User comment history
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| News Comments > Morning Consolidation |
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| 1. |
Re: Morning Consolidation |
Jun 19, 2017, 21:19 |
MisterBenn |
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It's amazing how much virtual reality has progressed. I never used to think it would happen, but now I can slip on a headset and experience in stunning accuracy the year 2011 when I last cared about Skyrim. What an age we live in!  |
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| News Comments > The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ Next Month |
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| 4. |
Re: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ Next Month |
Dec 10, 2016, 12:17 |
MisterBenn |
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| Currently I'm on a Grim Dawn and Rocket League-related break from this game, but I'll be straight on this when it comes out. It takes a bit of effort to get past the snes cartoon graphics and the fighting against poop monsters (and I'd hate to be caught playing it by a fellow adult) but underneath that there is a game with a rock solid design, huge variety and longevity. The way you interact with the levels, improvising with your items and abilities to get things done is amazing, and I haven't seen that kind of thing rivalled in another roguelike. The mod tools, and monthly integration of the community's best efforts into the official game should really assure that the game is not done for a long time yet. |
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| News Comments > The Elder Scrolls: Legends Beta Begins |
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| 1. |
Re: The Elder Scrolls: Legends Beta Begins |
Aug 4, 2016, 19:21 |
MisterBenn |
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This is possibly still easy to get into, I signed up 9 days ago and got an invite 5 days later. There was a "agree to marketing for an increased chance of an invite" option that I also didn't take.
In general I've been looking for something to fill the Duels of the Planeswalkers hole since they screwed up the formula of that. (And I'm closer to being an Elder Scrolls fanboy than a Blizzard one.) Mostly interested in this because of the solo arena mode, you can draft and run versus AI opponents at your own speed, and don't have to commit the time to stay competitive versus a public community meta. Much more my pace! |
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| News Comments > etc. |
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| 16. |
Re: etc. |
May 22, 2016, 12:09 |
MisterBenn |
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| My guess is they're sitting on HL3 so it can be the honey pot, if they make a major play into a new market in future. |
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| News Comments > Stellaris Sales Record |
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| 12. |
Re: Stellaris Sales Record |
May 10, 2016, 12:30 |
MisterBenn |
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I smirked at seeing:
IGN: 6.3
IGN Italy: 9.3!
To me it's a solid 8 at the moment. Does a lot of things right and plays well out of the box, but has some gameplay issues to work out and has some official and user content to fill in yet. I expect it's got an excellent future ahead of it though, presentation + accessibility + simulation depth + unscripted + mods is a killer combination. |
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| News Comments > Steam Top 10 |
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| 11. |
Re: Steam Top 10 |
May 8, 2016, 22:43 |
MisterBenn |
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I'm probably up to about 25 hours of Stellaris footage watched at this point! I watched the weekly Paradox Blorg streams, the 22 player 2 day press event they did, Quill and Das's series and also about 4 hours of Quill's space dwarves saturday stream this weekend.
Quill definitely likes the game, he played for 10 hours before starting his youtube series, and made about 8 episodes before heading out to that press event. He said on Saturday's stream that facing the day of travel he had a hit of anxiety that he wouldn't be able to get his fix! Having returned he's made 4 more episodes and did that 6 hour stream - he's clearly on a Stellaris high currently.
Having seen what I have I am still dying to get my hands on it tomorrow. Here's my snap judgement on what I've seen. (Bear in mind I haven't seen late game yet).
+ Overall level of finish and polish is excellent.
+ Accessibility is very good, no worse than any other space 4x to get started.
+ Tooltips everywhere explaining game mechanics, up to the same standard as the Civilization games.
+ Smart gameplay design decisions all over the place and really good streamlining.
+ Stable and smooth engine, and presentation is really good. Space objects look awesome up close and free camera can really capture some good scenes.
+ Some space 4x feel lacking in character or at worse a bit like a lightly dressed up spreadsheet, Stellaris is a lot warmer than than and has a bunch of character.
+ Races can be one of three kinds of FTL (warp, starlane or wormhole) which brings an interesting dimension to fighting wars across FTL types.
+ Lots of mod support. Content and mechanics are available to fuck with. Whatever sci-fi universe that you are thinking of WILL get made by someone.
