Tested and forgot

Was invited back for the second beta testing period for "The Crew". While I didn't post anything in the official forums, they seem to have taken into consideration anyone playing well below spec. There were quite a few players doing exactly that, and they were considerably louder than I would be. And because of that, the new build was considerably easier to play. Definitely more on the arcade-style racer. Still rather slippery, but a lot easier to control. There's still a bit of the input lag, but it's a lot better than before. My fps still sucked rather spectacularly, usually hitting around the 15~20 range. But during those few bits of running at 30fps? It felt pretty awesome.

Didn't have a lot of time to play since I was playing a little bit more Ingress than expected during the week, but I did manage a few things that I wanted to do since the first beta. One of them was actually getting past the first mission. Which I did. With time to spare even though I made quite a few mistakes. Barely played through any of the story missions, which is fine. It's not like there's much to it in the beta in the first place. Focused on the driving and a little poking at my car. Didn't get that many upgrades due to the poor performance actively screwing with adjusting and steering. Even with a few small upgrades and changing the spec on the car was enough to give it a different feel.

So where did I drive to? Hung around Detroit for a little while before checking the map to see what's available around me. Then I set off to Chicago, finding a couple of satellites along the way. The waypoint guide system is pretty broken. A lot of the time it would either disappear or tell me I'm going the wrong way even though I had been following it correctly just seconds before. It seems to have trouble when there are multiple routes you could take. After hitting Chi-town and driving around there for a few skill games, it was trying to get to Seattle. Instead, I ended up in Las Vegas. It was along the way. Struggled a bit to find the satellite there, then decided to fast travel since the beta was going to be ending quite soon. Found the Space Needle, and it wasn't marked as a landmark. And with that, I set off to San Francisco. Made it there pretty quickly and without much issue since the path was pretty straight. Found the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge. Those weren't marked either. Then again, beta. Might be marked in the final release.


I can definitely see myself liking the game quite a bit. I would've liked to have formed a crew during the beta, but what can you do. None of my friends were in it, and I don't think my laptop would've been able to keep up. At least I know 2 of my friends are interested, and one had asked what I thought of the beta when it was first available. Kinda wonder about the story... is anyone going to even bother with it?

It's a Puppy right now

After playing through twice, I can see why opinions on Aiden are split into 2 camps:
1. that he's an irredeemable asshole/psychopath/sociopath (by the way, Aiden doesn't exhibit that many symptoms of being a psychopath; Damien on the other hand...)
2. he's got a lot of problems, but he's trying
I'm mostly in the latter camp. Because, you know, maybe I've been poking at the audio logs and piecing together things, and NOT playing as a violent lunatic. ...Even if playing as a lunatic is more fun with the explosives. I like my precision shooting and environmental antics too much to give it all up, and I'm pretty terrible with explosives.

I think Damien puts it best. Aiden's a "vengeful son of a bitch" based on everything he does in the game. I think he does border on sociopathic in his disregard for a lot of things he does. He's overprotective and paranoid (security cameras in his sister's home after Lena's death), controlling (learned social engineering and studied psychology), vengeful (events in Watch_Dogs), etc. When you take into account what his childhood would've been like, you would expect Aiden to be at least a little messed up in the head. Was in gangs, a thug, idolized a freedom fighter father he barely even remembers, always felt this need to be fighting for something. Has drive, but didn't know where to put it. A constant need to be ahead (which didn't really help him, since Damien played him like a fool; have to give Aiden some credit since he does try to get out of whatever Damien was planning). An unhealthy need to try fixing things around him because everything reminds him of his need to protect something. And you know what? The entire plot of the game? Aiden does blame himself for what happened. One job that just spiraled out of control, with one thing leading to another.

Still. Kinda curious about Aiden and Jordi's relationship. I don't get why Jordi tried warning Aiden about the fixers coming after him near the end of the game. Telling him to get out of town after Aiden had moved Nicky and Jackson. Telling him that he's never seen that many 0s attached to his head (and Aiden brushing it off; it's happened before?!). They're not really friends, as seen in the Announcement Trailer from 2012. As Aiden so kindly puts it, "We don't hang out because we'd kill each other."

Got a little curious to see what would happen if you failed the QTEs during the second last sequence of the final act...
1. Fail to press Square/X for the lighthouse -> shot in the head by Jordi ("Nothing personal"). Also kills Damien with likely a headshot (choppy framerate, can't do much about it until I get more powerful hardware).
2. Fail to take down Jordi -> Jordi readjusts his aim to shoot Aiden in the chest. Also kills Damien. Think it was a head shot.
3. Fail to kill Damien while in Focus -> Damien shoots Aiden in the chest.
My guess is that either the Chicago South Club or Blume issued those hits on them. Aiden understands that it was "just business" during that bit at the lighthouse when he gets a call from Jordi.


The game can be rather uncomfortable to play at times... Some of the privacy invasions and "Randomizer" vids are pretty funny, and then you get ones that are just "no". In a way, I'm OK with something like that. But it's also problematic because some situations can trigger traumatic experiences. The game could just as easily be called "Trigger Warning The Game" because of all the stuff in it. Suicide, sex-related triggers, blood, violence, etc. The Russian Roulette privacy invasion was a little uncomfortable to watch. I haven't seen all of them yet, so no further comments...

As a bit of a joke... There's a lighthouse. There's a man. There's a city. Hm.

The story could definitely be more cohesive. It has a lot of good ideas and the mechanics are a pretty solid foundation, much like the first Assassin's Creed. Practically everything is victim to bad writing. If they can do what they did transitioning from AC to AC2, then I think they might have a winner. I wonder if it's going to be the Ubi-verse. Could be interesting. Hoping that Aiden returns. The entire game practically reeked of "origin story". The novel didn't really help matters either since it showed at the end that Aiden and T-Bone have officially teamed up to do stuff. Hopefully that concussion doesn't have any lasting damage. He did seem to take his new-found playfulness a little bit far. But it's good to know that he has allies, even within DedSec.

In terms of mechanics, they're solid enough. The driving could be less slippery and more like Driver: San Francisco. The bike mechanics were great though, except for taking sharp turns. The cover system is good, as is the freerunning. Moving between cover and getting in/out could be a little bit tighter though. There have been times where I should've been out of cover, but still stuck in it, and vice versa. Being able to turn off the aim assist was a good design choice. I like to be in full control of what I'm doing. Controller remapping though? Where's that? You can remap on the keyboard, but not the controller? Really? We're in 2014, we should be able to customize things relatively freely now.

