Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

[yourbeliefs]

Yeah I have that game on my wishlist. It looks intriguing if nothing else.

I've been playing various things because I can't focus on one game. Well, I CAN, but that game is currently in limbo while we wait for Rocksteady to fix it. I tried out Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. So far it basically seems like more of New Order, which isn't a bad thing. But then I got stuck on a part rather early on. I'll definitely get back to it soon, but currently my main focus has been on Metal Gear Solid 2. I picked up the HD collection recently on a Live sale. I have to say, I don't know if my skills have atrophied or if this was always the case, but holy crap am I bad at it. I game overed so many times in the first chapter that it started to get sad. My plan is to get through at least 2 again, and then maybe delve into 3 in preparation for MGS V in September.

 

[king3pj]

I finished Halo 4 last night. I won't go into much detail since this game is a major release from 3 years ago and anyone who really cares has probably already played it. I will say that I liked the campaign and I'm looking forward to playing Halo 5 this Fall. It looked surprisingly good on Xbox One for an up-rezzed 360 game that didn't get the the full anniversary treatment like Halo 2. If I didn't know better I would have probably assumed it was a native Xbox One game.

I have already battled the Covenant in Halo 1,2,3, and Reach so it was nice to finally have some new enemies and weapons. I will say that I thought the inclusion of the Covenant in this game was kind of a cop-out though. It was almost like they were worried fans couldn't handle a Halo game without Elites so they threw them in even though they had very little to do with the story.

I am interested to see where they go with Halo 5. After the events of Halo 3

Spoiler

the Covenant and humans agreed to a truce

and Halo 4

Spoiler

the Didact was killed

there isn't an obvious enemy trying to destroy the human race. I know a big plot point is Master Chief versus another Spartan named Locke but there has to be more to it than that or the scale will be much smaller than previous games.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So while I stay in my "Waiting for Rocksteady to fix Arkham Knight" phase my gaming has been somewhat scattered...

Portal 2 Co-Op: I beat Portal 2 back when it came out in 2011 as part of a Gamefly rental, and I didn't do the co-op mainly because I knew no one who had a PS3 and Portal 2. At the Summer Sale the game was discounted to $5 and since I knew king3pj had it I decided to pick it up and have us do the co-op campaign. So far it has been quite fun. It is cool to try to solve the various puzzles through trial and error and shooting different ideas back and forth between the players. Yes, with a game like this, a Microphone is all but required. You can play without one but it just makes the experience harder and less fun.

Wolfenstein: Old Blood. There's not too much to say about this game in the sense that it's a stand-alone expansion from Wolfenstein: The New Order, and basically it's just like TNO, although this game seems to be harder and more frustrating. The difficulty seems to be ramped up compared to the previous game, although it hasn't been enough to turn me off (yet.) The general consensus of this game was that if you liked TNO, you'll like this as well, and I don't see that changing as the gameplay of the two is virtually identical. And the game runs very well on my 960. With the game on high graphics detail and full FOV I am able to maintain 60 FPS with no problem. Even with Ultra settings I was able to get over 30 FPS, but I decided I wanted a steady 60 instead.

The Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams: You can be forgiven for not hearing of this game, but this game series actually has a history, or perhaps a stigma. The Giana Sisters started off as an independent project by some developers to make a computer port of Super Mario Bros. They made the game (or at least a prototype) and sent it off to Nintendo in hopes of getting a licensing agreement to sell the game legally. Well unsurprisingly, Nintendo decided that it didn't want to share their IP to other platforms and declined the offer. The company was undaunted and instead decided to change up the game's palate and change some art assets and release the game as "The Great Giana Sisters." However, while much of the game was modified to be different from SMB, a number of things stayed the same, to the point where the differences were undeniable. Here's a quick comparison:



Big N was less than impressed, and the developers did themselves no favors when on their print ads they started with the phrase "Move over BROTHERS" (emphasis not added.) So they sent a C&D and the game was quickly taken off shelves. Still, it was pirated rather heavily and various ports/fan hacks were made over the years (all unofficial of course.) Later on, a brand new game was actually released for the Nintendo DS to moderate success. For more on the story of the Giana Sisters I recommend this retrospective, as it's where I got the majority of my info:



