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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.
I finally broke down and bought Baldur's Gate 3. I like it just as much as everyone says, though I wish it autosaved more often bc I have forgotten to quicksave at some inopportune moments. I'm not even to Act 2 yet and I was playing the fuck out of it all weekend. Great character writing and I'm having a blast at it.
It's odd how accustomed I've become to a game autosaving. Random story: I played the subnautica sequel/expansion "below zero" for about 6 hours in a sitting, then it crashed. No big deal, I thought, surely the game autosaves at regular intervals or at least when I return to a safe area. No such luck. Thankfully, I was able to cheat my way back to where I left off and enjoy the rest of the experience.
But, yeah, a good auto-saving regimen is now a requirement for modern games.
Luckily the quicksave is easy and can be done pretty much any time, but yeah it's hard to remember it's a thing I should do nowadays.
I've been save scumming mostly because I want to try different dialogue options or fight the same battle different ways just to see what's possible. I'm so used to games where you just smash into battle and stomp on people. Realizing how much I can customize my battle style with the environment and character abilities has been so fun... I was getting super fucked up by some little guys in Act 2, and it occured to me that I could wear a different amulet, hide on a roof, and not be affected by their garotting move. I have never played a game quite like this. I think it might also be making me better at regular dnd because I understand the world more. Maybe my imagination sucks!!
tbqh I've often found D&D 5e combat pretty tedious when I played irl, but they really found the perfect level of abstraction -- it feels natural af.
Same here! Between this and the (tragically overlooked) D&D movie, it really helps me have a good feel for the Forgotten Realms setting. I'm going to be DMing my first campaign when my current one ends (my wife is DMing this one), and I feel much more comfortable with the setting now than I did before I played the game. It also gave me a good feel for the other classes I haven't played yet (I've only played a rogue and a rather short campaign and a paladin in a game we've been playing for about a year).
Wizards of the Coast really screwed the pooch when they didn't cultivate their relationship with Larian. They couldn't ask for better brand ambassadors for D&D than they got with Larian and they just let them go. WotC should have done whatever they could to maintain a consistent relationship with Larian. Because I can't see anyone else making a D&D game of that caliber in the next decade or more. Or just D&D content of that quality in general.
You are so right. Wizards of the coast has had several notable fuckups in the last couple years.
For me the hardest part of dnd is memorizing what the spells do, and what is a bonus action vs a full action, and what I need to roll/what I add to my roll. This is my first campaign since like 2003. Without a visual reference it just feels very abstract. But once I have the visual, it is cemented in my mind. I'm also playing a githyanki in my current campaign, and Lae'zel's character helped me see how I have really not been maximizing my potential....
Yeah, I got into a habit of quick saving constantly. Perhaps, even excessively. You can never save too often! (Particularly if you are prone to the occasional save scuming.)
I went ahead and bought a Steam Deck! It's not here yet but I'm pretty excited and am going to look at previous Tildes discussions if any. Usually super stingy kind of person so going for not the absolutely cheapest unit was a big thing for me (512GB regular LCD refurbished).
I don't play any triple A games, and also am a bit of a gremlin when it comes to gadgets, so it doesn't make sense to swing for the terabyte OLED. I'm used to swapping out games to manage storage sizes anyway, and the additional advantage of having housemates is that if the limitation is insurmountable, we can always buy a second top of the line unit for them.
Game-wise, enjoying some old favourites, like playing Loco Roco on PSP emulator, to make save scumming that much easier. Honestly don't know why they make cute games where the cute critters die and animate them dying with super sad sounds, but that's just me I guess. I always pretend I'm Prince of Persia Sands of Time:
“No no no, that’s not the way it happened. Shall I start again?”
As for what I'm going to be playing on the steam deck when it arrives, I'll be re-purchasing Trombone Champ to play all the custom songs, OddSparks is coming out soon, and then likely a ton of StarDewValley if I had a magical amount of free time.
The Deck is great. I played on it exclusively for about a year after I received mine in June 2022 and now it's much more sporadic, but I still love the thing and it's great for both Indies and older AAA titles. My library spans 20-years now, so it's cool to go visit a lot of games I've never played or put only a little bit of time into and they fit the Deck just right. The last one I was playing on there was Red Faction: Guerilla and prior to that, Star Wars: Republic Commando.
My only complaint is that it's so damn large, I use it more as just an option for how I want to play games in my house. It seems so large to travel with and I prefer to travel light, so I end-up bringing a laptop instead of the Deck since the laptop can serve double duty, even if it can't play everything the Deck can.
You can also get a microSD card to expand your storage. I put my ROMs and big Halo MCC install on one, which leaves a lot of room for games on the main drive (I also have the 512GB LCD model).
Oh I didn't know it'll take micro SD!! Hurrah! Thanks for the tip :)
I've played Stardew Valley to finish on my Steam Deck for the first time.
It is great device that will give you so much freedom in playing games! You can play in 5 minutes increments throughout the day here and there when you have time and before you know, you have done 2 hours each day! Also playing in the bed before going to sleep! And on you daily commute. Or just chill on the couch with Steam Deck in hands. While kid does homework or your partner watches their favorite movie or series... Or on vacation, in the camp, in hamaka in the garden...
Valve didn't lie when they used slogan "Your games are going places." They really are!
With Stadew Valley, you can probably do 6 hours on new Steam Deck (with fresh battery) meaning likely multiple days of gameplay - game wise and real life wise as well, actually.
You will be surprised how many AAA titles it can run, too. That is if you are not the "60fps or nothing" gang member. I never had high end PC, so stable 30fps does it for me. And with 30fps you can do 2-3 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn, Witcher 3 and many others. If you like older games and play in the dark (before sleep), you can do probably close to 8 hours in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1&2 basically playing through the whole night on one charge!
And the best thing - suspend & resume. Just hit the power button and in three seconds the unit is in sleep. You want to play again? Just hit the power button and in three seconds you are right where you left of! No need to boot up, start the game, load savegame... Perfect!
You did great when you bought yourself Steam Deck!
I went a similar route as you and got the base model and just upgraded the storage. When I got it the base model was the 64GB eMMC version which was completely insufficient both space- and speed-wise. The shaders and compatdata would eat that up in a heartbeat, and all that has to be stored on the internal storage, so the microSD wasn't a workaround. I think you'll fare much better with a 512GB NVMe.
If you do decide to upgrade the storage, I recommend you use a powered USB hub to connect the OS installation media. I tried using an unpowered USB-A to USB-C adapter, and it kept failing. I ended up just flashing the OS media to microSD with Rufus and installing it that way. That only really works if you have extra microSD cards laying around though.
Drop me a line if you do decide to do any upgrades or repairs and I'll be happy to give advice on parts and tools. I've been a device technician of one sort or another for nearly a decade, and I'm always happy to help out.
Thank you that's most kind of you :) I'll save this comment for the eventuality when i inadvertently muck up somehow
Would it be advisable for one to backup an image or do some kind of regular maintenance?
It kind of depends what you're going to use it for. If all you're doing is playing Steam games, then no, not really. Many games make use of cloud saves, so the only thing backing up your data will save you is time spent downloading the game data again, should you have a drive failure. You might want to backup save game data for those games that don't, if you're precious about your game progress.
Valve has done a pretty good job of patching the shader and compatdata leaks with software updates, or at least I haven't noticed my storage getting full inexplicably. I suppose you could get full up with cruft if you're constantly installing and uninstalling, and a reimage would be the fix for that. But as I like to say, installing and uninstalling computer games is my hobby more than playing them, and I haven't needed to reimage since I did the drive upgrade (more than a year ago).
I will say as an electronics repair tech, the first-gen Steam Deck is one of the most repair-friendly handheld devices I've ever had the pleasure to work on. Last I checked, most all the components were available for replacement except for the mainboard, and everything except the display and battery are easy enough to be replaced by a novice, provided they follow the iFixit guides. Even the display and battery are doable, but as they make use of adhesives, some specialized tools are necessary and experience advised.
That makes me super happy to hear :)
The switch handheld has a cracked screen and maybe the iFixit site has a guide....very intimidated though, one time I opened up an old stopped working NDS and immediately ripped a ribbon
iFixit guides will usually warn you if there's a fragile ribbon cable or something of which you need to be conscious. To my recollection, there are few things in the Deck like that, although I'm not a huge fan of the haptic unit connectors. I've had connectors like that crumble on me before. Thankfully, a simple drive replacement doesn't go near those.
