I feel like the issues with Andromeda aren't so much issues of playability (at least, not in a Mechanical sense) as they are of expectation and execution.
Consider, if you will, a Car metaphor.
Now when buying a new car, you can go either to a Used Car lot, or to your nearest BMW dealership.
At the Used Car lot, you can get yourself a car for cheap. It'll get you where you're going, and maybe even be kinda fun to drive, but it'll probably run a little rough, or clunk funny when you shift, or rattle a bit on the highway. Nothing that stops it from being a perfectly respectable car, and nothing you wouldn't expect from a used car.
The BMW, on the other hand, is brand new. Full of top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art systems and luxuries. You're paying full price for it, and what a price, and it's a brand that's known for quality. Heated seats, leather interiors, crash avoidance systems, automatic parallel parking, backup camera, all those bells and whistles. And it rides like an Arabian dream, quiet as an owl in flight, as smooth as silk even when driving on the highway.
In this metaphor, the Used Car is a game from a 'second tier' development studio- the people that main branches foist the PC ports and cosmetic packs onto. They don't generally make games- just re-package them as needed, maybe do a little touchup here and there. The BMW is the main AAA studio.
Now imagine, if you will, that you go to the BMW dealership, get a brand new luxury model, and...
When it starts up it whines for 5 seconds before turning over.
The whole thing hums in the key of G major when you go 70 on the highway.
The muffler rattles in the undercarriage when you go over a bump.
You have to jimmy the trunk (boot) open with a screwdriver.
You're feeling gypped, right? You paid good money for this car! You went to a brand that you trusted, who were known for making really nice cars, and you got something that seems like it just rolled off of Akbar's Used Car Lot! Yes, it's still a good-looking car, yes it still works as a car, yes it's still got some of the fancy interior stuff, but it wasn't up to the company's usual standards, and there was nothing that would have warned you before you bought it.
That's what people are upset about. Bioware assigned the creation of an entire game in their flagship line to people who have never done a full AAA game of this type before. As far as I know, their entire purpose was to be 'helper elves' to the main studio, doing things like texture touchups and miscellaneous model sculpting. They should have been put in charge of a couple major DLCs before being asked to make an entire game from the ground up.
And so you get a brand-new BMW that drives like a 10 year old Buick.
And by the way, in this metaphor, Bethesda would be Jeep. You're buying a brand new car, and yeah, it's not that great a car, but you know full well that you're getting it because of all the cool add-ons and aftermarket parts you can put on it.
I'm just starting the 6th dungeon of Persona 5. What a ride. I'm starting to stress out I won't have enough time to get any social confidants maxed. Dang it. I feel there is sometimes way too little time to get things done. Like too often Morgana doesn't let me go out and get anything done even though there is clearly early and have ton of energy.
Other than that I'm liking the story a lot. I'll rank the party confidants in how much I like them.
Mokoto > Yusuke > Futaba > Ann > Akechi > Morana > Haru > Ryugi.
I like all of them except for Ryugi. I originally started out liking him but as the game goes on he is getting pretty insufferable and he is a super load mouth.
Gamgee wrote: I'm just starting the 6th dungeon of Persona 5. What a ride. I'm starting to stress out I won't have enough time to get any social confidants maxed. Dang it. I feel there is sometimes way too little time to get things done. Like too often Morgana doesn't let me go out and get anything done even though there is clearly early and have ton of energy.
Welcome to the Persona lategame. I sure hope you've maxed out all your character stats, or are very close to doing so.
Gamgee wrote: I'm just starting the 6th dungeon of Persona 5. What a ride. I'm starting to stress out I won't have enough time to get any social confidants maxed. Dang it. I feel there is sometimes way too little time to get things done. Like too often Morgana doesn't let me go out and get anything done even though there is clearly early and have ton of energy.
Welcome to the Persona lategame. I sure hope you've maxed out all your character stats, or are very close to doing so.
All my confidants except the Empress are at least 4 or higher and the majority around 6-7. I have one maxed stat in charm and the others are at 4. I need a 5 in proficiency to start the Emperess confidant. *sigh*
I am still playing myself some stellaris, i am trying my best to be the friendliest all-devouring hive mind in the galaxy, just making new friends and eating the old.
I just beat Persona 5 and other than some very minor complaints I have to give it a 10/10. No game is perfect, but this game is as perfect a game can possibly be. This is a game everyone need to experience.
My only personal problem was I ended up not getting many confidants maxed at all so my ending was a little meh, but it gives me something to work towards in NG+. If I had more of a gameplan with raising my stats I might have been able to pull it off, but eh that's my persona inexperience showing.
The fact that I hate jrpg's but went on anyways should say a lot. Despite this it's probably the second best jrpg system I've played other than chrono trigger.
Anyone out there with even a passing interest in this game should get it.
Also I totally seen a lot of plot points coming. If anyone else has finished it let me know what ending you got, but please mark in spoilers.
I want to know more about all these confidants. I want a sequel somehow.
Freaky, I started this up again last week Its been fun but I still rate Morrowind and Skyrim a bit higher.
I tried installing a better enemy levelling mod and improved AI and couldnt get them to work.
Feels wrong that Im level 2 and battling daedra in the rifts etc :(
Yeah, first Morrowind, then Skyrim, then Oblivion. Haven't played Daggerfall, so can't rate that one, and Arena suffers from its old mechanics, though the graphics actually hold up somewhat.
I'm actually doing a Let's Play of Morrowind on my YouTube channel, hoping to finally finish the main quest. Played it for years, but never actually got around to finishing it. Same with Oblivion and Skyrim.
Not entirely sure what sort of class to play in Oblivion, though. Was thinking a fully-physical class, but unsure. I like magic too much.
I recently downloaded the original StarCraft from Blizzard's web site. It's free, so why not? The game has aged well, although StarCraft 2 is a huge leap forward. I only ever played the original on the N64, so it's kinda like new playing it on the computer, although the missions are still the exact same.
Blowing through Nioh. It's fun and a lot like Dark Souls, but way more "Over the top action combat and gear hunting" than "precise combat and timing", specifically because you can block almost everything and Ki Pulsing (stamina regen basically) makes it so you can combo enemies effortlessly.
Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop. I used to play this a bit back when it was released all those years ago, but it was very much lacking a lot. This version has actually fixed a lot of the problems and best of all, added in more campaigns.
Dark Souls 2, SOTF edition
The Ivory King is the last roadblock I really have. I could beat him if it wasnt for the stupid first part. I hate gank fights. The boss himself is easy, but I can never really get to him
Anvildude wrote: I feel like the issues with Andromeda aren't so much issues of playability (at least, not in a Mechanical sense) as they are of expectation and execution.
Consider, if you will, a Car metaphor.
Now when buying a new car, you can go either to a Used Car lot, or to your nearest BMW dealership.
At the Used Car lot, you can get yourself a car for cheap. It'll get you where you're going, and maybe even be kinda fun to drive, but it'll probably run a little rough, or clunk funny when you shift, or rattle a bit on the highway. Nothing that stops it from being a perfectly respectable car, and nothing you wouldn't expect from a used car.
The BMW, on the other hand, is brand new. Full of top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art systems and luxuries. You're paying full price for it, and what a price, and it's a brand that's known for quality. Heated seats, leather interiors, crash avoidance systems, automatic parallel parking, backup camera, all those bells and whistles. And it rides like an Arabian dream, quiet as an owl in flight, as smooth as silk even when driving on the highway.
In this metaphor, the Used Car is a game from a 'second tier' development studio- the people that main branches foist the PC ports and cosmetic packs onto. They don't generally make games- just re-package them as needed, maybe do a little touchup here and there. The BMW is the main AAA studio.
Now imagine, if you will, that you go to the BMW dealership, get a brand new luxury model, and...
When it starts up it whines for 5 seconds before turning over.
The whole thing hums in the key of G major when you go 70 on the highway.
The muffler rattles in the undercarriage when you go over a bump.
You have to jimmy the trunk (boot) open with a screwdriver.
You're feeling gypped, right? You paid good money for this car! You went to a brand that you trusted, who were known for making really nice cars, and you got something that seems like it just rolled off of Akbar's Used Car Lot! Yes, it's still a good-looking car, yes it still works as a car, yes it's still got some of the fancy interior stuff, but it wasn't up to the company's usual standards, and there was nothing that would have warned you before you bought it.
That's what people are upset about. Bioware assigned the creation of an entire game in their flagship line to people who have never done a full AAA game of this type before. As far as I know, their entire purpose was to be 'helper elves' to the main studio, doing things like texture touchups and miscellaneous model sculpting. They should have been put in charge of a couple major DLCs before being asked to make an entire game from the ground up.
And so you get a brand-new BMW that drives like a 10 year old Buick.
And by the way, in this metaphor, Bethesda would be Jeep. You're buying a brand new car, and yeah, it's not that great a car, but you know full well that you're getting it because of all the cool add-ons and aftermarket parts you can put on it.
Yeah i remember seeing it on a Twitch stream. Hopefully they didn't pull the 'if you don't like it you're a bigot' type mantra. I heard there was a lot of options for various non-white people but not so much for white people. The bigger part however was the facial animation and the fact that when your character runs it just looks so weird. Seriously the animation of the characters looks so awkward and lifeless. Wtf was that about?! It seemed to have decent moments but it had mining a lot and various other things. From the people i heard in the Twitch stream most of them didn't like most of the party members in the game either. The Twitch streamer said they thought the mission was pretty serious and nobody in the party took it seriously and they mostly agreed most of the party members they had no desire to romance anyway.
Evolve Stage Two. Just bought Quantum Caira and I'm having q blast with her. Despite the fact that she's supposed to be "harder" to play than regular Caira I actually found Quantum Caira easier to play.
Anvildude wrote: I feel like the issues with Andromeda aren't so much issues of playability (at least, not in a Mechanical sense) as they are of expectation and execution.
Consider, if you will, a Car metaphor.
Now when buying a new car, you can go either to a Used Car lot, or to your nearest BMW dealership.
At the Used Car lot, you can get yourself a car for cheap. It'll get you where you're going, and maybe even be kinda fun to drive, but it'll probably run a little rough, or clunk funny when you shift, or rattle a bit on the highway. Nothing that stops it from being a perfectly respectable car, and nothing you wouldn't expect from a used car.
The BMW, on the other hand, is brand new. Full of top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art systems and luxuries. You're paying full price for it, and what a price, and it's a brand that's known for quality. Heated seats, leather interiors, crash avoidance systems, automatic parallel parking, backup camera, all those bells and whistles. And it rides like an Arabian dream, quiet as an owl in flight, as smooth as silk even when driving on the highway.
In this metaphor, the Used Car is a game from a 'second tier' development studio- the people that main branches foist the PC ports and cosmetic packs onto. They don't generally make games- just re-package them as needed, maybe do a little touchup here and there. The BMW is the main AAA studio.
Now imagine, if you will, that you go to the BMW dealership, get a brand new luxury model, and...
When it starts up it whines for 5 seconds before turning over.
The whole thing hums in the key of G major when you go 70 on the highway.
The muffler rattles in the undercarriage when you go over a bump.
You have to jimmy the trunk (boot) open with a screwdriver.
You're feeling gypped, right? You paid good money for this car! You went to a brand that you trusted, who were known for making really nice cars, and you got something that seems like it just rolled off of Akbar's Used Car Lot! Yes, it's still a good-looking car, yes it still works as a car, yes it's still got some of the fancy interior stuff, but it wasn't up to the company's usual standards, and there was nothing that would have warned you before you bought it.
That's what people are upset about. Bioware assigned the creation of an entire game in their flagship line to people who have never done a full AAA game of this type before. As far as I know, their entire purpose was to be 'helper elves' to the main studio, doing things like texture touchups and miscellaneous model sculpting. They should have been put in charge of a couple major DLCs before being asked to make an entire game from the ground up.
And so you get a brand-new BMW that drives like a 10 year old Buick.
