🚀 go-pugleaf

On 11/30/2016 9:16 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

> * Resident Evil 6 (new)

I rather liked the movies.  So I tried an RE game a long time ago, I 
don't remember which one, but I absolutely hated it.  It had some of the 
worst controls and angles of any game I've ever played, so never tried 
another.  I kept thinking maybe I played the wrong one, and that one was 
just bad.  It sounds like 6 wouldn't be for me either.

> * 35mm (new)
> For all that I am constantly disappointed by the genre, I keep giving
> these so-called "narrative games" another chance. That's because when
> they work, they can be very powerful experiences (if only for the
> single pl ay-through). Unfortunately, Sturgeon's Law applies and
> narrative games that "work" are far and few between.

Which ones are good?  I keep seeing these top rated on steam by 
everyone, but I worry they aren't for me, and haven't taken the plunge 
on one to see.

> Anyway, enough of my muttering. Now it's your turn:

Always a pleasure reading your reviews.  You're much more eloquent then 
I could manage.

>
> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2016?


_________________________________________
The Crew w/ Wild Run & Calling All Units
Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon
The Deadly Tower of Monsters
Downwell
Fable 3
_________________________________________

The Crew (PC/Xbox 360, continued MMO RACING).  Mostly.  Still. I bought 
and tried the xbox 360 version, which looked horrible compared to even 
the lowest settings on the PC, and was dead for online play, as the PVP 
was the part I enjoyed the most that made that version useless to me. 
Then I finally broke down and bought a new MB, CPU & Memory and it plays 
well now.

More on the Wild Run DLC:  I thought you would be able to PVP in the new 
Monster, Drag and Drift specs but you can't.  There's only single player 
skills/trials rated against other players.  I've been playing the 
Summit, and found I do actually like the FD challenge, I've been able to 
get up to level 30 on it and could've gotten higher, but it takes a lot 
of time, which I don't have in a single session, and you have to start 
over if you stop playing.

I can tell I suck as a driver as I'm usually last or near it on the 
summit PVP in which everyone has the same cars, and low fps isn't to 
blame any more with the new computer.  I don't really like the Summit 
PVP compared to the regular PVP, for the reason there's not much choice 
in races, they only give you 7, and my favorites aren't usually there. 
I usually only play it once for each 7 to try the different cars out. 
That still eats up most of my play time though.  I was starting to find 
this disheartening that I was so bad at it, I may be getting better, but 
very very slowly, It'd probably take me a year to get up to the skill of 
the average person I run across in summit PVP.

I also find that I'm next to last most of the time, but only because 
there's somebody who isn't even trying and probably just randomly 
hitting buttons so they don't get kicked and get the rewards while 
watching TV or something. I admit I kind of half-assed some races myself 
while semi-watching some music videos.  There's absolutely no penalty 
for losing in the Summit PVP, while in normal PVP you lose rank (not 
that rank seems to do anything other than put a rank next to your name 
in races and let you buy rank number stickers).

Just as a funny story in PVP from yesterday.  In a dirt race (my worst 
pvp skill, and most hated) which I was last, the next to last person was 
going off saying "I've never seen so many bad drivers!  Especially that 
brown Cherokee." - I was driving the brown Cherokee.  Lol!  I think he 
was implying I was causing him to lose somehow.  The next race on street 
he was last and I was 2nd, then he blamed his new controller.  I laughed!

----------

Calling All Units -  DLC for The Crew.  I bought it yesterday and got to 
play with it a couple hours.  I mostly got it because you have to to 
raise the level cap to 60, and if you don't you can't be competitive in 
PVP stuck at 50, not to mention the game keeps nagging you to go pick up 
your free cop car every 2 minutes, which isn't free as you have to get 
the DLC to get it.  I gave in as I've been playing this game for months, 
and there's no sub fee, and it was only $25 so I figured I play it 
enough to give back that much, and maybe they'll be something I like in 
it.

