Octopus Overlords

From what I have seen the only issue I might have is all the “busywork” at the Abbey - hangouts, havens, sparring, the Forge, crafting, petting your “dog”, etc. Christopher Odd days he had a list of 17 (!!!) things he does each time he comes back to the Abbey. It all seems a bit much to me though it all serves a purpose - to advance your chacter(s) fir the most part. Stil . . .

For those who bought it...what's the "hangout"/social side of the game like? That's one thing am concerned with. Does it feel fun, or are you just clicking a bunch of social dialogues?

Seen the gameplay and it looks fine. Not concerned because I loved xcom2 and what Sullivan did with that.

Newcastle wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:33 pm For those who bought it...what's the "hangout"/social side of the game like? That's one thing am concerned with. Does it feel fun, or are you just clicking a bunch of social dialogues?

Short animation, 4-5 lines of dialogue, maybe one dialog choice and done

There are also "help hero" dialogs where you are usually deciding what upgrades the hero will get like more damage vs more health or maybe some resources for some cost

Damn this torrid OO effect. Ye and all your exclamations of awesomeness! Boughten.

I picked it up last night for the PS5, and have been playing for a couple of hours this morning. Overall, I'm quite enjoying it. Sure the models are a bit "plasticky" looking, and the writing isn't always the best, but it definitely gives me that comic book feel I was hoping for. Combat is visceral and fun. Having played and loved games like Mass Effect, Persona 5, etcetera, I'm used to playing the "relationship game". The Abbey isn't my favorite part, but so far I'm ok with it.

My biggest gripe right now is the inability to pause cutscenes. My wife and daughter have an uncanny ability to walk in and talk loudly during cinematics, and in 2022 I expect games to give me that option. Here's hoping they patch it in soon.

Sigh, I hate you all (boots up PS5 to purchase Midnight Suns)

Fishbelly wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 1:10 pm My biggest gripe right now is the inability to pause cutscenes. My wife and daughter have an uncanny ability to walk in and talk loudly during cinematics, and in 2022 I expect games to give me that option. Here's hoping they patch it in soon.

This is my biggest gripe as well. Inexcusable not to have that these days.

Perhaps I’m being too critical, or maybe because I’m coming off the eye candy of GoW Ragnarok, but this game looks really awful to me. Feels like PS3 levels of modeling, animation, and character design. The facial hair is especially noticeable, it all looks glued on. I almost burst out laughing when I saw the running animation for the first time.

EDIT: After spending a couple more hours last night, I have decided that it's not just the Space Marine theme that turns me off X-Com type games. I just don't care for this gameplay at all.

While it's good to try games that are outside my usual genre norms, it's annoying when I flush $75 down the toilet.

I have been playing this off and on over the weekend, and I like it do far. But other than the "friendship" and the running around the abby and getting reagents, it really is just a reskinned Xcom, with a little of Chimera squad thrown in.

Except, you don't get to recruit and train new members of your team, and you only deplay 3 people instead of more. The upgrades feel like a let down to me, and man, there are a ton of resources... Cresits, Gloss, and three types of "card upgrade material", and then intel points, and relics to upgrade your research level. <shrug> Not that any of it is "bad", just that it seems to be a lot of extra's and not sure it adds value overall.

Also, I have noticed that the "dark" dialog options seem to generate more freiendship then the light ones, but I am in the early stages of the game, so maybe that is just the characters that I am dealing with.

The humor is fairly good in a Dad jokes kind of way, so that fits the comic book vibe, and I am enjoying the combat as it is not too hard, and not too easy. Lots of different ways to win so far, and a ton of environmental items to interact with.

Overall, I think if you like Xcom, Chimera squad you will enjoy this game. If you really like comic books, marvel in particular, you will like it as well as long as tactical games are something you are okay with.

But it is not breaking any new ground, and the card system can be frustrating, when you need to do a single point of damage, and all you have ius cards that will not allow you to do any damage. <shrug>

Well so far reviews have kept me off of this game and The Callisto Protocol, which I thought would be my 2 big spends for the holiday.

