General Game Discussion thread for April 2026

[BeardyHat]

I left mmo of the list
Wow would be about 2 years or so
Age of Conan another 2 years.

I played those constantly while I was playing them, no other games.

Only reason I stopped playing wow is I wanted to try other games, as at time I had just updated PC and the original wow wasn't graphically impressive compared to now, I wanted something that used my new GPU more than:

for example.

That and wasting an entire two week holiday grinding one skill to max struck me as a waste of time... I may have done it a year earlier but factors had started to make me reconsider playing it.

Main reason I stopped playing Age of Conan was PC was getting too old, and gpu wasn't animating all the stuff in new areas. That and my main character was mostly finished, didn't need any drops, I was struggling to find a reason to keep playing.

I generally play one game at any one time, I don't bounce between them or at least, I haven't since I stopped buying consoles. Although by end of consoles I was mainly only playing one game... my avatar.

I go back periodically, but only on private servers these days. Though I often feel the same: Why am I doing this?

I mostly just like to do the dungeons and explore the world and even after 22 years I still run across things I hadn't seen before.

Seeing all of the Artemis II footage makes me want to play Kerbal Space Program again.

I keep seeing my Nephew pop-up with it on Steam; seems to be going around.

 

[Zloth]

Really, I kind of just want to play more Retro Rewind or Peglin or something that's not so eager to talk to me and wants me to listen.

Battletech. Career mode has practically no talking. Campaign mode has some at the start and after the main quest battles, but not much and you get a story to follow. XCOM style battles. Awesome (with 3 PPCs)!

I continued Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain today. I unlocked the Africa map and completed the first two missions there.

You got through the dreaded Jeep Ride exposition dump - with musical interludes! Dreaded because, well, it was pretty dreadful.

I don't think playing the previous games would help much, except perhaps to help understand Boss's relationships with some of his allies - but it's pretty easy to pick up on what those are. It's mostly just that the story is confusing. Did you find Code Talker? He explains a lot of what's going on.

 

[BeardyHat]

Battletech. Career mode has practically no talking. Campaign mode has some at the start and after the main quest battles, but not much and you get a story to follow. XCOM style battles. Awesome (with 3 PPCs)!

Oh, I know. I have 240-hours in that particular game 😛

 

[Zed Clampet]

Should I contact the Soulmask devs? Two years ago when Soulmask went into early access, their NPCs were terrible. Their pathing kept breaking. They would sometimes stop working. Sometimes they just stared at their workstation. I figured out an in-game solution, and took some guesses at the problem, but I didn't bother telling anyone. They know infinitely more about this stuff than I do, so I just left them alone. But now the game has come out in early access and the NPCs are still broken. As I said, I don't know the exact problem, but I can tell them what fixes it in game. Surely that would be helpful. My guess of the problem involves navmeshes and doors, but my guess won't do them any good. 😆

 

[Pifanjr]

I decided to get Darkest Dungeon for the Switch 2 today. Originally so I could play it while waiting during my kid's swimming lessons, but I ended up waiting until she was in bed before I started.

I quite like it. It's definitely challenging, but it doesn't feel too unfair.

I've only had to abandon one mission so far and it was because I accidentally used up my only rest after the very first fight, so I decided that run probably wasn't worth continuing.

I have lost two of my people, but that was some incredible bad luck. One of them got attacked and hit by all 4 enemies in a row, killing him before I could even try to save him. Then in the last battle the last two enemies both attacked the same guy at the end of the round, then immediately attacked him again at the start of the next round. The remaining two guys finished the run though, so it wasn't too bad.

You got through the dreaded Jeep Ride exposition dump - with musical interludes! Dreaded because, well, it was pretty dreadful.

That doesn't ring a bell, which is worrisome.

I don't think playing the previous games would help much, except perhaps to help understand Boss's relationships with some of his allies - but it's pretty easy to pick up on what those are. It's mostly just that the story is confusing. Did you find Code Talker? He explains a lot of what's going on.

That also doesn't ring a bell.

I got a message asking if I could come visit Quiet at the base, but then I walked into a room with an entirely different woman in it and got a flashback and some exposition that seemed like it would be very impactful for someone who already knew who she was, but for me it was just very confusing.

