Hot Heart

Accommodation? I have to buy a house just to upgrade?!

What a n00b

After "The Great Sonic Degeneration", CyberRat and Johnny left the forum, mended those rifts and now have a podcast.

This needed to be stopped. It could've led to a podcast.

I've come to accept the fact that my backlog is so big that I probably won't revisit a lot of games, so a lot of my bigger Steam stuff is gone now. I'd probably do the same with PS4, but I don't see myself reaching the limit anytime soon (and even then, you can replace the HDD). On the plus side, you can start playing PS4 stuff while it's downloading/installing anyway?

Me again! Managed the next part of our Descent campaign: the Masquerade Ball. Another cleverly designed encounter, this time a two-parter. Part one was the party itself, which involved revealing guests or shape-shifting monsters. I just charged in and started hitting things, as that's usually the best approach. Unfortunately, I rolled a few misses at critical points, since my character works best combo-ing off kills, but my broadsword purchased after the first session proved useful. Could reroll the red power die, which is 1/2/2/2/3/3 distribution, meaning some of my attacks were pushed over into kills on 3s, especially with surge abilities. On talk of surge abilities, we found out we'd missed a little rule about being able to use a surge to remove a fatigue (for instances where the surge isn't needed for any other effects), which was quite critical for my character who's always pushing the limits. Anyway, the Overlord played well and crafty, managing to steal away 2/4 guests, but fortunately the deciding roll meant we'd rescued the host himself: Lord... I want to say Fiortefeld but that probably isn't right. Either way, he's a madman and his party suuuucked. The second part involved a race to a relic, the coveted Fortuna's Dice, in the same place's basement. So we discover this Lord Furfenoogle has been hosting a shindig on top of a cellar of giant venomous spiders and other horrible creatures. Not cool, man. From looking at the setup, and after the first few turns, we could not see how the heroes would win this. Basically, there are a bunch of doors to get through, which involve skill tests for might, knowledge or awareness (I think?) and each have different effects. One bashes the door down, which isn't ideal because then the monsters can follow; another opens the door, which means you can shut it behind you; the final option allows you to teleport through the door, leaving it in place. So, there was the killer vampire lady who could teleport through doors while sicking her minions on us, and us heroes trying to coordinate how to get through these things and not get beat to hell. And did I mention we start one door back? Fortunately, the overlord had some bad rolls on the second of her doors (well, most of our heroes had to roll 4 or under, she was restricted to rolling 3 or under) which gave us a ray of hope. Our initial scheming about opening and closing doors gave way to a mad dash, involving me breaking them down and trying to get our door 'porting mage ahead while our healer used a stun ability to limit the vampire's movement. Just about worked, though the overlord put up a strong fight, and we got two heroes ahead of the villain. Took a long time for a race, but some smart team tactics and lucky rolls got us through. After the first encounter, the scout took to keeping trophies in the form of the miniatures killed. I did the same, since I'm the warrior, and had 8 kills in that first encounter. From the second one, well... Yes, I counted the doors as well.

That is the only purchasable DLC so far. No real season pass, but these are the only things that really 'expand' (read: extend) the game for the 6 months after launch. The first expansion is a few extra story missions focusing on one of the enemy factions, a couple of extra 'strikes' (more combat-focused missions) and a 'Raid', as well as lots of extra unique gear. At the same time, the game will have an update for everyone, so they can still reach higher levels and keep up with the other general content when that gets a bump. Details on the second expansion are scarce at the moment, but I don't expect it to be that huge either. It's all a bit confusing unless you've been keeping up with the updates/game news and know a bit more about the game (or perhaps just general MMO progression) Frankly, unless you can get them in some sort of deal, the UK price for the expansions sounds like a total rip-off (especially so if you're on Xbox where some DLC items are PS-exclusive). On the plus side, the game doesn't have a subscription (beyond PS+ or Live being required), so I'm okay with that side of things; especially since PS+ covers all online stuff and gives you free games and discounts.

So, the latest Bungie weekly update has a bit more to say. Cool that "An upgraded Exotic is more powerful right out of the box" as demonstrated by an 'upped' Thorn starting at 302 damage. And apparently the missing Daily Public Event reward packages thing was a bug... or at least it not being delivered by the Postmaster is anyway. Maybe it's still meant to be useless Motes of Light. I say useless because, yep, Xur's appeared with no exotic engrams. Great... Other than that, things are sounding a bit more positive, but I guess we'll see. I just think most of the changes have ruined its more casual appeal for me.

Was reading all this on my phone so missed stuff. Okay, yeah, that sounds pretty dumb if it is just a selection every weekend. Fuck, why not make the Gunsmith useful for a change instead? There are simply not enough ways to get strange coins or exotics without playing constantly and with alts, and it'll be a slog at first when they bump up the heroic and nightfall stuff too.

That doesn't sound quite right. Based on the image, it looks like it'll be for whatever exotics you're carrying (says 'Equipped' but might have been for demo purpose). Otherwise you'd be screwed over on PS4 exclusives and exotic bounty ones.

Wonder if it'll go in the Steam sale and piss off all the people who bought it already for a higher price. That happened with TWAU, didn't it?

Yeah, everything I've heard about the upcoming stuff does not sound good. On top of that exotic thing, there's an extra bit with the legendaries. New, more powerful legendaries, great, but you need vanguard or crucible commendations to purchase them... which you only get when you level up rep. Fuck that. The game is grindy enough without adding more to it. There is simply not enough stuff to make it worthwhile if you can't get a regular 3 or 6 player fireteam. And another thought, based on that screenshot, am I seeing that Xur no longer sells exotic engrams? So Motes of Light, the thing that replaced ascendant materials from public events, are useless for anything besides some cosmetic things (or the Iron Banner gear perk rerolls?). FFS... I'm hoping there's still some great surprise to come...

Heh, well, I'm only kidding. I'd just heard that the remastered stuff didn't sound so good.

You can only use the remastered versions.

This was by a different team, and was apparently in the works for years, so there's still a possibility that Paris will be reused by the same Unity dev team for 2016.

Since it wasn't complete until this year, and I missed it last year, I'm also counting The Wolf Among Us. I'll probably find something from The Walking Dead S2 as well, I think I liked at least one of the credits songs...

It's that time of year again, folks. You know the drill. I've only really played one new game this year, but it has some fantastic music. Yes, it's Destiny, you wouldn't expect anything less. Wait for the 1:26 mark What about you? What have been your favourite game tracks of the year?

So, there's been another update, this time one that I'm not entirely happy with. Mainly because I have to do most things solo or in two-player co-op. On the plus side, it's meant to cut down on farming, since 'destination materials' are far easier to come by and can now be bought with vanguard marks. However, they've removed the ability to exchange fifties of destination materials for vanguard/crucible marks and rep, which kinda sucks. On top of that, Exotics now don't require Ascendant Shards or Energy (hooray) but you need a new Exotic Shard for the last tier... which can either be bought from Xur for 7 strange coins or from dismantling unwanted exotics ('cause they're just falling out of the sky, huh...). So you'll need to make sure you're doing the weekly heroic more... which is tricky when you can only find one other person to reliably play with. Annoyingly, engrams don't level up the Cryptarch as much anymore. On the plus side, purple packages have an increased chance to award legendary engrams... which will probably turn into ascendant shards or energy... of which I won't need much anymore since I don't have a chance to get anything new and decent anyway. I guess I can say I'm done with Destiny... for a week at least.

Man, you need Grunt at your party, and his little side bit.

Interstellar There's a lot to like about the film, but also dumb or cliche stuff and long stretches of boring. Matthew McConaughey is great (most of the cast is, really) and the score is real good (needed to be, considering it's present for about 90% of the film), plus it has cool effects and those robots. It's somewhat awe-inspiring, if you're a big fan of space exploration and astronomy. It definitely captures the old style of 'sci-fi' but manages to keep it personal enough. It's just too long and the protagonist's heroics feel too overplayed, which somewhat ruined me enjoyment. I can't really say more without spoiling it, and there are some nice surprises in there, but it does have this mish-mash of grand ideas and soppy sentimentality that reminded me too much of Lucy.

