On my end in Cali since I own the base game plus the three DLC pack I see the full game price $50 and the upgrade price for those like me who already own the game with all DLC. It shows a price of $30 but is crossed off and says 33% off $20 is my cost to upgrade. I will but not now, Bloodborne has me hooked.

Verno wrote on Mar 26, 2015, 13:18:
Reviews have been stellar, can't wait to dig into it. Gonna be impossible playing this and Bloodborne at the same time but I'll manage!

I'm into Bloodborne far too much at the moment. Cant wait to get home to boot it up. Three day weekend too. Sweet! Pillars is on my radar though. Don't want to get hooked on two at once. When I feel a little tired of Bloodborne's over the top action I can try something else for a bit. But not sure how many weeks from now that will be. Bloodborne is the best souls-like game yet. I was hoping for good... stellar will work.

Glad to hear such glowing impressions of Pillars. Way to go Obsidian!

This comment was edited on Mar 26, 2015, 17:19.

PHJF wrote on Mar 24, 2015, 02:07:
hoooo boy these reviews sure are positive...

My first impression is very good. Trying to learn the new combat system and having a blast. I was afraid I would not like the setting from the dark videos that I had seen of the opening area but I was wrong... its very immersive. The combat is tough and much faster than the previous games. I went with the large axe. You get to chose from three weapons and two guns. Have mostly been using it two handed for some devastating power attacks. I can one or two shot a lot of enemies with it.

Very different movement feel to it. The player character makes quick back steps or circle strafes if locked on. That is what I am trying to get use to now. Haven't even figured out how to fire the pistol yet.

Edit: Wish I had time to ramble on about how awesome this game is but I want to get back to it. I've only played four or so hours. Mostly just exploring and getting a good feel for the control differences. Must have used eight or more blood vials by mistake trying to go two handed and hitting the old triangle button, it's L1 now.

They have taken the souls experience to new heights with the atmosphere and setting... so far much better than the past three. More interactions which draw you in. Hidden paths, traps, death around every corner. The aggressive combat style is a blast. Knowing you can regain or even top off your health if you strike back after being hit just makes the finish blows that much better. Want to try several different starter kits to see how the other start weapons play but I am having so much fun finding the different parts/hidden paths of the start section and learning the creature attack patterns.

One thing I can't figure out and it may be bugged is when I interact with a bloodstain to see a specter nothing happens. A short animation plays to show the tombstone coming out of the ground but I see no shade/specter and his last few moments of life. Also no invasions yet but I am still early on. Haven't even found the second lamp/bonefire. Having a blast. IMO there are no better combat controls for hack-n-slash games than the souls games.

This comment was edited on Mar 24, 2015, 15:13.

Creston wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 23:22:

Paranoid Jack wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 21:46:
I stopped playing a week after release and have not bothered with it since. Please, somebody tell me this has since then been address or fixed... since the only thing that matters to me is the combat. Have they fixed the mess that is the tactical combat option for the PC version? Or do party members still teleport to you after you set them up and tell the ranged fighters to stay clear?

Nothing destroys the fun of a battle with a huge dragon more than arranging your team from the tactical over-head and then when switching to the fighter who is up close and personal you find your entire party has stupidly warped or teleported to your side just to be stomped to the ground by the dragon you just told them to attack at a distance. How the fuck that made it through play testing... I would really like to know? Needless to say that is the very last game that I will buy from Biowares on release day. From DA:I on I will demo their games or I will not purchase them. Tired of the BS and the reviewers not a one mentioning this issue. Not even Anger Fuckin' Joe.

Edit: Ah, isn't that convenient they patch just before releasing a new DLC. So very special.

? They stay at ranged for me, but Dragons do have a special attack that draws everyone into melee range, and they use it OFTEN.

That said, if you as the main character run too far away from the dragon itself, it seems you trip some sort of "OHMUHGERD RUN!" mode that makes all party members return to you. It's happened to me a few times, but really only if I go quite a ways away from the Dragon.

I wind up having to reset my party members maybe 3 or 4 times per Dragon fight or so, so it's not too bad, I feel. It'd be kinda boring if you set them once and then you just watch the Dragon's health bar go down for ten minutes, too.

I wouldn't bitch except they touted the tactical combat feature when it was really a lie

Mike Laidlaw does nothing BUT lie. I think he's trying to become the next Peter Molyeneneneuuxuxuxx. "Dragon Age Inquisition is a PC Game made by PC Gamers!"

...

I mean, I still really enjoy the game, but it's NOT a fucking PC game.

