[notbov]

more boring adventures in emulation: PCSX2 edition

I spent a bunch of years wondering if PSU: Ambition of the Illuminus was any better than the base game. it is not. and I'm not going to hate-play through the whole thing to talk shit about it like I did with PSU, so.

S.L.A.I., the not-sequel to Phantom Crash, a game I actually own but wrote off because it felt "off" way back when I got it. I played a bit and was like "I don't know why I hated this game!". there were a few things that I had to get use to - mostly, you have a lot less mobility because you no longer have the small amount of air control while jumping like in PC - but they weren't a big deal. then a D-ranker boss came out and blew me up in seconds and I remembered that the game has no concept of a difficulty curve.

oh well, at least I can play Hawke- oh, wait
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[parker]

I can't figure out how to swim on keyboard in witcher 3, control scheme page just shows me a controller layout even if I unplug my controller
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[Rud31]

YOU CAN'T LOOK AT CLOTHING BEFORE YOU BUY IT IN AKIBA'S TRIP ZERO OUT OF TEN.
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THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Victor]

I have mostly ignored Witcher 3 prerelease press, never played the other two; I guess it is to be expected but I was still a little taken aback but the dumb game of thronesyness of the intro. Hopefully there is not too much serious-faced choker-clad bird-murder in what I am hoping is a compelling horse and tree sim.

[Talbain]

May need to take back what I said. Yrden seems to be more situational than I might have thought, but it also seems like White Orchard is a tutorial area compared with how much more diverse things are now that I'm in Velen. Difficult to use Yrden effectively though it's powerful when it works. Now using Igni and its channeled mode a lot more. Aard might be useful but I doubt I'll ever know. Despite the one-hit kill thing if you knock enemies down with it, it doesn't work on the enemies you want it to work on.

Still dying way more often than I expected. Glad I picked normal difficulty.
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[Felix]

the combat in witcher 3 seems a lot worse than 2 and I can't find anyone else who agrees with me, this is a bit weird. cuba's right on about why 2 was so good. then again, that official-ish "combat re-do" mod they released for witcher 2 a couple years after its release also seemed way worse than the base game, and I guess that was churned out during the witcher 3 dev cycle, so maybe they just have no idea what made it good in the first place

still enjoying it though

oh, and the base yrden in witcher 3 is terrible compared to 2 (when it was bread and butter crowd control), so I'm pleased to hear it at least gets better. back attacks are still a huge multiplier on both you and the enemies and it's still poorly reflected in the actual animations if you don't watch the numbers rolling by, but luckily I'm already used to that from 2 so it's not a shock, I think that was responsible for a lot of people writing off the last game on the apparent difficulty of the tutorial.

I just did the first dungeon-type area from the main quest, with the sorceress, and the bosses were utter garbage, but the game itself is still phenomenal when compared against skyrim and dragon age, it's just making me realize that I wasn't going on and on about 2 for no reason (even seeing as I've never bothered to play the first), 2 really was tight

there's a drowner group encounter on one of the early velen quests that is just broken, the AI is a mess, etc. historically these games have needed like six months of post-release patching to not feel like that though. in particular a lot of the text is just comically small for a console (I'm playing on PS4) and I can't imagine that won't get fixed

this is certainly the first game in a while I've been totally content to sink three or four hours into a clip and I'm not quite willing to call that a virtue but it certainly is something, given how much I'm at ordinarily at odds with open world stuff. I think I should probably give xenoblade a pass later this year on the basis of how skeptical I am about mostly really enjoying this (given how much I looked forward to it)

[Felonious Monk]

I somehow managed to lose Roach after swimming and running across the landscape for a while. Couldn't find him on the world map either. And the 'tap L stick twice to summon horse' prompt in lower right screen had vanished too.

I...i missed him. Fortunately, reloading an earlier save brought him back.

Despite encountering a couple weird bugs like that, i'm having a ton of fun with Witcher 3 so far. Possible GOTY?

