Whatcha Been Playing?

[DomsBeard]

So after all the kerfuffle of the last few days I started Episode 2 of The Walking Dead Final Season last night. I had bought the season pass weeks ago (I believe you cannot buy the Episodes separately anymore).

First up there was two dates attached to episodes 3 and 4 which appeared after I had downloaded Episode 2. (I am at work now so forgive me if they are wrong). Episode 3 on the 6th of November and Episode 4 on the 18th of December.

As to the game itself it is very very good. Clem being that bit older and is now taking on a role similar to what Lee did in Season 1 however in I would say far more difficult circumstances.

I would recommend picking this up if you liked the series and would skip The New Frontier if you have not played it as to be honest after a strong start in the first two Episodes it was not very good in the end. I did like the main character in that series but I would be surprised if her appeared in this.

[ratsoalbion]

Buyer beware though: There are no guarantees right now that episodes 3 and 4 will ever get made. And even if they do, there will be absolutely no continuity between the people who made the games up to now and those who might be cobbling the climax together.

Personally I’m in favour of Telltale actually paying their 250 sacked staff some severance, rather than trying to put the remaining episodes together somehow.

[KSubzero1000]

I bought spintires but haven’t played it yet.

I'll be interested to see what you guys make of the game

This shilling is becoming too obnoxious to ignore. Bought.

[DomsBeard]

Buyer beware though: There are no guarantees right now that episodes 3, 4 and 5 will ever get made. And even if they do, there will be absolutely no continuity between the people who made the games up to now and those who might be cobbling the climax together.

Personally I’m in favour of Telltale actually paying their 250 sacked staff some severance, rather than trying to put the remaining episodes together somehow.

Yeah I totally agree. I bought it before all this happened so accepting it might never happen. Just found it interesting dates appeared for the remaining episodes. Will report back when completed to see if there is a ''next time'' section at the end as usual.

[DomsBeard]

https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/25/17903 ... s-canceled

Looks like you cannot currently buy it...........

[Flabyo]

I do get that people are upset that they’ve paid for a full season and they probably won’t get it. As a consumer you’re absolutely right to ask for and get a refund (and people already are for the steam version).

But I also think all those ‘if they cared about the game they’d finish it for free!’ posts on the steam forum are coming mainly from people who don’t really understand that

1) this is a job, we do it because we get paid to do it, and we kinda need that money to live.
2) the legal situation here is going to be a clusterfuck anyway, actually getting the rights to do anything with it is going to take months to wrangle for anyone, whether they’re ‘fans doing it for free’ or if, say, Square deiceded to pick it up.

There are a lot of hot takes out there about Telltale, and I’m not going to kick off one of those discussions, but the way they seem to be putting ‘don’t worry about the game!’ ahead of ‘don’t worry about the people!’ In their statements is just another symptom of what appears to have gone wrong there.

[Chopper]

This shilling is becoming too obnoxious to ignore. Bought.

Oh god
That's three people now; I'm under pressure for the game to deliver!

The Telltale thing is terrible. These disastrous studio collapses, I wonder if they are just part of doing business in the US (and reflect how many startups/businesses in general fail every year), or is the games industry particularly egregious? I mean, they make big news for us, but it may be a common occurrence. There's no doubt they were catastrophically managed though.

[Simonsloth]

This shilling is becoming too obnoxious to ignore. Bought.

Oh god
That's three people now; I'm under pressure for the game to deliver!

So everybody should rush out and buy Spintires in the PSN sale. I am serious

It really is excellent.

When you make statements like this you need to be able to back them up. I will be having a go tonight I think so the pressure is on!

Judging by your video game tastes on this forum I’d say I’m in safe hands.

[Chopper]

It's a fair cop, guv'nor!

[Joshihatsumitsu]

I do get that people are upset that they’ve paid for a full season and they probably won’t get it. As a consumer you’re absolutely right to ask for and get a refund (and people already are for the steam version).

