Shagger

No problem buddy. You're not on the clock here. Post if and when you want and are able to do so. Your education is way more important, but remember that we are here to offer any support we can. Best of luck with your studies.

It makes me wonder what the first three Fartcry games were about...

My sympathies, that would be very irritating, but sadly as @The Blackangel pointed out it's to be expected and there isn't much that can be done about it.

This is a little game that's nothing more than a chance to be funny and creative. What to do is completely ruin a video game, movie, TV show or book by changing just one word from the title. I'll go first.

Holy hell. I'm gonna have to do bullet points, because there's so many things wrong in this statement. Look up the meaning of the word "bigot" and you'll realize that it applies in no way to anything I said. I don't hold prejudice against people who share your viewpoint, I simply disagree with them, there's no reason to take it that personally. Maybe I shouldn't have implied that people who share that view are stupid and more that it's just a stupid point, so I apologize for that, but I didn't expect anyone to take it to heart like you just did. Watch your tone, especially with the use of the "bigot". There's few things in this world I hate more than prejudice and bigotry, so don't throw term my way again. To be clear, that's coming from me as a man, not a forum mod, so don't expect any reprisal or abuse of power from me, but I believe as both I warrant more respect than that. Don't try to educate me on my use the word "hypocritical" when you incorrectly call me a bigot. Even if what a said was a deliberate and a specific attack on your intelligence, that's not what bigotry is. It is hypocritical to say eSports can't be a sport because it doesn't represent an athletic challenge for reasons I already explained in my post, points that you choose to ignore, and the fact you choose to ignore those points as well as everything else I said is also very hypocritical. So it's not a "buzz word", but thank you for the help in proving that point. The world does not revolve around precious, little you. I wasn't referring to you specially, just calling out how that statement and doesn't make sense. If you read too much into it and end up with your precious little feelings hurt, then that's on you. Grow up. What exactly was the point of that post? There were no counterarguments, no new points made and as aforementioned, you didn't address anything I said. It's just you pretending that I've attacked you in some way, when the truth is I didn't even see your post before I made my own. And even if I did, I wouldn't have quoted it because I was taking a stance against the viewpoint, not you. If you have a point to make, an argument to present, then please do so, but do so like an adult. Playing the victim doesn't make your case stronger.

I don't know. If Facebook and Twitter are happy to host profiles representing The Flat Earth Society, then I'm not so sure you're correct. Yes, there is that too. For example, there's some fool I sub to that keeps using Twitter to send me messages because he's a twit who can't seem to keep track of his phone.

The fact it is a competition is exactly why it's a sport. Competition is what defines a sport as a sport. Just because it's not an athletic challenge, doesn't mean it's not a sport. I'll refer you back to previous post;

To hell with this franchise. They're always the same. Just the previous years game with an updated team roster loaded with some of the most predatory microtransactions the industry.

Got it. The Monument to Alexander II of Russia outside the Helsinki City Cathedral, Helsinki, Finland.

I don't think one needs to be an advocate for eSports to know ridiculous the idea is that something has to be athletic to be a sport. There's so many other sports that are not based on an athletic challenge that have been taken seriously for decades, if not centuries, and have a huge following behind them. Golf, Snooker, Darts, Pool, (some forms of) motorsport, to name but a few. Claiming eSports can't be a sport because it's not a test in athletic ability is an ignorant, hypocritical view shared by the truly stupid. I'm not actually into eSports at all, it's not my sort of thing, but I have enough common sense to recognize it as a team vs team challenge of strategy, coordination and skill, and only the most talented and hard-working succeed in it. So yes, it is definitely a sport. As others have point out with examples like pro wrestling and circus acts, being an athletic challenge doesn't automatically make something a sport either. It's actually very simple, competition is what makes a sport, not the nature of the challenge itself.

Mmm, 1863. So @Crazycrab was wrong it has nothing to with WWII. Other than that, I have no idea.

