Random Game Thoughts Thread - March 12 - March 18

[Brian Boru]

Let's kick this week off with a rather good rant:

What The HELL is Going on With PC GAME PORTS?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joze6uRyBRs

 

[Johnway]

i was watching a bit of zero punctuation extra and it did bring a somewhat positive light on the live service model of gaming - it might be dying.

The Live-Service Model Is Dying - Extra Punctuation

Extra Punctuation: Yahtzee takes a look at the current state of live-service video games and how the trend may finally be dying down.

www.escapistmagazine.com

Still playing Phantom doctrine, no news to report, still twiddling my thumbs racking up huge amounts of cash, weapons, skills etc. Got to say, having disguises and a silence pistol in the game makes it very easy. Make infiltration missions piss easy.

Onto other news, i have a week off and i'm spending that time playing Path of exile for my lootbox and to finish off my drawing, Just the last 3 figures, patching up any mistakes and adding the bells and whistles and we'll be done. But my current opinion on it? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear; this is a disaster. Any who i should be finished by end of march. Hopefully.

 

[ZedClampet]

Sad gaming day. Needed space on my primary drive and ended up uninstalling Darktide, as I'm unlikely to go back to it any time soon. Was looking forward to that game so much. If they ever allow singleplayer, I will probably go back to it.

 

[Brian Boru]

racking up huge amounts of cash, weapons, skills etc

Yeah, I'm in a similar situation in Far Cry 6:

Unless I'm missing sth, there's nothing worth spending my riches on.

 

[Brian Boru]

Just tried to continue Call of the Sea, this week's Epic freebie.
♣ First up, some big Epic update
♦ Then launched game, to meet a request to share my info 'somewhere'—I wasn't interested, so didn't pay much attention
♥ Canceled out, pressed Enter to continue, and got into a loop of:

Clicking Accept got me back to pressing Enter, and loop again

It's a nice game with a Firewatch vibe, but I wasn't hooked on it by any means—so it's easy to uninstall and list in my Do Not Play.

 

[Frindis]

Going to be playing some Lost Epoch and moving on with the next difficulty in Grim Dawn. Probably some more Atomic Heart and the 3yo anniversary event for Warzone is coming on the 15th, so I'll tune in there and see what freebies I can grab. I have started playing a little bit of Stardew Valley, so I think I'll mine a little soon, needs some ores. I love that game, especially since you can jump into the game at any time and do whatever you want. No death, no end far as I know. Just a cute colorful little zen game.

No Twitch Prime event for Runescape, wonder if it has stopped completely. A lot of freebies for games on mobiles and stuff I don't really want at all, so I stopped my Amazon Prime subscription. I'll jump back in if there is a good month, we'll see...

 

[Johnway]

Yeah, I'm in a similar situation in Far Cry 6:

Unless I'm missing sth, there's nothing worth spending my riches on.

if you're anything like me, you're frugal with spending and/or you get money so easily it just racks up. Then when it comes to spending the ingame currency... you feel somewhat concerned to see vast amounts just disappear. In most cases i'm too pragmatic, yeah, i COULD afford it but i just don't need it that badly. I have a work around or i'm saving up for a rainy day. A rainy day that never comes.

its especially true for multiplayer games, if its cosmetics, i just don't buy them at all. Unless its the very best/nicest ones. more worryingly i sometimes find the best stuff garish and ugly and i prefer the rough, rugged, battered look so my costs are kept low. The Division is a good example. I see division agents as soldiers dressed as civvies and a rag tag bunch of agents as opposed to some military organization. The elite battle cosmetics just makes you look like spec ops and it kinda feels out of place. That said its not helping that the cosmetics are rare/expensive so i look like trash anyway. The same in the division 2. When society has collapsed i didn't expect people to walk around dressed like spec ops. Sure, Black Tusk it makes sense; they're organised, had massive financial backing and were professionals to boot. But when i see lawless gangs and rag tag miltia's looking a bit samey, i kinda get triggered. The hyenas especially. They all wear the same white tops and jeans and spray paint its a bit silly. hell, they should have been dressed in sports wear as their home base was the sports stadium - The weapons i can kinda forgive as they got from the police armory next door.

Another good example is Chivalry 2. I have 100000+ saved and can afford to look swanky with my knight. I played hours to get to the rank i could buy the armor i want and yet... i still don't want to pull the trigger and buy. I think its probably because it marks you out in a battlefield as either very dangerous and it brings the very best to come and face you. Since i'm not very good its like pretending to be good when you're not.

