Video Games: Mystery Box Character Creation

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 7/20/2020 at 4:49 PM, RumHam said:

The first time I played it like rimworld or any other "manage a group of people who have to do things" game but once you get the hang of automating things I highly recommend forming a party of your favorites and just exploring the world like it's an RPG. ...which it is!

I'm starting that, but the holy nation saw my shek and keep attacking me all the time (even though I set that to rare). On the plus side, got plenty of cyborgs I'm my army now.

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

I'm intrigued and want to play... but it is also supposed to have a PS5 version at launch, is it not?  I may wait for that.

Not entirely sure. It's pretty gorgeous on the PS4 though and I need something to tie me over until Cyberpunk (even if I'm much less excited now).

[RumHam]

42 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I'm starting that, but the holy nation saw my shek and keep attacking me all the time (even though I set that to rare). On the plus side, got plenty of cyborgs I'm my army now.

Often you can talk them out of it if you have a male human doing the talking. Those assholes hate EVERYONE else. I really regretted building my first base in their territory. If you can pick a character and have them pretty much constantly making weapons. They'll get really good at it and high quality weapons make a huge difference.

[Ramsay B.]

So one of my only complaints about Ghost of Tsushima is that I want it to be a little tougher. Even on hard I feel like l can go to a camp and clean house fairly easily, without having to be cautious or utilize stealth. They did an update today and added a new Lethal difficulty. Good shit! 

[TrueMetis]

On 7/26/2020 at 3:43 PM, Werthead said:

Incidentally, I hope Bethesda come up with better physics for their next few games. Seeing a rickety, half-collapsed, 200+ year old wooden footbridge being completely unscathed by multiple mutli-kiloton nuclear blasts is getting ridiculous.

I don't hold up a whole lot of hope because they still used the same engine for FO76. (And seemingly TES6) Which means a decade later your seeing the exact same bugs in FO76 as you got in Skyrim. So they'll almost certainly just going to keep trying to patch up and build upon that engine. And sure doing that you might be able to improve graphics, but changing physics is a different beast.

[briantw]

8 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

So one of my only complaints about Ghost of Tsushima is that I want it to be a little tougher. Even on hard I feel like l can go to a camp and clean house fairly easily, without having to be cautious or utilize stealth. They did an update today and added a new Lethal difficulty. Good shit! 

One of the things I kind of like about the game is that getting spotted doesn't mean you have to reload a save like in Odyssey.  You just proceed to ass kicking mode and cut your way through everyone.

Half the time I don't even bother with stealth.  I just call those fuckers out, slice through the first three with ease, then take down the rest in a massive melee. 

[The Grey Wolf]

Cuphead's coming to the PS4!

[Red Tiger]

15 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

So one of my only complaints about Ghost of Tsushima is that I want it to be a little tougher. Even on hard I feel like l can go to a camp and clean house fairly easily, without having to be cautious or utilize stealth.

That tends to happen with simple combat systems and easy enemy AI. Sure you have the stance differences, but...that's about it and even that isn't exactly complicated.

[Werthead]

On 7/28/2020 at 9:30 AM, TrueMetis said:

I don't hold up a whole lot of hope because they still used the same engine for FO76. (And seemingly TES6) Which means a decade later your seeing the exact same bugs in FO76 as you got in Skyrim. So they'll almost certainly just going to keep trying to patch up and build upon that engine. And sure doing that you might be able to improve graphics, but changing physics is a different beast.

They have Starfield in the meantime, which apparently is the same Creation Engine as FO4 and FO76 but with some differences in how they use areas (including the rumour that they'll take advantage of greater graphics memory to have no indoor/outdoor differentiation; like The Witcher 3, you'll just open doors and go into buildings seamlessly rather than having to be loaded into a different worldspace). The Elder Scrolls VI is reportedly using a completely new series of plugins and modules built on the same foundations, but will be a lot more advanced, but we'll see. They have kind of promised this stuff before.

[Rhom]

Phantasy Star Online 2 comes out on Steam next week.  Figure it will be safe for me to jump in now!   

[Fez]

Been playing Othercide, and... meh. There's some neat ideas there, and it is stylish as hell, but there's not nearly enough content to justify the price tag. It's also grindy as hell, and because of the lack of content that grind gets repetitive real fast.

