All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

2 hours ago, mog_kupo said:

 I came back to Cyberpunk last wekk,  a copule years after the orginal relase...

So much better than I remember, and the DLC its awesome too

 

I'm looking forward to going back to Night City real soon, my buddy says it has improved greatly since I last played.  Armored Core has been taking a lot of my dwindling gaming time though.

[mikeszekely]

5 hours ago, mog_kupo said:

 I came back to Cyberpunk last wekk,  a copule years after the orginal relase...

So much better than I remember, and the DLC its awesome too

 

I played it after it was patched a bit. Late 2020/early 21, I think (I remember putting in some time while in COVID quarantine). I bought Phantom Liberty and started over from scratch after finishing Starfield. Bonus because I upgraded my GPU since my first play.

I agree that it's a good game, and most of the changes seem pretty positive. I do have two complaints, though. One, I hate that instead of tracking down sellers and buying cars whenever you have the eddies you're gated by street cred then just buy whenever from the net. And two, I've got katanas and knives (and some people might have monowire arms or mantis blades), but stealth kills are still limited to grabbing a guy and breaking his neck. Wait, actually three complaints. Now that I'm thinking about stealth takedowns, is also kind of dumb that if you knock a guy out instead of killing him that hiding him in a crate or trunk kills him.

Oh well. Minor gripes overall, and it and Forza should keep me entertained until Mario and Spider-Man.

[mikeszekely]

So the new Forza Motorsport reboot came out.  First game in a series I'll go to my grave arguing is better than Gran Turismo, so needless to say I had very high hopes for it.  However, the "finished" game is definitely a case of one step forward, two steps back.

Let me start by asserting that one of, if not the most important quality of a racing game is the feel.  You can make the prettiest game with a super deep career mode, but if your car physics make Cyberpunk's look good I'm going to take a pass.  And fortunately, this is the one aspect that Turn 10 definitely nailed.  The different cars feel unique; you can drive two different cars with similar PI numbers but, as in real life, get a sense for the fact that they're actually handling differently.  And even with a controller the sense of feedback you get from the car is much better than in previous Forza games.

Another thing I like, and this is a bit of a hot take since most of the reviews I've seen seem to hate it, is the car leveling system.  Yeah, a lot of people are mad you can't just buy a car then immediately jack it up to S-class, but let me offer a different take.  See, in previous games, yeah, I'd be that guy who'd get a car then let the game auto-upgrade it to whatever the max class was for the event I wanted to race in.  But the way it works in the new FM is that when you get a new car it's level 1.  As you get experience (which is fairly easy to do; one five-race cup is usually enough to take a car from 1 to close to 20) you'll unlock upgrade categories as well as CP you can spend on upgrades.  So, for example, at level 1 you can upgrade your air filter from three different options with different CP costs, but you might not be able to swap out the stock tire compound until the car's at level 11.  And yeah, while at first this seems unnecessarily restrictive, I found that it did two things for me.  First, although auto-upgrading is still an option, I found myself thinking more about how best to use my limited CP on the available upgrades to get the best balance of speed, acceleration, handling, and braking and choosing my upgrades manually.  And second, because I'm not doing all my upgrading at once but in smaller increments between races, I'm able to get a better sense of exactly how each small choice affected the car's performance.  Coupled with the fact that, as previously noted, each car behaves differently, the upgrade path you follow for one might not be the same as for another.  Start with a nimble car and you might find the best bang for your buck in upping its top speed, while another car that struggles through the turns might benefit from upgrades that improve the braking or handling.