I recommend iFixit's 64-bit Mako precision screwdriver kit to anyone foolish enough to stop and listen. It's the main toolkit I've used in my career, and I can think of only once or twice that I've needed to take advantage of the lifetime warranty. That's impressive considering the number of turns of the screwdriver I've been wont to do on a daily basis.
I was also considering doing some backup as I have added spme emulators to the mix and I have their savegames and setup... But considering this is running for two years without a single.problem, I chose to not backup anything. It is a PC after all - how many times in say 10 years you do backup of your system or game drive?
I recently saw the Fallout TV show, and it was surprisingly good. It was enough to give me the Fallout bug and I've been playing through the 2nd game.
It is surprising how much the first two Fallout games hold up. The atmosphere is impeccable and the dialogue is great. Although the combat is pretty archaic. I find myself running from most encounters, it's just not worth it most of the time. Fallout 2 is also loooooooong. Almost double Fallout 1 (still around the length of the 3D Fallout games). I'd recommend 1&2 for any Fallout fan, don't let the isometric world and turnbased combat turn you away.
I really ought to try out 2. I played the first one something like 15 years ago, but didn't get a chance to finish it because I encountered some game breaking bugs. I loved 3 and played New Vegas for twice the amount of time, finished the main story, but always intended to go back and play more.
I've heard 2 is so great, but just never made the time for it, in spite of owning it on GoG for years and years.
I always had a hung game in 2 if/when I lost my spleen... never actually finished the game. Still was my favorite until I finally played NV.
I'll throw my hat in and say Fallout 1 is great once you get used to the gameplay which is, frankly, some of the easiest 90s crpg gameplay. I'm using some spoilers to help me not get stuck but it feels like you don't even need those if you have a notebook handy.
I've been looking for a good "junk food" JRPG fix and I've come across Octopath Traveler 2. For whatever reason, I couldn't really get into the first one, but I'm about 20 hours into this one and it's providing the fix I was looking for.
Pros:
Cons:
I went into this one completely blind and I have no clue if I'm in for another 10 hours or if it will be a 100+ hour grindfest, like Dragon Quest 11 turned into. 40 hours seems like the sweet spot for me -- I can't see how this could make it beyond that without becoming entirely too repetitive.
Huge RPG's, especially JRPGs are kind of a turn off for me. Speaking of Dragon Quest, I actually just reset my save (backed it up first, anyway) of 8 after 45 hours, because I'd been playing it over the course of years and I'll be damned if I can remember what has happened in the story so far. I did end-up starting a new game, but put it down immediately, because I just can't stomach the thought of going through all of that again (even if I can't remember it) and losing 45 hours in what is probably a 60-80 hour playthrough. Thinking about it, I may just put it down and say that I'm done with DQ8 and I liked it ok, but never intend to actually go back and finish it.
I'm pretty sure I hit 60 hours for the first Octopath, and howlongtobeat suggests Octopath Traveler II is in the same boat
Played a lot of the Frostpunk 2 Beta and I'm going to gush about it for a bit.
Edit: apologies, I really went off here. TLDR: great game. Give it a look at release.
Decided to preorder after watching several playthroughs/streams of it. After playing 10 hours (5 plays of the preview time limit) at all difficulties, it feels like the sandbox alone is well worth the price of admission for me. But I did hold off on the season pass until I see the DLC.
The biggest positive is that it's a completely different game from the original and not meant to be a replacement or upgrade. The first is a micro-heavy survival city builder; this is more macro focused politics/colony manager. And I normally hate the latter type of game but it's the setting and writing that sucked me in.
The major gameplay loop comes down to satisfying the cities need for fuel to stop people freezing to death. Fuel needs to be mined by people (I suspect they that people could even be fuel). People need: homes, money, heat, goods, food, medicine, jobs, community, relationships, childcare, a social contract and ideology. You should see where the problem comes up. And in juggling all the human needs, its easy to forget that a single misstep and drain your fuel and that leads to a glorious failure cascade.
But when you get the hang of it, it's all simple supply and demand. That leads into the roadblock of the politics involved with an ideologically fictionalized population.
The beta starts of innocently enough, 51% of the population are machinists who believe in equality, progress and expansion. 49% are survivalists that value tradition, personal merit and isolation. These groups want a say in the runnning of the city and a vote in setting policy.
And it's a tense balancing act because I have a gods eye view of the situation and know the objectively best move. But I promised machineists freedom to table the next motion if they voted to approve the child lab... I mean apprenticeship bill and I don't care about welfare when we are already in a budget deficit and need border control because of the housing crisis. And this is just the first hundred weeks (45min).
It gets even better when the extremists movements start popping up. They might start off as small 20% of the population, but they are willing to research the more dubious technologies and throw support rallies when they get their way. But ignored, they are enough to shut down districts until you buy their respect with "donations", council seats or promises. They also will never negotiate on policy because of the hardlines in their world view. I thouht it was a little stupid when their was a major storm, resources on a razors edge and the Ice Bloods were firm on a position that would directly lead to peoples deaths. But then I thought of the last few real life years and it checks out.
All of it is punctuated with how many actions (and inactions) can lead to a little story pop ups about how policy affected someone's life. My personal favorite is the gang kid learning to read and wanting to write stories about a world without snow. But it can become depressing and outright horrific if the last game was any indication. It grounds the stats and cost benefit calculations in very human narratives and thats important for me in games.
This is the appeal of the game to me. Because the theme is the value of morality in the face of human extinction. But it feels like the people in the story forget that. There's almost this wistful references to the last game where The Captains absolute authority saw mankind survive a -184F snowstorm. But no one remembers that it was 50 people eating sawdust in some ripped tent and that the captain was a despotic monster or religious zelot. They hint at the systems and laws that will allow you to chip away at people's freedoms, but it doesn't hold a candle to the some of the extremes the factions could go to. Human obsolescence, forced marriages, punitive punishment, chemical enhancements.
While I really enjoy this game and series, there is a lot I think needs work before release. The UI looks like someone installed WinXP on a flashbang. The overworld supply line interface needs a lot of work, there's no clear frame of reference for time and it feels like the hardest difficulty is more about following the right script instead of any organic problem solving.
Also, the game looks pretty at a glance but doesn't compare to the first with a lot of fine detail and character in almost everything. I can understand it's because you have to focus on the big picture and at some point I stopped registering the city and just saw tiles, district colors, resource symbols and building slots.
I did break my pre-order rule for this game and I'll have egg on my face if the full game releases in a horrible state. I'm being generous in believing that the closed beta was for series fans who would likely pre-order to test things out and give feedback because its a major departure. And regardless, I've gotten less playtime from more expensive games so it's not a complete loss.
The only disappointing thing about the Frostpunk 2 beta for me was how limited it was with only 300 weeks of in-game play time, only 2 classes, one map, and with less than half of the tech tree and laws available. ☹️
Although the absolute worst part about it is now having to wait until July to play the full game!!! 😭
Edit: The one legit criticism I have is how annoying the district building is. Once placed you can't rearrange the hexes of them without completely demolishing the entire district and all the buildings in it, so you better make damn sure you plan their arrangement well ahead of time! Especially because with how important the neighboring district hex bonuses and flying stations (to share manpower between districts) are, all of which require precise placement to optimize, it's super super frustrating when you make a district placement mistake. This ended up causing me to build my districts in long, straight lines with the occasional gap in between them for flying stations, which was incredibly ugly and unnatural looking despite being far more optimal.
So I hope come release they allow district hex rearrangement, have revamped how the neighboring district bonuses work, and make flying stations to just be a flat bonus to the entire district they touch rather than only effecting the hexes in a perimeter around them... especially since -200 labor for all those hexes is super powerful, and being able to place 3-4 of them next to districts to get them to have 0 labor requirement (since the entire labor pool is shared at that point) is OP as hell.
The limitations were a pretty tough pill to swallow, especially if you get things super optimized and breeze through the storm.
I do sort of agree with it. The early game balance is important to get right so limiting people to that would yield more focused feedback.
