What are you playing now?

[BruceVC]

Just finished Metro 2033 Last Light Redux on ranger hardcore difficulty. One of the most atmospheric and thrilling games I've ever played, the maps were fantastic and so was the gameplay. Too short though. A silenced 5.45 sub gun with a NV scope on top and the knife were the only weapons I used, aside from repelling scripted mutant mass attacks with a 4-barrel shotgun and the weapons I was forced to use near the ending. I love games that allow using stealth. 

I also welcomed some subtle improvements over Metro 2033, like the scarce but helpful little red flags on the surface to hint the direction I was supposed to go. I got lost and ran out of filters more than just once in Metro 2033 which was highly frustrating, this time I could actually enjoy the visuals on the surface. (Loved the bridge level near the end)

 

- Mild spoiler ahead- 

One thing I did not like was the morale system, and of course I got the ''bad'' ending. Yes, I got it, the whole game was about forgiving and being forgiven in return but some situations called for a less pacifistic solution. Yes, I killed those bandits in the tunnel who executed civilians and were about to rape a woman next to her dead people. According to the morale system that makes me a bad person, more than simply ignoring the whole situation and walking by. And yes, Pavel, after committing so many atrocities deserved no quarter, his fate of becoming a lost soul was fitting. But this decision also made me a bad person.

Some of the moral points made sense, some were a little on the WTF? side. 

 

Yeah its  a brilliant game. Did you play the first one ? I thought it was harder than Last Light but both games were very entertaining 

[Woldan]

Yeah its  a brilliant game. Did you play the first one ? I thought it was harder than Last Light but both games were very entertaining

Of course, bought both games (Redux) from steam. Could play it on highest settings and resolution with 60 fps, totally enjoyed my new PC. 

 

I actually found Last Light harder, especially those Nosalises attacking in waves in the Church was a hard fight, made it out alive after the fourth try, making an impenetrable firewall with the firebombs and then shooting those bastards behind it did the trick. Oh, and the Rhino was a tough one too. Big AND fast. 

Edited January 28, 2015 by Woldan

[Nonek]

Playing Torment again with the various fan patches, tweaks and whatnots, now I distinctly remember having the option to ask Candrian Illborne (the Planewalker in the Smouldering Corpse) about the Rule of Three in previous playthroughs, this time the option does not appear. Seems very strange that a fan patch would remove content, doe anybody else remember this conversation node being present?

[Gfted1]

Never played but perhaps that conversation option is tied to an attribute being at a certain level and your current build doesn't support that?

[Bartimaeus]

What Gfted1 said. I am pretty sure it's still there, as I remember getting it while having the "various fan patches, tweaks, and whatnots" installed,

 

- Mild spoiler ahead- 

One thing I did not like was the morale system, and of course I got the ''bad'' ending. Yes, I got it, the whole game was about forgiving and being forgiven in return but some situations called for a less pacifistic solution. Yes, I killed those bandits in the tunnel who executed civilians and were about to rape a woman next to her dead people. According to the morale system that makes me a bad person, more than simply ignoring the whole situation and walking by. And yes, Pavel, after committing so many atrocities deserved no quarter, his fate of becoming a lost soul was fitting. But this decision also made me a bad person.

Some of the moral points made sense, some were a little on the WTF? side.

I never finished Last Light because the story and characters were insufferable (and not to mention stealth was even more pathetically easy and exploitable than it was in 2033): was it a lot harder to get whatever's the "good" ending in LL vs 2033? Just exploring the levels in 2033 was enough to always be presented the good ending, even if you were constantly committing humanicide.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Fighter]

I've tried to kill the the fast night zombies in Dying Light by sneaking up on them from behind to score a few hits followed by uv flashlight and some more melee. But seems I just don't have the weapons and skills for that yet. On another note human enemies are pretty tricky.

 

 

Disabled the film grain effect in Dying Light by messing with the files. I like the game better this way. This should really be in the options menu.

Which line in the ini?

I'm really enjoying the game btw, hopefully I won't end up overpowered as most of the fun comes from surviving.

