What Are You Playing 5: New Thread+

[zlefin]

Finally beat a game of GalCiv3!

Terran Resistance! It was an ascension victory (which are kinda cheap, IMO), but I ruled half the galaxy and two of the three remaining opponents were friends, so I consider the game truly whipped.

How does galciv3 compare to 2? Last I heard (which was years ago), 3 wasn't really any better than 2 with its dlc.


As to what I myself have been doing of late; one thing is I've been working the godhome area in hollowknight to try to complete the pantheons. Hard, but sufficiently learnable and reasonably entertaining.

[Anonymouswizard]

Finished my second run of Bastion.

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It was much, much easier, of course, as I went in with access to a bunch of tier 3 and tier 4 weapons, and by the final levels the Scrap Musket, Duelling Pistols, Army Carbone, and Galleon Mortar were all level 5, plus I could equip an additional three spirits. At that point the Battering Ram kind of felt like a downgrade compared to my jump and guns.

Saved Zulf again, of course, and went for the Evacuation ending. It's much, much more fulfilling than the Restoration ending, especially with all the implications that otherwise the Calamity is just going to happen again. If the gameplay was better then I might have done a third run, but it's time to move on.

I started on Transistor pretty much straight after. The gameplay feels slightly better, although it's still not amazing, and Turn() is incredibly fun to use. Tying your extra lives to your attacks is almost a nice way to partially avert the entire Critical Existence Failure aspect of games, with hard fights leaving me less capable and forcing me to change my load out

Plus, the bosses seem to be much better. No more 'enter room, find a bigger version of a regular enemy, kill it' like in Bastion, bosses here seem to be more unique and play by rules slightly closer to yours than the regular enemies'. The result is that I left the first boss two attacks down after several tries, and wanting another fight like it. Psyched to get home and play more

[LibraryOgre]

How does galciv3 compare to 2? Last I heard (which was years ago), 3 wasn't really any better than 2 with its dlc.

Well, it's prettier.

To me, GalCiv 3 is deadlier; it's easier to get behind on the war curve, and the Drengin are Korath are REALLY aggressive; having them as neighbors can really suck early on. They made the Krynn full-on Malevolent. I feel that making a new civilization is less integrated, and requires more work, but isn't unreasonable.

Special resources are more necessary; there's a lot of things that can't be built without specific ingredients... not a lot of the basics, but more exotic and powerful stuff.

[warty goblin]

I don't have the last GalCiv 3 expansion, but I'd definitely say after the first 1 or 2, it's definitely a better game than 2. I mean it's still a pretty close sequel, but going back to 2 makes you realize how much they changed and improved.

Most notably I think they went a long ways towards making the terrain matter, with this like ships now being built by destructible shipyards that take production from multiple worlds, the strategic resources, and so on. It's been a while since I last played, but I seem to remember they substantially upped the importance of the strategic resources in later patches, to the point where resource access would start to substantially shape your military research and designs. I like resource systems with teeth, so this is excellent in my view.

The citizen system is really good too; every 10 turns you get a dude you can set to improving some aspect of your civ, be that buffing a particular planet, improving a fleet, or whatever. You get more options with research, but the game admirably sticks to its guns on the 1 citizen every 10 turns, rather than implementing some sort of currency you can focus on. This means that they're methods for enhancing a strategy or responding to events on the ground, not a playstyle or strategy even of themselves.

[Anteros]

Well, I picked up Halo Infinite. I'm doing my first playthrough on Legendary and I can definitely see what people mean about the boss fights. I know for a fact I've been shot through a wall at least twice.

As someone who has never played Halo before....I'm surprised by how much of a **** Master Chief comes across as. Maybe I just lack the proper amount of reverence since I never played the previous titles, but he is not a likable character.

Gunplay is good though, and it's fun experimenting with the different weapons. I usually play games on the hardest setting, but I may turn this one down a bit. It's not that the difficulty is impossible...it's just that it really limits my playstyle options and I think I'll have more fun if I turn it down.

I started having performance issues after a few hours. Not sure if there's a memory leak in the game, or it's my system. I had been alt-tabbing a lot. I'll know for sure when I get around to booting it up again.

[Lord Raziere]

As someone who has never played Halo before....I'm surprised by how much of a **** Master Chief comes across as.

???

Have they made him insult people or something? Master Chief usually is just a very stoic and professional soldier who focuses entirely on doing things competently rather than having any personality at all so that the player can put themselves in his shoes. What is going in Halo Infinite to make anyone come to that conclusion?

[Rynjin]

I know in Halo 4 they were having him deal with a lot of people who technically outranked him and were trying to give orders despite being less than a tenth as competent, so maybe two games of dealing with that gave him a short temper lol.

