Oh great, I can see QD's version of a Star Wars game:

*Prompts player to do a Quick-time event to ignite lightsaber*
*Prompts player to pick a timed conversation choice*
*Prompts player to do a timed left-stick dodge*
*Prompts player to do a Quick-time event to use the Force*
*Allows player to free-roam and investigate a square room of 12x12 ft*
*Prompts player to do a Quick-time event to use a door to exit room*

HorrorScope wrote on Aug 26, 2021, 11:30:

Rhett wrote on Aug 26, 2021, 04:07:
I have a few friends anxious to play, but I am seriously concerned about the longevity of the combat depth.. I played the beta, and the trees/combat were way too simplistic long term. Two weapons equipped. Two combos (if you can call it that) for most weapons - basically 3 lights or 3 heavies, and also equip 3 (IIRC) abilities from their trees. But it was super repetitive, and the trees aren't very big.

What's funny for me, even games with more, the combat loops become pretty darn repetitive to. It seems most will find their happy spot loop and for most battles stick with that plan. Maybe the Atari 2600 controller had it right all along.

Plus a lot of times, skill upgrades or unlocks in MMORPGs tend to be derivative variants or straight up upgrades to already pre-existing skills. Instead of a "Strike I" attack that does +10 dmg, you unlock a "Strike II" attack that now does +15 dmg. WoW and plenty of MMOs that I've played in the past tend to fall into that trap. It's an easy and no-effort way for devs to add some sort of artificial progression for players to look forward to when it comes to leveling their characters.

Slick wrote on Aug 26, 2021, 03:09:

OpticNerve wrote on Aug 25, 2021, 18:48:
Whining about Saints Row being "woke" is fucking hilarious given that the series was full of characters of all kinds of races and sexualities (Pierce and the main character as an example) and it was one of the few games that did not lock your character customization options based solely on your gender (even before Cyberpunk 2077 made that a big deal).

I really don't think it's about gender or race, we haven't gone back that far culturally where that's a big deal right? I mean, it's 2021, trannies are "beautiful" and most republicans are okay with gay marriage.

It's the hipster vibe, and I'm sorry, but when I see "characters" in the real world dressed like that, they're more likely to be "woke" virtue-signaling puritans who will cancel you for being mean to someone 30 years ago. That's an involuntary reaction I get when I see this trailer. Like I can picture at least one of those characters getting mad at me for using the incorrect pronoun around them, and they'll try to make it very awkward and uncomfortable when I don't share my preferred pronouns the first time we meet.

It sucks, but it's in the atmosphere of the world we currently live in, and when art imitates life, I fill these otherwise vacuous hollow characters with all the dumb shit I've heard people say who look like that.

I completely agree that the trailer was underwhelming and that these new characters initially seem like pale imitations of the past Saints Row characters. But even I have to admit that when I first saw the characters of the Saints Row 1 games, they looked goofy as hell with their bright purple clothing and overly 90s-era attitudes. When you're comparing the gangs from something like GTA: San Andreas to Saints Row 1 (which came out 2 years later according to wikipedia), then Saints Row looks like what game developers THINK gang members look and act like. They absolutely look like Poochie the Dog versions of Gangbangers.

The thing is, I played the horrible PC port of Saints Row 2 in co-op with a buddy on a whim and we absolutely loved the game with its characters and fun gameplay. Given how absolutely shitty that port was, it says a lot that my buddy and I stuck with it all the way till we finished it. And that is ultimately why I'll wait until I see more gameplay trailers and info of this new Saints Row game before I judge it solely based on a crappy cinematic trailer. If I judged Saints Row 2 off of initial visual impressions of its characters, then I would have just ignored the series as a bargin-bin GTA-wannabe and that it was in no way worth my money and time in comparison to something like GTA:SA. I ultimately enjoyed SR2 a LOT more than I did GTA:SA. The series embraces its wacky lunacy and that's something that I feel is missing from the GTA series in it's weird, surreal, self-important seriousness.

Calling these new characters hipster-like is something I can agree based off of initial impressions but you never know. Maybe they'll be competently written and voiced. After all, Saints Row has a South Korean gang member who wears gaudy shades and wears bright purple clothing. How could anyone seriously think that Gat would be as awesome as he ended up being when you first saw him? And remember, THIS is what he looked like in the first Saints Row game: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/saintsrow/images/1/14/Johnny_Gat_-_full_of_surprises.png

sauron wrote on Aug 25, 2021, 18:28:
I'm up for this. Looks promising.