Fast forward to recent times and Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams was actually a Kickstarter that got enough funding and was eventually released. So is it any good? So far I have to say Yes. The platforming action is fun, with the "gimmick" being that you actually play as both sisters, swapping between the 2 at will, which actually changes the world around you. This leads to different items being made available, enemies changing, platforms being accessible, etc. It all works quite well and I like how in some scenarios you have to quickly switch while still playing the actual game. Still, this game isn't perfect and I wouldn't put it up at the same level as Freedom Planet and Rayman: Legends quite yet. The main issue I have is with the difficulty. The difficulty in this game ramps up VERY quickly. It's not like Super Meat Boy where you have short rounds of everything trying to kill you. Rather, this has full length levels but after only 7 stages in I'd have to classify the levels in the "Hard" category, even though I'm playing on Normal difficulty. To the game's credit, the deaths I've experienced are legit in that it was my fault that I died as opposed to the game built badly, but dying numerous times still isn't fun, and it's made less fun by the fact that you get stars at the end of each round which you need to unlock later levels, and if you die too many times in a given level you don't receive any stars, which I am NOT a fan of. I don't like any game that actively punishes me for not doing well. Even Shovel Knight didn't impede your progress if you died a lot of times. IT made it harder to get upgrades, but not actually beat the game. Still, I'll be plowing through as I seem to be on a platforming kick as of late. I tried to get into The Witcher 3, but my inability to get a steady 60 FPS at any detail level above Low turned me off of that almost immediately. For what I paid for my card I'd expect to get 60 FPS at graphics better than what the One and PS4 can produce. Maybe some more patches will help fix that.

I'm sure my time will be more divided soon, as I have Splatoon and Godzilla coming in from Gamefly this week.

 

[Zookster]

So I can get a "junior" membership in the PC Gaming Master Race now with this "Gaming" PC laptop? lol
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=34-315-016

I needed a new home office laptop anyway, as my five-year-old laptop was just running too damn slow after spending hours and hours of time troubleshooting over the past year to speed it up (it only has 4 GB of RAM with no room for upgrade). So imagine my surprise when I came across this Acer for under $500 that had a separate video card (NVIDIA Geforce 940M). I figure I'll at least be able to play some indies, Telltale and other point-and-click adventure games, and perhaps the occasional 3-year-old-plus AAA title. I'll have it hooked up to a two-year-old 1080p LED TV, so the lower resolution monitor on this laptop isn't a factor.

The only real concession I'm making is having to also buy a new router that does AC wireless (even though I just bought a new one - wireless N - two years ago), since this laptop's wireless card won't read the other frequencies. I know I could've gotten an adapter dongle for much cheaper, but since I already have a perma-dongle for my wireless keyboard/mouse, I didn't want to take up one of the other three USB ports with another perma-dongle. This laptop doesn't have a DVD drive either, but I can just use my old laptop for the 2 or 3 times a year I might rip or burn something. Or if worse comes to worse, buy an external one for $25.

I was looking to spend less than $600, so with the $63 router and sales tax, I'm at $566. I also signed up for NewEgg's credit card, so I'm only paying <$50 for the next 12 months.

 

[king3pj]

So I can get a "junior" membership in the PC Gaming Master Race now with this "Gaming" PC laptop? lol
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=34-315-016

I needed a new home office laptop anyway, as my five-year-old laptop was just running too damn slow after spending hours and hours of time troubleshooting over the past year to speed it up (it only has 4 GB of RAM with no room for upgrade). So imagine my surprise when I came across this Acer for under $500 that had a separate video card (NVIDIA Geforce 940M). I figure I'll at least be able to play some indies, Telltale and other point-and-click adventure games, and perhaps the occasional 3-year-old-plus AAA title. I'll have it hooked up to a two-year-old 1080p LED TV, so the lower resolution monitor on this laptop isn't a factor.

The only real concession I'm making is having to also buy a new router that does AC wireless (even though I just bought a new one - wireless N - two years ago), since this laptop's wireless card won't read the other frequencies. I know I could've gotten an adapter dongle for much cheaper, but since I already have a perma-dongle for my wireless keyboard/mouse, I didn't want to take up one of the other three USB ports with another perma-dongle. This laptop doesn't have a DVD drive either, but I can just use my old laptop for the 2 or 3 times a year I might rip or burn something. Or if worse comes to worse, buy an external one for $25.

I was looking to spend less than $600, so with the $63 router and sales tax, I'm at $566. I also signed up for NewEgg's credit card, so I'm only paying <$50 for the next 12 months.

