Picture of Your Games the 15th

[InsaneCommander]

Finally made it to Baldur's Gate. Time to wear normal clothes and visit the circus:

Find someone who looks at you the way Karlach looks at my character:

Baldur's Gate (or at least its entrance):

Edited October 5, 2023 by InsaneCommander

[HoonDing]

Imagine not wearing a spacesuit on a -30°C planet

[LadyCrimson]

"There are many like it, but this one is mine."

...finding a system that had the right fleets pop, and then the reload-grind to get the specific freighter to be actually offered, plus as over a B class was long. I got impatient re: an "S" class and settled on an "A" class.
...there are some much more unique/kewl freighters in the game I think, but I would guess they are hard to find/get.
...looks like you can build a huge modular-room base on the thing (red-lined squares in pic below are player-placed). To the point it would get annoying to run around in. But I hear getting the freighter modules/currency to unlock more/all the modular rooms/thingies for it are a serious PITA. I probably won't bother. In fact, I probably won't use it, since I'm not interested in quests/combat etc, altho who knows. But I had to have the ST/SW combo one. And now I know what they're like.

Edited October 8, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[HoonDing]

[Hawke64]

Anno: Mutationem (not the strategy)

Spoiler

He lied, after the Evil Dragon there was the Evil Twin.

Not sure why, but there were a lot of crosses:

Spoiler

 

[LadyCrimson]

I was told if I did hire max frigates, all those msg's etc. would stop. So I did. Turns out max is 30. I now have a fleet. Plus once again I was delighted that I could "board" every single frigate, walk all over on the outsides, look inside. There isn't much point to it but virtual tourism (if they come back damaged from an expedition, there *is* a go-there and click stuff to repair them element) but it's impressive/fun and grand tourism. I've decided this game is an amusement park, with sandbox elements.

Edited October 9, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[HoonDing]

[Keyrock]

Another Next Fest on Steam which means a bunch more demos. First up Ghostrunner 2.

I never played the first game but it's a first person game with a focus on mobility where you play a cyberpunk ninja. Everything 1 shot kills you so it's all about being fast and precise. There were some HARDCORE stutters in what otherwise ran great. It's a demo so I don't expect it to be well optimized.

[Keyrock]

Next demo, The Inquisitor.

You play an inquisitor investigating a vampire sighting in an alternate history where Jesus got all types of vengeful.

It looks like a PS3 game.

And runs like complete ass. They have a lot of optimization work to do.

Still, y'all know how I love my Eurojank. This could be right up my alley.

 

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Keyrock

[melkathi]

What if Bertram is the vampire?

Doubting the vampire's existence is exactly what a vampire would do.

I say you should kill Bertram.

At the very least on grounds of having his journal entry right next to the vampire's. What god fearing person would do that?

Edited October 10, 2023 by melkathi

[Keyrock]

51 minutes ago, melkathi said:

What if Bertram is the vampire?

My money is on Liliana.

I'm going to have to examine her thoroughly to make sure.

VERY thoroughly.  

...

Because you don't want to sentence an innocent to death. You can't be too thorough.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Keyrock

[LadyCrimson]

I may have finally found the "forever home" Paradise planet! All I need now is to make a bit of a base. Maybe I'll let this one be the one where I hire an Overseer, so I'll make it a bit bigger.

....maybe I went a little overboard, and not in the best way. I'll clean it up later.

The funny thing is while I kept trying to place all those landing platforms (I had a temp-display-ships for screenshot idea - sadly 9 platforms is max per base), the random-encounter npc pilot/traders kept landing on them! That red ship below isn't mine, get off my stuff! So I then had to wait for them to fly off before I could move pieces again...I had no idea they'd use player-made platforms. Guess you need more than one, lol

[HoonDing]

[Keyrock]

Next demo, The Thaumaturge.

This game is all over the place. It labels itself an isometric RPG and most of it is played isometric like in the picture above. Here it plays like a detective game and sort of like a point & click. You have powers that let you sense latent emotions left on things and I guess you can detective together events and motivations or something. It's weird.

There's also combat, which kind of sort of takes place in old skool dungeon crawler view with me in the foreground and the enemies in the background. It's turn-based and the little bit in this demo was mostly me punching dudes in the stomach, but also you have this spirit dude who hangs out with you because reasons, y'all probably got a bond or pact or something. It's weird.

There are also puzzles. Also, the game takes place in very early 20th century Poland, or, well, Poland didn't exist as a sovereign country at that time, it was still divvied up between Russia, Austria and... I think it was the German Empire at that point, but I imagine people would have still called it Prussia.

Yes, it's THAT Rasputin.

