The Bard

Don't have it, all my FPS time still goes to Titanfall 2. I'm unconvinced that another PvP shooter will ever tear me away from that game. Added you on Battlenet anyway in case I do get it at some point!

Ok so this is super great. @Choze was gracious enough to send me a key for Destiny, which totes worked, so now I'll be playing the game day one when it comes out on PC. My battle.net name is Audioserf (Battletag #2147) Let's get an N-E PC squad together peeps!

I hated the characters, story and tone of Bravely Default, but dude its battle system was incred.

Just played the demo, and I really enjoyed it. Has a really distinctive look, but I'm more interested in the promise of the framing device, which is 8 different characters that you can either choose as your protagonist or pick up as members of your party during the course of the game. It has the capacity to pull off something like Rashomon where a story is told from different perspectives with each character giving a personalised account. Hope it actually lives up to that promise.

Welcome home big dawg.

Well alright, I guess if you absolutely need to give it away I'll take it off your hands . I really enjoyed the beta. I guess I'm going to have to cajole some friends into giving it a go, hopefully some of the people I played Borderlands with back in like 2009 will be interested.

Thanks for the offer man, but I have a Gigabyte AIB card which I'm not sure would be eligible (think it's only the founder's edition that can redeem?). Also I'm not sure I'd play it, since I don't know anyone who's going to be playing it on PC . But I'll try it if there aren't any more deserving takers.

I've got a 1080, what do you need help with?

Anyone tried to use PSVR on PC? Been eyeballing VR headsets for a few weeks now, thinking it's about time to make the purchase but I really don't like the fact that there isn't one that can just work with all platforms.

I think it's amazing. Really manages to take what was previously a fairly niche genre and streamline it in a way that makes it comprehensible and accessible - you don't jump into a round with the understanding that it could take you hours of play to get any kind of result. Instead the dome constriction makes it so that every round is pretty much done with within 30 minutes (much less if you don't make it into the final 10). If you die, just quit out and hit quickplay again. Danny O'Dwyer's streams are super fun to watch. I'm kind of jealous of people who have a group to roll with in this game because there's so much possibility for developing a shorthand with your pals in terms of strategy and making up tactics to handle other players on the fly. Also really enjoy Patrick Kleppek and Austin Walker's streams on Waypoint, as well as the 4 man hijinks the Giantbomb crew get into. Even in its unfinished state, without mantling, with just one map and a total lack of anything approaching performance optimisation, I've put about 25 hours into it and I'm always up for a game.

CoH is fairly dependent on resource management and base structures but it's more about squad tactics for sure. I guess what I was getting at is that they are very smart designers that've made some really cool, varied RTS games so I'm sure they'll be fine working on something a little more traditional. Typically though I think resource gathering in RTS' is best when the resources are between enemy territories and they become staging grounds for skirmishes. I really don't like having to optimise dirt farming near my home base, it takes away from the mental bandwidth I'd rather devote to dealing with the opponent.

Relic made CoH which is unequivocally the best RTS ever made so there's no doubt they'll be able to do something interesting with this.

Jesus, this looks like shit.

Well I was waiting for Vega 64 to upgrade my GPU, but not with that 375w power draw I'm not. You could light up an entire village with that kind of TDP.

Lol absolutely fuck off. There's no conceivable way I'm paying £50 a year to occasionally play some shit online and fill my hard drive with free games I'm never going to play.

Way to take a simple observation and extend it to the most bizarre, illogical conclusion. What evidence are you providing for the idea that "acting effeminate" somehow tanks sperm count? I can maybe see an argument being presented for long term sexual selection for neoteny and effeminate traits resulting in lowered sperm counts but that should present even more in asian and east african populations where neoteny is much more obvious. It's happened over a short space of time though so it would be better to look at more obvious culprits like diet, stress levels, sources of ambient radiation etc.

I suppose that's fair enough. Regarding the app the biggest problem I've heard of is a usability issue. If you don't have the app as your open window on your phone, it disconnects you from chat. That needs to be fixed asap. Another function that would be nice is some way to stream both game and chat audio via the app so you don't need that fucked up splitter box.

I don't have Splatoon yet so I haven't had occasion to use the app, but is there any reason you'd use the Nintendo specific app rather than discord? I mean it's a massive chore to actually add friends on the Switch, and since they're having you use a phone anyway, may as well use the industry standard app that works flawlessly and that you can use for any game of your choice, right?

Couldn't stand hearing all the mad hype for Battlegrounds and not giving it a try so I'm going to give it a go tonight soon as it downloads. I feel like it'd be much more fun playing as a squad though. If anyone wants to team up, my Steam id is Audioserf

If you all can make it to Croydon you should try the Heart of Gaming arcade. Really great arcade with a buttload of cabinets and consoles. It's not pay per play either, think it's £7ish for entry and everything beyond that is free to play.

Good call. One other thing is that Ryzen CPUs consist of multiple core complexes stitched together with what's called an "infinity fabric." Inter communication between the complexes is really really improved by high speed low latency ram (much more so than Intel processors) so make sure if you're going for 8gb you get the best stuff you can afford.

Ryzen 5 is a good CPU series but there are some issues with the motherboard socket and RAM controllers on the first generation boards, so make sure you read the reviews before you commit. There should be a good, viable upgrade path with the AM4 socket though in the coming years. I'm imagining the successors to the Ryzen line will work with it. i5 7500(K) is also a good option if you want to stick to the intel side, since they have slightly better single core performance. If you already have an SSD then you're already covered for a large part of the expense. RX 580 or GTX 1060 (6GB) GPU will cover you nicely for 1080p60 at max settings on most games. You might want to wait for RX Vega release since it'll likely kick down the price of competing GPUs. 16GB 2800-3200mhz RAM should be the sweet spot for pretty much anything you'd want to do on a PC besides intensive video editing. Don't bother with an optical drive. Any good brand 550+W PSU will cover your power needs, and you're good to go.

Yeah Maximilian's been stoking a boner for that game for ages. LI Joe gave an interview where he suggests that it has a bit of a low skill ceiling, so that's partly where my fears came from. But hopefully we'll get our hands on it during the beta to check it out for ourselves. Honestly, I can't wait until the game hits the tournament circuit. The game looks better than the anime ever did, it'll be super fun to reenact some of the classic fights.

Ok so having not played it, and just going on what the director has been saying in interviews about input/execution simplification in this game, I wonder if they're going to release a completely stripped down game without a lot of serious competitive and tournament potential. I really hope that everything you can do in this game isn't just a series of canned auto-combos and flashy looking assists, and that there's actually some scope for a variety of mixups, cancels, crossups, fakeouts, parries and all the other good shit ASW are known for. Can't wait to get my hands on a demo or something. I watched a metric buttload of Dragonball growing up and it'd be so fucking good to sit down with some childhood buddies and play some versus matches where skill plays a large part and you're not just mindlessly mashing to make cool shit happen on screen.

Surely the idiom "for the players" still suggests that the platform holders want to appeal to what the players want, and if the players want cross platform play doesn't this show an attitude contrary to their own marketing slogan? It's a ridiculously bad excuse, especially since Playstation consoles have traditionally been the most geared towards cross platform play (Portal 2, Street Fighter 5 etc all having Playstation/ PC crossplay). So yeah, if you're going to be anti consumer, at least find a decent excuse for it.