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 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Playing Dredge now, after it came out yesterday. It scares me.

Yeah me too. It’s a neat little game. Though I’m surprised there’s no daily cost. Like fishing is only to buy upgrades. You don’t need to fish to actually live. It is scary though.

The pale beyond. Had some time to play during Easter so I finished it. It’s kind of a hard recommend. Good game about a 1900s ship crew surviving on the ice. It has a little bit of an identity crisis though where the real game only opens at the very very end. If you like the theme then go for it. I’d give it a 6/10 I think.

Also tried remnant: from the ashes with some friends. Pretty fun co-op shooting.

Was able to figure out what was giving me CTD on loading up with Warhammer 3 a few days ago, after a lot of frustration.

Just for giggles, I got some turns in with a Grimgor Ironhide before tomorrow's patch changes up the map right on his doorstep.

Really looking forward to this DLC and how it will change up the game.

Just belted through the Stranger Things mission on Far Cry 6.

Was quite good fun, and an interesting challenge, as you end up stripped of your weapons and gear, having to make do with what you can find during the missions.

more dredge and hunt: showdown. Dredge really ramps up the lovecraftiness at the third zone, the tropical one. No spoilers but it got me very excited for what the game has in store. Hunt: showdown is running a quest line with the final reward being a gator like skin. I don’t think I’ll make it but I’ll give it a try. The game also added a new tutorial so it’s a recommend to start now for people who‘s been curious about it but havn’t started yet.

Was playing Xcom 2 Long War of the Chosen mod. Basically got to the 2nd last mission and beat it. I'm only waiting to play the last mission and finish the game whether through losing or winning. Sadly 2 of the Chosen are still alive but i should hopefully win this. I've never had to deal with 2 chosen alive on the last mission though and i generally don't win Long War mod on 2nd hardest difficulty on Ironman.

Lately been in a bit of a bouncing around phase of gaming, switching between:

-Cyberpunk 2077
- TW3
-Wartales
-TdF 2021 on ps4

Of those, Wartales is the only new purchase, and I've gotta say: a fantasy setting with NO magic, and a sort of not really grid combat is quite fun

Err... been playing Dome Keeper. It's nice.

Wartales. I’m about 3 hours in. At the very start I didn’t like it much. It felt like a less interesting battle brothers with tacked on mini games. But after an hour or so I really started to enjoy it. The world and combat both work well. There are a bunch of mini games that feel tacked on but I’ll let that slide. Overall the feel of the game is great. Looking forward to what it has to offer. There’s one very interesting thing I’d like to talk about that almost deserves it’s own thread: region locked difficulty and dynamic difficulty.

So when you start the game it asked how you want your difficulty to scale. You get two options. One is region locked where each region has a set difficulty of higher or lower. This means you can be under leveled or over leveled for a region. The starting region will always be somewhat safe. The other choice is dynamic difficulty. Where encounters will always be made to be a challenge for your party. Basically this means the stats for enemies between regions will change to how strong or weak you are.

Personally I find it amazing that the game asks this. I prefer region locked difficulty. Making me feel like I conquer a region and I’m ready for a bigger challenge. To me that makes progression matter. But anyone who wants fair challenges at all time would be right to go dynamic. I’ve never come across a game that has this as an option before and it’s really fundamental to how the game progresses.

Portrait of Ruin for the Nintendo DS. Basically you get two characters to control, Johnathan and Charlotte, who can do double attacks and talk to each other during boss fights.

The series began to go down hill after this one, although Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Eccelisa are also worth playing.

 Nerak wrote:
Wartales. I’m about 3 hours in. At the very start I didn’t like it much. It felt like a less interesting battle brothers with tacked on mini games. But after an hour or so I really started to enjoy it. The world and combat both work well. There are a bunch of mini games that feel tacked on but I’ll let that slide. Overall the feel of the game is great. Looking forward to what it has to offer. There’s one very interesting thing I’d like to talk about that almost deserves it’s own thread: region locked difficulty and dynamic difficulty.

So when you start the game it asked how you want your difficulty to scale. You get two options. One is region locked where each region has a set difficulty of higher or lower. This means you can be under leveled or over leveled for a region. The starting region will always be somewhat safe. The other choice is dynamic difficulty. Where encounters will always be made to be a challenge for your party. Basically this means the stats for enemies between regions will change to how strong or weak you are.

Personally I find it amazing that the game asks this. I prefer region locked difficulty. Making me feel like I conquer a region and I’m ready for a bigger challenge. To me that makes progression matter. But anyone who wants fair challenges at all time would be right to go dynamic. I’ve never come across a game that has this as an option before and it’s really fundamental to how the game progresses.