That said, Turn 10's rationale for the car XP system is that they want you to really get into a car instead of buying a bunch of cars and switching them out all the time.  That's kind of dumb on the surface- half the fun of a game with hundreds of cars I'll never own in real life is collecting them and racing them in the game.  But then there's the fact that the game itself is running counter to the developers' stated intent.  See, after doing the intro, you're given a choice of a few cars then thrown into an introductory cup.  So far, so good.  After that intro cup, you can start your career in earnest.  Now, the career mode itself is already a bit barebones, but I'm going to let that slide for now.  But what I will say is that, aside from limited-time "Feature" events, you have one cup unlocked and the car you started with doesn't qualify.  So I buy one that does, and I do that cup, and two more cups unlock.  And neither of the two cars I have is usable in either of them.  You can see where this is going, right?  By now I've done (I think) six cups, and each one required a different car.  This is where I'm starting to get frustrated, too.  See, buying cars costs credits, and unlike past Forza games it doesn't seem like you win cars (at least, I haven't won a car yet).  Now, to be fair, every time I've finished a cup and needed to buy another car for the next cup I've had the credits to do so.  But, see, in real life my wife and I decided to go electric.  This year my wife already replaced her car with a Hyundai Ioniq 5.  As someone who prefers sportier sedans and is due for a midlife crisis, I decided to start saving for a Porsche Taycan.  And when I saw that Forza's initial car list included the 2020 Taycan Turbo S I wanted it to be one of the first cars I bought in the game.  I had no problem earning enough credits to buy a Taycan... but never enough credits to buy a Taycan and a car from the handful of cars allowed in the next available cup.

Then there's the whole "finished" in quotes at the beginning of this post.  It's in quotes because there's no way this is the finished product.  And sure enough, the devs are already saying that a patch should be released early next week with bug fixes and quality of life improvements.  Let me tell you, it needs them.  I've experienced all sorts of weird pop-in and lighting issues, on both console and PC.  Annoying, but not exactly game breaking.  On console, the game will not Quick Resume, which sucks.  It tries, then crashes back to the home screen.  I've had one crash to desktop on my PC, too, plus an issue where it wouldn't sign into the Xbox server until I manually changed my firewall settings (something a UAC popup normally asks for, but didn't happen here).

And by "quality of life," I kind of hope they mean graphics.  A lot of Sony fanboys have been posting Forza screens with GT7 screens to show off how much better GT7 is.  Now, I think brand loyalty to either console is dumb, and graphics aren't everything... but they're not wrong, Forza looks bad next to GT7.  I mean, it's kind of nuts that FM is the first Forza designed exclusively for next-gen, but it looks a lot worse than Forza Horizon 5, too.  I started playing on an Xbox Series X in Performance RT mode; that is, 4K 60fps with ray tracing.  It looks kind of muddy to me, I might try turning RT off.  Next I tried on PC, where I've got a Core i7-9700K, 32GB of RAM, and an RTX 4070.  Visual options are a bit more granular on PC, so I set the resolution to 1440p, I told the game to target 60fps, I turned DLSS on for quality.  I insisted that the car textures be "ultra" but left everything else, including ray tracing, to automatic.  Sure enough, the game runs at a smooth 60fps, even during heavy rain, and the car I was driving looked great (as did the rain on the camera).  But the tracks themselves didn't look too hot.  Finally, for gaming on the go I tried it on an ROG Ally.  Note that Forza Horizon 5 ran decently on the Ally at 1080p with a mix of Medium and Low settings, and it looked pretty decent doing so.  FM, though, not so much.  I went with 1080p, FSR on, and everything else set to the lowest settings.  It looks about as good as Forza 2 on the Xbox 360 did, and only hit 30-40fps.  I tried dropping the resolution to 720p, but I was still only getting 45-ish fps and it looked like someone smeared Vaseline all over the screen.  

TL;DR: Excellent physics and handling make for a fun time driving, but bugs, technical issues, subpar graphics, and a barebones career mode makes Forza Motorsport seem a bit like a beta for a future, better game.

[Big s]

On 10/10/2023 at 3:27 PM, mikeszekely said:

Wait, actually three complaints. Now that I'm thinking about stealth takedowns, is also kind of dumb that if you knock a guy out instead of killing him that hiding him in a crate or trunk kills him.

That’s actually a pretty realistic part of the game. Every kid with a group of four friends remembers back to their childhood when only three of the four make it home from the junkyard. The trick is to pick the least memorable kid in the group to go in the box, never the popular one or the most hated or the weirdest one. That way when the police come by for questioning everyone just says they hadn’t seen the fourth kid that day and hope everyone forgets you had a group of four friends rather than a trouble making trio that you now have with a secret that you never ever bring up even if it’s the day you die

[sh9000]

Spider-Man 2.

