Random Game Thoughts Thread - February 12 - February 18

[Brian Boru]

Far Cry 6

Playing Far Cry 6 on Action difficulty this playthru—that's the middle one. With armor piercing bullets, one AR headshot doesn't kill guys with helmets, which is a pain. Wildlife also seems a lot more aggressive, had some dodgy encounters with crocs and boars which were more difficult than at Story difficulty.

I also take more damage—got killed so far once by crocs and once by boars. Same in gunfights, needing to heal more often. This all on the starting island. So looks like I need to change weapons from last time. I just equipped a shotgun special to deal with the wildlife, and going for the Supercharger shotgun will be a priority. I found the starting sniper does kill in one headshot, so that's along for the ride now too.

I didn't use the Supremo—think backpack rocket launcher—in Story mode as it's OP, but I guess that'll be necessary this time. Explosives too, probably. Upside is I have a good idea of what's what this time, which should reduce the number of blind alleys I wander down.

Next stop the big island and Meet The Monteros to get the Hideout Network up and running—that provides fast travel points, wingsuit, and air drop… all essential to my style of play. I'll probably do the Guerrilla Garrison after that since it has to do with weapons, and looks like I'll need access to a lot more than I needed in Story mode. The other 4 Camps are mostly useless for me, pick 'em up when I have nothing else to spend resources on.

Rebel leader Clara Garcia driving us away from the starting island after zapping the blockading navy.

 

[ZedClampet]

We've been playing a new TWW3 campaign. Both of us are playing vampire factions. I'm playing Vlad von Carstein and his wife. As usual, everyone around me is at war with me except for one Empire faction. I've only manually fought one battle, and I managed to turn a "Crushing Defeat" into a "Heroic Victory", so I was pleased by that. The key was that all my units started out nearly dead from a previous battle, but my Lord and 3 heroes all had healing spells plus Raise the Dead, which helped a lot.

When one person fights a battle, the other person just takes a break. We're on the same team, so we can't control the enemy army. Neither one of us would try very hard if we did. We could help each other by giving each other some of our units, but we both have very different styles, so we don't do that, either.

 

[ZedClampet]

"As a connoisseur of anything Hitler- or BDSM-related, I never dreamed a game would come out designed to fill my very specific niche. "

That's a user review of Hitler: BDSM Bunker, one of the top new releases on Steam. Why did I click on that game? Now I have a mental image of naked Hitler tied up and....Anyway, I believe you play as a **** (er...German soldier) and try to unlock sex encounters with Hitler. I think we can all see why that would be popular. Um....

I used to think I was as open minded as the next person. Turns out I was wrong, and I actually have a line drawn somewhere before you reach "Hitler Torture Sodomy Game". Not that I'm protesting and want the game removed. I just wish an asteroid would destroy humanity.

 

[Zloth]

Brian hunting crocodiles (not safe for work, but what are you doing reading PC Gamer at work, they can SEE your browser history you know!)

View: https://youtu.be/fynWOio9jBo

 

[ZedClampet]

Speaking of dodgy encounters with crocs, I played some theHunter: Call of the Wild last night on the new (to me) Mississippi map and stalked alligators for about 2/3 of the Super Bowl last night and never did find one. Game is annoying as hell without mods, so I've downloaded a mod this morning that spawns 3X the animals. Now I can end up on "When Animals Attack!" for sure. Hell, I was killed by turkeys the last time I increased animal spawns, so the alligators should do it for sure.

 

[Brian Boru]

Brian hunting crocodiles

Hey, how'd you get that, it was supposed to be a private viewing for the county? Well, kinda private, you know counties

Far Cry 6

Second croc attempt: here's how my new special shotgun handled some crocs:

Mr Dundee would be proud!

I noticed in Story mode that the difficulty seemed quite uneven. Eg taking over road checkpoints were a piece of cake, but messing with an airfield brought the Wrath of Khan down on me. There's a Heat Level to monitor—once it gets so high, it triggers Khan & friends. That's going to be a pain, as it's not my style to sneak around in cover just doing the missions, I want to be getting in trouble in between missions—but manageable trouble.

The other 4 Camps are mostly useless

Correction, the Hunter's Lodge is useful, and is priority 3—when buffed to level 3 you can zap animals with guns and explosives without damaging the skin… ie get better sales deals for 'em.

I forgot a perk of the buffed Hideout Network—a daily cache of supplies, with some good stuff in it. If I stick with this difficulty level, I'm likely to need such resources to buy/craft better firepower. You can visit each Hideout every day and collect a fresh set of goodies from each—for me that's busywork, which I ignored in Story mode, so I'm not sure if I'll get annoyed with it this time.

