Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

yourbeliefs said:

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.

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BF4 looks great. I have read lots of reports saying people's CPU holds back their performance with that game even with high end GPUs but those complaints are mostly aimed towards multiplayer. It makes sense when you are talking about 64 player conquest matches on destructible maps. The single player campaign should have a lot less CPU stuff to worry about.

Yeah I fired up BF4 and put the graphics up to ULTRA and the card pulled it off basically without a hitch. To be fair, the card hasn't really been taxed yet under those settings, but those settings definitely add a good amount of eye candy. I just wish I wasn't so tired lately and only being able to play around 40 minutes a night after I get my kids into bed..The story of BF4 has definitely made me raise my eyebrows a few times, but I'll get into that at another time.

I finished up Saints Row: Gat out of Hell last night. My opinion of this game is kind of mixed. On the positive side I liked the powers, weapons, and enemies better than Saints Row IV. I would even argue that the world of Gat out of Hell is better even if it is a bit smaller.

Maybe it's because I could just use my blast power with the explosion element (when one enemy explodes it causes a chain reaction that explodes all the other enemies in the area) and take out mobs of aliens with one shot in Saints Row IV but I almost never used my guns. In Gat out of Hell I still had great powers but it was fun to use weapons like God's Hammer that would physically smash enemies but also bring down lightning from the sky to kill other enemies. During my entire playthrough of Saints Row IV I never found a weapon I liked as much as God's Hammer and that is the very first weapon they give you in this game.

The biggest addition to Gat out of Hell that wasn't in SR4 is that you can fly. The biggest surprise is how much fun the flying was. I probably spent as much time flying around collecting soul clusters as doing everything else in the game combined. I didn't get 100% but last I checked I had collected over 800 out of the 952 in the game. You use these to upgrade your powers and make yourself an increasingly powerful super hero. It was already fun to zoom around the world in SR4 but Gat out of Hell improved on that by letting you fly.

Now for the negatives... My biggest issue with this game is that it's not a campaign. Instead it's a collection of side quests. There are no missions that progress the story. Instead they just give you cutscenes once you get to certain percentages of completion. Even the loyalty missions, which were my favorite part of SR4, are just a NPC telling you to do a specific set of side quests. I had one loyalty mission that was pretty much completed before I talked to the NPC because I had already done the side quests on my own. Also, SR4 gave your friends powers when you finished their loyalty missions just like Mass Effect (who they were clearly copying) and you got a better ending if you had completed all of them. As far as I can tell, doing the loyalty missions in Gat out of Hell does absolutely nothing. When you are done they don't gain any powers, they don't help you in combat, and the ending is the exact same whether you did them or not.

Like yourbeliefs said it was also a little disappointing that you couldn't play as the character you created for SR3 and SR4. They talk about Gat a lot in 3 and 4 but since I didn't play the earlier games in the franchise I have no frame of reference for why he is supposed to be so important. I played most of the game as Kinzie just because I at least knew her character better. That was another weird point. Even though I was doing everything as Kinzie all the cutscenes featured Gat doing all the work. The only time Kinzie got to do anything cool in one of the cutscenes was when she pops up to help Gat with the final boss fight. Even though I entered the room to fight the boss as Kinzie at the end of the cutscene she says you got this Gat and control shifts to him. When you are playing as Kinzie she throws out one liners like "at least this game lets you play as a girl." That seems a little hypocritical when the game's cutscenes act like Gat is doing everything no matter which one you choose to play as.

All in this was a fun 6 hour DLC expansion. It was definitely worth the $5 preorder price I got from Gamestop due to their pricing error. I'm not sure it's worth the regular $20 price though. I think I would have preferred that they fleshed this out into a full sequel. They did a good job with the world and powers and then failed to back it up with an actual campaign.

Next up for me is Shadow of Mordor. Other games have pushed this back for me but I like what I've seen of it so far. I figure I need to get it out of the way before Arkham Knight since they are similar games.

