Video Games: Doing Archaeology With A Shotgun

[Sullen]

On 06/02/2016 at 8:38 PM, 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.

It's fun, harder than the last one.

Personally fan of the turn timers, which makes the whole Overwatch turtley cheesing most people used to employ to get through harder difficulties completely unusable now. You're a ragtag team of guerrilla fighters, you should have to act fast. I like the challenge.

It is glitchy though, very glitchy. Collision glitches are annoying as hell, getting shot through three walls is no fun, actually made me want to quit a few times. I'd still say the game is worth it though.

 

In other news, the patch they released for CK2 along with Conclave broke the game, it's damned near unplayable now.

[The Anti-Targ]

Finally finished Tell Tale's Game of Thrones. I think I tried to work for the survival of House Forrester but I think I ended up with the worst possible outcome. I assume there's going to be a season 2 and the Forresters are going to have to work very hard to undo what I've done to them. I assume some outcomes are unavoidable regardless of choices. But I am so tempted to play through again to see if I can make better choices and have a better outcome. Especially for Mira.

 

[Werthead]

Quote

They are not individual rolls after reload. You most likely kept replaying the same couple failed coin flips over and over again. For example if the first action after save is a miss on 99% then it´ll also be a miss after reload.

There are some games that do this, but I don't think XCOM2 is suspposed to work like that. As mentioned above, the first time the 52% hacking succeeded, so after reload it should have worked again and then every time afterwards if that was the case.

[Kalbear]

From what I've seen it has a set seed, so that you'll get the same rolls every time after that - but what order you choose can change things. If you do the shot first then the hack that might change it.

[Andriy Czarchenko]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

There are some games that do this, but I don't think XCOM2 is suspposed to work like that. As mentioned above, the first time the 52% hacking succeeded, so after reload it should have worked again and then every time afterwards if that was the case.

He said he set up differently at that point so it´s not the same roll.  The description of the repeated tries however sounds like he kept trying the same rolls.

[Werthead]

That makes a bit more sense.

Still puzzled there's been no patch so far. The game is in pretty urgent need of one.

[Arthmail]

The only thing my Ranger did before she drew agro, that was different than the first play through, was to drop smoke for concealment instead of using overwatch. I can't believe it would change the mechanics so fundamentally. I mean doing any other action causes a different dynamic to the battle field in terms of action and consequence, as it should.

In theory I should be able to play the same battle a hundred times and get wildly different reactions depending on my actions.

[briantw]

So I pretty much agree with all the Firewatch reviews.  The early parts of the game are great, the writing is awesome, and the graphics are gorgeous.  All that said, the ending was pretty underwhelming based on what led up to it.  It wasn't bad, really...it's just that the first half of the game creates a mystery that the resolution can't really live up to.

I'd still recommend playing it for the great writing and the tension, but all the reviews I read were spot on about the ending.

It kind of reminded me a bit of Gone Home in that regard, but Firewatch is a much better overall game/experience than Gone Home could ever hope to be.

[KiDisaster]

Picked up Firewatch. Played through it in one sitting. Took me around 3 hours, which for $20 I know will be off putting for a lot of people but I think it was very much worth it. 

It's captivating. Had me roped in and getting attached to Henry and Delilah almost instantly and didn't let go till the end. I need to let it sink in a while longer before I come to a real conclusion on it but I definitely enjoyed my time with it. 

It is an interactive story much moreso than a "game" (if you care to make that kind of distinction) but that's what I expected. There are no failure states, no way to really affect the outcome of the story and a whoooooooole lot of walking. But the dialogue between the two main characters is the main meat of the game, and that you do get to have some impact on by choosing your responses. 

Great sale game if you're not itching to play it ASAP. 

[MerenthaClone]

My XCOM2 Ironman Commander run might be getting pretty close to done.  I've got a full team of colonels (though only one has a particularly spectacular AWS perk) and two psychers rapidly running up through the ranks.  Two WAR Suits, one Wraith suit, and all I need is some more damn elerium cores so I can grab another powered weapon, some more custom ammo, and maybe another Wraith suit.  In the meantime, I'm just putting off hitting the second "tier" of story missions, but once I do those I can't imagine not just running through them pretty quickly.  I'm excited to start another campaign with a few mods and see how differently it actually plays out.  

As for the RNG, in XCOM1 it worked that if you did the same set of actions, you'd get the same set of results on a reload.  However, some actions would still advance the RNG seed without seeming to "roll" (iirc Flashbangs did) so maybe the same thing was happening with that smoke grenade.  No idea though.  

[Jon AS]

6 hours ago, Arthmail said:

The only thing my Ranger did before she drew agro, that was different than the first play through, was to drop smoke for concealment instead of using overwatch. I can't believe it would change the mechanics so fundamentally.