Poor design choice when you hit the main island. I toodled around as usual, met the guy I was supposed to, toodled some more before returning to fast travel point to quit game. Except: no FT point thus far on main island! I was in no humor to have to repeat the very boring boat ride from rebel HQ island to main island, so I had to attack something and get myself killed, so I'd spawn around there on next startup. Grr.

Boring boat ride:

 

[ZedClampet]

Guido's school is out due to illnesses, so we played some Hunter this morning. Sadly, I'm pretty bad at the game at the best of times, and today my vision is poor. I don't know how long we played, but I shot one animal while he got about 20 including shooting a flying turkey from 100 yards with a musket rifle. *eye roll*

Told him I was hunting dragons because if an animal wasn't the size of an ancient dragon AND shooting flames out of it's mouth, then I'd never see it. I could see the roads, though, so I spent most of my time driving around unlocking the camps so we could fast travel.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Finished up Dead Space remake today, and put my thoughts on it in the completed games thread. Its really good if you like that sort of thing.

Fired up Dead Space 2 straight away and had to apply a mouse acceleration fix and unlock the framerate as it locked to 30 and felt like Isaac was walking in glue. After that it still looks and plays very well for a 12 year old game. More of an action game than the first, some real Uncharted feeling segments in a train and corny quips from Isaac already. Also noticed the in game store is full of special weapons which is not something I remembered. Wonder if it all got added in for microtransactions at some point, game wants me to sign in with an EA account on start up. I know they did that with 3.

Also played a bit more Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. The combat seems good, I dont understand fully the upgrade system and how the whole meta layer works yet, but seems theres stuff to get into there. Anime style storytelling not usually my bag, but I dont hate those parts so far.

 

[Zloth]

Fly turkeys fly, on the road to Guido's lunch (bang! bang! bang!)...
I better stop before I'm forced to try to eat a cheesesteak nasally.

Also played a bit more Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. The combat seems good, I dont understand fully the upgrade system and how the whole meta layer works yet, but seems theres stuff to get into there. Anime style storytelling not usually my bag, but I dont hate those parts so far.

There are a bunch of Steam guides, including one I wrote!

 

[Frindis]

While I have not been overly excited by Fanatical since it changed from Bundlestars, there is a pretty decent bundle event they have going on now, so credit where credit is due.

The new bundlefest introduces new giant bundles for the next five days (until Friday) and the one today called Killer Bundle 25 got a lot of good games for a good price so I recommend you guys check it out and see if it might be to your liking. I'm on the fence myself since I have some of them, but still, I might buy it because I can just give away the games I already have to my nephews.

I wish Fanatical would have made this into a pick-your-games instead like they used to do it, but at least they got some good ones in there this time.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

There are a bunch of Steam guides, including one I wrote!

Nice I'll check it out, I've done the in game tutorials but the way I did it was so broken up and over a few weeks even so I'm sure I've missed or forgotten a lot of important basic stuff.

 

[ZedClampet]

I have decided to even the playing field. I watched a video on modding theHunter, and it's really easy. I can now move as silently as a butterfly and run at about 50 miles per hour and crouch walk at about 20. I just chased down a bear. I am death incarnate. I just have to make sure that I stay far enough away from Guido that he doesn't see me. If he can see me, I'll have to just tap the W key over and over to walk so he doesn't suspect.

The good best thing is, I can now sneak up on feeding zones. Bwahahahaha!

Edit: I just had a hard time getting out of a house. I kept missing the door.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I have decided to even the playing field. I watched a video on modding theHunter, and it's really easy. I can now move as silently as a butterfly and run at about 50 miles per hour and crouch walk at about 20. I just chased down a bear. I am death incarnate. I just have to make sure that I stay far enough away from Guido that he doesn't see me. If he can see me, I'll have to just tap the W key over and over to walk so he doesn't suspect.

The good best thing is, I can now sneak up on feeding zones. Bwahahahaha!

Edit: I just had a hard time getting out of a house. I kept missing the door.

You should have posted this in the thread about cheating.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, I found where the lions sleep. One minute, I'm death incarnate. The next minute I'm dinner.

 

[mainer]

Edit: I just had a hard time getting out of a house. I kept missing the door.

I'm assuming that's in the game, and not you trying to get out of your own house (or neighbor's house).

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Well, I found where the lions sleep.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle.

