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 BrookM wrote:
Restarted Cyberpunk 2077 at the start of this week, trying to figure out the new system and whatnot, spent more then 13 hours playing through the prologue, doing every side job, frying every ganger I came across to level things up as much as possible. Will probably go with a pistol / hacker build again, hacking is once again quite OP, even if they try to trace you. Once I got the contagion hack things got hilariously fun.

One of the new Intelligence perks is particularly OP, imo, if situational. If you're getting hacked by an enemy hacker, and you successfully deploy a quickhack against it, the quickhack also affects all of the enemies within a certain distance of the hacker. Given that Short Circuit is usually enough to one-shot most enemies (at least for me), having an enemy try and hack me tends to make my life much easier, as it means that I can take out a bunch of enemies with just one quickhack.

Eumerin wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
Restarted Cyberpunk 2077 at the start of this week, trying to figure out the new system and whatnot, spent more then 13 hours playing through the prologue, doing every side job, frying every ganger I came across to level things up as much as possible. Will probably go with a pistol / hacker build again, hacking is once again quite OP, even if they try to trace you. Once I got the contagion hack things got hilariously fun.

One of the new Intelligence perks is particularly OP, imo, if situational. If you're getting hacked by an enemy hacker, and you successfully deploy a quickhack against it, the quickhack also affects all of the enemies within a certain distance of the hacker. Given that Short Circuit is usually enough to one-shot most enemies (at least for me), having an enemy try and hack me tends to make my life much easier, as it means that I can take out a bunch of enemies with just one quickhack.

Something I miss from my old playthrough, can't even remember if it was a high-tier hack or a high-tier deck bonus, but on a successful quick hack it had high chance of applying contagion-like effects to said quick hack, spreading like wildfire through enemies when it hit. I always use either overheat or short circuit and it was broken as hell.

I began Phantom Liberty a couple of days back, and it's awesome. But I watched a video that said it was a good idea to complete the love interest quest, so I began the questline to capture the Dr dude to meet Panam. I've also been running around completing NCPD scanner hustles and stealing cars for El'Capitan, as well as sidequests and gigs. Fun times!

 BrookM wrote:
Something I miss from my old playthrough, can't even remember if it was a high-tier hack or a high-tier deck bonus, but on a successful quick hack it had high chance of applying contagion-like effects to said quick hack, spreading like wildfire through enemies when it hit. I always use either overheat or short circuit and it was broken as hell.

I think it was a perk. I think if you one-shotted a target with certain perks (not Suicide), it would spread it to nearby enemies. And yes, I've been missing it, as well.

Another annoying thing is a handful of times where quick hacks just haven't worked. One of them was mostly a style thing on my part. I had a gig to kill a particular individual, and felt that using the Suicide quick hack would be appropriate. Unfortunately, I couldn't hack her. It wasn't a problem to just shoot her with a handgun (she was just a normal civilian, and therefore quite weak), but I wanted to use the suicide quick hack! The others have been "give the boss a free action before the actual fight starts so that you can't get in a quick shot while he's exposed and in the open" sorts of situations. Very annoying.


One of the more amusing things I ran into, and one that requires a little bit of Cyberpunk lore knowledge...

I can't remember the context, but someone dismisses a topic as a conspiracy theory, and throws out a couple of examples of obviously fake conspiracy theories that somehow keep resurfacing. The second one is that legendary hacker Rache Bartmoss is hibernating somewhere inside of a refrigerator.

As it turns out (as revealed in one of the sourcebooks over a decade ago), Rache Bartmoss really was hibernating inside of a refrigerator. Unfortunately for him, Bartmoss's body was in stasis, and the fridge was slowly losing power due to a near-fatal run-in with black ICE. That means that Bartmoss would die unless someone opened the fridge, got him out, and got him medical care. And due to Bartmoss's paranoia, no one - including Bartmoss - knew where the fridge was.

^^;;

Given that the game is in 2077, he's almost certainly dead by now. But he really was hibernating in a fridge when he died.

Eumerin wrote:
Rache Bartmoss

I found him and well, it was one of those darkly funny lore moments alright.

Welp... Phantom Liberty is effectively done. The DLC has some ending-changing decision points, and I've played through them. Barring a really out of left field surprise, the only thing I've got left is an epilogue - which, as is usual for this DLC, I have to wait around for.

Bleh.

Time to knock off a few more unfinished gigs, I guess.


I'd say more, but, spoilers and all that.

Darktide. Been swapping between Ogryn and Veteran.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Darktide. Been swapping between Ogryn and Veteran.

Haven't even touched my Ogryn yet. Having too much fun with my Psyker, putting up protective walls and throwing psychic darts that are OP as feth. Feel like that whistling dude with the mohawk in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Still on Mad Max.

Just got me Thunderpoons. Which means I’m more or less playing on Easy Mode now!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Still on Mad Max.

