Be Excellent To Each Other

Started playing the insane edition extras last night. The Lost Expedition details a search for a piece of Eden on the island. Y'kna.. like in AssCree.

Best. Review. Ever.

I've heard the same lines from the same pirates over 20 times "it's burns when I piss". Geesh, have they ALL been sleeping with the same woman? Who wants to hear this sexist drivel time and time again.

I'm not having half as much fun storming pirate camps as others in the thread either. I take out a few at range with the sniper, I sidle over and assault a few with a mix of mid-range weapons and shotty the rest. Repeat and rinse. Occassionally I'll shoot an animal out of a cage and watch the pirates get wasted without any further intervention. Fine. There's not much more to it. I might even let them trigger reinforcements and bazooka the jeeps as they come in. I might just duke it out with a few. I'm just a bit unenthused about it all, really. It started off alright when ammo was low and i was avoiding firefights for fear of zapping back to a safe house miles away but as the game has given me more and more weapons firefights have become much less tense affairs.

Change out the weapons. Shotgun Thursdays were quite fun for me, Stealth Wednesdays not so much. Always leave space to set things on fire.

Yeah and don't forget Shit Game Fucking Friday, and then set fire to the disc. (That's the 'set things on fire' that MaliA referred to.)

And then play Borderlands 2 instead, where every day is gloriously fun game day.

Extra bonus, you don't have to play as a character you'd cheerfully shoot in the face at the first opportunity.

That's all well and good, MaliA, but the only incentive is for a increasingly closer knit web of fast travels. It becomes less like a safari and more like a game where you zap to locations just to chop up an animal for a bigger ammo pouch or a wallet or a natty looking hat or as a way to zap around the map chasing the main campaign missions that are artificially spread out.

I have mostly ignored the main missions in favor of seeing how much stuff i could set on fire and twatting about doing the bases and things. I have a few missions to do on the south island left but i probably will leave it where it is as the later missions were, as you say, a bit shit. Everything that was not a mision was a scream, though. Even collecting stuff for more ammo. I did not have too much of a oroblem . With the characters that you had to rescue/were l. I probably was that teenaged brat.

Does AE not like this game? He should let us know occasionally.

I play my cards very close to my chest.

A closed book. A flit in the shadows. A dark horse.



Ian seems to be getting about the same out of the game that I did, what other folks are oooohhhing and aahhhhhing at I was just, 'Huh? Which bit of this is supposed to be awesome?'

136 hours play time on Borderlands 2 and still counting.....

I don't like this game either. Must be some sort of Ass Pie thing.

I must be two thirds of the way into this and it's finally ramped up the difficulty. The southern islands are supported by a crap load of heavies which are causing quite the nuisance. I'm actually enjoying it much more with the greater difficultly and each outpost attack needs more careful planning.

Even the main missions have become more interesting. I especially liked being buried in a mass grave - that was terribly gruesome even if the set up was uninspired. Buck was a great character too even though his missions were a little tiresome at first, but then they had a good crack at trying some CoD style bombast even if the results were patchy. There's been some terrible shit in there too (the fight with Vas in the dream, the boss fight with the dream monster, an insultingly tedious forced stealth mission, in fact, any of the dream shit, a turret section with waves of enemies, playing *sigh* poker, oh and Jason being criminally irritating) but overall it's really picked up a bit towards the final stretch.

So I have to play two thirds of a rubbish game to get to the good stuff at the end?

NO SALE.

Oh shit, I already bought the fucking thing.

Er... how far did you get into it, AE?

Not that far, a few hours, I did the first base and the first outpost and stuff, drove around the island a bit and got a handglider, had a trippy dream sequence, found the old crackhead and so on. Did two radio towers I think.

IIRC I made a couple of bags and some syringes too.

The whole thing left me amazingly underwhelmed, it's still installed on my PC but it'll be the next thing to go when I need some space on my SSD.

So, you barely started it?

Fair enough you didn't like it, but dear Lord we get it now.

I'm not sure my position on the game is clear enough yet. Ambiguity is man's ruin!

Yeah, we're also a little unsure of how you feel about fucking Borderlands fucking 2.

I really like it! Fun and explosions and guns in one awesome package!

I think there's a thread about it somewhere, but it can't be mentioned too much in other threads, of course.

To be fair, it really doesn't sound like you've given it a fair chance, AE.

I don't know what you were expecting, which might be the reason you dislike it, but I suspect the structure of the game might be the reason why you've been so put off.

FC3 suffers from the same problems as most modern games and almost all open world games, it simply throws everything at you right away and expects you to enjoy it all all of the time. There's harvesting, hunting, camps, towers, vehicles, missions, hunting missions, killing folk missions, etc etc etc and it wants to tell you all about them. So you might want to sample each and get frustrated when you're looking for a bigger ammo pouch (or whatever) when you could be following the main mission strand and picking up these other events along the way.

