Video Games: Next Stop... Andromeda

[A True Kaniggit]

Finally started FFXV and it's been pretty interesting so far. The biggest complaint I have right now is that my companions keep on running into areas after I cast magic and get themselves killed.

[Werthead]

Torment: Tides of Numenera hits tomorrow, five years after the Kickstarter campaign. Looking forwards to the reviews.

[Fez]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Torment: Tides of Numenera hits tomorrow, five years after the Kickstarter campaign. Looking forwards to the reviews.

I just haven't had enough fun with any of the new wave of CRPGs, that I'm really cautious about this one. They all seem to set up an interesting world but then tell a fairly boring story, and have characters with long, detailed backstories that have almost no interaction with the main story. 

Even though I've put a lot of hours into games like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Wasteland 2, I haven't fully enjoyed any of them. And I know its possible for smaller budget games to tell compelling stories, just look at The Banner Saga, or the Shadowrun games.

[Jasta11]

Alright, new rig will arrive Soon^tm. Core i5, 12 GB RAM, AMD RX 480, along with new mouse and SSD. I'm ready for whatever games are thrown at me for at least 2 years now, and it didn't even cost me that much. I just hope everything arrives in time for Andromeda's launch...

Other than that, Bretonnia hits Warhammer tomorrow. And from the looks of it, the revamped faction is pretty OP. Heroes are very powerful, Grail Knights are now supermen that never get tired and beat Blood Knights 1v1, and they even get a powerful armor-piercing infantry with Foot Squires. I'm really not sure about that last part, the Brets were never supposed to have good infantry.

[briantw]

28 minutes ago, Fez said:

I just haven't had enough fun with any of the new wave of CRPGs, that I'm really cautious about this one. They all seem to set up an interesting world but then tell a fairly boring story, and have characters with long, detailed backstories that have almost no interaction with the main story. 

Even though I've put a lot of hours into games like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Wasteland 2, I haven't fully enjoyed any of them. And I know its possible for smaller budget games to tell compelling stories, just look at The Banner Saga, or the Shadowrun games.

I really liked Tyranny, although I thought it kind of felt like half a game, as it ended right as things were getting truly interesting.

[MerenthaClone]

12 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Other than that, Bretonnia hits Warhammer tomorrow. And from the looks of it, the revamped faction is pretty OP. Heroes are very powerful, Grail Knights are now supermen that never get tired and beat Blood Knights 1v1, and they even get a powerful armor-piercing infantry with Foot Squires. I'm really not sure about that last part, the Brets were never supposed to have good infantry.

Foot Squires come from your peasant reserves, which actually makes them harder to field in campaign since you're capped by territory for them.  Also, they're slightly more aggressive, less sturdy Greatswords.  Given that Bretonnia's infantry exists solely to give their enemies something to beat up on while their Knights move to the flank/rear charge, I'm okay with that.  Rebalance their cost and they'll be fine and have a role in a Bretonnian army without being overpowered.  They're also t4 to the greatswords' t3. 

And I've played a bit through the campaign and they are actually a pain in the ass to get rolling.  The peasant army cap means you can't fill your roster with t1/t2 units without suffering significant economy penalties and I found myself hurting for cash pretty badly even without those penalties.  Sacking, raiding, and ransoming all hurt your chivalry pretty badly and those are all key campaign mechanics for pretty much any faction as far as money-making goes.  Ambushing does too, which was the easiest/best way to get open-field battles from a garrisoned army. Plus, you're up against a decent faction almost immediately, since Marienburg's walls and economy shut you down hard and Orion's a monster early on.  Well, unless you start with Alberic who seems like he's got the weakest start bonus/units but also the "easiest" enemy in Mousillon.  Terror does a huge number on Bretonnia's starting units and I've only been able to take on the Red Duke when the Green Knight is available to me, so even though Mousillon starts off with only a minor province the'yre absurdly hard to dislodge.  

