What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition

[BruceVC]

I bought all the Gold Box SSI games on Steam and Im playing Eye of the Beholder 1 as my first game. Im going to spread out when  I play these games 

I played it when it was first released back in 1992 and I still remember certain mechanics like the pressure plates 

The Gold Box games have the All-Seeing Eye automap built in which is  a "must have " feature if you dont have the time for making maps manually which I dont 

And Im really enjoying it, its very simple but thats the fun of this type of classic dungeon crawler. And of course it uses the D&D ruleset and mechanics which is always a win for me 

[Hawke64]

Fallout 4, Far Harbor. Reached the point of the main conflict's resolution or close to it. Not particularly fond of the combat, controls, dialogue system (keyboards have somewhat more keys than gamepads and I can see what the game was focused on, even with the mod), and the UI. There was one unique puzzle (pointing a beam at certain points) mission based on the building system, where I also could not save in the process (about 1-2 hours, considering that it highlighted the issues with the controls and that the PC is a flying camera in the first-person view). On a funny note, I sneaked/ran to the console, while leaving 2 legendary dominatrix murder bots behind (after trying to kill them unsuccessfully a couple of times). The only way to survive it for me was to lower the difficulty and eat all damage-resistance consumables I had. Several hours later I noticed that I had some armour that was not focused on stealth and carrying capacity, so it is possible that I could have fought them.

The story is fine. Not great, but good enough to keep going. No strong feelings about the loading times, the game runs fine from an HDD.

[Malcador]

Finished Caesar 4, the last economic mission was a hard one, ended up nailing everything down but the Culture rating, so much hell trying to work with that map's hills.  Of course if I were in any way intelligent I'd have planned it out with blocks and beat the game in 10 in game years rather than the 54 I actually did, but c'est la vie.

All in all not a bad game, changing away from walkers was a good one, at the very least.  Agent AI is a bit messed up, guys going to a market across town rather than the one right across from their house. Reminded me of the hidden food preference in C3 for market ladies, oh the chaos that created

[Hurlshort]

I'm playing Fallout 4, but my son has been playing FO:NV, and I find that I am jealous of all the cool story stuff he is getting to experience while I deal with Piper and the Minutemen.

Edited May 4 by Hurlshort

[LadyCrimson]

Manor Lords: you thought Caesar 3's market ladies were bad?

----the market system isn't tuned properly, or is too confusing for many to understand, or it goes haywire/glitchy the more you grow.  Markets do not have a physical distance radius (but it looks like it does, causing confusion).You could build a market on one side of the map and a village on the other side, doesn't matter. It's this process of villager-built market stalls - firewood, clothing and food stalls - vs. house checks on the stalls/market, vs. teleporting goods to houses. Each house "checks" the market in order from closest to farthest.  Have enough goods in those stalls for every house check, within enough of each type of stalls, all houses get covered. Good in theory.

Problem is it gets borked as your town grows and supply/AI calculations re: stalls/goods fluctuates (stalls start to be "empty" far too often).  I think I have this bug where every time I build even 6-10 more houses, the market "coverage" and stall functions drops badly and stays there. I can build more market space areas (so more ppl build more stalls), rearrange things, manually delete individual market stalls hoping different ppl will build different stalls, build more granaries nearby to encourage supply chains etc, nothing works. Spent days trying to figure out how to stabilize the system.

Finally I found it - delete market/s entire and rebuild - once they fill up again, coverage magically goes back to 100%. Until I build more houses. Which works (for me) every single time I want to expand a lot, so I now have 600+ population with 100% access, but this indicates AI glitching. Hopefully will be fixed.

 

Edited May 5 by LadyCrimson

[Hawke64]

Islets. It is a very nice Metroidvania. The level design and controls are good, the graphics and audio design are beautiful. The only issues are the foes respawning too quickly and the bullet-hell ship battles. Though, considering that everything else (open paths and picked up items) is preserved upon death, the former is not too bad. The story follows a warrior mouse (or a warrior cat? Looks like a cat to me) who is trying to bring several floating islands back together by restoring their engines.

