What Are You Playing Right Now, Part 2: Daggerfall

[LibraryOgre]

Here we are, in the second thread for talking about what you're playing right now. Or, you know, as close to right now as you can, since you're obviously reading this right now, not playing a game. Hopefully. I don't know.

[Resileaf]

Right now, as all things are, is relative. :smallbiggrin:

I've been playing Rogue Squadron on Steam these past few days. It's as fun as I remember it being on the N64, although the Steam version has a very annoying camera glitch where the camera has trouble keeping up with your ship.
I should probably look into the forums if there's a fix, but it isn't gamebreaking, so that's not too much of a problem.

[LibraryOgre]

I decided to pick up and push further into Jade Empire, and I'm glad I did. Once I pushed past the intro, it's becoming a lot of fun, and my choice to unreasonably favor Body over Mind and Spirit has worked well (to wit: I always put 1 point in Body. At each level, I put points in Mind and Spirit to make them as close to equal as possible). I'm mostly doing White Demon style, focusing on getting its speed and damage as high as possible... it's basic, but it works.

Notably, I was not expecting the flying machines.

[GloatingSwine]

Remember to pick up Mirabelle when you get to the big city.

[unseenmage]

Still fiddling about with Ark single player on console. Extinction map is fun. I like Ragnarok better.

That corrupted dinos can spawn as holiday colored variants is neat but feels like it cheats me out of some cool recolors since they cant be tamed.

[rooster707]

I decided to pick up and push further into Jade Empire, and I'm glad I did. Once I pushed past the intro, it's becoming a lot of fun, and my choice to unreasonably favor Body over Mind and Spirit has worked well (to wit: I always put 1 point in Body. At each level, I put points in Mind and Spirit to make them as close to equal as possible). I'm mostly doing White Demon style, focusing on getting its speed and damage as high as possible... it's basic, but it works.

Notably, I was not expecting the flying machines.

I'm so happy for you! :smallbiggrin:

Now I want to replay Jade Empire... but I still need to finish my winter sale games... :smallfrown:

[Anonymouswizard]

I decided to pick up and push further into Jade Empire, and I'm glad I did. Once I pushed past the intro, it's becoming a lot of fun, and my choice to unreasonably favor Body over Mind and Spirit has worked well (to wit: I always put 1 point in Body. At each level, I put points in Mind and Spirit to make them as close to equal as possible). I'm mostly doing White Demon style, focusing on getting its speed and damage as high as possible... it's basic, but it works.

Notably, I was not expecting the flying machines.

I feel the need to play it again now.

I remember focusing on Body being rather effective, especially in the early game where you're much more dependant on pickups and free enemies are immune to martial styles. In the late game better chi and focus are more important so you can take down those enemies immune to either, but I tend to prefer Body.

Honestly, I've been thinking about Jade Empire, and I think most of my problems come from it's combat. There's just too many styles and not enough difference, I'd have probably combined several styles together and given each style more variation. Also I'd have probably gotten rid of either Weapon or Support Styles, probably the latter, just to keep things simple.

[LibraryOgre]

In playing Jade Empire, I considered how really cool a Robotech/Mosepeda game based on the engine could be... using Protoculture as a limit for things like your Alpha, but usually having enough to run your Cyclones.

[danzibr]

Shouldn’t rooster707 have had the honor of making the new thread, as he started the last one? Or is that not a thing?

Anyway...

I just finished playing Resident Evil 2: remake on PC, gonna play Silent Hill now
Thoughts on the remake? Spoiler free, preferably. I grew up loving RE2, but felt the gameplay took a turn for the better in 4.

I guess. We will, of course, need a clever subtitle... Any ideas?
oh my gosh i made a thread and it went to 50 pages, how did this happen
I'm getting close to the end of Axiom Verge (I think). I was a little surprised by how much I'm liking it; although I do like Metroidvanias, games with this much of a retro feel don't usually interest me - I just don't have any of the nostalgia that they're appealing to. But Axiom Verge does enough unique things with its gameplay that it pulled me in, and the story, while not the main focus, is still intriguing enough that I want to see where it goes.
Hmm I’ve considered getting that game for a long time. I love playformers. Now I’m convinced.

[rooster707]

Hmm I’ve considered getting that game for a long time. I love playformers. Now I’m convinced.

It’s free on the Epic store right now, but only for... two more days, I think? Better hurry.

[danzibr]

It’s free on the Epic store right now, but only for... two more days, I think? Better hurry.
Niiice! Thanks for this. Never heard of the Epic store.

Now if I can do this on the Switch and/or PS4...

[Triaxx]

Slowly trying to enjoy X4 and fighting with a slightly under RAM'd video card. Still fun even with the issues that induces.

[rooster707]

Niiice! Thanks for this. Never heard of the Epic store.

Now if I can do this on the Switch and/or PS4...

PC only, AFAIK, and you'll have to download the Epic launcher also. :smallannoyed:

(The store is pretty new. Epic is trying to compete with Steam, which... probably isn't gonna work, but the upshot is that we all get free games a couple of weeks.)

EDIT: Almost forgot. Link. (https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/)

[Resileaf]

Epic Games has gotten the ire of a lot of people due to their predatory practices. They've sniped several games off of Steam, including the new Metro and the new Division, demanding that those games not be released on Steam for a year. It's particularly aggravating with Metro because it had been available to pre-purchase on Steam and was one week from release. I don't know if they've been bribing game companies to do it, but it's somewhat shady.

[theMycon]

I didn't know about the Epic store either, and I literally live 20 minutes from their HQ & occasionally playtest their new products. This isn't anything special, they send out "sign up to playtest our new product" emails more than once a week if you've interacted when them face-to-face in any way. I just downloaded Axiom Verge because I remember it being kinda fun.

But... sweet fancy Moses, their PC installer is terrible. I'd thought their customer agreements are uniquely terrible, but this thing is painfully stupid.

----------
I just got Nox of GoG. It's sorta like Diablo, in that the meat of it is 2.5D dungeon crawler, though the comparison appears to come more from it coming out around the same time as Diablo II than anything else.

The good: The writing's fun, the battles are fast, and it has 3 distinct storylines depending on a choice you make right at the start.

The bad: You don't get much in the way of character building. You level 1-10 without making many choices, aside from "what spells do I buy", and if you have enough money you can get them all.

The Ugly: The battles are fast either way. I'm in chapter 4 of the conjurer quest, and just finished fighting my first necromancer. I had to try it 5 times, because he can one-shot me.

[NRSASD]

Playing Witcher III, and just finished the Crones of Crookback Bog storyline. Dang, I forgot how good they made that storyline!

[Zevox]

I'm still playing Smash Ultimate daily online. Game's just that much fun. I'm up to 10 characters in Elite Smash now - so I guess I'm making it my goal to just see how many I can get in there. Currently working on R.O.B. and Falco, with the former going better than the latter.

The recent announcement of BlazBlue Cross Tag getting more characters and a balance patch has tempted me to pick that up again, but for now, I'm waiting to see if it'll get any of my favorite Persona characters that aren't already in (or any new RWBY characters at all, but I'm not expecting that). The first one revealed was Teddie, which makes sense given he was the biggest omission from the roster as it stood, but I was never a fan of his play style. If they throw in Elizabeth, Margaret, or especially Rise, though, yeah, that'd get me to set Smash aside for a while. ...unless it releases around the same time as Joker arrives in Smash, anyway. Which is a fear, given that's scheduled for April, and the BB Tag update is sometime in spring. Though in that case, I may actually try to play both, something I've never tried before with fighting games.

Single-player I've been playing Total War: Shogun 2, but I've talked about that in the thread where I asked which Total War game to try. Also slowly going through my Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation run through, and I'm at about the halfway point. So far, it's fine - I am disappointed by the number of stages they're re-using from Birthright and Conquest, but in at least some cases they've changed up elements of them enough that I don't mind that much, and I have liked the stages that were new. And the story is back to being normal Fire Emblem rather than the frustrating stupidity of Conquest's, so that's nice. Currently pausing my plot progress to figure out who my romantic/breeding pairings will be and start recruiting children. Which is going to take a while since this path has so many characters.

[Forbiddenwar]

A new thread and a new (for me) game. Diablo 3. I hear that it changed a lot since it's release. I'm glad I'm playing it now. It's really addictive, though. I wonder how long it is. And if the necromancer is worth it.

[factotum]

Slowly trying to enjoy X4 and fighting with a slightly under RAM'd video card. Still fun even with the issues that induces.

I'm not even going to attempt that game until the PC upgrade I've got pegged for later this year happens--my PC hasn't been upgraded in four years, and it wasn't exactly top flight even after I did that!

[Zombimode]

I decided to pick up and push further into Jade Empire, and I'm glad I did. Once I pushed past the intro, it's becoming a lot of fun, and my choice to unreasonably favor Body over Mind and Spirit has worked well (to wit: I always put 1 point in Body. At each level, I put points in Mind and Spirit to make them as close to equal as possible). I'm mostly doing White Demon style, focusing on getting its speed and damage as high as possible... it's basic, but it works.

Notably, I was not expecting the flying machines.

Yes, Jade Empire is a really charming and fun game. A bit underappreciated.



On Topic: I've started another Warhammer 2 Total War campaing, this time as Louen Leoncour, Bretonnia.
Things are tense, but manageable. Carcassone is destroyed so I wont get the Fay Enchantress, but at least I confederated with Bordeleaux.

[Cozzer]

Hey, apparently Yakuza Kiwami is available on Steam! I think I know where all my (pretty scarce) gaming time is going for a while.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well thanks thread, you made me feel like playing Jade Empire again, to the point I've bought the Steam version despite having the Xbox version*!

So went with Monk Zheng as my Avatar, focusing more on Body and Mind over Spirit and with Legendary Strike as my style (and going Open Palm, although I really wish that Bioware hadn't messed up the morality system by turning Closed Fist into 'puppy kicking evil'). An hour in and wishing I'd gone with White Demon instead because it's just that little bit better, but LS's kicks get the job done once you've upped it's damage and speed a bit. The one thing I'm remembering is just how much you have to concentrate on one style at the beginning and how you'll find yourself boxed into a small number of styles due to the low number of upgrade points. I remember my first playthrough I began with Thousand Cuts but abandoned it for Legendary Strike, and boy did the points sunk into TC bring me down.

* To be honest, this is mainly because I bought the Xbox version preowned a few years ago and want modding capability.

[Iruka]

Well thanks thread, you made me feel like playing Jade Empire again, to the point I've bought the Steam version despite having the Xbox version*!


I gave it two tries and lost motivation because ... actually I do not really remember. I think some of the early fights was rather frustrating? I will give it another try, all you guys can't be wrong. :smallbiggrin:


got Prison Architect and Cities Skylines for cheap recently.

I'm conflicted about the first.

As much as I like developing my prison, it's difficult to grow it organically and I find that i will need to sell and rebuid a new prison to try for the bigger prisonners held numbers so i can prison better... but lumberjacking is much more profitable. about a third of my prison is legit just woods to chop down and regrow as another source of income.


The winning move is to shut down the prison (who likes prisons anyway?) and open up a much more profitable lumber company (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXRnsTbJ6js).

I got Nox too some time ago and my problem is that I keep forgetting to save on a frequent basis and then something one-shots me out of nowhere. Otherwise it can be quite fun, I will return when the frustration has subsided.

[GloatingSwine]

Hey, apparently Yakuza Kiwami is available on Steam! I think I know where all my (pretty scarce) gaming time is going for a while.

I've just picked up Kiwami 2 on PS4 to continue the adventures of the Very Earnest Punching Man. After playing 0 and Kiwami 1 Kamurocho is starting to feel comfortable now.

[LibraryOgre]

I gave it two tries and lost motivation because ... actually I do not really remember. I think some of the early fights was rather frustrating? I will give it another try, all you guys can't be wrong. :smallbiggrin:


The were. I'm playing a custom Wu the Lotus Blossom who I've respecced as Tiger Shen... she's all Body, with White Demon style, and renamed Wu the White Lotus. I don't touch my support style, and only just picked up the Spirit Thief style, which will no doubt help my endurance.

A big trick, that I wish I'd learned earlier, is to use focus mode carefully... dip in, throw the block-breaker, dip out. Dip in, kill a weak opponent, dip out.

[Anonymouswizard]

The were. I'm playing a custom Wu the Lotus Blossom who I've respecced as Tiger Shen... she's all Body, with White Demon style, and renamed Wu the White Lotus. I don't touch my support style, and only just picked up the Spirit Thief style, which will no doubt help my endurance.

A big trick, that I wish I'd learned earlier, is to use focus mode carefully... dip in, throw the block-breaker, dip out. Dip in, kill a weak opponent, dip out.

Storm Dragon is okay, but I remember better Support styles coming along later. I'm not that keen on Spirit Thief, it's great if you use a lot of Chi, but at the same time I'm not sure it's much better than having Dawn Star meditate. I've got to just before the bit where you pick up Spirit Thief, and man is levelling a Martial Style up first practical (although I think I might have recieved double points on my first level up*). I remember one Support Style that let you paralyse an enemy with it's strong attack, although that might have been one of the magic styles.

In all honesty, the main problem with the early fights is getting to grips with the system. I just breezed through Chapter 1, and had barely any trouble with the fights. Suffering from the One Trick Pony problem right now, anything immune to Martial styles requires me to fall back on an unlevelled Dire Flame or Golden Star, but I don't think any of them come up for another level or two.

Oh, and I'm fully convinced that you should just customise your characters instead of taking the prebuilds, especially if using one of the builds with Thousand Cuts (which is the fastest style of the four basic ones, but only if you never finish the combo).

* Which is in no way a bad thing, I remember style points being rare enough that I ended up only using two or three styles by the end game. Especially as I'm planning to use both Legendary Strike and, once I finally get it, Iron Palm.

[Zevox]

[Jade Empire] The one thing I'm remembering is just how much you have to concentrate on one style at the beginning and how you'll find yourself boxed into a small number of styles due to the low number of upgrade points. I remember my first playthrough I began with Thousand Cuts but abandoned it for Legendary Strike, and boy did the points sunk into TC bring me down.
Really? It's been a while since I played, but I recall having enough to go around. By the end of the game I was never using the starting style or weapon anymore - I usually switched to the Leaping Tiger as my martial style, the double axes as my weapon, and... *looks it up* Storm Dragon as my preferred support style, usually with the ice or earth magic thrown in every so often and some use of Spirit Thief when necessary.

[Rodin]

Shouldn’t rooster707 have had the honor of making the new thread, as he started the last one? Or is that not a thing?

Anyway...

Thoughts on the remake? Spoiler free, preferably. I grew up loving RE2, but felt the gameplay took a turn for the better in 4.



If you liked 4, you'll love the remake. This isn't some re-mastered edition where they try and pull you in with shiny graphics but the same dated gameplay - it is functionally an entirely new Resident Evil game that broadly follows the plot of Resident Evil 2. The mechanics are straight out of 4 with the over-the-shoulder gameplay and limited ability to move and shoot - it's all very familiar. The big difference is that ammo consumption is very much at the level of the early games, rather than 4 where you could comfortably kill everything with ammo to spare if you were a little bit careful. You have to decide which zombies are worth taking out, board up windows to stop additional guys from breaking in, and run past zombies that are not directly in your way.

As someone who loved RE4 to bits and thought every RE game since was trash (although I haven't played 7), I thought the RE2 remake was a terrific return to form.

-------

In terms of what I've been playing, I finally decided to give The Council a try. I was really enjoying it as a game that seems to actually have really distinctive paths and changes to conversations based on how you react, as opposed to the Telltale Games that try to hide how similar the routes are. However, I just got to the big plot twist which reveals that

Demons are real, you are one, and everybody is being mind controlled to some extent

And BOY did that ruin the game for me. I'm debating whether to continue through the final episode, but I'm so disappointed in that plot twist and the direction the story is going that I'm just not sure. It's a textbook lesson on how to ruin a perfectly good premise by going too far into the woods with your writing.

For more mindless fun, I finally decided to give Overload a try. And well..it's Descent. Not much more to say than that. It's a lot of fun for what it is, but I do kind of wish they had tried to innovate a bit more than they did. Definitely the best Descent clone I've played though.

[danzibr]

@Rodin: huh, not an identical story. Wonder if it changes the canon.

Also, on every game since being not so good, I actually liked 5. It had some really derpy moments (like punching a boulder), but I liked it. 6 was pretty awful. 7 I started, didn’t like what I saw, maybe it improves.

[rooster707]

Epic Games has gotten the ire of a lot of people due to their predatory practices. They've sniped several games off of Steam, including the new Metro and the new Division, demanding that those games not be released on Steam for a year. It's particularly aggravating with Metro because it had been available to pre-purchase on Steam and was one week from release. I don't know if they've been bribing game companies to do it, but it's somewhat shady.

I don't want to come across as defending Epic, or anything, but platform exclusives aren't really anything new. And while they're definitely annoying for us consumers, I wouldn't say they're "shady," and there's definitely no bribery involved. It's just business.

Anyway, back on topic: I finished Axiom Verge. I don't really have anything new to say about it, but it was good. Now I'm starting on Hollow Knight - usually I wouldn't play two games this similar back to back, but that giveaway threw off my lineup. While they're both Metroidvanias, Axiom Verge is extremely Metroid while Hollow Knight seems to take a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls. I haven't played enough to say much more yet, but the art is beautiful.

[DeadMech]

Jade Empire, that is a name I have not heard in a long time. I'm going to kindly ask that no one brings up exactly when Jade Empire came out, I suspect the revelation will only remind me about the unyielding passage of time and that I am in fact old.

I remember liking it, I got a copy for the xbox sitting on my shelf. But don't ask me for tips and tricks or quiz me on the plot. I will concur with the morality system being a flub. KotOR with it's lightside/darkside thing you didn't expect much out of the morality system and it was still bad. Jade Empire's open palm/closed fist though was described in a way that set up expectations that the game basically never attempted to live up to.

Myself I'm playing skyrim...again. Maybe someday before I die I will actually do everything in a TES game. Maybe at least complete the mainquest. No... I don't believe myself either. Currently running around Solstheim doing some random quests while I level up some tertiary skills for perks in between sessions of brewing enchanting potions so I can make enchanting alchemy gear so I can make enchanting potions. You know... so I can enchant smithing gear... so I can smith things to be every more legendary. Nevermind that the armor I'm already wearing breaks the armor cap... Listen I know this kind of thing is the reason I'm never going to beat the game.

[Anonymouswizard]

Really? It's been a while since I played, but I recall having enough to go around. By the end of the game I was never using the starting style or weapon anymore - I usually switched to the Leaping Tiger as my martial style, the double axes as my weapon, and... *looks it up* Storm Dragon as my preferred support style, usually with the ice or earth magic thrown in every so often and some use of Spirit Thief when necessary.

I might be misremembering, I remember switching my primary style being painful for about three levels but that might have been because I didn't sidequest as much as I should have. Looking it up I'd forgotten that you the points you get per level grows pretty quickly, which does ring a bell as I remember switching my main magic style being less painful. I think my final set for my first runthrough was:
-Legendary Strike
-Stone Immortal
-Paralysing Palm
-Spirit Thief


One of the most annoying things that replaying it has reminded me off is that it gives you the choice of being a nice follower of the Open Palm philosphy or a puppy kicking evil person. The game really seems to think Closed Fist is akin to evil, instead of the more 'social dawarnist/tough love' version it's explained as. I mean, why is a very legitimate Closed Fist choice giving you less Closed Fist points than just murdering somebody?

For those who have played the story, you know the choice I mean. Pirate hideout, knife, standing up for oneself.

Although I'm also annoyed at how the endings are treated as Open Palm and Closed Fist despite there being legitimate reasons for a follower of either philosphy to pick either choice.

I mean, I'm sure a Closed Fist follower might want to only rely on their own power, and kill the Water Dragon's body instead of stealing her power.

[Zevox]

One of the most annoying things that replaying it has reminded me off is that it gives you the choice of being a nice follower of the Open Palm philosphy or a puppy kicking evil person. The game really seems to think Closed Fist is akin to evil, instead of the more 'social dawarnist/tough love' version it's explained as. I mean, why is a very legitimate Closed Fist choice giving you less Closed Fist points than just murdering somebody?

For those who have played the story, you know the choice I mean. Pirate hideout, knife, standing up for oneself.

Although I'm also annoyed at how the endings are treated as Open Palm and Closed Fist despite there being legitimate reasons for a follower of either philosphy to pick either choice.

I mean, I'm sure a Closed Fist follower might want to only rely on their own power, and kill the Water Dragon's body instead of stealing her power.
Oh yeah, Jade Empire's morality system is a bit of a mess that way, for sure. I'm not sure if they were going for a more order vs chaos type of system (the way the game's explanations of it would imply) and just somehow wound up treating it like straight good vs evil, or if they always intended to do it as good vs evil and just thought that trying to frame it differently was appropriate to the setting, in the process creating expectations that it really doesn't meet at all. Either way though, the end result is kind of disappointing.

[Resileaf]

I don't want to come across as defending Epic, or anything, but platform exclusives aren't really anything new. And while they're definitely annoying for us consumers, I wouldn't say they're "shady," and there's definitely no bribery involved. It's just business.


Oh, yes, obviously it's business and everything.
But it's the part where Metro is pulled off of Steam one week before release that is just a little off. As far as business decisions go, I wonder what kind of advantage the Metro publishers have to move to a completely new platform out of nowhere after pre-purchases on Steam had been out for a while.

[danzibr]

I don't want to come across as defending Epic, or anything, but platform exclusives aren't really anything new. And while they're definitely annoying for us consumers, I wouldn't say they're "shady," and there's definitely no bribery involved. It's just business.

Anyway, back on topic: I finished Axiom Verge. I don't really have anything new to say about it, but it was good. Now I'm starting on Hollow Knight - usually I wouldn't play two games this similar back to back, but that giveaway threw off my lineup. While they're both Metroidvanias, Axiom Verge is extremely Metroid while Hollow Knight seems to take a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls. I haven't played enough to say much more yet, but the art is beautiful.
I got a decent ways into Hollow Knight. Was really liking it. Problem is I prefer to play on a console and own it on Steam. I’ll come back to it at some point.

