FF:QLD The Gamers Gaming Thread About the Games they're Playing

Maybe not a 386, but WoW will run on pretty much any old bottom-end PC with an on-board graphics card. It won't look like much, but it'll still run.

Mass Effect looks very pretty, but I think an accord between low-poly models and prettiness should be reached. Something that looks nice but won't require a million dollar PC to encompass a MMO sized world.

 

Wasn't that the design paradigm for Zork?

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

Absolutely right, an MMO needs by design to be accessible to a large range of machines or else it just can't make its money. I just want my Unreal 3-powered, Mass Effect-style Knights of the Old Republic 3, and I want it right now.



And the 386 comment was me exagerating for humourous effect. Get it?

 

Don't we all, aye. Although I wouldn't mind a fixed up KotOR 2 either.

Heh, yes. Got it. (Oh ho! Very witty...)

 

Oh I know, but i don't often get to throw out comments about vodka-cooled PCs, so I just went for it. You set 'em up and I'll knock 'em over

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

We're a hell of a team, Magnus.

 

Just finished Strong Bad episode 3. Started out a bit slowly, but came in for a positively triumphant finish. The whole third act is brilliant. And oh my god, the preview for the next episode...


It'll be complete gibberish and confusion if you're not a Homestar Runner fan, but to those of us who are crazy fans, you'll know just how stupidly excited I am that next month's episode is none other than DANGERESQUE 3: THE CRIMINAL PROJECTIVE!

 

That Spoiler tag is full of greatness.

 

I haven't been able to play it, as for some reason I cannot download the file from Telltale.

Could you furnish me with a copy Saturday night BBN please whilst Telltale tech support gets back to me please?

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

Fallout 3 -

I blew the head off of a dog that was leaping at me, in slow motion, while the US national anthem played.

Game.
Of.
The.
Year.

 

Been Sneaking around with the baseball bat ambushing raiders and clocking them up side the head.

Only downside is: THIS GAME WILL EAT YOUR LIFE!

 

I need to get Mass Effect before I start contemplating Fallout - but I do want it, oh yes I do...

 

Mass Effect is going for like 60 bucks at JB Hi-Fi right now. Good deal.

 

Well, I've wanted to take some time to formulate some solid opinions about Far Cry 2 before posting anything about it here. There's a lot of niggles I have with it. Little design issues like how enemies at guard posts pretty much respawn when you turn your back for a couple of seconds. Or how the lame gotta-catch-em-all collection mechanics (find all the diamonds, find all the guard posts, find all the tape recordings...) are really stupid and artificial and game-y and severely take away from the otherwise compelling world. Or just that general pervasive feeling throughout the whole design that it was a game that WAS going to be a PC exclusive, but was hurriedly re-shaped into a multi-platform (read: console) release midway through development.

But every niggle I have fades away when I get into the heat of the moment. Combat in FC2 is low-tech, dirty, grungy and very visceral. It's the antithesis of Crysis, with its nanosuit powers and state-of-the-art weaponry. Over in Africa, all you've got is a machete, a rusty AK-47, and the bad guys. There's no HUD and no minimap, so there's always this tension as you strain your ears to try and hear where your adversaries are and how many there are left. Maybe the busted-ass gun you grabbed out of the dirt will jam. Maybe the harsh sunlight will get in your eyes and cause you to miss the enemy charging towards you. Maybe you'll have a malaria attack in the middle of the fight, and have to collapse to your knees and choke down your medication. Maybe the explosive barrel you shot will set the surrounding grass and trees on fire, hemming you in and leaving you with nowhere to go. It's really, really goddamn exciting. While I love Crysis's wild and ostentatious freeform insanity, the level of grounding that FC2 has is very compelling.

