[What Are you Playing Now: Living the Good Life]

On 4/16/2021 at 2:12 PM, Hurlsnot said:

I cleared some sort of goblin dungeon on the Isle of Siptah in Conan Exiles. It was scary.

I'm enjoying the Isle a ton. It's fun just to have a whole new area to explore, but I also feel like funcom has come along way with the engine and their world building, and it resulted in a pretty focused expansion with great effects.

I am building my fortress on a large rock outcropping in the middle of the maelstrom. 

Should give it another go now that they've added NPC camps, because boy, was getting thralls tedious in the original beta release.

Ironically though, I feel the game has mostly been regressing, rather than advancing when it comes to the base systems. All the additional crafting stations are just a nuisance (gotta fit them all *somewhere*, feels like just lazy workaround instead of properly dealing with atrocious crafting station UX, I guess), combat is as broken, if not more so, as it's ever been. But they removed much of the cheese tactics, so now you're more at the mercy of the game's shoddy hit detection and teleporting enemies.

But I still play the game, though I rarely venture into combat heavy areas, or dungeons, anymore as that experience, solo anyway, is just...not good. Building stuff is where it's at

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

New Cyberpunk update (Patch 1.21). Was 588MB for me on Gog, mostly minor bugfixes and deals with some quest progression issues (like Cyberpsycho quests not counting towards the "meta" quest).

The two things I'd like fixed aren't, those being:

• Ping quickhack alerts enemies
• Can't craft multiples of crafting materials

Kinda prefer having these smaller patches, but more often, rather than wait months for a large one, but given the inefficiency of these updates on consoles I can see why that doesn't happen (this patch requires like a >20GB download on some consoles, ouch).

Here's to hoping that now that the worst issues are tackled they'll start adding in some additional content as well.

[What Are you Playing Now: Living the Good Life]

On 4/10/2021 at 10:50 AM, BruceVC said:

I loved the Dead Space series, that first one was the scariest game I have ever played...the way the aliens make noises and try to creep up on you created an amazing psychological gaming  experience 

I also use to enjoy hunting for ammo and resources and the unfolding narrative cant be ignored because its so interesting

 I dont remember ever having enough ammo 

For some reason the next games in the series didn't really scare me. The one part where I went "oh dear, oh dear, oh fscking dear!" was in Dead Space 2 when

Spoiler

you revisit the Ishimura.

People keep saying the "slow" aimining in the PC port of Dead Space was a bug, but imho it worked well given the heavy suit, and it really made you feel a lot more vulnerable, so I didn't even question whether that was intended until I read about it later...

 

Anyway, have mostly been hopping between my go-to "I dunno what I wanna play" games, Conan Exiles, Warframe, and FF XIV. I did give Outriders a go as the demo was promising. Unfortunately the final game, well, far less so.

Balance, for single players, appears to go entirely out of the window the further in the campaign you get. Enemies with assault rifles have sniper accuracy from across the map, and many "elite", or "boss" enemies will basically one, or two-shot you when you go near them (great when running a melee build...)

As such it often feels more like a case of luck (or not having "bad luck") when I get through an encounter alive, even on what is supposed to be "normal" difficulty. Not really the feeling I'm looking for, tbh.

This game, while mostly single-player, is always online. If the connection goes out during a mission you just get kicked out and get can start over.

This especially matters because there's an inventory wipe bug that happens on disconnects, and crashes, where you can irrevocably lose everything on your current character. Saves are local (and they rely on some sort of anti-cheat to keep people from tinkering with them) so the devs have no backup of your stuff. At best you get some random-rolls of items you may, or may not, have had back (imagine losing some tweaked out Diablo 3 character and getting some random rolled legendaries back. Yeah...)

So yeah, stopped playing until they can sort that stuff out, bit of a deal breaker right there...

[What Are you Playing Now: Living the Good Life]

17 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

"Don't update games until I launch them."  - <---used so downloads don't auto-start when I go "Online."

But then ... I like how Steam disables the "PLAY" button within their gui (even if you go back into Offline mode), because they don't want you to play until you update.

Thankfully, most of the time you can bypass this (Offline at least so it can't autostart updating on launch) by launching a game directly from the .exe in the install folder.  FU Steam. And before anyone wonders - no I don't really care that these games want updates. Except Xuan-Yuan, they changed a lot of things I don't want to deal with yet. Mostly I'm just too lazy to want to temp-backup game installs first, and then download, most of the time, especially games that seem to "update" every two days.   I know there's a way to download/downgrade to older game versions (manifests?) but it's way too much bother.

