26
votes
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've been playing Bannerlord. Honestly, it is exactly what i wanted. It's just a better looking, better AI, better UI, potentially deeper, version of Warband. It's definitely early access, there is a fair amount of stuff missing everything from dialogue to couching lances and the economy is broken and there are balance issues but after the first few hotfixes it's playable and enjoyable if you accept a bit of jankiness. I was a bit surprised with how much negativity i saw about the game but i guess it was inevitable from a game that was so intensely hyped.
As a Mongol/Nomad fanboy playing the steppe faction it is immensely satisfy to order your horse archers to attack and they attack en-masse while circling the main body of enemy infantry. Just pouring arrows into the poor bastards, it is fantastic. I can't wait until lance couching is added so i go finish them off with a heavy cavalry charge.
Highly recommend if you liked Warband and dont mind early access.
The only gripe I have with bannerlord so far is how insanely, ridiculously slow it is to level up your character and regen smithing stamina... but both those were easily fixed with the Bannerlord Tweaks mod. And other than that, it's been amazing and I can't stop playing.
100% agree about Khanate, too. Their heavy horse archers and the AI for them is amazing. They are absolutely unstoppable on open ground, and it's soooo satisfying to watch them raining death on the enemy army while barely taking any damage in return. Combine them with some Empire Legionaries for tanking damage during close quarters battles, and you can wreck face in almost any situation, even sieges.
Yeah, I'm wrecking face with 4/8 empire foot, 2/8 foot archers, 1/8 cav, 1/8 cav archers. By the time the foot and archers arrive, the cav have just wrecked any semblance of a proper enemy line and the Legionnaires mop up.
I'm not much of a regular melee cavalry fan since they tend to get de-horsed and die way too often due to horse charges being remarkably underwhelming again infantry right now, and horse armor being completely useless against arrows/bolts. So I have more of an even 33% split between Khuzait Heavy Horse Archers, Imperial Legionaries and Sergeant Crossbowman, with a smattering of Minor Faction unique troops thrown in the mix as well (e.g. Puppeteers, Arboreals, Chosen Wolves) that I captured/recruited while fighting them all.
Edit: Though now that I finally managed to unlock the Disciplinarian perk, I am going to slowly start working on replacing some of my base troops with the various Major Faction unique troops using captured bandits (e.g. Forest Bandit -> Battanian Fian Champion, Steppe Bandit -> Khuzait Khan's Guard, etc).
Oh, you like the crossbowman? I was going off of old Warband knowledge where I remembered them as being underwhelming as opposed to archers. Are they serving well?
Eh, even in Warband it was situational, and crossbowmen generally fared far better than bowmen during siege attack/defense and vs cavalry. I haven't done extensive testing yet in Bannerlord, but so far the same seems to hold true. However, I have yet to amass a significant amount of Fian Champions yet though, who I have heard speculation on reddit and the forums are by far the best ranged unit in the game, no matter the circumstances. So I will let you know how they fare once I manage to properly test them out.
Cool, thanks. That's what I get for working off of half-remembered years old knowledge. :) I look forward to your findings.
Just from my initial testing, it does indeed look like the Fian Champs are better than the Sergeants in terms of damage output. They even do some work with their 2Hs in close when they need to too. However, they also die a fair bit more often than the crossbowmen though, and since they are kinda hard to get ahold of and train (even using forest bandits + disciplinarian), I unfortunately don't think you can really utilize them to their full potential in the campaign mode.
Ditto for the Triarii vs Legionaries. Triarii are superior in every way, and even die a lot less due to better armor and higher level melee skills, but getting enough of them to make a difference is even more difficult than the Fian since AFAIK the only way to get them is by defeating "Legion of the Betrayed" armies and then recruiting the ones you imprison.
Lance couching definitely is already in the game. Once you're moving at a good clip there'll be an icon on the right edge of the screen. If you see it, hit X to toggle lance couching.
Humans can couch but the AI cant yet, so when leading a cavalry charge its a bit underwhelming as most/all your cav is doing 50 spear/sword damage instead of the 100+ lance couched damage.
Ah, that's depressing. Early access indeed.
So far Bannerlord is fun, but I put it to the side to allow for a few more weeks of patching before I really sink my teeth into it. I do appreciate the near daily patches they have been putting out.
I finished Borderlands 3, and I'm about 2/3 of the way through a second playthrough on True Vault Hunter mode. I thought the game was a bit of a mixed bag.
