4769

Finished Ryse:

  • I have no idea why this game is scoring so low with the reviewers (62%) but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
  • Graphics are really great. It’s nice seeing crytek engine being used in something other than a shooter. The environments and characters are gorgeous. Some faces are still a bit odd looking though. I think the only thing that looks slightly better would be frostbite 3.
  • This game is gory. I mean really violent and bloody. I love it.
  • Combat felt good to me. There is a nice rhythm and timing to it. Sure, you could button mash but you’ll do a lot better timing your rolls, blocks, attacks, and bashes. Things get a bit more challenging later on when you have more difficult enemies that vary up their attack.
  • Difficulty and pacing felt just right. I never got bored. There was just enough variety in gameplay to keep things interesting. I especially liked the formation segments which were at least something new I haven’t seen before. The turret stuff was less so. Length felt about right at around 6 hrs. It could have probably used another couple of hours. I didn’t feel like there was any padding though.
  • It could use some more enemy types. It can be seen as either cutting corners and reducing assets needed or as a gameplay feature. It’s sort of like final fight. You can quickly recognize the enemy you are fighting by how they look and know what attack patterns they will use and how to counter them. If they all looked different it would probably make the game a lot harder and frustrating. So I’m ok with the land of a 1000 clones.
  • Sound effects are great too especially all the slicing and dicing. You really feel the impact of your hits.
  • Music was appropriate if a bit forgettable.
  • Story wasn’t that bad if very predictable. I thought it serviced the game just fine.
  • The last bit of gameplay on the last level is a bit weak. Think farcry 3 boss battles and I’ll leave it at that.
  • The character progression and upgrading in single player was a bit meaningless. None of it had that big of an impact on gameplay.
  • Tried some multiplayer which is basically gladiator arena co-op combat. There is the whole leveling thing too. It’s actually pretty fun.

Highly recommended. This is a very competent and stunning game though not all that original. Sure, it’s not masterpiece like Last of Us or Tomb Raider but I still found it very worth playing. It’s like a big summer blockbuster with the production values to match that is easy to digest. This is one case where it seems most reviewers had their mind made up even before playing it (probably based on the E3 showing).

4770

Update on my situation, I took the rather drastic step of resetting the XBox to factory settings and reinstalled, and the problem seems to have gone away. I started a fresh game and took it from the start to the point where I had earned my ship and landed and gone hunting on the first post-Ship-earned island with no crashes at all.

As far as I can tell the latest saves for all my games were saved onto the cloud and I lost no progress on anything. I ignored the AC4 save, since I thought it best to start from scratch, but Ryse and Forza are exactly where I was when I clean wiped. The one issue I have noticed is that Ubisoft now claims I don’t have an activated AC4 Passport. I haven’t tried messing with it, since I wanted to run as close to a vanilla AC4 as possible.

I’m not quite sure what to make of the crashes. I suspect it might have something to do with having run the AC4 tablet companion. It did seem to be memory related, and I assume the tablet does put some extra load on the system. Crashes would either be preceded by some of the sounds dropping out such as the music and some but not all ambient sounds abruptly stopping followed by a crash 5 minutes or so later, or when loading a new segment after a cut scene.

4771

I’m with you ARogan, glad to see there are at least two of us.

4772

Glad to help! I always turn off with “energy saving” mode now.

4773

You guys who said you liked Ryse: Son of Rome didn’t warn me that this game was so hard even on the middle difficulty level. I was expecting some kind of QTE fest but this turned out to be a pretty tough fighting game that requires good timing and some pretty good reflexes.

Having the defensive button being A is just evil though. What button do you press to prevent being hit? A? WTF? Who does that? It’s crazy. Even after a couple of hours with the game I’m still getting hit constantly and not defending myself because I forget to press A after every encounter. It’s as if years of playing these kinds of games with a controller have trained me so deeply that I can’t unlearn it. It reminds me of when Mercenaries 2 had me press the A button to accelerate in a vehicle. It was so ingrained in me to use the right trigger that I just couldn’t unlearn that. Eventually I just had to abandon that game because there was no way to change the controls and I just couldn’t do it. I just can’t press A to accelerate in vehicles. My brain is incapable of learning that.

4774

How weird is it that the best game on Xbox One is… Peggle 2?

