What are you currently playing? Last game played?

[DeadSlash]

I passed Metro a few minutes ago, I'll have to play through again because it is my understanding that you get different endings based on how many people you kill, and I knocked just about everyone out instead of killing them.  I'll do a second play through as a blood bath + I don't think I would have the patience to sneak around and knock people out a second time through.

 

I really enjoyed the last 2 areas immensely over the first 2.  I'd rate the last 2 a 10/10 vs a 7/10- for the first 2.   Very few games have a clearly better second half, most of them pack all the good stuff in early.  This bucks that trend for sure, imo.

I'll have to check out anthem, I'm not keen on the onlineness of it, but you're right, it looks really pretty.

[OmarBradley]

On 2/19/2019 at 2:51 PM, OmarBradley said:

EDIT: So I've been having issues using Photo Mode to take photos in Metro. I can get into Photo Mode, but I can't seem to take any photos. It appears as though this is due to Epic. Apparently, Photo Mode relied on Steam's screenshot service, and Epic doesn't have one. If this is true and I can't take screenshots in photo mode, that just about seals the deal in me permanently hating Epic, and Deep Silver. It looks like this may be a PC-wide issue, not just Epic.

Confirmed with 4A Games, the Photo Mode was built to use Steam's system. So they recommended I use additional third party software for Epic. I think MSI Afterburner can take screenshots. Minor annoyance, but so far those two words sum up my experience with Epic.

[OmarBradley]

21 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

I passed Metro a few minutes ago, I'll have to play through again because it is my understanding that you get different endings based on how many people you kill, and I knocked just about everyone out instead of killing them.  I'll do a second play through as a blood bath + I don't think I would have the patience to sneak around and knock people out a second time through.

 

I really enjoyed the last 2 areas immensely over the first 2.  I'd rate the last 2 a 10/10 vs a 7/10- for the first 2.   Very few games have a clearly better second half, most of them pack all the good stuff in early.  This bucks that trend for sure, imo.

I'll have to check out anthem, I'm not keen on the onlineness of it, but you're right, it looks really pretty.

I missed this post somehow. Wait, you finished the entire game? How many hours did you put in? So far I've been taking it slow, listening to every conversation and combing the environments, etc. Also trying to go for "the good ending" - I have only knocked people out so far. But I hope to at least to kill some Nazis. I don't think I got "the good ending" with either of the first two games, though I watched them on YouTube. 

Also, let me know if you want the digital artbook and/or soundtrack. I just realized I get both since I pre-ordered. They're just files, don't think they're tied to my account at all.

Edited February 22, 2019 by OmarBradley

[AtariLegend]

On 15/02/2019 at 7:21 PM, OmarBradley said:

I don't know how widespread or detailed the allegations are, but it's something I've heard repeated.

It is true. They went off the walls years ago.

From Halo 2 at least. Metal Gear V in recent times.

Those for example were good games, but they were not masterpieces.

[DeadSlash]

3 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

I missed this post somehow. Wait, you finished the entire game? How many hours did you put in? So far I've been taking it slow, listening to every conversation and combing the environments, etc. Also trying to go for "the good ending" - I have only knocked people out so far. But I hope to at least to kill some Nazis. I don't think I got "the good ending" with either of the first two games, though I watched them on YouTube. 

Also, let me know if you want the digital artbook and/or soundtrack. I just realized I get both since I pre-ordered. They're just files, don't think they're tied to my account at all.

Yeah, I really crawled through the last portion too, it was about 9 hours.  I think I might have missed something on the second to last area, it seemed way to short.  

One of the pleasant surprises that you only really get when sneaking around is the amount of care that went into the unimportant chatter between enemies, they have some legit conversations that make sense and are sometimes funny af.  I was in one section where it was really entertaining and I was waiting for the conversation to start repeating... 7 minutes later and they were still saying all new things.  There must be hours and hours of background dialogue between NPCs.  The conversations are unique to the area too, so it's not even generic "bad guy" talking.  It's really ambitious, I've never seen a game nail that part down so well.

