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I watched that run live and it is astonishing. That stuff should be impossible, and yet here we are.
 
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Blizzard gets a lot of justified hate recently. Never the less, this merger is, for me, a sign of an absolute disaster of a system. Blizzard was on the forefront of gaming for a long time. They've earned their market by decades of high quality products that have pushed boundaries and technologies ahead. It's an ideal free market fairytale if you skip the ending where you're bought out by an oligarch who's known for "embrace, extend, extinguish" and cartel-level vendor deals.

Also we're looking into consolidation of all consumer media. I see a route where entire A-level American movie, music, games and infotainment production ends under a single supra-corporation made from 5-6 Fortune 100 listed companies.
 
Zare said:
Also we're looking into consolidation of all consumer media. I see a route where entire A-level American movie, music, games and infotainment production ends under a single supra-corporation made from 5-6 Fortune 100 listed companies.
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Probably true, but this is also arguably part of a long-term cycle of consolidation followed by market disruption and/or anti-trust actions, followed by reconsolidation. So it may not be dystopic yet.

In this specific case I think Microsoft is desperate to get their hands on more must-have exclusive games for the XBox, since they're in the process of having their lunch eaten by Sony for the second console generation in a row. Internal development has produced some gems, but not enough to consistently grab people's interest, so they're opening up the wallet. If all future Call Of Duty, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Overwatch, Warcraft, and Starcraft related games are MS-exclusive, that's enough to make people sit up and take notice, and perhaps entice some people over to the XBox ecosystem. PC gamers should be more or less unaffected by this.

If Sony wants to counter, Take-Two would be an obvious acquisition target. EA is another possibility. Sony going on the prowl could be worse for PC gamers if they decide to make things PS-exclusive, though I would guess it would just be timed exclusivity before eventually releasing PC ports, as with the recent God Of War port.
 
Zare said:
Screenshot_20220118-200210_Instagram.jpg


Blizzard gets a lot of justified hate recently. Never the less, this merger is, for me, a sign of an absolute disaster of a system. Blizzard was on the forefront of gaming for a long time. They've earned their market by decades of high quality products that have pushed boundaries and technologies ahead. It's an ideal free market fairytale if you skip the ending where you're bought out by an oligarch who's known for "embrace, extend, extinguish" and cartel-level vendor deals.

Also we're looking into consolidation of all consumer media. I see a route where entire A-level American movie, music, games and infotainment production ends under a single supra-corporation made from 5-6 Fortune 100 listed companies.
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Microsoft didn't buy Blizzard, they bought Activision. Blizzard are a decent developer of games but Activision, their parent company, are an absolute shit-show of amoral and unethical behavior toward their employees. Microsoft buying them is a good move. Maybe they can dump their shitty higher ups and allow Blizzard to flourish once again.

Edit: To be clear, i'm aware it's called Activision-Blizzard, but that's just PR. The company Blizzard used to be is not the company they are now under Activision. Same for Bioware under EA.
 
Very late to the party, but Insomniac’s Spider-Man game from 2018 is really outstanding. I wasn’t totally sold at first, but after playing on Spectacular difficulty and unlocking some key skills, I was finally convinced this was a superlative game. Obviously the best Spider-Man game since Spider-Man 2, and probably the best one ever. The web-slinging is great, the combat is unique to the character, the set pieces are awesome, and just traversing the city feels great. Really good voice acting, too.

I got the GOTY edition, and the DLC isn’t mandatory by any means, but some of the combat scenarios are enjoyable challenges for a fully maxed Spider-Man on Spectacular difficulty. I’ll probably check out Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS5 once it’s significantly discounted.

I finally finished Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force from 20+ years ago, and it was enjoyable enough, though the enemy AI was pretty pathetic, running straight at you with only the level geometry to break up the monotony. I picked up Star Trek: Elite Force II on discount, and it looks pretty amazing for a game based on the Quake III engine — looking forward to playing through this one.

I now have Lost Judgment and Demon’s Souls queued up on the PS5, with some other items in the backlog (Nioh 1&2, The Last Of Us Part II, Resident Evil Village, Ghostbusters). Lots to do yet.
 
I've upgraded my rig's graphics card to a GTX 3070 Ti, which is giving truly excellent performance, and to celebrate I bought Cyberpunk 2077 now that it's half off. They've fixed most of the gamebreaking bugs - I've had one softlock in about 15 hours of playing - but there's lots of really weird little bugs still in the game. Most of it is weird physics stuff or weird graphics clips.

I've been enjoying the story and the gameplay is good, but I'm really disappointed in the graphics. Sometimes they're stunning. You'll look out over this vista full of moving flying cars and transports and stuff and be blown away by it. Then you walk into a building where there's three things moving and the framerate slows to a crawl and the characters look like they were dropped in straight out of Fallout 3.

Also it kinda sounds like Keanu phoned in his voice role in the game. But overall, it's pretty good, 7.5/10.

I'm really excited to play RDR2 again with this setup. RDR2 looked better on my 1060 on medium than CP77 looks on my 3070 Ti.
 
I’m looking to buy a midrange computer with GTX 1070 or equivalent because RDR2 on my laptop with 1050 Ti is unplayable. I need to gather some money to make that purchase, though.
 
