Tales of the Aggronaut

The Bounty of Not-E3 2020

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020 by Belghast

PC Gaming Show with Day Nine and apparently Teddy

This time of year is normally a magical time for gamers. It is during June that we traditionally get a bunch of announcements surrounding E3 that ultimately set the expectations for what we should be anxiously watching for the remainder of the current year and most of the next. However there have been a few forces at work that have changed this dynamic significantly since the heady days of the early 2010s. Firstly a number of companies have broken out from the show and started doing their own thing on a more regular basis. Secondly we have a global event like Covid 19 that is causing pretty much everything to be cancelled.

As a result there is a void to be filled and it seems as though we have a wealth of options to fill it. Instead of getting a few big shows from various publishers or console manufacturers, we get an entire summer filled with smaller shows that really started reaching a fever pitch this week. Traditionally I have done coverage of each of the big shows, but quite honestly there is too much to cover at this point and not enough desire to do so. One of the interesting things I have noticed this year is how the various show options have more or less democratized access to smaller studios. As a result we are seeing a lot of A and AA studios punching well above their weight limit and going toe to toe with AAA announcements.

However before I get into specific games I feel like it is important to lay out the landscape. Here is a list of the shows that I am aware of, each of which filling the same sort of niche that the traditional E3 shows have. I have links to videos/vods if available currently and links to what information I do have for everything else.

Schedule of Shows that I am Aware of

There are a handful of events that IGN talks about on this schedule, but they don’t seem to be “named” like the Expo days so I have slipped those in separate from the IGN Expo block. The short of this is that we have a massive block of shows available if we so wish to partake. For those of us who never actually attended E3, but were instead limited to the pre-game that happens with the publisher shows… this is effectively like getting three different E3 periods. It is making me wonder if we are going to see a similar burst of shows around the time that GamesCom and PAX West would have normally been happening.

On With the Games

As I said before there were way too many games being announced to really talk about them all, so instead I am going to talk about a handful of games that stood out for one reason or another. I’ve not managed to make my way through ALL of the content to this point, and now have mostly just been focused on watching individual trailers since some of the shows have way more “couch chat” element than I care to partake of.

First up in the list of things that I want to talk about is Godsfall, which up until the PC Gaming Show I had only actually seen information surrounding it related to the PlayStation 5 release. The PC demo reel showed off significantly more of the world which is good, because I was getting to the point where I was a bit afraid that it might be an arena game. From the look and sound of it, this game is essentially Destiny but with melee combat. I am significantly more interested in it knowing that it is coming out on the PC, given that I tend to prefer this sort of game on that platform. Still very much looks like a higher resolution SkyForge.

This game only means something if you were either a Sega Master System kid, or were friends with a Sega Master System kid. There once was a department store chain called Montgomery Ward, and in it they sold Sega an TurboGrafx systems… and I spend so much time while my mom shopped hanging out and playing Alex Kidd. Years later I eventually owned a Sega Master System and the Master Gear Adapter for my Game Gear and these games are criminally underappreciated. Looking forward to playing this in a prettier form and hoping it holds up as well as my memories of it.

I feel like I know next to nothing about this game. I’ve done a bit of digging and it seems that this is going to be a third person single player action roleplaying game, but all of the trailers I have seen to date mostly just focus on cinematics of the World of Darkness setting. I am very interested because Werewolf: The Apocalypse was without a doubt my favorite of the World of Darkness settings, so with Bloodlines 2 coming out soon I am super down to see this setting get its due. I guess we will have to wait until July 7th when Nacon is set to show off some footage.

I’ve never played one of the Mafia games, but I have to admit this trailer for the reworked first game really interested me. I always assumed incorrectly that the Mafia series was more Grand Theft Auto than story driven tale, and because of that I had more or less ignored it. With the first game getting a remaster treatment, and the second game having already gotten this… I feel like it might be a good time for me to sit down and play through the entire thing.

