Enshrouded 1.0 -- the "can't change difficulty settings" is fixed.
I now remember mostly how to play, but since it's been at least a few "big updates" since I last played, there's a lot of small stuff that's changed/isn't what I remember. I don't like how the basic magic wand attack, on the 3rd or 4th attack/cast/fire, it does this different fancier animation for the next attack that's longer - it throws off my sense of timing and drives me batty re: mouse-clicking. I'm guessing it does a little extra damage? I don't recall wand base attacks doing that before, certainly not to this extent. Other very minor UI stuff like changed recipes and a plethora of auto-UI messages popping up (you can disable a lot of them but there's lots and I'm finding it difficult to figure out what controls what). Or if this or that in the list is even what I'm bothered by.

Not saying it's bad per se - more like a lot of minor irritations, vs. what I knew before plus just in general (not UI things I would ever like). Sometimes it feels like more clicks then before, which to me isn't an improvement. Some might like all of these things more than me, ofc - who knows. Anyway - all of this is making me grumpy re: the game. It does look nice and the general sandbox/exploration is still nice, but I feel like I'm constantly fighting UI/usability issues.

Maybe it's time to try Space Haven and make my "backlog" be zero, again.

Finished the military campaign in CivCity Rome. Game has a brutal bug where people will not work, have to restart the game after playing with settings - rather hilarious bug and finally remembered why I stopped playing this in back 2007 or so. Some of the music from Caesar 3 was a nice touch, the devs worked at Impression before.

I do like that you can be offensive, have to wipe out some barbarian camps to make things easier. The combat is clunky and rather annoying as the enemy AI suicide charges a lot, wish there was a way to predict which vector they'll hit you from too. Other than that, was a fun game, I like that for the most part you can get away without sufficient housing (more games need to model homelessness in a dystopic sort of way).

Edited Saturday at 04:55 AM3 days by Malcador

Finished Star Wars Zero Company and Control: Resonant. I enjoyed both games, though neither of them is likely to become an "all timer".

Zero Company is an all around "pretty-ok" package. Doesn't provide excel in anything, but all it does is pretty enjoyable. Combat is a bit too shallow and repetitive for my taste. It's a quite different combat model then XCOMs, and I would like to see the team expand on this game. Be it a sequel or an expansion. It is understandable, that licensed StarWars game will be aimed to be a highly accessible experience, but even playing on expert the game stopped being engaging about halfway through. It is FiraXCOM tradition, that difficulty curve is somewhat manufactured - a bit oppressive at first, then you enter (in my opinion) best middleground where you have genuine challenge and interesting opportunities for counterplay, and the end game is victory lap where you maw through enemies without fear of hurt. ZCOM in my opinion entered third stage far, far too early. Though of course your mileage may vary.

Now story of ZCOM was what disappointed me more, mostly because it was so highly spoken of. It's easily best integration of a narrative in this time of game I have seen - though it comes IMO at a heavy cost of the gameplay fun. Overall, I found the plot to be just serviceable with one strong contrivance where everyone behaves in the most irrational manner just to allow a story beat to happen. The character writing is great, though, and the game makes good use of the IP - on that front, through, I felt I was missing out by not being familiar if some of game's references. I think some of its beats would come out of nowhere if someone wasn't at least somewhat familiar with the prequels. There was one element which I found kinda daft, but it seems to be canon and not game's invention🤷.

Control: Resonant - good! Storywise it builds mostly on what Control1 established, so worldbuilding isn't as consistant and plenty as it was in the original. In general, story seems more like an excuse to run around in distorted Manhattan, rather than reason for play itself. It also felt smaller - Control1, while humble in its storytelling was evocative, painting a world of unending possibilities, while this one just feels far more contained. Still, I did enjoy the story that was there with some caveats. I really liked Dylan as a protagonist - I found him to be quite a nuanced and subtle character. Combat is ok - satisfying to press buttons, but pretty simple and there is a lot of it. What I liked the most is the map design and exploration. While it looks like open world game, and older zones can feel like it once you unlock new powers, for the most part progression is far more guided and maze like then it would initially seem. Gravity mechanic is novel, and I liked sidequests and puzzles. To me it was a perfect balance, between allowing players to figure things out without being frustrating. Still, there is something that feels incomplete about the title. Perhaps, it is due to how hard it teases a potential DLC/sequel.

