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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.

My favorite non-party confidants:

Sojiro > Yoshida > Kawakami > Shinya > Iwai > Tae > Ichiko

The only really annoying confidants I don't care for is Chihayo for being so annoying. I also dislike Hifumi for being so soooooo bland.

 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.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh yesssssssssssssss.

 Blind Idiot Psyker wrote:

 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.

Just playing some For Honor and being bad at it.

Running With Rifles.

It's everything I could hope for in a toy soldier game. Except Batman.

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.

Playing TES:IV Oblivion again, this time a ranger class.

Not even started the main quest beyond getting out of the starting sewer.

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.

Well next up is Horizon Zero Dawn or Torment Tides of Numenera. Any opinions on which one I should play first?

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.

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.

Been playin the campaing in DOW 3.

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.)

Edit: spelling

Horizon Zero Dawn. Finally left tutorial area.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 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

Shatterhand on NES

I have decided to try out Everything.

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.

Ah the Muppetman technique, very cunning.

I mean, it's HoTS. You can literally be 3 people playing 1 Hero if you want.

Cho'Gall is two players controlling a single character, and with Abathur, you can have a third person 'helping run things' if you will.

I think Jesse Cox did that once.