What Are You Playing Now: The meaning of life

[Malcador]

Rather annoyed at Star Wars Squadrons' SP campaign.  Made it to mission 11 on Veteran and just got fed up with dying due to every AI opponent gunning for me, it's like COD where your allies are window dressing.  The AI's flight model is interesting as well, seem to be able to halt instantly and change direction. Guess I will knock the difficulty down and just finish this thing.

[Humanoid]

On 2/3/2021 at 1:52 AM, Humanoid said:

Euro Truck Sim 2 in Eyefinity mode unfortunately exhibited some graphical corruption

Turns out the solution to this was to set my central monitor in Radeon Software to "Preferred Display". Don't know what that has to do with anything but all is fine now. This was after updating to the 1.40 Open Beta that was released today, but the patch by itself didn't fix anything. There's also an annoying bug in the beta where headlights and dashboard illumination are borked. Oh, and framerate report - there were actually some annoying slowdowns at max everything, but bumping AA down a notch from Ultra to High fixed that.

[melkathi]

Werewolf: the Apocalypse - Earthblood released today. If anyone ends up playing it, I'd be interested to hear opinions.

[Malcador]

Beat Squadrons...meh that campaign was uninteresting, I really enjoyed the dead eyed soulless NPC squad mates.  Well, Keo wasn't too bad.

Edited February 5, 2021 by Malcador

[BruceVC]

12 hours ago, melkathi said:

Werewolf: the Apocalypse - Earthblood released today. If anyone ends up playing it, I'd be interested to hear opinions.

I did see this on Epic and it looked really  good but I tend to be overly enthusiastic sometimes on how I automatically respond to game trailers and marketing so I dont always trust myself 

What is  it like ?

Edited February 5, 2021 by BruceVC

[melkathi]

Funny you should say that - I was very interested because it is a world of darkness game, but I was turned off by the trailer.

[melkathi]

Oh, I had Challenge Mode on. That explains a lot.

 

In Troubleshooter you select your game difficulty as usual. Easy, Normal etc. I went with Normal.

Story Missions unlock the map to play as a repeatable Case. So if you clear a gang out of an area, you get a repeatable mission to clear out remnants or to stop them re-establishing their presence. Same map, similar objectives, but with the Main Story replaced with a new briefing for the repeats.

The repeatable cases are either your average missions or violent cases. They can be played in Normal or Challenge Mode.

Violent Cases you will have a large map with multiple objectives - from what I can tell that usually means taking out the various boss enemies. Every time you beat an objective you get the option to continue or to retreat. If you choose retreat, you have to hold out for a set time, then your team extracts (no need to run to an extraction zone - which is good on large maps).

Challenge Mode means all enemies level to your highest character level and get a random mastery (read: ability).

So I thought I'd do a Violent Case on Challenge Mode.

11 Bosses. If you beat them all the option to retreat or clear out all remaining enemies.

The map had robots. And robot bosses. Robot boss' random ability was to go berserk on death - stay at 1 HP and attack anything nearby for several activations...

 

[Tale]

Anyone ever find themselves in the mood for a particular kind of game and just can never find it? I want me some good space opera with a starship focus. And not have to grind around trading for hours. I guess I have to wait for Everspace 2 to hit 1.0.

 

Anyway, I played through Metal Unit. A recently graduated from Early Access side scrolling roguelite. It's got a derivative story, what with it being aliens invade earth so we fight them with robots. If you're familiar with that kind of story you'll see the twists coming too. It's decent fun for 12 hours. Got it from Humble Choice.

 

I did my replay of Nier: Automata on PC. And it still proved to be a game I'm absolutely in love with.

I tried out Rain World. I bought it expecting a cute+dark platforming adventure. Instead it's kind of a side scrolling survival metroidvania. With a focus on the survival. I ended up replaying sections over to gather food, nap, then try to run past enemies that kill me in one hit. This was not my idea of a good time and so I put it away.

[melkathi]

I want a good Dune strategy game that isn't an RTS.

i would have liked a proper Necroumda cyberpunk gang simulator tactics game.

I want a Mutant Chronicles tactical rpg. Or just rpg. I want Modiphius nowhere near that project.

I want a World of Darkness: Changeling the Dreaming RPG.

I want a well written World of Darkness: Hunter the Reckoning Visual Novel, possibly done by the same team that did Werewolf: Heart of the Forest.

