Video Games: Gears of Borderlands

[Toth]

Mmh... there is one other thing about Elite Dangerous that I guess I have to point out: The sound design. I have seen it praised before while looking at reviews, but didn't really believe it up until now. Probably because the music overall is quite bland (as opposed to the really impressive synth sounds in X, especially when reaching a home system). And because the Sidewinder barely does any noise. I noticed some more with the Cobra, but now when space mining with the ASP Explorer I am more and more blown away. When circle around a cracked asteroid my thrusters make a deep gurgling noise that reminds me quite alot of the Slave 1 in Star Wars Episode 2. It is somehow really satisfying, despite finding motherlodes having become quite a bit frustrating during my last trips. Either I find none at all, only find surface deposits of diamonds or get mocked by finding a motherlode of a different deposit (what the hell is Alexandrite?!?). It feels like my current area of operation has already been picked clean by other players, so maybe I should go and get find some other place. I'm also thinking I'm wasting my reputation on factions with no superpower affiliation.

[The Drunkard]

9 hours ago, Rhom said:

I just watched the accolades trailer for that on GoG.  So what's the gameplay like?

 

9 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

It is all dialog/skill check based even stuff like fighting.  Think Planescape Torment with the combat mechanics removed. 

Yeah, isometric game with a very heavy dialogue and skill check focus. All/any combat occurs through the dialogue trees. Your skills and 'Thoughts' (like perks) change how you act and react to everything you get involved in, and they vary from vanilla things like reaction speed, empathy and logic to some very weird paranormal things.

It's very entertaining. You start the game as an absolute mess with no idea how to solve the case and stumble around the city trying to piece things together. The city itself is some sort of weird fictional early 1900s eastern European city following an overthrown monarchy and attempted Communist revolution. 

[Toth]

Okay... my last session was quite a bit more irritating than I thought it would be. I bought a Python thinking it would be neat to have a mining ship that could actually fight back, but as I am flying around buying the mining equipment for it I'm getting very unhappy about the overall handling of the ship. Maybe I'm spoiled by the ASP Explorer, but the Python's jump range is abysmal, I barely get anywhere. It also is incredibly slow and maneuvers like a brick. Tellingly, when leaving the station I bought it in I accidentally scratched its gateway on the way out...

Part of the problem however is that I can't find a station that has the parts to upgrade my Python's core systems. Like thrusters or Frameshift Drive.

Well, I guess it will be fine once I use it for what I intend to use it. Still... I guess it is time to outfit my ASP Explorer for a deep space mission instead...

[Toth]

Okay, after finally finding using a wiki to find a station that has the equipment needed to upgrade my Python, I must say that it sucks significantly less. Especially since I found a system with two Void Opal hotspots that are marked as low yield, but somehow allow me to get motherlodes significantly faster than all the "pristine" rings I had visited before, as well as an Imperial station that buys Void Opals for 800k per ton... That is pretty much the most ridiculously easy money I have made in this game so far. Well, I now have 162 Million credits stored up and the Empire loves me. Enough to switch back to my ASP Explorer, outfit it for exploration and try my luck going into the void...

... after trying out all the shiny new equipment while still in the bubble, of course. Also I only have a jump range of 32 lightyears, which might become troublesome if my first goal is to travel to the edge of the galaxy where stars are more sparse. I wonder if it had been more clever to buy a Diamondback Explorer for my first deep space mission, given that it has a higher jump range. I could also buy an Anaconda, but everyone seems to agree that it sucks as an exploration vessel.

Come to think of it, given my gripes with the Python that still remain and that its awful turn rate is apparently still supposed to be better than a larger vessel, I wonder if I should even bother trying out in one of those.

12/8/2019 at 1:46 PM, Derfel Cadarn said:

Yeah the universe is massive. You have to go quite far out to find planets no one’s scanned. If you can find mineral-rich or earth-like planets, you get a lot more cash on selling the data. 

Well, it seems I've got a route few have travelled on yet. Two jumps away from the bubble I am already stumbling over systems that haven't been mapped yet. Discovered yes, but people obviously find using the surface scanner a hassle, so I already got some opportunities to engrave my name upon planets.

My plan right now is to head towards a nebula south of the bubble and follow that path until I hit undiscovered systems, then turn around and cash in on my findings. If I don't find anything undiscovered, I make my way to the edge of the galaxy. To see whether I can survive that.^^

Of course, if I go for the full Star Trek experience and map every system not yet mapped, this plan will take basically forever.

[RumHam]

I know Fallen Order is supposed to be good, but any word on anything in the vein of Rogue Squadron / Rogue Leader in the pipeline? Re-watching the space battles of the OT really put me in the mood for that sorta game. I may have to dig out my Gamecube. 