I have to confess, I'm not much of a bookworm. I'll read stories on Wattpad and stuff wile on break at work and stuff, and that suits me. It's just more convenient that an actual book. Still, a couple of favourites of mine would "Goodnight Mr Tom" by Michelle Magorian and Bill Bryson's "A Walk In the Woods". True. There was a time when it was morally right to segregate and owning slaves made you the apex of society. It seems pretty pointless to just people from way back when for how the society they lived in shaped them, what we need to do is, like you, learn from the mistakes of the past. And yes, people shouldn't take the words of a fictional character to seriously, whether it be a book, movie, TV show or even a video game. Still, if the author or creator was clearly a rancid human being, I would be very reluctant to buy/read/play/watch anything associated with them. For example, I'll never have anything written by J.K Rowling in my house because she's a despicable TERF. But I think the topic has been derailed enough, so I'll put my moderator hat back on and address the original point. People are obviously free to discuss literature in the General Chat, but I don't think the subject comes up often enough to warrant its own sub-forum. However, if people do want to see such a thing, feel free to suggest it in the Questions and Suggestions section, and if it gets enough support, It'll certainly be considered by myself and @DC. Don't be shy to present ideas, this is our community and it's up to all of us to contribute and make it better however we can. The only stupid ideas are the ones never suggested. In the meantime, I'll move this topic out of movies and TV and into the main General chat, looking at it now that's really where it should be.

I actually do think the XBSX is the superior console, and even has the superior services, Game Pass in particular, but what really matters is exclusive games, and the PS5 certainly has the XBSX beat. Most of XBox exclusives will be on PC, so there's little point for anyone with a decent PC to buy the XBox, and first few months to a year looks far stronger for PS5 in terms of exclusive games anyway. The mistake they made was assuming people would be happy to accept all those changes in one single moment as opposed to being phased in. Don't get me wrong, the original XB1 concept is just as unappealing now as there were then, but much of those restrictions already exist on PC and have done for years even before then, so Microsoft wrongly assumed consoe gamers would just accept them. XBox pushed the idea to hard and to sudden, and I'm glad because they did because now they know console gamers just aren't willing to accept that bullshit. If that hadn't happened, though, we may have been in a situation where those restrictions would be a part of everyday life on next gen, and thankfully they're not. So, I have to say, thank you, Xbox. The world is better for your cock up.

This seems iffy. Maybe it's my region, but that link lead me to mostly a load of free packs for FPT games and a few obscure computer games old enough to drink, nothing that remarkable.

That's very interesting, I admire your attention to detail. The concert is there, but it would all depend on the execution. I see a developer like Naughty Dog or Respawn pulling this concept off, but did you have anyone in mind?

I get what you're saying, and it makes too much sense to dismiss, but we cannot condone piracy. It may be holding out a hand to have it bitten, but people who didn't buy the game on PC before this have no other options now. Like I said, I'm sure patches will come, but until then and until this new DLC expansion is launched this game, or at least this port, should be avoided.

I appreciate that, and it's obviously very good advice, but there's one colossal problem. It's OK for people like me who have the game on Steam already, but everyone else is now burdened with no choice but to endure this horrible port as the original is no longer available to buy on Steam because of the publisher change. This will be the one and only time I will ever say I wish EA were still involved.

If you ask me, it's to provide an entry level compatibility option for XBSX games and features. It makes sense for someone who has no intention to upgrade to a TV more compatible with the XBSX (or PS5) anytime soon, and that actually makes sense given that such a TV would cost at least $1500 atm. That's my theory, anyway.

Pretty much answered your own question. The technology is too young as it stands. The software and hardware development, and most of all the infrastructure, just isn't there yet.

There's a very simple difference between collectibles that are fun to hunt and those that aren't. Naughty Dog's Uncharted 4 philosophy where it serves no purpose other than a chore for vain achievement hunters. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us philosophy where the relics are actually interesting, educate on the lore and sub-stories, and actually lead to practical in-game rewards.

I was just about willing to push past the fact this game is not made my Naughty Dog, but when the guy doing the voice over in the trailer said at around the 2 minutes "the skins are totally cosmetic" in an Activation published game, I knew exactly what that meant. Yes, a few seconds later, he said "Just to be clear, there's no MTX here". Bullshit! If there was no MTX, you wouldn't have brought it up in first place. In game cosmetics is a feature that needs no mentioning. So, I'm done with this. Mark the time, mark the day, I'm calling it. That is a lie.

I can't say I'm shocked by this. The Series S isn't even as powerful as the Xbox One X, so obviously it has limits with its capability. Honestly, it's a stupid console that looks like something one would talk to whilst ordering fast-food from the diver's seat.