If I were to rate it, a solid 6~7 would be it. Good to great ideas abound. Relatively poor execution and rather disappointing PC support. And despite that, it's still pretty fun to play with plenty to do. Except for that drinking mini-game. That thing can just go away. Also, the fact that women were mostly used as plot devices. Clara was great for as long as she lasted, and I believe that her death was unwarranted. There was literally no reason she had to be killed off. Not even to give Aiden motivation, because he already knew what to do. Nicky was a damsel in distress. What the hell was Poppy? A mere plot device? They could've done so much more! Lena was motivation...


It was all wasted potential. Ubi, you're big enough to take chances. You should know that. What are you so afraid of? I loved playing the game (with all the crappy performance from a GT540M) and I had a lot of fun with it, but it was just...



Disappointing.

Still no Crew

There was a patch released earlier today, and while it did increase performance... I still can't get past the second checkpoint. I did it ONCE. Then I hit something, which warranted a restart, because the game wants practically perfect runs. Then I was back to square 1 with the "can't get past second checkpoint" problem.

Was getting a few more frames out of the game though, which was good. It was also slightly more responsive, so turning was easier. Still disappointing that it's stuck on that... Really hoping that I have something better to use when another beta comes around. Would've loved to add to the server strain earlier today, but not being in free roam kills it.


Still looking forward to it, but definitely not Day 1.


ETA: And I definitely missed the tail end of the beta. Oh well. I still have the data on my drive. We'll see what some hackers can do with it...

Can't really run with a Crew right now...

...Because my laptop can't handle it.


It can probably pump out about 14~20 fps while I'm driving, but it's not enough. I can't even get to the second checkpoint during the first mission because of that. And because of the poor performance, I can't get to the free roam aspects or even to the damn story. Oh, and Alex? Voiced by Troy Baker. I heard the voice and it was just "...Troy? Freeman? When did you learn to talk?". ...I had looked up what I was missing since I couldn't get past the intro. He sorta looks like a weird Gordon Freeman. Or to some, Walter White/Heisenberg.

From what I've played though, I did have some fun with it. You begin by driving a truck offroad onto farm land with the police on your tail. It would be fine and all, considering that you have access to nitrous boosting, and the charge rate isn't all that bad. Looks to be some vehicular damage at play as well since the police also attempt to ram you from the sides. The "track" was definitely slippery, and I'm not too familiar with offroad driving, so I don't know how to deal with dirt as opposed to regular asphalt. It was a little annoying sliding around, drifting when I didn't want to. But that can probably be attributed to my lack of experience with that sort of racing.

The driving physics did feel rather familiar though. Turns out I wasn't completely crazy. Ubisoft Reflections is one of the studios collaborating on the project, with Ivory Tower. When I looked up who everyone was (didn't do any prior research before signing up for the beta; go me!), no wonder. Ivory Tower was made up of devs that worked on Test Drive Unlimited. Reflections did the Driver series, and also worked on Watch_Dogs. Adjusting to the somewhat slippery, arcade-y, controls was easy enough. Adjusting to the input lag though? Way worse than the missed input polling while playing WD. At the very least in WD, I had other ways of dealing with the objective (unless it was chasing a helicopter, but that was one time). It doesn't quite work when you're dealing with checkpoints and the timer be global rather than tied to actual game speed. I can understand some input latency when sending the signals via USB, wireless, or Bluetooth, but really? That much of a delay is unacceptable. Racers practically require tight controls.

Speaking of which... I can understand why the timer isn't affected by your fps: it's essentially an online game. An open world racing "MMORPG", with drop-in drop-out multiplayer. Everyone has to be running on the same timer or else it wouldn't work. The problem with that is it interferes with what's actually going on in-game. As noted above, my laptop runs the game rather slow. The game speed is tied to my fps. If it were uncoupled, then I could potentially compete and help out fellow teammates. I would experience a hell of a lot of stuttering and may make it an unplayable mess, but at least I wouldn't be desynced with what should be happening.

The graphics options look pretty standard. For some reason, it wouldn't let me set it lower than 1280*720, which would likely increase performance on my laptop. It did say on the requirements page what was needed to for 1280*720 at minimum, and 1080p for recommended. Was hoping that you could set it lower. Oh well. Might be possible if I had something to force it. Since I can't really do much with the graphics, no way to play around with the different AA settings. In fact, I haven't done any of that since forever anyways! V-sync was off since it would've been worthless and pointless. Can't lock my fps to 30 (or 60 if I edited a config file) anyways. For controls, it can be customized quite nicely. About the only thing I would change would be getting rid of the gear up/gear down lock to the right analog stick. Would prefer to map it to the shoulder buttons and map the view change to something else (d-pad?). I don't even remember what L1 does! Haven't tried out keyboard controls since it's a racing game. I don't do K+M when it comes to certain types of games. I don't have a wheel either, so can't provide feedback on that. But all the options present to tweak it? Nice.

Reading on the forums, there were a few strange things going on. Some weren't able to complete the first mission because of having too many input devices plugged in. That's a rather strange reason to fail... So they disconnected whatever they had and went with K+M, passed the initial mission. Didn't help my case, and quite a few others, since our problem was game speed. TXAA is apparently broken. Textures are messed up. Loading to a black screen. Amongst other things. Hopefully they're reading all of the feedback and working to fix things. I'll have to check back a little bit later to see if they've updated the build for the beta. Maybe I'll have something better for another testing session. I do want to play it with a couple of friends. I know that one is a racing enthusiast, and another expressed interest by asking for my impressions.


About the only thing I want is an offline option... Just cruising around the USA without any outside interference. And if I want to jump in with a crew, then I'll just do that.



Gotta ask though. Why is there a story...?

Open World Fun

Still haven't finished Saints Row The Third despite having it for at least 1/2 a year now. Then again, I sometimes buy games and not even start them until a few years later, so this is already progress. Like, insane progress. That, and I've really only been playing it as a co-op title, with the occasional pop in for random mayhem. Not story missions, just some minor levelling since I kinda want that infinite ammo upgrade.

