Travis4

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

Web developer and all-around geek.
https://travisnewman.me

547 Posts

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 4: Castlevania Special
Netflix dropped a new show based on the classic Castlevania series and in this episode we break it down for you to easily digest. Does Castlevania elevate the spate of terrible video game shows and movies or is it something else? The show contains some mild show spoilers so we recommend you watch it before listening. Don't worry the show is only four episodes and well worth watching!

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 3: Luke Skywalker's Cane
In this episode of Cheerful Ghost Radio we discuss Jon’s recent disappointment in losing his Super Nintendo Classic pre-order and all the games we are looking forward to playing this year. We round things off by talking about Luke Skywalker's Cane and our theories about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. As always, we start the show talking about what we are playing and watching and we’re interested in what you are playing too, so let us know in the comments!

No Man's Sky 1.3 (Atlas Rises) is out on PC and PS4
Just look at that beautiful video! I got about 20 minutes with it earlier and even in that small window, it feels like a very different game now. It reminds me (fittingly) of Terraria 1.3 with how much the game has changed.

Here's a brief rundown:

  • A new story. the lore of Atlas continues and the path has been reworked some. The NPCs you could have in your home have changed dialogue to fit the new story. Apparently, there's 30 hours worth of story content here. The long-rumored fourth race is here!

  • The galaxy has been redone again. Your home planet may look completely different now. The variety has been significantly increased.

  • They've added economy, wealth, and conflict ratings to each system, and those ratings affect what you can find.

  • You can now find crashed freighters on planets and loot them.

  • You can manipulate terrain with a multitool upgrade.

  • There's a mission board in every galaxy with procedural missions.

  • The amount of items you can craft and find have increased dramatically.

  • The visor looks very different, and scanning can help you find rare items.

  • The menu UI has been overhauled, to accommodate a new ship inventory system (you now have separate areas for equipment and cargo) and a more in-depth reputation system.

  • Portals are now functional! You can input the coordinates of planets to transport to them. Which helps with...

  • Multiplayer! In a sense. "Glitches in the simulation" are causing fragments of other participants to show through, and voip works within a certain radius. Basically, it's the Fable 2 take on multiplayer where everyone else is a floating orb. BUT it's the start of more to come, and still neat.

  • You now have the ability to fly low to the ground instead of hitting an invisible barrier far above the surface.

  • There are new ship models, some of which are only available in high-wealth systems.

  • Tons, tons more. But those are the big ones.



Full patch notes with screenshots here: http://nomanssky.com/atlas-rises-update/

And just a reminder, No Man's Sky is $25 on PSN, GOG, Steam, and Humble right now so if you don't have it, now's a good time to get it!

No Man Sky's Waking Titan is Over, and Some New Details About 1.3 (Atlas Rises) Emerge (UPDATED)
https://i.imgur.com/9UzmFx8.jpg
The ARG Hello Games organized for No Man's Sky is over, and we ended up with some hints and somewhat cryptic information about the lore of the game. It appears we're playing a simulation started by a rogue AI, which was a common theory. We also got some 1.3 screenshots!

The one above shows a portal-- a structure present in the game already, but one that had no apparent use. Apparently that's going to change soon! The control panel thing pictured isn't currently in the game, so it looks like we're getting some interactivity.

In addition, this beauty dropped showing a new ship class! It's parked next to an observatory, so those may be an important part of the update, or maybe just a neat thing to put in a picture.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.wakingtitan.com/loop16/a8af5654-879c-4cea-a476-77c2fd54dfee.jpg

A few places have No Man's Sky for around $25 right now, possibly in preparation for an update. If you're interested, now's a good time to grab it for cheap!

UPDATED: The man himself, Sean Murray, sent out an email today with more information about the update. It's called Atlas Rises (which I hope is a reference to a Metallica song) and will focus on new lore and making portals do fun things. The full text of the email follows:


Hello Citizen Scientists,

It’s been a year since No Man’s Sky first released, and it’s been an exciting, intense and emotional year for us at Hello Games. We have been quiet, but we have been listening intently.

We've spent that year working hard on free updates for this game our team cares about so much.

