Videogames: Perfect homies for the great indoors.

[Toth]

14 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

What do you teach? My students are so close to nervous breakdowns (with all their classes) that I decided to do something similar!

Well, mostly Politics and Computer Science at Vocational School. I must say I am rather frustrated at the two extremes I am confronted with. Lots and lots of students went underground, not reacting to any communication attempts at all. And those who do react either do their work ridiculously superficially or complain about why I even bother give them work when I am not teaching major subjects.

Anyway, after doing my stuff for today I just played another race in Project Cars. Didn't think I would have this much fun in just 15 minutes. I got an event race invitation to a BMW M1 ProCar race at Spa. According to my statistics it was my first race in a Touring car and damn... I must preface what I am about to say with that I'm not a very good driver of course. I usually just focus on getting every corner right and not crash, while at the same time getting very irritated when the AI drivers are in front of me and then start to make mistakes when forcing my way through them. That combination makes little sense, but it is what it is. I usually don't drive a car to the limit.

And yet when I sat in the M1 ProCar and drove up the first hill at full throttle it was like love at first sight. After spending most of my time in this game in karts that get a stroke when slightly brushing a curb, this car was telling me: "Go at it! Brake hard, throttle hard, powerslide through corners! Go for it, I have your back!". The race itself was a rather uneventful start-to-finish victory, but bloody hell was I having fun taking every corner with reckless abandon, daring the tracklimits to try to catch me. This car is like the polar opposite of the McLaren F1 that wants to murder you every time you think about touching the throttle. It actually succeeds in making you think that you are actually good at this. XD

[Poobah]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

She’ll always be Aeris to me.

Remember, 1997 was still the days of terrible translations.  Apparently the Japanese release her name would be Aerith, but was translated as Aeris for western audiences.  Not an example of terrible translation itself (plenty of that came later in the game like the plug for XenoGears which came out Xeno Gias or something like that) but an example of the kind of mid nineties things that happened when bringing games over.

So to western audiences, she is Aeris.  But with the Remake, they went with the original intent.

Re: Aeris translation, I feel a lot of sympathy for the translators on this one because as a very casual student of Japanese I feel like it's a lot easier to think you'd drop enunciating the "u" sound out of the katakana ス (su) on the end of her name to easily get Aeris, rather than bend it into a "th". Also from looking at these two clips (JP) (ENG) if we assume the Japanese VO knew how her name was supposed to be pronounced it kinda sounds like Aeris would have been a better romanisation

edit: sorry the Japanese link wasn't at the right timestamp, and idk how to change the link with this editor, she introduces herself by her name at around 1:20.

[aceluby]

I'm really enjoying RE7 on playstation VR.  Takes me back to the feeling I had playing RE2 on the original PS.  Survival horror at it's finest with some great puzzles.  It feels kind of like a horror escape room with some incredibly good jump scares.  Best overall VR game I've played.

Really excited for Iron Man VR to be released next month.  Early reviews were glowing.

[Toth]

... and the very next race turned out to be a shitshow. First I have to correct myself in that no, the BMW M1 is not classified as a touring car, instead it's a road car. The single touring car in my statistics is the historical touring season I am attending right now. And now was the second race of those. In an antiquated Mercedes across Brands hatch. The practice was great, I had the fastest time. Qualifying was bad. First lap was bad because I spun out, then it started to rain and I only made mediocre times, then the rain stopped for the very last lap and I managed to get only third because I spun across the finish line.

Then came the race. Minimal distance. Three laps. First lap in the dry. Managed to take lead and get quite the distance between me and the field... at least until the very last corner. The entry to the final straight is basically an oval course that causes my Mercedes to spin uncontrollably if I stick to the recommended speed, but for some reason the AI can go through it at full throttle, catching up with me as I brake.

Halfway through the second lap it starts to rain again. The road starts to get slippery, I get a bit more than a second slower, the other cars pretty much breathing into my neck now. Still manage to brave on ahead. Then comes the third lap. Heavy rainstorm. The car feels noticeably wobbly. Every single bump on the track sends my car flying, forcing me to constantly correct my course. And then in the first before last corner I suddenly start aquaplaning and off I go into the tire wall, watching the whole field pass me in my back mirror.

