Thirith on 19/2/2020 at 07:45
I've been wanting to replay Assassin's Creed III (in the remastered version) lately, for various reasons, masochism being just one of them. However, the game runs so poorly on my PC (and sure, I've got an ultrawide 1440p screen and the settings were all at max, but I do have a 9900k and a 2080 Ti, so the game has no excuse to run somewhere around 20 fps), even after tweaking the settings, so I decided that Connor can get lost, at least on PC. This morning I started the Red Dead Redemption 2 story instead, and the game runs smoothly and is utterly beautiful, which makes it all the more ridiculous that the AC3 that came out last year and that looks so much more primitive than RDR2 runs at about a quarter of the framerate.
Those games are mainly for the mornings before I'm off to work, though. Mainly, I'm still savouring my replay of Kentucky Route Zero. I finished Act II over the weekend and am looking forward especially to Act III and *that* moment.
twisty on 20/2/2020 at 12:04
Out of interest, how many hours of gaming do you cram in before work? And are you often late getting to work as a result?
Thirith on 20/2/2020 at 13:20
Not much. I mainly wait for my wife to get ready, as we work in the same part of town, so I usually get 30-45 minutes of gaming done in the morning when I feel like it. When she's done, I'm done, so I'm not late as a result - but then I don't have to be there by a specific time. As long as I'm in by 9am, everything's fine, and if it wasn't a regular thing I could even go in later, as long as I put in my hours.
reizak on 20/2/2020 at 15:11
That AC3 issue is baffling since your system should be able to just brute force even a terribly optimized game, but some people have solved the same problem by setting the application-specific options for "maximum performance" (or whatever it's called, I have an AMD) in the Nvidia control panel. Could be some weird driver bug, dunno.
After a few weeks of being obsessed with Zelda: Breath of the Wild I finally "finished" it. That is I beat Ganon; there's still a bunch of side stuff to do if I'm so inclined, but I usually lose motivation in these things after finishing the main quest, which is why I tried to do everything before rolling over Ganon with my ridiculously overpowered Link. I finished all 120 shrines and the DLC shrines, but found the Master Sword trials too annoying to bother with. They plonk you into a series of twenty or so levels without any of your equipment, and if you die before reaching the end you have to start from the beginning, and it takes too long and is too easy to mess up in that I didn't find it particularly fun. I also only found about 100 of the 900 (!) korok seeds, and while a lot of them are cleverly hidden and the little thieves are pretty cute I'll pass on that. Either way I really got into this game, and have that slightly empty feeling now that it's over. Maybe I'll harness that feeling for a replay of Disco Elysium.
Starker on 21/2/2020 at 06:20
The game does have bit of a learning curve. The main thing is to get behind obstacles and to manage time units -- know exactly how much each action takes and plan accordingly. For scouting, it's a good idea to bring a tank along and it also comes in handy when you want to capture deep ones, since they can't really damage it.
Also, screening and training soldiers is quite important in the long run. Hire a whole bunch, keep the best, and try to have rookies get the first killing shot, so they can get experience. And until you can get psi training to weed out psionically weak soldiers, fire anyone who gets mind controlled on the first turn.
henke on 21/2/2020 at 12:13
I am also playing arthouse trucking sim Kentucky Route Zero. Finished Act 3 yesterday, it was super-long and really kinda bleak by the end.
Also picked up The Outer Worlds for PS4, gonna get into it this weekend.
Starker on 21/2/2020 at 12:51
Quote Posted by icemann
Don't they get better at that stuff over time? Like get better mind resistance, ability to do MC's themselves etc etc.
Nope. Psi skill you can train, but the resistance stat is fixed for life. Likewise, energy recovery is fixed for life (initial TUs/3, rounded down). Also, bravery is somewhat difficult to improve, since it essentially requires you to get soldiers killed.
Every primary stat (react, fire acc, melee acc, throw acc, psi skill, bravery) you can improve by taking relevant actions that increase them (taking react shots, firing and hitting, meleeing, throwing, using psi skill, resisting panic) -- 1 action gets an increase of 0-1 points, 3 actions 1-3 points, 6 actions 1-4 points, and 11+ actions 2-6 points. So, for example, if you want to improve throwing accuracy, have every soldier throw an item to another 3 times.
Secondary stats (energy, TUs, health, strength) improve whenever you have taken any primary action in mission other than throwing, no matter which one or how many times you do it.
Also...
Reaction is more important than you'd think -- it not only allows you to get reaction shots, but also determines who gets to go first in a situation. So if you encounter an alien during your turn and it is aware of you, both of your reactions get compared to determine whether the alien gets a reaction shot or not. The effective reaction stat is a percentage of remaining TUs, so a unit out of TUs (eg. panicked) never gets a reaction shot and a unit with full TUs gets the full chance of whatever their stat is.
Firing accuracy improves any time you hit a hostile enemy (mind controlled aliens count as friendlies) and one getting caught in the blast of an explosive shot counts as a hit, so it's not a bad idea to give your rookies either explosive weapons or weapons capable of auto fire. I usually keep them around near the starting position so they can take the first shots whenever one of the squads combing the map sees an enemy.
Melee accuracy is a pointless stat, since every melee weapon has amazing accuracy anyway.
Throw accuracy is so trivial to train you might as well do it on your last turn or whenever a squad has reached the end of their route.
Psi skill goes up so fast (and gets trained automatically in psi labs), it's almost no effort to train. And once you get the amps or whatever they are called in TFTD, you're a master of the battlefield anyway, so you get many many chances for it.
Starker on 21/2/2020 at 14:41
Yeah, no, it happens automatically, if the soldier's reaction level is higher than the alien's and there are enough TUs. And it's always a snap shot, so it retracts whatever percentage TUs it costs from the reaction level. Same goes for aliens -- once they get a reaction shot, their reaction level decreases.
Starker on 21/2/2020 at 15:50
Yeah, even before I got the game, I read about it in a book / gaming guide (it was before WWW really took off) where they had all kinds of strategies and little tricks to give you an edge. Like for example you never have to do terror missions at night, because they will not disappear while one of your crafts is targeting it. And explosive blasts don't expand upwards, so grenades cannot hurt your or enemy flying soldiers.
SubJeff on 22/2/2020 at 00:06
Spiderman on PS4.
27% into the main story now and what a fun game. The movement is really great. The modelling of the city is amazing. Very well done and two thumbs up so far.