November 2025 General Games Discussion Thread

[dxchase]

Arc Raiders is currently down while players top out at around 350k. Im kinda annoyed because im playing with someone for the first time and now we cant after smooth sailing since launch.

I was able to play some of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection and it seems to run fine but im playing entirely offline. I do wish they had more versions of the game that are missing from this collection but im assuming they will come in some form of DLC. The documentary though is pretty cool.

They added some new features too like a rewind button so if you are about to die, you can just rewind it lol. I also like pinning moves to the screen is doable and also allowing to play any music from any game within other games. Standard cheats from the old franchise days are there too like playing hidden characters and unlimited time to do finishing moves.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some more Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. The gameplay video for the DLC made me feel like playing it again and my kid was up when I started gaming, so Cyberpunk 2077 was not an option.

Things are still going quite well. I got three new castles, though one of them I almost immediately lost after getting it. So far we've won every war we've been in and captured at least one new castle or city in each of them.

I also did two sieges for the first time. I normally use a horse and pole arm, so I'm not too useful during sieges. My crossbow skill is pretty high too though so I just tried sniping enemies from the wall and got a couple of kills.

Being useless on foot does kind of suck in tournaments and when assaulting hideouts though. The regular bandit hideouts aren't too bad, but every so often you have to do one for a quest and I can't win in a 1v1 duel and I can't win in a straight fight. Maybe I need to figure out where I can get better infantry to back me up.

 

[BeardyHat]

I've been alternating between Cultic and Pacific Drive, depending on how I'm feeling. I love the fact that Pacific Drive finally has a Suspend function, which was sorely needed; I was initially pretty frustrated when I bought the game about a year ago, given it lacked this and that just doesn't work for me. Now that it has it? I've used it quite a bit.

The game itself is pretty fun. Fairly chill exploration, gathering and crafting. It has a story that I'm really only partially following, partly because my kids or my wife seem to know exactly when exposition will happen and then begin to talk over it. Plus I'm also lazy and don't feel like reading all the text in the Codex, but it seems pretty fleshed out. Really loving this one and makes me want to visit the Pacific Northwest again.

Cultic on the other hand has been frantic. I made it to The Slaughterhouse, which I think is the fourth or fifth map? Playing on hard and it's pretty damned challenging. I got past a major fight in the previous map and then have been working my way through the newest map only to get to another hard fight which I attempted a few times and then needed to take a break from, because I could feel my frustration rising.

I'm going to play these two and then I've got a few more games already lined-up for my November, as I'm playing a "Backlog Bingo" started by my other forum for the month. They have a tool that generates a Bingo card of game genres based on your preferences and then you can go ahead and try and get yourself a Bingo or whatever. So I'm going up the left hand side of my card, starting from bottom that goes from Bottom to Top:

Driving/Piloting - Pacific Drive
Arena/Boomer Shooter - Cultic
Shop Keeper - Recettear (Always been meaning to go back to this one)
Cozy - No idea what I'll play here.
Interactive Fiction - 328 Shibuya Scramble

I doubt I'll get through everything, but it's fun to have a little guidance and a theme to the event.

 

[Johnway]

not much to report on my front. still playing yakuza 5 and i'm just about done with most of the faffing about taxi missions. Still got to do the main driving missions but we're getting close and my car is pretty much maxed out performance wise. The main story is also progressing but i might dial it back and finish off more the side stuff before proceeding.

i have decided to play the POE league. my initial plan is to get to end game and take it from there. So maybe 10 days if i finish a capture a day depending on how busy i am and how quick i finish it. I'm going for a slam build as it worked so well last season. But since volcanic fissure of snaking is dead, i'm opting for the next best thing Earth shatter. Not sure how it will play but we'll see. it might do the job doing enough DPS to kill things quickly or its going to be another league cut short. Still, at least i got my character name sorted EarthShat_your_pants, i try to add humor to my naming convention.

hand held wise i'm playing fire emblem awakening. i'm at chapter 10 but playing on casual difficulty unsurprisingly isn't difficult. i might dial it up next time and see what happens. The progress is fairly slow primarily because the game gives you random battles and i've been abusing them like crazy. Expecting to get a few promoted and make the fights even easier.

 

[Zloth]

I went up against the Fire Giant in Elden Ring. The guy is killing me! I'm trying to throw lightning at him. It keeps targeting his leg, but that moves around a lot, making it hard to hit. If I aim for the chest, though, the guy is so tall that I have to be almost under him for the attack to be in range!! (Groin shots are not given as an option. This is a family-oriented game! )

I decided to go back to Castle Sol and finish it off. Commander Niall posed no problem. Looking at the map, it turned out that I missed a boss in a fort, too, so I did that one. Now I'm just about out of options. I only got part way through the lake of rot, but the rewards for that quest have all been pretty mage-oriented, and my characters intelligence is just 7, so I'm not real eager to finish it.

