Video Game Reviews: What Are You Playing?

[Blarg]

Going to go pick up Uncahrted 4, it has been on pre order since November and they kept pushing back the release date.

[TobiasFunke]

Hey Mul, do you know any speculations on the Andromeda story?

[Blarg]

@mulwin444 I got to the point in Fallout4 I'm doing a bunch of wandering for lower level quests because I really don't have much interest in wiping out the Institute or joining the Railroad to save Synths. Paladin Danse is a bit of an angry racist homo so the Brotherhood is not a great alliance. Looking forward to the expansion.

I was in Diamond City doing repairs and some hitmen tried to take me out. Curie was in her sequin dress and when the shooting started she hopped into my power armor, much to my shock, I didn't know your partner could do that. The problem at that point was getting her out of it. Once I figured that out I could assign her to hop into my spare set (I have three) and she is a murdering machine that rarely goes down in battle. I just have to repair her armor often. I should try Cait in it, that should be fun as she rampages through the wasteland. I don't think Nick will do it since he won't wear anything but his trench coat and hat.

Building water pumps and defending a crop of Tatos is getting annoying. I haven't gone down the Charisma build to be a local leader but being aligned with the Minutemen forces me to stop my quests and go protect a bunch of farmers. Not using chem stations means all those crops are pretty useless to me. I should wise up and start taking advantage of chemistry because I'm always out of wonderglue.

My son started a Charisma/Luck character and in no time made Sanctuary his own little Diamond City in the rough with food, 15 people, trading shops, etc. He even build some crazy three story condo and has people dropping off junk for his workshop. His only real problem playing is he has a hording problem. He is constantly over his weight limit, afraid to use up his power cores on armor he runs with whatever scrap armor he finds. He picks up every piece of junk on the way instead of basics then save room for a good weapon or piece of armor. It is funny watching him angst over dropping a vase or tato to make room for something of value.

[mulwin444]

@TobiasFunke My understanding in piecing together the announcement trailer, tweets from BioWare's producers/writers, the main BioWare message board, and a marketing survey than revealed some potential plot elements, is the story is set during the events between Mass Effect 2 and 3.  With the imminent arrival of the Reapers to the Milky Way Galaxy, a contingency plan is developed to preserve the races ( Humans, Asari, Salarian, Krogan, etc) in the event Commander Shepard's efforts fail to defeat the Reapers and Space Traveling civilizations are wiped out.  They develop an "Arc" survival vessel that journeys to the Andromeda Galaxy to explore and establish a colony for the Citadel Counsel races.  Obviously, that's just the premise and the habitable planets will more than likely be occupied or, at the very least, challenged by whatever races currently exist in the galaxy.  The implied twist is now humanity and company are considered the "aliens" and "invaders" from another world. The story begins concurrent with the events the original Mass Effect and then branches off once they enter the new galaxy - supposedly sometime in the future due to traveling required. 

[nate]

I was playing some of the new Diablo 3 season which is always fun for a couple weeks.

 

I got invited to the WoW Legion Alpha but not sure I really want to play that.

[TobiasFunke]

9 minutes ago, mulwin444 said:

@TobiasFunke My understanding in piecing together the announcement trailer, tweets from BioWare's producers/writers, the main BioWare message board, and a marketing survey than revealed some potential plot elements, is the story is set during the events between Mass Effect 2 and 3.  With the imminent arrival of the Reapers to the Milky Way Galaxy, a contingency plan is developed to preserve the races ( Humans, Asari, Salarian, Krogan, etc) in the event Commander Shepard's efforts fail to defeat the Reapers and Space Traveling civilizations are wiped out.  They develop an "Arc" survival vessel that journeys to the Andromeda Galaxy to explore and establish a colony for the Citadel Counsel races.  Obviously, that's just the premise and the habitable planets will more than likely be occupied or, at the very least, challenged by whatever races currently exist in the galaxy.  The implied twist is now humanity and company are considered the "aliens" and "invaders" from another world. The story begins concurrent with the events the original Mass Effect and then branches off once they enter the new galaxy - supposedly sometime in the future due to traveling required. 

Thanks brotha. I knew you'd know something.

[mulwin444]

@Blarg Yeah, I'm not a fan of either faction.  The Brotherhood of Steel seem like a bunch of douchebags, the Minutemen and Railroad both mean well but are uninteresting and the Institute's plan it just "wipe out the surface".  None of which is a particularly satisfying conclusion.  My take is they needed to make it so you could continue to cultivate and grow the settlements to become self sufficient so you are not constantly having to rescue someone's daughter from Raiders or protect another from SuperMutants.  Progressively, their increasing sophistication becomes a threat to the Institute, whose goal is hasten the demise of the corrupted surface so they can establish their own Utopia.  They really needed an endpoint to these "fetch" quests.  Same with the tech searches for the Brotherhood or the Weather Station placements for the Railroad - they need a resolution that was never provided.  As it was, I got to the point where I could end the game with a tilt toward either faction and I never did...just continued to go on missions and become overpowered in my armor, abilities, etc.

