PWB: What happened to April, is it really May already?

Not even started Cities Skyline and I'm already overwhelmed by the mass amount of stuff greeting me on the 'What's New' tab as I start it, pretty sure there's more things to keep in mind here than just making an actual real city wtf.

It's actually got a nice smooth learning curve, most stuff is locked as you start and it opens things up in tiers as your population grows. Also it's very easy, so it's definitely a game where you can let your creativity run riot without having to worry about constantly running out of money.

I thought I'd play Dirt Rally V2.0 on PC.

105Gb install. What the actual living fuck.

Cities Skyline might be my bag….

Play

Cities: Skyline - after 3 failed attempts I just looked up a damn tutorial video and it was actually a lot easier than I thought, as Gar said. It's quite generous on the way a few things like electricity and water supplies work and the game doesn't really make any big demands of you, unless you accidentally build a neighbourhood directly next to a landfill, then they'll get very unhappy. The main goal is just increasing the population it seems and to do that you don't need go full 'hangover.gif' on where to put what, just make houses to live, things to buy and places to work.

I made a Foresting Industry since the map they gave me had a lot of trees, so I went ahead and made my own Twin Peaks, so far no one died (In Twin Peaks that is, I've lost like 5 citizens to polluted water..and living next door a metric fuckton of filth) but if they do I'll be sure to call Agent Cooper I guess…

I haven't played a Sim game in years, let alone Sim City so this is quite nice, watching buildings slowly grow in real time, people move in and traffic comes alive. I hope when it really opens up I can really do things my way, so far I only have a small square area to work in.

Additional PLAY:

Maneater: I bought the silly shark game, kids. Let's 'av it.

Population of 5500 in my first area in Cities, it's ab it too safe, so the next area I get will be a bit more ambitious and soul crushing.

You can min max Cities Skylines but it never really feels designed for that, it’s a creative tool as much as a game. Some of the cities people have designed are amazing, they look almost real. Mine tend to be awful American-style grid cities because I have zero imagination or creative talent.

My first one is shit but it's helping me understand the game. The real brain melter is gonna' be designing the spaghetti highways in a way that works and doesn't look stupid without building myself into a corner. And yeah, I've seen some and they are indeed amazing, visually I don't think the PS4 version will ever pass the 'Crysis Turtle' test though but that's okay.

A bit late to the party, but a lot to report.

Play
Loads. Our PC was giving up the ghost (amongst other things, the USB ports were stopping working) so we decided this time of economic uncertainty, with me furloughed and my job up in the air, was the perfect time to buy a new PC. Naturally, we got carried away and got one with a Ryzen 5 and a RTX2060 graphics card. This coincided with a quite mental sale on the Epic Game Store, where they gave everyone GTAV free and started handing out replenishing £10 vouchers like madmen. In the end I got Control, ANNO 1800, Outer Wilds, and Assassin's Creeds Origins and Odyssey gold editions for under £50. I haven't played all of them yet, and I'm still playing some other stuff, but I have loaded most of them and looked at the graphics. I did the same with Shadow of the Tomb Raider and that looks just astonishing. Anyway,

Control - Sometimes when you start playing a game for the first time you can just tell it's going to be right up your alley. Control was like that for me. I knew I'd like it after about ten minutes. After an hour or two, now I'm pretty sure I'm going to really like it. It's got a mind-bending setting, and already a lot of very striking and original imagery. It's also got loads of ray-tracing effects, and I'm running them all on full blast. The reflections are a bit of a game-changer, to be honest.

Shenmue 2 - Okay, this has been a bit of an odyssey into pointlessness, to be honest. I was whizzing through in order to start Shenmue 3 when I read about some sections of the game I had never seen, and didn't know were there. There is Duck Racing in this game. You punch a tree until a duck falls out of it and then you race it around a track. There's also a bit involving buying a minor character a birthday present, so we decided we had to do that too. Unfortunately you have to wait until the in-game date of the character's birthday. There doesn't seem to be any way of advancing time, so we've been killing day after day trying to get to what will probably be an underwhelming and in all likelihood creepy cut-scene. I've shifted so many of those boxes.

World of Warcraft - Still very compulsive. It's utterly different to what it used to be when I played it, but in some ways it's exactly the same. Levelling is oscenely fast - I just took a character from 65 to 71 in an hour, and a lot of that time I was looking for ore. I haven't got the latest expansion, so I'm just exploring the Legion content. There are these quest chains for each class, and you get a sort of base. It's cool. It's undemanding fun, basically.

