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there's a frog in my snake oil
Lo, stray Elite Dangerous owners. (I think that's basically just @Sedai ). The DLC is getting bundled into the core game for free from Oct 27th.

Means you get some free planets to bonk about on in rovers and multicrew mini-ships and such.

Also means they're ramping up for the Odyssey launch next year. EDIT: Ah, vid dropped today:



Still waiting to see the actual gameplay side of it, but it's not a bad vibe platform

(Watching old man ED bumbling over Star Citizen territory is pretty damn amusing )
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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
The VR view...

First Look: Star Wars: Squadrons



Check out that evil R2D2:

I spent far too long just oggling the hangars and cockpits in the various customisation screens and early campaign tutorials. If nothing else works in this, it's working very well as a 'sit in a Star Wars scene' simulator


Forget the flight stick:

I thought I was totally winning when I figured out what 'button 11' was on my stick. That meant I could finally run my ship checks and get out of the hanger.

Where I found out that roll was mapped to yaw on the stick, and yaw was mapped to roll. That was interesting in VR...

No in-game rebinding from what I can tell. So I just can't be bothered with the faff. It's not like the flight model has full '6 degrees of freedom' inputs with lateral jets and all that deliciousness, or novelty synched animations in the cockpit.

It does have lots of welcome sub-sim touches though, like lowering your speed to turn better, and shuttling energy between speed, shields & weapons etc (and 'drifting' at speed apparently). An Xbox controller should be just right


Stay on Target:


Have only just nosed into the campaign, but it's a fun form of naff so far on the story front. The missions themselves leaning towards the 'scan this' / 'escort that' / 'fly down that tunnel so far, but fine for all that.

The starter ship seemed comically slow when flying around the initial location, and the 'kill X fighters' in veteran difficulty was just... kinda ok. But it's early days.

The T-fighter cockpit view didn't really help with that, making it more of a mindless case of swivelling constantly and being surprised by geography. The visibility really is terrible, total tunnel vision. Enjoyed it a lot more once I was in an X-Wing with more situational awareness.

Not entirely convinced by the scale at points (some of the smaller big ships look... like models). The bigger ones seem decent from a distance though. Will see how fly-by attacks pan out.





there's a frog in my snake oil
Second Look: Stars Wars: Squadrons

Ok so I stopped trying to play this like a 'serious space mission simulator', after smearing a fragile A-Wing over one too many cruiser carapaces, and getting grumpy about the re-starts. The earnest challenge of it all wasn't feeling quite right.

Knocked the difficulty down to the 'normal' level and I'm having a lot more fun now. Just ignoring the fact that it's all super easy, and enjoying playing through the hero fantasy scenarios



Here's a ponderously slow 'bombing run' in a Y-Wing, which shows off some of the fun 'fly amongst stuff' opportunities.



(Don't think too much about the bombs in zero gravity )

One good thing about playing in 'wish fulfilment' mode is that you can mess about with all the different loadout options, without fear of having to hard-restart the round, and then just enjoy the cinematic flow of what unfolds.

---

As a side note, despite the flip-flopping Rebel/Empire narrative being kinda bubblegum fun, I'm torn on the character chit-chat filler in the hangars & briefing rooms. On the one hand it's all welcome context filler & characterisation in some ways, but it's also all delivered in wooden lumps of exposition.

But dammit, the locations and character models all look pretty great in VR...



So I keep stopping by for chats anyway. And then wondering why I bothered



Second Look: Stars Wars: Squadrons

Ok so I stopped trying to play this like a 'serious space mission simulator', after smearing a fragile A-Wing over one too many cruiser carapaces, and getting grumpy about the re-starts. The earnest challenge of it all wasn't feeling quite right.

Knocked the difficulty down to the 'normal' level and I'm having a lot more fun now. Just ignoring the fact that it's all super easy, and enjoying playing through the hero fantasy scenarios



Here's a ponderously slow 'bombing run' in a Y-Wing, which shows off some of the fun 'fly amongst stuff' opportunities.



(Don't think too much about the bombs in zero gravity )

One good thing about playing in 'wish fulfilment' mode is that you can mess about with all the different loadout options, without fear of having to hard-restart the round, and then just enjoy the cinematic flow of what unfolds.

