Ultimate Videogame Topic 3: The Next Generation

[zoraster]

i have telltale's monkey island game on my computer but haven't played it. been too scared.

[zoraster]

also, can anyone explain to me what the appeal of gary's mod is?

[zoraster]

I enjoyed playing CK, but mostly only in the initial phases. Turning a Baron into a King was fun. Turning a King into an emperor was just tiresome.

[zoraster]

does anyone know if there's a way to filter out "Early Access" games on Steam?

[zoraster]

is dark souls the answer if I don't confuse difficulty with quality?

[zoraster]

Nope. Not worth my time anymore. I've done the beta dance, watched good feedback be ignored, or mixed with bad. I no longer believe devs use Beta for gameplay feedback. Look at Wildstar. It's launching in what, a few months, they'll overhaul the gameplay or something?

No, it's just a technical test. I'm not spending my time dealing with hardware issues.

Note: Xenonauts has been in beta nearly a year, has incorporated multiple gameplay fix suggestions, and is an amazing game. All rules have an exception, but an AAA title ain't gonna be it.

I'm with GI. Admittedly, paid betas are particularly obnoxious, but even free betas aren't worth my time.

Also, Sid Meier Humble bundle is a pretty good deal if you don't already have Civ 5 (or, as in my case, you have Civ 5 but none of the DLC). $15 for stuff with Brave New World, $10 for all but Brave New World (including Pirates, which I thought was a fun game). Anything at all for Civ 3 and 4.

[zoraster]

open world games aren't for me.

[zoraster]

i liked dragon age origins a lot, but i will say that it did not exactly go against fantasy tropes (the dwarves are ax swingers who live in mountains, the elves are arches who live in the forest, etc). But it feels epic, there's intrigue, and you're constantly propelled down a story-path without feeling like you're just treading water.

[zoraster]

Yeah, DAO isn't really unique--it follows the 'Bioware flowchart' pretty much exactly and is mostly generic fantasyland, but its also really really well-written and an enjoyable tromp. The combat is kinda boring unless you like the old isometric style stuff(I don't), but you can turn it in easy and just breeze through. Its also the last good game Bioware made before EA really took them over.

I thought ME2 was good. I wish I could play ME3 without getting motion sick.

[zoraster]

(Enjoyable Play Time-Time Spent Annoyed About Technical Difficulties*3+Time Spent Discussing Game on Forums/2)/$ Spent on Game and DLC

is a precise expression of a formula I just made up.

[zoraster]

My Steam Profile

(from SteamDB)

• Worth:
  $760.45
  
• Games owned:
  73
  
• Games not played:
  37
  
• Percentage:
  51%
  
• Hours spent:
  373.7h

I feel like some of the hours on this are pretty off. Like I spent way more than 33m on Football Manager 2011.

Anyone here play Clash of Clans? I just started playing it a few days ago. Just was wondering if anyone else was playing and wanted to join a mafiascum clan or anything (or even if we already had one). If anyone doesn't know about it, its actually a fun little "free" strategy game for iOS and Android. Gameplay is pretty basic and simple. Its kinda similar to a game like Travian (if you know of that one) in the way you spend resources and time on building and upgrading, but the gameplay is much different. You design the layout of your own village to best defend from attacks, and when you attack you place troops where you like to exploit the enemy's defenses (or lack of). Theres IMO a lot of strategy in how you set up your base and deploy troops to attack.

Its pretty fun so far. Its been out for a while. The TV commercial I've been seeing a lot lately is pretty cool:


(I think thats the right one I'll check when I get home)

God I wasted so much time on Travian. I started playing that game my 1L year of law school and showed it to a few friends. If you stood in the back of the classroom, you could see a half dozen people with timers counting down. In the end, I realized it was just so soul sucking, though not before wasting a year (and "winning" the game).

Anyway, the ad seems pretty misleading.

[zoraster]

gotta play in lotsa tabs

[zoraster]

i have a confession to make: I have never played either of the Baldur's Gate games. I'm kind of in the mood for something really statsy, so I'm looking at the enhanced versions on steam.

1. Interface is incredibly important to me. I have fond memories of games I used to play that I've tried playing now and the interfaces keep me from enjoying it. Will I be annoyed at the presumably still pretty old game despite "enhancements"?
2. Do I need to play 1 to Play 2?
3. Worth my time and money?

[zoraster]

i played daggerfall back in the day.

[zoraster]

i mean, i played Sim City 2000 a bunch back in the day, but when I tried it from GoG, I couldn't stand the interface. Just because I was okay about it back then doesn't mean I'm okay with it now.

