December 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

I might be just a tad careless. I got my whole party wiped when I mouthed off to some demigod.


There was an update on Friday that lets you watch the cutscenes at 1.5x or 2x speed instead of just skipping them. I wonder how that will go over?

By the way, the next game in the series finally makes the soundtrack available! Well... a mini-soundtrack. That's kinda available - you have to use their digital access application; they don't just hand you MP3s. It's still better than the first game.

I don't understand this at all. The game has an awesome soundtrack. A lot of people want it. But they don't make it available!? Not "they hide it behind a ridiculous paywall" but flat out burry the thing. Now the new game just lets you get a small bit of the thing?

I'm playing an indie solo dev game right now that would make you never want another soundtrack. I think he just made up songs on his guitar, which he can barely play. After hearing the 3rd song, I was in an emotional panic to find the audio settings.

 

[ZedClampet]

I might be just a tad careless. I got my whole party wiped when I mouthed off to some demigod.

You would think a demigod would have a little more emotional resilience than to have to murder 4 people for mouthing off.

 

[Pifanjr]

I captured another fort and did a couple more quests in Shadow of War, but it's reaching the point where it starts getting repetitive. I'm still enjoying the game, but I'm going to ignore the collectibles as I'm especially getting tired of having to run around so much and the rewards have become pretty worthless.

You would think a demigod would have a little more emotional resilience than to have to murder 4 people for mouthing off.

I think that a lot of people who grow up with power have very little emotional resilience. They would have very little need for it as very few people would dare to anger them and if someone did anger them, they can usually just kill them without any effort or consequences.

 

[Frindis]

I might be just a tad careless. I got my whole party wiped when I mouthed off to some demigod.

I did the same and thankfully I learned it before honor mode, or that would have been an annoying experience. It is one of the few surprises where you will get wiped because of your actions in dialogues. Come to think of it, the game has a lot of fun ways you can get in tough positions, some quite humorous and some frustrating. Being careless might just be an interesting way to experience most of them.

You would think a demigod would have a little more emotional resilience than to have to murder 4 people for mouthing off.

That demigod is full of surprises

 

[ZedClampet]

I think that a lot of people who grow up with power have very little emotional resilience. They would have very little need for it as very few people would dare to anger them and if someone did anger them, they can usually just kill them without any effort or consequences.

We're picturing two very different people. You are picturing a spoiled brat who was born a demigod. I'm picturing a warrior who had to work for everything he got and was anointed on the battlefield.

 

[BeardyHat]

Alright, well, it's not all sunshine and roses with the eGPU. I mean, it's wonderful, but there are some issues, though not necessarily the result of the whole conglomeration itself.

I've got an itch for Dishonored 2 and while I can absolutely play it on my Steam Deck it feels like a "PC-Ass-PC-Game" for lack of a better term; meaning I want to play it on a proper PC with a keyboard and mouse. The problem is, Dishonored 2 is broken when it comes to some AMD hardware configurations. Apparently, if you have a switchable AMD graphics card (as the eGPU gives me), Dishonored 2 just refuses to launch. I've been through many troubleshooting steps and the only way I've actually gotten it to launch is to disable my Intel integrated graphics in Device Manager; that said, for some reason it then runs at 2FPS, in spite of using the AMD graphics. Mighty disappointing, but I'll probably still be having a another go with the game on my desktop and on my Steam Deck when I want to be somewhere other than my office.

I'm still playing Shadow of the Colossus on the PS3 my friend gave me, having now killed 3 of the giants. I know absolutely nothing about this game (other than it's supposed to be good), but it has very strong "Are we the baddies?" energy to it.

And, I also feel guilty. Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen has gone into Early Access on Steam; or maybe I should say been dumped into Early Access, having run their Kickstarters into the ground over the past ten years they've been asking for funding. My friends, who I introduced to Everquest back in 1999 are all about it, having bought it (for $40!!!) and been playing it since its release three days ago. I watched them Stream on Discord on Saturday and immediately started making fun of them for both still playing Everquest and now playing this game which is a carbon-copy rehash with no (apparent) new ideas to add to the genre; it even uses the same level-up noise from Everquest. Anyway, I continued to make fun of them via Text on Sunday, saying if they bought me the game, I'd play it for at least 5 minutes and well, now they've purchased the game for me.

