The Video Game Thread

[Blackman]

You haven't played Daikatana? Boy, are you in for a treat!

 

Seriously, though, it seems like a good deal. Just not for me, as I have the Deux Ex games (except the Fall or something) and Thief. Have Tomb Raider on xbox and it's not so fun imo.

 

They do have a good deal on MtG 2015 though. Even though the reviews are bad, it's actually a good game. People just get frustrated that they actually have to pay for stuff. A tragegy...

[bigtplaystew]

Anyone checking out this Destiny beta? I like it so far. If you are into Borderlands this will appeal to you. I'm not seeing the "groundbreaking true next gen experience" like it was hyped. But as a wrestling fan it's hard to cry foul for someone hyping the crap out of their product :-)

[D-Lyrium]

Just finished Transistor (finally ¬_¬). Decent game, though still not as great as Bastion.

 

I think the actual gameplay lets it down. The story is just as compelling (though it takes AN AGE to start getting somewhere), and the final boss battle is awesome, but it sort of made me wish there were other boss battles. The general combat isn't much fun.

 

The actual combat SYSTEM is fun, with the swappable skills and various skills which boost other skills and give certain bonuses depending on which slot they're in (and also the fact that some of them synergise with other skills, etc) is fantastic. I also love the fact that you have to use them in each slot (Attack, Upgrade or Passive) to unlock each bit of lore, so to get the full story you need to mix up your skills. It's a really great system.

 

But it's only really in the final boss battle where the actual combat itself becomes fun. Everything else is a little easy and gets repetitive after a while (especially after a certain point, where you basically just fight one enemy type for the rest of the game).

 

Trying not to spoil anything, but basically there's real-time combat with a pause/planning mode, where you can slow down time and plan a few attacks (each attack takes a different amount of planning time, so you're limited as to how many you can use per pause, and the pause takes a while to recharge), which is fine, but in the final boss battle the boss gets to use that system too, which makes it VERY challenging and pretty fun. None of the other enemies do that, so while they have some cool abilities, it's pretty easy to beat them all. Even the other 'boss' you fight in the game doesn't use the pause mode, so she's just a really tough version of the usual fights.

 

But yeah, overall, the story kept me going, and I really wish there was more than one boss battle. There's certainly a lot of reasons to replay the game, but I just don't think it's going to be fun enough to bother replaying it.

[masterded]

Anyone checking out this Destiny beta? I like it so far. If you are into Borderlands this will appeal to you. I'm not seeing the "groundbreaking true next gen experience" like it was hyped. But as a wrestling fan it's hard to cry foul for someone hyping the crap out of their product :-)

 

Just started playing the beta on Xbox One and I got to say I like it. Got to say the comparison to Borderlands seems right on the head just less cartoony and over the top. That being said if anyone has an Xbox One and would like to play hit me up my gamertag is masterEGON

[Timber]

As i am up on all the latest games, i just picked up Dragon's Dogma and am about level 30 or so. It's been a fun game and i'm having a good time smashing things and setting Ogre's on fire. I suppose if i finish it, i'll have to get Dark Arisen and give that a go.

 

I suck at FPS games on anything but the pc and i know my pc won't be able to run Destiny but the game seems good and with the people behind it, i'm sure it'll sell like hotcakes. I might have to jump in with the rest of the crowd but i'm not gonna buy any of the super bundles that are surely going to come out for it.

[i effin rule]

Greenman Gaming has a couple of bundles available for $4.99

[Jaysin]

As i am up on all the latest games, i just picked up Dragon's Dogma and am about level 30 or so. It's been a fun game and i'm having a good time smashing things and setting Ogre's on fire. I suppose if i finish it, i'll have to get Dark Arisen and give that a go.

 

I suck at FPS games on anything but the pc and i know my pc won't be able to run Destiny but the game seems good and with the people behind it, i'm sure it'll sell like hotcakes. I might have to jump in with the rest of the crowd but i'm not gonna buy any of the super bundles that are surely going to come out for it.

 

No PC owners will be able to run it

[Blackman]

No PC owners will be able to run it

 

Same for Dragon's Dogma, unfortunately. That game was surprisingly good (with the expension pack; that is).

[D-Lyrium]

Finally caved in and bought Divinity: Original Sin. Not sure why I waited so long, I already love it 3000% more than than the first two games (not including Dragon Commander, which is a different genre entirely and I haven't played). Well, ok, 3000% more than the first one, about 1500% more than the sequel (and at least 80000% more than Beyond, which is weird because that's where the 'single player co-op' mechanic came from).

