The Videogames Tab

Yeah, the space requirements for the Vive, I think, will be its downfall. I mean, I live in a decent sized house: Spare bedroom? It's got a bed in it. Dining room? Dining table. Living room? I'm not moving coffee tables and sofas around and hanging sensors from the walls every time I want to use a Vive.

Due to having various bits of my body not in great nick, I'd also prefer to sit down while gaming.

The gamepads are its best feature, for me, but the Rift will be getting those soon.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Finished Automatron the other day. Not bad. The quest itself is a little short and not terribly compelling, but one thing it has going for it is that it really attaches to the rest of the world seamlessly: robot gangs, and robot construction, feel like a totally natural extension of the base game.

I'm probably not going to spend hours and hours building robots, but I've already had a bit of fun making a few extreme bots, like the massive one I built by simply choosing the larger component every single time, or a tiny little floating orb.

The big DLC with the new area is coming next month. Kinda torn on whether or not to go play something else for awhile, or just fiddle with settlements and robots until it comes out. I like to focus on one game at a time, so probably the latter. It sounds like there'll be more DLC, but my guess is there'll be a break before the next batch. And I'll probably use that to get through The Banner Saga 2 (and replay the first), as well as....

...this! I've been watching most of the video updates, but haven't fired it up in quite some time. So I think there are two new areas and maybe a dozen big mechanic changes I haven't touched yet. Story Mode's coming pretty soon, too, so I'll probably wait for that in case I get sucked in again for awhile.

I agree with you about the snowprints things. I'm really encouraged by the fact that they haven't just expanded by loading up on features (which would be easy to overdo, and still may happen), but have continued to dedicate time towards tweaking the atmosphere of the game. So far, they haven't lost sight of why people have loved it.

The sleep/cabin fever things sound like they might actually be a step too far in the challenging, survival-y direction, but we'll see. It might be that, as much as I like holding up and stocking up and all that, it's really a better game if I feel more consistently imperiled.

Yeah think I will hang on for launch actually. Will be good to see everything fully formed. Seems like the footsteps thing will be extended into a full tracking option for a start, but I'm especially looking forward to the pass on landscape detail. (Do you know if you can select wooden items to dismantle in shelters now? And whether it becomes less 'restful' if you demolish a chair etc? That's the sort of 'realism'/gameplay balances I always expected them to make).

Know what you mean about the sleeping thing. As much as it felt akin to scum-saving at points, it did have its costs too. Definitely puts it closer to realism, but the balance will be important. The adrenaline thing sounds like it would work as gameplay, but if anything takes the realism edge back off :/

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

In case anyone was curious about this...
...here he is:



Gonna try to do a really humanoid one, a really friendly one, a really futuristic looking one, and a really intimidating one (beyond just size, though it'll probably look a lot like the one above, with more spikes on it).

I'm 90% sure I recall an update before this one where you could dismantle stuff found indoors, yeah. I think it was binary, though: scrapped or not scrapped. Still, a good start. If they get to the point where you can do the same with shelters, so that you're basically consuming your own home to survive, that'd be nuts. Though maybe too fundamental a change, programmatically, since I'm pretty sure they treat interiors as totally different spaces.

Cool, it feels like it'd make the locations feel realer somehow (it was always a bit weird when you scavenged a ton of wood but there was no visual change), and add another nice choice layer. Decisions along the lines of: Keep that storage box to preserve food or dismantle it to make fishing kit etc. Could really have an impact on how you view your refuge over time (if it's falling apart as you desperately cannibalise it, or conversely, if you can look at the intact chair etc with pride knowing you've kept things together). Seeing similar things added in to out-door shelters would definitely be cool, but trickier no doubt, ay.

Re: scavenging and change. They overhauled the wood harvesting mechanic so you can go around picking up individual sticks. This actually sounds infuriating. But I haven't really toyed with it much. I can't recall how often (if?) it replenishes, but yeah, that'd be a good way to do it: sticks "come back" a bit, but not fast enough, so you really can't camp out in one place forever.

It's really impressive that most of their changes have been things that push people out of the hibernation comfort zone. They've got a strong compass as to where to push the gameplay, which was a big question market when they started pulling in more money than expected. Would've been easy, and even understandable, for the game to veer the other way.

Oh god, kindling nabbing makes me think of The Forest. (Whose main survivalist claim to fame is still its satisfying tree felling, from what I can tell ). That used eventual replenishment too. It worked, but foraging was a faff. (Stuff like making a weapon that could actually kill a tortoise so you could have a rainwater collector, that was actually alright...)

Will actually drop back in on that eventually. They seem to be knocking out solid updates. Avoiding the eerie cannibal clans actually made for an interesting (if nerve-wracking) twist on survival.

I didn't think I'd play a puzzle game nearly as good as The Witness for years...then Stephen's Sausage Roll is released. It has a very steep price tag for a puzzle game that looks just like a typical sokobon game, but it's exponentially more complex. Each new puzzle asks you to learn and master a new concept or take your understanding of a concept to the next level. I'm on the third island of the game and I've already been to the point where I thought I was fully stumped dozens of times. The game takes that frustration and creates wonderful eureka moments where you feel like you've learned an entirely new skill.

