mkreku

I tried playing Breath of the Wild, but.. I'm a huge fan of open world games (I even buy games only because they're open world, like Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3) and I've played a lot of them over the years. I've also enjoyed some of the Zelda games before. But I could not get into Breath of the Wild. All the reviews have been absolutely raving about how good it is and how Nintendo is teaching everyone else how to build open worlds. In my opinion, Nintendo made almost every mistake a newcomer to world building could make: indistinct areas, instantly respawning enemies, finite vital resources, resetting world states, lots and lots of filler content instead of 'real' content, annoyingly impassable areas that you need to traverse over and over, the list goes on. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised to see Oblivion-like level scaling in there (I never got that far before giving up). The biggest problem for me though was the story. Or the lack of it. There was absolutely nothing there to keep me going. There was no goal, no aim, no interesting things in the distance. Just dullness. I think I played for 8-10 hours before I gave up. Oh, and the last game I bought was.. 1nsane on GOG. I wanted Singularity too, but $30 for an eight year old game? Uh.. keep it.

Since I like lists.. here's another one. https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/834-best-rpgs-of-all-time-community-picks.html I'm only posting it here because they (like me) consider Stalker to be an RPG. Take that, non-believers! Edit: This was supposed to be in the news thread, but it ended up here and I'm too lazy to move it.

Meet my partner Lydia: Yes, hmm.. maybe I was a little harsh earlier, maybe Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is worth 6/10 after all.

Exactly my kind of game!

Still think Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is very pretty..

OK, so I have been playing Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 for a while now and the first few hours seemed very good, bordering on great, and I kept wondering to myself why this game got such middling review scores. After a few hours of playing I understood it completely. The world is great, the presentation top notch, the fire fights and sniping are naturally quite good (although enemies spawn in when you get close to the levels they are in and not when you can reach then through your binoculars, which irks me a little) and even the quests/writing seems OK (more the quests than the dialogue actually..). So what's the problem? This game plays a lot like Stalker. You have your world, things happen and you shoot yourself out of situations. But in Stalker you feel progression. It's an absolute blast to find a new weapon (even more so if it's modded or unique) and feel yourself become more accurate, more deadly and more powerful. In Sniper I find a new weapon and.. nothing. I get the same results whether I'm using the starting weapon or the fourth sniper rifle I've bought from the list in my home base. I bought a light armor. No difference (maybe one more bullet before I died?). I invested in some skills (Sniper has very light skill trees). Great, now I have an extra slot of health (one more bullet before I die again?). This game has really put into light how absolutely freaking awesome the Stalker series is, and how difficult it must be to balance such a thing to both make it challenging for the player AND give the player that feeling of progression and getting better. Sniper fails completely in this regard. In fact, even though the rest of the game is good/great, I fear continuing knowing that the actual gameplay will never really change. I will not shoot farther, I will not aim better, I will not change my playstyle the further I go. I will do exactly the same thing from beginning to end in this game. Maybe I'm still too early in to have a valid opinion (around 20-25% completed), but right now it's hovering on 5/10 or some such.

I recently bought Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 for some reason. I wasn't expecting much, but so far I'm pleasantly surprised. After a slightly awkward introduction you're let loose in a big open world. An open world where you're equipped with a sniper rifle... The deer population will never be the same. I also think it looks very nice. Much better than I was expecting. The attention to detail is top notch and the interactivity is also quite good (although I have hit the edge of a canvas that stopped my sniper rifle bullet dead in its tracks once). I've only played for two hours yet, but so far so good.

Apparently Pillars 2 is quite good: https://wccftech.com/review/pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/

Finished Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. It's such a great game, only way it could have been better is if it had been fully open world and had a lot more equipment to choose from. Also longer.

Since I have 400+ games in my Steam library it's easier to filter the currently installed games. I'm playing like.. two of those.

They were and I loved all three of them (and even the fourth on PS2). But since we have viable 3D graphics now I was hoping for updated game mechanics, like Bethesda did with Fallout. I played those games despite having crappy 3D and movement, not because of it.

I just remembered I backed Bard's Tale 4 for the $95 Premier Collector's Edition - Early Bard. Expected delivery October 2017.. hehe. I'm not regretting anything although I'm sure I'm gonna hate the game. I just couldn't play the Grimrock games, they felt so ancient, and this reminds me of those.

