Messages

201

General Gaming / Re: I want to build a PC and run every good and maybe the next gen stuff. Advice?

« on: April 11, 2013, 04:35:41 PM »

For $1000, you should have no problem building something that will play games for the foreseeable future.  At that cost, you're probably already ahead of the "next-gen" console specs, even if you were to build today.  Do you have any restrictions on size?  Some people don't want a big, bulky tower sitting around their home entertainment center.  That could change the components/scope of your build a bit.

I would say to prioritize RAM and GPU.  Try to spend around $300 on a video card, I'd say.  Unless you go with Linux, you'll need to set aside some money for an OS(go OEM).  For gaming, if you're going the Intel route, an i5 chip will work fine.  Most games aren't set up to take full advantage of hyperthreading, so the i7 would not be worth the extra cost.  RAM can be found fairly cheap, and is going on sale all the time at various vendors; 4 GB is the absolute minimum for "future-proofing" I think.

After that, you'll need a hard drive, tower, PSU and mobo.  Maybe an optical drive, up to you, but they can be had for cheap too.  I don't even know if they make conventional HDs with less than 500 GB these days, which is... a start.

That will probably get you right in at around $1k, depending on how you do your shopping.  I spent about that much on my rig 6 months ago, and it won't have any issues playing games on my tv for a while.

202

General Gaming / Re: I want to build a PC and run every good and maybe the next gen stuff. Advice?

« on: April 10, 2013, 04:55:10 PM »

Why are SSD's essential? They just speed up boot and load times, right? I'm not really interested in my SSD failing after a certain amount of writes.

I skipped out on SSD.  Occasionally, I feel the urge to change, but it really hasn't bothered me.  I keep a lot of games loaded at all times on multiple HDs, and load times are still reasonable to me.  Maybe I'm still used to WiiU load times, but a few extra seconds/minutes isn't going to make/break my experience.

Output to a TV is nice, because it limits your resolution options so you don't have to go spec crazy.

I built my system recently and it's played everything on my TV at high settings with nary a hitch.

i5 2500 CPU
GTX560Ti Video Card
8 GB RAM
etc...

I don't foresee having a huge issue with "next-gen" games, but my motherboard can handle some upgrades.  You can build a decent rig for under $1k, but you can easily spend well over that.

Building a computer these days is fairly easy.  It's almost like paint-by-numbers.  There are a few things to keep in mind regarding static electric discharge and such, but once you know what you're doing, you can't really mess it up.  The only thing the pros do better is keeping everything nice and neat inside your tower.  If you know someone that can do it, I would suggest enlisting them to show you how to do it so you can upgrade components/build another one later.

Don't cheap out on your power supply.  Make sure you get as big and obnoxious a tower as you can find; something that flashes blue, red, and green lights would be best.

Ultimately, questions like this are very hard to answer without knowing more about exactly what it is you're looking for.

203

General Gaming / Re: Sell millions, still a failure?

« on: April 09, 2013, 04:02:17 PM »

Square-Enix have clarified their issues with sales numbers for these games. 

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/square-enix-reveals-sales-expectations-for-tomb-raider?abthid=516427a067b8048829000007

Lulz at S-E expecting Tomb Raider to sell between 5-6 million units in under a month.... and that was a conservative estimate!

204

General Gaming / Re: Bioshock Infinite Spoiler Thread [is anyone even playing this game?]

« on: April 01, 2013, 04:38:14 PM »

I think Elizabeth is a really interesting gameplay/narrative device.  For as much as she's vital to the story, she really doesn't do much.  Her AI is... interesting, if a bit underused.  The game's AI pretty much ignores her existence, so she really never was in any danger.  I think this implementation, and the community's acceptance of it, is really an indictment of the gaming industry's inability to make NPCs who are vital to the storyling, but aren't completely detrimental to the gameplay experience.

I agree with the arena shooter aspect.  I think I mentioned how the encounters felt like those in the Uncharted series.  It might be laziness, but more likely, it's probably just another convention of the medium.  I did kind of like how the musical cues would let you know if you were done with the combat sections.

I watched Angry Joe's review of the combat system, and he bemoaned the lack of depth and options in the game.  He said he found no real reason to use any vigors/weapons other than the ones he had an affinity for.  I actually felt the same way on my playthrough.  Strangely enough, the vigor/weapon choices he made were COMPLETELY different from mine.  And I've heard other people have different play styles, too.  I'm actually quite surprised at how differently people are playing this game from me.