It looks like getting to 60 will be quick, I'm already 57 - all in the 
new cop missions, which look to be the way to make money/xp fast now.  I 
get $7k & 20k xp per mission, and you can do the first one really fast 
most time - probably less than 30 seconds, possibly under minute with 
overhead (pressing buttons/loading pre & post mission), especially now 
that I found out you can skip the cutscene (which you can'd do in PVP 
normally).  PVP with all the overhead was the best previously which when 
good was about $2.7k a minute on the best races, so perhaps 2-3x as 
fast.  Doing the missions over and over could get boring pretty quick, 
but I've managed to keep myself entertained by trying to do it 
faster/better score each time, and switching to dirt mission after my 
street car was maxed.  There's only a few (7?) cars that can be bought 
as cop cars, only one is new - the Jeep Wrangler.  Which is a Dirt Spec, 
which is my least favorite of all the specs, with the possible exception 
of Drift. All the cop cars are of the previously available specs, but 
are special cop cars which you have to have to do the cop missions & cop 
PVP.

I'd mention if you do get CAU don't bother to upgrade your cop cars, you 
get huge part bonuses doing the cop missions, I was getting something 
like a +64 level part each time, and had my Street cop car maxed out in 
an hour of doing that, while you normally get something like +8 doing 
skills.  I made the mistake of blowing $350k on upgrades for the circuit 
one before I realized that, and the parts were level 50 instead of 60 so 
will be useless when I get to 60.

Which brings up another point, it looks like they added a new type of 
part, which has a diamond, and gives bonuses to all of the stats, so it 
looks like there's no more having to decide between a bonus to braking, 
grip, acceleration or speed.  I've mostly (perhaps only after 50?) been 
getting diamond parts, so it looks like they won't be hard to get.  I'm 
sure that'll piss some people off who liked their secret perfect 
combination of bonuses that gave them just enough of an edge, but it 
means less grinding and a fairer playing field, I'm all for it.

The PVP part of CAU I didn't like so far.  I got invited to chase some 
guys as a cop (which it seems you are every second in free-drive), but 
It didn't seem like I had the slightest chance to catch them.  I'm not 
sure if it's again just that I suck, or it needs some re-balancing.  I 
did it before trying the missions, which is the same situation only 
against an AI, now that I've had some practice, I might be better.  I'll 
have to try it again and on the bad-guy side.  Apparently you can get 
some cars through the PVP of CAU, but I haven't looked into it yet, and 
I'm not going to try it again until I'm level 60 and maxed out on parts 
at least for my circuit cop car.

I still have a hard time believing I'm enjoying and hooked on a PVP MMO 
driving game, as I've never been much for PVP (though I did play the 
original counterstrike back in the day with a friend for a couple 
years). I gave up on MMOs after City of Heroes was killed, and usually 
avoid them because of the time suck, grind, crafting crap that I hate, 
and requirement to be online at certain times for guilds and raids 
(which is why I gave up Star Wars - Galaxy of Heroes recently, and 
that's a phone game!).  Fortunately this one has very little of any of 
that.  I've never really been into driving games either, unless you 
count GTA & Spyhunter.

But enough about The Crew, Here's the games I tried to try to wean 
myself off of it...

------------------------------

Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon (PC FPS, first play)
Hey, it was free on Uplay, so I tried it.  I didn't get very far.  The 
beginning was pretty cool, ultra-80's machismo & the main character 
complaining about the tutorial.  But after I got into the real game-play 
I found it just a bit of pretty standard FPS with really bad visual art 
that made finding enemies difficult and the controls felt sluggish.  For 
some reason I was getting really bad frame rates in this older game too. 
  All that just turned me off, and I wasn't into it enough to bother 
trying to troubleshoot all that.  I wouldn't recommend this one for more 
than $1, but for free the intro was cool enough to play for a bit.

------------------------------

Deadly Tower of Monsters (PC, indy, new)
A 50's Sci-Fi movie parody 3rd person view 
shooter/fighter/puzzle/platformer.  I don't know I'd really call this a 
platformer/puzzle game as the puzzles were so easy I never had a single 
problem with any, and there was only one spot that was even slightly 
difficult for platforming.  So mostly a 3rd person iso view 
fighter/shooter sort of Diablo-like without random loot.  It's 50's 
Sci-Fi movie parody was the best part of this game, There's a 'DVD 
commentary track' over the game which is mildly funny too.  I'd note the 
commentary is mostly while you're playing which makes it less intrusive. 
  There are cut-scenes, but they were short and infrequent enough they 
actually felt like they added to the game instead of taking away from it.

