Video Games: The Real Thread That Never Ends

[Jon AS]

My fish died... :(. Can I buy more?

Yes. And if you flirt with Kelly enough she'll offer to feed them for you.;)

I read that I will need 100k of each resource to carryover to ME3. Does that include Eezo? I've got over 400K of the other three, but just 50K of that.

You don't need any kind of resource reserves to import. You get slightly more war asset points for more resources, but at most that's 90 additional points out of a possible maximum of ~7000. And you don't need the maximum amount of points for the "optimal" ending.

[Fez]

Yes I'm still slowly working through my noobtastic four years late Mass Effect 2 play through.

Gettin ready to do Horizon mission.

My fish died... :(. Can I buy more?

I read that I will need 100k of each resource to carryover to ME3. Does that include Eezo? I've got over 400K of the other three, but just 50K of that.

I don't think you can replace fish, but there quite a few to buy. So unless you already had all of them, there will be more to get. Invest in the automatic feeder though.

And resources aren't nearly as important in ME3, I wouldn't worry about it.

ETA: Damn, too slow. And for reference, I'm not so callous as to call Kelly an automatic feeder, its another option.

[Rhom]

ETA: Damn, too slow. And for reference, I'm not so callous as to call Kelly an automatic feeder, its another option.

Heh. I did wonder if you meant Kelly there. :lol:

[Jon AS]

Heh. I did wonder if you meant Kelly there. :lol:

I think the aquarium VI is only in ME3.

Yes, in the future, fish will be so complicated that just setting up a system to feed them in regular intervals requires a virtual intelligence.

[Gears of the Beast]

True, but then the same could be said about a lot of games. So dayz with base building, crafting 1000's of people online and a seriously huge landmass to explore + zombies sounds kind of fun

DayZ will have base building and crafting. Several DayZ mods already have extensive base building and crafting.

[PhoenixFlame]

I want a PS4 for my birthday in June. Can anyone recommend me some games (besides Black Flag, as I'll redeem my PS3 code)? I'm more into RPG/story heavy games like Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed, and The Last of Us. I like JRPGs too, though I disliked FFXIII.

[Jabronius Maximus]

You may want to check up on the deadline for that PS3->PS4 redemption, as I think it was march 31 (unless you already redeemed).

But aside from that, there really isn't much out there for the PS4 story/RPG wise. By June of course you'll have Watch Dogs to chew on. I haven't played InFamous SS, but I heard it's pretty good as well. That's about it, aside from the FPS titles. If you're into indie games, there's Outlast, Don't Starve, and a host of others. Many of them are even free with PS+. One of them, Resogun, is really fun. That and AC4 have been my most played titles on PS4.

[Gears of the Beast]

DayZ will have base building and crafting. Several DayZ mods already have extensive base building and crafting.

Also, are they really saying they'll have 1000s of people on the same map?

[Fez]

I ended starting my own replay of New Vegas. I did this maybe six months ago, but lost interest around when I reached the strip the first time. I just got there again, and haven't lost interest yet; so that's a good sign. It turns out I actually skipped a fair amount of post-strip content the time that I beat the game, so there should be a decent amount new stuff for me. Speaking of, I've never played the DLCs, but I'm planning on getting them if I'm still interested in the game (its really hard for replays to keep my attention) in several hours. When in the game does it make the most sense to do each one?

[Gears of the Beast]

I ended starting my own replay of New Vegas. I did this maybe six months ago, but lost interest around when I reached the strip the first time. I just got there again, and haven't lost interest yet; so that's a good sign. It turns out I actually skipped a fair amount of post-strip content the time that I beat the game, so there should be a decent amount new stuff for me. Speaking of, I've never played the DLCs, but I'm planning on getting them if I'm still interested in the game (its really hard for replays to keep my attention) in several hours. When in the game does it make the most sense to do each one?

