Video Games- Mess Effect: Andromeda

[Werthead]

A Pandemic Studios designer waxes lyrical about Company of Heroes, still the Last Great RTS to my mind. Been playing some CoH2 multiplayer recently and, although quite enjoyable, it lacks the real tactical enjoyment of the original game.

Everspace has come out, which I was under the impression was going to be a Freespace 2/X-Wing style space combat simulator. It turns out it's a Freelancer-style arcade blaster. Which is still fun, but rather less than I was expecting. Will definitely wait for the sales on this one.

Started playing Torment: Tides of Numenera. Wonderful world, characters and writing, but there's an odd lack of "just keep playing" to it. I find it very difficult to fire up, but once I'm playing it's fine. Combat is not great, but given you can avoid just about all of it that's not a problem. The game basically says that combat is a failed state where you've failed to resolve the problem by other means, which is an interesting tack to take.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 2017-5-27 at 2:36 AM, Fez said:

The open beta for the standalone Gwent game started this week and I've been playing it. Its a pretty different game from what was in Witcher 3. Same basic concepts but way more rules, card interactions, and cards. Its more balanced than the original and there's less cheese strategies, but I sort of miss the elegant simplicity.

The devs really need to work on the card text though. Its very inconsistent and unclear what many of the cards are supposed to do without relying on trial and error.

Also, I hate the new weather system. Each of the weather types can go on any row and they only affect your opponents; and rather than being an instant weakener that can go away, they are now DoTs that can go away but the damage they do is permanent (and, since the damage is done at the start of the affected side's turn, even if you clear skies immediately it had an effect and causes you to waste a turn). There are also some Gold card weathers that are even worse, but I haven't seem yet. Apparently this is a change from how weather worked in the closed beta (where people complained that it was too work), and I'm hoping it will changed again.

I'm also not sure how competitive players can be without spending quite a bit of money. There are opportunities to earn cards, and there's a crafting system like Hearthstone, but there are so many powerful cards that you're extremely unlikely to get without buying numerous card packs ("kegs"). But that's just the nature of a free-to-play game I guess.

I'm having fun though.

I think part of the reason for the change in weather cards was because players were not bothering with clear skies. Whenever you got clear skies dealt to you at the start of the game you always swapped it out, or you just don't have any clear skies card in your deck at all. There is almost always a better card to have in your hand than clear skies. And the same, more or less, with weather cards. In TW3 minigame I pretty much don't bother with clear skies cards, and a often swap out weather cards. Now clear skies becomes almost necessary in every hand. So it changes the tactics for a game quite a lot. And there are cards that buff other cards, so while the weather effect permanently knocks off points, you should also have cards that permanently heal, so it's fair enough IMO.

My son has been playing since the closed beta, the weather cards in the closed beta worked pretty much like in TW3 mini-game.So they made the change after seeing how tactics were developing in the closed beta.

[briantw]

Making some nice progress on Divinity: Original Sin in a co-op campaign with one of my friends.  We got to the final boss of the first segment of the game last night, at which point he started the fight by casting a spell that wiped out our entire party before we even got a chance to move.  I have to admit, I laughed out loud it was so ridiculous.  It was one of those moments where you're just like, "Welp, time to play another game for a little while."

We had a lot more success today when we went back to it.  Beat him on the first try.  Turns out the fight is a lot easier when he doesn't wipe you on the first turn.  

Aside from some occasional moments like that, I'm really liking this game.  I love the way the various elements play into each other, and how you can manipulate them to cause severe damage to enemies (or yourselves if you fuck it up).  For example, if one mage casts a rain spell that makes everyone in the battle wet, freeze spells are more effective, as are electricity-based spells.  If a group of enemies are standing in a puddle of water or a cloud of steam, you can electrify it and stun them all.  You can ignite oil spills with fire, and clouds of poison can explode as well if hit with fire.  Fire, on the other hand, creates clouds of smoke that block your vision, meaning someone standing in smoke can't be targeted by ranged attacks (although area of effect attacks are still viable).  There's just a lot of depth there, and the battlefields typically leave you with plenty of options, as they'll typically have things like water and oil barrels scattered about to make things interesting.

