Sane

Bought this in a sale a while ago and booted ME1 up to have a look today. I confirmed my suspicion that this is still an excellent game. Ropey faces and cumbersome inventory management aside it's still the best virtual space adventuring there is, no other game gives me that sci-fi feeling like Me. 

Not sure how much remastering they did but the environments look great. And 60fps makes it feel smooooth. 

Time to hunt down Seren! 

To be honest I never found a satisfying way to deal with that. I ended up just using the wheel mostly (or slowly cycling through all the weapons while being shot 😅).

I did part of the weekly club rally yesterday, is it correct there's no retries? I wasn't really prepared for that 😅.

15 hours ago, MardiganX said:

Thanks for the shout on side missions guys. Money is rolling in now and half way through the street races with my new big time crush Claire too.

Take care not to do too many side missions though, it's very easy to become OP, removing any challenge from the game.

15 minutes ago, CrichStand said:

@Sane If it keeps happening, try this and see if it sorts it out. It works on PS5, never had a problem with it again! 👍🏻

Thanks! I'll try that if it happens again. 

That bug still exists on Xbox, it's happened to me a few times. Even with the Xbox' normal rumble it's as you say, without it it feels floaty and uninvolved. Had to restart the game entirely for it to go back to normal. 

Power Bombs also work well on the armor.

10 minutes ago, CrichStand said:

I’m on PS5 with the controller and WRC makes great use of the DualSense. From “feeling” the different surfaces, to the resistance of the  pedals on the triggers and little touches like gravel pinging off the car through the pads speaker, it’s all done brilliantly and makes a big difference. Once you get used to it there’s no going back!

Yeah that sounds great, makes me wish the Xbox had something like it. Good haptics are underrated!

9 hours ago, Alshie said:

I'm using controller rather than a wheel etc if that makes a difference. 

I'm a controller user too. While it's probably possible to get better times with a wheel I have to say this game works really well on a controller. 

OK, I managed to get there by jamming my controller under a pillow . I sent a request to join the club. 

51 minutes ago, Junker said:

This week it’s a weird one. The 5 gravel Super Special stages in the game done at night in the 2007 Focus WRC.

 Only running for 5 days to keep it to a traditional Sunday finish so these little stages will only take a couple of minutes each. 
If you’ve not joined the club there are unlimited spaces and all are welcome. I post them weekly and they are aimed at being do-able in half an hour or so.

@Sane @ryodi @wullie do you fancy a go? No obligation to do it every week, just a little bit of rllmuk competition.

Yeah sounds great! I wanted to join before but I'm not really sure how. It seems like I have to scroll through hundreds pages of clubs to be able to find this one. And each page takes a good few seconds to load. Is there a better way to do it? I'm on Xbox. 

Got my first win! It was on a racetrack in Portugal. Proper fist pump moment. 

I turned off ABS, seems fine so far. I also did the opposite of what you said and turned off the voice for the pace notes and kept the arrows. I'll try the other way around too so see what works best. 

One more question: why does it stop letting me restart races sometimes? Is there a limit? 

Speaking of Mia Goth, I watched Infinity Pool and she's also in that. I really enjoyed it, it's by Brandon Cronenberg and it's a about a couple who are on vacation in a resort that's fenced off from the rest of the, very poor, country it's in. They venture outside and of course things go bad. But it takes a very interesting turn and from there on things get properly crazy. I'd recommend it to fans of more 'out there' horror, it's not too crazy but it might put some people off with trippy scenes and such.

Watch Kermode's review if in doubt, his enthusiasm will probably rub off.

7 hours ago, CrichStand said:

Yeah, it’s always best to just stick to whatever suits you and makes the game most enjoyable! 
 

About the weight of the car........so using momentum and weight transfer. In other words it can be good to turn the car one way before turning the car the other way through the bend. There are parts of tracks where this will happen naturally and it feels a bit like surfing a wave when it does. It’s a technique that can make taking certain corners better/faster. It might be called a Scandinavian Flick. Again, Junker will know if I’m using the right terms. Probably not! 🤣

 

Same applies to jumps. Instead of blasting over them, use the correct speed and weight of the car to get the wheels back on the ground asap and gain traction and speed. It’s stuff like this that can take loads of time off stages. It’s knowing when you can push and when to reign things in.
 

