December 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[red_5ive]

I wouldn't mind replaying Last of Us, this time with keyboard and mouse

Exactly why I grabbed it! I've played through it 3 times, all on Playstation. I have a PS5, but I'd rather play it again with the updated visuals with kb/mouse.

I've never played either of those Uncharted games. Or maybe I played the 4th one. Not sure.

I've only played the first 3 and been waiting for this one to go on sale.

But I think I'm finished this sale. I've already bought a ton of games.

I hear ya! I have to stop spending anymore money. I set aside some coin for this time of year, and I've reached my limit.

I don't even know what I've bought unless I go to the Help section and check my purchases haha

I actually just had to do that already. And I bought the games this morning lol

I'm gonna have a busy gaming first half of 2025 if not longer, as everything I got are my must-play/re-play titles.

 

[Pifanjr]

Played some Slime Rancher today. I guess you would consider it a sandbox since it doesn't tell you what to do. I've just been changing regular slimes into giant slimes. Like the tabby slimes are now giant rock slimes, and the regular slimes are now giant tabby slimes.

Not sure if there is a storyline or not. I'll just keep doing things until I get bored. I think I have all the slime types from the area I can get to, so I guess my next move is to expand into a new area.

As far as I know there is no story, you just keep unlocking new areas to get new slimes to get more money to unlock new items that get you more money and let you unlock new areas.

 

[ZedClampet]

As far as I know there is no story, you just keep unlocking new areas to get new slimes to get more money to unlock new items that get you more money and let you unlock new areas.

It was kind of humorous, but i googled whether there was a story, and Google's AI said, "Yes, there is a story. The story is that Beatrix moves to a new planet and attempts to become a successful rancher."

I'm not sure that qualifies as having a story. Stories usually have a beginning, a middle, an end and some sort of conflict. This qualifies more as a setting for you to create your own story as you play. I thought maybe the messages left by the previous owner, or perhaps the emails, led to something, but apparently not.

 

[Frindis]

52 hours in STALKER 2, so I am taking a little break. I don't want to rush anything. *Cough* I guess I am not exactly rushing when I have not yet finished the game yet

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (one sale) has surprised me a lot. The combat is decent enough, but it is the storywriting that has been really, really good. It is mature and so far has shown a lot of depth. The writing seems sincere if that makes sense. Let me show you guys what I mean with a few examples:

Here is a companion called Lann talking about aging, which for his race goes very fast:

 

[Johnway]

A bit more POE news, if you have a twitch account theres some swanky cosmetics drops to unlock watching select people playing POE2. Me? I'm going to just have it running in the background whilst playing another game and have the video at low quality and muted.

As for other POE news, i've decided to bite the bullet and invest in some more gear so i can get some 6 linked gear going. I compromise by have a 5 link because frankly no one is going ot have 1000+ fuse links spare (plus each stack is just 20...) Will it make my game better? probably not. i really don't want to play POE anymore, but... i don't know feel like i'm onto something and i want to just elevate my game to get the challenges sorted. But... it feels completely senseless to invest this much time for admittedly tat.

 

[BeardyHat]

52 hours in STALKER 2, so I am taking a little break. I don't want to rush anything. *Cough* I guess I am not exactly rushing when I have not yet finished the game yet

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (one sale) has surprised me a lot. The combat is decent enough, but it is the storywriting that has been really, really good. It is mature and so far has shown a lot of depth. The writing seems sincere if that makes sense. Let me show you guys what I mean with a few examples:

Here is a companion called Lann talking about aging, which for his race goes very fast:

That's interesting. This one is on my list, but I feel like I have so many Legacy RPG's to play through, I haven't even bothered picking it up.

I started playing Elite Dangerous yesterday morning, putting in an hour to see if I could trigger the muscle memories from 10 years ago (Can't believe it's that old) and after a lot of fumbling, as well as some in game UI elements to help with the shortcuts (playing with a controller), it's come back to me quite handily. I played through the intro of the new(ish) Odyssey expansion but needed to quit out and take a break. Unfortunately, this dumped me out of the tutorial entirely, so I really had to learn stuff on my own.

I was heavily into mining last I played, but it looks like before I stopped 10-years ago I reconfigured my ship for passenger transport; guess I needed something different. So, I picked-up where I left off and grabbed a passenger contract, which turned out to be a criminal wanting to go on vacation. This causes issues as the security forces might scan you if you're not well trusted and you'll be blown-up/arrested. No big deal, I figured, I might be able to get away with this.