Saapanael said:
I’m looking to buy a midrange computer with GTX 1070 or equivalent because RDR2 on my laptop with 1050 Ti is unplayable. I need to gather some money to make that purchase, though.
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RDR2 was pretty playable on my 1050ti (desktop pc) although idk how the mobile pascal gpu fares.
 
I have put everything on hold the past few weeks while I was playing and finishing Dark Souls 1 (which honestly became one of my favourite games ever) and began playing the third one and Sekiro, but now I'm nearly 18 hours in Elden Ring.
Loving from software a lot. A total gaming addiction for me.
I'm also looking forward to finally playing RDR1 and re-playing RDR2, but there's no time for that.
Also progressing through Valhalla and as I have recently bought Series X, I should also try Cyberpunk again.

Oh, and Cuphead. Don't forget Cuphead.

Just a tidbit, here's a piece on an oft-forgotten DS1's strong point and why the game feels so... intense and why it should be praised for its level design. I wholeheartedly agree with this:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/in...what-makes-dark-souls-unique-its-level-design
 
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I once tried DS1, and it's not that it's too hard for me, I am capable of learning the commands needed to defeat the enemies, it's that hitting my head on a wall repeatedly for the purpose of getting to the next wall isn't at all what I want in my gaming experience. So I'm probably gonna give Elden Ring a pass. Maybe next year when it's on sale I'll grab it to give it a shot.
 
I went way down the rabbit hole with Lost Judgment, logging over 90 hours before finishing the main story and the majority of the side content. What a great, meaty, bizarre game. I never played any of the Yakuza games, but this spinoff still has recognizable DNA from Shenmue in it, with tons of different activities and great combat. The story beats bounce around between dark and cool, melodramatic, and completely ridiculous. There are a ton of mini-games, and all of them are at least competent, with many of them being pretty compelling. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I still have a handful of post-game things to clean up there if I feel so inclined.

I needed a palate cleanser after a giant open-world game like that one, so I picked up Disaster Report 4 on discount. I’d enjoyed the first two games on the PS2 despite their budget title nature, and the third title never made it to the west, so this was my first shot at the series in a long time. Just getting started, and this one still has a budget feel to it, but I’m a sucker for adventure games in weird environments like this (the immediate aftermath of an earthquake). It also has a VR mode, but I haven’t tried it yet, and I think it’s a separate mode rather than a VR version of the main game.

Still have a number of other games in the queue, including Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil Village, and Demon’s Souls on PS5, and The Last Of Us Part II and the Nioh games on PS4, among other things. And I still need to get back to Star Trek: Elite Force II.

Going to wait for discounts on Horizon: Forbidden West, Sifu, and Elden Ring.
 
Jer said:
And I still need to get back to Star Trek: Elite Force II.
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I also need to do this.

As I progress in Cyberpunk, I find the bugs are becoming more and more apparent. I've had two CTEs in the past two days, which are the first two I've seen, and I had a mission-impacting bug where an enemy I needed to kill clipped through a rock and could shoot at me without difficulty, but of course, I was shooting a rock.

Other bugs include doing a jump on a motorcycle and hitting an invisible wall, getting my motorcycle stuck on literally nothing, and one time I lightly clipped another car with mine and ended up being thrown at great speed straight up, and then down, upon which the car exploded and I died. The vehicle physics engine is particularly broken. I've been hit by cars when they should have missed me in first person mode and sometimes collisions that should do nothing send the other vehicle ricocheting down the street.
 
Is Elden Ring essentially a Dark Souls clone, if I may call it that? Never played any of the DS style games.

Meanwhile, I got a good deal on a used laptop and can play RDR2 very well now. GTX 1660 Ti and i7 9750H. The only thing is that the CPU heats up to 92 Celsius while playing, so I should buy a cooling pad. There haven’t been any crashes or problems due to the heat but I’m worried that it might be bad long-term.
 
Saapanael said:
Is Elden Ring essentially a Dark Souls clone, if I may call it that? Never played any of the DS style games.
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Yes, it is mostly Dark Souls 4, but open world. And I didn't realize the open world experience would make it feel as different as it does, but it does. Although it doesn't have the chance of surpassing DS1 for me, which is special in many regards, it is ... something else. A true addiction.

It is significantly easier, though, IMHO (already DS3 was much easier than 1). Sure, the Tree Sentinel is crazy when you meet him in the very beginning, but coming back at about level 25 and trying him on horseback he isn't that tough.
I died about 50 or more times on Ancestral Spirit (though that's still about half of the attempts I had at Genichiro in Sekiro :D ), because the fucking undead deer hits like a truck and is fast as a shark, but I probably went at him way too under-leveled. It was totally worth it, though, because the Ancestral Follower ashes I got from him is ridiculously effective.

In fact, just by discovering different stuff throughout the world I levelled my Holy Broadsword to +7 and the Follower to +3 and I did Margit in one attempt. After nearly 30 hours (I do have a life, blokes) and levelling the sword to +8 i did Godrick in one attempt.

I picked the Confessor class and doing a Strength/Faith build, named him Godefroy.

