Destiny looks cool and I wouldn't mind giving it a go, but seems like an actual commitment for a while. I don't think I have the time for that sort of thing. Also it's only on console at the moment. I could play it for the PS3/PS4, but I prefer FPSs via mouse/keyboard.
I started to write a post to saying that it is tweaked to work probably better with a controller (like Halo). But now I'm wondering if the Playstation will let you use a mouse and keyboard. Probably not.
Perhaps, however I probably won't get it anytime soon. I really don't care for MMO type online open world playing with interaction of other players. I'll stick with the additional BL2 content I have yet to play along with the Prequel coming out.
It's pretty similar to Borderlands actually minus the wacky gun combos. The interaction is a little more inline with Journey. I only ever played a little bit of Guild Wars but it seems like they're going for that approach where you level cap really fast but then there's a whole lot of end game stuff.
Not sure how I feel about Prequel. I sorta feel like its a cheap cash in despite it looking like a full game. I just can't seem to convince myself its actually a full package.
Not sure how I feel about Prequel. I sorta feel like its a cheap cash in despite it looking like a full game. I just can't seem to convince myself its actually a full package.
It's a return to the BL1 style, more than anything - lots of guns, all the fun of BL2 that goes down when nobody's fucking talking, extra mechanics, but no abysmally fucking bad Anthony Burch writing, which is a massive plus.
I guess it has been 2 years since the last game which is blowing me away a bit. Feels like it was last year for some reason. I think its just the sticking to the Handsome Jack story in some way that's breaking it for me.
I recently played Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragonkeep. That is so far my favorite DLC. It was just silly and enjoyable as well as endearing. I teared up a bit. I don't know how much Burch was involved with that, but I definitely will be playing it again. Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is abysmally boring. I still need to play the Headhunter DLCs.
I recently played Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragonkeep. That is so far my favorite DLC. It was just silly and enjoyable as well as endearing. I teared up a bit. I don't know how much Burch was involved with that, but I definitely will be playing it again. Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt is abysmally boring.
I have no idea. I should be a little more specific - the main game is super hamfisted, and the humor is real bad. I mean, a lot of it is just shouting memes and references as loud as possible, because loud is funny. Every story beat is telegraphed for ages, because there's seemingly no ability to differentiate between building tension in the story, and just straight-up telling you what's going to happen, and then going "but not right now. In a little bit, you'll know when it happens."
Handsome Jack's primary villainy seems to be just that he's a rich douchebag with a bit of power, and the attempt at nuance of him once being a regular guy isn't well done, it feels tacked on because someone said during the development "Wow, I have no interest in this guy because he's not really a threat, he's just a shallow, annoying wanker and I want him to go away." He does monstrous stuff, sure, but the impact wouldn't be in any way lessened if he was gone, and it was just the faceless "Hyperion Corporation" doing it, or if they didn't even tell you, that was just assumed. He has no real agency, no real presence, no menace or threat - and that doesn't make for a good villain. He seems like just an annoying face put there to tie events together, instead of them just being things that happened.
As for friendlies? Don't even get me started on how you can tell villains from friendlies by the fact that if someone is a bit dorky, or especially if they're a bit Dorky AND adorable, then they are 100% a friendly without question. Roland, Axton, Maya, lilith, Gage, Scooter, claptrap(I fucking hate claptrap), the list goes on. Even Krieg - who is meant to be an insanity spewing lunatic with a weary, normal-person inner voice that's still damaged by the constant death and horror of Pandora - gets to be adorkable with his crush on Lilith.
The only characters I can think of that escape it are Zero(presumably because nobody figured out how to write an adorkable haiku), Moxie(by being sultry instead of adorable and dorky), and Marcus(by being obsessive about business and profit, and little else, but he skirts the edge on a few occasions.)
Not to mention, Burch seems to be a fan of the whole "Ironically annoying" thing, but fails to realize that ironically annoying is still really fucking annoying, nor that filling the cliches and shitty parts of a genre "ironically" doesn't mean dick if you're still just doing it anyway.
In a way, it suffers the same problem as Duke Nukem Forever: A wink and a nod at the camera doesn't change that you're doing the thing you're winking and nodding about with an entirely straight face.
But, that's not to say that it's entirely unlikeable or that you shouldn't like it, that's just, like, my opinion man. And there are good bits to it, and good individual jokes and story beats - This is just talking about the bad bits, the good bits are still there.
I bit into Crawl, it's the next Nidhogg. Sadly, it has the same problems as the old Nidhogg, namely that an extra hour of game time can make you a glorious golden god against scrubs. Also, there is only local multiplayer right now.
