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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 Age ever since it released. What month is this?
They've really done a great job in not just extending the existing game loop but adding a bunch of unique new challenges on the different worlds. I'm getting close to having a ship survive to the end zone now but there are always more things to tweak on it. It is still addicting as ever.
I have too. I have been working on a writeup about my opinions of each new planet. Now that I have finished the 4 inner planets, I would like to share my thoughts. It has some spoilers, so you may want to ignore this if you want to avoid spoilers.
I have mentioned elsewhere that I have been playing Factorio Space Age exclusively since it came out. In case anyone isn’t aware, Factorio is a factory building game. Space Age is a DLC that was just released for it. If anything I say seems interesting, I highly recommend picking up a copy. The base Factorio is still fantastic without the Space Age DLC, so if you want to save some money, you can skip the DLC. The DLC release coincided with the 2.0 update. All of the major quality of life additions that they developed for Space Age (and there are a lot of them) are included as a free update to the base game. Also worth noting, don’t bother waiting for the game to go on sale. The devs have been pretty vocal against game sales. They reason that (especially when it was in early access), they should price their game at a reasonable price and keep it there, instead of pricing it higher than it should be and having sales to lower than it should be.
Factorio also has the single best modding community out of any game. I know there are some fantastic mod communities, but I feel confident in saying that Factorio’s is the best. The game has a mod browser built directly into the interface. The “base game”, and the Space Age additions are actually implemented as mods using the game’s modding api, so the developers dogfood what they allow modders to do. (One caveat, the “base” mod is tied so inextricably to the engine that it’s a little misleading to call it a mod as such, but the devs recently released an alternative to the “base” mod. The alternate sets up everything necessary that the “base” mod normally sets up, so a modder could potentially create a total conversion from scratch in the Factorio engine. To my knowledge, no mods yet exist that use this base replacement foundation.) In all games, modders will find bugs with the game. In many cases, these bugs exist in the base game, but it’s impossible for them to affect the player in an unmodded game. Usually developers will ignore those bug reports, or only fix it if it can be replicated in an unmodded game. The Factorio devs go out of their way to track down and fix bugs in the engine, even if you can only replicate the bug with an obscure mod setup. (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-296)[Here is a fantastic example from some time ago]. A player’s game was freezing for an entire second every so often, and then continuing like nothing happened. Since the save file was heavily modded, they at first thought it was an unoptimized mod. But the actual issue was that the base game used a O(N^2) algorithm for updating train signals, where the speed of the train affected the input length. So in the base game, it never got large enough for the game to make a frame drop. But the mods added trains with insane acceleration, which triggered 5.7 billion signal updates in one frame, most of which were duplicates. They rewrote the algorithm to O(N), even though it is incredibly unlikely to ever affect an unmodded game.
Anyway, that is all just backstory of why I think Factorio is a fantastic game. Now for my opinions on Space Age. This bit will be spoiler heavy. There are a number of new planets. So far, I have been to the first 3 new inner planets.
Nauvis
Nauvis is the name for the planet in the base game. It is mostly unmodified, but launching a rocket in Space Age is much simpler than in the base game. Since traveling through space will require at least hundreds of rocket launches, this is welcome. I had often optimized the fun out of the base game in the past, so I forced myself to slow down and enjoy the early game again. And it actually worked pretty well. None of this gameplay was particularly new, but it was refreshing to replay this after not playing Factorio at all for a few years.
Space platforms
Space platforms are exactly what they sound like, and they double as spaceships, if you put engines on the back. You have to send up batches of platform tiles to build on with rockets, along with all the supplies you want to build. You collect asteroids that fly by for raw ingredients. All in all, it’s a fun challenge. Builds on Nauvis are very large since space is pretty much unlimited. In fact, that’s often advice given to new players: don’t try to make things small. On space platforms, that logic is flipped on its head, and it makes for quite a fun challenge.
Fulgora
Fulgora is set in the ruins of a collapsed empire. Because of this, there are no raw resources like you would expect on Nauvis. Instead you mine “scrap” directly from the ground and process it through a recycler. The recycler is a pretty fantastic item that breaks whatever item you give it into its ingredients, but only returns a small fraction of the ingredients. The scrap returns a variety of high level items. This makes Fulgora a unique planet because items that are expensive/complex on other planets are quite simple here. Launching a rocket, once you build the rocket silo, is essentially free. The major drawback for me is that you seemingly need to commit to a large scale base quickly. I started with a pretty small base, and kept running out of space for storage and belt logistics. Space is quite limited here because everything is on small islands with oceans of oil in between. I built a bit of infrastructure and bounced off this planet to come back later. Once I did come back, it was much more pleasant because I was more mentally prepared to make a base focused on small island independent factories connected by trains. I was also more prepared to use logistics bots. They tend to make the logistics challenges of this game less interesting, but you just don’t have the space available for belt based logistics. And I just realized while typing this that the logistic challenge of Fulgora is the trains, so having simple logistics within the islands doesn’t remove the challenge entirely. I have slowly been building more infrastructure to build robots across my planets, and I will be coming back to convert basically everything to bots.