The racism stuff, while overt, it's role in the story is much more subtle.  Booker's past is reflected in Comstock's present.  Early in the game, Booker is hesitant to undergo the baptism, because he does not believe that it will wash away his sins.  Comstock obviously believed that it would.  Since Comstock never put in the effort/time to truly rid himself of the demons of his past, he was doomed to repeat them.  This is reflected in the society he's built.  Ironically, in one of the interpretations of the ending, in order for him to "fix" everything,  Bookerstock must be "baptized" by Elizabeth.

Of course, in my opinion, the story's setting does not necessarily have to be relevant to the story other than that's where it takes place.  I found Columbia to be a visual marvel.  For a lot of games, that's enough.  But adding the layers of labour unrest and race relations serves to make the world feel more alive.  The fact that it could serve as a metaphor for the nostalgia that many Americans remember was a better time, to me, is more gravy.

Oh, and did anyone else get a kick out of the Founders' patriots being George Washingtons, and the Vox Populi's patriots were Abraham Lincolns?

205

General Gaming / Re: Bioshock Infinite Spoiler Thread [is anyone even playing this game?]

« on: March 31, 2013, 02:03:33 PM »

Teehee...

Found a nice quote from the SomethingAwful forums:

Elizabeth is a good NPC. She's not constantly screaming "HELP ME, BOOKER!" instead I'm screaming "SAVE ME, ELIZABETH!"

My thoughts exactly!

Also, a blog post that dissects the major themes in the game: http://peripsuche.blogspot.ca/2013/03/bioshock-infinite-thematic-analysis.html.  It's a pretty interesting write-up.

206

General Gaming / Re: Bioshock Infinite Spoiler Thread [is anyone even playing this game?]

« on: March 30, 2013, 05:35:04 PM »

Hurrrr....

I seem to be deleting my thoughts before posting a lot.  I think it's great that the game seems to be provoking so much discussion around the community(just not this one).

Beware unmarked spoilers in a spoilers thread!

So, two camps, it seems.

1) Elizabeth kills Booker, and, by extension, all instances of either Booker or Comstock.
2) Elizabeth kills one instance of Booker, and, by extension, all instances of Comstock.

I haven't revisited the ending since my first playthrough, so some of the details that might clear that up are a bit murky.  Personally, I like the second option, because it is less depressing.  I think the post-credit sequence lends credence to this option since it can be assumed that it occurs outside of the universe where Elizabeth kills Booker/Comstock.

My interpretation is that before drowning Booker, Elizabeth mentions that in that specific timeline, Booker had just made the decision to accept Baptism and become Comstock(at least, that's how I'm remembering it).  At this point, she drowns Comstock.  I'm inclined to believe that the multiple instances of Elizabeth is a reference to the constants and variables theme of the game.  At this point, Comstock's death is a constant across all universes where Booker chooses to accept rebirth.  Elizabeth, as we have come to know her, no longer exists.

This leaves all universes where Booker rejects rebirth intact.  I think.  Anna never gets sold/lost to Comstock since he never comes into existence.  Everybody lives happily ever after.  Possibly.

Thinking about it further, that theory leaves a lot of holes, too.  Technically, the PC Booker shouldn't be the same Booker/Comstock that Elizabeth drowns since it isn't his universe(at least, I don't think it is). 

Argh...  The more I type, the more I think, the more I second-guess myself.  This is why alternate universe/time-travel/ambiguous storylines always run into problems!

207

General Gaming / Re: Bioshock Infinite Spoiler Thread [is anyone even playing this game?]

« on: March 29, 2013, 03:37:17 AM »

Gah.  Just lost my long-winded post.

Anyway, I just finished marathoning the game today in honour of the long weekend.  I have mixed feelings about the game, overall.  I loved the combat of the game.  The vigors are great, and the guns are mostly satisfying.  I've heard that auto-aim on PC is turned on by default, but I'm not really bothered by things like that.  In fact, I probably enjoyed the game a bit more because of it.

My favourite combo in the game was to start off encounters with Shock Jockey, then clean up with a headshot from the Combine(or just splatter them with the shotty).  This works exceedingly well(especially with auto-aim) once you get the ability to chain lightning.  Possession was a lot of fun; I love having Patriots mow down their own teammates.

