Gaming at 3440 x 1440

Posted on August 10, 2016 by SynCaine

My 1080 GTX finally arrived, and after figuring out how to go from two 6-pin power cables to two 8-pin power cables (turns out my 6-pins had tucked-away 2-pin additions, so it was actually very simple once I found those additions), the new card was up and running along with the Dell U3415w. On to the good and some of the bad.

The good is the monitor is overall fantastic. The picture quality is great, the setup was super-easy, and perhaps most surprisingly, the curve on the screen actually has an impact in terms of immersion and just enjoying what you are looking at. At 3440×1440, the desktop is HUGE compared to the view at 1900×1200, where the different application icons on the left side feel like they are a mile away from my Steam friends list all the way to the right.

Speaking of resolution size, for games that support it, its amazing. I’ve already talked about the benefits in Mordheim, but the same can be said for TW: Warhammer; the extra screen size not only makes the battles looks better and help you see the details, but the view of the campaign map is also greatly enhanced. Simply put, the game is more fun to play at that resolution, which is the ultimate payoff for upgrading; having more fun.

EVE in particular is awesome here, both if I run the game full screen for the ridiculous immersion factor, and the more normal scenario where I have EVE in a large window, and then have things like Jabber, the forums, and other tools on the side. At 1900×1200 that meant windows would stack behind each other, but at 3440×1440 I can fully see multiple windows while still having full view of EVE. I can also run multiple clients without major or any (depending on the number of clients and the window size of each) overlap, which almost feels like cheating.

I should also mention League of Legends, as not only does the game support such a resolution, it also results in your view being more zoomed out, so you see more of what is around your champion. From a competitive perspective, that’s actually a decent advantage. It won’t get me into diamond, but it doesn’t hurt.

For games that don’t support that high of a resolution, things are hit-or-miss. Fallout 4 doesn’t, but the Nvidia control panel will allow you to configure the game so it does (you can also edit the config files in the game to get the same result), and the only major drawback is that the GUI in the game is a little too wide at times (oddly the pipboy interface is fine, but looting menus are too wide). In terms of performance, at ultra the game stays locked at 60fps, so at least in that regard all is good.

Fallout Shelter on the other hand will have more problems if I go full-screen, where certain items will wrap around and the game basically isn’t playable. That said putting the game in a window the size of 1900×1200 (or bigger) isn’t an issue, so it’s not a total disaster by any means, and we are talking about a game originally released for mobile, so I don’t really need it full-screen anyway.

ARK does support 3440×1440 in terms of having that resolution as an option, but it looks like it just stretches the game out a bit too much rather than actually widening the field of view, which is very disappointing. It runs fine, but knowing the game doesn’t look ‘correct’ makes it a little harder to get up for playing it.

However just having to wonder now going forward if game X is going to support my native resolution is a minor pain itself, but that I guess is the cost of being on the upper-end of technology. Still worth the upgrade, by far, but to be fair its not without some potential hassle.

Posted in ARK, EVE Online, League of Legends, Random, Review | 2 Comments

Mordheim City of the Damned review

Posted on August 8, 2016 by SynCaine

Little (huge) update: Since I ordered a 1080 GTX and everyone was telling me playing at 1900×1200 was poor people stuff, I also got a Dell UltraSharp U3415W. Now you might be thinking “Syn do you really need a resolution of 3440×1440 and a curved screen to play games on?” and the answer to that is of course I do. My wife tell me the setup in the office now looks like NASA, which I took as a major compliment and confirmation that the correct choices were made (also really helpful that the monitor was 40% off on Amazon).

As I previously mentioned, I tried out and subsequently bought Mordheim: City of the Damned (plus DLC) over the weekend. Amazingly even on my old 790GTX the game runs really well maxed out at 3440×1440, and it also uses the extra screen space well. At 1900×1200 a lot of the unit stats and extra info could be cycled through on the side but was normally not displayed, while at the larger resolution it automatically sits on the sides of the screen, which is pretty awesome.

