The Videogames Tab

I wish I had time to play video games. I've been stuck in about 10 minutes of gameplay of Batman Arkham Origins for months now. I mainly play app games in my downtime. :-/

Just a quick heads up for anyone who's not played one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Dragon Age Origins is free on ... ermm ... Origin!

Quite a slick PR move from EA before the release of Inquisition and even though it doesn't include any of the DLC, it's still a stupendous, classic game. I've played through it at least 6 times, maybe more.

__________________
"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

I just finished downloading it here... along with Bejeweled 3 (also free). Will see what I think of it at some point, when my brain comes back online one of these days.

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

The free games on Origin have been pretty strong so far. I'd go as far as to say that Origin is a better realised platform than Steam (along with the monthly free stuff there's a no questions asked money back guarantee) so it's a pity that it only sells EA stuff.

Uplay is still awful.

FFXIII on PC. I'd been meaning to give this game another try for 2 or 3 years and when it got announced on Steam a few weeks ago at a budget price I figured I'd buy it.

There was a 25% pre-order bonus on GMG, it was a game I knew, Square make good PC ports (Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Just Cause 2 etc) so what could go wrong? Yeah...

It had slipped my mind that the good PC ports were not by Square Japan. The game's 50GB and in 720p!

Even the movies aren't 1080, and they were on the bloody PS3. We've got some weird mash-up of a port going on here: The PS3 version had 720p game assets and 1080p videos while the 360 port was sub-720 for the game and 720 in videos. I can use the GeDoSaTo upscaling tool but it only seems to upscale the 720p worse (and blurrier) than Nvidia's native one.

The guy who made the tool is working on a proper fix apparently and as he fixed Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition to run at a native 1080p I've got some hope.

It really shouldn't be like this - It's 2014 not 2004 and a AAA game released on Steam should have resolution options as a bare minimum. It doesn't even have controller button prompts even though it recommends a controller for the game.

My caveat has been well and truly emptored...

EDIT - Such a pretty game though.

I disliked the X-box version, but I eventually got the PC version, which is a lot more tactical, and it is indeed a damn fine game. Some things still irk me about it, but the writing and characters make up for it in spades.

Meanwhile:

The Last of Us



The owner of the game company I work with stopped by last night, PS3 in hand.

"Hey man, I have an extra PS3, you should play this game!"

Well, who am I to refuse? I didn't have much time, but i got a chance to play through the opening, which was amazing. Well, you know, for an on-rails, set piece game, that is. Still, I am looking forward to playing some more!

__________________

I really really wanted to like The Last of Us but my experiences playing it were of a game trapped inside hardware nowhere near powerful enough to run it properly leaving me with a tanking framerate, low resolution and awful jaggies which ruined any immersion that had built up. It was shortly after buying The Last of Us that I realised I was done with consoles.

The PS4 version, however, looks proper.

Is the PS3 yours to keep? If so the Ico/Shadow of The Colossus HD collection is bound to be pretty cheap by now...

In other news, I picked up Alien Isolation. I'm not a huge survival horror fan but Green Man Gaming has some fantastic offers on - It's become my go-to site for game buying. I got emailed a one-use 25% discount code for anything on their store which meant Alien was £24. Not bad for one of the AAA October releases.

Don't know whether to start it now or wait for the sun to go down.

Wait for the sun to go down and stream so I can watch!

I couldn't resist. Played about 10 minutes and the only thing I can say so far is that they've nailed the aesthetic. Totally nailed it.

PC port-wise, it looks pretty good. A decent level of performance options but I've set everything to max and it's smooth as butter. Seeing as the game takes place in lots of enclosed, claustrophobic, terrifying, dark, musty, ... erm ... spaces, it probably doesn't need a great deal of power to run well.

Might well end up livestreaming this later.

In the meantime:

Arg, Tatty, you're like some kind of gaming Pied Piper! Those GMG deals are just too tasty for AAA new launches. (Found a 20% off code on Reddit so down to £25. Downloading nowwww )

I am now totally going to have get my kid work in advertising or something, but it will be worth the moral degradation

PS stick the stream link up here if you get it on (With mike please - And I don't means Seds roleplaying the monster )

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

Guys,I really love RPG's but I think genre is so big and that I only scratched surface.So do you have any suggestions?I love to have choice of more then 2 races,I love to have some kind of impact of how game evolves and to have different skills(thief,archer,mage etc) and in the end ofc good story.By the way,I finished Batman: Arkham Asylum and its awesome,if you are Batman fan its even better,totally loyal to character,voice acting is amazing as always in Batman,fighting is simple but again you can make it complex,there are detective parts,riddle parts,fighting parts...Its your choice on how you want to fight.But near the end they lose some of their imagination with boss fights and enemy's(Ivy's plants for real?).But in the end its awesome!