I’ve been in the alpha process for Torchlight III, previously Torchlight Frontiers for quite some time. The thing is however it was NDA bound and as a result I have not been able to talk about it much. During the PC Gaming Show, they shadow dropped the early access release and… what can I say… it is VERY early access. If you are interested in this game I would suggest maybe giving it a few weeks to stabilize before diving in. I spent most of Saturday getting disconnected or not being able to log in generally, and I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon getting disconnected after every quest. Its a good game, but very raw still and I question if they are maybe rushing it out the door a bit since there appears to still be the same infrastructure issues I experiences when a new version released and everyone flocked to test again.

This is a quirky game that appears to be everywhere right now and has appeared on multiple shows. I vaguely remember Ash talking about this briefly when we did the Pax South 2020 coverage show as it was apparently one of the Indie Megabooth titles. The idea is that you have a couple versus a hostile planet, and the game appears to move back and forth between ARPG type segments and more traditional menu driven JRPG style combat. There are also sequences that were shown that reminds me of a more Bioware style dialog choice story driven gameplay, so honestly right now I am a bit confused as to how the entire thing performs. That said it has made me interested enough to start watching what comes out about it. I dig the art style, and I did the concept of a romantic couple setting out on their own against a harsh environment.

While in the case of Godsfall new information made me significantly more interested, I have to say the New World trailer has made me significantly less interested. I did not see a lot of game-play that actually looked interesting to me. What I did see instead was a bunch of siege game-play that reminded me of the big battles from Shadowbane, a game I was decidedly not into. I am hoping that this is not a PVP siege game that they just added PVE players in place of player characters, because the sizzle reel definitely looks like that. Public testing however will begin in just a few weeks, so I guess I will be able to see better footage of how the moment to moment feels at that point. For now I am super cautious about this maybe not being a game I am going to care about.

A Whole Lot of Games

Those were a few of the games that interested me. However as I said before there is a giant insurmountable wall of new games to talk about and as a result I only covered a small handful. Did you get to watch any of the shows over the weekend? If so what were some of the games that you were interested in that I didn’t cover? Drop me a line below with some of your favorites.

Fixing Launcher Limbo States

June 14, 2020 by Belghast

A few days back I talked about losing the hard drive that a lot of stuff was installed on. The games were not that big of a deal, because I can legitimately download them faster than I can copy them to another drive. What ultimately ended up causing an issue however was the fact that all of my storefront game launchers were installed on that drive. This morning through some trial and error I sorted out how to restore them, and I thought I would write up a quick guide to how I fixed each of them.

Fixing Steam

This one was dead simple. I downloaded the steam client and installed it. There was a minor issue with the steam library on the drive that I installed to. Previously I had farmed out library space to all of the drives in my system, meaning that I can a “DRIVELETTER:\Games\Steam” repository on every drive where the games for steam installed. So when I went to install Steam to F, it would not let me mount two repositories on the same drive, considering Steam created its own internal repository. The fix was simple, you can move steam games freely, and I just copied them from the previous “F:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common” folder to the newly created repository.

For sake of anyone finding this at a later down, everything contained within “steamapps\common” is more or less portable. While you can move games around between your repositories from the steam client, you can also simply just copy them freely between “steamapps\common” directories on your system pending the steam client is not running. This also means that if you have large bulk storage you can back up your game at will when you just want to free up some space, and then copy it back in when you want to use it again.

Fixing Origin

This is the beginnings of my woes, because with Steam now having a bunch of EA games… they still require you to have Origin installed. No matter how many times I attempted to run the installer it would crash out telling me that it could not find “G:\Games\Origin” aka the original path. The challenge there is that google doesn’t exactly have a lot of cases of “my drive died and now I can’t install origin” examples. I did however find buried down in the stack someone talking about an uninstall failing, and I followed those directions.

The first step was to boot Windows 10 into safe mode. This would have been the correct way to do it. Another way would have been to hold down Control while booting, but that only works if your keyboard is recognized by the bios quickly during the boot. Instead I jumped through a bunch of hoops, but ultimately ended up in safe mode. You need to locate your AppData folder, and the easiest way is to type %appdata% in your search prompt. You are looking for:

AppData\Roaming\Origin
AppData\Local\Origin

Once you have deleted these two directories, reboot and you should be able to install Origin fresh once and for all.

