The campaign for this game is mostly really good. There are some frustrating things about it (some enemies and encounters are just annoying) and I've had some performance-related technical issues on PC, but the story is really enjoyable (I think it starts and ends really well), and the game is worth playing if you're a Marvel fan (MCU or comics).
There are definitely some combat mechanics that took me hours to figure out, so it's not surprising the some of the duders are having a rough time (compounded by playing a post-game mission underleveled).
While I found it a bit odd that they got so hung up on the lack of a mute button on the Flight Simulator installer, they are right in saying that the install process is hot garbage. I had a very similar issue that Jeff G had. Note that I'm playing the Game Pass version.
I finish the quick 9GB download from the Xbox PC app, and left the installer running overnight knowing it would take a while (not sure why Vinny was so against this). I wake up to find the program not even running, which seemed a bit odd. So during lunch I start up the game to make sure it finished downloading, so I can play when I finished my work for the day. Game boots up fine, runs me through choosing control options and assist settings, and I get to the main menu. Everything seems to be in order. Great! Excited to play later.
I boot it up again a few hours later when I have some free time, and I can access the menu and every setting, but can't actually play. All of the tutorials are greyed out (despite the game saying they're downloaded), and when I try to free fly, the fly button is just greyed out. After some googling, it seems like the issue is that the installer didn't finish correctly. Which makes sense considering it wasn't running after I left it overnight, but why in the hell would it start the game normally after this like everything went smoothly? Why didn't it come up with an error when starting the game? I have to restart my PC, run the game again, and now I get hit with a screen saying I've got 50GB left to download. Luckily I've got good internet, so this only took an additional 1-2h (including troubleshooting the problem). But man, what a terrible experience to get the game running.
All that being said, the game seems great. Runs fine on medium settings on my mid-range PC (2600X, 970 OC, 16GB ram, SSD), I get 30fps consistently away from big cities. Playing with a controller feels good after you turn the sensitivity way down (I set it to -65% for both left stick axes), but the rudder control is broken on controller (it reads the triggers as digital inputs, not analogue). Makes taxiing a pain, but once you're in the air it's not an issue.
The game clearly needs some additional work (the install process is a nightmare), but it seems like a good foundation to build on. It's really crazy how accurate the representation is of my current city (Fort Worth, TX), all the buildings have correct geometry and satellite textures. It seems several years out of date, but I'm guessing that's an issue with Bing maps or whatever satellite imaging they're using.
@cats_n_tats: Regarding the animus stuff, you’re in luck because they’ve said that they are specifically trying to minimize the amount that it “takes you out of the animus” by making a lot of the animus stuff side-stories you find in the world. So if you want to ignore the animus sci fi stuff its much more doable now.
I really enjoyed Odyssey and love the viking setting, so Valhalla looks like the game for me. It looks exactly like what I was expecting, which is great!
A little less sold on Legion so far. Idk if @alex or anyone else can answer this, but I wonder how much you can customize your team. Can I just release the starting characters and build an all-hacker team, or all-hitman team? Or does it force you to have a wacky assorted team with construction workers and grandmas because the different missions require one of each type. I hate the wacky assorted cast idea, but would really enjoy being able to min-max this system to build the exact team I want.
Me playing the game is basically coming down to this, so I'd love to hear if anyone knows anything about it.
The top end Nvidia graphics cards might be super expensive but AMD isn't that terrible in comparison in the mid-range as far as I can follow. Plus it seems like there might be actual competition in the x86 CPU market again so building a console-level gaming PC at similar price point is probably more achievable than ever.
There has been competition in the CPU market for several years, Ryzen CPUs kick ass for the price. And with Ryzen 3, they actually have parity in the high-end market. Now the big question is if AMD's Navi GPUs can do the same for the GPU market. Also of note, both next-gen consoles use Navi GPUs.
@jbick89: Yeah I agree, I've always thought the ending criticism is pretty overblown. If you're playing the game now with all the DLC it's totally fine, it's just nothing spectacular. I think the 'endings' offered by the game's main planets (Tuchanka, Rannoch, etc.) are the real 'endings' that should be considered when this game is discussed, and they're all fantastic.
I’ve always held the opinion that, ending aside, the main story beats of ME3 are some of the best of the series. The intro on Earth, and all of the main priority planets are pretty incredible both because of their spectacle and the trilogy-spanning stories they resolve.
@vinny@alex The N7 missions (like Cerberus Lab) generally serve as introductions to the multiplayer maps. They're very straightforward combat missions (no dialogue or story choices) which have a tiny bit of story setup, usually ending with a transmission from Hackett where he says Alliance forces will have trouble holding the location (ie, him telling you to go play multiplayer). They are by no means essential, but they usually only take 15-20 minutes so maybe use them to pad out an episode's length if needed (like when last week's episode was uncharacteristically short). I am not sure if they eventually fall off the map, but you shouldn't worry about missing anything critical if you don't do them.
@alex Grenades basically go where your crosshair is pointed, and Shepard works out the throw strength on her own. You keep aiming past the enemies thinking you need to account for an arc like in most games, but you don’t in ME3. Should help with your grenade aiming, it’s actually much easier in ME3 than in most games.
Also, to use a squadmate’s power the enemy has to have the red outline around them. The smoke was obstructing your view, so that’s why her power wasn’t working. Earlier in the game the issue was that you kept toggling James’ ammo power, like Vinny mentioned. I’m sure your dpad is fine.
@afro_stevens: I'm kind of getting sick of it to be honest. It was appropriate for early VR (especially with games like Job Simulator designed to be played like that), but at this point it's kind of getting old and I wish he'd just play the game sometimes. In Alyx it even seemed to be hampering his enjoyment, because he was missing a lot of story/direction cues.
It's almost like he knows he has an audience so he's trying to put on a show for us. I just want to see how he actually would play the game if he was on his own.
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