Wrapped up Horizon Zero Dawn earlier today and really enjoyed it. Great story, great cast of characters, fun gameplay, and while I didn't 100% it, the amount of side quests, collectibles and whatnot are just the right amount to be fun and not a chore like some open world games out there that flood the map with them. Though I will say that the rewards for these fetch quests were a bit disappointing, but oh well. Want to say, bring on the sequel, but that'll sadly be a console exclusive for the next couple years.
BrookM wrote: Wrapped up Horizon Zero Dawn earlier today and really enjoyed it. Great story, great cast of characters, fun gameplay, and while I didn't 100% it, the amount of side quests, collectibles and whatnot are just the right amount to be fun and not a chore like some open world games out there that flood the map with them. Though I will say that the rewards for these fetch quests were a bit disappointing, but oh well. Want to say, bring on the sequel, but that'll sadly be a console exclusive for the next couple years.
Yep HZD is probably one of the best games I have played in my lifetime. The sequel will probably be what causes me to get a PS5... assuming one can ever again purchase a PS5 not through a scalper.....
I got HZD when it came to PC a couple of months ago, played it non-stop for two weeks and thoroughly loved it. However my take on it is that it is an amazing game that doesn't do anything individually amazing. Instead it does everything to a high level and never let's its standards slip.
Good story, scenery and main character, varied enemies, satisfying weapon selection, well laid out main quest which unlocks the world naturally, short side quests which don't become tiresome or perfunctory, good supporting cast of characters, good scope of collectables and achievements without becoming grindy - in short, a well produced game where the directors knew where to draw the boundaries. They polished what they wanted to put in and didn't bloat it with crap.
I played it for two weeks and will probably never play it again, even though I didn't do the expansion. But I will tell anyone who likes games that this is one they really should play. I got my money's worth and will have nothing but fond memories of it.
Edit: just a thought, but the directing style feels similar to Dragon Age 2 - a game that tells a story in acts, within limits that aim to feel open world while being obviously staged, and that attempts to limit the inventory while, again, making it feel much more open. HZD was successful in this where DA2 completely failed and I'm going to have to spend a little while figuring out why.
Agreed! I love open-world games a lot, so playing through one that doesn't feel like a cynical chore where the story is more of an afterthought than the collecting of the side material is a breath of fresh air for me. They just could've gone with better rewards for the collection of the metal flowers, Banuk figures and whatnot. Hunting for some of the animal components (Raccoon skin!) was also bothersome, taking way too many tries to finally get those. Also did not bother with the hunting lodge challenges, a bit too finicky and stressing for me to try and get within the allotted time.
The Frozen Wilds expansion is okay. Mind, great characters again, some nice additions to both the lore and overall picture, but one of the new enemies introduced, the DAEMON BEAR FROM HELL, is just plain annoying to deal with. I did like that I could tackle the DLC straight after becoming a seeker and before leaving the Cradle for the main story, meaning I was quite over-levelled for most of the game, carrying some of the best gear available. Being able to overdraw a bow with those piercing arrows is amazing against certain annoying enemies, especially with the right upgrades slotted in, bumping the damage to absurdly hilarious levels when you land a crit.
Started Playing Outer Worlds. Suprsiingingly, its a pretty good casual RPG with a lot of borderlands/firefly style humor. Probably the best ship interior design I've seen outside of Mass Effect.
Finished the campaign in Desperadoes III. Another fantastic real time tactical game. The last part of the last mission - take out 8 members of a gang at once, without being seen, and if you miss even one you auto-lose - was very, very tough, especially when your gunslinger (who can use both pistols at once) is stuck in the centre of an open courtyard, surrounded by guards, and unavailable to you.
I've got the three DLC missions to do, and there's a mode that lets you add missing characters to existing missions.
The only thing in the game that annoyed me was how few times you had all 5 characters available to you, and this mode actually addresses that. I'm sure adding them will make things easier, but I figure if you've finished the missions the real way having some fun is ok.
Shadow Warriors: Blades of the Shogun (the developer's previous game) did the same thing. There was exactly one mission that used all of the characters.
The Witcher 3 newgame+ and this time made sure Letho lived. Wish he was in the game more, and wish Iorveth was in 3 as well. But them's the brakes. It's pretty funny that I had to infiltrate the north like some kind of spy just to get a damn shave and hair cut lol
Phoenix Point had a rather interesting mission i want to talk about. So there was a parody of elon musk becoming a pirate king and you had to stop him and his band of bandits for synedrion. Oddly i took care of the snipers first with my 2 snipers and then overwatched with everybody else. They then decided to make a mad dash towards me and i tore through just about every enemy due to the heavily exploited enemy A.I..
I like elon musk irl but he's gotta be wrong about A.I. being so powerful in 20 years if it still plays in an exploitable ways and stupidly or maybe video game programmers just suck at it and rely on cheats or force handicaps on the human player for their A.I. to win.
Anyway after i killed most of the enemies i start getting owned by a dude with a flamethrower. It ends up being elon musk's parody. Once he gets in range i take him out but not before his flamethrower did a number on my guys and notably kills one of the weaker soldiers. Aside from that it was a fairly solid mission and a good bit of silliness with elon musk's boring company's flamethrower that doesn't work. The game does have some humor it seems. One of the synedrion haven's phrases is "we're hoarding the toilet paper" which is quite silly. It must've been a year one update in the steam version.
flamingkillamajig wrote: So there was a parody of elon musk becoming a pirate king and you had to stop him and his band of bandits for synedrion.
Is he based on Mars? Cause I could see Elon Musk trying to become the god king of Mars (he has a rather bizarre fascination with the idea IRL if you ask me XD).
flamingkillamajig wrote: So there was a parody of elon musk becoming a pirate king and you had to stop him and his band of bandits for synedrion.
Is he based on Mars? Cause I could see Elon Musk trying to become the god king of Mars (he has a rather bizarre fascination with the idea IRL if you ask me XD).
It's a missed opportunity for sure. The parody version according to synedrion was eccentric (incredibly accurate) and a sociopath (dunno if I'd agree with that).
The mars thing still seems weird to me. I think people said the irl elon musk has resources that can be taken from mars which I'm fine with but aside from the thought of colonizing space mars doesn't sound so great. I mean even to make it self sustaining. It's just such a grand idea but I don't think it can be realized so easily or quickly and the why bugs me. I think the line was from the original Jurassic park but you asked so much that you could that you didn't ask if you should. I couldn't stand months of space flight with freeze dried food living on a mostly inhospitable planet stuck in a dome with the same bunch of people. Then again I suppose when Disney land first came around it was pretty barren.
In the game I started capturing more mutant cthulu crab men with synedrion neural paralysis pistols. They are so much better for stunning them and now that I know how capture works in this game I did research on em. Depending on the creature and the hybrid you can actually kill them and eat them. New Jericho doesn't fully approve and I get it but we need food right now.
I'm starting to lean more towards synedrion now but more for the tech. I think synedrion should be displayed with a more negative light to balance out all the bad vibes new Jericho is starting to get. The most I get from synedrion is they don't agree on a course of action, they're anarchists not pacificists according to a synedrion soldier (If they're anarchists how do they have a society that doesnt fall into absolute crime and disorder? This makes no sense irl and wouldnt work like the game shows.) And some of the founders of synedrion are Marxists in the games written in-game wiki. That makes me a bit uncomfortable but your mileage may vary. As I said each of the 3 sides has negatives. New Jericho are starting to come across as authoritarian though. I havent seen enough of the disciples of anu mutant cult but imo they just seem irresponsible. So I choose between the cult that mutates without worrying about consequence, new Jericho which has no ethics for bionics and comes off authoritarian or the Marxist anarchist group in synedrion with no hierarchies which argue about things as small as putting toilet paper over or under (over is the correct way and I won't change my mind). I guess I will go synedrion but I don't like it. I'm telling myself I'm mostly doing it for the sweet tech but my relationships with all 3 groups are really positive right now.
The disciples of anu virus rifles I got sound really sweet though and I can make them now. We will see how that goes. If I recall virus damage leaves enemies to be panicked more easy and goes against will stats. Paralysis works against strength. Sadly I think many strong enemies have both. Shock damage is solid though (powerful weapons get this) and I think it was based around armor and hp vs shock value. I could be wrong though.
One of these days I'll have to revisit either Desperados, Commandos or Shadow Warriors. Played a lot of Commandos back in the day, but they've always felt less like strategy games and more like puzzle games where you are required to find the solution the devs want you to apply to the problems they've created for you.
I've been replaying Dawn of War 2 for now, both as a general revisit and to mine it for ideas for a Crusade project. I'm happy that the game still lives up to my memories and expectations, with its 12th birthday a month of so away.
Also, more Brigador. Its soundtrack has been on repeat these last few days of work as well.
I can't speak for Commandos. But Shadow Warriors usually had multiple solutions. There's even an achievement for being particularly creative in dealing with the big bad.
having a run in Attila Total war as Western Roman empire... So many last stands of my garrisons.
I do good ?!? 50+ turns in and i have "kinda" expanded. (lost 0 territory and have now two major settlements in germania because these specific tribes didn't leave me alone)
I have stabilised public order to the point where i don't need bread and games anymore, i have full army count.
I pacified the british isles, sadly i had to wipe out the ebdanians but that has to do with them constantly breaking peace with me, picts and caledonians are puppet kingdoms, one even voluntarily joined which is wierd as i never had that happen.
I do have a strict no migration policy though. As in not in my "empire" , am perfectly willing to resettle border territories that don't originally belong to me.
I also have a strict "no Huns" policy. which paid off magnificently.
further , making 10k bank and having 8 full and 2 reserve armies is damn impressive for corruption levels
Phoenix point is a good game so far in my playthrough. The most notable negative I can think of are the bad soldier voice actors. There's maybe one good female voice actor and she does cutscenes as well as voice a soldier you can have. Part of the issue is the soldier voice acting is at best English as a 2nd language voice actors and the acting bit is cringy bad some times. All the cutscenes and messages from character in the game are all well voice acting in comparison. Can't say why there such a divide here. Maybe some of the game makers figured the soldier dialogue wasn't that important so they did it themselves or paid some random dude on the street to do the voices.
Anyway the game is mostly good. Some parts it learns from xcom but others it doesnt. The 3 sub factions will eventually declare war against each other and the game gets progressively harder in weird ways.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Phoenix point is a good game so far in my playthrough. The most notable negative I can think of are the bad soldier voice actors. There's maybe one good female voice actor and she does cutscenes as well as voice a soldier you can have. Part of the issue is the soldier voice acting is at best English as a 2nd language voice actors and the acting bit is cringy bad some times. All the cutscenes and messages from character in the game are all well voice acting in comparison. Can't say why there such a divide here. Maybe some of the game makers figured the soldier dialogue wasn't that important so they did it themselves or paid some random dude on the street to do the voices.
Anyway the game is mostly good. Some parts it learns from xcom but others it doesnt. The 3 sub factions will eventually declare war against each other and the game gets progressively harder in weird ways. The difficulty curve starts off really slow but you can potentially get destroyed later. In xcom and xcom 2 they get harder but wants you reach highest tech and gear the enemy difficulty plateaus. In phoenix point it seems you want to end the game fairly quickly before humanity is mostly wiped out but also because of the strength and frequency of attacks going up esp. When the 3 sub factions declare war on one another. The whole world is getting fethed and yet people find it more important to destroy each other during the near end of the world than to rebuild and defend each other from mutants.
Began yet another Fallout: New Vegas game after watching a long, long retrospective of it. Love it so much it isn't funny. Top five favourite games. which include.
Fire Emblem 7
Resident Evil 4
Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift
Fallout: New Vegas (of course)
And Metroid Prime.
Me and my wife are playing RDR2 now, close to finishing.
Credit where credit is due - atmosphere and graphics are excellent, much better than other open world games I've played on PS4. And characters are pretty interesting.
But the game underneath is ABYSMAL.
I remember playing RDR1 on PS3 and throughout the game wondering why people admire this game so much. RDR2 repeats exactly the same godawful design. Basically if you take any open world game, like the Witcher, Skyrim, Fallout, Dragon Age and cut out 90% of content you get RDR.
I know people mock the "press X to pay respects" moment in COD but this is exactly how quests are designed in RDR games. You start with a lengthy non-interactive cutscene, then you travel to a specified point on the map where in most cases you
-push the exact sequence of buttons the game directly tells you to push
-follow an individual (which is just another cutscene tbh)
-take part in a dumbed down, most basic cover-shooter sequence (also too easy thanks to heavy aim assist* and Dead Eye)
-play a pointless mini-game which best belongs on a mobile phone
Than you watch another long cutscene and you're done.
Player agency and choices (both story and gaemplay) are almost non-existant. Forget creative problem solving. It's an empty world where you travel from one "push X to pay respects" to another. Also
-character progression doesn't really exist
-exploration is pointless, there's nothing to be found out there
-items are irrelevant, I've never felt any urge to buy anything, why do shops even exist?
-economy is broken, or rather non-existant as well
-camp activities serve no purpose, you can choose not to bring any resources at all and all is well
So why are we close to finishing the game and why did I finish RDR1? Apart from the story, which is really ok, we're both into horses and horse riding, an activity we can't perform much of IRL. We find this travelling on horseback relaxing and soothing. If GTA is exactly like RDR but with horses replaced by cars it's probably one of the worst games imaginable to me. I can't fathom how it is so loved.
*-to prove how easy it is to my wife I passed one such sequence looking directly at her and pressing L2-R2-L2-R2-L2-R2
Cyel wrote: Me and my wife are playing RDR2 now, close to finishing.
Credit where credit is due - atmosphere and graphics are excellent, much better than other open world games I've played on PS4. And characters are pretty interesting.
But the game underneath is ABYSMAL.
I remember playing RDR1 on PS3 and throughout the game wondering why people admire this game so much. RDR2 repeats exactly the same godawful design. Basically if you take any open world game, like the Witcher, Skyrim, Fallout, Dragon Age and cut out 90% of content you get RDR.
I know people mock the "press X to pay respects" moment in COD but this is exactly how quests are designed in RDR games. You start with a lengthy non-interactive cutscene, then you travel to a specified point on the map where in most cases you
-push the exact sequence of buttons the game directly tells you to push
-follow an individual (which is just another cutscene tbh)
-take part in a dumbed down, most basic cover-shooter sequence (also too easy thanks to heavy aim assist* and Dead Eye)
-play a pointless mini-game which best belongs on a mobile phone
Than you watch another long cutscene and you're done.
Player agency and choices (both story and gaemplay) are almost non-existant. Forget creative problem solving. It's an empty world where you travel from one "push X to pay respects" to another. Also
-character progression doesn't really exist
-exploration is pointless, there's nothing to be found out there
-items are irrelevant, I've never felt any urge to buy anything, why do shops even exist?
-economy is broken, or rather non-existant as well
-camp activities serve no purpose, you can choose not to bring any resources at all and all is well
So why are we close to finishing the game and why did I finish RDR1? Apart from the story, which is really ok, we're both into horses and horse riding, an activity we can't perform much of IRL. We find this travelling on horseback relaxing and soothing. If GTA is exactly like RDR but with horses replaced by cars it's probably one of the worst games imaginable to me. I can't fathom how it is so loved.
*-to prove how easy it is to my wife I passed one such sequence looking directly at her and pressing L2-R2-L2-R2-L2-R2
I recently tried playing it for the first time and I have to agree with all of this. The game is beautiful. Like, one of the nicest looking titles I've ever seen. The visual fidelity is a work of art, to be sure. I just couldn't get into the gameplay though, and I don't have your affinity for horses to keep me invested.
I finally beat the Outer Worlds. It was a lot of fun, even if I ran into this wierd glitch where my companions would execute people whose lives I had spared. I have no clue why and it was both funny and annoying when I'd walk away from a former bad guy only to hear *Boom* and my companion reporting 'Got Em Boss"
Embarrassed to admit I've been playing a whole lot of a free game called Gems of War. It's just a match 3 game but actually has a pretty deep RPG system layered on top.
Mod edit - Images spoilered due to their page-stretching size
Been "playing" Soul Calibur VI, meaning mostly having fun making my characters in the character creation system.
Anargrin from The Angaran Chronicles.
Spoiler:
And Attelus Kaltos from Secret War.
Spoiler:
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, because I was reading One Piece decided to make a few of the characters. Want to make Zoro but there seem to be very few options to make of him.
Tyranid Horde wrote: Played some multiplayer Civ 6 at the weekend and really enjoyed it as normally I stick to single player.
