Now Playing (Video Games)

Decided to run through Fallout 3 again for the Neutral Karma Achievements as well as a couple of missions that I missed like Trouble on the Homefront, in which you go back to Vault 101 answering a distress signal. In reading how to trigger the mission, one wiki mentioned the mission is only available for 14 in-game days after the waters of life mission. Even though I had seen a Youtube review in which the guy did it AFTER leaving the Enclave base, I feared my deadline passed. I booted up an old save from my original good karma run and did it there. Then I double checked if I could do it on my current neutral karma run and I was able to after all. This was cool though, because on my original run, in which I had no idea what to do or the consequences of certain actions, I had killed the overseer. Upon going back there was a new overseer who wouldn't listen to me and became hostile. I had no choice but to kill him. Amata was not happy that once again, I killed the overseer and unceremoniously banished me from the vault. In the neutral run I didn't kill the overseer so he was still there, open to dialogue and I was able to talk sense into him. Amata was very happy, gave me a jumpsuit and still kicked me out, just nicely this time.

I'm only missing 4 achievements from the main game which are all the evil karma ones plus crafting one of each homemade weapon. I might weight another six months to do those, unless I keep burning through games and books before going back to work in September, or if we go back to work on an online format.

The Neutral run was much quicker since I knew where many of the things were and I didn't feel the need or want to explore the whole map again, not to mention play treasure hunt with unmarked missions. It was also quite hard to keep the neutral karma as breaking into houses and stealing shit wasn't enough to off set my good karma actions. I had to do some unpleasant things like enslave people, kill good people and sell their ears to the contract killers. I also killed the ghouls harrassing Tenpenny Tower. The only murderous spree I went on was killing everyone in Tenpenny tower. Every. One. Cuz you know, eat the rich and all that shit. Didn't bat an eye lol. I actually felt bad enslaving people, killing millionaires? Not so much. I made up for it by killing everyone in Paradise Falls and freeing the slaves.

This game really hates you having companions. My first companion, Sydney, partnered up with me while searching for the Declaration of Independence. She died stepping on a mine not even 5 minutes after joining. Dogmeat left me when I treaded into evil karma. After buying his contract Charon died also stepping on a mine. Taking advantage of my evil Karma I hired Jericho in Megaton. The idea was we would go to Paradise Falls together and tear it up. I decided to sell my last set of ears to the peeps at the scrapyard and when we spawned there from the fast travel we landed in the middle of a fight between Talon Co. mercs and Enclave soldiers, both of whom started shooting at us. He got hit by a missle and died. So when I got to Paradise Falls, still with evil karma, I bought clover from Eulogy, gave her a 10mm submachinegun and a Talon Co. armor. When the fireworks started she lasted about a minute.

What surprised me was the ending. The vanilla game forces you to die, the expansions fixed it and you can have someone else enter the chamber. For shits and giggles I told Lyons to go in and surprisingly she said, "Wow, just like that, huh? Guess Chivalry is dead," and then goes inside and does it for me. Then the game said I was shit and she was the true hero, wtf ever. lol.

Looking forward to my evil karma run, but first I'm going to finish KOTOR then flip a coin between FEAR and Bully.
 
WOW! I've never been mentally challenged like this in my entire life! One thing I absolutely suck at and can't do is spotting places that korok seeds are hidden. Thank goodness for youtube! And I printed out a map that just shows the borders of all the sections. I'm at the part where I was told I have to locate all of the memories. Hopefully I'll spot them while looking for shrines since you have to pretty much look everywhere. I'm going to start with all of the ground level stuff to build up stamina for the mountains. I have a real intense feeling all the time because so much of the game is on my mind. My sister just got her copy and I can't wait for her reaction.
 
Travis The Dragon said:
WOW! I've never been mentally challenged like this in my entire life! One thing I absolutely suck at and can't do is spotting places that korok seeds are hidden. Thank goodness for youtube!
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From what I've seen/read, there are more korok seeds in world than you'll ever need. Don't be so hard on yourself, they're supposed to be fairly hard to find. From the playthroughs I've watched I just kept thinking, "I would have never seen that."

Anywho, taking a break from the reading. Decided to playthrough one of the games I've bought for a dollar: Adam's Venture. The trailer made it look like Tomb Raider in the 1920s, and there is some truth to that. But it's more like Archer meets Indiana Jones. Your character, Adam, is a sexist idiot who somehow ends up solving every puzzle and saving the day, at times by accident, a la Archer. The Biblical themes are VERY heavy handed. Your father's name is Abraham, you're Adam. you're paired up with Evelyn, get it? EVElyn, and you are searching for the Garden of Eden. You also find Solomon's mines which reminded me of the book by H. Rider Haggard. Admitantly never read it, but I had a kid friendly edition when I was younger. Now I want to read it lol.