[Oner]

I still want a Dark Heresy RPG, something like the Shadowrun games just with more budget.
I want Total War: Exalted, or Exalted May Cry.
A tactical rpg based on Lancer would be dope as well.

[Vaeliorin]

I'll second the Dark Heresy RPG. 

I'd also like Exalted, but as an RPG, since I don't like the Total War games, and I hate any game that grades me on how I play.  I've wanted an Exalted cRPG since I first played it 20-some years ago.  I swear that there was Exalted game in the works ages ago that was an isometric action game, but despite remembering seeing a gameplay snippet, I can't find hide nor hare of it now...so possibly it was just my imagination (well, more like a nightmare, since that would be a terrible interpretation of the game, as far as I'm concerned.)

[Mamoulian War]

3 hours ago, Tale said:

Anyone ever find themselves in the mood for a particular kind of game and just can never find it? I want me some good space opera with a starship focus. And not have to grind around trading for hours. I guess I have to wait for Everspace 2 to hit 1.0.

 

Anyway, I played through Metal Unit. A recently graduated from Early Access side scrolling roguelite. It's got a derivative story, what with it being aliens invade earth so we fight them with robots. If you're familiar with that kind of story you'll see the twists coming too. It's decent fun for 12 hours. Got it from Humble Choice.

 

I did my replay of Nier: Automata on PC. And it still proved to be a game I'm absolutely in love with.

I tried out Rain World. I bought it expecting a cute+dark platforming adventure. Instead it's kind of a side scrolling survival metroidvania. With a focus on the survival. I ended up replaying sections over to gather food, nap, then try to run past enemies that kill me in one hit. This was not my idea of a good time and so I put it away.

I think Freelancer might be pretty good open-space sim, where you do not need to grind that much. But it is very long time, when I played it for the last time

[melkathi]

Freelancer was great in its simplicity. You could fly around and trade Niobium to afford a Titan, but you did not have to.

[Malcador]

Finished all the Secret Files games. 3rd one was definitely rushed in the ending, the developers do have a knack for amusing epilogues at least.  Didn't know there are four different (sort of, anyway) endings, so maybe will collect the other 3.

[Mobi]

Bit of a random selection of games. But I'm going back to some old favorites of mine in Half-Life 1 (Black Mesa) and Morrowind. Whenever I'm in a gaming slump going back and replaying the oldies can tide me over until something new catches my attention. 

[213374U]

18 hours ago, melkathi said:

Werewolf: Heart of the Forest.

Was that any good? I just saw it on GOG the other day.

(sorry if you've already written about it, I usually skim this thread and don't remember seeing it mentioned)

[melkathi]

I mentioned it, but didn't write too much. As it is a VN it is impossible to talk too much without spoiling.

If you like the World of Darkness, it is great. The whole game is about the character awakening to the WoD. It isn't about running around as a werewolf eating people, it is about realizing you are a werewolf.

You get the feeling that your choices matter and you get the feeling that Rage and managing Rage is a thing.

Of course, if you play more than once to get the various endings, you do see that the key moments always are the same, just part of the path to reach them changes.

[Vaeliorin]

@melkathi

Since people are bugging you about games...

I was curious if you'd recommend Troubleshooter to someone who was a fan of Xcom and Fell Seal/Final Fantasy Tactics type games.  It looks really good, but I'm somewhat hesitant and can't really find many good gameplay videos on Youtube.

Also, how important is the online stuff?  Do you know if you miss anything by playing offline?

Thanks.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Vaeliorin
Tagging Melkathi

[melkathi]

@213374U I found my review from October:

 

It is not the shortest review I have written in this forum.

 

Edit:

The game was also voted Best Writing in Games 2020 in the gaming retrospective discussion. Getting the prestigious award having gotten 1 out of 1 votes from me.

 

Edited February 7, 2021 by melkathi

[melkathi]

15 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

@melkathi

Since people are bugging you about games...

I was curious if you'd recommend Troubleshooter to someone who was a fan of Xcom and Fell Seal/Final Fantasy Tactics type games.  It looks really good, but I'm somewhat hesitant and can't really find many good gameplay videos on Youtube.

Also, how important is the online stuff?  Do you know if you miss anything by playing offline?

Thanks.

