Humanoid

Started a game of CK2 as a single county count in East Francia. A number of years later made Duke of Austria for no reason. A couple of decades later elected Holy Roman Emperor for no reason. End of game. One of those weird things where things line up to end in a nonsensical outcome. In the just-under-30 years gametime I had, I started no wars, did not expand past my single county, was nowhere near Austria to justify being made Duke, and had no specific allies to further my non-existent political goals.

Do your standard rulers you use at school not have 1-30cm on one edge and 1-12in on the other? Measuring cups with mL on one side and fl oz on the other? Nutritional labels on food with both kJ and calories?

Yeah, I really burned out on the hacking minigame in HR, and now it's functionally the same, but presented even worse with less clarity and usability. This minigame in general is one of those things that look okay on paper as a designer, until you realise the player is going to be faced with hundreds of repetitions of the exact same thing. Minigames aren't going away anytime soon, but the best implementations typically take about half the time, and usually there's a second completely different minigame to break it up a little. Incidentally I also think the animations in the game have somehow gotten even twitchier and generally stilted, which is quite the accomplishment given how hopped up on caffeine everyone in the previous game looked. Hmm. And because complaints come in threes, why is Jensen's toilet seat a square? Is it a special design for augmented butts?

I liked the tutorial level right up until the sandstorm. At that point, I just panicked because I didn't have a clue where anyone was or what I was supposed to do. Only way I figured out how to keep Singh alive was by shooting him myself with the non-lethal dart so the enemies would think he's already dead. The sandstorm bugged me because it seemed like I was the only one blinded by it. I couldn't see jack all, but my enemies saw me (and Singh) like it was a bright and sunny day out. I probably reloaded a couple dozen times, and the first third of those it was probably because I had no idea what I was expected to do. I'll admit I didn't even know you were supposed to jump off the cliff to start the engagement, again one weakness of the poorly-explained augment suite you start off with. In the end I just made a few exploratory rushes on the helicopter to figure out where the non-obvious objective point was, then used the invisibility augment to magically walk over to said point and immediately end the mission. Because I guess all the bad guys magically realise their craft is no longer flyable and give up fighting the moment that happens (did Jensen eat the battery or something?). On reflection, the process of just standing around trying to figure out what's happening reveals another dumb thing: the VIP you're meant to rescue spends the whole time standing out in the open exchanging gunfire while being outnumbered a dozen to one, even before the sandstorm starts. If not for the metagamer in me knowing there'll inevitably be a reward for saving him, I'd say he's too dumb to live. P.S. To compare the stealth gameplay with Dishonored again, it boggles the mind that there's still no option to carry bodies over your shoulder, and allowing you to chain a silent takedown into it, when it's bloody obvious Jensen should easily be capable of that. This addition alone would be huge improvement on how the stealth gameplay feels.

Yeah, i got through the subsequent cutscene (and boy does this game not do subtlety), and saw that. Hopefully this'll be the start of my positive experiences with the game, because as in HR, my least favourite parts of the game were the long, self-contained story missions. And if the game continues to sink, well, at least the GOTY patch for The Witcher 3 is out. That, and I'm weighing up WoW Legion, which seems to have a positive reception so far despite my dislike of the direction they're taking the game storywise (particularly the utter laziness of bringing back big-name dead villains).

I think they went overboard with throwing you into the deep end. You have barely any context to the mission you've just been thrown into, you have all your augments unlocked with the most threadbare of tutorials covering them, and I really didn't like that final setpiece and its gimmicks, though my experience is probably coloured as someone who prefers to play as a silent ghost. With the takedown system continuing to be awful (seriously, Dishonored came out in the interim, just copy that), it does feel like my preferred style is being somewhat marginalised for the big Hollywood bombast. Compare that to the opening of Human Revolution, where Jensen is a regular dude with a gun. Yes, in terms of narrative it makes sense that in one game you start with nothing, and the other you're fully kitted out with everything, but I don't think it makes for good gameplay when you just throw everything at the player right off the bat and let them sink or swim. It's been five years (I was surprised when I looked that up), I think managing the learning curve a little better would be nice. I'm not giving up on the game by any measure, and I know the part of the game I like best - wandering around the city hubs doing odd jobs - will come up later, but the impression I'm getting at the moment is "more of the same" rather than "new and improved".

