October 2025 General Games discussion thread

[Frindis]

I think the general consensus from reviews I've read so far is that it's not similar to the first Bloodlines game but still solid in it's own. The combat looks pretty good, though I've mostly only seen hand to hand/melee weapon combat, not sure how the abilities work while in the middle of a fight. The story seems really good too. I'm interested but not being similar to the first game has me cautious.

The story, characters, and exploration were what I enjoyed the most with Bloodlines, so if hope they manage to nail it in this one. The combat was pretty janky in the first one, so I don't really have many fond memories of it, except for a couple of cool abilities like making enemies explode.

 

[neogunhero]

The story, characters, and exploration were what I enjoyed the most with Bloodlines, so if hope they manage to nail it in this one. The combat was pretty janky in the first one, so I don't really have many fond memories of it, except for a couple of cool abilities like making enemies explode.

What I like most about the original was the customization of your character. There were lots of different stats to make your build unique, different factions that affected gameplay abilities and so on. From what I've been reading a lot of this has been dialed back which is a shame.

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My wife is being involuntarily volunteered by her job to run a concessions booth at the high school basketball game for about 4 hours this evening, meaning while she'll be tormented by cringe high schoolers spewing their TikTok memes all night, I get to enjoy a relaxing evening with a nice video game and some frozen General Tso Chicken. Can't decide if I want to continue with Skin Deep or Deus Ex tonight. I may end up doing a bit of both but one thing is for sure, I need a break from BALLxPIT, the game is amazing but it is eating up a lot of time away from other games. I like this nice little rotation I got going on now.

 

[Johnway]

What I like most about the original was the customization of your character. There were lots of different stats to make your build unique, different factions that affected gameplay abilities and so on. From what I've been reading a lot of this has been dialed back which is a shame.

I played as tremere and had a reasonably good time playing the game. Interestingly, not being able to max out your last stat is something of a blessing as i found out in the late game. Turned out you didn't need the last upgrade and all those expensive last upgrades could be used for all skills or the all important blood magic or guns if you wanted. melee wise i just used that katana that was given as a reward and i didn't even invest in guns until the final battle. So no idea whether they were any good.

Gaming wise still playing code veronica. we've got to the Chris redfield stuff. interestingly (but to be expected) chris and claire share the same chest. So in theory, just before the switch you can dump most of the weapons (like the pistol or crossbow) for chris to use. Unfortunately besides some healing herbs and grenades (but no launcher) so pistol start then.

I hopefully should be finished on by november. Speaking of November PearsonVUE cancelled my exam because Apple is rolling out a new exam paper. Which is deeply annoying as i've been studying for months, suspended art studies and work for it. Had hoped to book the new exam but its not even possible yet, Bloody annoying. Especially that the previous MacOS (seqouia) was only released last year sept. if this is the trend for apple MACOS whats the bloody point putting that much effort into the cert?

 

[neogunhero]

Wait a minute... I was carrying a dead NSF soldier's body back to UNATCO HQ! They saw me then starting shooting at me, they should have been happy! Ungrateful bastards... Jock gave me a ride in his heli from Hell's Kitchen back to UNATCO and he didn't even complain about the stench!

 

[Zloth]

Deus Ex with ACHIEVEMENTS?? Ooooooo

1:40 butt shot!

<Queue the vile temptresses of Holy Grail> A spanking! A spanking!!

That was really rare. In my play-through, I've broken the enemy's poise maybe 3 times in the entire game, counting that one. Millicent must have been doing serious poise damage.

 

[Zloth]

Poking around in Steam's new calandar mode (https://store.steampowered.com/personalcalendar). Seems kinda cool, except it's not at all how I buy games.

It did point out to me that there's a Yakuza 0 Director's Cut coming. Looks like it just adds some cutscenes and a co-op fight-hordes-of-enemies mode. Somehow that means there's no way to upgrade the existing game or even transfer saves between games. Yeah, I think I'll watch those cutscenes on YouTube, thanks.

Errr, why is it recommending a VR version of Homeworld to me? I haven't used my headset in several years!

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm done with Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord for the time being. It's nice for when I want something chill to play, but I'm in the mood for something a bit more intense.

So I started playing Cyberpunk 2077. I put my starting points in tech, cool and intelligence, but so far it seems like it's better to stick to two attributes as perk points are too limited to spread between 3 trees. So I dropped tech, focusing on stealth and quickhacks.

I've done a couple of main missions and a bunch of side quests so far and I'm enjoying it a lot. I put the game on hard, but it's fairly easy so far because most enemies stay in cover, giving me plenty of time to heal up and recharge my RAM.

My only gripe with the game so far is how much of a bullet sponge the bosses are. The first boss I encountered did let me sneak up on him, but the takedown only did 25% damage, forcing me to slowly chip the rest of its life away.

I did encounter a boss that turns invisible though, so if I can just get my hands on an upgrade like that maybe I'll be able to sneak around bosses too.

 

[Frindis]

My only gripe with the game so far is how much of a bullet sponge the bosses are. The first boss I encountered did let me sneak up on him, but the takedown only did 25% damage, forcing me to slowly chip the rest of its life away.

It's unfortunately one of the old boss "mechanics" that some devs can't seem to innovate from. Hard should not just mean "ok, we inflate the boss with more HP and call it a day". BG3 is an excellent example of how you should do it: slightly higher HP pool, but with harder boss mechanics that challenge you to be the best you can be. To be honest, even in BG3 you would not have needed the higher HP pool, but at least it is not by that much.

 

[Frindis]

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[Pifanjr]

It's unfortunately one of the old boss "mechanics" that some devs can't seem to innovate from. Hard should not just mean "ok, we inflate the boss with more HP and call it a day". BG3 is an excellent example of how you should do it: slightly higher HP pool, but with harder boss mechanics that challenge you to be the best you can be. To be honest, even in BG3 you would not have needed the higher HP pool, but at least it is not by that much.

Yeah, it's not just that the bosses have a massive health pool, it's also that they aren't mechanically interesting, so it just feels like a slog. The bosses in Baldur's Gate 3 typically require you to come up with a strategy beyond just whacking away.

I had one boss in Cyberpunk 2077 that I could just hide from and set on fire repeatedly. He couldn't trace me and couldn't see me, so I could just slowly whittle his life away until I could finish him off with two sniper bullets.

In general it seems like the combat AI is a bit lacking, but I don't really mind as I'm trying not to get into combat anyway.

 

[neogunhero]

Deus Ex with ACHIEVEMENTS?? Ooooooo

Deus Ex: Revision has 255 achievements!
My favorite one I’ve gotten so far:

So I started playing Cyberpunk 2077...
…My only gripe with the game so far is how much of a bullet sponge the bosses are.

One of my favorite games ever! I’ve put over 300 hours into it across multiple playthroughs. Once you get some better weapons/abilities and level up some, enemies start to die faster. I also play the game on Normal so that could definitely be a big difference in enemy health.

In general it seems like the combat AI is a bit lacking, but I don't really mind as I'm trying not to get into combat anyway.

This I fully agree with though. They are able to use different augs and weapons so there is a nice variety in their attacks but sometimes they can be a bit dumb. They tend to attack all at once with no other strategy between them., no flanking or anything.

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Had a lot of time to game last night so I switched between BallxPit and Skin Deep. Finally got past mission 4 in Skin Deep, when the pirates boarded the ship at the end of the mission, I set a TNT charge at the entrance which helped decently. From there I just popped in and out of the spaceship through the broken window shooting when I could, and eventually I got them. They have spacesuits on but don’t leave the spaceship so the strategy of floating in and out the window was really effective. @Zloth inside the airlock there is a note that explicitly tells you they’re going to have on spacesuits… guess I should have read that before my last attempt.

Mission 5 was a bit smaller. Each mission introduces a new mechanic, so with this one the airlocks have these airbags attached to them inside the ship. You can use them strategically by destroying them, causing the airlocks to burst open, creating a massive vacuum and sucking everything in the room into outer space. I did not use this.

Instead, this ship was an intergalactic fast food restaurant, and patrons paid for their orders with weapons. I proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes collecting food to place in the chute then receiving weapons as payment. I must have sent out 7 whole burritos. By the end of it I had a fully loaded shotgun and rifle, a wire grenade and a hacking grenade which I used to turn an enemy turret against the pirates.

After rescuing the cats onboard the ship, again more pirates came to hijack it. Here I proceeded to go full guns blazing which almost didn’t work. There were a lot of pirates, and at one point they shot me down, but Nina Pasadena has an ability to revive herself once per mission which also happens to cause a massive electrical explosion. That explosion just so happened to kill the last pirate, finishing the mission. My heart was racing after that.

 

[neogunhero]

One beautiful thing about Skin Deep:

It was made on the id Tech 4 engine from 2004, originally made for DOOM 3, updated and modernized for today's computers. That means it barely hovers around 8GB RAM, 3GB VRAM, and keeps my graphics card and processor at a very frosty ~35c. Sublime.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some more Cyberpunk 2077. I got a quest to save a hostage, preferably without killing anyone, but apparently a shelf of falling crates was way more lethal than I expected.

At least I almost have enough money to get the tier 2 quickhack thingy.

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I also continued the Barotrauma campaign with my friends. We finally went to the area of the game where you can buy tier 3 subs. However, one of my friends decided to spend all of our money on sub upgrades instead of saving it for the new sub just before we got there.

We decided to go anyway, but failed to realise that the first outpost in the new area belongs to the separatists, who hate our guts. Half of the outpost immediately turns hostile on us, but we got to see some local clowns clobber separatists with toy hammers, so that was at least something. Also we have much better gear now, so it was relatively easy to clear the outpost.

Then we had the choice of either going past two more separatist outposts or go through 3 uninhabited spots, with the first part going past an abyss creature, to get to the next (and only) Europa Coalition outpost. Turns out this new area is very sparsely populated.

Also it turns out that abyss creatures aren't nearly as scary with a couple of upgrades and a well-stocked railgun. The last time we encountered the same creature we were stuck for an hour, had multiple deaths and had to repair every wall twice over. This time we just had a couple of scratches on both the sub and the people in it.

 

[Zloth]

It looks like an army came through here, went mad, and died. It still doesn't explain why they came armed with poles that have little hands on the end, though. I'm tempted to continue down just to see if I can get one of these weird weapons!

 

[neogunhero]

I love getting a few random pennies on Steam every now and then, it's hilarious to me. I've put up probably close to 100 different cards and cosmetics on the Steam Marketplace but they're selling very slowly, so randomly like today I'll get a "Pending: $0.03" at the top of the window.

 

[BeardyHat]

Haven't been playing a ton lately. Little bit of Advance Wars on GBA, but also started playing Costume Quest about a week or two ago and I think I'm getting towards the end of it, but also beginning to feel kind of bored with it. But I may push through anyway, just so I feel like I can check it off my list finally.

 

[Johnway]

Another Path of exile league reveal on twitch shortly. watch for 45 min for a free spider pet. The good news is that its available for 24 hours so those who have to stay up late to watch or miss the drops entirely have a chance to get the drop this time.

A lot of people are saying that with all the good stuff comes a whole load of nerfs. Only time will tell...

 

[dxchase]

Plenty on deck this weekend aside from my usual Diablo 4 and Battlefield 6 play.

So, trying out BallxPit, Ninja Gaiden 4, Double Dragon: Revive and maybe the Plant vs Zombies "remastered"

I have been playing BallxPit and it is FUN. Pixelated (that you can turn off) roguelike city-builder. Its simple, fun and... ADDICTIVE. Highly recommend for people who like somethin like that. I didnt think id like it as much but ive been really suprised.

The rest i am still waiting on playing but hoping Ninja Gaiden 4 is good.

 

[Pifanjr]

I've reached Act 2 in Cyberpunk 2077. I've upgraded all my cyberware to tier 2 at least, with a couple of tier 3 quickhacks (those things are expensive!). I've been putting pretty much all of my perk points in Intelligence to boost my quickhacks, since, unlike stealth, they work during combat as well.

I've been doing a bunch of side missions to gather money, which I probably shouldn't be doing. It's happened multiple times now in open-world RPGs that I get burned out on side-missions to upgrade my character and then quit playing.

 

[Zloth]

I've reached Act 2 in Cyberpunk 2077. I've upgraded all my cyberware to tier 2 at least, with a couple of tier 3 quickhacks (those things are expensive!). I've been putting pretty much all of my perk points in Intelligence to boost my quickhacks, since, unlike stealth, they work during combat as well.

Are you just doing intelligence and hacking? No weapons?

P.S.

View: https://youtu.be/eNaY10DQkJw?si=YiLI-F8miUJL_ldl


HOW!? Hello Games keeps making every other game company look greedy as NMS keeps getting free content year after year. Somehow.

 

[Pifanjr]

Are you just doing intelligence and hacking? No weapons?

I use my pistol with silencer pretty frequently as well to take out low level goons, or higher level ones if they survive the Contagion quickhack with a little bit of life left.

I also have a precision rifle which I use if I screw up and get detected and rushed by melee enemies. I do also have a sniper rifle, but I've only used it a couple of times.

HOW!? Hello Games keeps making every other game company look greedy as NMS keeps getting free content year after year. Somehow.

I wonder at what point the developers of No Man's Sky redeemed themselves, considering the first version they sold didn't live up to the things they had promised.