April 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Johnway]

I played a bit more XCOM 2 today and I've finally finished all of the required research to begin the final missions. I'm curious whether it will be significantly harder than the generic missions, which are far too easy at this point. Based on the last Chosen I killed, I have my doubts.

There's certainly no time limit to the mission so bring all your best units and the commander to the final battle. in multiple play throughs i would just spam the commander abilities fire them in the locations i know the enemy deploy and keep doing that until i succeed.

The final battle is probably the trickiest, but if you've maxed out your research, got the right members in play its not unbeatable. Hell i think the reinforcements are entirely random so you could luck out with easy peasy reinforcements or some brutally tough annoying additions.

regardless i was able to save scum my way to victory each time with zero casualties.

 

[ZedClampet]

I just unlocked the stocker in Supermarket Simulator, and he actually puts things on the correct shelves!

In Weed Shop 3, the stocker walks up to a random shelf, bends over, uses their fingers to count to 3, and then places the merchandise in random locations--until they get to level 15. At level 15 they sprint around the shop putting everything in the right spot, but it takes them forever to level up.

 

[BeardyHat]

Did any of your games do anything for April Fools?

You drive straight through pedestrians in Big Ambition, plow through them like they are ghosts. I told the developer that for April Fools they ought to give the pedestrians some funky physics so that they get knocked around by cars. I'm saddened that, as usual, they didn't pay any attention to my elite level idea.

What I wanted to see was what twisted, low-brow hijinks the Weed Shop devs might do, but there was no update, sadly.

Kind of?

The boot screen for my DSi with custom firmware showed a Virtual Boy boot image, rather than the usual Nintendo DS one.

 

[Johnway]

the new humble choice is out and... assassins creed valhalla and returnal is not there. A relief i guess, will skip month and see what the next month provides!

Gone back to playing Path of exile for a bit and try and get some challenges sorted. 4 days in and i'm at act 10. My build is a mess atm as i'm trying to play meta and do a frostbolt build. Too bad i've not seen any frostbolt stuff yet. I suppose i should do it at end game where progress slows and thats when the REAL game begins.

 

[ZedClampet]

Playing the demo for Of Life and Land which is a colony sim that launched today. Seems kind of normal so far. I think the catch is supposed to be the environmental impact simulation.

******

It's spring so we have a tornado watch until 2 am. Personally, I'm just going to go to bed. My wife is a stay-at-home storm tracker (she watches the local weather), so I should have a few minutes to get to the basement if worse comes to worse.

Everything I own is charged and ready for the near mandatory power outage. Just got to unplug my computers. I've got a 36 hour battery on my CPAP machine, so I should be able to sleep until they get power restored.

Already given the dog hardcore drugs. She's asleep and no doubt running through mythical beagle hunting grounds with rabbits as far as the nose can smell.

 

[BeardyHat]

the new humble choice is out and... assassins creed valhalla and returnal is not there. A relief i guess, will skip month and see what the next month provides!

Unfortunately, the games that are there are very tempting to me. I've been eyeballing Humankind and Excavation of Hobbs Barrow for many moons now, but I told myself I wouldn't buy any games this month.

 

[ZedClampet]

It must be difficult being a weather person, running around all day talking about storms and tornadoes and then we get neither wind nor rain.

****

Gave up on the "Of Life and Land" demo. My people ran out of food almost instantly, by day 3. The first thing I built was a fishing hut, but the assigned person never went to work and never caught a fish. They stayed at their house all day every day.

We had 3 large wheat fields that were empty of wheat on day 2. My forager found 10 mushrooms--that's it--and they were gone immediately. Bleh. We already had a mill and a bakery, but all the wheat produced very little bread. No thanks.

 

[neogunhero]

I played a bit of Conan Exiles last night. Started a single player world, after looking at the custom game settings and getting overwhelmed at the number of options, I decided to go with easy mode. Well after about 30 minutes, I felt like I actually wanted that granular control, so I restarted in a custom game world. I went through all the settings and basically made it super easy mode. Increased harvest yield, decreased crafting resource cost, increased damage output, decreased enemy damage, increased XP gain, so on and so forth. I just want to explore and build to my hearts content.

