Ready or Not, have been sitting on it for some time now, as we were originally supposed to play it in coop, but I wound up being the only one to get it.
Finally giving Elden Ring a real shot. It does remind me of my big gripe with the Souls games and that's simply for all the "get good" mantra behind the playerbase, there's still a pretty significant loot and stats element and the games aren't particularly good about letting you know if you need practice or to level up when you hit a wall.
Elden Ring kind of takes this to an extreme with an early boss (not the pre-tutorial one) designed to repel you and send you back into the open world to get stronger, but there's no real way of knowing this. I feel bad for the people who carried me to getting him down to half health before I realized I was just at maybe a third of where I should be to have a real chance.
Still, the game is clicking into place for me now. Gotten to where I can take down some of the random strong enemies without getting hit, so making progress. Definitely an interesting world to explore once the pieces fall into place.
Resident Evil, tarted up PS4 version, but on my PS5.
Granted I was a late comer to this franchise (big up the GameCube Massive), but it’s truly remarkable just how expansive and satisfying this game remains, many many years after its release.
I still quite enjoy the more action oriented latter sequels, but man, the original just cannot be beaten in my opinion.
Are you talking about the REmake or a PS1 port? Both hold up remarkably well really, though its particularly impressive how well the REmake's graphics hold up 20 years later.
I know it wasn’t just the graphics that were tweaked. But the overall experience is still frankly brilliant.
Though, given I have the genuine privilege of growing up alongside computer games, I do wonder if less venerable people wot play games find the need for manual saves irritating.
I mean, I did at first on this play through, but soon got back into the groove (was that bit a pain in the arse? Go And Save Young* Man) I was all good with it.
Back to playing Helldivers again after a very long hiatus and it's fun grinding samples to start upgrading my weapons and getting some of the late tier stuff for the harder missions. Surprised that its a lot more fun solo than I initially thought, as I almost exclusively played it with friends on the couch prior to this, so I've been missing out.
On the single-player side, I've been playing the Cruel King and the Great Hero. Another cute side game that I can chill with and I love the artstyle and classic fairytale atmosphere. Nippon Ichi does it again.
Began a new game on Cyberpunk 2077 this time as a Street Kid. Just running around grinding having a good time just paid back Victor Vektor and made sure to get the big jumpy feet early this time as they're just too good.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Still on my 2nd playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 and just completed the Gig "Dirty Biz".
Spoiler:
I was thinking of sparing the father and son who create the BDs just because I didn't the 1st time, but just couldn't. The father makes the excuse "if we aren't doing it, someone else would", which still doesn't mean you should do it, profit from the torture and death of children and innocent people. Hard-hitting side quest. Killed all the Maestrom gang members protecting them as well. So messed up.
Adrassil wrote: Began a new game on Cyberpunk 2077 this time as a Street Kid. Just running around grinding having a good time just paid back Victor Vektor and made sure to get the big jumpy feet early this time as they're just too good.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Still on my 2nd playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 and just completed the Gig "Dirty Biz".
Spoiler:
I was thinking of sparing the father and son who create the BDs just because I didn't the 1st time, but just couldn't. The father makes the excuse "if we aren't doing it, someone else would", which still doesn't mean you should do it, profit from the torture and death of children and innocent people. Hard-hitting side quest. Killed all the Maestrom gang members protecting them as well. So messed up.
Kind of excited to see what modders will do with that game, provided how deep you can mod things in the game.
Adrassil wrote: Began a new game on Cyberpunk 2077 this time as a Street Kid. Just running around grinding having a good time just paid back Victor Vektor and made sure to get the big jumpy feet early this time as they're just too good.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Still on my 2nd playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 and just completed the Gig "Dirty Biz".
Spoiler:
I was thinking of sparing the father and son who create the BDs just because I didn't the 1st time, but just couldn't. The father makes the excuse "if we aren't doing it, someone else would", which still doesn't mean you should do it, profit from the torture and death of children and innocent people. Hard-hitting side quest. Killed all the Maestrom gang members protecting them as well. So messed up.
See, I don't find that kind of writing hard-hitting. Its... obvious. Cut, dried, done. It fits the darker side of the setting, I guess, but its mostly just edgelord nonsense. There's no nuance or complexity involved.
Its a problem with the writing of the whole game to some extent, where its obvious that a lot of people are wrong and wallowing in the suffering they cause, and there isn't any reason for it. Often they don't even really benefit from it. They're just pieces of crap for no reason.
And that's dull. You might as well just have a pack of baddies charge out and die and not flesh them out at all at that point.
Adrassil wrote: Began a new game on Cyberpunk 2077 this time as a Street Kid. Just running around grinding having a good time just paid back Victor Vektor and made sure to get the big jumpy feet early this time as they're just too good.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Still on my 2nd playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 and just completed the Gig "Dirty Biz".
Spoiler:
I was thinking of sparing the father and son who create the BDs just because I didn't the 1st time, but just couldn't. The father makes the excuse "if we aren't doing it, someone else would", which still doesn't mean you should do it, profit from the torture and death of children and innocent people. Hard-hitting side quest. Killed all the Maestrom gang members protecting them as well. So messed up.
See, I don't find that kind of writing hard-hitting. Its... obvious. Cut, dried, done. It fits the darker side of the setting, I guess, but its mostly just edgelord nonsense. There's no nuance or complexity involved.
Its a problem with the writing of the whole game to some extent, where its obvious that a lot of people are wrong and wallowing in the suffering they cause, and there isn't any reason for it. Often they don't even really benefit from it. They're just pieces of crap for no reason.
And that's dull. You might as well just have a pack of baddies charge out and die and not flesh them out at all at that point.
Nyeh, sometimes there isn't much nuance or complexity. Sometimes people do that sorta stuff and are so psychopathic they don't see anything wrong with it. They do have reason the dad especially 'It's just business' to him and he's sadistic as well according to his email messages. I've been watching enough true crime lately to see that fact. The Japanese camps where they experimented on Chinese citizens is another example. It's also inline with the nihilistic, cynical themes of the Cyberpunk genre and shows how demented the society of Night City is. I think fiction can delve into the black and horror of humanity and sometimes needs to highlight the good.
The quest definitely made me feel something, so it did mean it was more than 'edgelord nonsense' in my case anyway.
Well, that's the problem. It isn't 'highlighting the good,' There is functionally no good. Yes, its in theme, but there's no contrast to be found. So its just more dark crap piled on dark crap, and for the game, just more random bodies on the floor.
There needs to be something to contrast with, especially if you're constantly hitting the 'everything is bad' button.
As much as enjoy the sidequests as the best part of that game, they're mostly about body count. Which is fine for that type of game, but not exactly deep or meaningful.
I was referring to 'overall' with the bad needing to be there to contrast the good thing.
There is good, though. I just completed the 'Happy With You' quest where you speak to an ex-cop who's depressed, in the end of the quest you can get his colleagues to finally try to understand him and prevent him from committing suicide (which can happen if you frig up the quest) It's wholesome as hell.
The ending where you give your body to Johnny Silverhand is beautiful in my eyes, he's a humbled man who's now wiser, he mentors a kid and encourages him to become a musician. The funeral for Jackie is sad but nice and I enjoy his friendship with V I just wish there was more time with him in-game.
Viktor Vektor's a nice man, as well who seems to truly care for his patients. There's good in the game, it's rare. I read a book which truly falls in line with the 'there is no good' thing and I hated it. The Aldecaldos bringing you in as a family member and are willing to fight on your behalf.
You don't find it deep or meaningful, and fair enough, but I sure do.
Gotten fully into the Elden Ring groove. Cleared the first demigod, got my Great Rune, realized I completely missed some huge sections of the map that I'm now grossly over leveled for which is kind of fun.
Mostly at the point where I've got a good handle on how the stats affect my character and how best to allocate them and level up and the like. Curious to see how long before the game feels impossible again.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Giving Until Dawn a play, as it’s one I got free years ago but never played.
Seems to have interesting mechanics.
Yewah, that one was good fun for a playthrough with friends.The following games were pretty dreadful as far as I know. Only played the one on the ship, and that was one boring video game featuring really annoying people.
Finally got a chance to play through Ready or Not in coop, a three stack is not great for most maps, but somehow we made it work. Really chuffed we managed to get through the nightclub map in just two tries, whereas the crackhouse took way too many attempts to clear.
I was finally able to set aside some time to get back to Regiments... and then was promptly reminded that since each Phase is only 20 minutes (hard time limit), I don't really need to set aside that much time.
Anyway, I finished the first Operation. Because I'd already cleared the first map, I had two maps remaining, with three Phases to clear each map. The first of the two maps required me to capture a string of objectives that would lead to an exit point at the far end. I managed to secure that within two Phases. The final map was a "capture all of the objectives" affair. After securing over half of the objectives with a little over a minute left in the first Phase, Something Happened(tm)... More on it below. The second Phase ended up a simple mop-up of what was left. Both maps had lots of allied units. On the first map, the allied units had been defending a cut-off section of the map that you were encouraged to relieve. Here, they were aggressively taking the fighting to the enemy. While they were a bit too zerg-like at times, they still did a decent job of dealing with the enemy, particularly if I acted in support to deal with particularly troublesome enemy units.
Once the third map was done, the Operation was finished. I got a results tally, and then I moved on to the first Intermission. Operations are big affairs with multiple maps. Intermissions are smaller affairs. This one appears to be just a single phase long. And instead of operating Panzerregiment 16 of the GDR Nationale Volksarmee, I'll be running the 14th Panzerbrigade of the West German Bundeswehr. And it looks like I'm about to start World War 3. Why am I about to start World War 3? It's a spoiler...
And it's definitely an unusual reason for it to start.
Overall, the game looks good. I'd encourage anyone who thinks they might be interested to pick it up. Or at least check out some YouTube videos (there are a few out there) first. In particular, I like the fact that it's similar to Wargame, but doesn't have the micro-management that many RTS games - including Eugen's offerings - frequently have.
Anyway, for those who want to know how I'm probably about to start World War 3...
Spoiler:
As you may recall, Panzerregiment 16 (i.e. the player) of the NVA was tasked with putting down a rebel group within the GDR that was backed by elements of the NVA. When you reach the third map, there's a notification that the jamming equipment headquarters sent to jam the rebels has finally arrived. Unfortunately, since you're fighting rebel troops, this equipment will also affect your own troops. This has a small but noticeable effect on your HQ unit if you're using one.
As I mentioned above, late during the Phase on the third map, Something Happened(tm). The something in this case was a ballistic missile strike by an unknown party against a railyard (one of the objectives, btw, though it's one of the more distant ones). That railyard just happened to have a railcar full of chlorine gas...
The gas was *not* destroyed in the blast. The gas *did* escape out into the open air in large quantities. Large amounts of the gas *did* drift across the border into the FRG, where it affected large numbers of West German civilians and soldiers. Attempts by the FRG government and NATO to find out just WTH was going on and why West German citizens were being gassed were met with silence and static from across the border due to the East German jamming nominally aimed at blocking rebel communications (and, again, also affecting the loyalist NVA troops). While NATO suspects (correctly) that the gas attack was not an intentional attack, it also can't sit idly by. At the very least, both NATO and the FRG government need to confirm whether the attack was intentional, and secure the border on the off-chance that they're wrong about the attack being unintentional. So the Bundeswehr is being mobilized and sent to the border.
And one particular part of the Bundeswehr, the 14 Panzerbrigade, is going to go *across* the border to secure the site of the gas release, shut down the East German jammers, and figure out exactly what happened.
Finished the main campaign in Witcher 3 and doing the DLC now.
Still trying to figure what the heck is going on in Hearts of Iron 4. I guess you make stuff in your factories and then that stuff is used to create/deploy units? That been my big epiphany so far...
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Finished the main campaign in Witcher 3 and doing the DLC now.
Still trying to figure what the heck is going on in Hearts of Iron 4. I guess you make stuff in your factories and then that stuff is used to create/deploy units? That been my big epiphany so far...
Thats the gist of it, basically it is a game of logistics.
And manouvres, and how you combine them to achieve your Goal.
In essence:
What is your aim? (form sfr bulgaroslavia f.e.)
What ressources does your country have? (F.e. hungary and alluminium)
Do you have allies? (UK and Commonwealth)
What is important in the map for me? (As germany f.e. you can basically ignore africa if you captured the suez.)
From there you can Form strategy and deduce tactics from it. E.g. Japan has few ressources, a highly unbalanced economy in favour of military, high available manpower a strong if underequipped and rather blunt army and 0 oil but a navy that is probably overall due to advisors, designers, and national modifiers the best. Further you got 1.5 puppets that can help with ressources and garisons,
Out of this follows.
Seizing China may alieviate ressources, but will be an slog. Further your army is initially illequipped and inadequate for the task at hand. Oversized units will sap supply fast, infantry alone won't dent the chinese for long, the infrastructure is horrible and they will only stop fighting after you went behind the western capital.
Ergo your focus will be to strike only when really ready, attempt to destroy the chinese army by encircling in order to avoid fighting in low supply areas, developping infrastructure and producing enough trains and trucks to maintain the logistics.
Whilest simultaniously fixing the unit templates you field. If you do a good enough job you will be able to further reach for india and malaya.
Or you pull the cheap one, justify on the philipines, reverse Island hop and knock out the USA before they are ready via abusing the puppet mechanics.
Flinty wrote: that looks pretty cool. If you have played World in Conflict, how does it compare?
I haven't played World in Conflict, but I've seen a lot of people compare Regiments with that. I like to compare it to the very old Sierra game Ground Control (the original one; *NOT* the failed sequel, which had pretty much *NOTHING* in common with the original). Unlike Ground Control, there's some flexibility after the map starts. The game expects that you'll pull units off the map and replace them with different units from your pool as a Phase progresses and your needs shift. But like Ground Control there's a heavy emphasis on preservation of forces. Also like Ground Control, the basic unit is the platoon or section, and not the squad or individual vehicle (which is the case in Eugen's games like Wargame or WARNO). Also unlike Eugen's games, your initial pool of units is set by the formation you're playing as. As the NVA Panzerregiment 16, I had a specific group of platoons I was assigned. I could add a few extra through the task forces that are available as support. But I couldn't decide to get rid of my T-72s or other core units. More recent Eugen games have shifted somewhat in this direction, but only to the extent that the division or corps you pick determines which cards are available to build your force.
Finally, unlike Eugen's games, you have your full allotment of deployment points immediately at the start of the Phase. If you pull a unit off, you'll gradually (but quickly) regain the points that unit cost so that you can bring on another unit. But unlike the Eugen games, the amount of deployment points you have doesn't otherwise increase over time. You can never have more points than what you start out with, and everything currently on the map comes out of that point total. If I have 800 points and I deploy a 100 point T-72M1 platoon, I'll have 700 points left until the T-72 platoon leaves the map (either withdrawn or destroyed).
I've been playing the heckaroonie out of Hunt: Showdown again lately with a couple of pals. It's such a good game concept and the artwork and atmosphere is excellent. Other players of course are miserable little turds
When you are doing well it's a joy, but if you aren't on form then there is little enjoyment to be had getting your collective arses handed to you.
Gave Hardspace Shipbreaker a go the other day, got it for free through Game Pass.
The premise is interesting and pretty unique; you work for an interplanetary corporation called Lynx which it seems is a thinly-veiled parody of Amazon, and your job is to break up old spaceships and sort the parts for decommissioning. There's a good amount of puzzle-solving involved in some areas; if you cut through a pressurised section for example then the decompression can injure you as well as damage components, which deduct from your overall profit.
The idea is Lynx have immediately given you a huge bill for your training and equipment, and you work to pay it off, but you are still forced to pay on top of that for your digs, fuel, food, oxygen, etc.
Pros: It's a good concept I haven't seen before and can be a rather forgiving puzzle game at first. If you chuck the wrong material into the wrong depository for example, that gets taken off your final profit but one or two mistakes aren't going to make a major dent in your takings. Very good graphics given it seems to be a rather small, indie company. The zero-g manoeuvring is also well done although that is a con at times as explained below.
Cons Some of the physics are a bit messed up and at times can be overly frustrating; your main tool is a gravity-grapple of some kind to move objects around, sometimes it just wants to propel you across the map and insta-kill you. The constantly having to keep an eye on your resources also gets tiresome, having to retreat back to your kiosk to buy more oxygen tanks every few minutes is boring after a while. The zero-g can after a while start to give you motion sickness; I'm very prone to that anyway so for a good few hours after playing I was close to vomiting at times. Finally in some areas the game is rather vague on what you had to do. I unlocked a new tool halfway through clearing a ship, and used the tool to finish the job. After this it wouldn't let me continue onto a new project, instead kept sending me back to the original one and adding £500k to my debt each time. After looking online I had to go back to the original training ship to use the tool I was already competent with, having blown the money I made from the original ship and then some.
@notonline! So what’s up with this whole occupied territories thing. How do I occupy them more? Like actually send more troops over or is that something you do in the menu?
Can anything be done about low manpower or is that just set by your country’s population?
KamikazeCanuck wrote: @notonline! So what’s up with this whole occupied territories thing. How do I occupy them more? Like actually send more troops over or is that something you do in the menu?
Can anything be done about low manpower or is that just set by your country’s population?
Spoiler:
Garisons are mostly done in the ocupied territories tab, where you can pick your template to do oppression/repression/neighbourhood watch/ administration.
It's also where you can pick how your country treats occupied territory and by extention how much garrisons are required, how much compliance will be gained and how much resistance will be there.
In essence resistance is how willing the occupied are to hurt you, compliance how much they work with you. The higher compliance the lower resistance , the break off point is on about 60% compliance from personal experience AT which you will not really loose manpower or equipment anymore because there will be due compliance no more resistance and bonus effects in place.
Therefore the best occupation laws are in general:
civilian administration which is available for all.
military police if you have a bit of resistance trouble.
if you are democratic then you get the best which is called local autonomy.
There are other laws, most of them are trash though, especially the one you get with the fascist ideology, because it selfsabotages you, just like irl since you waste valuable material to be an absolute monster to people.
the best template if industrial capacity is a non issue is Military police support with a brigade of cavalery or light tanks.
In the logistic tab you can set priority of equipment. For full effectiveness of garrisons full Equipment is required. In essence you want your garisons to have high priority for full effectiveness and an occupation law that generates compliance.
High compliance also leads to manpower gain and better rates of Ressource extraction and controll over factories.
In essence hoiv creates divisions for garisons as needed which are "semi -under the field." aka they drain your ressources as if they were "real" divisions.
Unless the territory you occupied has high compliance then you gain actually from occupation.
Compliance can also be gained if you manage to have your spies set up a collaboration government which adds flat compliance in territory of the state when you capitulate it. This requires however a dlc.
As for manpower, what can be done depends upon country, ideology, occupation and puppets and of course conscription law.
The closest is to just increase the conscription law, however going higher than limited during peacetime is not possible for non -aligned and democratic countries.
Certain countries can form other countries, f.e. hungary can Form austria hungary which gains full cores on all of czeckoslovakia, hungary and austria aswell as can further reintegrate the rest of the empire.
Other countries can for exemple gain national spirits to increase receuitable population (normaly a multiplier which then increases the population you gain from your conscription law through that) often related to women auxiliary forces (australia f.e.), paramilitary youth organisations (bulgaria f.e.)or flat out Recruiting them (switzerland).
If you are playing as a communist nation you can for 35(?) Army experience put up a picture of karl-marx which gives you 500 manpower for the recruitable pop/ week, one of the most Broken things actually.
2 doctrine paths add further recruitable pop through increasing adding Bonus % on recruitment, that would be mobile warfare --> desperate defense (5% and guerilla tactics) or Mass mobilisation peoples army (also 5 %), however both doctrine paths severly limit offensive capabilities and stat boosts for this.
I played the new Chaos Gate. I'm a big fan of the original one (and how could one not. 2nd edition (tailend therof, but still), absolute all-time banger of a soundtrack, 40k X-Com, boltguns going "boom. boom." instead of "dakkadakka").
There's all sorts of things I don't like about the new one: why is everything purple? why is everybody a cartoon? Why are there American christmas lights on everything? Why do I have to put up with 'character' 'dialogue'? Why is the techpriest Johnny 5 rather than a dude with cybernetics? All that aside though it's pretty clever to take the 2012 X-Com and put a 40k hat on it just like they did with the old X-Com. Sure, the focus shifting from tactics to just 4 dudes with a ton of abilities is lame, BUT at least Grey Knights are plausible subjects for that sort of game.
I also like how they took the strategic layer from the new X-Coms and put that into the new Chaos Gate, be it as stripped down as it may be. The tactical game is ...interesting due to a mechanic that introduces a count-down and when ever that's up a wind of chaos goes across the map and there's a chance of bad things happening. Otherwise the system seems to be rather stripped down from X-Com (yes, somehow they managed). By one by taking away to-hit percentages, and apparently damage ranges. It's all very arithmetic and abstracted it feels like.
I'm just three missions in yet, but it might be fun. I enjoyed the 2012 X-Com, couldn't put up with the sequel though for longer than a few missions to be honest (overloaded with stuff).
Good choice! My favourite comms in the homeWorld Series is from Cataclysm. At the start your commander is all “be aware we are a mining vessel” and then in The final mission out goes the call “this is the warship Kun-Lan!” and awesomeness results
Flinty wrote: Good choice! My favourite comms in the homeWorld Series is from Cataclysm. At the start your commander is all “be aware we are a mining vessel” and then in The final mission out goes the call “this is the warship Kun-Lan!” and awesomeness results
In the final mission in Cataclysm, The Beast warps around the map frequently during the battle. The first time I played that mission, The Beast warped out of the area that I could move in, and then stayed there. As a result, the mission was unwinnable.
I did finish it later, but it sort of solidified my impression of that game as a bit buggy.
Kicked up, Wrath of the Righteous again with the Enhanced Edition (with some trepidation, since I read through the 'great' AMA answers of 'No' and 'Maybe later').
Gambled on subclasses and lost (elemental wizard does a weird thing where the evoker damage bonus is cut in half because of the way they calculate the 'half elemental damage becomes untyped'- they forgot to apply the specialization bonus to both halves, when gets half level, the other gets nothing; war blessing (and others) for war priests are still not in the game), so there's a lot of outstanding issues still after a year. I know I've reported the war priest thing as a bug multiple times in multiple ways, but as is, basic aspects of the class are still just missing. Its not a very good class, but still.