Just got me Thunderpoons. Which means I’m more or less playing on Easy Mode now!

Don't know what those are but look forward to finding out. Just driving around clearing out those scarecrows right now.

I always liked taking out wheels on convoy cars with the sniper rifle, while perched in a nice safe spot.. Made for much easier pickings on the war rigs.

Mad Max was a solid game.

Finally got through the majority of Panam's and the Aldecaldos' storyline. It was funny, I spoke to her face-to-face about rescuing the NUSA president (which is pretty cool that CD Projekt Red added that dialog) her voice was all echoey like I was speaking to her during a call like they must've assumed the player would only talk to Panam about over the phone lol. Just gotta get that tank and stuff. I like the fight against the Spider Tank in Phantom Liberty which was a huge shout out to Ghost in the Shell while the storyline so far seems to be a big reference to Escape from New York.

 nels1031 wrote:
I always liked taking out wheels on convoy cars with the sniper rifle, while perched in a nice safe spot.. Made for much easier pickings on the war rigs.

Mad Max was a solid game.

Oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to try that next time.

I’m definitely at the stage where, barring human error, my Max is pretty much untouchable. Barely half way through the plot, and I’m nearly levelled out.

Played the first mission of AoS: Realms of Ruin.

Might be something cool here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m definitely at the stage where, barring human error, my Max is pretty much untouchable. Barely half way through the plot, and I’m nearly levelled out.

I remember having to downgrade my car(s) for certain races, because I’d max out the mods and it was too much for certain track/vehicle combos. Or I suck at race games.

I’m yet to bother any of the races in this playthrough, but you may be right.

Certainly before your assault on The Jaws, Chum demands the car be set to a specific Archangel configuration.

Except….it removed armour and shredding rims and that, which meant whilst I was arsing around reducing Jeet’s threat level to Zero? I kept getting my arse kicked and never knew why.

I’m also finding the game oddly glitchy, like my vehicle weapons won’t activate until I’ve cycled through each one. And foot combat, it has trouble letting me face the front.

Got those Thunderspoons. Definitely makes things easier.

My one criticism of the game is that when ever things get really bad on the road out there...you can just get out of the car. Chum will fix it and no one will mess with it. Then the bad guys can't really do anything to you when you're on foot so they just get frustrated and then eventually get out of their car and then you just punch them in the face... It's almost like an exploit. Your car is just way too safe left on its own.

Re-installed Elden Ring and beat Margit, the Fell Omen at RL8 +0 weapon with the thief base gear (buckler+great knife).
Parry and Bleed are really strong, so it was by no means the hardest way to do it, but it did get me to really appreciate that fight for the first time.
Then I went and tried him at RL1 with a +0 and got him down to 25% once and that made me dislike the fight more. It would be more reasonable with an upgraded weapon, but he doesn't give any freaking attack windows consistently for more than r1 unless you bait his delayed overhead swing and counter it with charged r2+jump attack+jump attack+poise break critical+charged r2.
The difference is parry forces the enemy to give you attack windows and Margit follows up the first successful parry with an easy to parry attack almost every time.

Then I went and did Margit and Godrick on an NG+ save and they weren't remotely challenging. I want to set up a character for the DLC and I'm not sure what to do. Leaning towards strength since I think I know where to get Greatsword and Claymore quickly.

Return of the Obra Dinn a.k.a. using pseudo-necromancy to solve a mystery.

I'm considerably farther in my no summons, parry focused run of Elden Ring and all I have to say is that Spirit Ashes ruin the fething game.
With the exception of the double Tree Sentinels every boss has been extremely fair in terms of moveset, the only issue is damage output and that is a combination of me being underleveled or undergeared. I also think FS probably upped boss damage and HP by at least 10-20% due to Spirit Ashes.

Hell hasn't frozen over yet. But there's a rumor that a red guy carrying a pitchfork was recently spotted looking for heaters.

Chris Roberts just declared that Squadron 42 is feature complete. It's not ready for release yet. Polishing still needs to be done. And Roberts is *not* announcing a release date at this time (and suggested that he might not until it's gold). But for those of us who pledged oh so many years ago, it's an indication that we might finally see the game that we paid for.

My most hated bosses used to be the Bell-Bearing Hunters. I never killed the Caelid and Leyndell ones.
I only did the named variant in Shaded Castle thanks to Spirit Ashes.
Took me 15~ minutes, but I no hit the Shaded Castle variant on my last go.
Caelid variant took about 30-45 minutes, but I killed him at RL60.
He's my favorite fight now.

Rome total war remastered.

I had the urge to play a Total war in which terrain, assymetrical balance, formations and especially moral play a significant role.

Not disapointed. Going well so far for my iberians.

