February 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

You gotta have a controller, that's the advantage of PC gaming. We have our choice of control method!

I've got 4 controllers, and the proper attitude is to be flexible.

I use my controllers for driving and flying. In most other games you turn too slowly and can't aim for crap. Fighters like Mortal Kombat are also best on controller and the odd other game here and there, like I play sports games with them, like Super Mega Baseball and various football games. But for most types of combat, keyboard and mouse are far superior, as they also are in strategy games, turn-based games, etc.

 

[February's Ghost]

Console peasant. 1 v 1 me, bro
Meet me in Vermintide 2

Never touched a console since the SNES and I didn't like Vermintide 2. You can't play it solo like the original game. (I will use KB&M for multiplayer shooters, but a toddler could take me 1v1 anyway).

 

[February's Ghost]

Helldivers 2 got a new warbond. I think the set looks dope:

I literally just played Helldivers 2 for the first time in awhile and finally made level 12 and earned enough super credits in game to buy a premium Warbond.

 

[ZedClampet]

Never touched a console since the SNES and I didn't like Vermintide 2. You can't play it solo like the original game. (I will use KB&M for multiplayer shooters, but a toddler could take me 1v1 anyway).

I was just joking. But you can play Vermintide 2 solo. I finished it solo on every difficulty. It's the only game I'm good at haha

 

[February's Ghost]

I was just joking. But you can play Vermintide 2 solo. I finished it solo on every difficulty. It's the only game I'm good at haha

I know you were joking. Hmm, I didn't know how to play solo then, as every time I played I always ended up in a foursome.

 

[Colif]

TIL Factorio is a space game

Most playthroughs I watch end on the planet still. This is... different

 

[ZedClampet]

I know you were joking. Hmm, I didn't know how to play solo then, as every time I played I always ended up in a foursome.

I don't remember now. Fatshark doesn't like solo players, so I remember the "private" toggle was kind of hidden. They've dropped all pretenses now. Single player is not in Darktide at all. If it were, I'd probably play it every day.

If you try to select "private" in Darktide you get a message that says you have to be in a group to select private, so they have a weird definition of "private"

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Finished up with The Last Spell for now, theres a DLC I havent got and another coming out fairly soon so might go back then, really enjoyed it.

Tried out a bit of Hitman World of Assassination today for something completely different. Did the prologue training missions and the first mission. I'm not sure as of yet, the levels are clockwork and there are basically waypoints to completethe levels in a way thats a bit immersion breaking because you just follow the prompts and just get the timings right. I understand the idea is you go back and repeat the levels again and again and find new ways to do stuff, its just that style of game isn't really my thing normally. Going to keep going a bit and see if I can find the fun there.

Then I played a bit of Songs Of Conquest, as I understand it its a love letter/spiritual sequel to Heroes of Might and Magic, which I never played. This is more in my groove at the moment, picked it up and straight away got into the turn based battles. Not sure how varied the combat is going to get just yet, theres a lot of buff spells to use but the units so far just have basic attacks and the hex based combat maps seem to be more based around simple positioning. I'm liking the pixel art style, and looking forward to getting more into it.

 

[Zimbaly]

Gaming plans for Feb - ARAM, maybe Starfield DLC and some more BG3. I'm doing art mainly till April when LUNAR comes out.... then nothing exists till I beat those games.

 

[Johnway]

You KB&M purists are too cute

I play most game with a controller seeing most games are designed for a controller (non-FPS games anyway, though I still use a controller for them).

I gave up on Valhalla a while back. It's a beautiful game (though nothing as good looking as Origins or Odyssey), great combat, but it's just so....big. I have like 125 hours into it and I still have one full area to do for an alliance. Too much.

Atm its reflex action where i constantly press space to dodge when i set it to a different button. I might have to make a few more adjustments till i get the right one that works. Hopefully i'll grow out of the habit and eventually its business as usual.

