The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (26 June to 2 July)

[Brian Boru]

third person … It's far superior during stealth, as you can look around corners

Right, but that's something I'd prefer to avoid if possible—but will of course use if necessary.

I'm playing on easiest—bet you're surprised!—and already died once. The AI seems quite aggressive and capable, I wonder if that's balanced on the premise that I have 3 companions.

I must have stolen a helicopter 20 times

Yeah, I had to grab one to finish the first mission. I managed to crash land it while figuring out the flying controls, and limped back to base with smoke pouring out of it

You shoot someone in the head and they die, but the same sort of goes for you. You can't take many hits

Right, I was pleased to see that in the first mission, had no trouble with it via changng position after each hit. Where I got killed was encountering a bunch of baddies afterwards while exploring near home base—I only took a few shots, but it was enough.

This could take me a long time with my penchant for exploring. Do you remember if there are fast travel points? I hope so, or I might be forced into driving—map is too big if I'm always starting from home base.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Still chipping away at Halo Infinite campaign. I don't have a lot of time for gaming, but I'm really loving this. I never thought it would end up being my favorite Halo game.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I played GR Wildlands Lone Wolf and while it was a bit more challenging due to being solo, you really just have to focus more on stealth and waiting for opportunities to take enemies down without alerting others.

Then again, playing on Extreme with no upgrades, where you have just one squad mate to sync shots with, and no ability to call i n helicopters, certainly helped me prepare for it.

My video walkthrough of the no upgrades extreme run I did may help with stealth tactics. A mission called The Outpost was probably one of the hardest with these limitations, because it requires sneaking into a base pretty much undetected.

One thing I learned was early morning is actually a great time to infiltrate with stealth. Reason being the shadows from the sun are dark, and when you lie prone in them, the enemy cannot see you nearly as well. Plus you have broad daylight to easily see enemies. At night with night vision goggles you are harder to see, but the enemies are also much harder to see. This of course depends how you play, but on extreme there are no enemy markers, and I didn't even have the HUD enabled. The worst thing about night infiltration is if you make one little mistake, you then have the whole camp gunning at you, while they are hard to see.

Full GR Wildlands Extreme No HUD/Upgrades Walkthrough

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHB6vX_n-5BOwb6B4izux5HjNAf0YFt00

GR Wildlands The Outpost Mission Extreme No HUD/Upgrades

There's also a couple prison infiltration missions in San Mateo that benefit from good stealth tactics. La Carcel Del Pueblo is one of the most liked missions in the game, and was one that took me serval tries Lone Wolf, but had I used these tactics, it would have gone much smoother. I don't recall if the back entrance was available Lone Wolf though.

Sometimes stealth and access is just a matter of stealing a cartel vehicle

 

[ZedClampet]

This could take me a long time with my penchant for exploring. Do you remember if there are fast travel points? I hope so, or I might be forced into driving—map is too big if I'm always starting from home base.

There's fast travel. I think you unlock it by finding friendly hideouts or something. Rebel hideouts? Sorry, don't remember exactly. It's something like that.

The vehicles in that game aren't very good and the roads are winding even more than usual for a Ubisoft game. I don't remember driving being much of an advantage. The only thing I remember is my son driving us off the side of a cliff. We bounced down the side of the mountain, rolling over and over, and when we finally came to a stop, one of the characters calmly said, "Sh!t balls". It cracked me up.

 

[Brian Boru]

video walkthrough of the no upgrades extreme run I did may help

Super answer Frag, and super stuff—thanks a bunch

So man, your driving is like mine IRL! Gotta love those shortcuts

How do you navigate without HUD & direction indicator? I find it tough enough with full info. Do you have the map memorized, or…?

I noticed in my bit of play that I could get up pretty steep inclines on foot, and take some good drops without taking damage—your vehicles displayed the same characteristics on the terrain.

I gather there's no bonus for headshots, you took mostly body shots.

In first vid, Outpost, you conked a few guys & dragged 'em outside to hide. Any reason not to shoot 'em first & then hide 'em? Blood spatter maybe, visible to next guy…

Also in Outpost—I think—your shots sounded loud, were you not suppressed?

A lot of the time you just ran in and around the compounds without any worry, or so it looked. I'd be looking around every corner, and sneaking slowly to the next, scanning the surroundings. Apart from the drone info, did you have some other intel re safe routes from somewhere?

Again, thanks a bunch

 

[Frag Maniac]

Super answer Frag, and super stuff—thanks a bunch

So man, your driving is like mine IRL! Gotta love those shortcuts

How do you navigate without HUD & direction indicator? I find it tough enough with full info. Do you have the map memorized, or…?

