August 2025 General Game Discussion

[neogunhero]

I have a confession that might revoke my PC gamer title. I have never really played Age of Empires 2 before. I've dabbled sure, but not to the same extent as 3 or 4. I played AoE 3 for a good 30 hours, AoE4 for a good 60, but never touched AoE2 much beyond a now defunct "HD Edition".

The newest Definitive Edition with a few DLC is on sale for only $13 and I'm very tempted to give it a shot. I liked 3 and 4, so surely I'll like what's considered the best in the series.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I have a confession that might revoke my PC gamer title. I have never really played Age of Empires 2 before. I've dabbled sure, but not to the same extent as 3 or 4. I played AoE 3 for a good 30 hours, AoE4 for a good 60, but never touched AoE2 much beyond a now defunct "HD Edition".

The newest Definitive Edition with a few DLC is on sale for only $13 and I'm very tempted to give it a shot. I liked 3 and 4, so surely I'll like what's considered the best in the series.

I have them from sales, but I've never played them.

They can try to take my PC Gamer title, but I've misplaced the documents.

 

[Zloth]

I think I played Age of Empire 1 a little at a friends' house way back in the day - and that's it for that game.

I found something in a guide I didn't know - I can cast spells from horseback (or cowback or whatever that critter is we ride on)! An attack where even a lance can't reach me? Ooooh! OK, knight-that-zaps-me-for-90%-health, let's play Catch the Fireball!

And now I have a nice lightning spell. I had to burn 30 of those small gold runes to get it, but that's fine. And I should be able to get that black flame fireball soon, too. I'm finally getting to be a real spell caster!

I also found out that those water-spout things can be used to help get down to a location, too, so I finally got down to that little beach near the starting location. Got a funky ashes of war item and figured that I should really sit down and try to make those things work. Those bats that bothered me at the start were subjected to some deadly experimentation.

Then I tried a game of 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, but despite winning my very first game I had no interest in doing that again.

This, to you, is a game where you don't have to think much!? I think I need a bulk order of humble pies....

 

[BeardyHat]

NOTE: I've been a poor forum member lately, not really reading the board, mostly talking to myself. I think I've reached a critical moment regarding my health, my brain function, and my general survivability. If I don't start sleeping soon...I have a Dr appt wed. I know exactly what the problem is, so maybe this will be coming to an end soon.

It happens. I've been the same way pretty often. See this post, I'm immediately referring to myself.

Get well, hopefully the doctor can help. Though it often feels like you need to tell them what you think is wrong with you before they really acknowledge it, but it sounds like you probably have a good idea on that one.

I have a confession that might revoke my PC gamer title. I have never really played Age of Empires 2 before. I've dabbled sure, but not to the same extent as 3 or 4. I played AoE 3 for a good 30 hours, AoE4 for a good 60, but never touched AoE2 much beyond a now defunct "HD Edition".

The newest Definitive Edition with a few DLC is on sale for only $13 and I'm very tempted to give it a shot. I liked 3 and 4, so surely I'll like what's considered the best in the series.

I played the hell out of the original and have now owned 2 for years now, but haven't touched it at all. Not sure why that is, given I do I like RTS games, I just usually default to something else like Warcraft or C&C.

I think I played Age of Empire 1 a little at a friends' house way back in the day - and that's it for that game.

I found something in a guide I didn't know - I can cast spells from horseback (or cowback or whatever that critter is we ride on)! An attack where even a lance can't reach me? Ooooh! OK, knight-that-zaps-me-for-90%-health, let's play Catch the Fireball!

And now I have a nice lightning spell. I had to burn 30 of those small gold runes to get it, but that's fine. And I should be able to get that black flame fireball soon, too. I'm finally getting to be a real spell caster!

I also found out that those water-spout things can be used to help get down to a location, too, so I finally got down to that little beach near the starting location. Got a funky ashes of war item and figured that I should really sit down and try to make those things work. Those bats that bothered me at the start were subjected to some deadly experimentation.


This, to you, is a game where you don't have to think much!? I think I need a bulk order of humble pies....

Casting spells from horseback definitely makes things easier, especially dragons! But it can be easy to get caught out when you run out of stamina.

Still only a few hours in Vomitorium, but I've found myself pretty enamored with it. I thought I had reached an impass finally, but went back and killed some bosses who wrecked me earlier. It was still a very tough fight, I think made together by being on Deck, but I finished them and then discovered I unlocked a previously locked off path, which also got my a new item to explore some other areas I've not been able to.

It's a pretty great game, even if it's hella ugly.

