Video Games: Thread Simulator 2016

[Jace, Extat]

17 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Well that dampens my enthusiasm a bit. Being I'm only just in the market for RoTTR having waited a year for it to come to PS4, hearing people who really liked the reboot being less enthused by the sequel to the reboot is a concern. I liked the reboot but I didn't gush over it. I think I still owe it to myself to play it though.

Yeah, go for it if you've got the coin. I didn't hate it or anything, but it didn't really do anything new or particular interesting besides the appearance of a certain something (if you know what appeared in this game that would make Jace giggle and clap, respond in a spoiler tag for your prize) that is pretty trivial to most people.

It's an interesting setting, some great visuals, and fun little puzzles. I kept it for a month or two and couldn't really get into it, but I might not have been in the best position to enjoy it. I was rehabbing from a couple of surgeries without painkillers and was not in a great mood.

[Jasta11]

Having a lot of fun in Total Warhammer thanks to the new King and the Warlord DLC. It adds a couple Lords, Legendary Lords, units and such, but the cool part is that the new Legendary Lords have thei own unique starting positions of the map and primary objectives, retaking a specific city on the other end of the map. Until then, you have fairly major penalties, such as doubled upkeep for all units. So the early game is about making the best out of the units you have as you carve a path to your objective in Greenskin blood. Then you get to your objective, the upkeep penalty is lifted, and it's payback time on all the enemies who profited from you only being able to afford one stack.

Also still playing World of Warcraft, with the 7.1 patch dropping yesterday. I had the time to do the first half of the new Karazhan dungeon once all the attunement nonsense was done, and it was pretty cool, atmospheric yet fairly hard. Can't wait to finish it soon.

[JonSnow4President]

So I preordered the new Skyrim Special edition on Xbox One so it would simply download when it was released.  It's downloading right now.  Am I going to be able to play in another 13GB?

[Mark Antony]

No it's just pre downloading you won't be able to play it till tomorrow night or whenever it comes out. 

[JonSnow4President]

Thanks.  Never preordered on the Xbone before. 

[karaddin]

On 23/10/2016 at 8:17 AM, Pony Queen Jace said:

Played one game on standard as Egypt to about turn 90, 3 different Civ's I never met were wiped out, I can't remember the computer ever killing other civs in V.

This message currently plays for city states as well as other civs btw. After seeing so much griping elsewhere about Civ6 its gratifying to see people having broadly the same opinion as me. I'm loving it, think its a great update and feels very significantly different to Civ5. Loving that the move back to local based stats has moved it back to city numbers being production and land constrained instead of the artificial constraint of happiness. It feels a lot more a part of the game instead of an arbitrary limit.

The variation in optimum route introduced by the importance of the map etc makes the tech tree feel a whole lot less linear, which was one of the things I loved about Beyond Earth (and not many seemed to share my love of that).

One issue with Civ6 is that the camera doesn't zoom out far enough for Brook, this combined with the busy graphics is giving her a headache sometimes.

[KiDisaster]

I agree regarding the camera. Also the minimap is useless in this game, and I really need a scalable UI slider. 

The more I play the more AI jank I'm beginning to experience. Denouncing me for doing seemingly nothing at all one turn after telling me how awesome I am, deciding I'm a warmonger for defending myself against Germany after they've declared war on me for the THIRD TIME (I didn't let them make peace after that, learned my lesson), telling them their offer of 1 gold per turn for my delicious chocolate is not enough and they counter offer by requesting that I give them my delicious chocolate and a pile of money in exchange for nothing from them.

It's a great game but in desperate need of some patches. But that's every Civ game. 

 

[Muttering Bill]

On ‎10‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 10:26 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Well that dampens my enthusiasm a bit. Being I'm only just in the market for RoTTR having waited a year for it to come to PS4, hearing people who really liked the reboot being less enthused by the sequel to the reboot is a concern. I liked the reboot but I didn't gush over it. I think I still owe it to myself to play it though.

I loved the reboot and am ejoying RoTTR quite a bit.  I'm taking it slowly, only about 30% through, becuase I have a lot of other things going on.  I may feel differently by the end, but right now it's great.  But it's really more of the same.  Same combat, same exploration, new location.  It's what I was looking for, but if you wanted to see some new features you'll be disappointed.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Muttering Bill said:

I loved the reboot and am ejoying RoTTR quite a bit.  I'm taking it slowly, only about 30% through, becuase I have a lot of other things going on.  I may feel differently by the end, but right now it's great.  But it's really more of the same.  Same combat, same exploration, new location.  It's what I was looking for, but if you wanted to see some new features you'll be disappointed.

