What are you Playing Now? No really, tell us more...

[Bartimaeus]

Outer Wilds (note: not The Outer Worlds). Somewhat Subnautica-ish, but without the survival/building mechanics...so also somewhat not Subnautica-ish. Space sure can make me sick.

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Outer Wilds (note: not The Outer Worlds). Somewhat Subnautica-ish, but without the survival/building mechanics...so also somewhat not Subnautica-ish. Space sure can make me sick.

Fun fact: I backed that game for 90$ or some such (pledge + shipping for some goodies). I have received my key, activated it and promptly proceeded to not play it at all, even though everyone who tried it seems to have enjoyed it.

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

Fun fact: I backed that game for 90$ or some such (pledge + shipping for some goodies). I have received my key, activated it and promptly proceeded to not play it at all, even though everyone who tried it seems to have enjoyed it.

The whole "reset every 20 minutes" mechanic doesn't much appeal to you, or is it something else?

[Sarex]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Space sure can make me sick.

This is the reason why I stopped playing it. I need to give it another go.

[Bartimaeus]

47 minutes ago, Sarex said:

This is the reason why I stopped playing it. I need to give it another go.

Earlier, I accidentally stepped onto a teleporter that I did not know was a teleporter and got flung to some far-away station I'd never seen before, looked around for approximately ten seconds before promptly falling into a black hole that I thought was safely far "above" me but turned out to actually be "below" me because its gravitational pull forced the issue, which then turned out to be a wormhole instead of a black hole and sucked me away to some other place that I had no idea what was either, where I then had no idea what to do especially since I was in space without my ship while running clear out of oxygen and thus perished. Good times were had by everyone...well, everyone except for me.

[Wormerine]

6 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Outer Wilds (note: not The Outer Worlds). Somewhat Subnautica-ish, but without the survival/building mechanics...so also somewhat not Subnautica-ish. Space sure can make me sick.

One of the best games I played. Easily the best "open world" game I played, with exploration purely driven by curiosity and desire to discover. Many games promise map/world/universe to explore, and it rarely feels like there is anything interesting to see. Outer Wilds mini universe is a constant stream of awe, discovery and joy of figuring some thing out. Also, a first game in a long time which managed to terrify me. Perhaps becuase of the short loop time, it is not afraid to mercilessly murder or strand you. Somehow I never got desensitized to in game deaths. 

[Bartimaeus]

13 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

One of the best games I played. Easily the best "open world" game I played, with exploration purely driven by curiosity and desire to discover. Many games promise map/world/universe to explore, and it rarely feels like there is anything interesting to see. Outer Wilds mini universe is a constant stream of awe, discovery and joy of figuring some thing out. Also, a first game in a long time which managed to terrify me. Perhaps becuase of the short loop time, it is not afraid to mercilessly murder or strand you. Somehow I never got desensitized to in game deaths. 

I'm starting to finally get desensitized to the deaths. For the first few hours, it was a lot of "I'm just going to close my eyes now until this is over"s. Accidentally falling into the sun, eaten by gooberfishes, shot out of repulsion cannons into dead space and suffocating, accidentally crash-landing into planets at a thousand kmph because I didn't slow down enough in time...not great.

[majestic]

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The whole "reset every 20 minutes" mechanic doesn't much appeal to you, or is it something else?

It's pretty much everything. Open world, exploration based, quick loop resets, the entire concept is pretty much the opposite of what I normally enjoy, so I never really tried to play it. The much more interesting question is why the hell I actualy backed the game in the first place, and that's not easy to answer.

I haven't read up on anything, is there even a point to the game? Something to find out, or some goal to achieve?

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, majestic said:

It's pretty much everything. Open world, exploration based, quick loop resets, the entire concept is pretty much the opposite of what I normally enjoy, so I never really tried to play it. The much more interesting question is why the hell I actualy backed the game in the first place, and that's not easy to answer.

I haven't read up on anything, is there even a point to the game? Something to find out, or some goal to achieve?

