jcracken

@ripelivejam: I just want a device that I can use to catch up on the DS and 3DS games I missed (had a DS lite but stopped paying attention it years ago and think it died? don't remember). Like cool Nintendo that you want me to buy a Switch but a. I can't buy that either and b. a Switch won't let me experience your older stuff. And even if they add support through emulation or something, it wouldn't be the same--IMHO trying to recreate the DS or 3DS, devices that specifically relied on two screens in a clamshell position, just doesn't work unless you have the same form factor.

Many of you might remember Jeff talking about how the 3DS was hard to find during the last holiday season. Well, as a followup, here's the retail situation for the 3DS a week or two after the Nintendo Switch, based off of my search for a non-XL new 3DS:

• Online (Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Gamestop): Not in stock, except for 2DSes at Gamestop. The sites that support it (Amazon, Walmart) have third parties selling every SKU at a not-insignificant markup.
• Various Walmarts in Phoenix, AZ area: No new 3DSes, but like clockwork every store had exactly one 2DS on sale.
• Various Walmarts in Tucson, AZ (two hours south of Phx): One red new 3DS XL at one store, one Galaxy Style at another (since sold)
• Various Targets in Phoenix area: sold out
• Target in Tucson: sold out

It seems NoA quietly stopped shipments for the 3DS in order to make way for the Switch. Ignoring their pledge to keep supporting it (c'mon we all knew the truth about that), this arguably makes the 3DS (specifically the non-XL new 3DS, since that was always de-emphasized in the US) harder to find than even the Switch. More shipments of the Switch in a week or two will alleviate some of its demand, but we may never get another shipment of the 3DS again.

Side-note: Because of the markup on US units sold by third parties, it's actually cheaper in most instances to import a Japanese console and then mod it to be US region.

Note: There are unmarked spoilers for both Dishonored and Dishonored 2 in here.

When Dishonored first came out in 2012, it was a revelation for me. Late 2012/early 2013 I was super jaded with gaming. I hadn't kept up at all with gaming news and I hadn't played a game for quite a long time. At that point I'm pretty sure the last game I had enjoyed was Arkham City, a game I got at launch and beat pretty soon afterwards. I played a couple other games, almost all of which I was so bored and jaded with that I never played more than one hour. TBH, i wasn't excited by gaming anymore and was pretty much done with it. One weekend, though, I was bored and there was a thread about Dishonored on Reddit. I was like, screw it, I have nothing better to do, might as well play this game.

When I had sunk into it, it really grabbed me. It was the first game where I felt like I had an emotional connection to the characters, and after the first time through I ended up with the medium chaos ending, it really broke my heart. I immediately restarted the game and played through the entire thing again to get the low chaos ending, and to this day I still view it as a defining moment as someone who plays video games.

Fast forward to 2015, and I became incredibly psyched at a new Dishonored. A year later, it came out and I played it at launch on a brand new PS4, and, well... I was crestfallen. It built upon some of what I loved about the first game, but completely eschewed others. Months have passed, and I think I need to finally flesh out what made me so disappointed with the game.

Story

One of the more polarizing parts of Dishonored was the story. Some felt it was incredibly cliche and predictable, while others thought it did its part well. Personally, I felt like it worked well. Even in subsequent playthroughs (I've played the first game maybe five or six times, in total) I still feel it holds up meaningfully well. Sure, the twist can be seen miles away, and sure it doesn't push boundaries in any major way, but it works, and it works well for the game that it is. Dishonored 2, on the other hand, falls incredibly flat in this regard, and it does so in many ways but I think I'll break it up.

Main Plotline

The main plot is as thus: Delilah somehow escapes her imprisonment from the Knife of Dunwall DLC, and comes back to steal the throne. OK, setup works, if a bit unambitious. Where it goes from there, though, feels hastened and unorganized. They played up the Crown Killer angle to make them seem like a threat to be aware of, but then immediately negate that threat with little buildup. And then you take out Jindosh, the Sokolov-equivalent of this game (we'll get to characters in a moment). And then Delilah's second-in-command, on and on until you almost unceremoniously take out Delilah herself. This roughly follows the format of the first game, but unlike that game where it felt like the good guys were slowly and methodically taking players off of the field to weaken the main enemy, everything here just feels completely removed and unnecessary, like Emily/Corvo is just going down a checklist of people to take out for vengance or whatever. Instead of the smooth waves of momentum of the first game, where each step felt justified, the momentum here feels jagged and uneven, like the game is making you do all this because that is the way things are done. On top of all of it, it lacks a late game twist along the lines of the first game, so once the climax has been reached, the game just abruptly ends, leaving you unsatisfied. It's a very poor showing altogether.

