Videogames Killed the TV Star

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

My horse is now a fire zombie! 

[Fiddler]

Ok, finally picked up Hades on Ps4 this week.

Damn, this is a great game.  Been hearing a lot of great things about it and couldn't wait to try it out.  Really does the whole Roguelite aspect really well.

Also started playing RDR2 after bouncing off of it the first time.  Really enjoying it, but, man, that opening in the snow really is a slog.  I understand trying to teach players game mechanics, but man.

Which leads me to one of my biggest pet peeves in games.  When you have to follow an NPC who has some weird speed that isn't your full sprint, but isn't your normal walk either.  So you spend the whole quest trying to speed up and slow down just to stay behind them, because of course they stop when you get ahead of them.  Hate that stuff.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Fiddler said:

Ok, finally picked up Hades on Ps4 this week.

Damn, this is a great game.  Been hearing a lot of great things about it and couldn't wait to try it out.  Really does the whole Roguelite aspect really well.

It's a fantastic little game, so well thought out and just plain fun. 

[Inkdaub]

13 hours ago, Mr. X said:

I'd say Will of the Wisps is pretty similar to Blind Forest in terms of difficulty, and it does have the same sort of difficulty spikes as Blind Forest with the escape sequences (which I'm guessing is where you're stuck). I found most of them to be tough but manageable, having previously finished Blind Forest, but I got pushed up to the border of rage quitting with the last one.

Will of the Wisps also has boss fights.

I do agree with Kal -- Will of the Wisps takes all the stuff that was great about Blind Forest and builds on it in a way that makes it even better.

Thanks for the info.  Truth is I'll likely keep trying at some point. 

I am stuck on a section where you have to jump down and flutter under a wall then across to another wall then up and up and up to safety. The ground is water that kills you I think and the walls are covered in spikes.  I have watched people do it on youtube and it sure looks easy...haha.  I have tried a thousand times and never make it.

[briantw]

38 minutes ago, Fiddler said:

Which leads me to one of my biggest pet peeves in games.  When you have to follow an NPC who has some weird speed that isn't your full sprint, but isn't your normal walk either.  So you spend the whole quest trying to speed up and slow down just to stay behind them, because of course they stop when you get ahead of them.  Hate that stuff.

Fuck yes, this.

Although when you're on horse in Red Dead 2 I believe there's a button you can hold to activate cinematic mode, which locks you at your companion's speed.

[kungtotte]

The reason walking NPCs don't move at a normal pace is so you can keep up with them. If they ran as fast as you can run you couldn't catch up if you got left behind, and if they walked as slowly as your walk speed was you'd go nuts walking that slowly. So they move at a pace that's in the middle of your walking speed and your running speed.

[Toth]

Okay, finished Far Harbor, now off to celebrate Cait getting sober with a trip to Nuka World. What?

All in all Far Harbor was... fine. Yes, I praised the writing before and I still stand by my opinion of how it's enjoyably crisp. Unfortunately it's still affected by Fallout 4's crippling lack of agency. So in the end you still end up just deciding who to blow up and who not, even if it manages to make this an interesting moral decision by having no obviously good option present. In the end I decided to support DiMa, even if it meant acting like the Institute, just infinitely more reasonable.

[Werthead]

Started Watch_Dogs Legion. Very impressed by the recreation of London in the game. Easily the best version of the city ever put in a game, even if it is a compressed version of it. The dystopian angle is a better fit for the gameplay than in the almost-contemporary Watch_Dogs 1 & 2 when it felt weird pulling out a gun and going berserk to achieve a mission objective. Here, with London much more obviously taken over by a fascist government, out-of-control corporations and heavily-armed gangs, it is a bit more thematic.

I'm not sure on the idea of not having a set protagonist, and instead being able to turn any NPC in the game world into a controllable character. It's a fun idea and you can end up with some crazy combos, but it's a surreal move to make when Watch_Dogs 2 worked so much better from having a really well-established core group of characters.

I have seen some people recommending doing the DLC first, since it is set before Legion itself and you can then use those characters in the main game, but that seems a bit like rejecting the premise of the game, not to mention that Aidan fucking Pearce is one of the weakest video game protagonists ever, so no thanks.

[RumHam]

I reinstalled Battlefield 4 overnight because I'm excited about the new one. There's been like three battlefield games since then but people are still playing this one.

[Toth]

No Man's Sky now introduced a settlement building system:

*happy Preston Garvey noises*

[Fez]

I picked up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I'd been planning on waiting a while, based on how much of a buggy mess Pathfinder: Kingmaker was at launch. But it sounds like the devs did a much better job this time, with bugs being much more isolated (except for on Mac, where apparently the game basically doesn't work). So I rolled the dice, and, I'm still early going, but so far I'm really glad I did. The jump in quality from Kingmaker to Righteous seems enormous, on par with the jump from Baldur's Gate 1 to 2. 

Not to say that this is as good as BG2; that'd be a hell of a thing, and I wouldn't even try making such a comparison until I'd beaten the game at least once. But it's the same kind of situation: the developers made a game, had some learning pains, and then made a sequel using the same engine that is better in every way. And, since they now had the game systems in place, they focused a lot more on the writing and story.