Nothing quite like robbing someone of a wonder that they've been working on and hearing a cry of frustration through the headset
I've been catching up on the 'New Frontiers Pass,' which I picked up on sale over the holidays.
I'm looking forward to the Vietnam and new district update (both look really interesting), but Babylon is simply unfair. Not sure who thought 'get inspiration= get the whole tech' would be remotely balanced, but surprise, surprise, it isn't.
I'm just about finished running over the map with giant robots, I've researched everything, and only three other empires even made it to the information age.
I do like the 'tech shuffle' mode, sometimes it makes things easier, but mostly it just breaks up the predictability of the game.
Perhaps kind of sad but Pokemon Diamond on the Nintendo DS. I missed it first time around and recently got hold of a mini DS, bloody hell is it addictive!
Tyranid Horde wrote: Played some multiplayer Civ 6 at the weekend and really enjoyed it as normally I stick to single player.
Nothing quite like robbing someone of a wonder that they've been working on and hearing a cry of frustration through the headset
How are you finding it with the difficulty?
I played IV a few times, thought I was doing OK "got a few warriors, my first bowman, working on a mounted archer" suddenly a group of crossbowmen and medievil infantry come over the hills and wipe me out, being apparently several eras ahead in military technology
Civ 6 doesn't really have difficulty, they just doubled down on the free bonuses the AI players get as you move difficulty up (multiple free settlers, techs, and units at turn 1 at deity)
Once you get used to the standard build order, losing becomes very, very difficult to manage except at the last two difficulty settings.
As an example:the last time in played, I noticed that from turns 150-250, 3 civs didn't have any military units whatsoever. Half their cities didn't even have walls.
I've been playing some Jurassic World: Evolution. I picked up Claire's Sanctuary during the Winter Sale, and, well, whoever designed the thing is an idiot.
There are a number of issues with what I've seen so far in Claire's Sanctuary. Some are nuisances (for one thing, the dinosaur AI really isn't designed to handle "feral" dinosaurs, which is a problem that also turns up on Isla Sorna), and some are more serious. The most serious one by far was a complete progress halter.
Spoiler:
At one point you're told that the volcano on the island that you're on is going to erupt, and you need to pick eight dinosaurs. These dinosaurs are the only dinosaurs that you can evacuate from the island. So far, so good.
When you arrive in your new location, you have to start building a new facility. You're told that the dinosaurs you saved will be arriving shortly, and you need to get everything ready for them. The first dinosaur you picked arrives. Shortly afterwards, the second dinosaur arrives. A little while later, the third dinosaur arrives. Then there's a short break before the fourth dinosaur is delivered, followed a little while later by the fifth. At this point the game literally comes to a screeching halt. Claire informs you that she needs to make sure that the dinosaurs are comfortable, so you need to keep the comfort levels of ALL of the dinosaurs above 80% for a few minutes. The sixth dinosaur won't be delivered until you've gone through this waiting period. The problem is that most of the dinosaurs in the game get unhappy if there aren't others of their kind around. Having an inkling of the kind of situation I might find myself in shortly, I picked six dinosaurs who don't need to be around others of their own kind, and two dinosaurs who need to be around at least one other dinosaur of their own kind.
Those two dinosaurs were the fifth and sixth dinosaurs that I selected. And since the dinosaurs are delivered in the same order that you pick them, that meant that dinosaur number five got lonely right after she was delivered, and her comfort level started to drop.
You CANNOT keep an unhappy dinosaur above 80% comfort level for the length of time required. And since I wasn't allowed to bring in dinosaur #6 until AFTER I had demonstrated my ability to keep the dinosaurs happy, I was unable to move forward with the mission. So I quite literally got screwed over by a no-win situation set up by an idiotic mission designer. If the mission had not suddenly decided to put everything on hold for a few minutes to make sure that the dinosaurs were "happy", but had instead delivered dinosaur 6 at the same rate as the earlier dinosaurs, I would have been fine. Now that I know how it plays out, I can work around that problem. But that's only possible because I now have advanced knowledge of what's going to happen.
Pikmin 3 is going well. It almost feels too easy though. I think that's partly because this one has a story and they removed the dungeons. So you can b-line it towards objectives with ease, and aren't losing as many pikmin along the way.
I don't know why exactly but bought RE6 in the Resident Evil discount in Steam despite the fact I already own it on PS3 and it's easily the worst RE game I've played. Well, I do know why exactly, but won't say why lol. Been playing the Mercenaries mode and it's pretty fun.
And now after the latest update, I can play Cyberpunk 2077 without it crashing when I try to open it! Although, not being able to play it spared me the embarrassment of showing Panam how terrible I am at driving. I half expected CD Projekt Red to have her say 'Huh, you're a pretty crappy driver, aren't you?' As I try and drive through the desert in their van, but didn't do too badly lol.
I’ve had quite a gamey time lately. Been doing some blasts from the past in Caesar 3 and heroes of might and magic 2. Also some Gladius. Gotta say I’ve grown fond of Gladius. I managed a game of playing Imperium vs 6 allied tyranid bots. Then I did a game of orks playing vs 5 guards and 1 space marine (all allied of course). Currently doing 6 necrons in a 3v3 while I play eldar without Eldar. It’s so much fun! Almost been thinking I should start streaming this stuff.
Got into Star Wars Squadrons. I'm still just in the story mode, having a blast as a fragile TIE fighter strafing turrets and cannons like in the old days with TIE Fighter. I remember being a much better pilot than I am now though!
I almost got 100% completion in Pikmin 3. Just a few missions left in the Olimars Return side story that they added in the switch release. Just a few fruits left in the main campaign. I'm really enjoying the game, however, I find it slightly too easy. I can't remember if it asked for a difficulty level when I booted it up, however, just making the enemies harder to kill wouldn't really fix the problem. It just doesn't feel satisfying to collect the fruit like it did tracking down ship parts in the original or clearing out the dungeons of treasure in Pikmin 2.
As for games I'm playing without my wife. I started up the original Dark Cloud game on the Playstation Now. (it's originally a PS2 title, but they did some backward compatibility magic with it on PS4 awhile back). I had forgotten how clunky the combat is and how much I hate playing as Goro. The weapon reach is just so short and it makes hit timing a pain in the ass. Thankfully I stumbled upon the Broken Dagger Glitch and it still works in the PS4 version. So now if I ever hit a wall thanks to clunkiness I can just make the character into a god so I only have to use them when they are required and skip grinding with characters I don't have fun playing.
I dunno what it is but I keep playing the Paradox Battletech PC game. Got like 200 plus hours in it , completed the campaign, a couple additional career playthrus and I am still going. I think because it is just so easy to fire it up and do a couple missions in between other stuff.
Also continuing Persona 5 Royal; good stuff, somewhat looking forward to the Persona 5 Strikers game that is due out EOM.
SNES version of Shadowrun.
Not sure why i booted it up but i am glad i did.
Enjoying asking evey npc about 'DOG'.
No luck yet.
Recommended.
cranium bomb/10
About 30 turns into an overhaul mod of Total War: Attila. Medieval Kingdoms 1212 AD. Its quite impressive.
It uses the base map of Attila, so the entirety of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. There are like 60 playable factions.
Right now, I’m playing as Antioch and I drove up north into what is modern Turkey and conquered the Sultanate of Rum, eliminating Muslim power in the peninsula. Now I’m surrounded by friendly Christian Kingdoms and just joined the Crusade. They even ported over the Crusade announcement dialogue from Medieval 2. Brought back memories!
I think I’ll get further into this campaign and then see how crazy a Khwarazmian campaign is when the Mongols arrive. Or try one of the main Euro factions.
Got hyped about the new total war trailer. Fired up my last total warhammer campaign. Remembered why I had left it off. Playing as the Empire. The legendary chaos Invasion of 12 full armies was just at my door. I had prepared with 5 full armies to face it. The legendary trio (Balthasar, Franz and Volkmar) led the defense against chaos. 4 insanely bloody battles later and both sides where decimated. Managed to fight two 4v4 stacks battle in river crossings. Gunpowder and magic saves the day! Luckily my allies, Bretonnia, wood elves and Hochland did a great job of keeping my other boarders safe. So far so good but the war against chaos rages on.
I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077, and Hearthstone these days.
balmong7 wrote: I almost got 100% completion in Pikmin 3. Just a few missions left in the Olimars Return side story that they added in the switch release. Just a few fruits left in the main campaign. I'm really enjoying the game, however, I find it slightly too easy. I can't remember if it asked for a difficulty level when I booted it up, however, just making the enemies harder to kill wouldn't really fix the problem. It just doesn't feel satisfying to collect the fruit like it did tracking down ship parts in the original or clearing out the dungeons of treasure in Pikmin 2.
I got Pikmin 3 on switch for my Fiancé for Christmas. She played it non-stop for days until she got to the mysterious lifeform/save Olimar boss part and she just gave up lol.
Just finished platting Nioh 2, it had a good way of being a prequel to the first game while also tying up loose ends from the first game's DLC. Solid game all around and lots of improvements on the first one. Going to move onto Ghost of Tsushima next, really looking forward to the coop options.
jaredb wrote: I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077, and Hearthstone these days.
balmong7 wrote: I almost got 100% completion in Pikmin 3. Just a few missions left in the Olimars Return side story that they added in the switch release. Just a few fruits left in the main campaign. I'm really enjoying the game, however, I find it slightly too easy. I can't remember if it asked for a difficulty level when I booted it up, however, just making the enemies harder to kill wouldn't really fix the problem. It just doesn't feel satisfying to collect the fruit like it did tracking down ship parts in the original or clearing out the dungeons of treasure in Pikmin 2.
I got Pikmin 3 on switch for my Fiancé for Christmas. She played it non-stop for days until she got to the mysterious lifeform/save Olimar boss part and she just gave up lol.
It's worth pulling up a walkthrough for that bit. Essentially you have to kite the monster around in a circle with one character while using the others to open the path to the exit. The nice thing is that progress is maintained over multiple days. So I just took 2 days to get everything set up, then went back on the third day and just ran straight to the exit.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Skyrim. Got it ages ago, but two characters got all murdered to death when they were travelling to a location, so I couldn’t complete it.
Three evenings under the belt, and really hitting my stride.
I keep thinking I should get a pc copy of Skyrim and try some mods out. My old copy is for my PS3. Sunk many hours into that game.
Currently doing Thea 2 the shattering. I love the Thea games though I certainly prefer the 1st one. They get dull once you start repeating quests to much but up until that point they are a blast. For those that don’t know them it’s basically the early game of Civilization in a Slavic folklore (-ish) fantasy setting with 5-50 characters and branching stories.
Skyrim mods can be either very, very weird, or very, very cool.
There's Skill overhauls (Ordinator, et.al.) which really change up the combat and exploration aspect of it, there's entire new sections and areas and questlines (Bruma, et. al.), and the Survival/Realism mods turn it into a cool, "The Long Dark"-esque survival game.
More Brigador and more Deep Rock Galactic, for which the latest update hit recently and added a pair of nice new biomes, along with some minor quality of life things patched in.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I started Arkham City for the first time in 7 years. I'm very bad at it. Lost my edge.
Nice to see it on a 75" screen though.
The best of the games in that series. More fully developed than Asylum. Less buggy than Origins. And no horrible driving segments. The only real downside is the lack of Scarecrow sequences.
I had a lot of fun with both Asylum and City. Getting that 50+(?) combo without anybody laying a hit on you in return was absurd the amount of jumping and dodging Bats did, but satisfying to pull off.
Also a pair of games that I happily 100%'d, as they had just the right amount of side tasks to not go full Ubi.
Finally beat Breath of the Wild. Only managed to get about 856 of the Korok seeds though before I decided to just finish the damn game. I'll probably go back and properly finish it up later but I want to play something else as I'm Zelda out at the moment.
Have got Civ 6 on the Switch (it was on sale). I have it already on the PC but wanted something I can be super lazy and lie down on the sofa with. Have to say am shocked by how good a conversion it is, really nice work on the interface you can move around pretty well and get to all of the menus pretty easily.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: Finally beat Breath of the Wild. Only managed to get about 856 of the Korok seeds though before I decided to just finish the damn game. I'll probably go back and properly finish it up later but I want to play something else as I'm Zelda out at the moment.
Think the same thing happened to me! Just want to get to the end of the game, think I was shocked by how few seeds I had as a percentage, felt like I had got a lot more while I was playing!
Got Ghost of Tsushima for my birthday, so been knocking around there. . . man this game is so much fun. Just the right amount of brutality, without going full on Souls game, interesting story (thus far), and everything just looks so damn amazing.
Adrassil wrote: Ahh! I have it on PS2 been looking at it on my shelf thinking of replaying it again, hadn't since it came out. An excellent game.
One of my favs. I've played it through about 4 times in the past, but not in nearly a decade, so it's fun to go back to it. I intend to complete it fully again, including all the Catwoman stuff.
Eumerin wrote: The best of the games in that series. More fully developed than Asylum. Less buggy than Origins. And no horrible driving segments. The only real downside is the lack of Scarecrow sequences.
I maintain that if you cut out 2/3rds of the tank battles from Knight it would be pretty much perfect. It really is just endless tank battles that hold that game back (and some of the Riddler driving sequences are obnoxious - we get it Rocksteady! You made a Batmobile. Good for you!).
BrookM wrote: I had a lot of fun with both Asylum and City. Getting that 50+(?) combo without anybody laying a hit on you in return was absurd the amount of jumping and dodging Bats did, but satisfying to pull off.
Also a pair of games that I happily 100%'d, as they had just the right amount of side tasks to not go full Ubi.
Only things I could never do were the AR flying challenges. The predator bits remain my fav thing in the whole game. Jumping around, stalking the thugs, taking them down one by one, watching them get more and more terrified. Often I'd go by the entrance to Joker's hideout just to do the stalker bit at the front.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Got Ghost of Tsushima for my birthday, so been knocking around there. . . man this game is so much fun. Just the right amount of brutality, without going full on Souls game, interesting story (thus far), and everything just looks so damn amazing.
I got the game recently too and it is absolutely fantastic. Their coop multiplayer mode is also suprisingly well done and not a cash-grab considering it's free and has it's own class system with equipment and abilities. Give me a holler if you ever want to do the multiplayer at some point, I'll PM my PSN name.
Greatly enjoying Skyrim. I’m a fan of Fallout 4, but am now greatly preferring Skyrim.
Gone with a Heavy Armour Archer build, and have nearly maxed Archery. I’m also close to Level 60 Smithing, which will allow me to improve Enchanted equipment.
To sum up my play style?
Deer Rayderz
I are in yoor camp, steeling yoor stuffs
You better come owt and kik my arse
Nipped over to Solsteim last night for a bit of Dragonborn. No doubt sneaky shooty shenanigans shall ensue.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
H.B.M.C. wrote: I started Arkham City for the first time in 7 years. I'm very bad at it. Lost my edge.
Nice to see it on a 75" screen though.
I can recommend Spider-Man on PS4. It’s very similar gameplay. And as you can’t really tank damage the way Bats can, the combat is sufficiently different to not make it feel like a lazy reskin. Web swinging is particularly enjoyable.
A bit of xcom 2's long war mod. Just about finished retrieving the psionic gate. I had to go to bed before i finished but its basically done.
After that I just gotta kill an avatar and then retrieve the stasis suit at the advent forge and I should be good. Avatar progress almost finished its countdown but getting the psionic gate should push it back a bit. Also I have a couple alien facilities revealed and their regions contacted so I'll be able to destroy those if I need more time. The game is going on a bit long compared to the normal campaign.
We are in mid February in game time and I have power armor but could use more elerium cores and resources so I can make plasma weapons for when it gets researched. I have a decent amount of power armor though.
Got into Valheim. Has a server running with friends and one on my own. Quite enjoying playing by myself and building/doing whatever I feel like. I slew my first troll solo! I think the most fun in this game is the building your house part. I've set up a farm with some beehives and boars I've tamed. Funnily all the boars just want to hang out in one area of their pen, despite it being quite large.
Nerak wrote: Got into Valheim. Has a server running with friends and one on my own. Quite enjoying playing by myself and building/doing whatever I feel like. I slew my first troll solo! I think the most fun in this game is the building your house part. I've set up a farm with some beehives and boars I've tamed. Funnily all the boars just want to hang out in one area of their pen, despite it being quite large.
I understand Boars to be more active once on fire?
