The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (11 September to 17 September)

[Ryzengang]

So I've been mostly playing AC: Black Flag on the PC recently and I'm having a good time with it. It's an easy game to pick up for an hour or two and just mess around. As Fall starts to roll in and it cools down more I'll be back to PC gaming a lot more.

As a gaming-related aside, I got my email for the Steam Deck today and I decided to pull the trigger on it. I have some problems with it, but overall I've come to really enjoy handheld gaming via my Switch so it kinda feels like a no-brainer to me now. Especially so since I already have a large library of games that I can play on the Deck. I've been meaning to get to the Yakuza games for a bit now and they are all verified to work on the Deck so I may start there.

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampetsuddenly you'll have countless others if you shoot and then all hell is loose!

I usually just play with the crossbow and a melee weapon when I'm out and a gun when I'm defending the base. When the game was relatively new, you could crossbow them once in the head and kill them. Now you have to hit them over and over again. Then they fall down. Then they get back up and you hit them one more time.

I really enjoy the game. There are a lot of things that could use some more polish. I've given up on The Fun Pimps, though, and try not to worry about it. It is what it is.

 

[ZedClampet]

Played some Tavern Master.

I was doing great. I had 3 cooks, one each for main courses, soups and deserts. I had 5 waitresses, one of whom liked cleaning, so I let her be the one who did that. And I had a security guard. And my bartender was excellent.

Then there was the fire. My bar where the drinks were burned to a crisp before my employees could put it out. So now I couldn't serve drinks without replacing the bar, but to replace the bar, I had to move the awesome bartender who was stationed there. But there was no place to put him. He could only be at the bar. The game informed me I would have to fire him to replace the bar. This is where I explain that I find that to be absolute bulls**t.

I decided I wanted to completely start over and scum-save instead. There were some things I didn't understand completely on the first playthrough, so now I can be more efficient.

Anyway, I played the demo for this a week ago and fell in love with it. There are all sorts of things you can do. I had just gotten to the point where teams of adventurers would come to the bar, and I could hire them to go on missions and bring back rare ingredients.

The building is pretty simple, but fun. Never enough money for what you want to do, though.

 

[Zloth]

It seems Two Worlds 2 is gone for good.

I enjoyed Two Worlds 1. The voice acting was weak, but the game was fun. Two Worlds 2, not so much. The voice acting managed to get even worse and the gameplay just wasn't fun enough to keep me hooked for long.

It did have special support for 3D Vision that was very interesting. Instead of making things that were, say, 80 feet away look like they were 80ft away, it set the entire game up in a way that it all popped out of the screen. Infinity was at screen depth. You would think it would be like playing the game in a shoe box, but somehow it really works. It was as if my brain re-calibrated. If I reached out my hand to try and touch where I thought the screen was, I would stop way short! I'm not sure what benefit there was to doing it like that, but it was sure interesting.

TW2 didn't do well, but it had folks that enjoyed it despite the issues. They put out a DLC for the game and people expected they would make TW3.

Then, for some reasons nobody can fathom, they released not TW3, but Two Worlds: Shattered Embrace. This was an HD version of Two Worlds 2.... but not the whole game. Not the base game, either. It's just the DLC done in HD! Done rather poorly, too. Less than 30% positive reviews on Steam. And who's supposed to buy it? I guess they were hoping people would buy the old base game then buy the Shattered Embrace instead of the old DLC??

Well, even that option is gone now. From what I can gather looking at the Steam forums, they had trouble with the DLC for the original game back in 2017. They tried to remove it but didn't do it right. They told people to fiddle with their registries to fix the issue, but that only worked for some folks. After five years (yes YEARS) of this, Steam finally de-listed the game. I don't know if the devs/publisher is even solvent at this point.

--------------------------

On the football front.... yow! Close game vs. the Chargers. I was really starting to worry about the Chargers' quarterback. He was clearly in a lot of pain and kept getting hit over and over. If he had a rib that was cracking, it could get real dangerous real fast.

Then he throws a huge pass almost to the endzone!?

 

[ZedClampet]

It seems Two Worlds 2 is gone for good.