Vulcanus
Vulcanus is a hot lava planet. It has some very interesting mechanics, and it might be my favorite planet of the expansion. I like that the planets don’t feel like copy and paste versions of Nauvis with different resources, especially with regards to combat. Nauvis combat is killing biter nests and building walls to defend from constant attacks. Vulcanus is entirely peaceful, unless you want to build in the range of the demolishers. They are essentially sandworms from Dune, but stay on the surface (Vulcanus is rocky not sandy). If you build in their territory, they will eventually come by and destroy your buildings, but as long as you stay away, they are entirely peaceful. They have insanely high health and health regeneration, so killing them is a battle that you have to prepare for. Factorio has artillery weapons, which are pretty much the late game weapons from before the expansion. I built an artillery train with 10 guns on it. To give you some sense of scale, a train like this would be able to take out gigantic swaths of the most powerful enemies on Nauvis. It takes out small demolishers pretty well, but I picked a fight with a medium demolisher and it took out my entire train. I did some math after the fact, and 10 artillery firing constantly was only enough to slightly outpace the base health regeneration. I am currently stocking up a 50 gun train and want to try again. But once you take out one of these creatures, their land area is yours permanently. So Vulcanus is a mix of highly militarized, but no ongoing military costs. I love this refreshing take on Factorio combat. Anyway, Vulcanus was quite easy for me to conquer, especially after Fulgora. It is regarded by the players as the easiest planet, and I agree. I got a but demotivated right before I started building the Vulcanus science packs, but I looked at the recipe and it was super simple to throw together. All around a relatively simple planet, but very fun mechanics and it unlocks a lot of powerful technology.
Gleba
Gleba was incredibly frustrating for me. It introduces a spoilage mechanic. You harvest fruits from trees and process them or they turn into an item called spoilage. Items you create, such as Gleba science packs, are pre-spoiled based on the spoilage of their ingredients, and the science packs have less science value based on how spoiled they are. Now that I understand it, it is an interesting mechanic, and I am sure mods will do some fascinating things with it, but I don’t think it’s taught well. Factorio base game teaches you step by step how to craft things, how to automate them, and how to ramp up production into a large factory. It does this by slowly stepping up requirements for science. It is done quite well. Gleba does not do this, or at least it didn’t for me. After spending some time wandering around Gleba, I started to throw together a production chain. Everything I put together would loose seeds until it died, and most of the products were wasted as spoilage. I saw someone describe it perfectly on reddit or the Factorio forums. You can only understand Gleba if you already completed Gleba, and you can only complete Gleba if you already understand it. I was demoralized for a bit because I was stuck on Gleba. To give you a sense of the problem, I usually don’t like creating perimeter walls, especially with flamethrowers. I am not sure why, but all my defenses in previous Factorio runs are extremely minimal, usually just a single line of turrets and walls. While I was on Gleba, my defenses on Nauvis started failing from behemoth biters and spitters. Using the remote build view (which is fantastic now), I built my own relatively complex wall blueprint and rebuilt my entire wall system. And I had a fantastic time doing that. Gleba was so frustrating that it made me enjoy the part of Factorio that I previously didn’t enjoy. That isn’t a great situation for new content to be. I ended up cobbling together some terrible production to build a silo. I imported most of the ingredients because I wanted off Gleba as soon as possible. But I got enough production to have a slow stream of rockets and Gleba science. I am not sure if I would have made it without my rare mech armor and personal roboports, and the 2 core nuclear reactor I imported for power (Once you make rocket fuel and a heating tower, apparently Gleba power is pretty simple, but, again, that means you need to have Gleba solved in order to solve Gleba, or just import everything). I got off planet and updated my labs to support Gleba science (you now have to remove spoilage from your labs and lab belts, which is just so much fun!!!). My defenses were terrible, so the pentapods quickly destroyed my Gleba base. I will not be mourning it. I got a handful of science from it, and that was all I wanted. I will be going back, but only after my infrastructure on other planets is significantly better. I want to set up Fulgora to be able to supply Gleba entirely with rocket parts, Vulcanus to supply artillery shells, and research the Tesla turrets which are apparently quite good against the pentapods. I also might station a space platform over Gleba to collect and refine iron products to send down because it’s simpler to set up an entire space platform than get iron production on Gleba. I think Gleba needs a rework. It is interesting and could be refreshing, but it was not a fun experience to learn it. I didn’t need any outside information for Vulcanus or Fulgora, but I needed to watch a few Gleba tutorials before I understood how to be successful. That should not be required.
All in all, it’s a fantastic expansion. Unless you have a very compelling reason not to, I highly recommend going in the order Nauvis -> Vulcanus -> Fulgora -> Gleba. If you want to switch it up, you can switch Gleba and Fulgora, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Vulcanus should certainly be your first planet, even if you just build a bunch of foundry buildings and do the science later. The foundry revolutionizes all metal creation in a way that is hard to explain. A handful of foundries can replace multiple furnace stacks easily. It makes building all the various iron rods, gears, and steel you need for everything simple and fast. It is by far the most powerful new building in my opinion. Fulgora is a fascinating inversion of typical supply patterns. Gleba seriously needs a rework. But still, I am loving Factorio right now.
Nice write-up! I went into the mod entirely blind and had some fun mistakes.
My first spacecraft launched with only laser turrets and got turned into dust pretty fast killing it and me. My 2nd craft was just fuel tanks, a thruster and a whole bunch of walls on the front. It actually worked and got me to vulcanus but since I thought its chances were slim I didn't bother to pack any supplies and had to start entirely from scratch which turned out to be a fun challenge!
Gleba was painful at first but once I rebuilt it a few times I ended up really happy with how it turned out. Infinite resources without any upkeep is really nice.
I'm still trying to get a ship designed that can make it to the shattered world. I also want to finish fish farming with the quality mods for that "Today's fish is trout a la creme" achievement. On that theme I built my current ship to look as close to the Red Dwarf as I could make it. It looks completely ridiculous but it got me to the edge and back!
From the browsing I have done on reddit, it looks like the lasers on spaceships was a pretty common trap for many people. I happened to see some info about it before I started, so I didn't make that mistake. (For anyone else reading, you have to defend against asteroids in space, and they have like 90% resistance to lasers. It isn't impossible to use lasers on a space platform, but having a robust nuclear setup is pretty much essential. Gun turrets and other late game alternatives are much better.)
