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

[MrBrown]

3 hours ago, Lexx said:

Still. This game feels so huge and I can't shake off the feeling that my characters and stats aren't great and that I should rather restart... but I just don't have the time to restart. Sinking another 30 or what hours into the game just to get back to where I am right now is not something I'd be looking forward to.

You can re-spec pretty extensively.

[Malcador]

On 1/27/2025 at 10:57 AM, Wormerine said:

My google-fu tells me that it was a DLC on consoles, so it is possible you played a version without it. Apparently it was always part of PC KOTOR (looking at screenshot it looks familiar, but my memory if the game is fuzzy by now).

Will dig up the DVD to check.

Almost finished, forgot how short some planets are.  Running with Juhani, usually I kill her, even on LS. Her remarks when I kill some guy's kid then shake him down for reward money are fun.

[MrBrown]

Caught a bit of a nostalgia bug, and played a bit of Civ4. Was quickly reminded of how much better 5 and 6 were.

Though I could listen to Baba Yetu 24/7.

[Humanoid]

It was between Civ4 and XCOM Long War for me when I was looking for a filler game to revisit until Avowed releases. Went with XCOM for now, but only so far as to pick up my old perpetual endgame save. I'll probably have time to fit in a game or two of Civ4 after I've had my fill though, and for me it's still the undisputed king.

Not a whole lot to comment on in terms of the XCOM campaign, just stomping on the aliens with a fully kitted out squad. It's frustrating though that the aliens just spam battleships at this point - I can shoot them down reliably enough but I just can't be bothered doing the loooong missions that result.

[LadyCrimson]

No Man's Sky - just checking out performance. FPS number seems higher/I could turn more things up to High/Ultra again, even on native/no DLSS, but there seems to be more general micro stutter. Not constant, but little jerks here and there. Didn't try to "fix" it/find out if I could. It's not terrible but not as smooth as before. There seems to be more clarity/crispness to the graphics of two planets I looked at. Swimming underwater looks nicer too.

Problem with this games is after many many months away, you're not sure you want to play an old save where you have no clue what you were up to. But the main quest/post-quests are pfft/don't care to repeat, so you don't want to start a new chr again (30+ hrs) if you have to have those finished to activate the Worlds 2 new systems/planets (post-game quest to be able to get the new hyperdrive that lets you get to purple systems). I only finished the MQ with a single chr/save, none of my other chrs ever bothered.

I think the save editor might be able to mark them as finished/give the inventory item needed ... maybe I'll do that when they update it, see if I can get the new quest to trigger that way.

Edited January 30 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

I am at 146/151 types of fish caught in Dredge. It feels wrong to give up on catching those last few.

[Sven_]

Bits of Cultic. Played it last year already. But this is my favourite boomer shooter thingy. It isn't actually quite such a game.

There's genuine Survival Horror bits in there. One moment you're headshotting and TNT'ing cultists. The next you drop into a hellhole of bodies. The music stops, you have to take out your lighter to see further than a feet, and then, suddenly....

Highly recommend the demo.

 

 

 

Edited January 30 by Sven_

[Malcador]

20 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Caught a bit of a nostalgia bug, and played a bit of Civ4. Was quickly reminded of how much better 5 and 6 were.

Though I could listen to Baba Yetu 24/7.

Them's fighting words.

Finished Kotor, killed Carth in an extremely half assed sequence, his dying words had a great bored delivery.

I guess I can go on to Kotor 2, but eh.

[melkathi]

Completed Dredge, both endings.

 

So I installed that Moria dwarf simulator.

Lasted up to the moment I had to construct the first wooden platform. Absolutely hated building even that, so uninstalled.

[Hurlshort]

40 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Completed Dredge, both endings.

 

So I installed that Moria dwarf simulator.

Lasted up to the moment I had to construct the first wooden platform. Absolutely hated building even that, so uninstalled.

It was fun to restore a brewery and get a decent bar going in the game, but my only customers were goblins, so I got bored of it pretty quickly.

[melkathi]

Started a new run of Exogate, now that it has officially released.

They toned down the squib invasions, which was the main change I had been hoping for.

Third invasion put almost all my soldiers in the infirmary, but I healed up and had time to do missions before they returned. Before, in early access, I'd heal up just in time for the next invasion.

 

Of course one of the major factions has declared war; they want to steal one of my mining operations. I have pushed them back one planet into their territory. So the priority now is to get more resources and kit out all medics with body armour - they love targeting my medics 

[Wormerine]

Pre-Avowed playthrough of Deadfire completed. Used some light mods, mandatory Community Patch, plus XP rebalance, which worked pretty well. I think this is a playthrough I enjoyed the most. Small narrative additions and DLCs, I think make Deadfire much stronger narratively, and enough time has passed for me to be able to assess it with a fresher pair of eyes.

 

Edited January 31 by Wormerine

[Lexx]

Damn, I forgot how nice Deadfire looked. I'm currently playing BG3 and I have to say... Deadfire with that engine would be absolute fire. Being able to interact with everything, jumping all over the map, the whole mechanics, etc... very nice.

Also in hindsight I'm pretty sure the real time with pause has hurt the gaming experience. Was never much a fan of it anyways, but playing BG3 now again just proves it to me.

[melkathi]

Last wave that came in through the gate never even breached the shields of my guard posts.

That was a nice experience. I am very worried about the next attack though - I don't feel prepared for higher tier enemies.

Back at peace with all major factions. Thf non aggression pact with the more aggressive one just ran out though, so I have my military team on standby. Really would love to level up the medics though.

 

Exogate feels tiny as this type of games go, at the same time I keep doing stuff. Mostly I feel the 50 gater limit - if I could field one more team...

