October 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

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Zloth

Community Contributor
There are over 50 houses in the game, and only about 8 are what you might consider low income. These are only in the game for when you are first starting and have little cash. The rest are pretty extravagant, with many beach houses, cliff-side mansions, high-rise condos, etc.
So, putting the properties out of reach for the upper-middle-class, are we? {smirk}
 
You would think that a game called Megaquarium wouldn't be very difficult, but each animal has so many requirements that it shuts down my brain trying to figure out which fish to put in a tank.

Fish have: a range of water temperatures, a certain water PH, an acceptable level of water quality, fresh or saltwater, how many of their own species they can be in a tank with, whether they are bullies or wimps, whether they are nibblers or nibbleable, how much open space on the tank floor they need, how full the tank is of swimmers, how many plants they need, how many caves, tall grass, rocks, plant cover they need....and more I know I've forgotten.
 
The halloween steam sale is on and i had a look around for any good deals. The only one i found was carrion which i've had my eye on for sometime (maybe years?). bagged it for a a fiver. Its the cheapest so far.

Still playing AOE2 and going through the el cid campaign. I have to say the AI seems... passive? Ok its on standard (technically the easiest difficulty) but compared to say the joan of arc, saladin or the barbarossa campaign the AI difficulty has just nose-dived. They rarely attack unless i attack their base directly and by that point i have a reasonable sized army to smash them to bits. That said, it might be because i have more of the tech tree built/ locked so i can establish a much better defense.
 
Oh my gosh. I've been using Steam forever and today was the day I figured out how to not install DLC.

Granted, this is really the first time I really, really didn't want a DLC installed, but it could have helped me in the past with Ark: Survival Evolved, which is a 350 GB download with all the DLC.

This time, however, I got rid of the Freshwater Frenzy Megaquarium DLC, which added many of the fish requirements that I listed above.

Can't believe I never paid attention to the DLC list under Properties.
 
i found out about that yesterday while watching this
That first setting change is a big no for me. I love watching developer streams. Other than that, mine was already set up pretty much exactly the way he recommended. While I was in there, I did turn off notifications for friends logging on and starting games. Been meaning to do that for awhile. Can't tell you how many times having the bottom left corner of the screen blocked off annoyed the heck out of me.
 
I not sure how the AI in Forza Motorsport can be so good at regular tracks and so bad at NASCAR ovals. The only thing I can think of is that at regular tracks the traffic gets spread out pretty quickly whereas at ovals everyone stays bunched together. The AI is definitely worse in traffic, but so are humans. I guess it just messes them up more at the moment. It's not unusual to see one crash in the first turn at regular tracks when the cars are still together. Maybe they'll keep learning. I certainly wouldn't buy a Forza NASCAR game at the moment, though.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
This uruk popped up in Middle Earth: Shadow of War.
full

I knew I had to have him. I eventually got up to level 19, challenged him, broke him, and forced him to serve my side. When I captured the first 'real' fortress, I set him up as overlord. I expect he'll have some excellent Halloween decorations set up in no time!

After that first fortress is captured, the game moves on to its main gameplay loop where you defeat/turn the chiefs then take over the fortress in a big battle a few more times while the game tells you a story. Having beat it before, I finally had my fill and moved on.

Next game:
Good stuff so far! GREAT visuals! Great music! And you can get detailed on changing the difficulty level instead of just easy/medium/hard. The interface seems console-ish, but the only trouble I've had with mouse/keyboard so far has been the in-game guide leaving all the Playstation prompts in the text.

Oh my gosh. I've been using Steam forever and today was the day I figured out how to not install DLC.
I did that in Saints Row 3 to keep the vampire DLC out. It's rare to need that functionality!
 
This uruk popped up in Middle Earth: Shadow of War.
full

I knew I had to have him. I eventually got up to level 19, challenged him, broke him, and forced him to serve my side. When I captured the first 'real' fortress, I set him up as overlord. I expect he'll have some excellent Halloween decorations set up in no time!

After that first fortress is captured, the game moves on to its main gameplay loop where you defeat/turn the chiefs then take over the fortress in a big battle a few more times while the game tells you a story. Having beat it before, I finally had my fill and moved on.

Next game:
Good stuff so far! GREAT visuals! Great music! And you can get detailed on changing the difficulty level instead of just easy/medium/hard. The interface seems console-ish, but the only trouble I've had with mouse/keyboard so far has been the in-game guide leaving all the Playstation prompts in the text.


I did that in Saints Row 3 to keep the vampire DLC out. It's rare to need that functionality!
I wanted to play Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor pretty badly, but when I tried to play (years and years ago), I ran into a game breaking bug that I found other people also having. Don't know if they ever fixed that. Somehow I also have Shadow of War, probably from a Humble Bundle, I guess. Maybe I should download that. I've been wanting a more AAA type experience the last week or so.
 
