marelooke

Dunno, maybe I should give Mooncrash another chance, but when I tried it the gameplay loop didn't hook me and there seemed to be very little story there to keep me going.

I just want Prey 2. Instead they turned that "meh" DLC concept for Prey into an entire game (that would be Deathloop, for the heathens among you that haven't played Prey)

Curious which ones you skipped, there's a few late game ones on timers that I'd recommend completing regardless. Certainly seems like the middle act is missing some content because I had to resort to random gigs to get the time to pass at the end of my first playthrough (maybe gets fleshed out with expansions?). There's also an option to simply progress time, no need to spam sleep if you just want to trigger those quests. Curious which ending you actually got, there's two people argue about which one has the better outcome, though given your mention of Judy I think I can make an educated guess For what it's worth you can do all the endings on a single save (assuming you meet the prerequisites). If nothing else they seriously nailed the atmosphere, I regularly boot up the game just to wander Night City. Reminds me of Bloodlines a bit (if they would have created the whole city in that game, I'd probably have gone wandering there too)

When people in the FF XIV community wax poetic about how awesome Square is I like to remind them that FF XIV is good despite Square Enix, not because of it... If they couldn't manage to make enough money off of Tomb Raider... I mean, I really don't think anything needs to be added to that.

I had some issues with blurryness, turning off Chromatic Abberration on top of the already disabled Film Grain (who keeps that on anyway? ) made the game look a million times better.

Errr, I had to look up what Last Light's story was about again... So yeah, Exodus' story is easily much better, a lot more "grounded" too, I'd say. The only thing you might miss out on with skipping Last Light is some of the relationships Artyom builds. Then again, aside from Anna and Miller I didn't particularly remember most of them (other than "name sounds familiar") and it didn't really hamper my enjoyment at all. I've now also finished the first DLC "The Two Colonels", which was a pretty interesting in itself giving some other people's perspectives on events during the main game.

Figure enough time has passed, so we're due some more FF XIV screenshots. Fair warning, there may be major spoilers in these, so anyone's not finished the MSQ yet or intends to actually play the game might want to heed the spoiler tags. I'll add whether I consider them light or heavy spoilers where appropriate and I've been careful to pick things that generally need more context, but still, beware! Me and the homies setting out on a new adventure. Potluck dinner with the homies Revisiting old friends (Heavensward spoiler) Second Endwalker Trial major spoilers. I'll say though, this trial made me bother with hard content again after a very negative experience during Shadowbringers. I just *had* to complete this on Extreme mode. 6.0 finale spoilers (no story stuff, but the area itself could be considered spoiler)

After finally getting a new GPU I've finished Metro Exodus (minus the DLC, for now). Kinda ambivalent about it. The storyline is nice, they do a pretty good job of actually setting up an existing relationship for the player you can't help but care about, with character with their own hopes and dreams. Quite unlike that other company with the post apocalyptic games that tries to make you care about certain characters... (*cough* Bethesda *cough*). However gameplay-wise... I don't know. For me the best sections where those that played more like previous Metro games, the more linear, more purposefully built pieces rather than the open world stuff, like the start of the game, Yamantau, the Taiga, and the finale. Especially the respawning enemies kinda took me out of the immersion, certainly when it comes to what are supposed to be the more "scary" enemies (like Demons). In that it sort of reminds me of Dead Space 2, that game was "fine", but really didn't evoke the same claustrophobic fear of the original, until I set foot aboard the docked Ishimura and all that claustrophobic fear came rushing right back. The use of collectibles (diaries in this case, some of which are really easily missable) for environmental storytelling also isn't a trend I particularly enjoy, especially given how the save system works: there's only a few rolling saves that constantly get overwritten, with autosaves and quicksaves using the same slot, so if you purposefully save at a certain point the game will just overwrite that save in short order. This means that if you miss something in an area you cannot return to your only option is to replay the entire level. Still, I'd consider it a good game as I finished it in a few sittings, which is unusual for me nowadays. I'd probably give it a 7/10, maybe an 8, if I'm feeling generous.

