Video Games - Watcha playin'?

[curses]

Originally Posted by BrotherMan

I had to relax my security a bit so it could keep some cookies on mah machine. That's different from the bugginess you report though. It works for me.

It's strange, on Chrome on my windows machine I couldn't log in, the login button did nothing. It's fine on Chrome on my Mac. Which is good, I can keep up with those pesky professions while working.

[Ymir's blood]

Just finished up VtM:Bloodlines. I can definitely say that it's an excellent game and yes, needed more work. I didn't know this until after getting the game, that Troika employed people from the excellent original Fallout games. Also, Troika produced Temple of Elemental Evil, which was fantastic (except for the weird enemy AI) right up until some memory bug would gradually slow everything down until it wasn't possible to do anything.

So, about Bloodlines. First, it looks pretty good. The sprites are decent and the closeup faces during conversation look great. There are a few points where people's mouths don't move quite in sync but it wasn't that distracting. The cities were nicely done. I actually felt like I was running around during a muggy summer night. Some of the fantastic creatures didn't look quite right, a bit too cartoonish on the horrible mutant things and the animal form people as well. The lupine werewolves, I think they are Gangrel clan, looked like a cross between Wiley Coyote and the Tasmanian Devil, but damn they sucked to fight.

Combat is kind of quirky. I didn't do much with firearms (more about that later) but melee has this problem where after a flurry of blows, an enemy is knocked down. Sounds great, except that you can't attack them when they're down and they come up swinging too fast for you to get a blow in first, meaning you always lose the initiative. Blocking against a downed enemy will limit the damage received but not as much as would be nice.

I didn't do much with ranged combat because during character creation (the second time around as the unofficial patch screws up existing games) I chose a 'history' for my character - something in the code but not activated in the official release of the game. The one I chose was 'Ninja.' My character looks down upon ranged weapons and can't spend any points on the Firearms skill. The benefit to this was I received one free point each in Strength, Brawl and Melee. And they were free, as those points didn't 'count' for determining how much leveling up those skills cost. Apart from the knock down problem, melee worked pretty well. (one of the weapons is a bush axe and the stealth kill for it horribly fun in a nasty way) However, it sucked in the boss fights many of which required one to either run through damaging terrain or the boss had ranged attacks. Worse yet, were the two final bosses. The first one has a ton of hit points and does a lot of damage, all melee. Gun would be handy here. Second one has to be fought twice. The first form is humanoid with a gigantic sword and he teleports behind you after getting hit several times. I did ok in that fight, but then he turns into a giant bat and takes the fight out on the rooftop. Sword vs. giant bat vampire thing? Not so good. There is a way to temporarily bring him stunned to the ground, but it glitched up. It can only be done twice and the first time, the bat glitched into the rooftop where I could barely hit it until it wasn't stunned anymore. The second time, I almost killed it. Almost. Finally I had to use one of the SMGs I'd looted from a guard and sprayed wildly until it took its remaining hit points and died, winning the game.

There are some very fine points to this game though. Very fine points. There are fair number of side quests, many of which have repercussions later in the game. The music is good to my ears. The atmosphere is perfect. In a very refreshing break from Skyrim, most quests have multiple ways of approaching and also multiple ways of completing. It isn't going to be as repeatable as TESIV or TESV, but I'll probably give it another play through, possibly with another clan, once I've had time to really digest which skills are worth spending points on and which can be dispensed with. I did all but three side quests and had most of the skills and powers upgraded to where I wanted, but some tweaking would have been most useful.

Anyway, I paid $20 for it on Monday and finished today, thoroughly enjoying myself for the most part. The learning curve was steep but not very high. Starting out, everything seemed really hard. Once I learned a few things, it quieted down considerably.

[curses]

So what's next up? Come play Neverwinter?!

[Ymir's blood]

Right now, I'm doing another playthrough. A lot of the crazy Malkavian dialog choices foreshadow parts of the plot. My character is seeing the future but doesn't understand what she sees. This time around, I do understand, which is p. cool. Plus there is an Easter Egg where you can throw a severed head (victim of a serial killer) through a basketball hoop and hear applause. I did that last night.

When I come down, I may trick you into showing me Neverwinter and I can judge then.

[BrotherMan]

Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW!

In a completely new storyline and adventure and featuring the voices of the show’s most popular characters, fans will have to save the Candy Kingdom by exploring the mysteries surrounding a massive Secret Royal Dungeon deep below the Land of Ooo. Select from an assortment of fan-favorite characters from the show, including Finn, Jake, Marceline, Cinnamon Bun, and more, and team up with your friends in four-player co-operative multiplayer as the Adventure Time world comes to life.

[Kael]

The article forgot to include this in their game soundtrack preview:

Jake shows you how it's done, for 25 minutes in...

[curses]

I hate you. I made it 5 mins before my brain melted out my ears and ran away.

[Kael]

Now you won't know how it's done!

[curses]

Now I have to finally cave in and start watching Adventure Time.

[curses]

Because bacon pancakes was the awesomest thing I've seen ever.

[Kael]

I recommend either starting at the beginning, or with one of the really good non-story episodes. My personal favorites are What Have You Done? and The Chamber of Frozen Blades.

[BrotherMan]

What Was Missing is an episode I can't believe nobody ever forced you to watch.

One word: Bass Playing Lady Vampire (and one of the best songs ever to appear in a "kids' show.")

[Kael]

What Was Missing is indeed a truly amazing episode, but there's a lot of character development elements that might go over the head of a first-timer...

[curses]

Oh god Imma start a thread about this. brb.

[Ymir's blood]

I started playing Neverwinter last night. So far it looks interesting. Not being able to pause is going to take some getting used to. I need to find a 'cheat sheet' for the keyboard controls. Google wasn't any help this morning.

[curses]

Here's a GIANT list of console commands, I'm looking for key commands next.

NWO Complete Console Command List (25 MAY 2013) (part 1 of 3)

keyboard commands:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/sho...=1#post1359251

[Ymir's blood]

:googlefu:

Originally Posted by BrotherMan

You can add me as @Strangerist whether I'm offline or as any character in any Cryptic game.

Hah! I meant to check on this last night. I'll add you when I log back in.

[curses]

Deer bort. I keep seeing you online. What level is your character in Neverwinter? I have a lvl 30 rogue and a level 49 GWF. We should all get together and do some dungeons. Preferably with the lower level chars as I like my rogue way better than my GWF.

[Ymir's blood]

I am liking my GWF very much for solo stuff. I just got an At-Will that does instant AOE which has made fighting solo much easier.

Still, we could use more Borts in our party. Especially fighter Borts.

[Adam]

Great Weapon Fighter?

[Ymir's blood]

Yes.

[California Tanker]

Greetings from E3.

I am most pleased to see that Lionel has a small stand here. Good to see them. Doubt it'll do anything for them, but all credit to them for trying.

[BrotherMan]

Originally Posted by curses

Deer bort. I keep seeing you online.

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Still, we could use more Borts in our party. Especially fighter Borts.

I tried real hard but Neverwinter has some weird implementation of "tanking." Even when I was doing some for reals taunting it didn't seem like mobs cared one way or the other.

[curses]

I noticed that too. I think it has to do with the new character rebalancing. They ignore my rogue totally. I try and stay back with Ymir to fight off the inevitable mobs who love to destroy his wizard. I wonder if my GWF would help take the aggression over. We'll find out at lvl 50.

[Ymir's blood]

Don't short yourself, Bort. You didn't see how we were getting ganked by devils before you joined us. Seriously, I was nearly dying every serious fight. I did die once and the game sent to a respawn point I'd never been to. Then I died trying to get back.