Why would I care about whether the gang are male/female/gay/straight/orcs/wraiths/aliens? So long as they kick ass and the gameplay is good.

W3 had a mutant as the antihero and it sold a ton based on story and excellent gameplay. If the gameplay is boring then **** it but that other stuff doesn't even factor into it.

Exactly. As long as the gameplay is fun and there's memorable characters (regardless of gender or race) and co-op (hopefully more than just 2-players this time) then I'm interested. I've enjoyed the Saints Row series for a long while. Even as the series has gotten worse with each new iteration, I've had a blast co-oping with friends throughout the series.

Whining about Saints Row being "woke" is fucking hilarious given that the series was full of characters of all kinds of races and sexualities (Pierce and the main character as an example) and it was one of the few games that did not lock your character customization options based solely on your gender (even before Cyberpunk 2077 made that a big deal).

Burrito of Peace wrote on Aug 2, 2021, 11:49:

Mr. Tact wrote on Aug 2, 2021, 11:09:
Exactly what I immediately thought on reading the article. Loving Brave, seems to be far more functional than FF.

I, too, am using Brave. It was a sad day when I had to abandon Firefox. But there was this annoying hitching/pause thing it would do when typing out text that never got fixed and happened on multiple machines with differing hardware.

Ah well, every dynasty falls eventually.

Yeah, I use Brave for more personal stuff (paying online bills, online shopping etc.) but generally I often use Vivaldi for normal everyday browsing. I was a huge Opera user way back then and Vivaldi just feels like Opera v2.0 when it comes to useful features that seems aimed right at me (I know there's still an Opera browser but that's now owned by a Chinese company so...). I haven't used FF or Chrome in a long, long while now.

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Jul 31, 2021, 23:30:
Steam version here: Game is gorgeous, some minor bugs. I'm using DX11 also, there were some DX12/ ray tracing issues reported anyway, so I'll wait for a patch for that. However, at the moment, weapon cosmetics you loot, are not getting saved. Cosmetic shirts... maybe are? But you can only put them on in the cybernetics surgery area..

I have not had any selling items for zero cash bugs, but I have noticed that sometimes you cannot sell a copy of a weapon you have equipped, ie. go down to just the one in your 'hands' you must keep two.

All minor bugs for me so far, the cosmetics on the gun barrels aren't meaningful enough for me to get worked up about, because the rest of the game is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

The game definitely needs a patch or a mod for: Transforming Credits into Weapon Upgrade Resources, aka be able to buy common gun resources for like 1000 credits from a merchant, or something. As it is now, I have a ton of credits, all the good guns can be found somewhere in the world, from a miniboss or whatever, but you literally can't afford to upgrade them all, because you the common gun resource is... relatively uncommon. I assume Advanced Gun Resources will be even worse, but I have like 5 of those, but no guns high level enough to actually use them on, because I lack common resources.

Not upgrading a gun isn't much of an option, because the base damage is usually not great, for high level enemies.

That said, the bigger guns are awesome, I'm liking the heavy machine gun and automatic rocket launcher quite a bit. I haven't seen a flamethrower yet, hopefully one exists or gets added. All there are so far, are fire based pistols and shotguns.

Some of the Tactical powers and Energy powers are pretty awesome; I wish the tactical resource recharged a lot faster. Even with some modules and some points in the Tactical stat(whatever it is called) it still takes several battles to get a tactical usage. Which I admit, may be the intent.

Everybody should buy this game at some point, just to run around the zones and gaze upon the harsh dystopian beauty. The combat is fun, but yes it's been done before. Crusader No Remorse is a good reference, updated. Some of the side characters are great, but then there are a lot of side characters who speak in a futuristic version of the adults non-dialogue in Peanuts cartoons; they basically ran out of voice actor money at some point.

Still, I am extremely impressed with what this development team accomplished; whatever their budget was. Hopefully the patches keep coming.