Most of the mechanical aspects were decent, I've enjoyed the hell out of all the Vault Hunters, which hasn't been the case in past games, and the movement and gunplay are just really smooth and well done. Cooperation mode is also a nice feature for keeping parties together without holding anyone back. But the game has a serious issue with what I like to call loot tier compression. Basically, even before the temporary drop rate boost that started last week, legendary drop rates were so ludicrously high that it's really not even worth looking at gear that isn't legendary, even in the first playthrough. So the first four tiers of guns are essentially vendor trash, and your normal spread of loot is contained entirely within the top tier. Kind of hate how much it devalues legendaries. It's also incredibly irritating and repetitive how literally every boss has a threshold-based damage immunity mechanic to artificially drag out the fights.
On the non-mechanical side of things, the writing was hit or miss, but more miss than hit, and the hits were mostly optional sidequests. Seriously, I know this isn't exactly an original or uncommon opinion, but the main story was a C+ rough draft that was never revised or expanded, and half the game felt like a parody of itself. And somehow, even though it took place on half a dozen planets, the game world felt way smaller and shallower than Borderlands 2. Apparently the maps themselves are bigger, but that's mostly empty space to drive around in; discounting kill quests (which are not really quests, there's no dialogue, no steps or procedure, no special zone, just a marker placed on a world boss to kill), Borderlands 3 has fewer than half the side quests of Borderlands 2.
Overall I'd give the game a resounding meh. Mediocre overall, with occasional good points that highlight wasted potential more than they're enjoyed in their own right. Lot of padding to cover up lack of content. Still fun enough with friends if you enjoy the franchise, and I don't regret buying it, but I definitely wouldn't recommend paying full or even half price for it.
I never really liked Borderlands. The lore and characters felt like some generic wasteland parody, I never laughed at a single joke. I don't like how the shooting feels. I don't like the pacing and the stats did not make sense.
Then I played Borderlands 2 with my friends, the dialogue muted and giving zero fucks about anything (except guns and skills). And I realized it's a pretty fun game. Tried single player again: still sucks.
TIL Borderlands has a singleplayer mode. ;)
In all seriousness though, unlike yourself I actually do like the setting, find the writing funny, enjoy the gameplay, and so would probably still find it enjoyable even as a single player experience... but it's so much better playing with friends that I just don't see the point in playing them solo.
However, the one thing I will say as a negative is that I really don't find the "endgame" enjoyable at all though. Grinding the same missions/bosses over and over again hoping for random gun drops with more favorable stats for your build is not my idea of fun... so I tend to bow out after I have played every class to max level and only come back to play again when new DLC is released.
I wonder if having been exposed to 80s Mad Max, 90s Fallout and a whole bunch of dystopian narratives in multiple media contributed for me to regard Borderlands lore and characters as extremely derivative, uninspired and unfunny.
Are you a young person by any chance?
In Portuguese derivative (“derivativo”) is used for works that are excessively referential or that are failed attempts at parody.
And to be frank, I cannot think of a single video game that I find actually funny, with the possible exception of some SNES RPGs (which were more amusing than funny anyway). Games usually fail hard when it comes to comedy and storytelling as a whole. If you removed the button-pushing no one would watch it.
So you don't find Portal 2 or Stanley Parable funny?
As evidenced by the rise of streaming, that is not the case.
The main reasons people watch game streaming are a desire for companionship, community, commentary, or an interest in the sport, strategies, walkthroughs, achievements, etc.
Regardless, a large audience does not necessarily imply quality.
I do not find Portal 2 or Stanley Parable particularly funny - amusing at best. There's nothing wrong with being amusing, though.
I do enjoy videogames, but I strongly believe videogame narratives have a lot to achieve before getting to the same level as other media. Fans and journalists are usually more forgiving with videogame stories, and I'm not sure if that's good for the evolution of the medium.
There are also longplays without commentary at all
Well.. yeah?
Sure, I was just commenting on the statement that "no one would watch it".
I didn't burst with laughter either (I think, don't really remember), but that's because they were not really trying to do that. Just as Borderlands doesn't: it's just a humorous setting, not an out right comedy game. So what I'm asking is did it give you a chuckle or did you think that the jokes were witty?
I don't usually play comedy games, so I can't really give an example there, but I definitely did laugh out loud at some of the jokes in non-comedy games. If only my memory wasn't so terrible...
UPD: ah! I did laugh at Tales from Borderlands (which is quite different in writing from mainline Borderlands). Jazzpunk also surprised be and got a few laughs out of me. Undertale, too.
To each their own. I thought that on the whole, 1 and 2 were very well written, and actually quite original takes on the genre. Even if they were steeped in a lot of the classic tropes, they're a riff on wasteland games more than an uninspired example, and borderlands 2 had one of the best 'civilization comes to the wastes' stories since fallout 2.
