Saturday!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yulxnzAsWEM]
I *STILL* cannot believe how awesome the Majora’s Mask port to 3DS is. They’ve done such an amazing job. If you have been on the fence on whether to pick this up, you NEED to. Especially if you’re going to be on a plane for goodness-knows-how-many-hours.
So when I get home the first thing I check to see is if I may have missed Steam and/or Good Old Games’s Summer Sales. Looks like I’ve got two days left on both. So I picked up the less-than-a-dollar games of Hexcells, Kami, and Ichi.
Hexcells is Minesweeper on a hex grid. If you’re into Minesweeper, you’ll be into this. If you hated Minesweeper, you will hate this.
Ichi is a fun little physics game. A ball rolls around a screen and you’re in charge of the bumpers that deflect the ball to ensure that the ball rolls over various targets. The physics part of this game is delightful. The fact that it happens in real time makes this a lot tougher for those out there who may be older and not have the timing they did as a younger person. But the game would be a lot of fun for people who still have their reflexes.
Kami is a great game that uses a mechanic that those who have played with Microsoft Paint will recognize as relying on the “fill” tool. By “filling” a particular field within a bunch of different color fields with one of the different available colors, and then doing it again, and then again, you can turn the entire board into one color entirely. This is the goal. There are two ways to play: Zen (and just taking your sweet time to change the board into one solid color) and Zen/Compulsive-Obsessive (mindfully doing it in the fewest moves possible). If you’re one of those people who ever turned a checkerboard into a solid black (or white, I suppose) field in paint just by using the fill tool, you will say “Holy cow… I made up a variant of this game back in the 90’s and didn’t know it!” And then you can either be irritated that you didn’t come up with a way to monetize it or be delighted that you finally have a real game out of this thing that you did to pass the time a million years ago.
(Oooh! And Afterlife is on sale at GOG for $4! It’s Sim City for Escatologists! No religion.)
So… what are you playing?
(Picture is “Untitled” by our very own Will Truman. Used with permission.)
Fallout 4 will not be compatible with my Xbox 360. Boo.
I guess I’ll just have to upgrade the console after all.Report
I am pleased to say that my PS3 has started acting up.
Well, to be precise, I am more irritated than anything else.
But it’s an excuse to get a PS4 and then look at the stack of PS3 games that I never got to play because the PS4 ain’t backwards compatible.
(Plus there’s Batman: Arkham Knight! And Witcher 3! And Cyberpunk 2077! And I can finally get around to playing Assassin’s Creed 4!)Report
XBox One is supposed to start offering backwards compatability for some games (and not in the “Buy your old PS3 games again as a digital copy! that PS4 is doing). OTOH, I have a 360 and a PS4. So that doesn’t do me a lot of good.
I have been playing Fallout Shelter (free App game for iPhone and iPad. Coming to Android…someday). It’s fun, but buggy. Crashes a lot (then again, on an older iPad that’s not fully supported). From the commentary around, it looks like it was rushed a bit for E3.
Still fun.Report
I am probably going to get an XBone eventually… but, unlike the last 2 generations, I didn’t absolutely *NEED* to get one as soon as they hit the stores (despite early unavailability).
That and how Xbox handled pre-release PR was a huge turn-off for me.Report
That’s why I have a PS4, to be totally honest. I’m still getting used to the new buttons. Picked up Diablo 3 (with expansion) as a learning tool. 🙂 It’s a little less frustrating than something like Shadow of Mordor, wherein you have fractions of a second to press the right button. :).
Also, I don’t know if you’ve seen the XCOM2 trailer, but dang….I have high hopes.Report
The new Long War mod is fantastic. If you played any of the previous releases, the dev’s have fixed a lot of balance issues and introduced a lot of cool stuff. And most importantly, they’ve made the “Normal” difficulty one which a player like me can enjoy.Report
I’ve played Fallout Shelter for a few hours, and frankly can’t figure out the point.
Of course it doesn’t help that while it doesn’t seem to crash often on me, my phone is clearly too slow to run it well.Report
I had similar issues on my iPad Mini. After 35 dwellers, I simply couldn’t start it up again without it immediately crashing, and so deleted it. I think I’d got the feel of it by then.Report
Yeah, it was not only rushed for E3, it looks like it was optimized for the latest generation iPhone and iPads. I’ve a friend who says it works fine on his wife’s iPhone (which she bought a few months ago) and crashes constantly on his, which is the previous generation.Report
I’m sitting here waiting for Arkham Knight’s preload to start. It’s about 50 gigs, and I get about a gig an hour, so the preload really needs to start two days in advance…and it’s out in three days. So I’m sitting here hoping.
