marelooke

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.

Giving Surviving Mars another go with a couple of mods that sort out some of the braindamaged colonist AI issues. While my current map is more conducive to having a single central base I did have to make outposts for various resources. The one giving me grief, specifically, is my research outpost. It's pretty far away from my main base, but my scientists apparently aren't the brightest as they regularly decide to walk across the map to my main base, and suffocate while doing so... There's shuttles available in both directions (shuttle hub in the remote area shouldn't have been necessary, and unsurprisingly adding it didn't solve anything, nor did designating a hub for only personnel transport) Noticed some of them actually "live" in my main base instead of the outpost (though there's plenty of room in the Research dome) so I dunno what to do about it at this point. Seems to be a known issue and there doesn't really seem to be a solution...

Glad I'm not the only one who struggles with Leliana's accent, at least.

Nah, the domes are connected with tunnels, unless they lost their legs they were perfectly able to move. I've since replicated the same again multiple times later when things started really going to hell. I destroyed their workplace, homes and pretty much everything in the dome. Quarantined it, turned it off, and the ones that hadn't yet died still wouldn't move (didn't try what would happen if I destroyed the dome they were in, something to keep in mind for the future). Since I cleared everything I ended up moving them manually since I could easily select them this time around (though can't move renegades, so he just chocked to death like the dumbass he was) As for the priority thing, seems the only way to fix the AI is using mods as the "default" AI is dumb as bricks when it comes to job preferences. Eg. if you don't specify "specialists only" (or the inverse) on buildings you'll have Geologists doing the dishes in the bar and untrained mooks mining, from the same dome. Otoh, if you do specify specialists only you often get understaffed buildings. Setting preferences on domes similarly has the risk of you ending up with *only* that specialisation in that dome resulting in trouble with utility building staffing. Per my understanding the only fix is either dealing with it, and just letting them do whatever, micromanaging the hell of out of things, or mods (which is what I'll try next). There really should be more fine grained control of target populations here, imho. When it comes to resource management, I kept things at default priority unless I needed them sorted asap. Though in general it doesn't really seem to matter much, and gets much, much, worse when Shuttles get involved. Eg. if you have an Electronics Store at low or medium it will still gobble up all your electronics if you're low, even if you set repairing the Drone Hub to max priority (and yes, there were active drones in range to actually do the repair), only solution is to actively turn it off. Not sure how you'd get away with only a single colony on a map with massive elevation differences though. Guess you could flatten the entire thing, in theory, but doubt that's practically workable. The only other thing I can think of is to make each colony entirely self-sufficient, but that sort of defeats the purpose... I'll look for some of the mods that are claimed to be essential to fix some of the AI issues and give it another go, see if that makes things more workable.

Was that last DLC also not made by a different studio, or team or something along those lines? I might come back to it if I can get the DLC on a sale as I didn't hate the game, per-se, it just felt incomplete to a degree that I didn't think was quite passable for a release. Hence why I didn't want to give it passing marks (which would be a 5/10 here) If I get my hands on the complete thing I might revisit that score. Thanks for the tip! I've wishlisted it on both Steam and Gog.

Been playing Surviving Mars. It's...incomplete? Like it should still be in early access. The potential is there, but it needs work. There's just so many things missing from the base game (some of which are then "fixed" with DLC. Yes, it's a Paradox game, why do you ask?) There's also just general frustrating jankiness with the AI, and resource management is iffy as hell too. For example of the first issue, missing features: there's no way to transport water over longer distances (once piping becomes impractical). So you can have a colony that is borderline drowning because it's on top of a bunch of water sources, and another one where your colonists are permanently dehydrating because you have to vaporize water from the atmosphere, which is far less efficient, and there is no way to get the surplus from the one colony to the other... Instead of doing something about this in the base game they added trains (that can transport liquids) in a DLC... The AI is just...let me just give an example: so your colonists live in domes (because no breathable atmosphere). However, I had a dome complete building around the same time more colonists arrived, so they immediately moved into that dome, of course (even though there was plenty of space elsewhere), a dome that had no air, no water, and no living spaces(!). To make things worse, there was no way to get them to move out of that dome: I put it in quarantine, disabled all "allowed" types of colonists for the dome (after which they are supposed to move to an allowed dome with room, of which there were plenty), turned off the dome entirely (which makes it so it also isn't serviced, so no more power either at that point). The ones I could find on the map I was able to mostly manually reassign, but the rest just died from dehydration... Resource management similarly seems iffy as hell once you have multiple colonies. It's possible to set priorities on various tasks, however the AI often outright ignores these instead choosing to do something else, like using resources to sell to your colonists in a store inside a dome instead of fixing the air filtration system that you put on highest priority... Furthermore that priority is shared between what your drones (workers) and your colonists prioritize. So if you want to have a factory fixed asap and you increase the priority on it suddenly all colonists eligible for working in that factory drop everything they were doing and switch to working there, potentially leaving other jobs unmanned... Frankly, the entire game seems like it should be enjoyable enough, but after a few days of this it seems I am mostly fighting the game itself, rather than the challenges I'm supposed to be dealing with. I'd give it a 4/10: base game needs work, DLC are not an acceptable way to "patch" a game. Might be time to go back to another, similar game, that appears way better designed: Timberborn.

