I ended up picking up Shadow Warrior 3 in the Summer Sale. I know the main issue with the game was the length, and that even at a budget price, the price still felt too steep. But at £17.50, that pill seems easier to swallow, especially as there is a New Game Plus mode now too. I might end up coming back and saying I still felt ripped off, but I guess we'll see.
So I think I am further now in Man of Medan than I ever got before and I got my first death - ironically, face of the game, Conrad. I dunno whether it’s because of the choices I made, but Conrad ends up becoming separated from the group for reasons never explained and due to narrative developments since then, I feel like his death was probably avoidable. Usually the supernatural is made real in these games, so when it asked me to confront some sort of hag, I thought that was a sure way to get myself killed. However, I am starting to wonder if maybe everyone is just tripping balls and there is no supernatural element at all.
Interestingly I have also had some scenes where it looks like The Curator is in the background, I guess this is a hint that characters could have died here? But no Curator when I got Conrad killed.
Honestly, in general, my story feels quite fragmented so far. Characters are discovering things which the game tells me are important, only for those characters to lose those items moments later without ever using them. Again, maybe it’s because of my choices, but every time this has happened there has been no obvious alternative path.
Also, just in general, while Man of Medan is full of cool imagery, the worst part about it is playing it. The fixed camera tank control thing does allow for some really striking visual moments, but it just feels horrible. I also wish they put more time into the animation, especially the body animation, god some scenes look so weird.
The seeming randomness of QTEs makes them I suppose appropriately stressful for the subject matter, but it just feels more frustrating than anything else when the game will suddenly change the rules with no warning, forcing a mistake only avoidable if you knew it was coming. Like for example, I dunno whether Fliss always gets separated from the group, but in my playthrough she ended up separated as they threw two different types of QTE back to back, tricking me. Not really much of a story to share with my friends.
Oh and the constant jump scares can ***** off. I eventually just took my headphones off and played with subtitles.
Just had a quick go on Shadow Warrior 3 and boy, I know I am not in for a long ride, but I kinda feel that might be fine based on my initial experience. The game is absolutely stick your tongue out, FPS, awesomeness but the combat also feels very messy, so I hope as the novelty runs out, the game does as well. The movement, gun feedback, environmental kills, epic finishers and using the powers of the enemies against them, just all feels so damn good.
Finished my playthrough of Man of Medan. Kind of annoyed as I feel like I made just one bad choice that cost me one of the best endings. The ending I did get was Brad chose to fight Olson, Olson died in the process but the cap was saved. This meant the remaining four playable survivors could ride off into the sunset on the duke. It turned out Danny had survived, so when the military arrived to follow up on my SOS, they were seemingly killed by Danny high on the Manchurian Gold, but no further consequence is given beyond this.
Reading around, it looks like based on choices Man of Medan can go in more overtly supernatural routes, but my playthrough seemed to hint at absolutely nothing supernatural going on at all. I actually kinda liked that in the end, as Supermassive have coded us to expect the supernatural and for there to be seemingly nothing supernatural at all is kinda clever in context.
Overall, I really didn't enjoy this a whole lot. But I did enjoy the setting and the story overall and like I said before, I think the dialogue/relationship/trait system is so much better here than in the Quarry, I just really didn't like the act of having to actually play this which is kind of damning in a videogame. The QTEs are so punishing - and not in the right way - and the horrid tank controls undermined a lot of the visuals, as I couldn't appreciate my surroundings when I was fighting with the person I was controlling just to get them through doorways and stuff. Oh and the constant jump scares can get in the sea.
Still planning to play Little Hope & House of Ashes, then, @Pizzamorg ....?
May as well since I have bought them and installed them already! Not sure when I will make a start on Little Hope though.
I see Little Hope and House of Ashes have slightly better reviews than Man of Medan, I just hope Little Hope controls/plays better, if nothing else. If they can also improve some of the animation/performances then that'll be the icing on the cake.
Made my start on Little Hope. Feels a bit more Quarry than the last game with that opening. It is either interesting or a bad sign though, in that the first bearing update is one the player has no control over.
Again, the game remains as visually splendid as these titles do. In fact, faces seem slightly better from the previous title too, however, the animation still remains weirdly low quality in the context of everything else.
Movement feels faster and smoother than the previous title, and I like that we now see on screen when relationships go up and down, rather than trying to find it in the menu. On the flip though the fact they have seemingly made QTEs more complicated (albeit not throwing nearly as many at you to begin with, thankfully) has me worried.
I guess I could just use the accessibility options, I think you can change everything to one button and change tapping to holding, making it more like The Quarry. But I do think on the flip The Quarry was almost too easy, I went something in the middle where I can fail, but I don't fail because the game tricks me by switching inputs or mechanics with no warning or prior context given like Man of Medan loved to do.
