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giphit · 10 months

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Review of Spider-Man 2 (PS2/GCN/Xbox)

A few months ago, I decided to play Spider-Man 2 on my VERY REAL Nintendo GameCube (Dolphin edition). Overall, I had a very fun time. Obviously the swinging is phenomenal, though it is not as approachable as the PS4 game. The combat is clunky but works most of the time. The world itself is honestly kind of barren and carried by the fact that swinging is fun. And the story is a mixed bag.

Long in-depth thoughts:

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Story

There's not much but the story in this game is very weird. As you'd expect, it covers the main narrative beats of the Raimi Spider-Man 2 movie but it adds its own stuff. And, opposite of what I expected, the movie stuff is the weakest part. As an actual adaptation, it's like we're just given an abridged version of that movie. These parts of the game feel kind of lackluster compared to the other parts of the story.

An example of this is with Doc Ock. In the movie we spend a good amount of time developing his relationship with Peter and establishing him as a mentor figure, meanwhile in the game, he's given a couple cutscenes before his accident and most of his time with Peter is cut off before a fade-to-black, back to the city as Spider-Man. Spidey will then say something along the lines of "Wow dinner with Doc was great, he's so smart, love that guy" and that's it. Maybe they expected you to have seen the movie so you'd know what these gaps were supposed to be.

A retelling of the movie isn't all this game is though, and the original content it gives you alongside the movie is super fun and interesting. My personal highlight is the Mysterio story line- everyone's seen the funny health bar clip. He's introduced as Quentin Beck, who dislikes Spider-Man and challenges him publicly only to lose. Post-humiliation, he puts a fish bowl on his head and uses his mystical power of "too much money and spare time" to pretend to be an alien staging an invasion of earth. This was just a fully enjoyable and funny quest line that doesn't just pad out the game but adds to it.

There's also the entirely new character arc that Peter goes on due to his interactions with Black Cat which actually introduce added depth to the internal "Spider-Man vs Peter Parker" thing he has going on. These two and other minor game-specific beats make it feel kind of "held-back" by having to tell the movie's story. You'll have a sequence of some really fun original quests followed by a watered down version of a moment from Spider-Man 2 (the movie).

I wouldn't say this even really takes away from the fun of the game, it is just a weird discrepancy.

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Swinging

It is nothing short of spectacular that this game, made in 2004, manages to have such enticing, deep and FUN traversal throughout the streets of New York. Jamie Fistrom is a genius, this idea of his was what paved the way for the evolution of Spider-Man games. But it's not perfect.

At the time, it probably was as perfect as could be but now going back to play it, there are some grievances. Mostly the problems are in the fine controls, a lot of games from this era have this "problem" of actually being TOO tight and responsive. Smash Melee is the best example (I love Melee), where it's near unapproachable for newer players due to a lack of buffer and requirement of clean execution on complicated tech.

Spider-Man 2 is not as hard to get into as Super Smash Bros. Melee but it definitely has a learning curve to it. Or I just suck. I was swinging into buildings non stop at the beginning of the game but over time you get better at it and more proficient at keeping your pace up.

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Combat

The combat in this game is very similar to the Arkham games, which is funny because those games came out 9 years after this. It's fair to say the combat is unrefined but it does get the job done and the combos are fun to pull off. Where the combat fall apart for me is in boss fights.

Despite liking the vibes and progression of the Mysterio parts of this game, I did not like the Mysterio "fight" (if you can call it that) at the statue of liberty. Getting to the orbs was annoying thanks to a lack of cooperation from Spider-Man's webs paired with me probably being a little bad at the game.

Then there's the Doctor Octopus fights which were just annoying. These fights feel really inconsistent and at some point I was just spamming buttons and hoping, which worked because this game was meant for children, but it was not satisfying to bang a head against a wall for a while. I'm sure there is a way to beat him consistently but the game did not convey it very well.

The shocker fights and Rhino were much more manageable but quite simple. Overall the combat is fine but there are points where it feels like a chore.

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Gameplay

Gameplay loop is very important in video games, and in this game, it ranges from fun to "oh this again, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay". The things to do in the city are: race, pizza, random crime and that fucking balloon.

Racing is a mixed bag. The races that are just swinging are fun because the swinging is fun. The races that ask you to wall run are annoying because the wall running in this game is not fun. Should be noted that I barely did any races during my playthrough and it's been months so maybe not the most accurate perspective coming from me here.

Pizza is fun, mostly because of the song, it is basically just another form of race but with more fun music and less stipulations. You just have to get from point A to points B through Z within an allotted time and make it back to point A. Don't do tricks or you'll ruin the pizza. Overall just fun.

Random crimes are incredibly annoying- after a while at least. When I started in the game, I was enjoying being Spider-Man, helping people out on a whim but as the game progressed, I realised that there are about 15 whole crimes/events to experience here. A couple are added to the RNG pool during the main story like Mysterio's robots and some walking tanks but that's it. Since you are forced to get hero points in every chapter, you have to keep doing these and by the end they are just monotonous tasks. It sucks that this is really all the city has to offer.

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Rating and Conclusion

Very fun game to play, technical achievement for its time and surprisingly well-aged. Combat is average, traversal is phenomenal, gameplay loop is pretty monotonous and the story is enjoyable in some parts and boring in others.

7/10

#Spider-Man #Review #video game #Spider-Man 2 #GameCube #PS2 #Xbox #my dumb stupid thoughts #i like this game

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anora-mac-tired · 4 years

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Okay so some Morrigan Hate came across my dash and I feel it highlights something that the Fandom forgets (most video game fandoms tbh). Dragon Age is a Video Game. That's the medium.

Now my point here isn't to say "oh you shouldn't take it so seriously!". No, my point is that Video Games, as a medium, are extremely susceptible to flaws, because of how just gosh darn BIG and difficult to produce they are. (Ever notice how seemingly simple concepts take years to make and require a big budget?)

Now, dragon age is a triple a title, which means that they are not big, but utterly MASSIVE. They take years to develop, and Dragon Age Inquisition, is an astronomical title. One playthrough, my first one, took me personally over 100 hours to complete, and I didn't do everything. That's over 100 hours of gameplay, side quests, and main story, that the developers had to create. And let me tell you, putting together a video game is not easy, especially when you have electronic arts breathing down your neck, and as a writer, you have to bend to a development board. (How many times have we seen horrible decisions because some bigwig thought it would make more profit?)

Now this means, that even with a thick layer of polish, cracks WILL SHOW (even the Witcher 3, which is probably one of my favourite games of all time from a purely video game development point of view) had glaring flaws, if you look for them. Now TW3 didn't have budget cutting, dont-give-a-shit-about-the-story-just-make-us-money Electronic Arts over their head, so CD projekt red could really make sure the story and dialogue was as they wanted it to be. The writers of DA don't have that privilege.

So, the writers have to put in weird shit like Morrigan explaining who mythal is, even to an elven Inquisitor, because they had to account for PLAYERS not knowing any of the lore (not everyone devours every codex entry they come across)

Now, the Dalish inquisitor could have had some bonus dialogue where they explain Mythal with morrigan to the rest of the party, but unfortunately Dialogue is expensive (that's an extra path of dialogue that all of the VAs need to record. Thats all four of Inkys Vas, Morrigan's, and possibly Solas', at the minimum. Thats 6 Studio appointments, and the salary of the vas, and sound engineers, and leases in all the tech they're using... I could go on forever honestly. My point is, every line of dialogue, IS EXPENSIVE to record, and budget cuts happen, and stuff needs to be sacrificed, also to make deadlines. (The writers point this out a lot)

Yes its unfortunate, but it's an unfortunate reality

Game development is long, hard, complicated, and expensive, ESPECIALLY for a triple-a title like Dragon Age. And since the disney of the video game world, ie EA, owns Bioware, you might as well expect budget cuts and vicious time restraints on the writers, AS WELL AS, pandering to a mainstream audience, ie handholding, like explaining who tf Mythal is, even though fans have known who she is since the first damn game.

So please

Before you go OFF and start hating characters and bad mouthing writers, please remember, no game is perfect, it is literally impossible to be, because it's at the mercy of the development cycle and sheer human tendency to make mistakes.

No, it doesn't make sense for morrigan to shemsplain to lavellan, but it's not her or the writers fault. Theres just some necessary evils that happen when you make a game that's that expensive and broadly marketed

#dragon age #video game development #somewhat fandom critical #i hope this made sense #typing a tablet is hard #dragon age inquisition #dragon age 2 #DA fandom critical #tagging #morrigan #and #lavellan #coz yall stans need to see this #the most

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ranger-report · 4 years

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Thoughts On: HERETIC II (1998)

Just over one year after the release of Hexen II, Raven Software published the final game in their dark fantasy series. Set apart from the Serpent Rider Trilogy of Heretic./Hexen/Hexen II, Heretic II told the tale of Corvus Corax, the elven hero of the first Heretic, and his journey to return home after years of wandering the Outer Worlds. See, defeating one of the Serpent Riders resulted in his being thrown far far away from his origin world of Parthoris, and left to his own devices, he had a bit of a time attempting to make his way back. Marking the first time in the series that id Software had no involvement in the release of the game save for providing the modified id tech 2 engine (AKA the Quake 2 engine), this release was published by Activision under their purview. Moving in the direction of a third-person adventure with first-person shooter mechanics, Raven made it clear that they were going to take inspiration from wherever they could, including a popular little title called Tomb Raider. While garnering favorable reviews, Heretic II would ultimately be lost in the holiday shuffle of PC gaming as it had the unfortunate circumstance to be released one week after a particularly groundbreaking first-person shooter from Valve Software. You may have heard of it: Half-Life. As a result of the unfortunate coincidence and the lackluster response from fans due to the series changes, Heretic II was a commercial flop. But, with all that said, how does Heretic II stack in the lineup of the series it brings to a conclusion? And why has there been no further entries in the series since?

To begin with, the decision to make Heretic II a third person adventure was controversial amongst fans of the series. Yes, the style was popular and gaining traction, and Raven was nothing if not innovators, so the decision to a degree made sense. Why not take their dark fantasy world and put it through the wringer, especially since the main plot of the first three games was now over? Going into this title, I knew I was in for an adjustment period, but I had no idea it would be as shocking as it was. Slow, unintuitive camera movement coupled with clunky, lackluster controls make the game much more of a chore to play than the original games. Gone is the fast-paced combat, replaced with deliberately paced enemy encounters. Picking up heavily on the Tomb Raider inspiration, Corvus can leap, flip, roll, and somersault his way around the maps. Points for inspiration. But man’s -- er, elf’s -- reach exceeds his grasp, and while this sounds well and good on paper, molasses-like reaction times feel more like directing Corvus through waist-high water instead of the nimble acrobatics the game shoots for. Animations, graphics, sound design, everything on a technical level is top notch stuff. Corvus himself has a modeled backbone to allow for more fluid animations, shown off in his running, fighting, and even idle cycles. It’s impressive stuff that the gameplay just can’t seem to live up to on an engaging level. Heretic II feels like an attempt to return to the form of the first Heretic, but through the lens of a team who’s never played the first one. Rather than using different types of mana for ammunition, green mana is reserved for offensive spells, blue mana for defensive spells, and most weapons have unique ammunition types. Gone, too, is the inventory system of carrying items and objects for future use; instead, Corvus automatically uses any health or magic pickups he comes across, something which is bolstered by shrines which either completely refill mana, health, or armor points. When it comes to story, one must wonder which direction the intent was headed. Perhaps the original vision of Hecatomb was to come full circle with Corvus and face the final Serpent Rider after being outcast from the realms. The scattershot nature of the plot here doesn’t seem to suggest it, however.

As Corvus progresses, he returns to his home of Parthoris to discover a strange disease has taken over the land, changing the elves into diseased, violent versions of themselves. After being attacked, Corvus himself is infected, initiating his quest to discover a cure, and stop the mad magus Morcalavin. On an interesting note, it turns out that Morcalavin has collected the Seven Tomes of Power to aid him in magic use, but one of the Tomes is a fake and is the cause of the infection -- Corvus has been carrying the seventh Tome with him since Heretic. A bit of revisionist history considering that Tomes of Power have been consumable items since Heretic, and there were many more than seven. Noting this change to lore, Corvus simply needs to replace the fake Tome with the true one, and that should reverse Morcalavin’s corrupted power. Another noteworthy change is that the hub system of the previous games is also gone, replaced with a similar map progression to Heretic. Some maps are linear exercises in traveling from start to finish, others require moving about the many layers of the map to collect and bring together keys and objects. This is one of the largest departures from the previous games -- this story is far more intimate, more structured, more character-driven with cutscenes, dialogue, worldbuilding not seen in prior entries. Before, we were simply nameless warriors moving through dark fantasy worlds, kicking ass, taking names, killing gods and monsters alike. Here, we get to know one of said warriors by name and history. Yes, before now, Corvus was never actually named in his first appearance. He was simply “The Heretic” which was FAR more badass, although Corvus Corax is up there on the list of great fantasy names with ease. But, rather than a ride, this game wants to tell a story, watering down the experience. Whether Raven can tell a good story in other games is besides the point; here, the slipshod nature of the shoestring story attempting to provide a bit more theatricality feels tacked on, an oddity. Sure, perhaps the evolutionary nature of progression is where Raven felt the need to provide an actual factual story with their action game, also again from the inspiration of Tomb Raider slipping in, but it doesn’t hit the mark, nor age well in particular. Here we can see the beginnings of action games moving forward out of simple exercises in running and shooting, but telling stories with cinematic flair. Half-Life did the same, but with striking results, and far less awkward dialogue. And then, furthering the frustratingly bland story is the abrupt ending, in which the villain is cleansed of his corruption and ascends to godhood the way he intended, but leaving behind his power to Corvus in order to protect the world. So the bad guy....wins? But has become a good guy?

So, the question must be asked: what happened? Where Hexen II showed little of the changes that Raven were forced to make when new owner Activision mandated that they split the Heretic and Hexen series into separate entities, this game bears the unfortunate weight of that departure. As previously mentioned, the planned third game in the Serpent Rider Trilogy, Hecatomb, was divided into two games post-mandate, the ideas of which also went in two separate directions. John Romero has made frequent commentary in the past about the separation of the games as products vs a proper trilogy. He’d been involved with Hecatomb until his departure from id Software, which was also around the time that Raven was purchased by Activision. The publishing giant, he notes, split up the Raven team who had worked on the Heretic/Hexen games, further increasing the divide of the products. According to one of his accounts, one team worked on all three Serpent Rider games before the split, at which point that team was divided amongst the three in-house developing teams that already existed. While Brian Raffel, the mind behind the game series, was present and active on Heretic II, not everyone who’d put their passion into the rest of the series was there for the creation of this game. This shows in the final product.

