The Gamer Thread Vol. 5 (General Gaming News & Discussion)

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Just had a mild jaunt into the Dark Zone with my main character. I kept to the lower areas, got a bunch of stuff and actually extracted 25 items, earning a bunch of rank-up caches along the way (currently rank 21 in the DZ). I would have grabbed a few more things but when I called in the extraction, another player showed up and butchered me (I'm mildly surprised it didn't happen sooner. Oh well).

I cleared a few landmarks, earned a couple boss kills. I accidentally went rogue because I had no idea what button to press (hold up on the D-pad). I think I'll be more careful about that until I have a solid PvP build.

Still gonna farm the DZ for items and commendations. Gonna take a long while to earn some of those but it gives plenty to do.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Belgium declares loot boxes to be gambling and therefore illegal

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

After a frankly awful day at work (don't worry, tomorrow will also be frustrating as well), I come home, help my stepdad a bit with the septic pipes, and start playing Division as usual. In the middle of a Light Zone boss run, no exotics dropped, it's time for dinner and then I finish the run.

Cool, I have enough global event credits to purchase a loot box. Maybe I'll get shafted yet again with gear I already have and sweet baby Jesus, it's the missing gloves I need!

I finally have a six-piece Classified Striker. Fucking finally! Going to feel so good mowing NPCs down by the score now, and what really seals the deal is that the Classified gloves have almost the exact same roll as my regular gloves.

But now that I have reason to, I'm more closely examining the mods on my gear and I'm seeing some of them are not as good as they could be. I need to switch out a few with better options, so I'll be doing that before I can really go on a proper rampage. Still, I'm in a very positive mood now, all thanks to a long-awaited reward.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

Collector finds drugs in NES carts

[buffalorock Star Sapphire's Love Slave Find all posts View Profile Close buffalorock]

I've been having a great time with the Mad Max game that was free this month with PS Plus. There is a lot of vehicular combat and hand to hand fighting along with collectibles, upgrading your car and Max, exploration, etc. . .

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Currently awaiting the Classified D3-FNC knee pads (fucking RNG...), but otherwise I've had a fair amount of fun this global event (electric-charged ammo, tougher modifiers during missions means you shock yourself/group if you overcharge too far).

One of the commendations was for melee kills while overcharged, rewarding a panda bear mask, and though it got very frustrating at times, I managed to unlock it today after grinding a mission several times. Not gonna lie, it was helluva funny to see enemies go flying outta their shoes when I smacked them.

Unfortunately, one of the commendations may be bugged for me. Sucks, because it's a Queen reference (specifically "We Will Rock You"). Also irritates me that, since I've been venturing into the Dark Zone more, I haven't been doing Underground, which means I haven't been getting Hunter kills to eventually unlock a really cool mask.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

The Warmind expansion for Destiny 2 released and it brought...story missions recycled as Strikes. Just like Curse of Osiris did.

Good game, Bungo.

I haven't set aside time to get through the newest content, but hearing about the return of a totally inexcusable lack of creativity makes me want to just not bother.

From what I glimpsed yesterday after the game finished updating, there's a decent amount of cool new content (Valor/Glory ranks in Crucible, for example), but I despise when main-game content is recycled as D2 is wont to do.

Maybe this weekend I'll be able to get through at least some of the Warmind story, if I can pull myself away from Division's Dark Zone (takes fucking forever to grind good money in there).

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Was doing some Dark Zone grinding in The Division last night and tonight.

LAST NIGHT -- Got ganked by a 4-man rogue gang, joke was on them because I had no loot to steal. Respawned and headed to a safer zone, thinking I would mess with their heads by calling in extractions at a bunch of spots and then pick a random one so they couldn't easily find me.

When I called in a second chopper, I noticed the rogues were fighting about half a kilometer away. Normally I don't really get nervous for this sort of thing, but I had my Dark Zone loot bag 8/9 full, and two or three of those items were sealed caches, which meant anywhere from 4-9k Dark Zone funds. I cleared the NPCs that showed, waited until there were only 15 seconds left before the chopper left, attached my loot, and kept looking in all directions to see if a rogue player was coming for me. I got lucky and the loot was extracted, putting me over the 50 extracted items requirement for the stage of the commendation I was on. Yay.


TONIGHT -- Once I got done killing the last few Cleaners (flamethrower-wielding trash collectors) I needed to complete their commendation (10k kills), I headed into the Dark Zone to kill a few soldier enemies for the daily challenge and of course, I grabbed a random piece of junky loot to trick rogues. I noticed there was some players causing a little trouble north of me and ducked into a checkpoint to replenish health and ammo.

When I turned back around to leave, the rogues were waging a four-man war right outside the goddamn door. I could see their silhouettes as they spent five whole minutes trashing other players, working their way to "manhunt" status before gradually moving farther north to a marked location to burn off their status. I waited to be sure and hauled ass south.

