marelooke

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

There is a patch for it, but it's big (well, for the time...) and took aeons to apply for me. That said, wasn't there a way to register your Witcher 1 disc key on Gog and get it on their platform for free?

Hmm, I'm pretty sure they were avoiding recreating Dungeon Keeper 2 as most fans think it's well inferior to the first game and I'd never have supported them if they'd have aimed to recreate DK2 (which I personally thought sucked. I played it on release and gave up in disgust after a bunch of levels due to it being rather bright, bland and soulless compared to DK1 and just generally messing with the formula in unenjoyable ways. And no, after all these years I don't recall most details except the annoying focus on the Horned Reaper, which was one of the most annoying creatures in DK1, Vampires were way superior and less of a chore). When I tried it during early access it felt pretty DK1 like, which was good, haven't really played it since release though, so yeah, I probably should fix that... Anyway, still mostly playing Forza (Horizon 3 and Motorsport 6 Apex) myself currently.

The ending wasn't the worst part of ME3 imho. Most of the game just felt rushed (as in, they tried to pack too much into one game, not as in "unfinished"), like they suddenly went on a tour of all the "homeworlds" because they felt obliged or some-such and in doing so short-changed pretty much all of them except Tuchanka (that questchain was downright epic which made the others stand out even more). Especially Thessia was a massive letdown, for me at least. The Quarian questline, well, can be argued I guess, but they never explained why that sun was so important in ME2, I guess they had something more elaborate thought out, but couldn't fit it into the time constraints and dumbed it down to the cliché we got in ME3. The way the original human companions (Kaidan/Ashely) were put in was also pretty ham-fisted to be sure (but merely continued the trend of them being idiots that was started in ME2, I guess). The combat also felt "off", superficially it would appear to be the same as ME2, but it isn't, somehow, or maybe the general level design is worse, I'm not sure. Either way I finished ME2 multiple times on the highest difficulty (which I generally avoid in games as most games are very much unenjoyable on the hardest difficulty) while in ME3 I regularly found "normal" to be frustrating, or at the very least annoying. Harping about the bad ending is just easy pickings, putting the other things that felt "off" with the game into words is just much harder. Overall I felt they should have done everyone a favour and broken their promise by splitting ME3 into multiple parts with more depth each. Or, dare I even suggest, made it episodic so proper care could have been given to fleshing out the major "pillars" of the story. ME2 arguably had a weaker (almost entirely ridiculous) main story but still I played through that game multiple times, but I only played through ME3 once (on normal difficulty) and a recent attempt to finish it again, but with all DLC installed, just fitzed out. But of course all imho ymmv etc. EDIT: spelling

Lara, crying in a tomb? Ohoh...

Not as effective as being forced to play the NWN1 OC. I never even managed that once... Anyway, played through the "Blood Ties" DLC for Rise of the Tomb raider. I thought it was pretty good, probably beat all the character development in the rest of the two reboots combined. The ending was kinda scary though, Lara is going to make the Croft name "great again" (not even making that up).

Well, Witcher combat could use some balancing, I guess... *starts running*

Finished Act 2 Mission 2 in the Sisters of Sigmar campaign in Mordheim. 2 more missions to go. I think I hit a bug though as it didn't list *any* loot on the mission rewards screen, so I fear the slog the mission was didn't even earn me anything. Can't really verify it wasn't just a graphical hitch though... (well, I could restore & reload the save I set aside in case of disaster, given how buggy some of these campaign missions used to be, but I've never had to use it so I'd rather not mess with it and break my game or so...)

Shinies! Saving the maiden? Psah, in Mordheim maiden saves you! (Agmundr got lucky though as I completed the objective (Act 2 Mission 2) and thus the mission before my Maiden of Sigmar could wipe out what little health he had left...