[Anteros]

???

Have they made him insult people or something? Master Chief usually is just a very stoic and professional soldier who focuses entirely on doing things competently rather than having any personality at all so that the player can put themselves in his shoes. What is going in Halo Infinite to make anyone come to that conclusion?

He doesn't insult people, but he doesn't treat them with respect either. Like you said, his primary personality trait is stoic...which is fine for a silent protagonist or something, but doesn't work well when you actually try to tell a story. For example, the game opens with you being rescued by a pilot who has been also stranded in space for months. The pilot makes the perfectly reasonable suggestion that maybe 2 people can't conquer an entire planet and they should go home. Obviously that isn't going to happen because it's a video game, but Chief basically gives him the middle finger, says "screw you do what I say" and refuses to explain any of his plans beyond cryptic nonsense. You'd think he'd be a little more grateful to the guy who saved his life.

I just did the second major story boss and

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rescued a Spartan who was being tortured....who immediately died for no apparent reason. I guess the torture was keeping him alive? If he was able to survive all this time being tortured you'd think he'd last more than a few seconds after rescue. Guy took masochism to a whole new level I guess.

Anyway, I'm very early in. I'm incredibly impressed with the gameplay, but the plot so far has been very mediocre. The second boss fight was much better than the first one at least.

[Rynjin]

The pilot makes the perfectly reasonable suggestion that maybe 2 people can't conquer an entire planet and they should go home.

This suggestion isn't reasonable, everyone knows who Master Chief is (everyone knows who ALL the Spartan IIs are), and everyone knows he's done it like 4 times already, with and without Cortana's help.

[Lord Raziere]

This suggestion isn't reasonable, everyone knows who Master Chief is (everyone knows who ALL the Spartan IIs are), and everyone knows he's done it like 4 times already, with and without Cortana's help.

....Yeah. probably by figuring out the central strategical places to capture and hitting them like surgical knife.

The not thanking him part is in character, I don't recall MC thanking anyone, he has no civilian social skills. He's a bit on the terse side, but cryptic nonsense? Hm. Weird, one would think he'd at least state mission parameters and such clearly, the guy's a leader of the spartans, he's had squad-level command positions.

[Zombimode]

Picked up Skyrim again. With the Anniversery Edition and very careful selection of mods I feel the game is in its most refined state. I'm having a blast for a couple of weeks now

But why, WHY in Todd Howards name does the Saviours Hide not come with pants? It looks so stupid...

[Triaxx]

For some reaspn 99% of the light armor is like that. Must be a Nord thing.

[NRSASD]

I’m playing Project Zomboid with the wife right now. I had passed on it for a long time because it had the ambition but not the content until just recently, but now? Consider me deeply impressed.

It’s a huge amount of simulation-y fun. We’re playing Sims: Zombie Apocalypse Edition basically, trying to survive and lead a mildly ordinary life in an ongoing apocalypse. Very good times, very good fun. We’ve already lost 2 characters each haha

[LibraryOgre]

For some reaspn 99% of the light armor is like that. Must be a Nord thing.

Pants were created by Molag Baal as an offense to the Nord people.

[Dire_Flumph]

Picked up Skyrim again. With the Anniversery Edition and very careful selection of mods I feel the game is in its most refined state. I'm having a blast for a couple of weeks now

I got sucked into Skyrim nostalgia with the anniversary release and started a new game on the PS5 with the anniversary update that I am still having a blast with over a month later.

However, the only new thing I could think to do this run that I've never done before was play 100% vanilla Skyrim with no mods (except the creation club stuff that comes with anniversary). I'm actually impressed that the core game is better and has fewer serious bugs than I expected. Specifically I thought not being able to console my way out of glitches would be a bigger problem than it has been. The only two things I've really missed so far is the ability to sort my inventory by weight from SkyUI, and dealing with a few minor irritations that the Unofficial Skyrim Patch cleared up.

[Anonymouswizard]

Never got into Skyrim, but I'd kill for a similar game with DMC style combat. The first person perspective throws off my attempts to use melee (which honestly feels crap anyway, even on third person), while I've not got the dexterity to be particularly accurate with spells or bows.

I mean, I know that a lot of modern open world games kind of fulfil my requirements, but they're missing that customisable protagonist. Maybe something more like Fable 2.

[Anteros]

This suggestion isn't reasonable, everyone knows who Master Chief is (everyone knows who ALL the Spartan IIs are), and everyone knows he's done it like 4 times already, with and without Cortana's help.

Well....it's perfectly reasonable since the character doesn't know he's in a video game. He doesn't know that the bad guys are going to do stupid video-gamey things like send single squads to his position to fight him, or lure him into traps where they fight him 1 on 1 instead of glassing his position from orbit. I'm only like 5 hours in, and there's several instances already where if it weren't for plot induced stupidity the story would be over.

