August 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

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To everyone playing Baldur’s Gate 3 tomorrow, I hope it lives up to your expectations and you have fun with it!

My CPU is really starting to show its age. I have a Ryzen 1600X and it’s been the main bottleneck in my gaming performance. Most games I play still consider my RTX 2060 to be good enough, but more and more games are saying the Ryzen 1600X is just too old. In Far Cry 6, I have to play it at medium settings with AMD CSR turned on to Quality. Still even then I get some dips below 60fps.

I’ve been eyeing the Ryzen 5800X due to its price when on sale (it was $160 on Amazon Prime Day, the Ryzen 5600X is still at $180 full price) and because I’m not ready to upgrade to AM5 yet. It seems to be a good pick for my budget build to last a couple more years.

View: https://youtu.be/necwqUV4kcQ


I know this video is a Ryzen 1600 and not 1600X but I’m sure the difference between the two are negligible. The main thing is most games are seeing a 20+ FPS increase, sometimes 40+ FPS with the 5800X vs the 1600. It really goes to show how much of a bottleneck my CPU is right now.
The Ryzen 5 5600 non X is pretty much the same as the 5600X for a bit cheaper, but the 5800X is also a good deal. 5800X3D is where it tops out obvs, but all would be a good upgrade for you.





Just bought BG3. Didnt want to take up @mainer on the offer because I knew I wouldn't have any time to get into it at release for maybe a week after. Still the hype got me a bit and I figured getting the Digital Deluxe edition effectively a bit cheaper wouldn't hurt as I'd buy it soon anyway. It'll probably take me a week to get it downloaded anyway with the size of it.
 

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
@Kaamos_Llama Smart move with the preorder and just in time also. A lot of nice goodies in the DDE edition and getting that for free is a sweet deal:) The dice skin and the bard songs are what I am looking forward to the most.

PS: There is going to be a BG3 Twitch drop event at release, so if you want some nice flair to put on while at camp, you can get that from watching/idling BG3 Twitch streams. It also lasts for two weeks, so plenty of time for redeeming. For those interested in the flair, remember to link your BG3 with Twitch or you will not get the items.

https://www.baldursgate3.game/news/announcing-baldur-s-gate-3-twitch-drops_74
 
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It will depend on the game a lot. If you want to check any particular game, just crank up the graphics settings, then lower them to the floor. If the framerate stays about the same, the CPU is most likely your bottleneck.
I do play a lot of the games shown in the video, but also my GPU is not as good as theirs. In newer more graphically demanding games, I definitely do have to reduce graphics settings, but I also have really bad issues with stuttering and slight lag. It also does not help that my 1600X does not support XMP at my RAMs full speed, and I have stability issues with XMP enabled I believe due to it making my RAM run at full speed 3200MHz, when my CPU can’t handle more than 2666. I think I can still get more life out of my RTX 2060 since I still play on 1080p, but the CPU needs updating desperately.




I’m really having a blast with Far Cry 6. I don’t remember much of the 15 hours I played at launch, but it feels a lot smoother now. It feels more like a “traditional” FC game, allowing a ton of player freedom to do whatever you want in its world. FC5, although great in my opinion, felt way more restrictive, with mandatory quests being forced upon you whenever you progress to a certain level. FC6 lets you loose into its world after the prologue like it’s supposed to, and I feel a lot better at being able to do the main story quests at my own pace. They did an amazing job on the geography of the game, I’ve been walking around the world awestruck at its beauty.
 

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
LvTXRYU.jpg

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Reckon it will stabilise in a couple of hours, still funny though:)
 
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Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
FC5, although great in my opinion, felt way more restrictive, with mandatory quests being forced upon you whenever you progress to a certain level.
If you ever want to replay, get the Resistance mod—it gets rid of all that BS, and the horrible intro sequence too. I dumped FC5 originally when I met the mandatory capture quests, came back 6 months later with the mod.
 

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
The BG3 download speed is much better now. I'm not sure if it was because of the Steam server or not since I also did reset my WIFI and after some time speed went drastically up. I should probably go to bed at normal times, but I also would like to squeeze an hour or two into the character creation which I should be able to do at around midnight if download speeds are still stable at 5,4MB/S. Oh..the agony of choice!
 
We're almost done with the main content of Hollow knight.

traitor lord defeated, hive explored, nail maxed out. As per the worksmith's request, i killed him with the very blade he created. Wish i didn't have to, but hey, that's the achievement. Arena 2/3 challenges down, one more and i can begin farming for cash and make those pins fragile charms good.

