Zero Company is fantastic. I played about 10 hours yesterday, which I probably haven't done with a game since Xcom 2 came out. It runs well on my very mid computer. It does struggle a bit, but not in places where it matters (ie movies and qte stutter a bit, but gameplay is fine.) I only have 16gb of ram.

If you liked the Clone Wars series, this is basically the game for you. It really digs into the lore of the animated shows. It feels like Bad Batch. The characters in your crew are all pretty interesting and you have a lot of customization options. It is still very story-centric, so that hurts the replay value a bit, but I am pretty sure I will still get at least a couple playthroughs out of it. Just doing a male and female Hawk alone is different enough. You can recruit a bunch of randos and ignore the main companions as well.

It's probably still more Chimera Squad than Xcom 2, but it has more depth than the former. Combat is fun. I started on normal and it is a bit easy, but I can see it getting harder as I move away from fighting droids. Like the show, droids are comically bad.

7 Days to Die:

--loot bags only ... a few/several plays later. "Well, that cycle is played out/change of pace needed."
--back to "normal" gameplay ... "Dangit, it now feels super easy/dull. What else can I do re: attrition starts."

EMPTY MAP. No towns/cities/wilderness POI's, no Traders, no roads, etc. Just biome terrain, occasional trash bags around, trees/terrain, max zombies. GO!
---Several hours later ... "Well that was fun." Tough start, but eventually had a base, all workstations, etc. But a little dull long run with zero POI's to even redeco etc. Not even rubble POI's spawn.

EDIT THE map generator .xml !
---teeny teeny tiny towns, only one to a biome (this is mostly to make the game create some roads/spawn a few Traders), mostly empty space. Still severe self-rules. Go!

Edited August 29Aug 29 by LadyCrimson

22 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Zero Company is fantastic. I played about 10 hours yesterday, which I probably haven't done with a game since Xcom 2 came out. It runs well on my very mid computer. It does struggle a bit, but not in places where it matters (ie movies and qte stutter a bit, but gameplay is fine.) I only have 16gb of ram.

If you liked the Clone Wars series, this is basically the game for you. It really digs into the lore of the animated shows. It feels like Bad Batch. The characters in your crew are all pretty interesting and you have a lot of customization options. It is still very story-centric, so that hurts the replay value a bit, but I am pretty sure I will still get at least a couple playthroughs out of it. Just doing a male and female Hawk alone is different enough. You can recruit a bunch of randos and ignore the main companions as well.

It's probably still more Chimera Squad than Xcom 2, but it has more depth than the former. Combat is fun. I started on normal and it is a bit easy, but I can see it getting harder as I move away from fighting droids. Like the show, droids are comically bad.

I do not like that they picked the worst type of turned based, the one Larian uses. Why not use grid based movement, especially because there is nothing in the environment that would benefit from that style.

Controls need some polish as I find myself picking the wrong action 50% of the time, also sucks that the action selection is fixed around the character instead of being fixed to where the camera is.

I'm also fighting the camera often.

Apart from that I'm making progress, waiting for the game to open up a bit.

Turn-based is fine if you read a book while playing.

2 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Turn-based is fine if you read a book while playing.

Oh yeah, you reminded me. You can't fast forward the enemies turn... I think they are trying way to hard to be cinematic.

Edited August 29Aug 29 by Sarex

Stalker 2 is pretty good now with the expansion installed and the engine upgrade. I made it 2/3 through. It's a very long game so that's not really a detraction.

the DLC has much better traditional single player level design, and also a fair amount of shoehorning, as you would expect. It kinda looks and feels like a real game now as opposed to a weekend project or steam greenlight thing.

21 hours ago, Sarex said:

I do not like that they picked the worst type of turned based, the one Larian uses. Why not use grid based movement, especially because there is nothing in the environment that would benefit from that style.

Controls need some polish as I find myself picking the wrong action 50% of the time, also sucks that the action selection is fixed around the character instead of being fixed to where the camera is.

I'm also fighting the camera often.

Apart from that I'm making progress, waiting for the game to open up a bit.

I hear the performance is pretty terrible, how far off are we from something like xcom war of the chosen. Which is a highpoint for me. Is there a proper campaign and so on.

40 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

I hear the performance is pretty terrible, how far off are we from something like xcom war of the chosen. Which is a highpoint for me. Is there a proper campaign and so on.

Zero Company is much more cinematic, so the story should be better. Performance is palatable. It's not good, but it's playable, especially considering that I am using the highest settings and native resolution.