But instead of fixing year-old outstanding bugs, they added transmogs and photo mode for... some reason. Its not a large character model or high quality graphics game, so both of those choices confuse me.
They did add character pets to the character portraits rather than hide them with scroll down the UI which is an actual improvement. Except its a less elegant and largely worse version of the concept than pillars of eternity managed on release 7 years ago.
I have to really be in the mood to grind through the pathfinder system mastery required and trudge through the indifferent writing. For whatever reason they've promised more DLC (which is rumored to include the Shapeshifter, the worst class paizo ever wrote), and fix more outstanding issues (like giving a reason to use heavy armor), but I'm not sure I'll ever get to the end of this game. Its just more laborious on about every level rather than fun.
So I finally finished a game of Stellaris… and gods was it boring. I mean I love the game but the endgame got so dull. I ran the crisis at 3x strength and just absolutely smashed it. Next time I’ll put it to 15x just to have it be an actual galactic nightmare. First time fighting the crisis and well.
So then I played cultist simulator. It’s a great game. I beat it for the first time! The final ritual was very hard and I was so stressed out by the hunters and the evidence. I’ll take a break from it before I do it again.
Also hunt: showdown. Though I’m very worried about the inclusion of the bug.
Valkyrie wrote: Gave Hardspace Shipbreaker a go the other day, got it for free through Game Pass.
The premise is interesting and pretty unique; you work for an interplanetary corporation called Lynx which it seems is a thinly-veiled parody of Amazon, and your job is to break up old spaceships and sort the parts for decommissioning. There's a good amount of puzzle-solving involved in some areas; if you cut through a pressurised section for example then the decompression can injure you as well as damage components, which deduct from your overall profit.
The idea is Lynx have immediately given you a huge bill for your training and equipment, and you work to pay it off, but you are still forced to pay on top of that for your digs, fuel, food, oxygen, etc.
Pros: It's a good concept I haven't seen before and can be a rather forgiving puzzle game at first. If you chuck the wrong material into the wrong depository for example, that gets taken off your final profit but one or two mistakes aren't going to make a major dent in your takings. Very good graphics given it seems to be a rather small, indie company. The zero-g manoeuvring is also well done although that is a con at times as explained below.
Cons Some of the physics are a bit messed up and at times can be overly frustrating; your main tool is a gravity-grapple of some kind to move objects around, sometimes it just wants to propel you across the map and insta-kill you. The constantly having to keep an eye on your resources also gets tiresome, having to retreat back to your kiosk to buy more oxygen tanks every few minutes is boring after a while. The zero-g can after a while start to give you motion sickness; I'm very prone to that anyway so for a good few hours after playing I was close to vomiting at times. Finally in some areas the game is rather vague on what you had to do. I unlocked a new tool halfway through clearing a ship, and used the tool to finish the job. After this it wouldn't let me continue onto a new project, instead kept sending me back to the original one and adding £500k to my debt each time. After looking online I had to go back to the original training ship to use the tool I was already competent with, having blown the money I made from the original ship and then some.
After playing a bit more Hardspace, I've decided to shelve it.
The novelty of the idea and plot does wear off rather quickly when you're having to scrap the same ship over and over again. You could spend an hour scrapping a ship and your total profit would be around £10,000,000 after deductions for shifts, O2, repair kits, etc. Sounds like a lot but when you consider your starting debt is in the region of £1,300,000,000.
The inconsistencies of the physics also get tiresome. If you have a large carbon panel for example, sometimes the grapple will move it no-problem, sometimes it'll fly off into the nether and gets deducted from your profit. Other times it'll seem to be solid lead and impossible to move. Trying to clear smaller objects like computers and storage out of the ship is just a headache, as an object stuck inside the ship will simply move the entire ship rather than extracting the object.
Added to that is the increasing complexity. You started with a ship, then you had to learn how to safely disconnect the fuel, then you have to learn how to decommission reactors, then how to disconnect power generators, etc. Each of these will pretty much insta-kill you which adds another £500,000 to your debt at a time. While it sounds simple enough there doesn't seem to be any consistency; you can disconnect the fuel to make the lines safe but they can still blow up and kill you. You can find a switch to decommission the engines but the switch has no power, so it's useless (and there's no way to reroute any power, that just isn't a thing).
To sum it up, the novelty has worn off, not worth continuing.
Just started on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey after it hit Game Pass. Enjoying it immensely. Seems to have more of an RPG feel to it, with character levels, equipment levels and modding and so on, than previous AC games I've played. Plus the ancient Greek scenery is gorgeous.
I'm unsure if i'll win my current xcom 2 long war of the chosen commander ironman run (i'm in the very end of the game). It's tough. I'll figure it out eventually maybe.
As far as games go i think i'm gonna try out Terra Invicta for the first time. Guess we'll find out how it goes. I heard it was ridiculously complicated esp. with all the different research you can do.
Well terra invicta is a bit odd. Most of it is about grabbing some council members and using them to change the ideology of nations and take control of them or overthrow governments of other ideologies or a variety of things to gain power for your faction.
For instance in my game I took control of the USA through normal means and then pushed popular support in Russia and destabilized the nation to force a coup which led to me taking control of the whole nation and kicking out all the previous owners. Which really boosted space flight ability. Also I control most of the worlds nukes in this game now but I plan to not use them.
However this is only the early part of the game. The end goal is to fight off an alien invasion that enters the solar system.
Basically you maintain control of your countries, build up your space programs, build mining facilities in space and eventually build warships to fight off the aliens.
Black book. Lately I’ve got into it and it’s a cute little card game rpg thing where you play what I think is a russian which. You use the black book to do battle with deamons and go on adventures. It reminds me a little bit of slay the spire but in a completly different feel and setting. It’s very cozy and quite good for comming home from work all tired in the head. I do love old east European folklore and this game id full of it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a relaxing rpg experience with east European mythological flavor.
BrookM wrote: Resident Evil Revelations, just for the sake of it, but it is a poorly ported game, so an utter arse to play on PC.
I recall quite liking RE revelations 2 on the Wii U (or was it switch?) but not so much the first one.
Yeah, the sequel is so much better, it still has poorly implemented controls and an archaic menu system typical of these games, but it looks better and somewhat plays better at least.
Been playing more of Terra Invicta. I feel like Not_Online might actually enjoy this game somehow. It's such a slow burn until you get some decent ships and resource income. It's crazy because in my game the whole world was divided up into the 7 factions but only maybe 3 or so of us have been scary to face (including me, humanity front and i think the academy).
I own canada, usa, the eurasian union (sort of like a worse soviet union in terms of land), turkey, UK, Brazil, iran, a small bit of territory in saudi arabia and other small lands in africa.
Humanity first owns the EU which in this has a lot of the stronger euro nations all combined into it and they have india and maybe other areas.
The academy owns all of china with its massive economy as well as the main control point for japan and its super scary military which is about into the age after the robotics age but only because they dumped all their funding into army tech level, maybe making new armies and little else. Luckily the nation is divided up between 4 factions so the ruler of the nation has only access to one army due to the number of control points out of a max of 4 it can own. Also though it has naval ability nobody else would follow it so it can only send maybe one army after me provided it isn't being blockaded.
This game is an odd one. I feel like i'm learning new things every time i play it. For instance the mega nations with high military tech and good navies are probably best for doing the military work.
Whereas medium military tech nations are probably best doing something else entirely like economy or space travel.
Then there's the low tech, low income nations which i just avoid entirely. I might see if they can become valuable though if you can combine them into a massive super nation but likely not in the case of africa at least. There's maybe a few nations in africa that are ok and honestly latin america, africa and the middle east are usually unstable enough that it'd be tough owning them because they can be easily overthrown if they even have some value.
Funny story on the case of stability because the usa in my game has gotten such low gov't that it is now middling and is considered an anocracy.
Also nukes have been used in the campaign but i only used one in retaliation vs the UK before they were mine and they nuked themselves and then me to be fair. I also nuked africa like 3 times when the aliens were running through it but that's only because you can only really take them out via armies and their army strength was so powerful only nukes would stop em. Also it was africa which had a low economy anyway and they only got nuked in their own territory so i consider it a win. Pretty sure my atrocity meter went up though but i did what needed to be done as the aliens would've taken more and killed more.
Space battles are also pretty fun but i've mostly only had to face the aliens as i'm about the only one with a valid fleet. Humanity First has a ton of small ships but those things aren't too great.
More Cyberpunk 2nd play-through. I made the mistake of completing most of the gigs and side quests too quick and now have to wait around or sleep for Kerry's next quest but been searching Night City with a fine toothcomb and grinding to gain more skill levels all the while Hanako Arasaka herself is waiting at a bar for days, twidling her thumbs for me to finally deign to meet her lol. Just completed Kerry's...2nd quest? And had the selfie with the girl band and found that you can use Goku's strange stance when he's about to fight Vegeta during the DBZ's Saiyan Saga lol so that's fun.
Not playing anything at the moment, as I am in a holding pattern until tomorrow. This time tomorrow, however, I will be directly injecting Persona 5 Royal into my veins via Steam.
More Cyberpunk 2077, mostly continuing exploring the map, scouring the northern badlands right now. I went to visit River Ward and change my clothes and accidentally found this...
Got back into Hunt: Showdown because its spooky season, and that game has a very spooky atmospheric experience. I've got a regular partner in my hunts, but we've been trying to get another of our discord regulars to try it out.
nels1031 wrote: Got back into Hunt: Showdown because its spooky season, and that game has a very spooky atmospheric experience. I've got a regular partner in my hunts, but we've been trying to get another of our discord regulars to try it out.
My friends and I have been playing an absurd amount of Hunt: Showdown at the minute. Love the game. Logged 24.4 hours in the past two weeks according to Steam. I've been experimenting more with different loadouts, using some of the whackier guns. I still prefer duos to trios, it's a very different style of play.
I’m doing solo drops half of the time. With a Long Bow as my main weapon and a Lemat as my side arm. Long Bow can be a one hit kill and its silent, plus ammo can be retreived. I’ve loved the Lemat ever since I saw The Man in Black use it on HBO’s Westworld.
Mainly play as an absolute vulture. Just killing mobs and collecting loot while others fight amongst themselves or the bosses. My last match I came up to the spider being killed and the duo who killed it were laughing about how they were the last folks standing and congratulating each other. I promptly murdered them and took their loot and the boss bounty. Booked it to the extraction point and went up like 15 levels. So much fun!
Got quite the line up to see me through the dark months.
Currently romping through Skyrim (again) with Breath of the Wild, Witcher III and the NES, SNES, Mega Drive and N64 archives from Nintendo Online to plug through.
I should probably crack on with Witcher III or Breath of the Wild though, as I’ve never played those before.
nels1031 wrote: My last match I came up to the spider being killed and the duo who killed it were laughing about how they were the last folks standing and congratulating each other. I promptly murdered them and took their loot and the boss bounty. Booked it to the extraction point and went up like 15 levels. So much fun!
that's too funny. One of the reasons I love the game.
I'm way too much of a wuss for solo. I've played maybe 10 solo games and managed to leg it with a bounty three times. I need to give it another go and just play to kill rather than getting bounties.
I was having a fun old time the other day with a hunting bow and the bornheim with a stock. Only really tried using the bow recently, the sights confused the hell out of me.
Clocked Cyberpunk 2077 this time managing to get Johnny Silverhand to 70% so I stormed Arasaka single handed and it was pretty fun. Slaughtering guard after guard as they cry out how can it be one merc!? All the while my body is deteriorating. Badass.
Not Online!!! wrote: has someone bought Victoria 3 ? if yes, what are your thoughts?
Can't bring myself to buy another paradox game on release.
Been watching some Let's plays. Its... somewhat interesting, but also kinda weird, and I definitely don't have a grasp of all the mechanics.
Was watching quill18 play Canada and he's debating attacking the US because of colonial border gore created by the absorption of native american tribal lands, and a mexican-american war is going on, and the way the game is counting American conscripts as line battalions is making him hesitate. (The two countries looked fairly even on paper, but effectively the US is 300 regiments ahead and steamrolling. At a price of about 9 million pounds (all currency is in pounds), but who knows if the AI has to _really_ care about shortfalls and debt?
The colonialism thing pissed him off because there was nothing he could do about it- the US filled in the 'indian lands' in central Canada at 20x the rate he could, and he couldn't alter the situation in any way.
Wars seem forgone conclusions- you either built up enough military infrastructure before the war which gives you more regiments, you're riding the coat of a powerful ally or overlord, or... you'll simply lose when the war happens. Its primarily an economic and governance game, so a more detached war mechanic makes sense, but it reminds me of some of the worst excesses of early EUIV, where if France decides to crush you, it does.
Economics and trade seem interesting, but there are still moments that player decisions just seem off the table. But some of it is 'build buildings that produce the most expensive products, repeat but stop before you crash the market price, pick next product.' Later you need to build stuff that produces things your better industries need to offset the costs of products that are used by your production, but its a pretty mellow supply/demand loop. Labor force is the big limiter, but it really depends on what country you play. Big populations make for a completely different game, but not necessarily a more interesting one.
Governance is a matter of clicking buttons, waiting for a success chance to proc and not pissing off important interest groups in a way that feels mechanical. (for example, with not entirely real numbers): Land owners will be at -10 and will radicalize if you grant rights to women, so enact workhouses to give landowners +15, then do rights of women and they'll be at +5 and be fine. /shrug. Attitude decay (the +5 will drop over time) makes this slightly more complicated, as will mollifying half-a-dozen groups, but you're essentially picking a playstyle and massaging approval numbers so no groups rebel. First time through, most people will probably make a complete mess of their government. Once people are more familiar with the game, it seems like it will be a solved system.
Bureaucracy, authority and <whatever the diplomatic currency is> seem interesting. Rather than the mana pools of older paradox games, its essentially a budget modified by various factors- tech, buildings, laws, and you can spend it down and alter things on the fly, even go negative (though that brings penalties).
Yeah, I saw it's up for sale now, I looked at the steam page, and it looks interesting, but ...well, it's a Paradox game and I don't wanna put up with them any more. Used to sink hundreds of hours into their games starting with Hearts of Iron 1.
The stuff they pull with DLC though is just a major turn-off which made me keep my hands off their games, which prior to that really enjoyed. Oh well.
So the big update to Age of Empires 4 is out, incuding the two new civilizations. Usually I only ever played HRE so far, but I tried out the Malians now, and they're rather fun to play. Feels much more dynamic than what I usually do. And so many other interesting differences.
Bought RPG Maker MZ with a discount from buying the Humble Bundle. I've been making for fun a game based in the medieval age of my Angaran Chronicles setting. I don't know where it's going, just going to be a small-scale RPG set in a region of a country called Everdeen.
Not Online!!! wrote: has someone bought Victoria 3 ? if yes, what are your thoughts?
I haven't bought it (I was looking forward to it, but can't afford anything right now), but I did listen to a YouTuber that I'd never listened to before trash all over it. He's apparently a fan of Victoria 2, but hates the new game. He talked about grossly simplified systems, teleporting armies, the East India Company involving itself in a war between the US and Mexico (the teleporting armies came up here, given that the East India Company is on the other side of the world), a complete lack of pop-driven actions (something that capitalist pops did in Victoria 2), and more.
Starship Troopers:Terran Command
It's everything a fan of the movie (singular, definitely only one) would hope for.
Shoot bugs, blatant propaganda and you can actually click and find out more!
Wow so i guess nobody on here is playing Terra Invicta. To be fair i'm getting a bit tired of it myself. I've finally got good or at least decent ships that can win fights against the aliens and net me exotic materials.
UV lasers are good at shooting down missiles and not quite as good at destroying incoming projectile weapons (railguns, coilguns, etc). I'm actually liking tier 3 coilguns myself. Generally you know weapons are good when they take a lot of research to get (12.5k or 20k research or so).
I'm also using anti-matter stuff now but only barely. It's ridiculously small in amount.
Aside from all this there's not much else to say about the game. After a long period it gets pretty dull but it's addictive for some reason. I think the space battles when they work and you finally work out how to win becomes extremely fun.
I'm playing lots of Homeworld Mobile. The game is a simplified Homeworld. You command a task group focused around a Hiigaran exploratory vessel (your flagship) that has been assigned to explore the far side of a jump gate leading to a distant galaxy. Your flagship functions as a battle carrier, able to carry squadrons of strike craft, and accompanied by one to three escort craft (frigates and destroyers). Unlike the Mothership of the titular games, your flagship also has an impressive array of weapons, and is typically the most powerful member of your task group. Like the mothership, your flagship can process ore collected by your resource collectors, and turn it into a variety of small ships, parts, and modules. You travel from system to system, complete missions, fight enemy ships, mine asteroids, get loot boxes, and conduct research. When the chat system works properly (more on that below), you have the option to group up with others for difficult missions, and for the special strike missions that reward the opportunity to get some of the best blueprints.
All in all, I'm enjoying it. However...
While the game is very much in a playable state, it's got problems with bugs. For example, when I finish refining ore and want to collect it, I click the Collect button, and am greeted with the usual spinning circle indicating that something is happening. And then the spinning circle goes away, and I get my processed metal. But occasionally, the spinning circle doesn't go away. Instead, the screen essentially freezes. I can leave the screen and do other stuff. But I can't do anything with the refinery. The only way to fix this is to shut down and restart the game.
Two bugs in particular are causing problems. One has a workaround. The other doesn't.
The first is that if you order a strike craft squadron to launch while another squadron is landing, the squadron that you ordered to launch effectively gets "stuck". It stays in your flagship's hanger, and refuses to leave. It stays this way until you leave the current map. Fortunately, most people who've been playing for a while have figured out that so long as you don't tell the squadron to launch while another one is landing, you won't trigger this bug.
The other particularly problematic bug is the chat system. Most of the time when you start the game, the chat channel has a lock icon instead of the speech bubble it's supposed to have. When you get the lock icon, you can't chat. And you can't hear others chatting. You are essentially deaf and mute where the chat channels are concerned. Again, this happens most of the time when you start the game. The only fix for it is to restart the game until the chat works. This in and of itself wouldn't be a terrible thing, except for the strike missions. Strike missions are missions that allow up to three players to join together to tackle a particularly difficult goal - so far, either defending a station or destroying a pirate base. When you want to start a strike mission, you hop into the mission lobby and then send an announcement out to the global channel. Usually, two other people will join you. But if you can't use the chat channels, you can't announce that you're launching a strike. You also can't listen for others to announce strikes. Even worse, if you attempt to enter a strike lobby while your chat is locked, you'll be confronted with the spinning circle of please wait... and the game will stay there. You're effectively frozen, and unable to do anything until you shut down the game and restart it.
Note that brand new players don't have access to the chat channels until several missions in.
Aside from that, I'm having fun. While the combat is nowhere near as complex as that in the Homeworld games, you do have some options. There's a story that effectively acts as an extended tutorial (which leads to one of my complaints about the game; some stuff that I would consider basic gets unlocked awfully late, imo; though since I'm now past all that it no longer matters to me), though it ends abruptly with clear indications that the developers intend to continue it. The game uses a grind system with rare drops to keep you playing (which is one of the complaints that people have about the game; some of the stuff is extremely rare even if you spend tons of time playing the game; if you don't spend much time, you effectively have no real chance of getting any of it). On the other hand, at this time the best stuff is not something that can be obtained by dropping cash. This isn't Diablo Immortal. The only way to get the good stuff is by playing the game.
I've still been playing Hunt: Showdown, the new questlines that have been added for Halloween have been very fun. It's nice to create totally different playstyles. Really changed up the game.
Also started playing a bit of Deep Rock Galactic. The new plaguefall stuff is great fun. I love the gunner's new grenade. Dakka dakka dakka indeed.
Olthannon wrote: I've still been playing Hunt: Showdown, the new questlines that have been added for Halloween have been very fun. It's nice to create totally different playstyles. Really changed up the game.
Yeah I finished the event yesterday. It was a lot of fun. I felt like no quest was too hard. Possibly with the exception of blowing someone up with a red barrel. Though I got lucky with that one. Also the quests kind of taught new players the game. Like yeah, smoke bombs kill immolators and fire is great for dealing with hellhounds. Overall a great game hunt: showdown and a very good event.
Olthannon wrote: I've still been playing Hunt: Showdown, the new questlines that have been added for Halloween have been very fun. It's nice to create totally different playstyles. Really changed up the game.
Yeah I finished the event yesterday. It was a lot of fun. I felt like no quest was too hard. Possibly with the exception of blowing someone up with a red barrel. Though I got lucky with that one. Also the quests kind of taught new players the game. Like yeah, smoke bombs kill immolators and fire is great for dealing with hellhounds. Overall a great game hunt: showdown and a very good event.
Nice one with the barrel, I had the gods of the Bayou very much against me. Trying to blow up meatheads in a solo game, I went 3/4 around the map hitting every compound on only found 2
I had the headshot one as my last challenge and I tells ya I had the worst luck. Amount of times I had someone lined up and they would move half an inch and I'd miss completely. Sod's Law and all that.
I'm planning to pick up Dorfromantik soon, as that looks like a wonderfully pleasant game. Very similar to Islanders if anyone played that. Worth checking out if you want something relaxing.
Finished up DMC5 last night. Pretty spectacular showing. A bit easy in parts, especially right after Elden Ring, but they didn't hold back for the final boss.
Currently I've been playing Minecraft, and Spiderweb Games Avadon. Nothing terribly glitzy, but lots of fun. The former is meditative, and the latter is deep and strategic.
People only seem disappointed in the story which is pretty par for the series. I'm saving it as a Christmas gift Idea for my family but plan to play it as soon as I can.
In the meantime clearing my backlog has brought me to No More Heroes 3. Kind of annoying so much of it is built off of the side game that got largely panned. Curious if I should give it a shot, but probably won't bother. This one is so far pretty fun. Certainly no shortage of creativity on disaplay and the combat is pretty engaging. A bit heavy in the cutscene department though, which is kind of funny given how nonsensical the story is, even by NMH standards.
Six ages ride like the wind. It’s a spiritual successor to king of dragon pass. I came to understand it a bit better by using Ventures differently and realizing how difficult it actually is to produce enough food. The secret is to use the herding venture. Also read some guides on how combat works. It’s needlessly complicated and should have included way waaaay more tooltips. Still a very good game though not as good as dragon pass was.