I've succeeded beating the white palace getting the second half of that white charm and had i not got that auto healing pin you can be sure i would probably have flipped my lid much much sooner. I do need to go back and complete the path of agony and yeah... its precision platforming hell. might skip it if i can.

the Dream version of the false knight finished. he's much harder then the first time as touching/getting hit by him takes double damage and he's faster and more aggressive. Don't cornered and stay near the center of the arena and you should be fine. remember that he often jumps when he attacks so it gives you a chance to dodge. Takes practice as sometimes he baits you out and you take a hit. Anyway, i have the 2400 souls to get the next achievement. I had thought i needed 2500 but apparently not.

Still, this game has found ways to make me groan in fustration. I was going to do the quest to deliver the flower without getting hit. i planned the route out and i had a solid plan (white charm + magic attack boost and spam projectiles) to my absolute horror i choked at the last 2 jumps TWICE. Rest assured, i'll be going back there first thing tomorrow...

More heart break i assume, but damn it we're so close to finishing. Just a few more bits and pieces and i just need to mop up thje DLC content...
 
Got more time into Far Cry 6 last night and accidentally found the secret ending. After completing the main intro, you escape the starting island to the resistance’s main HQ and are given a boat. Dani (main character) talks about leaving for America but the Clara (resistance group leader) basically extends a hand saying Dani can help more if he wants. I thought I was ready to go to the huge main island and start exploring, so I hopped on the boat and took off for the main island. I didn’t see I had a quest objective to talk to someone before I left. As I got further in the water, Dani goes “Sorry Clara, not my fight” and the screen faded to black. Suddenly, it says “3 months later” and it opens with Dani relaxing on a beach in Miami, with a drink in hand and listening to the radio. I was so surprised that I started to laugh out loud. When I reloaded the last save, Dani goes “Why do I feel so relaxed?” I found that so funny and a really great little touch.
 
As promised i've delivered the flower in hollow knight. Not before choking for a third time on the same jump AGAIN. In the end i was over thinking it. ultimately, i stood slightly closer to the edge and dashed across as opposed to running and dashing across. Something i've done a hundred times. Not going to lie, it was very nail biting and even on the simplest of jumps i felt like i could screw up.

But done and dusted. Final piece of mask and maxed out my health. Got all the charms and killed the final dreamer. So we're ready for end game now right?

not quite, now need to travel the breath of the land and find mister mushroom and then we'll go to the arena to complete the final challenge. just looked at the costs to make all my fragile charms into indestructible ones and it seems i need 36000 in total. I'm either a hairs breath away from that amount of geo!

Will finish off some more DLC after arena is sorted. The hardest content awaits...

Anyway, on other news with chivalry 2 being on humble choice, i might go back to playing the game (its been a while) and perhaps see if there are any other fresh meat i can farm/cull and bring some balance to the game. Still waiting for the august update. Perhaps i'll play it once i finish hollow knight...

On even more off topic news, i'm drawing another artwork piece. No where finished its still very much in the rough stages. Currently still playing around with the Background which i've been mulling over for the last 2 weekends...
 
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Got more time into Far Cry 6 last night and accidentally found the secret ending.

The first thing ive done since FC 4 is look for the ending in the beginning. I think its cool that theres an option to do that. I also did that as well and im pretty sure i found it out accidentally because your essentially going the wrong way on the boat (going out to sea) and i wasnt paying attention to the map lol.

Im still having loads of fun with Diablo 4 because im not A. Rushing to 100 within the first week, B. complaining on reddit about my build not being strong enough anymore and C. Playing other games to help break up the grind. The patch that "everyone hates" had literally 0 effect on my gameplay and builds, the game is still fun and engaging.

Im still burning away at Remnant 2 when i get a chance, im trying to not grind through so far so my wife and i can experience the game together, but between work and other things, we havent had much time to sit down this week to play it, so i havent played all that much, just 1 and 1/2 worlds so far.

I do not think that Baldurs Gate 3 will win GOTY even if PCG writes 15 articles a week about it lol. Dont get me wrong im glad its doing well and the no microtransactions is refreshing but that TB combat just stops me dead in the tracks to even try this game. So no i havent played it, im sure the story is amazing, i read the PCG articles, so again, its literally just the gameplay. I personally think part of the big hype around this game is so people can do stuff like marry animals and play with the character settings all day more so than the game. Just my opinion.

As a Diablo 4 player, im always seeing posts like "go play BG3 instead". Like theyre COMPLETELY different games, its like when you hear the suggestion "go play minecraft" when you guys are playing COD. Im not giving up hack and slash combat for stop-and-go fighting.

BG 3, for me, would be a new example to put in the overrated thread for me.
 
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This goes for all types of games, so I'm not putting it in the shooter thread, but the most remarkable thing about Remnant is its variety.

It has a different worlds, and each world is made up of zones, and each area is markedly different despite maintaining a cohesive experience and overall look. There are many zones you'll never see if you just play the game once. Each zone has it's own secrets, puzzles, hidden doors. Usually they have their own mini-stories.

