marelooke

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

EVE is awesome, but indeed, doing *anything* worthwhile requires setting aside an inordinate amount of time. Hell, just keeping up with the pace the game changes at is a challenge itself!

Yes, at least the companion quality seems to be going up each game (hope I didn't jinx it now), Nick Valentine is pretty nice and he easily gets the most screen time out of all of them with the ties into Far-Harbor. If they'd just fix the main story thing and deepen out the companion backgrounds more that's all I want. Because honestly, all most (or maybe I'm the odd one out *cough*) people want from a TES game is an excuse to roam around, trying to tell a deep and engaging overarching story in an open world setting seems a bit beyond Bethesda. They should have just stopped at the cryogenically frozen part, ditched the "kidnapped child" bollocks and played the "fish out of water" element out a bit more (more references to the old world, more banter with Ghouls, maybe run into some (more) acquaintances from before the war that got Ghoulified (and are not feral..), etc. Try to keep the initial "what the hell hapened to the world" vibe from the start going. Other than that, it's mostly fixing all the broken stuff in the game. And boy, is there a lot to fix, with the loading times in certain areas (central Boston mostly) and the utterly broken settler and companion behaviour kind of being the top of my list currently (and their treatment of mods, of course, but that's not really a technical issue...). Yeah the companions are pretty decent for a Bethesda game. Right now I'm wandering around with Deacon and he's made me chuckle. I especially like the way his costume changes tend to match the environment, baseball gear for Diamond City and a lab coat around Cabot House. Loading speeds are (insanely...) tied to vsync, Load Accelerator cuts down those two minute monsters to 15 seconds, it's essential. Thanks for pointing that mod out to me, huge QoL improvement. I was in fact aware of the vsync issue (which is pretty ridiculous, really) and I tried turning it off entirely at some point, resulting in the lockpicking minigame actually becoming challenging Needless to say, I turned vsync back on given the huge amount of locks that need picking, I also didn't remember the difference in loading times being particularly noticeable, but it's very well possible I didn't test it long enough. One weird thing I encountered though is that the first time I loaded a save after setting up that mod the loading times were absolutely insane (like almost 10 minutes or so, I literally went to make coffee and very nearly alt+F4'd when I got back), after that they were actually better than before and I've not yet seen the crazy long thing come back. Fifteen seconds, however, I'm not getting... I'd say they went from "absolutely unacceptable" to merely "bad" in busy areas (eg. downtown and huge settlements like Vault 88). I imagine that an SSD could bring them down even further though. As to my actual game. I started a new character in Fallout 4 a while ago. Trying to give it a bit more of a RP spin, my character is less braindead than the one Bethesda provides and realizes that the chances her son is still alive after all this time are extremely slim and has settled for figuring out what happened and eventually getting revenge if such a thing makes sense at that point (as in: chances that the perpetrators are pushing up daisies by now is also pretty big). This kind of takes off the pressure of the main quest in my mind. I also limited my usual urge to just explore everything by saying that I will only go to places I'm sent to through (radiant) quests or that I get told about. Exploring outside areas along my route is OK too as long as doing so makes sense. I also go everywhere on foot, but to avoid making things too tedious I stipulated that it should be from a settlement (major hubs like Goodneighbor and Diamond City qualify as well, though I haven't yet used those in practice). One not so RP thing I did though was making a beeline for Vault 88 as soon as possible as I intended to make that my main settlement this time around. Clearing that place out at lvl10 was interesting, especially the Mirelurk Queen was a pain (and ammo sink), the Legendary Alpha Deathclaw was less of an issue since I could just plunk down a bunch of turrets there... I'm now lvl54 (or so) and I've yet to get really started on most major questlines. While I ran into Danse while helping the Minutement the BoS has not yet arrived in the Commonwealth. I searched out the Railroad based on a rumor in Diamond City (I half expected not to deal with them, but Bethesda really doesn't want you to miss any content). Currently I've picked up Piper and Cait (while the Combat Zone was mentioned by NPCs it didn't really make much sense for my character to seek them out, so I kinda sinned and metagamed a bit there, though I did pass it on the way to some Minutemen radiant quest and got attacked, so I'll use that as my defense...), plus the companions that are hard to miss: Codsworth, Preston and Dogmeat. I also rescued Nick but I haven't gone back to his office yet. I'm considering doing Nuka-World next and then maybe pushing forward the main quests a bit more after that. One funny result of this way of playing was that most of the power armours I found (except for the very first one) ended up being higher tier ones.

Yes, at least the companion quality seems to be going up each game (hope I didn't jinx it now), Nick Valentine is pretty nice and he easily gets the most screen time out of all of them with the ties into Far-Harbor. If they'd just fix the main story thing and deepen out the companion backgrounds more that's all I want. Because honestly, all most (or maybe I'm the odd one out *cough*) people want from a TES game is an excuse to roam around, trying to tell a deep and engaging overarching story in an open world setting seems a bit beyond Bethesda. They should have just stopped at the cryogenically frozen part, ditched the "kidnapped child" bollocks and played the "fish out of water" element out a bit more (more references to the old world, more banter with Ghouls, maybe run into some (more) acquaintances from before the war that got Ghoulified (and are not feral..), etc. Try to keep the initial "what the hell hapened to the world" vibe from the start going. Other than that, it's mostly fixing all the broken stuff in the game. And boy, is there a lot to fix, with the loading times in certain areas (central Boston mostly) and the utterly broken settler and companion behaviour kind of being the top of my list currently (and their treatment of mods, of course, but that's not really a technical issue...).

How is it? I've been eyeing it for quite a while but I still haven't even finished Grimrock 2...

While they're nothing like the originals the quality of the second (reboot) one was greatly improved over the first (reboot) one, they fixed most of the major irritations I had with the initial game (being, the stupid QTEs, the stupid story and Lara being beyond stupid), while keeping the good (like an interesting setting). So I'm cautiously excited. Maybe we'll even get some bigger puzzles again (still setting myself up for disappointment, I see)

Wait, it's been released? Guess I should have actually clicked the link in those last few backer e-mails... (seriously why do people keep doing that, just put your damn content in the e-mail instead of sending us to some website...)