True to my word, I put at least 5 minutes in, having now played 71 minutes and I must say, it's mediocre and buggy as hell. Performance is absolutely pitiful. It runs like dog doo-doo on both my laptop and my Deck because it's hitting the processor so hard that it causes overheating and throttling, barely maintaining 20FPS with graphics that look barely better than Everquest in 1999 and certainly worse than Everquest 2 from 2004. And, as I mentioned, the gameplay is the same from EQ back in 1999. Kill a few creatures, rest for several minutes to get your health and mana back, rinse, repeat. They even have the grouping requirement where you'll spend hours just looking for a group and then sitting in the same spot for several more hours, killing the same mobs over and over again.

I get the charm. I was once 15 and loving Everquest for how new and novel it felt at the time, but that time has passed and I have better things to do with my time now. I feel bad that my friends bought me this game and want me to play with them because it's just such utter trash; good for them for liking it, but I was content to just make fun of them and not participate. At any rate, I know what this game is and how it plays and at this point, I put my 71 minutes in and I'm all done. Silly game.

 

[neogunhero]

So I picked up the latest Humble Choice and I’m kind of regretting it. My eyes are bigger than my brain I suppose, if that’s even a saying. What I mean is, the games looked fun and very interesting, but when I actually went to try them, I had no motivation or interest to keep playing.

Let’s start with Bomb Rush Cyber Funk. Stylistically, this game is awesome. A straight up love letter tinker Set Radio in every way. Modernized controls and QoL features, runs silky smooth, music and characters are very amazing. I just don’t feel compelled to keep going. I have no idea what it is, obviously not the games fault but my own.

Next up, Crime Boss: Rockay City. This is wha I got the Choice for. I read that it’s a standard Payday The Heist clone with a strong focus on single player and that’s what sold me. Combined with lots of updates and recent reviews being good, I was sold on pretty solid fun time with that game. I got into the tutorial, did the first few objectives, and went “I should be playing a better game with how little time I have”.

Then I booted up Old World. Lots of reviews are saying this is one of the best 4X games in recent memory. Simply put, it’s like Civ and Crusader Kings combined but a stronger focus on the Civ influence. Reviews are great. I don’t mind a learning curve at all, and I would love to have a game that is relatively stress free in its gameplay and can provide tons of hours of fun. I was excited to dive in and check it out. I played for 10 minutes and quit. I did not have it in me to read as much text and they throw at you in the tutorial.

Finally, I played Atlas Fallen Reign of Sand (whew), and immediately was turned off but the intro cinematic. This is undoubtedly a AA mid sized budget kind of a game. There is nothing wrong with that, I think a lot of games that can be considered AA are very ambitious and can be well made, but often times in my own personal opinion, they can be a bit mid. It lacks the polish and budget of a AAA game and the creativity of an indie. I played for about 30 minutes after the intro and was bored by its uninspired world and very simplistic combat.

 

[Pifanjr]

I've been playing Roblox every so often with my kid. Pretty much every "game" we play is just a sandbox. You can change your appearance, spawn items and vehicles at will and pick one of the preset houses at one of the unoccupied house lots. Then you just roleplay whatever you want, it's basically a big doll house.

We've mostly played in two different modern towns which have a decent amount of content. However, recently we've been playing in games which let you play as popular characters, like Peppa Pig, in locations from their series/movies, but they're far more low effort.

However, this evening my kid found a tram simulator that was surprisingly in depth, including specific model types and speed limit signs. Unsurprisingly, it was almost entirely in German.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've been playing Roblox every so often with my kid. Pretty much every "game" we play is just a sandbox. You can change your appearance, spawn items and vehicles at will and pick one of the preset houses at one of the unoccupied house lots. Then you just roleplay whatever you want, it's basically a big doll house.