[BruceVC]

I completed EoB1 after about 45 hours, it was a great experience and well worth playing
So a couple of comments

An Automap feature is a MUST for your average gamer if you serious about completing the game, of course you can make maps manually. A map is critical to completing levels for several reasons that include you find levers and buttons that sometimes open doors or hidden walls that aren't always in the vicinity of where you are but with the automap you can see immediately what a button does

I loved how the game is non-linear and you sometimes find keys in different places that you decide what you want to unlock and then you can progress as you want and I didnt explore every level completely 

The " fast travel " was a brilliant and well done feature. It makes exploration for the stone items worthwhile but its not easy to teleport unless you find specific portals

I enjoyed the overall combat mechanics, simple but still entertaining

I had an interesting final battle with  the beholder Xanathar, initially he decimated me after 3-4 rounds of combat with death spells and fireballs. Then I read some combat tips and I had the Wand of Silivias. But it didnt seem to work where you supposed to push Xanathar back to this spike trap so I adopted my own strategy. I ran to the room with the spike trap and literally fought him by running around the room, attacking him and avoiding his frontal spells. It was hard but eventually effective. I nearly had a crisis because I used a save game when he was down to 50% of health but then my front line fighters got killed and I accidently saved instead of restoring

And because you only have 1 save game and load game that meant I was stuck with a party of 3 dead party members and these were the only people who could harm Xanathar. But I ran away and luckily my Cleric was still alive and I had 2 Raise Dead scrolls so I used that to resurrect my fighters, heal and return to the battle and I was able to win and defeat the diabolical Xanathar

I am now playing EoB2 and I decided to import my previous party, I have just started and already I can see some improvements like how magical items are identified and multiple save games. Very appreciated change to EoB1

If someone had to ask me " why should I play such an old game like EoB1 when there are all these amazing new games with beautiful graphics and modern features "

My answer would be these types of classic games capture the excitement and ambience of dungeon exploration better than any modern game and they always will. Modern games are great but if you want to experience the true thrill of classic D&D exploration you wont find a better way of doing it than from games like EoB

And finally it gets a solid 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system "

[melkathi]

I have now reduced difficulty in Troubleshooter to Easy, down from Hard.

I am not mentally prepared to figure out the min maxing required to finish DLC 2 on hard. Or normal for that matter.

 

I may go down to story difficulty, since at 300 hours, I am only interested in seeing where the story ends 

[Raithe]

Having a poke on my Steam Library and realised I hadn't actually gotten around to trying XCOM 2.

So installed it, started it up.

And found I get fairly continuous "pure virtual function being called while application was running (gisrunning == 1)" errors that crash me out. I've barely got into the third mission and I've had to restart the game about 18 times.

No real solutions appear online after all these years, just that some magical combination no-one could ever confirm might possibly have an effect on some people...

Apparently the Omnissiah is needed.

[melkathi]

Burning incense may appease the machine spirit.

Reciting the proper litanies is also always advisable.

[Wormerine]

Hades2.

It's alright. More of the same so far. Like really more of the same. Improved, but in 6 hours nothing popped up which would explain why this sequel had to be made (money, obviously, but I am still willing to give Supergiant benefit of a doubt). That said, EA seems rather chunky and quite complete in many aspects, so it is not possible that more cool stuff is yet to come (or still to appear in this build). One thing was mention so far, which I am not sure what it is supposed to be - so I am looking forward to finding out.

Street Fighter6 update - I decided to switch my main - while Luke, whom I have been using up until now, is supposed to be by far the strongest character currently in the game, I felt I was reaching a peak of what I was able to achieve with him. To move foward I would have to get the hang of his perfect timing charge attacks, and figure out his rush combos - which at the moment are a bit too much for me. So I switched to the good, old Ryu. I am still getting used to it (tend to miss inputs a bit more often for now), but he seems more straightforward and deliberate.

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, Raithe said:

Having a poke on my Steam Library and realised I hadn't actually gotten around to trying XCOM 2.

So installed it, started it up.

And found I get fairly continuous "pure virtual function being called while application was running (gisrunning == 1)" errors that crash me out. I've barely got into the third mission and I've had to restart the game about 18 times.

No real solutions appear online after all these years, just that some magical combination no-one could ever confirm might possibly have an effect on some people...

Apparently the Omnissiah is needed.

That's weird. I just played through it a couple months ago and it ran pretty well. Do you have any mods that might be causing an issue?

