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

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, melkathi said:

The Skyrim Alternate Start - Live Another Life mod ( @BruceVC do you use it?) is nice because it adds a rumour about Helgen into the list of rumours you hear from innkeepers. So when you get to Helgen, you arrive just after the dragon attack and see it flying away. You can find the two faction npcs dying in the cave and have enough time to heal one with a potion (if you want). That way you again are the person who informs the jarl of what happened and can trigger the main quest if you want.

 

And the starts really are simple (unless you play something hooked into this mod from another mod like Death Alternative - Captured) so wouldn't really be all that hard for the devs to do. It actually could be less work than the one start they have.

Melkie I havent played Skyrim yet, I have been preparing to play it and I have been  researching the various mod collections 

 

I am going to use Wabbajack to automatically install the several thousand mods that will be part of the Wabbajack collection I finally decide to use 

 

And it seems  to be a choice between Wildlander and Lorerim  but I am definitely going to use Requiem as the foundation and all  these types of Mod collection do 

 

But I highly suggest using Wabbajack, it makes it much easier to see and browse the main Mod collections and all the collections have been tested and they have active Discord and other similar support forums for any issues 

 

 

[BruceVC]

I have some very exciting news

I  am about to finish  Underrail and after all this debate and discussion around W4 I have realized how much I miss the entire Witcher universe 

I have  decided to replay the whole Witcher series,  I only played these iconic games once and I didnt mod  them

This time I will use extensive mods 

I am looking forward to  revisiting the world of Geralt  

 

 

[melkathi]

If you really want to sell me on wabbajack, you know what you have to do.

Upload a soundfile of explaining it's merits to the tune of ABBA's Waterloo.

[Bartimaeus]

Mouthwashing.

Neat visuals and cool story, but literally half (or maybe even more) of the game is a dream sequence, and the other half is told out of order. 6/10, which is just barely a "pass" for me, coulda been a lot higher if not for all the nonsense.

I am once again asking that indie game developers, particularly horror ones, learn how to develop and tell stories, themes, and characters without the non-stop use of dream sequences. You can do it, I believe in you, even though you keep proving me wrong.

Edited January 5 by Bartimaeus

[LadyCrimson]

Since it does not seem to make my PC reboot itself - - I turned on Diablo1. Using a modded version that gives fast walk in town at least.
Put-put-putted around, killed stuff, sold stuff, spent any money I made on mana potions (sorcerer, I always play a sorcerer), poured all pts into Magic. Found lots of fireball and holy books. Cleared the Poisoned Well. Got to lvl 3, put-put-putted around, killed stuff, etc. Found gear with +10 STR, cool. Found gear with +4 VIT, cool. Full of confidence, I hit a barrel.

10/10, would get killed by exploding barrel, again.

[majestic]

Found myself with ample and somewhat unexpected free time in the past three weeks, so I figured I'd get this one done and over with too:

Funny how this was, purely in terms of getting all the achievements, the least hair pulling out of any of the FromSoftware game catalogue that I have so far 100%'ed (meaning the three Dark Souls entries, Sekiro and now Elden Ring) but it bordered on being the most miserable experience I have had playing their games yet. Not surprising, given that I generally detest open world games. At least it plays better than Dark Souls 2. Well, arguably, it plays better (in terms of how your character controls and how responsive the controls are) than all the other games except Sekiro. Cannot talk about Bloodborne as that is still somewhat out of reach.

Not sure what I can say about the game that hasn't been said yet. I find myself agreeing with Joseph Anderson's initial assessment. In some ways, Elden Ring contains the highest highs in the series (it might be worth the price of admission just for exploring Síofra River for the first time, assuming one does it the moment you find it) - but it also so utterly falls off a cliff at a certain point that one's experience ends up being worse than Dark Souls 1's latter half - and that is even before factoring in the amount of FromSoftware style bullsh*t that creeps up towards the end of the game. It makes the fandumb even dumber for defending it.

I have yet to complete Shadow of the Erdtree, but I'm not sure I want to do that just now. I'll get to it eventually.

[Mamoulian War]

Goal nr. 1/2025

January 6, 13:45 – First game finished in 2025 has become, to my surprise, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate on PS4. I got new arcade stick  from a sale, so I have tried to complete all Tutorials, which are prerequisite for the two hardest trophies in the game, that I was still missing. The finger coordination with old man’s reflexes was even more challenging for me than in Souls games, but I have somehow managed to overcome all of them . Despite excellent new arcade stick, it took me 3 hours and 45 minutes to beat them all. The hardest of the challenges for me was to perform successfully Raiden’s 14-hit Combo, where I had to connect two punches with amplified special move, teleport and another two punches connected into his signature “flying dart” attack in 5 seconds, which took me 16 minutes to learn . Completion of all the tutorials also unlocked rare Scorpion and Sub-Zero equipment, Shao Kahn as a match announcer and Ultra Rare Elder God Platinum Trophy for the game, which is currently held only by 0.3% of the players of the game .

[Malcador]

Dawn of War 3 sure is tedious. Sitting around waiting for resources a lot.

 

[majestic]

Here's one of the funny moments that I had playing Elden Ring. Prerequisite knowledge: Elden Ring loot icons come in different colors (that used to be different sizes in the other games). White for regular items, purple for rare items, and gold for legendary items.

Imagine the following situation: you have just stepped onto a lift, and it is bringing you ever downwards. Down, down, down you go. Further. And further. There is seemingly no end to the ride on the platform. Finally, after what seems an eternity, you reach the ground, and you walk out, spotting ruins. Small parts of the area are faintly illuminated by fireflies casting their silvery light into the darkness of these underground ruins. You take note that they do not try to escape when you approach them, and decide to take a few of them with you for further examination. Not that you have any use for them now, but perhaps they will come in handy, their silver glow being similar to items you have found before.

Strange looking new enemies creep about. Carefully you approach one that is standing about alone, to test the mettle of your newly discovered foes. You attack. Your opponent is decidedly unimpressed by your attack, as your combat abilities and equipment are seemingly not up to the task of breaking the clay hide of these shambling people, or whatever they are or used to be. You are clearly not prepared to explore the area, but still, they are slow, and you are not. It takes a while to dispatch them, but they are not an insurmountable challenge. You decide to press on, and explore the ruins. In the distance, you can see a human figure atop a broken pillar, clearly clutching something intricate in his hands (out of character note: the corpse has a purple glowing loot icon).

Ever so slowly you make your way to your freshly discovered point of interest. It gets dicey for a while, as you notice that these new enemies can also cast spells. Luckily for you though, the projectiles of their spells are as slow as they are, and only the enemies equipped with bows are a slight problem, as they rain arrows down on you from elevated positions difficult to rush to. You persevere, and finally reach the pillar. You see that the humanoid figure you spotted is an old, desiccated corpse. Carefully you make note of your surroundings and find that there is no way to reach the top of this pillar from where you are, but you can see the crumbled walls surrounding the ruins could perhaps be used to reach the elevated platform above the broken column. It would be easy to jump down from there.

Tracing your path along the walls you reach the other end of the area you are in. Carefully you climb in top of the partly crumbled walls, going higher and higher. It is a long way down now, a stumble now would surely kill you. There is a broken walkway atop a series of columns, and after a series of carefully executed jumps and a lot of sweat and anxiety, you finally cross the entire area and reach the platform above the corpse. You drop down, and immediately pick up the item the corpse is clutching.

Carefully you inspect it. It is an intricate backpack. Slowly, with bated breath, you open it. You wonder what it is you have discovered. A lost incantation? A new sorcery? Some ancient secrets allowing you to concoct potions to ensnare the senses and befuddle your enemies? A new weapon, perhaps? Oh, isn't anticipation just the greatest of feelings?

You find three of the fireflies that are buzzing around everywhere and that respawn whenever you rest at the nearby bonfire site of grace. They're classified as rare crafting material, giving them a purple loot glow, and you've just wasted your precious time doing a FromSoftware jumping puzzle for nothing.

[Wormerine]

27 minutes ago, majestic said:

They're classified as rare crafting material, giving them a purple loot glow, and you've just wasted your precious time doing a FromSoftware jumping puzzle for nothing.

