2016 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Basara]

7 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Got one trophy left (Titan Mastery) before I Platinum Destiny.

Those subclass levelings are such a grind. I was playing this game more than whats probably healthy at one point and i still haven't maxed out the new Hunter subclass they added back in September. Seems i'm missing 2 trophies, Flawless Raider and Relic Hunter. I might actually have to do those just for the sake of it!

Played the first episode of Life is Strange this afternoon. It's a really nice game and completely different to anything I've played recently. This is the first decision based story game I've given a try (is that an actual genre?). I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not that at the end, when it shows you the percentage of the people who made the same decisions, that I've gone with the majority for most of them. I'll be jumping into episode 2 during the week.

I'm enjoying a more story based game rather than having to hack apart werewolves with a razor blade or fighting off wave after wave of aliens for once.

[SirSmUgly]

I got a hankering for some Mario again and, because I still haven't learned my lesson from playing most Mario games post Mario 64, snagged a used copy of Galaxy 2 for sixteen bucks. I didn't exactly love the first Galaxy, but it was really lovely to look at and listen to (the Purple Comet theme made some of those terrible Purple Comet levels bearable), so I figured, why not Galaxy 2? 

And yeah, it's more of the same with Yoshi and some 2D Mario segments. It feels like a massive expansion pack more than anything. I'm going to get these 242 stars eventually, though. I powered through getting 121 stars for both Mario and Luigi on the first Galaxy, so I can do this. Maybe by October, even. 

[Cliff Hanger]

I've never been able to play the Galaxy games; anything that straight-up requires you to use the Wiimote as a pointing device is out of the question for me.  One day I'd love to see a 3DS or similar port just so I know what they're like.

[SirSmUgly]

I feel like we talked about this before and IIRC, it's something medical that keeps you from using the Wiimote's pointer controls? That's rough, and I'm sorry, man.

Surprisingly, the thing I like the most about Galaxy after the aesthetics is the control scheme. The pointer works nicely so that I don't have to gather star bits physically. I think that you could probably get through Galaxy without using the pointer very much at all, though at a bit of a disadvantage. Galaxy 2 has Yoshi, who is all pointer controls, though. 

The only bad thing about the controls for me is gyro. Gyro fucking sucks and Nintendo shoehorns it into everything just because they have the tech available, I guess. It works very rarely, but when it doesn't, it's game-hampering. Luckily, gyro is left to only a few stars in the first Galaxy and I haven't come across a gyro level yet in the second game, though I'm only about six stars in. 

[Raziel]

Yeah, there at least 3 flying levels that are completely gyro that accually caused me to never finish the game, since my CT can't take the Wii's gyro stuff for too long.  I can't imagine anyone with worst wrists than mine can take Wii games for very long. 

[Cliff Hanger]

1 hour ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I feel like we talked about this before and IIRC, it's something medical that keeps you from using the Wiimote's pointer controls? That's rough, and I'm sorry, man.

 

Yeah, I have nerve damage that renders me legally blind.  There's no place I can sit that is both close enough to the screen to read text and far enough away for a Wiimote screen pointer to work.  As such I've never played Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy, Zak and Wiki, Metroid Prime 3, Red Steel 2 or a dozen other Wii titles that people used to gush about.  It sucks, but I don't expect every game made to cater to my disability.  C'est la vie.

[jstout]

I didn't get as much time playing it as I would've liked by a longshot, but man, was that Overwatch beta fun. It's the first first-person shooter I've been vaguely able to tolerate, which gives me hope that I'd grow to like other FPS games. I love the richness of the amount of characters and all the different stuff they do. I only played two characters as I tried to grasp the basics of the game, so there were at least two dozen I never got to fool around with.

The co-op's a hoot, but I didn't bother playing against humans who have been playing the beta since it came out and have their favorite moves down with their favorite characters.

I think the co-op would get kinda samey (capture spot, defend spot, defend moving payload), but it'd still be a hoot to go through with all the different characters.

I wanna rent Battleborn and compare the two, but Overwatch was just a blast.

[Salads]

21 hours ago, Cliff Hanger said:

Yeah, I have nerve damage that renders me legally blind.  There's no place I can sit that is both close enough to the screen to read text and far enough away for a Wiimote screen pointer to work.  As such I've never played Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy, Zak and Wiki, Metroid Prime 3, Red Steel 2 or a dozen other Wii titles that people used to gush about.  It sucks, but I don't expect every game made to cater to my disability.  C'est la vie.