[Raithe]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

That's weird. I just played through it a couple months ago and it ran pretty well. Do you have any mods that might be causing an issue?

No mods at all. A completely clean install of the game with all the DLC content.

I'm only getting that message crop up when I'm on a tactical map doing a mission. But as I said, 3 missions and 18 crashes and restarts. It's making me wary of investing any more time on the game

[LadyCrimson]

Manor Lords - I don't profess to actually understand detailed mechanic workings, it's all too obscure/inconsistent/glitchy perhaps, but you do stuff enough times and you figure out what works.

Hence, I have reached the point where I can restart, get to 600+ population, and then get bored. At least in terms of sandbox. On the one hand, I appreciate I can grow at my own pace. On the other hand, when there is no reason to keep growing (especially since the multiple-region stuff isn't it)  outside of "town painting" a region, no risk or buildup left to do (I can literally walk away for hours and it runs itself with no problems) apparently for this game, 600 or so is the magic "I'm done" number.

I've barely tried the combat. It sounds way too buggy with perhaps too dramatic a difference between too easy and irritatingly rushed.

Edited May 10 by LadyCrimson

[Katphood]

Replaying Allen Wake on the Xbox. This thing is still fun.

[Hawke64]

Finished Islets. In general, very nice mechanically, the story is not exactly deep, but nice.
Review:

Spoiler

Islets is a Metroidvania. The story takes place in a fantasy setting with sci-fi elements. The protagonist, Iko,is a young warrior who aims to reconnect 5 floating islands. There are no other themes or deeper meanings, but the plot is interesting and the characters are likeable.

The exploration and combat are engaging and deep - as expected from the genre, the former relies on the traversal abilities, which are unlocked as the story progresses, and platforming, while the latter consists of melee and ranged attacks. There are no complex combos, but it is possible to attack in different directions and the combat abilities are used during exploration (e.g. breaking the weakened floor with the jump attack). Additionally, there are several types of arrows, which are necessary to overcome certain obstacles. Also, in order to travel between not-yet-connected islands, an airship is required. It can be and must be upgraded and there are several rather difficult bullet-hell boss battles specifically for it. Fortunately, the difficulty can be adjusted mid-playthrough, which still keeps these bullet-hell sequences challenging, but doable. The regular boss battles, on the other hand, are approachable enough on the Normal difficulty. The bosses themselves are diverse, engaging, and reasonably connected to the story.

Dying mid-level is rather forgiving - the only penalty is returning to the last shrine (checkpoint) rested at and some of the foes respawning, though, they also respawn on re-entering a room. The items collected and the shortcuts unlocked are not affected by dying. On a funny note, the Nurse NPC does count the number of deaths and sends disapproving letters upon reaching certain thresholds.

The character development system consists of upgrades found throughout the world, which provide different abilities or enhance the existing ones, and purchased from the hub, the Sky City, which just increase the protagonist’s base stats. There are some challenges that grant the upgrades, such as completing a platforming sequence within a time limit or slaying all the foes in the room or solving a simple puzzle. Mostly, the upgrades are just hidden in the corners of the rooms. The traversal abilities and the arrow types are bound to the main story progression, while the airship upgrades (i.e. finding the cogs) are required to reach the other islands.

The controls are very comfortable, rebindable, and do not require the mouse. There is a light aim-assist for on-foot combat and a stronger one for airship encounters. The visual style is expressive and easy to read, the soundtrack is nice, and the game is VA-free. The fonts are very expressive, though the option to prevent them moving did not work.

Overall, Islets is a very good Metroidvania and highly recommended.

Then purchased and completed the developer's previous game, Sheepo. Not as good as Islets, but generally fine.
Review:

Spoiler

Sheepo is a challenging platformer-Metroidvania. The titular humanoid sheep is an explorer sent to gather eggs of the local species for an intergalactic species database. How physical objects are digitalised or preserved is not explained, while the eggs collected allow the protagonist to shape-shift into the respective species, but only when there is one nearby, which does not improve the consistency of the story.