Should I contact the Soulmask devs?

Yes. It's always nice to be able to help others and it sounds like your observations could definitely be helpful.

 

[Zloth]

Battletech Advanced is moving along. I've got a hover tank that's... iffy. It doesn't have jump jets so it can't go over cliffs and can't go through forests at all, either. Occasionally, the poor thing will set down right in a forest. At first, I thought it would be stuck forever, but there's a 'move carefully' option now that lets anything move one spot, even if that's right down the side of a cliff. I also (eventually) got my pilot trained in a skill that lets him drive over anything once every 3 turns at full speed.

Unfortunately, that tank lives on speed. Tonight, I used the skill to move my hover tank out of a minefield, but the spot I sent him to turned out to have no movement possible. I moved him one spot, but the tank is easy to hit at such a slow speed, so he got smashed up pretty good. When his turn came around, there still was nowhere to move. He carefully moved one spot again but was quickly destroyed.

They did something great with escort missions: you now get to control the truck drivers, so they don't drive ultra-stupid. In the last one I did, they all had the sensor skill, too, so I was able to sensor lock 4 enemies!

I got a message asking if I could come visit Quiet at the base, but then I walked into a room with an entirely different woman in it and got a flashback and some exposition that seemed like it would be very impactful for someone who already knew who she was, but for me it was just very confusing.

Blond gal?

 

[BeardyHat]

I decided to get Darkest Dungeon for the Switch 2 today. Originally so I could play it while waiting during my kid's swimming lessons, but I ended up waiting until she was in bed before I started.

I quite like it. It's definitely challenging, but it doesn't feel too unfair.

I've only had to abandon one mission so far and it was because I accidentally used up my only rest after the very first fight, so I decided that run probably wasn't worth continuing.

I have lost two of my people, but that was some incredible bad luck. One of them got attacked and hit by all 4 enemies in a row, killing him before I could even try to save him. Then in the last battle the last two enemies both attacked the same guy at the end of the round, then immediately attacked him again at the start of the next round. The remaining two guys finished the run though, so it wasn't too bad.

If I can give any advice, it's this: your people don't matter. I mean, they do, but the real progression of the game is your village and making it better. Your heroes are disposable. If they're low level and get too stressed, don't fix them, kick them to the curb and hire some new sucker.

Also, I assume it's on iPhone as well, but I know for sure it's on Android: Darkest Companion is indispensable for runs. Especially for prolly like me who can't ever remember anything.

Also, DD2 is a pretty great game too. Very different from the original game, so if you ever pick it up, don't go in expecting more of the same.

 

[Pifanjr]

Tonight, I used the skill to move my hover tank out of a minefield, but the spot I sent him to turned out to have no movement possible.

Was this just poor planning on your end or did you have no way of knowing whether your hover tank would get stuck?

Blond gal?

That's the one. It came so much out of nowhere for me that I honestly suspect it's just a hallucination, but maybe it makes sense if you've played the earlier games.

If I can give any advice, it's this: your people don't matter. I mean, they do, but the real progression of the game is your village and making it better. Your heroes are disposable. If they're low level and get too stressed, don't fix them, kick them to the curb and hire some new sucker.

Also, I assume it's on iPhone as well, but I know for sure it's on Android: Darkest Companion is indispensable for runs. Especially for prolly like me who can't ever remember anything.

Also, DD2 is a pretty great game too. Very different from the original game, so if you ever pick it up, don't go in expecting more of the same.

But I feel bad about throwing people away 🙁

It does get pretty expensive fixing everyone's stress at the end of every mission though...

The Darkest Companion app is no longer available, but someone put it on a website. I'm not a big fan of playing a new game with a guide/wiki open, so I'll try each area without using it a couple of times first so I feel like I could've written my own notes.

Thank you for the suggestion!

 

[BeardyHat]

Was this just poor planning on your end or did you have no way of knowing whether your hover tank would get stuck?

That's definitely a quirk of BTA. You sometimes end-up being dropped in places some of your mechs just can't do anything; more than once I've had my 4-legged mech get dropped on some spot that they just end-up stuck in the entire game.

