What are you Playing Now? Whatever happens, at least we're out of that mudhole, Gilded Vale.

[uuuhhii]

trying to play cyberpunk again

crashed twice in one hour

never been this unstable before

not sure if it was problem of pc or game

[Keyrock]

Soul Hackers 2 - I'm only dipping my toe in the water right now, mainly trying to figure out whether I'd rather play with English or Japanese voices. The free DLC that adds very hard difficulty isn't out yet, I'll be restarting and diving in for real when that comes out. The little bit I have played so far has been on hard difficulty, which has not been the least bit hard. Take that with a grain of salt as it's early game and I'm a MegaTen grognard, by no means representative of someone new to the series.

I wonder how many people know that this is a game in the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner series? (the 5th game?) Or that it's a MegaTen game at all? I think Atlus is trying to make this its own distinct brand, similar to how Persona dropped the "Shin Megami Tensei" from its title, which is for the best since it really is quite distinct from the mainline series that spawned it. Where will Soul Hackers fit in if it's to become its own brand?

The mainline Shin Megami Tensei represents the big picture, focusing less on individual human characters and more on the grand battle between order and chaos plot. The demons often times wind up outshining human characters in terms of personality (SMT IV is a bit of an exception). Also, SMT is super hardcore in terms of gameplay. It offers a frankly ludicrous (borderline overwhelming) amount of control and customization over your team of demons. SMT is also well known for being very punishing, even on normal difficulty. On hard you need to exploit the press turn system to its limits or get stomped.

Persona is focused on the individual human characters and their hopes, fears, and bonds. While I would by no means call Persona a casual game series, it is nowhere near as punishing nor as deep a game mechanically, instead offering slick gameplay with no spreadsheet needed. Presentation has always been Persona's strong point, the games absolutely ooze style and personality.

Where will Soul Hackers 2 fit in? From the little bit I've experienced it seems like they are going for a middle ground, leaning closer to Persona. Ringo already has way more personality than either the Demi-Fiend from SMT 3 or the Nahobino from SMT 5 (I purposely skipped SMT 4 because the Samurai crew from that game is delightful). Only time will tell if the difficulty ramps up (and if very hard difficulty will challenge me) and how deep the demon customization system is.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

And done Andromeda.  Boss fight was as dumb as I expected, but it was nice to see my entire squad there - although wasn't sure what they were doing if anything, heh. 

Overall, still a decent experience, avoided doing most of the grindy stuff other than the memory fragment stuff which wasn't too bad to do.  The constant traveling for quests was annoying, think the worst for that was Peebee's loyalty quest or maybe the quest to hunt down the pregnant scientist.  Sunk 62 hours into this, so got decent mileage out of the $10 I spent on it and then some, I spent 75 h in ME:LE, heh.

Benefit of so many years since release, I guess.   It is sort of disappointing they dropped the series, if I am recalling correctly, the setting is interesting and the crew is...mostly characters i enjoyed (Liam and Peebee can go).

 

[Hurlshort]

8 hours ago, Malcador said:

Benefit of so many years since release, I guess.   It is sort of disappointing they dropped the series, if I am recalling correctly, the setting is interesting and the crew is...mostly characters i enjoyed (Liam and Peebee can go).

I just looked it up and it seems there are rumors of a new Mass Effect game in the future. It would be strange to just kill the IP over Andromeda. 

[Malcador]

Sorry, shouldn't have said series. Seems like they were planning sequels to Andromeda, but those got nixed.

[Keyrock]

1 minute ago, Malcador said:

Sorry, shouldn't have said series. Seems like they were planning sequels to Andromeda, but those got nixed.

They were going to make sequels but their faces got tired...

*crickets*

I'll show myself out.