Picked up Violet over the weekend. 2 gyms, 1 Star, 2 Titans. A little slow going since I'm playing it with my daughter. It's definitely got a good amount of that "ooo, piece of candy" exploration vibe that Nintendo gets so right with its open worlds. There's almost always a Pokemon or TM tucked away when you go exploring and it's just really, really rewarding. I had thought going back to the old catch mechanics would be disappointing after Arceus, but I think it's just having the Pokemon out on the world popping up as little surprises as you explore that makes the difference.
Seems to be a lot of hate among the haters but at the core of it it's FUN in a way that I didn't really feel in Gen 7 or Gen 8 (maybe a bit in the DLC). It helps that so much has been streamlined. You can disable so many text prompts and it flows really smoothly. The new Pokemon are all really fun and exciting to discover. Naming is really on point this gen. Haven't really felt this invested in the franchise since.... Gen 4 probably.
I just finished Persona 5 Royal on PC yesterday, with about 150 hours on the savefile. It was great, but I think I liked P4G more. At least, I liked the characters in 4 more. It probably makes a difference that I went into P4G totally blind when it released on PC, but I already knew a few things about P5R while waiting for it to come out on PC.
Now I'm finally getting around to playing Disco Elysium.
LunarSol wrote: Picked up Violet over the weekend. 2 gyms, 1 Star, 2 Titans. A little slow going since I'm playing it with my daughter. It's definitely got a good amount of that "ooo, piece of candy" exploration vibe that Nintendo gets so right with its open worlds. There's almost always a Pokemon or TM tucked away when you go exploring and it's just really, really rewarding. I had thought going back to the old catch mechanics would be disappointing after Arceus, but I think it's just having the Pokemon out on the world popping up as little surprises as you explore that makes the difference.
Seems to be a lot of hate among the haters but at the core of it it's FUN in a way that I didn't really feel in Gen 7 or Gen 8 (maybe a bit in the DLC). It helps that so much has been streamlined. You can disable so many text prompts and it flows really smoothly. The new Pokemon are all really fun and exciting to discover. Naming is really on point this gen. Haven't really felt this invested in the franchise since.... Gen 4 probably.
Many moons ago I had Pokémon Yellow, and other than Pokémon Go, this is my first foray into it since. It is as you say a lot of fun.
Spent most of Saturday just rampaging about. Today I finished off the last Titan, and another Star base. You definitely benefit from strategising, but it doesn’t feel compulsory, so definitely a very accessible game. I particularly enjoy hitting a new region or environment, and having that “and what are you? Get in the ball!” moment is still a treat.
Lots of very cool designs, but having seen Quaxly’s final evolution, bloody glad I didn’t choose that one, as it’s final form is bloody awful!
I am however struggling to find Fire type Pokémon. Though that sounds like tonight’s self appointed task!
I am however struggling to find Fire type Pokémon. Though that sounds like tonight’s self appointed task!
Fletchling's are everywhere. They start as Normal/Flying but quickly involve into a solid Fire/Flying option. There're definitely others but it kind of depends which way you go.
Personally I think Quaquaval fits the Spanish region quite well. Not my favorite either, but I think all 3 starters have pretty strong designs (though personally I like Meowscarada's middle stage better)
Just discovered Sinistea. As a Brit, a Cup Of Tea Pokémon is right up my street!
But I must now put it down, for it is a school night. Gonna gather some Steel type then go duff up the Fairy Star base tomorrow. After that, raid my boxes for whatever counters Dark Type.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Just discovered Sinistea. As a Brit, a Cup Of Tea Pokémon is right up my street!
But I must now put it down, for it is a school night. Gonna gather some Steel type then go duff up the Fairy Star base tomorrow. After that, raid my boxes for whatever counters Dark Type.
Sinistea has one of the most bizarrely specific forms in the entire franchise for what it's worth. I don't think there's any way to see it in Gen 9, but in Gen 8 when Dynamaxed you can see if the teapot its evolution is in has a seal of authenticity or if it's a forgery.
Fell into the rabbit hole that is Kenshi. I like it overall. Kinda like Rimworld, but less amin-y and more diablo. Slightly buggy here and there but overall a very interesting game. Having slight trouble making my own food, but my base gets raided by bandits every 2 minutes anyway, so I can sell their stuff to buy more food once I got my base back.
with 8+ people in the squad though it does get harder to keep control though.
Finished up No More Heroes 3. It's completely incoherent nonsense but a lot of fun. A couple bosses that were downright bad, but for the most part it was pretty great. Definitely got a chuckle out of the final fight.
Still enjoying planets nu. Childhood game I wanted to play but didn't really have ability(didn't have internet connection back then). Now taking back with vengeance.
One game ended up 3rd with rebel fleet crushing and colonies "mr no talk" not helping by deciding to steal from me couple planets rather than leave me alone so we could focus on the bigger threat of rebels. Facing 2 bigger fleets was just too much and colonies were crushed as well...Those 5 planets REALLY worth it eh? (seriously diplomacy is pretty big part of this game and he had no real reason to attack me if he was really interested in winning the game. I wasn't threat to him but he had no way in hell he could win alone vs rebels. Wouldn't be likely even WITH combining but any chance goes away if it's 3 way free for all fight...In that case my fleet just gets crushed super fast and rebels build fleet faster than colonies will be able to match up)
Other game managed to execute succesfull invasion and am now mobbing up after devastating crystalines. They are now in position to just harash with few remaining warships. No ability to build more. Then me and robots will focus on privateers.
One game it's experienced mentor vs multiple rookies. He's really showing how to build big empire Alone he's matching our combined numbers and he's certainly giving me headache on my side...Hopefully other new players can put pressure as well! I'm facing way too many battleships for my taste.
Plus several games on building stage. One game allied with romulans against privateers. I made some early minor stealing(empire stealing from thieves. The irony) but the romulans one upped it and basically ripped heart ouf of privateers. Now my fleet is trying to rush in trying to catch in fun It will be borgs after that we need to deal with...
Been back playing through Final Fantasy VII: Remake, and well...sometimes it just isn't fun for me. The combat can be frustrating, and after all the crap Square Enix have been pulling, I don't think I'll be buying any of their games in the future, to be honest.
Then i got a bit bored of xcom 2: lwotc mod and got a bit sick too so now i'm mostly resting.
Xcom really has a problem of late game fatigue and boredom.
...does it though? Are you sure that the fact this is your 218th playthrough isn't a factor?
Lol that's very true. Maybe i need something to jazz it up a little. Long War mod is much well....Longer than the normal game. So usually the game is fun but somewhere around facing two to three avenger defenses in a row (sometimes chosen avenger defenses) it becomes really, really tedious and prevents progression at the worst time.
KamikazeCanuck would you or Not_Online be interested in playing a game or two together. Maybe that'll make things more interesting.
Just finished a 2nd playthrough of Cyberpunk and a 3rd run at Disco Elysium. Both of these games I didn't like my characters build the first time through
Lol that's very true. Maybe i need something to jazz it up a little. Long War mod is much well....Longer than the normal game. So usually the game is fun but somewhere around facing two to three avenger defenses in a row (sometimes chosen avenger defenses) it becomes really, really tedious and prevents progression at the worst time.
KamikazeCanuck would you or Not_Online be interested in playing a game or two together. Maybe that'll make things more interesting.
You could take a look at the new Marvel game, Midnight Suns. It's also by Firaxis, and like XCom, it's a turn-based tactical combat game. Unlike XCom, though, it uses a card-based combat system. Given how much time you spend with XCom, it might be worth at least checking out some gameplay videos on YouTube.
I already know you don't want to play Xcom but maybe wh40k: gladius, wh40k: darktide, dawn of war 1 or 2 or barotrauma or Wargame or Total war warhammer 1 or 2 or even Hearts of Iron 4.
@Eumerin: I already know of this game but this time of year is extremely unlucky for me this time as i'm about to lose my job due to being unable to get rides to work anymore very soon. I'm banking on what i already have. Midnight Suns looks a bit cool but i'm a little fatigued on Marvel's entertainment these days. Blade looks really cool though. I always thought he was a much cooler character than Black Panther esp. with aesthetics. I'm a bit unsure about Xcom's never iterations after i played chimera squad. I get they were trying new things but many of them i did not like (except specialty weapons on the black market, breaching and a couple other things).
To be honest i might just play Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden finally. I haven't played that game ever despite even eventually buying it late and adding it to my steam library. There's something about a post apocalyptic future with a foul mouthed Duck Man that appeals to me. I wonder if they'll ever make a sequel. It definitely sounded like it has interesting lore and aesthetics from what i watched.
The Valheim update just dropped, after about 1.5 years of wait. Honestly it seems huge. Put 3 hours into it yesterday and it almost feels more like a paid dlc then it does a content update. Although the game is in early access as a whole so who knows where to draw any lines. Anyway I’ll put a spoiler below for those that want to experience it with no prior knowledge.
The two spoiler free things is that there’s a new biome and fishing is now it’s own skill. The biome spawns in existing servers, but only in unexplored locations. Concerning fish it seems like different biomes now attract different types of fish. You make different types of bait with a caught fish and various trophies. Honestly I found this all kinds of awesome. I think I’ll get deep into the fishing haha. It’s a fun addition to the game.
As for the new biome I strongly recommend going in blind. Otherwise:
Spoiler:
There’s ALOT here. Dwarves are friendly npcs than help you against monsters. But they can turn hostile if you anger them. It’s full of insects as well. Huge scary strong insect enemies of different types. The biggest thing is that magic is now in the game. Magic seems to be tied to what you eat and what staff you equip. Kind of surprised they added magic honestly. I havn’t gotten very far with it though. There’s a bunch of new resources, new things to build, yagluths item is now important and mothers crafting station now has craftable items. Overall I’m kind of astounded at how much stuff they’ve added haha.
Overall I’d say it’s as good of an update as we could hope for. It doesn’t make up for the fact that the game should probably have been out of early access already. But at least they really seem to have given this biome and update their all. I think I’ll spend a lot of time with the new fishing systems.
Cool, I might give Valheim another go then if I can mobilize any friends. I kinda adore Valheim. Not only because I'm a viking with a vast carrots-n-turnip field, not only because we built a huge cathedral, not only because seafaring is GREAT, but also because I realy like the graphics. What a clever way they found to deal with wide areas. Close-up everything looks like on a PS1, or Tomb Raider 2 without a 3d accellerator, but the landscapes look so pretty (and run smooth). Invites ye to go explore the world. Only thing I dislike is that huge effin tree, darkening the sky all the time. I like a good, wide firmament. Anyway, it's a great coop game.
Right, I'm playing AoE4. Now that Team Ranked is a thing we switched to that. I also switched from HRE to Malians, and I'm having a good time. Well, 50% of the time. The other 50% we get beaten by some internet low-lives with bs, basic do-or-die tricks and I get very aggrevated.
I also painted a bunch of Dark Souls boardgame figures again, which means that I have to play Dark Souls (3, this time) on the computer again once the figures were done. Servers are up again! And how much that adds to Dark Souls is really astounding. I mean it's a complete single-player game, but the spirit dudes running around, either making you smile because there's this weird sense of community half the time and the other half of the time making you freak out because you saw a movement at the corner of your eye, thinking it's some nasty enemy. Then there's the messages in this weird, insane language, but some people do really funny things with it, and of course there's invaders. But those are just a minor factor really. Anyway, what a game.
@Stevefamine: Aw, CS:GO. I spent quite some time with that game between its release (fall of 2012, right?) and ...er... 2017 I think? Sometimes I miss being shouted at by men from the balkans.
Been playing the new Warcraft expansion. Its probably the best one they've done in quite a while. It has its downsides (dragon riding is meh- it can be made to not actually suck with all the upgrades, but I'd rather just have normal flying. The centaur zone storyline suffers from multiple JRPG story conventions- in each confrontation when you start to win too much, it jumps to a cutscene where you get forced to 'fail' and set up the next stage of confrontation. Up to the final one, where the main enemy falls over like a chump)
Over all, however, its good, the story is much more coherent and the new crafting system is so much better.
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But... the biggest weakness of Dragon Flight is its release window. Partly I've got a lot of other stuff going on, but the big update and Steam release of Dwarf Fortress just happened and the remake of Master of Magic is next week, and sorry, but WoW's linear theme park just doesn't compare.
Only had a couple hours to delve last night, but I'm loving the new look and interface. They even fixed some of the problems with quantum bins and zones vs locations. Not perfect, but better. And lots and lots of fun.
Made it through my first year, still need to get a temple and tavern established, but just don't have enough hands to do the work required (half my migrants were children, and one adult was missing a leg on arrival- she's been in a hospital bed ever since). Need a crypt as well, though I haven't lost anyone (yet). And I really need to find metals, though I have tons of coal.
A clifftop farm and pasture is my next big plan, carving away at the lower slopes and topping it with a wall, but I definitely need more bodies. And then more yet for a military squad. And a well, which might involve diverting the small stream on the surface. And bedrooms rather than a dormitory. So much to do.
Fine tuning jobs in the new interface is a learning experience, but I'm getting there.
Lol that's very true. Maybe i need something to jazz it up a little. Long War mod is much well....Longer than the normal game. So usually the game is fun but somewhere around facing two to three avenger defenses in a row (sometimes chosen avenger defenses) it becomes really, really tedious and prevents progression at the worst time.
KamikazeCanuck would you or Not_Online be interested in playing a game or two together. Maybe that'll make things more interesting.
You could take a look at the new Marvel game, Midnight Suns. It's also by Firaxis, and like XCom, it's a turn-based tactical combat game. Unlike XCom, though, it uses a card-based combat system. Given how much time you spend with XCom, it might be worth at least checking out some gameplay videos on YouTube.
Yes, I really want to play Midnight Suns but will wait for it to come down in price.
Automatically Appended Next Post: @flamingkillamajig. I tend to spend my video game time playing single player games that go on forever. On the Blood and Wine expansion for Witcher right now that will take like another year to finish…
I've been playing Ixion. Heard it described as Frostpunk (which I haven't played) with a Homeworld plot, and sci-fi survival horror space station management. At an indeterminant point in the not too distant future, you've been put in charge of the Tiqqun (pronounced "tycoon") space station, which was built and owned by Dolos AEC. Tiqqun is equipped with the world's first hyperspace jump drive, and Vanir Dolos, the owner of the company, wants to use Tiqqun to help mankind colonize other worlds. The game opens with you taking command of the station, performing some basic construction of facilities in the interior of one of the station segments (aka the tutorial), and then triggering the drive for it's inaugural test jump to Proxima Centauri.
And if you've seen that one trailer video for the game that's put together like a live broadcast, then you already know what happens.
Oops.
I won't say more to avoid spoiling (even though - again - it's pretty much revealed in a trailer), but the goal of the game is to manage and develop your space station while jumping through various star systems looking for an exoplanet to settle on.
I'm mostly enjoying it. There are some gameplay elements that I find frustrating (particularly the mental stability rating for the population). The accidents mechanic appears to be very bugged right now (and not in a good way). And oddly, the game doesn't have any way to adjust the difficulty. If it were a relatively laid back game, this wouldn't be that big of a concern. But the game generally tries to keep the pressure on throughout. This isn't a game that you're going to chill to. Finally, there were some very important things that the game didn't really say much about, and so I didn't realize they were a thing until it was too late. But the game generally tries to keep the pressure on throughout. The replay value is questionable, though. Not only are there no difficulty levels, but the game is very linear. This game doesn't have any rogue-like elements in it. Once you beat it, you'll have seen everything that it has to offer.
More Ixion. I've made it to Chapter 3. When I jumped in-system, I thought I was in decent shape. I didn't really have a choice at that point since I was running out of materials to harvest in the previous system. But I still felt like I was in decent shape.
And then I belatedly discovered that I wasn't producing as much food as I needed. Oops. That's been taken care of for the moment. Unfortunately, one of my current tasks is to open an additional 2000 cryo pods, so...
Each chapter so far also throws new curveballs at me. The Prologue introduced me to the basics of the game. Chapter 1 is where I actually started playing. Chapter 2 introduced me to system terrain. There was a storm in an out of the way corner of the system that was hazardous to my utility vessels (it will also damage Tiqqun if you travel through it), and a massive cold zone radiating out from one side of the system's primary. The utility vessels don't care about that, but it can freeze Tiqqun's solar panels if you spend too much time in it. And guess where you need to go for one of your objectives...? Chapter 3's curveball is a bit of a surprise, so I won't mention it.
The game has some really glaring but unadvertised "No-brainer decision" sorts of things. The first involves the Tech Lab. When you start the game, the Tech Lab is primarily used for research projects. It can create research points on its own, but the rate is extremely slow (1 point every thirty cycles (days), and you typically need between 30-60 points for a project). Your research is effectively going to rely on what your science ship recovers for you. However, the first lab upgrade changes this to 3 points every five cycles. Then 5/5. And then, after a string of other lab upgrades, 5/3. For the non-math-inclined, those are increases of 1800%, 3000%, and 5000%. You can perform the first upgrade at the end of Chapter 1 (I didn't spot it until the end of Chapter 2, unfortunately), and it makes things *much* easier.
The second is something that I've sort of been aware of, but haven't tried yet. Players have confirmed that it works, though, and I'm pretty sure at this point that it's something that the devs didn't properly think through. The primary way that the game puts a "ticking clock" on you is via hull repairs. You're forced to spend a steady stream of alloys (the metal resource) to keep your hull repaired. In this way, you can't stay in a system forever. You can only stay until the Iron (the mined resource that's refined into Alloys) runs out, and then you're forced to jump to the next system in order to find more iron. However, a number of your buildings generate waste. Early in the game, your buildings that generate waste shut down periodically to jettison it. But after building a specific facility, you can implement a Recycling policy that allows you to gather the waste, instead. The waste can then be used to create other resources - for instance, growing mushrooms. Or turning it into refined resources such as alloys. Further, there are research projects that will cause certain buildings to generate significantly more waste than they otherwise would (or just generate waste period). One of these is the standard residence. With a large enough population, you can turn enough waste into enough alloys to cover all of your hull repair needs. This removes the "ticking time clock" function of hull repairs, and allows you to stay in systems for as long as you want.
Rescued the Dreadnaught in Chaos Gate : Demonhunters.
After about 5 restarts of the mission, I overcame the game bug that makes the Dreadnaught not activate like it should...
Once I got it rolling, it was pretty devastating, but also pretty soft but that's just how this game balances the scales of encounters. That's the first part of the 15$ DLC and it was pretty frustrating because of the bug that's supposed to be fixed this week. I haven't encountered the other parts of the DLC like the additional ship that allows you to go on multiple missions at a time.
I then had the opportunity to recruit a Techmarine but didn't have enough space in my Barracks... Not mad about that, as I knew I chose poorly on my ship building priorities but it sucked as I was looking forward to testing his abilities out. Off to start a new campaign to make the correct choices, and save my game much more frequently! Luckily this game is pretty damn fun.
The plot and visuals are solid, as is the voice acting. But it’s so bloody plodding, and the fights are super repetitive - but also few and far between.
There’s no lock on that I’ve found, so enemies just sort of run past you.
One to watch a play through of, rather than actually, y’know….play through.
I felt that way about the original. It took a very long time to get to where the game clicked for me. Worth it, but definitely lacking an immediate hook. Fairly common problem with modern games sadly. It's on my Christmas list so I'll be giving it a shot in a couple weeks.
Taking a break from Violet after putting a ton of time into it. Probably my favorite Pokemon game at this point, but now I've got a couple weeks to decide what to pick up off my backlog. Funny enough, Witcher 3 has been sitting there, and I keep considering starting it. Might have to give it a try tomorrow once the update launches.
Well, my latest Dwarf Fortress fell to Were-armadillos. I had an Exceedingly Cunning Plan, wherein entrance to the fortress itself required passing through the tavern (and thus various visiting warriors) to cut down on attackers and thieves.
And it worked. Except after the were-armadillo attack, I learned that several of the now-bitten visitors a) were nobles and couldn't be exiled and b) were guests so I couldn't exercise the fine control required to wall them off safely without trapping a bunch of others with them.
And then the potentially infected split off and some went back to the tavern and others to the temple, and I got morbidly curious as to what would happen. Short version: the gore in the new tile-set is quite prolific, and many deaths ensued in the public places of the fort. (And the hallway outside, as someone had left a stone in the door of the temple, so the splatter continued out into the hallway.
More planning is required, but after 40 hours into the game already, a palate cleanser sounded good.
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Cue Octopath Traveler coming up on 60% off sale on steam (due to the release of whatever Final fantasy remake part). Some old-style monster bashing sounded good.
Its pretty fun, though the experience and ability grind is rougher (in terms of numbers required) than it needs to be and class-combos have less customization than they really should.
Just started Mechanicus, as it was on sale. Nice fluff rich turn based tactical thingy. It plays a lot like Blackstone Fortress with the mixture of combat missions and random encounters. The Necrons are nicely deadly to my chaff, and can tank a few hits.
I just watched a video on Vampire: the Masquerade; Bloodlines, so it inspired me to check moddb if there's been an update, and it just so happened Wesp5 had uploaded a new 11.3 patch only a couple of hours ago, so I downloaded that and had a go of a new mod where you play as a member of the Society of Leopold after the main game, which is pretty cool.
More Hunt: showdown. I quite like the new event, though it seems to be crazy long. The blend of challenges and regular points grinding is welcome though.
Very interested in Ixion and think I will buy it tonight. A thank you to all who have written about it in this thread with prose and cons about the game.
Picked up Pentiment after watching Josh Sawyer talk about it from time to time on twitter. Only a bit in but loving the art style and presentation so far.
Ixion. I quite like it. The game falls short as a political simulator. It’s also a bit tedious to manage your space station, space and power have so far been the most limiting factors for me. The interface is a little clunky and I find it really difficult to maximize space. Managing resources is a drag because of how stockpiles work. You can’t send X resource to sector Y. What you need to do is go into resource management, put a high priority on the sector you want to send the resource to, lower the amount of desired resource in the active sector, wait for it to transfer then put the desired amount high again. There’s so many steps and it is clunky. All that said though it really is a very good game. It does feel like a cramped space station. Music is great, the space environments are amazing and Having all your ships out coordinated feels very good. The space theme carries this game and it does so quite well. I like specializing sectors. Like setting up an agri sector, a industrial sector and so on. My next step is going to be an energy sector full of power plants. First I need more food though.
