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Pretty chunky update to Fallout 4. Now I have a Nailgun, a Gauss Enhanced saw blade Launcher, various Grenade Launchers. Oh. And a Baseball Launcher which sets the Baseballs on fire.

Have they no regard for how much havoc I’m gonna cause?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And just ran into an Enclave patrol, which gave me a decent kicking before I succeeded.

On a real Switch binge of late, specifically Streets of Rage 4 and Lego Star Wars Skywalker saga
Star Wars is fantastic.

Thanks to a certain bit of media hitting the small screen, I've been back in that whacky wasteland of the Fallout universe.

Actually playing 4 on PS5, and slowly trying to get NV, 3 and older games to work on Win 11.

The new weapons are fun, but unfortunately the missions were a bit meh, and just thinly veiled ways to give you those new weapons.

Given one involves hacking Pipboys on dead Gunners, I had been hopeful of a new Vault to go clear.

Also, why didn’t Fallout 4 allow me to clear Vaults and set them up as settlements?

Manor lords.
An amazing game sofar!

Been playing Stellar Blade. It's a lot of fun. Great mechanics. Some of the character animations look a bit goofy during cutscenes (characters talking sorts of scenes, not battle scenes), but aside from that I have no complaints.

I strongly recommend it.

It does look like it might be a bit short (though I can't be sure since I'm not close to finishing it yet) if you just race through the main missions. But there are also a lot of optional side missions that you can run if you want. They give you something else to do, and also flesh out the world lore.

Eumerin wrote:
Been playing Stellar Blade. It's a lot of fun. Great mechanics. Some of the character animations look a bit goofy during cutscenes (characters talking sorts of scenes, not battle scenes), but aside from that I have no complaints.

I strongly recommend it.

It does look like it might be a bit short (though I can't be sure since I'm not close to finishing it yet) if you just race through the main missions. But there are also a lot of optional side missions that you can run if you want. They give you something else to do, and also flesh out the world lore.

What other games would you say it's similar to? Is it 3rd person RPG? Open world? I've been looking for something kinda like Horizon and Stellar Blade looks like it might fit the bill.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
Been playing Stellar Blade. It's a lot of fun. Great mechanics. Some of the character animations look a bit goofy during cutscenes (characters talking sorts of scenes, not battle scenes), but aside from that I have no complaints.

I strongly recommend it.

It does look like it might be a bit short (though I can't be sure since I'm not close to finishing it yet) if you just race through the main missions. But there are also a lot of optional side missions that you can run if you want. They give you something else to do, and also flesh out the world lore.

What other games would you say it's similar to? Is it 3rd person RPG? Open world? I've been looking for something kinda like Horizon and Stellar Blade looks like it might fit the bill.

It's a third-person action RPG like Horizon Zero Dawn. But I'd be cautious about drawing similarities. A good chunk of Horizon revolves around ranged attacks, or manipulating robot beasts. But Stellar Blade is very heavily focused on melee action. You do eventually get a ranged weapon. But for the entire first section of the game, your only weapon is your sword.

The gameplay is heavily focused on reading enemy attacks, picking the proper response, and making your own attacks without getting smacked around. Enemies often hit hard, which means that screwing up a counter can cost you a good chunk of your health. Button mashing attacks will do the same thing, since enemies that you're attacking can often launch their own attacks at you while you're hitting them.

There's a demo available that covers the early part of the game (it was accidentally released early, automatically deleted from Playstations that had downloaded it, and then officially released a little later). It includes the intro and tutorial section, and the first level proper of the game up through the first boss fight (which is *not* the end of the level). And it saves your progress (right up until just before that boss fight, unfortunately), and you can carry that progress over to the full game. It also has a boss rush mode where you're given an Eve with a large number of purchased skills, and fight bosses one after the other. I didn't check that mode out, though. Prior to the game's release, the developer - Shift Up - noted that some gamers had spent a disturbing amount of time (as in, dozens of hours) playing the demo just wandering around the section of the first level that's in the demo, and slaughtering enemies.

Given the noise over the game, it's worth noting that even the reviewers that bad mouth the game generally praise the gameplay before adding comments about how Eve's looks will lead to the downfall of civilization.

So far I've seen six maps. Two of them are standard level maps (albeit very big ones) that guide you toward a destination, though you do have the option to go poking around in odd corners along the way. And there are times when your path will open up into an area where you're required to complete various tasks before moving on. Two are large wasteland areas that you freely wander around in (I haven't actually had the opportunity to do that in the second one yet, though I recently had to pass through a very tiny part of it). One is a friendly city / quest hub. And the last is a very linear map where I could only use my gun (presumably to force players to get acquainted with it after spending so much time using their sword). After a certain point in the game, you'll have the opportunity to go back to earlier levels (not the tutorial level).

Doing yet another playthrough of Vampire: The Masquerade; Bloodlines. This time as a Ventrue, I wanted to play a Tremere but had a brain fart and accidentally chose Ventrue. This realisation made me want to finally do a "stuck up", donkey-cave, money/power-hungry Ventrue, but I haven't managed that much so far (except for one inhuman exception). I usually RP a Toreador "Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire" as Toreador is the clan I identify the most with, or a Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire Malkavian as I guess I identify with them too due to having a tenuous hold on my sanity a bit, lol. and it's such a fun way to play. Love the scene with the Stop Sign in Downtown. I'm finding it hard to be a dick mostly because almost all the characters are so likeable, despite many of them being heavily satirical lampoons on stereotypes. There's a reason why VTMB replaced Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift in my top five favourite games: that or Cyberpunk 2077; it's a toss-up between those two.

It's amazing that a rushed game on Xbox and PC from 2004 with such wonky animations, jankiness, and combat is so much more immersive and entertaining than so many AAA games that come out today. Troika deserved much better in my book. Love VTMB and Arcanum despite all their problems.

More progress for me in Stellar Blade. I finished the map that I had left off on, and now I'm doing more open world exploration. I've got a new map waiting (had it pretty much right from the start of the new batch of open world exploration), but it's on the back burner at the moment while I roam around.

And one of the things that happened while I was roaming around is that I unlocked fishing! Yes, I can now pick up a rod and reel, and fish. It's a bit goofy, but there are a few side missions that ask for it. And you can sell the fish for some cash (not that I have any money issues). There's also a codex that tracks the kinds of fish that you've caught, and an achievement for catching a certain number of them.

I'm finding the game story interesting. I don't want to talk about it because I haven't finished the game yet, and I don't want to accidentally spoil something that's important. But the more I play, the more it becomes apparent that there are some big secrets. Eve's mission hasn't changed yet from "Kill the biggest naytiba," nor is there yet any reason to think that it will. But the game is making it clear that she has a lot of very important holes in her knowledge of the world. And I'm not talking about stuff like not understanding why people on the surface like wine.

I ended up buying Stellar Blade so we can gush over the game together, Eumerin

The combat is excellent. I may actually try a Souls game again after bouncing so hard off Demons Souls back when that came out. I just unlocked the R1 attacks and been having lots of fun with those. The sound a successful parry makes is so satisfying. It's a joy making EVE kick ass.

The story I'm finding pretty good, I'm mystery of Mother Sphere and the Final War has been really interesting. Still peeling the layers but l'm really curious to see where it's going.

EDIT: the music is phenomenal. I've caught myself humming along a few times now. The songs are just so catchy.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I ended up buying Stellar Blade so we can gush over the game together, Eumerin

Nice! I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying it!

EDIT: the music is phenomenal. I've caught myself humming along a few times now. The songs are just so catchy.

It is, and it's not just action music like you might expect. There's a lot of variety in the music, and it really adds to the game.

Knee-deep into a Tamurkhan playthrough in Warhams 3.

Love how the chieftains unlock units that are generally out of the faction (Dreadquakes!!!), or give abilities to the army. The Skin Wolf chieftain giving his parent army "Stalk" is pretty devastating when surrounded by enemies or attacking a large group of army stacks.

Haven't even touched the new factions yet.

 nels1031 wrote:
Knee-deep into a Tamurkhan playthrough in Warhams 3.

Love how the chieftains unlock units that are generally out of the faction (Dreadquakes!!!), or give abilities to the army. The Skin Wolf chieftain giving his parent army "Stalk" is pretty devastating when surrounded by enemies or attacking a large group of army stacks.

Haven't even touched the new factions yet.

