June 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[Zed Clampet]

I was doing pretty poorly as goalkeeper during a couple matches so I went and did the workshop training, and it was extremely helpful.

I was goofing around and went in and did the training. Then I went to my mouse software and made a couple of goalkeeper macros. I have buttons on the left and right of the mouse (the sides), so I did <ctrl><a><space> on the left button and the right dive on the right button. Went back in and did the training again, and that worked much better for me. Instead of having to hit 3 keys, I just had to hit one mouse button, either the left or the right.

 

[BeardyHat]

Still been absolutely enamored with Kingdom Come 2. It's one of the rare games that I'm very happy to have spent $60 on it (for the Gold edition or whatever. Still got it on sale), because I'm glad to support the studio, especially after having received and loved the first game for free (In fact, the only money I spent on EGS was for the KCD DLC, just because I wanted to support the Devs...then I later bought the Gold edition on Steam anyway). Not much else to say, other than it's a lovely game and really reminds me of playing Gothic back in the day, where it feels like something totally different from what I'm used to and actually feels like a proper world.

Been also getting my laptop in shape for my trip. I finally replaced the battery, which I've had sitting on my desk for a month or two now and just finished the calibration on it this morning, but having said that, I noticed my left hand speaker sounding a bit tinny. Squeezing the case resolves the issue, so I went and took a look at it this morning and the left hand side screw for the cover plate is stripped, the screw will not grab at all; that's unfortunate, given there's some pillars on the cover plate that help push the speaker down and keep it in place and stop it from vibrating the case as I was hearing.

However, it's nothing a little bit of hot glue won't solve, apparently. I added two little dabs of hot glue to the little stands the speaker sits on and things seem to be resolved after my initial testing here. Sucks that I can't really do anything about the stripped screw hole, but at least the speaker doesn't sound like butt anymore...

 

[PakGamerNerd40s]

I played Expedition 33 for the first time today. The gameplay, score, voiceover, story, and graphics were just as humanely perfect as possible. Even if there were any imperfections, I didn't notice them.

I really like the FF RPG plus Sekiro elements (Parry, Grapple, Dodge, etc.) of this game. I have to say it has all the marks of a GOTY.

 

[DXCHASE]

Up and running in my new place! No real game news. Got my sons pc set up as well with his new desk. Hes excited to have space for 2 monitors now. Still have to set up a pc and wire up the house with ethernet chords but, everything transferred nicely. All monitors and towers work!

 

[Zloth]

I really like the FF RPG plus Sekiro elements (Parry, Grapple, Dodge, etc.) of this game. I have to say it has all the marks of a GOTY.

FF? Final Fantasy? Fully French? Freedom Force?

 

[BeardyHat]

FF? Final Fantasy? Fully French? Freedom Force?

Feelin' Froggy

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

 

[Zed Clampet]

Feelin' Froggy

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

I made that cucumber salad recipe you linked to. Was very good. I think next time I'm probably going to blanch the cucumbers and onions before soaking them. Also, I knew better, but I'm going to, unfortunately, have to change to a different type of onion. Red onions give me very bad acid reflux.

 

[BeardyHat]

I made that cucumber salad recipe you linked to. Was very good. I think next time I'm probably going to blanch the cucumbers and onions before soaking them. Also, I knew better, but I'm going to, unfortunately, have to change to a different type of onion. Red onions give me very bad acid reflux.

Glad you liked it! Interesting that red onion give you the reflux, they're usually pretty mild to me. Though, with the beer I've had this evening, I'm sure to have it myself, so that's unfortunate. Though, I do actually more often use sweet yellow onions than red, but that's just because that's what I tend to have on hand. I actually still haven't even bothered to plant my garden this year, which would include cucumbers, but I just haven't had the motivation; looks like I'll probably be skipping it this year, I guess...

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has issues with Bluetooth controllers. I thought I had solved the issues of having a very weird input delay with it, but turns out I jumped the gun and it's still only getting every other input when I use my controller via Bluetooth. Using my Steam Controller with the USB adapter doesn't have this issue, nor do the controllers I use via Bluetooth if I instead use them with a USB cable, so I don't know.

