marelooke

Nonsense, of course you bring the crossbow. How else would you squeak your opponents into all those carefully staged environmental hazards just for something to go horribly wrong and kill you instead!? By throwing objects?

I didn't see the mod related stuff or the leak mentioned around here (nor in the E3 thread) just speculation based on other rumours. Figured at least the mod related stuff would be interesting to mention...

They actually react to all movement, so just throwing a random piece of junk in their general direction will set them off. While it works a lot better in microgravity, it'll save your butt (and ammo) on the station as well. Exactly, I probably should have mentioned that. But given that the crossbow is only really useful in very very few situations using it for Cystoids is a very viable tactic (then again, just throwing junk allows you to just not bring the crossbow along, freeing up inventory space).

Oh yea, that was a pain. On the other hand, it was that room where I found that when you use the power to eliminate PSI abilities from Technopaths, their turrets do indeed all drop. I also found that when you shoot said Technopaths with a GLOO gun while they're defenseless, they're going to freeze and fall down to their deaths. That was a fun discovery. I mainly found out they have a longer range on their powers than the player does. I also found out that having the Gloo you stand on being shot out from under you is...not good By human I mean "human neuromonds only" not "no neuromods" ("No Needles"), just so that is clear I can't really remember having much problems with resource management, exploiting the weaknesses of the enemies helps a load with resource conservation though. And some of them just aren't worth fighting (especially early on) if you can just skip them (like the Weaver in the GUTS). I also don't think I ever bothered killing the big guy in my human only playthrough, just not worth the ammo (only drops alien material anyway, which you don't really need anyway), hiding for 3 minutes each time does get annoying though. Resource conservation tip: the foam crossbow is great against Cystoids, certainly never waste bullets on them, use the Gloo gun if you don't have the crossbow (or don't have it on you). Also: stun gun, upgrade asap. That said, I finished my alien only playthrough and I actually got a better ending than last time... That leaves five achievements to be had ("No Needles", "Awkward Ride Home" and "I and It" being the major ones, then there's "Escape Velocity" and "Mimic Massacre" left as well). Awkward Ride home seems really interesting (and evil) to pull off, though given my inability to be that kind of cruel, even in a videogame, I'm not quite sure I should even attempt it (I also think it implies "I and It")...

Sooo, Fallout 76, apparently there's been some leaks from a reliable source (predicted title last year already). Knowing that MxR's videos aren't exactly everyone's cup of tea, I'll summarize: it's still going to be an RPG, no battle royale, Rust like or anything emphasis on building and improvised weapons rather than customizing weapons (whatever that means) voiced protagonist is back (tbh, I ended up not minding the female voice actress much, she did an ace job, too bad about the ****ty script and dialogue system, but no word on the latter one so far) groundwork for FO5 which is already in the works apparently no modding outside of the creation club If that last one is true then Bethesda is really trying to sink its own ship. Full video:

Just leaving this here: FO4 might have been quite the evolution, but polished? Hell no. I mean sure if you compare to F:NV but then pretty much everything looks polished (especially if you take into account the launch state), but I'd argue FO3 was easily more polished from a purely technical PoV than FO4 (and I'd toss in Skyrim too as being way more polished than FO4).

Oh I've just finished the alien powers run (I'm now on human-only, genicidal run to wrap the game up completely. Maybe.) Anyway, I've picked the hardest difficulty (in which the game forces you to experiment a bit more and dig deeper into its mechanics so it just generally ended up feeling easier than normal, funnily enough, by not letting you get away with stuff that doesn't work) and it did feel easier than when I was trying to avoid most alien powers on my first run - you can instantaneously take control of both organic and mechanical enemies (yes, temporarily, but it's enough to either just bugger off or weaken everyone sufficiently), as well as shut them down (the power that simply lets you turn off alien psychic powers is just massively overpowered, turning both the mind-cotrolly aliens and machine-controlly aliens into utter jokes). And, just to make you even more powerful, you have a shield that makes you immune to damage. Sure, you can't hack and repair, but vast majority of content has alternate routes leading towards it. Inventory space is limited, that's true enough - but the PSI hypo thingies are rather cheap to craft, to the point where I didn't really have to limit myself in using said powers towards the end of the game. Yes, usually it's not a problem, though I've run out on a few occasions, mostly due to long stretches without crafting stations (I was out of PSI hypos after the entire Power Plant segment as the only functioning crafting station in that region is in the Cargo Bay, gotta say getting out was...interesting). Currently I'm out of organic material to craft with (I think, the leftmost stuff in the crafting station). But I've taken care of you-know-who and have about 20 hypos left so I'm pretty confident I'm good until the end of the game. I must say that the Machine Mind power did indeed turn all the robots into a minor nuisance (especially given how cheap of a power it is), though given their damage output even getting clipped hurt pretty bad. The alien power shutdown power is indeed pretty darn powerful. For regular Typhon the stun gun is pretty much equivalent, but for some of the harder ones (Telepaths and Weavers) the power is indeed a seriously huge advantage. Finding all the altnernate routes was serious fun, though they were often more time consuming or dangerous than the "normal" route (I mean, climbing out of the reactor room with the Gloo gun was definitely slower/harder/deadlier than just repairing the elevator... ) I'd need to do a no-powers and kill-everything run to wrap everything up (and a few combat achievements, apparently haven't managed to kill a bunch of mimics fast enough yet, among a few others) but I'm not really sure I'm up for that. Don't forget the time slowing psi power that's also exclusively in the human skill tree. One point is all you need to turn yourself into an unstoppable death god on demand. I think I used that once, for the achievement...