It's a really quick playthrough and it is almost exclusively puzzles. You don't have a gun, you never directly kill anyone and you move from one room to the next solving all sorts of mathematical and logical puzzles. I'm super proud of myself because I got through all of them without having to look any up. Just when I was about to give up, I took a deep breath and looked at it differently and BLAM, solved it. Also, another 100% completion under my belt.

KOTOR Is coming along, finally left Korriban for the Star Forge planet, currently trying to broker peace between the two local tribes.

Downloaded a cute kid game called JUJU. You play a chamanic pink Panda who is on a quest to save his dad. Got it to see if I can get the nephew to play something other than Castle Crashers and Plants v. Zombies. He was not interested in Toy Story 3, so we'll see.
 
Onhell said:
From what I've seen/read, there are more korok seeds in world than you'll ever need. Don't be so hard on yourself, they're supposed to be fairly hard to find. From the playthroughs I've watched I just kept thinking, "I would have never seen that."
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Ya, I read that as well. It's best to choose one thing at a time to do and keep working away. And be very thankful for the internet! The nice thing is they have a good variety of stuff to do so if one thing wears on me too much, I can try something else. This is a game that you could play for a very long time!
 
Finally finished the PS4 God Of War game from 2018. I liked the change in game mechanics and the change in tone from previous games in the series, and its semi-open-world approach offered some variety without losing focus.

Some of the traversal mechanics had a clunky Resident Evil 4 feel to them, and I can’t say that I ever felt 100% comfortable stopping to aim an axe throw in the middle of combat, but the rest of it felt great. Recalling the axe through a row of enemies never got old.
Also, after spending half the game playing a more deliberate, controlled form of up-close melee and long distance ranged combat, the moment where you get the Blades Of Chaos back and start tearing everything to pieces at medium range was pretty awesome. Even though the camera angle and control buttons were different from the older games, the blades kept most of the same core moves and combos, so it really felt familiar and became an “oh, it’s on now you motherfuckers!” moment.

I also thought it was pretty clever how they inserted Kratos into Norse mythology.
Though it’s only revealed indirectly at the very end (and apparently directly through runes, if you know how to read them), Kratos is inserted in place of the frost giant Fárbauti, whose name translates to something like “dangerous striker”, which matches him perfectly; just as his height and strength and pale ash-covered skin fit the frost giant motif. His newly dead wife was the frost giant Laufey, and their son was named Atreus by his father, but his mother had wanted to give him the name we’re more familiar with from the mythology, Loki.

Oh, and their actions in this game kick off the beginning of Ragnarök. Oops.

I must have sunk quite a few hours into the game, but I finally 100%’d it tonight. The optional fight with the Valkyrie queen is what took me the longest to crack — I had to really rethink my move set and loadout to give myself a chance there. I finally settled on a set of runic attacks that all had the exact same cooldown time, combined with the Atreus armor that helps him find health items. One attempt with that setup got me within striking distance, and a few tries later it all came together.

I like that they saved the biggest names in the Norse pantheon for future games. You still meet some key players in this one, and there‘s a lot of discussion about famous characters like Odin and Thor, but they’re clearly leaving room for another trilogy here, which I look forward to.

Just as I start making real progress against my backlog, they dropped Far Cry 5 to $9, so I had to pick it up. I almost got Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War when it was $12, too, but my PS Plus sense is tingling and I have a feeling it will eventually become a free game on the service one of these months.

I need to finish up Tetris Effect and Astro Bot Rescue Mission before I tackle another open world game, though. Maybe I’ll finally man up and jump back into RDR2 after that.
 
Jer said:
I also thought it was pretty clever how they inserted Kratos into Norse mythology.
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But HOW exactly did a Greek god end up in the Norse pantheon? People were under the impression this was a reboot since it completely ignores the events of GoW III, yet Kratos is clearly older, he bares the scars of previous adventures, the most telling being the one on his mid-section. So is it a reboot that ignores the last three games? a sequel? a soft reboot/sequel?

This is a franchise, along with uncharted, which has me considering a PS, so how much sense the story makes isn't a deal breaker. I am a fan of AC after all hahaha.
 
I'm on the Castlevania spree currently.

It started with a new game called Timespinner for PC, which I really liked. When I went searching for the sequel plans, I read that this game is hugely inspired by "modern" Castlevania. So in the last month I beat Aria of Sorrow and Circle of the Moon.