Made some more Little Hope progress. Are we really doing another story about hallucinogenic gas, or is something supernatural going on this time? They tricked me once... I actually do like the whole Silent Hill thing it has going on though, to be fair.
Not really a huge fan of the characters so far, especially Taylor, she seems like such a bitch. I have to assume they'll be some twist coming which makes it turn out she isn't so bad after all.
Oh and the new Lock system I dunno about. Just makes the whole trait system seem way more gamey than before. I liked the nuance of not knowing what different traits would result in, rather thna 'you get X lock traits and you are locking in your death' stuff.
Well, Little Hope is a sequel to Man of Medan, @Pizzamorg ... While House of Ashes is not connected to either previous game in any story way
I'm not sure you'll like this game or the next very much, going by the posts so far, sadly
I'm looking at getting a new laptop and was wondering if there are any minimum specs I should look for. I don't game on PC that much (I get the free Epic games whenever they interest me, which isn't often, and have a decent Steam collection that is mostly unplayed), and definitely not the new high spec games, so definitely not looking for a high end gaming one or anything. The only games I can think of that I have had trouble with was Abzu ran pretty slowly and either Portal or Portal 2 (I think 2) ran great the whole game until the final boss when it slowed to a crawl with so much going on. So is there anything I should be on the lookout for before I just buy another basic one like usual?
I noticed that xboxdesignlab is up in Australia now. I mean we all know the XBox Series controller is the best PC controller so obviously it's also for us here in this thread. What kind of Nintendo-ish (or non-Nintendo) colour schemes for it do people like? Kinda curious
I mean I was kinda thinking Gamecube colour schemes but unfortunately you can't make the sticks different colours. Which kinda screws you over. SNES I have a lot of nostalgia for but if you do the superior colour scheme for SNES it's basically just a grey controller with colour buttons. Which is nice but. Zelda might've worked but there's no gold colour to pick which makes it basically a non-option. Bowser is kinda similar, you can't really do a deep green it's either Yoshi green or mud brown
I think I might just end up going with my footy team's colours
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
An opinion is only respectable if it can be defended. Respect people, not opinions
I have been hitting Rise/Sunbreak really hard over the last few weeks, so haven't had a huge amount of time for my Little Hope playthrough. However, I managed to squeeze in another hour or so into it, and got my first death!
Now, I thought my first death was Angela, but it looks like if you get her beyond a certain point, everyone gets the same fake out death? And then she just sorta pops back up again a while later and it is sorta not properly touched on. I do hope there is a flashback or something at one point.
No, my first death ended up being Taylor, because she was aggressive and deceitful, apparently. It is funny, because I hadn't long maxed out her relationship with Daniel and well... that didn't help her in the end, did it? I don't feel too mad about this one, I didn't like her much as a character, so I won't really miss having her around.
I will say I am a little disappointed by the execution of her... execution (heh). If I was to describe the death to you, it would sound really cool, but the way they actually realised it was pretty limp.
Are there any decent external Blu Ray drives (to connect to a laptop) for a relatively decent price? Just want something that can be used to watch movies/TV shows. Not too fussed about the ability to burn or write.
To be blunt, BluRay playback on Windows is kinda garbage. At least it was last time I bothered with it. What you want to do is get a massive portable HDD and rip your collection. If you're going external purely so it's portable and you have a desktop somewhere? I'd pick up an LG BluRay drive for ripping, because you can overwrite the firmware which allows you to also rip UHD discs
If you want something portable because the laptop is all you have. I personally have a Pioneer BDR-XS06, it's not the fastest thing in the world but I ripped most of my collection with it. And I still prefer it over my LG drive for non-UHD discs because it's quite a bit quieter. I'm not sure if you can still get it but, something along those lines should do the job
@skywake, yeah, the laptop is the only PC I have. Sucks to hear direct playing of the discs isn't that great (as that's what I was mainly planning on doing), but I'll give it a try.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@RR529
If you do want to go down the road of ripping discs there are two pieces of software you'll want to look at. MakeMKV and Handbrake. The first allows you to decrypt and rip the discs into a easy to play format which may well be good enough. BluRays are ~25GB each and you can get a 4TB portable HDD for fairly cheap, that's a good 150 movies in your pocket
But if you have some more patience you can take those rips and cut the size pretty significantly without losing much quality. How long that takes will depend on how good your machine is. I use the bellow settings in handbrake to get the file to about 1/5th the size. Which means that same 2TB would store 750 movies. Save the bellow to a .json file and you should be able to import it into handbrake
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