Picked up Sleeping Dogs and Watch_Dogs, so I've been playing the 3 games alongside each other. I'm really not sure which one I like the best. In terms of control scheme, I like Watch_Dogs the most. About the only thing that's lacking is a jump button, but it's not like Aiden would be jumping around like a lunatic. And neither would Wei. The Boss from SR though? Would be fine. Sleeping Dogs is next, and I would probably place it above Watch_Dogs if there were a much higher emphasis on weapon/tool variety. It can also be customized, both the on-foot and driving controls, which is great. Haven't had to do so because the controls are easy enough to grasp without having to curse muscle memory. Mostly. Still a little awkward that they mapped both the sprint and vault/freerun actions to the same button (A/X), rather than having them separate (R2 for sprint, O for freerun). L1 does something different for all 3, which is pretty funny to watch when I'm switching between them (WD - weapon/tool wheel, SD - cover, SR3 - sprint). I hate that the weapon wheel is bound to O/B for SR3. It just feels so awkward... Would re-map to L1 if I could. Aim Assist is always off. Can't stand it. Before switching over to a controller for SR3, playing with KB+M was a little bit awkward. Combat and movement were fine. But then came the driving. I could not drive worth a damn. Change over to a controller, and it was a definite improvement. Still a terrible driver though, although somewhat better than in WD, but for other reasons.

The licensed soundtrack for WD is by far the worst in terms of variety. I just turned it off (and because you had to find 23 songs...), whereas I had no problem with flipping through stations at random for SD and SR3. The few instances where it used licensed music on purpose in WD though? Awesome. Overall soundtrack for the 3... Can't really comment much on it since they're open world. Unless you're in a mission, BGM just doesn't seem to matter all that much. I don't feel very immersed unless I randomly pick fights. Oh well. But when the soundtrack does kick in, it's generally pretty good. Besides, all 3 have their styles. I like the electronic and synth-y bits from WD, the silliness from SR, and the more regional sounds from SD. The soundtrack works.

For story... Don't really care about SR3. I'm just there to tear the place apart. SD is pretty interesting if you take the time to read the files. Fairly straightforward as well, so I don't really think there's much of a point in talking about it. Just play it. The psych implications on Wei are definitely interesting though. WD is a complete mess and a lot of info is hidden away in the audio logs. Seriously. But at least the logs play when you pick them up, except for the first 4 from Aiden himself, which explains why he knows how to fight/use a gun. I feel that if WD's story was more focused and not at odds with game mechanics (already have the city knowing my name + appearance halfway through Act 1 by being a homicidal lunatic), it would've been amazing, kinda like how AC1 was leading into the rest of the AC series. Maybe I'll post something on this later since I'm replaying as a homicidal lunatic, which is incidentally at complete and total odds with his actual character.


Of course, can't really talk about games without talking about their performance. Playing all 3 games at their lowest settings because my little laptop can't handle any of them that well (GT540M woo!). Hell, based on its specs, I shouldn't even be able to play WD in the first place! WD is DX11 only, which is a bit of a shame. Means that older GPUs won't be able to launch it. But your GPU would have to be pretty damn old for that to happen since the DX11 SDK came out in 2010 and GPUs from around that time should support DX11. WD has the worst fps fluctuations, ranging from just above 40 and dropping to practically nothing while driving. Lots of stuttering there. It's still relatively playable if you can cope with the fluctuations, although the driving sections will suck. Noticed that the audio is severely desynced from what happens on-screen, which is annoying since I sometimes rely on audio cues to do things. Still looks kinda pretty under these conditions. Definitely suffers from the cross-generation issue. SD runs pretty well. Again, with everything low. I actually turned off the shadows at one point and it just looked so weird. So back on they went, didn't notice too bad of a performance hit since I chose the lowest possible option. Just having the shadows is an improvement. Haven't encountered anything that would seriously tank my fps yet, so that's good. Hopefully it'll stay that way for the rest of the playthrough. SR3 is kinda special. Launcher that allows for either DX9 or DX10/11. DX9 is a bit more stable and consistent with being around 12fps or higher, but never hitting above 45fps (extremely rare). So there are fluctuations, but never as bad as WD's. DX11 performance is definitely better, although I've crashed out of the game more times using that. Ended up sticking with DX9 for stability's sake as I was doing co-op with a friend. Based on what I've been reading on the forums, SR3's stability is terrible in general. There was a special launcher mod-thing from a while ago, but it seems like the download is now "lost forever". At least I can edit a few values directly in the file. Helps it run a little better. Hopefully when I pick up SR4 (whenever that will be), I can find mods and the like to help with stability. There's a package coming out soon with the base game and all the DLC bundled.




As a side note, it seems that my cleaning of the original PS3 controller may have resulted in some sensor damage. While playing SR3, my character would randomly use melee attacks. No such problem with the new controller, which is good. At least now it means that I can shoot things when I want to shoot them, rather than going "stop kicking, start shooting!". Something funny I noticed when comparing the controllers: the original seems to have darkened to something of a very light beige, and that the plastic for the new one is either thinner or not as opaque. The indicator lights can be seen past the plastic, whereas it's blocked on the original.

Also, congrats to GDQ and SDA for raising $710K for Doctors Without Borders. Staying up until 0500 for that Trials Fusion run was completely worth it. "Owl hype" indeed.

Silly Trials

Been playing a fair bit of Trials lately. Motorcycle platforming! Lots of raging involved! And why the hell is the game speed tied to your fps? There's also the freezing/stuttering when trying to connect to the servers for Frontier, which is mildly annoying when you're resuming the game from putting the device to sleep/switching between apps. Still, it's mobile Trials and it plays well enough. There's just no pressure related throttle control, which would have been incredibly useful for the harder tracks.

