Video Games: Fantasy's Final '16

[Corvinus85]

10 hours ago, Fez said:

Funny to see this talk of X-COM 2; I picked that up during the Steam sale as well. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, I don't like some of the changes that were made from the first game. Between the hard turn limit that a lot of the missions keep having, and the behavior of some of the enemies, it feels like there's a lot fewer successful strategies that you can use. There are also a few things that don't feel fair, like ranger sword attacks having a chance of missing, but the game not telling you what the chances are. The meta-game also doesn't feel quite right, and seems to also have a had turn limit thanks to the Avatar project (not positive about that yet though, and I haven't read up on the game in advance). 

The game does tell you what the sword attack chances are. At least at the diff. level I play at. It's usually very high, except against the dodgier enemies. I seldom had trouble with the turn limits. It's the number of enemies that makes it challenging for me, so the black site missions are still the hardest for me. Don't rush into completing those. Like Wert said, the Avatar project is not really an issue, unless you keep failing at missions, but then you have other problems.

[Kalbear]

Also, explosives on XCOM are just too insanely good, with very little actual drawback. It is still highly amusing and very stupid to be able to use an invisible spotter to find aliens, call in an airstrike which blows them up, and has the remaining aliens completely confused and not go into any kind of attack mode because they still can't see anyone. 

[KiDisaster]

Watch Dogs 2 is pretty cool. Massive improvement over the terrible first one. I really wish they had gone all out and made it 100% non-lethal though. The heavy arsenal of weapons that you have available just does not mesh at all with the overall attitude of the game and your hacker crew. 

I'm not using guns at all, but it would have been cool to see a major studio take the giant step of not even including them. Or better yet, put guns in the game but introduce some actual narrative consequences for using them. All of a sudden your crew doesn't know if they can trust you anymore, and don't feel safe around you, because you fucking shot somebody and that's a big fucking deal. 

Oh well. AAA publishers don't like risks as a general rule I guess. 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

I'm not using guns at all, but it would have been cool to see a major studio take the giant step of not even including them. Or better yet, put guns in the game but introduce some actual narrative consequences for using them. All of a sudden your crew doesn't know if they can trust you anymore, and don't feel safe around you, because you fucking shot somebody and that's a big fucking deal. 

Aw man, that'd be awesome. That'd be like the videogame version of Mr. Robot, where your crew completely distrusts you and you bring down a huge raft of shit from police and FBI for any murders, even if you're careful. I would love that kind of game.

[Slurktan]

So I bought a bunch of games with the various sales (Steam and PSN) but have gone back to Third Age Total War cause Wert talked about it a few pages ago.  Did a big Dwarven campaign, which was easy and hard.  Easy because I wiped the floor with every orc faction and so expanded west and south all over the place.  Hard because Rhun is annoying to to battles with as the dwarves.  You have only comparatively shitty crossbowman, and really shitty cavalry to go against their super fast units since the Dwarves move like they are in molasses.

Installed a sub mod called Divide and Conquer (ever try that Wert) that splits some of the regular factions and adds a bunch more like Angmar, Dorwinion, Enedwaith.  It reminds me a lot of the old Europa Barbarorum mod for Rome: Total war with how they use different scripts for each faction.  The northern Dunedain has a neat one where you run Aragorn around to various places to power him up then getting the Army of the Dead.

[Fez]

16 hours ago, Corvinus said:

The game does tell you what the sword attack chances are. At least at the diff. level I play at. It's usually very high, except against the dodgier enemies. I seldom had trouble with the turn limits. It's the number of enemies that makes it challenging for me, so the black site missions are still the hardest for me. Don't rush into completing those. Like Wert said, the Avatar project is not really an issue, unless you keep failing at missions, but then you have other problems.

I think the issue is that I wasn't selecting 'Slash' as an action. I was doing what the game said and just moving rangers next to enemies until the arrow showed up, which causes them to slash automatically and doesn't tell the hit chance.

I haven't had trouble with the turn limits yet, but I don't like the game trying to force my playstyle like that; so I expect I'll look into those mods Wert mentioned.