Shagger Says: Welcome one at all! Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls of all ages! I present to you the Shining Star of my first ever Steam Refund! First let me gush for a moment about how brilliant a game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is. A massive, fantasy western style RPG with some superb combat that allows you to use any of a vast array of weapons regardless of class and doesn't limit you to a specific class through the fate waver system. The graphics are colourful and vibrant, there's a great variety environments to explore and has an epic tale to tell. A must-play for any fan of the genre. So you see, I love this game and wanted to sing the praises of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning to high heavens, especially to people who haven't played the original. Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, but THQ Nordic and KAIKO, this is not good enough. Usually when I do reviews I go into a lot of detail about the game itself, but this isn't really a review of the game, this is a review of the re-master, and as you may have guessed, it's not going to be kind. Still, I should talk about the game itself at least to some extent. So sharpen your bows and string your swords because it's time to get it all wrong with Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning! A King Indeed Kingdoms of Amular: The Game Itself As previously stated, I'm not going to go into too much detail here as this isn't really the focus of the review, but here's what you need to know. Kingdoms of Amalur is a western style fantasy RPG with a strong focus of varied combat and player advancement options. There is a choice of typical three basic attributes of magic, warrior type and rouge/thief (defined as sorcery, might and finesse in Kingdoms) that any RPG fan will be familiar with. These attributes define the skill trees, an example below: As you level up, you acquire point to spend on these skill trees to either unlock new abilities or upgrade current ones, typical stuff. For example, as you see here on the sorcery tree, you can see new spells to unlock and upgrade as well as improvements to be made on you comat with certain weapons like Staves and Chakrams. That's right, there's Chakrams in the game; I'm not sure why the Chakrams are considered primarily a mage style weapon in the game, but that doesn't matter because, as aforementioned, you can use any weapon in the game regardless of your class or abilities. The controls are very intuitive, so easy to switch from a bow to war hammer or whatever. You can also any spell you have unlocked regardless of how you're advancing your character, and many spells are useful to multiple classes, so that's worth looking into when you first access the skill trees. As you spend points on these skill trees, you also unlock new classes with their own perks that get more beneficial the more points spent. You need not just spend your points one skill tree, you can spend them on two of even all three to unlock mixed classes if wanted: Whilst the variety and freedom this system offers is certainly a great thing, the best bit is that you don't even have to stick with it. There are persons in the game called Fateweavers, a kind of trades person if you like that can, for a price, reset the skills and abilities back to zero, so you redistribute them all over again. This is a very coinvient system, and convince to the player is a common theme in the game's design overall. For example, in other western RPG's (*cough, cough, Shyrim, cough*), selling your excess gear and loot is a pain in the ass. The stores have little money without the right high-end perks attained, so odds are you'll have to go to multiple store to sell each of your unwanted items mixed with all the stuff you do want, ONE. AT A DAMN. TIME. In Kingdoms, find am item you don't want to keep, but you would like to sell. You hit one button to put it into the "Junk" section of your inventory. When you get to a store, you start to barter, then once again with a single button press, you sell all of your "Junk" in one go. No fuss. I know it's a small thing, but once you see it you can't help but wonder why doesn't every game do this? The star of the show though, is the combat. Brilliantly animated, fluid, skill and timing based combat a great variety of enemies weapons with various threats, poisons and elements to imply enough strategy to keep your head in the game. Like I said, no weapon is locked of to you and the game controls beautifully with a controller or a mouse and keyboard. It might easier to show the combat the let it speak for itself. And yes, this player IS using the Chakrams, consider it an apology for my bad mood in not using the Xena clip earlier. And then, there's this; There's a purple bar just below your health meter that charges in combat. When full, you can trigger a fate shift. For a short time, time slows down, you become invulnerable and deal more damage. Take down as any enemies as you can in the time you have then performing a finisher with a QTE that will have you press a random control repeatedly to build up and XP boost. Not only is this visually very cool to watch with some great and brutal kill animations, but because of the XP boost and unlike supers in other games, you'll find yourself wanting to use it every chance you get. Story, well there is one obviously, and I like it. I'm not gonna lie, there are better stories in RPG games, especially more recently, but this is still holds up and keeps you interested, and has unique set up. First, there's a war, because of course there is. More specifically, a war between the mortal races of man and Alfar (A kind of Elf, I suppose) and the Fae of the Winter court. Now the Fae are amongst the most interesting elements in this world. Immortal beings tied to nature, they live, die then rise again to fulfil their never-ending, always repeating roles in "The Song", call