Videogames: All Valves on Deck

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

As far as I know, while player reception was not great towards Modern Warfare III, it was at least playable on most, if not all systems. @Kalbear, that sound about right? 

 

Yep. It ran acceptably. It was just kind of shitty.

[IlyaP]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yep. It ran acceptably. It was just kind of shitty.

Which sounds like it was a day and night level of different from CP77 and its woes.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

11 hours ago, Relic said:

Sucks even more to spend 60 euro on a game that runs like a cow with cancer. Yes, they fixed it eventually, but in order to experience that i had to buy it again. Why would i compare it to other games i havent played or purchased? 

On a side note hope you got your refund for the PS4 version ? CDPR offered to pay for a blanket refund which pissed off Sony who have terrible refund policies  and led to their ban in the first place…Sony only agreed to refund after CDPR promised to fulfill it. 

Edited December 25, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

On a side note hope you got your refund for the PS4 version ? CDPR offered to pay for a blanket refund which pissed off Sony who have terrible refund policies  and led to their ban in the first place…Sony only agreed to refund after CDPR promised to fulfill it. 

Yeah, that's also not accurate. Sony did not change their policies and cdpr had no way of paying for sony's costs anyway. The refund of the game isn't the issue - that's easy to recharge to a card. The issue is that Sony has to pay for customer support for every refund call and on average that is $5 to $10 per call. In sonys case, because they have no actual refund policy it costs them even more.

Sony changed their policy by delisting the game. That was the only thing they changed. At times their support staff told them to literally call cdpr or contact them directly. Other times they got escalated multiple times. You can find articles from kotaku and verge about what a fucking shitshow it was getting a refund.

(I'm kind of proud of this because, again, I was in charge of making the service that xbox uses for doing refunds and our service gave refunds automatically to everyone who asked within minutes of a request - huge contrast to Sony and their system that still isn't on par. That we could put in a new policy to do this for cp2077 in less than a day was even cooler!)

The only thing cdpr probably did was waive their overage percentage. In retail gaming typically the publisher is responsible for all reimbursement up to 1-2% of the total sales, and after that it's the store's responsibility. Cdpr probably didn't enforce that.

[IlyaP]

Here is one Kotaku article that shows what a clusterfuck it was on consoles:

https://kotaku.com/cd-projekt-red-clears-up-misconceptions-says-no-speci-1845886880

[Ran]

Epic's giveaway of the day is The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition.

[Werthead]

Rounding off GTA5 again at the 44 hour-ish mark. Surprisingly short game, only about the same length as GTA4 plus its two episodes, despite the bigger map. There's a real dearth of things to do outside of the main story missions, as the optional activities (find 50 spaceship parts or 30 submarine wrecks) are a lot of work for relatively little reward.

Of course, GTA Online supposed to be the thing that massively expands the optional activities in the game. Weirdly, they've been emphasising playing solo in GTA Online (which you can do for a surprising amount of the missions and content, although I believe the big heists can only be done multiplayer) recently with more story-based stuff, so I might check that out. It been amusing seeing the impact that's had on GTA5 singleplayer (with way more radio stations then on release and many more different types of car around).

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Epic's giveaway of the day is The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition.

Solid, although unspectacular, game. Decent stories, some excellent characters, reasonably good combat. Story runs out of juice towards the end and it does feel like they built a large area for the final planet and then rushed it, with only a few quests to round off the game when it feels like it could have had a dozen or more side-quests there.

I think the tight story focus is probably being better-appreciated now in the wake of Starfield, and the feeling maybe this structure is better. If the half dozen planets in The Outer Worlds had all been large standard Bethesda-sized maps with more faction dynamics and dropping the pointless space stuff, I think that would have gone down better (at least in retrospect).

[Mexal]

After getting my Rogue to 100 in Diablo IV, I started up a Barbarian alt using a HoTA build. Got lucky last night and ran like 20 free runs of Duriel at 60 and now my gear is insane. What a crazy character. I absolutely crush shit.

[Durckad]

Outer Worlds is alright, a true 7/10 game. Everything works fine, the combat is alright, the RPG mechanics are alright, and the characters are all alright. There're some fun quests and some fun areas, but the story is surprisingly good. It starts out sounding low stakes but the implications are kind of far reaching. Very similar to Quantum of Solace (the movie) where the initial reaction is "Really? That's it? That's what this is about?" but if you think about it for a bit, it is kind of a big deal. The best thing about the game is it's black and irreverent sense of humor. The world of the Outer Worlds is incredibly dumb and ridiculous and most characters treat it as such. There's still stakes but the humor doesn't detract from them, IMO.

Worst parts about the game? The actual combat and gameplay is very samey. Most of the enemies fall into some pretty standard roles and you end up fighting them over and over, just with increasing numbers of hit points and amounts of damage they deal. It gets a bit bland well before the end, though it doesn't get bad per se, it does start to verge on being boring.

Totally worth playing for the 30-40 hours it takes to complete. It doesn't hang around much longer than it needs to, but it does start to feel a bit old near the end.

