marelooke

RE predates Tomb Raider by a few months, not quite enough time to steal major systems I'd think (RE is from March 1996, Tomb Raider was released in October of that year) So how does RE7 stack up against the Revelations games? I was never into the "modern" RE games, but I quite liked Revelations and your description seems quite appropriate (though afaik there were never multiple endings in the Revelations games). I played it at launch and liked it. Now that the gold edition is out I might give it another try. The visuals looked neat and the world looks vibrant and alive. I just hate those 20 GB patch updates. I oddly enough couldn' t really get into it, too much filler inbetween the story content I guess. The mechanics somehow also didn't click for me. Since we're on the topic of MMOs, I've dusted off my Guild Wars 2 thief after what appears to have been two years (juding by how long some things are already on the Auction House, kinda funny to see they just stay there if not sold). Some things I noticed: Lion's Arch has changed *again*, seems every time I quite & come back something happens to that poor city, they better hope I don' t take another long break anytime soon, because my breaks murder NPCs by the thousands apparently But more importantly, the fixed my major gripe with the game: the last step in the personal story was a dungeon and I didn' t have anyone to do it with. Now it scales and can be done solo. Though it was still a major PITA, Thieves being squishy as hell combined with ArenaNet's love of spamming movement impairing effects all over (explosions, knockbacks, stuns, you name it) and especially the tendency to chain them (Think you just got up from that knockback? Hers' s a stun, and here, another knockback, and here a stun. Oh, you died. How sad.) I think what I like about the game is, despite how cliche some factions are is how alive the world is and how much stuff there is to do. It' s something I always like about EverQuest 2, just find something obscure (less of that in GW2 though, in EQ2 there were literally quests 98% of the community had forgotten about) to do and chasing that goal all over the world is just fun. And if you get tired of that you can just tag along with a group massacring (or getting massacred by) world bosses, running world evens or w/e. Or you can just go around mining ore, whatever. The inclusion of "Mastery" seems like a step in the good direction, away from the typical leveling threadmill, though I don't have that much experience with it yet (just unlocked it yesterday). I reminds me a bit of EverQuest 2's AA (Alternate Advancement) system, which was just genius and something I'd love to see more often. Basically there are two types of XP in EQ2: "normal" leveling XP, that will gain you levels (duh), which unlocks new abilities etc. and then there is AA XP which will gain you AA points (basically skill points). And there was a slider to specify how much XP should go each way (once you hit max level any new XP is converted to AA XP). The idea here is that this gave you a few options, you could either go mental and level lika a rocket (100% of XP going to levelling), but end up being useless as hell at max level because you'd have almost no talent points to spend or level slow as hell but be a walking powerhouse. Sane try to find a balance between these extremes, of course. There's other reasons why leveling slower was often preferable (eg. while you could lock your level to be lower than your actual level you always got less XP, relatively than when you'd do something at the appropriate level iirc)

the way I see it, the primary goal is to stop people from buying games cheaper. Steam has very positive experiences with setting up region-specific stores on their platform. namely, Steam managed to become huge in Russia by dropping prices significantly for Russian users (my friends in Russia on average pay only one third of the game's price compared to me). so, naturally, Steam doesn't want people from the US or Germany to be able to spoof their IPs and buy games at Russian prices. therefore, games bought in the Russian Steam store are blocked if you try to launch them while having your IP address originate somewhere other than Russia. since the EU has significant disparity in income across its many member-states, I'm sure Valve separates its prices for different regions, implementing the same kind of blocking. Exactly, the EU is rather schizophrenic in that way. One the one hand they want to entirely open up the internal market which would eventually undo this income disparity. But on the other hand there are the powers that be that benefit from the current situation and try to maintain it. Kinda makes me want to look up the economic history of the German states now.