So far, I've found their start harder than most factions', including ones labeled "hard" like Skarsnik and, probably, Vlad/Isabella's.  (Also, here's hoping they move Kemmler to Mousillon and make it a playable Vampire start too, since that'd give you three VC factions in essentially two start locations with two LLs each).  Once the patch settles down a bit, I should probably re-try the Beastmen, WE, and Empire campaigns just because their starts have gotten considerably harder as the factions fill out.  CA's support of this game is nothing short of incredible.  

e:  My issues with Bretonnia might just stem from my inability to leverage my advantages, to be fair.  Grail Guardians are some incredible beastly fuckers and the Green Knight has basically let me win fights I have no right winning like 600 men, mostly peasants, barely losing against 3k+ undead, including some high-tier units (and then my remnants utterly crushing theirs').  The main reason I lost that campaign is that as soon as I suffered that defeat, Orion came rampaging from the woods and razed Carcassone, leaving me with no real base of power whatsoever.  I'll see if I can salvage it tomorrow, but I doubt it. 

Basically, Brets start with a good army and incredibly shit campaign location, which is fun.  

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

I'm pretty excited about playing as the Brets. But my main excitement comes from knowing they have nerfed the Wood Elves aggression. The current version is being steam rollered every game by them and Chaos, it gets a little dull.

[Corvinus85]

Bretonnia is out. I had enough time before work this morning to start a campaign, and I decided to go with Alberic of Bordelaux, knowing that would give me the initial challenge of dealing with Mousillon + unlike King Leuen, Alberic doesn't have all the Knightly Vows unlocked, so his development will be a bit slower. But knights will be badasses under his leadership.

I was able to draw the Red Duke out his fortress. The fool tried to ambush me in my own territory, and I smote him like the cur he is. Now I intend to go over the peasantry cap for 1-2 turns, just to have enough infantry to overwhelm Mousillon's garrison, and defeat the undead once and for all. God wills it!!! I mean... Truth shines!!! I mean... For the Lady!!!

[DJDonegal]

Playing through the Mass Effect series before Andromeda comes out. I should be saying I'm playing these again, but somehow I've contrived to this point in my life to having played through the first iteration four or five times while playing the others not at all.

I think I vaguely remember jumping into 2 straight after the first game and finding the difference in battle mechanics too much to handle and went and played other things.

I've been warned I won't like the ending to 3 but I can't let that stop me.

I've also been spending time crashing through some Games With Gold games since there's a lot of good in there that I missed having basically not gamed between 2010 and 2016.

[KiDisaster]

Of course they'd announce the 1080ti right after I drop my tax return on a new TV  4K looks amazing though. 

Banner Saga 2 is fucking fantastic. I mean the first one was great but all the new classes and everything really spiced up the combat, and I'm getting quite a bit better at it. The main improvement though is the new environments and the way it seems to have opened up and grown in terms in scale. Leading my caravan through the ancient caves, crossing the canyon with the help of a mage, so goddamn cool. 

[briantw]

3 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

Of course they'd announce the 1080ti right after I drop my tax return on a new TV  4K looks amazing though. 

Banner Saga 2 is fucking fantastic. I mean the first one was great but all the new classes and everything really spiced up the combat, and I'm getting quite a bit better at it. The main improvement though is the new environments and the way it seems to have opened up and grown in terms in scale. Leading my caravan through the ancient caves, crossing the canyon with the help of a mage, so goddamn cool. 

While I liked the first game, I thought the second was basically an improvement in every way.  It took the series from good to great.

[MerenthaClone]

8 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

I'm pretty excited about playing as the Brets. But my main excitement comes from knowing they have nerfed the Wood Elves aggression. The current version is being steam rollered every game by them and Chaos, it gets a little dull.

I'm glad they did what basically everyone was begging for, which was to make them defensive until they randomly flip back into being aggressive rampaging assholes for a bit, then back to defensive again.  

