January 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Brian Boru]

Summary is that more research is needed, but really it's only common sense. Isn't it?

Gamers at risk of irreversible hearing loss and tinnitus, study suggests

A new review of available evidence suggests video gamers regularly exceed safe sound limits.

www.bbc.com

 

[Zloth]

So what game am I playing?

Death Stranding has big Horizon: Zero Dawn tributes. Cyberpunk has BB from Death Stranding. I guess some other AAA dark future game needs to drop something Cyberpunk in now.

Summary is that more research is needed, but really it's only common sense. Isn't it?

Yeah. If people are playing the games too loud (or the movies, or the music, or whatever), it's going to do damage. By definition of "too loud."

I haven't got a clue how loud my games get. It's really quiet around here, so I don't need to drown anything out. <shrug>

 

[ZedClampet]

Summary is that more research is needed, but really it's only common sense. Isn't it?

Gamers at risk of irreversible hearing loss and tinnitus, study suggests

A new review of available evidence suggests video gamers regularly exceed safe sound limits.

www.bbc.com

I don't keep my game volume too high. Sometimes I do listen to music kind of loud, though. My dad is getting ready to have a cochlear ear implant done, but his problem stems from being near an explosion when he was in the military that immediately got rid of a significant portion of his hearing.

I think ear infections can cause hearing loss too. The wife of Eastman Kodak's CEO used to get ear infections quite often and went almost completely deaf. I was just a kid, so I don't know the details. I just know my parents blamed it on ear infections. She talked very, very loud to compensate. If she came to the front door, you could understand her clearly no matter where you were in the house.

*****

Has anyone played Slay the Princess? I've been working my way through it. I'm not sure I'm doing it right. It's sort of a Groundhog Day sort of thing, except you are going to parallel universes and find yourself in the same situation in each, being that you are supposed to slay the princess.

I've been playing 3 hours, and I only have 13 of 97 achievements, so I think I'm not changing my strategy enough with each new iteration. The story keeps changing, though, so I'm not sure.

It's an interesting game. I'm not 100 percent sure what's going on, though I have some theories. Won't spoil anything, though, in case someone else decides to play it.

 

[neogunhero]

Summary is that more research is needed, but really it's only common sense. Isn't it?

Gamers at risk of irreversible hearing loss and tinnitus, study suggests

A new review of available evidence suggests video gamers regularly exceed safe sound limits.

www.bbc.com

When I was younger I definitely liked to have my volume turned way up. Now I find that some sounds in games can be too loud such as gunshots and explosions, so I keep my volume around 40% which is perfectly fine if you have both ears on the headset.

However I must admit I’m very bad about listening to my music too loud… I have always loved my music loud. I understand the risks but sometimes music just doesn’t sound as good when it’s quiet, even to acceptable listening levels. It’s a bad habit that I’ve known most of my life I must break.

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Xbox Developer Direct live event is today, 2PM central time. Looks like we’re only looking at the big titles Xbox devs have been cooking up, but I’m hoping for a surprise drop like last year’s Hi-Fi Rush. I’m also looking forward to seeing more Avowed, I’m very excited for that game.

 

[Zloth]

I’m also looking forward to seeing more Avowed, I’m very excited for that game.

I was, until I saw that video. The combat looked OK but everything else looked meh. I didn't see anything that seemed original at all. Unless they can show something that's actually interesting, I would rather simply re-play one of my older RPGs.

 

[ZedClampet]

I was, until I saw that video. The combat looked OK but everything else looked meh. I didn't see anything that seemed original at all. Unless they can show something that's actually interesting, I would rather simply re-play one of my older RPGs.

It could do worse than to be a traditional, open-world RPG with pretty good combat. We don't expect every movie that comes out to be breaking new ground. Why do we expect that with games? If the stories are good and the combat is good then the game will be good.

 

[Zloth]

It could do worse than to be a traditional, open-world RPG with pretty good combat. We don't expect every movie that comes out to be breaking new ground. Why do we expect that with games? If the stories are good and the combat is good then the game will be good.

Yeah, if the story is good, it could easily carry the entire game. That's something that's nearly impossible to market, too, so we won't know how good/bad that is until release.

