Videogames: "No E3 for you!" edition.

[Kalbear]

Stadia was a failure partially because you still had to buy the games. And people already had them. 

[briantw]

50 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Stadia was a failure partially because you still had to buy the games. And people already had them. 

I took part in the free beta that gave you Assassin's Creed Odyssey and I thought, while it ran pretty well most of the time, it definitely had a lot more issues than GeForce Now does.  I very rarely suffer drops in performance on Now but it was a recurring issue with google's service, so much so that at times the game was basically unplayable.

I have the occasional issue with Now, but I'd say it runs flawlessly about 99% of the time.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think there needs to be a different kind of black list for this industry.

It's hard to really enjoy the sausage when you know how it's made.

 

[Poobah]

15 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I think there needs to be a different kind of black list for this industry.

It's hard to really enjoy the sausage when you know how it's made.

 

Jim Sterling is pretty much the only game journo I have major respect for, and I wish more people paid attention to all the work he does. The industry is rotten to its fucking core.

[Proudfeet]

Don't know much about his content, but his whiny and overly dramatic tone grinds my gears. Just tell it straight. 

[RumHam]

I see The Long Dark is doing a timed event. Good excuse to go get killed by an angry moose again.[ 

https://www.thelongdark.com/news/will-you-survive-winters-embrace/

[The Anti-Targ]

11 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

Don't know much about his content, but his whiny and overly dramatic tone grinds my gears. Just tell it straight. 

That's part of his charm for me. Each to their own I guess.

[Caligula_K3]

I finished The Outer Worlds (the Obsidian RPG, to be distinguished from The Outer Wilds, which is next on my to play list). I loved it - it's a really strong and focused RPG that reminds me of both Mass Effect and Fallout New Vegas. Because it was so focused, it felt like my choices had a lot of impact and I was given a lot of leeway to roleplay - I had very, very low intelligence and the Dumb options were especially fun, including one that determined my character's hilarious ending. The writing was generally well done on a character and world building and satire level. It's a pretty funny game. Companions were kind of hit or miss, but the ones I liked, I liked a lot.

In terms of gameplay some of the combat can get slightly repetitive. But I loved the addition of the Disguise Shroud, which allows you to move through restricted areas in a timed disguise. Especially towards the end of the game, unless I was fighting wild animals, I could avoid combat nearly entirely through pumping in points to dialogue skills. This also feels like the kind of game that will reward a replay. Like The Witcher 2, it seems that the main plot splits in the middle, so I think I missed out on a bunch of quests.

Aside from repetitive combat, it's main flaw is similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda's. Especially when doing companion missions, you're often shunted from planet to planet, meaning lots of loading times, walking to one place, talking to a person or fighting with someone, and then off to the next place. It wasn't as bad as Andromeda, since the loading times were shorter and the world less large. But I do wish devs would use these kinds of quests more rarely. Otherwise, you have to go in with the right expectations: it's a 25-30 hour game with a budget that's a fraction of most AAA RPGs. But it feels like the perfect length, I'm excited for a sequel, and it does a better job than some of Obsidian's most recent games of telling a full and interesting story (I'm looking at you, Pillars of Eternity).

About the Jimquisition: I'm glad he's releasing a video on this important topic, which merits anger and outrage. Most of the time, though, I'm done with his schtick (and the schtick of many other video game youtube personalities) which thrives on unnecessary anger and turning every little thing into a source of outrage. I blame these kinds of personalities for sucking the fun out of internet video game communities, which generally seem to enjoy hating games more than playing them.

[The Anti-Targ]

12 hours ago, Poobah said:

Jim Sterling is pretty much the only game journo I have major respect for, and I wish more people paid attention to all the work he does. The industry is rotten to its fucking core.

Agree with him or not, he always gives his views honestly and he's not a shill for anyone*. So that's fairly rare in games media.

I respect Angry Joe quite a bit too. I don't think he's brown nosing any game corporates either. But I think Jim is a bit more investigative in his approach, which I like very much.

 

*As far as I can tell.

[briantw]

6 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I finished The Outer Worlds (the Obsidian RPG, to be distinguished from The Outer Wilds, which is next on my to play list). I loved it - it's a really strong and focused RPG that reminds me of both Mass Effect and Fallout New Vegas. Because it was so focused, it felt like my choices had a lot of impact and I was given a lot of leeway to roleplay - I had very, very low intelligence and the Dumb options were especially fun, including one that determined my character's hilarious ending. The writing was generally well done on a character and world building and satire level. It's a pretty funny game. Companions were kind of hit or miss, but the ones I liked, I liked a lot.

 

The dumb ending is amazing.  

[Gorn]

Partly inspired by this thread, I decided to try out the free version of Geforce Now with my copy of Assassin's Creed: Origins, which I'm still playing.

After my first attempt during the evening failed due to immensely long waiting time, I tried it in the early morning, and it immediately started loading 20 GB of data to my PC. I waited patiently, started the game, decided to switch all the graphics options to Ultra/High, restarted the game to apply changes... and was greeted by another 20 GB download. Decided it wasn't worth it, and uninstalled it.

I don't think streaming services are a good fit for me, so I'll probably upgrade my PC later this year.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

After my first attempt during the evening failed due to immensely long waiting time, I tried it in the early morning, and it immediately started loading 20 GB of data to my PC. I waited patiently, started the game, decided to switch all the graphics options to Ultra/High, restarted the game to apply changes... and was greeted by another 20 GB download. Decided it wasn't worth it, and uninstalled it.

