Luseth

This isn't a tongue in cheek following last nights antics but genuinely serious. I think most mobile phones are generally the same, the OS isn't really too far apart except android is more open than IOS. If I wanted to buy the top of the range iphone or samsung they would be about the same price and have very similar specs as far as I am aware. If I wanted options of cheaper phones then Android makes sense but it's not really on the cards currently. However I have my phone contract ending over christmas and was thinking of giving mine to my wife and picking up a new one as her's is a bit crap. I like my iphone, it's familiar, I have my photos and e-mails and everything synced between my phone and ipad (which I have no intention of swapping out for an android) and cloud share with the family which makes it easy to share photos and such as well. So to me currently as far as I am concerned it would make life harder being apart from the same OS as my wife. So tell me why android is better?

I have been enjoying my work the past few days and realised pretty quick it's because of the work that I am doing currently. My job is incredibly varied at the moment which is great but I find some aspects are tedious, some things I just don't like doing (dealing with people, managing the design process, design meetings etc etc) but I am currently doing some 3d modelling. Probably my favourite part of my job and it comes quite naturally to me, it is also an aspect of my job that no one else in the company can do very well so I probably take a little bit more pride in it due to that fact. So what is the best thing about your job? (This is a query about your role rather than your pay, bonuses etc)

Hi Gary, welcome aboard!

Great post @RenFengge I am getting close to what I think is the point of no return so beginning to turn party members into Hero's of the Veilguard and closing out their character stories. I think some of them are pretty fun i.e. I have enjoyed the necromancer's story and ending, Harding's was interesting as it gave a bit of back story to the titans. But generally agree with most of what you have said. It isn't Bioware of yesterday by any means but it's not a bad game. I am hoping to try and get the platinum trophy and if this is the last dragon age game I wouldn't be too hurt as it is on a downwards trend but yeah it is a shame considering the heights of where it all started and fortunately there have been games in recent years such as Baldurs Gate and Divinity that have taken up the mantle.

So just been looking at portable stereos as I could do with something that could do everything i.e. bluetooth but also DAB and being able to play my cd's which I still enjoy time to time. This got me thinking about technology that I enjoy or use that seems to have been around for ages and it also got me reading articles online about how tape cassette's are on an upwards trend (even today I can't see what the fascination would be with them). But it made me think, in my car I still have a small ipod that get's used every now and again with songs from my younger years, everything being streamed from your phone today it is probably outdated tech but tech that is still pretty useful in today's world i.e. not draining my phone battery in the car playing music on longer journeys and such. I have also seen the Polaroid cameras recently, they seem to be sold everywhere again (the one's where you print out instant photos). So is there any tech that you still have lying around in use which might be considered outdated or any tech you would like to see make a bif of a comeback?

I had a stormer last night with the AK, the first night the gun really clicked, at first I thought it might have been because we were matching lobbies to Tom & Lee's skill level 😄 It took me from about 50 headshots all the way up to gold so that is 3 for me now! XM4, AK74 and the GPR with the latter being my favourite I think so far. I did make a start on the Ames last night but it doesn't feel like it packs the same sort of punch as the other guns.

That is good to hear! It is on my to play list but I have a couple of big single player game son the go at the moment so suspect this may be my game over Christmas. My ROG broke recently (missus broke it grrr) so it will be on the Xbox for me. Be interesting to see how it plays on my Series S!

I wasn't part of the original clan (more recent addition) but hi! We do jump on COD fairly regularly though most are on Playstation so when you say gamertag I imagine you mean Xbox? If so you might want to put your EA name on here as well and join the discord.

I am very mixed on the maps, I seem to dislike one's people kind of enjoy (Red card is horrible for me) but enjoy others such as lowtown and protocol where the general consensus is not so positive. As far as all round good maps I think Derelict and Skyline maybe and though not my favourite map I seem to do best on Subsonic ^_^

I have the GPR (I think that's what it's called?) and XM4 at gold and doing the AMES next. I am not usually too bothered by camo's but this seem's an easy way of getting them as most of the things needed to be achieved are things you do while playing anyway.