I've also just bought Valheim. I only played about 20 minutes of it, but it looks canny good. A bunch of my mates have it so I was going to play with them, need time to spend on playing it. My laptop is naff so I don't think it runs very well.
Edit: I also booted up Skyrim again and played a bit of that last week funnily enough, it must have been something in the water in the UK then, or maybe it was all that snow got us in the mood for it?
Whelp another game of long war down the drain but I'm getting closer to victory I think. The difficulty for this mod is ridiculous. I don't even want to know what the hardest is like.
Went and bought myself Pike & Shot on steam, it is a good game if a bit rough at some parts. It is fun to replay the various wars of the Pike & shot era, currently battling the Turks, and oh boy it's a meatgrinder.
Valheim, only tried it for 40 minutes so far and I'm still on the fence, though right now I'm still struggling to get a roof over a building I've found, the clipping system for building stuff is a bit finnicky. But that aside, it's already ticking off a few boxes with regards to games I usually enjoy.
Valheim looks interesting for sure. Like, where the other 'base-building survival' games like Conan and Arc make you manually pick things up and carry stuff, and so have the taming/slaving systems to help with that, Valheim looks more like a sort of up-graphics'd Minecraft, what with the auto-pickup and simpler building stuff.
Started playing the brand new Persona 5: Strikers. It's a musou game, with basic combat gameplay similar to Dynasty Warriors. But at the same time, *everything* has a Persona twist. There's even a calendar that tracks the passage of each day in the game. I've barely started, though, so I don't know whether you eventually have the freedom to pick the actions you're going to engage in each day as you do in the RPG.
Decided to keep Valheim and plug away at it half an hour here and there every day. I'm grateful that there is (as far as I can tell) no time limit or other factor forcing you into hurrying up or making haste with things. I am on the fourth or fifth day now and have slowly been restoring and adding onto an abandoned house I've found near the spawn, hunting for food and scraps of leather until I've got enough for a tanning rack.
So far haven't died yet, but did stray into the black forest and nearly got mobbed by several grey ones. I somehow managed to survive that encounter and quickly ran away again.
I've been playing more Persona 5: Strikers. It's an interesting mix of gameplay. Unlike most Warriors games, you don't play on big, wide-open maps full of enemies. Instead, you get into fights (which can involve the ambush tactic familiar to those who have played the RPG) which cause a large number of enemies to spawn. You defeat the enemies as part of a set encounter, and get experience and cash for defeating them, just as if you'd won a battle in the RPG version of the game. Also, your characters are weaker than is typically the case in a musou game. They're still quite powerful, and can mow down countless numbers of weaker enemies. But even the weaker enemies can hit back pretty hard if you're not careful. And - at least so far - you can't one-shot them. Plus, I seem to be encountering more mid-strength enemies that can hurt the protagonists pretty badly if you're not careful. Finally, the boss fights can be much more punishing than any enemy I've fought in a Dynasty Warriors game. One new element is that combat allows you to utilize certain parts of the local terrain. For instance, if you're fighting on a street and there's a light pole nearby, you can jump to the top of it, and then drop down and perform a spinning attack on any enemies that have gathered underneath.
Many of the basic elements and themes of the original game are present, though in a simplified manner. The Jungian shadow stuff is still there, but the tarot arcana are gone. So are the personal attributes that you increased through social activities. Doing stuff with your friends is important to build bonds, but so far the game doesn't seem to worry about who you're bonding with. The important thing is that you're earning "bond points", that you use to unlock and improve certain abilities. The personas (demons) are still present, of course, but the negotiation from the original is gone. Now personas that you defeat have a chance to drop masks that you can use to gather new personas, or improve ones that you already have in your list. The improving (as well as "executions", or fusing) is done in the Velvet Room, of course, and is recognizable to anyone who's finished the original game. There's a calendar, but your activities are fairly circumscribed. You can wander around, but you'll largely spend it visiting stores to buy items. You won't be going to the batting cages this time around.
It's an interesting take, and not at all what I was expecting before I started playing the game.
Finally did something that I've been meaning to do for a while.
I picked up Command: Modern Naval Operations quite a while back. But it's a complicated game, and I put it on the back-burner as one of those things that I planned to get to and start learning to play "soon" (the reason I bought it at that time was because it was on sale).
Needless to say, "soon" kept getting pushed back further and further. The game has now been replaced by Command: Modern Operations, which is on sale as a result of the Slitherine sale that's currently running on Steam. So I picked it up, and finally took it for a spin.
I've played through three tutorials so far, and have shot down an unarmed Iranian drone using an Israeli F-16. All hail the mighty air warrior!
Heh.
I'm planning on pushing through the tutorials until I figure out how all of the systems work, and trying out some of the scenarios that catch my attention to get a feel for combat that's a little more chaotic. After finishing that, the plan (which may or may not actually happen) is to start messing around with the mission editor on my own and have fun with various ideas that catch my fancy - comparing Shandong with USS Wasp, for instance. But getting the skills needed to properly do things like that will take some time.
Me and some buddies are almost finished with a full play through of Divinity 2 Original Sin tonight. It's been a ride.
Someone keeps straighting fights and kill important NPCs. Not sure how many quests we've prematurely ended because he loves playing chaotic evil >.>
All of us have incidentally done something that killed someone else in the party at least thrice. Award for best team kill easily goes to the guy who unloaded a shotgun blast style attack into a boss who reflected the damage right back at one of us and killed our rogue outright.I also incidentally set an entire room on fire and maybe killed the whole team that way. I did not know the barrels in the room were oil barrels XD
It's been a ride and we're almost at the end. If I could say one thing that hasn't been fun, it's that the dialogue system leaves the other three players with a lot of nothing to do XD Only one person can talk to an NPC at a time, so while going through stories and quests, it's usually just one person talking and everyone else waiting for the next combat. Some of the waits can be quite long.
Oddly enough, team killing each other by accident is probably the most fun we have. There are a few that have been just plain annoying, but several have involved an absurd confluence of events and been utterly hilarious in the moment XD
Started playing Jurasic World Evolution this last few days, while my stint as park manager has gone somewhat well. There has been a few "incidents" along the way, had my heavily modfied Tyrannosaurs Rex break out of her pen, and into the neighbouring pen and wholesale murder all my Edmontosauruses and several Triceraptos before ACU got it sedated and under control. Then spent much, much money of further security meassuers and replacing eaten dinosaurs. After that had all calmed downed my Velociraptors got rebelious.... Good times
Finishing a Warhammer 2:Total War Campaign as the Huntsmarshal as I picked up the DLC on the last Steam Sale. Should be able to finish off Itza easily enough but the Chaos Invasion was defeated and I'm surrounded by Elves who are VERY QUICKLY starting to not like me now that Chaos is out of the way...
Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.
Trondheim wrote: Started playing Jurasic World Evolution this last few days, while my stint as park manager has gone somewhat well. There has been a few "incidents" along the way, had my heavily modfied Tyrannosaurs Rex break out of her pen, and into the neighbouring pen and wholesale murder all my Edmontosauruses and several Triceraptos before ACU got it sedated and under control. Then spent much, much money of further security meassuers and replacing eaten dinosaurs. After that had all calmed downed my Velociraptors got rebelious.... Good times
Velociraptors are *very* temperamental - to the point where I only hatch them if a specific mission requires it. Any time there's a storm, no matter how good your fences are, they're going to go nuts and break out. They're more trouble than they're worth.
Now if you have the Secrets of Dr. Wu expansion, then you get access to new genetic mods that help mellow out your dinosaurs (or the opposite, if you're so inclined). That would probably allow you to hatch velociraptors that don't tear up the park every time it rains.
Tried to play Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on my Dolphin Emulator again, but it seems my save files are gone. Must've happened when I transferred the emulator to my new SSD drive which is annoying.
Epic games is giving out free copies of Sunless Sea. I'm really enjoying it, it's kind of an underground London Lovecraftian sailing simulator. I made good friends with some ladies, they burned their house down, ran salt lion sculpture parts, and participated in a rat revolt against their heavily armed Guinea Pig oppressors. So far, I have been set adrift, but haven't been driven mad or turned to cannibalism- although I'm told it's possible. One of my crew members has eyes filled with freakish wasp larva, and would like me to show her a certain tower before they hatch.
Gonna start fighting the advent regional hq when I start playing the continuation of earlier's xcom 2 long war session tomorrow. It's early to mid June and it has about 5 advent strength on it. I only have maybe 3 scientists and 2 engineers, only 3 regions but one region is gonna be liberated in the very next mission and I can raid another advent hq in another region right after when I feel fully prepared for it. I mostly just want predator armor so my guys will be tanks for that fight and it shouldn't be a long wait. I also ha've the ability to get a not 2 to even 3 regions once I get a resistance comm going. Should make everything easier.
I should get a lot of supplies and scientists soon tho. Had a bunch of sci missions come up and a couple smash and grabs and dark events I had to get rid of. I'm getting better because I have a full 2nd advent regional hq I can infiltrate and later destroy. The amount of supplies and corpses from this should be pretty nuts.
Could be awesome because in some ways I feel like I'm progressing super fast.
Trondheim wrote: Started playing Jurassic World Evolution this last few days, while my stint as park manager has gone somewhat well. There have been a few "incidents" along the way, had my heavily modified Tyrannosaurs Rex break out of her pen, and into the neighboring pen and wholesale murder, all my Edmontosauruses and several Triceraptos before ACU got it sedated and under control. Then spent much, much money of further security measures and replacing eaten dinosaurs. After that had all calmed downed my Velociraptors got rebellious... Good times
Velociraptors are *very* temperamental - to the point where I only hatch them if a specific mission requires it. Any time there's a storm, no matter how good your fences are, they're going to go nuts and break out. They're more trouble than they're worth.
Now if you have the Secrets of Dr. Wu expansion, then you get access to new genetic mods that help mellow out your dinosaurs (or the opposite, if you're so inclined). That would probably allow you to hatch velociraptors that don't tear up the park every time it rains.
Yea... I gave them all new homes far, far away from my park. Went with deinonychus instead. Far more manageable beasts. I do not have that expansion, but I will grab it at one point, I like managing these angry beasts, funnily enough, the things like the herbivores are far more problematics to keep under check, particularly the triceratops like animals.
Yea... I gave them all new homes far, far away from my park. Went with deinonychus instead. Far more manageable beasts. I do not have that expansion, but I will grab it at one point, I like managing these angry beasts, funnily enough, the things like the herbivores are far more problematics to keep under check, particularly the triceratops like animals.
Herbivores are always easy for me to deal with. The only problems I've ever had with them are the *huge* pen sizes required for most of the sauropods, such as brachiosaurus. The tricks are -
1.) Keep an eye on the pen sizes, and the amount of grass, forest, and water, inside the pen. Make sure that you're got the right amount for each dinosaur in the pen. Also keep in mind that the numbers shown are the minimum amount of that kind of terrain. They're not a ratio. So a ridiculously huge pen with a small percentage of space that's composed of trees might still be enough for a dinosaur that likes lots of trees because that small percentage is still enough raw wooded area. One tool that would really help the game is a way to determine the total size of the pen, and the area of each of the terrain types, *before* you put your dinosaurs inside. I've lost count of the number of times that I've had to tweak the terrain in a pen (or even just flat out make it bigger) after filling it up, because there wasn't enough of a particular kind of terrain for one of the dinosaurs that I'd put inside of it. Sauropods in particular are a constant source of frustration for me in this area.
2.) The social requirements have two numbers. The first is the total number of dinosaurs in the pen. The second is the number of dinosaurs of the same species in the pen. If either of these are too high or too low, then the dinosaur becomes unhappy. Group together species that have a similar total population social tolerance number, and they should stay happy. Problems will emerge when you put a dinosaur that freaks out with more than four in the pen with a dinosaur that *must* have at least eight dinosaurs (of any species) in the pen along with it.
I vaguely remember having problems with triceratops (and only triceratops) early on. I don't remember why. But after glancing over the requirements, I suspect it might have had to do with the sudden jump in pen size requirements between them and the species that are similar to them.
Been playing Warhammer 40,000: Relic- Gladius of War again as the Eldar almost finished their "Story" but it just keeps going on and on, the game really gets you hooked.
But it's also been making me want to buy a Wraithknight now I'm back into collecting my Eldar, they're just too cool and I've made the map crawling with them and Scorpions. Or manipulationg me as I'm sure that's the game's intention lol. Here's these cool units you can make and fight, and you can build them on the table top too, isn't that cool?
Gave the Outriders demo a try and I'm liking it enough to pick it up in a month or so when it releases. A grim dark Mass Effect of sorts almost, with trench warfare and a main character who really gives zero feths about anything and everything. Only thing I don't like is the oversized guns everybody is toting, but that could be Square-Enix deciding to go Monster Hunter on the guns.
Also decided to give Inquisitor Martyr another go, starting a new character from the ground up and I'm actually enjoying it a lot more now. Sure, the amount of greeble and voice acting is still bugging me, but at least the game plays like an actual ARPG now.
I finally finished Dark Cloud. After 15 years of periodically picking this game up and then putting it down. I finally finished it. I have no idea what I am going to play next.
balmong7 wrote:I finally finished Dark Cloud. After 15 years of periodically picking this game up and then putting it down. I finally finished it. I have no idea what I am going to play next.
Great stuff! That was such a fun game. Have been meaning to get hold of a PS2 again and that would definitely be on the list to play.
Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.
Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.
Keep an eye on Epic Games Store for Fallen Order on holidays. I got it at Christmas for £12.
I definitely got WAY more than £12 of play out of it, and as my first souls-esque game, it was fine. Normal difficulty was a too hard and easy was too easy, but overall it was a well made game with a fun time.
I would probably feel disappointed if I bought it for £50 or whatever games are nowadays, but it was excellent value for £12, and probably fits for about £25.
I also got Squadrons for around the same price and I really wanted to love that game, TIE Fighter was my first major computer game... But just... The control scheme for Squadrons is just impossible, I managed to finish it but I absolutely could not handle that control scheme.
Bring shields to front - Press X
Bring shields to back - Double press X
Equal shields - Long hold X.
Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.
Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.
I enjoyed it. I also think that comparing it to Soulsborne games is not a very useful comparison. Mechanically it is much closer to Sekiro.
balmong7 wrote:I finally finished Dark Cloud. After 15 years of periodically picking this game up and then putting it down. I finally finished it. I have no idea what I am going to play next.
Great stuff! That was such a fun game. Have been meaning to get hold of a PS2 again and that would definitely be on the list to play.
If you have a PS4 it's one of the few PS2 games they released for download on the PS Store. It's also on PS Now which is how I played it.
nels1031 wrote: I'm getting back into the swing of things with Total War : Three Kingdoms, in anticipation of the next DLC in 2 days. Looking forward to it.
Same. Been a bit too. Been trying the Yellow Turbans from Mandate of Heaven campaign start.
Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.
Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.
I enjoyed it. I also think that comparing it to Soulsborne games is not a very useful comparison. Mechanically it is much closer to Sekiro.
Cheers man - I have seen a few copies very cheap so will get hold of one.
Urtuk got out of early access. I'm really quite fond of it. Everything is so incredibly ugly and brutal. They really nailed the art style they where going for. Feels very balanced as well. High recommend from me, if you're into xcom style games.
Xcom 2 long war campaign seems to be going well for as far as I've gotten in it. I think it's not terribly tough when you've figured out some mechanics of it.
Started playing Stellaris again, the base game and nearly all of the relevant DLC are in one of the Humble Bundle charity sales so I picked that up for the DLC as they're pricey when not on sale.
Still playing Civ 6 too, invested in a multiplayer game with three friends and it's a great additional layer to be a dick to your pals.
Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.
Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.
I enjoyed it. I also think that comparing it to Soulsborne games is not a very useful comparison. Mechanically it is much closer to Sekiro.
I enjoyed it too, although haven't gotten round to finishing it yet.
Crusader Kings 3. Paradox finally remembered it exists, and released a flavor pack (Northern Lords, because obviously they're going to start with Scandinavia).
Haven't noticed much beyond a few UI improvements, but apparently you can go adventuring somehow, and a couple other thinks got reworked.
Game still has some issues, though, as an Event pop-up just had my 3 year old son assisting me in surgery... The man died, but the kid was very eloquent about consoling me on the man's death.
---
CK3 is also play free on steam for the next 3 days, so if in doubt, give it a spin for nothing.
Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.
Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.
I enjoyed it. I also think that comparing it to Soulsborne games is not a very useful comparison. Mechanically it is much closer to Sekiro.