And by the way, in this metaphor, Bethesda would be Jeep. You're buying a brand new car, and yeah, it's not that great a car, but you know full well that you're getting it because of all the cool add-ons and aftermarket parts you can put on it.
Yeah i remember seeing it on a Twitch stream. Hopefully they didn't pull the 'if you don't like it you're a bigot' type mantra. I heard there was a lot of options for various non-white people but not so much for white people. The bigger part however was the facial animation and the fact that when your character runs it just looks so weird. Seriously the animation of the characters looks so awkward and lifeless. Wtf was that about?! It seemed to have decent moments but it had mining a lot and various other things. From the people i heard in the Twitch stream most of them didn't like most of the party members in the game either. The Twitch streamer said they thought the mission was pretty serious and nobody in the party took it seriously and they mostly agreed most of the party members they had no desire to romance anyway.
Extra Credits did a pretty good YouTube video on that, actually. Apparently most games with the sorts of massive branching plotlines like Mass Effect and The Witcher use procedural systems to animate characters during conversations. The thing is, those systems aren't the best at making characters properly emote, or feel 'not plastic', and so most of the time animators go back in and tweak stuff, adding things in as well. BUT! Andromeda didn't seem to have that second layer of polish on it. Might've been a bug preventing that extra layer of craftsmanship, might've been poor pipelining on the part of the company, meaning they just didn't get around to that step.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Dark Souls 2, SOTF edition The Ivory King is the last roadblock I really have. I could beat him if it wasnt for the stupid first part. I hate gank fights. The boss himself is easy, but I can never really get to him
Have you rescued all the Loyce knights from around the place? They're pretty helpful for distracting the burnt knights whilst you kill them (and of course sealing the portals).
Alternatively you could summon some help. Twiggy and Lucatiel have summons for that fight and you can dismiss them before the Ivory King turns up after taking out the burnt knights.
So far I really like the game play, my only "complaint" would be that I personally prefer a DC/Soulstorm/Retribution style map interface rather than an escalating mission number system.
I just completed Bioshock 2, trying to get Platinum. Although I fethed up and forgot to max out the Big Sister research track. Not sure if I want to do another playthrough just to get the stupid trophy. (who am I kidding I love the shinies.)
hotsauceman1 wrote: Dark Souls 2, SOTF edition
The Ivory King is the last roadblock I really have. I could beat him if it wasnt for the stupid first part. I hate gank fights. The boss himself is easy, but I can never really get to him
Have you rescued all the Loyce knights from around the place? They're pretty helpful for distracting the burnt knights whilst you kill them (and of course sealing the portals).
Alternatively you could summon some help. Twiggy and Lucatiel have summons for that fight and you can dismiss them before the Ivory King turns up after taking out the burnt knights.
Yup, and yup.
I honestly gave up, went to go kill nashandra and took my throne. The fight was not fun, And no, Someone went into the games code. the Knights Prioritize you first and rarely ever go after the frozen loyce knights.
I Beat the Fume Knight. That was a fun fight that felt like it was fair but hard.
This was a gank fest that eats all your healing then sends you after a Medium Difficulty boss
Blizzard's 20 free heros has lured me back into Heroes of the Storm. My boys love copiloting and picking my heroes and powers. Fortunately it's forgiving enough of a MOBA that most of my allies don't realize we're really 3 short guys in a trench coat.
Gitzbitah wrote: Blizzard's 20 free heros has lured me back into Heroes of the Storm. My boys love copiloting and picking my heroes and powers. Fortunately it's forgiving enough of a MOBA that most of my allies don't realize we're really 3 short guys in a trench coat.
Started playing Grim Dawn this week and its been a long time since I have grinned so much while I game, the setting and the music hits home. That and the very much grim tone of the game makes it feel as some sort of steam punkish version of Diablo 2 mixed with 40k. All in all a great game and very reasonably priced as well
Grim Dawn is great. The only thing I disliked about it is that the maps aren't randomly generated. Gets boring after several hundred hours.
Still derping Diablo 2 with poison Amazon. So much fun. Also, there should be a ladder reset any time soon now, so helooo sleepless nights.
And when tired of grinding, I decided to replay Dark Souls 1. Just this time without actually power zweihandering, but being all sneaky with riposites. Which is actually kinda hard to do using only kb/m setup
Picked up battle brothers and lost way more hours to it then I had planned. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes turn based strategy. It could do with a little bit more enemy variety (dire bear? Vampires? Witches?) but all in all I think it's an amazing game for what it is.
Edit: If you're into warhammer I'd highly recommend this game.
Picked up Metal Gear Solid V 5 Definitive Experience and been playing it for a bit now. It's fun, but would've been so much better if the plot didn't have all these flying rodent gak insane things thrown in as well.
BrookM wrote: Okay, so beating up base personnel not only raises morale, they'll also thank you for it..
Damn straight. They know who the Boss is. Also, make sure you grab and interrogate them. Some of them can give you the location of diamonds scattered around Mother Base.
Found Quiet, unlocked her for missions and at first I was wondering what her major malfunction was, until I found out how to order her around (through clunky menus, yay...) but after doing the requisite amount of staring at her she's now bestest of friends with me and well, when I tell her to scout out a camp she not only scouts it out, but also drops supplies at several handy overlooking positions. When I tell her to cover me, she shoots everything in sight. I really, really need to unlock the Sinful Butterfly soon to really have her do her job a 110%.
Also discovered that it is possible to change out Venom Snake for members of the base, who are equally as mute as him (no problems with that by the way, it's refreshing to play a Metal Gear game where the protagonist is not a fething idiot who repeats everything his conversation partner says!)
Ok, that's me officially completed Mass Effect Andromeda.
Overall, a good game, but could very well have been a great one if it weren't for the bugs.
The chief bugs and issues I experienced:
4 missions uncompleteable. 3 due to bugs in event triggers. 1 was due to jerkiness by the developers - one chance only to collect some things. You fail, tough luck, can't finish the mission.
Levels 60 to 70, aka tier 8 items... Don't exist in the game, unless you make them yourself. As a sidenote, levelling from 60 to 70, really frikking hard.
Had to restart a few 'boss' fights, again due to event triggers not... triggering.
One of the big payoff events and quests in the game? They forgot to render my character. They literally didn't exist in one of the great 'scenes' in the game.
Picked up 10 old Star Wars games from Steam's "May the 4th be with you" sale. All of the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games, all of the X-wing/TIE Fighter games, and Empire at War Gold Edition. I was too young to really remember the X-wing series or Dark Forces, but it's still a trip through Star Wars gaming history. Empire at War is really fun and might occupy a lot of my time in the near future.
It's a good enough game from what I've seen so far, but that's not much as it requires a live internet connection to play the single player matches!
WTF! That is a serious step BACKWARDS for me. I rent a room and therefore have to share their connection, in a village 6 miles from the nearest hub station, so my signal just keeps dropping out. When it does, the whole thing shuts down. I can't even take a look at the 'shop' side of the program, just close it down, see if I can fix the connection and re-start, or just leave it 'til later.
I can therefore only play late evening or early morning [after 10PM and before 7AM] and forget weekends!
So I will still be plugging away on Gods Among Us for the foreseeable. At least I can play the single player without a connection on that. Might eventually add injustice 2 on my phone and therefore I can use the 4G to keep that going, but will have to see about how that eats my data allowance.
Also glad to hear that the latest ME:A patch will probably have fixed the problem I have with the Architects not moving on to the final waypoint making it impossible to take them down. will probably be playing that to fill the time in whilst I take a look at the requirements for the PS4 version of Injustice 2.
Anvildude wrote: Aw man, wish I'd realized about that. Coulda picked up KOTOR.
Ive never used steam myself but I own KOTOR and its sequel and it was tricky getting them to run right on my pc. They still have the odd bug here and there. Great games though...well the first one anyways
Just picked up Human: Fall Flat on Steam for half-off. So far I'm impressed with the game, it's a puzzle-solving physics game whose puzzles feel very organic and intuitive, and it's suprisingly addictive. My main issue is that it's not very well optimized, at least right now.
amazingturtles wrote: They just released some lovely new free portraits for Stellaris! and i mean it when i say lovely, the larva portrait is utterly pretty as heck.
I feel kind of dumb asking this, but what is Stellaris? I've heard it's name before, and I've seen a bit of gameplay but what's the actual goal of the game? What do you spend most of your time doing?
Injustice 2 (once you have the connection) is a deeper game than Gods among us.
There are more game modes than before, including daily quests and a story mode where you have to use the character indicated.
There are also more moves than before. The simple quick/heavy/block of the original is now quick [tap], heavy [swipe right], evade [swipe left], high attack [swipe up], low attack [swipe down], ranged [swipe/tap combo], and block [visible button , bottom left].
Characters level up as normal, but you can also get XP bonuses from the dailies. They increase tier from collecting 'character shards' with more shards required both for higher grade [silver/gold] and for higher tier characters.
Matchmaking in single player is somewhat easier too. You get to know the rating of the opposing team, and the team with the higher rating has their rating highlighted in green. Make sure that's your team and you are in for an easy ride.
Character purchase and upgrade is with crystals earned from the game or bought. 100 gets you 5 shards initially, but the cost for each character increases on subsequent packs of shards, two different characters are offered each day. 150 gets you a character box. This is a random character, including a chance of a rare one. If you already have the character, you get 10 character shards towards an upgrade.
Equipment is now 5 slots, not 3, but is restricted in that each slot has a particular piece of gear and won't accept any other. For example, Scarecrow's [silver] 'glove' slot item HAS to go on the Scarecrow character, not one of the upgraded [Gold] versions of the character, never mind giving them to Batman who doesn't have any gear. Breaking down gear gives you components that can be used to upgrade any piece of gear.
There are also a lot of Abilities and Talents that I have not had time or game currency to play around with yet.
Overall, a very good game, providing it doesn't stall all the time when your connection drops out.
Have to disagree about the Injustice 2 mobile game. It's an overly complicated mess, that quite frequently goes unresponsive when I'm trying to string moves together. I played through the available story missions, and some of the campaign missions, and found myself thoroughly frustrated by the combat. Additionally, the game just stops explaining things early on. I've got sim chips, but no clue how to use them. Some of the alternate game modes still aren't available, and there's no explanation as to what needs to be done to unlock them.
Just for fun, I hopped onto the original last night. It appears to be still going strong, as the game was running a challenge to get a free Aquaman card with the Injustice 2 skin. So if the original is still doing well, why did they opt for something that literally has almost nothing in common with it?
Re started fallout 4 as couldn't really get on with it when I tried a while ago. Enjoying it a lot more this time, only a few hrs in and have walled in sanctuary with a few settlers plus red rocket as my home base.
Now just pushing out in to the waste lands collecting scrap/crap.
Injustice 2 sim chips let you 'simulate' a battle. I have been using them once I have beaten a character in Campaign Heroic, once that character has been beaten, you can go back and you just need the Sim chip and the energy. The battle is simulated and the outcome given (presumably) based on the combined threat levels of each team. It can be a quick way to get gear for certain characters as well as shards to level up characters you already have.
If you have spare gems, pump them into Operations as soon as you get access to them. Any character not in your team can be sent on an operation, but you can only have a maximum of 3 operations on at a time. I have spent a load of gems and now am up to level 20 upgrades - +20% completion speed, +25% XP, +15% gear chance, +25% credits, and +15% chance of gems. In the long run, the extra gems I will receive will outweigh the gems I have paid out to get this, and I am running operations almost round the clock now.
The toughest operations require characters with a minimum individual threat rating of 4,000n and take 9 hours and change to complete. I have 2 of them that I put on this morning. They should finish just after I get home from work, when I will put another 2 on. If I wake early in the morning, another 2 will go on.
