Video Games: France not a WWI Nation

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, MerenthaClone said:

Nah, I understood you fine, you're good.  Any decent tips on how to deal with a Bastion + Reinhardt on the payload?  Corner-peaking with Pharah or Junkrat doesn't do enough to really dislodge them, and sometimes its not always a flankable route or the sightlines aren't long enough for Widowmaker to do her thing (though usually one of those is possible).  Preferably something that doesn't require too much coordination, since, well...

Individual response or as a team? My #1 instinct for a situation like that is to fly in as D.Va with her E up.  This will bump Reinhardt off the payload, almost certainly result in him turning around and smacking you and dropping his shield, and Bastion shredding your mech in 2 seconds after your E drops.  Which is more than enough disruption if your team is ready to drop the bastion and then deal with the Reinhardt in more traditional ways.

Junkrats tyre can also be excellent, but you'd need to already be playing Junkrat and have your ult charged up, although lobbing grenades onto shield does it pretty quick I thought.  Genji deflection kill if you can safely get the flank would also take out the Bastion.  Most of my response to that sort of thing involves D.Va though, and either doing what I said before or aggressive flanking to pull the rest of the team off while the rest of the team simply smashes through the shield.  I play a very aggressive D.Va though, the vast majority of people playing her have a very different play style.

[Fez]

Also, if Tracer's ult is up, she can dash in, drop the pulse bomb, and recall out of there, killing both of them. Even without her ult, if Bastion is distracted trying to kill someone else, she can usually take him out.

Or, if you have a little bit of coordination and there's another path, Lucio can sneak around, alt fire to bump Reinhardt off his spot and that'll give a window for someone at range to finish off Bastion.

There's a bunch of other ults that can take care of the problem too.

[The Drunkard]

Been playing Total War: Attila, seems quite a bit more difficult than Medieval 2. I think I fucked up attacking my barbarian neighbours rather than the WRE, but I've got most of Britain now and I've subjugated a few factions so I'm doing okay. Sieges (both sides) are so much better than what I'm used to, and having a limit on the amount of armies is interesting (although it quickly became pretty high).

The WRE was destroyed in about 19 years (and I only took two settlements from them), whereas the ERE is still going strong. Waiting for Attila to rock up at the moment.

[Corvinus85]

7 minutes ago, The Drunkard said:

Been playing Total War: Attila, seems quite a bit more difficult than Medieval 2. I think I fucked up attacking my barbarian neighbours rather than the WRE, but I've got most of Britain now and I've subjugated a few factions so I'm doing okay. Sieges (both sides) are so much better than what I'm used to, and having a limit on the amount of armies is interesting (although it quickly became pretty high).

The WRE was destroyed in about 19 years (and I only took two settlements from them), whereas the ERE is still going strong. Waiting for Attila to rock up at the moment.

What faction have you chosen? The Saxons? Yeah, better to attack the WRE, though it's not a bad idea to swath out your way some of the other barbarian factions early in the game. Left unchecked, they can become powerful, though they can also be allies. 

In my experience playing the game, the ERE doesn't last much longer than the WRE. Enjoy winter!

[The Drunkard]

57 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

What faction have you chosen? The Saxons? Yeah, better to attack the WRE, though it's not a bad idea to swath out your way some of the other barbarian factions early in the game. Left unchecked, they can become powerful, though they can also be allies. 

In my experience playing the game, the ERE doesn't last much longer than the WRE. Enjoy winter!

Yep. And yeah I heard things get more intense later on. I wonder if the ERE will survive that.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

What faction have you chosen? The Saxons? Yeah, better to attack the WRE, though it's not a bad idea to swath out your way some of the other barbarian factions early in the game. Left unchecked, they can become powerful, though they can also be allies. 

In my experience playing the game, the ERE doesn't last much longer than the WRE. Enjoy winter!

The ERE is eternal! So long as Constantinople stands, our people have a future.

[Corvinus85]

19 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

The ERE is eternal! So long as Constantinople stands, our people have a future.

1453

[Jasta11]

ERE usually lasts until Attila himself gets serious. Beforehand they usually manage to hold on to Anatolia at least. 

Also, Mannfred stands trimphant over Chaos! No big epic battle this time, but several ambushes where I used superior tactics and numbers to overwhelm enemy warriors, which is very in-character for the Vamps. There was some frustration in the end as Sigvald got away and razed two of my most prosperous towns, but that's a mere setback. I like to imagine Mannfred has him chained and tortured in a way even a servant of Slaanesh would find painful, in response to this offense.

Unlike my Empire campaign, this one if still far from over yet. The northern provinces are in ruins, but the southern Empire still stands strong with 11 settlements united behinf Franz, who has secured an alliance with Bretonnia and is beating back the Skaelings. This will prove to be a very tough nut to crack when I betray the Empire, so I may expand into the ruined regions to secure more armies first.

Then, the Long Victory conditions demand I wipe out the Dwarfs, who are in a massive war with the Greenskins and seemingly winning. I really doubt I'll have the patience for this. Pretty sure destroying the Empire alone is going to take 50+ turns already anyway, then I'll have to get rid of the Brets and hope the Norscans stay put.

[Jace, Extat]

28 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

1453

Hey! Hey! I got my eye on you...

[Rhom]

Remastered Arkham games indefinitely delayed.

Quote

After reviewing the progress of the project, the team at WB Games has decided to delay the release of Batman: Return to Arkham to give the team at Virtuous Games additional time to deliver a polished Batman Arkham game experience. We do not have a release date yet and will be sure to communicate that once we are sure the game will be ready. We know this is disappointing news, but we feel the extra time will allow the team to create the best gaming experience for our fans.

Better that than the Arkham Knight debacle I suppose.

[Werthead]

Far Harbour is a fun add on for Fallout 4. More of a sense of humour than the main game, some fun locations. Rather an overreliance on the same old monsters (especially Ghouls and Mireluks, it was a bit of a relief when I found a Super Mutant encampment). Settlement building is dialled right back, there's only a couple you can develop and they integrate them into the story more.

Overall, solid and certainly pays for itself in time (I've spent an extra 10 hours on it over the main game). Not entirely sure it's worth £20 though.

Picked up Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag in the Steam Sale for £3, which seemed reasonable.

[Lord Hanna]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

Remastered Arkham games indefinitely delayed.

Better that than the Arkham Knight debacle I suppose.

As long as it ends up being a better product, i'm fine with this, even though i want it pretty badly.

[RumHam]

Didn't Banner Saga 2 like just come out? I'm surprised to see it's xbox's free game next month. Glad I didn't pay for it. 

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

The Arkham games don't need a remaster. They look fine.

[KiDisaster]

It's for people who have PS4s and XBones who never played them on the previous generation. 

[Ravness]

On 6/27/2016 at 2:51 AM, Fez said:

Hopefully most of those folk will move over to ranked play when it starts (since they think they're hot stuff) and the Quick Play will be more laid back.

Is it mostly just people smack-talking in the team voice chats, or has anyone actually experienced receiving hateful messages after a match? I found the Overwatch community to be pretty tame/nice compared to other team-based games I've played.

[Jon AS]

Did anybody here give Battlefield Gothic a try? I remember seeing some decent reviews, and it'd feel kind of weird not to buy a single game during a Steam sale...

[AndrewJ]

 

So... Oculus Rift is a thing. That I now own.

Here's a copy and paste of a post I put on the Oculus forums about my first evening with it. Spoilered for length (and possible lack of interest).

Oh... and Rhom... you might wanna spolier stuff in your post too. Yeah... we pretty much know it's going to be that way. But you shouldn't really post spoilers in random threads when some people have decided to wait and read the books to find out stuff like this.

 

 

So… my Rift arrived yesterday.

In summary: Freaking Awesome!!!

Had about 2-3 hours to test it out yesterday evening, with my wife and I taking turns. The Dreamdeck stuff was fun and a great introduction. My wife wanted to run away from the T-Rex, though – she kept making little shrieks and trying to back away. I definitely made sure to video that and it went straight up on Facebook. Besides the T-Rex one, perhaps the one I enjoyed the most was the one in which the least happened. It’s where you’re standing in some type of Engine room (possibly in a submarine or something). Not a whole lot happens – but in the earlier demos, I pretty much felt like I was looking at a VR world in a headset. But I really did feel like I was in that engine room. This is the one that really opened my eyes to just how immersive VR can be.

After my wife finished her turn, she told me to “do the bunny one” – ie the Invasion movie. That was really fun. At one stage, I was telling the bunny to stop hiding behind me because I wanted to hide behind him. My wife then tried the same one – and while playing, she said “Oh!!! Now I see what you meant by stop hiding behind me – I didn’t really understand why you were saying that while you were doing it”. So it’s fairly obvious that watching somebody play on the monitor (or tv screen in my case) does a pretty poor job of conveying the experience that the person wearing the headset is having.

After a break (we had to go out for a little while), it was time for a real game. And Lucky’s Tale seemed the obvious place to start. The very first moment that I pushed forward on the thumbstick, I went all dizzy and felt like I was going to fall over. But after just 3-5 seconds, I got acclimatised to it and was fine. (My wife had the exact same experience when she played). And this is another example of just what a poor job watching somebody play does of giving you much idea of what it’s like to play. I remember watching the Giant Bomb guys doing their launch day play of all the games. And from that, I had the impression that you were watching Lucky’s Tale from a POV that’s quite high up. I think the reason I thought so was I assumed Lucky was “life sized” – say about 2 to 3 feet tall, like a real fox would be. And he appeared quite small on screen because you are viewing him from quite high up. But that’s not how it is at all. Instead, it appears he’s only a few inches high and he’s running around right below your gaze – probably somewhere around your waste. And when he drops underground, the little guy is right there in front of your eyes. You really do get a close up look of the action and it’s pretty amazing. I’ll be coming back to this game quite a bit, that’s for sure.

My wife had a turn with Lucky – but she’s not really much of a gamer and died quite a bit. She seemed to have fun though and I hope she will try it out some more.

Next up (and finally for the evening), my wife told me to “play the scary one”. So, we fire up Dreadhalls. My first reaction was similar to what I mentioned about the engine room in Dreamdeck. I really felt like I was in that first dungeon cell. And looking around at the sleeping pallet and everything, it really struck me that things like this (as well as the Engine Room, the T-Rex and the Invasion movie) demonstrate that the graphical fidelity is pretty damn good. I’d been hearing a lot of stuff about the graphics not being up to par with modern gaming and that current video cards simply can’t handle the resolution and frame rate required to give monitor-like quality on a headset. But the quality is far better than I was expecting. No, it’s obviously not going to match the graphics the latest machine can put out on a dumb monitor, but it’s still very good. This aint your daddy’s VR.

Anyway… Deadhalls itself. I had a blast. I probably played… I’m not sure… at least half an hour and it might have been close to an hour. (I got third eye, if that tells you anything). And it was definitely spooky. I’ve been reading about people finding it too intense to play for long. I was ok with it, for the most part (although, there was one moment when a creature was prowling around outside the room I was in and you couldn’t have paid me to leave the safety of that room.) Then I found the third eye and unlocked the door back to the central area. I decided to finish exploring the area I was in before going back. Soon, something very scary looking (I’m trying not to be too spoilery here), started coming after me. So I turned around and “RUN AWAY!!! RUN AWAY!!! RUN AWAY!!!” back through the safety of that door. So… yeah… that was NOT cool.

Okay… now for some more general comments.

Immersion – I’ve already commented in the immersiveness of both the engine room demo and Dreadhalls. But I’ll just add that I completely lost myself in those dungeons in Dreadhalls last night. I frequently had zero idea of where I was in the real world and had to peek out a few times to re-orient myself and keep from bumping into the furniture. In a word: awesome!

Screed Door Effect – Oh yes, I saw those. Once. It was a moment when I wasn’t doing a lot in one of the demos and when I stayed still and looked closely I could see it. And I decided right there, that if I was able to see it exactly like that the entire time then it wasn’t pronounced enough to be of any concern at all. But the reality is, when you’re playing a game, moving around and focussing your attention on other things it disappears entirely. It effectively didn’t exist for pretty much all of my play session.

Godrays – those actually don’t exist. Or didn’t for me last night, at any rate. Okay… I’m sure they do actually exist, but I completely forgot to look for them and didn’t notice them at all. I’m assuming in some games in some situtions (Elite for example) I may notice them a bit. But it was a complete non-issue for me.

Field of View – see Godrays. Forgot to check and never noticed any restriction of my FOV at all. I don’t doubt that it is restricted and I know doubt will see it when I remember to look for it. But in my limited experience so far, it simply isn’t noticeable when you aren’t looking for it.

So… that was my first evening with VR. No Elite or Chronos. These are the two games at the very top of my “want to play” list – but they both are games I will want to devote significant amounts of time to. Last night was for trying out a bunch of smaller stuff (though Dreadhalls ended up going a bit longer than planned). Tonight I’ll probably try out a bunch more small stuff for an hour or two then spend an hour or so in Elite. Chronos might need to wait for a while – it will be there waiting for me when I’m able to devote a good amount of time to it.
 

 

 

 

[Lord Hanna]

On 6/28/2016 at 8:49 PM, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

The Arkham games don't need a remaster. They look fine.

True, but for someone who's CD's of both got damaged due to kids, waiting on this is better than buying the normal versions for almost the same price. 

[Jasta11]

3 hours ago, Eoin AS said:

Did anybody here give Battlefield Gothic a try? I remember seeing some decent reviews, and it'd feel kind of weird not to buy a single game during a Steam sale...

It's pretty good, albeit it does get a bit samey after a while especially if you play Campaign. I'd definitely get it at a discount, albeit I think you're late and won't get the Space Marine and Chaos fleet for free, those were given to 2 months early adopters.