Mordheim is one of those games where its a lot less fun in the first 2-3 hours than it will be after, so you have to prepare yourself or just not bother. There are solid tutorials, and a lot of them, but even after those the game still has a steep learning curve in terms of the rules and how things generally work, plus the added complexity/difficulty of navigating the maps with your units the first time around. You will feel lost and frustrated trying to find things, as you will assume an item is on the second floor of a building, only to discover that its actually on the third and there are no stairs up near your unit. Adding to all of this is the game only has one ‘mode’, which is that it saves everything all the time and you can’t reload/undo (think Ironman mode in XCOM).

Now with all of that said, I still think you should press on if you enjoy games like XCOM or other deeper TBS titles. The basics of the game is that you have a warband (squad), and each unit has different classes, stats, abilities, and equipment. You deploy your warband on missions (most somewhat randomly generated, with some unique campaign/story missions), and during a mission they face off against another warband. Currently the game has five different warbands (the 5th, Witchhunters, are DLC), and each plays very differently.

After each mission you get XP not only for your units, but also for your warband as a whole, and XP towards your account (called veteran ranks). Units can have stats assigned as they improve, along with skills. Warbands gain more unit slots and different unit types as they level up. Your account levels can give you out-of-combat boosts like cheaper troop purchases or more gold from selling gear.

Combat is turn based, but movement isn’t on a grid. Instead, each unit has a movement range determined by blue dots. The more dots, the further you can move, and each time you go a certain distance, a dot is used. Things like climbing up or jumping across a gap also consume blue dots. And unless you hit a trap or trigger an enemy action, you can undo normal movement, which is really nice because the maps are tricky until you learn them.

Red dots are for combat, and work in a similar way. Different weapons and abilities have different dot costs, and maximizing the use of each is critical. Since units can gain more dots as they level up, or lose dots from injuries or debuffs, switching tactics is important, and gives the game some nice added depth.

I’ve mostly played the single player campaigns so far, but you can also do multiplayer matches, either in “nothing counts” mode, or as a regular mission where XP, items, and injuries all carry over. All warbands have a rating based on their total value (very similar to team ranking in BloodBowl), so in multi you will be able to tell if you are facing someone more advanced or not. This also applies to single player, as missions come in normal (same value) hard (slightly higher) and deadly (much higher) varieties. The AI isn’t awesome, but its not super-terrible either, and will generally give you a decent fight thanks to usually being stronger. Most single-player missions take between 30-45min. Multiplayer is longer, and depends on how quickly each player plays.

If you do decide to pick the game up, ping me on Steam if you want to do a little multiplayer.

Posted in Random, Review, Site update | 2 Comments

You might want to buy Mordheim now

Posted on August 7, 2016 by SynCaine

More on this tomorrow, but Steam has Mordheim: City of the Damned on sale right now (it was also free this weekend). Its a turn-based team strategy game, kinda like Bloodbowl without the football, but doesn’t feel like your normal ‘move around a grid’ TBS game. I’ve only played the single-player campaign, but it also has 1v1 multiplayer.

Like I said, more on it tomorrow, but before the sale runs out, consider picking it up. It’s $17 well spent IMO.

Posted in Random, Steam Stuff | 2 Comments

ARK, FO4, TW:W, EVE, and CoC updates

Posted on August 1, 2016 by SynCaine

Gaming update time. Basically I’m kinda hovering in most games as I wait for the 1080 GTX to arrive, which will hopefully be this week.

I started playing ARK again with the old crew I played with almost a year ago. We are on official server 351 (original map and rules), and they are the dominant tribe. My one-man tribe is allied to them, and currently I’m just leveling up via drug production.

My goal, once my character is up around level 60ish or so, is to build out a solo base and just mess around with some of the new stuff the game has added in the year since I played. I really don’t have grand dreams of taming a ton of dinos as I simply don’t have the time for it, both to do the actual taming and also the upkeep. Still, ARK is a fun game when played with a group, and there seems to be plenty of new content to explore.

