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 Nerak wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
Just got a new puppy, so the only thing I have time to play is hearthstone.

The new game mode seems to be a lot of fun but they want freakin’ 40$ to access it!? I do want to play dungeon run pvp.

Yeah, not keen on that buy in price for Duels. I'll stick to battlegrounds and arena for my alternate game modes for now, which is what I'm playing currently. It's not a bad game for just passing time while I do other things.

I picked up Mechanicus the last day so keen to jump into that, but have been tempted by many other games this week. Has anyone tried The Outer Worlds yet? Is it worth getting?

Has anyone tried The Outer Worlds yet? Is it worth getting?

I played it last year on the MS game pass for a dollar.
It was.... ok.

Bit thin and repetitive- lots of open world shooting pointless mobs in the head (of which there are only a half-dozen types)

Tries for fallout level satire and fails (going instead with Evil Corporations of Evil Evilness are certainly Evil! and -everybody- is dumb)

Characters are largely forgettable. (The first companion is sort of adorable, but gets annoying and needy as the game goes on, needing her hand held for basic human interactions. Most of the rest are terrible people that personally, I would never actually team up with, or willingly spend any time with)

Once the second DLC comes out, they do a game of a year edition, that gets a price drop and a sale happens, I might revisit it.

Also the item levelling system is pretty borked.

I loved the look of the Retrofitted Heavy Power Armour, for example. But you can only find the item at a low level, and the cost of levelling the item is not determined by what level you are increasing it to but by how many times you have levelled the item.

So there is zero point to levelling items yourself as the cost of doing so becomes massive and you could instead just use that other item which you found at a higher level.

 Nerak wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
Just got a new puppy, so the only thing I have time to play is hearthstone.

The new game mode seems to be a lot of fun but they want freakin’ 40$ to access it!? I do want to play dungeon run pvp.

I've not played any of the other game modes (arena, battlegrounds), unless there is some event where you get prizes for doing so. I just play ranked standard and tavern brawl once a week lol.


Speaking of outer worlds, outer wilds is an absolutely fantastic indie game i got totally sucked into, and I wish I could discover it again not knowing anything about it.

Might give the new game mode a shot when it's out for everyone, but I'm happy mucking about with my decks.

Just getting my teeth sunk into the new Doom Eternal expansion - "The Ancient Gods". ...Technically it works as DLC, but you don't need to own the original game and by all accounts it's sufficiently meaty of its own accord, which is a big plus in my books. I greatly miss the old style of proper-sized expansions we used to have.

As far as the actual game? So far it's more of what made Doom Eternal so great - but with yet another ramp up the frenetic scale. Doom Eternal was already much much rougher going than Doom 2016, but it at least eased you in with a small tutorial, and cranked up the action as you unlocked more powerful weapons and abilities.
This one? Gives you everything available in Doom Eternal right from the start and says "go get stuck in. QUICK, now, don't hang around, get movi- oh you're already dead."

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also the item levelling system is pretty borked.

I loved the look of the Retrofitted Heavy Power Armour, for example. But you can only find the item at a low level, and the cost of levelling the item is not determined by what level you are increasing it to but by how many times you have levelled the item.

So there is zero point to levelling items yourself as the cost of doing so becomes massive and you could instead just use that other item which you found at a higher level.

Yeah, I kinda skipped over a lot of the 'RPG' mechanics, and didn't bother learning them. Gear especially was a constant flow and I didn't really care, but stats/skills involved platform tiers [must have [25/50/75/100] score to do <task>] and talents were very blatant good/not good. Wasn't a lot of depth, and companions had even less.

As someone who started crpgs with Wizardry I and Ultima IV, character mechanics should never make me go 'meh, whatever' and take a straight shot through to the end of the game on the first character I've made.
I never once felt like I was missing something with my build or I might've skimped on something another character might have taken advantage of.

My brother finally conned me into trying out Among Us. I hope this doesn't become an addiction...

 ZergSmasher wrote:
My brother finally conned me into trying out Among Us. I hope this doesn't become an addiction...

