December 2025 General Games Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

Apparently nothing defines a man's worth more than his ability in the game Assetto Corso Rally. I asked if there were difficulty options, and you would have thought I'd slapped the baby Jesus.

 

[Pifanjr]

I looked it up and it honestly looks really fun. I've never played a major modpack like this before, so having to relearn simple things like where to find soul sand would be a fun challenge. It requires Minecraft Java to play these mods correct? I think I have it... I mostly played the Bedrock edition because then my wife could play with me on our Xbox One.

Yes, it's for Minecraft Java, but I'm pretty sure that's included in the regular Minecraft launcher on PC.

One of the things I really like about this modpack is that it's probably the best documented modpack I've played. Oftentimes when playing a modpack I'm spending as much time on a wiki as I am actually playing the game, but this modpack has a lot of useful information on the quest pages, plus you can always get the manual for the specific mod you're working with. Though it probably does help that I'm already somewhat familiar with a lot of the mods and with Minecraft mods in general.

As for my power problems, it turned out that the generator I made isn't really suited for burning fuel, but it generates power passively when surrounded by lava. I made a new generator that specifically runs on fuel and only needed a couple pieces of coal to get enough power.

Of course once I reached the next chicken tier, I immediately wanted to upgrade again, but now I need something to crush crystals. I could use a mill stone, but that requires a multi-block setup that uses actual kinetic energy, including gears and pistons. I could use a single powered machine, but that requires plastic which is proving to be really slow to get. So instead I'm going to summon and bind a spirit to crush stuff for me.

I really enjoy having so many options to reach the same result. And I'm probably going to get into the other mods I didn't choose this time because they do something else easier or better, so it gives a lot of variety as well.

 

[neogunhero]

Wife is out of town until late tonight, going to be a good day for gaming.

Blood West is free on Epic, I've had my eye on that for so long. It's got a lot of immersive sim elements which I love. Going to check that out, then I also saw that Splitgate got re-released as Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. If you remember, Splitgate 2 came out in beta earlier this year and a lot of people didn't like it. I believe it was mostly people mad that it was too different than the original game. They took it offline for a while, reworked nearly every aspect of the game, now I'm seeing a lot more positivity for it. It's a pretty standard online FPS game with unique portal mechanics but what I liked about the original launch version is how tight the gunplay felt. It's completely free so it was fun for a couple hours on deathmatch.

Besides that I may play some more Yakuza Kiwami. I'm starting that up again, about three hours into it, I think I'm going to stick with it. I've got too many games in my rotation currently to the point where I'm not really focusing on one or another. I really should because then I'll just keep bouncing around so many different games, but as they say, variety is the spice of life. When I'm tired of the shooters, Yakuza is always a great pick to fall back on.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Blood West is free on Epic, I've had my eye on that for so long.

I was just getting ready to post about that. It looks really good.

****

I was en fuego in Darktide today. It may be the best I've ever played a shooter, and I think it is the result of having gotten two nights of 8 hours of sleep in a row, which is crazy rare for me.

 

[Pifanjr]

I reached the next tier of magic chickens in the StoneBlock 4 Minecraft mod and immediately started work on the tier after that. I'm not entirely sure why I've decided that making the ultimate magic chicken was my main goal, but it's turning out to be a great way to sample a bunch of other mods.

For the next tier I need a ghast tear. Normally you'd go to the Nether and just kill a ghast, but there is no Nether in this modpack (at least, not reachable in the regular way). The only way I can get one is to either summon a ghast with magic or to build a machine that can generate any kind of mob loot. Both take quite a lot of time and resources to set up, but I think the latter will give me access to more useful stuff in the long run.

I'll probably need to find a better power generator though. I was still lugging around the single coal generator to every machine that needs power, which isn't ideal. I'm going to need to find some more advanced generators and then create some wires to hook up everything so I can keep everything charged.

 

[Colif]

Steam Machine only has 8gb of VRAM because Steam found only 14% of players play new games, and 8gb is more than enough for old games.

Its not really a gateway to better machines, its actually a gate keeper. You don't need more, just be happy with what you have.