That said, if you didn't care for them for those reasons, you'd actually probably love 3. Excise the story and the humor and it's got some very solid improvements on 1 and 2 in the areas you mentioned.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, the fallout comparison is a pretty good analogy for the writing and setting: it's the difference between classic, black isle or obsidian fallout, and bethesda fallout. Classic fallout (1, 2, NV) had a silly, zany, and satirical style that it used to show the player a surprisingly deep and well written game world. Bethesda fallout, well, let's just say they focused on the first part, and fell pretty flat there too.
Yet again, Stellaris. I mentioned it last week, and it's still the main videogame I've been playing, and hooked me in a way that I'm reading and watching things about the game in addition to playing it.
I'll focus this time on the diversity of playstyles. There are a bunch of choices to make in creating your empire, and that leads to a ton of different objectives. You can be a warrior clan bent on subjugating all other sentient life, you can be robot servents that went a little haywire and want to abduct people for MANDATORY PAMPERING, or you can be... nice. I've played a lot of CK2, but you always kind of have to play a feudal lord or some other elite who inherently has to be kind of a monster, to one extent or another. With Stellaris, you can play the good guys! And win! I like that positivity right now. :)
With RPGs, still playing Out of the Abyss in our Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and the last session was fun—again, mostly for the character stuff, and while my DM is doing a great job, I'm really getting sick and tired of the Underdark. Kind of the point of the campaign, though. :p
ALMOST wrapping up Blood in the Chocolate using Blades in the Dark, but since a couple of people in my group work in grocery stores and are thus essential, scheduling is still a problem. If we only got past this, we could do some one-session heists, but so it goes. I might try for some one-shots, maybe one-page RPGs in the meantime.
Stellaris is a great quarantine game. My only issue with it is that it's so complex, it's easy to get lost. I have no clue how wars work and only a basic understanding of things like diplomacy. I spent 45 minutes trying to look up where the edict menu is on PS4 because the placement doesnt make much sense. IIRC it's in the traditions menu but seems like it should be in the government menu. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of real story to it either. Definitely enjoy it though, although IMO Surviving Mars is maybe more fun.
Yeah, it's a great game to dive into. You're right that the depth is kind of a love-it-or-hate-it thing, since it's totally valid that some people may find it more frustrating than rewarding as a matter of personal preference. For me, though, the learning curve is super rewarding. Admittedly, all my games so far in ~60 hours of play have ended with my hitting a wall, bit it always felt like there was one more aspect of gameplay for me to work on before returning. I got surprised by an empire of fanatical purifiers, so next time I'm going to bolster my frontier outposts; I ran low on credits, so I'm going to look into setting up a trade route; I overpopulated all my worlds, so I'm going to rejigger how I set up planets and giving excess pops a place to go; etc.
On the topic of your problem finding where edicts are, I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME find out how to tell what ethic is associated with a faction for the purposes of reforming the government, and even searching it yielded no useful results... until I accidentally found out you can tell by hovering over the faction's icon. I mean, most of the time you can guess, but it sure would have been nice to have it more visible. :p
As for story, I would say it has tons, just not in the standard sense we think of with video games. It's not going to play like a game that has a story mode with a distinct plot and arc, but there's just a lot of emergent storytelling as the game goes on. That might be a pedantic point to make, since it's still not the kind of story you are looking for. :)
And thanks for mentioning Surviving Mars! Just added it to my wish list.
That's me right now too, although I'm probably 1/3 of your playtime tops. I don't mind that, kind of what you expect for a game like this, although some of the mechanics are a little opaque. I'm still getting the hang of expanding, so far the best I've been able to do is as a democracy, prioritizing areas with lots of mining potential. With some faction management and rivalries I've been able to expand pretty big, but then I hit a wall where I think I'd either need to do diplomacy or wars to keep growing.
If you like Stellaris, you'll enjoy Surviving Mars. It's similar in that you have to balance a dozen different things and if a catastrophe strikes at the wrong time it can totally fuck you over. It is very satisfying though, once you've got a cool base set up, to just watch it go.
The opacity is a problem with all the grand strategy games by Paradox, though to their credit it's something they're improving on. Battles in CK2 for instance, involve three flanks, maybe some leader, different phases, morale, losses... and with a few hundred hours in the game, I still have NO CLUE about most of it. I just stack up the biggest army I can and go to town. Stellaris still has that problem, but it seems like there's more sensible information presented to the player. I don't know that I'd play it without access to the wiki, though. :p
I definitely like the sound of Surviving Mars, and I'll pick it up eventually. The theme also reminds me of the board game Terraforming Mars, which I've wanted to play for ages, but without a regular board game group, had few opportunities.
When was the last time you played? Combat and wars in particular have been going through some overhauls recently.