With that in mind, it seems a little unfair to judge this game as harshly as I am. Perhaps we should be examining it, looking at the interesting bit of gaming history it represents. It marks a point in time where Raven, having experienced fair success on their own through working with technology giant id Software and other publishers, has become a corporate-owned entity. This is, in fact, the first game by Raven to be published exclusively by Activision. Eventually, Raven Software would be conscripted by Activision into the Holy Trinity of Call of Duty developers, rotating in and out making new COD games so they can come out yearly. What legacy, then, does this particular game leave? There is a mark here, a brand, a scar, a sign of things to come. Mandates from above demanding two franchises instead of one, an ironic analogy of the division of Raven from id Software -- Heretic II may have been published and distributed exclusively by Activision, but id Software published the previous games, and held publishing rights to those games. Meanwhile, the transfer of copyright went to Activision, putting future games into a pickle. Activision no doubt has little interest in creating new games in a series when they can’t make money from previous entries. Furthering problems is that Heretic II does not exist in digital format, probably again due to Activision unable to profit from sales of the prior games; a casual copyright search for Heretic II in the public record comes up with zero results, effectively placing the game as abandonware. With Raven owned by Activision, and id owned by Bethesda (formerly Zenimax), establishing cooperation between the two giants may seem difficult to impossible at this point.

What a shame for the final entry in what began as such a promising series to end limping across the finish line. In my research I found quite a few people who were glowing with nostalgic praise for Heretic II, and why not? In the opening level of Silverspring, we’re greeted with a run down town disparaged by the rampant virus. Flies zip back and forth and Corvus slaps his neck to be rid of them; children cry in the distance, dripping water echoing reminds of the empty nature of this place. All the environments in the game are rife with audio and visual treats that literally drip with atmosphere and character. There is a strange amount of life here, in a living world that feels interesting and worth exploring. But the controls and story fall flat, alongside the abysmal decision to make the game a third person adventure instead of the first person shooters of the previous entries. Whether or not we’ll ever see a proper new entry into the Heretic/Hexen world is, unfortunately, something that remains to be seen. Spiritual successors, such as AMID EVIL and the upcoming Graven reap the fields which were sown of Hexen’s seeds. Activision and Bethesda may never see eye to eye on the subject of reviving Heretic or Hexen or maybe even the fabled Hecatomb, but one thing is clear: regardless of the corporate greed which aborted the lifespan of this wonderful series, the first three games of this series live on as passionate exercises in dark fantasy, examples of how to push the FPS genre forward while remaining firmly grounded in what makes it work. Heretic II is the Crystal Skull of this series -- many will find themselves better off forgetting it ever happened. Activision certainly has. And again, how ironic is it, that the very mandate which they laid down in order to spawn new sequels and twin franchises led to the death of them.

#heretic ii #raven software #id software #activision #bethesda #heretic #hexen #thoughts on #ruby ranger #ck burch #ranger report #classic gaming #long post #pc gaming #quake #quake ii engine

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jeanvaljean24601 · 4 years

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Watch Dogs: Legion Hands-On — A World Worth Exploring

Watch Dogs: Legion follows the series’ established hack-heavy formula, but the new recruitment system adds a refreshing layer of intrigue underneath your run of the mill missions. All of which still have the fun of outsmarting enemies or finding the right angle to solve a puzzle, download a key/file, or wreak havoc from afar. But the most appealing part of Watch Dogs: Legion is finding and recruiting new people. From potential new weapons to lovable characters with fascinating backgrounds and recruitment missions, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by expanding DedSec.

Watch Dogs Legion’s Degrees of Dystopian.Set in near-future London, the bombings DedSec was framed for have led to an authoritarian state in which Albion - a private military corporation - has taken over policing while an intelligence community, led by Signal Intelligence Response Service (SIRS), spies on London’s citizens. In an attempt to clear DedSec, you’re tasked with finding out who is responsible for the London bombings. Villains include Nigel Cass, CEO of Albion, and Mary Kelly, leader of an organized crime syndicate in London. x96 tv box

In keeping with the series norms, Watch Dogs: Legion operates in the extremes of tech-gone-too-far and corporations-up-to-no-good. It’s what I expect, but as an exaggeration of where society could head, some storylines are more believable and intriguing than others. An Albion security guard making a janky deal to get medicine felt like a natural extension of the current ways governments fail their people, but an evil CEO shooting someone with a room full of high-powered witnesses felt more cartoonishly evil than cleverly dystopian.

Making every character playable is a narrative risk, but it’s one Watch Dogs: Legion seems to pull off based on what I’ve played so far. Those who felt Marcus Holloway’s cutscene persona didn’t match his mid-mission murders may have a hard time buying into the idea of convincing anyone on the street to join what’s publicly viewed as a terrorist organization — favors aside.

The script differences highlight each character as a unique individual rather than a generic stand-in. From the reserved yet no-nonsense attitude of the old lady I added to my team to my recently recruited Albion guard frantically chatting while she drives through London as if to say “Oh my god; I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”

And at the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with things being a bit video game-y if the ends justify the means, and in Watch Dogs: Legion they seem to do just that. Playing as anyone goes as narratively smoothly as it can, given the gameplay, and the experience of recruiting randos makes for a joyous open-world experience. android tv box

While there are plenty of new elements to Watch Dogs: Legion, such as ridable cargo drones, the fundamentals are still present. Take over cameras to redirect power, download data, or interact with nearby objects to create distractions or explosions. Distract enemies by sending something to their phones. Or go straight into combat, which leans even more heavily on player choice with enemies only using melee attacks against you until you pull out your gun and decide it’s time for a firefight. This is particularly convenient for those looking to stealth and hack their way through encounters.

My demo dropped me to the midpoint of the game where missions were a routine to-do list of heading from location to location, hacking drones to scope out the area, and then hacking cameras to download access keys or cause mayhem. At this point in the game the ability to cloak enemy bodies was available, allowing for a more aggressive playstyle, with stealth easier to pull off without alerting foes. London’s various buildings, tourist spots, and construction sites made for a fun playground to strategize my way through each gig.

The loop may be familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. As usual, I found that causing destruction without getting my hands dirty was far more amusing than doing stealth takedowns of less than intelligent A.I who have dull walking patterns and are easily lured or distracted. Seeing how many enemies I can kill by stringing hacks to set off carefully timed explosions before I even step foot in a building never ceased to satisfy. If I was spotted, I found it easier to lean on whatever guns I had available than to bother regaining my cover or fighting hand to hand.

Fast travel still exists and some characters even have their own vehicles (often equipped with useful tech), but otherwise there’s good old-fashioned carjacking. A clever, futuristic touch is the option to steal a self-driving car (just look for the icon on the windshield). No driver or passenger punching required!

Driving still feels arcade-y at heart but some vehicles control better than others. The narrower and more roundabout-filled London streets make for a slower, more challenging drive than speeding down San Francisco. Of course, there isn’t much of an immediate penalty for running over lampposts or even pedestrians.

However, upon closer examination you’ll notice that running over someone makes them like you less. Good luck recruiting the person you just hospitalized (still possible! But an awkward icebreaker once they recover). Albion may come after you if they see you commit a crime, but losing them isn’t too difficult as long as you put enough distance between the two of you. Some nice touches include the fact that they can follow you into buildings — your safe house is inaccessible when you’re under pursuit — and if you’re cornered, an electrical device can latch onto your car, rendering it undrivable.

Making Your Team is a Dream.By far, Watch Dogs: Legion’s biggest and most impressive differentiator is the ability to play as anyone. Though getting complete intel on a person (down to their schedule) requires you to upgrade the DeepProfiler by using Tech Points you find hidden in the world. Getting to know them will tip you off to what they’re looking for and unlock their recruitment missions to turn an initial No into a Yes. x96 tv box

The borough uprising system lets you take on missions to empower a borough and give them a more positive outlook on DedSec. Some recruitments will be mandatory as part of the campaign, such as an Albion guard, but you mostly have free reign. If you just want to get the best of the best, DedSec will mark a few people of interest on your map who have been predetermined as good recruits, such as a Drone Expert and Bee Keeper. But you’re also free to recruit whoever is roaming around London.

The first person who caught my eye was an adorable old lady who was looking for some Darts competition. To recruit her, the first step was to go to the pub and play her in Darts, which is one of the most appealing mini-game side quests I’ve ever had the option to do. Hell yes, I want to play this old lady in Darts to get her to join DeadSec! Winning led to her recruitment mission of investigating how her job replaced the 300 workers who were laid off.

I could see this recruitment loop getting stale over time but, during my brief session, I adored every moment of it because I was doing it for my new recruit and my reward was having her there for the rest of my adventure - despite the fact that the mission itself was nothing special.

Unfortunately, she was arrested shortly after being recruited. Despite previous plans for mandatory permadeath, no one dies in Watch Dogs: Legion unless you opt-in to play with permadeath on. Instead, they just get arrested or hospitalized and locked by a timer. You can go to the police station and potentially get them out early but the easier solution is to just switch to a different operative. Having certain operatives on your team such as Albion guards, police officers, or EMTs will decrease your time in jail or the hospital.

A Dynamic and Diverse Group.Each character has their own loadouts, perks, professions, personalities, and backgrounds. Weapons and tools are shared across your team and can be swapped, but there are some gadgets and guns that are locked to certain types of recruits.

Uniform Access allows for certain characters to enter restricted areas more easily. So walking into a construction site as a construction worker means I can more freely walk through the area and it takes longer for enemies to detect my presence. However, they can still realize I don’t belong there so it’s not an instant win.

My assassin had a slew of powerful guns at her disposal but the graffiti artist had a paintball gun and would spray folks in the face after executing a takedown. Even across folks from the same background there’s some level of variation. android tv box

For instance, one construction worker will have a different set of tools than another.There were some rough edges in the build I played. When characters are defeated the animation looks a bit goofy, and there are some questionable drivers. But some of these may be cleared up by launch. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Watch Dogs: Legion and grew attached to the different characters, their arsenals, and their sparkling personalities. The lack of a primary main character doesn’t detract from the story. Instead, it incentivizes exploring and immersing myself in a world I otherwise may have ignored in favor of mainlining the story.

Watch Dogs: Legion’s gameplay follows the established formula of hacking devices to accomplish your task at hand with the option to go in guns blazing - though it’s the less enticing route when you have plenty of gadgets at hand and drones overhead.

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stepphase · 3 years

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Cyberpunk 2077 Download for PC? Official Video Games

Cyberpunk 2077 has invited you to explore Night City. Of course, there is a fictional metropolis on America’s west coast that is jam-packed with the crime, opportunity, and anything your black heart desires. After all, it is based on Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop RPG. As well as, Cyberpunk is a bleak game that sees the corporations.

In fact, both domestic and foreign keeps a stranglehold on the military tech, drugs, health care, virtually, cybernetic advancements. Everything in common person could need or want. As well as, you can play as a mercenary V. In fact, a person is caught up in a job that is lasting in repercussions throughout its story campaign. As well as, you must hack, shoot, and slice your way out of trouble in a sprawling, open-world action-RPG. After all, this is a highly anticipated PC game offers that is thrilling gameplay that you will love it. Also, atmosphere-oozing sights also sound and those hours of story that have heavy missions but it feels undercooked because of large and small bugs.

The State of Affairs

After all, the Cyberpunk 2077 society has spiraled in a state of Weimar like debauchery and decadence. With advertisements which is peddle of everything from the snacks to the sex plastered on nearly city facet. As well as, the Humankind has embraced cybernetic modifications. Also, every dinky neighborhood across town have a cybernetic mod. Which is called a Ripperdoc, also eager and they are ready to slap new and also, horrifying body enhancements in you for right price.

In fact, You will play as V. Of course, the mercenary who will takes odd jobs across the Night City vast underworld. After all, the game will start that you can customize V look, stat and background. As well as, its character creator is not particularly robust. After all, there are many interesting option which is to explore like tattoos and cybernetic facial implants. In fact, You are starting to stats boost specific talent that once you are into the game proper. like for an example I boosted V's Cool stats and Reflex. So its weapon and stealth and weapon perks opened up relatively early in my playthrough.

After all, The background that you have select is determines V's prologue tutorial. And those impacts how you will tackle mission objectives. As well as, a side quest tasked a Nomad-based character with searching for a cop. Who has rocked the proverbial boat by investigating the criminals with clout than she had anticipated? In fact, no one knows the cop location. So it was up to if I will ask around. After all, an odd hooker recognized her, but the demand is a cash for the intel. Of course, V recognizes Nomad in the neighborhood who offer intel after a few if conversation. As well as, it's letting me bypass the sex worker extortion. After all, these Scenarios pop up regularly throughout 2077's campaign.

The Future You Chose

After all, this game is classic and future-noir tropes. As well as, its content is familiar to anyone who has played the Deus Ex games or seen the Blade Runner films are not present in the main storyline. In fact, they are prominently featured in Cyberpunk 2077 a lot of side missions. As well as, its campaign paints the world which has moved beyond its ethical quandaries which are trans-humanism raises. As well as, its Technology and synthetic is a part of everyday life. And its concepts like organic barely exist. Of course, everyone is enhanced in some ways and its culture is grown to embrace also fetishize cybernetic technology.

In fact, This campaign does not ask for big questions that set an action-packed journey through the flashy and bizarre Night City streets. After all, its side quests are where are the story's of the heart truly lies. Of course, it is similar to Assassin Creed Valhalla. In fact, Cyberpunk 2077 side quests flesh is out from the world and people in ways that its campaign does not. Also, the backstories add more to the narrative which should not be optional. In fact, they are essential for playing if you are ready for the full Night City experience.

Blast, Hack and Slash

After all, there are many ways that are to build V. As well as, you can go all-in just on hacking. That will give you the multitude of saboteur abilities that will let you hijack the cameras, defense enemies, and systems. If you will find yourself outgun, and hack grenades on your assailant’s belt and blow him. So nearby compatriots to kingdom come. Or else you can just use a local network to infect the enemies with the debilitations to prevent them from moving. The cool stat of umbrella houses all the assassination and sneaking abilities that you could want in. After all, if the poison, or silent movement, and the bonus damage undercover are more in your speed. This is the place where you have to invest your level-up points.