There's a very confusing bug, if you are unaware of it, in Total War Pharaoh multiplayer. When the faction you are at war with becomes some other faction's vassal (which they do a lot since that's better than getting wiped out), you don't get any notification or option to continue the war. The game just gives you a peace treaty, but doesn't even tell you that. So the next turn you try to continue your war and find out that somehow you are at peace with this faction now and declaring war on them again will drastically lower your reliability. That's a bit of a pain.

In single-player it works as intended. You get a notice and the choice of whether to continue the war.
 
I've been playing some Vermintide 2. I played with three friends on Friday evening and it went absolutely terrible. We were playing on Veteran and kept losing. It didn't help that when I joined the Discord call I couldn't hear the game any more for some reason. It also didn't help that one of my friends was playing with a level 1 character they weren't used to and had no equipment for.

After a few losses we tried the Chaos Wastes and that went much better.

Since it's a double XP event I've played a couple of games on Champion with random people with the characters I hadn't played with as much. I'm slowly getting better at avoiding being hit, but I'm usually still one of the weakest players.
 
I've been playing some Vermintide 2. I played with three friends on Friday evening and it went absolutely terrible. We were playing on Veteran and kept losing. It didn't help that when I joined the Discord call I couldn't hear the game any more for some reason. It also didn't help that one of my friends was playing with a level 1 character they weren't used to and had no equipment for.

After a few losses we tried the Chaos Wastes and that went much better.

Since it's a double XP event I've played a couple of games on Champion with random people with the characters I hadn't played with as much. I'm slowly getting better at avoiding being hit, but I'm usually still one of the weakest players.
It's kind of crazy, particularly with the vast numbers of enemies, to go into a round thinking, "I'm not going to get hit," but that's basically the game. Darktide is much tougher, at least for me, on getting out unscathed. I used to do it most of the time in V2, but never did it once in Darktide. Actually, in Darktide, I just tried to not take melee and special damage. A little mob gunfire is basically near impossible to avoid, at least for me. Imagine if half those rats you're fighting had guns. That's Darktide.
 
I got a 4tb Evo 870 ssd today. Spent afternoon moving all my steam and Xbox games onto it.
Reduced my hdd down to only having 43 19 gb used. Might leave Diablo 4 on nvme, its only 82gb.

C didn't seem to shrink as much as I thought it would.

I removed a few games that didn't want to move, Forza 4 needs to be reinstalled to move.
Next step is download Starfield now I have plenty of fast free space. Need to do that in morning as servers too slow until then.

I might buy another ssd and replace my hdd completely. Or not... Even after moving everything and not including the hdd in total, I still have more free storage space than I did before. 3.5tb free without hdd, 6.2 with it.
 
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It's kind of crazy, particularly with the vast numbers of enemies, to go into a round thinking, "I'm not going to get hit," but that's basically the game. Darktide is much tougher, at least for me, on getting out unscathed. I used to do it most of the time in V2, but never did it once in Darktide. Actually, in Darktide, I just tried to not take melee and special damage. A little mob gunfire is basically near impossible to avoid, at least for me. Imagine if half those rats you're fighting had guns. That's Darktide.

I had a great start at the last game I played yesterday, only gotten hit a little bit by a warpfire thrower. Then in the span of like 10 seconds I got hit three times, then got blindsided by a single normal enemy and downed while killing a chaos warrior, of course right after the rest of the party dropped down and couldn't reach me any more.

I got a 4tb Evo 870 ssd today. Spent afternoon moving all my steam and Xbox games onto it.
Reduced my hdd down to only having 43 19 gb used. Might leave Diablo 4 on nvme, its only 82gb.

C didn't seem to shrink as much as I thought it would.

I removed a few games that didn't want to move, Forza 4 needs to be reinstalled to move.
Next step is download Starfield now I have plenty of fast free space. Need to do that in morning as servers too slow until then.

I might buy another ssd and replace my hdd completely. Or not... Even after moving everything and not including the hdd in total, I still have more free storage space than I did before. 3.5tb free without hdd, 6.2 with it.

When I got my 1TB drive I thought it was a ton of room, but I didn't account for my wife getting into several games that take up somewhere between 75 and 125 GB each.
 
I seem to play smaller games, only about 3 of the many games I moved today were over 100gb. Most are small.

Currently getting Starfield, its 140gb.

Biggest game you can install right now is Ark Survival, its 250gb or more. A lot of its expansion packs and DLC... game size really doesn't mean anything though.

Which makes me wonder, so how big is wow then if its got 9 expansions? Could you install them all at same time? Is there a particular order you meant to install them in? (this is all hypothetical, I don't intend to play)
 
I seem to play smaller games, only about 3 of the many games I moved today were over 100gb. Most are small.

Currently getting Starfield, its 140gb.

Biggest game you can install right now is Ark Survival, its 250gb or more. A lot of its expansion packs and DLC... game size really doesn't mean anything though.

Which makes me wonder, so how big is wow then if its got 9 expansions? Could you install them all at same time? Is there a particular order you meant to install them in? (this is all hypothetical, I don't intend to play)

Wow is somewhere around 100 GB. I know because it's one of the games my wife plays. I think graphics account for most of the size of games though and WoW doesn't have all that high quality graphics, so even with 9 expansions it's not as bad as Ark Survival.
 
Still playing Elden Ring, which is pretty great. I've got about 35 hours in it, but I've got two friends telling me they think I'm further into it than they were at the same played time. Not exactly sure why that is, but maybe because I'm a pure magic user? It makes a few things easier and some harder.

One of those friends also bought me Resident Evil 4 Remake, which I put about 30 minutes in to. Seems neat so far, but I need to decide how I'm going to play it; I like playing these games with my wife watching, as she enjoys it, but it makes playing limited, as she's not necessarily always up for the intensity.

And after being nearly done with Symphony of the Night about a year ago, I've decided to restart. I had difficulty getting into it when I first played it, as I'd just completed all the GBA Castlevania games and think I was feeling done at that time. Currently enjoying myself and hoping to finish it soon.
 
I seem to play smaller games, only about 3 of the many games I moved today were over 100gb. Most are small.

Currently getting Starfield, its 140gb.

Biggest game you can install right now is Ark Survival, its 250gb or more. A lot of its expansion packs and DLC... game size really doesn't mean anything though.

Which makes me wonder, so how big is wow then if its got 9 expansions? Could you install them all at same time? Is there a particular order you meant to install them in? (this is all hypothetical, I don't intend to play)
Ark is 350 plus, but if you don't download the DLC maps, it's only 70 GB. There might be problems not downloading them, though, because some of the animals that were introduced on those islands might not work if the DLC isn't installed. Not sure.

This laptop I'm using now is the first one I've had that has zero HDD. I paid extra to get a 2 TB NVMe put in.
 
Still playing Cult of the Lamb. Getting pretty far, I stopped last night right before the third boss battle. I love how the combat in the Crusades (the roguelite runs) can be pretty sweaty, then after defeating the final enemy you get to go back to base and chill. I’ve been choosing doctrines that are more nice than evil, such as choosing to make my cult happier when there is no prisoner vs choosing the doctrine that makes then happier at other people’s misfortune. I’ve even married one of my cult members, then realized there is no limit to how many people you can marry, so I’m on a personal quest to marry as many cult followers as possible. Apparently they can get jealous at each other so maybe I shouldn’t, for the sake of the cult. I’m pretty far into the game based off all the different skill trees and how far I am on them. I truly don’t have any gripes with this game, it’s extremely addicting. It perfectly blends action roguelike elements with base/colony building simulation. It has such a fun gameplay loop, and it’s truly a “one more run” kind of game. I found myself up until 2am Saturday night totally entranced by leveling up my followers and decorating my base. I’ve also been getting very lucky as I’ve finished the last 2 major boss battles with only half a heart left, but that is so satisfying to finish like that on your first try on each of the boss battles. This game is amazing.
 
Still playing Elden Ring, which is pretty great. I've got about 35 hours in it, but I've got two friends telling me they think I'm further into it than they were at the same played time. Not exactly sure why that is, but maybe because I'm a pure magic user? It makes a few things easier and some harder.
What was the last story boss you hit? I went south to Weeping Peninsula after Limgrave and explored every corner of both areas and theres a lot of caves and nooks, well everywhere really. My first playthrough took about 135 hours. Since then I've NG+'s past the boss of Liurna of the Lakes, and also got to Leyndell outskirts on a fresh save in about 20 hours between the two just bee-lining main bosses, so YMMV depending on how thorough you are exploring. Love that game!
 
What was the last story boss you hit? I went south to Weeping Peninsula after Limgrave and explored every corner of both areas and theres a lot of caves and nooks, well everywhere really. My first playthrough took about 135 hours. Since then I've NG+'s past the boss of Liurna of the Lakes, and also got to Leyndell outskirts on a fresh save in about 20 hours between the two just bee-lining main bosses, so YMMV depending on how thorough you are exploring. Love that game!

I'm a fairly thorough explorer or at least I try to be. Weeping Peninsula was basically the first area I explored, cleared out the area, Castle Morne, etc. Moved on to Limgrave and did everything I could find there and moved on to Lake of...whatever. Pretty much done with that area, with the exception of a few northern spots I still need to hit, but I finished off the Academy a bit ago and have now gone back to the underground stuff I'd found in Limgrave; Sofria River Well, I think it's called. Just finished that up and now I'll move on to the northern areas of the Lake and eventually bake to Caelid when I feel like I'm strong enough.
 

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