We've mostly played in two different modern towns which have a decent amount of content. However, recently we've been playing in games which let you play as popular characters, like Peppa Pig, in locations from their series/movies, but they're far more low effort.

However, this evening my kid found a tram simulator that was surprisingly in depth, including specific model types and speed limit signs. Unsurprisingly, it was almost entirely in German.

I have a public transport game that is set in a 1:1 scale of Berlin. That's the only reason I got it, and I never even downloaded it. Developers are, obviously, German. I need to give it a try.

The Bus on Steam

The Bus is the next generation of city bus driving simulation. Sell tickets and transport passengers with various buses on different lines across the German capital Berlin on a realistic scale of 1:1.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Pifanjr]

I decided to see what other games I got access to through Netflix and downloaded Arcanium: Rise of Akhan. It's a roguelite deckbuilder that works very similarly to Slay the Spire in that cards have a certain energy cost, you gain a new card after every combat, cards can be upgraded and you can get artifacts that give a passive effect for the rest of the run, but you control 3 characters, each with their own deck and their own artifacts, and you have a big map of hexes where you can go to any hex you've discovered to trigger the event/combat there, giving you much more control over when you heal and when you fight.

You also fight against 3 enemies at a time, with your heroes and the enemies being assigned to lanes, so you have an entire system where you manage who can damage whom by swapping heroes between lanes, taunting enemies to attack a hero in an adjacent lane and taking into account that melee cards can only attack the enemy in front of a hero while ranged cards can also target adjacent enemies.

So far I'm liking it a lot better than Slay the Spire. I like the extra freedom in choosing what event/combat to trigger next and I like the complexity of having control of 3 heroes. It also seems less dependent on making crazy powerful combo's where you play your entire deck in a single turn, but focuses more on the synergy between the heroes instead.

The biggest downside is that it is a huge drain on my battery. It drains it faster than my charger can charge it.

 

[Johnway]

I've installed RE2 remake. Decided to play it on standard as the devs intended (although i really wanted to do hardcore mode with ink ribbons etc, perhaps second play...)

Despite my aging rig its been a visual treat, but i had to adjust some of the settings as some of the visuals are really off button like the bloom and blur etc. Still not quite there, maybe one or 2 settings off. I can run the whole thing on ultra with my 1070 but i tweaked it to use only half of it.

From what i've seen so far i'm excited. its familiar (i've played the original RE2) but also different as its all been reworked and makes things different.

 

[Frindis]

My new wallpaper (you have to solve Dec 15th puzzle to see it)

A Very Larian Christmas

advent.larian.com

 

[Zloth]

The biggest downside is that it is a huge drain on my battery. It drains it faster than my charger can charge it.

I guess they need a Steam Deck charger that plugs into one of those outlets that clothes dryers use.

 

[ZedClampet]

I failed the team in Darktide. Everyone else was down, and I fought my way to the nearest person, but right as I got there the net guy got me. There was so much chaos I didn't even see him. That was all 4 of us down, game over.

 

[Frindis]

I guess they need a Steam Deck charger that plugs into one of those outlets that clothes dryers use.

I read that as Steam Deck Burger. Must be hungry

 

[ZedClampet]

I read that as Steam Deck Burger. Must be hungry

I think I may have had a sandwich about 13 hours ago. Not really hungry, but I wouldn't turn down a burger...ever. I'm getting sleepy, though. Maybe I'll just go to bed.

 

[red_5ive]

I've installed RE2 remake. Decided to play it on standard as the devs intended (although i really wanted to do hardcore mode with ink ribbons etc, perhaps second play...)

Despite my aging rig its been a visual treat, but i had to adjust some of the settings as some of the visuals are really off button like the bloom and blur etc. Still not quite there, maybe one or 2 settings off. I can run the whole thing on ultra with my 1070 but i tweaked it to use only half of it.

