October 2025 General Games discussion thread

[Zloth]

I was reading an article in the print magazine about the dominance of Unreal Engine and that it's making the more popular games look the same. I haven't gotten that feeling at all! I used to be able to pick out engines (e.g. Source engine games would always have really sharp shadows), but now I tend to look it up if I want to know. Are other people able to pick out engines that way??

 

[Pifanjr]

I was reading an article in the print magazine about the dominance of Unreal Engine and that it's making the more popular games look the same. I haven't gotten that feeling at all! I used to be able to pick out engines (e.g. Source engine games would always have really sharp shadows), but now I tend to look it up if I want to know. Are other people able to pick out engines that way??

I don't think I've ever tried to pick out what engine was used to develop a game. The only way I would notice is if there was some very obvious tell, like the dialogue boxes for Source games being the same as the ones used on Steam.

 

[Frindis]

Played a few hours of this newlely released MMORPG. Very beautiful world, some chill activities like fishing. Exploring is fun enough, reminds me of Honkai Star Rail/Genshin Impact. Nothing new, it's free so you can take a looksie and decide if it's worth your time.

Blue Protocol: Star Resonance on Steam

Blue Protocol: Star Resonance expands the Blue Protocol universe with a vibrant MMORPG experience. Create your own hero, team up for strategic raids, or simply relax and have fun with friends fishing, crafting, and endless exploration. Adventure awaits!

store.steampowered.com

 

[neogunhero]

I was reading an article in the print magazine about the dominance of Unreal Engine and that it's making the more popular games look the same. I haven't gotten that feeling at all! I used to be able to pick out engines (e.g. Source engine games would always have really sharp shadows), but now I tend to look it up if I want to know. Are other people able to pick out engines that way??

I used to be able to discern which engine was being used when I was younger. The most obvious for me was Source engine since I played every and all Source engine games I could as a kid. They had a very special feeling to them that I look back upon very fondly and nostalgically.

These days it’s much harder unless it is a developer that uses their own engine for a lot of their games. Bethesda uses their own engine so their games have a very similar look and feel across them, even ranging from Fallout 3 to Starfield, you can pick up on a lot of similar quirks between them. RGG uses some sort of in-house engine for the Yakuza games that have a particular look that is distinct from a lot of other engines. Ubisoft as well, most of their modern games have similar looks and feels to them.

Unreal though is harder to detect because of how open it is to for the developers I assume. For example, Stalker 2, Fortnite, and Black Myth Wukong all use UE5 but I can’t discern any similarities between them tech wise. So I wouldn’t say that UE is making games look the same. I think it gives tons of tools to developers to truly make it their own.

 

[neogunhero]

I've never played Hell Let Loose but I've always been curious of it. I like realistic FPS games, though in recent years have fallen off them a bit. I was clicking through Steam and came across its newest update patch notes. I believe I have the game in my Epic Games library, so I decided to check it out. Then I read something that caught my full attention:

Contextual Repairs

Basically, tanks can now be destroyed in individual pieces, for example the tracks being destroyed or the engine being damaged. You now have to repair each individual component should it be destroyed, and as someone who loves tank gameplay in BF... this may be enough for me to check it out. They apparently also made tanks better at maneuvering rough terrain, better building mechanics, salvaging destroyed tanks, and more. I may have to hop on and go full engineer mode. Screw getting kills, I wanna resupply my fellow soldiers and repair tanks.

 

[neogunhero]

Tavern Keeper 🍻 on Steam

From the creators of Game Dev Tycoon comes Tavern Keeper 🍻, a cosy-chaotic management sim, featuring a powerful decoration sandbox and a magical storybook RPG!

store.steampowered.com

Greenheart games just announced Tavern Keeper will finally release on November 3rd after about 10-11 years in development.

The game was originally supposed to come out last fall, but for various reasons they delayed it all the way until now.