If only that option also worked for workshop content

Nothing quite as annoying as having mods auto-update, breaking your game until the mod authors manage to update their stuff... Been a major pain point for Conan Exiles, each update just breaks servers for sometimes days, until the modders manage to catch up.

On the subject of Conan Exiles, on top of the forced connection to Funcom's "live service" BS (note, game supposedly still works if you're offline now, but you can't force it into offline mode without disconnecting your network) they now added a dumb launcher too.

You can, at least for the time being, skip this abomination by just launching the exe directly from the game folder.

<rant>
What's wrong with devs nowadays? Do they not want you to, you know, play the game? Why make it as slow as humanly possible to get into the game? Just get rid of all the stupid unskippable intros, launchers, splash screens (that includes you "press <key> to continue" abomination of a UX failure), health and safety warnings, and get me to the main menu on startup, for Pete's sake, it's not exactly rocket surgery... If you really must show the damn things (eg. for legal reasons) at least make them skippable, or even better, only show them the first time. No need to remind me of the epilepsy warning every. single. launch.

Ugh
</rant>

[What Are you Playing Now: Living the Good Life]

14 hours ago, Malcador said:

Times like this I feel I could have made it as a game developer.

They make me fee like I definitely wouldn't be able to make it as a game developer...

The way games are just cobbled together in general without anything resembling a development process, the total lack of any competent UX design in most games,... I swear I'd go postal within a year.

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

13 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Some on Steam are saying the LoD/pop-in is even worse than before, especially when driving. Anyone here notice such?  If there's one thing I hate - particularly in supposed  "graphic wowzer" games - is texture and other pop-in.

Oh well ... I probably won't be able to dedicate to playing games like this for some months anyway (my hands, I mean). I may try to replay this game in 2022, see if they make enough changes where I'll find the gameplay/mechanics a little more interesting for my tastes. Won't expect miracles.

Didn't notice it being any worse so far, but well, it was already noticeable before...so take that for what you will.

Game did seem to look better after the patch though, initially I chalked that up to coming back after not playing for a while, but apparently they did improve lighting on lower end hardware, so I might not be imagining it.

As for a comprehensive list of changes, this Youtuber did some good coverage, covering probably all the important stuff:

Things that stood out to me (not all of them were in the patch notes):

• resistances now work
• most (all?) perks and items/mods now work
• driving is slightly better (but traffic is still broken)
• almost all exploits (xp and money) are fixed
• Ping and Breach Protocol now alert enemies (not a fan of this one, tbqh)
• FPS is more stable in general
• crafting got a bunch of fixes (lowered crafting requirements, buying crafting components got cheaper)
• shops now actually sells legendaries. Not sure if the rotation of blueprints is fixed, will have to test that one.

[What Are you Playing Now: Living the Good Life]

Put some more time into Warframe now that you can hire crew for your Railjack. It's better now, at least as you don't have to babysit the bloody thing quite as much anymore.

While doing that I made it to Mastery Rank 29. Go me!

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

Noticed you appear to no longer get xp for killing an enemy that was knocked out. Shame

Driving is still "meh", mostly because traffic doesn't appear to have gotten any fixes, so they still swerve randomly, or just stop in the middle of intersections for no reason at all.

Supposedly you can now craft multiples of items, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how...

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

On 3/19/2021 at 8:22 PM, Malcador said:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1091500/announcements/detail/3042717759905569253

"According to our survey over 30% of all Night Citizens experienced an irresistible urge to burst forward for no reason and the majority of affected people admitted that it put them in danger of falling from a high place. Manufacturer claims that the glitch is caused by a lack of perfect synchronisation between the user's brain patterns and the neuroprocessor."

 Hah.

 

 

Blaming bugs on the user, glad to see nothing is changing in the next 56 years

But yes, glad that one got addressed, somewhat, at least. Having a separate, dedicated, button would be better, of course...

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

19 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Got to the point of no return, 42 hours in. Not going to finish just yet, but fairly happy with that. Biggest complaint so far is the one forced (I think) boss fight I had to endure, pretty awful when I have exactly zero combat perks, ugh.

I'm kinda curious what level you are, and what exactly your build is that you have no combat perks.

Also I assume you were referring to the fight with

Spoiler

Oda?

In which case, yup, can't avoid that one.

[Picture of Your Games the 14th]

43 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Installing Mordheim now

You uninstalled Mordheim...