Never played any of the DLC so can't say anything about that.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Tried Outer Worlds back in the day, dropped it after a few hours. It reminded me too much of Borderlands (not in a good way) which was one of the most boring games ever made IMO.

Gonna dive into Prey later down the week, after all the praise I have high expectations and also Dishonored 2 is my favourite stealth game ever.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

Currently making my way through Final Fantasy XV, which is just the most absolutely gonzo RPG I've played in an extremely long time. But in the absolute best way possible.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

6 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Currently making my way through Final Fantasy XV, which is just the most absolutely gonzo RPG I've played in an extremely long time. But in the absolute best way possible.

this turned me off playing it lol 

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Currently making my way through Final Fantasy XV, which is just the most absolutely gonzo RPG I've played in an extremely long time. But in the absolute best way possible.

Every time I think about starting this, I'm reminded there's like an anime you have to watch first to understand WTF is going on and I lose interest.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Every time I think about starting this, I'm reminded there's like an anime you have to watch first to understand WTF is going on and I lose interest.

I was under the impression the animated movie (and sequel novel) were optional material? 

So far it's basically just 100% wild, whacky, OTT Final Fantasyesque gameplay and design. But, y'know - now with cars. It's basically 'Me and the Boys and Our Car: The Game'. It's deliciously goofy. 

[Impmk2]

I just finished Jedi Survivor over the xmas break. Story started out a little all over the place but it really picked up towards the end game. Thought it maybe slightly overstayed it's welcome (took me 40hrs), though I did do an awful lot of the side content. Still crashed a decent amount on my PC, especially during the

Spoiler

Vader

fight, which made it doubly frustrating , so that's not sorted yet.

Would give it a solid 8/10. Definitely worth playing, but wouldn't pay full price.

Now playing Sekiro which I bounced off on my first attempted play through a few years back. Had to get used to parrying a lot in Survivor, so hoping that carries over.

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Thought it maybe slightly overstayed it's welcome (took me 40hrs), though I did do an awful lot of the side content. Still crashed a decent amount on my PC

Really? How many crashes have you had so far (if you've counted). 

I played it on a system that technically should not have run it - though it did run, albeit it at somewhere between 25-30 frames per second, which is all I need, as anything faster than that...I just don't notice, nor much care about.

[IlyaP]

Hitting pause on FF15, as there's a sequence in the game that's either buggy or requires increased audio to navigate properly, which is extremely annoying (in chapter 11). It's entirely possible that my elderly keyboard - which I've finally replaced after five years of stalwart service - was the issue. We'll see early next year, as I find that, if a game frustrates me to the point of anger, it's best to put it down for a few weeks.

I also still can't work out what the hell this game is about or wanting to say after 30 hours, and the A plot is absolutely bonkers to the point of incomprehensibility. Which doesn't actually stop it from being (mostly) fun, though I've spotted a few parallels to Final Fantasy VIII, which famously turned off some gamers due to it's, uh, as one friend called it, "EMO SQUAD!!!". (I've only just purchased the remaster, which hasn't done much to really "remaster" the original, oddly enough.)

So in the meantime, back to Pillars of Eternity for me for another playthrough.

[Impmk2]

3 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Really? How many crashes have you had so far (if you've counted). 

I played it on a system that technically should not have run it - though it did run, albeit it at somewhere between 25-30 frames per second, which is all I need, as anything faster than that...I just don't notice, nor much care about.

Probably crashed every couple hours on average. Aside from in that fight where it crashed every couple attempts.

PC is brand new, maxxed settings, ran silky smooth otherwise. Just googled some more and apparently it's a known bug when ray tracing is on which makes sense I guess.

[IlyaP]

25 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

Probably crashed every couple hours on average. Aside from in that fight where it crashed every couple attempts.

PC is brand new, maxxed settings, ran silky smooth otherwise. Just googled some more and apparently it's a known bug when ray tracing is on which makes sense I guess.

Gah! And this is why I don't even bother with ray tracing. DLSS also seems to do the job just as well and with better quality, from what I've heard amongst many friends. (Not that I can run either, as my videocard is pre-DLSS/ray tracing.)

[Slurktan]

On 12/27/2023 at 10:07 PM, Impmk2 said:

I just finished Jedi Survivor over the xmas break. Story started out a little all over the place but it really picked up towards the end game. Thought it maybe slightly overstayed it's welcome (took me 40hrs), though I did do an awful lot of the side content. Still crashed a decent amount on my PC, especially during the

  Reveal hidden contents

Vader

fight, which made it doubly frustrating , so that's not sorted yet.

Would give it a solid 8/10. Definitely worth playing, but wouldn't pay full price.

Now playing Sekiro which I bounced off on my first attempted play through a few years back. Had to get used to parrying a lot in Survivor, so hoping that carries over.

Its not parrying in Sekiro as it is the souls games.  You will keep bouncing off it until you realize the parrying/countering is a rhythm game.  Think Rock Band.