As well as, the skill trees are massive that is bloated by the passive boosts like reload speed, damage, or critical-hit chance. In fact, that is not to say that the unique moves and the abilities are not there. Also, you can build for melee damage, stealth, evasion, gunplay, and other combat styles. In fact, the skill tree is not nearly as expansive as it initially seems. After all, you will make many incremental improvements to your character rather than the larger ones that are more noticeable. In fact, I would have perks that are consolidated to have more impact. That delivers a smaller and more concise, skill tree system.

After all, the combat is satisfying so thanks to the game's play style and the weapon variety. As well as, the Power Weapons is fancy lingo for the ballistics like machine guns, shotguns, and revolvers shred targets. Of course, you can easily decapitate assailants if you will pop them into the right place. Also, tech weapons will use railgun-style electromagnets to evaporate anything. If any problem you will aim at the disappears with the pull of the trigger. In fact, the smart weapons will target and curve the bullets around to the cover and corners. which will remind me of the silly weapon scene from The Fifth Element.

In fact, Melee is nothing to sneeze at it either. As well as, the bare knuckles do the surprisingly well in the scrap. But you can not arm yourself with a limb-hacking swords, good old bludgen, grappling mantis claws. Or the other body modifications that will enhance your brutish and physical prowess. After all, the enemies are resilient but not spongey like the shooter-RPGs. In fact, the foes to take a beating but they are stick around enough for you to get the creative that how you kill them. Of course, I had never felt to cheated what the game threw my way. Of course, I run the low ammunition regularly. because I went half on melee and running out of the ammo.

Kinks to Iron

After all, the Cyberpunk 2077 is the fascinating world and the great gameplay systems. In fact, the game is pack with bugs. As well as, sometimes the elevators do not load or do not work. Of course, enemies occasionally bug out and the mindlessly stand around waiting for you that you will shoot them. In fact, the characters teleport into scenes if they did not load properly. Also, NPCs drive through scenery and speed off in sunset. Also, the side quest did not complete correctly. Of course, I force to restart the game from the previous checkpoint.

As well as, these issues are the game-breaking problems and they are frequent. In fact, if you will buy the game at launch then you have to expect to see the bugs at play through. After all, the Developer CD Projekt Red have patch alleviate these issues.

Can Your PC Run Cyberpunk 2077's?

Of course, the Cyberpunk 2077 is open-world games. After all, this is grimy aesthetic off-putting. When compared to Deus Ex then the Mankind Divided's the clean and bright environments. Also, the Night City is larger and more interconnected to the world that is fallen on hard times.

Of course, the Night City is pack with a visual delights. Also, the car is interiors drip to detail and the streets is densely pack ads and cyber-enhanced NPCs. As well as, It is good to drive around the town also in the environments. After all, sitting in the shadow room and conversing with gangsters, clients, and kingpins looks stylish and cool.

After all, the game elements are not pulse-pounding action sequences stories. It is driven around the town during missions and enjoying Night City's sounds and sights. In fact, CD Projekt Red have craft world that visual settings suit PC and the game at best atmosphere.

Cyberpunk 2077 System Requirements

Of course, the Cyberpunk 2077 is the first game in Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card feel latest. After all, this game is default to the Medium settings on my gaming desktop. With CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 / GPU GTX 970 / RAM 16GB. In fact, this setting deliver best visuals that moved at 30 fps. Also, the Low frame rate will dance betweem 40fps and 50fps. But the gameplay is not smooth the visual hit. After all, playing on the High or Ultra High will drop the frame rate to 20s low that is not the trouble.

Of course, to play the Cyberpunk 2077 you have to need a PC that contains atleast the Windows 7 OS / CPU: AMD FX 8310 or Intel i5 3570k / Graphic Card: AMD Radeon RX 470 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 / RAM: 8GB / Space: minimum of 70GB or more. After all, the recommended system requirements setting is Intel CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200 or i7 4790 / Graphic Card: AMD Radeon RX 590 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 and RAM is 12GB.

In fact, you can purchase the Cyberpunk 2077 at jsut $59.99 from video game stores. As well as, this game is supporting many features of steam like Steam Trading Cards, Steam Cloud, and Steam Achievements. In fact, this is full controller support. There is no way to make character stroll when using a keyboard and mouse.

Unpolished Gem

In fact, I was not impress with the Cyberpunk 2077. Because the distinct west coast grime turn me off and few perks that did not appeal to my play style. After all, I fell so good and fall in love with the Night City. As well as, if bugs can get iron out then the Cyberpunk 2077 is potential Game of the Year candidate. Here’s we are hoping that the CD Projekt Red will push out fixes.

We are here to hear from you

After all, you can contact us to let us know if we are missing something on our page. I hope you like it and thank you for your visit.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Cyberpunk 2077 Cars: Everything You Need To Know

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While Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t emphasize vehicles as much as other open-world games like Grand Theft Auto, you are going to rely on the game’s array of cars, bikes, and trucks in order to get around Night City and the Badlands.

Like most other things in Cyberpunk 2077, though, the ins and outs of how vehicles work aren’t necessarily explained to the player. It’s not unusual to find yourself halfway through the game without any idea of how to acquire certain vehicles or what you are supposed to do with them.

With that in mind, here are a few answers to some of the most common questions regarding Cyberpunk 2077‘s vehicles.

Can You Steal Cars in Cyberpunk 2077?

You can steal most of the cars you see in Night City, but some of them are easier to take than others.

While clunkers and fairly average cars in Cyberpunk 2077 can be stolen at the push of a button, others require you to have the appropriate number of hacking or body attribute points. It’s generally not worth pursuing either of those builds just to steal more cars in the city, but if you’ve already chosen to focus on either of those attributes, then consider the extra grand theft auto opportunities to be a fringe benefit.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Just be aware that trying to steal cars in the city may result in a bystander reporting you to the police.

Can You Store Vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077?

You can store vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077, but at the moment, the only place to permanently park them is in the garage by V’s apartment.

You should also know that the only vehicles you can store in that garage are the ones that you acquired through missions or legally purchased. You’re currently not able to permanently store stolen vehicles.

It’s also worth noting that you can only “summon” one vehicle at a time. If you want to change the vehicle that comes when you trigger its AI tracking system, you’ll need to go to your garage and swap your currently selected vehicle.

Can I Buy Cars in Cyberpunk 2077?

Yes, you can buy cars in Cyberpunk 2077, but the process of acquiring them is a little strange.

There are no traditional car dealerships in Night City (at least none that have been found yet). Instead, opportunities to buy new cars are typically gated behind certain progression events. Completing specific missions will unlock the opportunity to buy a new car, as will earning enough Street Cred.

Basically, the best way to unlock cars is to keep driving around the city, keep completing side quests, and keep progressing through the main story. Eventually, opportunities to purchase new cars will be added to your side quest log.

Just know that unlocking the chance to purchase a new vehicle doesn’t necessarily unlock the vehicle itself. While it’s possible to earn free rides, you’ll still have to pay for many of the game’s vehicles. That’s potentially very bad news considering that some of the best cars in the game come equipped with the biggest price tags in Night City.

Can I Customize Cars in Cyberpunk 2077?

The very short answer to this question is “no.”

While CD Projekt Red was working on a car customization system, they revealed that this feature was abandoned at some point during development. It’s not entirely clear what the problem was, but it would be nice if car customization options were added to the game down the line along with the ability to tweak your character’s physical appearance once you’re past the initial character creation phase.

Can I Just Fast Travel in Cyberpunk 2077?

There is a fast travel option in Cyberpunk 2077, and it’s tied to Night City’s public transportation system: Night City Area Rapid Transit.

If you look at your map, you should see various NCART icons spread throughout the city. By visiting one of these NCART points, you should be able to jump from one public transportation hub to another. For now, though, there doesn’t seem to be any other way to fast travel from a specific point in the city to another specific point in the city.

Are There Motorcyles in Cyberpunk 2077?

While cars and trucks tend to dominate the streets of Night City, there appear to be at least five kinds of motorcycles you can acquire through theft, purchase, and unlocks.

Actually, one of the best ways to get a motorcycle early on is to just steal one from the Tyger Claws. It’s not a permanent solution, but the bike’s design is inspired by the motorcycle in Akira, so it’s got that working for it.

How Can I Unlock The Porsche in Cyberpunk 2077?

Yes, there is a Porsche in Cyberpunk 2077, and it turns out that it’s actually not that hard to unlock. You just need to follow these steps.

*Slight Side Mission Spoilers*

Proceed through the main story until you unlock the “Chippin’ In” side mission.

Meet Rogue.

During the mission, put your weapons away and choose to spare Grayson.

At the end of the mission, you should be rewarded with the Porsche 911.

How Do I Unlock Keanu Reeves’ Motorcycle in Cyberpunk 2077?

A recent Cyberpunk 2077 teaser revealed that a motorcycle made by a company that Keanu Reeves‘ co-owns would be included in the game. While not every Cyberpunk 2077 feature made it to release, this is one promise that CD Projekt Red did keep.

How do you get it? There are currently three known ways to acquire one. The first requires you to raise your Street Cred to 40 and buy an Arche Nazare motorcycle from a fixer in Westbrook for a whopping 138,000 eddies. Ouch.

If that price tag is a bit too high, then you can earn an Arche Nazare for free by completing either the “Heroes” or “The Highwayman” side missions. Without getting into spoilers, the one you get through the “Heroes” side mission is a little cooler and has a personal story attached to it. It can also be acquired very early on.

What is The Full List of Available Cars and Vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077?

For the record, “available” is the keyword here, as there are some cars in the game (most notably, flying cars) which you will see around the city but seemingly can’t drive or pilot at this time.

Having said that, here’s the full list of drivable cars, trucks, and motorcycles that have been discovered so far:

Arch Nazare Archer Quartz EC-T2 R660 Archer Hella EC-D I360 Brennan Apollo Chevillon Thrax 388 Jefferson Chevillon Emperor 620 Ragnar Herrera Outlaw GTS Makigai Maimai P126 Makigai Supron FS3 Mizutani Shion MZ2 Mizutani Shion Coyote Porsche 911 Turbo Quadra Turbo-R 740 Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech Quadra Type-66 Rayfield Aerondight Guinevere Rayfield Caliburn Thorton Colby C125 Thorton Colby CX410 Butte Thorton Colby “Little Mule” Thorton Galena G240 Thorton Mackinaw MTL1 Villefort Alvarado V4F 570 Delegate Villefort Alvarado V4FC 580 Villefort Cortes V5000 Valor Villefort Cortes Delamin No. 21 Villefort Columbus V340-F Freight Yaiba Kusanagi

There are a few variations to some of those vehicles (including a few special variations that can only be unlocked by making the right story choices), but that’s a rough overview of the game’s current drivable vehicle list.

The post Cyberpunk 2077 Cars: Everything You Need To Know appeared first on Den of Geek.

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illbefinealonereads · 4 years

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Today, the Don’t Read the Comments blog tour is stopping by illbefinealone reads. Keep scrolling to learn more about the book, as well as read an exclusive excerpt.

Don't Read the Comments Eric Smith On Sale Date: January 28, 2020 9781335016027, 1335016023 Hardcover $18.99 USD, $23.99 CAD Ages 13 And Up 368 pages

Slay meets Eliza and Her Monsters in Eric Smith’s Don't Read the Comments, an #ownvoices story in which two teen gamers find their virtual worlds—and blossoming romance—invaded by the real-world issues of trolling and doxing in the gaming community.

Divya Sharma is a queen. Or she is when she’s playing Reclaim the Sun, the year’s hottest online game. Divya—better known as popular streaming gamer D1V—regularly leads her #AngstArmada on quests through the game’s vast and gorgeous virtual universe. But for Divya, this is more than just a game. Out in the real world, she’s trading her rising-star status for sponsorships to help her struggling single mom pay the rent.

Gaming is basically Aaron Jericho’s entire life. Much to his mother’s frustration, Aaron has zero interest in becoming a doctor like her, and spends his free time writing games for a local developer. At least he can escape into Reclaim the Sun—and with a trillion worlds to explore, disappearing should be easy. But to his surprise, he somehow ends up on the same remote planet as celebrity gamer D1V.

At home, Divya and Aaron grapple with their problems alone, but in the game, they have each other to face infinite new worlds…and the growing legion of trolls populating them. Soon the virtual harassment seeps into reality when a group called the Vox Populi begin launching real-world doxxing campaigns, threatening Aaron’s dreams and Divya’s actual life. The online trolls think they can drive her out of the game, but everything and everyone Divya cares about is on the line…

And she isn’t going down without a fight.

Buy Links: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Read-Comments-Eric-Smith/dp/1335016023 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-read-the-comments-eric-smith/1131303425#/ Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Dont-Read-Comments/Eric-Smith/9781335016027?id=7715580291810 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/don-t-read-the-comments Indie Bound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335016027 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Eric_Smith_Don_t_Read_the_Comments?id=Go6PDwAAQBAJ

Eric Smith is an author, prolific book blogger, and literary agent from New Jersey, currently living in Philadelphia. Smith cohosts Book Riot’s newest podcast, HEY YA, with non-fiction YA author Kelly Jensen. He can regularly be found writing for Book Riot’s blog, as well as Barnes & Noble’s Teen Reads blog, Paste Magazine, and Publishing Crawl. Smith also has a growing Twitter platform of over 40,000 followers (@ericsmithrocks).

Author website: https://www.ericsmithrocks.com/ Twitter: @ericsmithrocks Instagram: @ericsmithrocks Facebook: @ericsmithwrites

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Rating: 4/5 stars

Review: Don’t Read the Comments tackles some heavy subjects, cyber bullying as one of the main ones. But it’s done beautifully, and though the subject matter is that way, it didn’t make me feel heavy while I was reading it. Eric Smith does an absolutely marvelous job at writing from a first person female POV. His excellent writing style, as well as the pace that perfectly suited the story, made the book unputdownable. I really enjoyed the characters. They felt fresh as they were developed excellently. The dialogue is excellent, it felt natural and flowed really well. All of it put together kept the book feeling dynamic, and entertaining throughout. This is a read that you definitely shouldn’t skip.

Excerpt:

1 Divya

Mom. We’ve been over this. Don’t read the comments,” I say, sighing as my mother stares at me with her fretful deep-set eyes. They’re dark green, just like mine, and stand out against her soft brown skin. Wrinkle lines trail out from the corners like thin tree branches grown over a lifetime of worrying.

