June 2024 Game Discussion Thread

[Hveðrungr]

The money I spent on my totally-unplayed games comes to just £29.97. I think that's pretty good going over fifteen years of tracking my games.

 

[neogunhero]

Finally beat DUSK last night, what a phenomenal game. Can’t believe it took me so long to get into it. Truly one of the greatest FPS games I’ve ever played. Now either I’m going to spend money on a different boomer shooter during the Summer Sale or try to barge through a few DOOM WADs. Currently in that weird phase after beating a game and not knowing what to play next.

 

[BeardyHat]

Finally beat DUSK last night, what a phenomenal game. Can’t believe it took me so long to get into it. Truly one of the greatest FPS games I’ve ever played. Now either I’m going to spend money on a different boomer shooter during the Summer Sale or try to barge through a few DOOM WADs. Currently in that weird phase after beating a game and not knowing what to play next.

DUSK is fantastic, that's really all that needs to be said.

I would suggest Cultic next. It's not complete yet, but it's one of the only Boo Shoots to give me that same feeling as DUSK. It's a bit different, feeling a little closer to Blood, but it none the less wonderful.

 

[ZedClampet]

It doesn't give me my pile of shame despite all my settings being "Public", and I don't care enough to try to figure out what's wrong with it.

***

I'm not doing the "games releasing this week" on Steam because something is wrong with the system. Up until today, there were only about 5 games listed as releasing this week. Now there's a bunch, but no games set to release next week.

Edit: Problem may just be using the browser.

****

@Pifanjr Don't forget you are going to FarmCon next week. I'm working on a questionnaire I need you to complete

Farming Simulator 25 has been announced and is releasing in November.

 

[ZedClampet]

My Steam forum post for Farming Simulator 25, which is filled with whining over the new game coming in November:

Would you all read the damn store page. A dozen people in here complaining that there's no ground deformation when the store page clearly says there will be ground deformation.

Overall this forum is a joke. People whining with the same old complaints without even looking at what the new game has to offer. Did you even write new complaints, or did you copy/paste your complaints from the last game? You could have at least corrected your spelling. Same old complaints with the same old bugs.

We do have a couple of new complaints. We have someone complaining that one of the three maps is in Asia, with the player saying he's not going to buy the game because of that.

All this complaining--particularly all the complaints about missing features that are actually going to be in the game--really makes us, as a community, look stupid. It's no wonder gamers have a terrible reputation.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Shadow of the Erdtree is pretty good so far. Only been able to play about 5 hours but I have a couple days free this weekend for the first time in ages so Im going to eat horrendously, play some Gloomhaven with a mate and hopefully absolutely cane Elden Ring for hours on end.

I dont see all the fuss about difficulty. Its pretty hard, but thats always been the point at the start of these games and it was the same in the base game at level 1. Looks like user reviews are mostly positive again now so I guess people are getting over it.

 

[neogunhero]

I would suggest Cultic next. It's not complete yet, but it's one of the only Boo Shoots to give me that same feeling as DUSK. It's a bit different, feeling a little closer to Blood, but it none the less wonderful.

Have you tried HROT? Cultic does look great, but I’m being picky and want full 3D environments. I could just get both for under $20 but that may burn me out on boomshoots too quickly so I need to choose carefully here.

 

[BeardyHat]

Have you tried HROT? Cultic does look great, but I’m being picky and want full 3D environments. I could just get both for under $20 but that may burn me out on boomshoots too quickly so I need to choose carefully here.

HROT is really good, I've played the first two episodes and made a little bit of progress into the third, but haven't been back yet. HROT is pretty great, but Cultic is better, by a lot.

I don't think you'll be disappointed with HROT if you ultimately decide to go that direction, it's still a great game, I just love Cultic. But I loved Blood moreso than Quake back in the day, so YMMV.

