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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.

Which is very annoying. Commandos II I think only did it once, for the final Paris mission, but that game also had 7 characters rather than 5.

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

I might have to grab HZD one of these days- just save it up for a long vacation or something, where I can sink my teeth into it.

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).

 LordofHats wrote:

 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.

Also, just got into Animal Crossing.

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.



And Attelus Kaltos from Secret War.







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.

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

Finally finished Horizon Zero Dawn. I think it takes the thrown as my favorite game of the PS4 generation.

Also, my wife and I finally finished 100% completing Lego Star Wars TFA and started up Pikmin 3 Deluxe on the Switch.

 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.

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.