Video Games: Shadow of the Rise of the Live Madden War III- HD Remaster

[briantw]

7 hours ago, Fez said:

Agreed. On a related note, as someone who skipped most of the AC games since the Ezio trilogy wrapped up, and only played 14 hours of Origins, the modern day story makes zero sense to me, feels totally unnecessary, and is barely in the game anyway so why bother keeping it.

The main problem with the modern day stuff is that they never actually went anywhere with it.  When the first game came out, it seemed obvious they were building up to a game set in the near future where your character would use all the skills he'd learned from his ancestors to become a modern assassin.  

But then that game just never arrived.  Or maybe it did and they just named it Watch Dogs instead?

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Fallout 76 looks thoroughly mediocre, as expected.

I wouldn't have been so irritated by this if Bethesda hadn't contradicted themselves and, after presenting this as a sort-of side project handled by their recently-founded multiplayer team with their main team working on Starfield in the background, they now seem to be saying that the gap from Fallout 76 to Starfield will be comparable to their previous gaps. So Starfield in 2021 and Elder Scrolls VI in 2024 (being generous on both), and presumably no Fallout 5 until years after that.

That seems quite ridiculous and it also seems to defeat the purpose of them hiring all these extra people and teams and refusing to contract out work like they did for New Vegas. I thought the idea was they could handle multiple projects by themselves and now that seems to be not the case.

[A True Kaniggit]

Ugh. You know when you're playing a video game and run into a glitch that prevents you from completing a quest? So you look up the glitch on the internet to see if there is a way around it and find that the first mention of it was 1 day after the games release 3 years ago, but it was never fixed. Currently talking about the Castle glitch of Fallout 4.

Sigh.

Fucking Bethesda.

[briantw]

51 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Ugh. You know when you're playing a video game and run into a glitch that prevents you from completing a quest? So you look up the glitch on the internet to see if there is a way around it and find that the first mention of it was 1 day after the games release 3 years ago, but it was never fixed. Currently talking about the Castle glitch of Fallout 4.

Sigh.

Fucking Bethesda.

They probably just expected the community to patch it out since their business model is to release half-finished games and let the modders fix it.

Can't imagine trying to play one of their games on consoles where that's not an option.

[RumHam]

6 hours ago, briantw said:

They probably just expected the community to patch it out since their business model is to release half-finished games and let the modders fix it.

Can't imagine trying to play one of their games on consoles where that's not an option.

I've played all the big ones since Oblivion on console it really wasn't that bad. The only game breaking bug I ever encountered was in the thieves guild quest in Skyrim. I finally finished that quest on the switch version without incident a few months ago. 

They probably should consider adding the console to the console versions so when people get stuck they can (usually) cheat their way out of it. 

[Red Tiger]

Alright, close to finishing Witcher 3 and it's DLC, just in time for Soul Calibur 6. 

[RumHam]

PS4 people may want to set your messages to friends only, supposedly there's a glitched message going around that can brick your console.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/14/17974946/ps4-message-hack-factory-reset

[KingintheNorth4]

I beat my high score on Subway Surfers yesterday. Have over 11 million points.

On Warframe, I like playing as Gara. Her mass vitrify ability is especially useful on defense missions.

[Toth]

For a change I allowed myself some relaxing time on Saturday. And admittedly, not working at all for a single day was a god's end for my mind. But in any case, I've spent the evening continuing my Stellaris New Horizons playthrough with the United Federation of Planets.

... and I screwed up fairly badly. For shits and giggles I agreed to the Sheliak war against the Breen and after 15 years they were utterly defeated. The Breen were relatively powerful in terms of territory, but their navy was busy subduing the Tholians by the time the Federation invaded them, so the resistance was actually fairly small and I lost no ships at all. I can't really shrug off this feeling that wars in this Stellaris patch just take far too long even if you are hilariously superior... This war also saw the christening in battle of the USS Tirpitz (strange name for a Federation vessel...), which happens to be my first Souvereign class assault cruiser. And it made such a decent job that I ordered two more afterwards (I researched a better dilithium refinement method that boosted my fleet capacity significantly).