Still, I can't think of any RPG that didn't have some sort of hook. Greedfall had its interesting setting, ELEX had its fantasy/SF mix, Risen had PB's unique approach to picking your class, Naheulbeuk had its humor... even Dragon Age: Origins felt it had to make a big deal about its blood flying everywhere (eye roll). I've got a bad feeling that this is going to be another Outer Worlds, only with an even less interesting setting.

They've got another six+ months to give us something to wow us, so there's still plenty of room to hope.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yeah, if the story is good, it could easily carry the entire game. That's something that's nearly impossible to market, too, so we won't know how good/bad that is until release.

Still, I can't think of any RPG that didn't have some sort of hook. Greedfall had its interesting setting, ELEX had its fantasy/SF mix, Risen had PB's unique approach to picking your class, Naheulbeuk had its humor... even Dragon Age: Origins felt it had to make a big deal about its blood flying everywhere (eye roll). I've got a bad feeling that this is going to be another Outer Worlds, only with an even less interesting setting.

They've got another six+ months to give us something to wow us, so there's still plenty of room to hope.

I'm actually more interested in that InXile steampunk game and whatever that 4X is called that was part of that same show.

 

[Pifanjr]

Played a bit more Subnautica. I moved part of my base down into the ravine so I could use the scanner room and cameras to map out the cave before going in it. I also upgraded the Seamoth to be able to withstand the pressure up to 900 meters deep, meaning I could use it throughout the entire cave, which made me feel a lot safer. It wasn't anything near as terrifying as I feared.

My wife was creating a party for Baldur's Gate when I walked in the room yesterday. She isn't the type to spend hours in a character creator, so she just sped through it as fast as possible. I was a bit confused because I thought you only made your main character in Baldur's Gate 3, but I quickly helped create two of the characters. Only when the game started did I realise she accidentally started Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, which explained why she was making an entire party and why I thought I saw a mention to THAC0, among other oddities.

She quickly quit and started Baldur's Gate 3 instead and I watched her play for about an hour or so. The cutscenes are a bit more gross than she expected, especially since she was eating at the time, but she enjoyed the game. It is interesting to see how different her approach is though, especially her complete lack of exploring any of the UI. She skimmed/skipped her way through character creation, looted everything without checking what she was picking up and never checked any of the ability/skill buttons on the bottom of the screen. It's slightly maddening to me, but it's working so far.

Summary is that more research is needed, but really it's only common sense. Isn't it?

Gamers at risk of irreversible hearing loss and tinnitus, study suggests

A new review of available evidence suggests video gamers regularly exceed safe sound limits.

www.bbc.com

I can't imagine why you would choose to blast gunshot sounds into your ears at 119 db.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

My wife was creating a party for Baldur's Gate when I walked in the room yesterday. She isn't the type to spend hours in a character creator, so she just sped through it as fast as possible. I was a bit confused because I thought you only made your main character in Baldur's Gate 3, but I quickly helped create two of the characters. Only when the game started did I realise she accidentally started Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, which explained why she was making an entire party and why I thought I saw a mention to THAC0, among other oddities.

She quickly quit and started Baldur's Gate 3 instead and I watched her play for about an hour or so. The cutscenes are a bit more gross than she expected, especially since she was eating at the time, but she enjoyed the game. It is interesting to see how different her approach is though, especially her complete lack of exploring any of the UI. She skimmed/skipped her way through character creation, looted everything without checking what she was picking up and never checked any of the ability/skill buttons on the bottom of the screen. It's slightly maddening to me, but it's working so far.

BG 3 is fairly forgiving on normal difficulty, probably part of the reason its been so popular. Lots of people new to the genre would have fallen off very easily otherwise.

Divinity Original Sin 2 was brutally hard at times on normal, they must have learned form that.

 

[BeardyHat]

She skimmed/skipped her way through character creation, looted everything without checking what she was picking up and never checked any of the ability/skill buttons on the bottom of the screen. It's slightly maddening to me, but it's working so far.

This is why I cannot watch others play games. For the sake of my sanity and my relationships.

I'm still stuck down in my hobby hole. I have about 80 little models to paint before Mid-March, as well as a very large one, so I've been utterly focused on that and my game time has fallen off a cliff.

That said, all this hobby time has really put me in more a handheld mood, so I've been using my Deck and my DSi, when I do have a few minutes and something put me in the mood for Zelda, so I got vast swaths of emulation working on my Deck. I'm finally playing Breath of the Wild for the first time and very much enjoying it in the 15-minute instances I've been putting time into it.