And this is truly remarkable, but each zone (and there are a bunch of them) only has enemies that are unique to that zone. So if you go into a zone and it has 4 different mobs, two different mini-bosses and a main boss, you will never run into any of those in any other zone. And these creatures are not just reskins of creatures from other zones. They not only look different, but their movements and attacks are different as well. You never even have a chance to get tired of an enemy because you'll make it out of that zone soon enough. Even FromSoft doesn't do it this well (although I still haven't played Elden Ring, so I can't compare it to that).

And I can't quite put my finger on why, but the gazillion bosses are not frustrating at all, at least not in co-op. Some of them may take two or three tries, but they are all unique and fun. Probably the best bosses of any game I've played.
 
So, I finished Yakuza 0 (which was absolutely awesome) and have already beaten Kiwami 1 after it. Kiwami was still a very good experience, but definitely not as good as Yakuza 0. The storytelling and characters overall are a bit of a step down, but that's only in a relative sense. Still very much worth playing. I've only just started Kiwami 2, so I don't have much I can say about it other than the visuals are clearly a substantial step up and seems to support proper HDR. The neon lights of Tokyo look brilliant in HDR, so that's already a huge win visually.

Also playing The Messenger on the side on my Steam Deck. I grabbed it for $5 during the summer sale and it's a fun little game so far. Pretty standard 2D action platformer fare with a strong retro-style soundtrack.

I've been considering jumping into Baldur's Gate 3 since I already owned it in EA, but I tend to be cautious about when I start these mammoth RPGs. These days it can take me a month+ just to finish 30 hour games, so I really have to commit to bigger RPGs as I know I'll be playing them for months.
 
I've only just started Kiwami 2, so I don't have much I can say about it other than the visuals are clearly a substantial step up and seems to support proper HDR. The neon lights of Tokyo look brilliant in HDR, so that's already a huge win visually.
Ah played that during dec/jan and it was a cracking game. Completed most of the content but once mahjong and golf was part of a side mission i knew i wasn't going to beat it 100%. I should go back to the yakuza series sometime soon. Might play the 3rd one.
 
So hollow knight update. i've beaten the arena challenges. Now is a question whether i can be bothered to be beat the DLC content. The Godseeker content is just boss rush mode and honestly i don't think i have the stomach to face that at all tbh. i might do the troupe one and pick up the last few achievements and call it a day. I could go straight to the hollow knight and end it all, but i would like to milk a bit more content. So maybe play it another week before we wrap it up i guess.
 
Wasn't really that enthused to start a new Remnant 2 game so soon after finishing it the first time, so we played Techtonica, a new automation-factory game.

My only problem with it is that the entire game takes place in caves, and I keep getting lost. Initially the map style wasn't clicking with me, but I'm getting the hang of it now. Plus, I have a giant drill I can always just use to beeline instead of wandering through the caverns. Going to be a million holes down there haha
 
I'm tired of hearing about Nintendo and Zelda, so I've been traveling around the Internet declaring that Zelda is the most overrated series of all time.

Granted, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's not the point. The point is to pay back, in some small way, for all the times I have to hear about Zelda. :ROFLMAO:

It's kind of like GoG. If you have enough righteous and religious followers proselytizing all over the place, I'm going to get sick of you.
 
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Playing solo developer early access games can sometimes be a mixed bag, but if you've never done it before you might be surprised about a few things.

For instance, I downloaded and launched the InfraSpace and instantly had problems. The game told me the first thing I needed to do was to build a road next to iron and sulfur, but there was no iron or sulfur. Every resource node in my starting area (which you can't leave) was methane.

A little confused, I just put a road down in a random location, and the game next told me to put a miner on a sulfur node. Again, there was nothing but methane, so this was impossible to do.

I logged out of the game and posted about this in the Steam forums and proceeded to start playing something else. I just figured I would come back to InfraSpace later.

Fast forward 30 minutes, and I noticed that the game had an update. Sure enough, the developer had read my post and fixed the game, and I wasn't even surprised by it. I've had similar things happen in other solo developer games.

You just don't get that in major developer games. Companies like Ubisoft let significant bugs go on forever (and their games may be grander, but they are less complicated than most single developer passion projects). I turned in a rather significant bug in Farming Simulator 22 (they reviewed my information and told me to put it in their bug tracker) a year and a half ago, and it still hasn't been fixed. It's the main reason I haven't been playing that game. If Farming Simulator were made by one person, there's a high likelihood that this bug would have been fixed within 24 hours of my reporting it. As hectic as a solo developer's life is, they take care of these sorts of things, and that's one reason I'm willing to support and play so many solo developer games.
 