[tyckspoon]

I got a decent ways into Hollow Knight. Was really liking it. Problem is I prefer to play on a console and own it on Steam. I’ll come back to it at some point.

I own a cheap Dualshock-knockoff design USB controller for pretty much this reason - makes platformer, action, and retro-console type games a lot more tolerable to play on PC. Strongly recommend. I want to say the modern generation Xbox and Playstation controllers are also pretty easy to hook up to Windows, although it might take a little fussing with settings or adding a Bluetooth dongle or something for the wireless ones.

[DigoDragon]

I'm still playing Smash Ultimate daily online. Game's just that much fun.

Recently been playing this with my daughter. Finally unlocked Bowser and using him as my main. My daughter is kicking butt with the Mii Swordfighter. Together we fight crime.

[danzibr]

I own a cheap Dualshock-knockoff design USB controller for pretty much this reason - makes platformer, action, and retro-console type games a lot more tolerable to play on PC. Strongly recommend. I want to say the modern generation Xbox and Playstation controllers are also pretty easy to hook up to Windows, although it might take a little fussing with settings or adding a Bluetooth dongle or something for the wireless ones.
Ahh it’s not a controller issue. I use a PS4 controller with my laptop. It’s the small, close screen that bothers me.

[Triaxx]

Depending on the age of the Laptop, you might have an HDMI out you can use to put it up on a TV.

[factotum]

Oh, yes, obviously it's business and everything.
But it's the part where Metro is pulled off of Steam one week before release that is just a little off. As far as business decisions go, I wonder what kind of advantage the Metro publishers have to move to a completely new platform out of nowhere after pre-purchases on Steam had been out for a while.

Yeah, if this had been announced six months ago I don't think there would have been so much of a fuss about it--it was the stupidly short notice that really got everyone's back up. Well, that and the Epic store being hot garbage that no-one would use if they didn't have to!

Re: the morality system in Jade Empire: I think it's interesting because it's quite clearly where the Paragon/Renegade system from Mass Effect came from. As a first attempt to get away from good and evil morality systems I think it's surprisingly good, considering you never expect the first time doing anything to work properly.

[Anonymouswizard]

Re: the morality system in Jade Empire: I think it's interesting because it's quite clearly where the Paragon/Renegade system from Mass Effect came from. As a first attempt to get away from good and evil morality systems I think it's surprisingly good, considering you never expect the first time doing anything to work properly.

I'm starting to be convinced that they began with a 'light and dark' system, decided it wouldn't work for a Wuxia game, and then created the Open Palm/Closed Fist duality and decided to make all the 'nice' decisions OP and the 'nasty' ones CF, only adding in a handful of new options and mostly in the early game (because the Closed Fist path does have a few very well written Closed Fist actions, but if given the choice between a philosphical Closed Fist action and an utter jerk Closed Fist action the latter will always give more points). One of the things I want to try to do at some point is to rewrite the entire game so that the PC has the option of going 'good' Open Palm or 'good' Closed Fist so that whichever way they go they mirror one of the main villains in the game, but that would be a massive undertaking.

I mean, the morality system is all good in theory, it's just that in practice it doesn't work out. Why is teaching somebody to fight for themselves less of a Closed Fist action than just murdering them? It's notable that this only really applies to Closed Fist runs, so I suspect that the developers expected most players to go Open Palm and spent most of their time there. The Open Palm run is just so much better written, the game is heavily biased towards the Open Palm philosophy (there's not a single major character who truly represents the good side of Closed Fist), and the endings are split between the philosophies in a way that is a bit contrived (assuming Open Palm means Harmony is fine, that's fairly true, but why does Closed Fist have to mean power?).

[Eldan]

I own a cheap Dualshock-knockoff design USB controller for pretty much this reason - makes platformer, action, and retro-console type games a lot more tolerable to play on PC. Strongly recommend. I want to say the modern generation Xbox and Playstation controllers are also pretty easy to hook up to Windows, although it might take a little fussing with settings or adding a Bluetooth dongle or something for the wireless ones.

My brother hooked up one of the Wii classic gamepads to my computer, and I just use that. Worked marvelously for Hollow Knight and similar games, but needed a cheap bluetooth dongle off the net, yeah.

Don't try playing Hollow Knight with a keyboard. It's miserable.

[factotum]

It's notable that this only really applies to Closed Fist runs, so I suspect that the developers expected most players to go Open Palm and spent most of their time there.

I think the same applies to some extent to the Renegade option in the Mass Effect games. The most stupid example of that is one I've mentioned before, where somehow taking the insane Asari who kills people by sexing them to death onto your crew is a Renegade choice, while helping her mother is the Paragon one. Unless Renegade has been redefined to mean "certifiable" that choice makes absolutely no sense--there is no good reason for Shepard to take Morinth along, since he has no way of knowing if her insanity will endanger his mission. He doesn't even have the excuse of her being more powerful than her mother, because the two of them are locked in a perfectly even duel and that's the only reason he gets to make the choice in the first place!

[Anonymouswizard]

I think the same applies to some extent to the Renegade option in the Mass Effect games. The most stupid example of that is one I've mentioned before, where somehow taking the insane Asari who kills people by sexing them to death onto your crew is a Renegade choice, while helping her mother is the Paragon one. Unless Renegade has been redefined to mean "certifiable" that choice makes absolutely no sense--there is no good reason for Shepard to take Morinth along, since he has no way of knowing if her insanity will endanger his mission. He doesn't even have the excuse of her being more powerful than her mother, because the two of them are locked in a perfectly even duel and that's the only reason he gets to make the choice in the first place!

Most Paragon/Renegade decisions make sense from a 'idealistic/pragmatic' approach but yeah that one is stupid. From the evidence we're given Samara and Morinth are just as strong, Morinth is significantly more dangerous (if I'm remembering correctly I believe she has a compulsion to perform murdersex), and we have no certainty that Morinth is going to become stronger faster than Samara.

Mass Effect was generally a lot better, because when it comes down to it Paragon/Renegade boils down to 'act like a jerk to make things easier now, or be nice in the hopes that it pays off later', but it still had it's own shortcomings. I think Dragon Age really cracked how morality meters should work in Bioware games: they shouldn't really be there. I can roughly work out what sort of decisions you made based on which characters like you (Alistair and Liliana like idealistic decisions, Sten prefers pragmatism, etc.) but the game doesn't keep track.

Of course, Bioware games all tend to have the 'evil' choice give a short term reward, but have making consistently 'good' choices give you something better in the long run. It's just that at least in Mass Effect there was obviously effort to have the Renegade choices not be stupid evil.

And I just encountered a bug which stopped me from progressing past one of the encounters in the pirate hideout (two enemies didn't enter the area and stood blocking the door, so that when the combat finished I couldn't progress). I'll come back to the game tomorrow, see if it happens again.

[Cespenar]

Don't try playing Hollow Knight with a keyboard. It's miserable.

It's not that bad, I think. It's certainly better for someone who is used to keyboard but totally isn't to a gamepad.



Mass Effect was generally a lot better, because when it comes down to it Paragon/Renegade boils down to 'act like a jerk to make things easier now, or be nice in the hopes that it pays off later', but it still had it's own shortcomings. I think Dragon Age really cracked how morality meters should work in Bioware games: they shouldn't really be there. I can roughly work out what sort of decisions you made based on which characters like you (Alistair and Liliana like idealistic decisions, Sten prefers pragmatism, etc.) but the game doesn't keep track.

Of course, Bioware games all tend to have the 'evil' choice give a short term reward, but have making consistently 'good' choices give you something better in the long run. It's just that at least in Mass Effect there was obviously effort to have the Renegade choices not be stupid evil.

I think the strongpoint of the Renegade side was the badassitude factor. No other game had such action movie moments tacked on to their "evil" alignment choices like Mass Effect, I think.

[Buji]

Playing different things on different consoles.
On PC, currently playing Warframe while I wait for the next Path of Exile update to launch.
I played Warframe like, over 5 years ago, though it seems my account was banned (got hacked and there was "illegal trading of goods and services" or something like that), so I started up again, and there is a lot of new stuff from before.

If I'm not playing computer games, I play Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links on my cell, since my friend got me hooked on it.

If not those, I'll probably play Monster Hunter World on the PS4, though I really need to finish The Witch and the Hundred 2.

If I'm not playing PC, phone, or PS4, I'm playing Super Smash Bros or whatever my fiancée wants to play together on the Switch.

If none of those, I go to the arcade and play In The Groove (prefer it over DDR) or Pump It Up

But sticking more to the title of the thread, I'm currently playing Warframe and Duel Links.

[DeadMech]

Still picking away at Skyrim today. Turned it on and I came to realize something. My homestead at Windstad Manor doesn't have it's wings yet. Once I realized this I immediately though, yes this will be the rabbit hole that I get lost in today. So I'm trying to figure out which three wings I want to build on this place. I'm leaning towards putting the three tower wings on this one. The alchemy laboratory, the enchanters tower, and the Library. They seem like nice themed rooms for storing allot of the junk I'm currently using the place as a hoarders nest.

Ultimately these choices aren't that important and all my dithering on this is just another example of why I will never beat a TES game.

[DigoDragon]

Spent time over the weekend playing Smash Bros Ultimate And Mario Kart 8 with my daughter. There needs to be a warning label on how cute Isabelle is riding a vespa in a race. ^^;

Rather proud that my daughter can finally beat me in Smash. She mains Lucario really well!

[Kaptin Keen]

It's not that bad, I think. It's certainly better for someone who is used to keyboard but totally isn't to a gamepad.

It's actually rather terrible. I'm a keyboard+mouse-kinda-guy, and I picked up a gamepad for Hollow Knight ... having never owned one before. And it was a near-instant improvement. And I'm 48, my days of picking things up quickly are behind me.

[Resileaf]

Spent time over the weekend playing Smash Bros Ultimate And Mario Kart 8 with my daughter. There needs to be a warning label on how cute Isabelle is riding a vespa in a race. ^^;

Rather proud that my daughter can finally beat me in Smash. She mains Lucario really well!

Ah, they grow up so fast. Soon you're going to be the out of touch parent who is terrible at videogames and your children are embarassed to play with you.

[LibraryOgre]

Beat Borderlands as Lillith, went on to play as Brick for a bit. If I finish with Brick, it will only leave the hunter unfinished.

[factotum]

It's actually rather terrible. I'm a keyboard+mouse-kinda-guy, and I picked up a gamepad for Hollow Knight ... having never owned one before. And it was a near-instant improvement.

It used to be the case that the big advantage of owning a PC was that you could use the right controller for the job. Flight sim? Joystick. Driving game? Steering wheel and pedals. I'm really not sure where the idea that "proper" gamers use mouse and keyboard, unlike those console peasants, came from. (Not suggesting you were saying that, mind, it just came to me while I read your comment).

[Resileaf]

It used to be the case that the big advantage of owning a PC was that you could use the right controller for the job. Flight sim? Joystick. Driving game? Steering wheel and pedals. I'm really not sure where the idea that "proper" gamers use mouse and keyboard, unlike those console peasants, came from. (Not suggesting you were saying that, mind, it just came to me while I read your comment).

I think the idea is that mouse movement is very much more precise than most other kind of controllers so it can be used for almost literally any kind of game.
It's very versatile, it's true, but I prefer controlers for platforming and racing games.

[GloatingSwine]

I think the idea is that mouse movement is very much more precise than most other kind of controllers so it can be used for almost literally any kind of game.

The extra precision of a mouse actually only really shows benefit in shooters. (And RTS games, but trying to play them with anything else is just silly).

Mouse + Keyboard is an interface which does a few things very well.

Some people have confused that with it being the best at everything. There are many more types of games that mouse + keyboard is really bad for and barely existed on PC until people started regularly plugging gamepads in (Gamepads are a control system which does almost everything at least competently but few things exceptionally well).

[Cespenar]

It's actually rather terrible. I'm a keyboard+mouse-kinda-guy, and I picked up a gamepad for Hollow Knight ... having never owned one before. And it was a near-instant improvement. And I'm 48, my days of picking things up quickly are behind me.

It could be that the controller's stick (or whatever its name is) may have a small advantage in a blank-slate case, but as someone who constantly plays platformers with a keyboard, I had no issue with it. In fact, if you gave me a controller, I probably couldn't have finished the game.

I think the keyboard's shortcoming makes itself more visible in racing games rather than platformers. In all platformers that I recall of, your softest key press will end up making the smallest possible move in the game, which means no disadvantages. While in most racing games, even your softest key press will make a rotation that's sometimes simply too big in high speeds.

[DigoDragon]

Ah, they grow up so fast. Soon you're going to be the out of touch parent who is terrible at videogames and your children are embarassed to play with you.

I'm sorta that way with Pokemon since I've never played any entry in the series. She has been pushing me to at least try her Let's Go Evee game in an attempt to correct that.

[Triaxx]

Not to mention Analog input from a stick means more granular control than walk full speed/run full speed.

[LibraryOgre]

On controllers:

Many years ago (say, late 90s), I had a number of good space combat sims... Wing Commander, XWing, and TIE fighter, plus WC: Privateer. At first, I was all jazzed to play with a joystick, but the consensus from everyone was that mouse was better... and it was. Every time. The control was more precise, less likely to slew too far. Switching to mouse made a lot of difference.

[halfeye]

On controllers:

Many years ago (say, late 90s), I had a number of good space combat sims... Wing Commander, XWing, and TIE fighter, plus WC: Privateer. At first, I was all jazzed to play with a joystick, but the consensus from everyone was that mouse was better... and it was. Every time. The control was more precise, less likely to slew too far. Switching to mouse made a lot of difference.

I remember playing flight sims with sticks and mice, on the Atari ST. It was possible, but the sticks were not very good in those days. The sticks basically had switches in them that were either open or closed. Then I came across something british made called a mouse stick, which used potentiometers, and that was better, though the design was a bit odd (the actual stick was about 1.5 inches tall, and there were lots of buttons), and they wanted you to use it instead of a mouse when you weren't playing flight sims.

All IBM compatible PC compatible flight sticks that I've seen have been potentiometer ones, or hall effect which is similar, I think they mostly were back in the day too, those just weren't available on the Atari ST joystick or mouse interfaces.

[Zevox]

On controllers:

Many years ago (say, late 90s), I had a number of good space combat sims... Wing Commander, XWing, and TIE fighter, plus WC: Privateer. At first, I was all jazzed to play with a joystick, but the consensus from everyone was that mouse was better... and it was. Every time. The control was more precise, less likely to slew too far. Switching to mouse made a lot of difference.
Huh, I had much the opposite experience. Way back when I was a kid playing TIE Fighter, I recall initially finding it unplayable trying to do so with a mouse - I couldn't even pass the training stage because I would crash into absolutely everything. It was only after my dad showed me that we had a joystick I could use instead that I started to feel like I could actually control and enjoy the game. I never even tried using the mouse again for the couple of other such games I played afterward.

[Bastian Weaver]

I actually am playing Daggerfall.

[Kaptin Keen]

(Not suggesting you were saying that, mind, it just came to me while I read your comment)

And you're perfectly on point. I sneer and wrinkle my nose at those heathen cave dwellers who toil with their sad plastic gimmicks like pigs in filth while we enlightened, high-brow intellectuals tap gently our keyboards, elevated, pristine and noble, dappled by the golden light of the sun.

Then I tried Shank, and Hollow Knight - with a keyboard and mouse - and eventually simply had to accept that for certain jobs, a game pad is the proper tool.

I still reserve the right to look down on consoles, though :p

Bloody heathens! =)

[DeadMech]

Skyrim - Welp aside from a tragic shortage of goat horns my house expansion is complete. The three towers are kinda short on floor space but do seem to have adequate storage spaces. Perhaps soonish I'll rearrange my house to move my stuff. Today I'm tackling moving my book collection.

It's a task. I downloaded the "unlimited bookshelves" mod off the steam workshop. Which is supposed to allow you to fill shelves by item width. Initially it didn't seem to work so I closed the program and restarted it to double check my mod loading order. Changing nothing I launched again and it seemed to work this time. I began placing one copy of every note and book I owned onto the shelves build in my library. I quickly had reservations that I would have enough room for this but it turns out everything fit filling the upstairs shelves and two of the mainfloor bookshelves. The mod seems to work well aside from a few books clipping through each other. Likely a number of them have width values that are set slightly too low. Kind of makes me nervous that I'll come back to the house and find out a bunch of books get deleted if they were to fall out of the shelf. Mods...

Also it turns out I'm missing quite a significant number of books across skyrim. At least 140 out of the 470 according to a list I pulled off a wiki. Let alone notes. Apparently the list I'm looking at while including books included in Dawnguard and Hearthfire does not include books added by the Dragonborn DLC. So I have more checking to do still. Definitely going to run out of shelf space in the library at some point. Maybe in the future I'll separate out the notes and letters and put them elsewhere. At least now I have a list I can reference when I visit merchants so I can keep an eye out for the stuff I'm missing.

This all just reminds me of what I've always wanted for Skyrim or TES games in general. A chest that automatically populates the area it's in with the items you put in it. Anyway all this burying myself in books is just another reason I will never finish a TES game.

[Resileaf]

After 100%ing Rogue Squadron, I'm on to 100%ing GTA3.
Cranks up the radio and plays 'Push it to the limit' all day long

[Eldan]

Occupy White Walls. It's a free sort-of MMO in beta. You build an art gallery and hang art in it, then go look at other players art galleries. I find it VERY relaxing.

[Zevox]

Still on Smash Ultimate as my multiplayer game of choice. I'm up to thirteen characters in Elite Smash now - including five of the seven Fire Emblem characters, so I'm tempted to try and get the remaining two (Marth and Roy, ironically) up there as well.
Edit: Make that fourteen - just got my Falco to elite at last. :)

On the single-player side with Devil May Cry 5 about to come up I decided to play a little bit of DMC4 Special Edition to get back into that. Playing as Trish in that game is so much fun - though it really makes me wish that she was going to be playable in 5, but alas, that's not to be from what I understand. Oh well, it'll still be great to finally have a true new Devil May Cry after so long - and maybe if the rumors that a Marvel vs Capcom 4 is on the horizon are true I might be able to hope that Trish returns in that.

[Lord Raziere]

I have played Wandersong up to.....Chapter Five I believe. real nice. a nice silly story that has surprising amount of serious and sad moments and chapter 4 in particular was a big mood shift.

I've started playing Dark Souls 1. Got through the undead asylum on Deprived. The boss while taking me down to a sliver of health never actually killed me and I got through on my first try. demon, I've beaten Iudex Gundyr with a deprived long before I faced you, and he was FAR harder and faster. gonna take more than that to kill Ol' Raziere, the fast skeleton shield guy outside was more of a problem cause he actually killed me a couple times, and only because I kept trying to parry rather than do the simple solutions.

[unseenmage]

Found the Witcher III, Skyrim for PS4, Far Cry Primal, and FF Dissidia all for cheap.

Planning to get Stellaris as soon as we order an external hard drive. Fallout. Skyrim, and Ark just eat too much data.

Started with Witcher. Is neat as I havnt played any of the others.
Dude drives like a boat sometimes.

[danzibr]

I have played Wandersong up to.....Chapter Five I believe. real nice. a nice silly story that has surprising amount of serious and sad moments and chapter 4 in particular was a big mood shift.

I've started playing Dark Souls 1. Got through the undead asylum on Deprived. The boss while taking me down to a sliver of health never actually killed me and I got through on my first try. demon, I've beaten Iudex Gundyr with a deprived long before I faced you, and he was FAR harder and faster. gonna take more than that to kill Ol' Raziere, the fast skeleton shield guy outside was more of a problem cause he actually killed me a couple times, and only because I kept trying to parry rather than do the simple solutions.
Makes me more tempted to get Wandersong. Nice.

Found the Witcher III, Skyrim for PS4, Far Cry Primal, and FF Dissidia all for cheap.

Planning to get Stellaris as soon as we order an external hard drive. Fallout. Skyrim, and Ark just eat too much data.

Started with Witcher. Is neat as I havnt played any of the others.
Dude drives like a boat sometimes.
Hmm, I was complaining about Geralt’s handling just a bit ago. Just wait until you drive a boat :P

[Anonymouswizard]

Speaking of The Witcher, because my short amount of time with The Witcher 2 impressed me, but I want to know the whole story (and don't have anything that'll run the one people recommend) I picked up The Witcher (1) at the weekend.

I can see that the control scheme for over the shoulder needs some tightening up, being able to attack without clicking on an enemy would be nice, but I find the three styles thing interesting enough to wish they'd expanded on it more in the following games. I can definitely see why people say it's the weakest of the series, but I'm still finding it fun.

[unseenmage]

...

Hmm, I was complaining about Geralt’s handling just a bit ago. Just wait until you drive a boat :P
Just sputtered about in a boat today actually.

It's not nearly as bad as the death sentence that is riding a horse into combat.
Seriously, bandits on horseback are so easy to unhorse then coup de grace.

[Lord Raziere]

I have finished:

and with that the wandersong bard just catapulted his way into a hero equal to people like, Steven Universe, Pacifist Frisk and Simon from TTGL by healing the entire world with his rainbow song to save it from destruction- and not even having the full Earthsong! he did so by bringing the world into harmony by caring for every single life on in the world- including even the insects he refuses to step on. thats enlightened monk levels of compassion there.

while the "hero" was only out for her own glory all along and didn't really care for anyone else. she selfishly pursued her own glory and image over saving everyone's lives because she couldn't let go of being the chosen one. and in the end after world is restored....she seems nowhere to be found. implying that she died as a result of her selfishness,the only thing left intact being her reputation which was what she wanted. yet the bard doesn't care- he didn't do this for glory.