[zoraster]

also, i wish I could set steam to never show me (a) Early Access games or (b) blocky 8-bit games. I will never buy either. Except by accident. Because I apparently already own Monaco.

[zoraster]

well i wanted to start with BG2 just because

[zoraster]

so I spilled scotch on my ancient G15 keyboard (got it in 2006 anyway). My keys mostly work except for the keypad, but I use the keypad pretty extensively and some of the keys have become harder to press in recent years, so I'm thinking about getting a mechanical keyboard. While I game a fair amount, I want to make sure it's still comfortable to type. Anyone have experience with these? I was thinking of one of the Cherry Browns like the Logitech G710 as I think having a tactical sensation would be nice but without the sound as that might drive my wife nuts).

[zoraster]

so i ended up getting a Logitech G710+. I haven't really used it for gaming yet, but I LOVE typing on it. It'll take some getting used to before I really enjoy its full potential (I'm still mashing buttons down more than I need to), but it's so... satisfying.

I just wish there was something good between the $80 tenkeyless versions and the $120 with keypad. I feel weird paying 40 bucks for a keypad, but there we go.

[zoraster]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... atars.html

Although the gender-switching men could partially talk the talk, they completely failed to walk the walk. The researchers found that all the men in their study moved around in a very different way than the women. The men moved backward more often, stayed farther away from groups, and jumped about twice as much as the women did. When it came to moving around, the men behaved similarly whether they gender-switched or not. So if you’re trying to figure out if that female Night Elf is really a man, focus on how they move around. As study author Mia Consalvo, a professor at Concordia University, says, “movement is less conscious than chat, so it can be an easier ‘tell’ for offline gender.”

[zoraster]

The equivalent is not an obscenely muscular male avatar in a tank top holding a machine gun?

Now we know Iec's type? Or are you saying you agree? No fats, no fems, no Duke Nukems?

[zoraster]

EARLY ACCESS MAKES ME SO CHANGRY.

Also... Xenonauts is basically a ripoff of Xcom, right?

[zoraster]

Got Enemy Within for $10. Considering Skyrim at the same price. I dont' think I'll like it, but for ten bucks, maybe worth a shot?

What are these "teams" you speak of?

[zoraster]

Got Enemy Within for $10. Considering Skyrim at the same price. I dont' think I'll like it, but for ten bucks, maybe worth a shot?\

Skyrim is a game that will almost most definitely get its own flash sale or daily sale, it did during the Winter Sale. Wait a couple days, it will drop to like 5 or 7 bucks. Also, I would get the legendary edition, since it has all of the dlcs.

This is the principle of steam sales. Wait for daily sales and flash sales for your games , if they haven't gone on sale by the end of the sale, then buy them on the second last day.

I don't really know why i'd bother with the legendary edition unless it makes the base game significantly more fun rather than offering EVEN MORE content, as if I'll play through the whole base game.

[zoraster]

can't you just buy the standalone?

[zoraster]

how do you know what team you're on and what does it matter?

[zoraster]

Pink Team!

[zoraster]

finally got FTL. Played through once, lost to the flagship in the second round.

[zoraster]

was doing so well in FTL... then i forgot to fix the oxygen and left my computer for a second to find my 7 crew members dead. hurrah.

[zoraster]

that seems like it's just part of the parody.

[zoraster]

been playing some multiplayer games with matchmaking (CSGO). It's been fun, and I'll often get some cool teammates, but there's definitely enough racist, homophobic stuff to make things occasionally suck. I never know what to do in those situations. Nobody wants to hear a shrill lecture or anything, but I hate to just leave it out there like I think that's just okay.

[zoraster]

Wing Commander III (the one with mark hamill aka Luke Skywalker) is free on origin today

[zoraster]

yeah it's a little tough with the keyboard but it's okay. the bigger issue is the one with lots of those old games... the resolution is tiny, and if you alt-tab for any reason i can't get my DOSBox to reexpand. That's okay though. Working on the stupid cloaking torpedo exercise that I remember failing about 20 times when I first played the game.

[zoraster]

i always find it hard to get excited about a game trailer that doesn't feature any gameplay.

[zoraster]

how new-ish are you talking?

[zoraster]

don't most gamers have quad cores (or more if you use AMD)? My machine is 3 years old and it wasn't even an option to get a dual core when I was looking, and my machine wasn't top of the line or anything.

[zoraster]

No. But buying a laptop to game is generally a bad move.

[zoraster]

things are made obsolete when software is put out that can't use it. also, who uses an HP ProDesk for gaming? doesn't even have a graphics card. i'm not saying that all computers use quad cores. just that anyone who games is getting one.

