What Are You Playing Now: The Other Thread

[melkathi]

At least my norse raiders have Federation transporter technology. Was raiding in western Ireland when I got attacked by a far larger army. My raiders retreated into Scottland, where they were again attacked by a far larger army. My character dueled the enemy commander, beat him but let him live (they are now pen pals). This gave my raiders the opportunity to retreat. So they appeared on Orkney, and apparently laid siege to the village and captured one of the courtiers.

All the time my ships where still anchored back in Ireland.

[Zoraptor]

3 hours ago, melkathi said:

Trying to give Crusader Kings 2 another chance. This seriously is the worst tutorial ever made. I pause the game to read the tooltip and keep getting interrupted with pop up messages. Which then pop up to stop me from reading the previous messages.

I think the devs mistook the malware advertisement spam for a great idea to bring information across.

That's not even the worst tutorial from Paradox, unfortunately. The Hearts of Iron III one- I'm still not sure if it actually existed or if I dreamt it all up.

And their previous system was if anything even worse for pop ups, as you'd go to clear one pop up message and something else would inevitably pop under your cursor at the exact same moment resulting in at best you clearing the new message before reading it, at worse you find that you've just declared war on Russia, Germany, plus the British,m Roman and Ottoman Empires by random event.

[melkathi]

The other interesting thing is that half the pop up window is above the menu I was looking at, half of it is underneath it, as if they coded the screen in two separate halves and the layers are in different order.

[Humanoid]

Got myself a Smart Trainer (an Elite Direto) and trying out Zwift. It's pretty good, but steep at $15/month. Will give it a go for the week-long trial before deciding whether to seek out cheaper/free alternatives.

[Hurlshort]

Fantastic pain cave!

A bunch of my riding buddies are on Zwift and seem to love it. The setup alone is pretty pricey, but relieving the monotony of the trainer is priceless. Also playing an MMO where grinding makes you stronger in the real world is fantastic. They've added treadmill support too. It will be interesting if they figure out how to implement the swim.

[Malcador]

Got The Division 2 on sale, in hindsight it was a poor purchase, but can play with my friend so is useful that way.  Prefer the NYC setting and winter rather than DC and summer, although did have a fun moment of fighting Hyenas with the sun at their back  - shame the reverse would not matter.  

 

[melkathi]

Re-started CK2 again.

I am going for the most difficult thing I could find:

A Lunatic Lady Chieftain in a one island norse kingdom. She is good at killing people and little else. Surviving a pregnancy is the biggest problem. Also finding a man to marry.

Smaller annoyances was C'thulu emerging from the waves near my island, but I rammed him with a longboat and killed him.

[213374U]

56 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Got The Division 2 on sale, in hindsight it was a poor purchase, but can play with my friend so is useful that way.  Prefer the NYC setting and winter rather than DC and summer, although did have a fun moment of fighting Hyenas with the sun at their back  - shame the reverse would not matter.  

Hm. Thanks for the heads up, I might pick up the new Ghost Recon, I had a ton of fun playing dress-up going through the last one with a friend. Anyone knows if it's any good?

[Mamoulian War]

40 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Re-started CK2 again.

I am going for the most difficult thing I could find:

A Lunatic Lady Chieftain in a one island norse kingdom. She is good at killing people and little else. Surviving a pregnancy is the biggest problem. Also finding a man to marry.

Smaller annoyances was C'thulu emerging from the waves near my island, but I rammed him with a longboat and killed him.

I have some tip for you

 

 

[melkathi]

Why thank you

[Keyrock]

Just started Kentucky Route Zero. Initial impression:

[marelooke]

Been blasting fools in Ion Fury. Been a blast so far. (Heh)

[Gorth]

Besides the regular Guild Wars 2 gaming and the occasional Killing Floor 2 games, I've picked up Shadow of The Tomb Raider on a Steam sale. There *seemed* to be some consensus that it was trying to be a bit more about, well, tomb raiding. I hope that means more exploration and the odd puzzle solving rather than a crappy corridor shooter like the previous Crystal Dynamics offerings in the franchise. I only just started, so still too early for me to have an opinion on it.

