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Gearbox Digital Showcase at PAX Online 2020

Right now in Oregon the state wildfires are destroying so much forest the air is hazardous and when you look outside it reminds me of the worse scenes from an apocalypse film where we've lost control of our environment. Needless to say it's pretty bleak here so I wanted to share something a bit more upbeat in a recent Gearbox Digital Showcase from PAX Online. As time marches ever onward Gearbox is positioning itself as more of a top tier video game company and is expanding heavily into game publishing and during this Showcase it's on full display.

Some highlights of the Digital Showcase were a table read by the voice talent from the recent Borderlands 3 DLC Psycho... Read All

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Coming in November

Nintendo has just recently announced Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and it's coming in November. This is one more reason why I wish I owned a Switch. Nintendo has acknowledged that they're working on a sequel to Breath of the Wild, but this new game is actually a prequel as it is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild. The original Hyrule Warriors game on the Wii U was probably my most favorite game on the system. I really enjoyed it. Hyrule Warriors is a mix between The Legend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors games. If you haven't played the latter, basically it's an action war game where you control one character battling a whole army. The individuals in that army... Read All

Red Dead Redemption 2: A Steam Version Review

Azurephile gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

Azurephile gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

I just received the 100% completion achievement for Red Dead Redemption 2, so it’s time to write about it. This game is great. It is pretty much exactly what I wanted in that it was a deep game that had a lot to do and took a long time to complete. It made time disappear quickly. It was one of those great gaming experiences I was wanting. I decided to grab it while it was slightly discounted during Steam’s summer sale. There are three versions of it. The most expensive version comes with additional content for single player mode and Red Dead Online. The one that’s a little cheaper only comes with the additional single player content, while the cheapest version comes... Read All I just received the 100% completion achievement for Red Dead Redemption 2, so it’s time to write about it. This game is great. It is pretty much exactly what I wanted in that it was a deep game that had a lot to do and took a long time to complete. It made time disappear quickly. It was one of those great gaming experiences I was wanting. I decided to grab it while it was slightly discounted during Steam’s summer sale. There are three versions of it. The most expensive version comes with additional content for single player mode and Red Dead Online. The one that’s a little cheaper only comes with the additional single player content, while the cheapest version comes with none of the bonus content. I decided to get the middle one, as I’m not really interested in Red Dead Online. I didn’t really enjoy Grand Theft Auto Online, so that’s why I’m not interested in RDO. However, there was a weapon you can unlock in the game if you do a certain treasure hunt on GTAO, I did that.

If you’re not familiar with the series, this is actually the third game in the Red Dead series that started with Red Dead Revolver, which I’ve never played. It was followed up by the very successful and great Red Dead Redemption, which I now intend to replay to piece the two games together. Basically RDR is like GTA, but a Western version of it, so horses instead of cars. I really loved the horses. I only ever had an Arabian breed as my main horse for a long period of time, but there are lots of other breeds you can get. I found out early on what the best horses were and how to get them. There’s a white Arabian you can tame near the bigger frozen lake up North. In this game, you’re pretty much a gunslinger named Arthur, who’s in a gang. I personally think the story is fantastic and emotionally moving. I won’t give away spoilers, but even when I discovered a spoiler, I was still quite affected by some of the events of the game. It’s interesting that I love this game so much, because I’m not into guns, hunting, and thieving, but this game puts them together and does a really great job of it.

Unfortunately the game is not without it’s flaws. The majority of issues I saw were minor, but visual as some object didn’t render properly. I visited one character who had a floating candle in front of him. I decided to share that with Rockstar tech support/customer service and it seems to have been fixed. However, this wasn’t the only bug I spotted and shared with Rockstar and about half the time I found their representatives to be quite unhelpful as though they hadn’t even read my ticket. Eventually, I pretty much gave up on reporting these issues as I had a few bad experiences with them. This I find to be unique as most other companies have excellent tech support customer service representatives. The game did not always do well with the Steam overlay, so I disabled that after a while. Sometimes, after using the overlay’s web browser, the overlay/web browser would stay on screen even though I had told it to close or tried to close it with TAB and SHIFT. This in turn made me rely on ALT-TAB to look up things on the Internet and keep track of that 100% completion checklist I was working on. Unfortunately, sometimes this caused the game to crash. Sometimes the game would stutter for a few seconds, but this was uncommon and didn’t last very long. I think perhaps something else was going on with my PC, but perhaps I’m wrong. Still, it was uncommon enough to live with. Other than that, the game ran smoothly, extremely well. I was impressed! In fact, the game’s benchmarking tool ran a lot smoother than GTAV’s, which made me think about how they’ve optimized the engine. I thought RDR2 ran better than GTAV, but after playing the latter again for a bit, I noticed that it doesn’t render the same way in-game as it does in the benchmark. In the benchmark, things pop in on screen instead of naturally gradually, maybe it’s that the view distance is short, but I didn’t see this in RDR2, except in one area later in the game.

