Cenotaph wrote on Sep 5, 2022, 22:17:
Of course a lot of reviews are legitimate, Amazon is just salty they're watching their 1 billion dollar investment go up in flames

"Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has subsequently revealed the series snared 25 million viewers on its first day – the biggest premiere in Amazon’s 15-year history."
https://www.darkhorizons.com/rings-of-power-has-amazons-biggest-launch/

Uh huh...

Fortnite should add a Last of Us "Bashed-in-skull" Joel skin just to trigger people

I wonder if you can actually DO anything with your updated and shiny Freighter though? The last time I played NMS, Freighters were a huge letdown and essentially static mini-bases that you could summon and that's it. You couldn't fly them, do missions with them or anything of actual substance (which is one of my general gripes with the game). The space stuff for NMS in general seems like huge wasted potential and I don't know if that has to do with limitations of their engine or just due to a lack of vision.

Armengar wrote on Jul 18, 2022, 14:05:
yeah, eternals was poor but there have been a few other poor movies too. I wasnt a fan of dr strange multiverse either.

I made the huge mistake of watching Dr. Strange 2 after watching Everything Everywhere All at Once.
THAT is how you properly do a Multiverse movie that has meaning and heart combined with great action scenes.

Hump wrote on Jul 9, 2022, 16:54:
Frankly I wouldn't even know where to start. I'd imagine half my weekend taken up by keyboard control assignments alone.

I would truly like to try the thing out but the fucking 2 day limit makes it just not worth it.

The controls aren't too hard to memorize since SC goes one step further and most ships have buttons that you can interact with in the cockpit (via holding down the F key).
This youtube video does a thorough job listing the important keys and things to do to get started though: https://youtu.be/Ewh3Qu2CWAY

Beamer wrote on Jul 7, 2022, 15:36:

Saboth wrote on Jul 7, 2022, 15:33:

GinRummy wrote on Jul 7, 2022, 13:11:
Gwent, by far the very worst part of the Witcher 3 game. I just don't understand the demand.

I'm not that big on card battling type games, but I actually enjoyed riding around challenging people in towns for their cards and building up my deck.

Same. But I found the standalone mobile Gwent game far less fun and far more crammed with gibberish that took away from the basic game.

Ditto. Gwent in Witcher 3 was addictive as hell for me. The standalone version - less so.

Nullity wrote on Jul 6, 2022, 13:01:

The Half Elf wrote on Jul 6, 2022, 00:28:
Give it a shot, ya got nothing to lose.

Yeah I do, my ship(s) and all my loot.

Thank you for the write up. Setting aside all the stigma associated with this game and being objective, that honestly sounds like a lot of fun. However, the PvP aspect just isn't for me. I'll never play any game where you can lose your stuff/progress like that.

If and when the game actually gets a full release, and if there are PvE only servers, then I may give it a try.

While you can lose your gear, if no other player loots your corpse, you can come back to loot everything off of it. But TBH, personal gear isn't ultra important unless you're doing a specific mission that requires a gun (aka. hunting down a target that's in a cave or station) or getting a Tiger Claw device and sneaking onto a station to clear your Bounty.

As for ships, yes players can "steal" your ship but it's just temporary and you can go to any station or base planet and reclaim your lost ship for a small fee. Same if you die or if your ship gets blown up. The only time that you can permanently lose your ship is if you use in-game funds to buy a ship and there's a patch that's going to wipe everything (like the upcoming one). If that does happen, then people who've spent Real Money™ get whatever ships that they've bought on the website. Non-Whales will have to do the usual grinding stuff (varied PvE missions, Mining, PvP Bounty Hunting, Events etc.) to get enough credits to buy back their ship(s). Server wipes are usually rare and last resorts that CIG does when an incoming patch adds something fundamental that requires players to start anew or if there's database corruption (aka. the upcoming patch) that requires a fix.

In a way it's a good thing since grinding missions, mining and doing events is basically the current content of the game and buying all the ships that you want really doesn't give you much incentive aside from griefing, PVPing or goofing around with friends.