Not bad! You won't want to play the current AAA graphics powerhouse games on it but you already have a PS4 for that. You should be able to get lots of stuff from humble bundles that would be perfect for that laptop. Me and yourbeliefs probably both have quite a few duplicate game codes you could get started with too.

 

[Zookster]

Big Doh! moment over my laptop purchase. I mentioned it didn't have a DVD-ROM drive. Well I realized late last night that the primary software I use for work (MS Office) is on disc. It's an old version, but I still have one more license key, and it does everything I need it to do. At any rate, buying a $25 external drive is cheaper than three months of Office 365 and worth having a $500 laptop that has a separate video card, the most current WiFi standard, and whose memory is upgradeable to 16 GB (almost all the other laptops I looked in this price range couldn't be upgraded).

 

[yourbeliefs]

So I tried out Godzilla on the PS4....

Normally I try not to look at reviews before I play a game so I can know as little about it as possible and go in fresh, but it was pretty hard to avoid the negative attention that Godzilla received when I got stuff like this on my Twitter feed:







And the rather liberal IGN gives a review like this



And let's not forget that traditionally Godzilla games haven't been very good with the possible exception of those that came out TWO console generations ago..



But being the massive Godzilla fan that I am (and because my copy was already coming via mail) I figured screw everyone else. I'm going to jump into Godzilla and damn well try to like it! 3 play sessions later, and I have to agree that the majority was totally totally right.

The main issue is that the game is repetitive, and what is being repeated isn't exactly fun. You pick a level in what I'll loosely call the "Campaign" mode, and your task is to destroy some generators, and then move onto the next level. That's it. You can destroy more stuff if you want to and you likely will enjoy it at first. I know I did. It was cool walking around as Godzilla just stepping on tanks, hearing people scream, use my tail to destroy buildings. Sadly these moments are fleeting quite quickly. What also doesn't help is that the fights against other monsters are horribly anemic. There's no real strategy whatsoever. To be fair, Godzilla himself rarely implemented any actual "strategy" other than brute force in the movies, but simply button spamming to win fights isn't fun, nor is it always a winning strategy. My final straw was when I was forced to replay the campaign for no adequately explained reason other than the game told me to, and I first tried the "hard' level because I had already played the easy one, only to be put in a fight against a Mechagodzilla that was literally twice my size. Needless to say the fight didn't go very well. So then I went to the "Easy" level and ended up fighting Hedorah, but I also ended up losing that because the lack of a block button or any sort of energy gauge messed up my strategy. This is also combined with a very clunky and unsatisfying movement and combat system, with Godzilla moving painfully slow, and his awesome fire blast lasting MAYBE 1 second. Granted, speed has never been Godzilla's strong suit (well, with this possible exception I suppose) but sometimes when it comes to game design, one needs to sacrifice "realism" for fun. Oh, and the game looks like crap. This was originally released just for the PS3 in Japan and it looks like they just gave it a resolution bump for its PS4 release. And even if this was just released for the PS3 with a resolution bump down I'd still say it looked bad for the hardware. And finally, while there's many monsters represented, if you want to actually PLAY as them you need to play the game repeatedly, and from what I could tell there was no clear explanation as to how to unlock the various monsters. All I knew was that if playing as the King of the Monsters wasn't fun, then it was likely going to be the same for the other monsters. It looks like we have an early contender both for worst game AND biggest disappointment of the year.

Hopefully Splatoon will yield more fun for me.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I think this video is a pretty good representation of how I felt playing Godzilla on PS4. They do come off sounding a little out of touch, even though they are my age, but they do go into how gaming has changed for those of us that grew up during the video game renaissance of the 1980s and 90s.

Oh, and the fact that there's no local multiplayer is INexcusable. I was floored when Mike posted that there was no local multiplayer. The idea that I couldn't play against my friend sitting right next to me in what is basically a FIGHTING game is just a joke. Imagine if Street Fighter 5 didn't have local multiplayer. All the more recent Godzilla games had local multiplayer, so for this one to omit it while still having all this other stuff in it is just laughable. Although to be fair, given how lackluster the combat is this may not be that severe of a omission.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So I sent back Splatoon! It fell into the category of "Not bad, but didn't interest me." If you have a Wii U (of which I think there's maybe TWO other people here other than myself) it's worth a look if for no other reason than dusting off your console. However, I DO feel the need to call out Nintendo for some incredibly baffling usability decisions that they throw at you right at the beginning. The game does NOT make a good first impression, or at least it didn't for me. If Splatoon! was a blind date, it'd be like picking up your date who requests to go to a restaurant you've never heard of and won't tell you how to get there.