I forgot how little this game holds your hand. There are Journey’s which are basically tutorial quests for each specific feature so I’ve been going through those. I knocked out a bunch of basic building and crafting Journey’s and built myself a nice little hut along a river. I’m stuck on the blacksmithing journey because I need to find coal and haven’t seen any in the 2 hours I played, so I started to smelt iron with wood which it suggested against but since one tree gives me about 50 wood its not a problem to me.

Combat is a little weird. Not sure if I changed some setting to make the enemies slow to attack, but sometimes they will stand there completely still while I wack them with my stone sword. The only settings I changed in terms of combat is damage received and outputs for me and npc’s, I don’t think that would cause them to not attack, but rather just have weaker attacks.

Haven’t found any thralls yet. I mean, I think I did, but an alligator killed them before I could reach the island they were on. I’m not ready to have thralls just yet, I need to build up a much bigger base. The official screenshots show these huge sprawling bases which is inspiring but would take so much work even with all the modifiers on. Luckily I can change those settings on the fly while in game, so if I need to bump up harvest gain from 1.75x to 10x I can do it easily then set it back down again.

Steam says I have about 45 hours gameplay on this game, but I haven’t touched it since maybe 2017-2018 so it’s feeling new to me still. I think I’ll definitely keep at it, you can do all of the content solo so I have tons of ruins and caves to explore. My only complain is that I wish the first person camera worked better, from what I read they switched focus on third person a while ago so the first person camera that still exists is years old code that has never been fully fixed to work properly. It’s just a bit wonky, some actions force you into third person, and you see your characters arms and head clipping a lot.

 

[ZedClampet]

I played a bit of Conan Exiles last night. Started a single player world, after looking at the custom game settings and getting overwhelmed at the number of options, I decided to go with easy mode. Well after about 30 minutes, I felt like I actually wanted that granular control, so I restarted in a custom game world. I went through all the settings and basically made it super easy mode. Increased harvest yield, decreased crafting resource cost, increased damage output, decreased enemy damage, increased XP gain, so on and so forth. I just want to explore and build to my hearts content.

I forgot how little this game holds your hand. There are Journey’s which are basically tutorial quests for each specific feature so I’ve been going through those. I knocked out a bunch of basic building and crafting Journey’s and built myself a nice little hut along a river. I’m stuck on the blacksmithing journey because I need to find coal and haven’t seen any in the 2 hours I played, so I started to smelt iron with wood which it suggested against but since one tree gives me about 50 wood its not a problem to me.

Combat is a little weird. Not sure if I changed some setting to make the enemies slow to attack, but sometimes they will stand there completely still while I wack them with my stone sword. The only settings I changed in terms of combat is damage received and outputs for me and npc’s, I don’t think that would cause them to not attack, but rather just have weaker attacks.

Haven’t found any thralls yet. I mean, I think I did, but an alligator killed them before I could reach the island they were on. I’m not ready to have thralls just yet, I need to build up a much bigger base. The official screenshots show these huge sprawling bases which is inspiring but would take so much work even with all the modifiers on. Luckily I can change those settings on the fly while in game, so if I need to bump up harvest gain from 1.75x to 10x I can do it easily then set it back down again.

Steam says I have about 45 hours gameplay on this game, but I haven’t touched it since maybe 2017-2018 so it’s feeling new to me still. I think I’ll definitely keep at it, you can do all of the content solo so I have tons of ruins and caves to explore. My only complain is that I wish the first person camera worked better, from what I read they switched focus on third person a while ago so the first person camera that still exists is years old code that has never been fully fixed to work properly. It’s just a bit wonky, some actions force you into third person, and you see your characters arms and head clipping a lot.

I forget exactly how the thrall system works, but I remember going to the big city and trying to sneak attack people and get my high level thralls out. Then I looked up where to find a certain thrall, and he wasn't where he usually showed up, so I ran backwards until the area despawned, and then ran forward again and checked. Did this over and over until he spawned.