Yeah, I remember the Dragon having some type of ability to pull you toward it if you were within its range. But the party members teleporting or rubber banding toward the character you enter while exiting the tactical over-head happens no matter where/what you are fighting. I don't remember it being there 100% of the time but it happened enough to ruin the games combat for me. If you can't control them enough to make them stay in place there is no tactical period. The way they sold it with the preview/demo videos made it seem like it was a return to what Origins had as far as tactical combat or at the very least a huge step in that direction. In reality it wasn't close. Not IMO.

Lesson learned, again... thanks Biowares.

PHJF wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 23:09:
Plus is required for all multiplayer on PS4 AFAIK

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Though I did play some DS2 on the PS3 a month or so back and I was able to join other players and had far too many invaders... all without a Plus account.

I might just have to go into the breakfast with redeyes and a dog tired look. Booting up the old PS4 now.

edit: Damn, I hadn't looked at my PS Rewards account for a while. Just realized there was free money waiting in it. I could be playing right now. It unlocked twenty five minutes ago. Any first impressions? I should have it in a half hour or so now that I have more than 50mbps... of course that depends on the PSN.

This comment was edited on Mar 24, 2015, 00:27.

Redmask wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 22:58:

Dirwulf wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 21:54:

Paranoid Jack wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 21:46:
I stopped playing a week after release and have not bothered with it since. Please, somebody tell me this has since then been address or fixed... since the only thing that matters to me is the combat. Have they fixed the mess that is the tactical combat option for the PC version? Or do party members still teleport to you after you set them up and tell the ranged fighters to stay clear?

Nothing destroys the fun of a battle with a huge dragon more than arranging your team from the tactical over-head and then when switching to the fighter who is up close and personal you find your entire party has stupidly warped or teleported to your side just to be stomped to the ground by the dragon you just told them to attack at a distance. How the fuck that made it through play testing... I would really like to know? Needless to say that is the very last game that I will buy from Biowares on release day. From DA:I on I will demo their games or I will not purchase them. Tired of the BS and the reviewers not a one mentioning this issue. Not even Anger Fuckin' Joe.

Edit: Ah, isn't that convenient they patch just before releasing a new DLC. So very special.

Hold Position? Maybe try that option? Bad player is bad. lol...

Your post seems much shittier than his. Your party members get teleported to you automatically based on distance from the current party leader regardless of your hold position command. The way hold position is implemented (the tactical cam in general really) is also not terribly optimal and the party AI itself is atrocious. Ranged characters needlessly moving into engagement ranges that don't favor them, melee characters moving monsters around for no reason, poor use of abilities and shit like that. The removal of customization of party AI is to blame here, a previous strength of the franchise turned into a weakness.

Dragon Age Inquisition isn't a horrible game but its combat isn't exactly its best quality.

Ah, thanks? I guess. But yeah, Dirwulf... did you read the post? Go back to the green highlights. Use of Hold doesn't work unless everyone is within a close proximity of the character you take control of when you leave the tactical overhead. I wouldn't bitch except they touted the tactical combat feature when it was really a lie... just a half ass attempt from what I experienced.

PHJF wrote on Mar 23, 2015, 17:15:
Firmly waiting and seeing on this one as it has every indication of being too Souls-y. I'm sure most people don't have a problem with that, but after three games I'd have liked to see some iterative improvements.

Have you been watching the same videos as me? The game has a lot of tweaks to the old Souls mechanics. I've seen/read a dozen or more and I've been doing all I can to avoid too much exposure to the hype and reviewers. I'm worried I'm not going to like the faster paced combat and the setting. Since I love the old games I figured this can't be that far off so I will be there as the doors open to get my copy. If I didn't have a company breakfast to attend I would probably pre-order and pre-install at this very moment.

Either way anyone planning on playing tomorrow and wanting some help/willing to help... please, add me to your friends list, thanks. From what I heard six total players. Not sure if that is correct. I assume two are attackers and four are co-op friendly fighters. I use the same name on the PSN. From what I have heard when you pull in a shade to help you you're also pulling in one to kill you. And you can set a passcode so that only friends can join, no random players joining your game except the attackers. Has anyone seen/read if a Plus account is required?

I stopped playing a week after release and have not bothered with it since. Please, somebody tell me this has since then been address or fixed... since the only thing that matters to me is the combat. Have they fixed the mess that is the tactical combat option for the PC version? Or do party members still teleport to you after you set them up and tell the ranged fighters to stay clear?

