Ewan

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Everything posted by Ewan

  1. Nintendo 3DS

    I never played the original Picross 3D but they just released it on WII U virtual console. I'd prefer if it was on 3DS, the Wii U seems an odd place for it, but I'm gonna give it a go. I also just completed the original Prof Layton game for the first time. Loved it, ordered the next two already. My 3DS is a fantastic double dip handheld, having never owned a DS.
  2. PL4YST4TION 4

    Even better battery life and more durable analogue stick material would go a long way.
  3. PL4YST4TION 4

    The new Xbox One S has 4k Blu-ray support for $300 I think. Seems really odd that the Playstation doesn't have it, but I don't think its actually that big a deal.
  4. Mercy was a great character for getting into the game originally, but nowadays I feel way more useful as Lucio. My mantra for Overwatch has become survivability. Playing Mercy, I just feel too vulnerable, too reliant on other heroes. Whereas with Lucio, I think his movement and alt fire blast wave allow me to survive for really long amounts of time, doing constant team healing. And he is a really good damage dealer when played right. I keep getting better at leading my shots, and doing side-to-side spreads with his shots frequently gets hits in, enough to deter opponents often. On average, I heal less with Lucio than Mercy, but I contribute in kills, objective time, pushing objectives, and escorting people back into battle using speed boost. Lucio, Soldier 76, Mei, and D.Va are my crew at the moment. All good survivors.
  5. Movie/TV recommendations

    I saw E.T. on Saturday...with a live orchestra playing the music. It was the RSNO as part of the Edinburgh Film Festival. A really incredible experience, I hadn't seen the film in at least 10 years, The chase scene at the end was really something special. Sorry for the brag.
  6. On the topic of Uncharted 4's accessibility option, PlayStation posted a video to YouTube around the release of the game. It highlights a lot of the accessibility options the thumbs discussed in this episode, and the story about how they came to be implemented:
  7. Recently completed video games

    Just finished up Oxenfree. Overall, I disliked the game. The big problem for me was the conflict between the wide camera compositions and the dialogue. Important to the visual style of the game seems to be maintaining views of large scenes, with characters appearing small in the frame. The game uses this to its advantage at points, creating some really beautiful images, but in exchange the game cant use tighter shots or camera moves to communicate emotion or drama. So as a result the dialogue felt over acted, with characters shouting out their every emotion. Further, their just isn't enough breathing room between lines, with characters speaking without having any time to think or reflect beforehand. The game would also often prompt me to make a dialogue decision whilst someone else was speaking, and though sometimes the game would wait to trigger the line, it often just interrupted the other character. The result being a mess of people speaking at the same time or being cut off. I appreciate the attempt to capture teenage energy in the dialogue but I found myself annoyed at the relentless pace, in what could have been a more sedate, tense experience. Kentucky Route Zero feels like a similar game, but has more confidence in its quiet, meditative moments.
  8. I had a really fun game attacking on Hollywood last night. The defenders went with five Bastions on various positions around the car and were just slaughtering us whenever we approached. It felt like a puzzle to try and figure out the combination of characters and tactics to take them out while the clock was ticking. Genji ended up being successful for me, deflecting and warping around for backstabs. We turned it around and starting pushing the car in overtime, which then happened again on the second checkpoint. Other than the frantic 6v6 skirmishes, I think my favourite moments playing this game are spent trying to figure out a solution to an oppositions team composition. The quick character switching and the overtime concept are great for this.
  9. Resident EVII_: P.T. Pretender

    Its coming to PC on Steam and Windows 10 (http://www.capcom-unity.com/timturi/blog/2016/06/13/resident-evil-7-biohazard-ushers-in-a-new-era-of-fear). Also, they seem to be calling the game "Resident Evil 7 biohazard". Not "Resident Evil 7: biohazard" or "Resident Evil 7 Biohazard". No colon, and no capitalization on the b! How dare they!
  10. This has been in the game since launch. I got it once after a mixture of connection drops, leaving to join a party, and me quitting matches (took me a while to get into this game!). Got the 75% XP cap for about three games.
  11. SPECTRE (new James Bond movie)

    Finally saw Spectre on Blu-Ray as I was ill when it was in cinemas. It was really frustrating to hear a lot of chatter around release without going to see it as everyone was discussing why this bit didn't make sense or why that bit in the story was stupid. After seeing it I did find it too referential to the other Daniel Craig films. Ten years ago the world had to be under immediate threat of destruction in every action film, nowadays the world still has to be under immediate threat of destruction but it also has to neatly link into the other films and spin-offs that proceeded it. So very frustrating in that regard, I would love if every film could just be a standalone spy adventure. Having said that I thought it was bloody good! Sam Mendes comes across as a more confident action director but also lets you know early on that you are allowed to laugh and be entertained by Bond once again with the sofa gag in the opening sequence. The supporting characters get a good amount of air time and it's nice to see a new dynamic of Bond having more experience than his support.
  12. Firewatch Spoiler Thread | Henry Two Hats

    There was a moment for me some time around finding the boy's body that I became very (wrongly) paranoid about Delilah's involvement in the affair. It felt like she jumped to the conclusion that Ned was responsible for his son's death, so for a while I just stopped talking to her. However, it never really felt like Henry and Delilah's relationship deteriorated. I was wondering, how far can you push it? Do the two always remain pretty friendly to the end or is there capacity in the choices to fall out a leave on bad terms? The only real sense I got of this was a moment earlier in the game when Delilah steps away from the radio for a time because she is annoyed with you, and the game pops up words to the effect of "Delilah will remember this". I think it was around the time you overhear a conversation between her and someone else on her radio.
  13. Firewatch Spoiler Thread | Henry Two Hats

