April 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[mainer]

For any of those interested in the upcoming Palace of Ice DLC for Solasta, Tactical Adventures posted new information on some of the features, including high level spells. It's quite lengthy, but might be of interest.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Solasta: Palace of Ice - Taking a look at Level 13+ - Steam News

Hiya folks! How is everyone doing? We're getting ever closer to the release of our next DLC Palace of Ice, for which we'll be announcing the release date pretty soon! While we wait a little more, what say you to some additional information on what's to come? But before that... A cat?! It's been...

store.steampowered.com

If you care about achievements, ME3, before it becomes impossible to get achievements. Otherwise, Prey - that game was so fun! Grossest way to upgrade powers ever devised, but being able to transform into a coffee cup is really fun. It's a shame Arkane decided to go a different direction after it finished.

The reason Prey jumped out at me from my back log, was because of a recent extra life article in PCG magazine (May 2023, US Edition) by Rick Lane: Prey By Proxy (Surviving Talos 1 without killing any Typhon). It really sparked my interest in playing. It's been sitting in my backlog for years after having picked it up on some sale, don't really know why I haven't tried it yet.

 

[Pifanjr]

I got to play games with two of my friends today, something I hadn't had(/made) time for in a long time. We played a bit of Barotrauma, but I had no clue what I was doing. We had a whole bunch of random people joining (and leaving) too, which made it that much more chaotic. It seems like it might be an interesting game though, once I learn a bit more about what I'm supposed to be doing.

We then just spend a bunch of time trying to decide on another game to play, going through all the games we all three own on Steam or maybe could get for cheap. We downloaded Sacred 2 Gold, but then discovered the multiplayer servers have been taken down. We finally ended up playing a round of Vermintide 2 on one of the new maps.

 

[Zloth]

There's some special oddness about X4, and I don't mean the way the rules change in sectors where your player happens to be standing. The game offers two graphics options that aren't compatible with each other: excellent anti-aliasing and volumetric fog. You can turn on both, but the game warns you about it and your framerate drops to single digits.

Enter NVIDIA's DLSDR technology... or DLSRD? Or.... ok, let's just call it anti-DLSS. Instead of rendering at a lower resolution and using AI to help upscale to your monitor's native resolution (DLSS), it renders at a higher resolution and uses AI to lower it to your monitor's native resolution. I've started using that to play at 3414x1920 resolution, which the AI then shrinks down and smooths. Now I can have my anti-aliasing AND volumetric fog!

What's more, the game's framerate is (as long as you aren't doing verboten things with your settings) bound by the CPU. That means that I don't lose any framerate at all!

The technology has been around for some time, but this is the first time I've found a proper use for it.

 

[Pifanjr]

Played more Vermintide 2 with friends yesterday. We're at the point now where Veteran is too easy and Champion is too hard. We tried one level at Champion several times and we got the first few minutes down perfectly, but then the game would throw a whole bunch of elites, specials and/or a monster at us and we just couldnt deal with it.

We also played a Veteran game with a Heroic Deed, which changed the rules such that you cannot be revived if drop to 0 HP and gave elites double health, and that was a perfect challenge. For those who don't know: if you die in Vermintide 2 you can still be saved, your incapacitated body is just spawned a bit ahead of the rest of the players and you have to wait for them to help you up. For most of the level at least one person was dead, so we were mostly in a mad dash forwards to get to the next incapacitated player to get them up so they could help out, with the horde of enemies catching up often during the revival process.

We also did a game of Company of Heroes, 4 of us against 3 hard and a normal AI. We played a map with a bunch of bridges so we could just defend the choke points until we've built up enough to start pushing into enemy territory. It went pretty well, though one of my friend's laptops eventually couldn't keep up with the amount of explosions, mainly caused by the three dozen or so nebelwerfers from another friend.

 

[ZedClampet]

In Big Ambitions, my hamburger joint never really worked out, so I closed it down and started a second gift shop because I needed some money in a hurry and I already understood the gift shop business. Now I'm making okay money, so I bought a desk, an office chair and a computer for my apartment. I'm advertising for employees so my character can sit around and play video games all day (playing PC games is something you can actually spend time doing).