So I took another break and then it occurred to me that missions have timers and timers are on a real clock, so I may potentially fail the mission by not playing. After putting my youngest to bed, I jumped on with my Steam Deck (Plays great, UI is small) and started jumping the MANY, MANY lightyears away that this person wanted to go. When I picked-up the contract, I only noticed the Credit amount and not the fact that they basically wanted to travel 300 light years out and 300 back. I decided to stick this all out and just have a trial by fire with the game to relearn everything. So after several hours, staying-up a little later than normal, I finally made it back to my jumping off point and now was the moment of truth.

In Elite, you can set your ship to run silently. This causes heat build-up and may destroy your ship, but you're nearly invisible to anyone and very unlikely to be scanned by Security. So I jumped in to the area the station was at and immediately set myself to run silent before contacting the station for docking permission. It was granted and I started speeding off towards the entrance to the station, hauling ass so as not to overheat. I had nearly made it inside the station to land, but I was coming at too steep an angle, forgetting that the entrances have basically metal guides to protect them from such maneuvers and ended-up crashing into it at high speed, training 3/4 of my shield and basically sticking myself into the wall above the entrance.

I was immediately scanned and destroyed, having been stuck in place there was nothing I could do. I ended-up paying 70k credits for my insurance policy on my ship and had to serve a prison sentence as punishment for my transporting this illegal passenger, not to mention failing the mission and missing out on 700k credits.

But, I did learn a lot, so I'm calling it a win:

1. I now remember how to fly
2. I now know not to take tourist missions, as they tend to want to go extremely far out and it takes entirely too long.
3. I now remember how to properly approach a station
4. I'm pretty sure there's other stuff, but I don't recall right now.

Anyway, I started-up this morning and from where I served my sentence, I'm now 115 lightyears from the station I had intended to be. At this point, I've decided to set myself up in the nearest systems to where I'm at and see if I can earn some more credits for a better ship to take on larger cargo and more passengers.

Somehow, between yesterday morning and this afternoon I've managed to play 6.4-hours of Elite (while also doing laundry, nice.) which is unheard of for me. I think I might be becoming a little obsessed right now, we'll see how long it lasts.

 

[Frindis]

@Johnway Tempted to get the King of the Faridun Supporter Pack. The hideout looks awesome as do some of the skins. You get a lot of coins also, so nice for future skins/animations and stash expansions when they go on sale (every three weeks I hear). The 480USD package also looks amazing, especially the portal effect! The price though, I would have had to be a super fan for that investment, lol.

Here are all the supporter packs if anyone is interested in taking a look:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHlYoGiF7JI

 

[Johnway]

@Johnway Tempted to get the King of the Faridun Supporter Pack. The hideout looks awesome as do some of the skins. You get a lot of coins also, so nice for future skins/animations and stash expansions when they go on sale (every three weeks I hear). The 480USD package also looks amazing, especially the portal effect! The price though, I would have had to be a super fan for that investment, lol.

Here are all the supporter packs if anyone is interested in taking a look:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHlYoGiF7JI

yeah don't be a sucker for it. I think the lord of ogham is my personal fav the rest are not to my tastes. Luckily i've got a fair few cosmetics from various challenges and free loot boxes so i have a look i'm happy with. thankfully i'm mostly immune to cosmetic sets as i prefer a natural look/progression appearance, the armor sets just seem too ott and restrictive for style. The same goes with the hideouts, i would like to design it in my own style and layout. But for those not so artistically inclined its fine i guess.

i had a similar opinion when it came to the division. Everyone comes decked out like spec op soldiers completely masked and any personality stripped out of them. I personally preferred a more casual civilian look instead.

 

[Frindis]

Delta Force Open Beta is out - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2507950/Delta_Force/

I played it for some hours back in early access and it is ok. I won't be returning to it right now because of PoE and other games I am playing, but sometime next year I'll give it a spin and see what has changed.

 

[red_5ive]

Delta Force Open Beta is out - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2507950/Delta_Force/

I played it for some hours back in early access and it is ok. I won't be returning to it right now because of PoE and other games I am playing, but sometime next year I'll give it a spin and see what has changed.

