Video Games: Console War Never Changes

[The Anti-Targ]

 

Did he mention Gone Home? I loved the game and I think it should be besides Stanley Parable as a great example, but you could make a case it was a bad one... I think. Maybe.

He may have, I don't recall. I only recall the ones that I'd heard of before and I haven't heard of Gone Home. I'm actually quite interested in games that don't have any combat but are more active than point and click adventures. Should I start with Stanley Parable and possibly ruin all other walking simulators. Or should I start with something a bit lesser and then try (arguably) the best in class?

[Tyrellius]

Play Smite. Here's one person's opinion on why Smite is awesome, which includes reasons for why Smite inherently has a less shitty community (though no online gaming community is completely free of shitty people). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDbVeCEcCCU 

 

I tried it when it first came out - neat idea but not my cup of tea.  Anyways, with mobas, you pick one and stick with it imo.  I'll just continue to hope that my teammates dont suck and try (and fail) to not be a dick.

[The Anti-Targ]

 

I tried it when it first came out - neat idea but not my cup of tea.  Anyways, with mobas, you pick one and stick with it imo.  I'll just continue to hope that my teammates dont suck and try (and fail) to not be a dick.

It is certainly very different to the "first gen" MOBAs. So if the LoL style is what you love then Smite would be a difficult transition. Smite is the only MOBA I've ever played so it was more about transitioning from console controller to keyboard and mouse. I still can't play it completely by touch typing, unlike with a PS controller which I can play with the controller, literally, behind my head. I know it's weird, but sometimes I really do hold the controller behind my head (a bit like leaning back to relax with your hands clasped behind your head).

[Melphis Amekia]

He may have, I don't recall. I only recall the ones that I'd heard of before and I haven't heard of Gone Home. I'm actually quite interested in games that don't have any combat but are more active than point and click adventures. Should I start with Stanley Parable and possibly ruin all other walking simulators. Or should I start with something a bit lesser and then try (arguably) the best in class?

 

I definitely reccomend The Stanley Parable and Gone Home - the first is an excellent game about the meaning of life, but if I say anything about it I'll spoil it - and the second is exploring your house after you returned from a trip across Europe to find out why your sister, who was supposed to be at home when you came back, wasn't. Sounds simple, but I greatly enjoyed the story, so much so I may play it again. Thing is, both those game s are rather short - a couple of hours. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a mystery/crime walking simulator, is longer and beautiful and also has a great story so I also reccomend it and if you are in for longer games it may be more to your liking(or your wallet's).

[Proudfeet]

Late to the party, but where is a good channel for watching Rocket League? I'm getting frustrated with my inability to play the game well and would like to see how others approach it.

[MerenthaClone]

Shadowrun: Hong Kong should come out tomorrow!  Given how good Dragonfall was, I'm very excited.  

[Fez]

Satellite Reign's launch trailer looks pretty good.

 

The game is out on 28 August. Totally up for this one.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong should come out tomorrow!  Given how good Dragonfall was, I'm very excited.  

 

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is the reason (along with me committed to finishing this DAI replay I'm on) why Satellite Reign, which also looks good, is going to have to wait.

 

I still disagree with the devs decision to go back to the Kickstarter well again for S:HK, but that doesn't mean I'm not still excited about the game. I look forward to purchasing a finished product and giving it a run.

[Corvinus85]

Still playing Third Age Total War as the High Elves. Both Orc factions and Isengard have been destroyed, so there is peace and prosperity in the the north and west (yay). Trouble is, Sauron has acquired the One Ring, so the game spent a few turns bashing me over the head with messages telling me how fucked I am. :lol: Anyone ever killed Sauron in the open field? The Balrog was tough, but not invincible.

No I don't recall killing Sauron. Maybe I did when I played as Eriador/Arnor, by far my favorite faction.

But I did do a couple of custom battles to test Sauron. In one, I had a small Gondorian army (2 Ithilien Rangers, 1-2 Knights of Dol Amroth, and some heavy infantry). Sauron killed them all.

Another was Sauron v. The Balrog. They ended up circling around each other until the game crashed.  :P

[Werthead]

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is the reason (along with me committed to finishing this DAI replay I'm on) why Satellite Reign, which also looks good, is going to have to wait.

 

Apparently Hong Kong is out tomorrow, not the 28th after all.

 

Hmm. Tempted by Hong Kong as I thoroughly enjoyed the first two, and my Witcher 2 playthrough has gotten stuck on a really annoying bug (I'm in the military camp in Act III and need to talk to the king, but the conversation won't trigger) and I'm not sure I give a toss enough about the game to reload a save from 1-2 hours earlier, which apparently is the only way to solve it. I may plump for some Shadowrun action instead.

[l2 0 5 5]

Late to the party, but where is a good channel for watching Rocket League? I'm getting frustrated with my inability to play the game well and would like to see how others approach it.

