What are you playing?

[Abraham Smashington]

almost beat the Gears remake last night. Playing that new Brumak level at the moment that was only released for the PC version. IT's nice but nothing too crazy.

Played a bunch more Lego Dimensions. Still love it. Just finished up the Simpsons level that came with the game. Fun stuff.

MGSV - on mission 20 at the moment (taking my sweet ass time with this game) and finally they have decided to have some story after the last few hours with none. I MISS THE CRAZY SHIT KOJIMA. STOP MAKING IT HAPPEN SO INFREQUENTLY.

[gravedigger]

Rob, Harmonix says if you set surround sound at a console level that the game will follow suit. I have no idea how to do that on the Xbone but I assume there's an audio page in Settings.

[Abraham Smashington]

that seems weird as all of my other games run in surround mode but I'll look into it. Nice looking out!

[Abraham Smashington]

Beat Gears remake this weekend. That added Brumak level SUCKED. I would have been totally fine without it being added. It was nothing but filler with a cheap fucking boss that was near impossible thanks to the shoddy AI of Dom. But it was still a bunch of fun besides that. Gonna replay Gears 2, 3, and Judgement now.

Played a bunch of RB4 and then got annoyed and decided to go back to RB3. It's fucking nuts how much of a better game all around that RB3 is compared to 4. They will need to patch in so much shit.

Picked up another Lego level set. This time it was the Simpsons. You basically play through the entire "Homer Eats an Insanity Pepper" episode. It was awesome. Lesley and I got a bunch of shit unlocked last night while playing.

[B_Metal]

SOoooooooooooo any word on Guitar Hero Live playlist? I got a hankering for some plastic instrumenting.

[Abraham Smashington]

beat the Portal 2 lego levels last night. Fun stuff. LOVE that they were able to use the original voices. Now it's time to find the Scooby Doo pack and the Ghostbusters pack.

[Abraham Smashington]

SOoooooooooooo any word on Guitar Hero Live playlist? I got a hankering for some plastic instrumenting.

the new guitar is so weird. I checked it out at Best Buy. If the reviews are great I'll probably grab this.

[B_Metal]

Yeah, the two level thing is going to take some getting used to.

[Abraham Smashington]

reviews for GH seem to say if you're hardcore you may not like it, if you're casual you may like it a bit more.


Will probably hold off on this until after Christmas. I keep hoping RB4 will be patched to fix the issues I'm having. That being said, I do like the whole music videos play behind you as you play in the GHTV area. I do not like the fact you're basically at the whim of whatever video is playing unless you buy credits or use the ones you may have earned. Seems odd. Let us know if you grab it and if you like it.

[Fil]

Played and finished the first Uncharted and God of War III this weekend. Both still fun, even more beautiful now on PS4. I look forward to replaying Uncharted 2 probably later today. After playing a bunch of open world games recently, playing these great linear games is a nice change of pace. Bummed that they didn't include the multiplayer modes for Uncharted 2 and 3 in the PS4 collection. Uncharted 2's especially was one of my favorite multiplayer games of the last generation.

[Abraham Smashington]

I was watching your playthrough. Jesus man. 8 hours straight? ridiculous

[Fil]

Ha, yeah, after a while I knew I was close to finishing it, so I said fuck it, I'm finishing this game. I wanted to finish God of War before Monday anyway. Rented it from gamefly (they enticed me to resubscribe with a super cheap month for $1 and I finished MGSV so I figured why not) and I wanted to return it quick for a chance of them sending me the new Assassin's Creed this week. I want to try it before I consider buying it like I did last year with Unity, which saved me money, since I didn't like it much. I hate these annual Assassin Creed releases. I'm trying to not be part of the problem but I do like this series a lot.

Long story short, I may be praising or complaining here about Assassin's Creed Syndicate if gamefly cooperates.

[Matt]

So, I put in a bunch of time on the KNIGHTS OF THE FALLEN EMPIRE yesterday. I got to Chapter VII with my Powertech Bounty Hunter, and here are my thoughts on the expansion as well as the changes that were implemented in the game overall.

Expansion:
- Very well done overall with about 500% more cut scenes to make it feel much more like you're actually participating in a movie. It's much more reminiscent of how the original two KOTOR games felt in terms of story immersion.
- The animations seem to be a tad improved. Movements of the characters onscreen seem smoother and more natural.
- The voicework is uniformly excellent from the new characters. No duff line readings so far, which is refreshing.
- The missions themselves are, unfortunately, pretty easy. While questing and commenting in the general chat, the general consensus was that it's pretty difficult to get into a situation where you're going to get below 80% health in any battle. If you're looking for a real challenge, you're not going to find it here. At least, not yet.
- The story itself is pretty damned good. I will avoid spoilers, but it does a nice job of launching off of the SHADOW OF REVAN storyline while also being its own thing...if you buy the game and simply create a level 60 character, eschewing the main game itself, you'll be able to enjoy the expansion without feeling too lost. It's good stuff with a sufficiently epic scale.
- It's fun to see random companions from all across the 8 classes appear in the game at random points. I won't go into spoiler details, but it's really fun to see, especially if you've played all 8 class stories to completion.
- There's a lot of humor in the expansion...more than I was expecting. HK, in paricular, is a riot.

Overall, I like it so far. It's easy, but it's also very engaging and immersive.

Of note: before you play, finish off any conversations with your companions that you have...you won't have an opportunity to polish those off once the expansion is launched...and that's all that I'll say about that.

Game mechanics:
- A new icon has been added to the top bar for your companions. When you open that, you'll be able to see your 'influence' on them and also be able to select them and assign their role (healer, tank, or damage). It works pretty slick.
- A new hotbar appears when you engage your heroic moment, and it contains all of the legacy heroic abilities that you've unlocked so far. It makes it VERY easy to use during battle. I love this addition to the UI.
- The scaling of companions is cool. All that you need to do is change their appearance to your liking now...they auto level with you and you don't need to wast resources on them like you did before.

Those are really the only changes that I noticed in the mechanics so far. I didn't really play around too much with the other stuff as I was fully engaged with the expansion.

[B_Metal]

reviews for GH seem to say if you're hardcore you may not like it, if you're casual you may like it a bit more.


Will probably hold off on this until after Christmas. I keep hoping RB4 will be patched to fix the issues I'm having. That being said, I do like the whole music videos play behind you as you play in the GHTV area. I do not like the fact you're basically at the whim of whatever video is playing unless you buy credits or use the ones you may have earned. Seems odd. Let us know if you grab it and if you like it.

Ugh, reading all of that about the "DLC" and paying for plays and all that.


NVM

[Abraham Smashington]

digging Smite at the moment. My little bro is a freaking machine in this game so he was taking me through the ins and outs last night on the xbox one. It's free for those of you who have a bone. It's actually really fun.