[BruceVC]

I am about 20 hours into W3  EE  and this was my 2nd best favourite RPG of all time but now Im using the mods but particularly a complex overhaul mod called  W3EE Redux

https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/5802

Its been fantastic so far and W3 EE and several mods improves and expands on everything I wanted. W3 EE comes with its own built-in mods like All Quest Objectives on MAP

The hardest part for me was getting use to the Controller and its mechanics like assigning and using bombs and potions but I am comfortable with all that now

I did have to learn basic Script Merger functionality which is necessary to install W3EE Redux and how you need to merge certain files when you first install it but the W3EE Redux documentation explains how you do this

I did have one bug with a weight increase mod that caused my vigor to stop regenerating but I uninstalled it and used another weigh increase mod and that worked fine

And my game so far is very stable and everything is working as expected, Im doing all the side quests in White Orchid before I go kill the Griffin

I really appreciate and prefer open-world RPGS, I am a huge fan of exploration and finding Easter eggs and random points of interest

[Majek]

ninja gaiden  2 black. I feel so old and rusted. Can't even play on very hard very well. ;_;

[melkathi]

Finished a game of Exogate.

Took 20sumthin hours to get a score victory. A domination victory could probably have been achieved sooner.

 

I like the game. There are a lot of little stories to discover, though the alien species you encounter probably will become a bit stale - I expect they will not have been able to write that many stories to have even more races to have variety between playthroughs.

 

You reach that point where you suddenly are stronger than the other factions. Then in a way you wait for victory. Similar with money: at first I needed to earn it. Then I reached the point where I had enough stashed away to be able to pre-pay all maintenance and salaries  for the rest of the game (if that were an option in games) and still have three quarters of my cash.

Which basically means the content that is there is great, but there may be just a tiny bit less content in a playthrough than the length of the playthrough.

That said, I only found the final artifact for my collection about 10 minutes before the game ended.

[LadyCrimson]

I dunno if I'm the only one left who doesn't have steam auto-run/start on pc reboot, full-exits steam all the time/hard restarts it whenever I want it open etc, but if anyone else does that, have you noticed it taking a lot longer to fully open when in "Offline" mode in the past couple days (it's really half-offline these days)? Like it's update check is taking forever. If I actually unplug the pc net cable it starts up really fast like it used to, then I plug the net cable back in.

Their Offline mode is seriously not an Offline mode anymore. It should just be called "Online Game/Social Features Disabled, Mode" instead.

Edited Tuesday at 11:48 AM by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

I haven't started it offline. I haven't noticed it being slower than I'm used to though.

 

I thought not running auto-run was the normal thing to do. Why would I want to have my PC boot up on startup all these programs that I may or may not use? If and when I want to use a program, I'll fire it up myself.

[LadyCrimson]

33 minutes ago, melkathi said:

I thought not running auto-run was the normal thing to do.

Maybe with us nerds it still is - doesn't Steam on first install make it start on boot, as default? I figure most people these days don't even know to check/care.

I mostly use Offline nowadays as the method to prevent Steam's auto-updates, since the option is now "only update game when I launch it". Which only triggers if you're in Online mode at the time you launch the game.  eg as long as I never launch a game in Online mode, it never updates. Edit: well, at least I haven't had it happen very often for SP games. If it's a game that's uber important to me to not have update yet (not often), I still do the temp install-backup just in case.

Edited Tuesday at 12:27 PM by LadyCrimson

[Malcador]

I just hate Steam for taking focus twice on startup.

On to Kotor 2 now with the restoration mod.  Have an annoying bug where the camera spins constantly after a cutscene, I guess it's an issue with my mouse driver.

New D4 season is interesting, sure is faster than before with the witch powers.

[majestic]

9 hours ago, Malcador said:

New D4 season is interesting, sure is faster than before with the witch powers.

The season specific journey elements are pretty rough though, or perhaps I'm the unluckiest guy playing D4. Opened 20 silent chests, got one (1) roothold key. Spent hours grinding the headhunts, at 15 of 20 reputation levels, and I got a total of four fugitive heads. Still missing the last witch power too.

And yeah, I am using the season elixir. Sigh.

On 1/22/2025 at 12:07 AM, MrBrown said:

Hmm, I'm having no problems. Maybe it's just you?

Yeah, no. When the game freezes for 20 seconds after using leap and then picks up exactly where it left off instead of having my character either dying or passively killed the mobs on the screen I'm fairly positive that it's server side lags.

[Sven_]

KCD II. For five hours straight without noticing. Have a feeling this may become the RPG to beat in the next coming years.

[i


 

Edited Tuesday at 11:24 PM by Sven_

[MrBrown]

15 hours ago, Malcador said:

New D4 season is interesting, sure is faster than before with the witch powers.

I enjoyed it a while, but then I noticed you need to play in a party to get all the season achievements. Meh.

[Malcador]

17 hours ago, majestic said:

The season specific journey elements are pretty rough though, or perhaps I'm the unluckiest guy playing D4. Opened 20 silent chests, got one (1) roothold key. Spent hours grinding the headhunts, at 15 of 20 reputation levels, and I got a total of four fugitive heads. Still missing the last witch power too.

And yeah, I am using the season elixir. Sigh.

Ah ok. I just got to 60, so just grinding along doing the headhunts. I'm unlucky but I chalk that up to just not playing all that much.  I should do the group stuff at least once though, I am sure pugging in D4 isn't as fraught with toxicity and frustration like WoW . 

Forgot how much I hate having to play my NPCs in KOTOR 2, running around with T3, Hanharr and Atton was not fun (granted I forgot to keep a good stock of medpacs)