Video Games: Fantasy's Final '16

[Werthead]

With my main computer kaput and being reduced to using a laptop, I decided to fire up Baldur's Gate again. Still a great game, but the remastered edition feels a bit odd. The characters look like they're floating above the landscape and a lot of the fine detail in the artwork is off compared to the standard edition run through a couple of mods. I know there's a general consensus that the original version + mods is superior to the remastered version, but I couldn't be bothered with the fiddling around. I may have to reassess that if I can't adjust.

I'm also a bit annoyed that I've picked up two of the new NPCs without meaning to (the dialogue didn't entirely suggest they were about to join up), disrupting my plan to have a classic party. Will probably dump them at some point, especially the wild mage who doesn't seem to bring much to the party but is handy until Dynaheir shows up.

[KiDisaster]

The issue I'm currently having with my PS4 is that once it has been turned off, it will not turn on again unless the power cord is unplugged for about ten seconds and then plugged back in. Makes no sense to me whatsoever. I swear I have more technical issues with consoles these days than I do with my PC. 

[The Anti-Targ]

 

6 hours ago, Ded As Ned said:

The biggest glitch I run into is for example, user A is playing Game A with Controller A.  User A finishes playing Game A, then manually exits the game.  User B later goes to play Game A, with controller B, under user B's profile.  Game A still pops up at the last place User A was playing, under User A's profile, and control for that game immediately switches back to Controller A (even if Controller A is powered off).  The only way I've found to get out of the loop is to completely power down the PS4 and start over.  I kinda feel like I'm missing something obvious somewhere that solves this, but I've not been able to find it.

Never had that problem, but I think that's probably because in my case User B uses the same controller as user A to log into their profile. I think we also always typically log out of our profile when someone else is going to use the PS4. I must actually give this a try to see what happens. It would certainly be a bug in the system, I don't know if companies ever pay attention to them but you could submit a problem report...somehow.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

The issue I'm currently having with my PS4 is that once it has been turned off, it will not turn on again unless the power cord is unplugged for about ten seconds and then plugged back in. Makes no sense to me whatsoever. I swear I have more technical issues with consoles these days than I do with my PC. 

That's definitely a hardware fault that should get fixed under warranty if the PS4 is still under warrranty.

 

[Jasta11]

I decided to grit my teeth and start back my Origins playthrough. The Mage Origin, Ostagar and Lothering again were a bit of a slog to be honest, but now I'm at Redcliffe again and it finally picks up into stuff I haven't seen in years. It also helps that I installed a few mods, the best being Improved Atmosphere which adds a buncha new items and static NPCs among others. Also the Warden Armor mod that adds DA2/Inquisition style Grey Warden armor, which looks rather fetching on my Elven mage.

My XCOM 2 campaign is also advancing. I'm in September now, with a solid A-team, unfortunately my B-team is being decimated by wounds and/or untimely demises. I finished an Avenger Defense mission where I had 3 deaths due to the veritable swarm of Elite Mechs that dropped by. I don't remember these damn things doing a whole 9 damage per shot; I think that's a result of the Long War Alien mod. But now I have EMP grenades, and I'm on the cusp of having a Psi Op with Stasis. Soon, we will have vengeance! Vengeance for ''Skids'', ''Marshall'' and ''Nuke'' (who, in a rather funny display of accidental political incorrectness, was a Japanese)! Vengeance!

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

I decided to grit my teeth and start back my Origins playthrough. The Mage Origin, Ostagar and Lothering again were a bit of a slog to be honest, but now I'm at Redcliffe again and it finally picks up into stuff I haven't seen in years. It also helps that I installed a few mods, the best being Improved Atmosphere which adds a buncha new items and static NPCs among others. Also the Warden Armor mod that adds DA2/Inquisition style Grey Warden armor, which looks rather fetching on my Elven mage.

I'm rather a neophyte when it comes to PC stuff. How does one get mods? And do mods work on games bought off Origin?

[Jasta11]

16 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm rather a neophyte when it comes to PC stuff. How does one get mods? And do mods work on games bought off Origin?

Get them mods here.

As for installing them, it depends, albeit any good mod has installation instructions. Simple mods come in a special Dazip file. Simply download them, then go to your game's folder, then into bin_ship and you should have a DAupdater application. Run it, then you can have it load the Dazip files and it installs them itself.

Others require you to deposit stuff in your Override folder yourself. Usually located in your User->Documents->Bioware->Dragon Age->packages->core->override. A few others come with handy installers.

As for mods working with the Origin version of the game, I think so. The version shouldn't change the base files of the game.

[Werthead]

Continuing through BG. Completed the gnoll castle, which was tougher than I remember (did they have immediately-respawning gnolls in the original edition? I can't remember them). But I now have my traditional A-team: Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc and Dynaheir. The weakness with this set-up is no dedicated priest, but getting a full priest means dropping one or both of the duos, or Imoen (whom I'm not crazy on but does make more sense from a story perspective). But my own character's (he's a fighter) innate powers, Jaheira's druid spells and potions do fill in the gaps, so I may rock with the standard gang.

I didn't do my normal exploration of every forested area on the way down to Nashkel, so I'm wondering if I should double back and clear those or proceed into the mines first. IIRC, the mines aren't tremendously tough and I can get a lot of EXP down there before going back to the Beregost area (and flaming arrow kobold death alley).

[Corvinus85]

Started a ME2 game. I tried Vanguard, but I just can't do anything other than Soldier, and be a good guy, not an asshole (for the most part). To me playing ME is almost like watching a movie, the story is largely the same, I don't wish to deviate.

But I am alternating ME2 with XCOM2 and A Clash of Kings Mod for M&B Warband. On XCOM2 I am trying for the nth time to have another successful campaign. Impatience and bad luck caused me to fail so far. I actually let myself be defeated in one game, but I was disappointed in the end cinematic. I feel in both intro and ending, the game designers were a bit lazy - they should show how Bradford rescues the Commander in the beginning.

Anyway, truthfully I'm just playing these games without much enthusiasm, as I wait for Andromeda and Bannerlord. I am thinking of pre-ordering Andromeda. I seldom pre-order games, but I feel that if Bioware is stupid enough to release a buggy game, they might be in big trouble with this one, so I am hoping/thinking that Andromeda will be a ready game at release.

[Fez]

8 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I feel in both intro and ending, the game designers were a bit lazy - they should show how Bradford rescues the Commander in the beginning.

Did you skip the tutorial mission? Because that's what that is; complete with Bradford as a controllable unit.

[Corvinus85]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

Did you skip the tutorial mission? Because that's what that is; complete with Bradford as a controllable unit.

Oh. Oops, I thought the tutorial was just stuff for beginners.

[Fez]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Oh. Oops, I thought the tutorial was just stuff for beginners.

Gameplay-wise it is. It tells you exactly what to do for every action for each turn to show off some of the beginning concepts. But wrapped around it is the narrative of the rescue mission for the commander.

[matt b]

15 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

I decided to grit my teeth and start back my Origins playthrough. The Mage Origin, Ostagar and Lothering again were a bit of a slog to be honest, but now I'm at Redcliffe again and it finally picks up into stuff I haven't seen in years. It also helps that I installed a few mods, the best being Improved Atmosphere which adds a buncha new items and static NPCs among others. Also the Warden Armor mod that adds DA2/Inquisition style Grey Warden armor, which looks rather fetching on my Elven mage.

Weird, I'm doing a replay of Origins myself. For me, they never improved on the gameplay from this first game, I just love it. DA2 and DA:I often had me losing track of some of my party during fights, leading to sudden deaths. Never an issue with DA:O. Also, I really miss the spell combos. Storm of the Century FTMFW.

[Rhom]

I'm terrible at playing the asshole in Mass Effect... I had no problem punching the snotty reporter bitch right in her whore mouth, but I couldn't lie to the Krogans about the fish in the Presidium lake!   

[The Anti-Targ]

On 16/01/2017 at 3:05 AM, Ded As Ned said:

The biggest glitch I run into is for example, user A is playing Game A with Controller A.  User A finishes playing Game A, then manually exits the game.  User B later goes to play Game A, with controller B, under user B's profile.  Game A still pops up at the last place User A was playing, under User A's profile, and control for that game immediately switches back to Controller A (even if Controller A is powered off).  The only way I've found to get out of the loop is to completely power down the PS4 and start over.  I kinda feel like I'm missing something obvious somewhere that solves this, but I've not been able to find it.

I tried replicating this problem by loading up my Rise of the Tomb Raider save on my account, exiting the game and then switching to my son's account with a second controller and loading the game on his account and it worked fine. So I failed to replicate your problem.

One thing to watch out for is when you turn on the second controller the PS4 asks which account is using controller B, but the PS4 stays logged in to controller A's account. You have to manually switch accounts to go to controller B's account before you boot up the game. I only noticed I was still on my account because I have the PS1 20th anniversary theme on my account whereas my sons both just have the default theme. If all the accounts on your PS4 have the same theme then you might not realise that you are still on controller A's account. Might be good to set each person's account up with a different theme so you can easily see which account is active.

[The Anti-Targ]

6 hours ago, Rhom said:

I'm terrible at playing the asshole in Mass Effect... I had no problem punching the snotty reporter bitch right in her whore mouth, but I couldn't lie to the Krogans about the fish in the Presidium lake!   

My first playthrough of Mass Effect (which was after playing through ME2) I didn't notice the reporter. But then in a second play through I did speak to the reporter and realised she's the same one in ME2. I thought that running conflict was a cool little extra thread, but which is totally missable.

[MerenthaClone]

10 hours ago, Fez said:

Gameplay-wise it is. It tells you exactly what to do for every action for each turn to show off some of the beginning concepts. But wrapped around it is the narrative of the rescue mission for the commander.

And a neat little touch it has is that the distraction that goes off at the start of the tutorial mission is what you play in Gatecrasher (the first mission if you skip the tutorial).  

Also its fun to blame just how badly the tutorial goes on Bradford because fuck me is he bad at commanding.  

[Ded As Ned]

16 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I tried replicating this problem by loading up my Rise of the Tomb Raider save on my account, exiting the game and then switching to my son's account with a second controller and loading the game on his account and it worked fine. So I failed to replicate your problem.

One thing to watch out for is when you turn on the second controller the PS4 asks which account is using controller B, but the PS4 stays logged in to controller A's account. You have to manually switch accounts to go to controller B's account before you boot up the game. I only noticed I was still on my account because I have the PS1 20th anniversary theme on my account whereas my sons both just have the default theme. If all the accounts on your PS4 have the same theme then you might not realise that you are still on controller A's account. Might be good to set each person's account up with a different theme so you can easily see which account is active.

I'm going to tinker around with it some more when I get the time... I think maybe if I log off the previous user (if that is possible) it might solve the problem.  

[Jasta11]

On 16/01/2017 at 10:18 AM, matt b said:

Weird, I'm doing a replay of Origins myself. For me, they never improved on the gameplay from this first game, I just love it. DA2 and DA:I often had me losing track of some of my party during fights, leading to sudden deaths. Never an issue with DA:O. Also, I really miss the spell combos. Storm of the Century FTMFW.

Oh no, it was a chore because I had done all that three weeks ago before my computer went belly-up and I had to reinstall windows. 

I do agree the combat was best in Origins. The ruleset in DA2 was actually pretty good too, but the encounter design was so atrocious, with those enemy waves, that it dragged down the whole thing. And Inquisition's could indeed bog down in a confusing mess at times.

[Rhom]

Injustice 2 story trailer came out today.  I got the first game for free with my PSN subscription or else I likely never would have played it, but I really liked it and my son loves having a fighting game with all the DC characters.  So this will definitely be on my radar.

https://youtu.be/bj1RC4WWUgA