marelooke

Like this? https://packaged-media.redd.it/egcskpmbdg2e1/pb/m2-res_480p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1732298400&s=151a2ebed849322880390d60a67db5deadb1883b

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The tl;dr: cannot recommend at this time unless you're a hardcore fan. Game is just plain broken, and no, I don't mean all the complaints about performance or crashes (haven't experienced any of that, the game runs just fine for me). It turns out the system that makes The Zone come alive ("A Life 2") is just not functioning properly (as confirmed by the devs), so NPCs just spawn out of thin air, often pretty much on top of the character, rather than organically wandering in and interacting with each-other, and the player. Given that this is the system that makes S.T.A.L.K.E.R., well, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that's kind of a big deal... (not to mention that a military patrol spawning on top of you is ... not a good time early in the game) There's some other things I'm not too fond of, but nothing that's a deal-breaker, at least that I've found so far. The game very much feels like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. so when they eventually get The Zone working as it should I'm expecting to put in many, many hours.

Right, I'm aware of those last two as they were all over the net, was bit hard to miss, even though I tried () as I don't tend to follow games I intend to play at a later date very much until I do actually get to them (Avoiding hype saves on disappointment. Which is likely why I didn't mind CP2077 as much as most seemed to) Personally I wasn't a terribly big fan of how the origins worked in D:OS2 so I kinda skipped over them, creating my own character in BG3 and I just assumed M&H were origins as well... Mea culpa. In retrospect I guess that'd have been quite the feat to pull off storytelling-wise so I probably should've figured that one out... It does really seem M&H weren't intended to be in the party together, it is rather noticeable in Act 2 as Minthara takes Halsin's spot in the camp, displaying him, which sticks out as a sore thumb because... There's at least one camp site where she's just standing inside a table too, so yeah... Honestly, from a story pacing perspective Halsin doesn't really make much sense to begin with, most of the Act 2 he's just chilling in camp, and by the time he decides to get off his arse and join you Jaheira is basically right around the corner. If they wanted a druid companion I feel they could've potentially done something interesting with Kagha, depending on how that got resolved.

Phew, at least the last ME games were great successes that were clearly better handled than the Dragon Age games. Can't wait to see what the next one brings!

More Baldur's Gate 3. Getting to the end of Act 2. Combat generally isn't a problem anymore, and with the higher levels, better gear, and after turning karmic dice off I can get through a couple of encounters at least without everyone being near death and/or "long rest"-spamming. Thankfully, as there is a lot of combat given how persuasive my Wizard is... Some thoughts: Build suggestions for the builds the companions start out with would have been nice for those of us that want to stick with these thematic builds. Someone at Larian has a hard-on for chaining increasingly difficult dialogue checks, either just harder and harder ones (usually Persuasion) or ones relying on totally different attributes. Bonus points for the only significant outcome being achieved by passing all of them, and failing any of them leading to combat. Dialogue/storytelling in Act 2 is kinda...disappointing in a few places. Major Act 2 spoilers: The two last "Origin story" companions you can pick up feel severely undercooked as companions, at least so far in Act 2. They often don't have dialogue for significant events other companions do comment on, and seem to not react in any way to many actions you can take during the Act (meaning no comments, nor approval/disapproval). Why does the druid just chill in camp for half the act before becoming an actual companion? The above two companions also make going back to Act 1 areas annoying as hell as they will just drop most of their inventory in a bag on your player character, even when they're not in your active party at the time, as if they are permanently leaving the party. Thankfully when going back to Act 2 areas they're still just in camp, but you get to re-equip all of their stuff. Annoying. That "other skill tree". Bringing the Paladin into the party... Really liked the interaction between Withers and that one NPC. Do wish we'd have more conversation options with the guy chilling in our camp though.

Hmm... Honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least. Then again, buying games on release is just gambling anyway. We'll see in a few months where the opinions land.

It's also full of content that avoids at all costs to express an actual opinion in fear of losing viewers, access to preview copies, or because they don't want to sound "negative", or whatever else may be the case. Does one have to be rude about it? Obviously not, and personal attacks are obviously a no-go. But if a game is bad, or strictly a downgrade to its predecessor, then it's not doing anyone a service (least of all the people actually building the game) by clutching to every single bit of positive news and spending as little time as possible on the negatives, or trying to turn negatives into positives just to avoid being seen as "negative". With regards to Mort, I don't watch him, so I can't speak to his general tone, but from what I've seen of Veilguard it further simplifies everything about Inquisition (narrative, combat, companions,...), so him calling it "the best Dragon Age ever" (or something to that extent) makes his opinion questionable, at best, from the perspective of someone that enjoys RPGs. Then again maybe he's just not much of an RPG player. Did he review Baldur's Gate 3? That could be interesting to contrast if he did...

Been making my way through the Underdark in BG3. Gotta admit, combat indeed picked up after hitting level 5.

Man, must be nice to have such low standards, at least, based on other long reviews I've seen it's just further into "offline MMO" territory from DA:I. If he's into that sort of thing, more power to him, I guess...

Yeah, so they changed the whole flight system after that announcement and are still massively tweaking/balancing it. I do not for a moment believe Squadron 42 was actually feature complete last year. In fact it almost seems CIG is turning quite desperate as they seem to have thrown out most of their ambitious plans for Star Citizen and appear to be settling for "first person EVE" (no "sov" though) with a slowed down "mode switching" flight system instead of the rather fluid system they had before, just so they can get something out of the door before we all die of old age (or, more likely, before they get into major trouble with their investors)

Wait, what? Did they add an Elf race while I wasn't looking? (which has been an expansion or two, mind...)

Parked ME: Andromeda because it, well, bored me, probably get back to it later, maybe. Instead I've started playing BG3 since I picked that up when it was on sale. Game started out well enough, reminded me a bit of DA:O early on ("kinda yank, but has potential"), while the camera resulted in NWN2 flashbacks, but then the shortcomings of DnD RNG (without a sane DM to temper it) combined with Larian's signature encounter design started kicking in. I'm not even sure I'm having fun at this point, doesn't feel like I'm making reasonable progress in the story with regards to time spent, and I'm starting to actually dread combat encounters. Been told it gets better after level5 (level 4 atm), we'll see...

Been a while, but haven't really played much worth reporting on, so quick summary of the past few months. Final Fantasy XIV new expansion was released. And well..."Meh." is the nicest thing I can say about Dawntrail. Reached Legendary Rank 3 in Warframe by playing on and off for a decade. The previous quest ("Jade Shadows") was...interesting, given its themes. Can't say I've ever seen a warning stating "This quest contains scenes of trauma related to motherhood" before. New major plot development (Warframe 1999) looks more interesting than I was expecting. Got dragged into some time in The First Descendant. It's a Nexon game with ideas stolen from Warframe and Destiny without understanding how, and why, they work in those other games. Maybe it's an improvement given how Destiny is doing (haven't touched since before they started deleting content, so...hearsay), but I'd just recommend playing Warframe instead of TFD. Back to more positive news, I've been playing quite a bit of Warhammer 40.000: Darktide and have been enjoying it immensely. As far as I'm concerned the main thing keeping me from outright recommending it to Left4Dead/Vermintide enjoyers (note, haven't played a lot of VT2, so dunno how it compares there) would be the multiple layers of RNG in the "crafting" system, which should (finally) be getting reworked end of September. Combat is tight, atmosphere is absolutely great (the music... ), and I do greatly enjoy the banter between the different characters. Also another attempt at finishing Mass Effect: Andromeda. Game starts of pretty strong and then just falls flat on its (supposedly, tired) face. I'm at the point where I gotta deal with the "exiles" and I really can't be made to care about that "faction" at all. Oh well, trying to power through.

Pretty much what I do, since I also upload my screenshots to my own domain I haven't opened the Steam Screenshots window in very long time. Anyway, haven't really been feeling like playing much that really engages the brain, thankfully there's the kinda brain dead, but cinematic, nature of much of Star Citizen's currently available game loops, like cargo hauling (well, when not dodging (wannabe) pirates anyway)... Star Citizen regularly has a soft reset, where one of the things that resets is your starting location. Recently I've been using that opportunity to move around the Stanton-system and until the last reset (earlier this week), I was based out of Hurston (capital: Lorville), home of Hurston Dynamics. My favourite "large" combat ship: the Constellation Andromeda. Tanky, big pew pew, and missiles for daaaaays. Landing one of these elegantly is a bit of an art. Hitting the chin against the floor is a pretty real possibility with the landing gear that far back... Finally saved up for one of these: an Aegis Eclipse. Resulting in probably one of my favourite screenshots so far. My, so far, last addition to the fleet is a MISC Reliant Tana because it has a great "bubble" ****pit, while still being decently fast in atmosphere, which makes zipping around planets taking in the sights a pretty great experience. (and if that ship makes you think of some other ship in some other universe, the person that designed this apparently ended up moving to LucasFilm...)

In Steam's settings under "In Game" there's an option to save an uncompressed copy of your screenshots. And to stay on topic here's a screenshot