*checks Steam*
Installed: 7th Oct 2020
Played: 56.5 hours

...I'm sure you'll be fiiiiiine

 Super Ready wrote:
Just getting my teeth sunk into the new Doom Eternal expansion - "The Ancient Gods". ...Technically it works as DLC, but you don't need to own the original game and by all accounts it's sufficiently meaty of its own accord, which is a big plus in my books. I greatly miss the old style of proper-sized expansions we used to have.

As far as the actual game? So far it's more of what made Doom Eternal so great - but with yet another ramp up the frenetic scale. Doom Eternal was already much much rougher going than Doom 2016, but it at least eased you in with a small tutorial, and cranked up the action as you unlocked more powerful weapons and abilities.
This one? Gives you everything available in Doom Eternal right from the start and says "go get stuck in. QUICK, now, don't hang around, get movi- oh you're already dead."

So the fact that I got my ass well and truly kicked by the first game means that probably isn't going to be easy going for me?

Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock on Wii. Has the best line up of songs for me of the games including Prayer of the Refugee by Rise Against (which is my main character of Secret War Attelus Kaltos' theme song, that, and Assassin by Muse, it's almost like those songs were made for him or I made him from those songs but made him way before I first heard Prayer of the Refugee) Knights of Cydonia by Muse (which is their best song ever to me, their 'Bohemian Rhapsody' so to speak) Helicopter by Bloc Party (Their Bohemian Rhapsody for me) Barracuda by Heart and Cult of Personality by Living Colour are a ton of fun to "play". Although, I miss Hotel California by The Eagles and Float On by Modest Mouse from 4. Spent quite a few fun hours playing Guitar Hero 4 with my friends with all the instruments back in 2009, those were the days...

 Pacific wrote:
So the fact that I got my ass well and truly kicked by the first game means that probably isn't going to be easy going for me?

...start wearing your brown pants.

 Adrassil wrote:
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock on Wii. Has the best line up of songs for me of the games including Prayer of the Refugee by Rise Against (which is my main character of Secret War Attelus Kaltos' theme song, that, and Assassin by Muse, it's almost like those songs were made for him or I made him from those songs but made him way before I first heard Prayer of the Refugee) Knights of Cydonia by Muse (which is their best song ever to me, their 'Bohemian Rhapsody' so to speak) Helicopter by Bloc Party (Their Bohemian Rhapsody for me) Barracuda by Heart and Cult of Personality by Living Colour are a ton of fun to "play". Although, I miss Hotel California by The Eagles and Float On by Modest Mouse from 4. Spent quite a few fun hours playing Guitar Hero 4 with my friends with all the instruments back in 2009, those were the days...

Oh man, this takes me back - GH3 on the Wii was the first one I could actually play myself! On account of not having an XBox or PS of any flavour at the time. Since then I've picked up a 360 and gotten the entire series, but those tracks on 3 hit the sweet nostalgia spot.
I'd have to say my favourite one though - thanks to a combination of tracks, improved mechanics and the additional instruments - would be the last one, Warriors of Rock.

I got into the Beta for Necromunda Underhive Skirmish on iOS. After some struggling to get the hang of the gameplay the first couple matches. I am now thoroughly enjoying myself. Excited to see how this shapes up moving forward to release.

The game I am playing now is: Do I stick with my 5700XT and Ryzen 3600, or do I upgrade to a 6800XT and Ryzen 5800X? I am leaning towards the latter now, after seeing AMD's announcement today. And I can turn the 5700XT/3600 combo into a PC for my wife to replace her older setup.

Played Siege, though hackers are ruining the Halloween event sadly.

Also played more Deep Rock Galactic Ultimate Squat Simulator and really getting into things again.

Started X4. Currently flying a small mining ship. Mining is something that I've largely ignored in the earlier games (I tend to forget about it), so this is a bit different.

I finally got around to playing Final Fantasy XV. It took me a long time to get into it but I eventually got there. I enjoyed the gameplay and combat system, even though it mostly came down to me spamming warp strikes with the Ragnarok sword. I had a lot of fun with the open-ended parts of the game in chapters 3-8.

But then... oh dear. Chapters 9-14 throw out the open world, and the car, and most of what made the game good. Ironically I kind of enjoyed the widely-hated chapter 13 as I had fun with the ring, and I liked being able to use it as an alternative strategy for the remainder of the game. The story however is unbelievably awful. I don't understand anything about the bad guy or the motivations behind his non-sensical actions throughout the game. I don't understand why I disappeared for a long period and then came back. I don't understand why one of my party members suffered a life-changing injury when it ended up barely having any relevance to anything. The story is a complete and utter mess.

