Author: Shmee

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PUBG Is Now On Xbox! … And It Is PUBG.

Yesterday PC’s biggest game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), came out on Xbox One, and you may be wondering how it turned out.  Well, for better or worse it is PUBG.  It is graphically uninspiring, the framerate is choppy, and it feels like you are always fighting the controls, so it is a pretty good port.  Thankfully, the heart pounding and exhilarating action holds up with a controller and a couch.

A word of warning, this game is still in Microsoft’s Game Preview Program, which means it isn’t done, and it doesn’t look or feel done, but it is still really, really fun.  It also has PUBG’s new vaulting feature.  Which is supper handy for getting over walls and rocks.  However, that means I can no longer blame dying on being stuck on a fence.  I am just not very good.

I will be playing a lot of PUBG in the days to come, and based on the usage numbers online, so will all of you.  With that being the case, I will be seeing you all parachuting to your almost certain doom very soon with the rest of Xbox Live.

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RPCS3 Works, But You Better Have A Beefy Rig.

I have always had fun playing with emulation, so RPCS3 has intrigued me.  The PS3 uses a very custom Power PC based processor called ‘The Cell’, so in order to emulate it on an x86 based processor it all needs to run at the software level.  The developer recommends an Intel Core i7 or better to get games running decently, but I thought I would give it a shot with my cheap overclocked AMD FX-8320.  It didn’t go well.

I couldn’t get games to run over 15 FPS, but I am guessing with a Threadripper or a an i7 I could have stabilized things a bit more.  Some people are able to get amazing performance, but most of us are stuck in frame drop city.  This is why it is incredible that the Xbox One is able to run un-recompiled Power PC Xbox 360 games so well, and even run some of them at 4K on the Xbox One X.

I am not condoning pirating, and if you are going to run emulators on your PC please buy the software first, and in RPCS3’s case, you can get a used PS3 for far cheaper than you can buy a PC that can run the emulator decently.  Not to mention most PS3 games are pretty cheap themselves theses days.  All in all, it is amazing what the RPCS3 team has accomplished, but don’t go thinking your bargain PC will be running PS3 games in a playable fashion any time soon.

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They Really Had To Streach For Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom…

So the movie is about saving the dinosaurs from a volcano?  I can only hope that they jump sharks as well.  I mean what the heck?!  Did they get a twelve year old to come up with this script.  That is the sort of thing twelve year old me would have come up with.  Then me and the dinos would jump from couch to couch so that we didn’t fall in the lava.  We can only hope Blue eats Owen.  That at least would be a surprise.  If nothing else it looks like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will have lots of action.  Big, dumb, action.

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Shmee Visits The Good Place!

Do you like The Office or maybe Parks and Recreation?  What if I told you the same guy that wrote and produced those shows, Michael Schur, made another show about ‘heaven’, The Good Place.  While it is theologically unsound, it is very funny, and since it has been out for a year you can blitz through the first season right now on Netflix.

The Good Place is about Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) who ends up in the titular Good Place by accident.  She of course doesn’t want to admit she is in the wrong place then be sent to eternal damnation, so she has to do her best to fit in, but her innate selfishness keeps getting her in trouble.

The Good Place is unlike any major religion’s idea of paradise.  Pretty much if you are good, like really good, you end up in a little neighborhood with a soulmate, and you can do whatever you want.  Things are fine for most of Eleanor’s neighbors, but she keeps doing things that screw her neighborhood up.  Making it hard to keep up her lie.

Like all comedies, they are only as good as their cast, and The Good Place has a great one.  Bell is hilarious, and Ted Danson as ‘The Architect’ of the neighborhood is still at the top of his game, but rest of the cast is great too.  They have good chemistry, and the laughs don’t stop coming.

While I doubt The Good Place will be used in seminary classes any time soon, it is a funny show, and another hit for Michael Schur.  You can watch the first season on Netflix, and the second season is airing now, so you can catch up on Hulu.com if you have it.  In these dark days without The Office or Parks and Rec it is nice to have The Good Place to visit.

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I Am Not Sure If Prey Is Its Own Game Or Series Of References!

I get the distinct impression that I have played Prey before, and not because I played the 2006 original.  No, because I have played the three games that Prey uses as its foundation extensively.  That being the case I find when I play Prey, I play a lot of it, but I am not sure it is because I like it, or because there is not a new System Sock, Bioshock, or Deus Ex to play.

In Prey you play as either a male of female Morgan Yu (I am playing as a girl) who has taken a job with her brother, Alex, aboard the scientific space station Talos I.  Morgan was going to be doing advanced science and research, but instead she finds the station overrun with unknown aliens.  It is up to Morgan to figure out what has happened and stop the aliens from getting to Earth.

To help Morgan on her way she can gain new abilities by getting Neuromods that jack in to her brain and help it function better.  Much like Praxis Kits in the newer Dues Ex games you need a set number of Neuromods to unlock an ability, so to get the more advanced skills you need to collect or manufacture a lot of Neuromods.

The most unique part of Prey is the ability to recycle everything and then make new stuff from the parts.  Practically what this means however is that you will find less ammo and useful stuff around the game, and end up just stuffing your inventory with a lot of junk until you can find a Recycler.  Then holding on to the recycled materials until you find a Fabricator, so this functionally ends up working like the vending machines in Bioshock.  Except instead of cash you carry around junk.

Like all games these days you get what I call a puzzle gun.  The gun you will use as your tool to get out of all your unfortunate circumstances.  Instead of a gravity gun, a portal gun, or a bow and arrow with cool stuff attached, you get a GLOO gun that can patch holes, make bridges and ladders, and entrap enemies.  It doesn’t quite do everything, but if you are stuck, it is safe to say it is at least worth pondering if the GLOO gun can help you out.

Almost everything in Prey is a reference to another game.  Right down to cribbing Bioshock’s Art Deco look, System Shock’s atmosphere (though a lot of games have stolen that), Dues Ex’s progression system, and Half Life’s special gun mechanic, and if I am honest, I think those games did their shtick better than Prey does.  However, Prey weaves them all together pretty well, and it is competently made, so it is worth your time and money.  Especially if you like the games it barrows from.  I am enjoying myself, but I just wish it was more original.