---

As a side note, despite the flip-flopping Rebel/Empire narrative being kinda bubblegum fun, I'm torn on the character chit-chat filler in the hangars & briefing rooms. On the one hand it's all welcome context filler & characterisation in some ways, but it's also all delivered in wooden lumps of exposition.

But dammit, the locations and character models all look pretty great in VR...



So I keep stopping by for chats anyway. And then wondering why I bothered
the game looks alright , havent played battlefront 1-2 for ages since they both came out



there's a frog in my snake oil
the game looks alright , havent played battlefront 1-2 for ages since they both came out
It's got a similar thing going on, in that the SW vibe is the real win, and the gameplay is kind of just tagging along behind.

But cool for all that. Will see how the gameplay actually holds up in the crucible of multiplayer once I'm done with the campaign

(Think the ideal for me is gonna be the 5-player co-op missions. Best way to relive the campaign silliness, while shouting SW quotes at each other )



It's got a similar thing going on, in that the SW vibe is the real win, and the gameplay is kind of just tagging along behind.

But cool for all that. Will see how the gameplay actually holds up in the crucible of multiplayer once I'm done with the campaign

(Think the ideal for me is gonna be the 5-player co-op missions. Best way to relive the campaign silliness, while shouting SW quotes at each other )
hope its the same controls to fly like the ones on battlefront 2. gosh love co op missions



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
Best CP77 preorder in the States?

Best Buy has a steelbook, which beats most of the ones I have seen.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
I haven't touched Ghosts of Tsushima for three or four days. Not for lack of desire, just the work place is getting demanding. Withdrawal sucks. Maybe that's a good thing though, and could give give me time later this week to finalize my ongoing writeup. I have about 50 video clips and as many screen captures. This game is simply gorgeous. Lighting is still hard on the eye from time to time, but the particle effects are the best I've seen. Of course I'm at work and can't upload samples, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Combat is MOSTLY great. I think C O N T R O L is a bit smoother. Perhaps only because Ghosts requires more levels of attack options than C O N T R O L. That does get clunky in the heat of the moment if you're not practiced up on your stance/weapon choice key combinations, but there is a LOT to do in this game and there are a LOT of random encounters in the open world to keep you practicing. Another comparison to C O N T R O L (I don't know why I keep adding spaces there, but it just looks cool), is that Ghosts has a more dramatic and grounded storyline. The voice acting and (get this) CHARACTER ANIMATIONS are spot on and emote quite well. I found myself nearly in tears watching a character's eyes on close-up well up with fluid as the catchlight became more apparent. There really are some very nice subtle details throughout this game like that.

Boss fights are about the same between the two. Effortlessly hack your way through the random encounters, camp leaders, etc., and have your *** handed to you multiple times when you finally come to a boss. There really is a gap there and I don't feel a progression from one to the other.

Other than that, I'm still loving it. Who wouldn't, playing samurai/ninja at will?

Huh. I guess I uploaded a clip a week or two back. Fun! For context, I'm roughly at the halfway point in the game. I'm playing EVERY side mission that I can find, increasing my technique points for as much as I can. This is a random encounter that you find along roads or deep in the woods, with enemy camps. On approach, you have the option to engage head-on, stealth assassinate one at a time, or use the Standoff option as I did here. Once you are within range of an unaware enemy group, you can press the UP arrow to initiate the challenge. By default, you then hold the arrow key until your challenger motions to attack. If you time it correctly, releasing the arrow button unsheathes your sword, delivering a fatal blow to your enemy. You can earn technique points to use to upgrade the attack. For example, the next upgrade will make it so that a second enemy will blindly rush in to attack you, effectively opening their defense to your attack and a potential one-hit kill. The next upgrade allows for a third attacker to rush in after. The technique caps at 2 additional potential kills before normal game play returns. However, some of the remaining enemies may be stunned at the sight of you killing 3 of his comrades and will either run away or stand, stunned, for a period of time giving you an opportunity to kill them before they are responsive. FYI, a side-mission later in the game opens up a new armor set that can extend this kill streak by an additional TWO when maxed. Do note, however, that these challenges get more difficult as later encounters will taunt and offer fake start, and the window for your response narrows. If you miss a beat, at least half of your health will be taken on the initial blow which can happen if you miss any of those opening three attacks.