[Picture of Your Games the 14th]

On 3/7/2021 at 10:39 PM, Keyrock said:

Valheim is slowly taking over Obs Forums. Everything is proceeding according to plan.

Gotta defend that throne...

 

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

10 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

I just don't understand how anyone complains about the game being too short. I put in about 50 hours and I don't think I was that close to the end. I stalled out, but I am pretty comfortable with the idea I will return to it. It is an enjoyable game. I think people just have crazy expectations.

Took me 150hours to "complete" the game. That is: one playthrough, all the (marked) side quests (minus the boxing ones, those can go diaf. Not counting the cars either) and went through all 4 main endings (Sun, Star, Devil, and Temperance).

10 hours ago, Oner said:

The actual complaint is that the main story is short. For some this means the 12-ish hours it takes to rush through it is a tiny part of the game, for others it means the story running leaps into the finale straight over a potential act 3 that the story is (or would) neatly flow into.

It's definitely short-ish if one ignores all the side content (some of which could borderline be considered main quest, though), but I don't think I'd necessarily want it to be longer just for the sake of it, if that would result in something like Witcher 3, which I thought felt seriously dragged out at points to the point that I ended up forgetting what my actual goal was.

I'd prefer more substantial side quest chains instead then, giving us the chance to become more familiar with certain NPCs without forcing it through the main quest, for example (like doing more substantial jobs with Rogue, or some deeper involvement with some of the fixers than merely doing their gigs).

Maybe once/if we get to continue past the ending...

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

7 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I thought that 1/3 at the end there meant that the new release date was the 1st of March. I suck at Twitter.

That said, I've been playing the game in earnest, finally. Only just past the big FUBAR and into the open world content proper for the first time. No technical issues really. Playing a pure stealth character more or less and not sure how I feel about it. Part of it is because I'm already stealth-inclined generally, but the other was that I ended up deciding that the gamepad was better for the game generally but at the same time it necessitated making shooting not the major focus of gameplay.

Both the stealth mechanics and level design in that context aren't quite as good as games dedicated to the mechanics, but that's understandable given that it's trying to be many things at the same time. Takedowns are clumsier than they need to be, requiring two commands instead of one striking me as particularly silly (grab first then decide on lethal vs non-lethal). I've long thought that Dishonored, even the first one, already solved the most elegant way to takedown and grab but for some reason it hasn't been shamelessly copied, with both Mankind Divided and now this regressing to jankier implementations.

That said, I'm letting myself be immersed, walking around at a moderate pace, following the walk lights, etc. I find myself reluctant to drive because of a lack of parking spots means I can't elegantly leave the car anywhere. Even when I'm in a place with parking spots, I find the game doesn't actually let me use them, which is irritating. Seriously, there's like an invisible wall in front of the parking spot itself. Whyyyyyy?

That's for quests, where they want to force you to walk up to the quest area. I have noticed those barriers tend to not always go away once you finish the quest, even though in some instances they are not there before the quest (eg. the Pyramid Song location)

Stealth didn't bother me too much, aside from Cool feeling a bit useless. Hacking seems a lot more useful to get around without being seen than most Cool perks and I've gone through the game with only 3 points in Cool (think I only grabbed the skill that makes you go faster in stealth)

As for the controller, I just use m+kb and grab a controller for driving. Also, as mentioned prior, the traffic AI is garbage (they like to swerve for no reason at all, for example) and car handling is "meh" with a controller (and outright bad with m+kb). Simplest "solution" is to just use a motorcycle, you should be getting one of the best ones in the game for free right about where you are in the game now.

3 hours ago, Spider said:

This kinda sums the game up in a nutshell for me. Everything in it is worse than in games dedicated to the specific thing, but compensates by having all the things. Problem with that approach is you risk dissapointing everyone. The GTA crowd feels the world is stale and vehicle handling is crap, the rpg crowd complains about lack of depth in the rpg systems and in meaningful choices. Both of which are valid complaints.

For me personally it worked well, I found the game to be greater than the sum of it's parts. I loved the first playthrough I did, but replayability suffers a bit. The story beats are largely the same, and while it's mechanically different, the melee slasher I'm playing now is less fun than the hacker/sniper I went with first. Then again, I tend to favor the former playstyle, so wasn't completely unexpected.

I feel the problem there is how people define "meaningful choice". I think most people want "big impact" choices, not necessarily meaningful ones (maybe just arguing semantics, but still) Because while you end up in the same place (and I've complained about that place before, so I'll spare everyone a re-run ) and walk more or less the same road there's still significant differences.