Finally found some time to finish the opening mission of Mankind Divided. I think I've finally found an opening mission worse than Fallout 2's Temple of Trials. It's kind of poured a huge bucket of ice-cold contaminated water on my enthusiasm for the game.

Don't know anything about the game, but perhaps a useful guinea pig for testing Galaxy's multiplayer implementation before I commit to getting GOG keys for D:OS2.

Going with one stick means it will simply be slower. Going with two instead of four makes sense because performance is the same (maybe someone can find a squillionth of a percentage difference if they really wanted to) but allows for future upgrades since most boards only have four slots. Another benefit is having less components in the machine overall makes it less likely something will go wrong. Troubleshooting two sticks if you do run into any issues is also easier than four.

Bumbling around with the controls in the DXMD tutorial level. I don't know whether it's because I've mostly forgotten how the previous game played, or if it's because of the new control scheme, but I'm struggling to get a grip on the movement system while in cover. With most actions being context sensitive, it seems half the time I try something I think clever, I end up leaping out into the open and doing the YMCA instead. (I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, but the primary issue I'm having is the extreme close range I have to be to actually take the cover, coupled it seeming visually a bit less obvious that you've taken said cover. With the overloading of the space key, I too-often end up just jumping on the spot while standing a metre or so behind the cover piece.)

Looking at the price history, Origin have had it for 50% off at most, Steam at 60%, full price is the same. No reason not to try to sell it on Origin given they take the same 30% cut as the other major platforms.

Yeah, I just noticed the announcement at the top of the forum and was wondering if it'd been there since 2006 and that perhaps I'd just never noticed it.

Saving up all the DDoS attacks for the US launch probably.

My copy of DXMD arrived today from the UK, exactly one week after it was sent out. Can't complain about that, especially since I only paid the equivalent of $40USD all up. Thanks Brexit! Game comes on three DVDs which is reasonable, unlike the publishers who ship single discs with nothing but a Steam installer on it. About 3-4GB needed to be downloaded. Interestingly the Steam key is printed on the inside of the sleeve, which seems a bit of an extreme cost-cutting measure to me, but eh. On the downside, my only SSD with enough room for the game (~50GB) is my system drive. Oh well, guess I'll be picking up yet another one sooner rather than later.

Having a look at the features added by the new CK2 patch 2.6 which was released alongside the new DLC. Don't care about the DLC in itself, but the best new addition by far is the ability to remove new additions, finally. Most of the ill-conceived, boneheaded and sometimes outright idiotic mechanics added to the game throughout the years can now be toggled on and off as desired. No more having to rollback patches or use mods to get your own preferred gameplay experience. So yeah, happy this feature is in, but I hope they learn their lesson and build this kind of functionality into every future game they release by default. Really no excuse for it to not exist.

DXHR burned me out with its main missions, which were overlong, and towards the second half of the game occurred without proper pacing due to additional city hubs being cut. These long, mostly linear story missions were happening back to back to back and I just couldn't take anymore. Tooling around in Detroit and Hengsha was fun, there just wasn't enough of it - if Montreal and maybe also Singapore were implemented like the other two cities, I might even have called it a great game. Hopefully DXMD gets the balance right. My copy is in the mail so I'll find out next week most likely.

Depends on the individual game. Some still can't use more than two cores, but the proportion of those which can is increasing so anyone planning to keep their machine for 5+ years should be looking at a quad-core.

The DVDs by themselves are not relevant, as the ISOs are freely downloadable (or at least they were, MS make you jump through some hoops now to get them). The important thing is whether they came with separate licence keys. It seems unlikely to me, as there's no reason for anyone to give them to you. More likely what happened is that Win8 Pro came with downgrade rights, because a lot of businesses still required Win7. Therefore MS made it possible to install Win7 with the Win8 Pro key.

I haven't done much research lately, really this is from when I was building a PC for my sister at the start of the year. Ended up going for a G550M. I usually use JonnyGuru for PSU reviews but they haven't reviewed the CoolerMaster or the directly competing Corsair CX450M, however both are well-regarded on their forums. There's a Seasonic G450 for 20EUR more if going for the premium option, but at the basic level I can't really go past the above two options. Doing a search now and the CM is quieter while the Corsair might have theoretically better caps. I'm of the opinion that it'd take some extremely bad luck to have either fail, whereas quietness is something that affects the day-to-day user experience, so I'd plump for the CM. P.S. The SII and MII from Seasonic are from last decade and while they're still serviceable, it's probably time to put those designs out to pasture. EDIT: Both the CM and the Corsair are made by Channelwell, so it's a bit of a muchness anyway, there is no wrong decision between the two.