I noticed in my bit of play that I could get up pretty steep inclines on foot, and take some good drops without taking damage—your vehicles displayed the same characteristics on the terrain.

I gather there's no bonus for headshots, you took mostly body shots.

In first vid, Outpost, you conked a few guys & dragged 'em outside to hide. Any reason not to shoot 'em first & then hide 'em? Blood spatter maybe, visible to next guy…

Also in Outpost—I think—your shots sounded loud, were you not suppressed?

A lot of the time you just ran in and around the compounds without any worry, or so it looked. I'd be looking around every corner, and sneaking slowly to the next, scanning the surroundings. Apart from the drone info, did you have some other intel re safe routes from somewhere?

Again, thanks a bunch

No problem, glad they were useful. The way I trained myself to navigate without HUD is before capturing each mission I'd do a few practice runs. Since I was copying and setting aside saves I could easily restart the mission after putting the save file back. The first thing I'd do was get to the closest safehouse, however where helis were used, that meant the closest safehouse to a heli I could steal. In practice runs I would take a couple just to drive to the place, first looking at the map, then getting in my head the sequence of turns involved (left, right, right, etc). Of course it complicates matters if it's not the next left or right, but the simplicity of the road system was doable in that regard ( I have a bad cerebral memory, but a pretty good visual memory). The practice runs are also helpful for getting to know foot patrols, hence the quick in and out.

Yeah the shortcuts were fun, and the missions above don't begin to show some of the most hardcore ones I used, like driving along sketchy, narrow game trails with a steep drop-off in the Bolivian Minibus, as well as up very steep slopes with it, and a rather sketchy drive through thick jungle vegetation in the Nakahawa just to skip the switchbacks down the road. That minibus is probably best at going up steep inclines because it's light and geared low. The shortcuts using the minibus on a narrow game trail are all the ones in Libertad, starting with Chemical Trail. It was the best way to get to a chopper to steal quickly. There's actually one of those big choppers that's closer, but I got tired of them wanting to blow up no matter how carefully I landed them.

I don't go for headshots a lot if I have a weapon that can kill quickly with torso shots, and when raiding El Chido's concert via stealth, I even got one in the crotch. LOL The weapon used in The Outpost I'm pretty sure is the M7, which is actually one of the quieter ones, and yes, it was suppressed. It just sounds a bit louder in some areas, like near hard surfaces vs out in the open more. ANY suppressed weapon in the game if you shoot too close to patrolling guards will get your whereabouts investigated though.

As far as why I knocked out and dragged those guards to a more obscure location, it's because if a guard sees a dead body, they will investigate. However this game has a cheesy feature where if you look the opposite direction of the still live guards by turning around, it will make the corpses disappear, making them invisible to those guards. Since you never know if you're going to have to backtrack for unexpected guards coming, it's best to thoroughly hide some of them, vs leave them where another guard might find them.

The mission where I discovered corpses were disappearing when I turned around was Carzita's Assistant, but by the time I found out, I wasn't going to waste a perfectly good stealth run doing it over again.

There's another one called El Pulpo's Right Hand Man where I had some corpses disappearing merely because the best spot I found to infiltrate from involved checking behind me for snipers up high, and on the ground for a patrolling guard in between shots ahead at the building/chopper I was headed to.

These are the only two missions I found it hard to avoid that cheese though, which I preferred not using.

This is one of the narrow game trail shortcut missions, which ended with an unexpected but exciting gunship pursuit.

 

[ZedClampet]

Hey, @Brian Boru why don't you want to play with the NPC bots on your team? You really enjoyed that in FC5 and even grew attached to them.

 

[Brian Boru]

Fanatical have a "limited time only, while stocks last" special going on at the moment, Dollar Bundles—ie each of 18 choices $1 each.

There's some good stuff there, eg Commandos collection, Men at War collection, etc.

 

[Brian Boru]

why don't you want to play with the NPC bots

Asked myself the same Q last night, when I got killed twice 😢
Just picked off 2-3 guys in the way w sniper, then dealt with the 4-5 who came after me for wasting their friends—usual stuff. However…
The 2-3 trucks with mounted guns & 4 guys each which roared up behind me… now that's another story, which sadly I'm not alive to tell.

I think I figured out why those jeep guys got me so quickly. Apparently they're regular military, not drug baddies, but seem to be in league with the baddies—not sure, must read up a bit on it.

