2016 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[J.T.]

16 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

The Mass Effect Theme Park ride opens May 18

http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/electronic-arts-mass-effect-theme-park-ride/

I hate everyone in California

Cedar Fairs?  My parents live forty minutes from Kings Dominion.  EA had better build a Dragon Age coaster there or something.

[Basara]

I finished Bloodborne tonight. Damn good game. There aren't many games i get that into that i play them non stop until i beat them. I think slogging through the harder DLC before finishing the main game upped my skills because i beat all 3 of the final stretch of bosses in 2 attempts each. I'm tempted now to give the Souls games a try since i never played them but with Dark Souls 1 not being available on the PS4 and no access to a PS3 at the moment makes me think twice. I dont like starting a franchise half way through.

[Neil Koch]

My wife picked up Bloodborne for me.  I think she thought it was a PG13 LOTR style game, not something where you hack people with a huge straight razor.  Haven't really had a chance to play it much other than getting killed about 10 times from the first few groups of enemies.

[Basara]

9 hours ago, Neil Koch said:

My wife picked up Bloodborne for me.  I think she thought it was a PG13 LOTR style game, not something where you hack people with a huge straight razor.  Haven't really had a chance to play it much other than getting killed about 10 times from the first few groups of enemies.

Yeah i died an embarrassingly amount of times to that mob on the staircase at the start. It's rough going for the first couple of locations but once you get past the first few bosses and the world opens up much more it's a great game. My advice to you is stick with it through the early part because you will die. A lot. But once the combat starts to click with you you'll start making progress fast. Until you get a feel for it and get to a point where you can level up your best bet is to try and lure away single enemies, never try to take on mobs. Even in the later parts of the game when you think you know what you are doing it only takes one mistake for a group to mess you up.

[J.T.]

Screw you, Watch Dogs.  There is a Criminal Convoy called Excessive Force where you have to take down a corrupt police officer.  Not only do you fall the mission if you kill him or he dies by other means (I failed once when an incoming patrol car PITed my car into the asshole while he was in the middle of the street) but your vigilante rep sinks with every police or civilian casualty.

After six attempts I finally caught a break.  I got to an intersection just in time to hack the traffic signal and cause a crash.  I ran and got a baton knock out on the target and made a quick getaway.

I got away without firing one shot. Pure luck.  

It was about as much fun as hitting myself in the mouth with a pipe wrench.  Replay value has gone down a billion percent.

[Cliff Hanger]

The recent Retronauts on the Dracula X games has had me playing the Chronicles version of Symphony at lunch/break at work.  I think this is the first time I've ever beaten Dracula without grinding an OP weapon like the Crissaegrim or using the Shield Rod.  I never even set foot in the Reverse Catacomb.  (Needless to say, I didn't get the best ending).

 

After I beat Drac, I wanted to hit the Catacombs and fight Galamoth but couldn't remember where to find the Beryl Circlet to turn lightning damage into heals.  So I checked GameFAQs and found that it's in the Reverse Entry, in the room I could never consistently unlock because the guides of 1997 basically said "run in and out of this little cavern as fast as you can and you'll unlock it. Try wolf or bat mode."  Only now do I learn that the mystery has been solved for like 15 years, and you have to enter as a wolf and leave as a bat.

[Basara]

Picked up Life is Strange and the Nintendo Humble Bundle offer so I've got plenty of games to keep me going. Looking forward to jumping into Life is Strange.

Now, i'm not a trophy hunter, I've never platinumed a game before. It just seems tedious when i look at the list of trophies. Most games will have to jump through hoops and give you unreasonable trick shots and time trials to pull off to get there. That just isn't fun to me so it's never been something I've gone for before. But... i'm seriously considering trying to Platinum Bloodborne. I've already got 100% on the DLC (the first thing I've ever 100%ed) but that's just gold and silvers. I took a look at the main game and i'm only missing the 2 alternate endings, the final Chalice Dungeon boss and one weapon (that's found in the Chalice Dungeons it seems). Now it took me 68 hours to beat the main game the first time, but that was doing everything when i'd never played before and leveling up. While the New Game+ modes get increasingly harder you do get to keep all your gear so it cuts out a hell of a lot of time. There's also a surprisingly small amount of bosses you are required to kill to beat the game, just 7 for one ending i need and 8 for the other.

