Keyrock

Dynasty Warriors 8 coming to PC in May

The Clippers/Warriors series should be fun to watch. That, to me, seems like the most fun of the 1st round series. At least, on paper.

The combat itself, once the shooting starts, in Call of Pripyat, or any of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games is pretty mediocre, in my opinion. Everything leading up to the combat is absolutely brilliant. Trying to remain unseen and silent, crawling through the reeds, peeking around a wall, hearing sounds and trying to pinpoint their source, finding a good vantage point and looking for a good spot of cover to snipe from. Going through all the preparation only to have a blowout approach screwing everything up and turning things into a frantic scramble to get to shelter without getting gunned down.

Here you go, Bruce

More Call of Pripyat. I made my way to the first helicopter crash site, the one near the sawmill. I should have just went there when I was at the sawmill getting tools for Cardan, it would have saved me a walk. Oh well. After that, I went to the snork filled caverns to get snag's container. Easy peasy. Of course, I didn't give the container to Snag, because I'm shady like that, instead I had Cardan open it for me for a small fee. I kept what I needed and sold the rest, giving me enough scratch to upgrade my SVD and Viper 5 to acceptable killing machine levels. Next up I'm going to do The Hit. I had tipped off Beard earlier, so I'm going to wipe out the bandits. The weaponry I have now will be acceptable for a while. The SVD is a mean murder machine, but obviously rather situational. The Viper 5, which I like much better than the 74/2U you start with, is quite effective at short to medium range. I don't mind that it loses accuracy very rapidly at longer ranges, that's what I carry a sniper rifle around for. I like that the Viper 5 doesn't have a wild amount of recoil so that I can neatly land 3 or 4 shot bursts and rarely waste many bullets. The stopping power is... acceptable. I'm not going to waste any more money on upgrading it beyond the basic upgrades I've already had done to it, since I'll likely wind up getting something better relatively soon. My main goal right now is to get some better armor than the sunrise bodysuit you start with.

This very much mirrors my own rant on the game some months ago when I played it, except you did it in a much more calm and rational manner, whereas my rant was a lot more bitter and hate fueled. The game skews heavily toward everything I hated about the Tomb Rider series (combat) and away from everything I loved about the series (exploration, puzzle platforming). It's a well made game, but it's a cover shooter masquerading as a Tomb Raider game, not actually a Tomb Raider game.

Same here. The difference between winning and losing would have been the price of a cup of coffee, but I'll gladly keep that in my wallet. I need to set aside a weekend to jump back into Zeus, not this weekend, though, since I'll be away visiting my folks.

Sweet. Now I can finish up my globetrotting adventure with George and Nico. Cool. I probably won't play it for a few weeks, though.

Yeah, the end game stuff isn't the greatest, but I'm a very long way off from that and the journey there is so worth it. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games create there amazing dynamic moments of tension and desperation. Slowly stumbling, wounded, irradiated, out of breath, out of first aid kits, toward Yanov Station. Hearing a blowout approaching and desperately trying to make it to shelter while muties chase you. The first time encountering a chimera. Good times.

I was off by 2 bucks. I just found out this is a $2.99 DLC.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat with a few mods, nothing game changing though. I'm using AtmosFear 3, which, in addition to making things look prettier, does change the weather patters and introduces a new storm type, but doesn't radically change the game, and Absolute Nature 3 and Particle Paradise, which are strictly graphical mods. The Zone is an eerily beautiful place, but if you stop for too long to admire it, it will kill you. I've only just started. I got the artifact from the Dredge, then made my way to the Sawmill and scooped up the basic toolkit for Cardov. I thought about taking out most, or all, of the zombies there to make getting the toolkit that much easier, but there are just so many of them there that I would have chewed up all my ammo in the process. Granted, I could recoup some of that with all the goodies off the corpses. Instead I opted for a sneaky approach until I got close, took out a couple zombie stalkers that were in my way, sprinted inside the building and up the ladder, grabbed all the goods up there, including the toolkit, fired a few rounds to get their attention and draw as many zombies into the building as possible, then hopped out through a window and made my escape nice and clean. While I was in the area, I went ahead and scooped up the SVD hidden behind the tree near the gate. Now that I have a legit sniper rifle, it's on like neck bone. When I got the artifact from the Dredge, I completed the mission the shady way by giving Tuna the artifact, chasing him for a bit, then gunning him down and taking the artifact back. I think I got far enough away that his two mugger buddies didn't see me gun him down, but I'm not sure. Either way, now that I have the SVD, I may just go back over toward the Dredge and kill both of them from a good safe distance and loot their corpses for profit. Hey, they were going to gun me down if I didn't hand over the artifact, they have it coming.

I thought he was changed his name to Snoop Lion? Now he's back to Snoop Dogg? Is he a dog or a lion? I need to know these things. I'm guessing this voice pack will be a $4.99 DLC?

I scraped snow and ice off my windshield this morning on April 16th. I really hate this god forsaken hellhole called Connecticut. I've lived here long enough that getting snow in mid-April isn't a shock, it happens roughly 1/3 of the years, but it's really depressing.

Sawx got hit with a bunch of naging little injuries right of the bat this season. Nothing major, but it still sucks to not have a team at full strength for even 1 game this season so far. On top of that, they've just plain sucked so far. Of course, the MLB season is insanely long, so starting out crappy isn't a very big deal.

Speaking of Cyanide

I'm attempting to survive the biblical flood in process in my area today.