Avoidance = previous bad experience with squad members constantly getting in the way or raising the alarm or being generally useless or not going/doing as ordered or… or…

But that was a long time ago, maybe they're better now. In Far Cry you can call 'em and dump 'em at will, change 'em out for each other, and have 1 or 2 with you. They're pretty well behaved, generally keep ~10m away so you don't have to elbow 'em aside or jump over 'em all the time, and are quite useful.

I'm going to take @Frag Maniac's advice more seriously—stealth, keep head down and neck in—and see how that goes. If I want to cross a bridge, I'm used to dealing with whoever's blocking it, and crossing. That may not work in GRW, which is a pity, as much of my fun is from that random stuff, rather than 'story' missions. Hope there aren't any piranhas in the rivers…

I'll try the squad also, of course. What happens if one of 'em gets killed, does he respawn immediately, or only after mission end or fast travel?

 

[ZedClampet]

I'll try the squad also, of course. What happens if one of 'em gets killed, does he respawn immediately, or only after mission end or fast travel?

Don't know. In co-op you can't play with bots, so I never got to use them, but I was thinking of reinstalling and doing a solo game with bots.

 

[Brian Boru]

one of the narrow game trail shortcut missions

All those racing games are surely paying off!

gunship pursuit

I noticed a few times you didn't seem concerned about patrolling choppers—eg on the first boat ride there was one nearly above you. Do they not 'see' you on ground/water unless there's an alert?

Again, thanks

 

[DXCHASE]

I absolutely want Nerf's x Destiny's Gallajhorn Rocket Launcher!!!!

Bungie.net

www.bungie.net

In other news, Outriders newest expansion is pretty good. Had some bad times trying to get connected on the first day but its been pretty smooth yet. Havent done much in game due to work, but its a good expansion so far.

 

[flashn00b]

If one game could benefit from a re-remake, I'd nominate Rise of the Triad 2013, albeit on the GZDOOM source port... Would that make it a de-remake?

 

[Frag Maniac]

I noticed a few times you didn't seem concerned about patrolling choppers—eg on the first boat ride there was one nearly above you. Do they not 'see' you on ground/water unless there's an alert?

The chopper in that first video isn't really close enough to be a threat, because you pretty much have to be in or near an enemy camp for them to consider you a threat.

 

[ZedClampet]

Ran two stock championships in Grid 2019. They are just two races each. Decided not to do multiple qualifying runs to make it more realistic. Qualified 1st in 3 of the 4 and 6th in the other one. Won all four races. Probably going to bump the difficulty tomorrow.

I bought the 3 seasons dlc. I think they were on sale for $2.99 a piece, which is pretty solid. Really enjoying the style of the game. Reminds me more of Forza Motorsport than Forza Horizon, which is good. The open world of Horizon sometimes wears me out, and I usually just fast travel around the track.

Speaking of Horizon, they always throw one user-made track in with the seasonal objectives. God, I hate those. There's a reason these people are not making bank as level designers. Why try to force me into running these ridiculous things, all of which are childish, elevated sky tracks? Today, on my first attempt, I flew off the track because the track disappeared on the left side after going over a hill. I crashed onto the ground 100 meters below, and spent 5 minutes trying to work my way up the mountain to get my car back on the track. That's when I decided I wasn't doing these anymore. I just won't get the prize. It isn't worth it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Ran two stock championships in Grid 2019. They are just two races each. Decided not to do multiple qualifying runs to make it more realistic. Qualified 1st in 3 of the 4 and 6th in the other one. Won all four races. Probably going to bump the difficulty tomorrow.

I bought the 3 seasons dlc. I think they were on sale for $2.99 a piece, which is pretty solid. Really enjoying the style of the game. Reminds me more of Forza Motorsport than Forza Horizon, which is good. The open world of Horizon sometimes wears me out, and I usually just fast travel around the track.

Speaking of Horizon, they always throw one user-made track in with the seasonal objectives. God, I hate those. There's a reason these people are not making bank as level designers. Why try to force me into running these ridiculous things, all of which are childish, elevated sky tracks? Today, on my first attempt, I flew off the track because the track disappeared on the left side after going over a hill. I crashed onto the ground 100 meters below, and spent 5 minutes trying to work my way up the mountain to get my car back on the track. That's when I decided I wasn't doing these anymore. I just won't get the prize. It isn't worth it.

