General Game Discussion for May 2026

[Kaamos_Llama]

My main problem is that I can't play it when my wife is around because she doesn't want spoilers and it's too gory for my kid. I played it for a while when my wife's sleeping schedule was different from mine, but that's no longer the case.

My wife is going on a trip for about 5 days soon though, so maybe I'll try to finish it then.

It definitely has some narky moments but thankfully its warm enough now that my kids outside a lot of the time in the yard so I can sneak it in more easily.

Would that my wife had any interest in BG3 at all, nice problem to have in a way. I remember act 3 was a little too meandering until the last hours which I had quite a bit of fun with the first time. Its never bad but a little maybe unfocused, but that could just be me.

 

[Frindis]

I remember act 3 was a little too meandering until the last hours which I had quite a bit of fun with the first time. Its never bad but a little maybe unfocused, but that could just be me.

It definitely felt a bit rushed the first time I got to Act 3. It has become a bit better with the patches, but I actually would not have minded another act. It would have made perfect sense to have a full Act 4 in the upper city of Baldur's Gate, and if they had done that, Act 3 would have been a bit more compressed and most likely added a bit more quality to it.

That said, Act 3 has some of the coolest boss fights and secrets (not to mention deadly traps), so there is a little bit of everything. You also get some nice weapons and armour, which ovbiously you would since it is the last Act, but there are a lot of them, and when you add in the different utilities you can get, Act 3 feels like a candy store if you have the coins. It adds a little flavour for touching up on particular builds or perhaps getting that final spell one wants.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

It definitely felt a bit rushed the first time I got to Act 3. It has become a bit better with the patches, but I actually would not have minded another act. It would have made perfect sense to have a full Act 4 in the upper city of Baldur's Gate, and if they had done that, Act 3 would have been a bit more compressed and most likely added a bit more quality to it.

That said, Act 3 has some of the coolest boss fights and secrets (not to mention deadly traps), so there is a little bit of everything. You also get some nice weapons and armour, which ovbiously you would since it is the last Act, but there are a lot of them, and when you add in the different utilities you can get, Act 3 feels like a candy store if you have the coins. It adds a little flavour for touching up on particular builds or perhaps getting that final spell one wants.

There were some great moments but without wanting to spoil it for Pifanjr some of the other boss fights that should have been epic were a little easy with a max level party as I remember.

Took me about 150 hours first time and I was about done with it by then, it was long enough for me. I do tend to want to be done with games before they end though.

Best CRPG yet all round, dont want to make it seem Im complaining much.

 

[Zloth]

However, combat is fun as hell, graphics great, traversal around the levels is mostly amazing and most of the puzzles are good fun too. They just could have done with either a fast travel within the levels or smaller maps IMO. havent finshed yet though, and Im also praying that the second game works better for me as this is a format I think has a ton of potential.

Jedi Survivor DOES have fast travel between any save point you've been to. The place is far too huge to make you run around between all the points. (You hear me Outward? TOO BIG TO NOT HAVE FAST TRAVEL? <grumble grumble>)

Ps: Have you guys done the optional Phase Spider Matriarch boss? The one before Auntie Ethel. That one has a little nasty suprise

Oh yes.

I'm not sure what the surprise was, though.

In Fallen Order the directions are clear. Theres timing needed and it feels exciting and powerful to be sliding then bouncing and wall running off of stuff. But most importantly if you do fail theres no loading screen, it takes a second or two to put you back at a checkpoint not far from where you were before. I dont know if this became possible due to SSDs or some other technical reason but it really makes the difference.

The second game has some special (and very much optional) challenges you can do with particularly hard ones.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I have previously recommended KMPlayer over VLC. I'd like to retract that. It is genuinely a great video player, but today I was fiddling with it (it's not open source, but whatever) and discovered that it was opening as a multilayer app and that hidden behind the first layer is a video player silently playing commercials one after another, presumably for as long as you have it opened.

It doesn't do anything harmful (except use your limited PC resources), but it's dishonest, and I'm not going to support that. It has run ads in the sidebar before. I guess people complained so he hid them. Sure, he deserves some money, but this isn't the way to do it.

