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there's a frog in my snake oil
Careful Aus, there are still dangers out there

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



The People's Republic of Clogher
Fallout 76 then.

Positives:

It's not the utter ****show I was expecting.

The lighting effects look quite nice.

Negatives:

I find it really dispiriting that a development team has spent so much time and effort on this lifeless, empty husk of a game. I've put about 10 hours in and I've yet to meet 10 other players.

The way they've had to turn the standard Fallout exploration loop into something which would work in an MMO is a slog. Guns seem to do half the damage you're used to, for example, so low level enemies take more precious ammo than you'd think was normal. Resources are fairly liberally scattered around but I'm not having a lot of fun collecting them, seeing as new blueprints are aggressively gated to your overall level. That stinks.

Combat? I'm playing on console with a controller (in a Bethesda game) and VATS is now no longer worthy of the name - It's about as satisfying as you'd expect.

4/10

If it doesn't go free to play, I can't see this game lasting much beyond the next 12 months without some inventive DLC. A large single-player expansion with NPCs, maybe?
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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



Re: better than expected. It has actually fixed a fair number of the biggest issues since launch, which I think is to be expected. If I weren't so addicted to Fallout in general I'd probably have waited 2-4 months after release, IE: now. It's in much better shape than it was, and while they've made tons of mistakes it was never going to be as bad as it probably sounds from the press. Especially since half the press was about canvas bags and customer support and stuff not actually related to the game itself.

I've met far more players, but that might be a PC thing, or based on the fact that at this point I'm moving around the world a lot. I don't know if I want more players around or not, but yeah, when they're not there it definitely feels different. There's an Adventure Mode or something coming where it's going to be a full free for all (no PvP protection). That might end up being more active, but who knows. It does feel rather empty otherwise, since the players are supposed to be sort of replacing the NPCs.

And yeah, I think the most dedicated players have largely run out of challenges. The DLC's going to have to do some heavy lifting.



Hellloooo Cindy - Scary Movie (2000)
Yoda you’re obsessed with fallout. I just hope you’re aware of it.

Bloodborne is kicking my ass badly, thought I had the formula having done DS 1. I was way over confident. Need to take it slow.



The People's Republic of Clogher
I thought I'd make use of my Xbox Game Pass (bought a year for half price a while back, which works out about the price of one full price game) and downloaded Crackdown 3.

I'd heard that the game was disappointing but, much like with fallout 76, I had to know for myself.

First things first, it's a comparatively tiny download - A modern AAA open world action game for 10GB? Even though the multiplayer is a seperate 10GB download, this seemed suspiciously small. RDR2: 103GB, Hitman 2: 60GB + 40GB for the season 1 maps, Far Cry 5: 50GB, GTA5: 60GB, Witcher 3: 50GB etc etc.

Then I booted the game up and all was revealed. It looks and plays like a Ł29.99 budget title - Bright but flat and lifeless graphics and gameplay which wouldn't be out of place in a launch 360/PS3 game. Open world games have moved on since the last Crackdown title but Crackdown sure hasn't. If someone told me this was a simple HD remaster of Crackdown 1 I'd have believed them.

$60 for this? I can only assume that something went badly awry in development because Crackdown 3 was one of the Xbox One's big exclusives at launch, with all sorts of promises being made about game physics being done by 'the cloud' and so forth. To see the finished game (9 years in development or something) come out as a competent but completely uninspired and short game is mystifying.

Maybe that's why Microsoft was so quiet about it for all these years?



there's a frog in my snake oil
$60 for this? I can only assume that something went badly awry in development because Crackdown 3 was one of the Xbox One's big exclusives at launch, with all sorts of promises being made about game physics being done by 'the cloud' and so forth. To see the finished game (9 years in development or something) come out as a competent but completely uninspired and short game is mystifying.

Maybe that's why Microsoft was so quiet about it for all these years?
Yeah supposedly it was going to have loads of the destruction outsourced to servers:



So is none of that in there? Or does it just not really add anything? (Maybe Epic buying up the 'Cloudgine' group mid-dev was an issue?)




"Paradox have stepped up their marketing with regards to a new entry for the Vampire: The Masquerade series. The latest is a mysterious website that has “uncovered” something sinister about the Tender app.

The site claims that Tender is planning a “controlled test group” in New York on February 23rd to test how they can match people into perfect groups. The results of these 4-hour sessions where they will monitor your biometric data while using Tender will have their algorithm assemble participants into two groups that have to “tackle and escape the room.”

Now naturally, this can’t happen, so the author of this website is asking for those who want to help stop Tender from doing this to fill out this form if they want to help. The author also talks about “Project Chimera”, and how they’ve almost finish decrypting it. The decrypted link on the blog leads to concept art for the new game (which you can view below).



Hopefully Paradox gives us a little more info on the game once this “event” on the 23rd happens."