I also liked Miriam. she was a good counterbalance to the bard's silly cheeriness. the entire game was pretty well balanced in how it mixed and light and dark to keep the game cheery but with a bite and actual emotion to it, there were definitely parts where things just went creepy, depressing or terrifying, between the sun palace, the clock town, the part where the world was actually ending they were just silent silhouettes in a white sky. as well as how it built and develop characters despite how short it was, Miriam having her own journey through the world as you go along, dealing with the fact that she feels like an outcast between her magic powers, introversion, and personality while being outshined by a silly bard. she helped make a lot of this feel more real and better developed because of her contrast.

and the weirder thing is? from a certain perspective, the entire game is almost a very cheery parallel universe to dark souls: a hero is chosen to kill various things so as to end the current cycle of the world and start a new one as the universe ends and dark beings begin to fester, but here that hero is the villain. instead some silly bard screws destiny and keeps the current world going, renewing it without killing the people within. and in the end, the world is saved by everyone, not just one person seeking glory.

[Rodin]

Just discovered Mutant Year Zero, a game which somehow passed me by entirely despite checking all of my boxes. It's XCOM meets Wasteland with a greater emphasis on stealth, with a Fallout sense of humor. I've been really enjoying what I've seen so far. The one disappointment thus far is the low party size of 3, which makes me wonder why there's an Ironman option since losing a single character is pretty much a death sentence. I'm hoping that I'll get at least one more person into the party later to make the fights more complex.

[danzibr]

Just sputtered about in a boat today actually.

It's not nearly as bad as the death sentence that is riding a horse into combat.
Seriously, bandits on horseback are so easy to unhorse then coup de grace.
Oooohhhh yeah I hate the Roach controls. No finesse. The races in particular, it's just try to block the other dude.

[NRSASD]

Playing Dawn of Man! I realize it almost plays itself, but it's a really nice, low pressure city builder. Though you can die if you do something stupid, like relocate your entire city across the map in the middle of winter.

[LibraryOgre]

Well, Steam has Fallout 4 for 50% off until next week, so I know what I'm doing.

[Anonymouswizard]

On a whim decided to buy and try Vergil's Downfall for DmC Devil May Cry last night (due to not having anything that'll run DMC5) shut beating the main game. Only got through the first mission, but it already feels more like Devil May Cry than the base game did, mainly due to Vergil's tighter control, the use of a single larger jump instead of a double jump, and the weirder demonic environments. The use of the summoned swords in order to teleport is also quite fun, it feels faster than Dante's chains and I haven't encountered an arena larger than it's maximum range yet. In fact, Vergil feels just that little bit faster than Dante in general.

[LibraryOgre]

Or, I won't be playing Fallout 4, because my computer can't swing it.

[Lord Raziere]

Or, I won't be playing Fallout 4, because my computer can't swing it.

I once played Fallout 4. wasn't as good as New Vegas, and I tried F4 first. F4 just made me feel empty for some reason even when I modded it to try and make it more fun. I doubt your missing much. the most fun I ever had with Fallout 4 was watching TFS's playthrough of it, because they can make anything funny

what I'm playing now is Dark Souls Remastered. Deprived class. with my experience playing DS3, I'm going for using a rapier and shield while keeping my equip load light so I can dodge roll fast for right now. also to parry more often just because I can. also focusing on leveling up my stamina firstly to keep myself able to keep moving.

[Anonymouswizard]

I once played Fallout 4. wasn't as good as New Vegas, and I tried F4 first. F4 just made me feel empty for some reason even when I modded it to try and make it more fun. I doubt your missing much. the most fun I ever had with Fallout 4 was watching TFS's playthrough of it, because they can make anything funny

To be fair, New Vegas is the best Fallout game. I've not played FO4, but from what I've heard it suggests from the FO3 problem of there being not enough rebuilding going on outside of a few settlements (I mean, in NV both the NCR and Legion are actively trying to expand, even if New Vegas itself seems more concerned with just remaining at the level it is).


I picked up Pillars of Eternity last night as it was 40% off, and I've got it all installed and ready to go when I get home. I'm considering going for a Wizard, Chanter, or Ranger as my PC, not sold on exactly which of the three though.

[halfeye]

Or, I won't be playing Fallout 4, because my computer can't swing it.

You need a pretty hefty graphics card (gtx 980 or better to play at 1080p with graphics maxed). That's about all that needs to be special I think.

If your graphics card is good, then it's very pretty, but I don't think it's a great game, there are some good fights in it, but there is a lot of story that isn't that great in my view.

[Lord Raziere]

To be fair, New Vegas is the best Fallout game. I've not played FO4, but from what I've heard it suggests from the FO3 problem of there being not enough rebuilding going on outside of a few settlements (I mean, in NV both the NCR and Legion are actively trying to expand, even if New Vegas itself seems more concerned with just remaining at the level it is).


yeah? the FO4 factions had minutemen who act like rebuilding and protecting each other is a revolutionary idea they're spreading, the while the BoS and the Railroad are more focused on whether robots should have civil rights or not in the bombed remnants of the previous age full of raiders and mutated super-beasts, while the Institute....I forget, what was their motivation/goal again? but yeah, I think there are more important things in the Fallout universe to be concerned about, the whole synth thing feels like it belongs in a cyberpunk plot not a fallout game. mostly because the synths look too much like those clean cyberpunk I,robot movie type of robots and thus look too out of place in Fallout, especially after seeing NV's robots, E-DE and the Think Tank.

Fallout just isn't the place for the Institutes kind of aesthetic and theme. like you can have shiny futuristic aesthetic here and there but it has be 50's about it with rayguns and silliness you don't get from modern visions of the future. and people can treat it seriously, but the robots themselves have to be silly. like imagine if you replaced all the synths with securitrons, then you have a Fallout plot, because then it makes the factions completely freaking insane as they should be, because thats apart of Fallout's absurd humor.

[Anonymouswizard]

yeah? the FO4 factions had minutemen who act like rebuilding and protecting each other is a revolutionary idea they're spreading, the while the BoS and the Railroad are more focused on whether robots should have civil rights or not in the bombed remnants of the previous age full of raiders and mutated super-beasts, while the Institute....I forget, what was their motivation/goal again? but yeah, I think there are more important things in the Fallout universe to be concerned about, the whole synth thing feels like it belongs in a cyberpunk plot not a fallout game. mostly because the synths look too much like those clean cyberpunk I,robot movie type of robots and thus look too out of place in Fallout, especially after seeing NV's robots, E-DE and the Think Tank.

I remember one of the writers of New Vegas claiming that if they do a Fallout story again they're going to destroy the NCR as it 'ruins the feel'. The thing is, the idea of rebuilding and establishing civilisation all over again has been there since FO1, the NCR is a direct descendant of one of the settlements in the game and the three 'West Coast' games seem to have an ongoing theme that those trying to adapt and rebuild the world are moving forward, while those trying to maintain a status quo are failing. In fact, when I played Fallout 3 it felt like there was less of an attempt to rebuild than in Fallout 1, despite it being over a hundred years later (nevermind that they changed the GECK from a bunch of seeds, chemicals, and instructions to a magical terraforming device).


Fallout just isn't the place for the Institutes kind of aesthetic and theme. like you can have shiny futuristic aesthetic here and there but it has be 50's about it with rayguns and silliness you don't get from modern visions of the future. and people can treat it seriously, but the robots themselves have to be silly. like imagine if you replaced all the synths with securitrons, then you have a Fallout plot, because then it makes the factions completely freaking insane as they should be, because thats apart of Fallout's absurd humor.

Oh, totally. Wasn't the idea of Fallout that the world of the 50s/60s extended for another century and a bit before the world destroyed itself with nuclear fire? I'd allow the really advanced stuff to maybe have an 80s aesthetic, but one of the things that gives Fallout it's style is the retro look.

Like, if Fallout introduce new robots that looked like Robbie the Robot and were sentient I'd probably roll with it, that's Fallout enough. Fallout when done right dances right on the line of serious and absurd without quite falling into either.


Started Pillars of Eternity just now, I really do miss isometric RPGs, so this is feeling great from the start just by the way it plays, and the writing is great too.

[Lord Raziere]

I remember one of the writers of New Vegas claiming that if they do a Fallout story again they're going to destroy the NCR as it 'ruins the feel'. The thing is, the idea of rebuilding and establishing civilisation all over again has been there since FO1, the NCR is a direct descendant of one of the settlements in the game and the three 'West Coast' games seem to have an ongoing theme that those trying to adapt and rebuild the world are moving forward, while those trying to maintain a status quo are failing. In fact, when I played Fallout 3 it felt like there was less of an attempt to rebuild than in Fallout 1, despite it being over a hundred years later (nevermind that they changed the GECK from a bunch of seeds, chemicals, and instructions to a magical terraforming device).


.....I dunno, destroying the NCR seems like absurd comic book style status-quo reset bull to me. like yes, it got to the point where it was an actual successful nation and whatnot, but isn't that the POINT of rebuilding? if you go into an eternal cycle of rebuilding and resetting destruction, its not really much of a progression and the Fallout universe becomes a grimdark world where every time someone gets somewhere a nuke magically appears to keep them in the Rad Ages.

[unseenmage]

.....I dunno, destroying the NCR seems like absurd comic book style status-quo reset bull to me. like yes, it got to the point where it was an actual successful nation and whatnot, but isn't that the POINT of rebuilding? if you go into an eternal cycle of rebuilding and resetting destruction, its not really much of a progression and the Fallout universe becomes a grimdark world where every time someone gets somewhere a nuke magically appears to keep them in the Rad Ages.

So... 76?

More seriously, am pretty sure that's exactly what the Fallout world is.

[Triaxx]

Actually you could destroy the NCR without ruining the feel. Have it be a civil war, where they're split into the Resurrectionists, and the Reconstructionists. The former want to bring back the vaults, and take people I to them to let the world recover. Resurrecting Vault-Tec in essence.

While the latter, is all about reconstructing their own idealized version of history where there are only those who conform and everyone suspects everyone else of not being true to the cause.

Of course then you set them up to have to travel through long tunnels to reach their leaders secret bunker to meet him. And on the opposite side is a door she mentions as being a secret escape route.

Of course at the end you head down to take the root of the evil opposition... And find that it's been the same person all along and that the two people are just holograms over the same Assaultron and the entire thing was a Vault-Tec experiment, ala Vault 19.

[Wookieetank]

Finished playing through Kingdom Hearts 2 over the weekend with the family. That was one absurdly long set of final boss fights. Thankfully it was a lot of fun, and ridiculously over the top, but sheesh that took forever to finally finish. I want to properly earn the secret ending, but I dunno if I want to bother with fighting the final boss again, hrm.

Now we're on to Birth By Sleep. My 5y/o daughter has been steadily playing the games more as we go along, and she's now beat her first KH boss all on her own. Gamer Dad is proud :smallbiggrin:

[Anonymouswizard]

Actually you could destroy the NCR without ruining the feel. Have it be a civil war, where they're split into the Resurrectionists, and the Reconstructionists. The former want to bring back the vaults, and take people I to them to let the world recover. Resurrecting Vault-Tec in essence.

While the latter, is all about reconstructing their own idealized version of history where there are only those who conform and everyone suspects everyone else of not being true to the cause.

Of course then you set them up to have to travel through long tunnels to reach their leaders secret bunker to meet him. And on the opposite side is a door she mentions as being a secret escape route.

Of course at the end you head down to take the root of the evil opposition... And find that it's been the same person all along and that the two people are just holograms over the same Assaultron and the entire thing was a Vault-Tec experiment, ala Vault 19.

Oh sure, my point wasn't that destroying the NCR ruins the feel, but that the NCR itself doesn't ruin the feel of Fallout (in fact it's pretty integral to it and half the reason the Capital Wasteland was so disappointing). In fact the NCR falling apart, having people fight over the remnants, and end up with one or more successor states feels like it successfully meets botht he idea of rebuilding after a disaster and 'war never changes'.

It was more a rant about how the idea that the NCR should be destroyed because it goes against the style of Fallout is, well, silly. The NCR is the epitome of Fallout, right down to being just that little bit silly.

[unseenmage]

So, when I first fired up Witcher III I was on painkillers for this tooth removal.
This was a poor decision.

Got to a level in the early teens and failed to get a playing card from a, now deceased, baron before deciding to restart.

Game is much more comprehensible and fun with a clear head and accurate fingers.

[Rodin]

Diablo I has finally been put up on GOG (no Hellfire, sadly, but that expansion was unofficial anyway and I'm sure there are rights issues), and I've finally gotten to answer a question that has been bugging me for years.

Was Diablo I really a fundamentally different experience from every game that followed it? Or was I just blinded by nostalgia?

The answer, surprisingly enough, is that I was right all these years. The experience is totally different. Being able to get manhandled by even a single, non-boss enemy is just something that never happens in the subsequent games. I tried to take a Skeleton Captain in melee as a Mage on the first floor of the Cathedral, and he whooped my ass. Enemies have outright magic immunities right from the start. Hell itself was torture, as all the enemies I was "lucky" enough to get had 75% resist to all forms of magic, and my squishy wizard self would just pop if they got close. With no Fireball spell found, I often found myself dropping Succubi with the lowly Firebolt spell I started the game with.

And the tension! Being actually afraid of opening a room to see what enemies are inside instead of just opening the door and spamming a skill until everything is dead. Running away from a pack of melee monsters that could eat my face, only to round the corner and be met with volley fire from a squad of Plague Beasts. The walking speed makes all the difference here, since unlike all Diablo-likes since you aren't able to outrun a majority of the enemies. If you get enemies on your ass, you have to deal with them, and post-haste.

The item game was also rather refreshing. One thing I hate about the more modern games is that you only return to town to sell loot, and loot drops in such ludicrous amounts that even Magic items are often left on the ground. On the first two levels of the Cathedral, I found a grand total of 3 Magic items. Potions were expensive enough to be a real concern throughout, and the only times I had to TP to sell loot was when I just finished quests with treasure chambers as rewards (e.g. Chamber of Bone). I found exactly one Unique, the rather useless Storm Spire. In general, Town Portals were generally used to run screaming whenever I ran completely out of mana during a fight.

All in all, it's re-doubled my wish to see a modern game take on this playstyle. Diablo-like gameplay, but with a slow and strategic speed, resource scarcity, enemies that can murder you if you don't play carefully, and no easy "peace out return to town!" button. The last game I think came even close is the original Dungeon Siege, and that game had um...issues. It's also near 20 years old itself at this point.

Think I might give a Warrior a shot now and see how different it feels. Not having any skills might make the game boring though, and it's easily the biggest weakness of the original game. I still feel the rage at having to chase Goatmen down one at a time.

[factotum]

And the tension! Being actually afraid of opening a room to see what enemies are inside instead of just opening the door and spamming a skill until everything is dead.

Well, they definitely tried to encourage those thoughts by putting the Butcher on level 2, where no character is likely to be high enough level to face him comfortably. "Ah, fresh meat!" still chills my spine all these years later.

[Rodin]

Well, they definitely tried to encourage those thoughts by putting the Butcher on level 2, where no character is likely to be high enough level to face him comfortably. "Ah, fresh meat!" still chills my spine all these years later.

On my fresh Warrior run, I had the good fortune to not only find a Fire Wall scroll, but to have found a book of Healing and rushed my Magic up to 17 to be able to cast it. This is coincidentally the exact amount of Magic needed to use the scroll. His axe is mighty fine and chops skeletons in two without slowing down.

[Wookieetank]

On my fresh Warrior run, I had the good fortune to not only find a Fire Wall scroll, but to have found a book of Healing and rushed my Magic up to 17 to be able to cast it. This is coincidentally the exact amount of Magic needed to use the scroll. His axe is mighty fine and chops skeletons in two without slowing down.

My first ever Rogue made extensive use of Fire wall. Find a horde of enemies, run away dropping Fire walls behind me as I go, and follow up by sniping anything gaining ground on me with my bow. Granted that tactic had me fall flat on my face when I hit Diablo for some reason... XD

[Zombimode]

I've startet Anachronox and made good progress into the game. So far I'm hooked :smallsmile:

My Knowledge about the game was pretty much non-existant, but from the screenshots on the GoG product page I was expecting a Cyperpunk RPG.

I was rather suprised that it is actually a Space Opera RPG, much closer to Mass Effect than to Deux Ex or Shadowrun.

[GloatingSwine]

I was rather suprised that it is actually a Space Opera RPG, much closer to Mass Effect than to Deux Ex or Shadowrun.

Anachronox is more specifically influenced by Chrono Trigger.

[DigoDragon]

Well, they definitely tried to encourage those thoughts by putting the Butcher on level 2, where no character is likely to be high enough level to face him comfortably. "Ah, fresh meat!" still chills my spine all these years later.

Though there was a trick where you lure the Butcher to the stairs that lead down to level 3 and just circle around the stairs with him chasing you until he gets himself 'stuck' on the stairwell. Then you just nickle-and-dime him to death with arrows for an easy kill.

[Rodin]

Well, I'm now officially lost on what is going on in my Warrior run. Thanks to a wealth of +Magic items dropping, my Warrior is technically a better Sorceror than my Sorceror was at the same level. His Firebolt is of a comparable level, he knows Lightning (which I didn't pick up until the Caves last game), and he just got offered freaking Elemental from Adria. On level 5. I didn't pick it up, because I don't like spells that empty my entire mana pool, but I had the stats to learn it.

It has made for a fun and different playthrough though. I've ditched the Cleaver and gone sword-and-board, and I just gather enemies up in front of me and then hit them with a few bolts of lightning before cleaning up with the blade.

Also: A room with a Stone Clan Archer boss pack, screened by a wall of Black Deaths!?!? Game, you think you're funny, but you're not.

[Bastian Weaver]

Just started playing Apotheon, the game that I dreamt about when I was a kid and read about Greek heroes and gods and how they all hit each other with spears and clubs and rocks and lightning.
Just like in my dreams. I... I'm so happy.

[Velaryon]

Ongoing stuff that I play at least somewhat frequently:

Summoners War: Sky Arena (mobile)
Overwatch (PS4)

Stuff that I play sometimes:

Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
Monster Hunter World (PS4)
Secret of Mana (SNES Classic and also PS4; I have different saves for playing solo and with a friend)

I was gearing up to play Anthem (PS4), but then all my friends who were planning to buy it didn't, so I haven't played it yet. May still at some point, but I'm not sure.

[The Jack]

On fallout.

Yep, NCR's a good idea, and it's a shame that Fallout doesn't develop. The newer games are like, 200 years after the bombs and it's still small tribes. What you need is huge bands of warlords, fuedalism and rival empires, people trying to rebuild but having completely different ideas of what that should look like...
Sticking to tiny towns and psycho raiders, throwing in super mutants because you can't think of a proper faction... ugh.
If you want that, sure, but don't set the game around 2277 or whatever. put it 20 years later or so. 2090 like.


Now, For fallout 4.
The premise is fundamentally flawed. The institute should've won long before the game actually begun. The institute's most logical move involved them escorting you out of the vault with your entire family and any other survivors, you should've started with the institute immediately, and they should be openly ruling. They have the means to militarily dominate, economically dominate and culturally dominate. The railroad doesn't have the luxury to be who they are and the BoS shouldn't be able to match them for firepower or numbers. If fallout 4 was ever to run with the institute story, you'd have to be a synth on the run or scared of an insane dictator. Every other Idea of mine gets shot down by myself.

[unseenmage]

Stellaris is hard. At least for now.

[Wookieetank]

Stellaris is hard. At least for now.

Don't worry, about the time you've got a handle on things they'll have an overhaul update that changes everything.

If you haven't discovered it yet already, if you click on your resource icons, it brings up the market screen where you can buy and sell the various resources. Also don't let the computer design your ships, they're all trash. Stellaris thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?576404-Stellaris-III-Shop-at-the-Paradox-Megacorp!&p=23575835#post23575835) for more info for ya.

[Anonymouswizard]

I picked up Bayonetta for PC while it was on sale, and was delighted to discover that my PC can run it incredibly smoothly at 720p (compared to DMC4SE, which I can't punt above 30FPS at minimum settings). I'm finding it a lot more responsive than I did the X-box version, although the difficulty is still there and I had to turn the camera sensitivity up a lot just to get it turning comfortably with the mouse. I do need to change my keybindings to make Lock-on easier to deal with, when I've got me left hand on WASD, Space, and Shift and my right hand on the mouse reaching and holding down Alt is hard, but otherwise it's an incredibly well done port and I hope that Platinum gets the chance to port the sequel to PC at some point.

[Lord Raziere]

so, played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice all last night (it dropped early like a sneaky ninja) and it is definitely a souls-like game, feeling it punish me for my every mistake definitely, but its also a stealth game, like I find myself trying to figure out ways to stealth and sneak around my enemies much more than I do dark souls and it is much more worth it to do so, while killing gets me exp, I have to be ready for the foes or they are going to utterly murder me and I often have to kill one guy in an ambush, then jump away and disappear so that I can ambush another guy. a big part of the tutorial is entirely stealth based and noncombative.

I'm definitely having fun with having cool more free movement and grappling to points though, like this game is much more fun in the movement and jumping department, almost like a spiderman or batman game. if you know what your doing you can avoid most enemies, but I'm not sure if you can truly pacifist run this game. but I'm really feeling like a ninja doing all this, and I'm having fun in some ways more than Dark souls and thats an accomplishment. it has some of the same "defensive combat, playing cautiously" mindset to it, but gives you a new high-flying stealthy ninja way to apply it.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm playing a lot out of Final Fantasy 15, which is actually pretty easy to get into. The combat system is a lot faster-paced than the Witcher, and adapting strategies is pretty easy (except for those damned Coerls) while the game overall can be a bit hard (I only ever beat those Coerls by cheating and using the Magitech Exosuits). Travel happens a lot, but since everything is either a teleportation Fast Travel, or a safe autopilot, you can comfortably set a destination and check your phone, go to the bathroom, make something to eat, etc, until you get there.

My biggest surprise is how effective it is to play the other characters. One thing you can unlock is the power to play as your teammates, which each have their own unique mechanics and abilities that they don't have when the AI is playing them. Prompto has grenades, a rocket launcher and an assault rifle, and plays like a third-person shooter. Gladio uses Stamina to become invincible as he blocks things, and gains power the more stuff he blocks, and then strings attacks together with his giant axe with freakishly awesome damage. In fact, the weakest character to play as, when one of the other characters can work, is actually the main character himself.

