What Are You Playing Now: Gaming Lives

[InsaneCommander]

On 10/21/2020 at 11:52 AM, bugarup said:

What's wrong with French accent? 

I really have no idea. The game is set in Algeria in 1937 so French people shouldn't be a surprise, right?

[ComradeYellow]

1 hour ago, InsaneCommander said:

I really have no idea. The game is set in Algeria in 1937 so French people shouldn't be a surprise, right?

I hate to agree with reactionaries but there may be a point in the absurdist notion of trying to artificially inseminate modern cultural sensibilities into historical video games.

I do not agree with islamophobia, sexism, anti-semitism and racism or any other filth ideology that always loses in the end but when you smell an artificial political agenda I think it can be appropriate to call it out on certain conditions.

I have always been in favor of historical realism over revisionism and would prefer people actually take the time to study mindsets of the era and try to creativity replicate them into a video game.

[HoonDing]

On 10/18/2020 at 11:20 PM, Malcador said:

Brno

why

isn't Sparta/Slavia Praha the only half-decent team

[InsaneCommander]

5 hours ago, ComradeMaster said:

I hate to agree with reactionaries but there may be a point in the absurdist notion of trying to artificially inseminate modern cultural sensibilities into historical video games.

I do not agree with islamophobia, sexism, anti-semitism and racism or any other filth ideology that always loses in the end but when you smell an artificial political agenda I think it can be appropriate to call it out on certain conditions.

I have always been in favor of historical realism over revisionism and would prefer people actually take the time to study mindsets of the era and try to creativity replicate them into a video game.

I just finished the game and I saw no political agendas in it. The protagonist curses a lot so maybe that is unrealistic, I don't know how people spoke a hundred years ago. But besides that I don't see a reason to complain.

Oh, there is a gay couple but they are minor characters and are mentioned just two or three times.

[Mamoulian War]

The next after Mytha was again the Old Iron King. In his arena, I died for the first time in the NG2+. Not because of his attacks, but because I walked right into lava pool again

On the second try, he went down again
 

 

[InsaneCommander]

Btw, I really liked Amnesia: Rebirth, but my impression is that it will have much less replayability than Amnesia: the Dark Descent or SOMA.
 

Spoiler

 

Basically there are much less encounters so once you know where is safe and where is not, most of the game won't be scary at all. Unless you wait several years to forget these areas, something I did do for SOMA.

That said, there are some areas with complex or longer encounters that were pretty good.

I think there is something between 10-20 encounters in TDD and a little less in SOMA, but Rebirth must have less than 10, plus the complex ones. That is not necessarily a problem, since one of the best things in Frictional Games is that they build the atmosphere slowly, without jumpscares and mosnters appearing all the time, leaving much to your imagination. But still, it is a big difference.

Anyway, they did say they wanted to try something different.

 

 

[Katphood]

On 10/21/2020 at 5:38 PM, Sarex said:

Because the movie was coming out and they wanted to have a game to accompany it, ie. to cash in. I'm so salty about the whole Prince of Persia thing, kind of wish Ass Creed never came to be.

Yeah, what makes it worse is that they keep making more and more Ass Creed games. I wonder where they are going to choose next for the neverending fight between the Templars and the Assassins: the Aztec empire? Japan? Pre-historic Africa? The north pole?

[bugarup]

12 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

...replayability ... Amnesia: the Dark Descent
 

Every time i try to replay it I descend to the prison and nope out, and it's not even the scariest level.   Maybe one day, though you cannot brown the same pants twice and so the big portion of first time experience's primal dread will likely be lost and all that. 

[Malcador]

Brigador is ok, sort of annoying to aim with sometimes as the arcs seem to not register hits.  Didn't expect the campaign to just be challenges more than an actual campaign, but eh.  Think I overpaid for this at $24 though, but will have to soldier through it.

Lost my Surviving Mars save as Russia due to what I suspect is an issue with a shuttle picking up waste rock, funnily enough.  Guess I can restart though.