Yeah I've had the same bugs/issues. Another gripe I have is wishing that I could forward a conversation line by continuing to press the Interact button [F]. Needing to mouse over to the [Next] button and click on it after every line is tedious after a while. Otherwise, aside from the DX12 issues (which a dev said they're working on), the game is absolutely gorgeous. It's astounding that a tiny, 12-person studio like this could release a game that puts a lot of AAA titles to shame graphically. Gameplay-wise, it does get a tad bit samey and I wish it had a bit more variation in randomized ARPG loot or RPG choice and consequences, but aside from some nit-picking, I don't regret my purchase at all.

I'm tempted to wait for the DX12 patch so I can play this in all of it's ray-traced glory though.

This comment was edited on Aug 1, 2021, 16:24.

According to multiple sources, it seems like Kevin Feige is now angry and pissed at Disney for putting Black Widow out on Disney+ in the first place and now for their tone-deaf reply that's only exacerbating things.

Yikes. If there is one single person at Disney that they do not want to piss off, it's Feige. At this point, Walt Disney could somehow miraculously get resurrected and if they could only choose between the two, I'm sure that they'd pick Feige every time due to how much money he's made them and how any other company would give an arm and a leg for Feige to work for them.

Rilcon wrote on Jul 31, 2021, 04:23:
Why do threads about "Don't sexually assault people" always make some people devolve into "literally 1984 / dumb SJWs liberals want to take away our freedumbs"?

It's a rhetorical question, of course, I already know it's because they have the emotional intelligence of a monitor lizard and the ego of a sentient cheeto.

And probably because they have to now worry about their past (current?) actions and "freedoms" of being a disturbed, egotistical and sexist, asshole harasser is going to catch up with them. It's really not fucking hard to not be a creepy, sexist, douchebag around women and yet the usual lot around here will defend their "right" to continue doing so.

"Being held accountable for my shitty personality and actions at work?! THAT'S SUM WOKE SJW LIBERAL BULLSHIT"

Hattori Hanzō wrote on Jul 30, 2021, 17:02:

OpticNerve wrote on Jul 30, 2021, 03:04:

Hattori Hanzō wrote on Jul 30, 2021, 02:23:
i found this game to be supremely generic and boring.. and it was incredibly disappointing to see how far obsidian has fallen

Wrong game. That was Outer Worlds.

indeed - ive done this before as well

but yeh.. outer worlds was sad face

Yeah it's completely understandable since they both have similar names and I think they were both released around the same quarter. But I instantly knew what game you were thinking of because once the new shininess wore off, gamers were lamenting about how generic and underwhelming Outer Worlds was and that they expected better from Obsidian given that they did FO:New Vegas.

On the other hand, my friends are constantly praising the hell out of Outer Wilds. I'll get to it one day once I finish up a bit of my backlog (ah... who am I kidding?).

Hattori Hanzō wrote on Jul 30, 2021, 02:23:
i found this game to be supremely generic and boring.. and it was incredibly disappointing to see how far obsidian has fallen

Wrong game. That was Outer Worlds.

Based off of the various things that I've read, it's hard to put the blame solely on one single entity. It sounds more like a perfect clusterfuck of various things coalescing to have this cause and effect. New World's devs should have coded it so that there was a framerate cap at the main menu/queue lobby. I've limited my max framerates -2 to get it working alongside my gsync monitor in the nVidia control panel and MSI Afterburner never showed New World's menu framerates jumping past that. But I noticed that my GPU fans went full blast right away just waiting at the main menus/lobby. I can imagine that someone who doesn't have their framerates capped and waiting up to half an hour in the queue menu would stress the hell out of their GPUs.

The nVidia RTX 3090s are already stretching the max capabilities of that particular GPU architecture and EVGA likes to boost and overclock their cards past the stock rates of the reference boards. So having a game instantly and fully pushing beyond the capabilities on an already tenuously overclocked videocard just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I fully expect Amazon to implement a framerate cap at the main menu/lobby and I also expect EVGA to replace the 3090s and to release a BIOs update that'll hopefully prevent something like this from happening in other sloppily coded games.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jul 19, 2021, 10:54:

OpticNerve wrote on Jul 18, 2021, 19:25:

RedEye9 wrote on Jul 18, 2021, 19:04:

OpticNerve wrote on Jul 18, 2021, 18:54:

eRe4s3r wrote on Jul 17, 2021, 14:32:
Wow.. talk about a cancerous comment section under that link ^^

Can't be any worse than DSoG's comment sections whenever Blue posts a link from them. That community is a complete cesspool that needs to be nuked for the sake of humanity.