Plus, the first time you hear the epic music of getting a god's blessing to smite your foes, and then seeing it happen, is pretty frickin' badass.

-------------------

Been playing some Witcher 3, too. It's just a bit too slow for me to want to play it for hours at a time. I've played a decent amount of it before, but I'm trying to go past where I was prior. FF15 kinda spoiled the whole "travel and kill stuff" routine, I think.

------------------

Been playing a lot of Elder Scrolls Legends on Mobile. It's a lot more tactically challenging than other card games, and it has Negative Feedback Loop mechanics (where the game gets easier the more you lose, like Mario Kart), so that the game is usually not a curbstomp. Plus, the decks you can purchase with the free currency are very thematic, using things like Shouts (spells that upgrade each time you cast them, resulting in a long-term "level up" deck), or Pilfer (Creatures that provide some kind of benefit upon attacking the enemy player).

I played a lot of Hearthstone, but I find that it has nothing on Legends. Hearthstone just feels very unbalanced, and a lot of playable decks end up following the same habits and cards for the same things. But in Legends, a lot comes down to how I play the deck, rather than the deck itself.

-----------------

Brawl Stars is another Mobile game I've been playing a lot of, made by the same guys who did Clash of Clans. Although this is more of a 3v3 battle arena game. Controls are very simple, with only an Attack and a Super Attack to use with your movement, but it's still very engaging despite its simplicity.

----------------

Caravan War is a rather interesting Mobile game, which is sort of a PVP Tower Defense game. You equip your "Caravan" with a variety of guards and units to protect it and send them out to convert your Cargo into Gold, but enemy players can attack your Caravan in a Tower Defense event. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from turning around and looting their stuff too.

---------------

Been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts 3 since it came out. The most notable thing is that they've added mechanics from pretty much every prior Kingdom Hearts game, so that there are a TON of ways to play, and everything feels a little bit familiar. My biggest complaint that, since there are multiple ways to play the game effectively, the game is incredibly easy when you combine them, even on the hardest difficulty. If you plan on playing it for a challenge, consider activating the ability that prevents you from gaining Experience on occasion.

[warty goblin]

Been getting into Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which I'd picked up at release, then uninstalled because I found the constant auto-patching tying up system resources annoying. But now that it's patched up, I thought I'd have another go.

A couple hours in, and it's pretty enjoyable. The very beginning was slightly painful; level one is not exactly greatest hero in the realm material, and the initial attack was right out of the Great Grimoire of RPG Cliches. But having your actions determine your starting party was clever, particularly since the game didn't spoil the fun and tell you.


Also picked up The Division 2. For my money, The Division 1 had the best cover shooter mechanics ever devised, and 2 improves on this. They seem to have buffed player durability a bit, which makes soloing things more plausible, and reduced enemy bullet spungyness a bit, which makes shooting them more satisfying. The flaw in the first game wasn't so much that having a guy in a shirt tank 30 rounds of 5.56 with his sternum and be pretty much ok was unbelievable, as it made shooting him feel kinda unsatisfying. Now they actually die when you dump a magazine into their torso.

Also, this is a small thing, but they seem to have realized that backpacks work better with two straps. The shoulder bags in the first game annoyed me.

I also feel compelled to note just how goddamn good the world and level design in this are, because they're so excellent as to be almost invisible. They hit that sweet spot of being naturalistic while still eminently readable from a gameplay point of view. So you can guess that you should go there without having it feel like the game is beating you over the head with it, or set up really good combat arenas that feel like mostly plausible spaces. And they are good combat arenas; with lots of verticality, cover surfaces that aren't all at 90 degree angles, and lots of flanking routes. The AI isn't stellar, but it generally gets the job done.

There's been a somewhat strange fuss about the game's politics, but I guess I'm not really seeing it? So far the most controversial statement the game has made is that shooting bandits who like to torturekill people is good, and apocalypses are bad. Which, sure, are political statements, but if these rise to the level of problematic, there's a lot of games that are in really hot water. For instance I don't remember people getting all bunched up over, say, Fallout 3; another game where you run around a post-apocalyptic Washington DC shooting bandits in fetishwear so you can get better guns to shoot upgraded bandits.

Tragically, I can only play for like 40 minutes at a time, before my framerate drops to the single digits. I can't blame the game, it doesn't even technically support my ancient video card; so frankly I'm glad it runs at all.

[DodgerH2O]

After a friend recommended it to me a while ago I finally looked into Minion Masters. It's surprisingly fun despite early access and F2P. I've been way out of the loop on MOBA and digital CCG and this combines both in a way that hooked me quick. I've heard it compared to Clash Royale which I am not familiar with. It is definitely super grindy to encourage real money spending but by the time things slowed down I was already 20 hours in and felt like I could compete with most decks. They appear to have the typical "pay to win lite" mechanics with an item that gets nerfed after the initial period of being a bit overpowered so there is that.

Any other playgrounders want to try it out I'm always up to team matches if you add me on Steam (Steam name: DWThyme)

[Zombimode]

A couple hours in, and it's pretty enjoyable. The very beginning was slightly painful; level one is not exactly greatest hero in the realm material, and the initial attack was right out of the Great Grimoire of RPG Cliches. But having your actions determine your starting party was clever, particularly since the game didn't spoil the fun and tell you.

:smallfurious: but YOU did!

[Zevox]

I've been playing Devil May Cry 5 basically since it came out. Just completed the game on Son of Sparda (the "hard" difficulty that you need to beat it once to unlock), and hot damn, the final boss fights on that difficulty were everything I wanted them to be.

Dante vs Vergil in DMC5 is just a better version of the same in DMC3, which was already one of the best boss fights in action games. On the "normal" difficulty (Devil Hunter) it was already pretty good, but not quite as challenging as I'd hoped, particularly since a brute force approach with Sin Devil Trigger worked to take out the last third or so of Vergil's health. Not so on Son of Sparda - I found that trying to use Sin Devil Trigger in general was just a bad idea, since you don't stagger Vergil even with most of its powerful attacks, so you'll be taking a beating in exchange for the one you dish out, which doesn't work out so hot on that difficulty. Instead it felt like it was genuinely better to use regular Devil Trigger when appropriate and otherwise just focus on learning how to fight Vergil better. Which is great, Vergil being a fight that has be won through finesse and just outfighting him is precisely how it should be, and it's fantastic that even the ludicrous power of Sin Devil Trigger doesn't wind up taking away from that. And it was damn satisfying that the final blow I struck to end it was a (normal) Devil Trigger-enhanced Stinger that broke his guard.

And heck, the Nero vs Vergil fight afterward even became reasonably challenging on that difficulty. It was an easy fight on Devil Hunter, with Vergil obviously toned down and Nero having some distinct advantages with the buster attack he just picked up, but on Son of Sparda Vergil was much closer to being as difficult as he was in the Date fight, and even the big damage you got out of buster hits didn't make it easy. Still not as hard as Dante's, mind you, but that's fine - Vergil being worn down from his battle with Dante makes sense, and it's appropriate that the classic match of the two brothers be the real highlight.
Yeah, with that, I think my opinion of the game is solidly raised. It's the series' best IMO, and probably on par with Bayonetta 2 for my favorite action game ever. If V weren't holding it back, it would be number one.

And I think I will try out Dante Must Die difficulty now that that's unlocked, see how that goes. And I'm actually kind of looking forward to when Bloody Palace mode gets added, which I didn't think I would be, but the core combat of the game is just so fun that I think that'll be worth playing at least a little.

[Lord Raziere]

Still playing Sekiro.

The art upgrade to recover health every time you do a deathblow is a godsend. As soon as I got it, the whole game just got more fun, because now if I lose health or make a mistake, I can just find an enemy and deathblow them to regain health until I get some back. it was worth spending 5 levels of exp for that. get it as soon as you can, it is worth grinding for.

[Inarius]

Right now I'm in the middle of a Dragon Age run. Wrapped up Awakening a few days ago but skipped Witch Hunt and started up DA2 with an older save because I couldn't get the outcomes I wanted due to how insanely buggy Awakenings is.

[NRSASD]

There's been a somewhat strange fuss about the game's politics, but I guess I'm not really seeing it? So far the most controversial statement the game has made is that shooting bandits who like to torturekill people is good, and apocalypses are bad. Which, sure, are political statements, but if these rise to the level of problematic, there's a lot of games that are in really hot water. For instance I don't remember people getting all bunched up over, say, Fallout 3; another game where you run around a post-apocalyptic Washington DC shooting bandits in fetishwear so you can get better guns to shoot upgraded bandits.

Not having played the game, I think the reason people have been getting miffed over it is because you play an official representative of the US government, planted as a sleeper agent among the general populace. When things go all post-apocalyptic, you're authorized to shoot anything that looks vaguely threatening without question. Since everyone you encounter (hostile or not) are technically U.S. citizens, that gets extremely murky extremely fast. And it doesn't do the game any favors that a lot of the hostiles look suspiciously similar to real life age/class/race groups, instead of obviously unrealistic groups like in Fallout.

Whether or not you feel that is something to be miffed over is entirely up to you.


In other news, I've been trying out Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. It's pretty good! Not sure if I'm entirely won over by it being the "best in the franchise" yet, but I am quite enjoying it.

[LibraryOgre]

Siege of Dragonspear was cheap on GOG, so I'm probably going to play through Baldur's Gate. Think I'll do a gnome cleric/thief, this time, and romance Aerie.

[unseenmage]

I work too much to play Stellaris. It just takes freaking forever to do anything and I really dont like how kinda impossible it's been for me to maintain any kind of military.

So I started playing this discount bargain bin copy of Far Cry Primal instead.

So far it's okay excepting that I take very real.issue with the opening cinematic's assertion that if these dudes dont (thrown!) spear this mammoth to death they're gonna starve.
Like there seriously aren't ANY other options? Then the sabercat, something imminently more spearable, shows up and they all go down like schmucks.
Ugh.

Other than that though it's been fun enough.

[Domino Quartz]

I'm playing through a game called "Baba is You." It's sort of a block puzzle game, except that some of the blocks you can push around are words. Also, the other blocks can't actually be pushed unless at least one of the rules defined by the word-blocks in the level says they can. There are three main kinds of word-blocks - references to types of objects in the level, blocks that define properties that objects can have, and connector words (such as "is") that connect references and properties. The game is named after the rule "Baba Is You". To explain, "is" is the most basic connector word, Baba is the name of an object that looks like a white quadrupedal creature (complete with walking animations), and anything that has the "You" property can be controlled by the player. The rule "Baba Is You" gives the player control of the "Baba" object. It's very fun, though some of the levels are quite difficult (and also sometimes a bit mind-screwy), and a very unique puzzle game.

[Rodin]

so, played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice all last night (it dropped early like a sneaky ninja) and it is definitely a souls-like game, feeling it punish me for my every mistake definitely, but its also a stealth game, like I find myself trying to figure out ways to stealth and sneak around my enemies much more than I do dark souls and it is much more worth it to do so, while killing gets me exp, I have to be ready for the foes or they are going to utterly murder me and I often have to kill one guy in an ambush, then jump away and disappear so that I can ambush another guy. a big part of the tutorial is entirely stealth based and noncombative.

I'm definitely having fun with having cool more free movement and grappling to points though, like this game is much more fun in the movement and jumping department, almost like a spiderman or batman game. if you know what your doing you can avoid most enemies, but I'm not sure if you can truly pacifist run this game. but I'm really feeling like a ninja doing all this, and I'm having fun in some ways more than Dark souls and thats an accomplishment. it has some of the same "defensive combat, playing cautiously" mindset to it, but gives you a new high-flying stealthy ninja way to apply it.

Sekiro has managed to scare me quite badly...by not running. Freezing and stuttering like hell and running incredibly slowly, I thought that this was the end for my now-venerable PC. The point where the new games finally outstripped my capability of running them.

...Until I found the problem. Apparently, Sekiro isn't recognized by Nvidia as existing, so it was trying to run it without a graphics card. I have no words.

At least now I can try my hand at being a ninja.

Edit: Having played now for a bit, good gravy is this hard. I think they tuned the damage on the bosses WAY too high. I should not be getting killed from 90% HP by a single blow from the second (non-tutorial) boss of the game. Especially when he can grab you OUT of a dodge roll, because I-frames are for other people. The fact that all the attacks track now when they didn't in the Soulsborne series is another thing that feels very cheap coming from that environment.

[aradralami]

playing Shogun total war 2 and it's a great game, with a long singleplayer campaign and detailed battles. Personally I think it is very unbalanced however, since samurai - who are trained from birth into accepting death - still flee easily when outnumbered. I really do not like the way the morale system is balanced, or the pathfinding for units either, for that matter. Also, archers and cavalry are very weak and naval battles are slow as hell. As a whole the game isn't that bad though. and the end i recommend this for strategy lovers

[Dienekes]

Sekiro has managed to scare me quite badly...by not running. Freezing and stuttering like hell and running incredibly slowly, I thought that this was the end for my now-venerable PC. The point where the new games finally outstripped my capability of running them.

...Until I found the problem. Apparently, Sekiro isn't recognized by Nvidia as existing, so it was trying to run it without a graphics card. I have no words.

At least now I can try my hand at being a ninja.

Edit: Having played now for a bit, good gravy is this hard. I think they tuned the damage on the bosses WAY too high. I should not be getting killed from 90% HP by a single blow from the second (non-tutorial) boss of the game. Especially when he can grab you OUT of a dodge roll, because I-frames are for other people. The fact that all the attacks track now when they didn't in the Soulsborne series is another thing that feels very cheap coming from that environment.

Been going through Sekiro. And honestly I've been finding it easier than any of the other soulsgames. At least for a first time run. With the exception of the headless enemies, because, damn man. They basically require a consumable item just to do anything to them, and I have not found a good spot to farm them.

But point of order here. Your lifebar is not your actual lifebar. Your real lifebar is your Posture. This is not Dark Souls where everyone rolls around like a lunatic. This is a swordfighting game. You stand in front of your opponent, and you hit the Deflect button when they attack. Now, I'll admit I have a bit of an advantage here, as I've been playing a lot of a different parry focused sword game (For Honor), so I'm kinda used to this mentality. Or you act aggressive and use some of that 5 hit combo your weapon has to deal Posture damage to the opponent. If you hear a higher pitched clang, then the enemy parried your attack. Stop attacking and get ready to block. If the unblockable signal pop up on your screen you have about half a second to see if this is a thrust, a low swipe, or a grab. A thrust you dodge into, a low swipe you jump on top of the opponent, and a grab you dodge away from the side the grab is coming from and then hit him a few times. Arrows can either be blocked or side dodged if you get the timing right.

That's it. That's the entire game, with two exception that I can think of. You'll eventually see enemies that deal lightning damage which have their own thing. And you'll find this damn ape that has this full body dive that I've only been able to consistently beat by running at it while it's in mid-air so he flies over my head.

But yeah. This is not Dark Souls. Do not focus on dodging. Dodging=bad, unless you can completely get behind the enemy, or you read the dodgable attacks.

So anyway, so far. The game has been awesome with a few nitpicks. That damn ape is giving me conniptions. And the systems are designed to promote farming, and I am not about that. I rush through every soulsgame I've played, it's part of why I like them. And while I am certain people much better than me will speedrun this thing in about an hour, to me looking at all the crafting and the skill trees and it's become a mess of me having to stop and find places to farm the equipment. Oh I need 4 yellow gunpowder to get this awesome looking prosthetic improvement? Better run to the gun fort 8 times and pray that RNG favors me. Oh, I'm like 99% certain a boss is coming up? Better go farm some experience because I'm about 3/4 of a way to the next skill point and I don't want that to drop to 0 because I'm going to die a bunch against this boss until I figure them out. Really slows down the otherwise fast paced gameplay.

At least, unlike Bloodborne you aren't farming for the basic healing item. Man that was the dumbest part of that otherwise great game.

[warty goblin]

Stuff about parrying

This is literally the first thing I've ever seen somebody say about a Dark Souls sort of game that makes it sound remotely appealing.

[factotum]

This is literally the first thing I've ever seen somebody say about a Dark Souls sort of game that makes it sound remotely appealing.

I think the point he's making is that the game isn't really a Dark Souls sort of game, and trying to play it like one doesn't work. As far as I understand it, it doesn't even have the "die once and you have to repeat the entire section" thing, because you get at least one free resurrection (hence the "Shadows Die Twice" part of the title).

[Lord Raziere]

I think the point he's making is that the game isn't really a Dark Souls sort of game, and trying to play it like one doesn't work. As far as I understand it, it doesn't even have the "die once and you have to repeat the entire section" thing, because you get at least one free resurrection (hence the "Shadows Die Twice" part of the title).

Indeed, at least one person I've seen has said that its the Anti-Dark Souls and that its specifically punishes you for playing Sekiro like you play Dark Souls. while it still requires skill and such to do right, its a very much offensive and parrying game where Dark Souls is generally a defensive dodge-rolling game. unlike in dark souls its perfectly possible to rush the whole zone your going through to kill every single enemy as fast you can before moving on to kill the next one in a run and gun style as long as you know how the zone works and what to expect, which you do stealthily assessing the area and figuring out the best path.

for example my recommendation for dealing with any lone ranged enemy: speed up to them as fast as you can and kill them before they can fire, if they do fire, dodge but give them as little chance for them to fire off shots as possible.

the game is a blend of stealthily carefully killing things in one blow like a stealth game with bursts of quick rapid fire violence where you kill the enemy as offensively as you can, make combat as short as possible, and give the enemies as little chance to respond as possible. if they do, deflect. if you haven't played Dark Souls you might even do better than people who have played those, because muscle memory and different mindset make you do a lot of mistakes and I had to earn my wins through hard won learning of how the games works from scratch.

though in some ways dark souls is easier, because you can't be patient in Sekiro, when you fight you have to be constantly moving and firing off chains of actions and it still punishes you for your mistakes and you can make a lot with how fast and furious you need to be. get too greedy and they will wreck your face, you have to actually deflect while attacking because the enemies will attack you back while you do so. its more of a mix than "block until vulnerability, kill" which is the basic strategy of dark souls. the basic strategy of Sekiro is "stab in the back if you can, if you can't, attack as furiously as possible while throwing in deflects while you do so and hopefully you get it get right amid the flurry of motion that is combat." which is of course scary and unintuitive to the average dark souls player, because they've been conditioned across three games to see that as suicidal.

[Razade]

Anyway, back on topic: I finished Axiom Verge. I don't really have anything new to say about it, but it was good. Now I'm starting on Hollow Knight - usually I wouldn't play two games this similar back to back, but that giveaway threw off my lineup. While they're both Metroidvanias, Axiom Verge is extremely Metroid while Hollow Knight seems to take a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls. I haven't played enough to say much more yet, but the art is beautiful.

The only thing that Hollow Knight shares with Dark Souls (that is something "like Dark Souls but") is the atmosphere and difficulty curve. The rest is standard Metroidvania with a very heavy focus on the Vania part. Dark Soul's design in that the world all lead into itself wasn't something it invented and like any modern Metroidvania there's plenty of backtracking once you find new upgrades. I guess there's also a "when you die, you can go back to where you died and get your stuff back" aspect that the creators absolutely admit comes from Dark Souls but Dark Souls isn't the first to have done that, or made it popular, and the wrinkle with having to fight your Shade adds a nice bit of depth to it.

[Rodin]

That's a very good summary, and a lot of my gameplay has been unlearning everything I knew from Dark Souls. Time a dodge perfectly to go through an attack? Hahaha no. The enemy will do a perfect homing pirouette to catch you. Holding a block? Only useful in dire emergencies when you don't know the timing for an attack, or if you're knocking projectiles out of the air.

One thing that I've started really liking is that relentless attacking isn't always the best way to go. Against one of the early bosses, if you try that she will block forever and then murder you when you miss a Deflect. You're far better off letting her attack first, dodging out of the way of it and then countering, or waiting until she leaps into the air to knock her down with a shuriken before starting your own combo. For another example, against spear elites I've generally found it best to wait until they try a Thrust attack and then use the special "stomp on their spear" counter before getting a few good hits in and raising the meter.

Also, you can parry and counter-kill dogs. That alone makes this my favorite game ever.

I do still find some of the controls really unintuitive though. Having two "evade" buttons really throws me, with both Jump and Dodge. And Jump attacks make no sense to me at all. It should be that I jump over the opponent's attack, which sets me up to perform a counter which I perform with my attack button. Instead, to perform the counter I have to hit Jump again. WHY? I'm not trying to jump again, I'm already in mid-air. Oh, and the parkour is some of the worst I've seen, though fortunately there isn't much of it and at least the main grapple mechanic works pretty well. Any time that I need precision jumping or ledge grabs though....*shudder*.

It's not the game I was expecting (a Soulsborne), and it's not the game I was expecting to be not expecting (a purely stealth-based ninja game). Instead, it's this weird mix of both, with the sword-fighting from Nioh thrown in as well.

And it's really starting to grow on me.

[Lord Raziere]

That's a very good summary, and a lot of my gameplay has been unlearning everything I knew from Dark Souls. Time a dodge perfectly to go through an attack? Hahaha no. The enemy will do a perfect homing pirouette to catch you. Holding a block? Only useful in dire emergencies when you don't know the timing for an attack, or if you're knocking projectiles out of the air.


Yeah, to explain it better: Dark Souls is European parry-riposte combat the game. its very much the knightly combat tradition of block attacks then killing when you see an opening.

Sekiro is Japanese Kenpo combat + shinobi stealth the game. you have a katana, you attack as furiously and fast as you can to interrupt whatever they're doing until they are dead.

its so different because its emulating very different combat traditions and targeting different fantasies. you can't play a ninja that same way you play a knight, its just not viable.

[Zombimode]

I've started Secret of the Silver Blades.

I was a bit hesitant to start the game since the reviews gave the impression that it is not on par with Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, as well as being somewhat on the "grindy" side.
But so far it has been a blast :smallsmile:
At least at the beginning the game has good pacing and provides a clear direction.

The quality and frequency of the artwork is also increased compared to the predecessors.