I enjoyed it too, although haven't gotten round to finishing it yet.
I'm a few hours in and definitely see the Souls comparisons, although I don't think it is anything like as 'tight' a gameplay experience as that game. I would say definitely a bit of Tomb Raider in there too. Certainly a lot of fun, and the Star Wars license probably makes it a lot better than it would be otherwise. I can't comment on Sekiro as haven't played that game.
Paradox has announced that the 3.0 update for Stellaris (set to coincide with the release of the new DLC) will be called "Dick", presumably named after Philip K.
The forums now have threads speculating on things such as how big the update will be (and arguments over whether the size truly matters), whether the update will make the game longer and harder, and similar questions.
The current Dev Diary does say its named for Philip K., and then goes on to talk about the movies he inspired. :sigh
I'm amused that they've reworked it enough (again) to be a 3.0 version of the game. I do like what I've seen of the first contact system, and it looks like they've developed a real espionage system (always iffy in 4X games), though I think they transplanted a fair amount from Hearts of Iron there.
I'm just amused that they've retooled Pop growth, districts and goods again.
But its the little things like the UI changes that excite me. Being able to re-order planets in the Outliner is really helpful. May give this another chance...
Eumerin wrote: Paradox has announced that the 3.0 update for Stellaris (set to coincide with the release of the new DLC) will be called "Dick", presumably named after Philip K.
That's some nice news. I keep comming back to stellaris a bit with every expansion. Play it for about a month and then move on. Cool to see some extensive updates to it. Though I do miss the trio transportation system. This is more balanced but that felt by far more sci-fi.
Myself has started playing Endzone, a world apart. It just got out of early access. It seems to simply be banished but with a post apocalyptic theme. I really liked banished and still fire it up time to time so I think this'll be a blast. Very much enjoying my time with it so far.
Persona 5 Royal is finally complete. The final semester was totally worth it. Though I feel like the original ending had a bit more punch than the revised ending. "The Phantom Thieves depart on one last road trip" hits better than, "The Phantom Thieves drop you off at the train station".
Also, we managed to snag a PS5 on the Walmart drop the other. So I guess I have that to look forward to. Not sure what games are coming up next on our list though.
balmong7 wrote: Persona 5 Royal is finally complete. The final semester was totally worth it. Though I feel like the original ending had a bit more punch than the revised ending. "The Phantom Thieves depart on one last road trip" hits better than, "The Phantom Thieves drop you off at the train station".
Also, we managed to snag a PS5 on the Walmart drop the other. So I guess I have that to look forward to. Not sure what games are coming up next on our list though.
You could try Persona 5 Strikers. It's Dynasty Warriors-style combat, but with a very distinctly Persona feel.to the other mechanics.
Myself has started playing Endzone, a world apart. It just got out of early access. It seems to simply be banished but with a post apocalyptic theme. I really liked banished and still fire it up time to time so I think this'll be a blast. Very much enjoying my time with it so far.
How does it compare with the Paradox version - Surviving the Aftermath?
You could try Persona 5 Strikers. It's Dynasty Warriors-style combat, but with a very distinctly Persona feel.to the other mechanics.
We plan on buying it at some point. But for now, I am trying to work down some of my PS+ and PSNow backlog. This morning I played a little of the Mario Sunshine remaster on Nintendo Switch. I love that game, but man the controls are clunky. I died so many times today to being a millisecond late on hitting the jump button and mario just running off a ledge instead.
Probably gonna win this xcom 2 long war game on Commander Ironman difficulty. I did the avatar autopsy so all i gotta do now is contact the advent main relay region and go on that mission.
Avatar progress is still pretty high and it's june of the next year in-game.
I'm also about to take out the 3rd advent regional hq. This one is a bit close to a high advent strength region though so it's possible that it gets attacked but it's late enough in the game that it's not really that relevant anyway. I need the resources and alien corpses more anyway. My monthly supplies could use a boost but it's not needed.
Regardless of what happens i probably have a month or two at most before avatar progress completes. Hopefully everything is in order for when it happens.
Fire Emblem Three Houses has taken over my weekends. My first foray into the series was Fates to set the bar low, so the experience this time around is exponentially better. There were even some parts of the story that caught me waaaay off-guard, and I have no idea how any of this is going to play out.
Hoping to try Awakening and the GBA one next. I get that the castle/monastery was more of a Fates/Three Houses thing, but how similar are these former two with the latter two?
Almost finished up the last mission of xcom 2 long war mod on commander ironman. So far so good but I'm gonna head to bed for work tomorrow. I'll finish it when I get back but I just entered the aliens throne room. Should be a tough fight but I'm hoping I win. I'm doing well so far. Gonna maybe wait till most of my soldiers skill cooldowns are mostly refreshed for the big battle.
I was playing Blaz Blue: Chronophantasma Extend but for some reason my games keep minimising to desktop I've tried so many things and it just keeps happening. Just started after I had a Windows 10 update recently...Hmmm
The Outer Worlds. Decided to do a new game and play it all the way through, quite enjoyed it this time around! Had just uninstalled it when I noticed that the season pass was on sale, so got that, reinstalled the game and am doing a new game now with a different build and two new stories on top.
Back to playing Blaz Blue: Chronophantasma Extend I'm now really getting into it. The minimising seems to have fixed itself now. It could've been something to do with the Clan Quest Mod of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines? I don't know...
Trying to settle into a calm, fairly zen game of Civ 6. But it keeps crashing. Its the only game in my currently installed library that crashes regularly, and its been out for 3 and a half years!
Also Portugal, a new map type (wetlands) and zombie mode hits tomorrow, as the last of the 'New Frontiers Pass.'
Apparently in April they're going for a major rebalance pass, with around 2/3rds of the civs getting tweaked.
Unknown if that will be the 'content complete' end of 6 or if they'll do another pass or traditional DLC.
Just finished my commander ironman long war run in xcom 2 for a fairly easy victory in the throne room bit. Running fully promoted guys helps a ton in certain missions and with certain gear. The final tier chain lightning perk on a few holo targeted enemies really can stun whole enemy pods and it is OP and glorious. If you use tier 3 stun guns then it forces the enemy to be knocked out for 2 turns so in this case a whole enemy pod. It's generally enough to wipe out a whole pod but just in case it isn't after every two turns you get one more available stun so stun locking your enemies should be really easy. While a full pod is stunned you can just run your whole squad up there and give them constant flanked damage they can't even respond to and holotarget them before doing so to make sure nothing misses. Not to mention some units do more damage to enemies that are stunned which is great.
Specialized squads in long war are so absurdly powerful.
SkavenLord wrote: Fire Emblem Three Houses has taken over my weekends. My first foray into the series was Fates to set the bar low, so the experience this time around is exponentially better. There were even some parts of the story that caught me waaaay off-guard, and I have no idea how any of this is going to play out.
Hoping to try Awakening and the GBA one next. I get that the castle/monastery was more of a Fates/Three Houses thing, but how similar are these former two with the latter two?
The GBA one I can't speak to. but Awakening doesn't really have a hub world like the monastery. Just a world map that you select your missions from. The support bonds are a major element on the game though, and not something to ignore due to story reasons that I don't wish to spoil. Awakening introduced the support bonds, so you won't find those in any earlier games.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Got to like 50 shines in mario sunshine. Got my first covid shot and it knocked me on ass for a day. So I laid in bed and played my switch all day.
SkavenLord wrote: Fire Emblem Three Houses has taken over my weekends. My first foray into the series was Fates to set the bar low, so the experience this time around is exponentially better. There were even some parts of the story that caught me waaaay off-guard, and I have no idea how any of this is going to play out.
Hoping to try Awakening and the GBA one next. I get that the castle/monastery was more of a Fates/Three Houses thing, but how similar are these former two with the latter two?
The GBA one I can't speak to. but Awakening doesn't really have a hub world like the monastery. Just a world map that you select your missions from. The support bonds are a major element on the game though, and not something to ignore due to story reasons that I don't wish to spoil. Awakening introduced the support bonds, so you won't find those in any earlier games.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Got to like 50 shines in mario sunshine. Got my first covid shot and it knocked me on ass for a day. So I laid in bed and played my switch all day.
Thanks for the heads-up on those support bonds! Rather liked mechanic, even if the interactions tend to go a bit all over the place.
Good on ya for sticking through the shot. Hope there are still some shines left by the time you’re back on your feet!
Been playing Vermintide 2 I just got because of White Dwarf. Played through recruit difficulty for helmgart and drachenfels. Not sure if I really want to go through it all again on veteran. I pretty much just spammed left click through hordes with a few charged attacks on the odd chaos warrior and shot special enemies with the handgun or crossbow.
Got the mercenary to level 15 and the dwarf to 7 for an Ironbreaker class bot so far.
Vermintide is a game for if you enjoy slaughtering rats, and don't care too much how you're going about it.
Granted, as you go up in difficulty, it does truly become more difficult in terms of a LOT more enemies, and more strong enemies, and all sorts of other complications, to the point that the sheer mass of rats requires more care in when you block, dodge, or use specific heavy or light attacks or ranged bits.
I'd suggest jumping to a higher difficulty, as you automatically get counted as 'beating' all the lower-difficulty versions for purposes of unlocks.
So like, if you beat a level on Legendary your first try (you won't), it'll count as you beating it on all lower difficulties.
Well, Civ 6 brought Portugal around.
Its... a little busted. The sheer volume of trade they can do makes for 100+ gold per turn in the classical or even ancient era, and you can just buy everything. Other than extra traders (and free movement through city state territory), all of their bonuses are late game (renaissance+), so they're kind of dull.
Also zombie mode exists. Its very, very dull. Also interacts poorly with the game. Sometimes they just keep spawning for no particular reason, many many turns after the dead units they should spawn from are gone. The AI often... just doesn't interact with them. As long as they're more than a hex away from AI units or cities, sometimes they just stand there. And the Ai doesn't attack them. They just... exist on the map. This is especially likely with Barbarian Mode on, as they apparently don't recognize city-states and units that spawn later from barbarian camps as hostile.
Well with xcom 2s long war campaign beaten I've been playing grim dawn as mostly a nightblade. They dual melee weapon assassins but I'm not sure fully on the best build. Bet Lord of hats is happy to know I'm playing that again. Strangely it isn't the high stakes, high stress and high reward and loss games like xcom 2 and dark souls that I'm used to playing.
Had a bit of a binge on Total War Warhammer I - watched some vids and now got mroe to grips with actual battles - still not great though.
Managed to win the short Campaign as Vampires - good fun and inspired me to do a bit of fiction. Kept Manfred with just Drakenhof to deal with the Dwarfs whilst Averland and I took the Southern and Western Empire. Then started fighiting Chaos as leader of growing faction of the living- now of course we have defeated most of them - just Norsca/Winter being annoying. Consequently all my nice military allies are now becoming more and more unhappy with me. Considering I took out Archaeon and co - a little ungrateful!
One fun and unexpected bonus half way through was a Dwarf civil war that led to Karak Kadrin asking to be my Vassel!
Been on a Warhammer binge since getting the white dwarf code.
Played more of Vermintide 2. Im enjoying it more on veteran difficulty with the more frequent specials and boss spawns crashing the party. Doing alot better after levelling all the characters to 5+ so they get temp health abilities while bots too.
Started looking into TotalWar: Warhammer 1. Grabbed all the free DLC on steam and the regiments of renown. Havent played a totalwar since either Medieval 1 or 2 so Ive forgotten how to play. Will get properly back into it eventually.
Also downloaded SpaceMarine, WarhammerQuest 1, and the Dawn Of War 1 GOTY.
Added Soulstorm to steam after learning the cd-key works for steam. Also Sega is still giving steam keys for retail copy owners of the DoW1 games so I requested and got Winter Assault And Dark Crusade added too.
Myself has started playing Endzone, a world apart. It just got out of early access. It seems to simply be banished but with a post apocalyptic theme. I really liked banished and still fire it up time to time so I think this'll be a blast. Very much enjoying my time with it so far.
How does it compare with the Paradox version - Surviving the Aftermath?
I wrote a reply for this but scrapped it. Decided to do a bit more research to be able to give a proper reply. Now I've looked more into surviving the aftermath by paradox and I feel like I can give a more informed opinion. I have not played surviving the aftermath, only read up on it and watched 2 let's plays. I've put 11 hours into endzone at the time of writing this. First I'll write down my general opinion and then some specific differences.
General gameplay: Endzone is a game that largely has two focus points. Those are population control and dealing with radiation. The easiest way to lose is to lose control of your population or not properly shield your people from radiation. All other resources play into these two elements in one way or another. It's a constant struggle against radiation. It's also a constant struggle to not fall into overpopulation, whilst beeing able to fill all important functions with your population. Most of what you will be doing is planning your settlements layout and managing your populations occupations.
Surviving the aftermath seems to have very different main focuses. From what I can tell your priorities are building your military and managing your specialists. Most of what you'll be doing is commanding your specialist to do specific tasks. Like scavenging, researching or building. you have 3-10 of theese specialists. They fall into the categories of fighter, scientist, gatherer and scout (there may be more). They are a big source of resources, whilst in endzone you produce most of your resources.
So that's the general gist of the games. Now let's get into specifics.
*Endzone has one large map where you explore old buildings, like ruined hospitals and old nuclear powerplants. Surviving the aftermath has an overworld where you explore farms, hospitals and settlements by sending specialists.
*Endzone does not require you to build military. You can, but it's a significant investment. The opposing factions can be paid a tribute not to attack you, so you might be better off investing military resources into infrastructure. Surviving the aftermath requires that you build military. Both to defend your settlement and to battle various neutral mobs roaming around. Military is mostly handled by specialists.
*Endzone scales of about 20 settlers at the start and can quickly reach 300+. My first game I lost because my population hit 200+ (within 2-3 hours) and I did not have food or water to support it. In Surviving the aftermath you start with 3 specialists and 10 settlers. Midgame might be 30 population. Lategame might be 60 or so, from what I can tell.
*Endzone makes you work for science. It's difficult to unlock and time consuming. In surviving the aftermath science is unlocked very early.
*Both games give you quests and branching options in exploration events.
*Both games have catastrophe events. Theese seem far more extensive in surviving the aftermath.
That's about all I have to say about them. This is a bit unfair because endzone is a released game while surviving the aftermath is still in early access. From what I can tell endzone seems to be the more wholesome experience. The constant struggle against radiation seems more fitting in a post apocalyptic city builder. In surviving the aftermath radiation is very easy to handle. Endzone seems to be the more difficult of the two games and have more focus on the population as a whole, while survival have you focus more on a few select individuals. Once again I have not played survival so take all this with a grain of salt. I might have gotten some stuff wrong. As of right now I'd definitely recommend endzone over surviving the aftermath. Surviving the aftermath has great potential though. Knowing paradox we will probably get intresting DLC to enrich the experience. For now though probably best to give it some time.
Re-playing the Fallout series as a dumb puncher. All strength, agility, luck, unarmed. Makes the game a breeze past level 15. In Fallout 2 you can 1 round Frank H with just your fists. Also the dialogue options are hilarious.
Eumerin wrote: I've been playing the new Evil Genius 2. It's an okay game, but a big disappointment considering what the first game was like.
Yeah, I was watching some gameplay of that and the impression I got was oddly... indifferent?
Partly because so many rooms/equipment pieces seemed absolutely required (creativity takes a back seat until sooo much is built) and partly because there didn't seem to be much of a gameplay loop. Maybe it changes massively in the late game, but everything I saw seemed a very simple (and somewhat archaic) dungeon builder/defense game. Almost like nearly 20 years of game design hadn't happened.
I also got the impression that it would be really easy to cut the base off from the enemy entrance point. Either just with walls (if you can build new walls) or a really gimmicky maze room of hard doors and traps that just loops the enemy until they get bored and wander off or die.
I also got the impression that it would be really easy to cut the base off from the enemy entrance point. Either just with walls (if you can build new walls) or a really gimmicky maze room of hard doors and traps that just loops the enemy until they get bored and wander off or die.
Your minions still need to be able to leave your base easily. And two of the three base locations available have multiple entry points. Doors haven't really seemed to slow down the Forces of Justice all that much, so far. That's a change from the first game.
Indifferent is probably a good word. One of the fun things about the first game was all of the hidden interactions. For instance, one of your minion jobs used sliding bookcases for their training. But if no one was using it, you could turn it into an interrogation tool for captured agents, complete with unique animations. In the second game, you can use the assigned interrogation tools such as the interrogation chair, and you can throw a captured agent into a trap. And that's it. There doesn't appear to be any other options.