For me the reboot was good, but it wasn't awesome. So, applying the law of diminishing returns a sequel that is more of the same will be less enjoyable. I really enjoyed Uncharted DF, and I loved UC2, but diminishing returns kicked in for UC3 and 4. Still enjoyed them, but they didn't have the tingle of UC:DF and UC2. And with that series the start point was much higher than with the TR reboot. UC4 also had the difficult task of following TLOU, which in terms of characters, story and drama far exceeds UC.

[Muttering Bill]

16 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

For me the reboot was good, but it wasn't awesome. So, applying the law of diminishing returns a sequel that is more of the same will be less enjoyable. I really enjoyed Uncharted DF, and I loved UC2, but diminishing returns kicked in for UC3 and 4. Still enjoyed them, but they didn't have the tingle of UC:DF and UC2. And with that series the start point was much higher than with the TR reboot. UC4 also had the difficult task of following TLOU, which in terms of characters, story and drama far exceeds UC.

I haven't played UC4 yet (waiting for a good sale).  I played through UC3 for the first time a few months ago.  It was good, but yeah, not quite as good.  Although the internet tells me that it was rushed to release, so with a little more time to polish it...  who knows.

If you compare it with TR...  I'd say that UC has the better stories, and TR has better gameplay.  (And following that line, The Last of Us has the best story and the worst gameplay of the three.)  TR's story was pretty basic, and from where I am in RotTR it's a bit worse in that respect.  If you're in it for the story, then RottR probably won't satisfy.  Maybe wait for a price drop.

But I'm here for the gameplay, so for me TR had a much stronger start than UC.  And far as that goes, unless they throw in some surprise later in the game, it's pretty much unchanged.  One thing that kind of bugs me though is that you can't hip-fire.  I don't recall if it was like that in the first one.  Had more than a few bad moments trying to shoot at enemies in close range.

[aceluby]

Finished up the Dark Souls 3 DLC last night.  Pretty much just casted Hidden Body the entire time and ran around like a madman picking up items and opening up shortcuts.  After using it for a couple of play throughs now I really think it's the most overpowered spell for PvE.  Just bought the bloodborne DLC and started a new character on that game as well.

[matt b]

9 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Finished up the Dark Souls 3 DLC last night. 

I've been having a lot of fun with it. The PvP arena is pretty nice. I'm liking the coop battles especially. I'll have to try hidden body on my caster character, probably make dealing with some of those Farron Follower mobs a lot easier.

[aceluby]

2 hours ago, matt b said:

I've been having a lot of fun with it. The PvP arena is pretty nice. I'm liking the coop battles especially. I'll have to try hidden body on my caster character, probably make dealing with some of those Farron Follower mobs a lot easier.

Omg.... it's absolute cake.  Takes some of the fun out of it, but also makes some of those more frustrating areas much more tolerable.  These have probably been my least frustrating runs of any of the souls/borne games.

[Jace, Extat]

Took a look at the Skyrim gimmick on account of it being free, and the first thing I noticed is that if the terrain looked super perty (was not clear to me), the characters looked even worse.

It was jarring every time I looked at a character.

ETA: Oh, and Titanfall 2 has that same manic energy as the first. I like it.

[Werthead]

On PC Skyrim actually looks worse than it did before, somehow. Something to do with the way the new graphics work with the limited memory of the XB1 and PS4 versus the high-resolution texture pack for the original version of Skyrim, which didn't have that limitation as it was exclusively PC-only. In fact, if you were using the high-res texture pack in the first place there is absolutely no reason to play the updated edition at all.

For some reason the updated version has inferior audio quality (they're apparently not sure why, trying to fix it), is incompatible with the vast majority of mods and what should have been a slam-dunk improvement, the move from 32 to 64 bit so vastly superior memory management, has been thwarted by Bethesda not making any improvements from that end. It will, in time, make modding a lot easier though.

To put it another way, the updated version of Skyrim means you can play the game on PS4 and XB1 and have it now look not quite as good as it did on PC in 2011 rather than just embarrassingly inferior. Cheers, Bethesda.

[Jace, Extat]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

On PC Skyrim actually looks worse than it did before, somehow. Something to do with the way the new graphics work with the limited memory of the XB1 and PS4 versus the high-resolution texture pack for the original version of Skyrim, which didn't have that limitation as it was exclusively PC-only. In fact, if you were using the high-res texture pack in the first place there is absolutely no reason to play the updated edition at all.

For some reason the updated version has inferior audio quality (they're apparently not sure why, trying to fix it), is incompatible with the vast majority of mods and what should have been a slam-dunk improvement, the move from 32 to 64 bit so vastly superior memory management, has been thwarted by Bethesda not making any improvements from that end. It will, in time, make modding a lot easier though.

To put it another way, the updated version of Skyrim means you can play the game on PS4 and XB1 and have it now look not quite as good as it did on PC in 2011 rather than just embarrassingly inferior. Cheers, Bethesda.

Glad it's not just me, I thought the NPC's looked like they'd been ripped out of Morrowind.

