What are you Playing Now? - Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll

[LadyCrimson]

Indy game: 
I believe I'm near the end of Gizeh. I think my game save says around 16 hours. This region has somewhat worn out my liking for sneaking around, because the enemies change it up a little. Also, they do eventually respawn. By that I mean, the region is more fun to randomly explore, but enemies/stealth/combat becomes more tiresome.

I have something like 900 "cash" collected for the region and have only had to spend ... 75.
I collected 1000's of adventure points doing Adventure/Fieldwork and picking up all the notes, medicine, and relics ( a few) I saw along the way. Meaning I've "read" almost all the books I've found. I can now hold twice as much bread!

Edited December 14 by LadyCrimson

[LadyCrimson]

Oh, also, if you'd like to not see all those logo intros starting the Indy game

steamapps\common\The Great Circle\base\video\boot_sequence

Rename the file in there.

Depending on your PC you may see the loading shaders text line (those logos are like load screens, these days) for 1/4 of a second but then you're in game manu. I don't care about the time saved, it's more my ears saved. Can we please make the game volume control slider ALSO affect the crashing logos "TADAAAA" audio?

Edited December 14 by LadyCrimson

[Lexx]

Woah, that incredibly long boot sequence was pissing me off so much. Thanks for the tip, removed it right away.

[MrBrown]

35 hours in PoE2, with 3 different characters.

A bit disappointed with it. It's basically just PoE1, but made way slower and with more dodgeroll. The gameplay seems like it was made more varied at the start, but in the end I still found myself just spamming one skill all the time. Not that I'm at "the end", I'm at the boss of act2 and find myself bored with the game. Feel like playing PoE1, which for all it's faults is at least faster paced. So instead of spamming your one attack skill in an area for 2 hours, you do it for 10mins and then move to the next.

EDIT: Path of Exile 2, that is.

Edited December 15 by MrBrown

[LadyCrimson]

Indy - apparently if you've upped your health bars and food-health bars enough, when you fall down a pit, you don't die. Just a sliver of health remaining, so no game-over/auto-reload screen. When it 1st happened, I thought maybe there was some way out of the pitch black pit that even a torch barely helped at all, but no. Result is same, restart checkpoint, so it doesn't matter, but it's hilarious they let you boost health so much/didn't account for that so it happens.

Edited December 14 by LadyCrimson

[Mamoulian War]

Spending to much time on Mortal Komabt 11 in Towers of Time. I am to bad at playing it, but it still is fun enough to me to spend a lot of time. Had 5 hour long session in Twitch Rivals Premier Towers, to get new purplish skins for most of the characters, before they expired.

[Sven_]

My GPU is up an running, undervolt is in place. So I've started Indy.

The beginning is pure fan service of course, CHILLS. Seems a bit QTE'ish at the climax, but the more open hub levels are yet to come. That aside, game runs fine totally maxed out on a Ryzen 3 (2nd gen with 8 threads) and a RTX 3060/12GB. At least on Full HD. And obviously, without full pathracing.

It's probably good that not every Steamdeck, Smartphone and potato PC is capable quite yet. Considering the additionally massive computing (and) power demands, WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.  
 

Edited December 15 by Sven_

[LadyCrimson]

Indy - from a gameplay perspective, the areas right after Gizeh sucked, far as I'm concerned. Cinematic story lovers will like it tho.

I would actually like a YT cut of this game where it's mostly all the "movies", in-game cutscenes, and the bare minimum amount of gameplay shown needed (the intro RotLA re-do need not be included, for example), to create a sort of 4-6 hour movie. Versus the 12+ hr "entire main game" fast run through videos where you have to watch someone playing for 8+ hours of it.

Edited December 15 by LadyCrimson

[BruceVC]

16 hours ago, MrBrown said:

35 hours in PoE2, with 3 different characters.

A bit disappointed with it. It's basically just PoE1, but made way slower and with more dodgeroll. The gameplay seems like it was made more varied at the start, but in the end I still found myself just spamming one skill all the time. Not that I'm at "the end", I'm at the boss of act2 and find myself bored with the game. Feel like playing PoE1, which for all it's faults is at least faster paced. So instead of spamming your one attack skill in an area for 2 hours, you do it for 10mins and then move to the next.

Exploration is very different, its basically open world and the whole ship and island travel  mechanics make it very different to PoE1

Im surprised you not enjoying it, its in my list of   top 10  best RPG of all time 

 

 

[Bartimaeus]

Fear the Spotlight.

Over the last few years, I've really grown to hate surreal/dream-like atmospheres and horror in both movies and games, and this is no exception. You're a goody-two-shoes breaking into the school with your goth friend so you can play around with a oujia board in the library, stuff goes sideways, and the game immediately segues into a dream sequence where nothing is connected to reality or really matters anymore, the game very thickly lays on a "there was a terrible fire that killed a bunch of students years ago" story that's told by picking up a pile of random notes throughout the environments*, which probably has something to do with the "there was this girl that was being bullied by the girl she was jealous of" stuff that was also going on at the time, but I didn't actually stick around to find out because this crappy 2 and a half hour-long game was at least an hour and a half too long for me to bother. Presumably, given the title of the game mentioning "the spotlight", it's one of the those two girls that set the fire, and maybe it comes back to connect to the two girls in present day, but whatever, I really don't care.

Probably the nicest thing I can say about is that I liked the in-game visuals, which were low-fi pseudo-PS1-like, which seems to have really taken off as a relatively cheap to make and run but stylish look, particularly for indie horror games. Now if there could just be some actually fun games making use of it...

*This particular approach to storytelling has become so commonplace to gaming, both AAA and indie, and I can't really understate how dull I find it. There's an appropriate time and place to use readable notes to flesh out your world/lore, but the extent to which games effectively use them as a crutch has become way too extreme...and it's especially bad when it's the only way of learning whatever garbage the story is supposed to be. Hey idiots, do you remember when fun or intriguing characters that the player/viewer likes or at least is curious about used to drive stories? Ugh. Though at the end of the day, if you're really into a game and its characters, world, and story, you're much more inclined to actually be excited to go find and read any information you can find in-game about all of it, which I clearly was not here. Now if this were like, Undertale or something, with actually fun and interesting writing, I'd keep my mouth firmly closed.

Edited December 15 by Bartimaeus

[Wormerine]

On 12/14/2024 at 3:07 PM, MrBrown said:

A bit disappointed with it. It's basically just PoE1, but made way slower and with more dodgeroll. The gameplay seems like it was made more varied at the start, but in the end I still found myself just spamming one skill all the time.

While overall I see PoE2 as an improvement system wise, per-encounter resources and more limited access to skills for some classes did result in per encounter decisionmaking  being more limited. Most of the game tends to revolve around having enough PEN, and everything else is 2ndary. When difficulty is tuned just right, I think it is a good system. It is not until the DLCs that Obsidian was able to dial in combat more, though it has some issues as well (like some encounters going on for far too long). 

Have you modded the game at all? I could be that the game is simply to easy for you - PoE2 has difficulties keeping up a difficulty curve due to its open world. I tend to use XP mods to make my party less overpowered after initial island, and there is of course Deadly Deadfire for those looking to spice things up.

Still, I didn’t find “I am doing the same thing in every encounter” to be as bad in some other games (cough DOS2 cough), but it is not quite as tactically interesting as I think it tries to be. 

Still I play those games for story and world, and with some XP rebalance mods combat is way better than it needs to be for my purposes. 

Edited December 15 by Wormerine

[melkathi]

Pfff,

Argenta can kill all of PoE2 before the game even loads.

[majestic]

Guys, like, @MrBrown is talking about Path of Exile 2, not Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

[Lexx]

I mean, it's on him for using an abbreviation of a game that is very similar to the abbreviation of a game made by Obsidian.

[MrBrown]

Sorry, forgot about that.  Did mention it before and others were talking about it, and pillars of eternity has no dodgeroll, but yeah.

[Wormerine]

46 minutes ago, majestic said:

Guys, like, @MrBrown is talking about Path of Exile 2, not Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

8 minutes ago, MrBrown said:

Sorry, forgot about that.  Did mention it before and others were talking about it, and pillars of eternity has no dodgeroll, but yeah.

Yeah, I was wondering what you mean by Dodgeroll. My brain already forgot Path of Exile release, and returned to reading PoE as... well PoE.

[Malcador]

Done with Venetica, that ending was so anticlimactic.  Nice melodrama though, bad guy screaming "NOW YOU WILL DIE" and honestly seemed like Anakin, getting so pissed off at a Council not recognizing his greatness and potential that he goes loco and tries to end the world.

At least I finished the game with my character wearing a dress showing a lot of leg.  Good old 2000s console game. 

That said, was an enjoyable time burner. Would have paid $10 for it - got 20h from it and I did most of the sidequess.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Sorry, forgot about that.  Did mention it before and others were talking about it, and pillars of eternity has no dodgeroll, but yeah.

Well Im glad I made the wrong assumption, it made no sense that you thought PoE2 is the same as PoE1 

In future just remember people associate abbreviations with what they familiar with and  because this is an Obsidian forum PoE is always going to be Pillars of Eternity 

 

 

 

[LadyCrimson]

^ I was playing Path of Exile (1) before Pillars was even announced. Then when Ob's PoE came out I was, for a while, constantly confused in forums/posts.

These days I try to see context before applying a name to an acronym. There are way too many of them these days, since most of us seem to be afflicted with lazy typing fingers.

Sideways: the other day I was contemplating how long it had been since I had written anything but a shopping list or quick game-note by hand. I used to write journals, poems, stories, entire game walkthru/notebooks etc by hand up to about late-20's (I did also use manual electric typewriter a lot back then, too). I barely know what a pen is, anymore.

Edited December 16 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

It is like the time people kept talking about printers casting spells and getting house points and waving around wands.

[LadyCrimson]

I reached the next area in Indy game and while it is a bit more involved ala Vatican/Egypt sections in terms of gameplay loops, my motivation to continue shrinks every minute. It's not that anything has changed/grown worse per se - the loops have just become too repetitive/not engaging enough. I may eventually get around to it but I'm in no rush.

Based on my time and forum posts I think the 25-35 hours to finish the game (not completionist) and maybe 45-50ish (completionist) are fairly accurate. I've maybe done 60-75% vs. 100% in all areas. It's not a very long game I think.

My favorite things in this game are the long Indy story scenes (some of them are very entertaining in that Indy campy way), some of the area designs/artwork (lots of details in some ways). Gizeh/Egypt was the highlight.

But in the end, I would definitely recommend either trying it on Gamepass if you have that, or waiting for at least a moderate sale.

Indiana Jones vibe/nostalgia - 9/10
Gameplay, AI/mechanics/loops - 5/10
"tomb-ing/exploring/puzzling satisfaction" - 3/10 (because there was not enough of it)

Edited December 16 by LadyCrimson

[HoonDing]

Apparently Gina is invisible. Perhaps for the best, since she'd ruin my ghost run all the time.

[LadyCrimson]

On 12/16/2024 at 3:49 PM, HoonDing said:

Apparently Gina is invisible. Perhaps for the best, since she'd ruin my ghost run all the time.

She got in my way while trying to get on ladders/use whip icons, by suddenly rushing to stand exactly in front of the ladder or a ledge blocking my view/ability to use icon. But the worst was the verbal in a few cases.

I want to glance around a large room before "moving on" and the entire time she is repeating the same "maybe we should do this, Dr. Jones" line every 3 seconds, for 5 minutes, until I finally did what she wanted so she shut up and I went back to exploring the room.

Her character is fine, but good lord.

[AlphaShard]

I am currently playing Jedi Survivor and enjoying it.

[BruceVC]

90 hours into Underrail and still loving it

Several major developments in my journey and adventures

I completed the Arena and I now have the Invictus title, great challenges and another example of where you need to be selective around combat strategy to win battles. I started the Gauntlet but then decided not to complete it. I dont like the idea of not having all my equipment which means I cant adopt my numerous combat strategies

I decide to join Coretech as my Core City faction, they have useful tech items and they make sense to me around there politics

I also aligned with the Protectorate and completed there quests, I like there vision of the future of Underrail. I went on the Chemical Assault Unit quests and ended up wiping out the Free Drones with mutagen gas . This was another example of a clever and unexpected mission. It turned into a complete disaster with me having to avoid the gas and escape the Free Drones base, I let the gas do most of the work and allowed the Free Drones and Mutants to kill each other

Im now at the Tchort Institute to get the cube back and its a fascinating place and what they believe. I am doing all the quests and I have read up on all the lore on the Original Report. I just completed the quest where you have to secure Station 7 in the tunnels underneath the Institute and the battle was other epic struggle of needing to use different strategies. I used mines, caltrops, stealth, grenades and then my Psi to finally win. It was like the Shopping Mall quest, you cannot rely on one approach

The Fast Travel option using Rift Gates is probably the most realistic and best implementation of Fast Travel I have ever come across, I realize this was added in the DLC so for most people who played the original game they didnt get to use it. But you need to find Rift Gates which is almost impossible without a guide and then they just make things easier. Its very convenient but you still need to explore and travel on foot

And then I still find Easter Eggs from randomly exploring , I came across this canyon and then I climbed down and found a Lunatic base and Formedictator selling rare items

The game really delivers on open-world, sandbox and different ways to complete quests