Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

[Krom]

Anyone else pick this up? Best $15 I've spent all year, even the tutorial is hilarious. Also it actually has nothing to do with Far Cry 3 other than using the same engine.

In vanilla FC3 the thing that killed me the most was probably falling damage, because if you so much as tripped on a pebble on the street and fell it killed you. In Blood Dragon your character is a cyborg commando, and cyborg commandos don't do falling damage, so you can jump out of a helicopter, let go of a hang glider, or dive off a cliff and walk away from it completely undamaged (aside from hearing this strangely satisfying metallic clunk when you hit the ground). You can also run absurdly fast and jump absurdly high compared to vanilla FC3, you can even perform a death from above take down on someone just by jumping at them on level ground.

Your standard sidearm is the automatic pistol from Robocop. But you will probably spend more time shooting people with the quad barrel shotgun (that also sets everything on fire).

Your character says something cheesy almost every time you head shot someone like "I picked his brain." or "He had a splitting headache" or when you stab someone like "Knife to meet you" or "That stabbing pain in your chest, was ME.".

[[]V[]essenjah]

Just picked it up. Well worth it! I was playing the new Star Trek game *utter crap,* got sick of the bugs and downloaded Blood Dragon. Well worth it. What makes it really great is it's sense of humor, it's 80's movie style soundtrack, references to Aliens, Predator, and Terminator... etc etc. Not to mention, the guy that does the voice acting for the player is the guy that actually played Hicks in Aliens and Kyle Reese in Terminator.

Still working on finishing it. I also HIGHLY recommend Far Cry 3. Best game I've played in a couple of years. Everything else is just disappointing after playing it. Played the new Tomb Raider and found myself bored because I had just finished Far Cry 3. The combat is really fluid and fun, the vehicles are great, and the AI for the animals is really amazing.

Never played it on-line but I love the single player for both FC3 and Blood Dragon.

[Tunnelcat]

I also HIGHLY recommend Far Cry 3. Best game I've played in a couple of years. Everything else is just disappointing after playing it. Played the new Tomb Raider and found myself bored because I had just finished Far Cry 3. The combat is really fluid and fun, the vehicles are great, and the AI for the animals is really amazing.

Never played it on-line but I love the single player for both FC3 and Blood Dragon.

I loved Far Cray 3 as well and the animals made wandering around the island hazardous to your health at times, but my gripe is that both endings really sucked. Depressing to go through all that great fun and then have it end the way it does. Far Cry 2's ending sucked even more too. Only the first Far Cry had a good ending.

Right now I'm playing Bioshock Infinite. It's an absolutely gorgeous game and I love the floating city, but it's more of a rehash of Bioshock 2 in fighting style, with less effective powerups, body mods and weapons. You always seem to run out of "salts" (the Adam equivalent), or ammo. One does get a sense of acrophobia to keep things interesting however. It also has a grappling hook a la Just Cause 2, but it can only be used on certain points on buildings, or as a melee weapon.

[Krom]

http://invalidopinions.com/2013/05/05/m ... on-sequel/

Short version: Blood Dragon outsold the ubisoft corporate heads initial estimates by 5x, it is the runaway hit of this season, possible sequel discussion.

Part of what makes Blood Dragon go so smoothly is the core game play is mostly unchanged from Vanilla FC3, all they did change was basically stripping out all the annoying crafting and skill trees, you level up quickly as you kill things (including animals) and gain additional abilities in predefined order, but you start with most of the FC3 skills already so something like half of the 30 levels are additional health slots (you are a walking tank by the time you have them all). You do need to do all the side quests and get all the collectables to fully upgrade all your weapons, but its still quicker and easier than Vanilla FC3 was.

Also the final vehicle you get to use in the story missions is BADASS.

[Tunnelcat]

I'd like to try it, but I can't let my beast computer run idle for 6 hours just to download the thing. Morons.

[Sergeant Thorne]

Start it up in safe mode w/network, shut down all unneeded background programs, screen and speakers off, and you're good! You on a power leash or something? Who are these morons? Inquisitive minds wish to know.

[Foil]

Why would you need to let it idle, for a download? Your machine should be plenty for doing other things (browsing, even gaming) with a simple download going on in the background.

[Krom]

Steam usually pauses downloads when a game is running, so usually you can't play a game while it is downloading. But you can override this behavior by alt-tabbing out of whatever game you are playing and going back to the steam library/downloads and hitting resume all, then alt-tabbing back to your game. Works for the most part except for games that crash when you alt-tab out of them.

Blood Dragon is about 3 GB, so its a decent chunk on DSL, but it could be worse (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 1 @ 25 GB...).

[Tunnelcat]

Still not worth it. It's almost principle for me now with these game developers and the telecoms. They either haven't figured out that not everyone has high speed internet, or the exorbitant amount of cash that's required for fast access, or don't care about alienating whole segments of the market by not even bothering to upgrade the infrastructure in the first place. And I downright refuse to give any more money to Comcast, the Evil Empire (not that Century Link is better ). Besides, their architecture royally sucks when the whole neighborhood is using the net at the same time, and everyone is on Comcast where I live. I've even had to buy import DVD's from the UK just to get Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution, FOR STEAM. Now that DVD ROM drives are disappearing from the market, (Sony quit making the Opitarc back in March) I'll be outta luck in the future for new games when the newer rigs no longer include DVD drives.

