2015 Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Shiva Down

June 17, 2015 by Belghast

Last Of the E3 Shows

I think at this point I am ready to be done with E3 2015 for awhile. In theory yesterday was the tail end of the major conferences. I have to say that when I originally made my statement that Bethesda had won E3, I was doing so with an over exaggerated amount of hyperbole. I have to say however as the dust settles… they still managed to put on the best event and was the only show where every single thing they announced was something I cared about, at least on some level. The most frustrating event for me personally was the Square Enix event, in part because they combined a line up of amazing games… with a high school speech classroom quality of presentation ability. I am not sure how they managed to make these games seem boring, but they certainly did. All of that said I am completely amped to get my hands on Just Cause 3… or that game that lets me blow everything up. I got a see a little bit of game play on Twitch yesterday evening that showed them taking out bridges… and I could not be more enthralled.

The surprise of the year still is Microsoft in the fact that they presented me with what was an overall enjoyable conference after several years of being frustrated by their product offerings. The problem being that last night during PC Gaming show they pretty much destroyed all interest I had in picking up an Xbox One, when they started announcing that several more previously Xbox exclusives would be coming to PC. It seems as though I am going to finally get to play Gears of War in the new premastered form, and get my hands in the new Killer Instinct. This makes me question even more of their previous “exclusivity” statements because it seems like they are treating Windows 10 and Xbox One as the same platform. I guess in the grand scheme of things I am completely fine with this. This lets me focus on a Gaming PC to get the Xbox exclusives and PS4 Console to get any remaining Sony exclusives.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5

Of all the games that I saw over the course of the last three days, the one that I am the most gleefully happy about is probably a surprising title. I am so damned excited to see the return of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater franchise to modern gaming, and yesterday I got to watch some game play on the twitch stream. It looks and feels like a beautifie d version of the game I loved and remember spending so many hours playing in the original playstation, and later the playstation 2. I cannot fully explain my love of this game, other than the fact that one upon a time I was a little skater punk kid. While I never had the skill to do half of the things that you can do in THPS, I always wanted to carve and insane session out like my one time idols. This is absolutely a guilty fantasy fulfillment experience for me, that allows someone who is relatively uncoordinated and has a shitty sense of balance to do insane grinds down every possible surface I can find.

Now Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD has been available on Steam for awhile now, and while I enjoy it quite a bit… it is missing a lot of the reasons why I enjoyed the THPS series. Firstly I loved the create a Skater mode that allowed me to essentially create a version of myself in the game and work my way through a “career mode”. This feature thankfully has been confirmed to be in the new THPS5, as is the create a skate park feature that is also missing from HD. Apparently there is going to be an in game market of sorts that will allow you to swap skate parks with folks online, greatly extending the replay ability of this title. The negative is that it will initially release on the PS4 and Xbox One and then later on the other platforms including PC. For me this is a simple decision since I played all the original Tony Hawk games on with a playstation controller in my hand, I have no problem picking this up for the PS4 which will also let me play it over my Vita. Watching folks play this game, and seeing the new version of Warehouse and School 2… that has been renamed to School 3… just put a massive cheesy grin on my face.

Shiva Down

I had originally intended to write about this yesterday, but wound up with far too much to talk about on the E3 news front. Monday night was our last raid night before the expansion lands Friday morning, and as such we focused on the two things that have been in our way for awhile now. The first of which is the last of the extreme primal encounters, Shiva. This fight is such a frustrating experience because it combines elements we are horrible at. Namely our group is bad at doing the same dance over and over. For example on Turn 9, everyone else does this method where they stack up and run as a group to drop the meteors. However for us we simply do this thing we lovingly refer to as the “Benny Hill maneuver” where we just try and spread out around the edge of the room and move as the meteors drop. Shiva combines elements of get away from everyone and stack the hell up in a way that ultimately ended up in many deaths along the way.

The worst of her mechanics is the bow attack, which she starts in phase two. This fires arrows in a 270* arc from the front of her meaning that you have to be stacked tight on her ass to keep from getting hit. What makes it worse however is that the normal damage dealt by bow to the tanks is truly insane. Ashgar and I had to essentially cycle through cooldowns while in bow phase to have a shot in hell of staying alive. On the attempt we defeated her, our strategy absolutely revolved around staying alive long enough to get a level three limit break… and then using that to resurrect the entire party and finish her off. There is something so damned satisfying about the level three healer limit break, it is like a giant screw you to the boss when you can bring back your entire party. It makes the whole experience seem like one of those insane Anime come from behind victories. While we did not get much further in Turn 9, we did manage to take down the last of the Extreme primals so I can go into this expansion with a feeling of accomplishment. Granted I know we will be fighting all of these extreme primals again partially for ponies and partially to get other guild members through the quests. I feel like I am completely ready for Ishgard now, and I am going to have so much trouble sleeping tomorrow night.