Grabbing a couple extra items, I called in an extraction at one of the shittiest places possible (it used to be the single worst spot, might still be). I then ran like fucking Usain Bolt to the next location, and surprise surprise, another player had called in a chopper. I get there just in time to help him finish off some NPCs and watch as he hooks his loot to the rope. Figuring he's either baiting me to do the same before going rogue or he's legit, I do the same and then initiate jumping jacks, tensely watching for betrayal (I'd be fucked if he did, I suck at PvP).

A third player shows up right before the chopper leaves, and as the last couple seconds burn off the timer, Mr. 3 goes rogue. I suspect he was honestly waiting to let us have our loot because there was too little time left to hijack it (I saw a notification earlier that another player had 'jacked a rope, so I avoided that extraction); I'm not entirely sure he even cared about the loot. Mr. 3 and a buddy of his slaughter me and Mr. 1, but I'm laughing because I got a few more bits out.

Currently on 64 items extracted. To complete the commendation I need 1,500.

Shit...

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

So yeah, Destiny 2:

Bunch of guys starting sending me invites and messages because they wanted to do the new Escalation Protocol (are they fucking kidding? It's an endgame event that requires you to be ~370 or you'll get creamed), politely declined and then was forced to go to orbit when they tried to insist (both Destiny games have always had horrid social tools, so interactions can be crude on the surface and you have to infer meaning, but some actions are clear; that, and I had my own shit to do).

I decided to jump into Quickplay (non-competitive) and work on getting me some Crucible tokens and rewards, one agonizing match after another (also knocking out a few milestones to slowly raise my power level). After some difficulty I managed to actually do rather well, and have progressed my "Valor" rank a bit. I doubt I'll ever touch competitive to earn Glory points, which means I'll never get that bitching new pulse rifle, but oh well.

Slowly working through some of the side projects you unlock once the story is beaten, namely Nascent Dawn and the IKELOS weapons.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

So of course I go into the Dark Zone, grab a junk item, thinking I'm going to troll rogues by calling in fake extractions all over the place.

And then a random boss drops a goddamn NinjaBike backpack. Only the second I've ever had drop, and it's a well-rolled beauty (gotta change one trait).

Fuck. Me.

I actually got fairly nervous calling in an extraction. Shit, clearing out the area was a pain in the ass because of the shit-ton of NPCs even before I called the chopper.

Wait was incredibly aggravating because I thought a wave of NPCs would show, and then an agent would go rogue and kill me, hijack my stash.

Thank god I was able to extract everything. Celebrated by butchering more enemies and then left the Dark Zone. Now I just need to decide how to set up a good build for my new bag.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

Today, the love-it-or-hate-it Super Mario Bros. movie turns 25. I plan to watch it again tonight (esp. since I own a copy). I hated it in a befuddled confusion when it was new, but have come to like it the same way you might your ugly dog that keeps walking into the wall.

+ YouTube Video

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

The SMB film has moments where it's not half terrible (and plenty of moments where it's straight up garbage). Somehow, yes, they balance out. I privately suspect alcohol may enhance viewing tolerance levels.

Best scene will forever be when Mario pulls out a bob omb when fighting Koopa. Crowd totally loses its shit and Koopa drops a brick into his pants. Priceless.

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

^That's funny because when I was thinking about it, one of the things I was looking forward to was the bob omb scene.



I'm watching it now and on the streets, there's also signs for "twomp" and "Bullet Bill's." But it's so weird since nothing matches. I guess actually setting it in the mushroom kingdom would be too expensive, but I don't know, the sets are still pretty complex. Seems like it wouldn't have been much harder to film it in meadows and construct some giant mushrooms to jump on.



I also forgot that Toad is played by Mojo Nixon (he even says "the king is everywhere") or possibly I didn't know who he was the last time I saw this.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

1) Had a very suspicious E-mail from Epic Games when I got home, letting me know my account was ready to use and all they needed was to verify my E-mail address via account login. Just to cover my bases, I asked both my dad and stepdad about their recent gaming activities, both gave negative replies, so I did the obvious thing and marked-as-spam and then deleted the clear attempt at phishing. Since I didn't provide any login data, the only thing the assholes who sent it have on me is an E-mail address, so I'm fairly in the clear.

2) Fucking Bungo. Faction Rallies in Destiny 2 have long been despised, but now they're basically abhorred. You can only pledge to a single faction during the rally now. Not just per character, but PER ACCOUNT. Once you sign the pledge you need not even bother playing with another toon, because there won't be any fucking point. I myself am extra-pissed off because somehow I suddenly don't have my Dead Orbit helmet for my Hunter, even though I know I fucking had one before. There's pretty much zero chance I would have deleted it, aside from a one-in-a-billion chance it was by accident, so now I have to hope the RNG blesses me again, because it took fucking forever to get it the first time. Goddamn it.

"We want your faction choice to have deeper meaning," said Bungo. Yeah fucking right, said the entire goddamn community. Forcing players to only use one faction per account per month is a fucking disaster.

[Agent Purple The Illustrated Man Find all posts View Profile Close Agent Purple]

Kingdom Hearts III to release on January 29, 2019