Aria of Sorrow felt natural from the get go. I didn't have to look up anything on the internet, I beat the game and it kind of went fast. There are probably more lengthy gameplays for different endings. Great game. Circle of the Moon I had a tougher experience with, it didn't go smooth, there were googles and savestates involved.

I've started Harmony of Dissonance, and actually made it 3/4 of the game in Dawn of Sorrow. When I finish these two, I'll do Portrait of Ruin.

At last I intend to do Eclessia and Symphony of the Night. I've played SOTN before but never finished it and it were disjoint experiences. Eclessia seems more like Shantae paced game.
 
Onhell said:
But HOW exactly did a Greek god end up in the Norse pantheon? People were under the impression this was a reboot since it completely ignores the events of GoW III, yet Kratos is clearly older, he bares the scars of previous adventures, the most telling being the one on his mid-section. So is it a reboot that ignores the last three games? a sequel? a soft reboot/sequel?
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It’s a sequel, or at worst a soft reboot / sequel. It doesn’t ignore the events of God Of War III, it actually builds upon them. The only suspension of disbelief involved is that he survived stabbing himself in the gut with the sword, and they already hinted at that at the end of III when they showed the blood smears leading to the edge of the plateau with no body there. And he’s a demigod, so whatever.

He migrated north after the destruction of Greece and wound up in Norway. He’s not part of the Norse pantheon itself, but he takes the place of another character in the original mythology.
 
Onhell said:
This is a franchise, along with uncharted, which has me considering a PS
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I haven't truly considered buying a console in decades. I would never buy a Playstation or XBox. It doesn't make sense to buy a low end PC in a format of a low end PC for quite some money and then pay a shitton for games. Also wall-gardened device that you don't have control over...

Nintendo at least tries to change the format. In late 2000s PS/Xbox are like an inferior PC, while Wii is something else.
 
There was a graphics interface company from Canada called Matrox, they had a significant share of market in the 90s. Their adapters were known for the quality of analog VGA output, for the quality of 2D display, and they were among the first or the first to do single card multi monitor on the PC. Pricey professional cards, but not exactly the pinnacle of 3D capabilities for the PC. I've used them extensively from 1997- to mid 2000s. When I got my G400 in year 2000 I run this demo :


As you can see, this can do better 3D graphics than PS2 games from 2005. It is an expensive graphics adapter, but not a specialized 3D one by any means.
 
Zare said:
I haven't truly considered buying a console in decades. I would never buy a Playstation or XBox. It doesn't make sense to buy a low end PC in a format of a low end PC for quite some money and then pay a shitton for games. Also wall-gardened device that you don't have control over...

Nintendo at least tries to change the format. In late 2000s PS/Xbox are like an inferior PC, while Wii is something else.
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I haven't paid a shit ton for games in years. I download the free games of the month and wait for sales or insane discounts. Xbox also has that game pass for an additional 10 dollars a month with which you have access to close to 200 games for free. So for 60 a year in gold membership I get up to 36 free games a year. For those 10 a month/120 a year you get up to 2000 games a year. For some, that's worth it. I make do with the gold membership. Under normal circumstances I don't have the time for the game pass, so I don't get it.
 
That's a good strategy, I forgot to write if you're willing to wait then stuff gets progressively cheaper.

I did pay 60 euros for Civ6 on Steam less than a year before it went free on Epic store. I wanted to support that game, tho, so I don't care.
 
I got out of PC gaming in the late 1990s because I couldn’t in good conscience keep supporting Microsoft. I was hoping Valve would make Linux gaming a thing with SteamOS, but that failed.

I had been a console gamer from nearly the beginning, though. I had an Intellivision, then skipped the 8-bit generation and got back in with the Sega Genesis. Stayed with Sega until the Dreamcast died, then hopped over to Sony. Microsoft continues to be a malevolent force, convincing console gamers to pay money to play games online when it was free on the PS2 and PS3 — Sony saw the cash they were leaving on the table and finally followed suit on the PS4. Fucking Microsoft, making life worse for everyone, as usual.
 
That's fair if you pay for software. Which we didn't do in the 90s. So if you go PC or Playstation you just consider the initial device price, the games are for free. In case you can't make a free copy somewhere, the price of software was 1 old German mark per 1.2 or 1.44 floppy at the local dealer in the mid 90s. This guy had everything that ever came out anywhere for anything. Later, when PS caught on CDs were maybe 15e a copy.

Nowadays I see console market as a malevolent force. Games are being underdeveloped and PC gets bad ports.
 