 

[Pifanjr]

I believe I'm at the last level of Creeper World, or at the very least near it. The last mission I completed had a timer though, which was annoying. For a moment I thought I lost the mission as I was just a minute or two too late to destroy the objective. I might have very well dropped the game if I had to redo that mission, but luckily I got a second chance with another timer to destroy a different objective, which I did fairly easily.

What I believe to be the last mission has a timer too, so hopefully I won't struggle with it too much.

I tried out some new games this weekend. One of which was Planet Crafter. I am unsure if this is hitting the spot for me, it's casual and relaxing sure, but also a bit boring... I'm right under the 2 hour mark so I'm unsure if I will refund or not. I should have just tried the demo first. It's really not a bad game at all, evidenced by the Overwhelmingly Positive reviews, just not sure if it's what I want to play at the moment. The survival aspects are easy and not difficult to manage at all, but I wish for a bit more challenge and risk/stakes in a way.

I loved The Planet Crafter, but it's definitely a low stakes experience. It's almost impossible to die if you just keep an eye on your oxygen.

Funny, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole this weekend wanting to play some old BF games. I did a lot of searching for ways to play online in 2025, and there are definitely some ways, it just didn't seem that worth it to me. Then, I realized I don't even have a CD drive to install the games, but I could always nab it off the Internet Archive. I realized I had BF1942 on the EA app, so I tried that, but that version has a lot of issues that require patching, then modding to get working online, I didn't want to do all of that.

One thing I didn't try this time around is getting BF2 Project Reality working. That mod is still around and has a good number of players, I even tried it just a few years ago. I may give that a shot again, not the purest BF2 vanilla experience but still a lot of fun.

Getting BF2 to work with bots was already almost more effort than I was willing to put into it and I didn't even bother adding in the AI Commander. I only played a couple of rounds before I was done with the game again, but I'm still happy I did it.

Also at you and @Pifanjr have either of you guys tried Ravenfield? It's singleplayer with bots only, but I feel it really captures the experience of 1942 and 2 from back in the day, especially if you played with just bots with any regularity.

Ravenfield on Steam

Fight upon the Ravenfield together with your Blue allies! Take down those pesky Reds using helicopters, tanks, guns, and active ragdoll physics!

store.steampowered.com

Looks fun, but I think I scratched my Shooter itch with Battlefield 2 for the foreseeable future.

I recommend Monster Train or its sequel, which is on Game Pass. Once you start a battle, you have to finish it to save progress, but it doesn't last too long, so I definitely consider this good for short play sessions. Also, as far as requiring thinking goes, I haven't thought anything in months, and I'm doing fine

I did really enjoy the demo for Monster Train 2. I'm not a big fan of roguelikes that reward you for beating the game with a higher difficulty, but Monster Train 2 seems to have quite a decent amount of different starting options and challenges to keep the game fresh.

I've put it on my wishlist.

@Pifanjr Maybe something completely different might be fun to try out. I play it from time to time as it has fast rounds, fun weapons, and overall a free good game.

Super Animal Royale on Steam

It’s a fight for furvival! Super Animal Royale is a 64-player, frenetic, top-down 2D battle royale where murderous animals fight tooth, claw, and machine gun across an abandoned safari park.

store.steampowered.com

This looks like it might be fun to play with my kid, I'll give it a try, thanks!

This, to you, is a game where you don't have to think much!? I think I need a bulk order of humble pies....

I definitely didn't put much thought into my moves. Luckily I was playing against an easy AI.

 

[Pifanjr]

I forgot, I also played a bunch more Barotrauma with my friends. It's still going surprisingly well, though one of my friends got himself stuck in a shipwreck that was irradiated and he died of radiation poisoning. His body with all of its loot started floating up though, so I had to go after it, leaving my other friend behind still in the wreck. I managed to grab the body, but my other friend apparently didn't bring backup oxygen, so I had to rush back down to pick him up. He almost suffocated, but made it inside with 3% left in his oxygen tank.

The friend who died then respawned in a shuttle, tried to get back to us and had a Crawler crash through his window and immediately kill him again. I think we've turned off penalties for dying though, so him dying again didn't really matter beyond him having to wait to respawn again.

We're also barely breaking even with all of the costs for fixing our ship and our bodies and replenishing our supplies between missions, but we have a decent amount left in the bank for emergencies. Still, it would be nice if we could upgrade our submarine, so hopefully our missions will go a little bit smoother next time.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I did really enjoy the demo for Monster Train 2. I'm not a big fan of roguelikes that reward you for beating the game with a higher difficulty, but Monster Train 2 seems to have quite a decent amount of different starting options and challenges to keep the game fresh.

