The Returns games are so damn good.

Painkiller Black and Nazi Zombie Army are my favorites and sometimes I play Dead Island. Also l recently played a lot of Fallout New Vegas. The best newer game is probably Shadow Warrior.

Anyone see the 30 minute gameplay demo of Pillars of Eternity?

Looks absolutely gorgeous (well, the backgrounds at any rate), but the RTWP combat system still leaves me with a feeling of uneasiness. Hopefully the game will be significantly more tactical and challenging once the player has more abilities at her/his disposal. On the filpside, the vast dialog trees from the Planscape: Torment writers, the enormous amount of content (~150 maps, just shy of Baldur's Gate II's map count!!) and the wonderful art style makes me feel my $20 Kickstarter investment was still money well spent, even if the combat never rises above a glorified hack 'n slash.

Oh right, and Wasteland 2 is just on the horizon as well! Not to mention Dragon Age: Inquisition (which is actually looking pretty decent, shitty dialog wheel notwithstanding) and of course Risen 3. Jesus Christ is it a good year for Western RPG gamers.

This is a long shot but a couple games I really wish they'd bring back are Syphon Filter (anyone remember the first 3 that came out on the ps1? God, those were such awesome games as a kid), and FEAR, I think they'd both make for some cool games on these new glossy systems they got out... Not like I'm planning on buying either of them anytime soon unless somebody just offers me one that fell off the truck or something.

EDIT: speaking of old PS1 games, I got a copy of Wu-Tang Clan's Shaolin style (like an old fighting game the group released right before they put out that double album, I think) and damn is it hard, there's a ton of moves you can use but it's such a combination of button mashing that it takes several seconds just to punch in the right sequence, it's not nearly as simple as Jurassic Park Warpath, which I guess is good in a sense, as once you unlock all the extra characters there's not a whole lot left to do anymore.

So.... I'll probably pass on Destiny. Or wait til it's like $4 on Steam at some point. Really, really underwhelming. I think I expected too much from all the comparisons to Borderlands, but it's really very little like it.

Cons:

• Worst UI ever. Seriously, it's a console game (that will be ported on PC later), but it's clearly been designed with a mouse in mind. You move a cursor around like it's a mouse, instead of taping rapidly the d-pad or analog stick to navigate the menu. WTF? It's horribly clunky and slow.
• Again with the UI: what's with the obsession over holding buttons to do anything, while simple, quick presses would do just fine? Requiring to hold a button makes sense when you want to cancel an action mid-choice, for example, when dismantling a weapon (you don't want to accidentally destroy good loot... not that there's much of that, more on that later). But to summon the Sparrow (the Star Wars-like motorcycle/vehicle)? Open loot chests? Talk to NPCs? Stupid. The worst offender is when you're in the Tower and need to return to the orbit, you need to hold triangle for like 6 seconds. Why?
• The navigation itself between the Tower (the city/hub) and the destinations is clunky. Instead of picking a destination from the Tower directly, you must return to orbit (hold triangle + loading screen), then navigate the map with that stupid cursor, then pick a destination, THEN move the cursor to a button that says "launch" to confirm, then more loading. You're on the ground and want to return to the city? Okay, you return to the orbit, select your destination again, move the cursor to "launch", yadda yadda. Jesus, just make a quick and snappy map in the menu, WTF.
• Loading the Tower takes forever. More than the actual maps, it seems. I don't understand why. It's not a particularly big hub at all, and it feels strangely empty.
• My suspicions that the universe would feel generic sci-fi, empty and soulless were confirmed. Compare to Borderlands, where the world feels more "lived in", this is a strangely empty world. Yes it's derelict and all, but why are all those gangs of hostiles attacking me? What do they want, what are they doing there? I wouldn't mind a bleak empty world if it were full of atmosphere and incredible level design, but there is little to none of that in Destiny that I've seen.
• Loot. Where's my loot? I was promised loot (I think?). Hardly any loot boxes to find, only a few random gear drops so far. Exploration is all but useless, very unrewarding. And when you do find a loot box it's usually just money. Where's my plethora of guns and armours? The loot was powerfully unsatisfying. Most disappointing aspect so far... except the one below, which is the worst thing.
• The missions really suck. Go to place, kill X. Go to place, deploy the robot (with serviceable, but often rather dry, VA from Peter Dinklage, hah), fend off waves of enemies while the robot hacks into thing. Now where have I seen that before? I'm actually OK with that trope in a normal "pure" shooter (since it's just an excuse to shoot at stuff after all), but this is supposed to be this epic shooter RPG, I'd love to do, y'know, more than that. So far the story missions are like the filler side-quests in other games. Yikes. And the actual side-missions? Well, I guess it's how MMO work, but you are basically dropped into the map free to "explore", which means running around until you find a beacon with an objective, each more trite than the last. Such as: kill X enemies and collect their drops, or go to Quest Marker and do... something, no need to explain what. I'm not even kidding. One time I picked a "mission" which had a voice saying "we need a good scan of this area". I follow the marker to this area, then when I reach it, I hold the square prompt, it says "Scan 100% complete", mission success! ...Yay? I get XP for my trouble, oh joy. Another was, go kill this Marauder. Okay, I go there... he dies pretty fast. Then I run around and pick up the next objective. "Go kill this Vandal." Uh, okay... wait it's at the same place as before! I kill another enemy. Done. Not even some bit of writing or story to accompany the mission. Just... the laziest shit you can think of. The only point of doing those is to grind XP, I suppose, because it's otherwise incredibly boring.
• Enemies respawn just about instantly. Kill off some, walk away less than a yard, come back and they're already back. Remember those 8-bit sidescrollers where, if you move the screen an inch and come back, the enemies you killed already respawned? It's kinda like that. I don't know if MMOs usually work that way, but it's pretty damn annoying.