Then you have seen the gist of it. The war system is still built upon Casus Belli and Exhaustion. It's not necessary to conquer every single system, it's just one of the easier ways to increase Exhaustion with an enemy. If you want to actually claim those systems/planets not occupying them makes it harder to enforce demands.
There are also certain types of war/empire that you can not "win" but can at best settle for white peace for (unless you completely wipe the enemy off the map). Functionally, though, white peace in those scenarios is as good as winning a war of conquest.
It seemed to work okay in my experience, but I haven't played many aggressive games. It may be difficult to outright win a war, but since you keep whatever systems and planets you occupy, you can still reach a productive status quo... and then try again in 10 years for more. :p
Courtesy of @scrambo, I have been playing Hollow Knight. I didn't know much about the game going into it, but it has been a lot of fun to play. I love that the player has to find the mapmaker in every new area, its really like a fun little quest in such an open world, without much in the way of directions or waypoints. The art style is cute, which really threw me for a loop when I discovered those creepy enemies in the Royal Waterways, and the spiders at the edge of the map. I haven't played many games like this before, and its a nice change of pace from the strategy games I usually play. From what I've seen, there's quite a bit of lore surrounding the game, and I'll definitely be doing some digging into that when I finish the game.
I finished Doom Eternal. I'll stick by my last post about it being too extra, but I did love playing it.
Then I wrapped up the pair of achievements I was missing from 100%ing Doom 64.
I also got FOMO and picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I haven't played an Animal Crossing since the original on Gamecube. This is very much the game I remember, except with crafting. I know there's probably a lot more difference than that, but it doesn't matter. I visited a friend's island and saw all their cool stuff. I went back to my sad island with almost nothing. I visited a couple mystery islands and got some bamboo and flowers out of it. It's a good daily play.
I just started Ghost Recon Breakpoint. I know it got a lot of bad reviews, but the Waypoint crew liked it and compared it positively to Metal Gear Solid V, which I loved. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm liking it more than I did Wildlands. That's probably because I'm more into the fictional tech billionaire, libertarian island setting than I was actual Bolivia.
Did you enjoy the crafting bit? I have a hard time with the modern trend of including crafting on every game.
It's not my favorite. I'm not a fan of my tools breaking so often and having to go back to a crafting table to make a new one. It's just giving me a reason to consume some of these resources rather than selling them. The 1st tier of tools are crap. They last maybe a day of work. The 2nd tier is much better, but they last something like 3 days rather than 1. I haven't gotten beyond the 2nd tier. Also you can only craft one item at a time, and you see the crafting animation every time. It's quite annoying.
Stuff breaking is a mechanic that needs to die, IMHO. I’m also not a fan of wear and tear. It’s just annoying.
And not every game needs crafting! Even God if War has it now...
Oddly enough, I had just today decided to go through my steam backlog and play Pinstripe.
It's very very short.
So it's a narrative fueled puzzle platformer where you play a priest who is trying to get his daughter back from the devil. Honestly, the puzzles are all very easy to figure out and the twists are not very shocking. It would have been much nicer if it was much longer and had more gameplay mechanics. The one redeeming factor is how visually polished it is.
Overall I wouldn't recommend Pinstripe.
Right before I played Pinstripe, I finished replaying Zero Time Dilemma. It's the last game in the Zero Escape series. I bought it a short while ago because I wanted to play the PC port, and it is much nicer to play than the originals since those versions were extremely choppy. Unfortunately, this game is easily the worst one in the series; though the puzzles are much more solvable here (generally less moon logic), the change in presentation makes pacing crawl; you can't reliably skip a single line of text, so if you do try to speed through the dull parts you will likely skip something important. Beyond that, the disjointed storytelling means it's really easy to lose your interest early on, and it gets really irritating in the third act since it's constantly stopping even when the story finally turns linear.
Just got my Valve Index, so naturally I've mostly been rhythmically slicing cubes and been getting jumped at by headcrabs.
Beatsaber: Unsurprisingly, it's tons of fun! I wish there were more ways of categorizing songs, e.g. by slapping tags on them. Right now there's only a "favorite" button. I also keep being surprised about finding some of the less popular/more obscure songs, and not finding (or only bad maps of) a couple popular ones. Nonetheless, I'm having a great time with it!
Half-Life: Alyx: It's a good VR game and a good Half-Life game. So far I played it less than I had thought I would, mainly because it's super exhausting (mentally, not physically) and I usually have to take a break after half an hour or maximum an hour. Brings up Ravenholm memories again, with the exception of being, quite literally, more in your face. Sometimes I wish I could do more with the environment. Sure, I can crush cans, throw bottles, and pull things toward me, but I can't do much with them. Throwing explsives at enemies and crushing ammo boxes doesn't quite fill the huge potential that the games physics has. The gravity gloves are insanely fun though! All in all it's a fantastic game!