So I decided to take a crack at the 8 boss ending. After 5 hours over the past 2 days I've made it all the way to the final area of the game, where the last 3 bosses await me. I've also only died 5 times so far. I died more times than that to the opening mob when i first started playing. Thought i was doing pretty well for time until i looked online and people have beaten the entire game in less than 40 mins! If things keep going well i can probably finish this run tomorrow. I plan on doing some leveling up before i do finish though just so i'm a little over powered for the even harder NG++ i'll need to beat for the 3rd and final ending.

If that goes well i just need to complete the required Chalice Dungeons. Which i hear are hell.... One problem at a time.

[Salads]

19 hours ago, Cliff Hanger said:

The recent Retronauts on the Dracula X games has had me playing the Chronicles version of Symphony at lunch/break at work.  I think this is the first time I've ever beaten Dracula without grinding an OP weapon like the Crissaegrim or using the Shield Rod.

Wasn't a fan of SOTN when I played it and one of the big contributors to that was the Crissaegrim falling into my possession and me using it because I thought it was there to be used and not to hot butter slice the entire game into droplets.

[Andrew POE!]

Got Fully Weaponized trophy this afternoon....two trophies away from a Platinum in Destiny.

[J.T.]

14 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Got Fully Weaponized trophy this afternoon....two trophies away from a Platinum in Destiny.

If you are a still a DVDVR clan member, you can try to solo one of the older PoE levels.  If you make it, you will get the trophy for completing a raid with your clan since PoE arenas that require matchmaking count as raids. 

If you make it through without dying, you will get the trophy for surviving a raid where no one in your fireteam dies.

[J.T.]

Got through a lot of Watch Dogs content over the weekend so that I can get ready to dive into more SR4. 

• Finished the Human Trafficking investigation.  I wanted to bring Joseph DeMarco in alive but he is accompanied by a convoy of police vehicles and your Paragon meter will take a hit with every policeman you injure or kill despite the fact that the cops are "corrupt."  I finally got fed up and decided to kill DeMarco.  I followed the convoy until they came near a steam pipe that I hacked.  The explosion threw DeMarco from his limo and I floored it and ran over the bastard with my Papavero Stealth hacker batmobile while he was lying there in the street.  I can't believe that the mayhem I caused only got me a 3 level Police level.  Then it was just a matter of evading the cops which is fairly simple now that I am finally a super hacker with all available skills (100 point achievement unlocked!).
• Knocked out the last Criminal Convoy and got the achievement.  Small Town Justice was a clusterfuck.  Two targets to knock down (figures that I couldn't just set IED booby traps in the road and be done with it) with only one good ambush location in Pawnee near the train tracks.  Finally got fed up (sensing a pattern?) and just spammed the area with my grenade launcher enough times to nuke the minions and moved from cover to cover until I got close enough to baton thump the targets.
• Knocked out the last Gang Hideout and got the achievement.  God, the Destroyer heavy sniper rifle really trivializes some of these scenarios.  There is no incentive for using pure stealth, so my tactic is to find a good sniper's nest and pick off bad guys until only the target is left to stalk him at my leisure.  Spec-Ops weapons are a non-necessity when you have the benefit of extreme range and your bullets go through medium cover. Factor in the ctOS Scan tool which reveals the locations of all enemies and it becomes even more simple.  The Gang Hideout that used the Unfinished Bridge in Pawnee as the setting was very challenging and I really liked it.
• I found all of Maurice Vega's burner phones and got the achievement.  Poor bastard's wife was abducted and sold off in one of Lucky Quinn's auctions in retaliation for him electing to shooting Aiden's tire instead of Aiden himself.  I am a softee and poor Maurice sounds like he is a broken man so when the inevitable moment arrives where I am offered the option of killing Maurice myself, I will show him the same professional courtesy.
• Finished the Missing Persons investigation and got the achievement.  This had great build up but a pretty bleh payoff. I was hoping for something a bit more sinister.
• I've cracked the last QR code and got the phone call from DedSec to hack GiggL3s.  Another achievement incoming soon.