Hmmm, Elden Ring reward system in a nutshell. Play not for the reward as most of the time you will be left disappointed. 

[LadyCrimson]

I still occasionally consider buying Elden Ring when it's on sale. But you know me - I'd just use some trainer and romp around like an idiot and take screenshots. eg, admire the scenery/art but never care about any actual gameplay. Thus I've confined myself to watching long streams of dunkey playing it. Which were so hilarious I actually watched multiple hours of it without FFWing. I'd much rather watch someone else die repeatedly in a humorous fashion/narration then experience it myself.    Games like that always look like fun to me when you watch snippets of others playing, but I know I'd toss a monitor out a window if I tried.

Oh and if you've never seen those streams and have hours to kill, and like dunkey, it's this playlist.

And now that I've needlessly chattered on that, I shall go back to panic-run-turn-fire from mobs of demon dogs (all at that put-put pace) and being killed by exploding barrels and packs of 20 bow skeletons you can't see across the room. Diablo 1's dungeon music and sound is still the best.

[Bartimaeus]

20 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Since it does not seem to make my PC reboot itself - - I turned on Diablo1. Using a modded version that gives fast walk in town at least.
Put-put-putted around, killed stuff, sold stuff, spent any money I made on mana potions (sorcerer, I always play a sorcerer), poured all pts into Magic. Found lots of fireball and holy books. Cleared the Poisoned Well. Got to lvl 3, put-put-putted around, killed stuff, etc. Found gear with +10 STR, cool. Found gear with +4 VIT, cool. Full of confidence, I hit a barrel.

10/10, would get killed by exploding barrel, again.

A couple years back, I played the DevilutionX re-build of Diablo 1 (it's very faithful but has some engine and QoL improvements, you can even transfer saves between DevilutionX and the original game), and I tried playing a Sorcerer for the first time: I'd only ever tried a Rogue or Warrior before then. Felt like I was playing on easy mode, the Sorcerer is so much more powerful than the other two classes. Given that I only ever played Sorceress in Diablo 2, you think I would've tried it at some point already...

6 hours ago, majestic said:

You find three of the fireflies that are buzzing around everywhere and that respawn whenever you rest at the nearby bonfire site of grace. They're classified as rare crafting material, giving them a purple loot glow, and you've just wasted your precious time doing a FromSoftware jumping puzzle for nothing.

Let's take a twenty to thirty hour game and stretch it into a hundred hour game while diluting and piecemealing out everything fun and interesting that you could do or find in it. I love open world games, they're the greatest.

Edited January 7 by Bartimaeus

[BruceVC]

I completed the main Underrail narrative after about 130 hours

As I mentioned in previous posts its an excellent game and well worth playing

What stands out as exceptional are these main mechanics and components
 

• Combat and how you have to adopt different strategies to win. In most large battles you cannot use the same approach
• exploration and the vastness of the map and then different places to find
• how you can use different builds to solve quests, lots of effort was put into this and it works

The single hardest battle I had outside of the final battle was with an enemy AI called  IRIS, it took me about 12 tries but I finally succeeded by using mines, EMP grenades and my PSI abilities and then I used the side room to control how the Robots could attack me and then I could focus my attacks on a specific area

The only real criticism I have is the final Mutagen puzzle was too hard, I have never come across a puzzle that was so difficult to understand. I ended up using guides to finally create Exitus which is a basically a Mutagen and helps in the final battle 

I find it hard to believe that anyone could solve this puzzle without guides but obviously some people did that. If you a gamer who prides themselves on being good on solving puzzles here is an example of the solution to this. If you havent played Underrail it might not make sense but this link is an example of the complexity of what is expected 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/250520/discussions/0/412449508288532344/

And now Im playing Expedition and its great fun. I really appreciate how they add components like the NavCom device to help you navigate the map without making it too easy

I like the factions and Im aligned with Aegis

[Mamoulian War]

Don't forget to buy the second expansion/DLC as well
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2604510/Underrail_Heavy_Duty/

[LadyCrimson]