I've read a lot of reviews that have complained about some pacing issues, specifically padding in the midsection(don't we all have that problem?).  I'm inclined to agree, though I think the problem extends through the end of the game.  To me, encounters felt a lot more like encounters from Uncharted/the new Tomb Raider.  I also took issue with the forced backtracking in some areas.  Fighting Elizabeth's "mom" was particularly bad in this regard.  Perhaps it was an issue with the order I was doing things, but I would go through an area, kill the bad guys, reach an endpoint, have to go back through the previous area, and fight another group of bad guys.

Anyway, how 'bout that ending, eh?  It's strange, to me, every major development in itself isn't really shocking.  Maybe that's because every review has done it's best to remind you of the OMGWTF plot twist(sort of like watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie), so you're mentally prepared for it.  But honestly, all those developments were, at one time or another, considered possibilities in my mind.

Any time you introduce alternate universes and time travel into a story, you open yourself up to plot holes.  Personally, I tend to gloss over the plot holes and try to look at the overall outline of the story.  Movies and videogames are much more enjoyable that way.  Infinite is no different.  My favourite part is the pinky incident, even though by that point, it serves more as confirmation of the major plot point than as anything revelatory. 

Anyway, TLDR.  Great game.  Though it was tough at times playing with a wireless keyboard/mouse that are running out of batteries.

208

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: March 27, 2013, 05:48:14 PM »

PS3 for the win? : : I didn't even have to do the long 45 minute install that was present in the original game.

I'm really digging the controls on the PC.  And the graphics are just stunning.  I didn't like the gunplay that much in the first two games, but the gunplay here is much more satisfying.  I think a lot of that is because I'm playing Infinite on the PC whereas I played the first two on 360.

It was a fairly large download, however, at about 15 GB or so.

209

General Gaming / Re: Bioshock Infinite Spoiler Thread [is anyone even playing this game?]

« on: March 27, 2013, 05:41:17 PM »

I'm playing it.  Got a bit in after the Leafs game last night.  The art direction in this game is pretty awesome.  My only complaint so far is that NPCs seem to just stand around doing a whole lot of nothing, which kind of pulls me out of the game since everything else seems so well thought out.

That tower section before the beach was awesome.  I'm not going to rush through the game since I agree with most of the reviews about how this game should really be savoured.  It seems like so much work has gone into crafting this world that it would be a shame to miss out on any little detail.

210

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Would you play a game for 50c...

« on: March 26, 2013, 06:35:57 PM »

As much as I hate some of the ideas that have surfaced recently, I like the fact that there is some discussion going on in the industry about their broken pricing model.  I just hate that certain publishers will inevitably come to a solution that ends up hurting consumers.

Personally, I doubt I'd be willing to pay per play.  Online rentals... eeeeeeeehhh....  Maybe.  Depends on the pricing structure they come up with.

211

General Gaming / Re: Sell millions, still a failure?

« on: March 26, 2013, 06:24:25 PM »

This is a link to what I presume are S-E's presentation slides:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/130326slides.pdf

The 9th slide shows that these are expected sales in fiscal year 2013(excluding digital download sales).  As such, I do think it's disappointing that Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider haven't done better.  I loved the hell out of both of them.  Hitman was an ok game, but it was ultimately hurt by trying to straddle the line between appealing to the franchise's core base and broadening its audience, imo.  Also, the marketing campaign for that game was absolutely brutal.

The point about FFXIV is valid, but I think from a corporate standpoint, it's understandable.  FFXI made the company a lot of money, and if they can hit that same market twice, that's a market that they would be serving for the next decade with various updates... under the old MMO model.  From the looks of things, the old MMO model may be over. 

And I agree with Ian about publishers having unrealistic expectations/demands for their games and the gaming community.

212

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: March 26, 2013, 06:03:07 PM »

Gah.  I wanted to play as soon as I got home from work today, but when I booted up my PC, I couldn't connect to Steam.  Tried everything I could think of, rebooting, cycling my router, etc...  After about thirty minutes of frustration, I discovered the hard drive I installed Bioshock Infinite to was full...  Oops!  Cleared up some space and now I'm just waiting on the last few gigs of the game to finish downloading.

213

General Gaming / Re: What's your favorite launch game of all time?

« on: March 25, 2013, 05:04:40 PM »

Perfect Dark Zero!  No, wait, that's not right...

Although I never owned one at launch, I'm casting my vote for Super Mario 64.