Following the story is damn near impossible in co-op, but I am also doing a single-player play through to catch all of that stuff.

[Werthead]

D:OS is great. I played about 10 hours when it came out but had some issues with difficulty spikes and the storytelling which were apparently solved in the Enhanced Edition (which they gave us all for free!). I do want to get back to it, but after Torment I'll need a few lighter games for a while.

Having 25+ really good games to play on my Steam list is great. Half of them being 40+ hour RPG monsters is not.

[Inigima]

Anyone getting Tekken 7, and anyone doing so on PC? I am terrible at fighting games, but I'm gonna give it a go after I had a good time with SF5 despite its flaws.

[Werthead]

Torment's quite a heavy game so I'm alternating it with something lighter and cheesier. I found Driver: San Francisco in my Steam list (which apparently I bought 2 years ago, but have no active memory of this) and gave it a whirl. It's always good when a dumb game operates in full awareness of its dumbness. Stupid, but quite a lot of fun, with a deceptively challenging driving model.

[Rhom]

I finally beat Andromeda late on Saturday.  I clocked 94h32m17s on it to reach 98% completion.  All that was left was probably a dozen or more "tasks."  (Those little things that don't give you a little hexagon to track down.)

Was it a flawed game?  Sure.  But was it fun and did I like the characters?  You betcha.

I'm definitely going to have to stay away from open world games for a bit though.  I lost all interest in FFXV and quit it before Andromeda came out and I had planned to go back and try it again, but have opted away from that for a while.

Overall, I feel like Andromeda was hurt by trying to do too much.  The central concept was sound, but there was too much extraneous stuff around it.  In the end, I really liked it but it left an awful lot for a sequel that may never happen now.  I will say that the romance scene really showed a lot more than I was expecting... that caught me off guard.   

[aceluby]

I'm really loving Farpoint.  Been playing it a few hours every night and it's been great fun.  There seems to be a bit of an issue w/ gun tracking that gets annoying, but I think that can be patched out.  The co-op is SUPER difficult.  I haven't completed a single mission yet, mostly because my teammates always want to go too far in and end up getting surrounded.  The single player game is fun, but I am only getting through a mission a day before I'm kind of over it and move on to co-op.  I just hope they continue developing on the engine, because it has a TON of promise.

[Werthead]

BattleTech looks pretty damn good. Looking forwards to this one.

[A True Kaniggit]

Durlag's Tower is kicking my brother's and my butts right now in BG:EE. After about 4 hours we finally made it to the second basement (We've both beaten the original BG, but neither of us ever did the tower, so we had no idea what to expect). At least it doesn't look like there are as many traps down there. Though Greater Doppelgangers appearing every other time we try to rest is really getting annoying.

[Werthead]

I wasn't a fan of the Tower. I ended up abandoning an exhaustive exploration of the whole tower and just completed the quests there and moved on.

A slight weakness of the Tower is that you best play it at the very end of BG1, by which time you're so tough and have got so much good gear that the loot from the Tower doesn't really help much. With the EE it's main use is getting another level or so out of it before moving onto Dragonspear (or BG2 if you prefer).

[A True Kaniggit]

If that's the case, then I'd rather just abandon the tower. We've both already hit max experience for BG1. I don't think I can talk my brother out of completing it though. He's a side quest fanatic (we still haven't beat FFXV or ME:A or H:ZD because of his insistence on investigating every question mark that pops up). Which is a shame because neither of us have ever played BG2, even though we both own it. The plan is to import our characters once we finish this play through. 

[Fez]

Overwatch is about to release a new map (probably also a new hero, although that's not official yet), set on the moon. The exciting bit is that part of the moon map will be super low-gravity, and Blizzard is adding a new arcade mode where all existing maps will have super low-gravity (and is adding gravity options to custom games).

Its cool to see Blizzard willing to change around core gameplay concepts to keep things fresh. You can't do things like this in the base game: https://gfycat.com/EnlightenedHeartyBird

 

[House Balstroko]

On 27/05/2017 at 7:51 PM, Werthead said:

It does look like Ubisoft said, "How can we do something relevant when Just Cause has basically completely blown away all of our normal stuff?" and came up with a pretty good answer. I'm on board for this, even if the suspension of disbelief about the "cult" having likely 500+ members that you kill alone will be difficult to maintain.

