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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Factorio, Space Exploration
But no for once I have something else intruding on my precious Factorio time, and that thing is:
Did you know the Nintendo Switch is perfectly emulatable on a PC? Prior to this weekend I didn't, but it's true, there are working Switch emulators out there, with ROMs for things like the latest Zelda game everyone is talking about, and they seem to work pretty well -- some would say they run better than an actual switch does.
Now I would never do such a morally dubious thing, I'm an upstanding citizen, I pay my taxes and I mow my lawn. In any case, I've been playing two Switch games: that latest Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Odyssey
Love it, it's adorable, it's fun, good stuff all around. I think Super Mario 64 is the best 3D platformer ever made (and I think Super Mario World is the best 2D platformer ever made) and I feel so much of it in this game.
The movement's great, graphics are great, the levels are great, everything's great. I love throwing my hat at things and becoming those things, I become tank, I become goomba, I become electricity. Neat feature. There's an entire stage that's a play on New York, and there are actual human people there -- not Mario human but real human, normal proportioned ones. Weird choice, big fan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1IHvzwUd6w
That Zelda Tears of the Kingdom game
I just made it out of the tutorial island, on to Hyrule, talked to that guy in the first guardtower, and called it a night. Mixed feelings about the game, not that I think it's bad, but not something I was super looking forward to.
The game starts you off in media res, apparently right off the heels of the prior game, which I have not played, and launches in to the plot. Link and Zelda are underneath the Hyrule castle, some stuff happens, suddenly I'm in a floating island in the sky doing a tutorial and trying to eventually save Zelda.
In tutorial island in the sky, I had to find and complete 3 shrines, each one imbuing me with another ability. The abilities seem neat, but also give me pause as I hit the suspicion that this game is going to be an open world puzzle game, which is also not particularly my kind of game. It seems like the focus for completing dungeons and what-have-you will be using the different abilities to get around obstacles and building contraptions using your gmod ability. I guess that is the m.o. for zelda games, remembering my last foray in to the series, with Ocarina of Time when I was 13 -- a game I enjoyed but haven't really felt the desire to play any others in the series since then.
We'll see, I'm not sure it's my kind of game yet, but I only just made it out to the open world part of it. I get a weird feeling in the open world part however, knowing that anything I do is going to require a lot of time spent just travelling places (on foot for now, until I get a horse), doing little mini-dungeons along the way. It reminds me of Elden Ring, a game I sunk at least 100 hours in to so far, but I've already played one Elden Ring and not sure if I'm keen on launching in to another. I also much prefer the ER combat, and it's world, and it's story, and even it's janky engine. I also enjoyed not having to do puzzles in ER, the real puzzle in that game is navigating the dungeons and finding the next bonfire. Does it work the other way around too? Do people who do Breath of Wild first try Elden Ring second and decide it's too much too soon?
Anyway the real big issue I have with both of these Switch games is that they use the same button labels as the controller I'm used to (xbox360 controller), the ABXY buttons, but they've flipped the A and B and X and Y and you can't imagine how much this trips me up constantly. I keep wanting to confirm menu actions with what I'm used to as "A", but the button I end up hitting is "B" and it cancels me out of the menu. It is a constant translation I have to do to make sure the "X" button they're referring to is the one I intend to hit (Y) and not the other one.
Factorio, Space Exploration
I'm trying to solve my biters issue through auto-glaives. I intend to genocide all biters from huge energy beams orbiting the sun. Good game.
Hey thank you for getting me back into factorio, I played vanilla factorio for thousands of hours during early acess an kind of got bored when they finally finished it :-)
space exploration is amazing and i'm hooked as ever!
do you know any online resources that work with SE? my beloved factorio planner is saldy not compatible :-/
stealthedit: i just got my first satelite into orbit, what a ride!
getting to that point feels like such an accomplishment in SE, an entire journey to build up the base to be able to do that.
And then the game after that is so many different types of that moments, going to space for the first time, doing your first space sciences, colonizing another planet, etc.
it feels like playing it new again, "finally got chemical running, wow, what now"
There's plenty of in-game calculators, if you don't insist on using a web app. Most notably factory planner and helmod. There's also recipe book which I would consider essential for larger modpacks.
Well, took the words out of my mouth before I could.