There's a mystery you have to uncover via exploring and investigating information you figure out (read the spoiler below if you want to know what it is - it's not really particularly spoilery since you already know about the loop reset mechanic, which I didn't going into it and which thus surprised me), which is also part of what makes it Subnautica-ish for me. A number of differences in the specific particulars of the gameplay, but it ends up feeling like a similar game even so. The game helpfully keeps a record of all important information you find in your space journal in between resets. I also didn't even realize this game qualified as "open world"...I guess it kind of makes sense, but it doesn't really feel like it's open world, because there aren't that many "planets" and the "planets" are incredibly small, which is really bizarre for its sense of scale but it's a good thing for actual gameplay, IMO. The world is probably...I don't know, somewhere between 1/100th and 1/500th the size of Breath of the Wild - it's not really even a comparison. howlongtobeat.com puts it at 15-20 hours length, which was right about where I was guessing it was - even for a 100%er, it's only at 25 hours.

Spoiler

The sun inexplicably goes supernova every 20 minutes - figure out why and how, and presumably how to prevent in. I'm still working on it, so I'm presuming there will be steps you need to stop it and thus "win" the game.

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

I see. The only thing I know about the game is what the crowdfunding campaign told me about it.

Anyway, I'll try it eventually. If the mystery unravelling part is good enough that should keep me entertained for 20 or so hours.

[Oner]

I'm still a little salty that Phoenix Point and Metro Exodus got their rightful dissing for the last minute EGS switcheroo but Outer Wilds got a free pass because it's zomg amazing.

Played through Days Gone last week, it was a fun ride - pun intended. Mechanically it's open world TLoU with bikes and hordes. The OW busywork wasn't as bad as in other games so that's nice. Enjoyed the plot, cinematography was great and they mocapped the crap out of the actors.

Been watching a friend of mine stream Resident Evil 2 Remake and ended up reinstalling RE3R yesterday because I never ended up finishing it.

[Bartimaeus]

13 minutes ago, Oner said:

I'm still a little salty that Phoenix Point and Metro Exodus got their rightful dissing for the last minute EGS switcheroo but Outer Wilds got a free pass because it's zomg amazing.

Didn't even know about that, to be honest. I did not back it or even follow it, nor pay anywhere near full price for it. Seems like they did Metro: Exodus one even worse, because Exodus at least gave the original Steam purchasers the game on Steam, while from what I'm reading, Outer Wilds did not (and in the process, screwed over their promised Linux support because EGS has no Linux client). Gross.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I see. The only thing I know about the game is what the crowdfunding campaign told me about it.

Anyway, I'll try it eventually. If the mystery unravelling part is good enough that should keep me entertained for 20 or so hours.

I haven't been absolutely blown away with it like so many apparently have been, but I definitely like it and think it made correct decisions in balancing world (well, worlds) and gameplay...for whatever that is worth, .

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Didn't even know about that, to be honest. I did not back it or even follow it, nor pay anywhere near full price for it. Seems like they did Metro: Exodus one even worse, because Exodus at least gave the original Steam purchasers the game on Steam, while from what I'm reading, Outer Wilds did not (and in the process, screwed over their promised Linux support because EGS has no Linux client). Gross.

I got both an Epic Store key and a Steam key from the development team. I don't know about the Linux support, I never cared and never will, in spite of having used various Linux distributions in one form or another for probably longer than the Valve apologist minority who use one exclusively know what computers are (what a sad that is, ultimately, but I deem it necessary to underscore my position here), but whoever claimed that Mobius Digital didn't give out both to backers is demonstrably wrong.

That said, I find it really hard to blame small teams or even medium sized studios when they take up Epic's offer for a limited time exclusivity when Epic buys more copies than they'd sell on Steam by even the most optimistic projections. Phoenix Point in particular, when you look at the state the game was in when it released, proved that it probably was the correct decision from a management and economic point of view. Especially for Outer Wilds and Phoenix Point whose campaigns ran on Fig, which meant they didn't just have backers, but actual investors wanting some return on their investment. Getting a fixed sale of at least a hundred thousand copies (which is I think the number that was given, at least for Phoenix Point) solved all these problems and provided a financial boost that kept people employed.

