Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

So I am done with the story mode of Mortal Kombat (9)...

Much of the praise of Injustice: Gods Among Us applies with MK(9) which is to be expected as both had the same developer. The fighting is tight and very satisfying. You don't need to be a combo master to get to the final fight in the game, and I really like that they don't do the same thing they did with Injustice and simply dumbed down the difficulty every time you lost. MK(9) says, "Oh, you lost? Well suck it up you p*ssy and try to be a man and beat me!" As a result, victories were MUCH more satisfying this time around. Speaking of the story, I wouldn't say it's on the same level as Injustice but it's one of the better ones. Then again, that isn't saying much when it comes to fighting games. And there were a few battles that really made NO sense, like the one time that two allies fought each other because one was being an assh*ole. Sorry, but we don't see that stuff even happen in the NFL, so we shouldn't see it happen in a battle to save the world.

As far as the plot goes, it's actually a retelling of the first 3 MK games. You start off seeing the end of the tournament, which didn't well for the humans, and Raiden tries, via visions, to not have a repeat of the outcome of the last tournament. The thing I liked about this was that it did fill in a number of plot holes of the first 3 games, and various stages are in arenas you fought in in the previous games, except they look much better. For old school MK enthusiasts this was a really cool touch. It really brought me back to playing the old games over 20 years ago. Damn, it's hard to fathom the series is that old.

I may as well get into what I didn't like about the game. Most of the issues are nitpicks. First off, for the PC version, for some reason they didn't up-res the cutscenes like they did with Injustice, so as a result the full rendered story cut scenes look like sh*t if you play on 1080p. It reminds me of how full motion video used to look on the Playstation, or how the cutscenes in the first God of War collection for the PS3 looked. I couldn't help but look at them and think, "Wow, that looks like crap!" At least the acting and storytelling was decent.

Speaking of storytelling, there is one part that both Yahtzee and I really didn't take kindly to.
So there's one part where like a half dozen good guys are planning a counter attack, when a character comes almost out of nowhere and wipes out 90% of them. The thing is that this isn't even a boss character and yet they wipe out nearly everyone, as if the writers just needed a quick way to push towards the end. Of course, you end up fighting this character, but honestly the fight was much easier than it should have been. A character that wipes out at least 6 people should be one of the harder conflicts in the game, and this game knows how to be hard.
Or rather, the game knows how to be cheap.

Finally, my last complaint. Apparently the programmers for this game never bothered to stay awake during the "Boss Battle" part of AI training. Mortal Kombat has had a history of simply putting cheap boss fights as opposed to difficult ones, but in MK(9) they went WAY too far. Shao Kahn is beyond cheap. He is in his own solar system of cheap. The first time you fight him the best method is simply to spam him with projectiles, which is hardly the proper way to handle a boss fight. In the final fight, you're supposed to teleport behind him every time he throws a projectile and then hit him. That sounds easy in theory, except that this success with this method is very sporadic. This isn't helped by the fact that at times SK (and Goro and Kintaro for that matter) have these parts where they simply don't react to you hitting them and will just plow on. They take a little bit of damage, but the fact that they aren't open for combos or fall down during this is the worst part. So if you end up beating Shao Kahn, it isn't a satisfying victory because you didn't outsmart the computer or recognize a pattern or come equipped with the right weapon. Instead, the stars and the planets aligned during this one match and you ended up winning. I ended up not beating the game and instead looked up the ending on YouTube, and I have absolutely NO shame in doing so. Don't get me wrong, I'm not HAPPY that I had to resort to that, but I'm not going to spend time that I could be doing on anything else to hope that the slot machine of MK(9) luck draws in my favor.

Still, with these complaints I can easily recommend Mortal Kombat Komplete. The PC version has all the DLC character and tweaks to kombat and it only costs $20. I ended up getting it for $5 in a sale, but I think it's worth the full price as well. I look forward to picking up MK X as well once the "Komplete" version comes out at a nice discount. Maybe that way I'll actually get to play as Goro.
 
I just finished Saints Row IV. I don't need to go into a ton of detail since people know what this game is by now. Saints Row 3 and 4 were both a ton of fun. Volition knows how to make games that are just pure fun. The super powers in this one brought it to a whole different level. The game is not hard but sometimes it's fun to just wreak havoc on an open world where you are by far the most powerful thing in the game.

I still need to go back and play the two story DLC packs and Gat out of Hell.
 
Well I just found out that the updated delivery estimate was wrong. The card will not be arriving between 4/30 and 5/5.

Instead, it's arriving tomorrow.

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I have absolutely nothing to base this on but I would also guess that the backorder won't take as long as they are saying now. There is huge demand for a 4GB card in that price range but Amazon is huge and you would think they would get some priority in new shipments of cards.

So I got this in my email this morning..

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Nice! I wouldn't be surprised if that delivery estimate is overstated either. I have had things from Amazon that were estimated to ship in 7-10 days show up in 2 business days more than once.

Well I just found out that the updated delivery estimate was wrong. The card will not be arriving between 4/30 and 5/5.

Instead, it's arriving tomorrow.

vsf4dIl.gif

Hmm... I think it's safe to say that I am the reason your card is coming early. It's like Amazon and UPS were reading my posts.
 
Actually it's the USPS delivering it, which is even better because my mail guy comes MUCH earlier than the UPS guy in my area. I almost had a heart attack when I got the shipment email because they said they charged me the original price without the discount, but then when I checked my credit card I saw they charged the proper amount. I'm in the Northeast and it's shipping out from NJ, so that helps.
 
After this weekend it was pretty much decided that I'll be skipping The Witcher 1 and 2. I liked the world but the game is just so dense. It's not only long but it's complicated. The combat is clunky and there are various potions you need to remember to use before fighting that make you stronger against different types of enemies. Before you can make one of these single use potions you have to find several ingredients and craft them.

The final straw was when I lost 2+ hours of progress twice this Sunday when the game randomly crashed. I was annoyed the first time but when it happened a second time in the same day I just uninstalled the game and moved on to Saints Row: Gat out of Hell. I was not about to play the same 2+ hours for a third time. There is supposed to be an autosave system and I've been relying on that without issue every other time I played the game. Crashing is frustrating but when you combine that with the game not making a single autosave over 2 hours you are at a whole new level of frustration.

I haven't read about crashing or autosave not working being a common problem in the Steam forums so I'm not sure if it's the game or my setup that's causing the issues. Either way it was enough to convince me that I don't need to play The Witcher 1 and 2 before I play the 3rd game. I was a already considering skipping them due to the sheer amount of hours required so it didn't take much to push me over the edge.

I'm still looking forward to playing The Witcher 3 this summer. The developers recently claimed that you didn't need to play the first two games to understand what is going on. It normally goes against my nature to jump into a sequel without playing the other games but I did that with Dragon Age: Inquisition this fall and had no issues with it. I think I just need to let go of the idea that I need to play an entire franchise before I can play a new game. It just leaves me playing old games when I'd rather be playing something else or skipping the new sequel I wanted to play now because I don't have enough hours in the day to go back and play the older games in the franchise.
 
I really hope Wolfenstein: The Old Blood gets good reviews next week. I had a really good time with Wolfenstein: The New Order and I just listened to a podcast interview from one of the developers of these games. Listening to it got me excited to play this new standalone game or even go back and play last year's game again.

With GMG's constant 20% off vouchers you can get the game on day one for $16. That seems like a fair price for an 8 hour AAA fps game. That's longer than Gears of War Judgement and most Call of Duty campaigns. Yes, those games have a multiplayer component but if this is anything like the last game this will have a better campaign. As long as the reviews are positive I'll probably buy this next Tuesday.
 
I'll likely wait on that. Even if it is good, I'm not exactly pining for more games to play. Also, with my nice GTX 960 I may be firing up some older games to test them out again. I'd love to see how Crysis 3 looks or Saints Row 4, but we'll see. And of course Broken Age 2 comes out today.
 
Broken Age (The Complete Adventure) is coming out on PS4 as well. I don't know much about the game other than I want to play it. Is $17.49 a good price for both Act 1 and 2?

That is the current price on Steam too. I just did a quick search of my gmail account to find my receipt. It looks like I bought the game for $8.49 on June 28th last year. It might not get back down to that price again for quite a while though. That was part of a Steam sale and Act 1 had been out for over 6 months with no sign that Act 2 was coming any time soon at that point. Now that Act 2 just came out they will probably try to ride the hype for a while closer to full price.

I need to go back and restart Act 1. I played about half of it when I first bought the game but since Act 2 was nowhere in sight I decided to put it off. I liked what I saw though and I'm looking forward to playing the complete game.
 
That is the current price on Steam too. I just did a quick search of my gmail account to find my receipt. It looks like I bought the game for $8.49 on June 28th last year. It might not get back down to that price again for quite a while though. That was part of a Steam sale and Act 1 had been out for over 6 months with no sign that Act 2 was coming any time soon at that point. Now that Act 2 just came out they will probably try to ride the hype for a while closer to full price.

I need to go back and restart Act 1. I played about half of it when I first bought the game but since Act 2 was nowhere in sight I decided to put it off. I liked what I saw though and I'm looking forward to playing the complete game.

Was the $8.49 you paid for the series or just Act 1? And about how long are these games? My general rule for purchasing games is $1 per hour of content/entertainment. If Act 1 is like an episode of the more recent Telltale games (90-120 minutes), I think I should probably wait for a deeper discount.
 
Was the $8.49 you paid for the series or just Act 1? And about how long are these games? My general rule for purchasing games is $1 per hour of content/entertainment. If Act 1 is like an episode of the more recent Telltale games (90-120 minutes), I think I should probably wait for a deeper discount.

That is for the complete game. Steam doesn't sell the two acts separately like Tell Tale does with individual episodes of their games on console. That might not be the case on PS4 though because even Tell Tale doesn't sell their games as individual episodes on Steam. The Walking Dead 1 and 2, The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, and Tales from the Borderlands are all only sold as complete packages on Steam.

As for length, Act 1 seems to be a little less than 4 hours depending on how long it takes you to figure out the puzzles. Since Act 2 just came out today it's hard to say how long that part is.
 
You're probably looking at about a 12+ hour experience. First act was about 4-6 hours and they said Act II would be significantly longer.
 
I'll likely wait on that. Even if it is good, I'm not exactly pining for more games to play. Also, with my nice GTX 960 I may be firing up some older games to test them out again. I'd love to see how Crysis 3 looks or Saints Row 4, but we'll see. And of course Broken Age 2 comes out today.

Saints Row IV won't really show off what your new card can do but it will be cool to go back and check performance with your new card. It will be nice to have rock solid 60fps performance at 1080p while you're zooming around the open world.
 
So it looks like there's a trophy for completing both acts of Broken Age in under an hour. How long can this game really be? lol
Well yeah, the time in games like this from exploring and figuring out the puzzles. If you know exactly what to do and don't engage in any unnecessary dialog then a speed run like that is definitely possible, although not necessarily easy. I've been breezing through Act I again to refresh my mind with what happened (I beat the game originally nearly a year ago) and I probably spent maybe 90 minutes in Shay's mission, which easily took me about 150+ minutes when I originally played, and I did break down and resort to the internet a few times just to speed things along because I had forgotten a few things.
 
Saints Row IV won't really show off what your new card can do but it will be cool to go back and check performance with your new card. It will be nice to have rock solid 60fps performance at 1080p while you're zooming around the open world.

Well, I was hoping that I'd be firing up that game now, but unfortunately I can't because in yet another chapter of "Can only happen to me," one of the projects I deployed at work has failed, and if it's not fixed by tomorrow, all hell is going to break loose. I just hope I can pull this off soon so I at least have some time to play with my nice new toy which is sitting by my computer still unwrapped.
 
Well, I was hoping that I'd be firing up that game now, but unfortunately I can't because in yet another chapter of "Can only happen to me," one of the projects I deployed at work has failed, and if it's not fixed by tomorrow, all hell is going to break loose. I just hope I can pull this off soon so I at least have some time to play with my nice new toy which is sitting by my computer still unwrapped.

Between work, installing the new card, and replacing your old drivers with the new ones you aren't going to get much time with it tonight.
 
I didn't have much time to play around yesterday. I got the new card in. First thing I forgot about was how big these cards are. My last two cards were actually smaller. This one barely fit into my PC. I had to move wires and junk around just so it would fit. And thank god they put the power cords on the side, although I suspect this is how they all are nowadays. I tried it out with SR4, and sure enough, with everything on Ultra, solid 60FPS gaming. When I played it originally I probably had 20/30FPS (and not as good graphic fidelity) because I was just used to that with console gaming. Then I tried it with Guild Wars 2 and was a little thrown off because I didn't' see much of an increase. To be fair it didn't push my 460 that hard, but with everything on Max it would stutter a bit when rotating my character. I heard though that GW2 throws a lot of stuff to the processor, so maybe that was where the bottleneck was. That was all I could really do though. I was so insanely tired that I went to bed before 9pm local time. Hopefully I'm refreshed for the card's first true test, Battlefield 4, which I'll be doing tonight. I considered Crysis 3, but I don't' feel like re-embarking on that disappointment train again. At least with BF4 I have an all new campaign to try out as well.
 

Xbox One, issue with Ready to Install List & External Drive

Possible xbox Hard drive issues....is all lost

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