My main focus is HZD right now, but love what I have played of Nier so far.

good, good....yep, looking forward to getting back to horizon so swapped over to nier before hzd really got going...

Anyone ever play Master Of Orion 1 and 2? I'm generally not into strategy games, but these are simple enough that I enjoy them. Is there a modern equivalent?

not really my area, and its fairly old itself now, but would something like sins of a solar empire fit the bill?

Hard to tell from the video because I can't tell what's going on (I'm sure the genre has mutated a lot since the early 90's), but looks like an interesting game. I like the weird evil voiceover I'll have to look into it, thanks for the recommendation!

Nier is... really fucking hard.

Played for 3 hours and have yet to get through the tutorial section on hard difficulty. Doesn't help that the tutorial doesn't explain key moves and the ability to heal, but still the best part of an hour without a save point and multiple enemies that can 1 hit kill you. Wow.

aye, i think the opening has put a few people off and they've whipped it back to the shop/applied for a refund- to get to the last boss, die then find out you're back at the beginning...

it's much more straightforward after that and saving opens up almost straight away...

alternatively, drop the difficulty for the opening then raise once you're past it...unless you're too hardcore for that....

wouldn;t surprise me if that unlocked one of the additional endings....

for anyone interested who hasn;t bought yet...final fantasy 15 is 9.99 in the uk psn store...fucking bargain at that price...my favourite certainly since 12 and probably since ps1...

there's a few other bargains as well, though i haven;t had a chance to dig thoroughly yet...but that's the cream so far...

and ff15 has disappeared....sounds like another psn cock-up.....

I did make it through after another 2 attempts or so. Must have died like six times on the tutorial.

A bit frustrating at the time, but you get that wonderful "FUCK YEAH" feeling when you pull it off that makes it all worth it. That's what I play challenging games for. I have to admit I did go from being fucking terrible to starting to feel like I get how the game works.

Then I died to a non-hostile antelope right at the start of the proper game.

Mass Effect Andromeda is released.

UncertainSloth wrote:and ff15 has disappeared....sounds like another psn cock-up.....

apparently it was only for PS plus players.

it was originally down as a further ps plus discount & i saw it as such and some people managed to grab it but they removed the whole listing from the site then relisted as a ps plus discount to £30

i know people that got it, downloaded it and are playing it but are worried the license will be revoked

they may try and pass it off as a flash sale but the 9.99 listing had an expiry of the same date in april as all the other new discounts....

SafeAsMilk wrote:Anyone ever play Master Of Orion 1 and 2? I'm generally not into strategy games, but these are simple enough that I enjoy them. Is there a modern equivalent?

Master of Orion ;) - http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/08/26/ ... ion-review

Have not played MoO but Sins of Solar Empire, especially with Rebellion, is imo excellent. End game is kind of weak, but that goes for probably most of games in this genre. It has decent level of customization (of campaigns/maps), nice graphics, interesting research trees/choices/buildings/units and factions, and pretty good combat.

Another one could probably be Stellaris reviewed here by some members before. Even Homeworld Remastered is good simply because its remaster of epic.

Thommo wrote:Makes me sad though, it's the end of an era.

I remember that somehow Mass Effect and Dragon Age origins flew under my radar and I played them both in a glorious few months after buying Mass Effect on platinum on my XBOX. Bioware have definitely jumped the shark now, if both of their flagship series have stumbled as badly as the reviews seem to suggest. DA is getting worse with every installment, and now Mass Effect seems to be following suit.

I feel like eating crow over this after playing the new ME last night after downloading. Loved it. Yeah there are some things that bugged me (seriously, calm the fuck down with the 20th century progressive agenda, why the fuck is SpaceX mentioned?) but there's so much to love. It has the gameplay aspiration of ME1 and ME3 combined in terms of innovation and challenge, a sense of exploration, character development, gameplay diversity and a new beginning and much more that the original Mass Effect aspired to but fell short of.

A few wonky animations, some less than perfect pacing and the odd line of duff dialogue (which admittedly is below what Bioware once did on the writing front, albeit not on the animation front) is a small price to pay. The sound design is mediocre, compared to the original score, but still, this game is so much better than the reviews I've read it's unreal, let alone the ludicrous "user reviews" on Metacritic. This is a great game as far as I can tell. Maybe not a classic like the original ME, but great.

The animations are pretty terrible and the UI can be really obtuse. I'm not far enough in it to figure out if I like the characters yet, though.

Mostly I'm worried there aren't enough alien races in the new galaxy.

Thommo wrote:

Thommo wrote:Makes me sad though, it's the end of an era.

I remember that somehow Mass Effect and Dragon Age origins flew under my radar and I played them both in a glorious few months after buying Mass Effect on platinum on my XBOX. Bioware have definitely jumped the shark now, if both of their flagship series have stumbled as badly as the reviews seem to suggest. DA is getting worse with every installment, and now Mass Effect seems to be following suit.

I feel like eating crow over this after playing the new ME last night after downloading. Loved it. Yeah there are some things that bugged me (seriously, calm the fuck down with the 20th century progressive agenda, why the fuck is SpaceX mentioned?) but there's so much to love. It has the gameplay aspiration of ME1 and ME3 combined in terms of innovation and challenge, a sense of exploration, character development, gameplay diversity and a new beginning and much more that the original Mass Effect aspired to but fell short of.

A few wonky animations, some less than perfect pacing and the odd line of duff dialogue (which admittedly is below what Bioware once did on the writing front, albeit not on the animation front) is a small price to pay. The sound design is mediocre, compared to the original score, but still, this game is so much better than the reviews I've read it's unreal, let alone the ludicrous "user reviews" on Metacritic. This is a great game as far as I can tell. Maybe not a classic like the original ME, but great.

Things I've noticed so far:
(YMMV)
1. Wonky animations.
2. Weird and counterproductive UI design.
3. Flat or subpar voice-acting.
4. Only 3 slottable abilities. Really don't get why they went backwards with this one.
5. No m/m party member options.
6. Ambient/background sound stopping all together at random intervals.

Thommo wrote:Makes me sad though, it's the end of an era.

I remember that somehow Mass Effect and Dragon Age origins flew under my radar and I played them both in a glorious few months after buying Mass Effect on platinum on my XBOX. Bioware have definitely jumped the shark now, if both of their flagship series have stumbled as badly as the reviews seem to suggest. DA is getting worse with every installment, and now Mass Effect seems to be following suit.

I disagree, but only in the sense that 2 was worse than 3.

SafeAsMilk wrote:Hard to tell from the video because I can't tell what's going on (I'm sure the genre has mutated a lot since the early 90's), but looks like an interesting game. I like the weird evil voiceover I'll have to look into it, thanks for the recommendation!

There's a new MoO, released last year or the year before.
It's simply called Master of Orion.
There's also Endless Space, which is a bit more detailed and varied imo.