I was just coming to post this! I hope we get the same kind of treatment for Diablo II and others. Starcraft is coming up on 20 years old... 20 years! It's amazing to see it played so heavily still, and getting this kind of update.
Yeah, Travis is right, it was about 20 years ago (apparently) that I got my copy of Starcraft. I couldn't find it within my small local area, so I actually travelled half an hour to a Wal-Mart in West Virginia to get it. I can't remember which box cover I chose, I think it was Protoss or Terran.
This is good news and what surprises me more is that it's supposed to be out this summer. I enjoyed the game and the expansion. I liked the cut scenes and funny things units and characters say. Remember, "I love you Sarge!" LOL
However, I'm not sure when or if I might pick this up. I enjoyed SCII, but the recent additions were a bit too difficult for me and I ended up cheating. This kind of turned me off a little bit. I remember using cheat codes on the original. I don't remember it being extremely difficult. It's been a long time since I've played it, so I don't recall very much very well.
The only missions I remember I cheated on in SC was the ending mission where the Protoss team up with the Terrans against the Zerg. That was nuts and I just typed in the code to have it be over. And it was. And I was confused by the ending.
Go figure. 
Starcraft is now free with a new patch. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/starcraft-goes-free-today-with-new-patch-its-first/1100-6449431/
And when the remaster comes out we'll be able to play multiplayer across this version and the remaster.
The one thing that I question is that CD-key banning is the most effective tool they had against hackers. They don't have that now since someone can just make a new account rather than having to pony up money for it.
I still need to catch up on MST1K and MST2K
I'm so looking forward to this. I haven't watched a ton of the old MST3K but I've seen some, and I've seen a lot of movies with RiffTrax, which is kinda their follow-up. It's all riffing on movies, without the plot, but it's still great.
I hear it takes place in the not too distant future.
I still want to pitch that if you have stepped away for a bit and want a recommendation on one to watch on Netflix that you start with Pod People. It's a very special kind of bad movie and the host segments and everything else makes it a very special episode.
It's also perfect for watching late at night so if you don't know what to watch... POD PEOPLE! Trumpy will thank you(this is not a political reference, but if you watch the episode it will make more sense)
I've never seen this show, so I was kind of delighted to see it on Netflix when I joined. Perhaps I'll check it out sometime.
Oh and speaking of Netflix, I probably wouldn't have jumped on the Netflix train if it wasn't for Cheerful Ghost. :)
Greg I don't know how you existed without Netflix :D
Your attempts to start this sound like my attempts to start Mass Effect. It took me three times to get past 6 or 7 hours. I'm thrilled I finally did, but that first game was a slow burn. I gather Dragon Age is as well from other people's comments. I have played about an hour of it so far and it looks really interesting.
Interesting. I can't really think of many other games I've started this many times and failed to make significant progress. On the contrary, I've played Skyrim 3 times, but I believe I completed it each time. I seem to recall Jon saying his experience w/ DA's battle system was similar to mine.
It's very strange/unique. It's not even turn based, it's weird. But it works! I haven't put much time in at all, I just needed something to take my mind off waiting for Andromeda so I fired it up. I plan on diving into that series next.
Cool! Maybe you'll post something and I can join your conversation. I might do the opposite, play ME after DA. I'm not really sure what I'll play when I finish this series. I do want to hop back into Ark to check out the latest patch, but I don't want to do that while playing one of these DA games, because I'm afraid I'll forget what's going on and feel like I have to start over again. Ark can wait, for now.
DAO just crashed on me. It's done that at least once before. That reminds me that this is one of those games where saving often is definitely something you want to do. I just lost some progress again. Ah well.
DAO was recommended to me years ago and I started playing and walked away about when you did. I absolutely __LOVED__ Neverwinter Nights which this is a spiritual successor to. Again, very similar to NwN which I loved but somehow, Dragon Age Origins didn't hit me quite right. I think it was the combat too and at some point the difficulty spiked and it was already feeling like work so I stepped away.
It's one of those games I bet if I came back to i'd enjoy in bursts but I think it might also be a game for another kind of gamer or another version of myself. Back when Neverwinter Nights came out that was the only new game I had that could run on my college laptop. I had played WarCraft III so much I wore out the CD's(not really but I played it a crazy amount) and I was looking for something else. Neverwinter Nights offered a metric junkload of gameplay and I really enjoyed it and bought the two expansions that came out for it.
I've never played NwN, but DAO reminds me of Lord of the Rings and The Elder Scrolls. Since you mentioned it, I haven't played WarCraft III either (although I do have a demo of it on my PC).