 

Meantime, I've also been playing a lot of Hitman. I only bought the Paris map so far, but I've been having a lot of fun trying to do all the different challenges (with the opportunities turned off so there's some real difficulty).

I tried playing FFVI again, but I really, really dislike the redone art style of the version on Steam; not sure I'm going to keep going on that. 

I also played Danganronpa, which was a really weird game/visual novel. The story was truly strange, but kinda interesting (I did dislike how often characters summarized information that had just been given though; made everyone seem like idiots when it happened). The primary gameplay segments were fun once they got going, but there weren't enough. There were six 'class trials' which is where most of the gameplay takes place, and each one is around 60 to 90 minutes. Problem was, the first three were embarrassingly easy, and the fourth wasn't much better; it was only the last two that truly felt like a game.

And on the the 31st, with only hours to go before I needed to head to a NYE party, I finally finished off the Witcher 3; final playtime of 82 hours. That was quite an experience; though my post-Velen impressions never really changed. Fantastic scope and developed world, but I never loved being forced to play as Geralt and the lack of a party or sufficient character development for the important NPCs (and the not great combat) means I still liked Dragon Age: Inquisition more. They are very different games though, considering they're both open-world fantasy RPGs.

I also thought the ending was a bit anti-climatic considering just how much build-up there was to it.

[Rhom]

Ooooooh...  I better bump up my replay schedule!  That's just in time for my birthday.  The new lamp for my DLP tv came in the mail today and if the video provided by the manufacturer is accurate, it should be no problem for me to be up and running again.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

42 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Ooooooh...  I better bump up my replay schedule!  That's just in time for my birthday.  The new lamp for my DLP tv came in the mail today and if the video provided by the manufacturer is accurate, it should be no problem for me to be up and running again.

I am just shy of giddy over this news. About 2 months ahead of where I figured to see it released, and well ahead of my typical busy season at work. Stoked!!!

[KiDisaster]

Fingers crossed for no delays, I'm pretty excited for Andromeda. 

[Jasta11]

On 03/01/2017 at 2:50 PM, Werthead said:

I think the tactical combat in XCOM 2 is superior to the first game (more weapons, more meaningful options, the modular maps with tens of thousands of possible layouts compared to the original game's eighty-odd) but the metagame is weaker (and the first game's strategy layer wasn't great either; the original 1994 X-COM is probably still the best on that score), even though they tried to make it more involving by having you flying the helicarrier Avenger manually around the map. But the amount of busywork is insane and giving you 5 mega-urgent things to do at once is just too annoying.

The Avatar Project is also something you don't have to worry about too much. The Avatar missions, when successfully completed, wipe out a huge chunk of the Avatar countdown, even if you've maxed out the Avatar bar, so it's bit of a false urgency. There's also mods that double the individual map time limits, which feels a bit saner.

I like what they tried to do with the metagame (and I do think it's superior to the first game's Panic whack-a-mole) but yeah, they could have made some of the busywork nodes shorter and made the Avatar more dangerous; as it is, it's only a real threat if you completely ignore expansion, or are unlucky and get no Facility Lead and have the things spawn at the other end of the globe. I'd have prefered not to have to unlock a region to access an Alien Facility, but make them a bit longer/harder baseline and if you attack a facility without local rebel support, you face more enemies and/or don't get concealment. But for me the Dark Event system adds enough variety to the mix, albeit I have installed a mod that, in the end. adds some pretty brutal one; the most unfair is the one that halves all the timers, and makes some mission basically impossible to complete in time.

Still, the timers are fine, IMO, if you use the True Concealment mod, which makes them not run out if you're still concealed. Which is how it should have been IMO; why in the blazes are the aliens activating their computer's lockdown sequence when they have no reason to believe it's threatened? But yeah, the combat overall is incredibly satisfying. So many options.

Also, yay, Andromeda drops March 21. We still need more info about it however; give me some gameplay already.

 

[Rhom]

10 minutes ago, Jasta11 said:

Also, yay, Andromeda drops March 21. We still need more info about it however; give me some gameplay already.

 

We did get some gameplay featuring combat about a month ago or so, and I believe we are supposed to be getting some in the next couple of days at a NVidia event or something like that.

[DunderMifflin]

ME Andromeda gameplay is dropping tommorrow

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 The 20th Anniversary Diablo Event finally launched on Diablo 3. It's a retro shout-out to the first Diablo. The graphics are all pixellated  and they use much of the music and sound effects from the first game. It features the four bosses from the first game (Butcher, King Leoric, Lazarus and Diablo). Looking forward to running it when I get home tonight.

[Werthead]

Quote

Still, the timers are fine, IMO, if you use the True Concealment mod, which makes them not run out if you're still concealed. Which is how it should have been IMO; why in the blazes are the aliens activating their computer's lockdown sequence when they have no reason to believe it's threatened? But yeah, the combat overall is incredibly satisfying. So many options.

Oh, that's a really good idea. Might spur the replay I've been putting off for a while.

 

[Fez]

15 hours ago, Rhom said:

We did get some gameplay featuring combat about a month ago or so, and I believe we are supposed to be getting some in the next couple of days at a NVidia event or something like that.

Don't know if there's anything else coming, but there was a short gameplay trailer that dropped yesterday through NVidia.

Looks like a lot of skill customization options.

[Jasta11]

Yeah, I liked what I saw. The Engineer alone seems to have a good array of skills (Flamethrower and Invasion sound neat), and they use the same branching upgrades as in ME3. My only quibble is that it seems we're limited to 3 skills at a time, which is too few. I hope this limit can increase as the game progresses.

But the combat seems to play mostly like ME3's, which is great since it was hands down the best in the series.

[Andriy Czarchenko]

18 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Still, the timers are fine, IMO, if you use the True Concealment mod, which makes them not run out if you're still concealed. Which is how it should have been IMO; why in the blazes are the aliens activating their computer's lockdown sequence when they have no reason to believe it's threatened? But yeah, the combat overall is incredibly satisfying. So many options.

 

Have you ever thought about how your squad arrives to the area? Unidentified skyranger on the general area should be more than enough reason for heightened security.

[MisterOJ]

Hey guys,

After being out of the video game loop for a few years, I decided to get back in the game and finally upgraded to an XBox One over the holidays. I just started out with a couple of updated classics I knew I'd enjoy - FIFA 17 and Gears of War 4. I've been enjoying them a lot, but am now wondering what my next game should be.

What are the hot titles I need to be checking out?

 

ETA: Other games I've really enjoyed in the past are the Elder Scrolls series, Civilization games (including the XBox 360 rendition), Minecraft for the 360, the Tropico games, and the occasional fighting game like DOA or Mortal Kombat.

[Ded As Ned]

1 minute ago, MisterOJ said:

Hey guys,

After being out of the video game loop for a few years, I decided to get back in the game and finally upgraded to an XBox One over the holidays. I just started out with a couple of updated classics I knew I'd enjoy - FIFA 17 and Gears of War 4. I've been enjoying them a lot, but am now wondering what my next game should be.

What are the hot titles I need to be checking out?

I just did the same thing this Christmas, except on the PS4 side of things.  I'm still working through a long backlog of stuff I've missed over the years before I get to the latest and greatest, so I'm not much help here.  Others will be though  

[l2 0 5 5]

6 hours ago, MisterOJ said:

Hey guys,

After being out of the video game loop for a few years, I decided to get back in the game and finally upgraded to an XBox One over the holidays. I just started out with a couple of updated classics I knew I'd enjoy - FIFA 17 and Gears of War 4. I've been enjoying them a lot, but am now wondering what my next game should be.

What are the hot titles I need to be checking out?

 

ETA: Other games I've really enjoyed in the past are the Elder Scrolls series, Civilization games (including the XBox 360 rendition), Minecraft for the 360, the Tropico games, and the occasional fighting game like DOA or Mortal Kombat.

I'm not a big JRPG fan but absolutely loved Lost Odyssey when it released in Spring of '08. Pretty cool story, diverse and interesting characters, gorgeous visuals.  They just made it backwards compatible on Xbone.  I don't think it was remastered, but worth a play nonetheless if you enjoy a game like that; also turn-based combat, just an fyi.