Yeah Gat plays a MUCH bigger role in the earlier games. In SR2, he's basically your right hand man, and because of one of his f-ups, he loses the love of his life. I haven't beaten SR2 yet but I do at least have a better appreciation for him now than I did previously. I'm not saying I necessarily LIKE him, but without seeing his backstory in 2 I found him more annoying than anything in 3/4. And I have to say that playing 2 is interesting after playing 3/4 to get a better insight into the story of the Saints. Of course, I see no real reason to go back and play 1 as that game is just a blatant GTA knock off, as opposed to 2 which started SR's decent into wackiness and irrelevance.

Well I've given up on BF4...

I mean, I know the running joke for games like BF4/CoD is "Why do you even bother with SP when everyone is getting it for MP?" Well, more people play SP than you may think, and at least if you have a SP you essentially make your game "timeless." I mean, you basically can't play any CoD MP games before Black Ops 2 because no one is playing them, but you can easily jump into their campaigns and have fun. And yes, the CoD SP campaigns have been hit or miss as of late, but damn, I at least get the feeling that the developers were TRYING to make someone enjoyable, as opposed to simply doing it because they felt obligated to do so. BF4 is almost insultingly bad. To be fair, I gave up only an hour in, but nothing that I saw made me want to continue with it. The game gives NO background in the beginning as to what's going on. What I pieced together was that China and Russia were acting up and America is getting involved simply because they don't want to have to face them in an all out war. Wow, that's super original.

At the end of the day, the all BF4 did was make me miss CoD. What I ended up doing last night was quitting the game and going on Amazon to pick up a used copy of CoD: Black Ops, which is my favorite of all the CoD games. And I don't feel like delving into BF4 MP with its fractured player base (I'm not spending $40+ to get all the required maps at this stage) and uphill battle to learn what I have to do. Still, I do have to thank it for showing and validating my purchase of the GTX 960. I'm super psyched for Arkham Knight. Let's just hope that they don't botch the PC version. Let's hope that the same company that did the port of MK X doesn't do the port of Batman and they actually built it from scratch. Given how long and how many delays we've had, a broken release will be beyond unacceptable.

In the meantime, Broken Age Act 2 has arrived, so I'll be delving into that. I finished replaying the game last night and there's a number of unanswered questions I'm waiting on, not to mention the drastic changing of scenarios for Shay and Vella. And I do recommend replaying it because Act 2 gives NO "previously on Broken Age" flashback and instead immediately throws you right where Act 1 ended. Hell, I actually uninstalled my copy of Act 1 and then installed the "complete" version, but I had left my saved game and it saw it and loaded it up and started me off right at Act 2. After that I may fire up Singularity, a game I recently picked up in the Steam sale. Apparently it's a very overlooked and under appreciated gem from the last console generation.

yourbeliefs said:

Well I've given up on BF4...

I mean, I know the running joke for games like BF4/CoD is "Why do you even bother with SP when everyone is getting it for MP?" Well, more people play SP than you may think, and at least if you have a SP you essentially make your game "timeless." I mean, you basically can't play any CoD MP games before Black Ops 2 because no one is playing them, but you can easily jump into their campaigns and have fun. And yes, the CoD SP campaigns have been hit or miss as of late, but damn, I at least get the feeling that the developers were TRYING to make someone enjoyable, as opposed to simply doing it because they felt obligated to do so. BF4 is almost insultingly bad. To be fair, I gave up only an hour in, but nothing that I saw made me want to continue with it. The game gives NO background in the beginning as to what's going on. What I pieced together was that China and Russia were acting up and America is getting involved simply because they don't want to have to face them in an all out war. Wow, that's super original.

