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Baldur's Gate 2: EE.

Though I love the game, some of the newly added stuff is hit or mess. The Hexxat quest is just plain annoying.

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  • 2 weeks later...

apps.29198.66416288418246547.8db04ed4-6710-424c-b2c7-fc1b8f89e9a2.125b501a-844a-4ec6-86ef-3c46ebf4c698%26sp=1598652628Tf499972a11bdd8fe39cc8ad174a632c9114a6025160dd57fe48181d43e3ab879&key=8f1d4f6b3cf6daf161b74c3bbdf254ed932269456ff43b8d401c61eb58727e10

 

Borderlands 3 (PC)

 

Excellent gameplay & mechanics which are the best in the series thus far. The game environments are a positive too with great settings across the in-game galaxy.

 

On the other hand the story is utter trash & the writing is really really bad. The DLC is a step up however in this regard albeit not hard with the low bar set. I could go full scale nerd essay on the many flaws of the writing & story if I could be arsed.

 

 

 

 

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On 17/08/2020 at 15:22, Comrie said:

Baldur's Gate 2: EE.

Though I love the game, some of the newly added stuff is hit or mess. The Hexxat quest is just plain annoying.

Is this available on steam etc? I think I had the OG one from years ago and enjoyed it.

I love games like this and Ages of Empire.

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21 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:

Is this available on steam etc? I think I had the OG one from years ago and enjoyed it.

I love games like this and Ages of Empire.

It's £14.99 right now, I think I got it on sale for a tenner at New Year.

Some of the new stuff isn't great. Hexxat is a particularly poorly written character compared to the originals.

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I'm sure Deus Ex is great, but it completely broke my PC after installation (probably 19 years ago) and I've never wanted to risk installing it again. I think I got to play the first minute or so of it, does it start off on top of a car park?

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2 hours ago, Mordecai said:

I'm sure Deus Ex is great, but it completely broke my PC after installation (probably 19 years ago) and I've never wanted to risk installing it again. I think I got to play the first minute or so of it, does it start off on top of a car park?

You start off down at the docks, don't you?

Curious about how it broke your PC, though. I remember one of the Leisure Suit Larry games (I think) had a glorious bug where it expected to be installed under something like C:\Games\LSL. If you changed it to something like the more traditional C:\Program Files\LSL, then later tried to uninstall the game, it assumed everything in its own directory and the one above was to be deleted.

That was fun  <_<

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f**k it.

09L10Eu.jpg

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (PS4, 2014 - originally PS3, 2012)

Set in Hong Kong, you are Wei Shen, someone who was born there and grew up with the local Triad but moved away to America for a bit. He came back with remarkably good physical fighting and firearm skills and was immediately accepted back into his old gang, with nobody questioning the fact he might be undercover police. Actually that's not true, there's one guy who says "we can tell if you're a cop because you won't kill anyone," but this rings slightly hollow when you consider both Wei's body count and the manner of most of those deaths, but we'll come to that later.

The premise is what you'd imagine based on that description. Wei goes undercover in the Sun On Yee to... er, take it down? Provide information? I'm not really sure, the police don't have any interest in letting him get high enough to have any genuine influence. This doesn't stop internal conflict from being the main aspect of Wei's character, fighting between loyalty for his friends and his new, adoptive family in the face of the obviously corrupt (hint: his boss has a British accent, he's obviously evil) police he's being controlled by. While the gameplay doesn't marry up well with this conflict since Wei is basically Batman with guns, the writing and acting for most of the characters is pretty good, Wei especially. The story itself gets a bit lost towards the final third, with characters introduced and missions played which have nothing to do with the story and aren't interesting in their own right. Is the game padding time? Was it rushed, with a GTAIV-esque sprawling insight into the true nature of a society not fully realised?

Setting this apart from being a straight GTA-clone, melee combat is the main focus of gameplay. You can unlock new moves and you get bonus points for killing people in varied ways, but really you unlock the move that kills people in two hits and spam that all the time. There isn't any skill in the button pressing either, it's square for a hit or hold it down for a slightly heavier hit. Triangle is needed for the occasional counter, but unless you're surrounded by ten guys at once this doesn't come up too much and it always telegraphs the same.