Nothing destroys the fun of a battle with a huge dragon more than arranging your team from the tactical over-head and then when switching to the fighter who is up close and personal you find your entire party has stupidly warped or teleported to your side just to be stomped to the ground by the dragon you just told them to attack at a distance. How the fuck that made it through play testing... I would really like to know? Needless to say that is the very last game that I will buy from Biowares on release day. From DA:I on I will demo their games or I will not purchase them. Tired of the BS and the reviewers not a one mentioning this issue. Not even Anger Fuckin' Joe.

Edit: Ah, isn't that convenient they patch just before releasing a new DLC. So very special.

This comment was edited on Mar 23, 2015, 21:52.

Creston wrote on Mar 22, 2015, 16:17:
Already been grilling for about a week now, and went over to a buddy today for some burgers for lunch. <3 grilling season! 70 degrees today!

Yeah, I hope they're wrong but they are calling for 90+ here on Friday, already?

"I hated Vegas, but this looks pretty crappy too. Bring on the return to the older games..."

There fixed that for you, your welcome.

At first I got excited to see the old less than stellar graphics thinking the gameplay would more than make up for it but the video looks bad and plays badly. Rough, alpha, yeah, we know. Sad, them trying to pull in us old school gamers with the use of those team names. I realize that the twitch gamer majority would not go for old school Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six style of game play. And I will admit that the original Ghost Recon and it's add-ons were great in their own ways... the PC games, not the console shite they went onto make. Lastly, I loved Raven Shield even though they were already taking the gameplay into the current mess that it has become. That said I have no faith in this being much fun for more than a few dozen hours of twitch adrenaline rush combat while sipping on whiskey. But for serious game play? I just don't see it... our last hope is The Division?

None of this is bad news to me. Nothing I've seen has me worried. As long as the combat is engaging the game will be worth it. I play both PC and console games. And I still prefer the old PS3 dual shock over any other controller. Though playing DS2 with the XBone control on the PC is still very much fun. Some games just play better on one set-up versus the other. Some games play fine on both. We shall see. I bought it from GoG six or more months ago. So I hope we will be able to play it at 9 pm the night before official release. That way we can give the skeptics our first impressions.

The Witcher 3 has become my most anticipated game at this point since I'm not sure Bloodbourne is going to be to my liking. Though I hope I am wrong. Still I look forward to exploring the huge open world of W3. My main problem is that I always abandon the main storyline/quest to go off on my own. And have far more fun doing that... at least in the Elder Scrolls games that has always been the case.

Sweet, just took off the 24th for Bloodbourne and already have the 27th through the 29th as a scheduled three day weekend. So unless somebody declares a state of emergency it's going to be a great week and a better weekend playing games.

I got the collectors boxed version with the first add-on and I'm happy to have helped. As was the case with Bloodbourne... I have gone out of my way not to follow this too closely. I spent a couple hours beta testing and then put the blinders on.

To be honest I cut back drastically on my kickstarter funding. And so far my biggest regret is Shroud of the Avatar. I don't even want to talk about how disappointed that development has gone... at least for me.

As far as that coach goes he needs to have a serous talk with that girl and her parents. She would be dead or paralyzed two times over just in that one meet. She needs to face reality before she ends up in a wheel chair or worse.

That tsunami was some scary shit and this video again shows the power of that surge. Sad so many people were caught off guard and perished.

This comment was edited on Mar 17, 2015, 01:30.

descender wrote on Mar 16, 2015, 18:38:
Clean drinking water is going to cause more wars than Oil, and soon.

Collecting rainwater is and has been a major issue since way before corporations started selling it though. It's been illegal in most places for decades because it messes up the local natural aquifers. You can literally cause drought conditions in your area if too many people are doing it. The laws are actually becoming "less intrusive" than they were lately, but they are also being enforced more than they ever were too.

The better question to ask yourself is... why the fuck do so many people essentially live in a desert? Time to pack up and move to somewhere actually habitable or you will forever be fighting with resource problems.

A huge part of this area, the San Joaquin valley of California, is a desert climate... that was turned into one of the largest agricultural areas in North America over half a century ago. Though it has been on the decline since the water shortage started taking a toll and just after they bankrupted the state (Gray Davis and Big Power) bailing out all the corrupt power companies. Back then California was the eighth largest economy in the world. Not sure where we stand now but I am sure it isn't that high with the financial insecurity of the last decade. Add this to the already over stressed economy and it all spells big trouble.

edit: I stand corrected we have regained the ranking of the eighth largest economy in the world. And even though we are not in the top five, just barely missed it, we have some of the highest unemployment in the country. My guess is that if we could get a true accounting of all the illegals living off the money given too those with legal residence we would be in the top three.

Verno wrote on Mar 16, 2015, 11:25:
I'm super happy about the lack of shields in this, I thought all of the turtling people did in videos/pvp was lame and it made the gameplay too predictable.

But there are shields....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo18fJJFkLQ

...though if you use them you will most likely lose more often.

Besides shields don't equal FTW. You just have to be smarter than the heavily shielded/armored opponents. Using tricks and out maneuvering them can be a fun challenge. That is one of the best things about the PvP there are loads of options.

From what I have read our water system here in Cali was set up to supply up to eighteen million people decades ago. We now have over thirty million, again from what I have read... yet our lovely elected officals have done nothing... jack shit to fix this issue until recently. So yeah, we are going to see some far reaching ramifications. Cost of produce going up across the country, more lost jobs for migrant workers and ranchers, and the ground is sinking.

In this county we still have no laws to stop the sales of water being pumped out and sent south or north by ranchers making millions. All the other counties pasted laws years ago. This county just recently limited the sales. So now they can only make ten to twenty million a year selling water from the underground reserve/reservoir and we are several years into a drought? WTF!

The idiots have drained lakes sending water out into the ocean because they want to save fish. Where are the fish going if the lake is dry or at record lows? And how about all that water being sent south while the lakes set aside for the bay area and the south are sitting there at normal levels or slightly below?

Anyone in Toronto willing to pick me up a copy?

I'm very much looking forward to this game. Nothing like the souls games for atmosphere and tension. Too bad that little memory wiping pen lite from MiB doesn't exist. I would love to be able to replay these games with the same level of excitement as I had the first time exploring them not knowing what lies ahead just waiting to kill me.

I'm taking the day off from work if possible and may even stop by GameStop just past midnight to get my copy. Fifty this year and still just a kid at heart... when it comes to games at least.

I have had several Steam CS nightmares. The last one being the purchase of Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition. I already owned the original version and bought the Ultimate version on sale. Several months to a year later I tried to play it. It won't load. The vanilla version loads. I have no access to any of the DLC. Steam tells me to contact Bethesda and Bethesda tells me to contact Steam. I didn't even bother. I've been down that road before and I give up. If you buy several versions of the game it only recognizes the original version. I've already heard the horror story about calling your credit card company to dispute the payment. Same shit happened to a friend. Valve threatened him and told him he would be banned and lose his account.

To be fair though the same shit has happened to me on Origin. First my BF3 account got wiped by a moron tech support rep because I inquired about regaining my user name some kid in England somehow was able to take from me even though I had been using it for more than five years with every BF game since the beginning. Then I bought DA Origins Ultimate and it wouldn't boot only vanilla would. Took me three months to get EA/Origin to fixed those issues. They gave me two old games for the loss of my level 43 account and gave me more codes to add the DLC to my vanilla DA.

Different versions of the same game not booting has been most of my issue with Steam for ten years. They have issues making the new version purchased work properly after you've already bought the original. I think it has happened to me three or four times now and I for one am glad they have finally pulled their heads out of their rich asses. Just don't hold your breath if you are waiting for them to fix your problem.

Tank? No way. A lot of geeks out there and these smart watches are selling fairly well not to mention it is one of the better looking models. Still, 20-30 million units? No way at that price. If it could sync up with an Android? It would sell a lot better.

jdreyer wrote on Mar 11, 2015, 20:18:

Orogogus wrote on Mar 11, 2015, 14:39:
He didn't say left wing, did he?

Huh, completely misread that.

No worries... left wing or right wing. No matter. These are just key words used by the media and people in power to set off certain types of people. To get them to tune in. Same as some idiot using racial slurs and saying idiotic things to other plays on X-Box Live. We all have are triggers and people will use them against you if you let them. Very few people are just stone cold and don't let anything get to them. Racism/Stupidity is part of the human condition. Every single human being on this planet could be of one color and we would still have issues. There is no way around it. A percentage of the populous would hate the other because their hair/height/weight/whatever. Understanding that is important. Being intelligent enough or educated enough to get over it is the problem. Most people who let these things effect them are having other issues and that racial slur is just the chink in their armor used to get under their skin.

As far as the excessive force and bad cops go my way of thinking is this... it has always been there. We just see far too much of it as of late because the population continues to soar and of course there are more police to help maintain peace. So naturally there are more incidents and more bad cops. Maybe I am over simplifying it but one thing is for sure... the media is on a roll with the witch hunting.


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