Yeah, I figured out the "companion in the powersuit" thing by accident and I have been rolling with Cait, Pepper, or Curie since then.

[Blarg]

I noticed Currie and Cait are the strongest characters to take along. Strong is a super dumbbell and not all that useful.The story teases the shit out of him by having empty milk bottles everywhere. Nick Is OK but also demands you play nice. Not sure what to make of Hancock other than he tells you the truth about his rival town.

[Chimi]

On 5/11/2016 at 10:20 AM, nate said:

I was playing some of the new Diablo 3 season which is always fun for a couple weeks.

 

I got invited to the WoW Legion Alpha but not sure I really want to play that.

I've been part of the Alpha for 2 months.  I have a really hard time logging on and playing it.  It just feels like the same boring crap that has been going on in WoW.  Demon Hunter is OK, but most of the classes were gutted again to have even less abilities. Pretty soon they'll have the classes down to just pressing one key over and over.

[Jason]

If anyone gets the new Doom game let me know how it is. I am always gun shy when buying new games before getting some reviews. I'm skeptical when reviewing sites don't get early copies.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Angels N Skins

[nate]

People are saying that it is amazing

[Chimi]

It's Doom. No reviews needed.

Now if we can get a new Duke Nukem...

[Guest]

DOOM is one of my favorite series. Looking forward to playing it this weekend. I also need to buy Uncharted 4 for this weekend. 

[Brandon]

I try to check the reviews for Uncharted but even the headlines are pretty much spoiler ridden. Seems to get good metric marks, though. Probably worth a pick up soon.

[nate]

[TobiasFunke]

21 hours ago, nate said:

Kind of on that note, I saw a hilarious meme the other day with the "back in my day" old man that said something along the lines of, "back in my day we didn't get video game demos to play before the game came out, we just bought the game, played it, and liked it."

I laughed

[mulwin444]

1 hour ago, TobiasFunke said:

Kind of on that note, I saw a hilarious meme the other day with the "back in my day" old man that said something along the lines of, "back in my day we didn't get video game demos to play before the game came out, we just bought the game, played it, and liked it."

I laughed

True story...the other day my 9 year old son was complaining about the load time after his character got killed in his game and I actually said something to the effect of:

"When I was your age, we couldn't just save when we wanted.  When we died, we had to go back to the beginning of the level and work our way back to the boss."

I caught myself and walked away after that...

[Blarg]

@mulwin444With a cane or a walker?

[nate]

Even worse remember games like Mega Man 3 which was incredibly difficult, where you would spend hours to get to the last level and if you died that was it, had to start all over from the first level.

Or when the NES would just freeze up two hours into the game.

Edited May 19, 2016 by nate

[mulwin444]

@Blarg Luckily, I'm still walking but with a slight limp.  I did yell at a passing cloud though...

 

 

[TobiasFunke]

31 minutes ago, mulwin444 said:

True story...the other day my 9 year old son was complaining about the load time after his character got killed in his game and I actually said something to the effect of:

"When I was your age, we couldn't just save when we wanted.  When we died, we had to go back to the beginning of the level and work our way back to the boss."

I caught myself and walked away after that...

That's why games like Dark Souls are such a good throwback. Unfortunately I can't dedicate time to playing the Souls games like I could have when I was younger. It's much easier to sit for hours and hours to play a game like Dark Souls or games like Mega Man. If you can only play them for like 30 minutes to an hour at a time you might as well not even start.

I wish I had the time still like I did when I was a kid to play video games.

[Blarg]

I watch my son's play the same level of Dark Souls a dozen times for no reason other than the programmers are dicks. No matter how frustrated they get they still try and complete the level and waste another 15-20 minutes before starting over. It is simply to boring to watch. 

[Jason]

20 hours ago, mulwin444 said:

True story...the other day my 9 year old son was complaining about the load time after his character got killed in his game and I actually said something to the effect of:

"When I was your age, we couldn't just save when we wanted.  When we died, we had to go back to the beginning of the level and work our way back to the boss."

I caught myself and walked away after that...

Lol! That's probably why more controllers were broken back then

[Jason]

20 hours ago, nate said:

Even worse remember games like Mega Man 3 which was incredibly difficult, where you would spend hours to get to the last level and if you died that was it, had to start all over from the first level.

Or when the NES would just freeze up two hours into the game.

I remember the original Double Dragon game and the platforming was so hard I would spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to time the jump on those stupid ass blocks that would pop in and out of the wall. When I finally did it I felt like I just won the World Series.

[TobiasFunke]

1 hour ago, Angels N Skins said:

I remember the original Double Dragon game and the platforming was so hard I would spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to time the jump on those stupid ass blocks that would pop in and out of the wall. When I finally did it I felt like I just won the World Series.

Which is the same feeling Blarg's kids get when they beat that section of Dark Souls that they've been working on for a good hour. I'll admit, as much as I absolutely love the Assassin Creeds, the Bioshocks, etc. I don't ever get "that feeling" anymore.