Videogames Killed the TV Star

[Werthead]

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Noob question, is PS Now a good investment? I really want to try RDR, but it seems like that's the only way to play it at the moment.

ETA: F it, I still have a 7 day free trial. Back to the old West!

It looks highly probable there'll be a next-gen RDR2 remaster in the next couple of years and a possible RDR1 full remake/upgrade sooner than that, if the GTA remasters due in the next couple of months sell well.

Quote

 

Playing an FPS feels good? Okay, maybe. 

Playing an RTS without hotkeys, control groups and bindings feels good? I have to doubt your taste in games. Even if you have insane APM and/or playing on the lowest difficulty, I'd imagine constantly scrolling the map for every menial task would be the height of frustration. It'd be interesting to see how they mapped the default controls though.

He's the head? of Xbox and those are Microsoft games, so there's that aspect to consider as well.

 

You can attack a keyboard, mouse or external controller to the machine via Bluetooth, and you have to consider if the screen size is suitable for playing a strategy game in the first place. You can output from the Steam Deck to a TV (though without a proper HD signal, it's going to be a bit blurry).

Playing Halo or Control or something like Dishonored on the thing should be fine, but I'd doubt that playing Civilization or a Total War game would be really satisfying. Maybe an RTS with a big, friendly UI that doesn't rely on tiny buttons (Blizzard games, maybe) would be okay.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It looks highly probable there'll be a next-gen RDR2 remaster in the next couple of years and a possible RDR1 full remake/upgrade sooner than that, if the GTA remasters due in the next couple of months sell well.

I'm only 90 minutes or so into the game, but so far RDR1 is holding up gameplay wise. The horse is just a little clunky.

The other upside of trying PS Now is that I can sample a few games that are similar to GTA and RDR2.

[briantw]

14 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm only 90 minutes or so into the game, but so far RDR1 is holding up gameplay wise. The horse is just a little clunky.

The other upside of trying PS Now is that I can sample a few games that are similar to GTA and RDR2.

I've been replaying the Arkham games on PS Now.  There's no shortage of good shit on there.

[aceluby]

35 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It looks highly probable there'll be a next-gen RDR2 remaster in the next couple of years and a possible RDR1 full remake/upgrade sooner than that, if the GTA remasters due in the next couple of months sell well.

You can attack a keyboard, mouse or external controller to the machine via Bluetooth, and you have to consider if the screen size is suitable for playing a strategy game in the first place. You can output from the Steam Deck to a TV (though without a proper HD signal, it's going to be a bit blurry).

Playing Halo or Control or something like Dishonored on the thing should be fine, but I'd doubt that playing Civilization or a Total War game would be really satisfying. Maybe an RTS with a big, friendly UI that doesn't rely on tiny buttons (Blizzard games, maybe) would be okay.

Civ6 on the Switch isn't too bad with the touch screen - I've probably put in 50 hours into it.  I thought I saw that the Steam Deck has one as well, but I didn't really look into it since I don't have a Steam collection to take advantage of.

[Werthead]

Humankind's launch trailer is amusing.

[Kalbear]

I have to say playing Halo on a small screen like my phone was pretty hard simply because enemies were pretty dang far away at times. Gears of War - which is significantly more into close combat - was a lot nicer. 

[Proudfeet]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

You can attack a keyboard, mouse or external controller to the machine via Bluetooth, and you have to consider if the screen size is suitable for playing a strategy game in the first place. You can output from the Steam Deck to a TV (though without a proper HD signal, it's going to be a bit blurry).

Playing Halo or Control or something like Dishonored on the thing should be fine, but I'd doubt that playing Civilization or a Total War game would be really satisfying. Maybe an RTS with a big, friendly UI that doesn't rely on tiny buttons (Blizzard games, maybe) would be okay.

I cropped the tweet, but he specifically mentioned that "screen size, controls all great." The way I read it, he's using it on his own without connecting it to anything. But again, looking at his handle, he might just have been blindly promoting his own games.

Off topic, navigating twitter has been a pain the past couple of days as a non registered user. Seems as if they're forcing me to sign up. No thanks. 

[Fez]

Played a bit of Humankind on Gamepass, and so far it's not doing much for me. It does have a dynamite UI and presentation style and the terrain looks great. But other than that it basically feels like a somewhat stripped down Civ6. Which would be fine, except I've already played a ton of Civ6 and am not looking for more. It does bring a couple unique ideas to the table, the culture shifting being the biggest one, but it's also missing a bunch of things Civ has. 

For the pre-release talk about this being Amplitude's "magnum opus" I'm feeling pretty letdown. It's not a bad game or anything, and if I hadn't played as much Civ as I have over the years I'd probably be much more positive. But as is, eh.

[Caligula_K3]

A trailer came out today for the new Pokemon game. I've never been a huge Pokemon fan, but this looks pretty fun: Breath of the Wild, but with Pokemon everywhere.

Speaking of, I've been replaying Breath of the Wild for the... third time? Fourth time? I love this game so much.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Has anyone played Days Gone on the PS5? 

