TGA Ghosts - co-op goodness for all

[Lenny Solidus]

Thanks to both Snowy and Raid for the Outriders session earlier, more proof that even those games we sometimes aren't sold on for a lengthy period w poor launch or early chilly reception can at a later date come together nicely as a fun co-op experience, and are actually a little deeper than you expected. I had a blast with the both of you, gib fests shit waterfalls no pants parties - unexpected surprises and all.

[Raid]

Yeah, a game that I don't think I'd ever have taken a second look at had Ian not suggested it, and we ended up playing for five hours straight as a trio. I know when it released the chatter was about how it wasn't really the cover shooter that it looked to be from the poor showing it had in the beta, but I still think it fits that model from what I've seen so far. It's just a bit more lenient about the amount of time you can spend running and gunning before you have to seek shelter.

I'll see how long it keeps my interest, this style of RPG advancement tends to lose it's lustre a bit once it stops drip feeding new abilities, and we only have a couple more to come, but I've really not delved far into the mods yet which look to add a bit of variety. I enjoy watching the numbers go up, but it usually has to be accompanied by significant alteration rather than +5% fire damage.

It's on game pass, and I'd say it's worth a look as a co op game.

[Snowy]

Yes a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon was had there and I am keen for more I must say. I intend to watch a 30-minute 'how to' as I suspect I have only the vaguest understanding of the mechanics at play. I also want to find a build to follow rather than wing it.

As far as longevity goes, let's keep playing and see. The one thing I do know is that I am playing less and less single-player stuff and more and more co-op, mostly in the TGA Discord.

For me, co-op just doubles down on the enjoyment of gaming as it becomes a shared experience, making it so much more in the process. For example, Raid and I played Sniper Elite 4 the other day and at one point I scrambled to shoot a nazi only to injure him. As he lay on the road screaming I nudged the sights for my second shot, moving from the easy headshot to the more difficult plum-shot, which I pulled off - the game gave both Chris and I a slo-mo kill-cam of both his spuds being vapourised and unknown to me Chris had seen the whole thing unfold.

"Oh you evil git!" the cry came through my headset, followed by both of us laughing. If I had been playing solo I would have been quietly pleased with the shot, but with another player present it became so much more.

I am happy to co-op anything pretty much, so anyone with a hankering, post here Meantime, will look forward to the next Outrider session.

[Raid]

Let me know if you find a decent tutorial for the advancement stuff. I absolutely want to keep playing, I'm even considering trying a bit solo to gain some more mod abilities. I've had a brief look through the ones available for my class and there are some corkers in there, and I'm already building synergies in my head.

Sniper Elite was I think maligned when the series first started, I'm sure I remember one reviewer saying that the kill cams were gratuitous. They're not, they let you revel in your accuracy for a few moments, which is the entire point of the series. They're especially good in multiplayer when you can't necessarily see what your teammate is doing. Ian currently has the crown for "most awful kill" for the one above, although I've had a few good ones too (I had a smashing testicle shot with an enemy sprinting perpendicular to my angle, which surely is one of the most difficult).

[Lenny Solidus]

Great Outriders session today, interesting times on Breakpoint but we won't talk about that.

What is standing out to me about Outriders in particular is how invested all three of us have become in all aspects of our toons, it's been some time since I can recall so much build information being shared to and fro step by step after almost each and every new engagement. That trio dynamic and what each person involved swaps upgrades or chooses as their next tree addition becomes ever more important as we enter into each new tier difficulty spike, our tactics are constantly put to the test and always naturally fluxing and bending because of it, in a good way. How just one of us in the group changing over to something new can bring such an addition to that overall dynamic. The self buffs and the unexpected but welcome team buffs you can never underestimate what even a slight change to one of us can make for all which makes spending all the time that each of us do on the toon advancing and careful balancing, important as it is at the base of the experience.

Then during a fight there are these instances when you visually see the information shared and those new changes made come together as if you are watching a beautiful canvas painting being painted right before your eyes. And Snow's always well timed bubbles make this amazingly cool noise right before your screen is filled up with a concentrated space of absolute carnage presented to you in wonderful slow motion vision, your whole experience slows down and almost stops even for a moment as you get to just enjoy this death compactor made up of everything each of us are pouring into that same space.

My head isn't the best right now but I think I know Snowy and Raid know what I'm trying to convey, underneath all the genericness the constant story beats there's something present at the heart of Outriders that reinvigorates that feeling that you know why you still play games moment to moment as you all fight together as a single entity, to overcome survive and kick fucking arse.