I didn't know this was a thing! I played the early 2000 games like there was no tomorrow. Black Hawk Down being my fav. Glad to see it's back. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Pifanjr]

Donate to Hold Mojang Accountable For Their Unlawful Behaviour, organized by Kian Brose

!! Conversion rate 10 sek = 0,92$, for a quick average remove a zero, … Kian Brose needs your support for Hold Mojang Accountable For Their Unlawful Behaviour

www.gofundme.com

A Swedish Minecraft modder is suing Mojang for violating several EU regulations, mostly in regards to writing a very vague terms of service agreement and then selectively applying it to block mods outside of the official Minecraft marketplace. He's managed to fund his gofundme to pay for a lawyer within 2 days.

 

[neogunhero]

If you’ve seen my posts in the Stalker 2 thread, I wrote how I’m taking a break from the game because it runs too poorly on my rig, so I’ve been trying to figure out what to play next. I’ve been excited to check out the new Indiana Jones game coming out this weekend, until they dropped the system requirements yesterday.

The minimum system requirements, which states is targeting Low preset at 1080p 60fps, requires a RTX 2060 SUPER. I have the base model, not the Super. Oh boy, here we go again… 😿 I beat the rest of the minimum specs so we’ll see if I can even get a steady 60FPS on Low lol. I’m still going to test it out. Some sources say it comes out tomorrow, others say Game Pass will release it either Sunday or Monday, so sometime this weekend I’ll make some time to benchmark it and (hopefully) play.

The main issue seems to be “baked in ray tracing” as I call it. Stalker 2 and Indiana Jones are the only games I can think of that have ray tracing build into the rendering pipeline with no way to disable it. Perhaps the ray tracing is more accurate if it’s “built in” compared to a toggle switch? I have no idea the reasoning to not allow players to disable it, even if that means a visual tradeoff for higher frames. I’m afraid this is only going to become increasingly common especially amongst AAA games.

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I am still wanting to play some RDR2 with mods, but I’ve had little time throughout the week to install mods. RDR2 technically can use Nexus Vortex, but most mod guides require a separate mod loader. I’ve become too cushioned with using Vortex, Workshop, and built in mod browsers for extremely simple modding. If you require me to use anything else besides those, I need to make some time to carefully read guides to make sure I don’t screw anything up.


Speaking of which, I’ve really been wanting to return to GTA 4 as well. That is perhaps my favorite in the series, especially the story. It often gets overlooked, but I believe GTA 4 has some of the best written characters Rockstar has ever created. The game runs *fine* without mods, but mods really make it shine on modern PCs. I found a very well made mod guide published just this year, but it’s extremely lengthy and would take me at least an hour to just get the mods installed. That’s something I may end up doing this weekend as well.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, I'm bored with Slime Rancher. I opened up a new area, and it had exactly the same slimes as the first area. I suppose this means I should continue to evolve the slimes I have. But to what purpose? What is the point of this game?

Think I'm going to get the new Farming Simulator game. If I want to zone out, there is a lot more to strive for in FS than in Slime Rancher.

 

[ZedClampet]

The main issue seems to be “baked in ray tracing” as I call it. Stalker 2 and Indiana Jones are the only games I can think of that have ray tracing build into the rendering pipeline with no way to disable it. Perhaps the ray tracing is more accurate if it’s “built in” compared to a toggle switch? I have no idea the reasoning to not allow players to disable it, even if that means a visual tradeoff for higher frames. I’m afraid this is only going to become increasingly common especially amongst AAA games.

My guess is that Nvidia is paying for this to be the case. They have to know that everyone just turns it off every time they open a new game, which completely destroys the competitive advantage they have.

I found a game last night on Steam that specifically says only Nvidia cards can play the game, that AMD is not supported. Supposedly this is because they are simulating the entire solar system and only ray tracing can put the light everywhere the way it should be.

 

[neogunhero]

My guess is that Nvidia is paying for this to be the case. They have to know that everyone just turns it off every time they open a new game, which completely destroys the competitive advantage they have.

That seems unfair but not illegal. You’re right about people turning off Ray Tracing, it seems it’s only worth it to use it if you’re able to buy a beefy card capable of handling it, which makes the whole idea of ray tracing seem funny and unimportant to me. I got my RTX 2060 around when it first came out, so that was the time we first started to see ray tracing as we know it today in games. I know it was the bottom of the stack of that GPU lineup, but even then ray tracing slowed every game I had down to single digit frame rates. My point being, it seems highly unnecessary, my guess is that most gamers don’t care to use it, and to force it into games will only cause players to either not play that specific game or to buy a new GPU. Win Win for Nvidia if they already got paid to force RT on and make some GPU sales from it, lose lose for consumers who don’t have beefy PCs.

