Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

[king3pj]

I finished The Walking Dead: Michonne in one sitting this morning. That might seem like a ridiculously long gaming session if you compare it to other TellTale games and it was longer than normal. When you take the 94 degree temperature into account that is on it's way up to 99 degrees here today it makes a lot of sense to stay inside with the AC and play video games. The real reason it was possible to beat it in one sitting is because not only does The Walking Dead: Michonne only have 3 episodes they are also much shorter episodes at about 1 hour each. The episodes were short enough and the cliff hangers were good enough that I found myself wanting to keep playing into the next episode.

That being said, the story was just okay. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't on the same level as TWD season 1 or 2. There was also a side story about her family before the zombie outbreak that was interesting at first but I found it completely annoying by the end of the game. Any time something big would start to happen you would end up in these bizarre flashback sequences. It felt like padding to me and worse than that, it kept breaking the momentum when things were starting to get good.

The game ran mostly fine on PC but there were still a couple hitches here and there. Also some of the load times between sequences were excessively long. If that is happening on a PC with a 1070 with the game installed on an SSD I can only imagine how poorly it would run on an Xbox One. TellTale makes great games but their game engine has to go. These aren't graphics showcase games. There is no excuse for them to keep having these kinds of performance issues on every game they put out.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I finished The Walking Dead: Michonne in one sitting this morning. That might seem like a ridiculously long gaming session if you compare it to other TellTale games and it was longer than normal. When you take the 94 degree temperature into account that is on it's way up to 99 degrees here today it makes a lot of sense to stay inside with the AC and play video games. The real reason it was possible to beat it in one sitting is because not only does The Walking Dead: Michonne only have 3 episodes they are also much shorter episodes at about 1 hour each. The episodes were short enough and the cliff hangers were good enough that I found myself wanting to keep playing into the next episode.

That being said, the story was just okay. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't on the same level as TWD season 1 or 2. There was also a side story about her family before the zombie outbreak that was interesting at first but I found it completely annoying by the end of the game. Any time something big would start to happen you would end up in these bizarre flashback sequences. It felt like padding to me and worse than that, it kept breaking the momentum when things were starting to get good.

The game ran mostly fine on PC but there were still a couple hitches here and there. Also some of the load times between sequences were excessively long. If that is happening on a PC with a 1070 with the game installed on an SSD I can only imagine how poorly it would run on an Xbox One. TellTale makes great games but their game engine has to go. These aren't graphics showcase games. There is no excuse for them to keep having these kinds of performance issues on every game they put out.

I didn't realize the game was so short. Maybe I'll dive into that next. Since I found out that I won't be able to get Minecraft Story Mode from the GMG sale I may as well delve into that. I'll post a link to it as well. Gotta get content for my new channel. ;-)

 

[king3pj]

I didn't realize the game was so short. Maybe I'll dive into that next. Since I found out that I won't be able to get Minecraft Story Mode from the GMG sale I may as well delve into that. I'll post a link to it as well. Gotta get content for my new channel. ;-)

Yeah, short isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case. I enjoyed the game but considering the fact that the side stuff envolving her family already felt like padding to me I definitely don't think making it longer would have improved things.

 

[king3pj]

I also beat the 4-5 hour Mortal Kombat X campaign this weekend. I grabbed it while it was $10 in the GMG summer sale Friday. Prior to this game my only experience with the Mortal Kombat series came from playing th SNES version at friends' houses when I was a kid. I had definitely never played a Mortal Kombat campaign before. I was always aware of the games but since I was never that into fighting games they never really appealed to me.

Injustice Gods Among Us drew me in because I was told the campaign had an interesting story based in the DC universe. I ended up really enjoying my campaign playthrough of that game. Since Injustice is basically just Mortal Kombat with a DC comics skin on it I paid attention when the next Mortal Kombat game came out and I'm glad I did.

This isn't The Last of Us but the story was good enough to keep me entertained. The environments and characters look great. I definitely had a few characters who really clicked with me. I wouldn't mind playing a bit more of them in the tower mode. I doubt I will do much more with the game besides that though. I'm not someone who masters characters in fighting games and memorized all of their moves. For me it's more about learning a couple moves and letting button mashing handle the rest. Because of that I will never be competive in an online mode and that is where fighting games really get their longevity for most people.

That's also why I was interested in Mortal Kombat X but had zero interest in Street Fighter V. I guess there is a story mode in that game that has been patched in now but it came many months after release and I haven't heard anyone talk about it.

I had a good time with Mortal Kombat X and it definitely raised my excitement level for Injustice 2. I care more about the DC characters and I'm ready for a new game in that series with updated, Mortal Kombat X level, visuals. Unfortunately it looks like Injustice 2 is not coming to PC.