 

[Tking22]

I just got contacted by my momNpop game shop that I can pick up my physical copy of Spider-Man 2 tonight, that's awesome. 

[no3Ljm]

 

 

[mikeszekely]

Still waiting for Amazon to deliver my copy, along with Super Mario Wonder.

And can we just take a minute to appreciate that we've got two GotY contenders out today in a year that's already given us Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, and Starfield? I can't remember a year this good for games since we got since maybe 2002.

EDIT: And it looks like I'm going to be waiting even longer, because despite showing two stops from my house at one point the Amazon driver never delivered my games, and now delivery is showing delayed until tomorrow.  Man, I preordered from Amazon because I figured release-day delivery would save me a trip to the store.  I had to go out and get tires today anyway, and Amazon dropped the ball.  I really wanted a physical copy, but screw it, I want to play Spidey tonight.  Bought a digital copy from the PlayStation Store, if/when the Amazon order arrives I'm just sending it right back to 'em.  Lesson learned, if I'm not buying digital and I want a game on day one I should just suck it up and plan to swing by Target.

Edited October 21, 2023 by mikeszekely

[mikeszekely]

Just finished Spider-Man 2.  And by finished, I mean got the platinum trophy 100% done finished.

On the one hand, it's a very good game.  The combat and web swinging is as acrobatic and fluid as ever.  The story is well-written, even if it borrows a bit more heavily from recent comics than SM1 or Miles did, and the voice acting is top notch, with Yuri Lowenthal bringing an even greater range to Peter Parker than the previous games.  Despite being arguably the "main" Spider-Man the game does give Miles an arc that really lets him grow as both a character and a Spider-Man.  While main missions and some activities are locked to a particular Spider-Man, for the most part you can switch freely between them when not currently in a mission, and there's some pretty cool touches in the game, like how if you drop into a random street crime activity there's a chance that you'll run into whichever Spider-Man you weren't currently playing as.  The game's map has expanded a bit beyond Manhattan island, and the new web wings allow for gliding that makes traversal (especially over the rivers) a bit more fluid.

On the other hand, Spider-Man 2 is either a step backward in some ways, or doesn't fix issues I had with the previous Spider-Man.  Spider-Man 2 seems like a shorter game than the first Spider-Man (longer than Miles, but Miles was only $40, not $70).  I think a big part of that is that there's less to do in this game's New York.  There's a few side missions with some actual story (one of which is pretty touching, if you remember some of the more minor characters from SM1), but less of everything else.  And as far as the everything else goes, a lot of it comes down to punching guys.  There's less stealth, fewer collectibles, etc.  Even the activities that replace the Taskmaster/Screwball challenges from SM1 are fewer and basically all beating people up under certain conditions.  There's a ton of suits for both Spider-Men in the game, but while (I think) all of Miles' carried over not all of Peter's did.  This might not bother me so much, but basically every suit that was in a movie (both Amazing suits, the stealth suit from Far From Home, the Homemade suit from Homecoming, etc) made it, along with some (often not very good) Insomniac original designs, but some of my favorite comic book suits from the previous game didn't.  No Future Foundation, no Big Time stealth suit, no Spider Armor (1, 2, 3, or 4), no Scarlet Spider II (Kaine), no Electro-proof Spidey, no Last Stand suit, no Bag Man, and worst of all (to me), no Spider-Man 2099 2 suit.  And they brought back Mary Jane missions.  The worse one is late in the game, where in a cutscene they come up with a plan where Peter will go fight one big bad guy, Miles will get into a brawl with a bunch of littler baddies, while MJ goes and grabs a MacGuffin.  After the cutscene, guess which epic Spidey battle you get to play... if you were paying attention, you'd know the answer is neither!  The cool stuff happens offscreen while you lead MJ to the MacGuffin.

I don't really know what kind of point I'm trying to make.  If you have a PlayStation and like the first two Spidey games then you'll have a good time with it.  But, especially in a year with as many awesome games as this one, it's not really GOTY, either.

