Month: February 2017

A few thoughts on Far Cry 4

Posted on by Nimgimli

Horizon Zero Dawn is out! I played the first hour or so before bed and it made a great first impression on me. That’s bad news for Far Cry 4 which is going to be set aside so I can focus on HZD for a bit, but I wanted to share some thoughts while they’re still fresh in my mind. At this point my FC4 game is about 50% complete and I’ve got somewhere between 25-30 hours into it.

This is the 2nd time I’ve played Far Cry 4. I bought it on the Xbox One quite some time ago and never got very far. I’m not sure why, but I suspect I was approaching it too seriously. Far Cry 4 is an over-the-top kind of game. It is very violent and kind of deliberately controversial. For instance to upgrade your gear you need to kill tigers, leopards and rhinos for their skins. Your main goal is that you want to get somewhere to spread your mother’s ashes and you seem to have no qualms about killing hundreds of people to get there. Stuff like that. It’s designed to be ‘extreme’ more than anything, so you just need to go into it with a “Why so serious?” kind of mindset and roll with it. I have trouble doing that sometimes and I bet that’s why I quit the Xbox One version. I was probably mad that the game made me kill a tiger or something. Moral outrage is right in my wheelhouse.

But this time around, I’m having a blast. There’s a lot of good stuff in Far Cry 4. The environments (it takes place in Kyrat, a fictional country in the Himalayas…think Nepal) are breathtakingly beautiful, the gunplay is fun and varied (everything from bows and throwing knives to flame throwers and RPGs) and there are a ton of ways to get from point A to Point B. Fast Travel is a thing, but so is riding an elephant, flying a gyrocopter, leaping off a cliff and using a wingsuit, or more mundane modes of transport like cars, trucks, boats and ATVs.

It’s really hard to get bored in Far Cry 4 unless you try to do everything. I’ve seen complaints that there is too much to do, and if you’re compulsive enough that you try to clear every point of interest and activity on the map you probably will get bored. Thing is, there’s no need to. Do the stuff you enjoy. If you hate stealth, skip the assassination missions. If you’re not here to drive fast, skip the racing missions. You don’t need to do it all.

As in most open world games, there are some RPG elements to Far Cry 4. As you do things, you earn experience and cash. You use the former to unlock skills from a skill tree and the latter to upgrade your guns. At my 50% point I’ve unlocked almost every skill and purchased almost everything there is to purchase. The point is the developers gave you so much stuff to do so that you can pick and choose and still earn ample exp and $$ to level up your character and keep him competitive with the locals.

So all in all I really like Far Cry 4, but I do have some gripes.

First of all, the wildlife is insane. I’ve died more to animals than to people and I think this leads to a lot of fun encounters. Once I was tasked with driving the enemy out of a village and right at the start of a firefight the bad guys pissed off a pair of elephants which went on a rampage and killed all of them for me. I literally crouched on a hillside, watched the mayhem, and got credit for clearing the village. Thanks elephants!

But the eagles… OMG the eagles. Eagles constantly attack you and NPCs in Far Cry 4. The first couple of times it happens it’s pretty cool, but the 30th or 40th time, it starts to get annoying. They rarely do enough damage to seriously harm you so they’re just kind of an interruption. Sometimes they’ll give you away when you’re trying to be stealthy but the enemy is more likely to start firing off hundreds of rounds trying to shoot the eagle than come at you. They seem to also realize the wildlife is the real danger here. Anyway I’d like to see the eagle attacks toned down in frequency.

Second is the pirate radio guy, Rabi Ray Rana. One of your tasks in the game is to shut down propaganda broadcasts, and Rabi Ray Rana will then fill the airwaves with his endless prattling and some music. I have two issues with RRR. First he talks about shit and shitting constantly. I guess that’s funny for some but it’s not my thing. But worse is that he doesn’t have enough material so you hear the same routines over and over and over again. And if he starts one of his spiels and you stop and get out of your car to pick a flower, when you get back in he re-starts his routine. So for Far Cry 5, please give us a better radio experience (you can of course turn him off but I kept thinking of games like GTA where you actually look forward to hearing what is on the radio).

Those are both pretty trivial grips, but my last one is money. There is SO MUCH MONEY in this game that it feels like the balance is out of whack. As I said, I’ve purchased literally everything I am able to purchase at this point and I’m half-way through. I don’t bother looting chests or corpses any more because I have more cash than I can carry (literally, your wallet holds a fixed amount, and even with mine upgraded a few times I still have too much cash). I think the game would be more interesting if you had to struggle a little bit when it comes to money. Instead I’m like “Well my body armor is down to 80%…might as well spent 20,000 rupees and buy a new set.”

In a game this huge, that’s a pretty small list of gripes. If like me you skipped on Far Cry 4 when it came out, I urge you to give it a try as long as you’re able to turn off your moral filters and accept that it’s ok to slaughter 4 rhinos in order to craft yourself a slightly larger wallet.