I enjoyed Two Worlds 1. The voice acting was weak, but the game was fun. Two Worlds 2, not so much. The voice acting managed to get even worse and the gameplay just wasn't fun enough to keep me hooked for long.

It did have special support for 3D Vision that was very interesting. Instead of making things that were, say, 80 feet away look like they were 80ft away, it set the entire game up in a way that it all popped out of the screen. Infinity was at screen depth. You would think it would be like playing the game in a shoe box, but somehow it really works. It was as if my brain re-calibrated. If I reached out my hand to try and touch where I thought the screen was, I would stop way short! I'm not sure what benefit there was to doing it like that, but it was sure interesting.

TW2 didn't do well, but it had folks that enjoyed it despite the issues. They put out a DLC for the game and people expected they would make TW3.

Then, for some reasons nobody can fathom, they released not TW3, but Two Worlds: Shattered Embrace. This was an HD version of Two Worlds 2.... but not the whole game. Not the base game, either. It's just the DLC done in HD! Done rather poorly, too. Less than 30% positive reviews on Steam. And who's supposed to buy it? I guess they were hoping people would buy the old base game then buy the Shattered Embrace instead of the old DLC??

Well, even that option is gone now. From what I can gather looking at the Steam forums, they had trouble with the DLC for the original game back in 2017. They tried to remove it but didn't do it right. They told people to fiddle with their registries to fix the issue, but that only worked for some folks. After five years (yes YEARS) of this, Steam finally de-listed the game. I don't know if the devs/publisher is even solvent at this point.

--------------------------

On the football front.... yow! Close game vs. the Chargers. I was really starting to worry about the Chargers' quarterback. He was clearly in a lot of pain and kept getting hit over and over. If he had a rib that was cracking, it could get real dangerous real fast.

Then he throws a huge pass almost to the endzone!?

How does Two Worlds II Castle Defense fit into that story? That's all I can find. Never heard of the games., but that's not unusual for me.

*************

Well, no sleep for me tonight. Got 4 hours each of the last two nights. Not good. And I have to go somewhere this morning. Going to see if I can cancel. Probably shouldn't be driving right now.

**************

I bought Tecnicity, which is a kind of typical/funny thing for me to do. I'm a horrible builder, so all I really needed was a first person city builder where you have to build every building yourself. Just finished my first building, a warehouse, and I'm not going to even post a picture of it because everyone would feel pity for me. Personally I think it's hilarious. I don't know how it's possible to be so bad at making buildings. I think what I'm going to do is do an image search for buildings and just make interesting buildings that I find. That I can actually do.

 

[mainer]

I reached a burnout point on turn-based tactical combat games, as I'd been playing them for a couple of months now (Wasteland 2 - Wasteland 3 - Solasta), and while all three of those games are excellent, I just felt the need to play a game with live action combat as well as having a deeper storyline and more complex character personalities/interactions. So I started modding & playing Mass Effect Legendary.

While I haven't had time to mod all 3 games yet, the good thing about MEL is that you can mod each game individually, and I finished modding ME1 in a few hours and began my ME Trilogy playthrough, as there weren't that many mods specifically for ME1 anyway and I can mod ME2-3 in my spare time. The biggest, and most important mods for me, in ME1 were the ALOT textures & static lighting, as well as ALOV for the upscaled 4k video cutscenes. I think it looks (and plays) pretty good for a game that is basically the same as the one released in 2008.

It seems Two Worlds 2 is gone for good.

That's so sad. Without quoting every point you mentioned in your post, I have to agree that TW1 was much more fun to play than TW2. For all it's jerky combat (especially when fighting from horseback) and the inconsistent quality of the voice acting, the exploration and combat in that open world environment were great. In TW2 I think the developer, Reality Pumps, just tried to do too many things and ended up not doing any of them well, plus the size of the explorable world was considerably reduced.

While I own both games on Steam from previous sales, I haven't played either of those games since I installed them from the original DVD boxed versions. I think Reality Pumps had some really good ideas for open world RPGs, but for whatever reason, they fell short in the actual game, more so with TW2.

How does Two Worlds II Castle Defense fit into that story? That's all I can find. Never heard of the games., but that's not unusual for me.

The first Two Worlds is still available on Steam:

Two Worlds Epic Edition on Steam

... 300 years after Aziraal has been banished, a brother and sister are drawn into the conflict which has flared up between the Orcs and the free world. Kyra, the hero's younger sister, suddenly disappears in mysterious circumstances.«...If my family really belongs to the chosen ones, why then...

store.steampowered.com

As @Zloth said, TW2 isn't, but here is the original store page (I can only access it because I own the game):

Two Worlds II HD on Steam

Check out the new Velvet Edition bundle including both Two Worlds II and Pirates of the Flying Fortress DLC.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zloth]

How does Two Worlds II Castle Defense fit into that story? That's all I can find. Never heard of the games., but that's not unusual for me.

I never heard of that!?

Well, no sleep for me tonight. Got 4 hours each of the last two nights.

So.... you would be particularly open to friends trying to mess with your mind, hmmmm.... <evil grin>

 

[Brian Boru]

you would be particularly open to friends trying to mess with your mind

Too late, already happened 3-4 years ago. Results/effects visible at:

Recent content by ZedClampet

forums.pcgamer.com

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Wood Elf campaign in Warhammer 2 today. I finished my war with Naggarond... or so I thought. Malekith escaped over sea with just one other unit after I took the last city I saw.

I tried chasing him with one of my armies, but you have basically no way to catch up to armies on the open sea. Meanwhile, some Skaven declared war on me on the South-East part of the map and I took over the magic forest on the South-West side of the map, for which I declared war on the Awakened. I also got dragged into a war between Oxyotl and another Skaven faction near my capital in the North-West, but so far they've been occupied each other, though I think Oxyotl just lost his main army to a Chaos faction he's at war with around there too.

After dealing with the immediate Skaven threat in the South-East, I decided to sail further, instead of trespassing through the Lizardmen who were between me and the rest of the Skaven forces and who refused me military access. There was some sea treasure nearby and I just captured a port city, so it was convenient anyway. Imagine my surprise when I stumble upon a bunch more of Naggarond's cities. Now I know where Malekith was sailing towards and now I can try to burn it all to the ground before he reaches it.

Between the sea treasure battles and the war with the Awakened, I had a lot of battles against Vampire Coast, which made me realize the Wood Elves have no proper artillery, at least as far as I'm aware. The Vampire Coast is also a ranged focused faction and they do it perhaps as well as the Wood Elves, especially with their artillery. Luckily the AI is still pretty bad and I was able to take out their artillery with some flying units without taking too many losses each time. One time I actually had the opportunity to set up most of my army behind his army, letting me charge straight into his artillery before he could respond.

All was going well until I wanted to take the capital city of the Awakened, which has a full garrison of 20 units and had a lord in it with a few units as well. Still, I didn't expect too much of a problem, but didn't notice there was another lord with a full 20 unit army standing right next to the city as well until I was standing right next to it with no option to withdraw.

With some careful maneuvering I managed to take out the worst of their ranged units and artillery before they could reach my lines, but they still got uncomfortably close to breaching my lines, especially when the mournguls showed up, which tore right through my infantry. Luckily I managed to break their leadership before things went wrong too much, which for undead means they just all fall apart instead of running away.

It seems Two Worlds 2 is gone for good.

I enjoyed Two Worlds 1. The voice acting was weak, but the game was fun. Two Worlds 2, not so much. The voice acting managed to get even worse and the gameplay just wasn't fun enough to keep me hooked for long.

It did have special support for 3D Vision that was very interesting. Instead of making things that were, say, 80 feet away look like they were 80ft away, it set the entire game up in a way that it all popped out of the screen. Infinity was at screen depth. You would think it would be like playing the game in a shoe box, but somehow it really works. It was as if my brain re-calibrated. If I reached out my hand to try and touch where I thought the screen was, I would stop way short! I'm not sure what benefit there was to doing it like that, but it was sure interesting.

TW2 didn't do well, but it had folks that enjoyed it despite the issues. They put out a DLC for the game and people expected they would make TW3.