The first thing the game does is make you design a character and then immediately throws you into the tutorial level. It does this before it gives you any formal introduction or options. I really don't like when games do that. I have nothing against tutorial levels but let me at least set up my game properly before you throw me into this. It's because of this omission that I ran into the first baffling decision, which is that the game uses the left analog stick to move, and the right analog stick to look left and right. Note that I said to look LEFT & RIGHT. If you want to look up and down, you need to rotate the gamepad in those directions. It is COMPLETELY counterintuitive. I'm getting a little sick and tired of Nintendo feeling like they have to crowbar their tablet into every game they make now with some gimmick. It is also used as a map, but given how short MP matches are I rarely found any use for it, and they sure wouldn't have helped in the complete beat downs I was the victim of while playing. I feel like Yahtzee describes it well here (although note that in Splatoon the right analog stick is NOT used for melee, but just shows why the right stick just fits the norm.) It's only after you get through the tutorial, which will take you longer than it should because of the awkward controls, that you're allowed to give complete looking control to the right analog stick, but even then it almost feels like trying to control a fire hose on full blast. I had to put the sensitivity all the way down and even then I had to be gentle with the touch.

BUT, before I could even do that, I was forced to watch what I can only equate to a "News Update" that had 2 characters talking back and forth to each other in an UNSKIPPABLE "cutscene" going into details I didn't care about about an upcoming multiplayer contest. I just wanted to get into the single player to try things out before jumping online. I went all over the "hub" and couldn't figure out where the campaign was. I had to actually Google "How to play the Single Player Campaign in Splatoon", and apparently Nintendo received enough complaints about this or understood that this would be an issue, so they have an official post on their website on how to get to it because it's not obvious at all.

Now I'm REALLY not trying to nitpick here. I honestly felt really turned off by these random design decisions. Still, given the fact that the game has an 81 on Metacritic shows that people are liking the game, and I do like that Nintendo is trying out stuff with new IPs.

In other news, I hope to finally finish the Portal 2 Co-Op with king3pj soon, and I am expecting Kirby and the Rainbow Curse on the Wii U soon. I tried it out at Gamestop and had a hard time putting it down. I've also delved into Tales From the Borderlands, but I don't want to give thoughts until I'm 2 episodes in. Finally, the Rare Collection (40 games for $40) is looking pretty good and will be coming in early August.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Here's what I've been playing with:

Finished Portal 2 Co-Op with king3pj and it was a lot of fun. It's really cool to try and figure out these puzzles with another person and trying various possible solutions. If you liked the single player mode and missed out on Co-Op I highly recommend finding a friend to embark on it with. And if you've never played Portal 2 in any fashion, please remedy that because it's a fantastic game.

Rare Replay: Not too much to say about this. It's exactly what it claims to be, which is a collection of 30 Rare games basically 100% in tact, except that they removed all Nintendo references. The funniest instance of this is in R.C. Pro Am, where to get the new cars you had to pick up a letter in each race. In the original version (which I had) the letters spelled NINTENDO. Now they spell "CHAMPION." Also in Conker's Bad Fur day, when giving button information Conker still says the original dialog (Z Button, C-Button, etc) but the on screen text will reflect the "correct" button." Speaking of Conker and the games in general, as I said, these are 100% copies. They have not been remastered or modified in any way except for bug fixes in a few places, but if you couldn't do something in terms of control or display in the original, you can't do it here. This is very prevalent in Conker where for some reason, the game has inverted controls that you can't modify. When I read that I thought, "Well, doesn't affect me I always invert my Y-Axis controls!" Turns out that they inverted the X-Axis for reasons I'll never understand. It's not a deal-breaker but it is a little frustrating. Still, for $30 (and cheaper via sales) it's an unbelievable package containing some classic games.