Note: Trying something different with this post. I turned some short video clips into animated gifs using ShareFactory. Not sure I’m happy with the results. I always feel weird uploading a 10 second clip to YouTube but maybe there’s no way around that, eh?

Gap Gaming

Posted on by Nimgimli

I think I’m finally done with Shadow of Mordor. After earning the Platinum trophy for the base game, I started in on the DLC. I finished the storyline, such that it is, for the Lord of the Hunt DLC and then looked at the trophy list and just couldn’t get too interested in going back to trying to set up the specific conditions needed to earn them. In general I didn’t like Lord of the Hunt that much (it leaned heavily on mind-controlling beasts and in general I found having mind-controlled minions was kind of annoying…they get in the way as often as they help) and I’ve read reviews of the 2nd DLC, The Bright Lord, and apparently it too is heavy on mind control stuff. So I think I’m done. I have certainly gotten my money’s worth out of the game. 50+ hours of gameplay and I got the game on sale for $10.

But that leaves me in a gaming gap. What the heck is that? Well Horizon Zero Dawn comes out on the 28th and I’ve pre-ordered it because I failed my “resist the hype” saving throw. I’m looking forward to jumping into it as soon as the clock strikes midnight. But what to do for the 19 days between now and then?

I had planned on playing Far Cry Primal next, but that looks like a big game that’s going to take a month or more to play. I’m also not sure that fighting with sword and bow in Mordor, then fighting with club and bow in Primal, then fighting with bow in Zero Dawn is the best plan. I don’t want to get burned out on open world bow combat stuff.

The Elder Scrolls Online’s housing patch hits consoles on Tuesday and that may or may not suck me back into the game. Or maybe this is a good time to finally play the TitanFall 2 campaign. Thematically Watch Dogs 2 would be a good change of venue but again, that’s a big game that I don’t think I could finish in 19 days. (I started playing Shadow of Mordor in December, to give you an idea of how long it takes me to get through a title.) I haven’t dipped my toe into the console versions of Star Trek Online or DC Universe Online in quite a while…

Project Cars is free on the Xbox One via Games With Gold starting on the 15th (I think), so maybe I’ll see if the Xbox still works. I also have a bunch of indie stuff that I’ve got via Playstation Plus or in sales, so I could tear through a few of those. Indie titles generally don’t hold my attention very long just because I’m so attracted by shiny things and pixel art isn’t (to me) shiny.

Yeah basically I’m spoiled for choice. I guess that’s the benefit of a big fat backlog. Definitely a #FirstWorldGamerProblem. But these days I’m most content when I’m really invested in a gaming world just because I’m finding gaming is the best way for me to shut out politics and other bad news from the real world. So I gotta find something. Just not sure what, yet.

Thoughts on trophy hunting in Shadow of Mordor

Posted on by Nimgimli

Over the weekend I earned the Platinum Trophy for Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. For PC and Xbox players, substitute “achievement” for “trophy” and know that the platinum is basically the “You’ve earned all the other trophies” trophy. It’s the same I guess as getting 1000 gamerscore out of an Xbox game.

I’m still not entirely sure I’m cut out for trophy hunting. (This is only my 2nd Platinum, the first was in Infamous: Second Son.)

The good news is that I got a lot more gameplay out of SoM. I was at 25 hours when I finished the story and 45 hours when I got the last trophy, so it almost doubled the time I spent with the game. And it was very satisfying to get that last trophy after all those hours, even though earning each individual trophy wasn’t always fun. I hit frustration levels well beyond what I experienced just playing through the story, but even the frustrating trophies came with a nice shot of dopamine to my brain when I earned them.

For example one trophy required you to get a Level 25 Rune. You get runes for killing named orcs. The level of the rune is the level of the orc plus some bonuses, and orcs cap out at level 20. So to get a level 25 rune, you need to kill a level 20 orc, but it needs to be a warchief (one of the top orcs in the hierarchy) because that gives you a 2 point bonus. You need to know that orcs weaknesses which means you’ve had to get Intel on him. 1 point for that. You need to USE one of his weaknesses or strengths (which can be easy or hard depending on what they are) because that’s a 1 point bonus, AND it has to be a revenge kill, meaning that orc has to have killed you already. 1 point for that.

When I went after this trophy, the first problem was there were no level 20 orcs and all the warchiefs were under my control. So I had to kill some of my warchiefs to create an opening. Then I advanced time (I think, I’ve already forgotten some details) to get enemy warchiefs in place. Then I got intel on them to pick one that would be easy to trigger. (Sometimes weaknesses are pretty obscure, sometimes strengths make them hard to fight). OK so now I had a warchief who got enraged by fire and I have a fire arrow skill. But he was level 16 and he hadn’t killed me. So then I fought him but he brought bodyguards and I couldn’t get the warchief to kill me since he was content to let his bodyguards do the work. In trying to let this warchief kill me, a random archer actually got in the killing blow. OK respawn, now isolate and take out the bodyguards. Then go after the warchief, kill all the minions around him and he FINALLY kills me. So now he’s level 17. Go back a few more times letting him kill me over and over to level up to 20. Finally I have a level 20 warchief who I can get revenge on and I know his weaknesses..that’s 24 levels of rune. In the battle I hit him with a fire arrow to enrage him, that makes level 25 and finally I just had to kill him. Trophy unlocked… FINALLY. That was like 90 minutes of game time.

On the one hand, it was really satisfying to finally get it. On the other, playing to lose (so the warchief would kill me) wasn’t as much fun.

I guess I’ll just worry about trophy hunting on games I really enjoy. I loved Shadow of Mordor. I loved the setting, loved the combat, loved little touches like how on a combat finisher the ‘clang’ of swords rang out from the controller speaker. I loved finding artifacts and listening to the “memories” and in general, I just love Middle Earth so the opportunity to spend time there was really appreciated. Even after 45 hours I was still getting a lot of joy out of just hacking and slashing my way through swarms of orcs. Even after Talion was completely leveled up and there was no reason to fight orcs, I’d keep fighting them because it was just so darned fun.

I think that SoM is known for being a pretty easy game to Platinum, which was OK by me. And none of the trophies were based on high levels of player skill. If you could finish the storyline you can do all the trophies. You don’t need to be a gaming god to achieve any of them. And there’s no multiplayer, so that’s a huge deal for me since I don’t do multiplayer any more. Even with all that, the Trophies that required you to manipulate the in-game situation in weird ways (like intentionally letting yourself get killed) were a lot less fun than the trophies that just came with playing the game they way you’d naturally play it.

Playstation 4’s 4.50 system software looks like a winner

Posted on by Nimgimli

This week Sony shared some information on their next Playstation 4 system software update, and the beta program is up and running. There’s an NDA in place so if I was in the beta program I couldn’t tell you.

So far this looks like a good update. The biggest feature for me, a heavy user of the Playstation 4, is support for external hard drives (finally). You can connect a drive of up to 8 TB to your PS4 and store your games and apps on it. For some reason save files, screenshots and video clips still have to live on the internal drive.

If you’re a casual PS4 owner, your best bet is to just upgrade your internal hard drive if you’re concerned about space. It’s easy to do and it means one less bit of clutter in your entertainment center. I think the biggest drive you can get that’ll fit in the PS4 (2.5″ drive that is no more than 9.5 MM thick) is 2 or 2.5 TB. Don’t hold me to that, I haven’t shopped for a new drive for a while, but that’s how things were last time I looked.

For heavy PS4 users (particular those of us who prefer digital to plastic disks) the external option is nice. Personally I have a 1.5 TB drive in my PS4 and a 1 TB drive in my PS4 Pro and both are full (with different content). I’m going to attach a 5 TB drive to the Pro, put everything on it and send the launch PS4 to storage (or maybe the TV in the bedroom). Since I can also use the internal drive, in total I’ll have 6 TB of space which should be sufficient for a while.

Another new feature is “Boost Mode” for the PS4 Pro. Sony has been a little coy about this. They didn’t mention it in their blog post but as soon as folks got their hands on the beta they started talking about it. Boost Mode is an experimental system that lets all games take advantage of the additional power of the PS4 Pro. Prior to Boost Mode, a game needed to be patched in order to get any benefit from the Pro. Now, in theory, every game will run better.

I’m still waiting to see some quantifiable data on this, but I would advise you to moderate expectations. Boost Mode probably isn’t going to take a 30 FPS game and make it into a 60 FPS game, for two reasons. First is that the game is probably locked to 30 FPS, and second is I don’t think we’ll get that much of a boost. I think the more reasonable expectation is that games that run at 30 FPS but sometimes drop to 20 FPS will now stay at 30 FPS. Ditto 60 FPS games that might drop to 50 here and there. Basically my hope for Boost Mode is that it’ll smooth out the gameplay of older games.

YouTube has some videos but they’re all done by amateurs. Hopefully someone like Digital Foundry will do some tests, and pump out some of those cool videos with frame rate and frame pacing indicators on them. Show us numbers with and without Boost Mode.

PSVR owners are getting support for 3D Blu-rays, which has some folk really excited.

You can now share stuff to the PS4’s activity feed directly, which is nice. It used to be that you had to share to Twitter or Facebook or something just to get a clip or screenshot into the activity feed. That was pretty silly.

They’ve tweaked Notifications and the Quick Menu. We’ll see what that means.

You can now use a screenshot as your “Theme” which is a nice feature that should’ve been there since Day 1. Better late than never.

That’s everything I’ve seen reported so far. Generally it seems like these system betas run for about a month before Sony launches to everyone so with luck we won’t be waiting too long for these new features.

Of course you STILL can’t change your PSN name, something folks have been clamoring for. PSN is old enough now that idiot kids who picked offensive PSN names are now responsible adults and are a little embarrassed by their PSN name and they want a way to change it. Heck I’d change mine (Dragonchasers) just to get something shorter for when my name is on-screen and blocking all the scenery!