Happy New Year! General Game Discussion--January 2026

[Zloth]

@Zloth Good luck with Terra Invicta. Supposedly there's a tutorial, but all I got was a world map and a bunch of mysterious buttons. I'm doing things, but whether they are good things or not I couldn't say. And I had a missions toolbar when I started, but that's disappeared, and I have no idea how to get it back.

There are two tutorials, one for the game proper and another for the interface. The interface one pops up every time something new shows up - UNLESS you click the little x in the upper right to close it instead of the 'next' button. It takes that to mean 'close the tutorial and don't bother me again unless I ask.' The other just guides you through missions as near as I can tell.

The mission window shows up when you have a councilor selected and a nation or interest point or some such. You can only assign those missions once per week, too, so a mission that ends early just results in the person taking a little vacation until the mission assignment phase comes back.

There's a LOT in those tutorials. I made popcorn and ate it while reading! Space is impressive, too, including Lagrange points for orbits and many many asteroids/dwarf planets. I had forgotten about Orcus until the game reminded me!

 

[Zloth]

Am currently in the process of begging Valve to stop allowing people to give awards for reviews and forum comments.

DONE! Sort of. They just changed awards completely. ALL the old awards have been wiped. They made 12 new ones. All awards cost 500 and bestow ZERO points to the account that gets them.

The jester is gone. The reason for jester farming is gone.

And all Steam guides now have no awards at all. Arg. It's always something...

 

[Zed Clampet]

DONE! Sort of. They just changed awards completely. ALL the old awards have been wiped. They made 12 new ones. All awards cost 500 and bestow ZERO points to the account that gets them.

The jester is gone. The reason for jester farming is gone.

And all Steam guides now have no awards at all. Arg. It's always something...

I don't understand the last one, but I consider the first two great improvements.

 

[Zed Clampet]

There are two tutorials, one for the game proper and another for the interface. The interface one pops up every time something new shows up - UNLESS you click the little x in the upper right to close it instead of the 'next' button. It takes that to mean 'close the tutorial and don't bother me again unless I ask.' The other just guides you through missions as near as I can tell.

The mission window shows up when you have a councilor selected and a nation or interest point or some such. You can only assign those missions once per week, too, so a mission that ends early just results in the person taking a little vacation until the mission assignment phase comes back.

There's a LOT in those tutorials. I made popcorn and ate it while reading! Space is impressive, too, including Lagrange points for orbits and many many asteroids/dwarf planets. I had forgotten about Orcus until the game reminded me!

Apparently I closed it out immediately. Think I'll just start over.

 

[neogunhero]

The jester is gone. The reason for jester farming is gone.

I'm glad someone gave me a Jester award on my profile, now I can proudly display this rare item whenever someone visits my page

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I've been a bad gamer lately. Buying games, barely playing them, then buying more. They're all great games but I'm in a rut, not able to dedicate a lot of time to one game.

First game I bought was HITMAN World of Assassination. I really liked the original reboots Hitman 1 and 2, so I picked this up for $2.99 for the starter pack. Fun little sandbox game, though I hate that I'm taunted with all the paid content in the main menu. I'm not sure how much time I'd put into this so that's why I stuck with the starter pack for cheap.

Next game I got is Vital Shell. This is a Vampire Survivors-like game with awesome PS1 aesthetics and an absolutely bumping jungle/DnB soundtrack. It plays like VS since you have auto-firing weapons, hordes of enemies to destroy and upgrades between waves. The big differences is that it is wave-based, each wave lasting a certain amount of time, requiring you to survive until the timer is out. In that time, kill as many enemies as possible to score the most points, making you able to upgrade quicker. It's a great little time waster and really cheap too.

Lastly I picked up Age of Mythology: Retold. I played it on Game Pass a year or two ago and really liked it, so I figured it's time to buy it. As a big fan of AEE4, this feels right at home with the modern UI and QOL updates. I never played the original AoM so I don't have nostalgia for it, though being an AOE4 player, it helped me learn a lot about the game very quickly. I absolutely love destroying my enemies with giant mythical gods. Compared to AOE4, this game feels more focused on combat and war which is a nice change of pace, I don't have to micromanage my economy as much.

 

[Frindis]

Maybe a shadow drop of Fallout 3 & Fallout: New Vegas next week. Most likely not happening, most likely just...erm....rumors, but I'm crossing my fingers anyway because I would love playing Fallout: New Vegas without having to mod it extensively.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7RgN9ijwE4

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some more FrogComposband today. I've mainly been finishing up some dungeons to increase my stats and doing some quests in the hopes of getting any good gear, but so far I'm not having a lot of luck.

I probably should be delving deeper to find good loot. All of the good players rush to the lowest levels as quickly as possible it seems, but I really don't want to lose all of the progress I've made and a single mistake is all it takes in this game.

 

[neogunhero]

Maybe a shadow drop of Fallout 3 & Fallout: New Vegas next week. Most likely not happening, most likely just...erm....rumors, but I'm crossing my fingers anyway because I would love playing Fallout: New Vegas without having to mod it extensively.

I wouldn't necessarily rule it out. The rumors are aligning in a very cohesive way. They were apparently leaked by the FTC when Microsoft was in court a few years ago, and they have been gaining a reputation of doing shadowdrops, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. If anything, I feel it will only be FO3, not NV.

