Videogames: "No E3 for you!" edition.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

19 hours ago, Toth said:

That's actually somewhat what I had in mind. Though would an AC with Desmond not just be Watch Dogs then? I had a slightly different take. Could you per chance have played Driver Parallel Lines? It's a GTA clone where you can freely switch between the current day and the 70s. Similarly I can imagine an Assassins Creed taking place in just one city in the modern day and in the past where you have to solve missions in both locations, with the passing of time heavily affecting the city while there are still some recognizable bits here and there. Of course in order to still keep roughly the same layout it might be advisable to have the past world a rather recent one like Syndicate.

I never played Watch Dogs, I ought to give it a try one day. I haven't played Driver Parallel Lines either, but that sounds super cool, and that'd actually be a pretty cool use of the animus. I suppose that's it right? Whatever the intent of the animus, they never fully thought it through to its potential.

I hope you enjoy Unity. I beat it, but I realized I have Syndicate still, untouched, in my Ubisoft library. I ought to give that one a go.

[Toth]

52 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I never played Watch Dogs, I ought to give it a try one day. I haven't played Driver Parallel Lines either, but that sounds super cool, and that'd actually be a pretty cool use of the animus. I suppose that's it right? Whatever the intent of the animus, they never fully thought it through to its potential.

Me neither. But I have Watch Dogs also lying around thanks to a giveaway...

And Driver Parallel Lines is a very old game I got with a gaming magazine back in the days. It was... decent I guess. The only thing I can clearly remember is that I spent a lot of time collecting all the cars in both eras... and that the aiming in gunfights was quite wonky. Like a typical GTA/Saints Row game of the time. Racing was far more fun. Also I think the free era switch was only unlocked after you beat the game (the main story doesn't involve time travel after all, you are just getting jailed after the first half and the second half is a revenge plot hunting down those who had you take the fall for your crime), but it was still fascinating.

52 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I hope you enjoy Unity. I beat it, but I realized I have Syndicate still, untouched, in my Ubisoft library. I ought to give that one a go.

We'll see. And Syndicate... damn, don't remind me that I missed when Epic was giving that one away. A shame really... that and Kingdom Come Deliverance are the giveaways I'm kicking myself into the ass for for missing.

[l2 0 5 5]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:34 PM, Mexal said:

I've started my replay of The Last of Us. Still a scary as fuck game.

The bloater sequence in Pittsburgh with the generator still makes me sweat... And hide and seek with David...

[red snow]

11 hours ago, l2 0 5 5 said:

The bloater sequence in Pittsburgh with the generator still makes me sweat... And hide and seek with David...

Is that the one where there are hordes of the infected attacking prior to the bloater? That scene along with another one where you are in a room having to hold off waves of the infected were definitely intense.

Oddly I can handle it fine in this game but I've just ditched RE:2 because I couldn't be on with the constant threat of Mr X and being short on ammo. I think the key difference is the "radar" in LOU and the stealth/hand-to-hand fighting offer more options than RE2 - which tends to require ammo as a means of killing enemies.

Going to have a go at RE3 though as my brother lent me them both so no big loss to me if I can't get into them.

[Mark Antony]

On 5/24/2020 at 3:34 PM, Mexal said:

I've started my replay of The Last of Us. Still a scary as fuck game.

Think it’s time I start my replay as well. Very excited for part II

[RumHam]

I see they added The Long Dark and Halo 5 to gamepass, and No Man's Sky is coming. From now on I'm gonna try real hard not to buy any Xbox games and just use that. No Man's Sky has been in my backlog for a while and if I'd waited I would have gotten it for free. 

Started replaying Chrono Cross yesterday. What a great game that is, it really needs a re-release with better textures. 

[l2 0 5 5]

3 hours ago, red snow said:

Is that the one where there are hordes of the infected attacking prior to the bloater? That scene along with another one where you are in a room having to hold off waves of the infected were definitely intense.