Tales from the Borderlands: Well this one is a rather unexpected surprise. While TellTale games have had consistent good quality, I was still taken aback by how much I enjoyed TFTB. It's the standard TT formula but the shining point is the story and characters, which takes a more comedic approach as opposed to the more dramatic tones set by previous ones. The episodes are nice and meaty in terms of content and it definitely justifies 2 playthroughs given how much the game changes based on certain decisions. I have 2 saves going concurrently and I love going from my "real" game where I make the decisions I want to make to my "other" game where I make opposite/separate decisions. To be fair the actual plot itself does not change, but I found myself genuinely looking forward to how the game would change. I really have no complaints so far with TFTB. Actually I do have one.. WHERE THE F*** IS THE REST OF THE GAME!? Seriously, we're on Episode 3 of 5 while Game of Thrones is on Episode 5 of 6. TFTB started on November 25, 2014, while GoT started on December 2, 2014. If I had to guess, something came up with the cast where crucial character(s) were not available to record lines, whereas for GoT they probably knew they had everyone for a short period so they made sure they got everything planned out and recorded in short order. Still, I guess it speaks good on the game that my biggest complaint is that they're not delivering content fast enough, but it still is annoying. I'm about to replay Episode 3 and after that I'm just stuck until 4, and 3 ends on a doozy of a cliffhanger.

Been playing Rayman: Legends again. I think that really may be one of my favorite platformers of all time, and the daily challenges add something new all the time. If you have this game sitting on your Xbox One from Games with Gold doing nothing, do yourself a favor and fire it up. It really is a ton of fun.

And yes, still waiting on Arkham Knight to finally be fixed. We're coming up on 2 months of the damn thing being broken.

 

[king3pj]

Here's what I've been playing with:

Finished Portal 2 Co-Op with king3pj and it was a lot of fun. It's really cool to try and figure out these puzzles with another person and trying various possible solutions. If you liked the single player mode and missed out on Co-Op I highly recommend finding a friend to embark on it with. And if you've never played Portal 2 in any fashion, please remedy that because it's a fantastic game.

This was a good time. Portal 2 has been one of my favorite games ever since I played it years ago on 360. Until we did this I had never played the co-op because I'm an adult and co-op partners are hard to find unless you go sign up register on different forums looking for people to play with. Doing that isn't a great experience because you have no connection to the person you are playing with, they might be 12 years old, and good luck trying to coordinate a second time to play when you aren't able to finish it in one sitting.

I've always preferred co-op to competitive multiplayer. Like I said though, it's much easier to join a multiplayer matchmaking lobby and play against strangers. I'll have more to say about that when I get into my Destiny talk later.

Tales from the Borderlands: Well this one is a rather unexpected surprise. While TellTale games have had consistent good quality, I was still taken aback by how much I enjoyed TFTB. It's the standard TT formula but the shining point is the story and characters, which takes a more comedic approach as opposed to the more dramatic tones set by previous ones. The episodes are nice and meaty in terms of content and it definitely justifies 2 playthroughs given how much the game changes based on certain decisions. I have 2 saves going concurrently and I love going from my "real" game where I make the decisions I want to make to my "other" game where I make opposite/separate decisions. To be fair the actual plot itself does not change, but I found myself genuinely looking forward to how the game would change. I really have no complaints so far with TFTB. Actually I do have one.. WHERE THE F*** IS THE REST OF THE GAME!? Seriously, we're on Episode 3 of 5 while Game of Thrones is on Episode 5 of 6. TFTB started on November 25, 2014, while GoT started on December 2, 2014. If I had to guess, something came up with the cast where crucial character(s) were not available to record lines, whereas for GoT they probably knew they had everyone for a short period so they made sure they got everything planned out and recorded in short order. Still, I guess it speaks good on the game that my biggest complaint is that they're not delivering content fast enough, but it still is annoying. I'm about to replay Episode 3 and after that I'm just stuck until 4, and 3 ends on a doozy of a cliffhanger.

I totally agree on this one. Like I said when I finished these episodes, this is the most fun I've had with a Tell Tale game and I liked all of the ones I have played. It ditches the depressing tone that dominates all of the other modern Tell Tale games in favor of comedy. It really is just a good heist story that you could enjoy without playing the Borderlands games. Those of us who have played them get some extra inside jokes.

The release schedule is a joke though. We are talking 3+ months between each episode. You think you feel let down by this but I have been dealing with it since November of last year. I feel that they bit off more than they can chew with this, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and getting ready to ramp up work on Minecraft. Since Borderlands is by far the smallest license out of all of those it gets pushed to the back burner.

It's hard to keep everything straight with so much time in between episodes. I still play each new episode as it's released because I'm truly excited to play them. I definitely want to play them all right in a row after the last episode comes out so I can follow the complete story though. This will be the first Tell Tale game that gets a second playthrough from me.

And yes, still waiting on Arkham Knight to finally be fixed. We're coming up on 2 months of the damn thing being broken.

