February 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

It's summer somewhere....

Steam Events for February:​

Lunar New Year Sale--Supposedly this is going on now, though I haven't seen it. Runs through 9 Feb.
Steam Idler Fest--Dates 3 - 10 Feb
Steam Couch Co-op Fest--Dates 10 - 17 Feb
Next Fest--Dates 24 Feb - 3 March

Games by well-known publishers/developers releasing on Steam in February:​

Pre-purchase Kingdom Come: Deliverance II on Steam

A thrilling story-driven action RPG, with a rich open world, set in 15th century Medieval Europe. Experience the ultimate medieval adventure - through the eyes of young Henry - as you embark on a journey of epic proportions.

store.steampowered.com

Save 20% on Big Helmet Heroes on Steam

Throw yourself into an epic 3D beat’em up adventure with adorable knights, full of surprising worlds and situations. Grab your buddy and play in 2 player co-op to save the princess, but this is only the beginning!

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator on Steam

Dedicate your life to saving others. As soon as you receive the emergency call, speed off to the site of the accident in your ambulance, sirens wailing. Apply first aid and transport the seriously injured to hospital. Every second counts!

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase Sid Meier's Civilization VII on Steam

The award-winning strategy game franchise returns with a revolutionary new chapter. Sid Meier's Civilization® VII empowers you to build the greatest empire the world has ever known!

store.steampowered.com

Save 10% on Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered on Steam

Her legacy lives on! Play the next series of Tomb Raider adventures in this remastered collection of the Darkness Trilogy.

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase Avowed on Steam

Avowed is a first-person fantasy RPG from Obsidian Entertainment.

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii on Steam

Embark on an over-the-top, modern-day pirate adventure with an ex-yakuza, now pirate captain & his crew. Engage in exhilarating combat on land and sea in the hunt for lost memories and treasure.

store.steampowered.com

Save 15% on Ninja Five-O on Steam

Ninja Five-O allows players to relive this classic game. Uphold justice with fierce Ninjutsu moves on Steam.

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase Galactic Civilizations IV - Tales of the Arnor on Steam

Uncover the mysteries of the past and shape the galaxy's future in Tales of the Arnor. Explore a new campaign revealing how civilizations evolved, discover anomalies, artifacts, and relics, and face late-game crisis events tied to the Arnor’s unfinished endeavors.

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase PGA TOUR 2K25 on Steam

The master of golf sims is back! Tee off with the world’s top golfers on the most storied courses on golf’s biggest stages.

store.steampowered.com

Pre-purchase Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam

The unbridled force of nature runs wild and relentless, with environments transforming drastically from one moment to the next. This is a story of monsters and humans and their struggles to live in harmony in a world of duality.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zloth]

I was popping back and forth between Baldur's Gate 3 and my X4 terraforming project, but I dropped both to play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth... at launch! I haven't played a game at launch in many years, and I haven't played a game at launch that worked well enough to enjoy in decades!

There are sure some big differences.

The first is the bugginess. Nothing really terrible is crashing for me, but a lot of people have it worse. Square/Enix has been slow on the fixing, too. After over a week, all they have done is acknowledge that they are looking into one of the issues. Most developers would have a hotfix or two out in the first week, but this is pretty par for the course with Square, unfortunately.

The second is the Steam forums. Holy acid bath!! No, that doesn't reflect the speed... Holy Acid Turbo Car Wash! If somebody posts a valid question, they are immediately hit with hate thrown at them for not knowing the answer and hate thrown at Square for not making the answer obvious. Then those two camps start wailing on each other! Hopefully, within an hour, somebody takes the time to read what the person asks and tosses an answer into the acid pool. (And, to be fair, within an hour is way faster than you can expect in a couple of years.)

 

[isleepinabed]

January is done and I'm pretty chuffed that I haven't bought a single game and yet managed to play games I already had and even replay others.
I look forward to keep the run going into March.

I will continue going into shmups.

I also reinstalled Assetto Corsa (the original one). I like it, it has a charm like something from a different time.
There's something about a good automobile sim because when you get into the zone you can while the time away.
Unfortunately I was playing in first person for more immersion and it gave me motion sickness and a headache, but I'll try again tomorrow on overhead.

 

[Pifanjr]

The second is the Steam forums. Holy acid bath!! No, that doesn't reflect the speed... Holy Acid Turbo Car Wash! If somebody posts a valid question, they are immediately hit with hate thrown at them for not knowing the answer and hate thrown at Square for not making the answer obvious. Then those two camps start wailing on each other! Hopefully, within an hour, somebody takes the time to read what the person asks and tosses an answer into the acid pool. (And, to be fair, within an hour is way faster than you can expect in a couple of years.)

