Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

After much deliberation (and by "much deliberation" I mean about 5 minutes) I decided to redownload Bioshock: Infinite and retry the Burial At Sea DLC. I tried it when it was first released, but for whatever reason my mind wasn't in a FPS mindset and I just lost interest very quickly. I didn't fault the game at the time, but just decided I wasn't in the mood for that. Also, it does let me once again play with my new 960. I cranked the graphics up to Ultra and it's running at a steady 60 FPS. I look forward to this keeping me occupied until Arkham Knight arrives.

So I finished Part 1 of Burial at Sea...

BaS is quite a mixed bag. Normally when reviewers say a game is a "mixed bag" it's a nice way of saying that the game sort of sucks. In my case though, that's not what I'm trying to say. There's quite a bit that's good but also a number of head scratchers. For those that don't know, BaS takes place in Rapture with Booker and Elizabeth, although this time in a different setting, and unlike the original Bioshock, this takes place before the entire city went to sh*t. If you haven't played the original BS, then you are terribly deprived and need to do so ASAP. For those that have and have also played Infinite, you know that each is a different experience, with BS being more "old school" with multiple weapons and healing packs while Infinite had a shield along with a 2 weapon system. BaS tries to marry these by giving you multiple weapons and plasmids. While this does work somewhat, it would have been nicer IMO to just give you full BS combat in this and not try to marry the two. For one thing, I know that BS did not have a Carbine weapon. Also, it would have been nice to be able to hack the various vending machines. If the dummy on the plane from BS1 could do it I don't see why Booker, a civilian in Rapture for many years, couldn't pull it off. Finally, your shield is about as effective as an outdated version of Norton Antivirus. It always seemed like it took about 2 hits before I had to run for cover lest I suffer "permanent" damage to my health.

Speaking of combat, even though it tries to marry BS and Infinite, in practice fighting is quite different than both games. Unlike those games, ammo and eve are VERY scarce, requiring you to actually strategize using stealth and your powers to your advantage to advance. You can't just come in guns blazing like you could in the other games, simply because your ammo won't allow you. As a result you need to resort more to stealth kills as well as death from above. At first I resented this but over time I grew to respect it as it made me actually think about how to approach every situation. It got especially interesting near the end when I had to fight a Big Daddy, which was MUCH harder with Infinite gameplay than regular BS stuff.

As far as the story goes, well, without wishing to spoil, if you played Infinite you likely have a pretty good idea where the story is going from the very beginning, and at the end of the story you're pretty much validated, although it does throw in a few twists, and the beginning of Part 2 throws a massive wrench into the overall plot, which again I won't spoil. The story is definitely intriguing enough to where I want to see where this goes, although I honestly don't see the results of this story changing my overall view of Infinite or BS (Which was very positive in both instances.)

Finally, if you have the option, play this game on a high end PC. Consoles can't do this game justice with beautiful graphics and 60 FPS.

In conclusion I did enjoy Part 1 of BaS and look forward to seeing what develops from Act 2. Just from what they throw at you within the first 60 seconds shows it's going to be a different ride than Part 1. Oh, and on a side note, the game actually gives you a "Previously on.." option where you can see what happened in the original Bioshock, which is rather odd considering I don't really see how what happened in that game overall affects Act 2. But seriously, if you are a gamer that hasn't played the original Bioshock, stop whatever you are playing and pick up a copy whether it's on consoles or PC. You can get it for $20 or less on basically every system, and it's well worth it.

I'm hoping to grind through Singularity after this game, which will hopefully suit me right in time before Arkham Knight.

I played part 1 but for whatever reason I never played act 2.

You finished Part 1 but never played Part 2? I'm surprised, considering the major cliffhanger that 1 ended on, although I do remember there being quite the gap between 1 & 2 so you probably moved on to something else in the meantime and forgot about it. Luckily I got nothing better to play, and I'm not jumping into that massive timesink of The Witcher 3 until I'm done with Arkham Knight.

yourbeliefs said:

You finished Part 1 but never played Part 2? I'm surprised, considering the major cliffhanger that 1 ended on, although I do remember there being quite the gap between 1 & 2 so you probably moved on to something else in the meantime and forgot about it. Luckily I got nothing better to play, and I'm not jumping into that massive timesink of The Witcher 3 until I'm done with Arkham Knight.

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Yeah, I think I finished part 1 before part 2 was available and just never went back to it.

I played a few hours of Left 4 Dead 2 tonight. I forgot how much fun that game can be when you get paired up with a good co-op team that actually works together. L4D 1 and 2 were some of my favorite Xbox Live games on the 360 but this is my first experience with it on Steam even though I bought it a few years ago.

I gotta say, the online community seems pretty great overall. I did play with one guy who kept shooting shooting at me for no reason and killed me a couple times but the rest of the team quickly voted to kick him as soon as they saw what was going on. I think part of the reason it seems better is because most people don't participate in voice chat. When they stick to keyboard chat they tend to be less obnoxious.

Anyways, I figure pretty much everyone who has Steam has L4D 2 since they discount it so heavily every sale and it can run on just about any PC. If any other Sat Guys want to get together for co-op campaign missions or Survival Mode (horde mode) let me know. I'll even wear my mic if you guys have them. I just tend to leave it off when I'm playing with randoms.

Edit: If you don't have it, it's currently $5 in the uPlay summer sale. You can skip L4D 1 since that entire game was added to L4D2 as free DLC. In fact, all of the DLC on PC was free even though they charged for it on 360.

http://shop.ubi.com/store/ubina/en_...ead-2/productID.295576700/categoryId.67755500

I'm up for a game of L4D2, although I don't have a Mic for my computer. I mean, if REQUIRED I could use one but I'd be stuck right to my machine.

yourbeliefs said:

I'm up for a game of L4D2, although I don't have a Mic for my computer. I mean, if REQUIRED I could use one but I'd be stuck right to my machine.

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I just sent you a message on Steam but I'm not sure if you're more likely to see it here or there. Did you want to play tonight or plan on a different night?

Instead of starting a new thread for this question, I thought I'd ask here ...

I started playing the first episode of the Game of Thrones Telltale game on PS4 last night (first three chapters). But in almost every scene the graphics were a bit wonky -- more specifically sketch-like, similar to an impressionist painting. If it was just the background and landscape elements, I would assume that's just the art style for this particular game, but oftentimes the sketchiness would appear in a character model or an object (like a table or weapon) in the foreground. Sometimes part of a character's body would appear sketchy while the rest looked more defined or normal. Has anyone else noticed? Is this just a PS4 thing or did I get a bad copy of the game? (lol) It's almost like the game is unfinished ... shipped in an early state of completion. The gameplay mechanics are normal, and I didn't really experience any lag or other problems. I guess I shouldn't complain since it was free, but compared to how awesome season 2 of TWD looked on PS4, I don't know how eager I am to pay even 50% to get the rest of the GoT episodes.

Zookster said:

Instead of starting a new thread for this question, I thought I'd ask here ...

I started playing the first episode of the Game of Thrones Telltale game on PS4 last night (first three chapters). But in almost every scene the graphics were a bit wonky -- more specifically sketch-like, similar to an impressionist painting. If it was just the background and landscape elements, I would assume that's just the art style for this particular game, but oftentimes the sketchiness would appear in a character model or an object (like a table or weapon) in the foreground. Sometimes part of a character's body would appear sketchy while the rest looked more defined or normal. Has anyone else noticed? Is this just a PS4 thing or did I get a bad copy of the game? (lol) It's almost like the game is unfinished ... shipped in an early state of completion. The gameplay mechanics are normal, and I didn't really experience any lag or other problems. I guess I shouldn't complain since it was free, but compared to how awesome season 2 of TWD looked on PS4, I don't know how eager I am to pay even 50% to get the rest of the GoT episodes.