Awe man. I had to look
DSoG's Marvel’s Avengers – Native 4K versus NVIDIA DLSS versus AMD FSR

That's actually pretty tame for that community. If there's any article about a game that has a female lead character or has a single PoC in a screenshot... whew. They make Cutter look like a liberal and woke Carebear in comparison. Plus a lot of them openly brag about pirating games "that they hate" and often talk shit about the site creator/article writer. It's that much of a toxic cesspool that borders on 4chan levels of idiocy, misery and pathetic Incels.

Yeah you don't get how good you have it on Bluesnews till you look how bad it is outside of Bluesnews. I mean... really just wow. We can get pretty grumpy and angry sometimes, even nonsensical, but this kind of name calling and just absolute disrespect is just.. not used to it since I am only here for gaming news.

That place is a perfect example of what you get when I read posts from some people at Blues whining about being "censored/moderated" over here and wanting a social media platform/site that is uncensored, unfiltered and doesn't infringe on their "freedum of spech". Those places actually exist and they're not hard to find but what you get is a community that is full of trash humans who take glee and pride at being anonymous, horrible dickbags (even to each other) and it makes you lose absolute faith in the gaming community.

There are some posters here who make me roll my eyes hard whenever I see their illogical and asinine posts but this community sure is an oasis compared to a lot of other gaming communities that have little to no form of reasonable moderation. It's also the main reason why I keep coming back time and time again.

RedEye9 wrote on Jul 18, 2021, 19:04:

OpticNerve wrote on Jul 18, 2021, 18:54:

eRe4s3r wrote on Jul 17, 2021, 14:32:
Wow.. talk about a cancerous comment section under that link ^^

Can't be any worse than DSoG's comment sections whenever Blue posts a link from them. That community is a complete cesspool that needs to be nuked for the sake of humanity.

Awe man. I had to look
DSoG's Marvel’s Avengers – Native 4K versus NVIDIA DLSS versus AMD FSR

That's actually pretty tame for that community. If there's any article about a game that has a female lead character or has a single PoC in a screenshot... whew. They make Cutter look like a liberal and woke Carebear in comparison. Plus a lot of them openly brag about pirating games "that they hate" and often talk shit about the site creator/article writer. It's that much of a toxic cesspool that borders on 4chan levels of idiocy, misery and pathetic Incels.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jul 17, 2021, 14:32:
Wow.. talk about a cancerous comment section under that link ^^

Can't be any worse than DSoG's comment sections whenever Blue posts a link from them. That community is a complete cesspool that needs to be nuked for the sake of humanity.

Xero wrote on Jul 1, 2021, 17:13:

OpticNerve wrote on Jul 1, 2021, 14:35:
It'll be interesting to see what I'll feel about Diablo IV once Lost Ark comes out first and I play that for a while (I have my doubts that Diablo IV will come out this year given Blizzard's glacial pacing). Although they're different in that Lost Ark is a completely over-the-top anime ARPGMMO, the combat in the Technical Alpha Test felt really, REALLY good and satisfying. It also does seem like Diablo IV is forcing in MMORPG elements with random people being able to show up in your game as well as world bosses popping up (based on what I've heard).

I've been a huge Diablo-franchise fan for a long, long time but Diablo 3 (and the current state of Blizzard Activision) really does make me have my doubts about Diablo IV. Granted, Diablo 3x-Loot 2.0 did do a lot to save it but there were still bad gameplay elements from base Diablo 3 that they couldn't fix without Blizzard completely redoing the game from scratch. On the other hand, Lost Ark has been out in South Korea, Russia and Japan for 2-3 years now and has a big fanbase with people absolutely loving the game. Nonetheless, it IS a South Korean MMORPG so there's always the worry about how much forced p2w elements and forced grinding there will be in the NA/EU version (grinding is a given in an ARPG but South Korean MMOs take that to extreme levels sometimes).

I'll still insta-buy Diablo IV but hopefully it won't be a letdown. At this point, it really is the only franchise remaining from Blizzard Activision that I give a rat's ass about.

