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The People's Republic of Clogher
I've not uninstalled it, so that's a bonus because I was pretty cavalier the other day in deleting PS4 games from my HD to get some space.
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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



Bought Luigi's Mansion 3, pretty solid and it's got co-op and multiplayer as well. Obviously charming per the Nintendo norm



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
I haven't gamed since coming to visit family. I feel withdrawn and depressed. I did end up getting a 5Tb external drive last night at Best Buy so I've at least started migrated installations from the system drive over. I read somewhere that gameplay recording on the PS4 glitches by skipping frames (seconds worth) if the HD is half full or more. Considering the price of the damn console that is kind of pathetic, especially given how many years this has been an issue. I noticed it recently with my CONTROL playbacks. Sucks because you can't just go back and replay the "boss" once it's cleared---not, at least, without deleting your current progress and starting over. What's up with that!? I wonder if I can create a second PS account and log in a new game that way? We kind did that on the PS3 when playing DUST514. Can anyone speak to that on the PS4 with experience?
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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



My brother got Mario Maker and a WiiU, so we made some crazy levels. It's a lot of fun. I love making levels that aren't necessarily difficult, but just fun to play. We made levels for each other to play, and then we made one level together that turned out to actually be pretty challenging.





This level is pretty fun. Battle Roulette, although the guy who made them isn't very good at his own level, I really like his design.

This level is also really cool and shows great design. Koopa's Cruel Castle




there's a frog in my snake oil
Star Citizen: Holiday Special

Nothing has happened. Everything has happened. It's impossible to summarise as always. Here I go

Citconned:



The grand community event and demo-fest of the year was hooked to three main things...


Micro Tech:



They unveiled the snowy planet Microtech. Their big addition of the year, which has now arrived in the 3.8 patch.

Some amusing demo aspects for connoisseurs were:
  • They play-acted having a stealth mechanic. Which they absolutely don't have.
  • They seemingly teleported a vehicle up a ramp, as that's an ongoing deadly bug that has undermined prior Citcon demos.

Unlike the convention demo, the game version doesn't have any building interiors, or indeed any gameplay as such, because they've hit a memory limit. (This was supposed to be solved by the miracle tech of 'SOCS', but doesn't seem to have been as yet. SOCS is a stepping stone to the inevitable 10k+ player 'Server Meshing' tech, the faithful will have you know )

If they get their gas giant added in Q2 (as scheduled) they will have completed their first solar system. Precisely 3 years late


Battlefield 42:

They are making yet another 'testing module'. 7 years+ after kickstarter. It's a Battlefield-esque thing. And currently looks so janky that they can't film it for more than 5 seconds straight...



On the plus side maybe this means they will finally get grenades working. Or introduce those tanks they've sold?


A Whole New World:

The grand finale was another 'not working as yet' demo of travel to a brand new system. The conduit showcased some lovely visuals, some bizarrely bad 'no clip' flying, and a complete lack of thought on how the actual gameplay would work. As they merrily admitted. (And then admitted further in a video discussing the demo's creation).



What happens if you clip out of the tunnel? Nobody knows... Where do the other tunnels go? Nobody knows... How will it all work? No need to write any more is there

But still, the mock up of space clouds in the next system looked pretty

---

Through it all, the community amused themselves by dressing up as one of the famous 'pleb' characters from the game...



And the goons found it very amusing that their 'Crobear' depiction of Chris Roberts ended up in an official collage


Squadron Falls In:

Just as the backers were getting a bit shirty with the buggy nature of 3.8 and the rolling delays, along comes an Xmas present. A 'visual teaser' for SQ42:



It looks very pretty but contains zero gameplay. 6 months before the proposed beta launch and with the roadmap absurdly delayed. Grizzled veteran citizens are waiting on the latter to be demonstrated...

You can tell it's in-engine because the alien race are T-posing


Shipping Stuff:



Roadmaps for both the Star Citizen 'Persistent Universe', and the secret squirrel Squadron 42 single-player, are absurdly backlogged. Note the specific crystallined complaints in those salty comment sections.

