Random Game Thoughts Thread - January 22 - 28

[ZedClampet]

I also disagree with that. Like Ipman I'm from poor background

I'm not sure you and Ipman know what poor really is. Have you visited rural Appalachia? Have you wandered the tenement homes of Baltimore? How about the swamps of Mississippi? Rural south Alabama?

In any event, I've lost interest in this, so I'll mark you both as "Born a poor black child" (Steve Martin) and move on from here...

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We've declared ourselves done with Colony Survival. Very fun game. It's in early access, and the dev only updates it once a year, but the update is always massive, so will probably be worth another playthrough next year. For me, the game is just right, but it may need to be rebalanced a bit for other players since it's probably a little on the easy side. I only played on "Normal", so maybe "Hard" would do the trick, but "Normal" was nice and relaxing.

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Played a janky early access survival game called Rogue Frontiers. It's basically amateur hour in terms of polish, but I was having decent fun with it. I got completely lost; however. There aren't very good landmarks for finding your way around. Then I got killed by a wild boar because the combat is awful. Have you ever played a game where you had to aim extremely precisely just to pick up objects? Well, this is the same way for combat. It is really, really hard to run around, dodge and hit whatever is attacking you. And the game runs like a slideshow, which doesn't help. Anyway, I died and the game sent me back to the main menu, so I thought it was permadeath, but the developer said that was just a bug. I dunno. I kind of lost interest in the jankfest, but I may go back to it today.

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In my continuous efforts to support every developer on the planet, I purchased Greats of the Gridiron, a game owned by probably a dozen people. I've gotten so far as to create a league, but ran into a bug. The developer gave me a work-around so I may give that a try today.

 

[Brian Boru]

what poor really is

It is of course relative, I certainly never experienced what I've read about in say Sub-Saharan Africa or rural India. I was 12 before we had electricity or indoor plumbing, but there was always enough to eat and a warm bed.

 

[ZedClampet]

It is of course relative, I certainly never experienced what I've read about in say Sub-Saharan Africa or rural India. I was 12 before we had electricity or indoor plumbing, but there was always enough to eat and a warm bed.

Yeah, but you're old. Had they invented plumbing yet?



My apologies. I'm around a lot of young people who consider themselves poor, and they are distinctly not poor, though I work with a lot of kids with the literacy charity who are actually poor, so it annoys me when these suburban kids are playing the "poor card".

 

[ZedClampet]

@ipman @Brian Boru

Would like to apologize for presuming things in the discussion above. I let my personal experiences blind me to other possibilities.

In the end, I'm the kind of person who would have felt like he was wasting his life (when I was younger, not now. Now I'm all about wasting life lol) if I had done anything but gone straight to college, but to each his/her/their own. Glad you all had a chance to do that.

 

[Brian Boru]

My apologies

Young brat!

Had they invented plumbing yet?

Sort of. We built our new house when I was 12—I was glad to see the back of mud walls, paraffin lamps & candles, and thatched roof by then. Plumbing involved sinking a well, digging a septic tank, and digging a long drain down the field from it.

When I built my own house next door early 80s, we tapped into the same well for over a decade, before public water made it down our road. Another septic tank, which did not go well—very high water table, so modern drainage system clogged up after ~5 years. Had to dig a new tank, and an old-fashioned stone drain!

Anyway, as I said earlier, it's all relative—I never felt poor growing up, the locale was mostly smallhold farming. Nobody gets rich on that, and when everyone's poor, no one is poor

 

[ipman]

Thanks, appreciate that As I'm originally from Europe, I've clued her in to research the various options—Germany might be the best, so much of it is free, and of course all the Scandinavian countries have varying attractive options too… plus being happy places


Yeah, I view USA as much more like 50 countries than one. Regional similarities of course, just like Norway & Sweden or Italy & Spain, but also significant differences.


I also disagree with that. Like Ipman I'm from poor background, but managed to do some travel, and live in 4 countries. It's definitely doable as long as it's a main priority, so you'll do menial work en route to make it happen.

Yes figured you must have some connections to Europe with your cultural interests. That's true the USA and Europe were almost mirror images of each other at one point in terms ofpopulations with their own cultures and traditions

I think it's definitely a lot easier to travel abroad from the UK. It's only 20 miles to France and from there the rest of Europe. I started going to France when I was 17 years old. But have travelled all over Europe.

