Last game played...

[ThryllSeekyr]

Damn my many typos.....

I really meant I was in no mood to keep going and just shut the game down then and there.

[Professor Bear]

You should've bought this:

Having played both extensively, I can confirm you are absolutely correct.

[Krakajac]

I realise the following is going to make me look like a real game newbie...but I need some advice. 

I've got STEAM installed on my PC - and use it to play games such as SKYRIM (which I bought on DVD) - but I've never actually downloaded a game via STEAM.  Yes, I'm old skool. 

I'd like to try my hand at ALIEN ISOLATION.  I can buy a disc-based version, but I also notice I can purchase a STEAM product key on eBay for a hell of a lot less.

Am I right in thinking - if I purchase the STEAM product key - it's simply a case of activating the product key from within STEAM - and then it will start downloading?

And on the same note - are the product keys for sale on eBay (as Delboy would say), cushdie?

[Keef Monkey]

I've never bought one on ebay (but have bought from 3rd parties before) - you're totally right, there's an option in Steam to redeem a code, once you've popped it in there it'll add it to your game library. If it doesn't start installing automatically (think I've got mine set not to do that) then you can just right click it in your library and choose to download/install it from the drop down.

People tend to sell them a lot on ebay and things, if they get a copy they don't want in a bundle or packaged with a graphics card or something, so it doesn't immediately ring alarm bells as being suspect. It is ebay though so I guess anything can happen!

[Krakajac]

Rightio.  Many thanks for the advice! 

[ThryllSeekyr]

Played some of the original Bard's Tale game last night on the eve the new Bard's Tale game was funded.

It was included with the other Bard's Tale game that was made available over ten year ago. That also offer the first three games in the series as a freebie. 

I actually forget what the very first game was called, but it's been the only one I never purchased in the first place. Except, I got the dungeon disk for this game for this game with Destiny Knight...which kind ruined that game as it was never compatible. So my party of adventures were confined to walking the streets of Skara-Brae for long as I played them. This is a old story of mine that I keep retelling and the old story continues where I played Thief of Fate which didn't have the problems of the previous game and I was able to reach very last boss of the game. I guess if this game was so simple then my adventures would have leveled up further enough to complete the game with out much more hassle. 

The very last game, was played in full and enjoyed.. as well. No problems there, but it was huge departure from the first three games it felt less personal because there was no character generation in it.

I clearly recall on the 21st year of my life my parents gave me the Bard's Tale Construction Set where I ended ruining the original disks with stuff I made up made up because I never made copies like they suggested. I have no idea where I left that game lying around, right now.

Anyway, playing the very first game again. Since I sampled it the first time I brought a few months ago now and was surprise to find a half-elf bard named Orpheus still on the character roster. I though it was theirs, and not mine....and thee was the Ateam a party of characters that came with the game.

You know.....

Brian the Fist,

El-Cid (Does anybody remember that tale....)

Merlin

I forget the rest.....

But I didn't use all of those, and accidently recruited a dead character called Nomad.

I think Merlin was the first guy and lost all the gold after pooling it to some character I forgot about after removing everybody from the party. This brings back memories of endlessly creating characters just for their gold and pooling to the one set of character's. I ended using. Not sure I did over and over again until I could out fit all the warriors with plate-mail and halberds. Yet, I made sure they were all able to equip themselves in some manner once they found the equipment shop.

Back in the days, I think had the location for all the places I needed to take them. The shop, the temple and the tavern......yet this was only in Destiny Knight and not in this game....

I had no idea about the location of these places and I will just recap on this....

Merlin,

Obviously a magic user of some sort was recruited first and then figured I could re-arrange the party of characters. Not sure about the rest of the characters, but I think the dead guy was third and the three last guys were warriors types. So, his back was well protected.

Yet, never wanted them in that order and couldn't find any other way around this and there were few other issues I had with this . That I couldn't deal with right then and wasn't long before I was returned to Adventurers-Guild with a party of dead characters. I should remind you here that this was party of nearly each race and class, but like I said in the wrong order.

So, I decided to make a Elf, Human and Dwarf, Monks, Half-Orc and Gnome, Hunters, and a Half-Elf, Rogue.

Not sure of the exact order but I knew I had the Elf, Human and Half-Orc in the front three slots and nearly the same order and the rest at the back.

I didn't make any mages or bards, because use of magic requires that I type in some code word I didn't quite remember from playing the game in the past. Repeated use of the Bard's signature talent required repeated treks to the tavern or he just couldn't sing.

Did you know that his second verse is called The Seeker's Ballad

They didn't last much longer and only found Garth's shop the first time I played.

I also found the Samurai guardian statue, but declined to fight my way past it.

