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Video Games - Legendary Edition


Rhom

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I've been playing a lot of Borderlands 3 again. I really just wanted a looter/shooter and this is fun. Also turns out there are a ton of DLCs I haven't played and I had 10 levels to get to max so that was fun. So far, I'm doing pretty well on Mayhem 10; finally have the gear for end game situations.

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Oooh. Bethesda updated their Starfield webpage to include a copyright 2021 notice, and numerous sites are now reporting that that game is targeting a November launch window, with confirmation to come at E3.

The only fly in the ointment is COVID and working from home, which allegedly is causing a slower-than-normal wrap-up and bug-crushing period, which might be encouraging Bethesda to drop it back to early 2022. Reportedly Microsoft are pushing hard for this year, and it will be an XBox exclusive on console (as expected).

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On 4/25/2021 at 10:38 PM, Toth said:

I feel you (and think to recognize your avatar XD). I still vividly remember starting out with X2 having my desk covered in post-it notes on which I kept track of all the prices I encountered while touring the galaxy to figure out which wares were profitable at which prices.

And yes, not even Elite offers that living, breathing atmosphere where you are just one guy in a completely simulated world where countless NPCs are doing their business and shape the galaxy. Heck, one of the things I keep reading about X4 is that all ships used by any of the factions have to be actually constructed from high tech wares instead of spawning for free, making the effects of a healthy economy even more apparent.

Have you managed to play X4?

Hah yes that's where I got it from oh so long ago. I still have my drawn paper map of X:BTF stored in the box!

I haven't checked out X4 yet, no, I fell out of playing the X series quite some time ago in the time when.... I remembered being kinda confused and miffed when they released another X3 game - Albion Prelude which I wasn't exactly sure what they were going for with and then all signs pointed to X:Rebirth being... less of what I wanted to play. I do want to check it out but some friends lured me in to checking back in with Minecraft after a probably similar number of years which is currently eating my time and also scratching a curiously similar itch despite them being very different games. It's definitely on the list though. Sad to see that many of the Terran ship designs seem to have changed though from that video you linked. I particularly loved the somewhat overpowered and beautifully designed ATF ships but the white Space Shuttle / "iShip" was great too, in general they did a fantastic job with the ship design for the Terran faction.

In other news this lengthy but interesting video really got my nostalgia pumping for a great series that was a large part of fuelling my love for Star Wars and evolution as a gamer. Dark Forces was also one of the first computer games that wasn't, like, an education game for kids that I ever played and wow was it a good one:

 

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54 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Hah yes that's where I got it from oh so long ago. I still have my drawn paper map of X:BTF stored in the box!

I haven't checked out X4 yet, no, I fell out of playing the X series quite some time ago in the time when.... I remembered being kinda confused and miffed when they released another X3 game - Albion Prelude which I wasn't exactly sure what they were going for with and then all signs pointed to X:Rebirth being... less of what I wanted to play. I do want to check it out but some friends lured me in to checking back in with Minecraft after a probably similar number of years which is currently eating my time and also scratching a curiously similar itch despite them being very different games. It's definitely on the list though. Sad to see that many of the Terran ship designs seem to have changed though from that video you linked. I particularly loved the somewhat overpowered and beautifully designed ATF ships but the white Space Shuttle / "iShip" was great too, in general they did a fantastic job with the ship design for the Terran faction.

Wait, "overpriced"? I think to remember you couldn't buy ATF ships, only capture them if you are masochistic enough to try. The Terrans only sold their white "IShip" designs on the free market I think, not the spiky space cathedrals of the ATF that were too large to fit through jump gates.

Yeah, I must admit I also didn't get Albion Prelude since it essentially sounded like just being X3:TC with a couple more sectors and questions. Which didn't seem to me warranting a new game either, compared to Terran Conflict being notable enough for its myriad of different starting situations and purely optional storylines after Reunion wrapped up the Brennan family saga (though I'm very surprised that I have read that Rebirth and X4 don't even mention what happened to them and TerraCorp afterwards...). Amusingly enough I just read that they are about to release a small-scale spin-off to Albion Prelude for free that takes place immediately after the gate network shut down.

