What are you Playing Now: Living the Game Life

[Keyrock]

On 7/23/2021 at 4:43 PM, melkathi said:

Most amazing thing happened today in Skyrim.

Lucia helped with chores around the house without having to be told.

She's clearly buttering you up for something. I bet she asks you for a pony in the very near future.

[the_dog_days]

9 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

She's clearly buttering you up for something. I bet she asks you for a pony in the very near future.

Time to get preemptive. 

 

[melkathi]

6 hours ago, Hurlsnot said:

How unrealistic.

Very realistic it turns out.

Next day the girls brought a pet home. Guess we know what they were buttering me up for

[melkathi]

Finally remembered to download the most important mod for Skyrim. Almost as important as Silent Bradford and the Bob Ross voice pack for XCOM.

No Dragon Attacks.

[Malcador]

Act of War is pretty fun, managing units can be a bit cumbersome and it sucks having a cap on group size.  Succeeded in the penultimate map by just A-moving a horde of units, managed to get it done.  The FMV cutscenes get worse though, there's something super weird about the way ersatz EVA and the field commando speak, latter speaks with an exaggerated Canadian accent and the former's just off.   

Urban combat is quite fun though, keeps infantry relevant (although how snipers can blow up a T-80 in sufficient numbers, I dunno)

[majestic]

I've been goofing about in the StarCrawlers: Chimera alpha.

Still really rough around the edges, and I'm hoping they won't keep the auto-heal button in the game. When you press space, turns fly by, and you have auto-healing, so when you're down on health, instead of using your consumables or anything you just stand there and wait for a spell. Well, and press space.

I sure hope that won't end in a time limit. I could get behind patrols showing up eventually, or something though. Still an alpha, after all.

Not liking the Force Psyker changes so far.

[Tale]

Marvels Avengers is free to play for the weekend. I got through the first level/tutorial. If I were to parody AAA gaming, I might end up using this game as a template. The first thing I saw after I started the game was a tutorial on how to use their store. When I actually started the campaign, I immediately got a popup of like a half dozen in-game currencies or crafting materials I know nothing about. Then it's following markers, watching cutscenes that are trying way too hard, and doing QTEs for a while. Then the explosions. It's...

I don't know what it is.

There's a logic to it. Let players try out all the characters before they have to pick one. But if I were to take that as a vertical slice, I'd never pick it up again. Even giving it benefit of the doubt that was some early development stuff they were too rushed to revise, I am not picking it up again. Thor just beats some guys up in a small arena. Then Iron Man does an on rails auto-target shooting sequence... and beats guys up in an arena. Hulk's turn to do linear platforming before he's tossed into an arena. Cap's turn is just more arena. Ending up lastly on Black Widow, who is now left with the boss fight. All the while the game keeps flashing messages telling you to use your cool moves that really aren't.

I have 50 minutes in the game and I want them back.

[Humanoid]

I have an admission. I've never finished Jagged Alliance 2, and indeed I've never even assaulted Meduna before. Well, at least I've finally begun addressing the latter point now. Just going through on Novice with as basic settings as possible as is my wont. It took a brief failure of a campaign and about 5-10 hours to even get comfortable with the interface again after maybe a decade-and-a-half since I last touched it. Sort of an honestman mode where I give myself leeway to figure out mechanics where I don't know how they work.

Yeah, there's a fair bit to complain about the late-game design, but I'm having a good enough time. I'm playing with just the Strachiatella rewrite for a hopefully less buggy experience but with essentially vanilla gameplay as that's all the complexity I care to deal with. I'm not sure I'd ever want to deal with this inventory management hell again though, so I'm in a bit of a pickle for any hypothetical future run. I heard that 1.13 adds a feature to just sell stuff through the inventory screen instead of faffing about with shopkeepers (never mind the absurdity of how there are like two viable shopkeepers in the entire country), but the rest of it is ehhh, not what I want.

(And yes, it's hard to stop myself from repairing that Steel Helmet so it will sell for $12 instead of $10 ...while I have $600k in the bank)

_____________

Also went through Full Throttle Remastered in pseudo co-op over Steam Remote Play (I've played the original some twenty years ago but have very little memory of any puzzles). I think this approach has potential and we might try some more adventure games over the coming weeks.

[213374U]

2 hours ago, Tale said:

Marvels Avengers is free to play for the weekend.

Thanks. I was thinking of giving it a spin. A friend of mine also wasn't very impressed so I guess that's that.

I'm playing a bit more BATTLETECH. Found a mod to enable playable vehicles and VTOLs on top of Extended 3025, so that's fun. Deploying combined arms lances is different, though I can see why they didn't include that originally. Non-hover vehicles are really really slow and one bad hit can knock them out, setting you back a few millions and possibly killing a pilot. Still, it can add a layer of strategy based on the biome and terrain that is more or less absent due to jump jets in the unmodded game. A LRM carrier is great for badlands or desert contracts because it can rain indirect fire on the enemy without worrying about heat. A Demolisher is fantastic for laying ambushes in urban enviroments. But they are both poor options for tundra biomes where 'Mechs just outperform them, etc. VTOLs are great for spotting, but poorly balanced and generally get shot down too quickly to be useful... but they are cheap.