I know I have a bunch of post-game content and DLC still to go but I am really put off at this point. Not sure how they messed it up so badly.

Finished Bloodstained and managed to get my first ever PS platinum trophy.

It almost broke me - stupid early hours of the morning trying to find some fething item. That might well be my first and last

 BrookM wrote:
Played Siege, though hackers are ruining the Halloween event sadly.

Also played more Deep Rock Galactic Ultimate Squat Simulator and really getting into things again.

Wow that looks amazing - hadn't heard of it before !

 Bilge Rat wrote:
I finally got around to playing Final Fantasy XV. It took me a long time to get into it but I eventually got there. I enjoyed the gameplay and combat system, even though it mostly came down to me spamming warp strikes with the Ragnarok sword. I had a lot of fun with the open-ended parts of the game in chapters 3-8.

But then... oh dear. Chapters 9-14 throw out the open world, and the car, and most of what made the game good. Ironically I kind of enjoyed the widely-hated chapter 13 as I had fun with the ring, and I liked being able to use it as an alternative strategy for the remainder of the game. The story however is unbelievably awful. I don't understand anything about the bad guy or the motivations behind his non-sensical actions throughout the game. I don't understand why I disappeared for a long period and then came back. I don't understand why one of my party members suffered a life-changing injury when it ended up barely having any relevance to anything. The story is a complete and utter mess.

I know I have a bunch of post-game content and DLC still to go but I am really put off at this point. Not sure how they messed it up so badly.

Chapter 13 was completely redone after launch. I forget all the specifics, but I know they let you run which cut the length of it in half and I think the ring got buffed somehow. I played the original version and you had to have enough distance from an enemy to where they didn't hit you before it went off and that took a really long time. There was also a huge insta kill stealth section that didn't really have the mechanics to support it. It was never as bad as people say, but it wasn't good either.

The game really suffers from being in development hell for too long. It's often said the difference between a great game and the rest is the last 10% and its pretty clear how much love went into the core gameplay loop for this one. The whole day to day cycle of getting quests, going into the world, hunting, finding a place to sleep to level up and the character interactions along the way are all magnificent, but after years of getting that together, telling the story became a rushed affair you're literally railroaded through. They just didn't have the time to build unique scenarios after so much work had been put into the generic encounter structure, and the game was released with the intent to patch it in via DLC later.

As messy as it is, I didn't find it all that confusing. I had to watch the monologuing cutscene with subtitles on YouTube because initially Ardyn's speech was on the secondary sound channel and Noctis grunting in pain was the primary and that was.... neat.... Anyway, basics of the plot. So, you learn that there's this disease called Starscourge that turns people into the demons you fight along the way that is kept in check by light exposure. Ardyn's brother, who's Noctis's ancestor used the light of the crystal to kill anyone infected to contain the plague, but Ardyn had the power to cure them by absorbing the plague into his own body which left him an immortal pariah. Long story short, in game he's essentially reached the point where he wants it all to end and forces Noctis to become the Crystal's avatar so that he can either truly destroy it or be destroyed by it to end his suffering.

 LunarSol wrote:
Chapter 13 was completely redone after launch. I forget all the specifics, but I know they let you run which cut the length of it in half and I think the ring got buffed somehow. I played the original version and you had to have enough distance from an enemy to where they didn't hit you before it went off and that took a really long time. There was also a huge insta kill stealth section that didn't really have the mechanics to support it. It was never as bad as people say, but it wasn't good either.

Ah, ok. I knew they made changes but I thought it was just adding the 'easy mode' path with Ignis and Galdio. It also helped that I was ludicrously over-levelled.

 LunarSol wrote:
The game really suffers from being in development hell for too long. It's often said the difference between a great game and the rest is the last 10% and its pretty clear how much love went into the core gameplay loop for this one. The whole day to day cycle of getting quests, going into the world, hunting, finding a place to sleep to level up and the character interactions along the way are all magnificent, but after years of getting that together, telling the story became a rushed affair you're literally railroaded through. They just didn't have the time to build unique scenarios after so much work had been put into the generic encounter structure, and the game was released with the intent to patch it in via DLC later.