I wish I could wash away all of her worries, but I only seem to be causing her more lately.

“I’m just not comfortable with it anymore,” my mom counters. “I appreciate what you’re doing with…you know, your earnings or however that sponsor stuff works, but I can’t stand seeing what they’re saying about you on the Internet.”

“So don’t read the comments!” I exclaim, reaching out and taking her hands in mine. Her palms are weathered, like the pages of the books she moves around at the library, and I canfeel the creases in her skin as my fingers run over them. Bundles of multicolored bangles dangle from both of her wrists, clinking about lightly.

“How am I supposed to do that?” she asks, giving my hands a squeeze. “You’re my daughter. And they say such awful things. They don’t even know you. Breaks my heart.”

“What did I just say?” I ask, letting go of her hands, trying to give her my warmest it’s-going-to-be-okay smile. I know she only reads the blogs, the articles covering this and that, so she just sees the replies there, the sprawling comments—and not what people say on social media. Not what the trolls say about her. Because moms are the easiest target for those online monsters.

“Yes, yes, I’m aware of that sign in your room with your slogan regarding comments,” Mom scoffs, shaking her head and getting to her feet. She groans a little as she pushes herself off the tiny sofa, which sinks in too much. Not in the comfortable way a squishy couch might, but in a this-piece-of-furniture-needs-to-be-thrown-away-because-it’s-probably-doing-irreversible-damage-to-my-back-and-internal-organs kind of way. She stretches her back, one hand on her waist, and I make a mental note to check online for furniture sales at Target or Ikea once she heads to work.

“Oof, I must have slept on it wrong,” Mom mutters, turning to look at me. But I know better. She’s saying that for my benefit. The air mattress on her bed frame—in lieu of an actual mattress—isn’t doing her back any favors.

I’d better add a cheap mattress to my list of things to search for later. Anything is better than her sleeping on what our family used to go camping with.

Still, I force myself to nod and say, “Probably.” If Mom knew how easily I saw through this dance of ours, the way we pretend that things are okay while everything is falling apart around us, she’d only worry more.

Maybe she does know. Maybe that’s part of the dance.

I avert my gaze from hers and glance down at my watch. It’s the latest in smartwatch tech from Samsung, a beautiful little thing that connects to my phone and computer, controls the streaming box on our television… Hell, if we could afford smart lights in our apartment, it could handle those, too. It’s nearly 8:00 p.m., which means my Glitch subscribers will be tuning in for my scheduled gaming stream of Reclaim the Sun at any minute. A couple social media notifications start lighting up the edges of the little screen, but it isn’t the unread messages or the time that taunt me.

It’s the date.

The end of June is only a few days away, which means the rent is due. How can my mom stand here and talk about me getting rid of my Glitch channel when it’s bringing in just enough revenue to help cover the rent? To pay for groceries? When the products I’m sent to review or sponsored to wear—and then consequently sell—have been keeping us afloat with at least a little money to walk around with?

“I’m going to start looking for a second job,” Mom says, her tone defeated.

“Wait, what?” I look away from my watch and feel my heartbeat quicken. “But if you do that—”

“I can finish these summer classes another time. Maybe next year—”

“No. No way.” I shake my head and suck air in throughmy gritted teeth. She’s worked so hard for this. We’ve worked so hard for this. “You only have a few more classes!”

“I can’t let you keep doing this.” She gestures toward my room, where my computer is.

“And I can’t let you work yourself to death for… What? This tiny apartment, while that asshole doesn’t do a damn thing to—”

“Divya. Language,” she scolds, but her tone is undermined by a soft grin peeking in at the corner of her mouth. “He’s still your fath—”

“I’ll do my part,” I say resolutely, stopping her from saying that word. “I can deal with it. I want to. You will not give up going to school. If you do that, he wins. Besides, I’ve…got some gadgets I can sell this month.”

“I just… I don’t want you giving up on your dreams, so I can keep chasing mine. I’m the parent. What does all this say about me?” My mom exhales, and I catch her lip quivering just a little. Then she inhales sharply, burying whatever was about to surface, and I almost smile, as weird as that sounds. It’s just our way, you know?

Take the pain in. Bury it down deep.

“We’re a team.” I reach out and grasp her hands again, and she inhales quickly once more.

It’s in these quiet moments we have together, wrestling with these challenges, that the anger I feel—the rage over this small apartment that’s replaced our home, the overdrafts in our bank accounts, all the time I’ve given up—is replaced with something else.

With how proud I am of her, for starting over the way she has.

“I’m not sure what I did to deserve you.”

Deserve.

I feel my chest cave in a little at the word as I look again at the date on the beautiful display of this watch. I know I need to sell it. I know I do. The couch. That crappy mattress. My dwindling bank account. The upcoming bills.

The required sponsorship agreement to wear this watch in all my videos for a month, in exchange for keeping the watch, would be over in just a few days. I could easily get $500 for it on an auction site or maybe a little less at the used-electronics shop downtown. One means more money, but it also means having my address out there, which is something I avoid like the plague—though having friends like Rebekah mail the gadgets for me has proved a relatively safe way to do it. The other means less money, but the return is immediate, at least. Several of the employees there watch my stream, however, and conversations with them are often pretty awkward.

I’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, I’d get to keep this one thing. Isn’t that something I deserve? Between helping Mom with the rent while she finishes up school and pitching in for groceries and trying to put a little money aside for my own tuition in the fall at the community college… God, I’d at least earned this much, right?

The watch buzzes against my wrist, a pleasant feeling. As a text message flashes across the screen, I feel a pang of wonder and regret over how a display so small can still have a better resolution than the television in our living room.

THE GALAXY WAITS FOR NO ONE,

YOU READY D1V?

—COMMANDER (RE)BEKAH

I smile at the note from my producer-slash-best-friend, then look up as my mom makes her way toward the front door of our apartment, tossing a bag over her shoulder.

“I’ll be back around ten or so,” Mom says, soundingtired. “Just be careful, okay?”

“I always am,” I promise, walkingover to give her a hug. It’s sweet, her constant reminders to be careful, to check in, especially since all I generally do while she’s gone is hang out in front of the computer. But I get it. Even the Internet can be a dangerous place. The threats on social media and the emails that I get—all sent by anonymous trolls with untraceable accounts—are proof of that.

Still, as soon as the door closes, I bolt across the living room and into my small bedroom, which is basically just a bed, a tiny dresser, and my workstation. I’ve kept it simple since the move and my parents split.

The only thing that’s far from simple is my gaming rig.

When my Glitch stream hit critical mass at one hundred thousand subscribers about a year and a half ago, a gaming company was kind enough to sponsor my rig. It’s extravagant to the point of being comical, with bright neon-blue lighting pouring out the back of the system and a clear case that shows off the needless LED illumination. Like having shiny lights makes it go any faster. I never got it when dudes at my school put flashy lights on their cars, and I don’t get it any more on a computer.

But it was free, so I’m certainly not going to complain.

I shake the mouse to awaken the sleeping monster, and my widescreen LED monitor flashes to life. It’s one of those screens that bend toward the edges, the curves of the monitor bordering on sexy. I adjust my webcam, which—along with my beaten-up Ikea table that’s not even a desk—is one of the few non-sponsored things in my space. It’s an aging thing, but the resolution is still HD and flawless, so unless a free one is somehow going to drop into my lap—and it probably won’t, because you can’t show off a webcam in a digital stream or a recorded sponsored video when you’re filming with said camera—it’ll do the trick.

I navigate over to Glitch and open my streaming application. Almost immediately, Rebekah’s face pops up in a little window on the edge of my screen. I grin at the sight of her new hairstyle, her usually blond and spiky hair now dyed a brilliant shade of blood orange, a hue as vibrant as her personality. The sides of her head are buzzed, too, and the overall effect is awesome.

Rebekah smiles and waves at me. “You ready to explore the cosmos once more?” she asks, her voice bright in my computer’s speakers. I can hear her keys clicking loudly as she types, her hands making quick work of something on the other side of the screen. I open my mouth to say something, but she jumps in before I can. “Yes, yes, I’ll be on mute once we get in, shut up.”

I laugh and glance at myself in the mirror I’ve got attached to the side of my monitor with a long metal arm—an old bike mirror that I repurposed to make sure my makeup and hair are on point in these videos. Even though the streams are all about the games, there’s nothing wrong with looking a little cute, even if it’s just for myself. I run a finger over one of my eyebrows, smoothing it out, and make a note to tweeze them just a little bit later. I’ve got my mother’s strong brows,black and rebellious. We’re frequently in battle with one another, me armed with my tweezers, my eyebrows wielding their growing-faster-than-weeds genes.

“How much time do we have?” I ask, tilting my head back and forth.

“About five minutes. And you look fine, stop it,” she grumbles. I push the mirror away, the metal arm making a squeaking noise, and I see Rebekah roll her eyes. “You could just use a compact like a normal person, you know.”

“It’s vintage,” I say, leaning in toward my computer mic. “I’m being hip.”

“You. Hip.” She chuckles. “Please save the jokes for the stream. It’s good content.”

I flash her a scowl and load up my social feeds on the desktop, my watch still illuminating with notifications. I decide to leave them unchecked on the actual device and scope them out on the computer instead, so when people are watching, they can see the watch in action. That should score me some extra goodwill with sponsors, and maybe it’ll look like I’m more popular than people think I am.

Because that’s my life. Plenty of social notifications, but zero texts or missed calls.

The feeds are surprisingly calm this evening, a bundle of people posting about how excited they are for my upcoming stream, playing Reclaim the Sun on their own, curious to see what I’m finding… Not bad. There are a few dumpster-fire comments directed at the way I look and some racist remarks by people with no avatars, cowards who won’t show their faces, but nothing out of the usual.

Ah. Lovely. Someone wants me to wear less clothing in thisstream. Blocked. A link to someone promoting my upcoming appearance at New York GamesCon, nice. Retweeted. A post suggesting I wear a skimpier top, and someone agreeing. Charming. Blocked and blocked.

Why is it that the people who always leave the grossest, rudest, and occasionally sexist, racist, or religiously intolerant comments never seem to have an avatar connected to their social profiles? Hiding behind a blank profile picture? How brave. How courageous.

And never mind all the messages that I assume are supposed to be flirtatious, but are actually anything but. Real original, saying “hey” and that’s it, then spewing a bunch of foul-mouthed nonsense when they don’t get a response. Hey, anonymous bro, I’m not here to be sexualized by strangers on the Internet. It’s creepy and disgusting. Can’t I just have fun without being objectified?

“Div!” Rebekah shouts, and I jump in my seat a little.

“Yeah, hey, I’m here,” I mumble, looking around for my Bluetooth earpiece, trying to force myself into a better mood.

This is why you don’t read the comments, Divya.

#booklr #blog tour #don't read the comments #eric smith #ynaall #yna4 #contempall #contemp4 #out2020 #read2019

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postgamecontent · 7 years

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Beyond Oasis: SEGA Genesis RPG Spotlight #2

Original Release Date: December 9, 1994

Original Hardware: SEGA Mega Drive

Developer/Publisher: Ancient/SEGA

In my article covering The Legend of Oasis, I already talked a little about Ancient Corporation. In short, the company was co-founded by famed composer Yuzo Koshiro and his mother, Tomo Koshiro, in 1990 in order to officially enter a development deal with SEGA. Koshiro had only done music for games up to that point, but he wanted to try his hand at more. For their part, SEGA needed someone to handle development of the Master System and Game Gear Sonic the Hedgehog games. After doing a fairly good job of that, Ancient was then tasked with assisting on the development of Streets of Rage 2, a sequel to the surprisingly successful SEGA belt-scrolling beat-em-up. At the same time, Ancient also made contributions to ActRaiser 2 and Robotrek, though mostly with regards to audio matters.

It wasn't until nearly four years later that Ancient finally got to develop something original of their very own. SEGA's 16-bit console was in a weird position during that generation. While it had failed to catch on in the Nintendo-dominated country of Japan, it was punching well above its weight in the rest of the world. This made for an interesting problem for the company. Most Japanese game companies had a tendency at this time to focus on the domestic market above all, a tactic which made a lot of sense for those publishers best known for RPGs. Japanese-style RPGs simply hadn't caught on well in the West yet, so the market was completely lopsided in Japan's favor. Thus, SEGA generally had to provide their own games in that genre if they wanted them. Luckily, they had quite a bit of great talent to work with in that regard.

By the time Beyond Oasis was released in late 1994, however, time was running out for the Genesis in Japan. The Saturn launched just before the end of the year, and SEGA of Japan clearly saw greater opportunities in betting on that hardware than trying to make something of the Genesis. Over in the West, SEGA was having a different problem. The Genesis was enormously successful, but its tech was really starting to show its age. SEGA of America was hesitant to put an end to the system, though, as software sales were still very strong. To that end, they put their support behind a couple of ill-conceived peripherals that asked a lot of money of customers to try to prop up hardware ready for retirement.

On the bright side, it meant that SEGA kept right on localizing nearly every interesting-looking Genesis game no matter how late it released or how niche it might have seemed. In a way, Beyond Oasis could not have had better timing. The character designs by Ayano Koshiro had a lot of appeal in market still in the throes of Aladdin-mania, and the action-oriented gameplay was more palatable to Western tastes than a more traditional RPG would have been. It looked great, sounded amazing, had a theme that stood out, and gameplay that was very well-suited to a gaming audience feverish for fighting games. Beyond Oasis didn't smash any sales records, but it did better than anyone expected it to. Ancient had pulled off the difficult task of successfully launching a new console RPG property in the West.

Sadly, SEGA of America's fears turned out to be valid. SEGA would never again see the level of success that they achieved with the Genesis. Not by half, even. Had it been otherwise, we might have been playing Oasis: Ali's Open World Adventure on our SEGA Pluto handhelds this year. Instead, the series ended after the poor sales showing of this game's follow-up. Ancient continued to work with SEGA fairly closely for a number of years after that, even contributing to the development of Yu Suzuki's Dreamcast adventure game Shenmue. They also made a few other action-RPGs, though none quite in the same style as Oasis. Their most recent game is a fast-paced tower defense game called Gotta Protectors, released on the 3DS in the West in 2016.