The controls are comfortable and rebindable, though the on-screen prompts still show the default configuration and wall-jumping is a bit odd. There is no direct combat outside of boss battles, only the environmental hazards, such as spikes and chainsaws. The boss battles are mostly focused on avoiding damage (bullet-hell-like) long enough for the bosses to die or be knocked out. The difficulty cannot be adjusted mid-game, and discovering that you woefully underprepared at the fifth boss is rather unpleasant. Fortunately, the save file can be easily edited with a text editor.

There are several NPCs to talk to and some secrets to discover. The map is helpful overall - there are not many types of collectibles, only the health upgrades and the feathers. The latter are required to unlock the final areas and the ending. An optional NPC in the late-game gives a map showing the approximate location of the uncollected feathers. Another NPC can point in the general direction of the next egg to collect. Unfortunately, if the protagonist dies after collecting a feather and before reaching a save point, the feather will need to be collected again. Considering that they are usually located in hard-to-reach places, it is rather unpleasant.

The visual design is expressive and readable. The soundtrack is nice and fitting.

Overall, because I played Islets, the developer’s newer game, before Sheepo, the experience felt underwhelming. Islets is simply better in every aspect, but Sheepo can be enjoyable as well.

Tried VtM - Swansong. It did not run on the main PC, judging by the error message, the issue is with the OS. On Steam Deck, the poorly-made saving system is significantly harder to mitigate, so probably will play on the spare PC some time later.

Tried Xanadu Next. Refunded - between the screen flickering (resolved by running in the window mode), crashes (resolved by deleting the intro movie), the mouse-only movement (not resolved, and the boring combat (not resolved), it did not seem to be worth the time.

Finished Fallout 4: Far Harbor. It was generally fine. The body-hiding part of the assassination was a bit ridiculous - with some luck, I could have disintegrated the body during combat.

Tried Brain Marmalade, a platformer. Got stuck in 5 minutes. The controls are not rebindable, the resolution cannot be adjusted in-game. The art is fine, stylised like pen sketches.

Started Aspire: Ina's Tale. After Islets and Sheepo, mind-numbingly boring. Looks lovely, but so, so shallow. The story follows a priestess who is trying to escape a sci-fi-esque tower. There are some light environmental puzzles, but they are not exactly challenging or engaging.

Continued There is no Light. The protagonist is blissfully silent. Got repeatedly punched in the opening cut-scenes and I still don't quite get the logic, but the visual design is nice and controls are very comfortable and rebindable.

[Hawke64]

There is no Light. It is an action-adventure. There are several paths to follow from the start, but they seem to be rather linear. I think, I have finished 1 out of 4 main paths. So far, I have turned off the music (at one point, it switched to rock, which, while nice, was not appropriate for actually trying to fight off the ambush) and tried to switch the difficulty to the easier one (I cannot tell if I have succeeded).

The visual style is beautiful and expressive (pixel art), the controls are rebindable, and the bosses have been quite diverse and challenging*. There is a karma system, and I assume that it should go up. Which it does from picking the "correct" answers in dialogues and completing side quests (somehow, telling a pilgrim that their god was not testing their faith by murdering them was bad, while telling a random settler not to report on his brother being a rebel was good). The setting seems to be post-apocalyptic and dystopian - the population lives in the underground train network, but there is also magic, with the protagonist's current patron being some soft of murder god.

I like the combat system in general, but not its combination with the encounter design and level layout. The actions are mostly quite responsive, but when there are several foes with different attack states (can or cannot be interrupted) gathered around, it gets very chaotic, considering the speed. I have not found a way to upgrade the HP and the health-restoring consumables are limited, while the weapon upgrades do not directly increase the damage per hit. Though, there are several weapons, which seem to be unlocked by defeating main bosses.

In terms of level structure, it is not a Metroidvania - after choosing one of the paths, the progression is mostly linear with short side paths which may or may not lead to something (was not worth it so far). Nor there are any traversal abilities to unlock. The levels are rather difficult to navigate and for the areas outside of the main hub, there are no maps. Occasionally, the level borders appear only after you reach them.

I will try to finish the game.

*died several times to the second one before noticing that the thing was counter-attacking. Nothing before had been doing so and there was no indication that the boss was parrying me (aside from my HP going down).

