What are you Playing Now? Who needs a life anyway?...

[marelooke]

On 5/15/2022 at 8:28 AM, the_dog_days said:

Finished Cyberpunk. Pretty good game. It doesn't have the best intro and the tutorial can be something like 15 - 20 hours. At one point I was so kitted up with cybernetics I considered raising the difficulty but left it on Normal 'cause I suck at shooters. Felt like the game threatened to melt my graphics card a few times. It runs so hot. There's an odd quest design quirk that pushes you to pursue the main plot right until the point of no return, and then to go do side content. I did what I always do in games in consuming as much side content I could before advancing the main plot. There was two quest chains (only two) I didn't finish 'cause I didn't feel like spam sleeping to move them along when I'd already done everything else. I got the good ending. Judy's story . . . well, that was the quest chain that left me questioning if I would continue to play. The driving is kinda bad. The cars felt floaty. they slid around a lot. Also, way have a first person driving mode that only shows you one half of the view looking out the window? Don't know about you guys, but I peripheral vision.

Really good game. Highly recommend despite the bugs.

Curious which ones you skipped, there's a few late game ones on timers that I'd recommend completing regardless.

Spoiler

Don't skip Kerry!

Certainly seems like the middle act is missing some content because I had to resort to random gigs to get the time to pass at the end of my first playthrough (maybe gets fleshed out with expansions?).

There's also an option to simply progress time, no need to spam sleep if you just want to trigger those quests.

Curious which ending you actually got, there's two people argue about which one has the better outcome, though given your mention of Judy I think I can make an educated guess

For what it's worth you can do all the endings on a single save (assuming you meet the prerequisites).

If nothing else they seriously nailed the atmosphere, I regularly boot up the game just to wander Night City. Reminds me of Bloodlines a bit (if they would have created the whole city in that game, I'd probably have gone wandering there too)

Edited May 19, 2022 by marelooke

[the_dog_days]

1 hour ago, marelooke said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Don't skip Kerry!

 

That's one that I skipped. 

Spoiler

I got through the one-off show and then stopped mostly 'cause I was fed up with Johnny asking me for favors. The other quest chain was the racing one. I qualified for the final race and I hated the way the cars handled so much that I decided against finishing it.

 

1 hour ago, marelooke said:

Curious which ending you actually got, there's two people argue about which one has the better outcome, though given your mention of Judy I think I can make an educated guess

Spoiler

Star. My character was a nomad and romanced Panam and joined the Aldacados (spelling?). In my headcannon the only thing keeping my V in Night City was Jackie and then after that was finding a cure. He had no reason to stay and battle it out with the corps or join them.

 

[marelooke]

11 hours ago, the_dog_days said:

That's one that I skipped. 

  Reveal hidden contents

I got through the one-off show and then stopped mostly 'cause I was fed up with Johnny asking me for favors. The other quest chain was the racing one. I qualified for the final race and I hated the way the cars handled so much that I decided against finishing it.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Star. My character was a nomad and romanced Panam and joined the Aldacados (spelling?). In my headcannon the only thing keeping my V in Night City was Jackie and then after that was finding a cure. He had no reason to stay and battle it out with the corps or join them.

 

Ah, would recommend completing at some point that one it's pretty good

Spoiler

and it pretty much stops being about Johnny after the show. As a matter of fact, the show arguably is really the final quest in Johnny's questchain, Kerry's still has to really start at that point.

The racing ones, well, ymmv, but if you got to the final race you might as well see it through to its conclusion (imho)

[Malcador]

I hate puzzles where you have to remember and reproduce tones in adventure games, hardest puzzle in Crowns and Pawns so far was that, trying to hear a muffled tone in the distance, hah.  Delightfully absurd, caused Belarus to win by putting up a flag and making the crowd chant "Goal!" or "Defense!"

[213374U]

In a fun turn of events, my computer suddenly shut itself down and a distinct burning smell started coming out of my video card. Right, RIP my GPU and all that. However, it still works and there are no exploded capacitors or any obvious damage that I can see after detaching the cooling block to clean it a bit and apply new thermal paste. It's not even overheating. Maybe a bit of lint burned in there and that caused a temporary short which triggered the PSU auto-shutdown or something. Anyway, I'm not going to push my luck because it's a really bad time to be left without a graphics card. I'll bring it to the shop to have it taken a look at next week, maybe.

So, on topic... I guess I will still not be finishing Cyberpunk for the time being, heh.