It's a perpetual rogue-like with asymmetrical game play. One player plays an adventurer engaging in the standard hack&slash while three other players are ghosts that either possess traps or use summon circles to become monsters. The goal is for the human player to reach xp level ten and defeat the boss to win. The goal of the ghosts is to kill and become human.
The game's core theme revolves around risk and reward/punishment for timing. There is usually a rush for the ghosts to grab the summoning circles, because it gives you a better opportunity to kill the human player, but the downside is dying only makes the human stronger. The attacks have a nice scale of damage vs. cooldown with exceptionally powerful attacks leaving you wide open for nasty counters, the best example being the final boss.
When the map is exhausted, the human is encouraged to enter the next floor via slimes that give no gold or xp that can give another ghost a shot at becoming human. During these transitions, each player's levels are tallied, then points are given to other players based on the level gap from one player to the tallied level player. Those points can then be used to upgrade the three monsters that are randomly summoned when entering a summoner circle, which gives the nice decision of trying to risk that one in three chance of getting that almost guaranteed player-killer monster, or evenly leveling your monsters to ensure consistent damage against the human.
The final boss is especially interesting in terms of game design. The human starts in a sealed room and can't leave until he learns a new mechanic involving an exploding monster. The boss has three unique parts that each of the ghosts can individually control. Here, the premise of timing and risk/reward really shines, as the ghosts have to aim and time their attacks with each other in order to guarantee the player can't dodge a setup for the boss' most damaging attack. The player, in turn, can avoid the onslaught and use the recently learned mechanic of the bomb monsters to stun the boss during his damaging laser and deal massive damage. A well coordinated ghost team can keep the human on the defensive and take meaningless damage and a good human can easily ruin a clumsy ghost team. This boils mind game of predicting the other team's attacks and direction.
The boss fight also has one interesting part to it, While the goal of the human is to kill the boss, the ghosts only need to reduce the human to 10% health, where he will be kicked back to the dungeon with 10% health...the first two times. The thing about the boss room, is that it can only be entered three times total. On the third time, the rules change for the ghosts. If they kill the human, there are now three winners and one loser.
Overall, I love the game's concept. The little decisions, the moving bits to give the semblance of fairness, the cooperative/competitive feelings of all the ghosts and how they fight to kill the hero but then trip each other up in order to score the last hit. The tiny scaling mechanics to make sure one player doesn't run away with the game solely because his numbers are bigger than yours. It'll be a shame to watch this game die.
It is as good as advertised. This is also a good example for people who want to do good game design. There are so many subtle animation cues when you play giving hints like what can be possessed and when a player's attack combo and special moves are on cooldown without cluttering up the already cluttered space.
Smash demo for 3DS makes me excited for 3DS Smash. It's pretty fluid despite the controls being not the best. It just has be on a GC controller to feel right.
I have no idea. I should be a little more specific - the main game is super hamfisted, and the humor is real bad. I mean, a lot of it is just shouting memes and references as loud as possible, because loud is funny
Well that hardly seems fair I mean...
This trailer, written by me and with additional jokes by @duvalmagic, has my single favorite joke I've ever written. https://t.co/00yc5sRLQP
Destiny turns into a horrendous grind post level 20. The entire search for equipment with light to raise your level past twenty is terrible. Granted the exp that does not count for leveling still does count for unlocking skill and equipment upgrades but... shit give me some decent drops???
I even earned some legendary gear in a pvp match but it was for a class I had not raised passed level 5!
Yeah I ignored that game for quite a while but last time I looked at it I was pretty interested in it. Apparently it was supposed to be a new Batman Arkham game but someone didn't write off on it (a Bombcast email pointed out Nolan?) so they reskinned it as a LotR game.
Ahh I could see how that would work w/ randomized thugs that move up in the ranks and stuff. I really wouldnt care what theme is on top of it, Monolith has made some great AI and it looks like the entire game is all about messing around w/ AI.
That even makes a lot of sense given how the landscape is laid out, with all these weird plateaus all over. Must have been designed around climbing buildings and whatnot.
e: it's also really cool that theyve released hours of gameplay footage and have no review embargo, like almost every game w/ a preorder has these days.
It does sorta worry me a bit because they haven't sent anyone the PC copy and purportedly won't until the release date. Seems like they're working to the deadline with it so hopefully it doesn't suck.
With all of the "slow down" updates coming out for Destiny I really feel for the new players. I'd you purchased the game at launch you could have easily maxed out all three of your available character slots. If you waited... Well... Bungie has gimped loot drops to the point where it will take you months to make up the difference.
It's like they made a game and them went, "oh shit, everyone will max out their characters in a month and stop playing!" So they responded not by adding more awesome content and new things to do bit instead altered the rate of loot drops so that the stuff you need to level up hardly ever drops.
