Category: Video Games

…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.

 

Hey, you playing Conan Exiles?

…Technically, I still am; which is to say, I was, and in a month I probably will be again, as soon as I go and finish saving ANOTHER galaxy from having to do its own fetch quests. But for right now I’m playing Mass Effect. Which is a shame, because Conan Exiles is offering a bounty on exploits:

Similar to Ark: Survival Evolved’s bounty program, Funcom has introduced a cash-powered vehicle for tracking down exploits in their Early Access survival game, Conan Exiles.

[snip]

Funcom says it’s looking for “Serious exploits which can be used in online play and on multiplayer servers” that give players “big advantages in the game, like duplicating items or being able to build inside mountains/rocks.” Players spotting these kinds of exploits can email the developers to provide them with the info…

$100 to $500, depending on the exploit.  First person to report gets the money. So, hey, go for it. I gotta go rescue that cute asari reporter from something or other, myself. Swear to God, no wonder the Initiative went pear-shaped…

So now it is time for the inevitable question…

…Mass Effect: Andromeda DLC?

Yeah, yeah, I’m only on Planet #4 and I’m already asking that question.  I’m pretty sure that we’re not going to be getting new companions, if only because there isn’t a space for any in the Squad screen.  Looks like we’re back to a Mass Effect 1 ethos, which is hardly a surprise to anybody who’s played Andromeda for long. The entire dang game is a return to those days of yore, only now with jet-packs and no elevator ride conversations. Continue reading So now it is time for the inevitable question…

Well, Fallout: Cascadia looks interesting.

Fallout: Cascadia is going to be a fan expansion set in Seattle. It uses the Fallout 4 engine, but it seems to be drawing a lot of intellectual ideas from Fallout 3 and before. In particular they want to bring back S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (stat) checks, which is something that was only mildly used in Fallout 4 – and I’m actually a little surprised about that.

There’s a big team on this, so hopefully we’ll have another Falskaar (a similar project for Skyrim) on our hands.  Eventually.  This is probably going to be a while.

Moe Lane

PS: I certainly hope that the Enclave is involved, somehow. I’m still convinced that they were originally going to be in Fallout 4, but then got turned into the Gunners.

…Sorry, folks, I got nothing.

Unless you want to hear about how I’m ready to let that turian dude get exiled because he was engaging in conduct unbecoming in a turian.  Because I’m absolutely ready to do that.  When it comes to the Mass Effect universe, I have like zero tolerance for turians who let the species down. With great badassery comes great responsibility, and when your iconic figure is Garrus, well.

Sorry, yeah, this is mostly what’s taken over my brain.  You all know how that goes.

So, a few hours in for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

I’m still on the space station, which in classic beginning of video game fashion is a hot mess of people who apparently can’t do anything because of the thumbs up their rears.  Probably a side effect of the cryosleep process.  The leadership is all pissed at each other, nobody’s got a better plan than the Level 3 Chosen One who just breezed in, and there are a remarkable amount of boxes making it impossible for me to access a variety of doors just at this particular moment.  So, again, pretty typical. I’m sure that it’ll all clean up nice in the end, though. Continue reading So, a few hours in for Mass Effect: Andromeda.