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 SkavenLord wrote:
Been playing a lot of Tyranny lately, and just finished the first act. I’m loving this game more and more as I continue to play.

I’m not entirely certain whether dialogue choices actually do have consequences (heard it becomes less relevant as the game progresses), but the writing and atmosphere seem to build it up in such a way that I feel as though I am walking on eggshells with everything I say.

I think I like the party members here too, since it feels less like a band of loyal travelling companions and more like an unstable alliance of convenience that can fall apart at any moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them turns on the rest of the party at some point.

Tyranny is pretty great.. For the most part.

It's definitely an obsidian game though, so yeah, act 3 is..., well, it exists.

The big DLC is best avoided though, unless you really end up liking the dungeons in 'the Walls.'
Tales of the Tiers is actually a better dlc if you already have it, as it fleshes out random encounters and other things you run into as you travel during the game.

Welp, after having avoided it in favour of wanting to finish other games... a friend FINALLY convinced me to pick up Among Us and try it out.
...that was about 5 hours ago. Steam tells me I've just played for 4.8 hours. Of a game where a round typically takes 5-10 minutes.

DAMN this game is good!

Sanic 3 and Knuckles. To say it's a classic is a frigging understatement.

 Adrassil wrote:
Sanic 3 and Knuckles. To say it's a classic is a frigging understatement.

Seconded, thirded, fourthed and infinitied. I will sing this game's praises into whatever grave you try and shovel me into when you inevitably get fed up of me praising it.
I'm going to assume you're aware of Sonic Mania...?

 Super Ready wrote:

 Adrassil wrote:
Sanic 3 and Knuckles. To say it's a classic is a frigging understatement.

Seconded, thirded, fourthed and infinitied. I will sing this game's praises into whatever grave you try and shovel me into when you inevitably get fed up of me praising it.
I'm going to assume you're aware of Sonic Mania...?

I just wish they'd reordered the levels correctly in the linked pack. As a kid and to this day it still irks me seeing the wrong level transitions, which is mostly a testament to the fact I've played the game so many times I remember them all to notice.

Finished Vampire: Masquered, Coteries of New York. It was a pretty good game and one of the few Visual Novels that doesn't suck.

Then I played Shadows of New York and it was pretty much an example of everything wrong with Visual Novels. Can't win them all I guess.

IkenFell released today. I played a little bit so far. The plot and graphics are great. The controls scheme is wierd as hell and I can't find a way to customize button bindings. Might need a controller for this one...

 Super Ready wrote:

 Adrassil wrote:
Sanic 3 and Knuckles. To say it's a classic is a frigging understatement.

Seconded, thirded, fourthed and infinitied. I will sing this game's praises into whatever grave you try and shovel me into when you inevitably get fed up of me praising it.
I'm going to assume you're aware of Sonic Mania...?

Yep! Bought it a while back, frigging loved it. Just too good.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Played a game of Steel Division (1st one) with a friend. I suppose i realized usa airborne was much, MUCH better in phase A. I had been thinking phase A was what i should probably focus most of my units around both due to income per phase A being the best airborne had as well as a huge section of the game was phase A anyway. Planes were expensive so i just used less of them in my game. My force was mostly machine gun jeeps, artillery, tanks, infantry and a few planes but not much. I skipped AA emplacements entirely and didn't really use AT ambush teams or AT guns much. If enemy AT fire was an issue i'd either use spammed machine gun jeeps to fight them (most anti-tank in this is short ranged, on a vehicle or on stationary AT emplacements) or i'd shoot some smoke screens around the AT emplacements so they couldn't do anything to hurt my vehicles.

Machine gun jeeps are great because a lot of anti-tank seems to lack high rate of fire so you can suppress anti-tank emplacements and mortars fairly easily and they're cheap enough that a destroyed jeep isn't a huge loss. Machine gun jeeps are fast so a mobile force can really help in phase A.

In the couple previous games i played i was getting destroyed reasonably badly but in the latest game i got a handle on things and even pushed so hard on my side that i practically reached the edge of the enemy's map in a smaller part before the game ended. It's a bit good the game did end because i started to run low on vehicles. I could still have held the enemy at bay for a while but i imagine phase C would've gotten ugly the longer it lasted.

------

Outside of that i played more xcom 2: war of the chosen and was doing really well. I pretty much have full tier 3 weaponry and even armor is almost researched and most of it is built as well. I might play it more tomorrow. We'll just have to see. I may have to prep pretty hard but i'll probably have enough to assault and kill off the assassin soon which feels like it's being done in record time honestly.

What's your final verdict on the new XCom? Chimera Squad? I actually feel guilty I haven't picked it up yet. Isn't it episodic or something?

