tegan

I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

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One thing that really annoys me about online shooters is getting tea-bagged. Getting killed is already frustrating enough, but when it is followed up by a vicious tea-bagging I just want to reach through my tv and punch that person in the nuts (assuming guys do most of the tea-bagging in online shooters).

 

If a video game were to actually recognize the act of tea-bagging, this is how I think it should go: when you're on your death screen, if someone runs up to you and starts tea-bagging, the game should give you a little QTE prompt with a description that just says "BITE". If you complete the QTE, your character lurches up and bites that fucker's nuts off. You are then given a second wind and the person that tried to teabag you has to stay curled up in the fetal position on the ground completely immobile until some kind person decides to end their life so they can respawn.

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Call of Duty does recognize teabagging.  One of the games (I don't remember which one, they all look the same to me) has a thing called field orders.  The field orders are random assignments such as kill an enemy with melee or get 2 kills while crouched.  Completing them gives you an in-game bonus.  One of the field orders is to humiliate the next enemy you kill.  You do this by teabagging them.

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Call of Duty does recognize teabagging.  One of the games (I don't remember which one, they all look the same to me) has a thing called field orders.  The field orders are random assignments such as kill an enemy with melee or get 2 kills while crouched.  Completing them gives you an in-game bonus.  One of the field orders is to humiliate the next enemy you kill.  You do this by teabagging them.

 

They were so close! They already have that last stand mechanic too. Couldn't they have just gone one step further and made my dreams come true?

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I played both Dark Souls games with kb/m and I've seen comments saying that it's unplayable that way more times than I can count. Obviously I'm playing Bloodborne with a controller and having gotten used to it I don't see what the big fuss is about. I'd even go so far as to say I prefer kb/m. With a controller you get analog movement, which so far for me has had basically zero impact on my ability to play the game well. You also get to change targets with the right stick. This is the biggest difference, since you can actually point at targets and not just cycle through them horizontally.

 

Now, the problem I have is that there are eight(!) buttons I can't press without letting go of the two most important inputs, which are the character and camera controls. Maybe you can do some weird grip and press those buttons with some finger other than your thumb but that seems awkward. This is a difference that actually matters when I play. I can't sprint and control the camera, if someone's sneaking up on me from behind I can't dodge away and turn the camera 180 degrees at the same time etc. Sure, you're locked on most of the time so it's not a huge deal, but it's something I noticed. The dpad is probably worse because if I want to change weapon or item during a boss fight I need to stand still for a moment. Finally, when you lose lock-on say when a boss does a leap attack or something, the precise camera control you get with a mouse really helps.

 

It's a perfectly good way to play, it's just not dramatically better.

 

The analog movement is important not because of being able to walk slow or fast, but being able to move at various angles. With KB+M, you can move in 4 directions easily, and 8 directions by pressing more than one key. It's camera relative of course, so you have the option to swing the camera around with the mouse to move at more finite angles, but since Dark Souls is managing the camera for you with lock-on, that's often not an option. Basically, any character action game where you want your movement to not be limited by your camera angle is better with a stick is tough with KB+Mouse.

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One thing that really annoys me about online shooters is getting tea-bagged. Getting killed is already frustrating enough, but when it is followed up by a vicious tea-bagging I just want to reach through my tv and punch that person in the nuts (assuming guys do most of the tea-bagging in online shooters).

If a video game were to actually recognize the act of tea-bagging, this is how I think it should go: when you're on your death screen, if someone runs up to you and starts tea-bagging, the game should give you a little QTE prompt with a description that just says "BITE". If you complete the QTE, your character lurches up and bites that fucker's nuts off. You are then given a second wind and the person that tried to teabag you has to stay curled up in the fetal position on the ground completely immobile until some kind person decides to end their life so they can respawn.

Shadowrun (Xbox360) recognizes teabagging in two ways. There is a resurrection mechanic. Teammates with the ability to resurrect you can cast the spell over your body (if you are killed) and you become a zombie which means that you can play, but if they die, you will eventually bleed out. It's one of the most interesting mechanics I've seen in a team-based shooter. So the act of mutilating the body (which I consider a more general form of tea-bagging) is encouraged; if you destroy the body, they cannot be resurrected.

The other way was that there was an achievement that you could only get by tea-bagging someone else with the achievement; it was an STD-joke.

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The makers of Dirt 3 stripped Games For Windows out, added in Steamworks and gave all existing owners all the DLC. This makes me feel good. I would have gotten stuck on the road this winter if it had not been for my experiences with this game. I had given up playing it because of all sorts of Games For Windows Problems. Psyched. 

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After finishing The Martian I was having a conversation with a friend about the main character's circumstances and available entertainment.

 

TLDR - he gets stuck on Mars - but due to circumstances he has laptops that are loaded with crew member's allocated personal media / entertainment materials.  One person had hundreds of hours of disco, someone else several full runs of 70's TV shows, another had thousands of eBooks, etc.  This material is supposed to last the months getting to Mars, on planet, and trip home.