Grip: I just jumped for a quick round into Grip, only bought it a day ago. It's a nicely done VR update!
I just finished Half-Life: Alyx, and I'm super pleased with it—it totally met my expectations.
I do second the wish for the environment meaning more—there were times where I had such little ammo that I wish throwing a can at a headcrab would count for something.
It's pretty special though, I can't wait to see what that team does next. Hopefully, they can keep up with the momentum with the extremely positive reaction HL:A has gotten.
Being low on ammo was my thinking behind it too, especially because I'm not particularily good at shooters and VR doesn't help much. Throwing crap with the gravity gun was fun, and in Alyx I feel the urge to smack headcrabs with a brick.
I agree, I'm super excited to see Valve getting back into game dev. (Yes, I know Dota, Underlords, etc, but a full, single player game is quite different to that)
Does anyone have any recommendations for games that are playable on Linux? I’ve never been much of a gamer but trying to get into it to free my mind a little while stuck at home during this.
I can recommend a ton! Not only are there a good amount of native games, there are also a lot of Windows-only titles that work effortlessly on Linux through Proton, which is Valve's compatibility layer that they've baked into Steam.
What genres do you like? What playstyle are you looking for (intense, strategic, relaxed, contemplative, etc.)? Those can help me narrow down some recommendations.
Probably strategic.
Northgard is available on linux via Steam. Its a slow but steady real time strategy game. Play as a nordic clan on an island, taking territories and winning by trade, lore, conquest, fame or other map specific conditions. Its not particularly hectic like starcraft or anything, its closer to Civilization than anything else. A lot of resource management, exploration and protecting your path to victory.
I appreciate that its a bit slower so I can actually reason through my decisions instead of racing.
https://northgard.net/
Awesome! I will check it out. Thank you.
I hate to overpromise and underdeliver, but strategy is not my area of expertise! Sorry! I'm much more of a casual gamer.
That said, I have a friend who loves XCOM 2 which runs native on Linux, but that's more tactics than strategy. The publisher Paradox publishes a lot of strategy games and has a lot of goodwill in the Linux community for their support of it (as well as some of ill will for their heavy reliance on DLC).
If it's the type of game that interests you, I have an extra key for one of Paradox's games: the Crusader Kings II: Dynasty Starter Pack that I can gift you. No pressure if you're not interested in it, but if you want it, it's yours!
Some strategy games I play on Linux:
Survival Strategy: Games which have elements of base-building, resource-gathering, etc; but have a more heavier emphasis on survival.
Edit:
Forgot to mention Prison Architect ; It is a pretty good strategy game as well.
Also, A list of all strategy/City-Building games available on Steam that runs on Linux: here
Some more strategy games available for Linux from my Steam wishlist (a.k.a Games I haven't played yet, but want to):
Edit 2:
If you like old-school strategy games, I would suggest Caesar 3. There is an open-source version of this (you will need the assets from the original) that works very well under Linux.
Amazing thank you!! I’ve now had a few people recommend Factorio to me so maybe I’ll start there this weekend.
Thanks for your time.
Not to say you shouldn't be asking that, but these links are a great start:
Awesome, thank you - I'll give a look right now. I was just wondering if anyone here had any suggestions as well.
Portal 2 is awesome.
Yesterday I started playing Final Fantasy XV on the PS4, inspired by the buzz about the remake of FFVII. I'm usually not patient enough for RPG, but after playing Path of Exile this game seems the simplest, most relaxing thing in the world. All the friendly and emotional interactions really make me feel less alone. This game is really heartwarming once you get in the mood.
I'm 12 hours in already.
The combat is nice, but frequently confusing and for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I literally cannot distinguish my character on the screen because there's too much going on, and combats under heavy vegetation are a guarantee to be covered trees.
It's also a load fest! One must play this game with a smartphone handy because you will stare at the screen motionless for long minutes. I even have a PS4 Pro, but the issue here is reading times. I wish I had an SSD.
The car travels are so boring and uneventful that negate all the advantages of an open-world.
And why does every little thing requires at least 3 seconds to happen? To eat something there is: 1 second of black screen, one beautiful (and totally unnecessary) image of what I ate, one random comment about the food, one beautiful screen showing all the stats that we gained (which requires confirmation), 1 fade to black, 1 fade back to characters? FUCK! Are Japanese like the most patient people in the world? The word "bureaucratic" comes to mind.
Still liking it for now. Chocobos make a lot of difference.
Disc Golf Valley is a game that I've picked up to fill that Disc Golf shaped hole in my weekly activities. I would typically go out 2 - 3 times in a week, but now I'm going out 0 times in a week, and will be for the foreseeable future. I also got it for two of my kids, including my son who is a Disc Golf fanatic (probably as an extension of him being a "Dad" fanatic). We've got a little mini league set up, and we spend some time playing together (5 - 10 min) each day.