Pros:

• The skyboxes sure are pretty.
• The Star Wars like hovering motorcycle is pretty cool and fun to ride around.
• Gunplay itself seems solid. No real complaints there.
• Game seems to perform smoothly even on PS3, no framerate drops that I saw. The only point above the PS3 version of Borderlands so far (which performs like shite for some reason)

Too soon (aka PS3 beta isn't enough) to tell:

• Class abilities. There are three classes, Titan, Hunter and Warlock (seem to be the equivalent of Fighter, Rogue, Mage XD). I picked Hunter, of course -). So far the class abilities and skill trees are underwhelming, but the beta is capped at level 8 and I didn't get to see much of it. The first ability I unlocked is to... throw an incendiary grenade. Wot. It works with a cooldown, rather than consumable grenades. Again: wot? Then I unlocked... double jump. That's a class ability? Weird. Then my class's super ability; for a few seconds I get to shoot 3 powerful orbs, with a super long cooldown for the next. Oh wow. -_- Nothing cool and unique like the class abilities in Borderlands, that's for sure. Buuuut maybe you unlock really neat abilities later, so I won't be too dismissive of that yet.
• The maps. The Russia wasteland was a bit meh, not enough verticality IMO, but it wasn't bad per se. The Moon map was shown but locked (apparently it was unlocked for 2 hours yesterday but I missed it... -_-), I saw some screenshots and it looked pretty at least. I don't have enough information to comment on the map design so far.
• Story. Seems generic as hell but who knows, maybe it turns into a mindfuck with lots of twists at some point. They promised us an epic story. We'll see.
• Of course the graphics are a bit of a mess on PS3, I'm sure it looks muuuuch better on PS4. On PS3 it's pretty still but the shadows are atrociously pixellated xD and there's very noticeable chromatic aberration in some places. Keep in mind I am far, far from a graphics whore and I tend to never notice that kind of stuff, so if I notice it, it's pretty bad. But again, I'm sure it'll look much better on PS4 and on a powerful PC.
• Enemy design and variety. There was a decent enough variety on the first map I guess, not better or worse than other games. Hopefully they don't get constantly recycled in the rest of the game.
• I'm not sure I like how the gun categories are divided. In the beta you have access to 3 categories of guns (seems the full game has 4): primary, special, and heavy, with ammo shared between guns of the same category. But like, a shotgun and a sniper rifle are both "special" (so yes they use the same ammo lol), so I can't equip them both, I have to pick one over the other. In Borderlands I just have (up to) 4 gun slots and can equip whatever I want. Maybe it'll end up working just fine in the final game, but I think I prefer the Borderlands approach. Not sure what's the reasoning for putting a pistol and an assault rifle in the same category (primary), and shotguns and sniper rifles together under "special", really.

Tl;dr: Geez I wrote a lot. Well, okay: loot is bad, exploring is unrewarding, and the menu/UI/navigation is particularly bad. Seems like generic sci-fi MMO FPS, with emphasis on deathmatch PvP instead of epic questing PvE and coop. So far, fairly disappointing and probably not for me.

So there are just 2 thus far? Worth getting the system(s) for? I love the SNES games and wasn't aware of these. Looks fun.

Loving the culture/background/etc in character creation. Looks great so far, still watching.

Yeah, my only real complaint is how insipid the IGN correspondent is. It sounds like her knowledge of RPGs starts and ends with Dragon Age II.

Although on the aesthetic front I do hope the character models/animations get just a bit more detailed by release time (I'm not holding my breath).

It looks good to me. RTWP isn't ideal, but it's no surprise that that's what Pillars of Eternity was going to use, and I've used it in plenty of other RPGs, so I'm not really complaining. The graphics look fine, too - those are just icing on the cake in my book, as what I paid for was more the mechanics and setting/quests/writing than anything else. If I valued graphics over those, I'd go pick up the upcoming Dragon Age game.

I'd say so. Although the music in the newest isn't quite as good as the originals, they did bring back the original composer. It's got him and the Metroid Prime guy, maybe some other composers in there. Awesome music all around.

I'm about as picky as it can get with modern 2D platformers. Either the gimmicks or the style and visuals usually turn me off. But these games blew me away and were oozing with great atmosphere like the originals. Cool throwbacks and some remixed music of the classics in both. They were very challenging as well which was a nice change of pace. Always forgiving though and you learn from your mistakes, the difficulty curve was perfect. It's also awesome to finally get to play as the original team again, DK and Diddy. But Tropical Freeze mixes it up a bit and throws in Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky (you read that right, hah), each with their own unique abilities. Both games are a good length with some extra levels to unlock if you find the collectibles and such. Nothing as elaborate as DKC3 though, which is good... I'm a fan but I think it's a bit bloated. So the Returns games are a bit simpler like the first two DKC's.

You could play both on the Wii U, which already has enough reason to own one at this point with some other great games.

My only gripe, is no Kremlins and K-Rool. I'd like Retro to do one more to have their own trilogy, and bring back the Kremlins for the final game. Though another Metroid Prime would be even better...

I was never a fan of the New Super Mario Bros games, but the U one is pretty damn good too. But yeah, I'd put the DKC Returns games on another level easily. Damn good stuff.

One case of the new tracks being better than the old I'd say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQMmMxr605o

Oh believe me, I think the graphics are generally phenomenal for a game of this scope, complexity and budget. It's just that, to my eyes at any rate, the bright, cartoonishly plasticine characters contrast a bit too sharply with the intricately detailed, earth-toned world; they look like they're from two completely separate art styles. See Shadowrun: Returns for a more unified art design in a moderately comparable production (even though generally, it's visually inferior to Pillars). But really that's an incredibly minor nitpick in a sea of praise. Very much excited for this.

And to be quite honest, the new Dragon Age doesn't actually look all that bad on the PC. They're bringing back the tactical view and a mouse + keyboard optimized UI. I still probably won't pay for it, but, eh. I could think of worse ways to pass the time.

I can think of better. Have you checked out any of Spiderweb's games? Avernum: Escape from the Pit makes that Pillars of Eternity demo look like a fuckin graphical revolution, but it's also ludicrously big, with probably the highest level of challenge in any RPG I've played. Playing an RPG, how many times have you ever thought to yourself "I don't know if I can beat this." Because that's shit Avernum has you thinking all the time. The final boss especially required me to burn every consumable, every buff, every ability, absolutely everything I could to win, and was still a fucking bastard. And this wasn't a case of "well, I'll go grind out a few levels and come back and have an easier time," because I'd already done every fucking quest in the game, cleared every dungeon, gotten the best gear possible. How many end bosses in how many RPGs actually offer that level of challenge? What's more, I wasn't even playing on the max difficulty!

If that sounds daunting rather than enticing, Avadon: The Black Fortress is the first in Spiderweb's more mainstream-friendly RPG series, being less punishing and more story-driven, with scripted companions rather than a party you create entirely yourself. Also good, though ultimately less rewarding, imo. Did I mention all the combat is fully turn-based? Definitely better than RTWP, that's for sure.