Any tips for Gleba? I am thinking when I go back I will travel far from spawn (I assume the farming size patches increase the further you go), find a nice spot with decent farming, and set up an entirely bot base there. I know bots kinda invalidate the logistics challenges, but I just don't think I care to figure out how to make a high throughput base with primarily belts.
I am currently fixing up my Fulgora base, and I want to set up some high volume robot frame production on either Vulcanus or Fulgora, but after that I need to go back to Gleba. I need just a bit more research for things like rocket turrets and the spidertron, and of course the research for Aquilo. I hope I can have more fun the second time around.
After that first disaster I thought lasers were completely useless in space but they aren't. If you look up the asteroid damage resistance for each size of rock they are weak to different weapons. It's just super important to set the targeting on each gun and have it ignore all other targets.
I ended up using a double bus system on Gleba, nutrients go up and spoilage goes down.
At the top is the direct farm goods processing.
Under that is bioflux creation.
then ore generation.
then some misc things like sulfur and rocket fuel and science.
then bioflux->nutrients which sends output running back to the top feeding everything on the way
then at very bottom is spoilage->nutrients to kickstart bioflux and auto restart things if production stalls anywhere.
I also have an overflow on spoilage to feed burners for power along with any extra rocket fuel.
The biggest pain with Gleba is that the enemy scaling can be brutal and walls don't even phase the stompers. Some of the big gun turrets can keep them at bay for awhile but my friend found the easiest solution is to just use bots to surround the whole base with land mines. Resources are unlimited there so replacing them is a lot cheaper than constantly rebuilding belts and turrets.
I'd still like to find a better solution for Fulgora, once you start putting quality modules in the miners and recyclers the logistics gets really crazy.
I've also been playing Space Age since it released, and I found Gleba to be quite enjoyable once I figured out how to start up a nutrient/bioflux feedback loop. The rest of the game encourages making a bunch of resources and stockpiling them for whatever you are building next, so Gleba was a pleasant change of pace for me. The general design philosophy for the planet is that if you harvest/create a resource you either need to use it as soon as possible, or have a plan for dealing with spoilage if you don't need it.
I've written up a description of how I ended up setting up my Gleba base below, focusing mostly on my general design principles of how to keep things from backing up and stopping production. Hopefully you will find the below helpful to you when you set out to attempt your second Gleba base.
My Gleba Design Philosophy (spoilers for a way to solve Gleba production)
I started with a mostly logistics bot layout, and I actually found it was much easier for me when I used belts for things, as you can just add splitters that send all your spoilage to a waste belt that leads to an incinerator. You also get to see everywhere that things are spoiling so it's easier to track down bottlenecks visually than it is to figure out where the 10k of spoilage in your logistic storage came from.
The main change for me on Gleba is that instead of trying to make one giant system that does everything like my Nauvis main base, I instead made a bunch of small specialized production loops that can be duplicated as needed to output a specific product. Fruits go in, seeds and useful items come out, and everything I don't need immediately for that loop gets burned at the end of the line. There will always be more fruit coming in as long as you're processing it and shipping seeds back to the farms, so burning the excess items is totally free and it keeps things from getting backed up. If you find you're running out of fruit, you just go find a new soil patch and plant more trees.
The back end of each of my production loops changes depending on what I'm making, but they all start with the same basic system in the front. I will take tree fruits as an input and use it to make bioflux. I then use the bioflux to make nutrients. I do need to manually feed nutrients into the biolabs to start the loop up, but once it gets going, as long as I'm processing all the fruit that gets picked and sending the seeds back to the tree farms, it will run indefinitely and I'll never run out of nutrients/bioflux again.
Once I have the biolabs producing nutrients from bioflux, I then use that basic setup setup of fruits to bioflux to nutrients to sustain a constantly running loop of nutrients and bioflux that supplies all the machines in the production loop for whatever else I'm producing, be it iron/copper bacteria, science, petroleum products, etc. As long as both fruits keep coming in to make more bioflux, and the line doesn't get backed up, it will run forever. I will add a couple more Mash or Jelly labs depending on what the things I'm building down the line will need, but everything starts with the sustainable fruits to nutrient/bioflux loop.
To keep things from backing up and stopping production, my bioflux/nutrient loop always has a splitter or two that filters out any spoilage and sends it down a waste belt back to an incinerator. If any belt I'm using isn't looping, I just add a filtered output (like a splitter or inserter) at the last belt tile that will remove any spoilage as it collects at the end of the belt and feed it to the waste belt system.
The same is true for machines with anything spoilable in them. If a biolab gets backed up for a bit, the nutrients fueling it turn into spoilage even if nothing else in the machine can spoil, so I make sure every machine has a filtered inserter that will remove spoilage and add it to the waste belt/incinerator system. The spoilage is never high volume, so long inserters can handle offloading spoilage without hurting throughput. As long as waste disposal is handled at every machine and at the end of belt lines (or via splitters in looping belts), things will run forever.
One potential non-spoilage blockage that got me was seeds. If you're belting seeds back to your tree farms, you'll eventually end up filling up the seed belt since you get more seeds back than you need, so it's a good idea to check if the belt is backed up and burn the excess seeds before they reach your production loops. If the seed output on a biolab is full, that can halt your bioflux production and stop processing fruit.
Neat! Ive been moving really slowly, I just landed on fulgora after redoing my vulcanus factory and setting up calcite imports so I can use foundries in nauvis smelting. Im still trying to figure out a robust way to do scrap recycling, and I have a few ideas, though I think they are all inherrently throughput limited...
