Video Games: Fantasy's Final '16

[The Anti-Targ]

21 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

I picked up The Order: 1886 & Knack in the PSN flash sale. Haven't heard anything particularly good about either of them, but I figured for $5 each I might as well try them. 

Currently working my way through the new Deus Ex. Pretty alright so far. Some of the voice acting is laughably bad though, along with some of the animations (especially during dialogue). The level design and the number of ways to approach each mission are really fantastic though. 

Knack is good for kids. It's an aiight challenge for teens/adults on hard but the story and characters etc are pretty meh.

At $5 the Order:1886 goes from being a 6.5/10 game to being an 8/10 game because its shortness (the major criticism) and some of the unfathomably bad boss and werewolf combat mechanics are much more forgivable. The story itself is good, the characters are good, the gameplay other than boss and werewolf fights is decent, the weapons are fun, the visuals are brilliant. Play the game on the hardest difficulty and don't use bullet-time and you will extend the game time by a bit because some fights are pretty hard to get through without bullet time. I only played through without bullet-time because after the tutorial section I completely forgot about it as a feature of the game. But after rediscovering that bullet time was a thing I felt a masochistic sense of satisfaction at the achievement of never using bullet time after the tutorial section.

I would have played through The Order a second time if I was sure there would be a sequel. But even though a lot of critics, while still down scoring the game for its considerable faults wanted to see a sequel happen, the fact the game was a critical and commercial failure means it's almost certain we will never see a sequel.

[RumHam]

On 1/12/2017 at 4:44 PM, Suzanna Stormborn said:

What is the freaking deal with all this unused extra property in Altissia in FFXV.  I can see another gondola stop, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to get too, is there going to be DLC or what?

Another possible explanation, apparently there's a chocobo carnival in Altissia next week. It might use some of those places. 

 

[Liffguard]

On 19/01/2017 at 2:29 AM, karaddin said:

It should include whether you try set up a human only council or just a new council with humans on it to determine whether it takes the choice that way or not.

I thought that was one of the choices wasn't it? You could save the council, choose to focus on Sovereign (old council dies but is replaced by same races), or actively let the council die (replaced by new all human council). It's been a while since I played the first game so I could be way off.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Liffguard said:

I thought that was one of the choices wasn't it? You could save the council, choose to focus on Sovereign (old council dies but is replaced by same races), or actively let the council die (replaced by new all human council). It's been a while since I played the first game so I could be way off.

I don't think it's possible to set up a human only council.

On a related note, I just happened to open Origin on my PC to see what special deals they have, haven't opened origin for months, and Mass Effect 2 is there for free. Well I have mass Effect for PC, so I might as well get ME2 for PC for free even though I've played it to death on PS4. It might be fun to play it on PC with, comparatively, zero loading time.

[The Drunkard]

Waiting for the Ancient Empires mod for Attila to come out. I'm sick of Warhammer, exhausted with Attila and Med 2, and none of the other settings look very appealing. I've just been despondently killing Franks and Muslims in Age of Charlemagne. 

[Fez]

14 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I don't think it's possible to set up a human only council.

On a related note, I just happened to open Origin on my PC to see what special deals they have, haven't opened origin for months, and Mass Effect 2 is there for free. Well I have mass Effect for PC, so I might as well get ME2 for PC for free even though I've played it to death on PS4. It might be fun to play it on PC with, comparatively, zero loading time.

It's not possible for it to actually happen. But if you let the council die and side with the ambassador towards the end instead of the admiral, he will give this megalomaniac speech about having an all-human council. Which makes no sense, and is never referenced in ME2 in any way.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

Waiting for the Ancient Empires mod for Attila to come out. I'm sick of Warhammer, exhausted with Attila and Med 2, and none of the other settings look very appealing. I've just been despondently killing Franks and Muslims in Age of Charlemagne. 

So basically Rome 2 but with Attila features.

[Pliskin]

So, I decided to finally play Dragon Age Inquisition, and Bioware/EA continue to astonish me with their absurd choices.

First, why can't we access this Dragon Age Keep from within the game, instead of this third party web application? It's a regression, right? If I remember correctly, Mass Effect already had something similar (not sure though, since I had always just imported my own save, never tried the interactive recap).