From what I know of the game, it's supposedly shorter than Kingmaker (but shorter is relative; i.e., it's maybe 75 hours rather than 120 hours), with a ton more replayability. In addition to the several dozen different classes you can be, there are 10 "Mythic Paths" in the game; which don't just change gameplay mechanics, they substantially change the story too. I know in at least one of them you became the actual big bad of the story and you spend the whole second half of the game destroying your former allies. I don't think all 10 are as dramatically different as that, though I've tried not to spoil myself too much. But I know in one of the others there's a whole time traveling aspect, which supposedly gives you a different outlook on events and is not recommended for a first playthrough.

The downside though of the game is that it's hyper complex, which makes sense considering it's based off a tabletop system designed by people who got mad when D&D mechanics started making intuitive sense. The reason I know as much as I do about the mythic paths (which fortunately isn't a ton) is because they both have alignment requirements and offer very different gameplay bonuses, which are often only good for a few classes. Meaning if you go in totally blind, you might end up with an extremely sub-optimal build that requires knocking the difficulty down to story-mode to advance further in the game in the story direction you want. For instance [minor spoilers, this was mostly in the marketing materials of the game]

Spoiler

One of the mythic paths is Angel, which makes the game the classic righteous hero story. You can only be Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, or Neutral Good (if you aren't at the start, there are supposedly ways of getting there in the game). Any class can become an Angel, but Angel's gameplays bonuses mostly help either frontline warriors or divine casters; different classes will get way less of a boost. And on anything other than the lowest difficulties you'll need those mythic boosts to beat the tougher bosses. So, for instance, if you're an arcane caster like a wizard you could become an Angel, but there's other paths that would help you way more. 

Likewise, there's a huge number of feats and skills you can pick that are basically worthless. The game does allow re-specing at least, so you aren't permanently screwed; but it's not a perfect solution.

But it feels great to play (if you like CRPGs). The UI is way better than Kingmaker's, it has turn-based combat as an option (that was only patched into Kingmaker way after launch), and the characters feel way more reactive and involved in the story.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Back to fuck PSN. They double charged me for a year subscription and then charged me $10 for the first month after the trial expired. Took forever to get in touch with someone and they.... cancelled all three subscriptions and refunded me the $10. Fucking garbage service.

[A True Kaniggit]

9 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Back to fuck PSN. They double charged me for a year subscription and then charged me $10 for the first month after the trial expired. Took forever to get in touch with someone and they.... cancelled all three subscriptions and refunded me the $10. Fucking garbage service.

Wow. That sucks.

I’ve never had the problem of overcharging with PSN. My problems are usually about network outages preventing me from playing games  (happened again a couple days ago) and hackers trying to take over my account. 

Honestly. Why doesn’t Sony have a 24 hour support system for PSN? Would paying those employees really break the company?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Wow. That sucks.

I’ve never had the problem of overcharging with PSN. My problems are usually about network outages preventing me from playing games  (happened again a couple days ago) and hackers trying to take over my account. 

Honestly. Why doesn’t Sony have a 24 hour support system for PSN? Would paying those employees really break the company?

I'm normally never the "Speak English" guy, I've lived in a foreign country where I barely had a grasp of the language, but it was pretty clear the person behind the chat had a limited understanding and even after I walked him through everything he still didn't get it then said have a great day and ended the chat. I tried the phone, but after two hours, fuck it. What absolute dogshit service. 

[Ghostlydragon]

I picked up the revenge of the sith ds game from 2005. I enjoyed it on ps2 but didn't own a ds til September that year and never played it at all. I hear it had good touch screen space battles so I'm looking forward to it, even if it looks like a gba game

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Issue resolved, after an hour or so with a bot. What a weird loophole Sony needs to fix.

[Fez]

I'm starting to wonder if Kingmaker: WotR is actually shorter than Kingmaker. I'm 12 hours in and have only finished the prologue and 3 of the main quests of Chapter 1. I've got I think 7 other Chapter 1 main quests left open, and no idea if more are to come. And I believe there's 6 or 7 chapters in the game. Seems like this could easily be a 120+ hour game too. Though the difference is that so far every map I've been on has been plot-relevant; no random wilderness maps yet.

Not that I'm complaining, the game is great so far. But the longer this is, the less likely I am to ever see the other mythic paths. 

[Werthead]

Watch Dogs Legion is a bewilderingly odd game. Inferior to Watch Dogs 2 on almost every single level (in terms of story, characters, UI, stealth, combat and, as far as I can tell at this moment, length), but with an exceptional video game depiction of London and a much better atmosphere/premise. Still a lot better than the original game, though.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Giving up on RDR1 Zombies. I believe I've done everything except the last mission and I just can't figure out how to find it. 

Witcher 3 is leaving PSN tomorrow, but it looks like I can just download it. May give that a try next.

[A True Kaniggit]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Giving up on RDR1 Zombies. I believe I've done everything except the last mission and I just can't figure out how to find it. 

Witcher 3 is leaving PSN tomorrow, but it looks like I can just download it. May give that a try next.

Play some trash war simulator with me. (War Thunder) Free to Play.

Is it fun? I give it a C minus.

Give it a shot. We can Fuck Shit Up together.