Luke was here: A remarkable moment of kindness during the making of Marvel’s Midnight Suns

There's a tree in Marvel's Midnight Suns with an engraving on it. It simply reads: Luke Was Here.

The Luke in question is UK video game fan Luke Wiltshire. He was diagnosed with neuroblastoma -- a rare and brutal cancer -- when he was just 14. Over the nine years of treatment, and the immobility it brought, Luke had found solace in video games and Marvel. He could do things in a game he simply couldn't manage in the real world.

Last year, Luke was told the devastating news that there were no curative options remaining. He wasn’t going to get better and would now receive end-of-life care. He relayed to his family a few final wishes, a bucket list, that consisted of three things: He wanted a puppy for his mum to look after once he’d gone, he wanted to have a hog roast... and he wanted to play Marvel's Midnight Suns.

There was no Midnight Suns build at the time. The game was still a long way from completion. With very little time left, Firaxis, 2K and Marvel got together and worked through the night to get a build ready for Luke to play. It was a feat achieved in just 24-hours.

2K's social media manager at the time, Asim Tanvir, volunteered to courier the game to Luke's house. When Tanvir introduced himself and explained what was on the gaming laptop in his hand, Luke burst into tears.

Luke was named game design consultant -- you'll see his name in the credits -- and got the chance to play and evaluate Marvel's Midnight Sun’s first act.

That wasn't all, despite the time difference, developers from 2K and Firaxis, plus Marvel Games creative director Bill Rosemann, jumped on a video call to share stories with Luke.

"It was an exceptionally special and moving moment on the day," Jackson remembers. "Luke was able to share with Bill his own Marvel-style comic designs."

Luke was then told about the engraved tree in the grounds of the Abbey in Midnight Suns. Luke said that he had been "forever immortalised in Marvel."

It’s really underestimating the game and inaccurate to call merely a “reskinned” X-Com. And it’s not just a tactical combat game, nor is it just an RPG. What it really is is a comic book simulator. It really is the closest thing there is to playing an actual comic book. You have your heroes, your villains, snappy sometimes goofy dialogue, friendships and rivalries, mysteries and puzzles to be uncovered, a secret base, various mystical and technological McMuffins, and battles between heroes and villains. It really is simulating a comic book series.

That's not what I expected to hear. I was interested, then I wasn't but maybe I should give it a more detailed review and read more impressions.

Even the XCOM piece of it isn;'t very XCOM at all. From the standpoint that it is somewhat a puzzle on how to complete objective/defeat as many enemies using the resources available to you, it is the same, but beyond that the only real tactics are how to position yourself to inflect maximum punishment... how to smash as many enemies into as many things as possible, or, really, how to get all the enemies lined up so Ghost Rider can run them all down!

The Abbey grounds are much bigger than I expected and exploring them isn't too bad with fast travel available. I am not super jazzed with the friendship stuff as I have no idea which gifts are good for which heroes and which havens are the best, etc. I don't feel like there is enough in the game to get to that info personally and I am not sure of good answers even for the characters I am very familiar with, which is really only Iron Man and Spiderman of the early heroes.

I am still enjoying it, but it's not pulling me away from NFS: Unbound as hard as I thought it would. That may be saying more about Unbound.

Sorry, I guess what I meant was that there are some very real comparable items with Xcom/Chimera squad.

IE - The table for mission selection is right out of Chimera squad. The Intel missions, are another item right out of Xcom/Chimera squad.

The actual game play, with cards is totally different, and really plays into the comic book style of the game I think.

Even the comic book captures at the end of missions, are right out of Xcom, but they actually are a very cool homage. <shrug> I'm playing it, and enjoying it, but not sure how long it will keep my interest.

This game blew me away to be honest. Was not expecting this. I've really enjoyed my time w/ it over the weekend. Really, really fun game. I want to echo RMC"s sentiment ...there are alot of similarities w/ XCOM in the base stuff. Managing resources, building stuff etc. BUT THIS IS NOT XCOM!!! I look at it as a mass effect dialogue game [ ie running around the normandy or planets looking for stuff], with a good tactical game in it, with a dash of rpg Sims life.

Again, this is not xcom, but it's one helluva tactical card game. Love that part of it. The friendship stuff, is a lot, but they do provide some character backstory and such...so there is a tradeoff. Would be nice if they upped the tactical game to be about 2/3 of the game with the talking/friendship 1/3. Right now I'd say its about a 50-50. However, even with the social stuff, its bearable and even some funny parts in it. You can skip this stuff so that makes it bearable.

I think they also capture a lot of details in the screens that it makes looking for information easy. They have a robust "help section" as well.

Really enjoying exploring the abbey grounds actually. Its got a nice feel to it.

A few tips:

kind of spoilery tip if you get stuck on the abbey grounds story and need a hint. This will help nudge your way. It's not a massive spoiler if you have self restraint. -another tip - when you get a new card. It's permanently in your "library". You can deconstruct it for mats so you can always make another one. Am mentioning this in case you have a ton of cards, low amount of essences and want to make a nice deck.

another tip - if you reach lvl 3 on arcane knowledge it opens common chests without a key. SO If you have arcane keys only open up Rare or epic, etc. Eventually the common ones will be opened.

- get in a routine each day of what you want to do. IE check the research, send agents out on missions.....THEN do your tactical missions. There is a flow here for optimizations.

-Research - Look ahead to see what character's criteria you need to meet. Does Ghost rider need a few more missions in order to research X suit of armor? Plan those missions w/ your research so you have a steady stream of items to research and they aren't locked behind a step.

-Initially I would prioritize missions w/ the Arcane Pyramid artifact things. Those allow you to elevate your research level opening up more things for you to research. Eventually this opens up around lvl 4.


Question to all - am new to card games. BUT when I play a card, does it become recycled? or is it gone permanently? Haven't figured that out. I DO Know that some cards have "exhausted" on it. So i suspect more recycling that permanently gone.

Altogether this is a weird hybrid that simply works. Totally plan on buying the season pass for it.

I'd give it a 7/8 tentacles.

Grifman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:49 pm It’s really underestimating the game and inaccurate to call merely a “reskinned” X-Com. And it’s not just a tactical combat game, nor is it just an RPG. What it really is is a comic book simulator. It really is the closest thing there is to playing an actual comic book. You have your heroes, your villains, snappy sometimes goofy dialogue, friendships and rivalries, mysteries and puzzles to be uncovered, a secret base, various mystical and technological McMuffins, and battles between heroes and villains. It really is simulating a comic book series.

I think if you approach the game with this mindset it would be helpful. Nice take Grif!

Grifman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:49 pm technological McMuffins

I love every part of this.

gbasden wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:13 pm

Grifman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:49 pm technological McMuffins

I love every part of this.

Hah, spellcheck and lack of attention FTW!

Who all is playing on Consoles (esp xBox) - how is it as a console game with a controller?

For the record, I am playing on PC, but I am using an xbox controller. There isn't really much benefit to mouse/KB on this one as far as I can tell. I guess easier to pick targets in combat.

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:08 pm Who all is playing on Consoles (esp xBox) - how is it as a console game with a controller?

I'm playing on PS5 with a controller (naturally) and it works very well. In fact I always thought that even XCom (both 1 & 2) worked much better with a controller than mouse/keyboard. There is something about having immediate access to two analog controllers for positioning your (orbiting) camera and the way the shoulder buttons on a controller are ideal for switching through characters and enemies (IMO)

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:08 pm Who all is playing on Consoles (esp xBox) - how is it as a console game with a controller?

I'm playing on a PS5 and have had no issues at all using a controller. I was hesitant to buy it for the PS5 because I've played every X-Com on my pc, and I was pleasantly surprised that this game works splendidly with a controller.