Meanwhile I’m playing some challenge maps on Arkham City.
You know what I wish about the Arkham games? I wish that there were boss battles as ‘challenge maps’, where you could go back to those battles and fight them. I have no real problem with auto-save and one save slot for games like this, but it sure would be nice to be able to pull up a specific fight without having to do some saved game slot hacking the first time through.
And even dumber, these saved games are encrypted, so it’s not like you can just *download* a saved game at that point. I think, hypothetically, trading saved games become something we needed to worry about with ‘achievements’…but, seriously, if someone wants to go to that trouble, let them. Or only let people get them on games started on their computer.Report
And still not preloading, and the game unlocks in one day and 16 hours, which pretty much assures me that I can’t finish downloading it before it unlocks even if started preloading right now.
So, you know, thanks for that, Rocksteady.Report
Maribou told me that I could get the Arkham Knight PS4 bundle as a reward for a successful trip (incentive to not die while overseas) and it ought to arrive this week.
So I hope we can both discuss the first bit of the game next weekend!Report
Luckily, the game started pre-loading last night, and it looks like the 50 gig was the install size or something (Or my internet connection has mysteriously gotten faster) because it’s about 40% done already and says it will be done about 4 am tomorrow. Which is before it will unlock at 2 pm tomorrow.Report
2PM? That’s irritating. There will be no shortage of people who will be playing their game within moments of getting home from the midnight launch.Report
2PM? That’s irritating. There will be no shortage of people who will be playing their game within moments of getting home from the midnight launch.
Well, that’s what Steam says, ‘This game will unlock in approximately 1 day and 2 hours’. But Steam’s been wrong before.
Also, while I don’t know about the console versions, the PC disc versions probably rely on Steam to activate anyway, and thus no one’s getting started before the Steam unlock.Report
I just finished playing though Shadowrun: Dragonfall, which I scored for 15 bucks on Steam a few weeks ago. If you’re a fan of X-Com it’s a total blast, it’s sort of a more RPG-oriented version of that. The setting is pretty neat too: it’s a pastiche of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and high fantasy, set forty years in the future.Report
Dragonfall is far superior to their original Shadowrun Returns. (Dragonfall was originally an expansion pack, but the new Director’s Cut added a bunch of stuff and made it stand alone. Even as an expansion, it was OLD school expansion. Huge, well crafted, almost as big as the original game).
If you like it, they’ve more than met their goal for Shadowrun: Hong Kong, which is in development. Deeper magic, more cyberware, and a massive overhaul of Matrix gameplay.
I played Dragonfall through a few times. But then, I read the original tie-ins and played the pen-and-paper game back in the day. (Aw, life as a heavily augmented troll is wonderful. You can use a mini-gun like everyone else uses a shotgun. And with a combat computer in your head, you don’t really miss. Ever. Add in some bioware, and you’re even fairly charismatic!)Report
I bought and played through Returns a few weeks ago and I agree that Dragonfall is definitely the superior of the two. And I plan to buy Hong Kong as soon as it drops on Steam. I didn’t know about the improvements you mentioned, a Matrix overhaul could be pretty cool if they do it right.
I never played the pen and paper RPG, though as a lifelong Battletech player I’ve always been aware of it (since the properties were created and developed by the same series of companies). Mostly that was just due to lack of opportunity, although I don’t care much for the fantasy portion of the setting: I’m just a giant fan of William Gibson’s works (especially the Sprawl trilogy) and that combined with X-Com-style gameplay and RPG elements make it more than enough to make me overlook the fantasy bits. I played as a street samurai in Returns and a cybered-up combat decker with high charisma in Dragonfall, and it was a blast with both. I’m definitely going to play through Dragonfall a couple more times, though I’m not sure what kind of character I’ll play.
As an aside, I found out recently that a friend of a friend of mine works for Harebrained Schemes; I’m hoping to meet him in the near future so I can pick his brain about Hong Kong and any other upcoming SR-related projects they’re working on. Anything you’d want me to ask him?Report
Based on the E3 gameplay demo, you were right, Jaybird, about Fallout player character voice acting. My apologies for doubting.Report
Did they at least have two voice actors (a la Mass Effect)?Report
I think so. The bulk of the playthru was with a male character, but the character creation scene involves playing thru as both your parents (who are individually voiced) , so I imagine a female character has the female voice actor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t_YHgo_HN4Report
I can’t imagine that, in the current climate, they’d say “well, we decided to change directions and the story we wanted to tell relied on having a male protagonist” (and especially after allowing you to customize your character and character’s appearance pretty comprehensively in every game going back to 1997’s!) but my imagination is limited.Report
I got to think it’s going to be like the rest of the Fallout productions. You can get a perk to be suave with the ladies, you can get a perk to be suave with the fellas, you can get both, you can get neither, you can get either one or both regardless of your own gender, and the perks provide some shortcuts but aren’t necessary for victory.Report
Man, I hope so. These games are among the few that I feel compelled to replay (let alone finish!).