 

[Zloth]

What The HELL is Going on With PC GAME PORTS?

Do I even need to say it?

If you want to complain about the state of new games, that's fine. If you want to buy games on day 1, that's fine. If you complain about the state of new games, then keep buying them new, you're wasting my time with the complaining.

GameRanx has been making a bunch of videos like this, whining about the state of games at release. Not one (that I've seen) has even suggested the idea that maybe people should wait a few months before buying.

Edit: "you" meaning the gaming community in general, not Brian.

 

[Brian Boru]

Far Cry 6

Spoilers below.

A Little Birdie Told Me treasure hunt

Toughest side quest so far, took me 3 tries. It's the one in El Este where you have to follow the pelican Danilo thru 4 different hops—he flies and lands somewhere, you have to keep up and then feed him to get him to take off again.

♣ First try was wingsuit from starting point, then ATV from 2nd point, then wingsuit again from 3rd point—made a Brian of the takeoff and crashed

♦ Second try, I said 'Screw this hard work', got myself a chopper and somehow managed to land it at the small starting point. Well sort of land it—I think it went well, don't you agree?

PS I killed Danilo during that 'landing', so 'went well' may be my sunny optimism at play.

♥ Third try, I said 'Screw this chopper, let's do some hard work'—so wingsuit again. I have speed gear equipped as default, so I ran from 2nd point—just for fun, to see if I could keep up. I couldn't really, but the mission didn't fail me even when I had to take a small detour to avoid a special forces patrol.

So far so good, and didn't Brian the wingsuit takeoff from 3rd point this time—but was a bit low, so had to finish with chute and a sprint. Final stint was a jet ski run among a few coastal islands, which went surprisingly well considering Danilo was flying like a drunk hummingbird.

All's well that ends well!

ETA: the quest reward was a special rifle the ARC-C, which like all specials I've got so far, was worse than my buffed standard MS16 L.

PS What's up with my Wicked Chicken in the pic? Looks like I caught him either being rendered between frames, or else after an excellent night in the hen coop

He's a fun guy to have around tho. Think of him as the fauna equivalent of Hurk, but enjoyable for longer. Still only halfway thru leveling him up, which will take a while—2nd level is only earned when he makes a kill while below 70% health.

I'm just sending him into every fight I meet—fun watching him charge, take off in one giant leap for chickenkind, and land on some poor enemy Should be useful to have a second brawler around later, altho Guapo the croc's ability to self-revive means he's the #1 melee Amigo.

 

[Zloth]

Any landing you can ALL way away from is a good landing. And yes, passengers all count even if the passenger manifest burns in the 'landing.'

PS What's up with my Wicked Chicken in the pic? Looks like I caught him either being rendered between frames, or else after an excellent night in the hen coop

I was going to ask the same! It looks like a rooster crossed with a dog!

I'm making a lot of progress in Mass Effect 2. I had forgotten that the VAST majority of the missions are about recruiting or gaining the loyalty of the 14 companions in the game!

I also keep toying around with what I want to do for my next start in X4:Foundations. Because I played it a bunch before, I can start with a station right off the bat. If I make it a really profitable station, though, I'll do too well too fast. I might just plop a defense station right in Xenon space. That won't make much money, but it sure will be fun to watch!

 

[DXCHASE]

i was watching a bit of zero punctuation extra and it did bring a somewhat positive light on the live service model of gaming - it might be dying.

The Live-Service Model Is Dying - Extra Punctuation

Extra Punctuation: Yahtzee takes a look at the current state of live-service video games and how the trend may finally be dying down.

www.escapistmagazine.com

I love watching Zero Punctuation reviews and see the points brought up here but Live Service games, imo, will remain a genre like all others. I mean CSGO is considered a live service game and its still breaking its concurrent players record.

In other news, celebrated my sons 18th birthday yesterday, him and his friends wanted to go to Lasertron and play the arcades there then wanted to play some Destiny when he got home, so we did that.

Which also means im still knee deep in my Live Service game DESTINY 2! lol. Been busy with that so Shadow Warrior 3, Wo Long and Atomic Heart, welcome to my backlog. I do log into Guilty Gear Strive to do some fights, but thats it too. Gamepass just takin a backseat atm.

 

[Pifanjr]

I love watching Zero Punctuation reviews and see the points brought up here but Live Service games, imo, will remain a genre like all others. I mean CSGO is considered a live service game and its still breaking its concurrent players record.

