Open World RPG Archives - Page 39 of 41

Desert Rangers

June 28, 2014 by Belghast

Taco Bell Salad

As strange as it sounds, one of the meals we used to eat all the time when we were watching our calories is Doritos Tacos from Taco Bell. Each of them is pretty filling and only 170 calories a piece, and come in a variety of flavors now so it feels like you are eating way worse than you actually are. For some time now I have had this idea of taking them and turning them into a Taco Salad. Finally last night we actually did just this. The idea is that you essentially dump out the contents of the tacos, crunch of the shells and them mix it all together with some form of a binding liquid. I prepared my wife’s with four packets of Taco Bell hot sauce, and then did mine with some low fat ranch dressing.

The end result was really damned good. Like amazingly tasty, and it felt and looked pretty much like a Taco Salad. The only downside was it was a colossal mess to crunch the shells. You know you your fingers feel after eating a bag of nacho cheese Doritos? Well take that and multiply it by 100 because the shells themselves are not entirely dry as they’ve had taco fixings inside of them. I need to find a better way than using my fingers to crunch them up, and if so them bam I have a brilliant fast food “hack” that was super tasty. Three Tacos made a plate full of Taco Salad and was only 510 calories, I can totally live with that. It inspired me to try their breakfast this morning, and I have to say it is in no way near as manageable. In fact their breakfast seems like they ran an experiment of trying to cram as many calories into as little food as possible.

Desert Rangers

Earlier this week my friend Warenwolf mentioned something about playing Wasteland 2, and as a result I decided to check and see if I had access as well. Sure enough, when I dug out my forum link from the kickstarter project I had a steam early access code waiting for me. Last night I intended to just pop in for a moment and check the game out, and wound up playing over an hour. Now I knew of Wasteland, but I never really played it when it was originally out for the PC. That predates the bulk of my PC gaming, and I was still heavily a console gamer at that time. That said I was a massive fan of both Fallout and Fallout 2, and since Wasteland was the logical predecessor to those games I knew I had to get on board with this project. In truth other than the fact that the original fallout runs pretty lousy on a modern PC, I can still play it for hours. So far pretty much everything about this game is true to that genre and is a modern update of what feels like a classic game. There is an over arching storyline that you can follow, or you can simply wander around the wastes looking for trouble. You cannot however wander indefinitely as there is an interesting movement mechanic while you are on the overmap. Each step you take consumes water, and you have a finite amount of this. Every so often you can find an oasis here or there that lets you refill your canteens, but this keeps you from going too far off the beaten path. Luckily if you follow the actual quest line it leads you to find a large number of Oasis spots that you can always fill up at along the way.

Just like in Fallout as you wander around the world map you will come across random encounters. The interesting thing is that each time you come across one of these you have the chance to either fight or run. So far being the warmonger I am… I have fought all of them and it has been the source of much needed ammunition and medpacks. Overall the combat is not super challenging, but it is tactical in nature. Cover rules apply, so since I have a handful of ranged characters I try and place them behind a rusted out car hull or something similar and for the most part this allows me to whittle down the enemy forces. Another strategy I have found works amazingly well is to simply wait out the enemy. They seem to be willing to come to you most of the time, allowing you to set up from a defensive position and gun them down as they run towards you.

The game allows you to assemble your own team of rangers to meet anything you might encounter out in the wastes. For this first playing I chose to go with some premades so I have Pill the wasteland punk combat medic, Cold Eye the sniper, Bear the Native American tracker, and Big Bert the punk with a spiked bat and essentially my groups only front line fighter. So far it seems like I assembled a fairly balanced team. The only thing I am really missing is the ability to pick locks, but up until now I have only actually encountered a single locked object. Cold-Eye has a mechanical repair skill, which I figure will come in handy eventually. So far I am absolutely hooked, and looking forward to seeing the finished version. From what I understand it is pretty much fully functional, just missing some polish. Definitely glad I backed the kickstarter.