4775

While I rather like quite a lot of the PS4 games I have, the best one is (IMO) Resogun, which is similarly a “small game”.

4776

Which apparently launched with frame-rate issues! Really? In Peggle? Hardly a slight against Xbone, however, if a dev can’t that to run smooth on that hardware, something else is up. Given the other features that were apparently missing on launch and are getting patched in, pretty safe to lay that blame on the publisher pushing for early release.

4777

Yeah, that’s not the xbone’s fault. It’s more than capable of running Peggle.

4778

Shit dog I need Nvidia 780 Ti cards in SLI to run Peggle 2 at 60fps.

4779

Lololol!

4780

I got my Xbox One yesterday, and it’s got some kinks to work out. It turns on my Sony Bravia TV fine and will adjust its volume and pause it, but it won’t turn it off. When I turn off the TV via my Harmony remote, the Xbox turns back on.

It has a low (maybe 25%) rate of identifying me and my wife via Kinect to log into our profiles, but the voice recognition has been literally 100% accurate. It recognized a completely blank spot on the wall as my wife rather than her actual face. I think the visual/voice success rates are backwards from most people’s, so I’m a bit confused.

For streaming my collection of lossless classical music, the Xbox One is a miracle; it’s completely silent. My didn’t think my 360s was too loud until I heard the difference.

I think I read that they tested the new controller with human hands, but I have a hard time believing that given the placement of the bumpers. They’re way too high up, and my hand doesn’t stretch that way without discomfort. The new analog sticks are too small and loose. I wish I could use the 360 controller instead. The new headset is fairly nice, though. Maybe I’ll adjust with time.

4781

You can improve Kinect’s recognition. For each of the profiles, simply go to the top left of the screen and view the profiles. Then select the “I was not recognised” option (even if you were) and Kinect will take an additional picture of the player for that profile. If it’s looking at the wrong thing in the room, simply have the player lift one arm and the player will focus on their face. Once you have taken a couple of pictures in different light conditions / with different outfits, the players recognition will be pretty much flawless.

Wendelius

4782

That’s odd. I found this game pretty easy overall and very accessible to the masses. Here are some observations from finishing the game (default middle difficulty):

  • A is a priority button and overrides every other action and animation. As soon as you hit it, it will interrupt whatever attack animation you are in and block/deflect and open the enemy up for counter attack.
  • The timing for hitting A is pretty lenient especially if you aren’t going for perfect blocks (timing a block right before it hits). You can hit it very early in the enemy attack animation and you will still block. In fact if you aren’t too sure on the timing you can kind of mash A to ensure you get a block and is also handy when 3 or more guys are all chain attacking you.
  • So typically if you get mobbed you wait for somebody to attack and hit A. Then I lead into a counter shield bash, attach, bash, attack, etc. Usually while I’m doing this attack sequence another enemy will attack, and I’ll have to hit A to block, sometimes twice in a row b/c they are chaining attacks on me. After blocking everything you can start a counter and attack on the last person you blocked or use the analog sticks to go back and attack the first dude to try and finish him off quickly. This is very similar to how I play Assassin’s Creed. Basically every attack begins with a block so you always (well most of the time, I do make some exceptions) wait for the enemy to make the first move.
  • I left execution bonus on health gain for 90% of the game. It just makes things easier and the character upgrades aren’t all that helpful. So you really want to get in as many executions as possible to keep regaining health.
  • For the bigger warrior guys after a block I usually open up with a charged strong shield bash into a couple of strong attacks.
  • I suck at blocking arrows with A so I usually roll dodge instead after I fire an arrow. That seemed to work better for me.

Overall, I found this game quite a bit easier than say god of war with it’s rapid fire button mashing QTE that got old really fast. Most of the timing is very forgiving IMO. Even the colored execution QTE is optional except to keep your chain bonus multiplier going. As long as you get the execution started, that target is going to die with or without your continued input.

last sequence (minor spoiler)

The only place I felt was a bit cheap was the very last sequence where they kind of throw out a lot of the rules, timing, and cues. It took me maybe 5 tries to finish that.

4783

When I turn off the TV via my Harmony remote, the Xbox turns back on.

You can adjust that behaviour at the Harmony end, by telling it to leave the Xbox on when you turn off the TV.

