What are you playing now?

[GhostofAnakin]

This new Call of Duty Advanced Warfare gives off a very Mass Effect-like vibe.  Hopefully the ending doesn't make me want to kick kittens, though.

[Oerwinde]

 

 

Just beat The Wolf Among Us. Enjoyed it a lot. Makes me wish HBO or something would do a Fables tv series.

 

ABC has the rights and killed the show before it was aired to put out Once Upon A Time instead *blargh*

 

Maybe the WB movie will at least be good.

I heard the rights got passed around and were the inspiration for Grimm as well.

[ManifestedISO]

This new Call of Duty Advanced Warfare gives off a very Mass Effect-like vibe.  Hopefully the ending doesn't make me want to kick kittens, though.

 

So does Halo. So much so, I think Bioware copied Bungie like a junior-high school term-paper plagiarist. For example, the Citadel holographic girl-computer, as well as the Normandy girl-computer EDI, are pretty much exact replicas of Cortana. 

Edited July 8, 2015 by ManifestedISO

[GhostofAnakin]

 

This new Call of Duty Advanced Warfare gives off a very Mass Effect-like vibe.  Hopefully the ending doesn't make me want to kick kittens, though.

 

So does Halo. So much so, I think Bioware copied Bungie like a junior-high school term-paper plagiarist. For example, the Citadel holographic girl-computer, as well as the Normandy girl-computer EDI, are pretty much exact replicas of Cortana. 

 

 

Whichever game gave BioWare the inspiration for that annoying crucible star child also should rot in hell, then.

[ManifestedISO]

So it's my opinion now, that Bioware possibly likely heavily borrowed ideas from Bungie Studios, but it's been confirmed they definitely recently stole Halo 4 writer Chris Schlerf to be lead writer on Mass Effect: Andromeda. 

 

Which is good, I think. I'm in the middle of Halo 3, the last Bungie title before 343i took over the series. It's a lot of fun. Luckily included in the collection is Halo 4, so very soon I may get a slight sense of what we're in for with Andromeda:

 

 

Halo 4 featured a more human, interesting story than past games in the series, which is quite the trick when you're writing for a faceless soldier and an AI construct. The new Mass Effect game seems to be in good hands.

 

"As a writer, I write for characters," Schlerf said. "To me, it’s always about what makes my characters tick and what stories I can tell through those characters that will actually engage people about their own lives. It provides a mirror to that player’s experience [so that they are] not just sitting back in an armchair."

 

[GhostofAnakin]

It's been a while since I played Halo 4, but I didn't notice any difference in the writing between it and the previous 3 Halo games.  They were all the same general, one-dimensional story whose only purpose was to move the game along so the player can shoot more things.

[GhostofAnakin]

Finished the CoD Advanced Warfare single player campaign.  It was pretty good, just a bit on the short side.

 

I wasn't able to fully upgrade my Exo suit.  Probably didn't complete enough challenges or something.  Only got 17 of 22 upgrades.  So that's something I may end up going back trying to finish.

 

I doubt I'll play the MP component.  Tried it when the game first came out, but I didn't like it at all.

[GhostofAnakin]

Thinking more on it, I'd say Advanced Warfare's single player story was the best of the entire series.  The most coherent, anyway, even if it was straightforward and kind of predictable.

[Namutree]

It's been a while since I played Halo 4, but I didn't notice any difference in the writing between it and the previous 3 Halo games.  They were all the same general, one-dimensional story whose only purpose was to move the game along so the player can shoot more things.

Did you play Halo 2? It wasn't one dimensional at all.

 

EDIT: To note; I think all the Halo's have terrible single player campaigns (Halo 2 included), but Halo 2 had a dang good story. It certainly wasn't "one dimensional".

Edited July 10, 2015 by Namutree

[GhostofAnakin]

 

It's been a while since I played Halo 4, but I didn't notice any difference in the writing between it and the previous 3 Halo games.  They were all the same general, one-dimensional story whose only purpose was to move the game along so the player can shoot more things.

Did you play Halo 2? It wasn't one dimensional at all.

 

EDIT: To note; I think all the Halo's have terrible single player campaigns (Halo 2 included), but Halo 2 had a dang good story. It certainly wasn't "one dimensional".

 

 

It's been a loooooong time since I've played the Halo games, so maybe I'm misremembering.  However, I don't recall anything more than a rather simplistic story.  Granted, I'm usually comparing them to RPG stories, which tend to have more depth/content to them.