Wth all the talk about the Fallout minis game I got back into Fallout 4 recently. Even though I got the season pass I never played any of the DLCs, so I'm doing the robot one now and will work my way through the other. Ada seems like a good companion, but I prefer being sneaky so I'll probably switch back to Piper when I get finished with the robot quest line
Prey. About half way done Psychotomrics. This game is super fun. Really starting to amp up the difficulty now. Definitely not touching psi powers since it seems like shmuck bait.
Gamgee wrote: Prey. About half way done Psychotomrics. This game is super fun. Really starting to amp up the difficulty now. Definitely not touching psi powers since it seems like shmuck bait.
The ending is fantastic. Saw the whole playthrough minus a few parts). I think you'll really love it. Game of the year winner for sure.
Gamgee wrote: Prey. About half way done Psychotomrics. This game is super fun. Really starting to amp up the difficulty now. Definitely not touching psi powers since it seems like shmuck bait.
The ending is fantastic. Saw the whole playthrough minus a few parts). I think you'll really love it. Game of the year winner for sure.
I've played like 5 game of the year winners this year. Only one will survive... I mean win. This year is s imply fantastic for games. So far my prime contenders are Persona, Nier, and Prey. As fun as HZD is it didn't hook me anywhere near as much as these three. I still think it's a fantastic game, but these were all just that much more interesting. One game I don't think should win game of the year is the new Zelda. No way man, most overrated rpg in the last decade. Is it good? Yeah, but it really doesn't have much interesting content to do but wander around watching your weapons break. Terrible acting and story don't help either. It just didn't have the variety of content on offer like Yakuza 0 it just felt like this big empty nothing with annoying weapons breaking every 2 micro seconds.
Even my friend who played it thinks its good but nowhere near the hype. As for Yakuza 0 it has fantastic gameplay, characters, and some of the best facial animations around. Still I think its story and limited budget really hurt it as a GOTY contender. A great game, but if I was to recommend only one to someone it wouldn't be up there from this year.
Well there is more than one category. If you did horror it'd compete with RE 7 and probably win though RE 7 was a great reboot. If it went sci-fi it'd compete with mass effect: andromeda and win without even trying. Far as story i think it's one of the better stories i've seen in a good game since deus ex human revolution. It could also probably do best fps.
See my thing is this. I don't expect it to beat all games in every category it takes place but merely to win at least one in a category if not many more.
I enjoyed Wolfenstien the New Order a lot. I don't know if I like Prey more than it. That is still an fps I always think about even years later. There might be best of a genre awards, but there is only one game of the year. That's how I see it anyways.
amazingturtles wrote: They just released some lovely new free portraits for Stellaris! and i mean it when i say lovely, the larva portrait is utterly pretty as heck.
I feel kind of dumb asking this, but what is Stellaris? I've heard it's name before, and I've seen a bit of gameplay but what's the actual goal of the game? What do you spend most of your time doing?
I'm bad at this sort of thing, but it's basically at its core a well made space 4x. you explore systems, colonize planets, build fleets and so on. You can win by conquering the galaxy, uniting it politically, and similar. the basic game itself isn't revolutionary, just a well made example of the genre.
the charm for me lies in the ways you can customize your empire; you can make yourself a clan of honorable warrior penguins, and end up in a galaxy filled with plants that want to exterminate all xenos, and more. there's a lot of nods to classic science fiction, and to warhammer 40k as well.
Endless Space 2 as the Vodyani. Think of a bunch of religious war-mongerers that suck the life out of their enemies to increase their population and make more ark ships and you basically have their faction in a nut shell. Ark ships are giant ships they live on rather than colonizing planets.
Endless Space 2 is a 4X game by the great creators of the Endless series.
The Uncharted collection on PS4. Finished the original game, "Drake's Fortune", and onto the second, "Among Thieves".
It's a series I like a lot, although the swing bars sections in this one have me cursing. At least they're not that common. the camera angles can sometimes make things harder, I've lost count of the number of times I think I've pulled off the jump, only to miss my target as I suddenly seem to have jumped at 45° to where I thought I was going, and I am so sick of that 'falling to your death' animation now - for both of the above reasons.
Still, I like the fact that, for this one, they start the story somewhere near the middle, Nathan having been shot and slumped in a seat on a train, finding out very quickly that 'down' isn't where it should be, and having to climb out, then once you have done so the story flips back to where it all began. Then, just at the point where you have almost forgotten the start of the game, you reach the train station and think "Oh! I know where this is going!".
Still want to finish this one, although for some reason, I'm half remembering it. Must have played it on PS3 some time in the past, but don't remember finishing it - and I'm sure I never played the third one.
Right, I'm officially never leaving that zone till I absolutely have to. Since Beta I've wanted some proper Dark Elf stuff, and yup, nope, never ever leaving it now.
I just downloaded ESO Morrowind so I'm gonna be playing through the new stuff for a while now. Made myself a new Warden character, loving my bear pet so far.
Aetare wrote: Playing Kotor and praying that they eventually make a third game in the series! It's an absolute classic and deserves to be reborn.
They did it for System Shock - although that was certainly more of a remake than a re-vamp for modern graphics and processor speeds. Not that the modern one is a bad game, I intend on getting it myself having played the demo level. I think that if they can respect the original enough, a remake of KOTOR would be wonderful.
A modern KOTOR with modern graphics, maybe some more modern decisions [Help a gang of drug users and you may get something to save an injured party member - or you may not - or take them out of the equation [lead them into a police sting, or do you take them all on yourselves and just search the bodies?] and some more 'shades of grey' decisions would be wonderful. [No! not whips and leather straps, get your minds out of the gutter. just more decisions in between "+ maximum Light side points", "Gain neither type of points", and "+ maximum dark side points". That's all.]
Picked up Dishonored 2 for my PS4 yesterday, got a few hours in last night. The first game was one of my favorites for the 360, that or FO New Vegas.
It's a good start so far, I'm only playing it on medium difficulty and the mooks are pretty smart. The game is beautiful, of course, they did a great job of building a steampunk dystopia.
feeder wrote: Picked up Dishonored 2 for my PS4 yesterday, got a few hours in last night. The first game was one of my favorites for the 360, that or FO New Vegas.
It's a good start so far, I'm only playing it on medium difficulty and the mooks are pretty smart. The game is beautiful, of course, they did a great job of building a steampunk dystopia.
Whats crazy is that they did all of that world building for the game, and also designed it in a way that you can skip so much of it, depending on how you choose to play.
Its got a new Expansion coming too. You'll play as Doud's sidekick, with all sorts of new abilities and such.
feeder wrote: Picked up Dishonored 2 for my PS4 yesterday, got a few hours in last night. The first game was one of my favorites for the 360, that or FO New Vegas.
It's a good start so far, I'm only playing it on medium difficulty and the mooks are pretty smart. The game is beautiful, of course, they did a great job of building a steampunk dystopia.
Whats crazy is that they did all of that world building for the game, and also designed it in a way that you can skip so much of it, depending on how you choose to play.
Its got a new Expansion coming too. You'll play as Doud's sidekick, with all sorts of new abilities and such.
That sounds fun. I'll probably pick up the PS4 reissue of Dishonored 1 with all the DLC for that included. That should keep me occupied til Far Cry 5 or Last of Us 2 comes up.
Aetare wrote: Playing Kotor and praying that they eventually make a third game in the series! It's an absolute classic and deserves to be reborn.
They did it for System Shock - although that was certainly more of a remake than a re-vamp for modern graphics and processor speeds. Not that the modern one is a bad game, I intend on getting it myself having played the demo level. I think that if they can respect the original enough, a remake of KOTOR would be wonderful.
A modern KOTOR with modern graphics, maybe some more modern decisions [Help a gang of drug users and you may get something to save an injured party member - or you may not - or take them out of the equation [lead them into a police sting, or do you take them all on yourselves and just search the bodies?] and some more 'shades of grey' decisions would be wonderful. [No! not whips and leather straps, get your minds out of the gutter. just more decisions in between "+ maximum Light side points", "Gain neither type of points", and "+ maximum dark side points". That's all.]
Love this; needs an update and I hope one is in the works.
Just love each new game in the series. The upgrades to what moves Nate can do - now he can slide down a gravel path, dig his heels in at the right moment and he can jump to a ledge.
It's only once you get used to the mechanic that you realise it was missing from the previous games and then you wonder why it wasn't there.
And coupled with that, he can now grapple something like a window. Hook the grapple into the wood of a barred window, pull hard, and it comes out of the frame.
Only real thing that disappoints is the lack of sounds on the Naughty Dog logo that accompanied the first three games in the Uncharted series. I really miss that little bit of guitar. Hope they re-instated it for 5.
Edit: And the [Expletive deleted] sliding sections.
Spoiler:
Getting through the inside of that mountain and down to the ship is a [censored]!
I've started messing around with Total War: Warhammer again, and being amused by the fact that in every game so far where I'm not the Empire, the entire Empire gets burned to the ground in short order by everyone else.
Trying to Clean Hands your way through Dishonoured 2 is frustrating as feth, as you can't be certain your unconscious enemies won't be devoured by wandering rats.
feeder wrote: Trying to Clean Hands your way through Dishonoured 2 is frustrating as feth, as you can't be certain your unconscious enemies won't be devoured by wandering rats.
Has found a good way to deal with this?
I might be wrong but I think rats spawn less the higher above ground you are, so maybe try dragging the unconscious bodies to an upper story of a building? It's something my friend did when he played.
The unconscious people dying so easily (dumping the body from too high up is really risky in most difficulties if you're going for low chaos, and then there's the bodies getting eaten) is a bullgak mechanic though.
Same! Just hit 70 on my AST. I'm not sure I like it more than Heavensward but that's not a bit knock given how much I like the MSQ for that one. Honestly Raubahn EX aside I'm thoroughly impressed so far.
Might jump back into Mankind Divided tonight. First play through I managed the non lethal kills achievement. This time though I just want to pewpewpew.
Does anyone think Galactic Civilizations 3 is a good game? I'm thinking of buying the bundle for it during the Steam Summer Sale, and I'd like some opinions on how good it is and whether it would be worth dropping $30 for the game and all of its expansions.
I just landed my ship on the coast of England in Expedition: Viking. Going to explore once I get home from work.
I got a pretty well rounded warband (hyrd I think they call it) 2 Sword and board warriors, 1 Spearman, 1 Archer, and 1 Healer. The last three can be changed out as a Beserker, Rogue and Skald, if I wanted too, but I'm so far pretty set in my ways and strategies.
I'm playing as a fairly reasonable dude, so I'm sure I'll be punished later for my early merciful decisions. One member of my group is already disgruntled. We'll see how far it goes after I hopefully strike a some sort of deal with whatever English faction I landed near.
My next play through I'm going to be a merciless bastard, and see what happens.
Traveled across northern england on a quest to get some hot blonde's items from her former lovers. Had to kill two of them, the other one gave it up without a fight. Got the items. Magic happened.
My character now has an injury "Infection: Groin".
I'd do it again.
Also lost loyalty to the female member of my warband that I was romancing. Who'd of thunk it?
Console-wise, finally finishing Dark Souls after years of letting the game gather dust.
Hilariously it's pre-patched so I get perks like certain enemies respawning when they shouldn't be because it makes the game a bit too easy and I can only warp to three bonfires instead of every one that I've visited.
On mobile i'm horribly addicted to the Mordheim app. If you've been attacked by warbands called Bretonnian Questors, The Baron's Blades or Azyrheim Auxiliaries then know that they're mine.
ZergSmasher wrote: Does anyone think Galactic Civilizations 3 is a good game? I'm thinking of buying the bundle for it during the Steam Summer Sale, and I'd like some opinions on how good it is and whether it would be worth dropping $30 for the game and all of its expansions.
No. If you play for the campaign super no (it's nearly non-existent). I don't have all the DLC which may have fixed it but if you're trying to scratch that 4X itch play Endless Space 2 or Endless Legend. I have all 3 of those games and the Endless series outdoes everything gal civ 3 tries to do. All the factions in the Endless Series play very differently. It's not a copy paste with little change. Hell if you play with or against a good drakken player in EL you'll find that diplomacy is more destructive than war. They can force diplomacy with you whether you want it or not. Want to fight me too bad we're at peace now? In fact let's be allies so i can win the diplomacy victory. Don't like it? I have far more influence points than you so what i want goes so sucks to be you.