The district system is a mixed bag. In the long term, I suspect only housing and maybe industrial districts will be permanent and it'll become a colony logistics game, like the On The Edge DLC. And I'm the logistics nerd that enjoyed that over Last Autumn so that's how I plan to play. (but they really need to polish the overworld systems first)
So I'm actually in an opposite mind with district reorganizing. It sort of plays like Dorf Romantic where every decision needs logn term considerations. Because in my mind, there's somthing wrong about a city just demolishing a neighborhood when its not useful or poorly positioned. As an optional difficulty toggle, if a district runs it's course, I think it should exert a major health, crime and squalor cost until it's converted to a type of housings or industry.
The hub system is an incredibly versatile utility. For that power, I expected a higher and scaling costs with a significant Stean Core investment. But beside Steam Hubs and Security Hubs, I can't see how many other options there could be to augment neighboring districts.
Overall I'm looking forward to the Flashpoints in the story. The expectation is for colony revolt or open faction wars, but I really want the Old World powers to show up with an army and demand the generator cities bend the knee. Because I'll just let the Ice Bloods loose on them. Those guys roid themselves up and fight polar bears as a hobby.
Tekken 8 - I was incredibly excited for Tekken 8, after getting into Tekken 7 near the end of its' lifespan. That excitement has all but died out by now thanks to a combination of poor balance, patches that have actually-factually broken the game and introduced major bugs (that were patched out a bit over a week later, along with more micro-transactions being added), and what appears to have been a stealth change to matchmaking that has resulted in much longer queue times and significantly poorer quality matches. That last bit hasn't been confirmed yet, but there was definitely some sort of change that went out.
Decided yesterday that I'm going to take a bit of a break from T8 for the time being. Let things settle a bit, see how EVO Japan plays out, see how they handle some of the current backlash (like the game dropping to Mostly Negative in recent reviews on Steam, for a variety of reasons), etc. Hopefully I'll be able to pick it back up in a month or so, because at its' core I think it could be a fantastic game.
Final Fantasy XIV - I'm not really an MMO person, usually. Can't get into WoW for the life of me, bounced off Guild Wars 2 pretty hard. I started playing FFXIV about two years ago now and have been in love with the game from the start. I've got a (very) small group of friends I play with casually, and just got my second job (a healer) to level 90 so I don't have to deal with DPS queue times when the new expansion comes out this summer.
Hunt: Showdown - Still absolutely loving Hunt. It's the only FPS I play, and even with how brutal it can be from time to time when going on a "Hunt Taketh" spree I can't help but enjoy playing. The game's atmosphere, the gunplay, etc all just feels fantastic. I've improved a solid amount since I started, bringing my K/D up from 0.81 to 1.36. Very much looking forward to the upcoming engine upgrade. Nothing feels better than clutching a tense 1v3 encounter... at least until you hear a second full trio sprinting up to the compound you just finished fighting in!
Spirit Island - My tabletop game group got into this somewhat recently and it's fair to say we've all fallen in love with this game. Long story short, it's a coop game where you play as spirits defending an island from invaders bent on colonizing the it. There's an incredible amount of variety in what the individual spirits are capable of, and the expansions add a good amount of complexity/additional mechanics after you figure out the base game.
I love punishing coop games. Robinson Crusoe was my favorite for a long time, until spirit island came out.
Spirit Island is great. It's the first game where I didn't have to hold back my inclination to quarterback, because I simply couldn't. The search space for each person's decision is so large that I can barely handle optimizing my own options, much less those of an entire group. It's amazing. I wish the game built up to a more grand conclusion, rather than the final turns being playing out the motions of a mostly won game.
Balatro
I've completed 18/20 of the challenges. The last 3 are real doozies. There are some changes to the game coming down the pipe in the beta version that will make them easier. Part of me really wants to beat them before the changes get pushed to everyone. Part of me doesn't like doing really difficult things for no reason. Conflicted...
Slay the Spire
Between Android and Steam I now have a combined playtime of over 1000h (about 650/350 split). I wish the stats page did a better job at tracking things I care about, mainly granularity between act 3/4 victories and act 3/4 deaths. Maybe even separation of the stats into phases, like "these are your stats from before/after you had gotten to A20". It seems that some things were left unchanged from when ascension mode first got added to the game which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully the sequel will be better at all that stuff.
Blasphemous
I've spent a couple hours with it and it's just not for me. I think the entire Metroidvania genre may not be for me since I've bounced off a few now...
Most of the basic enemies felt overly spongey. I don't know if the game is maybe trying to encourage me to try to skip them or if later on you get a lot stronger and get to cut through them like butter and see how much you've grown. But for now it feels like too much of a slog. I feel like (at least in this stage of the game) the dodge slide isn't that great at its purpose; parry is much more important. The story/lore/setting is a big selling point for a lot of people but to me it just feels weird for the sake of being weird. I don't mind that it's gruesome and dark, but I don't necessarily love it either.
The art is very beautiful, which is mainly what drew me to it in the first place.
Dune: Imperium - Uprising
Have played a couple more times. I really like the sandworm combat mechanic. It's so nice to have a path to combat victories alternative to Heighliner. And you have to do a lot of setup to get them. Spies I still really like, but our last couple games have had issues with having cards available that can go to spied locations. Without that additional freedom of movement, the mechanic feels a lot more clunky. Card market availability is an issue for me with the game in general, and we play with the "sand worm eats cards" house rule, i.e. we trash+replace the last card out of the market at the end of the round to keep the cards flowing.
Update: finished the remaining Balatro challenges. I am the 0.6%! I honestly thought I would be stuck on Jokerless forever. Kept dying at ante 2 or 3 over and over. Getting the vouchers that decrease the round helped give me time to power up. Also got a burst of cash (the $15 for beating a boss then a Hermit card [double your money - up to $20] in the shop), and some early Jupiter cards (upgrade Flush).
Album of winning state
(edit: 150h play time)
An update on my Noita misadventures for @ICN - Spoiler warning for anyone else
This week I made somewhere around 20 attempts to survive the depths but unfortunately only a few of the runs were noteworthy. Though I have started to figure out a lot more stuff regarding wand building and have uncovered a few more secrets along the way. I now know why Stevari shows up after attempting to cut my way out of the Holy Mountain. In retrospect my first posts must have been amusing for someone that knows the game well and understood that the worm which cut the hole in the ceiling was the reason I had to fight the skeletal god.
My first run of significance started with the finding of a wand that had a triple cast and 4 plasma cutter spells on it all of a handful of metres into the mines. After clearing the mines and realizing the plasma seemed to be able to cut through everything I was curious if I could cut a path through the tree outside. Leaving the mines I went to the tree and decided to work my way to the top just to see what was up there. Along the way I found a room with the Kantele and some notes, and while I didn't know what I could do with it at the time on a later run I accidentally figured out that it can open a portal back to the surface... not that I can recall the combination to do that however. After visiting the top of the tree, which I assume might be a boss fight area to be triggered somehow with the Kantele, I went down the other side and saw some tombstone nestled in a nook carved out of the trunk. Again I've yet to figure out what to do there. I continued on my way into the frozen wastes to the West. After a short hike I noticed what looked like caverns under the snow and began to burn my way down with my trusty plasma cutter. Mere moments later I lost my footing as the snow shifted and fell into my array of plasma beams below, promptly ending my life.
Another run ended quickly after making my way across the lava pool East of the mines and beyond the bridge finding the mech-squid boss who dispatched me with ease. On a subsequent trip I found another plasma cutter wand and decided to see what lay below the bridge itself. I was climbing down the left wall carefully for what felt like an eternity when some ominous music began playing. Scared of what may arise from beneath me I began cutting my way into the rock when I started to notice the faint glow of something in the wall. A nuke... why is there a nuke down here and why do I feel like this tablet is foreshadowing something terrible. This run concluded soon after by accidentally throwing the bottle of acid I was carrying, melting myself into a puddle of goo.
A dozen or so runs passed before I was making any good progress into the dungeons once more. With some great luck I was able to find more hearts than ever before, crafted a minigun-like wand that never ran out of mana, had two ambrosia bottles and found a nuke orbit spell on my way through the jungle. If I could just make it to the end then surely my wand firing a spark bolt trigger that explodes into chainsaws and magic arrows surrounded by spinning nukes would vaporize anything standing before my path to glory.
Like a ghost I tip-toed my way through the Temple of the Art until I laid my eyes upon the glowing red gateway. I finally made it, beyond the great crimson portal and into the terrifying unknown.
