Keyrock

Racing a freight train in a Lamborghini Countach: Getting stoopid air in a Bugatti Divo: Apparently, all the rivers in Mexico are shallow enough to drive through. From a gameplay perspective, I get it, since there are no boats or hovercraft in the game, but it still feels silly. Edit: Microsoft makes posting pictures and videos so much easier than Nintendo. Nintendo, how are you still more than a decade behind on this Internet thing?

That Tyreeks of desperation. ... *crickets* I'll show myself out.

I'm probably in the minority, but I would wholeheartedly welcome a less open and more deliberately paced and focused game.

Soon.

Sierra On-Line was my childhood so anything involving Sierra alums...

It's too bad you can only have one companion at a time. I'd love to have both Caja and Nasty tag along and have them throw barbs at each other.

It's well known that Valve can't count to 3.

Sooooo... There's a Billy Idol concert in Elex 2. And by "concert" I mean 1 song. Also, where's your bassist and your drummer, Billy? It's not a song I recognize. It's not Eyes Without a Face or White Wedding or one of his other big hits. It's a good song, though. Does he have a new album or something?

GabeN talked about there bring more interest than anticipated in the most expensive model and Valve potentially making a higher-end model in the future. Assuming Steam Deck takes off, I'd be all over an 8 core Zen4 with 12 RDNA3 CUs model in the future.

I'm splitting time between Elex 2 and Forza Horizon 5. In Elex 2 I reached the Morkon Grotto. I had Caja with me and once I realized where I was, I asked her to head back to The Bastion. Given her hatred of Morkons and them likely not appreciating having a Berserker warlord in their stronghold, I thought it prudent to not have her along, though I am a bit curious if they would have eventually kicked her out or she would have left of her own volition. I didn't know I'd find Nasty in there, I guess she's a Morkon now. She was as, ahem, charming as ever. My favorite part was when the conversation was over and she started to walk away she yelled "stop staring at my ass". Guilty as charged. I was playing The Crew 2 a ton before I got my xXxBOxXx, which makes a good point of comparison with Forza Horizon 5, given that they are both open world racing games and both utilize the (DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!) live service model. Obviously, FH5 is a better looking game, given that it's newer and running on a more powerful console, not that TC2 was ugly, or anything. The biggest difference I have noticed is draw distance. TC2 on PS4 Pro had definite pop-in. It wasn't horrible, but it was easily noticeable. FH5 in performance mode (60 FPS) does have pop-in, but it's waaaay in the distance and only noticeable when specifically looking for it. In quality mode (30 FPS) I never ever saw pop-in in the brief time I tested that mode. Also TC2 had stutters. They were very rare, but when they happened they super duper sucked, ruining my racing rhythm. FH5 so far has had no stutters, frame rate dips, or any performance issues whatsoever, not in the brief time I tested quality mode nor in the hours I've played in performance mode. As for gameplay, while neither game could be accused of being a sim, not even in the broadest, most generous interpretation of the term, TC2 definitely felt more arcadey. FH5 also has a lot more tuning options, letting you tinker with sway bar stiffness, camber, downforce, and such on pretty much any car (that I've tested so far) whereas TC2 only let you do that with Alpha category (Formula/Indy type race cars) vehicles. Both have an absolutely gargantuan selection of cars but TC2 also had planes, boats, hovercraft, and motorcycles. The live service model in TC2 felt very generous, there was never a time I felt compelled to spend money, getting cars with in-game currency felt completely reasonable. There were so many different race events and challenges that I never ran out of stuff to do and felt the need to grind races I had already done. Granted, I jumped into that game when it had already been out for over 3 years, so I had the benefit of all that extra content already being there. Impressively, they are still continuing to add content regularly to this day. As for FH5, no complaints so far, there seems to be a ton of content already and the game is less than a half year old. The jury is still out on how well it will be supported down the line, obviously, but I can't see myself running out of stuff to do anytime soon. I do hope they add motorcycles in the future. Lastly, the settings. TC2 takes place in a highly compressed and hilariously inaccurate contiguous United States while FH5 takes place in an undoubtedly compressed portion of Mexico, no comment on how accurate it is. As a guy who has seen most of the US in person, I much prefer driving around in Mexico, since it's foreign to me and thus more exotic. Also, Mexico has pyramids and the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis is sadly not in TC2. Pyramids are awesome.

No Jeremy Irons no care. I love the fact that my man realized what kind of movie he was in and decided to ham it up so hard that even Jeff Goldblum would have been jealous, elevating an otherwise meh movie into something fun.

