marelooke

Well, did my yearly "let's see what's up with Star Citizen", and it kinda went like this: Followed YouTuber recommendations, tried some mission, bugged, only 2 of the 3 things i had to destroy spawned. Tried twice, same thing both times, giving up. Fly back to station, land in assigned bay, for some reason get ship impounded because blocking bay(?!). Lost another 5000 or so money getting it back. Then decided to try and loot stuff in a location that got recommended, firstchange my respawn point to nearby station, then fly over there. Server crashes when trying to enter airlock. *sigh* Right, getting late, better go to bed. Another day, let's try that again. Fly over to same place, loot stuff, backpack full, empty on ship. Disconnect. Lost everything in ship inventory. Great. Let's try that again. Fly over again, loot stuff. Don't put stuff in ship inventory because of last time. Try to fly back to station. Get arms stuck in front of face so have to fly using 3rd person camera. Game crashes on landing. Log back in. Am in New Babbage (my initial starting location) instead of the station I set my respawn point at. Lost everything. Loot. Gear. The whole shebang. Give up. Alt + F4. So yeah, "unplayable" about sums it up.

Have you heard of this little game called Factorio? Disclaimer: I will not be held responsible for any fallout (harr harr) of picking up Factorio. (which, incidentally, I've been playing. It contains temporal magic, I swear, makes hours, and even whole days disappear)

All of them are already in the art book that was in the original CE. One a more serious note, I wonder if they're going to mess with the combat. Withcer 1's was arguably more RPG-y, but everything needs Souls-like (or should we start calling that Souls-lite?) combat nowadays, so guess they might try to push the Witcher 3 combat into Witcher 1.

Finished Scorn, well, aside from the branching path The game really does have a very SOMA feel, gameplay wise, and honestly, removing combat wouldn't have been that detrimental to the experience. That said, do not expect the game to be anywhere near as good as SOMA. I feel like having the choice of fighting is probably more of a commentary on how we, humans, interact with anything when given tools. That being, our default instinct is to use the hammer we've been given to hammer in every nail, screw, and bolt we see, rather than considering alternatives. Feels a bit like an inverse Divinity: Original Sin, where in the former it just drives home how non-interactive most games are by giving us options we won't even consider since we're so conditioned by "mainstream" games being so...restrictive, while Scorn in a sort of similar vein makes fun of our tendency to assume any tool we are given must be used, because that's how we are conditioned. "Surely if they give me a gun, they intend for me to shoot things?" Personally I thought Scorn was a decent game, the atmosphere was great, the environmental storytelling was pretty decent (I got the gist of what was going on, at least). The puzzles are good, not too easy, not too frustrating, at least for me (well, except one, that I knew how to solve, since it was just a harder version of an earlier one, but I just couldn't be bothered). That said, I'm not a puzzle guru, so those among us that eat puzzle games for breakfast will likely think them trivial. Level design is pretty great. Most levels are like a giant puzzle, and that is kind of a neat idea. Unfortunately the level wide puzzles are rather restrictive, so just interacting with everything will eventually get you where you need to be. There's also enough variation in enemy density between levels that dealing with enemies didn't start feeling like a chore. Combat was functional. Some more details in the spoiler box, no real story spoilers, but some combat/enemy related ones. As for a conclusion, I'm not sure if it's worth the full asking price, maybe if they hadn't cut those two entire chapters, but the game, imho, isn't deserving of the hate it's getting. If you go in with the right, or no, expectations it's a rather good, but short-ish (took me 6.9hours according to Steam, but my actual playtime is probably a bit shorter), horror game. I'd probably score it a 6/10 or so, worth picking up on a sale, if you're into these types of games.

More Scorn, I've obtained the second weapon (so to speak) and so far I've been able to avoid all combat. Not a game to finish in one sitting for sure, kinda need my breaks in-between the puzzles.

Been playing a bit of Scorn myself, though my issue is the save system. On the 2nd puzzle I took a bit of a risk and died. Had to redo the whole section. Yeah, that's not fun. The save system is bad, at least snapshot after each completed part. On the topic of combat. I've seen it claimed you don't actually have to fight anything. If I can get past the annoying save system I might see how true that is...

