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Having played 6 or 7 hours I'd say don't worry about not having a Ground Zeroes save. All the big GZ points are covered pretty early on in Phantom Pain and the extra goodies the save brings aren't much of a big deal. They don't seem to be anyway, at this early (3%) stage.

The opening scenes have to be seen to be believed.

Still got a nagging feeling that the open world structure will take away from the traditional sweeping melodrama but I'll be ecstatic to be proved wrong. Not surprised that the game's even 60fps on consoles - My GPU topped out at 35%, even in the demanding parts.

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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

Today was the first time I've ever heard the original(?) version of the Man Who Sold the World.

I want to ration my play, but I also want to progress enough to start farming my daily online bonus (Gran Turismo flashback).

I looked up at the sizzle reel running in the store today . Cinema scenes...oh wait, cut scenes are something I never get tired of. Thanks Tecmo, after all these years.

Playing Witcher 3...it is awesome.

Three new videos are up guys, one of them is part one of walkthrough series. Here you go, hope someone enjoys it, subs are welcome ofc.

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“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”

Finally dragged myself away from Mad Max. Such an odd mix of good, bad and ungainly. But even a dog's dinner can taste great in the apocalypse ...



THE GOOD

• The gaming loops of endless distraction are in full effect here. The car is a great conduit for fluid changes of plan and magpie moments of opportunism. It's very easy indeed to lose yourself in a chain of high octane hijinks . If you are the type of person who likes going: "I'll just harpoon that evil totem pole, wait no, I'll boost jump through it and slow-mo harpoon that arriving driver instead... oh wait he's the scout for a giant convoy that I really should smash..." then this is the game for you
  
  
• Chumbucket is an excellent mystical, Malthusian misfit of a companion, scuttling over your vehicle like a human crab and expounding on world events with just the right degree of leavening comedy. And there are other fine turns from the nigh-orcish War Boys, the best being possibly the dangling War Criers, reassessing their profession once you've dispatched their mates
  
  
• I'm not sure whether I'll ever use the purloined bomb buggy in my garage. Or install a maggot farm in every safehouse. Or find a base that actually does look like a cookie-cutter-build (not a homespun idiosyncratic retreat). Or manage to add every single spiky thing to my car. But I'm gonna find out. Because beyond the freeflowing mechanics, there seems to be a hoarder's helping of world items to mess about with.

THE BAD

• It has the most useless jump function yet found in a computer game. He skips! The wasteland's ultimate badass skips! If you try anything so outrageous as to scale a small rock he kind of flaps his hands too, but that doesn't really help. It's a regular frustration when so much in the world looks scalable, and to actually have that freedom of movement on foot would have added proper depth to the basic pathing puzzles and sneaking strategies. As it is... he just skips
  
  
• The combat game loops feel like the most buckled and broken part. The actual bonce-bashing is viscerally satisfying (although also executable with your eyes closed in some cases). Add the small-ish interior environments, correspondingly baffled camera, and the general mobility of... of a man who skips... and it really feels very trammelled indeed though. The bases are often creatively crafted, and fun visual easter eggs to crack open once inside, but unless there's a wealth of novel environmental traps, or some actually challenging puzzles out there, this is the bit that's going to get old fastest. (Currently it's still satisfying to place a flaming gas can in the path of the VERY SILLY young War Boys, or to hurl one casually into chaos's lap, but particles can't cover all of these sins...)
  
  
• Consta-boosting is another game norm that's threatening to get old already. You don't have to do it, but everything about this quick-cooldown function, and the vast expanses, invites you to. It's a shame as the car audio is enjoyably raucous, especially after beefing up the bonnet bling. It doesn't need this lurid reinforcing every 3 seconds. (Unless youre flinging yourself into something, then it's fine )

THE UGLY

• Very little indeed. The character models are slightly crude, but the game glides by on some beautiful PC optimisation, fizzes and flurries with lurid and subtle particle effects, and presents a world that's as twistedly intriguing as a barren desert could possibly be

