Video Games - Storage Space Blues

[Argonath Diver]

Yep I finally broke down and bought it. I miss a lot of the amazing stuff PD2 mod did, but the newer graphics are just so nice. And it just feels different to have chars on BNet again vs my amazing horde of single player chars over a couple hundred hours of PD2.

2.4 just dropped yesterday.  Haven't had time yet to play it. Multiple new viable skills/builds and in 2 weeksthe ladder finally starts and there's some really juicy new runewords for that. Which sucks as I'm pretty invested in my current burgeoning wealth on what will be the wasteland that is Non Ladder.

[Werthead]

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is getting a new expansion in a fortnight. Dynasties of India launches on 28 April and adds three new civilisations from the Indian subcontinent, as well as three new SP campaigns (likely 18-24 missions).

I'm not sure any other game is releasing expansions 23 years after it first came out and six months after its second sequel came out.

19 hours ago, Darryk said:

I finally got around to playing The Witcher 3 DLC Blood and Wine and it's bloody brilliant. Love the French-inspired setting.

Blood and Wine may be one of the very best expansions ever made for any game.

[IlyaP]

Curious: does anyone know what the state is of Diablo: Immortal? 

[Proudfeet]

22 hours ago, Werthead said:

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is getting a new expansion in a fortnight. Dynasties of India launches on 28 April and adds three new civilisations from the Indian subcontinent, as well as three new SP campaigns (likely 18-24 missions).

I'm not sure any other game is releasing expansions 23 years after it first came out and six months after its second sequel came out.

Think its a bit of a stretch considering its been remastered twice in the past 10 years, and the current iteration that it is releasing an expansion for is only three years old.

Or that the first sequel kind of bombed and its expansions are lower priced than the expansions for this.

[Werthead]

24 minutes ago, Proudfeet said:

Think its a bit of a stretch considering its been remastered twice in the past 10 years, and the current iteration that it is releasing an expansion for is only three years old.

Or that the first sequel kind of bombed and its expansions are lower priced than the expansions for this.

Agreed in principle but the remaster is extremely faithful to the original release and is built on it. You could "demaster" the new expansions to work with the OG AoE2 very easily (if there was any point). It's not like, say, Homeworld Remastered or the recent terrible GTA remasters where the game is running on a completely different engine under the hood, and you could more treat them as remakes rather than remasters.

I think the two remasters have brought a ton of new players to a game which had a very active fanbase more than a decade after its original release and made such expansions economically viable. There's not many games you could do that for (StarCraft does come to mind though).

[Fez]

On 4/16/2022 at 7:12 AM, Werthead said:

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is getting a new expansion in a fortnight. Dynasties of India launches on 28 April and adds three new civilisations from the Indian subcontinent, as well as three new SP campaigns (likely 18-24 missions).

I'm not sure any other game is releasing expansions 23 years after it first came out and six months after its second sequel came out.

Blood and Wine may be one of the very best expansions ever made for any game.

Everquest is the answer. Also released 23 years ago, also has a sequel that has mostly faded away, and had its most recent expansion release in December 2021.

[Rhom]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Curious: does anyone know what the state is of Diablo: Immortal? 

It has a page on the App Store to “preorder” it.  Says it’s expected June 30.

[Fiddler]

Finally, after probably thousands of hours through all its iterations, I can now say I beat Skyrim.  I finished the main storyline, its DLC, and the creation club content that came with the anniversary edition.  Love that game.

I was then able to purchase Elden Ring, my first paycheck from my job, and play it a bit.  I didn't even unlock the level-up feature and my PS4 sounded like it was gargling mouthwash and shut off due to overheating.  Now it won't even run for longer than 2 minutes without shutting off. 

Elden Ring killed my PS4, lol.

What I did play of the game was awesome though.  Can't wait to start it back up in a couple of weeks when I get a new PS4.

[IlyaP]

Based on @Werthead's recommendation, I picked up Days Gone on Steam, as it was on sale. Am only about an hour in, but am thoroughly enjoying it thus far. The game integrates a tutorial and the mechanics of the game nicely. So far - so good. 

[Proudfeet]

59 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Agreed in principle but the remaster is extremely faithful to the original release and is built on it. You could "demaster" the new expansions to work with the OG AoE2 very easily (if there was any point). It's not like, say, Homeworld Remastered or the recent terrible GTA remasters where the game is running on a completely different engine under the hood, and you could more treat them as remakes rather than remasters.

I think the two remasters have brought a ton of new players to a game which had a very active fanbase more than a decade after its original release and made such expansions economically viable. There's not many games you could do that for (StarCraft does come to mind though).

Never played the original, but I thought it was a bit of a scam that they released DE only a few years after HD. They did incorporate all the expansions brought in with HD, so I got DE eventually but am not sure if there were any noticeable differences as there was a large gap since I last played HD though.

