The Video Game Thread

[Jocephus]

[tlombard]

Found out Sunday that Madden 22 is free with the EA/Origin subscription I have so I have that downloading. It's been downloading for over 48 hours now. The wifi speeds at this hotel are atrocious. So of course I read about Humanity today which just came out on the 17th and is somewhat comparable to the Civilization games and was I guess inspired by them. And it's free with the pass so of course I added that to the list of downloads pending on my laptop. Maybe I'll be able to play one of the games by the beginning of September! I can technically play the Madden now that it's over 31% but the only option is to play as Tampa against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl with 4 minute quarters and no ability to change any settings. I did that once and will just have to wait for the rest of the download. I just checked and it's finally at 67% downloaded while Humanity has only downloaded 176MB of 27.43GB. I'm going to be waiting a really long time.

My hope is that I can play both by this weekend because I won't have anything else to do all weekend and it would be nice to waste it playing some new games. I was hoping that I could go watch my friend race his modified at the dirt track in Lebanon just about 40 minutes away from the hotel on Friday or Saturday night but his wife's mom passed away and the service is Sunday so I don't think he's going to be racing which leaves me with NOTHING to do all weekend. I thought about going out and having a few drinks Friday or Saturday but in the end, that isn't a good idea. They were pretty clear at the school that one or two with dinner is OK but we are not to be drinking and not allowed to have booze in our room while we are attending the program and getting drunk is a huge problem. If you come into class and they think you might have alcohol in your system from the night before, they will test you and kick you out if you have even a trace. With the legal limit being .04 BAC when driving a commercial vehicle, they don't eff around. That will get you a DUI but any trace at all gets you in trouble and shut down for awhile even if it doesn't get you a full blown DUI.

[MinorLeagueGuy]

Wreckfest is really good fun if you have Gamepass and haven't tried it out. I haven't had this much fun in a racing game since probably Rush on the N64.

Great underrated game.

[MinorLeagueGuy]

Anyone getting the Diablo 2 remaster? I'm beyond pumped after playing both Betas.

[Jocephus]

Anyone getting the Diablo 2 remaster? I'm beyond pumped after playing both Betas.

i was...but with all the blizzard/activision [expletive] going on, i'm going to pass

[tlombard]

Wreckfest is really good fun if you have Gamepass and haven't tried it out. I haven't had this much fun in a racing game since probably Rush on the N64.

Great underrated game.

I love Wreckfest. I've downloaded a ton of games but that's the one I have played way more than any other. Great game. I love racing games and I'm not very good so I crash a LOT. Wreckfest is perfect for me and my skill level when it comes to driving in a video game. I just can't be precise enough with a controller when it comes to steering. My fat thumbs just don't have it in them.

After starting the download on Sunday, I finally came back from class today to see that Madden 22 had finished downloading. The WiFi speeds at this hotel are laughable at best. At least Humankind is almost finished too. I have right about 1.5GB left on that download. Having the two downloads going at the same time certainly didn't help with the Madden 22 download either They were both being downloaded from different stores so they were going at the same time instead of queued up one after the other. I still play Civilization Revolution 2 on my phone all the time and from what I have seen, Humankind was inspired by the CIV games and I really want to play it. I have Civ 6 on my Switch and had Civ 5 on a previous Windows tablet but the full Civ games are a little more involved than what I want. Civ Revolutions on the XBox 360 was really the perfect game for me. You could get through a full game in a couple of hours or less. With the full version... I have never come close to finishing a game because I just don't play games that much and haven't invested enough time. Even if it only takes six hours to complete a game (I have no idea), it would take me months to get through it all on the laptop because in the past I just wasn't home enough to get in much gaming time on the computer. On the phone however, I can play that anywhere and pick it up whenever I have a few minutes. Hopefully Humankind is more like Revolutions than the full game but we'll see. Either way, I'll have a ton of time between class tomorrow and Monday morning to play. I'm not driving home for the weekend like the roommate is and I don't have enough money to really do anything too fun here in Springfield, MO so I'll basically either here at the hotel playing games or I'll be out trying to make some money delivering for Door Dash.