I am revisiting my gaming childhood/adolescence recently. From Ebay over the past month or so, I have bought a SNES, N64 and Gamecube along with a bunch of games. Currently working my way through all those games I never got the chance to play properly or finish. As an aside, SNES games have rocketed in price. Trying to get a PAL Turtles in Time for a reasonable price is an exercise in frustration.
Currently playing through Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Waiting for Super Metroid and Super Castlevania to arrive - hopefully, this weekend!
Baron Klatz wrote: Console-wise, finally finishing Dark Souls after years of letting the game gather dust.
Hilariously it's pre-patched so I get perks like certain enemies respawning when they shouldn't be because it makes the game a bit too easy and I can only warp to three bonfires instead of every one that I've visited.
On mobile i'm horribly addicted to the Mordheim app. If you've been attacked by warbands called Bretonnian Questors, The Baron's Blades or Azyrheim Auxiliaries then know that they're mine.
In the first Dark Souls you couldn't warp to every bonfire, only to certain ones. That is somewhat countered by not having to return to the shrine to level up or upgrade your gear.
Baron Klatz wrote: Really? Hmm, okay then. Heard people say you could warp to ones you visited like the crystal cave bonfire.
Hmm, off the top of my head the ones I remember that I think you can warp to are Firelink, Anar Londo (the first bonfire you find there), Bonfire in front of Gwynevere, Queelags sister (hidden behind an illusory wall between the Queelag bossfight and the Demon Ruins bonfire which is the closest to the Ceaseless Discharge fight), The Painted World of Ariamis, The Depths, Crystal Caves (bonfire after beating Seath).
Pretty sure there is more but cannot remember at the moment. And of course you can only warp after getting the Lordvessel from Gwynevere.
Well, I picked up Stardew Valley in the Steam Summer sale. I haven't played it too much yet, just getting started, but I can already tell that game is a massive "black hole for time". It's pretty interesting and different from games I've played before.
ZergSmasher wrote: Well, I picked up Stardew Valley in the Steam Summer sale. I haven't played it too much yet, just getting started, but I can already tell that game is a massive "black hole for time". It's pretty interesting and different from games I've played before.
Did you take my advice with the 'Endless' Series and skip gal civ 3?
ZergSmasher wrote: Well, I picked up Stardew Valley in the Steam Summer sale. I haven't played it too much yet, just getting started, but I can already tell that game is a massive "black hole for time". It's pretty interesting and different from games I've played before.
Did you take my advice with the 'Endless' Series and skip gal civ 3?
I did pass on gal civ 3, and I just bought ES1. Sadly, the second one is not even on sale right now, so I'm gonna give it a miss for now.
Just got a copy of Fallout 4 on my PS4. Don't expect to play it at all, but a second hand copy of the Pip-boy edition for the cost of Deadpool (dreadful game), Uncharted 4 [which I will replace in a week or so.], a Red Dwarf bobblehead, and a Blade statue, plus £13, was too good to miss.
I can now add the hardware that I thought I would never get as the start of a costume - plus I can always use it for my PC version where I have a HUGE amount of time sunk into.
Result!
Now all I need is to get a bigger smartphone. My Galaxy 5s mini means the screen doesn't show properly. May pick up a second-hand S4 just for the pip-boy screen. Was thinking of upgrading, so may just go for an S7 first and see if that works.
Shadow of Mordor.
Enjoyable if a little samey.
Could have used a bit more of an RPG element imo but I get it they went down the hack n slash route gameplay-wise for a reason.
I got Ultimate General Civil War today, and well its quite fun if somewhat predictibale at times. Currently spending time shooting Confendarets and violentlely ravaging the south
Shadow of Mordor is one of those games where the level of roleplay is inversely proportional to the amount of skill you play the game with.
If you're good at the combat and mechanics, and don't die a lot... Then it's kinda boring.
BUT!
If you're not that good, and die a bunch, or let Orcs get away, then they start coming back, stronger, meaner, more often... Then you can make your own story of trying to take down a rival or nemesis.
That's the coolest thing about the game, I think. You should check out Tear of Grace's Shadows of Mordor playlist. It's fantastic.
That is a fair assessment of SoM, it's definitely a fantastically fun game to play, but you get so much more out of it early on when you don't have the skills and powers to trump every type of enemy that comes your way. Once you reach a certain level of power, the game just can't kill you except with the odd cheap shot, and even when you do die, you have the tools to make taking revenge trivially easy.
It's the one flaw in an otherwise superb game, so if the new, expanded Nemesis system in Shadow of War can fix it while keeping the rest it might well be an instant contender for the short list of near-perfect games.
Playing some more Dead by Daylight, and managing to hit every single bear trap that's placed on the map whenever the killer decides to play as the trapper.
Morrowind got me back into ESO, still playing pretty much only that right now. Got my dps warden mage up to level 35 or so now. Finished the Morrowind story quests and now I'm doing regular realm quests, but trying to stick to ones I haven't done yet. Been fun so far though.
It's great to have a real Hitman game (Absolution just wasn't a Hitman game... far too linear, missions broken up into tiny levels, few proper sand box areas, waaaay too much combat).
I've not even bothered with the 3rd level yet, and played the 2nd level only a couple of times as I've just been playing the Paris level over and over again, finding new ways to do things, completing challenges and so on.
Grabbed Gunpoint and Streets of Rogue during summer sale because my impulse control is lacking. Gunpoint is really fun if lacking in content (not worth it at all at the normal price, but half-off or less it's a good deal) and has a pretty good soundtrack and SoR is hilarious. Solving every problem with drugs and alcohol is a viable strategy (there's even a character designed with that playstyle in mind). Also somewhat pricey for what you get unless you have friends who play though.
I think I'm going to be getting Dead Cells. It was the last thing that tipped me over into actually buying a controller for my computer- between that, Rogue Legacy, and the Dark Souls franchise, I finally hit the point where there were more 'Please play with controller' games than I could bear to ignore.
And I've tried playing Dark Souls with KbM- it's just so... clunky.
Decided to pick up Stardew Valley again, having finally gotten around to fully expanding the house and getting that cellar done, so I can finally start doing something about this surplus of cheese and wine.
Nerak wrote: I dusted off Civilization 4 and fired up the fall from heaven mod. I'd forgotten just how much I like it. It's awesome.
Yeah, now I know what I'm going to play next... thanks for the reminder
But at the moment I am playing The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth + and I find it pretty awesome for an indie game!
The soundtrack, the setting, the graphics style... everything is on a very high level.
Also there are a lot of easter eggs there.
Playing a middle of the road character, equally interested in trade, conquest and exploration. Not very religious, I still find the staunch Christianity in Northumbria a bit grating. Currently allying with the Picts and Gaels and building up my hird and homestead before heading home to Jutland for the Allthing.
Still grinding Diablo 2. Learning, that it's actually a very, very bad idea to stand next to cursed, fire enchanted Griswold when he dies, on HC/NM difficulty
I ended up getting space hulk and that deathwatch game from the steam sale on account of cheapness.
i've been playing the deathwatch one and i can certainly see why it's got negative reviews it's also just kind of mindless fun, which is what i want right now i guess.
Splitting my time between Wildlands, where I'm just faffing about and getting some more flight time in as they've revised the helicopter controls considerably, finally(!) adding in a HUD for aiming and Stardew Valley, where I'm trying to 100% it, but the fishing aspect of the game is still as horrible as I remember it..
Just finished Gravity Rush 2, I was really impressed with what they improved upon in the original game, and just like in the first game the soundtrack is phenomenal. I'm a bit sad with how little attention the game got since its definitely one of the PS4's better exclusives, but at the very least it semi-concludes Kat's story but still has potential for a sequel.
I'm getting into Fortnite with a friend recently and its been pretty fun so far. My main complaint is the UI, its very clunky and unintuitive and takes you a lot of navigating to figure out where you're supposed to be.
Still waiting on Cyberpunk 2070 to get that Cyberpunk fix.
The lack of updates on this is frustrating. I would have expected something from CDPR on this after they finished with Witcher 3. But unfortunately the only thing they've said recently is that they're still working in both it and another unannounced project.
Given that it's just become free on EA Access, I finally got around to Titanfall 2. While the campaign is short, it is bloody good! Somewhat strangely, it actually called to mind Arkane's work on Dishonored in that the level design is meticulous and always tries to make the best use of all the game's mechanics and systems. Lots of alternate paths, lots of variety in heights and planes, lots of very well-crafted set piece scenes that make feeling like a badass effortless. It's very, very well thought out and clever game design which I always enjoy.
Solid writing as well, having the odd dialogue choice doesn't affect the gameplay at all but does help build up the pilot-titan dynamic the story is built around.
The multiplayer also plays much better than the beta did. The return of Grunts and Spectres helped the scale of the battles, as do the faster Titan build times. Nice to see the return of several maps from the original as well. I think I'll be sticking with this for quite a while.
Paradigm wrote: Given that it's just become free on EA Access, I finally got around to Titanfall 2. While the campaign is short, it is bloody good! Somewhat strangely, it actually called to mind Arkane's work on Dishonored in that the level design is meticulous and always tries to make the best use of all the game's mechanics and systems. Lots of alternate paths, lots of variety in heights and planes, lots of very well-crafted set piece scenes that make feeling like a badass effortless. It's very, very well thought out and clever game design which I always enjoy.
Solid writing as well, having the odd dialogue choice doesn't affect the gameplay at all but does help build up the pilot-titan dynamic the story is built around.
The multiplayer also plays much better than the beta did. The return of Grunts and Spectres helped the scale of the battles, as do the faster Titan build times. Nice to see the return of several maps from the original as well. I think I'll be sticking with this for quite a while.
The beta had Grunts and Spectres, you just had to play Bounty Hunt for them to really be there...
"Star Trek: Timelines" on tablet has taken over from my "Injustice 2" obsession, and "Need for Speed: Rivals" on PS4.
Timelines is a wonderful little time-waster. There has been a temporal disaster which has allowed multiple versions of all the crew from all series to exist at once. "Q" is asking for your help in tracing the cause of the event and putting it right, but should you really trust him?
This means that you can have a pool of crew to chose from ranging from the Original Captain Kirk, to Admiral Kirk, Young Kahn from "Space Seed", or "Wrathful Kahn" from the movie, to Captain Proton Paris, or "Mirror Spock". It has three different difficulties on each mission, which require different strengths of crew or different specifics (Bajoran, Brutal, Starfleet, etc.)
It can be quite challenging making sure you are working on a wide enough variety of crew to cover all situations, not just working on the 'best' crew at a time. some of the tasks involve restrictions on rarity of crew, so you can only use common and uncommon female crew that are Federation for example.
Having got a little bored with the same old same old in Fallout 4, I decided to see just how well I could handle Survival mode having never done it before...
Turns out, surprisingly well; I'm almost starting to think I'll struggle to go back to non-Survival in future. The game feels much more challenging but in a way that's entirely fair, unlike usual Bethesda difficulty levels which just inversely scale player and enemy damage, and to use a much-overused word, far more immersive.It also feels like my few hundred hours in the game learning how it works and where things are and all that are paying off, it rewards you for knowing your stuff. Progress is slow but it feels like progress, with a great trek to complete and turn in a few quests being so rewarding to finally compete and return to base for a good night's sleep and a good day's settlement building.
That said, bring on the Brotherhood of Steel and those lovely, lovely Vertibird Signal Grenades...
Season 2 Episode 1 of Telltale's Batman game came out today. I didn't like some of the choices that they made in the first season, so I've had no interest in Season 2. But I never bothered to remove Season 1 from my list of installed games (I'm lazy like that sometimes).