So, I have spent some time with this game now. I am definately on the side of it being a half decent game. I am not going into the is it or is it not a failure conversation again, just givnig you guys a brief run through of my thoughts - Visually it is quite a stunning game in places, I have put some early in game screenshots into the screenshots thread. The art style of the characters isn't quite my cup of tea and the Qunari characters you meet are a bit odd. There are also some on the other 'team' that look more how you would expect them to if you are a fan of the series. - The story & writing, it starts off medicore however the past couple of hours I have been playing and where I hit what I imagine is the halfway point it is getting much better. The characters are really quite good and engaging and I really like most of the companions. - Combat is not what I have enjoyed with past Dragon age games however it is quite fun and engaging. Quite fast paced but some of the bosses can be quite the challenge compared to the normal mobs. Creatures that were considered tough in previous games are somewhat weak here but that is because the big bads are at a level above. It is a combat system very much geared towards a wider audience. - The world building is quite good and there are moments where characters speak lines and such reminscent of old school dragon age. And some of the places you visit are brilliant, I think Treviso is fantastic running through the rooftops. General thought, the start of the game is not the strongest, it improves as it goes on but that is never a good thing with any game as it can often result in you losing players before the game really gets going. Only one decision so far seem's to have impacted things, generally your conversation decisions don't make much difference other than altering the opions your companions have of you, it is reminisicent of the Mass Effect games so I wonder if their opinion of you dictates if they live or die at the end of the game or something. Last night I was actually nodding off on the sofa as I was knackered yesterday but putting on the game and furthering the story at this one point I am at suddenly woke me right up. I won't go too much into it in case anyone here does play it but there is a section of the story where you are involved in a siege of a castle (won't say which side you are on) but it genuinely felt like one. It reminded me a bit of when I first player the lord of the rings two towers was it where you are fighting on top of the castle walls. It was brilliant and then fighting your way through to the boss of this area was great, with everything going on at the same time it led to a feeling of urgency, to get to where you are going before the place was overwhelmed (I am not sure that's even programmed into it but it felt like it). For me it's probably a 7.5 / 10, so not a bad game but not quite reaching the heights I had hoped it would but that's more because of what I have historically enjoyed from the series and really the series is moving away from that in the same way Final Fantasy has done from it's origins in recent years.

It certainly does not go back to it's roots in terms of gameplay and such though the game does keep to the lore quite well.

It may well turn out to be a failure but only EA & Bioware have the right to really determine that. You are stating it as a fact with no metrics, not real justification other than it's the biggest game of the year it should be comparable to everything else, . Considering the number of issues that affected this game's development they may have already reduced the internal expectations and to them a success of this game may not be 'achieving the biggest games of yesteryear' it may be, can we generate a new audience, does it show promise for developing future games in the same vein. The 250million figure can be found by doing a google search and is a guess that someone made based on 25 million a year between now and the last game (literally the first thing you find on google), regurgitating things you found on google doesn't make it fact. It ignores the fact that there was a whole different game initially called Dragon Age 'Dreadwolf', it ignores the fact this modern game is a whole different project and has only really been in real development for the past 5 years (maybe reusing elements of the original but it would have had it's own budget and resource allocated to it. This is kind of my point and I have probably said it in a very very very long winded way! It's ok to view stuff online, it's ok to form opinions based on it but be mindful that so much of it is very much created and curated to generate views and you are only viewing snippets. Snippets that have been curated and selected to help encourage people to certain opinions. We have seen it oh so much with politics in recent years, this is obviously for a different audience and on a much smaller less important scale.

What determines the 750,000 figure? Is that something you have decided upon as I can't see anything online that states this? As a comparison, Call of Duty, released in a similar timeframe on the same console / pc formats and probably a much larger budget. A game with multiple modes and generally multiplayer games achieve higher audiences in the first place had a peak of 300 thousand since release.... Is that also considered a failure for not achieving 750 thousand concurrent players at any one point? Is this a figure EA themselves have stated must be achieved? Just for something to compare it too, Skyrim has never achieved 750 thousand and is considered one of the most successful RPG's ever, Baldurs Gate 3 did exceed it but also didn't have quite the social media bashing that this game has received up to now. There are so many factors that can influence whether a game is considered a success or a 'catastrophic failure in the same realms as Concord', a big statement to make and I am trying to understand the metrics to it. We also have no idea what sales and numbers are like on console No need to go on the attack, I am not saying you can't have an opinion and have never done so. But what I am saying is whether you have first hand experience or whether you have watched video's / social media posts etc that someone where someone has pre-selected footage and such based on their opinion influences what you are saying. An opinion can be influenced, based on past experiences (for example have you played the last games at all? Were you hoping for something more akin to the original 2 games? Did you enjoy Inquisition and wanted more of that? Are you comparing it with Baldurs Gate, probably our most successful recent single player title), based on your personal outlook (and we all know what a happy bloke you are) or can be based on what you want from something. What I want from Dragon Age as a game would be very different from what you would want from it and depending on whose experience the game more closely achieves will influence our opinions of the game. You are entitled to have an opinion but what someone takes from that will be again different for each person depending on the background behind it and it is perfectly valid of me to ask if your opinion is based on social media or from first hand experience 🙂 I have played a number of games that were not received well initially (particularly by social media) and gone on to really enjoy them and in some instances have become popular games such as Days Gone, Hogwarts Legacy & Cyberpunk as recent examples, in fact I think Fallout New Vegas took a bit of a beating for all it's glitches and such early days and most of these weren't ever rectified and can still be found in the game today! 😄 As you have not not played it there are a number of positive things that I probably can't discuss with you because you may even not know they are part of the game and may not have been shown in the videos or posts you have seen - - Loading times seem minimal as you transition between places through the mirror transports which is really quite cool. The only thing I have seen that even closely resembles that was Ratchet & Clank. - Combat is really quite good. I generally prefer my turn based combat games, be it JRPG or Western RPG's, I like to take my time and pick my strategies. However the combat is quick, slick and looks fantastic. - The world building is up there with some of the best, they all look phenomenal, the way the blight has been crafted in certain areas and one of my favorite aspects is the use of mist in some areas. More often than not weather features tend to affect performance but it doesn't here. - The creation of your character actually impacts the game, most games where you create your protaginist it is typically a visual thing. This is much more like the original Dragon age game if you ever played it in that your decisions at the start impact upon how factions respond to you when you meet them. I have played 2 classes and factions through to Chapter 6 now and they have been somewhat different experiences. - It's also quite accessible, we live in a gaming world where your souls like games are something a lot of games try to recreate or capture. Tough games that require a fair amount of skill. My first run through of this I set the difficulty to one of the easy one's and it was exactly that. I find with single player games sometimes you just want to take in the world and story of it rather than taking on the challenges it offers. It is not a 10/10 experience by any means but it's also not the 'failure' you are both alluding to. It is probably more a 7/10 game, good ideas, good traits in there but it does have issues. I think James mentions one above which is probably my biggest bugbear, the lip syncing has not been done well at all. However that is something that could be patched. My other somewhat big gripe is the fact that the series started off much in the same vain as the Baldurs Gate games, I loved the original 2 games and for me that's where they should have taken the series and kept budgets smaller to suit, by appealing to a wider audience the game has had to change and evolve and it's just simply not the direction I would have preferred. A note on the writing, it does start off weak admittedly but once you get to the second half of the game it certainly improves, judging by both your comments above it would suggest the snippet of the game you have seen was likely in the first portion of the game which goes back to my point in that generally you would likely form a different opinion playing the game than watching something on social media. You have to also consider most of what is on social media is incomplete, a lot of the content release in the first few days of a games launch is all about getting your content out first which likely means the person has only experienced the first number of hours of the game.

It has its issues but most games do these days but its really not a ‘catastrophic failure’ and certainly not comparable to Concord, you only have to see the average user reviews on steam for that as well as the number of players the game has on steam. Have either of you 2 played it?