Ah, it's so sad that HBS seem to be done with the BT license for good. Maybe Obs could give it a shot...

[Hurlshort]

JA2 1.13 is a huge improvement and doesnt really change the game, so I think you should use it. Just stability and quality of life fixes.

I am on my 3rd playthrough of Underrail, and this time it is going much better. My first crossbow guy got stuck in some vents and was overmatched. My 2nd pistoleer petered out in Core City. But now I am a psionic master and I think I might actually get through the game.

[Keyrock]

13 hours ago, Hurlsnot said:

I am on my 3rd playthrough of Underrail, and this time it is going much better. My first crossbow guy got stuck in some vents and was overmatched. My 2nd pistoleer petered out in Core City. But now I am a psionic master and I think I might actually get through the game.

I'm already looking forward to the inevitable moment where Underrail kicks you in the crotch again.

[BruceVC]

I just started on Kingdoms of Amalur Re: Reckoning and its fun so far, only 1 hour into it so I will comment after 10 hours or so. But so far its a good gaming choice 

[melkathi]

The first area is the best. It starts getting generic stale after that.

[BruceVC]

3 minutes ago, melkathi said:

The first area is the best. It starts getting generic stale after that.

Its interesting you mention the design  tedium because I do notice that in games 

[melkathi]

It isn't as bad as Skyrim mind you.

It is a Dwemer City. Oooh, Falmer have broken in through the lower floors. It's another Dwemer City. Wow, Falmer have brokn into this one as well. It is a third Dwemer City, ah here come the Falmer...

It's a Nord Tomb. Oh, a hero sacrificed themselves to lock someone truly evil away in here and I have to fight the hero's spirit bound to guarding the tomb to get at the evil spirit and banish it for good. Oh, another Nord Tomb, and ah, there are the heroes that locked away the evil...

They came up with two quests and populated a hundred locations with them.

[the_dog_days]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

I just started on Kingdoms of Amalur Re: Reckoning and its fun so far, only 1 hour into it so I will comment after 10 hours or so. But so far its a good gaming choice 

I just finished playing this about 2 weeks ago. Fun game, but if it wasn't for my OCD I wouldn't have finished it. The spawn rates get ridiculous at a certain point.

[BruceVC]

3 hours ago, the_dog_days said:

I just finished playing this about 2 weeks ago. Fun game, but if it wasn't for my OCD I wouldn't have finished it. The spawn rates get ridiculous at a certain point.

I also have gaming OCD where I feel "compelled " to finish games I play....but most of the time I  can quit and walk away. Its not a question of rage quitting because that is normally  a temporary emotional reaction. I will quit if I feel its not fun anymore and the game is badly designed ....hence my frustration and since their are so many games out their I dont see the point at playing a game that is no longer entertaining. End of the day if we not having fun in a particular game then what is the point ?

[ComradeYellow]

7 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I just started on Kingdoms of Amalur Re: Reckoning and its fun so far, only 1 hour into it so I will comment after 10 hours or so. But so far its a good gaming choice 

Game is quite underrated imo, the class building and world is actually quite well made.  When it was released I kinda dismissed it as a single player MMO but time works wonders.

[bugarup]

Kingdoms of Amalur is the dullest, boringest, uninenteringest game I ever played, and yet I somehow sank ~50 hours into it. Has to be its MMO-typical timesink drug. Mercifully, I didn't finish it, since my proper MMO, SWTOR, have fixed my OCD real fine. 
 

[melkathi]

I am still playing Skyrim. That is my dullest game I haven't quit. All because I adopted kids...

 

It isn't just dull gameplay wise. It is dull visually, with all those gray mountains and snow.

[marelooke]

Finished Horizon: Zero Dawn

Great game overall, would highly recommend. So most criticism I have should be considered of the more nitpicky sort. If you haven't played this I'd recommend picking it up (unless this genre is just not up your alley, of course)

The lore is pretty great and hits close enough to home to be a tad disconcerting. Can't go into any more detail without at least minor spoilers, but the settings is right up my alley for sure!

The environmental storytelling is rather on point. There's quite a few collectibles and a few of them are actually really worth collecting for the lore bits, especially the "Vistas" are top-notch (the Banuk statues are OK, the rest is..."ehh").

I appreciate how they made it fairly hard to miss any of the major lore collectibles (journals etc) unless you really don't pay attention, and as far as I can tell you could go back to most places should you miss anything anyway.

My initial impression was a bit unfavourable due to how mine and Aloy's early goals didn't appear to quite align. The game solved that issue beautifully though. There were, unfortunately, a few places with "forced dumb" where you're forced to just stand around and watch things happen "because story", or where your character makes certain decisions you almost know will backfire. Most of these instances I feel could have been handled a lot more elegantly than they were.

A few main quests are (or contain) large exposition dumps which I feel could have been handled a bit more peace-meal.

