Playing other games

[M4xw0lf.978]

Alright, then I'll stay away from those 4 quests for now. It's not like I can accidentally stumble upon them... right?

Do you have time estimate, if one wanted to do most quests in the base game plus all expansions?

You get a warning when you're about to enter a DLC (without the possibility of returning at will).

Completing most quests plus DLCs will take you 70-80 hours at least - my Steam library tells me I've played New Vegas 251 hours (ahem...), and if i remember correctly, I had three character builds/playthroughs so far. (Without restored content mod... I'll try that some time.)

Edit: it just occurred to me that 250 hours aren't even close, since I completed most of my last playthrough using a 4GB exe, which is not recognized by Steam... so add another 60 hours to the total gaming time, and make that about 100 hours for one complete run.

 

[Dona.794]

I also loaded up Morrowind this morning. My husband played it when it first came out, but I never have, and I'd forgetten just how dire TES character models were, they even make DX look good. I think I'll be scouring Nexus for mods before I play it.

I think that VTMB has to be my next purchase though, given all the good things everyone here is saying about it.

Ah yes, vanilla Morrowind. Like spikes in your eyes. There's a really wonderful Morrowind Overhaul mod that is basically the best graphic mods combined in a bundle, so make sure to check that out. I remember the Better Bodies mod alone makes a huge difference. Face mods, too, although many just make everyone look 'pretty' (Elves just look like pretty, yellow-skinned humans, for example... I admit I didn't mind that one, their vanilla faces are atrocious D: )

Yassss, join the VtMB side! It will probably drop to $5 again during the winter sale.

 

[dragonbird]

You can't even say LA Noire and Sleeping Dogs/SW3 are even in the same genre. You don't play LA Noire to steal cars and hit hookers with dildo bats. The Open world part of it may aswell be scrapped, as the core of the game lies in the detective work.

So if I always let my partner drive, will I miss out on anything? (I did consider that, but I got the impression from the wiki that you might not get the side-quests unless you drove)

 

[Jackinthegreen.152]

So if I always let my partner drive, will I miss out on anything? (I did consider that, but I got the impression from the wiki that you might not get the side-quests unless you drove)

There is the issue with the sidequests, yes, but there are some mandatory quests in which you HAVE to drive too (cant remember properly, but Im sure towards the end there are a couple). And some are not easy, 'cause they are "chases", which involves speed and swift reflexes.

So I would totally let the other dude drive, but just as a way to get faster towards my objectives, and skip the boring traffic.... Because if you want to actually finish the game, you should practice enough driving so you dont suck when the obligatory driving comes...

This game has a neat mechanic (the interrogation part), but the downside is that it gets VERY REPETITIVE towards the end of the game... Moreover, the conclusion (storywise) is nearly ridiculous...
Comparing it with a similar kind of game, I much rather prefer Mafia II... The voice acting and the story is top notch there, and you actually have a sense of progression in the story... On the other hand, many times in LA Noire shit just happens, and you really cant figure why, nor the logic behind your character...

 

[gibb_geralt]

So if I always let my partner drive, will I miss out on anything? (I did consider that, but I got the impression from the wiki that you might not get the side-quests unless you drove)

You'll miss out on the car chase side quests and a few shooting galleries. But LA Noire has crappy driving with even worse gunplay. I don't think you'll be missing out on anything.

 

[dragonbird]

Ah yes, vanilla Morrowind. Like spikes in your eyes. There's a really wonderful Morrowind Overhaul mod that is basically the best graphic mods combined in a bundle, so make sure to check that out. I remember the Better Bodies mod alone makes a huge difference. Face mods, too, although many just make everyone look 'pretty' (Elves just look like pretty, yellow-skinned humans, for example... I admit I didn't mind that one, their vanilla faces are atrocious D: )Yassss, join the VtMB side! It will probably drop to $5 again during the winter sale.

I can tolerate the bodies, it's those faces that look as though everyone is using a flat paper plate mask with eyes and mouth holes drawn on it by a preschooler. The only good thing is that if you play in first-person, you don't get to see yourself. I think I'll get the mod because from the look of these...

...but the downside is that it gets VERY REPETITIVE towards the end of the game... Moreover, the conclusion (storywise) is nearly ridiculous... Comparing it with a similar kind of game, I much rather prefer Mafia II... The voice acting and the story is top notch there, and you actually have a sense of progression in the story... On the other hand, many times in LA Noire shit just happens, and you really cant figure why, nor the logic behind your character...