There is a lot to do in RDR2. The story is set in chapters. Chapter 1 gives you an introduction to the game’s controls and mechanics. There are only a couple of missions, before it moves on. Once you’re in Chapter 2, the world opens up, but not completely. There is one area you cannot go until much later in the game. Even if you avoid the law, you will be killed by “invisible snipers.” In a way, this is disappointing that a big part of the game is locked, because it prevents you from completing some tasks, such as studying all the plants in the game. In Chapter 2, it’s a good idea to do some of the story missions to get you started. One will open up a fence, which is someone you can sell stolen goods to, who also accepts wagons. Another will take you on a hunt for a Legendary animals. These are rare single animals in the wild you can track, kill, and trade in their carcass or pelt to the trapper and get another material you can take to the fence to create a trinket. Trinkets give you a permanent bonus, so it’s a good idea get these as soon as possible. Otherwise this is a perfect time to go exploring and doing a lot of non-story things. The game will tell you about some of these things, for instance there are Challenges where you need to do something to complete and when you do, you’ll rank up and eventually complete it. When you complete Challenges, the trapper will have new improved equipment unlocked that you can buy. This equipment often does things like increase ammo capacity and reduce maintenance needed for your guns. Having a completed set of this equipment will unlock a bonus to one of your stats, depending on the equipment. Stats in the game include health, stamina, and Dead Eye. The latter is kind of like V.A.T.S. in Fallout, it slows down time and allows you to aim and shoot. It can even highlight the areas on the animal or person you want to shoot for a critical hit. Although the full part of this feature isn’t unlocked until later in the game. It’s a very handy skill, one of the most important indeed. You’ll want to keep your Dead Eye bar filled as you may be wanting to use this often. You can replenish it with food, tonics, or getting kills without using it.

Hunting and fishing is an activity you can do, which I enjoyed even though I don’t hunt or like hunting in real life. Non-Legendary animals come in three qualities; poor, good, and perfect. If you kill a perfect animal with a critical shot that doesn’t damage the pelt, then you can get a perfect pelt from it. These are often needed for crafting different materials and also an optional hunting quest you can do. You use your Dead Eye ability to slow time and it will show you trails of animals that you can track and follow. No matter what animal you kill, you’ll get some meat from skinning it. You’ll want to set up camp often as sleeping restores your stats and it allows you to cook and craft items. You can then later eat the food you’ve cooked or found while you’re in a gun fight. There are herbs you can use as seasoning that will give the meat you cook certain advantages; like one will give you a bonus to health. However, I very rarely used any of the meat I cooked nor any of the food items I picked up in the world. Still, I enjoyed looting everything.

When you complete a story mission, you’ll be given a bronze, silver, or gold reward for it. These pertain to hidden objectives within the mission. If you complete all of them, you get a gold reward. I’m not sure if there’s anything related to getting gold in every mission, but it seems like a lot to do. This isn’t that different than GTAV’s missions.

There is really a lot about this game to talk about and it’s kind of hard not to find spoilers if you’re looking for information on something. I wanted to work on the 100% completion achievement, but by finding out what I had to do for it, I ended up meeting some spoilers. Although that didn’t change the game for me, I still enjoyed it very much.

I definitely recommend playing this if you’re into this kind of game or if it sounds like something you’d be interested in. It’s not too incredibly flawed and I got really attached to the characters and my horses. This is a game that will keep making you want to come back for more and play it all that you can, or at least that was my experience with it.

Oh, I also recommend using the keyboard and mouse controls instead of a controller. Even though this game was born on consoles, it translated quite perfectly to the PC’s keyboard and mouse. The mouse aids in aiming and guiding your horse or looking around. My only recommendation would be to change the Dead Eye key from the mouse scroll wheel button to CAPS LOCK as it can be tricky to trigger in it’s default setting.