 

[BeardyHat]

Steam Machine only has 8gb of VRAM because Steam found only 14% of players play new games, and 8gb is more than enough for old games.

Its not really a gateway to better machines, its actually a gate keeper. You don't need more, just be happy with what you have.

My laptop only has 6Gb of VRAM and honestly, it's been plenty enough to play what I want. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 plays great at 1200p 60FPS/High and everything else I've thrown at it (including emulating Breath of the Wild on Wii U, 4k 60). I don't think anyone is getting a Steam Machine and expecting miracles, just like people buying a Steam Deck right now.

Speaking of laptops, I messed-up. I ended-up finding what I thought was a good deal on an HP Envy 17. $400 for 2tb SSD, i7-1355u, RTX 3050 4gb, 64Gb of RAM. I thought I would snag the RAM and upgrade my laptop from 32Gb and then maybe sell the 2Tb SSD and put in one of my 1Tb, then give the machine to my kids to replace an aging MSI laptop they game on.

Unfortunately, I got too excited and didn't read the description and the reason it was so cheap was that it apparently has no video on the monitor. In my excitement, I didn't read the description and already purchased it. So, I've bought myself a project.

That said, I think I can still get close to breakeven on it and it's still effectively a "cheap" upgrade to my RAM in my laptop. Been wanting more to run my AI model a little more effectively, but 64Gb DDR SODIMMs right now are about $300, so this seemed more cost effective.

So, I'm going to still swap the RAM and SSD, probably sell the SSD since they're going for high prices right now and then see if maybe the repair for the monitor is cheap or easy. If I can fix it, it'll go to the kids and if not, I'll maybe try and resell it and see if I can breakeven on it. Although, I could also possibly just connect an external monitor and still let the kids use it as another gaming machine. We'll see.

 

[Johnway]

Still playing yakuza 5, i'm almost done with shinada's side story of baseball, the problem at the moment is trying to complete the coach master missions. i have to win a single game of pool at intermediate level and this is where i hit a brick wall. never played a game of pool in my life and no matter what i do, i get easily thrashed. not sure what else i can do about tbh. i can carry on without it as almost maxed out my skills, but it hacks me off. its like the mah jong thing again. What annoys me more is the mechanics of it. I seem to be missing something as to why when i smash the cue ball straight in the middle and it just veers off to the side. i would have thought going faster meant straighter shots then going slower?


Path of exile is not looking much better. I had calculated that i could do 28, but my plan hinges on being able to complete a tier 17 map and the problem i'm having is:

A: they;re not dropping. in fact i need 3 awakening stones to make them appear...
b: .... Which means i have to do more end game content which i can't do.
C: i bought some maps and tried them and the bosses are cheap one shot kill bastards.


So yeah if i keep playing at this rate i'll only get 26. 2 short. i looked the other options and they're not much better. Either luck based or expensive. bah. i either have to dig deep and try and overcome adversity or just give it up and walk away. I'm at 20 and unlocked the 2 bits i can at this point. So potentially chalk it up to another loss and a massive waste of time.

 

[Zloth]

My mouse was kinda jumpy as I was moving it along my mousepad. The mousepad is really getting old, so I tried using a big mousepad that doesn't really fit well on my desk just to compare, and the mouse worked better. I was Christmas shopping anyway, so I just grabbed a new mousepad from Amazon for a few bucks.

The new pad showed up yesterday. I switched to it and, 5 minutes later, the mouse's beam went dead. Not badly aligned - just flat out 'the laser will not turn on' dead. The LEDs worked fine.

So, now I've got a new mouse on the way and I'm using my work laptop's mouse, which is a free one I got with my PC from iBuyPower. It's fine for work but isn't much of a gaming mouse. I guess it's time for some 4X games again.

What annoys me more is the mechanics of it. I seem to be missing something as to why when i smash the cue ball straight in the middle and it just veers off to the side. i would have thought going faster meant straighter shots then going slower?

It shouldn't if you are hitting it straight in the middle.

P.S. Having played pool before wouldn't help much, if at all. Just like having a singing career would be of little help when playing the karaoke game.

Edit: And now I just double-checked, and my broken mouse is working again!? Yeah, I bet that won't last. Time for a new mouse.