[OmarBradley]

10 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

Yeah, I really crawled through the last portion too, it was about 9 hours.  I think I might have missed something on the second to last area, it seemed way to short.  

One of the pleasant surprises that you only really get when sneaking around is the amount of care that went into the unimportant chatter between enemies, they have some legit conversations that make sense and are sometimes funny af.  I was in one section where it was really entertaining and I was waiting for the conversation to start repeating... 7 minutes later and they were still saying all new things.  There must be hours and hours of background dialogue between NPCs.  The conversations are unique to the area too, so it's not even generic "bad guy" talking.  It's really ambitious, I've never seen a game nail that part down so well.

The first two games were very good at ambient dialogue, but this one does seem to improve upon that by quite a bit. I probably spent 30 minutes just listening to the Spartan crew of the Aurora when it hit that bridge/barrier before the cult. Then there were cultist conversations too!

I haven't gotten much further than that, I just found Anna in a ditch/nuclear vault of some sort. Three things (aside from a desire to take it slow) have stunted my play. One of those is Anthem: it's just a faster paced experience and it's a brand new IP/thing so it's getting a disproportionate amount of my attention at the moment, I have started to encounter more frequent crashing as well in Metro (though a new patch was pushed out recently and I haven't tried it yet), and some fuck on reddit made a thread title with a major plot spoiler that really upset me. Not the plot point itself (although it is sad in its own way), but the fact that I will see it coming before it happens.

Spoiler

Miller 

 

[RussTCB]

I've been messing around Crackdown 3 because it was free with Game Pass. It's fun for free but I'd be really mad if I'd paid for it. 

[downzy]

6 hours ago, RussTCB said:

I've been messing around Crackdown 3 because it was free with Game Pass. It's fun for free but I'd be really mad if I'd paid for it. 

Yeah, reviews haven't been too kind.  Guess it's not a big surprise why the release date for this game kept getting pushed back.  

 

[RussTCB]

43 minutes ago, downzy said:

Yeah, reviews haven't been too kind.  Guess it's not a big surprise why the release date for this game kept getting pushed back.  

 

It's a fun time waster, but that's not what I'm looking for if I spend $60 lol

[OmarBradley]

I'm really not liking Anthem's MTX scheme/store. While the items are genuinely cosmetic only, they only put 3-4 things in the store at a time and rotate them in and out. Apparently it's a marketing technique. But what's actually a bit annoying is how the MTX store is presented in game. There are two fully voiced NPCs about 10 feet from each other whose sole purpose is to draw up enthusiasm for the MTX store via their dialogue, and of course let the player access the store through them. BioWare has literally turned the MTX store into a character. These NPCs hand out no quests - one of them just likes to talk about "looking good and bringing the thunder," but the other is a pretty fleshed out character that tells you stories, makes jokes, and (not so) subtly plugs the MTX store at the end of every dialogue with them. But neither hand out quests and neither forward main or side narratives in any manner, they're solely digital salespeople.

Identifying common ground with your customer and establishing a warm relationship/entertaining them before you bring up the sale is marketing 101, and while I have no qualms about that strategy in real life, it feels pretty scummy to be put into a game in such a fleshed out manner, especially for a AAA game that has literally nothing for you to do except shoot, loot, rinse/repeat.

Is this a common method? I've never encountered something like this before, with this level of detail dedicated to the MTX store in game.

EDIT: I remember AC: Odyssey had something a bit similar in game. That game had an awful MTX scheme that was not cosmetic only. To be fair to Anthem, you can acquire the MTX currency at a decent rate compared to AC:OD. But since Anthem is so one dimensional (not that AC:OD was terribly deep, but it's basically Skyrim compared to Anthem) this really feels over the top.