Eh, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Like Balatro, there are many combinations to try to win with before you worry about raising the difficulty. I have both 1 and 2, and so far I'm enjoying the first game a little more than the 2nd. Both are good, though

 

[neogunhero]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJSie_3ncc8


Decided yesterday would be a good day to do some deep cleaning on my PC after seeing this video. Deleted a ton of large games, cleaned the disks, used this tool and disabled a lot of telemetry features mainly. There were some settings I was more wary of, so I didn't bother with a lot of them. I then decided to enroll in the ESU program to get another year of Windows 10, but I could not find the link to do so anywhere in the Settings app. Maybe it was because of that program I used caused it to become hidden, I'm not sure. I have the backup settings enabled correctly, and I see links to upgrade to Win11, but no ESU program link or confirmation. Oh well, we'll see what happens come October.

I also decided to switch to Brave as my default browser on desktop. I've used it on my phone for the past 3-4 months and have loved almost every single thing about it. It's incredibly fast, blocks all ads without additional extensions, strong tracking protection, lots of content filters to disable things like social media links and paywalls to news websites, all of that. The only thing is it takes a bit to configure properly, as some of the stronger protections can break some sites, but after some time I got it set up perfectly. I also love how I can sync with my phone app without making an account, but one big downside is that I now have to switch to a password manager. I know I should have already been using one, but now that my browser does not have an account attached to it, those passwords could get lost more easily.

I have been using Edge since I did my last reinstall nearly two years ago, and it really is "fine". It's not very exciting but also not horrible. I've just been trying to shift away from being so entangled in the Microsoft ecosystem though, so now was the time to change, and I'm beating myself up for not doing it sooner.

 

[neogunhero]

I pulled the trigger on a new 2TB SSD to replace my main drive. Since that will require a reinstall, I might as well just go with Win11 after complaining about it so much. That video I posted above also gives me hope that it will be just fine and it won’t be as bad as I’m making it seem. Will take some configuring but that’s no issue to me. Just seems to be much less of a hassle than keeping Win10 around for another year.

 

[Pifanjr]

Eh, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Like Balatro, there are many combinations to try to win with before you worry about raising the difficulty. I have both 1 and 2, and so far I'm enjoying the first game a little more than the 2nd. Both are good, though

My problem is that the starting difficulty is often so easy that you can't lose, but a lot of these roguelikes make you start at the easiest difficulty for every single class/character/deck. I just want to beat the game once with every class/character/deck at a challenging difficulty.

I also decided to switch to Brave as my default browser on desktop. I've used it on my phone for the past 3-4 months and have loved almost every single thing about it. It's incredibly fast, blocks all ads without additional extensions, strong tracking protection, lots of content filters to disable things like social media links and paywalls to news websites, all of that. The only thing is it takes a bit to configure properly, as some of the stronger protections can break some sites, but after some time I got it set up perfectly. I also love how I can sync with my phone app without making an account, but one big downside is that I now have to switch to a password manager. I know I should have already been using one, but now that my browser does not have an account attached to it, those passwords could get lost more easily.

I have been using Edge since I did my last reinstall nearly two years ago, and it really is "fine". It's not very exciting but also not horrible. I've just been trying to shift away from being so entangled in the Microsoft ecosystem though, so now was the time to change, and I'm beating myself up for not doing it sooner.

I used Brave for a while, but then it had a couple of controversies with both the browser and the CEO, plus it still uses Chromium, so I decided to switch to Firefox instead.

 

[Pifanjr]

We had our first defeat in Barotrauma. We got a mission to retrieve some cargo from a wreck. Like always I just parked our sub right above it for easy access, but before I was even done my friends started yelling and the entire sub was suddenly filled with water. I only made it two steps from my console before I died.

Turns out the wreck had been taken over by an alien organism and the weapons were still active. We had been torn apart before we even realised what was happening.

One of my friends wanted to try to get inside and shut off the weapons, then repair our sub and loot the wreck, but he got stuck inside the wreck and died as well. We could've just kept respawning until we cleared the wreck, but we decided to reload instead.

Apparently the reload also regenerated the wreck and this time it just had a couple of crawlers inside that were easily dispatched and we were able to loot the entire wreck without difficulty, though we somehow failed the mission anyway. It wasn't clear what we had to get from the wreck, so we probably accidentally deconstructed something or used part of it to fabricate something. Regardless, we got a ton of useful stuff and a ton of crap we can sell, so it was still very much worth it.

 

[neogunhero]

I used Brave for a while, but then it had a couple of controversies with both the browser and the CEO, plus it still uses Chromium, so I decided to switch to Firefox instead.

Brave definitely isn't perfect in every way, just in the ways that matter most to me. There is a lot of crypto and AI integration on here, but thankfully you can turn it all off to some degree.