Update 1.3 will release this week and will be available for free to all No Man’s Sky players. We're calling it Atlas Rises. It focuses on improving the central story of No Man’s Sky and adds the ability to quick travel between locations using portals. Patch notes will be made available shortly before the update goes live.

What we do is much more important than what we say, but since launch we have sometimes focused too much on that.

We wanted to reach out and celebrate the devoted community that means so much to us. We launched Waking Titan to try to do that.

When we posted those cassettes we didn't know what to expect. In the last eight weeks a quarter of a million players from across the globe (174 countries, to be precise!) have come together - united by a shared love of mystery and science fiction - to form the Citizen Science Division. You’ve travelled great distances both real and virtual, undertaken complex tasks, and explored the depths of simulation theory. New friendships have been forged, and a tight-knit community has been created. Most importantly a cute hamster has a new home.

You've become part of the No Man's Sky origin story.

It's been an honour to watch, but this is just the beginning. Whether you’ve followed Waking Titan or not, we welcome anyone to sign up to the Citizen Science Division, and to join us on the official CSD forums.

Our journey continues.

Thank you for this year. We hope you enjoy what comes next.

Sean

The No Man's Sky Hype Train Is Back In Service
https://i.imgur.com/yx0bRur.png
There's a new ARG/Viral marketing thing going on for No Man's Sky, and unless you've been following from the beginning it's easy to be confused like me. It started with cassettes being sent to some people involved in No Man's Sky subreddits that, when the waveform was analyzed and decrypted, had a secret message: portal.

Since then, the Waking Titan project site has launched, with the promise of 10,000 random entrants receiving a physical Atlas Pass v4, a questionnaire, a secret decoder wheel to get you into a website with Titan commands, PDFs with what may be coordinates to planets in-game, and other strange things.

I do worry that this is building hype for something that may not deliver what people expect, but I'm having fun tuning in to see what's new. I'm hoping for that shiny Atlas pass too.

Gamespot has a good breakdown of what's happening:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mysterious-no-mans-sky-website-goes-live-as-part-o/1100-6451908/#comments-block-33399448

And the NMS subreddit has some more history:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/6orsy9/waking_titan_megathread_phase_2_begins_edition/

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 2: Alien Covenant Special
We are back with Cheerful Ghost Radio with a special extra episode about Ridley Scott's latest horror extravaganza Alien Covenant! In this episode, we discuss our thoughts on Prometheus and expectations we had for the next installment, and then Jon and Travis discuss and review Alien Covenant itself. If you haven't seen it yet, we warn you before we go into spoiler territory.

Nintendo announces the New Nintendo 2DS XL
The mouthful that is the New Nintendo 2DS XL, will be released on July 28 for $149.99.

If you've been waiting to get into the 3DS/2DS scene, now might be the time!

This is the first new product in the 3DS family since 2014/2015's release of the New Nintento 3DS and the XL version. The NN2DSXL (which is totally not an official initialization, but I'm going to make it a thing) comes on the heels of the Switch launch, the news of the NES Classic being canceled, and rumors of the SNES Classic coming later in the year.

Star Wars Episode IX Release Date: May 24, 2019
https://i.imgur.com/DXpt25S.png
Disney and Lucasfilm have announced the release date for the conclusion to the sequel trilogy: May 24, 2019.

This means a bit less waiting than if they'd kept the holiday release schedule, but I have to admit, after the past two movies December just feels like Star Wars season to me, and I'll miss that a little.

Not enough to make me wish it was coming out 7 months later, though :D

In addition, the fifth Indiana Jones movie will be coming out July 10, 2020. Here's hoping the new Indy movies get the same treatment as Star Wars.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/25/media/star-wars-episode-ix-release-date/

Re-Logic Shares Terraria: Otherworld Woes and Plans for the Future
https://i.imgur.com/PFtND2V.png
As many surmised and/or feared, it looks like the silence on updates *was* a result of issues with development. Re-Logic has announced today that they were unhappy with the development from Engine Software, and are bringing in Pipeworks Studios to continue development.