Hail to the Chief

I logged into Wildstar for a bit, but really was not feeling the MMO thing. I am in somewhat of an existential funk when it comes to online gaming right now. I am going through one of my periods where I just want to play by myself, and not be bothered with other people. These usually last a week or two and then I have recharged and can be my charming self again, but while it is going on it is probably just best for me to play mostly single player games. Since I had so damned much fun the other night playing Saints Row IV I decided to fire it up and attempt to make some progress. The problem with me and big sandboxy games is that I never actually get anything accomplished. I have been wandering around the simulation picking up code fragments and knocking down Zin shield beacons reclaiming sections of the map. Last night I actually made an attempt to complete some of the quests.

SaintsRowIV 2014-06-27 21-18-53-685

The major accomplishment of the night was getting to the top of this tower. This is the granddaddy of all jumping puzzles I have ever encountered. The tower itself is so high that the game lets you save at various warp points up the tower as you try and ascend it. I admit it took me probably a dozen tries to get all the way to the top, and when I was up there my vertigo was going absolutely insane. The last bit of the climb freaked me the hell out, and I am just glad it is over. That said it was pretty cool because I actually feel like I accomplished something difficult. In addition to this there was a whole sequence of events that introduced me to the various minigames including Fraud where you throw yourself in front of cars for money, and one where you rampage through the simulation on a zin battle tank. I only managed to get bronze rating on fraud… but damned near got gold on my first try with the battle tank. I guess my inner rampage pays off sometimes.

I actually progressed the main storyline a bit and in the same fashion as the Matrix, unplugged forcibly and woke up on a Zin Battlecruiser butt naked needing to escape from the vessel. I can apparently take enough time to find a gun, but not enough to take a uniform off of one of the zin soldiers and wear that. I will admit the whole naked escape sequence thing was pretty funny, and it makes me happy I went so insane with the various tattoos. Like I really went crazy when I found the tattoo shop as you can see in the above picture. I feel like this is what I like the most about Saints Row, is that it is really similar in nature to Grand Theft Auto… but does not take itself seriously at all. In fact if there is a way to poke fun at your character, the game is going to do it by putting it in ridiculous situations. The fact that Saints Row is in essence a parody of a parody makes this the video game equivalent of one of the “Scary Movie” franchise movies.

Saints Row is one giant running “dick and fart” joke, but it works and while it is extremely lowbrow it is insanely fun to play through. Even if you don’t normally go in for that sort of thing… I think there is something in Saints Row for pretty much everyone. If this goes back on sale before the end of the Steam Sale… you should totally pick it up, because it is well worth the $10. I am also happy I went ahead and picked up all of the insane DLC, because some of the costumes are just great. Last night I was rocking the “cloud” outfit from FF7, but I have zero clue where to find the sword that goes with it. Instead I was running around swinging the “anal probe” weapon. At the end of the night I had just gotten out of the “matrix” and had not really explored the “real world” much at all, so I figure next play session I will do that. This game makes my inner thirteen year old extremely happy.

#Wasteland2 #TacoBellSalad #SaintsRowIV

Packaged Chaos

June 25, 2014 by Belghast

Best Laid Plans

Last night I had every intent of coming home and playing Elder Scrolls Online all night long. It felt like it had been ages since I had done so, and since I won’t likely be around tonight I thought it would be cool to play last night. My wife is coming back into town from her second conference and I have to pick her up this evening around 7ish when she gets into town. So that is going to minimize what time I have to do anything tonight. Last night I technically logged into Elder Scrolls Online, but only managed to play for about thirty minutes before my mind wandered elsewhere. To be honest the game looks even more beautiful than I remember it being, but I just was not in the right frame of mind to play it.

The pace of ESO is extremely slow compared to the games I have been playing lately, and I didn’t really want to force myself into playing it just for the sake of doing so. So I did a bit of crafting and queued up more research since I had long since completed what I was working on for all of the slots in Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Outfitting. I think mostly last night I was feeling overwhelmed by not remembering what the hell I was actually doing last time I had played the game. The last several times I had logged in, it was just to do some Cyrodil with the guild. As far as where I was in the actual completion of Auridon I had no real clue, and to make matters worse… apparently the recent patch broke every single mod I had installed. So more than anything, I didn’t feel like playing the game with the stock interface.