    Loved the game mostly but found the pacing to be rushed. The cuts between days work wonders in the early and late stages of the game, initially doing an excellent job of settling you and in the end creating a great tension, but I wanted a bit more time to breathe in the middle. I guess I just never felt like a fire lookout, or that it was a long hot summer. The montage of days in the middle was a great way to show time passing but I wanted to live that time more than I got to. It sounds like an odd request but I wish the game had more repetitive mundane tasks to do as a lookout, but it would have to walk that difficult line between routine and boring a la Papers, Please, but maybe that just isn't this game.
  14. A little disappointed with PS4 performance, lots of little hitches as I move through areas and whenever it quicksaves. After seeing the Giant Bomb video I loved the way the game hard cuts at the end of each day, but on PS4 the game judders momentarily before each one of those happens, and the loading of the new day is long enough for the cut to lose its effect. I dislike the camera turning accelerating as well. It seems to step from speed a up to speed b if I am doing camera moves over 90 degrees. I find that I have to look after the camera and move it a bit slower that I'd naturally like to. But I am liking what I see so far! The filmic editing in the opening sequence is very effective and an excellent way to understand both Henry's default state of mind and why he has chosen to isolate himself for a time.
  15. Even since watching The Sound of Music on New Year's Day I sing the words Idle Thumbs to the tune of Edelweiss when a new episode pops up...so that's a thing.
  16. Never got into Spelunky but this game is going down well with me.
  17. Recently completed video games

    I finished Super Meat Boy up to the credits this weekend. I played a bit of it on PC when it originally came out but it didn't hook me at all. In general I prefer my "difficult" games when they have few inputs a la Super Hexagon, a little to learn, lots to master, that sort of thing. Maybe Meat Boy didn't appeal because I haven't played a lot of 2D platformers in my time. But anyway, this time playing on PS4 it clicked with me. I found chapters 4 and 5 to rely on the more gimmicky mechanics too much, where most of the challenge came from an AI enemy seeking you out. But then I loved chapter 6, I wanted a lot more than the five levels you get. The chapter relied only on the simple obstacles: spinney blades and platforms. No seeking enemies or disappearing platforms, much more to my tastes. Now...dark world?
  18. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

    I have played about a dozen hours and made it to story mission 10 this evening. What is the deal with enemy soldiers adapting to your way of playing and giving you a different challenge? I don't feel like anything has really changed in the enemy AI yet, is it more prevalent later in the game?
  19. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

    I threw down the helicopter flare grenade thingy thinking it would come and pick me up from anywhere on the map, which I was wrong about. In fact, the helicopter flew overhead, spotted enemies way off in the distance and started firing. I got my goggles out and saw it shoot down about 6 troops in a big fort way off in the distance...all while Kids in America was playing. This game is pretty cool. Also, I was having a pretty bad time yesterday because all of the load times were stupidly long (playing on PS4), even for simple things like going into menus and a close to two minute load into the helicopter. Then today I started up the game and it forced me into offline mode, in which all the load times were super fast. Other that the mother base invasion stuff, what is the point in playing online? And a tip for anyone playing on PS4, there is an option to make the iDroid lady's voice come out of the Dualshock's speaker which is great as I was finding the crosstalk between iDroid, voiceover, and tape audio to be infuriating.
  20. Scheduled as playdate on Friday. I am slowly making my way through The Tragedy of Ragnar on YouTube which is my only reference for Crusader Kings so I'm curious to see another campaign of it. Fedlimid?
  21. Movie/TV recommendations

    The on earth drama kind of of reads as cliche but the thing that is interesting about the book is that it goes into the details and logistics of inter country space agency politics to send to get the guy back from Mars and so on and so on instead of just the emotional "we need to get him back" sort of thing My main worry with the film is that it has to gloss over most of the nitty gritty details which is what made the book so interesting in service of runtime and character drama, so it could just come off as very surface and lots of shots of Jeff Daniels looking worryingly at pictures of Mars on a screen.
  22. Movie/TV recommendations

    I have a weird mix of excitement for The Martian after reading the book and trepidation based on Ridley Scott's recent form. Could go either way, looks excellent from the trailer though.
  23. Movie/TV recommendations

    I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin a while back and I kind of can't stop thinking about it. I feel like normally after a movie I have a pretty good grasp of a character, or at least have a basic emotional state of whether I like them or not but I still cant quite figure out Tilda Swinton's character Eva after about two months, but that's kind of amazing and why I love it. Its rare for a film to stick with me like that but I also don't want to go back to it again any time soon because of the subject material. Highly recommended, I also recently watched The Zero Theorem and Only Lovers Left Alive, both good, both with Tilda Swinton (just a small part in the former). I like Tilda Swinton. She is good.
  24. Rocket League

    Only played in the new arena once in about twenty matches, wish they would promote it a bit more in the rotation. Makes the way Splatoon did its map rotation pretty good looking, but I guess the arena is less critical to Rocket League than the Map is to Splatoon. Meanwhile, my ep1c save m0ntage has been kick-started with a bang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcxd1fhkXj0&feature=em-upload_owner
  25. Rocket League

    I do not like these people.