But I feel bad about throwing people away 🙁

It does get pretty expensive fixing everyone's stress at the end of every mission though...

The Darkest Companion app is no longer available, but someone put it on a website. I'm not a big fan of playing a new game with a guide/wiki open, so I'll try each area without using it a couple of times first so I feel like I could've written my own notes.

Thank you for the suggestion!

It becomes essential, you'll likely find. Just because there are so many interactions in each different area and it ends-up being important to bring just the right amount of consumables for each individual interaction and length. The further you get into the game, the worse it gets.

Not saying you can't do it, but it just gets to be a lot; I still love the game, but I found it impossible to play without the reference for what to bring to any given run. This is one of the things they really tried hard to rectify with the second game, which I think was mostly successful; not that it's a direct replacement for the first game, again, they're quite different.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Huge Dune Awakening announcement.

TLDR: You will soon be able to host your own game for solo play or for you and friends, and the official servers will offer the option for PvE or PvP play, and even on PvP servers, all Hagga Basin PvP will be turned off. Expect a massive uptick in Dune Awakening player counts when this launches.

So I actually liked what little PvP I played, but, overall, PvP has been a huge problem for the game from the beginning. From day 1, while there were some excellent, non-griefing PvP players, the game was a magnet for the worst sort of player. They abused every glitch they could find to make everyone's lives miserable. The worst part was that they left each other alone and teamed up to make solo and small team players miserable. Misery was their actual goal, too. They would let a solo player spend an hour gathering spice and then the moment the solo player tried to take their spice and leave, they would utilize an ornithopter glitch (as opposed to shooting them down legitimately) to crash the player in open desert. Did they then gather the spice from that player? No, that would have made it somewhat legitimate. Instead they dropped a thumper next to the player's damaged vehicle, and as the player desperately tried to repair the vehicle, the worm showed up. This permanently destroyed the vehicle, all of its contents and everything the player had been carrying. AND, there is only one large spice field per server, so if your server had these people on them, as most servers did, then getting large quantities of spice was just impossible for solo/small teams.

The developers, Funcom, had assured everyone from the beginning that PvP was optional and that PvE wouldn't be a problem. As their stats showed, 80 percent of the player base were PvE players, and these players felt like they had been misled. Funcom very quickly fixed most of the glitches that the worst of the PvP players were using and made some resources more attainable outside of PvP zones, and these miserable PvP players went ballistic. It's been almost a year, and these guys are still lighting up the forums complaining about Funcom killing their PvP fun. Well, now Funcom is permanently killing it off, and I think the game will flourish without it.

I'm going to keep playing on the same server I've always been on because the people there are good, and I enjoy the economy. No one there tries to block paths to resources. They don't camp near the entrance to the Deep Desert. They'll fight you, but they fight fare.

 

[BeardyHat]

I stopped playing PvP servers in games (unless it's a purely PvP game) back some 2007 in WoW. After the first expansion came out, you'd have people dropping out of the sky with their flying mounts to kill you and then grief you by corpse camping.

It hadn't been so bad in the Vanilla game, because you go to the lesser trafficked zones and stay away from those types. The people in those areas just wanted to be quietly left alone, but that first expansion funneled everyone into the same, relatively small zones.

After that, I quit it entirely and moved to pure PvE servers, because any given PvE game with PvP is instead just griefing and the idealized PvP the developers imagine never comes to fruition.

 

[Zloth]

I remember when Star Citizen announced, they said you could play multiplayer on private servers. I think they pulled that option away years ago, though.

If I can give any advice, it's this: your people don't matter. I mean, they do, but the real progression of the game is your village and making it better. Your heroes are disposable. If they're low level and get too stressed, don't fix them, kick them to the curb and hire some new sucker.

WHAT!? I'm calling PETA! (People for the Ethical Treatment of Adventurers) I bet you're one of those shop owners giving adventurers 12gp for things they know they can sell for 150gp!!

Was this just poor planning on your end or did you have no way of knowing whether your hover tank would get stuck?

50/50. When you turn on the skill, all locations become accessible. The ones that won't be accessible later look exactly the same, so the GUI is no help. There IS the landscape, though. If it's flat, no problem. If it's steep, no way. If it's kinda steep but maybe not too much, you're taking a calculated risk. Except I'm a n00b, so it was more of a should-have-been-calculated risk.

That's the one. It came so much out of nowhere for me that I honestly suspect it's just a hallucination, but maybe it makes sense if you've played the earlier games.

Exactly! I think it might be from the Ground Zeroes game just before, but I never was sure. It was a very short game, maybe I should watch it.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some more Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain today. Only did one story mission because my kid was home and I don't trust the story not to become inappropriate, but the side-ops are fine.

I had Quiet join me on a couple of the missions, but I've concluded I like the dog more. Her special ability to shoot someone right before they sound an alarm sounds nice, but in practice she shot multiple people I had just shot with a tranquiliser and was hoping to recruit. But other times I've told her to shoot someone and she just knocked off their helmet.
She also needs line of sight to mark enemies, whereas the dog marks them through walls, so she's worse at scouting as well.

The only thing she is good for is for after an alarm has been triggered, as I can just hide somewhere and wait until she has picked off every enemy one by one all by herself. I prefer to use a stealthy approach though, so I think I'll stick with the dog for now.

It becomes essential, you'll likely find. Just because there are so many interactions in each different area and it ends-up being important to bring just the right amount of consumables for each individual interaction and length. The further you get into the game, the worse it gets.

Not saying you can't do it, but it just gets to be a lot; I still love the game, but I found it impossible to play without the reference for what to bring to any given run. This is one of the things they really tried hard to rectify with the second game, which I think was mostly successful; not that it's a direct replacement for the first game, again, they're quite different.

I should definitely take a closer look at the consumables you can buy before each run. So far I haven't bought anything besides food and torches and it's been working well enough, but I've also only been doing short runs so far.

Money is tight though, so I'm reluctant to buy anything I don't absolutely need. I prefer saving it to buy equipment and skill upgrades.

50/50. When you turn on the skill, all locations become accessible. The ones that won't be accessible later look exactly the same, so the GUI is no help. There IS the landscape, though. If it's flat, no problem. If it's steep, no way. If it's kinda steep but maybe not too much, you're taking a calculated risk. Except I'm a n00b, so it was more of a should-have-been-calculated risk.

I should try this game some day.

 

[Zloth]

I played some more Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain today. Only did one story mission because my kid was home and I don't trust the story not to become inappropriate, but the side-ops are fine.

Yep, Paz is who you rescue in Ground Zeroes. QUITE gruesome, but here's what happens when you rescue her:

View: https://youtu.be/s4UxP_8eFU8?si=MMpULqoq9JI9gOF-&t=1949


And that should leave you WAY more confused than you were before!

 

[BeardyHat]

Been playing Abiotic Factor again; I'm definitely back into it at this point. Steadily working my way through the Reactor and still have at least one more area to get through until I finish it off. I desperately need some more powerful weapons though.

Been having some hardware issues, however. Streaming from my main desktop to my laptop or Deck, after about half an hour or so, my desktop just completely s***s the bed and shuts off without warning. Not sure what that's about, but I'm intending to play for a little bit in front of the desktop this week and see if that happens when I'm physically in front of it. Not sure if that's maybe a PSU issue or not?

Also other thing I've noticed about running native on my laptop: My laptop cooling pad doesn't necessarily provide any additional performance over just propping the laptop up, however, it does stop the laptop from periodically throttling and causing CPU speed to drop dramatically enough to force the game to run at 30FPS. I did some testing a few months ago out of curiosity and propping the machine up makes a massive difference vs just leaving it flat, but there wasn't any other difference between just a prop and the cooling pad. But apparently, it can just sustain performance longer with the cooling pad. Thought that was interesting.

 

[Colif]

So one thing that may slow down my purchase of Sintopia is... watched a play through of a pre release version (its the release version, guy playing it just got it early) and the Tutorial quests... take 2 hours to complete.

Too much talking, does every game need voice acting? It over does the humour.