I am generally not a Zelda fan, though I've played quite a few of them, but Breath of the Wild is really 100% my jam. Free-form exploration and dicking around? Yes, please.

Also close to finishing Last Window - Secret of Cape West on my DSi, which is better than the first game Hotel Dusk, which I also loved. Both these games deserve to be ported off the platform and brought to a wider audience, as if you're in the mood for a visual novel, these are really fantastic.

Also made some time to play Call to Arms - Gate of Hell: Ostfront (My god, that title gore) some more last night, as I'm deep in the itch for WW2. I did a 2v2 battle with two of my buddies, but they forgot to give me an AI companion, so I rolled with it since I'm better than them at strategy games anyway and can normally defeat one of said buddies in about 15-20 minutes. This battle raged on for almost an hour, them finally able to roll over me because I ran out of resources to bring new units to the fight with, but boy it was fun to try and hold people off. I'm very happy with my performance and how they really had to fight for it. But after that hour, I was all done, as it's a very intense game and I was needing some winddown time before bed.

 

[ZedClampet]

My new "job" isn't keeping me busy at all. I'm having to wait while other stuff is done. I have my simulation part planned out as far as I can go at the moment.

 

[ZedClampet]

It's weird to me that some people think every game is American. Two most recent examples are a British guy complaining that "the Yanks" always get British things wrong. He was complaining about the British themed gardens in House Flipper, which is a Polish game. The other is one of the most popular Palworld reviews championing the new American Pokemon. The developers are Japanese.

Last I heard, the US produced less than 20 percent of games, so you're wrong 4 out of 5 times. Even I have a better record than that.

 

[RebeccaMigliorini]

Summary is that more research is needed, but really it's only common sense. Isn't it?

Gamers at risk of irreversible hearing loss and tinnitus, study suggests

A new review of available evidence suggests video gamers regularly exceed safe sound limits.

www.bbc.com

In my opinion, this is another case of the media trying to scare people about gaming. Do they warn about hearing loss from blasting music at concerts or clubs? Not as much!

So yeah, crank that volume knob down a bit if you need to. But don't stop fragging because of these overhyped news stories. Our ears have survived this long, they can handle a few more clutch plays at a reasonable volume. Game on!

 

[Brian Boru]

wrong 4 out of 5 times. Even I have a better record than that

Umm…

Do they warn about hearing loss from blasting music at concerts or clubs?

Oh lord yes, they've been warning about that for decades!

reasonable volume

That's the ticket!

 

[Colif]

Next Gen gameplay might show up in about 5 years given how long games take to be made now. Getting the games out with same features as other games is more important than innovation at beginning of a generation

I know, Zed... Youtubers are just entertainers... but then so are reviewers. Its just the format that is different. Not everything they say is just for clicks.

 

[ZedClampet]

Umm…

From my experience, you are unable to tell the difference between correct and incorrect.

 

[Frindis]

Been playing The Finals and Palworld.

The Finals have been a lot of fun to play with my nephews. We have been using a solid team combination of two tanks and a healer (3 players max on a team). Two meat shields with LMG/RPG and both use dome shields that protect from outside damage. Then you have a healer making it even harder to kill tanks. We got six wins in a row some days ago, so feeling good about that streak. It is pretty fast-paced and normally I don't like that, but this game has a nice flow to it without having to rely on a vast array of utilities like you have with a game like Apex Legends. There is also less flashy flash/clutter on the screen and I can appreciate that.

Palworld, I did not think I would like that much, but it is pretty good! It is kind of like Pokemon meets Ark Survival with a little bit of Zelda in the mix. You catch Pokemon-like creatures with something very similar to a Pokeball. Then you can use them for gathering resources, breeding, combat, and the like. You'll find them mostly through exploration which is one of the charming factors with the game. It has cute visuals and a lot of nice vistas with eggs and such that you would want to bring with you back to the base. You have dungeons, which is cool!

The creatures have different abilities and some make you able to ride on them, sit on their arms, or use them as a shield. Some have great attacks, others not so much, but they are more interesting than the human avatar you play when it comes to what they can do. They are all very cute and cuddly, and you do laugh a little when you see a giant sheep slowly walking around in your base doing different tasks with its small arms sticking out.