There's more that I'm unhappy about. But I think that more or less sums up the central part of my thinking. The first game was a near gem with a few big flaws. The sequel just feels... indifferent.
balmong7 wrote: I've been burning my way through subnautica this week. It's a very relaxing game so far. Though inventory management is kind of annoying.
I really enjoyed Subbautica. It might interest you to know that the expansion, Subnautica below zero, will be released on May 14th.
I’ve been playing the hell out of Hunt: Showdown. I’m generally not much of an FPS player but this one hooked me. There’s plenty of PVE and PVP. I usually focus on the PVE and only do PVP when forced. They nailed the zombie cowboy setting. I feel a little bit good inside whenever I retire my hunters.
I got Wargame Red Dragon a while back, and just recently started to play it. But I have to say, it's just so absolutely punishing! I have never been so utterly tested by an RTS game. Great atmosphere and gameplay but I really, really wished the AI would give me a chance sometimes.
Wanted a break from Strategy games so I finally played Mass Effect: Andromeda that I got on a Steam sale for 13$. I certainly did enjoy it. The main story is good, combat is smooth and the game is pretty.
It is buggy as all hell though. Not game breaking, but graphic bugs, weird spawning where models fall from the sky etc. I only really cared about half of my crew, and beyond the main storyline and a few of the Settling worlds missions the side quests are repetitive and boring. Basically you can really tell they didn't have the experienced A-Team working on this title since they were working on Anthem (which is now also cancelled...)
Also since it sold so poorly we didn't get the conclusion to all the hanging plot threads. What happened to the Quarian Ark? Who is the "Benefactor" who helped finance The Initiative because they knew the Reapers were coming? With no sequel we don't know what the Kett are up to now.
I mean I still enjoyed it. A solid "meh" 7/10. Good, but not great. I just hope they learn their lesson with Mass Effect 4...
There's a novel that details what happened to the Quarian Ark.
Also, Bioware might not be done with Andromeda. In the recent "Mass Effect will continue" trailer, there was a voice-over stating the the "6th Ark" was on its way.
Started playing Mechanicus. It's a complete blast.
I love the bickering Magi that give all the missions, and the way you upgrade/augment your various Tech-Priests. Combat is tough, and requires real thought in how you use your abilities.
I'm even starting to find uses for the hanger's on, although I've yet to unlock the Kastelans and Kataphron units yet.
Wrapped up both Outer Worlds DLC's last weekend and both are well worth the price for the amount of story they give. Enemies and all that are just reskins, but the rest makes up for it.
Followed it up by getting started on Outriders. The demo progress is neatly ported over to the main game, but I decided to start afresh because its been a while since I played through.
Also played Homeworld Remastered with a fellow mod, did a pair of comp stomp games, second one ending in a crippling defeat for us. But in our defence, my fellow mod was handicapped by being teamed up with me.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I love the bickering Magi that give all the missions, and the way you upgrade/augment your various Tech-Priests. Combat is tough, and requires real thought in how you use your abilities.
The game difficulty does drop off over time unless you limit yourself in a few areas (unlimited use of cog for extra moves, the bugged stealth field generator, and the Tech-Auxilium 'overzealous' ability).
Looks like it would make a fun board game though. Pity it's not multiplayer.
The 'cog occultaris' backpack item - it makes your priests start each map invisible allow you to avoid attacks and set yourself up, but it also provides a bonus to critical hit chances which is supposed to be for the first shot only but appears to extend throughout the entire round (if not beyond).
For a dominus that is 80% criticals with a level 1 occultaris IIRC, and with weapons like the heavy phosphor blaster a fight isn't often going past that first round of decisive shooting.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Started playing Mechanicus. It's a complete blast.
I love the bickering Magi that give all the missions, and the way you upgrade/augment your various Tech-Priests. Combat is tough, and requires real thought in how you use your abilities.
I'm even starting to find uses for the hanger's on, although I've yet to unlock the Kastelans and Kataphron units yet.
Quick tip. Press and hold tab in the mission select menue. The screen on the ship bridge where you pick who to go on a mission for. You unlock additional missions from the young tech priest by doing this. I would say wait with actually playing these missions untill you’re 3-4 bosses in. For story reasons. I think it was tab but it might be shift... Or was it spacebar? If the screen turns blue it's the right button.
Unlocks are sadly randomized from playthrough to playthrough, but once you get the Kastellan and a steady supply of surplus blackstone to field them with, they can be well worth it, just be wary, they are chonky bastards and can block off certain passages or not fit through some places.
Well, in Subnautica I finally have a cyclops and made it into the lost river with all the fossils. I am now building a second base around the Giant Cove Tree since it is an area of relative safety around all the nasty predators. I am getting really concerned about what I do if my cyclops dies though. I don't know if I can physically get to the surface without a vehicle if I were to die and respawn at this secondary base.
And... they suck. A flamer and a punch attack that's a skill rather than just a weapon? Sure, they're tough, but they take up tons of room and cost 5 cognition to teleport in.
I'll stick with the Sicarian Ruskstalkers and Skitarii Rangers. They seem to be more useful.
And my 5 Tech-Priests just demolished a C'Tan shard in two rounds.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And my 5 Tech-Priests just demolished a C'Tan shard in two rounds.
Oh yes, with the right amount of min-maxing you can create a devastating party of monsters. I usually just have my tech priests on a mission and servitors for free CP's and cannon fodder.
In Wargame Red Dragon, it was a grim and bloody day. I fought a major tank/air battle against the North Korean army, I managed to wreck most of the enemy army due to achieving air supirority, but the elite regiment of the enemy tank forces was a hard nut to crack. Lost several groups of my own MBTs.
In the follow-up battle in the next sector, I fared better. The enemy 56. Infantry regiment, 12. artility regiment and most of the escorting aviation company and engineer company perished in the figthing.
Playing Total War Warhammer 1. Playing dwarves on easy and started getting murdered a tonne at turn 30. I have silver road, rib peaks and the death pass taken over but Orc double and triple stacks keep spamspawning and running around everywhere murdering my stuff. Grimgor coming back from the dead again and again is pissing me off now too.
Took me 3 restarts kinda figuring stuff out and looks like Ill be due another soon. Shame because this was the only time I beat Zhufbar to Mount Gunbad.
Also found a copy of Dawn Of War 3. My god that games hard to like the gameplay of. Leader abilities are the only thing that seem to kill anything. 3 campaign missions complete and am sick of it. No wonder it killed the DoW franchise.
Dropbear Victim wrote: Playing Total War Warhammer 1. Playing dwarves on easy and started getting murdered a tonne at turn 30. I have silver road, rib peaks and the death pass taken over but Orc double and triple stacks keep spamspawning and running around everywhere murdering my stuff. Grimgor coming back from the dead again and again is pissing me off now too.
Took me 3 restarts kinda figuring stuff out and looks like Ill be due another soon. Shame because this was the only time I beat Zhufbar to Mount Gunbad.
.
Just won the long Campaign on turn 380 with Vlad and Isabella on hard - the game takes ALOT of working out I found - in and out of battles! Will likely pick up 2 and 3 soon
I've found Total War is always SOOOO swingy depending on the latest patch. The autoresolve style calculations are just always so messed up that, quite normally, in a handful of turns there's gigantic snowballed armies having taken over part of the map. In my last Mortal Empires campaign, that was the Orcs.
Dark Elves seemed to also be heavily losing out on automated battles too.
Although the funniest was a few patches ago, where you'd have Wood Elves just conquering Bretonnia then half of the world.
Had the opposite problem - the vast Dwarf empire was fine with me until Chaos was defeated then they stabbed me in the back.....
Same happened to me in my Vampire Campaign. Dwarfs left me alone and the Empire was basically in ruins so I alone had to take on the Chaos invasion by myself. As soon as I defeated them Dwarfs opinion of my took a HARD TURN and I got rolled by them. Lousy stunties...
Related, Currently playing through another Vortex Campaign this time as Kroq'Gar. Stay alive in the first 40 turns was hard being surrounded but once I wiped out Clan Mors and curb stomped the Malus Darkblade I'm just sitting pretty in the corner of the map mostly left to my own devices. I also made nice with Imrik so he leaves me alone, so I've been able to max out all my settlements and armies un-molested.
The last time I was putting some time together playing warhammer total war, Grimgor is the big meanie. He seems to decimate whoever he comes into contact with.
I picked up that Hunt: Showdown game on xbox because it was in the sale and a good pal of mine has it. For those who haven't heard about it, it's very fun pvp/pve supernatural/western style game where you hunt horrible monsters in d'bayou.
I played a few games tonight and the game revolves around wandering from one pant cacking moment to the other. Definitely recommend it if that's your jazz.
Wrapped up a Sisters of Twilight campaign in Total Warhammer. Was a bit of a slog at the end, partly because Tyrion and Malekith just wouldn't peace out with me, even though they had other things to deal with (Dreadfleet and Skaven, respectively), and were being roundly crushed.
So eventually ended up owning almost all of Naggarond and most of Lothern, with strong (defensive) alliances with Mazdamundi, Settra and Khatep, and mutual indifference to the various vampires.
The set piece battles for the Sisters were disappointingly easy, though I like the way the dragon mount was implemented (a quest rather than a skill point).
Still don't really like the wood elves as an army. They have a lot of unit options now, but I don't like micro-managing unit abilities, and they've got a lot.
Had the opposite problem - the vast Dwarf empire was fine with me until Chaos was defeated then they stabbed me in the back.....
Same happened to me in my Vampire Campaign. Dwarfs left me alone and the Empire was basically in ruins so I alone had to take on the Chaos invasion by myself. As soon as I defeated them Dwarfs opinion of my took a HARD TURN and I got rolled by them. Lousy stunties...
Related, Currently playing through another Vortex Campaign this time as Kroq'Gar. Stay alive in the first 40 turns was hard being surrounded but once I wiped out Clan Mors and curb stomped the Malus Darkblade I'm just sitting pretty in the corner of the map mostly left to my own devices. I also made nice with Imrik so he leaves me alone, so I've been able to max out all my settlements and armies un-molested.
I thnk there is bascially a relationship reset when the last Chaos is destroyed and anything related to fighting them is lost.
I did manage to hold back the Dwarfs - partly due to having kept Mannfred around as an ally so able to use his armies as well - ir at least set targets for them. Ended up having to trash all the settlements nearby and then the Wood Elves became friends so that helped.
Anvildude wrote: I mean, clearly the problem is that you're using those horrible, traitorous Vampire Counts, instead of the noble and upstanding Tomb Kings.
When I buy part 2 and 3 I will certainly test your theory -: 0 do they have the same Aversion stat in diplomacy?
Anvildude wrote: I've never actually played (though I'm highly tempted). I was just a Tomb Kings player before GW did them dirty.
Its good fun although a huge learning curve! I also tend not to run around with "Doom Stacks" so that makes it a bit harder - I also like it records all the events that happened for narrative feel
Anvildude wrote: I've never actually played (though I'm highly tempted). I was just a Tomb Kings player before GW did them dirty.
They are a lot of fun to play I think, it's quite nice to not have to worry about upkeep or recruiting costs. The drive towards getting access to the better troops helps you become used to their playstyle and can make for some really cinematic battels. Even more so if you use mods that spice up their looks, and add a bit more flair to them
I've always liked the Marching Statuary look myself, with Ushabti and Colossi and Heirotitans. I still think GW made a mistake by not having Ramhotep make Ushabti be Core.
That, or try out a Chariot build with Settra. A 50 strong unit of chariots would be awesome to see.
Just did the first ragequit in a while on Star Wars Fallen Order. Really amazed about how many bugs the game has but the final one was the nail in the coffin - got smacked by a creature and knocked off a ledge, rather than falling and respawning as you normally do I kept on falling through the scenery until I hit a floor of nothingness (think the down-below from Stranger Things). Could run around jump, fight etc. but most annoyingly wouldn't die/reset. So I had to reset and reload from my last save point, almost an hour previously. That hour had been pretty dull, retreading old ground to find some other crates, so the ragequit went as follows: Took out the disc -> uninstalled game from machine -> put disc in box -> put game on eBay -> sat down and ate a sandwich.
Overall despite the ragequit would probably give it a 6/10. Bits of it were fun, but really it was only the Star Wars license that made it playable. The whole thing felt like a poor man's Dark Souls, you could see that was what they were trying to achieve, but the combat and platforming sections felt like a PS1 or PS2 game with crappy hit detection and control, none of it fit together that well, and the gameplay fell well short of the (mostly) excellent production values. But even some of those were ruined by cut scenes where characters disappeared on jumped in from off-screen. Whole thing felt like a lost opportunity.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Finished the bonus Hivebusters campaign in GOW5. Mights as well keep the Gears binge going with Gears Tactics.
I actually really love gears tactics. Sadly side missions become really repetitive and obnoxious in act 3 when you face like 3 side missions and then one campaign mission per each part of act 3. There are a few things it can add like a character pool and maybe more abilities (hammer of dawn ultimate ability with massive cool down or one per mission would rock or a mortar or flamethrower).
The executions in the game feel great and are helpful by adding actions and making the game fast and gritty. Sadly late game the gear you outfit yourself with makes mission preparation slow but positively yellow and purple gear is great. I'm not sure if injuries would've made this game better or worse. In xcom it adds to the difficulty and makes you worried to get wounds.
I kind of wish new recruits worked like xcom but in this you get em constantly and they often outrank a lot of your previous dudes so you might just switch out one soldier for another.
-----
The main take I have on gears tactics is it's a great first game for a turn based squad tactics game mostly just let down by no character pool and far more side missions than it needs but mostly in act 3. They max number of side missions should be 2 per each campaign mission or at least add different mission types or more mission variety to keep things interesting.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Finished the bonus Hivebusters campaign in GOW5. Mights as well keep the Gears binge going with Gears Tactics.
I actually really love gears tactics. Sadly side missions become really repetitive and obnoxious in act 3 when you face like 3 side missions and then one campaign mission per each part of act 3. There are a few things it can add like a character pool and maybe more abilities (hammer of dawn ultimate ability with massive cool down or one per mission would rock or a mortar or flamethrower).
The executions in the game feel great and are helpful by adding actions and making the game fast and gritty. Sadly late game the gear you outfit yourself with makes mission preparation slow but positively yellow and purple gear is great. I'm not sure if injuries would've made this game better or worse. In xcom it adds to the difficulty and makes you worried to get wounds.
I kind of wish new recruits worked like xcom but in this you get em constantly and they often outrank a lot of your previous dudes so you might just switch out one soldier for another.
-----
The main take I have on gears tactics is it's a great first game for a turn based squad tactics game mostly just let down by no character pool and far more side missions than it needs but mostly in act 3. They max number of side missions should be 2 per each campaign mission or at least add different mission types or more mission variety to keep things interesting.
Ya it stared off good. The boss fight against the Brumak was fun but it is getting repetitive already. You can see them consciously trying to make it slightly different than Xcom in every little way but there’s no meta game so it’s not as addictive. Also you don’t get as attached to your troops because it just allows you to toss them aside and get better ones every 2nd mission. A strange design choice that is probably from trying to be slightly different than Xcom in each facet of the game.
@kamikaze canuck: Absolutely! You hit the nail on the head with some of the bigger issues. A more strategic layer would've been good.
I do like how each mission could have special challenges in some side missions but that may have been late campaign and possibly based on campaign difficulty. In some cases they made no sense though like I think one disabled grenade use for no logical reason. I can understand stronger troops or special enemy ammo but no grenades was one I think and it's an odd choice that makes no real sense in reality as far as I know.
E-holes went away in act 2 either at the very start of it or somewhere within the start of it. Also at certain points when you switch through enough gear in character customization it can hurt your eyes. Oh and the glowy super locust were kind of annoying in regards to shutting down executions a little but maybe I'm being unfair there.
------
Anyway I'm torn with gears tactics. It's a great first game of a series that's let down by some things. I mean it's no xcom but it doesn't crash or have ridiculous bugs like xcom if I recall correctly. Also some of the characters seem like a little more than just a roided up action hero and the story has some decent parts. Granted gears 2 and 3 had some alright character development in parts. The plot twist regarding the COG and the origin of the locusts was great in gears tactics but possibly lore breaking. Totally worth a change in canon however at least in my opinion.