In Far Cry you were always kind of the lone wolf, with some allies. It seems like the allies will play a much larger role this time around. I think this game is also taking cues from Wildlands with the vehicle roster. 

On 27/05/2017 at 9:58 PM, karaddin said:

This one is potentially not lazy and intended - the story just hasn't played out enough yet (and hopefully will do).

The game does try to somewhat explain it, but I found it rather unsatisfactory. I can accept the fact that the same wildlife ends up on different planets, but what I found odd is that both the fiend, taurg, echidna and spitbug have the same  "spit attack" . One can only hope the eventual sequel handles it and all the other loose threads.

[Inigima]

Tekken 7 update: Tekken 7 is good.

[Fez]

5 hours ago, Inigima said:

Tekken 7 update: Tekken 7 is good.

I also picked up Tekken 7 on PC. I'm truly terrible at it; I haven't played a fighting game since one of the Dragonball games around 8 years ago and before that it was random ones in the mid '90s. But my competitive juices have been flowing thanks to Overwatch and I wanted to see how I'd do in a game where I'm all on my own and don't need to worry about my FPS aiming handicap.

I have no idea what I'm doing though. The game is not new player-friendly at all; I had to look up online just how to block and sidestep. I can beat the 3-star CPU characters around 2/3rds of the time, but I haven't beat a single human yet; I'm 0-6 or 0-7. I have won rounds, but I can't get 3 out of 5. I'm gonna stick with it though.

[Inigima]

I'll PM you a link to my Steam profile in case you want to go a few rounds. I'm also pretty bad but I am having a bit better luck online. Mostly I've played Law, and a little Miguel and Shaheen. I'm messing with Leo but not finding her very intuitive.

Standard beginner advice that's served me well: Try to pick a character and stick with them for a while. Go through some of the move list in practice mode, see what attacks chain together well. You don't have to memorize everything. Get used to blocking attacks of various heights. Mix up your own attacks so an opponent who's blocking at one height gets hit when you change to another. Don't forget throws (the default ones are 1+3 and 2+4 for all characters, although some have more) are a great thing to throw in, especially against people who are turtling and just blocking everything. (You can escape throws by pressing either punch button, if you're fast enough.)

[Fez]

Sounds good. Replied.

I'm still awful, but I think I'm getting a bit better. I started 0-10, and then went 3-13 in my next 16 games. I've started to figure out a few tricks, like successfully using throws against blocks a fair amount. I'm still trying to figure out what character is the right fit for me to main first, and I've been going through the list of characters people claim are good for beginners. I think I may have finally found one with Katarina, but I'm not sure yet.

One issue I'm having is with input commands not always registering the way they should, especially when i'm trying to activate a rage art. I saw two main possibilities, the first is that i'm button-mashing a little too much and the command isn't getting through in time before my opponent hits me; the second is that my setup is the problem. My PC is wired to the modem, but I'm using a wireless controller. I've never had a problem before, but my understanding is that latency is absolutely everything in fighting games.

[Inigima]

Good news and bad news for you.

Bad news: yeah, you probably want a wired controller.

Good news: you don't have to worry about entering Rage Arts at all. By default Rage Arts are bound to RB, for all characters, regardless of what the actual command move is. This has the side benefit of annoying a lot of players better than me, since it's such a powerful comeback tool and you no longer have to be any good to activate them.

I played some rounds with Tyrellius this morning! Managed to go 3-3, which is pretty great for me, and it worked well despite the transcontinental distance between us.

[Tyrellius]

Wait.....you just press one button for the entire move set?!  I thought it just activated the art and then you had to input the buttons after to do it.  I usually bind double punch and double kick to right button and trigger and the two grabs to Left button and trigger so I was missing out on the Rage Arts EZ mode.

My thumbs were getting sore from the controller so I got the Mayflash F300 (entry level fightstick).  I suck with it atm but no more sore thumbs and I am enjoying the game.