 

[yourbeliefs]

If you liked MK X you should try MK 9. The story is much longer (and better) and it is basically a retelling of the first 3 games of the series. It'll also put more of MK X in context. I liked it a lot better than X, BUT as much of a pushover as the end boss is in X, they're that cheap in 9. Just put it on your wishlist or keep an eye out. It'll be discounted to $5 eventually.

 

[king3pj]

If you liked MK X you should try MK 9. The story is much longer (and better) and it is basically a retelling of the first 3 games of the series. It'll also put more of MK X in context. I liked it a lot better than X, BUT as much of a pushover as the end boss is in X, they're that cheap in 9. Just put it on your wishlist or keep an eye out. It'll be discounted to $5 eventually.

I already own it. I have had it for a long time. Just never got around to actually playing it. If it is quite a bit harder than MKX I might have a pretty hard time with it though. I would call my play style strategic button mashing. If they actually require you to learn the moves and learn how to counter their moves in MK9 I probably wouldn't be very good at it.

 

[yourbeliefs]

MK 9 isn't much harder, BUT when you fight Shao Kahn it IS a cheap pain in the ass. But those matches aside it still is a lot of fun.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So I tried out the story mode of Battleborn last night... it was..... eh....



I also tried out Warriors Orochi 3: Ultimate. Again, more meh. I apologize for the lack of audio. Apparently Twitch decided to strip all the audio out because of copyright reasons, which seems a little, DUMB on a video game. Sorry that my voice is the only thing you'll be hearing, along with me bashing the X button on my controller.



Also, not to be "that guy" but please whitelist my videos (AKA turn off your ad blocker and don't skip the ads, unless they're more than 30 seconds then by all means skip them.)

 

[king3pj]

That is the first I've heard of anyone having issues with Twitch blocking game audio. I've heard that it can happen when people are listening to music while the stream but even then I've seen several twitch streamers who play music the entire time they stream.

 

[yourbeliefs]

That is the first I've heard of anyone having issues with Twitch blocking game audio. I've heard that it can happen when people are listening to music while the stream but even then I've seen several twitch streamers who play music the entire time they stream.

I've had it happen before. When I did a stream of WWE 2K16 they removed the wrestler's theme song, but all the other audio remained in tact. I guess because technically it's licensed music in that it's owned by WWE, but 2K owns the game. Here EVERYTHING was removed, which is weird. Main reason I did it though was because I couldn't think of another way to record all my video from the Xbox One. Then again, I suppose I could try and stream to my PC and use XBox App Game DVR, but that's a rather obtuse way to capture video. I'm going to try recording from the PS4 later as I play that well known game, Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

 

[king3pj]

I've had it happen before. When I did a stream of WWE 2K16 they removed the wrestler's theme song, but all the other audio remained in tact. I guess because technically it's licensed music in that it's owned by WWE, but 2K owns the game. Here EVERYTHING was removed, which is weird. Main reason I did it though was because I couldn't think of another way to record all my video from the Xbox One. Then again, I suppose I could try and stream to my PC and use XBox App Game DVR, but that's a rather obtuse way to capture video. I'm going to try recording from the PS4 later as I play that well known game, Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

Have you checked out the Youtube app on Xbox One? I know you can upload game clips directly to Youtube from that app. That wouldn't help for longer play sessions but there may be a way to stream to Youtube Live directly from the Xbox One too just like you can from the Twitch app. I haven't looked into it.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Everything I'm reading says "No." I'd prefer to just be able to tell it to start recording then stop recording so I can deal with the whole file locally, as opposed to having to send it to Twitch then send it to YouTube.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Here's a video with my thoughts on Odin Sphere, a game that's worth a look if you have a PS4.

 

[yourbeliefs]

king3pj tried out the Titanfall 2 Tech Test.



A couple of notes:

The Xbox One version didn't allow us to group up and play together in a party for whatever reason, so this is from the PS4.
I told the PS4 to record my audio along with King but apparently it took that as a suggestion as opposed to a command so you just hear my side of the conversation.
We encountered a bug where our party would get disbanded after every match. This was particularly amusing at our second match where we didn't realize it until the very end where I was lamenting about how we lost but I got on the drop ship while King was celebrating a victory. That's why we keep grouping up after every match.
For some reason they have a tutorial mode for the soldiers but not for the Titans.

Other than that the game looks like fun so far. It's clear that Respawn want to truly improve and change the Titanfall experience with this game. I did like the addition of the grappling hook, which along with the jumping and parkour create a nice fast, fluid movement style. I'm also interested to see how the new "network" feature turns out, which are basically just big pools of (supposedly) like minded players which will allow for easier matchmaking.

 

[king3pj]

Yeah, there were definitely some bugs. I tried out the Xbox version after you left and the invite friends button still didn't do anything.

I also tried accepting the invites from people in my network a couple times to see how that would work. It put me in a party with them where I could see their names but the game would never start and eventually you would see people start to drop out of the party. I tried this a couple times and the same thing happened each time. Maybe it would have worked on the PS4 version.

The game itself was fun. I just don't know if it's a day one buy for me or not yet. I have to make my yearly Call of Duty purchase to play with my college friends. I also have interest in Gears of War 4 and Battlefield 1, although Battlefield is currently at the bottom of the list. Since I am also still playing Overwatch almost every day I won't have time for that many multiplayer shooters this fall. I'm not going to be buying all of them, at least not until some of them are discounted. I know I'm getting COD but it will probably come down to Gears vs Titanfall for which other game I buy at launch.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I know I'm getting COD but it will probably come down to Gears vs Titanfall for which other game I buy at launch.

Please get Gears. Don't forget we have to do our Cross Platform gaming test with the co-op campaign and see if it actually works as promised by Microsoft. ;p

 

[yourbeliefs]

So king3pj and I tried out the Battlefield 1 beta. I should note that I've played basically 0 BF multiplayer in my life, and haven't had much interest to do so. I've always seen BF as one of those series that definitely could be fun for people, but haven't made the time to invest in it. Will this change my view?

 

[king3pj]

I finally got around to playing Journey and it was just as much of an emotional gut punch as I was always told it was. I was skeptical that a game with zero dialog could have as much of an emotional impact as people claimed but I have to admit I was feeling it by the end.

I won't bother going into too much more detail because the game is hard to explain and you are probably better off going in without knowing much anyways. If you have a PS4 or PS3 and have been putting this game off for years like I was I definitely recommend grabbing it this month while it's free on PS Plus. It's not one of my favorite games of all time (it apparently is for a lot of people) but it does some interesting things and people have been talking about it this long for a reason.

One thing I do recommend is waiting until you have a couple hours of free time so you can play it in one sitting. I think some of the impact would probably be lost if you pull yourself away from the game for a couple days in the middle and it's short enough that doing it in one sitting isn't a daunting task.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I decided to try out Bioshock Remastered last night. Here's my early impressions



I should mention that while my experience with the game was generally positive (minus the oversensitive mouse at first and gamepad based prompts that I had to manually disable) a LOT of people are having issues with the game. These seem to vary from KB&M issues to frequent crashes. As I said, I didn't experience anything like that, but again I only played for a bit over an hour. Point is, it may behoove everyone to wait a week or 2 before really delving into this game.

 

[king3pj]

I decided to try out Bioshock Remastered last night. Here's my early impressions



I should mention that while my experience with the game was generally positive (minus the oversensitive mouse at first and gamepad based prompts that I had to manually disable) a LOT of people are having issues with the game. These seem to vary from KB&M issues to frequent crashes. As I said, I didn't experience anything like that, but again I only played for a bit over an hour. Point is, it may behoove everyone to wait a week or 2 before really delving into this game.

I played for about an hour and a half last night too. I didn't see problems that would prevent me from wanting to play the game, in fact I am planning on playing a lot more of it this weekend. I need to actually finish the game this time. I wouldn't mind replaying Bioshock Infinite either even though it didn't get a remastered version for PC.

Yes, it is dumb that they still show Xbox button prompts if you are playing with a mouse and keyboard instead of mouse and keyboard prompts but this is easily fixed in the game's settings so it doesn't really bother me.

The default mouse sensitivity is crazy fast. Just a slight movement of your mouse makes the camera violently jump around. Again, this is easily fixed from the game settings. I lowered mine to the lowest setting and it felt like what I am used to in other games. The downside to to this is that the mouse moves ridiculously slow in the pause menu now. Luckily I only need to access this if I want to manually save or exit the game.

For me the problems with the game are able to be fixed simply by changing 2 settings from their defaults. This isn't a situation where you have to manually edit ini files or install mods to get the game working properly. At the same time, it makes me wonder if anyone from 2K actually play tested the game with a mouse and keyboard. If they did I have to think they wouldn't have had crazy mouse sensitivity and Xbox prompts by default when the options to fix both problems already exist in the game. I didn't experience any of the crashing that some people are reporting so I can't comment on that.

It is pretty clear that these remasters were really done for PS4 and Xbox One players. If they weren't someone definitely would have caught these mouse and keyboard issues that have such easy fixes. I'm sure they will be patched soon. Still, I find it hard to actually complain about Bioshock Remastered, although many people in the Steam reviews clearly disagree with me. I just think things need to be put in perspective. People who bought Bioshock in 2007 were given the remastered version 9 years later in 2016 for free. I bought the original game several years ago for $5 and got this version free. 2K didn't have to do this for PC players but it's awesome that they did. They also left the original versions in your Steam library instead of updating them to the Remastered version if you prefer that instead.