Shit, I’ve forgotten one of the most important things! The pace notes! Try to follow them just as much, as what you’re seeing up ahead. Translation of 5 or 6 = spank the fuck out of it! Hairpin or caution = knew I should have slowed down. How am I going to get out of this tree? 🤣

Thanks, that helps a lot! I do try to follow the pace notes, slowly getting better at parsing all the information: how the track looks, what they are saying and the arrows on screen. Currently doing a rally in Estonia and that's going much better than Sweden so far.

Should I keep using ABS or is it going to bite me in the long run?

I know what you mean about going slow first, it's such a different attitude compared to most racing games I'm used to where you're just holding down the throttle most of the time with an eye on the mini map.

Even so, I don't think I've managed a faultless race yet, I usually mess up at least 3 or 4 times so I still have to be more careful. I'll get there eventually, it's also a matter of learning the tracks. 

I tried using manual gears but I think I'll have to stick with auto for now, there's just no way for my braid to keep track of everything . 

Edit: what do you mean when you say "using the weight of the car"? 

Thanks for the tips everyone! I'd love to join the club, as long as I'm not taking up a slot for a more serious player. I don't think I'll be able to actually be competitive, but I like the social aspect and being able to compare times and such. 

Do I really have to scroll through all the pages to find the club? 

As for the difficulty, I have abs on, tc off, damage to cosmetic and using automatic gears. I should use manual gears right? I find driving in Sweden extremely difficult because of the snow on the side of the roads, one tiny mistake and I'm toast... 

Gimped or not, raytraced Cyberpunk on Series X looks very good. Going back to performance mode really made everything look flat and lifeless.

I impulse bought this game because it was on sale and I was craving for a racing game. And I love it, it's just what I wanted! There's no annoying announcers, no 700 cars, no upgrading, no racing lines, no open worlds.

I love the focus on a smaller amount of cars and tracks so you can really get to know them. I also love the super smooth and clean visuals, maybe something like forza is technically more impressive but WRC let's met see where I'm going better. 

It's pretty brutal though! I haven't played a rally game properly since Rallisport 2,aside from some Dirt here and there, and I'm coming in dead last in every rally so far. Any tips for a rally noob? Should I be playing career or season mode? 

On 21/03/2023 at 18:40, CrichStand said:

Full lock down, just 27 health left, alarm sound blaring away constantly, no health in any crates, hrs of progress on the line, facing having to replay the same section and scan and collect everything all over again.........I had no choice but to drop into the electrical maze. 😩

 

Obviously I’ve got drift on my Joycons and they keep lagging for some reason whilst playing this, ya know, just to top things off nicely. 😂 I head to the right. Slowly, slowly, slooooooowly, don’t touch the sides, or it’s Game Over!!! I timed the first electrical gate well, but pressed waaaaaaay too hard and went out of control. Came  to a stop just before touching the electric barrier. Blood pressure is through the roof. Phew! Hold, on am I going the wrong way? Fuck! Back I go to the start. No, I was going the right way in the first place. Why did I turn around? Back to the right and through the electrical gate again. Make it through the 2nd, by which point I was shaking, having heart palpitations and risking nerve damage in my neck I was that tense! 🤣 One gate to go, I can do this shit! Spend 30 seconds counting the gate timing just in case. 3, 2, 1.......3, 2, 1.....3, 2, 1.......GO!!! Wobbled all over the shop, but I was through. I collect the upgrade and it fires me out of the maze! FUCKING YAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS!!!!

 

Now what? Ok back to that room with the puffers to try and get some health. Jump the platforms, through the door, oh fuck, realise there are going to be numerous rooms full of space pirates before you get back there. Head back to the electrical maze room again. Only hope is a save point being nearby. Walk in all casual and out of nowhere from behind me I hear “MUUUUUURGH”. Fucking space Pirates have spawned in the room. AAAAAAARRRRRGH!!! Literally jumped that much I left the fucking sofa! 🤣 Plasma shots whizz past my head as I leg it, jumping and sliding side to side, to a nearby door. I’m clearly fucked now. Run around the corner in a massive panic..........straight into a save station! 😂 

 

One of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Absolute class! 

