The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (28 August to 3 September)

[Pifanjr]

Has anyone here heard of the game Deo Gratias? I stumbled upon it by chance and I'd never heard of it before, but I've always had an interest in games where you play as a god.

@Pifanjr sorry if I seemed rude yesterday on the reddit stuff. Those guys are just so often full of it that it drives me batty, and I rarely go over there because of it, but everyone has different experiences and opinions on the reddit life.

It just adds to the grumpy old guy persona

The quality of Reddit heavily depends on the subreddit, some are far worse than others. Which is true for all of the general sharing websites, you have to put in some work to find the decent communities.

 

[DXCHASE]

What happened to the forum topic on the PCG articles? Are we not allowed to discuss them in that fashion? Just curious.

Well my random thought of today is, ive been enjoying Destiny 2's new season. Its entitled "Season of Plunder" and has a big pirate vibe to it. Guns and armor look pirate-y and the lore isnt all that bad.

But this isnt the main reason ive been enjoying it. My son has grown more and more into playing this game with my wife and I. We have played a little bit in the past but now since we each own a PC its been real fun running dungeons, strikes and team pvp together so he can unlock all these items hes never used. Its also been fun running old campaigns with him . He seems to genuinely like the game although none of his friends play it.

 

[ZedClampet]

OT: Grumpy Old Guy Complaint for the day....

My wife is screwing up my recipe for Cajun shrimp alfredo. The important part is how to make the alfredo sauce, which should be so deadly that you can only eat it once a month or suffer a series of heart attacks. My recipe involves heavy cream, butter, parmesan cheese, vegetable oil, white pepper, ground jalapeno, and paprika. It is spicy, cheesy and delicious. She declared she wanted to cook it tonight and comes in with two jars of store-bought alfredo sauce. I'm completely outraged.

Don't worry. I only get outraged online. I'll tell her it was delicious, of course.

What happened to the forum topic on the PCG articles? Are we not allowed to discuss them in that fashion? Just curious.

I'm not 100 percent sure what you are referring to, but the post I made this morning with the various articles in it was pinned.

 

[Brian Boru]

What happened to the forum topic on the PCG articles?

You mean this?

PCG Article - PCG Article Round Up...

Some good articles up on PCG (at least good to me). Please read and discuss.... I love that 'horror fishing game' is becoming a genre As a fan of both horror and fishing games, this seems right up my alley. Valve bans Steam curators suspected of scamming developers for free games The curators...

forums.pcgamer.com

jalapeno, and paprika

Installs extra steam vents behind ears.

I'll tell her it was delicious

Freud was wrong, self-preservation still trumps all.

 

[ZedClampet]

Freud was wrong, self-preservation still trumps all.

She talks a big game, but really she would just be sad if I didn't like it.

 

[Zloth]

My wife is screwing up my recipe for Cajun shrimp alfredo. The important part is how to make the alfredo sauce, which should be so deadly that you can only eat it once a month or suffer a series of heart attacks. My recipe involves heavy cream, butter, parmesan cheese, vegetable oil, white pepper, ground jalapeno, and paprika. It is spicy, cheesy and delicious. She declared she wanted to cook it tonight and comes in with two jars of store-bought alfredo sauce. I'm completely outraged.

I'll be right over!! Gotta help my fellow forum buds!

 

[WoodenSaucer]

OT: Grumpy Old Guy Complaint for the day....

My wife is screwing up my recipe for Cajun shrimp alfredo. The important part is how to make the alfredo sauce, which should be so deadly that you can only eat it once a month or suffer a series of heart attacks. My recipe involves heavy cream, butter, parmesan cheese, vegetable oil, white pepper, ground jalapeno, and paprika. It is spicy, cheesy and delicious. She declared she wanted to cook it tonight and comes in with two jars of store-bought alfredo sauce. I'm completely outraged.

Don't worry. I only get outraged online. I'll tell her it was delicious, of course.

Sounds a lot like my wife's recipe, only she doesn't use jalapeno. Homemade alfredo is definitely much better than jars if it's done right.

 

[Zimbaly]

Did anyone play Back 4 Blood? It seems like Turtle Rock channeled Evolve instead of Left 4 Dead 2. Of course, Valve was in charge and acting as game directors of L4D2, so maybe Turtle Rock really didn't have much to say about its success. Anyway, the reviews are pretty poor for B4B, and I noticed there were about 4 times as many people playing L4D2 this morning. I only played about 10 minutes of B4B on Game Pass with Guido and my nephew, but I found it difficult (they wanted to play on Hard) and kind of soulless.

