The currently playing and random game thoughts thread (Jan 23 to Feb 06)

[ZedClampet]

I'm playing a number of things right now. I'm still relatively early into God of War and really enjoying it. I'm back to playing Total War Warhammer 2 and complaining about it. Playing some Forza Horizon 5. Tried a number of demos, but came away largely unimpressed.

I should stop now. I just fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. I need to review some reports for work, and then I think I'm going to make a mod that rebalances the lizardmen in TW Warhammer 2. Going to let them earn a little more money, and slightly buff a couple of non-monster units, but put unit caps on all the monsters. Then I'm going to start a new solo campaign and see how it goes.

What I'd really like to do is figure out how to bring units from Troy into Warhammer 2 for custom battles just for giggles. The units in Troy are much stronger than the ones in Warhammer 2. I just want to see Ajax's best army versus some doom stacks from Warhammer 2. I think I could finally defeat a doom stack of dread saurians.

 

[DXCHASE]

In pure "waiting mode" atm. Feb. 8th is the next big release for me with Lost Ark so im just kinda doing random stuff in other games until then.

Im also doing some "stocking up" in Destiny 2 by holding onto completed bounties until the next season starts to turn in for high XP amounts to unlock early tiers in the season pass right away. Its a seasonal thing i do for Destiny but im starting a little earlier since i probably wont be playing it at all after dec. 8th until its expansion.

No current thoughts on gaming atm.

 

[ZedClampet]

In pure "waiting mode" atm. Dec. 8th is the next big release for me with Lost Ark so im just kinda doing random stuff in other games until then.

Dec 8? I thought it was releasing next month. December is a long time to be in waiting mode.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Just decided to get God of War on PC. Don't know when I'll get around to playing it though.

 

[Brian Boru]

Dec 8?

Must be in Australia, where they hang off the world and time flows backwards.

Releases Feb 11, 2022 on real Earth.

 

[ZedClampet]

We started a new Total War Warhammer 2 game. I wanted to test my new mod from a fresh start. I'm still playing the lizardmen, but this time I'm Ghosts of Pahuax in the north.


(Later)

Well, after over 1300 hours in the game, I've lost my second campaign. We were playing on Hard difficulty, and I'd never played the Ghosts of Pahuax before. Apparently you have to come out swinging and play as fast as possible. Me? I was decorating my capital. My capital was very prosperous and coming along nicely when on turn 16 I got attacked by 4 twenty stack armies. Somehow I managed to win the battle, but my units were completely decimated while many of the enemy units had merely routed. They immediately attacked again, and I conceded.

Needless to say, I've demanded a rematch and we are starting again now.

The other time I lost I was attacked by 2 twenty stacks in turn 4. Sometimes Hard means brutal.

 

[Mazer]

Must be in Australia, where they hang off the world and time flows backwards.

Releases Feb 11, 2022 on real Earth.

Hanging off the world, or wearing it like a jaunty cap?

 

[DXCHASE]

Dec 8? I thought it was releasing next month. December is a long time to be in waiting mode.

lol i meant February but ive been waiting longer than that for this game to release here, like 2 or 3 years? lol

 

[Pifanjr]

I've also played some more Warhammer2, continuing the co-op campaign we started last week. I only got around to destroying two more lizardmen settlements and getting ready to destroy Itza's capital. At least, I hope I have enough manpower, I unexpectedly needed an extra turn to reach it and he has two armies who are building extra units, so it might not go well. The other two lizardmen factions on the island also declared war on me and the rogue vampire pirates faction I declared war on way at the beginning decided to send a full stack as well, so I'd rather not lose too many units right now. Especially since my economy isn't doing all that great either and everything is expensive.

I've also played a bit of Spiritfarer with my daughter (or Witch as she calls it). She has fun cooking and she did pretty well catching jellyfish.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've also played some more Warhammer2, continuing the co-op campaign we started last week. I only got around to destroying two more lizardmen settlements and getting ready to destroy Itza's capital. At least, I hope I have enough manpower, I unexpectedly needed an extra turn to reach it and he has two armies who are building extra units, so it might not go well. The other two lizardmen factions on the island also declared war on me and the rogue vampire pirates faction I declared war on way at the beginning decided to send a full stack as well, so I'd rather not lose too many units right now. Especially since my economy isn't doing all that great either and everything is expensive.

I've also played a bit of Spiritfarer with my daughter (or Witch as she calls it). She has fun cooking and she did pretty well catching jellyfish.

I see Spiritfarer has a demo. Going to give it a try.

