What Are You Playing Now: The New Beginning Thread

[Zoraptor]

Of course they offer WIR free, it's a gateway drug for their fairly pricey War in the East.

In terms of detail I don't think anything comes close to the old SPI Campaign for North Africa which tracked detail down to the water requirement for Italian units to boil their pasta rations in. And that was a late 70s boardgame...

[Gorth]

30 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Of course they offer WIR free, it's a gateway drug for their fairly pricey War in the East.

In terms of detail I don't think anything comes close to the old SPI Campaign for North Africa which tracked detail down to the water requirement for Italian units to boil their pasta rations in. And that was a late 70s boardgame...

I was thinking mostly of computer games. For table top games, I think the biggest time sink my younger brother and i played was a game called "Flat Top". For something more "fast" paced (not trying to be funny) we played Wooden Ships and Iron men. From Avalon Hill iirc.

[Humanoid]

Got seriously screwed over by the Switch version of Flashback, where I got stuck on the last level after some shenanigans involving misuse of a teleporter and a lift with no button to summon it. Now, on just about any other version of the game this would be a relatively minor setback, as the original releases all had a password system to skip directly to the start of any level, and newer, non-Switch re-releases flat-out had a level selection menu. The Switch version though is a little special.

Now, for those unfamiliar with Flashback, it does not have a real save system, just a checkpoint one, so there's no earlier save to revert to beyond the last time you activated a checkpoint. As a result, once your checkpoint save is in an unwinnable state, and without the ability to effectively restart levels, getting stuck like this means having to restart the entire game from the first stage. Yup, this is what 30 years of progress looks like - thank goodness I only paid $1.50 for it. To add insult to injury, apparently the re-releases on all other platforms had a toggle to switch Conrad's shirt between pink and white, but this feature is mysteriously missing on the Switch version. Geez, I know it's a less powerful machine, but this is taking the mick.

Anyway, I might mess around with emulators and see if I can't just play the final level on the Amiga version (which most claim is the best release of the game) via some emulation. Failing that it should be trivial to play the Mega Drive version which is a close runner-up. Heard some pretty bad things about the SNES one.

_________

Beyond that, I've now been playing Age of Empires 2 on-and-off for twenty years, and have finally graduated from being a Black Forest noob. I still don't play competitively because I don't play any games competitively, but it's good to have a little more variety.

And in completely different news, I had some issues with my phone which required the reformatting of the external storage to fix. This resulted in the deletion of my FreeCell app and with it my record of thousands of games played, possibly nearing five digits. That's unfortunate. On the plus side, starting over has resulted in a better win rate I suppose, including a 126 match winning streak to begin.

Oh, and finally, I bought Ring Fit Adventure. Looks good on first impression, but I'm in the unfortunate situation where I'd have to rearrange a fair bit of furniture and equipment if I want enough space to play it to its full potential - remembering that my bike is front and centre of the living room TV for my Zwifting.

[Malcador]

Replayed Consortium, not a bad game, I rather like the amount of choices you have and the consequences, also a lot of world building.  Shame the game's still as janky as I remember, having a lot of poor performance, weird scripting failures and some annoying design decisions like "weak signal" messing up all visuals.  

[the_dog_days]

Just finished Elex. It was the rumor that Elex 2 will be out later this year or early next that prompted me to replay. There were a couple of things I forgot about the game. Namely times where environmental audio was so loud that I couldn't hear what was being said (I don't usually turn subtitles on because I'm visual textual and will spend the whole time reading the subtitles rather than watching the animation). There were probably a good dozen quests I didn't feel like doing and dropped. I had three talent points I didn't even assign because I was so OP.

Anyone who wants to play Elex on PC, I highly recommend the fog remover mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex/mods/3

Now moving on to Bard's Tale 4 elusively.

[Mamoulian War]

Still at Dark Souls 2, but due to a busy schedule at a slower pace. Also I have restarted my PS4 copy of Assetto Corsa after almost 2 year break and started to run one czech online league. I am to bad

Anyway, after Shrine of Amana, the area did become much easier and much more enjoyable. There were few places with difficult placed enemies, but manageable, with the exception of one room, which tbh was more like my fault at not seeing escape corridor, so I've died few times because of that. After clearing that one, it was again boss time. All you needed to go through, was a long corridor, with 6 Syan Knights, and two of them placed just in front of the Mist Gate, so it was not possible to run past them to boss after a wipe. Because of that, I had to repeatedly clear the whole room 12 times in between wipes, which took ridiculous amount of time. At least I farmed a lot of souls that way and found out new weapon for casting, when I forgot to pacify one bell undead

He was pretty easy, but my reflexes sometimes failed me, especially with his running smash attack so it took me 11 tries... and two attempt to homeward to Majula to spent 90000 souls from the Syan Knights  

 

[Raithe]

Had started up AC:Syndicate because I'd picked it up cheap in the sales the other month. Was getting into it..then it crashed. I rebooted, reloaded, got about two minutes further..and crash.  Went through the process..got itno it, finished the mission got the rewards popup and the autosave starts...  And it crashes.

Now everytime I load it up it's full of stutters and pauses.  Which is very weird, because AC:Odyssey runs as smooth as you like on the same settings.  Still, uninstalled Syndicate, re-installed it, and still suffering those stutters and pauses. It's even happening when I'm in the menu's and not running around the game world.

Trying to figure out what might be causing it.

