The Bill's Now Playing Video Game Thread (Now with Bames)

[Spooky Apparition]

so I got all four endings in F4 and am pretty shocked at how similar/unsatisfying they are, but ultimately they're not that much different than the full game. I did 40 of the 44 side quests as well (the infinite and pointless radiant quests aren't part of that; the 44 are fully scripted/unique ones) and all but 2 or 3 of them could only end with me killing someone. I reloaded at least a dozen of them and they ended basically the same every time. there's very little actual roleplaying in F4. even the end of the main story only really branches out in the last few missions of each respective faction, and those branches are all black/white without a true neutral option (the Minutemen are always on your side no matter what you do unless you really fuck up, which I don't think counts as a neutral path through the game). the lack of level cap/fast leveling even lets you boost any stat up to 10 with ease, so there's no reason to play as a specific build either. you could have half of the attributes in the game at 10 within 20-30 hours pretty easily.

in the F4 thread people were like "but Fallout is just about shooting stuff," which is kind of a ridiculous argument for a game with thousands of lines of recorded dialogue, hundreds of NPCs and quests, different factions, etc. the scale of the world, and how colorful the world is compared to F3/NV, kept me interested enough to keep playing, but F4 is a pretty huge disappointment overall.

[delmuerte]

I did the Railroad ending because fuck the Brotherhood.. Truthfully, none of the endings really seemed like they were gonna be that cool.

I have to know though, what was the big revelation about one of the companions in the Brotherhood ending??

so I got all four endings in F4 and am pretty shocked at how similar/unsatisfying they are, but ultimately they're not that much different than the full game. I did 40 of the 44 side quests as well (the infinite and pointless radiant quests aren't part of that; the 44 are fully scripted/unique ones) and all but 2 or 3 of them could only end with me killing someone. I reloaded at least a dozen of them and they ended basically the same every time. there's very little actual roleplaying in F4. even the end of the main story only really branches out in the last few missions of each respective faction, and those branches are all black/white without a true neutral option (the Minutemen are always on your side no matter what you do unless you really fuck up, which I don't think counts as a neutral path through the game). the lack of level cap/fast leveling even lets you boost any stat up to 10 with ease, so there's no reason to play as a specific build either. you could have half of the attributes in the game at 10 within 20-30 hours pretty easily.

in the F4 thread people were like "but Fallout is just about shooting stuff," which is kind of a ridiculous argument for a game with thousands of lines of recorded dialogue, hundreds of NPCs and quests, different factions, etc. the scale of the world, and how colorful the world is compared to F3/NV, kept me interested enough to keep playing, but F4 is a pretty huge disappointment overall.

[Spooky Apparition]

the brotherhood relevation is probably...

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

that Paladin Danse is a synth. I never used him as a companion or even really talked to him so it sorta didn't matter to me, but I guess if he was your favorite companion it would have been a big moment. you can choose to kill him or convince Maxson to let him go and then he can still be available as a companion

[hyperviolence]

so I got all four endings in F4 and am pretty shocked at how similar/unsatisfying they are, but ultimately they're not that much different than the full game. I did 40 of the 44 side quests as well (the infinite and pointless radiant quests aren't part of that; the 44 are fully scripted/unique ones) and all but 2 or 3 of them could only end with me killing someone. I reloaded at least a dozen of them and they ended basically the same every time. there's very little actual roleplaying in F4. even the end of the main story only really branches out in the last few missions of each respective faction, and those branches are all black/white without a true neutral option (the Minutemen are always on your side no matter what you do unless you really fuck up, which I don't think counts as a neutral path through the game). the lack of level cap/fast leveling even lets you boost any stat up to 10 with ease, so there's no reason to play as a specific build either. you could have half of the attributes in the game at 10 within 20-30 hours pretty easily.

in the F4 thread people were like "but Fallout is just about shooting stuff," which is kind of a ridiculous argument for a game with thousands of lines of recorded dialogue, hundreds of NPCs and quests, different factions, etc. the scale of the world, and how colorful the world is compared to F3/NV, kept me interested enough to keep playing, but F4 is a pretty huge disappointment overall.

agree 100%. what a letdown. makes me very nervous for the next elder scrolls.

truthfully i didnt even really enjoy exploring the world that much. oh, it's another super mutant base, cool. could be nostalgia but i remember almost all of fo3's locations being somewhat interesting and having backstories behind them that you could piece together by finding holotapes and what not. there was a few places that had that in fo4 but they were few and far between

i got a really bad feeling early when i completed the quest in salem. such a cool setup...