That's why I don't think that crafting is terribly well implemented. It's clearly there to restrict your progress and the number of weapons you have access to too quickly so you're not overpowered during the early missions when you should be feeling overwhelmed by enemy forces since you're just some little tit that got kidnapped but as you learn your destiny (bit rubbish but that's it) you become this jungle warrior get the best weapons and as many as you can hold to go on the offensive. It's probably a failing of the crafting and hunting system but if, say, you were really struggling through some missions you could piss off on a hunt to 'level up'. I suppose that's what those systems are really - a system of levelling up without the numbers and stats. What you would find though as you progress through the missions is that you're forced into areas where you can find the animals needed for crafting naturally. There's very little need to go out hunting until much later on at about the half way mark.

I suppose if you expected to start off like Crysis with all the abilities and shit to wreak havoc, I think you've missed the point; you should have enjoyed playing the pleb for half of the game since that's what you're supposed to do but then enjoy feeling empowered in the latter half when you'll naturally get all the good stuff.

Plus the southern islands must look awesome on your specced out PC. It's far more interesting terrain plus you'll pick up the Wing Suit and parachute! And there's plenty of stuff to dive off.

What he said. I had super fun taking over the radio towers, and, whilst that was happening, I was destroying wildlife which let me make things. The radio towers give you free guns and you don't really need money in the game for much. Playing the hiding person in the early game is really good fun, and as it moves on, you can be more aggressive, as you can carry more weapons and things about. Even bouncing about avoiding patrols and looking for relics or letters is good fun. Then tehre is "Can i drive this jeep off the cliff and survive?" minigames I invented where "jeep" can be subnsituted for most things and "Can I kill a bear in a knife fight?" (answer, not yet).

Hmmmm, well it's still installed so maybe I'll give it another go, I've obviously not uninstalled it for a reason, generally speaking I'm pretty ruthless about clearing games off my SSD I don't intend to play again as it's only a 128GB affair.

There was stuff about the game I liked, as documented earlier in this thread, and it's been patched several times over the last three months as I've seen it auto-update itself in Steam on multiple occasions, so maybe they've taken some of the rough edges off.

I did find the crafting and harvesting stuff annoying though, it didn't add anything to the game IMO.

Finished! And I did the Lost Expeditions too, cause, well, it came with it, so why not, aye?

I was definitely not enjoying myself for about half of the time that I was playing. The first half in fact. It wasn't that I thought it was poor either, it was just the same FPS that I've played several times over this generation. Actually, thinking about it, I really enjoyed the opening section - the escape from the prison and the death of your brother. That was actually quite a good little opening section but when I started getting a tattoo and was released into the wild to kill some animals and run little errands for some guy it took a dive. I appreciate that the game has to teach you all about its mechanics but I just wasn't interested enough after I'd just been chased through a jungle by pirates that wanted to kill me.

It got better though. I actually enjoyed some of the main story arc - getting your friends back, Buck, sexy voodoo woman, crazy Vas, German guy and crazy white guy. The main protagonists are really well fleshed out for the most part. Cracking mental characters. The story also takes you on some wild rides through an underground temple blowing up, a massive ship blowing up, a rocket base blowing up and it even lets you blow stuff up too. Some parts are quite original such as being buried in a mass grave, the torture and the poker game at gun point all being high points. All in the last third as well.

I even stuck around to finish off all the outposts so I must have been enjoying it. In fact, I wasn't advancing the story much towards the end as I was having too much fun doing the much harder and more satisfying southern islands. The outposts haven't however created the most stories for me - the main story was more satisfying - but I had fun being advanced upon by two heavies with flamethrowers and leading them on a merry chase after I'd ran out of ammo and was scavaging every gun on the floor to take them out, but then fecking back-up arrived. Fortunately they went down quite easy with a three-hit combo mega-kill and I pinched the .50 cal on the jeep and saved my bacon. Unfortunately there wasn't enough of this on the main island with the pirates being a piece of piss to kill after you'd unlocked all four weapon slots. It's a shame that the outposts didn't 'level-up' a bit more as you got more powerful. Shame. Still, I spent a good couple of hours thrashing it out with heavies and the like. That was really good fun.

In fact, you gotta admit that the stealth mechanics are pretty spot-on. It's generous enough not to give every solider super vision and the warning system as the arrow fills up was really helpful to maintaining the fun. It's ridiculously good fun to duck out of sight after being spotted and then ducking out of sight to flank your enemies - they advance on your last position or just look that way with sniper rifle lasers or whatever, as you run around and start a secondary attack from behind. It's awesome.

In the end I enjoyed what I'd seen and only had a few lingering complaints.

1) The 360 is clearly overworked, with textures blurred at a distance or being drawn right in front of you, a shonky frame rate, and stuff popping up as you get closer. It's a real shame.