4784

Thanks for the tip; I didn’t know I could do that multiple times. When my wife did the “I was not recognized” thing last night, she tried raising one arm, raising the other arm, raising both arms, waiving both arms and doing a raising/waving dance, and it still insisted that the spot on the wall was her rather than that arm-raising/waving object in its view.

That makes sense too. You guys are smart.

4785

That makes sense too. You guys are smart.

Not really, I’ve just had a Harmony remote of one kind or another for nigh on 10 years so I’m pretty used to fiddling with the setup by now. I used to leave my DVR turned on when I turned off the telly because otherwise the programme guide would have to reload every time (it’s delivered free OTA here) and it took ages.

4786

For anyone using a Harmony remote with an Xbox One, you might want to uninstall and reinstall the Xbox One from your Harmony software. Logitech updated the codes recently, and some things that didn’t work before now work. Some apps still only respond to button presses from the actual controller (the A, B, X and Y on the Harmony don’t work). I remember some games on the 360 only responding to the controller buttons, but not apps.

I realized that the bumpers are not meant to be pressed with the same technique I used to use on the 360. You’re supposed to use the distal or intermediate phalanges for the trigger and the proximal phalanx for the bumper. It works very well. I wonder how many other people will also not realize that a new technique is required, though.

One more tip I got from tech support: at Settings -> Network -> Test Multiplayer Connection, after the results come up (“Your console is now connected to the Internet”), pull all four triggers and bumpers to get “Detailed network statistics”, including down- and up-load speeds, packet loss and latency.

4787

For anyone using a Harmony remote with an Xbox One, you might want to uninstall and reinstall the Xbox One from your Harmony software. Logitech updated the codes recently, and some things that didn’t work before now work. Some apps still only respond to button presses from the actual controller (the A, B, X and Y on the Harmony don’t work). I remember some games on the 360 only responding to the controller buttons, but not apps.

On my 360, the Harmony started out fine, but a few years in, it went a bit wonky. Direction buttons would scroll too far, that sort of thing.

4788

I picked up an Xbox One last week (I guess Microsoft must be doing a really good job at keeping up with the stock: I was surprised that, a week before Christmas, I was able to get one), and it’s sitting next to my PS4. Here are my opinions so far . . .

– I’m “Darth Karna”. Please “friend” me!

– I REALLY liked “Ryse”. It’s a big deal any time I actually finish a game, and I finished the campaign of “Ryse”. I can see some of the criticisms (it really got on my nerves that animations had to run to completion; I must have killed six hundred clones of that one guy with the shield and the beard), but those issues weren’t enough to take away from a very satisfying game. I find it surprising that some of the very dramatic moments seem lost on . . . well . . . everyone else in the world, it would seem. By the way, I also played some multiplayer matches, which turned out to be fun, although I’m not sure if I’ll still be playing it two weeks from now.

– I encountered several bugs with the Xbox One itself. On the other hand, my PS4 has been running smoothly (I am hearing other people speak of bugs with the PS4, but I haven’t encountered any). None of these bugs has been insurmountable, and only one of the times (when I was hearing sound but nothing appeared on the screen) required me to unplug the system. The way I see it: the Xbox One trying to do a lot more than the PS4 is trying to do, and there was clearly a major OS change shortly before the release. I have faith that these bugs (and let me emphasize: these were all minor) will be fixed.

– The voice control is hit or miss. I like some of it, others seem more of a bother than they are worth. Why, oh why, is it that every freaking time I say “Xbox, Play disc”, it goes to the music app? And then when I say “go back, play disc”, it works? Beyond saying “Xbox, Watch TV”, I don’t much care for the voice controls for TV (Why can’t I watch a channel based on the channel number, for those channels the Xbox One doesn’t know about? Why, when looking at “OneGuide”, can I page up and page down, but not, say, just move up a row or down a row?). Honestly, at this point, if I had an extra HDMI plug on my TV, I would just use that for the Xbox One and not bother with the cable box passthrough.

– I’m impressed with the Kinect auto-login. There’s only one time it annoys me, and that is the Youtube app (when my son walks through the room, it says “hi” to him, but the app resets. If I am in the “search” screen or if I’m watching a video, it drops me back to the main screen.

Anyway, I’m very happy with the Xbox One, just as I am very happy with the PS4. I just want to clarify one thing: with Forza 5, am I NOT supposed to be crashing in to the other cars? Or is that okay?