I think that the problem with the hamburger joint was that I didn't lease a big enough space, and I could only have so many customers at a time. They constantly complained that I was charging $5 for a burger (it cost me $4 without taking into account payroll and rent), so I had to reduce the cost, and I just couldn't get enough traffic to make acceptable money. I was turning a profit, but it wasn't worth my time. I couldn't afford an industrial freezer and was having to go buy food every morning. I may try the restaurant business again later when I have more money.

 

[Colif]

Random thought. My internet has been dead all day and there is only so many videos that I can watch on my phone.
Shame all of my games are on Steam as I can't play any to fill in time.
We don't know why it doesn't work, it died mid phone call this morning and our ISP has raised a ticket on it. We have VoIP so it has been quiet here today.
Might need a new modem, ours is ancient. I will ask ISP about it tomorrow. They supplied the current one. It is at least 10 years old. Past due.

 

[ZedClampet]

Random thought. My internet has been dead all day and there is only so many videos that I can watch on my phone.
Shame all of my games are on Steam as I can't play any to fill in time.
We don't know why it doesn't work, it died mid phone call this morning and our ISP has raised a ticket on it. We have VoIP so it has been quiet here today.
Might need a new modem, ours is ancient. I will ask ISP about it tomorrow. They supplied the current one. It is at least 10 years old. Past due.

Why can't you play on Steam? I played games all week with no Internet after that storm about a month ago. Just launch the game as usual.

*************

Have restarted Big Ambitions twice now. I played the story campaign, which also serves as a tutorial, until it started telling me to do things I didn't want to do, so I started a custom campaign. However, the custom campaign doesn't work exactly the same way on a few things. In the story campaign, for instance, your character only loses happiness when he has a lot of things on his to do list that need to be done, but in a custom campaign, his happiness steadily drains. This is a problem because some of my employees are only happy when I'm at 50 percent or above happiness, so I was constantly having to stop what I was doing and play video games, watch television or take a nap in the park. SO, I started over again and disabled happiness. This time I also gave myself a little extra starting money for all my troubles It was just enough that I could get my apartment and first small business up and running.;

Loving this game, especially now that I've abandoned the story campaign.

 

[Johnway]

Well just an update on the power supply replacement - They delivered the replacement 1500w psu and now sits in my room, so the saga comes to an end. So i'm ready for a decent graphics card in the future. As to when i plan to upgrade i have no idea. better to keep it as spare incase the 750w packs up...

 

[Zloth]

Random thought. My internet has been dead all day and there is only so many videos that I can watch on my phone.

In addition to screenshots, I've got almost 1000 game videos saved off.

 

[Colif]

I have internet on my phone, just not pc at the moment. I just spoke to my ISP so hopefully we can get it sorted before the weekend. Waiting on a phone call now.

 

[ZedClampet]

I have internet on my phone, just not pc at the moment. I just spoke to my ISP so hopefully we can get it sorted before the weekend. Waiting on a phone call now.

But you realize you can play Steam games offline?

**********

Cheesing Big Ambitions. The game is set up for you to start off with a gift shop. In order for the player to make some money, the gift shop is designed for success. You are in for a big surprise if you then try to create another retail shop (jewelry, clothing, flowers). These shops are a huge difficulty bump and it's difficult just to come out of the day in the positive, much less make a useful amount of money.

However, I want to sell these other things, so I rented a huge retail space and marked it as a gift shop, but basically turned it into a department store selling every available retail product (including gifts). It's a huge success. I'm making over 10k profit a day. The gift shop my itself would probably make about half that, so these other products are helping significantly.

Just set up a deal with an importer and hired a purchasing agent. Can get products cheaper that way and improve your margins.

 

[Colif]

Yes, I saw that I could play if I wanted to.
Mum uses VoIP and feels lost without it so that is main reason why I want it fixed before weekend. Last few days made me think I need a laptop with a simcard.

 

[Brian Boru]

Ooh… pardon while I mop up some saliva 💋
I sooo hope these guys make it happen. They must be using a C&C engine of some sort, maybe OpenRA's? They're nailing the C&C vibe.