[Orogun01]

3 hours ago, Raithe said:

Had started up AC:Syndicate because I'd picked it up cheap in the sales the other month. Was getting into it..then it crashed. I rebooted, reloaded, got about two minutes further..and crash.  Went through the process..got itno it, finished the mission got the rewards popup and the autosave starts...  And it crashes.

Now everytime I load it up it's full of stutters and pauses.  Which is very weird, because AC:Odyssey runs as smooth as you like on the same settings.  Still, uninstalled Syndicate, re-installed it, and still suffering those stutters and pauses. It's even happening when I'm in the menu's and not running around the game world.

Trying to figure out what might be causing it.

What's causing it is that you're playing Syndicate, it was released in what we fondly recall as the Ubisoft buggy years.

[Zoraptor]

Syndicate, the Assassin's Creed where you were never quite sure if the next person you met would be some eldritch nightmare because the engine decided skin was a bit too difficult to render.

[HoonDing]

Never had technical issues with any AssCreed.

Edited July 3, 2020 by HoonDing

[Orogun01]

5 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Never had technical issues with any AssCreed.

There should be an Internet law that dictates that every thread discussing technical issues of a game and asking for a solution will inevitably have one poster proclaiming that they never had any problems and they will offer no solution.
Its like someone going to AA and saying "My life is perfect, I never had any problems"

[Hurlshort]

1 minute ago, Orogun01 said:

There should be an Internet law that dictates that every thread discussing technical issues of a game and asking for a solution will inevitably have one poster proclaiming that they never had any problems and they will offer no solution.
Its like someone going to AA and saying "My life is perfect, I never had any problems"

Yeah, but people usually don't go to AA and try to blame the bars for serving them alcohol. That tends to be the case with gamers who encounter issues. Granted it might be a buggy game, but it also might be an issue with your computer.

[Orogun01]

28 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

Yeah, but people usually don't go to AA and try to blame the bars for serving them alcohol. That tends to be the case with gamers who encounter issues. Granted it might be a buggy game, but it also might be an issue with your computer.

Fair enough I wouldn't go to AA to complain about how ****ty alcohol is I would be saying that it is awesome. Bad analogy, but my was don't go places and rub it in people's faces that you don't have problems. That's just dickish, it's like me going to Africa and telling everyone how much better my life is.
Its that analogy better Hurl? Are the African children like gamers that encounter issues? Ahhh.... just ignore me I don't know what I"m saying.

[Hurlshort]

I mean, African children probably don't complain about their lives like gamers do, but I will leave it alone.

[Azdeus]

16 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Never had technical issues with any AssCreed.

This just means you've never played it

[Hawke64]

Prey. Completed the game, then replayed the last few hours, when I realized that I had failed one of the requirements for the "I and Thou" achievement (dragging an unconscious person into ethereal phantom's remains does not count as a kill, but killing the same person with a wrench does). 

Red Embrace: Hollywood. It is an excellent VtMB-inspired visual novel (RE1 was awful, though). I wholeheartedly recommend it.

[Mamoulian War]

And another boss down in Dark Souls 2. Getting to him was also pretty annoying. TBH I am starting to get, why some people might not like the DS2 design. After opening the doors with 4 greater souls, the areas became more and more tedious. Overpowered mobs placed all over the map, making me pretty annoyed because of either constant deaths, or because you have to plough through them slowly, because of their ridiculous HPs... Or both things combined... And after that, a boss like this... Two minutes fight and 4 attempts needed...

The area right after him, is the best one after these doors. It looks nice and is more of a puzzle than a enemy fest... And the next one... well, I did not knew something can outmatch Shrine of Amana in ridiculousness, but I was unpleasantly surprised...

Well, enough of rambling, I had enough fun In between Shrine of Amana and Fragon Shrine, to be able to enjoy the game enough to continue onwards...

 

 

[HoonDing]

22 hours ago, Azdeus said:

This just means you've never played it

I played them all until the one in Egypt which I refunded because it felt like offline MMO.

[Bartimaeus]

On 7/4/2020 at 12:03 PM, Mamoulian War said:

 

Imagine how much more stupid this game would be to play through with a melee build.

[Mamoulian War]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Imagine how much more stupid this game would be to play through with a melee build.

I’ve seen some palythrough with melee as well. It looks like it would be for me even bigger pain in the ass than now, but I think some of these mobs would be easier to manage, due to much higher damage output of melee weapon with STR or DEX builds compared to my spell damage. Anyway, I have tried to search for some spell damage boosting gear like the Dusk Crown or how it was caaled in DS1, but failed so far. Does it even exist or I am just to bad at searching as well?

[Sarex]

It exists.

[Mamoulian War]

Would you be so kind do elaborate on the topic in question, with little bit more detailed information?

[Malcador]

New D3 Season so spending time killing stuff en masse.  The seasonal buff's not that great, random elemental effects.  Also decided to start anew in FM2018 again , this time I have chosen Teplice as they wear yellow. 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Malcador

[Chilloutman]

3 hours ago, Malcador said:

New D3 Season so spending time killing stuff en masse.  The seasonal buff's not that great, random elemental effects.  Also decided to start anew in FM2018 again , this time I have chosen Teplice as they wear yellow. 

 

pff Teplice...

[Sarex]

8 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Would you be so kind do elaborate on the topic in question, with little bit more detailed information?

Sorry it's in DS3... But you do have the Hexer's Hood.