(You can tell I'm full of paracetamol, yes indeed)

[Snowy]

I am certainly having a lot of fun with the game, no question. For what is ostensibly a third-person cover-shooter it stands out well from the pack. As Lenny says, it occasions a lot of discussion, and frequent changes to our builds as we pick up this or that ability or piece of loot.

Then it is back to the fray. Because we are effectively playing three superpowered killing machines, when the game lets loose it really gives you both barrels, loads of enemies including epic baddies and if you don't pay attention, you die fast. On the flip though, you can feel the movement of the pendulum within the game as it swings, initially into high danger but gradually back in your favour as the team immolates, slows and miniguns the slew of enemies down.

I do love the stasis bubble my toon uses and Lenny is right, it never gets old. Just the respite it allows is great, but paired with other abilities it really shines. My favourite move is to teleport in behind groups of enemies (especially snipers), pop the stasis bubble, kill the enemies, then dash back to the rest of the fireteam leaving slow-mo gibs floating through the air within it.

A game that is more than the sum of it's parts, with the enjoyment compounded for being played in co-op.

[Raid]

It's certainly engaging the parts of my brain that enjoy watching the numbers go up, but I'm still working out *why* the numbers are going up. There are times where my minigun skill does around 80 damage per shot. There are times where my minigun does 1200 damage per shot (and crits for 2400). That's a 1500% increase. It's not, as I've been thinking for the last couple of sessions, a bug, I just think I've inadvertently stumbled on a combination of mods that make it output insane amounts of damage. I know the skill scales from Anomaly power, and I have a mod that gives me what I think is a fairly substantial temporary increase to that when I kill something, so I've been trying to focus on the adds before turning it towards the elites (which I think is helpful for the party as a whole anyway).

...which is to say that while I think this is a fairly decent co-op shooter, there's certainly depth to it. It's just a shame that some of it isn't immediately obvious while you're playing; I don't know if there's a way of showing what my anomaly power is at any given time for example, which makes it difficult to understand exactly what's going on during a fight. I can see little buff markers above my health, but there's nothing that tells me what those buff markers actually represent. I suppose it's awkward in a shooter as you can't use mouseover for tooltips and such while the mouse is controlling your aim.

[Snowy]

The three amigos in Outriders - me on the left, Raid in the middle, LennyQuantum on the right

[Lenny Solidus]

A great session to be sure, if we can maintain progress at the steady rate we are currently we will reach endgame much quicker than I expected we would, though it's clear to see that the game loves to bask in a good counter to our combined 'sense of pride and accomplishment' with a direct sledgehammer to the face of said progress (particularly due to my own smug face who has a terrible habit of bigging our group up right before we get crushed) which is always my bad. Then I had a technical issue. Saying that, there was some very odd lag issues as we discussed at a very critical time which put today's session firmly to bed in a rather rapid manner but we got a good four or more hours out of it beforehand.

We work together very well as a team, nothing delights me more than seeing some of those bosses getting wiped out when the perfect amount of combined firepower/abilities and an at times meticulously framed sense of timing to deal with the right enemies at the right time all comes together, tight comms keep things ticking along nicely and sure we have a little bit of solid banter along the way. I've played a lot of co-operative games over the years but I look forward to these sessions with yourself Snowy and you Raid more than most, it wasn't too long ago that I had condemned myself to the fate of playing largely solo as others I approached would not give Outriders a second look. So thanks to the both of you for helping create one of the most fun rewarding and memorable co-op experiences in quite a while.

Then I had a technical issue.

[Raid]

I'd noticed the latency issue throughout today's session; headshots that were very obviously headshots not registering, slowness in activating my minigun skill, enemies occasionally jumping around, that sort of thing. It was fairly pronounced at times. Hopefully it's just a temporary server issue, as I've not seen it in previous sessions.

I'm still struggling to work out the damage output on the minigun. I know it's scaling from Anomaly Power, but it's difficult working out when I have enough of a buff to make it worthwhile. I know which buff icon is the anomaly power boost, but I don't think the buff icons show how many stacks of a buff you have. It's frustrating because there's a 10-15x difference between using it without, and with it's maximum potential.

And I'm so glad we didn't drop the difficulty for that really tough fight. This game isn't just a question of stats, there are builds and strategies that clearly make a big difference, and I don't like backing down from a challenge when I think there's something we can change in our approach.