That isn't to say the game is without guns. They're introduced after a few missions, with a comment from your police boss about how rare they are in Hong Kong. You then go through a few missions where everyone has one. My favourite mission is when rival gang 18K try to storm your headquarters. You have to hold them off for two minutes while using a grenade launcher with unlimited ammo. In fairness the guns are pretty useless, as enemies can take six or seven chest shots before they even start to stumble. The aiming isn't precise enough to compensate for this either. At least in vehicle chase sequences you can destroy cars quickly with them.

Elsewhere in terms of gameplay there are some interesting mini-games I remembered enjoying before which just about hold up now. There are a few hacking-based minigames for opening safes, hacking security cameras and other miscellaneous mission tasks. They're straightforward, but it takes a while for them to become tedious and overbearing. That's about the best you can hope for in a game like this. 

Since I played the Definitive Edition I got all the DLC and it adds a bit of variety to the open world options, but not much. Even in the base game the sidequest stuff is lacking. You can go on dates with some women who you meet, but you only have one mission each where you drive them to a place and see a cutscene or two, then never again. It's like they're there for something to do and weren't given any proper consideration. The same goes for the rest of the integrated DLC, which offers one or two missions you could finish in minutes.

The standalone DLC episodes are a bit meatier, although they also feel a bit rushed. One of them buys into the zombie craze of the early 2010s, but you can finish the story in an hour. The other features a badly dressed cult who're trying to blow stuff up because someone says they should. It's not much longer than the zombie effort and it doesn't have the same crass humour, so I really don't have a strong opinion on it.

Technically, holy f**k. Of all the games I've played on PS4 I think this bluescreened on me the most. On more than one occasion it happened several times while just trying to load it after starting it up. If you used a certain type of machine gun the sound for it firing would stick on, you couldn't get rid of it without restarting the game. The controls feel that unique sort of clunky where you're amazed video games like this ever caught on. The driving is the worst I can remember in an open world game, with cars controlling more like players from an EA Sports game before the days of 360 degrees player control. Uniquely, the higher performance a car is, the harder it is to steer or control. 

The setting is an interesting topic because you don't really get open world games set in Asian locations. The memory I had of this was that it was good to be in Hong Kong partly because it was different, partly because of how well it was realised. Now, it just feels sterile and empty. When I played Mafia III a few months ago the game felt like a period display where you could look at something meticulously created but only look, not touch. Sleeping Dogs isn't even quite that. Some, rigidly contained, locations feel authentic and properly immersive, but the world as a whole is cold and uninteresting. There's barely any traffic on the roads. There's nothing to interact with, unless you count the karaoke bars or cockfighting bets which are basically a coin flip. Having played a Yakuza game since 2014, there's no contest in terms of an Asian located open world setting. 

On the whole I think Sleeping Dogs is a reasonably unique take on the sandbox genre. Rather than just giving you a world with stuff in it to destroy the police element opens up new possibilities for both mission and open world gameplay. Having two separate XP bars to level up makes you approach missions in a certain way to maximise both, which is a nice change and offers an extra bit of depth to Wei's character as a police officer. Viewed as a whole though the game is lacking in a lot of areas and hackneyed in others. Couple this with it being a technical disaster on PS4, my memories of this game aren't as fond as they were six years ago. Make of that what you will.

Edited by Miguel Sanchez
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f**k it.