But more importantly, there is nothing to indicate that the import from the Keep was done correctly. I did the import yesterday and the timestamp was correct. But no summary to verify or anything. Until today when I discovered that my Warden isn't queen but Anora is. Great. After many hours of play-through. Apparently, you first need to export the world state in the Keep, not just save it. Of course, there is no indication as to what to do in the game itself. Fucking A, Bioware.

[Jace, Extat]

6 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

Waiting for the Ancient Empires mod for Attila to come out. I'm sick of Warhammer, exhausted with Attila and Med 2, and none of the other settings look very appealing. I've just been despondently killing Franks and Muslims in Age of Charlemagne. 

 

4 hours ago, Corvinus said:

So basically Rome 2 but with Attila features.

I'm unclear, is this out and playable or not? And if not, when might it be expected?

Rome II was probably my favorite setting for a TW game, as Attila is just little early for me to truly get my Holy City experience of bringing the ERE's strength to bear in an attempt to crush the Persian Empire and keep the flicker of light alive in the Feudal West's various increasingly subjugated holdouts.

Sure, you can do that stuff in Attila, but it doesn't feel quite right to me. It always happens way too soon.

Meanwhile, playing as the successor kingdoms (particularly Baktria and Ptolemaic Egypt) always felt unfulfilling. Macedon is basically the only faction in Rome II I can get a good long game going with.

[karaddin]

On 22/01/2017 at 10:18 AM, Liffguard said:

I thought that was one of the choices wasn't it? You could save the council, choose to focus on Sovereign (old council dies but is replaced by same races), or actively let the council die (replaced by new all human council). It's been a while since I played the first game so I could be way off.

 

7 hours ago, Fez said:

It's not possible for it to actually happen. But if you let the council die and side with the ambassador towards the end instead of the admiral, he will give this megalomaniac speech about having an all-human council. Which makes no sense, and is never referenced in ME2 in any way.

What Fez said. It doesn't work and it doesn't go anywhere, but the reaction to you letting the council die from the other races acts as though this was the option you chose despite it not working out. I'm saying if you side with Anderson in just getting the council back up then only radicals should see your actions as human supremacist, everyone else should just see you as ruthless. If you side with Udina then it should be as bad or even more overt than what we got. It doesn't change anything really other than tone.

[The Drunkard]

11 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I'm unclear, is this out and playable or not? And if not, when might it be expected?

Custom battles are out, but the grand campaign keeps getting delayed. Supposedly it will be out in the next few weeks according to their Steam page.  

Also, someone should make a First Law mod for CK2. I've tried being a puppet master in TW but it just doesn't work.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

On 1/21/2017 at 5:16 PM, RumHam said:

Another possible explanation, apparently there's a chocobo carnival in Altissia next week. It might use some of those places. 

 

WOW!!! And that will be on DLC next week?

[Ded As Ned]

I picked up Brut@l over the weekend... and it's great fun.  Perma-death so it's not a big time-consumer (until you get better at playing, anyway... but you can still do a save state to stop where you're at and pick it back up later... just when you die, game over).  

2 Player co-op is fun too with the kids, even though they hog up all the resources.  "Look dad, treasure chests!  I'll go get those while you're fending off those monsters, thanks!" 

Great fun for anyone who played Rogue and other text-based/ASCII adventures (way) back in the day.  

[The Anti-Targ]

On 23/01/2017 at 5:01 AM, Fez said:

It's not possible for it to actually happen. But if you let the council die and side with the ambassador towards the end instead of the admiral, he will give this megalomaniac speech about having an all-human council. Which makes no sense, and is never referenced in ME2 in any way.

 

23 hours ago, karaddin said:

 

What Fez said. It doesn't work and it doesn't go anywhere, but the reaction to you letting the council die from the other races acts as though this was the option you chose despite it not working out. I'm saying if you side with Anderson in just getting the council back up then only radicals should see your actions as human supremacist, everyone else should just see you as ruthless. If you side with Udina then it should be as bad or even more overt than what we got. It doesn't change anything really other than tone.

It would be completely logically inconsistent with the way the ME universe operates for an all human council to get into power. Despite "humanity" (read Shepard and crew AND a bunch of aliens) taking down Saren and a multi-species space battle finishing off Sovereign. The Asari, Turians and Salerians would never acknowledge an all human council

On 23/01/2017 at 6:43 AM, Pliskin said:

So, I decided to finally play Dragon Age Inquisition, and Bioware/EA continue to astonish me with their absurd choices.