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

and then 3 minutes later it's fucking over

[Spooky Apparition]

hahah yeah the museum of witchcraft quest was a big letdown for me too, and kinda indicative of how most of the quests go. i actually put off going there for a while because i thought it was gonna be really cool based on the name and wanted to save it for later, but it was a massive letdown. there are a lot of areas like that. the combat zone... aside from getting a new companion, that area was totally useless. they could have had betting, a playable fighting arena, etc... nope, nothing. you walk in and everyone starts shooting at you right away, which happens so much in the game.

and i agree that there were a lot more underdeveloped areas in F4 compared to 3/NV. i still have chunks of the world I haven't explored, but i've already done most of the sidequests so i know it'll just be shooting the same mutants for another 20 hours.

[delmuerte]

I think there were a lot of cool locations to discover, but yeah...their stories didn't necessarily pan out into anything cool. There was a lot of places like the Museum of Witchcraft that were kind of a waste of an awesome location. I do think they actually DID do a lot of that shit where they kinda filled in a story with holotapes and terminals, though. There were a lot of those stories, but it wasn't like they affected your version of the world at all.

I did notice that there wasn't much in the world you could do to irreparably fuck things up with one faction or another aside from the obvious. The stakes were a lot lower in this one. I liked it, but hoping that the DLC adds something to canon instead of just more shooting.

[Spooky Apparition]

yeah i'm still interested in DLC regardless of my problems with the game. it's usually a lot more dense than the normal game, so it could still be cool.

guess i could just bump the F4 thread, but the high points of the game for me were the whole Silver Shroud questline (choosing "speak as silver shroud" was fun) and the Last Voyage of the USS Constitution, I think it was called. that one actually had very different endings, which was cool.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

if you help the robot ship captain, the ship takes off and then immediately crashes on top of Trinity Tower, or one of the tall buildings anyway. you can later get to the ship and the captain is totally happy about how everything turned out

[The Bill]

Week in Review:

Week started with an ill omen in the air. My HDTV started doing this weird clicking on and off when I'd turn it on. Each time, it took longer for it to settle down.

Played an alright amount of Elder Scrolls Online. It's pretty much an Elder Scrolls side mission generator. Once I was past the new game smell of things it's shallowness started showing. It makes for the perfect I'm drunk or with out focus, so lets play this thing. One man's Tetris or Pac-Man is The Bill's Elder Scrolls.

Got Grand Theft Auto V up and working with the XBOX 1 controller and Win 10. Was just going to make sure it was working and then wasted a night just driving down a highway in the country side causing much chaos and ill will.

Then I became obsessed with Ambient Occlusion. Probably because I only found out what the hell it was. So, I forced it on (on the nVidia global setting) and it did absolutely nothing. I also ran a lot of new titles to make sure I had it turned on in options... and they were already on. Along the way, I put on Call of Duty Black Ops 3. Now I had never finished it because it's boring and very frustrating. I easily died more times in a few hours of that vs my entire Dark Souls run. I noticed that since November my saves had disappeared (good job, guys) but now the single player game remixed into a zombie game (not to be confused with the normal zombie defense style game) called Nightmare was unlocked. So, I played that, and I like it. These aren't dopey Nike Air Max running zombies and their extreme mutant cartoon Left 4 Dead special powers cousins. These are some old school slow ass but evil as fuck feeling Italian horror movie zombies. So far.

I turned on Tomb Raider 2013, and saw that a lot of graphic options were greyed out and it didn't look too much better than the 360 version. Had to uninstall SweetFX, and now all the options are cranked to the Ultra max and it looks better than it did when I first installed it last year. But if you want to talk looks Rise of the Tomb Raider... GODDAMN!!!



Now I know I'm falling down to 30fps sometimes with this cranked all the way up, but I don't care. No way I'm giving up this eye sex. That being said, I decided to do the logical thing and listen to the advice of a 6 year old and replay the first new Tomb Raider again first. I don't remember how this came about, but I agreed and so that's what I did last night. Still love that fucking game. Love it so much I decided to sneak down stairs at one in the morning to play a little more, and that brings us back to my first part of the post. HDTV fucking dead as a door nail. I fussed and feuded with it till 2:30, and that's when I had to admit it flat-lined. Then I took it apart off the mount by myself with my busted wrist. I'm quite happy about all this. I do have my ancient monitor I was using from the Windows 98 days up in my attic, but it's buried under a ton of shit and who knows if it still works. I might Jerry-rig an ugly setup till I get a new TV, but what a shit show that's going to be. I was pretty bummed about the TV situation. It was giving me the insomnia. I really, really wanted a Friday game day today on top of all this frustration. Then I voice said "Hey!" to me, at 4 in the morning, and I was able to fall asleep finally.