Rebirth I tried out when Steam had a free weekend. I was... ugh... somehow less than thrilled. It tried out to be a new X1 - Beyond the Frontier, but was playing so wonky and the story it was built around was so buggy, I just... couldn't get into it no matter what I tried.

 

.... and... I must admit in my eclectic current gaming habits, I did relent. I... got myself X4. I haven't played too much of it, only the tutorial and then aimlessly flew around a bit until I reached Argon Prime. And... I can understand everyone who flung this game away enraged about how inaccessible it is, but damn. X4 somehow feels like coming home. Yes, they completely changed the menus and the control scheme (WHY though? The new ones are actually even worse. And yes, plural. There are like four different control modes you can switch between). But... it's hard to describe, it's something about the graphics and the jelly physics of the ship (though you have an option to shut off 'flight assists' which enable newtonian physics, making the flight somewhat similar to Elite: Dangerous). Unlike Rebirth it feels very much like it's X3, but with copious amounts of new functionalities taped on top of it.

And I'm not just talking of the ability to walk around ships and space stations. For some reason the tutorial contains a segment where you explore the inside of a wrecked capital ship in your space suit, looting stuff you find there. And there are crafting tables you can use to create upgrades for yourself. Then of course the different flight modes that make travels with every type of ship significantly faster as your max speed isn't as ridiculously capped in travel mode or using the highways that hurl you from gate to gate in no time.

On the other hand, there is a certain delay in every action when outside the cockpit, which... I somehow connect with my CPU screaming in agony, but like to imagine it's actually the old X game engine loosing the will to live when having to compute all this shit it was never made for.

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After seeing some of the preview coverage of Expeditions: Rome, I was inspired to finally try out Expeditions: Viking. I'm still relatively early on, but so far I'm quite impressed at how much of an improvement it is over Expeditions: Conquistador. I thought Conquistador had some interesting ideas and was a decent isometric tactics RPG (including at least some grappling with its setting), but was clearly deeply hampered by a shoestring budget.

Viking builds on Conquistador's systems, but is better in every way. The combat system is deeper, the RPG progression more interesting, the party members better defined, the graphics improved, and so on. There's also more writing, and it's pretty decent too. Though the game can't seem to decide if it wants to play things straight or be more almost fourth wall-breaking, full-of-high-jinks adventure. It's usually the former, but every once in a while you get dialog options that are far too one liner-y. The game certainly still seems to have had some budget limitations, but less so than Conquistador. And it makes me excited for Rome, which looks like it got another budget increase.

Somewhat hilariously, Viking so far has an extremely similar plot to Assassins Creed: Valhalla. Or rather, Valhalla has a similar plot to it, since Viking came out in 2017. It's set about 70 years earlier, so its not the same characters (Ivar the Boneless is just the name of the medium difficulty setting, rather than a major NPC), but the plot beats are all very familiar.

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Completed the BattleTech campaign (again) so now in the Flashpoints.

Lots of fun so far. The lower-level Flashpoints forcing you to use your Medium and Light Mechs makes for a good challenge, and it's good to be doing lots of story-driven missions with lots of specifically-written dialogue rather than grinding the procedurally generated stuff.

The Raven is disappointing though. The idea of a support Mech with an electronic warfare suite is very cool, but all its abilities can be negated by someone just sensor locking it? WTF?

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I've gotten to the point in my BattleTech career game where I have too many cool toys to field them all at once and the challenge is down to roughly the same level as if I were doing this post campaign. I'm thinking I'm going to mostly focus on finishing as many flashpoints as possible while running down the clock so I can check "finifsh career mode" off my to-do list, but the only really challenging mission left should be the final fight at the end of the Heavy Metal mini-campaign.

