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2021 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD


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Nope.  Assault rifle was the best call.  An interesting gunfight, but obviously not the boss mission.  BBEG sent another hit squad for me after I rescued the Cuban, but I used the pro tip of driving to one of my rackets so that my mooks could help out.

It is odd how people will call the cops on you if you have a gun in your hand but think nothing of witnessing me use a crowbar to pry a door open.  

I am enjoying the ironic inversion of GTA crowds.  Bystanders think nothing of hurling racial slurs at me as I walk down the street and the cops will also harass me.  It beats the mute crowds that most sandbox games have.

The AI is really dumb though.  While escaping with the Cuban I think I killed at least two pedestrians that should have looked both ways before crossing the street and none of the drivers in this fucking game yield the right of way which makes escaping car chases and winning street races all the more difficult.  At least shooting out of your car game mechanics in this game gives you auto targeting so you don't miss when you fire at the driver or try to shoot out the tires on enemy vehicles.

Finally got the achievement for vehicle takedowns after finally getting the hang of the auto aim system for shooting at cars.

Now to smash the operations of this capo running the gambling and Black Market rackets in this distict.

Oh, I also need to see how my new hybrid ganja strain is faring.  Hopefully the profits of sale will help me pay for more upgrades to the grow house.

Edited by J.T.
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Kick ass!  In order to kill the BBEG's brother (also a capo in the organization) I had to pose as a bare knuckled brawler and compete in an illegal boxing tournament!  The champ nearly beat the shit out of me, but constant pressure and counter punching prevailed.  Just when things were going my way, the bad guys see through my little ploy and once again, I must break free from captivity and murder my way to safety.

It figures that the game once again finds a way to strip me of my favorite load-out and make me fight out of a bad situation with whatever is handy.  Oh well. at least the capo of this district aka the BBEG's brother no less, is a charcoal briquette.  This is the second racist villain in the game that I have burned to death.  I love this shit.

Almost got fucked.  I was collecting my kickbacks and assumed that the Cuban assassin that the BBEG hired to kill me in the epilogue cutscene would be a standalone story mission for later on, but no.  The mother fucker and a team of thugs jumped me on the street when I was driving around with about $12K on me.  I nearly shat.  The death tax in this game is half of the cash in your wallet, so getting riddled with bullets while carrying this much loot is not an option.  I need to kill EVERYBODY...

It took all of my healies, molotovs, and grenades, but I was able to make a stand inside of a Whites Only strip club in Southdowns (RIP Sparkles or whatever her dancer name was...) and murder the crap out of all of them 300 Thermopylae style as they all tried to pile in to shoot me.  After that, I killed the lead hitman with my Rambo knife in the cutscene.

Whew.  For a minute there I thought they were going to get me.  That asshole hired killer died far too slow for my liking.

In addition to nearly every consumable weapon and healie on me, it also cost me a marker to distract the cops long enough for me to find a good defensible spot to raise hell.  If the cops had been trying to smoke me along with the death squad, things would've turned south in a hurry.

Now to finish collecting the bank and then go to harvest my next weed crop.  Jamaican Train should be a big seller.  

After that I have to hijack another arms shipment for my Haitian homegirl underboss and then I think I will knock out the last DLC mission storyline before making a push to finish the main story.

HEY!  Jamaican Train just netted me over $10K in profits!  NEW RARE ACHIEVEMENT!  Now to get to max herbalism and fully upgrade the growhouse so that I can be done with the last vestige of the Faster Baby DLC.

Edited by J.T.
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Last summer i beat the original Metroid (NES), Metroid 2 (GB), and Super Metroid (SNES). they were all awesome.

Today, largely due to the recent announcement of Metroid 5: Dread, i finished Metroid 4: Fusion (game boy advance). this was awesome, too, if a bit too linear for my taste. some of the later bosses were frustratingly difficult. i finished with a pathetic 51% of items found. probably won't go back for what i missed.

Likely will jump into either Metroid Prime or Zero Mission. the FPS style of Prime isn't my favorite, but we'll see.

