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Video Games - Waiting for a New AAA Game (that isn't Elden Ring)


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2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The key to the combat is Tearblast arrows. The second you get those and you can blast the machines' armour away before finishing them off, the game gets a lot easier, even the gigantic T-rex ones and the flying ones.

Also a good tip is to do the optional Cauldrons as they become available as they are a rich source of experience. I think there's 5 or 6 and the first two are absolutely massive, which put me off the rest, but the others are all a lot smaller and simpler.

Yep, I figured out the tearblast arrows stuff. It's also good to have the high ground as often as possible.

But the spear attack is atrocious. I don't know how many time Aloy uncontrollably lunged at an enemy, especially a human, just to completely miss the target.

I did the first cauldron which also helped with world immersion. I knew there had to be an explanation for why there are still machines around considering humans hunt them like animals.

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Guild Wars 2 is really pissing me off at the moment.

Which is very annoying because this is a time when the entire world is pissing me off and I just want to play one of my favourite computer games to relax. Arena Net have been historically abysmal at taking feedback, with the best they've tended to manage is talking at players and explaining that they're actually right so the debacle surrounding the latest patch isn't surprising in direction as such but more in the sheer magnitude of it. In brief: a horrendously bad balance patch accompanied by an enormous leak of chat logs from a private discord which make the balance lead look... very bad.

:bang:

 

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43 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

But the spear attack is atrocious. I don't know how many time Aloy uncontrollably lunged at an enemy, especially a human, just to completely miss the target.

I did the first cauldron which also helped with world immersion. I knew there had to be an explanation for why there are still machines around considering humans hunt them like animals.

I completely ignored spears. Bows all the way, all the time.

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I'd agree with Wert about the spear - to me HZD seems to be explicitly telling you that you shouldn't ever be attacking the machines in melee, and you probably shouldn't be whacking the humans with the spear either.

Took me a while to get into the game when I played it too, but once you're out of the Embrace and really get going with the story, the narrative carries you the rest of the way through the game and makes it easy to forgive the annoyances I had with the mechanics.

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1 hour ago, Denvek said:

I'd agree with Wert about the spear - to me HZD seems to be explicitly telling you that you shouldn't ever be attacking the machines in melee, and you probably shouldn't be whacking the humans with the spear either.

Took me a while to get into the game when I played it too, but once you're out of the Embrace and really get going with the story, the narrative carries you the rest of the way through the game and makes it easy to forgive the annoyances I had with the mechanics.

Yup, the fact there's so many ranged weapons with high damage and basically two melee weapons (one of which you can't get until quite late in the day) is the game's way of telling you that melee is not really the way to go, apart from the finishing moves.

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Reservation email popped today for my 512gb Steam Deck.  I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the order.

Its actually perfect timing, in about three weeks I'm taking my son to my old college town.  He's signed up for a basketball camp for the week.  I will be hanging out around town and seeing some old friends and just basically being lazy.  So having a portable PC to do some gaming will be perfect.

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Some things I've noticed from my fresh replay of Elden Ring:

  • Incantations are more different from Sorceries than I realized. Some enemies are much easier now, but others (like those damn birds with blade feet) are much harder.
  • Muscle memory lasts longer than I realized. I beat Margit on just my third attempt this time.
  • The game's size continues to astound me. I've discovered yet more places in Stormveil Castle that I'd never been before.
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20 hours ago, Rhom said:

Reservation email popped today for my 512gb Steam Deck.  I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the order.

Its actually perfect timing, in about three weeks I'm taking my son to my old college town.  He's signed up for a basketball camp for the week.  I will be hanging out around town and seeing some old friends and just basically being lazy.  So having a portable PC to do some gaming will be perfect.

I don't think you'll regret pulling the trigger. As I said I wasn't even planning on keeping mine but the thing is just great. My nephew never has to know how close I came to giving it to him for his birthday. :lol:

It depends where you are but my email came on a thursday and it shipped the following tuesday and arrived the following Friday. Fourth of July might add a day but FedEx does deliver on saturday.