Characters

One of the more overlooked parts of Dishonored was its characters. Each character, for what little screen time they got, felt fleshed out and likable in their own way. Piero was an affable bookish type, in spite of the fact he was a little perverted (you catch him spying on one of the maids taking a bath). Emily was a perfect bit of sunshine, whose childish ignorance was charming in all of the right ways. Samuel was just the most likeable character ever, and one of the standouts of the game. They were meaningful characters that you created bonds with. In comparison, how does Dishonored 2 hold up?

• Delilah is Delilah. She plays the part of the villain alright, if a bit generic. The aura of mystery she held in the old DLC is long gone and with it part of what made the character so foreboding.
• Sokolov plays the part that Piero did last game, but not as well. Whereas Piero always felt like the Professor in Red Dead Redemption but less cartoony and more unlikeable, Sokolov just feels like an old man telling you what to do. Even playing a bad guy last game he still felt more likeable, or rather at least elicited something. Now he's just another video game NPC.
• Billie Lurk/whatever her fake name was is the ship's captain, and she is maybe the most fleshed out character out of the bunch. You do feel her loss, but on some level a lot of what makes her compelling was the fact that she was in that DLC for the first game and knowing what type of character she is.
• Jindosh is Sokolov's old role except more of an asshole. Kind of like his character but he exits the narrative as soon as he shows up.
• The Duke spends so little time in the narrative it's hard to tell if he's really a bad guy who doesn't care for the everyman or just really bad at his job and the everyman suffers as a result.
• Emily is OK. Her narrative is a bit weak as a whole and you don't get the impression that she changes much despite seeing what her empire really is at the bottom.
• Corvo sucks. His voice actor is a very poor choice and I couldn't stand listening to his exposition dumps at the beginning, much less play as him.
• The Outsider is worse than last time. Last time he felt like an apathetic demigod throwing his gift to people he thought could make massive changes and seeing the chaos that ensued, now it feels like he actually cares about Emily/Corvo's plight for some reason, and the new VA doesn't help.

There's a few more, but you get the point. While the Dishonored cast was interesting and held their own when held up to inspection, all of Dishonored 2 feels flat and video game-y in comparison. This isn't helped by clunky dialogue or bad voice acting, as some of the characters suffer from.

Gameplay

The one thing that was unequivocally agreed upon for Dishonored was that the gameplay had some merit to it. It managed the balance of action and chaos quite well, and each level was a richly designed, packed world. Dishonored 2 mostly delivers on this, with new abilities and unique gameplay systems, but there are the suggestions of something even more interesting that the game doesn't really play off of. Most of the levels work well, or at least as well as any one level from the last game, but the levels where they tried to experiment--The Clockwork Mansion, The Time-shifting Level, The Dust District--aren't the greatest.

The Clockwork Mansion

This level was maybe the biggest thrust of their sell for this game--it was in the first CG trailer, it was the level press were allowed to play for preview, it was a major selling point for the game. But as a stealth player, I felt that it became an exercise of tediousness. It was the first time either game constrained the player's choices. Usually, if you want to go high and avoid most of the action, you can do so. Want to go in guns blazing? That works too. Or you can avoid magic and just try to get around guards. Here, though, the main area was constrained, small, and at times irrationally difficult for stealth players. It was hard to get around the Jindosh machines when there was little room to maneuver, period. Changing rooms usually didn't make too much of a change to the environment--sure this display case got replaced, but what functional difference does that make? It was just a lot of those style of design decisions that made that level very unfun.

The Time Level

I'll be fair to this level--I don't remember what it's called and I did kind of rush through it, but the reason for that is that the whole schtick of this level is that they get rid of your powers and make you shift through time to get through the level. It sounds cool, but it got really annoying for one problem: the device you use to change time period has a tiny viewport on the left side of the screen that you're supposed to use to try to get through time. Staring at this tiny window while trying to control the character in the current environment quickly gave me a migraine, and I ended up rushing through the level.

The Dust District

Isn't actually that bad of a level, just a bit disappointing. They showed this off at E3 with the mechanic of having dust storms blocking visibility, allowing you to do more things unseen, but I felt like these storms came in too rarely to be of any use. Felt like a major misfire--the dust storms were almost always going off while I was indoors, making them functionally useless to me. And since they took so long to come around, I was never really willing to bunker down and wait for one.

Lady Boyle's Last Party (or the lack thereof)

The best level, by far, in the first game was Lady Boyle's Last Party. It was a large part RNG, was a great environment, and the first game at its best. Dishonored 2 doesn't have an equivalent, not in terms of coherent messaging, nor in terms of memorability, nor in terms of just being a visual splendor. The lack of this sort of level maybe felt like a microcosm to me of what the game really lacked.

Conclusion

I should point out, there are things I loved about Dishonored 2. I loved the game world just as much as in the first game, and there were some levels (like the Conservatory, and the Duke's Palace) that were absolutely wonderful and great to play. But I left that game with a bitter taste in my mouth and really have not come back to play it again as I was expecting to before release. There's a moment at the end of the game, while it's wrapping up, where it hints at Billie Lurk searching for and finding Daud, and I got really excited for a DLC starring him again. But after that moment passed, I realized--the only thing to really excite me about this game was the tease of picking up where the last game left off. Maybe Arkane will do some good work with the DLC. Maybe we won't even get DLC after the lower-than-expected sales. Nonetheless, I hope that if there is a continuation of this series in any form, that it will be able to live up to the legacy of the first game, instead of falling short like this entry did.

@aiomon:if it works out better, cdkeys has a copy for $60 CAD (they buy keys in regions that are cheaper and sell them worldwide). If you haven't given it a try, though, the Blitz mode differentiates itself from average RTS modes that it might find a niche alongside Starcraft.

@mems1224: Atriox is sooo much better than Didact and Cortana. I'd even argue that the story here is stronger than 2 and 3 as well, though I'm also maybe a bit out of the norm in that I rank the games stories as Reach>ODST>1>2>3>5>4.

I've noticed that there doesn't seem to be much interest in Halo Wars 2. The Halo Wars 2 subforum only has two other threads (both of which were made months ago), and outside of Giant Bomb you don't see much chatter about the game (in fact, I see more "ALL UNITS" jokes than actual interest in the game).

So! As someone who fell in love with the first Halo Wars, and then has since played through the majority of Halo Wars 2, as well as maybe 10 hours of Blitz between the Beta and the final release, here's a concise list of why you might want to check the game out:

• It's the best Halo story since Halo Reach, full stop. I'll go to bat for Halo 4 and Halo 5 when I feel like they are being disparaged but the stories in both of those games are quite average. Halo Wars 2, in comparison, is tight, is tense, is dramatic when it needs to be, is beautiful thanks to the wonderful people at Blur, and makes you care about space super-soldiers, computer programs, and gruff military officers in ways that are totally unexpected. It has its cliches and rough dialogue at times, but those moments are far outnumbered by the times the game made me smile and reminisce for the great days of Halo.

• It's an RTS with a great amount of depth, but also streamlined enough to appeal to beginners as well as veterans. The first Halo Wars always ended up one way: play for time until you could build up a massive army of Scorpions and air units, and then just roll over all enemy resistance once that point had been reached. This is very much not the case here! The new units introduced in the sequel fill in gaps in the rock-paper-scissors formula that you wouldn't even imagine existed. Sure, infantry beats air, air beats vehicles, vehicle beats infantry, but you can also use Cyclops infantry to beat back armor. Or you could build Reaver vehicles to tear enemy air defenses to shreds. There's a depth here that requires thinking about what units work together well against what other units that require a good amount of strategizing. At low levels, sure, you can just keep churning out Scorpions and Vultures and hope for the best, but past a certain skill level that all falls apart--anti-vehicle infantry and anti-air vehicles are cheaper to make than vehicles and air support, respectively, and that's a key point to understand. But this is not to say that it is too deep for the inexperienced RTS player--the toned down base-building and resource gathering allows anyone to feel their way through the game even if they've never played an RTS before. And, of course, it's playable with a gamepad.
• Blitz is exhilarating and takes the focus away from micromanagement and instead on broad troop strategy. The idea behind Blitz is to remove the basebuilding entirely, and put the entire focus on spawning troops using the cards in your hand. Each card costs resources that can be gained passively and obtained from drops on the map. You spawn troops to complete a domination-style objective of holding points. The key to this mode is that you do not need to keep troops on the point to keep the point, and taking a point just involves moving troops to it and making sure no enemies are on it--there is no timer or countdown to take it, you just take it. This gives it a metagame where anyone can come back at any moment (during the beta I played a 3v3 where we were down 42 to 192, and you needed 200 to win--we rallied and were able to come back to grab the win from the jaws of defeat) and moving quickly is a critical aspect. Building up an army to take and hold one point for an extended amount of time might leave your flank open, so make sure you've got troops ready to move quickly if the other player sends a scout to take the point and dash. Leaving your points completely defenseless is an invitation for the other player to grab them, but if you bait them into doing so you can get them to leave their capture points weak or completely undefended. It's thrilling, it's relentless, and it always keeps you on your toes. There is no slow buildup as both sides start to churn out armies, the game will never go one way for certain, it's the antithesis to what an RTS is in a lot of ways, and it works incredibly well. OK, sure, there's the microtransaction and card pack aspect, I get that. But, in defense, just by playing through most of the campaign, I got over 10 card packs, giving me a majority of the unlockable cards in the game. After a preorder bonus, playing the beta, and downloading the free DLC available right now, I ended up with 25 total card packs, which left me with close to every unlockable card in the game. Plus, you get cards by completing challenges that aren't even gameplay-specific, such as playing three 3v3 games, or completing three matches as a specific leader, and that's in addition to the as-expected level-up card pack reward. You don't have to put in money to be competitive, which is great.
• It's Xbox Play Anywhere, and the PC port is really good. This is maybe less of a factor for most people, but if you're afraid that it's a UWP game, don't be. The game runs great on my i5 and 480--I play on maxed everything at a super-sampled 5120x2160p on my 2560x1080p monitor, and it runs incredibly smooth (would say it's a locked 60, but haven't actually used an FPS counter to check). It also puts my ultrawide screen to good use, filling out the edges in the cinematics and displaying an extended view of the battlefield in normal gameplay. Plus, if you live in the EU, you can grab a snazzy-looking PC retail copy that will also count as Play Anywhere!

Normally, I don't feel very strongly about the games I play unless I think they execute on their promise in a big, big way, and I feel like Halo Wars 2 is one of those games. Creative Assembly did a great job with the game, and it deserves more interest. So, please, if any of the above appeals to you in any way, go ahead and check out Halo Wars 2. It's deserving of your interest.

Basically this is my problem:

when it should look like this:

(screenshots were taken on different devices before I had figured out the cause of the issue).

After some testing I found that using Edge, Chrome, or Firefox and setting Nvidia Optimus to use my integrated GPU for any of those programs, the video (and this applies for all videos on the site, and only Giant Bomb--issue doesn't come up in YouTube) renders correctly. If I used my Nvidia GPU in Firefox or Edge, it also rendered correctly. In Chrome, however, it does not. I've tried playing around with settings on my end and haven't been able to resolve it short of just using my iGPU instead of my dGPU in Chrome.

I haven't preordered the game because I'm hoping to use it in that Best Buy B1G1 40% off sale that goes live tomorrow (possibly tonight) but the lack of buzz in the same way there was a distinct lack of buzz for Deus Ex actually really scares me into thinking this might bomb in the same way that game did. I'd hope a main difference would be that people maybe were into playing another one of those but not at the current time, maybe in a few months when it goes on sale, whereas what limited conversations I've seen of Dishonored is more people either going "I'm excited and picking this up as soon as it's out" or "yeah sure I liked the first one I'll jump in on this one too" but in a very low key way.

@sammo21: My Xbox is back at home, in a city two hours away, so I was hoping to use the PS4 as a way to play games given that my PC has reached a point where it's struggling to keep up and since it's a gaming laptop there's no easy way to upgrade it. Growing up on Xbox platforms gave me a lot of respect and love for Xbox franchises, which is why I don't really regret getting that console, even if the visuals aren't really that up to snuff. I could play those games on PC, but in all likelihood they'd end up performing worse on my PC for various reasons.

@puchiko: Yeah I posted there when I didn't get many comments here at first, and all I got were a few people saying "that's your problem, the PS4 is great." Didn't even notice the mods deleted it, but wouldn't be surprised. I've seen some genuinely positive stuff coming out of the Xbox One subreddit, even when the thread is constructive criticism, so I hoped the PS4 subreddit was the same. Won't make that mistake again.

@bones8677: Yeah I really can't wait foir Persona 5, and I totally forgot that Insomniac's Spiderman game is coming out, and is maybe one of the few Sony first party games I'm genuinely excited for. Weirdly enough, I never really got interested in Horizon no matter what they've shown or people say--something about the animal/robot designs is just offputting to me and the setting in general (post-apocalyptic world where humanity has gone back to hunting and gathering) didn't really appeal to me. I guess Death Stranding is something I'm marginally interested in--I enjoyed MGSV until I burned out on it about 15 hours in. Not sure if I share your enthusiasm for Naughty Dog, though--still have to play The Last of Us, but out of all of the Uncharted games I played, really only UC4 and maybe UC2 left me feeling like it was worth my time.