Yeah, I kind of got that impression. They built up a lot of interesting systems that started off fun but then they never went anywhere. Even something as simple as the fishing - there seems to be a lot of depth and complexity there, but I got to max skill level without paying any attention to what lures did what or what fish appeared where, plus there seems to be no ultimate reward.

 LunarSol wrote:
As messy as it is, I didn't find it all that confusing. I had to watch the monologuing cutscene with subtitles on YouTube because initially Ardyn's speech was on the secondary sound channel and Noctis grunting in pain was the primary and that was.... neat.... Anyway, basics of the plot. So, you learn that there's this disease called Starscourge that turns people into the demons you fight along the way that is kept in check by light exposure. Ardyn's brother, who's Noctis's ancestor used the light of the crystal to kill anyone infected to contain the plague, but Ardyn had the power to cure them by absorbing the plague into his own body which left him an immortal pariah. Long story short, in game he's essentially reached the point where he wants it all to end and forces Noctis to become the Crystal's avatar so that he can either truly destroy it or be destroyed by it to end his suffering.

All of this is news to me

I did read that apparently a lot of the story was fleshed out in DLC and also through the anime movie, but from what I saw it made no sense.

 Bilge Rat wrote:

I did read that apparently a lot of the story was fleshed out in DLC and also through the anime movie, but from what I saw it made no sense.

I haven't played any of the DLC. That was what was in the original game, but I had to go back and rewatch a few bits to make sense of it. The movie is kind of important to the plot, but has nothing to do with Ardyn. It just shows you the empire killing the king and taking the crystal, which... is kind of a big thing to cut out of the game....

When people ask, I often say FFXV is the skeleton of the best game in the series. Sadly, even after all the DLC it never really got there. At one point they started crafting a completely different ending for it that probably makes better use of the characters as a whole, but only the very start of it got added before they stopped trying to keep the thing afloat.

 LunarSol wrote:
When people ask, I often say FFXV is the skeleton of the best game in the series.

I'm still waiting for them to beat VII. I got a lot out of all of the main series games that came after that, but all of them have been disappointing in one way or another.

X came closest I think. XII was the furthest away.

 Bilge Rat wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
When people ask, I often say FFXV is the skeleton of the best game in the series.

I'm still waiting for them to beat VII. I got a lot out of all of the main series games that came after that, but all of them have been disappointing in one way or another.

X came closest I think. XII was the furthest away.

I actually don't care all that much for VII, but mostly because I was a huge fan of IV and VI. I don't think its bad by any means, I just found the cast of those two games more interesting. I think IX might be up there among the best and I really like X apart from aspects of it that haven't aged super well. XII is honestly the only game I haven't finished.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Bilge Rat wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
When people ask, I often say FFXV is the skeleton of the best game in the series.

I'm still waiting for them to beat VII. I got a lot out of all of the main series games that came after that, but all of them have been disappointing in one way or another.

X came closest I think. XII was the furthest away.

I actually don't care all that much for VII, but mostly because I was a huge fan of IV and VI. I don't think its bad by any means, I just found the cast of those two games more interesting. I think IX might be up there among the best and I really like X apart from aspects of it that haven't aged super well. XII is honestly the only game I haven't finished.

I thought XII was a bit too much of a black sheep to compare to the other FF games. It’s got the staples, but the story focus seems less character-based (VII, VIII, X) and more based around the events occurring in the setting at the time. The worldbuilding stuff is actually kind of cool (probably helped that the tactics games were set in different continents of the same world), but the cast is kind of really bland. Balthier is fun and you can sort of see how these characters could work, but they’re as bland as planks of wood. It’s got its strengths, but it’s not hard to see why this one isn’t so well regarded.

Elements of the gameplay were probably influenced by Final Fantasy XI (the first Final Fantasy MMORPG). It's been quite a while, so unfortunately the only thing I still remember is the "much higher than everything else in the area elementals that agro when you use magic somewhere nearby them" (which is why nine times out of ten, an elemental's first kill was party healer, while the party was focused on fighting something else...). But I remember seeing in-game mechanics (and not necessarily combat ones) that seemed to me at the time to want the player to think that there were other active participants all doing their own thing while you did yours (even if that wasn't actually the case).

You could program the game to play for you via macros. My wife actually told me I should really give up on it when she caught me reading a book while steering my party towards the next encounter with my toe.

I spent hours playing through XII and doing the dumb bonus bosses, so it must have done something right. However, I remember almost nothing and don't really have any fond memories of it at all.

Eumerin wrote:Elements of the gameplay were probably influenced by Final Fantasy XI (the first Final Fantasy MMORPG). It's been quite a while, so unfortunately the only thing I still remember is the "much higher than everything else in the area elementals that agro when you use magic somewhere nearby them" (which is why nine times out of ten, an elemental's first kill was party healer, while the party was focused on fighting something else...). But I remember seeing in-game mechanics (and not necessarily combat ones) that seemed to me at the time to want the player to think that there were other active participants all doing their own thing while you did yours (even if that wasn't actually the case).

LunarSol wrote:You could program the game to play for you via macros. My wife actually told me I should really give up on it when she caught me reading a book while steering my party towards the next encounter with my toe.

The gambits! Those were pretty cool, and a surprisingly simple way to automate the other party members. Gotta love how they pretty much are macros, with the “if/else” statements and all that. I found the system a godsend for micromanaging healers and removing debuffs.

Bilge Rat wrote:I spent hours playing through XII and doing the dumb bonus bosses, so it must have done something right. However, I remember almost nothing and don't really have any fond memories of it at all.

The guild quests, right? Always kept running into the monsters before taking on their sidequests. The good news is that you get rewarded anyway when you get back to the guild hall. The bad news is that you could finish a story dungeon and walk back with a laundry list of accidentally completed guild quests.
Wasn’t there a 4 million HP dragon at one point?

 SkavenLord wrote:

Bilge Rat wrote:I spent hours playing through XII and doing the dumb bonus bosses, so it must have done something right. However, I remember almost nothing and don't really have any fond memories of it at all.

The guild quests, right? Always kept running into the monsters before taking on their sidequests. The good news is that you get rewarded anyway when you get back to the guild hall. The bad news is that you could finish a story dungeon and walk back with a laundry list of accidentally completed guild quests.Wasn’t there a 4 million HP dragon at one point?

Yeah, I think there were two different bosses with obscene numbers of hit points. I vaguely remmeber the gambit system but I couldn't be bothered to mess around with it and just looked up a guide for generalised ones. Also the Zodiac Spear - a hidden weapon that you can only get if you DON'T loot certain treasure chests. Basically impossible to get without a guide.

 Bilge Rat wrote:

Yeah, I think there were two different bosses with obscene numbers of hit points. I vaguely remmeber the gambit system but I couldn't be bothered to mess around with it and just looked up a guide for generalised ones. Also the Zodiac Spear - a hidden weapon that you can only get if you DON'T loot certain treasure chests. Basically impossible to get without a guide.

Eh, that's not that bad. I mean Chrono Trigger had similar stuff where you had to hold off on opening chests in order to open them in different epochs to get the best stuff. FF9 had Excalibur 2 which could only be got if you made it to Memoria (the final dungeon of the game) and talked to a specific hidden NPC within 12 hours of game time. Oh and good luck on the PAL version where the 50Hz framerate meant you actually only had 10 hours.

Then there was stuff like dodging 200 lightning bolts and beating the Chocobo minigame with a time of 0:00:00 in FFX.

The Final Fantasy series has pretty good pedigree for annoying as hell methods for obtaining the best weapons.

Slight update to my playing through Doom Eternal, now that I've actually finished the expansion. My first impressions still hold - it's more of the same, only amped up even more, and that's a really good thing - but there's one thing that really irks me about it.
About halfway through, you go through a part of the map that encourages slowing down a bit - without giving too much away, you have greatly reduced visibility. This then stacks up with the introduction of enemies that only serve to slow down the pace, but they're also a part of bigger arenas that have the original, faster-paced enemies too. This creates a conflict where you need to slow down to take those enemies out, while opening yourself up to attacks from everything else. That led to quite a few deaths that really didn't feel like they were my fault, and it feels like it spits in the face of the game's own design direction.
...aaaaaaand then, they added an enemy that actually directly slows you down when it hits you.