[Felix]

to be fair, high-level aard was enormously overpowered in the second game (you pretty much didn't need axii or yrden at all once you maxed it out, igni was never remotely as good, and quen blocked magic point regeneration, so it became all aard all the time), so it's nice they've fixed that, but some of the elegance also seems to be gone now that you can use food(?!) and potions mid-fight, and some of the signs appear to have slightly more turnkey effects on certain enemies (yrden to make wraiths materialize, axii to destroy alghouls' barrier). also re: fairness, the second game had one excellent early-game boss fight and then a bunch of terrible ones, so I probably shouldn't judge in the reasonable chance this one is less frontloaded.

I guess this makes it more of a slow burn, and in turn more of an open-world-feeling-game than before, but I really wanted to have a fully open world game using the same movement engine from 2, so I'm a little bummed. a little.

also, as good as this game looks, it strikes me that witcher 2 looked pretty much just as good in terms of the character models and the environments and the post-processing, just without the scale and the pronounced weather effects (holy shit those trees). so I guess I got what I wanted as far as "the second game, only more expansive" on that front!

but seriously any of you who are playing this without ever having played 2, play 2. it's so so good.

[Talbain]

Yeah, I'm kinda mixed on it. I feel like it's going back and forth between "wow that's something" and "what the hell was that?" The environmental effects are absolutely gorgeous though. I do find myself just staring at the environment.

Some of the problems are a result of bugs. I've already run into a few quest bugs that have rendered certain quests unable to be completed. In addition, I've had two instances where a bug rendered everyone in the world unable to move into a conversation. They would chat at you but they would not actually talk to you, preventing merchants and quests from working entirely.

Have had two crashes as well.

It makes me concerned about how much buggier this game may have been had it released on its original date.
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[Felix]

eurogamer or someone else mentioned that this game is extremely successful thematically in that you actually feel like a witcher roaming from shitty village to shitty village, which was something the first game tried to do but apparently wasn't too successful at (I wouldn't know), whereas the sequel was more like witcher gaiden, a single extended mission

and, well, given how well-realized the world was, and how I'm having a hard time getting over what they did to my precious combat, it's hard for me not to think I prefer witcher gaiden. I think I have to let its unevenness wash over me, and I'm not in the habit of that these days. I'm trying not to be too down on it because I do pretty much hate the working definition of an open world RPG (or even most open world games that aren't red dead or saints row iv) and I am going to happily put 20 hours into this thing by the end of this weekend. it is actually very good! I just can't get over the minor steps backward

this is the build I'm working towards, which may be disproportionately informed by my witcher 2 experience (looks like the last few skill slots are truncated because the URL is too long but it should be pretty obvious what's intended): http://www.gosunoob.com/witcher-3/skill-calculator/?combat=115_131_235_251_351&sign=111_125_153_211_251&alchemy=151&general=241_321
&slotted_skills=1xcombat_1_1|2xcombat_1_3|3xcombat_2_3|4xcombat_2_5|5xcombat_3_5|
6xgeneral_2_4|7xsign_1_1|8xsign_2_1|9xsign_1_2|10xsign_1_5|11xsign_2_5|12xgeneral_3_2

(remove the linebreaks, they were screwing up this page width)

[parker]

I am enjoying the witcher detective work stuff. I like the first area after the beginning sort of tutorial area. It's sort of mordavia-like, one my favorite game settings, though mordavia had a lot better music. There was a notice on the notice board saying the witcher version of halloween was coming up, I wish they would of just set it during that time.
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[CONSUME_PRODUCTS]

the ps4 version crashes if i try to play the card game

also destiny sure is a lot better now

[parker]

[Felix]

ps4 version has been totally stable for me but the card game is pretty boring tbh

all the money going into eurogames lately and they couldn't even churn out a triple triad

[parker]

what a weird feeling, walking around an artificial game place and thinking something about it feels off and seeing that it actually did look the way it "feels" like it should. they put all that work into building a certain atmosphere, I don't get why if they got to compromise the visuals why not leave at least the general colors and appearance alone. now it's another green mediaval village fantasy land
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[seven]

considering how often the internet loses its collective shit over this kind of thing (hi watch dogs, dark souls 2) i'm surprised it's still so common. it's kind of disturbing seeing the tall grass, rolling hills and smokey rooftops all replaced by oblivion's pea soup.