It also most likely cost Epic more than they gained from it. As an avid gamer that annoyed me too, but while I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision, I ultimately understand it. Fun thought experiment, if you'd offer Feargus to buy 500k copies of Deadfire for limited exclusivity on Epic, with the knowledge that the game would ultimately prove to be a disaster in terms of sales (if perhaps not directly in terms of finances with the money of the backers and investors, at the very least with long term issues attracting more investors for future projects), do you think he'd refuse it or take it?

I mean, not that Obsidian didn't answer the question by making Outer Worlds time limited exclusive on Epic before being bought out by Microsoft. Just as food for thought.

We also should not forget that ultimately, everything that weakens the Steam behemoth is good for the market (oi, now I'm poking a hornet's nest, I wonder if the fanboys will come swarming and drone something about their favorite quasi-monopoly being great while arguing for the wonders of the invisible hand of the free market in the Off-Topic political thread). Except for a minority of Linux gamers that seem disproportionally present in crowd funding campaigns, because there must be some reason beyond Unity supporting multiple platforms to always promise Linux support in one form or the other.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I haven't been absolutely blown away with it like so many apparently have been, but I definitely like it and think it made correct decisions in balancing world (well, worlds) and gameplay...for whatever that is worth, .

I'll see, eventually. Part of the reason I didn't try it right after I got my key was that my controller was broken, and the game supposedly is borderline impossible to play without one, and after I got my replacement I already started playing something else. Combine that with a general sense of not really going to like the premise or the gameplay loop...

Leaves the reason why I backed the game in the first place, and that was beause I didn't want Fig's first campaign to fail, and the fact that it looked like it would until the very last second makes me think that one of the owners chipped in with a last minute investment pledge, because that campaign missed like 10k dollars shortly before it ended until it didn't any more. Which seems like a silly reason, but I figured that could turn into an interesting platform, and since at the time I was backing several games, potentially making my pledge back in sales seemed like a nice idea. Except when Fig started to allow international investments, the idea was as good as dead, or at least I had lost all interest.

Edited January 15, 2022 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

40 minutes ago, majestic said:

I got both an Epic Store key and a Steam key from the development team. I don't know about the Linux support, I never cared and never will, in spite of having used various Linux distributions in one form or another for probably longer than the Valve apologist minority who use one exclusively know what computers are (what a sad that is, ultimately, but I deem it necessary to underscore my position here), but whoever claimed that Mobius Digital didn't give out both to backers is demonstrably wrong.

Wikipedia: "In exchange for additional financial support, Mobius announced that the game's initial release on PC users would be a timed-exclusive on the Epic Games Store. As it was originally announced that Fig backers would have received redemption keys on Steam for the game, some backers complained about the change; Linux users noted that as the Epic Games Store does not have a Linux-compatible front end, the change left them without any option." Perhaps something that was "fixed" sometime later once it was released on Steam?

42 minutes ago, majestic said:

We also should not forget that ultimately, everything that weakens the Steam behemoth is good for the market (oi, now I'm poking a hornet's nest, I wonder if the fanboys will come swarming and drone something about their favorite quasi-monopoly being great while arguing for the wonders of the invisible hand of the free market in the Off-Topic political thread). Except for a minority of Linux gamers that seem disproportionally present in crowd funding campaigns, because there must be some reason beyond Unity supporting multiple platforms to always promise Linux support in one form or the other.

True...and in a sense, it ends up working out regardless - I'm perfectly patient in waiting for these situations to resolve themselves, .

[majestic]

4 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Wikipedia: "In exchange for additional financial support, Mobius announced that the game's initial release on PC users would be a timed-exclusive on the Epic Games Store. As it was originally announced that Fig backers would have received redemption keys on Steam for the game, some backers complained about the change; Linux users noted that as the Epic Games Store does not have a Linux-compatible front end, the change left them without any option." Perhaps something that was "fixed" sometime later once it was released on Steam?

Maybe, it's also possible that Mobius Digital initially did not want to provide Steam and Epic keys for the backers but relented eventually, but the bottom line is that they did. I don't know if the Steam verison also runs under Linux, but with Proton that's entirely possible. I had a Linux "phase" too, but that meant playing around with Wine (or it's more gaming focused and commercial offshoot WineX) in various ways, so I eventually stopped bothering.