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Damn.  The cruel calculus is setting in.  If you are fair to all of your underbosses and assign each one three districts and the two rackets located in each district, your max kickback from each underboss will be $7200.  If you want to unlock the achievement for one boss earning you $10K, you're going to have to fuck somebody over.  That's hard for me because I actually like two out of my three lieutenants (the bitter old Irish guy makes me want to punch him), and I also like all three of the captains working under the lieutenants now that I have earned their respect.

I'll probably never earn the achievements for jerking over one of my crew or betraying all of them and taking the city for myself, because I am not a big fan of being a douchebag.

On the plus side, three districts per lieutenant allows you to finish all of their side gigs and earn their loyalty, and there are achievements involved in finishing their shit and earning the trust of one (and then all) of the underbosses.  So far the Haitian is on board, so now I have to work on the Sicilian and the Irish guy.

There is an achievement for earning a half million bucks and there is also an achievement for spending a half million bucks.  It is taking FOREVER to save up a half mil and I am totally shocked that I haven't spent a half mil yet since I am constantly resupplying and buying upgrades for everything.

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Looked through my PS+ games I haven't played and sure enough, there's Mafia III... I'd say that's next on the docket but STRONG rumors have Hitman 2 coming for free in September and apparently there's a free way to use the Hitman 3 PS5 upgrade to play both the older games...

Damn, we're so fucking spoiled as modern gamers.

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Holy shit.  The Stones Unturned DLC is fucking crazy. My CIA homie and I are racing some crazy ass black bag US merc to the location of a Russian made thermonuclear warhead brought to the States by a pair of Cuban pilots that defected.  This seems a little high end compared to the kill the Godfather of New Bordeaux revenge plotline of the main story.

Sniper backup is the best.  I have no idea how I have lived without it.   I am going to enjoy using this shit later on in the game.

Now that I have finally unlocked and purchased all of the vehicle upgrades offered by my underbosses, it's time for some racing.  Why they offer you bulletproof tires so late in the game escapes me.  I coulda used that shit like three chapters ago when I was behind the wheel of a semi trying to fend off four sedans filled with gangsters.

Yeah,  if I am going to break the half mil saved mark, I am going to have to continue to sell hybrid weed out of my secret growhouse to supplement my illicit income.  I am at max herbalism and my growhouse is fully upgraded, so it should not take as long to cultivate quality cannabis than it used to.  My Afghan Lemon blend should be hitting the streets pretty soon.

Why has it taken me this long to notice that there is a Barbarella movie poster on the wall of my growhouse?  Maybe it wasn't there in the shitty version of my growhouse and was part of the renovations when I upgraded?

I have a shit ton of yard work to do tomorrow and I am also trying to see Candyman, so I might not get in a long session of play until Sunday.

Edited by J.T.
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On 8/27/2021 at 11:45 PM, twiztor said:

Today, largely due to the recent announcement of Metroid 5: Dread, i finished Metroid 4: Fusion (game boy advance). this was awesome, too, if a bit too linear for my taste. some of the later bosses were frustratingly difficult. i finished with a pathetic 51% of items found. probably won't go back for what i missed.

The linearity is a common complaint for Fusion but I appreciated it. Gunning for the end credits isn't really getting the proper Metroid experience but I always have to balance that with my impulse to backtrack over every step of my game so far whenever I get a new ability so that I'm up to date with my upgrades. Fusion segmenting the map into sections and restricting access to one or few at a time still allowed for rewards for going off the beaten track / remembering prior obstacles but helped funnel me into a far more sensible backtracking : progress ratio.

Speaking of the beaten track, there were plenty of moments where you would be told to go to point X on your map like it was a GTA mission but some shit would go down en route and you'd have to go off-grid to find some other way there. So my initial reaction to tasks would be 'this sucks I'm meant to be playing a Metroid game' but instead of trying to find exploitable nooks and pathways as one of many sweeps looking for upgrades as I would in past Metroids I would end up doing the same things in Fusion to get to my next objective. Felt like they melded those two parts of the Metroid experience together well.

Maybe not the most Metroid way of doing things, but considering its GBA neighbour is the formularific Zero Mission those little set pieces helped set it apart from the rest of the series.