From what i've seen so far i'm excited. its familiar (i've played the original RE2) but also different as its all been reworked and makes things different.

I thoroughly enjoyed the remake, and yeah the visuals are great! I also loved that the game supports Dolby Atmos. I played with the lights out in a home theater setup, and Mr. X has never been scarier! It was a heart-pounding experience with his footsteps above an all around at the police station. At times I had to turn the lights back on lol.

 

[Pifanjr]

I guess they need a Steam Deck charger that plugs into one of those outlets that clothes dryers use.

I'm in Europe, all of our outlets are 240 volts.

My wife's charger is more powerful than mine though, I'll have to use that one next time.

I failed the team in Darktide. Everyone else was down, and I fought my way to the nearest person, but right as I got there the net guy got me. There was so much chaos I didn't even see him. That was all 4 of us down, game over.

Sounds like your team failed you first.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm in Europe, all of our outlets are 240 volts.

My wife's charger is more powerful than mine though, I'll have to use that one next time.



Sounds like your team failed you first.

With Vermintide/Darktide, I always have the philosophy that it's okay to go down so long as you aren't the only one left.

 

[Frindis]

I had a little laugh looking at the S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 homepage: " Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has maintained a steady course and is on track to deliver an undeniably singular shooter experience" - Sports Illustrated.

Seriously? The other one was from Windows Central and some other weird sites that nobody cares about. I'll never understand the point of this type of promotion. Who cares? You? Me? Do you really give a flying kakapo about what Sports Illustrated says? Is it for other journalists? Maybe shareholders will visit the site? "Oh look, Sports Illustrated guys, let's bring the money!"

"give a flying kakapo" I just made up a new swear word. I'll be using this whenever I want to swear. Kakapoooooo!

 

[Colif]

There aren't many games review sites anyone cares about now. Its a shrinking ever compressing market of websites all fighting for attention. IGN bought a few last year trying to stay profitable, but now they also giving staff a choice... leave now or we fire you later. Not all staff but its not going to get any better. It was obvious when they bought all the extra sites that there would be layoffs, too much duplication in roles. Some had to go.

I don't get why newspapers and other media type sites need to even review games. Maybe they see blood in the water. Last place I read a review for any game would be The Guardian. Or Forbes.

 

[Colif]

I missed a Lego game, but it wasn't made by the same people who made all the other ones... and judging by its numbers, I didn't miss anything

https://steamdb.info/app/2428810/charts/#max

and given it was full price, I am glad lol

Sony should be happy... someone sold less than Concord... wonder who made it... oh, Sony
Keep up the good work

 

[Frindis]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvRm4HKK4gQ

Companies that continue to ignore what Swen Vinke says in this speech deserve nothing less than what is coming to them. I don't give a kakapo about their excuses and apology letters. Either crash and burn to the ground or eliminate the kakapo business model.

​

 

[ZedClampet]

I had a little laugh looking at the S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 homepage: " Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has maintained a steady course and is on track to deliver an undeniably singular shooter experience" - Sports Illustrated.

Seriously? The other one was from Windows Central and some other weird sites that nobody cares about. I'll never understand the point of this type of promotion. Who cares? You? Me? Do you really give a flying kakapo about what Sports Illustrated says? Is it for other journalists? Maybe shareholders will visit the site? "Oh look, Sports Illustrated guys, let's bring the money!"

"give a flying kakapo" I just made up a new swear word. I'll be using this whenever I want to swear. Kakapoooooo!

Video games want to be sports, right? Makes sense.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvRm4HKK4gQ

Companies that continue to ignore what Swen Vinke says in this speech deserve nothing less than what is coming to them. I don't give a kakapo about their excuses and apology letters. Either crash and burn to the ground or eliminate the kakapo business model.

​

I agree with Swens sentiment and I like what hes been doing, but I did have a wry chuckle when I read this part:

They created it because it hadn't been created before. They didn't make it to increase market share. They didn't make it to serve the brand

Considering Sony mascot platformer and celebration of all things Playstation Astro Bot won GOTY and best design.