What are you playing?

[Bebpo]

I've bought Hitman 1&2 and all DLC for both, probably put in a total of 8 or so hours into both games combined. I'd say I was a huge Hitman fan, beat 2 on expert and contracts on expert a while back. Beat Blood Money numerous times, a couple playthrus on professional. Even beat Absolution a couple of times and defended that entry in the franchise.

The series peak absolutely was Blood Money imo. I guess it's the combination of tone, level design, environmental themes and soundtrack. For those reasons and more, Blood Money stands out above the rest for me.

New Hitman feels really.....empty for whatever reason to me. Voice overs being blanket American accents across all locales is off putting, the scoring and xp systems being so ingrained with unlocks makes experimental play feel less rewarding. The humor and tone being so light-hearted makes everything you're doing feel cartoonish.

New Hitman does have stellar environmental design and the AI/density is also incredibly impressive. But it hasn't grabbed me or doesn't feel as compelling as past Hitman games.

Always online stuff also feels unneeded and I've had weird disconnect issues that hinder immersion and my enjoyment.

I mean, that's fair. You dig it or you don't.

I think the levels are amazing in these games. On average it takes me about 15 hours to fully see all the details they've put into each map. Going through the challenges for each map and trying to figure out how to manipulate the character paths and NPCs to get a specific type of kill or feat is a real fun puzzle and a lot of it is really clever.

The games are basically puzzle x stealth games. The escalations where they modify fail conditions and give unique objectives are pretty cool to figure out too usually though some are tedious.

[Bebpo]

I'm playing a little AC Valhalla and they're so close to making AC a real rpg...but they just don't get there.

I like that the world is actually about exploring and that a lot of stuff isn't marked on your map. It's cool seeing something unique in the distance and going there and there's something and feels good to discover stuff. Also a lot less repetition with the smaller events.

But like I ran into an event early on in England where there's a nudist colony and some dude who got kicked out is on a cliff and asks you to destroy their clothes so they can be always-nude like him. Ok, so I go down and I see the clothes box but I see someone with a speech bubble in the colony and I go talk to them to see what kind of questing options I have. One of the options is saying you're going to join their nudist colony and asking where you can put your clothes away.

I thought this was a clever question branch option where instead of just running in and stealing the box you can pretend you're joining and putting your clothes away and then steal or destroy the box unnoticed.

But no, the game doesn't let you destroy the box. I tried throwing it in a river and it just respawns, I tried throwing it on a fire and it doesn't burn, I tried shooting it with fire arrows and it doesn't burn or break. And the second I touch it everyone yells I stole it and comes after me.

So really there was no option besides just grabbing it and having everyone chase you. Talking to the person was pointless.

They could've programmed this quest that once the box is destroyed the objective is accomplished and it's up to you to do it however you want. But instead they railroad you done a forced single way of grabbing the box and running while people chase you and carrying the box back to the quest giver to finish the quest. Even though the quest giver just said he wanted the box destroyed so they didn't have clothes.

So close, but not there.

Still enjoying the early bits of the game.

[MMaRsu]

Im thinking it might be time for a replay of NGB and NGII but sadly dont have a Series X or Xbox One X

Just a 360

[mormapope]

I'm the minority here, but I feel NG especially 1/Black control like absolute dog shit. It's like GTA IV (which I enjoy control wise) times ten. There's so much weight to everything you do. Mix in a lot more platforming that gets remembered and confusing level design, it just doesn't hold up to me.

I am a DMC whore though. And imo, DMC/Bayonetta are the best controlling character action games.

I enjoy DoA more than Ninja Gaiden. It's a shame DoA6 was sorta dead on arrival.

[Don Rumata]

I love Bayo, but dont like DMC's movement.

[Bebpo]

https://twitter.com/IOInteractive/status/1350899132966318084

IOI gonna make Hitman 2 content free for steam owners somehow. Guessing they want to stick to their original promise of this. Wouldn't be surprised if they end up eating the costs and just paying WB for a copy of H2 for every one redeemed at some bulk discount price.