I love Back 4 Blood. I find it feels more like Left 4 Dead. There's one huge flaw though and it's what really keeps me from playing it. No campaign VS.

Also if you're having a hard time try different card setups. I prefer the girl with the baseball bat and I use a melee, gain health on kills, stamina regen build.

And as for currently playing. AC:Origins. Seems pretty damn fun so far.

 

[ZedClampet]

I love Back 4 Blood. I find it feels more like Left 4 Dead. There's one huge flaw though and it's what really keeps me from playing it. No campaign VS.

Also if you're having a hard time try different card setups. I prefer the girl with the baseball bat and I use a melee, gain health on kills, stamina regen build.

And as for currently playing. AC:Origins. Seems pretty damn fun so far.

That sounds like the build for me. I'm just not a shooter person. I'm okay at them, but I'd rather be melee, which I'm actually pretty good at.

AC: Origins is great, but I've always been fascinated by Egypt. Unfortunately, I never quite finished the game. I have a bad habit of not finishing AC games lately even though they've been pretty darn good.

 

[Barukanen]

I don't have anything to offer on the cooking front here..

But I have picked up For Honor. For those that don't know this game, it is an action-strategy game based around the Samurai, Viking and Knight factions battling it out for territory. It has an interesting lock on combat system that took me sometime to get use to.

An for those that do know this game, you know how rewarding it feels to throw some smelly Viking off the edge of a cliff while emote spamming.

 

[ZedClampet]

I don't have anything to offer on the cooking front here..

But I have picked up For Honor. For those that don't know this game, it is an action-strategy game based around the Samurai, Viking and Knight factions battling it out for territory. It has an interesting lock on combat system that took me sometime to get use to.

An for those that do know this game, you know how rewarding it feels to throw some smelly Viking off the edge of a cliff while emote spamming.

Played that a lot when it first came out, but it's been years since I played. Took me a little bit to master the controls, but I actually played the campaign first to help with that.

 

[ZedClampet]

I wasted 20 minutes manually fighting a battle, Total War Warhammer 3, when a 20 stack enemy army attacked a settlement that was only defended by a 10 unit garrison. I did better than expected, but a loss is a loss.

The thing is, I sort of let them have the settlement. We're playing a High Elf campaign on Normal difficulty, which is completely screwed up. The AI is hyper-aggressive, and so, to get the full impact, I picked the Dragon Prince, who starts the game surrounded by two Skaven factions and two Greenskin factions.

So naturally they all declare war on me before I even have a full army. Some Skaven come down and sack one of my cities, and I realize that I need to go on the offensive, so I create a half-arsed army to stay home, and I send my main army north, where I take two out of three settlements of a province.

I heal up and head for the third city, which is walled, and here is where I made a horrible mistake. Because I'm playing co-op, I try to manually fight as few battles as possible (not counting the one mentioned above), so when I get to the city and attack, the game says an auto-resolve would be a close victory. I go ahead and take it, but there is an element of chance in this, and I lose a lot more strength than I had expected. The next turn, a 20 stack army starts sieging me. I test the idea of sallying forth, but the game says I'll lose. Obviously, I'm not going to just starve to death in the city, but I decide to leave my home province unguarded and bring the second army up to make sure that I win the battle.

So the second army moves closer and comes across some Greenskins getting ready to attack the aforementioned settlement. There's no guarantee I can beat them with my "value" army, so I march right past them and let them attack the city.

And that's when I wasted 20 minutes of my time. If I had just spent 20 minutes fighting the battle at the walled city, none of that would have happened,. Now I'm frantically building a 3rd army, but this time I'm not worrying about budget because this army has to win.

It's pretty awesome. I wish every Total War game was like this.

There's very little chance I'm actually going to lose. I spent all my efforts in the early rounds emphasizing growth, so the city where my third army is mustering is walled and has a nice garrison, and I can now one turn recruit dragons thanks to the faction I'm playing. Just got to weather this storm, then I can blitz them.

Now, could a couple of human players working together knock me out of the game right now? Absolutely. But the AI, while crazy aggressive, isn't smart enough to know what to do to get rid of me.

 

[Barukanen]

I wasted 20 minutes manually fighting a battle, Total War Warhammer 3, when a 20 stack enemy army attacked a settlement that was only defended by a 10 unit garrison. I did better than expected, but a loss is a loss.

The thing is, I sort of let them have the settlement. We're playing a High Elf campaign on Normal difficulty, which is completely screwed up. The AI is hyper-aggressive, and so, to get the full impact, I picked the Dragon Prince, who starts the game surrounded by two Skaven factions and two Greenskin factions.

So naturally they all declare war on my before I even have a full army. Some Skaven come down and sack one of my cities, and I realize that I need to go on the offensive, so I create a half-arsed army to stay home, and I send my main army north, where I take two out of three settlements of a province.

I heal up and head for the third city, which is walled, and here is where I made a horrible mistake. Because I'm playing co-op, I try to manually fight as few battles as possible (not counting the one mentioned above), so when I get to the city and attack, the game says an auto-resolve would be a close victory. I go ahead and take it, but there is an element of chance in this, and I lose a lot more strength than I had expected. The next turn, a 20 stack army starts sieging me. I test the idea of sallying forth, but the game says I'll lose. Obviously, I'm not going to just starve to death in the city, but I decide to leave my home province unguarded and bring the second army up to make sure that I win the battle.

So the second army moves closer and comes across some Greenskins getting ready to attack the aforementioned settlement. There's no guarantee I can beat them with my "value" army, so I march right past them and let them attack the city.

And that's when I wasted 20 minutes of my time. If I had just spent 20 minutes fighting the battle at the walled city, none of that would have happened,. Now I'm frantically building a 3rd army, but this time I'm not worrying about budget because this army has to win.

It's pretty awesome. I wish every Total War game was like this.

There's very little chance I'm actually going to lose. I spent all my efforts in the early rounds emphasizing growth, so the city where my third army is mustering is walled and has a nice garrison, and I can now one turn recruit dragons thanks to the faction I'm playing. Just got to weather this storm, then I can blitz them.

Now, could a couple of human players working together knock me out of the game right now? Absolutely. But the AI, while crazy aggressive, isn't smart enough to know what to do to get rid of me.

You've made what sounds like a complicated game, incredibly fun. I think I'll try and pick up a Total War game and see how I fair.

 

[ZedClampet]

You've made what sounds like a complicated game, incredibly fun. I think I'll try and pick up a Total War game and see how I fair.

I haven't played one that I didn't like, but they really took a step forward with the last few, starting with Total War Warhammer 2 and including Troy and Three Kingdoms. That's not to say that the earlier games aren't fun. They are. But they seem to really be perfecting the formula with these latest games.

Just depends on what you like as to which I would pick. The Warhammer games, if you want to really get the most out of them, require a lot of DLC, unfortunately, but they do go on sale pretty frequently. If you buy the DLC to Warhammer 1, they also work in Warhammer 2 and 3, and all of Warhammer 2's DLC work in 3. Needless to say, 3 is just a massive game with over 270 factions, and you can play a bunch of them.

Troy isn't like that because they kind of screwed up the launch and everyone stopped playing, but it would be a pretty fun, budget friendly way to see if you like the Total War formula. It's actually my favorite, but a lot of people wouldn't agree with that, partly because it's extremely difficult compared to other Total War games, but you could always play with the difficulty settings while you learn.

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Warhammer 2 Wood Elf campaign. Every couple of turns, there will be an event where your home base is threatened by something. If you reach the place of the event, you can try ambushing whatever is threatening you.

Now, this mechanic works fine, except that if any units manage to run away during the battle, the army will still exist on the campaign map and will just run away a bit, usually far enough that you can't immediately attack it again.

Also, because each army needs to be led by a lord in this game, the army just gets a free, full-health lord if you manage to kill the previous one in battle.

The first event just spawned an army of Skaven with very few ranged units, which was easy enough to deal with. The second however was an army of Dark Elves, with armour piercing ranged units, missile chariots with a bonus against large (so a perfect counter to my hawk riders, which are my flying missile cavalry) and two artillery units. I also failed my ambush, so I had to do a regular battle against them (I actually could have chosen not to fight, but it wasn't worth the penalties).

Autoresolve would have killed off all of my units, so I'm pretty happy I managed to keep all of them alive (though one of them had only 6 elves left), but it still left my army significantly weakened.

Of course the major Dark Elf faction next to me declared war right after. I had hoped to attack them and catch them unprepared, so that was very rude of them.