First, why can't we access this Dragon Age Keep from within the game, instead of this third party web application? It's a regression, right? If I remember correctly, Mass Effect already had something similar (not sure though, since I had always just imported my own save, never tried the interactive recap).

But more importantly, there is nothing to indicate that the import from the Keep was done correctly. I did the import yesterday and the timestamp was correct. But no summary to verify or anything. Until today when I discovered that my Warden isn't queen but Anora is. Great. After many hours of play-through. Apparently, you first need to export the world state in the Keep, not just save it. Of course, there is no indication as to what to do in the game itself. Fucking A, Bioware.

Bioware only made the interactive comic for ME1 because ME2 was being released on PS3 under the EA banner, whereas ME1 was published by MS and EA had no right or permission to publish ME1 on PS3, at the time. And without something like that PS3 players would be stuck with the default choices, which are [intentionally] almost all crap. And it was essential to make an extra effort in order to get decent sales of ME2 on PS3. Initially the interactive comic was only available for PS3, but then it was made available for all platforms. And somehow EA managed to find a loophole in the exclusivity of Mass Effect 1 to allow them to get ME1 onto PS3 as a stand alone digital download or on disc as part of the ME trilogy boxed set.

I guess EA figured the core Dragon Age fanbase didn't need to be enticed with something like the Mass Effect interactive comic because all platforms would suffer equally. Argualy this is another compromise forced on PC players because of the change in console generations making it very hard (but not impossible) to carry over game save datas from 7th gen to 8th gen consoles. Arguably with cloud saves becoming a feature at the end of the 7th gen, carry over saves on all platforms is possible. Also the interactive comic for Mass Effect had you make far fewer choices than what you make and what carries over if you actually play ME1. The Dragon Age keep goes into a lot more depth on your choices, and to get that level of choices into an interactive comic would be a helluva lot more work than the ME1 interactive comic.

[Joe Pesci]

I just discovered Chronotrigger for Super Nintendo...aaaand I'm hooked.

[Ded As Ned]

24 minutes ago, Joe Pesci said:

I just discovered Chronotrigger for Super Nintendo...aaaand I'm hooked.

Congrats!  That's a great gem you found. 

[Fez]

3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It would be completely logically inconsistent with the way the ME universe operates for an all human council to get into power. Despite "humanity" (read Shepard and crew AND a bunch of aliens) taking down Saren and a multi-species space battle finishing off Sovereign. The Asari, Turians and Salerians would never acknowledge an all human council

No kidding. There's a reason ME2 pretends Udina never the speech; not sure why it was included in ME1 in the first place. It doesn't read as Udina being unrealistically megalomanical, but as something that he can actually pull off.

[The Anti-Targ]

Another incongruity I have noticed with my recent re-play of ME2 is that non-human species refer to themselves as aliens, which of course is completely nuts.

I wonder if in ME:Andromeda the indigenous Andromedans will be referred to as aliens, when of course it's all the Milky Way refugees who are the aliens. Would be quite the colonialist mentality coming through if that is how the characters speak.

[briantw]

One of my buddies and I both picked up Resident Evil 6 during the Steam winter sale and are playing through it now.  Sweet jesus this game is awful, but it is pretty fun playing with a friend.  I can't even imagine playing the game alone, as the broken controls make it barely functional with a partner, but co-op you can at least enjoy the absurdity of the plot, the badness of the dialogue, and the ridiculousness of the set-pieces and boss fights.  Probably the best part of the game is cracking jokes about how bad it all is.

Anyway, I played through RE5 with the same friend a few years back and we had a great time with that, so this was a solid waste of six bucks.  Also, I can't say the game lacks value.  There are four campaigns with five chapters each (I think), and in the first campaign at least the chapter length seems to average out to about an hour.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Another incongruity I have noticed with my recent re-play of ME2 is that non-human species refer to themselves as aliens, which of course is completely nuts.

I wonder if in ME:Andromeda the indigenous Andromedans will be referred to as aliens, when of course it's all the Milky Way refugees who are the aliens. Would be quite the colonialist mentality coming through if that is how the characters speak.

I'm half expecting that sort of thing to be present and the colonialist stuff to be an intentional theme that's being explored. Could be done well or very poorly.