At around 30 seconds, you see two white icon sets appear in the lower left and right corners. Those are (part of) the different attack options. Left are thrown weapons (kunai, smoke bomb, and bells to toss for distraction), and right at the four different stances you must learn to better deal with specific weapon types. Generally, that's sword, shield, spear, and brute. Each one requires a specific stance that provides unique attack and defense abilities. Find yourself in a fight with 6 or more enemies and you will need to constantly change your stance to deal with whatever weapon type is coming at your first.
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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



A system of cells interlinked
I hate this guy...

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



You ready? You look ready.
So I can only handle so much Super Mario N64 before the camera makes me rage quit. It’s funny how when that launched it was revolutionary and now it’s rage city.

Super Mario Sunshine is still as awesome as I remember. It is my favorite of the series but I forgot how jarring of a change it was from N64, and I understand the mixed feelings around it now.

Haven’t played Galaxy any yet. I liked it back at release, but I thought it was kinda weak compared to Sunshine.

In the end, All-Stars is worth the money.
I've barely touched this game since that first day. On re-evaluation it is totally not worth the money.
__________________
"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza



I haven't touched Ghosts of Tsushima for three or four days. Not for lack of desire, just the work place is getting demanding. Withdrawal sucks. Maybe that's a good thing though, and could give give me time later this week to finalize my ongoing writeup. I have about 50 video clips and as many screen captures. This game is simply gorgeous. Lighting is still hard on the eye from time to time, but the particle effects are the best I've seen. Of course I'm at work and can't upload samples, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Combat is MOSTLY great. I think C O N T R O L is a bit smoother. Perhaps only because Ghosts requires more levels of attack options than C O N T R O L. That does get clunky in the heat of the moment if you're not practiced up on your stance/weapon choice key combinations, but there is a LOT to do in this game and there are a LOT of random encounters in the open world to keep you practicing. Another comparison to C O N T R O L (I don't know why I keep adding spaces there, but it just looks cool), is that Ghosts has a more dramatic and grounded storyline. The voice acting and (get this) CHARACTER ANIMATIONS are spot on and emote quite well. I found myself nearly in tears watching a character's eyes on close-up well up with fluid as the catchlight became more apparent. There really are some very nice subtle details throughout this game like that.

Boss fights are about the same between the two. Effortlessly hack your way through the random encounters, camp leaders, etc., and have your *** handed to you multiple times when you finally come to a boss. There really is a gap there and I don't feel a progression from one to the other.

Other than that, I'm still loving it. Who wouldn't, playing samurai/ninja at will?

Huh. I guess I uploaded a clip a week or two back. Fun! For context, I'm roughly at the halfway point in the game. I'm playing EVERY side mission that I can find, increasing my technique points for as much as I can. This is a random encounter that you find along roads or deep in the woods, with enemy camps. On approach, you have the option to engage head-on, stealth assassinate one at a time, or use the Standoff option as I did here. Once you are within range of an unaware enemy group, you can press the UP arrow to initiate the challenge. By default, you then hold the arrow key until your challenger motions to attack. If you time it correctly, releasing the arrow button unsheathes your sword, delivering a fatal blow to your enemy. You can earn technique points to use to upgrade the attack. For example, the next upgrade will make it so that a second enemy will blindly rush in to attack you, effectively opening their defense to your attack and a potential one-hit kill. The next upgrade allows for a third attacker to rush in after. The technique caps at 2 additional potential kills before normal game play returns. However, some of the remaining enemies may be stunned at the sight of you killing 3 of his comrades and will either run away or stand, stunned, for a period of time giving you an opportunity to kill them before they are responsive. FYI, a side-mission later in the game opens up a new armor set that can extend this kill streak by an additional TWO when maxed. Do note, however, that these challenges get more difficult as later encounters will taunt and offer fake start, and the window for your response narrows. If you miss a beat, at least half of your health will be taken on the initial blow which can happen if you miss any of those opening three attacks.



At around 30 seconds, you see two white icon sets appear in the lower left and right corners. Those are (part of) the different attack options. Left are thrown weapons (kunai, smoke bomb, and bells to toss for distraction), and right at the four different stances you must learn to better deal with specific weapon types. Generally, that's sword, shield, spear, and brute. Each one requires a specific stance that provides unique attack and defense abilities. Find yourself in a fight with 6 or more enemies and you will need to constantly change your stance to deal with whatever weapon type is coming at your first.
loved Ghosts of Tsushima one of my favorite games and loved the new DLC update



there's a frog in my snake oil
This had some decent bits in this. Especially the later sections distinguishing game and film composition:

'Top composers used to head to Hollywood. Now they’re into games'

For [Fallout 3] he experimented with non-traditional instruments he called 'artefacts' – like banging on garden furniture – "to evoke the scarcity the survivors found themselves within”.
For Assassin's Creed Odyssey, composers The Flight went digging in the crates for instruments from the time (there are no recordings from ancient Sparta). They used lyres, panpipes, dulcimers, aulos (a kind of Ancient Greek reed instrument), and ektara, a one-stringed guitar, along with more modern Greek instruments like the baszucki.

Then they begin to send through samples to the developers. This can take months. Game scoring, in comparison to film, is a long process that produces a ton more music.
You can picture a video game soundtrack like the map of the world you see in an adventure game. Under the hood, each area splits into little islands of music or "biomes", in The Flight's words. Each has its own musical rules. On Alien: Isolation's Sevastopol ship, for instance, the medical bay must evoke a different mood to the ship's dock. In Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Athenians, Peollopeneese and pirates announce themselves with their own motifs.

This fragmentation is exceptionally complex, explains Phillips – a maze of triggers. "We compose music for games as essentially a modular construct composed in pieces," she says. "These pieces are assembled by the game's audio engine, according to whatever the model is that the music system is going to use in order to make the music reactive to the actions of the player."

What this means is that much game music is in constant flux. It is combinatorial – imagine a constantly reshuffling Rubik's cubes, forming into different patterns. On Borderlands 3, Kyd explains, each action in the game was supported by a music cue – from location based triggers, like entering a swamp or space ship, to getting in fights or exploring. “Each of these cues are then divided into sections,” he says. “A pop song normally has a verse, chorus, bridge etc. I take a similar approach here, except each verse or chorus is always different. So I don’t repeat anything, I just keep going into new verses and chorus. So a three minute cue is three minutes of constantly new music.”

Each verse or chorus will be cut together into its own loop section. A three minute cue might have 6-10 different sections that all need to be able loop and connect with each other randomly. “All sections are then recorded into 7 layers (such as melody, percussion, bass, harmony, chords, big beat, small beat etc) so you can in real-time remix each section by removing layers based on the intensity of the game’s state and atmosphere,” he says. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that with that many variables, every player will hear a slightly altered tune. This jumbled approach to composition is unique to video game scoring.
To avoid "repetition fatigue" in their compositions, composers have several different tools at their disposal. They might play that electric guitar riff on a cathedral organ. They might alter the song's rhythm, turning major modes into minor. Or they might fragment it entirely, sneaking barely recognisable parts of the melody into new places.

Players cannot sense the links between different sections of music, either, particularly in wide-open exploration games. This often makes prominent melodies a big no-no. "Conventional music relies on building up tension and then releasing it – that's true of classical symphonies as well as drum and bass and house music," says John Matthias, a musician, composer and physicist. "So what you have to do is to produce music that doesn't build attention, or the brain ends up getting bored." (He makes the comparison to Erik Satie's famous furniture music; music to be heard but not noticed).

This is why some of the most accomplished video game music – like C418's Minecraft soundtrack – is ambient. It must sound infinite; it must distort our sense of time and appear, in Brian Eno's words "as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sounds of the rain were part of that ambience". Unlike films, game scores have two purposes; they must compel us to keep playing as well as involve us emotionally. Video game music is carefully designed to be both ephemeral and stimulating – to subconsciously encourage prolonged and intense focus.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Fight that boss - you will understand!
Wait til you get to this guy




That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Still deeply invested into Ghost of Tsushima. Still loving it, but it has recently started to reveal its flaws. I am perhaps two-thirds through Act II. I have all fighting stances maxed and nearly all my of my Ghost techniques with the exception of the few higher bomb skills that I never use anyway. There is one offensive skill I have not learned, and I still have not unlocked my fourth and final Mythic skill (burning blades!), and I'm am missing a few tracking skills for helping find hidden points of interest on the world map.

But oh the frustrations are coming to light....

Part of that is due to natural difficulty creep. Baddies get harder. It happens. Part of it is, too, the recent storyline quests feel rushed in design and not at all on equal footing with Act I. For example, I've run three story missions in Act II requiring me to follow a major character into either a village of thieves, a local castle, or across an area of the map to investigate some evil doings. In all three instances, the character that I'm supposed to follow either take off before I am done reading the mission text or before I've clearly identified which of the five characters standing around me is the one to follow. Oh, it was that sixth guy who's not here anymore that I never noticed until I had to reset the quest from the nearest check point to realize there was even a sixth character wandering around? After finding him (if I find him at all, as during one mission I could only ever hear the character speaking to me from way off in the distance but could never find him or any icon indicator as to where he might have run off to), he continues to charge ahead of me as I am in combat, pulling the next group of enemies. It's KIND OF like that one quest in Red Dead Redemption 2 where you head into town to rescue Micah from jail only to have him run all the hell around town pulling aggro so that you're forced to kill everyone to save his idiot self. Crap like that is happening way too often in Act II, in my opinion. It might not be so bad if your NPC wouldn't randomly disappear off screen so often or if the guy didn't look so much like the 10 enemy characters all running chaotic circles around you. Then enters the archers...

Act I archers were pretty easy to deal with. Like butter, if you will. Especially once you earn the defensive skill that allows you to block and slice arrows before they hit you. Cool stuff and, I admit, I felt rather OP through most of Act I. I never remember encountering more than two or three standing archers until these last few quests. Mind you, it is part of a major story line as to why these archers are becoming more proficient. So from that perspective, we're all good. Archers now shoot three volleys each before slowing down to reset aim. That's still pretty well and good once you realize what archer skill you're facing. Encounters now have archers waiting in ambush from higher ground such as cliffs or second-floor structures. Cool. They're strategic now. I suppose my problem comes when you have three or more archers firing at you three arrows back to back, each, from higher ground and can still hit you from behind cover. Getting hit by one arrow staggers you, which makes you vulnerable and somewhat unable to move for 1-2 seconds. That's not long, I admit, but when the time it takes you to recover is as long as it takes another archer to reload and fire again kind of sucks.

There is no aim-assist that I am aware of, so returning fire is difficult. At least for me. It takes half a breath to draw your bow, then whatever time it takes to align your aim on a target. You do have a "Dead Eye" feature to slow time down briefly to help with moving targets, but keep in mind that arrows are still incoming and will likely hit before you've lined up a proper shot (forget about a head shot). if you are hit, you are then staggered again and have start the process over including drawing your bow. I mean specifically you must release and re-trigger your L2 and R2 buttons to restart the bow draw animation and target the shot, respectively. Those added beats of time really get in the way of effectively defending yourself. More so for returning fire. And I love my bow!!! Why not fire wild hoping for a hit, or at least force the enemy into cover? Because you only have 16 arrows. Max. Don't even get me started on flaming arrow arches! There is no safe cover with those guys. If their arrow lands anywhere near you, you will still catch a flame, forcing you to tumbling to extinguish the fire before taking to much damage. Yes. That's tumble as in roll around the earth. Yes, that puts you outside of cover and open to more arrows from the other two or three archers raining fire and brimstone from higher ground while your mission guide has disappeared, yet again, not helping.

Hey. It's all exciting and fun. My problem is that some events happen much too fast to properly evaluate your situation to effectively respond to before it's all over from dumb luck. By the time it's over, I haven't learned anything or adapted to better prepare for the next, similar encounter. This is the equivalent of "button-mashing" in Street Fighter. I recognize the needs for action. Modern Warfare II did an excellent job of this rush attack sequence near the end of the game when you must run the trenches to find a way into the White House. That was pure chaos, but I felt like I was firmly grounded within it and had some level of control regarding my survival. Sure, I could randomly die from incoming mortar fire, but that's war! Survive that and I at least had a fighting chance. That hasn't play out for me in the few missions described here, within Ghost. That's a shame, considering the gorgeous details that were created everywhere else. Each moment in this game feels as though every blade of grass was strategically placed in order to create a visual masterpiece, frame by frame. Unfortunately, that only creates more contrast making oddities like these few missions feel more out of place with the rest of the game. I can't help but feel these quest lines were where directors started tapping their watches. Regardless, this game will still easily fall in my top 10 games list, EVER. So don't take this rant too seriously.

At least I've found the Black Dye Master, who can dye all my armor sets to super cool ninja black.