August 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[mainer]

With all the games released and those soon to be released, this year is becoming the greatest year in video game history since I started playing games back in the 80's. I just can't see much top this year and it is not even over yet!

I was just thinking that this week. There have been more game releases (and soon to be released) that I'm interested in released this year than in any year in recent memory. For me it was, Palace of Ice DLC for Solasta, System Shock Remake, Jaggaed Alliance 3 (which I won't even get to this year), Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield, and Broken Roads (still to be released). There could be a few others I haven't thought of, but just with those games alone, it could easily take me an entire year to play them all.

 

[Zloth]

...but TB combat is just not for me.

You must play TUNA then. Oh, wait, am I doing that wrong?

 

[Brian Boru]

then you can add

True, there are a glut of releases as devs seem to have caught up after the Covid disruptions. Plenty of good stuff there for sure, so we can probably say 2004 and 2023 will be the top 2 years, ahead of 2007.

For ref, I see 25 games rated 90+ in Metacritic for 2004…

2004 in video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

…whereas there are 18 so far in 2023…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_video_games#Critically_acclaimed_titles

…so yeah, looks like they'll be the top 2 years indeed—with a good chance for 2023 to take the lead with holiday releases.

No, I haven't counted other years, so maybe there's another one out there I missed—eg 1998 is another of my favs, but MC wasn't around then.

Anyway, doesn't matter—clearly we have an epic year in 2023

 

[ZedClampet]

Can it top what's generally regarded as the greatest month in VG history—November 2004?

Other months of 2004 included Far Cry, GTA San Andreas and Rome Total War. In short, it'll take a truly remarkable year to top 2004.

Half Life 2, Counter Strike and World of Warcraft were pretty successful

In terms of raw game sales, 2023 will win hands down, but it would be an interesting debate as to which year actually had better games. I wouldn't necessarily go by Metacritic scores.

****

PCG keeps mentioning GTA 6 in articles as if there's a chance it could come to PC. It probably will eventually, but not any time around its launch on consoles. That company couldn't care less about PC even though SteamSpy estimates that they've sold 56 million copies of GTA V on PC. That's more game sales than there are people who own this generation PS and Xbox consoles combined. But, no, they won't initially launch on PC.

 

[ZedClampet]

Techtonica just isn't doing it for me. Every time I see a new recipe, I inwardly groan. Every recipe is over-complicated and requires too many machines and too many belts for the cramped working area. What's even worse is that a lot of the later recipes require that you grow specific plants, which take several minutes to grow. How do you make a process efficient if part A produces 60 per minute, and part B produces 4 every 3 minutes? You end up with a million part As for every product you make because there's no way to slow the machines down.

 

[Brian Boru]

How do you make a process efficient if part A produces 60 per minute, and part B produces 4 every 3 minutes?

Some basics, on the off-chance one slipped past you:

Are all the machines single-purpose, ie can make only one part?
If so, is there an early setup choice to install multi-purpose machines, which can make 2+ parts?

Are any parts multi-use, while others are single-use? As in, used in only one later assembly for one final product versus used in a number of final products.

There needs to be flexibility in either production or consumption, and ideally both.

 

[Zloth]

My Solasta party at level 1, fresh out of the tutorial.

Going right to left (because I'm totally counter-culture)

Elven ranger that's great with a bow. Ho hum.

Human battle cleric. Not quite as good as a sword & board fighter, but he's always within touch range of the healer! He's able to cast a mean magic missile, too. I just gave him the ability to wear heavier armors.

Halfling monk. My plan was to have the cleric basically be the fighter early in the game, then have the monk take over when her skills got high enough to give her a decent AC. That's 1st edition D&D thinking, though. Between being a halfling and a good roll of the dice, she started out with a 19 dex, and just hit 20 with a feat at level 4, so she's already pretty hard to hit. Her strength is good enough to do nice damage, too, with no weapons at all. When the inevitable "the baddies steal all your weapons and armor" level comes, she won't even be slowed down.

Shadow gnome court wizard. (Totally NOT an oompah loompah.) He's the brains of the group, and hands the monk a bunch of extra hit points at the start of harder battles. His spells aren't bad for being so low level, and he can light up distant torches for free - which seems to be particularly handy in this game. He's a bit grumpy because there are no children in this game, leaving nobody for him to taunt via demeaning songs.

 

[ZedClampet]

Some basics, on the off-chance one slipped past you:

Are all the machines single-purpose, ie can make only one part?
If so, is there an early setup choice to install multi-purpose machines, which can make 2+ parts?

Are any parts multi-use, while others are single-use? As in, used in only one later assembly for one final product versus used in a number of final products.

There needs to be flexibility in either production or consumption, and ideally both.

The machines can make multiple things, but only one thing at a time, so you can't tell it to make 40 of one thing and 10 of another. There are no machines that can run more than one job and no option to create them. Technically, some machines do produce more than one item at a time, but not in the way that you mean. For instance, if you put a plant into a thresher, it will produce both seeds and the plant product.

There are a number of parts that are used for multiple products, and I'm certainly utilizing that, but there are also many parts that are only used for one thing.

There really is no flexibility in either production or consumption except that you can attempt to split off excess production and store it in containers, but then you just have a bunch of containers with stuff in them you'll never need.

In Satisfactory, I usually shoot for over production and stick everything, nicely organized, into a warehouse because the way Satisfactory works, the game progression, you will eventually need all that over-production (if you choose to play that way). In Techtonica there is no such end game. At least not yet. Maybe I should stop complaining about it while it's in early access XD

 

[ZedClampet]

My Solasta party at level 1, fresh out of the tutorial.

Going right to left (because I'm totally counter-culture)

Elven ranger that's great with a bow. Ho hum.

Human battle cleric. Not quite as good as a sword & board fighter, but he's always within touch range of the healer! He's able to cast a mean magic missile, too. I just gave him the ability to wear heavier armors.

Halfling monk. My plan was to have the cleric basically be the fighter early in the game, then have the monk take over when her skills got high enough to give her a decent AC. That's 1st edition D&D thinking, though. Between being a halfling and a good roll of the dice, she started out with a 19 dex, and just hit 20 with a feat at level 4, so she's already pretty hard to hit. Her strength is good enough to do nice damage, too, with no weapons at all. When the inevitable "the baddies steal all your weapons and armor" level comes, she won't even be slowed down.

Shadow gnome court wizard. (Totally NOT an oompah loompah.) He's the brains of the group, and hands the monk a bunch of extra hit points at the start of harder battles. His spells aren't bad for being so low level, and he can light up distant torches for free - which seems to be particularly handy in this game. He's a bit grumpy because there are no children in this game, leaving nobody for him to taunt via demeaning songs.

Based on the Worldstar video I saw the other day of a Nubian rogue fighting a halfling monk at a temple (okay, it was a drunk prostitute fighting a guy with dwarfism in the street), I'd say that in real life your halfling monk would be completely useless.

 

[Zloth]

Judge her by her size, do you?

View: https://youtu.be/wg1ydN42ukY?si=5-ChaUEKyyGq0H61&t=90

Much to learn you still have.

She's also got a MEAN uppercut when attacking human-sized males.

 

[ZedClampet]

Judge her by her size, do you?

View: https://youtu.be/wg1ydN42ukY?si=5-ChaUEKyyGq0H61&t=90

Much to learn you still have.

She's also got a MEAN uppercut when attacking human-sized males.

Overrated is Yoda.

*****

I've played the tutorial in Desynced twice because when the game told me I was free to do whatever I wanted, I decided I didn't really want to do anything, but that the tutorial was fun. I still haven't played any of the RTS battles, but I suspect there isn't much S.

 

[neogunhero]

More Vampire Survivors and Quake 2 this weekend. Taking it easy before Starfield. Those are great games for quick 30 minute bursts. Either Quake 2 veterans aren’t playing the remaster update or I’m getting really good at deathmatch… I won two matches with a score limit of 50. VS and Q2 are very similar in certain ways, mainly because they require ADHD-like reflexes to get good at. My eyes can only keep up for so long, which is why I can only play those games for no more than 45 minutes - an hour max.