I also tried out Northgard, which I talked about in the Tildes Backlog Burner. I have played a bit more since my post on it. I'm not a huge RTS person, but I have been enjoying this quite a bit. The little vikings are pretty cute, and the combat is easy to understand. The resource management is simple and fairly intuitive, and the story in story mode has been good so far, though I'm only up to the third map. It looks like it's still getting updates, too, so it's not a dead game. I would recommend picking this up if you'd like to dip a toe into RTS games but otherwise haven't really been into them much since Warcraft 3. In fact, I'd pick it up before WC III remastered.
Why can't you go play disc golf?
I feel like this is a disingenuous question, as the answer is obvious: I'm not disc golfing because there is a global pandemic.
I mean, what potential is there for picking up the virus? There's no common contact points, outdoors is good for you...
I'm disinterested in arguing the vagaries of how the virus can be passed, but I'd like to suggest that if someone has made a decision to isolate and brings that up online, that it's really destructive to try to encourage that person to go out and do stuff. You know absolutely nothing about me, or the reasons that I came to the decision that I did to stop going out to play disc golf, so just arguing for going out is really reckless behaviour. Maybe I elected to not go out and play disc golf because I'm in the midst of a particularly hard hit area, or maybe I'm caring for people who are particularly high risk or am particularly high risk myself. Maybe it's because I'm cuckoo bananas and paranoid. But either way, I don't think now is the time to be encouraging people to go back to things that they have elected to give up in the face of a global pandemic.
If I had said something like "I am not disc golfing, and everyone who is doing it is a moron" then by all means I would expect someone to take umbrage with that and correct the statement - it's a relatively low risk activity, as you've said. But since I'm clearly not advocating for everyone to stay home, why try to pick at this? It's really just fomenting discord for no reason.
For what it's worth, if you've deemed that it's safe for you and yours to go out disc golfing, that's great, and I'm envious of the position you find yourself in. I wish that I was in a place where I was making the same decision. I'm not.
Uh, I'm sorry dude. I'd like to point out that this goes both ways: you know nothing about me either. I'm just one dumb guy, and if you were to assume the best of me (which is generally a decent practice), you'd realize I was only trying to help you out and had your best interests at heart by encouraging you to perform an activity you enjoy.
That said, I hope you're in a place soon enough to be able to play disc golf again.
To be clear, I fully understand that you're doing this to try to be positive, and I appreciate that.
That said, I am trying to encourage you to reconsider your position about telling people to go out. Many people are electing to stay home for a variety of reasons, and I don't think it's actually a good idea to encourage anyone to go out who has made the decision to stay at home; if someone has made that decision, it's for a reason, and there's valid reasons, just about anywhere in the world, to cut out things like Disc Golf, which is a very minor thing to cut out of one's schedule.
To get to your underlying point - we are ensuring that we go outside every day, and get in an abundance of physical activity. We're staying sane; instead of going out and throwing a quick 18, I've been lifting weights in the backyard, and doing yardwork. It's not as good, but it's not so bad.
I get where you're coming from, however I didn't suggest you play Twister with strangers at the park, so I feel comfortable recommending a single-player non-contact sport. Obviously, you don't feel comfortable with that, and that's completely alright. I'm just glad to hear you're staying sane and going out, which was the foundation of why I even reached out to you.
Hope you have/had a good walk today!
I love this game. I had bought it back in 2018, since Don't Starve from Klei is another favorite game of mine and I picked up Oxygen Not Included as soon as I heard about it!
I played quite a bit of it and had some fun, but work and life got more hectic and I hardly got any time for games the next couple years, till few weeks back, I opened up steam and I fired up Oxygen Not Included.
This game has come such a long way, (Farming, Automation, germs, so many more great additions). I think I have spent waaay too much time playing this over the last few weeks :)
There's also a variety of really fantastic mods for filing off some of the rough edges. If you haven't looked at them yet I highly suggest it.
I did not know ONI had mods too!! Will check them out.
Any mod you recommend/like playing with?
In addition to the ones mentioned by Maddox, I like
Dupe Behavior Modifiers:
Other QOL
There's more out there (and in my modlist), but I hope this gives a sense of the breath of mods and fixes that exist.
Diablo II and AoEII with friends is how I pass quarantine. DII consumes copious amounts of time and is quite fun. AoEII is less time consuming for my friends with busy schedules and what not.
During normal times we usually get together and play a massive game of Factorio, but we recently stopped when our map became so big and so much stuff was happening that it started to crash some of our computers regularly.