They patched out the quick spawns so the "loot cave" is gone but they altered the item drops so that you reliably get what you expect out of engrams which is better. It's still not perfect but it does alleviate some of the issues that made the cave so vital. The loot cave wasn't making anything faster, but was making it more feasible. There was ~1/3 of a chance that you would get legendaries from purple engrams which was insane. So even when you picked one up it probably wasn't a legendary, so people were farming the shit out of engram drops just to try and beat the odds.
I'm taking my sweet ass time doing the story line content. I should just finish up the Mars quest and go back to Venus for patrols and back to Mars.
I'm currently 23 and working on my Exotic Bounty Weapon quest to where you have to dismantle a total of 10 FUCKING Rare or higher fusion rifles. Ugh. Then the last part requires a weekly Strike and I don't have a team for that. I'll figure something out.
I want Bungie to let all strikes be matchmaking. That would be nice. I also want the Queen's Wrath Event to go on another week. No me gusta Crucible/PvP.
Also one thing I noticed and enjoyed about the game is that there is a decent scarcity in regards to ammo and ammo amount varies from each gun in it's category.
It's challenging to have lesser bullet amounts for the stronger guns like rifles, shotguns, or pistols. Perhaps they calculate amount of bullets allowed with amount of damage/impact per bullet taken with range. *shrugs*
I've been streaming almost all my sessions lately. It's been a blast having some of the listeners from ATW9K watch and have conversations with them as I explain the game and shout expletives and shrieks when I almost die.
I will definitely need to get a better headset. Recommendations?
I've yet to get an exotic bounty. I'm pretty unlucky in destiny it seems. The only legendary I got from a drop (ie wasn't guaranteed to me) was for some Titan gear and I'm a Hunter.
I working two exotic weapon boy ties right now, 3 more rare fusion rifles to scrap.
I leveled up a Warlock and Hunter before the lootcave was shut down. I did not take advantage of the shards from scrapping queen armor before they gimped it.
Right now I am working on my Titan and at level 16 white items still drop!
The lootcave also allowed easy upgrade of your cryptarch level and every time you level it up you get a care package of rare or netter stuff. So... Yeah... Gimping the loot cave has shown a serious impact to me and I feel for new players.
With that said, toss me an invite on PS4 and you can do strikes with me.
Comments
Not sure how I feel about Prequel. I sorta feel like its a cheap cash in despite it looking like a full game. I just can't seem to convince myself its actually a full package.
Handsome Jack's primary villainy seems to be just that he's a rich douchebag with a bit of power, and the attempt at nuance of him once being a regular guy isn't well done, it feels tacked on because someone said during the development "Wow, I have no interest in this guy because he's not really a threat, he's just a shallow, annoying wanker and I want him to go away." He does monstrous stuff, sure, but the impact wouldn't be in any way lessened if he was gone, and it was just the faceless "Hyperion Corporation" doing it, or if they didn't even tell you, that was just assumed. He has no real agency, no real presence, no menace or threat - and that doesn't make for a good villain. He seems like just an annoying face put there to tie events together, instead of them just being things that happened.
As for friendlies? Don't even get me started on how you can tell villains from friendlies by the fact that if someone is a bit dorky, or especially if they're a bit Dorky AND adorable, then they are 100% a friendly without question. Roland, Axton, Maya, lilith, Gage, Scooter, claptrap(I fucking hate claptrap), the list goes on. Even Krieg - who is meant to be an insanity spewing lunatic with a weary, normal-person inner voice that's still damaged by the constant death and horror of Pandora - gets to be adorkable with his crush on Lilith.
The only characters I can think of that escape it are Zero(presumably because nobody figured out how to write an adorkable haiku), Moxie(by being sultry instead of adorable and dorky), and Marcus(by being obsessive about business and profit, and little else, but he skirts the edge on a few occasions.)
Not to mention, Burch seems to be a fan of the whole "Ironically annoying" thing, but fails to realize that ironically annoying is still really fucking annoying, nor that filling the cliches and shitty parts of a genre "ironically" doesn't mean dick if you're still just doing it anyway.
In a way, it suffers the same problem as Duke Nukem Forever: A wink and a nod at the camera doesn't change that you're doing the thing you're winking and nodding about with an entirely straight face.
But, that's not to say that it's entirely unlikeable or that you shouldn't like it, that's just, like, my opinion man. And there are good bits to it, and good individual jokes and story beats - This is just talking about the bad bits, the good bits are still there.
It's a perpetual rogue-like with asymmetrical game play. One player plays an adventurer engaging in the standard hack&slash while three other players are ghosts that either possess traps or use summon circles to become monsters. The goal is for the human player to reach xp level ten and defeat the boss to win. The goal of the ghosts is to kill and become human.