Ooo. That probably is worth a thread. What immediately came to mind is Skyrim and the modern Fallouts, because they do dynamic-only, and its done terribly. Because if you don't level up 'correctly' your damage and ability to take hits falls way behind enemy scaling. (and in skyrim, damaging magic becomes worthless, voiding entire playstyles). Its also relevant because its probably one of my biggest concerns for Starfield (apart from a sheer mass of dull, lifeless worlds that do nothing but provide time-sinks).

Conversely, Wrath of the Righteous mostly does region (with some other issues with how badly they handled assigning numbers that didn't match tabletop values), and that can be frustrating in play when you go to the wrong place first and enemies are 10 levels higher than you because reasons, and you don't know until a random plagued smilodon charges out of the fog of war and deals 200+ points of damage to your front line fighters (who are level 10 and have maybe 100 HP, because you actually wanted to use the game's companions with levels in their default classes). With enough system mastery you can work through it anyway, but it can make for very frustrating experiences.

Wartale does it well, imo. I accidentally went to the fifth region instead of the fourth, and while I was struggling, especially since I was just on the cusp of getting the next tier of items, it wasn't nearly as bad as Wrath of the Righteous.

The one I usse I see is missing XP for the sixth (and final) zone, thankfully, the fourth region, which I went to midway through, has an item that helps with earning XP for it, but with about half of both zones left before I gotta get to the one with the big scary red letters, it's not looking too great.

I think I played more of the SF6 demo over the weekend than all of 5.

Choo-Choo Charles, surprisingly fun and doesn't wear the gimmick out with its length.

Just a minor flex: I got my new PC gaming rig up and running on Saturday. AMD 7800X3D, RTX 4090, and a 42" LG OLED TV screen as my 4K monitor.

And what game am I playing on this beast of a machine?

Rimworld.


Eh, it's what I currently have the bug for.

Kind of hot-swapping between games that I'm not really focusing on because I care more about Age of Wonders 4 releasing next week.

Just had my shortest dwarf fortress run yet. Went with a small dwarven civilization (4 holds and 160 people) and picked an untamed wilds area to settle in.

The small civilization bore fruit: one of my dwarves (a lumberjack) became king by mid-spring of the first year. We didn't even have basic furniture in the fortress yet, but he was king.

Mid-summer, the agitated yaks came (no, not yak-men, or were-yaks, just... yaks). I had put up walls and we were down a tunnel, but they came. We weren't sealed off, as we were still moving supplies, but I had installed bridges and was just about to build the control levels. First they killed the sheep. Then the dogs. Then the dwarves. The geese and the cats, they ignored (they are still mortal and have limits). We killed three of the things before the end. There were still more.

Beware the yaks.

been playing through The Last Remnant, an old rpg i never actually played through back when i first had it for whatever reason

I forgot if i told you guys i beat Long War of the Chosen mod for xcom 2: wotc a while back. It was on 2nd hardest difficulty on ironman but having beaten many legend ironman runs i'd say it's tougher than that.

I actually started another run of lwotc because my game in dawn of war soulstorm as dark eldar ended when the game crashed to desktop after i beat the main ork hq in the story campaign and i lost all my progress.

I guess orks is never beaten in battle :(.

We finished Resident Evil 4 Remake on Hardcore mode (because it said "if you played RE4 before". They didn't say how balls hard it would be ). Between this, all the past remakes and a RE8 marathon session the past weekend, I'm rather burnt ouf on these games.

To be honest for the most time I was pretty fed up with RE4 for most of the times we played it. They tried to make it more spooky (for some silly reason. RE isn't spooky. It's a shooter.) and thus removed any feel of flow or 'getting better'. I'm not used to aiming using a controller, which probably isa problem on my part. And I'm rather sure that action video games moved on since RE4 (dodge rolls!!1). It was also stressful weeks and so on, so I may have gone into it with a wrong mindset and all. And I hate to be bothered with "stories" in videogames anyway (most of all "character backstories"). All the more I was annoyed with the bosses in this game constantly talking during the fights. It's just another annoyance on top of all the other annoyances. Like the loading screens telling you what to do as you sit there after you died to the same crap boss for the fifth time. Situation-dependant loading screens are patronizing and annoying. In a world where everybody seems to think that video was THE best medium for everything it's surprising how annoyingly many words there are in this video game.