I approached the spider-like three eyed behemoth with caution expecting it to attack the moment I was within striking range. Upon realizing I would have to be the one to initiate the fight I took some time to prepare myself by strategically placing some puddles of ambrosia around our battle theatre. Finally as prepared as I ever would be, we began. Immediately retreating to the right I jumped into my ambrosia before launching the earth shattering nuclear chainsaw payload... which he threw right back at me sending me flying off and into the awaiting lava below where, once again, I was liquefied. Now I know that fireproof doesn't mean lavaproof.
That was enjoyable to read, thank you. You're right, it was fun watching you speculate as the the nature of Stevari and angry gods. Honestly, I was surprised by how well you did; IIRC it was a while before I was able to deal just retribution to Steve for all the times they took it out on me when a worm wrecked their stuff. Nice work.
There's nothing like a good digging wand. There are a few different spells that can dig through anything like plasma cutter, which is a good thing because no matter how careful I try to be, I always end up accidentally blasting myself when I use that one.
The tombstone thing in the tree is one of 3 (IIRC) structures that seem significant, but aren't, to my great annoyance when I ended up looking them up. That one is monument to the first player or streamer (I forget which) to successfully complete a certain type of challenge. It can be useful though since IIRC it's an easier way to find the Kantele room for many players. The second structure is the achievement pillars at the top of the tree, which are a monument to you; as you do various things in the game, you'll unlock more bricks in the achievement pillars. The music machine is not part of the achievement pillars. The third is a little racetrack located below the nuke room, at a place where the dense rock thins a bit in the wall if you're climbing up the pit. There's a little drone in there that you can remotely pilot around a track, but it doesn't do anything aside from that.
The mech squid boss is legitimately one of the toughest in the game, which is hilariously mean given that they're also fairly likely to be the first encountered. Even on games where I can breeze through the layers, I tend to think twice about tangling with them. I'll break their mechanics in case you'd want that and want to avoid the wiki.
Possibly the tablet foreshadows something in some other way, but it does it definitely does portend one very concrete terror that now exists in your world. Now that you've discovered the nuke spell, it's added to the pool of spells that can be found on wands. You know, those wands that enemies sometimes pick up and fire at you. Sometimes your previous successes can really come back to haunt you.
A brutally comedic death at the hands of old three eye. Once you're done with the game, or at least aren't worried about spoilers anymore, I'd recommend browsing some of the top posts of all time on the Noita reddit. The game systems sometimes come together in hilariously oblique ways to ruin a struggling Noita's day.
Thanks again, that was fun to read. It sounds like you're doing pretty well overall.
Mech squid boss details
The boss is highly resistant to many damage types, most notably explosives and projectile damage (they take .3 of the listed damage). Furthermore, they have a diminishing damage shield; when they take damage, all damage is reduced to 0 for a time thereafter. It slowly scales back to taking full damage over a period of two seconds (120 frames). The damage field modifier and the plasma series of spells ignore this. When taking damage, the boss summons a retaliatory wand strike.It fires a few different types of projectiles, IIRC in every direction with some homing and acceleration to them, making them difficult to dodge. These can polymorph, blind, nullify your spells, or teleport you. It'll also periodically summon wands that'll fire spells at you. These wands will sometimes copy your spells. Also, it'll chew through terrain to get to you if you're close enough. It's a nasty boss with a lot of things that can go wrong.
Hint towards a quest start, if wanted
You've probably noticed some hand statues in the Snowy Depths. Those warrant some investigation.You're welcome, I'm also enjoying writing about my experience. Though for lack of time to play this week I will skip the upcoming weekly thread and post another update for you the following week.
Like much of this game a lot of my ability to defeat Stevari in that run was because I got lucky with a pretty good wand build early on. That luck would soon run out the first time Skoude was summoned. I miraculously killed it, narrowly avoiding death by the skin of my teeth. With no heart to heal myself and the Holy Mountain having been mostly eaten away by the gods destructive aura, I went to collect my golden reward from the heaping pile of bone dust. As I did I saw a familiar faint glowing ring emerging from below, my eyes widened as I witnessed another Skoude bore through the floor and finish what the first one had started. Initially I assumed it was a regular mechanic but on further testing I haven't had the game spawn a second one in the same mountain area, so I have no clue what happened there.
I do like the plasma cutter for how quickly it can slice through material but have become reluctant to use it to dig for that same reason, now preferring the luminous drill any time I have the option. While still quite dangerous I do like using plasma as the payload of a trigger spell.
That's kind of disappointing that the tombstone thing is only a streamer monument, again I imagined it was going to be part of a boss quest and had envisioned a slime monster with many faces because of how it looked. I probably should have realized the top of the tree was some sort of achievement area as I did notice the one pillar with the marking the dragon worm boss that I had killed earlier. Never would have guessed that other thing was a music machine and didn't touch it believing it would kill me. Similar story with the race track, I ran away from it when I saw the little robot thing jittering in the upper left corner of the track. I'm definitely going to go check that out now.
It does seem somewhat cruel to have that boss so close to the start but cruelty does fit the bill in this game. While the first boss I found was the green spider in the pyramid, the mech squid was the first one that I actually fought, or at least tried to fight. I'm going to skip your details on it for the moment, after a few attempts I think I may have figured out what needs to be done seeing that he appears to copy some of the things I've cast at it. As I've become quite efficient at removing myself from the world I want to try try hitting him with either the plasma cutter or one of those scary giga saw discs that always return to the caster. Hopefully it will use them just as carelessly as I have.
Until you mentioned that it hadn't dawned on me that some random Hiisi could now pick up a wand equipped with a nuke only to doom us all... wonderful.
I'm looking forward to checking those posts and the wiki. It's getting harder to resist the urge but now that I'm somewhat reliably getting through the vault (50/50) I feel like it won't be long before I can claim a victory.
I couldn't resist looking at the quest hint. I was wondering if those hand statues were anything more than traps. After kicking it (I kick almost everything at this point) and having the handy robot pop out it made me think there's something else I have to do with it but hadn't really taken time to figure it out yet. I'll see what I can come up with.
Until next time, wish me luck.
Glad to hear you're having fun too. That second Skoude seems like some real bad luck; I think it must've been some other creature getting polymorphed into one. Looking forward to seeing if any of your experimentation bears fruit. I would recommend avoiding spoilers for a while even after you complete the main path. There is quite a lot to do outside of it, to the point where it's often called finishing the tutorial in the community. And good luck!
I got Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga from the humble choice monthly. It's a pretty good turn-based combat, some mix of advance wars and ogre battle. It's well balanced, good presentation. But it's plagued with QoL issues that, I assume, stem from limitations of its choice of engine. Micromanaging the army in between missions is dreadful. The story and dialogue is amateurish, but passable. The meat of the game, the tactical combats, is super solid and worth the experience.
I'm mostly oriented this way already, but I've been in a handheld mood lately, as well as a "simple" "straightforward" mood, so I've gone back to my Gameboy Color. This week, I've been playing a pretty damned good amount of Dragon Quest 3 on GBC and it just hitting so right, right now. I love that with my GBC, I can have my coffee (or beer) in one hand and play DQ3 in the other and it's just not too involved, mostly just walking around and then when battle starts, hitting A with the occasional press of the D-Pad.
It's far from the most in depth of the series, but it's exactly what I want right now. I was thinking about putting it off and saving it for my travel I have coming up here in about two weeks, but it's all I can really think about as far as games go, so I've given up and just decided to play it. I also love that I know I'm not in for a 100-hour experience and can realistically finish it within about 30, which means I shouldn't get tired or bored of the gameplay as I would in a much longer game.
Classic games for the win!
Helldivers is awesome, I play a couple games a day, I enjoy it a lot. The sense of camaraderie there is really cool. Turns out I like PVE games. :)
With age I've been slowly decreasing how often I play multiplayer games because I thought I was bouncing off of them, with most gaming lobbies being tiresome. Turns out that no, multiplayer isn't the problem, the PvP mentality is. I like PvP, I just don't like the people playing PvP and Helldivers has been showing me that multiplayer can indeed be good if you remove the PvP aspect entirely.
The way they've created a community through an "us versus them" really works when "them" is the non-human enemy.
Live a Live (Switch). For years, I kept bringing this game up as the most interesting “hidden gem” from the SNES era and it’s a bit surreal to play a proper remake of it today. It’s an episodic JRPG (you can do episodes in any order) with chapters set in a wide variety of time periods and settings. There’s a Wild West chapter, a far future chapter on a space ship, a prehistoric chapter and one where you play a Ninja in Edo Japan. Some are heavily story-driven, some have a focus on fighting. The far future chapter is basically sci-fi horror, the prehistoric one is slapstick comedy. The game also has an interesting turn-based fighting system which lets you move characters in a 7x7 grid with attacks having chess-like ranges. It’s way more interesting and strategic than the usual JRPG grind.
Fairly short, though, for RPG standards (I think around 25 hours) and a bit easy. But what a ride! So many cool little ideas, characters and twists. I’m not entirely sure of that 2.5D aesthetic they’re using, I find it a bit tacky (especially since the full-res UI and particle effects make for a weird contrast). But still, this is an interesting game and the first chance to officially play this outside Japan in 30 years! One of the few cases where I can actually get excited about a remake.
I want to be play Live a Live so bad. I played the demo and really enjoyed it. Mixing up the setting so much is exactly the kind of thing that keeps me engaged. Plus I really appreciate short JRPG's. I just have a hard time maintaining focus on one game for upwards of 100 hours, especially a turn based game.
I'm kinda with you about the aesthetic. It seems to be a pretty trendy style right now with games like Octopath Traveler using similar visuals. I don't want to call it bad, but I think I just prefer traditional 2D sprite work. That said, it's fine enough that I still want to play the game.
Are the plot, dialogue and characters strong? Or pretty par for the course when it comes to JRPG stories? In other words, tropey I guess.
It’s a JRPG from the 90s, not Shakespearean drama (although somehow it even imitates that in the final chapter, lol). I tend to have a problem with judging stories in games like this since I instinctively adjust my expectations but there’s some rather charming little moments that pulled me in.
Finished Super Maio Wonder and it was a trip, literally! The trailers make you think that the big thing is turning into an elephant, but no! There's a joke that Mario doesn't actually turn big when he eats a mushroom. He's just tripping from the mushroom. This game takes that idea and runs with it! You eat a magical plant and the whole level turns into a drug trip. It is fantastic!
Aside from that, I'm slowly making my way through my first FireRed nuzlocke run. There's a lot of grinding lol. I'm 7 badges in and can't bear losing any of my crew at this point.
After reading some of the threads here about Minecraft, and after two kids asking for a good long while, I broke down and got three copies of Minecraft for us. The first couple of days we mostly learned in our own world's, but then the kids wanted to have a family server that was easily shareable with friends, so I probably over-engineered a solution. I found a pretty cool project that deploys Minecraft to AWS, and got everything put together fora pretty nice system. Whenever one of us wants to play, we just have to do a wake-up action for the server, which mostly just means hitting the server url in some manner. That triggers an AWS lambda that starts a farmgate instance on demand and updates the route 53 routing so that it all works. Then you connect, play, enjoy. If nobody is connected got 20 minutes then the instance stops. I get notifications when people go on and off, and it's pretty painless and also quite inexpensive.
I did originally set something up locally with my home server, but that highlighted a bunch of minor issues with my home network, which I haven't yet fixed, and also it is a bit underpowered for multiple people being connected, especially if someone is watching something on tv/plex which is the same crummy server.
Like many, I started playing Fallout 4 again following enjoying the show.
It's my least favourite mainline Fallout but it is also the easiest to get up and running/modded with little effort. Who knows how long I'll stick with it, but boy does it help remind me what I like about all Bethesda games before Starfield. The ability to just wonder off and find stuff you have never seen before from exploring is amazing. I have 400+ hours in Fallout 4 and was still able to stumble across areas I had never seen. Starfield never gave me that experience once.
MechWarrior 2. My dad got the game with a Matrox graphics card in the mid 90s and I remembered it fondly, so I decided to set it up in DOSBox.
Didn't look at all like I remembered it, but in a good way. The version we had before was apparently designed specifically for that graphics card. Other versions were released for other cards, each using the different features of each card (the APIs were all incompatible back then). The "plain" version I downloaded only supports VGA and VESA, and texture mapping is used very sparingly because it isn't accelerated.
The result is quite striking, though: low poly but more than serviceable mechs running around in stylistic, mostly flat shaded landscapes over gradient skies, that judging by screenshots doesn't betray how old the game is as obviously as the 3D accelerated versions.
Anyway, the game is still a blast and manages to suspend disbelief in itself as a simulator, not just a sci-fi game. Before most missions you get a chance to set your mech up, including arming it, installing heatsinks, jump jets, engine and armor. During the missions, parts of your mech could be blown off, which results in any weapons or heat sinks mounted to it flying off as well, so there are situations in the game where even if you can't avoid getting hit, you have to manage where you get hit. Similarly, you have to consider where you hit enemies, and what effects hitting them in different places will have.
I find the DOS version better with more striking color schemes and things like ground fog and time of day that weren't in the textured versions.
It's amazing how the game had so many releases that tried to add textures to the game but they all had limitations in one way or another compared to the DOS version that you could crank up to 1024x768, which was a feat at that time.
I ought to give this another go, as it's been... Shit, almost 30 years since I played it, I think? It came with my first graphics card, a 3dfx Voodoo and it was just such a cool game, made me a lifelong Mechwarrior fan, I even play the Battletech Miniatures game these days.
Isn't mechwarrior 2 one of those games with 50 other versions? Curious about trying it, I have a glide machine somewhere so I could probably download a glide version...
I think VGA versions while not flashy are pretty nice, the only downside here is that they'll probably use software rendering. Quake is the best example of what this means, you'll get that nice "pixel-art" feel but it won't run too well on anything because it doesn't scale on faster CPUs.
Quake is not a good analogue in this case IMO. Quake with hardware rendering is a fully texture mapped game with dynamic lighting effects. Quake with software rendering is essentially the same thing: a fully texture mapped game with dynamic lighting effects. The renderers implement the same basic features so the results are visually kind of similar.
Software rendered MechWarrior 2 on the other hand does away with most of the texture mapping features available in the hardware accelerated versions. Visually, it's an entirely different game, and on newer hardware it runs well even at higher resolutions like 1024x768 (which most of the hardware accelerated versions didn't even support).
What would you say is the best version in this case? I can probably try the 3dfx glide version since I have a machine with that, what about DOS versions? I'm guessing there's versions between Mercenaries and whatnot
I've only personally played the retail version and the Matrox Mystique bundled version. Of those two I'd say that the retail version looks better. If I had a 3dfx setup I would definitely give that version a whirl, if nothing else just to see it running!
Here's a comparison of the different graphics card bundled versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWzWdwj9NvU
The PowerVR and 3dfx versions look pretty good in my view, but here's a review with a lot of footage from the retail version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1O4WTwjWZ4
Ouch, that review is approximately 10 years old and discusses buying a physical copy for 30 dollars... 10 years ago. The game looks great though regardless
I've been playing the new onslaught mode in Destiny 2 and it's quite fun. I'm spending the next few weeks getting the weapons and armor from that while clearing up some older quests in my quest log to have a clean slate when The Final Shape drops in a couple months. The game is still fun for me, but I'm definitely not binging it like I used to. I'll probably play the first few months of TFS and do some raiding again, but I feel like the game has run its course for me at this point, and considering that TFS is the conclusion of the current story, I suppose it will be a good stopping point if I start to get bored.
Other than that, I haven't been much in a gaming mood lately. I want to be, but I keep finding myself parking my butt in front of the TV instead to watch the NBA playoffs or Deep Space Nine. While I'm out on the couch though, I should really try to finish Ghost of Tsushima. It's one of my favorite games, but because the game is massive and I want to do all the side quests and collectibles, it is taking me ages to actually get through the main story, but I'm still having fun with it. I boot it up ever month or two and play 10-20 hours and then rinse and repeat.
I may resume my playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas or Fallout 4 soon, as I'm in a fallout mood from the show, now. I've been feeling in the mood for action games, though I don't know if those will quite scratch the exact itch I have. My exact itch is more of a hack and slash or a diablo-esque itch (though not diablo 4 specifically, so idk), but I don't really have anything on deck for that.
Brotato
The past two weekends I have had friends over.
The past two weekends we have played hotseat Brotato on the TV, with one person doing a run while the room helps guide them on which level ups and items to take. It’s as close to multiplayer Brotato as we can get right now (at least, until the DLC comes out).
The past two weekends have been a ton of fun, and we have now collectively cleared 21 characters on Danger 5.
A side note: I am incredibly lucky to own a Steam Link. It is perfect for casting a Deck to the TV and works WAY better than the official dock (which legitimately remains non-functional for me). It’s also great for when your friends have multiple Steam Decks and you can easily trade off casting between them.
They really should start making the Steam Link again. With how well the Deck is doing, I have no doubt they would be in demand.
What about the Link is better than the dock? I own a Link (still in the box even) but the dock seems to be functioning fine. What does non-functional mean for you?
At the moment, my official dock simply doesn’t output to the TV. This is on the most recent firmware update too. I’ve tried it intermittently since I’ve gotten it and it’s always had issues: outputting at the wrong resolution, flickering, etc.
It’s possible I simply got bad hardware, but in trying to troubleshoot it, I’ve found a lot of similar complaints about it over on r/steamdeck which makes me think the product simply isn’t up to snuff yet. I ended up getting a third-party dock that works fine.
With regards to the difference, a working dock and a Link honestly aren’t that different, and the Dock is actually better in terms of quality since it’s not streaming. That said, the Link is super convenient, especially if there are multiple Decks.
We recently did a nerd weekend at an Airbnb where there were four Decks in attendance. I hooked my Link up to the TV, and we took turns hot seating games on different people’s Decks, or someone would just cast what they were playing solo to the TV during downtime as something we could communally watch and comment on. A dock would have been a lot more cumbersome for that, but the wireless Link made everything super fluid and easy.
Granted, this is an extremely niche use case, but I’ve pretty much adopted it at home. I use the dock when it’s just me, but when I’ve got friends over, my Link is up and ready to go.
Sounds like a great time and I get that not finagling with cables is much better in a group.
To me it sounds like your dock indeed has hardware issues, considering mine is very much plug and play. Whatever you are having is certainly not the intended behaviour.
I second this. I've had zero troubles with my dock. Works a treat.
Bouncing around a few games right now. Half way through the campaign of Advance Wars 1 and 2 hours into a new run of Pokémon Emerald. Advance Wars has been great, played with the map editor a lot as a kid but never got far into the campaign. Emerald is amazing as always.
Also playing some GT Advance 3 here and there which has been surprisingly fun. Love how the cars feel for a retro racer.
Which starter did you pick? I periodically play through Emerald again but I've found that I'm never able to enjoy it as much as I did when I was younger. Seems too easy now to just grind your way through everything without very rigid self-imposed rules. I still enjoy the nostalgia of it but find it missing something to keep me engaged.
I went Torchic this time! For me it’s less about the challenge and more about the adventure. It’s a relaxing game for lunch breaks or after the kid has gone to bed.
I feel it helps playing on real hardware as well, nothing more nostalgic than cracking open my childhood GBA SP (well….after I modded the crap out of it)
I’ve been continuing playing Cyberpunk 2077, for the first time - with the Phantom Liberty expansion.
I built my V out to be pretty stealth based (maxed out the Cool tree first, with I think a 3 in body and around 7-8 in the other ones currently) & basically 90% of the missions I start stealth until I fuck up and get spotted (usually by a camera that I ignored/didn’t see in time), and then it turns into all-guns blazing, but usually without too many enemies left. So my current loadout has been an iconic semi-auto pistol with a muzzle brake, an iconic power pistol with a silencer (headshots for stealth kills), and the overwatch sniper (silenced).
And that’s worked out pretty well for most jobs so far - sniper while rolling up, then silenced pistol for headshotting groups, and then when I’m spotted using the semi-auto pistol to clean up. And it’s even worked out OK against a few bosses on jobs like the VDB/Animals job.
But then, on the first phantom liberty mission, where of course, before starting, I dumped my whole inventory so that I would have backup space to not get encumbered from loot…it did, not quite work out as well.
Spoilers for the first few Phantom Liberty missions
Basically, from my V’s perspective- the stealth setup was great, successfully made it to the downed plane without being spotted.
But then everything went to shit on the plane, I can’t headshot the enemies fast enough with my silenced pistol, the sniper rifle is too slow and doesn’t have a big enough magazine, and the semi auto pistol doesn’t have enough range or mag size either.
So there I am, getting yelled at by the fucking president to cover her while she’s reloading (and doing about 80% of the work), so I have to fucking run OUT of the plane and pick up basically an LMG off the ground and then go ham.
But really, getting yelled at by the president for not doing enough was hilarious, as I’m sitting there like, “yeah planning on this to be fully stealth was probably a mistake.”
Bought a PSVita, hoping to play a bit on it.
No rest for the Wicked, yet another early access game, I know, but it's a project I've been following and looking forward playing for quite a time.
Moon Studios, the people behind Ori and Ori 2, try their hand at a new genre with a new perspective.
NRFTW is a single player (for now) super dynamic combat driven ARPG with wonderful graphics and overall arts department (textures, char design, VA,.. ) and a crafting and gear customizing system between Z:BoTW and Elden Ring.
It's in a weird place between DarkSouls, Torchlight, Zelda and a metroidvania, and it bloody works!
To be honest, the game is in alpha stage and it shows, there are a lot of performance issues and some unpolished aspects, but it's a great project that will deliver a unique and excellent product imho.
I know 35 quids is a big price for an unfinished game, but you should definitely keep an eye on it for the months to come if you like the genres I talked about, because this game might be your new thing!
Absolutely worth it at this price. Truly amazing support by the developers so far too. In the week since release I think they have pushed out 5 hotfix patches.
Been putting hours into Helldivers 2. What a fantastic game, I think my first live service game i've bought. The gameplay loop with killing the bugs feels exactly like what it would be like in the movie Aliens. Not much of a fan of the automatons, takes a lot of headshots to kill them quickly but it's not that big of a deal unless you get overrun with multiple chainsaw wielding bots.
Path of Exile. It's my favourite game, and with season coming out every ~4 months, I tend to play it almost exclusively for 1-2 months at a time.
The current league, Necropolis, is great in my opinion. They've made some pretty significant changes to the endgame which have shaken up the farming meta quite a bit. That combined with the league mechanic, which makes crafting top tier items pretty easy this league, have thrown a wrench into the economy, making previously unobtainable items much cheaper than they've ever been.
The game itself is also just in a great state right now. Almost everything is viable to farm, there's a ton of viable builds, it just feels great to play. I'll probably be sticking with this league for quite a while
I've played PoE for a very long time. I've seen some real ups and downs with the end game so I agree this is about the best it has ever been. I do have beef with tier 17 and how Uber access is gated now though. I'd love another players opinion. I've been avoiding the subreddit for a few leagues because it's.... a little bit toxic and unhelpful.
Just a few days ago, I beat Marvel's Midnight Suns. My brother got it for me for Christmas so that we could play it simultaneously. (I talk to him a lot on the phone, but I only see him once or twice a year.)
I was a little skeptical of it, despite good reviews. I thought it was going to be something like Hearthstone but with a Marvel skin. I have absolutely, positively no interest in reliving the TCG/CCG card games of my adolescence. But, fortunately, I was completely wrong about what kind of game this is! You can see Firaxis's past games, particularly XCOM, in the way combat was designed. The cards are just a way to randomize what abilities your characters have access to on any given turn and a way to create different builds for each character. Despite what it might look like in static screenshots, positioning and movement is quite important.
Both my brother and I quite enjoyed the game, and he's not even a superhero fan. (In fact, I would say he is skeptical of superhero content in general.)
There are admittedly definitely some weird things about the game. Like how it occasionally looks very janky, graphics-wise. As if they originally built it at more of an XCOM level and then decided to "zoom in" to the third person perspective they ended up using. The teambuilding and friendship mechanics are also very weird and grindier than they should be, as is the resource gathering. Fortunately, there are plenty of mods available for the game that can eliminate all of that.
But the combat is fun, the story is pretty good (though a bit cheesy and a hard game to follow up Baldur's Gate 3 with), and the voice acting is generally excellent. I heartily recommend it.
Skillup has a good review of it, if anyone's interested in the game, though I disagree with how much he despised the narrative side of the game. Yeah, Firaxis has delivered a rather more juvenile, high school-esque version of a lot of characters, but I didn't find it terrible. Some characters were annoying, and the way they fawn over the player character is irritating, but most of them were generally likable and, again, well acted. Baldur's Gate 3 companions these are not, for sure, though. None of the writing here is on anything close to that level. But I think it's telling that, even though he hated all of the narrative side of the game, Skillup still overall enjoyed it because the combat system is so unique and fun.
Good to hear about your brother not caring about Superheroes, as this is exactly what's kept me away from this game.
I adore xcom having played hundreds of hours between the Enemy Unknown and 2, but the superheroes put me off every time I look at this game. So I may have to get over it.
Skillup's review is probably a good one to go with if you're curious about whether or not you could enjoy the game. Though he has affection for the characters, he finds them practically unrecognizable.
You could conceivably skip all the dialogue and get mods to trivialize the out-of-combat experience. The game might well still be a great time for some players.
That said, if you hate superheroes, it might be too much to ignore here. Iron Man plays differently from Captain Marvel plays differently from Spider-Man because of who they are as superhero characters.
I just started Midnight Suns (about 3 hours in, though with a decent amount of idling). I'm finding the amount of conversations a bit tedious and wish the "base building" aspect was somewhat more in line with XCOM2. I do like the combat though -- it feels unique enough that it's not just XCOM2 with a marvel skin but still in that same lineage.
Yeah, I was hitting my ESC key quite a lot at the beginning. Eventually, the game either wore me down or I found things about it to appreciate more, but it was really hard to play, from a story standpoint, on the heels of Baldur's Gate 3. I'd like to think it got better!
As for the base building and other resource/friendship management… If the strategic game is less interesting to you (and I suspect the combat tactics are going to be the draw for most players), I would suggest picking up some mods to trivialize those things. There are a lot of good ones on Nexus Mods.
I've started playing Grounded with my brother, they ran a free weekend on Steam these past couple of days, and we both decided to pick it up during the sale.
It's a fun survival crafter that runs great on my Steam Deck, and has a lot of fun world to explore. The tone is a lot sillier than something like The Forest, but it feels internally consistent and very cheesy 90's. The tiny world setting reminds me a bit of Supraland, which is no bad thing.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
I'm still on my JRPG arc. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes releases tomorrow, 2024-04-23, and I'm really excited. Coming into the weekend, I figured I'd whet my appetite by playing the first game in the series: Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising.
Rising was the stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign that brought Hundred Heroes to life. That context was constantly top of mind, since my entire playthrough screamed: "We just need to get this out the door as efficiently as possible so we can work on Hundred Heroes". That framing was unreasonably good at rationalizing why I liked and disliked parts of this game.
The art was by far my favorite part of the experience. The environments are gorgeous, and punch so far above the weight of everything else this game has to offer. The spritework done for the main characters and a few side characters is also great. I wouldn't be surprised if these art assets were re-used in Hundred Heroes to justify the disproportionate effort investment.
That investment of effort probably wasn't something the developers could extend very far, which would explain the rest of the game felt so flat.
The storytelling is anemic.
The plot is weak, and never evolves much beyond its premise of "an adventurer leaves home for a coming of home adventure". That "adventure" is entirely comprised of helping towns people with menial tasks (side quests) until the main character falls into a "mystery" most of the way through the game.
Every single one of the roughly 130 side quests, and a good chunk of the 31 main quests, is a fetch quest. Either "go to find a resource for me", or "go kill a monster and get this drop for me", or "go around town and talk to this person for me". The last one being the source of one especially egregious quest, where I had to talk to someone, then relay a message to the person 2 steps to their right, and then go back to end the quest. The repetition wouldn't be that bad if the quests provided some exposition about the world or an avenue to develop characters, but they don't. It's always a sentence or two of bland flavor text to initiate the quest, and at the end it's more bland flavor text of the main character asking for their reward.
All of the characters are flat. Dialogue is only used as a utility to move the game along, seldom provides any insight that elevates the characters out of the archetypes they were introduced as, and further highlights how repetitious this game is. The only reason I even remember the main character's name is because of a gag that happens at the end of the game.
Movement in the hub town feels sluggish and awkward. My entire playthrough was spent wishing I could move faster in the town. A wish exacerbated by the jerky running animations that make the characters look less like people and more like marionettes. I'd guess this is why the game immediately gives you access to fast travel in the town, that you can always access with a button press.
The combat is... fine? Rising is a Hack-and-Slash Action RPG, with some borrowed elements from metroidvanias (backtracking, light platforming, 2.5D). Combat at the beginning of the game feels really rough, since you're missing a lot of what other hack and slash games would start you out with (upwards and downwards attacks, longer combos). The RPG systems (accessories, magic, weapon/armor buffs) all felt cosmetic, in that they were just stat buffs that felt imperceptible in an already too easy game.
Despite all of those negatives, I didn't hate my time with the game. I was eventually frustrated by some background music I found repetitive, turned off the game audio, and turned on the podcast. The game started to really work for me at that point; its repetitiveness meant that I didn't really have to pay that much attention. I could just enjoy the eye candy as I mindlessly worked through the dungeons and the side quests.
It is a shame that the storytelling was so weak. Rising takes place in a contemporary time period to Hundred Heroes, with many of the characters in Rising set to appear in Hundred Heroes (I'd imagine that's all the characters with impressive character design). Investing in the story, worldbuilding, and characters would have made for a strong payoff going into Hundred Heroes.
I don't know that I really got anything out of playing this game, other than the Marvel-esque after-credits scene that teases the conflict in Hundred Heroes. Nor do I think I would even started (read paid for) the game had it not been bundled in my Gamepass subscription.
Falcon 3.0 (Gold)
Falcon 3.0 is a 90s flight simulator where you fly the F-16 fighting falcon. It is a DOS game with a wide variety of campaigns and even expansion packs for different fighters, like the mig-29 and the f/a-18 hornet. For it's time, it was well known as one of the most in-depth flight simulators up until Jane's and Falcon 4.0 broke that record. To supplement this, the game boasts a realistic flight model borrowed off of a real-life training simulator and an in-depth campaign centered around historical and hypothetical conflicts. Like many flight sims, you must be prepared to read 50 or so manuals in a nice big box with a set of floppies (or a CD-ROM).
Since one of my side hobbies is retrocomputing, I have a few DOS machines which I can use to play the game on original hardware, right now I have a 486 66dx2 with an ISA ATI graphics card and a soundblaster (With MS-DOS 6.22 installed). On original hardware, the game works totally fine and is completely playable in many aspects, the campaign is chock-full of action and is surprisingly extremely difficult. The game had three 'period accurate' settings which centered around Israel (Six-Day war 2: Syria strikes back), Kuwait (gulf war), and Korea (falcon 4.0 lite), with expansions centering around Pakistan, Bosnia, and the Kurile Islands. They even give unbiased histories on each conflict which is unheard of these days, weighing in the political ramifications of each campaign and what the player must do.
Really its only drawbacks is the fact that you're only limited to an original machine or DOSBox, the game runs at a paltry 320x200 resolution and this seriously limits how you can view targets and enemy fighters. Additionally, the game has some vague speed issues and general bugs like funky g-forces and a slightly buggy high-fidelity flight mode, and this isn't even getting into how I had to install it on an original machine... You quite literally need 602k of conventional memory which is fun little learning experience for playing on the real deal. This was a year before virtual DOS memory was a thing, and really it isn't too hard to set up if you read the manual and are willing to experiment with configurations.
It's strengths are most certainly, the gameplay and actual content / aesthetic of the game. The game itself balances it's campaign mode as a straightforward open-ended RTS where you dispatch your squadron to destroy infrastructure and enemy units, but this means that you can highly customize and maintain who flies with you and how flight paths are laid out. For instance, one flight path can be set to be a SEAD mission, while another is set to patrol for fighters, etc. Finally, the game has a steep learning curve where you must learn real life tactics, understand your weapons, and additionally master realistic BFM, but it is not too step compared to the Jane's games or Falcon 4.0 (Or BMS, which is a full on study simulator).
All in all, a tantalizing MS-DOS experience, and a treat to experience on real hardware.
