April 2025 General Game Discussion

[ZedClampet]

By the way I'm on trial for murder tomorrow morning and have brain surgery scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

(I used a randomized excuse generator to come up with reasons why I had to post the monthly posts so early, but I didn't feel like they provided enough drama, so I just decided to go with the above. I mean "scheduled ISP outage"? Boring. Although that's still significantly better than "I was confused". I did genuinely feel terrible, so that might have caused some of my confusion.)

 

[ZedClampet]

@BeardyHat didn't notice there was a spoiler in the above message.

 

[BeardyHat]

I thought you were finally getting the help you need.

 

[Colif]

ok, sad AMD fanboy

its more a question of economics, if a gpu costs $8000 here to buy one and it burns down the rest of the system its in due to badly connected power cables, can I afford to replace it all?

I would say the same thing if AMD made a card that didn't power balance its cables.

 

[ZedClampet]

its more a question of economics, if a gpu costs $8000 here to buy one and it burns down the rest of the system its in due to badly connected power cables, can I afford to replace it all?

I would say the same thing if AMD made a card that didn't power balance its cables.

I know the story. I was just picking on you.

 

[ZedClampet]

I bought the riveting "A Game About Digging a Hole". After looking at it for a few days, I finally thought "It's nothing for me to spend a few hours digging in a game" (think Minecraft and Hydroneer), so I went ahead and bought it.

What you are supposed to do is to dig straight down and use your jetpack to take you back to the surface when you need to recharge your battery or to empty your inventory. But the battery explodes when it runs out, and the jetpack uses the battery along with the electric shovel. So I decided to make the game 100 times longer and dig out a ramp along the edges so that I can always just walk out. That also saves me a ton of money because I don't have to keep buying upgrades for my jetpack and battery.

So you dig down and occasionally find stuff. I just found a tunnel that I'm having to use dynamite to clear. Not sure what I'm going to find there.

 

[BeardyHat]

I bought the riveting "A Game About Digging a Hole". After looking at it for a few days, I finally thought "It's nothing for me to spend a few hours digging in a game" (think Minecraft and Hydroneer), so I went ahead and bought it.

What you are supposed to do is to dig straight down and use your jetpack to take you back to the surface when you need to recharge your battery or to empty your inventory. But the battery explodes when it runs out, and the jetpack uses the battery along with the electric shovel. So I decided to make the game 100 times longer and dig out a ramp along the edges so that I can always just walk out. That also saves me a ton of money because I don't have to keep buying upgrades for my jetpack and battery.

So you dig down and occasionally find stuff. I just found a tunnel that I'm having to use dynamite to clear. Not sure what I'm going to find there.

They mentioned this on a podcast I listen to and after your further description, it does actually sound vaguely interesting to me and at only $4, I might just pick it up.

Finally received my new computer late yesterday afternoon and well, it's a computer. It's pretty nice, though it does have a 4k screen, which is kind of meh to me, but at least the display looks nice. I got a massive discount on it, as it had "bright spots" on the lower right side of the screen. I was reticent, but decided to take the chance with it, because they didn't look too bad in the pictures and you know what? They're barely noticeable. I'll take that for $200 less than equivalent machines

https://imgur.com/a/q2fEcYl

Though it did arrive kind of disgusting, the seller clearly made no effort to clean it up at all, so it had a decent amount of grime on it. On the bottom there seemed to be gum stuck to the bottom of the chassis, but scrubbing the entire machine up with a soft bristle brush, paper towels, plastic razor blade and some isopropyl alcohol has it looking pretty much new.

Benchmarks look good. Not amazing by and stretch, but considerably better than what I had with my old machine with eGPU, so I'm excited to test some games out today.

I am debating if I should just repaste it immediately. It's actually running quite cool, not even turning on the fans (far as I can tell) while sitting here posting, so it might not be worth the effort. But it would give me an excuse to go over to Microcenter and buy some thermal pads...

 

[DXCHASE]

Gonna prank my son today and tell him his new monitor he/I ordered came in broken. Ill update his reaction lol. Happy April Fools Day!

Having finished Avowed at the end of march i am moving on full-time-ish to The Rise of the Ronin. I should be wrapping that up too, not having it fall into my backlog. Going to try to have it finished this month lol

Ive also been dabling into a new games demo called Tower of Kalemonvo. Its like Diablo 1.5 but honestly it isnt too bad gameplay wise. I got to a point i couldnt beat the final boss because its just a huge sponge but its suppose to be hard and mysterious which it is. Id say check it out if youve played Diablo before or you wanna try an independent developed old-school ARPG. Its only 13.50 usd right now.

I also tried out Warhammer40k: Darktide's new horde mode and general update (havent played in months) and its pretty fun. Game seems more stable to me personally and i like that its easier now to get materials etc. Their cash shop is still too expensive to consider, but the games new mode, expanded story, guns etc. are great. Hop back in if you have it and try it.

 

[Frindis]

I don't Like Intel or AMD brand processors. Right now I have bought the DragonCore chip. It uses 100% renewable panda power sourced from certified sustainable bamboo farms.

 

[Colif]

Age of Wonders 4 got new DLC today- - this is not a joke

 

[ZedClampet]

My wife hoards furniture (there's a gaming point to this coming up) that she finds at yard sales, flea markets and thrift stores. Fortunately, she then gives a lot of it away to our children, nieces and nephews.

So today I got my new PC and it's too big and heavy for where I intended to put it, so I went down into the bowels of our basement to see what furniture she had down there. She had exactly:

2 large bookshelves
4 chests of drawers
3 desks, one of them a PC desk
1 end table
1 huge curio cabinet
1 massive pre-HD style TV stand (with a little square shelf area for your TV)
1 50 gallon aquarium stand (by my estimate)
1 rocking chair that I bought her when she was pregnant with our first child
2 things I couldn't identify what they were for

I guess the 2 things I couldn't identify could be industrial strength end tables, and one of them I think would be perfect to set my PC on next to my ottoman. It will look weird, but the only people who ever come to our house are family, and they don't care.

The PC is sitting right here and I still haven't decided whether I'm going to stream from it or actually use it directly (Steam streaming is pretty awesome and @BeardyHat recommended a program for streaming everything, which I'll download.)

The nice thing about the end table, if that is what it is, is that it doesn't have legs. It's basically a huge block of wood with designs carved into the sides, so it is very sturdy.

Anyway, I'll get to use my new PC eventually...

 

[DXCHASE]

They mentioned this on a podcast I listen to and after your further description, it does actually sound vaguely interesting to me and at only $4, I might just pick it up.

Finally received my new computer late yesterday afternoon and well, it's a computer. It's pretty nice, though it does have a 4k screen, which is kind of meh to me, but at least the display looks nice. I got a massive discount on it, as it had "bright spots" on the lower right side of the screen. I was reticent, but decided to take the chance with it, because they didn't look too bad in the pictures and you know what? They're barely noticeable. I'll take that for $200 less than equivalent machines

https://imgur.com/a/q2fEcYl

Did somethin similar for my monitor. It has a little glass/plastic? deformity on part of the screen, maybe about an ~1/2 inch big? Its only really noticeable if you have a bright white screen on the screen but not at all anytime else.

Saved 350 with it. Monitor was 900, was originally 1200, i threw in the 50 because of the tax covered too.

UPDATE ON APRIL FOOLS JOKE: My son, since hes oblivious, totally fell for it. Told me he told his group chat about what i said hahaha.

 

[ZedClampet]

UPDATE ON APRIL FOOLS JOKE: My son, since hes oblivious, totally fell for it. Told me he told his group chat about what i said hahaha.

I like just driving my wife crazy with my stupidity on April Fools. I'll walk up to her and say, "Your shoestrings are untied." She's not even wearing shoes, but then I start laughing enthusiastically and say, "Got you! April Fools!" To which she usually replies with something like "It's tough being married to the village idiot." Good times.

 

[Johnway]

So thoughts on the new Humble choice? Some good games, but i think nothing worth rushing in to get it. The one game is probably alien: dark descent but not worth getting the bundle.

• Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered
• Dredge
• Alien: Dark Descent
• 1000XResist
• Nova Lands
• Diplomacy is Not an Option
• Distant Worlds 2
• Nomad Survival

if someone has a free key, of aliens dark descent or any of the above, feel free to send a key my way...

 

[BeardyHat]

Did somethin similar for my monitor. It has a little glass/plastic? deformity on part of the screen, maybe about an ~1/2 inch big? Its only really noticeable if you have a bright white screen on the screen but not at all anytime else.

Saved 350 with it. Monitor was 900, was originally 1200, i threw in the 50 because of the tax covered too.

UPDATE ON APRIL FOOLS JOKE: My son, since hes oblivious, totally fell for it. Told me he told his group chat about what i said hahaha.

Now the next question is, have you told him yet that it was a joke? How long are you going to let it ride, cause I would go all day and longer, if I could...

Yeah, this little spot can only be seen on black and so far, benching the thing all day, I haven't noticed it at all.

That said, this thing definitely needed some TLC, which I'm more than happy to give to it. I love a project, so I opened it up to take a look at things. I was somewhat reluctant to take the cooler off, since it meant I'd have to do a lot of work to get it back together and I was aware I'd have to be replacing thermal pads as well as paste. But, I took it off anyway and discovered the vents from the keyboard inlet were completely choked with dust.

Went ahead and cleaned all that up, but I needed to get some new thermal pads, since I didn't have any. Went over to Microcenter and unfortunately they didn't have enough of what I needed, so I decided to try this thermal putty they had and I must say: It's a pain in the ass. Hugely messy and difficult to work with, but I've got everything back together and while it's benching pretty much the same as it did before, I'm glad it can breathe easier. And actually, my CPU score in 3DMark did improve; first run it was over 1000-points better, but that seems to be diminishing with heat soak. Hopefully I did the paste right, otherwise I'm just going to have to run it like this for now and then order some fresh pads on Amazon; it is still hot as balls above the keyboard though...

@ZedClampet your wife and my wife should get together. My wife doesn't necessarily collect, but she is constantly getting new furniture, getting rid of old stuff and migrating things around. Her current thing is the kitchen, where she's moved my pantry around and added some new storage to it, as well as removed some shelving in there, rearranging 3 shelves into one long one and now getting rid of another shelf by hanging our coffee cups.

I don't mind too much as long as she doesn't move my tools and stuff in the pantry around too much.

Still haven't played any games on my new computer yet, just messing around and trying to get it to perform for me and now trying to figure out if I've screwed it up with the thermal putty and will have to have another go. Hope not.

 

[BeardyHat]

So thoughts on the new Humble choice? Some good games, but i think nothing worth rushing in to get it. The one game is probably alien: dark descent but not worth getting the bundle.

• Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered
• Dredge
• Alien: Dark Descent
• 1000XResist
• Nova Lands
• Diplomacy is Not an Option
• Distant Worlds 2
• Nomad Survival

if someone has a free key, of aliens dark descent or any of the above, feel free to send a key my way...

I'm interested in the Tomb Raiders, though not currently eager to play them. I have ways to emulate, so easy enough there.

Dredge is fine. I think it got a little overhyped, personally. People were raving about it and yeah, it's cool, it's neat that it's a small team, but it's not terribly interesting mechanically. I ended-up calling it quits around the 9-hour mark, as I'd seen all the game had to offer and it was neither very interesting to explore, nor terribly challenging.

Aliens has been pretty cool, I believe I'm towards the end of it at 23-hours and I don't regret picking it up for $17 or whatever I paid back in January. It's fun and challenging, I like pushing my team and myself to go a little bit further, but it can definitely get kind of annoying the further you get on your infestation level and becomes a little tedious to stealth around Xenomorphs so that you don't draw attention to your squad and then have to deal with all the ramifications of that.

Not sure about the rest. Can't recall off the top of my head, but someone, maybe @Pifanjr was playing Distant Worlds 2 and seemed pretty into it. I'd look back at the posts, but I'm already late leaving to pick the kids up from school, wheee...

 

[ZedClampet]

So thoughts on the new Humble choice? Some good games, but i think nothing worth rushing in to get it. The one game is probably alien: dark descent but not worth getting the bundle.

• Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered
• Dredge
• Alien: Dark Descent
• 1000XResist
• Nova Lands
• Diplomacy is Not an Option
• Distant Worlds 2
• Nomad Survival

if someone has a free key, of aliens dark descent or any of the above, feel free to send a key my way...

Ugh, I just recently bought Dredge, Diplomacy is not an Option, and 1000XResist. I'll gladly take the rest though, except for Nomad Survival which is just not my thing. Nova Lands looks like a factory game. I've never played the Tomb Raider games. I liked what little I played of Dark Descent on Game Pass and might take it more seriously once I own it. I'm not really sure what you do in Distant Worlds 2, but it's some sort of RTS in space, and I'm willing to give it a shot.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm already late leaving to pick the kids up from school, wheee...

An old guy like me was talking to a young guy on the radio, and the young guy was tired of having to pick up his kids at school every day, and the old guy said that he would give anything to sit in a car line one more time and see his daughter coming toward the car. I feel the same way. Don't take it for granted. These are the greatest days of your life.

 

[BeardyHat]

An old guy like me was talking to a young guy on the radio, and the young guy was tired of having to pick up his kids at school every day, and the old guy said that he would give anything to sit in a car line one more time and see his daughter coming toward the car. I feel the same way. Don't take it for granted. These are the greatest days of your life.

I don't mind it, since the school is in the neighborhood, we get to walk to and from school, so I usually bring them a piece of candy for the walk and I get to ask them about their day.

 

[BeardyHat]

Actually, trying to get my almost 5-year old (one more week!) to look for cars has been a pain. He hates being corrected usually, so the few times I've stopped him from crossing while a car is about to proceed through an intersection in our neighborhood, he gets mad and hits me. Today, I asked him to look for cars before crossing, he "looks" left and right, declares no cars and begins to start crossing.

Luckily, I had anticipated this, so I stopped him immediately, as there was a car coming, which he would have seen if he actually looked. Stubborn child, but he gets it from me, so...

Figured out why my new machine was heat soaking after running benchmarks. It would start strong and then graphics and CPU score in 3dmark would steadily decrease the more I ran it. I realized I had it in a different spot when I was running them in the past, so I looked at where it was currently sitting, which is my hobby mat. My hobby mat apparently soaks-up heat and retains it, so once I moved it to the bare desk, performance is back to normal.

I gotta say, I don't think my repaste job really did much (can't say for sure, I suppose), but I think just cleaning those clogged vents did wonders. 8-10% more performance out of my CPU and maybe about 3% on my GPU. Probably a margin of error for that one, but still. Alright, I gotta stop obsessing over this and actually play something...

 

[Zloth]

I would put the old Tomb Raider: Anniversary above Tomb Raider 1. It's mostly the same game, but with post-Y2K graphics instead of Lego Lara, plus a surprisingly fun tutorial.

Not sure about the rest. Can't recall off the top of my head, but someone, maybe @Pifanjr was playing Distant Worlds 2 and seemed pretty into it. I'd look back at the posts, but I'm already late leaving to pick the kids up from school, wheee...

Me! Ahhh, and you couldn't remember who it was, so clearly I haven't been going on about it enough.

It's still filling up a lot of my time. I should have finished Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth weeks ago, but I keep working on my empire! I messed up in my last game, telling the pirates I wouldn't help them fight some ancient ships popping back to life and eating people. All seemed fine at first, but relations soured bad. A few years later and most of them were attacking me - plus more of the ancient ships were waking up. Both at once? Ugh!

 

[ZedClampet]

Am currently in the process of begging Valve to stop allowing people to give awards for reviews and forum comments. The problem is that people are farming jester awards. Write a horrible review so that people will shower you with awards? Yep, it's happening. Hop into the forums and demand to know if the game is woke so that people will, again, shower you with awards? Yep. Theoretically speaking, giving awards to people who give great comments and reviews is a good thing, but in practice it isn't working out, and if they get rid of the jester award, people will use another one in its place. Just stop the whole thing and only allow awards to be given to mods, guides and screenshots.

 

[ZedClampet]

My favorite game right now is Zombieville USA 3D. I've made it to the highest level during a run, so the only thing left to me that I'm aware of is to get all the unlocks and try to continuously beat my old records, which is pretty fun. Would be cool if you could eventually escape, but it might be better without an ending.

 

[BeardyHat]

I would put the old Tomb Raider: Anniversary above Tomb Raider 1. It's mostly the same game, but with post-Y2K graphics instead of Lego Lara, plus a surprisingly fun tutorial.


Me! Ahhh, and you couldn't remember who it was, so clearly I haven't been going on about it enough.

It's still filling up a lot of my time. I should have finished Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth weeks ago, but I keep working on my empire! I messed up in my last game, telling the pirates I wouldn't help them fight some ancient ships popping back to life and eating people. All seemed fine at first, but relations soured bad. A few years later and most of them were attacking me - plus more of the ancient ships were waking up. Both at once? Ugh!

Whoops! Sorry, Zloth!

My memory is absolutely awful and things tend to just go in and then right back out. My wife (am I married?) mercilessly mocks me for it.

Am currently in the process of begging Valve to stop allowing people to give awards for reviews and forum comments. The problem is that people are farming jester awards. Write a horrible review so that people will shower you with awards? Yep, it's happening. Hop into the forums and demand to know if the game is woke so that people will, again, shower you with awards? Yep. Theoretically speaking, giving awards to people who give great comments and reviews is a good thing, but in practice it isn't working out, and if they get rid of the jester award, people will use another one in its place. Just stop the whole thing and only allow awards to be given to mods, guides and screenshots.

What's the point of farming awards? I barely interact with Steam outside of buying games. I've gotten a few awards on my 4 reviews, but I don't see why I was given them nor what they do for me.

 

[ZedClampet]

What's the point of farming awards? I barely interact with Steam outside of buying games. I've gotten a few awards on my 4 reviews, but I don't see why I was given them nor what they do for me.

I don't really know. They give you points which you can use in the shop on cosmetics for your account, but not sure if there's anything else you can do with it. Pretty sure you can't trade them, but I could be wrong.