The People's Republic of Clogher
Yeah supposedly it was going to have loads of the destruction outsourced to servers:



So is none of that in there? Or does it just not really add anything? (Maybe Epic buying up the 'Cloudgine' group mid-dev was an issue?)
I'd say the big problem was Microsoft having to walk back the Xbox's always online requirement pretty early in its life cycle. No online, no cloud, no Crackdown.



there's a frog in my snake oil
I'd say the big problem was Microsoft having to walk back the Xbox's always online requirement pretty early in its life cycle. No online, no cloud, no Crackdown.
Yeah guess that would gut your game :/. That's the whole USP and evolution aspect right there. The perils of trying to do the new I guess

I did enjoy the Crackdown 2 demo I played back in the day, but the idea of playing essentially the same game now doesn't really appeal.

---

Talking of retro revamps... I've nearly got this...




I remember that cloud-based building destruction thing from way back. Totally borked, eh? Bummer. Still seems like a good idea, if and when they figure out the tech side.



The People's Republic of Clogher
I remember that cloud-based building destruction thing from way back. Totally borked, eh? Bummer. Still seems like a good idea, if and when they figure out the tech side.
I think they might still have it in the online multiplayer, which makes sense. Not tried it though, and doubt I ever will.



A system of cells interlinked
After a bit of a break, I am back into surviving in The Long Dark. Now that I have a ridiculous amount of food and supplies stockpiled in the Coastal Highway zone, I will do what any level headed fellow would do, and hunker down for the duration leave most of it behind and head out to a tougher zone. I am thinking I will hit Pleasant Valley next, which is on the other side of a mine I explored a while back. I will come up with the best travel kit I can think of, and head on over. Of course, if the going gets tough, I will stick it out and persevere run back to coastal highway immediately, hiding in my house with my 75 kilos of meat.

Coastal Highway was fun, but it's time to move on...

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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
After a bit of a break, I am back into surviving in The Long Dark. Now that I have a ridiculous amount of food and supplies stockpiled in the Coastal Highway zone, I will do what any level headed fellow would do, and hunker down for the duration leave most of it behind and head out to a tougher zone. I am thinking I will hit Pleasant Valley next, which is on the other side of a mine I explored a while back. I will come up with the best travel kit I can think of, and head on over. Of course, if the going gets tough, I will stick it out and persevere run back to coastal highway immediately, hiding in my house with my 75 kilos of meat.

Coastal Highway was fun, but it's time to move on...

Where did you start and how long have you survived?

I think I'm still roaming a dark train car bunk trying to find the door. I went sleep at night and kept waking up at night lol. The frost of my breathing kept blocking my view so I logged out to ease my blood pressure.




A system of cells interlinked
Where did you start and how long have you survived?

I think I'm still roaming a dark train car bunk trying to find the door. I went sleep at night and kept waking up at night lol. The frost of my breathing kept blocking my view so I logged out to ease my blood pressure.

On the advice of our good friend Yoda, I had started my first Survival Mode game in Mystery Lake. I believe the first attempt I had ended after about a week when I fell victim to a wolf attack by multiple wolves at once. I am now still on my second game, which went as follows:

About 35-40 days on Mystery Lake, after which I moved to Coastal Highway. I want to say I am around 90-100 days survived now, but I will have to check next time I log in. As stated above, I have pretty much mastered this area, and I will now head off to Pleasant Valley. I do have another way I can go, but I forget where that ends up. In Coastal Highway, I have around 75 kilos of meat stored, along with a ton of canned goods and supplies, a plethora of skins and crafting materials, and of course, plenty of coffee.

After playing both areas for a while, I do thing Coastal Highway is the easier area of the two, even of the wolves are more plentiful there.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Without logging in (at work atm), I'm pretty sure I started from Alan's Cave in the Mystery Lake area. I died pretty fast freezing to death before I had a clue about anything (note that I'm still without a clue, but I survived past that point at least). With my next attempt, I circled around until I found a railroad, then I followed it until I found what looks like a train car sleeper unit. I've spent a few days in that area where nearby is like a 3-story machine shop type structure. there's a lot of heavy equipment but nothing really of value that I can find. A few soda cans, bags of chips, and junk to burn but no weapons that I've seen. I did learn that I can not only take items but place them as well, so I've been setting things in the sleeping car assuming it should be safe there, or that's what I'm supposed to do more or less.

Like I said earlier though, I could not escape that forever night no matter how many hours I slept waiting for daylight. That was where I left off.

There were rabbits and deer just outside of the cave I started from, but as far as I'm aware I had no weapon to kill anything with. Unless you can kill deer with sticks or maybe a knife? There was a bridge I had to hide under from the weather nearby. Someone left a campfire stone structure that I used to melt ice by mistake.

I did feel better about the game once I found my way inside the building, but man that was a lot of time spent just opening things to not find much of anything.
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"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear