What are you Playing Now? Volume XIX: The New Beginning of the End of the Middle

[melkathi]

16 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Starcom: Unknown Space - I grabbed this on GoG for cheap and it has been fun. It is lot like Star Control. Less silly, but still has lots of weirdos to meet and planets to explore. It's good. I never played the first one, I guess this is a sequel, but they don't seem too connected.

 

The first one:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/starcomnexus

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

Starcom: Unknown Space - I grabbed this on GoG for cheap and it has been fun. It is lot like Star Control. Less silly, but still has lots of weirdos to meet and planets to explore. It's good. I never played the first one, I guess this is a sequel, but they don't seem too connected.

Having played both they're pretty much entirely unconnected, except for having a similar establishing concept/ mechanism.

They're both also better Star Trek than most of the recent TV shows despite lacking the licence.

[Theonlygarby]

2 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Worse, it's usually completely quiet.

The reason is that most of my gaming takes place while working and/or when everyone in my house is asleep. 

I feel like I'm the opposite.  I got my phone, music and the game volume up.  Now that's ADHD.  Must stimulate myself or I'll have to have thoughts

[LadyCrimson]

3 hours ago, ShadySands said:

The reason is that most of my gaming takes place while working and/or when everyone in my house is asleep. 

I was going to say there is this product called headphones, but I suppose that wouldn't be great if working/having to keep half an ear on something else at times.
But at home/late night.  I know in some cases, if one has bad tinnitus (as example), that headphones can be bad, but if it's mild (like hubby's), light over-ear heaphones/low volume still works fine. He uses the small Koss ones I gave him at his desk and loves them.

If I like a game's soundtrack well enough, I'll leave it on. Most of the time however, after either a few hours (or for repeat playthrus) I end up turning it off and playing my own music.  I do like game sound design noises to be on however, and I become mighty peeved if that's attached to the same volume slider as soundtrack/music, ala games of many many years ago. That was one of the best side advances - sound is no longer just on/off. Gotta have Speech, Music, Game sounds at minimum. 

Edited October 17 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

So, New Arc Line has about a dozen hours of content in Early Access. I had hoped for more.

I tried a Voodoo Shaman to see the difference between tech and magic.

Gameplay wise, tech characters gain abilities through their equipment. Every weapon has the attacks it allows the character to perform. Backpacks and other equipment may give other abilities - boots crafted for Steam Engineers for example give a rocket jump and a charge ability.

Mage characters on the other hand craft additional spells and gain their abilities that way.

There is a magic corruption system that isn't completely implemented yet. If the spells cast by a mage are more powerful than the regions magic level, the mage slowly gets corrupted and will gain mutations at certain thresholds. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

 

Story wise, some npcs don't like you as much depending on your class. Some quests may have more objectives. During the main quest a mage player gets offered an alternate quest at some stage - it still links back into the next main quest just as if you had done the normal quest, but it offers a choice and that is nice.

 

The game has some potential. All the devs need is for the war to stop so they can develop in peace. 

[Bartimaeus]

On 10/16/2025 at 2:11 AM, Lexx said:

You know, I was just thinking.. back when Pillars 2 released and they added voice over for every dialog, I was like.. why, what's the point of that? Such a waste! But now I'm kinda glad they did. Feels a lot better and interesting to play, also it stops writers from text bloat, which I find highly annoying and tedious to read.

The irony of something like the first two Baldur's Gate games is that they were obviously a product of many, many compromises that the developers probably would've rather not have made if they didn't have to...but some of those compromises were the exact thing that I now realize I want out of a video game. Textual density and voice-acting is just exactly one such thing: the ability to be selective about what is voice-acted versus what is not, making it so that text is generally tight but you can have longer passages when the situation calls for it...and you didn't make the player constantly listen to or make the decision to skip past voice-acting because it's taking way too long when it's really not that good or for anything very important, but contrarily you can have entire conversations voice-acted if it is actually an important story moment or particularly silly or for any other reason you'd like...and it's not like the Baldur's Gate games did any of this perfectly either, there was a lot of room for improvement in many areas that didn't mean either going full book mode OR making every last bit of dialogue voice-acted.

I don't want games that are endlessly text-dense (unless it's actually REALLY well-written or intriguing, but the rate of games successfully sinking their claws into you so much that you genuinely want to explore every last nook and cranny, listen to every last character dialogue, go through the full lore descriptions of each item just for the joy of the writing is really low), but I don't want games to be total basic garbage, either. There's a balance to be struck with these things, and it seems like a lot of games really struggle to find that balance and meaningfully carve out their identities within it.

[Lexx]

Best examples for that are Pillars 1 and inXile's Torment, imo. Both (Torment worse than Pillars1) have a lot of dialog that is terribly overwritten and just horrible to read. And I don't even mean the baker characters. Especially Torment went way over board with descriptive text... You'll just end up skipping all of that after a couple hours. Though I'm not really blaming them - back then we all still thought that lots of text means good RPG. I blame Planescape: Torment for that, lol. Once those games were out and I've learned that a lot of text doesn't mean that it's good, I started to really appreciate Fo1's writing again. It's short, to the point, and never wastes your time. Very nice.

[Hawke64]

I have finished City of Springs and it was not horrible. While it is as engaging as Assassin's Creed without parkour (one can try to parkour and fall through the level geometry), it is functional. The story follows a young unemployed engineer in a steampunk/post-apocalyptic city after the local government executes the engineer's sister.

The stealth is functional and the combat is unusual, for what it's worth. The unusual part is that there are 2 lines and you can summon small drones, so can your oppponent. The goal is to destroy the opponent (bug-like robots). It vaguely reminds of DotA/MOBAs in general, but not quite it. And the opponents have slightly different shells - the starting ones are white, then the stronger ones are purple, and the late-game ones are golden and grey. And their shells have no bearing on their abilities beyond the health bar. The bosses have a slightly fancier shells with decorations on them and do require attention.  

The visual and sound design are present. Again, they are not the worst I have seen, but I generally struggled to notice the interactive objects without the highlight (looking for 3 "machines" in one of the missions was decidedly unfun). The VA is there and line skipping was skipping 2 at a time, thus, somewhere from mid-game I was getting about 50% of the dialogues because listening to it was not exactly engaging. The journal consisted of "Talk to [NPC]. There might be jobs to do" and put markers on the next objective. 

The controls are not rebindable, the game autosaves in 5 slots. There are some side quests most of which I've skipped. 

I suppose, "it works" is not the best recommendation, but given the price I had expected crashes or game-breaking bugs and there were none (I had to reload after getting stuck once), and the story was concluded at the end. 

[kanisatha]

6 hours ago, Lexx said:

Best examples for that are Pillars 1 and inXile's Torment, imo. Both (Torment worse than Pillars1) have a lot of dialog that is terribly overwritten and just horrible to read. And I don't even mean the baker characters. Especially Torment went way over board with descriptive text... You'll just end up skipping all of that after a couple hours. Though I'm not really blaming them - back then we all still thought that lots of text means good RPG. I blame Planescape: Torment for that, lol. Once those games were out and I've learned that a lot of text doesn't mean that it's good, I started to really appreciate Fo1's writing again. It's short, to the point, and never wastes your time. Very nice.

Yup. I've come to this same conclusion myself. Quality (and meaningfulness) over quantity.

[Wormerine]

On 10/15/2025 at 7:43 PM, majestic said:

That depends way too much on your class and your choice of weapons. I played a mage and thought the 2-handed playstyle was slow, unresponsive and not fun to play, so I switched to dagger/orb Spellblade and never looked back, stacking burn, shock and arcane bombs while zipping around the battlefield was very satisfying. Rounded the build out with some burst damage attacks, and it was a hoot and a half to play. At least it was for me, but I like high dps glass cannon characters whose only defense is high mobility and good cooldown management.

I played Rogue so, I don't think it was that. I just thought it was unenjoyable to interact with. Visually flashy but not very readable. Counter icons often disappearing in the noise of explosions. Stuff like that. In the end I don't think it was much different then any other DA combat - just spamming skills once they are out of cooldown, just with more generic slashing inbetween. 

Edited October 18 by Wormerine

[Hawke64]

I have finished Saviorless (reached the epilogue where an NPC asked not to hit them, so I did not and quit the game). The visuals were quite nice, but everything else was not. 

Review:

Spoiler

Saviorless is a "cinematic" platformer. 

To start with the positive aspects, the controls are rebindable, the system requirements are adequate, and the visuals are pretty. Possibly, that the checkpoints are frequent enough. The negatives are everything else - the movement, the combat, the puzzles, and the story. 

The movement, both in traversal and combat, is slow and unsatisfying. The main character has 2 modes - the puzzle one which cannot dash or hit and dies in a single hit and the combat one whose health depletes (replenishes on hitting obstacles or foes) over time and who cannot grab ledges. Switching between them is possible only at specific points and not at will. 

The puzzles are quite easy, more of a "how to kill an enemy to get the fuse without getting hit" than anything more complex, but given that the puzzle form dies in one hit, it can be somewhat challenging. In combat, it is technically possible to facetank attacks as long as you hit the foe in the process. There is 1 combo of 3 hits and nothing else. 

The pre-final battle and chase sequences highlight how infuriating the points above are. The final-final battle is functional if easy. Additionally, there are no difficulty options. 

The story has 2 lines - the one with Antar trying to reach the Smiling Isles and become a Saviour (without explaining at any point why Antar wants it or what the Smiling Isles or the Saviours are) and the other about some otherworldly beings narrating the first story (again, without explaining anything). So, there is little to no attachment to the narrative. 

The "good" ending is locked behind the collectibles and I did not collect them all upon finishing the game. There is level selection, but the levels are large enough and it is not possible to select a more specific checkpoint, so I have no desire to replay it to hunt for them. The playtime is 3-4 hours. 

Absinthia. I have found an oni in a hidden location and the party was defeated in 3 turns. It is a very well-made RPGMaker game, even if I somewhat dislike the generic RPGMaker combat. 

[LadyCrimson]

NMS: Done with Abandoned Save #9.  Tried loading up one of the 350 +/- saves. Problem is those saves, there's nothing left for me but hunt interceptor ships and/or perfect Giant Paradise planets. Neither of which I care all that much about anymore. Thought about Abandoned #10 but not sure I can stand another one for the moment, haha.

Keep seeing vids of all these possible new games that might be interesting. But there's always something - online, MMO, combat looks like Elden Ring type style (even if it's not supposed to be super hard, I mean the mechanics/animations), early access, really short vs. price, not released yet etc.

[LadyCrimson]

Of course NMS releases their new Expedition yesterday. I normally don't do those but this one hard-gates some new Corvette building pieces behind it. I could wait for a save editor to checkmark "finished expedition" stuff but thought I'd try.

I did finish (took about 10 hrs with a new chr vs. importing in item help from existing save) but it was a reminder of why I usually don't do them. They're always very similar in terms of "scan 10 fauna, fish 10 fish, kill a certain monster, loot a derelict freighter, go to this new system, checkmark, now repeat new short missions in this system" for 5ish "stages." Even if you don't have to do it all in order it's still very repetitive.  It might be fun once but do them a lot and it feels too same-y. And usually the rewards are mostly cosmetic and not worth the hours spent. But I guess I have the new parts unlocked now. 

[rjshae]

Went back to replay D:OS 2. I guess one thing I don't like about it is the number of times I have to refight every battle until I get a result where I don't need to resurrect half the party. It gets a little tedious, but I persevere.

[Theonlygarby]

Played some of the outer worlds.  Finished the intro section.  I'm sure I'll come around to it but I don't like how it started.  These sorts of games the more blank the slate for your character the better (imo).  This one they really have a backstory and you start as the captain of a ship.  Not a deal breaker but definitely making it harder for me to get into it.

[Sven_]

Stygian: Outer Gods.

Still Early Access, with a final release scheduled first half of 2026 or so. But as I'm playing highest difficulty and really take my time, I've already clocked ten hours into it according to the in-game clock. Still not finished.

Stygian's got Cthulhu, Lovecraft's Kingsport as a sort of hub world gradually unlocking, some RPG elements (including a skill that lets you talk with 'em dead), a bit of stealth -- plus Raphael Colantonio (Arkane's founder, former CEO and gaming's Last Action Hero) as the voice of THE SEER. Had to have it.

The mood is already pretty damn spot on. Positive that this can be a better game than the ancient Dark Corners Of The Earth. 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Sven_

[LadyCrimson]

Restless/bored enough was considering giving MS-Obsidian too much money to try-play their new game, but then saw UE5 and forum performance discussions. I suppose I could run it at DLSS Performance/mixed settings or 1080 native, or whatever, but for me that's nah, don't feel like it.  No longer have a working 1080p 27" monitor, either.

Another game to put on the "might try it if/when I build a new rig", list.
Manor Lords update still in beta. 7 Days to Die 3.0 still nowhere in sight. Farthest Frontier now out of Early Access but I think there's still no "turn off food spoilage" freeplay setting.

Back to NMS. The last planet I landed on had one of those terrain glitches, where a piece of earth was warped from bedrock to halfway up into the sky as a skinny triangular pillar. It even had grass growing on it on the sides. It was hilarious. I may have hit upon an extra glitched out area of the galaxy recently. I'm waiting for some glitched out fauna with three heads on the side of its body or something.

[marelooke]

Went back to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 now that about a year has passed and we're on the 1.6.1 patch to see how far the game has come and...well, they've added Night Vision Devices, and the Mosin, and it does run more stable, but other than that very little seems to have changed about the things I disliked.

In fact, one of my main complaints, enemy spawning, seems to have regressed since I last played, even at release with enemies obnoxiously spawning around you it'd take some effort to actually catch them "popping in", but on 1.6.1 I've literally had enemies pop into existence right in front of me on enough occasions that it's become rather bothersome.

There's also generally too many, it's literally impossible to get from A to B without the game spawning a bunch of enemies around you, if you're lucky they'll be too busy fighting each-other (which, I suppose, is an improvement over release where they'd all go for you). To test whether it was the game or I was just imagining things it I decided to make the trek from Quiet to Azimuth Station (after the mission that takes place there) multiple times in a row, this is a short distance that has you cross a tiny strip of empty bog, of the 8 times in a row I made the corssing (4 in each direction) I didn't run into anything only once, every other time there was something going on in this tiny strip of land. That's ridiculous, especially since there's no realistic way for anything to get there.

Missions still have the same issues they've always had with exposition but they've somehow managed to break in-world subtitles (which is a bit of an issue, seeing as I can't stand the English VO, but I also don't speak Ukrainian...) so I have to rely on memory for much of the context.

Haven't had any main missions outright break though, which is nice. Worst I had was an early side missions for the Ward in the Chemical Plant that I had to reload 6 or 7 times to get to function correctly.

So yeah...there's supposed to be an engine update in the next patch (1.7), honestly not sure what good it'll do unless it somehow also fixes the spawn issues.