My SO is into Zombie stuff and it looks like it could work for her.

 

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Has anyone played Days Gone on the PS5? 

My SO is into Zombie stuff and it looks like it could work for her.

I've been thinking it might be good on PC as well. The consensus seems to be that as an open-world zombie game it's solid, but not a patch on Dying Light, and in overall terms was not as good previous open-world PS port Horizon: Zero Dawn (although that doesn't have zombies, but it does have Zoids). Sort of a quintessential 7/10 game.

[A True Kaniggit]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

I've been thinking it might be good on PC as well. The consensus seems to be that as an open-world zombie game it's solid, but not a patch on Dying Light, and in overall terms was not as good previous open-world PS port Horizon: Zero Dawn (although that doesn't have zombies, but it does have Zoids). Sort of a quintessential 7/10 game.

And Dying Light 2 should be out in a few more months. 

[Toth]

Very sporadically continued my Fallout 4 playthrough. By now I cleared almost all sidequests and stopped at the main quest where you have to walk into the "Glowing Sea". By now I got a bit annoyed by about 4 quests sending me into the Corvega Assembly Plant even though I already cleared it extremely early in my game. In fact it made the game's mechanic painfully obvious that enemies only spawn at your level from when you first discovered a place. Meaning for the Corvega factory that I just walk in with my puny pipe pistol and one-shot every raider while they are barely able to scratch the paint off my combat armor.

So I guess that moment of boredom meant it is time for a deep dive into the DLC addons. First up: Far Harbor. I'm relatively unspoiled and only heard that it supposedly contains the best writing in Fallout 4, which... is an extremely low bar to pass, given how crap the writing is overall outside of the environmental storytelling of the various ruins. So in any case, I grabbed Nick Valentine and made for the Acadia National Park! A place that has turned into a glooming horror scenery as the last surviving inhabitants are huddling together at the last scraps of the harbor since an ominous radioactive fog that turns people insane has swallowed the island. They suspiciously eye my arrival and I must admit it's a neat trick to have the distrustful attitude of everyone cause you to only get a full picture of the various factions and the underlying reasons for their hostility piece by piece. Yes, the writing is surprisingly crisp and it's quite fun to interact with people so far, even though the goodawful dialogue wheel still severely handicaps your options and railroads you into the ever same replies where nothing you say actually matters.

Also I'm not sure I like the companion. Having Old Longfellow be a gruff old hunter who barely talks does feel like a cheap trick to masquerade that they put the bare minimum of voice lines for him into the game. Also I curse how the game trained me to only keep companions around for farming affection to unlock their perk. The game offered me to take Longfellow with me just as I arrived at Acadia and I instantly took him with me, dismissing Valentine, even though Longfellow doesn't say anything at all when meeting DiMa even though I guess Valentine would have quite a lot to say about him. Crap.

Well, looking forward to clear Far Harbor. After that I'll take Cait to Nuka World! XD

[kungtotte]

I recently picked up Fallout 4 myself since the GOTY edition hit the €10 price point that I feel comfortable spending on a game like this. So far I like it a lot, I still haven't finished the main quest and I'm not sure how much of the DLC content I've got cleared. I haven't left the main area yet.

Mechanically I like it, it still has a fair amount of the jank that's plagued these games/game engine since day 1 but it's a lot less than in 3/NV. The world is also so much better, the towns and cities feel like cities you can move around in as opposed to the series of corridors we saw in the Fo3/NV worlds. The streamlining of the SPECIAL and perk system also feels okay.

I defaulted to my normal sneaky sniper dude, pairing it up with pistols. The weapon modding system can go a bit overboard sometimes, and I'm not bothering much with the settlement system either, only building at Sanctuary. But all in all, I like the game. And at only €10 I can overlook the issues!

[Toth]

30 minutes ago, kungtotte said:

I recently picked up Fallout 4 myself since the GOTY edition hit the €10 price point that I feel comfortable spending on a game like this. So far I like it a lot, I still haven't finished the main quest and I'm not sure how much of the DLC content I've got cleared. I haven't left the main area yet.

Mechanically I like it, it still has a fair amount of the jank that's plagued these games/game engine since day 1 but it's a lot less than in 3/NV. The world is also so much better, the towns and cities feel like cities you can move around in as opposed to the series of corridors we saw in the Fo3/NV worlds. The streamlining of the SPECIAL and perk system also feels okay.

I defaulted to my normal sneaky sniper dude, pairing it up with pistols. The weapon modding system can go a bit overboard sometimes, and I'm not bothering much with the settlement system either, only building at Sanctuary. But all in all, I like the game. And at only €10 I can overlook the issues!