 

[ZedClampet]

AAAAAAAAAAAIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIAIAIIAIAIIIHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

theHunter is so frustrating. I just gave up for the night. I had about 6 kills I couldn't find. That's more than I actually did find. You shoot the animals and they run for about a mile before they die unless you hit them exactly right.

 

[Brian Boru]

shoot the animals and they run for about a mile before they die unless you hit them exactly right

Oh yeah, that's a pain—especially if it's with arrows which you need to recover.

An annoying thing in Far Cry 6 is there aren't any corpse indicators, like there were in previous FCs—X marks the spot. Even without them running off, it can be hard to find say 4 wolf skins in the long grass.

Mini Map

On a related note, I'm glad FC6 brought back the small round mini map. I found the top bar 'map' in FC5 very annoying, trying to center my direction on say a skin was a lot more awkward than it should have been—usually had to face a tree or look up at a dark cloud to see where the center marker was.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh yeah, that's a pain—especially if it's with arrows which you need to recover.

An annoying thing in Far Cry 6 is there aren't any corpse indicators, like there were in previous FCs—X marks the spot. Even without them running off, it can be hard to find say 4 wolf skins in the long grass.

Mini Map

On a related note, I'm glad FC6 brought back the small round mini map. I found the top bar 'map' in FC5 very annoying, trying to center my direction on say a skin was a lot more awkward than it should have been—usually had to face a tree or look up at a dark cloud to see where the center marker was.

Hunting is much funnier in FC5.

NPC: AH A SKUNK!
More of the same NPC: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Go over and revive NPC

 

[ZedClampet]

Really, really random game thought of the morning.

I still consider it a huge shame that Assassin's Creed Unity launched with a lot of technical problems because once it was fixed, it was, and still is, one of the most remarkable technical achievements ever in gaming. Paris was huge and filled with historically accurate detail, and the city was more alive than any game city I've ever experienced. There were so many NPCs going about their daily lives, that it would be hard to move on the streets sometimes, and I would take to the rooftops just to be able to make good time.

In retrospect, I think it was my favorite AC game, and one of my favorite all-time games. If I didn't have so many other games going right now, I might play it again, but I think I might start a new game just to wander around the city.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Really, really random game thought of the morning.

I still consider it a huge shame that Assassin's Creed Unity launched with a lot of technical problems because once it was fixed, it was, and still is, one of the most remarkable technical achievements ever in gaming. Paris was huge and filled with historically accurate detail, and the city was more alive than any game city I've ever experienced. There were so many NPCs going about their daily lives, that it would be hard to move on the streets sometimes, and I would take to the rooftops just to be able to make good time.

In retrospect, I think it was my favorite AC game, and one of my favorite all-time games. If I didn't have so many other games going right now, I might play it again, but I think I might start a new game just to wander around the city.

I've heard that a lot, but it seems like bad first impressions ruined its reputation. That's one good example of why game company execs shouldn't be too impatient about finishing a game. It's a risk that isn't always going to be profitable. Of course, I say that, and I haven't looked into the sales of Unity to see how profitable it was.

 

[Brian Boru]

sales of Unity

Wiki:
As of December 31, 2014, Ubisoft has shipped a combined 10 million copies of Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Rogue. From April 17 to 25, 2019, Ubisoft made the PC version available free of charge with a message encouraging donations to restore Notre Dame de Paris following the fire there on April 15, 2019. Thanks to this, Ubisoft donated €500,000 to help with the restoration and reconstruction of Paris' historic landmark.

 

[Brian Boru]

Calling all Patient Gamers: GOG has a pretty good sale going on for the next 1.5 days. I set my price range $0-20 which = 3,600 games, and sorted by highest discount—which starts at 95%.

Direct link with above parameters

 

[ZedClampet]

I got a sarcastic achievement in theHunter

Old habits die hard.

 

[ZedClampet]

Speaking of crocs and alligators (yeah, I know, we moved on from that), but according to theHunter: Call of the Wild, the best place to shoot them is between the eye and the ear. I finally got my alligators yesterday. Got two and stuffed them both for my hunting lodges.

In real life I don't shoot alligators. I feed them Doritos. Went on a golf trip to South Carolina years ago and rented a condo. The condo had a back porch that butted up to a pond, and there was an alligator that hung out there. One time as he was swimming by, I tossed a Dorito at him, and he immediately ate it, so every now and then, I would toss another one in, and he would swim over and eat it.

We would go out at night and come back late, and there was no lighting at the condo. As I would stumble my way through the darkness, it would occur to me that there was an alligator around that considered me a source of food.