Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

So I had the insane urge to start a new playthrough on the Mass Effect trilogy last night. I have no business starting that time sink when I still want to finish Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Dying Light, many more games.

I got as far as downloading ME1 from Origin before I talked myself out of it but the thing is I still kind of want to do it. I have a strong feeling that I will end up starting an ME playthrough while I have a few days off for Christmas/New Years.
 
At least finish Fallout 4 so you don't go back to it after playing ME and be all confused. The biggest killer of Bethesda games is time between play sessions.

I'm still going through Life is Strange. I'll have an early impressions up soon (want to finish Episode 2 first) and then I'll likely do The Beginner's Guide and there's a good chance I'm going to pick up Undertale at the Holiday Sale. Don't forget that Undertale was recently rated the BEST.GAME.EVER (in what led to one of the most amusing nerd rage fests of recent memory.) Then I'll likely finally delve into Bloodborne and plan on dying a lot.
 
At least finish Fallout 4 so you don't go back to it after playing ME and be all confused. The biggest killer of Bethesda games is time between play sessions.

I'm still going through Life is Strange. I'll have an early impressions up soon (want to finish Episode 2 first) and then I'll likely do The Beginner's Guide and there's a good chance I'm going to pick up Undertale at the Holiday Sale. Don't forget that Undertale was recently rated the BEST.GAME.EVER (in what led to one of the most amusing nerd rage fests of recent memory.) Then I'll likely finally delve into Bloodborne and plan on dying a lot.

Yeah, I've taken a slight break from Fallout 4 because I wanted to quickly get through some other games like Tales From the Borderlands and The Beginner's Guide so I could consider them for my GOTY list. I've been trying to regularly get back into Fallout for a mission or two every few days so I don't end up falling off like I did with Witcher 3.
 
So I think I’ve played enough of Guitar Hero Live to give a review of it.

I can’t tell if GHL is a good game in an evil shell or vice versa. While it does some things exceptionally well, it does other things exceptionally wrong. I’ll start with the good first. I like the new guitar controller. Although I never had a problem with the old one and sliding my fingers down the neck (I know that was an issue for some players) I like how with 6 buttons in 3 columns they made the game easier and harder all at the same time. It does take a little while to get used to but once you do it’s great. I also like how they tried to mix things up in the single player “campaign” by having your view be that of a guy on stage as opposed to a member of the crowd. It was smart of them to use live performances, as this was undoubtedly the result of them realizing that if they tried to render all these people they’d either look like crap or slow the game down to unplayable levels. Not a big fan though of the songs they have you play in those mode, along with the fact that you need to unlock the songs to play them when you want, similar to the older GH games. There’s a reason why they got rid of this stupid restriction back in the day and time hasn’t caused anyone to yearn for it back. Still, it is fun and I will be working to beat it.

GHTV is a mixed bag, and is where the game shines as well as frustrates. With each positive comes a negative it seems. I do like jumping in and out of songs on the playlists with the music videos playing in the background. However, this does lead to the unique problem in that whereas in the past in games like these you’d play the “master” version of the songs, now you’re playing music video versions. As a result you may be playing songs that are edited for time and are thus less satisfying (Faith No More’s Epic) or you get songs that have unnecessary breaks in them that ruin the flow (Weezer’s Buddy Holly and Walk the Moon’s Shut Up And Dance.) Also when you play in GHTV you actually play against other people and your ranking is updated continuously throughout the song. It does add a cool new dynamic to playing, as you not only get satisfaction of doing well, but also of doing better than other people. Well, sort of. Now I’m by no means a GH expert but unless I really screw up I can pull off a 4-5 star performance in each song (BTW this is much harder to achieve in GHTV, and this isn’t helped by the fact that your progress towards each star isn’t shown like it was in past games.) Your ranking in each song compared to other people is reliant entirely on score, even though they show you your score, star rating, and accuracy. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue as score is often an accurate indicator of how well you did since score is affected by your accuracy. But on numerous occasions (including this one that I’ve shown here, and yes I know that One can take screenshots in game but I had issues getting it to work with the guitar controller) I saw that people with lower star/accuracy ratings than myself were beating me because they had higher scores than me. And sometimes it would get to ridiculous levels, like to where someone would have less than 70% accuracy and fewer stars yet they’d have a better score and thus beat me. It wasn’t until recently that I saw the game remind me to purchase guitar upgrades. “What the hell are those?” I wondered. Turns out you can use in game currency to buy upgrades to your guitar which in turn will give you a higher score. So apparently these people spent all their credits buying upgrades while dumb schmucks like myself used them to buy credits to play more songs on demand. And of course, you can either earn credits in game or buy them with microtransactions. And for the higher level upgrades you will have to play a LOT to be able to unlock them. I suppose it’s not really “pay-to-win” gameplay in that you're not really rewarded for coming in 1st, but the fact that you can stack stuff in your favor like this is just dumb. Rather than just focus on score your final ranking should be an aggregate of score, star ranking, and accuracy. I mean the fact of the matter is that if I get 98% and someone gets 71%, I played the song better than they did regardless of what the score says, and I should thus get my kudos. To be fair the game doesn’t appear to punish you for not coming in first place (it seems to be based more on how much of the song you play.) And while this isn’t enough for me to stop playing the game, it does provide a constant eye rolling every time it happens.