Game just pulled in a 5.6GiB update on Gog. So far no patch notes so not sure what's in there.

Since Lost Ark is unavailable in my region due to gambling laws I started another Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough. Boy, must I have gotten lucky with my first playthrough because I've had to redo missions so many times because of bugs I'm seriously considering just giving up at this point. Not to mention quite a few graphical glitches. I barely had any issues prior to 1.5, but now the game is just a mess. Couple of examples, helping the monk: Jotaro gig: Had a few annoying glitches as well. Like people stuck in the floor and Jackie's motorcycle randomly being in the middle of the street (without Jackie). Also got hit (literally) by the "stuff spawns behind your back" "feature". Look around before crossing street, you know, as one does... Get driven over by car that spawned behind me. Ugh. The mission bugs might be ones I just managed to dodge before, since I went full stealth last playthrough.

Eh, so far nothing of value is being lost. Which, really, isn't surprising given the types of games that tend to include these "mechanics". Still, would be nice to stomp this predatory behaviour out. Last I heard quite a few countries were looking into updating their legislation to deal with predatory practices in games, not the least of which being France and the UK.

Well, I fired up the game. Had to respec my character, which is annoying as I hardly remembered what I put where in the first place. Then I found out they changed attribute requirements on weapons as well without refunding those, so my character-that-finished-the-game can no longer use the weapon-she-finished-the-game-with proficiently. Closed the game again. Might start a new character, but really getting a bit tired of these types of sweeping changes in single player games.

Well, it was bound to happen. Some new MMO launched (Lost Ark), and it's not available in Belgium/Netherlands due to the in-game gambling, or "surprise mechanics" if you're EA. Can't wait for the EU to finally get its **** together and ban this garbage outright, union wide (before any game I might care about is affected, preferably )

Stadia is still a thing? Anyway, sounds like a good time for a new playthrough. Shame it's still impossible to find a GPU at anything resembling reasonable prices, and with the dropping of 700series support I'm now literally on the minimum spec GPU-wise (GTX970)... There's two things that come up commonly that are, as far as I can tell, still not addressed: more stuff to do once you're "done" with the game that isn't just driving around and shooting up random gangs. Would be neat if they could generate semi-random Fixer jobs. I'd compare to Bethesda's radiant quests, but maybe something a bit better/more challenging than their system ability to not look like a clown Additionally, as far as I can tell form the patchnotes, most more "visible" cybernetic augmentations are still NPC only (at least without resorting modding) Edit: oh yes, also still no New Game+ seems like?

Haha, the latest Conan Exiles update is why I started playing Subnautica, as it broke my private servers something fierce for quite a few days Fact that they released the patch while I was messing with the docker image didn't help, of course, so wasn't entirely clear whether the breakage was mods, or my changes. Found this server tuning guide that improves quite a few aspects. Especially looking forward to how combat will feel, especially once the server's been running for a while (got really "NPCs teleport around"-y for me after a week or so. Then usually crashes with out of memory). I imagine much of it is applicable to single player too (since it just runs the server locally), though performance might be a consideration depending on the gaming hardware (one of the reasons I started running my server on a separate machine in the first place) Currently building a massive base/city in Siptah. Really enjoying the changes they made to the Island after the beta. It's also kind of interesting how things sort of make sense from a continuity perspective even if you played before these major changes that added the NPC camps etc. As for Subnautica:

Started playing Subnautica. Really great game. Start was bit rough, got a suboptimal location for an absolute newbie (ironically, it's a pretty great location in general, and I relocated there on my 2nd go), but got a new location after I forgot to save before exiting the game. Yep, no autosaves on this one, not even when exiting to desktop... It ticks all the boxes: dumped in "bad situation", gotta figure out how to get out of "bad situation", gotta figure out the mystery of what even is "bad situation" and how you got into "bad situation" in the first place. To do that gotta survive "bad situation", and to survive "bad situation" gotta build stuff. Hearing some really mixed signs about the sequel, but thankfully I doubt I"m done with this one soon And well, "started" got quite a ways in already:

Yes, after playing through it vanilla my current game is decently modded (which is my usual modus operandi for most moddable games). Mostly with regards to cosmetics and building options. I am rather careful about which mod authors I use mods from, as my games tend to be very long running and breaking my save database because of someone abandoning their mods is rather high on my list of things to avoid. For those who might be interested this is my Isle of Siptah server's current mod list (mod id followed by mod name):

Ummm... Hi?

