The Video/PC Game Discussion Thread

I'm finally starting on the first Witcher, now that I have a laptop that can run it. Just did the intro section and a little bit afterward so far, but I'll likely continue it tomorrow or later in the week. I need to readjust to the combat style, which is completely different from the third game, but seems fine enough so far. Otherwise, it's cool seeing characters I recognize from the third game already, and I think if it goes well I'll likely give the second game one last shot (probably on PC as well) then if that goes well I may even do a re-play of The Wild Hunt, since I loved that game despite its annoying glitches.

Yeah, I remember I played a bit of it on my brother's old PC when it first came out, and about every 15-20 minutes I would get the message "The Witcher has stopped working" . That was driving me crazy. I got it on GOG, because it and the second game were on sale for like $8 combined at the time, and so far I got back to the furthest point I had been at before, and haven't had any crashes or issues at all, so it seems to be fine. It is the "Enhanced Edition", btw.

Bethesda has done it yet again: They released a demo for the new Prey on consoles, but didn't release it on PC for no apparent reason at all, which has people suspecting another poor optimization, which Dishonored 2 apparently had. In fact, they haven't even listed system requirements on Steam yet (though they have been revealed elsewhere and seem pretty steep.) 

I finished Mass Effect Andromeda yesterday, with 98% completion. I had a few of the 'task' quests left in my journal but several of those I'd actually done and they'd just bugged out and at least one was outright broken and couldn't be completed. 

Finished Prey earlier tonight. Despite a rough start and some glitches along the way (had one crash, one freeze, some serious slowdown and times where the interface stopped working and I had to reset the game to fix it) I actually ended up loving it. Combat took some getting used to and isn't as good as it could have been, but it gets better once you unlock powers, and the exploration is amazing, with a ton of fairly big areas to explore, tons of side quests to do and lots of neat backstory. It's also very tense and atmospheric, which I like, and it blends Sci-Fi and horror elements very well. The plot was good as well and had a nice twist, and I like how it handles endings, in that choices you make throughout the game do effect it, and at the end there are multiple choices, but without going into specifics, it's definitely much more involved than your average "pick an option from a conversation and enjoy the show" kind of ending.  Basically, though, if "Bioshock in space, with horror elements and a bit of Deus Ex mixed in" sounds appealing to you, I'd definitely recommend it. Though maybe wait on the PC version, because apparently there's some game breaking bugs they have to fix, where people are constantly getting crashes after around 20-30 hours, or getting broken save files. Thankfully, none of that happened to me on PS4, and the bugs I got were all annoying rather than game breaking.

That sucks. Andromeda had its technical issues (what new AAA title doesn't?) but as a game it was very, very solid and nowhere near as bad as gaming reviewers have been making it out to be. I thought it reinvented the series in an excellent way and I spent more time on a single playthrough of it than a run of the original trilogy combined. I was actually really sad when I eventually wrapped it up and I haven't been able to settle into a new game properly since. 

Yeah, that could be interesting, or it could be a total disaster. One problem, though, is how will it stand out from Game of Thrones, considering they both fall on the dark side of fantasy and can both be pretty harsh and brutal sometimes? Guess we'll have to see how it turns out.

I decided to jump back into Dishonored 2 again since it's been patched a couple more times since I last played, just to see if it was finally as fully smooth as the first game.

I'm pretty sure the issue is the game because other games I've played recently are fine, including Witcher 3 (which I consider a much better looking game than Dishonored 2 - I've even managed to get rid of the initial load-up stutter now after 931 hours, lol) or at least only have their usual issues - Fallout 4 often microfreezes for a second or two for little reason, which I suspect may be a mod thing. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/daud-and-billie-lurk-return-for-dishonored-2-death-of-the-outsider/