The Gaming Den

Appearantly, Lego decided to take a look at minecraft and say:
"We can do better!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaQNzLngMKM

Heart of the Swarm is not the same kind of Saturday morning cartoon that the original Starcraft was. It has layers that the other did not.

It's a story about Kerrigan not only regaining her humanity, but also about advancing beyond the simple boogie-man persona of the Queen of Blades. It's a story of personal evolution and the relationships and sacrifices that drive that process. Her path to success is as much about owning the ruthlessness and power of the Zerg as it is about embracing the vision and heart of humanity.

It's also a story about the sacrifices necessary to become a leader, and about what makes a true leader instead of a tyrant.

Of course, I got my copy for $8, so take that into account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCOM_2
I heard they changed the alien AI. So I hope combat doesn't feel as awful as it did in the first XCOM remake.

I hope the strategic layer isn't total ass this time. Looks like the story will be more important this time which is not Firaxis strong suit. I will definitely be waiting for reviews and lets plays before buying. Giving the assault a fucking machete (which he proceeds to leap and slash with in the trailer) isn't filling me with confidence either.

ishy wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCOM_2
I heard they changed the alien AI. So I hope combat doesn't feel as awful as it did in the first XCOM remake.

Here is the number one thing I came away with from the early XCOM 2 info.

"From your mobile command base".

The main thing I read out of that was "command base... still singular".

XCOM was ok. But it was far from great, and the things which stopped it being great were bizarre forced design decisions epitomized by things like the "one base, one skyranger, one team final destination!".

And it seems the poster boy of "fuck you the designers wanted this and fuck the preceding games and fuck common sense and most of all fuck the save scumming player base" is still in the game.

Oh and just for good measure? Whatever you did in the prior game? Well fuck you, cannon is that you lost the fucking alien war anyway.

Firaxis has been plummeting downhill since Civ 5. Beyond Earth in particular is a travesty of the designers pulling shit like this out of their asses in apparent total lack of comprehension of how they are undermining the basic features of the game that people want to play (seriously... if you need to you can't just research a fucking upgrade to your boat units new units and the tech tree are almost entirely divorced, WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT OF THAT SHIT? For a fucking CIVILIZATION GAME?).

I think XCOM 2 is less a promising contender as at this point a last chance to turn things around, and I think that maybe Firaxis doesn't realise how dissatisfied the fan base is getting.

Beyond Earth is also getting an addon soonish, another total fucking call out to alpha centuari, because like the alpha centauri add on, it brings in sea factions/bases/stuff. It won't solve the game's problems, it will be a hollow ghost of alpha centuari that exists as a cash grabbing milking of an underserviced fan base, and I am wondering whether or not it's going to be nearly as successful as Firaxis needs it to be.

I get the impression beyond earth sales were underwhelming after dissatisfaction left over from Civ 5 still sucking (though finally being remotely tolerable, but ONLY after two whole fucking expansions, none of which removed the "fuck you city states" and "fuck you no large civilizations" no one asked for). People waited on word of mouth for beyond and then didn't buy it, the expansion will I hope fair worse. If it comes out before XCOM 2... Firaxis might have some idea how much their reputation will be riding on XCOM 2 being a distinct improvement on 1, but probably too late to do anything about it if it turns out to be a cheap hack job full of bizarre design decisions like the last one.

And also for good measure as a so far dissatisfied X-Com fan. Fuck you dumb ass designers at firaxis who said that the very concept of "Terror From The Deep" sucked "because the ocean isn't scary". The... thing.. you are creating will be a god damn shadow of Terror From The Deep in all respects and we all fucking know it.

So I just bought a Vita and, with it, Tales of Hearts R. And... holy shit. This is one of the best games of the Tales series, right up there with Vesperia and Abyss. The presentation is good, the world-building just enough, and the characters memorable and enjoyable. Gall is now probably one of my favorite characters, if only because - in the English translation, at least - is a smooth-talkin' jive cat from the 70s in a leopard-print fur coat who wields a fuck-off axe and knife.

The bad parts is that the game is almost unbearably Japan - early on, anyways. The characters grow through the game, and actually fucking change, which isn't out of the norm for a Tales game - but the way they do it in Hearts is so good and believable. The romance story is sorta tacked on, but it does gradually develop into something believable. And it loses the "Fucking JAPAN!" feeling about the time you hit Straga and gets the hot springs nonsense out of the way early - though a return trip does actually show the characters in clothing more appropriate for a sauna, and doesn't actually feel like fan service. They do show both the guys and the girls at that point, too.

The plot is vaguely predictable, and the world feels fairly small and hemmed-in, but the writing is top-notch and the progression feels good. And the combat system is one of the most un-fucking-believably active versions of the LMBS ever. Catch an enemy in a combo loop and they suddenly turn red and try to counter - but you can counter their counter with a properly timed press of the Square button and keep the combo going. Mastery of the combat system can turn pretty much any boss fight consisting of a single boss into a joke, though. In addition, holding down Square and down on the movement schema (which you can switch between Directional Pad, with analog for free-run, or analog and L+analog for free run) makes the entire party block, which is GREAT for living out a boss's Over Limit.