Packaged Chaos

I have to admit, somehow I completely missed playing Saints Row 3. Now I have seen video of my friends doing completely batshit insane things… and have it on multiple platforms, but for whatever reason I never actually played it. I did however play Saints Row 2, and while I enjoyed myself it just felt like a “better” version of Grand Theft Auto 3. It was charming, but for all of the same reasons why I never really cared for GTA, it didn’t just inspire me to go out and play Saints Row: The Third when it came out. That said everything I have heard about the franchise has been amazing, so when Saints Row 4 went on an extreme sale yesterday I opted to pick it up and give it a shot. So while I was playing Elder Scrolls last night, my mind was wandering to giving this game a shot as I had it remotely install to my main gaming machine. That still is a great feature, I just wish that you could stay logged into steam on all of your computers and remote install to one or many.

For starters… where has this game been all my life, and why did I not do this sooner. Basically Saints Row 4 scratches so many itches all at once it is silly. Some of my favorite games are open world non-linear titles like the Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series, Just Cause 2 and this game is firmly in that wheelhouse. You play through a rather long intro sequence, but it is so silly that it is wildly entertaining to me. This sequence of events might somehow connect to the events at the end of Saints Row 3, but I have no real clue having not actually played it. Essentially through a series of illogical leaps… you end up the president of the united states. Then like a sequence out of Duke Nukem, these very familiar looking aliens invade the planet capturing all your friends from the previous game. All of this is just enough plot to set up for the fact that you become trapped in a matrix like simulation and have to work to escape it.

I Know Kung Fu

Remember the crazy shit that Neo did in the Matrix where he “pushed” off the ground to leap insanely high up into the air… well gratz we get to do that here. So on some level it feels a bit like running around City of Heroes at times as I have both Super Jump and Super Speed. The system is familiar to anyone who has played GTA, that the more mayhem you cause the more attention you get from the police… and in this case eventually the alien invaders. The escalation is pretty slow actually, but the it becomes extremely hard to “get away” long enough to let the system reset and for the police to stop chasing you. I reached a point last night where every few minutes there were more aliens arriving on the scene and eventually they called in this insane gunship that I just simply could not take down as I did not have access to a rocket launcher yet.

Another cornerstone of the series is the insane options to dress up your characters. While I did not purchase the above outfit… I came really close to doing so. The only thing I wish is that I had the ability to change outfits on the fly, but that might be in there that I just haven’t figured out. I seem to alternate between various steampunk and futuristic fusion looks. I am really thankful that overall the costumes seem to be really cheap. You tend to be rewarded several thousand “cache” each time you complete a mission, and I have yet to find a costume more than a few hundred. The ability to play “dress-up” definitely helps out with the enjoyment of the game. As is the ability to customize your base weapons to look insane. Right now I am wielding Deckard’s pistol from Blade Runner, the heavy bolter from Aliens, and a Thompson machine gun… all of which make me extremely happy.

Driving Funtime

So my Grand Theft Auto experience pretty much is limited to GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas. But in all of those games a major detractor for me was that when you boosted a vehicle that it performed like crap. It was a struggle to get the vehicle to do what you want it to do. Saints Row 4 does an amazing job at making the different vehicles feel awesome. Above is a picture of me zipping through the city streets, and it feels like I am really hauling ass thanks to a really good use of motion blur. I was able to zip around the city at max speed and still be able to make my turns when I needed to. I also really like the variety of vehicles I have found so far. I’ve even hijacked a garbage truck and it was equally fun to control, albeit a bit more unwieldy to maneuver.

