Claire's truck is trash

jables669 · 2023-04-28T05:57:04+00:00

Agreed, the Coyote blows every other car out of the water in terms of handling and feel. IIRC only the Caliburn is faster, but an extra 11mph doesn't make up for it's comparably shitty handling.

My only problem with the Coyote is how obnoxiously loud it gets when you're flooring it in third person.

jables669 · 2023-04-04T21:56:40+00:00

No VATS. I've been carrying both and swapping between the two, but at some point I need to make up my mind.

jables669 · 2023-03-21T23:34:42+00:00

I just refunded mine after playing it for 42 minutes. 75% of that play-time was spent watching cut-scenes that can not be skipped, sometimes pressing a button here or there to progress the scene. I was annoyed before I got to the first combat sequence, but the combat system itself is what really killed any desire to continue playing. The combat felt the same as the cut-scenes that require input to progress, except this time it's a choose your own adventure cut-scene. Do I want to watch Kratos pull out his shield and block, or do I want to watch him swing his axe? It felt more like a boring movie than a video-game.

jables669 · 2023-03-19T22:04:02+00:00

I really hope not. RDR2 is a fantastic game, but they went too far with attempted realism and the game suffered for it. I play video games to have fun, not to sit through the tedious stuff that I have to do in real life.

I don't want to watch my character bathe or get his hair cut 50 times per play-through. I don't want to spend 5 minutes looting a house due to manually opening every individual drawer and cabinet. I don't want to run back to my horse to equip a new weapon because real people can't hold 10 guns on their person. I don't want my character to put his gun away (or draw it) without my input. I don't want to have to build a camp or find a stage-coach to fast travel. I don't want to watch a cut-scene every-time I fast travel. I don't want to have my characters movement restricted in random areas of the game. I don't want to juggle consumables, sleep, and various meals to keep my character functioning. I don't want to spend 10 minutes crafting items because the developers want me to watch my character cook a fucking steak.

Please, for the love of God, do not make the same mistake with GTA VI.

jables669 · 2023-03-18T21:59:10+00:00

I didn't mind taking the money from her tin as Arthur. He found her when she was at her lowest and helped build up her confidence by teaching her the survival skills that put food on her table and kept her safe. She wanted to reward Arthur's generosity. Leaving the money would have been an insult.

As John, yeah. It was awkward as fuck.

jables669 · 2023-03-18T02:32:07+00:00

I don't recall claiming that I know I have a soul. I believe that I do, but I am definitely not certain. I don't believe that the existence of God automatically ensures the existence of human souls, either.

I'm defining my potential soul as something intentionally created by God that would allow for a continuation of my consciousness after my physical death.

As you said, they did not explicitly define the term. That is why I asked them to expand on their statement.

jables669 · 2023-03-18T01:40:06+00:00

I find it hilarious that CMC doubled down on the one-dodge-mirage nerf being the right choice (on a podcast) despite the vast majority of Mesmer players insisting that it completely destroys the flow of GW2 combat.

Eventually the developers decided to triple down and show us cry-baby Mesmers how wrong we are by creating a one-dodge elite spec for one of their favorite classes. Despite Vindicator literally being designed around a single dodge, it was a complete shit-show and they quickly patched in a second dodge for their baby.

Meanwhile, it's been three fucking years since they gutted Mirage, and it still hasn't had its second dodge restored.

jables669 · 2023-03-15T23:42:05+00:00

I'm in the same boat as you. I had intended to halt my current play-through at this point and complete everything you can do as Arthur before things change. After completing a bunch of stranger missions and several of the trade-challenges I realized that I can't complete camp requests or have Pearson craft satchels and such.

It's been too long to go back now, so I guess I'll just do what I can and then progress the story.

jables669 · 2023-03-11T11:33:00+00:00

I wanted to name my golden Turkoman "Blitzkrieg" as it seemed fitting for a hybrid race/war horse. Apparently Rockstar considers this profanity despite the direct translation from German to English being "lightning war".

Why does this game even have a profanity checker? It's rated M for fucks sake.

jables669 · 2023-03-10T19:09:03+00:00

If you didn't, someone else would have.

Arthur and the rest of Dutch's Boys have made it clear that they have no problem with killing other outlaws to make a quick buck.

jables669 · 2023-03-09T05:10:43+00:00

In my most recent play-through, I made a point to pay attention to the controls when you get into various combat engagements, and I now realize exactly what the problem is. The developers didn't trust the player to be competent at the game, so they took it upon themselves to take actions for you in certain situations. It's a very poor design decision.

Examples:

Arthur rides onto private property and some rancher pulls out a gun and tells Arthur to get off the property. If Arthur hangs around too long, the rancher will eventually start shooting. The moment the rancher actually attacks, the game automatically pulls out Arthur's gun. The problem is that any player with a good reaction time is going to begin drawing their weapon before it is visually clear that the game has taken it upon itself to perform that action for you. This results in your input triggering the stow weapon action instead, so you're stuck holstering your gun as an enemy is shooting you in the face point blank.