My speculation as to why is because last year saw a fairly large influx of tavern simulation games. Ale & Tale Tavern, Tavern Manager Simulator, Deep Space Tavern... there were more released earlier but seemed to get a lot of attention last year. I have no idea how or why this happened, but it made me feel bad for the developers of Tavern Keeper because this is a game that I feel has genuine soul and love put into it. They couldn't put out a game like this when similar games were the trendy flavor of the season. A lot of the other tavern sims are very basic asset flip simulation games that we see far too often on Steam. I think they needed to give it time to breath, as well as work on some stuff with the game.

Tavern Keeper is meant to be a lot more strategic than just a cozy simulation game. The demo I played last year blew me away with the amount of hard work that was put into it and how clearly it showed in every aspect of the game. It is as much about managing your employees with their various randomized traits and quirks than it is simply keeping customers happy and making a profit. I just think that at first glance it can be easily written off as another simulation game, but it is far more unique than that in my eyes. Very excited to check it out next month.

 

[Johnway]

Well another game finished and we still have a few weeks in october. i could have started yakuza 5 but i think i'll take the opportunity to finish some more horror games. case in point i thought i'll have a look at Resident evil code veronica. its been in my back log and i think it won't take too long to finish.

Write on up on the last game completed in the usual topic thread.

 

[neogunhero]

Well another game finished and we still have a few weeks in october. i could have started yakuza 5 but i think i'll take the opportunity to finish some more horror games. case in point i thought i'll have a look at Resident evil code veronica. its been in my back log and i think it won't take too long to finish.

Write on up on the last game completed in the usual topic thread.

I admire how many games you beat in a year. I don't think I've fully finished a game this year besides my second playthrough of Yakuza 0. I have an issue with never finishing games lol.

 

[Johnway]

I admire how many games you beat in a year. I don't think I've fully finished a game this year besides my second playthrough of Yakuza 0. I have an issue with never finishing games lol.

Generally i play one or 2 games at a time and finish them before moving on. Any more and they fall by the wayside. I did install exodos some months back and not touched it since... Might look into that one day, but my steam/epic collection calls...

I pad the stats with a whole load of indie games. i also limit myself when it comes to playing sandbox/simulator games as those could take forever. When i play a game i try to complete as much of the content as possible so there is no reason for me to go back to them, so new game+ are worthless unless i complete the game very quickly. games on my handheld take forever for me to finish as i generally play them on the weekends. so trails of cold steel took well over half a year for me to finish.

There have been times where a game is so bad or i'm so bored i just drop them. But i do my utmost to finish them to justify my opinions on a game. Oh and make time for Doom 2. Note to self: Start halloween Megawad after completing headless chicken. I'm on the last map and i need to just push through 2000+ monsters.

 

[neogunhero]

i also limit myself when it comes to playing sandbox/simulator games as those could take forever. ... or i'm so bored i just drop them

This is my exact issue. A lot of games I play are quite open ended, or have lots of replay value to them. For example, I'm a big fan of Bethesda games but I don't think I've ever finished the main quest in ANY of them. Fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas, all the Elder Scrolls games... never "beat" any of them, but I have a good 600 hours if not more across all of them. Then I play games that are so large with so much stuff to do in them that I get bored before I can finish them. As much as I love the series, I have that issue with a lot of Yakuza games.

I think I'm spoiled for choice. I have so many games and if I took the time, I could find 100+ games I'd like to eventually get around to playing. My issue is the fact that there are too many games, and I get too enticed by newer games too. It's a problem I wish I didn't have, but at the same time I'm not doing anything to fix it. I really should make a backlog and try my hardest to go through it. I don't even know where to begin though.. replay an old favorite or start with something I haven't played before? According to SteamDB I have over 600 games I've never even started up.

 

[Johnway]

This is my exact issue. A lot of games I play are quite open ended, or have lots of replay value to them. For example, I'm a big fan of Bethesda games but I don't think I've ever finished the main quest in ANY of them. Fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas, all the Elder Scrolls games... never "beat" any of them, but I have a good 600 hours if not more across all of them. Then I play games that are so large with so much stuff to do in them that I get bored before I can finish them. As much as I love the series, I have that issue with a lot of Yakuza games.

I think I'm spoiled for choice. I have so many games and if I took the time, I could find 100+ games I'd like to eventually get around to playing. My issue is the fact that there are too many games, and I get too enticed by newer games too. It's a problem I wish I didn't have, but at the same time I'm not doing anything to fix it. I really should make a backlog and try my hardest to go through it. I don't even know where to begin though.. replay an old favorite or start with something I haven't played before? According to SteamDB I have over 600 games I've never even started up.

yeah FOMO is one of the main problems. Especially when it comes to multiplayer as you need to get in on the action from the start to truly enjoy its golden period. After a few weeks or months it just dies away and the experience is greatly diminished.

mercifully, FOMO doesn't really affect me. Especially SP games. As someone who bides his time waiting for games to drop in price i can tolerate waiting and with a massive back catalogue i'm content to wait. That said beating (or just playing so many games) at once has its disadvantages, you start to burn out leaving you greatly unsatisfied and bored of gaming. I had to dial it back and play another game that was of decent size and a genre i liked to reset it. in my case it was blasphemous.

That said, there was one game i did try playing that i didn't mention, it was beholder and i played it for one play session and decided it was not for me. Too difficult.

The other thing i suppose is that i always find time to play games. I generally get 2hrs in every day in the evening, people with lives, family or real life commitments might not have that time to play let alone complete. I'm slowly starting to relate as my real life commitments slowly take over or i just get older and the idea of staying up late playing games is a waste of time.

 

[Pifanjr]

My issue is the fact that there are too many games, and I get too enticed by newer games too.

I do this as well, though most of the time I don't view it as an issue. The main point of playing games is to have fun, not to complete them.

I've found that my main issue lately is that I regularly get so sleep deprived I can no longer focus on games that require a lot of reading or concentration.

 

[Pifanjr]

I did two campaigns in the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era demo, both with a single-hero setup.

The first time I went with the Temple faction and a hero that boosts attack and defense of his units, which was pretty straightforward but meant I didn't really get to cast any spells in combat.

The second time I used the Necropolis faction and took a hero that was specialized in one of the schools of magic. Turns out that if you have the sleep and web spell and can cast both of them in the same turn, you can annihilate a lot of powerful enemies before they can even do anything. The only enemies that were a significant problem were multiple stacks of only ranged enemies, especially if they're one of the types I cannot sleep. Or dragons, mostly because they have very high initiative so they act before I can casts spells, they can cross the entire map so webbing doesn't work and there's usually a bunch of different stacks and I can only sleep one per round.

 

[Zloth]

Had a good night last night in Elden Ring. I needed some runes, and I've been farming some Nox gals for their armor, so I popped down and finally got the grieves that the RNG gods have denied me for so long. A tomb gave me some upgrade materials for my summons to get a few (though not enough) upgrades. Best of all, I finally got through the valiant gargoyle fight:

View: https://youtu.be/yYkHQ-BkqBg?si=hAy6A8eJptjrpJuG

 

[Pifanjr]

I played one more match of HoMaM: OE, as the dungeon faction this time and on a different map. I suspect the AI didn't work well on the other map I played, as this time it absolutely annihilated me. It somehow had about 4 times the number of units I had, of every tier. I had absolutely no chance.

 

[Johnway]

My october horror experience continues. as previously mentioned, i'm playing Resident evil: code veronica x, been plodding around trying to figure out what the hell i'm doing atm been to several places and i've seem hit a brick wall. I'll explore a bit more and see what happens.

But my halloween/horror experience doesn't end there. I've finally finished Headless chicken and now playing my next doom wad. Ad mortem:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/125461-ad-mortem-a-halloween-themed-megawad-mbf21-new-update-phase-3-is-out/

blitzed the first few maps and just getting my head around the gimmicks of this wad. So far i'm liking it alot. The different weapons and new enemies spice up the gameplay nicely. A few dick move encounters (i just hate enemies teleporting away only to spawn behind you, cutting your escape) makes the wad somewhat challenging, but nothing stressful. yet. But the maps so far are packed with skeletons of all kinds. From your standard revenants, to skeletons and a cyborg revenant.

 

[Colif]

This video saves an awful lot of time

Only the young have the time to play this, the older you get the more you value it.

 

[Johnway]

This video saves an awful lot of time

Only the young have the time to play this, the older you get the more you value it.

yes i saw this game. The gimmick is that it runs on real time so if you start a game you can play a bit every day or leave it for a bit come back and something might have changed. I was tempted to have look at this as it seems like one of those relaxing games that you aren't rushed to play or could play for a quick spare minutes.

 

[Colif]

i know it runs in real time and a full play though is 400 days. I haven't looked into enough to know if it could be played as an idle game or if it needs attention.

its a story driven idle game

The Longing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I would probably forget I was playing

 

[Zloth]

So, I'm walking down a wide street in the Elden Ring capital city and the icon pops up indicating I can call up a summon. Uhoh. There's going to be something big. I don't see anything, though - is a dragon going to come swooping in? Hard to tell what I should summon if I don't know the target. Creeeep forward....

Bdrrriiiiing.... something is popping in, but it's BEHIND me. I turn around, and there's a big something, maybe one of those Erdtree guards. Let's bring up the mimic. But, to do that, I need to switch out the scythe for a seal or the mimic will try to fight like a fighter with the weapon instead of casting spells. OK, do that, now switch the item option to mim... WHAM!! Ow. OK, run a bit. Start getting shot in the back by golden balls... roll! But now I'm too hurt to summon the mimic, so I have to switch my item back to my heal potions while running. OK, did that, take a drink - allowing it to catch up some. I really need to run more instead of trying to switch, so I run more and get to the end of the street. The boss is keeping pace, I can't be switching my items, I'll have to fight it myself?

I lasted about 30 seconds. This game will ambush you with anything, even large bosses!

 

[Colif]

I know one of the mods played Slormancer, what did you think?

I have it and if I didn't have to go out early tomorrow, I would probably play it now... Instead I have to resist one more day. Still need to finish course as well.... only corrections.

it will be a good use for my controller. And the wireless dongle I bought for it a few months ago.

I like how respec is free for everything

 

[dxchase]

Played Battlefield 6's pvp mostly all weekend. Ran a bunch of team deathmatch and tried some domination and conquest. They are fun, but TDM is where i stay. Have a 1.8 kd right now which is surprising to me since i havent played a pvp game like this in a while, i run and gun and play 100% solo. I streamed the first bit of the campaign and plan on streaming and finishing the rest this week.

Still playing/grinding Diablo 4 and took a chunk out of Alien: Rogue Incursion.

Diablo has one of its best seasons this time around. I really hope they keep the changes they made (adding a set of armor that can make new builds) and arent taken away because they were seasonal. The limited amount of activities are more fun now than ever, even though theres only like 3-4 activities to really do. The games version of a battlepass called "reliquaries" is absolute trash and noone likes it but blizzard announced it will change, so thats good.

Alien: Rogue Incursion is fun even if its a pretty generic FPS set in the Aliens universe. The game seems to be leading up to another chapter (this one is called, fully Alien: Rogue Incursion Chapter One), so ill probably come around for that. Always fun to blast some xenomorphs.

Speaking of which, i read the PCG article that Alien: Colonial Marines is getting a mod that fixes and updates a lot of stuff from that game. Peaked my interest though i never bought ACM for steam.

Well another game finished and we still have a few weeks in october. i could have started yakuza 5 but i think i'll take the opportunity to finish some more horror games. case in point i thought i'll have a look at Resident evil code veronica. its been in my back log and i think it won't take too long to finish.

Write on up on the last game completed in the usual topic thread.

This alien game im playing right now, i might finished and itd be my second game of the year i completed lol. But like @neogunhero i play a lot of open-ended games and, personally, im enticed too easily too to move onto something new.

 

[neogunhero]

Happy Monday everyone (unless you're a time-traveling Australian).

I played a variety of games over the weekend. Starting with Skin Deep, I was having a lot of trouble on the third level. The main gist of the game is the save all the cats locked up on each ship, however you choose to go about it, but at the end of the third level it tasked me to go back into the ship as it got boarded by a good 7 more pirates. This is where I was having issues. I had no weapons or kill them, so I failed and retried a few times.

I eventually came up with a genius idea. One of the rooms has four huge windows gazing out into outer space. The main character Nina has a third lung so she can breathe in outer space, but the pirates cannot. I lured all the pirates into that room, one to two at a time, then bust open one of the windows using various solid objects to create a vacuum, killing them instantly. After that I used the emergency shutters to close the broken window, the air locks opened up, then rinse and repeat. It was a lot easier than trying to stealth around them and finding the key to their spaceship to escape.

I then played some more Skate. Season 1 dropped and honestly the game is getting more and more greedy with each update. As I've said before, the skating gameplay is perfect to me, and that's mostly what I like to do anyways, just chill out and skate around the city. The missions, cosmetics and progression don't entice me that much, but with this new update, they've introduced a new currency and reduced the number of points you get from missions which you use to unlock cosmetic lootboxes. My guess is that EA is not very happy with the amount of money they were getting and decided to make some changes hoping it will nudge players into spending money. Not me, I've played this game since July for a total of about 50-60 hours and haven't spent a single penny so far.


After that came the big one. Deus Ex Revision just got a 10 year anniversary update. It's not that massive, but continues to improve on bugfixes and even made performance massively better even though the game ran perfectly before this, but it's always nice to have. If you don't know, it's a mod for the original Deus Ex that does add new content but for the most part stays true to the original. It adds a few new characters, locations and items/weapons but they are quite minimal and serve the base game very well. The main purpose is modernizing the game, making it run flawlessly on modern PCs, improving graphics and audio across the board, as well as lots of QOL features. I've always recommended it as the best way to play DX.

I immediately downloaded it again after I saw the 10 year anniversary post. I ended up playing for nearly 3 hours straight without even knowing that is what I was getting into. Before I knew it, it was dark outside and a little past my dog's dinner time. It's safe to say that I've officially started my biennial replay of Deus Ex.

 

[BeardyHat]

I've never played Hell Let Loose but I've always been curious of it. I like realistic FPS games, though in recent years have fallen off them a bit. I was clicking through Steam and came across its newest update patch notes. I believe I have the game in my Epic Games library, so I decided to check it out. Then I read something that caught my full attention:

Contextual Repairs

Basically, tanks can now be destroyed in individual pieces, for example the tracks being destroyed or the engine being damaged. You now have to repair each individual component should it be destroyed, and as someone who loves tank gameplay in BF... this may be enough for me to check it out. They apparently also made tanks better at maneuvering rough terrain, better building mechanics, salvaging destroyed tanks, and more. I may have to hop on and go full engineer mode. Screw getting kills, I wanna resupply my fellow soldiers and repair tanks.

HLL is definitely a neat game, but one that as a man in his 40's now, have little interest in playing.

Trying to figure out if the moving thing 100-yards away is a guy I need to shoot and then dying out of nowhere can be fun, but only for a little bit, I find...

I did two campaigns in the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era demo, both with a single-hero setup.

The first time I went with the Temple faction and a hero that boosts attack and defense of his units, which was pretty straightforward but meant I didn't really get to cast any spells in combat.

The second time I used the Necropolis faction and took a hero that was specialized in one of the schools of magic. Turns out that if you have the sleep and web spell and can cast both of them in the same turn, you can annihilate a lot of powerful enemies before they can even do anything. The only enemies that were a significant problem were multiple stacks of only ranged enemies, especially if they're one of the types I cannot sleep. Or dragons, mostly because they have very high initiative so they act before I can casts spells, they can cross the entire map so webbing doesn't work and there's usually a bunch of different stacks and I can only sleep one per round.

I played just over an hour of it and I feel it's good, but I'm not sure why I'd play it over HoMM 2 or 3. And this isn't just some old-head thing, because I really love 6 and would continue to play that if it weren't for uPlay garbage constantly deleting my saves and screwing things up.

It just seems that Olden Era really has nothing new to add, given how hard it's aping the classic games, but worse. Everything in the game looks beautifully designed, the animations (especially the spellbook) are fantastic and very modern Blizzard-like, but the way the graphics are graded and colored, everything just blends together in an unreadable mess that I find a little obnoxious.

I don't think it's a bad game at all and I actually really want to love it. But when I'm putting time into it, I keep feeling like I should just be playing 3 instead.

After that came the big one. Deus Ex Revision just got a 10 year anniversary update. It's not that massive, but continues to improve on bugfixes and even made performance massively better even though the game ran perfectly before this, but it's always nice to have. If you don't know, it's a mod for the original Deus Ex that does add new content but for the most part stays true to the original. It adds a few new characters, locations and items/weapons but they are quite minimal and serve the base game very well. The main purpose is modernizing the game, making it run flawlessly on modern PCs, improving graphics and audio across the board, as well as lots of QOL features. I've always recommended it as the best way to play DX.

I immediately downloaded it again after I saw the 10 year anniversary post. I ended up playing for nearly 3 hours straight without even knowing that is what I was getting into. Before I knew it, it was dark outside and a little past my dog's dinner time. It's safe to say that I've officially started my biennial replay of Deus Ex.

Another game I need to get back into. I was playing it on my Deck, but then tapered off. Been meaning to go back to it.

I've still been playing Chrono Trigger, trying to play it for this monthly game challenge on another forum. I've got just over 8 and a half hours in it now and I am very much enjoying it, though I also don't feel that compulsion to play it like I did with something like Robocop. I'm going to try and get through it or at least play it until I get to the point that I really feel like I'm forcing myself and just not having fun anymore, but I am eager to jump into something else. Just not sure what that is right now.

 

[neogunhero]

HLL is definitely a neat game, but one that as a man in his 40's now, have little interest in playing.

Trying to figure out if the moving thing 100-yards away is a guy I need to shoot and then dying out of nowhere can be fun, but only for a little bit, I find...

This is my issue with "realistic" FPS games. Realism also means snipers 100+ yards away controlled by players with infinitely better reaction speed and accuracy than me. There is also a time commitment they require from the player. Unlike BF or COD where you can hop on and play for 30 minutes and feel satisfied with how you performed, the matches in realistic shooters are usually much longer with a much higher learning curve. Back when I had 8+ hours to game every day I got really into Squad because with that game a match can take up to 3-4 hours each. If you had a good team and a great leader it can be one of the most fun gaming experiences a person can have, but again the time commitment is out of reach and unrealisitc for most people.

Another game I need to get back into. I was playing it on my Deck, but then tapered off. Been meaning to go back to it.

The game should work better than ever now. One notable improvement that could be of use when playing on a controller is the new password/keycode manager. Instead of having to manually enter in usernames and passwords, the manager can fill them out with a click of a button. I haven't used it myself since I found out about it just today, but will definitely turn that on when I play tonight. Although I enjoy typing it in myself, it makes me feel like a hacker, it does get annoying having to cycle back to the Notes menu and find the correct note that has the info on it.

Everything looks so blue, like there is a shader overlayed on top of the screen.