LooseCannon said:
Yep. Consoles = shitty PCs. Nintendo at least has a clever combination of tablet and console that I find very enjoyable.
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Console also = much less expensive PC with stable hardware for years, so if you’re not a graphics whore and you don’t gravitate toward games that require a mouse and keyboard to play effectively, and you prefer playing on your couch to playing from an office chair, then it’s economical and you get some cool exclusives. And you don’t keep feeding the evil Microsoft machine unless you get an X-Box.
 
Jer said:
Console also = much less expensive PC with stable hardware for years, so if you’re not a graphics whore and you don’t gravitate toward games that require a mouse and keyboard to play effectively, and you prefer playing on your couch to playing from an office chair, then it’s economical and you get some cool exclusives. And you don’t keep feeding the evil Microsoft machine unless you get an X-Box.
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Sure.

I spent less than $700 on my current rig 5 years ago and I was just playing RDR2 (not at max settings, mind you). Now, I a) did the work myself, b) got some good deals on parts during a going out of business sale and c) have overclocked the shit out of it. It's absolutely not for a person who wants to pick up and play, which is the true advantage to a console. Steam/GOG/Epic sales are much more cost effective than Xbox/Sony/Nintendo stores as well. Hell, Epic's weekly giveaway has provided thousands of dollars worth of games, and while about 75% of them I don't play, I have gotten some biggies for free (Borderlands collection, Civ VI, Ark, and Just Cause 4) and played the shit out of them, too.

Honestly, I think that WASD + mouse is greatly superior for pretty much every video game than a control pad, but there's a few that just don't matter. And I *could* be in a couch if I wanted to be!

Not saying that consoles don't have an incredibly valuable place in gaming, and they are going to be the majority slice of the market for, like, ever. That's fine. But PCs do everything consoles do, excepting exclusive games, and does it all better - for a higher price, of course. And it is a simple fact of life that games developed for console often get shit PC ports. Though RDR2 is really good.
 
I’m not gonna wade into the pc vs console debate (spoiler: pcs are better) but I’m a console guy. A lot of it is mental: I enjoy having a device whose sole purpose is for gaming, while my computer is for other tasks. It helps me compartmentalize.

Also, while I know I can play most of these games on a computer emulator, my favorite games are Nintendo games and those aren’t available on PC. The Switch is also probably the best console I’ve ever had. If only it had GameCube and N64 support...
 
Mosh said:
I’m not gonna wade into the pc vs console debate (spoiler: pcs are better) but I’m a console guy. A lot of it is mental: I enjoy having a device whose sole purpose is for gaming, while my computer is for other tasks. It helps me compartmentalize.
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Completely agree. While I had computer games since I was a kid, they were few and far between. In fact only computer games I ever had were Pirates! GOLD, Diablo, Diablo II, Warcraft II, Starcraft, Starcraft: Brood War, and NHL 98. of those, I currently repurchased a few on GOG for cents. I've always seen computers as work related. Not to mention the money you have to drop for a gaming workhorse. A friend of mine spent upwards of 3,000 dollars on an Alienware rig. I spent 300 on my recent laptop lol. Not to mention since the 360 console are no longer just consoles. It's where I watch youtube, netflix, they have blu-ray players so you can watch physical media (I know the 360 only played DVDs), etc. They're becoming affordable jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I used to HATE the digital store, now I'm a true convert. Why leave the house and browse at Game Stop when I can just do it from home? The fact Microsoft said the Series X will play original Xbox, 360 AND One games along with all the new gen is great. The fact that since the 360 your profile moves with you is great too. I'll wait at least a year to buy one, if I go that route. Might enjoy the lower price of 360 and One games for a while longer hehe.

At any rate, the nephew really liked JUJU. I told him, "Hey, I need your help with this one game," so he played shotgun for a bit as player 2 and then said, "Can I play as the panda?" So we switched and he was REALLY into it. We finished it in two days lol. He kept commenting on the level design, the music and the cute graphics. So if you have kids/nephews in the 8-10 range OR if you like cool plataformers it is still free for download on xbox gold. I'm still playing it on my profile solo lol. Next time he comes over I'll ask him to help me get some collectables that are just easier in co-op.
 
Finished up Tetris Effect in VR last night. Good stuff. The artificial synaesthesia it tries to induce by connecting game actions to musical sounds that complement the in-game music is a clever trick, but the hypnosis never quite reaches the level of a Tempest 2000/3000/4000 or Polybius. And at the end of the day it’s still just Tetris with some bells and whistles. Glad I got it on deep discount, but it was worthwhile at that price, and it’s the type of thing I’ll periodically come back to.

Can’t quite hype myself up to jump back into RDR2 yet. Maybe I’ll go back to that FFXV VR fishing game, or The Exorcist: Legion VR.
 
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