Nabbed a copy of Trials Evolution and Trials Fusion... It took a while, but I finally unlocked the Extreme tracks for Evolution. Still working on it for Fusion, mostly because of the fps issue I have. Hardware isn't strong enough to keep a steady 60, which results in insane frame drops and slowdown (and subsequent speed spikes) that are difficult to recover from. Even weirder is the game rendering much faster than usual for Evolution. On some tracks, it'll spike to 80+ fps at specific portions of the track, making it extremely difficult to land a jump off a ramp while doing a backflip (and you're forced to flip, so eh...). But other than that quibble, it runs pretty smoothly. Now to actually make it past the first few jumps on those Extreme tracks, and to get that fault counter and time down for on the final Hard track. Almost ran out of time and faults to work with as the game actually reminded me about it. Had about 330 faults and a completion time of just over 23 minutes. Then the game crashed while trying to save the replay in webM format. It's actually pretty terrible at trying to save in that format since the quality is severely degraded and with frame drops everywhere. Oh well. That just means there's no video proof of my epic failure at playing Trials.

For Fusion... Eh... Can't even play the Hard tracks without being a complete failure. The frame inconsistency is just too much and too difficult to attempt to compensate for. The game's pretty though. Except for those shadows. I stared at those shadows for who knows how long because of how bad they were. In a way, I understand that shadow and lighting calculations are extremely costly, so corners had to be cut. But on the other hand, why does it still look so bad when cranked up to the highest settings on the PC? I think I still prefer how Evolution looked. Better than those warehouses! "Look, we're outside now!"

On a side note, the credits for Evolution are hilarious. Maybe I'll type them up in a separate post. It talks about the Bailout button with unusual detail and the marketing director making funny comments about it. And as per Ubisoft tradition, the credits are pretty long, but that's also because they included the Trials HD credits along with the Evolution staff.

And on another side note, did not know that you could attempt to speed run Trials. Thought I'd take a peek, and what do you know? Trials Evolution made an appearance at AGDQ13 and Fusion was present at SGDQ14. The Evolution player was pretty meh though. Faulting on some of the easier tracks. It would have been far more impressive if it were done like how the Fusion run was: unlocking every bike and passing every track with as few faults as possible. Instead, the rider used the Scorpion and Phoenix from the start. There was a bit of navigation fail, but that's kinda the game's fault as well. Not the best loading menus they made.

---

So... I noticed something kinda funny with the slots. Nothing on GFAQs last I checked. Playing on an iPad Mini, so I don't know how different some of the steps are with other devices. When I first started playing, you could fast forward the timer just from manipulating the clock. Still works on gas, so I'm not complaining too much.

1. Make sure you have an internet connection.
2. Disable the "Set Automatically" option in "Date & Time"
3. Make sure that you update the game on this change (if you're signed into Game Center, it'll say "Welcome back, *insert username*)
4. Go back to the settings and change the time to something else.
5. Update the game on the change
6. Go back to the settings and change the time to something a few hours ago.
7. Update the game, play the slots.
8. When you finish the challenge and and collect your rewards (or lack thereof), swipe to change apps, then back to Trials Frontier (or just begin the swipe change but don't actually change apps). That should reduce the timer to 0.

Of course, to fully take advantage of this... exploit, you still need to be able to do something about those challenges.

ETA: And it looks like RedLynx has fixed it for their 2.2.0 update. Kind of an annoying and weird update too: decreased the number of Gems required for another spin while increasing the time between spins to 1.5 hours.

LasRem Draft Run Part 1

I've already started my draft run. Second to start, by the looks of things. Should be fun, considering the units I've got. Managed to draft the following units, based on chronological availability:

Rush
Sandy
Baulson
Marty
Gabriel (why I'd torture myself with this unit, I'd never know)
Faye
Nora
Perneth
Beatrice
Adventurer Jorgen (Bandanna, Boots, Letter)
Acokus
Liza
Leshau
Ynfry
Paris
Zolean
Yugo
Snievan

I've also hired Neales and Chamberland to help out for the time being. Don't know if I'm going to hire any more soldiers, but I have 2 more slots I can probably fill. Not that it's necessary since the team is pretty much filled to capacity until hitting the second half of the game anyways. Might pick up a Traps soldier and a Potions soldier seeing as how I'm severely lacking in Bards (realized that I locked myself out of Robert and his crew a little while after I declared that I will be going for "At Hatred's End").

For Rush, I'm going for the Fencer class. More specifically, I'll be locking him into Adept Fencer for as long as possible. Maybe even proving that the class isn't terrible and that you don't need Legendary anything to get through the game. But then again, you wouldn't reach Legendary in quite a few classes when you're going for a true Low BR run in the first place~

His equipment will likely be a Shielding Hawkwind/Might Splitter combo. Sacrificing a little bit of a constant damage bonus for potential spike damage since I'm going to be training OH anyways. I'll likely end up upgrading to the Shielding variant all at once to avoid the Speed modifier. Accessories are still undecided, but will likely be using a few Remnants for their growth boosts. May go with dual Black Belts when it comes to the scoring, but we'll see. Not sure if I'll be using the accessory clone trick on anyone... Faye and Ynfry are practically begging for the Black Belts because of using DW.

As for progress, made it up to the Numor Mine events without too much trouble and without upgrading anything! Woo! The beginning segments were still about as easy as I'd remembered them. Floundered around in Gaslin and Robelia trying to get Pagus and Blocter's unions KO'd before the end of the fights to lower BR EXP a little bit. Didn't quite go as planned, but that's fine. There's still plenty of room later on to further optimize, but a good start is always appreciated. Torgal's union didn't go down during Dillmoor, which was a shame. Got careless around Blackdale and had to redo it once because I completely forgot about stocking up on Herbs ingredients. Almost went through the entire stock gathered from Robelia, Gaslin, and Dillmoor. Almost forgot that you could just slip right by one of the Skull Scavengers as it lifts off from the ground. The Fiery Idol took a few tries because I refused to leave the area to upgrade their equipment. I had 3 units, didn't see much reason to do so, nor should I have to.

Then ran towards Elysion, did/skipped all the story stuff, then ended up in the Catacombs. Which I promptly exited to start exploring, much to David's annoyance. Picked up whoever I could pick up (minus Gabriel for now), along with the 2 soldiers mentioned above. Catacombs were easy enough with Perneth and Chamberland taking out the larger unions with their Hexes. Sandy and Baulson still need to get their revive arts. Might take a little while though. Had a little fun running around trying to get them killed. Managed to avoid all the Landworms, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Normally, I'd just kill them and then move on. But since it's a fresh run, thought I'd try to optimize the early game as much as possible. Team wasn't optimal for linking the 4 Albic Qsiti at the end, so it was 2 at a time. It went from frustrating to too easy... Oh well. At least I'm at Numor Mine now. Thinking of grabbing the Simarrionne for Rush since I do need to start working on those OH and DW levels for Fencer. Almost time to recruit Jorgen too, which is good. Getting another healer is always a good thing, and it's right after a party upgrade.