[uuuhhii]

8 hours ago, 213374U said:

In a fun turn of events, my computer suddenly shut itself down and a distinct burning smell started coming out of my video card. Right, RIP my GPU and all that. However, it still works and there are no exploded capacitors or any obvious damage that I can see after detaching the cooling block to clean it a bit and apply new thermal paste. It's not even overheating. Maybe a bit of lint burned in there and that caused a temporary short which triggered the PSU auto-shutdown or something. Anyway, I'm not going to push my luck because it's a really bad time to be left without a graphics card. I'll bring it to the shop to have it taken a look at next week, maybe.

So, on topic... I guess I will still not be finishing Cyberpunk for the time being, heh.

had a gpu burn down before

never think the pc are ok when it restart and function fine for a few hours

the problem may only occur and worsen when gpu are running under pressure again

[marelooke]

59 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

had a gpu burn down before

never think the pc are ok when it restart and function fine for a few hours

the problem may only occur and worsen when gpu are running under pressure again

Running some benchmark on loop for an  hour or so would be a decent way to figure out whether it was a fluke or actual cause for concern. 3DMark or Heaven would work as both have a "loop" mode.

As to what I've been playing, I started, and finished Subnautica: Below Zero (took me 1d7h40min, according to my save file, though I did leave the game running at times)

My expectations were kind of  low since there was a lot of negativity around the game. Personally I considered it more of a standalone expansion than a full game, and as a standalone expansion it was definitely decent. I mean, it's more Subnautica, which is good.

Game world definitely feels smaller, which was a common criticism, but conversely it's also much, much more confusing. Early on I died quite a few times due to running out of, ironically, water, because I got lost somewhere in a cave system (and everywhere has cave systems). However, there's now these new plants that give you oxygen, and they're everywhere, so dying by running out of oxygen is actually pretty hard, which, eeeehhhh, I dunno, seems a bit counterintuitive and makes a lot of places a lot less claustrophobic and scary than they would have otherwise been.

Smaller size and the tight cave interiors also means that of the larger vehicles from Subnautica only the Prawn made it into the game. Unlike many I never cared too much for Cyclops (the big sub), I did however miss the Seamoth.

The Seatruck really isn't a good substitute for the Seamoth since without modules it has no storage. Furthermore each module you add makes the thing slower, and, obviously, longer, and thus harder to get around the tighter cave interiors. Combined with quite a few of the modules being really situational, I ended up only using three on the regular: the storage module, the one with the crafting station, and the docking one (so I could lug a Prawn suit around), and given how often I used the Prawn (basically only on land, or to mine) I could have done without that last one most of the time as well.

Which brings us to the land component, Below Zero features quite a bit of surface exploration, and it is kinda "meh". Don't get me wrong, instead of air, you gotta watch temperature (Below Zero is the outside temperature, in Celsius), and the atmosphere is great. You also get access to the Snowfox, some sort of hoverbike you're supposed to get around in. Unfortunately it's just not very usable, for starters it has no storage, you also get knocked off of it by certain enemies, all the damn time (oftentimes you get knocked off immediately after getting back on, multiple times in a row. RRRAAAGGGEEE). Using the Prawn was a much less obnoxious way of getting around, sadly.

So we need to talk about the enemies. They were...disappointing. Most of them are way more aggressive than they were in the original, unfortunately they're also way, way less dangerous. It really doesn't take long before most enemies are just an annoyance rather than a threat (yes, *those* too). This is especially true on land (see earlier Snowfox comment)

Unlike Subnautica, Below Zero has a narrated story and a voice protagonist. In fact, there's two storylines that are not directly related, though they do  intersect. The first one is the reason you're there in the first place: finding out what happened to your sister. This one fell really, really flat in my opinion. Supposedly they changed writers somewhere during development and I have no trouble believing it with how this storyline went. Started of pretty strong but totally dropped the ball past a certain point. The other storyline seemed a bit more fleshed out.

I feel I should also comment on the voiced protagonist. I generally prefer the silent type, however for plot reasons, that wouldn't really have worked here. Aside from the character you play reacting entirely differently from what I would have envisioned (really, strong reactions to something should be a player choice, not something forced onto them, it is jarring) it kinda worked better than I expected. I didn't hate it.

I'd give the game a 6/10, it's decent, but the story, land exploration, and lack of sense of danger (plentiful oxygen, most predators being more of a nuisance than a threat) make it so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't like the first game.

Tl;dr it's more Subnautica, If you liked Subnautica, can get past the story, and don't hate voiced protagonists with the fury of a thousand suns, I'd recommend it, certainly when you can get it on sale. For those who didn't enjoy Subnautica, well, doubt this entry will change your opinion.