So, what do you think about this? Have you played this game or RDR? Does Red Dead Online appeal to you? What did you think about it? Let me know what you think. If you want to talk about spoilers, I could create another post so we can do that.

Doom Source Port Breakdown

Recently I completed the original 1993 Doom campaigns Knee Deep in the Dead, The Shoes of Hell & Inferno. My recent dive back into the original Doom and subsequent focus is still going strong and one fun part of that is that I've tried out many of the major Doom source ports. If you want to dive back in to Doom it might not be obvious the best way to play so I hope this post helps that.

I'm going to order the Doom ports top to bottom as a sort of recommendation system where the top most, I recommend most.

The Official Doom Unity Port

iD Software worked with Nerve to create these modern Doom ports built on the Unity Framework. Whereas originally these ports weren't... Read All

Two Essential Runs From Summer Games Done Quick 2020!

The Simpsons Arcade Game by LRock617 in 20:33 One thing that makes LRock617 absolutely demolish The Simpsons Arcade game is the Japanese version adds more brooms making it possible to do some very powerful jump attacks. That said, LRock's skill is genuine and it's The Simpsons Arcade game so why not watch it?

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link by EnchantressOfNumbers in 50:59 I've played Zelda II a handful of times but was always stopped by it's difficulty. I enjoy watching Zelda II runs because they make the game seem easy something I know in bones is not true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0H5Pnp7K7Q

Digital Foundry Showcases Sonic Running on the SNES

TiagoSC on the NES Dev forums brought an early version of Sonic to Super Nintendo. Some have said Sega does what Nintendon't but apparently it's more like NintenDOES! Digital Foundry has a great break down video of it and some of the tradeoffs TiagoSC made. The SNES version is cut down visually a bit but I appreciate the SNES soundchip for Sonic a bit more than the original.

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20638

Official Doom Unity Ports Get Widescreen & Steam Release

iD Software is continuing to improve the official Doom & Doom II Unity ports with a fresh new patch that brings the game out of the 4x3 aspect ratio and in to a full 16x9 widescreen experience. You can also play the new ports on Steam so if you own The Ultimate Doom or Doom II on Steam you will get the new versions as an automatic update.

These ports don't support mouse aim or jump as some modern source ports do but since the original Doom and Doom II didn't allow that these ports are becoming one of the best ways to play Doom and Doom II in a very authentic way.

https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en/article/Cfuf9wL5enNxkx90hfJ21/doom-and-doom-ii-update-september-3

Mama Mia The Super Mario Bros. 35th Anniversary Nintendo Direct Is Stuffed With So Much Mario!

Nintendo let loose a new Direct that celebrates the 35th Anniversary of Mario with a whole lot of games to keep us busy for the next 35 years. I'm not going to cover everything but I'll point to the highlights.

New Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch

Nintendo is releasing a new Game & Watch handheld where you can play the original Super Mario Bros. + Lost Levels and a bit more. The Game & Watch will be released November 13th and they haven't mentioned a price yet or provided the ability to pre-order. This is Nintendo really focusing on collector bait and I think i'll take the hook. A handheld that plays two games? Sure, why not.

https://gameandwatch.nintendo.com/

I... Read All

Buy Even More Retro Games: COLLECTION of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend Comes To Switch!

In a recent Nintendo Direct Mini we got word that Square will be releasing the original Gameboy Final Fantasy Legend Saga on Switch this December 15th. The verdict seems mixed on the first Final Fantasy Legend but the series seems to be more loved from the second game to the third. With that, the Final Fantasy Legend series was one I missed originally and this December seems like a great time to jump in to the original Gameboy trilogy on Switch. According to Time to Beat the original Final Fantasy Legend takes about 10 hours, Final Fantasy Legend II is 15 and III is 14 so they aren't very long all told.

It seems to only be getting a digital release at the moment but... Read All

The Origins of Doom's Sound Effects

I know what you are thinking right now. "Hey Jon can you share a 23 minute video about the origin of the sound effects in Doom?" Sure Internet friend I can do that and while you are flexing your finger ready to tap play on the video I encourage you to check all the other Doom content I've posted recently as well.