Pretty sure it was downloading and installing the game on their server, not yours. At least, that’s how it works when I use it.

 

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

I don't think streaming services are a good fit for me, so I'll probably upgrade my PC later this year.

 

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Pretty sure it was downloading and installing the game on their server, not yours. At least, that’s how it works when I use it.

You're probably right, since I didn't even have 20 GB of free space on the disk where my game was installed. Still, my gaming sessions are usually limited in time, and I don't really want to spend the first five minutes of each staring at a progress bar.

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Pretty sure it was downloading and installing the game on their server, not yours. At least, that’s how it works when I use it.

 

 

Never waited more than about five seconds for a game on GeForce Now to download/install.

[Werthead]

Desperados III is even better than I was expected. They took everything great about Shadow Tactics and ramped it up with even better abilities, a more fun simultaneous action mode and even greater synergy between the characters' abilities. If I did have one complaint it's that maybe Hector is too overpowered as a character. He's basically the tank samurai guy from Shadow Tactics and the trap-tastic little girl rolled into the same character, and he can pretty much wipe out entire swathes of guards by himself.

The game also has an absolutely fantastic thing where at the end of every mission it does a sped-up recap of everything you did in the mission. Huge amounts of fun.

22 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I finished The Outer Worlds (the Obsidian RPG, to be distinguished from The Outer Wilds, which is next on my to play list). I loved it - it's a really strong and focused RPG that reminds me of both Mass Effect and Fallout New Vegas. Because it was so focused, it felt like my choices had a lot of impact and I was given a lot of leeway to roleplay - I had very, very low intelligence and the Dumb options were especially fun, including one that determined my character's hilarious ending. The writing was generally well done on a character and world building and satire level. It's a pretty funny game. Companions were kind of hit or miss, but the ones I liked, I liked a lot.

The Outer Worlds is a top notch game. You can see where the budget strained at what they could do, but otherwise it was a game that punched really far above its weight in terms of budget to gameplay value.

And yes, it's easily Obsidian's best game since New Vegas. Pillars of Eternity was okay but heavily flawed (making a Baldur's Gate-alike which is a lot less fun than just replaying Baldur's Gate is a really weird idea), South Park and was fun but too easy. Tyranny was also excellent, but felt a little abruptly curtained at the end (Outer Worlds also does the same thing though; I spent about 45 minutes on the big corporate planet which felt really underwhelming when I was expecting there to be a lot more stuff to do there). Otherwise a really strong title.

[Werthead]

14 hours ago, Gorn said:

Partly inspired by this thread, I decided to try out the free version of Geforce Now with my copy of Assassin's Creed: Origins, which I'm still playing.

After my first attempt during the evening failed due to immensely long waiting time, I tried it in the early morning, and it immediately started loading 20 GB of data to my PC. I waited patiently, started the game, decided to switch all the graphics options to Ultra/High, restarted the game to apply changes... and was greeted by another 20 GB download. Decided it wasn't worth it, and uninstalled it.

I don't think streaming services are a good fit for me, so I'll probably upgrade my PC later this year.

That doesn't sound right. Are you sure it wasn't installing the actual game (40GB sounds about right, especially with the high/ultra textures selected) and then trying to stream it locally from one device to another? I believe that's something else GeForce Now can do. The pure streaming option shouldn't really require that level of downloading (because it kind of defeats the point).

[The Anti-Targ]

Interesting the Dr Disrespect perma ban from Twitch happens just days after MS announces they are killing off Mixer. And I think we still don't know the exact reason he was banned.

I never watched his stuff and I have no idea what he is like (aside from reading that some time ago he made fun of the Chinese accent, and when he was accused of being racists he denied it was racist). But even if he is a racist, misogynist arsehole Twitch should be transparent about their perma ban actions. All Twitch said was there was a terms of service or something violation. 

Twitch is supposedly going on a clean up drive to ban streamers who use racists, sexist, homophobic etc language. But no one knows if that's why he was banned or was it for something more mundane like breaking his exclusivity agreement.

[Fez]

Somehow I missed until yesterday the news that CDPR announced almost a year ago that they were scrapping the plan to have the cutscenes in Cyberpunk2077 be third-person. Instead basically the entire game (except for driving, which can be either) will be first-person only. Gotta say, this significantly dampens my excitement for the game. I was okay with the gameplay being first person, but I was really expecting the story moments to still be third person. And it doesn't matter how many mirrors they put in the game, it just isn't the same. Ah well.

Mean time, I'm deep into a game I'm still excited for, Persona 4 Golden. It's now late December in the game, and at this point I only have left whatever extra content Golden added and the final dungeon. I haven't been using a guide at all; except to make sure I gave the right answers at the section needed to avoid the bad ending. Even though I once watched the entire Giant Bomb endurance run of the original game (not Golden) I'm still having a ton of fun playing it myself.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Somehow I missed until yesterday the news that CDPR announced almost a year ago that they were scrapping the plan to have the cutscenes in Cyberpunk2077 be third-person. Instead basically the entire game (except for driving, which can be either) will be first-person only. Gotta say, this significantly dampens my excitement for the game. I was okay with the gameplay being first person, but I was really expecting the story moments to still be third person. And it doesn't matter how many mirrors they put in the game, it just isn't the same. Ah well.

 

I feel like I just got shot.

[Mexal]

24 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I feel like I just got shot.

Me too.