"Our team had a clear vision for this game – one that we shared with all of you with much shared excitement – and, as much as we hate to say it (and in spite of all of the reforms we tried last year) - the current state of the game is still equal parts far from that vision and well behind schedule.

As a result, we have made the decision to move on from having Engine Software continue development of Terraria: Otherworld.
...
The great news is that we already have a dedicated and passionate team ready to pick up the torch and continue the Otherworld journey! Based upon their really impressive work to-date with the Terraria re-write on Console/Mobile, coupled with an amazingly on-point proposal for completing Otherworld (after a thorough review of the game on their end), we have made the decision to bring Pipeworks on board as our new development partner for Terraria: Otherworld!

We know that the "radio silence" and all of the shifting development work aimed at continuing the journey for Terraria: Otherworld has been frustrating for a lot of you.
...
The length of the silence was purely driven by "these things take time to occur and then set up" coupled with our desire to have an actual solution/path forward before just sharing the news about Engine."

This is good news, really. We now understand the long gaps between updates, and we know that Re-Logic is moving forward with a new team. The bad news would be if they had just pushed on. I'm more optimistic now, knowing that Re-Logic is taking care of things and bringing in some fresh eyes.

Full statement on the forums: https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/changing-of-the-guard-an-update-from-otherworld.56207/

Mass Effect: Andromeda - Review in Progress (the first 10-ish hours)
https://i.imgur.com/KDEgi9i.jpg
I've been playing Mass Effect: Andromeda in basically all my free time over the past couple days. EA has a program called Origin Access (or EA Access on consoles) where you pay $5 a month and you get access to a ton of games. It's like Netflix only for EA games. In addition, you get a 10% discount on any purchase. I had just gotten a new PC and wanted to try some games that I'd missed so I paid for a month.

Little did I know, however, that it also included timed game trials before release. In Mass Effect: Andromeda's case, I was able to play the game for up to 10 hours and up to a certain point in the story. I only got to about the 8:30 mark before I ran out of stuff to do, and I had been really taking my time. And now I have to wait until Tuesday, when it actually releases, to continue. And I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas.

In short: there are issues, but it's great overall... so far. The following are first impressions that may change over the course of the game, and I'm keeping things spoiler-free.

The bad
First, lets get the bad stuff out of the way:

  • The facial animations. Oooooooooohhhh boy, those facial animations. At best they're as bad as the previous entries. Bioware has a bad track record for those. But with the new shiny graphics, the bad facial animations are more pronounced. At worst, they're really distracting and jarring. These have been getting a lot of ridicule and it's clear why. The odd thing is, the aliens have perfectly fine animations, it's the humans who have weird thousand-yard stares and creepy smiles. Bioware/EA has said that there's a bug involved and that it wouldn't be fixed by day 1, so we may get some improvements.

  • The writing for character dialogue is inconsistent. One character can go from seeming real to seeming cliché in two lines. While it isn't bad overall, the bad parts bring it down a bit. Thankfully it seems like only a few characters are affected. Perhaps they just didn't have a solid idea of who these characters should be? I'm hoping this improves as the story moves on.

  • Planet scanning seems to have less of a point. Almost no planets have anything to scan. And while the on-planet vehicle makes a return, at least at this point in the game the only planets you can land on are the ones involved in the main story.

  • Getting around in the galaxy is slower. You have a really pretty cutscene every time you switch from one planet/system to another. It's nice the first few times, not the 20th.

  • The omni-tool scanner slows you down and I felt compelled to pull it out often to make sure I wasn't missing something.

  • The first planet you visit (after the intro planet) isn't a good one to show off for the demo. Or, alternatively, the demo ends just too soon. You can barely go anywhere until you do something (which I won't give away in case people are really wary of spoilers) but the trial stops right before you get to do that thing. So even when you get to the end of where the plot will take you in the demo, you've probably exhausted what you can explore too.

  • There are some sidequests that feel identical to ones I've done before in Mass Effect and other games. It's not something unique to this game, but a couple of times I thought, "Oh THIS again. OK." Not a huge thing, but there are some tropes.

  • I don't care about the enemies. At this point, they're just violent and nothing else. I wish that, by this point in the game, we had learned about them a bit more.

  • This is more nebulous but worth mentioning. I like the characters but none of them seem as memorable as the wonderful cast of characters from the first three games. I could be wrong, there's a lot of game left.

  • Sometimes the new on-planet vehicle is an asshole. I see what they were trying to do with the new controls for it, but it may be overcomplicated at times. And it doesn't have any weapons!



The good

  • The graphics, facial animations aside, are wonderful. I can't say much more about them than that. It's really good stuff.

  • The world-building is fantastic. Er... galaxy building? Andromeda feels alien. Even more than the planets you visit in the previous Mass Effect games. The structures built by the Milky Way crew look like modernized architecture from the previous games. It feels very Mass Effect, and yet separate from the Mass Effect trilogy that came before it.

  • The more open design helps make the worlds feel real. I wouldn't call it open-world, but it benefits from being more open. The addition of jump jets let you explore more of the space, and it feels less restricted.

  • Combat is much improved, largely because of the more open design and the jump jets, but everything just has more weight to it now. Enemies seem smarter, and will actively flank you. You have to pay attention.

  • Aside from the tropey quests mentioned above, the quests and sidequests are great. Even in the intro, when you first get control of your character, you can see things happening around you that you can jump into or not. When you first find a certain place (again, being careful of spoilers) you can start a murder mystery that takes you to multiple systems to solve.

  • Even if the lips don't match all the time, the voice acting is solid. I got used to FemShep, so in my mind Mass Effect has female protagonists and I chose Sara Ryder. Her voice actor is no Jennifer Hale, but she does well, and the supporting cast does as well.

  • There are callbacks to the old games. So far, they've been minor ones but it helps to tie the series together.

  • Omni-tool scanning, while not perfect (see above) is fun. I felt like I was in No Man's Sky, running around scanning animals, rocks, plants, and tech. I hope the folks at Hello Games play this and modify the scanner in No Man's Sky a bit, honestly.

  • (This isn't really a spoiler unless you've literally avoided everything about this game, so if you're here I assume you at least know the premise.) You aren't saving the galaxy this time, I don't think. I say "I don't think" because the plot has a long way to go and could significantly change. In the previous games there was a massive threat that needed to be stopped. In this game, it's all about making a new home. The new goal and focus are refreshing.

  • Multiplayer is pretty solid but I suck at it.

  • The Tempest isn't the Normandy but it's pretty sweet. It's that same familiar ship design from the SR-1 and SR-2, but modernized and shinier.

  • The characters are good. I'm pessimistic about them achieving the character development from the first three games, but they are good. I care about them. Natalie Dormer's Lexi T'Perro is a fantastic Asari doctor (who totally isn't into women, a fact I discovered accidentally), Vetra is a Turian who would make Garrus proud, and so on. The characters retain the traits of their races, while also having unique personalities.

  • The on-planet vehicle is much improved over the Mako. Yeah I know I complained about it up top, but in general it's far better. GTA it ain't, but it serves its purpose better than the Mako.



Bottom line
When I was looking for a screenshot to include up top, I found a screenshot from Shepard's apartment in Mass Effect 3, when she throws the party and they take a group photo. That felt like seeing a picture of my absolute best friends that I haven't seen in years. While Mass Effect 3 was a downgrade for the most part, I seriously felt regret and loss at seeing that screenshot. That's how much I loved the original trilogy. The question for many won't just be "Is Mass Effect: Andromeda a good game?" It will be "Does Mass Effect: Andromeda achieve what the previous games did?" And that's not really even something we can answer until there's a trilogy, because the strength of each new game builds because of the history.

For now, I can say Andromeda is really good so far. I'm simultaneously optimistic and hyper-critical because of loving the first trilogy. I have problems with Andromeda, some of which may get fixed, some of them are there for good, and some are my own brain telling me "BUT IT'S NOT SHEPARD!" But the problems don't make it bad, not at all. The facial animations are the biggest issue but, while they're distracting, I'm not playing the game for how people's faces look when they talk.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. There's a lot of promise here, and I just want to sleep until Tuesday so I don't have to wait to keep playing.