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Raven is disappointing though. The idea of a support Mech with an electronic warfare suite is very cool, but all its abilities can be negated by someone just sensor locking it? WTF?

The ECM suite is one of the most broken things in the game. Yes, the enemy can use sensor lock to get at one of your 'mechs, but that still leaves 3 others completely protected and means one less enemy unit is shooting at you. Just keep your entire lance within the bubble and reserve your movement until you have to move and you'll take very little damage and basically get to pick your targets at will.

You won't even need to field the (extremely suboptimal) Cyclops to get a tactictal advantage over your opponent, meaning even though your bringing a 35ton machine into an assault 'mech slugfest you're not losing that much firepower in comparison.

Sure, the Raven is a bit flimsy, but there's also a Cataphract variant with ECM as well as a very rare version of the ECM suite that can be installed in any old 'mech.

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I played a bunch more Expeditions: Viking yesterday. Here's a few of the more Viking-esque choices I've made in quests:

  • Killed all the men and exiled all the women of a rival family in my clan. To be fair, they had started things by attacking my father's funeral feast.
  • Attacked a caravan of slave traders belonging to an enemy clan; kept the thralls for my clan rather than freeing them. I needed the labor to speed up construction of my homestead's defenses.
  • Recaptured a different group of escaped thralls.
  • Knifed an orphan in cold blood and killed the rest of his gang of child squatters too. A merchant was paying me to get them off my property so he could rebuild some ruined buildings. Everyone felt bad about this one, but agreed there was no other option; if I drove them off they would've just returned. There was a peaceful option, but it involved doing stuff my character would never agree too.

What I really like is that the game doesn't treat any of this as edgy, but just as facts of life for 9th century Denmark. And in between these kinds of choices I've had plenty of more standard RPG quest outcomes; as well as quests where there were options to go full Viking but I thought it made sense to take a different approach. The game lets you go full Viking, go full 21st century values system, or stay somewhere in between, and they all seem viable. Each will have different benefits and consequences. Going full Viking seems probably the easiest, but you gotta live with the kind of character you're roleplaying. There's no soft edges like AC: Valhalla.

The one exception, which Conquistador also had, is that the game has pretty much total gender equality at all times. There are minor variances, like in that rival family quest I could forgive everyone, kill everyone, exile everyone, or kill the men and exile the women; but I couldn't kill the women and exile the men. But other than a couple things like that, men and women are treated equally. Which also means, as far as I've seen anyway, there's no systematic sexual violence. Which I appreciate. That's too dark for any roleplaying. I also appreciate game developers that aren't going to let anyone's complaints about "muh realism" get in the way of having strong female characters.

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Continued my exploration of X4: Foundations.

The new mission system is actually surprisingly neat. Instead of people on each station randomly having a quest sign attached too their name and you contacting them after closing in to an arbitrary communication distance and only then find out what they offer, X4 has a quest menu that simply shows you all quests offered in the system you are currently in. I signed up to a task involving shooting down pirate satellites around a space station and was baffled to receive 300.000 credits for this hilariously easy quest. They apparently massively increased the payout to make quests remotely comparable to trading in regards to profitability.

Next up went into the office of the Argon Xenon task force and signed up to the "Argon vs. Xenon" questline. My very first task was... scanning asteroids deep in Xenon territory? Okaaaay. What took me a while a figure out was how exactly I was supposed to do that scanning. Ordinarily scanning the asteroids doesn't do anything. Turns out if you look at the expanded mission description it says "Resource Probe required". I had no idea what that is and doubled back to the nearest Equipment Dock. It showed up in the last place I looked, the consumable satellite section. Because probes are satellites apparently and are deployed like that. Also I already had 5 stored for some reason. Interestingly while I checked that the sector was under attack by a massive Xenon fleet and I must say, standing at the edge of the hangar while the alarm sirens of the station are blaring and there are energy blasts flying very closely across the sky was pretty impressive. The Xenon even managed to destroy one factory before being driven off.