I should also say I haven't really used a planner in SE (I think literally once this run), I don't find it particularly useful in SE because you'll have such a hard time fully saturating all your production to keep things smooth. Once you start getting in to the sciences you do in space, everything will eventually end up bottlenecked by how fast you can mine resources on other planets (core mining plateaus after about 3 miners per planet, and conventional mining will eventually turn in to a game of whackamole, keeping mines up and running), and which resources are needed is very variable depending on what science you're currently using (they're not all needed at once for each bit of research), so even if you plan out the capacity, most of the time it won't be reached.
Reaching for a high science per minute in SE is tricky, since there's not much research to be done per each level of science pack, so even if you do build out your overall factory to support building packs fast, you'll quickly research everything that uses the packs you have, and you'll have a surplus until you can build out the next level of e.g. material packs level 3 or whatever.
I've been subscribing to the simple "if x is being held back by a lack of y, build more things that make y" approach and haven't had an issue with that. SE is designed to keep things moving at a certain pace, and going faster than that gets very tricky.
edit: and I think the other remedy at some point, or at least the other approach i'm sticking to now, is to improve production by ramping up modules. Modules in SE are very powerful, and can replace adding more and more assemblers in many places. Put productivity modules in as many things as you can (especially science labs), and you can make them faster with beacons loaded with speed modules. The higher levels of modules cost a lot of resources for only a +2% gain or so each time, but they're still an easy lever to pull to help out. I'm on level 6 or so of prod and speed modules, and with those two in tandem, I can get assemblers that are +50% more productive and run at about +200 or +300% speed -- so effectively I'm getting the same amount of output for 66% of the input (through prod modules), and doing it 2 to 3 times faster than otherwise. Scaling up a production line the same way without modules would require 2 to 3 times as many assemblers (and 2 to 3 times as much area), and require 33% more of each input (meaning more and more and more assemblers and area taken up, etc.)
I've actually gotten a decent bit of use out of them, if only for pre-production of small-scale production units. If I notice I'm lacking material X, I'll use the factory planner to figure out which inputs are viable. You'll often not have all intermediates on your bus/city block, so figuring out how to produce intermediates and which recipes to use is not always nontrivial, as is balancing the ratios. So I'll often work on multiple plans for the same process, tweaking which recipe I use and which modules to use until I have something I'm comfortable with. Then I'll implement that, ideally on a rectangular footprint. The resulting block can then be copy-pasted.
The result is that I have 10s of factory plans archived, and their numbers won't always line up. I might have a base that consumes 5 belts of iron, but my production block produces 2 belts, and I just replicate that as long as that particular item is in demand.
as a "true" factorio pro I embrace the glorious spaghetti*. so bus and block lay in the past, but if the "when you need x build x" mode works well i will have a lot of fun :-)
* for asthetical reasons, chaos just looks so mich nicer. And the "how can i get this belt through here" minigame is one of my favourite parts of factorio
Still playing Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, still loving it. As I get further into the game, it solves ever more of the problems I had with Breath of the Wild:
No longer do I get regularly ambushed by an enemy with a long weapon attacking me from behind the camera that wants to stay way too close to me. In the the late game I'm no longer fighting multiple things at once by myself; I can have contraptions fight for me, or other warriors also chiming in on the fight. Either way, a group of bokoblins is no longer more dangerous than most bosses.
Because a lot of the damage of a weapon comes from the head you attach, I'm a lot less salty about losing a good weapon. It's nice to gather good handles, but worst comes to worst you can glue a really powerful head onto a literal tree branch and at least shiv an enemy or two before it breaks. It makes the flow of weapon use and breakage much less frustrating.
The temples have been fun, though the Water Temple had a weirdly jokey boss.
I actually hated the weapon system in TOTK. Instead of just making the weapons just a bit more durable, they force you to use a weirdly clumsy system that relies on consumables. Granted, you'll have more of those consumeables than you'll ever know what to do with, but because the weapons break so often you'll be constantly remaking them. Not to mention they also had to nerf the base stats to achieve this, for which they put an extremely contrived reason. I also found it weird that you have to use a special power to make those weapons, but every 5th enemy has fused weapons somehow.