Looked interesting, even though I never understood the rules of American Football (or why it's even called football, but meh), then I noticed a controller is required. So much for that Project Creator comment on that in the comment section was: "Guys, you can play Sneak Peek Preview with gamepads only. Keyboard is not supported right now (but will be in nearest future)" Hmm, they should really be more clear on that on the KS page, chances that that cost them some backers is pretty high... Anyway, tossed them some moolah. Can't wait to see how this turns out. (I'll probably be bad, but that can be fun too ) (not that I don't own a controller, I'm just beyond hopeless when I try to use it for anything other that racing games. Trying to improve my controller skills it while playing "Remember Me" just made me hurt my wrists, so I just gave up on it )

Kind of surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, so here it is: The EU is investigating (among others, not really relevant to our little forum) Valve for breaking antitrust regulations, in Valve's case the commission wants to find out if the company has abused its position to try to divide the European single market with the use of geo-blocking in its dealing with select publishers. The specifics are in the EC press release, which is quite readable (and short).

Picked up my old Saints Row: Gat out of Hell playthrough and finished it (as in: 100% takeover of "New Hades" and completed main storyline). If it didn't freeze my PC every time I tried to exit the game I might even have gone back to it occasionally just to cause some mayhem, but alas, it does freeze my PC every time I try to exit the game... (and on occasion while playing too) Here's to hoping they go back to less of the supernatural stuff for a Saints Row V though. The entire "simulation" and "hell" shtick got old kinda fast (probably why my Gat out of Hell playthrough languished for so long)

Looked interesting, even though I never understood the rules of American Football (or why it's even called football, but meh), then I noticed a controller is required. So much for that

Sooo, finished SOMA. And damn, the PC is dense...

Trying to slog through PoE, what with the PoE2 announcement. Really hope they do something about the combat as it's just not fun. Considering dropping it down to easy or story mode to just get it over with.

I would guess that it is because of fees that PayPal asks It's not like other payment providers are free... Now Paypal's tendency to not ask too many questions before allowing chargebacks hasn't exactly made it popular with sellers. I know quite a few people that got burnt that way and now avoid it like the plague when trying to sell anything. Wouldn't be surprised if that factors into it... That said, I'd have preferred if I didn't have to use a credit card.

NWN2 seriously turned me off of multiclassing. Multiclass builds there were usually stupid powerful and they just made character creation (and evolution) complexity go through the roof. Not my idea of a good time.

Why did you have to bring Imoen into this? ;-)

Since the game is explicitly promoted as RTwP in the Fig video I'm afraid you're out of luck...

Development of Mordheim shall cease but in its place shall rise Necromunda Many screenshots shall be posted by Melkathi So sayeth the wise Alaundo No more Mordheim? Aww But I still have 5 campaigns to go through, so there's that I guess As for PoE2, hope they fix the combat (there was too much of it and given that it didn't give any XP it just made things tedious and unrewarding, at least for me) and make it more transparent, the entire combat system was way too opaque for me. At least I have a reason to finish PoE1 now, I guess...

"Kill the monster attacking the citadel.", sounded like it might have been the last one if I didn't know there were 4 missions in each act, so there's gotta be one after this one.

Hey guess what, hopping games again! (though I guess most of them aren't exactly story based, so I got that going for me) Played some Civilization: Beyond Earth with Rising Tide. Kinda like the floating cities, maybe I should man up and stop playing on easy though... Almost got routed for the first time with my Sisters Warband in Mordheim, for some reason the AI suddenly knew how to use its impressive, combined with a streak of bad luck on my end and a streak of good luck on the AI's end that almost ended rather badly. I got off easy with only two lasting injuries (none of which are too crippling at first sight) and a few light wounds. And this was "only" a Hard mission, ouch... Now Act II mission 3 has opened up, this is going to be interesting, assuming I don't get anyone killed before my "main" squad members get out of the hospital, that is... Also been playing some Soma lately. For some reason I've found the monsters often to be more annoying than frightening, at least so far (just started exploring Theta).

Only the xbone afaik. Eh, only games from the store I give a toss about are the Forza ones, because good racing games seem to have this tendency to be console exclusive...

Some of which(Multiplayer) are dead on arrival because most people don't like to buy games from the windows store. Well, not a single hear on my head that would consider getting anything from the Windows store that I could get for PC elsewhere. Hell, I think the Windows store ranks behind Origin and Uplay even. That said, the Forza games are cross-play (or whatever the name is), so I could just play those against Xbox players if I wanted to. Oh yeah, while it's nice that developers don't have to write their own networking code anymore I can't help but feel that all these incompatible multiplayer platforms are soon going to become one of gaming's biggest problems (assuming we're not there yet)... Anyway, not a lot of time for gaming aside from a quick race (in Forza Horizon 3 or The Crew) or Warframe mission here or there...

