Videogames : Cyberpunk Samurai edition.

[Inigima]

On 2/14/2020 at 11:58 PM, A True Kaniggit said:

Someone mentioned  Cities: Skylines a bit ago. So I bought it because I was in the mood for a city builder, and screw EA. And I enjoy it. But I do have one major complaint. 

Which is, why isn’t there a wider entertainment building selection?

No aquariums /movie theaters/ museums/ bowling alleys/ etc. etc. 

All there seems to be are parks. 

Come on Paradox people. What boring-ass. lame-ass cities did you grow up in where you think that is normal?

I don't understand why anyone would need a non-dog park option.

[red snow]

Finished Jedi fallen order (thanks to some tips here). I thought it was decent albeit infuriating in places (realised I'm not a fan of dying due to clumsy controls/interaction with surroundings). I did enjoy the boss duels as you couldn't button bash and had to learn their movements. The story was also satisfying in that it didn't upturn any continuity (unlike the last few films) and it's always fun to play as a jedi. I managed to get a really cheap star wars battlefront bundle which i will try at a later point.

Now I'm replaying telltale walking dead as i never finished the last two seasons

[Fez]

Been back to Witcher 3 after being away on vacation. It took a while to get back in it though. It's amazing how even a short break away saps my desire to keep going in a game; even one I like a lot. I'm almost done with the base game, and then I'll finally get to try out the DLCs for the first time.

Also, I saw that the Mutant Year Zero folks' new game is already out today: Corruption 2029. From the little footage I've seen, it looks like basically a reskin of MYZ. Which would be expected, since MYZ came out only a little over a year ago. I'm hoping there's more to it then that though, since ultimately I was kinda disappointed by MYZ. It was more a puzzle game than an XCOM-game; and while I liked the atmosphere a lot, the actual story was very light. 

In the mean time, I've been getting my turn-based tactics fix from an unlikely source: Banner of the Maid. It's a Chinese game, which from images on Steam you'd think was a Hentai ripoff like so many other games there. But it's not, I swear; though it does have incredibly cringe-y character art for most of the female characters (though not all, and the male characters look fine). It's a real game, set in anime revolutionary France (though alt-history, its 1797 and Louis XVI is alive as a puppet constitutional monarch, though everything is on edge).  The main character is Napoleon's sister, and I think is the reincarnation of Joan of Arc. There's a pretty good plot about the various political factions in Paris in conflict with each other, though its hampered by a rough translation. And once the game opens up after a couple hours, it's a solid Fire Emblem-style combat system with some unique aspects.

I've also been trying out State of Decay 2 on gamepass. It wasn't a game I was familiar with beforehand. It seems like it has some neat ideas, but I'm not sure its for me. The game just seems kinda lifeless; and I don't just mean the zombies.

[Werthead]

Finally got around to firing up Red Dead Redemption 2. I weighed up the Steam and Epic options and went for Epic, as they had a sale on the game and I'd also accumulated a surprising amount of credit from my previous purchases, which was odd as they were all free apart from Ghostbusters Remastered, Untitled Goose Game, The Outer Worlds, Control and Phoenix Point. The net result was that I got almost half the price of the game discounted compared to Steam.

This is the battle that Epic should be winning, though, rather than the enforced exclusivity period. As well as RDR2 (although that exclusive period was only for a month), the exclusive period for Metro: Exodus also recently ended so that is also available on Steam.

[Werthead]

The FF7 Remake Soundtrack is off the charts. Just the right amount of the old themes but then expended with modern orchestration into something epic.

[Werthead]

Blackbird Interactive have announced their new game, Hardspace: Shipbreakers, which is a revisit of their old Hardware: Shipbreakers idea (before it morphed into Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak). It's now a first-person survival sim set in space in a dystopian future where you cut up old ships and salvage wrecks in order to pay off an enormous debt, apparently accumulated from just being alive.

Looks pretty cool, like Subnautica in space but with a lot more spaceship wrecks to explore and a lot less fish.

[Corvinus85]

I’ve been jumping between different Total War games.