Now I have had a bit more time with it. The game's not too bad but I think as with a few of the multiplayer games I am playing at the moment they have just been done to death. No matter what way you look at this it is just another COD, much in the same way as fifa is just another fifa each year and as I get older, my gameplay time is reducing at the moment and I want to spend it on better experiences rather than rehashes of yesteryear. I will play this on and off but I am going to limit my gameplay, rather than playing all evening it will be an hour or 2 and then done so I don't burn myself out with it. I have had some great games mind and do frequently come top 3 which is always good with these games, being competitive in what is an environment geared towards a younger, quicker audience! I do like the gameplay, the omni movement I am getting used to and kind of like it, guns are a bit meh. The maps are generally crap though for me, I think there are 2 or 3 I kind of like but on the whole they are crap. Mostly too small or too big which results in often being killed from spawn or running for minutes and finding no one only to get shot by someone sitting in a corner and having to do it again... The football stadium map could have been good but I think that's a prime example of how not to do a COD map for me. Babylon as mentioned above, I don't mind it but it is a clusterf*ck so you have to be in the mood for that.

I have heard positive things about the campaign tbf, have yet to play it myself but things seem to suggest it is one of the better ones for years.

Would certainly build some resiliance 🤣

Oh no @WelchyTV are you an Arsenal fan? 😛

I know there aren't many of us that do it but I do like collecting my physical games and yesterday in game the missus agreed to buy me a game I found in the clearance section. So said game was Zelda tears of the kingdom and it had been placed in this area as it was the collector's edition and the box was a little damaged. Bizarrely we bought it for only £41, the price for this second hand in cex is still £40 so straight away we are fine, but then I am getting a few collector's items too ironically enough I think I could take this to cex now and sell it to them for more than we bought it for. So yeah, a game I wanted anyway but had held off and knowing what happens with Nintendo games and how their prices depreciate it's likely that it will never be worth as little as we paid for it. So yeah just seeing what gaming bargains people here have had in the past?

So just a thread really about a few of the controllers I have and to provide some general conversation around the various PS5 accessories, do you have any and do they get frequent use? So I have had a couple of different PS5 controllers now, a second hand Dualsense Edge controller and yesterday an impulse purchase of the Nacon Revolution Pro 5 which has prompted this post. The Edge is a definite improvement over the original controller, it feel's nicer to hold, the rubber grip and just feels better made, a more premium feel if you like. I don't however use the back buttons much really but it is just a nicer controller to use. However we popped into game yesterday and picked up 2 items from their clearance area, the first being a christmas present from the wife that she has now put away (another thread to come) and the Nacon Revolution pro 5. I have been after a new controller as the rubber grip is coming away from the controller which is irritating me and I don't know why but stuff like that grinds my gears unnecassarily (so tips to repair it would be appreciated!) I saw this controller and it was half price so £100 as opposed to £200 and I thought it was worth a shot at that price. Turns out this controller is brilliant! I opened the box and the first, strange thing to happen was upon opening it, there have obviously been lengths taken to make the box opening a little different. It was perfumed in some way and opening it, it actually smelt nice which was a bit odd. The controller itself is great, it feels really great in the hands and there are a number of weights that you can swap in if you want a heavier or lighter feel to the default. The controller comes in a pretty strong case with a USB-C cable, USB dongle, several weights, 2 additional thumbsticks (one higher and one a different style), and an alternative D pad button. The controller itself has quite a number of back buttons (more so than the edge), it has the xbox layout with the thumbsticks which I have always found a little more comfortable and the default thumb sticks are reminiscent of the PS2 controllers which is quite nice. Oh and it also has what is known as hall effect thumbsticks which are meant to somewhat eliminate stick drift which is common today with modern controllers. The other thing is how responsive this is, it really feels instant when gaming, like moreso than the 1st party controllers which is strange. It may just be in my head but it really does feel more responsive. So yeah if you are looking for a new controller and can afford it I would recommend this one from my limited experience so far 🙂

First thoughts are actually decent and I have been in a few good lobbies however it is already seemingly apparent there are some 'dodgy' players on pc and doing a quick google online this morning apparently cheats have come online very quick and is probably the only downside of playing on a computer over Playstation. That said the gameplay is decent and I don't mind the movement. I suspect I will play this a little but with the number of games I have on the go it may be reservered for a bit of Zombies with some friends and private matches with you lot. The guns are somewhat lacking, there are very few and It feels like I don't really need to move from the first gun (XM4) but we will see, I have just pulled the trigger and bought the playstation version now so will jump on in the week with you guys I am sure.