[Wolf-1]

Anyone lapping around on the latest Forza Motorsport?  Don't play Multiplayer that often but I'm always looking for more Rivals. Had a group on FM7 that did a weekly Hot Lapping challenge with winner choosing track, car, and P.I. and occasionally a specific "tune"; though given the new "unlock" feature of tuning that may need rethinking.  Still adapting to the newer physic's but still maintaining a 75-95% world wide ranking on official Rivals, depending on track, car class.  Looking forward to chasing some of you down or at least getting frustrated in an attempt.  

[mikeszekely]

3 hours ago, Wolf-1 said:

Anyone lapping around on the latest Forza Motorsport?  Don't play Multiplayer that often but I'm always looking for more Rivals. Had a group on FM7 that did a weekly Hot Lapping challenge with winner choosing track, car, and P.I. and occasionally a specific "tune"; though given the new "unlock" feature of tuning that may need rethinking.  Still adapting to the newer physic's but still maintaining a 75-95% world wide ranking on official Rivals, depending on track, car class.  Looking forward to chasing some of you down or at least getting frustrated in an attempt.  

I gave my initial impressions of it a couple posts ago.  I haven't done any multiplayer at all, but I'm close to completing the career mode.  I just have Prototype Power and the showcase left of the featured Track Tour, the Pony Car Showdown, C8 Tour, and showcase from the Power Tour, and the B, A, S, and showcase from the Open Class Tour.  I've just been playing here and there, it hasn't been my "main" game.

[Wolf-1]

4 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I gave my initial impressions of it a couple posts ago.  I haven't done any multiplayer at all, but I'm close to completing the career mode.  I just have Prototype Power and the showcase left of the featured Track Tour, the Pony Car Showdown, C8 Tour, and showcase from the Power Tour, and the B, A, S, and showcase from the Open Class Tour.  I've just been playing here and there, it hasn't been my "main" game.

You're further along than I am; I find that for career mode I only have about 2-3 races in me before I tire of the rinse-and-repeat anymore.  Practice is a double-edge sword, either cut it short because you know the track and lose out on XP or suffer through the 10+ extra minutes so that by the end of the series the vehicle in question is all but maxed out. I am impatiently awaiting the release of the "Green Hell" this coming Spring.

[azrael]

Steam Deck OLED silent announcement:

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/oled

There are some small spec bumps. They're touting better efficiency thanks to moving to a 6nm APU along with better battery life, Wi-fi 6E, slightly more screen real estate (7" to 7.4"). Performance should be on-par with the current Steam Deck but should last users longer than the original model.

Here's the specs for the base model:

512GB OLED

• 512GB NVMe SSD
• 1280 x 800 HDR OLED display
• 7.4" Diagonal display size
• 6 nm APU
• Wi-Fi 6E
• 50Whr battery; 3-12 hrs of gameplay (content dependent)
• 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
• Carrying case
• Steam profile bundle

On sale Nov 16, starting at $549.

Valve did say they are working on a next gen Steam Deck/ Steam Deck 2 but that's still a few years away.

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Steam Deck OLED silent announcement:

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/oled

There are some small spec bumps. They're touting better efficiency thanks to moving to a 6nm APU along with better battery life, Wi-fi 6E, slightly more screen real estate (7" to 7.4"). Performance should be on-par with the current Steam Deck but should last users longer than the original model.

Here's the specs for the base model:

512GB OLED

• 512GB NVMe SSD
• 1280 x 800 HDR OLED display
• 7.4" Diagonal display size
• 6 nm APU
• Wi-Fi 6E
• 50Whr battery; 3-12 hrs of gameplay (content dependent)
• 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable
• Carrying case
• Steam profile bundle

On sale Nov 16, starting at $549.

Valve did say they are working on a next gen Steam Deck/ Steam Deck 2 but that's still a few years away.

Real good deal if you haven't picked up a Steam Deck yet, but probably not necessary if you already own one.  I want to say "like the Switch OLED", but when Tears of the Kingdom came out and I saw a demo running on a standard and OLED Switch side-by-side the smaller bezels and much more vibrant display got me to buy one on the spot and give my old one to my daughter.

