Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

[yourbeliefs]

My playing has been rather scattered lately..

I'm finally delving into Arkham Knight and in spite of the awful performance problems, I'm actually having a lot of fun. I mean this is the 3rd/4th game to come out, so if you were a fan of this before you'll likely be a fan of this. It's just more refinements of the Arkham City experience, which isn't a bad thing. There's also a LOT of side quest stuff to do, but it gets annoying at times because I've actually run into scenarios where a new side quest set opened up, but I couldn't do it because I couldn't use my Batmobile at that part of the map yet. Also, the fact that only 1 out of the 5 or 6 bridges is down really makes things annoying for stuff that requires the car. Personally I preferred just flying around as I found it to be more fun and more direct, but sometimes a car is necessary. Still, overall the game is quite fun and I am enjoying my time with it. I definitely won't be getting 100% because I just don't care enough, but I am searching out side quests as they aren't too bad, but mainly I'm doing it to build up Wayne Tech points to upgrade my character. Still, combat is fun, voice acting is great, and I'm really surprised that Batman's "companion" wasn't spoiled in any of the coverage that I read.

Also been playing Catherine more. I forgot about how great the game was, which can be expected since I originally played the game 4 years ago. I do have to say that on a personal level, I found myself really viewing things differently after being married for 7 years with 3 kids than I did originally with 3 years with 1 kid due to the themes relating to relationships and monogamy. And the puzzle gameplay can be a real brain teaser, even on Easy Settings. If the game comes up as part of the Backwards Compatibility program I HIGHLY recommend people keep their eye on it. I think the game is well worth $20 even though I got it on sale for $5 (I paid full price originally.)

Battlefront came and went almost like a 1 night stand. It definitely looked beautiful and puts you into that world, but you can't help but feel a little "dirty" while you play, knowing this is just a shell of a game that really is going to be complete with DLC. Whereas most games are simply enhanced by DLC, this game you can tell is going to be "completed" with DLC. Also, this game whores out the season pass that gave me flashbacks of stage moms from "Toddlers & Tiaras." I mean I haven't even seen Free 2 Play games whore out for cash like I did this one. And before people say "Well, they don't make DLC to not profit off of it," they could at least not be so obvious about it and give us the impression that you care about the art of the whole thing. I get the feeling that many players will be like me and will simply wait a while for the "complete" version to come out at a heavy discount.

I've been enjoying Guitar Hero Live quite a bit. I enjoy the new guitar that only requires 3 fingers for 6 buttons, even though it takes some time to get used to it. Also, I found my performance with it to be rather varied. Apparently for some reason I can't play the game well when I'm sitting down. I tried playing sitting down but I kept finding myself missing/hitting wrong notes MUCH more often than I was expecting, to where I was like "COME ON, THERE'S NO WAY I MESSED THAT UP." I was a heartbeat away from going to Best Buy to replace it, and honestly I would have yesterday if I didn't overestimate the crowd at BB and didn't bring it out of fear of being stuck in a line. But then yesterday night, after a good amount of liquor, I picked up the game to show my best friend to point out how broken the game was, but instead I ended up doing really well, like better than I had done before. I do like jumping in and out of playlists set by the game, but unfortunately if they want this to keep going, they're going to have to keep the content updated, because having to repeat songs often is going to make interest wane VERY quickly. In the meantime I'm having fun, and will likely play everyday since I get rewarded for doing so. Yeah, this game does have a lot of F2P elements, somewhat implied by having microtransactions, but I really don't see myself needing to spend money since they really do throw in game cash at you to purchase on demand plays quite liberally.

Against all logic I decided to pick up 2 time sinks that were on sale, Bloodborne and Final Fantasy X/X2 Remastered for the PS4. I haven't delved into them yet and likely won't until next year. Final Fantasy X is one of those rare scenarios where I literally got to the end of the game but couldn't finish it off (or at least REALLY deep into the game.) And for some reason that really stuck in my craw over the years and I've been tempted to try again, and with this coming available for $18 with a redemption code I figured I may as well try again. I fired it up last night and was rather disheartened to see that they didn't include the Japanese vocal track. The American voice work in the game is, well.. Still, if I tolerated it before I can do it again. And I'll have to do some prep work on Bloodborne since I've read that not doing so is akin to jumping into a fire naked.

 

[king3pj]

My playing has been rather scattered lately..