Then, for some reasons nobody can fathom, they released not TW3, but Two Worlds: Shattered Embrace. This was an HD version of Two Worlds 2.... but not the whole game. Not the base game, either. It's just the DLC done in HD! Done rather poorly, too. Less than 30% positive reviews on Steam. And who's supposed to buy it? I guess they were hoping people would buy the old base game then buy the Shattered Embrace instead of the old DLC??

Well, even that option is gone now. From what I can gather looking at the Steam forums, they had trouble with the DLC for the original game back in 2017. They tried to remove it but didn't do it right. They told people to fiddle with their registries to fix the issue, but that only worked for some folks. After five years (yes YEARS) of this, Steam finally de-listed the game. I don't know if the devs/publisher is even solvent at this point.

--------------------------

On the football front.... yow! Close game vs. the Chargers. I was really starting to worry about the Chargers' quarterback. He was clearly in a lot of pain and kept getting hit over and over. If he had a rib that was cracking, it could get real dangerous real fast.

Then he throws a huge pass almost to the endzone!?

Two Worlds 2 was a mediocre game at best, but it had the best magic system I've ever seen in a game. I even adapted it for a homebrew D&D campaign once, but didn't get beyond the first session.

I reached a burnout point on turn-based tactical combat games, as I'd been playing them for a couple of months now (Wasteland 2 - Wasteland 3 - Solasta), and while all three of those games are excellent, I just felt the need to play a game with live action combat as well as having a deeper storyline and more complex character personalities/interactions. So I started modding & playing Mass Effect Legendary.

While I haven't had time to mod all 3 games yet, the good thing about MEL is that you can mod each game individually, and I finished modding ME1 in a few hours and began my ME Trilogy playthrough, as there weren't that many mods specifically for ME1 anyway and I can mod ME2-3 in my spare time. The biggest, and most important mods for me, in ME1 were the ALOT textures & static lighting, as well as ALOV for the upscaled 4k video cutscenes. I think it looks (and plays) pretty good for a game that is basically the same as the one released in 2008.

That's so sad. Without quoting every point you mentioned in your post, I have to agree that TW1 was much more fun to play than TW2. For all it's jerky combat (especially when fighting from horseback) and the inconsistent quality of the voice acting, the exploration and combat in that open world environment were great. In TW2 I think the developer, Reality Pumps, just tried to do too many things and ended up not doing any of them well, plus the size of the explorable world was considerably reduced.

While I own both games on Steam from previous sales, I haven't played either of those games since I installed them from the original DVD boxed versions. I think Reality Pumps had some really good ideas for open world RPGs, but for whatever reason, they fell short in the actual game, more so with TW2.


The first Two Worlds is still available on Steam:

Two Worlds Epic Edition on Steam

... 300 years after Aziraal has been banished, a brother and sister are drawn into the conflict which has flared up between the Orcs and the free world. Kyra, the hero's younger sister, suddenly disappears in mysterious circumstances.«...If my family really belongs to the chosen ones, why then...

store.steampowered.com

As @Zloth said, TW2 isn't, but here is the original store page (I can only access it because I own the game):

Two Worlds II HD on Steam

Check out the new Velvet Edition bundle including both Two Worlds II and Pirates of the Flying Fortress DLC.

store.steampowered.com

I'm getting a bit burned out on Total War: Warhammer 2 as well. I've been playing it for almost 2 years now, with the occasional smaller indie game in between. I considered changing games while playing the last campaign, but by the time I finished it I was ready for another one. However, seeing my wife play Rimworld has made me want to try it too. I recently saw gameplay of the new Steam version of Dwarf Fortress too which got me in the mood to play it and Rimworld is very similar.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Fenyx Rising is one awesome game. I just made it to the Hall of the Gods for the first time, and it seems like it's going to finally start becoming more of an open world. I'm loving this game.

 

[ZedClampet]

My Drowned campaign got pretty exciting tonight. At one point I had precisely 10 enemy armies in my territory. I had to abandon killing Naggarond to deal with the new arrivals, and, of course, they came for war, but they don't actually want to fight, so I end up chasing them around the map.

I did manage to get rid of the lizard men to the south. Next time we play I should be able to finish off Naggarond. We're only 18 settlements away from the Short Victory conditions.

 

[Brian Boru]

I mentioned elsewhere re Far Cry interfaces: "The abysmal interface of 3 has been mostly fixed in 5, after being 1/2 fixed in 4". Still got one of the main problems tho:

 

[ZedClampet]

I mentioned elsewhere re Far Cry interfaces: "The abysmal interface of 3 has been mostly fixed in 5, after being 1/2 fixed in 4". Still got one of the main problems tho:

Nothing like jogging down the road and pressing "2" to pull up your main gun and realizing that you don't have it anymore. You've got some random mob's gun instead.

 

[ZedClampet]

God, I hate tutorials. "Find house and get spare tackle....", "House Empty"...

 

[Brian Boru]

Nothing like jogging down the road and pressing "2" to pull up your main gun and realizing that you don't have it anymore. You've got some random mob's gun instead.

I've had a couple of funny ones, similar tho mostly not interface related—these were cheeky NPCs.

Rescued a hostage and lost gun via multi-purpose 'E' while looting one of the baddies. No biggie, swap it again after finished looting other baddies. Trot back to baddie, no gun

Hostage starts an effusive gratitude spiel, so I turn to her somewhat irritated. Had to laugh when I saw her carrying my tricked-out super-duper gun—she sure wasted no time picking up some protection! I didn't have the heart to blast her just to get it back—that's me, the softie killin' machine!

Second one was up in the mountains, I needed a chopper to access a nearby high point. Went to helipad, zapped a few baddies, rescued a hostage, looted the guys and the little shack. Reading some note on the table when I heard the rotors spin up…

 

[Zloth]

Almost done with Death Stranding... I think? It's a little hard to tell for sure when an episode can take anywhere between 3 weeks and 45 minutes.

Nothing like jogging down the road and pressing "2" to pull up your main gun and realizing that you don't have it anymore. You've got some random mob's gun instead.

Ugh! I got that a bunch in Metal Gear Solid 5. Worse yet, I sometimes wasn't sure which one was theirs and which was mine!

 

[ZedClampet]

Been playing some Tavern Master this morning. Don't know why, but I could watch the little people wander around all day.

 

[Pifanjr]

One of my friends on a Discord server started a Naked Challenge in Rimworld and sharing some of the stuff that's happening. So when I had a few minutes today I started my own Naked Challenge, though my experience with the game consists of watching my wife play through the tutorial.

I keep being surprised by the lack of mechanics compared to Dwarf Fortress, like your people not needing an axe to chop trees or seeds to grow crops.

I really only had maybe 10 minutes to play so far though, so I only got a little shack with a bed and a small plot of rice. I'm not sure yet what I can do for food. My friend has a mod that adds fishing to the game, but I'd like to try without mods first.

 

[ZedClampet]

One of my friends on a Discord server started a Naked Challenge in Rimworld and sharing some of the stuff that's happening. So when I had a few minutes today I started my own Naked Challenge, though my experience with the game consists of watching my wife play through the tutorial.

I keep being surprised by the lack of mechanics compared to Dwarf Fortress, like your people not needing an axe to chop trees or seeds to grow crops.

I really only had maybe 10 minutes to play so far though, so I only got a little shack with a bed and a small plot of rice. I'm not sure yet what I can do for food. My friend has a mod that adds fishing to the game, but I'd like to try without mods first.

This must be different from the Naked Challenge I just watched on TikTok. Were you wearing clothes? If so, what does your Naked Challenge mean?

 

[Zloth]

I'm guessing you never put on any sort of armor - but this is a colony building game!? Maybe it means no mods at all?

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm guessing you never put on any sort of armor - but this is a colony building game!? Maybe it means no mods at all?

That's my problem; however, after some more searching there is something called the Naked Brutality Challenge that involves starting with nothing, including clothes.

 

[Zloth]

You did a SEARCH on "naked challenge"?? You're a braver man than me!

 

[ZedClampet]

You did a SEARCH on "naked challenge"?? You're a braver man than me!

lol that's how I ended up watching TikTok