 

[neogunhero]

I'd say I'm still in a bit of a rut when it comes to gaming, but I did find a new "mindless" game that is easy for me to throw on, play for a bit, and be satisfied. I reinstalled Forza Horizon 5 for about the 4th time and decide to give it a real try and have been enjoying it all weekend. I call this a "mindless" game to me because it's not a game that I am particularly invested in, it's more just something that is easy to turn on and off in short bursts. It does not mean the game is bad at all to me, but it's no Cyberpunk or Red Dead 2 where I am much more engaged in the gameplay and story and can't keep it off my brain. Mindless games are the kind of game you throw on after a long day and just want to numb out and relax with.

I've tried it many times before, but for some reason, never got past the intro mission that's only about 10 minutes long. I do remember tweaking the graphics settings a ton and running benchmarks which you cannot skip, you have to run the full 3-minute benchmark every single time. I did tweak the settings a lot again to get silky smooth 60fps constantly, and after that I decided to really stick with the game. I quite enjoyed Horizon 4 back when it was new, so I figured this is just a bigger and better version. That's pretty much exactly what it is.

The Horizon games are great for people who don't play much racing games, and also good for those who like a realistic racing game but does not have a race wheel controller. The settings are incredibly detailed, allowing you to fine tune the difficulty in dozens of different ways. Surely you could use a wheel, but I would assume you'd want a racing game with a stronger simulation approach, Horizon can be a bit arcadey. The handling and controls still feel great, but games like AC surely offer more realism in the simulation department.

I was surprised to see player houses return. I thought it was very pointless in Horizon 4. All you can do there is customize your characters' appearance, look at your car collection (you are able to switch cars at any time you'd like in the open world), and look at a marketplace (also available through menus). They do serve some purpose, like fast travel and your starting point when you load into the game, but that's just about it. Just something for you to grind towards.

It's a fun and casual racing game. I have the difficulty settings pretty easy so I'm not worried about banging up my cars and having to pay for the damages. I may just need to increase the AI difficulty a bit higher, I smoke them all in each race I play.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'd say I'm still in a bit of a rut when it comes to gaming, but I did find a new "mindless" game that is easy for me to throw on, play for a bit, and be satisfied. I reinstalled Forza Horizon 5 for about the 4th time and decide to give it a real try and have been enjoying it all weekend. I call this a "mindless" game to me because it's not a game that I am particularly invested in, it's more just something that is easy to turn on and off in short bursts. It does not mean the game is bad at all to me, but it's no Cyberpunk or Red Dead 2 where I am much more engaged in the gameplay and story and can't keep it off my brain. Mindless games are the kind of game you throw on after a long day and just want to numb out and relax with.

I've tried it many times before, but for some reason, never got past the intro mission that's only about 10 minutes long. I do remember tweaking the graphics settings a ton and running benchmarks which you cannot skip, you have to run the full 3-minute benchmark every single time. I did tweak the settings a lot again to get silky smooth 60fps constantly, and after that I decided to really stick with the game. I quite enjoyed Horizon 4 back when it was new, so I figured this is just a bigger and better version. That's pretty much exactly what it is.

The Horizon games are great for people who don't play much racing games, and also good for those who like a realistic racing game but does not have a race wheel controller. The settings are incredibly detailed, allowing you to fine tune the difficulty in dozens of different ways. Surely you could use a wheel, but I would assume you'd want a racing game with a stronger simulation approach, Horizon can be a bit arcadey. The handling and controls still feel great, but games like AC surely offer more realism in the simulation department.

I was surprised to see player houses return. I thought it was very pointless in Horizon 4. All you can do there is customize your characters' appearance, look at your car collection (you are able to switch cars at any time you'd like in the open world), and look at a marketplace (also available through menus). They do serve some purpose, like fast travel and your starting point when you load into the game, but that's just about it. Just something for you to grind towards.

It's a fun and casual racing game. I have the difficulty settings pretty easy so I'm not worried about banging up my cars and having to pay for the damages. I may just need to increase the AI difficulty a bit higher, I smoke them all in each race I play.