I restart and drive the race again. And pretty much the EXACT same thing happens. I restart again. And the course of events was pretty much the same with one small difference: Half-way through the third lap I found myself suddenly alone. I don't know what happened, but for some reason the whole field barreled off-track and I was able to very casually bring it home. Unfortunately I jumped the gun and forgot to record the race. Would have been a pretty cool watch, especially given how gorgeous the rain effects in Project Cars look like.

[Fez]

Still playing Gears Tactics. The battles really are great, especially on hard mode (which isn't really that hard, I suspect normal must be pretty easy). But I do feel the lack of any strategic layer at all is hurting the game a bit.

The biggest issue to me is that I have this glut of troops, and nothing to do with them. You take 4 characters on each mission (I've had one solo mission too so far). Technically the non-named characters can die, but that's not happened to me yet and you can reload from in-mission checkpoints or restart any mission anyway; and there's no such thing as injuries. After the battle everyone who survived is totally fine. So there's no need to not just take your 4 best characters every single time. So the fact that I have 11 characters now feels like a bit of a waste.

There is a mechanism where each character can only go a side mission once between each story mission. So maybe eventually there will be enough side missions you have to do between story missions that you'll start using the full roster. But I just finished Act I and that wasn't anywhere close to being the case.

So even just an injury mechanic so that I'd have to juggle my roster more would be nice. I don't necessarily want a research mechanic too, like XCOM, but it would be nice if there was at least something else between the battles besides swapping around equipment (Also, the inventory UI is pretty bad).

The battles sure are fun though. And the Act I boss is the rare tactics game boss fight that I actually enjoyed.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

I'm really enjoying RE7 on playstation VR.  Takes me back to the feeling I had playing RE2 on the original PS.  Survival horror at it's finest with some great puzzles.  It feels kind of like a horror escape room with some incredibly good jump scares.  Best overall VR game I've played.

Really excited for Iron Man VR to be released next month.  Early reviews were glowing.

Seems a bit spendy, and it didn't look like there were a ton of games, or does it work with everything? 

Anyways, back to RDR2. 

[Fez]

The new AC game has been announced, Valhalla. You're a Viking (male or female) pillaging the ever-loving fuck out of Saxon England (though based on the announcement cinematic, you're a cuddly viking you doesn't kill unarmed women or children).

Cinematic: 

 

Store page: https://store.ubi.com/uk/game?pid=5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731&dwvar_5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731_Platform=pcdl&edition=Standard Edition&source=detail

It's out Holiday 2020 and is a current-gen game. Per the bullet points on the store page there's some sort of settlement management system in the game.

I'll end up buying it probably, but I hope they improve on the last two AC games, which were good but had a bunch of flaws. Especially around being way too bloated and the stories falling apart towards the end.

[aceluby]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Seems a bit spendy, and it didn't look like there were a ton of games, or does it work with everything? 

Anyways, back to RDR2. 

You can play anything on it, if it's not VR compatible it's the equivalent of a 100+ inch TV.  I bought mine a couple years ago, but there's only been a few games that have been worth it so far.  RE7 & Beat Saber are my two faves.  Batman is awesome, but it's only 2 hours long and it's more like a VR movie.  Farpoint was really fun, but needed more boss battles - as-is I still enjoyed the hell out of it.  Firewall Zero hour I got a while ago, but never really got into it.  I might try it again after updating my firmware.  Excited for Iron Man this month and I think I'm going to pick up superhot next once I'm done with RE7. 

[GallowKnight]

24 minutes ago, Fez said:

The new AC game has been announced, Valhalla. You're a Viking (male or female) pillaging the ever-loving fuck out of Saxon England (though based on the announcement cinematic, you're a cuddly viking you doesn't kill unarmed women or children).

Cinematic: 

 

Store page: https://store.ubi.com/uk/game?pid=5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731&dwvar_5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731_Platform=pcdl&edition=Standard Edition&source=detail

It's out Holiday 2020 and is a current-gen game. Per the bullet points on the store page there's some sort of settlement management system in the game.

I'll end up buying it probably, but I hope they improve on the last two AC games, which were good but had a bunch of flaws. Especially around being way too bloated and the stories falling apart towards the end.