D.O.R.F. Real-Time Strategic Conflict

PCG trailer 1m

Steam

"a return to classic isometric RTS action, featuring elaborate base-building, resource gathering and massive battles with powerful and unique units"

"will feature an elaborate campaign for each of the game’s three factions, as well as multiplayer"

 

[Pifanjr]

I've been trying out some other builds in Vermintide 2, but so far it hasn't gone very well. However, I realized that my favourite build, which is a melee weapon with fast attacks and armour piercing and a ranged attack that can kill specials, is great because it's mostly self-reliant. For other builds I would have to rely more on my team members, but when playing with random people without voice chat I can't really do that as well. Though part of it is definitely that I get separated from my party because of my own fault as well.

 

[Colif]

As usual the problem with our internet was actually caused by external forces. Cables had been damaged somewhere locally and they just had to swap us onto new cables to fix it. The tech was only here 20 minutes. Came in, put a tool that creates a tone onto our line and left to test from his end to find that tone from other end. Came back and our internet was back soon after. He had only just fixed someone else in suburb so I wonder how many others had same problem.

I learned a long time ago that generally, if the internet is down, its not my end. One day it might be. I used to try to fix it but all I do now is restart modem, if it doesn't come back I just wait. Its really rare to have it go off for more than a few hours. I think this might have been longest it has ever been off. Most times we have problems with them its just slow internet, not none at all.

 

[Colif]

1 perspective - Game asks too much
Other - I don't see it as a bad thing that the best GPU/CPU combo now can't max this game out. It means your next PC might make game look better. I don't mind that idea.
But I can bet others will be upset they can't get best eye candy now

 

[DXCHASE]

So i was approved for an amazon credit line which is crazy for me.

So naturally the first thing i did was buy something expensive that i probably dont need right away

Went and got me "the best" gaming monitor. Now the price listed there isnt what i paid. Theres an "open box" section where they had one for about 915 that i purchased. Yes, because its "open box", but im cheap so im taking my chances i also had an additional 60 off for getting the card so that helped cover taxes/shipping. I have had 0 problems with open boxed items ive bought in the past and on 1 monitor i did have to swap after about 1-2? Years of use was covered by ASUS and have been using it ever since in some compacity.

I will probably suffer some FPS even though its 1440p but not below 60fps so im good with that, but heres to hoping it works lol.

 

[Colif]

Nice screen but too wide for me... 32inch non ultra wide is wide enough for me, took ages to adjust to extra width from a 28inch screen before.

I only just got a GPU that can run my screen at right speed so last thing I would do is replace it now.
I have had 4k before, but only 60hz. As windows run desktop at 1440p I just swapped to a 1440p screen so that native apps wouldn't appear as postage stamp sized windows.

 

[neogunhero]

Been playing Death Stranding over the past few days. This is maybe my second or third time trying to play it but this time it really “clicked” with me. I enjoy planning out my routes and strategizing my load out, balance and carry limit. Walking across the rough terrain is fun but I just got the reverse tricycle which could easily replace walking if you plan and drive right. I’m playing on Easy difficulty now because ai was having a really tough time with BTs. Maybe Easy also changes the driving such as giving you increased vehicle health, because if you boost and jump while going up a rock you can launch yourself pretty far which is super helpful for traversing really rough terrain with the trike haha.

Also, I found a Portal cube out in the wild and delivered it, which gave me Gordon Freeman’s glasses… I’m playing the standard edition that was free on Epic last year and I was thinking this whole time I wasn’t gonna get the Half Life collab items. That made me very excited to try to find the rest of those items!

Also, those Monster Energy cans are crazy real lookin.

 

[Colif]

I only just got a GPU that can run my screen at right speed so last thing I would do is replace it now.

it would be de ja vu

8 years ago I got a new PC with a GTX 960 that was fine for the 1080p screen I had.
For my Bday I was given a totally unexpected 4k monitor
this was great and all, but I had to upgrade my GPU just to maintain 60hz on the monitor or it would turn off and report no signal. So I got a GTX 980 but it never could really run games at 4k. So needing to upgrade GPU for a new screen has happened already. Last time I did it in reverse in that my last GPU couldn't run my 1440p monitor at right speed. Now everything matches. ONly thing I wouldn't mind having is HDR but not worth buying a new monitor for it.