But what I think I'm going to do on Monday is go pick up Fallout 3 and focus on that instead. The thing I'm finding about Far Cry is that I want to play it in spurts. What little overarching narrative there is (at least at the point I'm up to) is delivered purely through mission briefings. And the only thing to do if you decide not to take them on is... more missions. The whole experience, while inhabiting a very seamless world, is extremely compartmentalised. So I'm finding that I want to fire it up, do a mission or two, then quit and do something else. Minute to minute it's awesome, but there's just not enough variety to make one want to keep at it for more than an hour or two at a time. Fallout, from everything I hear, has much more variety and driving narrative, and is something I'm much more keen to sink my teeth into. Far Cry's going to be a game I play in spurts for some time, I think, in between meatier things.

 

The problems I have with Farcry 2 are:

1: Too repetitive.
2: The AI is terrible
3: Sometimes too far to travel with little reward

 

Went to a family BBQ last night, was given all of my brother's old Game Boy games.

Fortunately, I've been prevented from playing massive amounts of Pokemon (crystal) covertly at work because the damn thing doesn't save games any more and playing seems a pointless endeavour because of it.

Unfortunately, I've got both Silver and Red versions at home, so I'll probably play those too much instead.

 

The Strongbad issue was resolved thanks to the diligence of Doug the Tech Support Guy. They even gave me a refund for my trouble. Why does Telltale Games need to be so awesome? Such kindness in a corporate capacity makes me instantly suspicious.

In other news, Fallout 3 is awesome for one primary reason. Who's your daddy? Liam freakin' Neeson.

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

Dammit Telltale Games, why you gotta be so awesome all the dang time?




Also, a follow-up on my previous speculation regarding how engrossing Fallout 3 may or may not be. My current level of sleep-deprivation ("high") and ratio of thoughts about Fallout 3 vs thoughts about everything else ("very high") have a very close corrolation with the level of kick-ass-frakin'-awesomeness of that particular game. Going to settle in for a nice extended play session tonight (no Serious Business for me until my new router arrives, though I'll be on Steam chat nevertheless), and will post some more detailed impressions after that.

 

So let's talk about Fallout 3. I want to tell you a story. I was on a quest which took me into a little villiage known to the Wasteland locals only as "Minefield." I'll give you three guesses why it got that name. Nobody ever went there; ostensibly because it was haunted, but more because you couldn't take two steps without getting yourself ripped in half by a landmine. I had to make it to the centre of the villiage, recover one of those mines (the details of why are not important), and then get out.

I arrived just as dusk was turning to night, and it was plain that this was a ghost town, figuratively if not literally. It had suffered worse than most locales from the nuclear blasts two hundred years prior, and what few houses were left standing were plainly devoid of any life. The Wasteland is hardly teeming with people, but hardy survivors can be found all through it. Not so in this place, though. I cautiously picked my way past the mines, avoiding the ones I was able and defusing those I had to. Oportunistically, I tried the doors to the still-standing houses, but found them locked beyond my skill to pick. I wasn't fussed, but it was a small disappointment. Respecting the dead is all well and good, but in the Wasteland you've got to look out for number one. I knew there was a story to this place. Who had set the mines? Who had locked the houses? What were they hiding?

As I rounded a corner, a shot rang out from the skeleton of a large building near the middle of town. A burnt out car exploded with a concussive mushroom cloud (the cars of 2077 were all nuclear-powered, and the reactors of the derelict automobiles remain hot and very dangerous even now) and scared the absolute bejesus out of me. I dove for cover in a pile of wreckage, desperately thankful for the darkness, and peeked out, rifle at the ready. I quickly spotted the sniper, and zoomed in on him with my VaultTec Assisted Targetting System. He was an old man, stiffly walking back and forth on his erstwhile watchtower. He was dressed in rags and the signs of makeshift habitation I could see even from the ground showed suggested that he'd been there like that for a long, long time.

