Gaming Thread

El Stormo said:
Shadowrun: Hong Kong was the bee's knees.
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It was pretty fun, although I can't say I enjoyed the combat as a Shaman or Mage in this game. The combat felt pretty unbalanced regarding the classes, and the Mage/Shaman were better off using support spells and a gun. On the other hand, a cybered out melee character was completely broken by the halfway mark.

I think I liked Dragonfall a bit more. I didn't care for how much the Matrix is forced down your throat in HK nor how it's implemented. It wasn't difficult at all, just a slog after a while, especially on a replay. Also, I'm not one of those people that has issues "reading" in a videogame, but my god the exposition was overboard in that game. My first playthrough took 23 hours and consecutive runs were 6-8 when skipping all of the text.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also get easily burnt out on cutscene, cutscene, cutscene, which is what the majority of big budget games are anymore. I had to shelve The Witcher 3 for a few months because of how tired I was getting of all of the attempts at being a movie, coupled with the extremely dull combat. Which makes me a fool, because I preordered MGSV, even though I was completely burnt out on the series after MGS4.

BTW, do you plan on getting Xenoblade X? Creepy doll faces notwithstanding, I'm ready for it. After Fallout 4 of course.
 
Yeah I don't often play mage or shaman types since I don't like the playstyle much, but any kind of combat-oriented character were broken, like you said, around the halfway mark, especially a ranged combatant. The Prototype Sniping Laser and the Monofilament Whip both use ranged weapons and can make mincemeat of just about any foe, including the final boss. Though honestly, it's one of the few games in which a mage character isn't totally OP compared to warrior types. Yeah, the Matrix wasn't ideal, I agree. Hacking especially was tedious (though easy), and trying to navigate the watcher ICs would have been much less frustrating if the game's interface and movement weren't totally clunky and unresponsive.

I didn't mind the reading and like you, I'm glad there weren't a shitload of cutscenes. I'm also tired of video games consisting of more cutscene than game. We already have video games consisting only of cutscenes, they're called films.

I had no plans on acquiring Xenoblade X, mostly because I didn't even know it was in the works. I'll have to take a look. Oh, wait, it's on WiiU... yeah no, I don't have a WiiU.
 
El Stormo said:
I just want to say I just bought a 4K monitor to go with my 980Ti. I thought it'd be a nice improvement, but nothing too spectacular, but holy shit it's amazing!
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I ended up buying a 980Ti through EVGA in March (Step-Up, knowing the new cards would be out in May/June) to play Dark Souls 3. Already had a GTX 780, which was plenty powerful, but I can't stand playing games on PC below 60fps (with most, if not all eye candy maxed, if not set to "very high"). When I upgrade to 4k, it's going to be a TV. Currently still playing on a 1080p monitor and plasma TV. I don't have any faith in a 980 Ti being able to play at 4k with modern games at 60fps at all. Hell, the GTX 1080 will struggle staying at 50fps on most games and it's ~30% more powerful.

I do most of my gaming on my TV, and the games that require a mouse and keyboard seem to be few and far between now, especially in terms of their requirements (mostly just isometric RPGs anymore or something like Diablo 3, which I'll play on my older PC) and while I am very interested in 4k, it would actually make way more sense with a monitor than a TV, and I am holding off for a few reasons:

1. For 4k to be noticeable on a TV you need to either get a 65+++ inch screen, or sit two feet away from it.

2. Competing technologies are still maturing. OLED is the best of the best right now in terms of colors/black levels. It's even better than a Kuro plasma (best of the best plasma), but they aren't easy to mass produce yet, and the life expectancy is questionable right now as is input lag for gaming. Then there's the standard LCD, which still has shit black levels. To get comparable to a plasma, you have to buy an LCD that costs 3x - 4x as much to a cheap plasma. No thanks. There is also a new tech called quantum dots, which is just a new iteration on the LCD panels, but it does things much differently and the blacks don't suck at all.

3. If I wanted to get a 4k monitor for gaming, I would probably have to get a G-Sync monitor. While my card won't be able to push 60fps (min, no drops) reliably, it kind of doesn't matter with G-Sync. The frame rate will always be super smooth regardless. I don't really feel like paying $1500 for a monitor right now though.

There are however two extremely awesome reasons to upgrade to 4k, even if it ends up being a gimmick like 3D (for a TV and at a reasonable viewing distance); HDR and Wide Color Gamut. These two technologies are huge for color fidelity and getting a realistic image. I am hoping that my 2009 TV lasts five more years. By then, there should be enough good TVs to choose from that have these two options that also have as good as plasma black levels, on top of not having tons of input lag for gaming. I am currently using a 42'', and it's served me extremely well. I'll probably upgrade to a 55'' though since that will most likely be the smallest of a premium TV.

BTW, I wasn't trying to rain on your parade. I am sure the picture quality difference is noticeable and amazing at the distances people tend to sit from a monitor. Not everyone cares about 60fps either and are perfectly happy with 30fps if it means they can play at higher resolutions. I've just become so spoiled by 60fps that it's hard for me to settle for anything less. Plus, as I said, I play most games anymore on my TV, and right now 4k would be a waste for me. I'm also banking on the 1080 Ti or the next more powerful card after it to be the cards that can handle 60fps at 4k without any noticeable drops. We're really close, but not there quite yet.

Side note: Does anyone here give a shit about the current consoles? I purchased pretty much every console up until the current generation. Bought a Wii U on launch day, and only ended up buying two games for it. Never bought an Xbone, and bought a PS4 for Bloodborne and exclusives (which looked way stronger than Microsoft's offerings), but I still never bought another game for the PS4 yet, and both Sony and Microsoft are about to officially announce their "new" consoles; and they aren't just like a slim version either. They have a lot of new hardware being added and they are both going to be releasing consoles now in the way that cell phone upgrades are handled. Apparently all games being developed from here on out are also supposed to be guaranteed to still work on the original PS4/Xbone, but with less bells and whistles. I would be jumping for joy if either of the current systems actually had libraries giving a shit about (if you don't also have a decent gaming PC), but they currently don't for me.

It doesn't help that this has been the generation of delays and remasters either. Most of the games that I really want to play are being released between this fall and next spring anyway, and not a few months after that the new systems will be released. WTF?
 
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Sdrawkcabgniklat said:
BTW, I wasn't trying to rain on your parade.
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You totally were. #TRIGGERED

No, but seriously, yeah, I know there are a few arguments against going 4K already, but I bought this monitor to last, so in the foreseeable future, I might slap another 980Ti in there. My CPU is overkill now, and I bought this PC so I could use a second GPU when games began requiring it - which isn't right now, not yet.
 
Hah. I just complained about this generation of consoles sucking (and I stand by that), since it's seriously been the generation of remasters and delays, delays, delays, but after watching all of the E3 presentations, Sony fucking blew it out of the park and to the moon again, and made Microsoft, Ubisoft and even the PCGamer presentations look like absolute pedestrian level. Sony spent 95% of their presentation actually showing off gameplay of soon to be released games as well as of course those still in development, but "scheduled" for next year. Then, everyone was expecting Nintendo to fail really hard like they did last year simply because they weren't going to announce anything about the NX, nor were they really going to have anyone there to speak aside from Reggie. They were also going to focus almost exclusively on the new Zelda. As hype as the new Zelda made some people, they didn't expect that to be strong enough to carry Nintendo's presentation by itself. Well, it was. It's now probably the most eagerly awaited game, and there's a TON of great games to look forward to. Problem is, there have always been good games to look forward to this gen since the start, but they've been forever delayed. But I digress, here are some highlights:

1. Last Guardian (a game that has been delayed for shit, almost seven years now but finally has a release date).


2. Mass Effect 4 (they don't show enough, and they are still insisting that it's set for a Q1 2017 release. No one believes that though). I just hope this doesn't turn out to be the boring "open world" shit in the way Dragon Age: Inquisition and TW3 were.


3. God of War 4 (series needed to really change things up. This does. Although it looks a bit too much like TLOU + Tomb Raider + Skyrim, but it has a lot of potential to not suck and to be as good as the first two games, if not better).


4. Horizon - Zero Dawn (Many people's most anticipated game since it was announced. Myself included. You get to fight Zoids!)


5. Resident EVII (No one was expecting this. Not sure what to think yet. Outlast was pretty boring, but at least it's not RE5 and RE6). Crowd seems to love it though, and I guess it's the next best thing to P.T. (Silent Hills), since that was scrapped.


6. Death Stranding (Uh, WTF? Kojima knows how to get people talking at least). Yes, that's Norman Reedus. He was also supposed to be the main character in P.T.


7. Spiderman (Ironically, recently I just ended up buy a bunch of new shirts, and three of them were Spiderman releated. I had no idea about this game. Might be the first decent Spiderman game since Web of Shadows). Marvel is supposedly taking a hard stance on "quality" with their licensed games now, and they are also claiming that this new game is just the start of a bunch of new superhero games. We'll see.)


8. Zelda - Breath of the Wild (Subtitle kind of sucks, but whatever. Game looks like it will be great, and it's heavily physics based too gameplay wise).
 
Aaaaand, not even a month after saying I'm holding off on buying a 4k anything, I got a really good deal on a 55'' LG OLED (2016 model). Words cannot describe how fucking amazing the blacks on it look (and I was truly satisfied with how my plasma was in that regard). It's crazy to think, but the difference between the black levels of my plasma and the TV I purchased are of a magnitude similar to going from 480p to 1080p. While there's still definitely not enough 4k content right now to warrant getting a set just for 4k, the ridiculous black levels, larger size compared to the 42'' I was using, and the fact that madVR does a pretty great job of upscaling 1080p files to 4k, and Sony also has a relatively cheap Blu-ray player that also upscales very well...why not? For now, I'll just keep my plasma as my backup gaming TV, and maybe in 2-4 years I'll be able to play on this new TV @ 60fps. :cry:

Oh, and I did I mention black levels? You've not seen an incredible picture if you're stuck with a typical backlit LCD screen. So many people right now are gushing hard over VR, but any truly meaningful games in VR are many years away. The real tech to drool over is OLED.
 
Starbound is really, really good and rather difficult, actually. Possibly best musical score I've heard since Red Dead Redemption and Morrowind. I don't really know what it is I like about it because retro-style games always seemed like a waste of time, but this game is really, really deep. It's almost like No Man's Sky meets Paper Mario. It's infuriating sometimes and unforgiving, but I can't stop playing it.

Speaking of No Man's Sky, I'm hoping it is what I hoped it would be. It seems like it's precisely what both Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen are trying to be, yet simultaneously eschewing it also. I have high hopes for it; it's the game I've dreamt about since I was a kid.
 
Dead Winter said:
Speaking of No Man's Sky, I'm hoping it is what I hoped it would be. It seems like it's precisely what both Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen are trying to be, yet simultaneously eschewing it also. I have high hopes for it; it's the game I've dreamt about since I was a kid.
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With all of the coverage on the game, the "But what do you do?" meme still applies. I had more to say, but there's no point. Everyone will find out soon enough whether or not all of the hype was for nothing.
 
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I heard they pushed it back a few more days again.

I don't think it will be anything as exciting or sim-y as Star Citizen, and while it's immense and vast like Elite Dangerous, I don't see it being such a dad game. I love ED, but I think it's driven by a base and by devs who haven't played a video game since the original Elite. Elite really has more of a, "but what do you do?" aspect to it because there's nothing to discover or experience after you've played for a month or so, unless you like going down to the surface of only airless, rocky planets and moons. That's cool and all, but it's also incredibly grind-y and some design decisions are real head-scratchers. You just get this feeling that the devs and the core players are middle-aged approaching retirement and have no idea what online games are supposed to do.

I think it won't suffer the same fate, although it is rather simplistic by comparison. It depends how varied the universe is, really. If it's same-y like ED then it will flop. However, I don't see that happening and everything I've seen has really impressed me. I love the fact that they sacrificed full AA graphics that look like a sauna full of steam for crisp, sharp, bright colors and designs also. Combat will probably be quite ho-hum in the beginning because it's more about discovery than anything else, but at the same time, skimping on the discovery and variety for hardcore combat is just as bad.
 
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I've been playing with my 1080, it's not leaps, but shoulders above my abused heavily Titan. Fucking bitchin' card for the price.


DOOM \m/
I took 6 mos off The Witcher and am rolling it with heavy graphics updates and this card is awesome.

<3 DOOM
 
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I've been in EVGA's Step-Up queue for a month now for my 1080. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still waiting until October either. They sent me a strange notice three weeks ago too. Because they either ran out of, or were in such a short supply of the original card that I was in queue for, they went ahead and put me in line for the newer, and better model that was above it. Seems kind of strange considering how long I've been waiting, unless they simply aren't making that model any longer. Nvidia also just announced the TItan X (poor branding since they already used that!). If the specs are to be believed, it looks like around a 40% boost compared to the 1080. We're already almost reaching a single slot card that rivals two 980Ti's in SLI. This also seems to be a card that will be able to run most modern games at 4K@60fps, although it's also probably going to cost $1200, so I'll just wait for the 1080Ti.
 
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