I think that the fact that it has a semi-active competitive scene helps. Also it has a relatively low barrier to entry hardware wise. Its kind of like CS and DOTA in those respects. Different genre of games and monetisation methods but similar in the sense that the core game play hasn't changed that much. 

I'm not that familiar with StarCraft, but I heard that Blizzard did a lot of damage to its competitive scene so it isn't as popular as it could have been.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, Proudfeet said:

Never played the original, but I thought it was a bit of a scam that they released DE only a few years after HD. They did incorporate all the expansions brought in with HD, so I got DE eventually but am not sure if there were any noticeable differences as there was a large gap since I last played HD though.

I think that the fact that it has a semi-active competitive scene helps. Also it has a relatively low barrier to entry hardware wise. Its kind of like CS and DOTA in those respects. Different genre of games and monetisation methods but similar in the sense that the core game play hasn't changed that much. 

I'm not that familiar with StarCraft, but I heard that Blizzard did a lot of damage to its competitive scene so it isn't as popular as it could have been.

Different teams. The HD edition was disappointing, so the modders who were making new expansions for it (who were then professionally hired by Microsoft) spent 6-7 years convincing Microsoft to let them to do it properly, which they did. The differences between the two are pretty notable I think, DE is far superior.

StarCraft's pro-scene was damaged by Blizzard forcing everyone to drop SC1 and move to StarCraft 2, despite SC1 being the tighter, more skillful game. SC2 was quite popular for a while, but eventually dropped in popularity and StarCraft Remastered being quite decent helped restore something of the original game's popularity, though nowhere near back to what it had been.

[IlyaP]

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Different teams. The HD edition was disappointing, so the modders who were making new expansions for it (who were then professionally hired by Microsoft) spent 6-7 years convincing Microsoft to let them to do it properly, which they did. The differences between the two are pretty notable I think, DE is far superior.

StarCraft's pro-scene was damaged by Blizzard forcing everyone to drop SC1 and move to StarCraft 2, despite SC1 being the tighter, more skillful game. SC2 was quite popular for a while, but eventually dropped in popularity and StarCraft Remastered being quite decent helped restore something of the original game's popularity, though nowhere near back to what it had been.

Do you know if the current version on the Blizzard store is the original version of Starcraft or the remastered version? 

[Werthead]

15 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Do you know if the current version on the Blizzard store is the original version of Starcraft or the remastered version? 

It should say StarCraft Remastered.

[Rhom]

7 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Based on @Werthead's recommendation, I picked up Days Gone on Steam, as it was on sale. Am only about an hour in, but am thoroughly enjoying it thus far. The game integrates a tutorial and the mechanics of the game nicely. So far - so good. 

Remembered his rec and thought about getting it as well.  Didn't pull the trigger though.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

Remembered his rec and thought about getting it as well.  Didn't pull the trigger though.

As I said, it's very solid but it's a slow-burn of a game that takes a good ten hours to overcome it's "standard open-world gubbins" format and start to give you the good stuff, and it does a great job of giving you new mechanics and locations right the way through its length. It's opening hours are slow-paced though, and constantly refuelling your bike does get a bit old. I have a more indepth review here.

I will say the Hordes are really, really cool though. When you realise you have to engage and destroy the biggest Horde in the game - which consists of 500 fast-moving zombies - it's a genuinely WTF moment, and great fun when you start working out what tactics you can use to tackle them.

[Ramsay B.]

Days Gone was better than I thought it would be. Not a perfect game but I had a good time with it. The hordes were definitely the highlight, it was very satisfying to beat the first few. 

I didn’t mind the slow start either. It was actually fun in the beginning riding by groups of zombies knowing that if you messed up at all you were fucked. And yup, the gas tank shit was easily my biggest gripe.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

As I said, it's very solid but it's a slow-burn of a game that takes a good ten hours to overcome it's "standard open-world gubbins" format and start to give you the good stuff, and it does a great job of giving you new mechanics and locations right the way through its length. It's opening hours are slow-paced though, and constantly refuelling your bike does get a bit old. I have a more indepth review here.

Did it ever remind you of the Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy? Between the similar crossbow reticule, camera placement, and graphics, I am getting a VERY STRONG Tomb Raider Survivor feeling from this game.

[IlyaP]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

It should say StarCraft Remastered.

It's odd. When I log into Battlenet via the website, to look at my account orders, I'm told I own the Remastered version of Starcraft. 

But in the app, Bnet doesn't seem to...make that clear? (I'm installing it right now, and my screen just says 'Starcraft'). I'm guessing the remastered edition has been the standard version for so long now that there's no need to indicate/explain that it's the remastered version? 

[IlyaP]

I think it hilarious that upon having typed in the word "philosophy" into Steam's search bar, first entry that pops up is Stellaris, but the second entry is...this. 

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I think it hilarious that upon having typed in the word "philosophy" into Steam's search bar, first entry that pops up is Stellaris, but the second entry is...this. 

It’s where I do my best thinking!!!