+ Strategic / Political AI is really good. AI feels active plays up to the wildly different government / ethic types very well.
+ Netcode is good, only a couple of drops in the 22 player press event, and they hot rejoined.
+ Paradox's credentials for support are very good.
- Ship combat will be too simple for some people. It's more strategic than tactical. It's more doing your homework on your opponent and countering their ship designs, which makes a really big difference to your success because of how much some components counter others.
- A question mark over the tactical AI. It can definitely build up, attack and invade but I've seen some silliness like continuously sending single ships to lose versus your fleet when you invade.
- Maybe the sector system makes you hand over too many planets for governor control?
- Alliances work fine but I can't imagine ever wanting to join a federation the way it's designed now (rotating 10 year president, president conducts foreign policy like war / peace declaration, inviting new members - without vote or approval from other members).
- It's clear that Stellaris is at the start of its life cycle and will get some major DLC and new features over the next couple of years. I definitely want more federation configurability, there's currently no espionage system and so on. It feels a little like when Civ 5 dropped and the DLCs hadn't been released yet (although this doesn't feel as feature-light as Civ 5 did on launch).
If like me you are dying for new Space 4x and just waiting for confirmation that it doesn't suck before buying in, I'd say it's good enough to have a fuck load of fun in right now. If you're interested but not with the same degree of urgency, there's no problem chilling for a while. It's only going to improve as patches / DLC / user mods get piled on - there's no rush. |
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| News Comments > Stellaris Preorders |
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| 2. |
Re: Stellaris Preorders |
Apr 14, 2016, 20:34 |
MisterBenn |
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| I ordered, it's one of my favourite genres and I've seen enough of the game that I know I want in on day one. Also through a triumph of planning I am unemployed going into release day so I'll be able to report on a decent session even though it'll be a Monday! |
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| News Comments > Into the Black |
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| 2. |
Re: Into the Black |
Apr 13, 2016, 23:42 |
MisterBenn |
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| I had 5 games get a 0 byte update. They all completed within a few seconds. Since my speed here is about 3 Mbps there must have been very little data in my case. |
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| News Comments > Stellaris Trailer |
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| 3. |
Re: Stellaris Trailer |
Apr 8, 2016, 20:22 |
MisterBenn |
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This developer diary video's a bit generic but the devs play a couple of hours of the game live on Twitch every Thursday. They are about 10 hours in with their current game.
https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/profile
I've watched all of it, they are still finding low impact bugs as they play (they use nightly builds on stream) but my overall impression is that the game is already in good shape, very intelligently designed and looks fun to play. I suspect it might not suck much at all and I'm in as soon as it launches. |
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| News Comments > Morning Interviews |
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| 1. |
Re: Morning Interviews |
Mar 31, 2016, 12:25 |
MisterBenn |
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I didn't know Stellaris existed a week ago and I'm already at maximum hype! Paradox have a developer play-through on YouTube too which has several hours of gameplay, as space 4x games go I am seriously impressed so far. Paradox are going on all on this one, it's getting the full grand strategy treatment and the sophistication I've seen in the game design and mechanics so far is really impressive. They've put a lot of effort into the visuals and sound, and the interface is clean and a lot more accessible than I expected. It shouldn't perhaps be a big deal, but I also approve that it's weeks until release and the game is complete, stable, polished and optimised enough that they are happy to demonstrate hours of it live on Twitch.
Space 4x is perhaps becoming a little more in vogue again (Polaris Sector, Stardrive 2 Sector Zero, Master of Orion etc.) but to me Stellaris is the only title trying to bring significant changes to the traditional formula. With the production values I've seen and credentials of Paradox, I think this one is comfortably the most enticing title emerging. |
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| News Comments > Morning Patches |
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| 8. |
Re: Morning Patches |
Feb 23, 2016, 14:44 |
MisterBenn |
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jacobvandy wrote on Feb 23, 2016, 14:26:
The Demolitionist (class you're most likely to use a rifle with) is all about explosions and fire, the most AOE heavy class there is. You can augment your auto-attack to explode with about a 10 meter radius, which eventually gets strong enough to kill trash in one or two hits, and by then you're doing 2+ attacks per second... You almost don't even need to use the thrown weapons at that point, but you still do, because it looks awesome. 
