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Video Games: In the Grim Darkness of licensed Games.


Toth

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I just finished the main story of Last of Us.  I feel like I should go sit in the dark and cry I'm so depressed it's over.  This might be the best game I have played yet.  The writing and voice acting are as good as I've seen in my limited experience with these games.  The developer made pretty much all the right choices as I saw it.  The final action sequence was exactly what I wanted...I'll leave it at that.  Truly great game from start to finish.

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1 hour ago, Inkdaub said:

I just finished the main story of Last of Us.  I feel like I should go sit in the dark and cry I'm so depressed it's over.  This might be the best game I have played yet.  The writing and voice acting are as good as I've seen in my limited experience with these games.  The developer made pretty much all the right choices as I saw it.  The final action sequence was exactly what I wanted...I'll leave it at that.  Truly great game from start to finish.

Definitely one of the best endings of any game I've played.  It was the ending A Quiet Place should have had instead of that dumbass one they went with that felt like it was ripped out of Evil Dead.

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This current playthrough of HoIV reminds me why I love Paradox's games so much, even though their AI's tactical ability has always left much to be desired.

In this version of WII it is now February 1942, and the sides are in a deadlock with almost no changes in territory for the last 6 months. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all allied with the Axis powers prior to hostilities breaking out (the Axis completely controls Europe except for neutral Bulgaria and Portugal, but has lost all of Africa to the allies). This front line stretches from the eastern border of Estonia down to the the Black Sea, just west of Crimea and hasn't moved in over a year of fighting.

The big surprises were when - 1) Japan joined the war early on, and instead of invading China launched a massive assault on the USSR. Now Japan controls all of Siberia and the Soviet Pacific coast. That line has now stabilized at what used to be the western border of Mongolia, all the way up to the Arctic Ocean.  2) Afghanistan sided with the Axis and launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union, which though it didn't capture much territory, drew much needed troops away from the other two fronts.

Both sides currently field 5 million soldiers each (including 100,000 brave Canadians fighting to drive the Axis out of Estonia). And unless the western allies launch an assault on Europe to take some of the pressure off, victory for the Comintern is in no way guaranteed. 

Edit: It's now May 1942. The Afghanistan front has been won, freeing up many Comintern soldiers. But an allied invasion of Sicily has been completely annihilated, and another invasion of Brittany looks to be failing as well. 

Ha. China has joined the war against Japan. It seems the tide is turning.

"sigh" Six up, half a dozen down. And immediately Spain joins the war on the side of the Axis.

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1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

This current playthrough of HoIV reminds me why I love Paradox's games so much, even though their AI's tactical ability has always left much to be desired.

This sounds really, really cool! I would love to get my hands on HoI, but given how badly I was overwhelmed by Hearts of Iron III already, I'm actually very anxious about it. It is the only part of their grand strategy line-up that I could never get into.

Speaking of which. I have one week of holidays before insanity starts once again. So right now I have a rather... peculiar line-up of games right now. I have fully scrapped War Thunder. A shame, really. I liked the game even in the end, but it has been so incredibly frustrating that even with becoming noticeably better, the statistics now rate me as a 'bad player' because thanks to my Japanese endeavour my effectiveness had dropped to 49,5%.

I then actually managed to finally (really, I've been waiting to do this ever since they announced Imperator: Rome!) get around to playing Europa Universalis: Rome. In a way of tribute to my first playthrough of Europa Barbarorum back in High School, I started as Catuvellauni tribe in England. God damn it. I know playing tiny factions in paradox games is always considerably more difficult, but after a couple of attempts in which I still had to get familiar with the mechanics, the race to become a civilized country was awfully tense. Especially the constant threat of barbarians snowballing into ludicrous doomstacks steamrolling you off the map... Well, I did manage get myself to a civilization rating of 50% and rolled out the colonies, consolidating myself as the major power in northern Europe and 24.000 troops in my disposal. I ate the Silurians and the Picts got clobbered into the stone age by Irish barbarians, so there is nobody left to challenge me on the islands. Unfortunately that was when Rome came... I was in a massive alliance with the two major tribes of Gaul, so when Rome attacked the Arverni, I got dragged into the conflict. That was a nightmare. Right away 50 triremes surrounded my territory while I watched my Gallic friends getting overrun by several monstrous 35k stacks. I actually managed to defeat the 40k legionaries that tried to land at Brighton for some reason and then did the mistake of forcing my way onto the continent to support the Gauls. Since the Romans either had horrible commanders or squandered all their troops through bad logistics, I managed to defeat push back three more legions through fighting defensively until one legion pushed through and defeated me as I tried to recover a Gallic settlement. It was then suddenly when I had both a Barbarian uprising in Britain as well as the Roman fleet suddenly returning, successfully landing their legions in Cardiff and then blockading the channel so that I couldn't get my armies back home. That was surprisingly clever of the damned Romans...