That leaves me with... the Fire Giant. Or burning down a few more Knights of Zamor. Those things are worth 5K runes each, and it only takes 3 or 4 long range lasers to burn one down. I don't think it's lack of levels that's giving me trouble with the big guy, though. Looks like his defense against Holy isn't particularly great. Maybe it's time to switch the flame reaper to a holy reaper or maybe bring out the light sab... <ahem> the Coded Sword.

 

[Zloth]

Got him. I summoned Dung Eater and Alexander, then Alexander hid for the whole second phase! I tried using one of those 'rune arc' thingies and it helped a lot.

View: https://youtu.be/m3XGvHSDX5s


I switched to the pest threads spell. The lightning bolt does a bit more damage for me, but the threads are far more likely to hit. (Still, I definitely should not have been trying to hit his hands.)

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Got him. I summoned Dung Eater and Alexander, then Alexander hid for the whole second phase! I tried using one of those 'rune arc' thingies and it helped a lot.

View: https://youtu.be/m3XGvHSDX5s


I switched to the pest threads spell. The lightning bolt does a bit more damage for me, but the threads are far more likely to hit. (Still, I definitely should not have been trying to hit his hands.)

Nicely done! I have a question though: are you watching all of the cut scenes every time?

The first time I fought Fire Giant I beat him after a couple of tries and wondered what all the fuss was about. The next 2 times Ive fought it have been pretty rough and Ive got annoyed with it, one of the least enjoyable boss fights in the game for me, although I also dont really like fighting any of the dragons much.

 

[BeardyHat]

Got him. I summoned Dung Eater and Alexander, then Alexander hid for the whole second phase! I tried using one of those 'rune arc' thingies and it helped a lot.

View: https://youtu.be/m3XGvHSDX5s


I switched to the pest threads spell. The lightning bolt does a bit more damage for me, but the threads are far more likely to hit. (Still, I definitely should not have been trying to hit his hands.)

That was a close one! Also, somehow I've never thought to put my mana flasks on the alternate hot bar. I always end up frantically mashing the down button to flip through when I need it.

Though actually it's my health flasks, since I usually only carry two or three and the rest are all mana.

I'm pretty obsessed with Pacific Drive. Ended up playing it a whole load yesterday (which I guess for me is about 2 hours, spread throughout the day) and it's just one of those "checklist" games for me, where I want to do a thing, but need resources to do it and then find another thing I'd also like to do and then preliminary steps to get myself to one of those end goals, etc, etc. Those types of games often just get their hooks in me for a good long while.

 

[neogunhero]

Got my RX 9060 XT 16GB installed and running smoothly. Compared to my last card the RTX 2060 6GB, this thing is a beast. I did have some issues though, mostly caused by my own incompetence.

First off, the included GPU stand was too short. It was clearly meant for a case with a PSU shroud which mine does not have. Granted, my case is pretty old school, has a very early 2010s gaming look to it, so no shroud. There was a good 7 or so inches between the bottom is the case to the GPU, so using a bit of electrical tape I stuck the stand on top of a bottle of zinc tablets and it’s working perfectly. Just need to get a proper stand soon.

Next up, I tried to boot up BF6’s battle royale mode. I get a message saying the security requirements are not turned on, so I start rummaging through Settings like I know what I’m doing. I end up clicking “decrypt drive” because I dunno, I didn’t think it would take hours. It began to decrypt to main SSD that has my Windows install and main game folder, and that was tanking my CPU performance. So, in a last ditch effort to speed things along, I did a clean install of Windows but this time on a separate slower SSD. So far it’s working perfectly, just had to take some time to get everything reconfigured.

After all of that it was finally time to play some games.

I picked up Oblivion Remastered just for this. I benchmarked it on my old GPU by downloading a save file right before you leave the tutorial sewers and walking around in the open world for 10 minutes. My old card on all Medium settings with no DLSS averaged around 25-30fps the entire time. My new card with mostly Ultra settings no FSR hits 75fps average. Mind you, this game is still heavily unoptimized, but it’s so much more playable and I’m very happy.

So after all this I proceeded to play 8 hours of Oblivion Remastered all weekend long and enjoyed every minute of it.

 

[neogunhero]

I also forgot to mention temps.