Then I logged into Steam today, and was greeted with a 12.9 GB download for Season 1.
Paradigm wrote: Having got a little bored with the same old same old in Fallout 4, I decided to see just how well I could handle Survival mode having never done it before...
Turns out, surprisingly well; I'm almost starting to think I'll struggle to go back to non-Survival in future. The game feels much more challenging but in a way that's entirely fair, unlike usual Bethesda difficulty levels which just inversely scale player and enemy damage, and to use a much-overused word, far more immersive.It also feels like my few hundred hours in the game learning how it works and where things are and all that are paying off, it rewards you for knowing your stuff. Progress is slow but it feels like progress, with a great trek to complete and turn in a few quests being so rewarding to finally compete and return to base for a good night's sleep and a good day's settlement building.
That said, bring on the Brotherhood of Steel and those lovely, lovely Vertibird Signal Grenades...
I'm playing Fallout 4 again, after having reinstalled it and spending a few hours trawling through the Nexus for mods and installing them on Sunday. I can't bring myself to do stuff like Survival mode, though. Too much, well, work for me when I just want to unwind. Kudos to the people willing to invest their time in it, but I just can't do it.
Next on my list are the games coming out this month that I've been looking forward to: Agents of Mayhem, XCOM2 expansion, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and We Happy Few I think goes into full release by the end of the month. Subnautica still has a couple months to go, I think.
After getting trolled too much in xcom 2 long war mod i decided to play total war: warhammer on hard difficulty as beastmen. The first time was a bit iffy but my 2nd go seems promising. The cat and mouse of horde gameplay has slowed down a bit since i got stronger but it's still sorta there. So yeah the game is going pretty well so far.
Funny you just did Xcom 2. Last week I finished an ubdertaking from 3 or so years ago to beat Xcom enemy unkown on (highest) impossible difficulty with Iron Man. 87 games in I beat it. 3 missions ended in failure and 23 soldiers died but I frakking did it. I felt like stop playing games entirely when I was staring at the victory screen at (4am at) the end.
Oh that's nothing. I could do xcom 2 on legend difficulty (hardest) on ironman. I did xcom 1 on hardest on ironman as well multiple times. What does it tell you i can't even beat xcom 2 on 2nd hardest on ironman with the long war mod. Seriously i've tried everything and just lose every time.
Playing total war: warhammer as beastmen again. Just got done destroying all of Tilea and Border princes are on their last settlement and last legs. I'm sieging their last settlement now and due to having boosts on siege holdout times the enemy takes about 3 turns before they start suffering casualties from hunger. So yeah it's going well. About to make bestigors in one of my armies and the other is also doing very well. If i do a bit better i may even buy another lord so i can have another horde going. Then i'll have 3 armies. I may need something to help lower upkeep some more though.
Paradigm wrote: Having got a little bored with the same old same old in Fallout 4, I decided to see just how well I could handle Survival mode having never done it before...
Turns out, surprisingly well; I'm almost starting to think I'll struggle to go back to non-Survival in future. The game feels much more challenging but in a way that's entirely fair, unlike usual Bethesda difficulty levels which just inversely scale player and enemy damage, and to use a much-overused word, far more immersive.It also feels like my few hundred hours in the game learning how it works and where things are and all that are paying off, it rewards you for knowing your stuff. Progress is slow but it feels like progress, with a great trek to complete and turn in a few quests being so rewarding to finally compete and return to base for a good night's sleep and a good day's settlement building.
That said, bring on the Brotherhood of Steel and those lovely, lovely Vertibird Signal Grenades...
I'm doing that too but only be able to save when you sleep thing is a bit too much. A whole days work can get wiped out by one mistake or a lucky shot.
I've been bouncing back and forth between ESO Morrowind and Fallout 4. I never did play any of the Fallout DLCs, so I've been checking them out now. Just finished the robot one, that was fun.
Total War: Warhammer. Just united Norsca under Wulfrik the Wanderer, supplemented by Throgg. Was prepping to start heading south, but the Chaos invasion started. I've got 3 armies, so Wulfrik and some random warlord will farm the Chaos invasions while Throgg heads for Kislev to take Troll Country.
The Monster Hunt quests are different, and a fun distraction with pretty hefty rewards. I atually got my ass kicked by the Frostwyrm and twin Cygor quests. The Frostwyrm caught me off guard with its reinforcements coming from both sides after I half assed my deployment. The explosive scattering of the Cygor projectiles was brutal, and whittled down 5 units to next to nothing before I could even engage in combat. Then when the second Cygor appeared behind me, his projectile wiped out what was left of my army. Can't wait to try the rest.
Wish Bretonnia had something similiar, where your lords could graduate up to the 3 different levels of Knighthood after completeing the quests, rather than them just being skills.
Whelp my total war: warhammer campaign came to an awful end. I destroyed the rest of the border princes but one army got mostly destroyed by top knotz (only by a bit the first fight) and then destroyed in the 2nd fight. Then my next army i go up to a dwarven stronghold. Now keep in mind he's only got one territory so i think "there's no way he could have that big of an army" only to find he's got like a full stack of 20 dudes with a crap ton of longbeards and a crap ton of crossbowmen both unit cards making my mainly gors and ungor archers look like crap. So he attacks and i withdraw and get away. I figure ok maybe i should use the 'beast paths' and then i get intercepted. This means if i lose this next battle on a skinny path with absolutely no way to flank that i will lose. Dwarfs being gunline just go up the path and i have no way out. Somehow he doesn't even take issue marching all the way around the map with his troops having 'fresh' status the whole way through so nobody got tired (which is moronic). Basically his ranged units outclass mine and his longbeards outclass my gors.
I lose fairly easily because dwarfs have quality and yet similar numbers. So i quit out of game because that ends the campaign. I find it to be absolute crap that such a massive dwarf army can somehow remain with only one territory and not suffer an insane amount of upkeep. How do you even maintain that size of an army with quality troops? That's such crap. Stupid A.I. cheats.
I will restart the campaign and maybe try something next time. Perhaps i will use a hero as a scout for my armies again.
My best guess is that the AI never has to pay upkeep. I've noted in multiple Total War games that the computer players seem able to keep ridiculously large armies no matter how small their territory is.
Thea dont have upkeep as far as I know, so yea. It can get hectic at times.
Playing as Norsca is way to easy as the campaign offer no real challenge really so a bit miffed at that
Trondheim wrote: Playing as Norsca is way to easy as the campaign offer no real challenge really so a bit miffed at that
I agree, I think 3 things could help make it more challenging and fun:
I think the Monster Hunt quests should be tied into requirements for high end buildings. That way you are sending an army raiding across the map, while your homeland is left with less defenders. Would be more of a gamble to do the quests, if you have enemies at your border, but still something you'd need to do and not wait until you get a stack of elite units. And the quests should get harder the longer you put them off after accepting them.
I also think there should be more Norsca subfactions. I can generally have two of the immediate subfactions confederated at the least by turn 20 if I play conservatively and that gives me control of two whole provinces that can only be effectively attacked from 1 direction. Once you get closer to Kislev and Kraka Drak, it gets a bit hairier if they go to war. More factions would make it tougher to build up an empire in the north.
Lastly I think rebellions should be more common. In a land where only the strong survive and raiding is a way of life, there should be constant challenges to leadership if you aren't winning battles, completing quests and raiding.
I think the last 2 could be modded by an intrepid modder.
And on a modding side note: I'll pay money if someone modded Fimir as recruitable for Beastmen! Probably overlap with Minotaurs, but I love the new updated minis from FW.
Conrad Turner wrote: "Star Trek: Timelines" on tablet has taken over from my "Injustice 2" obsession, and "Need for Speed: Rivals" on PS4.
Timelines is a wonderful little time-waster. There has been a temporal disaster which has allowed multiple versions of all the crew from all series to exist at once. "Q" is asking for your help in tracing the cause of the event and putting it right, but should you really trust him?
This means that you can have a pool of crew to chose from ranging from the Original Captain Kirk, to Admiral Kirk, Young Kahn from "Space Seed", or "Wrathful Kahn" from the movie, to Captain Proton Paris, or "Mirror Spock". It has three different difficulties on each mission, which require different strengths of crew or different specifics (Bajoran, Brutal, Starfleet, etc.)
It can be quite challenging making sure you are working on a wide enough variety of crew to cover all situations, not just working on the 'best' crew at a time. some of the tasks involve restrictions on rarity of crew, so you can only use common and uncommon female crew that are Federation for example.
I love this game, I really do. I think the concept is awesome, and the gameplay is fun for being relatively simple. That said, I'm unwilling to be "nickel and dimed" just to be able to play the game. The cap on number of crew without paying just killed it for me. I couldn't have all the crew I needed for the missions until I was willing to pony up the cash to remove the paywall, so I just quit, because I just know there would be another paywall, and another, and another, until I'm eventually shelling out way too much money on the game.
I know this sounds very ranty, but I hate this model of games, and you see it all the time on mobile games. You can technically play for free, but if you want to do well you have to pay for the game's "premium currency" (e.g. Gems, Dilithium, Diamonds, Tokens, etc.), which means ultimately you will spend a lot of money. I'd rather pay some money up front for a game rather than have it be "free" and have to do microtransactions all the time to stay good.
Started my 3rd beastmen campaign. Had some rocky parts and almost completely lost. Seriously i recruited khazrak after my main army was doing well (his army was destroyed earlier). Then i basically got that army annihilated due to a stupid move i made. A few armies going back and forth over an area and i attacked one only to have one of their allies attack multiple other armies (including a beastmen ally i signed a non-aggression pact with, the remnants of my beastmen brayherd waaagh! horde thing and then my army with another beastmen lord. Somehow they manage to attack, i flee and they are somehow still in range again. I lose the fight and that army completely somehow.
I then run away with khazrak slowly building up a force out of absolutely nothing but khazrak and about 20k of cash (which meant all i had to do was sack a lot of places or use certain dark moons for added horde growth boosts). Somehow magically even though some beastmen a.i. was a moron and almost got my force killed i magically lived, killed a small settlement off some dude i almost murdered earlier (never thought him leaving might save my whole game rather than become a minor annoyance. I somehow build up and get gors and very recently minotaurs. At this point khazrak's army has 3 minotaur units, a lot of gors and a bunch of ungor archers and is pretty heavily built up.
Things are going well and i've destroyed several bretonnia minor factions (fay enchantress and i think one to two others). I saw bretonnia at a disadvantage after colonizing a ruined settlement and murdered his army while it was repairing. Leonncour's army is fairly nearby but i think i can take it and i have a brayherd waaagh! army nearby.
Started playing TW Warhammer again after a long while. Started as the Empire, and ran into the usual problem at the start - namely, the rebels badly outnumber you (i.e. have more troops than you can afford to maintain), and horde factions keep scouting out your territory. Started up a Chaos Warriors campaign, and played it seriously for the first time. The start was actually pretty easy, and I was doing reasonably well... right up until I had an unfortunate run of bad luck right as a certain event (which is spoilery) occurred.
Trondheim wrote: Playing as Norsca is way to easy as the campaign offer no real challenge really so a bit miffed at that
I agree, I think 3 things could help make it more challenging and fun:
I think the Monster Hunt quests should be tied into requirements for high end buildings. That way you are sending an army raiding across the map, while your homeland is left with less defenders. Would be more of a gamble to do the quests, if you have enemies at your border, but still something you'd need to do and not wait until you get a stack of elite units. And the quests should get harder the longer you put them off after accepting them.
I also think there should be more Norsca subfactions. I can generally have two of the immediate subfactions confederated at the least by turn 20 if I play conservatively and that gives me control of two whole provinces that can only be effectively attacked from 1 direction. Once you get closer to Kislev and Kraka Drak, it gets a bit hairier if they go to war. More factions would make it tougher to build up an empire in the north.
Lastly I think rebellions should be more common. In a land where only the strong survive and raiding is a way of life, there should be constant challenges to leadership if you aren't winning battles, completing quests and raiding.
