JCC Gaming Förceboat Parté - JC G4m3z thr34d (Gaming General Discussion)

I managed to get

Spoiler

the biocell to Red Shoes but yeah, went back and found the yellow jumpsuit so I could find the agent in the showers

.

 

So I've been playing Stellaris...

and this happy little primitive space-faring civilization nuclear holocaust'd themselves into extinction.

I had an observation station in orbit.

Why didn't I do something? Why didn't I start influencing them behind the scenes?

 

On Shadows of Mordor: Perhaps it's because I had low expectations for it, or because I hadn't played any games that stuck to the typical formula for open world games for a while before it launched, but I managed to get through Shadows of Mordor and find it pretty thrilling throughout. Admittedly, saving some of the best features for the second half of the game helped keep my interest. Going from an assassin hiding in the shadows to the leader of a fledgling orc insurgency is a fun change of pace.

That said, I can't see how anyone could have played it on PS3 or Xbox 360. The nemesis system was completely removed from those versions so that they could run on those consoles. Content wise alone that would have made SoM duller than dishwater. The irony is that the performance was still abysmal after removing the meat of the game.



The PS3 port is so bad it's kind of special.

 

Here it is at 60fps in 1080p:



In a decade or so a console might be able to do this.

 

I believe I'm right in saying that there's a couple of people on here who play/have played Stellaris. Has anyone tried the Utopia DLC and is it any good?

 

Well I think I'm going to play through every single Assassin's Creed game in anticipation for Origins. I have never beaten IV, Rogue, Unity, or Syndicate. Is this a good idea, fellow gamers, or not worth it?

 

Play Black Flag, forget about the rest of them (including Origins) and reserve your excitement for Skull and Bones.

 

IV and Syndicate are good, Rogue is okay, and Unity is a mess.

 

Assassin's Creed II is amazing. Renaissance Italy. You heathens.

 

Only one still worth replaying, IMO. Though Brotherhood perfected the package, I still think AC2 was the franchise peak. Black Flag got close but, well, the pirate life just wasn't for me.

 

I started watching this great Noclip documentary about last year's DOOM. Really good stuff. The game's creative director is a hoot and someone who obviously gets it.



Have you seen it, Boba_Fett_2001 ?

 

I loved Black Flag. It is up there with AC2, which was a masterpiece.

 

Yes. I told you to watch it when it came out.

 

Look, I'm old.

 

Even though the protagonist is a Welshman?

 

The Welsh are allowed heroes, even if fictional ones.

 

As I ran places all I thought was:



I also made a point never to attack Crown vessels, so my fleet at the time was made up of inferior Spanish and French ships.

 

Pfft, like I was gonna pass on a British Man o' War if I had the chance to nab one. The only flag a pirate should pledge allegiance is the skull n' bones. Yarr and all that.

 

So I just finished, belatedly, the main story of Mafia III. On release it was interesting at first, but repetition meant my interest fell away. This time, thanks to a bank holiday, I was determined to push through.

There are parts of this game that are commenable. In setting up an analogue for segregated New Orleans ("New Bordeaux"), the game gets to show the ugly side of segregation to outsiders like me whilst not trivialising it. Walk into a whites-only area, and the shopkeep will inform you in no uncertain terms of the segregation and call the police if you don't remove yourself. In one sense it's trivialised down to a mechanic - as he goes for the phone, you can stop him with a bunch to le coq sportif or the like - but it still creates that atmosphere of exclusion and unwelcomeness.

And the rivalries between your main lieutenants, whose loyalty can be perceived as taken for granted when you assign rackets or territories to other lieutenants, is a nice touch. The city is divided up into territories loyal to the mob boss Sal Marcano. You attack the territories systematically (and repetitively) until territory underbosses come out of hiding for a fight. Their rackets can then be assigned to one of your main lieutenants/backers:

* Cassandra, who leads a Haitian gang;
* Vito Scaleta (from Mafia II), who leads a rival Italian gang, and
* Burke, who leads the Irish mob (supporting, as Americans sadly are wont to do, Irish terrorism with full throated loyalty).

Once you have taken down the 2 rackets, the territory boss is up for offing and then the territory, including rackets, is assigned to a boss. Ignore someone twice in a row and they're angry, which means you by default have to calm someone down at some point.

If the game wasn't a series of boring driving and fighting scenes between this, or if the interaction with the beautifully rendered city was deeper, the game would be phenomenal. I mean, if it rains at night, the French Quarter is a thing to behold.

If the game was on sale, I'd recommend it if you can steel yourself to push through the grindy content. The ending is definitely worth it.

 

I enjoyed the DLCs, though - very story-driven, especially the last one.

Still trying to get through Witcher 3 - vastly more enjoyable than the first two, but about 50x longer, it seems like.

 

DLCs are up next.

I also found the driving mechanics in Simulation mode were a bit loosely connected fromt he road, and that there was too little throttle control possible with the controller. Excepting the Dodge Charger analogue, which SHOULD suffer wheelspin on takeoff, the Dino 246 (it's not a Ferrari!) should have a smoother launch. Though the fact there's no ABS is a nice contrast from GTA.

Once you unlocked the supercharger and suspension upgrades from the underbosses, smashing those records by seconds wasn't hard. I think the closest I came to a record was being 3s quicker than it. Otherwise everything was shattered by the cars.

Edit: blackmyron, did you also notice how the French pistol, the MAB PAP F1, was basically the peak of sidearms? The .44 revolver and Automag did the same damage, with inferior stats all round. That pistol + the M16 were unstoppably good.

 

Yeah, that combo of guns made it rather easy. Being able to call up your weapons dealer to show made gunfights kind of a cakewalk.

I rarely did anything with the cars, especially after getting the 'silent lockpick' option from the Irish mob.

 

I just finished off all the DLCs, blackmyron. I had to do some races, and beat my old records, because there were a few nice $5,000 payouts in there which I needed to renovate Sammy's. Well, I could have left it running and checked in every hour for my kickbacks, but I wanted to earn it a bit.

I retired with a fully renovated Sammy's being reopened, and Lincoln sitting upstairs, dressed in the vest and rolled up shirtsleeves of the formal option, whiskey in hand. Seemed fitting.

With project CARS 2 dropping in Sept (22nd to be precise) and GTAO offering less and less, I might go and actually finish Sleeping Dogs off.

 

Kinda funny

 

I thought it was a nice sendoff for the game, especially with how dark and depressing the storyline was for the final DLC.

I found Sleeping Dogs to be a fairly enjoyable game, even if the city design was weak.