If you miss certain quests for example, or if let certain characters die, or how your relationship is which certain characters. It all impacts the flow and feel of the quests and how the endings "feel" (or which ones you have access to at all).

For example,

Spoiler

the Arasaka ending is very much a downer, but it is really depressing when Takemura is dead. Try romancing Judy for some extra punches in the gut in this ending.

But yes, you do end up in the exact same place in the end, but that is by design, the endings (there's only three outcomes, really, despite there being at least 5 endings with a lot of variations on each) are a very obvious setup for future content so I do hope they "fix" themselves once that content gets released.

So I would argue that the choices are meaningful, just that they don't have a big impact on the gameplay and replayability, as the road you walk is still mostly the same. And that's a very valid complaint indeed, multiple playthroughs are basically the same unless you take conscious effort to make them different (purposefully make different decisions to see what happens, purposefully use a different build). That said, my first character was a Corpo and, after the initial disappointment about the extremely short "origin story", I was pleasantly surprised about how much it actually affects the game.

I did try going melee on my second playthrough, didn't work too well for me (also tried NG+ style, by "cheating" my way to 50 on Very Hard, with appropriate attribute points, game put out the hurts, at least initially)

And another complaint I can get behind is that there's very little to do once you're "done", there's the police star things, but those are so easy by the time you complete the game it's like swatting flies, they're also not marked on the map, so finding them requires just randomly driving around and getting lucky...

Exploration is still enjoyable, there's quite a bit of environmental storytelling going on and I even found an unmarked quest that gave me a nice edgy motorcycle. But yeah, collecting more stuff...why exactly? Guess this is where the "not a living city" complaints come from, in which case I can kinda see where they're coming from.

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

12 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Metro is an excellent series of post-apocalyptic  games ....I have played and enjoyed all of them. The first one was the hardest....I have never had to ration ammunition as much as that game,it made you really learn to conserve your resources 

There was also the DLC for the second one where you start with basically nothing and have to go out on expeditions to make progress. That one was pretty neat.

[Cyberpunk 2077 continuing discussion]

7 hours ago, Malcador said:

 

Guess longer wait for patches.

Wish they'd just push more regular, smaller patches. There's enough little frustrations that would be nice to get fixed rather than having to wait for a big-bang "big patch" that likely will not live up to (inflated) expectations and/or break other stuff.

In good news, maybe graphics card prices will go down to something reasonable by then. Heh, who am I kidding...

[randoM vidEo gAme News]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

Well, RPG systems being aparently pretty bad. What I heard of it was: "ok open world action game, with weak RPG elements". The same would apply to Witcher3, but W3 had killer main character and story. All I heard from Cyb was "meh". 

Personally, of course, I can't have an opinion, as I didn't play the game. Just nothing I have seen in the promotional materials or review made me want to play it. And interesting stuff like wall climbing quite predictably didn't make it into the game. 

Well, story is a big case of "your mileage may vary". I thought the main story was pretty darn good, just frayed a bit at the endings (imho) because they really wanted to set it up for continuation in a certain way instead of taking it to its logical conclusion. Most of the characters are also very well done, and believable, with motivations that make sense based on what you know about them.

An example is the way Jackie, which presents like a typical "mr cool", handles the stress when you're on The Heist. Annoyed the hell out of me, but it was very ... human in a way I feel most characters in The Witcher lack.

I'm not generally a fan of having a voiced character, but I have to admit that in this case the voiced main character really helps to put some emotion in some moments that would likely lack such otherwise (at least with the female voice). Will be interesting to see how the male voice does (wasn't too fond of it at first, hence why I started with the female one)

The way the game handles choice & consequence is also very well executed, in the sense that it is, in the majority of  circumstances, unnoticeable. Many quests have consequences based on how, or even if you do them, but in many cases you'll never notice unless you happen to do something differently (or in a different order) on another playthrough (or because you redo things differently because...bugs ) as many of these consequences can be subtle, and only visible a long way down the road. Many of the side jobs, for example, lead to different results in other side jobs based simply on whether you go non-lethal or lethal (eg.  murder everyone, and their friends in a future job won't be amenable to talking, while otherwise you wouldn't have had to fight in said future job, for example. Of course, you could be doing them in a different order, and not even notice the possible interaction at all)

There are of course choices that have obvious repercussions, but then again, some things that would seem like they'd obviously have repercussions, don't. Like ...