At the end of the day, the all BF4 did was make me miss CoD. What I ended up doing last night was quitting the game and going on Amazon to pick up a used copy of CoD: Black Ops, which is my favorite of all the CoD games. And I don't feel like delving into BF4 MP with its fractured player base (I'm not spending $40+ to get all the required maps at this stage) and uphill battle to learn what I have to do. Still, I do have to thank it for showing and validating my purchase of the GTX 960. I'm super psyched for Arkham Knight. Let's just hope that they don't botch the PC version. Let's hope that the same company that did the port of MK X doesn't do the port of Batman and they actually built it from scratch. Given how long and how many delays we've had, a broken release will be beyond unacceptable.

In the meantime, Broken Age Act 2 has arrived, so I'll be delving into that. I finished replaying the game last night and there's a number of unanswered questions I'm waiting on, not to mention the drastic changing of scenarios for Shay and Vella. And I do recommend replaying it because Act 2 gives NO "previously on Broken Age" flashback and instead immediately throws you right where Act 1 ended. Hell, I actually uninstalled my copy of Act 1 and then installed the "complete" version, but I had left my saved game and it saw it and loaded it up and started me off right at Act 2. After that I may fire up Singularity, a game I recently picked up in the Steam sale. Apparently it's a very overlooked and under appreciated gem from the last console generation.

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I had a similar experience with BF4 as one of my launch games for PS4. I played about an hour of the campaign and had enough. I did have quite a bit of fun with the big conquest multiplayer matches though. I'm not sure I've ever played anything that captures that large scale war feel as well as the Battlefield series. No, I'm not trying to say it's realistic or compare it to actual war. The multiplayer mayhem with that many players and vehicles is just a different experience than COD and most other multiplayer games.

As for the Batman PC port, I'm not worried. I originally played Arkham Asylum on 360 but Arkham City on PC was a great port. I finished it for the first time on PC after I already had my PS4 and Xbox One. It ran great and I mentioned in my little recap here that I thought it held its own graphically against most PS4/Xbox One games.

We also have Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor to compare it to since they are similar style games from the same publisher. I'm currently playing that and it's a great PC port. It runs at a buttery smooth 60fps on my GTX 970 and it looks great. It was also the first game that I can remember hearing about that demanded more than 2GB of VRAM if you wanted the best settings. I have no experience with MKX but my experience with the Arkham City and Shadow of Mordor tells me that Warner Brothers is willing to go well beyond what the consoles at time of release are capable of to give PC gamers products that take fully advantage of their hardware.

We have seen enough terrible launches lately to know that any game can come out broken these days. My personal history with WB games on PC gives me a little more faith in them than most other publishers though. They seem to give PC gamers more than a straight console port more often than other publishers.

Apparently Bethesda didn't give out any early review copies for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood so none of the major gaming sties have their reviews posted yet. The game currently has a "very positive" rating on Steam and a quick look through the Steam forums gives the impression that it isn't majorly broken. Most of the Steam user reviews say that if you liked the base game you will like this standalone product but there are no revolutionary changes that will get someone who didn't like The New Order to fall in love with The Old Blood.

That's enough for me to know I want this game. With Green Man Gaming always having at least a 20% off I will be able to pick it up for $16 or less. I will probably do that as soon as I finish Shadow of Mordor. I'm finally getting into a groove with this game after new releases kept getting me off track. I don't want that to happen again so buying The Old Blood today probably isn't the best idea. I wouldn't mind picking up The New Order for a second playthrough if I find a great deal on that either.

Edit: Here is the launch trailer they put up over the weekend.

Pretty much every reviewer has said, "If you liked New Order, you'll like Old Blood." I'll definitely check it out sometime, but given how liberal Bethesda is with their sales I don't think I'll have to wait too long for a decent sale.

I finally started The Last of Us Remastered. So far, so good in terms of story and gameplay. But I was surprised by some of the AC Unity-type of graphical glitches: NPCs hovering and stuck in the environment and walls of buildings disappearing, opening up onto partially rendered streets. Was this a problem in the PS3 version? I remember hearing a lot about trophy glitches but nothing about graphics problems.