I think one of the problems I have had with the Grand Theft Auto universe is that increasingly it has seemed like a felony simulator. The game seems to favor a more realistic depiction of crime, while still maintaining a sense of gallows humor about it. This makes me feel like a complete and total asshole while playing the game, and generally speaking I feel like the characters I am playing have little to know redeeming human values. Saints Row goes in a completely different direction, making absolutely everything about the game over the top cartoony violence. So playing it makes me feel like I am watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon from my youth. This game goes one step further by telling you that you are just trapped in a simulation. So when you blow away a pedestrian… they were just polygons in a simulation right? The game lets me run amok without feeling horrible about it, and that works for me. At this point I have just scratched the surface of the game, but I can see this becoming something I play quite regularly for awhile.

#SaintsRow4

Next Gen Achieved

June 14, 2014 by Belghast

Aversion to Sports

It started yesterday with a random dumbass quip that I am known to occasionally spout towards the end of the day. Watching the internet be enthralled about the World Cup is a really surreal experience when you are living in the United States and soccer never actually makes the sports page other than during the World Cup. I figured surely someone would give me shit about my statement, but I expected them to hone in on the World Cup portion. Instead my friend Liore latched onto the root of the comment… asking why exactly I found the appeal of sports bizarre. I rattled off a half truth and said that I just was not born with what I call the “spectator gene”. I love league of legends for example, but no matter how many times I have tried to watch the LCS I find it completely boring. All it does it make me want to boot up League and play it, instead of getting completely caught up in the matches like my friends do.

My aversion to sports however goes far more deeply than that. When you grow up in a small town in Oklahoma or Texas… your entire school life revolves around the sports team. I grew up in a town of 2000, with a graduating class of 60… and even though we had a horrible football team… the entire damned town revolved around it. Growing up a big kid I was stalked from middle school on by coached that wanted to make me part of their “lineup”. I played little league ball and gave an attempt to play football… but I just didn’t enjoy it. Additionally I have never bought into the bullshit drill instructor act that all coaches perform. While that might motivate some people, all it does is make me want to flip them the bird… because I had so many other options for spending my time. It completely baffled them that anyone would not want to play football.

On top of that over the years sports have come to represent what was wrong with a small town. You might have duct taped together supplies in the science classroom, and classes meeting in portable huts instead of actual buildings… but by god if the field house needs renovated that is going to happen, and there is nothing that will ever stand in the way of our losing football team from getting shiny new equipment every year. The focus on football means other things slide and the school as a whole graduated a ton of barely functional adults. In my graduating class of 60, I would say 2/3rds of the kids who went to college flunked out their first year and are now working menial jobs in the same town. Then we get to the problem of the coaches themselves… who always seemed to be History or Mathematics teachers. My Geometry teacher was the head football coach, and would spend exactly five minutes writing something on the board… and then spend the rest of the hour as we worked on our homework assignment with the football players huddled around his desk talking about plays for the “big game”. The history teacher, while a nice guy was equally incompetent. He once told us that “Old Iron Sides” was named that because it was made of Iron not Wood. So how can I respect sports when I grew up in this situation.

I realize that huge swaths of the population love sports, and love cheering for their team. I try my damnedest to just ignore it, because I really don’t want to be a buzzkill. Every now and then one of these quips slips out, and as I said while I really do not have the spectator gene… there is a lot more driving that attitude. I played little league ball, but for whatever reason the indoctrination never really took. Which is humorous because I used to work in a baseball card and later comic shop. I even collected cards… but then it was more about the artwork on the card or the value of a specific rookie… and not about me actually caring about the game itself. I will say though that to this day Baseball is the only game I will really willingly watch. There is something untainted about that sport, because at our high school they never got any attention either. They had to play in old uniforms and on a crappy field… because the football and basketball programs drained the system dry. So in a way I felt almost a sense of kinship with them, since they too were damaged by the system.