Yeah, that game has basically been pushed out of my mind for now. I have moved on to other things and I'll get back to Arkham Knight when everything is fixed. I do regret buying the season pass even though I got a nice discount on it though.

 

[king3pj]

This was originally going to be part of the last post but that thing was already long enough and it turns out I had quite a bit to say about Destiny even though I'm probably the only one here who still cares about this game.

Basically, I'm back to the level 20 soft cap. To go higher than this I need to find rare loot with high light levels. This game gets a lot of hate but I obviously like it enough to grind through it for the second time.

It would seem that I'm really into loot games. I played a lot of hours of Borderlands, I'm playing through Diablo 3 on PC again after a ton of hours on PS4, and Destiny scratches that same itch for me. It's really all I want to play when I get home each night even though I have played most of it before. That being said, the expansions have changed this game quite a bit in the year since I last played it. That isn't even counting The Taken King expansion that is supposed to be much bigger than anything else released to date.

Obviously it would be more fun if I had a dedicated group to play with but like I said before, finding co-op partners is hard these days. luckily I have found this site called The 100.

https://www.the100.io/community

You make a profile and join a group. Groups are limited to 100 players (hence the name) but there are tons of groups to pick from.

Players in your group can post events like Vault of Glass Raid 8/11/2015 at 9:00PM for other group members to join. It shows who has signed up for these events and when they are full or there isn't one relevant to what you want to do you can make your own.

Unfortunately, this isn't an official website so there is no way to invite people to your party directly from the site. You have to get online a few minutes before the scheduled start time and manually search for the people who signed up for your event.

Most people use this site just for raids since there is no matchmaking in that part of the game. I'm not quite high enough level to play the raids yet but I have been using it to find people for standard missions and Crucible PvP with some success. Luckily all the Strikes (basically mini raids) do have matchmaking. I would rather play with people I actually know but this is the best substitute I have found so far.

 

[Zookster]

I'm glad to hear Tales of the Borderlands is turning out so well. Hopefully Telltale will do like they did with the TWD games and offer good sales on the season pass sooner than later to make up for the shoddy release schedule. They've got to be losing folks who are buying one episode at a time.

 

[yourbeliefs]

You can't really buy 1 episode at a time. It's all or none, except for GoT for a while until they started giving away episode 1 for free. And sadly But really, as I've mentioned numerous times, there's no reason to get TT games early on because you don't know how the story will turn out and its at the most expensive. 50% off is my buy in rate, and at least halfway through the story with good reviews, which is why I picked up TFTB. I don't regret my decision to buy but had I known there'd be a continued drought between episodes I likely would have just waited, knowing that I'd get 50% or more if I waited. I was really tempted to get GoT at 50% off at the summer sale, but figured I may as well wait for the whole thing to finish first. I enjoy GoT but I'm behind and will need to watch/read some sort of "refresher" before delving into the game, since I don't remember all that was going on up to and right after the "Red Wedding."

I haven't been on a "looting" binge so much as a platforming one, which makes Rayman a good fit as well as the Rare Replay. I may end up just "keeping" that for 33% off.

 

[Zookster]

With minimal expectation for a mobile app, I'm really enjoying Fallout Shelter. I've become a bit addicted in fact, constantly checking on my vault throughout the day to collect the various rewards that come through the more you open the app. It's also great to play while watching sports or anything else on TV. I love the humor and animations and have even taken a shine to the whole resource management sim aspect. I've actually never played a sim game like this before, so the casualness of the app is a good intro to the genre for me. It's really hard to completely fail if you are at all trying and paying attention. My first couple of hours were touch-and-go, as I was learning proper strategies. But once I got the basics down, it's been a snap to keep building and moving forward.

I was bailed out of my early troubles by unlocking Lunchboxes (4 random perks) by completing easy objectives. Of course now the Lunchboxes are much harder to come by (the objectives are more difficult and time consuming) since you can buy them with real money. However, as much as I enjoy the game and wouldn't mind putting money into it, I simply refuse to pay for random unlocks. Much of what you get in the Lunchbox (1 stimpak, 100 caps, 1 RadAway, etc.) can be unlocked within 15-20 minutes of gameplay. But I may go ahead and pay a buck to buy one Mr. Handy to complete my Fallout Shelter experience, since I'm not yet sure if one can be unlocked in-game (though perhaps it can be unlocked in a Lunchbox).