Picked up my Prey "alien only" playthrough with the DLC hopefully dropping soon. I swear the people saying that the alien powers are overpowered must be combining them with human ones, because this is well harder than my "human only" playthrough (on that note, I'm not even considering "No needles", that's just masochism): no inventory space, no ability to hack or repair anything, no way to upgrade any weapons past "peashooter" level and alien material to craft with is scarce as well as the ability that gives you more materials is in one of the human skill trees as well... Either way, I'm well past halfway now:

I got The Sexy Brutale from a Gog sale

Honestly, if you're spending a lot of time on Fallout 4, it probably did a lot of stuff right as well. One does not preclude the other. The reason I'm spending time with it is because modders managed to salvage quite a bit of the broken mess Bethesda left them. Meaning F4 is still a good platform for modding. Fallout 4, unmodded, to me, is unplayable (I tried and I gave up until I could get all DLC in a sale). And I've enjoyed (and completed) both Fallout 3 and F:NV without mods (as well as Skyrim, for that matter). The Metacritic User Score of 55 tells me that most people do not mod their games to make them function somewhat acceptably.

So we're getting a new Fallout before a new Elder Scrolls game? Weird. Then again, Fallout 4 (even though I'm spending a lot of time with it) is a massive trainwreck, there's very little I can think of that isn't broken in some major way (shooting mechanics, and even there the AI cheats, unless dodging bullets from an undetected enemy counts as "normal" behaviour)

I daresay there's a bit of a difference between funding "a game" and trying a new concept like Star Citizen (well, the concept isn't new, but actually trying to build it clearly is). Of course the reason something like Star Citizen has never been tried is because of the massive investments needed coupled with the risk of threading new ground. Few companies have the clout to pull it off, and as usual, those that *could* won't because they'd rather produce the same game over and over again instead of risking burning themselves trying something new. As long as Chris Roberts manages to produce enough of what he's promised at a somewhat acceptable quality level he is likely to win big (and given how the game is basically playable I wouldn't say he is that far off). Then we might also see the likes of EA trying to copy the concept (and simplify it for the masses) as then it's proven to be working (and in demand), "borrowing" the lessons learned from Star Citizen while throwing much bigger budgets at it.

Never cared for EverQuest Next, at all. EverQuest 2 was a pretty great game though and could still have been if Sony hadn't just invested the minimum to keep a viable playerbase and not a cent more. It had a great setting, a huge amount of lore, lots of actual roleplaying mechanics (like multiple languages that you had to somehow learn. Having to speak to a Dragon and then the super long questchain just to learn Draconic so I could actually *talk* to that Dragon, because no way in hell an ancient evil dragon would bother to speak some lesser race language... Or hell, just gossip about a guildmate with them there knowing they don't speak Fae...) and a huuuge amount of content built up over the years. Hell it actually had literal puzzle dungeons, and also just regular dungeons with loads of puzzles in them, to top it off it had a pretty great system to keep "max level" players playing lower level content by allowing them to lower their level temporarily. In my mind there's a very good reason why we don't speak about MMORPGs anymore in the context of any of the "big ones": because they ain't. MMOActionAdventures, sure, but RPG? Nah. On that note (and in some actual news, so we stay on topic ). The company that bought Sony Online Entertainment (and as such EQ, EQ2 and the rest of the furniture), Daybreak Games is in some seriously dubious waters as the company that supposedly bought Daybreak has had its assets frozen by the US government. So depending on what's what it is possible that the SOE franchises end up either disappearing or for sale once again, in which case I hope someone willing to turn the games around is picking them up (or just let them die, which seems preferable to the treatment EQ2 was getting from Daybreak, imho). Anyway, article here.