[mkreku]

On 5/3/2024 at 2:06 AM, Zoraptor said:

Heh, is there any better illustration of the absolute mess that is Gamebryo than F4's loading times? The loading times are linked to frame rate, and the frame is limited to 60 because otherwise minigames, physics etc get screwy because they're linked to frame rate too...

(If needed in future there is/ was a mod that 'fixes'/ helps with the issue by uncapping fps only during loading screens, whether it works still after the next gen update who knows)

Not sure if you know it already but it's easily solved (on PC) by tabbing in and out of the game while waiting for it to load. It instantly loads for me when I do that.

[Sven_]

The Outer Worlds.

Game was decent until ca. the Groundbreaker. Now at Monarch, it's taking a dive. Hopefully it picks up thereafter, but the area is focusing on everything the game isn't particularly great at:

- combat (enemy variety, difficulty or lack thereof, the ever present bullet sponge replacing better AI on increased difficulties)
- exploration (too many reused assets for budgetary reasons -- the environment on Monarch is rather bland in general, which is a bit subjective)
- looting (extra paragraph and rant added below)

I guess I could just sneak around all those copypaste enemy mob grinds, but that'd just take longer.
 

To be fair, Emerald Vale already is in parts Monarch, just compressed and (thankfully) smaller: Settlements connected by wilds filled with enemy mobs -- and a faction quest you eventually need to fiddle with to advance. That's what somebody told me before: After the first planet you'd seen everything, and then the game was on repeat. Then I went to the independent Groundbreaker station first, and was surprised that wasn't the case. Fav location so far.

I'm actually not at all a fan of Bethesda games (wide as the ocean, deep as a toilet). But Skyrim you want to explore some (without that, there's not much of a game, as systems are shallow and combat basic). Don't get that on Monarch, as every corner looks (assets) and acts (loot, enemy mobs) the same, so focusing on these areas does more harm than any good. Additionally, Monarch does away with the one thing unique to the game, which is toying with the idea of how corporations governing people may treat them.


---

Speaking about the loot, this isn't unique to The Outer Worlds -- general rant incoming. But I wish games would stop with randomly allocating loot and/or conveniently placing a box behind every rock. Firstly, it harms the game's fiction to have money lying around literally on the streets, the same goes for weapons (unless the game portrays a universe of total anarchy perhaps). Secondly, it turns the process of looting into something rather braindead where you routinely scan every corner as you could find something (and you WILL). Even oldschool Ultima games did that better. Or Thief, for that matter: Breaking into a castle, you were guaranteed to not find jewels in the servant quarters (unless it was stolen, which a document or dialogue would hint at). So you could think and plan ahead. Actually engaging with the game world, basically, rather than randomly checking every corner, toilet and bucket for brain goodies like a zombie.

Outer Worlds is a mix: In a bar, you'll mostly find stuff to drink. But then there's randomly sitting a box containing money right on a table, and on a chair near to the bar there's lying a hacking device. Meanwhile, on a toilet, there's a gun. Reason? Unknown. It's as if there's an RNG at work tweaked to trigger pack rat instincts in players rather than a world designer working alongside to the narrative guys. It feels lazy and cheap and only put in to further stretch playing time -- e.g. wasting yours in the hopes you won't notice the "quantity over quality" approach to things.

Edited May 14 by Sven_

[majestic]

Blizzard are the true kings of never learning from past mistakes. Diablo 4 is transitioning to the new season, it says. Patch it as soon as possible, it says.

Yes, oops, something went wrong.

Well, at least 1.32MB/s is better than the 3.6KB/s from last season's patch, I guess.

 

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. Game's not even that good. Or actually good.

[Malcador]

Supposedly the latest patch has good feedback, we'll see what Rhykker tells people to repeat later on today I guess

I'll have to give that a go, for now I am skipping Wing Commander 2 and tackling 3,  just beat Ariel by being cowardly and lowering the difficulty from ace to rookie for the second missons (useless wingman in Wing Commander as usual).   Pretty fun, downside is this game led us to have the somehow inferior Wing Commander movie.  

 

[Wormerine]

19 hours ago, Sven_ said:

The Outer Worlds.

Game was decent until ca. the Groundbreaker. Now at Monarch, it's taking a dive.

Yeah, and apparently there was supposed to be more Monarch. I don’t think the game has foundations strong enough to support large amounts of gameplay and it is better of when it sticks closer to early-BioWare type RPG. 