The Half Elf wrote on Jul 6, 2022, 00:28:
Give it a shot, ya got nothing to lose.

Yeah although there are numerous bugs in Star Citizen and it seems like there will be no end to the feature-creep, the game's scope and tech is impressive as hell. It's a very unique experience when you can literally run around a space station in first-person, go out of its airlock and leap off into Zero-G and float/propulse yourself in any direction in space towards a distant ship and either get inside of it if it's friendly or use a Multi-Tool to unweld the ship's door to ambush the pilot.

Or being able to fly any ship into a planet or moon's atmosphere and do unscripted stuff like driving a tank out of a Carrack ship's cargo doors and have it launch down to the ground once gravity kicks in is a great experience. I think that the Jump Town event shows off this aspect well since it's primarily PvP/PvE-based and a lot of unexpected stuff usually happens due to it based off of the player's creativity. This video shows what that event is all about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNALKEp8e60

The fact that it's all seamless is something gamers won't really appreciate until they experience it and then play games like No man Sky or the upcoming Starfield and see how limited that aspect is (based off of the things that I've read).

Yesssssss!

Aside from that very (very) annoying teenage girl, the Halo show wasn't half bad. Then again, I didn't think that the Halo games were all that fantastic when it came to the plotlines and the characters seemed pretty generic so I was never beholden to them or thought that those games were a high standard for storytelling.

Satoru wrote on May 20, 2022, 18:20:

Burrito of Peace wrote on May 20, 2022, 14:08:
They need to play Independence War 2. It has the best Newtonian flight model I have ever experienced while still being fun and approachable. You can either toggle full Newtonian flight or automatic RCS control which would give it a more "arcade" feel for those that want it.

They can't do that because this is 'supposedly' and MMO or whatever Chris has decided to call this train wreck. You can't have one set of people be on 'arcade' while the other half are in 'mega space sim mode'. Everyone has to be on the same flight model. The problem is Chris can't actually decide if he's making Wing Commander, trying ot redo Privateer, or trying to make EVE Online. He makes his team make all these different modes that all clash with eachother. He can't even get a single player version of SQ42 out the door because of the idiotic insistence of 'everything being on teh same code base' despite the fact that they have no 'code base' to start off of because Chris keeps changing his mind about what ever the hell they're making this week.

Star Citizen has a "quasi-newtonian" toggle called Decoupled Mode where your ship's inertia and momentum will continue until you thrust in the opposite direction to slow down and it allows players to do advanced combat/flight tricks. By default the game has IFCS (Intelligent Flight Control System) enabled which makes it more arcadey.

It also allows some pretty funky and impressive stunt flying in certain planets/moons with their varying atmosphere: https://youtu.be/1r7OSXSreF4

Kxmode wrote on Apr 25, 2022, 17:04:

chickenboo wrote on Apr 25, 2022, 14:01:
I've been enjoying Elden Ring as a newcomer to the Dark Souls franchise of games, but it's slowly beginning to lose its lustre. I think for me it's missing one critical element: charm. There's a lack of charm in the game world. Their endless approach to GrimDark aesthetic is commendable: I love the gothic ruined castles; I loved the cinematic during the Godrick the Grafted boss fight; the commitment to twisted, spooky monsters even if it's a giant crab or shrimp or even a shrimp-man (I find crustaceans revolting, so leaning into that as a horror enemy is brilliant); the voice acting is very very good, almost on-par with Hades.
And yet there's nowhere really to rest besides grace points, the utterly boring table place, or the modded-in pause menu. There's no comedy relief, no NPCs I actually want to learn MORE about (compared to say Diablo 2's Deckard Cain or the Act 2 palace guy or the Zakarum lady in Act 3), no personalities that are interesting (see Witcher 3 which is consistent in its war-ravaged tone yet has NPCs who express heart even in brief interactions).
Despite this so far Elden Ring is probably my GOTY but like, I don't really want it to be? It does what it does very well, and that's about it. I won't really be raving about it for much other than the aesthetic and the vertical progression.