If only they hadn't neglected EverQuest and then sold it to those...those...ugh

Didn't most of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. team end up elsewhere by now. So it's basically a game using the name but made by different people? Or am I getting that wrong? Not sure if I should be excited or scared right now, so I'll just go for both.

Phoenix Point target release date pushed back to June 2019 (source) I expect this to slide some more but if that means they can give us a quality experience like we've seen in the first backer alpha then I'm all for it.

The combat is worse because it isn't challenging at all. Combat in PoE 1 just can't hold my interest. It seems just convoluted for the sake of it. Lots effects that might or might not work and then there's that annoying "engagement" mechanic to top it all off. If they'd put some of these "hard" bosses somewhere out of the way (see: Kangaxx) instead of on story paths I'd just skip them because, unlike Kangaxx (and the Unseeing Eye and their ilk) I really don't think these encounters (or the combat mechanics) are enjoyable. I might just take it down yet another notch to Story Mode in hopes that that will allow me to mop up Raedric and the Adra Dragon without too much effort. If PoE 2's combat is similar then it being easier at least might allow me to power past it. Oh, I didn't finish it the first time around. Apparently I got stalled at undead Raedric and lost interest.

Gave PoE1 another go, Undead Raedric quickly reminded me why I quit in the first place. I sure hope combat is way better in Deadfire.

As a Warframe "bittervet" (as they like to call it in the EVE community) it's always nice to hear the experiences of a new player, kinda helps keeping things in perspective. If I may ask, how was getting into the game? The new player experience has been notoriously bad for a very long time and it's something that still gets brought up fairly often. (I also assume you found the Warframe Wikia, if not, check it out, many interactions between systems are not, or badly documented in the game itself) On that note I've also been playing Warframe quite a bit again lately, trying to complete my collection and especially acquiring some of the primes that will be "vaulted" next. I'm also finding I quite like Khora, there's something quite fun about running around with 2 huge Kavats (space kittehs!) mauling enemies ...

Stealth? I do stealth, by obliterating the entire tileset! Can't be detected by dead enemies!

If there would be confirmation of old school obstacle courses or level spanning puzzles I'd be so ready to pre-order despite my normal stance on pre-orders (or games that cost 60 Euro, for that matter)...

Not sure what one has outstanding with the other. There is a reason why gambling is regulated pretty much everywhere whereas violence in media isn't: there's ample evidence about the harmfulness of the former and none for the latter (quite the contrary, as far as I'm aware).

Didn't watch the video, but here's some more info based on the original article. It should be noted that they currently only looked at 4 games, the three mentioned above and Star Wars: Battlefront 2. The delicious irony is that Battlefront 2 was the only one not to violate the gambling laws... (note that this was most likely because they looked at the state of the lootboxes after EA made changes due to customer outrage...) Another possibly important tidbit from the original article (in Dutch) is that this research was done on explicit request of the Minister of Justice, Koen Geens. Fines can go up to 800.000 Euro with prison sentences of up to 5 years. Both of which can be doubled when minors are involved. Also from the original article are the "rules" (probably heavily simplified for the sake of the article) the gambling commission uses to determine whether something is gambling (tried to translate as literally as I'm able): there has to be a game element there have to be certain stakes that lead to gains or loss there needs to be a factor of chance There is no mention of there needing to be an in-game advantage to qualify (eg. cosmetic lootboxes are not necessarily in the clear), but I wouldn't draw any conclusions about that just based on the article.

Felt like doing a new playthrough of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. I used to run it with Olmod but that wasn't updated to support the final patch (and it will just crash) so I stated looking into alternatives. I wanted something that fixes some issues, maybe updates the weapon models/graphics and possibly adds some removed stuff back in (like silencers for the AKs) but leaves the gameplay intact. It seemd the Stalker Starter Pack was my ticket, but after starting the game on Master difficulty I immediately noticed the Bandits you meet in the first mission didn't have any shotguns... I am *very* sure they did in vanilla so I'm wondering whether it's the mod messing with enemy loadouts or just random. Guess I need to start over and if that doesn't work try it without the mod. There's nothing in there that claims it interferes with enamy loadouts but it's pretty common for mod authors (or Enhanced Edition authors...) to get carried away... EDIT: typos