[ManifestedISO]

You're both right, Halo 2 is a dang good one-dimensional story. And now super pretty with the Anniversary edition. 

 

I don't know how they did it, but I totally admire the Master Chief now. 

[GhostofAnakin]

I think my game of CoD Advanced Warfare is glitched.  I don't think I can fully upgrade my exo suit in the single player campaign.  I'm not getting any upgrade points after finishing missions, and the only other thing that I'm missing out on is two of the challenges, which will (at most) earn me 1 point each for a total of 2 more points.  I need 4, total, in order to finish all upgrades.

[GhostofAnakin]

I guess my game's not glitched after all.  All I need is to find 4 more pieces of intel and I'll have enough upgrade points to fully upgrade my Exo suit.  It will kill two achievements with one stone, too, with both the fully upgraded Exo suit as well as the achievement for finding all intel.

[Agiel]

You're both right, Halo 2 is a dang good one-dimensional story. And now super pretty with the Anniversary edition. 

 

I don't know how they did it, but I totally admire the Master Chief now. 

 

The high watermark has always been Combat Evolved (since you never forget your first love) and Reach for me. Particularly with Bungie no longer at the helm, I don't think the series will ever be as good as those two.

 

I am also of the controversial opinion that the Library in Combat Evolved was actually a pretty darned good level. Playing it co-op on Legendary was like playing Left 4 Dead eight years before Left 4 Dead was out.

[Malcador]

More Door Kickers, finally got that embassy mission down - go go Point Man.

[GhostofAnakin]

Finished up all the intel in CoD Advanced Warfare.  That allowed me to fully upgrade my Exo suit, thus finishing off two achievements in one.

 

I gotta repeat, I think the SP campaign in Advanced Warfare is the best of the entire series.  It's just too bad this is a new story arc, so I can't go back and play a previous installment of it.

[melkathi]

Warning: Long post.

 

So, Satellite Reign.

Is it the Syndicate / Syndicate Wars sequel you have been waiting for?

I don't know. It sure seems to be the one I was waiting for though.

 

 

 

 

 

The Basics:

The evil company Dracogenics (it's a cyberpunk story, big companies are by default evil) created immortality tech: the rich and powerful can download themselves into new bodies and essentially live forever. But a new player has arrived on the scene who aims to grab this tech and power it brings for themselves. Enter you.

To this end you control a small, 4-man clandestine team of cloned agents in isometric real time (without pause). A main story offers missions to guide you along and access to the different districts of the city has to be unlocked, but mostly players are free to do as they please in each district and pick targets of opportunity.

 

 

 

 

Your Agents:

Your agents have been cloned using stolen Dracogenics tech. As a result you can discard their bodies at a whim and download them into new hosts. This is meant to a) explain the respawn mechanic  and b) the game's new recruitment mechanic.

If an agent dies, they can be respawned at the nearest beacon. After some time. For a bit of cash they'll respawn sooner. The respawn timer and cash depends on the complexity of the agent being cloned. More augments and equipment requires more time and resources to procure after all.

But a base body can provide only so many ressurections before the genetic information starts to degrade. Thus you are required to diverify your gene data base by snatching people off the street.

 

While in previous games your agents were faceless, vat-grown base clones, interchangable for anything but their installed augments, the dracogenics tech has allowed for far more sophisticated skill sets. Your agents now each have a class/specialization. You have one of each, representing the four key agents who's conciousness is being transfered from clone to clone. Melkathi notes: This has been a point of critique from fans of the old games:  we want our faceless clone. It is part of what makes cyberpunk so distopian after all. Now that the body snatching is in place though, I for one have become quite happy with the new system.

 

The Soldier Agent:

The soldier is your grunt. At first not really able to do all that much other than shoot stuff and be shot at, they can enter a state of Rage to become more effective in combat, Draw Fire away from squishier friendly targets, Harden themselves to damage, and become the team's Explosive Specialist. On top of that they can learn to Hardwire equipment - a usefull skill when you want to turn off the electricity to a military compound.

 

The Support Agent:

The support agent does exaclty that: help your team accomplish their mission. They can heal team mates, hand out combat stims and even have some leadership training to boost the team's effectiveness. Most importantly though they are equiped to perform a World Scan, checking the flow of information for details about their surrounding. They can see what camera is connected to which control panel, but also who that civilian is who just strolled past.