[Corvinus85]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

On PC Skyrim actually looks worse than it did before, somehow. Something to do with the way the new graphics work with the limited memory of the XB1 and PS4 versus the high-resolution texture pack for the original version of Skyrim, which didn't have that limitation as it was exclusively PC-only. In fact, if you were using the high-res texture pack in the first place there is absolutely no reason to play the updated edition at all.

For some reason the updated version has inferior audio quality (they're apparently not sure why, trying to fix it), is incompatible with the vast majority of mods and what should have been a slam-dunk improvement, the move from 32 to 64 bit so vastly superior memory management, has been thwarted by Bethesda not making any improvements from that end. It will, in time, make modding a lot easier though.

To put it another way, the updated version of Skyrim means you can play the game on PS4 and XB1 and have it now look not quite as good as it did on PC in 2011 rather than just embarrassingly inferior. Cheers, Bethesda.

So Bethesda is not only incapable of releasing a clean new game, they can't even release a clean re-mastered edition of an existing game. smh

[JonSnow4President]

As an Xbox guy (been taking a little vacation off a portion of savings before searching for another job.  When I get a new job, I'll get a PC, don't crucify me), I'm loving the new remaster.  I haven't been able to play it in forever (my laptop is a potato that occasionally struggles to run youtube).  Trying out playing as a mage for the first time, and I'm finding it harder.  Just managed to get my enchanting and smithing up enough to make myself some halfway decent mage gear with an armor rating.  Before that, it was a struggle.  Used to being able to take some hits and block while playing as a warrior.  Don't have that option anymore. 

[Fez]

I've hit an unfortunate rut in my first Civ6 game. Thanks to the vagaries of map generation, there are almost no strategic resources in the gam other than Iron and Horses; which means even though its the Modern/Atomic era for most Civs, the armies are an odd mix of medieval units and the more modern ones that don't require resources (mine included). However, that's not too important because I spawned on a small continent by myself, which has prevented any of the other Civs from interacting with me in ways that could give me casus belli.

So I'm just sitting still for the most part, pushing for the Scientific and Cultural victories (its too soon to tell which I have a better shot at). Now normally I'm fine with a turtled up Civ game. But the other problem is that I'm playing on the Epic game speed, which I don't think has been properly balanced at all. Production simply takes forever for nearly everything, and I'm prettying sure I've got a lot of hammers. My research speed has vastly outclipped by production speed, so I have huge backlogs of things to build everywhere. Meanwhile, I do have a huge revenue stream, so I'm just buying what I can; but a lot of what I need to build I can't buy. So I'm just sitting and clicking 'end turn' for probably 2/3rds of my turns at this point; not interacting with the game at all. Not great. I think its just bad luck from RNGesus, but I refuse to abandon my first Civ6 game ever. I'm going to plow through it and hope the next game is better.

Its not all I'm playing though. I picked up Shadowverse on Steam. Its a F2P digital TCG that I think was originally just on mobile. Lot of similarities to Hearthstone, but there's enough differences as well to be its own thing (including have each deck leader have wildly different and actually really important skills). Also, its anime as fuck. There's also a really extensive story mode to teach you how to play the game. There's 7 different deck leaders, each with their own story; and they keep intersecting and meeting each other. Its not the best written thing at all; but its fully voiced and at least give some framing to all the practice battles.

And because I've been searching for a lengthy, story-based RPG for ages now, and because it was on sale, I broke down and picked up The Witcher 3. As I've said before, I didn't want to get it because I couldn't stand Geralt in the previous games; so all the world building and writing and everything else has always been wasted on me. I'm only a few hours in (I've done a few side quests and just went to the Nilfgaardian outpost and was told to hunt a griffin), but so far I'm not having that seriously negative reaction to Geralt. I'm not feeling particularly positive towards him either; but I'm not outright hating him the way I did in TW2. I think the writing for him has changed in some way, but I can't quite put my finger on it yet; also, maybe its my imagination, but I think the voice actor is being the tiniest bit less gravelly. Combat doesn't feel very good, and menu navigation is harder than it should be. The non-Geralt writing has been really solid so far. Gwent is great.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

The one thing I've tended to neglect on Civ6 games is production. I noticed everything was taking forever to build and couldn't figure out why. I' so used to Civ 5 which is all about research that I've become used to prioritising food and population. But the housing limit really makes that pointless now. 

So now I've focussed on production, getting an industrial centre going, especially with a factory, using trade routes to divert hammers to weaker cities. Seems to have pushed me miles ahead of the AI.

I do think there is a major issue with the AI at the moment though, they seem, well not so much passive, but stupid. Usually there is an initial bit of aggression, but then they don't bother to upgrade their troops, so I just get a bunch of warriors and slingers against my pikes and spears and crossbows. Its embarrassing. I could possibly steamroller every city on King level without even trying.