Managed a game of Hyperborea with three of my friends, playing the "Regular" length game and race powers. It was as brilliant as I'd hoped. The core mechanics of the game are great because they're somewhat intuitive - each cube colour represents types of actions (red for warfare, green for movement, purple for growth, etc.) - so even before you start developing and building up your pool of cubes, you have an idea of how you might want to approach things. You blindly draw three cubes from your bag each turn and use these to activate technologies, which give you action points to spend however you wish during that turn. Going by your basic technologies (everyone has the same) and any advanced ones you might wish to unlock, you get an idea of what you can activate on a turn and what might come up in a future turn. Since you start with a cube of each colour then get to choose your seventh it seems wise to match your pick to the colour of your race (each one has a choice of special ability usually linked to what their colour represents). As The Celestial Reign (Blue), I took an extra blue cube, but after that I only took one more for a total of 2/13 for most of the game. Because I had an idea of what I was doing I knew that the Red Duchy on my left would benefit from attacking a bunch and The Emerald Kingdom on the right could zip across the map quite easily. On top of that, none of the cities or ruins (they grant extra action points when a minature moves into them) on my homeland tiles (the immediate three) would allow me to attack back or defend. Because of all these factors, and all the ways you want to be scoring VPs, I knew that I'd have to fight for territory control and ghost killing, which meant focusing more on green and red cubes early on. And that served me well. I managed to nab the Beast Riding tech and, later, Bastions (two fortress tokens at that start of each turn, and they last until the start of your next turn) which meant I could kill off some opponents and keep my guy safe with the bastions. Everything was working out. The coolest part is when you get to combo a big turn. Using the example above, I've just reset so I've got all my cubes back and can reactivate the cities in the hexes my guys are in. In the green (forest) hex the guy can move into the city, allowing me to 'develop' more cubes and add them to my bag, but also lets me draw an extra cube. Because I can save the effects, I can also move the guy in the adjacent hex into that city for the same effects. At this point, I might have been able to generate one or two extra cubes, instantly placing them in the bag, and draw two more from my bag anyway. Then I've got that other city to activate which could allow a further cube draw or a movement point. I definitely got lucky with the hexes that appeared near me, but it was still a very close game. All the scores were within 5 points (38/38/35/33) and I only just squeezed victory because of controlling more hexes. Partly because the green player probably rushed the endgame too soon while not using his extra movement to spread his guys a bit more, but also because I managed a super last turn with an awkward combo. It took some planning but I managed to copy someone else's tech with an espionage effect, the race power meaning I could draw an extra two cubes because of it's a science activation, the espionage effect allowed me to move a miniature and kill an opponent's, both seizing the hex and gaining a new effect that allowed me to develop more cubes and draw another cube. I 'cashed in' the extra develop to gain two extra cubes (worth 2 VP) and the only thing I could do after that was gain a technology so I grabbed one based purely on the 2 VP value. Anyway, long story short, I thought it was fantastic. It's got so much depth and so much going on, but never in an overwhelming way. You have this individual civilisation game bit going on, but also that wargame-style bit of conflict and reacting to other players as well. Individually, you must manage your cube pool for efficiency, both in terms of what actions you can perform but also not bloating it so you don't get to reset as often; therefore, missing out on the benefits of moving miniatures back into cities or ruins to gain extra effects (after you've drawn all your cubes, miniatures that were 'frozen' in cities/ruins are moved back out and can reenter next turn). Collectively, you've got to assess what your opponents can do (cubes are public knowledge, since players draw up at the end of their turn) and how they might spend their actions ("It'll be more efficient for him to go kill the ghost, take the ruin token and also control that hex over simply killing my guy.") On top of that, it only took about two and a half hours, including a full explanation. Definitely a massive plus for that sort of game. I'm eager to delve back in and try out the other races and different powers and see how the map affects things. Especially since the Red Duchy does appear somewhat underpowered with either of its race abilities (came second last here, though).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL6-oFPeNco

That looks like absolute shit.