I'm finally delving into Arkham Knight and in spite of the awful performance problems, I'm actually having a lot of fun. I mean this is the 3rd/4th game to come out, so if you were a fan of this before you'll likely be a fan of this. It's just more refinements of the Arkham City experience, which isn't a bad thing. There's also a LOT of side quest stuff to do, but it gets annoying at times because I've actually run into scenarios where a new side quest set opened up, but I couldn't do it because I couldn't use my Batmobile at that part of the map yet. Also, the fact that only 1 out of the 5 or 6 bridges is down really makes things annoying for stuff that requires the car. Personally I preferred just flying around as I found it to be more fun and more direct, but sometimes a car is necessary. Still, overall the game is quite fun and I am enjoying my time with it. I definitely won't be getting 100% because I just don't care enough, but I am searching out side quests as they aren't too bad, but mainly I'm doing it to build up Wayne Tech points to upgrade my character. Still, combat is fun, voice acting is great, and I'm really surprised that Batman's "companion" wasn't spoiled in any of the coverage that I read.

I wouldn't bother going for 100% but I do suggest finishing out at least a few of the Gotham's Most Wanted quest lines. Some, but not all, of these have some interesting story moments attached to them. I didn't actually 100% the game but I did take down all of Gotham's Most Wanted except for The Riddler. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to lock the "good ending" behind 296 Riddler challenges. I didn't finish clearing out all the enemy towers, outposts, and bombs in addition to the Riddler stuff.

Also been playing Catherine more. I forgot about how great the game was, which can be expected since I originally played the game 4 years ago. I do have to say that on a personal level, I found myself really viewing things differently after being married for 7 years with 3 kids than I did originally with 3 years with 1 kid due to the themes relating to relationships and monogamy. And the puzzle gameplay can be a real brain teaser, even on Easy Settings. If the game comes up as part of the Backwards Compatibility program I HIGHLY recommend people keep their eye on it. I think the game is well worth $20 even though I got it on sale for $5 (I paid full price originally.)

I would have been all over this when it was $5 if I had any assurance that it it was going to be playable on Xbox One.

Battlefront came and went almost like a 1 night stand. It definitely looked beautiful and puts you into that world, but you can't help but feel a little "dirty" while you play, knowing this is just a shell of a game that really is going to be complete with DLC. Whereas most games are simply enhanced by DLC, this game you can tell is going to be "completed" with DLC. Also, this game whores out the season pass that gave me flashbacks of stage moms from "Toddlers & Tiaras." I mean I haven't even seen Free 2 Play games whore out for cash like I did this one. And before people say "Well, they don't make DLC to not profit off of it," they could at least not be so obvious about it and give us the impression that you care about the art of the whole thing. I get the feeling that many players will be like me and will simply wait a while for the "complete" version to come out at a heavy discount.

I have had fun with Battlefront in limited play time. It's not something I find myself wanting to sit down with for a couple hours at a time though. While Battlefront is pretty good at providing the chaotic mayhem feel of the Battlefield series the gameplay doesn't seem to have the same depth as something like Battlefield 4. I think it would have actually been a better game if it was just Battlefield with Star Wars skin over it. Instead it feels like they tried to make it more accessible for the massive Star Wars audience and I think the gameplay suffers a bit as a result.

I'm not saying it's not fun from time to time but I don't feel the need to constantly go back in like I did with Battlefield 4. It's more of a casual thing where I will play a match or two before bed if I don't have a couple hours to get lost in Fallout. Honestly, Rocket League has it's hooks in me again though and that has been the game I usually turn to in those situations.

I've been enjoying Guitar Hero Live quite a bit. I enjoy the new guitar that only requires 3 fingers for 6 buttons, even though it takes some time to get used to it. Also, I found my performance with it to be rather varied. Apparently for some reason I can't play the game well when I'm sitting down. I tried playing sitting down but I kept finding myself missing/hitting wrong notes MUCH more often than I was expecting, to where I was like "COME ON, THERE'S NO WAY I MESSED THAT UP." I was a heartbeat away from going to Best Buy to replace it, and honestly I would have yesterday if I didn't overestimate the crowd at BB and didn't bring it out of fear of being stuck in a line. But then yesterday night, after a good amount of liquor, I picked up the game to show my best friend to point out how broken the game was, but instead I ended up doing really well, like better than I had done before. I do like jumping in and out of playlists set by the game, but unfortunately if they want this to keep going, they're going to have to keep the content updated, because having to repeat songs often is going to make interest wane VERY quickly. In the meantime I'm having fun, and will likely play everyday since I get rewarded for doing so. Yeah, this game does have a lot of F2P elements, somewhat implied by having microtransactions, but I really don't see myself needing to spend money since they really do throw in game cash at you to purchase on demand plays quite liberally.