Most likely Twitch.tv. If you go to the app on your PS dock, you should be able to choose an option to watch people playing it. A game like that is better to learn through error, IMO.

[The Anti-Targ]

Late to the party, but where is a good channel for watching Rocket League? I'm getting frustrated with my inability to play the game well and would like to see how others approach it.

Use ball cam exclusively. Also play the tutorials over and over at least until you can 70% the pro level tutorials. The tutorials are very useful and you shouldn't skip them. Play it in practice mode (exhibition games) using ball cam until you can fairly easily beat the bots on pro difficulty. 

 

Some people switch between ball cam and normal cam, esp when they are wanting to collect boost, but I don't like doing the switch. However you might find switching occasionally helpful.

 

Twitch TV always has people streaming Rocket League. 

[Jace, Extat]

Lol, I'm not even going to touch the Roman factions... yet.

 

If you play with the Franks you start on good terms with the Western Romans, however, it's still a good idea to declare war on them. I did that, and everyone else became my friend. 

 

And right now my economy is so powerful that I can spend money to solve my problems. 

 

And I said it before, and I'll say it again, the world is crazy. Garamantia, from northern Africa, has a whole of bunch of regions in Germany and Eastern Europe. I made an alliance with them and drew them in my war against the Huns, finally turning the tide. The Huns, I think, keep spawning hordes somewhere in the east, because every time I seem to beat them, more armies show up. I suppose they did that to balance the issue that they don't settle, so they need to keep pace with the empires which can raise armies from settlements.

 

And not to let the AI beat me at this craziness, I sent a fleet in the Mediterranean to start a raid and scorch policy along the coast against one of my main enemies, Axum. Yes, Axum which conquered all of Egypt, all the coastal regions of the Levant, and some other north African regions. So with my kick-ass fleet I desolated 2 cities, skipped Alexandria because it was too well guarded, "liberated" a city that became Judea, and conquered Antioch and Cyprus.

 

And fuck climate change. It got so cold, that it's snowing all the way to Turkey, and even in spring all of Europe north of Italy is covered in snow. So you can only march for half a year without suffering attrition.

 

Regarding The Last Roman, I will probably play that one with the Romans. It looks good.

 

I haven't been able to keep a game going long enough for any of that craziness. I like the Franks' combat bonus' but don't like their starting position. I love the Celts the most all-around, especially their night battle option,  but their starting position makes them completely unplayable. It's impossible to get off the island, Jack!The Eastern Romans are my favorite geographical/cultural faction but their unwieldy as fuck. The Sassinids might have my favorite units, cavalry for the win, but I'm not a fan of their starting conditions (basically there's no reason to do anything, it's all kosher) and their culture bores me.

[Proudfeet]

Use ball cam exclusively. Also play the tutorials over and over at least until you can 70% the pro level tutorials. The tutorials are very useful and you shouldn't skip them. Play it in practice mode (exhibition games) using ball cam until you can fairly easily beat the bots on pro difficulty. 

 

Some people switch between ball cam and normal cam, esp when they are wanting to collect boost, but I don't like doing the switch. However you might find switching occasionally helpful.

 

Twitch TV always has people streaming Rocket League. 

 

Ugh. I hate ball cam. I only enable it when I lose track of the ball. Is it not just a preference thing?

 

I guess I'll try and master the tutorials. I've played them before, but I didn't retry until I get a good percentage. I tried Twitch, but I can't tell if the person streaming is any good before I start watching and I was hoping for recommendations. I'll try browsing now.

[KiDisaster]

Bought a few Hearthstone packs with the gold I had left hoping for enough dust to craft Malorne cause I really want to experiment with Beast Druid once the expansion comes out next week. I never hope to actually open legendaries. Playing since closed beta I've opened maybe four (well, six now) from packs and I've crafted the rest. Still a ton of vanilla legendaries I don't have. Mostly the class specific ones for the classes I don't play often. 

 

Got Malorne in the second pack I opened. Got Gallywix in the one after that. Thinking about dusting that one though as I never play Rogue and I want to make sure I have enough dust for that new Warrior legendary if nothing else. My control deck needs it. 

 

Today was a good day. 

[Fez]

Attila: TW does sound good. Also, I haven't played a TW game since the first Rome, so I'm sure it will seem fresher than if I'd been keeping up in the series. I'm no in rush, but next time its on sale, I think I'll have to pick it up.

 

Meantime, in DA:I I'm in that post-reaching Skyhold pre-Warden mission/Orlaisan Ball mission slog where there's six new zones to explore plus new stuff opening up in the three I'd already gone through. They really did make this game too "big for the sake of big." Still, I'm getting through fights faster than last time, so its going by at a decent clip. Also, I think there must've been a bug that was fixed since the last time I played since I'm getting a fair bit more party banter now. 

