What Are You Playing Now: The Other, Other Thread

[Hawke64]

The Surge 2. I've successfully reached the top of the Great Wall and was KO'ed in seconds by the final boss. Going to try again tomorrow.

Tales of Aravorn: Seasons of the Wolf DLC. The good thing about it was the management mini-game and more dialogue options. The premise of the story, protecting the village of Ninim from gnolls, was somehow uninspiring for a post-game DLC. Same for the outcome.
The combat encounters were easier, because I knew that there would be just one or two of them before rest, thus I could use special abilities each turn and not worry about running low on HP/SP by the end.

Amnesia: Memories. It is a VN, which I got on HumbleBundle and it is unrelated to Amnesia the horror series. So far I can say that it was made for consoles (the font is quite large), the controls are customizable (I don't know why, but it is still good), the art is consistent and detailed. The PC is nameable, so I got "creative" with it and the dialogues became more fun to read. The story follows the PC who got amnesia and an invisible friend (and they repeat the information received after each scene, because the players are incapable of analyzing it themselves). The choices in dialogues lack variety and there is little to none environment descriptions.
Edit. For some reason in the first world (there were four parallel worlds to choose from) it was impossible to establish PC's personal boundaries and the main NPC was pretty much a control freak just asking for.. physical encouragement to respect the said boundaries. I threw in the towel by day 11. The mystery of why the PC had lost her memories was not worth it.
I restarted from the prologue and the second route has been better so far (day 2), excluding the imaginary friend's comments.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Hawke64

[Keyrock]

I'm progressing in X4. I decided to move the story along and build a dock on my headquarters station. I could have just built a basic 1 medium ship 6 small ship dock that I already had a blueprint for, but I decided to splurge on a blueprint for a 3 medium 6 small luxury dock so that I can flex on the haterz. Once I got that built, I hired a manager then set about rescuing the Boron scientist I had been working with and bringing him to the station. Once I got him (? I can never tell with Boron) aboard that opened up research and one of the things I can research is teleportation. So I gathered all the resources I need for the research, flew them to the station and... wait, I can't actually transfer them to the station. That's when it hit me, I hadn't built a storage module, so where would I even store the materials?

Edited April 24, 2020 by Keyrock

[melkathi]

Store them on the ship the Boron had you sacrifice!

[Keyrock]

2 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Store them on the ship the Boron had you sacrifice!

It was a scout. I would need like 20 of them to have enough cargo space.

[melkathi]

You can afford it, you are like rich or something

[Keyrock]

12 minutes ago, melkathi said:

You can afford it, you are like rich or something

Not that rich... yet. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that building a storage module is the smarter solution than cramming 20 scouts somewhere on my station, almost certainly cheaper too.

As an aside, the headquarters station is in a pretty rotten spot (I had no control over that). I'm getting attacked by Xenon (Terminators), Kha'ak (pissed off insects), and Scale Plate Pact (pirates) all the time. It's not a big problem right now since I have a decked out Frigate and it's mostly fighters coming to raid me, but if they ever send proper warships I'm going to have issues. I need to build some strong defenses.

In the (distant) future I'm going to find out where the raiders are coming from and wipe them out to the last one. I very much hold grudges. Eventually, I will have the money to build a proper fleet,  I'm talking 2 destroyers, a carrier, 4 or 5 frigates, 4 or 5 gunboats, and about 50 fighters. Then I remember everyone that has wronged me, roll into their sector, and go full Exterminatus on them. It's going to be glorious.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Keyrock

[bugarup]

6 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Amnesia: Memories. It is a VN, which I got on HumbleBundle and it is unrelated to Amnesia the horror series. So far I can say that it was made for consoles (the font is quite large), the controls are customizable (I don't know why, but it is still good), the art is consistent and detailed. The PC is nameable, so I got "creative" with it and the dialogues became more fun to read. The story follows the PC who got amnesia and an invisible friend (and they repeat the information received after each scene, because the players are incapable of analyzing it themselves). The choices in dialogues lack variety and there is little to none environment descriptions.