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After slogging through the rain forest of some Central American green hell in pursuit of a US black ops merc trying to sell a nuke to the North Vietnamese government, the streets of New Bordeaux seem kinda tame.  I kinda hated the Bounty Hunting content that followed the Stones Unturned DLC mostly because I initially sucked at using the tranq pistol.  It has shit range, is non lethal, fires one shot at a time, and takes the place of your one handed weapon, so if the shit hits the fan, you better have an assault rifle or a shotgun to back up your bullshit.

I finally got through with the missions and went on a slight crime spree.  I began sleep darting the owners of Whites Only businesses and robbing them because dudes are trying to get to the half million dollar mark.  I stopped after getting 30 sleeps and unlocking the achievement so now I am back to growing hybrid weed and collecting my kickbacks.  While I was taking over Downtown, I also unlocked the achievement for using Sniper Support to kill 30 enemies.  Handed the district over to the Sicilians and completed my second underboss's loyalty mission.  Was pissed that his LMG did not unlock after completing the Sicilian's favor / loyalty mission and it still locked after getting his rackets in Downtown to max profitability.  Looks like this game still has a bug or two.

One more district to conquer and then I will be on the final road to revenge.

Edited by J.T.
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Well, shit.  The profits from my last batch of weed put me over the half mil mark, but the achievement didn't ping.   I'm pretty sure that's also the case for the achievement for spending over a half mil cumulative because I have burned through a shit ton of money.  I'm kinda bummed, but the achievements were only 10 or 15 pointers and it's not like I'm not going to play this one more time for the Snitches End Up In Ditches run where I murder all enemy informants and racket bosses.

I think all of the enemy kill count achievements are also bugged.  I have put a lot of guys in the ground and no love from achievements for stealth murders or just plain old beatdowns and violent shootings.

Against my better judgment and for the sake of science, I handed one of the rackets in the French Ward over to the Sicilians.  It finally unlocked the LMG I needed for this other achievement where I have to kill 50 mooks with the weapon while wearing this ridiculous Party Animal outfit (a floral print shirt and some chinos).  I still plan to give governorship of the district to my Irish underboss and we'll see if the additional district puts my Sicilian homie over $10K in cutbacks required to unlock the Big Earner achievement.  I know it probably won't but a guy can hope... i'm kidding myself....

I am two Vargas portraits shy of obtaining all of the collectables.  Getting to the 1960's Playboy magazines and the album covers wasn't easy.  The game likes to put junction boxes and collectables well inside of enemy gang territory or police offices.  I had to go on a cop killing death spree to gain access to a junction box in the last district I am working on.  For those not familiar with the game, junction boxes are located all over the city and you have to access them in order to highlight all of the collectables in a portion of the map.  The junction boxes also serve as wiretapping points that allow you to gain intel on you enemies. 

That's the games way of making you do this in order to have the option of recruiting enemy informants and racket bosses rather than killing them.

Anyway, I just assassinated some federal judge via grenade attack.  The BBEG bribed him to hasten the legalization of gambling so that he can open his casino.  So much for that shit.  There is a meta backstory in the game about the trial of a white man accused of murdering two black men (he claims self defense).  The judge I bumped off was presiding over the trial.  Rather than move the case to a new jurisdiction, the state AG called for and received a mistrial and the state is not going to hold a new trial.  I would like to pull the racism card but yeah, not happy about my road to revenge derailing justice for those murdered black men.  Keep it classy, America.

Anyway, I was thinking to myself, "What's a game set in Louisiana without a shootout on a riverboat?" and wouldn't you know, that's my next mission!  I'm off to kill the BBEG's older brother who really is the Cajun Santa Claus of this game.  His fat ass is going down with this ship and then there will only be two or so names left on my kill list.

Edited by J.T.
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You can now add a Louisiana state senator to the list of collateral damage victims along with that federal circuit judge.  I thought I was going to get to kill the BBEG's brother in spectacular fashion by tossing him into the riverboat wheel, but the game settled for hanging his gutted carcass from the statue of Andrew Jackson in front of City Hall.

Oddly fitting and relevant given how the US is currently struggling with how we feel about all of these monuments to Confederate generals and high profile slave owning political figures from antiquity.  