Overall, recommendation on both, perhaps on sale, as I didn't think either of games delivers anything exceptionally well. Still, perfectly enjoyable titles.

Edited Sunday at 10:29 AM2 days by Wormerine

@majestic and @marelooke

I finished SOMA after 20 hours

Incredible and thought provoking narrative. It made me really think about a myriad of existential questions like life and death and is existence just consciousness?

Im impressed that a little IT company could come up with this type of narrative

@Gorth you like sci-fi? You should play this game, I think you will be blown away by its concepts

I'm not that good at Sci-Fi adventure games because I lack the imagination. I like Sci-Fi but its not like fantasy or horror for me where I spend most of my time. So I used a few game guides in parts of the game. The monster escape scenes were terrifying and Frictional always delivers on that mechanic and atmosphere

I did end up making some profound and incredibly difficult deciions

Hard Choices

I let Sarah die. Living like that is hell and I killed the WAU. Despite its intentions and well meaning objective it had made an abomination of humanity and I couldn't let it survive

Great game overall and recommended as the best sci-fi adventure game I have ever played

Its gets a solid 68\100 on the " BruceVC game rating system

Edited Sunday at 04:55 PM2 days by BruceVC

Anyone else played Control: Resonant? Doing a bit of 2nd playthrough to tick of remaining achievements and had a story revelation(spoilers!!!!):

Contains Control1&2 spoilers.

Are Jesse and Dylan the same person split in two? Or alternative versions from different timeline or something like that?

I remember there being something weird said in Control1 (one of Dylan's weird Hiss dreams? Being Jesse Dylan Faden or something like that). Just had this relevation when going through the Fault in the Underpass and Dylan mentions there being only three of them (Dad, Mum and him - I assumed on first playthrough that was the effect of fault erasing his memory of Jesse) and they are happy family, and after that his parents go coocoo, and Jesse is there. Protecting him? Or turning against parents? Later mum tries to shoot Jesse. Which initially just seems like absurdly hateful parents, but not it seems she might be... unnatural?

And then of course there is the weird switching throughout the story (both in faults and of course at the end), and board describes them as interchangable.

8 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Anyone else played Control: Resonant? Doing a bit of 2nd playthrough to tick of remaining achievements and had a story revelation(spoilers!!!!):

Contains Control1&2 spoilers.

Are Jesse and Dylan the same person split in two? Or alternative versions from different timeline or something like that?

I remember there being something weird said in Control1 (one of Dylan's weird Hiss dreams? Being Jesse Dylan Faden or something like that). Just had this relevation when going through the Fault in the Underpass and Dylan mentions there being only three of them (Dad, Mum and him - I assumed on first playthrough that was the effect of fault erasing his memory of Jesse) and they are happy family, and after that his parents go coocoo, and Jesse is there. Protecting him? Or turning against parents? Later mum tries to shoot Jesse. Which initially just seems like absurdly hateful parents, but not it seems she might be... unnatural?

And then of course there is the weird switching throughout the story (both in faults and of course at the end), and board describes them as interchangable.

I don't think so.

Minor spoilers

You get asked that same exact question on the computer questionnaires scattered in all the levels and the correct answer is no. I think the one with this question may be in the field office.

Edited yesterday at 08:15 AM1 day by Sarex

OFF: We control the Batter. His goal is to purify the world he is in by annihilating spirits and monsters. It's a very basic RPG: head to a zone, purify it, and move on to the next. What really sets this game apart is its dark and bizarre atmosphere, well-written dialogue, and a fantastic OST. If you enjoyed Undertale or Omori, you might like playing OFF, which actually inspired those games.

Marble's Marbles: It's a...marble game, and it's actually in 3D with an isometric fixed camera. The controls are super tight. It's kind of a die-and-retry game where the goal is to get 3 stars on every level, which means collecting all the hourglasses, not dying, and making it to the finish line on time. There's a decent amount of challenge without being overly hard. It has a somewhat dreamlike atmosphere, the music is so-so, but I had a blast playing it!

Torchlight 2: I had the brilliant idea of making a Berserker on Veteran difficulty. Turns out my build choices were completely incoherent, but I realized it way too late and there was no option to respec my stats or skills. So, I dragged myself through the pain anyway.

By the final area, I was dead broke: couldn't buy potions, gears, nothing. I only managed to beat the final boss by dropping a TP right outside the entrance. Luckily, the boss's health doesn't reset when you die, so the strategy was literally: die, TP back in, land two hits, die, TP, land three hits, die, TP, land one hit... until the final boss finally went down. Fun.