I'm two or three missions into Act IV.  Iraq is dead and now my new Special Guest Villain is Default.  Yeah, someone at Ubi either loves or hates Deadmau5.

I dig T-Bone's personality a lot more than Aiden's and T-Bone is a bit of a badass, so I may put myself through a Bad Blood run just to run with a protagonist toon that I actually like,

I've been getting a lot of Friend Requests from other players who are after the online competition achievements.  Quite a few of them are either from South America or Eastern Europe. 

I've thought about finding someone online and see if they want to trade wins so that we can both get the achievements and unlockables, but I don't think it is worth the trouble since I have no intention of finishing the damn drinking game so there is no sense in doing multiplayer for the sake of completion.

[RIPPA]

I could have gotten Watch Dogs for $8 this weekend. Pre-JT play through I would have done it

Now that seems 8 bucks too much

[J.T.]

1 minute ago, RIPPA said:

I could have gotten Watch Dogs for $8 this weekend. Pre-JT play through I would have done it

Now that seems 8 bucks too much

Live vicariously through my playthrough and save yourself eight American dollars.

[Basara]

Finished my second playthrough of Bloodborne, took about 7 hours since i stopped to level up a bit at the end. I rushed through the first 1/3 of my 3rd playthrough this morning in less than an hour. So much faster once you know the shortcuts and how to smash the bosses.

While you can get the Raid Fireteam trophy from PoE, Flawless Raid doesn't work in there. I've beaten a bunch of prisons without dying but Flawless Raider is the only trophy i don't have. Getting massively over leveled and smashing Crota is your best bet for that one. I'm not even sure why i haven't bothered doing it myself.

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

If you are a still a DVDVR clan member, you can try to solo one of the older PoE levels.  If you make it, you will get the trophy for completing a raid with your clan since PoE arenas that require matchmaking count as raids. 

If you make it through without dying, you will get the trophy for surviving a raid where no one in your fireteam dies.

[Andrew POE!]

10 hours ago, J.T. said:

If you are a still a DVDVR clan member, you can try to solo one of the older PoE levels.  If you make it, you will get the trophy for completing a raid with your clan since PoE arenas that require matchmaking count as raids. 

If you make it through without dying, you will get the trophy for surviving a raid where no one in your fireteam dies.

I already got those and Flawless Raider. Just need to max out the Titan and Warlock subclasses.

[J.T.]

RIP JB "Defalt" Markowicz.

Spoiler

Or at least RIP the decoy you sent in your place.

Fuck you and your rocket powered station wagon.   I am a little disappointed that the devs did not parody Deadmau5's Nyan Cat Purrari a bit more when they designed Defaut's custom Rosewood.  The last song I needed for my SongSneak collection was the acid house track Default spun at dotConnection; Conduction by Johnny Fiasco. 

Another achievement unlocked!

This use of incidental music was just as good as CREAM by WuTang playing during my shoot-out with the Viceroys or Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry blasting while T-Bone and I were thinning the ranks of the local doomsday preppers turned Blume private army during an all-out assault of T-Bone's junkyard / booby-trapped sculpture garden. 

An interactive advert featuring poor Joseph DeMarco (RIP) adorned the wall in the atrium of the club. I guess I should've waited until after this mission to kill DeMarco with my car....

It was kinda hard to follow through with the mission because I was busy digging the music and wandering around the crowd. Too bad that Aiden doesn't dance.

