rabidtictac wrote: ↑Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:49 pm
A great example of what I'm talking about is the shitty parkour platforming system in asscreed. You use 2 buttons to do everything and the game fucking does all this shit automatically without any input from you. It's lazy as shit and makes an activity that SHOULD be exciting and action-packed (racing from rooftop to rooftop and clambering along walls) an automated process akin to holding a sprint button in Gears of War.
I see that as necessary evil. I certainly don't play AC for sophisticated gameplay (because there is none), and the simplification of parkour meant less getting stuck when the character did something I didn't wanted, in short, they never made a system that would allow for more precise parkour which would also allow for good precision and low frustration. A lot of the charm in AC to me is the settings, the presentation (graphics and music) and the fact that those games can be played as a relaxing jouney. If I were to judge them only from a mechanical standpoint, I would probably end up saying they're shit just like you do
rabidtictac wrote: ↑Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:49 pm
There's a lot of "shit to do" in Farcry games, but very little HAPPENS in these games when you're not engaging specifically in a side quest (aka checking off boxes on a scavenger list or following a basic map marker mission.) For all the animals and factions and shit, the maps are so spread out that the world doesn't interact with itself in any meaningful ways.
See, this is a perfectly fair criticism, I feel the same about Skyrim, except in Skyrim it's so much worse, because it's an rpg. In FarCry 3, I've never felt like the few interactions it had were an issue, even though seeing the AI for example to make raids on your allies would make for much more interesting game, it still had satisfying gunplay, the formula from FC2 was greatly improved, villain was appealing, missions were varied and fun, and the game was going somewhere. Then they did something similar, only worse in every way for FC4, which I consider mediocre.
And this is actually why I like Primal more, because it's more of a sandbox in a way that the nature and people interact more, and if feels like stuff is happening outside of your actions. Of course, it's still on a small scale, but it's at least something.
However, the comparison to Vice City is kinda shit. It's not like factions in Far Cry don't fight, they sure have those little, simplistic skirmishes that you see in Vice City, and it's not like GTA has evolved in this that much in past years. As for collectibles, I've said it, it sure would be better if they were all adding something meaningful, but since they're all optional, you can just ignore them. It's a missed opportunity for sure, I'll give you that. I like how the new Tomb Raider handles collectibles, everything has small trivia from the protagonist, Shadow of Mordor did similar thing.