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 Nerak wrote:
Got into Valheim. Has a server running with friends and one on my own. Quite enjoying playing by myself and building/doing whatever I feel like. I slew my first troll solo! I think the most fun in this game is the building your house part. I've set up a farm with some beehives and boars I've tamed. Funnily all the boars just want to hang out in one area of their pen, despite it being quite large.

I understand Boars to be more active once on fire?

I've also just bought Valheim. I only played about 20 minutes of it, but it looks canny good. A bunch of my mates have it so I was going to play with them, need time to spend on playing it. My laptop is naff so I don't think it runs very well.

Edit: I also booted up Skyrim again and played a bit of that last week funnily enough, it must have been something in the water in the UK then, or maybe it was all that snow got us in the mood for it?

Valheim. It's pretty awesome, getting my farm/meadery going to get ready to hit the second boss.

Whelp another game of long war down the drain but I'm getting closer to victory I think. The difficulty for this mod is ridiculous. I don't even want to know what the hardest is like.

Went and bought myself Pike & Shot on steam, it is a good game if a bit rough at some parts. It is fun to replay the various wars of the Pike & shot era, currently battling the Turks, and oh boy it's a meatgrinder.

Valheim, only tried it for 40 minutes so far and I'm still on the fence, though right now I'm still struggling to get a roof over a building I've found, the clipping system for building stuff is a bit finnicky. But that aside, it's already ticking off a few boxes with regards to games I usually enjoy.

Valheim looks interesting for sure. Like, where the other 'base-building survival' games like Conan and Arc make you manually pick things up and carry stuff, and so have the taming/slaving systems to help with that, Valheim looks more like a sort of up-graphics'd Minecraft, what with the auto-pickup and simpler building stuff.

Seems neat.

Started playing the brand new Persona 5: Strikers. It's a musou game, with basic combat gameplay similar to Dynasty Warriors. But at the same time, *everything* has a Persona twist. There's even a calendar that tracks the passage of each day in the game. I've barely started, though, so I don't know whether you eventually have the freedom to pick the actions you're going to engage in each day as you do in the RPG.

Fun game so far.

Decided to keep Valheim and plug away at it half an hour here and there every day. I'm grateful that there is (as far as I can tell) no time limit or other factor forcing you into hurrying up or making haste with things. I am on the fourth or fifth day now and have slowly been restoring and adding onto an abandoned house I've found near the spawn, hunting for food and scraps of leather until I've got enough for a tanning rack.

So far haven't died yet, but did stray into the black forest and nearly got mobbed by several grey ones. I somehow managed to survive that encounter and quickly ran away again.

I've been playing more Persona 5: Strikers. It's an interesting mix of gameplay. Unlike most Warriors games, you don't play on big, wide-open maps full of enemies. Instead, you get into fights (which can involve the ambush tactic familiar to those who have played the RPG) which cause a large number of enemies to spawn. You defeat the enemies as part of a set encounter, and get experience and cash for defeating them, just as if you'd won a battle in the RPG version of the game. Also, your characters are weaker than is typically the case in a musou game. They're still quite powerful, and can mow down countless numbers of weaker enemies. But even the weaker enemies can hit back pretty hard if you're not careful. And - at least so far - you can't one-shot them. Plus, I seem to be encountering more mid-strength enemies that can hurt the protagonists pretty badly if you're not careful. Finally, the boss fights can be much more punishing than any enemy I've fought in a Dynasty Warriors game. One new element is that combat allows you to utilize certain parts of the local terrain. For instance, if you're fighting on a street and there's a light pole nearby, you can jump to the top of it, and then drop down and perform a spinning attack on any enemies that have gathered underneath.

Many of the basic elements and themes of the original game are present, though in a simplified manner. The Jungian shadow stuff is still there, but the tarot arcana are gone. So are the personal attributes that you increased through social activities. Doing stuff with your friends is important to build bonds, but so far the game doesn't seem to worry about who you're bonding with. The important thing is that you're earning "bond points", that you use to unlock and improve certain abilities. The personas (demons) are still present, of course, but the negotiation from the original is gone. Now personas that you defeat have a chance to drop masks that you can use to gather new personas, or improve ones that you already have in your list. The improving (as well as "executions", or fusing) is done in the Velvet Room, of course, and is recognizable to anyone who's finished the original game. There's a calendar, but your activities are fairly circumscribed. You can wander around, but you'll largely spend it visiting stores to buy items. You won't be going to the batting cages this time around.

It's an interesting take, and not at all what I was expecting before I started playing the game.

Finally did something that I've been meaning to do for a while.

I picked up Command: Modern Naval Operations quite a while back. But it's a complicated game, and I put it on the back-burner as one of those things that I planned to get to and start learning to play "soon" (the reason I bought it at that time was because it was on sale).

Needless to say, "soon" kept getting pushed back further and further. The game has now been replaced by Command: Modern Operations, which is on sale as a result of the Slitherine sale that's currently running on Steam. So I picked it up, and finally took it for a spin.

I've played through three tutorials so far, and have shot down an unarmed Iranian drone using an Israeli F-16. All hail the mighty air warrior!

Heh.


I'm planning on pushing through the tutorials until I figure out how all of the systems work, and trying out some of the scenarios that catch my attention to get a feel for combat that's a little more chaotic. After finishing that, the plan (which may or may not actually happen) is to start messing around with the mission editor on my own and have fun with various ideas that catch my fancy - comparing Shandong with USS Wasp, for instance. But getting the skills needed to properly do things like that will take some time.

Me and some buddies are almost finished with a full play through of Divinity 2 Original Sin tonight. It's been a ride.

Someone keeps straighting fights and kill important NPCs. Not sure how many quests we've prematurely ended because he loves playing chaotic evil >.>

All of us have incidentally done something that killed someone else in the party at least thrice. Award for best team kill easily goes to the guy who unloaded a shotgun blast style attack into a boss who reflected the damage right back at one of us and killed our rogue outright.I also incidentally set an entire room on fire and maybe killed the whole team that way. I did not know the barrels in the room were oil barrels XD

It's been a ride and we're almost at the end. If I could say one thing that hasn't been fun, it's that the dialogue system leaves the other three players with a lot of nothing to do XD Only one person can talk to an NPC at a time, so while going through stories and quests, it's usually just one person talking and everyone else waiting for the next combat. Some of the waits can be quite long.

Oddly enough, team killing each other by accident is probably the most fun we have. There are a few that have been just plain annoying, but several have involved an absurd confluence of events and been utterly hilarious in the moment XD

Started playing Jurasic World Evolution this last few days, while my stint as park manager has gone somewhat well. There has been a few "incidents" along the way, had my heavily modfied Tyrannosaurs Rex break out of her pen, and into the neighbouring pen and wholesale murder all my Edmontosauruses and several Triceraptos before ACU got it sedated and under control. Then spent much, much money of further security meassuers and replacing eaten dinosaurs. After that had all calmed downed my Velociraptors got rebelious.... Good times

Finishing a Warhammer 2:Total War Campaign as the Huntsmarshal as I picked up the DLC on the last Steam Sale. Should be able to finish off Itza easily enough but the Chaos Invasion was defeated and I'm surrounded by Elves who are VERY QUICKLY starting to not like me now that Chaos is out of the way...

Might have to preemptively burn Lothern...

Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.

 Trondheim wrote:
Started playing Jurasic World Evolution this last few days, while my stint as park manager has gone somewhat well. There has been a few "incidents" along the way, had my heavily modfied Tyrannosaurs Rex break out of her pen, and into the neighbouring pen and wholesale murder all my Edmontosauruses and several Triceraptos before ACU got it sedated and under control. Then spent much, much money of further security meassuers and replacing eaten dinosaurs. After that had all calmed downed my Velociraptors got rebelious.... Good times

Velociraptors are *very* temperamental - to the point where I only hatch them if a specific mission requires it. Any time there's a storm, no matter how good your fences are, they're going to go nuts and break out. They're more trouble than they're worth.

Now if you have the Secrets of Dr. Wu expansion, then you get access to new genetic mods that help mellow out your dinosaurs (or the opposite, if you're so inclined). That would probably allow you to hatch velociraptors that don't tear up the park every time it rains.

Tried to play Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on my Dolphin Emulator again, but it seems my save files are gone. Must've happened when I transferred the emulator to my new SSD drive which is annoying.

Epic games is giving out free copies of Sunless Sea. I'm really enjoying it, it's kind of an underground London Lovecraftian sailing simulator. I made good friends with some ladies, they burned their house down, ran salt lion sculpture parts, and participated in a rat revolt against their heavily armed Guinea Pig oppressors. So far, I have been set adrift, but haven't been driven mad or turned to cannibalism- although I'm told it's possible. One of my crew members has eyes filled with freakish wasp larva, and would like me to show her a certain tower before they hatch.

It is easy to pick up, and a lot of fun!

Gonna start fighting the advent regional hq when I start playing the continuation of earlier's xcom 2 long war session tomorrow. It's early to mid June and it has about 5 advent strength on it. I only have maybe 3 scientists and 2 engineers, only 3 regions but one region is gonna be liberated in the very next mission and I can raid another advent hq in another region right after when I feel fully prepared for it. I mostly just want predator armor so my guys will be tanks for that fight and it shouldn't be a long wait. I also ha've the ability to get a not 2 to even 3 regions once I get a resistance comm going. Should make everything easier.

I should get a lot of supplies and scientists soon tho. Had a bunch of sci missions come up and a couple smash and grabs and dark events I had to get rid of. I'm getting better because I have a full 2nd advent regional hq I can infiltrate and later destroy. The amount of supplies and corpses from this should be pretty nuts.

Could be awesome because in some ways I feel like I'm progressing super fast.

Eumerin wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
Started playing Jurassic World Evolution this last few days, while my stint as park manager has gone somewhat well. There have been a few "incidents" along the way, had my heavily modified Tyrannosaurs Rex break out of her pen, and into the neighboring pen and wholesale murder, all my Edmontosauruses and several Triceraptos before ACU got it sedated and under control. Then spent much, much money of further security measures and replacing eaten dinosaurs. After that had all calmed downed my Velociraptors got rebellious... Good times

Velociraptors are *very* temperamental - to the point where I only hatch them if a specific mission requires it. Any time there's a storm, no matter how good your fences are, they're going to go nuts and break out. They're more trouble than they're worth.

Now if you have the Secrets of Dr. Wu expansion, then you get access to new genetic mods that help mellow out your dinosaurs (or the opposite, if you're so inclined). That would probably allow you to hatch velociraptors that don't tear up the park every time it rains.

Yea... I gave them all new homes far, far away from my park. Went with deinonychus instead. Far more manageable beasts. I do not have that expansion, but I will grab it at one point, I like managing these angry beasts, funnily enough, the things like the herbivores are far more problematics to keep under check, particularly the triceratops like animals.

 Trondheim wrote:


Yea... I gave them all new homes far, far away from my park. Went with deinonychus instead. Far more manageable beasts. I do not have that expansion, but I will grab it at one point, I like managing these angry beasts, funnily enough, the things like the herbivores are far more problematics to keep under check, particularly the triceratops like animals.

Herbivores are always easy for me to deal with. The only problems I've ever had with them are the *huge* pen sizes required for most of the sauropods, such as brachiosaurus. The tricks are -

1.) Keep an eye on the pen sizes, and the amount of grass, forest, and water, inside the pen. Make sure that you're got the right amount for each dinosaur in the pen. Also keep in mind that the numbers shown are the minimum amount of that kind of terrain. They're not a ratio. So a ridiculously huge pen with a small percentage of space that's composed of trees might still be enough for a dinosaur that likes lots of trees because that small percentage is still enough raw wooded area. One tool that would really help the game is a way to determine the total size of the pen, and the area of each of the terrain types, *before* you put your dinosaurs inside. I've lost count of the number of times that I've had to tweak the terrain in a pen (or even just flat out make it bigger) after filling it up, because there wasn't enough of a particular kind of terrain for one of the dinosaurs that I'd put inside of it. Sauropods in particular are a constant source of frustration for me in this area.

2.) The social requirements have two numbers. The first is the total number of dinosaurs in the pen. The second is the number of dinosaurs of the same species in the pen. If either of these are too high or too low, then the dinosaur becomes unhappy. Group together species that have a similar total population social tolerance number, and they should stay happy. Problems will emerge when you put a dinosaur that freaks out with more than four in the pen with a dinosaur that *must* have at least eight dinosaurs (of any species) in the pen along with it.

I vaguely remember having problems with triceratops (and only triceratops) early on. I don't remember why. But after glancing over the requirements, I suspect it might have had to do with the sudden jump in pen size requirements between them and the species that are similar to them.

Been playing Warhammer 40,000: Relic- Gladius of War again as the Eldar almost finished their "Story" but it just keeps going on and on, the game really gets you hooked.

But it's also been making me want to buy a Wraithknight now I'm back into collecting my Eldar, they're just too cool and I've made the map crawling with them and Scorpions. Or manipulationg me as I'm sure that's the game's intention lol. Here's these cool units you can make and fight, and you can build them on the table top too, isn't that cool?

Gave the Outriders demo a try and I'm liking it enough to pick it up in a month or so when it releases. A grim dark Mass Effect of sorts almost, with trench warfare and a main character who really gives zero feths about anything and everything. Only thing I don't like is the oversized guns everybody is toting, but that could be Square-Enix deciding to go Monster Hunter on the guns.

Also decided to give Inquisitor Martyr another go, starting a new character from the ground up and I'm actually enjoying it a lot more now. Sure, the amount of greeble and voice acting is still bugging me, but at least the game plays like an actual ARPG now.

Drake Hollow, it's...surprisingly, annoyingly even, fun for a weird little exploration/camp management game.

I finally finished Dark Cloud. After 15 years of periodically picking this game up and then putting it down. I finally finished it. I have no idea what I am going to play next.

balmong7 wrote:I finally finished Dark Cloud. After 15 years of periodically picking this game up and then putting it down. I finally finished it. I have no idea what I am going to play next.

Great stuff! That was such a fun game. Have been meaning to get hold of a PS2 again and that would definitely be on the list to play.

Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.

Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.

Keep an eye on Epic Games Store for Fallen Order on holidays. I got it at Christmas for £12.

I definitely got WAY more than £12 of play out of it, and as my first souls-esque game, it was fine. Normal difficulty was a too hard and easy was too easy, but overall it was a well made game with a fun time.

I would probably feel disappointed if I bought it for £50 or whatever games are nowadays, but it was excellent value for £12, and probably fits for about £25.


I also got Squadrons for around the same price and I really wanted to love that game, TIE Fighter was my first major computer game... But just... The control scheme for Squadrons is just impossible, I managed to finish it but I absolutely could not handle that control scheme.

Bring shields to front - Press X
Bring shields to back - Double press X
Equal shields - Long hold X.

And that was just for ONE mechanic.

 Pacific wrote:

Dreadwinter wrote:Jedi: Fallen Order. Honestly one of the worst souls games I have ever played. It is like they took all the worst ideas from Dark Souls 2 and decided they were the best ideas.

Ah really is it not any good? It was on my list of purchases just waiting for a good offer on it.

I enjoyed it. I also think that comparing it to Soulsborne games is not a very useful comparison. Mechanically it is much closer to Sekiro.

Looked like an Uncharted/Tomb Raider game when it came out. All the wall-running and collapsing tunnels/walkways.

I'm getting back into the swing of things with Total War : Three Kingdoms, in anticipation of the next DLC in 2 days. Looking forward to it.

And playing Insurgency: Sandstorm with my buds.