I think Aisha Tyler makes yet another appearance in the game as one of the party people, but you can't tell for sure since you can't profile anyone in the club.  You can only profile the mannequins decorating the club that Default is using to taunt you.

Me being weird is happy that I wore the Cutthroat outfit so that I fit in with the EDM crowd.  I am stupid like that..

Once you locate and hack Default's router to access the webcam on his laptop (the "connection" puzzles are really complex this time around), he causes a blackout in the club and makes a run for it.  As you chase Default, you run accross several decoys wearing electronic rat masks like his.

Spoiler

One of them is the actual Default and you end up chasing a decoy for the rest of the mission.

I finally got the shoot-out I want with realistic model animations.  Instead of pulling a shotgun or assault rifle out of my pants, I broke out the M8-M (based on the Mateba auto-revolver) out of my coat and open fire.  What a great six-shooter! 

The RoF is slow but the stopping power the gun has at medium range is insane.  So long as you are careful to count your shots and remember to take cover after six, you're good. Having a dude not die when your mag is empty and being forced to reload out in the open is the worst feeling ever.

Once I finished putting down all of Default's fixers, the obligatory car chase started.  Fun....

Fucking Default led me all over Chicago during the chase and the muscle car I was using was nearly scrap by the time Default finally took the wrong turn down the wrong street and I got him to crash into a street blocker.  One Focus assisted headshot later and he was down.

I was so frustrated by the pursuit that I put an IED on Default's car and made sure it was completely destroyed.

The cool thing about this mission is,

Spoiler

Once you finish downloading the stolen data, that's it.  You've won.  The mission is obviously over if you kill Default's decoy, but if the decoy gets away by car or on foot AFTER you've taken back Iraq's digital blackmail, don't worry. 

Eventually T-Bone will call you on the phone and tell you he's tracked Defaut's GPS location and you will arrive just in time to find Default gone and his trademark mask lying on the ground. 

It all works to set up Default as your primary antagonist in Bad Blood.

I will let T-Bone keep the six gigs of lesbian porn he stole from Defaut's apartment.

As for my motley crew.

Spoiler

Claira has kept up with me so easily because she's been working both sides of the street.  She was the one that gave up Aiden and Damien to the Chicago South Club, so in a way she is just as much responsible for Lena's death as Maurice was. Et tu, Brute?

As for the plotline, here is what I have figured out so far. 

I will spoil as much as I can so that if you are living vicariously through my playthrough, you will get so much information that you won't have to play through the game yourself to know what's going on.

Spoiler

So all of this bullshit and murder is about blackmail.  The Black Viceroy's street crime bankrolled Iraq's cyber attacks on various power bases in Chicago.  He had dirt on powerful politicians, businessmen, and criminal figures. 

Aiden and Damien had the misfortune to cyber-rob the Merlaut Hotel at the same time that Iraq went phishing for data.  It probably wasn't Iraq's first time hacking the Merlaut because the Club contracted Claire to monitor the network and prepare countermeasures.  It was Claire that scanned the network during Aiden and Damien's security breech and she was the one who turned their identities over to the Club's hit men. 

What Iraq ultimately intended to do with the information I have no idea.  That information can serve as leverage and grease a lot of wheels, but it also makes you a shitload of enemies and no matter how sophisticated they were, the Viceroys were just a street gang.  I don't think they would last long in an extended war with the Irish Mafia.

Anyway, apparently Iraq had something on the mayor and thanks to the audio logs, I know that it has something to do with Lucky Quinn telling Blume to use the bellweather algorithm on the mayor via ctOS to "suggest" to him that he was in love with Rose Washington; one of the original ctOS developers.