***********************

Thought this was kind of funny. I was playing a shop sim, and I heard loud footsteps, which was weird, so I looked around and no one was there. There was an update this morning, so I made a note to tell the developer, but then more noises started, and they weren't pleasant. I thought, maybe he's working on something for Halloween?

Finally I found out that I had YouTube open and it was playing a 'sounds of horror' or something video. I have autoplay turned off, so I'm not sure what triggered it.

 

[Johnway]

Still plodding along in HW😀oK and we've just finished mission 6. Not exactly a difficult mission, but i played it cautious and decided to inch along to the enemies bases and just sitting on top of elevated ground most of the time. i have to say that units can blow up very quickly so preserving units is a tough challenge at times and painful to see your a vetern die. Its got to the point however that i've reached capacity as i carefully look after my units.

So far i have a crack team of Heavy armor and rail gun support. Admittedly, just 2 so i need to get more of those fast. But yeah not being able to position units is annoying. Although i hear there is a way to do it, but the game never tells you... So i'll try it the next time i play.

onto other steam knows, you know me, i love those desktop simulator puzzle games. So when i discovered the InterfaceX26 sales page, i went sort of nuts and added a hell of a lot of games on my wish list. it will be ages before we'll play any of them, but add them to the list.


Doom 2 news and i've finished the second episode of the space cats saga, a cracking great time. Ends on a real high as you switch to slaughterfest mode and end up crashing your ship into mars to stop the hell forces. Anyway, playing episode 3 so we'll see how the new character and episode shapes up. The good news is that its a lot brighter so i can actually see where the hell i'm going.

 

[Frindis]

I'm not sure what the surprise was, though.

Spoiler: This suprise

Gossamer Tomb. Not super dangerous, but could potentially wipe out an unaware party with bad positioning.

 

[Zloth]

Ran into a zeppelin playing BattleTech Advanced today! Some army guys in little mech outfits, too. The game is choppy as can be with all those mods, but there's a ton of variety.

Spoiler: This suprise

Gossamer Tomb. Not super dangerous, but could potentially wipe out an unaware party with bad positioning.

NASTY!! And Legendary only, thank goodness. <shudder>

 

[Colif]

Might be handy for people

Game Compressor on Steam

Stop deleting games due to low disk space! Game Compressor uses advanced Windows LZX technology to reduce game file sizes by up to 50%. Play instantly without decompression waiting times or performance loss. The ideal storage savior for SSDs and Handheld Consoles.

store.steampowered.com

I haven't tested it... I don't really feel need. But not everyone has 8tb free

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Jedi Survivor DOES have fast travel between any save point you've been to. The place is far too huge to make you run around between all the points. (You hear me Outward? TOO BIG TO NOT HAVE FAST TRAVEL? <grumble grumble>)

Goood. I got a bit annoyed trying to find my way back to the ship a couple times already. I get they want you to explore, but honestly making the secret chests only contain cosmetics doesnt motivate me to go very far out of the way to get them.

Oh yes.

I'm not sure what the surprise was, though.

Its in honor mode, some of the bosses have moves they dont have in the other difficulties.

The second game has some special (and very much optional) challenges you can do with particularly hard ones.

I really have my fingers crossed it runs acceptably for me. Ive had to switch Fallen Order to an older controller because with my new one the left trigger wont work no matter what I try and do. Its Xinput, same brand, havent had a problem in anything else with it. Weird.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Did you see where Steam is going to stop letting developers do the minimum and recommended specs and instead do testing and do it themselves? @neogunhero I think you were the one who was talking about this last year.

Developers and publishers are going to loathe having honest specs on their store page 🤣

 

[Johnway]

had a crack at the demo of queen's domain and i've got to say i was quite entertained by it. It has a few niggles here and there or maybe some things that could be improved on, but i liked it and have wishlisted it.

Queen's Domain on Steam

A retro-fantasy action RPG with brutal combat and traversal-focused exploration. Embark on a quest to find your father who disappeared on the mysterious Isle of Neasied, where sinister forces gather, secrets hide everywhere, and the sleeping Queen has begun to stir…

store.steampowered.com

 

[Pifanjr]

I finished most of the challenges of Clone Drone in the Danger Zone yesterday after finishing the campaign. Each one changes up the gameplay in different ways and I had a lot of fun with them, though I got close to rage quitting several times because they are in fact quite challenging. Most of them are 10 or 14 levels and if you lose, you have to start from the beginning.

