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Video Games: Dawn of Waaaaagh!


Werthead

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Drack is great with pretty much every character (except possibly Liam, they don't seem to click), he's so... parental. Not really surprising considering his bond with Kesh, but it's nice to see, and even Peebee opens up more to him than anyone else.

 

29 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

And in the end, shooting everything is still the best way to take things down, so Turbocharge is a must. 

Bah, the proper way to go is to charge enemies and then chop them up with a sword.

Thanks to the shield syphon passive, a melee-focused vanguard with low cooldowns is actually really hard to kill once you've added some defensive passives. When I switched up styles to try out some more guns I had to be alot more careful.

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49 minutes ago, Fez said:

I am feeling bad that I put ME:A down. I think once I finish Nier I'll be ready to go back to it as my main story-driven game to play. 

That's what you think. Throughout the game you'll come across new quests taking you back to the old planets; long, long after you've hit 100% on habitability.

In both a good and a bad way. I'm nearly done with the game, with only one or two more sidequests I'm going to do (Movie night, finally!) before I do what is presumably the final mission. Like I said in my last post, I've generally been very happy with the "allies and relationships" quests, which have generally had fun and good writing, developed the characters, world, and Ryder well, and made good use of the planets. But one design decision I've hated hated hated hated: making most of these quests span across many of the worlds, causing many quests to be a series of endless loading times as you board the tempest, go to a planet, scan something/talk to someone, board the tempest, go to another planet, etc...

Spoiler

The Salarian traitor quest is a case in point. It's a fun, silly quest that's paced atrociously. You get it from Kallo, then go to Havarl to meet the agent, then have to go to Voeld to scan things, then have to go to the Nexus Operations to talk to the Pathfinder, then scan someone's aprtment in Nexus docks, then go to Elaaden to scan something and have a conversation, and then to a cave on Kadara for the climax of the quest. So much unnecessary filler, particularly given the long loading times between going from a planet to the Tempest to another planet. If they wanted to have quests take place on multiple planets so often, they really should have allowed you to fast travel to planets, at least once you've established an outpost.

Peebee's quest also gets special points: you have to go to three planets to get pieces of Remnant tech. The last one I was going to get was on Kadara, when you find out her robot is stolen. The next stage in the quest occurs when you leave the planet and find out you need to go back to Kadara, where you have a quick interrogation scene which tells you to go to Elaaden. So much time wasting...

On another topic, I also agree with those who say modern Bioware games have been pretty comparable to modern Obsidian games in terms of writing quality. I enjoyed Tyranny a lot and thought it was trying out some cool new things, and Obsidian has generally done world reactivity better than Bioware (just as Bioware has generally done companions better than Obsidian). But my god was Pillars of Eternity a boringly written game. So many worldbuilding infodumps, generally uninteresting companions, and the plot only starts picking up at the end of Act 2, at which point you're pretty much almost done with the game. I know it doesn't help that I prefer action-RPGs to tactical pause and click RPGs, but I had a lot of trouble finishing Pillars.

Edit: Fez is right about the best vanguard build, with one important exception: the Krogan Hammer is so much more fun to use than the Asari Sword. I've been having a great time with a Charge/Incinerate/Overload loadout, blowing things up and then zipping around the battlefield and whacking everything with my hammer. I do wish they let you have four-five abilities though... Three really is too little.

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58 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

Somehow I am 50 hours deep into Persona 5 and it still feels like I'm in the early stages. How big is this game? O.O 

I finished around the 100 hour mark and still have a lot to do on NG+. 

I love it though. Was hyped since 2014 and it didn't let down.

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34 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Edit: Fez is right about the best vanguard build, with one important exception: the Krogan Hammer is so much more fun to use than the Asari Sword. I've been having a great time with a Charge/Incinerate/Overload loadout, blowing things up and then zipping around the battlefield and whacking everything with my hammer. I do wish they let you have four-five abilities though... Three really is too little.

Would enjoy a good Vanguard build to switch over to at times.  So you used the three skills you mention, but what defensive abilities would I invest in that Fez is referring to?