Went back to Mordheim, messed a bit with the new Undead faction and got that warband to Rank 3. Unless the next hero and the impressive are annoying as hell this might be the next warband I'll take to Rank 10 (the first being the Sisters of Sigmar). Then I realized I still had Act II of the Sisters campaign to complete and so I did the first mission of Act II. It was a nice reminder of why I stopped doing these campaign missions in the first place. It was a long boring slog, not sure who thought "now tank this annoying resurrecting demon while you go over the whole level collecting stuff" was a great idea. Thankfully the demoness hit like a kitten (or rather, she more often than not,didn't hit at all), but boy, were the debuffs she threw around annoying as hell especially since there was little to be done about those as she ignored the silence spell, bosses and their cheap tactics Anyway, guess that leaves another 3 missions in Act II. Not sure if I'll try for the "one year with the same Warband achievement" after as I'm "only" at 107 active days so far (iirc a Warhammer year wasn't 365 days either (slightly longer, I think?)). Then again if a mission goes south badly and I have to rebuild my Warband things might add up faster than expected...

You know what this thread's been lacking? You guessed right! Since melkathi hasn' t been delivering (for shame! ;-) ) here's some Mordheim screenshots: Started an Undead warband, so far they're good fun. Haven't had this many henchmen downed for al long while though but now that some managed to get some levels under their belts things are improving. Went back to my Sisters, decided I should man up and finish Act II, so poor Ada ended up getting a bit of a beating... I like to think being on the receiving end of this trio (Purifier is just outside the screenshot) is the stuff my enemies' nightmares are made of...

I was gonna have a quick peek at around midnight yesterday. I ended up going to bed at 3:00...

Another good example of DRM gone horribly wrong was the disc version of the first Witcher game (which I suffered through to completion). That DRM (Tages, dixit Google) would check the disc on every single loading screen and would crash or hang (don't remember) the game when it couldn't verify the data fast enough, which was quite often given the DRM's need to spin up the disc for pretty much every DRM check (since the game data was on the hard drive). Not to mention the effect on the loading times (which became horrifyingly long, up to multiple minutes sometimes to enter a small house). It was so bad CDPR presumably lost money and reputation over it and became the DRM opponents they are nowadays. Anybody who thinks CDPR was "born enlightened" would do well to remember the Witcher 1 DRM fiasco and that their stance on DRM is a hard learned lesson.

Try the ring (R0/E19 around Brussels[*] in peak traffic, be sure to have rain and dark weather for extra masochism, do set aside an hour or three, minimum, just in case it's actually realistic... For maximum masochism you could of course try driving *through* Brussels. If you're still relaxed after that, well, I dunno what to say, really * http://www.reuters.com/article/us-traffic-brussels-idUSBREA3Q03220140427 - note even though trucks are now charged as mentioned in the article nothing has really changed (aside from lost of pissed of truckers) as there are no alternatives to going over Brussels, iow it's just another tax. FWIW I work in Brussels.

Skyrim is one of the only games where this doesn't bother me in the slightest. I loved how mountains made the world feel huge and after several playthroughs I'd keep finding hidden dungeons and shrines. The mountains themselves were nice to look at. The mountains where I couldn't figure the hell out where I needed to go to get up them were a pain. Hmm, can't remember too many of those tbh. Usually, as HoonDing remarked there is a road or path or some such leading up. Of course the mountains being this big it's kinda possible you're entirely on the wrong side to be able to get up (the statue of Azura took me a while to get to the first time iirc). If it really annoys you though there's always the console and noclip mode ("tcl"), I sometimes use that after jumping down a cliff (to pick up loot after I Fus-Ro-Dah'd some enemy to his/her/it's death for example) and knowing that getting back up is a long long trek... Note that I still play the "normal" edition and that at least there using the console doesn't mess with achievements, no idea about the "enhanced" edition. On that note, played a bit of Skyrim over the weekend, edging closer to lvl70 (67 now) and as such the killing of a Legendary dragon which would give me 100% achievement clompletion. Huzzah.