 

[Colif]

Star Wars Genesis

A Total Conversion Modlist for the game Starfield

genesismodlist.com

Star Wars mod for Starfailled. Might make game worth playing...

 

[Zloth]

I'm dubious that the main tutorial of Terra Invicta is really going to help me all that much. I'll just restart the game on easy, playing as the Academy - which is what I want to play as anyway.

Oh. The Academy starts with a space station, and I've got no clue how to run or support one.

I think I'll start over with the Resistance again, but this time play on easy. I'll learn how to exist in space and then restart as the Academy.

I love how the game starts at Feb. 1, 2026! There's a war between Russia and Ukraine, a mess around Isreal, Taiwan is its own nation but China has claims on it, NE India is also claimed by China but also by Assam, which I had never even heard of before. I wonder if it looks different in the Chinese version?

I'm snagging Iceland because it has good education and likes the Resistance, but I think I'll go after Egypt next.

I'm glad someone gave me a Jester award on my profile, now I can proudly display this rare item whenever someone visits my page

Nope. All pre-season-2 awards are gone. The only way to see them would be to go to Archive.org's Wayback machine.

I've been a bad gamer lately. Buying games, barely playing them, then buying more. They're all great games but I'm in a rut, not able to dedicate a lot of time to one game.

Quit talking to those developers, gettin' all hurt because you didn't play their game! Upper management is VERY pleased with your dedication!

 

[Colif]

Guess I should find a game to play...

this was my old GPU

New one just inched me up a little

Everyone above me probably overclocked or different GPU

Guess there isn't that great a difference between both.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Everyone above me probably overclocked or different GPU

Probably not. Every card is different. They call it the "die lottery".

I tried to run this but it kept running "windowed" and it refused to give me a score because of that. I'll figure it out later.

 

[neogunhero]

Nope. All pre-season-2 awards are gone. The only way to see them would be to go to Archive.org's Wayback machine.

I still see my Jester award on my profile! I also see them on reviews on community posts still, just hidden behind an award badge icon you have to click on. You can't give the award anymore, but they are still visible if obtained before the changes.

Quit talking to those developers, gettin' all hurt because you didn't play their game! Upper management is VERY pleased with your dedication!

At least Hitman and Vital Shell are both technically indie games. AoM on the other hand... *Xbox logo staring at me very menacingly*

 

[neogunhero]

Started up Age of Mythology Retold the other day and have put 5 hours into it across two evenings. This game seriously makes time fly! Started at 6:30 last night and before I knew it, it was already 9:30 and my dogs were waiting for me to go outside. Our routine is usually around 8, so they were anxiously waiting for me to get off the game.

So far I'm just doing NPC skirmishes. I really like he Norse teams, with Thor being my favorite so far. As with each faction in AOE, each God has a unique playstyle that you need to learn to properly utilize them. That's not the case right now, I'm just building massive armies to destroy my enemies. I'm not much for RTS strats and tech, I just like playing for fun. I'll use hotkeys and learn each Gods strengths and weaknesses but that's about it, I don't get into the highly technical moves that the really good players use.

I like how you can set "personalities" for the NPCs. There's ones like Attacker, Defender, Builder, Mythical, and more, which makes them focus on different playstyles. So far I've tried a 3V3 skirmish with all NPCs set to Builder personality, with the exception of one friendly NPC being set to Seiger. Maybe I need to set the enemies to Defender so they would actually build walls for us to break through because instead of that, everyone just had very elaborate and sprawling cities.

Great game so far, really glad I finally picked it up.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Guess I should find a game to play...

this was my old GPU

New one just inched me up a little

Everyone above me probably overclocked or different GPU

Guess there isn't that great a difference between both.

I guess I ran the wrong timespy because my scores are very different from your (30k). Or maybe it's a different scale by GPU. My GPU comes in right around 50 percent, just barely above. Of course I may have some VRAM still tied up in my AI program.

 

[BeardyHat]

Guess I should find a game to play...

this was my old GPU

New one just inched me up a little

Everyone above me probably overclocked or different GPU

Guess there isn't that great a difference between both.

I want to take this time to remind everyone of an important tenant from Jesus:

Mark 10:21-22
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

In this context, I'm pretty sure Jesus would want you to give your old GPU to those of us in need. I think Jesus would also ask you to uh, pay shipping and stuff.

 

[BeardyHat]

New post, because my previous one is probably in poor taste, but I am a man of poor taste.

Anyway, still at it with Civ 6. I did end-up picking up Old World on Steam for $3.99, even though I spent whatever money for it several years ago when it first released on Epic and never played it, mostly because I'm disinclined to use Epic.

I feel like I should play Old World, but I also just don't feel like learning a new game right now. Civ 6 is suiting me well right now, because it's so easy to just pick-up and play, make some decisions and then move on with my day.

It actually strikes me as kind of interesting versus what I had been playing which is Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I do quite like that game, but I feel like it really wants me to drive; I load it up, I need to figure out where I'm going and what I'm doing, how to accomplish the challenges on the way (which are of course, very easy) and I'm just not up for it.

It stands in stark contrast to Civ, where I loaded up a save from maybe a year ago and was easily able to just jump right in and keep moving on whatever I was doing at the time. It's making it very easy to play right now when my mental real estate is just sucked up by a bunch of other stuff going on with my life. I should finish Wind Waker, but I just don't think I'm going to get there, because I dread firing it up and figuring out what to do.