As with so many other online shooters, players tend to stick to a small rotation of maps. In Q2 it’s a map called The Edge. Not being a long time player, I’m not sure if this is Q2’s version of de_dust2 or something but nearly all servers are playing this map. It’s good and I’ve learned it well enough but I like playing on many different maps. When I played CSGO a lot I’d annoy people and beg everyone to vote the weird unplayed maps like Cobblestone or Militia and those would be some of the most fun I had on CSGO. So I hosted my own Q2 server and went thru a random assortment of maps, and people were actually enjoying them! One map we played was from Quake64, and was super complex and maze-like. It was really fun to play on an unknown map, learning it as you go. When you finally found where the rail gun is before everyone else, that’s when it got really exciting.

 

[Pifanjr]

Yesterday evening I had the house to myself after my kid went to bed, but I couldn't get the motivation to continue Fallout 4, so I played two games of Vermintide 2 instead.

Then this morning I decided to play a bit of Fallout 4 anyway and went to Vault 88. The vaults are typically some of the best content in the Fallout games and this one wasn't an exception. I ended up starting work late because I couldn't get myself to stop. Most surprising of all is that I spend a lot of it building a furnished room inside of Vault 88. It didn't look very great because I got sick of struggling with the interface, but it was satisfying regardless.

 

[neogunhero]

I met a Spanish player on Quake 2 and we had a 1v1. I don’t speak Spanish but I could make out what he was saying. He basically told me “let’s play until 10 points then change the map to The Edge”. We were 8-8. I got a kill, then he did. With one point left I grabbed a chaingun and 200 armor points and mowed him down. After that I switched us over to The Edge and died 4 times in a row then ragequit. It was a funny little experience lol

 

[ZedClampet]

Started playing Captain of Industry. The very first thing the tutorial tells you to do is wrong. You wouldn't believe how many times I've come across this in indie games. It's really frustrating because the first thing I do is blame my own understanding and start watching YouTube videos, but then the YouTube videos invariably show that the tutorial was wrong/bugged, so it's just a waste of my time. After getting past the tutorial error I had a good time, though. Very complex game, which is what I've been in the mood for lately.

I think the problem with early access games and tutorials is that the games constantly change, and the tutorials are sort of afterthoughts that the developers really wish didn't exist at all.

Sticking to complex games, I moved on to Stationeer, the game with a 10-plus hour tutorial. It had been awhile since I played it, so I had to remember my hours of training and actually went back and replayed a couple of the tutorial sections. As complicated as the game is, it has an incredibly good tutorial. So there's credit where credit is due.

Finally I played a game without a tutorial, Airborne Kingdom. It does tell you a couple of things at the very beginning to point you in the right direction, but I wouldn't hardly call that a tutorial. But it doesn't need one if you've ever played a colony sim/city builder before, so it's all good.

 

[Brian Boru]

Great chess scandal ends in agreed draw. There is however a passed pawn on the 7th rank who's sounding feisty, so I suspect there'll be a continuation fairly soon.

Huge chess scandal ends with begrudging agreement as one grandmaster threatens to 'name names' regardless

World champion Magnus Carlsen had accused opponent Hans Niemann of cheating.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[ZedClampet]

Great chess scandal ends in agreed draw. There is however a passed pawn on the 7th rank who's sounding feisty, so I suspect there'll be a continuation fairly soon.

Huge chess scandal ends with begrudging agreement as one grandmaster threatens to 'name names' regardless

World champion Magnus Carlsen had accused opponent Hans Niemann of cheating.

www.pcgamer.com

No idea what they are currently doing to prevent cheating, but whatever it is, it isn't enough.