@Bartimaeus  In Diablo1, Warrior had the toughest time mid-late game/high difficulties, Rogue next, Sorcerer was op'd godmode by lvl 20-25. Sorcerer only has issues at the lvl1-10 stage or maybe if luck with spellbooks/gear was terrible, or if one made the mistake of putting too many points into anything other than Magic. Although at max difficulty/MP mode which was more map-open/much more enemies  (vs. quest/campaign mode), Sorcerer could still easily die/1-2 shotted/mobbed in some cases.  But yeah Warrior late-game/high difficulties sucked because of chasing those witches everywhere and stuff like that. Rogue was annoying (to me) because of the bow aiming with that tile movement system but her magic capabilties were at least a little better to help out. And of course, vs. today's games, it's all very simplistic anyway.

Ranged - especially AoE ranged - will always outstrip anything melee (more pure melee, not magic-spell-melee, ahem). Unless one gimps the AoE ranged so much there's no real point in using it anyway. Even today they can't get a real arpg balance for it, having to use massive cooldowns stoppers and other methods.

Edited January 7 by LadyCrimson

[Mamoulian War]

Had pretty nice day today at Dark Souls 2. The fight, which I was most afraid of (Gank Squad) has been victorious on my first try (solo). I have not anticipated that at all, so I had not prepared for anything else to fight against . So after few minutes I have decided to go for Darklurker as well. To my surprise, I was able to defeat him on a second try Another big surprise for me Soo I have decided to go solo against Burnt Ivory King as well   Of course this was much bigger obstacle, but still in the end, I had like 5 or 6 tries to win the fight Out of them, I was able to get to the boss fight only three time, and as this was my first ever solo encounter against him, I had to learn his moves as well. Compared to anything before, he was not very difficult so on third try, I already knew how to avoid most of his moves. Aaaand even though I have messed up the last attempt as well, I was still able to find openings to heal up and finish him off  

So, now every single boss I have ever encountered in DS2, has been defeated solo. The worst one will be for me forever Lud and Zala duo at the Frigid Outskirts, which almost caused me to quit the DLC altogether. YAY...

No just to finish the NG+ and go through few more fights to get all of the items and then last three spells for Platinum Trophy

 

EDIT: just one more useless info, I had some time in previous sessions to grind for all of required Loyce Souls to get two more Armour Sets and one more Weapon, which have been locked behind the "paywall". 50 loyce souls and a victory over the Burnt Ivory King were needed to get them.

[LadyCrimson]

I noticed the d-x mod made the local MP/hosting be TCP instead of ancient-near-dead(?) IPX. So I wondered if I could still run two instances of the game at the same time .... and it worked.

I now have eight D1 mule characters that can join the main instance of the game, pick stuff I drop on the ground and leave. Mostly jewelry, occasional weapon/gear, and all the gold. Alllll the gold.
Wonder how long I'll play this game again, this time. 

[Malcador]

Still slogging through DoW 3.  Gorgutz is funny at least.

[Bartimaeus]

18 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I noticed the d-x mod made the local MP/hosting be TCP instead of ancient-near-dead(?) IPX. So I wondered if I could still run two instances of the game at the same time .... and it worked.

I now have eight D1 mule characters that can join the main instance of the game, pick stuff I drop on the ground and leave. Mostly jewelry, occasional weapon/gear, and all the gold. Alllll the gold.
Wonder how long I'll play this game again, this time. 

Yeah, I used it to play through the game with a friend across the country, their new netcode worked surprisingly well and we had fun.

Speaking of netcode with old games, I tried playing through Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition sometime ago with a friend, purely for the more modern netcode, and it was an absolute disaster, with endless glitches and desyncs that required reloading constantly. Really great, super fun, thank you Beamdog.

Edited Thursday at 06:47 PM by Bartimaeus

[Serrano]

10 hours ago, Malcador said:

Still slogging through DoW 3.  Gorgutz is funny at least.

Hey Malcador, I never got to try DoW3's multiplayer because the community completely bailed on the game by the time I got it. If you ever want a skirmish or anything I'd be happy to play you.