@KamikazeCanuck:

I only played xcom: chimera squad part-way through (probably halfway or less than halfway) and then played more gears tactics. Chimera squad has some fun things but a LOT of bad things in it. First off you can't pick up squadmates beyond a limit and they're all pre-made characters. If you leave mission site while the remaining squadmates are bleeding out but not dead then you still win the mission (unless they fixed that). Characters at worst get scars but no time off healing for being wounded even if they'd otherwise die. I think all characters in your squad instantly bleed out when they almost die. The dialog from radio ads and banter between characters can be really cringy. Some character voices are pretty bad and some are unfitting. After hearing how advent and skirmishers sound in xcom 2 you'll be thrown off by how the hybrid squadmates sound in this. The snake lady sounds nothing like a snake person is ever portrayed in fiction. In fact the snake lady sounds like a human woman of all things which is really off. Some of the movement in the game feels clunky in comparison to xcom eu and enemy unknown. Encounters feel very enclosed rather than an open fully destructible environment which you can play around with. A huge step down from grenades blowing up entire floors and sending enemies falling down to the building's lower floors.

There is some good with the bad. First off "breaching" feels really good at times. It's one of the few things i hope xcom 3 considers. You can breach through several different possible ways (vents, windows, breaching charge on a wall, etc.) and they generally have different negatives or positives on them. You can also throw in a breaching charge, holo-target nade, flashbang, etc. which can do different things. Enemies will have several states of awareness when you enter a room which is either: they attack you upon entering, they are surprised and therefore easier to hit and possibly crit. and finally the one where they rush to cover upon the breaching phase being over. All 3 of these tend to be interesting in their own ways. I tend to see people go for killing the ones that will shoot them upon entering or the surprised ones first but killing an enemy before they run into cover could be ok i suppose.

The turn sequence isn't fully a bad thing but it's very different and with a full big change like that i dunno how to feel with it as an xcom eu and xcom 2 vet. It's actually a change i don't like. Reminds me of people hating on the removing of time units. I think that's how i feel about it.

The character skills were kind of cool as well. I don't remember all the ones i saw but what i did use i found decent enough.

Of all the characters personality-wise i probably like verge the most. I haven't gotten to play with them all but blue blood and the shotgun lady seem to do well enough when it comes to fighting. I really want to use the grenadier guy more.

I normally wouldn't take all this so hard but after seeing xcom: eu and xcom 2 and their dlc made from the same company i'm fairly worried.

I feel bad because there are some ok things these guys have done. It's just i dislike most of what this game has introduced. I still can't get over the fact most of the aliens, humans and hybrids are fighting buddy buddy together after only 4 years of earth being liberated in xcom 2. Keep in mind in War of the Chosen the skirmishers, reapers and templar had a decades long blood feud and even the resistance didn't fully trust each other and according to the resistance informant dark event there was all too good reason for it. This just feels very awkward and non-sensical. After finding out the aliens were genociding humans i'd think they'd be a little more distrustful of the aliens even if they've left the alien's control. I dunno maybe it makes sense and i just didn't play through it all. I just found it to get pretty boring pretty quickly. It's a good thing it was only 10 USD when i got it. I'd recommend getting it on sale in case you feel like you might dislike it. I've certainly spent 10 USD far worse ways but it's not the best gaming experience for sure.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

What's your final verdict on the new XCom? Chimera Squad? I actually feel guilty I haven't picked it up yet. Isn't it episodic or something?

I played it and finished the campaign once. There's an achievement for finishing it multiple times in certain ways, but I don't think that affects much. So I didn't play it more than the one time.

As a budget title, I enjoyed it and think it was worth it. I wouldn't shell out full price for it. But that's not what they're charging. Is it worth the price that they're charging? Some people will like it at that price point, and others won't. It largely depends on the player.

The game finds ways to model and/or explain some of the strategy elements from the first game. "Research" is explained as already understanding the science behind the new equipment, but being forced to acquire the equipment needed to properly upgrade the low-quality gear that you start with (since Chimaera Squad was rushed into action more quickly than expected). Pressure on the player to succeed within a certain amount of time is implemented via the disorder level in the city. If the player can't keep the level down, then the city will fall to anarchy. And the time table is much faster than it is in the proper games. Instead of waiting for targets of opportunity to appear, you're essentially picking a mission to run every two days.

There's other stuff, but I suspect you get the idea.

As for the tactical elements -

As already noted, the Breach mechanic is interesting, and can be quite useful at times if you're clever with it. Understanding it is key to clearing the game Maps tend to be much smaller than "proper" maps. Instead of wandering around the map looking for clusters of 3 or 4 aliens scattered here and there, you're getting into a firefight in an area that can be up to a single large room in size (or a collection of small rooms and a hallway). When you clear the first room, often the mission will then expand to allow you to Breach into a second - and possibly even a third - area. Note that the areas in question don't have to be rooms. It might be an outdoor area that's roughly the same size.

Some of the missions get a bit silly. One that I saw generated more than once involved bad guys attempting to assassinate a VIP in a traffic jam on a busy highway, with infinite waves of bad guys spawning. Your job wasn't to kill all of the assassins. Your job was to escort the VIP off the map. How and why the bad guys were able to get so many assassins into position in broad daylight was never mentioned. Most of the missions made a bit more sense, with one caveat. That caveat was, specifically, the gamey things that you could do with the "end of mission" mechanic. This isn't exactly new. If one of your men is bleeding out and the mission ends in the proper games, then your guy will survive. But when the mission involves a smash and grab type of objective deep in supposed hostile territory, there's a bit of suspension of disbelief when the unconscious bad guys that you left laying around a map deep in hostile territory all somehow got recovered and imprisoned by the city's law enforcement after the mission ended.

Having said that, if the suspension of disbelief issue doesn't get you, then there is a good variety of missions, objectives, and maps. Enemies tend to get repetitive since each faction draws a specific theme for its forces. And this means that some characters do very nicely against some enemies while being much less useful against other factions. For instance, one faction likes to use lots and lots of androids. And one of your characters can cause enemies androids to explode. And since you can't switch which faction you're fighting against until that faction is defeated, this means that for long stretches of the game, you'll likely see the same character reappear whenever he or she is available. But aside from that, I was satisfied with the mission variety.


Again, though, each player will have a different take on the game. I enjoyed it. Others won't.

I still can't get over the fact most of the aliens, humans and hybrids are fighting buddy buddy together after only 4 years of earth being liberated in xcom 2.

I wouldn't say that they're buddy buddy. Chimaera Squad is. But there are some pretty clear indications in the lore materials within the game that Chimaera Squad is very much an unusual outfit, specifically created to deal with an unusual city. The city in Chimaera Squad is the most integrated city on post-liberation Earth, and Chimaera Squad is the first fully-integrated squad within XCom. And even then, there are some groups that don't integrate. There are repeated references to the idea that no one - human or extra-terrestrial - likes the Andromedans.

Inquisitor Martyr, been thinking of buying it for a while until it was on special and fixed up and expanded on so bought in the current Steam sale. I'm a huge fan of the Inquisition, so it's pretty cool they have a game. Love the Eisenhorn Trilogy, but the game sounds like its terrible, though. :/

I went back to The Division 2 to finish the latest manhunt target, also tried to find the last missing SHD tech I need to finish both the Battery park liberation and get the last bounty I need to finish the bounty hunt project. but so far I have been unable to find it, been wondering if maybe its glitched or I am doing something wrong.

 Trondheim wrote:
I went back to The Division 2 to finish the latest manhunt target, also tried to find the last missing SHD tech I need to finish both the Battery park liberation and get the last bounty I need to finish the bounty hunt project. but so far I have been unable to find it, been wondering if maybe its glitched or I am doing something wrong.

All of the SHD tech should be obtainable, but some of them are pretty hard to reach, and sometimes require a very specific set of steps. Are you using a video guide to locate the cache? Those tend to be the best way to do those sorts of things.

 Adrassil wrote:
Inquisitor Martyr, been thinking of buying it for a while until it was on special and fixed up and expanded on so bought in the current Steam sale. I'm a huge fan of the Inquisition, so it's pretty cool they have a game. Love the Eisenhorn Trilogy, but the game sounds like its terrible, though. :/

Now you know how I feel about warhammer chaosbane. I want to play it but reviews sound bad.

A while back, I finally caved and bought Inquisitor: Martyr, knowing how much time I've sunk into Diablo 3 over the years.
Don't do it unless it's on sale or something. It's such a shame because it's clearly a labour of love for the setting, and there's potential there, but the gameplay just doesn't hold up - and the loot cycle that such games rely on just doesn't do anything to excite.

 Adrassil wrote:
Inquisitor Martyr, been thinking of buying it for a while until it was on special and fixed up and expanded on so bought in the current Steam sale. I'm a huge fan of the Inquisition, so it's pretty cool they have a game. Love the Eisenhorn Trilogy, but the game sounds like its terrible, though. :/

I'd get it at a discount. The game has gone a long way and through many changes since its release, but it is still quite a clunky and unbalanced experience.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Now you know how I feel about warhammer chaosbane. I want to play it but reviews sound bad.

It's bad. If you are really curious buy it at a steep discount, because it is nothing but a really thin and poorly executed Diablo clone.

Eumerin wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
I went back to The Division 2 to finish the latest manhunt target, also tried to find the last missing SHD tech I need to finish both the Battery park liberation and get the last bounty I need to finish the bounty hunt project. but so far I have been unable to find it, been wondering if maybe its glitched or I am doing something wrong.

All of the SHD tech should be obtainable, but some of them are pretty hard to reach, and sometimes require a very specific set of steps. Are you using a video guide to locate the cache? Those tend to be the best way to do those sorts of things.

Well the problem is that is dose not appear on the mini map, I have scouring Battery Park for ages looking for any hidden spot that may contain it, been using two seperat guides. I have 4 out of 5, the last one appeard near the waterfront, not far from the control point besides the docks in said district.

From what I recall, some caches have been hidden away in an annoying way. I'll find out sooner or later, I've decided to revisit the game myself, until I grow tired of the poor gunplay mechanics.

Aside from Division 2 I've also been giving Crossout a try after it was promoted by a certain gopnik Youtuber I watch. Surprisingly, I'm okay with it, as PvP isn't really my cuppa anymore these days. Fun, but still annoying when you have a team of morons who run into you and one another instead of the enemy.

 BrookM wrote:
From what I recall, some caches have been hidden away in an annoying way. I'll find out sooner or later, I've decided to revisit the game myself, until I grow tired of the poor gunplay mechanics.

Aside from Division 2 I've also been giving Crossout a try after it was promoted by a certain gopnik Youtuber I watch. Surprisingly, I'm okay with it, as PvP isn't really my cuppa anymore these days. Fun, but still annoying when you have a team of morons who run into you and one another instead of the enemy.

They certainly makes you work for it, but on the brigth side I find that the gunplay has improved signicficaly over the last months, with the new patches and manhunt seasons

Started playing Desperados 3 again. Finished the "woke up with a hangover and no clue what happened last night" mission.

Heh.

Vampyr and NFS: Payback were on the PS+ "free" games for this month. So far been playing abit more NFS than the other, even tho Vampyr seems very interesting to me

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Vampyr and NFS: Payback were on the PS+ "free" games for this month. So far been playing abit more NFS than the other, even tho Vampyr seems very interesting to me

I got Vampyr on release. It's a bit of a shame really - it's very promising in its opening acts! Some great writing in there, and a lot of grey-area questionable morality stuff.
Sadly, towards the end there's a stronger focus on combat and the difficulty ramps up harshly for characters built for stealth, conversation and similar.

A bit late to the party but have just started playing through Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Really, really enjoying it.
It's like the magnum opus of Metroidvania games, there is just so much in there - have found the challenge is not so much in the combat and monsters (although these are great) but in trying to find all of the various secrets and hidden areas.

It's also got some wonderful little easter eggs. That moment of "what if I try this?" that is normally just in Nintendo games and the like, and you try it and the developer has hidden something there for you (sometimes some quite nasty things )

Played Among Us for the first time yesterday, was pretty intense, in fact, especially as the Imposter, had to stop after a few games due to being close to having a panic attack lol

I'm on a bit of a Hearthstone itch right now and so far I'm just enjoying dual class arena as it has a much more "old feel" where hearthstone was dominated by tempo plays and less about insane value and fatigue games you see in standard right now.

I'm also playing Among Us with my girlfriend, who is insanely competitive when it comes to the game as it turns out.

Finished outer wilds and damn... it’s definetly in my top 10 favorite games of all time. This is largely because of the ending. There’s a certain... I suppose you could call it “choice” at the very end that made it go from a good game to an absolutely amazing one. A bit about it: it’s a space exploration with a art style similar to how things looked during the moon landing. You are stuck in a 22 minute time loop. There’s no power ups in this game. You learn more and more about how the world works in order to progress. It’s full of puzzles and mazes. The clock is always ticking. There’s a point early on when you might get bored and overwhelmed. If so forget about the story and just go to wherever looks cool or exciting. It’s going to be worth it.

Edit: not to be confused with outer worlds!

Started Wintoormore Tactics Club...its really really good. I'm surprised, since good tactical games are kind of rare. Definitly one of those sleeper hits.

Plot is a little weird since I'm pretty certain the main character is hallucinating. She's either outright killing people are pretending they are ok afterwards, or she's particpating in snowball fights while imagining she's carving people up. I'm not certain which is the less grim option.

Pretty sure hitting people with snowballs is 100% less grim than killing people and pretending they're fine.

Someone's unhealthy fantasies don't compare to actual dead bodies and grieving friends and family.

I finally played through The Outer Worlds.

It's a fun game and I'm sure the sequel will be stunning, but it really lacks enemy variety and there are a couple of massive plot holes that are ignored by seemingly everyone from in game characters to the fans.

Mechanicus is free this weekend on Steam, so I took it for a spin. There's a lot of good stuff in the game. But the Cogitation Points system bugs me. Having to collect points in the middle of a battle just to use anything but the most basic equipment is silly. "Excuse me, but I need you to go look at that terminal over there before I can fire this rifle at the Necrons that are attacking us."