Oooh, I played that one a little! Wasn't too fond of INT4 extreme doormat heroine, but kinda semi-scored with one dude, parted amicably with another when he admitted we weren't to be but then another dude's story made me go "WTF, you serious, game?! " and ragequit. Not sure if I ever pick it up again, since the mystery of what really happened to Miss Doormat McGee is locked behind getting every "happy" ending, and me and the game seem to vehemently disagree about definition of "happy". And I think I'd rather date that other Amnesia's monsters than some of these dudes.

In other VN news, I finished Telltale's second Batman game and just like with the first I liked playing as the rich boy Bruce better than the vigilante in silly costume.  Rich Boy Bruce went double agent in this game and I do love my double agent stories, there are not nearly enough of them in games.   It's also funny how Telltale plots show their smoke and mirrors when you don't play by their rules -- here, the game obviously wants you to be mean to Joker and hot for Catwoman. Do it the other way round and the story falls apart.

 

I also picked up Divinities again. Almost done with the third map of DOS and finally left the tutorial prison of DOS2 but writing and acting are halting me again. Oh, and puzzles. Divinities love a puzzle here and there and that wouldn't be so bad if solving them did not require reading game's writing and I don't want to do that, skimming is painful enough.  Well anyway, since I progressed rather nicely this time, I found yet another off-putting thing about writing, that is schizophrenic tonal shifts. Most of stuff is ye olde super-hammy slapstick comedy with cat marriages and barrels-on-legs disguises,  but then you get a ghost who sticks around because afterlife is not kind to necropedophiles (yes, seriously) and there's a guy forced to serve drinks to orcs (pure comic relief otherwise) who killed his child and made him watch. Like, there are sorts of comedy that mesh well with grimdark or morbid, but slapstick isn't one of them. 

 

 

 

[Hawke64]

The Surge 2. I defeated the final boss by equipping the most OP implants I could find with the Iron Mouse set (0 CP consumption) and face-tanking him. Somehow it worked - I was able to regenerate and leech HP faster than he could decrease it. There was one choice after the battle and I did not quite understand what was the connection between the choice and Athena's comment (the kid sort of survived, by the way).

Spoiler

The choice was to kill Eli or not. He had at least two more chances to reconsider his actions and I just hoped that this time he would stay dead and not try to kill the kid again. What it has to do with me valuing power and not love and compassion I fail to see. The CGI cut-scene was the same for both choices.

In NG+ there is an extra scene at the plane before the crash. In general, random enemies have more HP/defense, there were several nanite ones in the tutorial location, bosses seem to be the same, though I have fought only two so far. I am unsure, if I should continue the playthrough - the game is great, but the first PT was as complete as possible. I only missed several audio logs.

[thepixiesrock]

On 4/22/2020 at 10:07 PM, Hurlshot said:

Normal. I'm no glutton for punishment. 

Well dude I freaking love pain. 

 

 

Anyway way to contribute to this thread I’m starting up deadfire for the third time since it was released on Xbox and I hope to finish it this time. I love the game but my two issues have been my inability to stick to a class and also the long and abundant load times. I’m hoping that acknowledging and facing and attempting to correct my problem (sticking with a class) is enough to combat the load time issue. However New Vegas is loaded in the chamber and I’m ready to switch 

[Hawke64]

20 hours ago, bugarup said:

Oooh, I played that one a little! Wasn't too fond of INT4 extreme doormat heroine, but kinda semi-scored with one dude, parted amicably with another when he admitted we weren't to be but then another dude's story made me go "WTF, you serious, game?! " and ragequit. Not sure if I ever pick it up again, since the mystery of what really happened to Miss Doormat McGee is locked behind getting every "happy" ending, and me and the game seem to vehemently disagree about definition of "happy". And I think I'd rather date that other Amnesia's monsters than some of these dudes.

I've got the same impression. I made it to day 11 with the "Heart" guy and realized that my only desire was to beat the **** out of him, which considering that the PC looked about as tough as him should have been technically possible. Or to lecture him on personal boundaries and importance of trust, respect and clear communications in healthy relationship, then recommend to find a therapist first, a partner (much) later.

I restarted from the prologue and trying another route with the Purple NPC. So far, it has been better. Though, I assumed that he and the PC were in open relationship, which would be refreshing. It seems that they aren't. For some reason the game does not allow me to role-play the meme version of Commander Shepard with the iconic "We'll bang, okay?". I was quite sure that it was the point of dating-sims. The dialogue options are still somehow lacking - I could not suggest threesome when the PC's BBF hit on the PC's BF. In another scene I was unable either to politely ask the Purple NPC to leave the PC's personal space or to suggest to continue in the PC's apartment. So it was just creepy/weird.

I guess, I'm not exactly the target audience for this VN, but I'll try to complete at least one route.

[bugarup]

1 hour ago, Hawke64 said:

I've got the same impression. I made it to day 11 with the "Heart" guy and realized that my only desire was to beat the **** out of him,

Haven't done the Heart dude yet, he can't be worse than the Diamond who made me ragequit, can he? Please share your impression of the Diamond guy when you get to him.

All in all, out of the three I played the Club guy was the most normal and well-adjusted, and he's a control freak with emotional range of android and Victorian approach to dating. I guess I'm not quite the target audience either.

[Zoraptor]

So I'm playing XCOM (recent one, not UFO Defence) and I'm enjoying the game itself well enough. I'm not keen on some gameplay things like aliens getting a 'free' move when spotted at all- only reason I can think of for it since aliens are pretty good at using cover otherwise is console memory limits- otoh it's recognisably xcom and I've always loved the strategy/ tactical layer mix in them and Jagged Alliance.

But that UI- sometimes you use the mouse to select/ confirm, sometimes you have to use the keyboard to do the same thing; sometimes both in the same UI element. Click through of interface elements in the tactical screen means you do stuff you don't intend to, typically opening doors. And it has a very annoying unresolved issue with ultrawide where you can choose having the UI elements misaligned or having the movement of your squad members not correspond to where the mouse cursor is placed. OK, the last probably isn't solely console related but the rest must be, surely. How could the people who made the seemingly infinitely scalable and perennially working CivIV come up with that abject mess?

 

And this is the point someone tells me that XCOM didn't actually have a console version...

Edited April 25, 2020 by Zoraptor

[melkathi]

It did, and as you said, a lot of things are an obvious result of the console version.

[ComradeYellow]

Tom Clancy's Division 2.

It's great, it has that certain theme to it that seems to be inherent to a lot of titles that land on the Epic Games Store.  Good guys trying to restore order in an evil chaotic world turned to Hell because of....a virus!  How prescient!

I swear to God the authoritarians are the good guys in the 21st century.

[Hawke64]

6 hours ago, bugarup said:

Haven't done the Heart dude yet, he can't be worse than the Diamond who made me ragequit, can he? Please share your impression of the Diamond guy when you get to him.

All in all, out of the three I played the Club guy was the most normal and well-adjusted, and he's a control freak with emotional range of android and Victorian approach to dating. I guess I'm not quite the target audience either.

The Diamond route was somewhere between creepy and morbid, watching the NPC's descend into madness was weird. I suppose, I appreciate that the lore started to appear and there was a little more action, granted it was mostly the PC dying and not the NPC, but it still was progress. I did not rage quit this time, because it was just too grotesque, unlike the Heart route, which was more casually sickening.

Spoiler

So I ended up with either this:

Or this jolly fella throwing the PC into an old well (the PC drowns):

The Surge 2. I restarted from the pre-endgame ("pre-end-game"?) save and went to hunt the last optional boss - Delver Echo Alpha. I remembered that it was somewhere underground, but not the exact location, so it took a while to find it. With fully upgraded equipment I still got defeated once when I ran out of stamina. The boss dropped an implant when it died. It never changed the moveset (the "panther" form of Delver the main boss), so I doubt that I'd be able to take him down when I was in the sewers for the first time.
I've purchased the DLC on GOG (which was not on sale, unfortunately) and going to try it out tomorrow.

In general, The Surge 2 felt less like a horror and more like an action, unlike the first part. And regardless of the final choice the endings seemed hopeful.

[Keyrock]

I built a storage module and some defense modules (connector pieces that have a bunch of turrets that fire on attackers) on my HQ station in X4 plus I put several laser towers near it. They're just mk1 laser towers, so they're not very powerful, but they'll do for now. I then invested in an energy cell production module blueprint, which set me back 2 million credits (a very significant amount for me still at this stage), then built a couple defense modules and an energy cell production module on my sunrise flower farm station, which set me back another 750k or so in material costs and hiring a construction vessel.

The investments will be well worth it in the long run. Energy cells are used in the production of almost everything, so I'll be putting that blueprint to use a ton of times going forward. Adding energy cell production to my farm makes it almost self-sufficient, I only need to bring in water. The module will pay for itself in time in increased profits.

In other news, I captured my first ship today. I wasn't trying to capture it, but it happened that way. I'm doing a mission where I need to get shot at by at least 3 different types of weapons, to get data for Boso Ta, so that he can research shield mods for my ships. I purposely loaded up the cargo hold of my Buzzard heavy fighter with some fairly high value cargo, then cruised around shady sectors. Sure enough, a pirate scans me then tells me to drop my cargo. I scan him and I'm like "Brah, you're in a scout and I'm in a fully decked out heavy fighter, come and try to take my cargo." He was feeling lucky, so he attacked me. Very quickly, with some persuasion from my neutron gattling lasers, he changed his mind and bailed, leaving a battered ship behind. It's a cheap Kestrel, but what the heck, I claimed it and brought it back to my HQ to fix it up.

Later on I found an abandoned ship, an Osprey frigate! The X games always have some abandoned ships scattered about. They are usually in places that are either far out of the way or very dangerous (sometimes both). In this case, it was dangerous. The ship was stranded in an area with a bunch of Xenon (Terminators). I was in my Buzzard, so I got their attention then led them on a wild goose chase to draw them away from the ship. Once I got them far enough away, I ditched them and beelined back to the abandoned Osprey. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't even that beat up, hull damage was minimal, and it even had halfway decent engines and thrusters, plus 1 turret. No shields, though, so I had to sweat it out until I could get to an equipment dock or wharf (I went to a wharf), I did make it without incident. I didn't have enough money to fully equip the Osprey, since I spent most of my dough on the blueprint and station expansions, but I at least had enough to buy top of the line shields. I'm pretty excited to get a second frigate.

My fleet currently stands at 2 frigates, a heavy fighter, 2 scouts, and a freighter.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Keyrock

[Hawke64]

The Surge 2. I've completed the DLC. It was rather short, but there were two bosses, two armor sets and several weapons. Also one of the side quests unlocked an arena. The story is tonally closer to The Surge 1, there is no "happily ever after" outcome, but you can choose the flavor of the bad one. Though, the arena side quest introduced a quite nice and friendly NPC who has not died horribly by the end. Considering I was overleveled and had a fully-upgraded armor set and weapons, the difficulty was lower than intended.

[Mamoulian War]

Started to play Vaporum. Grid-Based RPG Dungeon Crawler, made in Slovakia. The game is pretty good. Better, than anticipated so far, but yeah, I think I am to old for this game sometimes, I just click on wrong buttons or die, because of slow reflexes Still, I love it

I went through first two levels yesterday on normal difficulty. The puzzles were so far pretty straightforward, and I was able to find all of the secrets. I picked up Thauge body-kit, or what was it's name It is something like Steampunk Mage class. But still a lot of melee is needed in it

Edited April 28, 2020 by Mamoulian War

[Malcador]

Surviving Mars has some brutal mysteries, getting Wildifre right now.  Survived it barely, trying to produce those curetatoes is annoying with the 30% soil quality reduction.  Definitely do like using Brazil, cash flow is no issue with that waste rock processor.

[HoonDing]

Replaying Icewind Dale with imported characters who already finished the game.

Hilarious how many undead the cleric blew up in Kresslack tomb

[ShadySands]

Installing KOTOR2 for the first time in over a decade

 

[Skazz]

10 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Installing KOTOR2 for the first time in over a decade

First a V:tMB replay and now this?

MY MAN

[Malcador]

Soon he'll replay Deus Ex and the circle will be complete.

[ShadySands]

47 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Soon he'll replay Deus Ex and the circle will be complete.

I still need to beat it for the first time as I've never gotten more than like an hour in

The saddest part is that I've gotten much further in the second game than I ever did in the first

I did beat Human Revolution though.. well, kinda. I think I quit when it was time to pick a button. Still haven't played Mankind Divided.

Edited April 28, 2020 by ShadySands

[majestic]

3 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Installing KOTOR2 for the first time in over a decade

 

It probably goes without saying but don't forget the restored content mod. And, eh, skip the droid planet. Really. Just... don't bother. 

Edited April 28, 2020 by majestic