They could revisit V in the next game, I wouldn't mind that. Lots of people wanted a more happy ending. One thing that does annoy me about most of them is that they are basically a set up for future content, barring one (or two, depending on how you count) ending they are all fairly open ended in a way and leave CDPR the option of bringing V back. Now I wouldn't really mind that necessarily, but given that there's only going to be one DLC the thread of V's story is likely to be left where it's at. Heh, try having that one while Weren't the numbers of refunds stated during some investor call or leaked at least for Steam or something? From what I recall there weren't all that many and I would be entirely unsurprised if most of them were on last gen (where they never should've released the game, most of the really harsh criticism came from that direction)

Getting near the end of my 2nd Cyberpunk playthrough, trying to get the Autojock achievement but having some trouble finding whatever the last few cars are that I need. Maybe the messages from the fixers that are supposed to sell them are just coming really slow (I'm done with each and every Gig, just some NCPD callsigns and Sinnerman left) Also poking some at Conan Exiles, seeing whether their claims of being able to finish the battlepass easily within the timeframe are true. For sure the whole thing is a bloody nuisance though. It's an annoying list of chores and every day you get a few "boosters" that "multiply" the XP individual chores give you by 10x. Meaning that without those boosts it'd be one hell of a slow boring slog. Additionally it also means that if you want to optimize you only want to use the boosts on the high xp chores. Btw, I haven't bought the battle pass, just to make that clear. I'm just going through the free track.

I thought that was a given? I was just r/patientgamer-ing for that one Unfortunately I know just enough German to make some of it out... (also Scooter, that was a name I hadn't heard in ... decades) Skyrim, a terribly optimized game built on a terribly optimized engine performs terribly on terribly underpowered hardware. Wow, I'm sure nobody saw that coming

I'm particular to the Quadra Type-66 personally, the Avenger for city driving and the Javelina for the Badlands, though I do enjoy the Shion as well. That is, unless I need to be somewhere fast, then I just use a motorcycle since you can pretty much ignore traffic with them. Usually a Brennan Apollo with a mod so I can pick the skin, which is almost always this one:

You can rather easily accidentally kill people with blunt weapons, not sure if that goes for fists too. Haven't seen it with non-lethal pistols (well, except that one time I shot someone and they fell in water, and promptly drowned. Oops.) Moreover, and this is something I think is outright idiotic: unconscious bodies you drop in containers etc count as "dead" as far as "no killing" objectives are concerned. So you can't really hide knocked out bodies on those missions if you want to get the bonus... As for stealth not mattering, there's gigs that have, potentially, rather different outcomes if you do them non-lethally, and just shooting everyone can lock you out of peaceful resolution, and at least once, out of additional rewards, on some gigs entirely. Many gigs are also related in some way or other, so actions in one can have consequences in another. Generally I go by what I know, the objective, and my moral compass, and a bit based on my backstory. (eg. my corpo V was a lot more indiscriminate with killing off of gang members, while my city kid mostly left Valentinos alive where possible) Scavs are getting shot though, unless explicitly told not to, every time, all the time. They tweaked something about the settings in the last patch, I think they increased visual fidelity on certain default settings, so that might be why.

Yeah, agree. Apparently they're worried about carry-over items, or quest items getting carried over and that breaking things. Personally I'm mostly interested in the progress, so I'd be more than happy with them just retaining that and stripping all the gear, or adding some limitations for the first act or somesuch. I do still enjoy just hanging around Night City, the atmosphere really is something and the only comparison I can draw is Santa Monica in Bloodlines. I did notice that some events at least partially respawn (not sure if that was intentional, or conesequence of changes made in a patch), so there may be more to actually experience after finishing the game aside from mopping up random gangs.

The battlepass works with multipliers, if you don't complete it religiously it will become an insane grind to make it to the end. You can admin mode through all of it though, by design, which only makes one wonder why they bothered at all. There's already systems for optional challenges (the Journal, as well as Achievements). Oh, and the answer is: because FOMO, that's why. Store prices are multiples of old DLC pricing (someone calculated it, think I mentioned it with the source before), which was already rather expensive compared to similar games (eg. Ark) If you don't care about building bases etc. the whole thing can probably be ignored, but since most of the stuff are building pieces etc. that are gone forever after the "season" ends any and all people that play the game mostly as a builder are arguably going to be negatively affected. Haven't fired up the game yet since they didn't bother giving modders a heads up so most of my builds are probably broken (for Pythagoras there was supposed to be a migration script that won't happen because no longer any point for most people). The actual changes (minus the bugs) seem decent enough. The monetisation model, otoh, I can't support, so they probably did me a favour by basically killing off my saves as I might've been tempted otherwise. I do have backups from before the changes, but motivation to play is gone so haven't even tried if I can make those work.

