toxicitizen

But that's the heart of the PC gaming experience! All about dat tweaking, man. Seriously, though, that and immediately going into a cutscene on first launch BEFORE you're even allowed to get your settings right. Like, seriously, just get me a damn menu. Or if you absolutely MUST fire up into your precious fucking cutscene, then at least have a fucking launcher or something. Otherwise it just starts the game off on the wrong foot. Max Payne 3 was guilty of this. And it booted into some weird-ass resolution by default, too.

Uh, was looking for the Arkham Origins thread only to realize this had all happened in the Arkham City thread. I'm surprised Dean hasn't taken the mod axe to it yet. Anyway, been playing a bit and wrote first impressions in currently playing but I wanted to add a few things and didn't want to start spamming that thread. Looks like this game finally does boss fights right! I'm not spoilering since he was all over the marketing so this really isn't a spoiler. I fought Deathstroke last night and it was kind of awesome. It actually feels like a fight true to the combat mechanics rather than the usual gimmicky find-the-pattern nonsense. Color me impressed. It was actually damn fun. The new detective stuff is pretty sweet, too. It plays essentially the same as before (look around for clues and hold button to scan) but the crime reconstitutions look pretty awesome. Oh and, if anyone else runs into the same issue I did, I managed to fix the sluggish performance in cutscenes. Just gotta go in the BmEngine.ini file to disable DX11 and activate DX10. Locks you out of some advanced geometry and shadow settings but I'd rather that than the performance hit. Also, in the Steam game properties, set launch option "-nostartupmovies" without the quotes. I usually don't bother but holy shit there's a lot of splash screens when you fire up this game. Even worse than AC.

So I'm a couple of hours into Arkham Origins. So far, it's pretty much more of the same. It plays and feels exactly like Arkham City. It looks a lot better, though. I think it's the lighting. It gives the game a more vibrant look somehow. It's too early to comment on the story or side-quests (although if you were disappointed by the seeming lack of Riddler challenges, well, they're replaced by something... quite similar). So far, I'm enjoying it but something feels slightly off. Can't quite put my finger on what it is yet. Other than that, the PC version runs well enough. I'm getting occasional framerate dips but that was also the case with Arkham City so I'm not too surprised there. The biggest performance issue I have, and this confuses the hell out of me, is with the pre-rendered cutscenes, of all fucking things. This game seems to have quite a bit of those and, while they look pretty cool, they just struggle to stay above 10fps. So they're choppy as hell and it causes the audio to go out of sync. I kinda feel like that might be a problem with the game itself because, seriously, how the hell could my rig possibly be able to handle the gameplay but not fucking pre-rendered cutscenes? Oh and you can finally adjust the graphical settings from within the game!

Yeah, definitely. I think the problem I had was mostly with how the game constantly reminds you about the story, whether it's someone saying something over your comms or just the hourly countdown to whatever the big evil plan was called. I don't remember the games you mention doing anything like that. They just let you go about your business in peace. But I'm certainly not trying to argue that Asylum is better. Just playing devil's advocate as to why some people might think so. Anyway, earlier I realized I had forgotten to play DmC's Vergil's Downfall DLC, so I figured that was a good enough way to kill a couple hours while I wait for Arkham Origins to unlock at midnight. It's... kinda bad. I mean, playing as Vergil is always awesome but his moveset feels kinda limited compared to Dante's. The enemies aren't all that varied and the levels are all like to the shittier ones from the main game. And, for some reason, Vergil can't double jump so all that floating rocks platforming becomes kind of annoying fast. It takes place after the ending of DmC but really doesn't add anything to the story. I also can't help but feel like it was rushed. Instead of having in-engine cutscenes like the main game, they're all done in a more abstract animation style. It looks cool but, again, it really doesn't add anything. And there's a few times where there's actually some in-engine stuff, which makes it feel more like they were rushed to release it so they had to put them together quickly. If you absolutely must play it, wait for a sale. Otherwise, by all means skip it.

Well, it's a design fault in the sense that the story and gameplay are kinda working against each other. But I get what you're saying and I agree to an extent. I just feel like AC took it to an extreme. They wrote a story that would've been better served by a more linear and focused game like Asylum, without taking the open-world into account. I mean, I'm not usually one to play a game and be bothered by so-called ludonarrative dissonance. But when I first played AC, I did feel like I was doing it wrong whenever I wasn't heading to the next story objective. And it's kind of exacerbated by the way the game constantly pokes you all "Hey. Hey! There's that story mission you're not heading to. You should do that. Now would be good." I don't remember feeling that kind of pressure in games like GTA or Sleeping Dogs or whatever else but it was really noticeable in AC.

See, that's the thing. Arkham City is kind of at odds with itself. I agree that overall it's the superior game, regardless of story. The gameplay is refined in every aspect imaginable and it's just full of shit to do. I sunk 60+ hours in it and I still haven't done everything. But on my very first playthrough, I remember how the story kinda conflicted with its open-world nature. You want to explore but you keep getting this pressure to move on to the next main story objective. So it's a superior game but it suffers from its design not being as focused and cohesive, at least on a first playthrough. I'm with you there. I enjoyed the ending and all the twists and turns that led to it. It pales in comparison to stuff like Hush or The Long Halloween but who cares. Different mediums.

Gone Home. I liked it but I'm glad I waited for a sale. This just isn't worth 20$. One slightly ridiculous complaint: Also, like I said in currently playing, I've been replaying Arkham Asylum in anticipation of Origins. I know I've said before that Arkham City didn't feel much bigger than Asylum but I guess I had just never played them so close together. Asylum is ridiculously smaller than I remembered, both in terms of the map and the content. I mean, the map itself isn't that much smaller but there's a lot less stuff in it, especially in the outside areas, so it feels kind of empty. The main story is somewhat the same length but it only took me 2 evenings to both beat the campaign and do all the Riddler challenges. Then today, it only took me another 2-3 hours to beat all the challenge rooms. So it only took me like 14ish hours to 100% the game and get all the achievements. Getting those last few achievements was so satisfying, though. Back when it first came out, I could never get the damn gold medal on that last combat challenge, so I never got the platinum trophy. I guess playing so much Arkham City over the summer paid off because it was kind of easy now. I am the Bat.

Replaying Arkham Asylum both in anticipation of Arkham Origins and because the removal of GFWL/addition of Steam achievements is a good enough excuse for me to do so. The gameplay is obviously a bit rougher than I remembered but I still think it's more focused and well-paced than Arkham City. This series has probably been the games I've replayed the most this gen. This is at least my fourth time replaying AA at this point and I'm just not getting sick of it. I'll probably take a break from it to play Gone Home tonight, though. Also kinda tempted to fire up DX:HR Director's Cut just because why the fuck not.

This one unlocked late last night so I grabbed it before heading to bed. 5$ since I already owned the base game and the Missing Link DLC. It's not really an "upgrade", though. It's a separate library entry. So now I have the base game, the standalone Missing Link and this one in my Steam library. That's kind of annoying but eh, I'll just add the obsolete ones in some hidden category and forget about them. Been wanting to play this one since launch but felt 20$ was way overpriced. It's currently 50% off as Midweek Madness, which is the price I was waiting for. Looking forward to finally play it.

I use Dropbox as well but mostly for school stuff so that I can keep my work synced between my desktop and my laptop. I use My Pictures for pics, wallpapers, gifs and such because it's convenient and doesn't take much space. Otherwise, I don't really bother with the default stuff. I changed the path of My Music so that it points to the partition where my music is but I rarely go there using that shortcut so it's kinda useless. Anyway, the icons dragging thing turned out to be an issue with Fences, after all. They released an updated version that fixed it, so I figured it was time to "upgrade" from my torrented copy. I can't imagine not using that program anymore and I had been meaning to buy it for a while so this seemed like the time to finally do it. Also, last night I noticed the Afterburner OSD was working again in DmC. Not sure what the fuck is going on there. It really wouldn't cooperate when I was trying to fix it, so it's kinda weird to have it come back out of nowhere. Haven't bothered to check if it works with everything again yet.

Yeah, I meant to post here. The script is utter shit but the movie is undeniably fun to watch. As for Crank, I loved the first one but for some reason was kinda bored by the second one. Probably because I watched it alone but had watched the original with friends and beer.

Shit, that's annoying. Ever since My Documents started being taken over by a ton of programs dumping all kinds of shit in it, I started using my desktop as kind of a literal desktop. I have a ton of shit on it, kept organized with Fences. It's also my default download location, so I tend to drag and drop stuff from it quite a bit... As for Afterburner, yeah, I figured I'd have to wait for an update or something. At least, as far as I can tell, it's only the OSD that's bugged. My fan settings seem to still be working fine.

Update process was mostly smooth, just a bit long. It's also kinda weird how it got pushed through their app store instead of just regular Windows Update. I have encountered a few issues, though. For one, I can't drag and move stuff on my desktop anymore. I thought maybe it was a problem with Fences but it persists even when I deactivate it. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Like, a new setting that got turned on by default? I can't really find anything. Also, the OSD of MSI Afterburner seems to not work in some games now. I'm not sure how it would be affected but it was working in DmC prior to updating and now it's not. Seems to still work fine in Arkham City, though. So that's kinda weird.

Finally got around to watching Pacific Rim last night. I wasn't quite sure which thread to post in but I settled on this one. It's a damn fun movie because giant robots punching monsters. It has that much going for it. But holy fuck, what a goddamned piece of shit otherwise. There was no tension whatsoever. I never cared for any of the characters other than Charlie. His B-plot was pretty much the most interesting aspect of the entire movie. At one point, I looked at the running time and literally went "oh, there's less than 20mins left. I guess this is the climax?". Such a disappointment.

Oh well, life finds a way, I guess. Capcom have been repeating their 30th anniversary sale on pretty much every other digital distributor under the sun, with identical discounts. This time was GMG's turn. So that was 75% off + a 20% voucher + 1,50$ in store credit. Came down to about 8$ so I'm glad I didn't pay 12,50$ on Steam. I was tempted to also grab RE5 but I figured I'll wait to see if Capcom patches GFWL out. Also, porting the DLC would be nice. I never got around to buying it on PS3 and I think I sold my PS3 copy a while back anyway. I've been meaning to grab the Gold Edition but at this point it seems unlikely I'll ever get around to it.

DmC: Devil May Cry. (Jesus, what a fucking redundant title...) Goddamnit, I fucking hate gamers sometimes. This game is actually fucking great. It's even better than the old ones, in some aspects. I'm going to be so pissed off if Ninja Theory doesn't get to make a sequel. First, the story is told coherently. It actually makes sense. That's kind of new for this series. I don't know if I'd call it great but it's certainly better than what the previous games had. The new take on Dante and Vergil was alright, too. The old games also had such awkward level designs sometimes and the shitty camera didn't help in that regard. This isn't an issue here. Not only that but some of the levels actually look kind of amazing. The one in the nightclub in particular comes to mind, there's just so much going on in the background that it's hard not to enjoy the sheer creativity of the art direction. There's also a boss fight where you're basically fighting a demonic version of Fox News. It's kind of amazing. Ninja Theory really knocked it out of the park here. My only major complaint would be how piss easy the combat was, even though I played on the highest difficulty available. But there's 3 higher difficulty levels to unlock, so I don't see it as that much of an issue. I'll definitely be replaying it on those at some point. But overall, I feel like for once this was a needed reboot. The old games were great but it was kind of jarring how archaic DMC4 felt when I played it over the summer.

Been wanting to try a space 4X for a few months now. This seemed like the best candidate, I was just waiting for a good enough deal. Loved the original mod as well as last week's demo, so this one was a no-brainer.

Yeah, okay. That actually makes sense. I had forgotten that Revelations was originally a 3DS game. I guess I can see how the gameplay could feel weaker when compared to a proper console title.

Really? I keep hearing that Revelations was a return to form and is the best entry in the series since RE4.

Depends what you mean by new. It wasn't added into the game post-launch, if that's what you're saying. Target escort and target extraction are two different types of Council missions and both have been there from the start. They are awfully of similar compared to the other two types, though.

Started playing DmC last night and I'm loving it so far. It probably helps that, while I loved the shit out of the old games, I wasn't overly attached to the lore ( or maybe it's been so long that I just don't give a shit anymore). Either way, I don't really mind this new take on the story and characters. I also think that this one is a lot better at telling its story than the previous ones were. I mean, I loved Dante as much as the next guy, but the narrative in previous DMC games was always kind of awkward and all over the place. I feel like the combat is kind of on the easy side, though. I'm playing on Nephilim (the equivalent of hard, I think? It's the highest available difficulty that doesn't need to be unlocked), and so far the only bit that really gave me trouble was one of those secret challenge room things.

I think it's more a case of people being less forgiving this time around. I haven't played it yet so I can't compare the two, but like I said in the Beyond thread, I'm still kinda baffled that Heavy Rain was received as well as it was. People seem to like shitting on it a lot more these days, so I'm not surprised that Beyond is getting a similar treatment.

Broke down at the last minute. I was considering getting both this and RE: Revelations before it switched over to the next deal but I was hesitant to drop another 25$ on them in case the next deal was more interesting. Then it turned out to be Dead Rising 2, which I already own. Revelations and RE6 base game had already gone back up to 50% but for some reason the complete pack stayed 75% off for an extra couple minutes. That was kinda lucky. I didn't really care for the demo back when it first came out but since then I've heard enough positive things about it to want to give it a shot anyway. Was just waiting for the right price.