Compared to similar games in the genre at the time, Beyond Oasis is a really short game. While games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Illusion of Gaia, and Secret of Mana were all fifteen or more hours long, Beyond Oasis can easily be toppled in eight hours. A lot of that is owing to how linear the game is. There are some optional challenges along the way, and you're certainly able to wander around at times. There just isn't much of a reason to. The story seems to be pushing you along from one area to the next, and before you know it, the game is over. I probably would have been upset about that if I had bought the game instead of renting it, but it certainly made for the perfect weekend rental if nothing else. Sometimes if I couldn't find anything else to rent, I'd take another run through Beyond Oasis just because it wasn't a hassle to do so.

Indeed, I think the game's brisk pace is one of its strongest points. The game kicks off with a cool-looking cut-scene showing our hero Prince Ali coming into possession of a Gold Armlet. He returns to his home island just in time to see the village near the castle get attacked by ruffians. After taking care of them, you're nudged towards the castle, where your father lays out the job ahead of you. He tells you to find and awaken the four elemental spirits that obey your armlet so that you can stop the evil bearer of the silver armlet. With the next destination marked on your map, you head out to meet up with the first of the spirits.

Each of the spirits will require you to go through a dungeon of some sort, with each more elaborate and time consuming than the last. The first is basically a straight hallway with the spirit at the end. The second dungeon is much larger, less linear, and has some rudimentary puzzles to solve. By the third dungeon, you'll have to pull off some tricky platforming to go with the mazes and puzzles. It's a nice, smooth difficulty curve overall, though the platforming is always a pain due to the game's unusual controls. Basically, jumping and crouching are assigned to the same button. If you hold the button, you'll crouch. If you tap it or hold it and release it, you'll jump. It takes a lot of practice to get the timing down so that you don't fall into a brief crouch before a jump, and until you master that, you're probably going to make a lot of jumping errors. It's probably the main source of frustration in the game.

By contrast, the combat generally feels good. It's a bit stiff, particularly in comparison to its own follow-up, but it works well. Ali has a variety of special moves you can learn, and you can supplement his standard dagger with a number of different bonus weapons. Those weapons have durability limits, unfortunately, but the game throws enough of them at you that it really only becomes a mild issue at a few points during the adventure. There's nothing that you can't kill with your dagger, and if you happen to need anything else for puzzle-solving and the like, the game will almost certainly provide it for you. Various elements are more interactive with each other than you might expect. You can smack bombs back at enemies to have it explode on them instead, and any enemy that uses fire as an attack has a pretty good shot of lighting its friends up while it goes after you. These kinds of unexpected bits of logic help the world feel more alive, even if all of it is quite rudimentary.

As you meet up with each elemental spirit, you gain new abilities to help you out. The spirits can be very helpful, but you can only call them if there is some trace of their element around. Once they're out, you can keep them out so long as you have magic points remaining. Unfortunately, keeping them out causes your magic points to drop steadily. Again, necessary paths will almost always have a means of calling the appropriate spirit nearby, but there are lots of optional things to find that require you to keep the right spirit out and active for a while. The rewards for these optional paths rarely match the effort, but in a weird way it takes a lot of the pressure off of finding them, so I guess it's alright.

The game looks and sounds a treat as well, though that's probably to be expected from Ancient. Given the hardware limitations, the game really does look fantastic. The animations are good, the use of colors is superb, and there's quite a bit of variety in the surroundings. Koshiro had Genesis audio down to a science by this point and uses this game as an excuse to stretch his legs a little and try out some new styles of music. Some people don't care for it, but I think it does a good job of setting the atmosphere. The sound effects are great, too. You get a nice feeling of the impact when you hit an enemy, which is essential for an action-RPG in my books.

Outside of a few of the platforming segments, Beyond Oasis is just one of those games that is enjoyable to play on a very fundamental level. That and the presentation are the two aspects of this game that truly shine, with the rest of it tending towards adequacy rather than excellence. But it's enough. For a relatively brief game like this, I don't really care if the stories and characters don't go anywhere interesting. Nor am I particularly bothered by the lack of side-quests and other optional content. I really appreciate that stuff in some other action-RPGs, but I'm totally okay with how Beyond Oasis does things. It knows the kind of game it wants to be and does a great job of achieving its goals, and I think that's one of the reasons why the game has held up so well over time.

Indeed, I think I saw more people talking about Beyond Oasis when it got its Wii Virtual Console re-release than I did at the game's original launch. The game had a slight bit of competition due to coming out in North America just a month after the highly-anticipated Phantasy Star 4, and I think it got a little lost in the shuffle for some RPG fans as a result. The game certainly sold well enough, so someone was playing it, but I think the Wii Virtual Console opened a new audience for the game. While it was typically left out of Genesis compilations before that, it's been in most of the ones that have been released since and is now, I think, regarded as one of the many gems of the system's library.

If you want to play Beyond Oasis, you have lots of options open to you. As mentioned, it's on the Wii Virtual Console. It's also available in the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, as well as the SEGA Genesis and Mega Drive Classics Collection on Steam. If you want to play it on the original hardware, it can be a little expensive for anything other than a loose cart. Even then, you're looking at paying $30 or so, which is somewhat high relative to many games on the system. It's definitely worth playing no matter how you do it, though. Its brevity means it's not much of a burden to fit it into your schedule, so if you want to fill this particular gap in your history, I'd highly recommend it.

Previous: Shining in the Darkness

Next: Landstalker

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#retro #gaming #sega #ancient #sega genesis rpg spotlight #genesis #mega drive #rpg #beyond oasis #story of thor #yuzo koshiro

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tearasshouse · 7 years

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Attack on Backlog 2017 - No. 9

Final Fantasy XV

Breakdown: PS4 version at 80ish hrs for the Platinum. Plenty of post-game content left undone; plenty of pre-timeskip content left untouched; figure I’ll go back to the game someday (ha ha, not likely) and be like, oh wow, this single-player MMO still has a lot of questing left for me to do, cool (but that won’t happen).

Final Fantasy 15 is a big, beautiful, incomplete, incoherent but ultimately fulfilling and worthwhile experience that won’t disappoint if you have realistic expectations. So, it’s kind of like being in a relationship! Hah. Speaking of relationships, like the ones depicted in this game, and also like my own with the FF series...

TL;DR time! So far I’ve gotten as far as:

Sephiroth’s fight in FF7 where I parked my characters outside of the crater and went, Nah, putting a stop to that glorious (ly pathetic) summer where I spent my 13th or 14th birthday leveling up Materia or something. Whew. Somehow I just lost the nerve to continue despite grinding for hours upon hours. I didn’t even have KotR, so naturally I skipped Ruby Weapon and that just made defeating Sephiroth kind of... pointless?

disc 3 in FF9, but because I’d neglected and refused to learn Tetra Master up to that point, I pretty much hit a roadblock and could not progress. Thanks a lot! Thanks a fucking lot. I really liked this FF. The soft limits on class specialization, with the way weapons conferred different skills to different party members, but everyone could use pretty much anything, the soundtrack, the characters; a lot of it was great. Ditto about the story tho, wasn’t paying attention ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

fhe first 5 minutes of FFIV on the NDS.

almost 50 hours into Bravely Default, but put it down because the storybeats were just too inconsistently delivered, the grinding, though greatly alleviated with some QoL features, was still a huge grind, and something about the game just... never clicked.

taking a glancing look at copy of FFX/X-2 HD and putting the thing down because I have commitment issues.

the first 15 minutes of FF Type-0 HD.

and whoa, before I forget, Steam says I have 13.2 hours in FF13. So there’s that. Great music though! Paradigm Shifting is cool in theory too, I guess. But this game is just awful. And now I want to go back and play it. Why do I do this?

All in all a very poor showing from me. FFXV was, comparatively speaking, way easier to dig in. “A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers” they say. Well, I’m not sure if I fall into either of those camps. I guess I am a fan? Sorta? I couldn’t tell you about the lore, plot or characters of many of the games, but I do own one of these. And I used to listen non-stop to shitty low-bitrate .mp3s of Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtracks on my Walkman. And I had wallpapers of Rinoa and Yuna, and still own a really embarrassing FF8 wallscroll that was gifted to me?

So! As a casual fan then, I found this one... pretty good. I mean, there’s elements of every past Final Fantasy in its DNA. It feels like a Final Fantasy game, which is to say it feels like the ones which came after 12, which did the most to change up the ATB/turn based combat, and perhaps the composition/interaction of the characters, outside of maybe Tactics or 11.

There’s so much to like here that I’m willing to forgive its shortcomings and missed potential, even if, by the end, the things it gets right is in equal measure to the things it misses the mark on or flat out lacks. It has so much charm and warmth that I’m willing to forgive Square’s misguided reach for critical mass market appeal what with its numerous marketing tie-ins and cross-promotions, or its divvying up of exposition to tie-in films and DLC. At least it gave us that ridiculous Cup Noodle quest line. At least it gave us that. I’m even willing to forgive Chapter 13, and I didn’t even play Verse 2.

I’ve not followed the game at all, so its understandable the ones who clamoured for something like Versus XIII would be a bit irked. All those amazing tech demos and trailers they’ve released over the years? I understand the pain, but ya’ll only have yourself to blame for buying into the pre-release footage.

Yes, the Insomnia chapter was wholly underwhelming. Yes the pacing is weirdly rushed after you’ve hit Altissia onwards and becomes hyper linear. Yes Lestallum and Altissia are in general hilariously undercooked, non-interactive, tiny and I haven’t encountered something this disappointing since maybe hitting Markarth in Skyrim, where the magic of Skyrim’s first 50 hours really started to wear thin. We’ve truly hit a point where graphics tech has outpaced the ability and feasibility to render more organic, more reactive and believable AI simulation in towns and cities. Maybe all this increased fidelity strikes a dissonance with how we think worlds should be populated and behave? I don’t know. Witcher 3 looks incredible though, and perhaps that’s the game that shows you can have your cake and eat it too. Meaty, meaningful content that isn’t just throwaway Hunt quests, or helping some asshole with his car troubles for the umpteenth time. I’m of the opinion that all sidequests in RPGs devolve into kill or fetch quests, and the rare exception requires you to talk your way to success or solve some kind of puzzle and mechanically speaking there isn’t a whole lot you can do. So, that’s where good writing comes in. Fallout New Vegas, if I recall had fantastic writing in this regard. More recently NieR Automata had really rudimentary sidequests that were carried along with quirky written snippets that expanded upon the world. Then there’s the Witcher games and to a lesser extent the Yakuza series that construct entire stories around side content. Yes FFXV’s sidequests are... uniformly underwhelming. They’re all more or less MMO-like filler content for the sake of inflating the completion time and giving you some kind of incentive for exploring the world. And yes, Luna and Noct’s relationship is hilariously undercooked; she does her Aerith moment and it’s tits up from that point on. It’s a shame you can’t be with Iris though the game teases this; Aranea only shows up to do her thing and disappears; Cor straight up disappears; Gentiana does her thing and disappears, etc. People just disappear, for no apparent reason other than selling you DLC, or they didn’t know what to do with these characters because they are plot movers, nothing more. Sigh.

But you know what? It’s been awhile since I’ve played something like the first half of the game so yeah, sure, whatever. Throw on a podcast and go about overleveling past the main campaign. Go ahead and throw on that FF13 soundtrack and go pick up nutmeg (such a great soundtrack).

Speaking of which, I loved the music. I might even call it majestic. I loved oddball world design of mashing what seems to be not-Southwestern & not-Pacific Northwestern USA with not-Venice, briefly not-Rivendell (Tenebrae?) & not-Tokyo. I loved playing grab ass with my boys after camping out in the mornings. I loved Ignis being the mom friend and the my headcanon where the guys store all their cooking and crafting ingredients in the same astral plane where Noctis keeps his weapons. I loved the photography feature and Prompto’s arc. I fucking loved fishing more than I thought would. I loved that there’d always be some kind of incidental dialogue when you’d go exploring or take up a quest. I loved that Bahamut had a creepy human face. I loved how dangerous and crappy the Reglia Type-F is to handle. I loved that Gladio would give Noct shit, even undeservedly at times. I loved that Regis and his crew went on a similar journey all those years ago. I loved that there’d be super high level mobs just chilling in the overworld and that level scaling isn’t a thing, but there would still be things that could one-shot you. I can appreciate a game that helps me with completing its campaign, even if it does so kind of forcibly, since open worlds tend to induce some kind of completion anxiety in me. Will you please go and fucking fight Ardyn already?

About that fighting: I like it? I briefly tried Kingdom Hearts on 3DS and it was... It was not great. But I like the automation in this that allows for just enough player input where positioning and timing is more important than anything else. It’s not very strategic, and you don’t have much in the way of tactical forethought, but it looks cool! Props to Square’s animation team for blending all of it together into a somewhat coherent whole. It’s mostly flash, with just enough engagement to not be a entirely mindless affair.

I think at the end of the day we all have some kind of preconception of what we wanted FFXV to be, and we were all left somewhat disappointed that it didn’t turn out to be that figment of our fancy. But it exists, its more than playable, there’s a lot to do and soak in and those post-credits scenes with Noct and the lads, and Noct and Luna with the photo you chose were enough to wash away the cynicism and disappointment.

It feels like, with the completion of the Episode Ignis campaign and the successful rebirth of A Realm Reborn, Square might finally close the chapter on 13/Versus 13/15 and do things a bit better and more efficiently. Or maybe we’ll be subjected to a mobile hell and more games in 15′s mould, the latter of which wouldn’t be the worst thing? I keep saying it but I never follow through with going back to play the older mainline FF games. Now’s the time! Maybe.

#games of 2017 #attack on backlog #gaming #final fantasy #ffxv #final fantasy 15 #square enix #hajime tabata #yoko shimomura #final fantasy versus xiii #fabula nova crystallis

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archworks-gaming · 7 years

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So, I’ve been playing Fallout 4 again recently.

Because whilst the story is kind of ham-fisted and unimaginative the raw appeal of being a lone-wandering scrap hunter/robot maker is too strong for my frail human brain to ignore.

So from that you can likely gather I don’t really enjoy the story. To be more concise I don’t enjoy the main story.

Y’see, I’m the kind of gamer that will ignore the story at all costs. Not on a first playthrough mind, but for all subsequent playthroughs? That story might as well not even exist to me. Specifically with western-style, open-world RPGs.

It’s the same reason I recently got my hands on the remastered Skyrim, but you won’t see many story trophies/achievements appear under that title for me, because I haven’t done anything story-related. I’ve played the story already, it was... OK at best. Now I want to build a character and have their journey.