MC isn't invincible. Without going to far into spoilers, the game opens up with you losing. Military structure has broken down.

....Yeah. probably by figuring out the central strategical places to capture and hitting them like surgical knife.

The not thanking him part is in character, I don't recall MC thanking anyone, he has no civilian social skills. He's a bit on the terse side, but cryptic nonsense? Hm. Weird, one would think he'd at least state mission parameters and such clearly, the guy's a leader of the spartans, he's had squad-level command positions.

Being terse to the guy who just saved your life, and has been stranded in space for weeks orbiting a hostile planet after seeing all his friends die, while he begs to go see his family makes you a ****. It's not that he's bad at social interactions. He doesn't care enough to try. I understand why the character is written this way, but that doesn't mean the character isn't written as a jerk.

The cryptic nonsense is because the writers of the game have decided that being cryptic is a substitute for an actual plot. MC can't talk to other characters, because then the player would know what's going on.

[Lord Raziere]

Being terse to the guy who just saved your life, and has been stranded in space for weeks orbiting a hostile planet after seeing all his friends die, while he begs to go see his family makes you a ****. It's not that he's bad at social interactions. He doesn't care enough to try. I understand why the character is written this way, but that doesn't mean the character isn't written as a jerk.

The cryptic nonsense is because the writers of the game have decided that being cryptic is a substitute for an actual plot. MC can't talk to other characters, because then the player would know what's going on.

Hey I haven't seen the game man, don't bite my head off about it. I'm just stating what I've seen of previous depictions of MC.

[Anteros]

Hey I haven't seen the game man, don't bite my head off about it. I'm just stating what I've seen of previous depictions of MC.

Did you feel like I was biting your head off? I was just responding.

Never got into Skyrim, but I'd kill for a similar game with DMC style combat. The first person perspective throws off my attempts to use melee (which honestly feels crap anyway, even on third person), while I've not got the dexterity to be particularly accurate with spells or bows.

I mean, I know that a lot of modern open world games kind of fulfil my requirements, but they're missing that customisable protagonist. Maybe something more like Fable 2.

Closest things I can think of are Kingdom of Amalur or the new God of War.

[Zevox]

Never got into Skyrim, but I'd kill for a similar game with DMC style combat.

Closest things I can think of are Kingdom of Amalur or the new God of War.

Kingdoms of Amalur was very much trying to be that, yeah. The combat's not as good as Devil May Cry, and it's overall a very easy game (even turning the difficulty up to maximum, I had little difficulty with most of it), but it is intended to be basically an open-world RPG with a largely DMC-esque combat system.

[Anonymouswizard]

Kingdoms of Amalur was very much trying to be that, yeah. The combat's not as good as Devil May Cry, and it's overall a very easy game (even turning the difficulty up to maximum, I had little difficulty with most of it), but it is intended to be basically an open-world RPG with a largely DMC-esque combat system.

Yeah, played it on Xbox years back, needed work but it's probably the best open world RPG I've played for that exact reason. Maybe I'll pick up the remaster if it's cheap during the Steam Christmas sale.

[Zevox]

So, this weekend I'm spending most of my time playing the betas for a couple of upcoming fighting games - DNF Duel and King of Fighters 15. Because for some reason, they decided to hold both betas on the same weekend.

DNF Duel I'm definitely having a lot of fun with. Which is no surprise, being a collaboration between my favorite fighting game devs, Arc System Works, and the developers of my favorite fighting game not made by ArcSys, Eighting (who made Marvel vs Capcom 3). My only real complaint is that it's a no air blocking game, which is not to my personal tastes, but everything else is amazing. The visuals are great, the music is great, the characters are awesome, the combat feels satisfying - and most importantly, the netcode is great. I was a little worried that they might have started this one before ArcSys made the decision that all of their future games would use the rollback netcode they developed for Guilty Gear Strive, but thankfully, not the case. Matches feel like you're offline, pretty much all the time. It's had some problems with dropped connections and difficulties searching for lobbies, but that's par for the course with an open beta - every fighting game dev seems to underestimate how many people will play these.

My favorite characters so far are probably Inquisitor and Dragon Knight, but I also love Striker's combo potential, and Hitman and Kunoichi seem cool as well. (All of the characters are based on classes from a game called Dungeon Fighter Online, so no unique character names, just class names). But honestly, the only characters I can't see myself playing at all out of the ten in the beta are Grappler, Crusader, and Vanguard, whose play styles just aren't to my taste.