Anyway, here's good stuff: First and foremost I learned that the original voice person who did Ashley also voiced Sandy in Sponge Bob. That made me happy. Other than that: Luis was good, I liked Ashley in the end, Capcom's face animation stuff doesn't stop being very impressive. The baddies are all boring as heck, there was decidedly less suplexing in this one than in the original. At least you didn't have to fight the thing monster in the hanging cages. There is a LOT in this game. Somehow Capcom manage to make these remakes feel like they're worth the absurd price. RE games always seem to go on for a bit too long, but nobody can claim that they're short on things during that time. Compared to RE4 they did away with 90% of the quick-time event stuff, which is good. There also are no infinitely respawning enemies too. I was under the impression there were, but after about 200 hours I realized that there weren't. Which helps a lot.

If I wasn't as crap I may have enjoyed it more? Dunno. Either way, it's really, really well made for what it is.









edit: Also watched the demo of Street Fighter 6. Seems like they actually tried again this time. This might be rather fun.

I'm knees deep into Mordhiem city ofthe dambed right now after two weeks of learning how to play. Some friends want to organize a tournament for out group. I figured heck why not. The frist week all I did was get my warband wrecked this second week I am seeing huge improvements on my game play. I'm still learning how the game works but I am winning games and bringing in the Wyrdstone now. Sadly the game does have some glitches and one where an opposing model was trying to charge one of my own but when she made contact, instead of stopping and starting to fight she just kept trying to make the move action. 3 reboots later she was still making that attempt so I had to quit the match. Just a bit sad about that because I was pulling a win from the jaws of defeat. Oh well.
For 20 dollars on steam I think it's been worth the money.

I've recently continued my playthrough of Ghost of Tsushima and I still play Vermintide 2 on a regular basis. Still love that game.

Age of Wonders 4.

Excellent so far, but haven't had as much time with it as I'd like (looking forward to a weekend binge)

I bounced pretty hard off earlier incarnations of this series (especially #1, which was a poor Master of Magic knockoff), but this one is great for customization and magic effects.

Still a lot to learn, but looking forward to more

Playing the new Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened that came out recently. Enjoying it so far, like I have all of the recent Sherlock Holmes games from Frogwares (never played the earliest ones). Still only about an hour or so into the game, though.

I’m on Ps5

Still playing -
AC Valhalla (850+ hours so far)
Aliens Fireteam (almost to gold 100 level)

Preordered aliens dark descent

On the fence for SW Jedi Survivor

Just platinumed Horizon: Forbidden West. I don't think the game is bad, and the combat system is a lot more polished IMO than the first game, but the story definitely felt half-baked near the end and it had a lot less impact compared to the first game's ending. Felt a lot more like sequel bait with the way they set up the final fight (which was also way too easy and short). Curious to see how they'll wrap up the trilogy but kinda hoping Guerrila Games goes back to remaking the First Killzone game or working on other IP, since it feels Horizon is about reach it's natural conclusion soon.

 Grimskul wrote:
Just platinumed Horizon: Forbidden West. I don't think the game is bad, and the combat system is a lot more polished IMO than the first game, but the story definitely felt half-baked near the end and it had a lot less impact compared to the first game's ending. Felt a lot more like sequel bait with the way they set up the final fight (which was also way too easy and short). Curious to see how they'll wrap up the trilogy but kinda hoping Guerrila Games goes back to remaking the First Killzone game or working on other IP, since it feels Horizon is about reach it's natural conclusion soon.

Have you played the new DLC? I loved it, but I'm not exactly impartial as the Horizon series is easily my favorite brand of open world RPG. I've got hundreds of hours in and no sign of getting sick of it. Even grinding out the upgrades for legendary weapons on Ultra Hard has been fun because I just love the combat that much.

I've never played any of the Killzone games, but Guerilla Games have impressed me so much with Horizon I would definitely try whatever Killzone thing they release in the future.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Just platinumed Horizon: Forbidden West. I don't think the game is bad, and the combat system is a lot more polished IMO than the first game, but the story definitely felt half-baked near the end and it had a lot less impact compared to the first game's ending. Felt a lot more like sequel bait with the way they set up the final fight (which was also way too easy and short). Curious to see how they'll wrap up the trilogy but kinda hoping Guerrila Games goes back to remaking the First Killzone game or working on other IP, since it feels Horizon is about reach it's natural conclusion soon.

Have you played the new DLC? I loved it, but I'm not exactly impartial as the Horizon series is easily my favorite brand of open world RPG. I've got hundreds of hours in and no sign of getting sick of it. Even grinding out the upgrades for legendary weapons on Ultra Hard has been fun because I just love the combat that much.