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There's scant little story to speak of so far. You're rebuilding your car. That's pretty much it. Everything else has been a thumb-flick through a graphic novel's first page. But I'm told it turns up the heat towards the end, and barring horrendous repetitious crowbarring, I think I'm gonna enjoy the ride and the cartoon rage along the way

Provisional score: +


^^ "So you like killing War Boys then?" ~ The dangling War Crier makes awkward conversation ^^

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

Back from PAX! I did not, alas, get to check out the new Deus Ex game as a couple of you requested. Or a whole lot else for that matter: the booth was slammed and my voice was gone by the end of the first day or so. I got to come in early (we had Exhibitor badges) in order to play Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes in both roles (it was great! And we got it done on the first setting both times without a single mistake). We also got to play Due Process after the floor closed against the developers! We almost won a couple of rounds, too.

The lines on some of the major releases were nuts; I would've had to take a couple of hours off to see them. But I enjoyed the two smaller ones I played, and just walking by and seeing a lot of the others. I'll have pictures (and some writing on the whole thing) up within a week or so, I'm sure.

I watched a bit of the PAX Rumble but that's all.

How'd Spy Party fare?

Hecker mentioned sales were down from last year, but there were probably a lot of mitigating factors (another year removed from being featured in the final of the Omegathon, last year was the first time it was on sale there, etc). We had a really good time, though, and it really felt like a lot of new players had a good handle on the game after just a few minutes of hands-on tutoring and a couple of games, which is really encouraging.

Also, guess who stopped by the booth?

Owner of the cutest overbite in the business, no less!

I feel stupid. Who is that?

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Linda's Author Website
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Felicia Day. Actress turned web video entrepreneur and queen of all things geeky.

In MGS news: I didn't get a chance to play yesterday but did a mission today.

The stealth is pretty damned hardcore this time round, even more so than Ground Zeroes'. The easier path is to go in all guns blazing (because now it's a competent third person shooter as well) but I'm trying to play in the spirit of the game, so much so that if you die too often on a mission the game asks you if you want to wear 'the chicken hat', which makes guards much less receptive to footsteps etc.



A literal chicken hat.

I listened to Greg Miller's review today. He logged 54 hrs and is at 49% complete.

He really hammered how intricate the crafting is. Everything can be modded.

Btw, that's a good look for ya T.

That didn't take long.

Batman: Arkham Knight



Batman: Arkham Knight (PSIV)


PCMR news

from Kotaku

Arkham Knight, a PC game so broken that its publisher Warner Bros. had to withdraw it from sale, was released in June. It’s taken until September, but a patch to (hopefully) fix it is rolling out now.


The update popped up earlier in the week for beta testing, but WB announced today that it’s now available “for those who already have Batman: Arkham Knight for PC”. Note that this doesn’t mean the game is back on sale for anyone holding off; at time of posting, Arkham Knight was still unavailable for purchase on Steam.
Below are the important patch notes:

Reduced frame rate hitches
Optimizations for system memory and VRAM usage
Improved performance on all GPUs (requires the latest drivers)
More Comprehensive In-Game Settings
Fixed low resolution texture bugs
Fixed hitches when running on mechanical hard drives (HDD)
In addition to the above, we’re continuing to work on the following for future updates:
Adding support for SLI and Crossfire
Adding support for the latest DLC & Season Pass content
Adding support for additional updates such as Photo Mode
Continued improvements and bug fixing for a Windows 7 specific memory issue that occurs on configurations with 8GB of system RAM and some NVIDIA GPUs during extended game play
Continued improvements for Windows 10 specific issues on systems with some AMD GPUs

Having a roaring time in Mad Max, but it does stutter & splutter occasionally...

It's such a shame the on-foot limitations sometimes cause the gears to grind. It's not that those sections are bad, they're just not as fun, and as soon are you're capping a location (via nigh similar means), you know the options for freeflowing chaos and fun physics are reduced.