To get back onto Fallout 4, something that really stood out to me during a recent session was when I went to Diamond City to do an intro quest for Piper.

I forget the name of the quest, but it requires your character to be interviewed for the Publick Occurrences newspaper.

And for the most part the game will allow you to make up stuff during this interview. And generally just let you get away with whatever you want to say. (Well, out of the four options it gives you per question anyway)

But then you get to one of the final questions. Which is in regards to why you’re travelling across the Commonwealth, why you’ve wound up in Diamond City.

And the game gives you options for this, but only one of them actually does anything.

And that’s super disappointing. This isn’t a story critical conversation. I’m not going to lose anything by choosing the wrong answer. No matter what I say, Piper will publish it and then become a companion.

But for some reason at this point in the sidequest, Bethesda thought it would be best to force the player to pretend they give a shit about Baby Shaun.

I don’t feel like I’m alone when I say I couldn’t care less about Shaun in Fallout 4. And in fact the majority of the problems I have with Fallout 4′s story are directly related to Shaun.

“Oh but you have to feel attached to him because... He’s your baby, I guess?”

No. No I don’t. Because he’s not my baby, he’s a baby. Even without the gamer/game disconnect or the 1′s and 0′s argument, by this point in the game I had spent a grand total of about 30 seconds with him before he was taken.

We had one interaction with baby Shaun in the opening part of the game where we tickle him a little bit and that’s it.

That’s our full backstory with Baby Shaun. As a player I couldn’t be less engaged with this “character”. I’d spent more time telling the Vault Tech sales rep to piss off than I had actually interacting with what is supposed to be my son in Fallout 4.

I’ve grown attached to settlers more than I have with Shaun.

But for some reason, whenever my character is showing any kind of empathy towards another survivor in the Commonwealth the first words they’ll usually utter are:

“I know what it’s like to lose a child...”

Hey asshole, we’re in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland! There are literal fucking monsters outside that like to eat us and use our bones for decorations! Safe to say pretty much everyone knows what it’s like to lose someone!

And the thing is, for the most part your character will always go straight to “MY BABY WAS KIDNAPPED!” and never the more understandable:

“MY HUSBAND/WIFE WAS SHOT IN THE FACE WHILE I WAS TRAPPED IN A METAL BOX MERE FEET AWAY WHERE I COULD SEE EVERYTHING! ALSO HELLO! I WAS ALIVE BEFORE THE WAR, EVERYONE I EVER KNEW OR LOVED IS MOST LIKELY DEAD!”

It’s amazing to me how little of a deal it is that you are a pre-war survivor in this game. The only time to my memory where the character openly states that they gave any kind of a shit about the pre-war world is in the epilogue.

Hell, most of the characters you talk to about this to either understandably don’t believe you, Believe you outright with no proof and honestly don’t react to it all that much or they knew you already.

And I feel that’s one of Bethesda’s greatest missteps in creating the story for Fallout 4. We as the player have no reason to care about anything prior to what is happening right now in the wasteland. But are expected to regardless.

Even the player character doesn’t care enough about the world they were forced to leave behind because we and by extension they spent almost the entirety of it standing in front of a fucking mirror!

I personally pre-made my character’s appearance to look like they already lived in the wasteland, scars, bruises, that kind of stuff. And then they have to dawdle around in the pre-war section looking like their spouse says “I love you” with a hunting knife?!

This is the first time in a Fallout game where we’ve had even a glimpse of the pre-war world, let us have some fun with it! Let us have a reason to give a shit about it and not frantically mash buttons and jump hedges to get out of it.

If we’d gotten some sense of what the world, pre-war was like. If we’d been introduced to baby Shaun and given some actual time to interact with him, maybe even see him grow up a little bit because the next time you actually see “Shaun” he’s like 9-10 years old.

That section when you first enter the institute and are confronted by a Synth of Kid Shaun, that would have had so much more impact if that was what Shaun looked like when he was taken.

instead you’re yet again, FORCED to have your character lose all semblance of sense at the mere sight of a robotic ten year old. There’s no option for disbelief when you find Synth Shaun in the institute, despite the fact that your character is knowingly infiltrating the place where fucking synths come from!

Beyond that, Father’s devotion to the Institute would be so much more meaningful if he was old enough to take it all in when he was taken, instead of being basically tailored from birth to accept it.

It would make sense for an adult Shaun to release you from your cryo-pod at the start of the game if he was old enough to even remember you when he was taken, instead of this whole “Oh, I let my parent out on a whim, just to see how far they’d get” bullshit the game actually gives us!

And then there’s the games core “twist”...

“Oh no! my 1 year old son was taken whilst I was frozen, I should go looking for him with the expectation that despite being re-frozen after he was taken that he will still be a 1 year old baby!”

“Oh no! I have found my son and now he’s older than me and somehow dying of cancer in a future underground science utopia where they literally build human beings from scratch!”

... I’m not the only one who’d guessed that Shaun was going to be either long dead or an old man at the very beginning of the game, was I? It was just that blatantly obvious, wasn’t it?

I feel I would have been more satisfied if when you wake up in the pod after Shaun’s been taken, that Father had come to personally wake you up.

With cancer threatening his life they’d need a genetic back-up for the synth experiments and you’re the closest match. So out a sense of familial-fueled curiosity he accompanies the recovery team, but you manage to fight back and escape and you build up kind of an antagonist viewpoint of “Father” up until the moment you meet him in the institute, where he reveals he’s Shaun. Boom! Story twist.

It’s probably just as easy to see coming, but hell if it isn’t more engaging.

Maybe the reason Father has cancer in the first place could be because he tried to get out of the institute at a younger age and he got irradiated trying to find you? Then when he’s leader of the whole place he finally has the clout to force people to take him to you.

And with that kind of approach, when you possibly decide to take down the Institute his sense of betrayal towards you will feel a fuckload less hollow!

“Oh mother! I can’t believe you’re against the institute, especially since all they did was murder your husband, my father and kidnap me, putting you through almost literal hell trying to find me, only to find that they’ve robbed us of any meaningful time we were ever going to spend together, just so they can built robots that can more effectively kidnap and replace other people’s family... I thought more of you!”

And it’s fucking bullshit! You can’t even convince him that he’s wrong!? What kind of shit is this? I get that not everyone who’s committed horrible acts for “Good intentions” can accept that their actions were horrible. Some terrible people die safe in the personal knowledge that they’re probably not monsters.

But they are. And in the case of Shaun, this is a fucking videogame. A place where I as the gamer, the one in control, should have some sway in the matter.

Up until this point there has been an option to change everyone’s minds.

Fuck, I talked an armed chem dealer into not only leaving a place empty-handed but to also give me all his money before doing so. And he’s a chem dealer on the surface, he’s probably legitimately crazy.

So the apparent lack of any option to reason Shaun over to your way of thinking is baffling, since he’s so enamored with you that he actually names you his successor as leader of the institute (Which is another problem entirely).

If he values you and likely what you think so much why is there no option to persuade him to re-think his position? It’s mind-boggling!

To touch some more on the point I just made about how you can become the leader of the Institute, Why is there no active “good” option for this?

Why is it I can be named the Successor to the head-seat of the Institute but I’m not allowed to take this information to say... The Railroad and let them know that as soon the current leader is gone that I control the place where Synths come from.

Or take it to the Minutemen and tell them that in a little while Synth’s probably won’t be a problem and in fact might even serve as pretty good servicemen for the Minutemen (Especially the Gen 1 and 2′s).

Or I could go to the Brotherhood where I’d undoubtedly be shot on sight for saying I control the Institute.

Why can’t I choose to continue Synth production, but refuse to continue the abduction and replacement of humans on the surface?

Or why can’t I opt to halt Synth production to focus on things that can make surface life better? Like more effective water purification? Or something that can clean radiation from soil? Hell, even just make prosthetic limbs or organ replacements?

Admittedly, I’ve never seen fit to actually take the Institute option at the end. Even so, there’s a whole load of potential good that can be done with the place and for all my searching I can’t find a shred of evidence to suggest that any of it is actually possible... So far as I’ve seen the only difference you get in siding with them is that Synth’s take up control points on the surface and talk about how they control everything now.

In summary, the story is the weakest part of the whole Fallout 4 experience and it’s all Shaun’s fault.

#Fallout 4 #Analysis #Story #Spoilers #Shaun #Father #Bethesda #Gripes #blunders #shortcommings #fixes #opinions

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC port is deeply disappointing • Eurogamer.net

Horizon Zero Dawn has its own particular place of honour in a phenomenal line-up of PlayStation 4 first-party exclusives – an open world delivered with some of the best technology in the business, combined with the gameplay finesse and polish of a more linear experience, humanised with some of the most impressive character rendering of the generation. When Hideo Kojima went shopping for a game engine to deliver his vision for Death Stranding, it was Guerrilla Games’ Decima technology he settled upon – and can there be any higher praise than that? In the wake of Kojima Productions’ generally excellent Death Stranding PC port, expectations were sky-high for Horizon’s PC conversion. With that in mind, it’s both baffling and extremely disappointing to see the port fall so far short of expectations.

Make no mistake, the core game is all there. It is indeed the Complete Edition. It’s still a unique experience for PC users, simply because multi-platform projects and even the odd PC exclusive aren’t built quite like this. Horizon Zero Dawn looks and feels a class apart in many ways – and yes, you can increase graphics settings and improve resolutions and frame-rate compared to the PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro originals. However, where the game falls short is in its many technical failings.

When a game is content-complete but requires polish and bug-testing, it’s considered beta code – and that’s the impression we got from this conversion when we tested it, to the point where much of the reviewing process has been a case of testing and re-testing the game on multiple pieces of hardware to answer a simple question – is there something wrong with our kit or is the game at fault? It’s a little bit of one and a lot of the other, but the bottom line is that there are many technical issues that need addressing to the point where not all of them can be included in this article. A 35GB day one patch arrived on the same day as the embargo lift – hence the delay in publishing our review – but the many and varied problems are still in effect in the code that makes its way to players.

It starts with the initial ‘optimisation’ phase on boot. Like a number of DX12 and Vulkan titles, shaders are compiled and stored the first time you play the game – as opposed to generating them during play, potentially inducing stutter. It’s an extended process to say the least, it adds to the storage footprint, and if your drive fills up during this procedure, the game crashes to desktop – sometimes with an ominous ‘fatal error’. While testing and re-testing across systems, the process could often stall and lock-up even when required storage was available. Beyond that, when I booted the game on my 4K screen in full-screen mode, something didn’t look right. It turned out that Horizon was rendering at 4K, downscaling to 1080p, then upscaling to 4K again. Switching to the borderless display option fixes this (albeit introducing other issues), as does swapping back to full-screen mode from borderless. Bizarre.

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The Digital Foundry PC tech review for Horizon Zero Dawn.

Once past these issues, things do look up. Horizon Zero Dawn offers a large amount of options to tweak, scaling graphical elements both higher and lower than the default PlayStation 4 presentation. Better still, the inclusion of an ‘original’ graphics preset is a great touch – and it’s similar to the ‘default’ option on Death Stranding, where the settings are essentially a match for the PS4 version. You can define the console experience as the baseline and scale up – or down – from there. However, similar to Death Stranding’s PC port, while the settings are there to push to higher quality levels, the actual improvements to visuals are thin on the ground.

So, for example, the reflections setting improves the quality of screen-space reflections – and the high preset is indeed of a higher quality than console-standard medium. However, the practical difference is minimal and the main disadvantages of SSR are not mitigated. A game based mostly in nature has very little in the way of reflective surfaces meaning that where there is a gain, it’s not really significant. Similarly, the only real difference in shadow quality at the highest setting comes in the first cascade right in front of Aloy. It helps a touch with self-shadowing but not to any great degree. It doesn’t change the range of shadow cascades or the distances at which they ‘pop’. Even the texture setting is a little strange. Pushing the setting up increases texture quality further into the distance. There’s the perception of increased detail, but it can also produce aliasing issues – leaving it on console quality medium is just fine. Speaking of texture quality, the anisotropic filtering setting simply does not work. My advice? Set it manually to 16x in your GPU control panel for an actual quality boost.

Various anti-aliasing options are available but of all of them, only TAA really does a good job – and thankfully it has a minimal performance hit. Two settings I do recommend boosting from console quality are model detail and volumetric clouds. The former increases the distance at which certain patches of grass or objects render further away from Aloy, reducing the pop-in effect – and it also increases the distance at which the higher quality versions of a model are rendered. So trees into the distance will look less cardboard and ‘2D-like’ and show off more individual branches and leaves. Guerrilla’s cloud rendering system is brilliant but computationally expensive. The default medium setting has some artefacting, but there are obvious improvements shifting to high and ultra. High delivers the best balance of bang vs buck.

If you were looking to utilise the game’s dynamic resolution scaling for balancing performance, I do not recommend it at all, as it is overzealous to the extreme and coarse in its application. I observed a scene rendering at 55fps using native 4K at ultra settings on an RTX 2080 Ti, where DRS should deliver full frame-rate with a minimal resolution drop. Engaging dynamic resolution scaling did indeed get me to 60fps but pixel-counting saw that the game had switched resolution to 1080p to get the job done. To claw back a mere 5fps, the game had quartered resolution to do it. I’d recommend leaving DRS disabled.

Let’s talk optimised settings – my selection for the best bang for the buck across the game’s many tweakables. As things stand, console quality ‘original’ – with 16x anisotropic filtering forced via the control panel and TAA – will do just fine, but feel free to add ultra model quality, high shadows and high clouds. Ultra settings are nice and appreciated, but there are few meaningful visual returns. You’re better off spending that performance elsewhere, which brings me onto the crucial matter at hand: I’m privileged enough to run high-end hardware and put simply, I had a hard time getting this game looking good and running well, even on a Ryzen 9 3900X paired with an RTX 2080 Ti. Meanwhile, performance on my mainstream class rig was way off pace.

Average frame-rates from the benchmark don’t tell the full story. Apparently, I can run Horizon Zero Dawn at native 4K at an average of 78 frames per second on an RTX 2080 Ti. What it doesn’t tell you is that the actual game experience will be a fair bit lower than that, with frequent stutters. Stutters in excess of 40ms, 70ms or over 100ms can happen as a cutscenes starts or ends, when a camera changes position in a cutscene, when a UI element updates for a quest, or when you are just walking around in the world not doing anything special in particular. This happens reproducibly across multiple graphics card and CPUs and chosen resolutions, impacting the fluidity of the game, producing an experience less consistent overall that the PlayStation 4 version, which has no such stutter.

