The Videogames Tab

It's the most sincere gaming experience I've had since Deadly Premonition. It's also utterly charming, not cutesy at all and is as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.

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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

All the comments about B2 seem to be about loot boxes, not actual gameplay.

The Beta was just dull. Star Wars COD, just like the first game.

If you're into COD style multiplayer/Star Wars then it'll be fine. Possibly?

Sure, but what makes this game different from the first? The chance to play as those iconic characters that you either have to put way too much time into just to obtain one of them, or spend massive amounts of moolah to maybe get one. That hurts the experience. Gameplay? I'd imagine it's a copy and paste scenario so why not just play the original instead?

The single player campaign they've introduced I've heard is okay.

Here's a GAMESPOT review:

The Good:

Visually stunning and incredible sound design
Exciting scope of online battles
Impressive set-pieces in the single-player campaign
Starfighter Assault provides dynamic battles with tight controls.


The Bad:

Excessively complex progression system in multiplayer
Over reliance on randomized loot drops and microtransactions
Cumbersome menus and poor tutorials
A promising story weakened by predictable twists


Trusted reviews gives almost the same overview.


Great to look at, but hates the player. I see their point though; a bad progression system makes you not want to play.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

I was just taken back by all the lackluster responses.

I've got some buddies that are big into streaming and one that is involved with Sandy Ravage. Apparently Ravage was really impressed, saying this is gonna be the new multiplayer beast. Over everything.

They vampire-siphoned enough cash from me with the first one. I like DICE, and I'm sure they'll have improved the infantry+vehicle combat. And they make gorgeous games. And in the right circumstances they make addictive online games too. I just don't think this vice-like IP-squeeze is the right circumstances...

(Also personally, I couldn't give a **** about the bookend trilogies to be honest. BF punched me right in the retro wallet, but I didn't care. Because I was charging around in a gloriously executed AT-ST, upending entire corridors as Darth, and heroically driving speeder bikes into Endor trees . Totally worth it . I'm not paying a premium to forgive hurried gameplay loops and transparent price gouging in the land of JahJah Biggs though. Nuh uh...)

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

So, Skyrim on Switch is .... actually pretty decent. I've got no desire to buy it but the 'how' involved fascinated me. Ok, it's a 6 year old game, but we're getting the much newer (and more taxing) Special Edition version of the game on Switch.



Digital Foundry do God's work but I can never watch their videos for too long. Adenoidal English blokes with speech impediments saying numbers, basically.

Not exactly fun. Unlike Skyrim, MoFo's official favourite game!

In other Skyrim news: VR is now out.

Loving the fact that EA caved in to the Court of the Internet and reduced the in-game currency requirements (which, of course, you can top up with real money) required to unlock the heroes in Battlefront 4 2, then quietly forgot to mention that they've also lowered the limit to the amount of currency that can be earned in-game per day.

You'd imagine that 90% of that game's target audience will go "Durr, Star Wars" and buy it blindly to sit on their shelves alongside FIFA and COD, but I digress...

As someone who'd never lower themselves to play a game filled with microtransactions and loot boxes, I max levelled my second character class in Destiny 2 earlier. It's cosmetic gambling, ok?

Awwwww, man.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, my views of the Switch are definitely colored (perhaps irrationally) by how satisfying it is to use the hardware. I remember feeling this way about the iPad, too, and certain phones I've particularly liked. I'd find myself using them without even really using them, looking for excuses to use them, look at them from different angles. I get a big kick out of just sliding the controllers off and on or firing up a game to look at it for a bit without playing much.

I won't feel better until I have one. So for now, I'll get whatever I can vicariously.

More pictures, please.

video?

Yeah watched a man instinctively tickle his ghost dog under the chin last night . Can def see some potential in this weird old zombie game... (In fact hell I heard the music and wanted to be a rambling rogue ambling down that hill again )

Seems there's some PS4 jank involved (the old motion controllers really lack inputs for menus and fine control etc), and it was never going to look uber-pretty. But hey, it seems to work

I'm pretty sure that Sony's main reason for getting into VR were the warehouses full of unsold Move controllers and an accountant saying "I wonder how we can shift these things in 2017?"

Hah, yeah those weird sex toy abominations just should never have been...

That said, as much as Sony have really cobbled it together with the camera & controllers, I am pretty impressed they've got VR this close to mainstream accessibility. If they can keep the software coming (and ideally, get some modern controllers and 360 sensor tracking in their next gen, maybe get the framerate up in newer machines too etc) think they'll be in an interesting place. (I kinda suspect they'll need to get more cross-platform stuff going to open any floodgates though. The drip-feed of exclusives is always going to be slower than people are used to for standard console gaming)

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EDIT: Biggest gripe I'm hearing on Skyrim is that there's no 'smooth turning'. (IE you can only turn in discrete steps). This is one of the compromises to avoid nausea reactions in some people. In 360-setups you can mainly turn in real life, but there's no easy solution on set ups like the PS. Can see that getting a bit annoying.

That and the 'point to move' system takes one of your hands out of combat. (Which is a problem everywhere - it's the neatest movement system we've got at the mo, and fun to use, but it does tend to take a hand out of play :/)

General reception seems pretty glowing though. Will be interesting to see how it holds up as a long-play experience.

Before I bought my PS4 Pro, I considered the VR kit as it was the same price but camera and Move controllers would have pushed that over Ł400. Then the tracking issues surfaced and I discounted PSVR pretty quickly.

Apparently it's selling well.

Battlefront II Metacritic Score from Users

I feel bad for the developers of this game, but I firmly stand behind everyone hating on it to hopefully send a message to the industry. EA got greedy and gave people a Free to Play system hidden within a $70 game.The micro-transactions / loot boxes are being investigated as a form of gambling (which it is, but they would argue otherwise because you always 'get' something) and could potentially change the way these things are done.

Potentially is a big factor here because these companies make so much damn money of those things it's embarrassing. The consensus is that games are expensive to make and these companies need monetary gain other than the initial base sale of the game, which is why we see so much DLC and more importantly Season Passes. EA took it too far and they are seeing a huge online backlash that I hope and pray will eliminate some form of the business model.

I'm sure the game itself is great, but I will not be purchasing it based on principal. Also, don't let EA fool you into thinking they value your opinion. They recently made an announcement that in-game purchases are gone....for now. They literally said they will bring it back in at a later time. This is all to save face for the holiday season and once a few months go by and the media forgets (as they do so often with 'old stories') they will re-introduce it like nothing happened. I fully expect the player base for this game to be minimal or full of people who I don't really want to play with (children / overpowered players with money).

Compared to the original Wii controllers, the Move pads were pretty good at what they were originally intended for. Unfortunately, very few worthwhile Move games were made and I sold mine after a few months.

The Skyrim VR stream I linked to was still going on 4 hours later, with the guy (Ian Higton, who's fast becoming a fav of mine) not complaining of any motion sickness. The turning does look awful, though.

Eurogamer's YouTube channel is a hidden gem - When Ian and Johnny are in the same content it's as if a Poundland Alan Partridge and David Mitchell were livestreaming...

Electronic Arts: The people who brought you the online pass.

The person I feel bad for mostly in Battlefront 2 is Janina Gavankar. She's a good actress, a proper video game nut and infectiously overjoyed at appearing in a Star Wars game. Unfortunately, she's appearing in an EA Star Wars game.

Oh, but all those EA / Star Wars memes are delicious.