I need to try to get back into this one. I was playing it every night and then I left town for a week and a half. When I came back and tried to play it my skills had deteriorated to the point where it was frustrating to play. I haven't touched it much since.

Against all logic I decided to pick up 2 time sinks that were on sale, Bloodborne and Final Fantasy X/X2 Remastered for the PS4. I haven't delved into them yet and likely won't until next year. Final Fantasy X is one of those rare scenarios where I literally got to the end of the game but couldn't finish it off (or at least REALLY deep into the game.) And for some reason that really stuck in my craw over the years and I've been tempted to try again, and with this coming available for $18 with a redemption code I figured I may as well try again. I fired it up last night and was rather disheartened to see that they didn't include the Japanese vocal track. The American voice work in the game is, well.. Still, if I tolerated it before I can do it again. And I'll have to do some prep work on Bloodborne since I've read that not doing so is akin to jumping into a fire naked.

I also grabbed Bloodborne on sale a while back but I haven't built up the nerve to attempt a playthrough yet. It's probably going to be quite a while before I do. That doesn't really seem like the kind of game I would want to try to juggle with other big games.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well I just finished Arkham Knight (literally like 7 minutes ago)

Arkham Knight is not a great game... it's a f*cking awesome game. It will definitely have a GOTY award from me, which is bittersweet considering the PC port is as bad as the game is good. And speaking of bad, the game's ending if you don't reach 100% completion is sh*t. They should NOT have tied the game's "real" ending to having to collect all the Riddler Trophies. The difference between "regular" ending and "good" ending is almost insulting. Even though the Mario games had "true" endings locked behind 100% completion at least they made you feel like you finished the game if you got a standard ending. This game basically says, "Yeah you finished up AK and Scarecrow but there's still sh*t to do and until you do it you will never have peace." F*ck that. I'm not going all over the game to pick up 200+ random trophies to get the "good" ending. There was no need to do this. Basically the Riddler is a side quest and after you complete his other mission and confront him he pulls a bullsh*t excuse of "I won't confront you until you collect all my trophies!" Blow me Edward. I spent 30 hours beating this game, and I'm not spending any more to find random question marks throughout the city.

Other than that, the game is fantastic. If you liked Asylum and City there's no reason you won't like this. I played a bunch of the side quests and main quest and had a lot of fun, although the side quests are usually just more beat'em'up or stealth missions, or some Batmobile stuff. I didn't bother with the ManBat stuff because it was just too annoying, and knowing that I wouldn't get the "good" ending unless I got all the Riddler trophies stopped me from going overboard with side stuff. Still, I had a LOT of fun over these past 30 hours, and I highly recommend this game, but only for those with an Xbox One or PS4. Even if you have a Nvidia GTX 970 or Titan I don't recommend this game, because WBIE deserves NO money for releasing a game in this condition and expecting that PC Gamers would accept it. And even though this is a GOTY for me, I'm still requesting a refund, because WBIE needs to be taught a lesson that this sh*t won't fly. It's like going into a restaurant and asking for a steak well done, but they give you a raw one. So you send it back to the chef and then he cooks it more but now it's just medium. At this point you're pissed off and yell at the manager, and they say that your meal will be free. And then you get your steak and since it's been cooked for so long it's now well done, but it doesn't change the fact that you waited 2 hours for it and any other restaurant would have gotten your order right the first time. It's sad that PC gamers will likely never get a version of this game they deserve. And it's a bad way to end what has been one of the best trilogies in gaming of all time (and don't bother mentioning Origins because it wasn't made by Rocksteady so it doesn't count). I don't know if this beats out Arkham Asylum for me for best Batman game, but it definitely is under consideration. This game gets an A overall, but the PC version is inexcusably bad. I can say it does function properly with very few glitches, but the utter disrespect WBIE showed PC Gamers is simply inexcusable, and it's quite obvious they will be punished for this as this game will end up making very little money for them, and they clearly only have themselves to blame.