But dammit... the shifting palettes of locations and day cycles, the often marvellous constructions, the side-missions that really hit the mark, the unexpected clashes in your increasingly rad rustbucket... all of these things beg you to jump over one more dune





Ground enemies are thankfully getting more varied and durable, but it is so ludicrously easy to over-level yourself. (The way you increase your innate abilities is particularly over-generous, and you must apply all your 'Griffa points' before you can leave the screen). I'm sticking with being a badass though, as breezing through those sections is preferable.

It's definitely no Fallout, but the attention paid to some of the side-missions has been pleasing. A few of the optional missions for the base leaders have been more varied and creative than the actual storyline. And I particularly enjoyed a race that placed me in a bomb-carrying spike-tank, leaving me to side bash & grind my way past a horde of fleeter fighters set on my destruction. Pretty challenging, but well balanced!

The overall vibe of scratching someone's scabrous back so they'll scratch yours (hopefully not with claws) is still very fitting in the main story though. The familiar focus on cleansing zones rewards you with a car that's even better at violent roaming, and it's a solid application of that trope. It's the dynamo that drives much of what you do, or just happens spontaneously while you're tearing down some other route





There are still lots of little oddities and contradictions. Like the way it invites you design your own 'Magnum Opus', but also gets you to build Archangel archetypes for certain missions. Once you've ticked off those shopping lists you're free to turn it back into the flame-thrower metal porcupine of your dreams, but it's still a bit annoying.

I've got to leave a final hat tip and finger flip to two contrasting aspects though... The intel NPCs are cookie-cutter awful. But the fact that a passing twister can turn up during the cut scene and smack 'em on the head with some stray scrap (thus terminating turgid dialogue)... that, that is marvellous

Opinion about Mad Max I've heard has been patchy and that energy drink DLC pretty egregious. Apparently everything outside the main story is dull, uninspired open world side mission stuff? Can't say I'm summoning up much enthusiasm to get cracking on it.

File that one under: "If the publisher is keeping quiet about a game then it's best not to pre-order"

I wouldn't go that far, but it could totally do with fully realised characters in the wilds a la Fallout. What you get instead is Chumbucket's decent meta-narrative, and the 'telling through architecture' & background chat style of mini-narrative.

There are 'historical artefacts' to read, but they're not particularly profound. (They're usually postcards ). The optional side-missions for the main characters are strong from what I've seen though. Just ignore the wilds ones, I pretty much have been. The wilds are more about making your own fun

And anyway, the story is about driving and improving a car. And the bits between the story are mainly about driving a car around things, and then into things. So I wouldn't expect any soaring elegies, but you'll probably find some fun here

(All be it a bleached, ragged type of fun, next to the gleam of MGS )

Def still a + right now.

If you can get past the skipping....

Really great article about bootstrapping the funding/development of a higher-end indie game. Looks like a cool game, too, and the behind-the-scenes numbers are always really interesting. We're at the point where the better independent games (AAA Indie, they're sometimes called) are costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, it's getting to the point where the term 'Indie' is not relevant any more. Star Citizen is technically an indie game while Grow Home isn't...

$20/£15 games used to be called mid-tier and they all but dried up during the spiralling costs in the 360/PS3 generation. These were games with AAA pretensions but without the budget and manpower to make things truly overblown epic. Think Deadly Premonition or Marlow Briggs.

They got replaced with $10 indies but a good number of the devs who cut their teeth in that market are expanding their size and scope. Jonathan Blow and Mike Bithell are the two who most immediately spring to mind, as are the guys behind No Man's Sky who, even though they came from a AAA background originally, previously released the Joe Danger games.

I think mid-tier is back in a big way.

Just bought this sweet rig off a guy on the east side of town. He assured me it would play any game I wanted.





Went and got Ground Zeroes last night. Played the opening bit about 10x's, perishing in a different manner each time. I'm making my own tutorial. The opening prologue lost me immediately, so it's definitely a MG game.

Can't wait till the David Hayter patch comes in.

The stealth rules in GZ (and Phantom Pain, although they seem even stricter in the new game) are different than from previous MGS titles. I find myself crawling along on my belly a lot more now after having spent 90% of MGS 4 in a roadie crouch.