Also noting down some speed-run related things. Playing casually and tweaking a few things, already at Numor Mine after ~3 hours. I can probably get that down to <2 if I didn't screw up some basic movements and without distractions (seriously, I was playing around with the FOV for a bit). I'll have to map it out a little better at a later point, but it does seem possible to beat it in less than probably 12 hours for any%. No way am I going to check out 100%... I don't think there's an efficient route for that one at all unless you go NG+.



I have the best/worst luck ever. First time entering a few areas... and there's a rare monster ready to fight! Too bad I only had Baulson/Rush/Sandy at the time. Can't take on rare monsters like that! I'll be back to kill you all... Just you wait!

Been thinking again...

So the idea of doing a speed run of Last Remnant has crossed my mind a few times before, but I don't know if it's possible to do so in a feasible amount of time with cutting down as much of the RNG as possible. The biggest issue is the exponential enemy growth starting from the second half onward. The game doesn't give you enough units to comfortably deal with that sudden level spike once the Six Bases comes into the picture. It's still possible to take it down with what's already available, although it will take some creative approaches (single unit revive unions, for one). A lot of the units are also locked away behind quests, so that's another issue to contend with. Using Mr. Diggs can end up wasting more time than just opening up new areas and looting them. Generic leaders cost money, which will affect funds for using IAs, so resorting to soldiers helps alleviate that... But then comes the issue of soldier stat growth: they're not very strong, and they take a lot longer to get up to par with the leaders. Equipment upgrades are also going to be sparse, so units will have to rely on using requested items. This can profoundly affect the sovani as the only request available to them is the Leraje Princeps from the Ivory Peaks for Torgal... but they can make do with what they start with. At least on Normal mode.

There's also the issue of any% vs. 100% completion. Going for 100% can be incredibly deadly to the team since the HP and stat spike is crazy. There's also when we start the timer. The Four Generals of Athlum actually get some EXP from the very first battle in the game, but it's a scripted fight. Depending on how powerful the rig is, there could also be a lot of slowdown just from the Gae Bolg's firing sequence. If going for 100%, what would be the fastest way to clear out quests? In a way, there isn't much you can do about it since you have to take them on one-by-one based on the client. About the only ones you can do concurrently are "Amnesia", "The Hero" + "The War of a Thousand Years", "Darien", "The Secret Letter", and several others. Those are the only ones off the top of my head...

Of course, there's also the issue of "100%". Probably the best definition of 100% of the game would be completion of all quests, which nets the player the "Dream Edge", which can be displayed from the inventory ("At Hatred's End" optional, but should be indicated whether or not it's been completed). Another definition would be 100% quest completion and 100% guild task completion. That one will definitely take a lot longer due to RNG for spawning rares. Wouldn't do that for a speed run. Ever. And then the absolute worst, which is what I've managed to accomplish, is 100% quests/guild tasks/rare monsters killed/all DLC completed. That too way too long... but I needed the data. Might settle on something soon-ish. But for now, I think we're going to work with draft runs.



In other news... Sunset Overdrive is probably the only X1 game that interests me so far, if only for the absurd colour palette and silly guns they have. Getting a mix of inFAMOUS (parkour and traversal speed aspects), Ratchet and Clank (from the same developers!), Borderlands (the crazy guns) from the trailers I've seen so far. Maybe a bit of Dead Rising and L4D because of the silly zombies and variety of them. I have this feeling that I'll have a PS4 and X1 before the generation is over... Not too sure about the Wii U yet. I'll have to gauge interest and other things. I'll probably end up picking one up for the Fire Emblem X MegaTen crossover. Just because. And I'm still going to make fun of the X1 because of its name. It'll be an interesting system, to say the least. We'll see how DX12 works out for it. If it can handle it.

I'm maybe a Smoke Conduit

Still thinking about getting that PS4... but I don't know if I want to get a 1st-gen machine. It's still going to be a long while before I get one. Probably at least 2 years. Then again, I got the PS3 in 2009, about 3 years after its launch (and right before they announced the slim model). I think I did about the same with the PS2, nabbing one around 2002-ish. So if the pattern continues, I'll be seeing one in about 2016... And hopefully this time I'll get something after a hardware revision!


When not dealing with classes (or sometimes in them if I'm bored enough) or assignments, been reading a fair amount of game dev stuff. Found a game dev magazine with all the issues online for free + code snippets when I went looking for the original inFAMOUS's postmortem since the one for Second Son was rather fascinating. In fact, I have 2 versions of the postmortem: one with just the slides, and another with a few notes per slide (not a lot, but a few interesting tidbits). Now if only I could get my hands on the presentation about their particle effects system... That one's the most intriguing, and it's only open to GDC Vault subscribers, which is quite expensive.

Post-release support for the game has been rather impressive. Just from watching the streams, you can tell that it's a launch window game with its mission structures and the like (as much as I like the series so far, it really does look more like a playable tech demo). Sure, there are a lot of fine details and the like, but some things just don't seem to gel properly. It almost seems like the game is meant to be played as a hero based on cutscenes and dialogue. Content is somewhat sparse, save for the Paper Trail and potential "Festival of Blood"-sized DLC. Quite a few complaints about the side-missions, and I don't blame them. But adding in things like Photo Mode, a HUD-less option, 30fps cap, etc? Makes me want to play the game even more. It shows that the developer, Sucker Punch, has been listening to criticisms and working to improve their game. It helps having one of their patch notes say that their art director pulled something while scrambling for the spare controller. Amusing, although something like that should have been accounted for since we're now playing with primarily wireless controllers. Well, they're listening, and that's what matters.

For April Fool's? There were a few fun ones, like 16-bit Thief from S-E's JP site. Google and Nintendo teamed up for a Pokémon themed challenge. Managed to catch all of them by the 13th because I had caught 5+ before the first deadline. Took screens of Mew on my tablet (found it in the Amazon). It was relatively painless, although I would've preferred to catch them all on the phone as it's a faster device. Still, happy to have caught 'em all~ Another one that amused me was Sony JP's "travel" campaign... which included a 4 day tour of Seattle courtesy of Delsin. With the D.U.P. still there. That can only end well.