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Decima should be running much better on PC – as the PC port of Death Stranding demonstrates.

I thought that dropping to console-level 30fps might solve the issue but the problem is that the 30fps cap within the game actually runs at 29fps, producing even more stutter. Also, if you are experiencing profound performance problems, make sure you have your mainboard properly configured for 16x PCIe bandwidth for the GPU. This one’s on me but I didn’t – my slot was set to 8x bandwidth and it hobbled performance, while switching up to 16x solve that particular problem. Going back to Death Stranding, PCIe bandwidth made no difference at all.

Even with the game running in what I think are optimal conditions, performance is not where it should be. Death Stranding would deliver 1080p60 on a GTX 1060 or RX 580 system. Horizon Zero Dawn – based on an older iteration of the Decima Engine – does not, far from it. The lack of a day one driver from Nvidia is also curious. Horizon certainly seems to need it as GTX 1060 performance up against RX 580 – its perennial rival – is remarkably poor. Indeed, on optimised settings, the GTX 1060 can drop beneath 1080p30 with highly erratic frame-times, meaning that it’s performing worse than a PlayStation 4 with only a small visual uplift. The Steam hardware survey cites the GTX 1060 as the most popular gaming GPU around and yet it is clearly not performing as it should be, which means that a large proportion of the PC market could have issues. By extension, it comes as no surprise to see that the brilliant DLSS 2.0 support we saw in Death Stranding is not present in Horizon.

There are other issues that need to be addressed. Cutscenes run at arbitrary frame-rates but facial animation is locked to 30 frames per second – it doesn’t look right, with an almost Wallace and Gromit-like effect. Another problem in cutscenes is how they were not authored around the idea of interpolated frame-rates above 30fps, so in some cutscenes you can see characters warp around during scene cuts. Mismatches in animation refresh are evident elsewhere: Horizon’s tall ‘stealth grass’ runs at the correct frame-rate at all times, but the new dynamic plants and foliage added to the PC version are locked at 30 frames per second refresh instead. An unlocked frame-rate needs to mean just that – picking and choosing what can meet the limits of PC hardware and what remains locked to 30Hz shouldn’t be an option. What’s so baffling about this is that Guerrilla Games are perfectionists – I can’t help but feel that intrusive stutter and mismatched animation would never make their way into one of their PlayStation products so it’s disappointing to see that happen here.

Our feedback was submitted to the developer and we understand that addressing the stutter and fixing the broken texture filtering is a priority, while essential features like full frame-rate animation are being looked into. But to see such an amazingly polished console experience transition to PC with so many issues and with depressed performance is a problem. Death Stranding set the bar with a technically solid (if not especially scalable) port and to see Horizon Zero Dawn fall so far short by comparison is such a let down. We will be waiting to see if these issues are addressed over time, but right now, while the game itself is highly recommended, we can’t say the same for this PC conversion.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/08/horizon-zero-dawns-pc-port-is-deeply-disappointing-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=horizon-zero-dawns-pc-port-is-deeply-disappointing-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Marvel’s Avengers Beta Doesn’t Deliver Superhero Spectacle, But There’s Hope

https://ift.tt/30sxkpP

There was a moment while playing the Marvel’s Avengers early access beta on the PlayStation 4 when I had to ask myself whether this slice of the game was the best way to showcase what was supposed to be a major spectacle for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Following two of the biggest movies of all time, Marvel’s Avengers should feel like a victory lap for Square Enix and a grand return to video games for the superhero team. Instead, the beta showcases a low-key affair that never quite feels all that fresh or unique.

While the combat, traversal, and all of the game’s other mechanics generally work just fine, the title’s dependence on long-established trends and design concepts, as well as a very dull group of baddies, render Marvel’s Avengers sort of ordinary. The game’s arcade-y co-op gameplay feels like an over-the-shoulder upgrade of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series, which is undoubtedly a major inspiration here, while the loot shooter elements don’t really add anything new to that particular genre, either.

It’s important to note that these are my impressions after only playing the game’s beta build, a small portion of a much larger whole. This is in no way a final verdict on Marvel’s Avengers.

Before we jump in, you can check out some gameplay footage from the beta below:

I spent three days with the beta, playing through the “A-Day” intro mission that Square Enix has previewed plenty of times before as well as several main story missions (called Hero Missions in the game), a handful of short Drop Zone and War Zone missions, an Iconic mission focusing on the Hulk, and three HARM Room Challenges best described as the game’s take on a horde mode. While the beta was a varied sampling of the activities that Marvel’s Avengers has to offer, it was also a brief one that I wouldn’t consider a full view of the final product, and I definitely left the beta with the sense that there was way more to see.

The beta opens with the heavily-directed A-Day tutorial mission that familiarizes you with the different heroes at your disposal. You wreck terrorists on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with Thor and his mighty hammer while zipping through the skies to lend air support as Iron Man. The Hulk joins the fight on the bridge, too, smashing and stomping his way through gun-toting enemies and tanks. The tutorial gives players only the briefest of moments with Captain America and his trusty shield before switching to Black Widow for a QTE-heavy boss fight with Taskmaster.

The A-Day sequence is fast-paced and exciting, full of Marvel’s signature funny quips and heroic moments to be sure. But while this opening story mission shows how Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can work perfectly in tandem during an emergency, it isn’t really indicative of the rest of the missions in the beta, which feature combat more akin to a brawler or beat em up than the choreographed, more linear fights of the intro.

A time jump after the intro sequence sees the Avengers disband after failing to save San Francisco from the terrorist attack. We reunite with Bruce Banner and Kamala sometime later on a mission to reassemble the superhero team. The beta keeps things largely out of spoiler territory, so I didn’t get to see how the duo first met or what set them on their new mission. But from what I did see, it’s clear that the young Kamala, who is destined to become the superhero Ms. Marvel, is the heart of this story.

It’s her desire to learn more about her powers as well as the heroes she grew up admiring that drive the main plot forward. She brings an energy to the team that’s a very nice contrast to the much more defeated Banner, who is living in exile on the Chimera years after A-Day. We get hints that he’s not really interested in being the Hulk or an Avenger anymore, but Kamala convinces him that reuniting the team is the only way to save the world from the game’s main enemy faction, Advanced Idea Mechanics (aka AIM).

The Hero Missions that follow hit familiar story beats, as Bruce and Kamala first go on a mission to recover an old piece of Stark tech vital to finding Iron Man and then make contact with what remains of SHIELD, now led by Maria Hill. The beta stops short of actually reassembling the team, but along the way, we watch as Kamala interacts with pieces of Avengers history, from finding Cap’s original shield in a silo to walking around the team’s old HQ on the Chimera. It’s nice to be able to experience this story from the point-of-view of a fan who feels as much wonder for these characters as we did when we read our first Avengers comic book or watched the first movie, even if the beta’s somewhat unsurprising and safe missions don’t quite inspire wonder themselves.

The big issue with the Hero Missions and War Zone/Drop Zone side quests is that AIM’s massive army of jet pack-wearing soldiers, evil scientists, and robots aren’t all that much fun to fight or learn about. While some of the robots boast cool, bug-like designs (one class even looks like a smaller version of an X-Men Sentinel), they’re basically just punching bags and bullet sponges that don’t require much strategy to take down.

Running from room to room taking out AIM agents and machines starts to feel repetitive really quickly, and it doesn’t help that the environments sometimes feel really drab — big steel buildings with plenty of glass and high-tech lab equipment to destroy. There were even times when I felt like War Zone missions were recycling the same environment, simply remixing the order of rooms and hallways you traverse. Fortunately, these environments are almost fully destructible, which is a nice touch, especially when you’re playing as someone as chaotic as the raging Hulk. But overall, the level design showcased in the beta felt a little uninspired.

Once you unlock the War Table, you’re pretty much free to embark on missions in any order you choose and with whichever character you want, except when it comes to Iconic missions, which require you to play as a specific hero. The beta featured a Hulk-centric Iconic mission that saw the Jade Giant smash into an AIM facility to destroy the group’s gamma ray research. There’s a bit more storytelling involved with Iconic missions as well as opposed to other War Zone and short Drop Zone activities, which feel a bit less remarkable.

While there are a variety of different War Zone and Drop Zone missions to choose from, the ones in the beta mostly come down to fast sprints from point A to B that require you to destroy AIM research, defeat a robotic mini-boss, gather intel, or hold down a specific position. They rarely feel like unique experiences that could only belong in a Marvel game and are generally unexciting. And although some War Zone missions tend to offer up multiple stages and objectives, usually broken up by an elevator ride into an AIM facility or underground bunker, Drop Zone missions are bewilderingly short. You can finish them within 10 minutes, which makes them feel like filler content most of the time, although it should be noted that the shorter length of these missions is by design.

The nice thing about Marvel’s Avengers is that it won’t force multiplayer on you. All of the missions mentioned above can be played solo with three AI characters at your side or with up to three other players. While I only spent a very limited time playing with others, matchmaking worked well, but the real test will come when Crystal Dynamics opens up the beta to a much bigger group of players throughout August. But if you want to play the game solo, you can do so no problem. I even found the companion AI to be nice substitutes for real players during big fights with AIM. It’s evident that the studio has put in a lot of time into making all of these heroes feel genuine regardless of whether they’re being controlled by a player or AI.

A high point of the beta was the HARM Room, a holographic training area where the Avengers can square off against hordes of AIM enemies. In this mode, which is set on the Chimera itself, the team must survive 10 waves of increasingly difficult baddies. Only three difficulty levels were available in the beta, but it was a nice taste of what the mode has to offer. Whereas fighting AIM grunts in War Zones and Drop Zones starts to feel a little redundant, taking them on in bigger numbers in an enclosed area can get pretty exhilarating, especially when you’re against a wall in later rounds with fewer chances to heal.

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As far as the combat itself goes, there’s a nice flow to the action, which feels pretty polished at this point, as you chain a mix of attacks with Black Widow, Kamala Khan, Iron Man, and Hulk. I particularly enjoyed playing as Black Widow, who uses a mix of batons, gravity-defying flips, kicks, and dual pistols to take down the game’s robotic enemies. She also has a cool grapple that she uses to swing to hard-to-reach platforms or hurl herself at enemies. Switching between her melee moves and third-person shooter gunplay is pretty smooth, too. Black Widow ultimately feels like the hero who benefits the most from Crystal Dynamics’ own experience with the action-adventure genre. At times, I even wished the studio had embarked on a Black Widow solo adventure instead of such a big superhero endeavor.

Unsurprisingly, learning how to play as each hero is the best part of the beta. While Captain America and Thor are notably absent beyond the tutorial, you get plenty of time with the other Avengers. For the most part, each character feels distinct. Black Widow performs as a close- to mid-range hero while Ms. Marvel is all about melee. Hulk not only brings devastating tank-like power to the battlefield and destruction to the game’s environments but also does quite a bit of platforming along the way (a strange choice to give Hulk so much of the platformer gameplay but it mostly works). With Iron Man, you unlock the ability to fly around and wreak havoc from above, although his melee attacks also feel satisfying and weighty.

Special abilities that work on a cooldown timer add a nice superheroic layer to each character. Iron Man can summon his Hulkbuster suit for when he needs to take on bigger enemies and Hulk can clap his hands together to create a soundwave that does incredible damage and staggers targets. Black Widow can activate a camo that effectively turns the entire team invisible for a short time while Ms. Marvel can embiggen. Each hero has three unique abilities that really complement them and their move set. It was a blast learning how to best implement each ability.

A skill tree and a gear upgrade system allow you to unlock new attacks for each hero as well as upgrade gear stats to make your character stronger. As you level up in the game, you get skill points to redeem in the skill tree while the game’s myriad resources can be used to upgrade different pieces of gear. There are quite a few resources to keep track of, mostly found inside giant crates during missions, but I found that you could mostly ignore which resources upgraded each piece of gear. Compared to loot shooters, collecting resources never feels as grind-y or frustrating as it does in, say, the Destiny games.

You can also find different pieces of gear on the field, such as better gauntlets for Black Widow or better armor for Ms. Marvel, that offer perks (buffs) such as a damage boost, health boost, or elemental effects. Some pieces of gear even have two perks that you can unlock by upgrading them. As far as I could tell from the beta, gear serves to boost your character’s stats further but doesn’t offer any cool cosmetic effects, making loot feel a little less satisfying as a whole than in other loot-based games. Instead, cosmetic changes to your character will come from unlocking skins through gameplay or buying them with real money.

While microtransactions weren’t turned on during the beta, Crystal Dynamics did provide in-game currency so that I could shop for some skins, emotes, and themed nameplates for when you want to rep your favorite hero while in the matchmaking lobby. Skins include a Joe Fixit costume for Hulk, a casual winter-themed outfit for Kamala, a very cool black and red suit for Black Widow, and MCU-inspired suits for each hero. There were only a few skins to try for each character but trailers and gameplay videos have already promised way more costumes to choose from.

Some Marvel fans might perk up at the thought of being able to play Marvel’s Avengers as Joe Fixit and I guarantee there’s plenty more deep-cut comic book goodness where that came from. Credit must be given to Crystal Dynamics for just how much Marvel history it managed to pack into just this short beta. From breaking news from Marvel’s number one reporter, Phil Sheldon, to references to Dum Dum Dugan, easter eggs to be found on the Golden Gate Bridge, and classic real-life comics that make up the game’s collectibles, it’s clear Crystal Dynamics has done its research and has a real love for this universe. There are Avengers memorabilia scattered pretty much everywhere in the Hero Missions and there are even one or two villainous cameos I won’t spoil here.

While AIM facilities feel a bit dull as you run around their familiar hallways, the world as a whole feels lived in. The level design in the beta might falter but the world-building in Marvel’s Avengers is on point. It’s just a shame that the gameplay itself never comes together like the world and lore Crystal Dynamics is building around it.

I return back to my earlier question about whether the content specifically chosen for this beta was the best way to showcase a game as big as Marvel’s Avengers. Did Crystal Dynamics play it too safe for the sake of preserving story elements and other surprises? Will War Zone missions have more to offer than the repetitive gameplay shown here? Crystal Dynamics has stressed that these missions could last anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours. It would’ve been nice to see a mission that’s somewhere in the middle, just to get a better look at the scope of the game. For now, missions and levels feel too minuscule for a team as big as the Avengers.

