Fenixp

Finished the White Orchard area in TW3. I really quite love that bit - it's obvious CDP did this area when they knew what they were doing. It's concise, everything's there for a reason (including all the question mark bits which actually all have a story and meaning behind them), all quests in it have their little twists and turns... Yeah, this is what I love TW3 for. It's a shame that next area I can look forward to with the same level of quality is possibly Novigrad - the quality drop in Velen when it comes to exploration is just jarring.

Well, we did have a whole bunch of hacks and mods when D2 was the shiz, so people who did complain found a way

Well, do you prefer grind or storytelling? I for one opted for the latter and am currently replaying Witcher 3

No, I'm afraid not really. In spite of being a fan of X series, I really looked forward to X: Rebirth's take on X series as more streamlined, dumber experience. Sadly, the game commits suicide by all the pointless busy work it makes you go through, and it somehow ends up being less complex while at the same time slower and more cumbersome version of X. Don't get me wrong, I really hope you get your enjoyment out of it - but if you find it incredibly boring, just... Don't judge the entirety of X series by it.

Well, regardless of what one opts to use, competition's always a good thing. And if Epic's store gains any traction, for many it'll mean that Valve will try to provide a better service. It means anyone can use whatever DRM scheme they pick to use, essentially, or none at all. I can't really see the Epic store distributing stand-alone installers so it's mostly moot anyway, but it's kinda nice.

Incidentally, Epic store launched. They want to compete with Steam - and I can't really think of many studios on the market with even remote chance of doing this. Epic owns UE4, develops Fortnite and, apparently, they want to give out a free game every two weeks upon launch, starting with Subnautica. They also managed to secure PC release of Journey, formely a PS exclusive. Link Oh, right, and apparently, the store won't enforce any DRM scheme. Edit: Oooh, and a new Supergiant game? ... Interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=593xCDfumN0

*Negativity time with Fenixp* Why does it feel so... Borderlands? Why does it feel so generic? I'd be completely unphased by the trailer if I didn't know it was made by Obsidian. That's not to say I'm particularly phased now. Did they see a Rage 2 trailer and go "Let's make our own"?

Is it any good? What would you compare it to? Looks a bit Mount and Bladey to me. Can you romance a broomstick?

HITMAN. After scrounging like every millimeter of the level, I'm slowly wrapping up Hokkaido the way I wanted to. I have it on good authority Hitman 2016'll become my game of 2018. Now I'm certain I'll be grabbing the second second game once the price drops a bit.

Yeah, I'm stashing a sniper rifle next time I'm in the area. Oh look, my hospital room has a nice view! And a nice spa! ... I wonder, if I just changed temperature of the water a bit to clear the people out... Dressed as that yoga dude over there... And, y'know... Offered my target some yoga lessons she's been craving I could get a decent stretch for straters. And, y'know, while she's so close to the edge, I might as well... Push. Oh. Well the employees don't get rooms quite as nice as I do. At least they get to DANCE DANCE tho! And, as a part of my secret evil plan, I set their difficulty higher.

They do give you a whole lot of choice in how you want to build your party and characters tho. I don't think RDR2's really built to support more than a single role that's been chosen for the main character by the writers.

Considering what I've seen in previous Rockstar games, "Mission failed" may quite easily be a "Game over" screen which'll make you load a checkpoint, so unless your choice is to be stuck in an endless groundhog day scenario, you don't get any. I might be wrong, Rockstar may have shifted their mission formula somewhat. I mean, their Australian branch absolutely did that with LA Noir - at the end of a mission (or case, as it were), the game would tell you whether you actually caught the suspect or not and then the story would just sort of continue, your failure persisting. That was nice.

Well, melkathi, that's because you are a gentleman and a scholar. Tag would be below you.

In my eyes, this sentence translates to: "I want all fantasy RPG games to be precisely the same game with no attempts at innovation or evolution." Dunno what about you, but I for one am quite glad that nowadays, both Kingmaker and Deadfire can exist, giving us all a choice in what we want to play. It's not like Deadfire pretends it's a game in a different setting than it actually is. (And no, you wouldn't play Black Flag to roleplay a pirate. You wouldn't play Black Flag to roleplay just about anything.)

Well... Let's say that the only thing you'd be getting X1 and 2 would be for the story. X3 pretty much incorporates everything that was in the previous games and builds heaps unpon it, so if it's the freelance do whatever component you're interested in, just getting X3: Albion Prelude is all you really need (albeit I think there's more mods for Terran Conflict, which also seems to be a bit less buggy?)

Pfff, you can just come for the PDXCON 2028 and get the GOTY ticket for the 2018 one. Well there's an understatement. I really, really tried to like that game, but in name of being more action and character-oriented it gives you a lot less options than X3 did while at the same time it somehow managed to feel like much more of a chore. And, after it got announced and we got told what it'll be, I was really excited for an X game which falls outside of the X series and is more action and character oriented! I swear, if I watch a gameplay video of X4 and I see someone flying around a station like a lunatic trying to "Scan" it, I'm not touching the game with a 10ft pole.