I wouldn't say hoards of infected, but there are a handful (4 I believe), if you choose to pick up the keycard prior to starting the generator. If you start the generator first, you do not have the keycard and need to make a pitstop for it before accessing the exit door. If you're playing on a harder difficulty and have concerns about ammo to infected ratio, I'd recommend grabbing the card first, beating the 4 stalkers first, and then starting the generator. You don't wanna have to run to the office to get it when the bloater is on your tail. Easy to get crossed up as the corridors are tight and dark. 

For fun, I'll rank the 5 bloater fights in terms of difficulty:

5: Bill's Town

- This is the tutorial bloater fight, and the easiest considering you have a ton of lighting, large area to maneuver, and Ellie/Bill lend a helping hand.

4: University

- This could actually be the easiest one cause you don't even have to fight the bloater if you don't want to, as you can sneak around it and engage the exit door which allows you through before the big guy can get you (Would recommend on Survivor or Grounded). What's the fun in that? Especially if you need to collect the firefly pendant it drops. Just stealth the clickers and take the bloater on by itself at the end. If you alert the bloater before you mean to, it could get hairy since it's dark and tight corridors make it a little challenging to navigate (especially if you're freaking out).

3: Tunnel Bloaters

- Yes, there's three to defeat, and yes they have many minions around them, but if you're playing on Hard mode and lower, you have so much ammo/bombs at this point you can blow right through all of them pretty easily. Playing on Survivor/Grounded can be a real challenge, though. Would recommend stealthing everything you can and save your bombs for the bloaters. You can hit the two at the end at the same time as their paths cross, so get on the semi-truck and wait for them to overlap. Oh, and there's almost always shotgun shells in the cab of the one semi-truck.

2: Boiler Room Bloater

- Easily the most frightening bloater sequence as it's the next in line after the tutorial one, and things are quite different. Training wheels off! You're by yourself, it is dark and cramped, and there's a good bunch of enemies that accompany the bloater. If you're on Hard or lower you should have enough ammo to kill all the enemies including the bloater. If you're on Survivor or Grounded, may want to grab the keycard first, kill the stalkers, start the generator and make a run for it to the exit. You may not have enough ammo to kill the remaining infected (probably another 3-5) plus the bloater. At this point hearing mode is off so be careful you don't round a bend and run into the bloater's gut cause he'll initiate the goriest kill screen the game offers, and rip your jaw from your face . Would recommend placing a bomb at the mouth of the exit corridor as there is almost always an infected sitting there waiting for you when you're running for it and if you muff the kill on it you could be in trouble since the other enemies will catch up to you.

1: Ellie's Bloater

- I love controlling Ellie's character cause she offers more agility (it would seem, at least) than Joel, and you need it for this one. Yes, it is light out, and yes, you do have a partner in David , but you're in tight spaces and Ellie loses health quicker than Joel does. You have to be nimble and have your head on a swivel cause the infected poor through the windows and long corridor, and it's easy to get caught. If you're playing on the harder difficulties, you may only get one tangle with a runner before you're toast. Use David as a sponge and knife the enemies he's tied up with. Always keep moving. You'll want to save as much ammo as possible for when the bloater drops down at the end of the fight. You may still have a couple runners/clickers alive too so use the ammo sparingly if possible. This is easily the hardest bloater sequence I had to face on Grounded.

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!

[briantw]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:12 PM, Simon Steele said:

Yeah, those older model Assassin Creed games were clunky, and games like Shadows of Mordor really streamlined that kind of game control. Sometimes, in the older AC games, when things were real tense, I felt like I was short a hand necessary to fluidly execute things. You get used to it fairly well, but going backwards I bet is a lot harder after experiencing more fluid gameplay.

Edit: Also, the animus is the dumbest thing ever. I'm glad they've scaled it back from earlier games, but at some point it seems unnecessary, and they ought to just let you play the game without any of that animus stuff.

Yeah, the thing that turned me off of the series until Odyssey pulled me back in was the piss poor controls.  I felt like being stealthy was borderline impossible because you couldn't properly control your character.

I didn't play Origins, but in Odyssey stealth was actually fun and functional.  I felt like a badass picking off enemies one by one and hiding their bodies in a way that just wasn't possible in the earlier games.