I got the XFX Mercury edition. It’s the flagship “high end” model complete with the highest factory OC apart from a single ASUS model which beats it by 20mhz in the memory clock, so completely unnoticeable difference. However compared to stock, it’s about a 12% increase in clock speeds, so maybe a frame or two extra per second compared to stock.

This model features all sorts of extra cooling power. It’s a three fan model with the middle fan being a little bigger than the other two, I’ve never seen that before personally. It has a massive heatsink spanning the whole length of the card, the outer plastic shell apparently has been redesigned to push air back onto the cooler better, and uses some high quality thermal paste.

I have a very basic fan curve set to it. 0% at 0c then 100% and 100c. Playing Oblivion for hours straight last night didn’t cause my GPU to exceed 45c, which blew my mind because my old card idled around that temp. It was not uncommon for the RTX 2060 to hit the 70s while gaming, so this card is staying ice cold compared to the old one. Very happy about that.

 

[dxchase]

All good things must come to an end, and that is so with special loot you find in Arc Raiders. Was lucky enough to extract with whats basically a minigun in Arc Raiders. I had it with me for a few rounds and had moments like this... (mind you, i was being hunted by 2 people)

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And then...this happened, mind my little rage at the end haha

I was showing off the gun i had just got the 2-fer when i got shot. Also, when you are down in the lift and extract you still get your stuff, but the lift had different plans.

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So, finally was able to get in last night to play with my wife, showing her the ins and outs and sure enough, we get to our first area and run into people who shoot us after telling her that most of the time we will either be alone or working with others lol. The following match.. ran into 3 people that were friendly, said hi and left us alone as i told them i had someone new with me. Then 3 games of just looting and extract.

Next up, I tried to boot up BF6’s battle royale mode. I get a message saying the security requirements are not turned on, so I start rummaging through Settings like I know what I’m doing. I end up clicking “decrypt drive” because I dunno, I didn’t think it would take hours. It began to decrypt to main SSD that has my Windows install and main game folder, and that was tanking my CPU performance. So, in a last ditch effort to speed things along, I did a clean install of Windows but this time on a separate slower SSD. So far it’s working perfectly, just had to take some time to get everything reconfigured.

Was this the secure boot thing or something else?

 

[Frindis]

@dxchase That second guy ate sooooo many of those bullets

 

[neogunhero]

I was showing off the gun i had just got the 2-fer when i got shot. Also, when you are down in the lift and extract you still get your stuff, but the lift had different plans.

If only you were just a step or two closer to the elevator, that's so annoying

Was this the secure boot thing or something else?

I think so, and honestly I wasn't too bothered trying to figure it out at the time. It was strange because I'm pretty certain I played the open beta on that install of Windows because I just got newest SSD about 2 months ago or so. I opened settings, looked around the security tab, saw the encryption thing and just decided to decrypt, pretty dumb idea on my part. It was stuck in the decryption phase for nearly two hours before I decided it would be quicker to reinstall Windows and this time put it on a seperate drive in case something like this happens again.

Another issue I was getting when reinstalling Windows is for some reason the USB boot drive I made did not work. I was able to get to the installation screen which I then figured I was good to format all my drives, but then Windows kept failing to install. Luckily the previous main drive had a partition made automatically that contained the installation software so I booted to that partition and was able to finally install Windows. My issue was that I kept jumping the gun and doing stuff I didn't know, but it all worked out in the end lol, plus now Windows and my main game drive are separate which helps me avoid having to reinstall all my games again.

 

[Zloth]

Errr, now I'm in the place with the tornadoes? Isn't this, like, the end game area? I still haven't seen the lower parts of the mountains!?

Nicely done! I have a question though: are you watching all of the cut scenes every time?

Heck no! The first times I tried that fight, I didn't even get to the cutscene! That was only the third time it played (2nd time that day), so I left it in hoping I would win the fight.

That was a close one! Also, somehow I've never thought to put my mana flasks on the alternate hot bar. I always end up frantically mashing the down button to flip through when I need it.

I missed WAY too much when doing that. It was a big reason I switched to controller - using the alternate hotbar makes you take your hand off the mouse using mouse/keyboard. I really should put the health there, too, then use the main one for various pots, mimic veil, and other stuff you can pick while out of battle.

Torrent is on the secondary, but I put something else there when in big 'legacy dungeon' areas where you can't use him.

Though actually it's my health flasks, since I usually only carry two or three and the rest are all mana.

I do that, too, except when up against bosses that WILL hit me. I'm nowhere close to the timing needed to roll through those Fire Giant attacks.

 

[Zloth]

OK, found my way to the snowfields. Ended up having a really confusing boss battle...

View: https://youtu.be/sxgrDgZ0mYI