 

[BeardyHat]

Part of being successful at Pool is drinking just enough beer to hit the Ballmer Curve.

Only time I was ever a successful Pool player.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Steam Machine only has 8gb of VRAM because Steam found only 14% of players play new games, and 8gb is more than enough for old games.

Its not really a gateway to better machines, its actually a gate keeper. You don't need more, just be happy with what you have.

It's a whole gaming computer that's expected to cost $699. You'll still be able to play everything that they can get to work on Linux.

I challenge you to find a game on Steam that I can't run on my HP laptop with 8 GB of VRAM. (Note: I'm not buying a $70 game to meet this challenge)

This Steam Machine is going to sell like mad and be fantastic for PC gaming by lowering the cost of entry to parity with consoles.

 

[Pifanjr]

Another tier of magic chickens has been achieved in the StoneBlock 4 modpack for Minecraft. Ironically, I achieved it by killing about a 100 chickens to build a digital data model that then simulates more chicken deaths, which somehow gives me the ability to get ghast tears.

I also upgraded my power generation, I now have a generator that runs on food. It's surprisingly powerful if you put high quality dishes in it, which I can easily make with my new kitchen that shows exactly which dishes I can make with the ingredients in the connected cupboards and fridges.

I also did a couple of the main quests, but purely because some of the things I needed to craft to get better chickens were gated behind their completion.

One of the main quests inexplicably required me to go through a condensed recreation of Portal. It was kind of painful to get through because Minecraft wasn't really build for this kind of stuff and it's not what I play Minecraft for, but luckily it didn't take all too long.

I did find a dungeon on my way to that Portal recreation and got some cool loot. I had found some gear that makes me nigh invincible, so none of the mobs really posed a threat, until I stumbled on a witch spawner with a group of like 5 witches around it. It turns out that my armour offers no protection against poison. It also turns out that dungeon is a lot deadlier without that armour. I died like 7 times in a row before I finally got all of my stuff back. Luckily I had set a teleport right at the entrance.

 

[Colif]

Mindcrap... I mean, I can't actually say its real name... memories.

Clearly game has warped somewhere.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Mindcrap... I mean, I can't actually say its real name... memories.

Clearly game has warped somewhere.

You can pretty much do anything with mods. My favorite is Galacticraft, which lets you build spaceships and travel to other planets. The game itself almost never has a substantive change. Usually, their "big" update does something like adding bears to the game. It must be incredibly boring to work there.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Zloth The recent Final Fantasy VII games, Remake is the first one, correct?

 

[Zed Clampet]

Just me talking about Guido again. TLDR: Guido trolls me because he can dodge the undodgable worm, and he is good at diffusing confrontations with other players.

There is something reassuring about being with someone who can headshot 3 people in a little more than a second, so Guido and I have been going to the PvP area in Dune Awakening. Even given the security, he was driving me crazy yesterday because he kept intentionally drawing the attention of the sandworm while I was trying to gather spice. He was flying around in circles with his suspensor belt (which the worms hate) and firing his plasma gun wildly in all directions. He thought it was hilarious that every 30 seconds I had to run to my ornithopter and pound the thruster to get to safety. Meanwhile, he was using a suspensor dash to, at the last second, dodge the worm's attack. It's nearly impossible to time correctly, and I'm not even sure other players realize it's possible.

Of course, he had ridden there with me in my ornithopter, so he didn't have to worry about losing his vehicle. I finally left him there, flew my ornithopter up high and wished him luck, laughing as I did since he was about 1000 meters, maybe a little less, from a safe area. Let me be clear, you aren't supposed to be able to dodge the worm out in the open, and I've only seen one other person do it. Despite that, I watched what I truly consider perhaps the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in a game as he made his way to the safety of the rock island, dodging the undodgeable worm time and again, always moving forward. God, he is a joy to play with.

Also, he's not a shoot-on-sight player. Whenever we cross someone else, Guido says to them, "You're okay. You're alright." And somehow that diffuses the situation more often than not.

 

[neogunhero]

Another tier of magic chickens has been achieved in the StoneBlock 4 modpack for Minecraft. Ironically, I achieved it by killing about a 100 chickens to build a digital data model that then simulates more chicken deaths, which somehow gives me the ability to get ghast tears.

I also upgraded my power generation, I now have a generator that runs on food. It's surprisingly powerful if you put high quality dishes in it, which I can easily make with my new kitchen that shows exactly which dishes I can make with the ingredients in the connected cupboards and fridges.

At first I thought this would be fun to check out, but on second thought I think I'm having more fun reading you describe all the crazy stuff in that mod. Chicken death simulation models, Michelin star generators, Portal recreation... I probably wouldn't reach half the stuff you're experiencing lol

I was en fuego in Darktide today. It may be the best I've ever played a shooter, and I think it is the result of having gotten two nights of 8 hours of sleep in a row, which is crazy rare for me.

How is Darktide compared to Vermintide 2? I know they're different settings and eras but they are similar in way of being a co-op horde shooter. Vermintide was good for solo players, it usually matched me with similar leveled players. Is Darktide good for solo as well?

Steam Machine only has 8gb of VRAM because Steam found only 14% of players play new games, and 8gb is more than enough for old games.

Its not really a gateway to better machines, its actually a gate keeper. You don't need more, just be happy with what you have.

It was never meant to be a high-end machine. They stated that they are targeting a console like experience and price, so it's going to be console level performance. I think it will still be better than the current gen consoles, but only for a little as the new ones may come out in around two to three years if rumors are to be believed.

Usually, their "big" update does something like adding bears to the game. It must be incredibly boring to work there.

For one of the all time best selling games ever, the pace of which they put out new content is shocking. One, two, maybe three very minor content additions per year. The game is not that much different than it was 10 years ago. Must be Microsoft restricting them, telling them not to mess up too much of a good thing.

I challenge you to find a game on Steam that I can't run on my HP laptop with 8 GB of VRAM. (Note: I'm not buying a $70 game to meet this challenge)

Cyberpunk 2077 with Psycho Ray Tracing mode turned on It may run... but how steady would the FPS be?

 

[Frindis]

I managed to get to Act 4 in Path of Exile 2 HCSSF (Hardcore Solo Self Found) and now I am a bit scared. I'm going into this completely blind, so that basically means that if I don't learn the boss mechanics fast, I'll be deader than dead and I'm not bragging to be a fast learner by any shape or form.

Hardcore in this game basically means that if you die, your character will die on that league (campaign) and be sent to softcore with the rest of the dead characters. So, anything you did not put inside of your chest (that you share with other characters in same league), will be deleted, which means anything in my inventory or on my body will be gone forever!

SSF means that you cannot buy stuff from other players or play with them and you can only get items from NPC traders, what you find from mobs you kill or from whatever you have put in the stash, so that means it is also more fun to look at stock from traders when you level up, because (and like in Baldur's Gate 3) the inventory will replenish.

To say it differently: You get happier for the smaller upgrades, because just a slight increase in health, could mean the difference between wiping or staying alive.

So, with only 1 life and a lot of hours getting to Act 4, I'm in for a serious nerve wrecking adventure. I'll try to remember to share how it is going (in the POE2 discussion thread), but so far I know that there is a boss in Act 4 that I don't quite understand the mechanics of and he almost oneshotted me last time I visited, sooooooo, yeah, not so much looking forward to that and I might try to level up some more and getter stronger items, so I at least can have more survivability before my brain kicks in.

 

[Johnway]

It shouldn't if you are hitting it straight in the middle.

P.S. Having played pool before wouldn't help much, if at all. Just like having a singing career would be of little help when playing the karaoke game.

the ghost ball suggested that it was going straight and i didn't adjust the point where i stuck the cue ball and yet the shot still went wide. it wouldn't have been so annoying if i wasn't making the first break shot and for some reason it missed the 1 ball at front and smashed into the ones in the back as well resulting in a foul.

but whatever, its irrelevant. i've beaten the baseball substory without the training. I might go back to it, but honestly i'll probably should move on.

Yakuza 5 wise, besides griniding the baseball substory, i'm trying to get my weapon skill up as well. a bit tedious of needing to talk to the guy and training really.