2) FUCKING DREAM SHIT. The battle with Vas? What the fuck? The battle with the last guy? Also, what the fuck? The only time it made sense was right at the end when you had a face full of drugs.

3) The Lost Expeditions: "40 Minutes of New Gameplay" the box says. Erm, actually 15 minutes you lying shits. Plus both missions were a bit rubbish.

4) Collecting stuff: I never want to do it in a game ever. 120 Relics? Life's too short for that shit.

5) Outposts: This was a double-edged sword in my eyes. Conquering them was fun but if you do then that area is free from baddies. None at all. So you get no beef crossing the island when they're done but you open up more fast travels, which is a great shame since you get hardly any running battles going cross country as you zap from one fast travel point to the next so you can smash the next outpost. Which you will, cause they're not that hard.

Still, I mustn't complain cause I've had hours of fun with this. It's been worth it in the end even though it has a slow start which sags too much. I'd give it a good 6.5 out of 10.

tl;dr

It's no Borderlands 2.

That was awesome! Is it Dimrill?

I quite enjoyed the relics. Each one was placed in an interesting spot and some required a bit of a puzzle to get to. The one underwater was genuinely terrifying as the sharks circled. If you were going for the cheev it only requires 60 to be collected, most of which I ran across while just playing the game. Dain't stop me collecting the other 60 though. *puny fist pump*

What Dimrill said.

And goodness me, most games are made up of just collecting things. Star Wars Lego, anyone?

Erm, I don't think so buddy. Unless you're making some amoosingly ironic statement here about the base obsessions of gamers.

Plus I wouldn't put Lego Star Wars up there with my favourite games of all time.

What erks me most are those games have collect-o-thons shoehorned in as a way of arbitrarily extending the length of time the disc stays on the tray. I don't necessarily put Far Cry 3 in that bracket, mind, since Dimrill is right about some of the placements of the relics - hell, I even went after a few when they popped up on the mini-map - but generally speaking I don't find these collect-o-thons add much to the gaming experience.

I'm all for collectables if they're... hmm.. apt. They made sense in the Far Cry world. The GTA pigeons were good too. Beyond Good & Evil's photo creatures were awes. And there's always lovely Crackdown. But I've played far, far too many games where they're shoehorned in. Kids games are especially buggersome for it. I could understand them being in Tomb Raider Underworld, but they made the mistake of putting about 60 in per level. I just couldn't be arsed to trawl through it constantly flicking to a sodding Wiki to see if I'd missed any.

Y'know, I once used a magazine to find the 100 summats in GTA: Vice City. I got to the last one that I'd scribbled off in the magazine. It must have taken me a few days. I still remember the position of it - under the bridge on the island on the left; right down at the bottom of the map.

I was reet chuffed!

So I clicked start and looked at the stats page.

98/100

FUCK!

I never did find out where I went wrong. Never again.

Ultimately they all are, really.

I was doing that too.

Then you're a wrongy wrong face.



Yeah, I will give you that. The obviously "additional" collectothons can be a bit annoying, but if it's part of the core then it can work well. But then again the same can be said about absolutely any element of a game. Isn't this more about "stuff that is obviously shoehorned in" rather than what it is? It could apply to QTEs, minigames, chocobo racing etc etc.

Well, obviously. If you buy a game that's fundamentally about collecting then don't come crying that all you're doing is collecting shit for collecting shits sake.

All this Pac-man does is eat dots, whaa, whaa!

Yay, we're arguing for no reason! And I'm right, which is the main thing.

That does it, I'm flouncing!

Hang on, we ain't arguing; did my post sound unnecessarily aggressive? I suppose it did abit. Sorry about that chap.

All I meant was...in a nutshell, Lego Star Wars is for poofs.

Aaand we're back to normal.

Warning NSFW audio at least in here - the trailer for Far Cry 3 : Blood Dragon



Standalone game - on PSN and XBL (and uplay)

Good job it's standalone as I've long since traded mine in, but that looks, um, mental. If the tone of the game is like the trailer then I'm in but if it takes itself too seriously then I'm out.

From the terrible/awesome retro animated-gif-tastic website I don't think there's much change of it taking itself too seriously.

Blood Dragon: out now! On PSN! Probably on Live too.

FREE TRIAL ON PSN!

It looks pretty amazing too. I shall definitely be getting it once I've finished a couple more of the games I'm on with.

"Hints on the loading screen will give you hints" Nice.

"Pressing X enables you to move in a Z-arc without touching the ground inbetween"

Er... it's pretty funny. But the shooting is pretty bland. I don't know what to make of that, to be honest. I sharn't be dropping no coinage on it unless someone tells me it gets significantly more awesome.

Or, you know, you could read the thread! I know, I know, you're not reading etc.

*pssst* talking about the DLC...

Oh.

I'm having a bit of an off day, in my defense. Can barely keep my eyes open.

I was SO close to doing that.

Blood Dragon is supah boffo time.