Spoiler

helping Panam take her revenge. It doesn't matter at all, just gets you more fighting, and some pretty good loot, but it has no impact on anything, not even on your ability to start a romance with her.

The majority of quests also don't have an obvious good/best outcome. There's quite a few (most?) where you get to pick between bad, and worse. But which is which is then often debatable. Hell, in some of them arguably not getting involved is the better outcome.

The main story is fairly linear, but in a way that didn't feel forced. The circumstances are just created in such a way that you don't really have a choice (which I prefer over artificially taking choice away). Though depending on your actions you will only have access to a subset of endings and there will be variations in how you actually get there (and how they play out). It's also well shorter, but a lot more focused than Witcher 3's story. If you really rush it you can probably be done with CP2077 in a very short amount of time.

I wouldn't have minded the main quest chain being longer, as long as it didn't meander like Witcher 3's. Think I'd honestly have preferred more substantial (optional) side content (and more interaction between blocks, see later) over a longer main questline for CP2077.

And yeah, they didn't want to lock people out of any endings, so you can basically pick whichever one you want as long as you meet the conditions (I think there's only 2 endings, out of five, that are not missable though). I didn't particularly mind this approach (but, as mentioned, I do have reservations about how some of them play out)

Where I do take some issue with the game is how there's basically three "content blocks": there's the main story (intertwined with Johnny's), there's the love interests, and there's "the city" (side quests, NCPD call signs, etc). A fourth is, imho, missing for "V's friends", most of which have really nothing to say, or do, after their "part" is played (since there's only really 2 people, outside of the ones already mentioned, that know "what's up", that's a bit of a shame, but I digress). And fwiw I'm referring to:

Spoiler

Misty and Viktor. Well, Misty has Tarot the quest, at least.

The problem I have with these "blocks" is that they don't really interact , they feel like entirely separate entities, that are very well done in their own right, but only overlap at very well defined points (if at all). The further into the game I got the more noticeable this became. There's not really any points where helping someone in a side quest ("city"-block) impacts how the main quest goes (not even in minor ways), and vice-versa: for the main quest "the city" feels like just a backdrop.

Moreover none of the (possible) LIs ever comment on any of the (major) side quests either (for some of them, like Johnny's, that's a serious bummer), or hell most barely even comment on your "situation".

As for gameplay, there's still ways to get around, I got double jump rather late and am seriously regretting that choice. Managed to get into some interesting places with it.

But yes, combat is extremely unbalanced, especially hacking ends up being killer since there's not really any level scaling, so if you are level capped before starting the final quests there's not really any challenge to be found (the only reason I didn't one shot the "big bad" was because he has an invulnerability phase). Only way you can die is if some enemy sniper gets lucky with a critical head shot, and that probably wouldn't even happen if some of the attributes actually worked (some of the defensive attributes apparently just don't work).
Crafting is also broken as hell in a few ways, on one end you can create stupendously overpowered gear (especially weapons), on the other hand it's ridiculously expensive to upgrade early game gear to keep it relevant in the endgame. So you're sometimes better of trying to do certain things as late as possible, just to avoid the upgrade costs. Not exactly desirable imho (not that you need any of that gear to get by, at least on normal)

Another thing that's brought up constantly is the "police system". I played as a mercenary, not a petty thief or a lunatic, and I triggered it not even 5 times in 130hours. There honestly is no reason to ever steal vehicles from innocents at all, aside from "because I can", since you can summon yours whenever, and wherever, and if you can't, there's gangs all over with vehicles that you can grab without repercussions. The focus on this system by gamers, and reviewers alike is a bit baffling (well, CDPR promised, but still), game's not GTA and at this point I feel they would have been better off not adding a police system at all just to get rid of all the GTA comparisons.

Now, granted, if actually using cars you'll probably end up killing innocents all over since driving (which is only sort of tolerable with a controller), and traffic AI, suck. The simplest workaround I found is to just use a motorcycle. You get one of the best ones in the game for free early on anyway and it bypasses the majority of the issues with traffic.

Stealth, well, I put 3 points in "Cool" (aka Stealth) and managed to sneak my way through pretty much everything with that and a high hacking skill. Can't say I minded, but wouldn't call it balanced

Still, the technical, and gameplay, issues are likely to get worked out, the story related stuff, much less likely.

