Decided to make some time to game again this year after a dry 2016. So far this fortnight digging into my 2013 crates

The Stanley Parable - metatric: 88% , my score: 6/10
I give it a 6 for trying something different and very amusing/entertaining narration, well written. But let's be honest, this is an interactive movie with little point, dated Valve graphics and a bunch of corridors.

Slender: The Arrival - 65% no score because I quit after 2 of 5 levels
Piece of crap. Slender Man scared the fuck out of me a couple times, that's the only good thing about this game.
Having to start that second level over and over again with randomly generated locations and almost random deaths was enough for me. I watched the rest on youtube and am glad I didn't continue.

Resident Evil 6 - 69% - 7/10
Really not too bad. Good story the way it has 4 campaigns telling the story from each perspective. Unfortunately, replaying the same levels up to 3 times is not so good. Good graphics though. 20-25 hours is long for linear game like this, though.

Far Cry 3 - 88% - 9/10
If this was the first sandbox RPG FPS I played, I'd love it. But it's not, we've seen the island setting before in FPSs Crysis and Far Cry 1. We've seen Ubisoft bring RPG into it with Far Cry 2. So now we're just going back to island. Which we've seen before with Dead Island and White Gold. But is that such a bad thing? There's not many themes that haven't been done already in some game. Far Cry 2 gameplay in Far Cry 1 setting, why not? Also some of the FC2 issues have been fixed (respawning enemies every five minutes which ruined the game for me). Plus a little easier. Would have been great with more side quests that are even remotely interesting and worth doing, but even so I spent about 20 hours on it so that's full value, when you compare a COD campaign is about 5 hours.

I might play Blood Dragon next. Looks like they should have made this a full game. Then I don't know, maybe force myself through another Batman game (Arkham Origins). 

 

Well Blood Dragon is one of the good ones afaik. Didn't you try it? Arkham 3 I can't really miss because Batman. Those Arkham games are worth playing for the design, they all look great. Usually good stories too, and you get to battle just about every villain DC ever created, they cram them all in there. It's just a shame the gameplay sucks ass. 

Trying to think what was around in 2013. Can't even remember.

Looking at my steam list, between 2013 and 2016: Dark Souls 3, SOMA, Dishonoured / 2, DX:MD, Titanfall 2, Doom 4, TR2013, ROTR, Bioshock Infinite, Metros Reduxes, Styx, Alien Isolation, WOFL TNO / TOB, would all be worth checking out in the action-ish genres. 

Tried Mass Effect 4 / Andromeda / whatever the fuck it is. Was pretty hype after watching Cohh play some.

No problem with the animations / faces. Eyes a bit glassy, whatever. Shits given, none.

Graphics look real nice overall except face lighting is bland. All else was good.

Game is....I really don't know. Never played ME before but I know the premise. ME4 sets it up nicely for a fresh start, fresh protagonist.

But....I just don't like it. It's so clunky, so complicated, and the combat is frustrating as waxing balls with inadequate ball wax.

Controls are like trying to stir soup with a spoon attached to a telegraph pole via a string of condoms. No less than 4 view points - normal, scanning, combat, zoomed in. No less than 5 extra movement actions - run, walk, jump, boost, mantle. This is symptomatic of the whole game.

The amount of extra stuff (collecting, researching, developing, selling, deconstructing, mining, scanning planets, going between the 4 vehicles / bases, upgrading your character, your team mates, your vehicle, all the other customisations) could easily be a full game++ in it's own right.

UI is equally clunky. So much going on.

Combat is tough as fuck. Mobs make Dark Souls 3 look like Quake on Normal skill. Apart from one shot ranged weapons, don't think DS3 had those??

Too frustrating. Uninstalled. 

http://reworkedgames.eu/the-last-of-us-pc-download/

I wonder if it works, or just a bigass virus. It is supposed to be the greatest game of all time for Playstation (with Uncharted) so I wouldn't mind giving it a go. Just cbf learning how to use my PS4 (what a waste of $500 that ended up being). 

You have a ps4 but you'd rather download some shady pc hack? 

Whoa Kona what a strange site and it looks fishy as all hell too.

If you brave the risk, let us know how it works because I would like to try Silent Hill Downpour on the PC (Even if the game was bleh) 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=897799480 

hasn't this been in development for some time, like 8-9 years? 

ME4 I've only seen some videos so far, but female main character does look hilariously ugly.

Anyway, Blood Dragon wouldn't install so skipped ahead to Batman: Arkham Origins. As always good design, good story, average gameplay. No side missions worth a damn or DLC's. Nothing new to the franchise AT ALL. No point exploring the open world because there's nothing much to do. But I quite enjoyed this one anyway (except for Bane). Maybe my favourite so far because it was easy and simple. 7/10

Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Fuck these guys need to upgrade the engine on this thing. Great story though. I could totally see Black Ops being on the big screen as a huge blockbuster. Same old gameplay, lots of epicness, but the visuals are starting to date. 