Also finally decided to crack open the actual testing kit. Unfortunately, my screwy sense of smell worked against me this time. If you know me IRL and were present in that bio class, you might remember that I had absolutely no reaction in Gr.11 when it came to the digestion lab with the incubator, mock intestines, and enzymes. In fact, you had to put me really damn close to the incubator in order for me to smell anything. Well, taking a whiff of swatch 3 almost did me in for the night. I still don't know what the hell that was supposed to be and I'm not about to find out. Swatches 1 and 2 reminded me of various cleaning fluids, so it didn't bother me as much. No idea how they're determining the results though. Did sort of notice how they were graphing the answers. Maybe I'll create a dummy account and spam a bunch of answers to see what happens. Plus, I want to save those trippy pics they had for the online-only version. The ink splotches were quite nice though.

The funniest thing about the test? My results didn't change in the least. It was still 92% and Smoke. In a way, I suppose it's accurate considering how much I like fire.


Added a couple of things to my Steam wishlist. Trials Fusion was just too funny to pass up after seeing a trailer for it not too long ago. You see some pretty good gameplay for a bit... then you hear screams. Then you see slo-mo crashes for some time. And they were hilarious. Saw a few livestreams and some beta test footage (or is it demo footage?) for the PS4 version, and it looks really fun. Lots of physics and face-planting.


By the way? Coconut Oolong? Ew. I think it's either the oolong or the lemongrass. Something's rather off-putting about this blend. Had to force myself to finish it. It smelled quite nice though... Shame that it fell on its face like that. The coconut seemed a little bit off as well. Almost too much on the artificial flavouring. And I think I have to watch when I can steep a cup of the Coffee Cake blend. It apparently makes someone nauseous. I guess I can only have it while I'm hanging out in an open area. Like a certain office...

I has a beanie

So it took only about a month for the physical testing kit to come in for the inFAMOUS Paper Trail ARG. I had already done the online test while the site was slightly broken and had gotten 92% Pressurized Water. It was later corrected to Smoke, but I do have to wonder what all the different powers are. Maybe it's really just the ones that were listed in the other sites linked to Paper Trail. Either way, it might have to wait until the weekend before I take a poke at it. Got lots of things to take care of this week.

Oh, and I picked up the Collector's Edition. The beanie was inside the box~ ...Unfortunately, it was also kinda broken. So, I fixed it. Kinda badly. Have I ever mentioned that I suck at things like sewing? Something must have happened with the knit and stitching, because it was starting to fall apart at one quadrant. It was easy enough to patch up since it was easy to see all the loops. Granted, the glasses had to come off to really get in there, but at least it's wearable without fear of it unravelling on me. Hopefully. It's actually quite comfortable. Come to think of it, it's really the first hat that I've found comfortable and wouldn't mind wearing. Minus the static and hat hair, of course.

Everything else in the box was kinda cute. Not sure if I want to use the buttons. I like having them, never been a fan of displaying my fandoms in public. Which I suppose is somewhat amusing when you see that I have Sigma Harmonics on the phone and an Airu on my bag (with 2 finger slings; it's pretty funny though, I like the Airu/Felynes but dislike playing Monster Hunter). Or maybe not as Sigma Harmonics was never localized and was a pretty weird game, and the Airu is modelled after their PSP spin-off version. So those not familiar with imports wouldn't recognize them. Hell, one of my profs mistook the Airu for a weird pants Pokémon.

For the game itself... Can't even play it~ No PS4 yet. I had already watched a few streams a week before the game was officially out, so that satisfied my curiosity a bit. Kinda disappointed that the game is so short though, and a bit lacking on the karmic missions. Oh well. It was released within a year of the console's first year, so I can kinda forgive that. Hopefully the next one builds even further, although I'm expecting some interesting additions once their planned DLC is out. I've been hearing that the Paper Trail ARG is really well implemented. I'll have to check out this 42 Entertainment company... Now if only the site would stop dying every now and then~

Also checked out the trophy data. Looks like it'll be another easy Platinum. Had absolutely no trouble with 2's, and this looks even easier. And looks like Good is winning over Evil. Again. But from what I've seen from the playthroughs, it doesn't seem quite right to have Delsin go evil anyways... Evil may be more fun, but character-wise, it doesn't seem quite right (the neutral cutscenes are quite guilty of that). Well, I'll have to play for myself because of dropping in and out of livestreams. Gotta love those District Showdown interactions though. Wish there was a little more to it.


By the way? "Scraping the Sky"? Awesome track. And I maintain my opinion of Delsin being adorkable.

This must be Hell

I think I'm going to start counting how many times I've shouted expletives while playing a certain Xavi stage. They've managed to make the gimmick from 3/U worse. Granted, I was going at it with Matabei, who I'm not particularly good at using. He has a somewhat annoying pause when using some of his attacks, which isn't present once you throw away his boomerang. I think he's tied with Tenkai for absolute worst base DEF at 50 (it'll be 60 since you're not likely to get a weapon with 0 DEF). If the JP wiki is right... Kingo has the highest DEF. Wat. There are a few missing from the list, so...

Anyways, the stage. Every hit you suffer results in cutting your money. It's really too bad that they stick both Muneshige and Yoshihiro near the start of the stage to wipe out your funds, unless you happen to be really good at doing no-damage runs. I guess someone like Mitsunari (or even Kenshin) could wreck the stage. At least your partner getting hit doesn't count towards losing money, so I was using Naotora as an attack dog. Attack tiger? Eh, who cares. Playing on the Basara difficulty was kind of my fault since I wanted the trophy. At least I have a relatively easy way of grabbing EXP now. ... And it's not using Katsuie. I somehow ended up with all the EXP-related inscriptions while playing as Kojuurou, so he's been the one helping level the next ones up for story completion. Because HP is really that important./s

You can probably tell by now that I really like Kojuurou. But I should probably get an EXP farming weapon for Katsuie because he can wreck stages faster than Kojuurou when locked at Lv1. Plus, his gimmick lets him practically full-combo a stage, which is pretty awesome.

The other Xavi stage isn't that bad, although I haven't quite figured out how to "pray while the Waltz is in effect" part. It's probably related to the roulette at the top of the screen. That I can't, incidentally, fully read.


Capcom seems to have released challenge vids. It was a nice reminder that Yoshihiro's best movement technique is... dash jumping. He's funny in his own, sluggish, way. Thankfully with the system changes, Yoshihiro doesn't get his massive sword stuck in the ground as much. Because I suck at aiming that rather large chunk of metal. Seriously, it looks more suitable for breaking all the bones rather than cutting you. I think almost half his skills involve smashing you with it.

Oh yeah. Kinda noticed after a bit that you can see after beating a route with a character if they have other notable routes. So the most efficient would actually be clearing their "Creation" routes first, then selecting their "Drama"/"Anime" routes after. Only need to play 2 stages and the game plays all the dialogue leading to them. Which was great when I needed to finish up Hideyoshi's Drama route because I suck at playing grapple characters. Still fun, just wouldn't want to go at it at a higher difficulty.

I'll get an inFAMOUS post up at some point since Second Son is now out.

DRAGON BOOST

Yep. Got 戦国BASARA4 in about a week ago. Still haven't unlocked everything, which is a bit of a shock, to be honest. Then again, I didn't expect some of the changes to the game that would make it a little bit more difficult. Normally, Hard would be relatively easy for most characters starting from Lv1 (Kenshin is arguably the most broken character in the series, even if he's cherry-tapping all the way). About 12 more stages need to be unlocked, although I think I've gotten most of the weirder stages for now. Don't really care about the Matabei invasion stages since it's really just an extra boss fight on top of what's already in that stage. Unfortunately, I read that there are more than 42 stages involved with the "beat all stages" trophy. So I think I'll need to track down all the "outbreak" stages, which are likely going to be the duels missing. Don't remember which ones I've already done...

It was nice of them to not make Kojuurou an NPC again for the main installment (he's graduated!). Don't really want to wait another year before the expansion inevitably comes out to play as him. And it turns out that "Bontenmaru" line was part of a flashback. The story was actually kinda cute. Little Masamune was such a little brat~ Too bad about only having 1 ending though. Want Yoshiteru playable. He seems pretty interesting, and should be as broken as possible considering the kind of hell he can give you during his fight. Although that might be because of trying to take him on without too many upgrades to my weapons and not really knowing how to use Hideyoshi (lol, I can't do chain grabs to save my life).

Should slowly get through the rest of the characters. It'll be interesting to see who kills who, who doesn't kill certain characters, etc. In other words, waiting on the announcement of the script book because I'm very sure that I won't trigger every possible convo. Some had rather strict conditions before they popped.




By the way, Masamune? Spinning your katana like that doesn't give you flight. You're not flying a jet-horse. And I think that's cheating when you're trying to do a race. Love the fact that Kojuurou just stands there with a straight face when Masamune takes off like that. Then again, he does that a lot.

Another thing I noticed... I didn't see Tsuchibayashi's name for character designer. Maybe I missed it, but pretty sure that it's not there. His personal site doesn't even list 3 Utage, so maybe there's a change to a different designer from now on...?

ETA: Ah, that's why. Since SB4 is considered a parallel universe (amongst all the other parallels), they're going with something new. Kinda also explains why they're a little bit on the scrawny side. Production IG's characters tend to be rather slim. Looks like SB's got some sort of multiverse thing going since there are a few constants here and there, and some variation elsewhere.

SaGa, and other things

Well, the teaser from not too long ago was been revealed to be a Romancing SaGa event of sorts. Learned something new too: there's a prefecture called Saga there, which is the location of a sort of collaboration between the two. Needless to say, no one (that I've seen so far from the English-speaking community) is actually happy about this. I'm intrigued though since the actual 25th anniversary isn't until some time in December. Not sure if the whole anniversary thing is going to focus on the entire series as a whole or if it's going to focus on the Romancing SaGa sub-series. Either way, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Doubt they're going to put out another soundtrack collection (and I don't think I'd buy it since I already have the 20th Anniversary edition).

Been keeping an eye out for inFAMOUS Second Son news every now and then, so I think I'm mostly up-to-date on that front. What I didn't realize was that the SRP is now $10 higher than I anticipated. Kinda makes me wish that I had pre-ordered it on Amazon instead of at a local store, but I'm not sure about getting the pre-order bonuses from them. That, and I normally don't pre-order games that far in advance... Oh well.

One of the things that's starting to concern me is the graphics, funny enough. It's not that it's not a pretty game (it is!), but that there are some very glaring differences between the different builds we've seen so far. And shadows. Delsin doesn't seem to be casting a shadow from all light sources (self-shadowing is present, which is good). It's likely that there was some sort of performance hit somewhere along the line that resulted in some of the changes. Possible that there were just "too many" light sources for it to be feasible. Trade-offs and whatnot. Or maybe the E3 build, which was definitely one of the prettier builds (at least in terms of texturing), is what we're to expect. Or maybe it just won't be that noticeable in the long run because the screens we'll be playing on wouldn't be exposing all those flaws in the first place. I know that I wouldn't be able to pick out some really minor details if I tried with my current setup (and the current pair of glasses I'm wearing, but it's mostly the distance from the screen).

Speaking of different builds... New gameplay vids have come out, although in Russian. Can't understand a single word~ Looking pretty fun, and the reflections are looking great. Getting a bit of rain while looking up is a nice touch. The UI is pretty ugly, although the first games weren't really that notable either. So nothing new in that regard. Feels kinda weird seeing the energy bar on the bottom left though. But damn. The mini-map? I LOVE IT. Not only does it show your location, but also the cityscape based on the camera's direction! It's a really nice touch. For the gameplay, great to see that when using Precision mode with Neon, you can see a red highlight for an execution (headshot) and a blue highlight (leg) for a non-lethal takedown. Shoot that area while using Precision, and you have your result.


Thief reviews have come in. It's interesting to see the split so far. To be honest, the split was pretty much expected.