 

 

What Keyrock said. This may be a little clearer though:

 

1. Go to Dying light located in your steam library folder: C: Program Files 86 / Steam / SteamApps/ Common/ Dying Light / DW

2. With WinRar Installed open Data0.pak and extract it to
   C:\Users\"username"\Documents\DyingLight\out

3. Then Open the out folder. You will see additional folders of data/logs/settings.

4. Got to Data/ Scripts / and look for varlist_noise.scr

5. Open notepad

6. Drag the varlist_noise.scr file into it and change the 0.15 to 0.00. Hit save and leave the the Data0.pak where it is.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dyinglight/comments/2tus4n/how_to_disable_film_grain/

[GhostofAnakin]

Finished AC: Black Flag.  Gotta say I found it the best AC game by far.

[Bokishi]

I've tried to kill the the fast night zombies in Dying Light by sneaking up on them from behind to score a few hits followed by uv flashlight and some more melee. But seems I just don't have the weapons and skills for that yet. On another note human enemies are pretty tricky.

 

 

Disabled the film grain effect in Dying Light by messing with the files. I like the game better this way. This should really be in the options menu.

Which line in the ini?

 

I'm really enjoying the game btw, hopefully I won't end up overpowered as most of the fun comes from surviving.

 

 

What Keyrock said. This may be a little clearer though:

 

1. Go to Dying light located in your steam library folder: C: Program Files 86 / Steam / SteamApps/ Common/ Dying Light / DW

2. With WinRar Installed open Data0.pak and extract it to

   C:\Users\"username"\Documents\DyingLight\out

3. Then Open the out folder. You will see additional folders of data/logs/settings.

4. Got to Data/ Scripts / and look for varlist_noise.scr

5. Open notepad

6. Drag the varlist_noise.scr file into it and change the 0.15 to 0.00. Hit save and leave the the Data0.pak where it is.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dyinglight/comments/2tus4n/how_to_disable_film_grain/

 

Thanks for this, that grain was causing major nausea on the rift for me. Now Dying Light is more playable

[Tale]

Apparently Grim Fandango has cloud saves on Playstation even if you arn't a PS+ subscriber. That's unique to my knowledge.

 

I was wondering why it always did an extra load when looking at saves.

 

But yeah, I'm on the second year and the passion is dying down. I think it's because I know my goal, but I don't really see how I'm supposed to get there. Well, I know how to get there, but I don't know how to get that.

 

So I'm checking every nook and cranny for something random that will be useful. Takes the thrill out of adventure games.

[Fionavar]

Dragon Age: Inquisition. PS3. Was hoping to play on the PS4, but still waiting for the PS4 to have all of the daily features I take for granted on my PS3!

[GhostofAnakin]

Decided to pick up AC Unity.  Very early on, but I'm not impressed.  The graphics are the only thing I like so far.  They've completely changed the control scheme, the stealth aspect is more annoying than fun (barely anywhere to hide in now), and for whatever reason, the sound seems off when outside of cutscenes, like they're all talking in an echoing hallway.

 

Sneaking around and hiding in bushes or haystacks was fun in Black Flag.  Sneaking around and hiding in mobs of people and nowhere else is not in Unity.

[Bokishi]

Starting Year 2 in Grim Fandango Remastered, and I remember how cryptic and tedious it was back in 1998. I'll see how much I can remember

[trulez]

What Keyrock said. This may be a little clearer though:

 

1. Go to Dying light located in your steam library folder: C: Program Files 86 / Steam / SteamApps/ Common/ Dying Light / DW

2. With WinRar Installed open Data0.pak and extract it to

   C:\Users\"username"\Documents\DyingLight\out

3. Then Open the out folder. You will see additional folders of data/logs/settings.

4. Got to Data/ Scripts / and look for varlist_noise.scr

5. Open notepad

6. Drag the varlist_noise.scr file into it and change the 0.15 to 0.00. Hit save and leave the the Data0.pak where it is.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dyinglight/comments/2tus4n/how_to_disable_film_grain/

Couldn't you just copy edited varlist_noise.scr from someone else and drop in to the correct folder?

[Fighter]

Couldn't you just copy edited varlist_noise.scr from someone else and drop in to the correct folder?

 

Sure you can. if you trust the source of the file.