Edited May 21, 2022 by marelooke

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, 213374U said:

In a fun turn of events, my computer suddenly shut itself down and a distinct burning smell started coming out of my video card. Right, RIP my GPU and all that. However, it still works and there are no exploded capacitors or any obvious damage that I can see after detaching the cooling block to clean it a bit and apply new thermal paste. It's not even overheating. Maybe a bit of lint burned in there and that caused a temporary short which triggered the PSU auto-shutdown or something. Anyway, I'm not going to push my luck because it's a really bad time to be left without a graphics card. I'll bring it to the shop to have it taken a look at next week, maybe.

So, on topic... I guess I will still not be finishing Cyberpunk for the time being, heh.

Kind of reminds me when my buddy had a fan spontaneously shatter while the PC was running and pieces went flying into the video card and it immediately died. Hope yours turns out okay.

[Keyrock]

I'm starting Vampire the Masquerade Swansong (henceforth referred to simply as "Swansong" for the sake of brevity). I had read that there are technical issues, I expected such and can confirm that indeed there are issues. The game has pretty bad pop-in, and that's on xXxBOxXx, with its considerable processing power, I can't imagine how bad it is on previous gen. The audio mixing leaves a lot to be desired; hearing 3 different audio quality and volume levels for the same character in the same dialogue is alarming. There are also some pretty stiff animations, but I fully expected that. There is also a decent bit of inconsistency in terms of the character models; some look like mid to late last gen and some look like PS3 models, all the protagonists are in the former group, thankfully. On the bright side, no showstoppers so far.

Technical shortcomings aside, I'm liking the game so far. It's slow paced but I was expecting that and have no issues with it. This game has a more robust RPG system as compared to The Council. Resource management is a big part of the game as using skills drains willpower and focusing them to increase chance of success further drains it. Using disciplines increases hunger and upon reaching your threshold you can lose control and feed on a human whether you want to or not.

I'm not going to metagame this on my first playthrough, I'll live with my choices and failures and see what comes of them (AFAIK failures don't necessarily lead to a "game over", rather they impact how much XP you get and the course of the story). I'll take what I learn from said first playthrough and apply that knowledge in my second. Hopefully some of the technical shortcomings have been addressed by then.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Keyrock

[Sven_]

Having finished Weird West (liked, will buy story DLC if some come out), I hopped on to Hard West, which is kinda neat.

However, I also just bought and installed Elden Ring. Never actually played a From Soft game myself yet, but I like it. I didn't necessarily buy the game for the combat challenge absolutely first and foremost, but because it is a curious AAA experience that dials open worlds back to where they used to come from (early TES, Elite, etc. etc.):

You're just put into a world and can actually discover it for yourself, rather than being guided all the way through. That, to me, is the entire point of such an experience to begin with. The sensation of discovery.

There's a huge paradoxon here at work anyway how things have (mostly) developed: One the  one hand, developers obviously don't trust their players to even find out of their own closet without a helping hand (and their game worlds are being designed around those helping hands, which means even if there's options to turn them off -- it doesn't feel good). On the other -- they're not only making sizable open worlds where potential customers indeed may get some lost in -- but those worlds keep on getting bigger.

Whether the game's huge commercial success will influence anything though, I'm rather sceptical. From Software in general is a name associated with a specific kind of experience, almost a meme, and they've made that sort of their own. They had to deliver that again and seemed to have gradually and organically expanded their audience some. I think all the other big kids on the block will keep on doing whatever they did, perhaps with a few more tweaks here and there. Breath Of The Wild apparently also didn't change much, so... I'm certainly not expecting the Next Gen update for the Witcher to suddenly include quests that don't witcher sense themselves or anything.  

PS: Started yesterday, I'm already level 24 and it's quite fun (surprisingly, even on mouse+keyboard after a few tweaks, plus with a 1050 ti).  

Edited May 22, 2022 by Sven_

[melkathi]

Harvest Time in Gamedec is seriously addictive.

[Malcador]

15 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Harvest Time in Gamedec is seriously addictive.

Was the most enjoyable part of the game for me, shame there weren't more cases.

[kanisatha]

14 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I'm not going to metagame this on my first playthrough, I'll live with my choices and failures and see what comes of them (AFAIK failures don't necessarily lead to a "game over", rather they impact how much XP you get and the course of the story). I'll take what I learn from said first playthrough and apply that knowledge in my second.