Alan Moore described it best as "a one-dimensional character is where it's either a hero or a villain. It's a goodie or a baddie. You don't need to know anything about them other than that. They don't have to have motivations. They're just a good guy or a bad guy. All of the bad guy's schemes, they can be explained by the fact that he's a bad guy." In the case of your comment, the entire world of Elden Ring is one-dimensional with no diverse biomes of emotion. It's rather strange, given that George R.R. Martin wrote the story. He's known for crafting three-dimensional characters and environments.

That is actually not true in Elden Ring's case. Many of the characters tend to be Gray rather than Black or White when it comes to their motivations. Some are friendlier than others in their initial dialog but once you complete their questlines or delve further into their end goals or dig into items related to them, they can be revealed to be extremely greedy, selfish or self-serving in a, "fuck everything and everyone else, I will get my way at the end" sort of way (a certain four-armed character comes to mind). And a lot of the characters might be initially evil but you end up finding out that they're this way due to the endless suffering and torment that they've endured or that they're ultimately "created" to act a certain way without them having a choice.

There's a surprising amount of depth to some of the Dark Souls and Elden Ring characters but a lot of times, you have to dig really deep to find the clues for their real motivations beyond their surface dialog. That's why the wikis and communities/youtube videos are so lengthy when it comes to the origins and backstories of various NPCs and characters in all of these series. It's easy to initially think "Weird NPC says cryptic, weird thing and is either good or evil" but in most cases, it's much more than that.

Beamer wrote on Apr 14, 2022, 10:33:

Razumen wrote on Apr 14, 2022, 10:25:

Mr. Tact wrote on Apr 14, 2022, 09:35:

Razumen wrote on Apr 14, 2022, 09:23:
There's zero point in exploring in a game that was marketed and sold as a space exploration game.

You are going to have to explain that to me...

I need to explain to you why it's bad that a game that was marketed as an exploration game, isn't a good exploration game?

Yikes.

That isn't what you initially said. You didn't initially say it was bad that a game that was sold as exploration was bad as exploration, you said this specific game offered no reason to explore, and that seems to be what he disagreed with. I've not played it, but it seems many, many people disagree about whether there's "zero reason" to explore. But literally no one would disagree that a game sold as an exploration game should be good at exploration.

I wouldn't say that there's "zero" reason to explore but I'd have to honestly agree with him. Due to the nature of how heavily proc-genned NMS's universe is, once you see a few of the biomes and creatures the first time around, you'll always just see slight variations of them all the time and it just gets overly repetitive and boring with little incentive to explore once you find a decent biome to build a base. It felt like I was mining and managing my inventory and cargo more often than I was actually "exploring" in NMS. And there's woefully little variation in ship types (I really wish they offered a LOT more in that regard) and space combat is a heavily under-utilized part of the game that Hello Games never seemed to do much with (not being able to pilot or control cap ships, always fighting the same type of bandit ships in small skirmishes, the lack of ship customization, etc.).

NMS has what I call the "Warframe Problem™" where the developers keep adding new content (which is always a good thing) but it's content that's easily finished in an hour or two and quickly forgotten or abandoned by the devs. My issue is that there are often annoying or major issues within the base gameplay loop that the developers completely ignore or do not develop further for whatever reason.

Quinn wrote on Apr 13, 2022, 03:59:

OpticNerve wrote on Apr 13, 2022, 01:45:

Verno wrote on Apr 12, 2022, 09:11:

KezClone wrote on Apr 11, 2022, 20:27:
I finally gave in and bought it for PS4. I am really bad at this game. I can't beat this stupid beast man in one of the first caves you come across.

It's humiliating.

Nah man, it's liberating. The game actually wants you to try, so many these days do not

You got this. Run around on the horse, go explore and collect some golden seeds. Come back and whomp that guy. You will look back on that enemy as if it was nothing later on, probably not even taking a hit.

Yup, the thing you'll realize is that there's a big whole world to explore and level up in. After a few levels (and perhaps with new weapons/gear) you'll be able to come back and take on the Beast Man boss much more easily. One advice I can give is to not forget to level up Vigor. Vigor = HP and that is VERY important in PvE and especially in PvP.

As for weapons, I respecced from STR to DEX/ARC and am mostly running around with bleed weapons. Primarily with Dual Cross-Naginatas or just with a Rivers of Blood if I want to absolutely delete a boss. I also use a Zweihander sometimes in PvP since that's very easy to wield and the long reach of the crouch + stab is great for roll-catching. This time around, DEX just has a lot of fun options for Melee weaponry unlike STR options (sadly). I suppose it was inevitable though since STR weapons had a lot of fun variety in Dark Souls 3.

I disagree about Vigor. Most bosses leave you with a sliver of health after one full hit anyway, and a bit less of a sliver if you have invested in Vigor but you won't have enough health left to endure another hit anyway. So, in both cases -- invested in Vigor or not -- most bosses 2-shot your ass unless you heal up. Instead, the faster you kill your enemies the better. I find that this game really is all about doing your best to nuke your enemies. Personally, I learn about the behavior of the strong enemy or boss and then aggressively Square Off. It's the only way I finally got to kill that full-grown meteor beast on top of the mountain: by hugging him and spamming Square Off. He got stunned after the third hit, giving me the room for another Square Off hit + a critical hit. Rinse repeat. A few dodges, a few hard hits, another stun, rinse repeat, and one of the harder bosses was dead after the fourth try.

If bosses leave you with a sliver of health with one or two hits, isn't that a clear indicator that you don't have enough Vigor then?
Leveling health in the Soulsborne series has never allowed you to mindlessly face-tank hits (that usually requires a Greatshield and a crapton of Poise) but it DOES allow you a lot of leeway in regards to surviving enough hits to roll away and/or drink a Healing Flask which means everything when it comes to tough boss fights. Also after a certain point, leveling beyond a certain softcap of a main damage scaling stat (Str/Dex/Int/Arc etc.) yields very little returns and is better utilized and spent leveling in other stats.

There's a ton of videos on Youtube explaining why Vigor is so important in Elden Ring but the following links do a good job explaining why:
- (You Need To Increase Your Vigor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuapvoPr4Xg
- (The Philosophy Behind HP: You NEED Vigor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyCFldDVFl0
- (Vigor Soft/Hardcaps): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHBz1Pgq9-4

Vigor is especially important when it comes to Co-op/PvP/Invasions. It's baffling why so few invaders level up vigor and are so easily killed. You're already outnumbered 2 or 3 vs 1 and you also have such low health that you can be demolished in one weapon-art attack? Yikes.

This comment was edited on Apr 13, 2022, 15:36.

Verno wrote on Apr 12, 2022, 09:11:

KezClone wrote on Apr 11, 2022, 20:27:
I finally gave in and bought it for PS4. I am really bad at this game. I can't beat this stupid beast man in one of the first caves you come across.

It's humiliating.

Nah man, it's liberating. The game actually wants you to try, so many these days do not

You got this. Run around on the horse, go explore and collect some golden seeds. Come back and whomp that guy. You will look back on that enemy as if it was nothing later on, probably not even taking a hit.

Yup, the thing you'll realize is that there's a big whole world to explore and level up in. After a few levels (and perhaps with new weapons/gear) you'll be able to come back and take on the Beast Man boss much more easily. One advice I can give is to not forget to level up Vigor. Vigor = HP and that is VERY important in PvE and especially in PvP.

As for weapons, I respecced from STR to DEX/ARC and am mostly running around with bleed weapons. Primarily with Dual Cross-Naginatas or just with a Rivers of Blood if I want to absolutely delete a boss. I also use a Zweihander sometimes in PvP since that's very easy to wield and the long reach of the crouch + stab is great for roll-catching. This time around, DEX just has a lot of fun options for Melee weaponry unlike STR options (sadly). I suppose it was inevitable though since STR weapons had a lot of fun variety in Dark Souls 3.