One thing that really irritates me is the fact that you have to select "move", both in combat and exploration, to move. In Pool and Curse moving was implicit by pressing the movement keys.
A change that I really don't understand :smallfurious:

[Rodin]

Yeah, to explain it better: Dark Souls is European parry-riposte combat the game. its very much the knightly combat tradition of block attacks then killing when you see an opening.

Sekiro is Japanese Kenpo combat + shinobi stealth the game. you have a katana, you attack as furiously and fast as you can to interrupt whatever they're doing until they are dead.

its so different because its emulating very different combat traditions and targeting different fantasies. you can't play a ninja that same way you play a knight, its just not viable.

What really took a long time to get used to is the stealth. I'm used to stealth games that prize "ghosting", such that either the enemies never knew you were there and/or the soldiers disappear one by one with nobody the wiser. If you break stealth, that's it - you're in for a fight unless you want to run away and wait for an unreasonably long time before they settle down.

Sekiro doesn't allow that - the patrols travel in groups, and sentries sit where they can see each other. Instead, the style is to pick off one or two solo dudes, and then launch yourself at a group of enemies and stealth-kill the strongest one. You then sprint around trying to murder a couple of the weak guys, then book it entirely and wait only a very short time for enemies to settle down. Rinse and repeat, until only the enemy general is left and you can take him on in glorious mano-a-mano combat, after honorably stabbing him in the neck from stealth.

It's a very fun style of play, but once again my instincts led me down the wrong path initially.

[Dienekes]

Yeah, to explain it better: Dark Souls is European parry-riposte combat the game. its very much the knightly combat tradition of block attacks then killing when you see an opening.

Sekiro is Japanese Kenpo combat + shinobi stealth the game. you have a katana, you attack as furiously and fast as you can to interrupt whatever they're doing until they are dead.

its so different because its emulating very different combat traditions and targeting different fantasies. you can't play a ninja that same way you play a knight, its just not viable.

Eh, honestly I think it’s just more fair to say Sekiro tries to get the feel of swordsmanship right, and Dark Souls doesn’t. I’ve personally never tried to dodge through an attack, and both the German and Italian Traditions agree that it’s safer to be the aggressor.

Honestly Japanese and European swordsmanship aren’t really that different from each other. Which makes sense if you think about it. You’re just using a long sharp lever to both defend yourself and cut apart your enemy.

[Iruka]

Just started playing Apotheon, the game that I dreamt about when I was a kid and read about Greek heroes and gods and how they all hit each other with spears and clubs and rocks and lightning.
Just like in my dreams. I... I'm so happy.

Apotheon is a true gem and deserves more attention. :smallsmile:

[PokemonQ]

Pokemon gogo

[Lord Raziere]

Eh, honestly I think it’s just more fair to say Sekiro tries to get the feel of swordsmanship right, and Dark Souls doesn’t. I’ve personally never tried to dodge through an attack, and both the German and Italian Traditions agree that it’s safer to be the aggressor.

Honestly Japanese and European swordsmanship aren’t really that different from each other. Which makes sense if you think about it. You’re just using a long sharp lever to both defend yourself and cut apart your enemy.

Well to be fair, Sekiro has a lot more human-scaled opponents than Dark Souls. In Dark Souls your often fighting bosses who are inexplicably giant or cast a lot of magic at you, like demons, dragons, and so on. in that paradigm the optimal thing to do is exploit greater maneuverability by dodging their big yet slower attacks.

in Sekiro on the other hand, most of your opponents are the same size or nearly the same size as you and thus are almost as or just as fast as you. the biggest you get is those ogre guys and those can be deathblow from behind easier than most because they're even stupider than normal soldiers and lose track of you easily. its a lot better to emulate swordsmanship when your working with the scales that swordsmen operates on.

and also most of the more human-scaled dark souls bosses and minions I don't dodge roll but block or parry because often dodge-rolling isn't needed or doesn't accomplish what is needed to defeat them. the best way to defeat Abyss Watchers? parry king the hell out of them because once you recognize their patterns they telegraph what they do from miles away. its more an emphasis on the more human-scale aspects of dark souls combat than the "normal guy vs. a titan" aspect that many boss fights were.

[Rodin]

Well to be fair, Sekiro has a lot more human-scaled opponents than Dark Souls. In Dark Souls your often fighting bosses who are inexplicably giant or cast a lot of magic at you, like demons, dragons, and so on. in that paradigm the optimal thing to do is exploit greater maneuverability by dodging their big yet slower attacks.

in Sekiro on the other hand, most of your opponents are the same size or nearly the same size as you and thus are almost as or just as fast as you. the biggest you get is those ogre guys and those can be deathblow from behind easier than most because they're even stupider than normal soldiers and lose track of you easily. its a lot better to emulate swordsmanship when your working with the scales that swordsmen operates on.

and also most of the more human-scaled dark souls bosses and minions I don't dodge roll but block or parry because often dodge-rolling isn't needed or doesn't accomplish what is needed to defeat them. the best way to defeat Abyss Watchers? parry king the hell out of them because once you recognize their patterns they telegraph what they do from miles away. its more an emphasis on the more human-scale aspects of dark souls combat than the "normal guy vs. a titan" aspect that many boss fights were.

To be fair, you do get a good few that are bigger than the ogre dudes, at least among bosses. Including one dude that look like he got lost looking for Bloodborne, asked for directions from Patches and is now wondering how the hell he wound up in Feudal Japan. And with the few deaths I have against that guy, it seems like parrying him is a very, very bad idea.

After bouncing off the final boss in a big way, I decided to restart and go through the game again on a fresh save and practice my skills on the earlier enemies. Turns out my skill level has gone way up, which is a gratifying feeling I haven't really had since Bloodborne. I'd even say it's more akin to my first time replaying Dark Souls 1 in terms of how different the difficulty level is. (mini)-Bosses that I spent dozens of lives on are dropping without landing a blow in return.

One place where I did have more trouble than on my first run, however.

The Flaming Bull. This guy is absolutely a Bloodborne boss (not the guy I was referring to earlier though), in that parrying him doesn't really gain you all that much and his flaming horns will deal damage through your block. The first time I fought him I still had Soulsborne instincts, and I dodged my way to victory. Trying to fight properly using parrying and Firecrackers got me killed several times before I managed to get back into the mindset of dodging his attacks.

[warty goblin]

Not really playing anything much at the moment. I just ordered a new gaming rig, and it seems pointless to put up with horrid loading screens and so forth on the eight year old fossil I have right now, when by next weekend I can crank up the Division 2 in glorious high settings. Frankly I'll be happy with a setting where cars don't sometimes have triangular tires.

And by 'crank up the Division 2' I mean 'spend all day waiting for it to download.' Tragically faster PCs do not magically come with faster internet.

[NRSASD]

Playing Darkwood! Not sure I can manage it to be honest. I'm not the biggest fan of horror, and was lured in with the promises of "a horror game without jumpscares" and "we hate horror movies and being scared". Those may be true, but WOW the tension in that game is unreal. I survived the first night, and it was ridiculous. Nothing happened, and I was waiting with bated breath the entire time. In an isometric game!

Unbelievably creepy, and the worst thing is, I'm really intrigued! I HAVE TO PLAY MORE

[Zevox]

So, I got to a point I was pretty darn happy with in Smash Ultimate's online (21 characters in Elite Smash), and Dragon Ball FighterZ just had a big balance patch drop that basically buffed everyone, so I decided to put Smash on hold until Joker comes out and spend my fighting game time with DBFZ again.

Oh boy, getting back into that game after four months of Smash is rough. Adjusting to the speed, mobility options, and generally different feel of everything going from Smash into a more traditional-style fighting game is not easy, and of course most of the people still playing a fighting game that's over a year old are at least pretty decent. I have gotten my ass handed to me so many times the past few days, and am only now starting to feel like I'm adjusting a bit.

Picked up Videl though, and I'm finding her pretty fun. Not as similar to Android 18 as I expected though - even though she calls Gohan/Great Saiyaman like 18 calls 17, she uses her summons more as a replacement for projectiles (since Videl never learned to throw energy around like everyone else in DBZ), where 18 uses them as pressure tools. Still, very fun rushdown character with a lot of options and unique combos - and a good assist that goes well with my favorite character, Vegito, too, so that's a great plus.

On the single-player side, still doing Devil May Cry 5, slowly making my way through Dante Must Die difficulty. It's appropriately a lot harder than even the next-highest difficulty, with much more aggressive enemies, and I am indeed dying a lot more than on my other runs. But that just makes it all the sweeter when I do finish a mission and see an A or S rank flash across the screen (B at worst - I tend to restart missions if I'm doing poorly enough that I'll get below that). I'm both excited and terrified to see what the final boss will be like on this difficulty.

[Inarius]

Well I moved on from Dragon Age to Outward. It's pretty enjoyable for me but I can see how it would be really offputting to a fair amount of people. Its got some real jankyness in its combat and its death penalty ranges from an inconvenience to soul crushing. Honestly I think I prefer the death penalty in the souls games or even everquest because at least they're consistent so I know what the cost of failure is going to be.

Other than that though I'm usually having fun, though balance is also all over the place. Melee is just awful early on since all of the useful abilities are really expensive to train. Meanwhile casters get a ton of pretty good options at a low training price so they wind up excelling early on. I of course decided I would start as melee then shift towards a spellblade character later on... it was probably the opposite of what I should of done to make my life easier heh.

[Lord Raziere]

Sekiro:
I....finally....beaten Lord Genichiro second battle. ahahahahahaha. and I thought that lady butterfly and blazing bull were bad. Genichiro was something completely else. the constant mix up game he was playing with his sword and his bow, the second phase/third bar with lightning attacks,it all just made him something truly special to beat. the last few moments of that final second phase was me in some trance in a moment of pure focus doing just enough to kill him by blinding him with a final firecracker flash and some perfect parries. I felt like I was ultra-instincting those final moments.

in the end, I had to go through most of my accumulated pellets, a couple hundred spirit emblems and tons of ungo sugars on my failed runs, and I still ended up drinking up all my gourds and only having like, 20-30% of health or less left by the time I finally beat him, and I couldn't use pellets on my final runs because I used up so many I decided to save them instead of wasting them on dying to Genichiro again. (Ironic since between my many failed runs and my final ones, I went to ginrd on gun fort specifically to level up the skill that makes medicine more effective)

and this is only apparently, the mid boss. yet if there was music I'd put to the bosses in this game, it'd be megalovania full stop.

I'm going to get the mortal blade another time. I'm tired, and my third rez and increased attack power is reward enough for now...

[oxybe]

Currently replaying the sims 3 as a jobless manchild who never leaves his 400square foot "house" and publishes a line of bad novels titled "In another world with my magic toaster", while also doing the artwork (as cruddy as his art-ing skill is). he has 20 volumes published as of now. Why they manage to be best sellers is beyond anyone's imagination.

He's finally achieved on of his life goals: to have a hired maid tend to his cleaning needs which means he can be even lazier then normal and live off his preferred diet of Kraft Dinner, Pancakes and PB&J sammiches, thanks to the weekly royalties

I initially wanted to have him live entirely off dependents, basically having 2-3 other characters I never controlled and just had this one guy play around, but then I realized I can't afford to build a larger space so I had to put some elbow grease and effort.

I do realize I could have simply started with having a couple of others living with him, but I wanted to play him as a parasite, weaving his way into the lives of others and then sucking them dry, rather then just starting with all the pieces in play. though at this point with my current cash flow it won't be long until I can basically stop working and technically live like a jerk forever, assuming I can get that Vampire I met online to hang out at my place and turn me immortal.

[GloatingSwine]

Currently replaying the sims 3 as a jobless manchild who never leaves his 400square foot "house" and publishes a line of bad novels titled "In another world with my magic toaster", while also doing the artwork (as cruddy as his art-ing skill is). he has 20 volumes published as of now. Why they manage to be best sellers is beyond anyone's imagination..

Sounds like a 100% realistic depiction of the average Isekai light novel author to me.

[oxybe]

Sounds like a 100% realistic depiction of the average Isekai light novel author to me.

I'm half tempted to find a way to setup an animation studio on my surprisingly large plot of land and just jail about a half-dozen schmucks in there full time and label it "Toei".

Needs me at least 1 season of MagiToast.

[Anonymouswizard]

Okay, laughing at Iseki-Sim. Might have to reinstall my Sims 3 (I think I need a bigger hard drive).

Well apparently Chrono Trigger has been released on phones and only costs £10. So time to see how the Adventures of our hero, Boy, turn out, along with Girl, Royal, Toad, and whatever I device to call the others.

[Wookieetank]

Okay, laughing at Iseki-Sim. Might have to reinstall my Sims 3 (I think I need a bigger hard drive).

Well apparently Chrono Trigger has been released on phones and only costs £10. So time to see how the Adventures of our hero, Boy, turn out, along with Girl, Royal, Toad, and whatever I device to call the others.

Robot, Chief, and Mage come to mind, particularly if they still have the very limited name length.

[Aspheric]

I started another playthrough of Stardew Valley... Please send help.

[LibraryOgre]

Nominally playing Baldur's Gate... I can't really get into it, so I'll usually log in, go to a screen, use the console to clear Fog of War, then walk to the location of important things. I'm not sure if I'm having trouble getting in because I've played it so much, or because I beat BG2 (beating a series usually reduces my enthusiasm for playing it again), or because I'm not enthused by my character (a gnome cleric/thief), but it's just... meh.

[Velaryon]

I dusted off Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes again, only this time I'm playing it on Steam instead of Xbox 360. I always loved the puzzle aspect of the battles, although the story is rather simplistic.

It's not as fun as playing 2v2 with my friend back in the day, which lets you pull off some pretty crazy combos if you coordinate well, but it scratches the itch at least.

[Triaxx]

Mark, if you're not on the Enhanced Edition, try BG-Trilogy, and play as one of the Kits. They make the game more interesting early on by far.

[LibraryOgre]

Mark, if you're not on the Enhanced Edition, try BG-Trilogy, and play as one of the Kits. They make the game more interesting early on by far.

I am on Enhanced Edition. I beat it as a Blade, but I'm not finding the cleric/thief as compelling.

[Inarius]

I am on Enhanced Edition. I beat it as a Blade, but I'm not finding the cleric/thief as compelling.

I really do find that getting the right class helps a lot for getting into the mindset to play to old IE games and even the more modern homage games like POE and Pathfinder. Could always try using EE Keeper to adjust your class to see if its fun if restarting isn't something you want to do.

As for what I'm playing I've kind of run the course on Outward, its been a pretty fun run and I managed to get the hang of how everything works in the game to the point where I broke the casting system skyrim style (no mana costs for all of my spells). As for what I'm going to move on to it'll either be Dragon Age Inquisition to finish up my current semi annual playthrough of the series or to load up Borderlands 2 since the reveal of 3 has kind of got me hankering for a looter shooter.

[tonberrian]

Dug out my gamecube, now I'm 20 hours deep into Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. Trying to bide my time until my new laptop arrives on Monday.

[Lord Raziere]

Dug out my gamecube, now I'm 20 hours deep into Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. Trying to bide my time until my new laptop arrives on Monday.

man I hope I get to play an rpg like that again. those were great. I don't even have my gamecube anymore.

still playing Sekiro, run up against the guardian ape. will have to push through another boss wall eventually. bought Witcher 3 for like ten dollars on a steam sale, so I can finally play that fully after I finish....Sekiro and Dark Souls Remastered, the latter of which is on pause until I finish Sekiro. sigh. maybe I should vary it up a little more....

[Silverraptor]

Discovered Warthunder. Haven't been able to stop since.:smallbiggrin:

[oxybe]

Got a new switch game a couple days back!

Super Dragonball Heroes World Mission Hero Edition.

A gosh darn mouthful that one is.

So you're generic preteen shounen protagonist who never played the world famous card game so popular there is a district in a large metropolitan city completely dedicated to it.

you just casually stroll up to a tournament with thousands of spectators and register, without a deck mind you, and are given the equivalent of a ****ty "here are my spares I don't want" preconstructed Universe 7-themed deck by the lady at the counter.

and you proceed to unceremoniously beat this 6 year old in suspenders and a bowtie with such incredible strategies as "i attacks withs alls my mans", something that makes a Great Saiyaman 3 cosplayer, a guy so good at the game NPCs call him "the Master", take note of your brilliant skills and take you under his wing.

And then out of nowhere Cooler, the actual movie villain, arrives and basically threatens to kill everyone who are all like "great cosplay mate, you know the Saiyaman 3 guy?". after miraculously deflecting an energy ball from Cooler using literal plot armour, Saiyaman 3 tells you that bad guys from the dragonball videogame are invading the real world and you need to jump into the digital world and stop them.

So yeah, they took the plot of Digimon and went "but what if Dragonball, and card games?"

The game itself is interesting. I'm still very early in and learning how it works. you start off with a deck made up of 7 characters. these are usually some variations of a dragonball character like Kid Goku or Super Saiyan Gogeta. they each have their own super attack and various abilities that can buff themselves or allies or debuff the enemy team. you can also equip each card with 4 different accessories that modify them, from stat boosts to new specials or a custom team up.

Matches are 5 rounds and cards can be put into attack or defense position. when attacking you generate hero energy, which allows the use of abilities and special attacks, but uses stamina. characters with no stamina can't guard and take extra damage and don't really provide any hero energy. characters in defense regain stamina and can use support abilities. each round both sides get to attack, with the side committing the greater power amount going first.

the twist is that there are 1100+ character cards, gained though playing the gacha.

but it's not pay to win. there is no premium currency and all all the gacha tickets are gained in-game by completing story missions, the equivalent to achievements or user-generated missions, and this includes the guaranteed rare tickets, so yes you can farm them. doubles gained though the gacha return generic ticket stubs (higher the rarity = more stubs) that can be use to buy gacha tickets (10 stubs for a normal, 50 stubs for a guaranteed rare).

in addition to these 1100+ cards, you can create your own custom cards by using "blank" cards of various rarities with a point total to use towards setting the stats and abilities, that you can either buy using zenni or as a drop/reward. So you want a Kid Goku who uses the Galick Gun? there you go. Want to make a nobody like Sugesh that hits like a truck but is made of paper? there you go.

having loads of fun for now. i streamed the first hour of storymode and played the player created missions for a bit off stream so i would have some tickets to pull with when i next stream.

the player missions are abuseable though. If you've played pokemon and remember when they brought back secret bases, people were making the Chansey training rooms for easy XP? think that, but less for XP and more for those card customization bits, gacha tickets and super dragonballs (which can give various boons like exta inventory)

[halfeye]

I'm still playing IL*2 (Cliffs of Dover is also fine, in it's own way, but I don't play it as much, and Battle of Stalingrad is by another developer entirely, I haven't bought that one yet), it's just my current flight sim, it's got a lot of aircraft and a lot of campaigns.

Currently replaying Dragon age Origins as a Dwarf Rouge (sic :smallwink: ), without all the mages offering healing I'm expecting this run to go tits up soon.

I had Civ V fail on me lately, it's just not starting, I think I bought it at a supermarket (I can't find an Amazon order), if they have killed it because the supermarket dropped games, then I've dropped Civ.

[LibraryOgre]

One thing that REALLY annoys me in the BGEE? How CLUMSY the interactions for the various added NPCs is, especially Dorn. In order to get Dorn, you have to talk to him at the Friendly Arm, which is natural to do (he has a name and is a Class-modeled character). He will then randomly arrive, and you can only get him by having a space in the party, or dropping someone, perhaps before you're ready. You then have to hang around with this ******* through Cloakwood, or he won't rejoin you. The NPCs that finish his quest might or might not show up., you just have to keep checking this one screen that's not going to be commonly visited.

It just feels like they could've integrated these better.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

OK, so about a month ago, the battery of my laptop started to swell to the point where the laptop wouldn't lie flat anymore (I'm told this is by design). I took it in for replacement. After verifying that the battery was on its last legs, and agreeing to replace it, they ran "one more test, to see if anything else is wrong". The test killed my laptop dead - wouldn't start, wouldn't acknowledge external inputs.

Long story short, they gave me a new one, for the cost of the battery alone. I can now play Warhammer Total War at max specs, which had crawled at min specs in the old laptop. I'm hoping I'll also be able to play Mechwarrior, next time it goes on sale.

(I did lose a bunch of unlocks in my games, though, which sucks - especially in renowned explorers, where I had all the characters and all but one of the cards. But nothing else, since I had backed up the important bits. I just had balked on backing up the game folder due to its size)

Grey Wolf

[tonberrian]

OK, so about a month ago, the battery of my laptop started to swell to the point where the laptop wouldn't lie flat anymore (I'm told this is by design). I took it in for replacement. After verifying that the battery was on its last legs, and agreeing to replace it, they ran "one more test, to see if anything else is wrong". The test killed my laptop dead - wouldn't start, wouldn't acknowledge external inputs.

Long story short, they gave me a new one, for the cost of the battery alone. I can now play Warhammer Total War at max specs, which had crawled at min specs in the old laptop. I'm hoping I'll also be able to play Mechwarrior, next time it goes on sale.

(I did lose a bunch of unlocks in my games, though, which sucks - especially in renowned explorers, where I had all the characters and all but one of the cards. But nothing else, since I had backed up the important bits. I just had balked on backing up the game folder due to its size)

Grey Wolf

Aww. I had to go through something similar - laptop wouldn't charge, sent it in for repairs, they couldn't fix it and gave me a refund of the whole price i paid for it, and they're saying I'll get a refund on the warranty as well because it took so long to get me the buyout offer. Purchased a new laptop with marginally better specs from a different company, which just arrived today (so did the check for the buyout, actually). Didn't lose much because most everything i have is either on the cloud or backed up on my crummy laptop. More relevant to this thread, I can finally try out the new features of the free expansion to CK2 they put out this month, yay!

[GloatingSwine]

Long story short, they gave me a new one, for the cost of the battery alone. I can now play Warhammer Total War at max specs, which had crawled at min specs in the old laptop. I'm hoping I'll also be able to play Mechwarrior, next time it goes on sale.