 

I've been playing a lot of Pillars of Eternity this month. When it was first released I got as far as Twin Elms and then got interrupted because of work and everything, finally got around to giving the game another go. It's so good! I love Obsidian so much, they are my absolute favorite developers and this playthough has reminded me of everything I love about their games. So far I am basically finished with Definace Bay, have cleared everything but the dragon in the Endless Paths and I'm currently working my way through Durgan's Battery in the White March: Part 2. I think the thing I like the most about the game are the classes and experimenting with party composition. I know they're basically d&d classes but Obsidian really did a good job with their versions and optimising everything for a videogame.  I like how they've assigned things like might to damage and healing output, intelligence to the area range of abilities ect. It makes the character builds a lot more diverse and I feel like it's harder to make a "wrong" choice in how to build your character as even if you go for an unorthadox build your character will still be good at something and can have a use.

Edited Friday at 02:08 AM by Serrano

[MrBrown]

Done with Mass Effect Andromeda for now.

I finished the main story, and around 60% of the other stuff. Other than some technical advancement like graphics, and a more 3D world, the game is lackluster compared to previous MEs in just about all ways. Hard to think of anything that is done better. Mostly not to infuriatingly badly, just boringly. Some of it is issues with polishing/finalizing, but some are more fundamental. I can imagine it being a huge disappointment on release with all the bugs etc.

[BruceVC]

I have been preparing for my Witcher series replay 

I am going to start on W1 EE and I found this informative modding guide which I am following 

 

 

 

 

[Malcador]

17 hours ago, Serrano said:

Hey Malcador, I never got to try DoW3's multiplayer because the community completely bailed on the game by the time I got it. If you ever want a skirmish or anything I'd be happy to play you.

Thanks, but I will uninstall this once I'm done the campaign. Not so much the game is bad, really, I am just awful at the game I am feeling.

[Hurlshort]

11 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Done with Mass Effect Andromeda for now.

 

I just played it recently and stalled about 20 hours in. It was interesting at first, but I lost interest quickly.

Alternatively, I've jumped back into Hogwarts Legacy. I bought this on the PC and never got into it, although both my kids loved it and took over all the save slots. I got a PS5 for Xmas, and decided I wanted to see how it looked and played on my big TV. It made a difference. I'm loving it right now and have pushed past my previous game easily. I think it lends itself well to a controller and a giant 4k screen. 

[melkathi]

I completed King Arthur: Legion IX, the stand alone expansion to King Arthur: Knight's Tale.

 

Being a stand alone expansion it is mostly the same game with some quality of life improvements.

Most important is removing perma death and injuries from your characters. Perma death was an idiotic aspect of the original game, seeing how the whole story was that people in Avalon could not die but would rise again and again.

On the other hand, it is a very bare bones version of the game. The traditional two axis alignment system, with one morality and one religion axis has been reduced to a simple humanity-demonic axis. You get enough points to be able to make a couple of choices of the other alignment and still max your chosen alignment. The bonuses are boring.

You only get 6 characters and each mission has fixed party composition (either everyone or one character will refuse to participate). You start with 3 of these and get the other three over the first few missions.

The characters are interesting gameplaywise. I actually enjoyed the healer after a while, even though she doesn't heal, but transfer's the party's health around until everyone has the same percentage of missing health. With life drain on attacks though, everyone can heal up - it actually works.

On hard the game is very easy. At least for someone who has finished the original.

The story is ok. The nice touch though is that it follows up not just from Knight's Tale but also King Arthur II's prequel DLC, Dead Legion. Which I felt was a nice gift to fans of the whole franchise, such as myself.

It seems quite obvious that they ran out of money. Halfway through the game, after defeating a boss, you are informed you finished the campaign. You get an ending cinematic and the credits roll. Then you are thrown back in the game and there is the post campaign endgame. This includes a dozen missions, 3 bosses, and the final boss of the game. After beating that, you get the achievement for completing the game. But, the level cap doesn't increase, so you play all these missions at max level. The missions all seem unfinished as well - the party no longer has dialogue during them. Enemies do things, but there seems to be something missing, as they do so in silence. It is a shame.

 

Fun on sale.

More so if you enjoyed the original.

Bonus if you enjoyed Dead Legion in King Arthur II.

Incomplete game presented as complete.