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1 hour ago, KiDisaster said:

Somehow I am 50 hours deep into Persona 5 and it still feels like I'm in the early stages. How big is this game? O.O 

I can only speak about Persona 4, but that took me 95 hours I think. The Giant Bomb endurance of it hilariously was 99 hours 59 minutes, and they weren't sure if that was how long it took or if the game clock couldn't click over to 100 hours.

They be big games.

1 minute ago, Rhom said:

Would enjoy a good Vanguard build to switch over to at times.  So you used the three skills you mention, but what defensive abilities would I invest in that Fez is referring to?

Jeez, it was a while ago that I posted about my vanguard build. I switched things around a bit, but I think I mostly used Charge/Pull/Throw. You can throw people 50 feet into the air, charge up them like superman, hit them, and shoot everyone as you slowly fall back to the ground. 

The guy in this clip isn't the best at it, but it gives you an idea.

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1 hour ago, Rhom said:

Would enjoy a good Vanguard build to switch over to at times.  So you used the three skills you mention, but what defensive abilities would I invest in that Fez is referring to?

Charge in itself is a great defensive ability, particularly if you choose the ability that halves its recharge time. Barrier is great; I've also put the shield oscillator into my crafted guns, which restores shields when your health gets too low.. There are some combat ability passives as well that restore shields with every melee attack. If you have all these, it'll be pretty easy to never be out of shields.

I like throw and pull, but I chose Overload and Incinerate because they're good at dealing with shields and armor. They're particularly helpful on the Architect fights, when it's better to keep your distance, and for crowd control when lots of enemies are in one place (though I also like Singularity for this).

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1 minute ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Charge in itself is a great defensive ability, particularly if you choose the ability that halves its recharge time. Barrier is great; I've also put the shield oscillator into my crafted guns, which restores shields when your health gets too low.. There are some combat ability passives as well that restore shields with every melee attack. If you have all these, it'll be pretty easy to never be out of shields.

I like charge and pull, but I chose Overload and Incinerate because they're good at dealing with shields and armor. They're particularly helpful on the Architect fights, when it's better to keep your distance, and for crowd control when lots of enemies are in one place (though I also like Singularity for this).

Having killed the Eos and Voeld architects last night and this morning... I think I'd likely stick with my Soldier profile for those!

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4 hours ago, Fez said:

I can only speak about Persona 4, but that took me 95 hours I think. The Giant Bomb endurance of it hilariously was 99 hours 59 minutes, and they weren't sure if that was how long it took or if the game clock couldn't click over to 100 hours.

They be big games.

 

4 hours ago, Jamie Lannister said:

I finished around the 100 hour mark and still have a lot to do on NG+. 

I love it though. Was hyped since 2014 and it didn't let down.

Hmm, so I should be around the halfway point then. Doesn't quite feel like it though. I'm about to go into the third dungeon and it still feels like the story is just picking up properly. 

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28 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

 

Hmm, so I should be around the halfway point then. Doesn't quite feel like it though. I'm about to go into the third dungeon and it still feels like the story is just picking up properly. 

Well, I'm 95 hours in and I'm around half way through the year (mid September). But I don't know if the game will last for the full year or if there might be a time jump at some stage.

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8 hours ago, Jon AS said:

Drack is great with pretty much every character (except possibly Liam, they don't seem to click), he's so... parental. Not really surprising considering his bond with Kesh, but it's nice to see, and even Peebee opens up more to him than anyone else.

 

Bah, the proper way to go is to charge enemies and then chop them up with a sword.

Thanks to the shield syphon passive, a melee-focused vanguard with low cooldowns is actually really hard to kill once you've added some defensive passives. When I switched up styles to try out some more guns I had to be alot more careful.

 

Yeah...I was riding in the Nomad and Peebee goes, "Don't go and die on me old man." And Drack goes, "Okay." That was the first interaction I ever heard. I've had it on mute ever since.

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8 hours ago, Rhom said:

Would enjoy a good Vanguard build to switch over to at times.  So you used the three skills you mention, but what defensive abilities would I invest in that Fez is referring to?

I played a charge, annihilation, lance Vanguard.  There are a couple ability picks that give shields on kill, and putting a shield oscillator in chest armor also provides shields on kill.  Barrier is a passive biotic skill that also provides many defensive shield bonuses, and charge itself regenerates a large chunk of shields, up to 100% depending on what skill picks you make.  I also put points in combat fitness, and eventually shotgun and the other guns.

The way you play the build is to charge into an enemy and spam lance (need to get lance to level 6 and pick shield powered) at the enemy you charged and then any other enemy within your annihilation field.  Any enemy you hit with lance that are within the annihilation field will trigger biotic explosions.  Vanguard profile works well because it reduces the shield cost of spamming lance as well as providing bonuses to your max shield and it also provides some shield restore on melee.  Killing regular units usually only takes a charge and a lance or two, so you are constantly regenerating your shields due to shield restore on kill.  Harder enemies can eat a bunch of lances, which drains your shields and makes you vulnerable, so I'd recommend firing several lances and then switching to melee or a gun until you restore some shields (i.e. using charge again) before firing off more lances.

To regenerate health you can melee with a Kett Carfalon.

The build doesn't work that well until level 20-30 or so, I think.  I remember having a hard time at the beginning of the game.

My favorite gun was a piranha with bioconverter and plasma seeking.  You could fire it indefinitely without reloading at the cost of a little life, which you can get back by using the Kett Carfalon to melee occasionally.  And the plasma seeking really extends the useful range of the shotgun for targets that aren't moving.  I also carried a sniper rifle with a bioconverter for architect fights and for ascendants.  

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Bought Battlegrounds at the urging of several friends.  Only played one game, but it's pretty fun.  We had a team of three counting myself and made it to the very end of the game.  Sadly, my game decided to lock up while I was still alive, and by the time it started running again I had been killed.  So yeah, you can tell the game is still in beta form.  

Still, it's a really great multiplayer format.  If you're unfamiliar, the basic premise is that you and up to 99 other players parachute down to an island filled with weapons and vehicles.  You can either be alone or in a team of up to four players (and if you play on a solo server you will be kicked if you team up with other players), and your goal is to arm yourself and be the last man standing.  The map is huge, but every couple of minutes the area of play shrinks.  It's controlled by an electric field, so if you don't make it into the new area of play in time, you get fried.  This smartly keeps the game moving and prevents long-term camping, as this system is randomized so you never know exactly where the new area of play will be.  

It's constantly tense and requires communication if you're on a team server.  I would have played more, but I finished downloading the game right as most of my friends were calling it a night, and I'd prefer to stick with team play until I get a hang of all the game mechanics and develop some basic strategies.  We did a great job in the one game I did play of securing buildings as a trio and then finding spots to camp temporarily as the game map shrank.  We took down a handful of enemies by locking down smaller buildings and covering all the entrances.

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The problem is that the last time they did that with DA2 they got a pretty scathing reaction. So the next DA game was almost the exact opposite of DA2 and it got a lot of critical acclaim and sold extremely well.

DA2 was a special case. They made a game as long as most of their titles (in the 20-30 hour range) but with nothing like the variety of location, enemies or characters. DA2 could easily have been 10-12 hours long and would probably have benefited from that, but of course that is unacceptably low for an RPG (although apparently fine for just about every other genre aside from grand strategy) so they bloated that out with lots of quests which exposed their limited assets. But all of that is on EA for their mandating of a quickie sequel to DA:O to try to ameliorate the costs sunk into that game (which was way, way over budget and years behind schedule).

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14 hours ago, briantw said:

Bought Battlegrounds at the urging of several friends.  Only played one game, but it's pretty fun.  We had a team of three counting myself and made it to the very end of the game.  Sadly, my game decided to lock up while I was still alive, and by the time it started running again I had been killed.  So yeah, you can tell the game is still in beta form.  

Still, it's a really great multiplayer format.  If you're unfamiliar, the basic premise is that you and up to 99 other players parachute down to an island filled with weapons and vehicles.  You can either be alone or in a team of up to four players (and if you play on a solo server you will be kicked if you team up with other players), and your goal is to arm yourself and be the last man standing.  The map is huge, but every couple of minutes the area of play shrinks.  It's controlled by an electric field, so if you don't make it into the new area of play in time, you get fried.  This smartly keeps the game moving and prevents long-term camping, as this system is randomized so you never know exactly where the new area of play will be.  

It's constantly tense and requires communication if you're on a team server.  I would have played more, but I finished downloading the game right as most of my friends were calling it a night, and I'd prefer to stick with team play until I get a hang of all the game mechanics and develop some basic strategies.  We did a great job in the one game I did play of securing buildings as a trio and then finding spots to camp temporarily as the game map shrank.  We took down a handful of enemies by locking down smaller buildings and covering all the entrances.

This sounds an awful lot like The Culling (which is pretty much The Hunger Games). The Culling is also still in development. You and 15 others are released from boxes with absolutely nothing. You then must find/craft weapons in order to be the last survivor. As the clock winds down poisonous gas is released forcing players to converge in the center of the map. 

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35 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

This sounds an awful lot like The Culling (which is pretty much The Hunger Games). The Culling is also still in development. You and 15 others are released from boxes with absolutely nothing. You then must find/craft weapons in order to be the last survivor. As the clock winds down poisonous gas is released forcing players to converge in the center of the map. 

Similar, yeah.  There are 100 people in Battlegrounds games, and the map is massive (it's based off of a DayZ mod I believe, so the map is similar in size and set-up).  There's also no crafting, although there are weapon attachments that you can find and add to your weapons.  It's very much last man standing, with no respawns, although you can be "revived" if you're only knocked down rather than killed.

I guess Battlegrounds is made by the guy who popularized the Battle Royale multiplayer format, PLAYERUNKNOWN (hence the game being titled PLAYERUNKNOWN'S Battlegrounds).

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PHOENIX POINT is on Fig now. It's already broken its crowdfunding goal (or will do so imminently) which is quite remarkable given there's 42 days to go on the schedule.

The new preview video looks stunning. The Geoscape is far more detailed and far more advanced than either of the new XCOMS and the combat looks pretty good in action. This is rapidly becoming my #1 most anticipated game, which is annoying as it's still 18 months away.

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

PHOENIX POINT is on Fig now. It's already broken its crowdfunding goal (or will do so imminently) which is quite remarkable given there's 42 days to go on the schedule.

The new preview video looks stunning. The Geoscape is far more detailed and far more advanced than either of the new XCOMS and the combat looks pretty good in action. This is rapidly becoming my #1 most anticipated game, which is annoying as it's still 18 months away.

So their studio is a real dungeon? It would have been funnier if the game they made was a dungeon crawler. :P

I do like the look of the game.

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Since there's been a lot of talk in this thread about whether the old Bioware is dead due to people leaving, I thought this post was pretty interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/68fmiw/what_the_people_who_made_star_wars_knights_of_the/

 

It tracks the careers of many of the people who worked on KOTOR, including many of the core development team. What's interesting is that the vast majority of the core developers are still at Bioware, though now split on different teams (some in Montreal, some in Edmonton, some in Austin), and a third of the rest are still there as well (which is pretty good considering it's been almost fifteen years). So I'm not sure I can buy the Bioware "brain drain" theory, though of course some big people have left Bioware in recent years, like David Gaider, whose writing I will definitely miss in future Dragon Age games.

Speaking of Bioware, I finally finished Mass Effect: Andromeda! The last mission was pretty fun and epic (minus a lame final boss), and I enjoyed the epilogue and getting a chance to wrap things up with the crew. All in all I enjoyed myself and don't regret playing the game at all; but I definitely feel no urge to keep playing, minus a few rounds of multiplayer every now and then, and I can't imagine I'll ever want to play this game again.

Romance and Kadara spoilers:

Spoiler

I also find it hilarious that what I meant to be a fling with the Charlatan ended up being my romance for the game. Sorry Tempest crew!

 

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