[Keyrock]

Now if we could just get rid of the horrific chromatic aberration.  Both filmgrain and chromatic aberration are 2 trends that need to die a fiery death as soon as possible.  I drives me nuts that developers keep cramming this crap into games.

[Malcador]

What is cryptic about Year 2? I do remember taking a while to figure out what that key from Nick was for.

[Tale]

What is cryptic about Year 2? I do remember taking a while to figure out what that key from Nick was for.

Edit: I see this is about Bokishi saying it was cryptic, not my saying I'm checking every nook and cranny.

 

I'm feeling better about it now that I've found a new path.

[Malcador]

Rubacava was fun enough for me that exploring every nook and cranny was enjoyable, was truly sad when Year 2 ended. Never did like 3 or 4 that much.

[Woldan]

I never finished Last Light because the story and characters were insufferable (and not to mention stealth was even more pathetically easy and exploitable than it was in 2033): was it a lot harder to get whatever's the "good" ending in LL vs 2033? Just exploring the levels in 2033 was enough to always be presented the good ending, even if you were constantly committing humanicide.

Some of the characters were pretty awful I agree, I especially loathed Anna. But, Pavel was a pretty good antagonist for a survival FPS game.

 

Stealth was exploitable but way harder than simply going in guns blazing and head-shooting everyone. Heck, with the assault rifles you were nearly invincible. Get behind cover and head-shoot everyone.- Its like a hammerhead game. Sneaking past 15 guards who carry flash lights / head lamps and finding alternative routes and avoiding nearly invisible traps was fun. Not nearly as much fun as stealth in the Thief games but fun.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Woldan

[Bartimaeus]

Some of the characters were pretty awful I agree, I especially loathed Anna. But, Pavel was a pretty good antagonist for a survival FPS game.

 

Stealth was exploitable but way harder than simply going in guns blazing and head-shooting everyone. Heck, with the assault rifles you were nearly invincible. Get behind cover and head-shoot everyone.- Its like a hammerhead game. Sneaking past 15 guards who carry flash lights / head lamps and finding alternative routes and avoiding nearly invisible traps was fun. Not nearly as much fun as stealth in the Thief games but fun.

Anna made me want to bash my skull in with a rusty iron rod - but what they did to Khan was nearly equally reprehensible. Once a passive and semi-spiritual wiseman, now a crack-smoking hippie whackjob who's personally directing and goading you on to your every bloody insane move. Didn't look the same, didn't act the same, and didn't even have the same voice actor - should've been a completely different character, and, in fact, if not for the name, he actually was.

 

I don't remember what the difficulty curve was for Last Light, to be honest - but I do remember 2033's Hardcore/Ranger mods, which made going in guns blazing pretty danged hard unless you were okay with and accounting for the fact you were gonna die one one or two shots (though enemies would as well - but if you were facing multiple at once, you were at a serious disadvantage). My problem, though, lied more with the fact that the stealth simply felt ridiculous: like when you're running through that...Nazi, was it?...prison with Pavel, the entire situation was silly. The lighting of the level was way too bright - they should've spotted you immediately to begin with by Metro 2033 standards (never mind real life); firing your "silenced" revolver in what's essentially an echo-chamber and somehow not being heard by everyone in the room is equally ridiculous, and jeeze, I swear, has no-one heard of actual whispering? Because I'm pretty sure Pavel and the random prisoners you talked to were loud enough that everyone should've heard the various people talking bouncing off the walls and wondered, "hey, where'd everyone go and who are all these not very quiet people talking in semi-hushed tones?".

 

Lack of attention to detail to stuff like that really gets to me, especially when it's for something as critical as the stealth system. Do it right - even if it means stealth won't always be perfectly possible for every single situation, or at least seemingly feasible, which it really shouldn't be to begin with - or don't expect the atmosphere and immersion to hold up. Anna falling in love with you after having only met and talked to you for all of five minutes also darkened my already dour opinion of the game - that was some seriously pathetic and oh-so-forced "storytelling". It was also the final straw for me before I quit.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[marelooke]

Trying to finish Bioshock (never made it through and I'm back in the area where I usually quit, so we'll see if I make it to the end this time...). The story isn't really grabbing me, but I gotta finish this, then move on to 2 and Infinity, my gamer cred is at stake

 

I also hit Mastery Rank 17 in  Warframe, they changed the test in one of the previous patched so my preparation was wrong, which means I needed two tries instead of acing it the first time around.

