First we talk about Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Old Man & the Gun, and American Ultra. Then we bet you’re too chicken to listen to the rest of the podcast. Bwaak, bwak, bwak!
Next week: A Star Is Born
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Bethesda has released a stealthy update for The Evil Within 2 that could make the game more appealing for children and yellow-bellies. The 1.05 patch officially contains two innocuous-sounding changes.
– New features for Bethesda.Net members
– Minor bug fixes
The new features includes a harder-than-hardcore “AKUMU” difficulty, an infinite stamina cheat, a ridiculous strength boost, and for everyone that wished for a super-wuss mode, an invincibility toggle. Sign in with your Bethesda.net login and cheat through the horrors of The Evil Within 2 just in time for Halloween. Spooky!
Red Dead Redemption 2 will talk you through most of what you need to know. For the most part, it’s not a challenging game and it’s not trying to be. It just wants you to spend time with it while it tells you a story. But sometimes, you’ll find yourself wrestling with the controls or not quite understanding how something is supposed to work. You might accidentally shoot someone because you mixed up your L2 and your R2. You might then find a town full of folks shooting at you. You might then hitch your horse when you meant to get up on it. You might then die and now you’ve lost your favorite Appaloosa. All this is theoretical, of course. I’m not saying it happened to me. But I’m not saying it didn’t.
So here are a few helpful things that I had to figure them out on my own. And since none of them are spoilers, I pass them on for you to use as you start playing.
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of homespun wisdom, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.–with apologies to T.S. Eliot
The camp is celebrating because one of the gang members has returned, rescued from certain death. A night of carousing has begun. Mary-Beth asks Arthur to dance. He’s not much of a fella for dancing, he tells her. Oh, it’s okay, Arthur, she says, just ’cause you dance don’t mean you’re not still angry and sad.
Is that what you think of me? he asks good naturedly.
Sad in a good way, like a romantic poet.
Well, that’s about all I can muster, he drawls. They dance in the firelight to a merry accordion.
Hellgate: London, the ill-fated 2007 online action MMO from Flagship Studios, (that some would argue was ahead of its time) is coming back as a standalone single player experience on Steam. Now managed and developed by T3Entertainment and HanbitSoft since Flagship’s liquidation in 2008, this single player only revamp is an offline version of the Hellgate: Tokyo 2.0 MMO available in Asia.
When Hellgate: London first launched in 2007, the sci-fi setting, procedurally generated environments, third or first-person action gameplay, and the optional online subscription were considered by many people as too far from the Diablo model that the audience expected. How times have changed! Additional criticisms included drab looks, bland gameplay, and the online features being a bit of a mess. Financial woes and player dissatisfaction led to bankruptcy for Flagship, but the game lived on in Korea as a free-to-play title.
The new version of Hellgate: London launches on November 15th.
NIS America has explained the lack of online functionality in the Steam version of Disgaea 5 Complete. According to the publisher’s blog post, there are “irreconcilable platform differences” that prevent the network features from working. One of the features disabled in the inferior version of the game is the popular Map Edit Shop that allows users to share their creations. If only Steam had a kind of user sharing “workshop” built into it! Alas. Powerhouse platforms like the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch apparently do not suffer from whatever deficiencies plague the modern gaming PC using Steam.
We’ve come a long way since 1978. Or have we?
Next: 3×3: taunts
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The Deutsche Motor Sport Bund has officially elevated video game racing. As Germany’s official motor sport governing body, the DMSB’s recognition of professional sim racing includes the announcement of an eSport arm that will establish guidelines and standards. As translated by Jalopnik, “there’s little difference between real-world racing and sim racing – with some important caveats” like the presence of sponsors, and perhaps the threat of accidental injury or death. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of virtual racing, it’s that getting all the sweet sponsor money is mad important.
The in-game store is now open for business in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. The Black Market, Call of Duty’s reward system, is live on PlayStation 4. Players can unlock new cosmetic items on Sony’s console first, while players on other platforms will have to wait a week for the privilege.