[zoraster]

that's happened to me before. that feeling is so terrible. on the plus side at least it didn't fail out of warranty

[zoraster]

The issue is how to get people to believe that their choices matter. Obviously there are the big choices that are scripted in a couple of branching ways (Do you save Ashley or not-as-hot-guy-who-no-one-knows-the-name-of-but-probably-isn't-a-racist?), but Bioware games have a ton of stuff that doesn't have anything to do with that so it's nice to have some of the choices matter in some game-specific way. The problem of course is that it's limiting, particularly the ME ones (I don't feel like being an asshole this time, but dammit I need Renegade points!)

[zoraster]

I didn't play ME3 because I couldn't go more than 5 minutes without getting motion sick :-/

[zoraster]

you can on pc. you can't on xbox

[zoraster]

http://www.amazon.com/eForCity-SWITCHER ... 1+out+2+in

[zoraster]

I don't understand what you'd hope to do with that, but i don't think it costs less either.

[zoraster]

what? How do you "beat" Bloons TD5? great game though!

[zoraster]

So I've been playing through KOTOR on my ipad. While the controls are slightly worse on the Ipad than the PC, it's still really easy to use. And it's such an awesome game to pick up and just play for a few minutes advancing the story. Already about 14 hours in.

[zoraster]

Anyone have any offline ipad game suggestions? Leaving tomorrow on a trip to europe for about 17 days and only taking my ipad and kindle, so figure a few games wouldn't be bad. Currently I have:

KOTOR (already done one run through)
XCOM Enemy Unknown
Bloons TD5
Kingdom Rush
Geometry Wars 3
Loot & Legends (though not positive I can run this without wifi)
Commute
Monument
Table Tennis

[zoraster]

it's called Dimensions? That's the worst googlable name since that raucus good time game "Megapixels"

[zoraster]

i love agricola, but is it much fun to play single player?

[zoraster]

I played through Grim Fandango on my ipad. That was fun.

[zoraster]

So I find Eve fascinating to read about even though it sounds utterly boring to actually play, but anyway this was cool: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev ... of-b-r5rb/

A big battle that caused (supposedly) $300,000 worth of real world money in destroyed ships.

[zoraster]

Yeah it seems like it's 99% toiling for the brief periods of utter awesomeness.

[zoraster]

And really, it seems most awesome to be in charge and making meta calls about strategy and what not, but to do that would probably take an immense amount of time and dedication, rivaling a real time job... which I'm sure would be full of backstabbing, gossip, etc.

[zoraster]

If talking generally, Sonic is a good choice. On this board in particular, it almost has to be a Touhou character. I can't distinguish them, but Vi has told me many, many times that they "aren't anime."

[zoraster]

I mean it's infinitely better than Space Invaders.

I'm not very familiar with it, but I don't think the GAME looks bad at all. It looks like a fun shoot things game.

What I have trouble understanding is how a game like that can inspire fanboy/girling about the characters within it.

[zoraster]

But it's they're not anime! Apparently.

[zoraster]

I guess it's accurate of the games listed, but it's not that accurate with all games considered:

Spoiler: Games

Rank Game
1 Star Wars: KOTOR
2 Mass Effect
3 Portal
4 Uncharted 2
5 Team Fortress 2
6 Mass Effect 2
7 Civilization V
8 Dragon Age: Origins
9 The Last of Us
10 Portal 2
11 Diablo II
12 Half-Life 2
13 Mass Effect 3
14 Starcraft
15 World of Warcraft
16 Half-Life
17 Baldur's Gate II
18 Hearthstone
19 Assassin's Creed II
20 Call of Duty 4
21 BioShock Infinite
22 BioShock

Uncharted 2 was my wife's baby. She worked on that one more than any other game, so I don't know if I rated it too highly because of that or I should feel guilty for not rating it higher.

Any system that makes me rate CoD4 and Assassin's Creed in my top 20 isn't comprehensive enough. Those are two games I enjoyed like popcorn, nothing more.

[zoraster]

I'm always wary of crowdsourced funding, but this looks pretty cool: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fath ... 13529805#/

My guess is that the MMO portion of it will only be satisfying in a few large, urban walkable cities like SF and NYC or potentially on a college campus. But the quick skirmish thing could potentially be a way to play laser tag with friends for a lot less, since consumer laser tag guns are pretty awful.

[zoraster]

What part of it appeals to you UT? I've had to same reaction as Zito from streams.

[zoraster]

which ones? My wife worked on the one released in 2009.

[zoraster]

Well she used to do sound editing for video games. She doesn't do that anymore though.

[zoraster]

Well she used to do sound editing for video games. She doesn't do that anymore though.

holy shit she sounds super cool

she seeing anyone???

Sure, if you have a time machine to either 9 years ago or maybe like... 50 years from now when I go first.

[zoraster]

I hope you feel really badly about yourself if that death prediction comes true, Sudo. Because I'm going to haunt the living day lights out of you.

[zoraster]

Nice! Yeah, in fact the games she probably worked on the most hours on the Uncharted games of any game. She's friends with a number of people who worked there, but most of them did stuff with the actors (writers, directors, sound people, etc.)

[zoraster]

Yeah we've gotten a fair bit of swag, but not a ton. She didn't work for the studios directly, she worked for a contractor that did sound work for video games. Mostly T-shirts, shot glasses, etc. The Naughty Dog wrap parties were probably the best we went to as well and were very on theme. Clearly they spent the most money on their wrap parties, but part of that is they took a very film type approach to the project, at least for the parts my wife was involved in.

She also got this thing for one of their games:

[zoraster]

SAG-AFTRA strike against most of the major game companies: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechcons ... -companies

[zoraster]

Been almost 6 years, but it's time for a new PC. My i5-2500k sure lasted a while though. Hope this new i5-7600k lasts as long. Figure I'll do the same thing with this as I've done with my previous two PCs: buy a good but not top of the line GPU (1070 in this case) and then replace it 2-3 years in.

Funny enough, the thing I'm possibly most excited about is something I could have just bought for this PC: upping it to 16GB of RAM (probably to 32GB eventually). I actually tried to add 8GB to my current 8GB but one of the RAM sticks didn't work and I kind of just said screw it after I returned them.

[zoraster]

before I recycle my old PC, does anyone have any interest in my old MSI Radeon HD 7870? It's a bit old in the tooth now, but it still functions well.

[zoraster]

last chance before I recycle it all:

MSI AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
2x 4GB Sticks of Dance Dance Revolution 3 - 1600 RAM

[zoraster]

Is that better than a 750ti? Does it have legacy bios or a hybrid switch?

Roughly the same tier, I think. If you're not having problems with the 750ti I wouldn't switch

[zoraster]

i would extend my hand for jess' computer if i wasnt so far away

what do you mean?

[zoraster]

I mean... UPS still goes to Canada though I do think that ups the cost a bit. Particularly for the RAM it's probably still fairly cheap but even the GPU is probably still only $25 or so.

[zoraster]

Well, I'm talking about relative to purchasing a similar GPU, not relative to how much money one has. Tom's GPU hierarchy puts it on the same tier as a GTX 1050, which is selling for $120 on amazon. This is a well used card, so I wouldn't exactly expect to get full value out of it, but if you needed/wanted a card of that ability, $25 is probably less than whatever else you could find, and I was just guessing at the shipping cost anyway. If I were hiplop, I would only take it if Jess really needed a GPU though. Depending on the CPU, it's not necessarily enough power to comfortably play PUBG, for example.


The RAM can probably be shipped for much, much cheaper (can slip it into a padded envelope even), but the gain probably is only a bit as you can get 2x4GB 1600 for about $30.

[zoraster]

Yeah, best not send good money after bad. I didn't absolutely hate Andromeda, but it couldn't let itself focus on the things that made it fun and instead went with boring generic quests.

[zoraster]

yeah. i always liked the ME mostly linear approach. Even in ME2 with the loyalty missions, you were mostly on a rail. Those games were weakest when it deviated from that, like with the mako.

Also, I found the loot/equipment system particularly useless here. Mining was a minor annoyance, but research and development was super annoying and i just never even wanted to spend that much time figuring that stuff out.

But mostly the open world nature really hurt Andromeda.

[zoraster]

wasn't the original dragon age pretty open world?

And ME did have open world elements. You kind of need a bit to make the story stuff come together. But MEA felt a lot like an MMO where there was stuff put in to grind just to make you play longer. Also... why did the doors in some places take SO much longer to open than others?

[zoraster]

I don't think that's true. ME1 had the citadel but otherwise wasn't very open world at all if I recall. DAO had several cities with different quests and such.

[zoraster]

ME and DAO had open world elements, but DAO was open more like Baldur's Gate was open- you had an area you could explore, and there are some sidequests you only find if you do explore, but mostly each area is designed with a "go through this way" mentality.

And somebody actually tweeted one of the game developers about why the doors at Kadara Port in MEA took twice as long to open as other doors, and the dev replied that it was done deliberately, to make Kadara feel more worn down- everything there is made from scavenged tech, including the door servos, so it takes longer. I don't remember people finding that answer satisfying.

honestly, it just made me feel like it was sloppily put together (the game, not kadara). My sister-in-law worked mostly on Kadara but I didn't really want to ask her.

[zoraster]

that's really cool