Anyway, I fly to the designated Xenon sector and wasted a couple of satellites because the mission objective then complained I found too little ore and silicon in the direct vicinity of the satellite. Somewhat out of spite I flew up right next to a Xenon station that was located in an asteroid field and placed the thing right in their yard, which the quest really liked and I was given several 100.000 credits for that. Next quest... is... scan a Xenon freighter carrying energy cells. Wait what... I noticed much to my astonishment that the Xenon themselves have an economy, with several miners in the asteroid field and transports darting back and forth between the stations. That darting is a bit problematic because you have to get very close and keep a target for several seconds in your crosshairs while in 'scanning mode', which isn't 'travel mode' in which you can keep up with the freighter when at full speed. You could of course strafe it and force it into battle, but... that's battle and I only have an Elite, a fighter that already sucked back in X3. I can take a Xenon freighter on, but only barely. So the only way to scan one is to catch it close to a gate (where their interceptors are waiting for you) or close to a station (where their station defense blasts you to pieces). Also I wasn't sure you need a police scanner since the regular one doesn't show the freight of a ship, so I doubled back to the equipment dock and got myself one. Also splurged on some better shields and weapons, just in case.

... and that's pretty much where I am right now. I returned to the Xenon sectors and began scanning, but so far haven't found any freighter with energy cells, even when camping outside a Xenon solar power plant scanning every freighter coming out of it. What the hell?

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18 hours ago, Ghostlydragon said:

Chrono Trigger on Wii Virtual Console.  What an amazing game.

Is the Virtual Console store still open? I wouldn't mind plugging in my Wii just to buy a bunch of old games like Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time, since it seems the Switch will never get them.

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6 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Is the Virtual Console store still open? I wouldn't mind plugging in my Wii just to buy a bunch of old games like Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time, since it seems the Switch will never get them.

I didn't realize OoT was on the Wii Store.  I have the original version of Final Fantasy IV The After Years on my Wii.  (On my phone its the one with the updated 3D graphics... meh.)  When they first announced that the PS3 store would be pulled down, I did do a binge of old JRPG purchases.  Now of course they have backed off that.

But you know... the most exciting release for me is the fan translation from Geofront for Trails to Azure

I gotta say, for a fan translation, it is amazing to me the job they did with Trails From Zero and now what they are doing with Azure.  It was everything I would expect from a professional localization minus the fact that they did not record English voice acting.

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1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Is the Virtual Console store still open? I wouldn't mind plugging in my Wii just to buy a bunch of old games like Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time, since it seems the Switch will never get them.

Unfortunately it closed a while ago. I got Chrono Trigger shortly before it closed.

Anything you already downloaded can be gotten again though.

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6 hours ago, RumHam said:

How do you guys feel about Chrono Cross? 

 

 

Decent game that was in no way going to be able to live up to the name.

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Sounds like Giant Bomb is basically ending, for those who know it. Jeff Gerstmann is sticking around, and I think the two remaining more tech/back-end guys, Jan and Jason, are staying too, but all the remaining other employees (who've been there since the start back in 2008/9) are leaving this week; just announced on their podcast. Not sure if this relates to the sale of CBSi (which GB is part of) from Viacom to Red Ventures Media, or just a coincidence of timing. But its a damn shame. Jeff's the heart of the site, and the last standing games reviewer from the consolidated mid'90s days, so its not quite the end of an era yet. But its close.

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8 hours ago, Rhom said:

Decent game that was in no way going to be able to live up to the name.

Yeah, it's a pretty disappointing sequel but I really like it as it's own thing that briefly brushes up against Chrono Trigger. Shame I can only play it on my PSP, it needs a re-release. 

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4 hours ago, RumHam said:

Yeah, it's a pretty disappointing sequel but I really like it as it's own thing that briefly brushes up against Chrono Trigger. Shame I can only play it on my PSP, it needs a re-release. 

I’ve got my old PS1 disc around, but I did get it on the Vita virtual store.

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