Gaming General Chat Thread

[RedNightmare]

Oh man, even playing Tales from the Borderlands' first episode for the second time is still hilarious, especially with a friend. Really, if you get the chance, play it. It really fleshes that world out more than the three FPS's combined.

[Kapol]

For anyone watching The Evil Within stream, I just posted a large rant explaining some story information as well as some ranting thoughts in the IDDQDerp thread. Just in case anyone is interested.

[MotorWaffle]

Didn't want to start a whole thread for this, but does anyone here play Guns of Icarus?
My ship names:
Goldfish=S.S. Snack that Smiles Back
Junker=JunkerInTheTrunker
Galleon=Knut
Spire=S.S. SubtleImagery
Pyramidion-DemBawls

[korvys]

Wow, this is cool: https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3

[Bebop Man]

Question to anyone that has played Shadows of Mordor... why are there Uruks in the game? The game takes place BEFORE Lord of the Rings, IN Mordor, answering to SAURON. Yet Uruks were created DURING Lord of the Rings, IN Isengard, answering to SARUMAN. This is true to both books and movies. So what gives?

[korvys]

Fun?

Also, maybe the idea of modified orcs isn't a new one?

[ch3m1kal]

The lore actually mostly supports it, though it could be interpreted as a bit of a retcon.

Saruman bred the fighting Uruk-hai, which are not exactly the same thing as the Black Urukhs in Shadow of Mordor. Sauron also bred Urukhs in the films, they can be seen in Return of the King and they're slightly less badass versions of the ones from Isengard.

It's not a huge stretch to say that Sauron was the one who originally created them and Saruman simply improved upon the process.

[MotorWaffle]

Yeah, Uruks were totally a thing, but Uruk-hai were basically Saruman's upgraded version. I think there's something about how orcs are corrupt elves and Uruk's are corrupted men, but I could be wrong.

[empath]

So remember that "Afterfall InSanity" game that Alex & Graham Watch+Play'ed? The one that apparently needed crowdfunding to get finished after it was dropped part of the way through a 'traditional' game development cycle? And one that seemed to take several disparate (and in some cases, mutually-exclusive) stories and mash them all together?

...well, apparently the devs managed to get ANOTHER game in that universe made: Afterfall: Reconquest

here's hoping they at least focussed on ONE story this time...

[Omega Lairon]

You know... I didn't think Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was *that* bad. The gameplay itself is pretty decent, if a little slower than recent modern Sonic games, and the levels look good and play well, with no major bullcrap / unfair traps. I didn't even mind the brawl / fight sections either... it's not like there isn't precedent for it (Sonic Heroes had its fair share), and my only big criticism with it is that with a lot of enemies and 4 playable characters, it does tend to get a little messy, but not deal-breakingly so.

Probably its biggest weakness was the god awful writing and blatant hand-holding. Every few seconds, a character would spout a horrible one-liner which served to brutally butcher any shred of likeability each character had, distil them down into one annoying trait (Sonic: well meaning idiot, Tails: know-it-all who uses unnecessarily big words, Amy: typical "girly" girl with a hint of snarky, Knuckles: mentally disabled), and proceed to hammer it into the ground with absolutely no subtlety or finesse. And if it wasn't the characters being annoying and... I want to say "one-dimensional", but I feel that even that gives the writing far too much credit... they're reiterating a blatantly obvious hint for the hundredth time. It showed very little respect for the player's intelligence... and even taking into account the "it's accessible for kids" argument - kids are a lot smarter than the writers gave them credit for, and I'm sure even they would feel insulted by the incessant reminders. Thankfully, you can just mute the voices, which I highly recommend.

The other major thing I noticed is that there tended to be a lot of different gameplay and level ideas all sorta smashed together. One minute you'd be doing an on-rail obstacle course, the next, you'd be doing 3D platforming... oh no wait, now it's in 2... no, back to 3D again. And for my money, it did all of those different styles pretty well, but all of them blended in together just made for an awkward experience that never really gained too much momentum to get truly great at anything (the old "jack of all trades" problem). On the flipside though, no gameplay style ever really stuck around for long enough at a time to get boring or annoying, so there's that.

Other minor "flaws" I've read about, but personally don't give a crap about:
* Outdated graphics (I love retro junk, a few jagged edges mean nothing to me. I don't care if the hardware "can do better")

* Lame, cliché riddled story (It's a SONIC game, I'm not here for high art... I want to run fast and break stuff)

* Repetitive enemy design (A - it's a robot army... robots and armies both tend to look fairly similar. B - They never really stuck around long enough to matter)

* Story mode extremely short (I'll give you that it's short, but Sonic doesn't really lend himself to sprawling, 100+ hour epic quests. It does what it needs to and doesn't overstay its welcome, and that's good enough for me)

* Dull, repetitive music (it's not that I don't agree, but I found it entirely inoffensive and easy to ignore. Yes, Sonic games have had some truly masterful tunes, so I know they could do it better, but I'll settle for "average" if the alternative is "excruciating")

* Knuckles looks weird (opinion. I actually though he looked fine, once I got over my own "it's different, I don't like it". His personality, on the other hand...)