I think a big problem was that, like Titanfall, it kept wooing press and con attendees but unlike Titanfall it didn't seem too spectacular watching trailers or gameplay. Add in the fact that at the time, many were convinced that Titanfall was "manufactured hype" given that the game came out and then died on the vine almost immediately despite being sold as an incredibly fun and amazing game. There were a lot of parallels between the two in terms of marketing run-up, the main difference being that Evolve's single concept was maybe a little thin for what it was billed as. Plus when Titanfall had failed with low amounts of content, Respawn went in and added a bunch more for free, later making paid content free, as well. In comparison it seemed like Evolve was nickel-and-diming the smallest bits of new content. There was just so much to hate on that there was no way any game was going to survive that.

My entire life I've used Xbox consoles--the first console I used/had any sort of ownership over was the original Xbox, I went on to buy a 360, and then got an XB1 on launch day. There was a time where I was a bit of a Xbox fanboy--I like to think I've since changed as a person, though, and I started to get wooed by games like Until Dawn and the appeal of being able to finally see what the Uncharted series was all about and why everybody was blown away by Uncharted 4. Anyways, after first discovering Giant Bomb, I voraciously went through as much GB content as I could, until I kept finding recommendations in past forum posts for the Persona 4 Endurance Run. Now, I'm really not a JRPG guy (or Anime either, tbh) but for whatever reason I decided I wanted to first play the game for myself before watching Jeff and Vinny play through the entire thing, so I went out and bought a Vita TV and a copy of Persona 4 Golden. Despite some early uneasiness, I ended up falling in love with it and beating the entire game. It convinced me to buy a PS4 to be able to play Persona 5.

Fast forward to the slim reveal, and I decided that I might as well keep an eye out for a good deal on the OG model. I then saw the Best Buy pricing error on a slim + Platinum Headset bundle (they were throwing in the $150 pair of headphones for free) and I jumped on it. After it got cancelled (for obvious reasons), the disappointment drove me to throw caution to the wind and buy an Uncharted 4 Limited Edition PS4 (they were pricing it for the same price as a slim). I was able to get a used copy of the Uncharted Collection for $10, and I played through the entire Uncharted series as a sort of a marathon (I did UC1 and UC2 in one sitting each, UC3 in three sittings, and UC4 in three more sittings a week later). I had mixed feelings for the first three games (I hated the first, liked the second, thought the third was a mess) and loved UC4, but after that I sort of left my console unused for a while. I eventually found out that it was defective (this problem, specifically), and just earlier today sent it to Sony for repair.

But over the past week or so, after weeks of lack of use, I started to use the console again after redeeming an early access code for Modern Warfare Remastered and the Infinite Warfare beta, and I've turned somewhat sour on the console. Even ignoring the hardware issue I had, I keep running into multiple problems with PSN and the OS in general--payment methods not working, not being able to download themes and other content for a few days until they fixed certain server problems (while, as far as I could tell following PSN support threads, there was little to no messaging from Sony acknowledging such an issue even existed), not being able to mute my mic without creating a Party that only includes me (!), the download speeds being utterly abysmal (it took 40 min to download 10 gigs on my PC from Steam--it took 10+ hours to download the 30-ish gigs for Modern Warfare Remastered)--that really make me wish I was just using my XB1 instead. Even the one thing I've especially seen people harp on the most for the Xbox--its OS being slow compared the PS4--didn't really seem to hold up to me as I still felt like the PS4 OS lagged a bit at times (specifically the menu that comes up when you hold down the PS button).

On top of that, there really aren't any games I'd want to play on the PS4 that I couldn't already play on my Xbox (which, in all fairness, I don't have access to unless I visit back home, two hours away from my college) or on my PC with aging hardware. At one point I couldn't decide if I wanted to get Dishonored 2 (maybe the one game this year I know for a fact I'm going to get) on PC or PS4, but now I'm more inclined to get it on PS4 only if my PC falls below minimum specs. I've started to tell myself "get as few games as possible on this platform, because after Persona 5 odds are you're selling this console." And this really bums me out, because even if it fails in many respects I still want to have that window of access to Playstation exclusives that look good (I still need to check out The Last of Us, for example).

I guess this was a bit long and aimless, but am I alone in this feeling? Should I just sell the console now and then buy it on Black Friday when it gets even cheaper, or should I tough it out?