[Howdyphillip]

 

I definitely reccomend The Stanley Parable and Gone Home - the first is an excellent game about the meaning of life, but if I say anything about it I'll spoil it - and the second is exploring your house after you returned from a trip across Europe to find out why your sister, who was supposed to be at home when you came back, wasn't. Sounds simple, but I greatly enjoyed the story, so much so I may play it again. Thing is, both those game s are rather short - a couple of hours. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a mystery/crime walking simulator, is longer and beautiful and also has a great story so I also reccomend it and if you are in for longer games it may be more to your liking(or your wallet's).

I really liked both games quite a bit. Gone Home was an emotional experience, while Stanley Principle really featured a lt of great humor. If I had one drawback for both of these games, it would be the length. They are awfully quick play throughs. Having established that this kind of game can be successful, I hope studios will expand on the game play and release a 20-40 story. 

[Jace, Extat]

Wow! Just, Wow! I spent like 7 hours last night playing Attila as the Eastern Roman Empire before slipping into a coma. Pure craziness.

 

The first thing I did was eliminate excess armies and work on my infrastructure near Constantinople. Then I set about to securing my borders from the Visigoths (I think, it might have been the Ostrogoths). So that kicked off a northern campaign that saw me make puppet states out of conquered-then-liberated Macedon and Dacia. When they couldn't run their own shit, I stepped in and brought them back into the Empire. On about turn 6 the Huns offered me 5,000 monies for a peace agreement (which of fucking course I accepted). A few turns after that the Western Roman Empire offered (out of the blue) to become my puppet state.

 

So I set about to securing the West, but... I couldn't. Every turn, as I tried to handle barbarian uprisings in the Balkans and African insurgencies, I watched as chunks of the Western Roman Empire were lopped off at a time. They start the game as the most powerful nation by a fucking mile, but they have so many enemies that there's just no way. By the time Attila was born, I had sent fleets across the Black Sea and taken settlements. I was wrapping up my campaigns in Africa. The Sassinds were mobilizing for war. The Huns had a full on Military Alliance with me. And the Western Roman empire was completely bisected by the new Seubian nation.

 

I watched helplessly as one by one every province in Spain revolted and the WRE crumbled. Now, I'm holding on for dear life in Asia as I try to force the Sassinids to accept terms while they have no less than 15 fully marshaled armies (that's 20 units in each army, for a total of 1800-2500 men depending on the types of units). For comparison, I'm the most powerful nation in the world and I have 6 such armies in the area (but help is on the way!). My wars in the north are more or less settled, though so that's good. And there's a Hunnic horde that set out from Constantinople across the Black Sea to help me against the Sassinids. No shit, I've got a Hunnic horde crossing the fucking sea to fight my war on another continent.

 

Meanwhile, the Western Roman Empire is basically fucked. I sent two MASSIVE fleets into the Mediterranean with the initial mission of assisting my African Expeditionary Force, but they were redirected to setting fire to the Spanish coast in an attempt to alleviate pressure from my allies. But there's only so much that two massive artillery fleets can do. :( WRE has completely lost everything from Britannia to... well, Rome. They're still clinging to their  Easternmost provinces (mostly because I've beaten the fuck out of all of their enemies over there), but Rome is surrounded by at least 5 armies right now and it's looking fucking dark. I've committed to starting to make peace with the barbarians because I don't need them in my life when they're done with WRE. Oh, and the WRE's power ranking last time I looked was in the low-30's. But that was before they completely lost Spain and Rome was besieged. God only knows what it is now.

 

My only regret so far is that I loaded a mod for the game that does a lot of tweaking and balancing for all factions, but it doesn't give me the full set of options when I've won a city. I almost always can either Loot and Occupy or just Occupy Peacefully. Which sucks, because I'd prefer to make a buffer of Puppet States around myself. And in Africa, I'd like to just torch the lands I take so that I don't have to worry about holding them. And it would free up my Mediterranean fleets to wreak some real havoc. 

[Corvinus85]

Wow! Just, Wow! I spent like 7 hours last night playing Attila as the Eastern Roman Empire before slipping into a coma. Pure craziness.

 

The first thing I did was eliminate excess armies and work on my infrastructure near Constantinople. Then I set about to securing my borders from the Visigoths (I think, it might have been the Ostrogoths). So that kicked off a northern campaign that saw me make puppet states out of conquered-then-liberated Macedon and Dacia. When they couldn't run their own shit, I stepped in and brought them back into the Empire. On about turn 6 the Huns offered me 5,000 monies for a peace agreement (which of fucking course I accepted). A few turns after that the Western Roman Empire offered (out of the blue) to become my puppet state.