[notbov]

I will give up my gaming PC when all the games I enjoy playing get ports and that'll never happen because even the games in popular genres won't be able to overcome market realities

also, Steam sales

[Felix]

I just got a titan x for free (don't ask) but I'm still using 1680x1050 monitors I got for like $60 secondhand several years ago and something I'd actually want to upgrade to (which would be like, a 5k display that I run in hidpi mode for desktop applications and pixel-doubled 120hz 2560x1440 for games) either doesn't exist yet or costs a fortune, so I'm probably gonna keep running stuff at 1680x1050. with, uh, very smooth framerates.

anyway, the PC game looks identical to the console versions because they need to make money and self-important PC folks constantly overestimate how much money a publisher can make from producing a super special high-end version of something just for them because they're so special. witcher 2, for the record, was basically a PC-only game (that, as I mentioned, looked pretty much as good as witcher 3 does at a smaller scale) until it got an okay-ish 360 port! these guys wanted to go big after that (p l a y t h a t), and going big is fucking expensive!

as for "what's the point of building a PC for gaming," well, I'm of the belief that there really shouldn't be a "point" outside of super niche graphixxxxxx people. until I got this new stupid top-of-the-line-card for free I was still running intel graphics on one machine of mine and a 9800 GT on the other because the cool stuff that indies can release on PC that isn't gatekept by console marketplaces (even though sony is doing an absolutely ace job these days thanks in large part to really good middleware, no reason to assume that'll be the case forever) really does not need modern high end graphics. that is fine. that is great. buy a macbook and a PS4 and you can play 99% of the interesting games that come out as long as you don't care about maxxxxxxing them out. that is a very healthy scenario. I'm basically transitioning back to console gaming for high-end stuff after going far in the other direction last gen, due largely to current consoles being well-priced compared to current GPUs that are significantly better than they are (albeit it's early days) and many more games being ported everywhere and me deciding I don't want to run windows anymore if I have an excuse not to.

if you feel cheated just wait six months for mods and whatnot. jesus.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah mods are the saving grace of PC gaming. In fact, there's a Witcher 3 patch that just went to certification that will add not only more graphics options for PC users but also the ability to directly edit .ini files so you can just tweak it to your hearts content until it looks and runs just how you want.

That's what PC gaming means to me anyway, modding and squeezing everything you can out of your hardware, but I'm a bit of a graphics whore. If I could still afford it I would be right there with the rest of them tweaking and fiddling with the settings more than actually playing the game. For a few glorious years there a couple years ago I was enjoying dat 1080p gaming while the consoles were still struggling to make 720p/30fps the "standard".
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[Talbain]

I'm sure some insane Durante patch is around the corner.
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[notbov]

[Felix]

no, believe me, it is worthy of your ire

I just can't justify an upgrade though. It's still serious diminishing cost returns once you go above $100/1080p. Like I said, I could maybe talk myself into a huge waste of money if it meant getting 120/144hz AND hidpi support from the same display (if not simultaneously) but $500 for just one or the other? I can't do it.

also, this will make you furious, I'm also using a ten year old 1280x1024 vga-only dell LCD with terrible colour temperature because it's approximately the same height and DPI as the 1680x1050 and fits well on the side. had to get a dongle to get the old VGA signal to it!

[notbov]

I won't begrudge a setup if it works for you (I was running with a 32" 768p TV as a 2nd screen for a bit), just, you need to give that thing a bit of space to let it stretch its legs

at least you're set for VR
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Got that 100% in GTA V again. Just had to replay those off road races a few times until the next one opened up. Also had to do a friend activity at a strip club so Franklin and Lamar went to the Vanilla Unicorn for a few minutes, threw some money at the dancers and then left.