Wow, that's good, I'd like to see some of your races should you choose to capture any. When you said you plan to bump up difficulty though, do you mean full on Very Hard mode? Reason I ask is because that mode removes all assists down to zero, unless you choose to keep them or set them how you like. You may want to get a bit deeper into the game before bumping difficulty. There's a reason it's hard to find videos of the game on Very Hard mode. An example I always refer to is a guy named Jun Choi, whom used a Logi G29 wheel/pedal set. He started out on Hard using no assists, and is very precise with his car handling, but he ended up dropping AI to Med midway through the game, which is almost civilian speed compared to Hard. I was disappointed he did that, because I used to watch his vids.

Yeah I agree on open world race games and those arcade tracks, it gets to be a bit much.

 

[ZedClampet]

Wow, that's good, I'd like to see some of your races should you choose to capture any. When you said you plan to bump up difficulty though, do you mean full on Very Hard mode? Reason I ask is because that mode removes all assists down to zero, unless you choose to keep them or set them how you like. You may want to get a bit deeper into the game before bumping difficulty. There's a reason it's hard to find videos of the game on Very Hard mode. An example I always refer to is a guy named Jun Choi, whom used a Logi G29 wheel/pedal set. He started out on Hard using no assists, and is very precise with his car handling, but he ended up dropping AI to Med midway through the game, which is almost civilian speed compared to Hard. I was disappointed he did that, because I used to watch his vids.

Yeah I agree on open world race games and those arcade tracks, it gets to be a bit much.

Ah, I forgot you said they tied difficulty to assists. That's a shame. Assists are for people without wheel setups. They have very little to do with skill. I'll probably try it anyway, but I may wait awhile before I start. I'm having fun now, so no reason to kill it. If I up the difficulty and can't do it, it will just frustrate me, and I would probably switch games. But Forza cars--pretty much all of them--are harder to handle and the tracks are more difficult with lots of long straights and sudden 90 degree turns, or a straight into an "S" turn, and if you use just slightly too much brake, the AI flies ahead of you, and you'll be hard pressed to ever catch them without going perfect the rest of the way, and probably even that won't help you. That's kind of why I'm enjoying Grid so much, but I'm on the highest difficulty on Forza, but not on Grid. Maybe if I dropped the difficulty on Forza I'd be enjoying it more. Dunno.

I may upload a video at some point, but i want to delete all the embarrassing videos off of my channel first haha.

Edit: You know, I don't even know where my assists are set on Grid. I just selected a difficulty and started driving.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Ah, I forgot you said they tied difficulty to assists. That's a shame. Assists are for people without wheel setups. They have very little to do with skill. I'll probably try it anyway, but I may wait awhile before I start. I'm having fun now, so no reason to kill it. If I up the difficulty and can't do it, it will just frustrate me, and I would probably switch games. But Forza cars--pretty much all of them--are harder to handle and the tracks are more difficult with lots of long straights and sudden 90 degree turns, or a straight into an "S" turn, and if you use just slightly too much brake, the AI flies ahead of you, and you'll be hard pressed to ever catch them without going perfect the rest of the way, and probably even that won't help you. That's kind of why I'm enjoying Grid so much, but I'm on the highest difficulty on Forza, but not on Grid. Maybe if I dropped the difficulty on Forza I'd be enjoying it more. Dunno.

I may upload a video at some point, but i want to delete all the embarrassing videos off of my channel first haha.

Edit: You know, I don't even know where my assists are set on Grid. I just selected a difficulty and started driving.

No, I never said assists were tied (locked) to difficulty settings like Hard, Very Hard. That's only if you choose to use the default settings for the difficulty mode you choose. Even on Very Hard I think you can use whatever level of assists you want. At least that's the way it is on Hard mode, but come to think of it, since I've never set it to Very Hard, I don't know for sure if it allows you the same freedom as Hard does.

 

[Pifanjr]

Being able to play a bit on my desktop PC made me miss gaming, but I still don't have a lot of spare time, so I decided to give mobile games a try again.

I first tried Titan Slayer: Deckbuilding RPG, but got a winning deck within half an hour of playing or so and the actual battles are far too simple.

Then I tried Behoarder, but that was just a mess. Bad UI and uninteresting gameplay.

Merchant was a bit better. You have to send out heroes to fight specific monsters to gather resources to craft into equipment, which you can either equip your heroes with or you can sell it, as you need money for both crafting and sending heroes. However, everything is on timers, which are too long to just keep playing the game and too short to only play every so often.

I finally landed on Cells to Singularity: Evolution, an idle game, which, just like Merchant, also gives the satisfaction of seeing numbers go up, but does it better.

I'm still not entirely sure why idle games are fun. When I was younger I could not fathom why someone would waste their time with them, but now that I'm an exhausted adult it's kinda nice to have a sense of progression without really having to think about it too much. And since I'm incapable of not thinking too much about things, I've already made two automated spreadsheets that show what to invest in to get the most return.

 

[ZedClampet]

No, I never said assists were tied (locked) to difficulty settings like Hard, Very Hard. That's only if you choose to use the default settings for the difficulty mode you choose. Even on Very Hard I think you can use whatever level of assists you want. At least that's the way it is on Hard mode, but come to think of it, since I've never set it to Very Hard, I don't know for sure if it allows you the same freedom as Hard does.

Somehow I missed the "unless you choose to keep them" part. Sorry 'bout that.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm still not entirely sure why idle games are fun.

I really enjoyed the one I played, although in the end it required a cash investment to actually finish the game unless I wanted to keep checking in every day for 9 months. It was a free game, though, and I enjoyed it and got a lot of free time out of it, so I didn't mind paying them a little money.

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

I'm really pleased with my play in V Rising. Honestly, when I started playing, I didn't think I would improve much at it. But I'm not even using the toggle mouse thing anymore. I created my own solo world so I could do the bosses by myself, and I've been working through that while waiting for my son to come home from Nashville.

One annoyance is that you can't change the server difficulty once you launch the game the first time. Only way to do it is to start over. What a pain.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Frag Maniac So I looked at my assists finally in Grid and they were on max. I turned them all off and did some qualifying sessions and experimented with it. At first I didn't notice any difference. That's the way I always drive. But if I tried driving as though I were on a keyboard, that's where the problems came in. By driving like I'm on a keyboard, I mean that when you push the gas or the brake, you are always at 100 percent. That's when I started spinning out coming out of the turns and whatnot. I would normally never slam on the gas half way through a turn or brake all the way until I can make the turn. The first race games I ever played were simulations with no assists, so I just sort of always drive that way, I guess. When I've had problems, it's generally with a bad controller or the controller set up.

Other than goofing around with the Forza Horizon games, this is kind of my biggest push into racing in a long time. Thanks for recommending the Grid games to me. I'm really, really having fun. They are bringing back the passion for racing I thought I'd lost after Papyrus shut down many years ago. These games aren't at that level of simulation, but they are a blast to play anyway.

 

[Zloth]

Being able to play a bit on my desktop PC made me miss gaming, but I still don't have a lot of spare time, so I decided to give mobile games a try again.

Steam Deck?

 

[Frag Maniac]

@Frag Maniac So I looked at my assists finally in Grid and they were on max. I turned them all off and did some qualifying sessions and experimented with it. At first I didn't notice any difference. That's the way I always drive. But if I tried driving as though I were on a keyboard, that's where the problems came in. By driving like I'm on a keyboard, I mean that when you push the gas or the brake, you are always at 100 percent. That's when I started spinning out coming out of the turns and whatnot. I would normally never slam on the gas half way through a turn or brake all the way until I can make the turn. The first race games I ever played were simulations with no assists, so I just sort of always drive that way, I guess. When I've had problems, it's generally with a bad controller or the controller set up.

Other than goofing around with the Forza Horizon games, this is kind of my biggest push into racing in a long time. Thanks for recommending the Grid games to me. I'm really, really having fun. They are bringing back the passion for racing I thought I'd lost after Papyrus shut down many years ago. These games aren't at that level of simulation, but they are a blast to play anyway.

Again, not sure which GRID you're referring to here (I assumed you meant 2019)?

Yeah that's the only bummer of keyboard driving, and why I could only handle Shift, Shift 2, and the original Project Cars on Med AI. I was hoping when pressure sensitive keys for keyboards were being demonstrated and talked about, those types of KBs would become commonly available and coded for in race games, but that didn't happen.

So unfortunately the only fix is tap, tap, tap, for acceleration, braking, and steering. Some devs are pretty good at using algorithm filters to arc steer on KBs, and adjustments for throttle and brake sensitivity, but it's never anywhere near the same as an analog feel where you can feather the controls.

It all reminds me of an old episode of Top Gear where Jackie Stewart was riding along with James May at Laguna Seca I think, teaching him how to drive it fast. James kept pulsing the gas, saying that's how he played it on a PS4 I think, and it was driving Jackie nuts! LOL

Why on Earth would you need to repeatedly tap gas on a gamepad?

 

[Brian Boru]

now that I'm an exhausted adult it's kinda nice to have a sense of progression without really having to think about it too much

You should switch to a government job.