Apparently the CEO of Brave created JavaScript and Mozilla, cool, then I see the other stuff he's done. Not cool at all.

Maybe going back to Firefox would be better.

 

[Zed Clampet]

My problem is that the starting difficulty is often so easy that you can't lose, but a lot of these roguelikes make you start at the easiest difficulty for every single class/character/deck. I just want to beat the game once with every class/character/deck at a challenging difficulty.

I'm not sure when you played the MT2 demo or how it may have differed from the game at launch, but I definitely haven't had a problem with it being too easy. It took me about 10 hours for my first win. I suppose I could have just been catastrophically bad at it.

 

[Frindis]

I need to jump back in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I was supposed to yesterday, but I ended up in Dayz killing a fresh spawn (I was also fresh spawn), cutting him up into little pieces, and roasting him on my open fire. Sounds a bit brutal, but his demise made me survive just a little longer before I started to lose blood from a bacterial infection, and ended my own life after jumping from a large building.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm not sure when you played the MT2 demo or how it may have differed from the game at launch, but I definitely haven't had a problem with it being too easy. It took me about 10 hours for my first win. I suppose I could have just been catastrophically bad at it.

I don't remember exactly, but I think the demo might have only contained a partial run, up to the first boss or so.

I still have Monster Train 2 on my wishlist, but I've just added the first game as well.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I don't remember exactly, but I think the demo might have only contained a partial run, up to the first boss or so.

Ah, so this actually highlights something a little odd about the games. There are 8 battles in a run, and you basically make it to the 8th battle every time. But the final battle is vastly more challenging than all the other battles. The first 7 battles are essentially just getting prepared for the final one, getting bonuses, improving levels with room cards and characters with equipment cards, etc. It can feel somewhat frustrating to coast through the first 7 levels and then get utterly destroyed in the final fight.

 

[BeardyHat]

I pulled the trigger on a new 2TB SSD to replace my main drive. Since that will require a reinstall, I might as well just go with Win11 after complaining about it so much. That video I posted above also gives me hope that it will be just fine and it won’t be as bad as I’m making it seem. Will take some configuring but that’s no issue to me. Just seems to be much less of a hassle than keeping Win10 around for another year.

Windows 11 is quite fine, honestly. And there's a few features (that have been in Linux for awhile) that I'd have trouble going back to Win 10 without, such as tabbed Explorer windows. I also really enjoyed the Phone Link app until I switched back to Google Messages, as now the Phone Link app plays weird with my group text, so I've had to stop using it. I'm not a huge fan of the new Start Menu, but given how I've been using Start for the past several years (Windows Key, type application I want, hit Enter), I don't have much need to interact and poke through it for stuff.

Windows 11 is much maligned, but I it's fine as an OS. It does its job and gets out of the way, for the most part. Just make sure you disable stuff like the second chance OOBE so it stops pestering you to get Office 365 and disable OneDrive completely, otherwise it obnoxiously syncs your desktop across computers and doesn't store your files in the usual local location (C:\Users)

I'm not sure when you played the MT2 demo or how it may have differed from the game at launch, but I definitely haven't had a problem with it being too easy. It took me about 10 hours for my first win. I suppose I could have just been catastrophically bad at it.

Monster Train is the first deck builder/roguelike where I was actually able to make it to the challenge tiers. Most Roguelikes I can maybe struggle my way to the final boss, only to be swiftly kicked back to the start (Slay the Spire/FTL). I felt like it was one of the first ones for people like me that don't really play them with any regularity.

Speaking of Roguelikes, I've been thinking about jumping back into Caves of Qud lately, though I don't actually like playing that one as a Roguelike, much to the chagrin of a friend of mine.

I finished Vomitoriem yesterday. Steam says I spent 4-hours with it, but the game says I took just over 3 to complete it. Anyway, fun game, loved the exploration, the Dark Souls and Metroid elements mixed together were fun. The story is so-so, not bad, not amazing. The boss fights are completely mediocre, being made-up completely of bosses you simply circle strafe for 2 minutes straight until they die. Sometimes you gotta throw a jump in there to jump over their projectiles. But you're not coming to this game for the boss fights, so it's ok to just write those off, though there probably should have been half the amount. Anyway, for $10, I'd recommend, it was a good way to spend 3 (or 4) hours and I felt compelled to play it and a little obsessed with it.