[Fez]

Well, I feel like a dumb-dumb. I got the Xbox Gamepass for PC a few months ago. And maybe it was the way I got it (clicking a link in the Microsoft Store) or maybe I missed something after I signed up; but I didn't realize until today that there was an actual Gamepass app for PC. I'd been just trying to use the Microsoft Store itself; which has terrible search functionality and an all-around awful UI. I always idly wondered if I missing something, but it seemed like an awful product to be promoting. Turns out I was missing something; and using the app makes it all a million times easier.

[Kalbear]

15 minutes ago, Fez said:

Well, I feel like a dumb-dumb. I got the Xbox Gamepass for PC a few months ago. And maybe it was the way I got it (clicking a link in the Microsoft Store) or maybe I missed something after I signed up; but I didn't realize until today that there was an actual Gamepass app for PC. I'd been just trying to use the Microsoft Store itself; which has terrible search functionality and an all-around awful UI. I always idly wondered if I missing something, but it seemed like an awful product to be promoting. Turns out I was missing something; and using the app makes it all a million times easier.

I really wish I could disagree with this. 

That said, Gamepass is kind of amazing, and if anything the biggest problem is that there are too many good games on it that you don't have time to play before they go away. 

This holiday season should be pretty exciting for Gamepass folks.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 7/27/2020 at 5:01 PM, RumHam said:

Often you can talk them out of it if you have a male human doing the talking. Those assholes hate EVERYONE else. I really regretted building my first base in their territory. If you can pick a character and have them pretty much constantly making weapons. They'll get really good at it and high quality weapons make a huge difference.

I'm doing the crafting now--my armorer is masterworking stuff. But it's too late for the paladins. I've created a squad I call Assassination Nation, and they're training up all sneak and assassinate skills, and I'm going to to make their lives a living hell. 

[RumHam]

For some reason I had the overworld theme from FFVI in my head all day. So eventually I gave up and decided I'd replay it, I've never done the GBA remake with some added content. It's crazy how excited I am to boot up this 26 year old game. 

Squareenix really needs to do something with it. The first four got 3D remakes. IV also got a sequel. VI is being remade. Five kinda sucks but how do you skip VI!? All they've done to it recently is port it to phone with terrible new sprites. 

[Ramsay B.]

On 7/28/2020 at 11:41 AM, briantw said:

One of the things I kind of like about the game is that getting spotted doesn't mean you have to reload a save like in Odyssey.  You just proceed to ass kicking mode and cut your way through everyone.

I actually like the added pressure of basically not being able to mess up at all, or it means death, in stealth games. But the combat is fun as hell so it’s not that big of a deal here.

Just started Act II. The boss at the end of Act I was pretty tough. 

[briantw]

7 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

I actually like the added pressure of basically not being able to mess up at all, or it means death, in stealth games. But the combat is fun as hell so it’s not that big of a deal here.

Just started Act II. The boss at the end of Act I was pretty tough. 

I enjoy that sometimes but I also like games that let you play how you want like this one and Dishonored.  I swap back and forth from stealth to samurai badass to ungodly archer in this game depending on my mood and the situation at hand. 

[Soylent Brown]

I mostly like stealth games, but I end up murdering everyone in my path anyway so it's less of an ordeal when I inevitably fuck up and get spotted and everyone comes at me.

[Derfel Cadarn]

6 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

I mostly like stealth games, but I end up murdering everyone in my path anyway so it's less of an ordeal when I inevitably fuck up and get spotted and everyone comes at me.

I generally stealth 90% in to prove I can do it, and then backtrack to kill everyone

[Clueless Northman]

8 hours ago, briantw said:

I enjoy that sometimes but I also like games that let you play how you want like this one and Dishonored.  I swap back and forth from stealth to samurai badass to ungodly archer in this game depending on my mood and the situation at hand. 

With Dishonored and Deus Ex, I tend to have a fighting / killing playthrough and a stealth / 0-death one. Usually in this order, because it's easier to get a good overview of the level and where to pass through while stealthed once you've killed everyone on the map, so the brute force helps me to better plan my "pacifist" next game.