As a fun example, Salvaging, a gameplay mechanic attached to the $400 Reclaimer, has been pushed yet again, and looks liable to miss its Q2 2020 slot, and be over 3 years late too... Yet they found some time to market and sell further grand ships with significant game dev requirements. The $725 mine-laying Nautilus. The $2,000 floating market rework of the, also unreleased, $1,650 Kraken. And so it goes. Mining remains the one pre-sold ship profession ever added to the game, while yet more get layered on...


Let Me Hand Hold You Through The Finances:



They released some, not-quite-audited, financials for the second year running.

The amateur take-aways are pretty much in line with last time:
  • $48.9m income
  • $56.1m outgoings
  • -$7.2M net position over 12 months with just under $7M in the bank
  • They would have been dusted without the Calder's $46m investment. As it is, they're still trucking on.
  • Most of their staffing increase this year has been in marketing.
  • They're still pulling in hefty amounts from backers, with this being their best year ever.
Amateur sleuthing on the final point suggests it's still whales plugging those holes, rather than new sign ups.


Turbulent Turbulence:



CIG's long-term marketing partner Turbulent did a wee share swap with them.

There has long been gossip that CIG were lagging on payments to Turbulent. On the sceptical side of the aisle this seemingly simple affair is being seen like this: [33m+]
  • Presumably an equity swap. IE presumes CIG owed monies, the stock in CIG pays it off. To value the transaction Turbulent gave CIG stock in exchange. Turbulent can now peg their stock price to CIG's stratospheric private valuation.
  • Turb owners got $mil personally, plus stock revaluation. CIG got the debt wiped out & 50% presence on Turb's board.
  • Turbulent can get loans / venture capital off the back of the associated valuation of their company stock now.
  • CIG created new shares (0.1%) to give to Turb. So the investors had to sign off on a dilution of their share, if a tiny one. Whereas Turb sold their existing personal shares, rather than create new ones.
  • CIG may have manoeuvred nicely here. Got Turb off their back with a payout, without appearing to. And possibly avoided a second Crytek style legal encounter.
  • You don't dilute your stock for no reason, even if just for a small amount. Not the sort of thing that makes a big investor happy. (But neither is having your ship sale website shut down, or legal action for non-payment etc )
Turbulent have seemingly done sizzle reels for CIG in the past. Are these extended arms connected to the fancy SQ42 filler vid that just turned up? Who knows


Ludicrous Gossip of the Month:

In the lead up to the BBC Click 'investigation' of Star Citizen (which turned out to be about as hard-hitting as a marshmallow), this grab of a dev's screen caused amusement amongst the sceptics. Now blurred-out from the video in question, it was broadly 'interpreted' as follows

Line 1: perfect timing
Line 2: Also, the BBC show. Are we ****ed? yes or no
Line 3: I'm pretty sure they spoke to US marketing, not our marketing.
Line 4: brexit citizen [??]
Line 5: So yes, we're ****ed

Stop Bugging Me:

3.8 has been notably unstable. Legacy bugs are still in full effect (ships spawn without doors, walking around during quantum flight flings you out of the ship, ships disappear, etc etc etc). Add in the shiny new bugs, and showing off SC to friends can be something of a challenge. As an example...

yeah had all those, but then also had my friend become a naked man with two skin colours and was technically a women to the game, They have yeeted me across a reclaimers bridge so hard I phased through the cockpit before dying in the vacuum of space, only for them to then get stuck in a wall of the ship as it despawned for no reason leaving them stuck inside a ship that doesn't even exist.

They have managed to be one shot through the cockpit of the Hurricane leaving me floating stationary in the turret as planetary turrets fired at me, They have made mission boxes vanish as they placed them only for the boxes to spawn and fill their hab unit a few days later after we did those missions.

They get interdicted way more than the builds average they some how QT multiple times into a planet in the same session a few minutes after the last time and their ratio of working missions is horrible, missing enemies, objectives everything on missions I have done many times alone or with other people with absolutely no issues.

Or just they get in a ship and nothing works their player model dangling out the ship or they get on a space bike and ping up almost into orbit in the first couple seconds of starting it up or they some how turn all my MFDs [ship screens] into their face talking to me from 4 different dimensions at the same time.

We have fun because it's always funny as all hell but this just a small number of the issues we have faced and it just comes off as amazing.
Some of the more amusing new ones from 3.8 seems to include scale getting misaligned. Giant guns and tiny characters...




There's always room for some new twists on a few old classics though



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



there's a frog in my snake oil
Star Citizen: There's Always More

Given today's legal update, here's some bonus stuff


Legal Twists & Turns:



TLDR:

Crytek want to pause all legal action and carry on later. CIG want to carry on being sued to the current schedule, or at least get legal fees for their troubles.


Slightly Longer Read:
  • During the early paper trails of discovery, something has convinced the Crytek lawyers that one of their key claims is not yet 'ripe'.
  • CIG's lawyers have previously argued that the SQ42 claim is not ripe. (IE although they have indeed sold and marketed it as a separate game, they have not as yet released said game. The Game License lists all three aspects as being of note for a breach.)

The Sceptic's Take:

Emails etc alone have confirmed that SQ42 isn't expected to hit release standard in 2020. Probably longer...




Who Leaks to the Leakers?:

Gossip nexus TheAgent dropped a few posts in October. The most amusing one by far was this one

hello part 2 (from someone waaaaay different)
  • internal planet build of Earth has taken thousands of man hours but "worth it"
  • land claims first to debut in the Sol/Home/Domus system: "Stake your claim on Earth, the moon, Mars and beyond."
  • prices for land claims will increase "massively"
  • build fortified bunkers, farms, population towers, player usable banks/stores and planetary defenses
  • "It isn't ready, but it will be ready very quickly after we show it. This groundwork is half a decade in development."
  • player controlled orbiting rest stops, cafes (the ****), fueling stations and defense platforms all planned for sale
  • "Chris wanted something never seen before and that's an Earth that is completely open to exploration."
  • "As we strive for realism and fidelity, these parcels of land will eventually be worth much more than their cost."

Earth is indeed amongst the many old launch and stretch goals, so it's not totally left-field. (Land claims are also for sale already, but not in the game, while rest stops have recently been added for free.)

But take with a shovel of salt as always.

(It was intriguing to note a minor prediction confirmation in the form of the reformed AMD/CIG partnership at Citcon though. The original breach with AMD is a thing of gossipy legend (more gossipy context here))





Addendum:

Honestly there's so much more in terms of smoke, mirrors & mayhem that I could churn through, but I'm going to show some restraint and spare you

I'm not delving into the ongoing use of Cryengine tools by CIG. The latest shell company. Subtexts like their apparent issues hiring AI specialists. The flight model seemingly getting worse over time in some key ways. The ever perplexing funding tracker and its norms... Etc etc etc...

(And I'm not paying your subscription to SA to read those either. You'll have to pay the bunnyman gatekeeper if you foolishly fancy jumping down the rabbit hole too )





Played Superliminal yesterday, in one sitting. Just takes a couple of hours.



Kinda went back and forth on this game: when I first heard of it and saw the trailer, I was very excited (great premise: objects can grow or shrink based on your perspective to them!). Bought it either immediately or via preorder, can't recall. Reviews came in, read one that was pretty meh on it, so I waited awhile. Finally sat down to give it a go, and I enjoyed it pretty well. Perhaps because my expectations had been lowered?

This game is right between Portal and The Stanley Parable. Like, perfectly equidistant. I was actually trying to decide which it feels closer to...and I'm not sure I can. If you liked either or both of those games, you'll like this. The puzzles are rarely perplexing for long. Usually you just have to fiddle around and try stuff, and the fiddling is almost always fun. I wouldn't play it if you really want challenging puzzles, but if the thing you liked about puzzles in Portal was less the challenge and more the fun little moment where you brain sees things from a new angle...Superliminal has that. It's hitting a weird sweet spot where puzzles are satisfying without being hard, for the most part.

There's also just a lot of fun little things that are not puzzles, but just little revelations and shifts in how things work. I laughed out loud several different times.