Now that this game is out of the way, I'm going to turn my attention to Until Dawn and Life is Strange.

 

[king3pj]

I played The Beginner's Guide last night. It's the follow up to The Stanley Parable from Davey Wreden. The Stanley Parable has a lot more humor than this follow up but both of them are fairly depressing at times. There are also moments in both games that make me smile.

I don't want to go into much detail because I think these games are better if you go into them knowing as little as possible. I will say that I can relate to the Stanley Parable because I know what it's like to sit in an office doing mundane tasks all day, every day. This game is much harder to relate to for me because I don't know what it's like to create games or art in general.

 

[king3pj]

Well I started episode 1 almost exactly a year ago at this point but I finally finished Tales From the Borderlands. See, I got it in Xbox Live's Black Friday sale last year and immediately loved it. The problem is that they took about 3 months (not an exaggeration) between episodes and I started to forget all the little details that were necessary for making my choices in this game. I played through the first 3 episodes as they came out but I got frustrated with Tell Tale's release schedule enough to decide to wait until the full game was done and start over so I could remember everything. That is exactly what I did this week.

I guess I should continue with my negative points so I can get that out of the way before getting to the good stuff. Tales From the Borderlands has taught me two important lessons about Tell Tale games. I already hit on the first one. I'm done buying their games until at least 3 out of the 5 episodes are out. They can no longer be trusted with early buys because they have bitten off more series than they can handle and their delays are out of control.

The second lesson is to never buy another Tell Tale game on console. I came to the same conclusion after finishing The Walking Dead Season 2 but I played that on a PS3. I figured the Xbox One/PS4 couldn't possibly have trouble running these games so it was probably safe to buy on console again. I was dead wrong. The performance on consoles, at least Xbox One, is laughably bad. I gave them a pass on some of their older games but they are no longer a little studio and it's unacceptable at this point. The game constantly had huge framerate dips or flatout froze. I messed up several of the quick time events because the game completely froze on me while I was supposed to be performing an action. It catches back up after a second but you have already failed by then.

Just so people don't think I'm exaggerating about how bad this game runs on Xbox One I edited a few clips together and put them in a Youtube video. I'm putting this video behind a spoiler tag because the clips were taken near the end of the game. Do not watch this video unless you have beaten the game or don't plan to play it.

Spoiler

I know that everything I have written so far has been super negative. Reading that you could assume I did not like this game, but you would be wrong. It's easily my favorite Tell Tale game yet. Did it have the same impact as TWD Season 1? Absolutely not. However, it's by far the most fun game they have made. There is an all-star voice cast, the game is hilarious at times, and it has the best action sequences in any of the Tell Tale games I have played.

The characters are great and so is the story telling. Also, as a big Borderlands fan they did this franchise right. At the same time it's a good enough heist story on it's own that you don't need to play the mainline Borderlands games to enjoy it. yourbeliefs is proof of that. Just read his glowing review. I know I was hard on Tell Tale in the first part of my post. I think they deserve that. They also deserve GOTY awards though. This will definitely make my personal list. I just wish they would stop taking on so many projects at once and try to get back to their original 1 month release schedule for these episodes. They also need to fix their console performance issues.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Christ Almighty, that is bad. That reminds me of TWAU on the 360. The One is more than capable of handling this game. TT has just proven that if it's not on a PC, they don't know what they're doing. I hope the performance isn't this bad on the PS4 for GoT, as I purchased it on that since I could get the whole damn season for $5

 

[king3pj]

Christ Almighty, that is bad. That reminds me of TWAU on the 360. The One is more than capable of handling this game. TT has just proven that if it's not on a PC, they don't know what they're doing. I hope the performance isn't this bad on the PS4 for GoT, as I purchased it on that since I could get the whole damn season for $5

Yeah, it's ridiculously bad at times. The good news is that I also played the first 3 episodes of Game of Thrones on PS4 and I don't remember it being this terrible. I don't know if that is because the PS4 is slightly more powerful or because they just did a better job on GoT. To be fair, it has been a long time since I played an episode in that game so I might not be remembering the performance correctly.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I don't think it's a power thing. I mean my old GTX 460 v2 could handle TellTale games without a hitch, and I know the cards in the new consoles are significantly more powerful. The idea that they STILL can't properly optimize their stuff is just ridiculous. Maybe they're still learning the technology, but I think 2+ years is long enough, especially since they've ported all their other older games over.