The most ridiculous thing I managed to get to run was Internet Explorer 4.0, and that was at a time when IE 4.0 was arguably the best browser on the market and Microsoft was busy pummeling Netscape into submission. Good old times, and all that. Gee, that was when... like 1997?

10 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

True...and in a sense, it ends up working out regardless - I'm perfectly patient in waiting for these situations to resolve themselves, .

People who waited for the Steam version of Phoenix point arguably got a much better game out of it. I liked even the release version well enough, but it was the ridiculous loading times that eventually made me give up until a hardware upgrade that keeps being postponed for various reasons.

[Hurlshort]

Phoenix Point really also needed a year of DLC to flesh out all of the systems. They added a lot of content.

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Hurlsnot said:

Phoenix Point really also needed a year of DLC to flesh out all of the systems. They added a lot of content.

Did it get better with DLCs? I never got deep enough to actual try DLCs 2-4. The updates to based game are certainly for the better, but from what I have seen (which is not much) DLCs seem to disconnected to really contribute. A bit like minor XCOM2 DLCs where, without War of the Chosen that tied everything together. 

[melkathi]

The dlcs are a bit of a mess. The main thing that improved for me is that adding all this stuff allowed them to tone down the faction war, and factions no longer wipe each other out at a rate where you wondered why there were monsters in the game at all.

 

DLC 1 adds cybernetics.

The good:

It gives the player options.

It adds a new minor faction that for a while may attack havens, adding diversity to what you fight.

The bad:

The enemies are basically bullet sponge versions of New Jericho soldiers.

You are resource starved so may not have any resources to waste on something so trivial as cybernetics.

 

DLC 2 adds prehuman ruins and tech.

The good:

The weapons you research are powerful.

New enemies and map type are fresh.

The bad:

Once you have played one new map you have seen everything the dlc has to offer.

You have to manually collect the new resources with an aircraft hovering over the site. This is time consuming and costs resources if you have to craft an aircraft or two or three for this purpose.

At least in my playthrough I did not get resource sites for every type of ancient resources, making some tech uncraftable in my game.

 

DLC 3 adds fliers.

The good:

It adds a new layer to the game.

The bad:

Air combat sucks.

Aircraft are a huge resource sink.

The behemoth is the giant base they always wanted to add and with this DLC finally didn't add. It stomps havens but you can't interact with it. To drive it off you have to defeat enough fliers, which it randomly sends out. In other words you sit there passively waiting.

 

DLC 4 adds corruption and cloning.

The good:

Vat grown mutant clone troopers are cool and add variety to your roster.

Pandorans can corrupt havens, opening up cool though tough liberation missions.

Mutagen is finally useful outside Anu mutations.

The bad:

They overdid the need for mutagen.

Corruption is is a bad system as all it does is have you waste mutagen to cleanse your soldiers again and again and again. Corruption increases the damage your soldiers deal, but reduces their Willpower. Losing 1 willpower out of 12-20 WP your soldier may have per point of corruption is too big a problem compared to the 1% damage increase they get. It also means that soon enough the use of a single ability will get your soldiers close to panicking.

Clone troopers need mutagen to heal and to level up, but as you also need mutagen to cleanse your soldiers of corruption, it's not worth spending it on such a resource sink.

 

 

For every good idea they have, they come up with two to ruin the fun.

Edited January 16, 2022 by melkathi

[Humanoid]

Holidays means family gaming time as I go back to my parents' house for a couple of weeks. During that that I played Unpacking with my sister, taking turns to unpack each room. It's a decent enough game, cute but perhaps not as zen as others may see it. However it has way too many books.

That's not a joke complaint. A lot of the game is just robotically unpacking books out of boxes and putting them on a shelf. Makes it feel like filler, especially as the low-res pixel art means most of the books are nameless, title-less and look completely generic instead of telling a story about the protagonist which you'd think the intent would be. You might say that this kind of thing is the point of the game, but differences can be subtle: organising a bunch of colourful panties into an aesthetically pleasing grid arrangement in a drawer is far more engaging than placing nameless books in arbitrary order on a shelf.