 

Aaand, I also picked up Guild Wars two again, my lvl23 Veggie Thief was still patiently waiting for me after two years (I got two "anniversary gifts" on login). One thing I noticed is that my build still played like it used to (in as far as I still remembered anyway), in World of Warcraft I probably wouldn't even have recognised the skill trees anymore after that much time... (*adding* to a character is imho *much* preferable over redoing entire classes with each bloody expansions. Did ya hear me Blizzard?). Edging closer and closer to lvl30 though I feel rather purposeless, I finished the last story mission I had at lvl23 and now I feel like I'm just grinding (by completing map objectives) to lvl30 so I can get more story...

[Hurlshort]

Blizzard simplified the classes and got rid of a lot of the redundant skills in this last expansion, so it is actually easier to jump back into the game than it used to be.  

[marelooke]

Blizzard simplified the classes and got rid of a lot of the redundant skills in this last expansion, so it is actually easier to jump back into the game than it used to be.  

 

Yes, but skills were only redundant due to their ineptitude, different builds used to be possible but Blizzard pretty much killed that option with Wrath of the Lich King (Arcane Power/PoM/Pyro anyone?). And a lot of the "redundant skills" would more accurately be described as "situational skills", cutting those killed the flavour of a lot of classes (but that's another discussion entirely).

 

Quite a few other games actually manage to do skill "trees" (they don't have to be trees at all) perfectly fine without the need to entirely revamp the skills and their associated tree with every expansion, Everquest 2 for example, were skills (or entire skill trees) are added with expansions and the tuning of abilities was generally fairly minor. Their splitting of "skill XP" ("AA" for Alternate Advancement) and "leveling XP" was also pretty neat imho.

Judging by how my class still plays the same (though I wasn't exactly that high level when I quit GW2) it seems ArenaNet also got things right, at least to a fairly decent degree.

 

Blizzard just did a bad job imho, and instead of fixing it they scrapped it, because apparently they assume their players are too dumb to handle anything but a cookie-cutter promoting skill system.

[GhostofAnakin]

Trying to finish Bioshock (never made it through and I'm back in the area where I usually quit, so we'll see if I make it to the end this time...). The story isn't really grabbing me, but I gotta finish this, then move on to 2 and Infinity, my gamer cred is at stake

 

I'm one of the folks who preferred Infinite to BioShock 1 and 2.  Really enjoyed Infinite, was kind of meh about the other two.

[Woldan]

 

I don't remember what the difficulty curve was for Last Light, to be honest - but I do remember 2033's Hardcore/Ranger mods, which made going in guns blazing pretty danged hard unless you were okay with and accounting for the fact you were gonna die one one or two shots (though enemies would as well - but if you were facing multiple at once, you were at a serious disadvantage). My problem, though, lied more with the fact that the stealth simply felt ridiculous: like when you're running through that...Nazi, was it?...prison with Pavel, the entire situation was silly. The lighting of the level was way too bright - they should've spotted you immediately to begin with by Metro 2033 standards (never mind real life); firing your "silenced" revolver in what's essentially an echo-chamber and somehow not being heard by everyone in the room is equally ridiculous, and jeeze, I swear, has no-one heard of actual whispering? Because I'm pretty sure Pavel and the random prisoners you talked to were loud enough that everyone should've heard the various people talking bouncing off the walls and wondered, "hey, where'd everyone go and who are all these not very quiet people talking in semi-hushed tones?".

Hm, whenever I shot somebody with a silenced weapon enemies in the vicinity immediately went into an alarmed/search mode for half a minute or so

 

Also the bright lighting may be your gamma setting, I set gamma lower than recommended so a lot of times I had to use night vision to see where I was going. If it was so bright that you could navigate in the shadows without any kind of help from your NV gamma was set too high.

Walking in guns blazing was realtively easy because the AI's aim was not very good even at the highest difficulty setting, if you had halfway decent cover sticking your had out shoot others in the scull was really easy, especially at long ranges. It took waaaay more effort to do half as much damage in stealth mode. (as it should)

The whispering in the Nazi prison was dumb though.