Quinn wanted dirt on the mayor so that he could keep the mayor in line.  Whatever that vid was on the Merlaut servers. it was pretty bad and it involved Rose Washington.  The usually smug Malcolm Deodario found Jesus and resigned from Blume in fear and disgust according to his last audio log.  He did so after he saw the results of the bellweather that Blume used on the mayor, so I am guessing the mayor killed Rose in a fit of passion or something.  That was the leverage Lucky had on the mayor and Iraq wanted the vid so that he could have leverage on Lucky..

The video proves that:

1. The mayor is guilty of murder.

2. Lucky Quinn and Blume were responsible for it.

3. ctOS has a pod people setting that is capable of mental conditioning aka MIND CONTROL~!

At first I honestly believe that Brenks kidnapped Nicky because he really did want to get Aiden to investigate how the Club found out about their hack and who was responsible for crippling him and killing Aiden's niece, Lena, but now Brenks's goal is to get his hands in Iraq's data so that he can use it for his own ends.

Looks like Aiden gets to rescue his sister during the next mission I play.

[J.T.]

Almost forgot.  I also completed the Palace exclusive content.  RIP Daniel SoSuMe.

I have done so many Gang Hideouts that getting to the unlock spots without being seen was pretty easy.  I was happy that I did not have to kill any of the guards, but I did have to baton thump a couple to keep patrol lanes free of curious security dudes.

Once you hack the system, you once again (you guessed it!) get involved in another car chase.   I was smart enough to have left my Boxberg LE parked at the mansion entrance, so I did not have to use their shitty default chase car.  I actually had to get into a small gunfight this time, but good shooting and grenades carried me to victory.

After that it is a collection hunt across the map.

All of the hard drives you have to find are located in areas that are easy to access if you think outside the box and look for areas where you can climb or hack hydraulic lifts.  You get 3K XP for your effort, but one of the DLCs gives you double skill points.  By the time you get around to doing this, you're probably already a super hacker and are doing this for the lulz.

[Kyuubi]

On 5/2/2016 at 9:28 AM, RIPPA said:

I could have gotten Watch Dogs for $8 this weekend. Pre-JT play through I would have done it

Now that seems 8 bucks too much

Give me the hook up please. I am a petty ass gamer who will wait a year after the GotY edition to pick shit up(save for Mirror's Edge because that game is special to me). Where can I find games like that for 20 dollars or under. Hell, I have yet to get fucking GTAV.

[Andrew POE!]

WWE 2K15's servers are shutting down at the end of the month. For the trophy hunters (me and like one other guy) you better get those online trophies soon.

[jstout]

So, what's the groupthink on "Battleborn"?

I hates me a first-person shooter, I know that.

[J.T.]

RIP "Lucky" Quinn:

Spoiler

I hate it when i am right.   The video was of the mayor killing Rose Washington by accident.   I love the gimmie missions where being overpowered pays huge dividends.  Two blackouts and two baton thumps later and I am in the elevator of the Merlot on my way up to Lucky's office. 

The security guards did not stand a chance as I had plenty of components set up to build more blackouts and I had the highest rank Disable Helicopter hack.  Of course, blackouts prevent you from using security cameras or unlocking doors, but that doesn't matter when you have KOed the guards under cover of darkness who had the closest patrol routes to the security keypad you had to hack..

Lucky thought he had me, but a room encased in bulletproof glass will not save you from the Batman super hacker when you are standing ten feet away from a camera.

I did not expect to get to kill the elderly bastard by remotely shorting out his pacemaker.

I read all of Lucky's e-mails to the "almost late" Joseph DeMarco (see the third set of spoilers) and saw that Clara really was trying to make good after selling Aiden out and I figured that it was Clara that left the flowers at Lena's grave.  RIP, homegirl.  The room got a bit dusty during the cut scene where Lucky's men gunned her down.

RIP Damien Brenks:

Spoiler

So my former criminal mentor has transformed from evil hacker to evil information broker to city destroying nihilist. 

This mission was the exact opposite of the Get Lucky Quinn mission in the THIS MISSION CAN EAT A BAG OF DICKS~! way.   What was once simple turns into a cluster fuck as Brenks takes control of ctOS away from me and gives me a bitter taste of my own medicine. 