The Black Market’s “Contraband Stream” is the event pass system for Black Ops 4. Taking part in seasonal or special events will move you along a loot path. As you progress, you’ll unlock various event rewards including skins, gestures, special weapons, and new characters. For now, these events seem to be free for all to participate in, but Activision does note that they’ll be turning on the ability to purchase items with real money in November.
Sean Bean plays the role of Mark Faba in Hitman 2’s first elusive target mission, The Undying. It’s Sean Bean, so we know how this one will turn out, especially with Agent 47 involved. Faba’s somewhat of an inventor according to the video. You even get to vote on which one of his weapons the developers should unlock. (Of course, the right answer is the pen.) Players will be able to hunt Bean’s digital alter ego starting on November 20th, and he’ll only be available as a target for ten days.
Hitman 2 launches on November 13th.
Due to Bad Times at the Qt3 Movie Podcast Recording Software, we had to use a back-up in which Christien Mulanski’s voice is way quieter than anyone else’s. You’ll have to keep your hand on the volume knob and surf our various volume levels, which will make it our most interactive episode ever.
Next: Halloween
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Welcome to the Ecdysis Club. Ecdysis is the process of shedding old skin. Like a snake. Or a cultist sloughing off their mistaken conception of how the universe works. Cultist Simulator’s latest offering, The Dancer, gives players new ways to blast their sanity and delve into forbidden knowledge while managing the ever-rolling tide of time.
Some dances can only be performed in far places, and some cannot be performed in human shape.
Like everything else in Cultist Simulator, there’s a price to paid for getting what you want.
Beginning on October 16th, owners of Destiny 2’s latest expansion, Forsaken, will get all the content from the expansion pass. That’s everything from the Curse of Osiris and Warmind packs. According to Bungie’s post, the content is being rolled together to streamline the process of bringing on new players. It makes sense because many popular MMOs and “games as a service” experiences do the same thing. Easing the barrier to entry can better entice fresh players and keep the community going.
Every player of Destiny 2 who has yet to touch down on the Tangled Shore will need only the Forsaken upgrade.
If you jumped on Forsaken already, you’ll get a bunch of in-game items as an acknowledgement of your loyalty. There’s nothing quite like wearing a cosmetic doodad to tell everyone you paid full price for something.
I’m not sure there’s anything particularly new or even special about Strange Brigade. You could call out its commitment to serial pulp adventures set in the 40s. Or, as it’s known these days, Indiana Jones. These characters and their weapons are the trappings of an era when a pilot was called an aviator and pith helmets weren’t ironic. Steamer trucks full of weapons and nary an assault rifle in sight. Zeppelins, tents and short wave radios at excavation sites of ancient Egyptian ruins, an incredibly annoying announcer trying his darndest to sound like announcers of yore. You gotta give developer Rebellion credit for their commitment to the aesthetic.
But really, Strange Brigade is the simple act of shooting powerful guns at monsters. And lobbing the occasional grenade. And even more occasionally popping off some magic power because, well, that might as well be in there if we’re going to have zombies and skeletons. For the most part it works splendidly. Simple, gratifying, quick, accessible, with a unique sense of character, to boot. So why have I stopped playing?
If you purchase the Season Pass for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you have copies of Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered and Assassin’s Creed Liberation Remastered coming. According to the newly updated support page, these are the full games with all story DLC and upgraded graphics. All the buzzwords are here. There’s 4K, HDR, new light rendering, denser crowd tech, and various other improvements.
What’s important is the remaster may get people to play Assassin’s Creed 3 that missed it the first time around. It might even entice some players that abandoned it halfway through to come back. If you’re one of those folks, ignore the hullabaloo over the main character’s supposed blandness or the criticism for the odd extended prologue. Instead, make sure to play the optional homestead missions. They’re a delightful set of quests that task the player with building a small slice of colonial America. They’re a great mix of gameplay, and the story gives the normally dour Conner a chance to show off some humor. Most importantly, the founding and nurturing of the homestead perfectly captures the essence of the setting.