I took a quick look out of morbid curiosity. The concept of giving someone the benefit of the doubt seems entirely foreign to these people. If someone posts something that doesn't line up with someone else's experience they both consider the other person a troll.

January is done and I'm pretty chuffed that I haven't bought a single game and yet managed to play games I already had and even replay others.
I look forward to keep the run going into March.

Not only did I broke my resolution to finish Baldur's Gate 3, I bought a new game to play instead. It's not a great start of the year.

I do plan on returning to Baldur's Gate 3, though I did recently learn that Starcraft 2 is now on Game Pass and I've always wanted to play the Protoss campaign. I've done the Terran and Zerg ones in the past but never got around to the last campaign.

My wife and kid will (probably) be gone for about 5 days near the end of this month, so it'll be the perfect opportunity to finish the campaign within the 14 day trial period of Game Pass.

 

[neogunhero]

View: https://youtu.be/32XIrcMwT9o?si=uQKaGHB_kiU4DBET


Some gameplay of reTHAWed I just took. I’m by no means good at this game… but it’s so much fun. This is the free skate mode so I’m just messing around trying to practice.

 

[ZedClampet]

View: https://youtu.be/32XIrcMwT9o?si=uQKaGHB_kiU4DBET


Some gameplay of reTHAWed I just took. I’m by no means good at this game… but it’s so much fun. This is the free skate mode so I’m just messing around trying to practice.

Dang it. I really wanted to see what happens when you "Press Y to freak out". You look pretty good at it to me.

Liked and subscribed.
Didn't send you money on Patreon /jk Seems like every Youtuber has Patreon now.

 

[BeardyHat]

January is done and I'm pretty chuffed that I haven't bought a single game and yet managed to play games I already had and even replay others.
I look forward to keep the run going into March.

My New Year's Resolutions was just to spend less this year and so far, I think I've spent about $35, so uh, oops. Though I'm well below the $420ish or whatever it was last year.

At least I'm still playing Aliens: Dark Descent, which I picked up in early January. Did also buy Outward, as it seemed quite up my alley, but I haven't touched it yet. I'm worried it'll yank me away from Aliens and I'm not ready yet...

Also just spent another $9 on 3DMark, as I've been doing a lot of Benchmarking lately and with my decision to keep my current laptop, I'm back to it, testing out the tweaks and things that I'm able to do to my laptop.

At any rate, I did also start playing Darkest Dungeon 2 again. It's amazing how stressful that game can be and how much I suck at it, given I was pretty decent at the first game over my 200-odd hours I put into it.

One thing I really appreciate over the first game is the fact that I don't need to have an app on my phone to look up every curio and what I item I need to use on it. As well, I don't need to look up what supplies to bring on each mission, as it changes per location. I don't know why in 200 hours I could never commit those things to memory, but it made playing the first game kind of a burden.

At any rate, we'll see how long I continue with it for now, as it's similar in a lot of ways to Aliens, but certainly more challenging, which is fine, but I need to be up for that challenge and stressing myself out.

 

[Johnway]

January is done and I'm pretty chuffed that I haven't bought a single game and yet managed to play games I already had and even replay others.

I had hoped to try and reduce my purchases but jan's Humble choice partly meant that i've got 11 games. The good news is that again, i haven't spent all that much and the games i got are all ones i want. I don't think feb or Mar will have anything i really want, or at least i can wait a bit....

 

[Frindis]

More Path of Exile 2 for me and Kingdom Come Deliverance. A new patch is around the corner for BG3, so considering restarting my solo run to test out the new subclasses. Want to play Ghost of Tsushima and waiting for a good sale that never happens.

 

[Colif]

Wish they would release AC Shadows, I want to play as a Female Sumo wrestler alongside the other totally historically accurate characters (female Sumo exist now, but not in the Professional leagues, and its unlikely in 16th Century Japan)

 

[January's Ghost]

January is done and I'm pretty chuffed that I haven't bought a single game and yet managed to play games I already had and even replay others.

What? That is NOT how gaming works. Get back with the program or we'll take away your gamer's card.

 

[BeardyHat]

Wish they would release AC Shadows, I want to play as a Female Sumo wrestler alongside the other totally historically accurate characters (female Sumo exist now, but not in the Professional leagues, and its unlikely in 16th Century Japan)

Asmon is such Chud, constantly doing the JAQing off thing.

