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

[Wormerine]

17 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I decided it was time to set aside my Battle Brothers play through and get ready for Avowed. So I re-upped my Gamepass account for $11.99. Then I splurged on the $25 pre-order so I can play it in a few days. It was still a lot cheaper that the $70-90 on Steam.

But now that I have the Gamepass, I'm thinking I might give Indy a try. I downloaded the massive game overnight, so we'll see if I have any time to play it before Avowed drops.

Oh, I didn't know that you get discount on pre-order if you have Gamepass. Still, I am happy to wait those couple extra days. I don't think I will struggle avoiding spoilers. I will save those $25 to get the game later, on a proper platform once it gets discounted later down the line (assuming of course, that I want to play it ever again... finger's crossed).

 

12 hours ago, Serrano said:

I noticed that there are Critical Role portraits and voicepacks, I wonder if the popularity of shows like that and LA by Night had anything to do with Obsidian going so heavily for that pen & paper vibe with all the skill checks and little details like everyone reacting to you being a godlike.
(...)

I've made it to Neketaka and I'm overwhelmed and intimidated by the size of the city, let alone the rest of the game. I have a list of all the companions and sidekicks and where to recruit them, so I'm just ticking those off initially, so far they all seem like an interesting bunch. Did Obsidian say why they reduced the party size to 5? I'd guess it's because it's easier to balance the roleplaying side of things but for combat it's a bit like losing a limb.

You might have noticed that Critical Role joined Mercer in the sequel - companions are mostly voiced by CR cast, and they got some other major roles (Eothas, narrator, Imps). It was definitely a marketing thing as well, though it didn't seem to help them much considering how much Deadfire underperformed initially.

Eh, Obsidian has always drawn heavily from P&P, and both PoEs used story adventure sequences to expand scenarios that the game could support. Personally, I still think the ones from White March are the most interesting ones, but Deadfire is good.

Neketaka is massive - it is a Hub you will be visiting and revisiting throughout the game, so my advice is to not spend too much time there are any given time. Do a major quest or two if you feel like it, gather quests and bounties and sail out. You can explore districts and all that they have to offer at your leisure, no need to try to complete it all in one go.

While initially jarring I think party of 5 is a good choice. You still have a lot of flexibility in how you build your party, and I didn't feel loosing the 6th member impacted negatively my enjoyment of the game. As someone who micromanages my parties, 5 was a very good sweet spot where everyone is actively working on accomplishing something.

[Malcador]

Almost done Kotor 2 again. Maybe I should cheat to get influence up with some characters I barely used, like...well everyone except Kreia and Atton in my playthroughs, really.   Probably should have gone LS this run, I think Kreia sounds less disappointed in you if you do, if I recall.

 

 

[Lexx]

Ok, so I've played some more Deadfire and finished the first island. Have to say that the TB combat does really feel so much better. Seems like it's the first time I'll actually try to place my dudes in a tactical manner.

[majestic]

16 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Almost done Kotor 2 again. Maybe I should cheat to get influence up with some characters I barely used, like...well everyone except Kreia and Atton in my playthroughs, really.   Probably should have gone LS this run, I think Kreia sounds less disappointed in you if you do, if I recall.

 

 

She at least doesn't give you a five minute verbal lashing about how much of a failure you are if you are light side. 's a pretty cool moment though. "You have failed me. Completely and utterly.", "To have the Jedi Masters brought low by such a failure, there is no victory in that. You have not heard a thing I have taught, and for all I have said, you have never learned to listen." and "Stay here and die, apprentice, among the wreckage of all that remains of the Jedi. It is a fitting grave until the Sith come to end you. To end everything."

[Hurlshort]

Ok, the Indiana Jones game is pretty dang good. Is this the rebirth of adventure games? I know there is some action, but really the best part is the puzzles and exploring.

It might be time to re-launch Dr. Brain.

[HoonDing]

It's likely restored content, but Kreia taking down each of your snowflake party members with one flick of a finger is prolly the greatest moment in all of Star Wars.

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

She at least doesn't give you a five minute verbal lashing about how much of a failure you are if you are light side. 's a pretty cool moment though. "You have failed me. Completely and utterly.", "To have the Jedi Masters brought low by such a failure, there is no victory in that. You have not heard a thing I have taught, and for all I have said, you have never learned to listen." and "Stay here and die, apprentice, among the wreckage of all that remains of the Jedi. It is a fitting grave until the Sith come to end you. To end everything."

Yeah, hearing that line now after graduating and 2 decades of working life certainly hits a bit different than it did the first time.    I didn't kill Vrook (who didn't mind me selling out the Administrator for 2k...) and Zez-Kai, and tried to be less blaming toward them.  But killed Kavar due to no choice, real shame I couldn't be real dark side and just kill Vaklu as well.

Maybe I'll reload a post-Peragus save and go LS from there, Hanharr sucks anyway.

[Tale]

Spider-Man 2 finally hit PC and it was worth the wait. Not as good as 1 and better than miles. Insomniac are doing a bang up job of transitioning comic book stuff to a cinematic medium. Better than Marvel is at the moment, anyway.

[LadyCrimson]

NMS - My cute new hermit crab pet is apparently the victim of a bug/glitch. After initially taming it, it takes up a pet slot but there is no info/stats for it in the list and it is not summonable.  Seems to be a known thing - hopefully they fix it. It was so cute, I want it back.

I have now seen tons of "purple" systems, several water worlds (still don't care about exploring their depths much), lots of gas giants, tried building my own Fighter ship (very limited feature, nothing interesting) etc. Which was fun, but now I'm back to have nothing to do besides admire vistas and maybe hunt for the perfect Sentinel ship (can't craft those).

There's two restrictions to gameplay that keep ppl like me from playing a lot longer, per return. The base-part building restriction per save and player-terrain changes limit  (there's a limit to number of terrain edits then it starts erasing older changes for newer ones). I know the premise is to keep moving/discovering new systems forever, but eventually all the planets/biomes are the same, so motivation to planet hop 100000000 times forever dwindles.

I think these restrictions are because NMS has Steam cloud saves, which is a hard save-size limit.  7 Days doesn't have/allow cloud saves for this reason. eg, Steam cloud saves for sandbox+building+mega exploring/mega-data etc. games sucks.

[Malcador]

Droid factory in KOTOR 2 should have been left out of that restoration mod, good grief what a tedious experience  

[Wormerine]

13 hours ago, Malcador said:

Droid factory in KOTOR 2 should have been left out of that restoration mod, good grief what a tedious experience  

Still not as bad as the "restored planet".

[kanisatha]

On 2/11/2025 at 11:36 AM, Hurlshort said:

Ok, the Indiana Jones game is pretty dang good. Is this the rebirth of adventure games? I know there is some action, but really the best part is the puzzles and exploring.

The reason I passed on this game as well was, again, the first-person combat. But is there a lot of combat in the game? Because if it is much more a puzzles and exploration game, then I should and would reconsider passing on it.

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, kanisatha said:

The reason I passed on this game as well was, again, the first-person combat. But is there a lot of combat in the game? Because if it is much more a puzzles and exploration game, then I should and would reconsider passing on it.

I haven't played a ton, but there is a super easy combat mode that you can set separate of the puzzles. So you can set the puzzles to regular or hard, but breeze through the stealth and combat stuff. So it might be worth a try.

[LadyCrimson]

3 hours ago, kanisatha said:

The reason I passed on this game as well was, again, the first-person combat. But is there a lot of combat in the game?

Only if you want there to be. Note I never story-finished the game but I did explore/move around the last big "open" section so I did get pretty far.
It's more of a stealth game in many cases and you can avoid or sneak-deal with enemies most of the time (not always but often). Or if you really want to, you can charge in or do something non-stealthy and attract a lot of enemies for chaos. It's up to you. Generally speaking trying to take on lots of enemies at once is often not a great idea, partly because of certain mechanics but also just spatial jank sometimes.

There's some "boss" fights of course.

Edited Thursday at 10:12 PM by LadyCrimson

[Hurlshort]

Avowed - It's fantastic. It looks great. The intro area is really well done. I just reached the first city.  

[MrBrown]

5 hours into Avowed. Seems good.

More linear than Skyrim, but still a bit open-worldy. Maybe Witcher 3 is a good comparison?

Feels like the PC has too much special stuff thrown at them. You're the king's envoy, but also some kind of special godlike. Just either one could have made an interesting story.

Only bug I've ran into so far is people's hair having that problem of springing down from default position when a new camera angle is loaded.

Edited 23 hours ago by MrBrown

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, MrBrown said:

5 hours into Avowed. Seems good.

More linear than Skyrim, but still a bit open-worldy. Maybe Witcher 3 is a good comparison?

Feels like the PC has too much special stuff thrown at them. Your the king's envoy, but also some kind of special godlike. Just either one could have made an interesting story.

Only bug I've ran into so far is people's hair having that problem of springing down from default position when a new camera angle is loaded.

Please provide a detailed review of this game as you progress similar to how you review other games

I really want this game to succeed and we  can assess sales numbers later because we wont know that now 

[Malcador]

Finished Kotor 2, got to see Atton die because I can't build good characters I guess.