I'm still early on in the game (or at least I think I am) so I'm reserving judgment.

Oh and I found out you can change the action wheel in the game settings.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Sarex

Drova. Kited 2 immortal and hostile NPCs to a mini-boss. They were getting repeatedly KO'd throughout the battle but overcame the boss by the virtue of their immortality, however slow it was, while I sat behind a rock and poked the occasional spawn (my hits were not even visible on the mini-boss' HP bar). Ironically, the mini-boss defeating them counted as my victory, so the side quest was completed as well.

Otherwise, it has been quite story-light - I've been exploring and not seeing many talking NPCs. I finished the session when I reached the Remnants' Camp and befriended a cat there.

I'm on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's final main DLC quest and really don't know how I feel about the DLC itself yet. Just to reiterate patch 2.0 was a very marked improvement to the game, but you do not need the DLC to experience those improvements so I consider them separately, this post will be about the DLC content specificallly.

The good: the DLC areas were neat, being able to finally explore the Iron Forest and the CNPP freely is fantastic. The new weapons are good (though "locking" some of the unique ARs to a red-dot is...a choice).

When it comes to the missions, there's the main mission, and then there's a bunch of new side missions.

The main DLC missions, at best I found them to be "eh", at worst I actively loathe them. They're really more of the same from the base game, but dialed up to 11, which is the problem, at least in my book. But if that was your cup of tea, well, there's more of it. If, on the other hand, you were hoping they'd go back to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-style mission design where you are given an objective and then there's different ways to approach it...well, this does not appear to be that kind of game, unfortunately. Everything is on rails, even the labs in SoC arguably gave you more freedom to accomplish your goals than S2 does in its story missions.

The missions have tons of platforming, magically locking/unlocking doors to force head-on engagements, create boss arenas, and/or lock you into sections of the mission (and then usually making those permanently inaccessible after the mission). Then there's the usual nonsensical "action" cut-scenes (please just ditch those if there ever is a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 3), and finally they throw so much loot at you that inventory management becomes more of a problem than the actual enemies (in one of the missions I picked up over 100 bandages(!)). I swear they are just trying to make fun of us loot goblins by actively giving you gear at the start of missions.

The story forces a faction choice, as I feared. As a certified Loner I am absolutely not a fan of these choices, not in the least because the choices in this game tend to negatively impact exploration, my favourite part of the game, by making bases inaccessible (which is also why in this play-through I avoid the mission unlocking Pripyat, getting there through other means). So far it does not appear to have any negative consequences to my standings, though I have heard that picking the other side, does, or maybe it is bugged. Will probably dig more into the DLC storyline when I get through all of it.

The side missions, have been a bit of a mixed bag. A few were literally just going somewhere and then talking to someone, though I guess you could start a fight if you really wanted to. The one involving the new anomaly seems pretty cool so far, but it feels as if progress is gated by completion of the DLC's main story, so more on that one later.

Stability has been good for me in general, though I had a single CTD in the penultimate DLC mission.

Edited Wednesday at 01:59 PM4 days by marelooke

I played Plague Tale Innocence which is an action adventure game set in 14th century France, it also has several necessary stealth mechanics. Its basically about a brother and sister who travel plague ravaged France trying to escape the Inquisition, find a cure for the brother and then free there mother. Its fun and has some good moments. Every map has 2-3 ways you can progress around defeating soldiers or avoiding them and you always find enough resources to use a certain skill or weapon. Its short, 20 hours but worthwhile

It gets  a 63\100 on the  " BruceVC game rating system "

Now Im playing GTA5 again in anticipation of the eventual PC release of GTA6. But this time Im using about 20 mods that just improve the overall mechanics of the vanilla game and visuals. So for example I added a search mod  for dead bodies and car dealership so I can sell any stolen cars. I initially downloaded the enhanced version but realized it doesn't support many of the mods I wanted so I downloaded the legacy version and modding this game is extremely easy. You just have to drag an .ovI file into the mod manager called OpenVI and it configures everything for you or you copy a few files into install folder. Thats it

Its really fun, the humor and memes around US society and culture always make me laugh. The radio stations are the most hilarious and I like playing the different characters because they all have unique missions and NPCs they interact with. The missions, activities and NPC are varied and memorable so I always have lots I want to do

Its early days and Im 20 hours into it but having a blast

I'm surprised no one here is playing Blood of the Dawnwalker. Sounds like a vampire Witcher game. I'm busy with zero company, but I'm keeping it on my radar for later.

30 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm surprised no one here is playing Blood of the Dawnwalker. Sounds like a vampire Witcher game. I'm busy with zero company, but I'm keeping it on my radar for later.

Wasn't even aware that it was out. Then again never liked Witcher either. Control 2 is what I'm hyped for.

Edited Friday at 05:48 PM2 days by Sarex

It's just really hard to get me to play a vampire game in general, horror is something I steer well clear of. Sure, if it's absolutely exceptional like Bloodlines I'll make an exception, but that's literally been a one-off in my decades of gaming. The reviews for Dawnwalker on the other hand seem to be more along the lines of "great first effort by a rookie studio" rather than simply "great".

Minor point, but the PC version supposedly needs some patching to be as polished as the console versions are at launch.

---

Anyway, the only thing I'm playing at the moment is Two Point Museum, and only a few hours a week. Don't know how I feel about it overall yet, I'm finding the expedition mechanic a bit unfun at the moment and it's dragging the game down a bit.

I've let my Game Pass subscription lapse so my Avowed save is back on ice, as is my intention to finally start KCD2 after that. Though I might just buy it outright if I catch a good price on GOG. Another thing I'm considering is getting Tabletop Simulator (sadly Steam only) in order to play the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective game.

I've read the reviews and some comments for Dawnwalker. It might be fun, but I am definitely going to leave the paying testers to face the first wave of bugs and performance issues. Speaking of, the price tag and me strongly disliking TW3 do not encourage purchasing it now either.

---

Played Drova some more and visited the main towns. After ~10 hours of exploration, I forgot what the main quest was about, so had to reread the journal. I also was able to avoid being kidnapped (this time the bandits were not immortal and died to the same type of mini-boss), then, after several attempts, reached the potential kidnappers' base and somehow cleared it (of bandits only, as the giant worms were 2-shooting me). So, the exploration is satisfying overall and the story should get going more actively now.

6 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm surprised no one here is playing Blood of the Dawnwalker. Sounds like a vampire Witcher game. I'm busy with zero company, but I'm keeping it on my radar for later.

I very rarely buy games on release, but I watched Mortismal's review and the combat somewhat concerns me. so I would have held off to see how that shakes out regardless.

7 hours ago, marelooke said:

I very rarely buy games on release, but I watched Mortismal's review and the combat somewhat concerns me. so I would have held off to see how that shakes out regardless.

Thats been my rule for the last 15 years or so and its also why I am almost never disappointed with any game I play

I wait for official patches and updates at the very least like for STALKER 2

And ideally I wait for mods but thats only for games that support mods like Bethesda or Rockstar games

Then I decide on a game based on my family and friends opinions, views on forums like this, Steam user reviews and I sometimes confirm final decision by watching gameplay YT videos

But then there are games released by companies as a sequel that I will always play once the official patches are released because I have enjoyed previous games from them so I know I will enjoy them

And that includes Obsidian, Rockstar, Bethesda, Larian and Ubisoft to name a few.

20 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm surprised no one here is playing Blood of the Dawnwalker. Sounds like a vampire Witcher game. I'm busy with zero company, but I'm keeping it on my radar for later.

I'm in the same boat as others who've commented. This game does interest me, but I'm going to wait and see. If you play it, please post your expeirnces with it. In particular, for me, I'm concerned about timed quests, and even certain combat sequences being timed (something really bad/game-over happens if you don't kill the big bad boss within a certain amount of time). That is something too onerous for me to abide.

2 hours ago, kanisatha said:

In particular, for me, I'm concerned about timed quests, and even certain combat sequences being timed (something really bad/game-over happens if you don't kill the big bad boss within a certain amount of time).

The main thing about the time limit that sounds questionable to me is that the act of simply using skill points consumes time. That sound utterly bizarre to me. Morti's review mentioned that he finished the game with a hatful of unused points because it wasn't worth that sacrifice to use them.

It means the mechanic takes a weird meta turn, where instead of choosing between doing quest A or quest B as is seemingly intended, you instead do both quests and then just not use your skill points if you feel you're powerful enough already.

That said, "failing" the limit is not a game over, and apparently it's something that people going for a second playthrough may be nudged into doing deliberately.

Well, I finished S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope, so yeah...

Couple of notes on 2.0 before I dive into the DLC conclusion: loading times for me got significantly longer (at least on Linux), and the incessant shader precompilation on startup had like a 50% change of requiring me to alt+f4 out of it. There's a way to disable it by adding an "Engine.ini" file, but the game kept erasing it so I had to make it read-only. Haven´t noticed any ill effects of getting rid of that precompilation, but that was annoying to have to deal with nevertheless.

