New Testingstan

Losonti Tokash wrote:

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:I really feel that Taipei is the best starting point for Alpha Protocol.

i agree, for two reasons

1) your flight out of saudi arabia is where you meet scarlet, which to me says you're headed to taiwan anyway
2) omen deng's cape is hella cool

Where is my like button.

If you take on Moscow last then the last fight in the body of the game is against Brayko

And I mean if you specialised in martial arts that fight rules

Shamefully enough, I'm all about goddamn minecraft these days.

What can I say ? I fucking love sandbox games, and two third of the fun come from goofing off with the server's peeps on teamspeak while playing.

Gands wrote:I got bogged down in AP after I had to fight some PCPd up Russian dude and he cleaned my clock.

Yeah. Me Too.

Didn't really enjoy playing it a first. Sort of got into the swing of things by the end of the first area, then got went to Russia got to the boss and stone walled. Not played it since.

I am a bad gamer.

You could always just fly to another part of the world.

Yeah, lol. Some told me that last time we discussed it. Hadn't relaised you could move at any time.

Regardless though, I don't have access to the game or my ps3 at the moment since they didn't make the move to my lodgings for my work placement.

So what i have been playing mainly is angry birds.

What's the word on XCOM: Enemy Unknown? I really liked the premise of the original, having to keep your elite team alive and sleep with the UN for funds, but the execution was a little weird.

Finished Dark Souls some time ago. Bought it at release, but for some reason didn't play it very far for a long time. Maybe because it's kinda challenging at first. Anyway, once I got into it properly, it was eleven shades of awesome. The difficulty is just right, the game mechanics are good, and the art and music are downright lovely.

Oxymoron wrote:Shamefully enough, I'm all about goddamn minecraft these days.

What can I say ? I fucking love sandbox games, and two third of the fun come from goofing off with the server's peeps on teamspeak while playing.

Yessss, Minecraft is good too. I oughta figure out how to mod it.

I recommend Technic Pack/Tekkit if you're into mods, though it is significantly slower than the more recent vanilla builds.

I got bogged down right before the Moscow boss. Specifically the escort mission. The guy had no sense of self-preservation, and I had already completed Taipei and Rome so there wasn't anywhere else for me to go.

Seriously, just hide in a cupboard and wait for me to clear the way for you.

escort mission?
do you mean the embassy thing?

I found all this stuff easy, probably because sneaking + pistols are way overpowered

I'm doing RE6 but its so frustrating that I'm thinking of trading it for XCOM.

RyanThunder wrote:

Oxymoron wrote:Shamefully enough, I'm all about goddamn minecraft these days.

What can I say ? I fucking love sandbox games, and two third of the fun come from goofing off with the server's peeps on teamspeak while playing.

Yessss, Minecraft is good too. I oughta figure out how to mod it.

I recommend Technic Pack/Tekkit if you're into mods, though it is significantly slower than the more recent vanilla builds.

Way ahead of you on that one, though the Technic Pack is Evil, for a number of reason I'm not going to get into. Once it gets released, you should use the Feed The Beast modpack instead ; as contrary to Tekkit/Technic, it has been made with the full consent and cooperation of all the modmakers, with their active support when bugs occur - be in with their mod or in the interaction between their mod and someone else's.

Also, it's probably going to be less of a resource-hog.

Crazedwraith wrote:Yeah, lol. Some told me that last time we discussed it. Hadn't relaised you could move at any time.

Regardless though, I don't have access to the game or my ps3 at the moment since they didn't make the move to my lodgings for my work placement.

So what i have been playing mainly is angry birds.

I love Angry Birds. The narrative is complex and the characters are engaging. They also took some daring challenges with the gameplay and I daresay it worked out well for them.

I honestly did not see the many twists and turns in the plot coming, and for once they felt natural and organic rather than some hackneyed HERE'S A PLOT TWIST LOL but instead flowed quite naturally from the beginning. I've really achieved a deeper appreciation of the excellent storytelling after a second playthrough.

10/10 GOTY

So I have like no money so i'm restricted to buying games used when they've dropped a couple bucks in price. Yesterday I picked up Ghost Recon Future Soldier and Borderlands.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=t1Zc2oxijVY

Aside from the amazing Stark bait at the start of that trailer, that looks like a cool title. Love some of the graphical/design flourishes - having the walkthrough of the ship/scramble sequences is neat. But honestly? It's been a long time since Freespace 2/Starlancer. And the Diaspora mod is good, but obtuse as hell (kinda like I've Found Her was a neat idea with poor execution).

If this is a return to the classic WW2 dogfights in asteroid fields then yes please.

weemadando wrote:If this is a return to the classic WW2 dogfights in asteroid fields then yes please.

^^ this

Also private servers FTW. Wonder if you could do full on campaigns on one...

The new enemy faction for the ME3 coops is actually pretty fun to fight. They have a lot of controlly powers to hinder the team.

Also, the game is a lot harder now. They removed shield and health gates to 'fix' the vanguard, so now everyone dies a hell of a lot faster.

What are health and shield gates?

It's a metaphorical 'gate' on damage that can be taken on any given shot. In gameplay, the effect is... let's say you eat a 2000 damage rocket to the face, but you only have 500 hp and 1000 shields.

With the Shield Gate active, what happens is that your shields are totally depleted, but you take no damage to health from that single attack. Your shields 'pop', effectively, and eat the entire attack, and you get some breathing room to duck for cover or whatever. If someone else shoots you, or a second rocket comes in before your shield has come back, you will get trashed as expected.

The Health Gate is a little more complicated, but works on a similar principle. When you take a bunch of HP damage, for a short time your health bar 'pops' and you're left with angry flashing empty bars, and there is a threshold of damage you can take while being at basically 1HP that just doesn't kill you, while you run for cover.

Both of these things in concert give you a lot of kinetic, 'oh shit oh shit' frenetic sprinting to save your own hide, or gives you a chance to maybe make a tactical decision before faceplanting. Removing them means that's basically gone, and whether or not anyone was aware of what effect this had on their gameplay, their performance is definitely affected.

Incidentally, the Shield Gate is also on Enemies, though it scales differently for them. It's the reason why Big Ass Sniper Rifles can't one-shot a lot of Shielded enemies on gold and platinum.

five games i'm playing these days:

- kerbal space program
- doom multiplayer (zandronum port)
- space empires 4
- legend of the red dragon, YOSPOS style
- internet syyyyysoooop virtual sysop


last two courtesy of the yospos synchronet BBS

Picked up Dishonored. About an hour in, and so far so good.

Oxymoron wrote:Way ahead of you on that one, though the Technic Pack is Evil, for a number of reason I'm not going to get into. Once it gets released, you should use the Feed The Beast modpack instead ; as contrary to Tekkit/Technic, it has been made with the full consent and cooperation of all the modmakers, with their active support when bugs occur - be in with their mod or in the interaction between their mod and someone else's.

Also, it's probably going to be less of a resource-hog.

I did not know that. Thanks.

Ah, I was wrong. Health and shields gates were not removed, there is just a bug hidden somewhere. Surprise.

Dishonored is pretty damn good. Gives you a broad scope of choices - not just "murder v stealth" but a variety of ways to accomplish either of those.

Plus the art in that game is so nice, stylised and the textures look "painted". It serves a purpose of hiding some lost fidelity as they want bigger levels, but it works so well.

joviwan wrote:It's awful. They have a bunch of great things and then tie them together poorly.

gearbox.txt right here