Oh btw you also need internet connection to verify the game on startup. I like how the game doesn't spam dlc everywhere but sadly the updates seem a bit few in number. I don't know how well supported this game is anymore. I sort of dropped it after some months, picked it up months later and haven't touched it since. The side missions got so excessive and boring in act 3 I never fully finished the game and seeing the ending on twitch didn't give me reason to.
Ya I didn’t notice that about the E-Holes. Obviously that’s should be a big thing in a Gears game. That shows that they ran out of time and just started recycling stuff. I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel where they improve and expand.
Exactly. Gears tactics is a decent game with some big problems that could've been a great game with some more fine tuning. I have big respect for the creators of the game for that.
I'm also doing long war in xcom 2 again. I think I'm gonna lose in this campaign sadly as opposed to the one I won in not so long ago. If so this has been a decent attempt.
I've been playing a bit of barotrauma with a friend too. It's a bit of good fun going around as the crew in a sub.
Funnily enough I was thinking of picking up Gears Tactics yesterday while shopping. I didn't in the end as overall the Gears franchise is getting a bit dull. Could have finished the story after 3 and left on a high, but they went down the weird new route of "Oh the original Locust can't be killed, oh by the way they've mutated into something even worse".
So the new stellaris expansion dropped and I’ve been busying myself with it. There’s some pretty big changes. Envoys are now really important in the early game. There’s an event chain when you establish first contact. You get much less information on other empires and so on. You unlock information with other empires either by trading it or by employing spies. I quite like that part. Diplomatic interactions are now far more important. There’s also changes to how colonized planets work. You now have industrial districts. The factory buildings (For consumer goods and alloys) are limited to 1 per planet. The city district unlocks a building slot. Quite a few changes that took me by surprise. Overall I like it. The new economy will take some time to wrap my head around. It feels a bit more reasonable though. Your main production will now be districts, not buildings. There seems to be a few more events, excavations and first encounter interactions. Which is always a plus. It’s still stellaris but it feels a bit *more* now I guess. Stellaris really needed to shake up diplomacy a bit and they have done exactly that.
Edit: Oh and two more things. You now get the choice which end game crisis you want, or leave to be semi-random like it was previously. You can also apparently become the crisis now yourself OR become the dictator of the galaxy. Apparently you can form the galactic empire and become its de-facto ruler as a galactic forum political decision. So wreck the galaxy or become it’s dictator. Neet stuff.
A "real" end-game crisis can still hit while you're in the middle of a player-induced crisis.
The nations opposing the player-induced crisis can form a "custodian" faction, and the leader gets certain emergency powers... which aren't automatically rescinded at the end of the crisis...
Eumerin wrote: A "real" end-game crisis can still hit while you're in the middle of a player-induced crisis.
The nations opposing the player-induced crisis can form a "custodian" faction, and the leader gets certain emergency powers... which aren't automatically rescinded at the end of the crisis...
I AM THE SENATE!
Star wars prequels were mostly bad but palpatines machinations were fun. Subtle machinations are often more fun than brutal killing.
Anyway I'm getting off topic.
Barotrauma was fun. A shame ai controlled crew are super dumb. At least bots are fine for tedious tasks but one time during an artifact mission when we left the ai controlled crew to the ship alone while we took the artifact the bots died of flooding or suffocation by the time we got back. It'd just be nice if they had an ounce of free thinking and weren't absolutely brain dead. I've been told if the sub takes leaks and they were earlier commanded to stay on the guns they will legit put on diving gear and wait until they legit run out of air and die rather than fix leaks or kill what sea monsters are causing those leaks.
In xcom 2 long war mod I liberated my 2nd region but sadly 4 soldiers died on that mission and most were heavily wounded. I needed to liberate it but I'm in some trouble with all of this overall. I need more Intel so I can get more regions because avatar progress is moving quickly. I could also use better gear. I might just start with power armor first since coilguns are not the biggest upgrade and they might be harder to research. Ofc coilguns don't require such absurd amount of resources that power armor does. I guess we'll see.
I finished Subnautica. That was a very satisfying game to complete. My PS5 arrived in the mail the day after I finished it as well. So I got that all set up and now I am enjoying my Next Gen upgrade of No Man's Sky. I even convinced some of my friends to pick it up and play online with me.
I am miles ahead of them though because I can't put the game down. Got my first freighter today, and am slowly upgrading my base and following the early quests. My biggest complaint is still that the early quests don't encourage you to travel enough. I was all excited when it looked like one of the missions was finally having me jump somewhere new and it actually just made me backtrack to somewhere I had already been.
balmong7 wrote: So I got that all set up and now I am enjoying my Next Gen upgrade of No Man's Sky.
I’ve heard no man sky is one of the greatest comeback stories in gaming. After frequent updates and unrelenting patching the game is now very worth playing. I’ve yet to get it myself due to is terrible launch but I might end up getting it soon.
The NMSdevs have really worked hard, and are still working hard, on improving the game with a crapton of free content updates. They could have just done a runner or start a new project, but instead they're still working on the game and putting out content without slapping a DLC price tag on it.
If you have the time, take a gander at this, which pretty much details the rise, fall and recovery of the game:
Go for any mission that adds to the cognition bar. Once you hit 7-9 cognition, things became much easier, especially if you get the upgrade that lets you drain multiple cognition points from a single location in one go.
Plus the mechadendrites that let you drain 1, 2 or even 3 (!) cognition from enemies are just broken.
Valkyrie wrote: Funnily enough I was thinking of picking up Gears Tactics yesterday while shopping. I didn't in the end as overall the Gears franchise is getting a bit dull. Could have finished the story after 3 and left on a high, but they went down the weird new route of "Oh the original Locust can't be killed, oh by the way they've mutated into something even worse".
Yes, they definitely should have ended with 3. Like the story was over...the war was over. I didn’t like 4 at all. That being said I have to admit 5 is quite a lot of game for your buck. But you just have to keep watching some of your favourite characters keep getting tormented.
BrookM wrote: The NMSdevs have really worked hard, and are still working hard, on improving the game with a crapton of free content updates. They could have just done a runner or start a new project, but instead they're still working on the game and putting out content without slapping a DLC price tag on it.
If you have the time, take a gander at this, which pretty much details the rise, fall and recovery of the game:
BrookM wrote: The NMSdevs have really worked hard, and are still working hard, on improving the game with a crapton of free content updates. They could have just done a runner or start a new project, but instead they're still working on the game and putting out content without slapping a DLC price tag on it.
If you have the time, take a gander at this, which pretty much details the rise, fall and recovery of the game:
Just don't watch the last 5-10 minutes
That was the Pervy internet fan fics part right?
@kamikaze canuck: Name a franchise that's lasted decades that hasn't milked itself dry of fresh ideas or completely sold itself out. Im sure some exist but lately it doesnt seem to be the case.
BrookM wrote: The NMSdevs have really worked hard, and are still working hard, on improving the game with a crapton of free content updates. They could have just done a runner or start a new project, but instead they're still working on the game and putting out content without slapping a DLC price tag on it.
If you have the time, take a gander at this, which pretty much details the rise, fall and recovery of the game:
Yes, the side channel is for the shorter stuff, stream highlights and the more tongue informal fireside / quarantine uploads, whilst the main channel is for the more involved and heftier things he puts out.
Been playing some more Command & Conquer Remastered, almost done with the Soviet campaign, which has some really annoying missions from time to time.
balmong7 wrote: I can't play Alien Isolation. The game terrifies me sure. But more than that it just stresses me out beyond all belief. So I had to put it down.
Let me guess, San Cristobal Medical Facility section?
Sigh. Pretty sure my current campaign of xcom 2 long war is screwed. I took out the enemy black site and I can destroy an alien facility once I start infiltrating but avatar progress is just too freaking fast. At this rate it'll complete again before the end of the 3 week period and I'll be screwed again but without time to wait.
At least I have power armor now and in decent supply but still just magnetic weapons. I just don't think I'll be able to win this campaign. It's at the end of December of the first year in the game's time. I dont even have the shadow chamber being made yet which is super pathetic.
Anyway I'm pretty sure this campaign is lost but I've come pretty far with it. Best to see what more I can get out of it before I quit.
------
Btw I watched an indie game on twitch that was being played as a game to suffer through. I don't know the game's name but the dialog was some of the worst I've seen. It was super up its own ass too. I mean it was BAD. The type where you want to tear your eyes out. Supposedly it was made by a games journalist. Good to make fun of but I couldn't take watching it anymore. It's like the scene in Indiana Jones where the nazis look into the crypt and their faces melt or south parks parody of the same. Thats how bad it was.
It deals with cringy dialog no person with any human interaction would ever use with another person. Imagine all those fun gaming cartoons or cartoons about nerd culture that in some cases died before their time while this game existing at proves there is no God and there is no plan for any of us in the world.
------
Amazing how within about 10 days of game time the avatar progress went up 3 bars and completed. I had no way of stopping it in time and thus ended my campaign. Not all is bad news however. I think I'll try more proving ground gear like redscreen rounds on rangers for 25 hack decrease per each shot and they have 2. Should make robots cry against me. I could use a couple pet robots in my campaign to help me.
Next I'm gonna try a weird little squad combo that I don't know will be effective. Rangers can sort of be like overwatch specialists but with certain important details. Their first possible skill allows them to use all moves for an automatic overwatch shot. They also get 1 or 2 really nice abilities like boosted aim and crit chance for overwatch at low levels. The plan will be to go into overwatch with sentinel specialists (maybe one), pin down with area suppression on gunners and finally have 2 or so move and auto overwatch rangers in place to react to any action and pointed in such a way that the enemy is flanked and with an ability or two it'll crit one of the enemies it's flanking. They'll be double suppressed at least so it should be painful if the enemy moves and aim will be in the crapper and I will get as much crit hit chance I can if possible on my reaction fire. I suppose it depends on the enemies moves how well it goes down.
balmong7 wrote: I can't play Alien Isolation. The game terrifies me sure. But more than that it just stresses me out beyond all belief. So I had to put it down.
Let me guess, San Cristobal Medical Facility section?
This comment has now made me want to stop replaying the game as I haven't reached that bit yet
I was feeling burnt out with Strategy and RPG games so I just wanted to play a game where I shoot stuff. Titanfall 2 was 10 bucks on Steam so I bought it.
balmong7 wrote: I can't play Alien Isolation. The game terrifies me sure. But more than that it just stresses me out beyond all belief. So I had to put it down.
Let me guess, San Cristobal Medical Facility section?
This comment has now made me want to stop replaying the game as I haven't reached that bit yet
My advice, just keep walking (not crouching, walking at max speed, no sprinting). The Alien cannot see you as it is doing its emerge from the vent animation after you get the door code so just walk right past and enter the code to unlock the door and then just keep going. Once you reach the save point near the corridor on fire make use of it and the fact that when you reload, you have a brief window where the alien is in the vents and must come back down, this can get you a bit of time to reach the next objective. Basically, learn all the little tricks with the Alien AI and abuse the hell out of them.
balmong7 wrote: I can't play Alien Isolation. The game terrifies me sure. But more than that it just stresses me out beyond all belief. So I had to put it down.
Let me guess, San Cristobal Medical Facility section?
How did you guess? lol. I don't remember specifically which part of that chapter I was on. But I know it was a section with both human survivors and the alien in the same general area. I got spotted, shot at, and then killed by the alien. Never picked it up again. lol.
Titanfall 2 is indeed awesomepants. I had a lot of fun with it.
I am currently playing “Rain on your parade” in which you play a cloud. That rains on people. There is a Metal Gear Solid level called Cardboard Gear Cloud.
There is often a little person in the level with a sign that says “I love cloud”.
Flinty wrote: Titanfall 2 is indeed awesomepants. I had a lot of fun with it.
I am currently playing “Rain on your parade” in which you play a cloud. That rains on people. There is a Metal Gear Solid level called Cardboard Gear Cloud.
There is often a little person in the level with a sign that says “I love cloud”.
It is gloriously stupid.
Has there been an appearence by a blonde guy with spiky hair and a really big sword?
balmong7 wrote: I can't play Alien Isolation. The game terrifies me sure. But more than that it just stresses me out beyond all belief. So I had to put it down.
Let me guess, San Cristobal Medical Facility section?
This comment has now made me want to stop replaying the game as I haven't reached that bit yet
My advice, just keep walking (not crouching, walking at max speed, no sprinting). The Alien cannot see you as it is doing its emerge from the vent animation after you get the door code so just walk right past and enter the code to unlock the door and then just keep going. Once you reach the save point near the corridor on fire make use of it and the fact that when you reload, you have a brief window where the alien is in the vents and must come back down, this can get you a bit of time to reach the next objective. Basically, learn all the little tricks with the Alien AI and abuse the hell out of them.
Source: my no death run for the achievement
Thanks for that. I usually just try and run even though I know it will get me killed!
No death run? Super impressive. I looked at that in the trophies list and knew this was one game I wasn't going to get a platinum for..
Thanks for that. I usually just try and run even though I know it will get me killed!
No death run? Super impressive. I looked at that in the trophies list and knew this was one game I wasn't going to get a platinum for..
There's a little exploit you can make use of for getting the no death playthrough. It only counts as a death when it takes you to the reload screen. If you get grabbed by the alien you can manually reload before it finishes killing you and it doesn't count
How did you guess? lol. I don't remember specifically which part of that chapter I was on. But I know it was a section with both human survivors and the alien in the same general area. I got spotted, shot at, and then killed by the alien. Never picked it up again. lol.
San Cristobal is up there as one of the most difficult parts of the game as you have no weapons which can repel the alien (though if I remember correctly you find the schematic for the petrol bomb there) and the alien ai is also set to never get too far from the player nor to go back into the vents until a certain point is reached.
I got very frustrated there my first time through, though now it has become one of my favourite sections as once you get weapons which can repel the alien and its ai becomes more predictable the game gets a fair bit easier.
San Cristobal has a very annoying bottleneck when you first need to enter the facility, which paired with the AI set to never be too far from you, can make for an annoying experience. I know I was stuck on that section for aaaaaages myself.
Back on to xcom 2 long war mod. I had one squad wipe in a couple months of game time and lost one soldier due to kinda lame reasons. That totals to 6 dead soldiers so far. I have Guerilla tactics school, proving ground and advanced warfare center. The only one I'm maybe regretting is the proving ground since I'm not really building anything worthwhile yet and I'm hurting for supplies. It's been about 2 and a half months in game time and I can assault one of my regions regional advent hqs which will liberate a region if successful. However I could use more laser weapons for this mission. Enemy corpses and resources would also be nice for development.
I currently have about 4 scientists and 2 engineers and it's about mid-May in game time.
------
Sometimes I also play barotrauma but I should just decide to paint wh40k models already. At least it might feel more rewarding afterwards even if playing xcom 2 on long war on commander difficulty on ironman and succeeding sometimes is a testament to pretty good skill at the game.
Thanks for that. I usually just try and run even though I know it will get me killed!
No death run? Super impressive. I looked at that in the trophies list and knew this was one game I wasn't going to get a platinum for..
There's a little exploit you can make use of for getting the no death playthrough. It only counts as a death when it takes you to the reload screen. If you get grabbed by the alien you can manually reload before it finishes killing you and it doesn't count
Interesting! So you're saying, I hit the reset button on my PS4 the moment I am about to become Alien food I can achieve the same thing?
BrookM wrote: San Cristobal has a very annoying bottleneck when you first need to enter the facility, which paired with the AI set to never be too far from you, can make for an annoying experience. I know I was stuck on that section for aaaaaages myself.
If that is the bit where the Alien first emerges from the vent then you can just walk straight past it
It is blind as it is doing the scripted "slowly emerge from vent" animation in that scene, so just stroll on by and to the door you got the code for at the end of the corridor
Dispels the immersion a bit but eh, better than the alternative!
played through all of Hitman 3.
There are sadly not a lot of levels i feel like replaying like in 1/2
Berlin has a cool concept and its pretty cool. The train one was fun. The vinyard one is frusterating because to get to one of the guys, you have to do a mission story properly.
Really only China was a good mission. But even then, No one in the ICA headquaters recognized Agent 47?
My xcom 2 long war commander ironman campaign is going oddly well right now. It worries me somewhat because things are too quiet. I am scanning for my 7th region (in western europe) which isn't too shabby all things considered even at about mid-August in game time. Western Africa's avatar facility and eastern Europe's black site are close enough that if I build a relay in western Europe I can reach both regions without much issue.