 

Edited February 26, 2019 by OmarBradley

[DeadSlash]

3 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

I'm really not liking Anthem's MTX scheme/store. While the items are genuinely cosmetic only, they only put 3-4 things in the store at a time and rotate them in and out. Apparently it's a marketing technique. But what's actually a bit annoying is how the MTX store is presented in game. There are two fully voiced NPCs about 10 feet from each other whose sole purpose is to draw up enthusiasm for the MTX store via their dialogue, and of course let the player access the store through them. BioWare has literally turned the MTX store into a character. These NPCs hand out no quests - one of them just likes to talk about "looking good and bringing the thunder," but the other is a pretty fleshed out character that tells you stories, makes jokes, and (not so) subtly plugs the MTX store at the end of every dialogue with them. But neither hand out quests and neither forward main or side narratives in any manner, they're solely digital salespeople.

Identifying common ground with your customer and establishing a warm relationship/entertaining them before you bring up the sale is marketing 101, and while I have no qualms about that strategy in real life, it feels pretty scummy to be put into a game in such a fleshed out manner, especially for a AAA game that has literally nothing for you to do except shoot, loot, rinse/repeat.

Is this a common method? I've never encountered something like this before, with this level of detail dedicated to the MTX store in game.

EDIT: I remember AC: Odyssey had something a bit similar in game. That game had an awful MTX scheme that was not cosmetic only. To be fair to Anthem, you can acquire the MTX currency at a decent rate compared to AC:OD. But since Anthem is so one dimensional (not that AC:OD was terribly deep, but it's basically Skyrim compared to Anthem) this really feels over the top.

 

I've played some Anthem, I noticed that with the MTX also, kind of odd and unique as far as my experience is.  My main takeaway from Anthem is that it is always fucking loading something.  I mean ffs, there is perpetually something to fucking load. 2 minutes to load into a mission, 5 minutes for the mission, 2 min to load out of the fucking mission.  I spend more time fucking loading shit than playing!

 

As good as it looks, the reveal trailer makes the final product look like garbage...

 

On 2/24/2019 at 8:49 AM, RussTCB said:

I've been messing around Crackdown 3 because it was free with Game Pass. It's fun for free but I'd be really mad if I'd paid for it. 

Is gamepass an xbone thing?  I actually like mindless beat em ups, it's my gaming guilty pleasure. 

[RussTCB]

7 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

Is gamepass an xbone thing?  I actually like mindless beat em ups, it's my gaming guilty pleasure. 

Yeah, it's basically the Xbox equivalent of PS Now. I enjoy some mindless fun as well, but this is getting tedious more than fun lol

[OmarBradley]

16 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

I've played some Anthem, I noticed that with the MTX also, kind of odd and unique as far as my experience is.  My main takeaway from Anthem is that it is always fucking loading something.  I mean ffs, there is perpetually something to fucking load. 2 minutes to load into a mission, 5 minutes for the mission, 2 min to load out of the fucking mission.  I spend more time fucking loading shit than playing!

 

As good as it looks, the reveal trailer makes the final product look like garbage...

 

Yeah the whole game design makes for a jarring and limiting experience. Not having For Tarsis rendered in the open world was a bad decision. I assume it's due to technical limitations, but it feels really stupid to load into Fort Tarsis, grab your quest, do one 5-7 minute quest, load back into Ft. Tarsis, grab another quest, load the open world, do another 7 minute quest, load the Forge, load back in to Fort Tarsis, etc.. With a SSD the loading times aren't that bad, 20-25 seconds max, but the frequency of loading screens is ridiculous. And even main story missions are not much longer than 15 minutes (so far, I'd say I'm 40% through the narrative). And if you spend 20+ minutes on a quest, it usually means there was either a damage sponge like a Titan or you were replaying the same 3 Strongholds (I only have one unlocked so far) just mowing down wave after wave of the same enemy.

Freeplay is usually a bore because the appeal of flying through the world and looking at the scenery simmers down after you've done it for ~10 hours. World Events aren't marked on the map and after you play 2 or 3 of them you realize there are basically 2 or 3 unique types of quests in the entire game. And even those differences are minor, as the whole impetus of the game seems to be: shoot, loot (and customize here and there). For the first time, last night I played a few quests and thought to myself "didn't I do this exact task in this exact area for a quest already?" I'm about 18 hours into the game.