That's exactly how it worked in EU, though: one action taken differently would essentially give you a new "roll", but the result of said "roll" was then fixed. There was an option to avoid the latter (giving you a new random seed with every reload), but you had to explicitly set it in the menu.

[TrueMetis]

39 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

That's exactly how it worked in EU, though: one action taken differently would essentially give you a new "roll", but the result of said "roll" was then fixed. There was an option to avoid the latter (giving you a new random seed with every reload), but you had to explicitly set it in the menu.

Wasn't that only introduced with Enemy Within?

[Jon AS]

1 minute ago, TrueMetis said:

Wasn't that only introduced with Enemy Within?

Possibly. That was the last campaign I played, and I never used the option.

[briantw]

Really enjoying Rise of the Tomb Raider.  As someone else mentioned, the story is totally ridiculous, but the same was true of the first game and I enjoyed it a lot as well.  This is one of the rare sequels where it seems that almost every one of my complaints from the previous game was addressed.  There's much, much less combat and a much larger focus on stealth and exploration, both of which make perfect sense for a game centered around a character like Lara Croft.  I thought the first game was entirely too much like Uncharted, which already has far too high a body count for my tastes.  I'm happy that they've toned it down a bit in this go around and added more actual tomb raiding and puzzle solving.  It's a welcome change.

The game is gorgeous, too.  I think Lara in the game is the most realistic-looking human I've ever seen in a video game.  Her face and eyes look damn near real, and the hair (which is still good, just not near photo-realistic) is the only thing that gives it away.

Here's a screenshot I took:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/308864099116700555/E32E41B144D2F6351D55A61C43F251080D6D76D5/

Steam screenshots aren't the best in terms of quality, but even there you can see what I'm talking about.  They did some damn good work there.  Supporting characters don't look quite as good, but the overall quality is still really high.

[Werthead]

Player shatters reality by directly colliding a blue and orange portal in Portal 2 whilst they're standing inbetween.

Freaky.

Meanwhile, Dragon Age co-creator working on the new Baldur's Gate game.

Which given he started out working on Baldur's Gate II and Throne of Bhaal is a bit more encouraging than that might sound.

[Werthead]

Star Wars Mario Kart must happen.

[RumHam]

On 2/8/2016 at 2:40 PM, Kalbear said:

My only complaint is that the load times between missions is on the longish side. 

Apparently hitting caps lock can dramatically speed up the "going back to base" load times for some reason

http://kotaku.com/an-unlikely-fix-for-xcom-2-s-long-ass-back-to-base-load-1758314840

[Sullen]

On 09/02/2016 at 5:28 PM, Werthead said:

There are some games that do this, but I don't think XCOM2 is suspposed to work like that. As mentioned above, the first time the 52% hacking succeeded, so after reload it should have worked again and then every time afterwards if that was the case.

XCOM2 (and the previous instalment) works on a pre-determined seed system, the outcome of every single string of actions is predetermined, which means that doing the same actions in the same order will always yield the same results.

You probably disrupted the order of actions after you reloaded, which yielded a different result.

[Arthmail]

Sure, I can imagine having different results. But never producing the same result? I guess I didn't try a hundred different options with my ranger, but the hack nearly went through at least 2 times, so it shows the numbers are randomizing somewhere on the back end or am I not understanding this. I am not a big XCOM guy but I am loving this game.

[Werthead]

Some people are very angry that Quantum Break is coming out on PC as well as XB1. Some players have even cancelled their pre-order. Which is a bit bizarre.

It's weird because it was always acknowledged that QB was going to come out on PC as well (Remedy made it clear during the Alan Wake kerfuffle that they weren't going to do that "pretending it's not coming out" thing again) and that QB was only going to be an XB1 console exclusive (not exclusive full stop). QB was also going to be a launch title, so when it missed that title a key reason for timed exclusivity vanished. Finally, the XB1 has not sold in the numbers required to justify a brand new IP being exclusive (but if QB is absolutely massive on XB1, expect QB2 to be a timed exclusive), so it's no surprise that Remedy and Microsoft have moved it up to having release date parity.

Microsoft are still creating obstacles here though. QB won't be on Steam, it'll be exclusive to the Microsoft Store. It'll also be a Windows 10 exclusive, apparently as it uses DirectX 12. It also requires hefty graphics card firepower to run on recommended settings above HD. So it's not like it's going to be selling gangbusters on PC without a Steam release or lower specs.

I guess we'll see on 5 April. What is very nice is that the XB1 version of QB will come with the new XB1 edition of Alan Wake and its expansions and its semi-sequel for free, and XB1 owners of the game will be able to play on both XB1 and PC and exchange saves between them.