Has anyone here played this? It's right up the alley of Quake level designers because most of it features marvelous architecture from Rome. I haven't played Crysis 3 yet, but these are the best graphics I've ever seen a game (keep in mind I'm yet to play anything from 2014 on). Of course I had everything turned up and it still ran okay. This CryEngine is fucking wonderful, it's a shame it didn't get licensed for more games. Instead it gets this, Crysis 3, then Crytek go almost bankrupt and now just waste all their talent on shitty fucking cellphone games. What a terrible waste. Oh there was that dinosaur game but it looks like ass (again proving they have great trouble making fun games). Meanwhile everyone else carries on with the old Unreal Engine 4, Valve with their updated Quake engine, COD with it's updated Quake 3 engine etc.

But yeah the environments in Ryse are fantastic, definitely the best looking water I've seen. It's starts out a bit average in level 1 (of 8) but gets better. Just a shame it's very linear, terrible FOV, clips everywhere. The story is also good but someone from the art and engine department forgot to tell the combat/gameplay people that they're supposed to be making a good game here, because the combat fucking sucks. Way worse than Arkham. It's basically a great big QTE game but without the prompts. No keyboard remapping but that doesn't really matter because movement during combat almost doesn't exist you're just hitting the push>attack>attack rinse and repeat, sometimes with a block added in. Very unresponsive, I'm just clicking the mouse like a madman. I had to put godmode on for half of it because it was so repetitive and actually not that easy at times, even though I'm apparently playing in recruit/story board mode. Another developer that doesn't know what "easy" actually means.

Crytek can make stunning looking games, and they got gameplay right with Crysis and Far Cry, which wasn't hard since there's 100s of FPS's that came before it to replicate, but they got it wrong - big time wrong - with Ryse. If only this was an open world RPG, think The Witcher, with freeflowing combat, and with these graphics. 

btw 6/10 (10/10 for art though, if you want to sit through 6 hours for some pretty environments)

http://www.newgamenetwork.com/images/uploads/gallery/Ryse/RyseE3_04.jpg 

iirc it was a different developer who made it. The series is back on form with Arkham Knight however, which was excellent! 

Blizzard finally release a widescreen patch for Broodwar and charge full price for it because REMASTERED?

Is this remastering the new big thing since all the possible sequels got made? 

Alien Arena yet another pile of utterly generic rehashed deathmatch TURD. Q3A Q2 and UT called and they want their aborted ass-baby back. 

Yeah, I would've been happy with just a widescreen patch.

However, this might cause me to break my blizzard boycott. Broodwar classic is now free and is compatible with the remaster. Remaster players can play with classic players, play on old maps, chat, etc. They've updated bnet and intergrated the two clients with one another. So that's cool.

SC1 is great and I'm happy that it appears to be getting proper treatment. Here's a pretty ok interview with the project producer. 

 

Some added features with no changes to core gameplay at all. Some new graphics look very good while so others look ehh, but it's not finished yet. 

Different to Battle Royale how??

Not that I'd touch it with a bargepole. 

PlayerUnknown started making BR mods for Arma 2 and DayZ, then moved to Arma 3, then worked with Sony on H1Z1 before making this.

It's by far my favourite incarnation of the KotH game mode. Even in its early access state it is leaps over any of his previous projects. 

 

Dead Space 3: gee, lot of average comments about this game and people saying it's just Gears of War. Rubbish. I probably enjoyed it the most. I love this setting, dark claustraphobic atmosphere-rich sci-fi and the last chapters in the alien setting - awesome!! In fact that last level with the planet being pulled into the moon as you fight on it is one of those "best levels of all time".

If people liked the older games being harder, why don't they just put the fucking difficulty up? I started on easy and there was still some tough sections even on easy. But then I realised I had a glitch that was giving me WAY more items out of those boxes, so by chapter 11 or 12 I was pretty much able to max out the rig and create any gun I wanted. So I put it up to normal because it was going to be too easy. The crafting system (once you get the hang of it) is fun, just a shame the military attachment is the only thing worth having.

For the last few chapters I ended up making a custom weapon that was even better out of parts I did legitimitely find (electricity based). The main difficulty in the game is actually just getting caught out in between reloading and the whole monsters spawning behind the player and trapping him in stupid QTEs. Oh and the mini games and on rails sections were pretty bad.

It's really a shame the industry slagged the game off for not being surivival focused enough, instead of just taking it for what it is.

metlslime are you still at Visceral Games? Dead Space 4 coming soon? :P