 

The rock, paper, scissors system for settling intra-party arguments is perhaps not the greatest way of doing it, but I love the fact that the feature is even there, and I love how the characters react differently to various dialogue options (based on the AI you choose, I think). It'd be fun to play in co-op (and this is coming from someone who HATES playing things in co-op ¬_¬). For those who have no idea what I'm on about, I'll spoil the very first one in the game for you (at least, how it happened in my game, yours may well go differently). Found the two drunken guards who wouldn't let us into the city, they offered to take us to the wizard in charge of the defences. I agreed to this, but my companion didn't like the idea of being taken anywhere by guards, and wanted to fight them. We had an argument, and then the game went into a game of rock, paper, scissors. When you win you get points (depending on your relative charisma score) and the first to a certain number of points wins the argument, and it's their opinion that carries on the conversation. In my case, she won, so we ended up fighting the guards and killing them. If I'd won, we'd have skipped the combat and been taken to the wizard we ended up meeting ourselves soon after. It's a pretty cool system, and I love the fact that you don't always get your own way because other party members have opinions on things too. Makes it seem much more like a DnD session than a traditional computer RPG.

 

One thing that does annoy me slightly is that you have to be really careful who you're controlling when you initiate dialogue, as you can only speak for one person per conversation (the other is AI controlled, and acts according to one of a number of preset behaviour types). My guy now has a point in Heartless because I didn't realise I was controlling the girl (my version of whom IS a heartless bitch) and the AI-controlled guy agreed with her on something, which gained him a heartless point as well as her. But that's hardly the end of the world.

 

I do love how you CAN initiate dialogue as whoever you want though. One thing that irks me about other RPGs is that the guy doing the talking was ALWAYS the main character, even if he was a charisma-void guy with no relevant skills (it's even more annoying when the game just assumes you have the skill level of whoever's best at the skill in the party: there's one bit in Neverwinter Nights 2 where my character managed to charm a woman into doing something for him, when all the charm skills were on the tiefling chick, but she wasn't involved in the conversation). I love how every character in your party can essentially be the 'main character' whenever you want. Allows you to build a 'utility' character with all crafting/speech skills, and not have him gimp the entire party by having to do the things he's terrible at (fighting, for instance ¬_¬) on their behalf all the time. Now you can have a rogue who can lockpick stuff, and - shock horror - SHE can do the lockpicking, instead of sitting there with 9 ranks of Lockpick and having to watch the main character fumble around unable to even find where the lock is because he put all his skill points in one-handed swords. But as I said, you just need to be careful who you have selected when you start conversations.

 

Loving the spell system too, where spells work as they logically should (water puts out fire, oil catches fire, etc). And since they use AP instead of mana, you can't 'run out' of spells, whereby your mage becomes completely useless for the rest of the combat. Not to mention the various types of magic user the game has (Cleric, Enchanter, Battlemage, Wizard, Witch, etc) mean that you could in theory have 3-4 magic users in the party who're all completely different in terms of abilities and roles. Currently I'm running with a Battlemage (warrior/wizard hybrid) and a Shadowblade (Rogue/Witch hybrid), plus a pure Wizard I recruited in the first city. So technically I have three mages, but we're all completely different in terms of party role.

 

And turn-based combat.

 

I can see this being 'my game' for a while...

[Blackman]

There's party AI now? Nice. See, this is why I generally wait several months before jumping into a game. The original was probably fine, but if I had played it already, I'd feel a bit sad for missing out on some new features. But then again: one can wait for a long time before the devs and the community decide to stop working on it (take CKII and Skyrim for example), so there has to be a moment where you just stop updating and go for it. I still need to get used to that.

 

Still having the coming week off, I'll have to decide between the Baldur's Gate 1/2 Enhanced playthrough or finally starting Divinity. Played for an hour already, but I picked Paladin and Cleric as characters, which is not optimal by far. You're supposed to have at least one magic character.

[D-Lyrium]

I thought the original Divinity only had one PC? I got bored of it because my Wizard kept getting his ass handed to him in the crypts.

 

And just to clarify, I think you have to play your whole party yourself once you get into battles (which is, to be fair, probably for the best. I certainly prefer it that way), the AI only handles your companions' dialogue options in "co-operative dialogues" (because having an argument where you play as both sides would be a bit lame ). There is a 'No AI' option, which in theory should let you do both sides, but I haven't tried it.

[Rickymex]

I thought the original Divinity only had one PC? I got bored of it because my Wizard kept getting his ass handed to him in the crypts.

 

And just to clarify, I think you have to play your whole party yourself once you get into battles (which is, to be fair, probably for the best. I certainly prefer it that way), the AI only handles your companions' dialogue options in "co-operative dialogues" (because having an argument where you play as both sides would be a bit lame ). There is a 'No AI' option, which in theory should let you do both sides, but I haven't tried it.

 

Funny thing is that I would probably f-up something like that

[Harmor]

Fully agree with you guys on Original Sin, I completely love the game. I play it coop with a buddy, 28 hours in right now and still quite at the beginning of the game. The game is freaking HUGE - just adds to how much I dig the game right now. In actual fact, it's one of the finest RPGs I have played in a long, long time.

[bigtplaystew]

So I had a little more time with Destiny. It's pretty damn sweet. In tone and style, it plays not unlike Halo. The gameplay mechanics make it easy to bring Borderlands to mind, but once you're out there exploring and completing missions you see this game definitely has its own way of doing things.

 

Its not a twitchy first person shooter. It's actually kind of chill and relaxing. For the most part. The PVP looks fun.

[FINisher]

God damn it guys you made me buy Divinity: Original Sin.