[Mamoulian War]

6 hours ago, Katphood said:

Yeah, what makes it worse is that they keep making more and more Ass Creed games. I wonder where they are going to choose next for the neverending fight between the Templars and the Assassins: the Aztec empire? Japan? Pre-historic Africa? The north pole?

Q'onoS

[InsaneCommander]

8 hours ago, bugarup said:

Every time i try to replay it I descend to the prison and nope out, and it's not even the scariest level.   Maybe one day, though you cannot brown the same pants twice and so the big portion of first time experience's primal dread will likely be lost and all that. 

You should have seen me replaying SOMA after 5 years. It was scarier than the first time. I thought I knew when and why the monsters would appear, how to trigger them. I was wrong.

And I was lucky on my first playthrough so I didn't even know all the encounters in the game.

[Keyrock]

I was going to play Amnesia: Rebirth, but the game's a mess on Linux right now. It's surprising, since Frictional Games has a history of great Linux support, but oh well, I'll wait until it's sorted.

For now it's Yakuza Kiwami and The Outer Worlds soon.

[Hawke64]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. Became a Truesworn (completed the Warsworn quest line), reached Rathir (the largest city in the game, spent there 2-3 days), defeated Balor, the Niskaru Lord (why the game uses "Niskaru" for "a demon" and "Alfar" for "an elf" I don't understand, the definitions seem to match 1:1, though the Alfar have beards and elves usually don't).
I guess, doing a completionist PT was not the best idea, this way the pacing of the main quest line is very uneven (obvious, but still unpleasant). But it has picked up speed, as I have reached the second-to-last area, the swamps of Klurikon.

[Tale]

Was playing some Deadfire, but then kind of lost the reason why. The quests are all starting to blend into each other and none of the companions are giving me something interesting to work with. I hate saying it.

I'm also tooling around in Amnesia: Rebirth.

I'm tempted to go back to Pathfinder: Kingmaker for my party based RPG fix, but it ultimately has the same complaints as Deadfire. Maybe I find there to be more interesting companions, but the pacing of that game is utterly glacial. No interesting developments in the 60 hours I already committed to it.

[LadyCrimson]

Installed Outer Worlds. Made a character. Had no idea what to do with stats, it's been a while since I've played something with all those chr. choices at the very start. Certainly feels Fallout-ish in that regard.
Ran around a bit, shot some bandits or something, went ooh and ahh at the colorful scenery. NPC faces are a bit, uh, less scenic, but that's fine. Not sure I'll use that Tactical Time Dilation combat thing (kind of VATS like  in a way, I guess, which I never used either).   Anyway ... seems ok at the start, typical rpg very-beginnings.

[Oner]

1 hour ago, LadyCrimson said:

Installed Outer Worlds. Made a character. Had no idea what to do with stats, it's been a while since I've played something with all those chr. choices at the very start. Certainly feels Fallout-ish in that regard.
Ran around a bit, shot some bandits or something, went ooh and ahh at the colorful scenery. NPC faces are a bit, uh, less scenic, but that's fine. Not sure I'll use that Tactical Time Dilation combat thing (kind of VATS like  in a way, I guess, which I never used either).   Anyway ... seems ok at the start, typical rpg very-beginnings.

Had almost exactly the same impressions as you.  TTD can be used to analyze enemies, so even if you don't want to slow-mo hammer enemies with disadvantages, it's still useful.

[Mamoulian War]

Next Great Demon in row was The Rotten. My primary controller went out of batteries, so I've changed to my backup one, my oh my, I was sooo pissed off. For some reason the backup one did some stunts on me. Random changing of spells, items and weapons O.o I got really hissy after a while, especially when The Rotten destroyed my first try right after my controller glitch.

The second try went much better, but I still got at least one glitch during that fight

 

 

[BruceVC]

I am going to be starting D:OS 2 EE  today, I am excited ....generally excellent reviews 

I am using some Mods, as usual,  but not many

[Humanoid]

Likely no one is surprised as I am that I'm playing Pillars of Eternity. I don't like RTwP, I don't like party management, I don't like inventory management, and I've only really ever tried to play the game briefly when it first launched. And yet despite all that, here I am playing it. The situation came about mostly because of my irritation at BG3 - not the unpolished state it's in but rather some of the fundamental DnD-oriented design decisions. Reading up on some feedback about the game I happened to be reminded that PoE2 now has a turn-based mode, something that has completely slipped my mind. I didn't know whether such a thing would also be in PoE1 so I fired it up and had a poke around. My save was dated 2017 but I suspect it was just an aborted attempt at resuming the game that might have lasted half-an-hour at best.