 

[ZedClampet]

That seems unfair but not illegal. You’re right about people turning off Ray Tracing, it seems it’s only worth it to use it if you’re able to buy a beefy card capable of handling it, which makes the whole idea of ray tracing seem funny and unimportant to me. I got my RTX 2060 around when it first came out, so that was the time we first started to see ray tracing as we know it today in games. I know it was the bottom of the stack of that GPU lineup, but even then ray tracing slowed every game I had down to single digit frame rates. My point being, it seems highly unnecessary, my guess is that most gamers don’t care to use it, and to force it into games will only cause players to either not play that specific game or to buy a new GPU. Win Win for Nvidia if they already got paid to force RT on and make some GPU sales from it, lose lose for consumers who don’t have beefy PCs.

They are locking out a lot of players. It's questionable to me if this is to the benefit of the dev/publishers, but it's definitely a positive for Nvidia as everyone with a 2060 or earlier model, including those tons of 1650s and 1660s they sold when there were no other graphics cards available--all those people can either upgrade or not play.

 

[ZedClampet]

I don't know why the Government Subsidy mod is always the most popular Farming Simulator mod. If you want to adjust the money, either for roleplaying purposes or just to give yourself a head start, all you have to do is click on the save file, which is easy to find in your Documents section, and type in how much money you want to have.

The Government Subsidy mod ruins the game, IMO. It showers you with money to the point that you can quickly afford pretty much everything.

 

[red_5ive]

The main issue seems to be “baked in ray tracing” as I call it

Yuck. I'm not a fan of RT. Even for having a rig capable enough to play with it on, I still disable it. The performance hit isn't worth it, I'd rather have higher framerate. Star Wars: Outlaws doesn't have a means to disable it, either. I'd like to see more titles with Unreal 5's Lumen. Robocop: Rogue City looks phenomenal with it enabled, and I didn't notice any significant performance hit.

I've yet to sign up for gamepass, but I think it's time. I might have to sign up to try out the new Indy game. And thanks for the reminder on that, I'd forgotten it was on the horizon.

 

[Frindis]

Just did this one so I can play the new Indiana Jones when it releases and play some Alien: Dark Descent + Microsoft Flight Simulator - https://gg.deals/freebie/free-14-day-pc-game-pass-codes/

What to do: Go to Discord, watch a 1-minute video = Get 14 days of free Game Pass. If you already have an account with GamePass, make a new one, and from what I have read and have experienced myself, it does not matter what country you live in to redeem the code.

"This offer is available exclusively for new subscribers. Officially, it's valid in the US, CA, MX, BR, UK, FR, DE, AU, JP, and KR regions. However, we successfully redeemed it in PL, so it's worth trying even if your region isn't listed!"

Easy Peasy Lemon squeezy, free games for 2 weeks.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just did this one so I can play the new Indiana Jones when it releases and play some Alien: Dark Descent + Microsoft Flight Simulator - https://gg.deals/freebie/free-14-day-pc-game-pass-codes/

What to do: Go to Discord, watch a 1-minute video = Get 14 days of free Game Pass. If you already have an account with GamePass, make a new one, and from what I have read and have experienced myself, it does not matter what country you live in to redeem the code.

"This offer is available exclusively for new subscribers. Officially, it's valid in the US, CA, MX, BR, UK, FR, DE, AU, JP, and KR regions. However, we successfully redeemed it in PL, so it's worth trying even if your region isn't listed!"

Easy Peasy Lemon squeezy, free games for 2 weeks.

hmm, I didn't realize Aliens: Dark Descent was on there. I've been wanting to play that.

 

[Pifanjr]

My PC woes continue. You might remember that my PC has a problem where it occasionally refuses to boot up, which can be fixed by removing or adding a RAM stick. Well, a couple of days ago, the CPU fan started being louder than usual and when I turned the PC on this morning it spun a little bit and then stopped, even though the PC was booting up as normal.

I checked the connection on the motherboard, but that didn't help. I did notice that if I tried to turn it by hand, it made some noise and didn't turn very well. So I took it off the CPU and discovered there were a bunch of hairs wrapped around the motor. I wasn't able to detach the fan blades from the motor though, so I couldn't get to it to clean it.

