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Videogames - The definitive Edition, remastered


Toth

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Since the old thread is pretty full, I guess I make the first step into a new one this time. Though I'm afraid I can't say anything about the last questions about running games on external drives as I never tried that.

In other news: The English version of Magia Record has announced end of service after just one year. People are pissed, but honestly I'm surprisingly ambivalent about it. The constant onslaught of events in an attempt to catch up with the Japanese server in a third of the time had already driven me out of it. I'm rather appreciative of not having this timesink around and honestly I'm not even that tempted to dust off my old Japanese account (though I must admit that I made some rolls for lols in the current Anniversary Event and got Kyubey and Mayu, so... it does try to tempt me I guess).

Also yesterday I installed another old classic to go back to: Victoria II. In part because my school research gave me a sudden itch for sphering folks. Oddly enough, I started with Japan instead. Back in the days my only ever game I finished was with the USA and... while I did expand quite decently and managed to survive two World Wars against Britain, I never quite managed to get a hang of the economy system and remained behind Britain and I think France in the global rankings despite colonizing huge swathes of Africa, owning the Panama and Suez channels and gobbling up China with the Brits (which ended up in gruelling trench warfare throughout Manchuria).

As Japan my goal is to westernize as fast as humanly possible, but right now I'm also playing them as a hyperaggressive maniac. I will see... whether I can survive that. It's already 1840 and I conquered only Korea and Hawaii. The former because it makes sense as the closest country I could grab, the latter was more of an act of convenience as it's nearby and allows me to shut the USA out of the Pacific. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure I didn't overstretched my infamy rating with that... so far nobody really bothered. China is the biggest power nearby and they are my ally. So I'm rather in a pinch. Shall I sit back and let my infamy go down while waiting for the Meiji Restauration to kick in, or should I risk everythink and invade Indonesia or Vietnam before any great powers take an interest in them? Of course, not being able to recruit infantry hurts like hell at the moment. In any case, I think I will wait anyway and raise more armies just in case Korea rebels as I pushed for a literacy program there to get more research points, but that increases the uprising risk. Gah...

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It's 1853, I managed to trigger the Meiji Restoration. It sucks that it took me three goddamn years to research the last necessary technology...

... and then the event itself proved to be quite anticlimactic. My research doubled as I wasn't tied down by uncivilized modifiers anymore and all of a sudden I jumped ahead from place 60 to place 15 in the world rating. Here I am, a fledging new power, having saved up a Million pounds in funds to splurge on setting up factories all across the country. I hope I don't mess that up.

Unfortunately I am now becoming more and more aware just how behind I am. Russia has eaten Finland and already colonized all islands to the north I have a core on, they and the USA are also in a tie in their attempts to sphere me. And I had to abandon my alliance with China. They asked for help when they were invaded by Great Britain, which oddly enough was their very first action after abolishing monarchy, and I just went "NOPE, sorry buddy, you are on your own against this one!". And just as expected Britain marched their Indian sepoys all over China within a few months, annexing a terrifying amount of territory. This while successfully fighting off an alliance of France, Germany and Russia at the same time.

Can I just say how much it irritates me just how broken Britain is in Victoria? I wish to see just one game where they implode instead of going on a world conquering spree...

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50 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

There's been a rumor for months now that the original Mass Effect Trilogy is getting a remaster and the rumor is becoming stronger and stronger, with reliable leakers giving info.

All I knew was the rumors.  Didn’t know it was getting to be reliable.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

It sounds like the Mass Effect Remaster is more likely a 2021 release (the expanded art book is coming out in February) than 2020 at this juncture.

I'm still wondering if the rumored gameplay changes have any chance of actually happening. Source I saw was a Reddit post so not the most reliable information. Updating the graphics for the games will be nice (and who am I kidding, I'll still buy it just for that) but it would be nice to also get updated combat mechanics, particularly for the first game. 

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Decided to go back to an old favorite and pop Dark Souls Remastered into my switch.  Game still has a very special place in my heart after all these years.   Got the Black Knight Sword right away, so have been using that at +5 with base stats and pumping stats into Int, which has really made this game a breeze.  Already taken down O&S, 4 Kings, and Seath - moving on to Bed of Chaos today, then will probably move to the DLC areas, get that sweet dark magic, and build up my faith so I can wield WoG

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Oh my god, Mass Effect remaster is a thing that's happening? If they actually redo the gameplay of Mass Effect 1 in a more Andromeda style, that would be incredible. That's probably too much to hope for, but it would be so nice to be able to replay Mass Effect 1 and enjoy myself (story and dialogue scenes aside, which are still very good). The gameplay really hasn't aged well, especially in comparison to the later ones.

 

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There's zero chance of any kind of remake of the Mass Effect games. This will be a remaster, sharper graphics (based off the PC mods that have been circulating for years) and with a small chance of moving the games into the Unreal 4 Engine to facilitate that. Making the games operate on the same mechanics across all three games would be a bit more involved but possible.

Moving all three games to the Frostbite Engine and making them similar semi-open world games to Andromeda would be as expensive as making a brand new game, so that's definitely not happening.

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As I do every few years, I fired up Dungeon Keeper for a replay.

When it comes to 1990s video game developers there's a bare handful operating on Bullfrog's level (LucasArts, Rare, id, early Blizzard and Valve), and almost none who were as forward-thinking about things like UI, reactivity and AI. If it wasn't for the somewhat blurry graphics (and that's with high-resolution mode - 640x480! - enabled) it'd easily be a fantastic modern game (as the same devs proved with Two Point Hospital, which was basically Theme Hospital 2018 and was fantastic).

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2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

As I do every few years, I fired up Dungeon Keeper for a replay.

When it comes to 1990s video game developers there's a bare handful operating on Bullfrog's level (LucasArts, Rare, id, early Blizzard and Valve), and almost none who were as forward-thinking about things like UI, reactivity and AI. If it wasn't for the somewhat blurry graphics (and that's with high-resolution mode - 640x480! - enabled) it'd easily be a fantastic modern game.

I replayed part of it some time ago and had quite a bit of fun. I got it for free on Origin back when they still had a free game program. The first person mode looks really bad though and you need it for some of the secret levels.

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2 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I replayed part of it some time ago and had quite a bit of fun. I got it for free on Origin back when they still had a free game program. The first person mode looks really bad though and you need it for some of the secret levels.

The 1st person mode in DK1 is terrible, but it's okay (ish) for DK2. Fortunately you don't have to use it too often.

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All three of the modern Shadowrun RPGs - Dead Man's SwitchDragonfall and Hong Kong - are free on the Epic Games Store for the next three days, along with the 2016 Hitman.

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Started playing both Wasteland 3 and Crusader Kings 3 on Gamepass (RIP to the other games I'd been working on). I'm only a few hours into Wasteland 3, but I'm not that impressed so far. It feels like a relatively generic "one of those" games so far; competently made (ignoring all the current bugs, though I haven't encountered any yet) but not doing anything special or interesting.

On the other hand, I'm loving Crusader Kings 3. I played a bit of CK2 way back when, long before most of the DLC came out, so I don't know what that game ended up like, but CK3 is leaps and miles better than what early CK2 was at least. There's also a much better tutorial set in Ireland that actually explained how most game mechanics work, which helped enormously. The only thing I dislike so far is that there's no diplomatic fog of war, which just feels too unrealistic. There's military fog of war of course, and you can't interact with realms too far from you, but it just feels silly that I in 11th century Italy have perfect information about the diplomatic situation in Mali, Bengal, or Mongolia (the outer edges of the map).

I started my first game as Duchess Matilda of Tuscany and spent about 25 years conquering and vassalizing large portions of northern Italy (while remaining loyal to my liege HRE Henry IV), to the point where I became Queen of Romanaga. My main problem at this point is that many of my titles and vassalizes are de jure part of the Kingdom of Italy (which doesn't exist right now) rather than the Kingdom of Romanaga. And, because all forms of primogeniture are locked behind some mid-to-late game innovations, it means when I die my titles will be split up among my eligible children. My primary heir gets the Kingdom of Romanaga, and the Duchy of Tuscany (since my capital is still there), but my other heirs that inherit titles in Italy won't be vassals of Romanaga after I die.

Which means my realm as a player will lose about half its size when Matilda dies. Shes's only 45 right now, so its a race against time to conquer enough of what's left of northern Italy to create the Kingdom of Italy. I can then make that my primary title, being my heir will get it instead. My second son will get Romanaga and become independent, but at that point I'd only be losing about a third of my realm instead of half. If I can get really lucky, I'll get enough land that I can form the Empire of Italia. If I do that, and have that my primary title, it means all my extra children would stay vassals of the primary heir. Although, that would mean leaving the HRE and the protection that entails, and I'm not sure I'm strong enough to stand on my own.

So that's my plan. Or at least, one plan. The First Crusade just completed and I contributed enough to it that I was able to get my eldest daughter crowned Queen of Jerusalem with her husband as the King Consort. This caused the game to trigger a decision where I can keep playing at Matilda or switch over to playing as my daughter Beatrix, instead. I have a manual save slot there and have gone down both paths a couple days so that I have separate save files with each. Not sure what I'll do yet, they seems like they'll be very different game experiences. I'll probably stick with Matilda though, since I think Jerusalem is going to get wiped out after Beatrix dies (in addition to the kingdom's regular levies she has 6500 crusaders as a special army for founding the kingdom, but if I'm reading the tooltips right, it will disappear when she dies).

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Started playing Avengers and it is pretty fun so far...though I am still pretty early in.  I have had a brief chance at playing all the opening Avengers and they are all fun.  I have played Hulk a bit more than the others at this early stage, though.  I am still learning to use my abilities properly.  Kamala Khan is the MC for the campaign and she's pretty good.  Her powers are goofy but she is still fun to play so I think that's a good sign.  I always say I want it to be fun to push the buttons and it's fun to push the buttons in this game.  So far so good...

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