Yes.

Deus vult.


P. S. - Usually I realize that the 10/10 game for me must not be "for everyone", it must be its own thing, to provide the special experience. Honestly, I felt that way with RDR2 too, you might disagree, but I don't think the slow, meditative, lonely, sometimes eerie atmosphere and approach with reeeeeeeally subtle (and sometimes hardly noticeable) characterization/character development and the whole general weird narrative structure is completely for everyone.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
It is significantly easier, though, IMHO (already DS3 was much easier than 1). Sure, the Tree Sentinel is crazy when you meet him in the very beginning, but coming back at about level 25 and trying him on horseback he isn't that tough.
I died about 50 or more times on Ancestral Spirit (though that's still about half of the attempts I had at Genichiro in Sekiro :D), because the fucking undead deer hits like a truck and is fast as a shark, but I probably went at him way too under-leveled. It was totally worth it, though, because the Ancestral Follower ashes I got from him is ridiculously effective.
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Personally I think this game comes in two difficulties depending on whether or not you use the summons. If you avoid them then it's definitely harder than DS1, and one of the optional lategame fights might be the hardest fight in the entire series.
 
Finished my first playthrough of Disaster Report 4, and it's a glorious mess.

It apparently started its life as a PS3 game and was supposed to be released in 2011, but a major earthquake in Japan that spring put off its release indefinitely, and eventually some of the original team members got a hold of the rights and released it in Japan several years later as a PS4 title, with a western subtitled version released in 2020. Its core mechanics are mostly the same as the original PS2-era games (called Disaster Report and Raw Danger in the U.S.), but the visuals look like early PS3-era graphics with a tiny number of PS4-era effects slapped on top. Some reviews of the game mentioned framerate problems (something the previous games also suffered from), but playing it on my PS5 I can't say that I've seen any hitches at all.

The game mechanics are mostly tedious and/or broken, generally involving running around and clicking on everything to figure out what to do next, and having some superficial survival elements around hunger, thirst, bathroom needs, and stress. In the first two games those survival elements were serious business, and if you found yourself stuck in a section of the game with inadequate provisions or a bad starting status, you could be royally screwed. As far as I can tell in DR4, you could ignore any of these statuses for a very long time, and the worst that might happen is they could eventually start to cause stress, which gradually overtakes your life bar but can be relieved at any save point by resting there. Even the life-threatening situations aren't that big of a deal, because you can immediately continue from a spot very close to where you died, with your life bar totally full again if it wasn't already.

But at the end of the day, this game isn't about its superficial mechanics -- it's about traveling through interesting environments and experiencing its absolutely bonkers narrative, which whips around between serious, sentimental, incredibly dark, and completely ridiculous. You get the array of situations you'd expect from a post-earthquake disaster game, but you also wind up dealing with a weird cult, corporate stock intrigue, a strange Romeo and Juliet scenario, human traffickers, and more. DR4 also gives you an overabundance of response options when dialog comes up, so you can role play your character as a pure selfless hero, a scared milquetoast, an annoying lothario, an unscrupulous jerk out to make a buck wherever they can, a complete asshole, or anything in between. This is one of the very few games where I've been regularly presented with dialog options that match what I'm actually thinking at the time, even when those thoughts are pretty dark. The game also gives you "moral" and "immoral" points when you make decisions that swing significantly one way or the other, but these stats have no gameplay relevance other than giving you a sense of how your character has behaved over the course of the game.

While I tried to act like a normal human being during my first playthrough, I'm eager to give it another go as a selfish, money-grubbing asshole just to see how different the experience is. I'm especially curious about how much you can affect the narrative, since it looked like you could potentially avoid rescuing someone who was a pretty major presence in my first playthrough, and there are a number of other scenarios that seem ripe for alternate outcomes too. There's at least one guaranteed major branching point near the end of the game, and a number of trophies are set up to encourage alternate choices, so I'm hoping for some meaningful differences. You can also play the game as either a man or a woman, though all of the "romantic" choices appear to revolve around women either way, so...LOL.

I tried the VR mode, which has 5 levels that unlock as you complete certain parts of the game. This is a totally separate game mode where you explore the game's environments (in a very clunky way) and try to find hidden parts of the game logo which can apparently be exchanged for some kind of currency in the main game. This is mostly a throwaway mode, though it's interesting to look at the game's environments from a VR perspective, and there's some earthquake action that's sort of neat to witness in VR too.

There's also a playable epilogue, where your character visits the city 5 months later and can see how the different environments have been rebuilding and find out what happened with the various NPCs; but it's not clear whether it carries over your in-game choices automatically or not (it gives you dialogue choices that might be used to decide what happened in your game instead), and without any earthquake scenario involved it really just boils down to lame core mechanics and sentimental narrative. Also, you only get to visit the first 3 areas of the game in the free part of the epilogue, and they want you to pay for anything more as DLC, which seems absurd for what it actually delivers.

It's probably best to describe this title as the video game equivalent of a wonderfully bad B-movie. It should only be considered on deep discount, and it's not for everyone -- but if it scratches the right itch for you, it's great for what it is, and there's nothing else quite like it out there.
 
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