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I've played the first 3 episodes on PS4 and I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Some of the art is kind of weird, especially when you are looking at someone they modeled after characters on the TV show like Tryion, Cersei, or Margaery but that's what happens when you take Tell Tale's art style and try to apply it to real people. I didn't notice anything that looked unfinished though.

king3pj said:

I've played the first 3 episodes on PS4 and I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Some of the art is kind of weird, especially when you are looking at someone they modeled after characters on the TV show like Tryion, Cersei, or Margaery but that's what happens when you take Tell Tale's art style and try to apply it to real people. I didn't notice anything that looked unfinished though.

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Weird. I wonder if it's just this free version of the game then? Next time I play, I'll record some footage and post it.

So I just finished the Story Mode of Mortal Kombat X. Yup, I did it over a weekend, which should tell you quite a bit already..

While Netherealm has done well in terms of fighting stories with MK 9 and Injustice, this time things aren't quite as good. For one, the story is VERY short. I mean like it's MAYBE half the length of MK 9. Also, I feel like this should be called "Mortal Kombat Babies" because a significant number of characters are the offspring of previous MK characters. There's at least 5 that I can think of. Speaking of characters, this game clearly assumes that you have played MK 9 because while it does give you a general overview, it doesn't at all explain what happened to certain characters in the previous game. AS such, you'll likely find yourself confused while playing if you at least know the characters from previous games. You'll likely say, "Why does A and B not have masks on?" or "Why are A, B, C, and D looking so funny and why do they seem to be bad when they are traditionally good characters?" As I said, the game expects that you played the previous game, and while it does make allusions to what happened, it's obviously not as clear as seeing it in the original game.

Another issue with this game is that while MK 9 itself assumed that you knew who everyone was and didn't bother going into character backstory, this game feels the need to since it introduces many new characters. Like I said, the "MKids" are big in this game, along with others who are introduced, so almost all of them have a "'X' Years ago" scene where they need to tell you who this person is and why they are fighting, meaning the plot is CONSTANTLY taking detours. It was much more straightforward in 9, but again, they assumed that we knew who everyone was.

Overall there isn't too much to complain about with the new characters, but I do have 2 main points of contention. For one, it seems like some were added at the sacrifice of other, more interesting/significant characters from the previous game, mainly all the cyborgs that infected the Lin Kuei clan. They were big players in 9 but they're basically forgotten in 10. Also, and I can't believe more reviewers didn't catch this, but the new leader of Outworld almost looks like a clone of Ogre from Tekken 3. Seriously, this is Ogre, and this is the character Kotal Khan. There is no way this could be a coincidence. Finally, the main antagonist is a joke. The main plot is that all the actions of MK 9 were part of a bigger, more sinister plot perpetrated by a former ELDER GOD named Shinook. Just to remind you, the Elder Gods are the ones that run EVERYTHING, so it would make sense that an Elder God should be incredibly tough. Now to be fair, Shao Kahn from MK 9 was too tough, in that he was WAY WAY WAY too cheap. I mean he made Akuma from SSF2T seem like a cakewalk, to where I never got around to beating him because it was too frustrating. Well, apparently NR heard all the complaints and instead made an antagonist that was a total pushover. Very rarely did I feel like "Wow, this is a real badass that could take over the universe." And there's very little buildup to the final conflict with him. It just sort of "happens," unlike MK 9 where it really comes down to this final, tense battle between your character and SK. It just sort of happens, and the character that ends up doing the deed isn't exactly someone that screams "Yes, I am the main hero and better than everyone else in this game."

Still, at the end of the day the story did keep me interested enough to see it through to the end to see what happened next, but this is almost a detriment because the story is so short that it just makes it seem shorter. Hell, it took me from Friday to late Sunday with sporadic, limited playtimes, but your typical gamer that has more free time could easily wrap this up in a weekend, or if they're really dedicated, about 1 day. The story mode is maybe four hours. And yes, while it is interesting, it's still very short. Oh, and they threw in QTEs, because of course they did. And it enhances gameplay about as much as you think it does.