Though you still can't play a Mortal Empires campaign in the lifespan of the average human. Turn processing takes so damn long with that many factions.

[Cespenar]

One thing that REALLY annoys me in the BGEE? How CLUMSY the interactions for the various added NPCs is, especially Dorn. In order to get Dorn, you have to talk to him at the Friendly Arm, which is natural to do (he has a name and is a Class-modeled character). He will then randomly arrive, and you can only get him by having a space in the party, or dropping someone, perhaps before you're ready. You then have to hang around with this ******* through Cloakwood, or he won't rejoin you. The NPCs that finish his quest might or might not show up., you just have to keep checking this one screen that's not going to be commonly visited.

It just feels like they could've integrated these better.

Still, compared to the original game, Dorn alone probably has more lines of dialogue than all of the old party members combined, so it's not all bad I think.

[DigoDragon]

I'm considering putting Minecraft away for a bit. The 1.14 update should be coming out soon and the servers I play on want to switch over ASAP. I generally avoid switching over to give the developers time to flatten out any new bugs in the update. Maybe i'll pick up MoO: CtS for a bit again. There's a bunch of Steam Achievements I didn't get yet.



OK, so about a month ago, the battery of my laptop started to swell to the point where the laptop wouldn't lie flat anymore (I'm told this is by design).

...wut?

That is a very... interesting design choice to have your battery swell when it goes bad.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

...wut?

That is a very... interesting design choice to have your battery swell when it goes bad.

It beats it swelling explosively because they reinforced the casing so it wouldn't, is my guess (no, they didn't explain it to me either). But yes, I kinda miss the batteries that sort of simply stopped holding a charge when they aged. It turned my mobile laptop into an immobile desktop after a few years, but it still functioned (indeed, I used my old laptop for the duration of this incident. It struggled with even simple tasks, but it worked).

Grey Wolf

[Brookshw]

Just played Far Cry 5.

Having played 3 & 4 in the past, it seemed to tread well worn paths. Most the weapons are picked up from the previous iterations. The only thing that really was "new" was planes (and helicopters). Well, I guess the companion system as well. Otherwise it was a similar series of "fetch" and "kill" quests. If you played the previous iterations the general game play won't have anything drastically new to throw at you.

Hunting was slightly less important in terms of crafting, but they also changed the perk system so that now one of the ways you get perks was by hunting, and you need perk points to get the benefits of crafting usually (i.e., ammo bags). So if anything, hunting overall became more important. Also now fishing, because clearly the thing you want to do is spend time virtually fishing so you can more efficiently shoot cultists.

Story wise, it's....okay. There are numerous times in each area where you get "kidnapped" or otherwise get railroaded. I didn't mind it at first but it got really old after a while.

The ending...Was very disappointing. The "Good" ending involves the cultists being right and nukes starting to fall just as you beat the main boss. You run for a bunker with some friends and the handuffed boss. Car accident, you're friends die, the boss carries you to the bunker and it's just you and him waiting out the apocalypse. Of course, you're tied up and his prisoner. So in the end, the "Good" ending is the bad guy winning. The "Bad" ending, you don't fight the bad guy and he wins. So if you actually play the game, there really isn't any winning. There is secret ending similar to Far Cry 4, where if you don't do anything at the beginning of the game, i.e., don't handcuff the boss, starting the chain of events that lead to the game, and instead just walk away. So the secret ending is...not playing the game.

I'm glad I didn't buy it when it first came out. Was it worth the $20 I paid? Ehhhhh...... I got what I was expecting, an open world environment to go shoot people in. There was the occasional 'Merica moments which gave me a chuckle. Ranking wise, it's below Far Cry 3 for me, roughly on par with 4.

[factotum]

I never completed FC5. As you say, it just felt like re-treading well-worn paths, and I'd already had enough of that with FC4 being basically FC3 but in the mountains rather than a tropical island.

[Resileaf]

Considering FC5 has a post-apocalypse sequel, it's in retrospect pretty obvious why they made those endings.

[Zombimode]

Im currently right in the middle of Soulbringer, a somewhat unknown RGP from the year 2000.
Early 3D, fully voiced, awkward controls (but it plays quite well despite of the controls), rather mature characters, large in scope, pretty much no filler material.

All in all a very enjoyable game :smallsmile:
It has the unfortunate standing of being released during the time of the Infinity Enging games which are just so much better than anything else, including Soulbringer.

[DigoDragon]

It beats it swelling explosively because they reinforced the casing so it wouldn't, is my guess (no, they didn't explain it to me either). But yes, I kinda miss the batteries that sort of simply stopped holding a charge when they aged.

Yeah, I'm of the thought that there should be a third option for non-bulging, non-exploding battery death. :smalltongue: My lappy battery did a very quiet death and I'm glad it didn't decide to shape-change in its death (or catch fire or something spectacular like that). Unfortunately replacing it costs more than the lappy is worth (plus the keyboard is going bad) so I only use it for Discord calls.

[Anteros]

Considering FC5 has a post-apocalypse sequel, it's in retrospect pretty obvious why they made those endings.

That doesn't make them good though.

I paid full price for Far Cry 5 and still gave up on it after a few hours. It doesn't do anything that Far Cry 3 didn't do a lot better except obviously graphics. I don't think I'll ever buy another Far Cry game.

I'm honestly pretty much ready to give up on Ubisoft entirely as a studio. I don't think I've ever enjoyed one outside of Far Cry 3, and somewhere between assassinating the Pope, fighting a cult of white supremacist analogues, or battling through the ruins of Washington, the heavy handed yet shallow political statements have gotten old.

[tyckspoon]

Yeah, I'm of the thought that there should be a third option for non-bulging, non-exploding battery death. :smalltongue: My lappy battery did a very quiet death and I'm glad it didn't decide to shape-change in its death (or catch fire or something spectacular like that).

Sure, user-replaceable battery segments that are designed with some flex space around the battery in the compartment. The way laptops were built for literally decades. But that requires dedicated empty space for the battery, costs more to make (because you have to build a rigid shell around the battery instead of just putting it in what is essentially an anti-static bag foil bag), and means you can't shave .1 mm off your total profile from last year's design and market the NEW THINNEST LAPTOP EVER.

[Resileaf]

That doesn't make them good though.


Oh, I know. It was a criticism on my side too. XD

[NRSASD]

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice! Very fun. A bit clunky, and gameplay is mind-bendingly simple so far (go here, press this; go there, look at that), but it positively oozes atmosphere from every pore. It's not just the story of a Pict warrior or someone with psychosis; it weaves both elements together so well that her character is all the stronger for it. I'm not sure if the story is going anywhere, but I'm really enjoying the ride so far!

[Anteros]

I just finished up Sekiro since I had a week off and some free time for gaming. No idea what I'll play next. Maybe nothing for a while. Between Subnautica, Kingdom Hearts, and Sekiro I've spent waaaay too much time on the computer in the last few months.

Plus it's finally getting nice out. It might be time to put the games away for a few months and go back outside.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Sure, user-replaceable battery segments that are designed with some flex space around the battery in the compartment. The way laptops were built for literally decades. But that requires dedicated empty space for the battery, costs more to make (because you have to build a rigid shell around the battery instead of just putting it in what is essentially an anti-static bag foil bag), and means you can't shave .1 mm off your total profile from last year's design and market the NEW THINNEST LAPTOP EVER.

User-replaceable battery also weight quite a bit extra. The thinness you can make fun of, but heck if this laptop (and the one that just died) aren't significantly lighter than the one with the old battery style. Since I drag those things with me in my frequent trips, the older I get the more I appreciate laptops that don't feel like lugging bags of bricks hanging from my shoulder.

Grey Wolf

[Demidos]

OK, so about a month ago, the battery of my laptop started to swell to the point where the laptop wouldn't lie flat anymore (I'm told this is by design). I took it in for replacement. After verifying that the battery was on its last legs, and agreeing to replace it, they ran "one more test, to see if anything else is wrong". The test killed my laptop dead - wouldn't start, wouldn't acknowledge external inputs.
Grey Wolf



...wut?

That is a very... interesting design choice to have your battery swell when it goes bad.

As a battery engineer (:smallbiggrin:)...that's almost certainly because the chemical reaction that runs your battery is having problems.

To put it simply, unexpected reactions are happening instead of the usual charge-discharge, which causes gas to be generated as the materials in your battery degrade. If you have a rigid shell and your battery starts malfunctioning, then you basically have an extremely high pressure, very flammable bomb inside your laptop. The true design choice, rather than the swelling itself, is the soft shell around the battery which allows you to (a) visually notice the malfunction and replace the battery and (b) relieves the pressure on the battery until you do.

First time I've gotten to use my graduate degree to explain something on these boards! Sweet!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

As a battery engineer (:smallbiggrin:)...that's almost certainly because the chemical reaction that runs your battery is having problems.

To put it simply, unexpected reactions are happening instead of the usual charge-discharge, which causes gas to be generated as the materials in your battery degrade. If you have a rigid shell and your battery starts malfunctioning, then you basically have an extremely high pressure, very flammable bomb inside your laptop. The true design choice, rather than the swelling itself, is the soft shell around the battery which allows you to (a) visually notice the malfunction and replace the battery and (b) relieves the pressure on the battery until you do.

First time I've gotten to use my graduate degree to explain something on these boards! Sweet!

I'm guessing that the obvious alternative, a method to allow those gasses to escape, would be a bad idea because we'd be venting toxic and/or carcinogenic gasses out of our laptops?

(Glad I guessed right that they wanted a more gradual pressure increase as a safety feature. Thanks for confirming that)

Grey Wolf

[factotum]

I'm guessing that the obvious alternative, a method to allow those gasses to escape, would be a bad idea because we'd be venting toxic and/or carcinogenic gasses out of our laptops?

I think more "highly flammable" is the problem there, although the smell wouldn't be great either.

[danzibr]

Im currently right in the middle of Soulbringer, a somewhat unknown RGP from the year 2000.
Early 3D, fully voiced, awkward controls (but it plays quite well despite of the controls), rather mature characters, large in scope, pretty much no filler material.

All in all a very enjoyable game :smallsmile:
It has the unfortunate standing of being released during the time of the Infinity Enging games which are just so much better than anything else, including Soulbringer.
Soulbringer!

I started this game several times, but never beat it. Maybe someday...

[warty goblin]

New computer is set up (finally), and so far I've messed about with:

Darksiders III: This is, delightfully enough, a pretty traditional sort of game. You run around and abuse various demons using a whip that is basically the extreme BSDM version of a lightsaber. There's some very nominal sorts of puzzling and platforming in between the demon-murdering, which don't require much in the way of thought, but do keep you tuned into the environment and break up the flow nicely.

The combat, at least so far, is nicely button-mashy. There's a combo system, but it appears that one can basically ignore it on standard difficulty, which I like. Also the basic enemies hit pretty hard, but between jumping and dodging you've got good mobility-based defense, which seems to incentivize hyper-aggression, which I also like.

Also delightfully, the dodge move is a proper dodge, and not a roll. I am entirely over dodge-rolling as a thing at this point.


And back to Division 2. Which is as excellent as I thought it was, although the experience is substantially improved by a solid frame rate and car tires that aren't sometimes triangles.

It's actually sort of hard to describe just how well put together the thing is. The cover system is just the best ever, the guns all feel nice and punchy, they've dialed in the enemy HP and armor values to where enemies take some commitment to kill, but aren't total bullet sponges, and the tone of Post-Apocalypse Lite urban warfare is spot on. I had a really excellent fight over a control point the other night, with the enemy and friendly AI going at it, grenades going off everywhere, various weather things happening, just fantastic.

[Demidos]

I'm guessing that the obvious alternative, a method to allow those gasses to escape, would be a bad idea because we'd be venting toxic and/or carcinogenic gasses out of our laptops?

(Glad I guessed right that they wanted a more gradual pressure increase as a safety feature. Thanks for confirming that)

Grey Wolf


I think more "highly flammable" is the problem there, although the smell wouldn't be great either.

Yeah, you guys have the general right idea. The specific gasses are hard to predict, but generally speaking you don't want to inhale stuff from batteries. The gassing (technical term) also indicates a significant problem if it's in large quantities, so it's a good way to get people to not just keep using the defective battery. Also, modern laptop batteries are lithium ion, and lithium burns/explodes on contact with water (including the water in air).

You can PM me with other questions/we can move to a random banter thread so that we don't clog up the thread. :smallsmile:

-----------------------------------------------
Thread Tax:

Mostly playing Dominions 5, a turn-based medieval fantasy strategy game with a very heavy mythological influence, lots of obscure mechanics, and super diverse nations.

Also playing Divinity 2 (multiplayer turn-based rpg), and some indie coops (Tick Tock, We were here (1/2)) which were decent with gorgeous art, but felt kinda lacking in content.

[NRSASD]

I quite enjoyed my time with "We Were Here (1 & 2)" but I agree, there's not much there. Still, it's a ton of fun to run through once, and definitely money well spent as far as I'm concerned.

[rooster707]

Wow, I haven’t checked in here for a while, for some reason.

I just started Assassin’s Creed Unity, which I’ve wanted to try for a while. I’m gonna give it a couple more hours, at least, but so far I’m not really having fun. It feels... well, it feels like an Assassin’s Creed game, which isn’t surprising, but after playing Syndicate (which felt like “An Assassin’s Creed game but Good” in every possible aspect) it’s hard to go back to the way things were before. (And the terrible performance isn’t helping... I really need to upgrade my PC.)

[Brookshw]

Resident Evil 7. Good. Returned to it's survival horror roots. Kinda short though. First person view and okay gun control. Would recommend if you like the series or Dead Space.

[Anonymouswizard]

I finally got around to picking up an Xbox One controller for my PC, so I've been playing some Devil May Cry 4 to test it out because I know how Nero controls (terribly in my hands, but that's due to other reasons). It works fine, and feels much nicer to play than it did on console.

But mainly I've been playing Psychonauts. I'm finding it really charming, if a bit annoying in some of the platforming sections (it took me an embarassingly long time to work out the rules for the MC level). I really do miss 3D platformers and wish that 2D ones weren't the preferred style, although maybe I prefer them to 2D platformers because I grew up on them. I do remember getting annoyed at the new Tomb Raider games for breaking up fun jumpy platforming sections with forced combat or stealth sections that took several times as long (I'm sorry but if I want shooting or stealth I own games focused on shooting and stealth, I bought a Tomb Raider game for the jumping and puzzles).

[warty goblin]

I finally got around to picking up an Xbox One controller for my PC, so I've been playing some Devil May Cry 4 to test it out because I know how Nero controls (terribly in my hands, but that's due to other reasons). It works fine, and feels much nicer to play than it did on console.



The XBox 1 controller is great. I already really liked the 360 controller, and the One fixes the only flaw with that; the terrible D pad.

[The Glyphstone]

Playing through Descent for the first time in almost 15 years. Still an amazingly designed game for something that ran on MS-DOS.

[Anonymouswizard]

The XBox 1 controller is great. I already really liked the 360 controller, and the One fixes the only flaw with that; the terrible D pad.

Yeah, I'm not sure how they thought the 360 d-pad was a good idea. I was so good when I got the One controller and found that the d-pad not only had less travel but was, as far as I can tell, properly microswitched. It makes it much nicer, and I can finally jump over missiles I'm Studiopolis 1 when playing Sonic Mania (but that I'm able to beat that boss yet).

[Zevox]

I just finished beating Devil May Cry 5 on Dante Must Die difficulty. Almost managed to keep my gold orb use confined to V (who I don't especially like and don't mind not getting good enough to beat everything legit with), but I did use one each on Dante's mission 12 (first Dante vs Urizen fight you're supposed to win) and mission 16 (vs King Cerberus), because I was playing late at night and just got so close and wanted to close it out at a reasonable hour. Might go back and re-do those missions to win more legitimately. But
I did manage to beat Vergil without one, which was so satisfying. His fight isn't too fundamentally different from the next difficulty down, but the big damage increase in DMD mode means you really need to make sure you make next to no mistakes fighting him. And he sometimes stays in Devil Trigger mode for an amazingly long time, not triggering the big flying move that normally leads to him leaving it, so you really need to get used to finding your few stray moments to hit him with a stinger or the like while he's in that.

Nero's version of the fight is still noticeably easier, but damn near as satisfying despite that. And I actually got to see something I hadn't on previous runs: a buster move done in Devil Trigger where he grabs both Vergil and his doppleganger and slams their heads into each other. That was even the final blow I did to finish him off, so yeah - awesome and satisfying.

Just going to do some Bloody Palace runs, and I think I'll finally be happily done with DMC5 (because Heaven & Hell and Hell & Hell difficulties don't sound like fun). What a great game.

Also playing Smash Ultimate again since Joker release. He's great, just a ton of fun to play, and they really captured Persona 5's style with both his moveset and just little things like his win screens. I do find myself getting more annoyed by the online at times though. Nintendo really needs to add the ability to see some basic information on opponents and accept or reject a match, rather than just throwing you into a fight with the first person it finds every time. It sucks to get laggy connections or rulesets you don't want to play with and not be able to do anything about it besides suicide and take the loss. Would also be nice if they changed how the ranking system is calculated, still feels dumb that a loss can lose you far more rank than a win gains you, to the point where you need something like a 66%+ win rate to actually gain rank even slowly. And that might help with the problem of how most people don't do rematches against anyone who beats them, even if the match was close.

[halfeye]

Dragon Age Origins, again. Sometimes it is very, very silly.

I go through the whole castle Redcliffe bit up to the point of setting off to see the mage's guild, and there's a battle with random wolves that ought to be no problem they were no problem in the Kokari Wilds, and there are about 6. Kill four or so of them, and now there are ten, and they are all unhurt despite being in a fight for fve or so minutes, so that's that, back to Redcliffe, but not back to where I was, oh no, back to an hour before that, with all of the castle to do again. Very very silly.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Picked up Forager, a game I just heard of only a few days before it was released thanks to YouTube.

It’s a crafting exploration game with no fixed goals so i’ve been bingeing it hard. I mean the unstated goal is to unlock all the islands and discover all the things but you can approach that in many ways and at many different speeds.

I’ll have to hit the endgame to really evaluate it though, but I like it so far.

[Balmas]

I've been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance. While I still think it's earned a place in my Top-10-Games-of-all-Time list, I do have some minor and some not-so-minor niggles with the game.

The minor niggles mostly have to do with the character system, and how there just aren't enough perks to really distinguish one playthrough from another. In each skill area, you can earn all but one perk. That means that you're not so much building around a specialization as picking which one perk out of a list you don't want to get. Pair that with the fact that every character is eventually going to hit the cap in every stat across the board, and each version of Henry seems to become a bit samey. Personally, I'd want to have more perks to choose and to lift the level cap for attributes so I can specialize more.

The not-so-minor niggle mostly has to do with one particular story beat. Minor spoilers be present.
During most of the game, you have an enormous amount of freedom in how you want to go about things, and in which order. You can be a silver-tongued minstrel with enough charm to talk the scales off a snake, a brutish warrior who solves his problems with intimidation and violence, a rogue who creeps around bandit camps with poisoned blade. If you want to blow off the main quest in favor of sidequests and exploration, that's your prerogative.

Then you get sent to Sasau Monastary to track down and kill one of the bandits who raided a stud farm. In order to get in, you need to join the order and become a monk yourself. And the story comes to a screeching halt.

See, the KCD deves were just as committed to a realistic portrayal of 15th century Bohemia in Sasau Monastary as they were in other areas of the game. That means that, as a monk, you're stripped of everything you have, and you're expected to keep to a monk's schedule:
-Up at 4AM and head to the chapel for mass until 6AM
-Breakfast in silence until 7AM
-Work in the gardens and making potions until noon
-Work in the library transcribing books until 4PM
-Mass until 6PM
-Dinner until 7PM
-Freetime until 9PM Curfew

Miss Mass? Don't do your work? Ignore your schedule in favor of doing the other three side quests in the area? The Circators, the enforcers of the Monastary, will track you down. That means that unless you're going to dodge the Circators at every opportunity or just ignore how the quest tells you to do things, you're going to spend about fifteen hours of each day just staring at the wait menu. Go to mess hall, and wait. Go to gardens, make one potion, wait. Go to library, pick three dialogue options, wait. And it's probably going to take you a few in-game days to nail which of the other four novices is your target, much less to carry out your hit.

To make matters worse, this is a portion of the questline that basically requires you to play as a thief-ish character. Don't have 15 lockpicking? Sorry, you won't be able to pick the locks of the doors out of the monastary, so you'll need to pick the pocket of the Prior to get the key. What's that? Didn't put any practice into Pickpocketing either, because you're playing as a Henry that values chivalry? That's a right bummer, innit?

I appreciate that the KCD devs give you multiple ways to identify the target, but it kills me that all of them amount to "play a thief in the nine hours a day you're not tied up in Monastary life." Sneak into the Prior's office to read his notes. Steal a forbidden book to influence an election. Steal the Prior's keys so you can sneak over to the custodian's house and steal some booze. Sneak into a cellar to spy on some senior monks. Break into every room in the monastary to put together a manuscript of Ovid. It's all thieving left and right, which is brilliant for a thief character but not so great for anybody else.

[Corlindale]

I'm really starting to get into Hollow Knight. I bought it a while ago, but it didn't really click immediately, so I recently gave it another shot. It's safe to say I'm hooked - I understand why it's frequently nicknamed Bug Souls, because it does many of the great things that Dark Souls does - and I always find it extra impressive when games do the whole 'sprawling environment with interconnected pathways , shortcuts and hidden secrets' in a 2D environment.

It feels a bit more forgiving than Dark Souls, though - which I don't mind, as my gaming time is limited these days.

[Zevox]

Just going to do some Bloody Palace runs, and I think I'll finally be happily done with DMC5 (because Heaven & Hell and Hell & Hell difficulties don't sound like fun). What a great game.
Well. Holy cow. So, I finished my first Bloody Palace run - and cleared the whole dang thing on my first try (using Dante). Either DMC5's Bloody Palace is a lot easier than DMC4's, I'm a lot better at the game than I was at DMC4, or a combination of the two, because I'm pretty sure I never even made it halfway through DMC4's. And it was mostly not that hard, either, I didn't start having close calls until floor 90 (of 101), against King Cerberus, and the only other time I nearly lost was during the second of the three Urizen fights on floor 99. Granted, I'm coming just off beating the game on Dante Must Die, but still, I'm floored that I managed that at all, much less on the first try. Feels good.