The Chase Link system is fun, if a bit short-lived, in that you put the enemy into a permanent stagger, can teleport to them, and can pull off a Link Finisher move that does decent damage that shares your character's favored elements - Kor/Shingu does lightning, Gall does Earth, Hisui does Wind, etc. The downside to Chase Link, as opposed to perfectly countering the enemy's counters, is that once it ends the enemies go back into their Iron Stance and you have to break it again, thus breaking your combos.

Additionally, about halfway through the game you get total control over your button mapping. Sure, you can bind Artes to the Circle button - also the right stick, and then at the later point mentioned you can remove your normal attacks and replace them with more Arte shortcuts so that base X, left-right X, up X and down X become Artes. There is just so much customization available that it's kind of ridiculous.

Additionally you can buy Parameters from Book Stores that let you set up per-character chains of actions that kick in at certain conditionals, modifying the AI to your liking. It's kind of like FFXII's gambit system in its set up and execution but as a modifier for base AI rather than a replacement, and the base AI is pretty fucking good.

Basically the combat system in Hearts R is the fucking best version ever and I wish Graces, Xillia and Xillia 2 had done the same, and hope that Zestiria will copy it. The downside is it does use Graces' CC system (named TC here) but only for chaining Artes rather than for movement, basic attacks, and Artes.

Another downside is the English translation is text only - no English voice acting, which is kind of silly because they changed the main character's name from Shingu Meteorite to Kor Meteor, yet everyone voiced calls him Shingu.

It's also criminally short. I did a fast replay after finishing (and am on a third) and, skipping cutscenes, sidequests, and skits, it clocked in at 11 hours. The first playthrough, doing lots of sidequests and grinding, was at 35. So about on par with Tales of Innocence. A longer console game with Heart's combat system and the writers on their toes like they were here would completely dominate the jRPG market on release.

PhoneLobster wrote: Oh and just for good measure? Whatever you did in the prior game? Well fuck you, cannon is that you lost the fucking alien war anyway.

Well, but of course.

The new old X-com had no chance when the aliens deployed their secret weapon that's revealed in the trailer:

Snake tits!

For me the big problem with X-Com 2 trailer was that X-Com 1 apparently didn't happen. Everything you did in the first game - doesn't matter. Humanity lost, aliens won, the plan aliens revealed in the end of the game never existed. What is this shit and is there are a need to retcon the ending of the first game?

Longes wrote:For me the big problem with X-Com 2 trailer was that X-Com 1 apparently didn't happen. Everything you did in the first game - doesn't matter. Humanity lost, aliens won, the plan aliens revealed in the end of the game never existed. What is this shit and is there are a need to retcon the ending of the first game?

There's no retcon, X-COM 2 simply assumes the bad ending was the one that happenned. You screwed up too much in fighting the aliens and they ended up mind-controling the governments, forcing them to sign a peace treaty.

Then in X-com 2 we see genetic modifications are being pushed into human society as a whole, which follows with the end aliens plans of turning humans into fresh super soldiers.

Longes wrote:What is this shit and is there are a need to retcon the ending of the first game?

I imagine they did it so you start with more basic weaponry and have to do research - if they made the game set after X-COM's victory, you would have plasma weapons, top tier armor, several fully geared mech suits, well-trained psions etc. Which means either inflating the numbers so greatly the old top-tier stuff becomes garbage or having to justify that X-COM somehow survived an event which made them lose everything they gained during the first war.

I would greatly have preferred inflating the numbers. What, aliens don't have an r/d cycle?

X-COM went through four tiers of gear in about nine months because they were looting alien tech and reverse-engineering it as fast as they could. While aliens might develop one more tier of prototype weapons without straining verisimilitude too much, if aliens then develop another three tiers of tech so that the top of the old list is the bottom of the new one, it'll start to get crazy.

Of course, there's plenty of other solutions. Do the Final Fantasy thing: We aren't obviating the old story, just telling a new one that's only thematically connected to the old. Or, create a new villain: Turns out the alien empire that came knocking last time was itself an X-COM project that tries to keep their head above water by genetically re-engineering other species, and now that you've whacked them you have to pick up where they left off and fight the enemy army that's three tiers more advanced than they are and which they had barely any hope of defeating. Or the prequel approach: You're an X-Files style band of investigators in way over your head who upgrade from pistols and SMGs up to the assault rifles and body armor that are the bottom tier of the first game, and the goal of the game is to uncover the alien threat, defeat the conspiracy vanguard infiltrating world nations, and assemble a council aware enough of the danger posed by the x-rays to turn the resources of the world into a united front that just might be able to win the coming war.