There's actually a lot that bothered me about Tears (mainly the water bubbles and the means of activating your companion's abilities), but to be honest most of it is because I got sick right as it came out so I powered through all of the content. Spending a week doing nothing but playing a game is a great way to take all the fun out of it.
I haven't played BotW, and I also find the weapon durability thing in TotK strange. I've talked to people about it recently, and they have interesting responses to why its the way it is, but in the end I can't help but feel like I wish it all just wasn't there, that you just accumulate weapons and pick the one with the high attack that you like the most. The way it is right now, I have no connection to any weapon, I can't, because I'll soon either need to drop it to make room for something else, or it will break after the first fight. I've started even just trying to ignore combat as much as possible, the rewards often don't seem the effort, and its a drain on my weapons, makes me have to go through the whole UI flow for equipping and fusing a weapon again, and just seems to distract me from the part of the game that I find fun: walking places and climbing things.
I also found myself avoiding combat generally. The only times I found getting into combat was actually worth the risk was in the depths in the various 'campsites' because those usually did have some degree of reward.
Sadly sneaking seems even less effective in this than it's prequel. There's always some sort of scout that spins around so much they might as well have 360 vision so it doesn't matter how quiet you are.
Somewhat related but I recently watched a video about a Doom map called MyHouse.WAD and it was super interesting. I've never played the OG Dooms (I found the 2016 Doom unengaging for some reason) but nevertheless I watched the entire video and you should too (100 minutes long).
It also pointed me to The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet which is a pretty banging tune.
I've been playing a bit of Cassette Beasts on my deck. The game is good (although I find the music insufferable ironically) but is missing a certain something although I've only played maybe 80 minutes.
Related Tildes topic:
https://tildes.net/~games/15hr/myhouse_wad_inside_dooms_most_terrifying_mod
Crusader Kings III with the new Tournaments DLC has been loads of role-play fun. I started a game in the Iberian struggle. A bit of a set back as I did not read ahead on how to resolve the struggle, so I'm kind of stuck in an infinite loop of struggling. The DLC has added a lot of fun additions to the game.
Agreed. I'm really loving the new expansion and all its new events too. But the thing I love most about it is actually something that wasn't really advertised; You can finally earn achievements without being in Ironman now!
I am a bit of an achievement whore in Paradox grand strategy games, but it can be incredibly incredibly frustrating when you fail after making an accidental mistake, misclick, or get unlucky after many many hours of working towards one... or because of a bug.
E.g. I actually met the requirements for the Mother of us All achievement once, shortly after the game launched... but Paradox fucked up, and at the time there was a bug where none of the achievement that required players to start as a specific character were actually working properly. And it was only after 40+ hours of intense ironman play (and a lot of luck) that I finally learned about that bug the hard way when the achievement didn't fire properly despite me conquering and converting all of Africa. :( Thanks to this new change I might finally attempt Mother of us All again though.
But like you, right now I am currently playing in Iberia, since even after multiple attempts I've still never managed to get all the major achievements there yet either.
I didn't know about the ironman change. I don't particularly go after an achievement, but I always feel accomplished when I see one pop up! I will likely have to play again in order to actually "win" in Iberia because right now I own way too much land and 75%+ has to be my culture if I am to end the struggle...I have like 40ish or so counties that are the wrong culture.
Yeah, the tournaments and other traveling mechanics are top notch. I'm playing as the Byzantine Empire, which used to be pretty boring for large parts of the game, but with so much more going on, I can fill my time with parties and hunts when I'm not trying to reverse the Schism and restore the Roman empire. This latest DLC really feels like the balance between peace and war activities has finally been achieved.
I am playing Tears of the Kingdom. It's great, but I it's quite a bit more difficult than BOTW was, I think because they require more diverse play styles. I like the new weapon mechanic where you make instead of just get weapons, but I'm a bit worried it's going to wear a bit thin. We'll see.
I'm emulating it in Yuzu, but did buy it for Switch, I just prefer sitting at my computer.
I just hit the open world last night and ran to Kakariko to see what's going on there for fun, and then was just playing in the mountains outside the town, and really enjoy the controls, physics you get with the new construction system, and how it feels like it's just more BOTW with construction. I'm also falling off of a lot of stuff, and my fear of heights is getting the better of me. They really did a good job of conveying the scale, but I hesitate every time I jump off of something in the Island Archipelago, at least when I start a session.