Anyway, this game has me intrigued, I don't know how to feel about it. I'm not sure if it works, but I'm not saying it doesn't work either. For example, the combat felt sort of barebones, but then I looked through the skill "tree" and there are potentially some interesting mechanics, but I didn't get to play with those, so who knows? Production value wise this looks to be quality AA. It looks good in a very good last gen game sort of way.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

Next demo, The Talos Principle 2.

It starts out looking like The Talos Principle.

Not the worst thing in the world since The Talos Principle is one of my favorite games and IMHO the best game Croteam ever developed. But then...

But also Greek gods?

This game looks STUNNING.

There are some wall textures I've found that look a bit gnarly if you try to lick them, but overall it looks spectacular.

It's out in less than a month too. 

/rubs hands together

 

[Keyrock]

Demopalooza continues with Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express.

Everyone's favorite Belgian detective.

Doing detective things.

Investigating a murder, as Poirot is wont to do.

Wait a minute, what the **** is a FN Five-seven doing in the 1930s? I knew it right away because of the really awkward to hold looking grip (it is!) and the caliber confirmed it. AFAIK that gun didn't come out until late 90s or early 2000s.

A smart phone?

Vape? Wait a minute, is this game taking place in the present?

Well, that confirms it. The game takes place in the present, but the train is old-timey and people dress and talk like I imagine people in the 1930s did. What a bizarre design choice to mix 1930s and 2020s. Why would you do this?

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Keyrock

[LadyCrimson]

I cleaned up my large base. It's 99% for looks/fun of building ... the npc pilots still visit.
You can go multi-story with the room modules but the auto-mount a ladder when you get close to them mechanic drives me nuts - and you must put those ladders in the center of the claustrophobic rooms - so I don't do that and instead "game the system" to spread a base over more territory then initially allowed.

I have a few pets but I forget about them since they're auto-put away every time you get in/out of your ship. Plus per usual, they're just deco or the silly riding. Or you can try to breed new ones re:colors/size/shape I think. Some are cute tho. The brown one on the right tries to track/find POI's for me but isn't very good at it.

Not all worlds are grassy biospheres. There's a non-organic lifeform in the below pic - in the game it's obvious because it's rolling around like a boulder. Pretty cool.

This planet matched my ship pretty well I thought.

Edited October 13, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Keyrock]

Demo Madness keeps rolling along with ARTIFICIAL.

It's a physics-based puzzle game in the vein of Portal, minus the eponymous portals.

It has a low poly aesthetic, it basically looks like a PS2 game but with modern lighting and particle effects. It's a good aesthetic, looks quite nice IMHO.

Seems decent enough, if unremarkable.

[HoonDing]

[Azdeus]

Really, CDPR? Really?

[Keyrock]

Demomania continues with Star Ocean: The Second Story R.

This is a remake of Star Ocean 2 and the second game in this latest batch of Next Fest demos that has me scratching my head at a bizarre design decision.

If it isn't already obvious, they decided to marry 16-bit era sprites with fully rendered modern-ish 3d modeled environments. Why would you do this? The environments are fine and the sprites are great, but they clash. Why not just stick with one art style?

Beyond that, this seems like your typical JRPG. It's been forever since I've played a Star Ocean game so I don't know how much the battle system has changed from the original, but it plays very much like a traditional JRPG with a real-time combat system.

 

Edited October 15, 2023 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

The final demo I've played during this installment of Demorama, Hollow Cocoon.

It's that time of year, so I had to play at least one spoopy game.

The demo is quite short, so I didn't need to use them, but there are closets to hide in, so it's likely one of those games where you are collecting items to help you progress while trying to stay out of sight of the monster.

Said monster:

That's where the demo ended.

[HoonDing]

[LadyCrimson]

I got a new  Star Destroyer Freighter on my main save. 

Seemingly you must have space combat active (maybe also on Standard, not Minimal) so every 5 system warps or so you get a rescue-freighter when you drop out of warp, which is when these bigger ones may show up. I lucked out and got the biggest version of this Capital style after four reloads/retries, but once again it's only an A-class, not S, but since I suck at the ship combat, I'll take it. Mostly more starting cargo space so less work to max that out (33 vs. 19 starting, in my case) + looks, altho stats/combat abilities do go up a little too. I wish you weren't limited to only having one/your previous goes poof (can't collect them). I suppose you could try to get a different style in multiple saves. Anyhoo, I can now go back to ignoring space combat on this save.

[Lexx]

I'm still playing my 2000+ mods Skyrim and pretend that it is Bloodborne.

 

Damn, just imagine Elden Ring... but Bloodborne. I want it so hard.