Once bought an old Italian motorcycle on a Wednesday and Thursday said to mate, shall we take this bike home, left UK Saturday, into Italy Sunday evening. But also lived in Holland for a while in a squat and also used to go grapepicking in France in the autumn months. Doing menial jobs like that you meet the real people. I try to avoid tourist routes and hotspots.

Enjoyed every minute of it all.

I do get the impression that some Americans feel reluctant to travel abroad, not sure why that would be.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Video games!

I started playing Necromunda: Hired Gun!

Doom influenced for sure, wall running, grappling hooks and fast moving enemies. Not as polished coming straight over from Doom Eternal, but not janky either. Only a couple of hours in, seems theres a lot of upgrading of both weapons and abilities to do so will be interesting to see how it all pans out. The story seems pretty Warhammer 40k, angry spacepunk Londoners and shady posh blokes. Hopefully theres some Chaos or other factions involved later, but they managed some enemy variety so far with the gang members having rocket packs and shields, as well as Ogrins and some industrial mechs. The movement and shooting feels good, which bodes well.

I'm also still playing Old World, still learning the game there. Early impressions I like it a lot, theres something to do or tune almost every turn and theres a lot to figure out without seeming too overwhelming, as of yet.

 

[ipman]

@ipman @Brian Boru

Would like to apologize for presuming things in the discussion above. I let my personal experiences blind me to other possibilities.

In the end, I'm the kind of person who would have felt like he was wasting his life (when I was younger, not now. Now I'm all about wasting life lol) if I had done anything but gone straight to college, but to each his/her/their own. Glad you all had a chance to do that.

Hey we're just talking. You should travel more

 

[ipman]

Video games!

Are you trying to get us back on track

It's funny because it started when I said 'that's another story'. I do find I'm spending less time gaming recently and more time talking to gamers about everything.

This idea of a PC gamers forum simulator comes to my mind for some reason.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Are you trying to get us back on track

It's funny because it started when I said 'that's another story'. I do find I'm spending less time gaming recently and more time talking to gamers about everything.

This idea of a PC gamers forum simulator comes to my mind for some reason.

No, it was entirely selfish because I wanted to mention those games. Please continue around or over me as appropriate.

 

[ipman]

No, it was entirely selfish because I wanted to mention those games. Please continue around or over me as appropriate.

No you'd be right to do so. When 'It's a different story', we should switch to an appropriate thread.

 

[Pifanjr]

I installed Space Engineers to see if my current PC could handle planets. Last time I tried it, on my old PC, I was getting a FPS of below 10, but the new PC seems to have no problems with it.

Now I just need a couple of good nights of sleep, because I've been too exhausted to invest into anything new and I hardly remember to play Space Engineers.

 

[ipman]

Ever have one of those 'That moment's', like I just wanted to unwind with some GTAV and other games.

Open Razer synapses all all my profiles and keymaps were gone, AAAAh! No similar problems showing on their forum.

But actually managed to get them back

 

[WoodenSaucer]

No you'd be right to do so. When 'It's a different story', we should switch to an appropriate thread.

They've said before that these weekly threads are where all of our off topic discussions can go. Between those and the Coconut Monkey thread.

 

[Brian Boru]

some Americans feel reluctant to travel abroad

It's not so much 'reluctant', more they don't see a need for it. The mythology that USA is the best country is strongly entrenched here—and if you believe that, why bother spending a good chunk of change to visit sub-standard places?

Video games!

Huh? Uh, what? Oh yeah…

Old World, still learning the game there. Early impressions I like it a lot

Great! Very briefly, how does it compare with Civs you've played?

PC gamers forum simulator

Oh hey now, there's a thought…
Nah, prefer the real thing

Please continue around or over me

Save the llama, nobody roll over the llama!

They've said before that these weekly threads are where all of our off topic discussions can go. Between those and the Coconut Monkey thread

Did we say that? Oh, ok then…
Yep. that works, these threads disappear into the morass of 50 more per year, so we can be looser with 'em

 

[ipman]

It's not so much 'reluctant', more they don't see a need for it. The mythology that USA is the best country is strongly entrenched here—and if you believe that, why bother spending a good chunk of change to visit sub-standard places?