I think I put something like 300 hours combined into Origins and Odyssey this past fall, so I'm down for this. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

32 minutes ago, aceluby said:

You can play anything on it, if it's not VR compatible it's the equivalent of a 100+ inch TV.  I bought mine a couple years ago, but there's only been a few games that have been worth it so far.  RE7 & Beat Saber are my two faves.  Batman is awesome, but it's only 2 hours long and it's more like a VR movie.  Farpoint was really fun, but needed more boss battles - as-is I still enjoyed the hell out of it.  Firewall Zero hour I got a while ago, but never really got into it.  I might try it again after updating my firmware.  Excited for Iron Man this month and I think I'm going to pick up superhot next once I'm done with RE7. 

I bought (cheap 2nd hand) copy of the first Star Wars battlefront just for the VR x-wing mission. Very immersive.

[aceluby]

28 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I bought (cheap 2nd hand) copy of the first Star Wars battlefront just for the VR x-wing mission. Very immersive.

I was super disappointed that the VR Star Wars game is an occulus exclusive

[Ran]

For those with Discord, we're trying to integrate with a Discord server to provide a chat (and, at least for now, voice chat) option. 

First, head to account settings and then link up your Discord with the forum.

Then click this invite link to, hopefully, get added to the server.

[Werthead]

Trying out Axis and Allies 1942 Online (my first-ever early access game) and yikes, they seem to have gotten this quite wrong for what should be a straightforward translation of a fair straightforward board game.

First of all, they've covered the game in tons of unnecessary and over-elaborate animations. You can turn some of these off but not all.

Second, the process for picking up troops with a transport and landing them is really labourious, just unnecessarily complicated for the sake of it. In several battles I carried out attacks with several units who were supposed to be involved left behind because the UI had not displayed that I'd picked them up. Baffling.

Third, and just an elementary mistake, is that in defensive battles you can't pick your casualties per battle, which is an absolutely key part of the battle strategy of the board game. They've been told hundreds of times (the Steam forum is a shitshow about this) that this is an essential part of the game and the developers have just dug their heels in and said no, they're not changing it, which is completely bizarre. This has cost them an enormous amount of goodwill from the fanbase who do have other options (including the 1998 video game version, which is still very serviceable and has a better transport mechanic, as well as the very mod-friendly, fan-made free version, TripleA).

The other concern is statistically anomalous die results, which has seen people asking the devs how the dice are calculated because there have been some really weird results (including a battle where someone had 30 attacking units and every single unit missed across several rounds of combat, including multiple bombers with a 4-in-6 chance of scoring a hit and many fighters and tanks with a 3-in-6 chance). I'm not 100% convinced this isn't random chance results which people are blaming on a fouled up algorithm (a la XCOM) but there's enough reports with screenshots and videos to suggest there might be something wrong. In twenty-two years of playing the board game, I've never seen a 30-die battle with absolutely no hits at all (I think the record was a 10-die battle, and that was only one round with plenty of hits the next round).

It's annoying because if you strip away the die results, the casualty thing and the transports, the game is a lot of fun. But that's three pretty big flaws that all need to be fixed.

6 hours ago, Fez said:

The new AC game has been announced, Valhalla. You're a Viking (male or female) pillaging the ever-loving fuck out of Saxon England (though based on the announcement cinematic, you're a cuddly viking you doesn't kill unarmed women or children).

Cinematic: 

 

Store page: https://store.ubi.com/uk/game?pid=5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731&dwvar_5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731_Platform=pcdl&edition=Standard Edition&source=detail

It's out Holiday 2020 and is a current-gen game. Per the bullet points on the store page there's some sort of settlement management system in the game.

I'll end up buying it probably, but I hope they improve on the last two AC games, which were good but had a bunch of flaws. Especially around being way too bloated and the stories falling apart towards the end.

Fantasy author Chris Wooding has done some writing for the game, so I'd be interested to see how that turns out.

[Nictarion]

7 hours ago, Fez said:

The new AC game has been announced, Valhalla. You're a Viking (male or female) pillaging the ever-loving fuck out of Saxon England (though based on the announcement cinematic, you're a cuddly viking you doesn't kill unarmed women or children).