Yeah that one was a failed theorycraft, I tried to improvise a build 5 hours in and it didn't really work. I was trying for a chaos damage build using Occultist + Soldier based around Sigil of Consumption for AoE, Cadence for single target, and Solael's Witchfire for chaos damage conversion. It was always going to be a late bloomer, but the Sigil didn't have enough stopping power and the lack of AoE was too much as you mentioned. It was good for learning but it hit the cutting room floor. |
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| News Comments > Morning Patches |
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| 4. |
Re: Morning Patches |
Feb 23, 2016, 12:42 |
MisterBenn |
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After watching ZiggyD stream some, I bought in to Grim Dawn this week. It's a really solid ARPG! After Path of Exile it's a nice change of pace to play something without a network connection, and with drop rates that aren't balanced around a community that plays several hours every day.
There's also more theorycrafting than I expected. After the freeformness of PoE I couldn't play Torchlight 2 any more, building a character just felt like selecting a build created by someone else. There's more to decide here, between blending two classes and being able to select all sorts of trigger skills from constellations and items, you can really customise your character and gameplay a lot.
There is a solid, decently polished feel overall, but the production values are a bit lower than AAA as you might suspect from a small indie team. A bit of the old Titan Quest still shines through as you might expect, although that's not necessarily a problem for fans of the genre and I quite like the reminiscent feel.
The combat's a little on the uneven side, some skills feel great and some I've found to be a bit underwhelming. I didn't find a melee setup that really caught my eye yet, I started making a dual wield blademaster but it was a bit too "autoattack + bonus procs" so I rerolled. My second build was a rifleman with a pet, that was better but rifles I discovered, have almost no AoE capability. Now I am rolling an Arcanist caster and this one feels great so far!
Edit: I forgot to mention, the itemisation is great. The affix system is very clear, and gives you a decent chance to drop or craft the items that you need. I've found so far that while levelling, the item hunt feels really good. The crafting is also excellent, there are zone specific crafting materials to find and blueprints drop that will let you craft rare and unique items, or some of the limited resources like potions that let you boost your crit or block rate.
This comment was edited on Feb 23, 2016, 12:54. |
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| News Comments > Planar Conquest Announced |
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| 2. |
Re: Planar Conquest Announced |
Feb 7, 2016, 13:05 |
MisterBenn |
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I am checking out Thea now, looks to have a lot of potential so far, I like that the scale of distance and time are shorter than most fantasy 4x games.
Cutter I take it you tried out Age of Wonders 3? Warlock, Fallen Enchantress and Eador all left me cold too but AoW3 is MUCH better in the same vein. |
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| News Comments > New Brutal Doom |
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| 14. |
Re: New Brutal Doom |
Jan 3, 2016, 12:55 |
MisterBenn |
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What an amazing surprise this was! I finally downloaded this mod based on the level pack this release, and it is shit loads of fun. I'm 9 levels in so far and the map design and polish is fantastic throughout. There's some variation in locations versus the original in chapter one, but most is bang on what you would expect and overall the feel is incredibly faithful while being brand new to play.
They have some tweaks to the weapons, gun play and physics which are an excellent mid point between feeling like a modern shooter and retaining the original way things worked. The map pack is put together with a lot of love, the secret hunting is really faithful to the original, level 7 is an arena fight like Dead Simple was, you get the idea. Some of the ambushes are pretty evil! I had to concede that my hands are 40 years old now and I was going to enjoy it more setting it down to Hurt Me Plenty.
It plays really well out of the "box", but here are the settings I've found useful:
Brutal Doom Options -> Set Blood Amount down to Realistic. The default is more gore than that, and once things get busy it gets a bit much, it's tough to see through the piles of dead bodies and all the walls are red!
Automap Options -> Set Map Colour Set to Traditional Strife. This colours doors requiring keys on the minimap so you can find them quickly when you are backtracking.
Hud Options -> Message Options -> Set Scale Text in High Res to On. You can actually read messages from the game now if you playing in your native resolution!
Display Options -> OpenGL Options -> Texture Options -> Here are your options for smoothing the sprites, they make a big difference and are basically free on my 3 year old hardware. I have mine set to Texture Filter Mode = Trilinear, Anisotropic = 16x, HQ Resize Mode = Scale3x. That was the best mix of appearance and keeping max frames when things are really hectic.