I know of Black Fortress, but not Escape from the Pit. Looks pretty great, but honestly I think after playing it for a few hours I'd just start up a similar game I'm a lot more comfortable with like Baldur's/Icewind, or ultra-tactical turn based games like Jagged Alliance 2, Shadow Watch (very underrated game, btw) or the non-terrible X-Coms. It's generally really hard for me to get into modern indie isometric games.

While we're on this subject, did you play through both Shadowrun Returns campaigns? The first was mediocre but the second really knocked it out of the park for me, and it's definitely worth your time. You'd be advised to ratchet up the difficulty before playing either, though, because I'm kind of an idiot and I still found the default difficulty to be pathetically easy. Oh, oh, and will you be playing Wasteland 2 when it finally comes out in a month-ish?

I did buy the Spiderweb pack during GoG's sale (all of them for like $7.00 or something) but I haven't played any yet. They look very minimalist and samey from a distance, but your description of them is very promising failsafe. I may have to pick one out and play it soon.

Unless you're playing as the absurdly weak shaman class, which I was dumb enough to do. But yes, Dragonfall especially was very good indeed, although I still felt that some of the portraits clashed horribly with the game's setting and tone.

I enjoyed Escape from the Pit quite a bit, although I never finished it (or got anywhere close, most likely).

Escape From the Pit is so awesome, although I have yet to beat it. I got pretty far in Avadon, though. I'd say Avadon is probably a better place to start although Avernum has more intriguing lore/world building. The writing and setting is really what sets these games a part though, as the combat can be someone tedious outside of the difficult boss battles. Like failsafeman said, some of these fights really make you want to give up (as I obviously have since I've yet to beat them, haha).

I've played the first one, which yeah wasn't the best, but I really enjoyed the character creation/fight mechanics/art style, so it's good in my book. I'm waiting for the expansion to come down in price before I pull the trigger on that, though. Still a shitload of games in my library I haven't touched.


Ditto with Wasteland 2. Not paying full price for it.


What the fuck are you talking about? I played as a shaman and they fucking kick ass. Their buff spells are absurdly powerful if you have strong party members, their summons get absurdly powerful in general, and their area-denial spells are fantastic when you're fighting melee enemies. They might be a tad weak at the outset, but once you start getting the better summons they're incredible. Maybe you didn't know what you were doing, or just messed up your build somehow.

About to join the rest of the world and give Diablo 3 a crack. Never played the first two, but I'm still in a "carrot-on-a-stick" mood after going through Terraria, so it should be fun for a spell.

Path of Exile > Diablo 3

Games not developed by Blizzard > Blizzard games

Diablo 3 has the best hack and slash RPG combat I've played in recent memory but it generally sucks at being an RPG, compared to Path of Exile where theorycrafting is actually incredibly interesting.

Probably both. Maybe I should have got the bear totem for the group heal. Spirits are costly and can turn on you even with high spirit control. I'd rather take drones or the offensive abilities of an adept over a shaman. I just found them underpowered in comparison. Keep in mind that Dragonfall is harder than Dead Man's Switch.

They CAN turn on you, sure, but keep in mind that the tactics you use shouldn't be the same as those you use for the drones. The drones are like another party member; you have to take care of them. But what I did with the shaman was just summon the earth spirit, march him straight into enemy ranks, and have him smack guys around/eat their attacks. Even if he did turn, he'd still be surrounded by enemies and would sometimes just keep hitting them on his own instead of making a beeline back to me. The earth spirit, the one I liked the best, was less about getting kills and dishing out the DPS and more about tanking/drawing attention away from my party. Every round the baddies shoot at the spirit is a round my party isn't getting hit, and another round my boys have to whittle down the enemies' ranks. Also don't forget Haste, which is fuckin' awesome. Granted, it wasn't my first time through, but if anything I probably found it easier than playing a decker.

Now wait just a minute mr, let's exclude Lost Vikings ... then I shall agree!

Actual in-game screenshots from The Last of Us remastered (PS4), using the game's "photo mode" (spoilered for size, not actual spoilers), note that photo mode doesn't work during cut scenes so this is all in-engine/gameplay:



Courtesy of NeoGAF. More here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=863461
Some of those are insane. Almost like concept art. And remember, this was originally a PS3 game they remastered (they didn't remake it). Naughty Gods indeed.