The gameplay itself was just o.k.  The 'tower' aspect is kind of 
innovative, you can jump off it to get down to certain things you can't 
otherwise get to and fall slowly looking down (low gravity?) and can see 
everything below you.  You can collect and upgrade various weapons,  I 
chose to go with the energy whip mostly for melee, which upgraded to a 
red energy whip then to a tentacle whip, and liked the taser upgraded to 
the Tessla gun best for ranged.  The energy sword (lightsaber) was 
probably the best melee weapon, but you get it last, and you have to 
spend limited resources to upgrade weapons so I didn't get to upgrade it 
by that time having spent them on previous weapons.  That was my one 
real complaint with it.  I don't think it's worth playing again to get 
the other upgrades.

It's not terribly long either, steam says I played it for 12 hours, but 
some of that I may have left it on while I was interrupted by the kids 
for this or that.  I briefly tried survival mode, but didn't find it 
enjoyable.  A bit too hard.  I can't really recommend this game, the 
gameplay being just o.k. the humor likewise, and little to no replay 
value and not terribly long.  It was a fun little distraction though and 
perhaps worth checking out if you like parodies of 50's Sci-Fi.  It was 
on sale for $5 when I got it, and I did get more than my money's worth 
for that value.

------------------------------

Downwell (8-bit (or is that 4-bit?) indy 'platformer')
$1. You jump down a well and can shoot stuff below you to collect gems. 
The difficulty is very arcade like.  I died having to start over 
probably within 10 seconds on my first try, I might have been up to a 
minute by my 3rd and last play.  Again platformer is questionable as you 
mostly jump down. The mostly black and white old Computer CRT graphics 
would probably put most people off.  I can see myself playing this for a 
few minutes while something is downloading or loading slowly off and on 
as I'd been doing with Bit blaster before.

------------------------------

Fable III (xbox 360, 3rd person RPG)
I rather enjoyed the original, so I thought I'd give this a try as it 
was in the bargain bin.  I haven't played II, and am feeling like I'm 
missing something as they keep referencing 'Your father the Hero' It's a 
bit different than the first as it's set in beginning of the industrial 
age, steampunk perhaps?

As it started off I rather liked it, I was shaking everyone's hands to 
get them to like me.  Going on quests, etc.  But it started waning after 
the first couple towns, the magic system is pretty one-dimensional, and 
combat too, I pretty much just sit in the middle of a battle raining 
lightning down on everything, and waiting for them to die.  Boring.  I 
got tired of shaking (now dancing, hugging, etc.) everyone's hands, 
feels grindy.  The quests keep sending me over the same territory, and 
teleport points 'close to your destination' are sometimes farther than 
you at your original location, or other teleport points in another city 
next to the exit.  Everything respawns all the time, so I keep having to 
fight my way through the same monsters over and over.  It looks like 
some of the quests require online multi-player too, which I really don't 
want to get into with this game.

There's been some high points, I especially liked the garden gnome quest 
line - at least to begin with until it turned into a collection quest 
(find the 50 gnomes in the world).  I would also complain about constant 
loading and times, but the loading screens have a bunch of funny posters 
to keep you entertained.  I may try switching to melee/ranged instead of 
spells to make it more interesting and quit the 'make friends' aspect of 
the game for the moment and see how it goes down the main story path.  I 
think The Crew has me for the moment, but when that wanes this will be 
at the top of the list to pick up again.

------------------------------

I wish I'd bought a couple more games on the black friday steam sale, I 
saw Dark Souls 2 & 3, & Tales from the Borderlands, but held off. I 
almost bought one, then decided to yesterday to do so, but the sale was 
off, and couldn't bring myself to do it at full price, and bought that 
Crew DLC instead.

- Justisaur