Favourite computer games of all time. [2]

Forest Shepherd wrote:rofl, British police in the US.

What, is there computer game about this?

{{Forest was referring to the vid I put up-




Its GTAV, but heavily modded with a very in-depth mod that adds in UK police, police vehicles and the ability to do 'police stuff' like taser people instead of shooting them, run checks on suspects, vehicles, call for backup, or ambulance or fire services ect And its all put together by real UK police, so its surprisingly accurate }}}

Why would something put together by UK police be set in the American south west?

{{{{ Because GTAV is set there and they are using that game engine to run all their mods- its a lot easier if you just watch the bloody video! And because its a fun way for a UK police force to reach out to young folk who might play GTAV as well as showing what they do and how they go about the job in an entertaining way.
If Rockstar ever make another GTA London I'm sure they will use that game engine instead. }}

I DID watch the bloody video! That's why I'd be wondering why they did what they did. Understand that I'm not the least immersed in this gaming thing (nor do I wish to be) so don't have any understanding of one game being co-opted by 'mods' from somewhere else and all that stuff. I just see a bunch of british accents in the US southwest and wonder why they'd do such a thing. Even if they mention it in the video I wouldn't catch what was going on - why should I give a shit about mods and scenario I've never heard of before? Just goes in one ear and out the other.

{{Well a small police force in the UK is unlikely to make an international muli-million dollar production!- GTAV however has the perfect massive open world and city environments suitable to adapt, and you can make mods and add your own stuff- so they did that as a way of educating and entertaining- especially younger players who play GTA5.
That's all there is to it. }}}

Ok... so I ordered my new desktop. If it turns out to be a waste of money then so be it!!

{{{Nice one Lance- whats the specs can you VR with it or sticking to the psvr for that? }}

Went for an Alienware Aurora R7 with:

Intel i7 8700K CPU
Dual Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU
32gb DDR4 RAM
256gb SSD and 1TB HDD.

Those are the key stats... should run VR perfectly well!

{{Very nice- lot more  power than mine and Ive not had any issues with VR- should run like a dream on that beast!- now you just need to decide between the Rift and the Vive!

Personally having used both I prefer the Rift- the resolution is better on the Vive- but not Id say the couple of hundred quid difference.

And right now Oculus is cheaper than ever and you get a lot in the bundle- when I bought mine I got the headset, one sensor and no controllers. Now for less than I paid you get two sensors, the controllers and the headset.
And I much prefer the oculus touch controllers to the heavy wand thing of the Vive- the oculus ones feel more natural to me, and there are more sensors in them so you can also make hand gestures, like thumbs up, or pointing at stuff as it tracks your thumb and index finger even when not actually pressing anything. I also find the Oculus headset to be more comfortable and lighter so better for extended game play periods.

Advantages to the Vive is its room scale out the box- you'll need to buy a third sensor for true room scale on Oculus, but you can do it with two (I did for ages) if you place one behind diagonally across form the front sensor, not perfect you'll still sometimes lose tracking a bit but its still usable- 3 is ideal however and is my current set up.
The other advantage to the Vive is the lenses can be moved in and outwards from the face whereas the rift you can only move them sideways- if you wear glasses the vive can be better for that in that you can move the lenses a bit further out to give more room for the glasses- but having said that I wear glasses and its never been a problem using my rift.
Games wise its 50/50 most games work on both, there are very few exclusives and most of those are on the oculus side. You also get more free shit when you get oculus- 6 free games I think at the moment plus some demo stuff. The Vive only gives you a 20 quid Steam voucher.
But they are both very good systems, so its really down to how much you want to spend and if you think the slight resolution advantage on the Vive is worth the extra couple hundred bucks.

Issues wise I've had one major issue with my oculus, it stopped working, which is pretty major and I had to send it off for a replacement- but my experience of the customer service was superb- they stayed in touch with updates, sent me out a shipping label that covered the potage costs and there was no charge for the replacement or return delivery either. I have no experience of Vive customer service so cant compare it, but I cant fault Oculus for theirs it was best customer service I've experienced with a big company.

But whichever you choose you will notice a big upgrade from the psvr, especially in clarity and tracking.