Did you ever lower the difficulty when you played? I feel no shame that I'm playing it on "easy" now, it (to me) certainly makes the game much more enjoyable. That doesn't mean I don't get my ass kicked, but it's usually not so bad or often.
The game offers a variety of choices. For example, in the quest I'm working on now with the dwarves, the king is dead (trust me, not a major spoiler), and I can choose which of the two sides to support. There are other choices to me made as well. I can recall at least one bad ass kicking you can avoid, by saying the right thing. At another point, there's a dragon, which you clearly see, but it won't attack you unless you blow a certain horn (or hit the gong for the console version).
There are also plenty of gifts you can give to your party members, which raises or lowers their disposition to you (how much they like you). I haven't run into it yet, but it seems "romancing" certain characters is a very popular thing among DA fans. You can do this via gift giving. If you do decide to "romance" a character, you're not limited to herterosexuality.
One of my biggest annoyances so far is trying to righ-click on (to open) something on the ground (like a chest) and instead right-clicking on a character, which initiates a conversation. So, sometimes while my characters are following me, they get in the way. Your party members don't have to follow you every where as you can have them stay put or "move freely."
> I feel no shame that I'm playing it on "easy" now, it (to me) certainly makes the game much more enjoyable.
I play a lot of games on easy these days. I had more patience for it back in the day but I just don't have time to master a game the way I used to. If I'm getting home from work, then relaxing a bit before/after dinner, then getting maybe 2 hours of gaming in, I don't want to spend half that time repeating stuff because I died.
Wow, Steam says 40 hours. Even on easy the last part was extremely difficult. Luckily you can use your army allies and call them into battle. In the final battle I used golems and when they died I called in the dwarves. Now I have Awakening and the DLC to do.
Isn't the switch region free? I guess a text heavy game like this might be difficult to play though.
I enjoyed Faeria up until a point. The last time I played I was working on my dailies, but I got blocked. I think I might not be high enough in levels to complete some of them. The only thing I could actually do required me to play against other people. That's what made me quit. Still, it's a good game and I recommend it for those that like such games. For people like me, it's good and fun, until you're forced to play against others (which I really despise). That said, congrats to Faeria on 1.0!!
In a world where free-to-play card games are becoming a dime a dozen, it's nice to see a new take on it. This seems like the kind of thing I'd suck at but I'm going to give it a shot!
Travis, I strongly recommend checking out the Faeria YouTube channel. They usually have good videos, such as how to build decks. I liked the yellow elemental cards, I think that kind of deck is usually referred to as a rush deck. It is pretty fun to rush at your opponent and beat them quickly, granted I mostly played against the AI.
> In a world where free-to-play card games are becoming a dime a dozen, it's nice to see a new take on it. This seems like the kind of thing I'd suck at but I'm going to give it a shot!
I'm not particularly good but I still win a fair amount of the time against people with better decks than me in casual. I've played through a lot of the single player stuff and I haven't quiet completed it and am sort of saving it for later
That said, you can get a lot of milage out of the basic decks and it's a ton of fun. Plus, right now I haven't seen anyone be amazing yet. Since it's new still people aren't dominating things. At least I haven't seen that yet, but i'm not playing ranked.
This is just delightful. Not the most useful thing ever, but I love some of the ideas people implement with the Pi.
Sweet, Vinny got an Ocarina for Christmas.
Looks like this month (and maybe next) we're both playing Bioware games. I'm working my way through the Dragon Age series. I intend to get the Mass Effect series eventually since it comes with a lot of strong recommendations (from friends). I'll probably wait for a sale though.
They go on sale often. In fact, you just missed a huge Origin sale where they were way cheap. I recommend getting them on Origin because the DLC is way easier to deal with there.
(But if you have them on Steam already you can *usually* activate them on Origin with the CD key, at least until those keys expire)
That sucks that I missed it. I do intend to buy them on Origin, since Steam's ME collection is limited. Steam doesn't even have ME3.
Nice review, Travis. Seems more fair and balanced than others I've read. Andromeda was high on my anticipated games list for this year. While I haven't played yet, I did watch gameplay of the first hour, after reading some reviews, and decided I should probably rent this first. I'm at 57% completion on Horizon Zero Dawn, and the complaints I see about Andromeda are handled with absolute style and grace in Horizon. I've heard other reviewers complain mostly about the writing in Andromeda, and from what little I've watched, I can see what they mean. Bioware games are typically synonymous with rich story. The beginning of Andromeda is more like cheap fiction. More Starship Troopers than Star Trek. Which is okay, I guess, if that's what you're looking for. To be fair, though, I'll give it a rent and see what else is there.
The story does seem to get better. I'm not super far into it or anything but I can kinda feel things building toward something. That something could be good or bad.
But yeah still. None of the same writers from previous games worked on this one. We're in uncharted waters, story-wise.
Okay, I'm a little over 10 hours into Andromeda now. All of the complaints seem justified, or at the very least understandable, from what I've played. Animations are not what you would expect from AAA studios in 2017, but for a Mass Effect game, they aren't awful, which isn't a great thing. It would be like saying the Wii U was amazing for implementing HD graphics, when everyone else had been doing it for a decade. It's progress for them, but a slow train moving for the industry. Voice acting in Andromeda is decent, mostly. What those voices say, however, can be cringe inducing at times. It's less horrible than some have made it out to be, but it's indeed jarring. The combination of poor dialog segments attached to unpolished facial animations is where I find the game most disappointing. These are the vessels that are telling the story. It's hard to take them seriously when they all look like they had their eyelids removed before cryo-sleep.
Shepherd's saga left large shoes to fill, and, smartly, Bioware has thrown them away altogether and are trying something mostly fresh, but safely familiar. Its a good idea, but I find the execution so far is boring. Rather than explore options in this new galaxy, you're immediately presented with ad nauseam justifications, from almost every speaking character, as to why this game had to have combat mechanics. I get that the story is about immature explorers making bold choices and finding their way, but that doesn't mean the story itself has to be immature. The overall design of story, levels, and characters feels sloppy. This could be something that improves as the game progresses, but it needs to be there at the beginning, and certainly within the first 10 hours.
UI is painful. Combat is painful (AI especially. Again, maybe better for ME, but way below average). Environment scanning is painful as well (I know you like it, Travis, but it takes me out of the game. I'll take NMS existing scanner any day. An improvement would have been to make an omni visor, or something so it could actually be a vision mode, ala the Arkham games, especially being a 3rd person game. As it is, you're constantly pulling out the scanner, because you don't want to miss anything. At least in NMS, when you do scan, it seems out of purpose rather than paranoia.). In fact, that's what I keep coming back to with my game play: an unnecessarily painful experience. And I'm super bummed about that.
The best thing I saw, so far, happened in the first 20 min or so: The "cinematic" when your shuttle is en route to Habitat 7. For a moment, it felt like a Mass Effect game. The rest of the time if felt more like "Uncharted Jr. in Space" Effect. I want to say that I'd come back to it at some point, to see how it plays out (maybe the real meat is at the 20 hour mark! I've heard that Final Fantasy XIII is like that.), but I don't see anything in there that would pull me back in.
I haven't had any UI issues and I love the combat, but I totally get what you mean about the scanner. It's not for everyone.
I don't know how far you got in that 10 hours, but if you haven't left Eos, the galaxy has yet to open up. Very shortly after Eos, it starts to really feel like Mass Effect. I'll avoid spoilers but send me a text/chat/something if you want more details about what I'm talking about.
But you're absolutely right that this is a problem in and of itself. I kinda wonder if the start of the game was written around that 10 hour trial so that you don't get stuck in something important. Eos's main plot should have ended way earlier (exploration later notwithstanding) so that the next chapter could have come by at least hour 6ish? The pacing of the beginning is way bad.
An aside, but how freakin' annoying is the sudoku you have to do for some of the hacking? Talk about taking you out of the game.
Total sudoku! I mean it's nice to see an attempt at fresh puzzle mechanics, but it's literally sudoku with glyphs.
It changes up a bit on the more difficult ones but the basics are still the same.
But jeez that's just what I want in the middle of my exploration, right? Stop playing a video game and play sudoku instead!
I think you might be on to something with the pacing of the 10 hour demo. It's so - and I hate to keep using this word, but it fits so well - painful. The pacing of the combat is intended to be flinchingly fast, and they've done well in that regard. But everything outside of that slows to a crawl, to the point where I feel like I need to take a day just to figure out the mod/inventory system. There is a reason that Call of Duty doesn't have 10 layers of character modification and nuanced weapon crafting. I don't know. I feel like you should pick one or the other, or simmer the whole thing down to a happy medium. Does the happy medium come after 10 hours?
It gets better at least, yes. I can't say whether the happy medium comes because that's going to be a moving target. I'm on hour 22 and it's better now than it was at hour 15, which was better than hour 10.
What's odd-- and I'm not just getting used to it, I watched some videos to confirm-- the facial animations get better. I kinda wonder if EA said "We need 10 hours to give early" and the whole Eos arc was a rush job. OR if they tried to pad it to make the cut-off point (right before you head into the SPOILER that changes the SPOILER and lets you SPOILER) close to that 10-hour mark.