 

[Zookster]

I've played The Walking Dead season 2 (all episodes) and Tales from the Borderlands (first two episodes) on PS4 and haven't had any performance issues. TftB is one of the best looking games I've played on PS4. It'll be hard to go back to in-engine graphics for future Borderlands game releases on PS4 after seeing how great the world looks in this Telltale game.

 

[king3pj]

I've played The Walking Dead season 2 (all episodes) and Tales from the Borderlands (first two episodes) on PS4 and haven't had any performance issues. TftB is one of the best looking games I've played on PS4. It'll be hard to go back to in-engine graphics for future Borderlands game releases on PS4 after seeing how great the world looks in this Telltale game.

Well, it definitely has issues on Xbox One. After you finish the game check out my YouTube video.

 

[king3pj]

I just finished up my second campaign in Civilization Beyond Earth. I'm never really finished with Civ games but with 2 campaigns, and 16 hours in the books I think I have seen enough to write up my opinion on it. Civ V is my most played game on on Steam by a pretty wide margin so I was really excited when I heard about Beyond Earth. Then the reviews hit solidly in the "okay" range and I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for the game. I still bought it during the Steam Summer Sale but I found myself still playing Civ V instead of trying Beyond Earth because I was expecting a letdown.

I finally gave Beyond Earth a chance over the weekend and I found time disappearing the same way it does when I play Civ V. I sat down expecting to play for an hour or two Friday night but when I looked at the clock it was nearly 3:00am and nearly 5 hours had passed. Civ V has had this same effect on me many times. The next wonder or research item is always only a few turns away so it's easy to say I'll just finish this last thing and call it a night. Then the cycle repeats and I am up way to late.

Many people were down on Beyond Earth, basically calling it a science fiction mod for Civ V. That's not exactly true but even if it was I probably wouldn't hate it. I like Civ and I like science fiction so a mashup of those two things sounds pretty good to me.

One thing that was a little disappointing is that all of the other civilizations you are competing for resources with are also humans from earth. In that respect it does feel like a Civ V mod instead of a totally new experience. It would have been cool to come across alien civilizations who maybe value different resources and ways of life than you do.

Instead, all of the aliens you encounter are primitive animals with no technology of their own. They take the place of the barbarians from previous civilizations with a few changes. Like I said they don't have any technology of their own so you won't be getting attacked by alien vehicles or improved weapons. Barbarians didn't advance as quickly as civilizations before but they did still advance through out the game. Every type of alien can exist from the first move of the game. This changes the exploration factor at the beginning of the game because you are not equipped to deal with them at that point. By the middle of the game they are just minor annoyances or completely wiped out as civilizations claim their territory.

One other big difference between this and Civ V is that you can play with very minimal military investment in Beyond Earth. The aliens won't attack you unless you send military units too close to them or their nests. Even then they only attack those units and not your cities. Special invisible fences can be used to keep them out of your territory and that same technology can be adapted to keep them from attacking your trade convoys. There is really no reason to attack them unless you want a resource that they are too close to.

The same holds true for competing civilizations. In my most recent game I completed one of the win scenarios with almost no military presence and I was never at war with any other civilization. From my experience this is impossible in Civ V. Even if you make every effort to be diplomatic in Civ V some other civilizations will attack you because certain leaders are war mongers, based on real history. In vanilla Beyond Earth I see no reason to put more than the bare minimum investment into your military unless you are going for a domination victory.

Is Beyond Earth as deep as Civ 5? Not even close, but Civ 5 had 3 years of huge expansions and Beyond Earth just put out its first. I was pleasantly surprised with Beyond Earth but that could partially be due to my low expectations going in. I'll be looking for a deal on the Rising Tide expansion in the Steam Holiday sale and I will most likely end up putting a lot more hours into this game.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Out of curiosity were you up at like 5:30am playing that this morning (12/15)? Steam said you were but I didn't know if it was accurate or not. I was up because my daughter decided to climb into my bed around that time and I figured I may as well be productive and work on Arkham Origins.

 

[king3pj]

Out of curiosity were you up at like 5:30am playing that this morning (12/15)? Steam said you were but I didn't know if it was accurate or not. I was up because my daughter decided to climb into my bed around that time and I figured I may as well be productive and work on Arkham Origins.

