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Even as someone who has never played a Doom game before everything they have shown so far looks pretty cool to me. I don't think I will be a day one buyer unless GMG has one of their $35 pre-order deals but they have my attention. I would definitely be interested in an open beta.
 
If GMG gets the game to $40 or lower I'm jumping on it. I still got my $37.50 credit and I don't really see anything else coming up on the horizon that I'd rather get exclusively for PC.
 
Well I wasn't one of them. I mean I thought the beta we played together was amusing, but if the full version is just a bit more of that I don't see myself throwing Destiny/MMO level hours into it after I beat the main story. Hopefully my copy will arrive today and the game won't keep going offline so I can plow through it before Quantum Break arrives, and maybe even Republique (3/25). And I don't see myself spending much time in the PvP "Dark Zone" area as I have yet to experience a MMO style PvP experience that I really enjoyed.
 
Well I wasn't one of them. I mean I thought the beta we played together was amusing, but if the full version is just a bit more of that I don't see myself throwing Destiny/MMO level hours into it after I beat the main story. Hopefully my copy will arrive today and the game won't keep going offline so I can plow through it before Quantum Break arrives, and maybe even Republique (3/25). And I don't see myself spending much time in the PvP "Dark Zone" area as I have yet to experience a MMO style PvP experience that I really enjoyed.

I don't think you will have to worry about the game going offline. I'm sure it will happen from time to time but they seem to have things mostly under control.

The comments I read on articles posted about it and Steam threads made it sound like it was really only a problem for about 40 minutes after the midnight release. Compared to most major online launches they seemed to get their sh*t together pretty quickly. I didn't play until the evening on launch day but I haven't seen a server issue yet.

It's way to early for me to know if I will keep playing after finishing the main story like I did in Destiny. I haven't played enough of the game to know that yet and we haven't seen how well Ubisoft will support it with end game content yet.

I will say that I really liked the Crucible (PvP) in Destiny. I probably played as many hours of that as I did in PvE missions. That was a strong hook to keep me coming back to Destiny. I don't see the Division's Dark Zone PvP drawing me in as much.

Destiny's PvP was basically Halo multiplayer with all the RPG elements of Destiny added in. You had the same special abilities and class build-out you used in the PvE missions. You also had your unique armor and weapon loadout. Depending on what you equip you can have drastically different stats and abilities. Plus you still have a chance to earn high level loot after every match.

The point is that Destiny is more traditional multiplayer with the things that make your character unique added in. The Division is not traditional multiplayer. I've only played the Dark Zone in the beta but it's not a team deathmatch or control all points situation. The Dark Zone is wandering around killing AI enemies while you look for loot chests.

The thing that makes it different is that you don't know if other players you come across online are going to help you kill AI characters or attack you to steal your loot. My guess is that it will be very few friendly characters and everyone you meet will try to kill you. I also think it will be pretty much impossible to go into the Dark Zone without a group because if you are alone you will become an easy target.

I don't see myself playing much Dark Zone at all. If I had a squad of 3 other players it might be fun from time to time but that isn't going to happen. Hopefully the PvE endgame content is compelling enough to keep me interested even without the Dark Zone.
 
Looks like Rocket League is getting a basketball mode



That looks really cool but It is going to be so much harder to actually score. Just like the hockey mode that is in there now I will probably check it out a couple times just to see it but I will mostly stick to the standard game.
 
That Doom looks good.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
Well I've thrown about 3 hours into The Division, and while I'm not ready to throw in the towel, I'd have to say that it's not looking very promising that I'll keep playing for extended hours..

As I mentioned a while back I knew little to nothing about The Division other than it was a 3rd person shooter based in New York. I didn't realize that it was basically Ubisoft's attempt to capitalize on the shoot & loot genre that Destiny and Borderlands had been so successful in. Unfortunately it appears as though Ubisoft doesn't totally understand what it is that made those games so popular. I mean I'm not big into those types of games but I can at least understand why people are. It's not just the constant mowing down of enemies and getting different random prizes for doing so. Taking down enemies is only fun if they have some sort of personality or some "thing" that makes taking them down feel like an accomplishment, and loot is only cool if it's, well, cool. Maybe I'm just too early into the game but I haven't seen any indication that Ubisoft realizes this, because the enemies are just generic thugs mixed in with other thugs who for some reason can take more bullets to the head than a goddamn Abrams tank. I can believe that random enemies in space or Pandora can take damage like that, but a guy in the middle of Manhattan in what is supposed to be a "realistic shooter?" Not so much. And the weapons are nothing unique unless you haven't played a modern military shooter made in the last decade. Oh boy! This new M5 reloads a half second faster than the one I already have? JACKPOT!

I'm also not a fan of the silent protagonist role again, nor the amazingly lacking character customization. I mean this is essentially an MMO so they're expecting a lot of different people to play, but the options for creation are not much better than what was in the beta. I wasn't expecting Saints Row 2 levels of customization, but the levels I'm seeing here are what I'd expect to see in a PlayStation 1 game.

And the missions seem to basically be "Kill everyone" or "Guard something by killing everyone" or "Save someone by killing everyone." At the end of the day the task is just "Kill everyone" no matter what sort of weak context they give it.

Speaking of weak, let's talk about the controls. They sort of suck. Maybe I'm just too used to Gears of War style controls but the cover based shooting seems very sloppy here. It's not hard to accidentally poke your head up or dislodge from the wall you were stuck to, leading to you getting hit. And getting hit really sucks because it does that crap where you have regenerating health that only goes up to your highest health bar at the time. So you could get shot 4 times and then you won't be able to recover past your lowest bar unless you have a health pack or someone else can heal you, and the health regeneration for that is PAINFULLY slow. Even when playing with other people the early missions I've done have been quite difficult, in fact more difficult than seems appropriate for this early in the game.

But who knows, maybe as I level up more the game will get more fun, and while I'm willing to keep an open mind, past experience seems to point at what will inevitably be another "meh" experience that will quickly go back to Gamefly.
 
Well I've thrown about 3 hours into The Division, and while I'm not ready to throw in the towel, I'd have to say that it's not looking very promising that I'll keep playing for extended hours..

As I mentioned a while back I knew little to nothing about The Division other than it was a 3rd person shooter based in New York. I didn't realize that it was basically Ubisoft's attempt to capitalize on the shoot & loot genre that Destiny and Borderlands had been so successful in. Unfortunately it appears as though Ubisoft doesn't totally understand what it is that made those games so popular. I mean I'm not big into those types of games but I can at least understand why people are. It's not just the constant mowing down of enemies and getting different random prizes for doing so. Taking down enemies is only fun if they have some sort of personality or some "thing" that makes taking them down feel like an accomplishment, and loot is only cool if it's, well, cool. Maybe I'm just too early into the game but I haven't seen any indication that Ubisoft realizes this, because the enemies are just generic thugs mixed in with other thugs who for some reason can take more bullets to the head than a goddamn Abrams tank. I can believe that random enemies in space or Pandora can take damage like that, but a guy in the middle of Manhattan in what is supposed to be a "realistic shooter?" Not so much. And the weapons are nothing unique unless you haven't played a modern military shooter made in the last decade. Oh boy! This new M5 reloads a half second faster than the one I already have? JACKPOT!

I'm also not a fan of the silent protagonist role again, nor the amazingly lacking character customization. I mean this is essentially an MMO so they're expecting a lot of different people to play, but the options for creation are not much better than what was in the beta. I wasn't expecting Saints Row 2 levels of customization, but the levels I'm seeing here are what I'd expect to see in a PlayStation 1 game.

And the missions seem to basically be "Kill everyone" or "Guard something by killing everyone" or "Save someone by killing everyone." At the end of the day the task is just "Kill everyone" no matter what sort of weak context they give it.

Speaking of weak, let's talk about the controls. They sort of suck. Maybe I'm just too used to Gears of War style controls but the cover based shooting seems very sloppy here. It's not hard to accidentally poke your head up or dislodge from the wall you were stuck to, leading to you getting hit. And getting hit really sucks because it does that crap where you have regenerating health that only goes up to your highest health bar at the time. So you could get shot 4 times and then you won't be able to recover past your lowest bar unless you have a health pack or someone else can heal you, and the health regeneration for that is PAINFULLY slow. Even when playing with other people the early missions I've done have been quite difficult, in fact more difficult than seems appropriate for this early in the game.

But who knows, maybe as I level up more the game will get more fun, and while I'm willing to keep an open mind, past experience seems to point at what will inevitably be another "meh" experience that will quickly go back to Gamefly.

That's too bad. I am actually having a really good time with it so far. The game just came out Tuesday and I've already put 11 hours into it. I've actually come across some pretty cool people through the matchmaking and my uPlay friends list has been gradually growing. I never had a use for it before this game.

I'm even liking the Dark Zone much more than I thought I would. It's not GTA Online where everyone you see immediately attacks you. Most people work together. I've even had strangers who weren't in my group reviving me when a rogue agent or AI enemy downs me. This is surprising because if they just let me bleed out they could take whatever loot I had found but not extracted yet. It's been a much more cooperative experience than I thought it would be.

I'm going to copy a couple parts from your post and respond to them directly.

As I mentioned a while back I knew little to nothing about The Division other than it was a 3rd person shooter based in New York. I didn't realize that it was basically Ubisoft's attempt to capitalize on the shoot & loot genre that Destiny and Borderlands had been so successful in. Unfortunately it appears as though Ubisoft doesn't totally understand what it is that made those games so popular. I mean I'm not big into those types of games but I can at least understand why people are. It's not just the constant mowing down of enemies and getting different random prizes for doing so. Taking down enemies is only fun if they have some sort of personality or some "thing" that makes taking them down feel like an accomplishment, and loot is only cool if it's, well, cool. Maybe I'm just too early into the game but I haven't seen any indication that Ubisoft realizes this, because the enemies are just generic thugs mixed in with other thugs who for some reason can take more bullets to the head than a goddamn Abrams tank.

The Division is heavily influenced by the two games you mentioned, Destiny and Borderlands. If you didn't like either of them it makes sense that you wouldn't like this either. I just checked the Smartglass app and I have 165 hours into Destiny. I also beat the story on PS4. It's hard to say on Borderlands because I have played 3 separate games in that franchise on a mix of PC and PS3. I've also played a ton of Diablo 3. It's clear that I love loot shooters or even just loot games in general.

The enemies vary a bit more as you get further into The Division. There are 4 different gangs with 4 different combat styles. They also have 4 different reasons for doing what they are doing. It is a little disappointing that there are so few character models. Basically there are a few variations in each gang but you see a lot of the same enemies over and over again. This is no different than Destiny or Borderlands though. In Destiny all the Thrall look the same, all the Vex look the same, etc... In Borderlands the raiders and psychos look the same.

And the missions seem to basically be "Kill everyone" or "Guard something by killing everyone" or "Save someone by killing everyone." At the end of the day the task is just "Kill everyone" no matter what sort of weak context they give it.

This is true. It's also true of Borderlands and Destiny. Actually it's true of most shooters. I've recently been playing Uncharted 2. A little before that was Halo 5, and before that was Black Ops 3. All 3 of those games mostly consist of walking into an area and killing everyone and then going to the next area and killing everyone. Uncharted changes it up occasionally with some climbing and light puzzles but it's mostly shooting a bunch of people.

I will say that the story is not a strong point of The Division. Again, the same can be said about Destiny and Diablo. For me the loot grind and gameplay has been enough for me to overlook the weak story in all 3 of those games. This is one of my favorite genres and so far I think The Division is doing it pretty well.

I don't know if there will be enough here to match my 165 hours of Destiny. That depends on how well Ubisoft continues to support The Division with end game content. This is something Destiny was bad about at the beginning but got much better by the time The Taken King came out.

I do think The Division does a much better job of bringing people together. I played the almost the entire story in Destiny alone. This was not by choice. It happened because there was no matchmaking. The only time I was playing with other people was the special strike missions and the raids. I ended up finding a good group to play with through an external site but that is more trouble than most people are willing to go through. I haven't played a single mission in The Division alone and it's mostly been a positive experience for me.
 
Well like I said, I had no idea about the Division until we played that beta together, and yes it looks like I'm not big on the Shoot & Loot game style, but I will also totally admit that it's a "It's not you, it's me" thing. And perhaps I'm not the right point of view to judge such a game but to me as I played I was just thinking, "You know, the little time I spent in Destiny & Borderlands still felt more exciting than this." I eventually gave up on those games because they became too much of a grind, and yeah I bet if I had had friends to play with it would have been more fun, but alas...



Still, if you and others of your ilk (meaning people who like these games) find it to be good then more power to you. Even though I met the beta with a resounding "bleh", I wanted to at least give the full version a chance to impress me. It does look like they do have a more concrete and open plan for expanding on the game by opening up the other boroughs of New York (Although I'd like to see how well they do Queens and see they put in my mother's old house.) I think I'm going to send the game back though, as I just invested in another time sink to carry me until April 8th
 
I totally understand. We all have certain genres we like more than others. I've never really been into fighting games even though lots of people love them.

I am enjoying The Division so far but I do want to be clear. I made comparisons to Borderlands and Destiny but I'm not ready to put it up on the same pedestal as those games yet. It's way to early for me to make that kind of statement right now. I haven't seen what the end game content is yet and I still have a long ways to go in the main story.

I've pointed out some things I think The Division does better than Destiny but there are also things it doesn't do as well. All the other loot games I play (Diablo, Borderlands, Destiny) have character classes that can make the gameplay a much different experience. This encourages people to run multiple characters and adds a ton of replayablitly.

The Division lets you tie multiple characters to your account but there are no classes. You can completely re-spec your abilities at any point just by going into the menu. As far as I can tell, there is literally no reason to level up a second character unless you just want to start the game fresh again. You don't need to build out a character with healing abilities and another with high damage abilities because you can just use one character and switch between the two by going into the menu for 30 seconds. I think this is really going to impact the amount of time I put into The Division.

I think the cover system is okay but like yourbeliefs said it doesn't feel quite as good as Gears of War. The climb button is Ctrl which feels really awkward to me. This would typically be tied to the Space Bar but since switching between various cover points quickly is more important than jumping and climbing it makes sense that the cover system got the Space Bar instead. Still, it didn't feel natural at all to me in the beginning and I still find myself occasionally stopping for a second to get my pinky down to the Ctrl key instead of vaulting over things smoothly.

I'm sure it will never be comfortable for me to hit Ctrl with my pinky while having my middle finger holding down W to move forward at the same time. That's an awkward stretch to make for me. I'm just not sure what I would remap it to that would feel better.

I also prefer my shooters to be first person so that's another thing Destiny and Borderlands have over The Division for me.
 
First Click: PlayStation VR and 3.14 other reasons to be excited about the week ahead

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/1...vr-and-3-14-other-reasons-to-be-excited-about

It’s a big week for The Verge with four major events scheduled: the South by Southwest festival, the GDC gaming show, the Baselworld Swiss watch event, and the final Go match pitting man against machine.



South by Southwest is well underway in Texas. The first two parts of the annual Austin tradition — SXSW Interactive and SXSW Film — are already in full swing, with SXSW Music kicking off Tuesday, followed by a Michelle Obama keynote on Wednesday. The first lady will be promoting the "Let Girls Learn" initiative, which is focused on educating the 62 million girls around the world who are not in school.

We’re expecting to hear important details on the PlayStation VR on Tuesday, as well. Sony’s GDC press event should give us pricing and release dates for the final version of the PSVR, allowing us to complete the VR Buying Guide so that you can easily compare Sony’s VR platform with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. GDC will be packed with VR news from developers this year as virtual reality becomes an entertainment reality in 2016. Look for our full GDC preview on the site later today.

Meanwhile, Baselworld will attempt to rekindle our love of expensive Swiss time pieces when it kicks off on March 17th. Smartwatch sales outpaced luxury watches for the first time in 2015 thanks to a strong franc and reduced demand in Asia. Bloomberg published a primer with a preview of all the big announcements expected.

We’ve also got the fifth and final Go match between Google’s DeepMind and champion Lee Se-dol on Tuesday. DeepMind is leading 3-1 after Lee took the fourth match on Sunday, handing Google’s AI its first ever professional loss. Still, as Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt said at the outset, "The winner here, no matter who wins, is humanity."

But that’s all yet to come in addition to our usual coverage of tech, science, cars, and entertainment. First let’s take a look back at the weekend that was.
 
Especially because a match in a fighting game doesn't typically take that long. Even a light penalty should be enough to keep people from quitting. Even if I am getting my ass handed to me in a fighting game I can probably suffer through it for the 2-3 minutes it will take for them to finish me off.
Well you could always do the Story Mode, which apparently is so easy that a Baby can beat it. Literally.

http://kotaku.com/six-month-old-baby-beats-birdies-story-mode-in-street-f-1764624575
 
Wish I had a wife like that as carefree about the kids playing games. I tried to have my kids play Mario Kart with me a while ago and when my wife saw it she acted like I was doing a bourbon tasting with them.
 
So Microsoft just launched an initiative to have true cross platform gaming. Rocket League (which was recently released for the One) will allow One players to play against PC gamers. Currently PS4 players can play against PC gamers, and this will allow One players to play against PC gamers, but not One players with PS4 players. However, with this initiative such a thing could be possible where PS4 players could play One players, assuming the developers (read: the publishers) want to implement it.

http://www.destructoid.com/microsof...ge-bomb-open-cross-platform-play-348579.phtml
 

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