The flaws of this game are mostly apparent if you’ve played other games in the same genre. Overall I’d say it’s very good if a bit tedious and hectic. Think of it as a challenging city sim in space.
Edit: I just found out that the composer for Ixion was the same guy who made the music for Mechanicus. The music is just as good as can be expected.
I have begun the ancient, perplexing art of building Dwarf Fortresses. I poisoned my entire fort when miasma went off in the kitchen, for reasons I still do not understand, and flooded an entirely different fort attempting to secure a water source after the dwarfs fetching water kept being assaulted by badgers.
Miasma from food (and in general) is... odd. Mostly because time in dwarf fortress is odd, and the timer_until_rotting (not actually the name of the variable) for various things is hidden (though a sufficiently deep dive into game files and maybe the wiki can find it).
But the short answer for miasma from kitchens is, the only real way to prevent rot is to have food in bins (or barrels) in a stockpile.
But hauling things is super-low priority for dwarves (though children do it now as a chore, albeit slowly), so unless you have dedicated haulers that ONLY haul things, too many tasks (including automatic background tasks) means they won't get around to it quickly. And as you have more and more stuff (which happens naturally as time goes on and you expand), there's more to haul, and ironically, less gets hauled as you give them more other things to do.
The good news is its easier to set prioritized work now, but it can take some learning of the labor menu.
Sorting out stockpiles properly (don't do 'accept all' stockpiles, except maybe when unloading the wagon) helps as well. Both what they hold and being nearby the relevant workshops for input and output.
So, for example, put a non-prepared food stockpile (no seeds) near the kitchen then a 'prepared meal' stockpile between the kitchen and dining room (which shouldn't be far). Minimizing hauling time helps a little. More work time before the hauler gets distracted by sleep/drinking/eating/praying/random bout of insanity/re-prioritizing/badgers.
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Dealing with DF water physics is definitely its own topic. In general carve a reservoir and overflow tunnel, install flood gates (and link them to levers), seal the dig tunnels off and only then crack the walls and let the water in.
Then hope you can deal with whatever goes wrong, including rocks getting shoved under the floodgates so they won't close.
Flinty wrote: Let us know when it’s caught fire, fallen over them sunk into the swamp
Swamp forts are surprisingly good. Lots of wood, plants to forage and water sources.
I did have a nascent tower fall over when the river thawed (and I built it wrong). But the second time it stayed up!
It got abandoned because I didn't put limits on who was allowed to gather plants, and the farmers guild got larger and larger with demands for a grander and grander guild hall, and effectively turned into an anarcho-syndicalist commune, just staying out in the forest at all times, ignoring the fact that I cancelled all gathering orders, eradicated all fruit gathering zones, set gathering to 'no one do this' and restricted everyone to the defensive burrow.
There were just ~20 odd dwarves gathered around a stepladder under a particular tree. Talking. And plotting.
And then the goblins came. And the dwarves scattered in every direction but the fortress, running and dying in their panicked flight.
I also had a lizardman mob boss come visit my tavern, but he wandered into the river outside the fortress walls, not far from the corpse of the poor dwarf who fell into river while expanding the fishing area inside the walls. (He dug out the wrong square first- ironically I was trying to get him to channel a ramp so people who fell in could get out). The lizard stayed there for years, under the water. Waiting. Possibly for his lieutenant, who quite happily installed himself in the tavern and never left.
There was also the were-iguana that showed up with an artifact armor stand that he left behind after shifting back into a dwarf.
That particular fort became increasingly confusing and inscrutable. I now heavily restrict farming and gathering as a matter of course (gathering is quite dangerous as it takes people outside the fortress, and ties them up on tasks for long periods of time)
Flinty wrote: You should write a novel about your dwarf fortressing. Funniest thing on Dakka
My current one is sadly quite boring, other than the absolute weirdest aquifer I've ever seen. It spanned about 15 z-levels, but wasn't consistent- just spots here and there. Had to change plans on the fly as I kept running into it as I dug stairs and rooms, and had to keep digging and digging to get past. Eventually did a shallow, sprawling fort across a couple upper levels just to get industries up and running. Its cramped and laid out wrong and I hate it.
I've got everything up and running (except soap, which is a pain), well on my way to steel equipment, and had to dig down 100 levels to finally hit a cavern level. Nothing was there. I closed it up after a bit, but with other fortresses, I've opened up caverns to find evidence of sprawling monster brawls- just blood and bits everywhere. Or endless waves of troglodytes (to the point that the monster hunters that came with express purpose of hunting monsters in the caverns eventually gave up and stayed in the open-to-visitors chapel in the fort). This was silent.
I picked a coastal desert on an island between the major civilizations, and I guess its too far from anything. No visitors, no caravans other than my own.
I'm at about the five year mark and the total incidents so far is 2
A child fell into the river while hauling wood (mid-spring, the ice thawed while he was halfway across). Started building a bridge in response. Dunno if they're using it now.
A were-elk arrived around year... 4? Killed some sheep, and caught a peasant out at the fortress entrance. Killed her, but hesitated to go after the dogs I keep at the bottom of the entrance passage to detect thieves. Eventually it turned back into a goblin and left.
Only mystery was that in both goblin and were-elk form, it had the title 'Overlord.' May have to dig around in legends mode and figure out who that is.
Or start over and find a nice swamp in the midst of the all-out war between humans and goblins (their respective settlements are intermingling on the map in an absurdly aggressive way), and see what happens.
Progress! I have turned my fort into a profitable gem mine and jewelcrafting concern, and migrants are arriving each season now. A stoneworker was driven mad by his work, and sadly dehydrated to death within the halls.
My attempts to entomb my fallen dwarf were complicated by the horror other dwarfs felt at the task, and must have been unsuccessful, for a poor, innocent child, barely old enough to be buzzed, was soon possessed and crafted a masterworked leather bracelet.
I got it to the weird and inscrutable point of the game, and it is every bit as perplexing as I had hoped it would be.
trexmeyer, I felt the same way until the new Steam version came out with graphics. It is much, much more approachable.
The graphics are nice, but the big improvement is the UI.
I have no idea what was in the programmer's head when he came up with the keybinds (the old version was basically keyboard only, though you could fight with making a mouse not-really-work). There are still some issues (military squads are still messy, but there were things that if you didn't know, you'd never find).
Tombs are also currently weird. It does work, but learning how it works is like peering into the mind of some sort of Dark Souls entity. The easy way is to treat them like 1x1 bedrooms or cells, pop doors in front of each and use the 'multi' option to create them all at once. Otherwise you're painting each individual square with an installed coffin and that's a pain. And unlike beds (though they prefer bedrooms), dwarves won't utilize an installed coffin until you tell them it is a tomb. They'll just leave their family members to rot on the floor.
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Update on tombs and corpses and things: my current tavern has turned into a strange place. For a bit I had a full demon visiting (who was also 16 years old, which is weird in its own right, as DF demons are immortal and usually spawn at the beginning of time or early in world generation when a civilization breaks into the underworld. He just.. hung out, felt nothing while watching various performances and after a couple months, left. Currently I've got a troupe of naked elven poets hanging out. They have no items, just sheep blood on their feet (they walked through the remains of a cyclops attack from a year back, which left some blood on the ground). Just a troupe of naked poets. One has a book about ears. Sure. I've also got a lot of special undead creatures visiting. 'Sunless ones' and 'faint corpses.' One is a 'wolf woman faint corpse.' Not hostile, just... hanging out, listening to stories, occasionally singing and dancing. There was also a human poet necromancer, but happily he left before one of poets turned out to be a were-coyote. A necromancer animating bits and bobs of dead creatures in the tavern would have turned into a 'fun' pinata.
But a werecoyote incident got me going on corpse disposal, and some of the weirdness. Some human poets (the ones that weren't a werecoyote) were killed, and they got tossed in the refuse pile. Several visiting dwarven poets got killed as well, but were left on the floor, as were the were coyotes (visitors got injured by the first were, and just hung out in the tavern, so I locked everyone in to keep the infection from spreading next month). Turned out I had blocked dwarven corpses from my refuse pile (preferring actual burial for fortress residents), but because these dwarves weren't residents, no one would bury them. So I had to toggle settings on the refuse pile and now there they sit among the cow and dog bones and turtle shells. The werecoyotes were a different problem- the refuse area has no setting for were creatures, and two died as werecreatures, so didn't revert. So they weren't treated as refuse. So I had to create a garbage dump, and mark the corpses (well, one corpse, one skeleton at this point) for dumping. Finally all the corpses are gone.
Still a few teeth and a necklace or two, but someone did come along and mop up all the blood and vomit, so that's nice. It got out of hand, but my tavern this time is on the opposite side of my entrance hall from the fort entrance (with the trade depot in the middle), and nothing is getting past my disturbingly large pack of dogs undetected (even with butchering some of them, there's 20+ dogs in the fortress pack. I started with 3).
Ixion, just finished it. Everything I’ve seen in this thread holds up until the end. It’s a good game with a strong theme. A hectic city builder in space. I enjoyed my time with it. It’s by no means great and suffer from a number of issues. Most notably pacing and very strange research paths. Also garbage is quite simply overpowered since it can make you self sustaining. Or at least it seems to, I’m not going to actually calculate the numbers. It can provide the two resources you need at any rate, which are alloys and water. There’s actually multiple endings. I noticed two and possibly more. If you don’t take the final planet up on its offer you receive a different final goal, one I thought was more interesting. The game as a whole is a recommend but be aware that it’s not smooth and is more carried by it’s theme rather then it’s mechanics
People only seem disappointed in the story which is pretty par for the series. I'm saving it as a Christmas gift Idea for my family but plan to play it as soon as I can.
Follow up on this. Didn't get as much game time as I'd like over the break, but played through most of Bayonetta 3. Haven't yet seen the ending, so I'll comment on that later.
Overall its GREAT. In terms of gameplay its Platinum running on all cylinders. The combat is as fluid as ever and the ability to mix in demon summons mid combat lets you get really creative while not being as complicated as say, Dante's different styles in DMC4/5. The game does a great job mixing in other genres similar to Nier to keep things fresh and definitely shines when it keeps up the momentum. Newcomer Viola has major Nero vibes but is definitely implemented better. She has a dorky charm and rather weak playstyle that keeps her from feeling like she's here to steal the spotlight the way Nero did in DMC4. She's largely won me over, though I'd really love it if her Witch Time trigger was more forgiving.
Now, what I will say is that it's very clear this game was salvaged from a more ambitious design that just wasn't working. The level design clearly has this open world flair to it and there's a bunch of kind of pointless traversal mechanics to explore. This stuff is mostly tedious and feels like busywork. It's particularly bad early on. Big empty spaces reworked into linear levels via some awkward invisible wall placement. You can actually feel as the game goes on things shift to a more focused design and the level design gets notably better.
This kind of extends to the story as well. The inciting incident is the kind of fun you'd expect from the series, but quickly turns numbingly apocalyptic in a way that Bayonetta's character doesn't interact with very well. It's a huge step back from losing Jeanne at the start of 2 and it takes a long time for everything to fall into place, but even then is kind of repetitive. Viola actually helps break things up a lot and probably would have helped if she had been integrated in a little sooner as would an encounter with the villain who is all kinds of generic.
So... yeah. I guess it's a question of what you're looking for in the series. I'll likely have more to say on the story tomorrow once I've finished it, but neither it nor the level design are the best in the series. The gameplay, however, is super fun. I just cleared DMC5 a little bit ago and this tops it pretty easily for me. The speed, weapon design, mix of kaiju elements and regular bits of alternative game mechanics are all fantastic and only get better in the later levels as the game drops a lot of bad ideas in favor of keeping things moving.
Finished it last night. Strong finale. Dumb villain but spectacular fight. Ending was actually quite well done to the point where I'm wondering why the setup was so shaky by comparison. Anyway, quite enjoyed it. I could maybe call it the worst Bayonetta, but that still puts it in the top tier of games I've played overall.
Saw so many comparisons between Ixion and Frostpunk that I decided to pick up the latter during the Steam sale. Took it for a spin. After a few false starts, and getting the hang of some of the mechanics, I sat down for several hours and played through the main scenario. Managed to survive with just over 450 people.
Spoiler:
The news of the oncoming storm caught me off-guard and in a bit of a precarious situation. I started scrambling to get everything taken care of, but didn't do very well. When the storm started, I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to survive it. Fortunately, I had enough time to get the waves of refugees all housed and healthy (though I only retrieved one of the three late-game refugee groups stuck in the Frostlands) though it took me a while to get houses for all of them. Coal production was stabilized just as the storm started, though I had to play with the overcharge early on to get my reserves up. Unfortunately, I ran out of food just before the storm broke. But that turned out to be the very last day, and a single missed day of food won't starve your citizens.
I was quite surprised at how short the main scenario is. Explains why they felt the need to release a special "endless" scenario.
Over the break I've been playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a little bit of Hunt: Showdown and very recently a whole lot of Dorfromantik.
This is the first AC game I have played since 2 but I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought. My wife started playing it when it came out on xbox gamepass and I was pretty impressed. I have a fair few problems with AC:Valhalla but I let a lot of it slide because the bottom line is the immersion is superb and the depth and colour and life that they created in the early medieval period is impressive. It's a great way to show how connected the peoples in this time were. Of course they then ruin that by completely breaking you of your immersion with the ridiculous abstergo modern world crap. I've never understood why they put that in the games when a historical game series would be completely fine.
Dorfromantik might be my new favourite game. I've spent an absurd amount of hours on a game that I've owned for 2 days. It's very peaceful and it's mind numbing in a very good way.
Been doing a multiplayer campaign of WH3 Immortal Empires with one of my gaming buddies.
Its really expanded my love of this game.
He's playing as Karl Franz and I'm Louen Leoncoeur. It was rough going because we were playing on one of the higher difficulties, but I've got Couronne upgraded to tier 4 and have an elite knight army with a supporting peasant army, slowly retaking Bretonnia from Grom. He's got a similar mid/high tier army as well, ready to claw The Empire back from Festus and the Vampire Counts.
Its been a lot of fun, and relatively stable (only 2 crashes in about 50 turns spread over 3 days).
Would be even more amazing with more players that can meet up at similar times.
Also pretty deep into a playthrough of Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters. Almost ready to take out Mortarion. Got a solid crew of 25 grey knights mostly max level.
LunarSol wrote: ... I could maybe call it the worst Bayonetta, but that still puts it in the top tier of games I've played overall.
Yeah, I guess that's a fair assessment of things. I'm just so worried the story may annoy me. I have very, very little patience for stories in video games, and if they try to do hollywood stuff that's a reason for me to give up on it. All I want is to make the little guy on the screen jump around and not fall down holes.
Most of what I tolerate in a video game in terms of story is what I recently saw in the latest Kirby game: Big hole appears in the sky, slurps everything up, Kirby gets in and has to get it all back. Efficient, clar, not annoying and certainly an understandable motivation for the guy in the tv to jump at things and not fal down holes.
Maybe I'll get it, if if gets a PC port and is on sale for less than EUR15,00 some day.
In other news, I played more C&C2, this time online with my brother, and it's pretty good fun.
In other other news, I reinstalled and refamiliarized myself with Elite: Dangerous. What a game. Not necessarily a rush playing it, but being a spaceship captain and being able to do all these things in this HUGE universe is just nice. Lost 2 nights to the game, uninstalled today, because it would ruin my life if I didn't. 5/5*.
LunarSol wrote: ... I could maybe call it the worst Bayonetta, but that still puts it in the top tier of games I've played overall.
Yeah, I guess that's a fair assessment of things. I'm just so worried the story may annoy me. I have very, very little patience for stories in video games, and if they try to do hollywood stuff that's a reason for me to give up on it. All I want is to make the little guy on the screen jump around and not fall down holes.
Most of what I tolerate in a video game in terms of story is what I recently saw in the latest Kirby game: Big hole appears in the sky, slurps everything up, Kirby gets in and has to get it all back. Efficient, clar, not annoying and certainly an understandable motivation for the guy in the tv to jump at things and not fal down holes.
Maybe I'll get it, if if gets a PC port and is on sale for less than EUR15,00 some day.
Well, that shouldn't be a dealbreaker. There's basically no story until the credits roll. Almost every cutscene is some variation of "world ending, so Bayonetta surfs a cruise ship on the wave of destruction" or the villain shows up and says your doom is inevitable before the boss attacks. There's basically no plot. Evil dude wants to destroy the multiverse so you go to alternate realities (that are more like just other cities or time periods really) and fight monsters until you fight a big monster. When people complain about the plot on this one, its mostly because there's no real plot to speak of until the very end.
I could do with more stories in games and less mission tables and collect-a-thons.
Been watching some coverage of Marvel Midnight Suns as it unexpectedly went on sale already, but the amount of busy-work required to get to the next (quite possibly tiny and short) mission is appalling.
Yeah, I hit a pretty hard wall on busywork a few years back. The indie retro era has done a great job providing games with engaging gameplay and level design again and the big budget games I still play tend to carry my attention on raw game mechanics more than anything.
Eumerin wrote: Saw so many comparisons between Ixion and Frostpunk that I decided to pick up the latter during the Steam sale. Took it for a spin. After a few false starts, and getting the hang of some of the mechanics, I sat down for several hours and played through the main scenario. Managed to survive with just over 450 people.
Spoiler:
The news of the oncoming storm caught me off-guard and in a bit of a precarious situation. I started scrambling to get everything taken care of, but didn't do very well. When the storm started, I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to survive it. Fortunately, I had enough time to get the waves of refugees all housed and healthy (though I only retrieved one of the three late-game refugee groups stuck in the Frostlands) though it took me a while to get houses for all of them. Coal production was stabilized just as the storm started, though I had to play with the overcharge early on to get my reserves up. Unfortunately, I ran out of food just before the storm broke. But that turned out to be the very last day, and a single missed day of food won't starve your citizens.
I was quite surprised at how short the main scenario is. Explains why they felt the need to release a special "endless" scenario.
Each scenario is about 20 hours which is the length of a normal game. There's 5 story based scenarios. I'm on the last one now. I really like FrostPunk and glad to hear a 2nd one is coming out.
Each scenario is about 20 hours which is the length of a normal game. There's 5 story based scenarios. I'm on the last one now. I really like FrostPunk and glad to hear a 2nd one is coming out.
That's definitely not the case with the New Home scenario (i.e. the original one). The scenario lasts for
Spoiler:
48 days. And the last week or so of that is basically spent responding to the occasional pop-up while you wait for the storm to blow over.
I can't see it taking anyone twenty hours unless you pause it a lot, and never use the time acceleration.
I’d be curious to know which game you found to be the more enjoyable experience Eumerin. Between Ixion and frost punk that is. Since you played through both so close to one another.
Black book is my comfort game and what I’ve been playing lately. It’s an rpg card game. A little bit similar to slay the spire and baten kaitos. It’s very cozy and filled to the brim with Slavic folklore. Very simple graphics but it’s got a lot of heart and feels like a fairy tale.
Also been playing a bit of necromunda hired gun and don’t starve.
Each scenario is about 20 hours which is the length of a normal game. There's 5 story based scenarios. I'm on the last one now. I really like FrostPunk and glad to hear a 2nd one is coming out.
That's definitely not the case with the New Home scenario (i.e. the original one). The scenario lasts for
Spoiler:
48 days. And the last week or so of that is basically spent responding to the occasional pop-up while you wait for the storm to blow over.
I can't see it taking anyone twenty hours unless you pause it a lot, and never use the time acceleration.
Actually I guess I never use the time acceleration. Too busy stressing about all the problems and see what people are up to.
Nerak wrote: I’d be curious to know which game you found to be the more enjoyable experience Eumerin. Between Ixion and frost punk that is. Since you played through both so close to one another.
Mind you, I still haven't finished Ixion yet. I need to get back on that. And as KamikazeCanuck noted, there are five different scenarios in Frostpunk, and I've only played one (though I suspect that all five have similar atmospheres).
The most apt comparison that I can think of for Frostpunk is that you're standing in front of a dam. Not Hoover Dam, but big enough. Made out of concrete, of course. And if it breaks, bad things happen when the water behind it gets released. You've got a trowel and wet concrete, and are busy patching holes in the dam. But every time you patch a hole, a new one appears. And if you let up on patching the existing holes, new ones will still appear and finally the whole thing will collapse and sweep you away in a torrent of water.
It's a gross simplification, but the overall urgency of the situation is probably about the same.
Ixion has elements of that, but not to the same degree. Early on, things will be tight. But while you're expected to take on refugees (and later awaken the contents of cryopods), *you* get to decide when to do that. You don't have a group of people suddenly show up in your hanger asking whether they can come in *right now*. Instead, you'll be told to pick up a group of people (or cryopods), and then the game will let you arrange the cargo ship(s) to get that done. You could wait an (real life) hour before dispatching those cargo ships, if you wanted, while you gather the resources to build the homes and food production that they'll need. Frostpunk might let you know that the refugees are headed your way. But you can't stall them for an hour. They show up when they show up, and you need to deal with them at that exact moment. While playing New Home, at one point I had dozens of homeless people. They just showed up on my doorstep, and I had to get the homes built as quickly as I could after they arrived. The cryopods in Ixion are even more of an "How do you want to handle this" affair. You bring the pods onto the Tiqqun at your own pace, and then wake them at your pace (there's a morale penalty associated with having too many unopened cryopods, though it was made much less punishing in a patch a couple of weeks ago). Hull repairs are somewhat similar to the generator in Frostpunk, but never to the same degree. Late in the game, the generator in Frostpunk is devouring coal by the wagonloads. While hull repairs get more and more expensive as the game goes on, they never consume to the same degree. That's not to say that you can ignore the refugees and cryopods forever. You do need to leave your current system at some point, and sometimes you'll be required to bring in a certain number of people or pods before moving on. But you get to choose when they board the Tiqqun.