I played Three Kingdoms for a while after the release of the last DLC but grew bored. For all the many positives, the game doesn’t have that much replayability.

I miss naval battles, so for the first time ever, I gave Empire a serious attempt. I had bought the definitive edition on steam some time ago. Unfortunately, the game experienced occasional crashes, which got annoying. I had to watch a youtube video to really figure out naval battles, but once I figured them out, the naval battles were probably the best thing about the game for me. Unfortunately, I dislike the 18th century style of battles, so I had less fun with land battles. I do appreciate that, unlike recent titles, it takes a lot of time and patience to complete battles in this one. Also, one area that the newer titles improved are the UI, handling of armies on the battlefield, and being able to see how other factions view you, and how likely it is to succeed in a deal. It grew quickly frustrating trying to make deals with other nations, when I didn’t know what they want, and how much to offer for something. That being said, next time it’s on sale, I’ll get Napoleon, the only TW game I’ve never touched.

I briefly got back into Attila, fighting some good naval battles with the Geats around the Scandinavian coasts, but once again grew bored.

So, then I jumped into Rome 2, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how many changes they made to the game. Character skill development has been improved, and there are more options for political maneuvers.

[Jace, Extat]

I did a number of campaigns as the Epirots, Macedonians, and Bactrians just the last few weeks.

If Rome 2 had all of Attila's features it'd be just about perfect.

[Heartofice]

Empire total war had the potential to be the greatest total war game of all time. I’d be totally up for a remake. It was just a bit too clunky in its execution, and the battles never really excited.

I always found Napoleon to be a big improvement , with its more focused campaign map, and basically the battles felt properly napoleonic!

I didn’t think I’d enjoy those types of battles actually,  but there is something quite satisfying about having two lines of riflemen line up and just fire until the other side is dead.

[Rhom]

I don't figure its worth its own topic, but can I just say here that I am stunned that Sonic the Hedgehog had the best opening weekend of any video game movie in history???? 

I thought that movie had "bomb" written all over it, but it seems to be getting decent reviews as well. 

[Red Tiger]

51 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I don't figure its worth its own topic, but can I just say here that I am stunned that Sonic the Hedgehog had the best opening weekend of any video game movie in history???? 

I thought that movie had "bomb" written all over it, but it seems to be getting decent reviews as well. 

What competition does it have? Mortal Kombat?

[Rhom]

5 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

What competition does it have? Mortal Kombat?

A ton of movies have been made from video games if that's what you're asking.  Just in the last couple of years there was Warcraft, Assassin's Creed, etc.  The Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie did well enough to warrant a sequel or two I think. 

[Rhom]

16 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

What competition does it have? Mortal Kombat?

Here's the list of highest grossing video game movies ever.

Detective Pikachu is at the top.  Sonic is already number 8.  

(And man... are there some stinkers on that list!    And a lot of Resident Evil movies!!!!)

[Rhom]

Just finished up the Tomb Raider trilogy here at the office... the PS4 Remote Play app is an amazing thing.   

I think next up for me will be the Spider-Man game.  Its been a while since I played the Arkham games, so the city spanning super hero genre should be good for me to get back into.

ETA:  Speaking of the Remote Play app... is there any sort of device I can use to do that on a TV in another room?  For example, my PS4 is on the basement TV.  But there are situations where I would rather just sit in the upstairs living room to play.  Is there something that can run the remote play app on my TV?  The best I can come up with is my laptop and run it through the TV, but that's less than ideal.  If there were something I could plug in like a Roku or some such that had the app, that would be great.

[Fez]

I'm a sucker for even mediocre turn-based tactics games, so I'm really, really excited about Othercide. Both the style of the reveal trailer

and what the gameplay demo shows.

 

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

ETA:  Speaking of the Remote Play app... is there any sort of device I can use to do that on a TV in another room?  For example, my PS4 is on the basement TV.  But there are situations where I would rather just sit in the upstairs living room to play.  Is there something that can run the remote play app on my TV?  The best I can come up with is my laptop and run it through the TV, but that's less than ideal.  If there were something I could plug in like a Roku or some such that had the app, that would be great.