it a pre-written fate. There are two types, the Fae of the Summer Court and the Fae of the Winter Court. For example, growth, like Summer and decay, like Winter. Neither are technically good nor evil, just represent different elements of nature The new king of the winter court and leader of the Winter Cour clan called the Tuatha, has abandoned his role in The Song and is now out to conquer. This war has been raging for over 20 years and the mortal races, according to fate, are destined to lose. As for you, you're dead. I mean really dead. So the games over before it starts, of course not. You are resurrected by something called the Well of Souls, but that's not all they well has done to you. You have become untethered from fate, so lets call the protagonist "The Fateless", and this makes you potential threat to the Tuatha because you possess the unique ability to control fate as you will, so even though fate says the Tuatha will win this war, you and you alone, can change that. You may have lost your memories from your previous life, but you can still find out who you are as well as turn the tide in this war. That's the goal of the game. So, this is a very good game, and it is massive, don't expect to spend less than 70 hours on a first play through doing side quests and stuff along the way. Unfortunately, this game is no longer available on PC because of a publisher change between the original and the remaster. What we have now for PC and current gen consoles, is this... Frame-Rate Weaver The "Re-Master" First thing first, it's important to know my PC specs before moving on. My Specs on my ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DV Laptop. CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3750H. Base Clock 2.3GHz, Boost 4GHz RAM: 2x8GB DDR4 (16BG total) GPU: GTX2060 with 6GB of V-RAM and up 1830Mhz boost clock. Game Installed on a Patriot P200 SSD 2TB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive 2.5 with up to 530MB of read rate and data transfer. To put it simply, that's well above the recommended spec's; And honestly, that isn't even that much more than the original, a game I can run at 50+fps at max setting just fine; And yet, when I try to run the game at settings I know this laptop can handle... And do you get a massive improvement in visuals? Well one of these screenshots is from Re-Reckoning, the other from the origonal game, can you tell which is which? Please answer in the poll I've provided and/or comment below. Number 1 And Number 2 The short answer is no, you don't get much of an improvement. Some people will still claim that it's my system not having enough guts to run the game better, but you're wrong. Now, I am most definitely not the resident tech sensei on this forum, I do think @Crazycrab or someone else might make a strong case for that, but I was monitoring the performance stats whilst getting these captures. Sadly, the overlay didn't appear in the capture itself, but what I found was the GPU and RAM usage was exactly the same in both games, only the CPU usage was higher on the re-master. What was really striking though was low these stats actually were. On the re-master between 45-50% of RAM, hovering around 40-50% on the CPU, and most importantly just 10% of GPU power, that went down as low as 3%. And remember, with the exception of the CPU (at 25% usage give or take of the original game), both were exactly the same. Like I said, I'm no expert and I'll never claim to be and I would actually ask someone reading this that has more knowledge to shed light on this, but I think that because both games are still using the same engine, that engine is only drawing what it needs to load the original game's textures. However, despite how it looks, the re-master is loaded with higher resolution textures (that's why the filesize is so much larger), but the engine isn't compensating for the extra time it really needs to load these textures, and that I think is that is what's affecting the frame rate. If someone with better knowlege wants to give input, I'll update this. In short, this is a software issue, and something KAIKO and THQ Nordic should have thought about when developing this. Or they just couldn't be bothered. As far as I can tell, some are having problems, others aren't as is the useual with these things, but that doesn't excuse this. I'm also a little disspointed that the new game isn't compatible with saves from the origonal, I honestly don't think that would have been much work to accomplish given that the inner software workings are basically the same in both. Apparetly there has been gameplay improvements (I did see a new very hard diffculty mode, so kudos for that), but I'll never get far enough into the game to know what they are. Besides, why fix what was never broken in the first place? Decide Your Fate: Conclusion Well, it's simple, really. Another great game ruined by a rubbish port. I put is togeather partly becasue I was pissed about this, but also wanted to warn people. It may work better for you on your set up than it did for me, but doesn't mean that this is OK. It's not like all hope is lost for this title, there will be patches and the re-master will get a brand new exclusive DLC expantion next year, but for now either avoiding this re-master or picking it up on console would be my, as always, humble advice.

I've had a similar issue with ReCore. Bought the game, it downloaded, and now I literally can't find it. The game works perfectly fine through the shorcut on the start menu and via the Microsoft Store app, but I would still like to know where it's installed if that's OK with you Microsoft. I also didn't get a prompt asking what drive to install the game on, but in my case I bought the game through my phone and activated installation remotely, so It could be the same problem @m76had or it's just issues or limitations with the phone app. Even so, I would still expect to be able to find the game on my system.