But I also think all those ‘if they cared about the game they’d finish it for free!’ posts on the steam forum are coming mainly from people who don’t really understand that

1) this is a job, we do it because we get paid to do it, and we kinda need that money to live.
2) the legal situation here is going to be a clusterfuck anyway, actually getting the rights to do anything with it is going to take months to wrangle for anyone, whether they’re ‘fans doing it for free’ or if, say, Square deiceded to pick it up.

There are a lot of hot takes out there about Telltale, and I’m not going to kick off one of those discussions, but the way they seem to be putting ‘don’t worry about the game!’ ahead of ‘don’t worry about the people!’ In their statements is just another symptom of what appears to have gone wrong there.

I saw this wonderful bit of satire regarding Telltales developments... sums it up better than I ever could!

[KSubzero1000]

^^^
Visual description of my MUD Runner experience. In that order.

[Chopper]

The first time I played it I thought, it's ok. Then next morning I couldn't stop thinking about it, I had to stop work at 10am and play a game. I bet that happens to you too.

[Alex79]

I started Assassins Creed II via the Ezio Collection on PS4 last night. I've not returned to these games since first completing them the best part of a decade ago, and it felt like putting on a comfy jumper.

Remaster-wise, I'm sure the original game looks a lot more dated than I remember it, but it doesn't appear like they've done a great deal of work here. The in game stuff looks nice, if a little last gen, but the cut scenes are ropey as hell. Still a very enjoyable game though, looking forward to playing through all three of them over the next few months.

[KSubzero1000]

The first time I played it I thought, it's ok. Then next morning I couldn't stop thinking about it, I had to stop work at 10am and play a game. I bet that happens to you too.

Now don't you start being cute! Your game is the equivalent of solving a Rubik's Cube underwater using only your non-dominant elbow and a bowling ball while blindfolded. You realise I'm literally pausing DMC3 for this, right?

Spoiler: show

Just messing with you. I can see the appeal!

[Joshihatsumitsu]

Sat down to a quick spin of Spintires (sorry, still calling it by it's older beta title), and did the tutorial... then a challenge... then dabbled in the single player, where I managed to deliver a load of small logs by around 3am (in-game clock), with sparks still flying out of my truck.

It's niche... but I love niche!

[Chopper]

That's more like it!

It is niche for sure. I've used the short log trailer pretty much the entire game; I found the bigger trailers are hard to pull and get bogged down very easily, though I might tend towards underpowered trucks.

I spent 4 hours over the past two days doing a single mission. I'm one-starring the maps on hardcore now, for some reason - where you start off with just a jeep. Someone send help.

[DomsBeard]

I am up to Chapter 4 in Yakuza Kiwami 2 and it is infinitely better than Yakuza Kiwami.

I am struggling to get past the antagonist looking like Javier Bardem in Skyfall though

[Stanshall]

DBFZ on the Switch. It looks amazing, like some anime has vomited all over your telly but in a good way. I'm not totally convinced by the gameplay but I'm getting better little by little. It seems a bit like first one to connect gets a 25 hit combo but it has its own rhythm which is nothing like Street Fighter, and I might as well give it a good chance for the sake of variety and a decent sized player base.

[duskvstweak]

Did anyone try out Magic: The Gathering Arena yet? It's in open beta now. I haven't been following it but I checked it out last night. Feels very much inspired by the Hearthstone UI and all that, kind of what I wished Magic Online was forever ago. I'm interested to see where it goes from here.
Now, if they'd do the same thing for Android: Netrunner...

[Scrustle]

Still playing CrossCode, and it's proving to be a very impressive game, albeit with a few things that I don't think pan out too well. The game itself is impressively large. It doesn't really feel like an indie game in that respect. I'm about 25 hours in so far and I think I'm still less than halfway through. The game has a ton of content, and loads of systems that all seem to have a lot of thought put in to them. Combat continues to expand with different elemental modes to switch between that all have their unique skill tree special and moves too, which adds quite a bit of technicality to combat, on top of the already slick and frantic pace of it.