Anyway, yes, everything gets better. The plot opens up significantly, you feel like your actions are leading to something story-wise, the sidequests seem less grindy and more things you can do while on your way to other things (while I liked them before, you had to travel way off the beaten path on Eos which was a grind all on its own). It seems like the pace averages so that you aren't just driving for 5 minutes with nothing to do.
The most important thing, character banter and the interplay of your squad gets better. It's like they figured out the characters and started writing them better. OR they padded the intro and had to write shoddy plot/dialogue to fill it in. Either way, once you have everyone, it feels like that same kind of Mass Effect character interplay.
Better and better. Still loads of problems and plenty to complain about, but I still want to stay up all night playing.
An important thing to stress here is that it's the same gameplay, just paced better. If you don't like the combat or the nomad, you won't like them after Eos either.
As for the inventory/mod system, it seems to work about as well as it did in the other games, but they needlessly change it every game so you have to get used to it. One option you have is just ignoring it for the most part. Just switch to new guns/armor you find and don't worry about crafting. Since they took out the ability to customize your squadmates' gear it's less of an issue.
This article from Forbes is great for where you seem to be scrypt: https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/03/21/ten-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-mass-effect-andromeda/#3ff712be5e68
The one thing about this article though-- he mentions the first two planets being Eos and Havarld but you don't have to do it that way. I went Eos -> Voeld and based on that article, I'm glad.
Oh wow. Crafting materials no longer taking inventory slots gives me like two stash tabs! I'll have to log in to check this out. I don't want to start playing again until the necro update, I want to come into that fresh, but I gotta see this new QoL stuff.
Crafting materials not taking up inventory space is sweet! This update sounds good, but not something that makes me want to jump back in the game right now. I'm looking forward to the Necromancer. I like that there's still so much in the game that I haven't even touched. I've hardly done anything in Adventure mode, though I did try it out a few times.
I'd like to see another expansion for this game, but I won't be disappointed if it doesn't get one. I don't see the need to "wrap up" the whole Leia thing. I guess I just didn't feel that it was lacking closure.
Y'all, Leia is the princess/general in Star Wars. You're thinking of Leah :D
I blame my error on Jon, he wrote "Leia" and so I wrote it that way, too. Infectious, Jon, you see your error is infectious. LOL
> Y'all, Leia is the princess/general in Star Wars. You're thinking of Leah :D
Right, that person.
I have a way with getting people to do the wrong thing....
... suckers.
Updated Necromancer video, the "Melee-nancer." It looks pretty cool. I'm really intrigued by what they said at the end, that this could be a real expansion, possibly with a new Act, not just a simple character class addition. They also said that while there is still no release date, the Necromancer will be joining the PTR "soon." I'm going to take a guess and (hope) that this will be out by summer time. Anyway, the video is short, but worth watching!! https://youtu.be/v8Kc8vNap-E
I really wish they did a full act for the Necro update. Seems like they said there might be but Blizzard is being very cagey about it, which I understand. *fingers crossed*
But like Travis I want to wait until the Necro is out before I head back in the game to experience all the freshness at once.
Blizz seemed to clear up all our questions with a recent update. TLDR; No new story updates.
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/20597129
"Is the Necromancer part of an expansion pack?
No, the Necromancer is part of a content pack which includes the class, an in-game pet, cosmetic wings, two additional character slots, two additional stash tabs (on PC), a portrait frame, pennant, banner, and a banner sigil.
It will, however, launch alongside a free major content patch that includes two new zones, Challenge Rifts, and more. These additional features will be available for all players with Diablo III: Reaper of Souls or the Ultimate Evil Edition.
How much will the pack cost?
Weāre not ready to announce a price yetāwe know youāre eager to find out, but we have a few more iās to dot and tās to cross before we can share.
When is the Necromancer coming to Diablo III?
We are currently aiming for the second half of 2017; when we have an official release date, weāll certainly share it!"
Thanks, Jon! It sounds like what I expected it to be originally. The only part I'm not too fond of is the last sentence, "second half of 2017," as I expected this to come out during the first half. I'm still ok with that though. I have other games to play and there are also other games I'm waiting on (like Terraria: Otherworld).
I think second half of 2017 has been their target for a while now, but I may be wrong. That said, I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm kinda patient with game updates/releases.
Speaking of patience and game releases... yeah Terraria Otherworld :D
> That said, I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm kinda patient with game updates/releases.
I agree. I have so many games already that I don't need anything to launch at any particular time. So developers can take as long as they need, i'll still be around when it gets done.
Can I get it on Switch?
I've heard the newer Meat Boy game will be coming to Switch but not the old one.