What videogame are you playing recently?

[Akibiyori]

Continuing Final Fantasy XV. I went more than a bit overboard with the side quests here. I’m still on chapter 3 and I’ve done most of what I have access to, so I’m level 53, I have the Ultima Sword already as well as a couple other upgraded weapons. That’s a problem with this structure - if you give me access to a lot of things to do, I’m kinda goin’ to do ‘em! I guess the rest of the regular story won’t be any problem but then again this game gives you so much leeway it probably doesn’t matter in the end. If I play it again, I’ll definitely prohibit doing side quests, maybe all of them.

A problem I have with combat is how easy it is for your field of vision to become completely obscured, not just in the brush out in the field - a constant occurrence - but also in places like Crestholm Channel, where that Naga fight is in such a small space the camera is constantly getting tripped up and blocked. If I could actually see more, I’d be able to do a better job evading and blocking. This is probably one of the reasons they made item usage so easy and accessible.

Is there some bug with the music? I’m waiting for something to come on, like the nice afternoon theme, but it’s often silent. Then when music finally comes on randomly, I need to check the map…which ends the music. I know I can use the MP3 player with the various FF soundtracks but I’d rather listen to the music composed for this game when I’m out just running around doing stuff. Why not just let it play?

Why do so many of the NPCs have a kind of blank Texan or vaguely placed southern accent? A lot of them sound like the same person. It reminds me of the awful, laid-on-much-too-thick accents from Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights (especially Natalie Portman.)

I’m still enjoying this a good deal but I can really see how this game struggled in development and may have been released in a compromised state.

[Warm Gun]

Good lord, I don't remember the cutscenes in Alien: Isolation looking THIS awful. Like they ran it through the lowest settings in Handbrake.



Thinking they went a little too far with dressing up old tech or didn't do it half as well as the filmmakers. Spotted an item that looked exactly like a big printer. The batteries for the flashlight look very much like current batteries. Those are so abundant, they should have just made the light unlimited.

Overall, too simplistic, the progression. Baby puzzles. A constant objective pointer because the level design/progression isn't solid enough to move the player along on its own.

[HipsterTrash]

Beat Death Stranding about a month ago. Looked forward to the possible sequel.

Kind of floated around, looking for a game to play. Tried Alien: Isolation and I just can't handle for whatever reason. Something about it feels stilted.

Landed on the Resident Evil 2 remake and it's glorious. Wish they would do whast they did for this one to the first game (and all the others for that matter).

[Warm Gun]

Wondered why the quality of the Alien: Isolation cutscenes was so poor, so I extracted some of the USM video files with vgmtoolbox. Turns out they are MPEG-1. Who the **** still encoded for PC monitors and HD televisions in MPEG-1 in 2014? 12 Mbps is low for 1080p, but I've seen videos of much better quality, with far less macroblocking, at that bitrate. Only they weren't in MPEG-1. I wanted to compress a video in MPEG-1, 2 and 4 to see what the visual difference is, but Handbrake doesn't even encode in MPEG-1, because it's so dated and obsolete.

Also interesting is that the extracted video played smoothly. It looked like a 30 fps video, while the game plays them back seemingly under 20 fps. That's not just me either; it's widely reported.



https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/USM

[Warm Gun]

In testing the cutscenes, I lost my save current file. Forgot that you can't reload an old save after starting a new game. But it's okay, because Hard mode is boring, and you can't switch from Hard to Nightmare. Items are too abundant. It's Nightmare or nothing. I'm gonna see how playable this is without using the objective magnet thing.

Ugh, just remembered the HUD is gone on Nightmare, which would be fine if you could only see your own health. Still, Hard's boring.