Random Game Thoughts Thread—November 06-November 13

[Zloth]

I don't remember Oblivion being particularly hard, but it was eons ago, so I could have forgotten. I played an elven archer the first time through. When Shivering Islands showed up, I made a warrior gal that did a lot of summoning. I don't think I did all that many Oblivion gates, especially on the second run, but I do remember them being pretty crazy runs.

 

[Pifanjr]

I've always purposefully avoided the main quest in Oblivion so there wouldn't be any Oblivion gates. They don't really add anything to the game in my opinion, they're just annoying.

Honestly, the random dragon attacks in Skyrim are pretty annoying too, especially if you want to play as a melee focused character. I hope they don't include something like this in the next Elder Scrolls game (or Starfield, for that matter).

 

[Sarafan]

I've always purposefully avoided the main quest in Oblivion so there wouldn't be any Oblivion gates. They don't really add anything to the game in my opinion, they're just annoying.

The problem is however major, if you want to actually finish the game. And I agree that the dragons in Skyrim are annoying as well.

 

[Pifanjr]

The problem is however major, if you want to actually finish the game. And I agree that the dragons in Skyrim are annoying as well.

You only need to finish the game once though and you can do that after you've done all of the "side" content (which is really the primary content, as the main quest always kind of sucks).

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Honestly, the random dragon attacks in Skyrim are pretty annoying too, especially if you want to play as a melee focused character. I hope they don't include something like this in the next Elder Scrolls game (or Starfield, for that matter).

They're definitely annoying early in the game. After I built up my smithing skills to make dragon weapons and armor, and my enchanting skills, I was pretty much able to pummel them almost as easily as a draugr, though. My last playthrough, I had already built up like that before I played that ending sequence of the main quest, which has a ton of dragons. It made it so easy.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I meant to also say that my wife and I had a chance to play some more It Takes Two last night. She disappointed me. She wanted to change her inverted vertical back to normal.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some more Vermintide 2, this time with 3 friends. It went really well, though it took me the entire first game to realise I had apparently muted one of my friends on the Discord call. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't hear him, but I didn't have time to check why in the middle of the game.

It went pretty well all things considered, until the last mission which we failed twice. I'm hoping we can try it again tomorrow.

 

[Zloth]

What!? Those dragon attacks are cool!! Especially if I can get one to fight some big nasty that's somewhere close.

 

[Brian Boru]

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
… will give it another hour to see if I get some agency

That didn't work out, as I mentioned in the Incomplete thread. However a DLC for it—Siberian Strike, only $3 on Steam til Nov 14—does provide agency, and is in daylight, so I'm getting thru it. Not great, still too linear, but definitely a lot better than the base game. I'm about 2 hours in, and it looks like maybe halfway thru.

It's a mix of sniping and close-up work, and the second half likely includes a lot of work with colleague Diaz, so I'll see how that goes. I don't see this going on the replay list, since Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is much better.

I have only 2 weapons—sniper and pistol, both suppressed—and a takedown ability. No grenades, mines, rockets, knives etc—ie no extras at all. Climbing is nerfed, there's a small jump ability, plus crouch and prone which both reduce sway when aiming. Prone seems to make me almost invisible when traversing, apart from when crawling over a baddie's toes.

AI don't charge my position when they spot me—they'll move, take cover, advance a bit towards me, but it's mostly a defensive stance. This is probably just as well, cos a group assault would be tough to deal with without mines, grenades or shotgun.

Nothing to pick up from corpses. There are medkits and ammo in occasional sheds, but their scarcity hasn't been a problem—but I'm playing on Easy.

If you have the base game, pick this up for $3 for sure. It's decent, and actually might be replay material since it's short.

 

[Pifanjr]

What!? Those dragon attacks are cool!! Especially if I can get one to fight some big nasty that's somewhere close.

They are definitely much better than the Oblivion gates and the emergent gameplay is a big part of that.

 

[mainer]

Yeah yeah, next you'll be looking up the version of the Bambi movie where Bambi's mother lives.

Now, now; play nice.

Hey as long as you differentiate it by calling it the 'Directors Cut' or something so everyone knows its not the same film then have fun with it

That's my primary goal, to have fun. I figure since I only play single player games, I can mod or tweak them to suit my needs, play style, or how I want to experience the game.

It looks like the game wasn't properly balanced for mages. I wonder if it's better with a warrior or stealthy character.

My memories of playing Oblivion are vague at best because it's been so many years ago, but I do distinctly remember playing as a warrior once, and a thief another time. Both, from what little I remember, felt pretty well balanced, even with the level scaling that Oblivion used. The warrior was especially fun when playing the Knights of the Nine, one of the better DLCs., and the Thieves Guild quest lines were also really good. So maybe there is a balance issue there, as I've never been into playing a mage-type character.

Closing the Oblivion gates could be challenging, especially the major ones, as you get attacked by multiple high-level enemies as you get near the top of those towers. Oblivion wouldn't be my favorite ES game either, but I loved the game even if it wasn't my favorite, it had a lot interesting quests and areas. I especially loved the Aylied Ruins, and there was a quest (I can't remember the name of it), where you got sucked into a painting and had to fight/figure your way out.

I don't think I've done DA:O without at least one mod, but now I can't remember what it was!

I did add one mod so far to adjust the UI, text size, journal, and conversation text. I play on a 4k monitor and my chair is roughly 3 feet away, and I had to lean forward and squint every time I tried to read some text. That just wasn't going to cut it for the next 150 hrs+. I found the FtG UI mod, a pretty simple manual install, and it's saved my eyes. I may not finish it till the end, as I've got such an overpowering Fallout-itch right now, so once I get either FONV or FO4 modded, I know I'll move on to one of those games.

I meant that it solves one of the biggest issues of Skyrim - the standard UI. With SkyUI inventory management is incomparably easier and better.

Of all the Skyrim mods I've ever used, SKYUI is the most essential one, even more so than USSEP. There's other, newer UI mods for Skyrim, but I haven't found any that do it better than SKYUI.

 

[Sarafan]

What!? Those dragon attacks are cool!! Especially if I can get one to fight some big nasty that's somewhere close.

One of my tactics is to summon your very own dragon from the Dawnguard DLC to fight the dragon you've encountered. It doesn't get the job done, but it can look cool in the appropriate circumstances.

 

[Zloth]

What!? Those dragon attacks are cool!! Especially if I can get one to fight some big nasty that's somewhere close.

Like this!

One of my tactics is to summon your very own dragon from the Dawnguard DLC to fight the dragon you've encountered. It doesn't get the job done, but it can look cool in the appropriate circumstances.

Like dat!

 

[DXCHASE]

Pre-ordered Warhammer 40k: Darktide: Imperial Edition and am excited to jump into the beta on the 17th, im excited for this and if anyone here is going to play lmk if you want!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

That's my primary goal, to have fun. I figure since I only play single player games, I can mod or tweak them to suit my needs, play style, or how I want to experience the game.

Sure, if I played things enough times I'd probably mod more than I have done. As it is I only used whatever mods make a game not broken like for Vampire The Masquerade, or the mod for Nier Automata. I do use a mod in Battle Brothers that adds an extra speed setting and auto pause when an enemy appears on the screen.

Anyway the old mod convo got blown out of context and proportion as obviously now some people think I hate mods or something. The core of what I actually think is that if you have to mod a game to make it fun at all, its probably worth mentioning you had to do that when you talk about the game.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

RIP Gallagher.

At about the 3:34 mark, he takes the Sledge-O-Matic to what I think is an original Intellivision console. (Edit: I guess you have to watch it on YouTube.)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gasAFyonmmI

 

[Zloth]

A bad update from Google knocked out my Google Fiber for about a day. Oh well, easy enough to play my games with no internet. What was a little surprising was that Windows actually had a harder time having no internet connection than Steam! It worked, but it took about 10 minutes before it got through all the connection timeouts for things like the task bar.

I haven't heard anyone complain about "must always be online" for a long time, come to think of it. Is that still a thing?

 

[Brian Boru]

Windows … took about 10 minutes before it got through all the connection timeouts

That's odd, don't think I've ever heard of that. Have you pruned your Startup apps?

 

[Zloth]

Nothing in the apps - I think it's just stuff like the temperature reading in the lower right, checking for updates, and stuff like that. I wonder if having my task bar on auto-hide delays some of that, so instead of having multiple checks trying (and failing) at about the same time, I get the lined up?

Oh well, whatever - I only get an outage once every couple of years. I'll likely go to Windows 11 by the next one.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

A bad update from Google knocked out my Google Fiber for about a day. Oh well, easy enough to play my games with no internet. What was a little surprising was that Windows actually had a harder time having no internet connection than Steam! It worked, but it took about 10 minutes before it got through all the connection timeouts for things like the task bar.

I haven't heard anyone complain about "must always be online" for a long time, come to think of it. Is that still a thing?

That's weird. I've had a couple of times when my internet was knocked out because of storms, and I never had any trouble with Windows hanging like that.

 

[Pifanjr]

My wife was doing another WoW raid and I was bored, so I decided to check the Google Play Store once more to see if I could find something to occupy myself with and I actually found something decent: Slice & Dice. It's really just a demo for the full version, which costs $7, but it's a good demo.

It's a rogue-like, turn-based strategy game where you have to survive for 12 fights (20 in the full game) against increasingly more difficult enemies. You control a party of 5 characters, with each character's actions mapped to the sides of a die, based on their class. The basics are regular attacks, shields, healing and generating mana to use the available spells, but there's a whole bunch of special actions and modifiers. Each turn the enemies roll for their attacks, then you get to roll your dice three times, setting aside any dice you want to use that round. Then you can activate each ability you rolled in any order, after which the enemies activate their abilities. After each fight you either get a choice between levelling up one of two of your characters, which gives them new actions, or picking one of two items, which generally give a passive bonus, change a die or add a spell to cast.

There's quite a lot of different character classes and items and you unlock more as you play, so it doesn't get stale very fast. It's at least good for a few hours of fun.