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.
27 Jul 2014
25 Jul 2014
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...
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...?
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...?
5 Jul 2014
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.
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.
1 Jul 2014
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.
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.
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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.
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