Coconut Monkey Cornerclub

[Rensje]

My girl's been going hard on Phasmophobia with a couple of our friends, but I think any horror game that you play together is inherently less scary. While you are communicating you're focused on each other rather than the game, making the impact of both the visuals and the sound design less pronounced. It just detracts from the experience a bit, no matter how cool the idea behind the game is.

My favourite way to play horror games will always be by myself in a dimly lit room. I have fond memories of playing System Shock 2 and hearing the voice of SHODAN talk to me as if the sound was coming from inside my own cybernetic mind. It creeped me the hell out. Or what about the creepy gorefest that is Resident Evil 7? I think that game nails the eerie atmosphere. You never feel quite at ease. Maybe right after a boss fight or a chase, but it doesn't last. Alien: Isolation comes to mind as well, for the same reasons.

I don't get 3rd person horror games, now that I think about it. If you're playing a character it's hard to get as invested and you won't be scared half as much as a result. If it's me doing the walking and interacting, then it can be extremely effective. I know a lot of people swear by games like Silent Hill, but I don't know, that just doesn't do it for me. If you're going with 3rd person horror, make it campy and a bit more action-y like Resident Evil 2 Remake.

You know what else is a horror game? Escape From Tarkov. It's not meant to be one, but holy **** is it ever.

 

[Frindis]

@Rensje I had a scary experience playing RE7: Biohazard VR with my nephews. Since we all were new to the game (I played the demo) we all managed to get sucked into the world and feeling the eeriness. We also tried to scare each other talking about what could potentially be around the next corner. It is not the same as playing it alone, but ít definitely was fun.

The scariest experience with EFT is when you tactically sneak in Factory, looking to get your hands on that sweet loot on the 2nd floor. Then you hear the most horrifying sound ever as a player is running his ass off and beating you to the loot while screaming at your face:! "I got the gamma container, boooy!

 

[Zloth]

No Man's Sky has some parts that are supposed to be kinda sorta scary, I suppose. (I'm way more scared of prune juice.)

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a game of Company of Heroes with two friends. Not particularly scary, but it was very nice to be able to play together again. It was a good game too, with us being driven back, holding the line and then mounting a counter offensive that slowly pushed the lines forward until my friends managed to break through with a whole bunch of tanks.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Maybe not worth its own thread I guess, and not free either so won't suit that thread, but I just picked up Homeworld Remastered collection for €3.19 (90% off) on GOG. Get on it if you're into it. That's a lot of classic game for the money!

Homeworld® Remastered Collection

Die Homeworld Remastered Collection enthält: Homeworld Remastered Edition Homeworld 2

www.gog.com

 

[Zloth]

Did you get Emergence? I vaguely remember having more fun with that one than the original.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I actually played Cataclysm (Take that Blizzard!) first as well, a couple of years after release, then the other games later. When Homeworld came out my PC didnt have a 3d graphics card. The atmosphere in the games is still great, I havent played anything like it since.

So many games on the list, I'll see how far I get through these 2 first before I pick up Emergence.

 

[Sarafan]

Maybe not worth its own thread I guess, and not free either so won't suit that thread, but I just picked up Homeworld Remastered collection for €3.19 (90% off) on GOG. Get on it if you're into it. That's a lot of classic game for the money!

I'm currently playing Homeworld Deserts of Kharak. I was very skeptical about the game: a Homeworld game which isn't set in space couldn't be good. I was wrong. The game is great and to my surprise it has Homeworld atmosphere! It's mostly due to great soundtrack. The plot is also very "Homeworldish". I'd recommend it to everyone who liked the original Homeworld series. You won't be disappointed. It's also currently on sale on GOG. The only major issue is performance. The game runs horrible even on high-end hardware. It's badly optimized. On my RTX 2070 Super I have drops to 30-35 fps during bigger battles. It was the same on my previous graphics card GTX 1060, so I guess the game doesn't fully utilize the graphics card and the processor due to bad coding.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

@Sarafan I forgot about that one actually. A streamer/Youtuber I casually follow got into it a couple of years ago and it looked quite fast paced, I may be remembering wrong? I generally prefer to turtle in RTS games as my use of shortcuts and apm is awful, in Homeworld I probably spend more time paused than playing Is that possible in Deserts of Kharak?