The game's core theme revolves around risk and reward/punishment for timing. There is usually a rush for the ghosts to grab the summoning circles, because it gives you a better opportunity to kill the human player, but the downside is dying only makes the human stronger. The attacks have a nice scale of damage vs. cooldown with exceptionally powerful attacks leaving you wide open for nasty counters, the best example being the final boss.
When the map is exhausted, the human is encouraged to enter the next floor via slimes that give no gold or xp that can give another ghost a shot at becoming human. During these transitions, each player's levels are tallied, then points are given to other players based on the level gap from one player to the tallied level player. Those points can then be used to upgrade the three monsters that are randomly summoned when entering a summoner circle, which gives the nice decision of trying to risk that one in three chance of getting that almost guaranteed player-killer monster, or evenly leveling your monsters to ensure consistent damage against the human.
The final boss is especially interesting in terms of game design. The human starts in a sealed room and can't leave until he learns a new mechanic involving an exploding monster. The boss has three unique parts that each of the ghosts can individually control. Here, the premise of timing and risk/reward really shines, as the ghosts have to aim and time their attacks with each other in order to guarantee the player can't dodge a setup for the boss' most damaging attack. The player, in turn, can avoid the onslaught and use the recently learned mechanic of the bomb monsters to stun the boss during his damaging laser and deal massive damage. A well coordinated ghost team can keep the human on the defensive and take meaningless damage and a good human can easily ruin a clumsy ghost team. This boils mind game of predicting the other team's attacks and direction.
The boss fight also has one interesting part to it, While the goal of the human is to kill the boss, the ghosts only need to reduce the human to 10% health, where he will be kicked back to the dungeon with 10% health...the first two times. The thing about the boss room, is that it can only be entered three times total. On the third time, the rules change for the ghosts. If they kill the human, there are now three winners and one loser.
Overall, I love the game's concept. The little decisions, the moving bits to give the semblance of fairness, the cooperative/competitive feelings of all the ghosts and how they fight to kill the hero but then trip each other up in order to score the last hit. The tiny scaling mechanics to make sure one player doesn't run away with the game solely because his numbers are bigger than yours. It'll be a shame to watch this game die.
Edit: Found this little gem. http://steamcommunity.com/app/293780/discussions/0/613936673368555346/
[A MAN YELLS "GHOST DAD" ~@2:55]
hmmmmmm.
I even earned some legendary gear in a pvp match but it was for a class I had not raised passed level 5!
It would be interesting if many people played it. Hopefully it builds some hype.
That even makes a lot of sense given how the landscape is laid out, with all these weird plateaus all over. Must have been designed around climbing buildings and whatnot.
e: it's also really cool that theyve released hours of gameplay footage and have no review embargo, like almost every game w/ a preorder has these days.
It's like they made a game and them went, "oh shit, everyone will max out their characters in a month and stop playing!" So they responded not by adding more awesome content and new things to do bit instead altered the rate of loot drops so that the stuff you need to level up hardly ever drops.
I'm taking my sweet ass time doing the story line content. I should just finish up the Mars quest and go back to Venus for patrols and back to Mars.
I'm currently 23 and working on my Exotic Bounty Weapon quest to where you have to dismantle a total of 10 FUCKING Rare or higher fusion rifles. Ugh. Then the last part requires a weekly Strike and I don't have a team for that. I'll figure something out.
I want Bungie to let all strikes be matchmaking. That would be nice. I also want the Queen's Wrath Event to go on another week. No me gusta Crucible/PvP.
Also one thing I noticed and enjoyed about the game is that there is a decent scarcity in regards to ammo and ammo amount varies from each gun in it's category.
It's challenging to have lesser bullet amounts for the stronger guns like rifles, shotguns, or pistols. Perhaps they calculate amount of bullets allowed with amount of damage/impact per bullet taken with range. *shrugs*
I've been streaming almost all my sessions lately. It's been a blast having some of the listeners from ATW9K watch and have conversations with them as I explain the game and shout expletives and shrieks when I almost die.
I will definitely need to get a better headset. Recommendations?
I was looking at this for $10 http://amzn.com/B00HLBPE52 or this for $25 http://amzn.com/B00K786AFE .
I leveled up a Warlock and Hunter before the lootcave was shut down. I did not take advantage of the shards from scrapping queen armor before they gimped it.
Right now I am working on my Titan and at level 16 white items still drop!
The lootcave also allowed easy upgrade of your cryptarch level and every time you level it up you get a care package of rare or netter stuff. So... Yeah... Gimping the loot cave has shown a serious impact to me and I feel for new players.
With that said, toss me an invite on PS4 and you can do strikes with me.