They all have recommended levels for you to do them at. Honest Hearts is 10+, Old World Blues (the best one) is 15+, Dead Money is 20+ and Lonesome Road is 25+. I think 15+ is a little low for Old World Blues, I'd play it much later. My recommended order would be Honest Hearts, Dead Money, Old World Blues then Lonesome Road. And I'd personally add 10 to the those recommended levels but that's just me, you might not be one of those players that gets to level 50 and does everything there is to be done.

edit: Also I recommend getting Gun Runners' Arsenal DLC too.

[The Anti-Targ]

I want a PS4 for my birthday in June. Can anyone recommend me some games (besides Black Flag, as I'll redeem my PS3 code)? I'm more into RPG/story heavy games like Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed, and The Last of Us. I like JRPGs too, though I disliked FFXIII.

I would say don't unless you have some sort of obligation other than a birthday, and that's coming from someone who just bought a PS4. Sign up for PS+ (if you haven't already) and enjoy the massive back catalog of PS3 games that you have no doubt not played yet. Tales of Graces f and Tales of Xillia are discounted on (EU) PSN, and even further discounted if you have PSN+. I broke my cardinal rule of not buying a new gen console until at least one year (preferably 18 months) has passed and there's been at least one price cut. But this mostly because my sons are paying a 3rd each, and we each invested money in some stocks about 9 months ago that doubled in value, so we're paying very little out of pocket for the PS4. And because we wanted inFamous Second Sons. While its a good game and I enjoyed it, ISS is not as good as the previous inFamous games and in the end it is not worth buying a PS4 for it. For me none of the games released for PS4 so far justifies the purchase, so my purchase was for ISS (a minor mistake in hindsight) and in preparation for future games (which I have no doubt PS4 will deliver in spades). Warframe (which is free) is quite fun, but My PS3 backlog is commanding the lion's share of my attention.

I can't remember when DA3 is coming out, is it this year or next? Anyway, I would wait on PS4 until there's either a quality JRPG available (and I think you can ignore FF for now, though FFXV might be worthy) or DA3 is about to launch.

I'm also gently getting back into Smite after a long hiatus. I see there's some rumours going around that Smite may be coming to PS4; which is fine so long as the player bases are segregated, because PC players would kill people using the PS4 controller. I think, like PS3, PS4 will support KB+M for certain games, and I think Smite would be a must for PS4 to allow KB+M, though I would like it if I didn;t have to start a whole new account for it on PS4, because I'd have to start my god roster from scratch.

It's only had 6 reviews so far, but Titanfall on X360 is on 88 on Metacritic. Looks like X360 players have got themselves a great game and it should do well.

[Fez]

I can't remember when DA3 is coming out, is it this year or next?

There's no release date yet, but its still supposed to be this fall. Its coming out on the 360 & PS3 as well though, so unless better graphics are that important, I don't think its a good enough reason on its own to go next gen.

ETA:

They all have recommended levels for you to do them at. Honest Hearts is 10+, Old World Blues (the best one) is 15+, Dead Money is 20+ and Lonesome Road is 25+. I think 15+ is a little low for Old World Blues, I'd play it much later. My recommended order would be Honest Hearts, Dead Money, Old World Blues then Lonesome Road. And I'd personally add 10 to the those recommended levels but that's just me, you might not be one of those players that gets to level 50 and does everything there is to be done.

edit: Also I recommend getting Gun Runners' Arsenal DLC too.

Thanks. I know about the recommended levels, but good to know about going some past them. I was more thinking about fitting them into the main plot though. Like the one that's about Graham, it seems to me it wouldn't make much sense to play that one before going to the Fort for the first time and hearing about him. And is the one with Ulysses so conclusive-feeling that I should wait until beating the main game, going back to the final save point, and pretending its an epilogue DLC (the old ME3 Citadel move)?