It is bad enough that Brenks turns the entire city infrastructure against you (exploding steam pipes, malfunctioning traffic lights, the works) as you race to three ctOS junction switches situated around Chicago that you have to disable (aka defend for thirty seconds while on foot) that will allow T-Bone to infect ctOS city wide with the same virus that caused the legendary Blackout of 2003 in order to delete Bellweather and stop Damien from tearing the city apart..

EVERY COP IN CHICAGO IS TRYING TO KILL YOU INCLUDING FUCKING SNIPERS IN HELICOPTERS~!

DAMIEN IS ALSO FUCKING WITH YOUR GPS AND MOVING THE FUCKING MISSION WAYPOINTS AROUND~! 

There are three stationary waypoints on the map representing the locations of the ctOS boxes you need to crash before T-Bone can upload the city killer.  Problem is that the waypoint locations are masked with flickering decoys and it is up to you to figure out which way you need to travel in order to find the true waypoint. 

DID I MENTION THE ENTIRE CITY IS GOING APESHIT AND EVERY COP IN CHIGAGO IS SHOOTING AT YOU AT ALL TIMES AND PITING YOUR FUCKING CAR AND IF YOU KILL OR INJURE A COP YOUR REP DROPS~?

i think had to swap out vehicles no less than ten times in the course of merely trying to stay mobile long enough to keep hunting.

I found the first two ctOS boxes fairly easily (defending them while on foot was not easy), but the third one was a bitch since it was inside of the ctOS station you hack in the third story mission and you have remain alive long enough to make note of the waypoint that seems to stay in the same place.

After minutes of agony that seemed like an eternity, I finally caught a break.

When I went into the ctOS station and crouched while disabling the last system lock, the cops lost sight of me and called off the search once I took care of the last switch..  I was sorta paranoid because of the active police location markers on my minimap, but they didn't seem to take notice of me as I ran down the street.  My heat meter returned to zero after disabling the final ctOS box

Then it was just a matter of returning to main ctOS station and popping the main router so that T-Bone could do his thing and violently reboot ctOS in order to purge the Bellweather code from the system and kill Damien's access.

The final showdown quicktime event was slightly anti-climactic.  How many horror and action movies have had the last stand take place at a top of a lighthouse?  Brenks is standing there watching the city shred itself until I come waltzing in and then Jordi shows up and pulls a gun on both of us. 

First my French-Canadian Suicide Girl almost but not quite romantic interest tries to punk me out and now my Yellow Peril professional hitman gallows humor comedy relief does the same thing?

Endgame ran the way I expected it to.  Hack lighthouse lamp to cause distraction, punch Jordi, shoot Damien in the head, roll credits. 100 point achievement!

With all of the talk of the price on Aiden's head, I figured that Jordi would sell out and try to collect on the bounty and I knew it wouldn't be personal, so I was happy to see in the Maurice epilogue that Aiden and Jordi were cool with each other again.. 

Yeah, I let Maurice live during this playthrough.  I may play another quick run so I can see what happens when I kill him, but that won't happen until after the SR4 playthrough.

Epilogue:

Spoiler

Little Sister was yet another one of the guide your friend via cameras missions that I hate, but this wasn't as painful as it could've been since I sniped the Fixer standing closest to Nicky's escape vehicle.  I loved how Nicky went from "Guns? I hate them!" to EEEK BANG~! in three seconds flat.

Once I got Nicky past the guards in the middle of the warehouse thinging where she was being held hostage, she was home free.  I was hoping to get my murder on, but the stealth option was far more satisfying.  The mission right after where you have to get Jacks and Nicky out of town blew goats.  Thank God for dirt roads and breakable fences.

So the Mayor of Chicago dies under mysterious circumstances, Charlotte Gardner makes the PR save and pitches ctOS 2.0, and despite me running over Joseph DeMarco with a car, the news reports state that he was arrested and sent to prison for human trafficking. 