09L10Eu.jpg&key=f22048304ff10b0fe501e63811bda1427acb873848eebf1726d2d0b8f24c1cec

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition (PS4, 2014 - originally PS3, 2012)
Set in Hong Kong, you are Wei Shen, someone who was born there and grew up with the local Triad but moved away to America for a bit. He came back with remarkably good physical fighting and firearm skills and was immediately accepted back into his old gang, with nobody questioning the fact he might be undercover police. Actually that's not true, there's one guy who says "we can tell if you're a cop because you won't kill anyone," but this rings slightly hollow when you consider both Wei's body count and the manner of most of those deaths, but we'll come to that later.
The premise is what you'd imagine based on that description. Wei goes undercover in the Sun On Yee to... er, take it down? Provide information? I'm not really sure, the police don't have any interest in letting him get high enough to have any genuine influence. This doesn't stop internal conflict from being the main aspect of Wei's character, fighting between loyalty for his friends and his new, adoptive family in the face of the obviously corrupt (hint: his boss has a British accent, he's obviously evil) police he's being controlled by. While the gameplay doesn't marry up well with this conflict since Wei is basically Batman with guns, the writing and acting for most of the characters is pretty good, Wei especially. The story itself gets a bit lost towards the final third, with characters introduced and missions played which have nothing to do with the story and aren't interesting in their own right. Is the game padding time? Was it rushed, with a GTAIV-esque sprawling insight into the true nature of a society not fully realised?
Setting this apart from being a straight GTA-clone, melee combat is the main focus of gameplay. You can unlock new moves and you get bonus points for killing people in varied ways, but really you unlock the move that kills people in two hits and spam that all the time. There isn't any skill in the button pressing either, it's square for a hit or hold it down for a slightly heavier hit. Triangle is needed for the occasional counter, but unless you're surrounded by ten guys at once this doesn't come up too much and it always telegraphs the same.
That isn't to say the game is without guns. They're introduced after a few missions, with a comment from your police boss about how rare they are in Hong Kong. You then go through a few missions where everyone has one. My favourite mission is when rival gang 18K try to storm your headquarters. You have to hold them off for two minutes while using a grenade launcher with unlimited ammo. In fairness the guns are pretty useless, as enemies can take six or seven chest shots before they even start to stumble. The aiming isn't precise enough to compensate for this either. At least in vehicle chase sequences you can destroy cars quickly with them.
Elsewhere in terms of gameplay there are some interesting mini-games I remembered enjoying before which just about hold up now. There are a few hacking-based minigames for opening safes, hacking security cameras and other miscellaneous mission tasks. They're straightforward, but it takes a while for them to become tedious and overbearing. That's about the best you can hope for in a game like this. 
Since I played the Definitive Edition I got all the DLC and it adds a bit of variety to the open world options, but not much. Even in the base game the sidequest stuff is lacking. You can go on dates with some women who you meet, but you only have one mission each where you drive them to a place and see a cutscene or two, then never again. It's like they're there for something to do and weren't given any proper consideration. The same goes for the rest of the integrated DLC, which offers one or two missions you could finish in minutes.
The standalone DLC episodes are a bit meatier, although they also feel a bit rushed. One of them buys into the zombie craze of the early 2010s, but you can finish the story in an hour. The other features a badly dressed cult who're trying to blow stuff up because someone says they should. It's not much longer than the zombie effort and it doesn't have the same crass humour, so I really don't have a strong opinion on it.
Technically, holy f**k. Of all the games I've played on PS4 I think this bluescreened on me the most. On more than one occasion it happened several times while just trying to load it after starting it up. If you used a certain type of machine gun the sound for it firing would stick on, you couldn't get rid of it without restarting the game. The controls feel that unique sort of clunky where you're amazed video games like this ever caught on. The driving is the worst I can remember in an open world game, with cars controlling more like players from an EA Sports game before the days of 360 degrees player control. Uniquely, the higher performance a car is, the harder it is to steer or control. 
The setting is an interesting topic because you don't really get open world games set in Asian locations. The memory I had of this was that it was good to be in Hong Kong partly because it was different, partly because of how well it was realised. Now, it just feels sterile and empty. When I played Mafia III a few months ago the game felt like a period display where you could look at something meticulously created but only look, not touch. Sleeping Dogs isn't even quite that. Some, rigidly contained, locations feel authentic and properly immersive, but the world as a whole is cold and uninteresting. There's barely any traffic on the roads. There's nothing to interact with, unless you count the karaoke bars or cockfighting bets which are basically a coin flip. Having played a Yakuza game since 2014, there's no contest in terms of an Asian located open world setting. 
On the whole I think Sleeping Dogs is a reasonably unique take on the sandbox genre. Rather than just giving you a world with stuff in it to destroy the police element opens up new possibilities for both mission and open world gameplay. Having two separate XP bars to level up makes you approach missions in a certain way to maximise both, which is a nice change and offers an extra bit of depth to Wei's character as a police officer. Viewed as a whole though the game is lacking in a lot of areas and hackneyed in others. Couple this with it being a technical disaster on PS4, my memories of this game aren't as fond as they were six years ago. Make of that what you will.
I loved it first time round on the ps3 I think but playing the Definitive edition ruined it for me, im sure the cuts scenes were ropey as hell.
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I'm a huge fan of when it turns out that different IPs actually exist in the same universes so as soon as Control AWE was announced I immediately bought all the DLC completed the main game and then blasted through Alan Wake. 

Alan Wake - Spooky Twin Peaks meets Stephen King and HP lovecraft with the meta references cranked up to 11. I really enjoyed this even if the game feels dated in a few ways and vastly improved upon in nearly every way by Control. It's very corny, riddled with tropes and every character feels barely developed but it's very earnest and a lot of fun. The advice and tidbits that the Taken use to announce themselves to you are also very funny. "There are 65 million cows and pigs in the world!" "Omega 3 fatty acids are good for your heart!"

Control - Riffs on a lot of the same vibes that Alan Wake introduced but also introduces government bureaucracy and a Ballardian building that messes with you over the game. Much more refined gameplay wise and a lot more fun to engage in combat with. This gets a lot of things right in setting the atmosphere and covers for failings around bad checkpoint design and slight repetitiveness around enemy engagements. Maybe the first game in years where I actively want to read more notes and collectibles as they're very funny in the way they riff on an opaque government department and petty office squabbles (in a building literally haunted by otherworldly entities). Jesse is also probably a better protagonist than Alan Wake and leans into a lot of the comedy going on. When I say that it improves on a lot of Alan Wake I also mean that it does this specifically well in the way it uses in universe music to ramp up the fun in specific scenes namely late on when you traverse the Ashtray Maze and late on in the Oceanside Motel with a cameo from one of the game's main expositional characters performing a tune.

Just diving into the AWE atm and interesting to see which specific Alan Wake villain shows up. Excited to see where it goes with it although I get the feeling it's actually setting up the premise for an Alan Wake sequel.

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Started Resident Evil 2 remake this afternoon and about 2 hours in so far. Really enjoying it so far, was always too scared to play the original when it came out (was prob about 13 at the time). It's amazing how quickly your ammo and health packs can get used up and leaving you fearing a zombie encounter everytime you enter a new area.

 

 

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Bought the Sega Mega Drive collection for the PS4. Confirmed what I always thought, Sonic games are shite. Golden Axe is fucking brilliant though. Couldn't put it down until I'd managed to beat the first one. I love that these old games basically force you to keep playing and keep dying until to learn something or improve enough to get that little bit further.... then die and start again.

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Bought the Sega Mega Drive collection for the PS4. Confirmed what I always thought, Sonic games are shite. Golden Axe is fucking brilliant though. Couldn't put it down until I'd managed to beat the first one. I love that these old games basically force you to keep playing and keep dying until to learn something or improve enough to get that little bit further.... then die and start again.
The original Sonic was not bad but nowhere near the level of Golden Axe, Streets of Rage or Ninja Gaiden.
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Started Resident Evil 2 remake this afternoon and about 2 hours in so far. Really enjoying it so far, was always too scared to play the original when it came out (was prob about 13 at the time). It's amazing how quickly your ammo and health packs can get used up and leaving you fearing a zombie encounter everytime you enter a new area.
 
 
The Resident Evil 2 remake is fantastic but don't bother with 3 unless you can get it dirt cheap, it's shite in comparison.
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The Resident Evil 2 remake is fantastic but don't bother with 3 unless you can get it dirt cheap, it's shite in comparison.
Just reached the Umbrella Lab in the Leon story.
Is there enough of a difference in Leon and Claire's stories to warrant playing one immediately after the other?
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  • 2 weeks later...

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Driveclub (PS4, 2014)

Driveclub. A game with driving. A game where you can join a club and drive and earn points and things for your club while competing against other clubs. I like it when the name of something sums it up so well.