I think one of the comments made a good point that we've gone through all of this already with MMOs, which also try to keep players playing a single game for "eternity". There have been a ton of MMOs trying to replicate WoW's success, but ultimately there's only room for a couple of MMO's to remain successful at a time.

Live service games won't disappear, but there will probably be far fewer live service games being released over the next few years, as it's just not worth it to try to establish a "permanent" player base in an already oversaturated market.

 

[Brian Boru]

looks like a rooster crossed with a dog!

Here's a 6-min video of Chicharron—the Wicked Chicken—in action:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMFQUzI7iZg

 

[Zloth]

Assassin's Creed has some mighty nasty chickens, too. Then there was Asherons Call's 666th level white rabbit... <shudder>

 

[ZedClampet]

IMO, the most infamous chicken is in Skyrim. As soon as you finish the intro, you arrive in a small village and immediately see a chicken. Naturally, you want to kill this chicken, but if you do, it completely screws everything up. The villagers chase you around trying to kill you. (at least this is my memory of it).

*******

Played some more FC6, but all I did was that one mission I failed a couple of weeks ago because I didn't know how to cut the engines in the plane.

********

I'm truly loving NASCAR Heat 5, but I'm mad about the progression, or lack thereof. So there are 4 series you can play, Dirt, Trucks, Xfinity, and Cup. I skipped Dirt because I just don't like driving it. So starting with the Truck series, I chose to create my own team rather than join an existing one because I like the strategy involved in running your own team.

So the first year, you aren't expected to do well because you have to build up your team: buy cars, level different parts of your engineering, hire and train employees, etc. And you really aren't competitive until you do all those things. EXCEPT that I avoided that by playing on Easy. I wanted to see if I could actually win the championship the first year and then move on to the Xfinity series and change the difficulty to Normal (then Cup and Hard).

The problem is that when I moved to Xfinity, I lost everything that I did in the truck series, including, for some unfathomable reason, the money I was saving up at the end of the season. So basically, every time you start a new series, you start from scratch with little money, no employees, no research, etc. It's kind of annoying.

 

[Pifanjr]

Loading…

www.pcgamer.com

I wholeheartedly agree with this article. It really bothered me in Control that I needed to do inventory management for a couple of percent increase in healing regen or some extra damage or something like that. I think the game would have been just fine without that entire mechanic.

 

[Johnway]

With the path of exile end of league events up and running i spent the last few days grinding away to lvl 4 to grab me a loot box. So what did i get after nearly 10 hours of play (over 5 days)? Another helmet.

All things considered it could be worse but it could be a lot better. Oh well, still another cosmetic. But what about ruthless league itself? What about the gold mechanic? Honestly not a big fan of Ruthless, what made Path of exile good is stripped/removed from the game and its a slog, especially as magic/rare items are few and far between. Not even given enough currency to even craft! Didn't even get an alchemy orb to craft rares. Given a choice i wouldn't play it unless there was some monetary incentive. The gold mechanic? yeah, good thing they didn't implement it as it kills the compelling looting of the game. Doesn't help that its peanuts for the amount of gold you get. maybe 1s or 2s as opposed to 100+ stuff.

Oh well, its all done now, so i can relax a bit and play doom wads again.

Onto other news, more work on my Artwork, we're nearing the end now. Will start work on the last figure and once i've painted him i just need to go back and sort out any more unfinished business. Right now it feels too dark and i think its too little too late now. Another failure in the books. Don't worry, i'll be showing it hopefully before april.

 

[Zloth]

It really bothered me in Control that I needed to do inventory management for a couple of percent increase in healing regen or some extra damage or something like that. I think the game would have been just fine without that entire mechanic.

I don't even remember it! I remember getting that sweet dark green coat and different gun modes, but that's it.

 

[ZedClampet]

Loading…

www.pcgamer.com

I wholeheartedly agree with this article. It really bothered me in Control that I needed to do inventory management for a couple of percent increase in healing regen or some extra damage or something like that. I think the game would have been just fine without that entire mechanic.

I agree with it for the most part. I don't like the constant loot insanity where you are getting tiny, incremental improvements, but I do like a loot system where you make significant advances when you get new loot. For instance, a game may only have 8 weapons to find during the whole game, and when you find each one they change the game, give you a new way to play. Examples of this would be Resident Evil games, Remnant from the Ashes, and Strange Brigade. All of those would be much worse with no loot system at all.

 

[Pifanjr]

I agree with it for the most part. I don't like the constant loot insanity where you are getting tiny, incremental improvements, but I do like a loot system where you make significant advances when you get new loot. For instance, a game may only have 8 weapons to find during the whole game, and when you find each one they change the game, give you a new way to play. Examples of this would be Resident Evil games, Remnant from the Ashes, and Strange Brigade. All of those would be much worse with no loot system at all.

So what part of the article do you not agree with?

 

[ZedClampet]

So what part of the article do you not agree with?

Sorry. I don't remember where I was going with that. I'd have to reread the article. But I definitely agreed with the superhero journey type of loot system that he praised and wanted to point that out. Strange Brigade and Remnant were two shooters I actually enjoyed and finished, and I think a lot of it had to do with that loot system philosophy,

 

[mainer]

I hadn't realized up until a couple of weeks ago that there was a Greedfall 2 in development by Spiders (that's the game developer and not a group of arachnids).

GreedFall 2 on Steam

Dive back into the unique world of GreedFall again in an even deeper RPG experience. Uprooted from the island of your birth, find your freedom, explore the old continent and forge your destiny through alliances, scheming and battles!

store.steampowered.com

I had thought that they were working on something else, but apparently Greedfall 2 will be a prequel, as opposed to a sequel. I enjoyed the original, as the characters, conversations, choices/decisions were very Bioware-like, so this game has moved up to my #8 slot on my Steam wishlist.

The Greedfall 2 announcement trailer:

View: https://youtu.be/ryl5dbOlpyg

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Atomic Heart is weird.

Had a boss at 1/3 health left disappear completely, meaning I had to reload. Before that the main quest waypoint led me up and out of a facility. At which point some exposition dialogue played with the glove and the way point reappeared behind me inside the facility I'd just spent 10 minutes fighting out of, with no explanation or justification. Its beyond a lack of polish, the whole thing lacks cohesion. The music ranges from electro, to weird jazz in the crafting menu, to hard rock at times, doesnt feel like its all from the same game.

Theres about a dozen weapons I found so far, but not much incentive to use them as you have to inventory tetris everything including ammo, so you can only really carry 2 at a time, and they need upgrading which costs resources. The boss battles so far feel janky, either stupidly easy or frustrating because they feel unfair.

Having said all that the powers are fun and combat mostly feels good, so I'll keep on with it. Hoping for a bit more enemy variety as it could start to get boring. I do have a hankering for Wo Long and not much time to game though, so it might go on the back burner soon.

 

[Johnway]

Well... Still at it in phantom protocol, finally rolled over to chapter 4 and honestly the main story hasn't progressed too far along as i've spent time racking up cash, getting things set up etc. The body count keeps rising as i capture more enemy agents, stick them into MK Ultra to get my juicy intel before i execute them. its a never ending revolving pain factory there. Just a shame i couldn't use more creative methods of disposal like setting up a hot dog factory or something.

Any who as my responsibilities increase across the world, it means i need to get more agents. My last hire turned out to have a trigger word in her brain (so the enemy can say trigger word and convert her into an enemy agent) she will be paying a visit to MK Ultra for brain washing before i send her out on any missions. Hired her for her hacking skills. So far all the best, multiskilled agents with lots of talents are dodgy (or best to assume dodgy).

Artwise, All the figures are painted, i'm not moving to finishing off the various bits i've left out (namely faces), tidying bits up and then we'll get back to the background to finish off.

On more concerning issues, my wall socket is making a loud crack/pop noise when i turn it on. The thing is that it only seems to happen when my PC is plugged into the extension lead. Doesn't happen if i plug in monitor and the other stuff. Just the pc. Might need to call out someone to look at it or try a few other plugs etc and see what's causing it. it might be nothing big, like the pc drawing a large amount of power during turning on, but at the same time it shouldn't have to do that... It could men a a plug is dodgy or the psu in my pc is dodgy. No buzzing and popping/cracking sound after i turn it on. Its just make me a bit nervous when i turn it on now.

 

[ZedClampet]

Ever since I posted the list of 2023 Steam sales, I've been waiting for today to buy Project Cars 3 (supposedly it was pretty good, but the diehard fans didn't like the transition to Sim-Cade from pure Sim). The sale finally arrives, and the game isn't discounted. So I got irritated and used the browser tool that @Brian Boru has mentioned before and got it for $12 off. Not a huge savings, but at least it's something.