And I agree they need to just ditch the Animus entirely.  I thought they were building up to eventually have your character from the early games be the main character in a game set in modern times, but they appear to have ditched the whole story line at this point and I don't really understand why the modern day stuff is even necessary any more.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

I've been playing Legend of Grimrock 2 the last few days. I've never played a grid type game like this, and I love it! I like the puzzles and the exploration so much. I'm so engaged with the game world, I'm not looking most things up. I'm keeping my own journal to help me remember spells and recipes (so I can drop those out of my inventory). It's just a lot of fun.

If I ever get back into my office, I'll have to grab some graph paper and play a game like this by making my own map.

10 minutes ago, briantw said:

Yeah, the thing that turned me off of the series until Odyssey pulled me back in was the piss poor controls.  I felt like being stealthy was borderline impossible because you couldn't properly control your character.

I didn't play Origins, but in Odyssey stealth was actually fun and functional.  I felt like a badass picking off enemies one by one and hiding their bodies in a way that just wasn't possible in the earlier games.

And I agree they need to just ditch the Animus entirely.  I thought they were building up to eventually have your character from the early games be the main character in a game set in modern times, but they appear to have ditched the whole story line at this point and I don't really understand why the modern day stuff is even necessary any more.

I haven't played Origins either, but I loved Odyssey. I need to go back to it. I never beat it. I also had panic attacks any time I jumped in the ocean!

I think the games could still keep their pseudo sci fi feel without directly having animus portions too. You can have your weird animus codex and historical marker stuff, and players will just accept it at this point. I didn't spend more than 10 minutes out of the animus in Odyssey--and that's only because the game made me. 

 

[briantw]

24 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I haven't played Origins either, but I loved Odyssey. I need to go back to it. I never beat it. I also had panic attacks any time I jumped in the ocean!

I think the games could still keep their pseudo sci fi feel without directly having animus portions too. You can have your weird animus codex and historical marker stuff, and players will just accept it at this point. I didn't spend more than 10 minutes out of the animus in Odyssey--and that's only because the game made me. 

Odyssey, and presumably Origins before it, made the genius decision to just shamelessly rip off Witcher 3 and add functional stealth.

And hey, it worked, so good for them.  

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I've been playing Legend of Grimrock 2 the last few days. I've never played a grid type game like this, and I love it! I like the puzzles and the exploration so much. I'm so engaged with the game world, I'm not looking most things up. I'm keeping my own journal to help me remember spells and recipes (so I can drop those out of my inventory). It's just a lot of fun.

If I ever get back into my office, I'll have to grab some graph paper and play a game like this by making my own map

Ha, that's pretty much how we had to play games like this back in the day. There was a whole subgenre of them: Dungeon Master (the original, classic tile-based game); Captive (the SF version, with robots); Eye of the Beholder I-III (the Dungeons & Dragons version), Bloodwych (which allowed you to control 4 characters simultaneously, which was a total nightmare); Knightmare (a fantasy alternative based on a British kids' show); and Space Hulk (the inevitable-even-back-then Warhammer 40,000 version). I remember they were divided broadly into "games that allowed you to shut doors on enemies for cheese extra damage" and "games that didn't."

[Centrist Simon Steele]

57 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Ha, that's pretty much how we had to play games like this back in the day. There was a whole subgenre of them: Dungeon Master (the original, classic tile-based game); Captive (the SF version, with robots); Eye of the Beholder I-III (the Dungeons & Dragons version), Bloodwych (which allowed you to control 4 characters simultaneously, which was a total nightmare); Knightmare (a fantasy alternative based on a British kids' show); and Space Hulk (the inevitable-even-back-then Warhammer 40,000 version). I remember they were divided broadly into "games that allowed you to shut doors on enemies for cheese extra damage" and "games that didn't."

I really love Grimrock 2. Do you have any suggestions for others? I suppose ones I could play without graph paper? It's so much fun finding tiny little secrets by being observant!

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I really love Grimrock 2. Do you have any suggestions for others? I suppose ones I could play without graph paper? It's so much fun finding tiny little secrets by being observant!