As I said, I spent most of my credits on playing songs on demand. These are all the songs that are in the playlists but you can play them whenever you want in this mode, and it has you competing against other people like the regular version, although I don’t know how they track this as I can’t imagine that at least 9 other people at that exact time started playing “Cult of Personality” with me. And in this mode you can unlock medals for doing well. They have no monetary in game value but it is nice to see. It’s just a shame that they’re implemented horribly. The things you get rewarded for are 50 & 100 note streaks, hot start, strong finish, and 3 star ranking. So you’d think that if you played a new song and pulled off all (or more than 1) of these feats that you’d get each of those rewards, right? WRONG. They’re done in tiers of bronze, silver and gold. Bronze is 3 stars, I believe silver is hot start/end and I believe gold is 50/100 note streak. So in order to unlock all the medals for a particular song, you need to play it at least 3 times. If you didn’t have a limited # of on demand plays this would be acceptable but when you have a limited number and your only other option is to wait until they come up on the livestream, this system is just obnoxious. I mean I’m not a performance freak that needs to 100% every song and get 100% completion, but some people are, and this is just a d*ck move for those people, and I’m not thrilled to see myself play a new song great and get 4 stars and good note streaks just to see at the end, “Bronze Medal Awarded: 3 stars achieved!” And while this isn’t enough for me to stop playing the game, it does provide a constant eye rolling every time it happens.

In spite of this crap, I do have to say I recommend GHL’s new rebooted gameplay and controller as opposed to Rock Band 4’s “Games as a Service” that currently doesn’t have all the songs of the older generation nor does it work with all the old instruments and is also lacking other features the older games always had like online play and (yes this is true) quickplay setlists (I can’t believe that didn’t think to have a feature like that in as opposed to one song per session.) Maybe in due time RB4 will be worth playing for people like me that have older instruments and a ton of DLC, but at this point I can get a superior experience by just playing on my 360 (not to mention I also get to use a keyboard.) If you can get GHL for $60 or less I’d say go for it, but it may be worth waiting as they’re still adding new songs to the livestream and are adding new features to the game itself, such as the superfluous “Rival Mode” (let me go off on a small tangent here) where they have you go one on one against another player in a scoring battle. In theory this doesn’t sound like a bad idea, until you find out that they don’t match on difficulty. I was matched against someone on “Heart and Soul” and quit during the first chorus when I realized that my opponent was playing on a higher difficulty and unless they REALLY screwed up (which they weren't) there was no way I was going to beat them because you get higher scores at higher difficulties because you have more notes to hit. So there was no point in me staying in in a futile game. And while the game is fun, the microtransactions do hang over it like a dark cloud. Yes it's true that you don't NEED to spend money and I certainly haven't felt compelled to do so (and I doubt many other people have either) but the fact that I need to now work to upgrade my guitar in order to stay competitive is a rather bitter pill to swallow, as I'd prefer to just keep adding on demand credits. At this point I give GHL a B.
 
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So I've finished the first 2 episodes of Life is Strange..

LiS comes across as a game that was the response of fans who liked the recent Telltale games but wanted to fix some of the inherent flaws, specifically not being able to go back on your decisions, the linearity of areas, and the inability to easily reference all the decisions you make (this has since been addressed by TT but you need to create a TT account in order to reference your old decisions.) In this game you play as Max, a girl that apparently played "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time" so much that eventually the game fused with her and gave her the ability to rewind time. You use this to solve various puzzles as well as see how the decisions you make immediately affect you. So if you don't like a particular outcome, you can rewind back and see how the other options play out. Note that you can't go back forever. Once you leave the area your decision remains final. I do like this mechanic, as it allows you to see more of the game as well as add new dynamics to the puzzles. Like TT games, the decisions you make will affect how your story unfolds, although it looks like, as with the older modern TT games (TWD, TWAU) no matter what you do you will end up with the same basic ending. Speaking of, it appears that A: There is just one ending, and B: Said ending is VERY polarizing. I have no idea whats it is so I am interested to see what comes.

From this you can probably guess that I like LiS, and indeed I do. The characters, although made up of a bunch of college age millenials are at least interesting, for the most part the dialog and acting is well done, although it isn't helped by the rather spotty lip movements. This game reminds me of Indigo Prophecy in terms of how characters look when they talk, and just a reminder, that game came out in 2005. The characters simply open their mouths and sound comes out. Don't expect any Bioware level mouth movement in this game, which is understandable as it looks like this was made by a small studio even though it was published by Square-Enix (Man, remember when SquareSoft and Enix were separate companies?) And speaking of looks, while this isn't a graphical powerhouse of a game and instead uses a more cartoony (read: lower detail) visual style, it is rather jarring to see the game (at least the Xbox One version) have issues loading in textures. Yes, such is common with Unreal Engine games (which is a fact that this game is so proud of that it actually says "Made with Unreal" twice in a row when you boot the game up) but you'd figure that the One would be more than capable1 in loading everything. Still, you don't play games like this for technical marvel, you do it more for the story and its ability to grip you, and this game has certainly done that in only 2 episodes. At the end of Episode 2 there's a situation, which I won't spoil, that involves you having to get involved in a crisis where you can't rewind time, so you really need to be careful and choose your words wisely. Also, while I can't confirm this, I think if you don't do certain things in the game leading up to this, you may "fail" it, which has very severe and immediate consequences. I actually found myself pausing the game and walking away to think about what would be the right thing to say at times, as I wasn't sure if I would be able to reload right after it became obvious I didn't get the outcome I wanted (aka the TT quicksave to stop you from going back.) Turns out that yes, you can reload if you're quick enough. Yes I admit that I "cheated" and played the scenario again, but to be fair I only screwed up on the very last part, and I don't think it would have worked if I hadn't been so vigilant in doing various things leading up to it.

As I said I'm about to start Episode 3 and am looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to a second playthrough to see what happens if I make other decisions, as well as make sure I do various things that I forgot to do in my first runthough. It is possible to miss various things if you just blow ahead in the game and not take note of your surroundings, and thanks to my list from each episode I'll be able to keep track rather easily. I do anticipate finishing this before the end of the year, so it will be a candidate for GOTY. The game has already been mentioned on a few lists, so I am motivated to move quickly to see what happens.
 
I just finished Cibele. The reason I wanted to play it is because it was made by Nina Freeman from the Fullbright Company. For those who don't know, they are the people who made Gone Home. I feel a little dumb now because after I finished the game I did some reading and it sounds like she wasn't part of The Fullbright Company when they made gone home. She is, however,the level designer for their next game, Tacoma.

This game only takes a little over an hour. It's not actually even a game. I know that some people say that about games like Gone Home but this is different.

In Cibele you are basically in a college girl's head while she has an online relationship with a guy who plays in her MMO group. You listen to awkward private voice chat conversations while the fake MMO basically plays itself. You can also read text chat with other members of the group while they gossip behind everyone else's back but you have no say in the conversation.

You just read the message they sent you and hit reply. The game then fills in a response with no input or choices on your part. It really would work just as well as a YouTube video because you aren't actually doing anything as the player.

Between these game sessions you get FMV of real life Nina Freeman taking sexy pictures to send to the guy she is dating through the MMO. There is no actual nudity but it was a little weird seeing this take place, especially because Nina is friends with the Giant Bomb guys and has appeared in their videos. After seeing her actual personality as an adult it feels weird to see her pretend to be an awkward 19 year old sending sexy selfies over the internet.

Overall I don't really recomend this game. Even though it's available for less than $5 in the Steam Sale and it only takes an hour to play I don't feel that it's really worth doing. I like Nina from what I've seen on Giant Bomb and I wanted to like this game. I really didn't get anything positive out of it though.

I'm looking forward to seeing what The Fullbright Company does with Tacoma but I don't think Gone Home fans need to bother with Cibele.
 
I never even heard of that game. Sounds like something that will end up on a humble bundle in the future. Maybe I'll check it out then
 
I never even heard of that game. Sounds like something that will end up on a humble bundle in the future. Maybe I'll check it out then

It came out in November, which is a little surprising because she has supposedly been working on Tacoma at Fulbright since January and this is not under the Fullbright name.
 
Not uncommon for developers to have side projects. Besides, can always use money earned from that to fund the big stuff.
 
How are you enjoying Fallout 4 king? I try to play a few hours here and there when I can. I find myself screwing around a lot and doing side missions a lot because for some reason I don't want to move the main story along too fast. I'm still really enjoying it.
 
How are you enjoying Fallout 4 king? I try to play a few hours here and there when I can. I find myself screwing around a lot and doing side missions a lot because for some reason I don't want to move the main story along too fast. I'm still really enjoying it.

I really like it. It's likely between Fallout 4 and Akrham Knight for my GOTY right now but I am still trying to squeeze in a few more contenders.

I'm all about the side missions too. Not just because I don't want to progress to quickly either. I think most of them are just more interesting than the main quest.
 
How are you enjoying Fallout 4 king? I try to play a few hours here and there when I can. I find myself screwing around a lot and doing side missions a lot because for some reason I don't want to move the main story along too fast. I'm still really enjoying it.
Totally agree with this. At one point I started a mission that was moving the main story forward without realizing it. I was thinking to myself, oh crap! I wasn't trying to do that! I just want to do the side stuff! I know that once I finish the main story I will pretty much quit, so I don't want to do that too quickly. Freaking love this game though!!

Did Christmas with my family today and got both Battlefield and COD BO4. This should keep me busy for a long time.
 
Merry Christmas everyone. (Assuming the networks aren't down) Let's not forget what today also is:

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I ended up getting The Nathan Drake Collection and a 3 month Gamefly subscription for 2 games at a time as gifts. Looks like I'll be trying out rentals again. I know Halo 5 will be one of the first 2 games I request but I'm not sure what I want to do with the second one.
 
For Christmas I asked for free time but Santa was not able to pull through. I went to 6 Christmas get-togethers over the last four days. I'm looking forward to this weekend though. I get three days off and the only plans I have are to watch the Iowa game with friends on the 1st. Hoping I get some game time in.
 
So I finished off "Life is Strange" late on Christmas Eve thanks to an energy drink and some late coffee.

Overall I felt the game was very good. If you like TellTale games then this definitely deserves a look, especially with the rewind capabilities, easy tracking of decisions, and generally interesting story and characters. The writing and pacing isn't the best but for a first effort it definitely shines in ways that more experienced developers have not been able to pull off. Characters aren't as 1-sided as they seem at first and the world is built rather well. Also the little puzzles the game throws mix things up a bit in a good way.

Still, it's far from perfect. Just from a platform (Xbox One) standpoint, the loading times were longer than I expected, textures loaded up at embarrassing speeds at times, and for some reason the game plays at 30 FPS. Again, not to be a snob about frame rate but I find it hard to believe that the Xbox One couldn't render at that when it can do it just fine with the Halo games and Call of Duty. At first I thought the 30 FPS was just how the game was supposed to be, but when I saw it running on PC at 60 I just didn't understand why it was nerfed like that. Also, navigating around with a 3rd person camera perspective that requires you to look around a lot to find various objects to interact with is a little unwieldy with the gamepad. I would have preferred mouse and keyboard controls, but then again the reason I picked up the One version was because it was so cheap and I was sick and tired of waiting on Square-Enix to give this game a proper discount on Steam.

My last main complaint has to do with the story, specifically Episode 5. When it was released there was a lot of controversy over the game's ending and after playing I fully understand why. But as I said, I think the problems also laid with the entire Episode. I'm going to try to be as spoiler free as possible but I will still hide my comments as they could potentially paint a player's view of what will happen.
So basically for the entire game, the story is leading you on a very specific path in terms of what your "master plan" will be and who will be involved. But at the end of Episode 4 the game throws in a MAJOR plot twist, like I mean when I was playing my jaw almost hit the floor when I saw how things had now changed. While I'm by no means against plot twists, I AM when the game puts SO MUCH towards one potential end game, but then throws a complete wrench in that and doesn't properly explain how the wrench makes sense. The game does give a general explanation as to why things end up being the way they are but when you start analyzing it further and ask some more specific questions I feel as though the game doesn't do enough to justify the twist it makes. It feels very out of place, as if the writers felt that they had to throw it in at the last minute to make a bigger impact.
To get back to the actual ending, again without wishing to spoil I have to say that I found the ending(s) to be rather underwhelming. Basically at the very end you're given one last decision to make and that decision dictates what ending you get. I will "spoil" the fact that it isn't as simple as a "good ending/bad ending," but after reviewing both of them (playing one then looking up the other on YouTube) I have to say that neither felt particularly rewarding. I definitely understand why there was some controversy.

Still, even with said controversy and the game ending on a rather down note, I still highly recommend the game. I also am looking forward to a second playthrough where I go with different options/decisions, but I don't see myself doing that this year or anytime in the very near future, as right now I'm not in a big interactive narrative mood.

For now I think I'll finally get into Hotline Miami 2 and may catch up on some other stuff. I reinstalled AC: Unity but the jury is still out on that game.
 
I'm currently part way through episode 2 of Life is Strange. So far I really like it. Even though you are able to rewind time and change your responses after you hear how the other person reacts to you the best decision isn't always clear. You are often choosing between decisions that feel like they have some real weight to them and sometimes I'm aren't sure whether I are making things better or worse with my choice.

Maybe my opinion will change as I finish up episode 2 and play the remaining 3 episodes but I am feeling pretty good about Life is Strange right now.

In other weird news, I saw an old Giant Bomb Unprofessional Fridays video where they were playing Bulletstorm. I had never really paid attention to this game but it looked pretty awesome so I grabbed it while it was on sale for $5 during the Steam Sale.

I fired it up today and I was kind of shocked how good the graphics are in the PC version for a 2011 game. It's kind of weird because the cutscenes are clearly the same as the 360 version. They look to be a lower resolution and have really low quality textures compared to the actual game. In most games the cutscene visuals are better than the real game. That is not the case with this one. There are also some Games for Windows Live annoyances but I was able to get that straightened out relatively easily.

I also played nearly half of Uncharted 2 during my days of after Christmas and I played a few hours of Rebel Galaxy.

I'll likely hold off on Uncharted 2 and Bulletstorm for the rest of the week so I can focus on games I can consider for my GOTY list like Life is Strange and Rebel Galaxy.
 
Well, it's been nearly a year since I canceled my Gamefly subscription. I'm a temporary subscriber again since a friend got me a 3 month, 2 game at a time subscription as a Christmas present. I can't say that I'm all that surprised to see that their service hasn't really improved in the year since I last checked in.

First, they only sent out 1 game today even though I put 11 in my queue and several of them were listed as high availability. Second, the game they sent out was Trials Fusion even though it was near the bottom of my list and I had several games with high and medium availability above it.

I was hoping to get Halo 5 and Shovel Knight sent out today. Both were listed as high availability and neither was sent to me. My backup plans were Mad Max and Assassin's Creed Syndicate but instead Gamefly jumped all the way down to game 9 out of 11 on my list.

I was originally thinking I could be persuaded to keep Gamefly at least a month or two after my gift subscription expires to play Uncharted 4. I'm quickly being reminded of the reasons I chose to cancel my subscription in the first place though.
 

Xbox One, issue with Ready to Install List & External Drive

Possible xbox Hard drive issues....is all lost

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