 

I very, very rarely buy full priced games other than TEW.

[Blackman]

g2play has it for 23 euros, which is very reasonable a price for what it is. Even 40 would still be a good price imho.

[FINisher]

Well now you say it. -.-' I did check out GOG.com but it was the same price. Also during Summer Sale I didn't think I'd want to get that game.

[The Swanton825]

<p>I bought Marc Ecko's Getting Up a little bit after it got put on Steam and I finally got around to trying it. It's...actually pretty fun. Don't get me wrong, it's still a really stupid game. But the beat 'em up gameplay and the simple, yet fun graffiti make up for the idiotic "Yeah! Fight the power! Anddon'tforgettobuyMarcEckoclothingandNokiaproducts." that makes up the whole story and setting.</p><p> </p><p>

Plus Adam West is in it.</p>

[FINisher]

Mount Your Friends!! Get it now! ;D

[D-Lyrium]

Started getting into the crafting in D:OS now... such a simple yet effective system. I love how (other than the very basics) it doesn't actually TELL you many of the recipes, it lets you work most of the stuff out for yourself (unless of course there are 300 books per series and my poor guy is going to turn into a walking library...). There are books that give you hints, but lets you work it out on your own. It's pretty cool.

 

For instance, the basic cooking recipes (which it does actually tell you, to be fair, but it's not completely obvious at first).

Pizza: Grind wheat in a mortar and pestle to make flour. Mix flour with water (either a Cup of Water or an Empty Cup filled at a water barrel or bucket at a well) to make the dough. Crush a tomato (with any weapon that does crushing damage) to make tomato sauce (), and mix the two together, then cook in an oven (one in the Cook's House near the barracks. He won't mind you using it to cook with, but don't click on it or he'll get pissy. Or use the forge in the old smithy).

 

I can see myself wasting a fair amount of time with this, let alone the actual quests.

 

Hah, potato + hammer = mashed potatoes. I'm easily amused...

 

You can also make a spear out of a dagger and a branch too. I'm not sure if it works with any one-handed slashing weapon, or only regular dagger specifically. Pretty awesome though.

 

You can also combine various things with a knife to cut or whittle them (log + knife = wooden stake, potato + knife = fries, feather + knife = quill, etc).

 

Quill + ink pot = quill and ink, not sure how to use that yet though, presumably you can scribe scrolls/spellbooks from spells you know and give them to other people but there must be more to it than that as I can't work it out (I have both a blank scroll and a blank spellbook). Still, it'll be fun finding out all this stuff.

 

I'm off to find more recipe books and hit food with hammers. ¬_¬

 

Oh, anyone found out how to split stacks yet? My main character has all but two of my health potions, and he's the one that needs them least. I'd kinda like to share them around a bit... In every other game ever it's shift+click, but I can't seem to work it out in D:OS.

[Blackman]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="FINisher" data-cite="FINisher" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="28397" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Well now you say it. -.-'</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I don't often mention those sites as it's not an 'official' site, which means the keys can be stolen or whatever. They do always work and you get them almost instantly, so it's all fine to me. But they operate almost always with Steam-sale prizes.</p>

[FINisher]

<p>Well yeah that too. I get my games 99% from Steam and I have no problem paying for legit copies and the safety associated with Steam etc. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/smile.png.142cfa0a1cd2925c0463c1d00f499df2.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p>

Speaking of that, I can't remember the last time I pirated a game. Seriously. It's been like years and years and years. Quite weird in a way since as a kid that was like so normal but now as an adult who has a constant wage etc., I love buying games, epecially small indie games and so on. I've got +130 games in Steam library right now. :3</p>

[Rickymex]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="D-Lyrium" data-cite="D-Lyrium" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="28397" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div><p> Oh, anyone found out how to split stacks yet? My main character has all but two of my health potions, and he's the one that needs them least. I'd kinda like to share them around a bit... In every other game ever it's shift+click, but I can't seem to work it out in D:OS.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Apparently its shift+drag to the slot you want the new stack to be.</p>

[moon_lit_tears]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="FINisher" data-cite="FINisher" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="28397" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Well yeah that too. I get my games 99% from Steam and I have no problem paying for legit copies and the safety associated with Steam etc. <img alt=":)" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/smile.png.142cfa0a1cd2925c0463c1d00f499df2.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /><p> </p><p> Speaking of that, I can't remember the last time I pirated a game. Seriously. It's been like years and years and years. Quite weird in a way since as a kid that was like so normal but now as an adult who has a constant wage etc., I love buying games, epecially small indie games and so on. I've got +130 games in Steam library right now. :3</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I will admit I've done this a few times, but it's mostly to see if I can actually play the games or not before buying them.</p><p> </p><p> I tried Tropuco but I can't play it because of poor eyesite so I didn't buy it.</p><p> </p><p> I tried cook, serve, delicious and found I could, so I bought it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> I'm a believer in giving my money to games.</p>

[DaMegaFish]

Don't know if anyone else here has a PS4 or anything, but my name on PSN is the same as here. Currently playing The Last Of Us Remastered. Online is a blast and has distracted me away from the single player.