You'll miss out on the car chase side quests and a few shooting galleries. But LA Noire has crappy driving with even worse gunplay. I don't think you'll be missing out on anything.

... I'm not sure that I'll bother continuing with LA Noire.

And I've got my Steam rss feed set up so I should hopefully catch the next VTMB sale

 

[not_slimgrin]

Well, Arkham City is also awesome open-world-but-more-focused-goodness, DB. And you get to be the goddamn Batman.

 

[Pangaea666]

With my laptop back among the living again, I fired up Mafia. Love that game. Strong story, good gameplay, though with a tad too much driving to and fro for my liking. Usually I get annoyed when I fail a mission, as I'm quite the perfectionist. But this time I just sat there laughing my balls off.

There is a mission where you have to drive a racing car and win the race. But first you need to get to the track. So I drove there, which takes probably about 5 RL minutes. The Family is standing outside a garage, and I only have to park the car. Intend to slide neatly into the parking lot, so I hit the brakes and start to turn. Ooops, maybe a bit heavy on the gas there.... BANG!!! The whole Salieri Family is down.

Ooooops!!!!

Replaying those 5 minutes of driving isn't the greatest fun in the world, but it was a good laugh.

Don't like these early missions in it though. Especially the one where I have to teach some thugs a lesson for trying to beat up a girl. You'd think having a partner with you was an advantage - but now when the plurk keeps getting in between my baseball bat and the thugs in narrows alleys. I look forward to the mainly solo-based gun-wielding missions. Easier to stay alive for the most part, without partners acting like idiots. For the same reason, the mission in the parking garage is a complete nightmare. The biggest challenge isn't to stay alive, despite a massive shootout, but to keep the two mongs that are with me alive.

With automatic saves at certain places, it's a nightmare when they manage to get themselves killed at the very end of the mission.

 

[SystemShock7]

Well, for some reason I stuck with Age Of Conan... feels like playing Oblivion, for some reason, but with a heavy dose of extra-fetching. I stuck with my female character, even if I get the occasional "hey baby" in chat. I created a very exclusive guild, "Daughters of Kaer Morhen", which only has 1 member If you play AoC, my character is easy to recognize: it is the only female character wearing a skirt and not a loin cloth.

 

[Dona.794]

And so I gave up on Limbo. It's a game I really wanted to like, it has all the components I love (dark, atmospheric, good puzzles... and indie), but it's just... ugh. I could not get into it. And I was about three puzzles away from the end, too, but it was easier to just watch the last 5 minutes on youtube. The ending - I liked that. I almost thought it would end in a different way. The ending is simple and satisfying.

 

[gregski]

And so I gave up on Limbo. It's a game I really wanted to like, it has all the components I love (dark, atmospheric, good puzzles... and indie), but it's just... ugh. I could not get into it. And I was about three puzzles away from the end, too, but it was easier to just watch the last 5 minutes on youtube. The ending - I liked that. I almost thought it would end in a different way. The ending is simple and satisfying.

Too bad you didn't like it as much as I did. But yeah, the ending was just like it should be. It rarely happens in games that it all just hangs there and fits so perfectly.

 

[Dona.794]

Too bad you didn't like it as much as I did. But yeah, the ending was just like it should be. It rarely happens in games that it all just hangs there and fits so perfectly.

Your post prompted me to (try) to finish it, I should have mentioned that I got stuck on the mosquito sequence months ago (uhh... it was still winter, I think), just couldn't get past it with a keyboard. This time it was so easy, perhaps because I have a different keyboard. In any case, it's a good game, but it missed that little "something" to entirely pull me in. The puzzles were great, though.

I'll probably be playing short horror games now, I'm in a mood for that. Sorry, Planescape, we're just not meant to be :[

 

[volsung]

OK, I just made a mess. I installed a few New Vegas mods this morning (Poco Bueno Textures, Enhanced Shaders, Weapon Retexture) and the game seemed to behave fine.

I reloaded this evening and there were artifacts all over the place, not to mention almost immediate crashes. I deactivated the mods using FOMM, and that didn'f fix anything. I uninstalled all mods, and that didn't fix anything. I uninstalled FOMM, and that didn't do anything either. Then I made Steam check the integrity of the game's cache, and it redownloaded one tiny file. I still get artifacts and immediate crashes, even on older saves from before the mods.

Does anyone know a way to fix this without having to redownload all 9 fucking gigabytes again? That should teach me not to use (New Vegas) mods...

EDIT: I need help! Now it seems that other DX11 games also have artifacts that weren't there before! For example, Batman Arkham City shows weird spikes coming out of Batman's fists and elbows, and random lines show everywhere. This wasn't happening yesterday or even this morning! Any idea what might be going on? This driving me crazy, it's very frustrating!

Btw, I have a GTX 560 Ti and driver version is 304.79

EDIT 2: OK, after battling with this issue for well over an hour, I tried downloading the newest beta drivers, 306.02, and doing a clean install. Then I turned off my computer and then back on. I tried Batman AC and it seems the artifacts are gone! Now the question remains: what the hell happened!? Can video card drivers corrupt just like that? Could it be that the computer "decided" to give me hell and simply not load the drivers properly until I turned it off? I did restart multiple times though. I have all sorts of crazy theories now. And just in case you need to know, the temperatures never reached 70º C, so it was not overheating.

FYI, I deleted all of New Vegas and decided to redownload overnight or sometime tomorrow. What a night... all I wanted was to play a game, not battle to the death with a demon possessed computer.

 

[Blothulfur]

Moseying on through Severance: Blade of Darkness, whooping and a wailing on everything that moves, mano a mano.

 

[gregski]

Moseying on through Severance: Blade of Darkness, whooping and a wailing on everything that moves, mano a mano.

Oh man, I wish my old CD still worked :| Great game and best combat system ever.

 

[Blothulfur]

Yeah I voted for it on GOG, my old disc's scratched as hell.

 

[SystemShock7]

OK, I just made a mess. I installed a few New Vegas mods this morning (Poco Bueno Textures, Enhanced Shaders, Weapon Retexture) and the game seemed to behave fine.

I reloaded this evening and there were artifacts all over the place, not to mention almost immediate crashes. I deactivated the mods using FOMM, and that didn'f fix anything. I uninstalled all mods, and that didn't fix anything. I uninstalled FOMM, and that didn't do anything either. Then I made Steam check the integrity of the game's cache, and it redownloaded one tiny file. I still get artifacts and immediate crashes, even on older saves from before the mods.

Does anyone know a way to fix this without having to redownload all 9 fucking gigabytes again? That should teach me not to use (New Vegas) mods...

EDIT: I need help! Now it seems that other DX11 games also have artifacts that weren't there before! For example, Batman Arkham City shows weird spikes coming out of Batman's fists and elbows, and random lines show everywhere. This wasn't happening yesterday or even this morning! Any idea what might be going on? This driving me crazy, it's very frustrating!

Btw, I have a GTX 560 Ti and driver version is 304.79

EDIT 2: OK, after battling with this issue for well over an hour, I tried downloading the newest beta drivers, 306.02, and doing a clean install. Then I turned off my computer and then back on. I tried Batman AC and it seems the artifacts are gone! Now the question remains: what the hell happened!? Can video card drivers corrupt just like that? Could it be that the computer "decided" to give me hell and simply not load the drivers properly until I turned it off? I did restart multiple times though. I have all sorts of crazy theories now. And just in case you need to know, the temperatures never reached 70º C, so it was not overheating.

FYI, I deleted all of New Vegas and decided to redownload overnight or sometime tomorrow. What a night... all I wanted was to play a game, not battle to the death with a demon possessed computer.

Sounds like the shader enhancement to me.

 

[volsung]

Sounds like the shader enhancement to me.

I thought so too, but the bastard would not uninstall. So much for the "Mod Manager", huh?

Anyway, I suppose vanilla is fine for me. As long as it works Plus, my eyes are now adjusted to the ugly graphics, so it's not as much of an eyesore anymore. I wish it were isometric though...

 

[Pangaea666]

Which games in the GOG point and click offer would you recommend? I'm thinking of buying a few as I really enjoyed Broken Sword 1-3.

 

[volsung]

Which games in the GOG point and click offer would you recommend? I'm thinking of buying a few as I really enjoyed Broken Sword 1-3.

Machinarium unless your already have it.