Anyway, continuing my old save finds me still in Gilded Vale - yes that's as far as I've ever gotten - having apparently just begun the small dungeon in town. I am a rogue, as is my custom, and I remember not particularly enjoying it because the game isn't built for sneak killing enemies one by one like say, a Thief, Deus Ex or Dishonored. Hell, I remember Valygar being a hell of a lot more effective in BG2, though that might be his high level plus 20 years of dead brain cells talking. At any rate, the resulting feeling that it was barely worth using stealth is probably a big reason I ended up dropping out pretty fast the first time around. I don't want to restart though, I'm comfortable with the character in a roleplaying sense - and have just been living with the fact that all I'm doing with stealth for now is to open fights with a sneak crossbow shot.

I had hoped that I could be completely hands-off with controlling the companions in combat, but regrettably this has not been the case and they tend to just twiddle their thumbs until I at least order them to get closer. Without micro-managing further than that, the combat is proving to be plenty challenging especially since the early companions seem to be of the squishy variety, one aside. Only after a full day of playing and getting to the point of claiming the player stronghold did I realise that the difficulty was set to Normal, instead of the Easy that I assumed it was on. I guess 2015 me was a bit less of a wuss than 2020 me. I don't think I'd get near to finishing the game in Normal so I think I'll be toggling it down next session.

 

Aaaanyway, the game is playing okay for now. I won't say I'm having a great time but it's passable. I might decide to drop it at any moment to try out the turn-based mode in the sequel but I figure I'll give it at least the weekend to see if I can get into a groove.

[Mamoulian War]

Not the best, not the worst game, but certainly it was one of the best games released in the West in the last few years. Well, of course after all the of the patches has been released and applied.

[Hurlshort]

6 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Aaaanyway, the game is playing okay for now. I won't say I'm having a great time but it's passable. I might decide to drop it at any moment to try out the turn-based mode in the sequel but I figure I'll give it at least the weekend to see if I can get into a groove.

TB mode made the gameplay way more engaging for me. I had finished PoE1, but kept stalling out on the starter island in PoE2 until TB mode was introduced.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Hurlshot

[LadyCrimson]

5 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Not the best, not the worst game, but certainly it was one of the best games released in the West in the last few years. Well, of course after all the of the patches has been released and applied.

When I played it at release (on an older PC) I remember the loading times were sometimes excruciatingly long. Like, 30 seconds or something.  I wonder what they'd feel like now.  

I definitely understand not wanting to party manage much (or any micro-management, really). I used to like such a lot more, pausing games every second to give orders and the like but I think these days I wouldn't even want to manage the party ala KOTOR style. Turn based wouldn't change that for me at all.  Just let me dump gear on them and let AI do their half-arsed job. 

Edited October 25, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Mamoulian War]

22 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

When I played it at release (on an older PC) I remember the loading times were sometimes excruciatingly long. Like, 30 seconds or something.  I wonder what they'd feel like now.  

I definitely understand not wanting to party manage much (or any micro-management, really). I used to like such a lot more, pausing games every second to give orders and the like but I think these days I wouldn't even want to manage the party ala KOTOR style. Turn based wouldn't change that for me at all.  Just let me dump gear on them and let AI do their half-arsed job. 

I still have the same PC, as at the time, the loading times are approximately the same

Edited October 25, 2020 by Mamoulian War

[LadyCrimson]

Outer Worlds - is there a hotkey to turn the UI on/off?  Because it's a pita to go into Settings every time you want to take a scenic screenshot.

[Malcador]

Brigador's campaign challenges are meh. I like some of the writing, the one mech described as being in a "real engineering facility with real engineers with actual degrees" was the funniest.  Is nice to blow stuff up, at least.