March 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Kaamos_Llama]

Thinking I will treat myself to a new CPU for my birthday. I know I have said something similar for probably a year now on this forum but I’m ready to pull the trigger. Not wanting to spend $600-700 to upgrade to AM5 yet, so I think a good AM4 CPU like the 5700X will last me a while. After all a lot of brand new graphics intensive games call for a 3600X for their recommended specs, so the extra cores, newer architecture, and higher thread count leads me to believe that the Ryzen 5000 series chips are still very much competitive with their newer models.
Besides, going from a 1600X to a 5700X is expected to give me a massive performance boost, if not just make games smoother overall.

I was playing Boltgun last night and my game kept having microstutters. The art style is very much retro FPS but there is some really nice lighting and particle effects, but I was amazed that even a game like that causes me minor issues. I believe a 5700X would help eliminate that.

Just in case you didnt know or dont have it, its worth having at least 3200 RAM would be best. Ryzen CPUs match part of the internal CPU communication to half RAM speed, so slower RAM than that slows them down. Not that a big jump in CPU power wouldnt already help a lot.

 

[neogunhero]

Just in case you didnt know or dont have it, its worth having at least 3200 RAM would be best. Ryzen CPUs match part of the internal CPU communication to half RAM speed, so slower RAM than that slows them down. Not that a big jump in CPU power wouldnt already help a lot.

Yeah, that will be a big performance increase as well. I do have 3200MHz RAM, but without researching it, so later I found out the 1600X only supports 2666MHz. Also it doesn’t handle XMP well, so I’m hoping to be able to turn that on with the new CPU also.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Should be fine with the latest BIOS, GL!

 

[Brian Boru]

I'm tempted as well

Yeah, especially if it means skipping the EA launcher completely—unlike say Far Cry on Steam, still get the abysmal Ubi launcher after Steam does its thing. Probably doesn't skip it tho, so I won't bother—I launch from desktop icon collections, not a platform's launcher… I have too many platforms for that.

I've never played RA2 and C&C2

Many people's C&C fav is RA2—it's my 2nd-fav—so give it a spin sometime, along with expansion Yuri's Revenge. C&C2 is low on my C&C list, but I liked its it's expansion Firestorm.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Yeah, especially if it means skipping the EA launcher completely—unlike say Far Cry on Steam, still get the abysmal Ubi launcher after Steam does its thing. Probably doesn't skip it tho, so I won't bother—I launch from desktop icon collections, not a platform's launcher… I have too many platforms for that.



Many people's C&C fav is RA2—it's my 2nd-fav—so give it a spin sometime, along with expansion Yuri's Revenge. C&C2 is low on my C&C list, but I liked its it's expansion Firestorm.

Some EA games require the launcher and some don't. Easiest way to find out might be the user reviews. There are always a bunch of negative reviews citing this as the reason whenever it's required. For old games like that, I doubt you'll need it.

***

Got talked into playing Outlast trials again, but I only did one mission and wasn't enjoying it even though I didn't go down, so I apologized and quit after that mission.

***

I have truly quit playing Elden Ring this time. I love everything about it except for the keyboard/mouse controls. Too bad I'm terrible with controllers. Really I just have an attitude problem because the controls never bothered me this much in their other games.

 

[dxchase]

HELP I CANT STOP PLAYING HELLDIVERS 2

I've been boosting up my old Destiny 2 clan members in HD. A bunch of them have picked it up in the last week or two and its brought back that feeling of teaching Destiny 2 to some of them.

Goin to Helldive pretty much all day with the wife. Gonna drop our mechs together and kill bugs/robots <3

Heres a video of me throwing a stratagem perfectly that i probably wont do again:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zl4pHoozLM

 

[Zloth]

I have truly quit playing Elden Ring this time.

So, if I get the game later and start talking about it a lot, you won't go back? 😉

I got a pretty standard mission for the Terrans in X4 to deliver a bunch of ships half way across the galaxy. I did a dumb thing, though, and just started buying up ships before checking where the fleet was supposed to be delivered - which turned out to be deep in nasty Xenon space. I had already invested a pretty huge sum of cash, so I wasn't going to give up on the mission. I managed to get through it by putting all the smaller ships on the carrier, then driving the destroyer myself to the target spot, then driving the carrier to the target spot.