In one other glitch, I selected "Restart Encounter" from the pause menu, and the game fast-forwarded me to the next checkpoint with all the enemies gone. Is "Restart Encounter" actually a "Skip Encounter" option? I'm reluctant to test it out.

Zookster said:

I finally started The Last of Us Remastered. So far, so good in terms of story and gameplay. But I was surprised by some of the AC Unity-type of graphical glitches: NPCs hovering and stuck in the environment and walls of buildings disappearing, opening up onto partially rendered streets. Was this a problem in the PS3 version? I remember hearing a lot about trophy glitches but nothing about graphics problems.

In one other glitch, I selected "Restart Encounter" from the pause menu, and the game fast-forwarded me to the next checkpoint with all the enemies gone.

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It's been a couple years since I played the game at this point. I don't remember experiencing any glitches like that, or really any at all on my PS3 playthrough though.

The closest thing to a glitch I remember seeing is when Ellie and Tess would run around like crazy while you are hiding behind cover trying to get through a stealth sequence. They would bounce from once piece of cover to another one over and over again running right in front of zombies or human enemies making all kinds of noise and the enemies would act like nothing happened. Of course, that's much better than dying in a stealth sequence because the NPC's AI was dumb and got spotted. It just breaks a little bit of the immersion factor.

As for the remaster, I only played about an hour of the Left Behind DLC. I didn't see anything like what you are describing there but I haven't tried the base game on PS4 yet. I plan to play through all of it now that it's summer and I have more free time.

I don't recall any crazy glitches with TLoU on PS3 either.

king3pj said:

The closest thing to a glitch I remember seeing is when Ellie and Tess would run around like crazy while you are hiding behind cover trying to get through a stealth sequence. They would bounce from once piece of cover to another one over and over again running right in front of zombies or human enemies making all kinds of noise and the enemies would act like nothing happened. Of course, that's much better than dying in a stealth sequence because the NPC's AI was dumb and got spotted. It just breaks a little bit of the immersion factor.

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Yeah, I was going to complain how ridiculous it is for a stealth-based game to have an AI partner(s) that you can't control or position until I realized last night while in the capitol building that there aren't any detrimental consequences to the AI moving around directly in front of enemies. But now that you mention it, it does adversely affect the immersion factor. I wish you could at least use them as decoys. I also wish you could close doors. At one point in the museum, I lured two clickers into a shift-door supply closet with a bottle. Shutting them in would've helped me search the rest of the area much more easily. I'm having issues finding my way around dark areas with clickers as this game is seriously lacking any wayfinding mechanic or map. I spent nearly an hour in the subway waiting area trying to figure a way out, which I was only able to do after using a lot of resources to kill all the clickers in the area (while crouching I couldn't see the ladder prompt near the exit).

Zookster said:

Yeah, I was going to complain how ridiculous it is for a stealth-based game to have an AI partner(s) that you can't control or position until I realized last night while in the capitol building that there aren't any detrimental consequences to the AI moving around directly in front of enemies. But now that you mention it, it does adversely affect the immersion factor. I wish you could at least use them as decoys. I also wish you could close doors. At one point in the museum, I lured two clickers into a shift-door supply closet with a bottle. Shutting them in would've helped me search the rest of the area much more easily. I'm having issues finding my way around dark areas with clickers as this game is seriously lacking any wayfinding mechanic or map. I spent nearly an hour in the subway waiting area trying to figure a way out, which I was only able to do after using a lot of resources to kill all the clickers in the area (while crouching I couldn't see the ladder prompt near the exit).

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One thing that may help with that is the fact that clickers are blind. You can use your flashlight and shine it directly on them and they wont notice. You only have to be concerned with making noise around them. That being said, I do remember them charging directly at me a few times while I was sitting completely still behind cover. I also remember being lost several times. Sneaking past a room full of clickers once is tense enough. Having to do it multiple times because you can't find the exit can get frustrating.

king3pj said:

One thing that may help with that is the fact that clickers are blind. You can use your flashlight and shine it directly on them and they wont notice. You only have to be concerned with making noise around them. That being said, I do remember them charging directly at me a few times while I was sitting completely still behind cover. I also remember being lost several times. Sneaking past a room full of clickers once is tense enough. Having to do it multiple times because you can't find the exit can get frustrating.