Next Gen Achieved

I have for the most part avoided the “next generation” of consoles, and as all the hype surrounded them leading up to the launch I didn’t think much about any of them. Then something happened… and I saw the 2013 E3 presser from Sony. During the current generation of consoles I started out an XBox 360 fan… but over time I gravitated towards the Sony Playstation 3 when I picked up one used from a friend. The primary reason behind this shift in allegiance was the phenominal deal that is the Playstation Plus membership. For what is roughly $50 it gave me access to a massive game library of I think a dozen different playstation 3 titles at a time. So not only was the service cheaper than Xbox Gold but worth way more value in that it actually just gave me a curated collection of games every month for me to download. One of my good friends Ashgarshowed me a nifty trick that allowed me to log into the website and “purchase” the free games to add them to my account each month. After watching the E3 press conference last year, I knew sooner or later I would be getting a Playstation 4, but I was mostly waiting for the price to come down. Nonetheless this meant every single month I would add the new PS4 game to my account knowing that sooner or later I would get one and have a game library ready to play.

Awhile back on the AggroChat podcast, my friend Tam introduced me a rule he uses for the purchase of new console systems. He waits to buy a new console until it has at least five games, either currently released or releasing within the next six months that he wants to play. The more I thought about it, the more I thought this was an excellent and logical way to decide when to jump into a new console. For me right now the list of games I am excited about looks something like this.

Infamous: Second Son
Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Last of Us: Remastered
Destiny
Kingdom Hearts III
Final Fantasy XV
The Order: 1886
Guilty Gear Xrd
Bloodborne

While many of those are not Playstation 4 exclusives… I am devoted to the playstation family of consoles thanks to the warm fuzzies I have about playstation plus as a whole. In the time I have been subbed to the service I have gotten 151 games, and have a library of six PS4 titles waiting on me. Granted most of these are not exactly AAA titles yet, but one of them at least is something I have amped to play since the moment I saw game play from it. Microsoft on the other hand… really has nothing to offer me. As far as Microsoft Console exclusives… the only two that I am interested in that are not also coming to the PC are Killer Instinct and Sunset Overdrive. Neither of which are going to be games I play enough to make that console worth my time. Then again… there is just a lot I don’t like about the target of the XBox One. I was watching an excellent rundown video about the two consoles yesterday, and the guy admits that while he used the Kinect and TV integration features for the first month… he hasn’t used them at all since.

Getting the Goods

When it comes to buying hardware especially… I am a cheap bastard. I rarely if ever buy game systems new… in fact the only game system I did buy new was the 3DS, and only because I had pretty much exhausted all options. So when I started kicking around the notion of maybe picking up a PS4… I hit craigslist like normal. I did a search of the site and noticed that someone had a PS4 incorrectly posted in the barter section for way less than normal. They were wanting $280 and it came with two sports titles. Since I have zero use for those… I opted to try and talk the guy into a price without them. I honestly expected nothing to come of it, so when it texted me back a day later saying he would do $250 without the games… I was absolutely pumped. I joked during the day yesterday that I hope I didn’t get killed meeting a stranger on craigslist… which apparently disturbed Rae considerably. It was a little odd because generally I am not alone when I meet people from craigslist, but my rule has always been that we meet at one of the many QuikTrips in Tulsa… since they are ALWAYS busy 24/7.

The guy was running late… as in he was an hour late at the time he finally arrived. For awhile I was thinking that it was going to fall through like so many other “good deals” from Craigslist have. However he arrived with a PS4 in hand, with the original box and everything that came with it. It seemed that once again I was benefiting from the flighty nature of teenagers. He bought the PS4 and games with High School graduation money… and then decided he needed that money to move into an apartment. It is funny the stuff that folks you meet from craigslist will tell you, like when we bought my chromebook we found out that the guy grew up in the same town as my wife… and that they knew some of each others family. I think maybe this stuff only actually works out this well here in Oklahoma… where people are generally well meaning and rather polite about everything. But once again I am more than happy to take advantage of a good deal when I can find it. I took the machine home, booted it up and everything works awesome. It feels as though the dual shock four hasn’t really even been broken in. The guy had not even registered an account on the playstation network, so after a wipe of the system it is now set up with all the plus games.