Nope. I had the day off and I played it all afternoon but I slept in this morning. For some reason that I can't figure out my PC wakes from sleep around that time every morning and eventually goes back into sleep mode due to inactivity.

I was playing Beyond Earth until I went to bed last night but I don't know why it would say I was playing when my PC woke from sleep mode this morning. It's not like I don't exit my games before putting the computer to sleep.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I think the Steam friends' list doesn't always update in a timely fashion. To be fair I put my computer to sleep last night and saw you were on but then after waiting like 10 minutes it still said you were on, which made me suspicious. In any case I'm off to (hopefully) finish off Arkham Origins.

 

[king3pj]

I think the Steam friends' list doesn't always update in a timely fashion. To be fair I put my computer to sleep last night and saw you were on but then after waiting like 10 minutes it still said you were on, which made me suspicious. In any case I'm off to (hopefully) finish off Arkham Origins.

Well let me know if it's worth finishing. I played about 7 hours when I was waiting for an Arkham Knight patch but haven't gone back.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well I just finished the main story of Batman: Arkham Origins. I say that because I did almost NONE of the side missions, minus unlocking maybe 2 Riddler towers.

Looking back I was rather harsh with my criticism of Origins. Unfortunately when I had the game for my 360 was the same time that the great WB Humble Bundle came out, which had Arkham Asylum and City on it. I was maybe 2 hours into Origins and I decided to fire up Asylum again on my PC and I was sucked in harder than a $1,000 hooker and I simply couldn't go back to Origins. Playing it again now paints a different picture. Just to be clear, this is definitely the worst modern Batman game to come out, but that doesn't mean it's bad. How much fun you'll have with it will depend solely on how much you enjoy the standard combat/predator missions of the Arkham games. If you enjoy those aspects then you'll at least find yourself amused by this game.

Having said that, the key word is "amused." While I had fun playing, it was because of the tried and true Rocksteady gameplay that this game implemented. As far as the story and everything else, this game falls short. First off, let's just come out and admit that "Arkham Origins" is a horrible title for this game because it simply doesn't work in terms of plot and continuity. So this takes place 2 years after Batman first appeared so to speak, and people still don't know whether he's good or not. Really? After TWO YEARS the people of Gotham can't tell whether a guy that takes down criminals and thugs is good or not? Unless he's also beating up Special Olympics athletes or the news is all run by J. Jonah Jameson I don't see how the people could be confused. Also, if this is supposed to take place in Gotham, why is the map smaller than that of Arkham City, which was supposed to just be a SECTION of Gotham? Speaking of, where the hell are the regular citizens of Gotham? The only people outside are criminals. This made sense in City and Knight due to the sectioned off area and everyone leaving town respectively, but here they say "Oh, there's a curfew," which you don't know about unless you happen to be listening to the PA system while you're flying around the city. And finally, if this takes place before Arkham Asylum (which took place in 2009), why is everyone using smartphones and modern technology?

The phrase "cheap cash in" isn't helped by the fact that the game doesn't have the same great voice talent as the originals of Kevin Conroy, Tara Strong, and most importantly Mark Hamill. I'm sorry, but as far as going with the crazy, over the top persona for Joker, Hamill has it down. No offense to Troy Baker, but he simply doesn't pull it off as well. I would have preferred that they didn't even involve the Joker without Hamill, or if they did have Joker, try and use a different persona. I feel like Jack Nicholson doesn't get the credit he deserves for how he interpreted the Joker in the first Batman movie, and seeing someone do the Joker like that would have been cool IMO if they could pull it off. But I guess we'll never know.

It also doesn't help that we definitely have the "B-Team" when it comes to villains. I mean, Copperhead? REALLY? On the other hand, it is nice that you actually get to FIGHT these villains, as opposed to Asylum where you basically fight thugs and Titan-injected monsters instead. The fights are fun for the most part, with a GLARING exception being the first fight with Deathstroke. He is simply excessively difficult for a first boss fight (okay technically he's second but the first boss really doesn't count.) With that I should also talk about the bugs I experienced. As much as I b*tched and moaned about Arkham Knight, at least it was a technically competent game. It ran awful, but I had less errors with it than I did with Origins. I almost quit playing the game because of how frustrated I got with Deathstroke, and this didn't help that twice when I fought him, the game glitched out and Deathstroke was apparently transported to the Phantom Zone and I was unable to fight him anymore, which prevented me from continuing in the game. Then there was the time when I was about 75% done with the game and it ended up crashing when I was entering a new area. What made this more disturbing was that this happened when the word "Saving" was on the screen, which led me to believe that my save got corrupted. Luckily that wasn't the case, which was a good thing because if it was then I would have given up right there. I suppose going through all that was worth it for being able to play a Batman game that actually could pull off a consistent 60 FPS, except at times when smoke was on the screen for some reason.

Long story short: If you've played other Batman Arkham games and enjoyed them, then there's little reason you won't enjoy this simply because it's more of that Arkham gameplay you enjoy. Still, the game does come across more as a massive DLC package akin to Dragon Age: Awakenings or Bloodborne: The Old Hunters. It's something that simply works off an existing engine and doesn't bring much in terms of innovation to the base package, but instead just more content. If that appeals to you then it is definitely worth a look, but if the Arkham Trilogy has given you your fill of Batman then there's nothing that Origins offers that will entice you for more. Now to be fair I didn't do any side mission stuff, but it never really appealed to me, nor did it feel necessary. At least with Knight aside from the fact that side stuff was fun (and at times they'd stop the story missions and force you to take side stuff), I was also able to gain XP and level up more. Origins on the other hand lets you gain XP simply by beating up thugs, which are easy to find and execute. If you're a Arkham veteran then the same techniques you used in other games will work here as well.

TL;DR: If you like the other Arkham games and want more, this will satisfy you. Just don't expect it to bring anything new or innovative to the series.

Now that I'm done with Batman, I'm going to refocus my attention on Life is Strange and Until Dawn. I'm only about an hour into LiS but I enjoy how it is so far. Can't give any real impressions until I finish an episode or 2, and haven't even booted of UD yet, but definitely looking forward to it. Hopefully I can beat both before the end of the year so I can consider them for this year's Game Awards.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So I just finished "Until Dawn..."

The big "joke" about UD is that it is essentially the best David Cage game ever made, except that it wasn't made by David Cage. Cage is the creator of other "cinematic experience" games where the gameplay takes a backseat to the story (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls.) The problem with Cage's games is that A: Player actions usually had little influence on the actual plot, and B: The stories themselves were sometimes so far fetched that it ruined the enjoyment (Fahrenheit suffered much from this, as did Beyond to a lesser extent.) UD takes this style of game to its next logical step, where you essentially are playing a horror movie. Included are all the classic horror tropes you can think of: Group of obnoxious teenagers all designed to fit stereotypes, numerous instances of said characters making illogical decisions for the sake of keeping the story going, numerous jump scares, which early on are caused by scenery/characters themselves, and then a villain that borders on the fantastical/illogical. Even the plot is not immune to tropes. A bunch of teenagers are partying at their rich friends' house when they pull a bad prank that ends up killing two of them. Then exactly a year later, the same group meets up again in the exact same place for the anniversary at the request of the two girls' survived brother. Without giving too much away it's basically "I Know What You Did Last Summer" meets "Friday the 13th" meets "Saw" meets "The Ring." Of course rather than just watching, you're here to do your best to make sure everyone gets out alive by successfully getting enough clues and objects in the levels, as well as not messing up too many of the quicktime events. The former is more important than it sounds. Normally you collect all the items in a game to get the hidden good ending, but if you plan on saving everyone, you better put your sleuthing hat on, because characters WILL die if you don't. Near the end of the game one of the characters was confronted by one of the bad guys, when they noticed something on their body of super importance. Sadly this wasn't recognized in time and said character had their head crushed like a watermelon at a Gallagher show. I was then told by the game that another character didn't learn enough about "X" to be able to recognize and warn the now dead character. You can also lose characters if you tell them to do the wrong thing. Very often you'll be brought to a fork in the path or 2 ways to approach a problem or whatnot, and sometimes doing the wrong thing can be a fatal mistake. I lost my other character that way, and they ended up hanging off of a huge metal hook mouth first.

This video I took of the game basically shows the majority of your gaming experience. There aren't any real spoilers here (not even at the end).



As far as whether the game is any good or not, I have to say that yes it is. In fact I was surprised by how much I liked UD. I'm not big on jump scares or horror movies in general and even though this is literally an interactive horror movie, I still had a lot of fun. In fact at one point I had a 4+ hour marathon at night playing it in the dark with headphones until nearly 1am, which given my life with 3 kids is EXTREMELY rare. The graphics are good and very realistic with a LOT of motion capturing of regular actors, the writing is good (by horror film standards) and the twists and turns the plot takes are certainly not the worse I've seen in similar films. If you like horror movies this game is an absolute no-brainer. You will easily ignore the game's flaws and have a great time either saving the teens, or conversely, killing them all off (yes this is apparently an option.)

Speaking of flaws, this game does have a number of them. First off, the high fildelity graphics are done at the sacrifice of frame rate. Now as much as I harp on that 60 FPS should be the standard of games, I'm not opposed to 30 FPS if the developer feels it is more appropriate, and in a game that is actively trying to emulate a movie, that makes sense. I just would have preferred that this game make an attempt to achieve even 30. According to digital foundry the game has an AVERAGE of 22, and I'm sure it dips into the teens (no pun intended) numerous times. This leads to rather jerky and unrealistic movements by the characters and at times you almost feel like you're dragging the characters more than you're moving them, which isn't helped by the game's tank like Eternal Darkness control style. Speaking of control, aside from QTEs, the game also has these times when you need to be perfectly still to avoid detection or else you'll likely die by using the controller's motion control. This sounds okay in theory, except the controls are SUPER sensitive with this, like to the point of almost absurd, and others have reported that even placing the controller on a flat surface can also result in failing. I understand them trying to add more tension, but this gets especially frustrating at the end of the game when you're expected to be perfectly still up to 6 times or risk losing more characters. My palms were sweating like I was taking a driving test. Finally, since this is basically a 8 hour horror movie, after a while the scares become a little too predictable, and thus lost their effectiveness. For the first 3 hours I was constantly jumping and feeling my heart race, but by the last 3 I was literally calling about 80% of them out before they occurred.

This is a game that is meant to be played multiple times given the length and numerous collectibles and multiple endings, but I don't see myself going back and reloading various chapters in order to accomplish this, especially since I can just look them up on YouTube. Even without YouTube I don't think I'd go back either, simply because the grind I'd have to go through to get that "perfect" ending is more than I care to deal with, as it would easily double my playing time. Still, if you're the completionist type you'll definitely find some to do here.

So in conclusion UD is a fantastic example of marrying movies with games, the thing that David Cage has been trying to do for years, yet not quite being able to pull it off. UD is the Tom Brady to Cage's Drew Beldsoe to give a football analogy. Unless you're totally against narrative driven games as well as horror movies, you definitely deserve to give this game a look. I certainly don't think it's worth $60, but for $30 or as a weekend Redbox rental you could do a hell of a lot worse. Highly recommended.

Now that UD is done I'll be jumping back into Life is Strange, and after that I really don't know what I'll do. Perhaps I'll take that precarious dive into Bloodborne.

 

[king3pj]

I was really liking Until Dawn myself. Then I went out of town for a week and a half and I never finished it. Maybe I'll start a new playthrough.

 

[king3pj]

I've mostly been playing Star Wars Battlefront this weekend. I guess seeing the movie got me back into it. I like the new mode that came with the Battle of Jakku free add-on too.

 

[Zookster]

I really enjoyed the finale to Tales from the Borderlands. The episodes got a bit slow for me at times in 2 and 3, but really picked up for the last two. During the first few episodes, I wasn't sure I could see myself playing it again, but now that I know that decisions during the game affect

Spoiler

the options you have for building a team at the end - including a certain mystery option,

I'm much more motivated to give it another go. When I make decisions in these kinds of games, I play the way I like to play and generally don't have any interest in going through again just to be an asshat (I rarely care to make those choices) - unless such a playthrough is required for the platinum trophy. I'm also much more interested now in playing the Pre-Sequel so I can get more of the backstory on

Spoiler

Athena and Nisha

. I am glad I finally played the Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt earlier this year because it helped the

Spoiler

Jack AI deal make much more sense

.

Still no serious performance issues except I got a small bit of freezing or stuttering during the montage in episode five

Spoiler

after you pick your team

, but certainly nothing that ruined my experience. I've read elsewhere that episode five is prone to freezing and other glitches on both PS4 and PS3.

Being tied to one of my favorite franchises, I made a point of making the platinum for Tales from the Borderlands my 5,000th trophy. That's a significant milestone for trophy hunters, so I wanted to make it a memorable trophy, and I like the name of this particular platinum "We Had Fun, Didn't We?"