In Fallout 4 I’ve completed both the Automatron DLC as well as the main quest in the Vault-tec DLC. Automatron had a surprisingly fun quest line, while the Vault-tec one is pretty short (especially considering what COULD have been done around building a vault and experiments, but ah well). Building the actual vault itself is both fun and frustrating. Its fun because the space you are given is pretty massive, and the new building pieces work better than most settlement items. Its also frustrating because at the end of the day, you are still using the base building tool that came with the game, and its not the most user-friendly item around.

The other issue is that, much like settlement building originally, building your vault is ‘pointless’ other than to build it. Its almost sad that the vault in Fallout Shelter has more purpose than the vault you build as DLC in Fallout 4. The DLC could have easily added new events, new progression, and new radiant quests that come up based on the size and function of your vault.

I have but haven’t played the Beastman DLC for Warhammer, but I’m excited to play the new mini-campaign, as well as beating the game in the grand campaign as the beastmen. Again though, want that 1080 GTX so I can set the game to ultra and not worry about late-game slowdown.

In EVE I got another ship down to our staging system, but seem to miss fleets as they go out. At least I finally set that station as my home base, so when I finally do get going, I’ll come back to life in the right place.

Finally, in CoC my main account is one Barbarian King level away from starting the TH10 upgrade (he will hit 25, but I’ve decided to go TH10 rather than finish his last 5 levels, as I have everything but some walls all done, and I know there is a ton of research to get done at TH10). I’m excited, as its been many months since I’ve gone up a TH level on either account, and it will be good to go to war with both a TH10 and a TH9 account.

Posted in ARK, Clash of Clans, EVE Online, Fallout 3, Goons, Random, Site update | 3 Comments

ARK: Primitive+ time?

Posted on July 29, 2016 by SynCaine

Quick friday note: ARK has released a new official mod called Primitive+, which limits the game to stone and below tiers, and also introduces new lower level tiers of building. It looks pretty interesting overall, and ARK has changed so much since I last played that its almost a new game. Might be time to spin it up again, especially once my 1080GTX is finally here.

PS: Ghost/Karrigan if you read this, ping me on Steam.

Posted in ARK, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

CR: Tourneys are awesome, if you can get in

Posted on July 27, 2016 by SynCaine

Tournaments in Clash Royale are easily my favorite way to play the game, assuming of course I can bother to actually get in a tournament (more on that later). But they also highlight a flaw in the core game, and why its mechanics lead to the game being less fun than it should be.

The level cap in tournaments for cards (9/7/4/1) is low enough that mixing your deck up and trying new things isn’t a months-long grind, which is a big plus. In comparison, getting even a single common card from level 10 to 11 not only takes 800 copies of that card, but the upgrade itself costs 20k gold. That’s half a legendary in the shop, and if you are long-term planning, you know that you will max your commons and rares long before you even have a legendary halfway to the cap, so NOT buying a legendary in favor of upgrading a card is, technically speaking, a bad move.

Except if you don’t upgrade the cards you use, you’ll have a tougher time climbing up the ranks. Yes, over time your player skill will improve, so that will help, but card levels are also a factor, and at a certain rank you will simply play too many people with cards that outclass yours to progress. Even if you are 10% better than the other player, if your cards are 20% weaker, they will likely still beat you, and that becomes more and more the case the higher you go. I’m currently around 3200 on both accounts, and while I still do occasionally play someone who is HORRIBLE at the game and is at that level due to crazy-high cards (lvl 6 epics and such), it’s very very rare.

The other bonus in tournaments is that who you play is random. That means someone at 1500 trophies can play against someone at 4000, and both players will have equal cards. Now sure, that 1500 player is going to get CRUSHED, but that can actually be really helpful. Imagine if in League of Legends you, very rarely, got matched up against a pro in a game. They would destroy you, but you would learn so much from facing them that it would be a fast-track to improvement. That’s what tourney play can be in bad matchups. I’ve had a few games where the person I’m playing against runs circles around me (and keep in mind, I’m already near the top 1% in terms of ranking), and after watching the replay, I almost always come away with something to help me improve.