I get that this is a genre, but this is my first experience with it and being a BioWare game, I expected certain things. Like the narrative being more cohesive instead of being limited to the game design and more depth than shoot/loot. Perhaps my expectations were erroneous.

I'm still having fun with it and I'm glad I got it, but wtf was BioWare working on for 6+ years?! There is just no depth to the game. Obviously a lot of resources went into crafting the world and getting flying feeling good. But are those two items enough for the game to stand on its own? I don't think so, and neither do most reviews. Some of the NPC writing is very good and funny, but some of it's pretty cliche and bad too.

I hope BioWare turns this into something a bit deeper, otherwise I can't see myself habitually playing past the main story. Still think it's worth it from a value standpoint since it will be at least 40 hours of content, but there's a lot of potential here that's squandered. And I can't help but feel it's due to the "live service" shenanigans. A basic rule of creating media that has story telling is create the story first, then design the mechanics. BioWare has done the opposite, they designed a game and then shoved a story into it.

And yeah, I saw that 8 minute video the other day. What a shame.

[DeadSlash]

17 hours ago, Oldest Goat said:

Crackdown 3 and Anthem look fucking terrible. I will be livid if Halo Infinite is like Anthem or Destiny.

That would be a kick in the balls.  The more I play Anthem, the less I like it.

19 hours ago, RussTCB said:

Yeah, it's basically the Xbox equivalent of PS Now. I enjoy some mindless fun as well, but this is getting tedious more than fun lol

Shit, man everyone has one of these things now.  I fucking subscribe to like 3 services already.  It's getting out of hand.

[OmarBradley]

9 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

That would be a kick in the balls.  The more I play Anthem, the less I like it.

Shit, man everyone has one of these things now.  I fucking subscribe to like 3 services already.  It's getting out of hand.

Yeah Anthem was very impressive for the first 5 hours or so, but after that...

3 services? I have 5 launchers! Origin, Uplay, Bethesda, Epic, and Steam. If only I was an adept programmer/UI designer, I'd make a single piece of software that amalgamates all games across launchers. It would require local login access, but I think that's the heaviest lift.

@Gibson_Guy87 Here's your startup idea. 

[downzy]

13 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

Shit, man everyone has one of these things now.  I fucking subscribe to like 3 services already.  It's getting out of hand.

I think the major difference between Xbox Game Pass and PS Now is that Game Pass includes all first-party releases the day they are available.  But maybe PS Now includes that feature as well, but I don't think it does. 

[Gibson87]

5 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

Yeah Anthem was very impressive for the first 5 hours or so, but after that...

3 services? I have 5 launchers! Origin, Uplay, Bethesda, Epic, and Steam. If only I was an adept programmer/UI designer, I'd make a single piece of software that amalgamates all games across launchers. It would require local login access, but I think that's the heaviest lift.

@Gibson_Guy87 Here's your startup idea. 

That's actually a really good idea. If only I was a programmer 

[DeadSlash]

7 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

Yeah Anthem was very impressive for the first 5 hours or so, but after that...

3 services? I have 5 launchers! Origin, Uplay, Bethesda, Epic, and Steam. If only I was an adept programmer/UI designer, I'd make a single piece of software that amalgamates all games across launchers. It would require local login access, but I think that's the heaviest lift.

@Gibson_Guy87 Here's your startup idea. 

lol, yeah I have launchers out the arse, but only 3 that I subscribe to get access to the games library.  

[OmarBradley]

I got curious and decided to take a look at some Destiny 2 gameplay.

Wow! Anthem is far less original than I thought it was. Honestly, Anthem looks like a Destiny rip off with the addition of flight. I'd have to play Destiny 2 to get a better sense for comparison, which I may do because the flow of that sequence I linked is much more interesting than anything I've encountered in Anthem so far.