And of course there was no need to pick up Madden 22 because it isn't any different than Madden 21 which I already had other than updated players I guess. But it didn't cost me a penny and I had plenty of hard drive space so whatever, throw it on here.

[Famous Mortimer]

One of my favourite Youtube channels, FailRace, does a fun series on Wreckfest. I love racing games while being terrible at them, so I probably ought to give it a go. Although I'm still enjoying Forza Horizon 4 a lot.

Also, Myst has just been fully remastered for modern machines, and you can play it in VR too. Not going to bother with that, but after failing completely to install the old version on modern equipment, I'm looking forward to this.

[Jocephus]

oh hey...xbox users. be careful with any mandatory updates you might get. i turned the console on last night, get the forced "time to update prompt", went ahead and did it as i always do and then when the console finished updating, it restarted and it went to a black screen. turned console off, turned back on, it gives you that green loading screen, you see the pop up of "welcome jocephus83!" but then, black screen. so MS has f'ed something up and of course have no liability for it.

i had heard about this recently but it was thought to only effect "xbox insiders" (program that gives you beta access to updates and testing for features on the console itself). this article goes into it - https://kotaku.com/xbox-one-s-black-scr ... 1847546423

well yada yada, i ain't an insider and i got it. thankfully there is a solution to it but its a bit convoluted and took about an hour for me to sort out, from testing and looking things up online etc. and thank goodness for cloud saving otherwise all my save files would be gone (because of the process you have to do, basically a factory reset). if anyone gets it let me know and i'll pass along what worked for me.

edit: might as well just add, this is the solution that worked for me
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/xbo ... 959?page=3

I tried everything on this post to fix our Xbox One with the black screen after the latest update (August 2021) like holding down the sync and eject buttons at the same time as well as unplugging everything after holding down the power button for 15 minutes, NOTHING WORKED. This is what worked on our Xbox One that was bought in 2015:

1) KEEP THE XBOX PLUGGED IN.

2) UNPLUG THE ETHERNET CABLE (INTERNET CABLE) FROM THE BACK OF THE XBOX!

3) PRESS THE POWER BUTTON

4) PRESS AND HOLD THE SYNC AND EJECT BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME UNTIL YOU HEAR A SECOND BEEP.

This should bring up the reset screen. Automatically this worked for our system and brought up the reset screen with the option to keep or delete our games. Once we chose the reset option to keep our games and plugged the internet cable back in we had to sign back in using our Xbox email and password. I thought we would lose our live game pass but it reloaded everything as it was before the update.

[tlombard]

Spent some time with Humanity last night and while it is maybe a little less complicated than Civ, it's still a bit involved for me. I'm going to stick with it and I think if I take the time to actually learn all of the mechanics of the game then I'll probably love it but I still just want something like Civ Revolutions where I can blow through a game fairly quickly. I'm going to search for something similar available on PC later today or tomorrow since I don't have an XBox with me down here and I really want something that I don't have to play on my phone.

[tlombard]

I finally took the time to figure out how to connect my Switch controllers to my laptop and hooked up the laptop to the TV in the room so I can play games on a larger screen and not be attached by wires! Hopefully I can manage to still use the XBox controller I have that has to be plugged into USB so I can play against somebody in Madden or something. Plus the XBox controller is a little finicky. I think there is some issue with the USB adapter because sometimes it just doesn't want to work at all until I get it plugged in just right. Other things work just fine in both USB ports and the controller has issues in both ports so the problem definitely lies in the cheap USB adapter. I don't even remember where I got it. I think it came with one of the XBox's I bought at some point. I've been through a few of them because the stupid things just keep breaking on me. I'm not buying another console until the next GTA comes out. I'm done with them until then. I have been playing some Need for Speed Rivals and Forza Horizons 4 today but hopefully Forza Motorsports 7 will finish downloading in the next few days so I can play that (again, the WiFi is soooo slow at this hotel). The Horizon and Need for Speed games are fun but I much prefer Forza Motorsports. Or Wreckfest. It's one extreme or the other because I'm weird.