All true. That's why I said in the recommendation thread that I often used racing games for what you were wanting in terms of casual play. I love all the adjustments you can make to your cars, and then you go out and see if you are faster (although I'm not always a good enough driver to be able to tell).

The only thing I ended up taking seriously were the PvP races, but those are easily avoided.

This is the year we are supposed to get a new Horizon, but they are working on the new Fable game, so I'm not sure it's going to happen.

 

[Zloth]

Tons of FF7 Rebirth this weekend. Going by chapters, I'm still only half done, and I'm expecting to go back and clean some things up when I get near the end.

I got $20 on Philadelphia

Huh, I think that's what Taylor got for that ring she pawned off this morning, too.

 

[BeardyHat]

I finally finished Mission 5 in Aliens: Dark Descent today. Had taken a long break from it a week or two ago while I was working on other projects and then got into playing Snowrunner.

Which I've still been playing a good amount. I have several games I'm pretty interested in starting (Midnight Suns, as well as Styx: Master of Shadows), but just haven't been motivated to do so and am just falling back on stuff like Snowrunner.

 

[neogunhero]

View: https://youtu.be/LLh4vRYb36A?si=UDFp_2aRoFUIOFrX


What an awesome series. The humor, editing, and style is seriously great. Even if you aren’t into Postal 2 you’ll find some entertainment in this series. This guy plays the game on the hardest difficulty and gives lots of insights into different tech and mechanics to beat the levels. He’s beaten Postal 2, the Apocalypse Weekend expansion, and now he’s moving onto Paradise Lost, the DLC that came out in 2015. I binged the entire series last night.

---

I decided to replay DOOM 2016 last night. I saw DOOM Dark Ages is coming to Game Pass, so I figured I should refresh myself with reboots. Apparently, I haven't played this version since 2017! Yeah, a replay is in due order. At this point, DOOM 2016 feels a lot like DOOM 3 when I first played it in maybe 2012 or so. It's starting to show its age in the graphics, but the gameplay is still great fun. I'll most likely be sticking with this, then moving onto Eternal which I haven't played yet.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Doom The Dark Ages might be one of the games I actually buy around release this year, pending reviews. Those games are so good.

Just finished the 3rd Hitman mission in Marrakesh. Getting into the flow of it now, there arent quite as many tools as I though there would be. Mostly to access the areas I need to I just find rat poison, stalk the people whose clothes I need until I can dose them then follow them to a bathroom where I sneakily can knock them out, steal their clothes and leave them unconscious in a handily placed cupboard/hamper/dumpster. Seems to be various shades of that so far, feels more varied than it sounds when you put it like that because of the settings and storylines. Still very early on as its not even halfway through what was the first game.

Anyway Ive been using Ultra settings, full RT with DLSS quality and Frame generation. Its putting me at 80 odd FPS and it looks and feels great. Interested to see how it would feel in a game where latency matters, but my mouse reactions arent exactly professional gamer level so I dont think it will matter to me.

 

[ZedClampet]

Do you think this is completely ethical?

A developer who sells their old game both on Steam and Gog said they were going to make the code open source so players could update it, keep it working, fix bugs, etc. So they uploaded the relevant files to Github.

However, if you download the supposedly opensource game off of Github, it requires that you own the game through GoG so that you can add the user made fixes to it. I have no idea if the Steam version of the game works or if you can add the fixes to the Steam version, but I assume that you can.

The thing is, they are still selling this game for $9.99. If they said they weren't going to update it anymore and took it off the market, but then added the files to Github, that would be understandable. But selling a game that is fully maintained by the players seems off to me.

 

[Pifanjr]

Do you think this is completely ethical?

A developer who sells their old game both on Steam and Gog said they were going to make the code open source so players could update it, keep it working, fix bugs, etc. So they uploaded the relevant files to Github.