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After the subway, I consoled myself over all the time it took me to get through it with the fact that I now have a much better sense of what I can and can't do around them. But then that was all shot to hell in the museum when they seemed much more sensitive to my presence. I almost wonder if in the subway, the clickers were partially "AI-partner blinded" to my presence, because in the museum, the AI partners were in another area whereas in the subway they were always on my hip.

So I just finished Broken Age: Act 2, and I have to say that overall I feel rather, Broken Hearted.

It is a little hard to believe that this once humble Kickstarter idea ballooned into a 3 year development cycle, with the game being split up into 2 parts, with each part being released nearly 18 months apart from each other. Sadly, this does FEEL like a game that has been broken up into 2 parts with that sort of cycle. The game suffers due to the fact that Tim and the team took feedback from Act 1 into their design of Act 2. Now on the surface that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, player feedback is a good way to help achieve a better game. A prime example of that is Mass Effect 2, where nearly everything bad with the first game was thrown out while the good was kept in, thus creating in my opinion a masterpiece. Sadly, BA:A2 is not a masterpiece.

I suppose the biggest offender in this game is the difficulty. Act 1 was criticized by many for being too easy. I felt the same way as I mentioned in my earlier review, but I still thought it was good as it was like the modern Telltale games (not TWD, but more akin to Monkey Island and other true adventure games they made.) Well unfortunately Tim and his team took this feedback and decided to crank the puzzle difficulty to a very frustrating level. Whereas in Act 1 I only needed a walkthrough a couple of times, I practically had it open in a separate window as I played Act 2. And I know I’m not the only one who thought some of the puzzles went over the line. At least 5 reviewers that I know of were especially pissed at a particular puzzle that is solved by literally doing NOTHING for 90 seconds. That goes against all rules of point and click adventure games. What makes this puzzle worse is that you are put in the same puzzle in Act 1, but you can’t do “nothing” like you do in Act 2. And sadly I have to admit that if not for a walkthrough, I doubt I would have beaten this game. Some of the puzzles had solutions that, while not exactly moon logic, were things that I know that I would not have been able to figure out on my own. There’s no hint system in the game, and they’re stingier with clues this time around. All this is rather surprising in that none of the difficulty concerns seemed to have come up during the numerous playtests that I know this game received. I suppose their testers just operated at a higher level of intelligence than myself.

The story also suffers in Act 2. I don’t wish to spoil much about it, but I will have to say that basically the two characters swap settings with each other. So basically, you’re at ALL the same places in Act 2 as you were in Act 1, also interacting with all the same NPCs. So that sense of adventure and discovery in Act 1 is basically lost here. The voice acting and writing are still good, but the removal of the mystery surrounding the whole thing destroys a key element. Finally, the main “plot” of Act 2 is quite lacking. A big conspiracy is revealed near the middle of the Act, but there’s almost no proper elaboration of it, and there’s hardly even a proper resolution to the whole thing. The game leaves a LOT of unanswered questions, and it’s clear they’re not going to be answered, as this is a 1 and done game. Oh, and the ending is sh*t. When it was done I said out loud, “That’s IT?!” This seems to be a sadly common trend with Tim Shafer’s recent games. Psychonauts (a GREAT game btw) also suffers from the same “That’s IT?” style of ending, and I’ve heard that Brutal Legend wasn’t much better either.

I suppose now the question comes as to whether or not Broken Age is worth it as a complete package. I suppose my thoughts are somewhat jaded as I (and many others) played the game in 2 separate parts. I suppose all done within one package, the difficulty spike and revisiting of characters and settings are more tolerable. On the other hand, there’s no real excuse for the overall story being lacking and the numerous plot holes that exist. I’d hesitate to call it bad, but I do wish that this had simply been released as one big game and not broken up (no pun intended) like it was. I give it a C+. I’d say it’s worth looking into if you can get it for 75% off (which is a likely proposition as Double Fine games often get discounts like that.)