Ixion again. Beat it when it came out and giving it another spin. They’ve added some new features. Like difficulty levels and a revamped final chapter. I put the game at the highest difficulty and had a few frustrating restarts. Now it seems to be going very well. Still in the early stages but I think my big mistake has been 1. Tech path and 2. Expanding too quickly. It’s peaceful enough once you get the hang of it. The challenge seems to be planning ahead and setting up so enough space is available.

I'm really enjoying Inquisitor: Martyr. Being a battle sister is pretty sweet, and I love that you get both long and short range flamer options. Heretics must be burned.

Spidey 2 and Mario came out on the same day. Luckily I had to travel and got to play quite a bit of Wonder which is just the usual Nintendo masterclass in level design. The amount of "that's clever" moments throughout are a total joy.

Spidey 2 is great. There's a dedicated thread for that.

Also finally started Sea of Stars. Not too far in, but the battle system has a lot of nice touches and the story feels classic while clearly coming from the same voice that wrote The Messager. Sadly its probably back on the backburner for now, but I got enough of a taste to ensure I see it to the end.

I've been playing xenonauts 2 on 2nd hardest difficulty and treating it like ironman. The first campaign i had ended after a base defense where there was 2 cyber-drones and a bunch of sebillians.

If you don't wish to read a wall of text then read till the dashes. I'll just say i enjoy xenonauts 2 and most of the enemies on the ground aren't too tough (except for like the final cleaner base in the final room) but the aircraft/ufo battles can be brutal if you're not prepared which is often.

The game is also not finished in its current form so after about 6 months of game time in my 2nd run (which i had trouble hanging on by the skin of my teeth in ufo combat) it just stopped progressing towards new enemies and the campaign allowed me to end or continue as is.

--------

Cyber-drones hit really hard and it takes an autopsy to realize their weaknesses. The amount of health and armor they have in the front is insane though. Other than that the only frustrating enemies are Wraiths (they also have optical camo that makes them harder to hit until the first time they're hit in a player round which makes them a little frustrating (although the teleportation ones from from xenonauts 1 were possibly more frustrating in some ways). They also throw grenades if you don't suppress them (which they love to do if you deploy smoke between you and them). Enemies that can suppress you pretty hard can also be frustrating (turrets and those little healer drones with a light machine gun).

The lizard dudes just suck at long distances esp. with intervening terrain and have poor reflexes so won't often overwatch you. Honestly lizards only suck to fight in a tight space like a ship.

Speaking of short distance enemies the new not-chryssalids feel weaker too. Sure these ones can't be suppressed but they're weak to long distance guns and overwatch. I oddly haven't lost a dude to the not-chryssalids in xenonauts 2 yet even during the terror mission in my 2nd campaign.

The not-sectoids with the psyon variant have an ability that mesmerizes opponents if they shoot and miss them which takes away all remaining time units for the soldier that shot and missed them. I'm pretty sure suppressing them takes that ability away from psyon not-sectoids. The non-psyon non-sectoids are small and supposedly have increased accuracy in greater numbers but in general they're trash and usually are about as threatening as the Grunts in Halo except probably less so as far as i know.

There's also the fast, high accuracy ranged version of chrysallids which doesn't have much melee and is easily suppressed. These can catch you off guard in some cases.

Cleaners are generally pathetically weak once you put on the first upgrade to your armor and maybe get accelerated guns. The first armor upgrade has hardness (yeah ha ha pervy joke i know) which gets rid of armor penetration (sigh yeah i know) of a weapon. This makes Hardness esp. useful vs high tier weapons the aliens usually will have. The first upgraded armor has i think hardness 5 which mitigates the AP of the accelerated weapons and aside from the final cleaner base should make cleaners nearly trash against you. Armor while it deteriorates after getting shot by weapons also lowers damage of an attack by its armor value. High damage will still likely hurt but lower damage weapons (like trash tier cleaner weapons) will mostly bounce off your armor. The aliens however need better armor to sustain multiple hits from....or you could just use smoke, explosives and flashbangs as well as staying out of Line of Sight to ruin your enemy's day.

Just finished up my playthrough of Cyberpunk with the 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty. Enjoyed it all immensely. I originally played it when it launched, and I guess I was one of the lucky ones as I had very few issues playing it on my PC.

Anyway, now I'm waiting for Alan Wake 2. I really liked the original, as I've enjoyed most of Remedy's games. Really looking forward to seeing what kind of connections AW2 will have to Control, as well as what new songs we'll get from Poets of the Fall/Old Gods of Asgard.

Got to the triple secret final stage in Mario Wonder last night. Got pretty far but hit my first Game Over on it. Need to fill up on extra lives and try again soon.

Playing Soul Hackers 2 right now. I'm poking around in an abandoned subway line looking for a guy who - based on his last name - is probably related to Raido Kuzunoha from the Devil Summoner games that bear his name.