This also answers a lot of my questions/grievances about Anthem in than some are due to genre and some are due to Anthem not being as good as Destiny in certain ways.

Has anyone played both?

[OmarBradley]

It seems players discover a new issue with Anthem every day. The more people/time on Anthem, the more it seems it was rushed out and the devs were quite aware how unpolished it was.

I could list off 20-50 things wrong with the game, but the most 'lol' one is that the starter rifle is better than any higher level weapon in the game. Literally the starter rifle you get when first creating a character is better than ANY weapon you can spend hundreds of hours grinding for because of the way Anthem's weapon/damage/health scaling system works (or doesn't work, depending how you view it).

This (among other things) has made the player base realize why there is no stats page in the game: the stats system is fundamentally flawed and it's likely the devs realize this. Many of the numbers, health gauges, etc. players see on screen appear to not reflect actual values of what happens in the game. So creating a stats page would just emphasize how broken the system is. It also explains the notable lack of explanation/description for in game systems - the mechanics either aren't working properly or they were built in such a convoluted and twisted manner that the devs themselves aren't 100% sure what's going on, or they don't want to draw attention to the fact that the system is unfinished.

EDIT: Some credit to BioWare, they've acknowledged the starter gun issue and are saying that's not how they intended the system to work. Will be fixed in a patch next week,

Players are also starting to ask questions about the content 'drip' and where all of the promises from E3s 2017 and 2018 are. Obviously, BioWare has largely ignored these complaints.

Also, Anthem is crashing PS4s to the point in which you could lose data and have to rebuild the database in your PS4 - it is possible to do this at home yourself, but it is not a standard process. No bricking has been noted, but this is still a pretty serious issue and some Sony reps are flat out recommending people not play Anthem on PS4 at all until the issue is patched.

I think both BioWare and EA are to blame here. Funny, I said the exact same thing with my ME:A 'review.' But what I didn't not there is: I think Frostbite is the problem. It's an engine designed for Battlefield, not versatile RPG experiences. But EA has enforced an "every dev must use Frostbite" edict. Hard to blame BioWare for making mediocre experiences when it's likely the engine is limiting compared to what they worked with on ME:T and the first two DA games. However, I can't fully blame EA. It's clear in Anthem that development was messy (or maybe even rebooted midway through?) and the repetitive content, chopped up story, and limited narrative are due to development decisions. 

I still like the game overall, but there is so much squandered potential with the game's vision. I am 28 hours in and I think I have 3-6 more hours of main story. Combined with Freeplay/Contracts I think I will "complete" Anthem at around 40 hours of play. Not terrible, but I still don't see how this is going to be a worthwhile 'live service' experience, especially with the bare-bones roadmap they've released.

They really should have made a regular single-player game with Anthem's flight/combat and maybe included an optional MP mode like in ME (and DA:I might have had this?). 

Edited March 7, 2019 by OmarBradley

[DeadSlash]

On 3/3/2019 at 5:20 PM, Oldest Goat said:

You don't want to play Destiny either. I got it for free and uninstalled it after 5mins.

Bungie is dead to me.

^This

I played Destiny 2 for like maybe 8 hours, and while it's pretty simple at it's core:  Do Mission - Get new item - Level - Repeat  … it at least looked freaking different in different places.  I could tell I was grinding the same "types" of missions, but at least they were different missions.

Anthem is the exact same shit after the main campaign. I mean, literally the end game is one of 3 "strong holds" to play over and over for all of eternity.  Even the main campaign is pretty much the same shit (there are like 3 main mission types fly here, kill this, collect that) at least it was different voice acting, and different lines.

Destiny 2 is also WAY less immersion breaking as you don't have to load every GD second.

 

Destiny 2 is tripe.  Anthem is utter fucking tripe. 

[DeadSlash]

Another TOTAL ASS thing that Anthem did is first, come up with a good idea: As a sort of rando mission, you'll get paired up on earlier missions you've completed with lower levels that haven't done it yet.  You get an XP boost for it.