I'd also say that just because a came says "unsupported" you should still try. Most of them work, in my experience. Mainly it's online stuff that requires anti-cheat software that doesn't work at the moment. (Unless you install windows in a dual boot situation, but I haven't seen the need to.)

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On 6/29/2022 at 11:46 AM, IlyaP said:

The UI, combined with the repetitive planet roving missions, is what made me give up on the game. Also, the plot point with the main character's dad and the helmet decision is just so mind-bogglingly stupid as to be nearly insulting. 

Do you mean

Spoiler

the decision to sacrifice his life for yours, the nepotism in making his kid the new Pathfinder or that there should have been another option that didn't require sacrificing himself?

The first two are actually explained (very satisfactorily imo) near the end of one of the main quest lines, if the last one is your complaint then there's no reprieve on that front but I'm ok with it.

Spoiler

You've already cracked your face plate on the initial fall which is why it's weakened and gets completely destroyed at the end.

20 hours ago, Fez said:
  • The game's size continues to astound me. I've discovered yet more places in Stormveil Castle that I'd never been before.

I've started another one as well going str/colossal swords and also found new areas in Stormveil. This is the 4th for me and I'm sure there's plenty more still.

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I'm reading the Shamus Young (RIP) book on Mass Effect now and I have to say his analysis of how utterly nonsensical the storyline of Mass Effect 2 is, is extremely good. Mass Effect 2's side-quests and how they build to the Suicide Mission are brilliant, with some great storytelling and moments, but I think they do make people ignore a hefty chunk of utter bullshit at the start of the game (and intermittently through it), easily as bizarre as the ending to ME3.

If the Amazon show goes ahead, I think their writers need to have this 700-page tome next to them and they need to do some major rewriting to segue the events of Mass Effect 1 and 2 together because adapted literally, they would come across as completely deranged if played straight.

How I'd do it is have the Normandy not destroyed but damaged, salvaged and then rebuilt by Cerberus. Shepard isn't hunting down Geth, she's investigating more Prothean ruins for information on the Reapers, but is frustrated because she's not getting anywhere. There's a plot twist that Cerberus is aware of the Collector activity but they either sic the Collectors on Shepard deliberately or they take out the Normandy themselves and later blame it on the Collectors (otherwise that whole plot point makes no sense, since the Collectors don't collect the crew, which is kind of their whole thing). They then try to convince Shepard to work for them but she tells them to fuck off and heads back to the Citadel, but the fact she was restored by Cerberus makes her status dubious and the Council revokes her Spectre status and the Alliance also puts on her on leave whilst they try to work out what to do with her. In the meantime a major human colony in the Terminus Systems is destroyed with thousands of lives lost and it's a major scandal that the Alliance won't do anything and the Council is urging restraint because sending forces into Terminus is an act of war blah blah and Shepard ends up getting fed up with the bullshit and very reluctantly agrees to work with Cerberus at that point because the situation is critical, and various Alliance personnel who "just happen" to be on leave sign on with her, like Joker and Chakwas. Possibly we find out later on Cerberus was using political leverage to stop Shepard being reinstated.

I think they also really need to tie in Shepard's ability to communicate with Prothean technology as a major reason why Cerberus spent the GDP of several countries in rescuing her. This doesn't really come up in ME2 (where they kind of forget about the Protheans), with the reason for Cerberus to bring back Shepard boiling down to, "because she's the protagonist," which isn't really good enough.

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23 hours ago, RumHam said:

I don't think you'll regret pulling the trigger. As I said I wasn't even planning on keeping mine but the thing is just great. My nephew never has to know how close I came to giving it to him for his birthday. :lol:

It depends where you are but my email came on a thursday and it shipped the following tuesday and arrived the following Friday. Fourth of July might add a day but FedEx does deliver on saturday.