After that I finished up the murder mystery quest for Michael and got the two noir filters. One is kind of grey-ish and basically looks like the black and white filter from L. A. Noire, which isn't that hot. The other one is a higher contrast black/white filter where the darks and darker and the brights brighter. I like it more than the other one.
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[Talbain]

I have been playing a lot of The Secret World recently and am really enjoying how quirky it is. Still trying to become a better leech healer but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.
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[Loki Laufeyson]

i got kengo zero for £1, and though it's not the super-serious swordfighting game i was expecting, it is a pretty cool beat em up with countering and blocking and that kind of thing. fairly atmospheric, too
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[John Mc.]

Still playing old games, mainly as none of my new stuff works. Strangely, I prefer this, at least until I ante up for a new PC.

Finally finished Landstalker, which has some of the more clever (and devious) platforming I have ever come across. There's something about Genesis games that maintain that cartoonish demeanor while kicking you in the balls over and over again that hurts yet charms (see below). I'd never given isometric games like this the time of day, though I'm not sure of any others that would offer the whimsy on display.

I then jumped into The Revenge of Shinobi. Yikes! This upped my game. I thought the tone was at first kind of dire, though then ninjas started exploding and I started to giggle. Things escalated until I was fighting (literally) Spider Man, The Terminator, and Godzilla. I was howling (also because the game is damned hard). A little obtuse, but mainly in that it takes a lot of practice to negotiate (especially Zeed, the bastard and his fucking hair).

Taking some earlier advice, I slipped into Renovation land, and played Valis 3. An interesting platforming romp; seems like a wild if not terribly progressive universe, though it is a product of its times I suppose. I'm told there's quite a bit missing from it when compared to the TG16 version, which I may look into soon. I'd rather get my Turbo CD fixed at this point than my 360. :-/ A great bad game, and perhaps a great bad series!

Burning Force is an assault on the senses. However, the scaling issues mean a lot of cheap hits, so I cheated and used the 10 lives code. Maybe I will review it later when my backlog isn't insane. Pretty fun, with an astounding soundtrack. I should look into the arcade version, presuming it is emulated well at this point.

The trial for the last few days has been Dynamite Headdy. Jesus Christ. This is one of the roughest I've come across, I think. Thematically, at first I found the game kind of grating, though I have warmed to it quite a bit with seeing new little details with each playthrough. the second to last stage was pretty hilarious. I think I beat it last night by a fluke; the Dark Demon and I were down to one hit each, and he screwed up and gave me a hammer option. Technically the game feels fantastic, if not clunky sometimes (missed jumps on Twin Freaks spells certain doom). It may be as I'm using a 6-button controller and I keep forgetting to use the mode button, as I noticed it Revenge as well. Or, they're just kind of clunky. I have Gunstar Heroes on the queue, and a repor of Alien Solider en route, so my Treasure adventures are not quite over yet.

I wish I could fight the Trouble Castle...

Phelios is in the Genesis at the moment, so we shall see how that goes. Still have a couple of others, including the Phantasy Star series and the Thunder Force series to go!

[Raziel]

So, ahem, Silent Hill: Homecoming. I consider myself a Silent Hill fan. In fact, it used to be a series I totally gushed over. However, by the time Homecoming came around, I pretty much dropped out of the scene, and while I remain a fan, the passionate fire of a fanboy has long been dead inside me.

Anyway, since it's way past the series' prime, as far as fan reaction and critical acclaim is concerned, I thought playing Homecoming now, after so many years, wouldn't be a bad idea. Give it a benefit of the doubt, judge it on its own merit, without overly comparing it with older games.