I inched closer, tense, trying to stay hidden. I wanted to talk him down, find out who he was. He spotted me as I left the bushes and opened fire without a word. I fired back, aiming to disable him and force him to drop his weapon. A well-placed shot crippled his right arm, but he snatched his rifle back up and kept firing, with far too much accuracy for me to stay where I was. I stood up and sprinted for the base of the stairs, pulling my combat shotgun out. I had no desire to kill this man, but I didn't think I was going to have a choice. A mine went off beneath my feet as he came pelting down the stairs to meet me. Practically immobilised, peppered by his bullets, out of stimpacks, I desperately kept shooting, with a gory chest-shot finally knocking the old man to the ground. With only a single health point remaining, I staggared up the stairs and collapsed on the dirty matress I found, knowing it was my only hope to recover.

I awoke the next morning and surveyed the scene. Still feeling shaken, I riffled through the man's meagre posessions, once more looking out for number one. He was carrying a master key that would unlock all the locked houses I had passed. At last, I thought, maybe this won't be a waste. What was he concealing? I slipped through the minefield and opened the first door.

There was nothing in the house. Oh, there was a little ammo here and there, and money, but there were no hidden treasures, not even any lurking enemies to fight. All I found was the harsh, grim light filtering through the tattered curtains, and the charred remains of the dead, flash fried by atomic blasts two centuries earlier. A couple lying embracing each other in bed. A child lying next to a teddy bear. It disturbed and upset me far more than I ever would have anticipated. I felt dirty and despicable picking my way through these houses, but I went to each one, just to see, so t

 

Sounds like a game that one could use to cheat at NaNoWriMo, to be frank.

Great story though

 

Heh, thanks. It's not the only noteworthy, powerful experience that I've had playing the game, but it's by far the strongest, precisely because it was so understated and so unresolved. It was a bleak and moving slice of life, a tiny little scene I only stumbled upon because I was deliberately sent there by someone who had no interest in it beyond the recovery of that aforementioned mine. I could have walked right past it and never known. There's something very... I dunno, sobering I suppose, about that thought.

It's an amazing game, but more than that it's an amazing experience to walk through that environment, that place. Bethesda build worlds.

 

Yeah, everyone else has already said it but I may as well add mine to the pile:

Fallout 3 is frick'n awesome!

The only problem I have... and this is my problem, not the game's... I feel overwhelmed. I'm afraid that I haven't made the right decision somewhere, I haven't spoken to enough people, I don't have the right equipment and skills. I think this is a testament to how huge Fallout 3 is and how much you can do. Deep down inside, I know there is no 'wrong decision'... I'm playing how I want to play and the game adjusts for it but there's still that feeling of complete loss.

Frick'n awesome!

 

I love that feeling. I normally don't in games, I'm one of those people who like being led along by the nose, at least slightly. I find an overabundance of choice to be paralysing. But in Fallout I think it just accentuates that feeling of lonliness and emptiness that makes the game so striking and engrossing.


Oh man, just talking about it makes me want to run home and play it right now.

 

The loneliness and isolation are really contributing to the atmosphere. The thing that I find most annoying (out of character) or terrifying (in character) is that I'm completely outclassed and under equipped. I'm continually finding myself having to scrounge for ammo and equipment, and paying jobs are thin on the ground and pretty much danger money, and I find myself having to be very thrifty with the ammo. VATS suddenly is a lot more useful, but it's not a perfect system.

It was really thrown into sharp relief whilst trying to track down The Family (a side quest I amazingly managed to find a good karma path for). Running across the wastes, I was suddenly attacked by something huge with an axe; I one of the legendary Super Mutants.

Ridiculously tough fight; fortunately the sawn-off double barrel shot-gun I had managed to dent him badly...until it broke. I managed to bring him down, and I was left bloody, but still standing.

And then his buddy with the chain-gun turned up...

There is no Triumph in the Wastes, only Respite apparently. And even then, not that day

Got my apartment in Megaton, so it's time to leave a bigger mark on the Wastes...and get some sleep in character!

Be seeing you,

Magnus Darcrider

 

That's why you take the underground metro path to the family. There's just a couple of Mirelurks and some random, disarmable traps to deal with (yay, free frag mines!)... much easier.