 

[neogunhero]

I’ve been noticing my GPU and CPU have been staying around 60-70% utilization in most games. I was wondering if this is a problem but no matter what I search I can’t find definitive answers. I uninstalled a ton of useless programs, like Corsair iCUE and the EA app among many others, changed my power mode to the hidden Ultimate Power Plan, turned off Game Mode, made global program changes in Nvidia Control Panel like maximum power performance and adaptive vsync, and it seems like my FPS in Far Cry 6 got a lot more stable. I’m actually hitting 60fps in areas where I didn’t before. I didn’t really test it properly and record FPS, I just reloaded the same save and did the same thing over and over before and after making the changes. I did use MSI Afterburner to graph other things and my temps are perfectly cool. So I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was that improved my performance. If I had to suspect, it must be turning off Game Mode and deleting what essentially became bloatware in my PC that would always run in the background.

I stated in an earlier post that I will be upgrading to the Ryzen 5600X but the price keeps steadily increasing. At this point I’m thinking of just getting a faster SSD for Starfield and maybe during Black Friday the Ryzen 5000 series chips will be cheaper, or perhaps I could upgrade to a 7600X and new motherboard… I’m going to do a fresh install of Windows for Starfield as well. I just hope my 1600X can play the game decently enough even though it’s lower than the minimum recommended specs

 

[Pifanjr]

Vault 88 in Fallout 4 turned out to be a lot shorter than I thought, which is a shame. I moved on to the Nuka World expansion, which is pretty mediocre so far. The idea behind it seems like it would be fun on paper, but neither the gameplay nor the storytelling is very interesting.

 

[Pifanjr]

I think the problem with early access games and tutorials is that the games constantly change, and the tutorials are sort of afterthoughts that the developers really wish didn't exist at all.

I understand that feeling. Writing software is fun, writing tests and documentation is not.

Some software developers use TTD, Test Driven Development, where they write the tests first and then write the code until the tests succeed. Seems like indie game developers should try Tutorial Driven Development, where they write the tutorial for any mechanic before actually implementing it. Perhaps it would even limit the amount of times the mechanics need to be changed during development.

 

[neogunhero]

Vault 88 in Fallout 4 turned out to be a lot shorter than I thought, which is a shame. I moved on to the Nuka World expansion, which is pretty mediocre so far. The idea behind it seems like it would be fun on paper, but neither the gameplay nor the storytelling is very interesting.

I did Nuka World as fast as I could. It was tedious and took too much time. I didn’t have fun doing it but I wanted to see it through. There are no differences to any of the choices you make. All that it’s really good is if you really really want to be a raider back in the Commonwealth. I’d recommend trying to speed run Nuka World if you’re wanting to finish it.

 

[ZedClampet]

I’ve been noticing my GPU and CPU have been staying around 60-70% utilization in most games. I was wondering if this is a problem but no matter what I search I can’t find definitive answers.

It's not typically a problem. If your CPU were maxing out, that would be a problem. On the other hand, unless capped in some way (which could include heat, FPS caps, CPU bottlenecks, etc), your GPU usage should be high, even approaching or at 100 percent.

 

[Brian Boru]

So it may be a while before this reappears in the 'Completed' thread

It's the free Picross Touch, great for quickies, which I already described here and there.

PS the 39K levels are community contris in Steam Workshop.

 

[ZedClampet]

So it may be a while before this reappears in the 'Completed' thread

It's the free Picross Touch, great for quickies, which I already described here and there.

PS the 39K levels are community contris in Steam Workshop.

Based on it being out for 7 years as of last week, that's 15 new puzzles per day. You're going to have to work faster.

 

[Johnway]

Vault 88 in Fallout 4 turned out to be a lot shorter than I thought, which is a shame. I moved on to the Nuka World expansion, which is pretty mediocre so far. The idea behind it seems like it would be fun on paper, but neither the gameplay nor the storytelling is very interesting.

Nuka world was one of the last things i played and yeah... much of it is disappointing. More so when its the last thing you played. The problem is that its more tailored towards being evil then good. if you're good your real option is to just gun everyone down, locking you out of a large chunk of content. Even when i played the long game, playing the bad guy to get the perks before promptly going kill crazy on the raider scum, Preston garvey still hated my guts.

But its not just that, if like me you completed the main game, seen all POI and taken all available settlements, when you finally send the bandits out to take settlements, you're effectively attacking your own settlements. Which is stupid as hell. But to progress you have little choice until you've completed the campaign.