I doesn't seem like it right now. There is an open source program called Chiaki that will let you stream to unsupported devices, but you'd probably want to run it on something small like a Raspberry Pi and apparently even on the new RPi 4 it doesn't run well. Though it's unclear how much RAM that guy's pi had. 

Someone will get it working eventually.  I know they recently released a version of windows 10 for the Pi, maybe Sony's official app will run better on that, but I doubt it. For now it seems yeah a laptop is the way to go. 

 

[Werthead]

Playing RDR2 in an episodic fashion, doing a couple of missions per evening, and that's working well. The game is extraordinarily pretty and the free-roaming photo mode is amazing. Combat is meh (like, they haven't even looked at it since GTA5 apart from adding a half-arsed slowmo mode) and the general game structure feels like Rockstar have just taken their standard GTA template and mashed it - sometimes rather awkwardly - into Skyrim and then walked away saying job done. The UI is a total mess and needlessly fiddly and whoever decided that the context control for talking to people is the same as punching people in the face is a lunatic. The game's NPCs are also ridiculously hostile. I barely bumped into someone trying to walk though the front door of a shop and the next thing he's trying to stab me in the face.

Take all that away and the game is quite good fun, but it's a bit janky. It definitely feels Rockstar didn't learn the narrative lessons they needed to from The Witcher 3.

[Werthead]

EA continuing to make a massive mess out of the Star Wars licence.

First look at Hardspace: Shipbreakers.

[kuenjato]

On 2/21/2020 at 3:33 PM, Werthead said:

Playing RDR2 in an episodic fashion, doing a couple of missions per evening, and that's working well. The game is extraordinarily pretty and the free-roaming photo mode is amazing. Combat is meh (like, they haven't even looked at it since GTA5 apart from adding a half-arsed slowmo mode) and the general game structure feels like Rockstar have just taken their standard GTA template and mashed it - sometimes rather awkwardly - into Skyrim and then walked away saying job done. The UI is a total mess and needlessly fiddly and whoever decided that the context control for talking to people is the same as punching people in the face is a lunatic. The game's NPCs are also ridiculously hostile. I barely bumped into someone trying to walk though the front door of a shop and the next thing he's trying to stab me in the face.

Take all that away and the game is quite good fun, but it's a bit janky. It definitely feels Rockstar didn't learn the narrative lessons they needed to from The Witcher 3.

I'm saving this for the summer (after Last of Us 2), and this isn't all that encouraging. I'm playing GTAV right now, and while the game is fun in places, the shooting mechanics really aren't engaging and can be downright frustrating, and after playing really responsive games like Horizon and Nier, the basic movement is pretty cumbersome.

One thing I do like about it is how it emphasizes variety in the main missions and side quests. One moment I'm trying to outbike my douchebag son, the next I'm shooting down helicopters, then torturing some poor dude for info (that last part I didn't like at all, and was surprised you couldn't just skip it). I compare this to Assassin's Creed Origins, the last open world game I played, which had amazing visuals and one of the best ambient soundtracks I've heard in video games, but a gameplay loop that was just endless fetchquests and outposts/bandit camps. Seems like most games haven't learned the lesson from Witcher 3. 

I currently have my 9 year old daughter playing Horizon Zero Dawn. She's spent the last 2-3 hours just playing around in this little valley near Telluride, hunting turkeys and foxes and the occasional Scrapper/Grazer/Watcher combo. I urged her to do sidequests or continue with the main story, and she just rolled her eyes. "Dad, I'm having fun." It made me step back and appreciate that she wasn't just following-the-marker, like these games tend to encourage.

[Red Tiger]

On 2/20/2020 at 10:56 PM, Rhom said:

Here's the list of highest grossing video game movies ever.

Detective Pikachu is at the top.  Sonic is already number 8.  

(And man... are there some stinkers on that list!    And a lot of Resident Evil movies!!!!)

Ah, I see, for some reason I didn't take Pokemon into account. I thought MK would be among the top 5 highest-grossing at least.