You clearly need some nice adult mod to spice up the game Given the loading times I might be better off getting my adult entertainment elsewhere... ;-) So yeah, Fallout 4's on the backburner for now (still, took me 44hours before I looked at the icon and went "meh", tho I guess half of that was spent looking at loading screens, or just going AFK due to loading screens...) Started playing The Crew, which I picked up during the Steam sales. Gotta say, it was quite jarring going from Forza (been playing Motorsport 6 Apex and Horizon 3) to this kind of truly arcade driving. I started off by hitting a wall because I didn't expect a Ford Mustang to brake and turn like a Lamborghini... I wish I'd recorded that first race, I bet it would have been hilarious for spectators... Man, I wish I could have Forza Horizon 3's cars (and driving) in The Crew's world. Horizon 3 really doesn't have a map big enough for nice long cruising.

Apparently there was a Windows 10 release planned as well, so the game already was no reason to buy an Xbox One. (on that note, while I'm not particularly fond of the Windows Store this new "single platform" at least allows me to play specific games I care about that would likely have stayed console exclusive otherwise like the Forza games)

Mostly Fallout 4. And really, the game' s not very good when compared to its direct predecessors (by which I mean Fallout 3/NV). All the different parts of the game just don't seem to work well together at all. But I could probably see past those issues if it weren't for the excessively long loading times (the game doesn't exactly look good enough to justify those...from what I read textures are just badly compressed) and the inconsistent mess that is the UI (then again, game UI's apparently just need to be pretty, not functional...). Going to try to fix the loading times, not sure if I can fix the UI though since f4se seems to disable achievements (and breaks the mods that re-enable them for me), assuming someone already made a mod to fix the UI to begin with.

How so?Given monsters elemental weaknesses magick archer is easily the best DPS class. Especially in BI where pawns get perma-killed all the time. That's why having to do 90 levels of sorcerer first is such a pain. No it's not, Magick Archer is the easiest DPS class to play perhaps (ricochet arrow in BBI is easy win against most trash and you don't even really need to bother with aiming), but generally doesn't do as great against the bosses as other classes imho (it generally doesn't target weakpoints). I'd argue the "best" (if min-maxing) would be Ranger with Tenfold Flurry using explosive arrows, as that will turn any (boss)fight into a really short one (albeit a rather expensive one, due to explosive arrow expenditure). Hell, if I'd min-max I'd probably do it for Ranger, as min-maxing for that will cut down on the amount of flurries you need and as such on the costs of the explosive arrows. Personally I only really used Magick Archer against Death which, aside from Daemon, is the only insta-killing enemy in BBI that I recall*, and Death is more cheap/annoying than hard (because pawns are dumb as nails). Not to mention that this kind of min-maxing will result in you having to neglect at least one defense stat (be it physical or magical defense). I imagine Awakened Daemon to be rather painful if either defense stat is low... (I made sure mine were sort of balanced) *) oh wait, there's the Maneaters, but those shouldn't be a problem anymore as soon as you're on a first name basis with Death and Daemon