This is exactly how I play most RPGs, the first time being a blind learning experience (where I may not necessarily finish the game), and the second time being a completionist and perfectionist run.

Re. Swansong itself, how difficult is it to handle the resource management? I like resource management in games, but have found there is a fine line between resource management that is challenging but reasonable and fun, and resource management that is aggravating and frustrating.

[Keyrock]

4 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Re. Swansong itself, how difficult is it to handle the resource management? I like resource management in games, but have found there is a fine line between resource management that is challenging but reasonable and fun, and resource management that is aggravating and frustrating.

It's not challenging to manage, it's a question of making judgement calls on what's important. It's nigh impossible, if not completely impossible, to succeed in every situation, I am going to fail along the way (already have). On a subsequent playthrough I will be armed with additional information which will help me decide when to spend my willpower and hunger to make sure I succeed in situations I deem most important. On the first playthrough I can only at best guess what may come next and thus judging whether to spend resources or not is more difficult, so I go by feel and let the chips fall where they may.

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

It's not challenging to manage, it's a question of making judgement calls on what's important. It's nigh impossible, if not completely impossible, to succeed in every situation, I am going to fail along the way (already have). On a subsequent playthrough I will be armed with additional information which will help me decide when to spend my willpower and hunger to make sure I succeed in situations I deem most important. On the first playthrough I can only at best guess what may come next and thus judging whether to spend resources or not is more difficult, so I go by feel and let the chips fall where they may.

Okay, but then is it difficult/challenging/frustrating to build up/regain willpower and to reduce hunger?

[Keyrock]

2 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Okay, but then is it difficult/challenging/frustrating to build up/regain willpower and to reduce hunger?

There are items that will restore some willpower if you can find them and/or get to them, plus you sometimes restore some willpower at story points. Reducing hunger is easy enough, you feed on a human, but that may come with consequences, especially if you aren't discreet about it, given that the whole purpose of The Masquerade is to keep the existence of vampires a secret from humans.

[Humanoid]

Now that the real-life football season is over, I can feel comfortable playing Football Manager again - specifically FM21 Touch. I'd forgotten where I was, having last played it the month that it was an Amazon Prime freebie, but turns out I'm manager of Excelsior in the Dutch second division, around a couple months in.

Anyway, being a very hands-off manager, and this being the Touch version, I can motor through a season pretty fast, and I finished up the season in 2-3 days of play. Secured promotion by finished third place in the league, as while only the top two automatically promote, one was the Ajax youth team who are ineligible for promotion. Then I checked my staff at the end of the season to see who I could promote ...turns out I went through the entire season without an Assistant Manager. Umm, I don't know how that happened. Did he retire or get poached? Was no one there in the role to begin with? Who was giving me all my squad selection advice and handling training? It's quite the mystary.

[Malcador]

Friend played Stellaris due to free weekend, so went back to that. Was fun to re-learn the game.  Still suck at it, got the Unbidden invading and they pretty much wrecked me.  But good to see espionage is finally in (they've caught up to SEIV ! )

[MrBrown]

5 hours ago, Malcador said:

Friend played Stellaris due to free weekend, so went back to that. Was fun to re-learn the game.  Still suck at it, got the Unbidden invading and they pretty much wrecked me.  But good to see espionage is finally in (they've caught up to SEIV ! )

Unfortunately, espionage is mostly useless. The "intel" part of it works fine, but the espionage actions are just woefully weak.

[Chilloutman]

yeah, they really didn't done much with espionage, shame, could have been interesting to play some espionage heavy empire

[uuuhhii]

6 hours ago, Malcador said:

Friend played Stellaris due to free weekend, so went back to that. Was fun to re-learn the game.  Still suck at it, got the Unbidden invading and they pretty much wrecked me.  But good to see espionage is finally in (they've caught up to SEIV ! )

just too much micro

even total war hurt wrist less

hope vic 3 change that

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, MrBrown said:

Unfortunately, espionage is mostly useless. The "intel" part of it works fine, but the espionage actions are just woefully weak.

Well, I guess I should have expected as much, didn't dabble too much in my learning game. 

[ShadySands]

Now I'm reinstalling Stellaris, thanks!

[Hurlshort]

Hah, I was already playing Stellaris, so it wasn't the peer pressure!

[Wormerine]

My Stellaris experience usually goes like that - I install it, buy bunch of extra content that was release since I last played it, then I play it for couple evenings, get distracted, try to return to it, but can't remember what is what and where, and why. I spend one session just trying to recall what I was doing, get frustrated, uninstal the game and wait for the next cicle like that.