I feel horrible now.  At the end of my Irish underboss's loyalty mission, the old bugger confesses that he's suffering from liver cancer and has had me stealing shit in order to put some money away so his surviving daughter can leave the city after he dies.  He wants his daughter to keep hating him so that it won't be hard for her to cut ties when the time comes. 

I salute him.  He's a right hard bastard.  The least I can do is put the Godfather of New Bordeaux in the ground before his time is up.

The two remaining Vargas paintings are in the last two missions of the game, so I am right on track.  I kept inching through the riverboat and searching every area just in case one of the paintings was permanently skippable if you didn't find it during this mission.  I was kinda nervous until I cheated and read the Prima guide.

Only two more names on my hit list, I think.  The BBEG and his equally foul elite mook henchman of a son. 

Edited by J.T.
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I resisted the call for months, but Skyrim being on Game Pass has finally suckered me back in.  I'm sure I haven't touched it since before my son was born, and he just started first grade, so I've had plenty of time to forget stuff.  I remember next to nothing, which is making things interesting.  Things boil down into three categories so far

1 - things I run into, get surprised by, and then say "oh yeah, I kinda remember this"

2 - things I run into, get surprised by, but then they seem vaguely familiar so I'm assuming I've seen them before

3 - things I run into, get surprised by, and then I ask what the hell was that?

I'm guessing that last group is DLC stuff I've never seen, since I only ever played the base game

So far I'm ignoring all quests.  I've done the introductory shit it's a dragon, run away! main quest, but that's it. The lack of dragons flying around annoying me is nice.  

Mostly I'm running around finding things on the map, while picking flowers, whacking rocks with a pickaxe, and setting the local wildlife on fire.

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I have settled my debt with the Mob.   I thought about assuming the throne and becoming the new kingpin, but chose to leave the city in search of a new life for this playthrough.  My Sicilian homie took over the city in my stead, which wasn't entirely horrible.  Out of all of my lieutenants, I think I liked him the best.

Fired up my Kill Em All playthrough to see if I can coax some of those locked kill x number of mooks with takedowns achievements to break loose, but I think the Stones Unturned code permanently fucked them as well as the monetary ones and from what I have read online, 2K isn't in a hurry to fix the glitches. 

I did manage to get the five headshots in five seconds achievement done as well as the one for scoring three consecutive Brutal Takedowns. 

I should knock this playthrough out pretty quickly since I'm now proficient with combat, don't have to worry about the weird gimmick achievements, and have figured out that you don't have to collect every transistor widget on the board if you want to wiretap the entire city.  I did and I had close to 300 extra gadgets to spare.

Now to make these fuckers pay... again...  and see what happens when I become the new crime boss.

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Well, Xbox offering up the HD Collection of Zone of the Enders is a good thing since I have been tempted numerous times to buy The 2nd Runner on PS5 when it was on sale every so often the last few months. This has both games, so it’s a win/win.

I didn’t know Kojima produced this game, oh boy. This is about as close to a North American video game of Evangelion as we’ll get it looks like. Or did any of those games ever have a NA release?

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6 minutes ago, Casey said:

I didn’t know Kojima produced this game, oh boy. This is about as close to a North American video game of Evangelion as we’ll get it looks like. Or did any of those games ever have a NA release?

All of the Zone of Enders got NA releases at the time, including the GBA title (Fist of Mars).

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14 minutes ago, Casey said:

No, I meant the Evangelion games.

Oops, my mistake.  No, none of the various Evangelion games ever made it out of Japan.

I've owned a couple Evangelion titles over the years.  Even without the language barrier, the games didn't seem particularly remarkable.

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1 hour ago, Eoae said:

Oops, my mistake.  No, none of the various Evangelion games ever made it out of Japan.

I've owned a couple Evangelion titles over the years.  Even without the language barrier, the games didn't seem particularly remarkable.

Well there was the Eva-01 Type F that was introduced in one of the games (and was later used in at least SRW @3)

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Finished Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut last night and really liked the new material.  Side quests are probably superior to the ones in the main game, and the Eagle Tribe were interesting adversaries.  And, of course, Iki Island is gorgeous and well-realized.  i'm not sure that the new material strengthens the overall narrative, but it doesn't weaken it and, personally, I really dug the story Iki Island tells.  Having to confront - and clean up - the messy legacy of Jin's father adds an interesting layer to the main story, which (in my opinion) is mostly about Jin confronting his grandfather's legacy and having to choose his role in that legacy.  Anyway, great game, great expansion.  Hopefully, there's a sequel.