So this is the first time I fought a professional level player in Street Fighter. Blaqskillz who is normally known for his Dee Jay but this time he was using Decapre. I recognized the username and his rank was really high so I picked my main character Rose and gave it my all. Pretty good fight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27R5N3mP_84

Here's his Dee Jay in action during Evo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2jnf3n19AI

Makes me wonder if I can beat Lexy's Chun Li if we both lose to Blaqskillz.

Those Last of Us screenshots sure look good. I have no interest in the game personally, but my fucking god is it visually impressive. Except for the hair. Haha. I don't think I've ever seen a game with good looking long hair, ever. They just can't seem to get that particular detail right.

Yeah, I'd heard a lot of mixed reviews when it came out but it sounds like Blizzard have patched away most of the problems. I played the shit out of D2 and other diablo clones like Titan Quest, Fate, Dungeon Siege, etc. so I think I could have a lot of fun with D3. I'll get it after I've burned through some of my massive Steam backlog and have some money to spend.

I've been playing some Diablo 3 lately (after having dumped it for a year), and the improvements are, well, an improvement. My Witch Doctor was never this fun a year ago.

I've been messing around with this program called Space Engine that I came across on Reddit. For those who haven't heard of it, it's basically an interactive planetarium which allows you to explore the known Universe on a 1:1 scale at your leisure. It has millions of procedurally-generated stars, planets, galaxies, moons, asteroids, etc. All of which you can land on, catalog, and screenshot. It's a really humbling and awe-inspiring experience and I've been playing around with it for the past couple hours. It's completely free to download at http://en.spaceengine.org/ but I plan on donating some money to them when I get paid next, I really love what they've done so far.

Here are a few screens of the places I've been/seen.

For what it's worth, Gran Turismo 5 had a photo mode that made the game look way better than it did while playing it.

Anywho, Dragon's Crown is a free game on PS+ for August. Initially it was stated that it was the Vita version and it wasn't cross-buy, but reports are saying it will be free for PS3, as well. So it's not cross-buy, but it's cross-buy.

Yeah, hair is always incredibly difficult to render. I think that's why there are so many bald or buzzcut white dudes as protagonists. TLoU's hair is pretty good as far as it generally goes. Joel's beard is amazing, to be honest.


Depends on what you mean by "made the game look better". Did it increase the resolution or something? In TLoU's case, it might "make the game look better" that because you can rotate and zoom around and use unorthodox camera angles to make it seem more "cinematic", for example, but the graphics are not "enhanced" (unless you add DoP to hide imperfections for a "photo" look, or the film grain or noir filters, but most of the shots I posted didn't), they really look like that in-game. I just saw the game briefly in motion today, as a matter of fact, on my friend's PS4, he just received his copy.


Yeah. Too bad I've had the game for a year now so this doesn't affect me. August looks bleak for PS+, nothing I want. Hopefully it'll bounce back with more interesting titles in September.

I actually have a copy of The Last of Us Remastered sitting on the table, but I haven't popped it open and tried it yet. The PS3 version was one of the best looking games of its gen, so I'm really curious to see how Naughty Dog could possibly have topped it. But I probably won't have time to find out for another couple days or so.

I'm still pretty curious about Last of Us. I really didn't care too much for Uncharted. I liked watching my friend play through them (or marathon the entire thing), but when I tried playing them it took me like two weeks to beat them, I just got really bored after short bursts. Last of Us looks way more my style though and kind of like what Resident Evil should have become or something.

Who knows, I'll have to check out the PS4 release someday.

It's really nothing like Uncharted, believe me.

Yeah, looks slower paced with a bit more stealth and more brutal combat? From what I've seen it definitely looks fun.

Uncharted, for some reason the controls bugged the hell out of me. Controls felt way too sensitive, like one tap on the joystick would send Drake two to three steps forward or make him do a complete 360 and then some. The covering felt overly fluid too. And I've never really cared for the whole "hold up to climb all this stuff"... eh. lol, beautiful games with some great writing, but the gameplay to me definitely wasn't anything special.

I got Last of Us on black friday and everyone I talked to loved it to the point where it sounded like they were exagerratng. I havent played it yet, since Ive got a lot of pc games still. A friend of mine's cousin doesnt even play games, yet he loved it.