 

 

Of course the conversation devolved to what game could you play the longest/infinitely (if got stranded there) After careful thought I think I would ask for Binding of Issac RE, Starcraft2, and Diablo (barring of course all online requirements etc)

 

I was trying to cross genres while still having an opportunity for endless content with different win conditions the create variety.  Dota2 would substitute my RTS selection - but an 36 minute lag and contact with Earth would break the exercise

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I remember that this was the exact premise for the Klutz board games book - what board games would be suitable for a long journey through space. It was a pretty good book, it had some games that I think should be more widely known. It was the first place I ever saw Fanorana, which most people know from the board games in the later Assassin's Creeds.

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The analog movement is important not because of being able to walk slow or fast, but being able to move at various angles. With KB+M, you can move in 4 directions easily, and 8 directions by pressing more than one key. It's camera relative of course, so you have the option to swing the camera around with the mouse to move at more finite angles, but since Dark Souls is managing the camera for you with lock-on, that's often not an option. Basically, any character action game where you want your movement to not be limited by your camera angle is better with a stick is tough with KB+Mouse.

Having to do weird claw-hand to be able to both run and aim the camera sucks though. A proper targeting control scheme makes kb/m much more comfortable for me.

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Having to do weird claw-hand to be able to both run and aim the camera sucks though. A proper targeting control scheme makes kb/m much more comfortable for me.

 

Problems like that are one of the reasons I greatly dislike most controller designs.  The addition of triggers was one of the best things to me but I was really disappointed that it didn't go any further.  I'm always bothered that there are so many buttons but they're all designed to only ever be pressed by 2 fingers and 2 thumbs.  I want buttons on the back or in some other orientation such that I don't need to contort my hand to do all the actions that I want.

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Having to do weird claw-hand to be able to both run and aim the camera sucks though. A proper targeting control scheme makes kb/m much more comfortable for me.

 

Hmm, I don't recall having to do any weird claw-hand stuff in Dark Souls. In the end, it's to-each-their-own anyway. I'm the weirdo that prefers controllers for FPS's as well.

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While Pillars of Eternity look so good, I still have some other old school rpgs in my backlog which I decided to revisit:

 

Drakensang: I say this, it is a good game. However, Drakensang rule system isn´t very good, I mean, I can see it working in tabletop, but in the game you often you never really knows if you are spending your xp correctly or even if you character is getting strong or if this or that skill is useful (but it is way better that Realms of Arkania, an older pc rpg, based in the same system, where you had gazillions of skills and spells, half that don´t work at all or are useless, while a handful of spell/skills are really needed, good luck figuring that out. tip: despite having a riding skill, there was no horse in the game). But as long you are facing slight lower level enemies or a few higher level encounters, even this isn´t much a issue. Problem is when you too much higer level encounters with too many enemies, because not only you can easily die but this bring the game pacing to halt.

 

Also, side quest often get very bloated, I mean: too many, too long, too large often even harder that the main quest, but never interessing or really good. I swear, you once get a quest where you go to dungeon face some rats, looks easy? No! for unknown reason this quest is ridiculous long as the dungeon have I think something absurd like 5 levels full of powerful rats and a strong rat boss. Which make this quest almost impossible to finish it when you get because simple you aren´t strong enough, but no one tell you that. Now I was finishing some side quest which the two first where quite easy or simple, which I find good, since quickly I would return to the main quest. Until the third one: go to a cript and find a couple which was doing meetings there. I was thought, that given the city wasn´t very large, this would not take long, but no, somehow it´s a fair large cript full of skeletons which spam a annoying attack which make your characters fall on the ground, taking several hits which kill them very fast.

Baldur´s Gate 2: I was replaying, now using the mods which merge BG 1 and BG2, I still love the game, but I don´t know if I am simple not on the mood to play it much...or if I had some burn out after playing the whole BG1 or something else. Still if anyone is curious, I found out that with the merged version, BG1 is slight easier that I remembered, maybe because Kits make you a bit more powerful, so some heavy combat moments (I think around the 3 or 4 act? the one which you face several mercenary groups) is easier, but small warning:

 

Saverok final battle with the wrong mods installed can get almost impossible (the mage which help him often cast a instant death spell) if you don´t have a strong enough group. The old trick of throwing explosion potions off screen to weak him before the combat does not work.

 

Also I had a rather large bug which almost ruined the save, but can´t remember what I did or how managed to continue.
 

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I played both Dark Souls games with kb/m and I've seen comments saying that it's unplayable that way more times than I can count. Obviously I'm playing Bloodborne with a controller and having gotten used to it I don't see what the big fuss is about. I'd even go so far as to say I prefer kb/m.

 

I went from playing Dark Souls on consoles to playing DS2 on PC, and ended up playing with the keyboard and mouse for a bit before sorting out a gamepad to use instead.

With KB/M, some of the inputs i found virtually impossible to perform. Guard breaks and the unparryable jump attacks, mainly. Not a huge problem in solo play, but sure to get you wrecked in PVP against turtles and parry-baiting.