I think comparing the combat between the two isn't really fair, given that they're (as far as I'm concerned) in different genres. Dragon's Dogma combat gets compared against the likes of Dark Souls, and though Dragon's Dogma's combat is prettier, it's nowhere near as compelling as Dark Souls. I also don't really like open worlds, so that type of exploring isn't really for me. Dragon's Dogma also suffers because in order to optimize your character you can end up spending 200 levels playing as every class but the class you want to play, which is pretty terrible design. Also, only 1 save...I don't know who thought that was a good idea, but it wasn't. Comparing Dragon's Dogma to Dark Souls never made much sense to me. I hated Dark Souls' combat (and consequently didn't get very far in it) as it felt blatantly sluggish and often plain unfair (which is the entire point, I imagine, not my cup of tea though) while I'm currently on my third playthrough of Dragon's Dogma. As a matter of fact the comparison to Dark Souls kept me away from Dragon's Dogma for the longest time. The one save makes perfect sense given the story and the pawn mechanics (I'll admit to being annoyed at first, but now that I understand the reasoning I no longer care). Optimizing (as in: min-maxing) your character also isn't particularly important and unless you only play one of the classes until lvl100 (which is the breaking point, progression wise, the last 100 levels are far less important as they follow a different, and slower, stat progression pattern) you are likely to end up with fairly balanced stats and the gear easily makes up the difference. Moreover having more balanced stats will allow you more flexibility in how you can play and to pick the class that deals easiest with whatever challenge you face rather than being "min-max locked" into one class, which might just have a hard time with the enemy you're trying to kill. For example: being able to switch to some form of ranged class for the Daemon fight is kinda...nice (or not being a Magick Archer when you know you'll be facing a magic immune enemy...). Can it be done with other classes? Of course, but it's going to be harder, min-maxing or no. Hell, I'd even argue that unless you really really only like one of the classes min-maxing for one class is overall a bad thing to do in DDDA. Dragon's Dogma is, imho, less about min-maxing one specific class and more about making do with what you get thrown at you (eg. the pawns you manage to find as most of them aren't exactly "optimally min-maxed" even at high levels) and picking the right tools for the job (be they said pawns, or your own and your main pawns class and abilities). While I can agree that the amount of sidequests and markers in Witcher 3 was huge the side "content" in DA:I was on average far more boring and pointless.

Honestly there's only two real background choices that matter in DA:I: are you a Dalish or are you not (iirc Dalish was the only Elf option this time around, for the PC at least). If they'd cut the second path they could have done so much more with the lore without needing a "predefined character" in the sense The Witcher or DA2 had it. Or they could've made Solas a mandatory party member so he could provide the exposition, I guess. Personally I'd greatly prefer the former even though I took Solas everywhere that smelled even remotely like Elves might have been involved anyway... (which is like...most of the game anyway)

Hopping between a bunch of games (as usual, I know. I certainly didn't learn "focus" from playing through Jade Empire ;-) ): Doom: awesome so far. Nothing much to add really. If it moves, shoot it. Then curb stomp it. Good. Fallout 4: turns out it was indeed me who was too dense to figure out the Perks screen. Oh well, more charisma and perception can't hurt I guess. Bethesda trying to disable achievements when modding is pretty darn obnoxious though, not sure why they'd even do that (so yeah, first things I added where the obligatory unofficial patch and a fix for the awful dialogue wheel). Power armor is pretty cool, though I guess a bit too common to my tastes (and tossed at you too early in the game to my liking, also, no need to learn how to use it this time around. Guess you learn that in lawyer school) Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen: completed my second playthrough and now going through hard mode, will stay there until I hit lvl200, then back to normal mode and finishing Bitterblack Isle. Ending of the 2nd playthrough was interesting I must say ;-)

I was gifted Fallout 4. The entire story starts off idiotic but I held out some hope for decent dialogue at least about "wtf happened". Yeah, nope. The dialogue system is even worse than I imagined. I chose the wrong option in the first real dialogue (with the Minuteman leader) and couldn't even mention anything about coming from a Vault, though they psychically all already knew somehow. Anyway, other (very early) impressions so far (I just met the Minutemen and got to zap a Deathclaw with a minigun): I'm not sure if on the first two level ups I could only assign attributes or I am too denseto figure out the new "perks" screen. The fact that I'm not sure imho already means the UI is bad. having to confirm exiting almost every dialog window with <return> when tab is used everywhere else is fairly obnoxious (iow, to get out of the workbench I have to press <tab> and then confirm with <return>). Sure, using a different key makes sure I won't "accidentally" exit a dialog, but using two keys on different ends of my keyboard one of which requires me to take my hand off my mouse to exit every single dialog is just plain obnoxious. It might be acceptable for exiting the game or doing other "destructive" actions (eg. assigning points on level-up), but not for exiting every. single. workbench. Ugh. Probably can change that or some nice guy might've modded it already, but the defaults are crap. combat seems good so far. Went with a snipery build and only put 1 point in endurance. Hasn't hindered me in the slightest so far. The slowdown things in VATS is kinda annoying as it sometimes messes with targeting. Probably just a matter of getting used to it though. worldbuilding seems typical Bethesda, iow. despite the story (and it's telling) appearing to be terrible I'm likely going to have fun hiking around exploring one thing they did get right story wise was that they gave your character a military background, so at least it makes some sense that you just pick up a gun and know how to use it