I'd also say that just because a came says "unsupported" you should still try. Most of them work, in my experience. Mainly it's online stuff that requires anti-cheat software that doesn't work at the moment. (Unless you install windows in a dual boot situation, but I haven't seen the need to.)

I've been looking over the online tutorials on how to get the Playstation Remote Play going and even the Heroic Games Launcher for GoG/Epic.  Seems like a nightmare for a PC neophyte like me.

Is it possible to take the install folder of games that I have on GoG on my computer and somehow transfer them directly to the Steam Deck memory and play them as a non-Steam game?  Or is installing through the Heroic Launcher the only way?

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2 hours ago, Rhom said:

I've been looking over the online tutorials on how to get the Playstation Remote Play going and even the Heroic Games Launcher for GoG/Epic.  Seems like a nightmare for a PC neophyte like me.

Is it possible to take the install folder of games that I have on GoG on my computer and somehow transfer them directly to the Steam Deck memory and play them as a non-Steam game?  Or is installing through the Heroic Launcher the only way?

Sadly, no. They need to be installed. I have the heroic launcher but I've never actually used it yet. It is possible to install many GOG games via steam but it's a process that I bet is more complicated than just setting up the launcher.

Anyway I'll try to play one of those free Epic games I claimed via the Heroic launcher later and let you know how bad it is to get setup.

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3 hours ago, Rhom said:

've been looking over the online tutorials on how to get the Playstation Remote Play going and even the Heroic Games Launcher for GoG/Epic.  Seems like a nightmare for a PC neophyte like me.

So, as far as Heroic Game Launcher on Steamdeck goes, have you tried the Flatpak? The instructions seem very straightforward.

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15 minutes ago, Ran said:

So, as far as Heroic Game Launcher on Steamdeck goes, have you tried the Flatpak? The instructions seem very straightforward.

It hasn’t arrived just yet.  I was looking over tutorials just to familiarize myself with it.

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I can confirm that installing Heroic Game Launcher was easy using the Discover app to install the flatpack version. The few games I have on there are big though, and I don't have space on my SD card to actually install one right now. I a few days once I've finished FFVII I'll uninstall that and have room to try actually playing a game through it.

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On 7/1/2022 at 1:07 PM, Werthead said:

I'm reading the Shamus Young (RIP) book on Mass Effect now and I have to say his analysis of how utterly nonsensical the storyline of Mass Effect 2 is, is extremely good. Mass Effect 2's side-quests and how they build to the Suicide Mission are brilliant, with some great storytelling and moments, but I think they do make people ignore a hefty chunk of utter bullshit at the start of the game (and intermittently through it), easily as bizarre as the ending to ME3.

It's because Mass Effect 2 was dumb at the beginning but awesome at the end, whereas Mass Effect 3 was awesome at the beginning but a complete piece of shit at the end.  We remember bad endings a lot more than we remember bad starts.  It's why it's almost painful to rewatch Game of Thrones at this point.  We know what an utter catastrophe it becomes at the end and that paints the entire series, even the insane highs of the first four seasons, in a negative light.

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17 hours ago, briantw said:

It's because Mass Effect 2 was dumb at the beginning but awesome at the end, whereas Mass Effect 3 was awesome at the beginning but a complete piece of shit at the end.  We remember bad endings a lot more than we remember bad starts.  It's why it's almost painful to rewatch Game of Thrones at this point.  We know what an utter catastrophe it becomes at the end and that paints the entire series, even the insane highs of the first four seasons, in a negative light.