Yesterday evening I received my Honeywell PTM7950, the thermal pad material that's supposed to be a miracle worker and I must say, I do believe it's worked some miracles on my little "Glorified Chromebook" (ZedTM). I thought it was supposed to take a couple of heat cycles to actually show some effectiveness, but it seems to have gone to work immediately.

I should have grabbed some pictures, but it definitely seemed like the Kyronaut paste I put on there back in November had pumped out, which really shows in my temps as I was benchmarking and stress testing yesterday:

Here's the entire CPU package temps - Idle - Low - Highest

| +- CPU Package : 69 - 66 - 82

And the Clockspeeds - Idle - Low - Highest

| +- CPU Core #1 : 3620.82 1307.51 4123.71
| +- CPU Core #2 : 3620.82 1408.09 4224.28
| +- CPU Core #3 : 3620.82 1408.09 4425.44
| +- CPU Core #4 : 3721.39 1408.09 4224.28

Now temps after the application of the thermal pad

| +- CPU Package : 49 - 47 - 75

And Clocks

| +- CPU Core #1 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #2 : 4425.13 1206.84 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #3 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #4 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.17

So much lower temps (20* in the case of idle and 19* lowest, 8* highest), Boost was higher and longer, though lower lows, which is an odd one.

Haven't had a chance to test it out as far as gaming goes yet, but I did play about 30 minutes of Wolfenstein: New Order and while frames weren't amazing, performance felt much more consistent than it had been. Once I have time, I'll do a little more testing and see how things feel. I also want to test the integrated graphics and see if my clocks stay generally higher, with higher frames to boot.

Maybe this should have been in the hardware section, but I'm just happy with how things turned out.

Lastly, I'm just amazed at the size of the motherboard on this machine. Obviously, it's not an extremely powerful machine, but it's not really a slouch either and all packed into this tiny board; this computer is like 70% battery.

https://imgur.com/a/PJFfzN0

 

[ZedClampet]

Wish they would release AC Shadows, I want to play as a Female Sumo wrestler alongside the other totally historically accurate characters (female Sumo exist now, but not in the Professional leagues, and its unlikely in 16th Century Japan)

I don't know anything about Sumo wrestling or its history, but assuming the video is correct this could be very insulting to the Japanese. Of course, a lot of westerners think Japan is rather backwards because of things like this, so maybe this was an intentional attempt at social commentary, but that would be an odd thing for Ubisoft to do since in the past they seem to have made herculean efforts to remain neutral on stuff like this.

I had a talk with a developer from Poland. I was going to post about it in the thread about the Australian game Broken Roads roads and the problems they had because of the grant they got for representing the indigenous people of Australia in their game. Ultimately I decided just to let that thread die since not all the mods were happy with it, but the Polish developer had included, lets just say, certain American things in their game even though the game didn't seem to be set in an American city, and the developer said that they felt a significant degree of pressure on social media to include those things.

They also said, however, that this was the first time anything like this had happened to them and put part of the blame on their own vague marketing on social media, which they admitted that they didn't handle very well, partly because certain aspects of the game, like location, hadn't even been decided upon before they started marketing it.

I'm being very vague because, as I said, some folks don't like this sort of discussion being on this site, and also because I don't really want to tell which developer and which game it was because it was a private conversation, and I want to avoid even a very small chance of accidentally stirring up something for them.

The whole conversation started because I sent them a note during beta testing that something in the game was incorrect for an American city, as I just assumed that was where the game was supposed to be taking place based on these American sensitivities they seemed to be ticking off on their to do list.

 

[ZedClampet]

Asmon is such Chud, constantly doing the JAQing off thing.

Yesterday evening I received my Honeywell PTM7950, the thermal pad material that's supposed to be a miracle worker and I must say, I do believe it's worked some miracles on my little "Glorified Chromebook" (ZedTM). I thought it was supposed to take a couple of heat cycles to actually show some effectiveness, but it seems to have gone to work immediately.

I should have grabbed some pictures, but it definitely seemed like the Kyronaut paste I put on there back in November had pumped out, which really shows in my temps as I was benchmarking and stress testing yesterday:

Here's the entire CPU package temps - Idle - Low - Highest

| +- CPU Package : 69 - 66 - 82

And the Clockspeeds - Idle - Low - Highest

| +- CPU Core #1 : 3620.82 1307.51 4123.71
| +- CPU Core #2 : 3620.82 1408.09 4224.28
| +- CPU Core #3 : 3620.82 1408.09 4425.44
| +- CPU Core #4 : 3721.39 1408.09 4224.28

Now temps after the application of the thermal pad

| +- CPU Package : 49 - 47 - 75

And Clocks

| +- CPU Core #1 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #2 : 4425.13 1206.84 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #3 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #4 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.17

So much lower temps (20* in the case of idle and 19* lowest, 8* highest), Boost was higher and longer, though lower lows, which is an odd one.

Haven't had a chance to test it out as far as gaming goes yet, but I did play about 30 minutes of Wolfenstein: New Order and while frames weren't amazing, performance felt much more consistent than it had been. Once I have time, I'll do a little more testing and see how things feel. I also want to test the integrated graphics and see if my clocks stay generally higher, with higher frames to boot.

Maybe this should have been in the hardware section, but I'm just happy with how things turned out.

Lastly, I'm just amazed at the size of the motherboard on this machine. Obviously, it's not an extremely powerful machine, but it's not really a slouch either and all packed into this tiny board; this computer is like 70% battery.

https://imgur.com/a/PJFfzN0

I think you enjoy tinkering with your often unlikely hardware as much or more than you enjoy playing games. You really ought to start a YouTube channel doing all these things, although that would kind of turn it into a job rather than just a fun hobby. But I bet there are many budget-minded gamers who would appreciate you sharing your knowledge on this sort of thing. Heck, companies might even send you free hardware to tinker with.

 

[DXCHASE]

Asmon is such Chud, constantly doing the JAQing off thing.

Agreed, as he is someone who is def. apart of the anti-woke mob (big facilitator of it imo) and his controversial takes on certain matters, i cant take his videos as honest, legit sources.

Why is it so hard to convince your significant other that we need to run diablo 4 dungeons 40-50 times a night!? Well thats the grind im on in that game. Running the same activity to get my glyphs up. I love diablo but man there is literally no other way to get more powerful at higher tiers in this game.

Edit: Since this is still the last post, this was the vibe a bit ago...

 

[Johnway]

Mechanicus and so far things have been going great. I've unlocked the full 6 team and room to spare to pack in my elite troops. to top it off, the last few missions i've beat the map with no impact to the death clock or at most just 1 notch. I'm currently at 53/100 so i'm quids in for a few more missions. Once i findthe other 2 bosses, i'll take part in the fight.

But for now, keep completing missions and unlocking stuff and levelling up my kill team.

 

[BeardyHat]

I think you enjoy tinkering with your often unlikely hardware as much or more than you enjoy playing games. You really ought to start a YouTube channel doing all these things, although that would kind of turn it into a job rather than just a fun hobby. But I bet there are many budget-minded gamers who would appreciate you sharing your knowledge on this sort of thing. Heck, companies might even send you free hardware to tinker with.

I definitely do enjoy messing with stuff, probably also why I'm into automotive repair and electronics mods (Just got a new, better soldering iron, gonna try installing a USB-C into a Nintendo DSi). But for Youtube? No one wants to hear me blather on, not to mention yeah, it would become an obligation so I'd immediately hate it and stop doing it! My brain is stupid like that.

It's also just hard to find something that meets all the parameters I want. This computer is just so damn premium in addition to being compact and light, just wish it had extra performance and I'm trying to tease that out of it, but there's not a ton I can do about it. I'm still perusing eBay for deals on newer computers, but I'm less inclined to actually go through with something right now and doing my best to be content with what I have; I'm just damn curious how much of a difference processor wattage and speed makes with an eGPU. I'm still kind of hoping I can find a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 3 for $300 or less, as that's a good price for experimentation.

This is another reason no one wants to watch my Youtube channel, I'm too damn long winded. Can't shut myself up.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've been very tired lately due to my failing kidneys not properly clearing out a medication I'm on, so I'm basically overdosing and slept most of the day today. Played the demo for Trepang 2, which is on sale, and I had a good time with it. My problem with it is that I put it on Easy, and it was impossible, I think, for me to get killed, which takes a lot of the fun out of it. May play the demo again on a higher difficulty and see how that goes.

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued The Planet Crafter. I reached the insect stage, but I couldn't find any larvae. I eventually reached the stage after that and still hadn't found any larvae, so I looked up where I was supposed to get them. Turns out they're supposed to be spawning around your character, but for some reason it wasn't working for me. I reloaded the game and instantly got like 5 of them around me.

So now I'm behind on my insect progress, which is a bother, but it should go a lot quicker once I unlock the insect boost rocket.

I also already unlocked and built an aquarium, but I hadn't advanced far enough into oxygen generation to unlock the machine necessary to make fish eggs.