I agree, in terms of gameplay Fallout 4 is definitely an extremely smooth experience and I guess the the streamlined perk system works well with the kind of casual loot-shooter approach they were going for. The environmental storytelling is great in that every place you visit tells its own story that you can uncover by combing through every nook and cranny and read all the conveniently intact terminals. Also... well, despite the developers definitely overdoing it with the sheer amount of useless settlements with suffocatingly small building spaces, I must say that the settlement mechanic triggered all my OCDs and I keep getting sidetracks trying to make some random scruffy nerfherders in the middle of nowhere happy... and also turn their camp into some kind gulag with a tightly packed barrack filled to the brim with beds... Another pro-side is that most companions are actually very interesting to have around and feel very fleshed out. Also compared to Fallout 3 the voice acting is leagues better altogether (can't say anything about New Vegas, as I still have to play that one).

The downside is that the world feels incredibly shallow in my eyes and the writing, especially for the main story, is absolutely abysmal. It makes no sense that they are only just now starting to rebuild the Commonwealth amongst perfectly untouched ruins filled to the brim with goodies while people are busy nationbuilding on the West Coast where pre-war america is a faint dream of the distant past you barely find remains of that weren't already picked clean. Also the non-existant motivations of the Institute and how the whole Kellogg nonsense makes not a lick of sense... Better don't think about it. Also not about how 90% of quests somehow devolve into "Go to location X, kill everything, bring me Y". That only rarely gets grating because the locations themselves are interesting enough most of the time and also the gameloop itself feels oddly satisfying.

[Soylent Brown]

Decided to replay Breath of the Wild, and having a lot of fun again. So many games these days I find that I play for an hour and then want to do something else, but with this I'm always looking to do one more thing and then it's 2am on a Wednesday, haha. Perhaps that isn't a good thing, but I really don't think a game has caught me this much since WoW, even second time through.

Lightning enemies can still go and suck a fuck, of course.

[IFR]

I very rarely play video games, but a friend got me into Disco Elysium and it's very entertaining. The dialog is hilarious. I'm hamming it up as the incompetent buffoon detective and there have been a couple of times I've been reduced to tears from laughing. Love this game.

[Werthead]

As far as Fallout 4 goes, yup, Far Harbor is the best part of it. Nuka World is dumb as fuck though.

Spoiler

If you've been playing a relatively good guy, allied with any of the FO4 factions which you really had to because, well, that's all that's in the game, and you want to maintain that, then you can only go about 40% of the way through Nuka World's storyline. At that point you're supposed to go off and help the Raiders take over your own settlements in the Commonwealth. Unless you're playing your character as a schizophrenic lunatic, that won't make any sense. You can go "fuck off" at that point and murderate all the Raiders (which does lead to possibly the biggest and most challenging battle in the entire FO4 game-line), but that reduces the rest of Nuka World to dungeons you're simply farming for money and XP.

The only way Nuka World works is if you got there ASAP after the start of FO4, lead the Raiders into taking over 3-4 settlements in the Commonwealth, then complete the rest of the campaign and then do FO4's main story as normal, but helping the Commonwealth take over other settlements than the ones you let the Raiders take over. That's the only way to get the story to make sense, which is bloody stupid, especially as Nuka World came out a year after FO4.

 

 

 

[Toth]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

As far as Fallout 4 goes, yup, Far Harbor is the best part of it. Nuka World is dumb as fuck though.

  Reveal hidden contents

If you've been playing a relatively good guy, allied with any of the FO4 factions which you really had to because, well, that's all that's in the game, and you want to maintain that, then you can only go about 40% of the way through Nuka World's storyline. At that point you're supposed to go off and help the Raiders take over your own settlements in the Commonwealth. Unless you're playing your character as a schizophrenic lunatic, that won't make any sense. You can go "fuck off" at that point and murderate all the Raiders (which does lead to possibly the biggest and most challenging battle in the entire FO4 game-line), but that reduces the rest of Nuka World to dungeons you're simply farming for money and XP.

The only way Nuka World works is if you got there ASAP after the start of FO4, lead the Raiders into taking over 3-4 settlements in the Commonwealth, then complete the rest of the campaign and then do FO4's main story as normal, but helping the Commonwealth take over other settlements than the ones you let the Raiders take over. That's the only way to get the story to make sense, which is bloody stupid, especially as Nuka World came out a year after FO4.

 

 

 

And yet if you do that...

Spoiler

... the Quantum X-01 armor is leveled according to the wiki, meaning you get a crappy version if you go there underleveled.

When I read just how focused this is on being an evil character and there is no good option aside murdering everyone, I also wondered whether it wouldn't have been far more cool to have several moral options within the Nuka World quest line that shapes the attitude of your raiders. If you go for all the good options where you harshly punish excessive behavior, you get the chance to transform the raiders into a mercenary group like the Gunners and can use them to take over Gunner/raider territory or use them to protect provisioners and settlements.

Just one idea... Everything better than the game asking you to break everything you built up for lolz.

Btw, I just saw they are remastering Skyrim again for the 10th anniversary. Bethesda is only a meme by now, isn't it?

[Ghostlydragon]

Dragon Quest 11 on Switch. What a masterpiece. After I get tired of the inevitable level grinding I may go back to Zack and Wiki on Wii. Its a game I always meant to finish in 08 but got tired of the puzzles. Obv I was an idiot 13 years ago as that is the point of the game but I just need time, and possibly gamefaqs haha