Forza Horizon 5 Quality Mode: I don't normally play in this mode since it runs at 30 FPS, I just tried it out to see the difference (not much) and take some screenies. Performance Mode: I play in this mode since it runs at 60 FPS.

Corned beef brisket:

In regards to the last message, I would retort with a question: Compared to what? The industrial revolution happened in the past 200 years. The Wright Brothers took to the skies in the past 200 years. We first went to mother****ing space in the past 200 years. Show me a more impressive 200 years. Edit: Actually the industrial revolution began closer to 250 years ago, so scratch that one.

^ I'm guessing that's the new Syberia game, right?

That's true, there is a lot more grass in Elex 2 (the World Heart at work ) and not just green ground. No physics to it, though. The grass isn't a physical object, you just walk right through it and it doesn't react at all. On the bright side, lovely sound effect for walking through grass and you usually don't see your legs unless you pitch the camera way overhead, so the lack of physics doesn't matter much.

I played Elex on PC at 1440p with the settings cranked so I don't have an apples to apples comparison with Elex 2 either. The lighting effects are what stood out as being much improved. Pretty good draw distance on the environment and pop-in, while definitely present, hasn't been that egregious. The character faces are still hideous, though. I'm talking Bethesda-level hideous. Does the map screen run like ass on PC or is that just an XBOX thing? It's weird because the gameplay, which by all rights should be far more taxing on the hardware, runs buttery smooth.

I started Elex 2 on xXxBOxXx. What can I say? It's a Piranha Bytes game. If you've played a Gothic game (except 4, we don't talk about Gothic 4), a Risen game, or Elex then you know what you are in for. Visually, it's not much of an upgrade over the first game. There are moments the game looks truly next-gen, for example the bloom effect when walking through a doorway from a darker area into a brightly lit area looks fantastic. For the most part, however, this looks like an early XBone/PS4 game, and that's being generous. If there have been any gameplay improvements made, I've yet to experience them. This plays exactly like the first game, same jank-ass combat PB have had for years. Seriously, Piranha Bytes, I love y'all but you need to completely overhaul your combat. The jetpack is still awesome, though, and has a lot more upgrade options, which is great. Another positive is how well the game runs. This is my first time playing a PB game on a console. By all accounts, when PB first released their games on consoles (Risen?) they ran like ass, but they've obviously gotten better at that. I don't have any empirical data to back this up, but it feels like it's running at a rock solid 4K/60 and I've not experienced a stutter yet in general gameplay. The map screen, on the other hand, tanks the framerate and feels quite sluggish to navigate. I wonder if it does that on PC also? Anyway, I only just got to The Bastion and cleared out the annoying critters. I'm playing on hard difficulty and the game has been fairly easy so far, I've only died twice. I'm somewhat tempted to restart the game on ultra difficulty (can't change difficulty mid-game AFAIK), but I'll probably just stick with hard. I'm surprised by how much I like Dex. There's always a very significant chance in games (and movies) that children wind up being really bad and/or annoying, but I quite like the little tike. It's good that they made him as young as he is. There's nothing worse than game writers trying to write teens. 9 out of 10 times they try to make them either edgy or angsty and the vast majority of the time it winds up being pure, distilled, hospital strength cringe.

Elex 2 Not exactly a showcase of the xXxBOxXx's capabilities, not that I expected it to be

A river of Mountain Dew? Get some Doritos and it's gamer heaven.

Hard West had a lot of good ideas but it was very rough around the edges. Phantom Doctrine was waaaaay more polished and a much better game. I enjoyed it quite a bit. My biggest criticism is that once I figured a couple of strategies out, it became too easy. At that point, completing levels became trivial, it was all about meeting challenges I imposed on myself.

Brisco County - EP6 Riverboat Brisco steps in after Socrates has been fleeced by a riverboat gambler and boxing promoter who also happens to be one of Bly's men. Mostly a side quest episode but tangentially related to the main plot. This was my favorite episide so far. It had gambling, a boxing match, and Brisco Roscoe Meriweather using his wits and silver tongue to swindle a swindler. The appearance of Dixie Cousins [Bobby Heenan]"But who's side is she on?"[/Bobby Heenan] threw a wildcard into the mix, creating a delicious web of deception and double crosses.

I think the problem is that the character Jean-Luc Picard is far too outdated. The show writers need to update Picard and make them an ethnically mixed, androgynous, pansexual, time-traveling, undead, semi-biological semi-synthetic, shape-shifting ethereal being that birthed itself during a quantum fluctuation in a parallel reality. Obviously. /hides