Sure, but tell that to console peasants. (Not that I am one. Just saying that if you aren't playing with mods, then the games start is really bad once you feel like replaying) I will never understand people playing Bethesda games on consoles...modding support (if only to fix all the breakage Bethesda doesn't) is vital, and I'm not normally much of a modder... Anyway, I picked up my playthrough of The Wichter 3 that I had sort of abandoned. For some reason the game hadn't been able to suck me in, I mean, when I started a play session I kept playing until the wee hours, but when I stopped there was literally no urge to pick it up again the next day. So I'm happy to report that after making it to Novigrad that's finally changed. Things are at last getting somewhat interesting and the setting's definitely improved over the bore that was Velen. (though given the huge amount of unfinished content I still have there I guess I'll be going back occasionally, if only to finish up the various contracts)

Colour based puzzles? Does that mean game over for colour-impaired people like me?

Tried to go back to my Skyrim playthrough. It appears some not particularly smart guy at Bethesda figured it would be a nice touch to lock people out of kb/mouse controls when a controller is plugged in (can't even get into menus with Escape). So Alt+F4 it was and I guess it's either unplugging the controller or back to Forza... (for which I *do* use that controller). Ugh. Oh yeah, also not bothering with the "enhanced" Skyrim since I can't just copy/past my entire mod setup.

That's what confused me since I had all the Quest achievements for MoP (bought Draenor and never really started playing that expansion), so I was wondering what I missed... Guess I stopped playing just before that final raid and those scenarios. Of course now there is the same problem they introduced Raid Finder for anyway: people missing out on content due to not being able to raid (or playing at the time), guess next up is a single player version of each and every raid </sarcasm>. I mean not even a single mention to people that join or return after the fact is kinda...lame? Suddenly everything's changed and apparently nobody still talks about it. For something that was apparently a big deal that's kinda weird. Seriously some quest connecting things (just dialogues filling people in would be good enough) would have been nice. Then again WoW has always been pretty half-assed in this respect, compared to say, EverQuest 2 (where NPCS were still talking about the destruction (and rebuilding) of Freeport so even people that weren't around at the time, like me, still got the gist of what happened). Also given the fond memories most raiders have of M'uru I don't see the Naaru suddenly being the bad guys ending well, though players did manage to kill A'dal on my realm (Wildhammer-EU) during the Scourge Invasion, which was kind of hilarious ;-) Also, don't they dare devalue the awesomeness of my "Hand of A'dal" title! Oh yeah, and aside from WoW I'm still mostly playing Forza Horizon 3. Next major patch (expansion) to Warframe should be arriving this week too, looking forward to that since it'll be a lore patch! EDIT: typos, so many typos!

Catering to a pretty common handicap (at least for males from Northern European descent) is hardly a "gimmick", especially given how fond game devs are about using colours in places were not being able to discern them can be a serious disadvantage. I also think that there's tools available nowadays for game developers to make catering to this easy (I base this assumption on how common colour blind modes are nowadays compared to the "bad old days") I remember "fun times" in Warframe where I had to hug every damn locker because I could not differentiate based on colour whether it was open or locked. I remember having similar problems in some RPGs where I couldn't discern whether an NPC was friendly or hostile (until the hostile ones attacked me, of course) by the circles under their feet (that might even have been PoE, might also have been the Beamdog IE reboots) On that note, modern World of Warcraft has the most extensive colour blind options I've ever seen. Props to Blizzard for that. That aside I do agree that not having the autosave sucks. Story mode difficulty for the win, for me. It makes most trash negligable. It also makes the real fights negligable, but since I've never been someone to really get deep into the strategy of CRPGs and am mostly there for the story, it makes the sacrifice worth it. Ironically, the cloth wearing mages and warlocks are much tankier than my mail wearing Shaman. Enhancement Shaman has never been more fun. Anyway, don't expect much of Shattrath. You never get to go in. Well crap, that just killed my motivation to soldier on... Combat is completely broken nowadays so I'm just taking in the sights really, and if those end up sucking, yeah well... Also I figured out that I need a group to find out what happened to Hellscream (and for some reason Saurfang is in his place and Mr. Troll Chief is also gone). Honestly WoW does a beyond terrible job of keeping people in the loop about what happened if you're not constantly playing. Would it have been so hard to get Saurfang to give you an explanation or something? Thankfully there's still the Wiki (such as it is, seems to be well past its glory days) so I now know that Sylvanas is Warchief (that's gonna be interesting) and that Troll Boss apparently got killed in the most lame way imaginable.