 

The Hacker Agent:

The hacker agents hacks. They can hack door controls. They can hack security cameras. They can even hijack the chips implanted in a person's brain. Melkathi notes: In effect the good old persuadatron from the Syndicate games, intelectual property tied to that license, has been turned into a skill in this game. A hacked person can follow the agents around and assist in combat, or they can be send back to base and used in the gene pool (ouch). In combat, the hacker is an expert when it comes to energy weapons and can deploy combat drones like a rigger in Shadowrun.

 

The Infiltrator Agent:

The infiltrator does the sneaky stuff. Like the soldier they start off rather skill-less (though with a neat sniper rifle). Soon though they can develope their sniper skills, dealing knockback damage and entering sniper stances, but they can also learn to be extra sneaky. The click button turn invisible mechanic can seem out of place in many games, in a cyberpunk game it does make a certain sense though (think assassination scene in 1995's Ghost in the Shell). And to make the stealth even more usefull, the infiltrator can be trained in melee combat for stealthy, silent kills.

 

 

Melkathi says: Yup, I do kinda miss the agents with the complete lack of personality. Syndicate was the one game series where this lack actually enhanced the atmosphere. But the classes and accompanying skills add a lot more options without truly taking anything away gameplay wise. Maybe it would have been better if the player could choose how agents specialize. But 5 Lives Studio is just five people and they do have to set in limits if they want to ever produce a finished product. This is a limitation I can live with. Most importantly it adds more than it takes away. Agents haven't lost any ability. They simply became from four clones who can hold an Uzi, four clones who can hold an Uzi and know how to...

 

 

 

 

The City:

You can move around the city freely. For specific values of freely. There are restricted zones where guards will shoot you on sight. There are gates that need to be bypassed one way or another. there are security cameras that will spot you. So let's say: you can try to move freely. But nobody stops you from trying.

The city districts have been quite lovingly crafted to give players loads to do, and more than one way to do these things.When for example you leave the short tutorial (right click to make your agent walk over there etc) and enter the Downtown District, all you have to do is get the band back together and get access to the next district. All you can do though is a whole lot more. There is a bank waiting to be robbed. There is a Dracogenics military compound waiting to be raided. There is a Ronin Industry storage facility to be snuck into. There is the CCTV database to be hacked and the Black Market Clinic inside the Wyvern compound that could be of interest.

And of course there are the spots to set up your beacons, the ATMs to be hacked and the civilians doing what civilians do: walk around oblivious to the fact that the player is about to happen onto their lives.

Holster your weapons, stroll around, see the sights. Don't get arrested.

 

 

 

 

 

The Mission:

Your mission log holds the information Tag (the lady with the sexy accent) has provided you both on your main mission and on targets of opportunity. She also provides opportunities to purchase more info through information brokers and strategic bribes.

For example, and only the tiniest spoiler, the game intro informs you that one of your agents has been arrested. As you leave the tutorial, saving them should be a top priority. You know the location of the police compound they are being held in. It has a big gate. You could blast your way through the gate. Shoot the guards and fight your way back out through the inevitable reinforcements. You could wait for a patrol to open the gate, then fight your way in. Of course you could also wait for no guard to be in sight and hack the gate controls. Alternatively you could snoop around for something other than the gate. Have some spare cash? Tag has a contact who knows someoneone who knows a corrupt cop. That can save you the snooping. Through the back alley to the west you can enter through the compound's back door. Or from the construction site to the east you can use a cable to zipline directly onto the prison roof. The choice is yours.

 

 

Melkathi says: the back door really is the easiest way. Your agents come out fairly close to the CCTV control panel, turning the sneaking to the prison building into a stroll. And if you don't dawdle, you can be back out the same way before the cameras wake up.

 

 

 

 

Hijacking:

A note on hijacking. It is a skill only your hacker has. And it is a skill that needs to be upgraded. A level 1 skill can only grab civilians. At level 2 some minor guards can also be controlled. The heavier guards require a higher skill. Guards too can be send back to the gene databank, though currently it messes the game up a bit: Sending the hijacked person to base releases them from your command, resulting the guard you hijacked to then try and shoot you if you are in a restricted area. When you kill them they still appear in your gene pool.

Before you hijack a new recruit it is advisable to perform a World Scan with your support agent. Once a person has been scanned, with just a small expenditure you can download additional information on them, showing you how they would affect an agent's stats if they were used as gene material for a new clone.