 

So I set about to securing the West, but... I couldn't. Every turn, as I tried to handle barbarian uprisings in the Balkans and African insurgencies, I watched as chunks of the Western Roman Empire were lopped off at a time. They start the game as the most powerful nation by a fucking mile, but they have so many enemies that there's just no way. By the time Attila was born, I had sent fleets across the Black Sea and taken settlements. I was wrapping up my campaigns in Africa. The Sassinds were mobilizing for war. The Huns had a full on Military Alliance with me. And the Western Roman empire was completely bisected by the new Seubian nation.

 

I watched helplessly as one by one every province in Spain revolted and the WRE crumbled. Now, I'm holding on for dear life in Asia as I try to force the Sassinids to accept terms while they have no less than 15 fully marshaled armies (that's 20 units in each army, for a total of 1800-2500 men depending on the types of units). For comparison, I'm the most powerful nation in the world and I have 6 such armies in the area (but help is on the way!). My wars in the north are more or less settled, though so that's good. And there's a Hunnic horde that set out from Constantinople across the Black Sea to help me against the Sassinids. No shit, I've got a Hunnic horde crossing the fucking sea to fight my war on another continent.

 

Meanwhile, the Western Roman Empire is basically fucked. I sent two MASSIVE fleets into the Mediterranean with the initial mission of assisting my African Expeditionary Force, but they were redirected to setting fire to the Spanish coast in an attempt to alleviate pressure from my allies. But there's only so much that two massive artillery fleets can do. :( WRE has completely lost everything from Britannia to... well, Rome. They're still clinging to their  Easternmost provinces (mostly because I've beaten the fuck out of all of their enemies over there), but Rome is surrounded by at least 5 armies right now and it's looking fucking dark. I've committed to starting to make peace with the barbarians because I don't need them in my life when they're done with WRE. Oh, and the WRE's power ranking last time I looked was in the low-30's. But that was before they completely lost Spain and Rome was besieged. God only knows what it is now.

 

My only regret so far is that I loaded a mod for the game that does a lot of tweaking and balancing for all factions, but it doesn't give me the full set of options when I've won a city. I almost always can either Loot and Occupy or just Occupy Peacefully. Which sucks, because I'd prefer to make a buffer of Puppet States around myself. And in Africa, I'd like to just torch the lands I take so that I don't have to worry about holding them. And it would free up my Mediterranean fleets to wreak some real havoc. 

Sounds like you fully adopted the Byzantine ways, by becoming a sell out and making a deal with the devil.  :P But I fully expect you to backstab your friends when the need arises.

Be ruthless on the sea. The AI has a tendency to embark its armies on fleets. Intercept and destroy.

I think you can only create a puppet state if you conquer a settlement that was the original location of a faction. Then you get the option to "liberate." I'm not sure if there is a mod out there that makes this option available all the time. But personally I would not create too many puppet steps. The whole buffer thing doesn't work that well when you're dealing with factions who have no trouble crossing half the map to fuck your shit up.

Also, seeing how climate change affects things, keeping direct control of the most fertile regions is a good idea. Winter is coming.

[Jace, Extat]

Sounds like you fully adopted the Byzantine ways, by becoming a sell out and making a deal with the devil.  :P But I fully expect you to backstab your friends when the need arises.

Be ruthless on the sea. The AI has a tendency to embark its armies on fleets. Intercept and destroy.

I think you can only create a puppet state if you conquer a settlement that was the original location of a faction. Then you get the option to "liberate." I'm not sure if there is a mod out there that makes this option available all the time. But personally I would not create too many puppet steps. The whole buffer thing doesn't work that well when you're dealing with factions who have no trouble crossing half the map to fuck your shit up.

Also, seeing how climate change affects things, keeping direct control of the most fertile regions is a good idea. Winter is coming.

 

Money talks. Though I can't imagine a scenario where I'm not faithful to the Huns, and when I gobble up what's left of Rome it will be a mercy. For the city issue, though. I don't even get the option to loot or raze. The first time I noticed it with this mod was when I was the Ostrogoths which was a real problem when I was forced to settle in a region I really didn't want.

 

Winter may be coming, Corvinus. But an Empress of Byzantium always pays her debts. :)

[Sci-2]

Apparently Hong Kong is out tomorrow, not the 28th after all.

 

Hmm. Tempted by Hong Kong as I thoroughly enjoyed the first two, and my Witcher 2 playthrough has gotten stuck on a really annoying bug (I'm in the military camp in Act III and need to talk to the king, but the conversation won't trigger) and I'm not sure I give a toss enough about the game to reload a save from 1-2 hours earlier, which apparently is the only way to solve it. I may plump for some Shadowrun action instead.

 

Still in the middle of Dragonfall, but surprised by how much I enjoy this game despite its rough edges. Will definitely get Hong Kong but will probably wait until my backlog on games-i-bought-but-didn't-play (which includes Witcher 2 incidentally) is at least partly played through.