[LadyCrimson]

7 Days to Die -

FINALLY.
I found a post on the official forum that someone made, that gives a method/xml to edit, to increase bedroll  "deadzone" radius. Where it actually shows up in the game options as the selectable settings. eg, it sticks and I don't need to type in that debug/console command all the time. Seems to work on land claim blocks too. So for the bedroll I now have one larger but "reasonable" size (at least covers the giant POI's they have now), a much bigger size (a city block or two) and one ridiculous size (half or all the map basically) to pick from.

Only issue is that bedroll blocks all random spawns - not just POI/sleeper respawn - so meat/hunting animals too I think. So if it goes map edge to map edge, you'll see zero animals/deer/wolves etc. - maybe. Oh well, I can just farm/eat veggie stew. Hahaha.  Also, makes the apoc. world feel even that much more empty and haunting to not even see chickens/rabbits 

...Land claim blocks would still be better if you only want to block POI/dungeon sleeper respawning (so u have to kill/clear at least once vs. z's off entirely) vs. blocking general z spawning. Maybe just make a LCB cover the whole world and leave bedroll radius smaller...hmm...testing is in order.

EDIT:  Nevermind. It does work with LCB's but it's still limited. Go over 800ish and the block turns red/you can't place it anymore (error). 250-550 seems to be the max limit definition where you may actually notice a border size increase. Still a lot better than the default max of 50, tho - maybe cover a whole smaller city/town. Still...bedroll and veggie stew it is then!
EDITEDIT:  Oh, forgot about traders. So it's not that you can't make a single LCB cover the map, it's that if the border lines will overlap a Trader territory, you can't place it. So that's the limiting factor - the bedroll border edge doesn't trigger trader in same way since it doesn't claim, I guess.

Edited August 28, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[MrBrown]

3 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I just looked it up and it seems there are rumors of a new Mass Effect game in the future. It would be strange to just kill the IP over Andromeda. 

They released a teaser, so I think it's well past rumors. Doesn't mean it's 100% to come out of course, projects do get canceled.

[Wormerine]

12 hours ago, Malcador said:

And done Andromeda.

And I gave up on Inquisition. I didn't find Hinderlands that bad, but I didn't find the game got any better afterwards. The story missions have been mediocare but servicable - open worldish stuff, though have been bad. What is abysmal is inventory managemenet - running out of space all the time, tedious and boring items and constant upgrading of my party members equipment through a tedious UI. Combat is not good, but it never has been in DA games. With bunch of large areas I don't want to explore, story I don't care to finish I just decided not to waste any more of my time. If Dragon Age4 wants me, it will need to convince me on its own.

I am somewhat curious about Andromeda - pretty much all criticism of it that I heard I would apply to Inquisition. How worse can it get? Maybe one day I will find the answer to this question, but for now I had enough of subpar Bioware releases.

[MrBrown]

27 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

What is abysmal is inventory managemenet - running out of space all the time, tedious and boring items and constant upgrading of my party members equipment through a tedious UI.

It really is the worst part of Inquisition (and I generally like the game). It's not optimized for PC at all, and the loading times can be bad if your computer is around the minimum requirements.

Thankfully, most of the loot is not useful for characters, so you can just sell 99% of the stuff and just do some upgrades when you go back to base.

[BruceVC]

45 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

And I gave up on Inquisition. I didn't find Hinderlands that bad, but I didn't find the game got any better afterwards. The story missions have been mediocare but servicable - open worldish stuff, though have been bad. What is abysmal is inventory managemenet - running out of space all the time, tedious and boring items and constant upgrading of my party members equipment through a tedious UI. Combat is not good, but it never has been in DA games. With bunch of large areas I don't want to explore, story I don't care to finish I just decided not to waste any more of my time. If Dragon Age4 wants me, it will need to convince me on its own.

I am somewhat curious about Andromeda - pretty much all criticism of it that I heard I would apply to Inquisition. How worse can it get? Maybe one day I will find the answer to this question, but for now I had enough of subpar Bioware releases.