Overall it's hard to recommend MK X just on the story mode, but I can say that the fighting engine is still as fun as ever, so if you like the NR games and Injustice and MK 9 aren't doing it for you anymore, then I can easily recommend this, even if you are stuck with less characters, no stage fatalities, and a messed up microtransaction system. If you haven't gotten into these games but are interested, you'd likely be better off picking up Injustice or MK 9.

Now I'm just waiting on Arkham Knight.

I haven't been on here much lately and have been out of the loop but I did just hear about the upcoming release of Fallout 4. Is anyone else excited about this? This franchise is one of my favorites and I can't wait for this one. Will be a must purchase for me.

So I'm really liking Tales from the Borderlands. Each episode has been great so far. I'm starting to think the episodic system they use isn't for me though. I don't remember it being a problem for TWD or TWAU but Tales from the Borderlands episodes seem to come out at a much slower pace.

There was a 3 month wait for episode 3 and I think episode 2 had a similar wait. When I was playing the 3rd episode last night I could remember the main plot points but I forgot a lot of details. For example, you get in a bind and a villain asks you which of 3 people were responsible for the deal going bad. Two of the choices are other bad guys and one is a your friend. You are all captured and the implication is that the villain will kill whoever was at fault.

The problem is that I had forgotten all three of their names over my 3 month wait for this episode to come out. I had a clear choice in mind for who should be the scapegoat but I couldn't match a name to their face. I took a shot in the dark and ended up guessing wrong.

It turns out that I still got a result I was happy with but it wasn't the choice I would have made had I known all the details. The story recaps at the beginning of episodes are nice but they still won't help you with choices like this that depend on you remembering details from previous episodes.

This is a problem and I think Tell Tale has bitten off more than they can chew with all the IPs they keep signing. I was on board with the 1 month they were shooting for on TWD season 1 but 3 months between episodes is just not acceptable to me. The thing is, I really like both Tales from the Borderlands and Game of Thrones. Tales from the Borderlands is in the running for my favorite Tell Tale game just because it is fun and has a lot of humor versus the serious nature of their other games.

On the positive side I will almost definitely replay the entire package after the final episode is released. That will be a first for me in any of the Tell Tale games. In the previous games I made the choices that I thought were right at the time and I wanted to have the consequences of that without having a chance to second guess myself. Playing again while knowing most of the outcomes didn't sound appealing to me. This game's less serious tone makes me worry about that less.

Scherrman said:

I haven't been on here much lately and have been out of the loop but I did just hear about the upcoming release of Fallout 4. Is anyone else excited about this? This franchise is one of my favorites and I can't wait for this one. Will be a must purchase for me.

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Yes. This is by far my most anticipated game of the fall. I'm just waiting to see one of those $35 preorder deals pop up on Green Man Gaming like Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight got. Sure it might be a buggy mess like Arkham Knight at launch but I don't see the point of waiting until a game is fixed before I buy it if I'm going to end up paying more money to do so. Arkham Knight hasn't scared me off. If I see Fallout 4 for that price before launch I won't hesitate to jump on it.

I loved Fallout 3 so I really can't wait for this game. Did any of you watch the E3 announcement? The new features looked amazing.

Scherrman said:

I loved Fallout 3 so I really can't wait for this game. Did any of you watch the E3 announcement? The new features looked amazing.

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Yeah it looked really impressive. Hopefully it lives up to the hype.

Well I just finished Freedom Planet and I can safely recommend it. Personally I think it's worth $15 of asking price, but at least put it on your wishlist so you are notified when it goes on sale. If you like platformers, especially if you like retro platformers from the Genesis era then this is about as definitive as it gets. Tons of fun, and quite the achievement from (what I can tell) a team of 20 developers. And it's a great example of the GOOD that can come out of Kickstarter.