Whereas The Witness holds your hand through puzzle introductions very logically and thoroughly (though with the exact number of puzzles needed to learn the concept), Stephen's Sausage Roll never seems to add a new concept, but constantly asks you to deepen your understanding of what's already right in front of you. I thought for sure that The Witness would be my favorite game this year, but that might change once I'm finished grilling all of these sausages.

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Mubi

I still share many of the concerns others have voiced about No Man's Sky and whether or not there'll be a lot there after the initial rush of scale and general newness wears off, but I gotta say, this preview has reassured me slightly:


They seem to have added a pretty decent number of things to do. There's still the danger that they'll feel too similar, though the difference between them all feeling similar right away, and taking awhile to go stale, is the difference between the game being an empty technical achievement (though what an achievement) and being genuinely fun to play for several dozen hours.

Still not sure what to think, but yeah, looking better.

Yeah the IGN 20mins of the same playthrough gave me a similar vibe. Still not convinced the core gameplay has legs (and survival scavenging done badly can be pure chore), but I'm still fully in essentially. The UI all looks very neat, I like the basic mechanics on display, the faction specializations sound like a decent streamlined way to fill out the universe and give you mini goals, and the scale and trappings are just awesome. Barring a run of 3 star reviews, I'm jumping in.

Man, I'd forgotten how much a POS the final battle in Banner Saga was. Even on Easy it's blatantly unfair unless you've levelled your party a certain way from very early on - My speed run through the story up to that point meant that I had not levelled my party especially cleverly.

Without a huge degree of luck I'd say that it's impossible for my particular save.

It really does spoil what is a lovely game.

I thought it made it kinda epic, but yeah it did also take a lotttt of goes, and that's with a streamlined team.

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So I bought Rust. This almost certainly makes me a bad person



I figured if I could find a semi-friendly server it might be fun, now that the zombs aren't a thing, and the devs seem to be on a strong run.

So far... it's crashed every time I've killed a wild boar, so I'm not surviving very long. But on the plus side, only half the people I've encountered have tried to kill me (and in the defence of those that did, they either had a good reason, or just watched as I ran into some spiked defences in the dark and saved them the bother)

Plus...



I managed to implant my only weapon safely into the lock of my door.



And make this little naked guy jump for joy

(Although he was possibly planning to kill me and steal my base )

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In other non-news, Battlefront is still stupidly pretty. Sorry

Anyone playing Black Desert Online? If so can it be recommended?

MMOs aren't really my jam but Black Desert seems to have a lot of fans. It's also got a character creator that has to be seen to be believed:

Definitely heard good things about Black Desert, although not my world either. I think there's some annoyance about the flash kit being on micro-transactions or something, but sounds like people are liking in general.

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Ok, I'm surviving in Rust...



Mainly thanks to a friendly neighbour who set me up with an axe and a bow. Now all I need is for wolves to stop clipping through walls onto my sleeping bag... (It makes for something of an unwinnable cycle )

Bugs aside, I'm definitely liking some aspects. The MS-Paintery of the signs is small bit of 'make your own mark' genius, while the base building is solid (if resource heavy and not too easy to get showy with). The lottery of blueprints is pretty well handled (once you've learned them you keep the knowledge even after death), and the way the procedural maps have hot points you can head to or avoid to get better resources.

Will probably stick with this server til it gets its 2-week wipe (which seems to be mainly about stopping uber-clans). No idea where it is in its cycle though.

I downloaded some old favourites of mine. Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Two of my favourite games and surprisingly they hold up well.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

I'm def looking forward to trying out Solid V on the cheap down the line. Haven't tried the series as yet, and have gone off stealth a bit, but it seems like a deranged final magnum opus (studio issues aside)

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Ok so I finally troll-proofed my Rust house with a key-coded iron door. Then the game trolled me. I got killed by a psychotic AI helicopter and realised I hadn't made a back up key for my wooden front door. So I'm locked in my own safehouse...



So far I've I've tried a new machete and a homebrew revolver on it, but it's pretty tough. I thiiinkk I have enough stuff to make some form of explosive, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea . Looks like this is gonna involve a repair bench and a whole lot of axes ...

I remember it being really tough (almost unfairly so), but I don't remember the party leveling wrinkle. Maybe I just happened to choose the right configuration. Could you elaborate a bit so I can make sure to do it again?

I remember having 3 tanking Varls was useful to protect the more fragile ranged guys (especially with 'Rook' acting like a King in chess). I seem to remember two of them had a load of action points so could get back to intercept after the big knockbacks.

*EDIT*

Ahh, that's right, Iver's skill could push back their advances handily if it was maxed, and do bonus armour damage (which brought the ranged guys more into play). Pretty sure I had at least one more 'shieldbanger' who was useful for armour attrition too, pretty sure it was this guy.

Think having this lass levelled to hurt more while blocking routes was useful too, but only as a bit of bonus attrition.

Tried it briefly, but ultimately ended up going back to Archeage, which like quite a bit more.

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