The final "main" DLC mission had a boss fight that was surprisingly appropriate (rather curious, and slightly worried, how the other branch will fare in that respect). The mission itself was OK in the scope of what S2 missions are like. So that left me on a relatively positive impression.

Most of the other new side missions were good, except, unfortunately, the one I mentioned I was enjoying and looking forward to where it went: the one related to the new arch anomaly. The final part of that mission made me want to break my keyboard, and it really dragged down the whole experience for me. So I'll try to get into why without spoiling the storyline, but obviously I have to talk about mechanics and some of the things happening in the quest. If you want to find out the hard way, skip the spoiler bit.

"The Forgotten"-mission spoilers

As mentioned before and one of the purposes is to get the artefact that should make you immune to the massive anomaly haunting the CNPP, since the thing kills you in two "hits" when it can see you, which makes getting around a tad inconvenient. They make you do a bunch of stuff to get protection against it so you can go near it and get the (arch) artefact, implying you now have a certain level of protection against the instagibbing it does.

Except...that is not true. You are allowed to go near the thing to start another very long jumping puzzle, but once you are "there" the anomaly functions just the same as before: killing you in two "hits". So ... I died since the game had literally told me, and shown me, that I was a now enjoying a certain level of protection which I clearly was not outside of the very narrow circumstance where the level designers wanted you to not die to it.

Anyway, you are now in a very long, (and imho, tedious) jumping puzzle that ends with a very large open air section (this is important) combining the worst things about S2 platforming: you have no idea where you need to go, there's lots of jumping, various anomalies to avoid, "imaginary" artefacts all over (so scanner is borderline useless), and of course, the big Flare that will melt your brain should you get stuck on a ledge for a second too long. Given that you are jumping between a number of different, mostly identical, locations I lost track of where I was pretty early on, not that it would matter since there was no way to know where the thing I was looking for was going to be, whether it was 100% random or there was some system to it (I learned later that there, in fact, is a system to it)

To top it off I was hit with an emission while I was doing the puzzle (I said the open air things was going to be relevant...), probably because I took forever. Given how there is nowhere to take cover while doing this, and, as far as I can tell, no way to get out of this until you complete it, I had to reload and start the whole thing over again.

At this point I was rather agitated, but I got the bloody thing, died a few times getting out (because you need to do the finicky "cloud hopping" and I fell through a bunch of times), and then continued onto the final mission which I had hoped to be a victory lap of sorts.

Instead the game locks you into an arena with two of the new Amok mutants. The ones that are entirely invulnerable unless you shoot a small thing on their back that they expose for a fraction of a second...seemingly randomly, and that kill you in three hits? Oh, and that have a knockdown, so if one gets you the other murders you? Yeah those.

I gave it a few good shots, but at this point I was absolutely not having fun anymore so I got a mod to enable the console, turned on god mode, and still had a bloody time killing these two <insert expletives here>.

So yeah, after that bull**** I was about ready to give the DLC a failing grade, that quest really, really ruined it for me. But I let it sit for a bit and while I do not intend to ever even attempt that mission again legitimately unless they make some significant changes the rest of the DLC was decent enough.

One additional note is that after removing the CNPP anomaly and dealing with the faction stuff the whole CNPP area became pretty...lifeless. At least with my chosen faction during exploration I rarely ran into anything alive (and hostile), so that was a bit of a downer.

Another niggle with exploration is that there is a rather large area where you will get incessantly attacked by Flame Poltergeists that are situated out of bounds (since these guys don't need to be able to see you to attack you...) so you can´t get rid of them legitimately (and they will just respawn if you get rid of the illegitimately, not that I would know...)

I was debating a slightly higher score than I ended up with on in the end I have concerns about replayability. I don´t know whether I'd really want to play through the DLC missions more than twice (to see both sides). The extra areas (arguably, only the CNPP as you can access most of the Iron Forest without completing the DLC story), or the unique weapons don't seem like a compelling enough reason to run through the story missions again (and while I ranted mostly about The Forgotten, the main chain also contains a few missions that I'm not confident I would really enjoy doing again and again)

tl;dr the DLC improves on the base game storytelling wise, but is really dragged down by other aspects that either do not improve on the base game (like mission design), or double down on things that were not great in the base game to begin with, like the excessive amount of platforming and the mutant design.

Given that, for me, replayability of the DLC content is a concern I'd rate it at a 5/10, "decent".