Does the Epic store have install modules? Because Hitman 2 on steam with all the maps installed along with Hitman 1 maps was something close to 200gbs. Add in Hitman 3 maps and you're gonna need 300gb free if you can't piecemeal install this.

[MMaRsu]

Somehow but they dont know how exactly 2 days from launch?

Not like they didnt know this beforehand. They are just sorry they have been caught with their pants down.

Seriously, I love the Hitman series and wish the best for IOI money wise, but fuck IOI and EGS and this fucking stupid ass scheme.

Just put the game up for sale everywhere and let players decide. But nah gotta grab the cash and make it annoying for players to even transfer anything.

Why anyone would go for the EGS version of these games is absolutely beyond me, at full price even.

[Pissy F Benny]

To annoy you

[MMaRsu]

To annoy you

idgaf but why support such a shit setup. I always said I would have used the EGS if they battled on price instead of exclusivity.

Shit like this just makes the entire situation worse. Giving me zero incentive to actually give money to IOI. Id rather wait till the gold edition is 10 bucks on CDkeys, like 2 is now.

[Bebpo]

Why anyone would go for the EGS version of these games is absolutely beyond me, at full price even.

To play them year 1.

That's it.

After year 1, everyone buys them on steam and they launch at like 20-20% off by that point anyhow.

You can ask the same thing for every AAA release (especially Ubisoft games). Why buy them day 1 at a full price? Same answer. Because sometimes people want to play something in the first 6-12 months.

[Bebpo]

EGS sucks balls,

but I wanted to play Control year 1 so I bought it on EGS.

I wanted to play Tony Hawk 1+2 year 1, so I bought it on EGS.

I want to play Hitman 3 year 1, so I'll buy it on EGS.


But for most EGS exclusive games, I'll wait until they hit steam. Never bought Untitled Goose Game because of that. Same with Outer Wilds.

[MMaRsu]

I understand that and thats why exclusivity is shit

[Mr Gilhaney]

Ive yet to buy a game on there, but I think this will be my first. Not really an active boycott, just that I thought it was really shit and could wait with most games. But I kind of want to play Hitman now.

[MMaRsu]

Im hoping it will be cracked within 1 year and then ill just eventually buy it on steam

[Nintex]

I'll just wait for MS to buy them after this inevitably bombs and puts all their shit exclusively on GamePass

[chronovore]

Looks like Hitman will be the first Stadia game with State Share features:

https://community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-Community-Blog/Capture-and-share-playable-scenarios-with-State-Share-coming/ba-p/50835

Somehow but they dont know how exactly 2 days from launch?

Not like they didnt know this beforehand. They are just sorry they have been caught with their pants down.

Seriously, I love the Hitman series and wish the best for IOI money wise, but fuck IOI and EGS and this fucking stupid ass scheme.

Just put the game up for sale everywhere and let players decide. But nah gotta grab the cash and make it annoying for players to even transfer anything.

Why anyone would go for the EGS version of these games is absolutely beyond me, at full price even.

Jesus, fuck, you are a Negative Nancy.

[Don Rumata]

Somehow but they dont know how exactly 2 days from launch?

Not like they didnt know this beforehand. They are just sorry they have been caught with their pants down.

Seriously, I love the Hitman series and wish the best for IOI money wise, but fuck IOI and EGS and this fucking stupid ass scheme.

Just put the game up for sale everywhere and let players decide. But nah gotta grab the cash and make it annoying for players to even transfer anything.

Why anyone would go for the EGS version of these games is absolutely beyond me, at full price even.

Is it greed to want to pay your staff and not go bankrupt? Epic gave them money upfront to keep the lights on, obviously.
and "just put it out and let people buy it" would ring more credible if this third game didn't follow two absolute bombs.

Again, this sucks, but they didn't have many roads open to them.

[Bebpo]

Finished the first half/act of DQXIs. Honestly seemed pretty short and the world wasn't that big. I'm at like 27 hours and I only skipped a few sidequests. Yeah, the S version is quicker, but I'd heard XI was pretty huge/epic game. Iirc I think people were mainly talking about the post-game, which can be pretty long & grindy in DQ games.

Also

spoiler (click to show/hide)

going around re-visiting all the same places at least initially seems kind of been there, done that. Hope it picks up quickly.