Cinematic: 

 

Store page: https://store.ubi.com/uk/game?pid=5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731&dwvar_5e849c6c5cdf9a21c0b4e731_Platform=pcdl&edition=Standard Edition&source=detail

It's out Holiday 2020 and is a current-gen game. Per the bullet points on the store page there's some sort of settlement management system in the game.

I'll end up buying it probably, but I hope they improve on the last two AC games, which were good but had a bunch of flaws. Especially around being way too bloated and the stories falling apart towards the end.

I only ever played the original, but this looks pretty good. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, aceluby said:

You can play anything on it, if it's not VR compatible it's the equivalent of a 100+ inch TV.  I bought mine a couple years ago, but there's only been a few games that have been worth it so far.  RE7 & Beat Saber are my two faves.  Batman is awesome, but it's only 2 hours long and it's more like a VR movie.  Farpoint was really fun, but needed more boss battles - as-is I still enjoyed the hell out of it.  Firewall Zero hour I got a while ago, but never really got into it.  I might try it again after updating my firmware.  Excited for Iron Man this month and I think I'm going to pick up superhot next once I'm done with RE7. 

Interesting.

It's just one of many things you can't buy though.

[red snow]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

Fantasy author Chris Wooding has done some writing for the game, so I'd be interested to see how that turns out.

This is no knock on Chris at all, whose work I enjoy but I'd have thought Joe abercrombie and Mark Lawrence (who've both done Vikings-ish fantasy) would have been more obvious choices. Then there's a horde of Vikings fiction authors out there as well. Good thing about Chris is he seems to be able to turn his hand at most genres and strides the YA/mature boundary in a way that a computer game would appreciate. Also, his banter between characters can be fun.

As for the game itself the AC games always have my really interested in their setting particularly with origins and odyssey but the sprawling nature of them (and the ridiculous and unclear number of purchase options) put me off.

I'm almost finished FFVII remake. Debating whether I play Witcher or God of war next or do the sensible thing and play through some of my PSplus titles. I didn't realise I only "own" the free titles as long as I have the PSplus account and tbh I'm reaching the point where the games they offer each month are either games I already have or games I have no intention of playing.

[Inkdaub]

21 hours ago, Rhom said:

She’ll always be Aeris to me.

Remember, 1997 was still the days of terrible translations.  Apparently the Japanese release her name would be Aerith, but was translated as Aeris for western audiences.  Not an example of terrible translation itself (plenty of that came later in the game like the plug for XenoGears which came out Xeno Gias or something like that) but an example of the kind of mid nineties things that happened when bringing games over.

So to western audiences, she is Aeris.  But with the Remake, they went with the original intent.

OK that makes sense.  I keep seeing people call her Aeris so I knew there was something.  I didn't even think of translation.  Thanks for the info.

[Proudfeet]

I'm probably going to regret it because its just not my sort of game anymore, but I'm going to purchase a remaster of .hack//G.U. on Steam because its on sale and also because you guys made me itchy for nostalgia sequels with all the FF talk. 

[Werthead]

I was so used to Aeris that I could only pronounce "Aerith" with a lisp. On my last OG FF7 run-through I did rename her as Aerith and ended up getting used to it.

3 hours ago, red snow said:

This is no knock on Chris at all, whose work I enjoy but I'd have thought Joe abercrombie and Mark Lawrence (who've both done Vikings-ish fantasy) would have been more obvious choices. Then there's a horde of Vikings fiction authors out there as well. Good thing about Chris is he seems to be able to turn his hand at most genres and strides the YA/mature boundary in a way that a computer game would appreciate. Also, his banter between characters can be fun.

The question is if they'd have been asked. I could see Joe being asked (he has a higher profile than Chris) but he's very busy with the new trilogy, so it's perhaps less likely.

 

[Rhom]

4 hours ago, red snow said:

This is no knock on Chris at all, whose work I enjoy but I'd have thought Joe abercrombie and Mark Lawrence (who've both done Vikings-ish fantasy) would have been more obvious choices. Then there's a horde of Vikings fiction authors out there as well. Good thing about Chris is he seems to be able to turn his hand at most genres and strides the YA/mature boundary in a way that a computer game would appreciate. Also, his banter between characters can be fun.

Get Mark Lawrence to do it and the main character would be a long ago ancestor of Snori ver Snagason!!!!