 

[yourbeliefs]

I tried out Shelter a few days ago. Seemed okay, but when I was looking up how to play the game "correctly" my head started to spin, as it seemed like too much micromanagement. In any case it's a nice little game that doesn't gouge players with standard "Free 2 Play" shenanigans, and it's a good tool to advertise Fallout 4.

Speaking of Shelter..

http://kotaku.com/bethesda-is-advertising-fallout-on-tinder-1724699875

 

[Zookster]

I tried out Shelter a few days ago. Seemed okay, but when I was looking up how to play the game "correctly" my head started to spin, as it seemed like too much micromanagement. In any case it's a nice little game that doesn't gouge players with standard "Free 2 Play" shenanigans, and it's a good tool to advertise Fallout 4.

Speaking of Shelter..

http://kotaku.com/bethesda-is-advertising-fallout-on-tinder-1724699875

Now that I've got over 40 dwellers, it's getting pretty crazy trying to keep up with all the resources needed, which involves equipping everyone for a particular job and training them to increase certain skill points. And now that my vault is growing, I'm finding I need to make sure I spread out my strong, weapon-wielding warrior types throughout (not just near the vault door, where the raiders come in). Yesterday morning, a mole rat attack on the lower levels killed 7 dwellers (it costs 200-500 caps to revive them depending on their level) and today a radroach attack killed 4 dwellers because I didn't have a strong weapon carrier in the vicinity.

I did go ahead and buy the Mr. Handy, and while I don't regret throwing a dollar at Bethesda for my FS experience, it wasn't really necessary in terms of helping my dwellers. (Mr. Handy had little impact on the radroach problem mentioned above; and in fact, he loses health and can't be repaired and will eventually die, costing 2,000 caps to revive). So in other words, in-game purchases aren't really a great boon unless you want to spend $40-$50 to buy Lunchboxes in the hopes of unlocking a legendary weapon or dweller that will really make a difference.

 

[king3pj]

Now that I've got over 40 dwellers, it's getting pretty crazy trying to keep up with all the resources needed, which involves equipping everyone for a particular job and training them to increase certain skill points. And now that my vault is growing, I'm finding I need to make sure I spread out my strong, weapon-wielding warrior types throughout (not just near the vault door, where the raiders come in). Yesterday morning, a mole rat attack on the lower levels killed 7 dwellers (it costs 200-500 caps to revive them depending on their level) and today a radroach attack killed 4 dwellers because I didn't have a strong weapon carrier in the vicinity.

I did go ahead and buy the Mr. Handy, and while I don't regret throwing a dollar at Bethesda for my FS experience, it wasn't really necessary in terms of helping my dwellers. (Mr. Handy had little impact on the radroach problem mentioned above; and in fact, he loses health and can't be repaired and will eventually die, costing 2,000 caps to revive). So in other words, in-game purchases aren't really a great boon unless you want to spend $40-$50 to buy Lunchboxes in the hopes of unlocking a legendary weapon or dweller that will really make a difference.

The way I dealt with it was just not keeping any of the dwellers armed. When something happened I could give guns to everyone in the room where the attack was happening. I never lost a single dweller doing this since attacks don't happen when you are outside of the app.

My experiences were on iOS and only in the first week the app was available so things could be different on Android a month or two later but it worked for me.

 

[yourbeliefs]

The way I dealt with it was just not keeping any of the dwellers armed. When something happened I could give guns to everyone in the room where the attack was happening. I never lost a single dweller doing this since attacks don't happen when you are outside of the app.

My experiences were on iOS and only in the first week the app was available so things could be different on Android a month or two later but it worked for me.

Yeah the iOS version got a big update on the same day the Android app was released.

 

[Zookster]

The way I dealt with it was just not keeping any of the dwellers armed. When something happened I could give guns to everyone in the room where the attack was happening. I never lost a single dweller doing this since attacks don't happen when you are outside of the app.

My experiences were on iOS and only in the first week the app was available so things could be different on Android a month or two later but it worked for me.

Interesting strategy, though it would be a pain to arm and disarm everyone in the room every time, I imagine. I usually try and move my heavies to any area under attack, but by the time the heavy gets to the room, sometimes the attack has already spread to the next room where, for example, I may have a bunch of unarmed scientists working. But perhaps I'll keep a handful of weapons in reserve.

Regardless, I'm definitely out once Deathclaws start attacking. I heard even level 50 dwellers with maxed skills and a legendary weapon are no match for them.