 

Then they went and just fucked it in the ass by making the cut away scenes unskippable, in the middle of missions, and 2-5 min long....  So you hit "quick play" to jump in to a quick mission and grab some xp and end up playing for 3 min, and watching 7 min of fucking movies.

That fucking game.

[OmarBradley]

17 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

^This

I played Destiny 2 for like maybe 8 hours, and while it's pretty simple at it's core:  Do Mission - Get new item - Level - Repeat  … it at least looked freaking different in different places.  I could tell I was grinding the same "types" of missions, but at least they were different missions.

Anthem is the exact same shit after the main campaign. I mean, literally the end game is one of 3 "strong holds" to play over and over for all of eternity.  Even the main campaign is pretty much the same shit (there are like 3 main mission types fly here, kill this, collect that) at least it was different voice acting, and different lines.

Destiny 2 is also WAY less immersion breaking as you don't have to load every GD second.

 

Destiny 2 is tripe.  Anthem is utter fucking tripe. 

 

15 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

Another TOTAL ASS thing that Anthem did is first, come up with a good idea: As a sort of rando mission, you'll get paired up on earlier missions you've completed with lower levels that haven't done it yet.  You get an XP boost for it.

 

Then they went and just fucked it in the ass by making the cut away scenes unskippable, in the middle of missions, and 2-5 min long....  So you hit "quick play" to jump in to a quick mission and grab some xp and end up playing for 3 min, and watching 7 min of fucking movies.

That fucking game.

Yeah Anthem's lack of unique content is really a travesty. I imagine putting 40 hours on the game to complete the main story and side narratives/some challenges, but those 40 hours are spent doing the same 3 mission types in the same environment over and over and over again. I still can't wrap my head around some of the game design choices. Really think proper production on Anthem didn't start until 2015-2016 and then when 2018 rolled around they had to cut content and rebuild the game with a limited pallet. Some NPC storylines seem like they should go further than where they end, only a few I'd say feel like they have completed arcs for those characters. I understand it's a live service and more will be done with those characters, but that does not excuse an incomplete game priced at $60 (or $80 for the version that comes with a few extra things). If the price-tag was $30 or free, pretty much every single grievance I have would be disappear. But charging $60 for this downgraded, limited experience is nuts. Why should we pay $60 on the assumption the game will at some point have enough content to warrant the price/marketing.

I don't generally watch YT reviewers, but Angry Joe had some good suggestions on what Anthem should have been. The game he described sounded really interesting.

I don't know, I just don't understand how a studio of 600 people (I'm estimating at least half worked full time on Anthem during production) could put out something so clearly contentless and functionless compared to the other games in the genre. I believe Destiny and Warhammer had rough starts too, but that shouldn't be allowed to be a norm in this genre. 'Live service' is quickly becoming 'incomplete game,' and that's really unacceptable in general, but especially in what's supposed to be an immersive RPG experience.

Edited March 8, 2019 by OmarBradley

[Dazey]

Anybody else playing the Resident Evil 2 remake?

[action]

@Dazey sadly not, I only have a switch.

I'm having crazy amounts of fun with "capcom belt action collection" lately. Couch co-op with my son or my brother, playing final fight or knights of the round. final fight is wonderfully political INcorrect with lots of stereotypes and beating up hookers with pink hair. great laughs. How they managed to release this game then and now, and not be criticised for it I'll  never know.  the graphics look like ass but they're still more diverse and creative than the repetitive grey / brown environments of most AAA games. Naturally, I forked out for the japanese physical edition since nothing beats putting a cartridge in a nintendo console.

fun fact, final fight has enemies called "Axl", "Slash", "Roxy", "Poison".... I wonder if that was intential and wether they were deliberate GNR references 

oh my god, you can't make this up, the wikipedia article states the following:

"Because Capcom believed that "players would feel bad beating up a woman", they noted in the manual that the female opponent poison was transgender"

As if beating up transgenders is somehow more acceptable

Edited March 8, 2019 by action