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When I first started Agony, something about it felt immediately like a lower-budget dungeon-crawler. I noticed the graphics have been down-scaled considerably from what was seen in the trailers, but the depictions of Hell itself is still very robust. Although I wouldn't immediately refer to it as action-oriented, I do believe it can become that way. The immediate comparison to draw from the early offset is of Alien: Isolation (which is really solid by the way) and Outlast (which is also really solid). Perhaps more so Alien, as, in one segment of the game, you're wandering around this maze looking for skulls in-order to open a large door and succubi are wandering around the maze looking for you. It reminded me a lot of the AI for the xenomorph in Isolation.

When you die, you have a brief period of time where you can "possess" one of the weaker people in Hell, and there's a little mini-game involved (that can be turned off now) to possess them. Point is, you can possess a succubus (but I haven't been able to) and from there, you'll be able to attack enemies.

I'd say right now it's very stealth-oriented at the moment and there's physical combat that can eventually come.

In case anyone missed it, the different editions of RDR2 got announced: http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/...s-appear-early

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My Letterboxd

Now that we know Fallout 76 will be a survival RPG and with my love for State of Decay 2, I'm cautiously optimistic that it'll be good.

Cautiously.

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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

Everyone's favourite Irish video game documentary maker, Danny O'Dwyer, has done one on Bethesda. It's an hour and a half long and he seems to have gotten great access (I've not watched it yet).



I'm in a few Discord groups with Danny. He's a top guy.

EDIT - Don't know whether it's in this video or not but he's also trailing a 'making of Fallout 76' feature.

Avalanche is teasing a new game on twitter. Have to say, I'm not all that impressed by the image, but we'll see what it is in 24 hours.

Finally Finished red dead a couple of weeks ago....really loved it. So much so it gave me a new appreciation for gta 5 which I dove into again. Had finished gta once before and was midway through another play through when I gave it up a year or so ago.

Today I finished it for the second time, picking missions and heist plans I hadn’t done, with that i decided to kill micheal, having saved them all previously.

Feel so guilty about it! Geniuine guilt and mourning! I decided to go to a previous save but accidentally saved it again...I’m stuck in this sad, guilt ridden, Michael less world! Forever! His actual death was awful to behold, the texts and calls from his family members after are brutal!

Still playing

Need for Speed "underground" hehe

It looks like Code Vein will be released sometime in late-September, which entails that, along with Spider-Man, the Spyro Trilogy, and Tomb Raider will officially bankrupt me. Other titles I'm looking forward to are: Scorn, Death Stranding, Atomic Hearts, Bloodstained, ... just a lot right now, which is the first time in a long time I've been able to say that.

In an update to the Agony game, I bought Agony on the PlayStation 4 for $40 even after I saw the negative reviews from critics and the negative fan reception because I had been excited for it and didn't want my mind made up for me. In truth, while playing Agony, I immediately understood why a lot of critics disliked it. Agony is rough around the edges, so much so that it received several patches in the first few days of release.

- The graphics are dated. Although the graphics depicted are robust and visually inspired, playing it feels like playing an early PlayStation 3 game.

- The A.I. system also leaves a lot to be desired, with it not feeling as sophisticated or as "tackle-able" as Alien: Isolation. It feels like the available stealth mechanics are too simplistic, whereas the environments and available mechanics make it frustrating to try and maneuver around enemies. For instance, if you hold your breath, you can crawl around Succubi that are blind and it uses up your stamina meter, however, a lot of the areas are really closed in, even though they look like they shouldn't be, and if your stamina meter runs out, they will one-hit kill you immediately if you're in their vicinity.

- Some of the features originally implemented in Agony also leave a lot to be desired (but now are able to be disabled). Like, for example, originally, if you died three times at a checkpoint, the save file would corrupt itself and you would have to restart from the checkpoint before that. And if you died three times there, you'd have to restart from the checkpoint before that.