Well, can no longer play LAN games in offline mode since they added the launcher, so it's not like there's no precedent, unfortunately. When my internet drops for even a split second I get booted from my local network game...

Alas, it's also created by Funcom, who just stuffed battlepass in Conan Exiles, a full price survival game alongside a hilariously overpriced cash shop. Oh, they also didn't give modders any time to update their mods beforehand, so everything is broken. Oh, and apparently the cash shop is about the only thing that actually works from their "major update" anyway (so more patches, with more mod breakage to be expected) Oh, and you can apparently no longer play offline at all (used to already no longer be possible for LAN games, but supposedly no longer possible for single player either) Even with a free weekend and a suspicious amount of positive reviews of suspiciously low gameplay hour accounts the general review trend has been very much downward. I think they're probably just trying to see how far they would be able to push this predatory garbage for when they release the Dune game before they ditch Conan Exiles entirely, well, unless the stuff somehow succeeds, then they'll just milk the suckers that buy in dry, I would expect.

Factorio. The spiceore must flow.

They claim you can progress the battle pass on a local server. I'm not quite sure how that'd work, since, as you mention that would trivialize...everything. Then again, the same goes for single player so I dunno what they're trying to do, really, aside of attempting to fleece their playerbase. On the topic of which, someone did the math, and items in the new store are apparently between 10 and 100 times more expensive than the "old" DLC model, which itself was already fairly expensive, comparatively...

Well, Conan Exiles battlepass is officially going to be the FOMO "grind it now or miss out forever" type of deal, with ditto rotating cash shop. https://steamcommunity.com/games/440900/announcements/detail/3358013033289159770 Bloody shame, but I guess at least I got my money's worth out of the game. Might have to see if I can't lock down a version so I can avoid all this crap as I don't think there's really anything out there that kinda can take its place.

