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

[MrBrown]

Started Unavowed. Thought I should play the first game before the sequel comes out. Or is it a prequel, I haven't really followed development.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/336140/Unavowed/

Edited Saturday at 08:52 PM by MrBrown

[Serrano]

6 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Started Unavowed. Thought I should play the first game before the sequel comes out. Or is it a prequel, I haven't really followed development.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/336140/Unavowed/

Thanks for letting me know about the sequel/prequel, I've always had a special place in my heart for WadjetEye Games. Without spoiling anything I will say that I really liked the story in Unavowed and it had a very cool twist that I hadn't seen coming. As a successor to the Blackwell games I think it really hit the mark.

Edited Sunday at 03:08 AM by Serrano

[MrBrown]

6 hours ago, Serrano said:

Thanks for letting me know about the sequel/prequel, I've always had a special place in my heart for WadjetEye Games. Without spoiling anything I will say that I really liked the story in Unavowed and it had a very cool twist that I hadn't seen coming. As a successor to the Blackwell games I think it really hit the mark.

It was an attempt at a joke about Avowed.

[marelooke]

Forcing myself through the story in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, they clearly ran out of time and just half-assed the latter half once you start making "ending choices". Instead of having multiple missions depending on earlier choices there's only the single one that makes absolutely no sense for 50% of the choices you may have made before. Things got so on my nerves I actually put the game down for a few weeks.

I'm talking about "Dangerous Liaisons":
 

Spoiler

If you sided with the Ward up to that point the game does it damnedest to force you to just kill Ward members without any proper reason. You *can* avoid killing anyone if you sneak in (trying to use your authority just results in a straight shootout, which probably wasn't intended either) and do some creative jumping to get past people. All that effort is just RP purposes anyway as the game acts as if you had a grand shootout regardless.

That's ignoring the fact that you've just broken into a facility operated by a friendly faction on the word of someone you've talked to all of 5 minutes (I'm being generous here) and of whom you have no idea at all what their end goal is.

The lore is intriguing, but the storytelling is abysmal. I'd have taken less cinematics (that have lots of issues on their own) and better storytelling over what we got. If you're going to give players choice, better make it makes sense or it's just going to feel even worse than getting no choice at all (much more to say there, but will reserve that for when I get to the end)

No patches since the last one, so AI and spawning issues are still the same as they were after the first big patch.

[Majek]

Looked through what i actually bought on Steam year end sales.

Installed Drova Forsaken Kin.  Started the game and 5 hours passed before i knew it.  Love it. 

[melkathi]

I started Dredge.

 

I guess it is aimed at people who played Sunless Sea.

[Serrano]

11 hours ago, MrBrown said:

It was an attempt at a joke about Avowed.

Sorry, I take things very literally

[Lexx]

Replayed Disco Elysium over the weekend. Still really good. After not touching it for 4 years, I also don't mind the full VO from the final cut version anymore. I still think the middle part is a bit meh, because the quests don't really interest me and there is so much running around to do... but the ending really makes up for it. It's just so well written.

I'd say my biggest complaint about the game is... all that exposition. Jeez, can you chill for a moment. I don't need to know *every* detail and obscure lore. At some point it gets so extensive that I started to skip lines just to get it over with.

[Wormerine]

So Jagged Allience3 is being offered in this months Humble Choice. I remember some people here played it extensively. How good is it? Worth picking up by a non-JA fan? (I bought and launched JA2 a while ago on steam, but never spent a meaningful amount of time with it). 

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, Wormerine said:

So Jagged Allience3 is being offered in this months Humble Choice. I remember some people here played it extensively. How good is it? Worth picking up by a non-JA fan? (I bought and launched JA2 a while ago on steam, but never spent a meaningful amount of time with it). 

JA3 is fantastic if you like turn based combat. Get it. 

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, melkathi said:

I started Dredge.

 

I guess it is aimed at people who played Sunless Sea.

It looks good, I had never heard of it 

How is it compared to Sunless, it does seem simpler but similar?

[Lexx]

Fun fact, I never finished JA3 ... I don't know why. It's honestly a great game, and the gameplay was fun. Guess somewhere near the end I got distracted and then stopped playing. I really want to pick it up again, but now there have been quite a few patches and apparently changes that I'm not really feeling like continuing with my savegame.