Would like to bring a wireless controller with me, but the Steam Controller ends-up being a little annoying to use, since it only has the right touchpad rather than a stick. Which means if I want to switch enemies during combat in KCD2, I need to bind another button to the mouse wheel, which doesn't seem to necessarily do what I want it to all the time.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Glad you liked it! Interesting that red onion give you the reflux, they're usually pretty mild to me.

No idea why red onions do it to me. I eat all sorts of much spicier peppers, and they don't bother me at all.

 

[Frindis]

Been playing Book of Demons:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/449960/Book_of_Demons/

it is a mix of card game and top down RPG. You have two cards stacks that you can switch between with the G button and you can for example have one for mana and the other for energy use cards.

You have a ladder down to the final boss and you can decide how long down you want to play by choosing if you want a game with less or more floors. So if you choose a 15 minute game, you would get two floors with a mini-boss or two and when you are finished you can continue down next floor or go back to town. You can also go back to town between each floor and replenish health/mana and the like.

The floors are tile bases, so you move along them and attack mobs by right clicking on your cards. You can swap them out and upgrade them and you'll be able to find even legendary upgrades to your cards or new card you find.

Some of the items you find go into a magic cauldron that gives you bonuses depending on how many items you save in it. So if you play good, you'll get extra rewards from it. You don't need to save them, but if you pick from the cauldron after each floor or game session, the price will increase for each time. Think of it as an extra reward that you can play with if you want to.

It's a fun game with increasing difficulty and I think the option to choose how long you want to play is a very good element to the game, especially for those who just want to jump in for a quick session. Progression is also saved, so you go back when you want.

 

[Frindis]

Steam Summer Sale starts on the 26th, hoping for a decent discount on Ghost Of Tsushima.

https://steamdb.info/sales/history/

 

[BeardyHat]

Been playing Book of Demons:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/449960/Book_of_Demons/

it is a mix of card game and top down RPG. You have two cards stacks that you can switch between with the G button and you can for example have one for mana and the other for energy use cards.

You have a ladder down to the final boss and you can decide how long down you want to play by choosing if you want a game with less or more floors. So if you choose a 15 minute game, you would get two floors with a mini-boss or two and when you are finished you can continue down next floor or go back to town. You can also go back to town between each floor and replenish health/mana and the like.

The floors are tile bases, so you move along them and attack mobs by right clicking on your cards. You can swap them out and upgrade them and you'll be able to find even legendary upgrades to your cards or new card you find.

Some of the items you find go into a magic cauldron that gives you bonuses depending on how many items you save in it. So if you play good, you'll get extra rewards from it. You don't need to save them, but if you pick from the cauldron after each floor or game session, the price will increase for each time. Think of it as an extra reward that you can play with if you want to.

It's a fun game with increasing difficulty and I think the option to choose how long you want to play is a very good element to the game, especially for those who just want to jump in for a quick session. Progression is also saved, so you go back when you want.

I need to give this one more of a go. I bought it on GoG when it first came out and played maybe an hour or two of it, but never went back; but it lives rent free in my head and I definitely end-up thinking about it a reasonable amount, given my love for the original Diablo.

Steam Summer Sale starts on the 26th, hoping for a decent discount on Ghost Of Tsushima.

https://steamdb.info/sales/history/

Nothing I'm particularly interested in, I think. I did just buy Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night off Fanatical though, as it was only $5 and I was thinking I might want to play a Metroidvania.

 

[BeardyHat]

Finally fixed the obnoxious Bluetooth missed inputs issue that I've spent this week on.

I've updated drivers, BIOS, wired the controller in (which fixed the issue), opened up the computer and reran the antenna wires (which actually were pinched), but absolutely nothing would get rid of this missed input issue. It has been one of the most irritating issues I've dealt with in awhile.

Finally found a fix for it, which is disabling Bluetooth Power Management in Device Manager. After unchecking the box for that, everything is working flawlessly. Holy crap was that frustrating.

 

[Pifanjr]

I haven't really had the energy to play anything lately, but yesterday we ordered dinner and with the energy that saved I managed to play a bit of the Liminal Industries modpack for Minecraft.

I figured out how to make bone meal, which is great because it's used in quite a few recipes and I was worried I'd have to manually spawn skeletons to farm their bones.

I also finally got bamboo. I can now start automating wood production, which also means automated fuel production, which means I can afford to run my machines continuously, which means I can automate a lot of other stuff as well.

 

[Frindis]

Nothing I'm particularly interested in, I think. I did just buy Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night off Fanatical though, as it was only $5 and I was thinking I might want to play a Metroidvania.

I got that game some years ago on GOG. Need to get back into it because I did like the flow of it, music, boss fights, cool spells and good map layout. I also loved to go after secrets, which there are a lot of. Some are also well hidden so it is not always you can find them just by looking at an area and see a crack in the wall, etc.

I stopped playing it because of new games and it is one of those game it is a bit harder to get back into because of the intricate map system and because there is a lot of grinding for particular materials for weapon upgrades.
That said, while the map has a lot of twist and turns with backtracking for materials, it also opens up more and more ways to go back to those areas. So from what I remember it is not that tedious, it is probably just more about getting used to it again and finding those shortcuts.

 

[neogunhero]

All I've been playing lately is DayZ and Rematch.

I’ve noticed that I have barely played on the Livonia map in DayZ, the second official map that was originally sold as DLC but is now free. I found a PVE friendly vanilla server, which is my favorite type of server. It’s vanilla in the sense that there are no mods, but they do increase things like loot and car spawn rates and make nights go a bit faster.

If the original map Chernarus is based in Ukraine, then Livonia has to be France or somewhere similar. It’s got beautiful golden rolling hills full of wheat farms, whereas Chernarus was pretty dull and grey. There are little forests and piles of brush dotted throughout the hills, sometimes hiding an old war bunker with decent loot inside. The towns look similar, but had slightly different design layouts, with Livonia having lots of hidden alley trails and large fields, not so condensed as Chernarus’s largest cities.

I really should get the newest DLC Frostline. I would see how much it is on the summer sale but it just began, the servers are incredibly slow for the first hour or so. Livonia is great, it is a brand new land to explore, has new unique POIs, expanded hunting, but overall it is quite similar to the original map. Despite the second expansion coming out, I think it was a smart move to release it for free. The Frostline expansion takes place is a blizzard ravaged country, so you have the added element of warmth to be aware of. Plus, the map looks way different than the previous two official maps, it would be a much more unique experience than what I've been playing for the past nearly 12 years. Geez, it's really been that long hasn't it?

EDIT: It's on sale for $18.08... definitely adding it to my list of games I want during the summer sale.

 

[neogunhero]

Is there room in the gaming industry for 6/10 - 7/10 kinds of games? Or do you believe majority of games released every year should try harder to be unique, innovative, genre defining titles?

I was inspired to make this post after getting into arguments over Splitgate 2 in the Steam Discussion Boards. That was my first mistake, obviously, but I came away with a different point of view: not every game needs to be the best of it's genre. You guys are probably sick of hearing from me talk about SG2, but I truly think it needs to be talked about more within the gaming community for exactly what this game is.

The game is fine enough, solid enough, new enough to be fun and entertaining. It launched with tons of features gamers complain are missing from modern shooters. It has a plethora of gamemodes, custom map maker, dedicated servers, good optimization, just about everything a person could want from a multiplayer FPS game. However, this game just isn't "sweaty" or "competitive" enough to be taken seriously as an esports titan. I see that point of view, and I truly think the devs are to blame for this reception. They positioned it as exactly that, the next major esports FPS to take over the industry, when it literally did not need to be that at all.

I think there is room for an average FPS multiplayer game that is easy to pick up and play for as little or as long as you want. Especially in the online FPS space, not every game needs to take off with millions of players, become Twitch's #1 most streamed game, host massive tournaments in football stadiums, I really don't think every game needs to be this way or should even strive to be like that.

However, the reality is that in todays market, I see the reason to position the game this way. Investors make up the majority of funding in game development, so they want to fund something that will make them a return. The esports angle also appeals to a lot of gamers, just because I'm not like them doesn't mean they don't exist. Esports oriented FPS games are still the most played kinds of FPS games.

I think my point I'm trying to make is that not every game needs to be the absolute best in its genre. They don't all need to be these huge culture-shifting events like Fortnite was back when it first launched. Not every game needs to become some massive franchise that generates millions year after year. I wish this was true, but the unfortunate reality is that games are not cheap to make and they need to make money any way they can, and SG2 is just another casualty of that. In a few months, servers will most likely shut down, we will all move back to COD or CS, and it will become forgotten over time.