Further, Ixion expects you to get most of your supplies from outside. In Frostpunk, you mostly create your own resources using the facilities that you've built inside your settlement (village, really; I'm not sure if it's possible to get more than 600 residents). Scouts can find supplies elsewhere, and outposts can provide a steady stream of resources each day. But ultimately, you depend on what is being produced within your settlement. Ixion instead expects you to gather your raw materials from outside your "settlement". Your miners will turn asteroids into units of a raw material (say, Iron), which will then get picked up and brought back to the Tiqqun by your cargo ships, where it will be refined into a processed resource (Alloy, in this case). Or you'll retrieve the processed goods using a cargo ship from a "node" in the system that you've explored. The important thing is that outside of your ships is where all of the materials come from. Except food. You grow that. And while you can find food elsewhere (and it's helped me paper over a shortfall a time or two), that's not the primary source. The bulk of your food comes from Tiqqun. You eventually can develop the ability to produce other resources inside the Tiqqun. And as has been mentioned previously, that appears to break the game somewhat.
Also, morale isn't as big of an issue in Ixion. Yes, it's important. And to a certain extent, it works like the temperature in Frostpunk. You'll have constant negative modifiers that you'll need to counteract with positive modifiers. But the pressure (at least so far) isn't to the same degree that the temperature is in Frostpunk.
Finally, there's the length. Both games have a Very Definite Endpoint. But as I noted just a bit ago, Frostpunk (at least for me) was quite short. Ixion is not. While the game has a mild morale penalty if you stay in a system for "too long", the penalty is removed when you jump to the next system. And it's generally worth dealing with the penalty to collect all of the resources that you can before going to the next system. On the other hand, Ixion can start to drag a bit when you're not quite ready to leave a system just yet (which is where I am with the third system right now).
To sum up, Frostpunk pretty much always left me scrambling. You always feel like you're running right along the edge of the precipice, and one wrong step could doom you. There's some settlement-building, but you're heavily constrained by the generator, and the need to stay warm (and to keep from running out of coal). It's also short. Just as I was about to reach the point at which I could take a step back and relax a bit, the game ended (which, really, kind of seems like the point; you got your settlement to the point where things weren't running along the knife's edge, so you've "won" and the game ends).
Ixion isn't quite so urgent. There's always the potential for sudden disaster lurking in the back of your mind. But as the game goes on you develop more and better ways to keep things under control. It also allows you more freedom over when you specifically have to deal with additions to your population (though unlike Frostpunk, many of the people that you bring in are completely non-productive; Frostpunk lets you find a humane use for the children, and eventually lets you put amputees back to work). Resource management and settlement building are much more involved and important than they are in Frostpunk, particularly as you shift resources around between the sectors (which works, but is clunky imo). It's also longer. I don't know exactly how much time I've spent in the third system, or how much longer I'll spend. But I wouldn't be surprised if I spend as much time in that system alone (which, in fairness, will be more time than I spent in the earlier systems) than I did on my playthrough of Frostpunk's "New Home" scenario.
Hope this sheds light. Feel free to ask questions.
Playing Witcher 3 finally with the next gen update. Wasn't actually waiting for it or anything, it just so happened that I cleared most of the other games on my pile of shame and was thinking of getting to it when the update made it an easy pick.
Anyway, combat is pretty weak. Floaty, lacks impact. Also a lot of meandering. I've dozed off once during some boring quest dialog. Also some notable technical hiccups. Novigrad is kind of a mess, with tons of load times and one easily reproduceable crash that apparently isn't new as I found a discussion on it from 2016.
Despite all that, I totally get the appeal of the game. The open world design is remarkably lived in. Quests overlap in really natural ways that you rarely see in any medium. Remarkably little in the way of mindless sidequests too. Most of them are quite involved and do a great job making the encounters feel like something that demands supernatural expertise to extinguish.
So yeah, Witcher 3 is a pretty known quantity by now, but definitely holds up. I am rather glad I played it after the Netflix show though; it provides some solid context behind Yen and Ciri that the game assumes you're fully aware of.
Voss wrote: What does the 'next gen update' actually add?
I saw the announcement but puzzled over what the point was. No content really leapt out at me.
It's mostly just a texture/ray tracing/lighting/4K refresh kind of thing. It looks nicer, but not dramatically so. Apparently, the foliage is nicer and the ground textures have been given an overhaul. It looks nice, but the game always looked nice. It still looks "old" but it's not like modern games are looking all that much better than last gen anyway. There's also some popular mods implemented in the console versions that provide some quality of life improvements as well. I'm honestly not sure what the point was, but these kind of unnecessary upgrades have been all the rage while the industry tries to get the next gen going after the stalled launch.
Ah. That's fair I suppose, the industry is in an odd lull, so I guess this sort of thing is to be expected.
I know I'm looking askance at the upcoming '2023' releases- I'm finding little to be excited about- a lot of Dark Souls-alikes (a genre I don't care about), and a lack of commitment to release dates (probably wise of studios after the last couple years).
I feel like I'm still waiting for 2021 & 2022 games to actually be finished (like bg3, wrath of the righteous and Total Warhammer 3), and anything new is going to require more waiting for much the same reason.
Voss wrote: What does the 'next gen update' actually add?
I saw the announcement but puzzled over what the point was. No content really leapt out at me.
They put a fast travel point at the Bloody Baron's castle
Flinty wrote: Homeworld 3. That is surely enough to make the whole year exciting
Eh. Not my thing. To be honest, I never heard much about the Homeworld series outside people trying to establish 'Nerd Cred' hierarchies. I knew it existed, just burned out on space RTS games long before.
Nerak wrote: I’d be curious to know which game you found to be the more enjoyable experience Eumerin. Between Ixion and frost punk that is. Since you played through both so close to one another.
Mind you, I still haven't finished Ixion yet. I need to get back on that. And as KamikazeCanuck noted, there are five different scenarios in Frostpunk, and I've only played one (though I suspect that all five have similar atmospheres).
The most apt comparison that I can think of for Frostpunk is that you're standing in front of a dam. Not Hoover Dam, but big enough. Made out of concrete, of course. And if it breaks, bad things happen when the water behind it gets released. You've got a trowel and wet concrete, and are busy patching holes in the dam. But every time you patch a hole, a new one appears. And if you let up on patching the existing holes, new ones will still appear and finally the whole thing will collapse and sweep you away in a torrent of water.
It's a gross simplification, but the overall urgency of the situation is probably about the same.
Ixion has elements of that, but not to the same degree. Early on, things will be tight. But while you're expected to take on refugees (and later awaken the contents of cryopods), *you* get to decide when to do that. You don't have a group of people suddenly show up in your hanger asking whether they can come in *right now*. Instead, you'll be told to pick up a group of people (or cryopods), and then the game will let you arrange the cargo ship(s) to get that done. You could wait an (real life) hour before dispatching those cargo ships, if you wanted, while you gather the resources to build the homes and food production that they'll need. Frostpunk might let you know that the refugees are headed your way. But you can't stall them for an hour. They show up when they show up, and you need to deal with them at that exact moment. While playing New Home, at one point I had dozens of homeless people. They just showed up on my doorstep, and I had to get the homes built as quickly as I could after they arrived. The cryopods in Ixion are even more of an "How do you want to handle this" affair. You bring the pods onto the Tiqqun at your own pace, and then wake them at your pace (there's a morale penalty associated with having too many unopened cryopods, though it was made much less punishing in a patch a couple of weeks ago). Hull repairs are somewhat similar to the generator in Frostpunk, but never to the same degree. Late in the game, the generator in Frostpunk is devouring coal by the wagonloads. While hull repairs get more and more expensive as the game goes on, they never consume to the same degree. That's not to say that you can ignore the refugees and cryopods forever. You do need to leave your current system at some point, and sometimes you'll be required to bring in a certain number of people or pods before moving on. But you get to choose when they board the Tiqqun.
Further, Ixion expects you to get most of your supplies from outside. In Frostpunk, you mostly create your own resources using the facilities that you've built inside your settlement (village, really; I'm not sure if it's possible to get more than 600 residents). Scouts can find supplies elsewhere, and outposts can provide a steady stream of resources each day. But ultimately, you depend on what is being produced within your settlement. Ixion instead expects you to gather your raw materials from outside your "settlement". Your miners will turn asteroids into units of a raw material (say, Iron), which will then get picked up and brought back to the Tiqqun by your cargo ships, where it will be refined into a processed resource (Alloy, in this case). Or you'll retrieve the processed goods using a cargo ship from a "node" in the system that you've explored. The important thing is that outside of your ships is where all of the materials come from. Except food. You grow that. And while you can find food elsewhere (and it's helped me paper over a shortfall a time or two), that's not the primary source. The bulk of your food comes from Tiqqun. You eventually can develop the ability to produce other resources inside the Tiqqun. And as has been mentioned previously, that appears to break the game somewhat.
Also, morale isn't as big of an issue in Ixion. Yes, it's important. And to a certain extent, it works like the temperature in Frostpunk. You'll have constant negative modifiers that you'll need to counteract with positive modifiers. But the pressure (at least so far) isn't to the same degree that the temperature is in Frostpunk.
Finally, there's the length. Both games have a Very Definite Endpoint. But as I noted just a bit ago, Frostpunk (at least for me) was quite short. Ixion is not. While the game has a mild morale penalty if you stay in a system for "too long", the penalty is removed when you jump to the next system. And it's generally worth dealing with the penalty to collect all of the resources that you can before going to the next system. On the other hand, Ixion can start to drag a bit when you're not quite ready to leave a system just yet (which is where I am with the third system right now).
To sum up, Frostpunk pretty much always left me scrambling. You always feel like you're running right along the edge of the precipice, and one wrong step could doom you. There's some settlement-building, but you're heavily constrained by the generator, and the need to stay warm (and to keep from running out of coal). It's also short. Just as I was about to reach the point at which I could take a step back and relax a bit, the game ended (which, really, kind of seems like the point; you got your settlement to the point where things weren't running along the knife's edge, so you've "won" and the game ends).
Ixion isn't quite so urgent. There's always the potential for sudden disaster lurking in the back of your mind. But as the game goes on you develop more and better ways to keep things under control. It also allows you more freedom over when you specifically have to deal with additions to your population (though unlike Frostpunk, many of the people that you bring in are completely non-productive; Frostpunk lets you find a humane use for the children, and eventually lets you put amputees back to work). Resource management and settlement building are much more involved and important than they are in Frostpunk, particularly as you shift resources around between the sectors (which works, but is clunky imo). It's also longer. I don't know exactly how much time I've spent in the third system, or how much longer I'll spend. But I wouldn't be surprised if I spend as much time in that system alone (which, in fairness, will be more time than I spent in the earlier systems) than I did on my playthrough of Frostpunk's "New Home" scenario.
Hope this sheds light. Feel free to ask questions.
Ya, Frostpunk is like recreational stress management. Normally, I don't like that kind of thing but it this case it works for me. It's also quite grimdark. Just finished the 5th scenario and what's cool is that all 5 scenarios take place in a "shared universe" for lack of a better term. Some take place before, concurrently and after A New Home so you feel like its one long game. They got a lot out of their mechanics for sure.
Need to look into this Ixion thing if its Frostpunk like. Did it come out after?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Voss wrote: What does the 'next gen update' actually add?
I saw the announcement but puzzled over what the point was. No content really leapt out at me.
It kind of ruined it for me. I was like hundreds of hours in and don't get why they would release a major overhaul to a 7 year old single player game. It changed the controls which obviously - I'm very used to the controls I've been using this whole time and nerfed food which was something I relied on. Basically they made the whole game harder suddenly. That combined with the fact I picked the "wrong" ending in Blood and Wine (Blood and Wine staight up has a right way of doing the main quest and wrong way which is really unusual) made me low key rage quit the whole thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyway, playing "Avengers" right now. Totally getting an Anthem vibe so far. Clearly a visually spectacular game that a lot of hard work went into but I get the feeling the suits said make sure it's some kind of MMORPG or whatever gets the most microtransactions nowadays. The profit must never end! It had this weird jarring opening where it shows you the entire main storyline in cutscenes. I guess cause it's older now and they just want you to get straight in the "Raids".
Fortunately, you can still just choose to play the main storyline that it just spoiled which I'm doing now. So far, I'm liking it.
Ya, Frostpunk is like recreational stress management. Normally, I don't like that kind of thing but it this case it works for me. It's also quite grimdark. Just finished the 5th scenario and what's cool is that all 5 scenarios take place in a "shared universe" for lack of a better term. Some take place before, concurrently and after A New Home so you feel like its one long game. They got a lot out of their mechanics for sure.
Need to look into this Ixion thing if its Frostpunk like. Did it come out after?
Ixion came out just a few months ago.
I think the main thing with Frostpunk is that you don't really have time to get that badly wound up about it. If you fail, you fail quickly. You don't need to worry about stressing out for thirty hours of playtime, and then realizing that everything you did was a waste of time. You get the push from being under pressure, but you don't get it long enough for it to start to feel like a grind. Mind you, as KamikazeCanuck's recent post indicated, apparently some of us are getting shorter playtimes than others of us. Ixion is long, which I think is why I've been reluctant to get back to it. And I really do need to get back and finish it. On the other hand, if you've survived in that game for as long as I have, you probably don't need to worry about failing, either.
And the developer definitely knows that Ixion players are going to take a while. Every 365 cycles (the base in-game time period that is likely just a day with a different name) the AI assistant wishes you Happy New Year, and you hear your population cheer.
Anyway, playing "Avengers" right now. Totally getting an Anthem vibe so far. Clearly a visually spectacular game that a lot of hard work went into but I get the feeling the suits said make sure it's some kind of MMORPG or whatever gets the most microtransactions nowadays. The profit must never end! It had this weird jarring opening where it shows you the entire main storyline in cutscenes. I guess cause it's older now and they just want you to get straight in the "Raids".
Fortunately, you can still just choose to play the main storyline that it just spoiled which I'm doing now. So far, I'm liking it.
I played Avengers for a bit with a group of friends back when it came out . They all dropped away pretty quickly, though I stuck around long enough to play through the two FLC releases that introduced the Hawkeyes. On the other hand, I also didn't put all that much time into leveling up. I don't think I ever reached raid level on any of the heroes.
@Enumerin Well, in Frostpunk I try to see it out until the end. In almost all of my playthoughs it seemed like I had really screwed up but then I persevered through it and pulled it off in the end. Frostpunk is always trying to make you think you've messed up or made the wrong decision no matter what you do. The only time I completely had to start over because it was a disaster was The Fall of Winterhome. When you screw up there the generator blows up in your face...hard to persevere through that...
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Deadnight wrote: Getting the feels to have a go at one of the 'life is strange' games again.
Most extraordinary series I've ever played.
Played the first one and it was quite trippy. Been meaning to get back into some of the other ones.
I started playing Sun Haven, a game that is clearly based heavily on Stardew Valley, but with more of a Japanese theme (anime-looking characters and stuff). It's fun and pretty addictive.
I turn on VaatiVidya videos when I'm driving and those inspired me to replay Sekiro and Elden Ring in piecemeal fashion.
ER's worldbuilding is actually incredible and I daresay between Sekiro and ER, Fromsoft does it better than anyone else. I haven't played Bloodborne or Dark Souls, but based on my reading Bloodborne is incredible and DS is mediocre, but three titles with that level of worldbuilding and, in the case of Bloodborne and Sekiro, narrative, is incredible. Everything ties together so well.
I really dislike the combat system in ER still...mainly because certain weapon arts such as parry provide terrible in game details. Buckler Parry has minimal windup, huge iFrames, and a moderate cooldown while other parries vary. None of this conveyed in game outside of trial and error.
Sekiro's combat on the otherhand is extremely polished and once you get it, you don't forget it.
I one shot the horse boss and Lady Butterfly in a fresh game, but strangely the first Seven-Spears is giving me trouble...this is the one critique I have of the gameplay. It's far too easy for certain bosses to either one-shot or instagib you with multiple, unavoidable attacks if you fail the first dodge/parry in the early game and stangely enough Seven-Spears actually hits harder despite being a miniboss than either Butterfly or the horse boss. The worst part is that I'm 99% sure I actually one-shot him during my first playthrough...
Other than that Sekiro is still my all-time favorite game.
I’ve played a bit of wh40k dawn of war 1 vanilla campaign as well as wh40k gladius with a friend. He chose sisters so I decided to make it fluffy and chose imperial guard. We’ve basically won already as the last 2 enemies (chaos and eldar) have just a few cities left and I’m pumping out a leman Russ per turn. I wonder if the imperial guard will get to use rogan dorns by the time the next unit pack comes out. It’d certainly be fun but not sure how likely.
Then I have my xcom 2 long war of the chosen campaign which only needs be to do the last 2 campaign missions before winning but I’m too bored to finish it. I’m still surprised xcom 3 hasn’t come out yet. Maybe when I get my financial situation figured out I’ll get Midnight Suns. I’m not too big on comic heroes but the ones I’ve seen in the game seem fun.
@kamikaze Canuck and eumerin :
You know I kind of want to get Dune: Spice Wars at some point and I think I heard the frost punk devs made it. Once my financial situation improves maybe some of you dakka dudes would be up to play it. Ofc I think Canuck doesn’t play multiplayer. It’s a shame as co-op vs ai could be fun.
Different devs, unless the Frostpunk devs all bailed on their original development house and started a new one. The Frostpunk devs did make another game I've played - This War of Mine. Though a different game, there are some shared elements between the two.
Seems Goldeneye is coming to Nintendo Online soon.
I’m gonna have to get a bunch of N64 controllers and dust off the boys for Pizza, Beer, Horror Movies and games of Get Coltrane!, a personal Goldeneye Multiplayer variant.
Basically, one player takes Robbie Coltrane’s character. They’re allowed to pick up arms and equipment, but not engage in combat beyond slapping. Taking in turns over timed games, whomever died the least wins, with longest period between deaths the tie breaker.
I’m gonna have to get a bunch of N64 controllers and dust off the boys for Pizza, Beer, Horror Movies and games of Get Coltrane!, a personal Goldeneye Multiplayer variant.
Basically, one player takes Robbie Coltrane’s character. They’re allowed to pick up arms and equipment, but not engage in combat beyond slapping. Taking in turns over timed games, whomever died the least wins, with longest period between deaths the tie breaker.
It’s surprisingly good fun!
That sounds pretty damned cool! It's always fun to play your own little scenarios inside of already made games like that
I’m gonna have to get a bunch of N64 controllers and dust off the boys for Pizza, Beer, Horror Movies and games of Get Coltrane!, a personal Goldeneye Multiplayer variant.
Basically, one player takes Robbie Coltrane’s character. They’re allowed to pick up arms and equipment, but not engage in combat beyond slapping. Taking in turns over timed games, whomever died the least wins, with longest period between deaths the tie breaker.
It’s surprisingly good fun!
We generally always played Licence to Kill with pistols only as our mode of choice. As an aside, if instead of playing Licence to Kill you just turn everyone's health down to zero, there's some neat differences like body armor giving a single hit to surprise someone with.
flamingkillamajig wrote:I’ve played a bit of wh40k dawn of war 1 vanilla campaign as well as wh40k gladius with a friend. He chose sisters so I decided to make it fluffy and chose imperial guard. We’ve basically won already as the last 2 enemies (chaos and eldar) have just a few cities left and I’m pumping out a leman Russ per turn. I wonder if the imperial guard will get to use rogan dorns by the time the next unit pack comes out. It’d certainly be fun but not sure how likely.
Then I have my xcom 2 long war of the chosen campaign which only needs be to do the last 2 campaign missions before winning but I’m too bored to finish it. I’m still surprised xcom 3 hasn’t come out yet. Maybe when I get my financial situation figured out I’ll get Midnight Suns. I’m not too big on comic heroes but the ones I’ve seen in the game seem fun.
@kamikaze Canuck and eumerin :
You know I kind of want to get Dune: Spice Wars at some point and I think I heard the frost punk devs made it. Once my financial situation improves maybe some of you dakka dudes would be up to play it. Ofc I think Canuck doesn’t play multiplayer. It’s a shame as co-op vs ai could be fun.
Eumerin wrote:Different devs, unless the Frostpunk devs all bailed on their original development house and started a new one. The Frostpunk devs did make another game I've played - This War of Mine. Though a different game, there are some shared elements between the two.
flamingkillamajig wrote:I’ve played a bit of wh40k dawn of war 1 vanilla campaign as well as wh40k gladius with a friend. He chose sisters so I decided to make it fluffy and chose imperial guard. We’ve basically won already as the last 2 enemies (chaos and eldar) have just a few cities left and I’m pumping out a leman Russ per turn. I wonder if the imperial guard will get to use rogan dorns by the time the next unit pack comes out. It’d certainly be fun but not sure how likely.
Then I have my xcom 2 long war of the chosen campaign which only needs be to do the last 2 campaign missions before winning but I’m too bored to finish it. I’m still surprised xcom 3 hasn’t come out yet. Maybe when I get my financial situation figured out I’ll get Midnight Suns. I’m not too big on comic heroes but the ones I’ve seen in the game seem fun.
@kamikaze Canuck and eumerin :
You know I kind of want to get Dune: Spice Wars at some point and I think I heard the frost punk devs made it. Once my financial situation improves maybe some of you dakka dudes would be up to play it. Ofc I think Canuck doesn’t play multiplayer. It’s a shame as co-op vs ai could be fun.
Oh yeah got to play that Dune game too. I'm a big Dune fan. So many games. It's RTS though right? I find I'm too old to play RTS anymore. My reflexes are slower than they used to be and my brain addled.
This War of Mine was actually the game I was going to play next. Been wanting to play it for a while and it seems more relevant than ever. Didn't even know it was by the FrostPunk guys but even more interested now.
This War of Mine was actually the game I was going to play next. Been wanting to play it for a while and it seems more relevant than ever. Didn't even know it was by the FrostPunk guys but even more interested now.
Good game. Still dark, though not nearly as bleak as Frostpunk is.
I don't have the expansions, though. The first one added kids which I would prefer not to deal with in this particular scenario (for starters, I don't think they can be done correctly). The story based ones just didn't attract my interest.
I have been really enjoying Returnal on the PS5. Boy is it difficult, and my reactions are obviously too slow at times, but I quite like the way the story is drip-fed to you, and it tries to give you little pick-me-ups upon death, rather than just the cruelty of a game-over screen.
I’m gonna have to get a bunch of N64 controllers and dust off the boys for Pizza, Beer, Horror Movies and games of Get Coltrane!, a personal Goldeneye Multiplayer variant.
Basically, one player takes Robbie Coltrane’s character. They’re allowed to pick up arms and equipment, but not engage in combat beyond slapping. Taking in turns over timed games, whomever died the least wins, with longest period between deaths the tie breaker.
It’s surprisingly good fun!
We generally always played Licence to Kill with pistols only as our mode of choice. As an aside, if instead of playing Licence to Kill you just turn everyone's health down to zero, there's some neat differences like body armor giving a single hit to surprise someone with.
Excellent stuff, we used to do that too! Nervous as hell when you knew the shot coming in would kill you
I pledged for Star Citizen back in the day, so I've been messing around with the Alpha recently. Ambitious game, and what looks like some good stuff incoming maybe when the game finally goes live. But it's an alpha, and you realize it quite quickly when playing.
Surviving the Abyss, the latest Paradox "Surviving" title, has gone into Early Access on Steam. And since there's a discount for people like myself who own the other two Surviving titles, I went ahead and grabbed it. The backdrop for the game is that back in the '50s, some amazing advances in cloning theory were achieved and many attempts were made to clone humans. Unfortunately, all of those attempts failed due to various mutations that hurt the subject's health and caused early death. A vast wave of protests against the inhumane experiments ensued, and cloning experiments were shut down.
Publicly.
The military likes the potential of human cloning. And so in the mid-70s, it has tasked you with establishing and running a new top secret base on the ocean floor over 7km below the surface. Your assignment is to take advantage of the genomes of the ocean life to try and develop better clones. Congratulations! You are now an amoral mad scientist! You're given a handful of employees right at the start of the game, and that's it. Any other employees that you need will need to be created from clones that you create. The game has similar pressures to Frostpunk and Ixion. The other two Surviving titles (each of the three was made by a different developer, btw) are fairly relaxed affairs (usually; I've had at least one playthrough in Surviving Mars when a very unlucky meteor strike ended up wiping out my entire first wave of colonists). This game is not (at least not initially). You never seem to have enough of anything, and once the last of your initial batch of employees are sent down from the surface, the only things you'll get are what you yourself recover or clone (and the clones only have limited lifespans). Complicating matters is that there's no sunlight at that depth. You need to set up electricity-hungry giant light posts to illuminate the darkness, which will allow you access to new resource deposits and places to expand your base buildings.
There's also a couple of other items of note. The first is if - as you were told - you're the first person ever to descend to that depth, then why is there an abandoned research lab already down here? The second is that something keeps emerging from the darkness to attack your bases - something that would cause H. P. Lovecraft to smile in appreciation. I don't know if this is the first survival horror base builder that's ever been made, but it's the first I've ever played. Though since it's a base builder and not an action game, the tone is more suspense and dread than terror.
As I noted, this game is still in Early Access. So the end result might look quite a bit different (and the devs have apparently already acknowledged at least one very prominent - but probably easily fixable - bug in the gameplay) depending on what design choices they make. I played the Surviving the Aftermath demo early on, and own it as a finished product. And while the two still bear a strong resemblance, there are a lot of differences. So it's anyone's guess how Surviving the Abyss will change over time.
Finally, this isn't directly video game related, but does sort of relate to Frostpunk. Yakutia, aka the Republic of Sakha, is a part of the Russian Federation that makes up I'd estimate between one-quarter to one-third of Siberia (any Russian nationals who have better information can feel free to correct my estimate). It's also one of the coldest places in the world. There's a young Yakut woman who posts short videos on YouTube where she talks about what it's like to live in a town where it typically hits -71C in winter (the Alaskan interior generally stays at least 20C higher, and apparently the coldest part of Canada - where it can get just a touch colder - is just across the border). So I thought this might interest some of you who have played Frostpunk. Link here - https://www.youtube.com/@KiunB/videos
Huzzah. Just finished Mechanicus on normal difficulty. A distracting little turn based tactics game.
Once you get 3 or 4 stealthed tech priests, it gets pretty easy. For the final fight I had 5 of them and just took my time wandering up to the big bad bodyguards one at a time before executing them. I was hanging back for the final boss right expecting something wacky to happen after I knocked it down, but no, I just minced the guy.
Recently finished hunting down all of the trophies for God of War Ragnarok. Really solid game. Well written, well acted, fantastic combat, and it looks gorgeous. Some of the sigial arrow puzzles are a little wonky, but that's a minor blemish on what is otherwise an excellent game. I'd highly recommend for anyone that enjoys action RPGs.
I'm playing Tactics Ogre Reborn. I never owned a PSP or PC as a kid so getting able to experience the story from Let Us Cling Together is a real treat. I only ever played the Gameboy prequel back in the day. I'm loving the updated score and all the post-endgame content.
Finished my Sekiro run (Purification) and then NG+ with Shura ending to get the unique Combat Art. I think I did all of NG+ today...I may have started it yesterday, I don't remember exactly. I've been trying to incorporate Combat Arts more into my playstyle. High Monk is wicked for countering sweeps.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Recently finished hunting down all of the trophies for God of War Ragnarok. Really solid game. Well written, well acted, fantastic combat, and it looks gorgeous. Some of the sigial arrow puzzles are a little wonky, but that's a minor blemish on what is otherwise an excellent game. I'd highly recommend for anyone that enjoys action RPGs.
You really thought it was well written? The story seemed atrocious to me, Atreus especially was terrible. Both as a character and his own sections. And Odin, who was meant to be portrayed as intelligent, was stupid in every possible way.
Disco Elysium, so far I managed to survive retrieving my tie from the fan without dying and maintaining my sanity whilst trying to talk to Cuno. This game is going places to say the least.
BrookM wrote: Disco Elysium, so far I managed to survive retrieving my tie from the fan without dying and maintaining my sanity whilst trying to talk to Cuno. This game is going places to say the least.
That game is pretty damn unique. I need to return to it.
Currently doing a Be'lakor campaign in Warhammer 3, bringing all of the Norse tribes and other Chaos legendary lords under my command. Have almost all of Norsca, with Throgg holding out, then I'm going into the Chaos Wastes north and taking out Archaon, Sigvald and Valkia.
been hitting up some Tales of rpgs i had but hadn't actually finished for one reason or another
though given how long it had been since i'd played them, its been fresh start savefiles all around
greenskin lynn wrote: been hitting up some Tales of rpgs i had but hadn't actually finished for one reason or another
though given how long it had been since i'd played them, its been fresh start savefiles all around
Which Tales of ones are you completing? I liked how polished Tales of Arise was in terms of the gameplay, though story wise I think Berseria was still my favourite.
Arise was a really fun one
I just finished a run through of Zestiria, after finally getting over whatever it was back in the day that made me give up part way through (possibly the fact i found the way you leveled gear up to be annoying)
I'm now going through Berseria and having fun while trying to remember why i stopped on this one, cause nothing terrible stands out so far
Some Fallout: New Vegas again with a huge plethora of mods. So many scenario mods especially because I have the entire Someguy2000 series it's a bit overwhelming lol
BrookM wrote: Was gifted Vampire Survivors, which is quite addicting and a perfect thing to play when I've got ten to twenty minutes to kill.
Well.... 30 minutes when you get it down, though the counter doesn't tick up when selecting upgrades so it runs longer than you think.
Still, incredible game. My wife and I both played it to completion on the mobile port which is pretty perfect with no real monetization nonsense.
Haha, I am still quite crap at it, only managed to reach thirty minute mark once so far, insta-death happened. But a lot of fun for a game where all you really do is move about and select upgrades, hoping that the gacha blesses you with the right weapon-item combo.
Just wrapped up playing Plague Tale: Innocence and I can't believe I'd never heard of this series until the game awards. It really harkened back to the classic games of yesteryear with the sluggish camera, check points that aren't instantaneously right before you died, and scarce resource management. Wonderful story, great characters, and the most creepily atmospheric game I've played since Alien Isolation. Already bought the sequel Requiem and will get through it once I platinum the first.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: This War of Mine. Friggin hard. Feels like if you have one bad run then you’re doomed.
Oh man I played that a lot. It’s absolutely brutal and I love it. My first game actually turned into a success but only because all 4 of my characters lay in bed for 5 days straight slowly dying from starvation and disease. One died in the sickbed. I only won because the war actually ended before the rest of them starved. I think this was day 50 or so and others had died prior to that. Since then I’ve nicknamed it depression simulator. Now with kids (in the dlc).
I've been on an interesting run of games. I mostly beat dawn of war 1 vanilla campaign and then stopped and started playing c&c 3 vanilla with the nod campaign and then saw someone suck hard at xenonauts 2 on twitch so i decided to play xenonauts 1 on the same difficulty and i seem to be doing well so far.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: This War of Mine. Friggin hard. Feels like if you have one bad run then you’re doomed.
Oh man I played that a lot. It’s absolutely brutal and I love it. My first game actually turned into a success but only because all 4 of my characters lay in bed for 5 days straight slowly dying from starvation and disease. One died in the sickbed. I only won because the war actually ended before the rest of them starved. I think this was day 50 or so and others had died prior to that. Since then I’ve nicknamed it depression simulator. Now with kids (in the dlc).
My first 2 games went poorly. On my third and it’s going better so far. I got a group of survivors that half of whom have no useful skills but I seem to be getting luckier on the scavenging sites. So far a lot of easy to get resources.
I re-downloaded Warhammer 40,000 Gladius: Relic of War and began a new game as Eldar, again. And it's not going well. It's a 3v3 match but because I was deployed the furthest south two out of three of the enemy factions (Chaos and Orks) have decided to attack me. They've pushed my forces right back to my 2nd city and no matter how many I kill with a small but elite group of troops more and more pour my way. It's made extra frustrating because my NPC allies aren't doing a thing to help me at all (I think the SoBs are slowly heading south, but VERY slowly) Might be my first loss at this rate lol
I'd been on a weird craving for a good JRPG (it's a genre I've not played all that much tbh) for a while, so I'd been looking and looking.
A few months back on my playstation plus, Persona 5 Strikers was up for free. So a couple weeks ago I fired that up. There's so much that I just don't know about that world that this past weekend I picked up Persona 5 Royal and that's basically all I've played this past week.
Still on the first palace, but there's just so much I love about this game. The music in many spots is especially engaging.
I started playing Nioh 2 since it was on sale. I'm about 5 main bosses down, might be six.
There's an optional boss at the start that you're meant to avoid unless you want the challenge, but I'm pigheaded so I did him anyway.
First required boss isn't bad, I think it took 2 tries and I was still learning the combat.
Bosses 2 and 3 (Tornado Yokai and Snake God) sucked, especially the tornado one. Really sucks that you have to farm for healing mats if you run out.
The first human boss was a pushover, it took two tries and only because I whiffed a burst counter and got deleted.
Weasel took 3 tries, but I got him to 5% on the second one, I just ran out of heals and ate too much stupid damage.
Killed him with 4-5 heals left after that.
The combat is really good, mainly because it's complex and intense. There is a lot going on with the Ki Pulses, burst counters, Ki (Stamina) management in regards to blocking vs dodging (which changes based on your stance), and the yokai powers you have access to. Oh, and yokai enemies have specific spots on them that take bonus damage...some are more hittable than others. However, it is absolutely brutal both in your favor if you get your timings down, but also against you if you slip up. It can snowball in either direction quickly.
Right now I'd say it's harder than Sekiro, but I'm only 20 hours in and I still don't Ki Pulse or stance shift perfectly. It's definitely harder than Elden Ring because early game cheese is limited to summoning an AI controlled player avatar and certain situations destroy them instantly. They're useful for clearing the zone en route to a boss, but bosses kill them so fast it's kind of hilarious in a way.
In comparison to Sekiro/Elden Ring
Spoiler:
Your heals are limited (I think cap is 8, I haven't seen a way to increase it)
Nioh 2 has a ton of on use items and weapon imbues, comparable to your options in Elden Ring
Nioh 2 has ranged weapons that you have to use (some enemies are unnreachable) and can 1 shot weaker enemies, but your ammo is limited
Nioh 2 uses stamina (Ki) like Elden Ring, but if you don't Ki Pulse the regen rate is poor and there are in game effects you have to clear via Ki Pulse because they limit stamina regen
Stamina regen does depend on your stats and equip weight
There are a LOT of weapon types and they all have 3 different movesets (High/Mid/Low) with significantly different attack speed, damage, block capability, dodge stamina cost and roll distance
Parries are limited to very specific skills that are unlocked in the skill trees and are not useable against every enemy (i.e. Odachi has a mid stance parry against humans and yokai with melee weapons)
There is a posture system, getting hit when out of Ki breaks posture
Human enemies that are posture broken can be grapple attacked for a large amount of damage
Yokai enemies have to have their Anima and Ki bars depleted to be grapple attacked
There are two types of perilous attacks, grabs and burst attacks. You have to dodge grabs and you can counter bursts. Very similar to sweeps and thrusts in Sekiro, but grabs will hit you for 50%+ of your HP and stagger you
There is no r1 spam, you want to combo light+strong attacks for combos (i.e. Odachi high stance - light attack in strong attack activates Twin Moons skill which is a pair of quick upward slashes)
As a whole, it's like the complexity of Sekiro's combat arts + prosthetics for Katana, but across multiple weapon types
Edit: It's a great game, but I would not recommend it. It's very similar to Souls in the sense that it's a punishing game focused on boss encounters, but the combat has an adjustment period.
I played a bit of Sea of Thieves earlier which I absolutely adore as a game. Not played it for a long time so I was pleasantly surprised by all the updates. I don't do much beyond chase after pigs and chickens to capture.
I have a lot of love for it so glad to get some time in to play again.
Going to give Squad the ol' College Try after having it in my library for however many years.
Always looked neat, but I liked my shooters a bit more 'arcadey' and less sim. But with Insurgency: Sandstorm kind of getting stale, I'll give this a shot.
A few days back I completed my campaign of Gladius: Relics of War with the Eldar. It's a fun game even if it lacks such things as diplomacy like other 4X games. I made sure to wipe out the main enemy factions before doing the "campaign" as the spawning enemies are far easier to take down of I don't have to fight off the Orks etc. Now I've begun an Imperial Guard campaign and it's pretty fun. In contrast to the Eldar I already have a dozen or so squads supported by a couple of Sentinels sweeping through the enemy wildlife.
We are playing Hogwart 's Legacy and my wife, who's much more of a Potterhead than I am, loves it. I admit the presentation and details are spotless, but the first few hours in the school lack conflict and adversity - being bullied by a prejudiced teacher or students for example. Everyone is friendly and helpful and everything goes so smoothly. I got bored. Only now, around Lv10 do we start to encounter some danger and things are getting interesting.
One thing I don't get is the time period chosen. I don't feel the zeitgeist of fin de siecle in UK at all. Students' way of speaking, topics, beliefs and attitudes may as well be placed in modern Hogwart's as far as I am concerned. A wasted opportunity Imho.
Phew, finally survived in This War of Mine. Ironically is was with a weak group of survivors that almost made me want to quit right away but after looking up some strategies I think I've got the hang of it now.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Phew, finally survived in This War of Mine. Ironically is was with a weak group of survivors that almost made me want to quit right away but after looking up some strategies I think I've got the hang of it now.
Congrats! It’s kind of a hard game to beat without guides. Usually the way to go is aiming for being self sustaining by catching mice and growing plants. I find that buying from the sales person Franco is pretty good as long as you only buy basic materials. Like wood and tools. Everything else is crazy expensive and you need so much of the basics anyway.
I bought the new Pokémon game (violet) for my gf and we’ve been enjoying it a lot together. I quite like the concept of open world Pokémon. Havn’t played a Pokémon game since the days of gameboy color I think.
Still plowing through Nioh 2.
The difficulty seems to be front loaded, but trash is still annoying if you aren't careful.
Fists + Ippon Yokai + Brute Counter feels kind of OP, but you still have to time it and manage Ki properly.
One shot a main mission boss (Ryomen Sukuna) blind, but it was close.
More Gladius as the Guard. My allies and I are pushing back the enemy factions quite well now, although, now they're somehow pulling out the top-tier units now which is annoying. But now I have finally had two Lord-Commissars and a Leman Russ which is cool. Enjoying it a lot!
Playing through Kuru Kuru Kururin since its no longer being kept from us. One of those games I remember people being furious wasn't released. Not sure if it would have actually sold well, but its for sure a phenomenal quick little playthrough.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Phew, finally survived in This War of Mine. Ironically is was with a weak group of survivors that almost made me want to quit right away but after looking up some strategies I think I've got the hang of it now.
Congrats! It’s kind of a hard game to beat without guides. Usually the way to go is aiming for being self sustaining by catching mice and growing plants. I find that buying from the sales person Franco is pretty good as long as you only buy basic materials. Like wood and tools. Everything else is crazy expensive and you need so much of the basics anyway.
I bought the new Pokémon game (violet) for my gf and we’ve been enjoying it a lot together. I quite like the concept of open world Pokémon. Havn’t played a Pokémon game since the days of gameboy color I think.
Oh yeah, double Rat Traps is the way to go - that's good eating. If you can grow your own vegetables too then food is not a problem anymore. All the guides say to clear Franco our of wood but I find that parts are the hardest thing to get. Another thing is learning how combat works. If you can clear just 1 site with bad guys it goes a long way.
Wrapped up Dead Space so I can do a new game + and oof, the soldier armour is ugly, shame I can't unequip it. But at least I can try out the other guns now after I did a plasma cutter only run, pretty chuffed that the flamethrower is finally useful now, though disappointed that the pulse rifle is really weak now, ha, only piece of proper military hardware you can use and it pales in comparison to the power tools you find.
HOIV again, achivement hunting:
Did
-soviet onion (aka only puppets as neighbours, in essence a WC)
-We don't like statistics (aka less than 1 mio losses against germany)
-proper gander (x ammount of propaganda campaigns which you'll anyways will do since they are absurdly strong)
I bought Star Wars: Empire at War a while back for cheap on Steam downloaded it and started playing it today. It feels like Star Wars so far, the tutorial is kinda boring, but I think it'll be very fun once I learn how to play it. The space battles seem especially fun, even though I'm more of a ground battles guy.
BrookM wrote: Wrapped up Dead Space so I can do a new game + and oof, the soldier armour is ugly, shame I can't unequip it.
It's biggest problem IMO is being clinical white in a game where everything is grungy. If it were a different color it wouldn't stand out so badly.
But at least I can try out the other guns now after I did a plasma cutter only run, pretty chuffed that the flamethrower is finally useful now, though disappointed that the pulse rifle is really weak now, ha, only piece of proper military hardware you can use and it pales in comparison to the power tools you find.
I was all about the Line Gun in the first game, but the contact beam seems to have a lot of ammo efficiency now. It just gets so much ammo compared to how much it needs to kill anything :/
Pacific wrote: I have been really enjoying Returnal on the PS5. Boy is it difficult, and my reactions are obviously too slow at times, but I quite like the way the story is drip-fed to you, and it tries to give you little pick-me-ups upon death, rather than just the cruelty of a game-over screen.
I’m gonna have to get a bunch of N64 controllers and dust off the boys for Pizza, Beer, Horror Movies and games of Get Coltrane!, a personal Goldeneye Multiplayer variant.
Basically, one player takes Robbie Coltrane’s character. They’re allowed to pick up arms and equipment, but not engage in combat beyond slapping. Taking in turns over timed games, whomever died the least wins, with longest period between deaths the tie breaker.
It’s surprisingly good fun!
We generally always played Licence to Kill with pistols only as our mode of choice. As an aside, if instead of playing Licence to Kill you just turn everyone's health down to zero, there's some neat differences like body armor giving a single hit to surprise someone with.
Excellent stuff, we used to do that too! Nervous as hell when you knew the shot coming in would kill you
So, went back to Dwarf Fortress for a bit of casual building.
Everything going fine, industries falling into place, expanding into a relatively small area of the first cavern layer that could be safely sealed off, was just about done when I decided to mine some gems.
Then I get the message 'Something evil is emerging from this newly exposed pocket.'
Yeah, an eyeless pterosaur was sealed away behind some gems. It also spits webs, because why not?
I didn't even know these pockets of evil were a thing.
So, it kills the miner stone dead in a second (kicked in the head, which exploded into gore), slipped out the last unsealed wall segment (I did manage to get the bridge up in time to keep it outside the fortress... for a bit). Then flew around the caverns and right up my well.
Its now rampaging up the stairwells, slaying as it goes.
Population was 68, and now its dropping like a rock.
Yep. 5 minutes and everyone is dead. Including various cats and a small caravan. (The accompanying diplomat left in a huff because of an interrupted meeting, the lucky git).
It just moved too fast to seal off once it came up the well. Took a grand total of three injuries and briefly passed out when there were two dwarves left, but two of the cuts had already healed to 'dents' by the end.
Finished the main questline of Nioh 2.
Last three bosses took 7 attempts total.
Difficulty is massively frontloaded, but trash mobs are consistently a PITA if you don't pay attention.
Other half is engrossed in Hogwarts Legacy at the moment. I agree with the previous comments that the setting is a bit odd but overall it does seem rather enjoyable.
I'm slugging through Callisto Protocol at the moment. Premise sounds good but the combat system is pretty clunky and unforgiving.
- You have a dodge mechanic but enemy attacks are too quick to really make it any use
- You always seem to walk at a leisurely pace in combat and while you can jog, it doesn't make the combat much easier.
- Ammo and health pickups are pretty rare. You could spend 5-6 rounds to kill a single enemy, but are likely to only pick up 3-4 after killing half a dozen of them. Health pickups are a bit rarer, and you have to perform an animation of around 4-5 seconds to heal which is hard to do in combat.
Decided to give total warhammer 3 immortal empires a spin now that it’s out of beta. And my god the loading times are extreme! It takes me 15 min to load a save file and around 5+min to load a battle. I didn’t at all remember it being this bad with 1 or 2. By comparison the end turn wait isn’t that bad. So the good thing is that things have been shaken around. Seems like every lord has received some sort of change to their start since mortal empires. Whenever the lord has moved or if the starting province has changed or if there’s different enemies around. I like it since it’s similar but changes things up a bit. Going with an old race you enjoyed has different challenges now, which is welcome. Also I love the fact that siege battles are actual cities, not just a wall. They are still wonky though and the supply system simply should not have been implemented. Even so fighting a large battle in a proper city is really cool. Overall I like it a lot. Also the new endgame crisis system adds replay value. My big issue is that the loading times make it almost unplayable. I have it on my hadddrive but I might need to put it on an SSD because this is just ridiculous.
Did you have warhammer 2 on a hard drive or ssd? Because that one also had abysmal loading times for campaigns and battles when it was on a hard drive, at least for me.
Had it on an hard drive as well. It was also bad but not this bad. I guess I should buy a new SSD, my current one probably can’t take total warhammer 3. The game has about half it’s storage capacity
nels1031 wrote: Did the tutorial and first mission in Company of Heroes 3. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this game, I suspect.
Whats your experience with the game in terms of stability, any bugs and overall gameplay?
None that I encountered. This was very limited game time and probably the most polished part of the product, given that its the tutorial and first mission.
I haven't touched it since, because Insurgency:Sandstorm has been popping lately and I was in the midst of a WH3 Dark Elf campaign that was getting intense. I definitely was very leery of the "mixed" score it was getting on Steam.
I only bought it because of the recommendation of a gaming buddy who wanted to play multiplayer. I had somewhat erroneously roped into him into buying Darktide, so I kind of felt obligated to buy it.
I'll probably play some multiplayer this weekend and have a bit more to report.
I adore CoH1, but I only played single player mind you. I played a fair amount of the CoH2 campaign, but did not like it as much. Overly scripted, and often way too much on a too low level (l don't want to have to bother with micro-managing single soldiers picking up item A to use on problem B. That's what we got Commandos or Men of War for.). Hoping for CoH3 to be like the first game again.
So I fired up total warhammer 3 yesternight and clocked it. The game was at a quick save before an important battle. Fromm clicking on the steam icon to starting the battle took 21 minutes. New SSD here I come. So I quit and fired up a different game.
Thea the awakening. I absolutely adore this game. It’s a rough gem that not a whole lot of people talk about. At it’s core it’s a hybrid of and rpg like final fantasy, a 4X like civilization and a card game. It’s kind of like fantasy civilization but at a much smaller scale. You start with a village of 7 people. You must make sure the village has food and lumber. If you lose your village you lose the game. Each person is represented by a card and have skills and abilities. You equip each person like in an rpg. They level up as well and have different jobs with various skill sets. You chose who stays in your village and who goes on explorations You also chose a god at the very start who gets meta progression. Each run levels up the god. When you click on your village it’s a management game. When you explore it’s a hexagonal 4X game. When you get into a challenge like fighting, conversation, magic or hunting it’s a card game. It is rough but I’ve playing it on and off for many years and highly recommend it.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Did you have warhammer 2 on a hard drive or ssd? Because that one also had abysmal loading times for campaigns and battles when it was on a hard drive, at least for me.
SSD fixes the issue completely.
Honestly, i had it now on both SSD and HDD. And for me it did not change a thing atleast for WHTW 3, atleast not so that i wouldn't require a clock to measure it.
Fact is though that loading times are horrendously long, despite having a fixed mappool.
Playing Paradox’s Battletech turn based game. It really scratches the itch. I learned the ropes in one campaign the. Restarted when it became apparent I kept losing too much money. Now I’ve got a heavy Lance that basically cores 1 or 2 light mechs per turn. Marauder and warhammer are great. Quickdraw is utterly gash and a total bullet magnet, but will do until I can find a better alternative.
Flinty wrote: Playing Paradox’s Battletech turn based game. It really scratches the itch. I learned the ropes in one campaign the. Restarted when it became apparent I kept losing too much money. Now I’ve got a heavy Lance that basically cores 1 or 2 light mechs per turn. Marauder and warhammer are great. Quickdraw is utterly gash and a total bullet magnet, but will do until I can find a better alternative.
On that note, I'm excited for Monday. Both Harebrained (the studio behind Battletech) and Colossal Order (the not!Simcity game) are finally announcing new projects. Also a third studio they've set up in Seattle or something (Paradox Tectonic) under a former Sims exec.
And none of them got saddled with Vampire bloodlines 2, apparently.
This is in addition to the already-announced Age of Wonders 4, which is coming out the beginning of May, and looks real good (and a fairly short wait period after its announcement in January, which bodes well)
Flinty wrote: Playing Paradox’s Battletech turn based game. It really scratches the itch. I learned the ropes in one campaign the. Restarted when it became apparent I kept losing too much money. Now I’ve got a heavy Lance that basically cores 1 or 2 light mechs per turn. Marauder and warhammer are great. Quickdraw is utterly gash and a total bullet magnet, but will do until I can find a better alternative.
Hah! Better alternative turned up last night in the shape of an Awesome tonight’s outing should be fun
Flinty wrote: Playing Paradox’s Battletech turn based game. It really scratches the itch. I learned the ropes in one campaign the. Restarted when it became apparent I kept losing too much money. Now I’ve got a heavy Lance that basically cores 1 or 2 light mechs per turn. Marauder and warhammer are great. Quickdraw is utterly gash and a total bullet magnet, but will do until I can find a better alternative.
Hah! Better alternative turned up last night in the shape of an Awesome tonight’s outing should be fun
I really enjoyed it but its eventually you just seem to face Assault lances so you pretty much have to do the same.
That's part of it, but its more that being outnumbered 2-1 (or more with turrets &etc) is standard and evasion simply isn't a defense as the AI blats away at the most vulnerable mech. Only DR and high armor is.
Especially given that 'reinforcements' function rather poorly as sudden map spawns, with good odds that you'll meet them before the actual enemy force.
Basically, expected DLC for the big games, mentioned AoW4 again, and the smaller stuff. But...
Harebrained are doing the awkwardly titled 'Lamplighters Society and the Tower at the End of Time' basically 1930s supernatural X-Com vs (not?)Nazis and monsters.
Also everyone can buy City Skylines and all the DLC all over again, because City Skylines 2 was the big announcement.
Oh, and a preview of the announcement of their upcoming Not-the-Sims game.
Just picked up a free battlemaster. Also small lasers in this game feel a bit like teabagging. You knock over a small or medium mech, you stamp it’s centre torso out with an assault mech, and only after it explodes does the small laser pew pew over the smoking remains
Currently playing as a paladin, because its usually an easy class from what I remember from BG1 + 2.
Quite a bit of interestng mechanics and design choices. Probably just going to mess around with character creation and such and then uninstall, so as not to spoil anything. August release date, I believe.
Hah - In Battletech I picked up a Highlander, and found that an emergency DFA on a scurrying light mech awarded the "Highlander Burial" achievement Nice to see the nods to the fluff in the game.
Was pondering re-subbing to WoW for a bit, but it turns out they're doing a free weekend. So after poking about a bit and doing Darkmoon chores, I... guess I don't need to resub?
I genuinely like the current expansion, but it came out in the face of several releases I was really looking forward to, so I didn't stick around for very long. Being more distanced from Covid mode, I don't really have the interest in signing back up long term for chores.
Voss wrote: That's part of it, but its more that being outnumbered 2-1 (or more with turrets &etc) is standard and evasion simply isn't a defense as the AI blats away at the most vulnerable mech. Only DR and high armor is.
Especially given that 'reinforcements' function rather poorly as sudden map spawns, with good odds that you'll meet them before the actual enemy force.
Basically, expected DLC for the big games, mentioned AoW4 again, and the smaller stuff. But...
Harebrained are doing the awkwardly titled 'Lamplighters Society and the Tower at the End of Time' basically 1930s supernatural X-Com vs (not?)Nazis and monsters.
Also everyone can buy City Skylines and all the DLC all over again, because City Skylines 2 was the big announcement.
Oh, and a preview of the announcement of their upcoming Not-the-Sims game.
I used to like Paradox so much, but I guess there's this big problem with "doing a good job" to an extent that it means that accursed "getting big and rich", which ruins things. Can't play their games any more.
So I started playing Mount&Blade Warband again. Vanilla, even. It's OK fun.
I used to like Paradox so much, but I guess there's this big problem with "doing a good job" to an extent that it means that accursed "getting big and rich", which ruins things. Can't play their games any more.
Pretty sure I didn't follow that.
My biggest problem with the main paradox games is they're largely just real-time spreadsheet simulators. You wait until numbers tick up enough to spend them and then wait some more. But there aren't many meaningful player interactions or decisions to make, so any playthrough feels the same.
The smaller studios they've bought tend to have more interesting ideas, but they aren't always fully baked. For AoW 4 (the one I'm really excited about) there's definitely signs of a well developed game coming, and if its anything like Planetfall, there's going to be a set number of dlc and then the game is complete forever, which frankly I'm up for. Funding everything all at once is a challenge, so discrete dlc for specific gameplay features is fine. Its just main paradox (and cities skylines) tends toward endless minor adjustments of systems that were either unfinished or were working fine (I honestly think a lot of EUIVs systems are worse now than they were years ago).
Lamplighters I'm kinda meh on despite liking Battletech because I'm not found of the modern X-com type games, nor pre-1930s semi-Nazi supernatural noir. Its rather overdone.
I've dusted off Civilization 6 after hearing that Civ 7 is in development.
Its a great game but there are definitely some niggles I'd like to see addressed in Civ 7. (Districts, diplomacy and diplomatic victories are the main ones!!)
Dabbled in DOW in the past, couldn't get into the first one, the 2nd one didn't run right on my machine total disappointment, but I was just looking over DOW3 and in particular the no limit mod, looks like I could get into it, reminds me of BFME. Anyone playing this or the mod?
One added to the Nintendo Online, and a Zelda game I’ve never played before.
Originally released in 2004, it’s an odd mashup of classic top down, 2D gameplay, but lifting the music from the 3D games. Also made in collaboration with Capcom.
Capcom influence I find in the art style and some of the sounds (there’s a distinct whack I recognise from the superb Secret of Mana).
Two dungeons down, and greatly enjoying it. I don’t think it’s gonna be a long game, given it was on Gameboy Advance, but it’s nice to be playing a 2D Zelda after so many years.
I used to like Paradox so much, but I guess there's this big problem with "doing a good job" to an extent that it means that accursed "getting big and rich", which ruins things. Can't play their games any more.
Pretty sure I didn't follow that.
My biggest problem with the main paradox games is they're largely just real-time spreadsheet simulators. You wait until numbers tick up enough to spend them and then wait some more. But there aren't many meaningful player interactions or decisions to make, so any playthrough feels the same.
The smaller studios they've bought tend to have more interesting ideas, but they aren't always fully baked. For AoW 4 (the one I'm really excited about) there's definitely signs of a well developed game coming, and if its anything like Planetfall, there's going to be a set number of dlc and then the game is complete forever, which frankly I'm up for. Funding everything all at once is a challenge, so discrete dlc for specific gameplay features is fine. Its just main paradox (and cities skylines) tends toward endless minor adjustments of systems that were either unfinished or were working fine (I honestly think a lot of EUIVs systems are worse now than they were years ago).
Lamplighters I'm kinda meh on despite liking Battletech because I'm not found of the modern X-com type games, nor pre-1930s semi-Nazi supernatural noir. Its rather overdone.
I'm speaking mainly from a EU/HoI/Crusader Kings player's perspective (I played Cities:Skyline as well.). I loved their AAAA RTS games or what ever they call them (I don't quite agree on each game being the same), but the constant tinkering with the mechanics and DLCs just annoyed the heck out of me. I absolutely agree with you - EUIV worked perfectly fine about one year after release. I have no idea why they kept on messing with it. I also read about their plans for some sort of subscription system and any sort of that stuff or live service stuff deserves to be booted in the nads instantly.
It just feels like they're milking their main games needlessly.
I asume you mean Age of Wonders? If so - Loved 1 and 2, Shadow Magic with the community patch is peak AoW. The third one was a huge disappointment, so I'm not really looking forward to AoW4. And - just like you said - IF it proves to be good Paradox will blart DLC at us constantly, and I don't feel like keeping up with that stuff.
Agreed about Lamplighters. That seems like a pile of a lot of overdone stuff.
Sure, to make it playable I have to set my desktop resolution to 800 x 600 (and even then it plays in a 640 x 480 window!), but it finally works. I'd kill for a modern update of this game.
I have four massive fleets rolling around the Galaxy, taking out (and taking over) one sector at a time.
I used to like Paradox so much, but I guess there's this big problem with "doing a good job" to an extent that it means that accursed "getting big and rich", which ruins things. Can't play their games any more.
Pretty sure I didn't follow that.
My biggest problem with the main paradox games is they're largely just real-time spreadsheet simulators. You wait until numbers tick up enough to spend them and then wait some more. But there aren't many meaningful player interactions or decisions to make, so any playthrough feels the same.
The smaller studios they've bought tend to have more interesting ideas, but they aren't always fully baked. For AoW 4 (the one I'm really excited about) there's definitely signs of a well developed game coming, and if its anything like Planetfall, there's going to be a set number of dlc and then the game is complete forever, which frankly I'm up for. Funding everything all at once is a challenge, so discrete dlc for specific gameplay features is fine. Its just main paradox (and cities skylines) tends toward endless minor adjustments of systems that were either unfinished or were working fine (I honestly think a lot of EUIVs systems are worse now than they were years ago).
Lamplighters I'm kinda meh on despite liking Battletech because I'm not found of the modern X-com type games, nor pre-1930s semi-Nazi supernatural noir. Its rather overdone.
I'm speaking mainly from a EU/HoI/Crusader Kings player's perspective (I played Cities:Skyline as well.). I loved their AAAA RTS games or what ever they call them (I don't quite agree on each game being the same), but the constant tinkering with the mechanics and DLCs just annoyed the heck out of me. I absolutely agree with you - EUIV worked perfectly fine about one year after release. I have no idea why they kept on messing with it. I also read about their plans for some sort of subscription system and any sort of that stuff or live service stuff deserves to be booted in the nads instantly.
The sub service exists. Presumably people use it, but no idea why or if its profitable. It probably does make sense for new players that are only going to play a couple months than drop a game, rather than buy into hundreds of dollars of DLC.
But I know I'd have a hard time getting into the games in their current states- though tomorrow's stellaris DLC does have some interesting ideas (and the return of starting with jump drives, though at a huge cost in starting pops)
I asume you mean Age of Wonders? If so - Loved 1 and 2, Shadow Magic with the community patch is peak AoW. The third one was a huge disappointment, so I'm not really looking forward to AoW4. And - just like you said - IF it proves to be good Paradox will blart DLC at us constantly, and I don't feel like keeping up with that stuff.
That's the opposite of what I said- the DLC model for Age of Wonders Planetfall was a set number (3?) announced with the game and then they full stopped.
They've done a similar announcement for Age of Wonders 4 (2 dlc and 2 content packs), no indication that they'll continue churning past that point. The mechanical systems (provinces, unit defense & damage calculations, some customization aspects) are more Planetfall than AoW3.
Oops, sorry. Let's see what they do with AoW4 then. Maybe it'll be good.
The sub service exists. Presumably people use it, but no idea why or if its profitable. It probably does make sense for new players that are only going to play a couple months than drop a game, rather than buy into hundreds of dollars of DLC.
But I know I'd have a hard time getting into the games in their current states- though tomorrow's stellaris DLC does have some interesting ideas (and the return of starting with jump drives, though at a huge cost in starting pops)
Sure, but if a video game costs hundreds of Euros to get into there's just something wrong there. It's nice that Paradox found their way of running their company, but to me it's just not interesting any more that way, at least not their big four games or so.
One added to the Nintendo Online, and a Zelda game I’ve never played before.
Originally released in 2004, it’s an odd mashup of classic top down, 2D gameplay, but lifting the music from the 3D games. Also made in collaboration with Capcom.
Capcom influence I find in the art style and some of the sounds (there’s a distinct whack I recognise from the superb Secret of Mana).
Two dungeons down, and greatly enjoying it. I don’t think it’s gonna be a long game, given it was on Gameboy Advance, but it’s nice to be playing a 2D Zelda after so many years.
This was a good one! Definitely under appreciated along with the other Capcom Zeldas, though Secret of Mana is a Square game.
One word of warning, don't go for all the heart pieces. There's one that's just a random grind that's absolutely miserable and in no way worth it.
At a super frustrating bit, where you need to use your newly acquired item, and a fan you don’t control, to jump a gap. Except you’ve been given maybe five minutes to figure out this new item and your timings.
Currently in a huff with it, but an otherwise brilliant game.
Started XCom: Chimera Squad. It's a bit odd but I'll give them credit for trying something different. I guess they wanted to get rid of the part in battles where you're not shooting someone but those parts where you're sneaking around or setting up were often some some of the tensest parts of the game. There's nothing scarier than the enemy you haven't spotted yet. Anyway, just wish the bad guys didn't have unlimited reinforcements all the time. That doesn't make sense storyline wise. This time you're the authorities and have control of the city. I mean the first thing police do is usually setup a perimeter...
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Started XCom: Chimera Squad. It's a bit odd but I'll give them credit for trying something different. I guess they wanted to get rid of the part in battles where you're not shooting someone but those parts where you're sneaking around or setting up were often some some of the tensest parts of the game. There's nothing scarier than the enemy you haven't spotted yet. Anyway, just wish the bad guys didn't have unlimited reinforcements all the time. That doesn't make sense storyline wise. This time you're the authorities and have control of the city. I mean the first thing police do is usually setup a perimeter...
I haven't touched Chimera Squad in forever and i'm wondering if you brought that up to summon me like some sort of summoning ritual. My thoughts on Chimera Squad is most of what they did was bad for xcom with the exception of new items, breaching options, a couple characters (the sectoid) and some specialty black market gear you can buy. The game feels easier, less action oriented, most of the characters feel kinda bad, the alternating turns isn't fun, the end-game avatar progress timer is too easy to delay and it just feels worse overall. They gave the viper a completely human voice and the post-advent soldiers are lame this time around. I don't even know how they made the game like xcom 2 but mostly worse. I was really disappointed esp. after we got the nice war of the chosen and fun story missions freeLC.
I heard Marvel's Midnight Suns (sons?) was good but i haven't tried it yet.
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I was playing xenonauts a while but have been either away from gaming or just trying different things.
I played some hearts of iron 4 as the british last night. I think i'm getting the game more. I'm defending France and it's halfway through 1940 and it hasn't fallen. I may have to flee back to the UK soon enough as the germans are just too strong like they were IRL.
Finished the Battletech campaign. Nice wee story, and plenty of opportunity to stomp about in big stompy robots. So now I’m just an average mercenary band, rocking a mech stable that would make House militaries cry
I thinned out my stock of salvaged medium lasers to the tune of 150 and 1m c-bills, and still had over 100 left.
The mercenary mode is better, mostly because it isn't saddled with that story (which isn't what they promised during the kickstarter, which involved picking sides and nuanced morally grey sides, not mustache twirling villains and death camps. It also didn't help that they creatively misinterpreted the paradox forum rules (specifically re: the death camps) to shut down criticism of the story.
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Back on a new Dwarf Fortress. Had a minor undead siege early on, which was fine, but it turned out that several of the monster hunters that had arrived were chilling on the surface.
Specifically, they were enjoying a nice swim in a pond (for months) while the siege was going on. Eventually the undead chased my sheep into the ponds and they finally decided to help out.
I hadn't managed to get any of my animals inside yet, but the geese, yaks and puppies survived. The adult dogs and sheep got slaughtered, however.
Most of the monster hunters later died to an ambush by giant olm-men while I was expanding out into the first cavern layer. The only survivor is a goblin spearman, who saved my miners after an attempt to drop a chunk of ceiling on the invaders went wrong.
I channeled out the wrong area and made a ramp down to the olm-men, who the miners suddenly and inexplicably charged. They killed four of the six before running away.
Two of my ad hoc military died because they didn't pick up any gear before joining the fight, but the goblin showed up to save the day (and both miners)
I now have a nice sealed underground pasture and farm. Need to gear up, train and make some building material before trying the same trick on the second cavern layer.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Started XCom: Chimera Squad. It's a bit odd but I'll give them credit for trying something different. I guess they wanted to get rid of the part in battles where you're not shooting someone but those parts where you're sneaking around or setting up were often some some of the tensest parts of the game. There's nothing scarier than the enemy you haven't spotted yet. Anyway, just wish the bad guys didn't have unlimited reinforcements all the time. That doesn't make sense storyline wise. This time you're the authorities and have control of the city. I mean the first thing police do is usually setup a perimeter...
I haven't touched Chimera Squad in forever and i'm wondering if you brought that up to summon me like some sort of summoning ritual. My thoughts on Chimera Squad is most of what they did was bad for xcom with the exception of new items, breaching options, a couple characters (the sectoid) and some specialty black market gear you can buy. The game feels easier, less action oriented, most of the characters feel kinda bad, the alternating turns isn't fun, the end-game avatar progress timer is too easy to delay and it just feels worse overall. They gave the viper a completely human voice and the post-advent soldiers are lame this time around. I don't even know how they made the game like xcom 2 but mostly worse. I was really disappointed esp. after we got the nice war of the chosen and fun story missions freeLC.
I heard Marvel's Midnight Suns (sons?) was good but i haven't tried it yet.
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Indeed I knew saying I saw some Aliens would summon you. I know you're always on that wall - always watching - always waiting... So far I don't mind it but, ya, I doubt it will have the replayability of the first 2. One of the hybrid soldiers is Australian but only sometimes....
I was just about to buy Midnight Sons but then it turns out you have to have an Xbox Series X and I only got a Xbox One X (Microsoft has the worst naming system ever). Haven't run into that before so looks like it may be time to take the plunge on that.
I am currently playing Pharaoh (a 1999 city building game that followed on from the Caesar titles). I was never able to beat it back in the day but I think I only have three missions left now. They get extremely difficult near the end
After re-watching the excellent Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime, I decided I wanted to find Rebecca's Apartment, which I instantly recognised as the building in the show. I thought I knew where it was, but...I didn't. Tried to look it up online, but I could only find where to start the Gig that allows you to visit the apartment, which is somewhere else. Eventually, I managed to find it, but of course, because I'd completed the quest months ago, the apartment was inaccessible; what a waste of time, lol. I found her shotgun a while back, though. It's amazing that no one out of surely millions of people which walk through that area daily didn't stumble on it over the years after Edgerunners happened. I'm just looking forward to the 1.7 update and the DLC.