E3 2015 Day Zero

June 16, 2015 by Belghast

Microsoft E3 2015

Yesterday was a huge day of E3 shows with Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Sony all strutting their stuff with big press conferences. While I still stand by my statement yesterday, that Bethesda software is winning this E3, everyone involved had some interesting things to show off. Mainly for me this is the year that Microsoft figured out how to do a relevant press conference. The past two years since the announcement of the Xbox One have provided extremely awkward and disconnected moments, but for the most part Microsoft nailed it this time around. They provided a wide scope of games to appeal to all genres, and while I don’t believe in their exclusivity after seeing titles appear on steam months later, I do feel like they are trying really hard to wrap up a large stable of winners as far as software goes. The big title that I am interested in is the new Tomb Raider game, which makes me realize that I really need to finish the last Tomb Raider game.

I’ve never been a huge Halo fan , but even I have to admit that the Halo Guardians demo looked pretty amazing. The title I was most amped about seeing again however was The Division, since we had not really seen much since the last E3. It seems like now we have a pseudo release date and a beta beginning towards the end of this year. My big concern was with the lackluster showing of Destiny so far, that this title might have simply quietly been cancelled. Thankfully that is not the case, and we will be exploring a new action role-playing game setting early next year. The video that takes the cake however for Microsoft is the Hololens demo showing off a special Hololens version of Minecraft. The more I see of Hololens the more I think it is going to be a real force in gaming, and not just another gimmick hoping to find a Market. Virtual Reality headsets extract you from the world, and Augmented Reality keeps you interactive with the world… I think that is going to make a big difference. The little I have played with the Occulus Rift was cool, but I suffered a pretty massive headache and was dizzy as hell as my mind tried to readjust to the “real world” after being in the unit for only around fifteen minutes. I cannot imagine what it would be like after some of my marathon gaming sessions.

EA and UbiSoft E3 2015

As good as Microsoft did with their press conference, EA doubled that effort in the opposite direction. The entire thing was this awkward and disjointed mess trying to play towards too many different demographics and just coming off as frustrating to I believe all of them. The biggest frustration for me personally was the fact that this press conference was about one thing for me… getting to see the new Mass Effect game. We got a minute and a half trailer… and that was quite literally all we saw of Mass Effect. Similarly with Mirrors Edge Catalyst… the game so many people have been amped to hear more news about… we got a two minute trailer. It seems that all EA actually cares about is peddling the new years edition of the same damned sports titles they have been selling for decades. From what I can tell roughly an hour of the presentation was tied up in these sports titles with blips at the beginning and the end about something interesting. I do have to say though that Star Wars Battlefront still looks amazing, however I have had that on preorder from the Playstation network since the Fan Fest announcement. They didn’t really need to sell me on that title, but I am looking forward to it all the same.

UbiSoft on the other hand unleashed a whole bunch of interesting stuff. We are apparently going to colonize the moon in Anno 2205, which looked amazing. They are releasing a version of Trials Fusion where you apparently play a cat that rides a flame breathing unicorn. We got to see even more staged footage of The Division, this time centering around the “Dark Zone”PVP area. The game I never thought I would be interested in however was Ghost Recon Wildlands, which for all intents and purposes seems to be their answer to the Just Cause franchise. Big open world game where you take on drug lords in whatever fashion you see fit. It looks like it is going to be extremely fun in the same way that I lost serious amounts of time to Just Cause 2. The real triumph of the show however is that Aisha Tyler is amazing, and I want her to host every press conference from this point on. Additionally they brought out Angela Basset at one point, who is the absolute badass mocapped leader of the new Rainbow Six. While there was not a whole lot that I was extremely interested in, it was nonetheless a good show or at least looked amazing as compared to the train wreck that was EA.

Sony E3 2015

Finally we wrapped up the night of E3 events last night with the Sony Press conference, and honestly even hours afterwards I am not 100% sure how well it went. They dropped some massive bomb shells on the crowd, but it only really plays to the folks who were already PS4 fans. Ultimately the goal of an E3 press conference for both Microsoft and Sony is to sell hardware, and at the end of the day I end up with the same equation. Most Xbox One exclusives also come out on the PC, and I own a fairly solid gaming PC. Most PS4 exclusives don’t, and as a result that is the hardware I chose to buy. This years game conference only serves to give me more reasons to be happy with my decision. The show lead off with finally giving a date to a game many had just expected got cancelled… The Last Guardian. This game was originally slotted for the PS3, and it was questionable if it had survived the generation hop. The big reveal of the night however is that Final Fantasy 7 is in fact getting a Remake. It was glorious to see at least glimpses of Cloud and Barret as they moved past the camera in all their ps4 glory.

