GAMING THREAD aka holy fuck, l.a. noire = ^_^

[MrMonster]

an apt time to get in since they just pushed the game back to "late june" at the earliest 

here's hoping Torchlight 2 can make it out before then, if they want to make any money at all

[r00]

I really like it so far.  They only allow you to play up to the end of Act I right now, but all classes are available.  I burned through it on Barbarian over the weekend. 

Some things I liked:

- the animations are cool.  Monsters get thrown all over the place depending on how you hit them.  Undead sometimes break in half and come crawling back at you and attack again with just their upper torso.  Nearby items get thrown and destroyed when you are battling too.

- Deckard Cain is back in it and one of the first chapters is called "Legacy of Cain."  lolz

- You can craft now.  You befriend the blacksmith in New Tristam and can use him to crush magic items and then use those materials to craft other magical armor and weapons.  You can also pay gold to train the blacksmith and learn new recipes.  Pretty cool, especially at the beginning when you are equipping anything you can find.

[sin]

What are the hardware requirements like?  I've heard some ridiculous predictions about what they might be, and I didn't believe them, as the Diablo series has never been very hardware intensive.

[r00]

I am running 2 to 3 year old hardware and had no performance issues and it looked great!  I am running at its suggested video setting for me which are probably "medium-high" settings and at 1080p resolution.  I am using an AMD 4890 graphics card, AMD Penom II x4 940 CPU, and 4 gigs of DDR2 RAM.  So pretty average specs for 2012.

The only thing I would consider close to "performance issues" that I have encountered is only when I first jump in the game.  The harddrive is obviously loading the rest of the map in the background while I play, and that can mean occasional stuttering for the first couple of minutes.  I am sure it is something that could be remedied with a SSD or faster drive/RAID setup and more/faster RAM.  It is very minor though... just something I've noticed and it only happens at the very start of loading the game.

One thing though...  I haven't played it multiplayer yet.  So who knows if I will be whistling a different tune when 4 people are all firing off spell effects at once.  I'll post here about it when I get a chance to play again this week.  That was the next thing I wanted to try after playing it through by myself once.

[sin]

Well, that sounds fine for my rig.  Our processors seem about on par, and I think I'm a little better off in terms of RAM than you; my graphics card is absolutely garbage (it's so bad I've found myself lying about it when it comes up in conversation with my geek friends), but I'm looking to possibly upgrade that as soon as I get my tax return back, and from your description I could possibly run it at low settings even without upgrading.

Also, I almost never do multiplayer, so that's not a big concern with me.

[Aaron]

I was going to buy the Collectors edition of D3 from amazon for 100 bucks. However, they sold out, and now its 200 bucks. And while I reallllllllllllllllly wanted the wings. Fuck paying that much. I'll just download it from blizzard for 60.

[r00]

Yeah, I wouldn't pay more than $100 for it either.  BTW, I see it still available for pre-order at Walmart.com Target, and BestBuy for $100.  I guess I should get on reserving mine too.

[Aaron]

Eh, ya, I think I will just dl it from Bliz. Then I can play at midnight...

[r00]

People I work with have already scheduled days off for when it is released.  lulz

[Aaron]

Hush, I'm taking vacation for it too... I also plan on buying an ungodly amount of energy drinks to keep me up for as long as possible...

[r00]

haha nerds. *

*subtext=jealousy

[Aaron]

*cough* whos in the beta? *cough*

hahahah but ya, my roommate is as well. It's gona be great.



A few days ago, I busted out my DS and was playing some of the games I have for it. However I have finished them/given up on them. So I looked at newegg and asked my friend what he thinks are good games. I asked about Final Fantasy 3, he said it was good. So I got it, and now I'm playing it. All in all it's good, not that far into it thought.

[sin]

Just thought that I would mention that the conclusion of the Mass Effect trilogy was brilliant.  I can't remember being so satisfied with a game since the first time I played through FFVII in junior high.  Absolutely fucking amazing.

[MrMonster]

I'm of the opinion that the last 5 minutes of that game completely ruined it. 

They'll apparently be "addressing concerns" with upcoming DLC in April... I'll watch it on youtube.

In lighter news, finally a release date for Trials Evolution! April 18th. (This will probably be my game of the year, though Binary Domain looks like a close second right now)

[r00]

I can't remember being so satisfied with a game since the first time I played through FFVII in junior high.  Absolutely fucking amazing.

I haven't played ME3 yet, but I can totally agree with your above statement about FFVII.  That game is also my benchmark for game enjoyability.  It had everything.