The only one I just could not do was the one where the upgrade you get after each fight gets randomised. One of the things you can buy with upgrade points is extra lives and since it only takes one good hit to die I usually go through at least 5 of them on each challenge. It doesn't help that this challenge has 20 levels and even if they don't ramp up in difficulty quite as fast as other challenges, every level is another chance for a mistake or an unlucky hit.

 

[Pifanjr]

had a crack at the demo of queen's domain and i've got to say i was quite entertained by it. It has a few niggles here and there or maybe some things that could be improved on, but i liked it and have wishlisted it.

Queen's Domain on Steam

A retro-fantasy action RPG with brutal combat and traversal-focused exploration. Embark on a quest to find your father who disappeared on the mysterious Isle of Neasied, where sinister forces gather, secrets hide everywhere, and the sleeping Queen has begun to stir…

store.steampowered.com

I thought the description of "brutal combat" referred to gory graphics, so the video on the Steam page was a bit underwhelming.

 

[Frindis]

Can you beat me in today's daily challenge?🙂

https://www.geoguessr.com/. I just made a free account, and then I can do the free dailes.

 

[Frindis]

had a crack at the demo of queen's domain and i've got to say i was quite entertained by it. It has a few niggles here and there or maybe some things that could be improved on, but i liked it and have wishlisted it.

Queen's Domain on Steam

A retro-fantasy action RPG with brutal combat and traversal-focused exploration. Embark on a quest to find your father who disappeared on the mysterious Isle of Neasied, where sinister forces gather, secrets hide everywhere, and the sleeping Queen has begun to stir…

store.steampowered.com

I played through the demo and it grew on me. Started very hard, but then stuff clicks, and it gets more forgiving.

 

[neogunhero]

Did you see where Steam is going to stop letting developers do the minimum and recommended specs and instead do testing and do it themselves? @neogunhero I think you were the one who was talking about this last year.

Developers and publishers are going to loathe having honest specs on their store page 🤣

I didn't see where it will be part of the store page, all I know is now reviewers can attach their system specs to give people a general sense of how well it runs. I do think there needs to be more transparency when it comes to system specs, as well as just optimizing the games better in general.

Related, I saw this over the weekend:

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Updated PC System Requirements Revealed

TT Games has provided the minimum, recommended and 4K PC system requirements for LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

insider-gaming.com

Recommended: Intel Core i7-12700 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8 GB) or AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB) , Medium 1440p at 60 FPS with DLSS, FSR, or XeSS Quality and Frame Gen Enabled

This Lego game can only get to 60fps at 1440p medium with frame gen enabled??? That's just insane to me. How graphically demanding can these games really be? My main issue with this is that it seems more and more developers are going to just rely on using upscaling and frame gen to achieve playable frame rates.

The funny thing about 60fps with frame gen is that you need a decent frame rate before even using frame gen, typically it's suggested you reach close to 60fps before enabling it. if this game is running at 30fps without it, the latency and visual artifacts can be very bad if it's only getting to around 60fps with it enabled.

 

[Zloth]

Yay! Semi-retirement is finally here! They worked me until 2am on Saturday, but the watched pot did finally boil. Only semi-retirement, though - gotta get back to work in a few hours.

I haven't tested it... I don't really feel need. But not everyone has 8tb free

My main drive has only 2TB and I never have any space issues at all. Sometimes it hardly seems worth the bother to uninstall games because the drive is so huge. I mostly uninstall them because I want to get them off my Steam list of Favorites and I know I'll forget to uninstall them if I don't do it then.

Developers and publishers are going to loathe having honest specs on their store page 🤣

I think they would love it, especially for the minimum specs! First and foremost, they would have somebody else to point at when one of those gamers that considers a turn-based game unplayable complains. Second, they wouldn't have to do it themselves.

