The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Razgovory]

Woah, that take you back.  I remember Fantasy General had some really weird units.  Like a guy tied to a balloon holding a rifle or cavalryman armed with a flame thrower.

[Syt]

Yeah, I don't know why they decided to revive the brand. Fantasy general was fun, but the lore and story wasn't very memorable. In fact, their producer said as much during the reveal stream, pointing out that they work on fixing that. This would probably work and sell just as well if they labelled it a spiritual successor and created an original world.

[Syt]

Possibly the best gaming related Twitter account: https://twitter.com/CanYouPetTheDog

[Syt]

Meanwhile, at ActivisionBlizzard (courtesy of WaPo):

[The Brain]

"Rather than having a baby who's in the neonatal ICU, where she's not able to focus much on work."

I've heard about child labor but damn.

[Valmy]

Funny because my attitude went from "Activision Blizzard is a video game company with ethically questionable monetization practices" to "Activision Blizzard is an ethically questionable video game company"

[Grey Fox]

Anno 1800 is coming out next Tuesday, there's is an open beta until the 14th.

It's pretty good.

[Tamas]

Anno 1800 is coming out next Tuesday, there's is an open beta until the 14th.

It's pretty good.

I spent about an hour with it before work.

It is stunningly gorgeous. Otherwise I have seen so far one big improvement: range of buildings is based on distance on the road network, not an arbitrary circle.

Both things are great, but otherwise the gameplay is identical to all previous games, and thus I doubt I'll make myself pay 50 pounds for those two things.

[Grey Fox]

It seems to be a lot incremental improvements, yes. Relocate key & blueprint mode.

It's also for me, the first interesting setting since Anno 1404, as #5 & 6 were stupid.

Can't decide if it's worth 80$ to me.

[viper37]

Syt, have you try Anthem?

No. Not really into that sort of game. I tried a bit of Warframe and Destiny 2, but got bored fast. Don't see why I would get invested more in this. Generally not big about shooters or MP games.

So I tried Destiny 2.  Got it for free, played through the campaign and a few MP missions&matches.

It was fun for a little while.  My younger cousin told me the game was super fun once you completed the main game and started doing coop missions... but really, no.  I feel like I have no purpose...

Ok, I'll admit, I like shooters, sometimes.  I really like the Sniper Elite shooters, 2,3,4.  A lot of fun.
In Far Cry, I kept using a sniper rifle as often as I could, same in Mass Effect, alternating between an auto rifle for close encounter and the black widow for as much as I could, in MP as well as SP.

So, this game... the AI is stupid.  Like really stupid.  Unlike Doom or Wolfenstein they wont follow you through corners, they won't try to find a weak spot in your cover, so basically, hide behind a rock, get a quick shot or 3 with rockets or sniper, and the ennemy is gone.  You only really need to come out of cover to take your ammo.

While you play, there are other players in your world, and sometimes you interact with them, as in, shoot stuff together because an ennemy is in your way.

Now, the bad stuff is, that game is totally imbalanced.  Your mission requires you to go to point A.  To get through to point A, you need to get over an ennemy that is invulnerable to your puny weapons because the recommended power level to kill it is 603 while you are at 70 power... So you got to wait for higher level players to come and do this mission that is to kill this ennemy...  Boring and stupid, at times.

The story is unimpressive.  Yes, it has airs of Mass Effects at times.  Yes, the MP part is better developped and integrated into the game than Mass Effect was, since it is basically a MP game to begin with.

All in all, I have enjoyed playing this game for a few hours and it was well worth it's 0$ price tag.  The expansion costs 55$ and I wouldn't recommend this for anyone here, unless you really, really, really like multiplayer unbalanced semi-cooperative shooter.

Ah, did I tell you about the "true" multiplayer part, where you play against ennemies 60x more powerful than you are?  The other players can kill you with one shot from their sidearm, or simply run you over with their double bladed lightsaber or whatever it is they're using that makes them look like Darth Maul on steroid... Really, I like a challenge, but this is stupid.  Jesus, what was going in the mind of these developpers??  What is the fun is shooting at ennemies that don't take damage and dying on the first shot?

So, 0$.  That's worth trying, if only to see the "future" of gaming (it is depressing ).  Don't expect to get attached to your character, to cry because you lost your favorite tomboy soldier to a suicide mission, to feel the adreline rush of multiple banshees screaming and coming at you while the friend's daughter you just saved is sacrificing herself to kill them alll...  Nope, nothing of the sort. 

Also, the single player game is weird.  You got to complete some missions to advance the story.  Some of them mid game require an higher level (24) than the end missions (160)... Silly, if you ask me.  Not having a linear game is ok, but not sure that having missions you can't really take until you level up your character only to have to end missions ridiculously easy to do afterward is fun.

I would not recommend this game to Valmy, unless he wants to do a sunday afternoon AAR

[crazy canuck]

My older son likes playing the competitive matches.  He tells me they last about 20 minutes so it is something he can work into his schedule every few days.

[viper37]

My older son likes playing the competitive matches.  He tells me they last about 20 minutes so it is something he can work into his schedule every few days.

he's probably one of these Jedi killing me in one strike

[Zanza]

I got Anno 1800 now. I like it so far. I think the last one I played must have been 1503 or so. This is pretty well done.

[Syt]

Meanwhile, in Mortal Kombat 11:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/bguuzb/in_mk11_it_will_cost_you_6440_to_buy_every_skin/

In MK11, it will cost you $6440 to buy every skin in the game without grinding, assuming you have perfect luck and are checking on the store every 6-8 hours

Let's assume you just want to finish the campaign, do every character tutorial and complete the basic towers. You do not want to do any grinding outside of this, but you want to unlock every skin in the game:

On average, one skin costs 500 Time Krystals, which costs $5 in the store. You can of course earn these, but they accumulate very slowly

Skins appear in the store on a rotational basis, where a set of five skins are made available for a limited period of time (usually 6 to 8 hours), then they are gone and you have to grind the towers to earn them. This adds to the urgency to quickly spend money on that skin you always wanted. For our calculations to be valid, we will assume you never see a duplicate skin in the store and you check the store every 6 hours or so

There are 23 characters in the game, each of which has 60 skins. But playing through the story, character tutorial and basic towers will usually unlock 4 of these, so we have 56 skins to unlock

So based on these, we get: 23 * 56 * 5 = $6440

Note that these calculations include the patch which the devs promised would solve the progression issues

This figure does not include: fatalities, brutalities, gear or single use consumables because I have not figured out the exact drop rate for these



Edit:

Why not just grind for the skins?

I got around 760 Time Krystals after 4 hours of play. At this rate, it will take me 3390 hours to unlock every skin. Sure, I could complete specific towers of time to get there faster. But like I explained in my previous post, these are near impossible to complete without rare or better gear and single use consumables, which themselves require more grinding.

Why the outrage over this? Previous MK games allowed you to pay for skins too...

In MKX, you could unlock all: skins, fatalities, brutalities and DLC characters for just $40. Yet in this game, you need $6440 just to unlock all the skins.

[The Brain]

Why would you bother to unlock all the skins?