[Gears of the Beast]

Thanks. I know about the recommended levels, but good to know about going some past them. I was more thinking about fitting them into the main plot though. Like the one that's about Graham, it seems to me it wouldn't make much sense to play that one before going to the Fort for the first time and hearing about him. And is the one with Ulysses so conclusive-feeling that I should wait until beating the main game, going back to the final save point, and pretending its an epilogue DLC (the old ME3 Citadel move)?

I don't think it really makes a difference to be honest.

edit: But you should definitely be progressed far enough into the game to have gone to the Fort.

I'd personally do Lonesome Road after finishing the main game because it feels like that's kinda how they designed it, it does have a conclusive feeling. It always felt like an epilogue DLC to me.

Don't be discouraged by how bad Dead Money is, Old World Blues more than makes up for it. Those 2 don't really have anything to do with the main NV stuff if I recall correctly so don't worry too much about that.

[paddington]

Also, are they really saying they'll have 1000s of people on the same map?

On the same server, don't know how the map will work out. Planetside 2 has up to 2000 players on a 64km² map. It sound like they are trying to create a continuous landmass instead of maps. Need to wait for more details to be released.

[Gears of the Beast]

On the same server, don't know how the map will work out. Planetside 2 has up to 2000 players on a 64km² map. It sound like they are trying to create a continuous landmass instead of maps. Need to wait for more details to be released.

Sorry to sound like a cynic but this sounds like a terrible idea. PS2 is an MMO FPS, translating that scale of a map into a zombie survival game will never work. Either the map is way too small to support that many people in this kind of game: remember in PS2 you want to see tons of people on your screen, it's an MMO FPS (Chernarus is 225km², cramming 2000 players into 64!?!). In a survival zombie game if you're running around and you can see 30 people it's totally not gonna work at all for the zombie apocalypse scenario. Or to compensate for this they would have to make the map absurdly large which raises a ton of issues; they can only have been working on this map for about a year, it took Bohemia Interactive 3+ years to make Chernarus which would be significantly smaller (no more than 100 on a server MAX). With 1 year to make a significantly larger map, it's gonna be terrible. Repetitive as fuck, no attention to detail etc etc. There's no way it could work.

[paddington]

Was just using PS2 64km² as an example of how many people they can fit into a smallish area. From what I've read so far, the plan is to make it very large. SoE reakon they have away to add areas/landmass pretty quickly, so absurdly large could well be what they are aiming for.

So yeah it may well be really big, with large areas of reptitve wilderness, empty of large groups of players.

[Inigima]

Finished episode 3 of The Wolf Among Us. Itching to talk about it.

Most of all I want to know who did and didn't kill Tweedle Dum. I killed the shit out of that motherfucker.

In general this was the episode where I had enough of everyone's shit. I spent the first two episodes and most of this one playing good cop, trying to be respectful of everyone's feelings, toe the line of the law, and make nice instead of picking fights and rising to the bait. It's time for bad cop to show his face. The game wants me to feel bad about reverting to type and it ain't happening. My only regrets are that I couldn't rip the other Tweedle's throat out and shove that axe up Bloody Mary's ass.

Fuck the Tweedles. They shot me, they shot Grendel, and they shot Lily. I am ready to be judge, jury, and executioner for every motherfucker that gets in my way. Before, I intervened in the Tweedle interrogation (I detained him, not the Woodsman) and got Bluebeard to stop torturing him. Now I'm ready to turn back the clock and hand him a bigger knife.

Fuck Snow White. I did everything I could to play nice with her, and I am sick of her attitude. I'm supposed to feel bad that she's upset that I killed Tweedle Dum for emptying a shotgun into me three times? Fuck that. The episode preview shows her all aflutter that the other Fables might think I've gone back to my old ways? If only they'd let me.

If Bluebeard were less fucking dumb I'd throw in with him. I'm ready to be as free of respect for boundaries as he is, except he's too dumb to draw good conclusions.

I'm pissed that Bloody Mary was allowed to put me down. Deus ex machina horseshit.