 

[neogunhero]

Windows 11 is quite fine, honestly. And there's a few features (that have been in Linux for awhile) that I'd have trouble going back to Win 10 without, such as tabbed Explorer windows. I also really enjoyed the Phone Link app until I switched back to Google Messages, as now the Phone Link app plays weird with my group text, so I've had to stop using it. I'm not a huge fan of the new Start Menu, but given how I've been using Start for the past several years (Windows Key, type application I want, hit Enter), I don't have much need to interact and poke through it for stuff.

Windows 11 is much maligned, but I it's fine as an OS. It does its job and gets out of the way, for the most part. Just make sure you disable stuff like the second chance OOBE so it stops pestering you to get Office 365 and disable OneDrive completely, otherwise it obnoxiously syncs your desktop across computers and doesn't store your files in the usual local location (C:\Users)

Thanks for the tips. I'll definitely be doing all of that when I do my reinstall Friday. In an earlier post I also mentioned the free tool O&O ShutUp10 which is great for disabling lots of different trackers and telemetry stuff which I'll also use.

given how I've been using Start for the past several years (Windows Key, type application I want, hit Enter), I don't have much need to interact and poke through it for stuff.

You can't do this in Windows 11? I feel that has been a staple feature of Windows for decades, why would they go about messing with that.

 

[BeardyHat]

You can't do this in Windows 11? I feel that has been a staple feature of Windows for decades, why would they go about messing with that.

No, no, I'm saying that's how I exclusively use the Start menu, so I don't have any complaints about how it might be organized these days. You know, back in the Day is was Start > Programs > Etc and now I just type everything in without even looking.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I don't remember exactly, but I think the demo might have only contained a partial run, up to the first boss or so.

I still have Monster Train 2 on my wishlist, but I've just added the first game as well.

Ah, so this actually highlights something a little odd about the games. There are 8 battles in a run, and you basically make it to the 8th battle every time. But the final battle is vastly more challenging than all the other battles. The first 7 battles are essentially just getting prepared for the final one, getting bonuses, improving levels with room cards and characters with equipment cards, etc. It can feel somewhat frustrating to coast through the first 7 levels and then get utterly destroyed in the final fight.

After putting some more thought into it, this was a bit of an exaggeration. You can lose before the final round. It's just pretty rare.

 

[Pifanjr]

Speaking of Roguelikes, I've been thinking about jumping back into Caves of Qud lately, though I don't actually like playing that one as a Roguelike, much to the chagrin of a friend of mine.

I have a friend like that, who disables the permadeath in roguelikes. People should play the game however is enjoyable for them... but that doesn't mean I don't judge my friend

I've had Caves of Qud on my wishlist for a while now, but I feel like I should give Angband another serious try before I buy it. And maybe give Nethack and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead a try first as well.

After putting some more thought into it, this was a bit of an exaggeration. You can lose before the final round. It's just pretty rare.

Sounds a bit like the heart in Slay the Spire. Beating the first three acts is doable, especially on the lowest difficulty, but defeating the fourth is a lot harder and you'd need to have a well-prepared deck to have a chance of winning.

 

[Pifanjr]

I beat the main campaign of Creeper World 3. There are a hundred extra challenge maps and who knows how many more user-made ones, but I'm not planning on playing through all of those.

Not sure what I'll play next. I have a couple of games I left half-completed, one of which is Baldur's Gate 3 which I definitely want to return to at some point, but that might be easier to do when my kid is going to school again. In the mean time I might just browse through the freebies I've gotten from Epic and try a bunch of those.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I beat the main campaign of Creeper World 3. There are a hundred extra challenge maps and who knows how many more user-made ones, but I'm not planning on playing through all of those.

Not sure what I'll play next. I have a couple of games I left half-completed, one of which is Baldur's Gate 3 which I definitely want to return to at some point, but that might be easier to do when my kid is going to school again. In the mean time I might just browse through the freebies I've gotten from Epic and try a bunch of those.

Do you have RiME on Epic? I thought that was pretty good and a nice change of pace.

 

[Frindis]

Jupp, I'm playing it!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knh0HxK_d0Q

 

[neogunhero]

Been busy most weekends for the past 3-4 months or so. Even when I had my full week off of work over a month ago I didn't have much free time to do whatever I wanted. This weekend my wife is going out of town for a day with friends, leaving me all alone at the house for a good 6 hours or so. I plan to use this time wisely. Only problem is, I don't know what game to play just like so many others here.

BF2042 had a big update with a new map, and after the BF6 beta, I'm a bit fired up to give it a shot. I may run a few matches there, while not my favorite BF game it really isn't that bad overall, especially since launch.

I still have $15 in my Steam wallet, might spend that on something new. Enshrouded looks great, though not sure how well it is solo. Assassin's Creed Mirage is down to just $15, but I actually prefer the open world ones. Not sure what I'll end up playing.