I think the last 2 could be modded by an intrepid modder.
And on a modding side note: I'll pay money if someone modded Fimir as recruitable for Beastmen! Probably overlap with Minotaurs, but I love the new updated minis from FW.
Aye agreed, Kislev and Kraka can be a real pain if they jump you early on but I have yet to see any real effort from said factions to contain my monstrous horde, also its somewhat annoying that the new update keep turning your mods of, and it dose not seem to work with mods made By Radoius
flamingkillamajig wrote:Well trondheim is norwegian so maybe norsca's playstyle is in his blood hehe.
Well you know, raiding, burning and generaly sowing mayhem is a mandatory subject in school
And on a sidenote, once you get Throg past lvl 20 and tool him for combat and troll support, well there is literary no foes exept Kholek or maybe one of the Vampire Count lords whom can beat him. I faced down three full Empire armies with Throg and his army and half a stack of Marauder Champions and a few Warhounds, and won a crushing victory. So yea, he needs to be looked at and the AI definily needs a rework when it comes to it level of aggresivnes.
I know this sounds very ranty, but I hate this model of games, and you see it all the time on mobile games. You can technically play for free, but if you want to do well you have to pay for the game's "premium currency" (e.g. Gems, Dilithium, Diamonds, Tokens, etc.), which means ultimately you will spend a lot of money. I'd rather pay some money up front for a game rather than have it be "free" and have to do microtransactions all the time to stay good.
And yet people consistantly spend enough money in them to justify the expense. I've got a couple of mobile games that I'm playing right now, and in both cases I'm staying f2p simply because the amount of money you need to spend to make a difference is absurd. In one of them, they have monthly events in which you can easily spend over $100 and still not get anywhere near everything the event has to offer. In the other, it costs roughly $25 just to get one "10 roll" on the character gacha, each roll only having a less than 5% chance of giving you one of the rarer characters (note that you don't need the rarer characters to be very successful, though). So there's not much incentive for me to spend anything because the spending threshold to actually make a difference in my gameplay is too high.
Of course, the reason that everything is so expensive is because the "whales" *do* regularly shell out that much money each month. And considering you could get a brand new console or PC video game for significantly less than that, it's pretty amazing to me.
The only game that annoys me with that is MWO and their Caches. Mostly because the only way to get keys to open those caches (which you get just through good play) is with their currency. Which means, if you didn't start out with some MC, there would be no way to open your Caches. Even though you can get Cache Key bundles in Caches, it's random chance, and it's just... Urgh.
Anvildude wrote: The only game that annoys me with that is MWO and their Caches. Mostly because the only way to get keys to open those caches (which you get just through good play) is with their currency. Which means, if you didn't start out with some MC, there would be no way to open your Caches. Even though you can get Cache Key bundles in Caches, it's random chance, and it's just... Urgh.
Keyed caches are pretty common these days. Guild Wars 2 does it. The Perfect World games (including D&D, Star Trek, and Champions Online) all do it. Secret World Legends does it. The last one gives you one key a day if you're a subscriber. But iirc the others all require you to purchase the keys. And the chests are random drops that appear quite often as random drops while you play.
Game's going actually pretty well with total war: warhammer (hopefully don't eat my words). Got about 2 full armies of beastmen and just wrecking the **** out of bretonnia and some minor empire faction. Bretonnia is basically on it's death bed and i managed to avoid what seems to be some of the empire's bigger armies. Wood elves are the strongest power in the game currently. How that is i have no clue (confederated all their sub-factions super quick)? Luckily though i seem to be avoiding wood elves and may be out of their proximity for a time. Rather hating a lot of the enemies are settling the lands i raze and then boosting their empires considerably. Sorta gives them easy access to new territory by settling in the shadow of my devastation. Perhaps if i sow chaos taint more it'll help? That said they repair their armies in like 1-2 turns tops. It's rather stupid. So not only do they not have upkeep but they heal their army faster too. I honestly think horde armies are hard mode. Just so much cat and mouse even when you get a bit more powerful.
It is balanced by the fact that Horde factions can just run away and/or hide with their entire faction should they see it prudent to do so. Normal factions have to keep their empire in check.
Well last night i got close enough to some of the northern empire territories and empire and bretonnia are actually really weak now. In fact though wood elves hate me they decided to go at war with bretonnia (making my job simpler as beastmen) and a bunch of factions are either at war with the Empire or with their sub-factions. Basically if i really wanted to at this point i could raid a few territories in the wake of destruction by warriors of chaos, the norse, other beastmen, vampire counts and to an extent even wood elves (my only really strong enemy currently) and just win after they murder those factions. Basically i went from surrounded by enemies to everybody surrounding most of my enemies or at least the campaign important ones. I'm getting close to a short campaign victory. A long campaign victory would be significantly harder however as dwarfs are actually reasonably strong and i still need to raze a bunch more settlements to do it but besides that everything's going really well.
Spent almost the entirety of today with my brother playing Factorio. After having not touched the game for more than a good year now, we were curious to see what changes had been implemented and we were not disappointed.
We made some good progress and are about to fully deploy the much-needed drone logistics network again.
After that.. uranium refining so we can make nuclear bombs.
Dark and Light.
Had to give War in the East a rest. About to hit the first mud phase. On the verge of capturing Smolensk, Keiv, Odessa, and allocating divisions to Group North to help cover down on the front there and I get pass that big arse lake near Leningrad
BrookM wrote: Spent almost the entirety of today with my brother playing Factorio. After having not touched the game for more than a good year now, we were curious to see what changes had been implemented and we were not disappointed.
We made some good progress and are about to fully deploy the much-needed drone logistics network again.
After that.. uranium refining so we can make nuclear bombs.
I mis-read that as "Fictorum", thinking you'd had some sort of early-access thing going. Was very confused when you started talking about drones.
Ok bretonnia is destroyed. The empire has one territory. Both the main undead factions are on their last legs as well (like 1-2 territories per faction). Wood elves and dwarfs are still insanely strong. In fact their power level is higher than that of warriors of chaos but all the marauder tribes should help i hope. Wood elves are almost unassailable though and they've basically bubble wrapped the Empire with all their armies meaning even to win short campaign i have to go on a massive campaign into wood elf territory and make serious ground in there. After just going near wood elf territory i got the crap kicked out of me (i won the first fight but suffered about as much and then got hit by another of his armies that had 3 forest dragons). Then after that somehow mannfred comes by after i get outta there and kicks my teeth in to my annoyance. I dunno how i lived that but i'm glad i did.
However despite all this crap with wood elves most of their armies seem to be in bretonnian lands and if i can get to the forests of athel loren and destroy some of their main settlements then perhaps their income would go to absolute crap and i could taint their lands as an added bonus. Super risky but considering just about all wood elf income comes out of the forest of athel loren razing it esp. in its defenseless state (or seemingly defenseless state) seems like a really good idea.
Also wood elves with the exception of one territory (under empire control and in the middle of bretonnia) have taken over all of bretonnian lands and one territory i razed of estalian lands earlier in the campaign. The empire is almost totally a chaos tainted ruin and what isn't is under vampire control or corruption so yeah a sad pathetic crater of its former self. Greenskins are almost dead factionwide except skarsnik's faction which i befriended along with a bunch of mostly useless beastmen factions that i should probably just confederate if things are going poorly. Warriors of chaos and the norse are doing most of the work with me just tearing apart the enemy's territory from the back or like a cancer from the inside.
For now i'm mostly attacking border princes and it's helping. Not sure if i'll win the next battle vs 3 armies since they're badly damaged from attrition and other shenanigans. Also hilariously enough since they've been settling chaos tainted territory i just deployed a couple gorebulls to lower public order even faster and now in a turn one of their territories will rebel (the one with all 3 armies) and then another territory will rebel in about 2 turns. Hilarious stuff to be sure. Might just kill their armies for me but it could cause more trouble than it's worth. We'll see.
Did more Factorio with my brother this evening, finally setting up a limited logistics network run by drones (212 drones right now) and for gaks and giggles having a train run the science packs from that facility to our main research blob.
While he was doing that I've been busy stockpiling gakloads of flamethrower fuel and using it to burn out nearby nests of locals that were getting a bit too close to our outposts and railways. The battle for Outpost Oil was a long one, but in the end nothing but charred corpses and several acres of burned down woodland remained.
Next up when we find the time.. nuclear power. We've already decided to call our first reactor Chernobyl, because we all know where this is going.
Still plodding away at Factorio, we've gotten around to building four nuclear reactors, all we need now is enough fuel to run it all.
Also decided to play Metal Slug 3 again after watching a YouTube channel play through all games in a row. I'm still horrible at it, but it's still a fine game to play nonetheless.
Xcom 2: long war again. Turned down the difficulty to 2nd lowest (of the 4 difficulties). So far things seem to be going pretty well. The game is super slow though due to having 4 missions progressing all at once.
Playing through a load of Fire Emblem recently, currently on Sacred Stones, probably my favourite of the GBA titles anyway. To spice it up a bit though I randomized the characters, and suffice to say I'm getting pretty screwed over but I guess that's where the challenge is. I'm also trying to find a decent emulator to play Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance on, but so far it has been pretty hit and miss.
Still playing Agents of Mayhem. It's fun, but it doesn't have the same magic that Saint's Row 3, 4, and 4.5 had. I think the problem is that AOM tried to take itself seriously. "Seriously" isn't really the best word, though. It's like it's trying too hard to be internally consistent, trying to explain it's over-the-top aspects, etc. When I first started playing Saint's Row 3, it metaphorically grabbed me by the balls and swung me right over the top, so-to-speak, in that SR3 didn't take things seriously, it didn't care, and it took a maniacal glee in doing so. AOM is something of a very immature GIJoe cartoon. That's not a bad thing, though. I just wish I had prepared myself a bit more for that. It doesn't help that the game is a bit of a slow start, and you don't get some of the coolest agents right away. And the coolest agent of all, Johnny Gat, is locked if you didn't preorder the game. Fortunately, I did (because Steam refunds are a thing, if I didn't like the game). But I do like the game, having fun now. Need to go back to killing some gak.
Biggest problems I have with Agents of Mayhem right now are the poor PC performance and lack of coop. We usually guy these games for the awesome coop experiences.
I've been playing Agents of Mayhem on my Xbox One. I also agree about it not being quite what I had expected. I'm not sure what exactly is missing, but there's definitely something. I can definitely point to one thing, though - no moments like the duets between the boss and Pierce in the earlier games which were silly, heartwarming, and incredibly fun (and, of course, the moment in 4 when the big bad joins in and spoils the whole thing). AoM just feels like a random group of people thrown together. Now admittedly, that's what they largely are. But the game doesn't have to feel that way. Even the one confirmed romantic relationship in the game (so far, at any rate) between
Spoiler:
Friday and Braddock
just feels like the developers decided to throw two people together for no apparent reason.
The game appears to be a parody of Saturday morning cartoons, with an action team operating out of a secret base against an international evil overlord. It succeeds in that for the most part. But at the same time, there's something missing that was present in the Saints Row games (note that I've played SR 2, 3, and 4).
Took my first dive into the Souls games with DS2. So far I have yet to git gud, but am having fun with the combat and the environment. Also feth the Pursuer.
gnome_idea_what wrote: Took my first dive into the Souls games with DS2. So far I have yet to git gud, but am having fun with the combat and the environment. Also feth the Pursuer.
The Pursuer is quite annoying for beginners
Once you learn to parry, though, he becomes one of the easiest bosses in the game. Bait out his charge-with-shield-up-swing and parry, then get some free hits in and repeat.
Just had an rather unpleasent battle against the Advent in Xcom 2, my mission was to attack and demolish a blacksite. And to be fair the mission was labeld as very difficult, but I did not expect meet four pods of Mutons with one Muton beserker just for lolzs. My squad managed to dispose of them after a rather hectic and violent battle, it was at this moment where two massiv feth all two legged metal monsters came stomping into view.