 

[Brian Boru]

in that weird phase after beating a game and not knowing what to play next

If it's any good—eg 'phenomenal game' —start NG+ with a different approach or a different difficulty setting or whatever other significant variations are available. A great game is rare, so treasure it accordingly

Is H-ROT the inevitable result of H-RUST?

 

[BeardyHat]

If it's any good—eg 'phenomenal game' —start NG+ with a different approach or a different difficulty setting or whatever other significant variations are available. A great game is rare, so treasure it accordingly

Is H-ROT the inevitable result of H-RUST?

I think it's the opposite of THOT.

 

[Zloth]

The money I spent on my totally-unplayed games comes to just £29.97. I think that's pretty good going over fifteen years of tracking my games.

I would call that extremely good! (Zloth tries to award Steam points)

 

[neogunhero]

So I did that thing again. I bought a new game but ended up playing an old one and getting hooked.

I picked up CULTIC and Celeste yesterday for $9.98, but instead got hooked back into Death Stranding. I played 30 mins of Cultic and as great as it looks and feels, I think I’m actually needing a slight break from boomshoots. I’ve been thinking about Death Stranding a lot, so I started it back up. Unfortunately I only have the original version on EGS, I’d love to own to Directors Cut on Steam but it’s redundant. The upgrade goes on sale for $5, so I may get it later on EGS so I don’t have to spend $20 for the whole package on Steam.

Anyways, I really loved DS for the 30~ hours I played it last year, but for some reason I dropped it. It’s a great relaxing game to play after a long day at work. Sitting in the dark, headphones on, just doing these deliveries, it’s so nice. The combat sections are good too. The building system is probably my favorite feature of the game, I love making all these structures to help traversal for myself and other players. The presentation and UI is hellllla slick too. Sometimes you just want huge flashy menus in your game.

I want to beat this before Death Stranding 2 comes out because I do really like the story as well. Weird and as pretentious as Kojima could be, but there’s always a specific charm to his games that is undeniably great.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Zloth and @Brian Boru I had mentioned this guy to you all, so I wanted to provide an update:

Supermarket Simulator was a surprise success, but the developer went missing for months. Personally, I hoped he was at a beach somewhere drinking a mojito because I was enjoying using some mods i didn't want to have to fix.

But then a couple of weeks ago, someone on one of the forums said that he knew the developer and that he'd had a mental breakdown due to the success of the game, people demanding constant updates, etc. It all sounded very reasonable. It's happened before. So I didn't question it. I was still glad that my mods were working, but I felt bad for the guy.

Fast forward to today, and I decide to play for a few minutes. I open the game, and everything is gone. I just have a big empty store. Huh? I close without saving and look at the news, and he's back. So far as I can tell, he never had a mental breakdown. He had hired a few people, and they had gone to work overhauling the game with a massive update.

My game is completely screwed. There's no fixing it, even if I update the mods. But I'm glad he's back and okay, and the update is actually very impressive. Now if I can figure out how to fix my gullibility.

 

[neogunhero]

Well crap. In that mode again. Refunded CULTIC and Celeste to get my funds back to buy Death Stranding Directors Cut on Steam. No I’m not very proud of my actions. Yes I will be seeking a financial advisor in the future.

 

[BeardyHat]

Well crap. In that mode again. Refunded CULTIC and Celeste to get my funds back to buy Death Stranding Directors Cut on Steam. No I’m not very proud of my actions. Yes I will be seeking a financial advisor in the future.

At least you refunded and didn't just throw more money into the Steam machine.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well crap. In that mode again. Refunded CULTIC and Celeste to get my funds back to buy Death Stranding Directors Cut on Steam. No I’m not very proud of my actions. Yes I will be seeking a financial advisor in the future.

My financial advice is so good that I charge $0. If you are in America, go to one of the sports betting sites that is running a special, like $200 in free bets for signing up and depositing $100. Sign up. Deposit $100. Make ten $20 free bets. Maybe you win 4 of them and end up with about $160 plus the $100 you deposited at the beginning, so you now have $260. Withdraw the money and close your account. Buy games until you are broke again.