Played, and finished Necromunda: Hired Gun. Game is a mixed bag, objectively it ain't that good, but I had a lot of fun anyway. It's developed by the same people that also created Space Hulk: Deathwing and feels similar in many ways. Keeping in mind that this game is mobility focused I think you get a pretty good idea as to what to expect. Story doesn't really matter, and is basically wasted potential. The main character is a one-dimensional doofus that, despite being from the Underhive, doesn't seem to understand how things work around there (or "here", I guess). Game starts off being pretty hard (especially the side missions with their infinite spawns), but it is very easy to max out your bionics rather early on. Weapons and upgrades are a mixed bag, and balance is kind of all over the place. While I'm sure all weapons are "functional" there's also quite a few that just don't work too well, especially later in the game (shotguns, in general, but the two shots from the double barrel especially are problematic given the floods of enemies and its inability to deal effectively with shields) Gameplay wise offensive mobility is very much crucial, the game seems to push wallrunning but I barely used it (getting that achievement is going to be a chore) since it's kinda jank. The grappling hook, and just jumping all over, on the other hand... As for the "offensive" part, medkits are very limited and can only be stocked prior to the mission, you're supposed to heal using bionics, which only triggers after you have gotten hit yourself (yep, if you're on a sliver of health, out of medkits, have no more shields, and somehow are still alive you really are SOL). Story missions are quite a bit of fun (except the boss battles, most of those are, ehhhh, but I'm not a big fan of boss battles in general, so ymmv). I especially enjoyed the train mission. Side missions are a mixed bag, and risk/reward is way off for most of them. I'd imagine many players will quickly decide "Capture" (Domination, for all you UT99 players) missions, aren't worth the frustration, and in general just 'settle' on a set of favourite (or "to avoid") mission types and locations. On the note of locations, secondary missions are set on parts of the main mission maps where the same mission type will always use the same part of a given map. Similarly "secret" chests that contain upgrades are always in the same spots. The game also has its fair share of bugs, though most qualify as "annoying" rather than "breaking". The grappling hook is liable to get you stuck in terrain (that said, I've not gotten stuck anywhere in a way that forced a reload). Enemies can also get stuck in terrain, for side missions it doesn't generally matter as more will spawn, for main missions this can block progress (I've had to reload the last mission because of a stuck enemy that I couldn't get to in any way). When it comes to mission bugs there was only one that I found that is breaking, in the mission with the container puzzle, if you touch the controls "too soon", you break the whole thing and have to reload, that said once you know how it's triggered it is easy to avoid, but yeah, should've been fixed by the devs, really. "Finishers" don't seem to work reliably (often there's no prompt when there probably should be), maybe there's some hidden cool-down, but it's a good way to get killed for sure. Similarly it seems that the heal-on-damage mechanic doesn't always work reliably, or doesn't heal as much as it should (especially obvious when finishers heal tiny amounts) There were also some graphical issues, personally I had clipping issues with the armor of my character. Not exactly game breaking, since the game is first person so you only really see it in cutscenes, or loading screens, but when the devs are selling skins that is kinda...hmmmm... (that said, I did scroll through Steam screenshots and saw people using the same skin without issues, so maybe something with my system). There's also some very underdeveloped systems: side missions are given out by factions that you rank up with, but there doesn't seem to be any real incentive to do so (aside from "for fun", of course). Sure you get a one-time "bonus" reward for maxing out a faction, but that's about it. As a sidenote: you can also gain reputation with factions you're actively fighting, which, errr, doesn't make much sense. Another thing of note: for some reason it turned on FSR 1.0 by default for me, while my PC can handle the game just fine with everything cranked up without FSR. Took me a little bit before I figured out why things weren't quite as sharp as they probably should be... I'd probably give it a 6/10. I had a good time, but the game feels very undercooked. Just like Space Hulk: Deathwing, really, there was potential there, but they called it "good enough" way too soon. If you can get it on sale and enjoyed Deathwing and/or WH40k and/or janky shooters you could definitely do worse.

Holy hell, I thought that was a very well done parody, but it's an actual Blizzard trailer.

Gleaned some additional info, of course, until it's released everything's up in the air... One of the major modders claims it's not going to mess with mods. Then again, they got an NPC in the game, so they might be slightly biased. This whole debacle does explain why you can't even play on a local LAN anymore without internet connection though (game will instantly boot you from your local server if your connection drops for even a little while). Naysayers warned about this bs coming when they forced the launcher, guess they were right. Same, I've bought every single DLC so far. From what I gather the content in the battle pass will be time limited, per the usual FOMO bs, but it would rotate, or something? Kinda unclear to me right now. Regardless, seems hoping for the "least-bad" type of pass where you can complete them at your own pace (supposedly what Halo Infinite does) isn't on the table

Well, Conan Exiles expansion announced...aaaaand the game's getting a battlepass. No more details known, but given Funcom/Tencent's other products expectations are low. The lead designer immediately being apologetic after announcing it also says a lot, I'd say. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Well, completed my "Mystery" in Surviving Mars (the "AI" one, which was more of a nuisance than a threat, even though it was "medium" difficulty), so I'm sorta "done" with the playthrough as far as I can tell (at least, without mods that start new mysteries once the previous completes). Colony is running mostly smoothly, aside from my rabbits breeding a bit too much, leading to food issues, so I had to sort that out. I noticed Shuttles would "steal" food from food storage just to move it around...and around...and around, leading to enough food available, but not enough in stock where it needed to be (yes, I have minimum stock levels set). Disabling shuttle access to food stocks seems to have sorted that. I ended up getting rid of the research outpost to try and fix the "suicide walk", it made it better, but since I have outposts in that area for mining I still get the occasional asphyxiating Geologist that decides shuttles are for weaklings and just hikes across the map. Given I my population is now self-sustaining I don't particularly care anymore since it's not very common and the hit to prospective colonist applicants doesn't matter anymore. As an aside, I got my colony down to 0 Renegades. Once you figure out how that works it is kind of a cakewalk. Going to try and get a few more achievements (like build 5 Wonders, and "get filthy rich"), maybe try and get to the point where all my colonists are Martianborn, and then call it done for this playthrough, I think.