Yeah it's tough, my friend setup a pure logistic bot system but it got super hard to track and stuff kept backing up. I plotted out a massive train network and it's working but there are a lot of choke points on production. It's a really cool puzzle though, and at least your only enemy there is yourself. :)
Some of my tips for Fulgora. May be spoilery.
I read some tips on the Factorio wiki that simplified my Fulgora setup a lot. First important thing to know is that scrap is basically free. Anything you get from scrap can be thrown away without it being a problem. You will never balance your consumption of the different scrap products, so don't even try. Just throw out the excess. It may feel weird dumping a bunch of high level items like low density structures or blue circuits, but that is fine to do on Fulgora. You will always need more holmium ore, so you will almost always have a surplus of the other products.
There are a few scrap products that are only used for a single recipe. Instead of storing these, you can simplify your setup by processing them immediately and dumping the excess. First, ice is only used for making water. So just pipe all ice to your ice melters and recycle the excess (priority splitters make this very simple to do). Second, solid fuel is used only to burn or to make rocket fuel. And rocket fuel can be burned as well. So make all the solid fuel into rocket fuel and dump the extra (solid fuel is currently my second biggest excess on Fulgora). Last, holmium ore is only used to make holmium solution (not plates, the solution itself is used for a few items). So you can process all the ore into solution immediately. And if you ever have a surplus of holmium ore, I will be jealous.
I started playing when Space Age dropped. Just had my mind blown last night when I realized logistical robots are just a representation of dependency injection. I fully expect to sink far too many hours into this.
I have been playing Proverbs for the past few days. It's a simple little puzzler game (basically minesweeper) but it is really scratching an itch I had for a kind of zen state easy puzzle.
I've been skipping the New York Times puzzles over the last few days since the team has been on strike. I've replaced them with the Guild Puzzles and they're... fine. It's nice to have something to fulfill my morning routine but they are strictly speaking, not as great as the NYT versions.
I was trying Fallout 4 with a bug fixing and improvement modlist that is supposed to improve the game without altering it too much. This game is not good for role-playing.
spoilers
Am I supposed to believe that my character will go around the world at his leisure making friends, collecting caps and crafting nails or whatever right after he saw his son kidnapped and his wife killed with a shot to the head?
I started playing Fallout New Vegas with a similar bug fixing modlist. It's a fine game and way more RP-centric. Although I still think it's silly that my character can hold 800 thousand items in his pocket :P
Yeah Fallout 4 was the first Fallout game that was more action shooter and crafter than a true RPG. It received a lot of negative sentiment upon release. Also, aside from your legitimate complaint, I also hate how meaningless conversations became in it. The options were basically all Yes, sarcastic yes, indifferent and no, which is still basically yes. Also the prompts were all so short you would often select something only for your character to say something different.
Truth, but you can fix this to an extent if you play hardcore mode. Ammo has weight and you need food and water if you really want that realism.
I may try going the Hardcore route. I'm playing in "Very Hard" mode and I like it because it makes me do things in a more RP way. There's things I actually can't do at my power level and this forces me to take another route, while on easy I would probably just kill anyone that is in my way.
I'm olaying Morrowind on Steam Deck. Actually I use OpenMW to play Morrowind, which is open source engine for the game that enables some new features, has some bugfixes and runs natively in Linux.
I own the game for almost two decades playing it on and off the whole time. I have finished the main quest only once and only by actually forcing myself to do so. I have explored a lot of the game in my playthroughs but never actually played heavily into it.
I do his right now. I'm around 60-70 hoursin having completed some quests here and there and advancing main quest to say the second half. From my previous knowledge of the game I have kinda just scratched the surface in those 70 hours.
It was unbelievable game in the time it came out and even a few years after that. It's sad that people nowadays don't realize what a game it was - the 3D looked good back then, the whole Vvardenfell fit on one CD and it's HUGE. You had so many options, so many quests, so many ways to play. It was kinda revolutionary for its time.
And it still has all those qualities. I love reading up on all the quests I have, looking for all the places that are mentioned (which is actually hard in many instances) and overally enjoy playing the game. Especialy when I know a thing or two about themechanics and how to use it to my advantage (without actually misusing it to make myself invincible).
I don't think that people that didn't play it back in the day are able to play and like the game today. It's simplyy too old, too hard, too cumbersome for modern player. It's a shame it won't live on like its successors do. But I will always know how good the game is and I will still remember it fondly.
Anything I need to know for getting OpenMW running on the Steam Deck? I have a compulsion to play games in order so I haven't touched Oblivion or Skyrim and am still impressed by early 3D graphics.
I use Luxtorpeda. Since I have installed it two years ago, I can't really say how it was done. It was pretty easy though.
Luxtorpeda installs OpenMW by itself if I remember correctly and then you just go to Morrowind's Steam properties, into Compatibility section and pick Luxtorpeda. This will make Morrowind in your Steam actually launch OpenMW.
Let me know if you made it or what the problen is, I may be able to help.
The default controller scheme is quite good, I have just added quick save/load (F5 and F9 keys or whatever it is) to L5 and R5 buttons.
I run at native Steam Deck resolution and bumped up view distance quite a bit and also use shadows and it can still do like 3 hours on my two years old and heavily used (like 1000 hours on battery) Steam Deck. Have a look.
Just got done playing The Invincible and man was it great. I'm a huge fan of story games. Games that play like an interactive movie where you aren't necessarily required to tackle a ton of combat or otherwise, but just immerse yourself in the story.
The Invincible is a story based on Stanislaw Lem's book of the same name, and has this amazing mid-century Soviet aesthetic. But more than that, the way it's done with the unreliable narrator that is you and completely immersive music, just made me love this game.