[close]

*edit* Actually, was looking up some stuff and this is the new content they added for the S version between Act 1 & 2. So I haven't actually gotten to Act 2 yet and seen where the game is going from there. I can see why this section feels a little filler-ish. From reading comments, people seem pretty iffy on the addition of this new content they added for S, that it kills the pacing between the end of Act 1 and start of Act 2 and spoils a lot of early surprise stuff for Act 2. Hmmm...oh well.

[Bebpo]

Game has nice art direction though. On the 2nd story. Seems they're about an hour long, so 5-6 hours of break until Act 2 really starts. They're fine, but I just want to move on with the real story. Should've been optional, like choosing the character episodes from the menu after Act 1 ends.

[tiesto]

Now that CS4 is done I started playing a few other games:

Smash Ultimate - finally downloaded the second fighter pack and played through their Spirit Boards/Classic Modes. The final fight on the ARMS spirit board was kicking my ass for a while. I like how Sephi fights, not crazy about Min Min and especially not Steve.

SOR4 - made it to the final stage and got my ass kicked. Good game, though it feels a bit easier than SOR1-3, since it's a bit easier to figure out the 'ideal' way to beat enemies. Aside from the end stage, the boss that gave me the most trouble was

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Max

[close]

.
Not crazy about some of the new music, though I do like the song that plays under the pier before you fight Estelle.

DKC2 - you know, I'm not a huge DKC fan... the hit detection always felt a bit off and I don't like how the camera can sometimes be a bit too slow to keep up with you. Still playing through, finishing up the 4th area now (the amusement park).

Robotrek - this is my next big RPG playthrough. I got really far as a kid, to the final dungeon, but stopped for whatever reason (I think the enemies got a bit too hard and I was severely underleveled and didn't wanna grind). So now I'm playing from the beginning... The localization is super literal for the time, and I'm surprised how many character and enemy names they kept as Japanese and not try to localize... your dad's name is Dr. Akihabara, a reference that flew over my head in 1995. The customization and crafting systems in this game were pretty unique for its era, although the game can be super unbalanced (you can steamroll the game, then get to a boss who wipes the floor with you). Dungeons are also pretty large with lots of different tool usage and puzzle solving to do. I just got the airship after playing all of my day off. IIRC, I think that's like halfway through? Anyways, fun game, one of Quintet's lesser known titles for the platform, that doesn't get talked about much.

[Akala]

Does the Epic store have install modules? Because Hitman 2 on steam with all the maps installed along with Hitman 1 maps was something close to 200gbs. Add in Hitman 3 maps and you're gonna need 300gb free if you can't piecemeal install this.

3 including all 1-2 maps is like 70GB, they cut it by over 50% apparently.

[Bebpo]

Wow, that's impressive and nice.

[Sho Nuff]

Wrapped Tsushima. By the end I was a walking tank despite having maybe done 33% of the side content. Good game, would have been great if I could skip the fucking cutscenes or hit the O button to advance dialogue. Might finish up Squadrons in VR, also did about an hour into Resident Evil 3 remake which means I'm halfway done lolololol

[Bebpo]

Everyone says Tsushima is a better AC game than modern AC, but idk I'm starting to think all of these types of sandbox games are a bit boring.


The more I play Valhalla (still really early, like <10 hours first arc in England), the more it just seems like an incredibly gorgeous looking world of...nothing to do.

It feels like all the combat focus is just going place to place and raiding with your group of dumb AIs, which basically is just a bunch of button mashing simple & repetitive combat vs a ton of guys. Reminds me of AC1. I really hate the raiding mechanic and think it's enough to make me bail on this game since all the combat is based around it and solo stealthing is basically gone.

Outside of combat it's mainly just talking to people and doing little chores.

The exploration and puzzles are nice, but the rewards are crap because it's trying to be a 100 hour+ game, so everything you find will be extremely minimal so you don't get overpowered quickly. It just makes all this side stuff in the exploration not feel very rewarding.