Personally, although the APU is the same as the ROG Ally's, I've been eyeballing the Lenovo Legion Go.  Lenovo's software seems so much better than Asus' Armoury Crate, and the as someone who hates playing shooters with a controller their FPS mode seems pretty brilliant.

[davidwhangchoi]

league of legends finals this Sunday

[azrael]

Any bets they'll screw up something with this remaster?
 

 

[mikeszekely]

14 minutes ago, azrael said:

Any bets they'll screw up something with this remaster?

What's to screw up?  They could take the leftover discs from the first release and slap it in a new PS5 box and no one but Digital Foundry would know the difference.

Seriously, why this (aside from trying to cash in on the TV series) instead of, say, InFamous Remastered, Sly Cooper Remastered, Jak & Daxter Remastered, pre-Norse reboot God of War Remastered, etc?

[mikeszekely]

Well, as this year has been a pretty great year for videogames there have been several releases that I hadn't picked up because I was busy playing something else.  I was pretty excited for the Steam sale that started today, figured I'd be able to go back and get some of the games I skipped on a discount.  But... it's kind of disappointing.  There's big discounts on the games that always get big discounts every Steam sale... so I have most of the ones I wanted.  Newer games, though?  RE 4 remake down from $60 to $40.  Not bad, but not great.  Hogwarts Legacy is down to $36, a little better, but I think I'm waiting for both of those games to go under $30 before I pull the trigger.  Mortal Kombat 1 is still almost $50, and since I just play those for the story mode (yeah, weird, I know) that's a bit much yet.  Armored Core 6 isn't on sale at all.  (Neither is Baldur's Gate 3, although I already own it).

Then there's the Epic Games Store.  I have an intense dislike for Tim Sweeney and the Epic Games store, but right now you claim the current free game you get a coupon that you can use for 33% off your whole cart.  Dunno if that stacks with the sale prices, but you can use it on regular-price games.  And wouldn't you know it, they've got two very recent releases that aren't on sale that aren't even available on Steam... so I just bought Alan Wake 2 and Assassin's Creed Mirage for $67.

Edited November 22, 2023 by mikeszekely

[seti88]

 

[no3Ljm]

 

[mikeszekely]

Early reports are saying that it's going to be Xbox Series and PS5 only, at least at launch.  No PC is no sale, AFAIC.

[jenius]

I played about an hour of Alan Wake 2... as someone who almost never games (excluding Switch Zelda games) I was pretty amazed. 

[mikeszekely]

17 minutes ago, jenius said:

I played about an hour of Alan Wake 2... as someone who almost never games (excluding Switch Zelda games) I was pretty amazed. 

I actually haven't played the original, though I do own a copy on Steam.   I should; I loved Control.

Even though I didn't play the first one, I did buy the AW2.  During Thanksgiving the Epic Game Store was giving out coupons for 30% off your total transaction, and all you had to do to get one was claim one of the freebies.  Even though I don't really like EGS, I wound up getting Assassin's Creed Mirage (currently playing) and AW2 for $67-ish.

Edited December 5, 2023 by mikeszekely

[TangledThorns]

7 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Early reports are saying that it's going to be Xbox Series and PS5 only, at least at launch.  No PC is no sale, AFAIC.

Took them a while to bring RDR2 to PC so I'll be stunned if GTA6 never comes to PC.

[Tking22]

At least they left last gen behind, bout damn time. I get it, the install base for PS4 alone is massive, but you've gotta cut the cord at some point, even the PS5 and Series X are dated by modern hardware standards, I'm wondering how the Series S will handle the game, it's a neat little machine but there's always compromises for getting most of these newer titles on it. 

[sh9000]

Marvel's Blade.

 

[mikeszekely]

Arkane?  I know they're kind of in the doghouse right now because of Redfall, but Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop all slap, to use the modern vernacular.  I'll be keeping an eye on Blade.

[azrael]

Is there a limit to how many times one can see the same game engines/game types? Maybe it's me, but all these trailers from the Gaming Awards look like I've seen them on different games. Jurassic Park: Survival looks like Alien: Isolation. Black Myth: Wukong's use of the Unreal Engine reminds me of Jedi:Fallen Order/Jedi Survivor.