I think ME2 and 3 are much more consistently dumb (or weird) with the main plot and excellent with side-quests and the two major trilogy subplots (the genophage and the Quarian/Geth conflict) throughout. The overwhelmingly major problem with them is Cerberus being simultaneously a major force in both games when they barely exist in the first game, having massively inconsistent resources, and then acting and being completely different in ME2 to either ME1 or 3. Having a wild card human faction as an antagonist but occasional ally is not a bad idea since you are trying to preserve the mystery of the Reapers and they're not great conversationalists, but when that wild card human faction takes over as the primary enemy of the third game and constantly shifts the focus away from the Reapers, it is both implausible and annoying (not to mention the omnipresent horseshit of Kai Leng).

ME3's ending is also not shit in isolation but is a result of decisions made as early as the start of ME2 (and it is clear that there were massive deviations from the original outline for the trilogy at the start of development for both ME2 and ME3).

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5 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think ME2 and 3 are much more consistently dumb (or weird) with the main plot and excellent with side-quests and the two major trilogy subplots (the genophage and the Quarian/Geth conflict) throughout. The overwhelmingly major problem with them is Cerberus being simultaneously a major force in both games when they barely exist in the first game, having massively inconsistent resources, and then acting and being completely different in ME2 to either ME1 or 3. Having a wild card human faction as an antagonist but occasional ally is not a bad idea since you are trying to preserve the mystery of the Reapers and they're not great conversationalists, but when that wild card human faction takes over as the primary enemy of the third game and constantly shifts the focus away from the Reapers, it is both implausible and annoying (not to mention the omnipresent horseshit of Kai Leng).

ME3's ending is also not shit in isolation but is a result of decisions made as early as the start of ME2 (and it is clear that there were massive deviations from the original outline for the trilogy at the start of development for both ME2 and ME3).

Welcome to my frustrations with the ME series from 2 onwards. It just feels like tonally and aesthetically different games. I won't dispute that the plot is in some ways MUCH tighter in 2, and emotionally engaging (Moridin rules!) but as Shamus pointed out, the ruptures in the series began at the start of the second game. I played through it all, but never really liked any of the games that followed the first one, which felt vibrant, full of wonder, and let me explore the citadel and multiple worlds, and felt quite open in comparison to the latter games, which felt somewhat claustrophobic almost, by comparison. (Why so much of the citadel became unexplorable compared to ME 1 I don't know - or knew and forgot!)

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I've dabbled in Raft, was a great game to play idly with a second monitor on a game or comedy show on. Never played far into it at all, as it wasn't really compelling without buddies. But they released 1.0, and I just finished the story content. Each island had a differing them and somewhat tedious puzzles to sort through. Fun enough, though, to play jumping puzzles a bit while advancing the simple research system. I have a giant, ugly raft that I will slowly morph into something passable. Similar to my far-more hours in Valheim, I enjoy passively farming and doing the mundane in-game chores far more than real life stuff like the dishes I should go do. In both games cases, I have seen compelling co-op gameplay on Twitch and sometimes wish I were 20 years younger with lots of Discord buddies and what not, but both games also shine as a single player experience assuming one enjoys such laid-back gameplay.

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9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Welcome to my frustrations with the ME series from 2 onwards. It just feels like tonally and aesthetically different games. I won't dispute that the plot is in some ways MUCH tighter in 2, and emotionally engaging (Moridin rules!) but as Shamus pointed out, the ruptures in the series began at the start of the second game. I played through it all, but never really liked any of the games that followed the first one, which felt vibrant, full of wonder, and let me explore the citadel and multiple worlds, and felt quite open in comparison to the latter games, which felt somewhat claustrophobic almost, by comparison. (Why so much of the citadel became unexplorable compared to ME 1 I don't know - or knew and forgot!)

Yup. ME1 has, by far, the best writing, dialogue, worldbuilding, RPG systems and maybe the best characterisation, but the shittiest combat. ME2 and ME3 are much better with combat and moment-to-moment gameplay, but the worldbuilding (for anything not inherited from the first game) goes to shit and the writing and dialogue becomes way more inconsistent.

The overall story for the trilogy is excellent from a distance, I think, but they definitely screw the pooch on the details and how things hang together.

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