Wormie....Im disappointed in this post, remember the code? We always finish Bioware games unless we in jail and you dont have a gaming PC

The code has been around since time immemorial, its okay to deviate from the code every 10 years or so but you dont want to make a habit about it 

[Keyrock]

47 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

What is abysmal is inventory managemenet - running out of space all the time

Something I have always appreciated about Piranha Bytes' games is unlimited inventory space. Those fine folks in Germany figured out that no one enjoys playing inventory Tetris, it's tedious busy work that breaks the flow of the game and sucks the fun out of it. IMHO the complete, comprehensive, and unabridged list of game genres where inventory management adds to the game is as follows:

* Survival games

Coincidentally, that is the exact same complete, comprehensive, and unabridged list of game genres where crafting adds to the game, but that's neither here nor there.

[Wormerine]

53 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Wormie....Im disappointed in this post, remember the code? We always finish Bioware games unless we in jail and you dont have a gaming PC

I must say, it was a weird feeling to be bored by a Bioware game. As poor of a showing as Mass Effect3 was, I don't remember being bored by it. Annoyed, yes, but bored no. Inquisition was worse then Ubisoft game.

Speaking of which: I have been craving for some eye candy, so I installed Watchdogs2. As with all Ubi games I don't expect to finish it, but so far I have been.... enjoying it? Stealth based gameplay have been more engaging then usual Ubi stuff, and a choice of scouting and different gadgets have been fun so far. However, I am only about 4 hours in and repetition starts settling in. We will see how it will go.

I installed it through Epic games store as I got Watchdogs2 for free a long time ago - oh boy, was that an adventure. As far as I can tell, Epic downloaded an installer, then launched U-play to install the installer, then the U-play didn't recognise the game so I had to manually add it through U-play, then U-play patched the installed game, and now it plays fine, but only if I launch it through U-play - if I launch through Epic, then the game never starts loading (no opening logos just black screen) and if it does it crashes pretty regularly. U-play though - no issues. Good job Epic. At least I don't need to use you to play games you gave me.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Wormerine

[Raithe]

I kind of took a break from life and spent the weekend playing the new Saints Row game.

Once you got past the initial glitches and the day one patch and hotfix, it's not a bad game.  It's tone runs somewhere just a little past Saints Row 2 rather than closer to Saints Row 3.  The trouble being that when it's running as it's meant to it's a competent game, rather than anything fresh or new. It's got a decent open world design, some lush visuals and ambience. The empire building is an interesting idea, but fails to take off or rather be used in any meaningful way - it's like they've partially used it as an excuse to shove in a batch of mini-game / repeatable shallow side-quests rather than really make it interesting. Some of which are interesting, others not so much. And some you really have to question why they had you do it 14 times in a row.

Perks linked to challenges is nice enough, but the skills are fairly terrible to use and pretty forgettable. The melee is like all Saints Row, fairly atrocious, and the shooting is that standard run and gun and have fun.

The writing lays some good foundations, but they don't manage to develop a lot of it with what they've done. The principle companion figures are interesting and have some minor development, provide a couple of good emotional beats, but again fail to really be developed beyond the basics or one note points. Some slightly silly missions that then turn around and have some  impactful emotional connections related to their backstory once you know it. And then it moves on with nary a mention or anything built on that.

The main sequence of storyline is fairly short and again, in part it feels like the framework is being developed for something later. Whether that's future DLC or the next game in the franchise.

So in principle, if you don't have to deal with too many of the tech glitches, it's a decent game without too many memorable points, that you should be able to enjoy if you like that sort of stuff. There's nothing that fresh about the gameplay or structure to make it stand out. But there is entertainment to be found.

 

[Amentep]

Old thread:

 

[Hurlshort]

Stoked that Xenonauts 2 made the screenshot of the new thread post.

I've been playing Phantom Doctrine, which is a neat spy agency manager with not so engaging missions. I've had some fun with it so far. The story is good, but I might stop playing because I don't want to walk all over these tactical maps anymore.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Hurlshort

[Oner]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

Stoke that Xenonauts 2 made the screenshot of the new thread post.