Gameplay-wise the game works rather well on mouse+keyboard. Combat works fine, with a few minor niggles, like animation locks sometimes meaning you get hit because it potentially locks you into a long animation which enemies then "cancel" with a faster attack while you can't do anything about it even when you see it coming. There's also at least one enemy type in the Frozen Wilds DLC that's horrendously obnoxious to fight except with one very specific weapon whose ammo eats resources like there's no tomorrow.

Your growth in power is rather well done and closer to how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. works than most other MMOs, level ups mean relatively little, with skills mostly opening up additional options (except for melee attacks) and the power increases mostly come from a combination of better gear and a better understanding of your environment.

One minor niggle is that whoever gets the killing blow, gets the XP, meaning friendly NPCs often steal your XP. Can be a tad frustrating when you're fighting something very tough and some guards pass by and manage to get the killing blow.

The one thing I absolutely hope they'll fix in the next instalment though is the inventory. There's so many machine and upgrade parts and you really don't know what's useful and what's not that inventory management is just an utter nightmare where you'll keep stuff you end up never needing, while tossing things that you then later (quite literally) have to go hunt for. The same goes for some resources that I didn't use until I needed boatloads of them (see "specific weapon" from before)

As mentioned earlier I didn't like the Hunting Grounds. After the disappointment that was the "stealth" one I mostly ignored them. The DLC had a quest that was hunting ground related where you were set up with a limited arsenal (only specific weapon and limited amount of ammunition) to accomplish a task, but without a timer which I felt would have worked a lot better for most of the Hunting Ground trials. So I really hope they go that route if they want to retain the concept for the next game.

From a technical POV...well, my Gog copy CTD'd twice on its own, and screenshots are very liable to crash the game as well (seen that on Gog with other games, so not sure if Gog issue or game issue, regardless, my usual screenshot-happiness suffered greatly). I had one instance of textures simply not loading, forcing a reload, and a few cases of them loading slowly. There's also the "optimizing textures" bit that's bugged, it's supposed to help the game load faster but it ran on every game launch for me. I tried some of the troubleshooting tips but none seemed to work, so game loading times were agonizingly slow.

The UI is acceptable. It's a fairly direct console port and the most annoying part of it is the inability to "slot" more than four weapons at once, which is purely a controller-imposed limitation as you can swap out weapons in combat without drawbacks, so would be nice to see that resolved in the future.

Overall would rate it an 8/10 "Very good".

[ComradeYellow]

Bought the REmake on Steam not long ago and already I'm at 75% achievements unlocked xD

What annoys me most are Youtube speedrunners who kill the magic of the series by laser focusing on exploiting glitches and mechanics to hit that World Record that only dweebs care about.  Speedrunners: douches.

Though to be fair RE7's design is riddled with stupid "trigger" moments where you can exploit monster spawns just by doing a specific thing.  Capcom should have thought things through better.

[Tale]

6 hours ago, melkathi said:

I am still playing Skyrim. That is my dullest game I haven't quit. All because I adopted kids...

 

It isn't just dull gameplay wise. It is dull visually, with all those gray mountains and snow.

It's repetitive, but engaging. And that's where it traps you. I could go back to Morrowind, but get annoyed by whiffing all the melee attacks at low levels. I could go back to Oblivion, but I don't hate myself enough.

Skyrim is... easy to get into. And its flaws don't seem to really become striking until you've been playing too much and realized you saw everything worth seeing dozens of hours ago.

 

Anyway, I'm playing Ace Attorney Chronicles. As something of an Ace Attorney fanboy, it's nice to be back at it and with something new. Only two cases in and I've had plenty of laugh out loud moments.

[bugarup]

I'm playing "Kenshi". Sandbox where you do whatever (not my thing) with base building (I hate building bases), very grindy (grinding sucks), janky (that's actually a pro, I'm oddly fond of jank, Euro and otherwise), and yet I'm getting kind of addicted.  I like the worldbuilding, but starting as a total nobody weakling I love even more. You raise your skills by doing stuff over and over, kind of like in real file, so my guys scattered around different save states are good at sneaking and breaking & entering, rubbish at fighting and exceptionally good at running away.  Another good thing is that sentients in the game are content to beat you up and/or imprison/enslave so losing the fight is merely toughness training and not a game over. 

Anyway, 20 hrs in and it feels like I only scratched game's surface a little.    

[Gorth]

Sort of "discovering" one of the other game modes in Guild Wars 2, the wvw aka World vs. World. If running with a group of like minded IDGAF it can be fun on a different scale. Especially in the voice chat

A squad leader that is reluctantly squad leader (because nobody else wants to), an alcoholic, a handful of girls that are the meanest butchers and killer pvp players around (as long as they have other players to kill, they are all giggling and having fun), old timers like me who plays more of a jack of all trades character, theory crafters, etc. Just plain fun.

Taking keeps, towers, supply camps, killing supply Dolyaks (aka "cows") to starve defenders out, running away from mobs that outnumber you 80 to 10 and try to build defensive siege engines (I love pouring burning oil on people) and so on.

Edit: wvw is pitting populations of one server against two other servers in a 3 way fight on a number open world maps dedicated to it. Each server ("world") has it's own borderlands to defend while trying to attack the other two servers territory. A large, compact map is in the middle which is sort of a prestige thing to hold the central keep in.