2016 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Raziel]

26 minutes ago, Shadow said:

So I'm going through specs to see what I'd like to play as alts in Legion and enhancement shaman is a super fun spec now.  I think today I'm going to work on my fire mage and if there's time my warrior.  I have to be careful playing warrior because it's too much fun.  I look up and a few minutes later an entire zone is dead.

Yeah, my god did they make Enhancement Shaman fun as all get out by adding like 5 more attacks they didn't have before.  No more spamming lightning hammer, how you can just cycle through hitting EVERYTHING without relying on the totems as much as you used to.

 

New Warrior needs a bit of getting used to.  I have to play my Mistweaver since it seems they got rid of stances and made them more self sufficient while keeping their healing abilites active.  Right now I'm just working on learning the new rotations for Fury Warrior and Retribution Paladin since they took out on the fly emergency role changes and took out any range attacks they had (which is gonna make soloing Legacy Raids with those guys way harder)

 

[SirFozzie]

On 7/25/2016 at 10:10 AM, Raziel403 said:

Only on Level 8?  Man, didn't even get into the specs yet. 

 

But yeah, before I took time off, I was starting up a Rogue that only hit 6 before I went.  Came back and I actually thought about rerolling before deciding to just plow through to 10 to get the specs and reset everything (heirloom items, didn't need to worry about nothing lining up.)

 

I dig the new appearance system, I just wish that you didn't have to go to a Transmorg Vendor to do it (since there are only like, 4 a side in the whole game.)

There's a vendor summoner that can bring that (very costly), or if you have a L3 garrison with L3 storehouse, you have one in garrison

[Raziel]

I have the Transmorg in my Garrison on my Warrior.  Don't have L3 yet with my Pally.  I do have my hearth currently set to Shrine of the Seven Stars and Shrine of the Two Moons on my Level 100 characters, as there's transmorgs there (and portals to all the major cities.)  So I just use that.  The issue was on my lower level characters that I had to haul back to Stormwind or Orgrimar to do the swaps 

[Jerome Miller]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-swings-to-loss-1469604309

 

Nintendo loses 24 billion yen.

[The Man Known as Dan]

So apparently Marvel Ultimate Alliance on PC is a fucking train wreck. Just a warning.

[Cliff Hanger]

As soon as I saw that it has nome of the  platform exclusive content, I knew I would be happier charging my PSP for the first time in a while.

[SirSmUgly]

Games have been really cheap recently, so I played a bunch of them:

Android Assault Cactus - I love twin-stick shooters so much. So, what I like about Android Assault Cactus is that it's not only as good as other twin-stick shooters in terms of mechanics, but that each android's bullets mean that choosing a different android for a stage can totally change your strategy. The battery system is also really great because one can play just to beat the level and thus play more risky and eat bullets to win, or one can play to avoid being knocked down and losing a massive amount of points. A-fucking-plus on this game. 

Tembo the Badass Elephant - I had heard this was a Sonic-like, and really, this proves that people who make 2D Sonic-likes don't get what makes those Sonic games the best 2D platformers ever made. The vertical level design and branching paths in the Sonic games made exploration fun, and Tembo charts how many civvies you save and how many enemies you clonk, hiding them around the levels, but the design is so linear that it's not too hard at all to find all of these things. The platforming combat is pretty fun it its variety, but it's wasted on mediocre level design. 

Punch-Out!! (Wii) - The pleasure that I derive in theory from Nintendo games does not match the actual pleasure that I derive from them while actually playing them at this point in my life. And I think Punch-Out!! is a really fantastic game! It plays like a pretty version of NES Punch-Out!!, with the same twitch pattern-recognition of the same. But man, I don't actually have fun with it for some reason, like Mario Kart...like Smash...like Mario...I think the last game that Nintendo made that I really truly love is Wii Sports. I don't know what that says about me, but I'm bothered by it. Still love old Nintendo games, though. I am still buying NX because I want the magic back. I'm getting a mini NES too, for that matter. This is the rare company that I care about doing well. 

A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks! - It's not the greatest shmup ever or anything, but for two bucks (thirty-three cents, actually), it's a decent enough shmup that is perfect for being played in short rounds, and it does have a fun little leveling-up system for your ship. And again, thirty-three cents. 

I have more on tap because at this point, I own too many games to ever really play properly. I just bought twenty Sega classics for five dollars, so there's my summer break. 

EDIT: Oh, and I got Civ Rev 2 Plus for my Vita, and my utter joyousness over having portable Civ is still outweighing the fact that I'm playing an ultra-watered-down strategy game that takes no strategy and has those glossy-looking F2P-style graphics that I hate so much. For now. 

[Basara]

Fuck it, i brought an Xbox One!

