Random Game Thoughts Thread - December 18-24

[Zloth]

(Posting with less than half an hour left in December 18th!)

I've gotten back into Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and I can see why I'm taking so much longer than everyone else. I started playing at around 7pm, with my characters just returning to the main town. I sold off stuff, bought some more stuff, got a couple of characters' level drain issues fixed, leveled up most of the characters that weren't in the main party, moved some troops around (had just a couple of battles), made some decisions about the units we would be building, and spoke to a couple of NPCs about quests that got finished. Phew! Time to get out there and adventure again! Ooops, no it isn't... because it's already past midnight.

I didn't get time to play at all today, because I discovered I have been a terrible slacker this year about getting my screenshots out of the Steam directories and into my own. Not only were all the Yakuza 3 shots waiting, so were a few Yakuza 2 shots, Red Dead 2, about half of Wasteland 3's shots... ugh. Organizing this stuff is easy as long as you do it one game at a time, but I sure didn't this year. I guess I've got my New Year's resolution set up.

 

[Brian Boru]

Far Cry 6

Ammo shortage—or not?

I seem to have discovered 2 things yesterday:
♣ If you visit a Workbench, all your ammo gets restored to max;
♦ If your bow gets down to one arrow, it doesn't go to zero.

I was lowish on ammo after clearing out the infantry in an armored division base, but still had 2 tanks to defeat. Now you can whack 'em via Supremo attacks or with EMP munitions, but I prefer to avoid 'less common' munitions when possible—a bow with explosive arrows is my only 'big' weapon beyond my AR and shotgun. I just find it tactically more fun that way.

Arrows are capped at 15 max unless you invest to increase. Since I don't want to use the compulsory Supremo in play, I picked the one with the passive +50% quiver increase, which gives me a cap of 23.

I'd already used a good few of my arrows v some choppers which made a nuisance of themselves—it takes 5-6 explosives to take one down—so by the time I knocked out the first tank I was down to 3. After they were used is when I discovered I still had one left… and after using that, I still had another—and then another

 

[Pifanjr]

I was thinking about my Rimworld game and realized I just wasn't really excited to continue. Getting enough food has been a bother, for a large part because my colonists keep getting food poisoning. Which means nothing else gets done either.

The manager mod helps, but either I'm missing something or it just doesn't work as well as I would like it. I set it to keep my wood storages to 500, but then it only designated enough trees to get me 200 wood while I had no wood left and there were plenty of extra trees to cut down. Maybe it tries to avoid generating too many jobs at once, but I don't want it to decide what's too many jobs.

It's just made me realize that I'm a bit done with the amount of micromanaging necessary in Rimworld. And not just with getting resources, but you really need to babysit your colonists through every fight as well and fights are a pretty big part of the game, unless you play on the lowest difficulty settings.

In Dwarf Fortress, you're allowed to mostly focus on the expansion of your fort without babysitting your dwarfs all the time. They can even handle most fights all by themselves.

 

[Sarafan]

(Posting with less than half an hour left in December 18th!)

No worries. There are places in the world where it was 19th already.

I've gotten back into Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and I can see why I'm taking so much longer than everyone else. I started playing at around 7pm, with my characters just returning to the main town. I sold off stuff, bought some more stuff, got a couple of characters' level drain issues fixed, leveled up most of the characters that weren't in the main party, moved some troops around (had just a couple of battles), made some decisions about the units we would be building, and spoke to a couple of NPCs about quests that got finished. Phew! Time to get out there and adventure again! Ooops, no it isn't... because it's already past midnight.

I found that Pathfinder games aren't my style. The pace of these games is a little too slow for my liking. I also think that the main quest of Kingmaker was mediocre to say the least. I appreciate the implementation of Pathfinder table-top rules however and turn-based combat which makes the game even closer to the original. I haven't played WotR myslef (just watched some of the streams), but I presume that it doesn't differ greatly from Kingmaker. Of course there are some new mechanics like the army management, but the core is the same. I'll probably try another approach to the series once WotR has a really juicy sale. I don't expect to love it however.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Far Cry 6

Ammo shortage—or not?

I seem to have discovered 2 things yesterday:
♣ If you visit a Workbench, all your ammo gets restored to max;
♦ If your bow gets down to one arrow, it doesn't go to zero.

I was lowish on ammo after clearing out the infantry in an armored division base, but still had 2 tanks to defeat. Now you can whack 'em via Supremo attacks or with EMP munitions, but I prefer to avoid 'less common' munitions when possible—a bow with explosive arrows is my only 'big' weapon beyond my AR and shotgun. I just find it tactically more fun that way.

Arrows are capped at 15 max unless you invest to increase. Since I don't want to use the compulsory Supremo in play, I picked the one with the passive +50% quiver increase, which gives me a cap of 23.

I'd already used a good few of my arrows v some choppers which made a nuisance of themselves—it takes 5-6 explosives to take one down—so by the time I knocked out the first tank I was down to 3. After they were used is when I discovered I still had one left… and after using that, I still had another—and then another

That has to be a bug, isn't it?