The full story for Cyberpunk 2077's expansion was apparently leaked. Haven't looked at it myself (and I won't), and won't link it for obvious reasons, but apparently it's set in Pacifica, which is...meh, I guess? Certainly if it turns out there really will be only the one expansion. After setting up all the endings (well, except for *that* one, well, and *that* one too, duh ) as semi-cliffhangers, so they can basically continue from them it would seem the story of V is going to get dropped on the floor after all. Big bummer. Furthermore it would appear there is some serious unhappiness about how things are going at CDPR given that this got leaked. The ship, it it taking on water...

Yep, it does, but it allows me to just use DDG on my home page but still use Google when DDG fails me...

Assuming nothing got lost in translation this is kinda sad news: That said, apparently plurals are easy to trip over for Eastern Europeans, so fingers crossed. If they really only release the one (they promised at least two), then, combined with dropping the Red Engine engine for an off the shelf one, it would seem the money types finally took over. If that's the case I wouldn't be surprised if CDPR starts bleeding talent. Fingers crossed, but not feeling particularly hopeful with the news that's been coming out of that direction lately.

In all fairness, Google's searches have turned into hot garbage recently as well. All these algorithms certainly seem more of a hindrance than a help... I generally just use both (defaulting to DDG), depending on how hot the garbage served by either search engine is... As an aside, for those that might not be aware, you can search Google from DDG by prefixing the search with !g, same for bing with !b, making it quite a bit more convenient to repeat your search in another search engine. Anyway, on the subject of the thread. After my Subnautica Below Zero stint I've been mostly playing Conan Exiles (Isle of Siptah, and yep, still going ), and slowly picking away at my second Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough. Such a shame it appears CDPR is giving up on CP2077 already, and on their engine too. Seems the beancounters finally took over. Oh well, it was a good run while it lasted...

It's a cult classic, so there's money to be made off of nostalgia, mostly nostalgia from a generation that never experienced the original. See Baldur's Gate 3.

Running some benchmark on loop for an hour or so would be a decent way to figure out whether it was a fluke or actual cause for concern. 3DMark or Heaven would work as both have a "loop" mode. As to what I've been playing, I started, and finished Subnautica: Below Zero (took me 1d7h40min, according to my save file, though I did leave the game running at times) My expectations were kind of low since there was a lot of negativity around the game. Personally I considered it more of a standalone expansion than a full game, and as a standalone expansion it was definitely decent. I mean, it's more Subnautica, which is good. Game world definitely feels smaller, which was a common criticism, but conversely it's also much, much more confusing. Early on I died quite a few times due to running out of, ironically, water, because I got lost somewhere in a cave system (and everywhere has cave systems). However, there's now these new plants that give you oxygen, and they're everywhere, so dying by running out of oxygen is actually pretty hard, which, eeeehhhh, I dunno, seems a bit counterintuitive and makes a lot of places a lot less claustrophobic and scary than they would have otherwise been. Smaller size and the tight cave interiors also means that of the larger vehicles from Subnautica only the Prawn made it into the game. Unlike many I never cared too much for Cyclops (the big sub), I did however miss the Seamoth. The Seatruck really isn't a good substitute for the Seamoth since without modules it has no storage. Furthermore each module you add makes the thing slower, and, obviously, longer, and thus harder to get around the tighter cave interiors. Combined with quite a few of the modules being really situational, I ended up only using three on the regular: the storage module, the one with the crafting station, and the docking one (so I could lug a Prawn suit around), and given how often I used the Prawn (basically only on land, or to mine) I could have done without that last one most of the time as well. Which brings us to the land component, Below Zero features quite a bit of surface exploration, and it is kinda "meh". Don't get me wrong, instead of air, you gotta watch temperature (Below Zero is the outside temperature, in Celsius), and the atmosphere is great. You also get access to the Snowfox, some sort of hoverbike you're supposed to get around in. Unfortunately it's just not very usable, for starters it has no storage, you also get knocked off of it by certain enemies, all the damn time (oftentimes you get knocked off immediately after getting back on, multiple times in a row. RRRAAAGGGEEE). Using the Prawn was a much less obnoxious way of getting around, sadly. So we need to talk about the enemies. They were...disappointing. Most of them are way more aggressive than they were in the original, unfortunately they're also way, way less dangerous. It really doesn't take long before most enemies are just an annoyance rather than a threat (yes, *those* too). This is especially true on land (see earlier Snowfox comment) Unlike Subnautica, Below Zero has a narrated story and a voice protagonist. In fact, there's two storylines that are not directly related, though they do intersect. The first one is the reason you're there in the first place: finding out what happened to your sister. This one fell really, really flat in my opinion. Supposedly they changed writers somewhere during development and I have no trouble believing it with how this storyline went. Started of pretty strong but totally dropped the ball past a certain point. The other storyline seemed a bit more fleshed out. I feel I should also comment on the voiced protagonist. I generally prefer the silent type, however for plot reasons, that wouldn't really have worked here. Aside from the character you play reacting entirely differently from what I would have envisioned (really, strong reactions to something should be a player choice, not something forced onto them, it is jarring) it kinda worked better than I expected. I didn't hate it. I'd give the game a 6/10, it's decent, but the story, land exploration, and lack of sense of danger (plentiful oxygen, most predators being more of a nuisance than a threat) make it so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't like the first game. Tl;dr it's more Subnautica, If you liked Subnautica, can get past the story, and don't hate voiced protagonists with the fury of a thousand suns, I'd recommend it, certainly when you can get it on sale. For those who didn't enjoy Subnautica, well, doubt this entry will change your opinion.