Guess I'll see how I can do with Nero tomorrow. I imagine he may be harder to do that with though, he doesn't have quite the variety of options that Dante's many weapons affords him for dealing with all of those hordes of enemies.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

So I’ve unlocked all the islands and am coming close to Forager’s level cap. The game has a lot of busy work, but also mechanics for mitigating them.

Mining rods to automate resource gathering. Droids to auto-gather from livestock and fishing traps. Ballista to fend of the endlessly respawning enemies. It all depends on your play style. I’ve seen some streamers treat the click work as a relaxing activity in itself while others just want to do as little as possible. I’m somewhere in the middle, I have a couple of rods here and there but I also like to let some regions grow thick with resources before I run in and hack it all down.

[Eldan]

I'm really starting to get into Hollow Knight. I bought it a while ago, but it didn't really click immediately, so I recently gave it another shot. It's safe to say I'm hooked - I understand why it's frequently nicknamed Bug Souls, because it does many of the great things that Dark Souls does - and I always find it extra impressive when games do the whole 'sprawling environment with interconnected pathways , shortcuts and hidden secrets' in a 2D environment.

It feels a bit more forgiving than Dark Souls, though - which I don't mind, as my gaming time is limited these days.

Oh just wait until you see some of the later bosses. Or those required for the better endings. Or the ****ING White Palace and Path of Pain.

[Wookieetank]

Finally made it to KH: Dream Drop Distance yesterday with the family. Been playing through most games in the series on normal, but we're all getting impatient to get to 3 so this one we dropped to easy. Definitely enjoying the upgrade to movement and combat speed, gives things a nice actiony feel. Not a huge fan of the pokemon side of things with this game, but watching the wife and daughter d'aww over all the critters is fun at least.

Started P5 last week and liking it so far. Still working through the intro bits/first palace. Now I just have to finish before Persona Q 2 comes out.

Also been chugging my way through EO:Untold Millennium Girl. Been working through story mode, and I'm not a huge fan of the premade party, but I just found out I could respec chars into different classes at the start of the 4th stratum, so I figure might as well just keep on keeping on at this point.

[Anonymouswizard]

Finally made it to KH: Dream Drop Distance yesterday with the family. Been playing through most games in the series on normal, but we're all getting impatient to get to 3 so this one we dropped to easy. Definitely enjoying the upgrade to movement and combat speed, gives things a nice actiony feel. Not a huge fan of the pokemon side of things with this game, but watching the wife and daughter d'aww over all the critters is fun at least.

While I haven't played 3 yet, Dream Drop Distance is probably my favourite of the Kingdom Hearts games due to Flowmotion and the Command Deck making battle feel really nice. While I can see why some might not like how the Command Deck limits your options to the ones you brought into the battle, I found that in previous games I'd only use whatever spells I had set to fast access and avoid wading through menus, while with the Deck I found combat going a lot smoother because I could cycle to me next attack smoothly. It makes me want to try out Birth by Sleep just to play more using it. There needs to be more ironing out and balancing, but I found it to be significantly more enjoyable.

I'll agree that the Dream Eaters aren't the most thought out, really I'd have saved the concept for a game focused around them (maybe a Kairi adventure?).

[Wookieetank]

While I haven't played 3 yet, Dream Drop Distance is probably my favourite of the Kingdom Hearts games due to Flowmotion and the Command Deck making battle feel really nice. While I can see why some might not like how the Command Deck limits your options to the ones you brought into the battle, I found that in previous games I'd only use whatever spells I had set to fast access and avoid wading through menus, while with the Deck I found combat going a lot smoother because I could cycle to me next attack smoothly. It makes me want to try out Birth by Sleep just to play more using it. There needs to be more ironing out and balancing, but I found it to be significantly more enjoyable.

I'll agree that the Dream Eaters aren't the most thought out, really I'd have saved the concept for a game focused around them (maybe a Kairi adventure?).

I'ma a huge fan of the command deck setup, it also adds a nice bit of strategy to things as well. Having issues with swarms? Stack lightning attacks. Large singe enemies? stack fire/ice attacks. Etc.

I really liked how in BBS you get to combine your various commands to create new/powered up commands. Was a bit easy to break the game when you can make things like Megaflare before you cleared the first set of worlds, but was a lot of fun to mess around with.

I think my biggest issues with the Dream Eaters is that they are a blatant attempt to pull in Pokemon fans (particularly since the game was released on the 3DS originally), and an unneeded new type of enemy. We've got heartless, nobodies, dusks, and unversed at this point, adding in something completely new just seems messy.
Particularly when they're following the same design plan as the previously seen enemy types: small guys, big round guys, flying magic guys, etc. The bosses could very easily pass as heartless as well. At least the unversed had their own visual scheme going on, these guys are just technicolored heartless. /rant

Despite all that, I am enjoying the game and looking forward to playing through the rest of it.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'ma a huge fan of the command deck setup, it also adds a nice bit of strategy to things as well. Having issues with swarms? Stack lightning attacks. Large singe enemies? stack fire/ice attacks. Etc.

I really liked how in BBS you get to combine your various commands to create new/powered up commands. Was a bit easy to break the game when you can make things like Megaflare before you cleared the first set of worlds, but was a lot of fun to mess around with.

Yeah, as I understand it's been getting better with every game it's been in, with the problem being how to grant commands without making it too hard or two easy to get the most powerful ones. Honestly I think that could be easily solved in a game like KH3, imagine that you began with the four basic spells and got commands as rewards for completing story content or engaging in side activities. Don't make connecting Commands too much of an effort


I think my biggest issues with the Dream Eaters is that they are a blatant attempt to pull in Pokemon fans (particularly since the game was released on the 3DS originally), and an unneeded new type of enemy. We've got heartless, nobodies, dusks, and unversed at this point, adding in something completely new just seems messy.
Particularly when they're following the same design plan as the previously seen enemy types: small guys, big round guys, flying magic guys, etc. The bosses could very easily pass as heartless as well. At least the unversed had their own visual scheme going on, these guys are just technicolored heartless. /rant

Despite all that, I am enjoying the game and looking forward to playing through the rest of it.

My problem with friendly dream eaters isn't their Pokémon qualities (although that didn't endear them to me), more that they feel out of place with Dream Drop Distance. It's a story about Sora and Riku being asking alone, and I was disappointed that you were expected to cart a couple of moms around that don't add anything to the story and disappear as soon as cutscenes start.

But expanding on the Technicolour Heartless thing, that's exactly what Dream Eaters should have been. We know that Kairi he's at least some ability to alter Heartless (KH1), and she's obviously less competent with her Keyblade than either Sora or Riku are, so a game where Kairi bonds with a couple of 'tame' heartless that the player has more command over then a standard KH party member could be interesting. But sadly we'll probably never get that, as it seems like Kairi doing anything is not something the series developers like anymore.

[DigoDragon]

Okay... so...

Note to self: don't turn on the Frostfell mod until AFTER you're freed in the Helgen intro quest. My poor Brenton passed out from the cold when the guard called her forward and I'm pretty sure every Nord in that scene laughed just before the game locked up. XD

[Triaxx]

Comments like this make me wish I could like posts.

I have been lured in by the siren song of Dungeon's and Dragon's online. It's actually fairly fun even solo.

[Artemis97]

I've been playing ISLANDERS as a fun little pick it up put it down game. It's so quaint, and the art style is lovely. Very relaxing. And I think it cost like 6 bucks CAD? I'd highly recommend it if you like puzzle games, or city builders, although it's not a classic city builder like Caesar III or anything approaching that complexity. You just get points for placing down buildings in good spots.


I've also begun playing Heaven's Gate, which I saw a post for on Imgur a few times while it was in production. Well now it's out and I'm pretty hooked. So far it's a nice slow paced puzzle adventure game, where the key component is finding and deciphering ancient inscriptions. Makes me feel like an archaeologist.

Lastly I'm on Part 11 of my (mostly) weekly playthrough of Dwarf Fortress. Really excited to see if the cistern I made will hold up when the river finally thaws in the summer. Can the fort get over its depression and continue to be productive in the meantime before another goblin raid comes?

[Silverraptor]

Comments like this make me wish I could like posts.

I have been lured in by the siren song of Dungeon's and Dragon's online. It's actually fairly fun even solo.

I can only play for so long solo before I get bored from the tedium. I would love to try and make a full team and push through DDO sometime.:smallsmile:

[oxybe]

So the smash bros stage builder is quite possibly the best thing ever. the absolutely dumbest things ever are found there and i love it.

i am testing a stage I found called TEQ SSJ4 Gogeta.

it's such a specific reference I love that someone sat there and went: "today I am going to make a stage for smash that's the icon representing this one specific unit in my dragonball gachapon game"

and they did it and posted it and I'm playing it just because I get the reference and Gogeta's hair is made of lava.

It's dumb and I love it.

[Lord Raziere]

So the smash bros stage builder is quite possibly the best thing ever. the absolutely dumbest things ever are found there and i love it.


Yeah, I set up up a closed lava stage with portals so that you can smash someone into an infinite loop of damage and super-speed pinballing until they just auto-fall off, but then fall into the portal at the top from that respawn platform with the portal just teleporting them into more lava so that they being taking damage without me doing anything and start the whole cycle all over again so that the pinballing is fully automated after some start up, is the most beautiful and funny things ever, I'm sad that I can't share it because of the subscription thing.

[LibraryOgre]

Mostly finished the weirdest game of GalCiv II last night.

I, the Thalans, had a somewhat early war with the Drengin, where they eventually sued for peace (it was an inconclusive war; we were both too far from each other to do more than snipe around the borders) and then... nothing. Other people went to war with each other. I stole a few planets with influence. And I just kept getting to steal planets with influence. I have enough starbases that I can reach almost anywhere on the map, and I just flood out a bunch of Constructors, erect a powerful influence station next to a planet or three, and take planets away from people. And they keep giving me money. Like, they just say "Hi, we're the Terran Alliance, we love you so much, let us give you cash!"

I STOLE EARTH FROM THE TERRAN ALLIANCE.

Literally. Parked an influence station between Earth and Mars and the Terrans of Earth said "Hey, we like the Thalans better. Let's give ourselves over to the bugs."

This is made easier by the fact that Thalans start with Space Construction, which lets you have Small sized frames... because you can use a Small sized frame to make a cheaper, tougher, Constructor, Freighter, Colony, and Transport. Sure, they're not fast, and they don't have much range, but you don't NEED speed and range for things like that, most of the time.

I'm honestly at the point in the game where I'm just mopping up. I've got a few planets that turn out Battle Axes, so if someone gets shirty I can crush them in a few weeks. Someone sold me a Precursor Ranger for insane firepower. The entire universe will be bug, soon.

[Cespenar]

I've been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance. While I still think it's earned a place in my Top-10-Games-of-all-Time list, I do have some minor and some not-so-minor niggles with the game.

The minor niggles mostly have to do with the character system, and how there just aren't enough perks to really distinguish one playthrough from another. In each skill area, you can earn all but one perk. That means that you're not so much building around a specialization as picking which one perk out of a list you don't want to get. Pair that with the fact that every character is eventually going to hit the cap in every stat across the board, and each version of Henry seems to become a bit samey. Personally, I'd want to have more perks to choose and to lift the level cap for attributes so I can specialize more.

The not-so-minor niggle mostly has to do with one particular story beat. Minor spoilers be present.
During most of the game, you have an enormous amount of freedom in how you want to go about things, and in which order. You can be a silver-tongued minstrel with enough charm to talk the scales off a snake, a brutish warrior who solves his problems with intimidation and violence, a rogue who creeps around bandit camps with poisoned blade. If you want to blow off the main quest in favor of sidequests and exploration, that's your prerogative.

Then you get sent to Sasau Monastary to track down and kill one of the bandits who raided a stud farm. In order to get in, you need to join the order and become a monk yourself. And the story comes to a screeching halt.

See, the KCD deves were just as committed to a realistic portrayal of 15th century Bohemia in Sasau Monastary as they were in other areas of the game. That means that, as a monk, you're stripped of everything you have, and you're expected to keep to a monk's schedule:
-Up at 4AM and head to the chapel for mass until 6AM
-Breakfast in silence until 7AM
-Work in the gardens and making potions until noon
-Work in the library transcribing books until 4PM
-Mass until 6PM
-Dinner until 7PM
-Freetime until 9PM Curfew

Miss Mass? Don't do your work? Ignore your schedule in favor of doing the other three side quests in the area? The Circators, the enforcers of the Monastary, will track you down. That means that unless you're going to dodge the Circators at every opportunity or just ignore how the quest tells you to do things, you're going to spend about fifteen hours of each day just staring at the wait menu. Go to mess hall, and wait. Go to gardens, make one potion, wait. Go to library, pick three dialogue options, wait. And it's probably going to take you a few in-game days to nail which of the other four novices is your target, much less to carry out your hit.

To make matters worse, this is a portion of the questline that basically requires you to play as a thief-ish character. Don't have 15 lockpicking? Sorry, you won't be able to pick the locks of the doors out of the monastary, so you'll need to pick the pocket of the Prior to get the key. What's that? Didn't put any practice into Pickpocketing either, because you're playing as a Henry that values chivalry? That's a right bummer, innit?

I appreciate that the KCD devs give you multiple ways to identify the target, but it kills me that all of them amount to "play a thief in the nine hours a day you're not tied up in Monastary life." Sneak into the Prior's office to read his notes. Steal a forbidden book to influence an election. Steal the Prior's keys so you can sneak over to the custodian's house and steal some booze. Sneak into a cellar to spy on some senior monks. Break into every room in the monastary to put together a manuscript of Ovid. It's all thieving left and right, which is brilliant for a thief character but not so great for anybody else.

I haven't seen the parts you mentioned in the spoilers yet, but I've enjoyed the game immensely as well. Almost like a realistic Skyrim, yet I've seen so little discussion or praise about the game at all.


I've been playing ISLANDERS as a fun little pick it up put it down game. It's so quaint, and the art style is lovely. Very relaxing. And I think it cost like 6 bucks CAD? I'd highly recommend it if you like puzzle games, or city builders, although it's not a classic city builder like Caesar III or anything approaching that complexity. You just get points for placing down buildings in good spots.

Islanders is pretty enjoyable, yeah. I felt like it (intentionally) hit a pretty sweet spot between minimalism and strategy, where it fortunately avoids ever seeming like a knockoff mobile game. Almost like a Settlers - Zen edition.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well I've gone back to Devil May Cry 4 SE, just beat Mission 11 and I'm up to the switcharoo. I forgot how much I hate these Angelo enemies, although I guess switching characters and being tired didn't help my success in Mission 12.

[Balmas]

Just finished off Metro: Last Light this morning, which kind of leaves me in a void of what to play next. There's a part of me wants to jump straight into Metro: Exodus, but that'd involve an outlay of $60, which seems kind of silly when I have a hundred games in my Steam library waiting to be played. And also Epic Games horsecrappery, but I'm not touching that argument with a fifty foot pole.


Okay... so...

Note to self: don't turn on the Frostfell mod until AFTER you're freed in the Helgen intro quest. My poor Brenton passed out from the cold when the guard called her forward and I'm pretty sure every Nord in that scene laughed just before the game locked up. XD

As a general rule, I try to avoid enabling mods until after Helgen, if I'm not using Live Another Life.


I haven't seen the parts you mentioned in the spoilers yet, but I've enjoyed the game immensely as well. Almost like a realistic Skyrim, yet I've seen so little discussion or praise about the game at all.

I know, right? It's gone curiously under the radar for such a high quality game.

[rooster707]

Just finished off Metro: Last Light this morning, which kind of leaves me in a void of what to play next. There's a part of me wants to jump straight into Metro: Exodus, but that'd involve an outlay of $60, which seems kind of silly when I have a hundred games in my Steam library waiting to be played. And also Epic Games horsecrappery, but I'm not touching that argument with a fifty foot pole.

If you already have the Epic launcher, Transistor is free there right now and it's 100% worth your time. I just finished it last night, it's incredible. Fun tactical combat, but more importantly a beautiful story with amazing characters. Being more specific about why I liked it would probably spoil things, but... go play Transistor right now. Everyone. Please. :smalltongue:

[factotum]

I tried playing Transistor ages ago and I just didn't like it. I mean, I loved Bastion so I got Transistor expecting it to be similar, but I just wasn't any good at the game and got stuck.

[MinimanMidget]

I tried playing Transistor ages ago and I just didn't like it. I mean, I loved Bastion so I got Transistor expecting it to be similar, but I just wasn't any good at the game and got stuck.

I had a similar experience - I loved Bastion, but I just didn't find Transistor fun. I wouldn't say I sucked at it, it just wasn't enjoyable to me. I really liked Pyre, though, so I'm still invested in Supergiant and looking forward to Hades.

[DigoDragon]

As a general rule, I try to avoid enabling mods until after Helgen, if I'm not using Live Another Life.

I am using Live Another Life. It's just the intro sequence goes on longer than you are able to find a warm shirt to put on before the mod kills you. XD


Anniversary with the wife recently happened. She got me Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright as a gift, so I'll check that out this weekend. I heard it's pretty good.

[Silverraptor]

Just finished off Metro: Last Light this morning, which kind of leaves me in a void of what to play next. There's a part of me wants to jump straight into Metro: Exodus, but that'd involve an outlay of $60, which seems kind of silly when I have a hundred games in my Steam library waiting to be played. And also Epic Games horsecrappery, but I'm not touching that argument with a fifty foot pole.


Plus, they seemed to pull Metro: Exodus from the Steam store. Which is a shame because I would have bought it if it went on sale. But I'm not going to go out of my way to go onto their store page for a possible sale that may arise.

[NRSASD]

I had a similar experience - I loved Bastion, but I just didn't find Transistor fun. I wouldn't say I sucked at it, it just wasn't enjoyable to me. I really liked Pyre, though, so I'm still invested in Supergiant and looking forward to Hades.

Yeah, I had the same experience. I certainly enjoyed Transistor, but it was the least favorite of the three for me. I guess the story was a bit too abstract? Arty? for my tastes, and as such I missed out on the emotional punch that makes Supergiant games so good. I saw where it was supposed to happen, but it just didn't land for me.

Pyre, on the other hand, left me in tears hahaha. PLAY PYRE

Regarding Kingdom Come Deliverance: I really enjoyed the beginning, and I love some of the systems (like the clothing/cleanliness mechanic!), but my interest tapered out the further in I got. Which is a real pity, since my archaeological background was overjoyed to see such a serious attempt at portraying Medieval Central Europe.

Unfortunately, the reasons I disliked it are a bit hard to expound upon without treading on forum rules. In short, the game developers put a huge amount of effort into getting the material culture right without considering the societal aspects as well. I wrote a mini-review when the game first came out; you can find it here if you're interested http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22845080&postcount=12.

[Resileaf]

Playing Dragon's Dogma at the moment. It's fairly fun, if a bit big on making you travel from one end of the world to the other for every escort quest you take. Thankfully, the rewards are extremely worth it, as I already have a weapon that I could easily bring into late game. When most RPGs give you a pittance for your efforts, this is a really nice thing to have happen.
The fights against big monsters are fun, it's a bit like playing Monster Hunter, what with climbing on monsters, making them fall on the ground, cutting off parts of them, using those parts to enhance your weapons... Combat against small enemies is comparatively boring and low-risk unless you're in the wrong zone and get constantly wrecked by bandits.
The atmosphere is nice. Night time feels a lot like night time, very dark, much more dangerous, and seeing flames from campfires or torches dance in the background is very neat. Daytime is often sunny and vibrant.
There's a bit too much focus on crafting. Just about every single thing you find can be used to craft something else, so there's quite a lot of wondering if you should keep all that stuff you find. At least there's a storage box to keep all your materials in, especially upgrade materials.

[Cespenar]

I had a similar experience - I loved Bastion, but I just didn't find Transistor fun. I wouldn't say I sucked at it, it just wasn't enjoyable to me. I really liked Pyre, though, so I'm still invested in Supergiant and looking forward to Hades.

To be honest, Bastion was a pretty tough act to follow, and that colors one's bias no matter what.

And even though I agree that Transistor is probably the weakest link of the three, Supergiant still has an enormous amount of credit by me.

[Aspheric]

As someone who really loves Transistor, the combat is quite grating. I'd love to replay some of the later story bits in the game, but I just can't figure out a way to be efficient, or sometimes even effective. I would either use Turns as often as possible and bite the bullets while I wait for it to recharge, or never use Turns unless it was absolutely necessary, which often led to me dying in both cases. And coming off of Bastion, where you're afforded much more freedom and customization, it's not easy to get used to. The lack of defensive options and the mechanic that punishes you for every death you get is especially bad.

The story is worth at least a single playthrough, and the music and visuals are amazing, but I'd really love to see someone mod this before I ever try and play it with all the limiters attached. I respect that there are reasons why the combat is so clunky, but it doesn't make it easy to return to.

I started The Missing a while back, though my laptop is so terrible at running it that I might shelve it until I get an upgrade or can play it on a Switch. It sucks, because I was really looking forward to it, and enjoyed what I was able to play of it immensely. I can't wait to play it more thoroughly, because it hits a lot of the notes that I want in a game... oh well.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark just came out of its beta, and for the next week is going to have a slight discount, so I'm considering it. Do you guys have any first-hand opinions you could share? From both the Steam reviews and the screenshots, it looks very much like an FFTactics game, both on the good side and the bad (I count "a bazillion classes" to be a downside, since I tend to suffer from choice paralysis).

Thanks,

Grey Wolf

[Aspheric]

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark just came out of its beta, and for the next week is going to have a slight discount, so I'm considering it. Do you guys have any first-hand opinions you could share? From both the Steam reviews and the screenshots, it looks very much like an FFTactics game, both on the good side and the bad (I count "a bazillion classes" to be a downside, since I tend to suffer from choice paralysis).