The other side of that coin is that crushing people quickly in matches is also a nice change of pace compare to grinding out a crown chest in ranked play. I’ve had crown chests take 20+ matches because game after game is either a 0-0 draw, or a 1-0 loss, so being able to play a bunch of tourney matches and just coast is a refreshing change of pace. This is especially true in longer tourneys where you face the same person multiple times, because now you know right away whether you are in for a tough match or this is going to be somewhat easy.

I also really like that tourneys have some meta complexity to them. For example, in a 100 person, 2 day tourney it’s not uncommon for the top 3-5 players to be way ahead of everyone else, which creates a lot of interesting situations. For one, playing someone way below you in standing means a win won’t give you a lot of trophies (sometimes as low as 3-5), while a loss will be brutal (40-50 trophies), and because you never know who you will face (someone might be low not because they aren’t good, but simply because they don’t play enough), sometimes NOT playing at certain times is the best bet while you wait for another top player to go into a match and get an upset loss.

Other times you will know that you can beat all but one of the top players, so you wait for the one guy who can beat you to be in a match before you queue up. Dirty? Maybe, but it’s also smart, especially if you are ahead and they are the ones who HAVE to play a game in order to catch up.

As mentioned at the top, the biggest issue with tourneys is getting into one. You basically have to spam trying to join, and hopefully after 10 minutes of hitting refresh and join, you get in. It’s a painfully bad process, and that could be easily fixed with a waiting list feature. Find a tourney, hit join, and if it’s full it places you in a waiting list. While on that list, you can’t try to join another tourney, and as soon as a spot opens, the first person on the waiting list gets in.

Waiting list or not, I do hope SuperCell does something, and soon, to make joining a smoother process, because tourneys make CR a hell of a lot more fun to play, and having such a tough time to take advantage of the best feature is brutal.

 

Posted in Clash Royale | 6 Comments

Vaults vaults vaults

Posted on July 26, 2016 by SynCaine

I’ve been playing a surprising amount of Fallout Shelter on my PC. Playing a mobile game, especially one built around timers and playing in spurts on the PC is pretty interesting. On the one hand, there is still some waiting, and lots of stuff has timers in the hours if not days. On the other hand, because of all the updates, there is a LOT of stuff to do, so even though you are just clicking a few times here and there, you do keep busy. Plus the new mission locations look/feel much better on the PC IMO.

And right as I’m managing my vault in Shelter, out comes the vault DLC for Fallout 4. I was going to hold off on F4 until I got my new graphics card, but nope, here I go again playing it. Right now I’m going to do the Far Harbor content, as I have a level 15 character that has done a bit of the original content but still has lots to do. I originally loaded up a level 30 character that had completed most of the game, but at that power level and completeness I wasn’t really feeling pushing further, if that makes sense.

On the EVE Online front, the Goons are moving, but I made things easy for myself and just sold everything I had in Saranen besides one Interceptor, and am now waiting for our final staging system to be called. The only negative to that is I’m currently missing the ‘fun’ of the move Op, which currently includes an Incursion that needs to be cleared, but ah well. I am looking forward to working out of our new home in Delve, especially as the main combat ship is going to be the Proteus, and I’ve got the skills to fly it. Good times ahead I’m sure.

Posted in EVE Online, Fallout 3 | 1 Comment

Look ahead to the Nvidia 1080 GTX

Posted on July 19, 2016 by SynCaine

I’ve decided that I’m going to get an Nvidia 1080 GTX at some point ‘soon’. I don’t know when exactly, because I still haven’t decided which version of the card to get (feel free to offer advice here, I’m not exactly on the bleeding edge of tech news anymore), and because it seems most of them are sold out right now. Plus I’ve seen prices between $600-$900, and while I’m guessing there are reasons behind the price differences, what exactly they are, and if they are worth paying more, I again don’t know right now.