 

[Brian Boru]

That has to be a bug, isn't it?

The Far Cry 6 infinite arrow thing, I assume?

Yes, or… it occurred to me later that maybe I 'acquired' some arrow ammo without being aware of it. I was busy dodging a cheesed-off tank, and so not paying attention to what I was running, jumping, ducking, etc past—or to any onscreen info prompts re what ammo I acquired.

There are occasionally rare arrow finds in the ammo lying around the environment. I suspect this is what happened because I did run out of arrows later on—after a full ammo reload back at a base—when my alert status went too high and a wagon load of special forces got on my case. I'll keep an eye on it.

Amigos

FC6 has 5 'amigos' in the game, ie combat companions:
Boom Boom—dog Boomer from FC5;
Chicharron—Wicked Chicken;
Chorizo—poster puppy of pre-release hype;
Guapo—croc;
Oluso—black panther.

I have 4, got bored with the rooster when it transpired there are 3 separate melee missions to get him—did the second mission under protest If you play the game, he's worth it just to watch his antics—kinda like Hurk as comic relief in previous FCs.

♣ Guapo the croc you have almost from the start, and he's a great help while you're weak.
♦ Cute puppy is almost useless, acts as a distraction so you can sneak past enemies—I bet there's a stealth mission somewhere which will need 'im, but otherwise he's staying in his kennel.
♥ Panther is very strong, and makes kills disappear, which is a big help in keeping the alert level low—too OP for now.
♠ Boomer is my choice for constant companion. Does some looting, tags some enemies, and can handle small fights. Gets killed a lot, so not a major help.

I definitely prefer FC5's companion set, but Boomer was good then too, so yeah.

 

[mainer]

On a somewhat related gaming note, I started reading the Andrzej Sapkowski Witcher books this past week/weekend (don't know why I'd put off reading them for so long), starting with The Last Wish and moving on to The Sword of Destiny. They are really excellent novels, more of series of interconnected short stories in these 2 volumes, but tightly woven together with a good balance of humor, violence and emotional choices. They've also given me insight into certain characters such as Dandelion, Yennifer, and Ciri; which goes really well with my current game of The Witcher 3.

I discovered I have been a terrible slacker this year about getting my screenshots out of the Steam directories and into my own.

The same happened to me back around Sept-Oct, I hadn't moved a single image the whole year, so I took the time to move them all to my file system on my storage drive (as well as some older saved game files). It ended up being several GBs of data.

 

[Zloth]

I haven't played WotR myslef (just watched some of the streams), but I presume that it doesn't differ greatly from Kingmaker.

Not greatly. They've got some nice quality of life stuff, like searching through inventories and stores. You can have the game divide up XP for successful skill use, so your thief doesn't get ahead of everyone else by unlocking the jillions of chests lying around. The army battles are a lot more interesting than what Kingmaker has, but I still find myself wishing I could just get back to the adventuring.

The real time eater for me is the choices for all the skills and spells. When everybody levels up, I want to read all the possibilities and weigh them against each other. But this game has so many! What's more, I've got almost a dozen companions to level up. If I spend 20 minutes levelling up each one, four hours go by! (I do tend to skip some that I never use.)

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm in a position where there are just a bunch of games that I'm trying to juggle, but it's fun.

I'm basically done with Astro Colony. I just hate to leave it, but I can mark that one off.

I'm not done with House Flipper, but I feel like I should be. I think I just burned out with it because I've put over 200 hours into it so far. Just need a vacation from it.

Forza...I almost own every vehicle now. I must own a heck of a garage to keep over 600 cars.

Total War Warhammer 3 - Probably will never end. Right now I'm reenacting the Ogre apocalypse. Unfortunately, I'm actually the Ogres, so the apocalypse is happening to me. I don't know how much longer we're going to play this campaign because the AI tells me I'm going to lose every battle, which forces me to play them manually. That's fun for me, but not for Guido.

Warhammer 40k Darktide: Loads of fun. We waited until private matchmaking was live before we started playing. First game I screwed it up and we had real people. It wasn't that bad. Neither of them went rogue. We just had to revive them a bunch.

Farming Simulator 22: Yep, back to this.

The Witcher 3

Len's Island


Two games I bought this week but haven't been able to play yet are Football (Soccer) Tactics and Glory, and then also Football (football) Coach, College Dynasty. Both of these games seem elite in their respective sport's management game space.

 

[Sarafan]

If I spend 20 minutes levelling up each one, four hours go by! (I do tend to skip some that I never use.)

I find this one of the most entertaining things in RPG games. It provides loads of fun. Years ago I spent 8 hours creating a party in Icewind Dale. It was very time consuming to get satisfying attribute rolls. In the second place there's probably Icewind Dale 2. It took me a little less time to create a party because there are no rolls there.

 

[Brian Boru]

Far Cry 6, true believer:

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Made it to the 3rd part of the boss fight in Rise of the Tomb Raider, and I'm going to have to put it on hold for a bit. I just had surgery on Friday, and I don't need to be that stressed right now. So I'm going to try out High on Life and see how it is.

 

[Brian Boru]

@WoodenSaucer Woodworm's a pain—speedy mendies

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Tried out High on Life, and uninstalled it pretty quickly. Way too much cussing and drugs for me. Thankfully it was on Game Pass, and I didn't pay for it.

 

[Zloth]

Forza...I almost own every vehicle now. I must own a heck of a garage to keep over 600 cars.

I think the garage is called "Nebraska." There's room for plenty more!

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some Vermintide 2 together with 3 friends yesterday. We did the Chaos Wastes, which is a series of levels in which you can collect currency to spend on boons and weapon upgrades. I ended up with about 70% extra max health and a boost to my class' regeneration while below half health, plus damage reduction for a bit if I got hit and temporary HP every few seconds based on how much damage I did, so I could take a lot of hits without going down.

I also spend some time looking for a new game to play in between working. I started playing Rimworld because I thought I would be able to keep it running while working, but it needs too much micromanaging for that to work well. Nothing in my library really seemed both interesting and something I could play for little bits in between work until I saw Thea 2: The Shattering. I'm not sure where I got this game from and I didn't remember anything about it, but I had tagged it as a game I was interested in playing at some point. Since it's turn-based, it seemed to at least be perfect for playing in between working.

The game itself is a mix between 4X and RPG, with any conflict being resolved with a simple card-based fighting system. I was immediately hooked when I started the combat tutorial and saw the amount of stats for each character and each attack. When actually starting the game you get a ton of options to choose from just to set the difficulty, then a ton more options for traits to start with. I felt like a kid at a candy store. Especially since the world building so far is absolutely phenomenal as well.

I'm not really sure what to prioritize in the game, but the game gives you a bunch of tips to give you some direction and the victory screen helps to give some idea of what you need to accomplish as well. Actually, the victory screen gives you even more options for how you want to play, as you get to choose between two options for all three objectives you need to fulfil. I really like how much freedom you get in how to approach this game so far.

 

[Ryzengang]

Forza...I almost own every vehicle now. I must own a heck of a garage to keep over 600 cars.

Forza Horizon 5 just recently became my 5th most played game of all time on steam. I think I have like 540 cars now. Just a great game to continually come back to. I do want to try to own all the cars eventually. I don't know the exact number in the game, but you've gotta be pretty close at 600.

 

[Brian Boru]

something I could play for little bits

I currently doing 2 of those in between my longer Far Cry 6 spells. One's a hidden object game which is ok—definitely not replay material. But you're probably not interested in HO?

Other is a nanogram-picross puzzle game, which I'm enjoying, altho I've reached the brain-bending stage of it now in the last hundred levels—there are over 350 levels altogether, and apparently thousands more fan made in the Workshop, which I haven't tried for quality.

Picross Touch is free, with donation DLCs. Very easy levels to start, first ~100 levels can be done in under a minute.

 

[Pifanjr]

I currently doing 2 of those in between my longer Far Cry 6 spells. One's a hidden object game which is ok—definitely not replay material. But you're probably not interested in HO?

Other is a nanogram-picross puzzle game, which I'm enjoying, altho I've reached the brain-bending stage of it now in the last hundred levels—there are over 350 levels altogether, and apparently thousands more fan made in the Workshop, which I haven't tried for quality.

Picross Touch is free, with donation DLCs. Very easy levels to start, first ~100 levels can be done in under a minute.

I appreciate the suggestions, but both of those are what I would call methodical games, which is a type of game I only rarely enjoy and usually quickly get bored of. I don't really like it when a game makes me feel like I'm just going through the steps of a simple algorithm until I've won. It's about as engaging as alphabetizing my bookcase, which is to say it can be very satisfying, but not something I do for fun very often.

My work already feels like I'm just going through the motions for most of it, so I like games that let me explore and experiment more.

 

[Brian Boru]

those are what I would call methodical games

Yep, that's a good description! I didn't think you'd be interested, but you never know

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Thinking about trying out Assassin's Creed: Odyssey today.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I did start AC: Odyssey, and so far, it's great. I haven't played a lot of AC games, but I think this is going to be my favorite that I've played. It just has a different vibe to it.

 

[Zloth]

If you see a guy in a cage on the beach, @WoodenSaucer, be sure to do his quest. Talk about a Greek tragedy!

If anyone is interested in some gaming industry numbers, here's a big graphic for ya: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamesindustrybiz-presents-the-year-in-numbers-2022

 

[Zimbaly]

Still smashing giblets in Darktide and still got the biggest helmet in all the known and unknown universe. It's so big even the God Emperor bows to it!!!!

 

[Brian Boru]

AC: Odyssey, and so far, it's great

If you like it, you should like AC Origins too—it's sorta Odyssey's older brother.