It was a pretty dead genre. Aside from Grimrock 1 (which is about as good, just in a single dungeon), the only other modern option I think is Might & Magic X: Legacy, which isn't quite as puzzle-oriented but has a very similar feel (ignore the X, it's set on a different planet to the previous nine and can be enjoyed by itself).

[Centrist Simon Steele]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

It was a pretty dead genre. Aside from Grimrock 1 (which is about as good, just in a single dungeon), the only other modern option I think is Might & Magic X: Legacy, which isn't quite as puzzle-oriented but has a very similar feel (ignore the X, it's set on a different planet to the previous nine and can be enjoyed by itself).

Cool, I'll give it a try. Too bad it's dead, I love it.

[Rhom]

I tried to install Phantasy Star Online 2 today.

What. A. Cluster@&$%.

You have to get it from the Windows store.  So I download it this morning and then it goes to update.  Pretty standard MMO stuff.  Then as it updates it times out and I can’t get it to launch.  Still figure standard MMO stuff.

I go to look at the official Twitter to see if there’s an announcement on server outages. They recommend to people with my problem to update Windows and turn on XBox services.  I do that.

Still doesn’t work.  Then I start seeing messages on forums about being unable to uninstall or recover disk space when you do.

Yup. Just checked.  I have only a few KB of space on my main drive. There is a brand new folder on my C drive (told the installer to put it on E drive where I run my games from) that takes up over 59GB of space!  WindowsModifiableApps created today.  And when I try to delete or uninstall, says I don’t have permission to access it and the only user with access is “Trusted Installer.”

Its basically like Windows Store has put a big fat Malware on my computer.   

[Rhom]

Dammit... now my C drive is so full I can’t even open my QuickBooks file...

Its payroll day and my staff will not be happy...

[RumHam]

23 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Dammit... now my C drive is so full I can’t even open my QuickBooks file...

Its payroll day and my staff will not be happy...

You could try to change the permissions on the folder. Right click the folder, click properties and go to the security tab. There should be an "advanced" button that lets you change the owner of a folder. 

 

[Ferrum Aeternum]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I tried to install Phantasy Star Online 2 today.

What. A. Cluster@&$%.

You have to get it from the Windows store.  So I download it this morning and then it goes to update.  Pretty standard MMO stuff.  Then as it updates it times out and I can’t get it to launch.  Still figure standard MMO stuff.

I go to look at the official Twitter to see if there’s an announcement on server outages. They recommend to people with my problem to update Windows and turn on XBox services.  I do that.

Still doesn’t work.  Then I start seeing messages on forums about being unable to uninstall or recover disk space when you do.

Yup. Just checked.  I have only a few KB of space on my main drive. There is a brand new folder on my C drive (told the installer to put it on E drive where I run my games from) that takes up over 59GB of space!  WindowsModifiableApps created today.  And when I try to delete or uninstall, says I don’t have permission to access it and the only user with access is “Trusted Installer.”

Its basically like Windows Store has put a big fat Malware on my computer.   

That's insane. This is basic stuff that no one should screw up this badly. Also, a Windows Store exclusive? Yikes. 

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

You could try to change the permissions on the folder. Right click the folder, click properties and go to the security tab. There should be an "advanced" button that lets you change the owner of a folder. 

 

I was able to switch some up and it got down to a message that says the file or directory is not a reparse point.  Ridiculous.

ETA:  Yup.  Still won't delete.  To make matters worse... I copied all the photo files off my computer and then deleted that file which should have cleared up about 10GB (don't judge me) and now that space is gone.  This is about the goddamned perplexingest thing I ever perplexed.

[Jace, Extat]

7 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I was able to switch some up and it got down to a message that says the file or directory is not a reparse point.  Ridiculous.

ETA:  Yup.  Still won't delete.  To make matters worse... I copied all the photo files off my computer and then deleted that file which should have cleared up about 10GB (don't judge me) and now that space is gone.  This is about the goddamned perplexingest thing I ever perplexed.

Reinstall that OS, playa.