I don't know how but one of my regions has 8 advent strength (I sent my rebel civvies here to hiding so they don't get massacred), one has 3, 1 is liberated (and is giving me supplies) and I think the other three are at 1 advent strength which is ridiculous for August esp. Considering most of my regions are maxed out on rebels doing Intel. It should attract a lot of heat within a months time but I'm not seeing it. Perhaps it's because I've been spreading out so much. 4 regions that are mostly maxed out on rebels and going for Intel is pretty solid though.
What scares me is the imminent threat an 8 advent strength region near my liberated region could do. If they assault my liberated region with that region i might just be better off to let them destroy it and re-take it. I've been trying to force additional heat to territories bordering the 8 advent strength territory by finding more rebels for those territories and getting them near max level and going on maybe 3 to 4 missions in the same 1 advent strength region in eastern usa including some get advent attention missions which won't seem to get advent attention oddly.
My current regions are western usa: liberated, mexico: 8 advent strength, new arctic: 3 advent strength, brazil, eastern usa and east asia: 1 advent strength per region.
The good:
It's rome 1.
It's improved some units and factions into playable/ actual fun. ATM running around with spaniards, great fun.
the modding scene got early access and allready some really fething awesome things.
The Ugly:
The UI is ... worse than the original.. from basically 20 years ago... HOW!
Also fixed keybinds for a lot of things... which is just not okay.
The Bad:
The game is unstable, Yup for a remaster that is a shame.
The game runs not on anything under win 10 artificially.
The Factions could've gotten a slightly bit more love, like an expanded roster and maybee one or the other province and building line more.
Been playing more of Hunt: Showdown which is enjoyable as much as it is mildly irritating.
I was sorely tempted by Rome remastered but to be honest, it looks like the android/apple tablet release just on PC and it's 12 quid. But I can quite happily play the old game. I dunno, is it worth it Not Online?
Olthannon wrote: Been playing more of Hunt: Showdown which is enjoyable as much as it is mildly irritating.
I was sorely tempted by Rome remastered but to be honest, it looks like the android/apple tablet release just on PC and it's 12 quid. But I can quite happily play the old game. I dunno, is it worth it Not Online?
It's better than the old one as in that i think the rebalancing done to it and the graphical upgrade are quite well done. ( imagine, iberian infantry is now usefull, so your spain / cartaghe campaign is actually not hamstrung for once for just being reliant on them!) But yeah, only get it with the discount for owning the old one. Full price they demand 35 CHF, or attempt to anyways, which is insulting quite frankly. For the record i'd be with it if indeed it would be a remaster in a sense that it would expand and polish to the nth degree, which didn't happen, most factions still suffer from a rather bland unit roster and cities didn't get an increase in building type aswell either. Also neither got cut content implemented (at some point ilyrians were supposed to be a playable faction) nor are the additions they implemented (merchant) really groundbreaking.
Recently finally finished Cyberpunk 2077. I'd set it aside for a while, and then came back to it just recently. Turns out I wasn't all that far from the end.
Some quick observations regarding said end -
Spoiler:
I went with the Panam ending. After I finished with it, I jumped over to YouTube and watched some of the other endings. I understand why people were unhappy with them. All of them have a strong downer component, given the six month time limit at the end. Whether a given ending is decent despite that seems to largely depend on what you want. If you want revenge against Yorinobu, then the Arasaka ending gives that. If you want money and fame, then the Rogue ending has that. And if you want a community, then the Panam ending is the best one. But you can only pick one of the three.
And then there's the Johnny ending.
The six month deadline implies to me that they intend to pick the story up again, though whether it's as a DLC add-on or a planned sequel is anyone's guess.
We know that DLC are planned. I'm curious to see what they have in the pipeline. In the meantime, I'll probably poke around a bit more to see if I can turn up any additional missions with short stories attached to them. The ones I uncovered were some of the more interesting parts of the game.
More xcom 2 long war commander ironman. Things are going well and it isn't even mid September yet in game time. I've been doing missions like mad. I'm still on 6 scientists and have 4 engineers but I have a laboratory under construction and 2 missions where I can grab a scientist each and one where I can grab an engineer.
I'm doing elerium research currently so I can grab either coilguns or power armor next. My elerium, supplies and to an extent elerium cores are a bit low. I could maybe go for power armor next but it'd probably take a lot of elerium. It'd turn my frontline troops into absolute tanks though.
I'm also about to grab the eastern Europe region (Which will bring me up to 8 regions with eastern Europe, western Europe, east Asia, new arctic which is just above east asia, all of North America and finally brazil) after i get done with the million missions im being bombarded with. Seriously....i did about 13 missions in the last 3 week period alone. So more than one every 2 days. They weren't kidding about calling it long war and it can be absolutely tedious.
I'm basically doing every mission I can attempt to try with influence boosts that seem somewhat decent. I'm also prioritizing find a lead missions since those haven't seemed to be giving me a liberation mission or a facility lead and both are wonderful for those things. I might also grab a skulljack and get the upgraded skulljack powers so I can get an extra hack boost so I can roll over workstations and data vaults without any chance to prevent me receiving goodies.
I decided to do a bit of hearthstone. Used to play it a lot like two or so years ago. I found the current battlegrounds frustrating because... well simply people where very good at it. Some builds seemed much better then others, in particular quillboars. I guess it’s a bit imbalanced currently. I couldn’t be bothered to learn what is good and what isn’t so moved on to duels. The duels are great fun. You make a deck of 16 cards then it’s like playing cobolts and catacombs against other players. I had a blast with it. Not even going to bother with the regular game. These alternative game modes are fun though.
Runescape 3, back to it. Got 4 99's during this double XP time, lots of events and optimizing. Upgraded my weapons to double drygores and a sara godsword. Going to work on masterwork and trimmed masterwork after DXP, plus stocking up for the next one for all my stuff, so summoning charms and reagents, arrows etc. Pretty exhausting. I also have been doing Spelunky two, but that's been just in the background, and pretty redundant. I keep finding gakky dungeon layouts where I can't get either the pet or ghost jar on the first run, which is what I like to do.
Decided to give Cyberpunk another go, starting from scratch. Still playing as a corpo rat with a penchant for revolvers, but also took some time to take other skills now. Already thinking of a new build to take for whenever I want to replay again, as the while quick-hacking thing, especially when paired with the right daemons, would make for a fun stealth build.
I finally tried out Ash of gods: redemption. It's a game I've been interested in for some time. It's pretty much a copy of banner saga with a less original setting and a more wonky battle system. With that out of the way Ash of gods has been great fun. The world is ending, you set out with a group of soldiers. First goal is to save your daughter from a curse. Second is to reach the capital. Assumedly at some point the goal will be to stop the world from ending. You follow multiple storylines and swap main characters through the game. If you've played and liked banner saga this is a recommend. It's not as good but you're definitely going to enjoy your time with it. If you havn't played banner saga then just buy that instead. It's quite the gem.
Subnautica: below zero recently came out of early access. I havn’t quite made up my mind about it yet. It’s certainly a great game. Is it as good as subnautica? No, not at all. That said the feeling of diving under the water for the first time (again) and taking in all the flora and fauna is breathtaking. It seems to be much smaller then subnautica. Which is fine. View this more as an expansion then subnautica 2. The new cold mechanic is welcome. In cold areas a meter goes down until you find as heat source. Swimming under the water makes your heat meter go up which... sort of makes sense? I mean I know water remains at 4C a few meters under the surface but if your close to hypothermia... we’ll whatever. One huge difference is that the main character talks! I found that a bit shocking honestly. It makes sense from the stories perspective. I felt like the blank slate character of subnautica worked really well though. Final thought for now is that it’s a great game. Smaller then the original and with some changes. But diving under the sea and exploring the depths of an alien planet is as magical as ever.
Currently playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition now. The remaster of the first game is actually really damn good. The frame rate is pretty smooth on my Ps4 and the facelift for the most part is excellent. There's some great quality of life improvements too.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Currently playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition now. The remaster of the first game is actually really damn good. The frame rate is pretty smooth on my Ps4 and the facelift for the most part is excellent. There's some great quality of life improvements too.
Can you go into a bit more detail about what has changed beyond the graphical overhaul? I'm still weighing up whether I think it is worth buying.
hotsauceman1 wrote: played through all of Hitman 3.
There are sadly not a lot of levels i feel like replaying like in 1/2
Berlin has a cool concept and its pretty cool. The train one was fun. The vinyard one is frusterating because to get to one of the guys, you have to do a mission story properly.
Really only China was a good mission. But even then, No one in the ICA headquaters recognized Agent 47?
The train level was the only one that really disappointed me. It's supposed to be the grand finale but in practise there's only one way to do it, going straight forward and with no consequences if you get caught and start shooting everyone. In fact it's the only level that I've just played once, with no desire to do it again. Definitely the worst level in the entire trilogy. I've completed all the other missions a dozen of times each at least.
The british mansion played as the detective was amazing.
I tried playing ME:Legendary and....yeah, it looks better, but it did very little to improve the archaic gameplay of the 1st game. I still remember the plot, it being my favorite series of all times, so trying to play through it again was just a chore. If you're new to it, it's a great idea to play the best sci-fi rpg ever.
If you played it before, it's only a little less janky than when you played it the first time.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Currently playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition now. The remaster of the first game is actually really damn good. The frame rate is pretty smooth on my Ps4 and the facelift for the most part is excellent. There's some great quality of life improvements too.
Can you go into a bit more detail about what has changed beyond the graphical overhaul? I'm still weighing up whether I think it is worth buying.
The big changes are the graphics, UI/menu layouts and the fact you can shoot straight from the start, a la ME2 and 3. There's an optional overhaul to levelling that gives you half the overall levels but twice the skill points per level, so it's much of a muchness but the actual progression skills ect are the same with a few minor tweaks.
Having finished my playthrough of ME1, I will say between the nicer shooting and graphical improvements it's the first time I've not found the game at least a slightly hellish slog. In the past I've just blitzed through the critical path for the sake of having a save to import, but this time I could tolerate it enough to actually bother with enough side content to have got the Completionist trophy if not a full 100%.
I'm onto ME2 now, my favourite in the trilogy and possibly in general, and where ME1 was elevated from 'meh' to actually genuinely enjoyable for me, the remaster of 2 is just the same familiar game but much prettier and smoother, even on a base PS4. 3 I assume will be much the same.
If graphics matter to you, if you never got the various DLC, or you always struggled with ME1's jank, I'd say it's absolutely worth it (and for new players, I'm very jealous this is their first experience of the trilogy!), but the gameplay is largely unchanged outside of the areas mentioned. For my money it's a better remaster than a lot of the recent attempts (looking at you, Return to Arkham) and definitely worthwhile.
Was hoping that they'd change it up a bit more. Had fingers crossed they'd add the Reputation mechanic from ME3 into the first and second game as the paragon/renegade system locking out conversation choices in those two was quite annoying (especially 2 where if you didn't consistently pick one or the other you might not have the chance to pick later conversation choices).
Nerak wrote: Subnautica: below zero recently came out of early access. I havn’t quite made up my mind about it yet. It’s certainly a great game. Is it as good as subnautica? No, not at all. That said the feeling of diving under the water for the first time (again) and taking in all the flora and fauna is breathtaking. It seems to be much smaller then subnautica. Which is fine. View this more as an expansion then subnautica 2. The new cold mechanic is welcome. In cold areas a meter goes down until you find as heat source. Swimming under the water makes your heat meter go up which... sort of makes sense? I mean I know water remains at 4C a few meters under the surface but if your close to hypothermia... we’ll whatever. One huge difference is that the main character talks! I found that a bit shocking honestly. It makes sense from the stories perspective. I felt like the blank slate character of subnautica worked really well though. Final thought for now is that it’s a great game. Smaller then the original and with some changes. But diving under the sea and exploring the depths of an alien planet is as magical as ever.
There is a pretty good interview with one of the Devs on Escapist Magazine (and their youtube channel). They talk about how this game started as an expansion and then slowly became a sequel as they decided to focus more on story rather than just creating a new biome for players to explore. I'm excited to play it, but I've got some other games in backlog I want to finish first. How long did the playthrough take for you?
I'm playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Both games in the series are just fantastic, beautifully animated platformers. Love their take on boss fights in particular.
Finally beat Gear of War tactics. What a chore that became. Just playing the same mission on the same map over and over. Really makes you appreciate XCom. The final boss wasn’t difficult but took hours to beat. What they did best was the boss fights.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Finally beat Gear of War tactics. What a chore that became. Just playing the same mission on the same map over and over. Really makes you appreciate XCom. The final boss wasn’t difficult but took hours to beat. What they did best was the boss fights.
I told you man. I saw the ending before I got too close to the end myself so I stopped trying to beat it because I mostly knew what happened. Gears tactics really should've learned to tone down padding the game with too many side missions. It's legit a good game to a very good game if it just cut off the fat. Ofc it might not have justified the 60 USD price tag in that case. I'd still prefer that.
I've honestly not been gaming much except for a little bit of barotrauma and then painting my dark eldar incubi models. The reason why is my computer fan is filled to the brim with dust and ive been going to bed late and watching youtube videos instead.
Btw we should friend up on steam or something. Maybe I can show you how to beat xcom 2 on some of the tougher difficulties and get some tough achievements.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Currently playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition now. The remaster of the first game is actually really damn good. The frame rate is pretty smooth on my Ps4 and the facelift for the most part is excellent. There's some great quality of life improvements too.
Can you go into a bit more detail about what has changed beyond the graphical overhaul? I'm still weighing up whether I think it is worth buying.
The big changes are the graphics, UI/menu layouts and the fact you can shoot straight from the start, a la ME2 and 3. There's an optional overhaul to levelling that gives you half the overall levels but twice the skill points per level, so it's much of a muchness but the actual progression skills ect are the same with a few minor tweaks.
Having finished my playthrough of ME1, I will say between the nicer shooting and graphical improvements it's the first time I've not found the game at least a slightly hellish slog. In the past I've just blitzed through the critical path for the sake of having a save to import, but this time I could tolerate it enough to actually bother with enough side content to have got the Completionist trophy if not a full 100%.
I'm onto ME2 now, my favourite in the trilogy and possibly in general, and where ME1 was elevated from 'meh' to actually genuinely enjoyable for me, the remaster of 2 is just the same familiar game but much prettier and smoother, even on a base PS4. 3 I assume will be much the same.
If graphics matter to you, if you never got the various DLC, or you always struggled with ME1's jank, I'd say it's absolutely worth it (and for new players, I'm very jealous this is their first experience of the trilogy!), but the gameplay is largely unchanged outside of the areas mentioned. For my money it's a better remaster than a lot of the recent attempts (looking at you, Return to Arkham) and definitely worthwhile.
Thanks for the review, really useful to know
I take it is the game base PS4 only? Do we know if they are planning a PS5 upgrade if played on that console?
Been splitting my time between finally going to the center of the galaxy in No Mans Sky, and finally finishing the Parkitect campaign, and playing God of War (PS4) with my wife.
No Man's Sky is still nice and relaxing. Parkitect varies between a fun creative endeavor and administrative hell as you try to manage loans and proper path/employee placement. God of War is pure catharsis, I killed a dragon last night and now my son has lightning arrows.
I take it is the game base PS4 only? Do we know if they are planning a PS5 upgrade if played on that console?
As of right now, they have no plans to make a native PS5/Xbox Series X version. However, I believe the game is "optimized for PS5/Series X" so it can make use of the consoles upscaling and frame rate buffs and things. They said they purposefully didn't develop it for next-gen consoles because of the game engine they were using or something.
On PC - finished my Imrik Vortex campaign - enjoyed that - Got Khemri on side and for almost all the campaign Zatlan. Trying out the ME version - very different! Killed nearby Dwarfs and Eshin but even though have a port can't trade with the rest of my Elvish kin...hmm - oh well seems to going alright but Grimgor is growing.
ON PS4 - mainly Skaven in Mordheim and just started and enjoying Days Gone.
Muddling my way through The Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Feel like I'm figuring out the whole xianxia Cultivation laws that are the focus of the game. Through an event, unlock a new law called Primordial Unity Shaping. Note that it has some oddly low stat requirements. Ascend a character using that law.
Wait... what the heck is this "breathing" and "reshaping" stuff?
Just playing Spelunky at the moment. Boy is it difficult and utterly ruthless in the way it kills you off, but very addictive. There are tons of secrets to keep coming back to as well, I've managed to get to the final boss once but then died - must try again!
Its a pretty fun game with a good team and someone skilled playing as the Predator. Alot of tense moments running around completing objectives against NPCs while the Predator stalks you.