 

[ZedClampet]

All my posts about Total War Warhammer 2 in last week's thread were wrong, especially the part where I was going through the advantages the AI has based on difficulty. Turns out I was looking at the wrong stuff. Everything in those files is heavily abbreviated, basically speaking in code, and I thought I had it figured out, but I didn't.

I'm going to go back through the files again some time this week and see if I can figure it out. I saw a post on Steam that goes through it, but I don't believe that post is 100 percent correct either. It's correct in some aspects, but there are parts of it that I'm almost 100 percent positive aren't accurate.

I'm sure no one but me actually cares, but I want to figure it out so that when TWW3 launches I can compare the two because Troy's difficulty worked completely differently thanks to better overall AI and not needing to cheat as much.

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Repanse campaign in Warhammer 2 yesterday, though I probably should've just gone to bed. After finishing my first turn of the evening I discovered I forgot to check all my lords when one of them got attacked while sieging a Skaven settlement. After losing the battle, I discovered I completely forgot about three units of cavalry I had hid in the trees somewhere.

I decided to manually fight another battle because the autoresolve would kill three infantry units and I managed to lose one of my heroes instead. Luckily it wasn't that high level and I do get a +5 to hero rank, so not the worst trade-off.

I also finally got to recruit a bunch of pegasus knights, all of which lost at least half their life in every manual battle I fought because I keep forgetting to pull them away.

Luckily I'm rich enough that I can easily replace losses and have enough armies and no adjacent enemies such that I can send 3 full stacks for every enemy stack.

I did end up playing way later than I planned for, every turn thinking "I'll stop right after the next battle."

I'm sure no one but me actually cares

I do, please share your findings.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Making me want to play TW Warhammer again. Waiting until 3 as theres so much other new stuff to play with until after thats been out for a while. AI improvements would be nice.

Been playing Crusader Kings 3 a bit more, seems hard in a tribal Scandinavian start not to just invade everyone around you. Get a couple of points in the martial tree to deal with control and give away your titles so they just pay you tribute and vassals are happy. Still in my first life from the Jylland start and I founded the kingdom of Denmark and not far off having enough counties to grab Norway too. My breeding program not going so well though, my heir managed to get maimed and died from his wounds. Now I have a 60 year old king and a 3 year old heir from my second wife, which isn't a great place to be.

In random thoughts, our poorly 3 year old decided to go mountaineering on our TV stand while I was making a sandwich and trashed the TV. No major injuries thankfully, but it did mean I got to go and buy a new one with the full blessing of house management.

 

[Brian Boru]

my heir managed to get maimed and died from his wounds. Now I have a 60 year old king and a 3 year old heir from my second wife…

…3 year old … trashed the TV. No major injuries thankfully, but it did mean I got to go and buy a new one with the full blessing of house management

While those 2 incidents are clearly related, seems you fared much better in the 2nd skirmish?

 

[Frindis]

A little bit of this and that. Assassin's Creed: Origins, PUBG, Hitman 3 and If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers. I have to say, it is quite satisfying to go absolutely bonkers in Hitman 3. I almost never play a bad guy, but you can bet nobody survived my visit to the Thornbridge Manor (fantastic location btw!) muuahahaha! *looks around* muahahaahaaaaa! *looks around a bit more* muahhuh.....huh* OK, I'm all good now!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

While those 2 incidents are clearly related, seems you fared much better in the 2nd skirmish?

Well y'know what they say about life imitating art. Still, not sure how well getting a new TV compares to becoming the undisputed King of Denmark.

 

[Brian Boru]

not sure how well getting a new TV compares to becoming the undisputed King of Denmark

Well, just check that there's nothing rotten in the state of your TV in your little hamlet, and you'll be ahead…

 

[Zloth]

Had a great time with Horizon: Zero Dawn last night! I was doing a multi-part mission that had been pretty hard,

Spoiler: What monsters are in the game and Queen's Gambit side quest spoilers:

There's a robot critter in the game that's a giant worm-like thing, only with claws on its sides to help it burrow into the ground. It's got to be 15 foot tall when just lying on the ground. A quest I got last night required me to kill one. I had only tangled with those things once before, when I tricked some crocodile machines into fighting each other. A couple of these things crashed in and demolished them in no time, then started on me. I had to run a long way and quaff a few potions just to get away. So, I was pretty worried about having to fight something I could barely manage to run away from!

I started over toward where the marker said it would be and, oh ho! It was down below the cliff I was on! Worms can spit rocks pretty far, but not THAT far! Using my veteran gamer skills, I perched myself up on the cliff and plunked away at the thing. It took a while, and there was a scary moment when I found it actually COULD throw rocks that far, but it went down to my arrows.

Then I pulled a n00by and turned my quest in before looting the corpse. Aloy went walking away with the quest giver to another location, leaving whatever loot the giant clawed robot worm monster to the program's garbage memory collector. Ooof.

The next step looked like it was just a bunch of guys swarming in. It even let me set traps ahead of time. I guess the last mission was the final fight and they're just throwing this in so I can feel good about myself and get a bunch of loot off the bodies. The woman and her child, who I've been doing this mission series to rescue, walked on down to the lake and... boom! boom! BOOM! Something was walking toward us. Something BIG!

The quest giver ran off with the woman and child but ordered a couple of soldiers to help me fight. Yeah, right. OK buddy, your name is going to be "breakfast." And you? You're name is "lunch." I'm going to hide in this bush while you distract... oh great sunspot, it's a corrupted thunderjaw! The thing is like a giant... uhhh.... well, it's this:

Only this one was corrupted, meaning it's stronger and leaves puddles of corruption behind that slow you and do some damage.

I got killed pretty quick the first time, but I managed to bring the thing down in an epic battle the second time I tried. There was a rock pillar about as tall as the thunderjaw that I kept between me and the robot. It turns out that the thing's tail has the magical ability to clip through that rock, but it stopped everything else. Shoot, run around, shoot, run around, start to shoot but it's too late so just run around more, jump that puddle of corruption... I shot off one of its guns, picked it up, and shot the thunderjaw with it. Then I did the same to another of its guns. The thing still had half its hit points, so I kept playing ring-around-the-pillar until it was almost dead. I ran out of materials to make my favorite kind of arrow, something I never got even close to doing since the start of the game. Healing potions/herbs were almost all gone - but now the beast was limping and missing most of its weapons and armor. I pulled the fire arrows out and finished it off.

I looted the dead monster and the two dead soldiers, THEN I got on to the boat and road off to side-quest victory.

 

[Brian Boru]

Picked up Dishonored 2 & 3, currently on Midweek Madness sale on Steam, 75-80% off. I started Dishonored recently and it's great, looking forward to getting back to it soon.

Also got a couple of cute puzzles for $4, Cats Organized Neatly and Dogs Organized Neatly—simple little fit the shapes in the grid puzzles, but with loads of charm. Ideal to play with your young kids, I imagine.

@ZedClampet do you know about Gas Station Simulator? Might fit your car thing

 

[Pifanjr]

Picked up Dishonored 2 & 3

I didn't know there was a third game already. I haven't gotten around to playing the second yet.

So little time, so many games to play.

 

[mainer]

Picked up Dishonored 2 & 3,

I didn't know there was a third game already.

There isn't a Dishonored 3, at least not yet. But maybe @Brian Boru is thinking about Dishonored: Death of the Outsider which is a stand-alone adventure and the current end of the series, but not a true Dishonored 3. There is a nice 75-80% off Midweek Madness sale on those games.

Franchise - Dishonored

Franchise Summer Sale 2021

store.steampowered.com

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampet do you know about Gas Station Simulator? Might fit your car thing

It does sound like my sort of thing. I'll have to check it out. I mostly like simulators when they can teach me something, which I'm not sure is the case here, but sometimes they are fun just to relax in, too. I'm also looking at Tank Mechanic Simulator, where you repair and restore old tanks and put them in a museum. The tanks are all WWII models that are supposedly reasonably accurate with the parts you repair/replace.

 

[ZedClampet]

In my co-op campaign playing as Ghosts of Pahuax, I've decided to abandon my starting point. I've got one complete province and a couple of other minor settlements, but I decided I didn't want to deal with the 100 percent chaos corruption in the far north. It makes your citizens very unhappy, and you basically have to keep good armies with characters that combat corruption in every region you own.

I don't have enough money for that considering how long it takes to get rid of corruption even under the best of circumstances, so I'm leaving two dirt cheap 20 stacks up there, and my real army is heading south to claim some better territory. Not sure where I'm going yet. I don't know who is still around. If I can find those Skaven in the northwest, I'll pay them a visit. It's a gamble though, with only one army. It's a darn good army, though, the best I can make. Unfortunately, I've wasted a lot of time, so there are going to be a lot of big armies down there.

 

[Brian Boru]

maybe @Brian Boru is thinking about Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

I was too tired to type all that at the time, thank you for the abbreviation expansion

Geez, should've just typed it out—look at all this verbiage it's caused!

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I was too tired to type all that at the time, thank you for the abbreviation expansion

Geez, should've just typed it out—look at all this verbiage it's caused!

Your shortcut ended up wasting space on the internet servers.