Since you like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fell Seal, I would recommend it. The combat is closer to XCOM: Chimera Squad, but the spirit of the game is closer to FF:Tactics. It is jRPG meets XCOM.

So your characters (because you have a cast of unique characters similar to Chimera Squad and do not create your own soldiers as in Fell Seal) will have two actions. Using an attack will end their turn. You will need to dash for cover. Everything you are used to from XCOM. At the same time though, you have infinite time to do repeatable missions before progressing to the next story mission and all missions have their level marked. You can farm missions for loot and XP more in line with a FF:Tactics title. To a certain extent you need to do repeatable missions. Mind you, as I want to do repeatable missions, I haven't felt forced to farm for XP. The simple fact that by doing missions I drop the crime rate is reason enough for me to do them - the fact that my current story missions are level 40 and I am level 46 is a bonus (I currently do 4 repeatable missions per story mission).

You can farm. Crafting awesome equipment requires so many resources it is silly. But I craft quite a bit and still don't feel the need to do targeted material farming.

You can completely ignore Online mode. All that online mode does is that it shows you the percentage of players on the server who picked a specific dialogue choice. You are not locked out of any content. In the future they may add some sort of PvP arena match. If that happens, offline companies will not be usable, as you can transfer from Online to Offline mode but not the other way around. But for the single player experience you can absolutely ignore it.

 

The translation isn't perfect and as it has been getting a lot of fan help, the farther you get into the game, the fewer people have given input on the translation and it shows - the writing is very... Asian. It has this super politeness that feels strange. Abilities can be worded a bit odd: instead of saying "if within 6 tiles of" I have an ability saying "If adjacent by 6 tiles". I may have to drop a line about that in the proper forum thread. Until then I understand what they mean.

 

Characters can become very powerful. One of my characters reminds me a bit of a XCOM gunslinger specced sniper clearing out a lot of trash mobs. But difficulty can spike - especially if you do missions on challenge mode and those extra masteries the enemies get combo just right. Last story mission everything went swimming, but then I thought the villains were making a run for it, so I sent my main character to cut them off. He did. Even took down a boss enemy. The boss self-rezzed got an auto-crit buff doing so and got to play before my character. He got what I expect was his max crit 4500 damage when I had 2000 HP. It happens.

Aggroing too much of the map (or all of the map) at once is also something that happens. You have to go to the options and up AI speed then. With the way initiative works, I have had to wait for thirty AI activations before I got to move again. At the same time, some of my most memorable moments in the game were when too much of the map aggroed at once and I was surrounded and trying like crazy to stay alive.

 

I have 120 hours in this. I expect to get probably another 60 out of it before the next content patch. Possibly more.

 

edit:

A think to note though when comparing to XCOM: this does not have random maps. All maps are set. Spawns may vary a bit, but if you do a specific Magenta Streets scenario, it will be the same map with the same objectives every time. If you can't see yourself playing some scenarios half a dozen times or more, then it isn't the game for you. XCOM had the maps generated from preset parts, so you at least had the illusion that you were doing a different mission each time.

Edited February 8, 2021 by melkathi

[Vaeliorin]

Awesome, thanks.  I was a bit worried when I saw the online/offline thing, but knowing that it's not really relevant to me is good.  Definitely going to give this a shot.

[melkathi]

Yeah, ignore the online/offline tag. All it does is tell you in situations like this what percentage of players chose which option:

[Malcador]

Trying repeatedly to get gold in the 1848 scenario in RT3. No dice, I did get lucky with seeding and got 2 produce farms near Hannover, so can make booze.  Although that's superfluous once I link with Hamburg who has a brewery, bah.  Need to move quicker and bolder

[Sarex]

Trying to finish Pathfinder Kingmaker but the House at the Edge of Time is sooooo bugy. It's kind of sapping my will to finish it.

[Vaeliorin]

So i bought Troubleshooter, and it's really good.  The generic dudes feel kind of better than my characters at this point though, seeing as how they don't have to run out into the middle of everybody to actually do something.  Just finished the first (I think) story mission of chapter 2 and...wow.  That was a lot of enemies.  I kind of made the mistake of going the wrong way around a building, which ended up with me pinned between multiple groups of enemies, which hurt a lot.  Probably shouldn't have split the group either (it was a story choice, and I try to be agreeable in most games.)

Really glad I picked it up, and thanks @melkathi for bringing it to my attention, because I probably never would have heard of it otherwise.