A brutal game for the ignorant.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Progressed further with Witcher Three, and found a novel way of getting rid of the Mourn-Tart which was stealing children and using them in it's unholy-sacred-rites. Of course, who know, maybe quite a few people did what I did. It was kind of funny when I just had Geralt take a breather while somebody else performed his duty for him.

However..and afterwards when I had head back further north from that village to find the tracks left by some beast that took out a entire pack of wolves. Even though Geralt does this nearly every day him self...sometime twice a day or a little bit more.

[spoiler]The resulting fight with this beast known as a Chort or Howler (Looks like a giant mutant Ram) only reinforces what I think is wrong with a lot of these games that look real on only so many fronts, but some time fall flat where the developer just got lazy and spammed.

Sure, I love seeing him rip into packs of wolves, rabid dogs and Drowners or Nekkers, but this seems to be how he solves all of his problems with odd combination of his potions, mixtures and Signs.

It would seem he has to take down this beast or Relic inside it's lair, a confined space that makes it harder for both of them to move, attack and evade. This monster only has to swipe at him once or twice to bury Geralt while he only managed to knock it down to nearly a third of it's life with poisonous-gas bombs and it's nigh unavoidable first frontal attack after the Witcher leaps down from the ceiling entrance to wait for it to arrive from the only exit. The Witcher himself can only exit from this hole, while not in combat. I found he can't use parkour-skill to even get out of this place to lure the monster outside for more room for him to hit and run.

I know this deliberate to make this contract more interesting, but I think if he was smarter and being the alchemist he seems to be. Then he could lure the creature inside and have some sort of large explosive primed to go off after he escapes by a rope ladder. One of the many of which he loots from those barrel, packages and boxes. Yet, the game so far had never let him put any of the junk he collects to any other use but as something to trade for money.

The explosian would be the type of that would cause it's lair to fall on top of it. trapping if not actually being enough to kill the thing. Hell knows, I not sure after what I had Geralt throw at it, barely making a scratch. Yet the games insist I resort to the grind of hitting and leaping away to avoid being hit.

[/spoiler]

I wouldn't put up with that, if this wasn't still so much eye candy and a huge buzz to play. Yet, I also wonder if taking advantage of glitches and game hacking (Which I don't know how!) to get around grinding to succeed faster in play. 

[CheechFU]

rocket league. aka the best thing from top gear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdVmqssa5v4

[von Boom]

Phaëton. If you end up reading Armada you'll want to look at this game. Available for iPhone and Android, and online with the Unity player.

http://phaetongame.com/game

[Satanist]

Finished Arkham Knight (cant be arsed with all the Riddler guff) and so have decided to have a break from BIG games and play some smaller titles.

Rocket League - Playing football with cars is really good fun with mates and is free to PS plus users this month.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - First person adventure/puzzle game with a mental Lovecraft vibe. It doesn't hold your hand and just plops you in the countryside and lets you discover whats going on. Lovely graphics.

Broken Age - Ye Olde fashioned point and click from Monkey Island guy. Just started this but seems to do exactly what I wanted it to. Smartly animated and acted and have no idea where the story is going. Game has 2 characters you can switch between. A boy who lives alone on a spaceship and a girl who is about to be sacrificed to a big monster by her village. Quite funny too.

Geometry Wars 3 - Twin stick shooter cos sometimes you just have to take 5 minutes and blow shit up.

[Professor Bear]

Child Of Light. If you've tried playing recent Final Fantasy games and just gone "fuck it" and never want to play an RPG ever again, this will likely change your mind.  Probably far too short and lacking in depth for a hardcore gaming experience, but it looks gorgeous and is rarely taxing.

Godzilla - playing as the titular lumbering atomic supercunt, this is less of a one-on-one fighter like previous Godzilla games and concentrates on the feel of controlling an unwieldy behemoth as he makes bitches of anything over 10  feet.  Didn't get good reviews, but I feel those who thought it cumbersome have missed the point, especially given the inclusion of alternate resolution and frame rates for the video output so you can make the game look like a monochrome film from 1954 or a colour film from 1964.  From the shitty fog-like atomic breath of the original creature through the strains of five decades of Ifukube Akira's themes to the terrible VA acting that typifies the kaiju genre to those of a certain age, this is one for the fans, even if there's no denying that it just isn't a great game in its own right.

Final Fantasy VI Advance - no idea why I'm playing this as we can all agree that steampunk is totally over, but it's a good old-school RPG grinder if you don't mind the very dated fight mechanics.

[J.Smith]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - First person adventure/puzzle game with a mental Lovecraft vibe. It doesn't hold your hand and just plops you in the countryside and lets you discover whats going on. Lovely graphics.

Loved the method The Astronauts used to create the visuals of this game. As a long-time gamer and someone who studied games development, though entirely enjoyed design more than I ever did programming, I've always hated the idea of games someday being photo-realistic, a term thrown around mostly by the graphics-obsessed. But I have to admit that I was pretty blown away by the results here, which, on the one hand, is extremely realistic looking as far as the environment's concerned, but is intentionally toned down by the overall art style so that it doesn't distract the player or enter the uncanny valley (the way the lead developer explained it on his blog, it was a bit too weirdly real looking before). My understanding is that they'll be using the same method, called photogrammetry, which you can read more about here, for future games, and if those are as constantly surprising as this was (it really is a game best to go into blind) then that should be rather fantastic.

As far as the game itself goes, I loved it for that surprising element. No kidding they've called themselves The Astronauts because the game sure did make me smile several times with childlike wonder. The final twist was obvious from the start - [spoiler]especially if you turned back to the tunnel at the beginning[/spoiler] - and from other hard-to-miss hints but that didn't make it any less fun to piece together the various scenes which - like the story - were equally surprising in that they played to different genres and thus different styles of play. Anyone who refers to it as another walking simulator like Dear Esther is lying, that's for sure.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Instead of my usual fare, I decided to have quick look at Star Wars- Knights of the Old Republic Two -The Sith Lords and despite how dated it looks and feels, I couldn't stop playing because I wanted to help this Jedi, his Mentor, A Rogue-Pilot and a Droid of most useful trades band together and escape from a asteroid mining facility on a former smuggling ship called The Ebon Hawk.

I do recall playing as far as I could into the earlier game in this series closer to the beginning of this year and stopped ponce it seemed that I had reached dead end at every corner and exhausted all other option to progress any further.

Both games show signs of outdated graphics and combat physics, but still bear a certain charm by virtue of the rich science - fiction film franchise it's based on. They also use ideas, gimmicks long out of use in other games of similar ilk today.  It wasn't until I had party of more than two people...one controlled by myself and the other two controlled A.I. assisted by basic system of leaving them with crude attack commands if I'm fast enough to switch characters in the heat of combat which paused while I click on the action that need doing.

Back to what I was getting at....

It does look rather awkward as you witness the primitive path-finding mechanics that see them get in each others way more often than not.

I also quite enjoyed exploring the Ebon Hawk and controlling a droid nearly so similar to R2-D2 and then the Jedi as he found his way around the mining facility. Then I thought this could have been a warped Celtic barbarian and his newly found dwarfish companion both alternatively navigating them self out of in plans of escaping Skull-Sword training academy or was that the Broch where they both met earlier and had been returned to after being over whelmed again and are now fighting a snake demon who has taken on the appearance of one his former lovers/bandit companions who he used to commit crimes of high way robbery with before all this happened or was this after winning him over game of Fidchell with goblins inhabiting the Tower of Glass in one of the El-Worlds.

Sorry, but I always have that in min,d when playing computer games that rely on the role playing mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons.

This game must have layed the foundations for other games I felt less inclined to buy or play. Such as the earlier Dragon-Age and Mass-Effect and yet they seem less worthy. To myself, at least. I have purchased and played some of those earlier Dragon-Age games and thought the one where you have to convince this demonic bear to teach your companion how to assume the shape of anything much more impressive than the shape of a rat in dream like sequence at the beginning extremly gimped.

However, I only just remembered those other games just a few moments ago and was mostly thinking about those other combat related games that involved a little levelling and skill-trees.

Any one of the new Batman games, Middle-Earth - Shadow of Mordor and The Witcher Three with the improved sword wagging and stabbing and now Elite Dangerous for it's inspired space-flight and space combat simulation. Even if it's half real and half made up for the sake of keeping playing interested.

Just imagine if they make further games covering this part of Star-Wars universe.

Strange that that never showed interest in any of the actual later Star Wars games.  Although, I would love to see Jedi/Sith wielding a light sabre with the same skills as Talon or Geralt with their own weapons while using his force powers and what about new game about Slaine.

Yeah, I know it would cost a lot and be huge risk because he's less well known.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I prefer the first one.

Have tou ever considered starting your own blog. Your long form posts would be better suited to a blog

[ThryllSeekyr]

I prefer the first one.

Have tou ever considered starting your own blog. Your long form posts would be better suited to a blog

Yes, I have and was wondering how do you do those. Remembering back to time when I completed a T.A.F.E. in web design and had to buy some really expensive Max-Media software that would allow me to do this. unsuccessfully and the cd went missing.

That's about $600.00 down the drain