I started replaying Diablo II recently as well. It holds up surprisingly well! I haven't played it in years but it felt so good to just jump back in and get going. Also helps that I have a modicum of an idea of what I'm doing so I can actually have a halfway decent build
Not to get too nostalgia heavy, but the older RPGs have a depth of play that newer games sometimes lack. D2 was a really really good game even if you had a shit build, and its still tons of fun with friends.
You may like Path of Exile.
I finally got around to finishing Dead Space 2, and it was even better than I expected - a very good horror game and a good story (at least I thought so) with a lot of nice callbacks to the first game, but they didn't feel too heavy handed, and a pretty cool vision of what a future based on interstellar mining could be, and what a religion could look like given evidence of a real alien presence. Debating whether to play 3 or not given I've only really heard people bash it, but have read its still a good game in its own right but more action-oriented than the previous horror.
Gonna put any Dead Space on hold for a while though as I'm finally going to play Darksiders, courtesy of a giveaway here from @scrambo :)
As awful as this quarantine has been, the one bright spot for me is I've been able to catch up on a lot of games in my backlog. Though with all these great humble bundles, I've also managed to increase the total number of games, can't win them all.
I had heard about Kind Words before, but with the pandemic, it seemed like the perfect time to try it. The basic concept of it is you can send out a letter about what's on your mind, and people can see it and respond with a letter of their own. Conversely, you can look through different letters people have sent and reply to one if you wish, but if something is too heavy to respond to, there is no pressure to make a response. You would think such a system would be infested with trolls, but I have yet to find a single toxic person. I've found it incredibly cathartic to express feelings that I haven't been comfortable expressing to friends and family. It's really incredible how a platform like this gives people a space to talk about things you don't feel safe to talk about with anyone else.
I've played a couple of Blendo Games, but Quadrilateral Cowboy has to be one of their best. I'm a sucker for cyberpunk worlds and punching commands in a terminal is just so satisfying. It made me feel like a coding genius when I would think of some crazy idea and then be able to see it come to fruition. Normally I'm not one to complain about a games length, I normally prefer quality over quantity. Some of my favorite games clock in under 5 hours. But it felt like Quadrilateral Cowboy had so much more to explore. It feels like almost every level is introducing a new kind of mechanic, and there is never a final level that tests everything you have learned.
I played through A Way Out with a friend, and it was superb. I've never played a game that took advantage of two player coop so well. The story was super engrossing, and I loved the way the game forced you to rely on your friend to make it. It's an expensive play through, I paid $30 and it took us about 6 hours to make it through. While I don't see myself doing another run through of it, it was so interesting both mechanically and story wise that I don't regret my purchase at all.
Tomb Raider (2013) was free on steam the other week, so I tried it out. It's interesting, I don't think it's anything amazing, but I enjoyed my time with it. It felt like a bit of a hodge podge mechanically, just wanting to throw a bunch of mechanics in and see what sticks. At the beginning when I had to hunt and kill a deer I though there would be some sort of survival element with hunger, but I never had to kill another animal in the game. I'm not a huge fan of the way games love to tack on an light rpg system, it really didn't seem to fit here. But all in all, I enjoyed my time, and will check out the next ones once they go down in price.
I played Tomb Raider right when it came out on the worst machine I've ever owned. I couldn't even get past the main menu without lowering the graphics to the minimum and decreasing my screen resolution, so that was quite a process. I somehow managed to get through the whole thing, though (I'm pretty sure I even 100%'d it). It's so different from the old ones! Hardly any actual tomb raiding to speak of, haha. I think that some of the only tombs in the game were DLC. I own the second one, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I hope it sticks a little closer to its roots.
GTA V a lot lately find there is always something to do even thought it is getting very old it still seems fresh.
Also play Minecraft now and then for the same reason there is always something new to do or build
I haven't had the time to play myself, but I've watched som folks play the new Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.
It looks like it's going to be an incredible game in 6 months or so when it's out of early access and everything works. So far the development team have released a patch with significant fixes every day in the 6 days since first release.
I've been playing Persona 4. This is my second try at the game; last time I dropped it quite quickly when I got overwhelmed by all the fusing possibilities. I contemplating if I should just have started on easy, I heard it can get quite difficult/grindy at some point. I'm mostly playing it for the story and learning Japanese at the same time. It is my first "big game" in Japanese, but so far I haven't had any major problems. Especially the dialogue is quite simple to understand. So far I'm about 5 hours in and I think I've only had a tutorial fight and a tutorial dungeon; I guess this is gonna take some time.
I really need to just not think too much about the fusings and social link possibilities, even though they are easy to miss. I guess it's good practice trying to shake off some of that perfectionist feeling and just enjoy the game as it is; like I did with similar games as a kid.
