May 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[Zed Clampet]

Was that worth several hours of my life? Well, I did sort of enjoy putting it together 🙂. I'll do a "releasing in May" later, but when I was half-way through this my GPU arrived. Now I just have to put everything together.

 

[dxchase]

Happy May Day or International Workers Day!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Going to miss the Giant Bombcast. No idea what I'll replace it with, no other gaming podcast has made me laugh as much as them over the years, apart from the Beastcast. Salut.

Still playing Clair Obscur and still enjoying it. Dont usually play anything quite this whimsical and its made me smile quite a few times. Maybe I should give that FF7 remake a try after all after this.

 

[BeardyHat]

Going to miss the Giant Bombcast. No idea what I'll replace it with, no other gaming podcast has made me laugh as much as them over the years, apart from the Beastcast. Salut.

Still playing Clair Obscur and still enjoying it. Dont usually play anything quite this whimsical and its made me smile quite a few times. Maybe I should give that FF7 remake a try after all after this.

Never listened to GB, but as I understand it, a lot of the old hands went on to form Nextlander. I listen to it occasionally, but it's got that style I like where there's often a lot of banter.

Back Page is also worth listening to, though I haven't in awhile.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Going to miss the Giant Bombcast. No idea what I'll replace it with, no other gaming podcast has made me laugh as much as them over the years, apart from the Beastcast. Salut.

Still playing Clair Obscur and still enjoying it. Dont usually play anything quite this whimsical and its made me smile quite a few times. Maybe I should give that FF7 remake a try after all after this.

FF7 remake is on sale right now, but I need to get control of myself, so I might pick it up during the summer sale. Probably not, though, since Square often sits out the seasonal sales.

I had a hilarious fight yesterday. Somehow I didn't manage to get to attack first, and the enemies started attacking instantly. I failed to parry anything and died before I got a turn 🤣

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Never listened to GB, but as I understand it, a lot of the old hands went on to form Nextlander. I listen to it occasionally, but it's got that style I like where there's often a lot of banter.

Back Page is also worth listening to, though I haven't in awhile.

Nice! Nextlander is my only Patreon sub. Brad also does a pretty good tech podcast with (the other) Will Smith called Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod thats also sometimes interesting.

I go in and out of GB since that last split, but I generally kept up with it and Voicemail Dumptruck was sometimes really funny, real shame that Fandom are going to leave them as a shell, as it sounds like.

Not heard of Back Page before but will give it a look, thanks.

FF7 remake is on sale right now, but I need to get control of myself, so I might pick it up during the summer sale. Probably not, though, since Square often sits out the seasonal sales.

I had a hilarious fight yesterday. Somehow I didn't manage to get to attack first, and the enemies started attacking instantly. I failed to parry anything and died before I got a turn 🤣

I saw FF7 on sale and was pondering it, but not yet.

I'm still figuring out what abilities work best together for Lune, the element system is really fun to mess with out of the characters I have so far. Gustave (R Patz) is probably doing most damage overall, but Maelle is a little bit lackluster, need to figure out her stance system a bit better. Have barely touched Sciel yet, should also give her a try.

On normal difficulty it seems pretty forgiving on bad builds as long as you can manage to parry more often than not. Not complaining because Im still never sad to get in a fight even with some of the normal mobs because the dodging, parrying and jump counters are so satisfying.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Nice! Nextlander is my only Patreon sub. Brad also does a pretty good tech podcast with (the other) Will Smith called Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod thats also sometimes interesting.

I go in and out of GB since that last split, but I generally kept up with it and Voicemail Dumptruck was sometimes really funny, real shame that Fandom are going to leave them as a shell, as it sounds like.

Not heard of before Back Page but will give it a look, thanks.


I saw FF7 on sale and was pondering it, but not yet.

I'm still figuring out what abilities work best together for Lune, the element system is really fun to mess with out of the characters I have so far. Gustave (R Patz) is probably doing most damage overall, but Maelle is a little bit lackluster, need to figure out her stance system a bit better. Have barely touched Sciel yet, should also give her a try.

On normal difficulty it seems pretty forgiving on bad builds as long as you can manage to parry more often than not. Not complaining because Im still never sad to get in a fight even with some of the normal mobs because the dodging, parrying and jump counters are so satisfying.

I haven't figured out Maelle at all. I was in that boss fight where the boss kept eating the party members, and he ate everyone but Maelle. She was down to the point of only being able to take one more hit before dying when he spit the other two out. I should have taken a defensive stance with her as often as possible, but I didn't. I'd basically conceded the fight in my head. She did okay damage, but I can't get anyone to consistently do as much as Gustave.

She was working well going last because she can put "defenseless" on an enemy with her basic attack, but then I put too much into agility, so now she's setting up for Lune. I need to put more into Lune's agility and get her second again.

 

[BeardyHat]

I'm back on Abiotic Factor.

I heard on one of my podcasts (RebelFM - @Kaamos_Llama) that it was going into 1.0 in May here and figured it might be a good time to give it another go, even though I got annoyed with the teleporting enemy the last time I played about a year ago. Anyway, I started a new run and am trying to do things a little differently this time around and have already figured a few new things out, such as using the environmental hazards to my advantage to kill the security bots.

 

[dxchase]

Dont really do much podcast listening, not that i dont want to i just never do it, i get my info from the yt versions lol.

Just had a good session with Expedition 33. I just got past the Gestral village. Fun game, the TBC is still kinda tedious to me, but when its flowing or your team is just 1-hitting enemies, its fun. The story is great and its just a beautiful game to run around and explore. Will probably finish this one.

Ive split this time with *sighs* Diablo 4 since Tuesday testing out the new season. It isnt bad its just really stagnant to me how they do their seasons at this point. 8 seasons and theres still stuff from season 1 the community has asked for that are nowhere to be seen.

The same model for the past few seasons is applied here so its just "collecting x amount of stuff to unlock the next reward" style progression with 2-3 of them being a new quest that lasts all of 5 minutes, and the roadmap only shows more of the same until 2026, leaving a lot of fans dismayed AND they shortened their seasons, it seems, to 61 days from around 90. I guess this is ok because im usually done with the season and all its challenges and progression within the first month.

They made some changes that made a lot of people mad this season too, lets not forget that. They thought it was a good idea making a more expensive battlepass with lesser rewards and in-game currency to obtain. The biggest seasonal changes were done to the bosses and you cant get them until Torment 1, which i know doesnt take too long, but at least leveling from 1-60 is completely the same outside of unlocking whatever seasonal powers they have which dont add too much.

With all that, i like the Diablo 4 loop and it doesnt bore me out too much because i have a good rotation of games, just wish they did more and add a few features other ARPGs have that make them stand out a little more than D4.

Oblivion is takin a backseat atm where im about to do the Kvatch quest at level 9. I dont think ill be dabbling in much else between these 3.

But then... DOOM

Also, my LE Doom is on the way!!

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued Inscryption and just beat the fourth boss of the third act. I still didn't have a clue on how to complete one remaining mystery so I quickly tried looking it up and it seems there are a whole bunch of secrets I missed that unlock other secret things, though I didn't look too much into it to avoid spoiling anything for now.

Happy May Day or International Workers Day!

I recently learned that my country is one of the few that doesn't have International Workers Day as a national holiday. Luckily I have plenty of vacation days and I'd taken this entire week off to spend with my kid who's having a vacation as well.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I continued Inscryption and just beat the fourth boss of the third act. I still didn't have a clue on how to complete one remaining mystery so I quickly tried looking it up and it seems there are a whole bunch of secrets I missed that unlock other secret things, though I didn't look too much into it to avoid spoiling anything for now.



I recently learned that my country is one of the few that doesn't have International Workers Day as a national holiday. Luckily I have plenty of vacation days and I'd taken this entire week off to spend with my kid who's having a vacation as well.

Have a great vacation!

 

[Zloth]

Down with chicken? So, the protestor wants to use chicken feathers for making pillows, right?

I've finished FF7:Rebirth, got all the screenshots sorted, and popped back in a little to get some videos recorded. Now I just need to leave a quick review in the Finished topic and it's on to the next thing. Probably Forgotten City, because I forgot it and it almost scrolled off my games-to-play list.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Wow, when I first started reading PC gaming news, PC Gamer was huge, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun was just a scrappy upstart. Now I go to PCG and half the articles don't even have any user comments, but the one from RPS that I just read had over 200.

 

[Colif]

i used to subscribe to GB but I found I wasn't actually going there so I stopped paying to be a member. I hadn't been there in years until I just looked and the front page is different now.

I can't comment on PCG comments as they use another service and not here. I never really wanted to comment on any of their articles so I never looked. I believe they swapped services recently and maybe those who want to comment haven't registered.

 

[Zed Clampet]

It's interesting that CoPilot is learning from talking to you. About a year ago I asked it a question about a game. The answer wasn't online, so CoPilot just made something up that sounded plausible. When I figured out the answer on my own, I went back to CoPilot and told it what the answer was. A couple of weeks ago I went back and asked it the same question. This time it admitted it couldn't find the answer, but it followed that with, "But some people say...." and repeated the answer I gave him.

 

[Colif]

mine doesn't know anything. I even removed it off my taskbar

The only time it gets any exercise is when i start a new word document and it tries to help, but as i disabled a process it needs to work properly, it can't do much.

its been used as much as Gemini has been on my phone.
Not at all.

 

[Zed Clampet]

mine doesn't know anything. I even removed it off my taskbar

The only time it gets any exercise is when i start a new word document and it tries to help, but as i disabled a process it needs to work properly, it can't do much.

its been used as much as Gemini has been on my phone.
Not at all.

Hey, do you know how to permanently disable Windows updates? I went into services and shut down Windows Update and then changed the properties pages info so that it supposedly wouldn't start back up again, but every time I log into that laptop, it's started up again and wants to update.

I need to reinstall Windows on that laptop, and until I do that, every update takes an hour and then fails. It also, for some unknown reason, loses my D drive, and I have to do a device troubleshooting, which I'm pretty sure they are about to get rid of. Without that, it's going to be a bigger pain.

 

[Zimbaly]

God so many good games, but man I can justify getting any right now. Need yard tools and art supplies. Meh!!!!

 

[Zed Clampet]

Down with chicken? So, the protestor wants to use chicken feathers for making pillows, right?

Or winter coats. I used to have a down coat supposedly good to something like -20 degrees. Fortunately, I never got to test that claim.

 

[Colif]

Hey, do you know how to permanently disable Windows updates? I went into services and shut down Windows Update and then changed the properties pages info so that it supposedly wouldn't start back up again, but every time I log into that laptop, it's started up again and wants to update.

I need to reinstall Windows on that laptop, and until I do that, every update takes an hour and then fails. It also, for some unknown reason, loses my D drive, and I have to do a device troubleshooting, which I'm pretty sure they are about to get rid of. Without that, it's going to be a bigger pain.

Microsoft don't want you turning those off, everytime people work out a way MS fix it.

Instead of fighting it, why not fix it?
is D drive a seperate drive or just a partition?
if its an actual drive, I would check drives health as generally windows doesn't lose drives like that.

I would suggest a repair install, might fix the update problem, and remove need for a reinstall completely.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

How to Do a Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

www.tenforums.com

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

 

[Zed Clampet]

is D drive a seperate drive or just a partition?
if its an actual drive, I would check drives health as generally windows doesn't lose drives like that.

It's a separate drive, and it's dying. I knew I was going to kill a drive running AI 24 hours a day, so I picked the D drive. Now I'm going to use my extended warranty to get a new one 🙂

Also, I'm going to start running AI on a cheap second drive I bought for my new PC. That will be the only thing that drive does, and I'll back-up the data once a week to two external drives as I'm doing now.

 

[Colif]

ahh a scratch drive... you best off using cheap drives if you going to write a lot to them constantly. They way better than they used to be unless you get a QLC drive as they have less writes before they die

my nvme has had plenty of action in its 5 year life

My QLC drive wouldn't be looking so good if I used it more

or buy an enterprise drive that is designed for lots of writes.

 

[BeardyHat]

I recently learned that my country is one of the few that doesn't have International Workers Day as a national holiday. Luckily I have plenty of vacation days and I'd taken this entire week off to spend with my kid who's having a vacation as well.

We pay lip service to them here and then steadily erode their rights. In fact, my State has an "At Will" policy for employers (and technically employees), so they can terminate you at any time without any reason.

🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

Though I've never actually been fired, thankfully. Laid-off, yes, but that was never the worst thing.

Wow, when I first started reading PC gaming news, PC Gamer was huge, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun was just a scrappy upstart. Now I go to PCG and half the articles don't even have any user comments, but the one from RPS that I just read had over 200.

Been ages since I read RPS. Can't remember exactly why I stopped, but one of the big reasons is that they changed their commenting program and I couldn't sign into it anymore, so I just stopped attending. Had been going their daily for years up to that point.

Hey, do you know how to permanently disable Windows updates? I went into services and shut down Windows Update and then changed the properties pages info so that it supposedly wouldn't start back up again, but every time I log into that laptop, it's started up again and wants to update.

I need to reinstall Windows on that laptop, and until I do that, every update takes an hour and then fails. It also, for some unknown reason, loses my D drive, and I have to do a device troubleshooting, which I'm pretty sure they are about to get rid of. Without that, it's going to be a bigger pain.

This tool will allow you to do lots of stuff in Windows, including disable updates entirely. I haven't messed with the tool extensively, as I'm actually fairly content with how Windows 11 does stuff, but I've heard it vouched for.

GitHub - ChrisTitusTech/winutil: Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility - Install Programs, Tweaks, Fixes, and Updates

Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility - Install Programs, Tweaks, Fixes, and Updates - ChrisTitusTech/winutil

github.com

 

[Colif]

It is better to fix windows than to use utilities to avoid updates.

I don't like tweaking utiities. People say windows is bloated when really its not. Everything in storage isn't running constantly. Just cause its on your PC doesn't mean its running. PC's aren't like mobile phones. You not restricted to what comes with PC (unless its an Apple) so Storage and Ram is hardly expensive now. I don't believe in nerfing windows

 

[BeardyHat]

It is better to fix windows than to use utilities to avoid updates.

I don't like tweaking utiities. People say windows is bloated when really its not. Everything in storage isn't running constantly. Just cause its on your PC doesn't mean its running. PC's aren't like mobile phones. You not restricted to what comes with PC (unless its an Apple) so Storage and Ram is hardly expensive now. I don't believe in nerfing windows

I mean, yeah, I would rather fix whatever issue I have, but I have an answer to the question, so I figured I'd bring it up.

Similarly, I don't find reinstalling Windows terribly difficult these days, especially with a secondary game drive. It's mostly installing utilities and programs I use from a one-click installer like Ninite and then getting Steam to recognize its game folder or even just doing a transfer of my games over my local network.

I thought it was way more of a pain in the butt to distro hop with Linux than it was to completely start fresh with Windows.