It's a bit strange coming to a game with an extensive online mode several years post-release. You have a playerbase that doesn't seem like it could ever have sustained the numbers the game tells you it's had. You see features, modes, matchmaking so ill-suited to the few people still playing you wonder what it must have been like at its peak. So it was with me playing Driveclub, long after its delayed release.

On the face of it, Driveclub is an easy sell. An arcade racer with a range of exotic cars, varied fictional locations to drive them in, dynamic time and weather, various online and offline game modes, and the pedigree of the studio that put out the Motorstorm series on PS3. I can't argue with any of that. Driveclub featured lots and lots of cars and always had close racing in its extensive offline events, whether you were in a Honda Civic or a Ferrari 458.

One benefit of coming to the game late was being able to buy it and its season pass while it was on sale, meaning I got lots of content for not that much. With the online play and the cars in the base game you would never have gone short for races, but the single player experience was greatly enhanced by all of the extra vehicles. The clear support from lots of major manufacturers is notable here too, as it just makes the game feel more substantial and important.

Although every game mode in a racing game will boil down to "drive as fast as you can," there was enough variety in Driveclub to keep it interesting. In both the main Driveclub Tour and each added DLC section there was a range of events. Single races and championships were fine, but the time trial events meant you actually had to focus and not just drive all your opponents off the track. Some of them could take as much as twenty minutes to finally achieve a target time, and that's good going. The DLC events occasionally threw in a longer race, where you'd have to complete a set number of 'face-offs' to get a maximum rating - maintain an average speed over a certain portion of the track, get a high cornering score by following the pre-determined racing line, that sort of thing. In playing Driveclub I mainly dabbled by doing a couple of events a day, so it was nice to always have something different for the few months I played the game for each time I fired it up.

I'm not sure where to put this part but I loved the aesthetic of the game too. Each event has its own stylised poster. in the menu, and I've just realised I can't find an example of what I'm looking for. That's a shame.

I liked Driveclub for the variety in its cars as much as anything else. As well as the standard sports and supercars there were plenty of concepts thrown in, including stuff I'd never heard of before. There was one weird three wheeled electric Peugeot in particular that was a pain whenever it was in a race, the AI always seemed rapid in it. I drove every car several times and the detail that went into them was great, both inside and out. While the physics weren't completely realistic, different cars handled the way you'd expect them to, and the performance was noticeably different each time. Being able to use additional systems like DRS and KERS on certain cars was also a nice touch, and the added burst of speed in a McLaren P1 when you engage both modes was genuinely scary.

Coming to the game late I feel like my criticisms would differ from people who supported and followed from the start. The main thing I noticed was that the AI didn't seem to get any slower in the rain. I'd be pushing like mad while trying to keep my car pointed in the right direction, the AI didn't seem affected by the wet track at all. This disparity was much more noticeable than in any other racer I've played with weather this generation, and it was quite frustrating to try and overcome this. There was also the odd occasion where the AI would act like you weren't there and squeeze you into a wall at speed, but resetting was always quick and it didn't take too long to catch up. I think the way I played the game saved it from ever feeling too grindy or repetitive, but if I'd tried to finish it in one I might have suffered a bit. I suppose I could have mixed it up with some online modes, but it's not really important.

Driveclub is the sort of driving game I think consoles need. It fulfils pretty much every criteria you could want for a genre that you're a fan of - it looks great, it's sound mechanically and it's easy to pick-up, it's got a great variety of content and it's got good support from its developers. It also did well in harnessing the then-expanding social aspect of console gaming, and allowed for lots of customisation options therein. It appeals to the person who plays driving games more than anything else as much as it appeals to someone who's never played one at all and just wants to chuck something about for an hour at a time.

Finishing this game in 2020 and looking at something like Project Cars 3, I'm not hopeful for another driving game coming out with Driveclub's scope or strengths. That's a shame.

BONUS REVIEW - Driveclub Bikes

Think everything above, but with bikes. And with skill events rather than drift events, where you get points for doing wheelies and stuff.

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