 

[Tale]

I finished The Outer Worlds. It's the best game of the type of RPG it's trying to be. But I think I'm largely done with RPGs of its type. The shooting really needs to step up. I was really just done with shooting by the end. I let the companions do all of it. And I was glad to have been a persuasion focused character because just so I didn't have to shoot my way through the finale.

[melkathi]

I got bored. I need to head to the Hope and you know what for you know who and not side with you know who else. Am I almost done?

[Tale]

You are at the second mission from the end.

[melkathi]

The board hates me. I refused to do a mission for someone, so she drew a gun on me. I shot her in the head, the door burst open and guards rushed in.

[Tale]

I agreed to do her mission, but only because I thought I could sabotage it. Turns out you can't. I also figured she'd shoot at me and I was sick of shooting.

[MedicineDan]

Still playing Minecraft.  I've got a rainbow bridge (terracotta) between two islands.  A dark forest on the continent, a rainbow corral bridge just for the hell of it, and a map that spans ten zones.  Completed and framed, of course.  Such a superb waste of time, but I enjoy it.  I'm going to make a video and share it with my niece nephew.  I'm on Win 10, so I don't know if I can share or invite to the map, but if they come I've got tons of extra iron, gold, and diamonds.  hundreds of them, in fact.  The only thing before I show them is I'm going to see if I can create an underwater railway system connecting underwater conduits.  I've created underwater railroads in the past, but the some things have changed in the newer versions.

[melkathi]

The boss battle in Outer Worlds was tedious.

[Tale]

Disco Elysium is the greatest experience I've had roleplaying an alcoholic since that Halloween party where I threw up on everything and almost caught fire.

[IndiraLightfoot]

On 1/27/2020 at 3:07 PM, Hurlshot said:

Fantastic pain cave!

A bunch of my riding buddies are on Zwift and seem to love it. The setup alone is pretty pricey, but relieving the monotony of the trainer is priceless. Also playing an MMO where grinding makes you stronger in the real world is fantastic. They've added treadmill support too. It will be interesting if they figure out how to implement the swim.

I'm actually using Zwift + treadmill now, and it's much nicer than chimney + treadmill or TV + treadmill. However, watching Tour de France  on the telly + treadmill is still my favourite setup.

[Keyrock]

I'm on Act I, Scene VI of Kentucky Route Zero. I'm loving the bejesus out of it so far. It sort of has a bit of an Oxenfree vibe to it, in how cryptic the narrative is (I have an idea of what this all might be about, which I won't share on the off chance I'm correct). The game is also a bit like Sunless Sea/Sky in that there is a lot of text to read that may or may not be related to the main plot in any meaningful way, it may just be flavor text, but it is well enough written  that I enjoy reading regardless of whether or not it helps me understand or advance the plot in any meaningful way. It's amazing how much of a difference the quality of prose can make.

The game's presentation, both visually and audibly is terrific. It has a sort of minimalist style, with low poly art, a usually greyscale color palette, and no interface on screen except when there is something to interact with. Often times, nowhere near all the screen real estate is used. The camera will very slowly and smoothly move and zoom on its own as needed, and when it does zoom in and fill the whole screen and/or add colors, it has a significant effect on the mood. Similarly, audio is most often just ambient sounds in the background, but when called for, music fades in gently and it changes everything. When you aren't having your senses saturated constantly, even a small amount of extra sensory content makes a profound difference.

Hopefully the game is as good throughout as it is at the beginning.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Keyrock

[ComradeYellow]

Greedfall.

Another good pick, I sure know how to pick 'em lately.  Not only is it another great ARPG with a robust skill system and an integrated world to utilize them in and has a healthy degree of plot choices/decision/outcomes but I can also manage to run it at 165 fps 1440p with some modest graphics tweets.

[Malcador]

New hobby is playing competitive Overwatch and doing a poor job just to provoke some ragers on voice chat.  So far, decent yields.