Will AIM be the only bad guys in the full game? Hopefully not. There are hints in the beta that other supervillains may be on the move and there’s even a brief boss fight with a villain that’s appeared in an MCU movie. With all of Marvel history at the team’s disposal, it’s hard to believe AIM was the best choice here over the countless other evil organizations, factions, and races created by the House of Ideas. Hopefully, the full game will offer a bit more variety on the bad guy front.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that this is only a beta and what does work in Marvel’s Avengers works well. There’s hope in the game’s world-building, character design, and the combat system. And don’t forget that Marvel’s Avengers is a live service title designed to change and improve over time. It’s positioned as a platform that will receive content updates for years to come. Like many online games before it, it’s possible Marvel’s Avengers will face a rocky launch this fall, but if the history of this particular game format is any indication, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix will have plenty of time to right the Chimera.

Marvel’s Avengers is out on Sept. 4 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia. It’s coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this year.

If you’re interested in participating in the beta, here is the schedule of when you can do so:

August 7-9 – PS4 pre-order customers can join the closed beta

August 14-16 – All PS4 owners can join the open beta, and PC and Xbox One pre-order customers can play the closed beta

August 21-23 – Open beta across all platforms

The post Marvel’s Avengers Beta Doesn’t Deliver Superhero Spectacle, But There’s Hope appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3koQFQS

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glennmalcolm · 5 years

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Oculus Quest - Room-Scale VR For Schools - A Full Review

Since the original Oculus Rift was launched several years ago, I was converted to the use of VR. There was so much potential out there for VR for the forward thinking technology departments to drop into. As I learned more about the modification (or home brew) scene in VR I was hooked on the Oculus Rift Developer kit - even when there was only 4 degrees of movement and the tethering of the HDMI cables meant you were attached to a laptop or desktop and usually seated because there wasn’t and Z axis tracking.

Then came the addition of things like VorpX. This allowed you to take a first person type environment and then transpose it into a VR game. Driving, roaming, exploring and being part of a game became a truly immersive experience. I loved it - even on the mediocre screen back then.

Then came all sorts of varieties and news in the tech media of what was technically possible - Leap Motion was one of the main ideas of this time - the mapping of hands and limbs within VR. There was a very positive outlook for VR back then. Then came the HTC Vive. Wow. A standing, ‘outside-in’ trackable environment that ran on a beefed up PC hardware pushing the realms of a not-too-distant future of VR for the masses. Along with this came the Leap Motion clip-on module, the additional ‘pucks’ for tracking and backpack PCs for untethered outside in tracking.

A little back story: the phrase ‘VR for the masses’ has been around since the mid-nineties when I remember seeing an advert for Sega and Nintendo VR. The snag is that VR has been around a while and the mantle for which VR type, style and format is best. The real bone of contention is, if it’s for the masses, then it really needs to be pared down because not everyone has a PC with a (now aging) GTX 1080 to provide room-scale grunt for their VR realms and the floor space to create the ‘Guardian’ that is required for room-scale VR.

The pared down version comes at a cost to the user, I feel. Namely the appliance-like nature of the device so that the mass-produced all-in-one case can provide a three-click platform: turn on, choose game, hit go. The appliance also pares down what the ‘user’ should be able to do. I find that this channels the user into what the appliance’s designers want you to use and how you should use it. Think of it like an IKEA type VR. You shop at IKEA and all you can do is trundle through the alleyways following the arrows pointing you to checkout and exiting with items you never came in for. The format and style of current titles is also of a low poly nature, that to be frank, surely cannot keep going where every title has the same blocky nature.

That is where I feel we are at with the Oculus Quest. This takes the room-scale usership to a simplified level - albeit a well crafted one. Unlike the IKEA analogy, the Quest is very well built, offers a robust material set and has very ergonomic controllers that offer a some hand tracking that seems (at the moment at least) to halt at finger pointing to turn switches on and off in-game. Here the Quest’s controllers are AA style removable batteries. Knowing how fast the Vive’s paddles are depleted I think you’ll be looking for something like Sony Eneloops to get all-day longevity out of these. The same goes for making a hack for the headset’s USB-C battery bank connection as I had gone through half the battery in about an hour of intermittent use. In school though, I think most tech departments are looking for internal rechargeable batteries where a power bank can be USB connected and recharged.

The well-built nature of the headset means that the phone-like innards (Qualcomm 835 (3years old equivalent to a Samsung Galaxy 8), Adreno 540 GPU and 4Gb RAM run the device pretty well. The heavy coating of the Quest, combined with the screen means this thing is pretty heavy on the face after about an hour. Other people have said they get tiredness around two hours however I have a gigantic Roman nose that felt like it was supporting the entire thing after a while.

When you put the headset on, I like the way it recognises the headset is on your head and uses similar sensors to that of the eye-piece of a digital camera to turn the LCD off and turn on the viewfinder. This presents you with a lovely screen and decent adjustable lenses to view content. The controllers are simple to find (they light up on screen when the headset is on which is a nice touch) and the pass-through camera lenses on the front of the device also highlight the controllers which is similar to the more high-end Vive where searching for the controllers/ searching the room is needed.

The interface is simple and has a store that seems to be filled with large number of apps and games (50at present). Now, I was expecting a lot more from this section for both apps and games. I was kind of expecting something similar to the Oculus, Vive and Steam stores. Lots of people have said that this has plenty of games starting with 50 for this specific Quest store. This is where people get a bit miffed in terms of ‘content’. If you are a Steam user then you know that there may be 5,000 games and apps in the store, yet there will only be around 10% of those games that have good reviews or good enough for you to start there. Then there will be only about 30% of these top rated games that are to your taste and of those about 10% are affordable. I think you get what I mean here, there are only about 5 of those games that I would like to play yet this is not what I’m after in this instance. What I'm after is creative or story telling experiences that wow the user...

You see, the apps needed in a school are creative, world—builder type apps that put the controllers front and center and the device set to its limits. I want it to allow me and my students to create and build something then export it somewhere to be used elsewhere, say, in TinkerCAD and 3D print it. There is only Tilt Brush by Google that I can see in the Oculus store and this was $30 (around 1000thb here in Thailand -that's way too much). TiltBrush on Steam for the full version on the Vive is much cheaper. Also, I say ‘full’ because there is no way that this phone could cope with building the scale of the models you will end up creating and exporting from a whole class - especially if you are making a walkthrough gallery of models.

The next part is looking for experiences for my students because the creative angle is blocked within a single mainstream application. I looked for video and 360 degree environments either from YouTubeVR or from sites that offer the experience from the site itself. In this regard, I tried out FirefoxVR - this has potential however as of yet there’s not much difference to a phone VR experience. What I wanted in this realm were the types of environments such as Allumette that guide you in room-scale via sound or trinkets and want to immerse you within the story itself. No such luck. Maybe there’ll be some ported over.

I also searched for apps similar to Google Expeditions, Google Stories and places to build or explore such as Museums. Sadly there isn’t really anything that stood out as something I would use a Quest for in my classroom other than what I have used previously with Android phones and Google Cardboard (or Cardboard-like headsets). These offer the same experiences as on the Quest for students that teachers always ask for, and, more importantly class teachers need to be able to search for content to splice into class projects. Having Android phones as your class set of VR devices also allow you to log into a single Admin user on the Play store and wirelessly push out the apps to each of the phones.

The other snag I felt that limited the use in the primary classroom especially is, should you work in a large school such as mine (8 form entry and a total of 2600 students from 3-18), having just one Quest in class, where usually two lessons of specialist provision or eight classes are running simultaneously, how can you reasonably use something like Tilt Brush, Blocks or should it ever arrive: Co Spaces, and include all children. In my school I only see the children in the 16 Junior classes once a fortnight for an hour at a time. It would require 8 devices per class set minimum with a teacher’s unit to get close to coverage.

The next item to think about here is the overall cost of a class set of Quests versus a class set of Android phone based class sets. Even if it was a set of 6 Quests, these 6 a need an additional phone for ownership for each seat in the app store (or users in the Oculus store per app per device) after the initial $500(+pp +duties) each. (The ones we have are 128Gb models the 64Gb models are $400 each) - that makes a class set cost of a minimum USD$3000 (for the models we have) before shipping and import duties.

Compare this to my previous set up of:

13 Xiao Mi Red Note 6’s with jelly-like cases =13 x S$230 (2017 models) = S$2990

2019 Mi RedNote 7 (3Gb, Qualcomm 632, 6” , 4000mah, ) similar pricing here

14 iamcardboard headsets (spare included): 14 x S$ 322 + S$50 shipping

6 Anker 10000MiA battery packs = 5 x S$55 = S$330

14 Sennheiser HD202 headphones (spare set) 14 x S$54.99 = S$769

Grand total for 1:2 class set of VR headsets: S$4488 = USD $3243.48

We can easily skin this total down by not purchasing battery packs or the Sennheiser and only buying Apple style earbuds ( I prefer these hard shell earphones for their durability). Cheap copies are available on the likes of TaoBao, Ali express or Lazada for a lot less. However, for this comparison, I’m going with the Oppo/ Huawei standard 3.5mm type that come in at S$19.

13 Xiao Mi Red Note 6’s with jelly-like cases =13 x S$230 (2017 models) = S$2990

2019 Mi RedNote 7 (3Gb, Qualcomm 632, 6” , 4000mah, ) similar pricing here

14 iamcardboard headsets (spare included): 14 x S$ 322 + S$50 shipping

14 Oppo/ Huawei earbud type earphones: S$19 x S$266

Grand total for 1:2 class set of VR headsets: S$3628 = USD $2619.42

With import duties and shipping, the Quest set works out roughly the same for a 1:2 class set (our classes are capped at 24 children ) of devices that, in my experience are simple to manage and above all else, provide a bookable resource of mobile devices that are not locked down in the same way as the Oculus Quest and provide all the functionality of a phone: video, stills, editing, QR and other apps too. The locked-down nature of the Quest where there needs to be another phone attached with a person’s Oculus account to release the developer mode really is a bind that you don’t really experience on Android devices, nor do you want to experience this as a class teacher with your students. Unless, of course, you have a teacher cohort at your school that frequently flash custom Android ROMs on their devices. However, I doubt this very much.

The thing I’m going to lead onto here is that the need for another phone’s Oculus app to pair the device for the Quest to enter Developer mode really is a step too far by comparison to a standard mobile phone for general class use. This enhanced mode allows you to you sideload apps from your Windows computer which, as a stand alone R&D device is perfect. The real stickler here is twofold and this is part and parcel of it being a great R&D device for honing staff member’s understanding of what technology is just around the corner. What I’ve learned from this type of R&D is that when single units like this are dropped into classrooms they spark so many ideas and lead-in for new wild projects or add-ons for already outstanding projects. What they don’t do is shape the current use and ready-planned resources within a school, the working, easy-to-use devices do this. The Quest is a fabulous device for future planning and aligning budget cycles especially if you run a 10% R&D already or are about to.

The two fold nature of this device is that, yes, you can mirror your computer with Riftcat and run Steam VR from here. However, I found it sketchy at best and, in school environment this has a ‘faff-to-success’ ratio of about 2:10 which, is how I found the HTC Vive originally but the ideation that came from that HTC and all the teachers who used it was astounding. The other issue, and this is a big one in terms of school use, is the tethering of the Quest to another mobile phone with the app on it. This makes it instantly a 1:1 device or in an environment such as a school is a put on/ pull off situation where there is limited time to actually make anything, say an .OBJ, for something such as Co-spaces a very tricky thing to achieve with a large proportion of kids younger than 13 or 14. Time constraints and, subsequently the exclusive nature of the device is difficult to bring into a specialist lesson. An all day round-robin cycle of activities that had this as a 20 minute building set would also hone the ideas for what we can do with the class set of Android phones for VR. The bigger social issue with this is that a single VR device, while that one kid is using it everyone is looking at that one kid wondering what the hell they are seeing. It is possible to cast the screen to another computer however, again I found the picture quality contained a lot of artefacts that may have just been the setup of our school network. This was certainly the case for streaming Steam content and to remote desktop. The ‘faff’ scale was hockey stick shaped with this endeavour.

Back to the tethering. This is mandatory for developer mode (why this isn’t a toggle on the device to begin with I don’t know as it’s an eight tap sequence in Android settings) which in turn is needed for the creation of the business account at Oculus.com. Once this is done, you can install the ADB drivers, Powershell script and then you can add other free VR apps from the Sideloader platform. As a serial tinkerer, this had me very much tempted into the ‘what if...? idea stream in my mind’. I was thinking along the lines of ‘what if we can build something and export it. Can we make a simple video compilation or edit game streaming as stories” for example. As it turns out, not really, maybe we will have this soon. Remember, the original Rift was like this and the Quest is a similar informant.

Now then, the Sideloader games and apps... as with any communities such as this, you need to be sympathetic to the wants and desires of devs and tinkerers, and the unstoppable desire for nostalgia. I’m talking really about the porting of games such as Quake into a VR headset such as the Quest. Sadly these don’t really work, but the desire is there to produce these kinds of channels for once champions of the gaming world. In fact, I’m still searching for a port of a game where the parabolic head movement combined a similarly moving horizon doesn’t induce instant nausea. On the other hand, these kinds of apps and games are for niche elements of school life and are a far cry from being useful for the layman - such as the painting polygon app in Sideloader. It’s an early start, yet these are not built school use in mind.

The final note here is to do with the trajectory of VR for schools versus the path VR is taking. The types of kits and the resources that are available for schools is fantastic. Something so simple as the Tuscan villa or Google Earth VR is an exceptional example of how children can be inspired to write or experience a scene that inspires other aspects of our curricula. Google Earth VR has a real Gulliver’s Travels feel about it. The snag is, harking back to the phrase ‘VR for the masses’ earlier, means that the likes of Facebook need to earn back their investment and to gain a profit by securing users to a platform. And to do this, they need to make the devices locked down and appliance-like. The games need need to be just that, games where eyeballs are on the screen as much as possible and to serialise these mini franchises. Google Earth et al is not going to do that job. Ever.

In essence, schools need to think and research very carefully how they are going to incorporate these types of devices into classes, to include as many children as possible because the learning experiences to be had from VR, as much as I’ve experienced with my classes, provide a primary source knowledge base for nearly all students, that has an outstanding knock-on effect, especially in areas such as creative writing and as I mentioned above, ideation.

#VR #Virtual Reality #educational technolgy #virtual environments

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