Eumerin wrote: Muddling my way through The Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Feel like I'm figuring out the whole xianxia Cultivation laws that are the focus of the game. Through an event, unlock a new law called Primordial Unity Shaping. Note that it has some oddly low stat requirements. Ascend a character using that law.
Wait... what the heck is this "breathing" and "reshaping" stuff?
I'm confused again...
Ooh, there's a game for Xianxia? Neat.
Check out "Forge of Destiny" on RoyalRoad, maybe, if you want to get a better handle on the genre.
From what I can tell, it's basically a sort of analogue D&D style class-and-level system. Instead of XP earned through action and conflict, 'powering up' happens through repetition and practice, and is sort of solidified and kept from falling back through meditation and focusing on the form and movement of chi/qi/ki/ba/whatever energy.
Eumerin wrote: Muddling my way through The Amazing Cultivation Simulator. Feel like I'm figuring out the whole xianxia Cultivation laws that are the focus of the game. Through an event, unlock a new law called Primordial Unity Shaping. Note that it has some oddly low stat requirements. Ascend a character using that law.
Wait... what the heck is this "breathing" and "reshaping" stuff?
I'm confused again...
Ooh, there's a game for Xianxia? Neat.
Check out "Forge of Destiny" on RoyalRoad, maybe, if you want to get a better handle on the genre.
From what I can tell, it's basically a sort of analogue D&D style class-and-level system. Instead of XP earned through action and conflict, 'powering up' happens through repetition and practice, and is sort of solidified and kept from falling back through meditation and focusing on the form and movement of chi/qi/ki/ba/whatever energy.
I generally see "The Amazing Cultivation Simulator" described as "Rimworld-style xianxia sect management". At the start of the game, you control a handful of disciples (three is the default) who have fled the destruction of their old sect. You're tasked with managing the build-up of a new sect, ascending characters, and (if you choose) playing through a plot that involves figuring out who attacked your old sect, and why. Combat is never a requirement for advancing your characters (advancement happens via sitting and meditating), and is generally used either to defend yourself, or to get good loot (including the carved up parts of monsters).
The graphics are simple (to the point where they're likely a turn-off for some). But there is a surprising amount of depth in the systems involved. And, of course, most of the latter is left up to the player to discover, aside from some basic hints such as which side of a room feng shui dictates the door should be placed on.
My confusion above basically came from - after sort of figuring out the way that the five basic schools of advancement worked - suddenly learning a school that works in a *completely* different fashion. The starter five are the usual "contemplation and meditation leads to advancement" sort of affairs, but this new one is all about literally remolding your body using the essences you absorb from the world around you. And that's not just a fluffy way of having you do more or less the same thing with characters in that school that you'd been doing with characters in the other school. The mechanics are completely different. This was the first of the non-starter schools that I've ever unlocked, and there's a total of sixteen schools (I think) in the game. At the moment, I've no idea how many more of them are utterly different from the others.
They also got rid of the penalty for using a weapon you are not trained in meaning you can still play some classes and use the only good weapon in the game, Assault rifle.
Sniper rifles also no longer sway anymore.
ME2 and 3 however integrated DLC weapons into the main game.
Nerak wrote: Subnautica: below zero recently came out of early access. I havn’t quite made up my mind about it yet. It’s certainly a great game. Is it as good as subnautica? No, not at all. That said the feeling of diving under the water for the first time (again) and taking in all the flora and fauna is breathtaking. It seems to be much smaller then subnautica. Which is fine. View this more as an expansion then subnautica 2. The new cold mechanic is welcome. In cold areas a meter goes down until you find as heat source. Swimming under the water makes your heat meter go up which... sort of makes sense? I mean I know water remains at 4C a few meters under the surface but if your close to hypothermia... we’ll whatever. One huge difference is that the main character talks! I found that a bit shocking honestly. It makes sense from the stories perspective. I felt like the blank slate character of subnautica worked really well though. Final thought for now is that it’s a great game. Smaller then the original and with some changes. But diving under the sea and exploring the depths of an alien planet is as magical as ever.
IT is smaller, that is why the cyclops isnt in the game.
However, I am a little frusterated with it, not much, but a little. IT makes sense it gives you almost everything right away. But some things are not given right away(For example a thermal plant)
The cool thing is if you have a PS5, the voices come through the controller.
Trondheim wrote: Been playing Tyranny, enjoying the atmosphere and overall look & feel of it, it feels good to for once not having to be the savior of the world type.
Likewise! It’s not a long game, but it does dark fantasy pretty well. Assuming you’ve completed the first “part” already,
Spoiler:
Have you picked a side yet? Went for the Disfavored myself.
I was hoping that Neverwinter Nights would be in the Steam sale, but I guess not. In that case, should I play Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity or Torment: Tides of Numenera? Never got around to any of them so far.
nels1031 wrote: Been playing Predator: Hunting Grounds, casually.
Its a pretty fun game with a good team and someone skilled playing as the Predator. Alot of tense moments running around completing objectives against NPCs while the Predator stalks you.
Ah has this improved at all with patching now?
Also is it the case that everyone is still playing as Dutch, which was the case when that DLC came out?
Looking for something to play as a 4-player asymmetric as an alternative to Dead by Daylight and have this on the shortlist at the moment.
Just spent way too much time playing RimWorld today instead of something more constructive. Should've begun the 1st draft of my next Angaran Chronicles novel instead.
Bilge Rat wrote: I was hoping that Neverwinter Nights would be in the Steam sale, but I guess not. In that case, should I play Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity or Torment: Tides of Numenera? Never got around to any of them so far.
Original Sin is a pretty solid game that has a sizeable campaign, and (assuming you mean the first one and not the second) doesn’t take up much file space. It’s even more fun if you can get coop going.
Can’t speak for Tides or Pillars, but I’ve heard mixed reception on Tides.
There’s also Tyranny if you’re looking for a CRPG, but it’s a bit short and less number-crunchy than the others. Would recommend checking a review for this one if you’re interested.
Trondheim wrote: Been playing Tyranny, enjoying the atmosphere and overall look & feel of it, it feels good to for once not having to be the savior of the world type.
Likewise! It’s not a long game, but it does dark fantasy pretty well. Assuming you’ve completed the first “part” already,
Spoiler:
Have you picked a side yet? Went for the Disfavored myself.
I also enjoyed the distinct lack of the various fantasy creatures, well besides the two we got. Witch could also have been dropped.
Yes I did actually
Spoiler:
I went with Disfavoured in my first and ended with being all benevolent(sort of.) The second time around went a bit less well, ended up killing Tunon, The assassin fellow, and the Chorus leader.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bilge Rat wrote: I was hoping that Neverwinter Nights would be in the Steam sale, but I guess not. In that case, should I play Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity or Torment: Tides of Numenera? Never got around to any of them so far.
Pillars Of Eternity, both 1 and 2 are solid games with a lot of great content, storytelling, and adventure. The combat is rather decent and nice characters I thought at least. Torment is also a good choice
nels1031 wrote: Been playing Predator: Hunting Grounds, casually.
Its a pretty fun game with a good team and someone skilled playing as the Predator. Alot of tense moments running around completing objectives against NPCs while the Predator stalks you.
Ah has this improved at all with patching now?
Also is it the case that everyone is still playing as Dutch, which was the case when that DLC came out?
Looking for something to play as a 4-player asymmetric as an alternative to Dead by Daylight and have this on the shortlist at the moment.
Not sure about any issues with patching, tbh. I thought it just came out according to Steams release date.
It runs pretty well on my system, and my partner in crime hasn’t had any issues either.
There are a few Dutchs still running around, but it never felt excessive. Had a 1987 and a 2025 Dutch in the same map once.
Played all of ME3 till i got a headache.
I beat it and still love the game, I ended with it just under 7500 war assets and got the synthesis ending where everyone got along.
But Mass effect was always about the characters, which means in honestly, The Citadel DLC is a great end to the game, a chance to reconnect with these characters for one last time, do some stupid gak with them and party.
Y'know, its weird sometimes to get so attached to chracters in games, at some points, they even feel real.
Going to write a thing about Subnautica: below zero once I’ve finished it with final thoughts and such. Currently about 20h in.
Valheim. I log in every now and then to mess around in my base and do a little adventure. Just stumbled upon the final boss lair. I play solo but for this I’m going to call in the einhjär. Which is to say call in my friends for a big showdown against the final boss. The plan is to get 10 people togheter for the fight. Quite hyped! I have a lot of things to do though. Need to prepare stuff for the big raid. Like a big boat, comfortable beds for everyone and foods. Then we hunt the goblin king!
I decided to play Pillars of Eternity (thanks for the suggestions). It is pretty good so far, feeling very similar to Baldur's Gate but obviously far superior in terms of graphics and the like. I am still feeling pretty overwhelmed despite the familiar gameplay so am easing into it slowly. I have only played as far as the first town and am stuck on the bell puzzle because I am too lazy to read things.
Playing some OG Dawn of War: Soul Storm but with the Unification mod, which is pretty cool, loving the new way Dark Angels are played; Eldar are pretty similar to what they once were though an awesome mod.
nels1031 wrote: Been playing Predator: Hunting Grounds, casually.
Its a pretty fun game with a good team and someone skilled playing as the Predator. Alot of tense moments running around completing objectives against NPCs while the Predator stalks you.
Ah has this improved at all with patching now?
Also is it the case that everyone is still playing as Dutch, which was the case when that DLC came out?
Looking for something to play as a 4-player asymmetric as an alternative to Dead by Daylight and have this on the shortlist at the moment.
Not sure about any issues with patching, tbh. I thought it just came out according to Steams release date.
It runs pretty well on my system, and my partner in crime hasn’t had any issues either.
There are a few Dutchs still running around, but it never felt excessive. Had a 1987 and a 2025 Dutch in the same map once.
Ah that's good. I know when it first came out it was all over the place, constantly dropping people out of games and some quite bad in-game bugs (mobs just blinking into existence in front of you and things like that).
Adrassil wrote: Playing some OG Dawn of War: Soul Storm but with the Unification mod, which is pretty cool, loving the new way Dark Angels are played; Eldar are pretty similar to what they once were though an awesome mod.
I saw about that mod the other month, looks great. I really want to try it out!
I'm still playing WoW in the prep for burning crusade. Levelling a horde character seriously for the first time ever. Its good fun!
Adrassil wrote:Playing some OG Dawn of War: Soul Storm but with the Unification mod, which is pretty cool, loving the new way Dark Angels are played; Eldar are pretty similar to what they once were though an awesome mod.
Surprised how it fell under the radar. Firestorm over Kronus and Ultimate Apocalypse got aome reasonable traction from DoW fans, but this one seems to have Lictored it’s way over.
I remember needing to install a good few number of different mods to get Ultimate Apocalypse working. Does the Unification mod come under one package?
nels1031 wrote:Getting some practice in on Wasteland 3. New expansion or something drops June 3, I believe.
Fun game and looks like they’ve added some featuresvsince I last played.
Glad to hear. I remember playing the first Wasteland game and having a blast from its more pulp-ish feel.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Played all of ME3 till i got a headache.
I beat it and still love the game, I ended with it just under 7500 war assets and got the synthesis ending where everyone got along.
But Mass effect was always about the characters, which means in honestly, The Citadel DLC is a great end to the game, a chance to reconnect with these characters for one last time, do some stupid gak with them and party.
Y'know, its weird sometimes to get so attached to chracters in games, at some points, they even feel real.
Well especially in that series were some of them you’ve gotten to know over 200 hours.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Seems like a good one so far.
Been powering through God of War (the PS4 one) with my wife and I am loving it so far. I also messed around a little bit with Star Wars Squadrons. It's fun, but something about the throttling for speed is really hard for me to get used to. I will probably power through the small story mode and maybe play a game of two of multiplayer then put it back on the shelf.
Been playing PinballFX3's Williams/Bally tables and TotalWar Warhammer 2.
Started up my first vortex campaign as Eataine on easy. Took over the starter province, crossed into the east area and got my army killed by an early 18/20 dark elf blob. Then some high elves declared war and I was wiped out by turn 29. lol
Adrassil wrote:Playing some OG Dawn of War: Soul Storm but with the Unification mod, which is pretty cool, loving the new way Dark Angels are played; Eldar are pretty similar to what they once were though an awesome mod.
Surprised how it fell under the radar. Firestorm over Kronus and Ultimate Apocalypse got aome reasonable traction from DoW fans, but this one seems to have Lictored it’s way over.
I remember needing to install a good few number of different mods to get Ultimate Apocalypse working. Does the Unification mod come under one package?
Uh, sorry I have taken so long to reply. It's mostly on its own, but they had to separate it into two separate downloads as the mod site wouldn't allow one file over 9 gigabytes. The only other mods besides the mod manager is the Tyranid mod which is linked on the page.
Playing Hades right now. Excellent like the rest of Supergiant's stuff. Remains to be seen whether restarting the opening levels gets repetitive, but the emphasis on character building has helped thus far.
I completed the latest DLC for Wasteland 3 "Battle for Steeltown".
Was fun, but also frustrating, gameplay-wise. Was a great story with alot of tough decisions to be made, but I think I made out alright, making the most benevolent decisions(or at least I thought so). I won't know until I hunt down the last of the Patriarch's children and also deal with him how I see fit. Still not sure what side I'm going to take at the end.
On Sunday it is time for the great Valheim battle. I’ve been solely playing Valheim preparing for it. Think I’ll make a post in the Valheim thread about the preppwork as well as the actual battle. 10 players have been summoned to battle the games final boss.
Just completed Lego Harry Potter 5-7 to fully complete both games from the Xbox One double pack, so full 2000 Achievement points.
Also playing a bit of Hearthstone, my daily foray in Fortnite Save the World to keep Venture mode ticking along. A bit of Sims 4 and Doom 64.
Oh and I played a wonderful Adventure, puzzle game called 'Call of the Sea' which I'd have never brought but thanks to Game Pass didn't need to. I really enjoyed it mind, need to go back and grab a final few achievements but very impressed with the story telling, would be interesting in see what else the studio comes out with.
RimWorld again. Would be playing Vampire: The Masquerade; Bloodlines bot for some reason the pier is glitching. I'm trying to do the mission where you find the Ankaran Sarcophagous but I can't leave the beach. It could be something to do with the Clan Quest mod, which is a shame as it's an amazing mod.
LunarSol wrote: Playing Hades right now. Excellent like the rest of Supergiant's stuff. Remains to be seen whether restarting the opening levels gets repetitive, but the emphasis on character building has helped thus far.
This was one of my favourite games from last year. You can definitely tell the game was a labour of love for the developers because there are just so many little neat touches. It plays beautifully too.
I'm probably on about 40-50 playthroughs now and still don't think I have seen a repeated line of text from a character, which is pretty remarkable..
Broke and got Breath of the Wild while it was on sale. Anyone ever played this one? Heard “Zelda” and “open world,” which sounds like a good time, but I’m stepping in kind of blind.
New Venture mode in Fortnite Save the World, back to Canny Valley style, so my fave zone.
Also finished Full Throttle for the first time ever last night, fun little game, glad they remastered it because I'd only played Monkey Island back at the time.
Started a new game of Hearts of Iron 4. Was playing as Manchukuo, and wanted to get the Dragon Swallowed the Sun achievement (Manchukuo annexes Japan while not in a faction). Set myself up on the "break free of Japan" path, and watched while the German military overthrew Hitler on the other side of the world. Put my attention back to East Asia, and jumped through the necessary hoops. Now all I needed to do was build up my troop strength, and then trigger the "declare independence from Japan" event.
And then Japan and Communist China went to war. On the surface, this wasn't anything to pay attention to because the two countries didn't have access to each other. But then Mao joined the Comintern, which meant that the Soviets were getting involved.
/sigh
I initially ignored the calls to arms. But I knew that wasn't really an option, since both Nationalist China (which promptly joined in) and Communist China have claims on Manchukuo, and the moment Japan was beaten, the Comintern was going to invade me. And then Italy joined the East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (seriously!), and dragged me into a war in southern and Western Europe. That was fine... except that the British joined as well, and just invaded the Japanese Home Islands.
It's now 1940, the war in Asia is going reasonably well except that the Japanese Home Islands are getting rolled up, and pretty much the only pieceful places in Eurasia right now are Germany, and Poland.
Being able to overdraw a bow with those piercing arrows is amazing against certain annoying enemies, especially with the right upgrades slotted in, bumping the damage to absurdly hilarious levels when you land a crit.