So now I'm a few hours in, and it's starting to rear its ugly head. Well, truthfully speaking, the dream sequence in the beginning was already off. The transition to the Otherworld looks cheap. Right in the beginning of the game, there was some stupid gimmicky jumpscare from the ceiling, and I knew this shit was off to a bad start. And then the combat, jeez. Once I started knifing those movie nurses with combos and stuff, I started laughing how silly it all was. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised when the game started proper, in Shepherd's Glen. From that point to the hotel, I really enjoyed the game. It was atmospheric and not very combat intensive at all. But then, the goddamn police station and sewer bullshit appeared. Why the need for such forced encounters, especially the sewer area? Why can't I just run around the Needlers and wait until Elle has found a way to open the gate? No, video game logic demands that I kill all the Needlers and the Siam proper. Now, I know I'm playing on Hard, but at this point I think I'm legitimately stuck because I pretty much have to go through the stand-off in the sewer with half a health bar only. Of course, the combat system is wonky. This was also the case in previous games, but either the encounters were not that difficult or you could run away (playing Silent Hill 3 on Hard for example, the best course of action is to just run away from monsters). Here, nope. You gotta go mano-o-mano on these monsters. Ugh. Also, it seems knife is the best weapon because it's fast, and that's all you need for stunlocking the enemies. What a stupid game.

[Mikey]

Tower of Guns left me completely cold. But Attack of the Friday Monsters was as pleasant as expected.

Really I'm just putting off getting back into Bloodborne partly because I'm a baby and partly because I'm expecting to go back into my work rotation any day now and I don't want to keep having my momentum/getting into the swing of playing it interrupted.

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Played some ZombiU last night.

I'd almost forgotten what a neat game it is, and how much it doesn't feel at all like a market-tested AAA product despite being an internally-developed Ubisoft title. Even regular enemy encounters can punish you severely if you suck at the game (and are therefore truly tense), and poor planning/strategy can severely screw you over. Meanwhile, there are all sorts of tricks and shortcuts the attentive player can discover that will make it easier.

(ATTN ADILEGIAN - What I'm getting at here is I think you should definitely try this game.)
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[1CC]

So when I got my GBA SP I also got Bomberman Tournament because I saw some screenshots that made it look like Zelda and I like Zelda. I'm here to report back that it kinda blows. Like a combination of the most basic elements of Zelda, Bomberman and Pokemon. Brain dead puzzles, brain dead enemies and brain dead pokemans.

I think I'll get Bomberman Max 2 next.

[Rud31]

Woah Repro carts have come a long way in selection since I last looked.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Felix]

if we're still talking witcher 3 I just wrapped up the main velen questline and headed to novigrad. that is a pronounced fucking transition! It really feels like you've made it a long way into a totally different part of the world -- which is understandable since I'm probably pushing 15 hours of game time, even though I think I'm maybe a third of the way through at most (and with tons and tons of optional stuff I'm still ignoring). I've gotten over some of my minor complaints from before about the combat and the pacing; the beginning of velen is a bit of a low point, is all. and, though this is exactly what I wanted to be able to say about this game before having played it and am afraid of this sounding too confirmatory, it really does drive home just how lifeless most open world stuff is by comparison. Truly great.

Oh, and anybody who didn't fully explore white orchard should go and do that; once you're a few levels higher and used to velen, that map seems tiny and the enemies really fragile, and there are tons of places of power located all around.

[notbov]

Space Marine was good, I just wished it was a tad harder and longer and had better bosses and marquee set pieces

something something Space Marine 2 but whoops, Sega won't do that
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[Ronnoc]

Ideal world the sequel would have been 'Battle Sister' :<

[Mikey]

I mean, aren't you kind of getting a sequel with that Space Hulk game?

[notbov]

if it's a fast-ish action game where I can instantly transition from shooting to cutting orks with my chainsword and stomping out heresay, then yes. I don't think it is, so, no, we're not

as someone not invested in anything GW, I am wary of any 40k game not made by Relic anyways
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[wourme]

I've been spending more time on Cosmochoria than it's probably worth, but I like it. I thought I was going to beat it this last session, but then I accidentally overshot a planet, ran out of jetpack fuel, and burned up.

[Ronnoc]

I have faith in Space Hulk because a) I want it to be good and b) Eye Divine Cybermancy was nuts.

[Marshmallow]

I have tried playing that game like 20 times but never last longer than half an hour