Still, I don't regret buying Agony because I think the music-effects and atmosphere were accomplished well. And even if the graphics are dated, they're still depicting an ambitious and robust playing-field. Even if Agony deserves a "bad review," I still don't hate it and, maybe out of optimism, I find myself hoping the developers continue to patch it up and do more polished work hereafter.

Aren't Avalanche working on Rage 2 (aka: Mad Max 2: RIP)? It must be a lot further along than I realised, if they're about to announce something new.

I doubt it's Just Cause 4. Never played 3, even though I've got it in my PS4 library courtesy of PS+. The console ports were apparently not good.

It's for something called Generation Zero...



Doesn't look to be my cup.

Yes!



Some say that Hitman was the best game of 2016...

I could never get into the Hitman games, personally. I own the first few games on PlayStation 3, but never went through and completed any of them.

Thinking about buying a fan for the RetroPie because it sometimes overheats while playing certain games and I want to offset that for when I eventually start delving into the PlayStation titles...

Same, then Hitman 2016 came out and it feels like they finally achieved what they'd been striving for since the very first game. It's super inventive, clever, funny and tense - I adore it.

Best of all, the first couple of maps are free. Give it a go!

Re: Hot Pi. If you don't want to go down the fan route (pro tip: Connect one to the 3v pin, not the 5v - very little cooling loss and a whole lot quieter) the FLIRC case is one giant heatsink so cools passively. Personally I'm not a huge fan of it because the thick aluminium plays havoc with the wi-fi and Bluetooth in the Pi but YMMV.

https://thepihut.com/products/flirc-...ry-pi-3-b-case

Most Pi sellers have them.

Is your Pi overclocked? I've never had it overheat while playing games (with or without a fan running), and that means the temp icon appearing in the corner of the screen. If it's warm without the icon then you're within the temperature limits.

Some cases are better than others for airflow, sure, and the official one is apparently one of the worst.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what all can you play with a RetroPie? Is there anywhere where you can buy one pre-built? Or is it something where it's so easy you might as well build it yourself?

A Retropie can handle most games and systems up to the PS1 era, but of that gen only the PS1 is emulated consistently well - N64 is very patchy and you can forget about Saturn emulation. A Pi 3b will handle this, although you can also install Retropie on the tiny Pi Zero, but you'll have problems on SNES and above.

Unless you're extremely tech-averse, I'd say build one yourself. Because the Retropie makers forbid people selling (and thus, profiting from) a Pi with Retropie pre-installed you will probably find yourself with nowhere to go in terms of advice if something goes wrong - The community are a bit sniffy about this and you'll get asked how you installed the system before they offer any advice.

Basically, watch a few tutorials (ETA Prime on YouTube is pretty good), make sure you've got a Pi, SD card and reader, a PC, a usb controller and keyboard, and access to the games you want to play.

https://retropie.org.uk/

Thanks.

If you've got even a semi decent PC, Retroarch (which uses the same set of emulators as Retropie) is a more comprehensive alternative.

Anyway, talking about retro games, I finally bought one of these today:



The joystick is awful, although probably a pretty accurate representation of what we had to put up with at the time.

Just a different perspective...

I've used pre-installed SD cards with little to no issue and I enjoy the convenience of it a lot. (Pre-installed SD cards are a moral gray area. Are they buying the games? Are they buying the convenience? I think it's convenience. But, even still, the RetroPie itself is a moral gray-area. Is it piracy? Or is it okay because the titles are obsolete?)

I'm not tech-adverse, but I don't like having to dig around for ROMs with a shoddy internet connection, usually finding the ROMs on sketchy-looking websites.

The Raspberry Pi I bought actually came with an SD card with thousands of SNES, GameBoy Advance, Sega Genesis games, etc., I'd recommend going that way if you're looking for a plug-in-play experience. I haven't had any problems that aren't self-explanatory.

If you have the time, the internet connection, and willingness to make your own build, I'd say go for it. Just saying there's alternatives out-there that many others prefer.