 

 

 

 

 

The World Scan:

The Wold Scan is an integral part of the game. Within its radius it shows you power lines, highlights important objects and highlights human targets in different colours: white for civilians, red for guards, blue for agents and yellow for VIPs. Need to assassinate a target? Scan the area they were last seen and locate their chip. Need to bribe someone for their access codes? Do the same. And as guards are highlighted in red, a scan will help you keep tabs on them while you are infiltrating a facility.

And you'll want to do random scans as you travel through the city. Not all civilians are just average Joes and Janes. Sometimes someone will turn out to be someone you need: a World Scan may reveal a person to be a scientist you can headhunt. Offer them some cash and poach them away from their current employer to bolster your research team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final Thoughts:

It seems you cannot lose the game. Even though clones deteriorate if they die too often, you can simply grab more bodies off the street - life in the city is cheap. Hacked ATMs provide a steady cash flow. It seems you will always be able to recover from any mistake. Some people may wonder what the point is of trying then. Well, for some there may be no point. But dying does rob you of time, can rob you of money, of the sense of accomplishment and, as you are forced to replace the clone base for your agents, it can rob you not only of an agent's dashing good looks, but also the desirable traits of a body. Melkathi remembers: While most civilians seem to give around +10 Health as a clone, and my base soldier clone had a nice +30, I ran accros a lady with a funky haircut who had +80 health. The ideal meat shield! To me, eventually being forced to replace that body could end up just as bad as a game over screen.

To me the game is a lot of fun. I love the atmosphere. A LOT of work has been thrown into it by the small dev team. It captures a lot of what made the original Syndicate games *feel* great without simply copying them. It is a game that stands in its own right. It is real time without pause, but so far it hasn't gotten so hectic that I woul have needed the pause. Then again. When I did get overrun, I recloned my agents and tried again.

Edited July 12, 2015 by melkathi

[HoonDing]

Is this for iPad?

[melkathi]

PC.

 

But I am playing on a fairly oldish laptop that is in a bad state. So only the city screenshot is at better settings.

[Keyrock]

Methinks it's time to start up a new game of X3: Albion Prelude.  I need to build a new galactic empire.  The nice thing is that my old custom flightstick profile is still saved, so that's 15-20 minutes of setup saved.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Keyrock

[GhostofAnakin]

Trying Metro 2033 again.  Hopefully this time my save game file won't get corrupted and ruin hours of gameplay.

[melkathi]

The Green Lizard Thingie Syndicate (I figured out how to upload custom Logos) welcomes Mr. Igor Sciolla as our newest member of the R&D Department. Happy researching cranial bombs Mr. Sciolla.

 

This pacifist playthrough attempt is proving quite tricky, A lot of XP I do not get by not shooting stuff.

There is a tiny XP exploit, but am trying without abusing it (too much).

[Darkpriest]

I was thinking about supporting SR during Kickstarter, but decided to wait and see (I already had a few games on KS portfolio that were yet to be released and none ready).

 

Now I do have original Syndicate on Origin (the only recent game released there that is actually worth playing and an EA owned title, same with Theme Hospital), and there is one thing in that game that I found missing after all these years of gaming and being spoiled by dumbed down games... I wanted some sort of AI behavior that you could set up, so you would be more focused on positioning them than on aiming and firing.

 

How is the SR gameplay. Do you have a link to some good Lets Play series? I'd like to check the gameplay before buying it.

[melkathi]

You can't setup AI behaviour. There is a cover mechanic and once combat starts you don't have to manually shoot every bad guy.
Pathfinding is still a bit buggy.
With the different roles there can be some fun setup for infiltrations. I had my hacker open the door for the infiltrator to the west, while support was standing outside the south wall checking guard patrols with the world scan to see when the infiltrator should dash in and grab the stuff. Runs seem to be a lot easier (at least early on) if you use agents` strengths.

Don't know any let's plays. As a kickstarter backer any let's play would have been too late anyway.

 

 

edit: for what it's worth, while I own both Syndicate and Syndicate Wars on GOG, I can't really play either of them anymore. Especially not the original one.

Edited July 13, 2015 by melkathi

[Keyrock]

So I started building my empire in X3: Albion Prelude, and by "building" at this point I mean just earning whatever money I can doing short trading runs to upgrade my transport so that I can haul more stuff faster which I can turn into more money which I can turn into a second transport and eventually my first station.  Eventually I'll buy combat vessels too, but that's much later on, I'm not aiming to fight anybody right now, I always play these types of games as merchant first and foremost.  