214

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: March 25, 2013, 04:39:17 PM »

Preloading Bioshock Infinite right now.  I tried to be strong, I really did.  If you're quick, Greenmangaming has a sweet deal for it.  59.99 gets you Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, XCom: Enemy Unknown, and your choice of: Civ 5, Spec Ops: The Line, Mafia 2, The Darkness 2(my choice since I have the others), or Bioshock 2.  Oh, and either $14 cash back or $15 GMG credit.  Can not wait to play this game.

215

General Gaming / Re: Everyone needs to go play Spec Ops: the Line

« on: March 18, 2013, 06:28:31 PM »

I got it in the 50€ pack along with Darkness 2 and Civ 5 (and some other games I didn't care about) about one month after it came out. PC, f'yeah!

Yeah, PC gaming is awesome.  After about 10 years away from PCs, I finally jumped back in and built a rig in August.  I grabbed this game during a Steam sale for some absurdly low price.  The game is entirely competent, but for some reason just never grabbed me the way I was expecting.  I'm probably about 40% through the game, and I probably couldn't recall any of the finer points of the story.  Every now and then I feel the urge to go back and revisit the game, but there are just so many shinies, so little time!

216

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: March 18, 2013, 06:18:16 PM »

Picked up the new Tomb Raider for PS3.  I'm enjoying it, though it's basically an easy version of an Uncharted game.

Picked that up for PC last week.  Had to disable "Tress-FX" since I heard it doesn't play well with nVidia cards.  I loved the game despite some flaws(a bunch of podcasts have referred to "ludonarrative dissonance").  The game did a great job of dragging me along for the ride, and I couldn't put the controller down.  I really wish there were more of the optional tombs to explore, though, since those were a lot of fun and designed really well.  The game felt a little bit tedious toward the end - I switched the difficulty to easy just so I could mindlessly mow down everything in my path.

217

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: December 10, 2012, 03:58:32 PM »

Got it for PC.  I was one of the many who were burned by Skyrim for PS3, so I'm also pretty cautious about PS3 versions, now.

218

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: December 08, 2012, 03:42:33 PM »

I just picked up Far Cry 3 after hearing nothing but good things about it.  I never really got hooked by the other games, but I heard that it was "Like Skyrim, but with guns".  And it is!  Massive world, great graphics, and tons to see and do.  This engine is ridiculous.  Haven't encountered any hitches or load screens, and the combat is extremely satisfying.  Unlike Dishonoured, I enjoy being able to initiate my encounters with stealth, then failing and just plowing my way through enemies.

219

Nintendo Gaming / Re: wii u gamepad camera

« on: November 18, 2012, 08:42:30 PM »

You can zombify your face in ZombiU, which is neat... for about 5 minutes.

220

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U is here

« on: November 18, 2012, 05:52:13 PM »

Picked up my Deluxe Wii U preorder from my local EB this morning.  I didn't receive any notification so I was worried that they didn't get enough stock or something.  I walked into the store and they had about a dozen other reserved packages sitting on the floor.  I guess they forgot that they were selling these or something.


Picked up Super Mario Bros U and ZombiU after jumping on and off the fence a number of times.  I will pick up Assassin's Creed at some point. 


My update process was relatively painless.  Got a few timeouts, but everything else has been pretty smooth.  Mario looks great on the tablet screen, and I find myself looking at the controller more than my TV even when I'm using the TV.


ZombiU so far is alright.  I don't like the decision to create atmosphere by throwing "dust" everywhere, but I guess I can understand why they did it.  Since I'm such a weenie, I can only play games like this in short spurts, and the tension in this game doesn't change that one bit.  The controls are a little bit off, and I have look sensitivity cranked, but it still feels a bit unresponsive.  In other words, it's a Ubisoft FPS.


The controller is surprisingly comfortable.  I really like the ergonomics, especially with regards to the triggers(boo on digital triggers).  Recessing the second trigger is something that I've been wanting on controllers for a while, and this nails that feeling.  Unfortunately, the bumps that you wrap your fingers around on the back feel a little bit awkward when you are holding both triggers at the same time.  The placement of the face buttons is a little awkward, but isn't anything to get worked up about.


I have the unit set up in my bedroom with all of my other toys.  While messing around with Mario, I had the urge to... expel some liquids, which reminded me to try out the range of the tablet.  It worked, kind of.  The bathroom is next to my bedroom, and I got a few unstable connection messages that I remedied by treating the tablet like a cellphone trying to get reception.  I don't think the walls are necessarily "thick", so I was a little bit disappointed.  Tested out a few other rooms(a bit further away) with much better results.  I haven't tested different floors yet.