Story games tend not to have the best replay value as all the details have been revealed by then, but I'm seriously considering playing again. Even though I know the story and the turns, Starward Industries did a great job in providing choices that I'm sure moved the story in different ways. It's not like everything would end up completely different, but the choices had weight and I want to see where the branches take me.
Agreed, great game I did play a while ago!
From what I understood, there are in total 11 endings to the game. Some of them quite different from each other. So if you do opt for a replay, making different choices might yield interesting results.
Sounds like you enjoyed it more than I did although I don't disagree regarding the strengths of it (aesthetic).
This week I got into a nice pattern of alternating games once I finish a "segment" of gameplay. This is nice because the games I'm playing are all AAA and each "segment" is in more or less hour long chunks.
Death Stranding Director's Cut Installed from PS+ on a whim. I remember some of the hate when this game first came out but it has its hook into me. Because it's Kojima it's ripe for analysis and interpretation. But really... it's just the vibe of walking through beautiful environment with some nice music. It's what I really spent my time doing in Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, Skyrim, and Vanilla WoW. I can definitely understand why people bounced off it originally and then rediscovered it during Covid. Like Elden Ring it is a game that emphasizes solitude and celebrates what little connection can be found.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard The story and characters are all fine. What keeps drawing me back in is the combat. Which isn't to say the combat is good. There's a weightiness to the light and heavy attacks that feel like commitments. As a rogue I can't block (can any class?), I can only parry and the parry timing is weird and enemies do these huge wind up attacks that fucks with my timing. I've heard some reviewers mention that they liked the combat for a while then it didn't evolve much. I think that'd be okay... it's working for me right now.
BLOPSIX I jumped into multiplayer and yeah, it's Call of Duty. I do prefer this type of shooter to some of the ultra-low TTK games that are out there now. The omni-directional movement is neat and I'm sure the kids will handily wreck me with this new tech. The campaign is also pretty fun. I like how each missions is a take on a different genre. The latest mission I played was quite creepy.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth I bought this at a steep discount several week ago and installed it last night. Played the first hour or so getting Ichiban ready for this date. Hoping to get a bit more time in before the end of the year. I've heard this game held up as "RPG of the Year."
I’m playing a warrior in DA:tV and I think I can block with the shield loadout…but I’ve only used the two-handed maul loadout so far. I’m going for maximizing staggering enemies and then using the “Takedown” attack.
I don’t think I have blocked or parried a single attack, just “dodged” or facetanked them.
I do a lot of dodging but I have at least one pretty strong skill that procs off "perfect guard." But I'm taking a lot of damage to try and learn the timing. The game is generous enough with healing that I'm making it through without much trouble. There are some encounter I put it all together and wreck face, but we'll see how long I continue with this build direction.
I just ran through Hypnospace Outlaw and cannot be more pleased with it. The intricacies they wove into the game really capture what the late 90s/early 00s felt like to be online as a youth. I'd advise anybody interested to be careful not to get frustrated and look up answers. The fun is existing in the space, not bussing straight through to the ending. I can't wait to run through again to find all of the little easter eggs.
@kaffo
I am still playing Drova - Forsaken Kin. Steam tells me I have 9-hours in it, but my save file says 7, so take that for what you will. I am still primarily playing on Deck, though I have also played on my other PC's, but with a controller and so far, I haven't found the combat too difficult. Challenging for sure, but I haven't felt like I've had any issues with it per your post last week.
I've almost made it to Nemeton(?), having hit the crossroads that I assume are right before the city and ended-up following a cat into the wilds, getting distracted. Finally picked-up some Leather armor from the Remnants camp and been experimenting with a few different weapons, so far, I'm thinking I like Spear + Shield the best,. but I've been wary of investing my learning points into any one melee skill tree yet, as I feel like I'm still finding new weapons to experiment with.
I am very much enjoying it. I didn't think I'd like it as much as I do, as generally I'm not too in to isometric style exploration games, but it's just damn fun and the quests so far have been pretty fun and interesting. The world being so hostile towards the player is a nice change of pace, though given that I've played all the Gothic games, as well as some of the Risen and Elex series, things do feel somewhat predictable. I know when I'm going to be shook down for coin or tricked into following someone and beaten up for it, so I've generally been avoiding those situations, as I know I'm not quite capable enough yet to defend myself.
At any rate, I'm very much enjoying myself and it's been the primary thing I've been playing this week, time allowing. I generally only have about an hour a day, so I'm making slow progress, but I am enjoying myself.
When I don't feel like I have time to sit down and play a session, I am also still playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike, which feels surprisingly easy so far. I think I'm on mission 14 or so and I've mostly S-ranked all the missions, which is pretty unusual, as I'm not that smart or skillful as it comes to strategy games, so I'm thinking this one must be easier than 1 + 2. Still having a great time of it, though I need to figure out if I can setup Rewind on Drastic on Android, as that's something I made fairly liberal use of playing the other games, as I often make mistakes due to not fully analyzing my situation.
Did you leave the game running when you alt+tabbed?
Playing on Deck, so I can't necessarily do that easily, but no. I'm slightly neurotic about my playtime, so I generally shut things down or suspend if I think I'll be taking a break for any extended period of time. Not sure how I gained two-hours, but oh well. I'll just assume the game itself is more accurate.
Awesome!
So glad to hear you're still having fun! Be interested to see if you're a Nemeton or Remnants guy in the end. I went Nemeton as I decided from the get go my character would be a dumb axe wielding loyalist who wanted to make Drova great again, so it worked.
Check out my post also on this thread for my final thoughts on Drova after I finished it.
I finally finished Drova: Forsaken Kin and boy it was good.
