Video Games: Doing Archaeology With A Shotgun

[KiDisaster]

Last thread is on the brink of being locked. 

Still working my way through Rise of the Tomb Raider. "Helping" this ancient group of people who live secluded in the mountains of Siberia and yet speak perfect English with British accents because of course they do. By "helping" I of course mean going round plundering their sacred artifacts, breaking shit, blowing things up and otherwise desecrating their most sacred and holy of places whilst also being in awe of them and putting up this weird pretense of respect and appreciation because ARCHAEOLOGY or something. Also brutally murdering loads and loads of baddies with incredible precision. 

It's fun, but I am constantly shaking my head and laughing at how utterly ridiculous the whole thing is. Not that I didn't go in expecting exactly that. This isn't exactly anything new for the series. 

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Also, I don't know how or why I hadn't heard of this game before but Firewatch looks really interesting. Definitely going to give it a shot when it comes out next week. 

[Fiddler]

I've been playing a bit of Warframe (PS4), DC Universe online and Binding of Isaac lately.

Really enjoying Warframe.  I'm loving being a "space ninja" and just grinding for materials (reason I enjoyed Diablo 3 so much).  Just finished the quest line to get my first Kubrow (a dog like companion).  Getting new weapons and equipment can be a pain (when you build stuff it takes real time to build), but I haven't found that to be much of a drag.

DC Universe Online has been fun also.  I haven't went to deep into it, mainly because I keep restarting to make a different type of character, but I have enjoyed my time in that game.  It's very fun to create a Superhero (or villian) and immediately be able to fly or run superspeed or wallcrawl.  Don't know about endgame or anything because I am not to deep, but it's free to play on the PS4 so I figured why not.

Binding of Isaac is fantastic.  It is, by far, my most played PS4 game since I bought the system.  It is grueling and frustrating, but something about it is just fun.  I'm hoping the next expansion or whatever Afterbirth is called will be coming to PS4 soon.

[MerenthaClone]

XCOM2 is preloading!  And while I wasn't able to get sick time for Friday, I picked up overtime tomorrow hoping it bumps me to the top of the downsize list for Friday.  I've got aliens to kill.

[Jack Bauer 24]

Will Elder Scrolls VI be announced at E3?

http://ign.com/articles/2016/02/04/unlocked-231-will-elder-scrolls-vi-be-announced-at-e3

[KiDisaster]

Unless Bethesda outsourced development of an ES game to another studio, no. Even then, it'd be a "spin off" game rather than a main series entry (like New Vegas was). But I don't even see them doing that. ES is their baby. 

FO4 just came out. We've got years to go before ES6. 

More than likely it'll be more Dishonored 2 and Doom info. There will 100% be an expansion announcement for FO4. And maybe that ES card game if they actually decide to bother releasing that. Or a new IP. That'd be nice. 

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Yeah I wouldn't expect TES6 until 2018 at the earliest.

[Fez]

19 hours ago, Fiddler said:

Really enjoying Warframe.  I'm loving being a "space ninja" and just grinding for materials (reason I enjoyed Diablo 3 so much).  Just finished the quest line to get my first Kubrow (a dog like companion).  Getting new weapons and equipment can be a pain (when you build stuff it takes real time to build), but I haven't found that to be much of a drag.

I started on Warframe a couple weeks ago myself. Fun game. Basically the game that Destiny should've been. I wish it had raids though, or some other endgame content that's different from what you're doing the whole time before. Without having a specific goal like that to push for, I'm sure I'll eventually get bored. Apparently though, the last few updates have had much heavier story focuses than the game used to do, so maybe the devs are moving in that direction.

 

10 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

Unless Bethesda outsourced development of an ES game to another studio, no. Even then, it'd be a "spin off" game rather than a main series entry (like New Vegas was). But I don't even see them doing that. ES is their baby. 

FO4 just came out. We've got years to go before ES6. 

More than likely it'll be more Dishonored 2 and Doom info. There will 100% be an expansion announcement for FO4. And maybe that ES card game if they actually decide to bother releasing that. Or a new IP. That'd be nice. 

I hope ES6 isn't ready for years, because unless Bethesda takes the time to figure out and implement a new type of game, I'm just not going to buy it. FO4 made me realize just how tired I am of the standard Bethesda template.

I am really excited for Dishonored 2 though, and I think it and Doom will definitely be featured this year. They are almost certainly both being released this year. FO4 DLC/expansion news will likely be announced as well.

Todd Howard has dropped hints about a new IP from time to time for over a year now, and with that Montreal studio Bethesda now has, I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is something happening on that front.

[Jack Bauer 24]

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Bethesda announces Doom will launch May 23th as well as CE news and a new trailer.

https://bethesda.net/#en/events/game/doom-release-date-collectors-edition-and-pre-order-bonuses/2016/02/04/72

[Proudfeet]

In my latest on-off relationship with Rocket League, I am rather upset to discover that people have made it to veteran status without learning or caring to defend the goal for kick offs.

Really? You can't spend 5 seconds to attempt a block on a possible kick off bounce on goal? Its not like you are in a position to contend for the kick off. How often do people starting in goal actually manage to even touch the ball at kick off? One percent of all attempts? As a veteran! That's a significant number of games played to reach that level without learning something that basic.

[Rhom]

On ‎2‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 2:07 PM, Fiddler said:

I've been playing a bit of Warframe (PS4), DC Universe online and Binding of Isaac lately.

Really enjoying Warframe.  I'm loving being a "space ninja" and just grinding for materials (reason I enjoyed Diablo 3 so much).  Just finished the quest line to get my first Kubrow (a dog like companion).  Getting new weapons and equipment can be a pain (when you build stuff it takes real time to build), but I haven't found that to be much of a drag.

DC Universe Online has been fun also.  I haven't went to deep into it, mainly because I keep restarting to make a different type of character, but I have enjoyed my time in that game.  It's very fun to create a Superhero (or villian) and immediately be able to fly or run superspeed or wallcrawl.  Don't know about endgame or anything because I am not to deep, but it's free to play on the PS4 so I figured why not.

Binding of Isaac is fantastic.  It is, by far, my most played PS4 game since I bought the system.  It is grueling and frustrating, but something about it is just fun.  I'm hoping the next expansion or whatever Afterbirth is called will be coming to PS4 soon.

I've been meaning to download DCU to give it a go.  Your post reminded me of it last night.  So I started it going last night before I went to bed.

Don't know how much I will play it seeings how I am just now finally taking time to play MGSV; but I want to give it a go.

 

[Jack Bauer 24]

Edit: Never mind

Has anything been said on DSIII's difficulty? Are they implementing any new major mechanics?

[Fez]

So I logged into steam today, and imagine my surprise when Shadowrun: Hong Kong started downloading a nearly 800MB update. Turns out, with only a couple days warning (and they only said "soon," not "this week") the devs decided to release for free an entire second campaign for the game that takes place in the weeks after the main campaign. From what I can tell, this is the second campaign that was originally a Kickstarter goal that would only be free for backers who gave above a certain amount, but that the devs decided to make free for everyone.

Supposedly its quite a bit shorter (around 5 hours long total, whereas the main campaign took me 21 hours), but one can hardly argue about the price. Really looking forward to digging into this when I get a chance.

[Werthead]

Quote

Unless Bethesda outsourced development of an ES game to another studio, no. Even then, it'd be a "spin off" game rather than a main series entry (like New Vegas was). But I don't even see them doing that. ES is their baby. 

New Vegas is definitely a main series entry, but it's not a numbered release because it was a modest iteration of the previous tech rather than a decisive move forwards. Fallout 4 was considered more of an important step forward because of the "switch" to the Creation Engine and the introduction of the settlement mechanics. Same logic as why Vice City and San Andreas were definitely main series GTA games even if they weren't numbered as they were iterations (if much bigger and superior) on GTA3.

I agree outsourcing Elder Scrolls is unlikely, but not impossible. Obsidian had discussions with Bethesda about new Fallout or Elder Scrolls projects a while back. More likely, Bethesda may have developed a new team (in fact, I think they did announce a while ago a new division of the software development team had been established) to do the donkey work whilst the main team was working on FO4.

However, if the FO4 model is the same system Bethesda will use going forwards - announcing the game 4 months out from release - then I can't see how ES6 will be announed at all. Unless they decide that didn't help them with FO4 and are going back to announcing games 1-2 years out from release.

[Fez]

Doom 4's release date has been announced, its May 13, which is over a month before E3. So now I'm really curious what Bethesda will actually be covering during their press conference. Dishonored 2 and FO4 DLC can't be it, can it? If that was all they had, would they really bother having their whole own press conference again this year?

Maybe that supposed new IP is much further along than anyone could've guessed.

[Corvinus85]

So has anyone tried XCOM2 yet?

Reviews on steam are... "mostly positive"? What? Sites were giving it glowing reviews pre-release. From what I gather it's in need of a few patches.

I'll wait for a time, until it gets those patches, and maybe I catch a discount, too.

[MerenthaClone]

13 hours ago, Corvinus said:

So has anyone tried XCOM2 yet?

Reviews on steam are... "mostly positive"? What? Sites were giving it glowing reviews pre-release. From what I gather it's in need of a few patches.

I'll wait for a time, until it gets those patches, and maybe I catch a discount, too.

I will interrupt my furious playing between stupidly busy shifts at work to tell you that XCOM2 is awesome and people are big crybabies.  Here are the negative reviews:  Some people do not like the timers on a lot of missions.  This is the source of all of the negative reviews from players, as far as I can tell.  They got attached to the "advance lead soldier a single tile, overwatch, conga line everyone behind them" style of hyper-safe playing from EU.  As far as I can tell, anyway.  I really like the changes so far, they very much change the different mission type.  ANd there are already mods to remove them if you're gonna just refuse to play the new game.  The other source of bad reviews, like in XCOM2012, deals with people being really bad with RNGs.  One review literally listed "missed a 95% shot?  Bullshit!" as a negative for the game.  Like, dude, you know that happens roughly one out of every twenty shots, right?  You made about twenty shots that mission, let alone across multiple!

So yeah.  Game, so far, is a fantastic upgrade over XCOM2012 in every way.  The potential for mods and the ability to tweak your game is already very robust, and I'm sure between patches and fanmods, you'll be able to fix whatever problems you had with the game.  I also even understand the complaints about the timer, though I disagree.  And rather than modding the timer out, I'd rather see things like the ability to pay intel to increase a mission timer, or something.  The one thing I will say is that if you're coming from EU/EW, remember that they've made it much, much friendlier to recover.  I had an almost complete squadwipe about 5 missions in  and while it was painful, it wasn't the massive FUCK moment a complete wipe in the last game would have been.  I was able to evac a soldier out, and if I'd remembered I'd had the evac button earlier, I could have saved two more.  If you played Long War, they cribbed a lot of ideas (and refined them!) from the mod and one of them was having less punishing long-term consequences and the ability to pretty easily cut and run if you want.  And knowing when to do so seems a big part of the game.  They added a lot of variability to it:  maps are randomly generated, so its possible your objective will be pretty far away from you.  With a timer, that might make it hard to hit the objective in time.  So if you take risks to get there, you might get in over your head, but if you bug out, you can save your soldiers and gear.  One moment that drove this home for me was watching a stream of one of the best XCOM players.  He made it to the objective with time to spare, but the route he'd chosen left him completely surrounded.  He was literally sitting on the objective, but would take a round to hack it.  Rather than risk the hack, he called in evac and pulled all of his troops out because the position he was in was completely untenable.  I like that.  I think XCOM is about managing risk and they gave you a ton more options to do so.  This also necessarily included having more ways for things to go against you.  

tldr:  Game's amazing so far, people are mad their old tactics don't work as well and that they can't run perfect games all the time.  