After Far Cry 4, I was pretty sure that would be an ending, and tried it once I was sure I had a save. Did you hear what was announced on the radio while you were relaxing in Miami?
Yes, and Dani’s expressionless face was a little… concerning, given the fact that everyone he has ever known and loved is probably enslaved or killed by Castillo’s army lol.

The first thing ive done since FC 4 is look for the ending in the beginning. I think its cool that theres an option to do that. I also did that as well and im pretty sure i found it out accidentally because your essentially going the wrong way on the boat (going out to sea) and i wasnt paying attention to the map lol.
At this point it should be standard for every FC game haha. Was there secret endings for FC5 and New Dawn?

Also playing The Messenger on the side on my Steam Deck. I grabbed it for $5 during the summer sale and it's a fun little game so far. Pretty standard 2D action platformer fare with a strong retro-style soundtrack.
I don’t play many platformers but The Messenger is easily one of the best I’ve ever played. Super tight and fluid controls, very satisfying movement, gorgeous pixel graphics, and an awesome soundtrack, it was a great experience start to finish. I’m super excited for their next game Sea of Stars which comes out this month I believe.



Played more FC6 over the weekend and I’m starting to feel like this is the best game in the series. At this point FC isn’t doing anything revolutionary that is bringing in lots of brand new players, it is catering to their core FC fan base. They still try to make the game marketable to a larger audience, but there is no brand new features that make this the one everyone goes out and buys. It’s just slight incremental changes and additions to each entry that eventually becomes the latest one in the franchise, and if you’re into FC as much as I am, that is not a bad thing at all.

Gunplay feels the best in this one, with a large amount of customization options and 4 loadout slots so you can really experience all the weapons. I like the Supremos and use them more often than I thought I would. In a lot of games that have a super ability that takes time to recharge, I end up forgetting to use it or only very sparingly. However the Supremos in this game are very useful and charge up fairly fast, and have lots of useful features. My favorite so far is the first one you get which are rockets that shoot from your backpack, but they are homing so they can take out tanks and helicopters very easily.

The world is very detailed and there hasn’t been a single area that I felt was lifeless or full so far. As much as I love FC5, it portrays Montana a little too accurately, so there are large open areas with not a lot going on visually. FC6 is jam packed with handcrafted locations and a huge open world which ensures exploration never get boring. The little rebel trails are a nice feature as they literally take you off the beaten path and into some pretty beautiful views. There are plenty of secret areas, caves and the like to find and explore, which has always been one of my favorite aspects of these games.

So far my only complaint is the looting system. There are cache boxes scattered everywhere throughout the map, and some of them are specially marked to contain a rare weapon inside. However the standard ones work in a weird way. It seems like no matter where you find and open a standard cache box, it will always an item that is on a list of unlocks. You can climb a huge mountain to find one of these boxes, but it will just contain the next item in an armor set until you complete the set and it moves on to the next armor set. I’d rather each cache box to contain its own unique individual item, which makes finding these boxes a lot more of a treat. Instead you’re basically going down a list of preselected loot items no matter where the box is or how hard it is to get to it. Strange, but nothing that ruins the game for me.
 
Fast forward 30 minutes, and I noticed that the game had an update. Sure enough, the developer had read my post and fixed the game, and I wasn't even surprised by it. I've had similar things happen in other solo developer games.
That must be so satisfying to have happen to you especially if it is a game you really enjoy. I understand this may be easier for a solo developer to do, since they know how everything works, they can easily see if a change will break anything else. For a large AAA developer I can understand it being harder to do, with so much going into those complex games one minor change could break a dozen other systems. I just wish more AAA studios could listen and react to player complaints so promptly like the InfraSpace developer did.
 
That must be so satisfying to have happen to you especially if it is a game you really enjoy. I understand this may be easier for a solo developer to do, since they know how everything works, they can easily see if a change will break anything else. For a large AAA developer I can understand it being harder to do, with so much going into those complex games one minor change could break a dozen other systems. I just wish more AAA studios could listen and react to player complaints so promptly like the InfraSpace developer did.
The funny thing is that many of those games aren't more complex. Something like Cyberpunk 2077 might be, but your average AAA game doesn't have half the mechanics and systems of a lot of solo developer games (which are usually extremely ambitious). They usually just have better graphics.
 
At this point it should be standard for every FC game haha. Was there secret endings for FC5 and New Dawn?

in FC 5, yes idk about New Dawn, didnt play it but there are alternative endings to it

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Apd3pxE25k


Was finally able to play Remnant 2 with the wife yesterday. Got a good chunk in and gave up after we couldnt figure out where to go. Remnant doesnt have the best guidance system in where to go but, it was def. more fun having another person running around.

Took a minute to get used to the reviving and we both complain about how long it takes to take a health potion with me saying "thats a DS trope" because it is. It has to be difficult for some reason to take a health or at least take 5-10 seconds to take a health in DS-like games idk why.
 

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