If they hamstring customization in service to a story that only works once…Report
I had three items on my wish list which were awaiting the Summer Sale: Pillars of Eternity, Transistor, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.Report
PofE is worth the purchase at mostly full price unless you know in your heart that you’ll play it for an hour before having to go do something else.
Transistor can wait.
I don’t know anything about Castlevania:LoS.Report
A question for you, since you’ve actually played PofE…if I don’t like the Diablo series, and never played Baldur’s Gate, would I still enjoy Pillars?Report
It has nothing (well, not much, anyway) to do with Diablo. It may look like Diablo to a person running through the room, but that’s merely the graphics. Not the gameplay at all.
If you’ve played tabletop D&D, however, you’ll recognize everything that is going on. It will fit like an old robe from the back of the closet that you bought from before you lost 15 pounds.
So the question is: Do you want a single-player D&D experience?
If the answer is “thanks but no thanks”, you won’t miss much. If the answer is “Wait, seriously? Are you messing with me because it’s not cool if you’re messing with me”, you should run, not walk, to buy this.
Or if you’re still sitting at your computer, just do the mouse/keyboard thing.Report
Well, admittedly, I’ve never actually played D&D. But I do dig a good robust single-player RPG in general, and Obsidian has done two of my all-time favorite games (KotOR II and Fallout New Vegas), so I figured Pillars was probably worth checking out, since they got to design their own setting for this one (I am also a sucker for a well-crafted fictional universe).
tl;dr If I never played D&D would I still enjoy PIllars?Report
The graphics have a perspective similar to Diablo’s and a mechanics system similar to Knights of the Old Republic and questing systems similar to Fallout: New Vegas.
You might not be intimately familiar with everything, but it sounds like you have the “go up a level, gain a new skill… man, I wish I had more skill points…” phenomenon memorized by heart already.Report
Well, you’ve definitely sold me on it based on that description. That sounds pretty fishing excellent.Report
Pillars of Eternity is on my Summer Wish List too, along with Grim Fandango Remastered and the Homeworld Remastered Collection (the fact that those latter two are on my list makes me feel old, for some reason). I just need to actually have money during the windows when these go on sale.Report
I snagged Grim Fandango Remastered on the Steam Sale. I missed playing the original.
Of course, I’ve still got Planescape Torment from GoG to play.Report
Played Banished after I got it on the cheap. Oddly I haven’t found it particularly difficult but everyone in the reviews seems to think it’s the hardest.
Also gonna be in Colorado Springs over July the 4th. The relatives have pulled the whole “you tell us what you want to do” bit. Is there anything fun or interesting to do or see in Colorado Springs? The car obsessed hubby is probably gonna dragoon me into getting a rental car so we’ll be plenty mobile.Report
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Um, fun or interesting? Um, from what I understand, Garden of the Gods is outdoors and people who like going outdoors find Garden of the Gods to be pretty.
We can drive past the Olympic Training center, maybe?
I might not be the best person to ask.Report
Well what do you and Maribou like to do? I suspect our interests are close in many ways as I’m not enormously outdoorsy, I love table top games, rping and video games. Favorite restaurant?Report
I decided to start delving back into The Secret World, which is an MMO set in something like the modern area, with Lovecraftian horror. I bought the game a couple years ago, but I barely touched it, because I got distracted by other things. I finally decided to jump back in.Report
My friend is playing a bug generator.
And DROD, which I occasionally help to solve problems in.
(Drod’s a parody of some russian RPGs… a hard puzzle game)Report
Had been playing Witcher 3, but I heard there’s a big patch coming. I don’t mind early access for strategy-type games with a lot of replayability. I’ve played quite a bit of Gnomoria and Rimworld and they’re hardly finished. But for plot driven game, hearing of an upcoming patch tends to make me want to pause playing.
I’ve been looking for games I can play with my daughter, so I picked up an extra copy of Terraria during the Steam sale. We had fun playing that over the weekend. We’ve done a bit of Minecraft in the past, but I find Terraria to be easier to navigate, more gamey, and you don’t have to memorize how to assemble items.Report