Kewl, added to the Xmas wishlist, tho given that I just started Persona 5, it might come at a bad time

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

Fishbelly wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 7:07 pm

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:08 pm Who all is playing on Consoles (esp xBox) - how is it as a console game with a controller?

I'm playing on a PS5 and have had no issues at all using a controller. I was hesitant to buy it for the PS5 because I've played every X-Com on my pc, and I was pleasantly surprised that this game works splendidly with a controller.

Just started playing it for the first time on the PS5 and using the controller is quite intuitive.

+1 on the controller working fine.

I don’t have much frame of reference for the PC, but I haven’t seen any issues with the controller.

Some helpful stuff:

I bought it on the PC on Steam and had to return it. The performance was astoundingly bad for me. I ended up buying it for PS5 and everything works fine.

Scoop20906 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 09, 2022 10:18 am I bought it on the PC on Steam and had to return it. The performance was astoundingly bad for me. I ended up buying it for PS5 and everything works fine.

While I have not had that, I know some of my local friends have experienced issues with performace, especially in the loading screens, and with some of the graphics displaying incorrectly or just bad.

RMC wrote: ↑Fri Dec 09, 2022 10:55 am

Scoop20906 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 09, 2022 10:18 am I bought it on the PC on Steam and had to return it. The performance was astoundingly bad for me. I ended up buying it for PS5 and everything works fine.

While I have not had that, I know some of my local friends have experienced issues with performace, especially in the loading screens, and with some of the graphics displaying incorrectly or just bad.

My problem was framerates and lots of stuttering. It was almost Batman Arkham Knight level performance.

I made a thread in the Steam forums for disabling the 2K Launcher. Honestly it was unplayable for me...non stop stuttering 5+ minutes loading times, etc until I did that. Based on the feedback to my post on Steam...ALOT of people have the same experience. Granted I'm on very old hardware. The other thing that came up a lot was the Ray Tracing was badly implemented so turning it off helped too

IceBear wrote: ↑Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:31 pm I made a thread in the Steam forums for disabling the 2K Launcher. Honestly it was unplayable for me...non stop stuttering 5+ minutes loading times, etc until I did that. Based on the feedback to my post on Steam...ALOT of people have the same experience. Granted I'm on very old hardware. The other thing that came up a lot was the Ray Tracing was badly implemented so turning it off helped too

I have a newer computer, so that might be it with me. Not cutting edge or anything.

But:
Core I7 - 11700k
GeForce RTX 3080
32 GB RAM

So if anyone else has any concerns, my specs are working well with the game, with the latest drivers for Graphics.

It's working well on my 10 year old PC with a 970gtx...once I turned off the Launcher. Heck, GeForce Experience even set stuff to High and it's running fine...again with bypassing the Launcher

And ever since the patch, the game is now working like crap on my PC, and it just started to crash in the middle of missions. So I am putting it up until they get some more patches for the game.

I do like it, and the hero interactions are awesome, but man they need to ensure patches don't make the game play worse for people it was working perfectly before the patch.

The patch itself completely boned Steam for me. It downloaded but installation stalled out at 31% for some reason. Eventually I had to restart Steam and clear the download cache before I could even get it to uninstall, then reinstall the game from scratch.

I know it's already been mentioned a few times, but disable the 2K launcher:

As RPS and others report, the 2K launcher that fires up every time you try to play Marvel’s Midnight Suns isn’t just a mild annoyance, it is also having an effect on gameplay, with users tracing issues with both stutters and overall framerate dips to the presence of the launcher.

Framerate dips are an overall problem, one that developers Firaxis have said they’ll be trying to address in an upcoming patch, but they’re also specifically related to the launcher because people have worked out that if you disable the launcher then your framerates improve. Sometimes by a lot. Science!

There's instructions on how to do it in the article.

It's just a matter of setting a launch option in the game's Steam properties: Obviously you need to use the actual path to your own installation directory. The -d3d11 option in this example is to force the game to use DX11 instead of DX12, which has been causing problems for some players.

