The General Pooter Games Thread.

[Gotthammer]

against my better judgment I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. I had heard that for the first time I could go through the entirety of the Campaign as a woman and well apparently that’s good enough for me to buy a game.

But the point is that the game does not change the character interactions or relationships regardless of your gender. Some people view this as lazy writing and that’s probably true but it has resulted in something I view as a plus.

There is a romance in this game. Its pretty contrived and you’ve seen it a hundred times before, BUT because the character interactions/relationships are the same regardless of gender; PLAYING AS A WOMAN MAKES THE STORY ABOUT LESBIANS.

CoD: Black Ops 3 managed, through straight up laziness, to give create a B-movie, action-flick ABOUT LESBIANS.

A game I expected NOTHING from has made me happier than Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I had high hopes for.

What upside-down world is this?

Incredible

[Kirsten]

I have been playing Just Cause 3, was a little wary after all the reviews about serious technical issues, but it hasn't been a problem at all. thoroughly enjoying it.

[Wolfshade]

Just downloaded the long war mod for XCOM because it wasn't quite brutal enough before :S

[eldargal]

Incredible

*adds it to my buy list*

[Erik Setzer]

I ended up snagging a few games on sale. Battlefront was 40% off, so I opted to take the plunge, because at that price it's not terrible. (And it's been about as fun and frustrating as online shooters tend to be, with the added bonus of being Star Wars and looking & sounding awesome.) Witcher III was half off... I'm not sure if I should play the first two before diving into that one or not. Wolfenstein: The New Order was something like $8, and I'd heard it was fun. And then there's NBA 2K16, at 1/4.

Ah, NBA 2K... I grabbed 2K15 at a really low price and thoroughly enjoyed its "career mode" (aka "MyCareer"). I'm not even a huge basketball fan, but it was fun enough for me to buy the latest incarnation. But something unfortunate happened this year. Spike Lee happened.

Now, Spike Lee might be a great director and make amazing movies and all (I'll take the word of others for that). But video games? No. NBA 2K16's MyCareer mode gets hijacked by Spike Lee's "Livin' Da Dream" (yes, spelled like that). You have to spend the first 6-7 hours of the mode with a little bit of game play and a LOT of cutscenes, effectively a ridiculously long movie/"documentary" about your player with Spike Lee leading it (because of course he had to be in the game). Never mind the shoddy writing and the "twist" that was blatantly obvious. This mess of a long movie meant that no matter what you called your player, you had to deal with people calling him "Frequency Vibrations" or "Freq" for hours of dialogue (including your parents referring to you by a nickname, and never using your real name, so that your mom calls you "Frequency" to the media... WTF?!?). And you have no choice in what the player does through all this drama, so you have to sit and watch him make terrible decisions that end up with him cut from his first team at the end of his rookie year, all the while screaming at the computer than he's a freaking idiot. (Bonus: I ended up re-signing with the team that cut me, and the game makes no reference to that. The script has him talking about moving, even though he doesn't have to. It doesn't even reference really what happened for him to be cut, much less his overcoming that.) Because you have to sit through Spike Lee's story, you can only play eight out of 82 games in your rookie season, effectively making it a wasted season. And then, much like how you see "behind-the-scenes" of the motion cap actors before it starts, it ends with Spike Lee and the actors all introducing themselves and spending several more minutes pumping up Lee's ego before finally releasing you to the REAL MyCareer mode.

It's sad, because the real mode is full of all kinds of stuff. You can get endorsements to make money, practice to become a better player, hang out with other players to earn bonuses, spend time with the fans to get more love from them, all kinds of good stuff outside of playing games. It's great. And the funny thing is, though the game won't mention this, you can actually go into the options and change your nickname so announcers use one you prefer... so really, once you get into the real MyCareer mode, it's like that seven hours of your life you wasted never happened.

The appeal of a sports game's career mode is to make up your own story about your personal player. Having all choice taken away from you so you can sit through hours of a cliche-ridden movie is just not cool. I can pretend it didn't happen, but I'll always know that's time I can't get back.

[Erik Setzer]

Played a lot of Battlefront the past few days... It's like every other twitch shooter, which means I'm not amazing at it, and even more annoying because the "Deluxe" edition sold the most powerful weapon in the game for $10 (forget the emotes and all, the DL-44 is what people wanted). Since I didn't pounce on spending $8 extra for that during the sale, I'd now have to spend $15 to get it, or keep on slogging through the ranks until I get to pretty much the top level, all the while being murdered by low levels with the most powerful weapon. It really hurts game enjoyment when you realize people paid their way into a serious advantage. Other than that, it's been pretty fun. I killed Boba Fett while playing Han Solo (in a capture-point scenario), so that's one notch for me.

Last night it popped up the dogfights as the random scenario to play, so I gave it a go. While it's not a true simulator or anything, I had a blast with it and found I'm a lot better with that gameplay. I caught on pretty quick to controlling speed in order to reverse direction faster (and there's those maneuvers, but I never remember they're there). While in other scenarios I'm usually relegated to trying to help complete the mission of grabbing drop pods or something, that's a gameplay mode I can shine in, and I got a bunch of points and leveled up from 9 to 13 (sooooo slow). It's not a true sim, but I enjoy it. Only complaint there is that "heroes" might be even more OP, with the Millennium Falcon especially wreaking havoc the moment someone gets it.

[Kirsten]

yesterday I finished Just Cause 3, loads of fun. next I think will be Tomb Raider, then possibly finishing off The Witcher 3, then probably Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

[Erik Setzer]

I think I should try playing Witcher 3 rather than doing more Fallout 4 playthroughs right now. Also some others games I got on Steam, and I finally plugged in all my Humble Bundle Steam codes.

But I also just got Disney Infinity 3.0, with some of the Star Wars characters, and have been having a lot of fun with that. Mostly playing Rey so far, but it's fun to switch to Kylo when I need to cut open a door, or I screw up and get Rey killed temporarily. Using Kylo to kill Stormtroopers is rather amusing.

I got Just Cause 1 and 2 from a Humble Bundle. Think I'll play them a bit while waiting for JC3 to drop in price.

[Psychosplodge]

I got sid meir's pirates. Best £1.49 I spent this steam sale. It thoroughly distracted me from FO4.
Also in this sale got the survivalist (I think) a post apocalypse zombie game not played much but seems interesting.
And the latest saints row DLC, should be interesting.
Also got a Wii U for xmas. That's loads of fun. Mariokart 8 is pretty decent, especially as you now have a small chance to defend against blue shells if you're lucky.
Mariomaker is so frustrating, I can't believe I used to be pretty good at supermarioworld and yoshi's island etc. I suppose we just don't have real platformers anymore.
Also got Windwaker HD and Splatoon, but not played them yet.

[Erik Setzer]

And the latest saints row DLC, should be interesting.

Which DLC?

The last release that I know of is Gat Out of Hell, which is actually a standalone game (and they only charged for it like it was, so kudos to them for that). It's pretty fun, I need to get back into it and finish it up. The flying is a bit weird for me, but only really problematic if I want to try to do the flying racing activity. Almost worth it just for the musical number (and then Gat later shutting down another one before it starts).