[no3Ljm]

Mecha BREAK

Quote

由Amazing Seasun Games開發製作的近未來科幻機甲遊戲《Mecha BREAK》在#tga2023 公佈全球首發影片，並將在PC及家用機平台發表！駕駛作戰風格各異的解限型機甲，突破強敵防線，在戰火中探尋真相！透過塗裝改造，為機甲訂製最具個性的外觀方案，隨時準備好下一次的出擊！置身於危機四伏的廣闊場景中，直面巨型兵器，感受動力澎湃、火力全開的立體空間戰鬥！預約登錄已開啟，更多情報可關注！

Mecha BREAK, a recent sci-fi mecha game developed and produced by Amazing Seasun Games, announced its world premiere video at #tga2023 and will be released on PC and home console platforms! Drive different styles of unrestricted mechs, break through enemy defenses, and search for the truth in the midst of battle! Customize the appearance of your mech with paint modifications and be ready for the next attack! In a wide range of crisis situations, you'll be able to face giant weapons and experience the power and firepower of three-dimensional space battles! Pre-registration is now open, stay tuned for more information!

https://www.mechabreak.com/en/#/

 

Edited December 8, 2023 by no3Ljm

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

Sega's making some moves:

 

[Black Valkyrie]

 Finally a new Golden Axe. 

 

[MKT]

Awesome!!

This new Streets of Rage somehow looks familiar, then I remember some small studio made a proof of concept some 10 years or so ago for a 3D Streets of Rage game, and this one although unlikely looks like it straight continued from that.

Shinobi is hitting the right notes! What a classic, especially the new wolf riding scene recalling the horse riding stage of Shinobi 3. The graphical effects have some similarities to Streets of Rage 4, so perhaps its the same studio handling it..

[mikeszekely]

6 hours ago, azrael said:

Is there a limit to how many times one can see the same game engines/game types? Maybe it's me, but all these trailers from the Gaming Awards look like I've seen them on different games. Jurassic Park: Survival looks like Alien: Isolation. Black Myth: Wukong's use of the Unreal Engine reminds me of Jedi:Fallen Order/Jedi Survivor.

I mean, for a big company like Ubisoft, sure, you can afford to make an engine like Dunia in-house, but for most developers it's cheaper and easier to license someone else's. Unity was extremely popular until the debacle around changing their payment structure. Now Epic is claiming that around half of all next-gen games in development are using Unreal Engine 4 or 5.

As for types, seems like every time a game gets popular it spawns a a sub-genre of imitators. Just look all all the "Souls-likes" out there. Heck, Fortnite got started by doing PUBG's schtick, but their latest Lego update looks like Minecraft to me. Actually, the whole Lego Minecraft thing is just the first game-within-a-game they've planned, as they've also announced in-game games Rocket Racing from the team being Rocket League and Fortnite Festival from the studio behind Rock Band. So Fortnite is actually Roblox now.

[no3Ljm]

RE4 Immersion Trailer

 

Jurassic Park: Survival. Announcement Trailer.

 

Exoborne Announcement Trailer

 

 

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. "No More Heroes".

 

Banishers: Ghosts of the New Eden - Death to the Dead Trailer.

 

Warhammer 40000: Space Marine 2 - The Game Awards 2023 Release Date Reveal

 

Rise of the Ronin - Preorder Trailer

 

God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla - Reveal Trailer

 

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition - Launch Trailer

 

Street Fighter 6 - SpyxFamily Code: White Special Collaboration Anime

 

Skull and Bones - Gameplay Deep Dive Trailer

 

The Invincible - 11 Facts about the Game

 

[Tking22]

I got the new Avatar game, absolutely gorgeous, one of the best looking games this gen for sure. Yes, as a lot of people saying, it does feel like a Far Cry Primal 2 at times, but it definitely does it's own thing and is very, very much an Avatar game. The hunting, gathering and exploration is fantastic, combat is a bit too difficult and stealth isn't really a thing, enemies spot you almost always no matter what, there's no clearing about bases using stealth only like Far Cry, enemies seem to know exactly where you are if you shoot your bow at all. Kind of annoying, but really good overall so far.