The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (21 August to 27 August)

[Zloth]

GoG is having an.... end of summer (?) sale. It looks like a pretty big one, too. The complete Dishonored collection for just $16 is a steal. Mad Max for $5. $1.50 for F.E.A.R. Homeworld Remastered for $3.50 (also on Steam).

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Paint Drying Simulator on Steam

This is literally a game about watch paint drying for 6 hours, so.. ..do you feel like wasting money and time? XD

store.steampowered.com

PS read the review by Malutar

PPS comments re huge GPU usage, so possibility of some mining going on in the background.

Lol. Great game for only $0.99! And that's one great review. Haha. Definitely worth the read.

I'm alive. That's blessed enough for me. I love life even through the dark times.

Masochist or eternal optimist?

 

[ZedClampet]

Lol. Great game for only $0.99! And that's one great review. Haha. Definitely worth the read.


Masochist or eternal optimist?

I'm absolutely an optimist. Sometimes I laugh at my own optimism, but I stay optimistic even when I know I'm probably wrong.

 

[mainer]

Nvidia had great tech support the one time I contacted them, but that could have just been the guy I talked to, but he was extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

I've had really good experiences with both EVGA and OriginPC tech support, both are 24/7 with knowledgeable and patient people, without endless wait times or lengthy computer-generated menu options.

I just completed (Wed night) Wasteland 3, and while I came to love the game for all the variable ways to complete quests/missions, I still prefer Wasteland 2 Directors Cut for it's complexity and longer campaign. WL3 is much shorter and some aspects a bit over-simplified, but still an excellent story-driven, tactical combat RPG (For @Brian Boru 's sake, would WL3 be an SDTCRPG? As I know he loves all those RPG types). The soundtrack was definitely great, and you still get those ending slides that show how your choices affected the world.

Current projects are modding Fallout New Vegas, but that's going to be a WIP as most mods are really old and no longer supported, and other mods are from the last couple of years. Getting the right combination will take some time, but I really have the urge to play it again, as old as it is.

Also modding Mass Effect Legendary, which is relatively easy in comparison, but will take a bit of time because some of those mods are several GBs in size. Still waiting on the release of CEM (Citadel Epilogue Mod) for ME3, but hopefully by the time l play/complete ME1 & ME2, it will be released.

I've also started a new run of Solasta, as I wanted to play the Lost Valley DLC, but figured I run through the main campaign again first as it isn't that long.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I'm absolutely an optimist. Sometimes I laugh at my own optimism, but I stay optimistic even when I know I'm probably wrong.

I'm an exaggerationist. That means no matter whether I'm speculating something good or bad, my speculations are always way more grandiose than reality.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm an exaggerationist. That means no matter whether I'm speculating something good or bad, my speculations are always way more grandiose than reality.

Hmm, that could be good because any time something bad happens it's actually a relief because it wasn't as bad as you were expecting.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Hmm, that could be good because any time something bad happens it's actually a relief because it wasn't as bad as you were expecting.

You could look at it that way. But usually how it works out is that I'm extremely stressed and anxious for a long time, and then finally relieved. I'd rather just have a more realistic outlook.

 

[Brian Boru]

I'm absolutely an optimist

I'm an exaggerationist

You can always recognize pessimists by the broad smile on their face—things almost always turn out better than expected.

I'm an idealist—I make lists of ideas, there's one around here somewhere…

I'm a sedimentologist—ie a stick-in-the-mud.

I'm a philanthropist—just waiting for the prerequisite get-filthy-rich bit to happen first.

I'm an incrementalist—not quite there yet, you understand…

I'm a fundamentalist—but who doesn't like mind games?

@Colif queues up Four Yorkshiremen again.

 

[ZedClampet]

You can always recognize pessimists by the broad smile on their face—things almost always turn out better than expected.

I'm an idealist—I make lists of ideas, there's one around here somewhere…

I'm a sedimentologist—ie a stick-in-the-mud.

I'm a philanthropist—just waiting for the prerequisite get-filthy-rich bit to happen first.