 

I did the Humble Merchant start, which is the easiest starting point, at least if you're looking to trade.  With the Humble Merchant start you get an Argon Mercury (transport) and an Argon Discoverer (scout) and some meager chump change to begin with.  Like all Argon ships, the Mercury is a capable vessel, average across the board.  Argon ships are never a terrible choice, regardless of the role you're looking to fill, but they don't excel at anything either, hence why I pretty much never buy Argon ships.  Still, it's a decent enough ship to start with.  The discoverer I haven't touched yet, I just had autopilot park it at the nearest station while I do my trading runs.  The Discoverer will come into play soon enough, but I'm not quite there yet.

 

I have my Mercury decently upgraded at this point, but it still has a ways to go.  Once I fully upgraded the engines (which is fairly cheap) it became a balancing act of purchasing as many cargo extensions as I could afford while also maintaining enough cash in my account to fill said cargo hold with goods.  The transport starts off with no weapons and a weak ass 5 MJ shield.  I'll eventually get the ship as shielded as I can (3 X 25 MJ shields, I think), but right now cargo space is more important, plus finding a station that sells 25 MJ shields is easier said than done (that's where the Discoverer will come in).  For now, because of the pathetic shielding I have, I need to stick to safe, well patrolled sectors.  A 5 MJ shield will protect me from minor collisions, but if I get attacked by pirates I'm toast, that shield will go down right quick.  I'm never going to bother putting any weapons on this transport,or any other, for that matter, I kinda don't see the point.  You don't fight with a transport, if you see pirates a comin' you turn tail and run as fast as you can to the nearest station or (non-pirate) military vessels you can find, get on your comm, and ask for protection.  Either that, or you fly with an armed escort (advisable if you carry expensive cargo and tend to fly in dangerous sectors).  You can arm a transport with weapons somewhat comparable to a light fighter (especially if we're talking about a Split, Paranid, Terran, or OTAS transport), but transports aren't exactly the most nimble ships ever made.  Any fighter will have no problem flying circles around you and blasting holes in your hull while making it extremely hard for you to get any hits on them.

 

Once I finish maxing out my cargo hold, I'll hire a pilot to take over my Mercury and do trading runs in a safe area while I hop into my Discoverer and go exploring.  I don't remember if the Discoverer comes with any weapons to start, but if it doesn't I won't bother getting any.  While you can fight in a scout, I'm not looking to do that.  If I see danger coming I can simply outrun it; only another scout is catching a scout.  Step 1 will be to find a facility that sells 25 MJ shields for my Mercury.  When I find that I'll order my Mercury to fly over to that sector, get fitted with the shields, then back to trading with it (I can then be a bit less careful with what sectors to trade in to boot).  Then I'll take my Discoverer and head on over to Split territory to buy another transport.

 

When choosing a transport there are a couple different theories you can subscribe to.  If you follow the Boron and Teldai train of though, you get a slow transport with tons of cargo space.  If you follow the Split and Paranid train of thought, you get a transport with less cargo space but that is much faster.  I subscribe to the Split and Paranid transport theory.  Sure, I have less cargo room so I can't haul as much stuff per trip, but I can make the trip much faster, also I can beat the competition to stations to get the best price, also also having a faster transport gives me a better chance to get to safety before pirates get to me.  Of course, you can get a OTAS transport and get the best of all worlds (they have the best ships in the game pretty much across the board), but I won't be reaching any OTAS sectors any time soon unless I want to take some real big risks.  While Paranid ship designs, in my view, are far more pleasing to the eye, Split transports are much cheaper and a bit faster to boot.  Plus Paranid are tough to deal with at first, I'm not even sure they'd let me buy their most basic transport with my current reputation, while I'm almost certain the Split will sell me on of their basic Caiman transports.  I'll be dealing with the Paranid later to get military vessels, I like their combination of firepower, speed, and shielding.  Outside of OTAS, I think Paranid make the best war vessels.

 

Once I get my Split Caiman then I trade until I can afford to build my first station, likely an ore mine.  After that, more transports and more stations until I get enough steady income pouring in to begin building a fleet of fighters.  Then I start hunting pirates and other aggressive factions to raise my rep high enough to get larger and more powerful war vessels.  Once I get a frigate it's on like a pot of neck bones and then I go into conquer mode.