God bless you, Wii U. You are my favorite console of all time at this present moment in time.

[Wang Mandu]

Played The Division beta for a bit this weekend. It's decent, looks really pretty on PC and I like the loot. But, they haven't said anything about the end game so right now I'll pass at $60.

[Eight Bit Alien]

Shovel Knight beat my ass pretty good this past week. Finally beat it, serious challenge - the mechanics are definitely fair, but goddamn they didn't spoonfeed the game to you.

The Plague Knight expansion is incredibly fun, too - very difficult to control, hard to even figure out what they want me to do sometimes.

Soundtrack floored me - it's very true to the NES, the guy who wrote it claims that it's written entirely under the constraints of the original system. Very impressive.

[Wang Mandu]

Xcom 2 mod tools available to the public.

[The Bill]

Xcom 2 mod tools available to the public.

Cool! Now if some one would turn it into a real time shooter, I'd play it.


I did not play the Wii U Friday. Instead, I found and carried my old PC monitor from the attic to the basement. On top from the great pain of lifting anything in my wrist/forearm, this thing weighs a ton. Modern TV's that are quadruple the size of this thing are significantly lighter. So, I tore up the Batcave, and created a bootleg game station. Tomb Raider (2013) looked damn good, and it was interesting playing on something with a higher refresh rate than the dead HDTV. Next day, I went TV shopping with the Mrs. I had a plan to select from certain models I researched, but the Mrs. wanted to try shopping at BJ's/Cosco first to get something cheaper. Once there, she saw IT. Now, she normally doesn't give two shits about electronics, but if something makes her want it, kind of have to get it. 4K Curved Samsung. I was worried about the curve, I knew the TV does not do 3D (not like I care about that, though), and it would not have a higher PC refresh rate like Sony TVs do. Fucker weighs a ton as well, no rest for my wrist. But in the end this thing is goddamn beautiful.

I really feel like I'm seeing some of these games for the first time again. I tested out the PC, and the Wii U. It' great. And now I can watch the HD Netflix and Amazon... but that's not relevant to this thread. TV also does a surround sound Bluetooth headphone thing, so no more wires all over the place or switching whatnot when going to different machines. This makes me extremely happy. Elated even. I'm probably going to invest big bucks into noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones. I hear the new Beats are excellent and they stopped that over baring hip-hop bass horseshit. I did try out PC gaming at 4K. Dishonored, and Riddick. Both looked a little sharper, but took major hits to the frames per second. I could play this way, but when up close to something like an enemy character model the game goes full retard, and it's just not an enjoyable situation. I also tried 4K with Brutal Doom and Unreal Gold, didn't look any different to me. Maybe Unreal was slightly sharper, maybe, but the HUD was shrunk to nothing. So, yeah, if anyone is running around in a tizzy needing 4K gaming you aren't missing anything. I've watched 4K Youtube content on this thing, and yes, it is very impressive. But I have to say, gaming at the present, it's more of a bragging thing than an image quality thing.

[FVBTVS]

Xcom 2 mod tools available to the public.

Cool! Now if some one would turn it into a real time shooter, I'd play it.

[The Bill]

Xcom 2 mod tools available to the public.

Cool! Now if some one would turn it into a real time shooter, I'd play it.

I will not nor never apologize for my utter disdain towards turn based video games. If I wanted to play that kind of thing I'd play Dungeons and Dragons with Geoff and his horse killing DM. There, at least I have a lot more freedom.

[Wang Mandu]

Xcom 2 mod tools available to the public.

Cool! Now if some one would turn it into a real time shooter, I'd play it.

They did and it bombed

Don't buy Beats man, those are shit quality headphones for assholes who don't know any better . Get some Sennheiser or Beyer Dynamics headphones.

[The Bill]

Xcom 2 mod tools available to the public.

Cool! Now if some one would turn it into a real time shooter, I'd play it.

They did and it bombed

Don't buy Beats man, those are shit quality headphones for assholes who don't know any better . Get some Sennheiser or Beyer Dynamics headphones.

Yeah. I know all about Beat's history, and I'd never touch the things if music was my concern. I've got several other bad boys for music including Sennheiser. As far as wireless Bluetooth, noise cancelling, battery life, and game/movie headphones the new Studio v2 are actually perfect for my needs. Already bought them and tested them at work. I chose wisely.

[The Bill]

I did try out PC gaming at 4K. Dishonored, and Riddick. Both looked a little sharper, but took major hits to the frames per second. I could play this way, but when up close to something like an enemy character model the game goes full retard, and it's just not an enjoyable situation. I also tried 4K with Brutal Doom and Unreal Gold, didn't look any different to me. Maybe Unreal was slightly sharper, maybe, but the HUD was shrunk to nothing. So, yeah, if anyone is running around in a tizzy needing 4K gaming you aren't missing anything. I've watched 4K Youtube content on this thing, and yes, it is very impressive. But I have to say, gaming at the present, it's more of a bragging thing than an image quality thing.

I'm going to make an amendment to this statement. Outside of stressing out my PC to attain 4K resolutions, my HDTV PC refresh rate can only go as high as 30 at 4K. So, I'm not willing to lose 60fps, hence 1080p is going to be my go to resolution. Then it occurred to me that some games are locked at 30fps, regardless. I see that these dudes find out what games do this:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/framer ... e#curation

So, of the very few games I own on this list, I'm going to give it the old college 4K try. And by "college try" I'm not talking about these SJW millennial hipster xasthur fans that go now a days. I'm talking about some Laurel and Hardy go to Oxford University shit, you Cambridge going mother fuckers. I tried out American McGee's Alice and Alice: Return to Madness. How was it looking through the 4K looking glass? Really special. While I stand by my impression that the first person shooters don't benefit all that much from the bump up, 3rd person is another story. Return to Madness especially. Of what I tested it didn't seem that I dipped below 30fps, so I kind of excited about this. Mostly from a bragging stand point, but it is pretty enough that it almost mesmerizes me, you Cambridge cock suckers!

[delmuerte]

I really want this game to be awesome, but Ubisoft has me a little tight-fisted lately with their big games.

Played The Division beta for a bit this weekend. It's decent, looks really pretty on PC and I like the loot. But, they haven't said anything about the end game so right now I'll pass at $60.

[Wang Mandu]

I don't know what to think because it sounds like the support for Rainbow Six has been incredible. Super detailed patch notes and balance fixes and free dlc. Then again, it's Ubisoft. I hope The Division is great but will wait for reviews.

[The Bill]

Well, I'm hurting for games to play so those two are not on my radar. All the same, if by some miracle they have a single player that isn't the normal Battlefield/Battlefront bullshit I'd like to know.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed at 4K is pretty nice looking at times. I'm figuring out that the 4K improvement comes in the form of far off textures. That's why Turok's far away grahics are now sort of nice for what it is, but the game looks mostly unchanged. Hey, menu letters really pop.

I need to stop. I'm fussing with these games to run in 4K, then I'm feuding with these other games to get an optimal 3D sound in the headphones. I always do this with new tech. I need to stop the crazy and just play the damn games already

[FVBTVS]

rainbow six siege is seriously fucking incredible, you guys..

[FVBTVS]

http://1drv.ms/1nOmgNW

This is a very very very rough clip thing/montage of some recent stuff from Rainbow in case anyone is interested. I was hoping to capture the ambiance and tension of the ends of rounds or various crazy clashes but it doesnt quite get the picture across. Theres so much eerie stillness in the 3 minute rounds and then sometimes you have a few seconds to repel attackers or pick off defenders etc. Losing two or three members of your team in the blink of an eye can just crush your chances of doing anything in a round. The software on the xbox just doesn't allow longer clips to be recorded easily and you can only do 15 clips in the built in editing studio. Blah

Some clearly very funny business though

[doomeddisciple]

I'm getting even worse at FPS in my old age, but I've been looking for an excuse to play that game and you may have supplied me with that..

[FVBTVS]

I'm going to keep beating the drum. It has very little reticle magnetism on console (auto aim) if any whatsoever. So i'm not going to say its 'easy' going. But you don't need to be a skilled at fps fag the same way you do in other games. Its more about slow, smart, tactical play and foremost is communication with your teamates and calling everyrhing out you're seeing because there isnt a minimap etc

I keep describing it to people like pokemon the tactical fps with the best environment destruction ever conceived

[Spooky Apparition]

Anyone buy The Witness? Seems like a game that woulf be fun to couch co-op with someone.

I got it...

i've solved about 100 panels so far, and overall I really like it and look forward to figuring out wtf is going on, but holy shit it's made me feel DUMB like four times already. i've had my lady give me hints/try to figure out those puzzles, but we've had to look up a few solutions. then as soon as you see the solution, it seems super obvious. really clever game so far with a cool atmosphere, but it's not gonna be good for my self esteem.

neither is Super Meat Boy. i was honestly thinking the difficulty was kinda overrated until I hit world 5 or so. i've died 100 times on a few levels later in the game.