I've been waiting for that sweet spot where there are enough exclusive titles out, or coming out, and a low enough price point to make it worth while. With the S coming out next week and the download codes in the old FIFA 16 and Quantum Break packages expiring in August the price point of the old style Xbox One has taken a hit. I picked up a 500gig model with Quantum Break, (a backwards compatible 360) Alan Wake, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Assassins Creed Unity for £186. That's a whole lot of content for a very reasonable price.

[Chaos]

5 minutes ago, Basara said:

Fuck it, i brought an Xbox One!

I've been waiting for that sweet spot where there are enough exclusive titles out, or coming out, and a low enough price point to make it worth while. With the S coming out next week and the download codes in the old FIFA 16 and Quantum Break packages expiring in August the price point of the old style Xbox One has taken a hit. I picked up a 500gig model with Quantum Break, (a backwards compatible 360) Alan Wake, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Assassins Creed Unity for £186. That's a whole lot of content for a very reasonable price.

There's a 1TB one on eBay right now through NewEgg in the US for $229 that comes with Gears Ultimate, Ori, and Rare Replay. I'm having a hard time saying no to that, but I probably will just get an S over the holidays. That hideous power brick not being with the newer model is a big selling point for me.

I hate I can't get rid of my 360 once I get one because my wife can't upgrade her Skyrim save to the new one, and that's apparently not going to be Backwards Compatible.  I have a lot of unplayed digital content that I'm not sure has made the leap yet either.

[Basara]

1 minute ago, Chaos said:

There's a 1TB one on eBay right now through NewEgg in the US for $229 that comes with Gears Ultimate, Ori, and Rare Replay. I'm having a hard time saying no to that, but I probably will just get an S over the holidays. That hideous power brick not being with the newer model is a big selling point for me.

I hate I can't get rid of my 360 once I get one because my wife can't upgrade her Skyrim save to the new one, and that's apparently not going to be Backwards Compatible.  I have a lot of unplayed digital content that I'm not sure has made the leap yet either.

I'm guessing the older ones will drop a bit lower around November/December time too for Black Friday and Christmas sales. Still that's a good price for the 1TB model. For anyone interested this side of the pond you can get the 1TB model with The Division for £219 as well. I wasn't to fussed about the Division and for the extra £40 i could buy a bigger external HD than 1TB so i went with the 500gig model. I was just looking for the cheapest possible option. The power brick doesn't bother me too much. The consoles about the same size as my old 360 and the brick is smaller so it actually takes up less space now. Still, the size of the S was tempting but I wont really get any use out of the 4K player since i don't have a 4K TV and have no intentions of buying one any time soon. So the older model at that price just made sense for me.

With all these remakes this generation you'd think there'd be a way to transfer over saves, especially for a game like Skyrim where you can sink 100s of hours into it.

[EVA]

It's official: UNCHARTED 2 is crack.

Finished it off today, and while I feel the urge to jump right into the third game....there's just no way that isn't at least a mild disappointment, is there?

[AxB]

It's generally considered to be not so much a disappointment, so much as a 'why did they bother? It adds nothing' type of deal. Although having said that, I played the series 3, 1, 2, so the series peaking with the second entry (haven't played 4 yet) wasn't as annoying to me.

I mean, I completely missed the context of 1 being the first real visual feast of it's generation, where most PS3 games to that point looked like prettier PS2 games, but that's OK. All three have good stories with good characters (although the psychopath aspect of them killing hundreds of people in a couple of days and not being at all bothered about that,going back to being laconic quipping guy, is a bit troubling).

I'd say jump straight into 3 though, so your brain thinks of the two as just one long really good game, instead of one short awesome game and one short alright game.

[EVA]

Yeah, I couldn't help myself, so I started it.

I like that little trick they do where you think it's another in medias res opening like the train in 2, but it turns out to be a flashback all the way to Drake as a kid.

So far it's alright, but I like the panoramic openness of this series, so starting out in a series of dark corridors isn't pinging my pleasure center right off the bat.  

[Tabe]

I thought 3 was a bit of a disappointment but only because 2 was one of the best games I've ever played. It's still a very, very good game.

[Raziel]

Except the last 3rd of UC2.  Tomb Raider did the supernatural monsters better since said monsters weren't bullet sponges.

[Basara]

Fired up the Xbox One for the first time on Sunday after spending an hour setting it up, then another 6 hours downloading games since everything I've got at the moment is digital. Settled in for some classic Halo before having to spend another half an hour configuring my router because it doesn't like talking to Xbones for multiplayer for some reason. Got there in the end though.

Me and a buddy plan on working our way through the Master Chief Collection before finally picking up Halo 5. Looking forward to Halo 2 since I've never played that one before. Might grab ODST too since I missed that one also. The first ones aged well. It's a little weird playing an FPS with no sprint button or option to aim down the site for most of the guns but it's still a fun as it ever was.

I'll be giving Assassins Creed Unity a shot once in finished with Dark Souls 2. Haven't played one since the second game.

Looking forward to some fresh Forza and Gears over the coming months.