Chamomile wrote:X-COM went through four tiers of gear in about nine months because they were looting alien tech and reverse-engineering it as fast as they could. While aliens might develop one more tier of prototype weapons without straining verisimilitude too much, if aliens then develop another three tiers of tech so that the top of the old list is the bottom of the new one, it'll start to get crazy.

Of course, there's plenty of other solutions. Do the Final Fantasy thing: We aren't obviating the old story, just telling a new one that's only thematically connected to the old. Or, create a new villain: Turns out the alien empire that came knocking last time was itself an X-COM project that tries to keep their head above water by genetically re-engineering other species, and now that you've whacked them you have to pick up where they left off and fight the enemy army that's three tiers more advanced than they are and which they had barely any hope of defeating. Or the prequel approach: You're an X-Files style band of investigators in way over your head who upgrade from pistols and SMGs up to the assault rifles and body armor that are the bottom tier of the first game, and the goal of the game is to uncover the alien threat, defeat the conspiracy vanguard infiltrating world nations, and assemble a council aware enough of the danger posed by the x-rays to turn the resources of the world into a united front that just might be able to win the coming war.

Or do what X-Com games did in the past - new environment that makes old guns unusable. Like underwater, in Terror from the Deep. Or set the game in the future, on a different planet, where human colonies are fighting back the attack. There are many ways the problem could have been solved without a retcon.

The teaser website that is an advertisement for a utopian arcology makes it seem like the aliens went in for a soft sell after the events of the first recent game. They revealed themselves to the public, pretended like the whole thing was a misunderstanding, then set themselves up as a benevolent traders of tech and know-how in exchange for some real-estate to call their own. Basically, it's the plot of V (original or remake).

As for tech, I was always was under the assumption that alien tech was basically all custom parts and materials and that the X-com forces were constantly tearing out the bits from crashed spaceships in order to maintain the alien tech they were using because they lacked the processes to make most of it. If that's true, I could easily see a situation where the old parts that the X-com forces had socked away were no longer in good enough condition to be used in the old weapons designs and now X-com needs to make new designs cobbled together from the current set of alien materials and parts. The analogy would be cobbling together a working cellphone from parts from the 80s in the 80s, and then basically being forced to start at square one in 2015 when you are salvaging materials from modern smart-phones.

As for the single base, it makes a lot more sense if you are fighting a revolution that you'd want a single mobile base. It made less sense in the other games.

I couldn't possibly give less shits about the retcon thing in this instance.

I look forward to playing rebel/terrorist simulator, where hopefully we'll need to balance inflicting maximum damage to the aliens and not pissing off the human population that now greatly benefits from those aliens services.

That's what you get for trying to hoard all the cool toys for yourselves only, X-Com.

I want to know more about snake tits...

Dying Light is the total opposite of the "horror survival" game that it was made out to be.

I'm somewhere at around 48% of the main plot line done; have completed almost all side-quests as they come up; and killed well into 7,000 zombies any number of ways.

In many ways, Dying Light is the "ninja assasssin" game that I never knew I wanted to play; and its stealth game feels more in tune with an actual assassination game (i.e. the Hitman series) than ostensible 'assassination' games (i.e. Assassin's Creed). The various stealth killmoves (aka. takedowns) combined with typical FPS control means that as a player, you can run up to a Zombi head-on; running strafe-circle around them and be able to snap their necks (although; in my opinion, my 'best' necksnap kill came earlier today and involved grapplehooking across rooftops to land right behind an infected I took down).

Fallout 3 and New Vegas are on sale at the Steam store. Picking them up, I've never finished 3 and have never played New Vegas so it seems like a good time to pick both up.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Fallout 3 and New Vegas are on sale at the Steam store. Picking them up, I've never finished 3 and have never played New Vegas so it seems like a good time to pick both up.

I feel obligated to report, that Fallout 3 does not work for my computer literally no matter what, and has a crash that basically amounts "DUUUUUURRRR Why you have more than one processor!"

fortunately the aforementioned crash typically can be fixed by changing a single value and adding a subsequent line in the ini file.

Reminds me of the time I was trying to install a game on my old computer. It told me I didn't have enough ram because I had 3gb and it needed 32 mb, and 3 is less than 32...

Archmage Joda wrote:fortunately the aforementioned crash typically can be fixed by changing a single value and adding a subsequent line in the ini file.

Except that, as I feel obligated to report. Unfortunately, that crash can, at least in my case and the many many many cases I have found online, not be fixed by that change.

Because that fix, despite working plenty well for lots of games, does not work for Fallout 3 at all on my computer, and many many other reports on the internet that it doesn't work for them.

Luckily for me, Fallout 3 can understand my computer a bit easier and I got it to work at step 1 of the guide on Steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/22370/dis ... 147175081/

Didn't have to add any values or codes.

Yeah I did literally everything and it still doesn't work, and I hate it sooo fucking much, because Fallout 3 is much better than New Vegas.