I love that Obsidian probably haven't even noticed this thread on their own boards. Glad you guys can stand the filth over at the Codex and translate it for me here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaW0tYpxyp0 Help, Rockstar has me wrapped around their finger again!

I usually try to make my player character look as gay as possible. I wonder what that says about me..

Strange. I also felt the need to replay Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl around the same time you did. I wonder what triggered it? Anyhow, I am using the Stalker Complete mod. That's all I need, slightly better graphics and less bugs. Also, I forgot how fantastic this game is. It's amazing how they managed to make the character progression feel better than 95% of rpg's despite not using any levels or experience points or even skills!

Ryzen 2X00 series comes out in two days. https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-2700x-x470-review-out-beats-i7-8700k-in-7-10-game-tests/ It actually beats the Intel Core i7 8700k in 7 out of 10 games tested. This is kinda impressive if it's true, since the 8700k is the best gaming processor out there right now. We will see. I'm building an ITX gaming computer soon, I might opt for the Ryzen 2700 for that build. It's underclocked compared to the 2700X, but it's only 65W! That's kinda neat for an 8 core part.

Wasteland 3 is on track: https://wccftech.com/wasteland-3-hitting-all-major-milestones/ I kinda liked Wasteland 2, but..it just didn't have the same charm as the first game for me. Also, it was a bit surprising that the game actually felt like a step back in modern design! I mean, the first Wasteland had an open world and lots of reactivity. Wasteland 2 was level based and felt much less reactive. The story was also stronger in the first, but that may have had something to do with you having to read a book to take part of the story..

Imagine if music had to be removed from movies after ten years.. Why are games treated so badly?

Fly a plane instead! https://i.imgur.com/Eqg1qP7.gifv Best flying physics ever!

So, despite being able to shoot individual branches, set things on fire and fire a rocket into the sky that comes down again, it still wasn't fun to play? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

So basically you bought a full price open world game knowing you'd hate both the driving mechanics and the combat. Kinda makes me wonder why you bought it? You were expecting an engrossing story perhaps?

I'm on almost the same system as the topic starter and I would really not recommend getting any RAM for it. Just wait it out and purchase a new mobo and CPU/RAM combo when the prices normalize. I did the RAM upgrade myself (from something like DDR3-1600 to DDR3-2133) and from 6GB to 12GB, but it did practically **** all to my performance. I'm on a Core i7-970 and R9 290X system instead of Core i7-920 and 980Ti, but they're essentially the same.

Just a few shots I took from Assassin's Creed: Origins. These pics were all taken on between medium and high settings (first game my poor old Core i7 970/R9 290X hasn't been able to keep above high settings at least). I still say this is the prettiest Assassin's Creed I've played, but I never did play Unity or Rogue. Or Brotherhood. Or Reveletions. ****, I have some playing to do (I own all except Unity). Just taken randomly from different parts of the game. Just pics I found nice and relaxing.

I'll take a proper systems-driven approach over sterile, entirely predictable gameplay any time - in spite of Far Cry 3 being excellent, turning down on reactivity ended up harming the gameplay and throwing the game into a 'generic shooter' category. Yeah, me too. Luckily the later Far Cry's are neither sterile nor predictable. You're confusing reactability with predictability. Sure, it's cool to see individual branches being shot off from a tree. But how long did you play 'shoot branches off trees'? Even five minutes? Did it actually matter once you were in a firefight (cue the forced stories about how much difference it made in that particular firefight YOU had blah blah)? In reality.. it didn't matter at all. Cool on paper (and in a video), pretty much non-existant when playing the game. Weapons falling apart after two magazines? Fun or annoying? Cars breaking down after (predictably) exactly 10 kilometers no matter how you drive? Still having fun? Want to talk about predictability? How about we mention those outposts again? You know with 100% certainty what will happen when you see one. They are never empty, they are never friendly, there are never even different types of soldiers (or even number of soldiers!). Go play any of the newer Far Cry's and tell me they're predictable once you've attacked an outpost, been attacked from behind by a patrol while a plane crashes into a mountain in the distance and a honey badger eats up your last sliver of life. You can criticize a lot of stuff in the Far Cry series, but predictability is not one of them. Unless.. you mistake reactability for predictability and think shooting a tree into smaller chunks is unpredictable. Like I said, Far Cry 2 looks great on paper, so many systems, so much reactivity. Just in a below average game. Edit: added an example of what I consider unpredictability (taken from Far Cry 5): https://i.imgur.com/K0JCpIY.mp4