I have just done the entire mines up to this point and it was a relatively easy experience because I had already lived it through your stories. Many thanks . 

I don't think they look at it at all. I usually get my refund 5 minutes after dropping the item at the DHL service point.

8 hours ago, Alan Stock said:

Anyway, finally got around to finishing this off. Took over a week of evenings to polish off all the labelled side quests, plus I looked up to see if I'd missed any (just the alleyway gun, it turned out). I ended up doing about two thirds of the gigs as well. Although I really wish I had gone off on proper side quests much earlier in the game, rather than faffing around with gigs and scanner missions. It was like playing a whole new game or two with the amount of content, a bunch of major characters you can completely miss, plus more Silverhand story.

This is very true. I ended up spending too much time doing gigs and burning out on the game. My character was just an unstoppable killing machine which made the actual gameplay pretty boring. I then reached the point of no return in the main quest and thought "fuck it, I'll finish it now". I ended up with the worst ending. Only after watching Tim Rogers' review I realised how much amazing content I'd missed this way . I did actually like the ending though, it was bleak but with a tiny glimmer of light. Very Cyberpunk.

I'll go back and do those sidequests some day, but I'll make a new character for it that I will try to not make too powerful. Maybe by spreading out over all the skill trees as a jack of all trades.

I wrote down some impressions of the Ultimate pad in another topic. In short, I really like it. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a good pad. Also it's got those fancy hall sticks that don't drift (be aware: they only come with the bluetooth version of the pad for reason, the non bluetooth versions have traditional sticks)

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Got my controller today. It's very, very nice! I've had several 8bitdo controllers before (The SN Pro and the M30) and I've always felt they were almost as good as first party controllers, but not quite. With this new one it definitely feels like they've reached parity and it's rightly called Ultimate. If you told me this was the new official Xbox controller I'd believe it.

 

I'll give some more detailed impressions after playing more but I want to mention the little dock: it's great! It looks nice, especially with the controller in it and the 2.4g dongle lives in it. But what I didn't realize is that it's actually inserted into a USB port inside the dock. This means that you can connect the dock to your Switch with a USB C cable and that the controller connects to the Switch through that. Neat!

 

I will definitely sell my Switch Pro controller and keep this.

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Some more impressionson the 8bitdo:

 

I played Espgaluda 2, Cotton Reboot, Streets of Rage 4, Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Spelunky and I can confirm the dpad is excellent. I didn't notice any lag, pulling of special moves in Garou worked flawlessly and I did better in most of these games than usual (which is a pretty low bar to be fair).

 

I played through Magmoor Caverns in Metroid Prime and it felt great. The only thing I didn't like was the feel of the tops of the sticks, a bit more slippery than I'd like but that might be newness.

 

I find the Xbox Series controller to be slightly more comfortable to hold. The 8bitdo is slightly smaller and to my fairly big hands the shape of the Series pad is more suited.

 

The "Ultimate software" app on android works pretty well. It has horrible reviews and people complaining about it crashing all the time but for me it seemed fine. It lets you manage pretty much everything: change any button, calibrate, set up different profiles (switched by a dedicated button) and even adjust deadzones on the sticks and triggers.

9 hours ago, Stopharage said:

Emily St. Mandel’s The Glass Hotel is 99p today.

I read this last year and enjoyed it a lot! 99p is a steal.

I watched X and Barbarian. 

X was OK, but very predictable. Actually nothing really interesting happens at all. Should I watch Pearl or is it similar? 

Barbarian I loved! Just amazing start to finish. I'd recommend it to any horror fan. 

51 minutes ago, JoeK said:

Is there some special patent in the rumble effects that Nintendo is not willing to share with third parties? I'd kind of like the Hori grip pad pro ones, but the lack of feedback is a big fat 'no' - so used to physical feedback on these things, it would be annoying not to have something.

The Split Pad Pro doesn't have rumble (or wireless or gyro) because it doesn't have batteries. Other 3rd party pads do have rumble, I don't think official "HD Rumble" but works just fine. My 8bitdo ultimate pad has very nice rumble.