If the whole point is for DeMarco to survive and go to jail, why give me the option to kill him in the final Human Trafficking mission? 

There are a lot of things in this game that telegraph that this thing was rushed out of development, the least of which is that mission.  NPC's surviving when they're not supposed to and cars that constantly oversteer and handle like you're driving on glass for starters..

I like T-Bone as a good guy and really really really love / hate Default as an adversary, but not enough to run through Bad Blood unless there is another sale on Ubi downloads at XBox Live Market.

Random stuff:

Spoiler

Favorite Missions:  Dressed In Peels, No Turning Back, all of the ctOS Station infiltrations, the Palace mansion infiltration. For The Portfolio (best pure firefight in the game).

Most Hated Missions:  Planting A Bug (MOVE IT, BEDBUG, YOU LARDASS~!), The Rat's Lair (GOGOGOGOGOGO, T-BONE~! NO, DON'T HIDE THERE~! FUCKING CAMERAS~!) Sometimes You Still Lose (JESUS I CANNOT SHAKE THESE FUCKING PIGS FOR ANYTHING~! WHY ARE THERE NO FUCKING BOATS MOORED IN THE CANALS SO i CAN CHEAT AND USE THE RIVER~?).

Favorite Car: Papavaro Stealth (DUH~!)

Favorite Outfits:  Nemesis, Alone, Rogue, Highwayman, Wayfarer, Deep Blue, the Mobster outfit (I wore it during the Crispin assassination mission and the human trafficking auction mission.  The outfit was actually somewhat appropriate for the settings. Who knew?)

Most Hated Outfits:  EVERYTHING ELSE~!  Aiden Pearce may be the worst dressed protagonist in the history of video games.  Who the fuck buttons their coat like that?  How are you supposed to draw your fucking sidearm?

Favorite Load-out: M8-M auto-revolver, Biometric Rifle.  Destroyer heavy sniper, Piledriver auto-shotty

Proudest achievements: Double headshot with heavy sniper rifle during the Role Model mission, pure stealth run during first part of Open Your World mission, Unlocking the Fire Truck for my Car-On-Demand app.

 

[Dirty J.]

Just finished Witcher 3's Heart of Stone DLC and as far as DLC goes it is excellent and reminiscent of old expansion packs. Well worth the money since the quests are fairly long and well written (with multiple endings to boot).

Speaking of DLC, in case you hadn't have enough of Witcher gameplay you can download the new game plus dlc for free. It's what you expect but you keep all your gear and don't have to do tedious diagram quests.

Can't wait for Blood and Wine.

 

[BurningBeard]

I picked up Firewatch while it was on sale at the weekend and finished it in one sitting.

Spoiler

I can see why people hate the ending but that's no doubt due to storytelling conventions people have grown accustomed to in games and film than anything else. Firewatch is probably how it would play out in real life - you DO want to believe you're being spied on by researchers for nefarious purposes, you DO want to believe there's a Jason Vorhees figure stalking you and teenagers near the lake, you DO want to believe firefighters have disappeared when nope, its all a coincidence and the reasons for everything are mundane happenstance. Damned if I didn't feel sorry for poor Brian though

Ever since Dear Esther I've been getting more and more satisfaction from these emotional-narrative-exploring type of games. Gonna pick up Journey and Everybody's Gone To Rapture next. Will pick The Witness up when it goes on sale

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

The Witness only really has the first person perspective in common. For something more narrative, you'd probably want to look at The Talos Principle first. Although if you have like really pronounced death anxiety, it may take you quite a while to get through Talos Principle.

[AxB]

Is Midnight Club: LA any good? I'm looking for a decent PS3 racing game that isn't one for the super obsessives who'll spend hours experimenting with tunings and spoiler angles. Is it basically GTA 5 with all of the Grand Theft taken out, leaving just the Auto, is what I'm asking?