Verdict: 8.5/10
Just started Arkham City.

__________________
“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.”

I finished both and they are awesome. Rocksteady really knows how to deliver and I'm anxious to see what they have in store with Arkham Knight. I already know I won't be disappointed. This is going to be Rocksteady's best trilogy game ever.

Yep, will do. I've spent an hour troubleshooting OBS to try and get a picture - Originally tried with Shadowplay which was super easy but the mic was far too low in the mix and not adjustable. I'll get it going over the weekend and not touching Alien until then.

Will let everyone know so you can point and laugh.

Khan - If you want traditional RPGs and don't mind old games I'd recommend (from Steam) the first two Fallouts. For newer games in the classic style there's Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun Dragonfall (which is apparently better than Returns but I've not played it yet, it's either a DLC for Returns or a standalone game), Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland 2. Also, pick up Arcanum from GOG. Dragon Age Origins is free on origin and DA2 is exclusively there but it's nowhere near as good as the original.

Action RPGS - Diablo 3 (not on Steam), Torchlight 2, Titan Quest

JRPGs - Final Fantasy III, IV, VII and VIII are now on Steam. III and IV are ports from the DS versions which have updated graphics. There's also FFXIII which is 50 effing GB and locked to 720p - There's a resolution mod in the works but it's not perfect yet. Half Minute Hero is also a great little game.

Strategy RPGs - The Banner Saga, King's Bounty Crossworlds, Expeditions Conquistador

Open World RPGs - The Steam Elder Scrolls games are all classics (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) as are Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

Other - Mass Effect 1 and 2 are also highly recommended (ME3 is only on Origin). If it's heavily discounted I'd also go for Alpha Protocol which is flawed but pretty unique with its modern setting.

That'll keep you going over the weekend.

EDIT - The two Dark Souls games are also both on Steam. DS1 has a few problems - locked at 720p, locked to Games For Windows Live, awful keyboard/mouse support - but has mods which fix everything other than GFWL. DS2 is a pretty solid PC port, however, and tons better than the PS3 version I played a little bit of.

They're hard to catagorise - Made in Japan but not strictly JRPGs, combat has more in common with fighting games than with traditional RPGs and the online part was unusual at the time. Great games, but be prepared for death.

I played few of those(Fallout 1,2,3,New Vegas,Skyrim,Diablo 3...).I have only Skyrim on stem.I heard a lot of good things about The Banner Saga so I'll check it out,waiting for Dark Souls 2 sale,got Dragon Age on Origin.Thanks for the list!A lot of titles to check out.I don't mind old games,Resident Evil 1 and 2 are my favorites.Now...Lets start searching for games you suggested

Ok, I've hooked another monitor up and managed to get my mic levels working fine with Shadowplay. Streaming seems great on Twitch in 720p.

What time suits people? I'm free this evening.

http://www.twitch.tv/greenspagbol

I'm playing Alien: Isolation now and it's amazingly well done. The intensity of this just mind boggling. The graphics are astounding and every minute of this makes you nervous.. yet in a good way. You literally feel like you are in an Alien film, everything from the opening 20th Century Fox fanafare to the genuine look of the environment. There is so much to do and explore, it's going to be one hell of a ride.

When the time does come that I am finished with the main game, with the game being so long and in depth who knows when that will be, I will then play the included "Last Survivor" and "Crew Expendable" DLCs.

I'm around the next couple of hours either way. Might need a heads up beyond that, because I might watch a movie, but I'll be around most of the day.

I'll probably not do anything until after dinner, say two hours from now, but it might be easier if I left it later. Have you used chat overlays?

They seem to be functional with OBS but nothing for Shadowplay yet. It'll solve the whole 'two monitors' thing.

Yeah, I think most people do them by having extra "scenes" and just cropping the browser window to be over the chat, or something like that. In OBS, at least. And yeah, it's worth the trouble.

Oh, and watch out if you're the type of person who plays music underneath--they're making the VODs unwatchable by blacking out all audio if they detect that stuff.