[BruceVC]

I completed EOB2 after about 35 hours

 I didnt think it was as good as EOB1 for 2 main reasons and these are also my main criticisms

First and main issue is you have an incredibly bad design where you cant complete the game if you dont find a specific item and you not able to go back to find the item because a particular door is closed. For example on Silver Tower level 3 you need to find the Crystal Hammer for access to the Azure Tower level but I didnt even know I had to find the Crystal Hammer and I got to the end of the Silver Tower, defeated the beholders and then got teleported back to Temple but I couldn't go back to Silver Tower L3 because the door on L2 is now closed.

I then had to use ASE ( built-in automap)  teleport function to get through the Crystal Door but the Steam version of ASE doesn't include ASE teleport so I had to download and configure the normal ASE

But you shouldnt have to use a " cheat " just because you missed out on 1 item, any game should allow you to go back and find that item at the very least

EOB1 wasnt like that, it allowed to you travel back and retrace your steps and I didnt have to " cheat" once to complete the game

But I did enjoy EOB2, I liked several of the dungeon designs and puzzles like the Medusa Maze and the final battle with Dran was fun....I literally used save scumming and spent the entire battle moving from square to square to avoid his spells and then his dragon form fire breath. It was hard but he died at the end

EOB2 gets a 58/100 on the globally followed " BruceVC game rate system "

Its a fun game but very difficult and sometimes unfairly difficult. I cant imagine anyone completing this game without consulting game guides and getting tips but I suppose its possible 

I am now playing EOB3, I might as well complete the series. Its okay so far, nothing to write home about 

[Sven_]

Picked up Darkest Dungeon a couple days ago.... Week 25 or something (Dark difficulty setting). Despite getting my ass whopped right in the first combat in my first veteran dungeon (LVL3), I'm kinda addicted.

Which is strange, as what I'm doing since is kind of a grind: Leveling all weapons/armor and abilities up to lvl3 as well, all the while upgrading the town. Only then will I reenter another veteran dungeon.

The radiant difficulty apparently shortens things without making dungeons/enemies easier, but we'll see. Also, hopefully veteran dungeons and up don't make encounters more frequent. I think it's part of the charm for me that you'll never know whether your next run has plentiful encounters or not. Sometimes, you go a couple corridors / doors without encountering anything, which only adds up to the suspense and decision making process: Should I push on or not? If there's enemies in every corridor and room anyway eventually, that's all moot.

Edited May 18 by Sven_

[Humanoid]

I never felt that dungeons ever actually went up in difficulty, and indeed you probably outscale the dungeons if you know which trinkets to farm, because that's the only place where you actually have decisions to make in terms of the power level of your units. The rest is, as you say, just farming gold in order to unlock and buy better skills and gear levels, no decisions required there.

Rushing the bank district is a pretty decent idea, and remember to sell duplicate and junk trinkets regularly.

7 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Also, hopefully veteran dungeons and up don't make encounters more frequent.

They don't. All of the game rules are actually stored in plain text for easy inspection and modding, and as such is one of the easiest games to mod that I've ever encountered.

The file scripts/map_generator.darkest confirms this by only having one entry for each combination of dungeon location, length and mission type. For example:

map:

.size medium
.quest_type explore
.dungeon_type crypts
.base_room_number 14
.base_corridor_number 15
.gridsize 5 4
.spacing 4
.goal_room_number 14
.connectivity 0.9
.min_final_distance 7
.hallway_battle 3 4
.hallway_trap 3 5
.hallway_obstacle 0 3
.hallway_curio 14 14
.hallway_hunger 2 5
.total_room_battles 3 4
.room_battle 0 0
.room_guarded_curio 1 2
.room_curio 0 0
.room_guarded_treasure 1 2
.room_treasure 0 0
.secret_rooms 0 1
.nudge_span 0 1
.nudge_neighbour_bias 0.5
.nudge_map_centre_bias 0.5

8 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Should I push on or not? If there's enemies in every corridor and room anyway eventually, that's all moot.

Scouting is an incredibly powerful mechanic that's easy to neglect. The game doesn't make it terribly easy to understand how it works, so here's a guide: