Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN FEBRUARY 2025?

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

What Have You Been Playing... IN FEBRUARY 2025?

* Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

I’ve never played any Call of Duty game before but, well, I saw it on
TV. Specifically, my country’s public broadcaster/ministry of
propaganda/ministry of truth has a program on historical accuracy in
video games. So they actually have history profs commenting on a game’s
historical accuracy while watching another guy play the game.

I noticed the game goes on sale periodically (it’s from 2020) and
setup a price watch notification on Cheapshark. It triggered recently
but unfortunately I jumped the gun and bought it on battle.net. There
was quite a lot of hoops to jump through, some were on fire. And of
course, a couple of days later it went on sale on Steam. Gah.

While I didn’t know much of CoD in general, I was delighted by the
absurdity I saw on TV and enjoyed the quick and simple action in the
game. They even put in some “variation” where in one mission I was
suddenly a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, a flashback in other words. On
another I had to steer a radio controlled car into the landing gear of
a jet plane and blow it up into a huge fireball. Oh, and this was a
*covert* operation to stop a terrorist attack. Yes, the absurdity
entertains.

Technically, the game is good too. Installation options let you select
what content you want, I skipped the multiplayer bits and saved a few
gigs of download. Lots of options to tweak graphics otherwise
too. Couldn’t make it go above 60 fps though which is a little odd. It
even has an monitor refresh rate limit settable to 60/144/165 but that
does nothing, it sticks to 60.

Hoops to jump through on battle.net:

- Can’t create an account with a PC browser. You get a long CAPTCHA
  where your answers aren’t accepted even if right. In my case, the
  CAPTCHA wasn’t even solvable 2/3 tries either.

  Mobile browser works though. I assume their mobile app works as well.

- Payment: oh, you have to authorize them to charge anything they want
  on Paypal. Lovely. Removed.

- Another account: well, one isn’t enought, I need to have an
  Activision account too.

It’s true what Spalls says, Steam might not be good but others are
way, way worse.

* GTA4

I installed GTA4 some time ago, I was a little worried if I still have
access to the DLC. I have little interest in the main game but as I
recall the DLC is more fun. Turns out my old DVD release was converted
to a downloadable from Rockstar and the Games for Windows bought DLC
also came from there. I was pleasantly surprised.

I remember I played the lost and damned biker DLC a little bit back when
I installed this and started again. Turns out increasing the FPS messes
up the physics in the game and not in a fun way. Oh well, back to
plodding 60 fps. Keyboard also refuses to work in combat. When combat
starts apparently WASD doesn't means forward-left-right-back, it's more
like nothing-right-nothing-back. So pressing left goes right back goes
back.

Thankfully, my trusty old Xbox 360 controller still works. And the game
seems to play reasonably well, I think I'll try to complete the biker
and the other DLC.

* Star Wars Outlaws

This went on sale with 50% off so I figured it's time. Star Wars game,
even if it sucks, is still a Star Wars game.

All I've managed so far is fumble around on the starter planet,
collecting junk for money to get a data spike fixed which would enable
some lucrative thievery. The game's ambiance is great, other than that
it's pretty humdrum so far.