Stalk can also be a godsend in siege battles if it is a large map with multiple entry points. In my recent Aranessa playthrough (using the mod to increase the number and variety of living units available to her) I had to crack Clan Angrund's capital with Belegar sitting in it with a full stack including his ethereal heroes. Set up my army out the front on one side and promptly took out the towers with cannons and managed to waste quarreller ammo with a hero, then snuck in Aranessa with Stalk over a wall in the back and started capturing locations in the city which caused the AI to pull its forces way back to try and find and kill her. Then I was able to blow open a gate and get my handgunners on the walls facing inwards, with Sartosan pirates guarding the routes up. As the dwarf army rerouted to try and come back they were shot to death piecemeal and I was able to slowly grind them down as Aranessa kept many of them searching throughout their own city. Definitely cheesy and exploiting the dumb AI, but it felt fitting for a pirate to use such sneaky tactics.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Knee-deep into a Tamurkhan playthrough in Warhams 3.

Love how the chieftains unlock units that are generally out of the faction (Dreadquakes!!!), or give abilities to the army. The Skin Wolf chieftain giving his parent army "Stalk" is pretty devastating when surrounded by enemies or attacking a large group of army stacks.

Haven't even touched the new factions yet.

Stalk can also be a godsend in siege battles if it is a large map with multiple entry points. In my recent Aranessa playthrough (using the mod to increase the number and variety of living units available to her) I had to crack Clan Angrund's capital with Belegar sitting in it with a full stack including his ethereal heroes. Set up my army out the front on one side and promptly took out the towers with cannons and managed to waste quarreller ammo with a hero, then snuck in Aranessa with Stalk over a wall in the back and started capturing locations in the city which caused the AI to pull its forces way back to try and find and kill her. Then I was able to blow open a gate and get my handgunners on the walls facing inwards, with Sartosan pirates guarding the routes up. As the dwarf army rerouted to try and come back they were shot to death piecemeal and I was able to slowly grind them down as Aranessa kept many of them searching throughout their own city. Definitely cheesy and exploiting the dumb AI, but it felt fitting for a pirate to use such sneaky tactics.

I mislabeled the ability in my original quote. What I meant to say is it gives the "Stalking" army stance to his parent army, allowing ambushes when colliding with another stack, like Skaven and Alith Anar.

I forgot that "Stalk" is a unit ability for battlefields, while Stalking is the campaign movement.

So moving and ambushing Nurgle armies when the ability is paid for! I think it lasts for 2 turns.

 nels1031 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Knee-deep into a Tamurkhan playthrough in Warhams 3.

Love how the chieftains unlock units that are generally out of the faction (Dreadquakes!!!), or give abilities to the army. The Skin Wolf chieftain giving his parent army "Stalk" is pretty devastating when surrounded by enemies or attacking a large group of army stacks.

Haven't even touched the new factions yet.

Stalk can also be a godsend in siege battles if it is a large map with multiple entry points. In my recent Aranessa playthrough (using the mod to increase the number and variety of living units available to her) I had to crack Clan Angrund's capital with Belegar sitting in it with a full stack including his ethereal heroes. Set up my army out the front on one side and promptly took out the towers with cannons and managed to waste quarreller ammo with a hero, then snuck in Aranessa with Stalk over a wall in the back and started capturing locations in the city which caused the AI to pull its forces way back to try and find and kill her. Then I was able to blow open a gate and get my handgunners on the walls facing inwards, with Sartosan pirates guarding the routes up. As the dwarf army rerouted to try and come back they were shot to death piecemeal and I was able to slowly grind them down as Aranessa kept many of them searching throughout their own city. Definitely cheesy and exploiting the dumb AI, but it felt fitting for a pirate to use such sneaky tactics.

I mislabeled the ability in my original quote. What I meant to say is it gives the "Stalking" army stance to his parent army, allowing ambushes when colliding with another stack, like Skaven and Alith Anar.

I forgot that "Stalk" is a unit ability for battlefields, while Stalking is the campaign movement.

So moving and ambushing Nurgle armies when the ability is paid for! I think it lasts for 2 turns.

Ah! Well, campaign stalk stance is also a really good ability, especially against some army types. Anyone who is using a lot of missile troops or war machines gets royally fethed by ambushes where they can't defend their vulnerable elements, and of course denying reinforcements.