One thing to note if you got for oculus- check how many hdmi ports you have on your graphics card- the 1060 only has one and I was using it to hook up to my tv- as you need to be able to switch between seeing your tv and using the Rift to set up (and its just generally handy) you need both hooked up at same time- for me this meant I had to go buy an extra DVI cable (about a fiver) and use that port to output to my tv so I had the HDMI port free for the Rift- also the Rift uses a usb 3 port for the headphones and mic, and each sensor uses a usb port too- so you need to have 4 available usb ports if you want full room scale- 1 for the headset audio and one each for the three sensors. This can be a pain in the arse when you also have a gamepad, mouse and keyboard needing usb ports too- so check how many your pc has and if your short you might need to think of investing in a usb 3 hub or card too.
This is one area the Vive has the advantage at it only uses I think one port.}}

As far as VR goes I was impressed enough with what a friend of mine cobbled together using a cell phone app and googles made of cardboard and tape.

I am going to wait a while before I invest in VR. The main reason I went for more of a beast is for video production so going to invest in some software for that first.

My current laptop is just getting killed when I try to do anything even basic so hopefully the new one will feel much better.

Once I have that all running fine I will go for some games and see what can I can do with that! I really want to play Alien Isolation ib VR!!!

{{I've had a go on those Halfy -they are good fun and a cheap alternative to at least getting a VR feel, but its nothing like the real deal on oculus or vive- if you can at all get a chance to try one -in-store demo maybe- Id highly recommend it- you'll instantly see the difference and then your bank account will regret it afterwards when you just have to have one!
The most telling thing for me is I cant recall the  last game I played pancake- every game I play now is in VR- I find it really difficult to go back to a 2d display without feeling like most of the experience is missing.

Alien Isolation is bloody terrifying in VR- you need a mod to get it working as well as the original game, but its easy to set up- and the mod author is constantly tweaking the experience to make it better- especially menus and displays in game ect and it looks stunning.

Video editing wise I move between Adobe Premiere pro for editing and either adobe after affects or more commonly these days Hitfilm for effects and stuff- and if your feeling very creative you can always have a go at making your own game with Unreal Engine which is completely free and unbelievably powerful }}}

I have been using PowerDirector for video editing but have been considering a move to something else... Will do a bit of research on the subject to see what offers the best solution for a noob like me!

I also want to try some games with lots of motion on a higher refresh rate VR system. I do get a bit of motion sickness on PSVR but i believe it is to do with either refresh rate or frame rate.

Must test these things!

{{{ I was pretty bad for motion sickness when I started out- mainly with games where you used a traditional controller- most VR designed games have traditional movement and teleporting.
The worst offenders I find are games where they move your view when your not doing the moving- the opening scene in Skyrim is a good example of something you'd never do if it was made for VR- you start off facing sideways in a moving cart you have no control over

However I've found I've got used to it over time and now I can play a game like skyrim for a good couple hours if I want to with no ill effects. And I no longer need to use the teleport option to avoid it.
Best advise I got on motion sickness was dont fight it- soon as you feel sick stop- dont try to fight through it it'll only get worse. Instead take a break go back later- over a fairly short period time your brain gets the hang of it!

Most recent thing that gave me motion sickness was the Titanic VR- not the actual game, I find when I'm in control of the sub and robot and moving it myself its fine- but when I took the wreck tour which you just sit back and watch I found myself feeling queasy getting moved about inside the wreck.

On the other-hand games where you are sitting in a cockpit like Elite Dangerous I've never experienced even the slightest queasiness, despite the ability to barrel roll in a spaceship!

'i believe it is to do with either refresh rate or frame rate.'- Lance

Both! Plus the psvr lower resolution and slightly blurry visuals as a result. Combine them all and it can be sickbag time!}}

{{In case you do go for the oculus Lance when time comes thought I'd quickly list what I'd consider the best stuff I've seen and got for it over the last year or so.
I've broken it up into freebies, apps, games ect for ease- obviously I've picked stuff over time that appealed to me- but all these I can verify are quality VR experiences or have something worth seeing about them regardless of that. And being Scottish I've left out anything that might be quite good, but is a blatant rip off (looking at you Batman Arkham VR you glorified (though very nice) expensive tech demo!! ).

And if you go for a Vive some of them wont be available, especially some of the apps, and some games (like the brilliantly fun if short Robo Recall-does have a lot of replay value like an old arcade machine, especially as it gives you such inventive freedom for how to kill things!).

And obviously there are some games out there and apps which will be brilliant and arent listed here because I  haven't tried them (I try to budget for a game every paycheck, or at least every two- which easier on pc VR where you can pick up bargains on steam or in oculus store sales- this month was a bit tight for example, but picked up Titanic VR on sale for a tenner on the oculus store).

experiences (and all free!)

Abe VR
aircar
allumette
BBC Home A VR Spacewalk
Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab
Buzz Aldrin: Cycling Pathways to Mars
BBC Earth Catfight
Coco VR
Colosse
Dear Angelica
Discovery Vr
Disney VR
Dreams of Dali
Face Your Fears
Gary the Gull
Henry
International Space Station Tour
Invasion
Jurassic World: Blue
Lost
Master Works Journey Through History
Mission ISS
Moon Landing VR
Oculus Dremdeck
oculus First Contact
Nvidea VR Funhouse
Rapid Fire : a brief history of flight (you'll like this one Lance, goes form Wright brothers plane up to latest jets- particular highlight is the fly over by every single aircraft lost in WW2)
Senza Peso
Smithonians Journeys: Venice
Titanic: The Honour and the Glory
The Body VR
We Wait
Wonderful You:Meet Your Unborn Self

Useful Apps (free)
Bigscreen Beta
CNN VR
Firefox VR
Google Earth VR
Medium
Quill
Sensor Bounds
Sky VR
V.art

Games (free with oculus or just free games)
Minecraft VR
Dead and Buried
Farlands
Magic Table Chess
Minecraft VR
Polyrunner VR
Robo Recall
Skeet VR Target Shooting
Spiderman Homecoming
Surge
The Forgotten Chamber

Games (pay for)

Alien Isolation
Arizona Sunshine
Beat Saber
Dirt Rally
Elite Dangerous
LA Noire: The VR Case Files
Lone Echo (comes with Echo Arena free)
Lucky's Tale
Project Cars 2
Paranormal Activity
Pro Fishing Challenge VR
Rez Infinite
Skyrim VR
Star Trek Bridge Crew
Titanic VR
VR Golf Online

As you can see, even if you don't buy a single thing there's is still hours of entertainment there just in free stuff, and those are just the ones I've seen and experienced, there's probably plenty I've missed too.

One last thing, in recommending oculus, as I think it says a lot about the attitude of the people behind it- a few months back there was a big screw up when they were doing an update to the core software that runs the oculus headset- the result was every oculus globally all stopped working simultaneously- and it took them a day to fix it.
Obviously this made a lot of people very angry, others like myself who happened to be working that day and didn't use their oculus in the 24 hour period it was out, never even noticed.
Nevertheless the next day when I did use it, it was to be greeted by a message apologising for what had happened, and crediting every single oculus user in the world with the equivalent of £15 in credit to spend on whatever oculus store item they wanted, or to say take 15 off buying a new sensor. For the small inconvenience it was they really didn't have to do that, but they still did. }}

My P.C. has arrived. In the middle of transferring things from the old P.O.S. to the new one and gonna have a crack at some video editing later.... see how it handles things.

{{Nice one Lance- let us know how it goes   }}

Big Destiny 2 update today.

Wasnt great when it first released, for a variety of design related decisions, but today os the day that the community is expecting to return to the great game that Destiny 1 turned out to be!

What is certain is that if/when there is a sequel to this the community will not likely put up with situation for a third time (see history of Destiny 1 for background) so Bungie and Activision have hopefully learned from this last year!

{{Not being a particular fan of multiplayer anything, being too crabbit to have to put up with actual other real people in my off hours, Ive never played Destiny, though I am aware from watching games vids of the issues around it, to some degree at least. From what I gather this is certainly their last role of the die to sort things out. Out to run like a dream maxed out on your shiny new pc though }}

I will stay on PS4 for this one... it's where the people I play with are so no point in moving over.

Initial signs are good with 2 missions played yesterday. You can play the game single player but you do lose out on the best parts if you don't get involved with other people.

you do lose out on the best parts if you don't get involved with other people- Lance

{{Being as crabbit as I am I have never found this to be the case, not even in real life! The only game I have that has a proper multiplayer mode is Elite Dangerous- and I never play it in open, I nearly always play in solo, with occasional jaunts into Private if I really want to team up with a friend. But as most of my friends are likewise Scottish and just as crabbit even that is pretty rare, and friends with Elite Dangerous, a decent enough pc and VR makes it even rarer!

I have been playing a fun little VR game thats been out on psvr for about a year I think, but just made its way to the grown-up VR  headsets recently- Operation Warblade. Not perfect, few graphic issues where its a bit rough and ready- but tons of fun in short bursts, and for old fogeys like me who remember playing Operation Wolf in the arcade with its cabinet mounted Uzi its a very nice update of that format without breaking it.


Few things I wish they had done differently, mainly your health display- in the original Op Wolf there is a great big bar down the right side, starts of green goes yellow when your health gets about halfway down, and goes into the red when your about to die and plays a warning sort of heart beat sound, this version its hard to notice what your healths at with a glance and there is no panicky sound cue for when its low, and by time you've searched the screen for where its actually located your dead!

Also an interesting choice, and one I like but which threw me at first, is that relative to the action, you're huge, a giant- its kind of meta- as your both in the game and standing at the arcade cabinet - so its sort of you if your seen from the perspective of being inside the game- so your like a huge thing looming over the play area, with an uzi. At one point you get what is basically Halflife 2's gravity gun and can grab say a helicopter and pull it right up to you, an in comparison to your hands and uzi the helicopter seems about three foot across, increasing this sense of being this huge heavily armed presence- but when you shoot certain icons you get pulled into the action out of your cabinet, and get an up close and personal more traditional fps style view of the action for a short burst, these often also involve flying in a helicopter, driving a tank ect and they break up the more traditional horizontal scrolling shooting action of the Op Wolf game its paying homage to.
If you were ever a fan of Op Wolf, or enjoyed a good light gun game, then this will be great fun. As a general shooter its nothing particularly special, but still fun to play but hard to say if you'll ring quite as much pleasure out of it without a touch of nostalgia for the original games that inspired it.

I think for my occasional game reviews I'm going to start giving scores- Ill go for an out of 10 scale, with 5 being average. And by average I mean its a game that's well written, well programmed and works, just nothing special or notable about it in its genre to lift it high above the crowd. 5 therefore on this scale would not be a bad score, if a game gets 5 and sounds like the sort of game you like you'll have a good time with it, just probably not an outstanding time. Anything below a 5 is hampered by flaws of some sort, anything above has something about it I feel makes it stand out. I feel I aught to explain the scale as reviews often dont explain their scoring system, leading people to think if a game gets a 5 say it must be rubbish, when in fact often that means its ok, its an average standard, as in my own scale it would.

So Operation Warblade I award a 6 to. A competent, fun shooter raised slightly above being average for its type by its premise and homage to the original, and by virtue of being in VR and playing around with the meta concepts that presents in ways which add fun elements to game play. But you might want to downgrade the score to a 5 if you have no particular fondness for the original games that inspired it.}}

{{Had half an hour to kill so thought Id do some mini-reviews using my new scoring system!

Beat Saber- Very tightly written rhythm based game with a very simple but effective premise beautifully executed- you slice in two approaching coloured boxes, hitting them in the direction the arrow on them indicates, in time to the musics beat. Its incredibly simple, so much so that in game there is not a single button to press to play, its literally a game in which you wave your arms about and occasionally sidestep right or left to avoid wal obstacles coming at you. Its a game basically anyone, even someone who has never played a computer game before, can grasp and play within minute of starting. Mastering it however will take a bit more time.
Basically there is absolutely nothing wrong with this to fault, it is so simple. The main critique against it is that whilst it does what it does very well, that's all it does. Its one simple premise carried out to a high standard of polish. Addictive, rewarding, fun mentally and physically to play.
If I had to pick niggles the default out the box song choice is short at 7, though each have three levels of difficulty, but even then its hard to hold this against it as its so easy to mod in pc with more songs available to play than you'll ever have time for. And at its price point its money well spent.
8 out of 10.