I'm currently in the second main dungeon, so lots of Zelda-esque puzzles. The dungeons make some very interesting use of the ranged combat abilities. I wasn't too fond of the first dungeon's puzzles, but I'm liking this second one much more. I think it might be because this one makes it more clear what you can actually do with mechanics, while the first dungeon wasn't so good at that. The first dungeon also happened to be themed in an icy area, so there's lots of slipping around and falling off ledges, which got pretty annoying. Although, this second dungeon is fire/lava themed, and that trope tends to be one that gets on my nerves in games. Not so here though. The game doesn't punish you for falling in to lava, or throw up flame traps right in your face, so it dodges the reasons I tend to not like about the theme.

General character movement is really good too. Very fast and fluid, so it makes exploring around pretty fun, as you can rush around everywhere and it feels very precise. It also allows you to automatically jump up and down ledges fluidly as well, which helps make getting around nice and smooth. But it's something of a double-edged sword at times though. Given the top-down camera angle, and how verticality plays a big role in the game, being able to judge where your character is in space can sometimes be unclear. Sometimes you might jump towards a ledge you think you can reach, only to smack in to a cliff and fall, or you might be angled a tiny bit wrong when jumping diagonally. Usually there isn't a significant penalty for this, so it's not a big deal, but it was particularly frustrating when I was doing a side-quest in the icy area, where I had to jump between tiny slippy icy outcrops and small moving platforms as well. Was not fun. This problem with height can also be an issue with some of the enemy designs. While most enemies are no issue, ones that can move up and down can be a pain. For example also in the icy area there is a common enemy type that looks like a rabbit, that has an attack that jumps up in the air, and then leaps at you when they land. With them hopping up and down so much it's really hard to tell where they actually are and what angle they're coming at you from. I'm actually pretty glad to be past that area though. The game definitely picked up after leaving.

Also been playing Forza Horizon 4. First impressions are pretty good. I've just got to the point where I'm in to the global seasonal rotation. Earlier parts of the game give you a quick run through every season so you see what it's like before being put in to the week-long rotations that every player experiences in sync. It's quite impressive how much the world changes between seasons. It does totally change the feel of the world, and there are some impressive weather effects. I've been playing on PC exclusively so far, and for the most part performance has been good. There was one spot where my PC did struggle though, as I worried it would. During winter, in the city, in a race at night, everything piled up and was just too much for my PC to maintain 60fps. Everything else has been fine running at High preset on my GTX970. But I suppose this means during winter I'll have to knock down the settings.

The structure of the career in this one is really odd. The career modes in these games has gotten less and less structured over time. In this one it is both more and less structured than 3. The game feels like everything you can do sort of has its own mini career mode dedicated to it. You level up in each discipline to unlock new events for it, and you have an overall level that has some vague link to overall progress too that isn't that clear. But it seems like you can basically just do whatever and you'll make your way through the game even if you just pick the things you like. They even have long progress chains linked to stuff that has nothing to do with actually driving a car. But I haven't played the game long enough to see how it all works out yet though. I guess I'm starting to get in to the meat of it now that I'm out of that introductory sequence.

And for some more little oddities I noticed/stray thoughts. No Toyotas is still a bummer. The game feels like its missing a lot without that, along with no Mitsubishis either. I got a Subaru BRZ since that seemed like the closest thing I could get to the cars I'm missing, but it turns out you can't swap in the Toyota 2JZ engine in to it either, like you could in the older games. This is despite the fact previous games never actually named it as such. But now you have the ability to alter wheel fitment, which is pretty cool. Being able to push out the width of the track to give a car a wider stance and fill out the wheel arches is nice. More cars have wide kits too. Something appears to have gone wrong with the wheel paint finish though. A bunch of the silvery colours I used on most cars previously looks awful and flat in this game. I wonder if it's just a bug. Very odd.