Category: Video Games

Bayonetta on Steam for PC: $20. Go/No-Go?

I’ve never played it, but everybody seems to be jumping up and down and going whee.  Basic question is: I prefer RPGs, so is Bayonetta a good enough shooter that I won’t mind the lack of freeform play?  Also: do I need to go find the controller I have for the PC on this one?  I’m simply more accustomed to keyboard commands.

CD Projekt Red trademarks ‘Cyberpunk,’ but it’s probably OK.

The company recently trademarked the word in Europe with regard to software and gaming, but they’re swearing up and down that it’s only for defensive use.  The idea, according to CD Projekt Red, is to keep people from making their own game and titling it ‘Cyberpunk’ in a way that makes it look like it’ll be a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, which is of course is a hotly-anticipated game at this point.  As the Geeks Are Sexy notes: “It turned out that CD Prokect Red has already held a US trademark on the term since 2012, something that’s strengthened its argument that it doesn’t plan to use the term aggressively, for example by trying to stop any games with a cyberpunk theme.”

Personally, I think that it’s going to be OK.  CD Projekt Red doesn’t seem to have very many idiots working for it, and you’d have to be an idiot to start an unnecessary trademark war with your most likely customers. But you have to expect that people will seize on any little scrap of information that they see when you won’t, you know, SHOW THEM THE GAME OR ANYTHING…

Please don’t leak Secret World Legends beta information.

I’m not in the beta yet for Secret World Legends, and people blabbing about stuff going on in it just makes it harder for me to get access.  I mean, I’m a blogger, remember?  That’s a strike against me, right there.  I mean, sure, I can keep my mouth shut when people ask me to – but they don’t know that, do they?

Don’t get me wrong: I understand the allure of scoops.  But these are scoops that are affecting my quality of life.  Therefore, they are bad scoops, and so must be ruthlessly suppressed in the future. Because, sure, it’s all about me.

Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator coming to Steam soon.

Just got sent this in email (via Constant Reader BigGator5).  It’s coming out April 12th. Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator is not really something that I’d play, or at least buy: but I’d probably watch umpteen billion episodes of it.

Although I should note: the lack of advanced tactics would be a problem.  For example, note the Roman Legion versus zombies scenario above.  Assuming that the legionnaires knew what zombies were and why they were dangerous, they’d probably pick a better tactical formation than ‘blob.’ Or at least get some artillery… well, maybe they’ll add that functionality later.

Hey, for anybody else who plays The Secret World…

…the link to reserve your favorite The Secret World character’s name on Secret World Legends is not always showing up on the account page.  Here’s a link:

https://register.thesecretworld.com/account/subscription/ctrl/tsw/<ACCOUNT NAME HERE>/namereservation

Replace <ACCOUNT NAME HERE> with whatever username you use to log into your TSW account and you should be good.  Also: here’s the link to sign up for the beta. Continue reading Hey, for anybody else who plays The Secret World…

…alternatively, the dang computer just needed a good cleaning.

Sort of.  The video card is crap; it’s an AMD, and my computer guy flatly refuses to work with AMD cards.  Which is actually fine by me, but he also didn’t have a NVidia card of the right type (I’ve got a AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB Video Card (Require Min. 600W Power Supply) in there now) to swap it out with.  But the basic problem that was causing the CPU to crash were the fans; dust/gunk buildup was causing the overheating and subsequent shutdown.

For right now, the box has been cleaned thoroughly of dust and it’s running considerably quieter. It does still runs loud in Fallout, but it’s no longer shutting down.  The plan is for me to go buy a new video card* and have the guy install it; yes, I could do it myself after I watched a few YouTube videos, but I had to spend five minutes convincing the guy to charge me anything for looking it over in the first place.  This is why we have money, right?  To make it possible to have people who can specialize in stuff.

Moe Lane

*I think that I should be looking at the GeForce GTX 960, or maybe the 1060; that’s roughly equivalent to what I have now, right?

Just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Overall, I had a good time with this game.  Yes, Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s animation needs hella work.  It’ll be interesting to see if the patch Thursday addresses that; it had better clean up some of the quest bugs in the game, including one mission that I’m quite keen to finish up. But the combat is a lot better and I enjoyed playing a Mass Effect game where I didn’t have a little voice inside my head keep screaming gettheregettheregettherebeforeeverybodydies all the time. It was a bit relaxing, really.

Couple of tips: Continue reading Just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda.

So I got asked about how I feel about The Secret World changing.

It happened in comments here, and it’s a fair question.  Basically: The Secret World is re-configuring itself as Secret Worlds Legends, a free-to-play game with a Patron level, presumably to pay for the whole thing.  There are a lot of people gasping and clutching at their chests at the coming loss of their cheevos, pets, mounts, and vanity gear… to say nothing of their high-end weapons and artifacts and maxed-out ability wheels and everything else.  So how do I feel about this?

The answer is: …I’m OK with it.  I love that MMO, but it was slowly strangling for lack of meaningful content and there’s a limit to how far you can coast on that.  In retrospect, the uninspired Halloween event of last year should have been a warning sign.  TSW’s best holiday has always been Halloween; having it be so blah suggested real problems.

As I understand it, I can reserve my favorite character name and restart with a goodly portion of my loot.  Plus, as a Grandmaster I am going to be a Patron for life anyway, so it’s actually free-to-play for me for real. If I can get new content and we can all go back to the model of freaking out new players by swooping in on them and inexorably and mercilessly helping them out, I’m good with the new model.

But I want that new content.