It might be worth trying to play those games on Wii U. When in Wii mode the bar across the top of the gamepad becomes a sensor bar. It's about three inches wide so it can be used with off-TV, but you can output to your monitor of choice at the same time to free it up as a short distance sensor.

[jstout]

Upon further review, Overwatch doesn't even have a campaign - it's teams of players against players or players versus AI enemies. That's it. It's fun, but that will get repetitive quick. It's fun, but not $60 fun.

[Death From Above]

Probably still better than Street Fighter V.

[Craig H]

You can also buy Overwatch for $40. You don't need the $60 version.

I played Battleborn over the course of 4 days and man do I not like it. The MOBA mode is a mess with there being only one lane. Just way too much going on and on the PS4, it causes the framerate to dip.

Overwatch on the other hand is fantastic. So much fun on both the PC and PS4. I was worried it would be a way too fast paced game and it's not. It' super smooth and never too fast.

[Kevin Wilson]

Anyone get an Oculus Rift yet? I am still waiting til mine is delivered in July, just curious to see if any of the launch games were any good. I am tempted to cancel until CV2 comes out (whenever that is) to give more time for games to be made for it, but I am too curious about the technology.

[SirFozzie]

The second that Stellaris gets a Mass Effect conversion mod, I will be shanghai-ing the usual crew and demanding you all play it against me.

 

[jstout]

I couldn't find a $40 version of Overwatch for the XBox One. It gets crazy when there's a lot going on in a small space, but the graphics stay smooth throughout.

It is just a ton of fun, and I really like that people's weapons don't really improve as they level up - it keeps everyone on a relatively even keel. One person on a message board I read called it "my first FPS," and I could see that - it's a relatively uncomplicated, fun game. I still think it would get old, even with all the characters, sooner than a lot of games.

 

[RIPPA]

The $40 version of Overwatch is a PC exclusive

[Raziel]

11 hours ago, SirFozzie said:

The second that Stellaris gets a Mass Effect conversion mod, I will be shanghai-ing the usual crew and demanding you all play it against me.

 

I'm so there.

 

Stellaris, fucking Crusader Kings IN SPACE!!!!!

[Red is Dead]

Uncharted 4 looks so so so so so pretty.

But I cant justify the £279 for the ps4 plus the game at the moment.

*sigh*

[Neil Koch]

I'm sure they will have some sort of bundle (maybe with the 4.5 also) around Christmas.

Quote

Got my Bloodborne platinum today. Despite the fact that I've owned a PS3 since launch and a PS4 for over a year this is the first game I've ever platinumed. It's pretty much all I've played over the past 6 weeks but now i can finally start tackling some more of that pile of shame. Think i'll start Life is Strange tomorrow.

I just got to the first boss, and of course got my ass handed to me, so I can't even imagine platinuming this game.  I am having fun with it now though.  I finally figured out how to upgrade my weapons and level up, so I'm not getting killed by the scrubs anymore (well, most of the time anyway, the undead dogs can kiss my ass).  I also am learning the map a bit more so that I have a nice couple of loops I can go through to grind for blood.  The game has similarities to the Souls games but is different enough hat it doesn't feel like DLC for them.  The graphics are pretty amazing too.  Nice to finally start seeing PS4 games that look like PS4 games instead of slightly upgraded PS3 stuff.

[Basara]

37 minutes ago, Neil Koch said:

I'm sure they will have some sort of bundle (maybe with the 4.5 also) around Christmas.

I just got to the first boss, and of course got my ass handed to me, so I can't even imagine platinuming this game.  I am having fun with it now though.  I finally figured out how to upgrade my weapons and level up, so I'm not getting killed by the scrubs anymore (well, most of the time anyway, the undead dogs can kiss my ass).  I also am learning the map a bit more so that I have a nice couple of loops I can go through to grind for blood.  The game has similarities to the Souls games but is different enough hat it doesn't feel like DLC for them.  The graphics are pretty amazing too.  Nice to finally start seeing PS4 games that look like PS4 games instead of slightly upgraded PS3 stuff.

I never actually played any of the Souls games before so i went into this blind. I'm not sure if that helps or not. I didn't know what i was doing, but i also didn't have to unlearn the combat style of Souls.

Depending on which boss you found first, one i somehow managed to kill on my first try, the other... kicked my ass a dozen or more times. I probably spent more time in that first area than any other part of the game. Just getting killed over and over again as i tried to find my way around and unlock the short cuts. That's the first obstacle, opening up the area. The second is leveling up, which you cant do unless you find and use a certain item or discover a boss for the first time. Once those 2 hurdles were out the way i just hung out in the area getting used to the combat, mechanics and leveling up.

I was a little worried about how hard the game supposedly was but it isn't difficult in the traditional sense, its just got a vertical line as a learning curve. Once you know what you're doing it gets as easier. The first location can come off as a bit of a grind but once you get past that the world opens up a lot more and you have several areas you can explore. Basically, as long as you're enjoying yourself, take the time to explore and get used to the games and enemies. I think not rushing through and improving myself early on really helped me in the long run.

And yeah, one of the best looking games I've played on the PS4. Both in graphics and style.

[Neil Koch]

They're not really hard in the traditional sense that you need lightning fast reflexes/luck (though that helps) but they don't hold you by the hand like a lot of modern games, so you have to learn the game world/system organically instead of it being forced fed to you via shitty tutorial missions.  Also the element of risk/reward with the possibility of losing blood/souls and backtracking infuriates a lot of people who want games that autosaves every 30 seconds.

Probably the biggest difference I've noted with Souls vs Bloodborne is that there's no magic.  The left hand in Souls is used for magic, shields, or to hold 2 handed weapons.  It makes the game more visceral since you can't just hang back and use magic spells to defeat enemies.

[jstout]

10 hours ago, RIPPA said:

The $40 version of Overwatch is a PC exclusive

That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure, so I did some checking around. There's no way my $300 laptop could handle a game like this, and I'd much rather play it on the XBox One anyway.

I may wind up getting it, because I start a nine-day vacation the day it comes out and will probably be sitting around the house bored in between NBA games. Since I'm not going anywhere for the 250th vacation in a row, I could plunk down $60 for it under the pretense that I'd spend more than that on one night in a hotel  if I took actual vacations like actual people.

 

[Basara]

3 hours ago, Neil Koch said:

They're not really hard in the traditional sense that you need lightning fast reflexes/luck (though that helps) but they don't hold you by the hand like a lot of modern games, so you have to learn the game world/system organically instead of it being forced fed to you via shitty tutorial missions.  Also the element of risk/reward with the possibility of losing blood/souls and backtracking infuriates a lot of people who want games that autosaves every 30 seconds.

Probably the biggest difference I've noted with Souls vs Bloodborne is that there's no magic.  The left hand in Souls is used for magic, shields, or to hold 2 handed weapons.  It makes the game more visceral since you can't just hang back and use magic spells to defeat enemies.

The loss of blood echoes early on was a huge kick in the nuts to the point where every time i had farmed a few 100 or so i'd hurry back to the lamp to cash in. It's weird how your perception of the currency changes as you get more comfortable with the game. By the end i was wandering around with over a million without really caring. And it took a lot of adjusting to the fact that there were no checkpoints. The first few areas i was in i took my time slowly working my way through making sure i killed everything so i could unlock the next short cut or lamp. It's a big adjustment. I'd only play the game when i knew i had an hour or 2 free time just so could make sure i made progress. I disliked it at first but like everything else in the game, it all just seems to fall into place and works after a while. 

I'm on the fence about trying one of the Dark Souls games. The more i read about them the more it sounds like the combat is more defensive and you can just turtle up and poke away at enemies. I played Bloodborne real aggressively, probably a little too aggressive. I wouldn't shy away from getting in a bosses face and taking a hit to give 2 or 3 thanks to the rally system. As similar as the games are on the surface, the combat in Dark Souls sounds like it's a lot slower paced which is the exact opposite of what i enjoyed about Bloodborne.

[Craig H]

Woah. RIP Disney Infinity/Avalanche Software. That was really unexpected. 

[Andrew POE!]

1 hour ago, Craig H said:

Woah. RIP Disney Infinity/Avalanche Software. That was really unexpected. 

I guess I gotta boost Split/Second before the servers are gone. Any takers?

[Chaos]

Since I've beaten Batman; Arkham Knight, I figured I'd get back into Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, so I can play 4 at some point this year.

I played for about 20-30 minutes after RAW on Monday just to get once more acclimated to where I am in the first one (first playthrough, as I did not own a PS3).

The game is very basic from a third person shooter sense, but I did have to remind myself some of the secondary controls (like how to dodge-roll).

I enjoy the feel of this series, and I am curious to see how much of an upgrade 2 feels once I finish 1, as everyone talks about that being a leap above this one.

My one gripe tends to be working through combat, as there are sections where I feel like I get lucky because going into cover doesn't do squat, or the ammo is not plenty enough for you to stay put. I'm currently on the tail end of the mission where you and Elena run the jet-ski into The Drowned City.