On the gaming side, knowing I’m in for a hardware upgrade puts a hold on playing games that run well, but not ‘perfect’ right now, so no more Total Warhammer, and no more Fallout 4. TW:W has the beastmen coming out soon, which I’ve already purchased, and starting a game with them can really happen at any time. For Fallout 4, I’d almost rather wait for the remaining DLC to come out before diving back in, so that works out well-enough. I am also curious to see what, if any, difference I see in EVE. EVE runs without a hitch 99.9% of the time, but in the few larger battles (with sound on), I’ve had my framerate actually dip. Maybe the 1080 will help, maybe not.

For now I’ll keep running my vault in Shelter, play a little Verminetide co-op, keep doing EVE things, and hopefully finish up Shadow of Mordor before the next shiny catches my eye.

Posted in EVE Online, Random | 11 Comments

I don’t even know what to call you anymore

Posted on July 18, 2016 by SynCaine

Gaming terminology and descriptions have always been a little off. Remember when everything had “RPG elements”? Or when everything was an MMO? Or now when even MMOs aren’t called MMOs by publishers? I feel like right now, Early Access, alpha, beta, expansions, and patches all kinda mean similar things.

For example, right now a game called Stonehearth is technically in early access, and each update is called an alpha. But today it has more game to it than a lot of recent full releases, and its amazingly stable for an ‘alpha’. Yes, its not done, and more content is on the way, but if you bought it today I’d still say you got a game that is more than ready to be played fully.

Another example is Fallout Shelter, a mobile game I wrote about when it initially came out that has received a good number of updates, each one making the game significantly better. The big changes have come in the way of wasteland locations, which have a bit more gameplay to them and really show off the combat animations and brilliant Fallout IP style. That plus the new overseer mission system makes the whole game far more engaging.

If Shelter had been releases as an alpha and only called ‘done’ at the current version, would anything be different? If Stonehearth today was called ‘released’, and in a year was on version 1.6 ala Shelter, would anything be different?

We accept bugs in fully released games, even AAA titles like Fallout 4, so why do we need the ‘Early Access’ tag to let us know about potential bugs or missing features? Sure, at a certain level none of this matters, but it does make finding a game a little harder, especially if you are someone who wants to avoid a game until its ‘done’.

Posted in beta, Fallout 3, Patch Notes, Random | Comments Off on I don’t even know what to call you anymore

TimeWarp – Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor

Posted on July 13, 2016 by SynCaine

A 3rd Timewarp post? Incredible but true!

I picked up Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor on the latest Steam sale, because $7.50 for a GotY title seemed like a smart move. I was right. SoM is very good, especially because it uses the Farcry formula (I think Farcry started this type of game anyway…) in terms of an open-ish world, reaching towers to unlock more of the map, and having lots of side quests and collectibles along with a main storyline. Here however instead of guns you use a sword and bow.

Oh and you can die without the game just pretending it didn’t happen and resetting, which is a very refreshing feature. When you die in SoM, whoever landed the killing blow on you gets more powerful, and remembers that they killed you (next time you face them they will mention it). Death also ties into the excellent boss system, where certain orcs get promoted and become special, and they can gain further power as time progresses (or they kill you of course).

That power growth mechanic is interesting, because with more power bosses gain additional traits, such as being immune to ranged attacks or combos. As the system is random, the difficulty can sway by a good amount. Best (worst?) example for me right now? I have a power 20 boss who is ranged, immune to melee and stealth, shoots explosive arrows, and heals whenever he hits you. Basically the only way to damage him is by shooting him, but since he can also shoot, and shoots explosive arrows, its hard for him not to land a hit, and when he does, he heals. Combine this with other random orcs being around, and I’ve yet to figure out a good way to get rid of him (he’s also power 20 because I’ve now died to him a few times).

But that kind of difficulty is fun, because I don’t HAVE to kill him to progress, and (hopefully) I’ll eventually gain enough power and upgrades to take him down, which will feel very good. He could also be involved in a power struggle event (two bosses fight each other), and that might open the door to killing him as well.

Everything else about the game is solid. It looks good, runs great, and the story is good-enough to keep you going. If you haven’t played this one yet, its a solid pickup.

Posted in Random, Review, Steam Stuff, Time Warp | 2 Comments