* It's glitchy as hell (I barely noticed anything too game breaking, but then, I didn't deliberately set out to break it, so I can't really say for sure. Sure, there are minor glitches, but no more so than in any other game, really)

* Repetitive "time waster" sidequests (they're what you make of them - you don't need to do any of them to finish the game, and really, the rewards aren't that impressive anyway. But overall, I thought they were pretty decent, and "average at worst", with very little, if any "fetch me 10 bear asses" or "ultimate challenge of impossibly difficult difficulty" type quests. Heck, I didn't even see any escort missions, so that's something)

So overall, I was led to believe it was so much worse than it actually turned out to be. I didn't hate this game, and in fact, I would still consider it a solid choice for a "void filler" game (you know, when it's only half an hour 'til dinner, but you can't be arsed starting up a game of anything good, but still need to play *something*).

3/10 (with voices)

6/10 (with voices muted)

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Never thought my Dark Souls training would help me in Dragon Age.

I had an encounter with a Dragon (which I didn't expect) when I was on my own. Managed to beat the dragon by using the good old 'dodge and attack' that Dark Souls taught me.

Yes, I had it on casual difficulty, but I still think I did pretty well.

[Kapol]

I thought Smash Bros 4 3DS was hard on 9.0. The Wii U version is even harder.

[Bebop Man]

Yess I got Dragon's Crown. My body is ready.

[Bebop Man]

Question about Borderlands 2.

You know in the intro sequence with Maya using Phaselock on an enemy and throwing him to a side while he's trapped in the bubble? Is that something she can actually do in the game? I've gone over her skill tree and it doesn't seem like she can learn how to do that.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Never thought my Dark Souls training would help me in Dragon Age.

I had an encounter with a Dragon (which I didn't expect) when I was on my own. Managed to beat the dragon by using the good old 'dodge and attack' that Dark Souls taught me.

Yes, I had it on casual difficulty, but I still think I did pretty well.

I found playing Monster Hunter really helped me play better in World of Warcraft raids. It installed in me an ability to move out of stuff better.
Likewise with playing the old End Game in Diablo 3 helped me get better at MOBAs (avoiding stuff better & improved positioning).

[RedNightmare]

Question about Borderlands 2.

You know in the intro sequence with Maya using Phaselock on an enemy and throwing him to a side while he's trapped in the bubble? Is that something she can actually do in the game? I've gone over her skill tree and it doesn't seem like she can learn how to do that.

As far as I know, no. She can turn it into a charm and all, but no Force Grip basically.

[Prospero101]

Hey guys, if I started a forum game in which the object was to write funny captions for a random image found online, would anybody be into that? I've played it on a few other forums and I quite enjoy it.

[Geoff_B]

Oooh I think I might be interested

[Bebop Man]

Question about Borderlands 2.

You know in the intro sequence with Maya using Phaselock on an enemy and throwing him to a side while he's trapped in the bubble? Is that something she can actually do in the game? I've gone over her skill tree and it doesn't seem like she can learn how to do that.

As far as I know, no. She can turn it into a charm and all, but no Force Grip basically.

Damn, that sucks. They should've put their money where the trailer was.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

So I was facing the final boss of Dragon Age: Inquisition; they wait in an arena where you have to jump of a ledge to reach it. I decided to be gamey and used a range attack to engage them. They don't have a range attack, relying mostly in close combat which the arena allows for.

So they were trying to engage me while I was up on this ledge, unable to be touched. The boss has this one attack where it uses teleportation to zoom across the arena...they tried this and what happened? They teleported off the ledge...leading to their death and me 'winning' the game.

I don't think I have ever beaten a final boss in such a gamey way before. It was hilariously anti-climatic.

[Deedles]

I finished playing Valiant Hearts earlier today, been wanting to play it for a while, but didn't have money, and once I finally got money I thought I'd wait for the winter sale and for myself to actually have time to play it. And so I finally did!

And it was just as good as I'd hoped. I don't want to get into details, because spoilers, but it was funny in that kind of quirky and cute cartoon way, but at the same time could suddenly slap you across the face with an emotional scene. It was worth having to deal with uplay for a little while to play it, despite it "only" being about 7 hours long.

[Prospero101]

Oh, it has Uplay. Shit. Guess I'd better remove it from my cart then.

[Master Gunner]

If UPlay is a dealbreaker for you, you can always go back and watch Cam and Alex's stream of the game.

[Prospero101]

That's what I'll probably have to do. I'm boycotting Uplay because it's caused me nothing but problems.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Awaiting credit to flop into my bankbalance so I can buy RCT 1 and 2 on Steam.
Since I lack a powerful computer, I think most games I will ignore this sale since... well, I'd rather pool my funds for a powermachine.