 

[Johnway]

So... Chivalry 2 next update lands on 1st may. reading on the notes it appears to be pretty significant patching (Cross party BETA) among other things getting fixed. A personal bug bear was the server booting you out of the game for griefing when you planted explosives on the gate in the second part of escape from falmire and if enough friendlies stood next to it, they took damage.

Another map introduced and another season pass. But also its free on playstation plus. So freshmeat is on the meu so i won't be mercifully crushed by those who play the game like its a second job. Interesting its being launched when i've got nothing playing atm on my PC (just finished another indie game) and its bank holiday monday. its like a sign from the gods i should get back into Chivalry 2.

i said i would turn away from PVP style multiplayer because i'm a thin skinned player when its competition against random people. But yet... i'm intrigued and mighty tempted.

Dare i take another sip from the poisoned chalice that i call multiplayer gaming and be reduced to a gibbering-impotent-rage-induced wreck once more?

 

[Brian Boru]

I have had 0 problems with open boxed items ive bought in the past

Same here, I've bought open box and refurbished from Amz and NewEgg without a problem—peripherals like monitors only, wouldn't risk it with core components.

Best of luck with your monitor, it's ideal for realistic shooter games where you need to keep your neck on a swivel
I see it has 1.07 Billions Colors. Did you see the complaint from the guy who claims he got only 948 million? So you should count those asap before warranty runs out…

Death Stranding … edition that was free on Epic

Oh, I have that too, how about that? My library suddenly feels a little dirtier…

I'm submitting a new disease to the CDC for consideration—Kojimatosis, the state of not knowing whether making a David Lynch movie, or a video game.

i'm intrigued and mighty tempted.

Dare i take another sip from the pois
oned chalice

You answered your question earlier:

freshmeat is on the meu

That can't be passed up!

 

[Zloth]

I was cruising along a big landing bay that happens to be aligned with a sun in X4.

OMG! It's SOOOOOO bright! I can barely see what I'm... wait a minute. It's just my monitor. It isn't even as bright as the white color is on my desktop icons or the URL bar in my browser! Games can really play with your head.

Walking across the rough terrain is fun but I just got the reverse tricycle which could easily replace walking if you plan and drive right.

I didn't. I got my trike stuck in a rut after one mission, I think.

I’m playing on Easy difficulty now because ai was having a really tough time with BTs.

When in doubt, resort to biological warfare. In other words, throw your poo at them.

 

[Pifanjr]

I took a break in between cleaning to play a game, but since my daughter was playing in the same room it didn't seem like a good idea to play Vermintide 2...

So I played a bit of Conquest of Elysium 4. I decided to do the maximum number of AI players on a large map, with random, unique factions. I got the Baron faction, which has increased income and can spawn free, stationary units on towns and they get a couple of free units every year. Which is definitely not a bad faction for a full free-for-all.

Things were going fairly decent. The first few notifications of other factions being taken out by local wildlife, other players or horrors from another dimension came in, but I was just slowly exploring and expanding. I eventually managed to take out my nearest rival, though I suffered some significant losses. I quickly took my army in the direction their army had come from, hoping to claim their capital, but I ran into another faction with a large army of undead. Necromancers probably do pretty well in this set-up as you get more undead if a spot has had a big battle on it, which is more likely with so many players.

However, before I could even start worrying too much about that, a village right next to my capital was attacked by an otherworldly horror that had sneaked up on me. My army was too far away to make it back to my capital and the next turn the horror attacked the few soldiers I left at my capital teleported behind my archers and slaughtered everyone without breaking a sweat, thereby ending the game for me.

Such is life in Elysium. It's a game with a ton of content and quite deep mechanics, but also a game where you can lose without really anything you could've done to prevent it.

 

[neogunhero]

When in doubt, resort to biological warfare. In other words, throw your poo at them.

So I just got past the part in chapter 2 where you have your first “boss fight” with that huge BT and I definitely learned the benefits of using the grenades right there Haha