Edited yesterday at 12:30 AM1 day by marelooke

Ever since I played Shogun Showdown, I've been looking for minimalist and addictive puzzle games:

Mars Power Industries: Your goal is to connect colonization modules to electricity and other resources by placing energy nodes. You only have a limited number of nodes that you can use in a specific order, and you have to deal with constraints and mechanics like wind, shifting terrain, or obstacles. There are around 80 short puzzles, perfect for relaxing while giving your brain a workout.

Golf Peaks: On a grid, you need to get your ball into the hole using various movement cards (move 2 squares forward, jump over an obstacle, etc.). It's all about chaining the right actions to successfully sink the ball. The game keeps things fresh across 10 worlds of 12 levels each, featuring different types of terrain with their own unique characteristics, rugged landscapes, various obstacles, trampolines, and conveyor belts. Like Mars Power Industries, it's a small, relaxing game.

Shift of pace: Zero Sievert is a top-down extraction shooter heavily inspired by Escape from Tarkov (though I've never played it) and, more importantly, by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You immediately recognize that gritty, post-apocalyptic Soviet atmosphere complete with lethal anomalies, radioactive zones, and mutated creatures.

You’re tasked with exploring different biomes, scavenging for gear, taking down anything in your path, and completing NPC quests, all while managing your hunger, thirst, radiation levels, inventory space, and equipment condition before racing back to your bunker via an extraction point. Each successful run earns you experience points to unlock various perks over time. The materials you collect let you upgrade your equipment but also your bunker, like expanding your stash capacity etc..

Each area is procedurally generated, meaning extraction points shift locations and various landmarks are scattered across a brand-new map every time you deploy.

All in all, it's a tense, deeply addictive loop that keeps you saying "just one more raid."

And I've also played Forza Horizon 4 and TF2.

Regarding time limits in games in general, it can work if the game is balanced around it and not you vacuuming all map of XP. I liked it in The Séance of Blake Manor, so I had to prioritise the relevant items and dialogue options without having to go through everything. There also were several ways to gain specific information. I cannot quite recall how it was in Expeditions: Viking (there was a timer and several paths to victory), but I have not finished Expeditions: Rome which did not have a time limit and expected you to clear whole large maps (and frequently with random mercs, which annoyed me a lot). There's also Pathfinder: Kingmaker, though there were several factors that could lead to a death spiral.

---

Tried Silly Polly Beast demo. Got repeatedly bodied in a corridor where 2 waves of foes spawned in front and behind me and I ran out of ammo. After a few more attempts, I got to the next room, with low health and no ammo with predictable results.

It is heavily inspired by Silent Hill (you wake up in some demonic realm after doing a thing and falling into a well), the art is lovely, the controls are rebindable, the saving system is bad (a single overwriting auto-save per playthrough, 3 slots in total). The gotcha is that it is combat-heavy, up to being an action game, rather than a survival horror, and you need to hold the interaction key to unlock the next door, so you have to clear the rooms, while the foes revive when you re-enter. The one and only defence option, rolling, amusingly, does not consume stamine, but hitting enemies in melee does. There's also something about the setting that bugs me, but I cannot quite pinpoint it (it being Eastern Europe? The MC being very anime-styled, but everything else not?). Good audio design, though.

22 hours ago, Humanoid said:

That said, "failing" the limit is not a game over

Well, I'm going by what was in the various gameplay streams I saw some months ago after the game was announced. In them, early on in the game, you fight a very powerful spellcaster of some sort. In the very first round of combat she activates a spell that places a curse/hex on you. Then, you have a certain number of rounds by which you need to kill her to end the curse/hex, or else it puts so much damage on you that it kills you and game over. And in order to kill her, you first have to go through a couple of her minions while she retreats to the far back of the area, while continuing to attack you with her spells. All who played through that battle said they had to reload several times before they beat that battle. That's the kind of thing that's a hard pass for me.

Ok slackers, I bought Blood of the Dawn Walker and started playing it. I'm just about done with the prologue, although I restarted, so I've clocked about 5 hours in.

The story is very good. Interesting characters, good setting, great villains, and engaging quests just in the prologue. It plays a lot like the Witcher series, except the main character isn't a moody bitch like Geralt. It's a solid RPG.

The timed quests are interesting. Nothing so far is timed, but you have limited slots of time to use on quests throughout the day (and I'd guess night.) That means you can't do everything, but you have as much time as you want to complete the quests you choose to do. So you have choices to make and it is reactive with consequences. In the prologue I had to make some tough choices that then played out in the story. I'm liking it so far and it is clearly designed for replayability.