I'd go as far as to say that both PoE games had significantly better quality of writing than both Baldur's Gate games. However, I'd also dare to say that many people playing fantasy games often won't really look for particularly great writing but instead for a chance to experience their Standard Fantasy World which'll be reactive and able to accommodate whichever character they dreamed up lately, so tropy would actually be precisely what some'll be looking for.

IIRC X3: Albion Prelude is the first X game with official full gamepad support, including button combinations to (more or less) reasonably access all the stuff you need via the pad. Nonetheless, gamepad support in all X games that had it (including Rebirth) just felt really weird to me for some reason, and albeit I don't have one, I can imagine them being a lot more comfortably playable with a stick next to a keyboard on your desk. (I'm not sure Rebirth still supports sticks, then again, you don't really want to play Rebirth.) As for me, I always played X games with mouse and keyboard and never had any issues with it. The mouse controls are actually fairly intelligent and they're not particularly combat-focused anyway - you're going to be navigating a lot of menus and menus are best navigated with mouse and keyboard.

In today's episode of Hitting men, let's talk about the dynamic soundtrack. I bloody love soundtracks that are properly dynamic. 'Properly' as in 'Dynamically react to your actions' as opposed to 'There's a different track for combat and for non-combat'. So there's the Hotel mission and on approach to the hotel, the game'll interrupt its usual dramatic ambient music with good ol' fashioned orchestral Bondage. You then get in the hotel and do whatever - so naturally, I talked to the receptionist, told him ... A name and a steward took me to my room where Agency stashed some poison. Naturally, entering the safe room would start a musical cue. While I was looking around the hotel and found a lone chef that I could choke out and disguise as, dramatic music would start playing as I assaulted him and while I was hiding his body, which then changed to (what I assume is) 47's triumphant theme when I managed it all. I posted this over yonder in the pictures thread, but it's related, so... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UykPVofQuyU

You mean the -neural- ending? Eh? Eh?

Hello, mr. Novikov. I've mixed your favorite drink for you. With the... Special ingredient. I'm sure that plane is a possible escape vector. I will attempt to destroy the virus. Now, cue the Bond music! ... Oh wait, they did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UykPVofQuyU Yeah, people don't tend to notice strangers in a crowd. Especially in a crowd of protesters. ... Protesters that don't have a clue that the man they wish to rip apart lives no longer. What a nice hotel. I'm here for my room, see. So lead the way, steward. The room looks... Expensive. Of course, I've had agency stash some poison in it. In case a more ... hands-on approach fails. It did not. (Also, **** working mirros. Suck it, naysayers, a modern engine can do a functional mirror! I can live with some performance loss!)

Couldn't stand previous Hitman games - I felt like the levels weren't expansive enough and the guards were too trigger-happy. In other words no, you don't really need to have played them. Right now, guards catching you where you don't belong escort you out of an area. In fact, even if you fire your weapon, they'll often prefer to point their gun at you and ask you to drop your weapon and put your hands behind your head (which happends to be a thing you can do, incidentally, albeit 47 will immediately incapacitate the guard pointing the gun at him). Of course, that doesn't apply to 'top secret evil villain lair' areas, they'll shoot quite fast in those. To be fair, this makes me feel like the game's a bit too easy if anything, on standard difficulty anyway - but I feel reactions like that are a lot more natural so it works for me. Besides, the ratings at the end of the levels (if you care about that kind of thing. Usually, I don't, but in Hitman and Dishonored I do for some reason) are pretty strict about stuff like getting spotted, leaving bodies behind, killing non-targets, not destroying camera evidence etc. Additionally, it seems to me like majority of the (pretty damn large) levels are 'civilian' in nature, with mere parts of the maps with restricted access that you get to infiltrate - so you get to walk about the level, incognito, listen to conversations, inspect possible ways in, plan and only then go in. Usually, while I do that, I make a "TODO" list in my head of "I gotta try that on next playthrough of this level!" - and the game makes it exceptionally easy to replan and replay them as well.

Well I suppose I'm giving Observer a miss. Looked nice on the screenshots! Anyway, still going through Hitman. I've got something over 11 hours clocked in and I've got as far as the third map out of 6, isn't that impressive? I mean, the game can be finished really damned quickly if you want to considering its open-ended nature, but to actually get the story of the individual locations and actual stories of your targets, you really have to play through it multiple times - not to mention all the different ways of assassinating your targets. The game's really quite special and, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best take on the Hitman formula thus far (didn't play Hitman 2-2, so that may be even better)

How else are you going to get all the clicks, tho?