Assassin's Creed Discovery tours - We've reached a point where it's getting harder and harder to get my son to do school work at home. The problem is of course that there's not enough variety. There are only so many learning tools in the house, and once you've cycled through them a hundred times he's understandably bored of them. So we've added these discovery tours into the rotation and they've been fairly succesful. For the uninitiated, they give you the full Assassins Creed map to explore, in a completely non-violent version of the game of course, and give you little tours of various monuments and insights into the lives of the people from the setting. Naturally, historical accuracy isn't exactly something Assassin's Creed is renowned for, but an awful lot of research goes into these games, and by putting a bit of this into a quasi-educational game-mode, they have created something that is a genuinely useful and interesting thing. We've only looked around Origins so far, and there's a wealth of fascinating information about everything from the excavation of the pyramids to the Great Library of Alexandria. At the same time there's all the painstakingly-recreated scenery to look at. It's great.

I haven't played Odyssey yet, and to be honest I'm not sure how I'm going to explain the education value of thos sort of thing -
Spoiler - click to show

Want
Afer reading cavalcade's posts, a VR set. If the goal is to play Half Life Alyx, what is the better set to get though - the Oculus Rift S or the Oculus Quest? Not that I can afford either, I'm just mind-shopping.

Bin
Mind-shopping.

I am fairly sure they remove the MASSIVE STONE PENISES from the Discovery Tour, in a shocking act of digital cultural vandalism.

WHAAAT?

I've wasted £6.

To be fair, if your ambition is to expose your son to more penises, you don't need to spend £6 to do it.

To be fair, if your ambition is to expose your son to more penises, you don't need to spend £6 to do it.

Exactly. That's what most internet forums are for. HEY-OH.

Additional PLAY:

Maneater: I bought the silly shark game, kids. Let's 'av it.

This is utter nonsense and is as shonky as I expected, yet it's also great in a Saint's Row kind of way. Eating people and fighting hunters is easily the best bit, taking on multiple alligators at once is not. It's quite repetitive and suffers from Ubi Icon syndrome. That said, I'm currently a teenage shark with electric teeth, racing around a toxic lake eating mafia goons… what is there NOT to like?

the perfect time to buy a new PC

Hey, us too! I think you've got us pipped on specs – I went for a GTX 1660 because I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and it was the best-looking affordable one in stock at Overclockers. It's not shipped yet, though; another week or two before it'll get here. I'm looking forward to seeing what Sea of Thieves looks like actually running at 4k, instead of just giving me a very pretty slideshow.

I don even have a monitor capable of 4k, never mind a PC.

Do…do I buy Wonderful 101 on PS4? It was a great game on a brick of a console holding it back.

For anyone not in the know, it's like Chibi Bayonetta/Devil May Cry with a bit of Pikmin in there. You play as a superhero squad known as the Wonderful 101 and you fight by holding a button and drawing a shape to assume command of one of the seven major members an fight with a giant sword, whip or fists…some bad guys will require a whip to pull of armour, a sword to cut links..etc

Where does the Pikmin stuff come into it? Well, you control one 'leader' but up to 100 followers comprised of hidden lesser members of the group found throughout the level (Besides Wonder Red, Blue, Pink there's characters like Wonder Magician who has his own ID card and everything) or deputized Civilians will follow you around and you can fire them at enemies to attack them or the more people you have the bigger the attacks you can do because the superhero team literally build their weapons out of members of the team (wonder-Green uses a gun and he uses the team as ammo lmao)

It's an interesting and very well made action game but the combat may put people off, it can get deeper than what I've described, like you can draw a Sword and summon an AI assisted sword slash to launch an enemy, then draw a gun to shoot it on the ground suspending the enemy in the air (like Dante could do in DMC) then morph into a rocket and blast through them.

The whole super sentai thing the game has got going on is 10/10 though, and the game has the best end sequence of events I've ever seen tbh.

@feltmonkey

Rift and Quest are similar (Rift slightly shades it in tech), but of the two you want the Quest. It can do everything the Rift can do via OcculusLink and also can run fully standalone. Another £400 for the 64Gb model, which is rarely in stock, but if you're dropping for an 2060, then go for it I say. lots of educational apps too if you want to mart yourself into the purchase.

Bin?

I think I might have reached my limit of Animal Crossing today. I guess I have played every day since release. Time for a break.

No wait, I need to help Robin build her flower hybridisation garden first.

OK, OK…. which one of you dicks didn't tell me that Tetris Effect is fucking marvellous.

It’s… OK? Pretty but ultimately still just Tetris.

It’s no Tetris 99, that’s for sure.

Your Star Trek film opinions mean we'll skirt over that point and just go back to the key question: which one of you dicks didn't tell me that Tetris Effect is fucking marvellous.

Xenoblade Chronicles Remastered in a few days

Your Star Trek film opinions mean we'll skirt over that point and just go back to the key question: which one of you dicks didn't tell me that Tetris Effect is fucking marvellous.

Ahem.

Tetris Effect on PSVR is quite the thing.

April 28th, Bargain thread. No need to thank me. :)

mart, you are excused.

I've been playing PC stuff too! Late last year Charlys brother gave us a PC using bits he was no longer using (because his PC is ridiculous and he's not been using his money to buy his monthly upgrades/11 monitors that he uses to watch CCTV of train stations/yards…), Planet Coaster was cheap on Steam the other day, Can You Run It reckoned we couldn't run it, but whatever, we bloody well can, and on fairly high settings too, it said the same for GTAV, but it runs that on high settings (no point me going down the route of 4K, 1. not sure our graphics card runs at 4k and 2 we don't have a 4k monitor)

Hey, us too! I think you've got us pipped on specs – I went for a GTX 1660 because I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and it was the best-looking affordable one in stock at Overclockers. It's not shipped yet, though; another week or two before it'll get here. I'm looking forward to seeing what Sea of Thieves looks like actually running at 4k, instead of just giving me a very pretty slideshow.

Hate to break it to you but that 1660 is broadly comparable to the 1070 I’ve been using for a while and it’s really not a 4K card. It’s bloody great at 1440p or 1080p though especially if you’ve got a high refresh monitor.

I’ve been playing Civ 6, finally getting into it after owning it for ages. I like a lot of the changes since 5 though I really dislike the graphics style still and find it hard to parse what’s going on a lot of the time. It’s also very complex with lots to think about, I’m kind of blundering through on an easy difficulty and just really noting all the stuff I’m going to have to start paying attention to next time around.

OK, OK…. which one of you dicks didn't tell me that Tetris Effect is fucking marvellous.

I’m sure I’ve sung it’s praises a few times anyway, but I also mentioned it as a highlight of the generation in the last few weeks…

So yeah, wasn’t me your honour.

I'm getting back into Trails in the Sky. Cute little game, it's very every so slightly starting to pick up a little bit now, even so it's still kinda 'Day in the Lfe of a Bracer' right now. I on't really have any issue with this right now, but I hope it doesn't go on for much longer.

Aside from that, it's got a fun Stratgey-RPG combat system where you are regularly outnumbered but never outmatched, characters and writing have a lot of personality (even the Treasure Chests when you check them after looting them say stuff like 'What were you expecting to find?) and the music is pleasant. It's a very comfy game.

Can't wait to catch up in time for Trails of Cold Steel IV, after I've beaten Trails 1, 2 an 3, the 2 Zero no Kiseki games and then finally Trails in Cold Steel 1-4.

@feltmonkey

Rift and Quest are similar (Rift slightly shades it in tech), but of the two you want the Quest. It can do everything the Rift can do via OcculusLink and also can run fully standalone. Another £400 for the 64Gb model, which is rarely in stock, but if you're dropping for an 2060, then go for it I say. lots of educational apps too if you want to mart yourself into the purchase.

Yeah, I think you're right. The consensus on the Internet is that the Rift S is better specifically for Half Life Alyx, but it doesn't seem to be better by much, and everything else about the Quest appeals massively. The concept of a dedicated VR machine is just a much better idea than one that has to be tied to a PC.

It will be months before I can afford it, even if my job does turn out to be safe in the end. We should probably finish paying for the PC before looking for the next big purchase, especially considering the few months we've had. The pandemic itself hasn't actually been that bad for us financially - I'm getting paid 20% less, but Firestorm Games being closed, and me not driving past it on my way home from work every day has saved me a fortune. However, we have had a run of stuff breaking down. Recently it's been the old PC, the TV, the microwave, the toaster, the shed roof, and a laptop. Going back to this time last year it was the car. We've had to replace all of those, and bought a chest freezer as well, to store our stockpiles of curry in.

Probably by the time I could realistically afford another big purchase, something else will be on the scene, so we'll have to see what's going on then.

Hate to break it to you but that 1660 is broadly comparable to the 1070 I’ve been using for a while and it’s really not a 4K card. It’s bloody great at 1440p or 1080p though especially if you’ve got a high refresh monitor.

Cool.

Do…do I buy Wonderful 101 on PS4? It was a great game on a brick of a console holding it back.

For anyone not in the know, it's like Chibi Bayonetta/Devil May Cry…

Huh. Okay…

…with a bit of Pikmin in there.

[Immediately adds to wishlist]

OK, OK…. which one of you dicks didn't tell me that Tetris Effect is fucking marvellous.

I am 99% sure I did.

[Play]

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider - I'm really enjoying this. Weirdly, the removal of some of the systems in the “proper” entries, most notably the Chaos system, and Billie‘s streamlined-but-unique power set, have lead to me being freed from my normal Dishonored habits (total stealth and non-lethality), and I might be having even more fun as a result.

Dishonored has always felt to me like a game series that needed a less binary “honour” system, and finally getting to play as an anti-hero (which was what I really wanted from Knife of Dunwall) has been great. The little nudge towards Hitman that the face-stealing power gives is welcome too.

Bin?

I think I might have reached my limit of Animal Crossing today. I guess I have played every day since release. Time for a break.

No wait, I need to help Robin build her flower hybridisation garden first.

And today we get our five star island rating.

I was curious if we would be able to get to give stats because we have a smaller island in the middle of our Island which we decided to leave untouched, so there's still loads of weeds and tree branches lying around.

the perfect time to buy a new PC

Hey, us too! I think you've got us pipped on specs – I went for a GTX 1660 because I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and it was the best-looking affordable one in stock at Overclockers. It's not shipped yet, though; another week or two before it'll get here. I'm looking forward to seeing what Sea of Thieves looks like actually running at 4k, instead of just giving me a very pretty slideshow.

Yeah, I also run a 1070 (broadly the same area as a 1660) and Sea of Thieves at 4k might be ambitious, though it's an odd game and it's something of a lottery how well it runs on different hardware.

JDub and Luscan are also forgiven.

Playing games so you don't have to, since 2003.

The Cycle: weird, free to play cross between Fortnite, Rust and Borderlands. Basically you head down to a planet about to be plunged into a sun (or something) and have to loot it and get off it before it's too late. It's a battle royale with heavy PvE and some interesting game systems in play. You can play it in teams of 1, 2 or 4. And at 1 you can "pact" with other players and form mutable teams. The game mixes in objectives to win "contracts" with the occasional bout of fighting with other teams, keeping a rolling score of who is doing best. The actual combat with other players is a bit meh, but there's lots to like about it. The feel of the guns and their customisation options in particular is top tier. I can't see it having legs longer term but we're enjoying it.

Crucible, is Jeff Bezos entry into the 3rd person action shooter DOTA arena. And, well. it's promisingish. It's riddled with technical issues, and has some stupifyingly dumb design decisions (e.g. no mini map, no in game voice chat) and I remain a little unconvinced on the general balance and level design (and even the game modes). But it's fun enough in a DOTA/League sort of way. Farm for blobs. Level up. Cover your lane. Fight enemies. Capture points. Repeat.

Problem is, Valorant is on the 2nd, so who'll be bothering with either after that…..

Can happily confirm Wonderful 101 is still a game that makes me smile like an idiot and feel like a little kid again. At it's very heart it's an action game but like I said before wrapped in a very unique control scheme and set of ideas, and wrapped around THAT is every Saturday Morning TV show where the heroes save the day at the end (in this case by changing into a massive fist and punching a Bus that flew off the rails at an Alien spaceship in the first chapter..)

Man, I dunno what it is but I'm playing a lot of cutesy games at the minute, my heart can only take so much charm. Gonna' need to dip back into Doom or something soon.

Elder Scrolls Online. Maybe not the best MMO out there, but certainly for my money the most straightforwardly enjoyable. It is, basically, an Elder Scrolls game. It’s got exactly the same combination of open-world shenanigans and mild jankiness as the single-player games. It has an absolutely staggering amount of stuff to do, even if you just get the base game, looks pretty decent, has good writing and a lot of surprisingly good voice acting, and it’s just fun to play.

Got an email from Overclockers this morning that some of the components for our new machine were out of stock, so while I was on the phone okaying an alternative power supply and RAM, I took the opportunity to upgrade the graphics card as well.

Man, I am exactly like that except with bigger pizza bases and sides of garlic bread no wait what.

Good stuff, what did you get?

Stuffed crust.

Good stuff, what did you get?

RTX 2060, because – as mentioned before – I have no idea what I'm doing and it'd been mentioned here.

A good choice, I think. Similar performance to what you had before but lots of swanky new features including ray tracing. I still think 4K will be a bit of a push unless you want to take a big hit to settings but honestly you’ll probably find a high frame rate and all bells & whistles turned on a much better option anyway.

mart's answer deserved more recognition. I'm giving him +1 rep

Is that +1 rep sterling?

Converts to +1.12rep based on the current exchange rate.

mart's been doing some good work recently, I just think he needs an occasional clapping.

Please tell my boss this, my review is up soon.