I've read that Falcon 4.0 is still played today amongst the Sim Community, though heavily modded, I guess.
Never played any of the games myself, always preferred arcade style flying games, but I've been wanting a retro computer for quite some time now, just haven't really been able to justify it. The cost, while not crazy expensive, is still not terribly cheap (would love to get the same computer I had in 96 or so, but they're rare and expensive) and the space requirement with CRT is non-negligable, plus I'm not really sure what I'd play, most of the classics I like I can still get running.
All that said, I am going to VCF Southwest this year and I'm stoked to look at all the old hardware and I am tempted to find a laptop that might fill that retro computer hole in my life, even if it's not as perfect as a desktop may be.
This is the only downside of this hobby is that the parts are getting extremely expensive and the prices are becoming more and more BS. It isn't even that they're expensive, there are thousands of e-machines and xp dell computers which everyone has but they're up-priced by wannabee collectors. I would recommend you find stuff at garage sales- I ended up buying most of my machines cheap from a former computer engineer who had 4 or so machines which he did not want anymore. On the topic of CRT space, yes this is indeed a huge issue and it seems desks over the past decade are actually smaller. But a CRT is the real deal unless you like how LCD monitors blur lower resolutions.
The other issue is fixing machines, but there are dozens of computer forums which deal with vintage machines. If you want to look at youtubers who review and build machines I would check PhilsComputerLab
I definitely don't know if I have the motivation to fix the machines. I've watched plenty of retro computing Youtubers to know that I absolutely don't need more projects like this, as I already have plenty I'm neglecting.
Otherwise, I definitely wouldn't mind experimenting if I could get in for like $200. I do have a newer Pentium 4 I use just as a garage computer and I've considered downgrading the CPU to something slower and using it for Windows 98, but again, most anything I'm interested in playing, I already can on a modern machine. I know it's not exactly the same without some proper hardware like a Sound Blaster, but it's largely good enough for me and I don't have a good enough memory to recall what my actual SB16 sounded like.
if that motherboard has support for Windows 98 (many of the first P4 mobos did) then you can get a soundblaster live and use that for a "retro gaming machine". Typically speed issues don't matter for 90s-era games and many later DOS titles, unless you're playing something specific. But you will definitely be able to play era-appropriate Quake, Half Life 1, and a slew of windows titles and certain DOS games which don't work well on new computers.
Currently the cheapest way to get into the hobby is by finding an old enough dell machine (typically an optiplex) and just using that.
The Dell I have definitely doesn't support 98, unfortunately.
I have experimented with PCem in the past, which was pretty neat. I'd actually be curious to set that up and run it on a second (CRT) monitor to see if it would scratch the itch. Of course, the trouble then is finding a CRT in reasonable shape for a reasonable price.
Finally started Far Cry Primal as I work my way through the Far Cry series. Only a couple hours in but really loving it so far despite having to troubleshoot some issues to get it to work in the first place (the game doesn't like USB audio for some reason, so I had to run my speakers directly to my PC instead of through my monitor like I normally do. Don't understand why but it is what it is)
But it's pretty fun so far. I love the village building element, and I wish that was even more expanded than what it seems to be so far. I've always wanted a game like this that has some incremental game elements to it, where NPCs can gather resources and help build, which this game seems to have a lite version of that.
So it almost scratches that itch.
But otherwise, an interesting take on the Far Cry formula, I wasn't expecting to like the setting very much as it's quite a departure from the staples of the series, but I'm digging it so far
The setting is probably the best part of Far Cry Primal. I remember reading a while back that they actually hired a linguist or something to make sure that the dialogue sounds were accurate (based on academic research, I don't think we have many recordings from 10,000+ years ago lol). The gameplay is the same ubisoft loop of explore > find new outpost > sneak in or go guns blazing > outpost cleared > repeat. I enjoy it but I know that it's a lot of people's main gripe with the game.
I don't see a problem with the gameplay loop, it's a fun loop, and I enjoy coming back to it. If people don't like that gameplay then why are they playing a Far Cry game?
Yeah if you played them all one after the other it would get boring sure, but split it up with other games. Ill play a Far Cry, then play other games for a while, 6 months, a year maybe, then do another Far Cry.
They're fun games, I don't get the hate, unless they just hate the formula but then why are they playing them?
Oh I agree 100%, it's a tried-and-true formula and I find it relaxing knowing what to expect when I go into the game. I enjoy it as well in other games like the newer assassins creed games and horizon zero dawn, but I can also see how some people might find it a bit repetitive. HZD actually reminded me a lot of far cry primal, but with robots instead of saber-tooth cats.
Far Cry 2 had this same formula and it's probably one of my favorite games ever. The setting in that game was also pretty incredible (what other game has you fighting malaria?).
That's really good to hear cause Horizon Zero Dawn is on my list to play, didn't know it had a similar formula. Excited to get to that one
Wanted: Dead
What an odd game. So much of it seems intentionally unpolished like a big wink at the player rather than feeling poorly implemented. I find it funny that even in terms of save logic it feels like an early xbox360 era game where the last level has these massive sections without a save spot and really easy sudden deaths. Its charming in an odd way. The awkward silences, voices suddenly feeling like theyre not coming from the same character anymore, crass writing. Its all so strange.
I had played some baldur's gate 3 earlier in the week and decided that this was gonna be my palette cleanser. And cleanse the palette it did
I got back into Warhammer 40,000: Darktide to catch up on all the updates after not playing for a year and it's just as hectic and visceral as it was before, only with more maps, more banging music, and a lot more build options. As far as co-op games go, Helldivers 2 is probably still more fun but this one does top it in multiple departments, from music to immersion to rewarding skill by being considerably more punishing at the highest difficulty. Managed democracy is great, but I will always have a soft spot for the God Emperor of Mankind.
Also bought Balatro to play when I'm not in the mood for multiplayer and wow this game really is as addictive as everybody said it was. Who would have thought turning one of the most timeless card games into a roguelike would be such a dangerous combination. Haven't got all that much done in my collection and haven't even started on the challenges yet, but I did get one hand over a million and I'm pretty happy about that.
I've been playing the 1.0 update of The Planet Crafter and absolutely loving it. I bought it in early access but didn't play because I was focused on other games at the time. I'm glad it worked out this way though, because there is a ton that went in before 1.0 that really make the game shine IMO.
The game is very clearly inspired by Subnautica, but the setting and some of the mechanics are just different enough to make the game stand on its own. I loved Subnautica and a part of me is sad that I can't experience its story again for the first time. The Planet Crafter was able to scratch that itch to an extent. There's quite a bit of unexpected depth to the game's story, and I found myself really becoming immersed in the plot as I progressed.
Much like Subnautica, the map is pre-made and fixed. There is good and bad to this, in my opinion. The map is beautiful and feels natural. There is no weird glitchiness or sameyness that happens with procedural gen (thinking of games like No Man's Sky). However, once you've seen it all, that's it. Some of this is alleviated by the nature of the terraforming aspect of the game. The planet goes through quite the transformation, and it really is nice to revisit areas to see how they've progressed. There are also unlocks later in the game that add depth to existing areas, and even create small procedural areas that play similar to dungeon crawls. These all have the effect of extending the game's playtime in the best way. Once the main story ends in Subnautica, there's not a lot to do. I could see myself continuing to play The Planet Crafter in some capacity after the main story is done (I haven't quite reached that point yet).
There's a bunch more to the game that I didn't touch on, and don't really want to spoil. Let's just say that if you liked Subnautica, or No Man's Sky, or modded Minecraft, you should give The Planet Crafter a look. :)
I loved The Planet Crafter. I call it subnautica on Mars (even though the planet isn't actually mars in the game lore, it totally is mars). The terraforming is amazingly satisfying.
I second this game to anyone who liked Subnautica and wants something else to scratch that itch.
After (too) many years, I reinstalled Towerfall on a whim, to play with the kids and wife. And damn is this game still excellent. Zero time to setup, 3 buttons, and here we go. I recommend to use the "unlock all" cheat code to get all characters and levels without grinding solo for hours; it's a party game after all.
You can assign as many bonuses or maluses on individual players to even the field, which allowed my 5 years old daughter to win a game.
We played on the Switch, but if you own it on PC, it works very well with "Steam Remote Play Together" for online sessions (if all players have a controller).