Video Games: Keanu Re3ves Is Breathtaking

[A True Kaniggit]

Son of a Bitch.

Ok. I'll admit it. Mistakes were made. MAJOR mistakes were made.

I've established a beachhead centered around Norfolk. Over 500,000 infantry are currently in the pocket. 

But I didn't leave a garrison behind for Bermuda! And the U.S. slipped (wait. snuck isn't a word? WTF?) in an invasion force. The beachhead's aircover is gone until I retake Bermuda, which is gonna take about 2 months. Good luck you brave souls.

[Jace, Extat]

14 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Son of a Bitch.

Ok. I'll admit it. Mistakes were made. MAJOR mistakes were made.

I've established a beachhead centered around Norfolk. Over 500,000 infantry are currently in the pocket. 

But I didn't leave a garrison behind for Bermuda! And the U.S. slipped (wait. snuck isn't a word? WTF?) in an invasion force. The beachhead's aircover is gone until I retake Bermuda, which is gonna take about 2 months. Good luck you brave souls.

this would be a good time to give them that Mustafa Kemal speech I mentioned earlier.

ETA: I'm really getting impatient for a Turkey national tree. They've had it on their list forever. I want Spain and Greece (and Bulgaria!) too but Turkey needs to be able to get into the fight.

[Rhom]

I just noticed today that Detroit: Become Human is free this month for PlayStation Plus.  I moved it to my library.  Dunno if I'll ever get around to playing it, but its there.  I remember hearing good things about it.

[Fez]

I re-subbed to FFXIV. Such is life.

I also stopped Pathfinder: Kingmaker again. It's a good game, now that it's bug free, but the mechanics and writing just aren't fun enough to hold up how long a game it is. I'm 90 hours and only in the middle of Act IV of VII.

Still playing Three Kingdoms: Total War, though I still haven't finished off a game. I legit was going to lose my Gong Du game; everyone hated me and I was at war on too many fronts. I started and eventually gave up a Kong Rong game too. I was rich as hell with my highly developed starting area and I had gone the long way round to colonize about 1/3rd of the southland. Unfortunately Yuan Shao was an insane powerhouse who snowballed, and was able to take advantage of game mechanics since Kong Rong can't declare himself Emperor.

I was in a coalition with a surprisingly powerful Zhang Yan and Sun Ce and some nobodies at war with already super-power Yuan Shao (who had a decently powerful Liu Bei and some nobodies as vassals). The only other power was LuBu, who took over the Dong faction at some point. When the Three Kingdoms event triggered, it was Yuan Shao, and Zhang Yan and Sun Ce, who became Emperors. Since Emperors can't be in coalitions, Zhang Yan was booted out and I was still in a coalition with Sun Ce. However, Zhang Yan was strong for how he usually does but not actually that powerful, and the very next turn he abdicated to Yuan Shao. Meanwhile, my relationship with Sun Ce was going poorly and it was my troops on the front line everywhere. I just wasn't in a position to win.

So now I'm Gongsun Zan and I've got my revenge. I've 206 and I've wiped out Yuan Shao and united everything north of the Yellow River and am already Emperor (Liu Bei and Lady Wu are the other two). I now know the joy of cheap, powerful cavalry armies and am wrecking face (and I look forward to getting and developing Ma Teng's horse pastures as well; I've seen screenshots of folks with 0 cost, 0 maintenance cavalry). 

 

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I just noticed today that Detroit: Become Human is free this month for PlayStation Plus.  I moved it to my library.  Dunno if I'll ever get around to playing it, but its there.  I remember hearing good things about it.

Man, that game has all the same problem as the rest of those Xander Cage products. Looks great, starts out real interesting like and I actually enjoy the controls. But then it turns to poopy.

Give it a roll, I suggest. Sit down with a good glass of bourbon or whiskey on the rocks and watch a promising idea fly off the rails. I didn't finish it, and I can't imagine more than 12 people did, but I don't regret playing it.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Man, that game has all the same problem as the rest of those Xander Cage products. Looks great, starts out real interesting like and I actually enjoy the controls. But then it turns to poopy.

Give it a roll, I suggest. Sit down with a good glass of bourbon or whiskey on the rocks and watch a promising idea fly off the rails. I didn't finish it, and I can't imagine more than 12 people did, but I don't regret playing it.

And there's nothing wrong with that game completion rates in general are quite low. The interesting thing about trophies and achievements for games is that when there is a trophy or achievement for finishing a game we know exactly what % of people started the game but have not finished it. So if you have a gander as the trophy list you'll be able to report to the group what % of people really did persevere and finish the game. I expect you will be in the majority on that, and it might just be completionist gamers who went right to the end.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

I re-subbed to FFXIV. Such is life.

I also stopped Pathfinder: Kingmaker again. It's a good game, now that it's bug free, but the mechanics and writing just aren't fun enough to hold up how long a game it is. I'm 90 hours and only in the middle of Act IV of VII.

Still playing Three Kingdoms: Total War, though I still haven't finished off a game. I legit was going to lose my Gong Du game; everyone hated me and I was at war on too many fronts. I started and eventually gave up a Kong Rong game too. I was rich as hell with my highly developed starting area and I had gone the long way round to colonize about 1/3rd of the southland. Unfortunately Yuan Shao was an insane powerhouse who snowballed, and was able to take advantage of game mechanics since Kong Rong can't declare himself Emperor.

I was in a coalition with a surprisingly powerful Zhang Yan and Sun Ce and some nobodies at war with already super-power Yuan Shao (who had a decently powerful Liu Bei and some nobodies as vassals). The only other power was LuBu, who took over the Dong faction at some point. When the Three Kingdoms event triggered, it was Yuan Shao, and Zhang Yan and Sun Ce, who became Emperors. Since Emperors can't be in coalitions, Zhang Yan was booted out and I was still in a coalition with Sun Ce. However, Zhang Yan was strong for how he usually does but not actually that powerful, and the very next turn he abdicated to Yuan Shao. Meanwhile, my relationship with Sun Ce was going poorly and it was my troops on the front line everywhere. I just wasn't in a position to win.

So now I'm Gongsun Zan and I've got my revenge. I've 206 and I've wiped out Yuan Shao and united everything north of the Yellow River and am already Emperor (Liu Bei and Lady Wu are the other two). I now know the joy of cheap, powerful cavalry armies and am wrecking face (and I look forward to getting and developing Ma Teng's horse pastures as well; I've seen screenshots of folks with 0 cost, 0 maintenance cavalry). 

 

I finished my Sun Jian campaign this weekend. Played Records mode, which I think I prefer over Romance. It took me 227 turns out of which about 90 were after I reached emperor rank. The late game really was a fairly challenging grind. I had a huge territory, but my main rival, oddly enough Gongsun Zan had many vassals, stretching from west to east, so the frontline was literally from the western edge of the map to nearly the eastern edge, just east of where Cao Cao starts. I had to deal with incursions from all over, and as usual the AI abuses the forced march stance, so my main strategy was to ambush the fuckers. Eventually I made a big push towards his capital with 7 armies, crushing everything in my path. I finished the campaign with Sun Ce as leader, though the end game film praised Sun Jian for his achievement.  

[Corvinus85]

Looks like the next TW: Three Kingdoms DLC will be an alternate campaign covering the War of the Eight Princes.

 

[Toth]

Thanks to my successful returning to my writing projects I had a sudden craving for a Fantasy RPG and found one in the depths of my Steam library. So I'm currently downloading "Shadow of Mordor" which will probably take me a few days. Enough time to really flesh out my current chapters. XD

[Rhom]

36 minutes ago, Toth said:

Thanks to my successful returning to my writing projects I had a sudden craving for a Fantasy RPG and found one in the depths of my Steam library. So I'm currently downloading "Shadow of Mordor" which will probably take me a few days. Enough time to really flesh out my current chapters. XD

Does this really check the box as an RPG?  I know we've had the discussion before on "what makes an rpg" but I really do wonder.  It seems this would be about as much of an RPG as the most recent God of War where you allocate stats and choose your abilities... but the game is still mostly an adventure game to me.   

[Toth]

25 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Does this really check the box as an RPG?  I know we've had the discussion before on "what makes an rpg" but I really do wonder.  It seems this would be about as much of an RPG as the most recent God of War where you allocate stats and choose your abilities... but the game is still mostly an adventure game to me.   

Well, as far as I have heard it's "edgy ghost Batman murdering his way through Mordor" and pretty much ripping off the Arkham gameplay. So yes, action game is probably more appropriate.

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

Does this really check the box as an RPG?  I know we've had the discussion before on "what makes an rpg" but I really do wonder.  It seems this would be about as much of an RPG as the most recent God of War where you allocate stats and choose your abilities... but the game is still mostly an adventure game to me.   

It's an action-adventure game with an RPG style abilities tree.

[Toth]

Okay, wow, I'm impressed that it actually finished downloading just as I was about to go to bed. So... well, so now I'm about 20 minutes into the game and am already stunned speechless at the bloody pace of the 'plot'. It really starts out with "Okay, so you died, but now you are bound to this ghost who gives you awesome powers, now go kill all of Sauron's captains!" and drops you off pretty much right in an orc camp.

It's undoubtedly very pretty and stylish, but man, what an impatient game. At the moment it feels like the story is barely tolerated as a means to justify the gameplay. Which is odd, given that everything I had read of it the story theoretically should ooze awesomeness. Granted, more in the second game, but still.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Toth said:

Thanks to my successful returning to my writing projects I had a sudden craving for a Fantasy RPG and found one in the depths of my Steam library. So I'm currently downloading "Shadow of Mordor" which will probably take me a few days. Enough time to really flesh out my current chapters. XD

I really loved what this game tried to do, but I think the awesomeness of the Nemesis System RPG thing (aka "Orc Politics Simulator") was completely let down by the rest of the game, which was so painfully generic it physically hurt, and the fucking terrible use of Tolkien lore, the only benefit of which is that it probably impacted on Amazon's decision to set the new TV show around the same ideas (but hopefully executed a lot better).

[Toth]

10 hours ago, Werthead said:

I really loved what this game tried to do, but I think the awesomeness of the Nemesis System RPG thing (aka "Orc Politics Simulator") was completely let down by the rest of the game, which was so painfully generic it physically hurt, and the fucking terrible use of Tolkien lore, the only benefit of which is that it probably impacted on Amazon's decision to set the new TV show around the same ideas (but hopefully executed a lot better).

Okay, well, I have stumbled quite easily about the lore complaints. That timeline is all wonky with the Black Gate and Minas Ithil having been conquered a thousand years before the game, as well as the Nazgul, while nice to have them fleshed out, couldn't include Helm Hammerhand and Isildur due to them being mentioned earlier (though the game appears to justify that by claiming that their rings can change ownership). For that matter, before I read the lore complaints I myself took it for granted that the Nazgul carry their rings with them, given that they should be the source of their power. Apparently Sauron keeps them to prevent the thing that happens in the game with random shmucks taking their rings and taking their places. Ah and then the whole elven ghost possession thing that is hard to connect with Tolkien's afterlife dynamics (for that matter, what did Sauron even try to do by summoning Celebrimbor?!? He wasn't exactly in need of a bunch of new rings and even if he was, he is Sauron, he could just as well make them himself instead of unleashing a severely pissed off ringmaker).

In any case, that's just what I read in addition to my own observation. I see the game mostly as a power fantasy fanfic and will judge it accordingly. The trailers for Shadow of War were already enough to pleasantly remind me of "The Fourth Age: Total War" Mod for Rome Total War in that there are human-led orc armies.

Has anyone else ever played "The Fourth Age"? I just now found that this "A new shadow" storyline was actually based on Tolkien's cliff notes about a Fourth Age sequel involving a doomsday cult worshiping Sauron. Though the game put more focus on the Kingdom of Adunabar founded by Gondorian settlers in Mordor declaring themselves independent. Playing them in the campaign was just so incredibly hard, with the Reunited Kingdom having seemingly an endless amount of doomstacks marching up the Black gate every turn while you have to deal with scarce resources and a tiny population. It was such an epic last stand, especially in how I started out trying a good Adunabar campaign by suppressing the dark cults and refusing to take advantage of evil sorcery, but in my increasing desperation had to resort to settling orcs in Mordor again and use them as meatshields for my irreplaceable human armies.

[briantw]

11 hours ago, Toth said:

Okay, well, I have stumbled quite easily about the lore complaints. That timeline is all wonky with the Black Gate and Minas Ithil having been conquered a thousand years before the game, as well as the Nazgul, while nice to have them fleshed out, couldn't include Helm Hammerhand and Isildur due to them being mentioned earlier (though the game appears to justify that by claiming that their rings can change ownership). For that matter, before I read the lore complaints I myself took it for granted that the Nazgul carry their rings with them, given that they should be the source of their power. Apparently Sauron keeps them to prevent the thing that happens in the game with random shmucks taking their rings and taking their places. Ah and then the whole elven ghost possession thing that is hard to connect with Tolkien's afterlife dynamics (for that matter, what did Sauron even try to do by summoning Celebrimbor?!? He wasn't exactly in need of a bunch of new rings and even if he was, he is Sauron, he could just as well make them himself instead of unleashing a severely pissed off ringmaker).

In any case, that's just what I read in addition to my own observation. I see the game mostly as a power fantasy fanfic and will judge it accordingly. The trailers for Shadow of War were already enough to pleasantly remind me of "The Fourth Age: Total War" Mod for Rome Total War in that there are human-led orc armies.

Has anyone else ever played "The Fourth Age"? I just now found that this "A new shadow" storyline was actually based on Tolkien's cliff notes about a Fourth Age sequel involving a doomsday cult worshiping Sauron. Though the game put more focus on the Kingdom of Adunabar founded by Gondorian settlers in Mordor declaring themselves independent. Playing them in the campaign was just so incredibly hard, with the Reunited Kingdom having seemingly an endless amount of doomstacks marching up the Black gate every turn while you have to deal with scarce resources and a tiny population. It was such an epic last stand, especially in how I started out trying a good Adunabar campaign by suppressing the dark cults and refusing to take advantage of evil sorcery, but in my increasing desperation had to resort to settling orcs in Mordor again and use them as meatshields for my irreplaceable human armies.

Yeah, you pretty much just have to power through the stupid story bits and just focus on the orc murdering.  The nemesis system is what the game is really about.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 7/15/2019 at 2:10 PM, Fez said:

I re-subbed to FFXIV. Such is life.

I also stopped Pathfinder: Kingmaker again. It's a good game, now that it's bug free, but the mechanics and writing just aren't fun enough to hold up how long a game it is. I'm 90 hours and only in the middle of Act IV of VII.

 

 

I have a game with Pathfinder going. I like it a lot, but it is a bit much at times. I'm not the best at it, and sometimes have to turn the fights down to easy to get through them. Some people play these types of games much better than me. But it is fun to drop in and out of from time to time. I'm only in chapter 2, by the way.

[Leofric]

8 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I have a game with Pathfinder going. I like it a lot, but it is a bit much at times. I'm not the best at it, and sometimes have to turn the fights down to easy to get through them. Some people play these types of games much better than me. But it is fun to drop in and out of from time to time. I'm only in chapter 2, by the way.

I just started playing my first game in Pathfinder this week.  Still in Chapter 1, but the fog just cleared revealing the Stag Lord's location, so I can try the final fight whenever I feel ready. Still have 55 days left to do it, so no rush, can explore more of the Stolen Lands and level up some before I give him a try.     

[Spockydog]

Doing some research on the ethics and increasingly poor business practices of video game companies, and how this affects the relationship with their customers communities.

Creative Assembly seem a good example of turning the nightmare of launches like Rome II and Attila into the triumph that is the TotalWarhammer Series. 

Any other heroes or villains?

 

 

[Fez]

3 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I have a game with Pathfinder going. I like it a lot, but it is a bit much at times. I'm not the best at it, and sometimes have to turn the fights down to easy to get through them. Some people play these types of games much better than me. But it is fun to drop in and out of from time to time. I'm only in chapter 2, by the way.

 

3 hours ago, Leofric said:

I just started playing my first game in Pathfinder this week.  Still in Chapter 1, but the fog just cleared revealing the Stag Lord's location, so I can try the final fight whenever I feel ready. Still have 55 days left to do it, so no rush, can explore more of the Stolen Lands and level up some before I give him a try.     

Don't get me wrong. I really liked Pathfinder for long time; the problem is the game is even longer than that. I know some people like endless games, but I like to eventually get to a conclusion and this game was no where near one. And in the mean time, since I was level 12, my party tactics had pretty well-settled into a smooth grove that didn't change much.