That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Never even heard of it, wow. Will check it out.
The video is darker here so I suggest checking it direct through YT. There appear to be a lot of nice subtleties playing out with the text. Iderno. I didn't check price but looks cute, in a nightmarish Disney kind of way. I hope it has more puzzles than it shows and that word play isn't so obvious, but that "part" swing that slammed shut as "trap" got my attention. Post up, if you ever pick it up.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
Started The Witcher 3. Not entirely sure why.


You've always wanted to be Henry Cavill and that's the closest thing.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Star Citizen: Legal Ticker Tape



I'm just adding today's latest lawyer lunging, because you can't stop me

The key bit is this:

Crytek based its primary claims in this case on multiple public statements by CIG indicating the release of Squadron 42 as a standalone game with release set for the first half of 2020.
In late November, CIG served its verified response stating that CIG had not decided how the game would be released

Given that 'release' in this context covers the planned Q3 Beta (initially Q2), I guess it's still a big old muddle as always. (The court case was set to get its jury on in June, at the point of launch, prior to this latest run of kerfuffles).

For a fun reminder of how many times they've attempted a launch date for their CoD-slaying campaign, watch this nefarious Goon video feed:




there's a frog in my snake oil
Ok just to prove I do actually play games... Have some more VR musings that are of little use to you

Deep In The: Boneworks


This feels sooo cavernous in VR...

Gotta stress that this is very much an indie title. A humanoid throws a gun under a lowering door, and looks like he’s powered by clockwork. The incidental audio is so thin that your legs sound like two sheets of tin when they knock into something.

<snip>

But...




When the bespoke story audio is scraping and clanking down the other side of a wall, when you hit a grand set piece, or mess up a puzzle and drop 3 stories into a nest of ‘Combine wheely men’ (and survive via some emergency dual pistol duck and dive), it is alllll good

I was pleased to see that they’ve got scopes working nicely. And happy to notice I was flipping lockers open with neat flicks of my crowbar, and other fun physics interactions (to counter-act the periodic jank ). And when the slightly loose ‘do it your way-ish’ physics puzzles click (as you move giant paper clip things around to distribute weight etc), they feel like they’re pulling their weight...

Manually raising your legs up to get onto a ledge is still the most ludicrous thing in the world. But on balance, game good

Also, have this cyberpunk hobbit



Rumor has it that Frictional Games is preparing for an announcement of one of their two games currently in development. They seem to have updated the site.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Played Superliminal yesterday, in one sitting. Just takes a couple of hours.



Kinda went back and forth on this game: when I first heard of it and saw the trailer, I was very excited (great premise: objects can grow or shrink based on your perspective to them!). Bought it either immediately or via preorder, can't recall. Reviews came in, read one that was pretty meh on it, so I waited awhile. Finally sat down to give it a go, and I enjoyed it pretty well. Perhaps because my expectations had been lowered?

This game is right between Portal and The Stanley Parable. Like, perfectly equidistant. I was actually trying to decide which it feels closer to...and I'm not sure I can. If you liked either or both of those games, you'll like this. The puzzles are rarely perplexing for long. Usually you just have to fiddle around and try stuff, and the fiddling is almost always fun. I wouldn't play it if you really want challenging puzzles, but if the thing you liked about puzzles in Portal was less the challenge and more the fun little moment where you brain sees things from a new angle...Superliminal has that. It's hitting a weird sweet spot where puzzles are satisfying without being hard, for the most part.

There's also just a lot of fun little things that are not puzzles, but just little revelations and shifts in how things work. I laughed out loud several different times.

I bought this game right after reading your post here. I finally just hit Level 2. For some reason I play it only for about 15 minutes at a time before I get annoyed by it. Well, "annoyed" is too strong a word. Vexed?

WARNING: "Semi-spoilers on mechanics" spoilers below
Sometimes dropping the same object from the same height in the same spot doesn't give the same results. I'm sure I'm just a HAIR off in how I try to repeat a task, but once you know what to do and need an object to be a specific size, it's frustrating that the mechanic suddenly becomes somewhat imprecise and you spend ten minutes redropping the same object so you can move on. Also, in one spot with the broken window in Level 1, the graphics were slightly off and I couldn't see that the yellow square button was also positioned down through the window. Things like that have happened about three times, so I keep stopping. The game idea itself, and MOST of the execution, is delightful.