On a side note, I have to mention that the entire development of this game was captured in a documentary, which has recently been released on YouTube. It literally chronicles the entire game’s production, from the beginning of the Kickstarter to the release of Act 2. It is FASCINATING and really gives an insight to what goes into developing a game. It also explains why the game was broken up into 2 parts and all the other obstacles the developers ran into, from running out of money to people falling ill to deadlines not being fulfilled due to unforeseen circumstances. It is quite a beast to watch. I mean this thing over 10 hours long, but I would strongly suggest everyone at least take a look at it to see if they like it. If nothing else, it may give you all a better understanding of what goes into game development. You can view it here.

That's kind of a bummer. I've never been a big point and click adventure guy but I really like Tell Tale's dumbed down version of the genre. I haven't gone back to Broken Age since act 2 came out but reading your description makes me wonder if I even want to. The idea of constantly checking a guide to figure out what to do doesn't sound appealing at all.

Thanks for the BA:A2 overview. I really don't like puzzles that make you spend an hour trying to interact with every possible person/object in every possible combination and order, only to find out the solution was so obscure, you would've never figured it out in a million years. There were a couple of moments in Double Fine's The Cave that skirted with that level of difficulty.

I really wish more games would include an optional hint system. I really liked how the hint system worked in Back to the Future and in Valliant Hearts. You knew the hints were there, but they weren't forced on you if you wanted to take as much time as you needed to figure it out on your own.

I just finished Shadow of Mordor. I'll start by saying this is a great PC port. It looks great and the combat is buttery smooth. When I started playing the game I didn't understand where all the hype and GOTY awards were coming from. That changed quickly as my character grew stronger and unlocked new abilities though. At the beginning of the game 7 or 8 Orcs can be a challenge. By the end you can take on 30+ at a time and just mow through them. The combat system is fun and it really makes you feel powerful. There is just the right amount of stealth too.

The nemesis system is also very cool. About half the game is just manipulating the Orc's chain of command. You brand one Orc, making him loyal to you and then help him rise to the top rank of warchief. You can force one warchief to attack another or trick Orc's who aren't under your command into fighting each other. By the end of the game you will have an army of Orc's to go into battle against The Black Hand

The voice acting is good but I thought the story was just okay. The ending was a huge letdown. They build up The Black Hand to be this bad ass boss the entire game and then the entire boss fight ends up being a 15 second QTE. It wasn't even a particularly epic QTE. Still the game is worth playing for its stealth/combat and nemesis system alone. The final boss fight was easier than every captain I killed in the nemesis system. That was disappointing but the rest of the game was really good.

WB brought a lot of stuff from the Arkham series into this game. I'll be interested to see how much of Shadow of Mordor makes its way back into Arkham. I'm surprised we haven't heard anything about a thug nemesis system in Arkham Knight.

For those of you who didn't invest 100+ hours of your life playing through Witcher 1 + 2, a user has been nice enough to quickly sum up with some videos and even some shorter explanations of the series so far. This is a way to prepare us MANY players who are interested in 3.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/36dr46/the_witcher_complete_story_recap/

yourbeliefs said:

For those of you who didn't invest 100+ hours of your life playing through Witcher 1 + 2, a user has been nice enough to quickly sum up with some videos and even some shorter explanations of the series so far. This is a way to prepare us MANY players who are interested in 3.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/36dr46/the_witcher_complete_story_recap/

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IGN also put together one of their 5 minute recap videos. It's not as in depth as what you just posted but if you just want to get a quick summary in one short video it's okay. They took 5 minutes to explain two 100 hour games so it couldn't possibly be that deep but you can get a general outline. I watched it a couple days ago but I'll probably take some time to read some of that reddit thread later too.