I did sort of think that was the reason, and that's of course reinforced if Americans don't generally travel abroad.
The Newsroom clip Why America isn't the greatest ........It's from a tv programme, fictional truths.

I imagine that Holland, Norway or Sweden may be among some of the best places to live if you can handle the cold winters. I'm thinking of migrating north

 

[Frag Maniac]

The mythology that USA is the best country is strongly entrenched here—and if you believe that, why bother spending a good chunk of change to visit sub-standard places?

What, USA isn't the best country? Harry and Meghan seem to think it is, well, at least it's the fastest way to cash in on the we're not royals anymore controversy.

 

[Zloth]

A new version of Mechwarrior 5 came out. I've got a mod that hasn't been updated for quite some time, so I was already on the previous version of the game. They let you pick older versions of the game as "beta" versions, so I was doing that. However, Steam still said I had an update pending when the new version came out! Heck if I know what it was, but it downloaded and installed FAST.

I checked it to make sure everything was still working - and promptly got hooked on the game again!

Got a couple of good achievements in Colony Survival:

Those are pretty rare - you haven't been playing the game all that long, have you?

Many Americans never travel abroad. The vast majority never visit every US state, many of which have their own unique cultures. I think it's the size of the US and the many cultures contained within that prevent people from traveling. When we do leave the US, it is mostly to Canada or Mexico.

Great guns, travelling to every state would be hard! You could pop through a bunch real quick in New England. But it takes 8 hours just to cut across Kansas from Missouri to Colorado, assuming you stop for lunch along the way. (Heh, only 5.5 hours to cut across North Dakota, even though they look like the same width on most maps.)

 

[Brian Boru]

@Zloth I haven't watched this alpha demo play, but might interest you

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJrFjv9oZB4

 

[ZedClampet]

Those are pretty rare - you haven't been playing the game all that long, have you?

No, not really. The game has a ton of content, but it's poorly balanced, so if you concentrate on the right things, you can breeze through unlocking all the techs. There are something like 80 techs, but at times we could unlock up to 10 at the same time. Astro Colony was much the same: a lot of research to do, but you could trivialize it pretty easily.

 

[Zloth]

@Brian Boru - huh. Weak graphics for the overhead view but they have a 3D view in the upper right that's interesting. You can see the enemies and the

A pity they didn't just go with that. XCOM knock-offs are all over the place, but there aren't many games that have gameplay like Valkyria Chronicles and its 3D-XCOM approach.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Anyone playing Dead Space yet?

Great! Very briefly, how does it compare with Civs you've played?

I've only been playing the tutorials so I cant really comment to much yet. Also I havent played Civ properly in a long time so its hard to compare directly.

I'll speak in general terms as you can watch a far more informative video on all the mechanics than I can give. Its more complex than I remember Civ 4 or 5 being, you have a lot of different resources to manage, I think 10, split into building materials/food and intangible stuff like Research and Civics. At this stage I'm just building along with whatever I have least of as I dont know enough to have any long term strategies. You can also use Gold to just buy whatever youre lacking at any point, so seems good to lean into that.

Alongside all of that, you have an extra level of management, which comes from your court members and family. You can employ them in several different ways, as Governers of cities, Generals, Ministers and more. All of which I think give different global or local bonuses to different resources based on what their skills are. You can also educate heirs and children in different things to affect how much of a bonus they give in different things before they become old enough to employ.

Diplomacy has another layer as you have 3 family factions inside your own empire to please as well as all the other competing empires on the map. These are based around Military, Trade, Science and Culture, and whenever you found a city you have to choose who to give it to. The first catch is you can only choose 3 out of 4, so once your third city is founded the other faction is off the table, I think forever.

There's an event system that pops something up almost every turn usually related to your actions in the turn before. Youll have to choose whether to please one empire or another, give a skill bonus to one child or another, whether to pay tribute or not and so on.

I like it a lot so far. But having not finished a single game its hard to say whether it has real legs for me or not .

 

[Brian Boru]

I've only been playing the tutorials so I cant really comment to much yet. Also I havent played Civ properly in a long time so its hard to compare directly

Great stuff, thanks, appreciate that