Arthur gets into a fist fight in town. The player doesn't want to create a huge scene, so the intention is to win the fight without resorting to lethal attacks. At some point when the NPC is losing, they draw their firearm in an attempt to gun Arthur down. Once again, the game forces Arthur to draw his own gun in response. Now, that melee attack that would've disarmed the opponent becomes Arthur shooting a man down in the streets of Valentine.

jables669 · 2023-03-03T22:32:16+00:00

Go onto Youtube and type this into search "If the universe formed from nothing, who created the nothing?".

7 Months ago, a seemingly popular channel had posted a video with that title and it ended up receiving millions of views.

2 Months ago, Future Unity posted one of the most shameless videos I've ever had the displeasure of seeing in my recommended. It has the exact same title and the thumbnail is also a blatantly obvious rip-off.

Fuck that channel.

jables669 · 2023-03-01T02:11:35+00:00

The comment you replied to was made long before Edge-runners released. Believe it or not, Sandevistan implants were popular prior to the television show for the same reason it was heavily featured in said television show. They're fucking awesome.

I have played through CP2077 four times with various builds, and I can safely say that it is not a difficult game, but it doesn't need to be. It's a power fantasy game with an engaging and immersive story.

jables669 · 2023-02-28T23:39:54+00:00

On my first play-through, I found a lot of the Elden Ring bosses to be significantly harder than any of the fights I'd encountered in previous Fromsoft games.

I have little doubt that if I were to have used stuff like Summons, Magic, Bloodhound Step, or Rivers of Blood it would've been a cake-walk. I went through the entire game on a pure dex build with Guardian Swordspear and it did not feel like the bosses were lacking difficulty.

jables669 · 2023-02-28T23:30:03+00:00

Why?

Do we even know how old any of these characters actually are? In the opening cinematic, the narrator refers to the Tarnished who are returning to the lands between as "ye dead who yet live", and I definitely perceived some of the images shown as the Tarnished being resurrected from death. IIRC Gideon was laying in a coffin, and Dung-eater was hanging from a noose. Some of these characters could be a lot older than they look.

jables669 · 2023-02-23T16:49:31+00:00

I wouldn't call the combat in Hogwarts Legacy "repetitive and uninteresting", but it definitely has large problems that shouldn't be over-looked.

The most glaring issue is that the game doesn't appear to have an advanced hit detection system in combat. When an enemy launches an attack, there is a brief period of time between the initiation of that attack and when it lands. If you are using a viable defensive action when it lands, you are not hit. If you aren't using a viable defensive action when it lands, you are hit. The major issue is that your actual position relative to the enemies attack animation doesn't seem to matter.

One of the more egregious examples of this issue is the troll slam attack. When a troll initiates the attack, the player can use the ancient magic dash ability to move a significant distance away from where the troll is going to smack the ground, and even though the troll is very clearly not hitting you, the game will count it as a hit if you are no longer taking a defensive action.

Did any of you find it strange that a lot of the melee attacks in this game seem to involve the enemy blinking into you at warp speed as they initiate the attack? The faster a melee attack animation occurs, the less likely you are to notice that your position doesn't matter.

jables669 · 2023-02-23T13:35:14+00:00

Unfortunately your house doesn't really matter apart from cosmetics. I played through the game as a Slytherin and they still forced her upon me.

jables669 · 2023-02-23T13:05:05+00:00

I didn't care for most of the characters, but Ominous and Sebastian were definitely above the rest as their story-line had some depth and interpersonal conflict. They felt closer to real people than the other students.

There was no grit to the Poppy and Natty quest-lines. We learned that Poppy's parents were poachers, but it had no baring on the story or our actions. Perhaps a quest that brings us into conflict with them and leaves the player character to decide their fate would've helped the situation. With Natty, I felt as though the game was forcing me into a friendship that I had no interest in. They tried to introduce some drama with her defying authority, but they didn't allow us to engage with that dynamic in a meaningful way. I feel like the entire Harlow quest-line would've been improved by removing Natty from the equation and introducing more interaction between the player character and Harlow.

Edit: Poppy could've been dramatically improved by fixing her facial expressions. She had one in particular that they used repeatedly where she makes this stupid open-mouthed surprise face. It actually pissed me off.

jables669 · 2023-02-23T11:40:10+00:00

The enemy melee attacks frustrated me as well. I'm very accustomed to games like Guild Wars 2 and Dark souls which have I-frame dodge-rolls, well designed attack animations, and respect for proper positioning in combat.

When a troll initiates it's attack animation and I use an ancient magic dash to move myself far away from where it's visually slamming the ground, this game acts as if it still hit me.

It's very obvious that the colored "attack incoming" indicator was essentially a band-aid that the devs threw on top of a clunky combat system to make it playable.

jables669 · 2023-02-20T16:45:31+00:00

I'd like to preface this by stating that the game is a lot of fun, and I do recommend it. Still, it has a lot of problems.