However, if you download the supposedly opensource game off of Github, it requires that you own the game through GoG so that you can add the user made fixes to it. I have no idea if the Steam version of the game works or if you can add the fixes to the Steam version, but I assume that you can.

The thing is, they are still selling this game for $9.99. If they said they weren't going to update it anymore and took it off the market, but then added the files to Github, that would be understandable. But selling a game that is fully maintained by the players seems off to me.

As long as they're entirely upfront about asking for free labour, I don't see a problem. They're free to ask and I don't see any way they could coerce or pressure anyone into contributing.

People already contribute free labour to paid games in the form of mods, this way even people who don't want to go through the trouble of finding and downloading mods can benefit from these fixes.

 

[Zloth]

ETHICAL!

It's not the act of kindness releasing the game fully to the public domain would be, or even just making the game free, but it's way better than just leaving the game's code to rot in some coding salt mine. Also, it's entirely transparent. The people helping fix the game know they won't get a dime for it, while somebody else will. If they are still willing to do it, why not let them?

 

[February's Ghost]

The thing is, they are still selling this game for $9.99. If they said they weren't going to update it anymore and took it off the market, but then added the files to Github, that would be understandable. But selling a game that is fully maintained by the players seems off to me.

Ethics have nothing to do with it, it's what gamers want and are even demanding though petitions.

 

[ZedClampet]

Ethics have nothing to do with it, it's what gamers want and are even demanding though petitions.

Yeah, I considered that, but gamers aren't thinking clearly on this. If this becomes normalized, then the publishers will release broken and incomplete games and then after a short amount of time, announce that they are going open source (not true) and put the relevant code out for people to work on while the developers move on to their next game. The publisher will then continue to reap the sales benefits from the game for years and years to come. We're already near the finish line on the race to the bottom. This would put us across it.

Do I really think this would happen? Maybe. But we are giving them permission to do this when we start to accept things like this.

If you aren't going to fix your game anymore, then take it off the market and make it open source. That's the only real way forward. You can't let them have their cake and eat it too. They can't handle that level of responsibility.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Yeah, I considered that, but gamers aren't thinking clearly on this. If this becomes normalized, then the publishers will release broken and incomplete games and then after a short amount of time, announce that they are going open source (not true) and put the relevant code out for people to work on while the developers move on to their next game. The publisher will then continue to reap the sales benefits from the game for years and years to come. We're already near the finish line on the race to the bottom. This would put us across it.

Do I really think this would happen? Maybe. But we are giving them permission to do this when we start to accept things like this.

If you aren't going to fix your game anymore, then take it off the market and make it open source. That's the only real way forward. You can't let them have their cake and eat it too. They can't handle that level of responsibility.

Would require some form of regulation to curb the worst instincts of the market to work for consumers.

Thinking about it a bit more and as someone who knows little to nothing about programming, is it possible there might be some code publishers didnt want to be out there that could be used/copied by rival devs in other games?

 

[BeardyHat]

I doubt much will come of it and it also isn't unprecedented. Doom and Quake both had their source codes available in the 90s and they're still being sold 30 years later.

And if it's up to the players to maintain and alter, you'll probably see free versions here and there. No one pays for GZDoom these days, after all.

 

[isleepinabed]

I'm still playing Assetto Corsa. I wouldn't say it's the best automobile sim I've ever played but it's both relaxing and compelling and the hours while away. And even though this has a huge mod community I'm playing it completely stock, very few cars and tracks avaiable, it's just that the core simulation is really very, very good.

 

[Frindis]

I did some sword fighting in KDC and went back to kick Runt's ass. I'm slightly surprised I sliced and diced him up so fast (@BeardyHat I found out I like swords too much to go any other way. I'm not sure if I like shortsword more than longsword though, but definitely not going to use a shield.), but perhaps I also slightly overdid the training for two hours in the ring with a wooden sword. I also found out the hard way that there is absolutely no point of using heavy armor in the ring and having the durability go to 0 when you can train butt naked.