Or is there by any chance a version of Rogue Squadron that will run alright on Windows 10 or Linux? 

[Ran]

7 hours ago, RumHam said:

I know Fallen Order is supposed to be good, but any word on anything in the vein of Rogue Squadron / Rogue Leader in the pipeline? Re-watching the space battles of the OT really put me in the mood for that sorta game. I may have to dig out my Gamecube. 

Or is there by any chance a version of Rogue Squadron that will run alright on Windows 10 or Linux? 

Try GOG. My understanding is that everything they sell among older games are verified to work with Windows 10. They have Rogue Squadron 3D, Starfighter, and of course the TIE Fighter and X-Wing series of games. 

[Mexal]

Due to watching The Witcher, I jumped back into Witcher 3. I really do enjoy this game though it can be a massive time sink at points.

[briantw]

7 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Due to watching The Witcher, I jumped back into Witcher 3. I really do enjoy this game though it can be a massive time sink at points.

The main reason I haven't replayed it is because of how daunting a replay seems.  I sank like 130+ hours into that game plus the two expansions and I just don't have as much free time as I did when the game came out.

[Mexal]

2 minutes ago, briantw said:

The main reason I haven't replayed it is because of how daunting a replay seems.  I sank like 130+ hours into that game plus the two expansions and I just don't have as much free time as I did when the game came out.

Yea, definitely can see me getting up to that. I have a lot of time over next few days so going to make a big dent. I'm in Act 2 now so got a ways to go.

[briantw]

Just now, Mexal said:

Yea, definitely can see me getting up to that. I have a lot of time over next few days so going to make a big dent. I'm in Act 2 now so got a ways to go.

I remember when I was on the first big map I got every question mark.  Then I got to the Skellige map and was like fuck that. 

[Mark Antony]

4 minutes ago, briantw said:

The main reason I haven't replayed it is because of how daunting a replay seems.  I sank like 130+ hours into that game plus the two expansions and I just don't have as much free time as I did when the game came out.

For sure but I recently got a pc so I have tons of motivation to play it again cause of how much better it will look than it did on my original xbox

[Red Tiger]

2020 is looking good so far

Bayonetta Remaster

FF7 Remake

Resident Evil 3 Remake

Cyberpunk 2077

[Mark Antony]

6 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

2020 is looking good so far

Bayonetta Remaster

FF7 Remake

Resident Evil 3 Remake

Cyberpunk 2077

Last of us 2

Ghosts of Tsushima 

[RumHam]

10 hours ago, Ran said:

Try GOG. My understanding is that everything they sell among older games are verified to work with Windows 10. They have Rogue Squadron 3D, Starfighter, and of course the TIE Fighter and X-Wing series of games. 

Thanks I'll check that out. I never played the TIE Fighter and X-Wing games cause I only had a really shitty command line based computer back when they came out. 

I did find my gamecube and Rogue Leader was already in it. Played the first few missions and it holds up pretty well. I remember thinking the graphics were mind blowing when it came out. It could probably use a remaster but I'm guessing that's not gonna happen while EA has the Star Wars video game rights. 

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Thanks I'll check that out. I never played the TIE Fighter and X-Wing games cause I only had a really shitty command line based computer back when they came out. 

I did find my gamecube and Rogue Leader was already in it. Played the first few missions and it holds up pretty well. I remember thinking the graphics were mind blowing when it came out. It could probably use a remaster but I'm guessing that's not gonna happen while EA has the Star Wars video game rights. 

Funnily enough, if you look at Youtube, someone's been doing a fan remake of Rogue Squadron in Unreal Engine 4. There's video of it and it looks pretty good, but for legal reasons it's not publicly distributed.

[Fez]

Ended up picking up a couple games in the steam sale after all. I got Hitman 2 and its almost as fantastic as the first one; nothing has been as good as the Sapienza map yet, but its a lot of fun.

I also got Hades and damn if that isn't fantastic, as are all Supergiant games. It's still in early access, but I think almost done, and, as a rogue-like, the early access restrictions matter less. My only issue is that I think the game might be slightly too easy. I made it all the way to the final boss (who did kill me, but only barely) on just my 6th run; with almost none of the permanent unlocks available yet. Which is problematic because the game is actually filled with dialog and story (which you are supposed to unlock more of each time you die, both through time spent and using collectables from your runs) that I mostly haven't seen yet, and it would be a shame to finish the game so quickly.

Right now there isn't an ending in the game, apparently if you kill the final boss there's just a pop-up message saying literally "Let's pretend that he did kill you there" and you move to the next cycle just as if you'd been killed. But once the ending is in place, I wonder if there would be anything at all that makes it make sense to keep playing (which I'd want to do if there's still so much to see and do).