 

[Rolfil]

Planet Crafter is launching v1.0 on 10thof April. If you don't already have it there will be a 30% discount

 

[neogunhero]

I forget exactly how the thrall system works, but I remember going to the big city and trying to sneak attack people and get my high level thralls out. Then I looked up where to find a certain thrall, and he wasn't where he usually showed up, so I ran backwards until the area despawned, and then ran forward again and checked. Did this over and over until he spawned.

From what I remember 5 years ago, you beat them with a club, tie them up, drag them back to your base then break them with the torture wheel. Finding specific thralls is hard, so I may just round up a bunch then train them in specific areas which shouldn’t be hard with my custom game settings. My goal is to build up a sprawling city full of thralls all working different positions. I try not to look at them as slaves, but instead they’re friendly neighbors all working together toward a common goal, although I may have to force them into agreeing to that goal.

 

[ZedClampet]

I try not to look at them as slaves, but instead they’re friendly neighbors all working together toward a common goal.

Haha same here. Who wants to have slaves when you can have friends instead?

There's a mod in the workshop. I think it's called 300 and has a picture from that movie. It allows you to take your character all the way to level 300, so you can eventually get all the skills, etc.

I mention this because it seems like it would be perfect for your playthrough.

 

[neogunhero]

Haha same here. Who wants to have slaves when you can have friends instead?

There's a mod in the workshop. I think it's called 300 and has a picture from that movie. It allows you to take your character all the way to level 300, so you can eventually get all the skills, etc.

I mention this because it seems like it would be perfect for your playthrough.

Thanks for the heads up, I completely forgot about Workshop support. Something like that would be super useful since I’m already level 20 after only 2 hours of playing. I try not to cheat the game too hard, I just want to make it easier, so I have it set to 1.75x XP gain. Definitely gonna check out mods now.

 

[Primordial Shot]

Three of these games drop on my birthday, and two of those I'm interested in.
Sheba: A New Dawn seems enjoyable, and I relish a good Metroidvania.
Spirit City: Lofi Sessions sounds like the perfect game to relax to. With my occupation, I occasionally require that.

As for the rest, one of the ones I'm anticipating the most this month is No Rest for the Wicked. As soon as I saw that Moon Studios was the developer, I knew it was going on my wishlist. I'm a prodigious fan of the Ori series, and I listen to both Ori OSTs quite often. That game itself looks and sounds spectacular. Let's hope it will turn out that way.

I added 18 of those games to my wishlist. Will wait for reviews.

 

[Zloth]

Thralls? 200 quatloos on the newcomer!

 

[ZedClampet]

Thralls? 200 quatloos on the newcomer!

Kirk--All the thralls must be released.
Alien--Anarchy! They would starve!

This reminds me of the running Helldivers 2 HQ philosophy about how we are thinning out the enemies for their own benefit. They'll be happier and healthier!

 

[ZedClampet]

I added 18 of those games to my wishlist.

I'm now motivated again.

 

[ZedClampet]

Planet Crafter is launching v1.0 on 10thof April. If you don't already have it there will be a 30% discount

This is a great game. I've been thinking about trying to get my wife into PC gaming, and this might be a good start for her. No enemies or anything. Just terraforming. Don't know if they are adding multiplayer for v1 or if that comes later.

 

[neogunhero]

Managed to capture 4 thralls yesterday in Conan Exiles. Two fighters, one archer, one crafter. Only one of the fighters has been broken in so far. I can’t seem to find the option to make them break faster on the torture wheel, they take a good 15 minutes until you can assign them to anything. My first fighter I named Darfin, who is a Darfari Cannibal. Not sure if you can make them eat human flesh, I haven’t tried to harvest a human enemies body yet lol.

Darfin has been a good companion to me. He attacks everything on sight and has leveled up quite quickly. I decked him out in leather medium armor and an iron broadsword. Darfin gets rewarded with steak while the rest of the thralls are forced to eat gruel. I think I’ll keep Darfin on my side for as long as I can, and make him the strongest thrall to roam the lands. He did get dangerously close to dying while getting jumped by 4 crocodiles all at once but I stepped in just in time to save him. He still has a long way to go but he shows promise to be worthy of my right hand man.

The journey to build my city continues on, and progress is going well. I’m crafting so much iron which I think is going to help for more advanced building pieces. I haven’t found a good spot to build my metropolis yet, which worries me because I wonder how I will transport all my resources especially if it’s going to be far. I’ve still got a ton of journeys to go so maybe I’ll unlock something to help with exactly that.

 

[Rolfil]

This is a great game. I've been thinking about trying to get my wife into PC gaming, and this might be a good start for her. No enemies or anything. Just terraforming. Don't know if they are adding multiplayer for v1 or if that comes later.

10 player Co-Op is being added to Planet Crafter forv1.

 

[Johnway]

So after about 5 days of Path of Exile i think its been a real slog. I was hoping to get at least 16 challenges for the full basic set, but i've reached a few things that have really put me off and give up much sooner. The first is that the league mechanic isn't all that compelling. The second is that the build i'm going for isn't that easy to obtain the required high level skills and very specific armor. I got to end game with such a lousy build that i can't even clear white maps even! Plus we've got the tedious challenges that are grindy or luck based again.

So yeah, bad gear, boring league and challenge isn't great. Might take a break and dip my toes a bit more and see what happens.

 

[DXCHASE]

So after about 5 days of Path of Exile i think its been a real slog. I was hoping to get at least 16 challenges for the full basic set, but i've reached a few things that have really put me off and give up much sooner. The first is that the league mechanic isn't all that compelling. The second is that the build i'm going for isn't that easy to obtain the required high level skills and very specific armor. I got to end game with such a lousy build that i can't even clear white maps even! Plus we've got the tedious challenges that are grindy or luck based again.

So yeah, bad gear, boring league and challenge isn't great. Might take a break and dip my toes a bit more and see what happens.

Sounds like you were playing Diablo 4.

Joke aside, id give it a shot, you might find that less boring, or Last Epoch if thats your style.


Well. I had a hard shut down during my Dragons Dogma 2 last night and now the game crashes every time i start. I reinstalled, verified. Still nothing .

Helldivers 2 is fun, they keep adding stuff, there is another new pass of guns and stuff coming next week. Theyve add gunships that shoot at us, nerfed our shotgun but gave our sniper rifle a boost, which can take down a gunship in a whole clip. Its amazing.

Destiny 2's The Final Shape launches tuesday. I havnt purchased it yet or pre-ordered it (first exp. i havent pre-ordered from destiny 2 in its history).

Im going to wait and see how it is. I should probably finish the story given that i have 5600 hours in it, but ill probably wait for a sale this time around. I still have little interest in the game and all the recent dev streams didnt do anything to bolster that.

 

[Zloth]

Egosoft just started beta testing of version 7.0 of X4. So much cool stuff!

Well. I had a hard shut down during my Dragons Dogma 2 last night and now the game crashes every time i start. I reinstalled, verified. Still nothing .

Oh no!! Is it happening before loading your save file?

 

[Primordial Shot]

I'm now motivated again.

I'm elated that I could assist! Both conversing about games and observing people playing them usually do the trick for me. I do have various other hobbies I can occupy my time with as well, however, gaming is the one I'm most passionate about.
Just when I shaved a few games off my already massive wishlist, I went and added a quintuple of the amount I recently acquired. ಠ_ಠ

Like you, I'm also interested in Broken Roads. Looking forward to surpassing the double-digit hours of gameplay with that. Currently, I'm just defeating one game after the other, so Broken Roads will be a nice change of pace. One of the worst things, when immersed in a lengthy game, is impatiently waiting to go home while at work. Wonder if they'll have hostile emus in the game. ❛ڡ❛

 

[Brian Boru]

game crashes every time i start. I reinstalled

If you reinstalled over the existing game, try a full uninstall and then a new install. If you want to try the extra mile, use Revo Uninstaller for or after the uninstall—it's lauded for digging out remnants normal uninstalls leave behind.

If I recall correctly, you have good hardware, so shouldn't be that—but worth a look at temps and maxed-out performance levels just in case—some connector might have jiggled loose, or some paste not connecting well, or… or…

If there was a recent game or driver update, can you roll back to previous version? Or use a Restore Point for the same purpose, and turn off the relevant updates for a while.

hostile emus

Cassowary ftw!