It doesn't have all that much depth to it when not playing Rome (at least compared to other Paradox games), but it's still pretty fun. I may get back to an older save and decline the Arverni's call for aid. Not sure what that would get me though. All I can do is barricade myself on my Island while Rome gleefully conquers the entire world. Sooner rather than later they will attack me and without growing much larger, I'm pretty much toast anyway.

On another, absurdly unrelated front... I have been watch a couple of old Top Gear clips on Youtube lately (mostly in the background though, while doing other things, because I tend to do three things at once all the time). And this gave me the idea to look what racing games I have...

... and stumbled upon my Origin library. That consists entirely of free giveaways because I haven't paid for EA games since... ugh... when did Command & Conquer 3 come out? In any case, I found Need for Speed Most Wanted. Not the good one, the weird thing from 2012. I loved the original Most Wanted. My father got it as a birthday present but never touched it, so I played with it instead and a hell of a good time painting, modifying and of course racing the cars there. The police chases were awesome, the races were fair and varied, the arcade controls responsive and awesome. Heck it still looks great even today.

Most Wanted 2012 is pretty as well, I give it that. The rest however... I guess I'm running through open doors there, but the career mode and the car variety is plain boring. What the hell were they thinking just giving you all the cars right from the beginning? So basically the moment I found the Ariel Atom or any kind of Lamborghini just standing around, I instantly won. The rest is just grinding for the points to unlock the boss races. The grind however is supremely frustrating since you can upgrade your car by winning its designated races. This is hilariously easy with a supercar, but when trying out with a mediocre one like a Subaru, even the easiest race becomes a goddamn chore that doesn't allow any mistakes whatsoever (and you will make a whole lot of mistakes because your steering is apparently made out of concrete without any upgrades). I can't remember ever retrying the same race 20 times in the original Most Wanted because I always ended up 2nd, but needed to go 1st to unlock the goddamn nitro boost...

And then there are the police chases. I already absolutely love how the game has zero story whatsoever and doesn't explain you anything and here it comes full circle. The police chases are absurdly hard because you don't have any fun stoppers like construction sites, gas stations or the infamous rolling donut of doom. All you can do... is drive out of their sight. Which is pretty much impossible when you have a slow car (which you have, because those are also is too slow to unlock their upgrades...). And then haphazardly change your car or car color before any of the 20 bazillon cops that are homing straight onto your position get a glace upon you. Oh, if you even get that far! After ending my very first race the game just dropped me at 240km/h in front of a wall. So I crashed and then got immediately swarmed by all the police and was immediately taken in...

... not that it would matter anyway. Because nothing in this game matters. Even when caught, you still get your points for the chase. You also don't get any form of punishment whatsoever (making it clear that getting caught is expected to happen far more than it was in Most Wanted. Apparently the developers knew that their chases were frustratingly hard). So that's it. A game where you just get dropped into a city, get all the cars, don't have to earn money, don't get any punishment for losing to the police and still are expected to care about grinding upgrades. It just boggles my mind.

 

I guess I am becoming a gaming masochist... always loosing all the time... but then again, that's might just be my current mood. I notice that I am really irritated when playing and keep getting impatient and frustrated really fast.

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Been playing a lot of Spider-Man the past few days.  This game isn't fucking around.  There's suicide bombings and bioterror attacks and a dude getting his head stomped.  Not a lot of blood, but holy shit this game has a higher body count than I expected from a Spider-Man game.

Kind of makes me wonder where the Avengers are for all of this, though.  New York City is basically under martial law and Spider-Man is the only hero who can be bothered to show up.

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On 2/2/2019 at 9:51 PM, Toth said:

This sounds really, really cool! I would love to get my hands on HoI, but given how badly I was overwhelmed by Hearts of Iron III already, I'm actually very anxious about it. It is the only part of their grand strategy line-up that I could never get into.

HoI IV is a completely different game from HoI III. I also thought that III was overwhelming, but they rebuilt everything from ground up in IV, and made what I consider to be a much better game.

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4 hours ago, Gorn said:

HoI IV is a completely different game from HoI III. I also thought that III was overwhelming, but they rebuilt everything from ground up in IV, and made what I consider to be a much better game.

Sounds promising. Well, from what I could tell from viewing Youtube videos, it does indeed look somewhat more accessible. I'm still waiting for a bundle though.

Meanwhile... Huh, so in my Top Gear craze I already abandoned NfS Most Wanted 2012 and moved on... by installing Forza Motorsport 6 Apex. The free to play PC version that many reviews regard as a stripped down tech demo. Which I can fully confirm. 12 races is quite a sorry piece of game. But unlike Most Wanted I must say... damn, what a fun game. Yes, I know, I'm abusing the helping systems as much as I can get away with to get all the medals on my first try, but at least I don't have to restart races like an idiot all the time.

I guess it also kinda helps that the Top Gear presenters are narrating parts of the game and even the Stig's digital cousin is in it. I'm still a little unsure how to reach 234 km/h on the Top Gear test track though. 230 km/h was my top speed on the straight lines so far. If I go faster I die...

Also the weekly events seem to be dead. So it's impossible to unlock more than 36 cars from what I can tell...

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On 2/1/2019 at 11:22 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I have to be nearing the end of GTA V. I’ve sunk at least 30 hours into the game, have most of the map revealed and the missions I’m currently doing require me to bounce between all of the characters. I’ve really enjoyed this game, and Trevor is a blast to play with. Beating people to death while just wearing a diaper is hilarious.

Since I’m still fairly new to the current gaming world, can anyone suggest other open world games worth checking out? The aforementioned and RDR2 have both been huge treats.

Have you played Horizon Zero Dawn yet?

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13 hours ago, briantw said:

Been playing a lot of Spider-Man the past few days.  This game isn't fucking around.  There's suicide bombings and bioterror attacks and a dude getting his head stomped.  Not a lot of blood, but holy shit this game has a higher body count than I expected from a Spider-Man game.

Kind of makes me wonder where the Avengers are for all of this, though.  New York City is basically under martial law and Spider-Man is the only hero who can be bothered to show up.

I forget exactly, but Spiderman makes a quip about them being away and mentions what they are doing. 

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On 2/1/2019 at 9:51 AM, Rhom said:

I've been staying up late trying to hammer out the last part of Dragon Quest XI.  Its wonderfully nostalgic and I have a soft spot for the cell shaded graphics.  

I never finished it, but I bet I put 80+ hours in. I always get hooked on leveling and skills (metal monster hunting). 

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20 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I never finished it, but I bet I put 80+ hours in. I always get hooked on leveling and skills (metal monster hunting). 

Yes!  I have been wandering the world and doing too many sidequests.  It really is a beautifully rendered world.  I wasn't sure how I felt about updating the series to climbing and jumping, but it has stayed very true to form for the DQ series.

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3 hours ago, Ferrum Aeternum said:

You should play it. I think it's still on sale? $15 including the expansion.

As downloadable content? 

14 minutes ago, Reny of Storms End said:

You are in for a treat then. 

What's it even about? I read a vague description that was fairly open to interpretation. 

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19 minutes ago, briantw said:

If you're a Spider-Man fan, the PS4 Spidey game is great and it's also open world.  It's also an original story so it's not bogged down by having to adhere to a film narrative.

Hmm. Spider-Man is one of my favorite comic book characters (even though I've only read a few comics in my life), but I've never had any luck with comic book themed games. I will say though that the idea of being able to swing all around the city in an open world settings sounds like a blast, especially after a few drinks. 

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3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hmm. Spider-Man is one of my favorite comic book characters (even though I've only read a few comics in my life), but I've never had any luck with comic book themed games. I will say though that the idea of being able to swing all around the city in an open world settings sounds like a blast, especially after a few drinks. 

Have you played the Batman Arkham games?  Because I'd say that, quality and gameplay-wise, Spider-Man is closest to that.  Obviously you get around the city very differently (Spidey swings and flips around with ease, whereas Batman was all grappling and gliding), but the combat is similar and there are similar stealth elements.  I think the combat in Batman is a little better overall, but Spider-Man's is more versatile and crazy, which makes sense.  

But if Spidey is one of your favorite characters, I'd say this is required playing.  It's a really good game.  Swinging around the city is a blast.  Combat is really fun once it clicks.  The story gets pretty wild, and I think sometimes they kind of skip over little details (for example, at one point you control another character who sees something, but then Spider-Man somehow knows it when you go back to controlling him even though there's no way he could have found it out), but overall it works a lot more than it doesn't.  

It feels like a comic book come to life at its best.

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