[A True Kaniggit]

Have Horizon: Zero Dawn downloading now. Be afraid robodinosaurs!

Edit: And in Stellaris news, it seems the Utopia expansion finally has a release date. April 6.

[Werthead]

Torment: Tides of Numenera is picking up an amazing amount of critical acclaim. Looks like they may have actually pulled off the "spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment" thing they were going for.

[The Anti-Targ]

I want to get views on the safety of anti-cheat software. I have a couple of games on my PC that will be embedding Easy Anti-Cheat in them and I've heard some people say that EAC is pretty bad. On the one hand some people claim that it's not very effective at finding and banning cheaters. On the other hand people say that EAC takes screenshots and uses keystroke logging, which are both spyware techniques used to steal passwords among other things.

Does anti-cheat software that uses spyware techniques pose a security vulnerability?

The EAC provider claims that EAC will only exist and operate on your PC when the associated game is running. But of course if you are running the game, andyou do other things on your computer in between matches then EAC can log your keystrokes and take screen shots that are not part of in game activity.

Sounds rather sketchy to me so I am thinking of uninstalling these games unless / until the anti-cheat software being used doesn't include spyware type functionality.

[Kalbear]

Any software that spies on you is a vulnerability, period. Especially if it reports that information up somewhere and can be communicated to; at that point, it is basically full-on spyware and if it contains any vulnerabilities can be used against you. 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Any software that spies on you is a vulnerability, period. Especially if it reports that information up somewhere and can be communicated to; at that point, it is basically full-on spyware and if it contains any vulnerabilities can be used against you. 

So is Microsoft looking into this sort of "white hat" spyware-like stuff that creates security vulnerabilities on their platform?

MS obviously can't stop people from intentionally putting programmes on their PCs that causes security vulnerabilities. But if game publishers / developers basically put a gun to your head and say, take this or lose your ability to play the game (for which you have paid, or put a lot of money and time into) then that's a different matter and a situation where MS could take an interest in ensure there isn't widespread vulnerability forced on millions of PCs. MS could put pressure on companies to ensure anti-cheat programmes do not create security vulnerabilities and thereby protect both Windows and consumers.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So is Microsoft looking into this sort of "white hat" spyware-like stuff that creates security vulnerabilities on their platform?

MS obviously can't stop people from intentionally putting programmes on their PCs that causes security vulnerabilities. But if game publishers / developers basically put a gun to your head and say, take this or lose your ability to play the game (for which you have paid, or put a lot of money and time into) then that's a different matter and a situation where MS could take an interest in ensure there isn't widespread vulnerability forced on millions of PCs. MS could put pressure on companies to ensure anti-cheat programmes do not create security vulnerabilities and thereby protect both Windows and consumers.

Microsoft detects vulnerabilities like this and tracks them, and informs companies of their existence. MS has occasionally shut down access to various systems because of these types of things. It also does a lot of research into the vulnerabilities. The crime lab and the malware lab is pretty awesome, super-techy stuff.

But there's not a lot MS can do to say 'no, you can't do that' - because it's the customer who is choosing to do that. It's why malware works - because the user is in full control of what they're doing and gives access to it. That vector isn't going to be stopped any time soon, by design. 

In the future MS is going to be pretty hardcore about privacy and allowing you to opt out of things like this regardless of what you allow a program to do. This is going to likely cause certain programs to not work at all in surprising ways, but you'll have more control over it.

[RumHam]

I want to play the new Zelda game. I was just gonna buy a Wii U and wait and see on the Switch, but for some reason both systems are around $300. Weird. 

[mgambino]

I just picked up Torment for Xbox One. It seems like it would be a good game, but it runs like ass and freezes quite a bit.

Hopefully a patch will be incoming.

 

::edit:: Ok, quick change. It freezes pretty regularly to the point where it is almost unplayable past the first hour. Apparently other people are having this problem on XB1 and PS4. Boo.