When I have my Ferrari turned on, I use it mostly to play games. And it's my sole Steam, Origin and Uplay platform. Sometimes playing and downloading don't play nice with each other, and I'm not going to let it sit all by itself, turning fans and lighting LED's and generally wearing out parts for just downloading things. When you own a Ferrari, you don't let it sit and idle, you want to go out and go fast. I guess I could put Steam on my laptop, then download the game and transfer it to my gaming rig.......... My LAN is even way faster than my internet connection.

[Isaac]

Still not worth it. It's almost principle for me now with these game developers and the telecoms.

And the drug companies! They're in it together!!

Check out the wide array of indi games out there. There might be a few you like.

[Tunnelcat]

It's a virus, and there's a drug for that!

I have gotten into quite a few nice indie games. Great fun.

[Isaac]

Have you played world of goo and cortex command? Those are awesome.

[Tunnelcat]

Nope. I'll check those out.

[Sergeant Thorne]

When you own a Ferrari, you don't let it sit and idle, you want to go out and go fast.

LOL. That's a load of crap. Unless you're pulling 1.21 Gigawatts with that thing there's no reason it shouldn't be able to purr along on a download without causing you any concern. Geez, TC. Sounds like you need to downgrade to a Porsche so you can park with the normal people without being a nervous wreck all evening.

[Tunnelcat]

Tough tooties. Letting it sit for 2 hours a gigabyte is not my idea of putting my expensive computer to good use. Moving parts do wear out by the way and my videocard cost me $500 bucks. If it's going to run, it'd better active rendering something entertaining. If these game developers don't get that a lack of high speed internet access a big problem for a large segment of the population, in the same country that created the internet by the way, they won't get my business. Foo on our free market.

[Krom]

I hate to break it to you, but power and thermal cycling is probably more damaging to the components of your computer than just leaving it running 24/7 would be.

[AceCombat]

thing about my neighborhood and comcast........ im1 of only 32 people on the node. we bumped to Comcast extreme 50, recently, only to have the Tier Doubling effect take place 2 weeks later at no extra cost, now im Comcast Extreme 100/20. and holy shiznit!!!

[woodchip]

TC, by the time you wear out your beast it will only be worth a 100 bucks and you'll be wanting to build a new one. The one I'm posting with I built 6 years ago and nothing has wore out yet and I have it running sometimes 12 hours a day.

[Top Gun]

The only things that would be experiencing actual mechanical wear anyway are just your HDD (unless you have a SSD) and fans, the latter of which are fairly cheap to replace. There might be some level of thermal fatigue too, but I don't think it's the sort of thing that'd ever become an issue in your average system's usable lifespan. Hell, look at how many legacy machines with 15-year-old parts are still trucking.

[Tunnelcat]

I'm also lazy guys. As long as my machine is actively running, it's sucking in dusty air. I'm getting too old and ill to keep the house as clean as I used to, so there's dust a plenty stirred up whenever I, or my hubby, walks by. I also don't like to take my machine out into the garage very often and blow out all the components. My luck, I'd drop the thing or break something. I'm even too chicken to replace the CPU's thermal paste, even I know it tends to dry out over the years.

But have no fear, we're looking at our ISP's new 4G internet. Looks a hell of a lot better than what Century Link offers. AceCombat, I still hate Comcast. They're down to taking an arm an a leg anymore, and I don't even have the Premium Channels like HBO and Showtime. But I read that John McCain is trying to get this bill through Congress, which will allow me to pay for the channels I want and nix the ones I don't want. Well see what transpires, or if this ends up costing people more in the long run. Either way, I'm tired of subsidizing ESPN and Fox Sports with their bundling.

[Krom]

That bill will never pass. And 4G internet is a joke, you say it takes too long to download 3 GB, but with wireless internet you will be on the hook for $10 per gigabyte overage costs and a default 2 GB (or 5 GB if you are lucky) monthly data cap. So unless all you do is check your email twice a day and never update your computer, wireless internet ends up costing a LOT more than wired internet, it is absolutely terrible for big downloads. You can forget downloading a video game off steam, most of the games I have would cost more from the overage fees from the cell company than the price of the game itself.

You should just do what we did here: kept the cable internet, killed the cable TV. We own our own modem, internet bill is a steady $75/mo with no time limited promotions or discounts or that crap applied. We get along just fine with the 10 or so digital over the air channels we get using a small antenna plus our amazon prime and netflix subscriptions (thinking about dropping netflix though, since we don't watch it much lately). The cable bill for just the expanded basic + HD with internet bundled was like $170/mo after a couple years of constant rate increases and bull★■◆● hidden fees, totally insane and not worth the couple hours a month at most we spent watching it. We get our land line telephone service via voice over IP from an outfit called Ooma, for less than $4/mo (the standard service is free, you just have to pay taxes) and the initial $200 to BUY the box (no leasing, no rental, you own it).

Oh well, in a way you can say you are lucky because around here its either expensive cable or expensive and slow DSL. The cell service here is 2G from the US Cellular (GSM/AT&T) network, or spotty and congested 3G from Verizon's (CDMA) network, no LTE here and probably won't be for years still.

[AceCombat]

yup, same here....Krom we own our modem, DOCSIS 3 and pushing about 103d/20.06u without the bottlenecked 100mbit router and wireless. dont worry, soon as i have the extra $$$ im gonna get a gigabit network hooked up.

[Tunnelcat]

Oh well, in a way you can say you are lucky because around here its either expensive cable or expensive and slow DSL. The cell service here is 2G from the US Cellular (GSM/AT&T) network, or spotty and congested 3G from Verizon's (CDMA) network, no LTE here and probably won't be for years still.

Or move to Hong Kong, where they have fiber ticking along at at 49.2 Mbps (peak) for real cheap. Hell, we're number 11 behind Bulgaria.