This comment was edited on Apr 13, 2022, 02:18.

Or an Elden Ring clone (they're definitely jealous of the game's popularity and sales)

RedEye9 wrote on Apr 4, 2022, 12:58:
Elden Ring quests: a walkthrough of all side quests and fail states in Elden Ring
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/elden-ring-all-sidequests

Thanks for that link. Was meaning to search for something like that after I beat the game the first time around. My current initial playthrough is a "whatever happens happens (including the ending I get) one" but I'll definitely use that site for my New Game+ run.

Jim wrote on Mar 29, 2022, 22:31:
I played lost ark, liked it quite a bit. But then it became apparent that chunks of the game are level gated, and to reach those levels means playing one character for a chance to upgrade daily, or playing 3 for more chances, and running mindless tasks for more chances and... each time your chances get worse. Makes for huge twitch drama when streamers blow tons of money buying upgrade materials and failing. But to me the end game grind is the worst part of the game.

Agreed. Up until then, the game was a blast but then you just hit the honing-grind materials wall and all of the needed dailies/weeklies and abyss dungeons just sucks the fun out of it.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Mar 29, 2022, 15:22:
All FromSoftware' games have that peel the onion mechanics, layers uncounted, perhaps some secrets or aspects never to be discovered.

A world conception with such richness and mystery delights me endlessly.

Same. Games that plainly tell you how to do everything and show everything on the map (aka. Ubisoft-like open-world games) where things turn out being a checklist of things that you can absent-mindedly do end up feeling samey, formulaic and boring after a while.

I wouldn't want EVERY single game to be like a From Software game (although I'm guessing there will be more copycats in the near future due to how popular Elden Ring is and how salty some devs have been about its design choices) but that's why I'm always delighted when a From Software game comes out since it's a unique mixture that I enjoy once in a while. Every game being similar to a From Software game in it's vague obtuseness would be annoying and frustrating. But a From Software game every few years is a treat for me.

Yeah, the Tailoring Tools just enables you to do some minor cosmetic changes to *some* helms or chest armors at any Grace. Usually to remove or re-enable a cape or cloak.

I'm guessing this minor feature was added because there is a community mentality for the later Dark Souls series called "Fashion Souls" where it was less about the stats of the armors themselves but more about how awesome or funny your character looked. At the higher tiers and levels, it was expected that players were experienced enough in the game where they could dodge roll their way through combat and didn't care about how much resistances they had.

Wish they added more customization options though.

phinn wrote on Mar 28, 2022, 13:37:
There are definitely some UI tweaks needed, like it’s too hard to find an item in your inventory you just picked up. There should be a button when its picked up to jump right to it. But any complaints like that are very minor.

You can sort your inventory to show the "newest" item you've collected. Forgot how but it's there if you look around in the inventory screen.


As for someone asking how to use Spirit Summons, first you have to either get the "Spirit Call Bell" from Renna who can pop up at night if you go to the Church of Elleh grace near the NPC merchant Kale (aka "Santa"). If she doesn't appear, then just go to your Roundtable hold and find the eyeball-less old, creepy women merchant and they should sell the bell and the Wolves summon for a small amount of Runes. Once you do that, just equip the Spirit Summon like any other item in one of your quickslots (you don't have to do anything with the Spirit Call Bell item itself).

I personally prefer equipping it in one of the "E" menu slots for easy access (just hold down "E" and press one of the directional arrow keys) so it won't clog up my normal quickslot buttons. You can also quickslot multiple Summons for different boss types but you'll still only be able to call upon 1 summon per fight if an area allows it (a white tombstone-like icon will appear on the left side of your normal UI - pic example here ). Just like any spell, the Spirit Summon will most likely require and cost a certain amount of FP (mana) to use. Sometimes it'll even require health instead of FP to cast.

If a boss is giving you fits, make sure to try out a Spirit Summon. Just the fact that they can take aggro off of you can provide a huge amount of help in taking out a boss. Later on, you can find some really powerful Spirit Summons which can turn the tide of a hopeless boss fight.