I detailed my adventure with this in the sports thread I actually was doing a good job of picking NFL games and made a little bit of extra money.

 

[ZedClampet]

Played Wizard with a Gun. It's like an extremely simplified V Rising with Don't Starve graphics.

So I was playing and got an achievement. I looked down to the bottom right of the screen and it said, "Experienced a surprise encounter." I thought, "Huh?" and looked back up and there were 4 minibosses shooting at me.

 

[Brian Boru]

structures to help traversal for myself and other players

So is the whole country filled with previous players' constructions now? I remember @Zloth talking about this and I thought it was a great idea, a rare example of innovation actually improving gameplay.

But I guess there's some limit to the structures you see, eg you won't get to see anything Zloth built?

I did that thing again …meanwhile, back at the ranch… In that mode again

That's it, I've had enough! The upside is my financial advice is better than Zed's; the downside is I charge twice his fee.

Off to Patience school with you, me lad

 

[ZedClampet]

The upside is my financial advice is better than Zed's

Hmm, wonder which one of us retired early? You are definitely the go-to person for bad jokes, though.

 

[ZedClampet]

Trying to help people whose games have been destroyed by the Supermarket Simulator update.

By "help" I mean I'm explaining how to uninstall their mods, which is not the help they were looking for, but the help they need.

 

[Hveðrungr]

I would call that extremely good! (Zloth tries to award Steam points)

For even more context, that is £29.97 spent on unplayed games out of a total of £2,267.85 spent on [digital purchase] games in total! That's a 98.7% cost-weighted success rate in at least starting the game up and playing it enough to decide I didn't like it after all.

Making the spreadsheet to gamify my games purchasing solved my backlog and wastefulness problems pretty much overnight.

 

[Zloth]

I open the game, and everything is gone. I just have a big empty store.

Does the beta listing for the game have previous versions? If not, maybe you can ask the developer to support that. They can even make a beta password like "IWontAskForHelpForOldGameVersions" to emphasize the lack of support. (Egosoft uses IHaveBackedUpMySaveFiles or something like that.)

But I guess there's some limit to the structures you see, eg you won't get to see anything Zloth built?

It's a little mysterious, but definitely not everyone's. The area is divided up into regions and each region has one owner. If you make the owner happy enough, they let you link them to the network that you're building.

At first, the regions are all completely empty. When you unlock the network, though, the game checks its network and pulls down some number of structures. I don't know the criteria - maybe the number of likes, when the player who made it last logged in, and friends? Anyway, it seems to be a set number.

If a structure comes in that you don't want (I had a bridge come in that cut one of my ziplines, for instance), you can easily delete it. When you do, another will pop in after a minute or two. That actually turned into a strategy for me one time! I needed to get over a river but didn't have the stuff to make a bridge. It seemed like an obvious spot for one, so I deleted some network structures I didn't need, made sure I didn't look at the area where I wanted the bridge to pop in, and poof! One handy dandy bridge!

(You can also play the game with all that stuff turned off.)

Hmm, wonder which one of us retired early? You are definitely the go-to person for bad jokes, though.

Brian, not me!? I must redouble my efforts!

 

[ZedClampet]

Haha the game I'm playing changed "Walmart" to "Wallmart". I'm not sure that's going to save you in the event Walmart decides it cares about a game that only me and about 20 dudes from China are playing.

****

Does the beta listing for the game have previous versions? If not, maybe you can ask the developer to support that.

Doesn't hurt to ask. Here goes nothing...

 

[Brian Boru]

wonder which one of us retired early?

1990 for me.

You are definitely the go-to person for bad jokes

@Zloth enters the chat.
ETA: He did

 

[ZedClampet]

1990 for me.

I believe you and I have different definitions of "retired". Technically, I never had to work thanks to my father, so 1966 for me.