I can't imagine it happening, though. It's not like you can just get a bank of 30 or so PCs with different specs and drivers then automatically run each game submitted for about 5 minutes. For many games, different parts of the game will run at different speeds - and the more demanding parts may be different depending on what driver updates you've been doing. What about factory building games where performance is going to degrade as more and more gets built?

On the other hand, it's a mess now. Would a Steam-run version be worse?

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Zloth and @neogunhero Hey, apologies to everyone. My comment above was not 100 percent correct. I have a kind of funny story about the state I was in at the time, which involves another 56 hours without sleep. But I watched a video on YouTube, as much as I could concentrate at that point, and the video was very misleading. Both the title of the video and the first 10 minutes wasn't giving the whole story, which is that Valve is only doing this for their own hardware and software, which makes a lot more sense. I can't say whether this was ever stated in the video because I nodded off at that point.

Actually I'm falling asleep again, so I'm going to skip the funny story. All I'll say is that I'm a terrible farmer when I'm asleep. Good thing I wasn't at my own farm 🤣

 

[Pifanjr]

Can you beat me in today's daily challenge?🙂

https://www.geoguessr.com/. I just made a free account, and then I can do the free dailes.

I got 10,480 with 128 steps, so well below average. Though I didn't realise you could move around for the first one.

 

[Pifanjr]

I just tried out Boxes: Lost Fragments. I finished the first section of the game, then uninstalled it. The puzzles so far are way too easy, the main problem is figuring out which parts you can actually interact with. I got stuck once because I didn't realize a specific part of the box was interactive.

 

[Frindis]

I got 10,480 with 128 steps, so well below average. Though I didn't realise you could move around for the first one.

Yeah, the moving definitely helped me on a couple of them. I also don't like when it is too much jungle, because I'm not a botanist and have a hard time trying to guess exactly where the flora is from.

The last one was annoying! I could not find Brooklyn on the map, but I knew roughly the area. Probably spent a minute trying to zoom in and out to find the city name.

 

[Johnway]

I played through the demo and it grew on me. Started very hard, but then stuff clicks, and it gets more forgiving.

yeah the start was tough. Especially with all those lazer firing eyes. But once you get the infinite kunai's it made life much easier. i could kite most of the enemies or soften them up before delivering the killer blow. The boss fight was a bit sudden and i thought i messed up big time stumbling in. but turned out he wasn't so tough (plus i had a whole load of healing herbs).

I did get to try the 3 starter weapons and all things considered they all got used. i would say perhaps the most BS thing about the melee is that even a single quick swipe depletes ALL of your stamina. You might as well use the alt attack or charge every hit up and use it all. The other thing it could use is perhaps a block button or a shield as i spent much of the combat kiting enemies.

 

[neogunhero]

Save 60% on Element TD 2 - Tower Defense on Steam

Element TD 2 sees you combine powerful elements to create unique towers. Prove your defenses against challenging foes, and compete or cooperate with others to determine who has mastered the elements.

store.steampowered.com

Picked this up last night for $6. I've been wanting a good tower defense game, so when I saw this I immediately bought it. I played for about an hour and yea, this seems pretty good. There is apparently a lot of depth and complexity, so I'm excited to make some progress and level up. I think this is made by the guys who made Element TD for Warcraft 3, though that's not fully confirmed or not it seems.

EDIT: Turns out the original creators of the WC3 mod are involved with this, so that's very neat! Only one of the original members actually helped create this standalone game, the other member didn't make this one but is an advisor on the project.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Yeah, the moving definitely helped me on a couple of them. I also don't like when it is too much jungle, because I'm not a botanist and have a hard time trying to guess exactly where the flora is from.

The last one was annoying! I could not find Brooklyn on the map, but I knew roughly the area. Probably spent a minute trying to zoom in and out to find the city name.

You probably can't find that on a lot of maps due to what it is. What is strange is that wasn't any of my answers. @Pifanjr was that in your daily?

I only got 9000, partly because on the third location I was on a small street in the middle of nowhere with no signs, cars or buildings. I ended up picking somewhere in the US midwest only because the landscape was flat. I got 100 points. But I'm generally bad at geography, anyway. Still had fun though.