[Snowy]

And I'm so glad we didn't drop the difficulty for that really tough fight. This game isn't just a question of stats, there are builds and strategies that clearly make a big difference, and I don't like backing down from a challenge when I think there's something we can change in our approach.

Likewise - I made the suggestion to give everyone the option but am glad we didn't take it!

I find that with everything that is happening onscreen, I just don't see the status effect icons amidst the gunfire, explosions, showers of gore and body parts etc. I have no clue what the respective damage that we are putting out is either, but as we are marching nicely through the game and getting a good groove of gameplay between the three of us am happy to continue as we are, at least for now

[arqueturus]

I'm assuming this scales the difficulty when playing in a group?

I'm at the last (please god I hope so) bit of the campaign as a Technomancer and I'm at level 30 and World Difficulty 15. I wouldn't say I'm breezing at this point but I seem to have all the right tools to handle all the situations I'm coming accross.

[Lenny Solidus]

Thanks to Snowy for the Div 2 session yesterday, as brief as they can sometimes be (delicious sounding sausages and a fire alarm thrown in for good measure) it's always good to get to grips with gradually unlocking elements of which the game has many, some we instantly agreed upon we would largely ignore as there's enough to juggle already. Although early exploits on the game can feel so very slow paced compared to the onslaught we are connectively met with together on Outriders it's kind of nice to have that at times, it's not all that different a functioning world though the way ads tend to be encountered can be rather unpredictable, but fun in nature. Why the fuck is the enemy climbing up there? I'm going to pop his head like melon anyway.

I'm very much still getting used to the landscape that is the wild ride that is the discord, I received my first friend request a day ago which was nice and owning my first properly working mic in a while has already brought about numerous memorable moments. So it was to be directly after our session ending that the player joined server sound popped off and a friendly voice entered my ears. Once Snowy had departed for his hopefully not too desecrated sausages it quickly dawned on me thus - I was now to be in a conversation with someone whose moniker I had known of and been around for years but not once in that entire duration had I ever learned, his real name. A quick google of 'wtf is his name' returned zero results. Monikers as they say are all fine and well of course but there is never a time too late to strip away the phantoms mask and reveal the true form behind that is well you know, actually a person you've known for well over a decade but only until now left in a discord room together for the first time ever have no bloody idea what they are even called, and I wished to appear as personable as possible because of course I did. This was our moment, warp factor engaged, let's do this shit.

I somewhat gingerly professed to this slight setback and naturally they were just fine with it all, a very pleasant and at times revelatory conversation was had and I'm not afraid to say that there were moments that I even felt my heart swell a little with so much I'd not thought about in so long being mentioned. Like on a first date that was going surprisingly well, but I forgot my bank card. Now they obviously know who they are and what transpired in the conversation and reading this back I'm hopeful they are ok with me sharing all of this because I came away from the conversation feeling rather good about it all. And all the while during this conversation I had enemies in the game attempting to rip me apart as a solo player making my poor avatar run for his life the majority of the time under heavy gunfire feeling at times heavily stressed by the FUCKING BULLSHIT occurrences on my screen *in the game not the conversation* attempting to remain as casual sounding as possible over a mic that is at times a little too sensitive for my liking. Overall I think I made quite a good go of it looking back and no doubt he never suspected a thing, calm as a cucumber.

We both swapped names and did an entire round of do you remember and what happened with that we both recalled from our many overlapping era's together, from the pcg to the geeks (?) wizards ivors and preys now here thanks to Mantis, so many boards and a frankly disgusting amount of years gone by but still we prevail. An endless supply of names many of which we once considered super close friends some now lost to the sands of time while others continue to be refreshed by a quick slap of the old F5. It's been a very long and interesting road.

Well, I've taken up enough of your time and it's raining heavily outside in the middle of summer. I quite like that.

[Snowy]

The sausages were sensational btw, the fire alarm was just caused by a bit of grease hitting the grill.

[Snowy]

Well after years in the co-op wastelands, the TGA Ghosts are kicking arse and taking names regularly.

We (Raid, LennyQuantum, El Gaucho, me) have been putting in some hours on The Division 2, which played as a co-op team with comms is superb, even if you do have to wrestle with a purposefully idiotic UI.

High point of the weekend was getting to a climactic point in a battle, only to have a door only metres from where we were all in cover open and the boss and some adds come striding menacingly forth. Unfortunately (for him), we were all aiming directly at the door, and the absolute fusillade of fire, grenades, flamethrower turrets and Dave's Angry Love Eggs® tore the whole group to pieces. It does what the game does very well and made for a real cinematic spectacle.