Just passed the 50 hour mark... I am ready for this journey to be over. It was good for 25-30, ok for 40 hours, now it's just... kind of a slog. The new characters help a little bit, but I have high friendship and great decks for all the other characters, so using the new ones feels like I am just making things harder on myself (not that the game is in any way hard if you stick to the standard difficulty).

Finished it in 64 hours, about twice as long as it deserved to be. It would have been quicker but it took me a bit to stop messing around with non-story missions unnecessarily. I ended skipping through most of the interactions in the back half of the game to preserve my interest in the actual gameplay. I guess I am glad I played it, but I'd still much rather have XCOM3.

Question for Coop
I really have enjoyed this game, but I am going to put it aside I think for now. Fyi just started part 3. Have 61% of the achievements. And have solved the Shaw mystery. On day 40+ something. Initially was focused primarily on story missions to move through the story. Haven't done much side quests, except when prompted. One caveat i should mention; i've hit my saturation point w/ all things marvel. I dont think it biases my opinion much, but Marvel fans may see my gripes differently.

LIKES

-utterly love the tactical game play, I love the base building [ research, sparring, hero ops], deck building is fun and it's nice to check out various combination of hero abilities & their decks and their interactions. Finding awesome synergies is really pretty awesome. [ ie mixing Magik's gather w/ Hunter's annihilation.].

-Was an absolute blast running around the abbey grounds trying to figure out the mystery. I thought this was really well done and it was a delight trying to figure out.



Dislikes
-dislike running around to every machine ie, anvil room for research, excalibur sword to spar, mission room for missions...etc. Too much running around. They could have reverted back to an xcom type board. OR maybe they could have centralized the management somewhere.

- the biggest gripe i have is the Sims' like social management. I am a middle aged gamer. I don't give a flying F about Tony's/Robbies/Nico's hurt feelings or the various quasi drama BS. I just want to get back to the wonderfully, tactical goodness of the game. I've skipped most of the dialogues & most cutscenes, simply hitting circle. I burn through the "friend" dates and just hit every button. I really disliked this part and its starting to grate. It's just way, way too much. And it's unfortunate because to max power your toons, you've got to go on these friend dates. For me it's an unwelcome time sink. Unfortunately this dynamic is prevalent in the game. They could easily cut about 70% of that stuff and have a leaner and tighter experience.

- Another gripe is the running around for resources once you've explored. Not really into going back out looking for herbs to grind up potions. True you can run out for rare chests and arcane keys, but the only loot there is gloss and minor stuff. Not wasting my time running around for those. They should integrate resource gathering w/ missions of some sort. Or make them hero ops.

- I succeeded the first hunter challenge, but then realized I can't do the next one unless I max out the friend level with someone. Totally not going to do that. So that's an area I am not going to move further in. The challenge was interesting and would love to do the others, but no more friending for this lone wolf.

- huge need to have multiple decks/lineups for heroes. I like to experiment with decks. Being able to have various decks to play w/ at the click of a button would be a godsend. That way when I make my hunter more of a healer for a mission, I can click that deck template rather than rebuilding the deck after each time.

-more robust hero op missions

-more robust tech tree.

-better tension and feeding of credits to the missions. [ though this may be me skipping side missions]

Crashes

- I've had 2 or so.

- Strange whirring sometimes on my console as it accesses various menus, not sure if this is properly optimized.


Bottom Line:
I'd give it a 6.8/8 tentacles. I still plan on buying the season pass despite the aforementioned flaws. The tactical goodness is that fun. They also have a really, really good base of a game to work off of.

Newcastle wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 1:58 pm Question for Coop

Spoiler:

I just started part 3, and met hulk in combat for the first time. How many story missions would you guess are there until the end?

Honestly, not sure of the answer. I can't really remember. I googled for a list of story missions and there isn't a good one that I could find. I can't say much more without spoiling stuff I am not sure you have seen yet.

Best guess, not many, like around 4.