I did have an old heatsink that has 4 copper pipes that run through a whole bunch of metal fans, but I did not have the fan that goes with it, nor the screws to attach it to the motherboard, nor any thermal paste. Luckily I found a small business specialised in servers in the next town over that sold thermal paste and which had the option to pick up an order at their office. So I biked there during my lunch break to pick it up and the guy who handed it to me said they don't get orders like that very often. I did ask if they had any fans or heatsinks for desktop PCs, but sadly they did not.

So now I have a heatsink without a fan sitting loose on my CPU, but at least it has some fresh thermal paste. I ran a stress test of the CPU which pushed it to 100 degrees Celsius after a few minutes, so we'll have to avoid running it at 100%. I could play Shadow of War for like 30 minutes with the temperature staying slightly below 70 degrees though.

 

[Frindis]

hmm, I didn't realize Aliens: Dark Descent was on there. I've been wanting to play that.

Installing it as I type this. It is 55GB so not too large either which is good.

 

[ZedClampet]

@red_5ive
You were talking about going to buy a game and discovering you already own it. Well, today I discovered that I had 2 games installed in two different places on my hard drive, one under Xbox and one under Steam.

 

[BeardyHat]

Speaking of which, I’ve really been wanting to return to GTA 4 as well. That is perhaps my favorite in the series, especially the story. It often gets overlooked, but I believe GTA 4 has some of the best written characters Rockstar has ever created. The game runs *fine* without mods, but mods really make it shine on modern PCs. I found a very well made mod guide published just this year, but it’s extremely lengthy and would take me at least an hour to just get the mods installed. That’s something I may end up doing this weekend as well.

I totally agree with you. The one thing I like about GTA V is the first person view and that's about it. I couldn't make it through the story, as it's just so... I'm not sure. Every character in every GTA is a caricature to some extent, but everything just feels so over the top in 5, I hate all of the characters.

Would love to see the mod guide you found, as I do think about going back often and thinking I should mod, but never got started.

My guess is that Nvidia is paying for this to be the case. They have to know that everyone just turns it off every time they open a new game, which completely destroys the competitive advantage they have.

I found a game last night on Steam that specifically says only Nvidia cards can play the game, that AMD is not supported. Supposedly this is because they are simulating the entire solar system and only ray tracing can put the light everywhere the way it should be.

Sounds like we're entering a new era of "console wars" or just going back to the early days of video cards, when not all APIs supported all cards.

I don't know why the Government Subsidy mod is always the most popular Farming Simulator mod. If you want to adjust the money, either for roleplaying purposes or just to give yourself a head start, all you have to do is click on the save file, which is easy to find in your Documents section, and type in how much money you want to have.

The Government Subsidy mod ruins the game, IMO. It showers you with money to the point that you can quickly afford pretty much everything.

My friends want to run me some bounties in Elite and build me up a bunch of cash, but I've been telling them I'm not interested as I think it'll ruin the game for me.

I started with a proof 2.6mil nest egg from the last time I played, managed to lose 99% of it and now I'm back up to 1mil by figuring things out and trying a bunch of new things in the game.

 

[BeardyHat]

My PC woes continue. You might remember that my PC has a problem where it occasionally refuses to boot up, which can be fixed by removing or adding a RAM stick. Well, a couple of days ago, the CPU fan started being louder than usual and when I turned the PC on this morning it spun a little bit and then stopped, even though the PC was booting up as normal.

I checked the connection on the motherboard, but that didn't help. I did notice that if I tried to turn it by hand, it made some noise and didn't turn very well. So I took it off the CPU and discovered there were a bunch of hairs wrapped around the motor. I wasn't able to detach the fan blades from the motor though, so I couldn't get to it to clean it.

I did have an old heatsink that has 4 copper pipes that run through a whole bunch of metal fans, but I did not have the fan that goes with it, nor the screws to attach it to the motherboard, nor any thermal paste. Luckily I found a small business specialised in servers in the next town over that sold thermal paste and which had the option to pick up an order at their office. So I biked there during my lunch break to pick it up and the guy who handed it to me said they don't get orders like that very often. I did ask if they had any fans or heatsinks for desktop PCs, but sadly they did not.

So now I have a heatsink without a fan sitting loose on my CPU, but at least it has some fresh thermal paste. I ran a stress test of the CPU which pushed it to 100 degrees Celsius after a few minutes, so we'll have to avoid running it at 100%. I could play Shadow of War for like 30 minutes with the temperature staying slightly below 70 degrees though.

Wonder if you have some issue with continuity in your PSU or possibly even dirty power if you're plugged directly into a wall or something?