You want this thing to last, you get a proper quad-core. The age of the dual-core gaming machine is over. Other than that, hard to say without knowing where you're buying from. I priced a 1500EUR machine for fellow Finn Lord Socks a few pages ago using German stores, so if that's an option for you, here's a sample build (no idea what delivery will be). In terms of the decision-making process, I've changed to the cheapest Skylake quad-core, picked an appropriate motherboard (I think H110 is too bare-bones, and also like having 4 RAM slots for future upgrades), added an SSD, and gone to 16GB RAM. The rest is simply picking the cheapest option offered. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (€179.92 @ Mindfactory) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€73.10 @ Amazon Deutschland) Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (€57.37 @ Amazon Deutschland) Storage: Sandisk X400 256GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (€79.99 @ Amazon Deutschland) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€52.77 @ Amazon Deutschland) Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 470 4GB Video Card (€215.84 @ Mindfactory) Case: Fractal Design Core 1300 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (€48.49 @ Amazon Deutschland) Power Supply: Cooler Master GM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (€59.89 @ Amazon Deutschland) Optical Drive: LG GH24NSC0 DVD/CD Writer (€14.59 @ Amazon Deutschland) Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (€101.52 @ Mindfactory) Total: €883.48 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-24 13:59 CEST+0200 Some notes: - It may be possible to get a cheaper Haswell platform, if you choose to go that way you'd go something like i5-4460 + B85 board + DDR3. On the other hand upgrading to a 6500 is a decent idea too because it's got a sizable clock speed advantage. - The B150 chipset is theoretically aimed at business workstations. In reality though, the only advantage the costlier H170 gives you is more PCI-E lanes, which is only relevant for Crossfire. - Some games like fast RAM, but unfortunately Intel has locked all platforms except Z170 to the basic 2133MHz stuff. You can still get slightly faster RAM by looking for lower latency (CL13 instead of the CL15 on the cheapest stuff) if desired. - You can save a few bucks on a non-M.2 SSD, but the X400 is one of the better TLC SSDs, and M.2 is neat (it's a thumb-sized SSD that plugs straight into the motherboard, instead of having to mess with mounting a 2.5" drive and messing with SATA cables). - Only really picked the CoolerMaster G450M over other options because it's the most affordable PSU that has modular cables while still being a good PSU in general. Can you tell I hate messing with cable routing? - You could try your luck for the OS on the microsoftsoftwareswap subreddit. Legally it's a grey place, I suspect most of the keys being sold are TechNet keys which are generated by subscribers. The generation itself is legitimate, but they're meant to be for personal use of whoever holds the subscription, not for reselling. But for $20 a copy, I know plenty of people are happy to take the plunge, and if MS deactivates the key a couple of years down the track, then eh, spend another $20 and you're still ahead.

Well yeah, four party members with 120% XP each is fine. But the gameplay of a party of four would be far closer to that of playing a full party of six than a party of two, or one. The XP bonus probably needs to be exponential to the number of missing party members, rather than the linear bonus being applied now.

10% more XP for each "missing" party member I believe. So instead of 6 people getting 1000XP each, you have one person getting 1500XP. Appreciate the thought, but under my brief experience with trying it, it was decidedly Not Viable.

XCOM 2 has released all the DLC that is part of their "season pass", but that's not really saying much, it's not a lot of content. I mean I own it, but can't be bothered to start a new game just to play it because the fundamental gameplay experience would be unchanged. Across the 3 DLCs you get a grand total of two new scripted missions. *Two*. The rest of the content consists of the addition of mechs, the introduction of some special boss aliens, the obligatory new guns and stuff, and a bunch of purely cosmetic options for soldier customisation. Besides that, there's been no announcement as of yet for any further content, whether DLC or fully-fledged expansion, though you'd imagine the latter is quite likely to happen at some point.

Just looked it up briefly and it looks no different to HR? A game which also featured a revolver that could shoot high-explosive bullets, and both laser and plasma rifles.

Still, at least they won't have to imagine what a devastated New Orleans would look like. It would be genuinely interesting in a couple of ways. Fallout up to this point has been mostly dry wasteland, so it's an opportunity to mix it up a bit and have a setting where water is the predominate feature. The other would be the music. Actually on second thought, scrap Fallout and make a game inspired by Down by Law.