As far as King of Fighters 15 goes though... that's a much more mixed bag. There are parts of its combat system that I like (five bars of meter, plenty of combo potential with Ex moves and supers), and parts I'm not so fond of (three-character team game with no team mechanics, quick get-up that ruins oki, no air blocking, precise cancel windows). It has some cool characters that I want to like, but it can be hard for me to get into compared to something like DNF. The netcode seems to be quite good at least, haven't seen any issues with it, so maybe they got the few bugs from the first beta ironed out.

For this beta I've been playing Isla, Blue Mary, and Terry. Isla, sadly, I'm not liking as much as I'd expected to - her play style's a little weird and I've been having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Seems like she wants to poke people with her huge stand heavy punch as one of her main tools, but it actually seems really vulnerable to counter-poking - or just jump-ins, despite its animation looking like it might catch those. Also, I'm not sure if her DP has real invincibility, I feel like I've gotten hit out of it a lot, even when I do the Ex version. Blue Mary I like a lot more than I expected to, I could see playing her in the full game, alongside Chris (my favorite character from the first beta). Terry's okay, but I'm mostly just using him since his play style is pretty straightforward and doesn't take much learning, since most of the rest of the characters in the beta don't appeal to me too much.

I'm probably going to favor playing DNF over KoF for the rest of the weekend, honestly; I'm just having more fun with it.

[Resileaf]

On a whim, I decided to play Heroes of Might and Magic 1, which I got on GoG some time ago.

I have to say, that game is charming as hell! It's got such an old-timey RPG narration feel going on about it that I just love. Pretty basic by the standards of today but despite being such an old game it's very intuitive to play.

[factotum]

On a whim, I decided to play Heroes of Might and Magic 1, which I got on GoG some time ago.

I have to say, that game is charming as hell! It's got such an old-timey RPG narration feel going on about it that I just love. Pretty basic by the standards of today but despite being such an old game it's very intuitive to play.

If you've never played them then you should definitely give HoMM2 and HoMM3 a go once you're done with that one. HoMM3 in particular is probably the absolute peak those games achieved. Get the original, though, they did do a remaster but it was missing half the content because they lost the data somehow...?

Oh, and undead are absolutely sick in HoMM1, from what I recall. Sure, an individual skeleton is weak, but they're not as weak as Peasants, and when you're raising hundreds of them to replace your losses after every battle things can rapidly snowball.

[GloatingSwine]

Oh, and undead are absolutely sick in HoMM1, from what I recall. Sure, an individual skeleton is weak, but they're not as weak as Peasants, and when you're raising hundreds of them to replace your losses after every battle things can rapidly snowball.

That's HoMM2.

1 doesn't have the Undead faction yet.

2 and 3 are, I think, the peak of the series. People who like 4 seem to really like it, but it's different so people who were attached to the old ones don't. (They're on sale on GoG right now, if you can stomach giving Ubisoft money).

[Resileaf]

I'm going to play HoMM 2, 3 and 4, eventually (and the rest which I already have). 5 was my introduction to the series on Steam some...
Checks Steam to see when was the last time I played it
Wow, seven years ago.

I just wanted to see where it started and how well it stood up.

[Iruka]

If you've never played them then you should definitely give HoMM2 and HoMM3 a go once you're done with that one. HoMM3 in particular is probably the absolute peak those games achieved. Get the original, though, they did do a remaster but it was missing half the content because they lost the data somehow...?

To be precise, get the Complete HoMM3 from GOG which includes everything except the standalone expansion Heroes Chronicles, not the HD version from Steam. If you'd like some improved graphics and quality of life changes, there is an excellent HD mod for that. (And fan-made campaigns, expansions, factions ... The HoMM3 scene in 2021 is alive and thriving.)

[factotum]

That's HoMM2.

1 doesn't have the Undead faction yet.

Whoops, sorry, you're right of course. Just all the more reason to play HoMM2!

[Anteros]

If you've never played them then you should definitely give HoMM2 and HoMM3 a go once you're done with that one. HoMM3 in particular is probably the absolute peak those games achieved. Get the original, though, they did do a remaster but it was missing half the content because they lost the data somehow...?

Oh, and undead are absolutely sick in HoMM1, from what I recall. Sure, an individual skeleton is weak, but they're not as weak as Peasants, and when you're raising hundreds of them to replace your losses after every battle things can rapidly snowball.

I would argue that 2 is the best of the series. I know most people prefer 3, but 2 had much better campaigns, custom scenarios, and the the art style is the best of the series. 3 is also a very good game, but I just don't prefer it as much.

[NeoVid]

On the subject of Halo Infinite, there's a solution to the boss fight slog, thanks to a recent guide about where to find the strongest hidden weapon in the game.

...The guide is by The Spiffing Brit, however, so you should know what you're in for.