No more shooting for now

Well. Definitely not going to be shooting for the next while. Just returned a (very nice) set of limbs to a friend since she needed them back. Already got some recommendations for what to get next because of being acquainted with some shopkeepers. Carbon-foam was the suggestion due to the lack of arm length and need for efficient energy transfer. I did like the carbon-wood though, since it was a much smoother draw than your typical starter limbs. The price is definitely going to be a bit on the steeper side though, since it is carbon-foam. The tech used is enough to boost the price tag, unfortunately. Fortunately, SF does have a decent set for less than $300 before factoring in taxes. Might nab those at some point. Seeing those on sale is practically a no-go, although shorts are apparently a harder sell... We'll see.

Speaking of which, I haven't been shooting as much as I would like this term. Still, it's justified to the workload being considerably higher than I had expected. I'll probably have a post up on that on the other blog. It's quite fascinating if you think about it. And I think that 2 should really be -2 since that's what the formula states. Still not sure what that white spot is supposed to be though. Things at the range have been moving along quite nicely. Things are still getting broken, but they're also getting fixed quite quickly. Probably because they don't want me to try killing them from short range (I'm actually quite a weak long-range fighter, which is ironic since I favour sniping rather than CQC in games). Managed to accomplish the one thing that some of wanted to do without much of a fight. I think we managed to chip away at it long enough to get it to happen. The sweep was rather uneventful though; spent my time talking to another on what to order for the club/classes because of pooling some resources. Should be seeing quite the bill on my credit card soon... but since I'm dealing with the finances, I can at least see where the money is going. Which reminds me, I should file those receipts soon since it takes 35 days for the reimbursement if it's over $100, fewer days if less since it goes under "petty voucher".


Already noted on my other blog is the "Twitch Plays Pokémon" thing that's still ongoing. Even though people have started dropping off a bit, if you could call dropping from 80K to 47K dropping off, they might actually get somewhere!


...


Doubt it.


They're still trying to get the Lift Key.

Have a few other thoughts floating around in my head, but I'll leave those till later. Involves some SenBASA and inFAMOUS. By the way, I still think that Delsin is shaping up to be a complete dork.

Pink Golf Carts

Slowly moving through Saints Row The Third with a friend now... Still don't know what else I can do to get it to run a little bit better. It can easily tank at <15fps, which is nigh unplayable once you get swarmed. What's even funnier is that I can't see my partner's avatar, which he eventually told me that they're very similar save for the outfit and weapon choices during our BL2 session.

So. During the little rampage of various story missions, we needed a vehicle (since I still can't drive properly) to get around to the various locations a little bit faster. So my friend runs off to find one since he knows the city a lot better than I do, while I deal with the fighting (something I'm decent at even with crap fps). He asks one really simple question, "pink or purple?" Since I had no idea what he was referring to, I said "pink" for the hell of it. Turns out that he went to get a golf cart, of all things, out of a nearby garage for our use. And thus we continued our rampage in a pink golf cart. Tried to keep laughter to a minimum to not wake everyone else in the house... It was pretty absurd driving around in a tiny golf cart with Pierce and shooting up everything that gets in the way. Now only if it could run better... Maybe the cleaner install will help? It's already helping other things a bit.


Speaking of BL2, started playing as Zero. In a tux. And it's awesome. Well, except for going down all the time while trying to melee everything in the face. Also, he's a little bit taller than Maya, which was a little bit fun trying to adjust to (not as bad as Sal being really short though). Still don't know what to spec into. Started with Sniping at first... but that wasn't really helping since I wasn't the host, so lag killed the sniping. So respecced to Bloodshed, which worked a bit better, save for the fact that I went with Killing Bl0w instead of Ir0n Hand, which was pretty lulzy in itself. Funny enough, it saved me a few times while downed.

Silent Melody

Well, played through inFAMOUS 2 twice and Platinum'd the game within a week without much effort. Definitely like it a lot more than the first one, although it did have its little charms (grumpy Cole, for one; I don't miss chasing helicopters on foot). The one thing that constantly irked me was the camera though. I really didn't need it swinging back and forth to give me more dynamic angles when I was using finishers. Really, it gets old after the first 20 or so uses. Mostly because there are about 3 animations for a normal finisher and 3 for the ultra finishers, and considering an upgrade you can get for ultra finishers to restore energy after a take down, you'll be seeing those a lot if you go for melee (it tends to be faster to recharge energy this way as long as there's a human-sized enemy, unless you're low on health; Cole can't really eat a rocket to the face on Hard). Another problem with the camera after finishers was that it can be disorienting as the camera will attempt to shift behind Cole, and he's usually not facing the direction you originally had him.

You can see that a lot more effort was put into 2. Didn't really notice any stock animations during key scenes. Somewhat forgivable for the random NPCs since they're not major players. The game was also more my speed. iF1 felt a little bit slow and clunky, iF2 fit more my "let's get this done as efficiently as possible" mentality at times. Plus, with the power variations and being able to swap them out with Left on the D-Pad, more variation in battle! Although it does break up combat while changing things since it does pause the game. Real-time changing probably would've been a bit much in the middle of a massive firefight. Not that I would mind since even Hard Mode was a bit too easy once you got enough upgrades/cheesed your way to either Hero or Infamous ranked powers.

Still prefer the Good powers over the Evil ones. All that extra splash damage is great and all, but nothing really beats freezing your enemies for an instakill and some extra EXP. Not to mention energy regen when you hit human-sized enemies with any Bolt variation. Kinda miss the grenade upgrade that would auto-restrain your enemies if they were taken down by it. Some of the new neutral powers are pretty fun to play with, including the DLC ones. Love the Electrocution Grenade for setting up head shots. The Lightning Tether is also nice for travelling around when I don't feel like climbing things. And then I end up climbing it anyways because I tend to have Kinetic Pulse or Frost Shield equipped to the R2 slot.

Both endings sucked. Kill all humans or kill all Conduits. Either way, someone gets screwed. But then there's Second Son, which leaves me curious as to what really happened with the RFI. Seattle is definitely a lot closer than somewhere across the ocean if we're to take into account diminishing effects based on blast radius... We'll see what happens.


I suppose the next thing I should conquer is the UGC Editor. Looks like a fun little tool to play with. After I watch the tutorial vids. Or maybe I won't get to it because the break's almost over...

Oh yeah. Second Son has been pre-ordered... Problem is, I don't have a PS4. Yet. And the first thing I'm going to do when I get around to playing it? DUNKING DELSIN IN WATER. I should ask a friend who's actually living in Seattle where has the most water... or at least the deepest pool.