So, this morning (I had a half hour to kill before going to work) I discovered that if you hold down the Y button in Guacamelee! you stick to surfaces instead of sliding down them. I must have missed that bit when it was explained (either that or it wasn't explained). Suddenly, all that ludicrously difficult platforming became decidedly easier. That whole trip up the Tule Tree that borderline gave me blisters could have been much simpler and taken me 1/4 of the time to complete. I'm going to try finishing up the game when I get home (assuming I make it home through the torrential downpours, thunderstorms, and heavy winds we're currently getting) then see about scratching that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. itch I've been developing.

Thanks. Caesar III, Pharaoh, and Zeus are all great games and all very similar, as Pharaoh and Zeus are basically modified versions of Caesar III. It's really a matter of which culture strikes your fancy the most. I'm a huge fan of Greek mythology, so Zeus is my jam. If you're into ancient Egypt more, then Pharaoh might be more your taste. If you're into the Roman Empire, then Caesar would likely suit you best. Thanks. Yeah, I would have thought the vote would be more heavily skewed toward Caesar III/Pharaoh/Zeus also.

They don't really run any sort of offensive system whatsoever. Back in the day Jerry Sloan ran the pick and roll with Stockton and Malone. Phil Jackson ran the triangle. Gregg Popovich's current system runs so many screens that it may make your brain bleed trying to keep up with it. OKC's offense is Westbrook or Durant bringing the ball up the court while the other 3 guys stand around with their hands in their pockets. They rarely run pick and rolls, they barely screen, it's playground basketball.

Do me a favor, fine folks. GOG is running a Battle of the Games promo where they put two sets of games against each other and the one to get more votes gets the steeper discount. Today's battle is Caesar III, Pharaoh + Cleopatra, and Zeus + Poseidon vs. Empire Earth 1,2 & 3. Zeus: Master of Olympus is my favorite city building game of all time. I still have the disc somewhere, but the last time I tried to get it running on a modern distro, it laughed at me. So, if you're not keen on picking up the Empire Earth games yourself, then be a peach and drop a vote down for the Caesar/Pharaoh/Zeus team for me. I would dearly like to scoop Zeus up on the cheap so that I can play it again without having to jump through hoops.

This is all the industry is capable of anymore (this game, Witcher 3, DA:I, Two Worlds developers pirate game, Spider's new game, Risen 3, and likely plenty more that I haven't even heard of -- all carved basically from the same wood). How profoundly boring. The fact that action RPGs are trendy and there are a lot of them coming out is undeniable, but I don't really see this as a problem. Contrary to your post, I feel there is a good variety of games coming out now and in the near future. I would say that the variety of games coming out right now is the best it's been in a decade. You have the action RPGs you mentioned, turn-based RPGs, both first person (Might & Magic X) and isometric (Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original Sin), RTwP isometric RPGs (Pillars of Eternity), JRPGs (Bravely Default, Final Fantasy XIII: Dress Up Quest, Tales of Xilia 2), funky matroidvana/JRPGs mashups (Child of Light), and that's just scratching the surface and just RPGs. We've recently had the return of sidescrolling platformers. There are tons of beat em ups coming out. Shumps seem to be on the rebound. I could keep going. To me it looks less slow paced and methodical like Dark Souls, and more button mash combo like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as I generally enjoyed the combat in KoA:R, for a while. Anyway, while I liked Spiders' previous game, Mars: War Logs, quite a bit, this one, for whatever reason, isn't grabbing my attention. Who knows. If it winds up getting a good rep after it's released I may scoop it up.

I gotta say, Expeditions: Conquistador is a rather frustrating game. There's a lot to like. I love the premise, the combat is decent, the choices and non-combat skills are fairly well done. However, the game is bogged down by a lot of mechanics that I guess are there to increase challenge and add depth and realism, but, in practice, what they achieve, more than anything else, is adding a lot of tedium to the game. I guess what I'm saying is, the game has fun moments, but overall, it's a chore to play, which is a shame. I'm generally against streamlining, as it usually boils down to dumbing down, but this is one game that could have greatly benefited from streamlining.

Dance your dance and backtrack and twist your own words any way you like Volo, we all see right through it. But, by all means, write in all caps, italics, throw out supposedly trendy insult phrases. It totally makes you look intelligent. In NBA news, Miami got smoked by the Wizards without 2 of the 3 big 3 and OKC lost to New Orleans when Durant gassed in the 4th quarter. Scotty Brooks' "brilliant" strategy of running his franchise player into the ground just in time for the playoffs at work, ladies and gentlemen. I've seen a couple of times this year both LeBron and Durant run out of gas late in games. These guys are freak athletes, but they're not invincible. At least Miami will get to coast through the 1st round and recover, and maybe the second, unless they wind up playing Brooklyn, whom they'll beat, but the Nets will likely push them to a game 6. OKC won't have any such luxury. Sometimes I think the best thing for OKC that could happen would be to get swept in round 1 so that maybe that would get the owner to fire Scotty Brooks and get a real coach who knows what he's doing. Scotty Brooks is a good positive attitude guy, but he's terrible at game management, clock management, very rarely changes his lineups to take advantage of the other team's strengths and weaknesses (seriously, I get playing Perkins against teams that like to play big, but why in the world does he play so many minutes against athletic teams that play small? It makes no sense), runs no set plays whatsoever for the half court offense (it's a testament to the ludicrous abilities of Westbrook and Durant that they win as many games as they do playing essentially pickup basketball). OKC wins 55-60 games a year in spite of Scotty Brooks, not because of him.

I agree Volo, your post was an EPIC FAIL. All I did was apply your own faulty logic to the Miami Heat resting LeBron and Bosh, so if my post was a fail, then, your own post must also be a fail since it uses the exact same logic.

I wanted to play more Guacamelee! today, but I did my thumb in yesterday playing those intense platforming sections and didn't want to get a blister, so I played some Expeditions: Conquistador instead.