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I would love to watch someone hunt down people who give negative metacritic scores on great games and see if they stick to their guns or not when quizzed about it.

 

Also, who the hell is lighting all the candles in Bloodborne?

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I went from playing Dark Souls on consoles to playing DS2 on PC, and ended up playing with the keyboard and mouse for a bit before sorting out a gamepad to use instead.

With KB/M, some of the inputs i found virtually impossible to perform. Guard breaks and the unparryable jump attacks, mainly. Not a huge problem in solo play, but sure to get you wrecked in PVP against turtles and parry-baiting.

This is because of an issue with the kb/m implementation in Dark Souls II, I know exactly what you're talking about. The problem stems from the fact that the game recognises double clicks as valid inputs. As a result, there is an intentional delay with all mouse inputs to give time for the player to do another click. That is kind of bad just on its own, because ~100-200ms of input lag is ugh, but the real issue is that since the keyboard inputs are instant you need to offset the 'w' tap by the input delay for them to register at the same time. It's impossible to do consistently. What I ended up doing was using AutoHotKey to intercept my mouse inputs and resend them to the game as keyboard inputs, that way they're instant. It's an annoying workaround that has a few issues, but it at least solves that problem.

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I've been trying to hook up a PS3 to output audio to headphones. Turns out it's not possible to put audio through USB on a PS3, but that's not the point. What bothered me is that when googling for solutions I was looking through a bunch of forum posts from 2007 and it reminded me just how heated the "console wars" were for that generation. PS3 fans were incredibly defensive about their chosen console. Whenever anyone asked a question about something the PS3 can't do, the reply was always incredibly hostile. My favourite was this one:

 

what i really don't understand is why you'd (or any of the other people who've asked this question) want the beautiful 7.1 dolby sound to come out of your crappy little bluetooth speaker, but to each his own i guess

 

There were dozens of posts just like that. "Why would you want to do something the PS3 can't do? It's a perfect machine, and you're flawed for trying to exceed it!"

 

It's making me think about how I was probably guilty of being an Xbox 360 fanboy back then. It's such a weird time to think about. I was going to say that I'm glad people are mostly over that kind of dumb factionalism, but I suppose the same arguments happen today, just with the Xbox One as the underdog. I still recall a facebook post from a friend of mine who loves Microsoft that actually used the words "I was ready for the always online experience of the future".

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Is that really true? I thought that USB headsets were totally a thing with the PS3. I guess you could get a optical -> stereo converter or HDMI audio separator, both would cost $30-40 each and could let you use headphones. Though at some point I wonder if it's really worth it.

 

I will say that it's super convenient having the audio port right on the PS4 controller. I currently have my PS4 hooked into my computer monitor to more readily play Bloodborne and it's really nice to not having to work out some weird audio solution. Instead, I just plug any old pair of headphones into my controller and go. Console wars aside, that should be industry standard.

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Same here, I don't know how I'd get audio otherwise. My screen doesn't have an HDMI port and I don't have a TV.

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Is that really true? I thought that USB headsets were totally a thing with the PS3. I guess you could get a optical -> stereo converter or HDMI audio separator, both would cost $30-40 each and could let you use headphones. Though at some point I wonder if it's really worth it.

 

I will say that it's super convenient having the audio port right on the PS4 controller. I currently have my PS4 hooked into my computer monitor to more readily play Bloodborne and it's really nice to not having to work out some weird audio solution. Instead, I just plug any old pair of headphones into my controller and go. Console wars aside, that should be industry standard.

 

Yup, all you can get from USB on a PS3 is the multiplayer chat. The audio can come from either the hdmi, optical or AV cables. You can get a separator but it's pretty expensive considering I'm only using it for a few days. I'm doing the same with my PS4, using a headset from the controller. It really drains the battery, though.

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I'm playing through Grim Fandango remastered, I like a lot of things about it, but boy do I not enjoy classic adventure game puzzles.

 

Had I not referred to a walkthrough, I would have given up on the game, and missed out on all the wonderful music, dialog, and visuals. All the same, I can't help but feel that I am somehow ruining the experience by not bashing my head against the puzzles until I solve them by sheer luck and attrition, and earning the parts I enjoy, absurd as that probably sounds. 

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...I am somehow ruining the experience by not bashing my head against the puzzles until I solve them by sheer luck and attrition, and earning the parts I enjoy, absurd as that probably sounds. 

You are.

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Dark Souls is the Infinite Jest of video games

I guess I should read Infinite Jest then.

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So I found out that the Russian Night/Day/Twilight watch books I enjoyed a lot actually have 2 sequels and also 2 games? Super weird, I'm kinda curious if anyone has played them at all? I'm assuming no but eternally hopeful.

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So I found out that the Russian Night/Day/Twilight watch books I enjoyed a lot actually have 2 sequels and also 2 games? Super weird, I'm kinda curious if anyone has played them at all? I'm assuming no but eternally hopeful.

 

Oh, I didn't realize the fifth book was out in English now!  I love those books, I should get it.  I knew the first game existed, but I've never got around to trying it. 

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