Fixing Epic Games Launcher

During the above process I found a folder in AppData for Epic Games Launcher and tried deleting it, thinking maybe just maybe it would work. It did not. What I did instead however on a whim, is grab a random thumb drive and mount it to the same letter as the drive that died, aka G in this case. When I then ran the Epic Games Installer it launched happily and attempted to install the Launcher to this thumb drive. I let it finish doing what it was doing and then turned around and immediately uninstalled the launcher from Control Panel\Programs and Features.

After doing this I was finally able to install the Launcher to a directory of my choosing. This trick MIGHT have worked for Origin, but I was not to the point of desperation that I was with Epic Launcher. For now that appears that my system is back to fighting form with all of the necessarily launchers installed. If I run into any new issues along the way I will try and update this post with the directions on how I fixed them.

AggroChat #303 – Not-E3 and Pinball Gushes

June 14, 2020 by Belghast

Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

This show has a wide variety of topics that don’t really connect up. Bel starts with talking about how easy it was to reinstall steam after losing a hard drive, and how impossible it has been to install either Origin or Epic Game Store as they appear to be in a state of limbo, both installed and not uninstallable at the same time. Grace talks about her recent adventures in figuring out what she wants to play on her brand new Switch without peer pressure of playing a specific title. This goes into a side topic about Pinball games and also a side topic about a missing style of Arcade Racing games. We dive into a topic of virtual tabletops and iTabletop specifically as well as a run down of the various options we have tried over the years. Finally we land on some discussion of Not-E3 and the wide variety of shows surrounding it the biggest being the PS5 reveal.

Topics Discussed

Why Steam is Best Storefront
- Limbo of Origin and Epic Game Store when a hard drive dies
Pressure Free Switch Exploration
- Grace gets a Switch
Talking about Pinball Games
Talking about the missing style of Racing Games
iTabletop and Virtual Tabletops
Not-E3
- Talking about some of the wide variety of shows happening this year without E3
Sony PS5 Reveal Show

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Sony PlayStation 5 Reveal Thoughts

June 12, 2020 by Belghast

One of the things that I generally look forward to at this time of the year are the big reveal shows. Traditionally these were part of the giant cluster of events that was E3, but with Covid still boiling through the country those are all rightfully cancelled. What exists in its place however is a number of individual productions by the big companies themselves. Last night was the big PS5 reveal event and to be truthful it felt pretty much like one of the good Sony shows of old. It was chock full of interesting titles, a number of which were console generation sellers for me personally.

The above embedded video should be queued up to the beginning of the show if you want to partake of it. If for some reason the embed is not working for you, then it is roughly 40 minutes into the Gamespot coverage. I would say the best part about getting the presentations in this manner is that it was completely devoid of big showy in person events or the horrible before and after the show hype squad trying to get us excited about what we are about to or just saw. Instead the games themselves stood on their own, which is ultimately the way I would prefer everything work from this point going forward. I am not a fan of the correspondents telling us how we should be feeling with their ever Plasticine sheen of being paid to be excited for something.

If you don’t want to sit through the entire hour and some change show, here are a list of trailers for the games that were shown off specifically.

I didn’t get to watch this as it was actually happening live, but when I got off a conference call and clocked out I picked up the stream from the very beginning. So for those who were watching it in real time my “live tweets” were delayed by about thirty minutes. If you are curious about my in the moment reactions as I was watching the presentation you can check out that twitter thread here.

The Games that Sold Me

Ultimately when it comes to a new console generation, what matters most are the games that are on it. I am by nature a PC gamer, and as a result when it comes to playing a console, you have to hook me on the exclusives. That traditionally has been the reason to own a PlayStation console, is that they have games that never (or very very very belatedly) arrive on the PC. Xbox looks like a great console but since my play method of choice is with the mouse and keyboard and the vast majority of games ultimately release as well on Windows, it is an uphill battle to make me care. So as a result I am going to talk about the three games that will have ultimately sold me this PlayStation generation.

I love that we are seeing a hand-off between Peter Parker and Miles Morales with this next Spider-man game. It looks every bit as amazing as the first one, with updated graphics for this console generation. Into the Spiderverse is one of my favorite comic book movies in general and is most definitely my favorite spider film, so I am super on board for this game. Miles is just such a great character in general and this being a launch title has me real excited.