In general I actually felt a bit let down by the design of this episode. I had my issues with Episode 2, but I could do what I wanted. I never really thought Crane did it, yet my Bigby is surprised when Snow White says that. I frequently wanted to act differently than any of my dialogue options would allow, or at least felt like none of the options were what I wanted to choose.

Going forward, if the game will deign to allow me to play how I want, I'm going to continue to hunt for evidence and make sure I've got my I's dotted and my T's crossed, but anyone who gets in my way is going to find themselves with their intestines on the floor.

EDIT:

Interestingly, in the "You and x% of players did y!" bit, they don't talk about whether your handling of the end of the funeral. Once the other attendees got wind of the Tweedles being there, I let everyone know that it was about Crane.

I actually didn't try to rein Grendel and Holly in. (At least, I didn't want to -- dissatisfyingly, a dialogue option I thought would let them do their thing actually made Bigby try to stop them, verbally.) Once the Tweedles threatened me with shotguns, I was ready for them to be dead and I was going to let Grendel and Holly do it. Far as I'm concerned, once you've threatened the lives of me or another Fable, you're under a death sentence. I was unhappy when Bigby tried to stop them and extra unhappy when the others didn't kill them.

Most of the stuff in that section was not controversial. Over 95% of us offered Flycatcher a job, etc. They could have picked better decisions to highlight.

[Werthead]

Oh I was thinking fallout 3 was the most recent, new Vegas it is then.

I'd actually play Fallout 3 first. New Vegas is better (IMO) but FO3 is a better intro to how the world and game systems work. I also think it's much harder to play FO3 to completion if you've experienced NV (FO3 is much more limited in how the story plays out and its DLC in particularly is a lot weaker), whilst going the other way is fine.

Also, New Vegas has support for Windows 7, unlike Fallout 3 where you have to do a bunch of stuff to get it to run stable.

Give that FO3's bugs went mysteriously and completely unmentioned by the gaming press whilst NV's were screamed about (almost as if there was a financial reason why Bethesda wanted NV to get lower scores...oh right, there was), it is now the very height of ironic comedy that FO3 doesn't work (without some minor fiddling) on modern PCs whilst patched-up-and-fixed NV is absolutely fine.

When in the game does it make the most sense to do each one?

I believe that the intended order is Dead Money - Honest Hearts - Old World Blues - Lonesome Road, though IIRC you can switch the first two around with not too many problems. The four DLCs have a strong narrative thread linking them together which is conceptually brilliant, though it's a bit haphazard in how it's presented. But it adds a huge amount to the base game as well.

Dead Money has a brilliant atmosphere but is both linear and annoyingly restrictive (the old, "Take all your stuff away and get it back at the end of the mission," bullshit). Honest Hearts is rather badly designed; you can totally fuck it up in the opening minutes by shooting the wrong person and insta-fail every quest on the map, so be careful. Once you get over that bump it's pretty good. Old World Blues is brilliantly funny, with a lot of meta-nods to Portal 2. And possibly features the most frequent use of the word "penis," in game dialogue ever. It's also quite open-world, with lots of places to explore that the main storyline never directs you too. Plus both Doctor Who and Red Dwarf references; guess someone at Obsidian is into their British SF shows. Lonesome Road is Deathclaw Central and also quite preposterously tough at times. I'd leave it until as late as possible. It also starts off being pretty poor and doesn't get really good until the end.

When you do them with regard to the main game is more up in the air. Old World Blues gives you a brilliant home base and an awesome minigun (possibly the Best Gun in a Video Game Ever) which are very handy to use in the main game as well, but you also need to really be Level 30-ish before tackling it, which is likely getting on towards the end of the game (I also wouldn't touch any of the DLCs until you are at least Level 20; I found the recommended levels for them to be very generous, to say the least).