Citizen sleeper. Only just started and it’s certainly an interesting one. I really liked the developers previous game in other waters. Even paid for the art book of that game. Citizen sleeper is a role playing game. You’re a ex human robot who’s just escaped eternity of labor. Now you must manage on a new space station while staying away from the authorities. Your body is programmed to fail so you’re also fighting degradation. Also you need to eat and sleep apparently. And you’re being hunted. It’s a really interesting premise with a very immersive feeling. I would recommend it if you have a longer stretch of time to sit down playing.
It's Slay the Spire but in the Touhou setting. Still early access but with a steady stream of updates. Hopefully they'll finish the two remaining playable characters, and maybe add some more music (right now the same tracks for long segments of the game get kind of repetitive).
Bilge Rat wrote: I am currently playing Pharaoh (a 1999 city building game that followed on from the Caesar titles). I was never able to beat it back in the day but I think I only have three missions left now. They get extremely difficult near the end
The original Pharaoh or the remake? I've been wondering how that turned out.
Personally in stellaris i love the new Civic of eager explorers.
Testing an absurd build of beeing a remnant, technocratic and eager explorer. The former two are for Fluff and crunch reasons. Technocrat allows me to not suck so much at science and so does the remnants.
Economy is in shambles though
Personally in stellaris i love the new Civic of eager explorers.
Testing an absurd build of beeing a remnant, technocratic and eager explorer. The former two are for Fluff and crunch reasons. Technocrat allows me to not suck so much at science and so does the remnants.
Economy is in shambles though
Curious about that Stellaris expansion. The prospect of being primitives in space certainly is apealing. Very sci-fi. I’m only missing this one and the toxic expansion. I feel pretty done with Stellaris but might get the expansions sometime in the future.
More citizen sleeper. It’s basically a role playing game and a visual novel being married. Great stuff and good stories. If you’re into sci-fi that is.
Finally keeping a keen eye on dark and darker. Seems to be hunt: showdown the fantasy dungeon crawl version. What I’ve seen seems a little janky but looks like a lot of fun.
Edit: looks like there’s no release date for dark and darker. They’ve previously put it at last quarter of 2023. There’ll be a play test starting April 14 2023. Damn, I was hoping it would be out soon. Will probably forget about it by the time it’s released haha.
Personally in stellaris i love the new Civic of eager explorers.
Testing an absurd build of beeing a remnant, technocratic and eager explorer. The former two are for Fluff and crunch reasons. Technocrat allows me to not suck so much at science and so does the remnants.
Economy is in shambles though
Curious about that Stellaris expansion. The prospect of being primitives in space certainly is apealing.
It doesn't really do that. It gives some nice bonuses at the cost of 10 starting pops, but mostly what it means is hyperdrives, corvettes and research labs are moved into your first 'hand' of research options (and are always available), your first research is a lot further away (because you don't have a free research lab on your planet at the start) and the jump drives mean your ships require a lot of attention and micro, as you can't queue destinations. You have to micro each jump for every construction/science ship or fleet. It gets old real fast.
After the first ~90-100 months (less if you get research bonuses) you can just have hyperdrives and switch over. Keeping some jump ships is useful for cutting across long chains of hyperlanes, but creating weird pocket empires probably isn't a great idea, as you can't mix jump and conventional hyper drives. Its always one or the other (unlike the advanced jump versions, which have jump capability on top of normal movement)
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Interacting with or spying on primitives is more interesting, but it can be buggy (apparently atomic pre-FTL civs have a flat 5% chance of nuking themselves into oblivion every month, which isn't intended (no idea if its been patched) and the event pool is fairly shallow (people are complaining about the plague event frequency)
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Cloaking is pretty much quality of life for science ships (basically no stops on the science train), for fleets... reactions are pretty mixed. I suspect its another 'good for multiplayer, indifferent vs computer' choice.
yeah. The new stuff has some Interesting RP qualities. But realistically a lot of it is questionable. And indeed you start as a late age Primitive but that isn't something that really turns you into a primitive that has a challange. It just gimps your start a tad. Or a lot. Eager explorers is also absurd for some origins and has 4 forms 1 for hives 1 for robots 1 for normal empires and 1 for megacorp and of those 4 the normal one is basically a selfgimp whilest the megacorp one just catapults your science forward. Hive one is positivly absurd in application and origins also don't always work well with it.
Also the three new origins are... ehhhhhh.
One is blatantly broken if you pull it off (forest in the dark, either get a free suprise fanatic purifier civic slot or a free civic slot of your liking, yes you get more than 3 civic slots)
Broken shakels is nice on paper, but i question it's design somehow i can't be authoritharian as an ethics choice yet i can have my own species dominate and exclude the species that fought along my side in the uprising from politics? Seriously? Your telling me that these lot of intelligent species couldn't rally around a demagogue to throw of their shakels but are perfectly fine being excluded from policy making afterwards?
Payback is, either a rush build because free 4k ship is free 4k ship... or diplomatically inclined, but everyone knows the galactic senate is about as usefull as used toilet paper.
If you like stellaris and RP, then yes, the DLC is okay. If you want quality of DLC, then i'd say no.
Doom Eternal. Played a little, it's pretty fun. Maybe it's just my computer, but the graphics are ....okay? Bit cartoony for my tastes. The Chainsaw/glorykill mechanic works for me though.
Dome Keeper. Came suggested to me, so I gave it a go. That's a fun little game.
Grim quest. It’s a small dungeon crawler for smart phones. The game is available on steam but honestly I don’t see any reason to play it on anything other then a smartphone. You crawl through dungeons, kill monsters and get loot. Not much to say but has a nice old school feel to it. Great for killing time when you’re on the bus or tired on the couch. Like a zone out kind of game.
Since Warhams 3 is CTD on startup for me, I needed my Total War fix so I've been playing a Meng Huo campaign in Three Kingdoms.
Been fun, but CA always seems to make the barbarian factions pretty boring by giving them less stuff then the more "civilized" factions. Like no spies, no faction council to unlock stuff, very limited dilemmas.
On a lark I decided to pick up Chrono Trigger while it was on sale on Steam. I know it's basically THE classic JRPG (along with Final Fantasy VII), and that's not really a genre I've ever explored before so I thought, "Why not?" I've been enjoying it immensely, I can see why it's so well loved. I also did pick up Chrono Cross as well in the same sale.
I've been playing Xcom 2: war of the chosen long war of the chosen mod. It was going really well for a while and might be going sort of well still. I'll have to see. I might need more alloys and a good supply of corpses.
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Also am i the only one that played Diablo 4 in this forum during the Beta? Seriously this whole freaking forum was radio silent during that. A friend and i were both pleasantly surprised so far. I played the necromancer and he played most of the classes. Supposedly he didn't like the druid or the barbarian and said that melee damage is much weaker than ranged attacks in this game and necromancer blew the druid out of the water.
ZergSmasher wrote: On a lark I decided to pick up Chrono Trigger while it was on sale on Steam. I know it's basically THE classic JRPG (along with Final Fantasy VII), and that's not really a genre I've ever explored before so I thought, "Why not?" I've been enjoying it immensely, I can see why it's so well loved. I also did pick up Chrono Cross as well in the same sale.
Chrono Cross remains to this day one of my favourite games I've ever played, but I've never played Chrono Trigger and most CT fans don't like CC so take from that what you will.
ZergSmasher wrote: On a lark I decided to pick up Chrono Trigger while it was on sale on Steam. I know it's basically THE classic JRPG (along with Final Fantasy VII), and that's not really a genre I've ever explored before so I thought, "Why not?" I've been enjoying it immensely, I can see why it's so well loved. I also did pick up Chrono Cross as well in the same sale.
Chrono Cross remains to this day one of my favourite games I've ever played, but I've never played Chrono Trigger and most CT fans don't like CC so take from that what you will.
Chrono Cross is a really really great game, its just a terrible sequel to Chrono Trigger. It has almost nothing to do with the original except it IS a sequel unlike the Final Fantasy standalone stories. It takes place in a completely separate part of the world, it doesn't have any returning characters, the art style and battle system is completely different and the only times it ever even references the original is to tell you that after the game all the characters of the first were murdered horribly. Technically the whole thing is just a missing side quest from the original too, but that's a reductive complaint that simplifies the legitimately great story that Cross has to tell.
To me that's the worst part. Cross is great. It's not the pinnacle of its generation (that would be IX followed closely by Xenogears) nor does it surpass the original, but its a game that stands out even among the heyday of its genre as one of the best. It just really didn't need to have any ties to Trigger at all. They add nothing and just come across as mean spirited, leaving you with a feeling that the game knows its inferior and decides to be petty about it. It sucks, because it taints every conversation about the game because its best experienced as its own thing rather than a sequel to Trigger, but its hard to just say that to people asking about it while riding the high that is Trigger.
flamingkillamajig wrote: ...
Also am i the only one that played Diablo 4 in this forum during the Beta? Seriously this whole freaking forum was radio silent during that. A friend and i were both pleasantly surprised so far. I played the necromancer and he played most of the classes. Supposedly he didn't like the druid or the barbarian and said that melee damage is much weaker than ranged attacks in this game and necromancer blew the druid out of the water.
Well, it's Blizzard, and Blizzard have turned from "the surefire one to go with" to "clown, stumbling from one bucket into the next". I know that many people are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Diablo game. At least the ones I know. And they don't care for open betas or demos. Either the game's good at release or not. Maybe. I don't know. Me, I'm having a hard time to get hyped for anything at this point.
flamingkillamajig wrote: ...
Also am i the only one that played Diablo 4 in this forum during the Beta? Seriously this whole freaking forum was radio silent during that. A friend and i were both pleasantly surprised so far. I played the necromancer and he played most of the classes. Supposedly he didn't like the druid or the barbarian and said that melee damage is much weaker than ranged attacks in this game and necromancer blew the druid out of the water.
Well, it's Blizzard, and Blizzard have turned from "the surefire one to go with" to "clown, stumbling from one bucket into the next". I know that many people are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Diablo game. At least the ones I know. And they don't care for open betas or demos. Either the game's good at release or not. Maybe. I don't know. Me, I'm having a hard time to get hyped for anything at this point.
Well to be fair he played the game because he's a small time twitch streamer and he's trying to get bigger and i played during the Free to Play Beta so it's not like i had to give them a dime. I'm still disgusted it's like 70 USD for the game at full price. Most games aren't worth 40 possibly even with all this inflation going on. Of course i say that with GW's price increases for all their models and it's getting absurd. I also imagine Blizzard has burnt good will pretty hard from all groups at this point.
Didn't play it myself, but the coverage I've seen hasn't been terribly impressive (or impressed, to be honest).
The character creation looks amazing. But the game doesn't play that zoomed in so... whatever.
Several of the classes seem to be duds and the sorceress overtuned. And going by WoW, fixing that discrepancy is not something Blizz seems good at anymore.
Areas seem to very wildly from very atmospheric side quests to 'meh.'
The always online with other people in towns and the main world maps (outside of dungeons) is a huge turn-off, and general design is same-old, same-old.
Visually great (especially if you like overly dark areas), but gameplay seems like nothing to write home about.
I may pick it up at some point, but it isn't going to depend on the quality of Diablo 4. Its going to require me getting bored of dwarf fortress, TW3 Chaos Dwarves and Age of Wonders 4 (tho I expect my interest in total war to get completely run over by AoW4) and then Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield being total flops and nothing else coming out in the back half of the year, AND not wanting to go back to anything I already have.
Honestly, the WoW expansion had the same problem. Its fine, but there are just too many other things that have a bigger pull on my attention. Blizz makes fine, average games with high production cinematics for filling time during a pandemic when everything else is delayed, but they make games I'll instantly put down for something more interesting.
nels1031 wrote: Since Warhams 3 is CTD on startup for me, I needed my Total War fix so I've been playing a Meng Huo campaign in Three Kingdoms.
Been fun, but CA always seems to make the barbarian factions pretty boring by giving them less stuff then the more "civilized" factions. Like no spies, no faction council to unlock stuff, very limited dilemmas.
Was a lot of potential in this game.
WH2 is better, especially with mods. WH3 still hasn't fixed basic AI issues that weren't a problem in WH2.
Been playing Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector after getting it on sale on Steam. It's pretty fun, but there are little mechanics that I forget about that can make it frustrating and the damned Gargoyles. The Gargoyles are the epitome of the trope Goddamned Bats.
Adrassil wrote: Been playing Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector after getting it on sale on Steam. It's pretty fun, but there are little mechanics that I forget about that can make it frustrating and the damned Gargoyles. The Gargoyles are the epitome of the trope Goddamned Bats.
Adrassil wrote: Been playing Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector after getting it on sale on Steam. It's pretty fun, but there are little mechanics that I forget about that can make it frustrating and the damned Gargoyles. The Gargoyles are the epitome of the trope Goddamned Bats.
What is it like? Quick look kinda reminds me of Dawn of War.
It's pretty good! Unlike DOW, it's turn-based strategy, which is my jam, don't know if it's yours. It's more like a traditional game of Warhammer 40,000 as you choose your units at the beginning of each game using a points system. It's based just after the War for Baal. It seems to go into a bit of depth about how the Blood Angels deal with the devastation (pun unintended) and their dealing with the influx of the Primaris Marines, but I'm not too far into the story, so don't know how well they deal with those themes. The Voice acting is good, and the characters seem pretty well written so far, but there aren't any cut scenes, just stills and such. Hope this helps.
My friend got me a copy of TW2, and wow is it a lot lot better than the first one. It actually runs better on my old laptop too which is strange. But as a fan of greenskins, all the new changes are very very very appreciated. I'm just amazed how many improvements they made on core mechanics, the game itself seems to play a lot smoother now too.
After playing a greenskins campaign I'm torn between the lizards and skaven next. They both look fun to play.
Playing TW3 and doing an immortal empires campaign with Grom and I'm really liking the cooking mechanic he has and like Makeitorky mentioned, the revamp to the WAAAGH! system since it gives you a lot more to work with and not have to worry about the WAAAGH! armies constantly being out of range of your main stacks.
However, I am starting to hit a brick wall though, as I've unfortunately not even had a chance to start attacking Tor Yvresse since my neighbors keep declaring war on me. First it was the Bretonnians, who I wiped out. Then it was the Wood elves, who all took turns declaring war on me. I wiped them out. Then it was the Empire, followed by like 3 different dwarf factions, Border Princes and then Vampires backstabbed me after breaking their non-aggression pact. I was kind of hoping they would have fixed their war-declaring happy AI, anyone else find that to be incredibly annoying? I can barely catch my breath to regroup before I get into another extended war, especially with factions that send their units halfway across the continent to try and kill me.
Dwarf Fortress again. Very interesting start. By pure random chance my new starting location was on top of an existing cave system, filled with traps and staircases. No sign of any occupants, so I opened up the initial area and disarmed some of the closer traps, sealing some of the mysterious tunnels off.
A brief moment of concern came when one of the dogs encountered a necromancer experiment in forest, but (eventually) she drove it off.
Then a tree fell on a tree cutter, killing her instantly. (which, sadly, is not the stupidest way I've seen a dwarf die, as three in a row at my previous fortress decided to the best way to detail a wall was step into a waterfall and get pushed under water and drown, rather than work the other side where it was completely clear).
Finally I moved into a large space in the caves, which held a nicely terraced set of rooms going down 5 z-levels, which I decided to occupy and turn into bedrooms, a dining hall, with workshops lining the upper level. It looks fantastic, and is a complete departure from how I normally build living areas in DF, so that's fun.
But I finally discovered the occupants of the cave: kobolds. I'd inadvertently managed to seal them off from both my fortress and the surface, so I've been arming and training. They are hostile, so sadly we can't coexist. But its a very neat piece of world gen that basically just happened: this expedition of dwarves just happened to stumble on an existing cavern and move in, rooting out the miserable kobolds who lived there.
(somewhat sadly, the traps were all instantly forbidden the moment I arrived and my dwarves don't seem to trigger them, so this won't be a challenge. But I don't know what else lies below)
There is also another downwards passage that I haven't explored yet, so there may be more to this cave yet.
Flinty wrote: Drums… drums in the deep… make sure you can get out easily
The tunnel did lead down to the cavern layer, with a thin rock slope at the end, 1 tile wide. But... nothing was there, which was a surprise- I'm used to attack forces of ratmen or olm-men waiting on the first cavern level. So, walls went up, and I have a nice safe pasture, farms and water well. Once I sort out bedrooms, I'm going to expand again.
The dozen kobolds died horribly shortly thereafter. None had weapons. A couple had tunics or shirts.
Then a goblin scouting party arrived, and camped out on top of the chalk mound that serves as the entrance to the caves/my fortress (its just chalk, 5 z-levels tall in the middle of a forest).
Sent my squad out and, they got... carried away. Several goblins were just chopped into bits. (in several case a stack of body parts. Left hand, left upper arm, right foot, multilated body. Or legs chopped into several pieces, heads lopped off, the works).
One dwarf was slightly bruised and decided that was grounds for 'losing the ability to stand,' and just slumped on the ground until I got a hospital set up. They were in there for maybe 5 minutes after being diagnosed.
Between the goblins and the traps, I have a lot of junk equipment to sell off to the next set of merchants that show up, but somehow I've got a population of 100 already, and need to sort out keeping them supplied with drink (my food supplies are good to excessive) and also a massive backlog in housing. (I fell behind in that while getting my military up to speed, which I usually neglect. I just need to sort out why they simply won't wear steel boots).
My second biggest issue is with all the pre-dug tunnels and chambers, I've got less stone to work with than I'd like. My fancy trading hall in front of the entrance is only partly built because I've basically run out of building materials.
My mayor is, of course, a necromancer. [This happens a lot, currently. Mostly because necromancers in DF are immortal. If they've been around a while, they pick up skills over extended periods of time, and the elections appear to be based on social skills. So the necromancers consistently win, because they've been practicing conversation skills longer than anyone else. Well, except vampires.]. This one's highest non-social skill appears to be 'Milker.' Because... sure. Immortality of milking cows, makes you just want to run out and master the secrets of life and death for sure.
Took a turn at Hearts of Iron 4 for the first time in a long while. I decided to play as ahistorical Nationalist China. Highlights -
1.) Japan returned control of the nation to the Emperor. This was good news for me as that particular path leads to going to war with the USSR instead of with China.
2.) The USSR had a civil war break out. After several republics broke away (Ukraine, Belorus, Armenia, and a few others down by Armenia), the uprising succeeded, and the Tsar regained his throne.
3.) The entirety of the new Russia ended up as a Japanese puppet.
4.) Yugoslavia went communist, forming the Yugoslavia SFSR. This wasn't the only unusual communist uprising, but it had some repercussions for me much later.
5.) With no threat from Japan, I was able to focus on reuniting China under the KMT banner. And since the USSR wasn't around, Mao didn't have anyone watching his back. Time to get rid of that troublemaker.
6.) While I was dealing with Mao, one of the other Chinese states decided to start the "campaigning" mechanic (I hate it because it's always negative if you're the top dog; they can force you out by using it, but you can't use it to get rid of them). So I issued my ultimatum to the warlords. The two northwestern states joined as my puppets. The other three blew me off. Ma joined my war against Mao, which was initially a mistake since he couldn't properly watch the western border of the communist enclave. They expanded like crazy until I brought in reinforcements and got everything under control. Once they were (mostly) back where they had started, I brought in a couple of new units of light tanks and used them to punch through the communist lines. They fell shortly afterwards, and Mao met his end.
7.) During my war against the communists, they received an unexpected ally - Yugoslavia SFSR decided to enter the war on the side of the Chinese communists. Yugoslavia couldn't actually contribute anything to help in the war, owing to the fact that they were on the other side of Asia (technically in Europe), and had no way to reach me. But when the CCP finally capitulated, Yugoslavia SFSR did as well. So I grabbed the Chinese areas... and then grabbed Yugoslavia too. But I quickly thought better of it, and released it as a puppet. Having anything to do with Yugoslavia proved to be a mistake.
8.) Communists dealt with, I turned to the remaining warlords. Ma was quickly brought fully within the KMT fold, and Sinkiang was following. The group of bandits known as the Guanxi Clique was targeted, and I declared war. It was a slow slog, but much faster than the war against the Communists. They were doomed from the start.
9.) Mid-way through my war against the Guanxi Clique, the British decided to declare war against my Yugoslavian puppets. This automatically brought me in as a co-beligerent, and the British were part of the Allies. When the flurry of messages popped up from various nations at war with the Allies, I hurriedly clicked through them... and missed that one of them was an invitation from the German Reich to join the Axis. Oops. Oh, well.
10.) I finished off the remaining Chinese states, leaving just the Japanese puppets out of my control. At this point, I took stock of the world map. The Allies never actually invaded Yugoslavia SFSR, despite the war declaration. Russia was no longer a Japanese puppet, but it was a member of the Axis. In fact, the only parts of the European continent that weren't part of the Axis were Poland(!), Romania, and Lithuania, which were all part of a Polish-led Falangist alliance that was not at war with the Axis (I didn't check to see whether they were actively siding with the Axis, or just not at war with them). Great Britain led the allies. India was also part of the Allies, but the Japanese had landed troops while I was reuniting (most of) China, and were slowly pushing the Indians and their allies back.
11.) I attempted to send troops into India and Pakistan from across the Chinese border in the north, but the area's a mountainous mess and I bogged down immediately.
12.) Mexico was running rampant through Central and South America.
13.) Other than a brief declaration of war against the Bahaman communists (who started a civil war in the Bahamas), the US did what it always does when the Japanese don't attack the Philipines. It stayed out of the fighting (and was even shipping me arms even after I joined the Axis).
14.) With the Japanese making steady progress in India, the outcome of the Axis vs Allies war was pretty much determined. All that was left was the very long, slow, slog. So I called it quits at that point.
fantastic.
Only played the one on the ship, and that was one boring video game featuring really annoying people.
I've also got a lot of special undead creatures visiting. 'Sunless ones' and 'faint corpses.' One is a 'wolf woman faint corpse.' Not hostile, just... hanging out, listening to stories, occasionally singing and dancing. There was also a human poet necromancer, but happily he left before one of poets turned out to be a were-coyote. A necromancer animating bits and bobs of dead creatures in the tavern would have turned into a 'fun' pinata.