Sometimes I think the Ai just do this to give me grief
I managed a game of crusader kings where i lost in the first month. it has been a while since i had something like that happen. (Custom ruler somehow got and died of dysentery)
I vaguely remember "Remember Me". It was a decent enough game when it came out, but I remember feeling that it was far too linear. They build this pretty world, but you couldn't explore it. Every time there was a fork in the road/corridor, either one path dead-ended right away, or both just rejoined each other within 5 seconds.
The memory rebuilding thing was a neat idea, though.
Fallout Nevada (new version based on Fallout 2)
I want to try new official patch to HOMM 3 with real Multiplayer :-)
And Path of Exile (PoE) for poe orbs. If you know something, just let me know
I will be happy when I buy Exalted Orbs, buying PoE Currency is a matter of life and death. Buy Exalted Orbs and Chaos Orbs (cheap)
https://odealo.com/games/path-of-exile
Finally finished Breath of the Wild. In a holding pattern until Yakuza Kiwami, and I don't see much that really excites me for the Switch until a RPG that looks interesting. Maybe Battle Chasers?
BrookM wrote: I still need to play Life is Strange but after Remember Me I'm not really looking forward to it.
They're very different games.
Keep in mind that 'Remember Me' is a third person action game with an unusual mechanic that not many people remember, while 'Life Is Strange' is a Tell-Tale-style adventure game with an unusual mechanic. And while the former was released first, only the latter has an announced follow-up.
BrookM wrote: You bastard, nobody ever respects Dutch neutrality.
Think of the rubber, Brook. The rubber.
Get sweden next ;P. Something about those swedes. They have it coming .
I'm playing more xcom 2 long war. 2nd lowest difficulty just seems way too easy now. Game proceeds incredibly slowly. I have full mag weapons, full predator armor, a good chunk of buildings in my base, 8 regions, about 1.5k supplies per month, 2 liberated regions and everything just seems to be going really, really well. It's not even august yet and i have all this and the enemies i face are generally really pitiful in comparison. I'm probably gonna get another couple regions fairly soon. I'll see how it goes.
Oh and xcom 2: war of the chosen is out in 3 days so i downloaded it on steam. It should be good. I hope to stream it on twitch since it's a new game and it might get me some twitch followers.
I've come to hate the Walking Dead series from Telltale with a passion. The first season was amazing, but then the second season came along and for me it became "we're in this gak because we're dumb feths who keep picking up the idiot ball willingly."
On my own gaming front, I picked up the Escapists 2 yesterday, so we could play it in coop. So far, it has been a lot of brooding, skulking about and awkward shower scenes where we warned one another not to drop the soap or take up the role of hygiene inspector.
BrookM wrote: I've come to hate the Walking Dead series from Telltale with a passion. The first season was amazing, but then the second season came along and for me it became "we're in this gak because we're dumb feths who keep picking up the idiot ball willingly."
Glad to hear it's true to the TV adaptation.
Any "slow, mindless zombie" world requires a massive dose of idiot ball because slow, mindless zombies are basically not a threat otherwise.
Partway through S1E3,
Spoiler:
just met Chuck and got the train moving. Duck got bit and I'm worried about Kenny's reaction when the scamp turns.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, Stories Untold is one of those games I'll only play once, not because it's a bad game, but because of how the story is told, is best on the first playthrough. Plus, heavy gak.
Also played more Factorio with my brother, we sent a fish into outer space.
Mario Rabbids Battle Kingdom. This is a ton of fun and a solid strategy game. It seems Basic at first and it is but after some time the possible combos and attacks really start making you think
I finished the Xcom 2 War Of The Chosen campaign, and I dare say that bringing a templar along, whom is tooled for hand to hand figthing makes the game way more enjoyebal. The ability to simply wade into a mob of enemies and start ripping them apart is so good it should be illegal. That and the feeling of two champion SPARKS pummeling the Avatars made my day, shred gun for the win
Back into Starbound for a bit with my brother and a friend, as we're slowly building up a space station of our own. Also, the mecha aspect of the game, while a bit of a chore when it comes to finding good upgrade parts, is good fun as well.
WarbossDakka wrote: Destiny 2 at the moment, struggling to keep up with others with the pace they're leveling up at.
I was thinking about getting D2 once it goes on sale, but haven't made up my mind. How's the PvE and are their any endgame raids in the game yet? It looks fairly solid otherwise but those are the things I have conflicting info on.
WarbossDakka wrote: Destiny 2 at the moment, struggling to keep up with others with the pace they're leveling up at.
I was thinking about getting D2 once it goes on sale, but haven't made up my mind. How's the PvE and are their any endgame raids in the game yet? It looks fairly solid otherwise but those are the things I have conflicting info on.
There's a plethora of PvE things to do and the first raid opens tomorrow.
MIx of Total Warhammer and Tyranny (the new Bastard's Wound DLC)
Something of practice (for TWII) and armies that I didn't win the game with for the former. That has been fun.
BW for Tyranny was severely disappointing (and overpriced for such a tiny DLC), which was irritating, since I actually liked most of the base game (up til Act 3) Instead of dealing with the huge unexplored areas and unresolved issues of the base game and expanding out the lore and setting, it digs a new hole that doesn't go anywhere. Just retreads more of the (fairly boring) dungeons crawls in the original game (and has a similar abrupt and unanswered ending).
Adds a couple companion quests (for only half the companions), but they feel really brief and end on uncertain and unsatisfactory notes.
The sad thing is, this shouldn't be surprising. Obsidian is really bad at endings, I can't think of one of their games that didn't have a rushed and unsatisfactory ending.
WarbossDakka wrote: Destiny 2 at the moment, struggling to keep up with others with the pace they're leveling up at.
I was thinking about getting D2 once it goes on sale, but haven't made up my mind. How's the PvE and are their any endgame raids in the game yet? It looks fairly solid otherwise but those are the things I have conflicting info on.
There's a plethora of PvE things to do and the first raid opens tomorrow.
I let the Beastwoman run the joint after clearing out the boring dungeon and that was it. I don't even think there was a big reward or anything.
Tyranny has flashes of greatness, but it never delivered for me.
That's what annoys me. I thought acts I and II were rather good, with lots of choices, dilemmas, and even different world states depending on your choices in the prologue. Then it just... collapses into boss fights.
I even thought they improved the combat system from Pillars a bit (using the skills rather than level based with a few modifiers 'accuracy' and 'defense' made the mechanics work a bit better, with a greater sense of player control)
But yeah, that's about what I did. A few yawn worthy fights (some of which were a bit overtuned for random trash fights), a couple murders and I chose the same outcome you did. The other two contenders are useful for their specific skills in crafts and water reclamation, but they don't any leadership qualities (and they're both $&$@* jerks)
There is a panel in the end game sequence describing what happens, but the payoff for messing with this silly settlement [and why anyone would settle a place with poisonous water and constant attacks from supernatural horrors is a baffling starting premise] at all is... not very much.
I'd only recommend it to people who really really loved the dungeon sections of the original, because there isn't anything else to draw. Another unfinished mystery (which could be intriguing, but it's left completely open. To the point that the original point of the place could be a prison/concentration camp for eliminating variant species, or turning beastmen human, or seeking sanctuary from something, or turning the bane clouds into a power source for the spires or eleventy different other interpretations of bad cave art).
As a bonus, pursuing the main quest in the settlement breaks several side quests held by boring NPCs that you don't have any reason to interact with a second time. They'll actually give you the quest prompt, but there will be no dialogue option if you're at the wrong stage of the main settlement quest. You pretty much have to talk to them immediately after delivering the tools and/or book, and they're pretty irrelevant people and off the main path to the teleporters as well.
Just finished up CoD Advanced Warfare which was ok I guess. The story was pretty bad. Sticking with the Sci-Fi war theme I'm now starting Titanfall 2. After just 5 minutes I can tell the campaign is going to be better.
Decided to roll as an Echanter, so I can summon a lil Imp to do the rough and tumble stuff in conbat.
I loved the first Divinity: Original Sin, aside from its sometimes corny humor, it was a solid turn based RPG. Only about an hour in, but its feeling pretty awesome so far.
I've been playing a lot of different games lately:
Diablo 1 (kinda scary)
The Ultimate Doom (it is my favourite game, so I play it regularly)
Doom 3 (kinda scary)
Abe's Odyssey
Commander Keen 4 (it has a weird way of naming its sequels)
Hexen 2 (finished it lately)
CS:GO (It is kinda rare for me to play this game, but I sometimes enter a lobby with my friend and we both have fun)
I've been hearing a lot of good things about Warframe lately, so decided to give it a go (it's free, so I didn't really have anything to lose)... turns out, those good things were pretty damn accurate.
For a game that's 90% jumping and shooting, those two things need to be good and they definitely are! The mechanics brings to mind a cross between Mass Effect Andromeda with a dash of Titanfall and that's a pretty good mix.
It's also not that grindy for a free-to-play MMO... well, it is, but in an accessible way; you can play for an hour or so and still make some tangible progress to a rank up or a new weapon and the constant supply of weapon and armour mods means there's usually something new to keep the gameplay fresh.
Oh, and there's 360 Degree Space Jetpack Iron Man missions after a while, which are simply awesome.
Yeah, very enjoyable all in all, nice to dip in and out of and mighty good fun to play.
So far so fun on Farcry4. Its definitely more of the same, the basic formula hasnt changed but hey if it works it works.
Plot is definitely a bit thin though.....
Ratius wrote: So far so fun on Farcry4. Its definitely more of the same, the basic formula hasnt changed but hey if it works it works.
Plot is definitely a bit thin though.....
I really enjoyed Far Cry 4. Taking out strongholds without being spotted was fun.
I'm playing Uncharted 4, so far so good. I'm only playing it on moderate difficulty and the gunplay seems adequately deadly. I like that they amped up the stealth mechanic.
My only complaint is
Spoiler:
Why is Drake lying to Elena about his whereabouts? It seems a forced way to shoehorn in some drama later.
Ratius wrote: So far so fun on Farcry4. Its definitely more of the same, the basic formula hasnt changed but hey if it works it works.
Plot is definitely a bit thin though.....
Well until now no Far Cry game have had a real deep and twisting plot, but yes. I agee with you man. But its all good when you get to snipe people with a 50 cal sniper rifle and hunt bad guys with a elephant gun
Kingdom Hearts
I got the HD remake collection on ps4.
Its.... easier than I remember, and shorter...
But after defeating Darksouls several times any game is easy I suppose.
I also remember the worlds being bigger being this big sprawling places....but its a few small rooms per world...
Diverting my time between Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I've decided to restart after getting the season pass (going to 100% this one) and aimlessly wandering across Bolivia in Wildlands, which is still fun.
I just got a new computer so I am having a little computer game renaissance at the moment!
I am working my way through Darksiders 2 which has nice fighting mechanics and worlds with decent puzzles. It does have a weird loot system and the story lacks the complexity of something like Soul Reaver (especially as there is no central villain) but it is definitely worth a play.
I have also started an new campaign on Shogun 2. I have Darthmod installed and altered realm divide to only happen when I take Kyoto so I am looking forward to a long game with lots of diplomacy. Unfortunately the Takeda died very early so I had to send an army on a cross country hike buying access from 4 different clans to resurrect them as my vassal!
hotsauceman1 wrote: Kingdom Hearts
I got the HD remake collection on ps4.
Its.... easier than I remember, and shorter...
But after defeating Darksouls several times any game is easy I suppose.
I also remember the worlds being bigger being this big sprawling places....but its a few small rooms per world...
Now that's an absolute classic. Recenly entertained myself with watching a speed run off it.
I've spent some time with a house of many doors lately. It's not sunless sea but it really really wants to be.
Been looking into a game called Space Station 13. Looks like it has the Dwarf Fortress feeling of everything going horribly wrong for fun, but it looks a bit sketchy. Does anyone know if this is safe?