The pros and cons for the Xbox One and PS4 I've discovered so far.

The good:

External hard drive support for games. Why isn't this a thing on the PS4 Sony! My Xbox HD was 45% full after installing all the stuff it came with and all I need to do is plug in an old 1TB drive I have kicking about to triple the space. I'm forever deleting stuff on the PS4 for new games.

Games with Gold. Ok, I don't complain about all the indie stuff on Plus since its let me play a bunch of games I would never have touched before. But it's also nice to get legit, big, releases for free and they are a lot more frequent with Gold than they are Plus. With the 360 games always being backwards compatible now that's 4 games a month instead of 2 or 3. Microsoft have definitely got them beat with that one.

Backwards compatibility. Nintendo actually win this round! I think they've had full backwards support ever since they (finally) made the change to disc with the GameCube. They've also got the most extensive back catalogue with their Virtual Console out of any of the big 3. A Nintendo system with all the things they get right, their exclusive titles and with the full support of 3rd parties and the power of a PS4/Xbox One would be the greatest thing ever. As it is, Microsofts half decent attempt is a hell of a lot better than Sonys half assed attempt.

The Bad:

Holy shit is the menu system bad on the One. It takes an age to load compared to the PS4 and just seems like a jumbled mess. Nothing's intuitive, it's like they just threw everything at the screen and called it a day.

The store is just as bad. Unless I'm missing something it wouldn't even let me sort games alphabetically. There are very few categories. It's pretty much: New stuff, Stuff coming soon, Everything else. 

The controller. This is just personal preference at this point but also one of the big reasons why I've always gone PlayStation for my main console and Xbox just for its exclusives. Sonys just fit better in your hand. The Xbox controller has always been somewhat awkward to hold. And since it's essentially the thing that connects you to the game it's a deciding factor for me.

These ramblings went on a lot longer than I expected! I don't imagine many made it to the bottom of my post.

[BurningBeard]

I've been snagging indie games on the PS4 sale. Played Journey for the first time which was pretty fun and glorious to look at, then went on to Everybody's Gone To The Rapture which I felt was overly long but was as thought provoking and interesting as you'd expect from the folks who made Dear Esther. My hat's off to them for perfectly capturing rural England, I felt like I was experiencing a mash-up of the Archers and the Twilight Zone.

[The Man Known as Dan]

Paid the 5 bucks for the first episode of Telltale's Batman game.  Really enjoying the first session.

[Death From Above]

6 hours ago, El Dragon said:

Paid the 5 bucks for the first episode of Telltale's Batman game.  Really enjoying the first session.

How long does it usually take before all the chapters on their games are done? I want it but not until I can play the whole thing or I'll go crazy.

[odessasteps]

39 minutes ago, Death From Above said:

How long does it usually take before all the chapters on their games are done? I want it but not until I can play the whole thing or I'll go crazy.

If you are lucky, one chapter every 4 to 6 weeks. I recall long delays for Both Fables and GOT chapters to come out, esp at the end. 

[Chaos]

11 hours ago, odessasteps said:

If you are lucky, one chapter every 4 to 6 weeks. I recall long delays for Both Fables and GOT chapters to come out, esp at the end. 

I think they're releasing the whole thing pretty quickly. I want to say that the disc version is out next month, so that would mean they'd have to drop these things at about one a week.

EDIT: Also, Inside is coming to PS4 which is exciting given the buzz surrounding that thing.

[Raziel]

Man, I really hope Blizzard gets the WoW servers constantly crashing issue sorted before Demon Hunters go live on Tuesday.

[SirSmUgly]

I'm finally getting around to Borderlands 2 on my PSTV since I got a digital copy of it back when I bought my Vita last year. It's pretty decent! It's basically more Borderlands except with extra ways to level up your character to a point where s/he is ueber-powerful and destroys gangs of enemies at a time, which after eight years or whatever its been since the first Borderlands came out, I'm interested in again. Plus Handsome Jack is appropriately douchey and just the type of character that I'm looking forward to shooting in the face. 

It actually runs pretty well on PSTV, too! It's obviously a Vita port of an AAA game, but Iron Galaxy did a pretty good job. I don't know how load times compare to the proper home console versions, but other than being a bit jaggy in its textures, it runs and plays just fine (and of course, it's a much better experience with a DS4 rather than having to shoot using the terrible Vita touchpad). 

[Cliff Hanger]

Rebel Galaxy feels like something I would have been obsessed with in HS or college but just don't have the time to enjoy now.

 

[Zimbra]

12 hours ago, Cliff Hanger said:

Rebel Galaxy feels like something I would have been obsessed with in HS or college but just don't have the time to enjoy now.

 

Same here.  I think I would enjoy it more if warp travel was a bit faster and didn't get interrupted quite so much.  It feels like I'm spending most of my time staring at the back of my ship instead of actually doing anything.