[Corvinus85]

28 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

I will interrupt my furious playing between stupidly busy shifts at work to tell you that XCOM2 is awesome and people are big crybabies.  Here are the negative reviews:  Some people do not like the timers on a lot of missions.  This is the source of all of the negative reviews from players, as far as I can tell.  They got attached to the "advance lead soldier a single tile, overwatch, conga line everyone behind them" style of hyper-safe playing from EU.  As far as I can tell, anyway.  I really like the changes so far, they very much change the different mission type.  ANd there are already mods to remove them if you're gonna just refuse to play the new game.  The other source of bad reviews, like in XCOM2012, deals with people being really bad with RNGs.  One review literally listed "missed a 95% shot?  Bullshit!" as a negative for the game.  Like, dude, you know that happens roughly one out of every twenty shots, right?  You made about twenty shots that mission, let alone across multiple!

So yeah.  Game, so far, is a fantastic upgrade over XCOM2012 in every way.  The potential for mods and the ability to tweak your game is already very robust, and I'm sure between patches and fanmods, you'll be able to fix whatever problems you had with the game.  I also even understand the complaints about the timer, though I disagree.  And rather than modding the timer out, I'd rather see things like the ability to pay intel to increase a mission timer, or something.  The one thing I will say is that if you're coming from EU/EW, remember that they've made it much, much friendlier to recover.  I had an almost complete squadwipe about 5 missions in  and while it was painful, it wasn't the massive FUCK moment a complete wipe in the last game would have been.  I was able to evac a soldier out, and if I'd remembered I'd had the evac button earlier, I could have saved two more.  If you played Long War, they cribbed a lot of ideas (and refined them!) from the mod and one of them was having less punishing long-term consequences and the ability to pretty easily cut and run if you want.  And knowing when to do so seems a big part of the game.  They added a lot of variability to it:  maps are randomly generated, so its possible your objective will be pretty far away from you.  With a timer, that might make it hard to hit the objective in time.  So if you take risks to get there, you might get in over your head, but if you bug out, you can save your soldiers and gear.  One moment that drove this home for me was watching a stream of one of the best XCOM players.  He made it to the objective with time to spare, but the route he'd chosen left him completely surrounded.  He was literally sitting on the objective, but would take a round to hack it.  Rather than risk the hack, he called in evac and pulled all of his troops out because the position he was in was completely untenable.  I like that.  I think XCOM is about managing risk and they gave you a ton more options to do so.  This also necessarily included having more ways for things to go against you.  

tldr:  Game's amazing so far, people are mad their old tactics don't work as well and that they can't run perfect games all the time.  

Thanks for the info, glad you like it. 

I'm not sure what you mean by timer. I hope there's not an actual clock, since this is a turn-based game. If it's limited number of turns timer like in the bomb missions from EU/EW, then yes I can deal with that. And I seldom used overwatch to begin with, as I often felt that it just took one of my guys out of the battle rather than help.

[Tinker]

1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

Thanks for the info, glad you like it. 

I'm not sure what you mean by timer. I hope there's not an actual clock, since this is a turn-based game. If it's limited number of turns timer like in the bomb missions from EU/EW, then yes I can deal with that. And I seldom used overwatch to begin with, as I often felt that it just took one of my guys out of the battle rather than help.

There is a turn limit on missions not a time limit. First mission you get after playing the tutorial is 8 turns to complete the objective. 

[Jack Bauer 24]

Finally playing The Order: 1886. Game looks amazing.

[A True Kaniggit]

Anyone who uses steam probably already knows this, but just in case someone missed it they're doing their Lunar New Year Sale.