The title that both came from out of nowhere and stole the show for me however was Horizon Zero Dawn from Guerilla games. This apparently ushers in a brand new breed of post apocalyptic storytelling, that manages to do so without weaving in a zombie premise. We live in what seems like a Clan of the Cave Bear like setting, until we see the first giant robot roaming the landscape. This is Turok the Dinosaur hunter, meets Last of Us, meets Zoids. We get to see the female bow hunter protagonist take down a giant robot t-rex like creature. As Tam commented during the stream, we have apparently gotten really good at making fighting giant monsters seem awesome. Had I not already purchased a PS4, this would have been the title that sold me the console. I am really hoping this ends up being a vast open world landscape that lets us wander around and explore, hunting the big game and unfolding what happened during “the darkness” that lead to the machines roaming the earth. There were of course other titles announced that looked great, and that I will likely play, however at six in the morning… the day after the show… the Sony conference was all about FF7 and Horizon for me. You can check out the full show trailer below.

Bethesda Just Won E3

June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Belghast

It is nights like last night that make me realize I am wired just a little bit weird. Last night while the world seemingly was watching the season finale of Game of Thrones, I was tuned into the E3 2015 festivities over YouTube and eventually twitch. It started early in the evening with the 2015 Nintendo World Championships, and concluded later with the phenomenal Bethesda Softworks showcase. E3 is this miraculous time of bottled hope, that seems to pump up the heart of a gamer about what might be or at least what could be. If you did not have a chance to watch it, I highly suggest you check out the Nintendo Championships. It was equal parts charming, and thrilling… and when we finally got to the heads up match between the last two contestants I have to say I was literally tense for them. The hoops that they were asked to jump through were just silly, and in the proud tradition of the Nintendo Championship… they were in fact forced to play a “game” they had never seen before.

Doom 4

The real excitement however started when the Bethesda showcase began. When a game company shows off its wares at one of these shows, it is a rarity that there are so many different titles that I care about coming from the same place. Doom will always hold a special place in my heart, because in theory it was the game that really sold me on the power of PC gaming. I remember my parents getting so damned frustrated with me for tying up the phone lines as I dialed into a friends computer to play the game cooperatively. I remember spending hundreds of hours creating my own levels and imagining what my own version of the game might bring. I devotedly played the derivatives like Heretic and the oddball narrative spinoffs like Strife, because I literally could not get enough of the game. The problem being that with Doom there also comes a lot of disappointment, and strange decisions like that god awful movie.

The problem is that ID Software for whatever reason lost its way. The last Doom game shipped in August of 2004 and we have had to endure a decade of waiting. There was this period of time where ID seemed to forget what made its games great in the first place, as it curiously focused instead on building more complex engines… than creating interesting games. That wait however is apparently nearing its end, because last night we got to see Doom 4 in all its glory, and I weep at the system I will need to have to play it in all its glory. The game play I saw was this gorgeous carnal ballet of demons and zombies erupting into red volcanoes of gore and blood on the screen. It seemed to capture everything that made Doom amazing, and strutted its stuff with a level of technical detail that I am just floored by. What makes me even happier is it seems this time they did not forget that it was ultimately multiplayer that made the Doom franchise famous. They showed off this awesome new tech that will maybe once again make level creation simple enough that anyone can pick up the map builder and start making awesome things. The builder also seems to support the creation of game play modes themselves, so I am really hoping that we once again start to see some innovation from the community in moving the FPS genre forward.

Dishonored II

If Doom was not enough, moments later the folks from Arkane Studios took the stage to talk about the leaked announcement of Dishonored 2. Dishonored holds a special place in my heart because it is in theory a “stealth” game that I actually loved playing. Granted this is because it allows you to play the game in a way that takes all sneaking about and stealth game play out of the mix. The awesome thing is, it apparently also plays extremely enjoyably for the folks who do want to stealth about and have a zero body count. It is one of the few games that both myself and Tamriello raved about when it was released, so quite honestly I was going to snatch up whatever game came from them next regardless of its hype. All of that said it looks like the continuation of the original Dishonored game is going to be amazing. One of the most interesting features of the first game is the interaction of the character Corvo Attano and his “charge” Emily Kaldwin. As you play through the game, your actions effect the upbringing of Emily. If you play the part of a bloodless hero she focuses on the good things in life, or if you are like me and go for 100% bodycount… she focuses on the death, destruction and carnage.

In Dishonored II the trailer shows us that dear Emily has apparently followed in your footsteps and takes up the role of righting wrongs at the point of a sword. Ubisoft really needs to watch what Arkane is doing because they are fucking nailing it. They are giving us both an awesome and interesting male lead, but an equally interesting female lead. To make things even better it seems that they are apparently not just carbon copies of each other. Both Emily and Corvo will have unique abilities and game play styles that will cause you to approach the level design slightly differently. In theory this means that you have at least two fresh play through of the game, and four if you are trying to get a bloodless victory on each and a full body count victory as well. Personally I am likely going to play through twice because there is no way I can somehow stomach playing through this game in a full on stealth fashion. If my actions in the last game “raised”Emily… I would not want to meet her in a dark alley, because I am certain “my” Emily would be a brutal and heartless killing machine.

Fallout 4

If all of the above was not awesome enough… we all were waiting anxiously for more tidbits of news about the latest game in the Fallout franchise. The Fallout fans out there were absolutely not disappointed, as the floodgates opened with information about the new game. This game is apparently set in Boston as has been long rumored, and for the first time we get to see the world “before the bomb”. They showed a few minutes of the character creation segment of the game, and the events leading up to being forced to go into Vault 111. I am really happy with the way they are doing this, but one of the confusing parts about the demo was that people seemed to be excited that you can create a female Vault Dweller. Far as I remember you have always been able to choose to create a female vault dweller, or at the very least you have been able to since the birth of the modern Fallout series with 3. That confusion aside the new system looks great and I should be able to create a Vault Dweller I am happy with. The world out there to explore looked phenomenal, and I got flashbacks to the moment I set foot of the vault into the Washington wasteland for the first time.

What was even more amazing however is when they started going into the systems. Apparently this time around we are going to be able to fully mod out our weapons and our armor to create brand new items that don’t exist out in the world. Each component is modular and changes the function of the items they are attached to, and while they spent a lot of time creating brutal versions of Laser and Plasma rifles… all I could sit there and imagine were the awesome shotguns I would ultimately create. This was not all of the awesome however, in that they showed this amazing modular housing system that was like the next version of what was made possible with the Skyrim Hearthfire system. In the trailer they showed these insane bases that they had built using the system allowing us to essentially create our very own “Megaton”. This is playing down my alley because I always spend so much time kitting out my player housing in the Fallout games, because it allows me to have a place to be a packrat. After showing all of this goodness, to have me salivating… they did the ultimate mic drop. Apparently this is all going to be available this November 10th. I should probably give warning to everything that I know… because I will not be seen or heard from for at least a month.

Missing the Point

This is your standard reminder that Bethsoft rarely makes compelling worlds. Every complaint about themeparks in MMOs goes double for them.

— Fierydemise (@Fierydemise) June 15, 2015

Now is where I am going to diverge from the full on “fanboyism” for a bit to comment on something I have seen said so many times. I do not know who Fierydemise is, but the above comment was retweeted into my timeline. I have no problem with this person, and my commentary isn’t really directed at them, but instead something I have seen for years. When a traditional Bethesda “Fallout” or “Elder Scrolls” series game is released, there is a group of people that seem to go into them expecting a deeply tailored narrative experience. Quite honestly if that is what you are looking for you might be missing the point. These style of open world sandbox games are not really about being told a story, but instead giving you a launch pad and a creative engine for you to wander off and tell your own story through your interaction with the world. I love them so much because they give me the freedom to enter a world without deep narrative shackles. They don’t care one bit if I wander off in the opposite direction the in game indicator is telling me to go, and find my own experience out in the wasteland.

There are so many games out there that give you a very “on rails” narrative experience, and in each of them I try my damnedest to ignore it… and tell my own story. I appreciate these games so much because I don’t have to ignore anything. They give me little nuggets of story when I crave it, but also the insane hardcore explorer porn of going off and conquering an uncertain world. It has been said that these games sacrifice fidelity for freedom of exploration, and I am completely fine with that. I guess for me maybe it comes from cutting my teeth playing games in an era essentially “before stories”. It also helps that I am far more combat drive in a game than story driven, and often times finding myself frustrated when getting bogged down in a series of cut scenes. There have been so many times when I have waited for games to “open up” and let me “do my own thing”. With Bethesda titles, I know the moment the character creation is over… that they are going to let me off my leash to go bounding madly into the distance and cause havoc. These games are designed specifically for me, and people like me… and please don’t try and shackle them with deep narrative.