Video Games Thread

[Late]

Its too easy to troll you at the moment harv...

I'm thinking the same. I feel guilty for almost bullying him, lately. Poor lad's preordered a Wii U - last thing he needs is for us to keep reminding him of that.

It's probably not too late to cancel the preorder, Harv. I imagine you realise what a horrendous mistake you've made and are trying to defend it so as not to look silly, but it's backfiring big time. Each time you tell people that the U isn't shit you're just making the hole bigger...

[ancelotti]

Can't believe the Wii U's processor is slower than 7 year old consoles!

[harv]

Can't believe the Wii U's processor is slower than 7 year old consoles!

Clockspeed != power.

The CPU in the Wii, the Broadway, is better than the CPU in the 360 for general processing despite being clocked at around 1GHz. Mostly due to it being an Out of Order Execution CPU.

Where the Xenon and the Cell excell is with floating point operations. Next gen you'll see the PS4 and 720 being similar to the U in that the floating point work will be passed to the GPGPU and the clockspeeds won't be above 3GHz. Doesn't mean that the CPUs in the PS4 and 720 will be less powerful than the CPUs in the PS3 and 360.

Developers are going to have to get used to this new architecture for all 3 consoles next gen.

[jman]

Oooh Far Cry 3 is out at the end of next week.. that one has quietly slipped under the radar for me what with playing Halo 4 and Dishonored (to be fair - I havent got very far with Dishonored yet)

Thank god they have gotten rid of the respawning enemies (confirmed).. hopefully they haven't got another annoying concept like the malaria you got in FC2 which constantly made you do stupid side-quests.. that was just annoying after the first 1 or 2 times..  but why call it Far Cry 3.. it has absolutely nothing to do with the first (or even second) game... I really enjoyed the predator abilities you got with the first game.. they are just a distant memory now though 


My mate bought me a copy of 'Rise of Nightmares' (kinect) - I had previously played the trial and basically got so pissed off with moving/turning in the game that I gave up...but to be fair, you do get used to it (a bit).. it just requires unnatural behaviour which is so slow and annoying.. i.e. there was a zombie behind a table coming to get me.. so imagine Im facing him and am going to go around the table to fight him... I had to go into normal stance and turn my left shoulder to turn the character.. back to normal stance once I was facing left.. put foot forward to move slowly forward... back to normal stance, turn right shoulder to turn right, put foot forward, back to normal stance, turn right again, and finally I could fight the zombie.... but little did I know (because I was facing the other way), the zombie had gone around the other end of the table and I was in the same pissing position as when I had started... lol.  At the moment, Im not skilled enough to move and turn at the same time.. lol, sounds stupid, but it really is a challenge with the way its been implemented.

Once you get over the annoying and retarded movement/turning system though.. the game is actually a bit fun... the fighting is simple enough, either fighting with fists, kicks or some kind of weapon.. , the story is as stupid as you'd expect from a House of the Dead game.. but its all weirdly entertaining in a low budget value way.. strange.. 

[AVFCRoss]

Still pretty much playing FIFA 13 and now Black Ops 2.

I actually thought Black Ops 2 was quite shit at first, didn't think I'd take to it as well as I have before with previous CoD games...I'm still torn on some issues though...The new class system makes it way too easy to set up cheap loadouts which make the game boring to play when you're coming up against the proven classes, and some of the weapons are a joke (Shock sticks that are way punishing, Bouncing Betties that you throw, rather than plant from a stationery position), but I'm enjoying it overall.

[harv]

That's why Microsoft should have done the same as Sony and cloned the remote and nunchuck. It would have been the best motion control solution of the lot if they had done that, despite the lag. That way you could have the best of all 3 worlds - Kinect with you as the controller, Kinect with pointer controls/swords/martial arts with movement and speech recognition and Kinect with the 360 controller and speech recognition. The options for developers would be pretty much unlimited that way.

[jman]

Well no, they shouldnt of cloned the remote and nunchuck.. Kinect is better than a remote and nunchuck in a lot of areas.. I mean the dancing/fitness games for example.. Kinect pisses all over the other implementations because it tracks your whole body and you dont need to hold a controller or purchase this, that and the other just to play a game.  In other areas it struggles because the tech isn't that advanced yet... Kinect absolutely raped Move in sales and you could say that it actually signalled the beginning of the end for the Wii console.. so obviously the majority of people dont agree with you.. RoN has been built for Kinect anyway, Sega obviously knew the limitations of the tech and produced a game which doesnt involve a ton of accuracy.. playing the game with a controller or remote/nunchuk would be pointless.

The supposed Kinect 2.0 doesnt exactly fill me with confidence though.. being able to track fingers would be excellent.. but it needs a lot more tech advancements before it gets to the stage where it can be great at playing any genre of game seemlessly.

[harv]

So you're saying giving developers more options isn't a good idea..? Really?

You as the controller is a great idea but you can't use Kinect for any of the industry's biggest franchises. Cloning the remote and nunchuck would allow that.

[jman]

Well you just said it..

"You as the controller is a great idea"

As soon as you give them a remote and nunchuk - that idea and the whole appeal of Kinect dissipates you wally.

Imagine playing a fitness game - doing press-ups with a controller in your hand.. or having to dance with a remote tied to your wrist - no thanks.  If I want to play other genres, like FPS or Driving games then I'll do so with my controller.. the fact that nintendo have had to introduce a knock-off 360 controller goes to show that motion control itself has enough problems playing all types of games.

[Late]

Can't wait to see how badly the idiots with wiimotes and nunchucks get ripped apart by those with proper controllers on the Wii U.

I actually thought Black Ops 2 was quite shit at first, didn't think I'd take to it as well as I have before with previous CoD games...I'm still torn on some issues though...The new class system makes it way too easy to set up cheap loadouts which make the game boring to play when you're coming up against the proven classes, and some of the weapons are a joke (Shock sticks that are way punishing, Bouncing Betties that you throw, rather than plant from a stationery position), but I'm enjoying it overall.

I like the way tastes/requirements keep shifting in Blops2, and will probably continue to do so for the first month or two.
There were lots of shock/betty combos in the first week or so and it's still a popular combo but I'm finding less people use that now, as more people are using black hat and/or engineer to counter them.
Everyone had UAVs, at first, but as more people prestige that's becoming less popular as everyone has the ghost perk on (ghost is only available when you get to rank 55, the top rank, but each time you prestige you can permanently unlock one thing - and most people are picking ghost).
I'm noticing there seems to be a bigger difference in running speed when carrying a weapon than there's been before. I always rush the enemy (particularly useful in some of the objective modes, like S&D) and usually keep my assault rifle in my hands as I do so, as the increase in speed for putting it away isn't noticeable - but it's very noticeable in blops2, so I'm finding myself using knives more than usual. I'll have to give the ballistic knives a proper go some time.

Current favourite loadout:
MTAR Assault rifle with Silencer,
Perk 1 Greed, Perk 2 Greed,
Ghost & Lightweight in 1,
Marathon & Engineer in 2,
Black Hat & Bouncing Betty.
Unfortunately it means not having a second attachment on the primary weapon (I like Target Finder), and no secondary weapon, but you have to make compromises.
Search & Destroy, switch to knife, sprint around the map, if there's a betty in the way hack or avoid it,  and you're in behind the enemy and wreaking havoc. Or you're dead.
Will have to switch out the MTAR at some point. Only went with it because it was the first Assault Rifle available, and I've now levelled it enough to put emblems on.

Kill/Death ratio is improving slightly - now at 0.91 (with 1074 kills and 30.25 hours played).

Lately I'm sure I'm spending almost as much time dicking around making emblems as playing the game, mind. Have got a few good ones now (Spongebob, Mickey Mouse, Homer Simpson).

[jman]

Im pissed off that the emblems in Halo 4 are pants compared to previous versions.. I always had a 4 in my design but they have got rid of all the numbers and loads of legacy designs now

My emblems so far...



Yeah I really need to change my current one 

[harv]

Lol, it's going to be the other way around late. Pointer controls are far superior to dual analog controls. Particularly with Treyarch behind the implementation.

[Late]

Have had a look around on COD Elite website but can't see my emblems. Given the other stuff you can do on there I'd expected you'd be able to see (and maybe edit) your emblems. However I can only see a tiny version of my currently used one:


Well proud of that (though in reality it looks better than that tiny thing). You're allowed 32 layers, from a small number of shapes, and that pic uses all 32. In fact I think all of my pics do.
You could do similar in Blops1 but only had 10 layers. Here's the one I had on that:


I'm intrigued to know, now, whether that above pic of Spongebob will change when I put a different pic on my gun tonight. I change my emblem to one of the others every couple hours or so.


Oooh, just remembered I did a new one last night. Says "I want to play a game" next to a partial pic of Jigsaw's creepy doll from the Saw films, with blood dripping down the lens.
Like I say - I might be spending too much time expressing my artistic side and not enough shooting baddies... 

[ancelotti]

My loadout on Blops 2 (tailored for HC):

Type 25 with Suppressor, Grenade Launcher, Fore Grip (I think)
Marathon
Lightweight
Bouncing Betty x2

Wildcards:

Primary Gunfighter
Danger Close

Who needs a second weapon? Not me! Just trying to get to level 46 so I can unlock the Skorpion Evo gun, they seem really effective whenever I pick them up. I'm noticing bouncing betties aren't as effective now, good players know to crouch when going around corners!

[Late]

Yeah, I remember we had to do the same on CoD WaW, with the 2nd world war bouncing betties.

Is silencer necessary on hardcore?