Classic Sudoku!
I'm a freelance web developer on Upwork and interestingly, got a project from a client who required building of a Sudoku app. I had to learn about the math and how the game works along with all its variations. This got me pretty much addicted to the game itself!
Exclusively Genshin Impact for the last 2+ years. Current patch is sort of dry, but new seasonal area will be in the next, and after that a whole new region (Fontaine) is scheduled.
This game is perfect for my routine. I usually play no more than 15-20 minutes in weekdays doing daily chores, and catch up to the story content in weekends/ holidays when I have longer time to play.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is among my favorite games of all time and probably my favorite offering on the Switch. Naturally, I was excited to play its sequel; but after 50 hours, I found XC3 so tedious that I nearly dropped it, which is kinda crazy to think about -- in those 50 hours, I could've completed most triple-A games (if not two), and yet I insisted on drudging through this game that I admittedly wasn't really enjoying.
But now, having finished the game after 130 hours, I can definitely say: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is an excellent game.
To understand why I nearly dropped XC3, you have to understand the typical formula of a JRPG. Although a JRPG might draw you in with its cute anime aesthetics and banger soundtrack, JRPGs are really build around (1) grinding and (2) understanding its systems in depths. Utilizing both allows the player to live out their power fantasy, as a well-crafted build might allow the player to one-shot even the hardest bosses.
Of course, achieving this power fantasy requires understanding the different mechanics in the game, which are often poorly explained. (How does the attack stat actually affect damage? Is this bonus multiplicative or additive? How is agility different from dexterity?)
This leads to the following gameplay arc:
Naturally, this middle region is where JRPGs go to die. If you're a JRPG game developer and you want people to overcome the awkward middle hump, you either need a compelling world or intuitive gameplay.
And thus emerges XC3's critical flaw: although the world is compelling enough, there are just too many goddamned systems. It's as if the developers took all the ideas from the first two games and decided to shoehorn them into this one. Building a character requires:
And then you have to repeat this process for each of the 6 characters in your party. It's honestly just too much, and I haven't even discussed the interlinking (mechsuit) system, which has its own separate skill tree for each character.
But the real turd here is the class system. The game encourages you to use the skills on all of the different classes, but this is only possible if you level up each class. However, you have to do this separately on each character, which means leveling up ~25* 6 different character classes. Moreover, you need to adjust your accessories/gems/arts/skills each time you do this. No joke, manually adjusting every character's class can take upwards of 10 minutes, slogging through menus the whole time.
On the other hand, the game offers a "helpful" mechanic to bypass this tedious process: the auto-build option. You will be tempted to use this. Indeed, for the first 50 hours of the game, I relied on the auto-build system. But you should not. Besides being suboptimal, the auto-build system is boring.
When I used the auto-build system, accessories, gems, master arts, and skills became extraneous information. There was no joy in crafting better gems or finding better accessories, as I had no idea what most of them did anyway. In fact, there was little depth to combat: I essentially ran from one mob to the other, spamming my arts while my other (AI-controller) party members spammed theirs.
And thus I nearly dropped this game. I don't think I actually began to enjoy the game until I came across this post-game guide. But at 180(!) pages in length -- without even offering explicit party builds -- it took me a while to distill its information.
But after returning to the guide several times while taking notes, I eventually grokked the secret to big numbers: buffing the smash combo. Essentially, by having the party break, topple, and then subsequently launch the enemy, you can finish the combo with a smash, which has its own independent damage multiplier. This damage multiplier (when buffed) is sufficient to one-hit most enemies or, at least, hit the damage cap.
Once I practiced and understood the power of the smash multiplier, I finally had a concept to build around. I finally understood how to use the game's mechanics to my advantage, allowing me to trivialize even the game's superbosses. And eventually, I managed to hit the damage cap: on the very final hit, of the very final stage, of the very final boss.
Like everyone else, I have been playing a ton of Tear of the Kingdom. So far I think that it's a huge improvement on BotW. There seems to be far more to do and exploring feels more rewarding. I haven't really spent much time with the crafting aspect yet, but it seems interesting enough.
Aside from that, I have been playing the classic version of Dwarf Fortress and loving every second of it.