Since it's almost impossible to post any FF XIV Endwalker screenshots without massive spoilers here's one from Shadowbringers: Il Mheg And one from Endwalker's credits Always a nice touch when they thank the players for playing.

They're mostly running around and talking to people. There was surprisingly little combat involved in Endwalker (if we ignore the mandatory dungeons). The side quests (which became entirely optional in Endwalker, due to the main quest giving you enough XP to get to level cap) at least tend to deepen out the lore, though they are usually more typical MMO-fare (go there, kill/fetch that) Older expansions, and especially ARR, were worse in that respect, but I wouldn't really have any qualms playing the game just for the story (and as a matter of fact, a not insignificant part of the playerbase does just that) If they handn't just shut down registration of new trial accounts I'd recommend just giving it a go, base game and first expansion are free nowadays. Maybe something to keep in mind once the server congestion situation blows over.

Finished the FF XIV Endwalker Main Story Quest. As far as MMORPGs go FF XIV easily has some of the best story and world building. The combination of setting things up many expansion in advance as well as how they manage to just make things that were more than likely not planned entirely deliberate is pretty awesome. As an example they reused the "Answers" song (this one, used when the Calamity struck on FF XIV 1.0 to reboot the game into 2.0, aka A Realm Reborn) three times over the course of the last decade, and three times expanded upon its meaning. It's pretty hard to believe that was the intent when they rebooted the game, but they sure manage to make it look extremely intentional. Pacing was bit off this expansion, some things that should have gotten more attention, didn't, others dragged on way too long. But the 5th map and associated trial (the second one) absolutely delivered and were definitely the high point for me, though the ending was satisfying as well. Aside from that, just getting into the game is a chore on a technical level. Square Enix, despite which FF XIV became a good MMO, has refused to invest in servers for a long time (the European data center was already close to capacity before the WoW exodus, or the silicon shortage, basically during a "low" player activity period there were still queues), so now that we have both (alongside New World refugees), along with a new, highly anticipated, expansion release servers are just way over capacity with multi-hour long queues just to get in. They even stopped selling the game, or allowing trial accounts in. So yeah it's bad... The good part is that the game is actually stable and once you get in you can actually play without really having to worry about crashing out.

Queueing to get into Final Fantasy XIV early access. If game runs fine once I get in I'll probably put up with the queues, if it just crashes/disconnects all the time I"ll probably just go back to playing something else. Forza Horizon, most likely.

Getting that a lot on the forum lately, even when agreeing to the social media cookies. Something's clearly broken somewhere... Let's try that again: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixww37DKuY

Kinda same, been poking at Forza Horizon 5. It's fun, and it's more inline with Horizon 3 than 4 (which I didn't like and barley played). This about sums it up, honestly: This content cannot be displayed until agreeing to our use of Social Media cookies. Learn more. Manage cookies I wish someone would create a proper TDU sequel ... (no TDU2 does not exist, and never has)

Been playing a bunch of Timberborn. It's a city builder about beavers and your greatest enemy is drought. Every x in-game time a draught happens and you have the rest of the time to prepare for it, basically. Aside from the obvious solution (building vats to store water) you're also leading, you know, beavers, so building dams, redirecting flow, creating artificial lakes, are all tools you can use to store water (or just keep your crops hydrated) Wouldn't say the game is hard, at least so far, on normal, but you can get caught unawares pretty easily, especially when your beavers start "getting it on" and your population explodes. The draughts do get longer though, not sure if they keep getting longer, and longer, until things become unwinnable or whether there's a cap to them. Note the game is early access, but it runs great, haven't had any crashes or seen any obvious bugs, so mostly hoping for the devs to add additional stuff to do. Maybe add some more (optional) challenges. Stuff like that.