I love the Ratchet & Clank franchise. It was probably the game series that I spent the most time playing on the PS2, and I was super into the most recent game that released a few years ago. This alone probably would have sold me a new console to be honest. I like the whole set up of dimension hopping, which should add a really interesting flair to the already frenetic gameplay. The thing about this franchise as a whole that I love is the creativity that it always brings. Super on board with this.

I love Aloy and I love Horizon Zero Dawn. I will absolutely buy the first game again when it releases on PC and I will absolutely play through it in its entirety. This was the game of the generation for me when it comes to the PlayStation 4, and I have been anxiously awaiting the sequel since 2017. The big take away from the trailer is it looks like this game is overall much larger. HZD had plenty of room to roam around but was not on the scale of many of the big open world titles. It seems like this generation is going to change that because it feels like we are covering a large area in the various biomes displayed, at least more variety that we saw in the first game. It also gives the impression of underwater combat and I really hope they stick the landing on that, as it is something that most games struggle with. I had hoped this would be a launch title, but I am guessing we will have to wait awhile.

Other Things of Interest

There were a ton of titles that I thought were interesting. Godsfall still looks really cool but I am somewhat concerned as to what sort of game it might be. Right now it looks very much like a significantly higher resolution Skyforge, which isn’t a bad thing but definite the vibe I am getting. Pete and I talked a bit last night about the concern that this is a launch title and the game didn’t really show much as far as varied environments, which gives me a concern that this might be some sort of an arena brawler which lowers my excitement considerably. It also seems the type of thing that will eventually release on PC.

Kena: Bridge of Souls looked adorable, like a blend of an action rpg with Pikmin as you appear to be gathering fuzzy adorable critters to do your bidding. I was also into the trailer for Little Devil Inside which appears to be some sort of monster hunting game, or as I referred to it Arthouse Monster Hunter. Stray was a weird game full of robots and apparently cats, which could be cool or could be incomprehensible nonsense so it is too early to tell. Goodbye Volcano High gave a strong Night in the Woods vibe, but realistic looking Anthros are always a hard sell for me personally. Deathloop was the other big title that I am looking forward to, but it isn’t a console exclusive so 99.9% chance I will just be playing this on PC.

The Big Reveal

The other big reveal of the night is that we finally got to see what the PlayStation 5 look like. I gave it some shit last night, but overall I like the look of it. I don’t like it anywhere near as much as I like the controller design, and quite honestly it reminds me of a fancy USB hub or a cable modem. The key concern that I have is that it is vertical orientation, and I question if it will be a good thing sitting it on its side. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 appear to be designed so that all heat is vented through the center of the console out and out the top. Tipping the unit over may cause heat to evacuate the system less efficiently, and given the power that both are packing I would imagine heat dissipation is going to be key to sustained performance.

The other concern that I have with the horizontal orientation is that it appears that a large chunk of the unit is cantilever out over the base. I can absolutely picture my cats trying to hop up on top of this and flipping it off of the shelf. All of that aside it does at least look unique, and isn’t just a box… though admittedly I still greatly prefer the appearance of the Xbox Series X. The internet is already full of memes as is expected, but if I remember correctly there were a similar batch of memes floating around with the Xbox reveal so I think that is just part of life. The more I get used to this design the more it grows on me, but it does look like it will be a pain in the ass to break open for repair work, and this is coming from someone who has changed out several PS3 bluray drives for friends.

It’s About the Games

In the end however the design ethic of the console doesn’t really matter that much. When it comes down to purchase, it will rely solely upon the catalog of games available and this reveal hearkens back to some of the great shows from the past. The only part that was left out however was the price point, which I guess matters significantly as well. If this is a $600 console, I am not sure if one great launch game is going to make it worth the price of admission. If it is a $400 console this is an instant pre-order for me, but Sony has not shown a great willingness to launch consoles at a significant loss in the past and I fear a repeat of the PS3. I am more than likely targeting the all digital unit, given that I just don’t buy physical games and my hope is that comes with at least a $50 price break.

So what were your thoughts? Are you more interested or less interested in the PlayStation 5 at this point? Will you be instead following the path of Green and Black and going with the Xbox One X? Drop me a line in the comments and let me know your thoughts.