It was just released in early access, but it does feel quite smooth. Some glitching through objects, crashes, and stuttering, which is perhaps not a shocker when they even said that their servers were overheating from an insane rush of people joining. If you do want to give it a go, I highly recommend changing the server settings to your liking. I changed to have a much slower stamina reduction, not losing items on death, faster night because the night is way too long, and faster egg hatching, down from 48 hours or so to 20 minutes to an hour. I also turned off base raiding and base damage because I don't like that type of playstyle. I am playing it the way I want and love the fact that you can!

 

[Brian Boru]

From my experience, you are unable to tell the difference between correct and incorrect.

Hmm, I'm not sure if that's right, or not…

 

[Pifanjr]

My daughter and I managed to win a game of Fortnite this morning. We've gotten close a couple of times before, but for my daughter ending in the top 10 is still just losing, so she was very happy we finally managed to actually win.

 

[Johnway]

Still playing assassins creed odyssey - Although i'm having fun, i can't help but feel that the hard difficulty some of the bosses/enemies are too grindy. granted, its probably because i'm still using a weapon thats 1-5 levels below but still, it shouldn't make attacks glacial. the less said about opponents 2 or 3 levels higher just makes them practically walking tanks.

Might switch it to normal so i can speed up progression and enjoy my time playing. perhaps it will be too easy, but who knows.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Still playing assassins creed odyssey - Although i'm having fun, i can't help but feel that the hard difficulty some of the bosses/enemies are too grindy. granted, its probably because i'm still using a weapon thats 1-5 levels below but still, it shouldn't make attacks glacial. the less said about opponents 2 or 3 levels higher just makes them practically walking tanks.

Might switch it to normal so i can speed up progression and enjoy my time playing. perhaps it will be too easy, but who knows.

That was my problem with Odyssey after a while, the fights seemed exactly the same except the enemies had more hit points. Just made it feel like a levelling mill as I wasn't that interested in the story.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit of Subnautica today. I found an underground cavern with a vertical shaft to another underground cavern that seems to connect to a bunch more caves. Which presented a problem.

I suspect the caves are too deep for my Seamoth, which I left behind at my other base anyway, so I'd first have to build a new one. The vertical shaft is also too long for my prawn suit to get back up again, so it'd be stuck if I got it down there.

It would be ideal if I had an outpost down there, but I would probably have to make two trips to the Cyclops to get all the materials, or try gathering them in the caverns itself, which are full with predators.

So I decided to just get the entire Cyclops down there. It was a bit tricky getting it past the bigger predators lurking about and the vertical shaft was a very tight fit, but I managed. I completely disassembled my previous base, so I have all the materials to build an entire new base at hand. Now I can just build a sensor room, get a map of the surrounding area and use camera drones to explore instead of going in blindly and risk being eaten or getting lost.

 

[Johnway]

That was my problem with Odyssey after a while, the fights seemed exactly the same except the enemies had more hit points. Just made it feel like a levelling mill as I wasn't that interested in the story.

I had a bit more luck today as unlocking some of the later assassin abilities allows for extreme damage, but again, fighting boss characters just 1 level above you and their defenses make fighting them a slog. One mission i've been struggling is fighting the mythical beasts and getting my ass handed to me by it meant i'm leaving that till last or until i rack up some juiced up skills and weapons. another annoyance are the bounty hunters having a near psychic ability to track you down making things twice as annoying. Luckily paying off my bounty is easy peasy or just killing the patron. But if i want to move up in the merc world, i need to start trouble and bait them into a fight.

i still prefer origins method of progression where the levels were static and there was a sense of progression, but it did make it far too easy. once you hit lvl 50 pretty much a walk in the park and busy work.

outside of that i've encountered micro stutters and using a torch indoors made my frame rate tank, but for the latter i solved with lower shadow quality. i might turn off the uplay overlay as apparently that thing causes horrible things to happen.

Still, after nearly 20 hrs i'm still having fun. haven't turned the slider down. yet.

 

[Zloth]

....and risk being eaten or getting lost.

Ain't much that can eat a sub, even if you do name it 'sandwich.' Plus, there are things they can do to fight back or scare off mean critters... I think. It's getting hard to remember.

As for getting lost - no way!! You played Descent back in the day, right? You're trained in fully 3D mazes!