So far I am mostly playing Resogun and Infamous Second Son. I would like to find a cheap copy of Killzone Shadowfall because it looks pretty cool. I am also kicking myself that I did not sign up for the Destiny Alpha. At that point I had no clue I would actually be getting a PS4, so of course hindsight is 20/20. Here is hoping I can figure out a way to get an alpha key and play it as well. So far I am loving the system, and super happy with the purchase. It is actually good timing considering my allergies are going completely haywire and right now I can barely breath. Seems like the perfect time to hibernate with a console and play some games. I might even try streaming to twitch later, just to see how well the service works.

#PS4

Assassin’s Creed II

March 23, 2014 by Belghast

Steampowered Sunday #10

I have had a really lousy week, and if you have followed my blog you know why. However that said, I did not want to break the Steampowered Sunday tradition. This week we had a tie between Assassin’s Creed II and Evoland, and in order to settle the tie I essentially flipped a coin. As a result I played roughly and hour and a half of Assassin’s Creed II. At face value this seems like a game I would not like very much, considering in general I do not like stealth titles. However so many friends of mine have been so into this game series that I felt like I had to give it a try. I feel like I am somehow losing gamer cred by admitting that I have never played ANY of the Assassin’s Creed games before today.

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVAll of my friends have said that the essential title that I needed to start with was Assassin’s Creed II, so as a result that is the title I have placed in the running for a few weeks. Initially the title suffers from many of the console game tropes that I hate. Namely the “long introduction” and the forced “stealth” to get to an area where the game opens up. Then when you finally get into the action, there is yet another trope that I cannot stand… “the un-skippable mini-game” namely in the form of the rooftop race with your brother. So early on… things were not looking really good for this title. Within the first 15 minutes it had committed three cardinal sins. That said I kept playing and eventually got a grasp on why exactly this game is fun.

Where this game shines is the open world exploration aspect. While they only give you a small area at a time to roam around, for the most part you are allowed to get to your objective in whatever fashion you like. Additionally the “stealth” aspect of the game is extremely forgiving. If you are “feeling your wheaties” you can beat the shit out of your pursuers, or if you don’t feel like fighting you can simply run away and in a grand theft auto style wait for the coast to be clear again. Your enemies show up as very clear red dots on the map, and in many times you can simply blend into the crowd to avoid them. The only time they seem to notice you is if you are extremely close or doing something like running about or doing something to draw attention to yourself.

I realize at an hour and a half into the game I have barely scratched the surface. So far it seems like the game progresses in a very GTA style, where you are presented a series of small quests. Some of them involve going and fetching something, others beating up a person, and others still following around NPCs and helping them with some task. All of this is pretty boring, but the fact that you can accomplish these missions by wandering around the rooftops of the city make it far more enjoyable. I can see why people are into this title, and I think I would like it even more if it were more open and free. I can only imagine how great this title would be if it were presented in a more “fallout” type sandbox manner. Right now you are given pretty clear direction in what the quests do and which ones you should take.

So far the only real frustration is when I manage to get a “timed event” style quest. I find movement in this world to be cludgy at best, especially after being used to the parkour of newer games like Titanfall. There are many times where I do something like leap off of a building that I did not intend, but did so because I either didn’t wait long enough for my camera angle to readjust or waited too long. If I can get used to the quirks of the movement I feel like my enjoyment will improve, however when you put me under a timer and the movement does something screwball I feel like throwing the controller across the room. I have to remind myself that this game was initially released in 2009, and since then game controls have become so much more responsive. I am sure if I cracked open Assassin’s Creed IV many of these issues have been solved.

Overall I think this is going to be a title I play quite a bit more of. In fact once I finish a few chores this morning, I will probably boot it back up and play some more. I am hooked enough on what is there to make me want to play some more. Right now I am also feeling deeply antisocial, so a single player title is a good option. At this moment I am tentatively positive about the game and considering I got it as part of a massive package of other Assassin’s Creed titles, I can see maybe going back and playing the others as well. My friends all told me to start with 2, because there were some serious controllability issues prior to that point. If that is the case I am very glad I did, because I already feel like 2 is more than a little awkward, I would not have likely made it this far in a title where the controls were worse.