I'm an incrementalist—not quite there yet, you understand…

I'm a fundamentalist—but who doesn't like mind games?

@Colif queues up Four Yorkshiremen again.

The worst thing you can be, IMO, is an optimistic idealist with all-or-nothing cognitive distortions. Nothing satisfies them, and they wander through life, flitting from one thing to the next, never satisfied, never accomplishing anything. I have a couple of childhood friends who fit this fairly common description. One day they'll be a Realtor, then all of a sudden they are trying to get me to join their multilevel marketing business. Before I can finish telling them, "No thanks," they've opened up a landscaping business.

 

[Brian Boru]

Darn, it's not true—or not as true as it seemed at first anyway

I was sort-of hoping Amazon would buy EA and then shut it down. Poetry and justice sort-of

 

[Frindis]

I always found it funny how humans cling to life while at the same time smacking the ever-living **** out of anything smaller than themselves... I'm not human myself though, I identify as a meat popsicle.

As for games, I am currently grinding as an elite master (something like that) postmaster in Death Stranding. While the lore is a bit meh, the environment and hard labor make it amazing. Strapping overload on your back and stubbornly walking for an hour or two is irritatingly fun. Then you miss those hard labor moments as you get that sweet bike.

 

[ZedClampet]

Darn, it's not true—or not as true as it seemed at first anyway

I was sort-of hoping Amazon would buy EA and then shut it down. Poetry and justice sort-of

I don't think anyone is going to agree to EAs demands, which is that Captain WeinerHead (Andrew Wilson) becomes the new President/CEO of the combined company--at least that's what another article had said.

I always found it funny how humans cling to life while at the same time smacking the ever-living **** out of anything smaller than themselves.

Humans are just animals that happen to be omnivores due to the protein requirements of their big brains. Humans are biologically inclined, as a survival mechanism, to crave meat. I wouldn't expect them to stop killing/eating animals anymore than I would expect a lion to let a wounded wildebeest wander by them unscathed. In the end, a human eating a cow isn't morally any different than a lion eating a wildebeest. We just have this weird, narcissistic notion that we are more than just animals, but that's metaphysics, and I don't discuss metaphysics.

 

[ZedClampet]

Does everyone do this, or is it just an ADD thing? And I've had much worse than this.

 

[Zloth]

The soundtrack was definitely great, and you still get those ending slides that show how your choices affected the world.

The song playing for the first part of those slides changes lyrics depending on your choices! I don't think I've ever seen that before. I just re-watched the video I recorded of the end slides - there were some nasty choices in that game. I still feel kinda bad for Reagan.

It took me a little over 100 hours to get through the campaign. Seemed pretty long to me!

@Frindis - I'll have to watch for your structures! Are you playing on Steam?

@ZedClampet - are those browser tabs!?!? OMG!!! I hardly go over 4 tabs. I'm pretty sure I would reboot before I could get to that many tabs.

 

[flashn00b]

Considering the Steam Community's uncanny ability to burn bridges with developers working on the Mobile Suit Gundam IP, I think it's fair to say that said bridge burning is a pretty good source of validation for Epic Games' bribery of Square-Enix. And considering other issues I have with the Japanese PC gaming scene, I think it's fair to say that such bribes are a necessary, and ultimately lesser evil.

 

[flashn00b]

What's the Steam community doing? Just went to the forums and there's a lot of false speculation that the game has been canceled, but, overall, it's not that bad right now. Maybe it was bad when their server test failed. But there doesn't seem to be any bridges to even burn since the developer is still updating weekly. They just aren't communicating. Are you saying that Steam ran them off and that Epic's bribes are all that keep Japanese companies on PC? Sorry, I'm just a little confused. I've probably misread/misinterpreted what you are saying.

Basically, they took it upon themselves to whine about SD Gundam Battle Alliance when it's really not a good idea to compare it against games that would never see the light of day on PC, and the aforementioned whining only succeeds in contributing to the hemorrhaging of Gundam game developers on the PC platform.

And while the Steam Community is bringing their bridge with Artdink to the torch, people on the Epic Games Store are playing Kingdom Hearts III and Stranger of Paradise. I wouldn't be surprised if they also get LIVE A LIVE when that stops being Nintendo exclusive.

Honestly, it's pretty hard to care about the Steam vs Epic debacle when the Steam counterpart to Square-Enix's EGS exclusives are a litany of complaints towards the Mobile Suit Gundam IP, and this is 7 months after I bought Chivalry 2 out of frustration towards archer spamming in Mount&Blade multiplayer (both Warband and Bannerlord) at the time.

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampet - are those browser tabs!?!? OMG!!! I hardly go over 4 tabs. I'm pretty sure I would reboot before I could get to that many tabs.

Not only were those tabs, but I also had Solasta and Total War Warhammer 3 running at the same time. Plus Photoshop for cropping screen shots, although Photoshop finally crashed on me.

 

[ZedClampet]

Basically, they took it upon themselves to whine about SD Gundam Battle Alliance when it's really not a good idea to compare it against games that would never see the light of day on PC, and the aforementioned whining only succeeds in contributing to the hemorrhaging of Gundam game developers on the PC platform.

And while the Steam Community is bringing their bridge with Artdink to the torch, people on the Epic Games Store are playing Kingdom Hearts III and Stranger of Paradise. I wouldn't be surprised if they also get LIVE A LIVE when that stops being Nintendo exclusive.

Honestly, it's pretty hard to care about the Steam vs Epic debacle when the Steam counterpart to Square-Enix's EGS exclusives are a litany of complaints towards the Mobile Suit Gundam IP, and this is 7 months after I bought Chivalry 2 out of frustration towards archer spamming in Mount&Blade multiplayer (both Warband and Bannerlord) at the time.

Steam users and Valve are not the same entity, and Steam users are also Epic users--that IS the same entity. So the same people who are playing Japanese games on Epic are the same ones, for the most part, who are burning bridges on Steam. Why aren't they burning bridges on Epic? Because Epic hates gamers and refuses to allow forums or user reviews. Tim Sweeney's behavior towards gamers on Twitter tells the whole story.

Now do I actually care? No. Like many people, I use both stores. Sweeney is an absolute bastard, though, and I would take some pleasure in watching him crash and burn. But that would also have a downside since we all have so many games over there now.

 

[flashn00b]

The me of three years ago would join in on the Epic hating bandwagon. But between playing a game that's competing with an EGS exclusive that ended up being worse than installing the Epic Games Launcher and watching the Japanese PC gaming scene give all the validation that Epic needs to bribe Square-Enix, it just seems impossible to really give a crap about the Steam vs Epic debacle.

I think if people want more Japanese games on PC, they're gonna have to side with the lesser evil one day, cuz at least Square-Enix is contractually obligated to make PC ports of their games, while other Japanese developers can choose to abandon their PC support over hurt feelings on forums. In fact, I think if Epic were to put a lot of money into the Gundam IP, then the developers working on those games might actually see the lack of forums and/or meaningful review system as a feature rather than a bug.

 

[Frindis]

I'll have to watch for your structures! Are you playing on Steam?

I'm playing on Xbox Gamepass. I'm ScurvyTeeth in the game, but I have not built any structures yet as I have not ventured far (just took the boat). I did put up a way for people to avoid most of the timefall at the Wind Farm using a ladder and a couple of ropes and placing them on the western hillside. I had a little struggle myself the first time I went over there so hopefully, I'll make the journey a bit more pleasant for the other porters. I'm currently at Porter Grade 137 as Great Mover (not elite as stated earlier) with 3,77 tons overall delivered and with a total distance of 86 [km]. The other stats for anyone interested:

Just found out that pressing space while in photo mode does not actually take the screenshot. It kind of sucks as I wanted to share some pictures from my journey. Thankfully I found out early!

 

[Pifanjr]

I got to continue my Warhammer 2 Vortex campaign as Grom again yesterday, after two months of not playing.

I'm in the end game of the campaign, but the high elves are all near the top of the strength ranking and they're all at war with me, so they're not making this too easy.