Thanks,

Grey Wolf

Just saw the trailer for this, and I'm filled with temptation. I'd be curious for an answer to this as well...

[Man_Over_Game]

As someone who really loves Transistor, the combat is quite grating. I'd love to replay some of the later story bits in the game, but I just can't figure out a way to be efficient, or sometimes even effective. I would either use Turns as often as possible and bite the bullets while I wait for it to recharge, or never use Turns unless it was absolutely necessary, which often led to me dying in both cases. And coming off of Bastion, where you're afforded much more freedom and customization, it's not easy to get used to. The lack of defensive options and the mechanic that punishes you for every death you get is especially bad.

The story is worth at least a single playthrough, and the music and visuals are amazing, but I'd really love to see someone mod this before I ever try and play it with all the limiters attached. I respect that there are reasons why the combat is so clunky, but it doesn't make it easy to return to.

I started The Missing a while back, though my laptop is so terrible at running it that I might shelve it until I get an upgrade or can play it on a Switch. It sucks, because I was really looking forward to it, and enjoyed what I was able to play of it immensely. I can't wait to play it more thoroughly, because it hits a lot of the notes that I want in a game... oh well.

Keep Jaunt as your out-of-turn option. Try to dash behind cover for your last few Turn actions.

To be efficient, it mostly comes down to good use of on-hit effects and damage boosts. Things like Crash and Get are very powerful if they can affect multiple creatures, which is why their default can only effect a single creature. By combining these abilities with abilities that let you hit multiple creatures (Bounce, Void), you'll instead get about 3x the value out of the normal use of the attack.

That is, combining things like Crash: Bounce + Get, or utilizing Void, and then murdering an enemy in 1-2 fell swoops. Once you figure out that Crash: Bounce+Get brings all the enemies directly in front of you, and lots of attacks have a small AoE, you can C:B+G, moving a few steps forward (So you're now behind the group of enemies you just pulled directly in front of you) and backstab all of them for insane levels of damage.

Most of the game can be easily beaten with good use of Bounce and Get, and learning where enemies get positioned by the combination. What you do beyond that (Purge and Mask to poison the battlefield and run away, Void and Spark to deal a ton of splash damage in one turn, etc) doesn't matter as much as first grouping enemies for multiple effects per action.

You can also replace Jaunt with Mask, using it either as a super-backstab effect, or using it before your Turn is over to evade enemies.

[Aspheric]

Keep Jaunt as your out-of-turn option. Try to dash behind cover for your last few Turn actions.

To be efficient, it mostly comes down to good use of on-hit effects and damage boosts. Things like Crash and Get are very powerful if they can affect multiple creatures, which is why their default can only effect a single creature. By combining these abilities with abilities that let you hit multiple creatures (Bounce, Void), you'll instead get about 3x the value out of the normal use of the attack.

That is, combining things like Crash: Bounce + Get, or utilizing Void, and then murdering an enemy in 1-2 fell swoops. Once you figure out that Crash: Bounce+Get brings all the enemies directly in front of you, and lots of attacks have a small AoE, you can C:B+G, moving a few steps forward (So you're now behind the group of enemies you just pulled directly in front of you) and backstab all of them for insane levels of damage.

Most of the game can be easily beaten with good use of Bounce and Get, and learning where enemies get positioned by the combination. What you do beyond that (Purge and Mask to poison the battlefield and run away, Void and Spark to deal a ton of splash damage in one turn, etc) doesn't matter as much as first grouping enemies for multiple effects per action.

You can also replace Jaunt with Mask, using it either as a super-backstab effect, or using it before your Turn is over to evade enemies.

My plan was usually to kill things with Turn, then Jaunt away until Turn comes back, rinse and repeat till everything dies. I didn't know about that particular combination, Get is the other single-memory melee attack, right? I just wish you got more Memory at the end of the game, it certainly would help, especially in playing with the limiters... Seriously though, thanks for this! Maybe I'll return to this after all

[DigoDragon]

Since Minecraft and I aren't on speaking terms as of yesterday, I decided to burn some time playing MoO4 and pick up a few achievements I didn't collect yet. Farming pirates is really lucrative in the early game.

[Anonymouswizard]

Picked up both Divinity: Original Sin and the Dark Forces Saga, began playing Dark Forces because Divinity is going to take over an hour to reload, and it's exactly the kind of classic shootoer I like. Not too fast paced, but still just you and your laser gun against an entire base of soldiers. On the other hand I suck at key hunting, so looks like I'll be spending a few hours on every level.

[Balmas]

Decided to jump into Bastion. Turns out, it's a lot easier to play when I'm using a controller than when I first tried to mouse-and-keyboard it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Decided to jump into Bastion. Turns out, it's a lot easier to play when I'm using a controller than when I first tried to mouse-and-keyboard it.

That's good to know, I might have to reinstall it.

[Man_Over_Game]

My plan was usually to kill things with Turn, then Jaunt away until Turn comes back, rinse and repeat till everything dies. I didn't know about that particular combination, Get is the other single-memory melee attack, right? I just wish you got more Memory at the end of the game, it certainly would help, especially in playing with the limiters... Seriously though, thanks for this! Maybe I'll return to this after all

There are a few tricks you can learn about working things in Turn. For example, health regen is nearly impossible in Transistor...unless you charm a Worm. Convert one of those suckers to your side and use it as your own personal medbay.

You do earn more memory in the New Game + (called Recursion). After about level 12 or so, you start wracking up Memory like crazy, and you get multiple instances of functions. So you actually can have TWO instances of Crash or something. This might not seem like a big deal at first, but it means that you can have it as a passive, an active, AND as an Active function all at the same time. Kinda cool.

Right now, my combo consists of grouping everything up with a Crash with Bounce and Get and then landing a Cull to kill 2-3 creatures in a single blow. You'll find your own niche.

The trainings will teach you how to utilize different combos while also rewarding you bonus EXP. Might be worth checking out. That's actually how I learned about the value of Void and Crash as damage enhancers.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Started playing Raid Shadow Legends. I just wanted to have something on my phone and Fallout Shelter’s gameplay loop wasn’t cutting it.

I’m a little wary of freemium games due to past experiences but so far Raid seems alright. It helps that the graphics are decent. It actually reminds me of Marvel Avengers Alliance, though I suppose “hero collector” is a genre of its own by now.

[PraetorDragoon]

Reinstalled Dragon's Dogma and going to add the savegame mod so I don't lose 3 hours of progress to a stupid mistake with one of the dumbest save systems I had the displeasure of working with. Hopefully its enjoyable this time.

[DigoDragon]

Had an odd bug crop up in MoO4. During a fleet to fleet battle both sides just... Stopped shooting. The game didn't freeze up and I could still give orders for my side to move, but neither side could fire.

More bizarre, missiles in mid flight stopped moving and floated in place. O_o

I clicked the option to auto-finish the battle and it took me back to the galaxy screen, completing the fight for me and declaring me the winner with acceptable casualties. After that, game worked just fine in subsequent battles. Huh.

[GloatingSwine]

Total War Warhammer 2

Going through the Mortal Empires campaign with everyone.

I've done Short Campaign victories with Empire and Dwarfs, and they're both close to the Long Campaign victory because alliances are so easy for them once Archaeon gets his war on, so I'll go back and finish off if I can be bothered. Both of them have nearly every Old World race in one giant alliance, just a few rats and pirates to squash.




Now starting with the Greenskins. Going to be a bit of a different experience to the last two massive networks of alliance and trade. Figuring out just what to hold and what to let others keep so I can raid it and have people to fight. (Wouldn't want to run out...)

[oxybe]

Started playing Raid Shadow Legends. I just wanted to have something on my phone and Fallout Shelter’s gameplay loop wasn’t cutting it.

I’m a little wary of freemium games due to past experiences but so far Raid seems alright. It helps that the graphics are decent. It actually reminds me of Marvel Avengers Alliance, though I suppose “hero collector” is a genre of its own by now.

Dissida Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, the mobile game with quite possibly the longest name ever, is ridiculously free-to-play friendly.

-Combat is a bit weird in that you first attack to build "bravery" which acts damage you can throw at your enemy, so enemies will try to both lower your bravery and HP through different attacks.
-Each character has 2 main abilities in their kit and a third one is available if you have their EX weapon that is usable on a cooldown timer. different characters are tanks, support, dps, etc...
-gear is largely interchangeable. every sword user can use every 4star & 15cp sword, but the weapon's main user will get a buff for doing so. The 35cp & EX weapons and 5star armours are character-specific though.
-It's been out for a while, so lots of content to play through: 11 chapters in act 1 + a prologue, act 2's first chapter and the second one is coming soon in both normal & hard mode, with some chapters having 40+stages to go through... and that's not counting the events/MP content, lost chapters (mini-chapters for rerelases of non-story characters) & world of illusion (weapon, armour & summon upgrades)
-No stamina bars locking out main game content. MP has a limit on how frequently you can host games, but no limit on joining & world of illusion uses a stamina bar, but it's not too difficult to get stamina refresh potions
-Gems, the premium currency, are plentiful in game and there are weekly events that give tons of free gacha pull tickets. major events often have half-off the first 10+1 draw and there is a guaranteed 5star (though it might not be a banner weapon)
-non-story released characters, like Beatrix, are slowly being trickled out so if you missed them, you will eventually get them. do note that for these non-story characters you will get 2 free copies of their 5star armour for completing their event/rerelease's easy mode, and newer released characters also get a free copy of their basic 5 star weapon.
-multiplayer is not PVP, it's CooP PVE. there's no ladder boards or anything. Winning a MP fight will net you silver & gold tokens to trade for gems, gacha tickets, upgrade materials, armor/weapon token and more. and while there is a limit to how frequently you can host a fight, there is no limit to joining.

Power creep does exist though and some characters are in need of a rework to be viable outside of niche end-game content, but others just rock with their base kit, and most are find for the main game especially when fully upgraded. My FFIX girls team of Beatrix, Garnet & Eiko are just stomping through the main-game hard mode stuff i haven't cleared yet in anticipation of the Act2 Ch2 that's coming around the corner thanks to their powerful synergy.

Also the game is VERY grind heavy. It's a small price to pay for all the F2P stuff we do get, especially when you consider we have several month's foresight on upcoming events/characters/banners, but it can be tiring to grind out all those upgrade mats.

Finally, the monetization. It's pretty bad.

I've spent 1.39CAD on the game total for what was very much a steal of a one-time purchase chest that had 500gems (basically one pull on the gacha), 5 armour tokens (so 1 copy of any character's 5 star armour), 10 XP items, 30 armour & weapon upgrade orbs & some Gil (used to upgrade). note that a "bronze chest" of 120 gems is normally 1.39CAD. So yeah, huge steal and all it cost was the change I made with the Google Rewards app :P.

Outside of those rare steals, it has your 1/7/14/26/52/105 dollar gem packs that whales spend on. There are Kupo Cards, which will net you a better deal of gems over a week then their one-shot equivalent (the 16$ card nets you 3500gems, vs 25$ 3000gems). noting that only the 52$ pack's 6000gems will net you a single 10+1 pull with 1000 gems left over... so yeah, I don't spend my cash on this game. Gems are stupidly priced.

Also waifu costumes are bundled with gems... at the 52$ mark. so default waifus for me.

Thankfully, like I said, I've only spent the 1.39 since playing on release (though I did put it down for a while getting up to speed wasn't hard) that I made on Google Rewards and I've no issues clearing the end-game stuff and I have several characters with all their gear maxed out... the base game is super generous if you're willing to invest time into playing it.

I'm also a sucker for Dragonball Dokkan and it's smexy, smexy special attack animations.

[DigoDragon]

Oh goody. MoO4 just updated, so all my saves got invalidated. :|

Okay, got my saves back. Wasn't an update on MoO4's side, it was something Steam messed up. Re-validating files fixed what it broke. Back to conquering the galaxy...

[Inarius]

Well, I was playing Imperator Rome, but it seems like my current save got corrupted. I might go back and try the latest autosave but its about half a year back and at the moment I'm just slogging through trying to colonize Scotland and Ireland to be able to found Albion as a nation. Its really boring with all the waiting colonizing entails so I'm not sure I'll go back.

While I decide on that I started up Fell Seal which seems fairly interesting so far. Positioning really seems key for limiting incoming damage and they went with the set consumables for a battle which auto refill between battles which tbh I'm more of a fan of for RPGs in general since it makes resources much more balanceable and more likely to be used.

[LibraryOgre]

Been playing GalCiv2, again. Trying to do a screen or so of BG a week, just to bull through it, but the gnome C/T just is so BORING in this game.

For GalCiv2, I am considering disabling the Technology Victory. I've already disable Ascension, but I've won the last couple game just by getting unassailable and Teching my way to victory.

I might go with Drengin or Korath, and just try killing everyone.

[NRSASD]

Playing Total Waaaaaaarhammer (because saying Total War: Warhammer sounds dumb out loud) with a friend cooperatively. I love how they finally figured out how to make multiplayer battles against the AI interesting, by giving the army's owner the option of granting units to your buddy to control.

Just had a beautiful, edge of your seats, brutal battle. 650 wood elves fought 4600 undead. We won, but oh so barely. Battle lasted for 18 minutes and had mountains upon mountains of corpses (all still) by the end of it.

[DigoDragon]

Completed Moo4 with a tech victory as Mrrshan Pride. I might reload my save and do a different win. Hmm, close to building a Doom Star with the Stellar converter. Might blow up a few planets for the achievement...



Been playing GalCiv2, again. Trying to do a screen or so of BG a week, just to bull through it, but the gnome C/T just is so BORING in this game.

Maybe it's been that long since I last played. Not sure what BG and C/T are in this context.

[LibraryOgre]

Maybe it's been that long since I last played. Not sure what BG and C/T are in this context.

Baldur's Gate and Cleric/Thief.

[Man_Over_Game]

Been playing Borderlands: The Pre-sequel with my wife. She's playing a melee build Nisha (becomes harder to kill, gains power the lower life she has) and I'm playing a tank Athena (revolves around using her Shield constantly and supporting the team). So far, it's a lot of fun.

She gets mad because I can tank entire bosses without taking damage (Athena is invulnerable during her shield ability from all frontal attacks). I get mad when I hear Nisha's "High Noon" and watch all the bad guys on my screen get tore up from a dozen headshots in a second. It works out.

[LibraryOgre]

Been playing Borderlands: The Pre-sequel with my wife. She's playing a melee build Nisha (becomes harder to kill, gains power the lower life she has) and I'm playing a tank Athena (revolves around using her Shield constantly and supporting the team). So far, it's a lot of fun.

She gets mad because I can tank entire bosses without taking damage (Athena is invulnerable during her shield ability from all frontal attacks). I get mad when I hear Nisha's "High Noon" and watch all the bad guys on my screen get tore up from a dozen headshots in a second. It works out.

So.... Tank and Spank (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU)?

[Anonymouswizard]

So I've been playing Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition, and I'm quite liking it. I'm find some of the minor things, like the ability to choose your character's default undies, strangely endearing, although I am annoyed at there being only three options per gender.

Also been playing more Kerbal Space Progam. I finally worked out how to use SAS and get into orbit, although I'm still failing to get to the Mun. I'm now messing around in Sandbox to try some 'single engined, droppable fuel tank' style rockets, and see if I can learn to control a spaceplane, before I dive back into career mode and do this properly.

[Man_Over_Game]

So.... Tank and Spank (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU)?

What's interesting about that is that Nisha is both a sadist and a masochist. She's, like....really into pain. Her melee weapon? A whip.

When Athena pulls out her shield, Nisha sometimes yells "Don't hog all the aggro, Athena!" Nisha has no good abilities that help her survive (minus the few in her melee-specific build). In fact, she's the squishiest character (excluding DLC characters). She really just loves getting smacked around.

[warty goblin]

For GalCiv2, I am considering disabling the Technology Victory. I've already disable Ascension, but I've won the last couple game just by getting unassailable and Teching my way to victory.

I might go with Drengin or Korath, and just try killing everyone.

On the properly ludicrous map settings, that could be seriously huge. I'd go Korath, plague ships are way more effective than invading people. It hurts your population growth and tax base I suppose, since bioweapon victims aren't known for paying income tax, but it saves a lot of bother with troop transports.

[Zevox]

I've recently started playing Total War: Rome 2, which I picked up a few months back when a sale on it spontaneously happened the day after I decided to buy Shogun 2. So far, largely liking it. I'm not a big fan of the UI compared to past Total War games, but I'm getting used to it. I do like the provinces system, with only capital cities getting walls while the lesser cities of the provinces are less defended, and controlling entire provinces confers benefits, it's a nice change from every city in previous Total War games being stand-alone fortresses. Not so happy with the fact that armies and navies can no longer travel or be recruited without a general/admiral present, though, that feels overly limiting.

I'm playing as Rome, the Junia to be specific (was surprised it wasn't the same three Roman factions as in the first Rome: Total War). Already took care of the Etruscan League, and am in a war with Carthage that's going well enough so far, though the fact that they had two vassal states that came with them into the war is kind of annoying. But eh, more targets for after Carthage itself falls I guess. I just have to hope the factions north of me don't get any ideas in the meantime, but I've got a spy monitoring them.

I also switched over from Smash Brothers to Dragon Ball FighterZ again, trying out a new team of Freeza, Cooler, and Goku Black. Took a couple of days of getting my butt kicked, but I've finally got something like a handle on it and am winning matches. Feels like Freeza is the weak link of the team though (which is ironic since I designed it around using and supporting him), so I'm thinking about swapping him for another character I like but haven't played much/don't have a defined team for who might do well with those teammates, Android 21. Still, Freeza's pretty fun even if he's not great, as is the thematic element of having him and Cooler on the same team, so part of me wants to stick with it.

[factotum]

Also been playing more Kerbal Space Progam. I finally worked out how to use SAS and get into orbit, although I'm still failing to get to the Mun.

You might want to make Minmus your first target. It takes a bit more delta-V to reach it, because it's further away than the Mun and is also on an inclined orbit, but it's much, much easier to land and take off from because of its lower gravity, plus the dark blue basins on its surface are all at height 0 so you know exactly how far you have to go if you land in one.

[DigoDragon]

Baldur's Gate and Cleric/Thief.

Ah, thank you. Much clearer now.


Constructed my first Doom Star in MoO4 (my games always ended before getting that far in the tech tree). Interesting that they only allow you to build one... but considering how much weaponry you can squeeze into it (plus the Stellar Converter) you pretty much are unstoppable. I have mine with a flank of Titans that screen missiles and tank gunfire for it to just drift into range and nuke the field. Blowing up planets is fun, even if wasteful. :smallbiggrin:

[GloatingSwine]

Playing Total Waaaaaaarhammer (because saying Total War: Warhammer sounds dumb out loud) with a friend cooperatively. I love how they finally figured out how to make multiplayer battles against the AI interesting, by giving the army's owner the option of granting units to your buddy to control.

Just had a beautiful, edge of your seats, brutal battle. 650 wood elves fought 4600 undead. We won, but oh so barely. Battle lasted for 18 minutes and had mountains upon mountains of corpses (all still) by the end of it.

If you want a mountain of corpses, rock up on some Skaven.

Had a 3000 vs 8000 battle last night.

Didn't win that one though, but it was damn close. (because my Waaaaagh! army didn't arrive in time so it was 4 on 2 not 4 on 3 as planned, and whilst Skaven aren't strong they aren't that weak).

Played a bit better I might have been able to do it, getting my Spider Riders round into their missile better instead of them being intercepted would have helped.

Still, Clan Mors are nearly out of the picture now, split those four armies up and handled them separately and drew Queek out of his capital so I can flatten that. Will be armying up with some more stacks as well now I've got the Arachnorok researched.

(They need to overhaul the greenskin techs, they're the only race that have to research a unit).

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Man, I forgot how twitchy these online games can be. The first few days were fine, but recently there’s been random crashes and credit not given for quest completion.

They are reasonably swift with responding to the community, so there’s that. In the absence of an immediate fix, sometimes an acknowledgement goes a long way IMHO.

It also bothers me that the general progression quest line requires PVP participation. There’s nothing that screams “whale” more than the PVP quarter of a freemium game. Four legendaries by level 30? Oh well.

[Anonymouswizard]

You might want to make Minmus your first target. It takes a bit more delta-V to reach it, because it's further away than the Mun and is also on an inclined orbit, but it's much, much easier to land and take off from because of its lower gravity, plus the dark blue basins on its surface are all at height 0 so you know exactly how far you have to go if you land in one.

Maybe, at this point I still haven't quite made a craft that can get into orbit with a Kerbal. I'm also having trouble in Career mode, as I need more Science in order to get some better parts, but can't get my limited science equipment to any new biomes. I knew I should have started with the 'cash income to science' policy, might be time to restart.

[factotum]

I assume you've got science from the area around the space centre itself? You can get a surprising amount just by putting a rocket-less capsule on the launchpad and getting science and crew reports from that!

[Anonymouswizard]

I assume you've got science from the area around the space centre itself? You can get a surprising amount just by putting a rocket-less capsule on the launchpad and getting science and crew reports from that!

I've not worked out how to perform science experiments on EVA, so I've done all the science I can from just a capsule and some science things. Unfortunately I can't haul the capsule to other parts of the space center, so that's about it for me (I expect a lot more science to come along once I get the science for some more experiments...)

[factotum]

I've not worked out how to perform science experiments on EVA

From what I recall (been a while since I played), you can just right-click on the Kerbal when they're outside the capsule and get a crew report from that situation? It counts as a different crew report to the one you get when they're inside the capsule, even if said capsule is in the same location. Plus you can put stuff like Mystery Goo onto the capsule and get those results as well.

[Kailey66]

I play PUBG

[Wookieetank]

Finally finished Dream Drop Distance last night. That game just. wouldn't. end. Thankfully it was all very dramatic and spectacular to watch, but it just kept going and going.

Started up Birth by Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage afterwards and hot damn, the new engine looks fantastic. Spent more time just wandering around and looking at everything than actually making progress. Very hyped about how things are gonna look in KH:3.