Other than that I've played a random grab bag of things on the Xbox Sex. A little bit of Sherlock Holmes Crime and Punishment, co-operatively. A little Overcooked in 3-player mode (which is unbalanced in some levels that have a 50:50 geometry split). A little FIFA with the 10 hour trial thing that comes with EA on Game Pass. And sampled a couple other Game Pass titles: a little of The Pedestrian, which isn't a terrible puzzler but has an irritating interface. And Rain on Your Parade, which was just boring. Katamari Damacy Reroll which might have potential but is kinda obnoxiously loud (both in a literal and figurative sense). Oh, and Moonglow Bay, which crashed shortly after the tutorial ended and didn't autosave, and which apparently does not allow you to skip the tutorial. Ugh.

Anyway, back home now for the past week but haven't really been bothered to play anything but a couple of quick AoE2 games. I half feel like doing some trucking, but a recent patch kinda broke the default force feedback settings and I can't be bothered dialling it in manually.

[melkathi]

Imagine you could import your unread ebooks, then each book you unpack, you're character would sit down ingame and read it, so you'd have to finish reading the book before puting it on the shelf.

[LadyCrimson]

I am still ... making maps in 7 Days to Die. First it was huge Cities. Then I switched to mini-cities, but oodles of them everywhere. Then I tried to change hills, plains and mts. parameters but I can't seem to force the game to create maps that don't have giant sections of flatland. Then after every map I have to comb the POI .xml to see if it randomly generated most of the specific buildings one would want in a single map (gotta have at least one of certain Tier5 buildings!). If I sorta like one, I then have to recolor the biome map so stuff I want is in the "right" biome/s. At any rate, 100's and 100's of maps later I still have yet to make the perfect map, even considering the limitations of the default generator.

...someone smarter than me make a new version-update of a 3rd party map generator again, before I go insane, please.

[Wormerine]

17 hours ago, melkathi said:

For every good idea they have, they come up with two to ruin the fun.

That's Phoenix Point in a nutshell.  

 

In preperation for Hitman3 I cleared last remaining achievements in H2 - mostly all I had left was Sniper Mode, and couple "easter eggs" that for some reason had achievement tied to them. Not nearly done with actually good content in it (didn't even touch alternative targets for H2 levels) but that stuff I can finish in H3. 

 

Finished Halo: Infinite. My first Halo game. I tried Halo1 leading up to H:I, but it bored me within half an hour, and I have up on mission 3 I think. As someone who doesn't generally enjoy shooters, I must say that I think it is a very good shooter, mechanically. I didn't get bored, in spite of it being extremely repetitive and light on story and lacking anything beyond shooting, I enjoyed my time spent with it. I like Master Chief voice. Maybe the story meant something to someone with more investment in the story but all I got from it that a killing maching (but with heart?) had a crush on a program lady, and now he has a younger replacement and that there were angry aliens (now dead), and now there are new angry aliens (in the process of making them dead), and there will be new angry aliens (to be made dead) in the sequel. So shooty shoot shoot and hot digital lady. Oh, I really don't like the driving system. 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Wormerine

[Malcador]

 Next game on my backlog is Sea Dogs.  Well trying to play it, still don't really know what I'm doing but seems fun. Only way I can win in ship combat is to ram and board, then struggle through the super janky melee combat experience.

Still, good idea in this game.

[BruceVC]

I completed Bards Tale Trilogy, game 1, after 70  hours. It was great fun and my first real CRPG  I have ever played. I had to get use to the various gaming mechanics like prudent combat strategies, I learnt when to defend and when to use items,  and being able  to teleport quickly back to Skara Brae for healing( walking all the time can be tiresome ). 

And I can see how BT1 really was the precursor to future hard puzzles and interesting dungeon level design and how to progress to deeper levels 

This game gets a well deserved 65\100 on the globally endorsed " BruceVC game rating system " and I look forward to playing BT2&3 

 

 

[Hurlshort]

19 minutes ago, Malcador said:

 Next game on my backlog is Sea Dogs.  Well trying to play it, still don't really know what I'm doing but seems fun. Only way I can win in ship combat is to ram and board, then struggle through the super janky melee combat experience.

Still, good idea in this game.

Sea Dogs was my jam back in the day.