Useless gaming news & chatter

[jakonovski]

Mmm, Blaggards sounds good for that price...

[Yegolev]

Looks like this is happening to us for Christmas: http://www.nintendo.com/amiibo

I think I'm excited about this as well.

[Falconeer]

Mount & Blade is coming back in December. This time it's Vikings.

Features:

CAMPAIGN
Living world that evolves around you, with historical and random events, as well as the actions of the player all contributing.
Detailed map including the British Isles, Frisia, Denmark and Norway.
More than 300 new cities, castles, villages and special scenes to discover, explore, conquer and plunder.
Scenes, many based on archeological information, that allow the player to enjoy the true beauty of the Dark Ages.
21 Kingdoms and 6 unique cultures.
More than 200 historical characters and 100 extra NPCs: Kings, Lords, Ladies, bards, priests and many others. Meet legendary figures like Ivar the Boneless or his bother Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, royalty like Harald, later known as FairHair, or Aelfred of Wessex.
A Dark and harsh world, where laws are weak and men forge legends.
A story mode where the player will be part of a complex plot involving political conspiracy, during the time the sons of Ragnar were leading their Great Heathen Army through Britain. An immersive game style with choice and consequence, romance, betrayal, moments of greatness and ruin.
A sandbox mode, the classic Mount&Blade system, where goals are determined by the player, but with all the richness and options offered by the new setting.
A system of character creation complete with personality and background options that will affect how the player relates to the world around him and the characters within it.
Completely new art work to immerse you like never before in the Viking world.

More than 15 possible companions, with deep interaction and different personalities. Sometimes their conflicts will force you to use cunning and diplomacy.
A complex religion system with two faiths, The Norse Gods and Christianity, with monasteries, special NPCs and parties. Religion will be a important factor in the game that will affect the player's interactions even within their own party.
Naval travel and warfare, a key feature to really make the setting complete.

Build, buy and even name your own ships.

Several historical types of boats: Langskip, Knorr, Snekkja, Karvi and more. Each has its own characteristics, which are also affected by the quality of the materials, with which it was constructed.

Battles can range from simple robbery to massive naval conflicts between huge fleets laden with warriors, all in dynamic battles where you can pilot your own boat, adjusting for factors such as wind, waves, and weather.
Coastal assault! You can lead your boat or your fleet in rapid assaults from the sea.
And more: waves, storms, the option to create your own Viking expedition or hire a ship for travel.
The option to build your own refuge, hire staff for it, and populate it with the wives and children of your troops...
A battle system based on what we know historically about warfare in the Viking Age.
Morale and battle psychology

Different kinds of troops: permanent companion soldiers or landed classes called to war for specific situations.

Formations: Scildweall (shield wall), ranks, square, and wedge formations

Tactic camera for an overview of the battlefield.

Improved AI.

Special units such as clerics, horn blowers, standard bearers and more.

Wounds and critical hit system.

Hundreds of new items, weapons and armors!

Detailed siege warfare system, with options to reduce a defender by hunger or morale, or by direct assault. With hard choices, plagues and famines, coastal assaults.

Inmersive soundtrack and sounds.
MULTI PLAYER
Several factions to choose from including Vikings, Saxons, Irish, Britons and Picts.

Immersive multi player scenes.

Massive multi player battles.

Units/items with special capabilities are also present in multiplayer, along with berserk rage.

Optional item Deadly Bow to transform any mode.

Multitude of modes including dynamic sea battles, coastal assaults, warlords, deathmatch, team deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Conquest, Battle, and Siege.

[satael]

Mount & Blade is coming back in December. This time it's Vikings.

Maybe after this they can concentrate on getting Banner Lords done. 

though I will certainly buy this unless it gets devastatingly bad reviews

[Paelos]

  I'm always up for paying these guys for good work.

[Cyrrex]

GOG is dong a free giveaway of M&B (expiring Friday).  I have never played it...maybe I should?  I don't really know what these games are about (beyond the obvious mounting and...blading), other than that a few of you seem to like it.

[Paelos]

GOG is dong a free giveaway of M&B (expiring Friday).  I have never played it...maybe I should?  I don't really know what these games are about (beyond the obvious mounting and...blading), other than that a few of you seem to like it.

Simply put it's a sandbox. The base game is rather ordinary. You start as a guy by himself, you go to villages and recruit peasants, you level up yourself and your peasants into badasses, and you go kick ass across the countryside while raiding villages and seizing castles and towns.

Where the game shines is the combat feedback you get. It's simple yet satisfying. You ride on a horse, holding the left mouse button to prime your weapon, release to swing, right click to block. The difference is timing. How fast you're going, when you hit, where you hit, all amount to damage given to the target. If you whiff, you whiff. It's FPS style one with melee weaponry. On foot you can swing your weapon from either side or overhead depending upon your moves, and you can also block given how something is priming a swing. In practice you can fake someone into a block and then hit them from the other side. It's very reactionary when things get fast.

Then there's the modding community which opens up the game to a ridiculous level. You have full fantasy mods, historical mods, graphic mods, etc. These things take that sandbox and turn it up to 11. And it's all farily simple to mod, so that even a modding dummy like myself can unpack them into a mods folder. The interface allows for you to choose at the start menu which version you want to run. As an example, I'm playing Prophesy of Pendor, a mod that ramps up the difficulty and adds a new map, new factions, new mini-factions, new weapons and armor, victory conditions, and improved building options with management AI.

[Yegolev]

I paid 13 euros for M&B when it first came to alpha or beta... whichever one was the one you could buy and get lifetime updates.  At the time, the combat simulation was fantastic.  I can only imagine that it is even better now.  I think the only game that could contend with what I remember about M&B combat is the D* Souls game line.

[Paelos]

I paid 13 euros for M&B when it first came to alpha or beta... whichever one was the one you could buy and get lifetime updates.  At the time, the combat simulation was fantastic.  I can only imagine that it is even better now.  I think the only game that could contend with what I remember about M&B combat is the D* Souls game line.

The combat is better, and I like the fact they've improved how ranged weapons work. Crossbows have a target that sharpens the longer you aim. Bows have a target that sharpens as you aim, but then decreases if you hold too long. The advantage is that bows are faster to reload. You can fire ranged weapons on horses if you want to roleplay a Mongal invader. There's skills for that.

There's an RPG skill system involved that I didn't mention. Levels, skills, and weapons specializations, it's all there. It all makes sense. It's the world as you want it, and you can play the virtuous lord who has high honor rating, or the scumbag bandit who raids everybody.

[Cyrrex]

Well hell, that's pretty high praise.  And at zero dollars, it seems worth taking a chance on!

Only about 3 hours left on the giveaway, for those of you playing along at home.

[Paelos]

It's certainly worth it. I've played over 400 hours of the game. I love it.

It has downsides, the graphics are dated and that's usually the first thing people harp on, however most mods allow you to turn them up to a useable potential. It has repetition, like any open world fighting game. You can get to a point where you are so powerful that you are unbeatable. You can get so rich that you basically win before you win. Obviously mods aren't perfect and when the developers make them sometimes they break textures. Unit AI can be dumb when climbing ladders for example. Sometimes they get stuck.

But if you do what I do and mod the game with the more developed mods, that all falls away for the most part. And what you are left with is this long, open, choose your own adventure story where you can play how you want and define your own successes.

[Ingmar]

Is it the original Mount and Blade for free, or is it Mount and Blade Warband? I would just buy Warband instead if it's the original. It's better in basically every way and pretty much all the mod support these days is for that, not the original.

[Paelos]

Yeah get warband. It's where the mods are. It also can't be more than like $5.

FAKE EDIT: It's $4.99 on steam. DO IT.

[KallDrexx]

Gameplay trailer for some Korean ARPG called Lost Ark

[murdoc]

No loot dropped at all!

[schild]

No loot dropped at all!

Yea, that was annoyingly rad looking trash.

[Falconeer]

I am just gonna leave this here.

The game is "This War of Mine". Check it out.

EDIT: Let me expand on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQEkUUBeqxk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJKiCNzzrwU

[jakonovski]

An intriguing idea, but ruined by being yet another artsy indie 2.5D sidescroller.

[Falconeer]

I can't believe I didn'tknow about this or that no one told me, but apparently my fake-prayers have been heard and Pathologic is being remade.

If you don't know what Pathologic is, you can save your soul by reading this famous old journal in three parts about the best game that no one ever played. Definitely worth a read.

[satael]

Damn GOG (meaning CD Projekt RED) made me preorder Witcher 3 by making it too tempting (and adding a feel-good factor).
Lowering the price for owning both previous witchers (and being able to add them to GOG by just entering the product keys) + reimbursing the difference in currencies (so for once not paying a euro-bonus) in store credit was really nice.
(also having no drm-bs is always a nice touch)

[Yegolev]

I really like GOG.

[Falconeer]

Lucas Pope (Papers Please) new game, Return of the Obra Dinn, has a developer build available.



Consider me extremely teased.

And the first one who uses the word "artsy" gets a pile of poop in their Dropbox. You've been warned.

[Jeff Kelly]

That font reminds me of defender of the crown somehow

[Ingmar]

Now I have Pirate Jenny stuck in my head.

[Signe]

My sister plays WoW.  She needed support.  They want her to upload her drivers license.   

[Shannow]

That font reminds me of defender of the crown somehow

I now have to go play Defender of the Crown. Love that game.

[Phildo]

My sister plays WoW.  She needed support.  They want her to upload her drivers license.   

Do they think she's not 18?

[Rendakor]

It's a common practice to verify account ownership; I had to do it when my account got hacked.

[Selby]

My sister plays WoW.  She needed support.  They want her to upload her drivers license.   

Do they think she's not 18?

They do not care.  If your account has anyone's name other than yours, too bad.  If it's your account, you prove it with a driver's license.  Change your name?  Court paperwork required to prove it to them and allow the change.  I swear it was easier to deal with the California DMV regarding a name change than Blizzard...

[Falconeer]

New Mount & Blade: Vikings very awesome trailer. 

[KallDrexx]

Randomly came across a game called Depth on Steam. 

I might have to get it just to experience the idea of playing as a shark hunting down people 

[Paelos]

New Mount & Blade: Vikings very awesome trailer. 

Fucking LARPers. Not even they will soil my want of this game.

[Samwise]

Randomly came across a game called Depth on Steam. 

I might have to get it just to experience the idea of playing as a shark hunting down people 

That looks neat.  Lots of good reviews too.

[satael]

New Mount & Blade: Vikings very awesome trailer. 

Fucking LARPers. Not even they will soil my want of this game.

Actually that video reminded me that I want to play it and in some ways it was pretty good in depicting how the fighting is at the early stages of a m&b game; a bunch of relatively unorganized soldiers charging into a bunch of peasants and the whole thing breaks into a general melee where the peasants usually get mowed down by soldiers with better weapons and some armour.

Since I haven't heard anything really bad about this "mod" I'll most likely spend the next weekend playing it (its released on the 11th) 

[Falconeer]

Randomly came across a game called Depth on Steam. 

I might have to get it just to experience the idea of playing as a shark hunting down people 

That looks neat.  Lots of good reviews too.

Looks like a much better version of Evolve.