Welp, that became a tad longer than I intended (and there's a load more I could cover, but, err, let's not ).
Imho the game's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be, and in a lot better shape (at least on PC) than many prior games games that didn't receive this level of flak (looking at you, Fallout: New Vegas), if nothing else I do hope CDPR continues down this road, fixing up the obvious issues (bugs, broken mechanics, balacing) but leaving the things that do work alone (c&c, storytelling,...)

[randoM vidEo gAme News]

On 2/11/2021 at 11:11 AM, Wormerine said:

 

 

Eh, if CDPR actually fixes Cyberpunk then it will be fixed. For now it's on my list of games to keep and eye on but not to buy. Never was really - have been around for long enough to smell bullcrap - with that exception that Witcher3 smelled the same but turned out rather well (even if I remember wild promises being made pre-release as well).

Whenever Cyberpunk if fixable remains to be seen - from what I am hearing it's issues run deeper then just optimisation. 

If you go into the game with no expectations it's a pretty good game with a lot of technical issues. Won't argue with anyone who wants to wait things out because of the technical issues/bugs though.

As for "deeper running problems" without specifics that's not saying much. I do take issues with some of the stuff in the game, but it's generally not what most people/media keep hammering on.

 

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

Well, finished Cyberpunk 2077, and I gotta say, the endings were kinda disappointing.

I wasn't expecting a "and they lived happily ever after", but unfortunately the game decided to commit one of the biggest narrative sins there is (imho, anyway): they changed the rules in the ending to force a desired outcome.

Major spoilers inc, obviously:

Spoiler

So yeah, there's basically two outcomes for V: you die (or stop existing, if you prefer), or you are dying. What changes is how people think of you afterwards (there's issues there too, but ehhh, the entire ending section just feels rushed, and the credit slides have a lot of inconsistencies too. At least the quests are a somewhat coherent whole, unlike KotOR2's...).

And it's the "reason" for the second that annoys the hell out of me. After being split from Johnny (either by Arasaka, or by Alt) you are told your body is rejecting...you, because the Relic has been making DNA changes (early in the game it's said that not just your mind will be taken over by Johnny, but your body will turn into him as well, so no real big surprises so far) and your body no longer recognizes your mind.

So suddenly the Relic is unable to take over the "host" because of "DNA incompatibility", and getting "rejected" by your immune system, whereas that apparently wasn't a problem at all early in the game... One could argue that initial Relic was unique and got lost in the Arasaka ending when they removed Johnny so you're SOL, but then again the person who created it in the first place is right there, and you've been lugging the blueprints to the thing around for like half the game, so yeah...
It doesn't make sense in the Aldecaldos ending either as Alt presumably reprograms the chip with...you, meaning it must be the same chip and as a result ought to have the same capabilities (at least I presume she doesn't just reprogram your brain directly...).

The 6month thing just feels like a very forced cliffhanger for continuation's sake because the more reasonable (based on in-game knowledge) problems stemming from the chip would have been a lot harder to continue from. It also "saves" them from having the Arasaka ending be a "good" one, I guess (at least as far as V is concerned)

So the way they've set it up now V ends up living (for now, anyway) in all endings but two (the one where V merges with Alt, and the suicide one), but the way they've gone about it is...disappointing, especially since the game appears to go to pretty great lengths to be internally consistent up to that point.

 

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

Is it, though? There doesn't seem to be much to combat - just slash and dodge (or hack if you are S9 as it's super OP). There are indeed some moves that I didn't know about (like dashing toward the enemy) but move set seems fairly basic. I know the super versed in Platinum combat, but while it feels like I have still a lot to learn about Bayonetta, Nier felt like I explored the depth of combat on my first playthrough. "mastery" seems come in the form of griding efficient programs, and crafting items, but I can't be bothered to max out, and don't feel the need to. I do still have S ranks on the arena to tackle - so far I didn't see anything new, just main game enemies gated via level requirements. Those on S rank are level 80 and when I attempted them last time while being on level 60 - I would barely be able to chip their health while they would kill me in one hit. One of the arenas is novel as you have to play as a robot rather then yourself - that mostly comes to dealing with limiting moveset. 

No, I am on my 3rd playthrough, where you switch between A2 and 9S. I actually really don't like third act. My favourite parts of NIer so far were main missions - proper platinum affair with good spectacle and fun boses. 3rd act feels like more sidequests - go there, kill mobs, get item etc. Honestly, first playthrough has been so far the most enjoyable - unless Nier hides a Pillars of Eternity class of a twist at the end that will make it all worth it.