When I continued the campaign, Numas had just taken over most of Khemri, my faithful ally, so I had to divert a couple of armies there to help out. Not that I did much more than loot his cities though, as Khemri is a powerhouse who keeps destroying armies that I'm pretty sure outnumber his 2:1.

By the end of the session, Numas was destroyed and I had finally taken the capital of one of the high elves, after some slow and careful maneuvering so my three armies kept within reinforcement range of each other.

I did realize this particular campaign is a bit weird because Grom gets some buffs for Goblins, plus I then focused on Goblin techs and other ways to buff Goblins, so most of my armies consist of tier 1 Goblins. I don't really get to play around with the higher tier fun units.

 

[Brian Boru]

I don't discuss metaphysics

I met a physicist one time, and I don't blame you. She met me at a different time, so we never actually met. I much prefer the chemistry of biology.

Does everyone do this

I use 4 diff browsers, so no one gets clogged up like that—I doubt I've gone over 20. I've read posts on software forums from people with 50-100 open at times—but maybe it'll reduce now the better browsers have things like Collections or Save for Later functionality.

I'll have to watch for your structures

Oh, can you name stuff? Zloth's Rope, Frindis' Bridge… that would be cool.

 

[Pifanjr]

Does everyone do this, or is it just an ADD thing? And I've had much worse than this.

My wife with ADHD does. One of my friends does this too, but he's not diagnosed with ADHD (which isn't to say he doesn't have it).

I hate having too many tabs open, because each one feels like a thing I still have to take care of and I hate the feeling of still having things to take care of.

 

[DXCHASE]

GoG is having an.... end of summer (?) sale. It looks like a pretty big one, too. The complete Dishonored collection for just $16 is a steal. Mad Max for $5. $1.50 for F.E.A.R. Homeworld Remastered for $3.50 (also on Steam).

GOG also has Mortal Kombat Trilogy! (added sometime in the middle of august) If anyone is into old MK games. MKT is one of the best imo. Its what MK3 should have been.

 

[ZedClampet]

In my co-op TWW3 campaign, I'm playing Azazel, and all the faction mechanics are new to me, so it's been tough going in the beginning. For one thing, I didn't figure out that there were specific cities that I could take and develop until around turn 30, so I only had my starter city and 1 decent army and one completely crap army. Recruitment has also been something I had to learn, as they recruit very differently than anyone else I've played.

Also, we're playing without mods, so it took me awhile to get my tier 4 units. On Hard difficulty, you can take an early game 20 stack up to a settlement and the auto-resolve often tells you that you are going to lose, which is a huge pain. You either have to manually fight or encircle the city and wait them out, and I try to manually fight as few battles as possible when I'm playing co-op.

Had a nice battle where I was way heavily outmanned and still won, which is somewhat rare for me on Hard or above. I actually went into the battle just wanting to kill as many of them as possible to make it possible for my other army to come in and finish them off. There was nothing really special about the battlefield except that I was going to have to fight uphill if I didn't move after the battle started. Also there were two patches of trees. So I divided my army into four groups, one large and three small. The large group was on the far right, one was on the far left, and two, which had mostly faster units, were hidden in the trees.

When the battle started, my large group marched to the top of a hill further to the left, and then we just waited because we don't have artillery available to us. The Dark Elves also waited because they had reinforcements coming, and we weren't bothering them. So when their extra units arrived, they started moving to go after the largest force on my right, but they had plenty to split off and go to the left. As soon as they got close enough on the right, my units charged downhill to meet them. On the left, once they engaged, I moved both groups of hidden units to flank and surround them. The Dark Elf units didn't care for that, were losing health quickly and started routing almost immediately. As it became clear the left side was in good shape, I started sending the faster units over to hit the right side in the rear (no comment, Brian). Soon enough I had all my forces surrounding them on that side.

Generally speaking, the problem with this strategy is that you have to make sure that you can take care of them in a hurry on your weak side or your strong side can't hold out long enough even if you put your best defensive units there. That depends on the composition of the armies, of course, but in this case our units were about evenly matched, so I was running the risk of being bogged down on the left and never getting to reinforce the right.