I think now I'll delve into Resident Evil Revelations 2, or at least I will until Rocksteady finally releases a patch cleaning up Arkham Knight, because even though I had steady frame rates, what was on display really wasn't that good looking. The idea that my PS4 can produce better graphics than my 960 is just laughable, but the current state the game is in that's the case. Still, as Total Biscuit pointed out, the fact that they took the game out of sale likely means that there is not a patch coming in the immediate future, and that it may be a while before we get a proper port. It's hard to believe that we may have a port worse than AC: Unity, but to be fair, at least Rocksteady working versions for consoles, so I guess that deserves some sort of medal, as opposed to Unity which was a mess on every platform it came out on.

With all the Fallout excitement in the last week I went ahead and downloaded their Fallout Shelter game on my iPhone. It's actually pretty fun and makes me want to play Fallout 3 again.

I just "finished" Her Story. The reason I included the quotation marks is because there isn't really an ending to the game. You just go until you think you've seen enough to understand the story and let the person you are chatting with know you are done. There is a small payoff when you do this but there is no big cutscene or anything that reveals all the big secrets to you.

I guess I should say what the game is before I go any further. This is a FMV game where you are looking at interview videos in public records from an old court case. The case has already been solved and you aren't doing anything to affect the outcome. You aren't trying to catch the bad guy. You are just an unnamed person looking over this closed case to try an understand it for yourself.

You interact with the game by typing words into an old database computer's search engine. All of the videos have been transcribed and every video containing the word you type will be included in the results. The game makes this a little harder by only showing you the earliest 5 videos containing the word you searched even if it tells you there are 20 matching results. That makes you have to get more specific in some cases to narrow the results. Instead of just searching "name" you might have to search "my name."

When you search these terms you are seeing FMV (full motion video) instead of graphics. Each one of these videos contains the same actress by herself. You don't hear or see the detectives she is responding to and you don't know the questions they asked except from the context of her answers. For the most part, her acting is pretty good.

During the first hour and a half or so I actually got chills several times when she answered questions and when I would make a bombshell connection between a few of the videos. It's a little weird because you are seeing the story completely out of order since everything is based on the words you search.

I did have some problems with this game though. First, each video file was stamped with a date and time. They give no explanation for why you are watching the story out of order based on search words instead of just watching it in sequential order. No one trying to understand an old case would watch the videos that way. You might search for terms afterwards to see specific parts again but you would definitely just watch the interview in order to start out.

Second, after the first hour and a half or so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what happened even though I had seen less than half of the video files. Many of the more subtle videos from earlier in the timeline felt kind of pointless after I had already seen a more direct answer from later in the timeline because it came up earlier in my searches. To be fair, I was wrong about almost every assumption I made. I would frequently come across a big reveal that completely shattered my earlier theories.

The 5 viewable results thing starts to get kind of annoying too. There are icons to show whether you have already seen a video or not on top of each thumbnail. The problem comes when there are 18 results but you can only see the first 5. Since you can't see the thumbnails of the other 13 you have no idea if you have already seen those videos or not. You don't know whether to go with a more specific version of your previous search or move on to something else.

Later in the game i found myself searching semi random words in hopes of finding new videos because I had already seen the 5 viewable results for all the searches that came naturally to me. Once this started happening the game started to lose some steam for me. The thing is I got the achievement for seeing 50% of the videos but not the one for 75% so there was a lot of stuff I didn't see. There was more there but I was having trouble finding more relevant words to search that wouldn't come back with more than 5 results.

Also, spelling counts and there is no spellchecker. A couple times I made a spelling mistake or typo and didn't get any results for a word when I thought I had made a good connection. When I would see a video an hour later proving my theory right I knew I must have spelled it wrong so the search didn't work. Just a tip plural results will come up even if you don't include the "s" and vice versa but past tense words will not if you don't include the "ed".

Hopefully I didn't sound too negative with the second half of this review. I really do think this is worth playing, especially for the $5 they are asking for it. The story is interesting with lots of twists and turns. You will have several theories you are pretty confident in only to find out later you were dead wrong. It's also a very unique experience. I know FMV games were big on PC in the 90s but I think this is the first one I have ever actually played.