Well, I'm not particularly good with controllers, and I sure as hell ain't chaining combos like this guy... I just got by on the basic combo set, like most people, I imagine, which, at least on normal difficulty, is perfectly adequate, albeit probably crude. I haven't stuck my neck inside the arenas yet, I sort of doubt I'd fare very well.

If you're not enjoying third playthrough then I'm not sure it gets any better, honestly, but my memory after Ending B is kind of fuzzy of what happened when. I do know that A&B are the longest chunks though, so might as well make it to the end at this point and find out I guess...

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

20 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I am nearing the completition of Nier: Automata. I must say I am somewhat disappointed. It's been ok, but unless there is a really great wrap up to the story (doing third playthrough finished available for now content for one character and will start another) I really don't get what the craze is all about. For Platinum combat is pretty weak - it's fine, but it's mindless, shallow hack&slash. I like most of the RPG systems fine, except the leveling - it just throws any combat tuning out of the window making enemies either too quick and too tedious to kill depending if you over or underlevel them. Story has been "meh". Multiple playthrough gimmick would work well for typical Platinum games, where combat has so much depth that first playthrough is just tutorial - here I was bored with combat by first ending, and it only got more repetitive. Story itself is... meh. So far, consequent playthroughs feel like meandering, doing mostly fetch quests, with occasional big events which fail to land properly due to lack of character development. Also sooo muuuch paddding. I still like it though. I am just disappointed.

NieR: Automata's combat is of the easy to learn, hard to master variety, which suits me just fine because I'm bad at it. If it were actually challenging I'd never have made it through the game.

However, the DLC contains some arenas with supposedly harder bosses and I've seen some clips of people that mastered the combat system do things I didn't even realize were possible...feels like I barely even scratched the surface of it, really.

The first two Routes (or playthroughs, if you prefer) just give you different perspective on the same situation, ever so slightly lifting the veil of what's really going on.

If you've only just started playing as 9S you're on Route B (2nd playthrough), there will be differences with Route A, due to 9S's perspective, some will be significant, but most of it will be the same as in Route A. Side quest availability is also dependent on who you're playing as (might want to re-check areas regularly) It's Route C (which is entirely different from A & B) where things really get going.

And yeah, first time I tried the game I gave up halfway through Route A because things were just meandering along and the control scheme (ugh, controllers) didn't really work for me. Second time around I pushed through, and am I glad I did.

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

On 2/10/2021 at 10:28 PM, LadyCrimson said:

Became temp. bored of streaming TV and YouTube so I fired up 7 Days to Die current build again.  I left zombies off per usual. As a time waster I simply like generating new world maps every few days and farting around in the environment.

Anyway I wanted it to rain more often so I modded the files to increase the chance.  Still didn't rain that often, but when it did, it was a huge dark storm that seemed to go on forever.  Which was cool.  What was not cool was that at one point I noticed the "you are wet" percentage kept increasing (leading to temp. survival issues).  Oh sure, you're out in the rain, doesn't matter how good your raincoat is, of course you'll get wet, I hear you say.

...I was 20 meters underground, carving rooms out of solid rock, nowhere near any windows/doors/holes etc. I don't recall that in previous versions.  In 15-20 minutes I was 100% wet and dying from hypothermia. Game cheatz!  So I turned off weather survival, too. 

Ah, reminds me of the underwater sandstorm of Conan Exiles

 

Mostly playing Cyberpunk 2077. Think I've done all the major quests I had left (so the ones that aren't Gigs, or just NCPD markers), barring finishing up the Kerry quest chain.

Whoever calls this game short must've been skipping most of the side content because I'm 118hours (and 51minutes) in according to Gog, and there's still plenty of Gig and NCPD markers to go around.

The way I played is basically by not manually skipping time, ever. I did use the "wait here" feature of certain quests, and I did sleep a few times (a V's gotta sleep) but instead of skipping forward to force quest triggers I just did side content/exploration in the meantime.

This way the "major" content is mostly nicely spread out so the side quests don't start feeling like too much of a slog. Still, the game could have done with some additional meaty quests, especially once you complete the Johnny quest chain there was really very little left except for Gigs to stay busy until the next stage triggered for the like two quests that unlock after.

Anyway, at this point I'm mostly just putting off pushing towards the ending, since, given the rest of the game, I doubt any of the endings will end up being particularly cheerful...