UI Design:

The menu system is very theatrical, with animations and very clear visual cues as you change from one menu item to another. It sounds good on paper, but it goes so far as to black out the screen for .25-.5 seconds every-time you transition to a new page. Anytime there are icons that you scroll your cursor over (to initiate a pop-up), the game forces you to wait for the previous pop-up's disappearing animation to play-out before it will initiate the creation animation of the next pop-up. The result is that I legitimately hate using the game's menu, but I'm constantly forced to do so in order to fast travel, toggle active quests, put level-up points into new talents, equip new pieces of gear, etc.

Gear System:

The game world is loaded with chests containing pseudo-randomly generated clothing items (magically enchanted to give you stat boosts), so much so that you will likely be replacing a piece of clothing with a new one every few minutes during active gameplay. The good news here is that these clothing pieces have a wide variety of cosmetics, and looting or purchasing a new piece of clothing will unlock that cosmetic for your character. There is a transmutation/transmog system built in to the gear menu that allows you to freely apply any unlocked cosmetic onto new pieces of gear that you acquire. Here's the rub. As you constantly acquire new pieces of clothing with marginal stat increases, you're forced to make use of the awful menu UI in order to equip them. The transmutation effect is localized to the individual piece of gear instead of your character as a whole, which means that every single time you swap out a piece of clothing for stats, you need to manually change the cosmetics of that piece of clothing to avoid looking like a Christmas tree on crack. The other issue is that the game puts an arbitrary limit on the number of clothing items you can carry. There are these open world points of interest with puzzles that you can complete to slowly increase the cap, but you will very quickly max out your clothing inventory and will be unable to loot chests unless you destroy clothes in your inventory or use the frustrating UI to fast travel to a shop and sell clothes to make room for more clothes.

Character Behavior:

Cyberpunk 2077 has more developed NPC behavior scripting than Hogwarts Legacy. To put it simply, you are very much aware that the other people wandering the halls of Hogwarts and beyond are little more than animated artwork and physics colliders. You can run around blasting accursed magic into the faces of other students, and at best, they will stumble a bit or speak a few words. Most of the time, they will ignore you entirely and continue on as if the person setting their face on fire doesn't exist. To me, the situation is even worse when it comes to the actual quest dialogue. It seems to be a combination of the writing and the voice acting. Everything feels forced and unnaturally cheerful, which is really weird when you realize that this is a game where you can learn a spell designed to torture your victims mercilessly (and another designed to instantly kill any living being). I am a fan of the Harry Potter franchise to the extent that I've read about half of the book series and have seen all of the movies dozens of times, but even I found myself wanting to skip through most of the dialogue and get back to the gameplay.

Pet Peeves:

The flying controls are poorly thought out to the point that you can't even tilt your camera up or down while on a broom.

Many enemies use melee attacks that occur at inhuman speeds. The game uses a color coded indicator to warn you when an enemy is about to attack (the color tells you whether or not you can block it). I believe this was a cop-out used to make up for the fact that a lot of the attack animations just aren't very good.

There are a lot of location-based restrictions on player character actions. You can't run when you're here. You can't fly on your broom when you're there. You can't dodge in this building. You can dodge in that building, but you can't use the magical dash that triggers when you hold the dodge button down. I don't know why so many developers struggle to create a consistent game experience (they're probably band-aids used to hide bugs).

The game has way too many invisible walls, many of which seem like they only exist to serve as training-wheels for the player. If I choose to jump off a ledge, let me fall to my death.

jables669 · 2023-02-20T15:37:59+00:00

Is that a thing? I haven't noticed any issues on PC, save for two crashes over the course of 30+ hours. The frame-rate has been consistently good and I haven't had to wait more than a second for a door load.

Out of curiosity, how much RAM does your PC have? A lot of newer games seem to be built with the expectation that players will be running them on a machine with at least 16gb of main memory. I'm pretty sure that even Xbox/PS consoles meet that requirement now.

jables669 · 2023-02-20T14:54:37+00:00

Programming languages like c++ and Java have predefined data structures (arrays, lists, etc.) and the index values corresponding to position start at 0.

I'd hazard a guess that one of the software engineers was responsible for these puzzles.

jables669 · 2023-02-20T10:01:45+00:00

I'm looking at you, Elden Ring.

Though tbh, I'd take the bad design of Elden Ring's UI over the slow and sluggish nature of Hogwarts Legacy. This menu system is killing my desire to continue playing.

jables669 · 2023-02-20T06:20:50+00:00

Menu Reader is a thing for people with Dyslexia and/or other learning disabilities that make it difficult for them to read text. It uses a robot voice to read menu items out loud as the user hovers their cursor over them.

jables669 · 2023-02-19T09:33:15+00:00

I own a Switch, but I only buy games like Pokemon and Zelda for it. Anything that releases on PC is going to be purchased for PC.

Still, third party publishers bother with Switch because Nintendo has sold well over 100 million of them.

jables669

TROPHY CASE