I also unlocked the drone station, but I'm short one Pulsar Quartz, so I have to go look for one. Or I have to deconstruct a fusion reactor and replace it with nuclear reactors, but I don't think that's feasible. It would be really nice to automate resource collection though.

 

[Colif]

And the Clockspeeds - Idle - Low - Highest

| +- CPU Core #1 : 3620.82 1307.51 4123.71
| +- CPU Core #2 : 3620.82 1408.09 4224.28
| +- CPU Core #3 : 3620.82 1408.09 4425.44
| +- CPU Core #4 : 3721.39 1408.09 4224.28

Now temps after the application of the thermal pad

| +- CPU Package : 49 - 47 - 75

And Clocks

| +- CPU Core #1 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #2 : 4425.13 1206.84 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #3 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.13
| +- CPU Core #4 : 3620.56 1307.42 4425.17

Those idle speeds are a little strange. I have to assume its taking into account CPU boosting to run a process, as why run that fast in idle. You not going to get low temps if its idling at 3.6ghz

Mine can run at 4.5ghz but 90% of time its average core speed is about 300mhz.
True, its not a laptop but if anything, they need it more.
Windows sucks at knowing what speed I am actually running

Task manager often sees me at 4.3 or at the very least, 3.9, whereas at exact same time, HWINFO shows me running at 177mhz (Average effective clock is closer to reality)

Task manager still just uses the multiplier method to see speed, it doesn't account for sleeping cores.

I seem to be collecting Thermal Paste, I should have about 3 of them now. Cryonaut, the Arctic paste, and the Deepcool paste. Two of those came with coolers.
Not thought about the pads... maybe next PC.

 

[Dead2009]

I'm finally almost done Until Dawn on PS5 lol.

 

[BeardyHat]

Those idle speeds are a little strange. I have to assume its taking into account CPU boosting to run a process, as why run that fast in idle. You not going to get low temps if its idling at 3.6ghz

Mine can run at 4.5ghz but 90% of time its average core speed is about 300mhz.
True, its not a laptop but if anything, they need it more.
Windows sucks at knowing what speed I am actually running

Task manager often sees me at 4.3 or at the very least, 3.9, whereas at exact same time, HWINFO shows me running at 177mhz (Average effective clock is closer to reality)

Task manager still just uses the multiplier method to see speed, it doesn't account for sleeping cores.

I seem to be collecting Thermal Paste, I should have about 3 of them now. Cryonaut, the Arctic paste, and the Deepcool paste. Two of those came with coolers.
Not thought about the pads... maybe next PC.

Yeah, those are early temps from Open Hardware Monitor. I need to take some new data, as I've been through a couple of heat cycles at this point (only used it maybe 30 minutes so far, got distracted by other tinkering projects...), but temps seem to have settled a little bit more and are higher at this point.

I did see a couple highs of like 91*, still lower, but not as low as previously seen, so again, need to gather some more data, which I'll hopefully have time for in the coming days. Of the little bit of Aliens I played yesterday, the computer seemed cooler and the framerate much more consistent, which is what I was looking for. We'll see if that holds true, as this stuff isn't supposed to be subject to pump out like regular thermal paste, but the Internet has certainly led me wrong before.

 

[Colif]

My Antivirus decided it wanted to run a scan earlier so I saw 80c for a while. It didn't go over that as my fan curve set so 80c = 100% fan speed.

Air cooler has a switch on side that lets me control its max speed. Right now, its on high performance so I can always hear the fan but it also doesn't have to accelerate as much to lower temps

Its 19c at 1am so its not exactly cool here tonight. So my fans are just closer due to ambient temps to where the curve goes vertical. Most nights it idles on 51c but not today.

Only had cooler 3 weeks so I don't really know what normal is yet. Sick of swapping cooling methods in Summer. Last four years I have swapped something about this time of year. PC is becoming a money pit. Hence I am saving for a new one and hope its better.

 

[Colif]

I would play a modern take on this, it was fun... can't believe it was released in 1995

 

[BeardyHat]

I would play a modern take on this, it was fun... can't believe it was released in 1995

My wife and I put almost 20 hours into this game, I thought it was pretty fun. Haven't been back in several years to see if they updated it any more, but it was fun enough for like $15 or less.

Road Redemption on Steam

Road Redemption lets you lead a biker gang on an epic journey across the country in this driving combat road rage adventure. Huge campaign, dozens of weapons, full 4-player co-op splitscreen and online multiplayer.

store.steampowered.com