Video Games: Dawn of Waaaaagh!

[Werthead]

Completed Just Cause 3. Very, very daft game, but a lot better than the previous title. I think this series has now overtaken the Far Cry series as my go-to arsing-around liberating camps and shooting things kicks. I enjoyed the game so much that I spent a fair bit of time trying to beat the best scores for longest parachute climb (stacked it about halfway up the main mountain from sea level, which was irritating) and longest wingsuit dive. The latter was baffling until I realised the game counted the powered wingsuit (i.e. wingsuit with jetpack), which seems a bit redundant because you could theoretically fly forever with it.

Slight irritations were that the game set up a fourth title (it was likely anyway, but it was a bit blatant) and it didn't seem to know whether to go all-in on the satire or not. I was surprisingly engaged by the story though, especially since the second game's story was wafer thin. This one was a lot more effective with more memorable and interesting characters (especially Dimah, who was hilarious). It also made much better use of the enormous map size, with a lot more varied objectives, towns and camps to take out.

Overall, enjoyable. I got to 30 hours before it started getting really repetitive. Next up, Thimbleweed Park, as I really want a game now that doesn't involve killing insane numbers of people.

[A True Kaniggit]

Banks and Utopia will finally be released for Stellaris is a few hours. I know I should probably wait a few days before starting a large campaign so any new bugs can be worked out, but that's not gonna happen.

The multitude of delicious species across the galaxy will actually be doing something useful for once. They'll provide my space elves with much needed nourishment while we work on getting Dyson Spheres built.

I'm also looking forward to the fact there will now be a symbol that tells you weather ot not a system contains a pre-FTL species. 

Still waiting for planet killers to be released though.  Someday.....

[Fez]

The tech details on the Scorpio are out; really technical description, layman's description. 

Its not quite a next-gen console, but its sounds pretty close.

Quote

 

So, what did you find out?

Microsoft gave us the full tech specs of the machine. The central processor (CPU) has eight custom x86 cores clocked at 2.3GHz. The graphics processor (GPU) has 40 customised compute units clocked at 1172MHz - a very high clock speed for a console - and it does achieve Microsoft's stated six-teraflop performance figure. There's 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, with a memory bandwidth of 326GB/s. There's a faster 1TB 2.5-inch hard drive, and a UHD Blu-ray drive. Like Xbox One S, it has an integrated power supply, so no external power brick. In terms of input/output ports, it is identical to Xbox One S (so, no Kinect port, but HDMI in is retained).

I didn't understand any of that.

OK, so the CPU is about 30 per cent faster than the Xbox One's. The GPU is 4.6 times more powerful than Xbox One's. What matters just as much, though, is the huge amount of very fast memory available. Even with 4GB reserved for the system, games have a whole 8GB to play with, up from 5GB of much slower memory on Xbox One. That means fast streaming of very high-quality art assets, which will really help at the 4K ultra HD resolutions that Microsoft is gunning for.

……

More powerful than PlayStation 4 Pro?

Yes. Sony's machine is very clever and produces great results in the right hands - and as ever, the quality of the end results depends on how well the software runs, not on waving numbers around. But as far as those numbers go, Scorpio has PS4 Pro licked. It will surely be more expensive, too. It's a higher-spec machine in every sense, down to the optical drive that plays the new UHD Blu-ray format (not that anyone buys those). Microsoft uses the word "premium", and you know what that means: $$$.

Did you see it running a game?

Yes. Well, a ForzaTech demo, which is a stress test based on the Forza Motorsport 6 engine, running the maximum number of cars around a track with dynamic weather and all the bells and whistles turned on.

How did it do?

Smashed it. At the same graphics quality settings as Xbox One, the demo ran at a full 4K resolution, at a perfect 60 frames per second. For Xbox One to do this at a standard HD resolution of 1080p uses about 90 per cent of that console's power. Scorpio was only using 60-70 per cent of its resources to run this demo. The graphics settings were then ramped up to the equivalent of the ultra settings on the PC game Forza Motorsport Apex, and Scorpio still didn't break a sweat.

So that means...

Scorpio potentially has enough power not just to run Xbox One games at 4K resolution at the same frame rate - it's got power to spare on improving their looks further, with higher quality graphics settings, smoother frame rates, and more.

What's the catch?

Microsoft didn't choose the Forza engine to demo to us by accident. It's one of the best optimised, best performing game engines out there. Results on other game engines can and will vary.

 

 

[Kalbear]

I confess, I am salivating at the chance to get my hands on a Scorpio later this month. 

[KiDisaster]

I'm still baffled by the fact that Sony didn't include a 4K Blu-Ray player in their upgraded version and Microsoft have. Seems like such a weird decision. It's their tech for fuck's sake  

Scorpio looks impressive specs wise. The lack of exclusive titles on Xbone still leaves me uninterested in the platform as a whole though. But that's actually a good thing. Microsoft finally putting their first party games on PC is lovely. Even if the shitty Windows Store breaks my computer every time I install something from it >.> 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, KiDisaster said:

I'm still baffled by the fact that Sony didn't include a 4K Blu-Ray player in their upgraded version and Microsoft have. Seems like such a weird decision. It's their tech for fuck's sake  

 

People aren't buying Blu-Ray movies in large numbers and even smaller numbers are buying 4K Blu-ray. It's all digital download and streaming.

Quote

In 2015, Blu-ray and DVD sales fell 12 percent while digital-media sales jumped 16 percent, following years of similar trajectories for both categories, according to figures from the Digital Media Group. In fact, digital sales also surpassed physical-media purchases last year, clocking in at $8.9 billion compared with $8 billion. And let's not forget about streaming subscriptions, which jumped 20 percent to reach $5.7 billion. In other words, 4K Blu-ray is launching at the worst time for disc-based media since the advent of DVDs.

The thing that gives Scorpio a substantial advantage really is the 12GB GDDR5 RAM. That really gives Scorpio a substantial edge when it comes to streaming 4K content.

[DunderMifflin]

Other than the characters (only some of them are really good) I'm really loving this ME:A artwork. It's got a kind of 70s Sci fi vibe to it. Some of the stuff looks like concept art they would draw back in the day, like those old pre star wars paintings of weird looking Tie fighters and ships that never made it into the movies.

And I don't like how easy they made Liam, come on man make me work a little for it

[Kalbear]

21 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

Scorpio looks impressive specs wise. The lack of exclusive titles on Xbone still leaves me uninterested in the platform as a whole though. But that's actually a good thing. Microsoft finally putting their first party games on PC is lovely. Even if the shitty Windows Store breaks my computer every time I install something from it >.> 

The cool thing - if it hopefully works - is the idea that you can get a game for the Xbone and have it basically upgraded to Scorpio level quality almost automatically with the compilation tools that they're using. That's the goal. 

[DJDonegal]

Got a Switch so I could play Breath of the Wild. No idea how much time I've put into it but... I'd say at least 30 hours so far. Unfortunately had to stop playing just now because I left my charger at work. Going to have to go get it tomorrow; I can't go the whole weekend without playing it again.

Spoiler

Haven't even beaten one of the Divine Beasts yet. Just going around completing shrines. I also started off sharing orb upgrades between stamina and hearts but when I was on 5 hearts I stumbled on the Master Sword which requires more hearts to get it out.

Now up to 12 hearts and I still can't get the damned thing out. No idea if beating Divine Beasts gets me hearts but I want the Master Sword for as much of the story as possible and will beat as many shrines as it takes. I think I've completed 46 so far. Eventide Isle was my favourite.

Have found 3 dragons - are there only 3? But not sure how to beat them. Haven't tried, actually, except to shoot an arrow at one and make it fly off.

 

[RumHam]

35 minutes ago, DJDonegal said:

Got a Switch so I could play Breath of the Wild. No idea how much time I've put into it but... I'd say at least 30 hours so far. Unfortunately had to stop playing just now because I left my charger at work. Going to have to go get it tomorrow; I can't go the whole weekend without playing it again.

  Hide contents

Haven't even beaten one of the Divine Beasts yet. Just going around completing shrines. I also started off sharing orb upgrades between stamina and hearts but when I was on 5 hearts I stumbled on the Master Sword which requires more hearts to get it out.

Now up to 12 hearts and I still can't get the damned thing out. No idea if beating Divine Beasts gets me hearts but I want the Master Sword for as much of the story as possible and will beat as many shrines as it takes. I think I've completed 46 so far. Eventide Isle was my favourite.

Have found 3 dragons - are there only 3? But not sure how to beat them. Haven't tried, actually, except to shoot an arrow at one and make it fly off.

 

Beating Divine Beasts will get you a heart for each.  I think there are only three dragons. You can't kill them but when you shoot them they drop valuable crafting materials depending on where you hit them. Also there is

a way to re-allocate orbs if you want to temporarily sacrifice some stamina to get the master sword.

 

[Jon AS]

Managed to finish up MEA before my vacation. Was a close call, took over 70 hours and I'm not even at 100% completion. So it's easily the biggest ME game by a fairly large margin.

Overall it's pretty damn good, but it does have some glaring problems in its design. For starters, the open world aspect, even though it's the best Bioware has managed in this respect so far and it making sense for the Pathfinder to do most of this stuff in order to help establish various outposts, is rather repetitive. Also, why are two of the worlds we can visit desert worlds, particularly when we also get an ice planet? Feels a bit redundant, particularly when combined with the second big problem, the content gating via main quests. It makes sense to give the player one introductory planet to get their bearings, but after that you at first only get access to two more, and can only access the rest by completing the main quest on one of those. This leaves the world feeling incomplete, particularly when you can run into encounters that make way more sense if you know what the situation is like in the rest of the cluster (that might have been a bug, though). I get not wanting to overwhelm people, but this really should have been handled better.

 

The story doesn't have massive twists, but it's perfectly serviceable. The attempt to make it personal to Ryder at the end seemed a bit cheap, but overall the finale is suitably epic, with all the friends and allies you've made throughout the game so far putting in appearances to lend a hand. That aspect was actually much better handled than ME3 managed to do it even before the infamous ending.

 

But of course the heart of Bioware games tend to be the characters, and overall I find the Tempest crew interesting and well developed. You interact with all of them a fair bit, both on and off the ship, but like the open world content this aspect is gated through the main story missions, so people might not have anything to say to you for quite a while and then suddenly everybody wants something from you.

A missed opportunity here is the other Ryder sibling. They could definitely have done something more with that.

 

Ryder I quite like as a protagonist, or rather the mostly emotional/joking version I played. I felt that fit well with someone who is a bit of a thrillseeker but also inexperienced and in over their heads. One aspect I'd be most interested in seeing in a second run is how taking a different tone in various conversations affects the overall feel of the character.

 

One thing I still have to check out is how the open world is affected by the endgame. There should be some major repercussions felt, but then again the budget for this game clearly only went so far.

[Werthead]

Brian Blessed joins Kingdom Come: Deliverance, playing a (real-life) Bohemian siege engineer who liked to blow things up and built an allegedly functional diving suit in the early 15th Century. I will hazard a wild guess he will swear and shout a lot in the game.

[Fez]

Something I've discovered going through ME:A is that not all (at least yet), but a fair amount of the plot holes and logic failures actually do have explanations in game. Its just that they are way too buried for them to matter to most people. For instance...

Spoiler

 

One thing that made no sense was how poorly written the first contact with the Angara was. Another thing that made no sense was how the exiles in Kadara Port and the Angara seemed to have a long history with each other. Well, if you talk to Aya's governor after going to Aya; she says that the Angara had contact with the Kadara exiles from well before the point when you first come to Aya. And that she didn't mention it because they assumed we already knew all about Kadara. So for the Angarans, it wasn't first contact at all; which is why it wasn't as big a deal for them. And the reason Kadara Port and the Angarans seem like they have a long history is because they do.

It seems like poor execution to bury something like that more 20 hours after the fact. But at least there is an explanation in-game.

Likewise, its mentioned in a couple Codex entries that there's actually quite a bit of time passing during the course of the game. It seems like quite a big oversight for no one to mention it. But it helps explain why things seem to happen so suddenly sometimes; its because its weeks or even months after the last event.

 

 

[A True Kaniggit]

On 4/6/2017 at 0:12 AM, A True Kaniggit said:

Banks and Utopia will finally be released for Stellaris is a few hours. I know I should probably wait a few days before starting a large campaign so any new bugs can be worked out, but that's not gonna happen.

Yep. 

Towards the end of my play through and am nearing completion of my first ever ring-world. But every time I finish the second part of the project the game crashes.

Edit: Looks like this one is over. I can't get by 01 June 2406. Lucky galaxy, I was about to start a large invasion with my fleet of 180K power.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Been playing the new update on Hearthstone: Journey to Un Goro. I'm really excited by a lot of the new cards and the mechanics and hopefully this will freshen up what was essentially a very stale meta which seemed to be mostly made up of the same decks.

However. I'm pretty much a free to play player. I've bought the previous expansions, but I refuse to lay down a load of cash for the lottery of buying card packs. This new expansion has put me at a massive disadvantage because of it. Now all my old cards are pretty much worthless and underpowered, and unless I stump up for new cards I'm cut out of ever really competing in ranked play. Its quite disheartening.

There is still Arena mode which I really enjoy but as I'm not that good its not a good use of my coins. I think Blizzard have been too greedy here and are pricing people out of the game by gradually increasing the need for in app payments. I might bow out and never come back to the game if this is the case.

[Jon AS]

17 hours ago, Fez said:

Something I've discovered going through ME:A is that not all (at least yet), but a fair amount of the plot holes and logic failures actually do have explanations in game. Its just that they are way too buried for them to matter to most people. For instance...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

One thing that made no sense was how poorly written the first contact with the Angara was. Another thing that made no sense was how the exiles in Kadara Port and the Angara seemed to have a long history with each other. Well, if you talk to Aya's governor after going to Aya; she says that the Angara had contact with the Kadara exiles from well before the point when you first come to Aya. And that she didn't mention it because they assumed we already knew all about Kadara. So for the Angarans, it wasn't first contact at all; which is why it wasn't as big a deal for them. And the reason Kadara Port and the Angarans seem like they have a long history is because they do.

It seems like poor execution to bury something like that more 20 hours after the fact. But at least there is an explanation in-game.

Likewise, its mentioned in a couple Codex entries that there's actually quite a bit of time passing during the course of the game. It seems like quite a big oversight for no one to mention it. But it helps explain why things seem to happen so suddenly sometimes; its because its weeks or even months after the last event.

 

 

 

Spoiler

I actually picked up on the first contact issue as I was playing through that scenario: it's a big deal for the Initiative because it's first official contact for them, but it's "only" a big deal for the Angara because some outsiders have just stumbled onto their last, secret refuge. That they don't blow up Ryder and friends right then and there is actually a remarkable sign of restraint.

So I think there were enough clues to figure that out in the game, but as I said earlier, that really is the point in the story where we should learn what the current situation in Heleus is.

 

The first contact negotiations also provide the perfect moment to do so.

The Angara could demand that the Initiative hand back Kadara, only to find out that Ryder is completely clueless about it. Cue info dump.

 

[Werthead]

Word of warning: Thimbleweed Park is a game where you cannot die, but it is possible to trigger a fail state. I found this out the hard way, losing two hours of progress. The game does alert you to the possibility beforehand ("Maybe I should save my game?") but because they'd made so many meta-jokes about the game never getting into an unwinnable situation I assumed they were taking the piss. Argh.

[Corvinus85]

I'm starting to have fun in Andromeda. Only 15 hours in, currently on Veold. The combat is still stress inducing rather than actual enjoyment, but the rest is pretty good. Imo, Andromeda should have been a TV show, not a video game. It has all the ingredients of a solid space opera mixed with hard science, and the main characters are good enough to put some character driven plots in there, too. If anything, the facial animation would have been better. 

[The Anti-Targ]

Heck, I think if someone reimagines the ending to Mass Effect 3 then the original trilogy could translate well to a TV series.

But the TV adaptation should start with the discovery of the Prothean tech on Mars in 2148 and the discovery that Charon is a mass relay, anchor that point by moving Shepard's birth year coincide with those discoveries, show HER being born and being named. 15 minute prologue, then fast forward to 2183, Shepard and Anderson taking the Normandy through its paces.

[KiDisaster]

I've gone through cycles of obsession and disinterest with Hearthstone ever since it came out. Usually the release of new content gets me excited again and back into the game, and then by the mid-point or so of an expansions life span the meta is stale again and I get bored and play something else. This time though, I don't find myself interested in the new expansion at all and still have no desire to start playing again. 

And what really bugs me is knowing that if I skip this expansion, and then decide to come back when the next one comes out, I'll be a huge disadvantage because I missed out on a whole set of cards that I'd then have to catch up on. I know that's the nature of CCGs, but it sucks

I might have finally reached a point where I'm done with the game, and that makes me weirdly sad.