[Gears of the Beast]

I'd actually play Fallout 3 first. New Vegas is better (IMO) but FO3 is a better intro to how the world and game systems work. I also think it's much harder to play FO3 to completion if you've experienced NV (FO3 is much more limited in how the story plays out and its DLC in particularly is a lot weaker), whilst going the other way is fine.

Nope. Both games do have particularly good DLC but a lot weaker is completely unfair to say. Like NV (dead money) Fallout 3 has a dud: Mothership Zeta. But The Pitt and Operation Anchorage are very solid; better than Honest Hearts and Broken Steel which is great and on the level of Lonesome Road (I'd argue it's better). Then there's Point Lookout which could be it's own standalone game - I'd pay $60 for that. It's simply brilliant easily on the level of Old World Blues. Point Lookout and Old World Blues are great for different reasons, and I think it really showcases each dev studio at their absolute best. Anyway we've probably had this discussion like 9 times by now. I just don't want that guy getting the wrong idea about Fallout 3 DLC.

We actually agree on which he should play first:

I'd recommend he play Fallout 3 first so he can appreciate it before he plays Fallout: New Vegas which is the second greatest game of all time. I feel like it would be more difficult to appreciate Fallout 3 if you played New Vegas first.

[Relic]

Finished episode 3 of The Wolf Among Us. Itching to talk about it.

Most of all I want to know who did and didn't kill Tweedle Dum. I killed the shit out of that motherfucker.

In general this was the episode where I had enough of everyone's shit. I spent the first two episodes and most of this one playing good cop, trying to be respectful of everyone's feelings, toe the line of the law, and make nice instead of picking fights and rising to the bait. It's time for bad cop to show his face. The game wants me to feel bad about reverting to type and it ain't happening. My only regrets are that I couldn't rip the other Tweedle's throat out and shove that axe up Bloody Mary's ass.

Fuck the Tweedles. They shot me, they shot Grendel, and they shot Lily. I am ready to be judge, jury, and executioner for every motherfucker that gets in my way. Before, I intervened in the Tweedle interrogation (I detained him, not the Woodsman) and got Bluebeard to stop torturing him. Now I'm ready to turn back the clock and hand him a bigger knife.

Fuck Snow White. I did everything I could to play nice with her, and I am sick of her attitude. I'm supposed to feel bad that she's upset that I killed Tweedle Dum for emptying a shotgun into me three times? Fuck that. The episode preview shows her all aflutter that the other Fables might think I've gone back to my old ways? If only they'd let me.

If Bluebeard were less fucking dumb I'd throw in with him. I'm ready to be as free of respect for boundaries as he is, except he's too dumb to draw good conclusions.

I'm pissed that Bloody Mary was allowed to put me down. Deus ex machina horseshit.

In general I actually felt a bit let down by the design of this episode. I had my issues with Episode 2, but I could do what I wanted. I never really thought Crane did it, yet my Bigby is surprised when Snow White says that. I frequently wanted to act differently than any of my dialogue options would allow, or at least felt like none of the options were what I wanted to choose.

Going forward, if the game will deign to allow me to play how I want, I'm going to continue to hunt for evidence and make sure I've got my I's dotted and my T's crossed, but anyone who gets in my way is going to find themselves with their intestines on the floor.

It's interesting, we are playing the game the same way. I was Good Cop until this episode as well, but i decided i had enough and started kicking doors in, punching people, taking money, breaking noses, and ripping throats out. I knew the little girl was a witch right away and i would have burned her stupid tree if the timer hadn't run out on me. Also knew Crane wasn't the killer and disliked that my dumb Big Bad Wolf acted all surprised. Not all that upset by the Bloody Mary things as she clearly loaded a silver bullet into her gun before the shotgun rampage.

I kind of want to throw Blue Beard out of a window next episode. Hope the chance presents itself.

Im loving this series, prefer it to TWD, but i want longer episodes. The second episode of TWD S2 felt twice as long as this one.

Did this episode feel a tad short to you?