Skyrim VR - Ah Skyrim, probably the most famous, certainly the most played single player open world RPG of all time. All that's good about Skyrim in pancake is good here too, and all that's bad is bad here too. And in many ways what's good is even better, magic in particular is a whole new fun ball-game when freed up to point your hands and cast in different directions at once. Likewise firing bows and crossbows is way more fun when you're actually aiming and feel like your holding the bow in your hands.

And what is bad, z-flickering on distant LOD terrain, dodgy textures and slightly odd looking npc's, occasional floating livestock, unexpected ctd's- all the usual Skyrim issues seem more stark and obvious and immersion breaking.
But even on pancake there are still few games to match Skyrims scope and ambition or potential hundreds of hours of gameplay, and that sense of scope and scale and ambition is only amplified when your standing inside the world of Tamriel, it really does feel huge.
On VR there is simply no other game save maybe Fallout4 and Elite Dangerous which can hope to compete on its scale and size and hours of play time it offers. The fact pc Skyrim is easily modable too is just the icing on the VR cake. Its been ported to everything possible because its a very good game, simple as that, and the VR version, whilst not short of its own bugs and issues, is still an amazing game despite it all.
9 out of 10.



Arizona Sunshine- Zombie shooting in the sunshine! Well mainly. Solid mechanics, nice world environments and interactions with objects, opening drawers and car doors ect and fun, occasionally panicky zombie shooting. But whilst the presentation is nice and most of the mechanics work well, the formula is very predictable very early on.

Levels basically consist of making your way along a linear path shooting the occasional encroaching zombie along the way, then at some point you'll reach a dead end of some type where you need to do something, or get something, or wait on something (get a wrench to turn a handle to open a slow moving gate, wait on a lift to arrive, that sort of thing) and whilst the thing happens it alerts every zombie from all around and you have to survive what is basically a horde mode before moving onto the next part of the game and repeating the process in a new setting. There is some variety in locations provided by the mine sections, where fighting zombies in the dark with one hand given over to using the torch adds some much needed tension and scares to the otherwise quite arcadey and brightly sun drenched main game style.
There is some reuse of assets in this one too where you can see the games budget nipping at its heels, you will see the same zombie types over and over, and its not unusual to be attacked by two identical zombies.
And I did find reloading my guns a bit fiddly, you have to press a button to eject the spent clip and then move your guns to your waist where the ammo belt is to auto-reload it- I often found in the heat of zombie blasting I'd either forget to eject the clip first, or I'd not move the gun to quite the right location to reload automatically, have to look down to find the right spot and get torn apart by zombies in doing so.

Still everything else works, and you forget about the predictable level layout when your in the midst of a zombie horde trying to eat your face off and its in those moments somewhere between mayhem and sheer panic the game is at its best.
A good solid fun zombie shooter, with some high tension moments but generally more arcadey feeling than scary or horror feeling, some funny ironic moments in the scripting too but with predictable level layouts, too few zombie type models and some occasionally finicky control mechanics.
7 out of 10

}}}

Just going back to the Destiny thing... what I mean by missing out is that while you can do most of the content single player, the most satisfying and intricate part of Destiny is its raids where you need to have other people in there. You just can't do it without others so you won't ever do it and therefore miss out on the best bits (nothing like taking down an evil God like being after having worked as a team for hours to get there).

You should give it a watch to see some of the raids that Destiny has or has had. Each one is different and has its own personality... there is one called Leviathan that I don't love but some people think is the best as it is more puzzle type encounters.

There are others that are much more focussed on just smashing the shit out of a boss with very little mechanics (example would be Kings Fall and it's War Priest section).

Big platforming sections (see Vault of Glass jumping puzzle or Kings Fall)

Some more about getting an objective done in a time limit (Wrath of the Machine death zamboni section).

Apparently the newest one (live on the 14th) is the biggest one yet so I am super excited to play it when my character is ready to do so!!

{Big question is it winning back the fans or too little too late? }}