I've never played any of the Killzone games, but Guerilla Games have impressed me so much with Horizon I would definitely try whatever Killzone thing they release in the future.

Just finished the game so I haven't gotten around to buying the DLC yet, would you say it's worth it? All I've heard about it is the love interest option online so far (seems like it's been overblown by the internet as usual and AFAIK completely optional) and that it's been overshadowed by Tears of the Kingdom releasing next to it (seriously, Guerilla must be cursed to keep releasing their stuff near things like Elden Ring and Zelda games lol).

It's funny you mention the grind for weapons because I basically abandoned the main story for like 15-20 hours to max out my gear so I totally agree with you there, just disappointed since the worldbuilding in the first one was done so well. I'm glad they touched on a few things like Ted Faro's fate at least (really liked the Akira esque ending they did with him).

I've played Killzone 2, 3, Shadowfall, as well as their fantastic PS Vita game Killzone Mercenary (arguably one of the best handheld shooters of the time) so I'm biased in the sense that I think they did space nazis pretty well without just copying WW2 in space, unfortunately Killzone Shadowfall was made by their B team and not their main team which is why I think it didn't take off as much as I thought they would for next gen at the time, since as a release game it became more like a glorified tech demo shooter. The first Killzone game was back in the PS2 era and was pretty ancient and squad based, so I think this would be a great opportunity for them to revisit it and apply a lot of their expertise that they've developed into being a real unique shooter given that it was originally made to compete against the Halo franchise. Just even graphics wise it would be sick to see what they could pull off with a Killzone remake.

 Grimskul wrote:

Just finished the game so I haven't gotten around to buying the DLC yet, would you say it's worth it? All I've heard about it is the love interest option online so far (seems like it's been overblown by the internet as usual and AFAIK completely optional) and that it's been overshadowed by Tears of the Kingdom releasing next to it (seriously, Guerilla must be cursed to keep releasing their stuff near things like Elden Ring and Zelda games lol).

It's funny you mention the grind for weapons because I basically abandoned the main story for like 15-20 hours to max out my gear so I totally agree with you there, just disappointed since the worldbuilding in the first one was done so well. I'm glad they touched on a few things like Ted Faro's fate at least (really liked the Akira esque ending they did with him).

I've played Killzone 2, 3, Shadowfall, as well as their fantastic PS Vita game Killzone Mercenary (arguably one of the best handheld shooters of the time) so I'm biased in the sense that I think they did space nazis pretty well without just copying WW2 in space, unfortunately Killzone Shadowfall was made by their B team and not their main team which is why I think it didn't take off as much as I thought they would for next gen at the time, since as a release game it became more like a glorified tech demo shooter. The first Killzone game was back in the PS2 era and was pretty ancient and squad based, so I think this would be a great opportunity for them to revisit it and apply a lot of their expertise that they've developed into being a real unique shooter given that it was originally made to compete against the Halo franchise. Just even graphics wise it would be sick to see what they could pull off with a Killzone remake.

Yeah, I think the DLC is excellent value for the money. If you do all the quests, the new cauldron, vantage points and all that, you've got quite a few additional hours of content for an extremely reasonable price. I also really liked the new weapons, coils, and especially the skills. As someone who loves melee in that game, Berserk Blast has been such a game changer for handling crowds. The controversy about Aloy's sexual orientation is just the internet being the internet, I thought it was very gracefully done. Maybe a little rushed, but I didn't have any qualms about it.

The timing of Guerilla's releases is definitely something they need to work on. Forbidden West deserved more recognition and Elden Ring just kinda sucked all the air out of the room.

For world building and story, I agree the first game did it better but there is something to say for novelty. I'm not sure there's anything they could have done in the sequel to replicate the tantalizing mystery of not only what happened to the world to make it this way but also Aloy's origins. Like that's an incredibly tall order. I think FW is a worthy successor, even if the story isn't quite as tight.

Killzone with today's technology, especially with Guerilla's knack for visual fidelity, would look amazing I'm sure. I think they're actually working on one, unless the rumored shooter they're doing is something unrelated to Killzone. Whatever it is I'll definitely check it out when it drops.

I've seen a video review of Age of Wonders 4. This actually looks decent. I wonder if it runs on my pc...

Farcry 6 is 15.00 on steam! Had to scoop that up, even if I’ve soured on the franchise.

Rainbow Six: Extraction and Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed.