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A few days back I completed my campaign of Gladius: Relics of War with the Eldar. It's a fun game even if it lacks such things as diplomacy like other 4X games. I made sure to wipe out the main enemy factions before doing the "campaign" as the spawning enemies are far easier to take down of I don't have to fight off the Orks etc. Now I've begun an Imperial Guard campaign and it's pretty fun. In contrast to the Eldar I already have a dozen or so squads supported by a couple of Sentinels sweeping through the enemy wildlife.

We are playing Hogwart 's Legacy and my wife, who's much more of a Potterhead than I am, loves it. I admit the presentation and details are spotless, but the first few hours in the school lack conflict and adversity - being bullied by a prejudiced teacher or students for example. Everyone is friendly and helpful and everything goes so smoothly. I got bored. Only now, around Lv10 do we start to encounter some danger and things are getting interesting.

One thing I don't get is the time period chosen. I don't feel the zeitgeist of fin de siecle in UK at all. Students' way of speaking, topics, beliefs and attitudes may as well be placed in modern Hogwart's as far as I am concerned. A wasted opportunity Imho.

Phew, finally survived in This War of Mine. Ironically is was with a weak group of survivors that almost made me want to quit right away but after looking up some strategies I think I've got the hang of it now.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Phew, finally survived in This War of Mine. Ironically is was with a weak group of survivors that almost made me want to quit right away but after looking up some strategies I think I've got the hang of it now.

Congrats! It’s kind of a hard game to beat without guides. Usually the way to go is aiming for being self sustaining by catching mice and growing plants. I find that buying from the sales person Franco is pretty good as long as you only buy basic materials. Like wood and tools. Everything else is crazy expensive and you need so much of the basics anyway.

I bought the new Pokémon game (violet) for my gf and we’ve been enjoying it a lot together. I quite like the concept of open world Pokémon. Havn’t played a Pokémon game since the days of gameboy color I think.

Still plowing through Nioh 2.
The difficulty seems to be front loaded, but trash is still annoying if you aren't careful.
Fists + Ippon Yokai + Brute Counter feels kind of OP, but you still have to time it and manage Ki properly.
One shot a main mission boss (Ryomen Sukuna) blind, but it was close.

More Gladius as the Guard. My allies and I are pushing back the enemy factions quite well now, although, now they're somehow pulling out the top-tier units now which is annoying. But now I have finally had two Lord-Commissars and a Leman Russ which is cool. Enjoying it a lot!

Playing through Kuru Kuru Kururin since its no longer being kept from us. One of those games I remember people being furious wasn't released. Not sure if it would have actually sold well, but its for sure a phenomenal quick little playthrough.

 Nerak wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Phew, finally survived in This War of Mine. Ironically is was with a weak group of survivors that almost made me want to quit right away but after looking up some strategies I think I've got the hang of it now.

Congrats! It’s kind of a hard game to beat without guides. Usually the way to go is aiming for being self sustaining by catching mice and growing plants. I find that buying from the sales person Franco is pretty good as long as you only buy basic materials. Like wood and tools. Everything else is crazy expensive and you need so much of the basics anyway.

I bought the new Pokémon game (violet) for my gf and we’ve been enjoying it a lot together. I quite like the concept of open world Pokémon. Havn’t played a Pokémon game since the days of gameboy color I think.

Oh yeah, double Rat Traps is the way to go - that's good eating. If you can grow your own vegetables too then food is not a problem anymore. All the guides say to clear Franco our of wood but I find that parts are the hardest thing to get. Another thing is learning how combat works. If you can clear just 1 site with bad guys it goes a long way.

I've been enjoying Hogwarts Legacy for three days now

Wrapped up Dead Space so I can do a new game + and oof, the soldier armour is ugly, shame I can't unequip it. But at least I can try out the other guns now after I did a plasma cutter only run, pretty chuffed that the flamethrower is finally useful now, though disappointed that the pulse rifle is really weak now, ha, only piece of proper military hardware you can use and it pales in comparison to the power tools you find.

HOIV again, achivement hunting:
Did
-soviet onion (aka only puppets as neighbours, in essence a WC)
-We don't like statistics (aka less than 1 mio losses against germany)
-proper gander (x ammount of propaganda campaigns which you'll anyways will do since they are absurdly strong)

I bought Star Wars: Empire at War a while back for cheap on Steam downloaded it and started playing it today. It feels like Star Wars so far, the tutorial is kinda boring, but I think it'll be very fun once I learn how to play it. The space battles seem especially fun, even though I'm more of a ground battles guy.

 BrookM wrote:
Wrapped up Dead Space so I can do a new game + and oof, the soldier armour is ugly, shame I can't unequip it.

It's biggest problem IMO is being clinical white in a game where everything is grungy. If it were a different color it wouldn't stand out so badly.

But at least I can try out the other guns now after I did a plasma cutter only run, pretty chuffed that the flamethrower is finally useful now, though disappointed that the pulse rifle is really weak now, ha, only piece of proper military hardware you can use and it pales in comparison to the power tools you find.

I was all about the Line Gun in the first game, but the contact beam seems to have a lot of ammo efficiency now. It just gets so much ammo compared to how much it needs to kill anything :/

trashmetalth wrote:
I've been enjoying Hogwarts Legacy for three days now

After ~20 hours of playing it with my wife, I am sad to report that the game is unfortunately 20% exciting adventure, 80% tedious, pointless chores :(

Sad indeed, because presentation and theme are nailed down (apart from this XIXc. thing I mention a few posts back)!

 Pacific wrote:
I have been really enjoying Returnal on the PS5. Boy is it difficult, and my reactions are obviously too slow at times, but I quite like the way the story is drip-fed to you, and it tries to give you little pick-me-ups upon death, rather than just the cruelty of a game-over screen.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems Goldeneye is coming to Nintendo Online soon.

I’m gonna have to get a bunch of N64 controllers and dust off the boys for Pizza, Beer, Horror Movies and games of Get Coltrane!, a personal Goldeneye Multiplayer variant.

Basically, one player takes Robbie Coltrane’s character. They’re allowed to pick up arms and equipment, but not engage in combat beyond slapping. Taking in turns over timed games, whomever died the least wins, with longest period between deaths the tie breaker.

It’s surprisingly good fun!

We generally always played Licence to Kill with pistols only as our mode of choice. As an aside, if instead of playing Licence to Kill you just turn everyone's health down to zero, there's some neat differences like body armor giving a single hit to surprise someone with.

Excellent stuff, we used to do that too! Nervous as hell when you knew the shot coming in would kill you

Same here. That was some tense stuff.

So, went back to Dwarf Fortress for a bit of casual building.

Everything going fine, industries falling into place, expanding into a relatively small area of the first cavern layer that could be safely sealed off, was just about done when I decided to mine some gems.

Then I get the message 'Something evil is emerging from this newly exposed pocket.'

Yeah, an eyeless pterosaur was sealed away behind some gems. It also spits webs, because why not?

I didn't even know these pockets of evil were a thing.

So, it kills the miner stone dead in a second (kicked in the head, which exploded into gore), slipped out the last unsealed wall segment (I did manage to get the bridge up in time to keep it outside the fortress... for a bit). Then flew around the caverns and right up my well.

Its now rampaging up the stairwells, slaying as it goes.

Population was 68, and now its dropping like a rock.

Yep. 5 minutes and everyone is dead. Including various cats and a small caravan. (The accompanying diplomat left in a huff because of an interrupted meeting, the lucky git).
It just moved too fast to seal off once it came up the well. Took a grand total of three injuries and briefly passed out when there were two dwarves left, but two of the cuts had already healed to 'dents' by the end.

Overwatch 2 mostly. First competitive game I've played.

I'm also playing Elden Ring. It's the best game I've ever played, but I never want to play it again.

Finished the main questline of Nioh 2.
Last three bosses took 7 attempts total.
Difficulty is massively frontloaded, but trash mobs are consistently a PITA if you don't pay attention.

Other half is engrossed in Hogwarts Legacy at the moment. I agree with the previous comments that the setting is a bit odd but overall it does seem rather enjoyable.

I'm slugging through Callisto Protocol at the moment. Premise sounds good but the combat system is pretty clunky and unforgiving.

- You have a dodge mechanic but enemy attacks are too quick to really make it any use
- You always seem to walk at a leisurely pace in combat and while you can jog, it doesn't make the combat much easier.
- Ammo and health pickups are pretty rare. You could spend 5-6 rounds to kill a single enemy, but are likely to only pick up 3-4 after killing half a dozen of them. Health pickups are a bit rarer, and you have to perform an animation of around 4-5 seconds to heal which is hard to do in combat.

Started playing a bit of Railroad Tycoon II, one of my favourite games when I was a bairn. It was on steam for 74p and I had a sudden urge to play it.

Funny playing a game that you played decades ago and yet some of it is still ingrained in your brain.

Did the tutorial and first mission in Company of Heroes 3. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this game, I suspect.

Decided to give total warhammer 3 immortal empires a spin now that it’s out of beta. And my god the loading times are extreme! It takes me 15 min to load a save file and around 5+min to load a battle. I didn’t at all remember it being this bad with 1 or 2. By comparison the end turn wait isn’t that bad. So the good thing is that things have been shaken around. Seems like every lord has received some sort of change to their start since mortal empires. Whenever the lord has moved or if the starting province has changed or if there’s different enemies around. I like it since it’s similar but changes things up a bit. Going with an old race you enjoyed has different challenges now, which is welcome. Also I love the fact that siege battles are actual cities, not just a wall. They are still wonky though and the supply system simply should not have been implemented. Even so fighting a large battle in a proper city is really cool. Overall I like it a lot. Also the new endgame crisis system adds replay value. My big issue is that the loading times make it almost unplayable. I have it on my hadddrive but I might need to put it on an SSD because this is just ridiculous.

Did you have warhammer 2 on a hard drive or ssd? Because that one also had abysmal loading times for campaigns and battles when it was on a hard drive, at least for me.

SSD fixes the issue completely.

Had it on an hard drive as well. It was also bad but not this bad. I guess I should buy a new SSD, my current one probably can’t take total warhammer 3. The game has about half it’s storage capacity

 nels1031 wrote:
Did the tutorial and first mission in Company of Heroes 3. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this game, I suspect.

Whats your experience with the game in terms of stability, any bugs and overall gameplay?

 Trondheim wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Did the tutorial and first mission in Company of Heroes 3. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this game, I suspect.

Whats your experience with the game in terms of stability, any bugs and overall gameplay?

None that I encountered. This was very limited game time and probably the most polished part of the product, given that its the tutorial and first mission.

I haven't touched it since, because Insurgency:Sandstorm has been popping lately and I was in the midst of a WH3 Dark Elf campaign that was getting intense. I definitely was very leery of the "mixed" score it was getting on Steam.

I only bought it because of the recommendation of a gaming buddy who wanted to play multiplayer. I had somewhat erroneously roped into him into buying Darktide, so I kind of felt obligated to buy it.

I'll probably play some multiplayer this weekend and have a bit more to report.

I adore CoH1, but I only played single player mind you. I played a fair amount of the CoH2 campaign, but did not like it as much. Overly scripted, and often way too much on a too low level (l don't want to have to bother with micro-managing single soldiers picking up item A to use on problem B. That's what we got Commandos or Men of War for.). Hoping for CoH3 to be like the first game again.

So I fired up total warhammer 3 yesternight and clocked it. The game was at a quick save before an important battle. Fromm clicking on the steam icon to starting the battle took 21 minutes. New SSD here I come. So I quit and fired up a different game.

Thea the awakening. I absolutely adore this game. It’s a rough gem that not a whole lot of people talk about. At it’s core it’s a hybrid of and rpg like final fantasy, a 4X like civilization and a card game. It’s kind of like fantasy civilization but at a much smaller scale. You start with a village of 7 people. You must make sure the village has food and lumber. If you lose your village you lose the game. Each person is represented by a card and have skills and abilities. You equip each person like in an rpg. They level up as well and have different jobs with various skill sets. You chose who stays in your village and who goes on explorations You also chose a god at the very start who gets meta progression. Each run levels up the god. When you click on your village it’s a management game. When you explore it’s a hexagonal 4X game. When you get into a challenge like fighting, conversation, magic or hunting it’s a card game. It is rough but I’ve playing it on and off for many years and highly recommend it.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Did you have warhammer 2 on a hard drive or ssd? Because that one also had abysmal loading times for campaigns and battles when it was on a hard drive, at least for me.

SSD fixes the issue completely.

Honestly, i had it now on both SSD and HDD. And for me it did not change a thing atleast for WHTW 3, atleast not so that i wouldn't require a clock to measure it.

Fact is though that loading times are horrendously long, despite having a fixed mappool.

Playing Paradox’s Battletech turn based game. It really scratches the itch. I learned the ropes in one campaign the. Restarted when it became apparent I kept losing too much money. Now I’ve got a heavy Lance that basically cores 1 or 2 light mechs per turn. Marauder and warhammer are great. Quickdraw is utterly gash and a total bullet magnet, but will do until I can find a better alternative.