May 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

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Zloth

Community Contributor
He started with Big Ambitions, but even huge daily deposits into his bank account mean nothing to him. He has looked into the void and seen his soul, empty and malformed. The nausea is his permanent companion.
Time for some old fashioned shock therapy! Get a car battery (no, not a Tesla's) and set it up with a switch and the negative wire stuck into one of the HDMI ports on your graphics card and the positive wired to.... what? No?? Come on, you don't know it won't work until you try!

P.S. Dæmon
 
Valve has banned Elden Bling :ROFLMAO:

I may or may not have mentioned this game on here before, but it was...um...interesting. Developer is fortunate they left his already published games alone--for now.

After some thought, I had decided his games weren't necessarily racist given that all the characters in the games, regardless of color, were absolutely miserable misfits, but the main character throughout the games, Tyrone, is a little out there even for comedy. Things probably wouldn't have gone well for Valve if a games journalist had noticed those games.
 
I played another game of Conquest of Elysium 4. Again with max AI players on a large map, but this time I chose to play as the Necromancers.

I got lucky enough to get a capital in a corner, with a neutral capital nearby that was easy to take, giving me a strong starting position. I had some problems finding enough of the special resource used for rituals, but I did get plenty of money and trade capacity so I could supplement it that way.

I managed to eventually turn my starting character into a lich, making him immortal and giving him a bunch of resistances. It also unlocked the option of making him a demi-lich, which I did as quickly as I could. However, it turns out that as a demi-lich your character loses their ability to walk around. Instead, you can use a ritual and click on any area of the world map and it will teleport you to the closest tile with a high number of corpses on it...

Which is pretty terrible when you want to attack a specific army or city. Luckily the AI is pretty stupid and attacked my demi lich with several of their armies, even though he was now completely immune to non-magical attacks and none of their units had any magic attacks.

Luckily the demi lich could still summon undead and do a ritual that had a decent chance of summoning a unit that could act as a general to lead those undead, so I could spawn little armies all over the map. From that point I was basically unstoppable, though it took quite a while to hunt down every last enemy general. I should have just declared my own victory, but I kept underestimating how much longer it would take to finish the game.
 
It was released back in Nov last year, but one of the games I'm playing now and am currently stuck on is The Entropy Centre. It takes place in a lunar facility on Earth's moon. You play someone named Aria, whom is tasked with reversing time to avoid a cataclysm that causes Earth to explode. Please, if you've played this game through, no spoilers about the puzzle I'm about to describe. I want to solve it myself.

It's a puzzle game similar to Portal, but uses a rifle looking weapon that when aimed at objects, reverses their path for a short time. This "rifle" is actually an AI named Astra, and she'll even clap for you if you manage a skilled jump. For the most part you must move around similar cube objects that Portal has, like cubes, laser cubes, hardlight bridge cubes, and jump-pad cubes. It also however introduces "tall cubes" that start out compacted, and can be raised up to perform certain tasks. As well it introduces fields that can transform cubes from one type to another.

Once I grasped the concept of how it all works, it was going pretty well. There are also static launch pads here and there that help to project you upward and forward to access certain higher places, sometimes intended for the scenarios where you get stuck behind closed doors. The rifle can also erase any built up cube movement time via R, and show traces of past movement via F (which I find unnecessary to use).

The primary problems you run into as the puzzles get more advanced, are barriers that block usage of certain routes, and the amount of cube movement time you can rewind. Right now I'm on a puzzle that has transforming fields that will only render a hardlight bridge cube and a jump cube. The most puzzling thing about it is I see a high area on one side of the room accessible with a launch pad, but there's barriers all around the near side of another high platform near it. That near platform is also partly painted orange, which is typically an indicator it's part of the path you must use to the exit.

The exit is a small high platform with a door that has a pressure plate on the floor below the platform in front of it. I thought I had figured out a way to solve this puzzle via starting with a hardlight bridge cube on that pressure plate, then erasing built up cube movement time to start fresh. I then take the cube on the other side of the room to the far right where there's a launch pad to a high platform with a cube dissolver field. Besides dissolving cubes, these fields also negate the ability to rewind where you've moved the cube in time, even if you alone go through it.

This meant I had to place the cube on the platform behind the dissolver field, with the hardlight bridge aimed at the exit platform, then grab the cube and jump off the platform and head to the transforming field, and take the cube now transformed to a jump pad to a pressure plate between the dissolver field platform and one near it on that far right wall from the exit, which deactivates the dissolver field.

OK, that takes care of any cube movement, now I only have to hope it was done within the allowed cube movement time. I then head back to the launchpad that gets me up on the now deactivated dissolver field platform, and carefully hop down to bounce off the jump pad up onto the platform nearby. The jump pads give you more height the higher you fall from when landing on it.

The other tricky jump to land other than hitting the jump pad precisely is the jump to the hardlight bridge. Once this is complete, I can just go straight to the exit platform. Now comes the fun, but also worrisome part, rewinding the cube and hoping to hell you have enough time left on the meter to get it all the way back to where it started, on the pressure plate below the exit door platform.

I have tried this numerous times, and sadly the closest I can get the cube to that pressure plate is about 9 feet. I even tried holding the cube as high as I could above the launchpad that gets you up on the dissolver field platform, then dropped it and let it launch itself up just to see if I could save a bit of time, as I thought maybe the time only accumulates while you're holding it.

So yeah, fun game, it's even got a bit of combat with little worker mobile cubes, and mad dashes through areas where you have to rewind collapsed parts of the building to escape. It's also got sections with conveyor belts you can reverse direction, which serve to speed you up for jump cube launches, and also move cubes to where you can access them. The fun can come to a screeching halt when you get to puzzles like this though, and I can't help but think once I finally solve it, I'm going to find it was a simple solution that was well hidden, as with the Portal Stories Mel game.
 
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Before I go into what I'm currently playing, I just have to say that I'm amazed by how badly Redfall landed. I never had super high hopes for it, but for it to be sitting in the 50s on metacritic and torn apart by reviewers is a bit wild. Something clearly went very wrong in the development of Redfall.

In terms of what I've been playing, I recently put down Scarlet Nexus after 20 hours or so. I enjoyed my time with the game overall. I enjoyed the art and the soundtrack, and the combat was fast and fun. It definitely has clear signs of being a lower budget game, with middling voice acting and dialogue. Unsurprisingly for a JRPG, the story was largely incomprehensible, though not terrible or anything. I didn't end up finishing it because it just lost steam for me. A solid game but wasn't good enough to capture me until the end.

I've since started up Final Fantasy VII Remake and about 9 hours in or so. I'm really impressed by this game and I absolutely love the characters and the soundtrack. The graphics are excellent, and the combat is overall engaging and fun (though I've never really played RPGs for the combat). I've played a portion of the original FFVII but I never got through the whole game, so I don't have a particular connection to the original and thus no real opinions on how well it was translated. Regardless, I'm having a great time with the remake and I'll certainly be diving in to play more soon.
 
Bethesda should have 2nd thoughts about naming any games with Fall in it after
Fallout 76
RedFall

it looks hard. Its also hard to find clips showing how bad it is
It will be another 10 years before the next mainline Fallout game. Everyone will be over it by then. Unless, of course, Microsoft says, WTH, hire some people and make some more games, which could always happen and hopefully will.

By the way, Fallout 76 is quite good now. They've improved it vastly since launch. It's a very successful game. Most of the people who still complain about it never played it, or only played it early on. It's very much like No Man's Sky as far as continued development goes. It just hasn't gotten much press about its successes.
 
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the post in forum feedback showing media (Zloth) is for uploads to Media section whereas
this link shows how to upload to Imgur and use those links here - https://forums.pcgamer.com/threads/how-to-post-images-using-imgur.131444/

i remade Zloth's post so tell me if this makes any sense - https://forums.pcgamer.com/threads/how-to-upload-images-to-media-section.139682/
AH! I see the "Add Media" button now! I never looked through the list on the left before. I thought you would add it from inside of a post.

I'll probably still use imgBB and another site, but at least now I know (Imgur is annoying to me).
 

Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
Imgur is annoying to me
I find it the simplest, but maybe that's because I bypass some of the steps.

SgZBx4M.png


♣ Copy image to clipboard.
♦ Click my Imgur shortcut.
♥ Click my Paste button.
♠ Click the 3 dots menu after image has been reported as uploaded.
JWBizDK.png


♣ Click 'Copy Link' for forums.
VnbKhY4.png


♦ Paste link into post.

ImgBB is my backup, looked nearly as easy as Imgur when I checked it out.
 
To all those looking forward to Starfield, especially @mainer , I read an article in Forbes about Redfall and the author added some concerns about Starfield. Said there had been rumors that Redfall was "coming in hot" and that those same rumors said that Starfield was coming in even hotter. He then wonders if Starfield won't get pushed back to 2024 after the Redfall debacle to try to save the day for Xbox.

Of course, all of this is only speculation and rumor, but it's true that Microsoft does need a major win with Starfield. Given Bethesda's successful history, all it really needs is to do is not blow the launch and Starfield should be a smashing, maybe even historic, success. I guess we'll see what happens here.
 
What the hell is wrong with me? No sooner had i uninstalled Chiv2 vowing to never play the game i reinstall it and play the latest update. its like being an abusive relationship. Want to walk away but can't...

So... what happened? Well the good news i was able to get some fun out of it, playing against people who were mostly my level (ie rookie) but that said, the key problems persist with team stacking and it made for some pretty lopsidded games. hell playing as the attackers we would barely make a dent and lose at the first objective.

As for the new map? its not bad. its a nice map, the set pieces are good but i think they need to adjust the times for some of the objectives as the second one spend too long and you're finished. Maybe increase the timer each time you burn something completely. But get past that bit and its usually easy as the fight is narrow and difficult to defend. That said, the beginners seem to be hesitant to do anything. I see them stand around sometimes whilst the enemies just take the objectives. For christ sake guys defend!

Had some good games, had some woeful ones. Again, imbalanced teams so its not nail biting finishes but all but inevitable win/lose. hell for my tenosian faction my win lose count is 29/46. give or take 0.5.

i did try jump into training/beginner mode to harrass the bots, but when i saw all of them were lvl1 playing i jumped out. no way i was going to dunk on new players. Especially when i'm lvl 83.

On other games i'm playing hypnospace outlaw. Not sure how far i've got into it and i have mixed feelings about it. More when i beat the game...
 

mainer

Venatus semper
To all those looking forward to Starfield, especially @mainer , I read an article in Forbes about Redfall and the author added some concerns about Starfield. Said there had been rumors that Redfall was "coming in hot" and that those same rumors said that Starfield was coming in even hotter. He then wonders if Starfield won't get pushed back to 2024 after the Redfall debacle to try to save the day for Xbox.

Of course, all of this is only speculation and rumor, but it's true that Microsoft does need a major win with Starfield. Given Bethesda's successful history, all it really needs is to do is not blow the launch and Starfield should be a smashing, maybe even historic, success. I guess we'll see what happens here.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any concerns, since we haven't really seen or heard much since Starfield was bumped last November. My biggest concern is that maybe they were over-ambitious in what they wanted to achieve (like having 1000 planets you can actually land on), and are finding that actually implementing all those ambitious ideas into a game is taking way longer than anticipated.

But on the other hand, Bethesda knows how to make immersive, single player, open world RPGs. That's their bread & butter and what they're known for, going all the way back to Elder Scrolls Arena. I really feel that they're trying to get back to that now, after having branched out into online games with Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76. This game is huge for them, and it needs to hit the gaming community like Skyrim did. I think we'll have a better idea on June 11th when Starfield is showcased live.

It's huge for Microsoft as well, they can't afford another big game failure like Redfall, so I just don't see it happening. Speaking of Redfall, just going by some reviews as I have no interest in the game, how can a game developer actually play a game like this and think it's really fun? Arkane has made some great single player games in the past with great, detailed environments and different styles of gameplay. How could they see the faults this game has? I think they'd have been better off to scrap the development of Redfall a couple years ago.
 
With my finger on the pulse as ever I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 5. Its pretty good, hoping things are gonna shake up a little at some point as the camps have all been pretty easy to take out for the missions I've done in about 10 hours. If its just base after base with better weapons all the way I'll probably fall off. The story is bonkers as expected, but there's little kernels here and there in the cut scenes of a subtext to it which has me more interested than I've been in a MGS game before. Then again last one I played substantially was MGS on the Playstation in the late nineties, I think. Weird to be talking about subtext in a game where the opening sequence has you being chased on horseback by a burning man riding a flaming unicorn.

Played a bit of Into The Breach as well, not clicked with it yet fully. Its more of a puzzler than a tactics game. I'll give it some more time because I spent a lot of this week flat on my back with an injury, and theres a bit more of that going on this weekend anyway. Maybe lower the difficulty and try out some of the other mech sets
 
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