I have complaints for sure. By completing it it becomes clear how little choice you really have in the grand scheme of things. I had a look at it seems this is the main criticism of the game and I can totally understand why it would turn people off.
I think I was lucky because I had decided to go in hard has a Nemeton fan boy no matter the cost, and it worked for the story even though there's decisions I would have 100 percent not made as a player.
There's replayiblty by playing the other faction and seeing their side of the story, but I don't think the content is much different.
All that said, the combat, the exploration, the quests, the characters, the progression and some of the final fights were all epic. I had a great time. I got a load of achievements and one day I might go back to tick off the rest.
I did have a lull for a few hours like 35 hours in when I was just one hitting everything and it wasn't very fun, then I continued the story a little and the game was like "oh you want some harder enemies yeah?". Some fights really made me think and use both my whole ability set and my consumables, very good boss fights!
Big recommend again, get on it. Just give the main story a bit of leeway because it gets a bit rough in the middle but its worth powering through.
I picked up Dragon Age: The Veilguard and have about 15 hours in it so far. I think I’m still in the first main “act” - I just added the last companion to my party.
I know it got lots of right-wing backlash for being “woke” and then also lots of backlash from fans of the franchise for its art style and dialogue and everything else…but I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. (It is the first Dragon Age game I have played). The art style is maybe a little cartoony, but I actually like it for the game.
Companion gender identity spoilers
One of the companions is exploring their gender identity, it looks to be like it will happen over a couple event conversations of which I’ve only had the first. The conversation is a little basic, but overall I think it is decently thought out. And I’m interested to see how it resolves.
Sure, there’s some repetitive dialogue, but as the game has progressed it’s been less repetitive (so probably just slightly too-long “tutorial-style” dialogue). But not enough to turn me off of the game.
The companions banter has been fun. The lack of “open world” doesn’t bother me, because the levels are interesting enough and you revisit them at your leisure.
The combat is maybe a bit of a slog at times, but I’m still having fun with it. It’s not MMO-complexity, reminds me a bit of Genshin Impacts combat system, which I liked. I like that your companions don’t take damage and so you don’t have to worry about their positioning or micromanage their health and can focus on your own health instead.
One of the companions mentions how they hate boring puzzles that just seem thrown in like an afterthought, which is kinda funny meta-commentary on some of the puzzles in the game, which I can respect. The “puzzles” in the game have been fine IMO, though I did have to look up a guide for one of them so far.
Overall, I’m having a good time with it and am looking forward to playing more of it, to see how the overall story and the companion stories resolve.
Recently had quite a bit of free time, as well as the urge to play Skyrim, so I did so. Both with mods (nothing too crazy, just basic stuff to improve the looks and usability), and then without mods to try and get some missing achievements.
And I realized something about the game that I've always felt but never really put into words despite playing the game literally for 13 years (came out 11/11/11). The quest design kinda sucks without fast-travel. I love Elder Scrolls, Oblivion especially is one of my favorite games ever, even Skyrim I really love, but goddamn is there so much bullshit in between the quests that make them just not fun unless you fast travel all over the place.
I'm not even talking about those typical bs quests like companion missions or fetch quests, I'm talking about the ones that are actually interesting like the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild quests.
The Dark Brotherhood ones for example: a simple quest basically goes "we got a contact who performed the black sacrament, go meet with them to find out more about the target". Then you go halfway across the map to meet with the person, only to find out where the target is and why they want them dead, then you go to that new location to take out the target, then you report back to the person that gave you the quest, then you report back to the Dark Brotherhood base. That's at least 4 massive trips between 3 locations for a single mission.
I tried doing it in survival mode and without fast traveling and it was just insane how much time I was spending doing things not related to what I set out to do (walking, inventory management, hunger/sleep/fatigue management, walking some more, and oh yeah did I mention walking). And each new location I discovered along the way led to more of that and less of my goal of finishing the Dark Brotherhood questline.
So I turned off survival mode (so I could enjoy the actual gameplay a bit more), and instead started fast traveling everywhere I needed to go. And fuck me I was fast traveling every five minutes to get to some place just to talk to someone and then fast travel back and rinse and repeat. It felt especially bad when you go from point A to point B only to be immediately told that actually you should speak to this person at point A again. So you fast travel back to the exact same place you just came from, not because you forgot something or anything like that, but because that's just how the quest is designed.
Not sure what the solution is. And the game has sold a bazillion copies at this point, so what do I know. I still love the game, especially for nostalgia reasons, but it never dawned on me just how tedious the game could be when you're trying to focus on one specific storyline rather than just aimlessly running around the world doing whatever floats your boat, which in my opinion is where the game really shines: just fucking about with no real end goal. Maybe that's why I've never fully beaten the main story line despite having played it countless times in these last 13 years.
Also, side note but the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion was 10x better than the one in Skyrim. Some of the most memorable quests in the whole series.
I played Skyrim back in the days on PS3 and I'm thekind of guy who doesn't fast travel. I walk everywhere. I picked my future wife in Markarth (if I remember correctly) and the wedding was to be in Riften, that is quite some journey to just go there and ask her... Well, I'm used to do his lind of stuff from other games where I walk everywhere (especially from Morrowind and also Oblivion).
The solution would likely be to take every quest available and combine them so you don't go across the map for just one of them. In my eyes fast travel ruins the game(s) but if you haeto go for no apparent reason for many minutes juat to get on with meaningless quest, it may be even worse.
This is what many Bethesda games have in common, includng my beloved Morrowind that lacks fast travel on top of that (there are some limited means of travel though). There is no single pointer that made.me turn my back to Bethesda, but such little things add up and you become fed up with it.
Yup, 100%. And usually I do, so that way there’s always something to do between point A and point B so you don’t actually realize how far you’re going and how long it’s taking. But when you’re invested in one specific plot line or quest and just want to finish that, it’s a bit annoying. You either have to sidetrack your main goal dozens of times along your route to keep the game feeling engaging, or you put up with the monotony of walking halfway across the map.
And that is the problem for me. The gameworld is kinda uneventful, not really interesting and I don't want to run around empty world for no apparent reason. But I don't also want to teleport from one place to another because where is any immersiveness in that?
I had to do that in Oblivion too, just as I had to in Witcher 3. But the worlds in those games seemed to me more alive, more full of anything, really.
I guess it's also why people make and use so much mods with Skyrim...?
My favorite way to play Skyrim is normal mode with no fast travel. At one point I had a mod that disabled it (it could be toggled on/off in a mod menu), which let me have sessions where I got to run around and have fun in the world, or if something was super tedious just bop around.
That was especially when I just fast travelled around because once you've hit an area it's basically done for three days. I played the hell out of everything Bethesda did between Morrowind and Skyrim for a few years but it did eventually wear on me.
I really do recommend railroading the main quest in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games at least once, they're pretty good.
Most of my gaming time lately has been taken up by Warframe. I played it briefly many years ago, but never got hooked into it. About a month ago a friend of mine was talking about the upcoming Warframe 1999 update, which sounded hilarious and absurd, so I decided to try picking the game back up, and have since fell in love with it. Combat is fun and interesting, all the different Warframes have unique play styles while being anchored to the same broad strokes, and the story is engaging (well, once you get to The Second Dream).
So far I've gotten through all the main quests and the star chart, and mostly have been trying to gear up to be able to handle Steel Path. I'm at MR14 (account level, scales exponentially), hoping to hit MR16 sometime soon when I feel like leveling a bunch more gear, at which point account level stops mattering except for clout.
The community is extremely nice and helpful, I suspect in no small part because the game is PvE only. The F2P mechanics are all reasonable and the drop tables are openly documented, so you know what you're getting into. After playing a lot of Helldivers 2 and now Warframe, live service games are really fun when they're not predatory skinnerboxes.
Outside of WF, I picked up the Factorio: Space Age expansion, but have resisted the urge to let it consume me (WF's already got me there). I'm maybe ten hours in and have only just unlocked bots on my playthrough, so I haven't seen much of the new content yet. From what I have seen, the fluid handling changes are extremely welcome, and I'm just starting to get to experiment with the quality mechanic.
I was playing and quite enjoying Dredge, got through most of the base game. I really like the fishing system, though the dredging minigame keeps messing me up more than it should. I enjoyed my time with it and would like to go back and work the rest of the way through it and its DLCs, which I picked up on sale but have yet to play.
I also picked up Tactical Breach Wizards and have been playing it here and there during downtime, and it's great. It's a turn based strategy game (ala XCOM), with a demo that went viral during Steam Next Fest that convinced me to buy it. Gameplay is fun but (so far) not overly challenging, the mechanics are interesting, and the writing is the right mix of serious and humor without getting too meta.
I'm still playing nothing but Black Ops 6, that game thoroughly has its hooks in me and season 1 is coming this week. At least it's been a good distraction from the uh... situation... in the US.
I do have a bit of a list of things I want to play soon. The E3 2003 demo for Halo 2 released as a mod for the master chief collection on steam and I'm excited to try out this piece of gaming history: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3360515088
Additionally, I still have yet to start UFO 50 after buying it just before Black Ops 6 came out, oops! I still haven't picked up Star Wars Outlaws (waiting for deep sale), Space Marine 2 (kinda want to wait for a sale but also kinda want to play while the multiplayer is still populous), Dragon Age is on my radar, but reviews have been so divisive about it that I'm still trying to decide if I think I would like it, and then Flight Sim 2024 and Stalker 2 are both coming out very soon.
I'm currently working my way through the recent expansions for The Talos Principle 2 and loving all the extra puzzle-driven dopamine hits they deliver. In contrast to The Road to Gehenna from the first game which was a massive expansion building upon the main story, this time around it has been broken up into three different scenarios of varying difficulty, e.g., one is standalone and focused on pushing the laser puzzles to the limit, while another is more varied and serves as an epilogue to the main story. Well worth the cost of admission for any who have enjoyed the previous releases.
I have been hopelessly addicted to Valves Deadlock after getting an early access invite from a friend. Generally, I have never been very interested in MOBA's but I cannot stop playing this game.
At first, I was pretty bad, but everyone claimed that after about 50-ish hours, you start to understand how to not be constantly behind on souls and kills, and have found this to be very true. After playing for a few weeks, I can now be in the top 3 in every game consistently. Even though its still in development, it feels super balanced, compared to other competitive type multiplayer games. I'm usually atrocious at multiplayer games, especially shooters, but this game has a huge emphasis on strategic play and developing good character builds, and really only 10% of the gameplay revolves around good aim, and almost doesn't matter for a lot of characters.
Not sure what it is about the game that draws me in so much, but man is it good.
I played Ebenezer and the Invisible World.
This is one of those games that I only end up playing on account of how I select games - which is usually well in advance, from listings or trailers, gifts from others or recommendations, but otherwise going in completely blind. This method sometimes will yield a game that's not exactly bad, but aggressively mediocre. I'm not complaining, it's my fault, just an inevitability!
It's christmas in Industrial Revolution England and a reformed Ebenezer Scrooge is presumably looking forward to it. But! He's visited by a ghost that ropes him into a quest to defeat another miserly industrialist who's working to... I'm not sure, actually, the writting is bad and the progression confusing even by typical indie metroidvania standards (possibly translated from brazilian portuguese?) but I assumed from context that ultimately the bad guy wants to make all industrial workers redundant by replacing them with corrupted ghosts?
Ebenezer's London is aggressively postcard, with fluffy snow, warmly lit windows and wreathes all over the place. It's teeming with a wide variety of ghosts, all of which are very tanky, and the character's movement is surprisingly slow and floaty for this kind of game (I guess it's on the Castlevania end of the spectrum?) There is a limited, non expanding amount of equipables, and I found it necessary to have in one of them at all times an item to make the character move a little faster just to make the gameplay a little less annoying. It's impossible not to take hits sometimes, and enemies hit hard; the floaty movement makes it particularly hard to dodge in boss fights. Gameplay is thus mainly about grinding your way from save point to save point (those heal but also respawn all the enemies) and accumulate money (dead ghosts are apparently all carrying money?) to use in the game's only shop to buy dozens of roast turkeys that you can also use to heal.
There are friendly ghosts spread throughout the game world, and if you perform a quest for them they will join you. Each ghost provides Ebenezer with a new movement option and/or a special attack. Their quests are tacky and confusing (two of them ask you each to defeat a distinct enemy in a distinct location, both enemies having the exact same name, and they never tell you where to go). Half of the ghosts are just plain useless. The ghosts of christmas past, present and future will also cameo and each gift you with a little flying ghost child to help you, one of which shoots arrows at enemies and the other two of which are completely useless, which is OK since you can only use one at a time anyway. Finally, there's a selection of various canes to collect that you can hit enemies with, or a long chain that's vastly superior to all of the canes since it can be used to attack enemies from outside their range.
I encountered several bugs and issues while playing. Some quests were impossible to complete or collectibles impossible to find as enemies or other triggers were just plain missing (some of these issues were experienced by others as per the steam forums). The indicators that showed whether there were still things to do in a room kept turning themselves randomly back off and on, further confusing things. The game really loses steam toward the end, becoming more soulless and repetitive; it felt as if the developers themselves couldn't wait to finish it. There's a full, cohesive, playable game here, with a cohesive aesthetic and some fun to be had, and you can definitely finish it - as I did - but I wouldn't call it a good experience.
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Am most of the way through The Rewinder on gamepass and am enjoying it! I like interesting spins on puzzle games and the history-altering changes you make are neat.
It's a little on the easy side so far (the problem space isn't big enough to make it tricky at all), but there have been some interesting puzzles. The Chinese mythology doesn't do a ton for me (since I'm not familiar with those stories) but the village is a nice setting.
Separately, been really enjoying Citizen Sleeper. Its an RPG with a lot of tabletop influence (your actions each day are decided by which (and how many) dice you have available). The cyberpunk story is a little good and they did a great job showing what actions are available and if there's any time limits on them.
I think it'll be one of those games that feels very cool to play but I'll look back and realize there weren't as many branching paths / outcomes as the game makes it seem. That's not terrible (the game is still fun to play) but I wonder how it'll feel when the curtain is drawn back.
Oh, and I finished the platinum for Astro's Playroom to prepare for the sequel! That game is very cute and fun.
4xish Zephon.
Made by the team who made 40k Gladius, which I barely played. LOVE most of it. It's got some maybe questionable things regarding the tech tree/uniqueness, but the setting is glorious and the combat feels tactical unlike a lot of 4x games where combat winds up being an afterthought because you're economically crushing them.
There are two neutral factions in every game that are a big part of the gameplay and lore (alien faction and rogue AI) and it keeps things interesting even in a 1v1.
Factorio: Space Age TRAINS! I'VE NEVER BEEN THIS FAR! Sorry for the caps, I'm having a ton of fun. I have a transit factory, a train mall, am working on a red belt mall, and am really feeling the progress, except for the current bottleneck at automating oil pumps, which is postponed while I refactor some stuff.
Vampire Survivors: I'm working my way through all the content and using Sammy the Caterpillar from the Tales of the Foscari DLC to get my gold up for fun. Not much to say here, but I'm generally enjoying myself in 15-minute sessions.
Borderlands 3 - Thanks to Steam family sharing I borrowed the game from my friends. iirc the game has negative reviews at launch, but playing it I feel like it's more of the same like Borderlands 2. Unfortunately we play coop and my friend are quite busy so we haven't progressed much.
Serious Sam 4 - Yet another "let's buy this game and coop" except we don't have time to coop, so I solo-ed a few maps. I think the game feel is kinda similar to the original SS, but the monster density is lower. Instead, they added newer monster designs that are annoying to kills (one is invuln from the front, one constantly teleport). The art style is weird since SS3 that the game try to be realistic, but it feel too static. The enemies doesn't stand out from the background much.
Diablo IV - I don't have any incentive to play this game any more, except perhaps weekly citadel runs. Spritborn is bugged which make it so OP. Why play other classes when you would never be as good as Spiritborn. And this is not about pushing content - people playing Sorcerer are struggling to do The Pit 100, while I comfortably grind out my Spiritborn glyphs to 47 in Pit 100.
Brighter Shores - New game from the original creators of RuneScape. So far it's looking good with several experimental game designs, although I wonder how this kind of fun would last:
There are very few quests right now, unlike RS where there's a quest path to follow that minimize manual leveling up to the mid game. BS F2P currently has two quest chains of introductory level, then it skip to presumably mid game. There's a quest that everyone grind for though - like Fairy Tale Part II that gives fairy ring. This time it unlock additional banking spots that otherwise there's only one bank per type in the entire game.
I have been playing Metaphor ReFantazio recently. At first I was a bit skeptical tbh. It seemed like Atlus was going to make something more cliche and... It kinda is but in a good way? It's like an adult version of a JRPG, with elements of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei.