Video Games: A Far Cry From E3

[Rhom]

39 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Well, they've publicized the Switch exploit that someone showed off weeks ago. You just need to short a wire on one of the joycon connectors and you can overflow the memory and get linux running. Apparently the exploit can't even be patched. So if you're at all interested in running custom content on the switch I'd buy one in the next few months before the fix it in the hardware.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/04/the-unpatchable-exploit-that-makes-every-current-nintendo-switch-hackable/

Way beyond my level of technical expertise, but I assume this would allow you to install an emulator on there and run whatever games you might want?

[Werthead]

Re: BattleTech

I've played the first few missions now and I see where RPS is coming from, but didn't find the pauses in battle to be as bad. The second mission (the first after the tutorial) got a bit laborious with moving your mechs around but the next few seemed to go a lot faster. I didn't notice any major problem with the animations: they seemed to go about as fast, if not faster, than XCOM 2's (especially as usually only 1 unit per turn has a hero shot, unless you're destroying a mech).

I do wonder if the game would be better if it had a Divinity: Original Sin/Wasteland 2 approach where you can move in real time when not in battle but go into turn based in combat. The real dead air in the game comes from the bits when you're not in combat and moving your mechs one by one, turn by turn with no-one shooting at you. That gets real old, real quick.

I can also see where future updates to the game are going to come from. A big thing I think will be putting more voices in the game. It's kind of distracting on the ship to be reading all this text (on the battlefield it doesn't seem as bad) and people standing there, staring at you blankly. Yeah, I know, money and it's not that important, but it does feel like the biggest compromise to the budget. I also had a CTD in the first 90 minutes of the game, which was annoying, but I have a feeling it was my virus checker (it didn't add the game to the protected list until afterwards). No problems since then.

The music is also phenomenal and the opening title sequence does a great job of setting up the story and backdrop. Right now I'd say the game was a solid 7/10 and could go higher.

Oh, and I think they must have changed the weapons thing between the review build and the release version, as your weapons do all fire at once now. That makes a lot more sense.

[RumHam]

36 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Way beyond my level of technical expertise, but I assume this would allow you to install an emulator on there and run whatever games you might want?

Eventually, yes. One of the demo videos showed someone running the Dolphin Gamecube/Wii emulator to play Wind Walker. One group plans to release some kinda boot loader tomorrow, I think. Another said June 15th for theirs (a couple different groups have been secretly working on this for a bit) I assume eventually they'll be some kinda custom firmware like I used to run on my PSP that will support emulation. 

But even people who don't want to emulate games (that I'm sure they already legally own) will be happy if someone releases an easy to use back up and restore your save files thing. Right now if you have to get your Switch repaired or replaced you're probably gonna lose all your save data, which really sucks. 

Once they get it all sorted out it shouldn't even require any technical expertise, just plug in the little shorter part put in an SD card with the bootloader / installer thing and boot it up. But it's important that there's a way to switch back too the normal firmware too or you can never use the eshop or play online multiplayer. 

[Fez]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'll give it a go later. Pretty much every other review has been very strong and Harebrained has a superb track record so far. Whilst I also generally rate RPS as a review site, the same reviewer was also not very keen on the three Shadowrun games, whilst I thought all three were excellent, and was also down on the Banner Sagas, which are two of the finest fantasy games of the last decade, so I know this is a reviewer whose opinion I respect, but also diverges from mine in many key areas.

Well, those are five of my favorite games of the past 5 years; so if the reviewer didn't like them either, that does lower the stock I'll put in their review.

 

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Re: BattleTech

I've played the first few missions now and I see where RPS is coming from, but didn't find the pauses in battle to be as bad. The second mission (the first after the tutorial) got a bit laborious with moving your mechs around but the next few seemed to go a lot faster. I didn't notice any major problem with the animations: they seemed to go about as fast, if not faster, than XCOM 2's (especially as usually only 1 unit per turn has a hero shot, unless you're destroying a mech).

I do wonder if the game would be better if it had a Divinity: Original Sin/Wasteland 2 approach where you can move in real time when not in battle but go into turn based in combat. The real dead air in the game comes from the bits when you're not in combat and moving your mechs one by one, turn by turn with no-one shooting at you. That gets real old, real quick.

I can also see where future updates to the game are going to come from. A big thing I think will be putting more voices in the game. It's kind of distracting on the ship to be reading all this text (on the battlefield it doesn't seem as bad) and people standing there, staring at you blankly. Yeah, I know, money and it's not that important, but it does feel like the biggest compromise to the budget. I also had a CTD in the first 90 minutes of the game, which was annoying, but I have a feeling it was my virus checker (it didn't add the game to the protected list until afterwards). No problems since then.

The music is also phenomenal and the opening title sequence does a great job of setting up the story and backdrop. Right now I'd say the game was a solid 7/10 and could go higher.

Oh, and I think they must have changed the weapons thing between the review build and the release version, as your weapons do all fire at once now. That makes a lot more sense.

Good to know. Think I'll give it a shot.

[Werthead]

Played a fantastic mission (I think it's the first big plot-advancing one) where you have to retrieve a crashed starship. Extraordinarily tense as the enemy base is heavily defended and you have to move around the periphery trying to take out turrets and tanks. Managed it, but I took a fair bit of damage in the process. Arriving at the retrieval site, an enemy lance jumped my wounded mechs and I had to play cat and mouse with them around buildings and rocks. Managed to take them down, only for a tougher enemy boss to jump into my midst. My Vindicator promptly one-shotted it with a fluke critical from its main gun (it had to take serious heat damage in the process, but it was that or die). All four of my mechs made it home, but I think they were held together with rubber bands and paperclips at the end.

As tense, exciting and gripping as any XCOM mission.

[Jace, Extat]

35 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Played a fantastic mission (I think it's the first big plot-advancing one) where you have to retrieve a crashed starship. Extraordinarily tense as the enemy base is heavily defended and you have to move around the periphery trying to take out turrets and tanks. Managed it, but I took a fair bit of damage in the process. Arriving at the retrieval site, an enemy lance jumped my wounded mechs and I had to play cat and mouse with them around buildings and rocks. Managed to take them down, only for a tougher enemy boss to jump into my midst. My Vindicator promptly one-shotted it with a fluke critical from its main gun (it had to take serious heat damage in the process, but it was that or die). All four of my mechs made it home, but I think they were held together with rubber bands and paperclips at the end.

As tense, exciting and gripping as any XCOM mission.

How're the roleplay aspects? I'm getting off work in a bit.

[Werthead]

41 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

How're the roleplay aspects? I'm getting off work in a bit.

Quite decent. You create a character, including your background and affiliations, and these come up in the game through the XCOM-esque "back at the base" stuff between missions. You can roleplay as a ruthless martinet or an all-out hero if you choose, and it's up to you what missions you perform. As your reputation increases you can bargain for bigger payments and so on.

It's not an outright RPG, but you can see Harebrained's RP experience from the Shadowrun trilogy coming in there.

 

Worth noting that Polygon are gushing about the game in their in-progress review, and they barely ever gush about anything.

[Fez]

So I picked up Battletech. It's a really solid game overall. I see, but don't really agree with, RPS' issues; and I especially think that the menu options solve most of them (though the load times are excessively long). However, I do think the UI is beyond clunky and the game does a bad job at explaining a lot of its systems (I'm still not totally clear on when/how the list of non-priority contracts gets refreshed). Also, there's a ton of background info you can give your character and that your mech pilots come pre-generated with, but almost none of it seems to have any impact. I guess it's just there for headcanon role-playing purposes.

[Guest]

On 4/15/2018 at 9:22 AM, Fez said:

Goddamnit, I'm thinking of subscribing to WoW again. It's like a disease I can never fully shake off.

Speaking of old games that you just can't seem to quit, I ran across an article from February about EverQuest, which is still apparently kicking around, and became nostalgic about visiting Norrath once again. 

Based on the article, everything is pretty much end-game progression now, with very little low level stuff, but they've speeded up leveling, have provided companions available from level 1, and have completely removed the death penalty (I remember raids being put together for corpse recovery because some poor saps had gotten themselves killed in the Plane of Hate, and since all your gear remained on your corpse when you died, and you had to run back from your bind point to retrieve your corpse, you could end up losing all your gear because your corpse would decay after 7 days).

It would be weird revisiting it after having left the game for EQ2 14 years ago (big mistake).

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Speaking of old games that you just can't seem to quit, I ran across an article from February about EverQuest, which is still apparently kicking around, and became nostalgic about visiting Norrath once again. 

Based on the article, everything is pretty much end-game progression now, with very little low level stuff, but they've speeded up leveling, have provided companions available from level 1, and have completely removed the death penalty (I remember raids being put together for corpse recovery because some poor saps had gotten themselves killed in the Plane of Hate, and since all your gear remained on your corpse when you died, and you had to run back from your bind point to retrieve your corpse, you could end up losing all your gear because your corpse would decay after 7 days).

It would be weird revisiting it after having left the game for EQ2 14 years ago (big mistake).

Ultima Online turned 20 last year. I played it on and off from 2000 to 2009. Excellebt game, sadly mmorpgs went the everquest route leading to WoW.

UO went free to play recently. 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Ultima Online turned 20 last year. I played it on and off from 2000 to 2009. Excellebt game, sadly mmorpgs went the everquest route leading to WoW.

UO went free to play recently. 

I always wanted to try out UO, but I had been introduced to EQ first and was deep into raiding progression and was in the middle of getting my degree so I didn't really have time (or money) for an extra MMO I had to buy game packs and subs for.

[Jace, Extat]

So I've dumped something like 14 hours into Battletech.

Fucking awesome, sometimes the pauses do get a little annoying when there's around 10 enemies on the map.

I'm going to restart because I seem to have outrun my Lance's operational effectiveness and I'm fucking broke. I'm going to focus more on salvage (new Mechs) and keeping my rep high this time.

Hard game to get the hang of, but very rewarding.

[Fiddler]

6 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Speaking of old games that you just can't seem to quit, I ran across an article from February about EverQuest, which is still apparently kicking around, and became nostalgic about visiting Norrath once again. 

Based on the article, everything is pretty much end-game progression now, with very little low level stuff, but they've speeded up leveling, have provided companions available from level 1, and have completely removed the death penalty (I remember raids being put together for corpse recovery because some poor saps had gotten themselves killed in the Plane of Hate, and since all your gear remained on your corpse when you died, and you had to run back from your bind point to retrieve your corpse, you could end up losing all your gear because your corpse would decay after 7 days).

It would be weird revisiting it after having left the game for EQ2 14 years ago (big mistake).

EverQuest was my first computer game and my first online RPG.  So many great memories, but man, corpse runs were a pain the ass.  So many of them ended up as stories though.  I had so much fun in that game.

My main character was a Barbarian Shaman who was part of an all Dwarf guild.  Team events always ended up with a screen shot being done and I always looked like I was surrounded by little kids.

[Alcibiades]

The mmo that I feel nostalgic for is Dark Age of Camelot. That game is still kicking around in some form. I don’t think I’ll ever replicate the feelings I had playing that game.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Fiddler said:

EverQuest was my first computer game and my first online RPG.  So many great memories, but man, corpse runs were a pain the ass.  So many of them ended up as stories though.  I had so much fun in that game.

My main character was a Barbarian Shaman who was part of an all Dwarf guild.  Team events always ended up with a screen shot being done and I always looked like I was surrounded by little kids.

Yeah, I've never had as much fun in an MMO as I did in EQ, even with the constant grinding, camping for quest or item drops, and de-leveling when you died right after you dinged. I remember having a hell of a time just hanging out in East Commonlands which was the gathering spot before they introduced the auction house. What server were you on?

Shammy buffs were always sick. My main was a high elf cleric.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Alcibiades said:

The mmo that I feel nostalgic for is Dark Age of Camelot. That game is still kicking around in some form. I don’t think I’ll ever replicate the feelings I had playing that game.

I played DAOC for a while, but just never got into it as much.

[Fiddler]

16 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Yeah, I've never had as much fun in an MMO as I did in EQ, even with the constant grinding, camping for quest or item drops, and de-leveling when you died right after you dinged. I remember having a hell of a time just hanging out in East Commonlands which was the gathering spot before they introduced the auction house. What server were you on?

Shammy buffs were always sick. My main was a high elf cleric.

I don't remember which server I was on, lol.  Loved hanging in the tunnel in the eas commonlands and watching the griffin chasing a mass of people past.  I think I had left the game by the time the auction house came out.

Yeah, loved just hanging out in the newbie zones and dropping buffs on low level players.  

[Rhom]

I was walking down the aisle in Target yesterday when I saw the endcap of the Switch aisle had South Park:  The Fractured But Whole.

South Park?  On a Nintendo system????  Is this really the same company that made Mortal Kombat sweat in my younger days?!!?

[RumHam]

30 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I was walking down the aisle in Target yesterday when I saw the endcap of the Switch aisle had South Park:  The Fractured But Whole.

South Park?  On a Nintendo system????  Is this really the same company that made Mortal Kombat sweat in my younger days?!!?

I remember a fairly shitty south park reskin of of of the Turok games on N64. The alt-fire for snowballs was yellow snowballs. 

[Jace, Extat]

Update on Mechwarrior. I started a new game as Basaliskus (I know spelling, it's part of my fantasy), the last daughter of a petty noble who avenged her family's betrayal before enlisting in the army.

So I applied what I'd learned from my first playthrough to how I used heat sinks and general finances, but I was still having trouble.

But I got some new bud today and now everything's crystal clear! I think they might have given me Indica by mistake or something.

Anyways. I fought a battle and got squad wiped. But instead of quitting I plowed ahead with the game, with only myself and one teammate (who wasn't even an original squad member) surviving the attack I signed two rookies and rebuilt my Mech fleet from scratch.

Now that I understand how ranges and damage distribution works along with heating and maneuvering I was able to outfit each Mech to perform certain functions and use them correctly rather than slapping parts together that seemed to make the most effective overall unit that was poorly managed in the field and difficult to deploy strategically.

Now I'm cleaning up. I just got a little ahead of myself pressing a pirate gang and am now gonna take a bit of unneeded damage, which is actually what made me think of making a post. Great game!