I wondered for a minute if someone booted up SWAT 2. 

[Malcador]

18 minutes ago, Oner said:

I wondered for a minute if someone booted up SWAT 2. 

Someone should boot up SWAT.  Just to suffer.

 

[BruceVC]

 

I completed SoD last night and it was a  very entertaining DLC for BG1, well worth the experience. Its gets  a solid 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system " 

The key take-aways and indelible  points from SoD were 

• I enjoyed the large battles like Boareskyr Bridge and the assault on DS castle 
• I decided  to take the challenge of the  one-on-one duel with  the bombastic and arrogant  Ashatiel, I had my doubts I would win because Im a wizard but I got lucky with Wand of Paralyzation and then once she was frozen I killed her with spells like Magic Missile 
• I thought the maps like Underground River had some interesting quests 
• I decided to poison the  DS Castle  water and food and I used the barrel explosives to destroy the gate, the crusade had to be defeated and I had no qualms about using these types of controversial strategies 
• I aligned with Caelar Argent in the final battle against Belhifet, I understand why she did what she did and I forgave her

I enjoyed the appearances of the Hooded Man\Jon Irenicus and how this tries into the BG2 narrative, Im considering continuing with BG2 but I probably wont because I played  BG2 about 12 years ago and I remember too much about the narrative so I may wait a while?

 

[Hurlshort]

Conan Exiles releases the sorcery update on Thursday, so I'll be playing that. I'm not sure when they are releasing the microtransaction stuff, but for now the game will be free for a week. I already own all of the DLC, so I'll stick with it and see what happens. 

[Keyrock]

The Soul Hacker 2 Extra Difficulty + Useful Items free DLC is out. I have no idea what these "useful items" are, probably some medicine and chakra drops or whatever. I was also tempted to pick up the Costumes DLC so that I can dress up Ringo & Co. in the Samurai outfits from SMT 4, but I ain't about to pay $12 for 4 outfits (you get way more outfits than that plus BGM, but the SMT 4 Samurai outfits are all that I care about). Regardless, I'll be restarting on very hard difficulty.

[Oner]

16 Ways to kill a vampire at McDonald's

It's a short, free adventure game, I enjoyed it.

[Malcador]

Finished off the movie night in Andromeda, that was funny enough.  Shame not more stuff to do with crew. 

Playing D3, the angelic crucible gave me a fun gimmick - I can strafe and spray multishot everywhere.  Moves far slower than GoD, but still hits pretty hard.

[Keyrock]

I'm not sure if enemies have more HP and/or do more damage on very hard difficulty as compared to hard (if they do it's not by a lot) in Soul Hackers 2, but you cannot use items during battle, which is a MASSIVE handicap. This might get brutal, but I'm still going to try to finish the game on very hard difficulty.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Keyrock

[Hurlshort]

I loaded up Conan Exiles with the new massive Sorcery update. A lot of people are worried about the Battle Pass system turning it into a microtransaction hell. I can't speak to how this will affect multiplayer folks, but as a single player, it doesn't seem to have much impact. There are a lot of positive changes coming with the update that don't cost any crom coins, and it looks like I have access to all of the DLC stuff I have purchased over the years. 

The two positive changes that stood out immediately to me:

- The trait system is reworked. When you reach a certain level in an attribute, you get to choose from a list of perks. For example, when leveling up my expertise (harvesting attribute) I got to choose whether I want a boost to how much I get of a resource, or a better chance of a rare material. It adds some complexity to a stagnant system.

- There are challenges to complete. These are separate from the storyline stuff. Some are exploratory (go pray at a certain altar), some are combat related, and some are harvesting related (harvest 10 iron sources.) It seems pretty simple, but it's another way to stay engaged. I didn't play long enough to get into the rewards.

Anyways, I haven't even gotten into sorcery aspect, so I'm looking forward to that. But I was happy to see all of my DLC was still active and the single player game has only really been enhanced at this point.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Hurlshort