In any case... I won... and that made things worse... again. And I'm stupid. I am playing with just two save-files. One called "Federation" that is my basic save for peace-time and one called "War" that I only use when, well, I'm at war. So I had saved on "Federation" before the war with the Breen broke out, used "War" throughout it and when everything looked fine after my victory and I sent out the invitations to the Breen puppet regime and their allies to join my coalition, I overwrote "Federation".

Immediately afterwards the Breen and their allies refused, despite having just lost an "Impose Ideology" war. And then suddenly I get about 20 messages of factions cancelling their migration treaty. I'm stumped. And look and see that I have generated a threat of 200 in the entire galaxy. Everyone hates me. Fu***! How the hell did that happen? And then suddenly I notice that half the Breen confederacy is gone, swallowed up by the Sheliak and the Lurians, one of my vassals. I then remembered that I found it oddly strange how systems conquered by Starfleet ended up under the jurisdiction of these two. And then I remembered that the Sheliak, before getting 'freedom' forced upon by the Deltans, used to be a hegemonial empire that had rivaled the Breen and claimed many of their systems for as long as I can remember. Heck, the Lurians still are 'slaving despots' with a similarly bellingerent attitude. It seems that despite the main wargoal being 'impose ideology', the claims of my allies still allowed them to conquer a huge chunk of the Breen territory, effectively scaring the entire galaxy about what my little coalition just did. Well... that sucks... now I have to make sure not to attack anyone for the next century or so until things cool off. Except the Borg of course. Last thing I did was gathering all my fleets at their border.

Interestingly enough though, the Borg pulled back from their invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. They made a status quo peace with the Lydians (that leaves the Lydians bordering extinction by being reduced to a single colony). They then took their fleets back into the Delta Quadrant, immediately declaring war on the Kazon. I'm not saying I'm going to miss those suckers.

Meanwhile the Klingons made a terrific comeback. Back when I started this game I mentioned how the Klingons were invaded and crippled by the Suliban early on, but then formed a coalition with Husnock and managed to kick the Suliban out. In the wake of the Federation's entirely pointless victory over the Romulans, the Klingons now saw their chance to strike at the battered pointy-eared bastards, carving out a huge chunk of the Romulan Empire with fairly unsettling ease. While I was dealing with the annoying image losses of the Breen war, the Klingons then turned their attention to the still quite powerful Son'a and Orions to my south and it looks like they are sweeping through them with just as little resistance. Damn it. At this rate I'm dealing with a really powerful Klingon Empire soon...

[Iskaral Pust]

I just noticed that there is now a full version of Civ VI available for iPad and iPhone.  Full (over)price is $60, but it gets discounted heavily as they are trying to find the right pricing level.  Currently available for $24 (but I think that expires on 10/16).  There is no discount currently for owners of the PC version.

You can play the first 60 turns for free as a trial demo, but then you have to pay the price as an in-app purchase.  

I just jumped ahead and bought it immediately to get the discounted price now.  I’ll get around to playing it soon. 

[Corvinus85]

I'm having fun with the story missions of the Legacy Pack on XCOM2 War of the Chosen. Did the first two sets with Central, now started the one with Shen. A little disappointed that there isn't a set of missions that led to obtaining the Avenger in the first place.

Also, War of the Chosen is currently 40% off on steam, for anyone interested. @Werthead

[Werthead]

8 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I'm having fun with the story missions of the Legacy Pack on XCOM2 War of the Chosen. Did the first two sets with Central, now started the one with Shen. A little disappointed that there isn't a set of missions that led to obtaining the Avenger in the first place.

Also, War of the Chosen is currently 40% off on steam, for anyone interested. @Werthead

Aha!

Just finished my Valkyria Chronicles replay and was looking for a new game. Nice one!

ETA: Although that's still not a brilliant price for it, but getting better.

[Gorn]

Recently finished the single-player campaign for Titanfall 2, since I needed a palate cleanser after finished the Tides of Numenera. It was really good - kinda short, but the gameplay was really innovative and amazing. No other FPS that I've played recently offered so much originality and freedom.