The other thing is perhaps i should skip the cochin racing mini as well. its a bit tedious as it just involves me training the racing chicken so making repeated journeys to the m-mart to buy booze and yakatori chicken for the trainers, level up chicken, race then breed to get a new chicken with more potential. A bit tedious tbh.

lastly once i win the victory road mission i'll probably move onto act 5 and put yakuza 5 to bed. not sure how much time left, but i have sunk a total of 78 hours. Definitely the second longest amount of time invested in Y5.

 

[Zed Clampet]

How is Darktide compared to Vermintide 2? I know they're different settings and eras but they are similar in way of being a co-op horde shooter. Vermintide was good for solo players, it usually matched me with similar leveled players. Is Darktide good for solo as well?

It's very similar but with more of an emphasis on shooting and special skills. Progression is pretty fun.

As far as solo goes, you can't play by yourself, but there's always people queued up ready to go with you. The few times that I did it, no one said a word. It was just a workman like experience.

Cyberpunk 2077 with Psycho Ray Tracing mode turned on It may run... but how steady would the FPS be?

I already tried it with ray tracing, and it got 8 FPS, but I can turn it off and run the game fine.

FORGET all the nice things I said about Guido. Our PvP base is going to be destroyed in the weekly storm tomorrow. Is he helping me move the valuable stuff out of the base? No.

 

[Zloth]

@Zloth The recent Final Fantasy VII games, Remake is the first one, correct?

Yep.

Save 50% on FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE on Steam

Cloud Strife, an ex-SOLDIER operative, descends on the mako-powered city of Midgar. The world of the timeless classic FINAL FANTASY VII is reborn, using cutting-edge graphics technology, a new battle system and an additional adventure featuring Yuffie Kisaragi.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Pifanjr]

I've continued with the StoneBlock 4 modpack for Minecraft. I can now burn diamonds for power and I got a big battery, which allowed me to make an item that automatically repairs all of my equipment. Now I can focus on getting the best equipment without worrying about it breaking eventually.

I still need 5 nether stars to reach the next level of magic chickens. I saw I could make them fairly cheaply in a particle accelerator and after a whole bunch of effort I finally managed to make one. At which point I discovered that it's just one part of a large multi-block structure that needs a whole bunch of other, equally expensive and tedious to make blocks. So I'm going to pivot and try to kill a wither instead, which should drop a nether star. If that goes well I can scan it and stick it in a simulation chamber that'll generate new nether stars automatically.

At first I thought this would be fun to check out, but on second thought I think I'm having more fun reading you describe all the crazy stuff in that mod. Chicken death simulation models, Michelin star generators, Portal recreation... I probably wouldn't reach half the stuff you're experiencing lol

One nice thing about this modpack is that it really cuts down on the grinding. At the end of the tutorial you'll have two boxes with villager slaves employees that'll generate all of the base resources you'll need with minimal effort. You also don't need to wait for crops/trees to grow as crouching simulates using bonemeal on every plant around you. I've hardly left my base since I started playing, though if you prefer to explore there are also plenty of dungeons and vaults with some great loot.

 

[neogunhero]

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass?OCID=cmmi8bt6z9c_OLV_XGP_FUT_PCGSVideo_XGP1#join

Looks like the $1 for 1 month of GP Ultimate deal is back up in the US. Make a throwaway Outlook email, immediately remove your card info and disable recurring payments after signing up via your new Microsoft account settings. Profit!

 

[Colif]

Oh wow, congrats; making me jealous! Soon as I saw your post, I immediately started looking at Microcenter to see what was available. Best I could really do is a 9060XT, which is a fairly mild upgrade over my 6700XT and probably not worth it, but still quite tempting! Plus this 6700XT is only 2 years old for me and I feel like I should at least make it 4, given my last card lasted me like 8 years.

I didn't intend to cause a cascade.

My card is only just 3 years old this month. I bought it the day it was released here. So I wasn't really looking at all as I planned on buying the next gen AMD card, but with the memory shortage, that card might be delayed so I jumped on Thursday and only after thought about it... and reasons why it made sense (lol) apart from to finally make PC all white.