I'd say there is still a glimmer of hope that can do something decent with the Starcraft franchise. I mean, it's only left off as a successful RTS sequel. I'm not sure what else they COULD do though that isn't RTS and wouldn't really suck with the franchise. Sure, it sounds like a 3rd person game (which they tried) would make sense, but honestly, for a company like Blizzard, it sounds too simple and basic to do. Plus they want that monthly reoccurring income that they can get with online based encounters or skins or something that continues monthly.

Hence why D4 is looking more and more MMOish. There isn't much benefit from making straight up single player games anymore. Not unless they can loop in some kind of re-occurring payment idea. Effectively D3 did have that with the Auction House until the hordes raised their pitch forks threatening to burn Blizz to the ground and Blizz listened ...to an extent.

In a perfect world where Blizzard actually got its shit together, I'd love to see a Starcraft FPS where you're playing as different races (a Space Marine grunt, a Zergling, a Protoss Zealot etc.). Maybe allow co-op as well. Unfortunately you're 100% correct about the monetization aspect. If Activision couldn't monetize a game after the initial purchase, then this wouldn't get off the ground.

IMO, I think that Starcraft is in a tricky spot at the moment that I'm not sure if the current Blizzard/Activision knows what to do with the IP. I don't think that RTS' are enough of a major-money-making genre anymore for Activision to warrant investing money for a Starcraft 3 and a Starcraft game that isn't an RTS would just piss off the hardcore Starcraft fanbase. It's pretty clear that old Blizzard tried their hardest to expand the Starcraft IP with Ghost (a 3rd person console shooter - now cancelled) and then the Starcraft MMO (now cancelled and assets converted to form Overwatch) and I have yet to hear a peep about the series. Given the lackluster and critical reception that Warcraft 3 Remastered got (deservedly so), I'm not sure if Blizzard is going to do anything with the RTS genre for a while unless there's a shakeup on the company-side.

It'll be interesting to see what I'll feel about Diablo IV once Lost Ark comes out first and I play that for a while (I have my doubts that Diablo IV will come out this year given Blizzard's glacial pacing). Although they're different in that Lost Ark is a completely over-the-top anime ARPGMMO, the combat in the Technical Alpha Test felt really, REALLY good and satisfying. It also does seem like Diablo IV is forcing in MMORPG elements with random people being able to show up in your game as well as world bosses popping up (based on what I've heard).

I've been a huge Diablo-franchise fan for a long, long time but Diablo 3 (and the current state of Blizzard Activision) really does make me have my doubts about Diablo IV. Granted, Diablo 3x-Loot 2.0 did do a lot to save it but there were still bad gameplay elements from base Diablo 3 that they couldn't fix without Blizzard completely redoing the game from scratch. On the other hand, Lost Ark has been out in South Korea, Russia and Japan for 2-3 years now and has a big fanbase with people absolutely loving the game. Nonetheless, it IS a South Korean MMORPG so there's always the worry about how much forced p2w elements and forced grinding there will be in the NA/EU version (grinding is a given in an ARPG but South Korean MMOs take that to extreme levels sometimes).

I'll still insta-buy Diablo IV but hopefully it won't be a letdown. At this point, it really is the only franchise remaining from Blizzard Activision that I give a rat's ass about.

RedEye9 wrote on Jun 17, 2021, 14:48:
Windows 7 Users Might Get a Free Upgrade to Windows 11

LOLOLOL
May have to take them up on that offer. The pos laptop running 7 won't die.

Don't know if it's entirely true, but based on the rumors that my developer buddy is hearing about Windows 11, you might want to stick with 7 still. If there's any truth behind what he says, Windows 11 is going to be a giant clusterfuck that's going to piss off many users.

Looks like Turtle Rock didn't learn from their Evolve mistakes.

Mr. Tact wrote on May 29, 2021, 20:10:
Have I mentioned recently how happy I am with my decision to buy a new computer in May 2020?

Ditto. I had money to waste and all of my friends and Discord buddies were hyped for the new Nvidia RTX 3080s and 3090s as well as AMD's new upcoming CPUs. Initially I was going to hold off for the yet-to-be-announced-but-I'm-sure-it-will-be-coming-soon RTX 3080 Ti but I got lucky with an EVGA e-mail queue and that made my decision right then and there. And seeing how much of a mess it is to get new hardware now, I sure am glad as hell I got a brand new PC on a whim.