Tag Archives: PC Gaming

TCGP 59 – Give Me Gameplay or Give Me Death!

On this perilously handsome episode of The College Gamers Podcast: We are throwing a Fireside Gathering! Wildcard tries to explains itself but Mike does not buy it. Arkham Batman remake is looking goooooood. Development time for Cyberpunk 2077 is getting intense. World of Warcraft is enjoying the success of Legion. What is that Star Wars game? I want it. Halo is coming to Windows 10 but it might not be what you think. Forze Horizon 3 will is getting a demo. Do we get our Warthog? PS4 Pro and Slim announced  but we are not excited. What are we games are we playing? And more on THIS (yes, THIS) episode of The College Gamers Podcast.

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TCGP 58 – Watch That Warthog Fly

On this ludicrously harmonic episode of The College Gamers Podcast: Don’t burn your feet on the floor. Firewatch is watching its way onto the Xobx One. Mortal Combat XL and Pack Two are coming to finish your PC. Overwatch is getting a free weekend. Play it. Seriously. You can drive the warthog in a game other then Halo now! People are not happy with Ark at the moment, but those dragons though. You will be able to blow on your Nintendo cartridges again. We get a peak at the new Titanfall mechs. What are we playing? And more on this episode of The College Gamers Podcast!!

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No Man’s Sky Review Early (Readers Choice)!

Let’s start this review with a disclaimer: this review is still in progress and I am still early into the game. I have only six hours logged in the game according to Steam. No Man’s Sky is a good game but there is no way to could have lived up to the hype generated around the game. No Man’s Sky was announced when there were no other games offering the same universe exploring game play the game promised. Since then other games have come out including Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous which have do some things promised by No Man’s Sky and sometimes even better.

At first, the game could have been more optimized for PC. Even with a decent computer the game suffers from frame rate. Hello Games has released a fix improving performance and may continue to release patches improving performance.

The game begins with the player standing next to a crashed ship and the tutorial is fixing the ship up to begin your travels across the universe. Often the tutorial was vague and the goal was unclear.  I would have gotten off the planet sooner but I spent 20 minutes walking to a mineral I needed that I later realized was right next to my ship, but the scan detected ore 15 minutes away and could not detect the ore within eye shot.

The flying mechanics are fine, the only disappointment is that the ship will not fly closer to the ground but a mod fixed that. The flying in space and in atmosphere are not too different and the controls are relatively simple. Taking off can be a pain because every time my ship takes off it I lose 25% of the take off thruster fuel which is a pain to keep track off. Hopefully a better ship will fix that.

I set my goal in the game as becoming a space pirate. The space combat is pretty typical and the aim assist for targeting space ships is pretty handy. However, I can’t use my super boost when other ships are around which makes escape impossible sometimes and usually ends in death and that can be frustrating.

The market system is pretty simple. Going from one system to another the price of items can change. Two or three items usually sell for 100+ percent more and that is how I have most of my money. Grinding ores on planets that feel pretty cookie cutter has not been the most exciting game ever. The game feels too repetitive and slow paced. Often I get bored and leave the game without an urge to pick it back up.

Overall rating: 6/10

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TCGP 57 – How is Vampyr Spelled?

On this luxuriously spacious episode of The College Gamers Podcast: Sorry Russia, no free Halo for you. I love when my games are remade for mobile and then ported to console. Vampyr looks unique, and not just the spelling. Xbox players can witness The Witness soon. Evolve is getting some new content. More issues arise for No Man’s Sky. Sleeping Dog developers are developing a cool looting game. Dues Ex is following in Batman’s steps. What games are we playing? And more! On this episode of The College Gamers Podcast!

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TCGP 56 – Left for Metal Gear Dead

On this astonishingly complex episode of The College Gamers Podcast: We see some abilities from Dishonored 2 but do robots have souls and add to your kill count? Left for Dead 3 is coming ou-oh wait, it is Metal Gear Survive. We are finely getting space combat in Battlefront. You can customize your dragon in Scalebound. Ubisoft is giving us a sports game. Taft is excited but Mike is unimpressed. Trolling just got harder in Overwatch. Ezio may be leap of faithing into your Xbox One/PS4! Creators of South Park has made a device that should never been built. We answer your emails. What are we playing? And more on THIS episode of The College Gamers Podcast!

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RIP Battleborn

Battleborn was released May 3rd, 2016 and developed by Gearbox Software. For anyone who played the Borderlands series, the game should feel very similar. The two games’ art styles were very similar if not the exact same. The two games share similar dialogue, both being humorous and random, and also have very entertaining characters. The game boasted a roster of 25 playable characters, each with their own special abilities and play style. Players had the choice to fight one another in online matches or play cooperatively with friends or play alone through the game’s story. The game was looking to be a hit but unfortunately is not talked about much today and it only took three months for the game to go on sale for $15 dollars on Humble Bundle. So what happened to Battleborn?

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Overwatch is often credited for the downfall of Battleborn. Battleborn and Overwatch both have an impressive roster of heroes that all promise a unique experience. Overwatch lacks the humorous light hearted dialog and instead replaces it with small dialog interactions between characters that gave players a small peek at the characters’ story. Overwatch also promised a newer experience compared to Battleborn. Battleborn shared too much with Borderlands, the games even used the same quest marker. Borderlands is a special kind of game that gives the player a game experience that can’t be found in any other triple A game.The game had a new concept but lacked the feel of a proper new IP from Gearbox Software. Battleborn still has the same team based play style that worked so well in Borderlands. In contrast, Overwatch was the first FPS developed by Blizzard. Blizzard already has a huge dedicated fan base combined with two recent hits, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone. Overwatch did come out almost a month after Battleborn, but Blizzard built hype for the game months ahead by allowing Streamers and important community members into the close alpha. Overall, the PR for Overwatch was handled better while being a completely new experience. Keep it up Blizzard!

 

Prefer one game over another? Leave a comment!

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The One With Dills

On this scientifically amazing episode of The College Gamers Podcast: Dills joins us today to talk about video games! Blizzard announced when we are getting Demon Hunters and Mike is pumped. The developers of Sea of Thieves show off their game and explain what we will be doing. Elder Scrolls: Legends has now entered public Beta. Will this be a Hearthstone killer? (Hint: No) No Man’s Sky is getting a small delay for PC players. Rockstar has something cooking and we discuss what we would like to see. We talk about some major changes coming to Civ 6. StarCraft might be getting an HD remake. What games are we talking about. A lot of off topic conversation. And more! On this episode of The College Gamers Podcast!

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Dumb Ideas #1: Give Me A Modulor Console

Buying hardware for a console player is a different experience than hardware shopping for a PC player. For most console players, the choice of hardware is narrowed down to two options. The announcement of the Xbox One S, Scorpio, and Neo has complicated this question but, simplified, a console player really just needs to select Xbox or Playstation. A PC gamer always has the option to buy a rebuilt rig but that can be expensive. For the cheapest and most customizable option, PC Gamers build their own rigs. This includes choosing parts, checking compatibility, as well as making sure everything fits. But, this allows gamers to choose where they want to put their money. Consoles could go the same style but it would take a complete overall of the way console developers build their brand.

Consoles are basically dedicated PC’s for gaming. The only difference is that consoles have very standardized hardware and software. Instead of selling console gamers an entire box, allow third parties to sell hardware parts. To simplify the consoles, companies could break down the consoles into 4 parts: The CPU, the graphic cards, the motherboard + memory, and the case. AMD already supplies the Xbox One and PlayStation with CPUs. The next iteration of consoles could be designed to use PC graphic cards. Microsoft and Sony would sell rights to companies for creating hardware. Rather than buying a new console every few years, allowing players to upgrade individual parts when they become outdated makes the transition to better technologies smoother and cheaper for the user. Consoles would be able to keep up with PC performance, rather than the console becoming more obsolete as the years pass between iteration.

Console makers would then focus have to give more attention to the operating system. Similar to how Windows and MacOS compete with one another. By focusing on the OS of the box, resources that were previously spent on hardware would now be free to add better features to the operating system. Console exclusives would instead become OS exclusives. Console makers would of course still sell pre-built consoles. Because the idea of plug and play never gets old and PC gaming is hard.

Would would you like to see changed in the console ecosystem? Leave a comment!

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Why Hearthstone’s Invite-A-Friend System is Broken

Last Month Hearthstone implemented an “Invite-A-Friend” system for the game. Players use a link to invite new players to play Hearthstone and the link used would bind the accounts together. For inviting one player and the invited player reaching level 20, the Original player would receive Morgle the Oracle, a (very awesome) Shaman class hero. A player gets a free card pack for each friend that reaches level 20 once the fifth friend reaches level 20. Hearthstone is a free to play card game that has been out for 2011. At this point in Hearthstone’s life, the amount of gamers that have not discovered Hearthstone is a very small number. Joining Hearthstone can seem like a daunting task. Hundreds of cards have been added through multiple expansions and it can be intimidating to try to collect them all, which is required to compete competitively. Many people may have the problem where none of their friends are interested in Hearthstone (like myself). Many Hearthstone players will probably resort to using a second personal email to create a new account and grind their way to level 20 for Morgle.

Blizzard could keep players around by incentivizing friends who are linked to play with each other. Once a player reaches a certain level, such as 20 or 30, let friends earn quest credit by playing friends. Limit this to one quest a week or unlimited quests for a limited amount of time. The level requirement and the time limit put on these perks would reduce the amount of fraudulent accounts created.

Every plan has its own set of flaws while at the same time requiring a good enough incentive for players to go through the trouble of talking friends and family into playing.

Have an idea of how to the invite-a-friend system should work? Leave a comment!

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What does Virtual Reality Need to Succeed

For the past year Virtual Reality, or VR for short, has been a very hot topic within the gaming community.  It has been an especially popular topic for PC hardware providers such as AMD and Nvidia. VR headsets have to hit a frame rate of 90 frames per second minimum or the user can suffer from motion sickness and no one wants that. Great graphics at that frame rate can require serious hardware. A year ago, a VR computer could cost around $1000, not counting the six hundred to eight hundred dollar headset. In the past 3 months AMD and Nvidia have both released VR ready graphics cards that were cheap and promised high end card performance. AMD released the RX 480 that promised performance rivalling the R9 series  but for only $200 dollars.

In the community of VR, hardware is a topic that comes up often and is one of the bigger prerequisites for VR. However, the argument of this post is that VR will stay in the realm of enthusiasts until it is embraced by major studios. Steam has a section dedicated to VR games full of games that look like tons of fun. A majority of these games are small and based around the HTC Vive, which requires the player to move around a space. For VR to elevate from enthusiasts to a serious video game platform major studio needs to make their games compatible with VR. However, HTC Vive-”move around the room” style VR will not be the VR that takes off for the masses.

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At E3 this year, Bethesda showed off Fallout 4 in VR. But these open world games would shine with an Oculus Rift-sit down style VR because they have large open world environments, walking around/teleporting around would get old and can be clunky for larger environments. Now would also be a good moment to mention that, like myself, not everyone has a 15ft by 15ft room laying around for a VR experience. VR is still a new technology for gamers and the stand up and move around experience is the most exciting for us right now, but the sit down VR is what will break into the main-stream for gamers.

Have a comment? Contact me at bluecowradio@gmail.com!

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