I think its the case with many RTS games with lots of units and hit calculations happening simultaneously that they hit the CPU hard, I'm not any kind of programmer or software engineer but at least thats how I understandd it.

 

[IndecentLouie]

I just purchased Middle Earth: Shadow of War Definitive edition over at Fanatial for £6.79 (although the base game is quite cheap at allyouplay.com at £2.69)
and also Doom from Fanatical for £3.89.

They only last for another hour though if anyone is interested.
edit - actually DOOM is that price for anther 10 days! my mistake

 

[Sarafan]

@Sarafan I forgot about that one actually. A streamer/Youtuber I casually follow got into it a couple of years ago and it looked quite fast paced, I may be remembering wrong? I generally prefer to turtle in RTS games as my use of shortcuts and apm is awful, in Homeworld I probably spend more time paused than playing Is that possible in Deserts of Kharak?

The game lacks an active pause unfortunately. I missed this feature a lot. As for the pace, it's not as fast as Starcraft for example. Bigger units are slow which slows down the game in overall. The gameplay requires a lot of micro-management though, which can be a little hard without active pause system.

I think its the case with many RTS games with lots of units and hit calculations happening simultaneously that they hit the CPU hard, I'm not any kind of programmer or software engineer but at least thats how I understandd it.

I tried the game on Core i5 7500 and Ryzen 5 3600. It runs the same on both. Basically both processors were bored during my playthrough. Same goes for GPUs. When a game doesn't put a full load on the CPU or GPU and the performance is bad, this means it's badly coded.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

The game lacks an active pause unfortunately. I missed this feature a lot. As for the pace, it's not as fast as Starcraft for example. Bigger units are slow which slows down the game in overall. The gameplay requires a lot of micro-management though, which can be a little hard without active pause system.

Ahh thats what I was worried about, I might give it a try for 4 euros or whatever though. Maybe its not too late for me to git gud, or at least better.

I tried the game on Core i5 7500 and Ryzen 5 3600. It runs the same on both. Basically both processors were bored during my playthrough. Same goes for GPUs. When a game doesn't put a full load on the CPU or GPU and the performance is bad, this means it's badly coded.

It has a single thread bottleneck same as Starcraft for example then. I believe its always been a problem in RTS games especially, except for maybe Ashes of the Singularity? I like to cut the programmers some slack, I have no idea how the nuts and bolts of it work but what I have read suggests that it's pretty complicated to get multithreaded stuff to work well, and the deadlines those guys are working under are quite extreme.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

Throwing this out here: damn, Northgard is HARD. Like, campaign on hard level I made it to the "worm" thing and took a break. Conquest? 1 win in like 5 attemps on normal difficulty. I guess I need to figure out clans better and be more active with my forces, but it's kinda hard when it seems half of my game is waiting for new worker to spawn so I can immadietely send him/her to work on something I have planned 30 minutes ago.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Throwing this out here: damn, Northgard is HARD. Like, campaign on hard level I made it to the "worm" thing and took a break. Conquest? 1 win in like 5 attemps on normal difficulty. I guess I need to figure out clans better and be more active with my forces, but it's kinda hard when it seems half of my game is waiting for new worker to spawn so I can immadietely send him/her to work on something I have planned 30 minutes ago.

I vaguely remember seeing that game in early access a few years ago, reminded me of the Settlers 2 a bit? Sounds like it might be more my pace.

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

I vaguely remember seeing that game in early access a few years ago, reminded me of the Settlers 2 a bit? Sounds like it might be more my pace.

It's a good one - a bit of The Settlers vibe is there for sure but I find it less relaxing. To actually win you have to do things right and be active, just looking at your people doing their business won't take you very far. But of course there are moments when you can chill, especially during winters, so it's not high octane RTS like StarCraft II.

There's story mode that serves as quite long tutorial and in general I like most of the things - so far I am only a bit annoyed by AI never knowing when to give up.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

It's a good one - a bit of The Settlers vibe is there for sure but I find it less relaxing. To actually win you have to do things right and be active, just looking at your people doing their business won't take you very far. But of course there are moments when you can chill, especially during winters, so it's not high octane RTS like StarCraft II.

There's story mode that serves as quite long tutorial and in general I like most of the things - so far I am only a bit annoyed by AI never knowing when to give up.

I like the sound of it, I always especially enjoy a story mode for introducing the mechanics and pulling me through the learning curve. On the list it goes, I've been looking for a new city builder or RTS type thing.

I bailed out on Wasteland 3 after about 10 or so hours btw, wasn't grabbing me but that can also be life stuff too. I spent a lot of time on Wasteland 2 after a start and stop a few years ago so maybe it'll get me again later.

 

[Sarafan]

Ahh thats what I was worried about, I might give it a try for 4 euros or whatever though. Maybe its not too late for me to git gud, or at least better.

The game is not that hard. I finished it on normal without any bigger difficulties. It's a lot easier than both original Homeworld games. Well worth these 4 euro.

It has a single thread bottleneck same as Starcraft for example then. I believe its always been a problem in RTS games especially, except for maybe Ashes of the Singularity? I like to cut the programmers some slack, I have no idea how the nuts and bolts of it work but what I have read suggests that it's pretty complicated to get multithreaded stuff to work well, and the deadlines those guys are working under are quite extreme.

You're probably right, but this makes the game one of the worst optimized in history. No matter what hardware you use, you always get a similar experience. It's totally playable however and fully worth these 20 hours I committed to finish it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I bought it and Emergence anyway, only 4 euros for extra hibernation time entertainment.

I totally havent played the game, so I guess I'll see how bad it is. Over 30fps doesnt sound too bad for a strategy game.

I guess I have a defensive reaction because years ago people all over tech forums were claiming almost every game was poorly optimized/badly coded. Mainly because they ran badly on the AMD chips at the time. It obviously traumatized me

 

[Zloth]

Years ago? That's still happening all the time - even in turn-based games.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Well, theres people who say they can tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz on the desktop. I dont think I can, but all things are possible and I've never done a side by side.

I wonder if its something like when you move to a higher resolution monitor or TV. I always think it doesnt look much better but when I look at a lower resolution screen after using a higher one for a while the difference seems obvious.

 

[Frindis]

I used a 60Hz 40'inch TV as my computer screen for roughly a decade before I invested in my 144Hz, 27'inch Gsync. For me, the biggest changes were how the colors looked more vivid and how the gameplay felt more smooth when looking around. With the TV I basically had problems noticing stuff when turning around fast in fps games, because the pixels would just melt into each other and it would be hard to distinguish a player from a bush. With the 144Hz I am able to spot people much faster and react accordingly.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

@Frindis I think a lot of might be to do with the response time and quality/type of the panel rather then the refresh rate, although I'm sure it helps. Also 40 inch 1080p to 27" 2560x1440 is a huge leap in pixel density!

I've had an 24" Asus IPS 1920x1200 60hz an went to a Dell IPS 25" 2560x1440 60hz and for me resolution/sharpness diference wasn't spectacular at first but more noticeable when they were side by side or when switching back. Earlier this year I bought a 144hz 2560x1440 IPS screen, and its noticeably smoother in FPS/3rd person action games even at my low level of skill. I've started to lower settings to keep it as far above 60 as I can because of it. But on the desktop and in strategy games I cant see much difference at all.

 

[Brian Boru]

60Hz 40'inch TV … pixels would just melt into each other and it would be hard to distinguish a player from a bush

What? Those were all bushes, you're imagining things, or else there's ghosting on your monitor.

people who say they can tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz on the desktop … I always think it doesnt look much better

Me too. Linus Sebastian did an interesting comparison earlier this year, and he and his sidekick had a tough time telling super-doopers from ornery.

I think a lot of might be to do with the response time and quality/type of the panel rather then the refresh rate

I agree. New gear always bring many improvements to the table, not just the headline ones.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Me too. Linus Sebastian did an interesting comparison earlier this year, and he and his sidekick had a tough time telling super-doopers from ornery.

Can you post a link to the video? He does a lot of monitor stuff it seems.

I was meaning I feel like getting FPS up to 100+ seems much smoother in fast paced games, not sure how much difference a 240/360hz monitor would make to me though.

 

[Frindis]

@Brian Boru I do have a vivid imagination Ghosting seems to explain what I experienced quite well.