Been bouncing between the current (or maybe last year's. . . Marco Reus is on the cover) FIFA game, and Horizon Zero Dawn.
Horizon is definitely a beautiful game, the game play is quite fun, the missions aren't really repetitive at this point, and just overall a ton of fun to play
Been working on Crusader Kings. Was excited to see my Irish ruler join an Orthodox secret society. It didn't take long before she spectacularily botched all of the tasks given to her however, and the society became a revolving door of people coming in and out.
A bit worried about Scotland though. It seems to be expanding into Ireland at an alarming rate. Might try masterminding a few civil wars and convincing the more martially oriented court members to side with me.
BrookM wrote: It's a multiplayer game and it really depends on what server you join.
For viruses? I heard there was a thing you needed to download called Byond, but it looks a bit sketchy.
Beat Kingdom hearts.
God I hate the fights where im required to fight by myself. Donald is my Curaga buddie.
It also makes no sense.
Now im doing Re:Chain of memories. Not sure I will keep it???
I have not lost to much bosses or found them difficult. But I dont like the Deck of Cards thing.
Then im likely to take a break, my X mashing finger hurts.
Re-playing Far Cry 4 as I realized I have not played through supporting Amita. Still early in (only got 4 towers and 5 outposts). Still, feth Eagles and Rhinos. They are way more deadly than a squad of fully armed soldiers.
Noticed Danganronpa V3 has been released on Steam, so had to pick it up. So far, it's shaping up to be as good as, if not better than, the previous 2 installments. Its visuals have greatly improved, and the all the new Class Trial segments are good, there isn't one that stands out as bad. The characters are... interesting, but there isn't one that I can actually trust, which I guess means the game has done its job. That being said, I much prefered the 2nd game's cast (my personal favourite), though that might change as the game goes on.
Also if you like references, there's plenty going around in this game.
Managed to convince my brother to pick up Wildlands again, so we got us some glorious coop going on.
Also decided to give Inquisitor - Martyr another go. There have been changes to the game, it's shaping up now, but it still feels very clunky and lacking.
God I hate the fights where im required to fight by myself. Donald is my Curaga buddie.
That's quite interesting, I haven't played Kingdom Hearts (because Disney) but my favourite RPG Summoner 2 has many sections where you are forced to work with a reduced character roster or a single character and they are my favourite parts of the game.
I do hate white magic in RPGs though, so maybe I just enjoy sections that are balanced around not having access to it.
Managed to convince my brother to pick up Wildlands again, so we got us some glorious coop going on.
I thought this some sort of geography walking simulator from what you said about it before, I didn't realise it was a Tom Clancy game!
A central villain has been revealed in my Darksiders 2 game now which got me more into it, I like me a bit of story even if it is cheesy.
Kroem wrote: I thought this some sort of geography walking simulator from what you said about it before, I didn't realise it was a Tom Clancy game!
The title can be a bit misleading maybe if you leave the rest of the name off: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, though a better name would've been "CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER - THE VIDEO GAME"
Though it has plenty of sights to see, a lot based around real locations.
Still plugging away at Farcry4. Boy o boy are the characters utterly forgettable and bordering on genuinely annoying. The plot is paper thin too. I just dont give a darn what happens to anyone or the resolution of the revolution.
Still fun hunting convoys and blowing up camps though.
I actually went back and Purchased the Z.O.E. collectors edition (Zone of the Enders) Most people just purchased it back in the day for the Metal gear Solid 3 demo but it's actually a really good game of high speed flying robot action. I wouldn't bother playing the first iteration but the 2nd runner is great!
Yep ZOE 2 is a PS2 classic, like most Japanese games it has so much extra playtime with NG+ and all the challenge modes.
My friends and I even played quite a bit of the multiplayer, although we did rant about how ridiculous Arjet's 'Coffin Beam' was!
(To those interested, the beam itself was actually fairly easy to avoid but you were invincible in the charging period and the swirling energy which surrounded you did insane amounts of damage.
So the tactic was to stun your enemy, start charging and shove yourselves in their face for max damage!)
Ratius wrote: Still plugging away at Farcry4. Boy o boy are the characters utterly forgettable and bordering on genuinely annoying. The plot is paper thin too. I just dont give a darn what happens to anyone or the resolution of the revolution.
Still fun hunting convoys and blowing up camps though.
Yeah, I it's at the point where I only enjoy it when Pagan Min calls me on the radio, because he's actually a hilarious guy. If the writers of FC4 are trying to illustrate some kind of "no good guys in war" thing, they are sure doing a good job.
My other beef with the game is the wildlife of Kyrat is so murderous and numerous that humans would have been wiped out long before Ajay showed up.
I was intending to play World Of Warships today, but the game launcher simply chrases when I try to update the game, and it wont allow me to uninstal it either so I decide to dive back into a bit of Icewind Dale 2 and Pillars Of Eternity
Messing around with Shadow of Mordor this weekend, just wandering around killing orcs and doing challenges is a fun break. Been seeing a lot about the sequel and wanted to remind myself if I actually like the game, and what was fun about it. I did, and lots. So...
Despite some complaining about the sequel, it looks like an improvement with more options and abilities. The story is a bit WTF, but the game (and the PR stuff) doesn't make much effort to hide that fact.
Star Trek:Timelines on Samsung S7. Nice to get a heads up to at least one craft and a couple of the crew for Star Trek : Discovery over this side of the pond.
Even without that, it's strangely compelling. Trying to get your characters maximum level alongside your ships. I already have the I.S.S. Enterprise at max level and am working on mirror Uhura and Kirk.
Divinity Original Sin 2 - didn't care for the 1st one but I am really engaged in the 2nd. Combat is old-school turn based and fairly brutal but you can use a pretty good range of tactics and approaches that makes it interesting
Destiny 2 on ps4.
Pretty fun even though it is more or less like the first one. So many of my friends play it at the same time so it's a great way to pass time. Still don't know how to aim on console controller
Also during pauses I try to playtest and develop our school project game made with Unity. Multitasking ftw.
You are to be assimilated. Lower your shields and disarm your weapons. Resistance is futile.
--Moar Stellaris. The galaxy shall be liberated of the pesky meatbag infestation.
Shadow of War. Which, as it turns out, is absolutely flipping phenomenal. Every great system from the first game has been carried over and rather than change stuff, 90% of it is just tweaks and changes; some abilities are a little more balanced, some are expanded with cool new twists on the classic powers, and there's some new ones in the mix as well which are all very welcome. (I didn't know the first game was missing a double-jump slo-mo aerial takedown attack, but apparently it was! ).
The story is a little bonkers, but told well enough, there are some much stronger characters this time around and while no, it's hardly LotR story-wise, the tone is actually pretty bang-on. The architecture, the environments, the aesthetic, the music are all very authentic.
And to address the elephant in the room regarding the microtransactions and lootboxes and how that must have inherently screwed up the balance and pacing of the game? No, no it hasn't. At no point in the 10-12 or so hours I've played thus far have I felt the need to go and buy a loot chest to get more powerful, or felt like the progression was moving at a slower pace to encourage sales of EXP boosts or whatever. I know there's been a lot of controversy about it recently, and the practice of loot chests and all that might not necessarily be a good one, but it doesn't affect what is in every other regard a really, really solid game. So if you were on the fence about it, it's 100% recommended by me if you liked the first one. Get it, ignore the Market screen entirely, and play an utterly brilliant game.
Finished off Farcry 4.
Some fun fights/attacks and moments but overall a bit meh and most definitely repetitive. I'd be peeved if I'd paid full retail for it tbh.
20 quid was about right for 26 hours gameplay.
I've gone back to Civilization 5 since I don't have 6 yet. Almost forgot how fast time goes by in the real world when you're playing those games. It's like it alters the space-time continuum or something. Maybe if I played enough Civilization, when I got done we'd have flying cars, warp drive, and other future stuff.
Paradigm wrote: Shadow of War. Which, as it turns out, is absolutely flipping phenomenal. Every great system from the first game has been carried over and rather than change stuff, 90% of it is just tweaks and changes; some abilities are a little more balanced, some are expanded with cool new twists on the classic powers, and there's some new ones in the mix as well which are all very welcome. (I didn't know the first game was missing a double-jump slo-mo aerial takedown attack, but apparently it was! ).
The story is a little bonkers, but told well enough, there are some much stronger characters this time around and while no, it's hardly LotR story-wise, the tone is actually pretty bang-on. The architecture, the environments, the aesthetic, the music are all very authentic.
And to address the elephant in the room regarding the microtransactions and lootboxes and how that must have inherently screwed up the balance and pacing of the game? No, no it hasn't. At no point in the 10-12 or so hours I've played thus far have I felt the need to go and buy a loot chest to get more powerful, or felt like the progression was moving at a slower pace to encourage sales of EXP boosts or whatever. I know there's been a lot of controversy about it recently, and the practice of loot chests and all that might not necessarily be a good one, but it doesn't affect what is in every other regard a really, really solid game. So if you were on the fence about it, it's 100% recommended by me if you liked the first one. Get it, ignore the Market screen entirely, and play an utterly brilliant game.
Yeah, I've enjoyed this one. For all the complaints, I've found it fun, and the complaints irrelevant.
Some of the tutorial aspects (and getting domination) drags on too long, but compared to the first, it's a lot better- no more picking flowers or getting stuck in weird ghul caves where you absolutely have to build your hit streak up to some arbitrary number and can't progress at all if you don't.
I can easily see why LotR purists would complain, but most of the outrageous elements are feasible if you accept giant spiders are angelic beings just like everyone else that matters in the setting.
Paradigm wrote: Shadow of War. Which, as it turns out, is absolutely flipping phenomenal. Every great system from the first game has been carried over and rather than change stuff, 90% of it is just tweaks and changes; some abilities are a little more balanced, some are expanded with cool new twists on the classic powers, and there's some new ones in the mix as well which are all very welcome. (I didn't know the first game was missing a double-jump slo-mo aerial takedown attack, but apparently it was! ).
The story is a little bonkers, but told well enough, there are some much stronger characters this time around and while no, it's hardly LotR story-wise, the tone is actually pretty bang-on. The architecture, the environments, the aesthetic, the music are all very authentic.
And to address the elephant in the room regarding the microtransactions and lootboxes and how that must have inherently screwed up the balance and pacing of the game? No, no it hasn't. At no point in the 10-12 or so hours I've played thus far have I felt the need to go and buy a loot chest to get more powerful, or felt like the progression was moving at a slower pace to encourage sales of EXP boosts or whatever. I know there's been a lot of controversy about it recently, and the practice of loot chests and all that might not necessarily be a good one, but it doesn't affect what is in every other regard a really, really solid game. So if you were on the fence about it, it's 100% recommended by me if you liked the first one. Get it, ignore the Market screen entirely, and play an utterly brilliant game.
Yeah, I've enjoyed this one. For all the complaints, I've found it fun, and the complaints irrelevant.
Some of the tutorial aspects (and getting domination) drags on too long, but compared to the first, it's a lot better- no more picking flowers or getting stuck in weird ghul caves where you absolutely have to build your hit streak up to some arbitrary number and can't progress at all if you don't.
I can easily see why LotR purists would complain, but most of the outrageous elements are feasible if you accept giant spiders are angelic beings just like everyone else that matters in the setting.
One thing that is placating my inner (outer?) LotR nerd is that despite the fact the overarching story isn't really that Tolkienesque, the game's writers clearly do have a lot of love for the setting. Some of the Artifacts you can collect reference places that only really get an appendix note in LotR, and things like the naming conventions for the characters and locations are authentic to those languages and cultures. Those are really nice touches that remind you you are in Middle Earth, even if it's a somewhat bizarro version of it...
KamikazeCanuck wrote: I'm trying to solo play Borderlands 2 but its starting to kick my but.
What’s causing the trouble?
I'm ok now. Just got to make sure to do some side-quests and not just all main quests to level up a bit. Those Golden Keys really make a difference too!