So let's attempt some predictions about the endings based on what I know:

Spoiler

I know there's 4 endings that Misty predicts with the Tarot, and V offers a fifth one: death. Then I know there's a "secret ending" because it's mentioned like...everywhere.

Let's guess:

1.  V commits suicide (guess V could also just get killed, my bet would be on Arasaka in that case). This is the most obvious one, and one that's literally offered by V as an option when talking to Misty.
2.  you get suckered by Arasaka and end up like Johnny (or Alt, possibly)
3.  you "die" and Johnny takes over
4.  you actually succeed by doing what Alt suggested, and get re-inserted into your own body. She suggested you'd lose your "soul", not quite sure how that would play out, or whether that was just a bit of superstition. But given how most bad things in NC seem to turn out to be kinda real, yeah, not holding my breath
5. you somehow manage to save both yourself as well as Johnny (put him in some other sucker's body. Or maybe, and I'd guess more likely even, just stop the deterioration so you at least don't get worse). This sounds like it could be the "best" outcome, and probably the only one in which you don't have to die at all. If I'd have to guess that'd be the "secret ending".

Should be fun to find out how close I got, and what kind of gut-punches the game still manages to pull. I mean, it can hardly be worse than NieR: Automata, right? Right...?

 

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

2 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

HA!

Missed your chance to just answer with "No!" and confuse everyone

 

Anyway, been rather hooked on Cyberpunk 2077. I've been saved most egregious bugs it seems (well, unless the game is yet to slap me with some broken quest chain down the line...), and graphical glitches have been very much limited (there were only 3 occasions I can recall: one floating person, 2 parked cars stuck in the ground, and some untextured terrain).
Ran into one item glitch which is an invisible item, it doesn't have a picture in the inventory (does have a name though) and no textures, so if I can find a few more of those I can run around nude, while clothed, I guess. Literally unplayable

Actual gameplay affecting bugs have mostly been weird UI breakage, the two most obnoxious issues being getting stuck in hacking mode and being unable to fire my weapon when I aim down sights. Both of them only fixable with a reload.

The one quest breaking issue I've encountered so far is one of the Cyberpsycho quests that refuses to recognize a non-lethal takedown (it's the Mox one fwiw), possibly breaking the overarching questline. I sure hope all the previous ones registered, but I haven't gone back through my quest log to check how many I've already done...

There's a bunch of systems that could use some serious work, driving (I didn't expect Forza Horizon, but come on...) and the UI (the map can be rage inducing if you tend to drag it with the mouse, like I do) being on top of the list for me. I also absolutely hate how double tapping a direction key dodges in that direction (and puts you out of stealth to top it off). I've done that way too often by accident and I couldn't find a way to turn it off.

As for the story, the start feels kind of rushed. The "origin story" is really short and does not really give you much time to "get into" that part of your PCs life. After that you barely spend time with the main NPCs before the first big mission (and the actual start of the game), instead most of that timespan is covered by a cinematic montage of what you've been up to in that timespan. That first big mission itself has some very obvious cut content too (spoilers on The Heist mission):

Spoiler

After the murder you can go to the roof, where you will have to kill two guards (not even an option for non-lethal take-down here, which was weird), but after that it's almost impossible to grab the stuff from the aircraft.

The fact that they cut that escape route isn't much of a problem if it makes the story work, cut content happens. But they could have cleaned up that area so it doesn't feel as...glitchy(? looking for the best word here) to grab the stuff from the aircraft there. It really makes that area feel unfinished.

It has been uphill after that, but I haven't really touched the main quest past where it branches out in multiple quests.

Given the criticism the game has gotten about "having nothing to say" I was pleasantly surprised how often quests touch upon various mental illnesses and how society is still unable to cope with them (and boy, there's quite a lot of reasons to pick up some kind of mental illness in Night City...).

[Picture of Your Games the 14th]

On 1/31/2021 at 1:05 AM, ComradeMaster said:

This is only for last gen consoles.  PC version is well polished but does contain some nasty bugs that are off putting to quite a few players, myself included.

Oh, quite a few people claim the game is unplayable on a GTX970, turns out it is, at least for me, perfectly playable.

As for the bugs, yeah, there's quite a few though it hasn't quite gotten to the level where they're enough for me to shelve the game.

[What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life]

Made it past the Heist in Cyberpunk 2077 and getting absolutely bombarded with quests (and Gigs, just by walking around...), a lot of them "urgent", do any of them have actual timers, other than possibly failing by pushing the main quest too far? Because if they do, it's going to be an interesting (and frustrating) ride...