Don't worry too much about the fusing. I think that trips everyone up on their first SMT game, the amount of combinations is insane. But you don't really need to worry about it that much, you can keep a steady, trusty stable of Personas. Following the side story where you make specific Personas from fusions is actually a pretty good intro to fusing if you continue with that, and really don't be afraid to look up info on GameFAQs or the internet. Persona is old school in that way, where you won't find all the info in the game and you'll need some guides handy.
Yeah.. I guess if the alternative is to talk to every single person to see what community links are available instead of just sometimes looking at a guide it's not a bad idea.
I think I'll just try to experiment with the fusions for now. Only thing I worry if I end up having bad personas with the wrong element and/or skills for a dungeon and somehow get stuck.
Best advice I can give to negate that possibility is to always try to keep Personas that have different elemental abilities so you can swap between them depending on the enemy weaknesses. Each one is weak to something, you just have to find it and then exploit the hell out of it, stealing their turn orders with successful hits.
It is indeed a long game, but I think you've hit the nail on the head with how to play it, at least for a first run-through - trying to be a perfectionist and do everything possible in the game makes it lose some of its charm, I find, and the newgame+ exists to go through any content you miss the first time.
Are you playing the original PS2 version or the Vita rerelease/update?
I'm playing the original PS2 version. Sadly I never picked up a Vita and the emulation isn't there yet.
Nothing wrong with the original! I think the remake's extras are best appreciated having played the original, anyways - the main story doesn't change.
As a side note, I think vita3k is getting in pretty good shape, but getting a dump of the game to actually play seems pretty hard without a vita & a copy (and it seems it can't handle p4g besides)
Enjoy the game!
Persona 4 was a bit overwhelming for me but I’d like to give it another chance. It’s basically a menu based RPG and this made me feel super claustrophobic.
I had it on Vita but I sold it along with the portable. What a great failed console.
Yeah there's a lot going on.
What do you mean failed? It's still alive and kicking in Japan.
So is laserdisc, but no one thinks it's a success :P
Well I agree it wasn't a huge commercial success per se, but that's a bit unfair comparison I feel. There are still Vita exclusives released every year and stores and Book-offs are loaded with Vita games there.
That's fine, but sadly I do not live in Japan :(
I started playing the 1st Witcher game because I liked Witcher III so much.
It's definitely an early version of what the developers envisioned but the deep story and details are there. The biggest difference is the combat system is nothing like the 2nd or 3rd game and it just involved timing your clicks correctly, don't worry about dodging or fighting multiple opponents at once. It's much more static but it is an improvement from something like World of Warcraft and most other Action RPG combat systems at that time.
For a game that was released in 2007, it's pretty fun but falls below the level of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). For an initial game from a brand new studio, it's a phenomenal piece of work and hints at what's to come when they have more funding behind them.
When I complete that game I'm going to play through The Witcher II. I enjoy playing classic games that were made even before I was born, and I still play DOS games like Star Wars: Dark Forces series and Prince of Persia from time to time. It's a fun piece of history I get to experience.
But it's important to note, that sometimes it is beneficial to use (double tap direction buttons: pressing W-W will cause you to jump over an enemy in front of you, for example. Same for A, S and D). I still vividly remember when I entered some cellar for side quest and found there 5 hungry alghouls! So I had to drink blizzard potion and then jump over them like Mario until everyone was dead. I wish alchemy was as good in later games, as it was in the first one
Witcher 3 is awesome but I’d trade some of the prettiness and openness for faster loading times. Playing in harder difficulties is excruciating, and the easy mode is not very exciting.
What are you playing it on? I find on a PC with an SSD, the loading times are basically a non-issue.
PS4 Pro. Reloading after dying takes a full minute.
Started with ThatGameCompany's Sky for Android. It was just released, and seems to be if not a follow-up, very similar to journey as it's a multi-single player game with cloak flight instead of scarf flight. There are a lot of people running around, so whoever your "friends" are aren't likely to stick around, but you can upgrade emotes now, which is a choice that was made. Supposed to support controllers too, which is invaluable.
Just started FF7 remake, god damn the game is like is a living movie. Am on chapter 3 right now doing side quests. Can't wait to see the new stuff that was added.
OpenRCT2. It's one I keep around, but I decided to push through the scenarios. I'm having fun, but understanding a few basic principles of how the game operates, along with being 30 instead of 12, has made the game extremely easy to beat so far. I just did Dynamite Dunes, Leafy Lake, and Diamond Heights tonight, in less than two hours. The longest it took me to complete a scenario was maybe half-way through March of Year 2.
I keep wanting to do a sandbox map of some sort with money and make it the best I can, but I can't bring myself to actually follow through on it.