I've now started Divinity: Original Sin - Definitive Edition, and I already love it. Now I understand why it was the most successful of recent party-based, isometric RPGs in terms of both sales and critical recognition. There is so much thought put into both the gameplay and the writing, so much freedom to play it your own way and to experiment, that it is truly amazing. When compared to it, Tides of Numenera feels like a dour, overwritten mess, and Pillars of Eternity doesn't fare much better. Characters are interesting, almost every dialogue or item description contains a joke, and game design is focused on the player having maximum fun. I can't wait to finish it and to start the sequel.

[briantw]

Man, the map in Odyssey is just absurdly huge.  I'm around eight hours in and I haven't even fully explored the second area the game sends you to, which is just a small fraction of the overall map.  There must be hundreds of hours of content in this game.  

[Fez]

3 hours ago, briantw said:

Man, the map in Odyssey is just absurdly huge.  I'm around eight hours in and I haven't even fully explored the second area the game sends you to, which is just a small fraction of the overall map.  There must be hundreds of hours of content in this game.  

There really is. I'm 30 hours in and have only been to about a fifth of the map, and that's even with me only doing main story and "gold-plated" side quests. I haven't done any bounties, any repeating sidequests, and I've only completed locations that I directly stumbled across on my way to something else. And even with this playstyle I think I'll hit 100 hours easily; and its a good 100 hours too.

Doing everything probably really is a 300+ hour game, but I wouldn't recommend it. The combat is fun, but I don't think its good enough to drive that much gameplay. Its the writing and the RPG elements that really propel the game.

[mcbigski]

On 10/15/2018 at 2:09 PM, Corvinus said:

A little disappointed that there isn't a set of missions that led to obtaining the Avenger in the first place.

Also, War of the Chosen is currently 40% off on steam, for anyone interested. @Werthead

Was i just imagining that was covered in the DLC for the previous game? I dont remember for sure but i thought somewhere they made a reference to I think it was Operation Slingshot.

[Corvinus85]

33 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Was i just imagining that was covered in the DLC for the previous game? I dont remember for sure but i thought somewhere they made a reference to I think it was Operation Slingshot.

If it is, I've not played it.

[Week]

Playing through the Witcher 3 -- goddamn this game is huge ... too many hours spent galloping/yachting towards "?"s -- when should I buy/install Expansion packs? After completing the game or prior to leaving Skellige? I should say that I'm in the midst of questing in Skellige at level 24 or so.

[Toth]

I am thinking about engaging the Borg this weekend. So here are a few more screens that I had made from my Stellaris game, but somewhat forgot to post the last time. Not much in terms of things happening, mostly me bragging with my fleets.

One of the engagements with the Breen: http://fs1.directupload.net/images/181018/k4estmxc.jpg

I tried to get a good shot the whole time but no matter what I tried, there was never any good one among them. This one is one of the better shots, but still pretty bad. With a single Ambassador class shown to kick some ass.

Meanwhile my Souvereign class ships look really slick: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/181018/fr6cywaf.jpg

Gotta admit, with more and more of these creating the backbone of my fleet, I kinda feel reminded of Star Trek Armada. Good memories, good memories... Also strange feeling with the USS Gibraltar being NCC-130 and the USS Endurance being NCC-131. On one hand, it's still far too low a number, one the other hand I can only half believe that I already built 130 ships since the founding of the Federation.

In any case, with my super modern Souvereigns I'm now forming super modern fleets to take on the Borg: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/181018/koapivqk.jpg

With all of them converging at the heavily fortified Lowder system at the edge of Borg space: http://fs5.directupload.net/images/181018/lzngswfz.jpg

I'm however a bit concerned about the possibility of the Borg ignoring my attack fleet and invade my territory instead. Therefore I still have two fleets remaining behind. These are at clean-up duty in the core systems anyway: http://fs1.directupload.net/images/181018/t2f9aul3.jpg

[Werthead]

Enjoying the new Tactical missions for XCOM2. They're huge: 4 campaigns, 7 missions per campaign, for a 28-mission, narrative-based campaign, including maps repurposed from Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within. Quite a lot of content for free.

2 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Was i just imagining that was covered in the DLC for the previous game? I dont remember for sure but i thought somewhere they made a reference to I think it was Operation Slingshot.

Nope. Slingshot was the storyline about destroying an alien mid-range command ship over China. It crashed and was destroyed. In retrospect XCOM hiding it and it turning out to be the Avenger would have been cool though.