Otherwise, right now I'm grinding Helldivers 2, and I'm playing my very first MMORPG: Guild Wars 2.

Giving Battletech a go. It hasn't grabbed me yet, but I will give it some more time. If nothing else it was cheap.

I gave it three tries but kept bouncing off it hard.

6 hours ago, Sarex said:

Giving Battletech a go. It hasn't grabbed me yet, but I will give it some more time. If nothing else it was cheap.

I raged at the injuries due to head hits.

Trying HoMM 3 again, I suck at it.

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Trying HoMM 3 again, I suck at it.

Try the Olden Era. I played it a bit and it was very good.

Enshrouded 1.0 - ok I figured out the wand timing thing is dependent on how long one holds the mouse click. If I rapidly (and I mean rapidly) spam the mouse click, it does the fast single wand shot like before. If I use a longer click, it starts the longer animation. I guess it's a charge-up mechanic. But it's really easy to mouse-click for a micro second too long.

Anyway, went into the new cinder biome. I suppose it's ok, but it's dark and dreary because it's, y'know, volcanic like. Jumps over lava. Black/grey stone/dirt. Darkish lighting. Common mobs no biggie for a lvl45+ chr, my frost wand and staff frost spells seem op'd in early areas/encounters, at least. Gameloop repeat of all the other biomes - new dirt type, new stone/ore types, new gem types, new spark levels, to craft new/stronger blocks/gear/foods and whatever else. And max clvl is up by 5, so now max gear lvl is 55 instead of 50. So far not as fun to explore, to me, because of design (more elevators, more leaping/gliding/jumping) - reminds me of some of the lava-shroud areas already in existence. New enemies so far are robotic looking. Feels like when an ARPG gives one a new Act/area and the game loop continues. So if one really likes the cinder biome, it's great. If one finds it dull and dreary to wander endlessly among many poorly lit twisting paths, looking for chests and loot and quest markers, not as much.

Yeah, I think I just OD'd on it last time. New blocks and craft items not motivating at this point. Again, not bad or anything. Just more of the same. It's not different enough to feel worth bothering with as someone returning to it.

Pathfinder: WotR

Getting to what I suspect is the end of chapter iii. Botched a few quests. Nothing important (for my particular play through). I missed a third part of the silver dragon (Mendelev? Sp?), a quest in the DLC town (Gundrum or some such) is unfinishable. I completed everything else, but the guards will be sick forever now I suppose 🤔

Also completely ignoring Nenio and her nightmare quest. Never felt any interest in the character personality or story anyway 🤷‍♂️

Doing the first island chain the Treasure Island DLC. Just passing times while leveling up my outposts to bastions. Because I cant remember if they stay bastions when I get to chapter v 🫣

Edit: Running out of enemy armies to destroy, I think I will get under time pressure anyway to progress the story, because you can't keep people happy without killing stuff.

Noticed that I had forgotten a tiefling, that i had in my first play through. I wonder what happened to Woljif (sp?)?

You're supposed to run into Woljif again in a random encounter chain where he's ruling some cultists. Always seems to spawn around Wintersun.

iirc both the Terendelev quest and the dlc one are reliant on clicking non highlighting interactive spots/ characters which is somewhat annoying, but both ought to be completable throughout C3. Terendelev's claw is on a wagon where you got Xachariah's (? lich boss) wand, but it doesn't register as being an object, just a flavour description so if you skip clicking all of them you can easily miss it. That might be important for a lich later on.

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

You're supposed to run into Woljif again in a random encounter chain where he's ruling some cultists. Always seems to spawn around Wintersun.

iirc both the Terendelev quest and the dlc one are reliant on clicking non highlighting interactive spots/ characters which is somewhat annoying, but both ought to be completable throughout C3. Terendelev's claw is on a wagon where you got Xachariah's (? lich boss) wand, but it doesn't register as being an object, just a flavour description so if you skip clicking all of them you can easily miss it. That might be important for a lich later on.

I went back to the cave (lepers smile?) and found the cart where it was supposed to be, but it seems to be unavailable (clicking the "hand" icon does nothing) in chapter iii. Ah well, iirc, it matters if you want to be a golden dragon if i remember correctly. I did get the wand, without which you can't really start the lich path