[Toth]

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship, uh... ASP Explorer? I'm afraid I still haven't figured out how to name your ship. And the game somehow defaults to Pokémon naming conventions.
In any case, it's still not quite going where no man has gone before, but instead going where... at least a few people have been passing through during the last 5 years this game is going. So here is what I have done:

My aim was to reach the Witch Head Nebula and from there go to the stellar foundry of the Orion nebula. Which, come to think of it, might have not been the most clever idea given that a scenic tour through the galaxy would be one already traversed by countless other players having the same dumb idea. In fact when I reached the Witch Head Nebula I realized that unlike the proximity of human inhabited space, this nebula has already been completely mapped. At least those parts accessible to me. I was very confused when I found permit locked systems that are a bit of a mystery according to my google results because nobody has an idea what the developers wanted to do there when they shut the players out. It's also notable that within the Witch Head Nebula I was suddenly surrounded by countless "non-human signal sources of threat level 4", which apparently were Thargoid scouts. I pissed off to the Orion nebula because getting murdered in outer space wasn't exactly high on my priority list.

Btw, I should mention that I'm the worst explorer of all time given that even when I was mapping planets I did only those which hadn't been mapped by other players yet, so I left all other worlds completely unexplored, not even bothering to make detours to have my discovery scanner get a lock on them. And once I got bored of the stupidly tedious mapping (as did everyone else on this route, apparently, given the plethora of unmapped planets), I just hopped from system to system only making the sensor ping from the starting location and looking up whether every planet has already been discovered. I also tried a few times to get away from my route and make some random jumps hoping to get a system untouched by passerbys, without success. Therefore I'm not really exploring at all, but rather am just sprinting through the galaxy trying to cover as much ground as possible, hoping to somehow stumble into the great unknown and I wouldn't be surprised if I don't even scratch the 1 Million mark when I sell my data.

So now I'm in the Orion nebula. Here countless stars are accessible, all extremely thick together. Unfortunately all I have seen have been discovered yet, which makes sense. Landmark and all. But unlike the Witch Head Nebula some aren't mapped, so at least I have a chance to leave a mark of my passing here and there.

But where to go next leaves me a bit stumped. My initial idea was to get to the huge Barnard's nebula and from there as far to the edge of the galaxy as I can. But looking at it logically, that makes little sense because I'm sure many other players got the same idea. At the very least going to the Barnard's nebula is a waste of time. So my idea is to strike north and maybe make a small circle towards the galactic core and then back to Sol. I guess not going for any specific target and instead heading into a random direction gives me the highest chance of getting uncharted territory. I mean come on... 400 Billion systems, they can't all be visited, can they?

And one last thing... if I had known I'm not exploring much and I would be traversing such great distances, I would have bought the Anaconda instead. It might be awful for mapping jobs, but I would appreciate the greater jump discance.

[Red Tiger]

On 12/26/2019 at 5:39 PM, Mark Antony said:

Last of us 2

Ghosts of Tsushima 

Neither interest me, hence why I didn't put them on my list.

[Toth]

There is good news and bad news.

The good news is my trip north was actually successful in having me reach uncharted terroritory. That happened actually surprisingly fast. The bad news however is that I breezed past my very first newly discovered worlds because I only saw two planets in my close vicinity without seeing the 6 more hiding there according to my Discovery Scanner. I thought it was pieces of asteroid belts causing these pings, so I moved on. Two jumps later I then reached a system with 10 stellar bodies, but I could only see the sun. That was how I noticed that I was doing this wrong. Scouring through some guides I noticed I haven't once been using my Full Spectrum Scanner.

Well, now I have. But so far haven't discovered anything too interesting. Just empty rocks. Oh, and a wrecked explorer and a floating container! That's unusual. Unfortunately I'm facing a far more dire problem: Col 70 sector.

I thought the blocked off area in the Witch Head Nebula was bad, but this here is outright ridiculous. It's like I'm faced with a huge wall completely blocking my path in every direction. I can't go east to the galactic rim, I can't go upwards to reach the stars there, I can't go west to the galactic core. Right now I'm heading downwards and ever so slightly to the west on what is pretty much the only available path of stars, but it's nervewrecking. At one point I passed four systems without fuel stars, ending up ahving my fuel half drained before finally reaching one. And all because every star surrounding me is stupidly permit locked. What the hell, developers? This is a huge chuck of the galaxy baffingly ruined and according to the wiki it has been for 3 years like that.

[Ran]

I had no idea that so much was blocked off in Frontier. I had assumed it was like the old games, everything accessible, although they might populate places with story and cool stuff after the fact.