Lol, when Ghost of Tsushima was first announced, I was disappointed it wasn't more like Nioh or Sekiro (ie, fighting fantasy creatures).

Played a bit of Song of Iron this morning since I'm home due to the storm.  Not sure I'm going to like it.  It was a day one buy for me yesterday because it looks gorgeous and was developed by one man working on it in his free time for over a decade.  And it's a 2.5d Norse fantasy.  But, for everything I like about it, it seems a bit clunky.  The characters move slow and combat is slow and deliberate.  I'll give it another go, but I've got plenty of great games to play or replay.  Not inclined to spend too much time trying to talk myself into liking a game.  i don't expect every game to grab me immediately, but there are too many games out there.  Developers shouldn't expect players to sink hours into a game before they start liking it.  Most of the time, gut reaction to the opening minutes is a fair barometer of interest.

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Gonna finally finish up Death Stranding by the end of the weekend. I'd love to harp more on its themes and vibes n all that but I have a more important point to make - the game is a lot more fun if you play it like a idiot.

There's probably a thousand reason why so many gamers bounced off the first 10 hours, but one of the hangups HAS to be how the game never forces you to dick around via weird missions or challenge levels. It gives you a cornucopia of tools to work as laterally and creatively as you want, but it's entirely possible to do everything by the book and miss out on so much stuff.  I know somebody who quit after getting past the first map, and when I mentioned the standard overworld black-goo boss fights, they had no idea what I was talking about. I get that you're supposed to sneak around BTs all carefully, but a lot of people just assume it's a game over ? Likewise, I wish there were more story missions based around speed. Force careful players to jet across the map in 5 minutes and they might realize it damaging your cargo a little isn't the, uh, end of the world and it can be fun to crash and burn. Every time I saw a MULE camp I started chucking cargo at their heads, I never stealthed it. I couldn't imagine how much time that would waste - but there isn't a "run over every orange-pilled Amazon junkie with their own car" mission or "how to launch a container of resins at a dude" tutorial. For a game where death is pretty negligible, I get the feeling a lot of people didn't realize the futility of playing it safe. Certainly, plotting a careful course and flexing your noggin is the right call for some missions. But you really haven't played it until you've tried to go all Wages of Fear and drive a truck with a nuke in it down the side of a cliff.

It looks like the PS5 Director's Cut has a lot more stupid gadgets like catapults so I'm hopeful for future players.

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Speaking of Kojima - Zone of the Enders is definitely a goddamn Kojima game. Frustrating and weird but somehow still very likeable (IMO).

Anyway.

Downloaded DOOM (2016) and that's pretty fun. Seems like the framerate definitely isn't 30fps, but it's also a lot smoother than 60.. but it's not optimized for Series S/X like Eternal is. And I don't think the S does the boost like the X does, right? Did this game get a 120fps upgrade and I just don't know about it? Either way, I play this game in bursts (one level, quit, do something else, come back to it) because the darkness > then everything is mostly red hurts my eyes.

Also picked Quantum Break back up, it was the last game I remember playing on my Xbox One a few years ago. Cutscenes are still fucking gorgeous. I really wish this would be a game that gets a 60fps boost. I got heavy, heavy Control vibes from this, and sure enough, there's Sam Lake, and it's made by Remedy. Fuck it - I hope Remedy one day just merges all of their games into one universe. We already got Alan Wake, throw Max Payne and Quantum Break into the sequel. Hell, out of all the games that they COULD do crossovers with, I'd think this game is ripe for that, since thematically it's very similar to Control.

Had this console for just about two months now, and I've still only actually bought two games for it. Game Pass is wild. Why Playstation doesn't include PS Now in a subscription with PS Plus is beyond me. I still don't like that some OG Xbox/360 games are $10+. Silent Hill HD Collection is $20 or something on their store. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is $20, and it's on sale for 60% off! But, then again, at least you can buy/play older games in the Xbox ecosystem - can't even do that on the Playstation side.

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