But goddamn, Valhalla visually is ridiculous the more I play of England. Like coming from Origins and the little I played of Odyssey (which looked exactly like Origins) Valhalla's visual jump is like generational even if it's mostly the same formula. I mean it helps for Valhalla that there's so little world geometry since it's all a bunch of fields with occasional ruins or small fort, but those fields & ruins look hella nice. I'll up some screens at some point.

[Don Rumata]

Everyone says Tsushima is a better AC game than modern AC, but idk I'm starting to think all of these types of sandbox games are a bit boring.


The more I play Valhalla (still really early, like <10 hours first arc in England), the more it just seems like an incredibly gorgeous looking world of...nothing to do.

It feels like all the combat focus is just going place to place and raiding with your group of dumb AIs, which basically is just a bunch of button mashing simple & repetitive combat vs a ton of guys. Reminds me of AC1. I really hate the raiding mechanic and think it's enough to make me bail on this game since all the combat is based around it and solo stealthing is basically gone.

Outside of combat it's mainly just talking to people and doing little chores.

The exploration and puzzles are nice, but the rewards are crap because it's trying to be a 100 hour+ game, so everything you find will be extremely minimal so you don't get overpowered quickly. It just makes all this side stuff in the exploration not feel very rewarding.


But goddamn, Valhalla visually is ridiculous the more I play of England. Like coming from Origins and the little I played of Odyssey (which looked exactly like Origins) Valhalla's visual jump is like generational even if it's mostly the same formula. I mean it helps for Valhalla that there's so little world geometry since it's all a bunch of fields with occasional ruins or small fort, but those fields & ruins look hella nice. I'll up some screens at some point.

Who's "everyone"? Aside from the combat, i think just about everything is worse.
I still enjoyed it a great deal though.

[Bebpo]

Everyone says Tsushima is a better AC game than modern AC, but idk I'm starting to think all of these types of sandbox games are a bit boring.


The more I play Valhalla (still really early, like <10 hours first arc in England), the more it just seems like an incredibly gorgeous looking world of...nothing to do.

It feels like all the combat focus is just going place to place and raiding with your group of dumb AIs, which basically is just a bunch of button mashing simple & repetitive combat vs a ton of guys. Reminds me of AC1. I really hate the raiding mechanic and think it's enough to make me bail on this game since all the combat is based around it and solo stealthing is basically gone.

Outside of combat it's mainly just talking to people and doing little chores.

The exploration and puzzles are nice, but the rewards are crap because it's trying to be a 100 hour+ game, so everything you find will be extremely minimal so you don't get overpowered quickly. It just makes all this side stuff in the exploration not feel very rewarding.


But goddamn, Valhalla visually is ridiculous the more I play of England. Like coming from Origins and the little I played of Odyssey (which looked exactly like Origins) Valhalla's visual jump is like generational even if it's mostly the same formula. I mean it helps for Valhalla that there's so little world geometry since it's all a bunch of fields with occasional ruins or small fort, but those fields & ruins look hella nice. I'll up some screens at some point.

Who's "everyone"? Aside from the combat, i think just about everything is worse.
I still enjoyed it a great deal though.

Well most people from what I've seen online and talked to irl.

The general opinion seems to be that Tsushima is the improvement to the AC formula that AC needs.

[Bebpo]

DQXIs - Ended up finishing the character episodes. For whatever reason the sisters don't have one? The episodes were solid->good once you got past the story just hitting the brakes at a point where you want to see what's next. Starting with Sylvando's story which is the loooongest and most boring right after the ending of Act I is...not so good impression. I thought Erik/Kamyu's story was the best, he really should've been the lead character in DQXI. Rab's had some nice moments.

Oh and the worst part of the character episodes is the one person battle system which just sucks in this game so they have to give you cheats so you basically can't die in fights. It's just boring and unfun.

Once Act II started, yeah, pretty good and exciting again. Even if the concept is pretty standard, but DQ's main stories are pretty standard and its the individual arcs that have always stuck out.

Feels like in DQXI the way it's going it's the main characters in the party and their stories that will end up standing out the most.

[Don Rumata]

Everyone says Tsushima is a better AC game than modern AC, but idk I'm starting to think all of these types of sandbox games are a bit boring.