[BruceVC]

Im about 12 hours into Witcher 1 and its been an excellent and nostalgic experience 

Now that I know more about the Witcher lore and world I am appreciating the game even more 

The combat mechanics are not great but Im use to them now but Im using a mod called FCR (full combat rebalance )

I had to use a cheat in the Beast battle because of  how  badly designed that battle was, I hate using cheats but I had no choice

You end up having to fight the Beast with no potions and you immediately get attacked in a relatively small area and having to use the frustrating overall W1 combat system

It just wasnt worth spending hours to win this battle, so I loaded a cheat mod that gives you 1000 health and then once the Beast was defeated I uninstalled the Cheat

I am having loads of fun with the Romance card  system, it makes sense because its better than the silly Bioware Romance scenes 

 

And then W1 highlights again what an honourable person Geralt is compared to many of  the " good " humans he meets like all the degeneracy and iniquity in the village on the outskirts of Vizima

The hatred towards Abigail from all the  influential   hypocrites in the town made my decision to support her easy 

It surprised me when  someone like @Hurlshot said he doesnt like  Geralts  personality because Geralts core beliefs are about justice and helping the downtrodden and he is a  good person at heart who demonstrates real humanity in a harsh world that lacks it 

 

 

 

 

 

[melkathi]

11 hours ago, BruceVC said:

It looks good, I had never heard of it 

How is it compared to Sunless, it does seem simpler but similar?

 

I didn't play much of Sunless.

Dredge does not have fuel or food, so you aren't going to start eating people.

 

The focus is on fishing and salvaging. You can upgrade your ship with better fishing rods, nets, crab pots, engines etc. Different fish are in different waters and at different depths. Some you catch during the day, others at night.

At night the sea becomes dangerous. You have to use your lamp even on familiar routes, as rocks appear where there were non during day. Sea monsters can attack you. There seem to be ghost ships - I have been avoiding the dark ships that roam at night.

You have to sleep or you go crazy.

The game has a set map with set locations.

There are quests - probably one of them is the main quest, others are side quests.

 

I got eaten once by the kraken.

[BruceVC]

11 minutes ago, melkathi said:

 

I didn't play much of Sunless.

Dredge does not have fuel or food, so you aren't going to start eating people.

 

The focus is on fishing and salvaging. You can upgrade your ship with better fishing rods, nets, crab pots, engines etc. Different fish are in different waters and at different depths. Some you catch during the day, others at night.

At night the sea becomes dangerous. You have to use your lamp even on familiar routes, as rocks appear where there were non during day. Sea monsters can attack you. There seem to be ghost ships - I have been avoiding the dark ships that roam at night.

You have to sleep or you go crazy.

The game has a set map with set locations.

There are quests - probably one of them is the main quest, others are side quests.

 

I got eaten once by the kraken.

It sounds good fun around its overall mechanics, I enjoy these types of RNG survival games 

I will play it 

 

[Zoraptor]

Dredge is definitively not an RNG survival game. There isn't much random about it at all, and if you die it isn't because of a bad die roll.

[melkathi]

More likely it is because you didn't pay attention to the giant tentacles because you thought it was daytime and you are safe.

Edited Monday at 08:11 PM by melkathi

[MrBrown]

Finished Unavowed. It's pretty good, classic point-n-click adventure, but with some choices and branching in the story. And the story was nice.

EDIT: Went and bought a bunch of the studios other games.

Edited Tuesday at 09:25 PM by MrBrown

[melkathi]

So you are all caught up on the story and ready for Avowed?

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

So you are all caught up on the story and ready for Avowed?

No, he is Unready.

[Serrano]

5 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Finished Unavowed. It's pretty good, classic point-n-click adventure, but with some choices and branching in the story. And the story was nice.

EDIT: Went and bought a bunch of the studios other games.

The Blackwell series was really good, I think some of the studio's best games for plot. It's a series about this medium and her ghost companion who go around helping the recently deceased move on by talking them down or solving their unresolved issues. The series has so much going on for it, it has a lot of humour, tragedy, mystery and really top quality banter between the main characters Joey and Rosa. 

Gemini Rue is a great one-shot cyberpunk/detective noir story, you're a detective looking for his missing brother in this Bladerunner-like universe.

And Resonance is probably the one the feels the most like Unavowed with multiple playable characters and intertwined stories. The game starts off with a lab accident that quickly spirals into a big mystery over this new scientific breakthrough that could change the world.

Edited yesterday at 02:48 AM by Serrano

[Malcador]

Was in the mood for a 4x game, picked Stellaris although I wonder if it is considered such.  The way they do wars in the game seems a bit silly.

 

[Chilloutman]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Was in the mood for a 4x game, picked Stellaris although I wonder if it is considered such.  The way they do wars in the game seems a bit silly.

 

WDYM?

[MrBrown]

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

Was in the mood for a 4x game, picked Stellaris although I wonder if it is considered such.  The way they do wars in the game seems a bit silly.

 

Paradox likes to brand their games "grand strategy", but they're basically 4x games.

The claim and war exhaustion systems are weird, but otherwise warring is pretty logical.

[Zoraptor]

Grand Strategic is an old tabletop wargaming term. It's definitely the correct technical term for something at the scale of Paradox's historical games, though personally I wouldn't apply it to classic 4x like Civilisation for example as that is one layer too much abstraction.

Edited yesterday at 04:54 PM by Zoraptor