Video Games Thread

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[jman]

Oh dear lol...

I haven't really done much messing around with my character/bikes yet - level 73 but just can't be arsed opening those sticker packs/cases.

Got A+ in all tutorials so far.. except that last bunny hop 2 one.. the third jump on A1 is a bitch - landed it properly once and then fucked up the easy last jump.

[Late]

I've never been any good at the bunny hops. I scraped a B in the first then gave up after about 100 deaths trying the next one 😡

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Oculus had a press event at the GDC behind closed doors on Monday and the press embargo is over later on today, 3pm. Rumours are that Oculus are releasing a new PC VR headset this year with a higher resolution and inside out tracking.

I'm not too sure about inside out tracking tbh. The Rift has outside in tracking meaning that it has cameras outside the play space pointing inwards towards the HMD. This rumoured new headset has cameras built into the headset and point out of the play space.

The advantage is that you don't need a great deal of USB bandwidth because there aren't any sensors plugged into your PC but the disadvantage is that your controllers have to be in view of the headset to keep tracking them, which is going to cause problems playing games with a bow and arrow or FPS games if you're planning on shooting from the hip.

We'll see how things go I guess. I'll definitely be getting one, assuming that these rumours are true, and I'll be giving my old Rift to a mate of mine in Kent.

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Well it's official now. The Rift S will be releasing in the Spring:

Inside out tracking (with 5 cameras so should have better tracking than the WVR headsets)
Resolution: 2560x1440
Refresh Rate: 80Hz

A bit disappointing tbh, I was expecting it to have the same resolution as the Oculus Quest that's also releasing in Spring (3200x1400) and they've also removed the headphones and the nose gap that the Rift has, handy for tilting your head back and seeing outside the headset).

Not sure if I'm going to be getting one or not. The Rift S has 5 cameras for its inside out tracking (two on the front pointing down slightly, two on each side and one on top) which means the tracking will be better than the WVR headsets but I REALLY don't understand why they aren't giving us the option to use our current sensors to improve the 360 degree tracking. Currently the controllers going out of view of the cameras will lose tracking which will be jarring in VR.

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Not sure if it has started already but there's a sale for Elite Dangerous coming up for 75% off.

You guys will probably enjoy the Achievements I reckon because the game can be quite grindy.

Whilst it CAN be played with a gamepad you're better off getting a HOTAS to control the game.

There has been an update to the game released today which makes it easier for new players to learn how to play the game, but if you've ever played any of the previous games the learning curve isn't that steep.

Once you get into the game it's difficult to put down, even when played flat.

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Oh shit. I didn't think ANYTHING would beat Dreadhalls and Alien Isolation VR Mod in terms of scares but I bought FNAF VR Help Wanted the day before yesterday and it's bloody terrifying lololol 

I haven't played any of the games from the franchise before but have seen various videos of people playing Vive Nights At Freddy's and crapping themselves.

FNAF VR Help Wanted has the first 3 games plus three sets of mini games to play so you get plenty of content for the 23 quid you pay for it and it has plenty of replay value for those that like scares.

[jman]

Caught the tail end of Microsofts E3 conference last night:

Project Scarlett is real, a new xbox that is 4x as powerful as the X1X with an SSD with 40x better performance.
Native 4k with 60FPS, Backwards Compatible, has a disk drive, capability to do 8k, ray tracing and 120FPS.
Halo Infinite releasing alongside it - and Master Chief is finally back.
Can't wait, I'm in... nothing beats a launch day console feeling!

No mention of VR - the supposed future of gaming.

Also managed to catch Keanu Reeves bigging up Cyberpunk 2077 - that game looks amazing.

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We'll probably see it being compatible with the Windows Mixed Reality headsets I expect. There's no need for them to release their own because they have numerous VR headset manufacturers doing it for them.

[jman]

No plans for Xbox ultimately though...


I upgraded my Xbox Game Pass / Xbox Gold membership last night to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - this covers your gold membership and game pass membership in one package - there is a special on at the moment - £1 for the first month.. but Ultimate also includes the NEW Xbox Game Pass on PC.

Both my gold/game pass memberships were due in November.. but after upgrading - I've now got a XGPU subscription until May next year...
I guess it worked it out at 5 months left on both subscriptions + the extra month I paid the £1 for = 11 months

So I just downloaded a game on the PC that I downloaded on the Xbox via Game Pass (Wargroove), started it up.. and its exactly at the point I left it at - AWESOME.  And the PC game pass version has stuff like FM2019 and other PC exclusives too.. Rise of Nations Extended Edition.. i loved that game!!  I downloaded 3 games in about 20 seconds as well.. super fast.

Xbox Game Pass is such a great thing to have.. and now on my upgraded PC, its even better!!

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A Post Nuclear Post Mortem of Fallout 76 by Jim Sterling:

https://youtu.be/ghdOSTAda1w

 

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There's a HUGE update for No Man's Sky on 14th next week. The game had a terrible launch 3 years ago because Sean Murray, the founder of Hello Games, was a bit green all those years ago and unlike now, where he only comments on things they've actually FINISHED, three years ago he was enthusiastically mentioning things that they were working on at the time. And the vast majority of those things didn't appear in the first release.

Sean and Hello Games have a huge amount of respect from me and many others since then though because they've released a few updates that now have all of those features and plenty more too - all for free

The update on Wednesday will be adding VR goodness and according to hands on reports they've done a REALLY good implementation of it.

Plus they've added a feature where you can ride on Alien lifeforms 

What they've done since it first launched has been REALLY impressive, I almost feel guilty getting this update for nowt!!! They reckon there are around a million players of the game with VR headsets and of course VR players and flat players can all play together without a problem.

32 players online together on the PC and 16 players together on consoles. And no lobbies. No connection time. No loading screens.

There aren't any loading times throughout the whole game. You can fly through space, dock with space stations, land on planets, all of it seamless. An incredible piece of software engineering.

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Aw bollocks. No update yet which means it's going to be tomorrow tomorrow instead of today tomorrow lol

I was hoping that the Steam update would start at midnight but no such luck. Oh well, something to look forward to tomorrow I guess.

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Wow. I've had a few days playing NMS now and it's quite exceptional. It's basically a survival/exploration game set in a fictional universe with around 18 quadrillion planets to visit. Yes, you read that right lol. 18,000,000,000,000,000.

You start the game on a random planet surface with your Exosuit's protection being cut down constantly by the heat/cold/acid rain/radiation and you have to mine Sodium to top that up with your Multitool by shooting plants. Then you have to create a scan visor for your suit (more mining) so that you can find your crashed ship. Once you find it you need to mine some more to repair it, then mine some more to refuel it. lol 

It's pretty grindy but it's a good grind, and once you can scan stuff it plays into my scanning OCD that started when I first started scanning in the first Metroid Prime game years and years ago. I need to scan EVERYTHING lol

So with 18 quadrillion planets I'm probably going to be scanning stuff on my deathbed lmfao 

The developers, Hello Games, are working REALLY hard - they've released 10 patches since the game released on the 14th and they had the weekend off.

VERY happy with it so far, there's around a 30 hour single player campaign but it's VERY easy to get sidetracked by just exploring and seeing what's out there. I'm around 12 hours in I think and I'm only on my second planet, plus Hello Games keep on adding to the content with every major update (and they've released 7 so far since it launched 3 years ago).

Have just built my first Base and am going to fly up and dock with a space station later on.

For my money this is now the second best VR game available right now, and it's also worth playing flat for those of you that don't have a VR headset that like survival and exploration games with a good bit of grind and inventory/resource management.

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I'm hearing good things about it (No Man's Sky) lately. Will probably pick it up on the Xbox if I see it on sale.

Haven't gotten stuck into a game for a while. I'm currently playing Tales of Vesperia (never played any of the Tales games the first time around, and I believe this is widely considered to be the best of them) but I'm not really feeling it

(Am also playing a bit of Minecraft again. I'm building a giant pyramid in survival mode but I bit off more than I can chew. The size is just ridiculous and my attention span isn't the best, so I'm just mining and adding a few thousand bricks every now and then. I think I've been building it for a couple of years now, on and off, and the outer shell is about 80% done, and there's not much inside. I should just delete my save file really, but I can't see that happening.)