The more I play Valhalla (still really early, like <10 hours first arc in England), the more it just seems like an incredibly gorgeous looking world of...nothing to do.

It feels like all the combat focus is just going place to place and raiding with your group of dumb AIs, which basically is just a bunch of button mashing simple & repetitive combat vs a ton of guys. Reminds me of AC1. I really hate the raiding mechanic and think it's enough to make me bail on this game since all the combat is based around it and solo stealthing is basically gone.

Outside of combat it's mainly just talking to people and doing little chores.

The exploration and puzzles are nice, but the rewards are crap because it's trying to be a 100 hour+ game, so everything you find will be extremely minimal so you don't get overpowered quickly. It just makes all this side stuff in the exploration not feel very rewarding.


But goddamn, Valhalla visually is ridiculous the more I play of England. Like coming from Origins and the little I played of Odyssey (which looked exactly like Origins) Valhalla's visual jump is like generational even if it's mostly the same formula. I mean it helps for Valhalla that there's so little world geometry since it's all a bunch of fields with occasional ruins or small fort, but those fields & ruins look hella nice. I'll up some screens at some point.

Who's "everyone"? Aside from the combat, i think just about everything is worse.
I still enjoyed it a great deal though.

Well most people from what I've seen online and talked to irl.

The general opinion seems to be that Tsushima is the improvement to the AC formula that AC needs.

Anything BUT the combat is straight out of open worlds from 10 years ago.
The fuck?

[HardcoreRetro]

But you follow a bird instead of a quest marker. 

[Don Rumata]

But you follow a bird instead of a quest marker. 

Yeah that shit actually made it worse for me.
It's supposed to make it feel more organic, but it actually made the world out to be some big Rube Goldberg Truman Show thing, where everything is artificial.
Just have some unobstrusive markers if you're gonna have the same game design anyway.

[Joe Molotov]

But you follow a bird instead of a quest marker. 

AssCrud has quest markers and birbs. Best of both worlds.

[MMaRsu]

I need some homies for Apex Legends

i used to play with duckman but he gone

[Mr Gilhaney]

started hitman 3. looks really nice

[Bebpo]

Hitman 2 progression carry over site is slammed and broken.
Meanwhile it says if you start H3 without doing this you lose all your H3 progress 

Also under manage DLC modules it only has 3 locations? Weird.

[Bebpo]

Got through but I can't sign in with my epic H3 game to my IOI account so there's no where to export

Day 1 server stuff always suckssss

[Akala]

yeah it let me transfer, H2 is all on there but it's trying to get me to buy H1 again. 

[Bebpo]

Still can't get through but I've linked my H3 to my IOI account at least.

*edit* Yeah, I'm just gonna give up. I've got work to do and I'll try again at late night and maybe traffic will be down.

[MMaRsu]

Got through but I can't sign in with my epic H3 game to my IOI account so there's no where to export

Day 1 server stuff always suckssss

The server stuff in these games has always sucked imo. Relient on internet connection for items and challenges.. blergh

[Bebpo]

Yeah, I got the transfer thing through earlier, but now when I try to load the game it fails at authenticating and I can't connect to online so I get access to nothing -_-

This been going on for an hour now.

[Bebpo]

Wow, this is amazing design.

If you transfer your progress and it gives you an error, your profile is now fully corrupt and you can no longer log into the game or your profile! IOI says error means that your profile is in a queue to transfer from Steam to Epic. No indication how long this is supposed to take, but the game is basically unavailable until it's done. I did this like 90 mins ago...

[MMaRsu]

Dl the cracked version till its fixed. Cant get any unlocks but 🤷🏼‍♂️

[MMaRsu]

God the targets are fucking boring as ever so far.

The constant this, providence that

JUST LET ME KILL SKME GRUESOMELY EVIL MOFOS NOT SOME CORPORATE CUNT

[MMaRsu]

The club lvl tho 🔥🔥🔥

[Bebpo]

Like 6 hours later and profile still isn't done migrating. And their transfer site has crashed.

Guess I'm not playing Hitman 3 tonight. I can log into my profile but I have no items. Not even coins lol.

[Bebpo]

Well, my stuff still hasn't transffered over but I tried Dubai on a master difficulty run just murdering everyone I could find with letter openers without being spotted. Killed one target and got the second target in a hallway with just one guard and threw an apple to distract the guard and then went stabby on the target but was too fast and the guard hadn't turned yet and died   

Almost had my low effort clear.


Will actually try to do it right later. I just like that you can do whatever in these games.


Also the art direction in Dubai is stellar but the graphics maxed out on PC look worse than H2? Feels like a lot of low res jaggy stuff. Might need to mess with settings more. Or going from 200-300gb to 70gb took a hit on the textures.

[bork]

I tried to wishlist Hitman 3 and it failed, lol.

I forgot that I had Hitman 1 on my EGS list as a free game- going to try it out.

[Bebpo]

Ok, everything finally moved over in Hitman 3. Surprised they didn't remove the tranq guns like they did the exploding cellphone. Tranq guns were super broken and all the streamers just used those.

Figured out the low res stuff, had variable shader quality on which was like a DLSS? Turning that off fixed that.
Also the game has some weak AA, so turning on super-sampling to even just 1.10 helps smooth it out a lot.

But man, the game has pretty rough performance and everything too dark or washed out on my non-HDR monitor. Feels like another case of HDR ruining it for everyone playing on non-HDR tvs/monitors. I tried Paris and could barely see in the dark museum rooms. Re-installing Hitman 2 Paris to compare them.

[Bebpo]

Ok, messed around with stuff and got performance closer to Hitman 2. Maybe like 25% dip in FPS for the new engine. Good enough. Turned the gamma up slightly which helps on my monitor.

[Don Rumata]

Finished Observation.
Cop out ending, but i enjoyed it.

[The Sceneman]

Might check it out, I dig hard sci fi like Ad Astra, et al

[Don Rumata]

Keep the expectations in check, as i said it's barely a game, but atmosphere is spot on for 99% of the story.
If you like that kind of sci fi it's worth a shot, it's very short anyway (4 to 5 hours).
I wish they had budget for better facial animations though.

[demi]

Observation rules. Easy 1000 too with a guide for collectables

[Bebpo]

DQXI S - 2nd arc/half/chapter - Kinda surprised and glad I didn't see any spoilers about

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The secret party member with Hendrick/Greg

[close]

Good stuff. Heading to Pang Lai now.

[tiesto]

More Robotrek - I beat De Rose, the boss that stopped me in my tracks some 25 years ago. Now up to the final dungeon, but have a bit of grinding/item creation to do before I can take that on. Hope to finish that this weekend, and continue with my DKC2 playthrough.

[Pissy F Benny]

It's decided to explore the deepest depths of autism, as I've just started playing kingdom hearts 3

If I stick with it more than 20 mins I may post thoughts

[Pissy F Benny]

Played about 40 mins and I'm intrigued to know if the Japanese version sounds like it was written by someone who has never talked to another human being before or if it the English version was localised by aliens

[Bebpo]

Eh, Japanese KH just sounds like every other jrpg?

jrpg/anime dubs are usually crap because they're trying to translate and fit the English lines into the same spaces/time-syncs as the Japanese lines. Can often create stilted awkward stuff.

[demi]

KH3 is really phoned in, yeah

[Spieler1]

Wanted to get some short Mario 64 footage and ended up playing like 25 stars. No idea what's up with people whining about the camera so much. Yeah, in 'remasters' it should be better, but overall the og game still plays well enough. I guess it helps that everyone knows the game by nature and what missions to avoid, but still. Didn't have too many problems with some things I barely remembered either. Mastapeeze.

[Nintex]

Started Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition today.

It looks very pretty despite being a Wii game. It cleans up really nicely in what I assume is almost-HD. They did Weebify it a bit but just about right I would say.
This is also one of the first times I find that the so-called QOL improvements actually greatly enhance the playability of an RPG in meaningful ways.
The menu's and UI are much more clear and easier to understand now and there's barely any loading for fast travel and going in and out of areas and as a result the game is much smoother to play.

It's quite remarkable how well everything holds up a decade later.
Also if you have a Xenoblade 2 save you get 100k credits so you can buy a Bikini for your waifu