Video Games: Gears of Borderlands

[RumHam]

Hollow Knight is a bit of a slow start. Until you get more movement options getting around is mildly annoying. 

[briantw]

Just now, RumHam said:

Hollow Knight is a bit of a slow start. Until you get more movement options getting around is mildly annoying. 

Yeah, that's how I felt as well.  

Just generally speaking, I think it takes too long in Hollow Knight for your character to get to a proper power level to contend with some of the challenges the game throws at you early on.  Like that fucking Mantis fight.

[Rhom]

9 minutes ago, briantw said:

Yeah, that's how I felt as well.  

Just generally speaking, I think it takes too long in Hollow Knight for your character to get to a proper power level to contend with some of the challenges the game throws at you early on.  Like that fucking Mantis fight.

Gah!  Yes!!!!!  I don't remember how many times I had to fight Mantis!!!!!

I wound up just sort of getting lost not long after that and sort of lost interest.  The game itself was certainly beautiful though.

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

Wow. It's not for everyone but I didn't expect this level of distaste for it. Out of curiosity, how far in did you get before quitting?

Killed 3 bosses. It was like pulling teeth (no lie, I was legitimately wondering if I should go mow the lawn). I've concluded this year that I just don't like 2d unless it's fighting games and Metroidvania isn't for me either.

[Ramsay B.]

39 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I wound up just sort of getting lost not long after that and sort of lost interest.  The game itself was certainly beautiful though.

That’s exactly what happened to me. I was just going in circles and fighting the same enemies. I got annoyed and gave up. 

[The Anti-Targ]

Death Stranding is getting some really good reviews. Given I've only played MGS Ground Zeroes to completion among all the MGS games I'm not sure I will get this. But I was curious about the one negative review on Metacritic so far specifically with this highlighted comment:

Quote

Death Stranding is an irredeemable piece of garbage that should serve as a warning to publishers who give developers carte blanche to create ‘art’.

The funny thing about this comment is that Kojima rather infamously (from my perspective) has been recorded as saying he doesn't see himself as an artist nor does he see video games as art. Though, I dunno, Kojima does seem to be a pretty eccentric dude and maybe he made that comment more for the troll value than as a reflection of his actual opinion.

I watched a Youtube about it and one thing that is pretty interesting (and a bit of a twist on the Souls approach) with player interactions is that things you do in your world will also appear on other people's worlds but players will never directly interact. So the game is both a shared as well as very solitary experience. Conceptually very interesting, and appealing to me since I really am not big on multiplayer (I played Demon's Souls almost entirely in soul form so that I would never be invaded, and if I was in body form I played offline). But not sure it is entirely enough for me to be convinced to buy it.

[RumHam]

I was really surprised so many people gave up on Hollow Knight. Then I remembered I bought that game twice. I Gave up on my steam save file after losing a lot of "souls" or whatever they call the currency. Then I got the Switch version when it came out and beat it on there. It really is an amazing game. That maybe would have benefited from some difficulty sliders. (movement speed, enemy hp, jump floatyness) 

Edit: though I just remembered a lot of the reason I gave up was that I bought Hollow Knight and Dead Cells on the same day like  a moron. 

[red snow]

On 11/1/2019 at 12:55 PM, Inkdaub said:

I'm borderline obsessed with all three of these so I'd say you did well.

I'm looking forward to all three of them. Plan is to pick up Uncharted 4 and the stand-alone one in sales soon as I was a massive fan of them back in the PS3 era.

[Raja]

Ahh, Red Dead is stunning & I'm only running it on a 1070

[Luzifer's right hand]

15 hours ago, Raja said:

Ahh, Red Dead is stunning & I'm only running it on a 1070

I'm looking forward to playing it. I have yet to finish my first Outer Worlds playthrough though.

[Inkdaub]

Well I just pre-ordered Fallen Order.  I hope it's good and fun.

I still haven't loaded the RDR2 that came with my PS4.

[aceluby]

Hollow Knight is a great game.  Super frustrating at times though.  Never did actually finish it or go back for the 3rd DLC.  All I had left were optional bosses, the ridiculous vampire boss, and the final boss' extra forms.

1 hour ago, Inkdaub said:

Well I just pre-ordered Fallen Order.  I hope it's good and fun.

I'm taking a few days off to sink my teeth into it.  Gameplay looks awesome and the initial reviews have been pretty stellar.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Inkdaub said:

I still haven't loaded the RDR2 that came with my PS4.

I want to love RDR2 because it looks so great, but its a game that feels like an open world RPG, but its not. Its hard to get my head around.

[felice]

On 10/13/2019 at 6:58 PM, felice said:

I'm looking forward to this: https://www.fig.co/campaigns/chorus-an-adventure-musical/about - an interactive musical from Bioware's former lead writer.

There's a playable proof-of-concept available now: https://summerfallstudios.itch.io/chorus-concept

[Caligula_K3]

Hollow Knight is very fun, and its art and soundtrack are gorgeous, but yes, very frustrating at times and definitely a slow start. If there's one design decision that I completely disagree with, it's the decision to make navigating so dependent on the map while making maps pretty hard to get and also needing an additional item to see where you are on the map. I got the hang of all that about halfway through the game, but at the beginning it was a real slog.

As for the Mantis Knights... I think that boss battle is either optional or not necessary until later in the game. I didn't even find them until I was doing a lot of backtracking and by the time I did, they were definitely much easier than what others have experienced. So if you're having trouble with them, come back later!