And, in this way, the routine mission turned into a whole lot of fun! Yet another example of how screwing up makes a game a lot more fun.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I bought a game purely out of frustration, and so far it's worked out.

A developer called Wolverine puts out a bunch of sports management games every year. Most people buy them directly from Wolverine, but they are also on Steam. The Steam reviews for the games are usually pretty bad, but I noticed the developer highlighting a bunch of changes for the 2024 college basketball game, so I was waiting for its release yesterday. I then waited 24 hours for user reviews, and only one person made a review. It was negative, but it was mostly things I don't really care about that much, like UI complaints.

Since the basketball season is coming to an end, I won't want to play this game as much in a couple of months, so I just went ahead and bought it, and so far I've been very pleasantly surprised. For one thing, the UI is actually great. Considering this is a sports management game with a ton of detail, you would expect a cluttered UI that takes getting used to, but I just hopped right in and started playing. No tutorial needed. So far I'm loving it.

 

[Johnway]

Those of you excited for dragons dogma 2 might be interested in the FREE character creator thing. So you can prepare all your characters/pawns as and when you play the game proper:

Dragon's Dogma 2 Character Creator & Storage on Steam

In this app, you can create your characters for Dragon's Dogma 2. Customize the looks of your main character, the Arisen, and the looks and inclination of your companion, your Main Pawn. You can store up to 5 characters of each, the Arisen and your Main Pawn respectively.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zloth]

Already made a couple of characters! Honestly, I doubt I'll use them by the time I get around to the game, but it sure is a great character maker. This is the first time I've been allowed to pick which teeth are missing! Being able to make eyes that are different colors is pretty rare, too.

Over in X4, I ran into one of the games issues last night: friendly fire causing a cascade of hate.

I sent a ship after a pirate in a crowded sector that's really important to what I'm doing in Boron space. The Boron noticed it, too, and also went after it. In the firefight, my ship must have hit a Boron police ship. This doesn't madden the entire Boron empire, it just makes the one ship an enemy temporarily. I'm not sure how long that is, but it's in the ballpark of half an hour.

The thing is, I've got a LOT of mining and trade ships going through the sector the cop is patrolling - there are probably 3-5 ships flying through at all times. The cop will find one of them and attack immediately. The ship fires back, and that does eventually start hurting my Boron reputation. To make matters worse, the cop seems to like flying above where I've set up satellites, so I don't know where she is until she comes swooping in. I had to stop all the ships trying to go through the sector and have them wait around.

Eventually, the cop went after some Kha'ak (quit snickering, they're a serious threat!) off radar and wasn't seen again for a good 10 minutes, so I figured my problem was taken care of. I got everyone moving again, saved the game, and... yeah, she was just hiding above radar again. After two hours of this, I was done. I loaded an older save, shot the pirate myself, got a 60,000 credit award for doing it, and everyone lived happily ever after. Well, except the Kha'ak. I need to take care of them before they get out of hand.

Wait, why are you snickering again??

 

[Zed Clampet]

Played some Helldivers 2. It was just me and Guido. We didn't play with randoms because no one wants to get the side objectives, and we want those odd currencies.

I still haven't had a friendly fire kill. These are almost a feature of the game to hear other people talking. I guess many years of watching Guido run in front of me while I'm shooting has paid off. It did register that I partially hit him once when a bug was nipping at his heals as we ran, and I shot it with my shotgun (even though I aimed as far away from Guido as I could while still hitting the bug), but he didn't die from it, so my perfect record is intact.

I like the new mechs, so I imagine they'll be nerfed soon.

Despite not being a huge shooter guy, I do like this game. The shotgun is ridiculous. Very long range for a shotgun. I suppose we'll get a better weapon at some point. We've only played twice for a total of 6 hours, so we're still at the beginning, I guess.

Reloading is exhausting, though. You can't really reload until you are completely out of ammo. If you still have ammo in the gun, you lose it, and there isn't enough of it just to throw it away. This means you are almost always needing to reload in the middle of a fight. I usually just turn and start running and reload while putting some space between me and the baddies.

 

[Brian Boru]

friendly fire causing a cascade of hate

I had to up the FF-okay counter in Far Cry 5. I keep shooting civvies in baddie jeeps passing by on a nearby road—they're typically potshots of opportunity with no time to check status of driver. Happens when they commandeer a vehicle after a firefight down the road.

Got offed last night when a friendly traveling merchant used me for shotgun target practice. I was spinning around trying to ID the shooter, didn't occur to me it might be her. I guess that was her dog I shot just beforehand, when it looked ruffly at me 🙄

Still think it was an over-reaction tho—I mean, Mary Mae is singing my praises all over the valley, AND I'd just recently brought the bulls' balls back to the chef for the Testy Festy!

 

[Pifanjr]

I finally made some time to start XCOM 2. Only finished the tutorial and the first mission so far, but I'm really enjoying it, much more than XCOM: Chimera Squad.

I'll have to see how much the mission timers will be a problem for me. I've already lost a soldier because I rushed ahead a bit too much, assuming all the enemies were dead, so I'll have to be a bit more careful next time.

 

[Pvt.Vegemite]

I finally made some time to start XCOM 2. Only finished the tutorial and the first mission so far, but I'm really enjoying it, much more than XCOM: Chimera Squad.
........

I've been meaning to play it again. Too many games.
I use the soldier name change cheat though to make things a bit easier for me 🙂

 

[neogunhero]

I completed the Dead Island 2 campaign over the weekend. Without spoiling anything (I know how much you lot are frothing at the mouth about playing this game), the overall story was decent until towards the very end where it had that feeling of “oh shoot we need to hurry and wrap this up”. It was serviceable, there were a few good characters, more annoying ones, but overall it was a fun experience.

The game ends with you still being able to continue playing the game endlessly so you can complete all side missions and activities which is really nice and is exactly what I’m doing now. Now that I’m done with the main story I have been doing quickplay to join random people in their games. I enjoy playing with randoms and completing missions together. One guy helped me get a few achievements just by doing the missions he had that I haven’t started yet.

This game is seriously great as the kind of game you put on as you plop down in your chair after a long day and just want to turn your brain off. It’s the perfect balance of fun zombie slaying, challenging moments, and thinking. Melee combat is satisfying and watching all the blood and gore paint a room never gets old, it can be challenging at some points so it keeps you on your toes, and you have to use your brain just a tiny bit to do some inventory management and stat comparison. You are constantly repairing weapons, upgrading them, selling or scraping the ones you don’t need, so as long as you don’t find it tedious, it helps keep you engaged and take breaks from killing zombies.

As I mentioned before on a previous post, one aspect I didn’t like is how often you are needing to upgrade and find new weapons. As I got further in the game it stopped bothering me, it’s just a part of the game and it’s how they balance it without having any difficulty options, and that let me enjoy the game more once I accepted that as a fact. My plan at the beginning of the game is to always have multiple weapons that you will actually use, so these weapons are upgraded, each with different types of damage (fire, electric, caustic, bleeding, impact). As you get further in the game, your weapon durability becomes really good to the point where you can use a single weapon to take down hundreds of zombies before needing to repair again. You also have the ability to level up your weapons if you out level it, so make sure to sell a lot of weapons you find to make money to do so.

Towards the end of the game I was using only a few weapons and now at the end, I use mainly one legendary sledgehammer, a legendary pickaxe and two legendary guns. That’s all I need and I sell the rest since I’m so stocked up on crafting resources.

I think I’ll keep playing this for a while more since it’s very easy to just enter and exit whenever you want. Being basically forced to play this game on controller since it’s only available on Game Pass for consoles gave me a new appreciation for games with easy controls. I absolutely suck at shooting with a controller, so I always turn up auto-aim if I need to, but first person melee where you just need to hack and slash fits absolutely perfectly with a controller. It really makes me wish the Far Cry games had better melee combat.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Guido had his first LAN party last night. They were going to play Elden Ring (which secretly irritated me since I've been wanting to play it with Guido forever now), but they ended up playing 7 Days to Die.

I think the reason Guido won't play Elden Ring with me is because he knows I'll die at every boss and then just sit there and watch him finish the fight. Hey, it's a strategy.

 

[neogunhero]

7 Days to Die.

Unrelated to what you’re saying but this gave me an idea on what I should play next. I haven’t played 7DTD in over a year so all of the major updates since would be great to explore. Plus I love how you can customize so many different aspects of the game’s difficulty and experience, so this would be a great game to casually play to me. Thanks for the idea!

 

[Zed Clampet]

Unrelated to what you’re saying but this gave me an idea on what I should play next. I haven’t played 7DTD in over a year so all of the major updates since would be great to explore. Plus I love how you can customize so many different aspects of the game’s difficulty and experience, so this would be a great game to casually play to me. Thanks for the idea!

It's been at least a year since I played it, as well.

Played some more Helldivers again today. Still going it alone. Also played some Enshrouded.

 

[Pifanjr]

I did another mission in XCOM 2, this time without having anyone killed. I did have someone get wounded though, so now I won't have a sniper for the next mission, which is a bummer. Though it probably won't hurt training some additional recruits while I still have easy missions, in case someone dies later (and I manage to avoid the temptation to save scum).

I also got a 100% hit rate, which is surprising since I did not actually hit every shot, but apparently overwatch shots don't count.

It's been at least a year since I played it, as well.

Played some more Helldivers again today. Still going it alone. Also played some Enshrouded.

What are your thoughts about Enshrouded? The building part looked really cool in the videos I've seen, but I read that the rest of the game is fairly underwhelming.

I wanted to try the demo during Steam's Next Fest but it just gave me a message that my PC wasn't good enough to play.

 

[Zed Clampet]

What are your thoughts about Enshrouded? The building part looked really cool in the videos I've seen, but I read that the rest of the game is fairly underwhelming.

I wanted to try the demo during Steam's Next Fest but it just gave me a message that my PC wasn't good enough to play.

I only have 4 hours in Enshrouded, so my opinion could definitely change down the road, but it's very well done and there seem to be many things to do, a lot of direction in addition to the sandbox, which I think is good. World building is excellent. Exploration is very good as the world is incredibly dense. You are constantly finding outposts, etc. Crafting and building are pretty much as good as I've experienced in survival games, although some crafting recipes take a long time to complete.

Overall, so far I'd say it's vastly superior to the average Steam survival game, and is up there with the likes of Valheim and maybe Subnautica, though Subnautica is kind of in a class by itself in my book due to its uniqueness. But there is actually a lot more, apparently, to Enshrouded than to Subnautica. It's a bigger, more complex game by a good margin. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the player.

I'm not sure what survival games you've played. Overall, in terms of comparison, I'd say that if you like Valheim, then you'll like Enshrouded. I'm not willing to say it's better than Valheim just yet, but it's trending in that direction. I'll let you know if my opinion changes as I get more into the meat of the game. We're still in the very early stages.

 

[Pifanjr]

I lost my first mission in XCOM 2. I got a string of unlucky shots, some poor decisions and a new enemy that showed up unexpectedly that I wasn't prepared for.

I only have 4 hours in Enshrouded, so my opinion could definitely change down the road, but it's very well done and there seem to be many things to do, a lot of direction in addition to the sandbox, which I think is good. World building is excellent. Exploration is very good as the world is incredibly dense. You are constantly finding outposts, etc. Crafting and building are pretty much as good as I've experienced in survival games, although some crafting recipes take a long time to complete.

Overall, so far I'd say it's vastly superior to the average Steam survival game, and is up there with the likes of Valheim and maybe Subnautica, though Subnautica is kind of in a class by itself in my book due to its uniqueness. But there is actually a lot more, apparently, to Enshrouded than to Subnautica. It's a bigger, more complex game by a good margin. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the player.

I'm not sure what survival games you've played. Overall, in terms of comparison, I'd say that if you like Valheim, then you'll like Enshrouded. I'm not willing to say it's better than Valheim just yet, but it's trending in that direction. I'll let you know if my opinion changes as I get more into the meat of the game. We're still in the very early stages.

It sounds like it might have improved a bunch since the demo.

 

[Zed Clampet]

The game Garden Life is living proof that a game doesn't have to be in early access to be completely ruined by an update. Have fun decorating 5 percent of your garden thanks to the new plant limit.

 

[Johnway]

I finally made some time to start XCOM 2. Only finished the tutorial and the first mission so far, but I'm really enjoying it, much more than XCOM: Chimera Squad.

I'll have to see how much the mission timers will be a problem for me. I've already lost a soldier because I rushed ahead a bit too much, assuming all the enemies were dead, so I'll have to be a bit more careful next time.

if you have WOTC expansion you can set up timers to be longer. Failing that, the True concealment mod sets it so that the timer doesn't start until you break cover or fire the first shot. So you could potentially scout a bit or get closer to objectives before you go loud.

That said, i played Xcom2 standard, with and without the timer mod and with the time extension and its fairly doable not at any point did i feel like i didn't have enough time. You get use to moving quickly, but then again i saved scum so yeah...

when i played Xcom2 i went slightly crazy modding cosmetics. one mod i would recommend the Gotcha Again! mod for QOL stuff. although it conflicts with the perfect info mod apparently.

 

[neogunhero]

I beat my first run on Balatro last night, Red Deck on normal difficulty. I can see some players get discouraged with this game because I have 5 hours on it and just now was able to beat it, but it’s definitely by design. You unlocked better cards the more you play which increases the chance they show up in your runs. I also focused heavily on gaining a lot of money which helped me get a lot of tarot and planet cards. In case you don’t play it, tarot cards upgrades cards in your deck either with multipliers or something simple like change the suit or increase the rank of the card. Planet cards increase the points and multipliers done by specific poker hands. Getting lots of these early in the run can help you get more points on each round.

After that I tried some 7DTD but it wasn’t working with my controller properly. I seen that the big A22 update they’ve been working on for over a year is going to have a total overhaul of the UI so maybe I should wait for that update to come out.

Instead of Fallout 4 I ended up playing some more Dead Island 2. I may be the world’s biggest fan of that game with how much I talk about it yet my feelings are still unchanged: it’s fairly mediocre overall with fun melee combat. I do want to hit level 30, only 6.48% of all Xbox gamers got to level 30, so it would be cool to be a part of that exclusive club haha. Until I find another game that’s very easy to pick up and play in the way this one is, or until I complete everything, I think I’ll still be playing it for a while.

 

[BeardyHat]

Yeah, that will be a big performance increase as well. I do have 3200MHz RAM, but without researching it, so later I found out the 1600X only supports 2666MHz. Also it doesn’t handle XMP well, so I’m hoping to be able to turn that on with the new CPU also.

It'll be a huge upgrade. Am I reading right that you're coming from a 1600x? Last August I went from a 2600X to a 5600 (Non-X, as I had no intention to OC) and the upgrade was pretty substantial; I did a video card upgrade first and then later the CPU and that made a big difference, especially since I was then able to enable XMP.

There's still life yet in AM4. I figure maybe a few years down the line I'll pick up a 5800X3D used when I can get one for cheap, just to squeeze some more life out of my system.

I finally made some time to start XCOM 2. Only finished the tutorial and the first mission so far, but I'm really enjoying it, much more than XCOM: Chimera Squad.

I'll have to see how much the mission timers will be a problem for me. I've already lost a soldier because I rushed ahead a bit too much, assuming all the enemies were dead, so I'll have to be a bit more careful next time.

XCOM2 is one of mine and my wife's favorites. We have over 400-hours in it, having completed several Commander-Ironman runs. There are a heap of mods I would recommend, but going through all 56 of them might be a bit much... But I'd definitely recommend the one to disable timers while your team is concealed; to me, that just makes sense. Another I recall off the top of my head is Aiming Angles, which guarantees critical hits if you're flanking, though it does the same for the enemy, so be careful.

Honestly, I recommend pushing through pretty much no matter what happens. The game is pretty completeable even if you lose a whole bunch of soldiers, as long as you have a solid rotation of them being trained; I'd recommend an A and a B team at the very least. Also WotC is required, as it just balances the game so well and while the Chosen do tend to be tough, some of the weapons and upgrades you get off them will give you a dramatic power boost.

https://imgur.com/a/GtwoO