I've only a couple of tiny negative comments - there's a performance problem in map 8 on my system: there are a couple of rooms filled with bad guys and racks of barrels up all the walls to kill them, the chain reaction in there brought me to 10-20 fps for 30 seconds. Otherwise I'm maxed all the time. Secondly, when you get hit by Mancubus fire the entire screen is basically a flame effect, so once you take a hit you are blinded and take like 5 more hits!
What a blast it is though. There's some nostalgia in there of course, but the action is rock solid and it's just fun to play in its own right. I really love single player FPS games with an engine that allows for huge swarms of bad guys coming at you. Too many modern shooters prioritise packing extra detail on to enemies but only have you fight up to say 5 at once. It's a fairly common mistake! |
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| News Comments > The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth Released |
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| 5. |
Re: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth Released |
Oct 30, 2015, 23:54 |
MisterBenn |
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As you win some runs, you generally unlock new items to find in future, but in general you always start from scratch at the start of a run. Items aren't persistent, but runs generally last 45 minutes, or 25-30 if you are an expert or don't get all the way.
The basic strategy to get rolling is not obvious, you have to hunt down items to get a decent source of damage going. These normally come from:
1) The Item Room (one per floor for the first several floors, has a gold doorway, needs a key after the first level)
2) Shop items (the good items cost 15 coins, early floors always have a shop and it will need a key).
3) Boss items (kill the boss and generally get more health, a damage increase or a familiar).
4) Devil / Angel items. If you kill the boss of a floor and you haven't taken damage to your red hearts, you have a good chance of getting an extra door (with devil or angel symbol above it) open with some deals inside. These generally involve trading away maximum health for a mix of really good items. Taking no hits at all on a floor is pretty tricky, but if you find some spirit or demon hearts (the blue and black ones) then damage will come off of those first and your red hearts will be protected.
That's the main framework of the game. Getting and combining those items into weird synergies is where a lot of the game's fun comes from. |
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| News Comments > The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth Released |
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Re: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth Released |
Oct 30, 2015, 21:11 |
MisterBenn |
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I was still hooked on this game before the DLC came out! The presentation is kind of childish at first glance but the warped biblical theme gives the game a definite unique style, with a good sense of humour packed in as well.
Even before the DLC, it was the most replayable roguelite that I've played. The way the random levels present you with ways to solve puzzles to get extra value out of your items is genius, and stops the levels getting boring because you're always looking out for tricks to get more drops.
I also like the way the game allows you to get genuinely overpowered when things go right. So many games make you grind for the good items these days, but Isaac understands that it has short runs and lets you feel good about yourself when an amazing combination of items comes together. You are also not protected from the RNG fucking you sometimes, and have to improvise and make the best of a bad situation, a bit like poker. It's one of those great pick up game for 30-60 minutes, and it makes a good couch coop game too. |
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| News Comments > 9M Played Star Wars Battlefront Beta |
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| 63. |
Re: 9M Played Star Wars Battlefront Beta |
Oct 13, 2015, 20:28 |
MisterBenn |
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| Random thought: It occurred to me today that this game will let you play Darth Vader and defeat Luke Skywalker - and if you teabag him and tell him you fucked his mother, for once it will actually be true! |
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| News Comments > Out of the Blue |
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| 23. |
Re: Out of the Blue |
Sep 15, 2015, 23:01 |
MisterBenn |
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The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth DLC opened for preorder today, release date is 30th October and it's 40% discounted until the day of release I think. Isaac's art style is so simplistic it's a bit off-putting, but it has a unique setting and is the most replayable modern reoguelike I've played by a country mile.
Incidentally are you guys aware of the VDC mod for Master of Orion 2? I don't recall seeing it discussed here. I know how much admiration and recognition that the Vampire: Masquerade mod gets for superhuman commitment... I don't know who the VDC guys are but their balance / overhaul mod for MOO2 is still in active development to this day too. I recently got it set up again on a 10 year old laptop now running linux and it has dated amazingly well.
This comment was edited on Sep 15, 2015, 23:08. |
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316 Comments. 16 pages. Viewing page 1.
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