Right now the internet is abuzz with drama because the new Pokemon game is coming out next week and many past Pokemon are not in the game. Now, I haven't played a Pokemon game since Pokemon Gold for the gameboy colour (unless you count Pokemon Go and Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, the remake of Red/Blue that came out last year) but I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what the fuss is about. How many players are there whose enjoyment of these games is dependent on bringing in all the past Pokemon you've caught? Even if you are one of these players, why all the outrage? Nobody's lied to you; the developer's been upfront about the decision for months and why they did it. If this is such a big deal to you, don't buy the game or wait for reviews. The internet is such a silly and scarily angry place.   

[Inigima]

I think the Mantis Lords (in the Mantis Village in Fungal Wastes) are completely optional, assuming that's what we're talking about. (If it's the Traitor Lordj in Queen's Gardens, that's a different fight, and it's optional too but it is bullshit --it used to be very easy and they patched it to make it harder and now I hate the fight. I recommend cheesing it with a combination of Flukenest and Shaman Stone charms.) You can get to Deepnest via the Mantis Lords, but there are other ways in and out of it.

I am genuinely surprised that people have so much trouble with the Mantis Lords. I am not sure if I have ever died to them in 3 or 4 plays. Maybe once. It's a very learnable fight, and I for sure beat it on the first try. (That's not to judge -- I find people have wildly varying amounts of trouble with a lot of the bosses.) If you tackle them early, though, you won't have a high-level Nail and the fight will be much longer. If you are having trouble learning the fight, Quick Focus is a big a help so you can heal more easily.

[Fez]

I never actually fought the Mantis Lords (other than the Traitor Lord). I missed them entirely for a long while on my first playthrough, and, by the time I did find them, based on the lore it just seemed wrong to kill them. So I always avoided them.

Which means I don't know if their fight is bullshit; but I'd be surprised if it is, very few of the boss fights in Hollow Knight are actually bullshit (though the post-patch Traitor Lord is one of them).

[Inigima]

You won't actually kill them. They salute you and then all the mantises are friendly.

[mcbigski]

More of a statement than a question, but feedback might be helpful.  I upgraded my PC from 12gb to 16gb ram yesterday.  When I closed up the box and restarted it, I kept hearing a thumping sound inside.  Turns out the video card was sagging downward and the fan was getting caught on the data cable from the CD Rom drive that connects just below the video card to the motherboard.  Haven't used the CD Rom drive in years so I yanked that cable and unplugged it from the power supply too.  (Figured that would be marginally less power and waste heat once disconnected so why not.)   Running the video card with only one of two fans operating seemed like a much worse idea.

My previous round of upgrades was a few years back putting in a new video card that was significantly heavier than the previous one, along with a new power supply.  I'm guessing it was the weight of the video card that has been slowing warping the mount on the back of the case where you screw it in.  I took all the relevant parts out, remounted and tightened them back up for what its worth but still the card was tilted down somewhat.  Is it worth it to try to replace the piece at the back of the case where you fasten the screws to hold the video card?  Case is about 9 yrs old so possibly hard to find the appropriate part but maybe they're standardized.

Or if I wanted to remount the DVD drive, I could also look at propping up the opposite end of the video card.  I'm thinking take a pencil (should be nicely non conductive) and saw it to the proper length to push the opposite edge of the video card back up with the eraser end and set the other end against the bottom of the case.  Is that a good work around or a very bad idea?

Alas even with extra RAM it's still taking Stellaris about a minute to cycle through one late game month on a medium size map.  Makes it hard to get those late game crisis achievements!

[Toth]

I'm a goddamn idiot. I am constantly short of time, but now my small Star Wars fad has caused me to wonder whether playing a bit of a space sim could be right. And just at that moment Steam notified me that X4 Foundations is on a discount due to its first expansion releasing soon. And damn I want to play it... but at least the system requirements sobered me up a bit. The game seems to be a sure way to melt my laptop.

For anyone who doesn't know, the X-series is a long-running German series of sandbox space sims with high focus on economics. They are actually the most fun when playing as a space trucker who buys and sells stuff until he makes enough of a buck to start buying other freighters and space stations until he owns a veritable little trade empire that finances you fooling around with capital ships. The newest one was basically a 30 people studio's attempt to one-up Star Citizen and... I must say, it doesn't look too shabby in that regard:

I read one comment about how you could theoretically wander around and enter all ships parked at a lot. One dude was exploring some NPC's ship when that suddenly launched, bringing him god knows where and he had to have his own ship follow him on autopilot for retrieval. XD

I guess I would be better off removing the dust from my copy of X3 Terran Conflict. It even got Terrans in it! That's the part I'm still sore about them removing. The return of the Terrans was such an impressive game-changer in the story.

(For all wondering what I'm getting at: In the X-universe the humans are actually the most advanced civilization, but after some particularly nasty robot rebellion have turned bitter and isolationist. Most of the series up to X3 had been about a Terran test pilot stranded in a strange galaxy trying to get home. When his son finally did and made contact with the Terrans, the result was a breath of fresh air since the Terrans worked completely different to the other races, what with them only having a densely populated solar system with layers and layers of restricted areas instead of a vast empire, having their own economy completely incompatible with the standardized stuff of other peoples, having horrenduously overpowered tech, but also being extremely reluctant to trade it with outsiders focing you to do a lot of errands to gain their trust and get access to their ships and weapons. It really felt like a major new faction entered the world that was completely alien to the heavily interlinked community of Argons, Borons, Split, Teladi and Paranid)