Troy isn't like that because they kind of screwed up the launch and everyone stopped playing, but it would be a pretty fun, budget friendly way to see if you like the Total War formula.

Especially budget friendly if you picked it up when Epic was giving it away for free.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Random thoughts: I've been reading/listening to The Stormlight Archives audiobook series by Brandon Sanderson and its a real page turner in a way that nothing else has caught me for a long while. Also watching Sandman on Netflix, and although I prefer the graphic novels. which feel much darker, worth a look if youre into any of Neil Gaimans other stuff and somehow havent come across it.

Video game wise, I'm making my way through Doom Eternal, its really bloody good. Been slightly frustrated with some of the platforming and environmental puzzles as I much prefer double jumping around the environment and blasting demons, but overall its pretty great.

Also Crusader Kings 3 continues, Kingdom of Gallicia soon to be the Empire of Hispania. Or maybe I just found a load of smaller kingdoms and let my heirs have one each to increase the reputation of house Menendez, havent decided yet.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

An for those that do know this game, you know how rewarding it feels to throw some smelly Viking off the edge of a cliff while emote spamming.

If only HenryForkBeard were here now!

Is For Honor a multiplayer-only game?

 

[Zloth]

Random thoughts: I've been reading/listening to The Stormlight Archives audiobook series by Brandon Sanderson...

The very start annoyed me mightily. One prelude is fine. Two? Ummm.... THREE Preludes!?!? Come on! But once Bridge 4 started up.... wow! It's been going strong ever since.

 

[Zimbaly]

If only HenryForkBeard were here now!

Is For Honor a multiplayer-only game?

When I played years ago it was only multiplayer. Don't know what else they've added since then

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

The very start annoyed me mightily. One prelude is fine. Two? Ummm.... THREE Preludes!?!? Come on! But once Bridge 4 started up.... wow! It's been going strong ever since.

The end chapters of the first book are really something. Read Mistborn a couple of years ago and while I enjoyed it, I think this is where I should have started.

 

[Frindis]

Playing some more Death Stranding. Been making more roads, so the likes from other players have been increasing, which is cool. Death Stranding is basically a social platform, perhaps you could even say it is a way to be more self-reflective about the reaction you have towards getting more and more popular.

Other than that I am playing on Willjum's Solo-only vanilla server since it is the monthly full wipe for all servers in Rust and that server has some of the most sweaty players.....and then you have me in the middle. That solo server is wMy super secret 2nd base. The main base will be placed on top of a small ledge with pretty much no insight from the ground or top.

 

[Brian Boru]

Is For Honor a multiplayer-only game?

Don't know what else they've added

Wiki says Single Player.

 

[ZedClampet]

If only HenryForkBeard were here now!

Is For Honor a multiplayer-only game?

Actually, it has always had a small single-player campaign, but I'm the only person I know who's played it. Definitely get it on deep discount if that's all you want it for.

 

[ZedClampet]

I continued my Warhammer 2 Wood Elf campaign. Every couple of turns, there will be an event where your home base is threatened by something. If you reach the place of the event, you can try ambushing whatever is threatening you.

Now, this mechanic works fine, except that if any units manage to run away during the battle, the army will still exist on the campaign map and will just run away a bit, usually far enough that you can't immediately attack it again.

Also, because each army needs to be led by a lord in this game, the army just gets a free, full-health lord if you manage to kill the previous one in battle.

The first event just spawned an army of Skaven with very few ranged units, which was easy enough to deal with. The second however was an army of Dark Elves, with armour piercing ranged units, missile chariots with a bonus against large (so a perfect counter to my hawk riders, which are my flying missile cavalry) and two artillery units. I also failed my ambush, so I had to do a regular battle against them (I actually could have chosen not to fight, but it wasn't worth the penalties).

Autoresolve would have killed off all of my units, so I'm pretty happy I managed to keep all of them alive (though one of them had only 6 elves left), but it still left my army significantly weakened.

Of course the major Dark Elf faction next to me declared war right after. I had hoped to attack them and catch them unprepared, so that was very rude of them.



Especially budget friendly if you picked it up when Epic was giving it away for free.

Speaking of events, I'm playing the dragon elf guy, and just a few turns into the game, a dragon encounter popped up right next to my capital. I told Guido I was going to go ahead and do it because I had a full 20 stack army. I get into the next screen and their army has a Dread Saurian, a Carnosaurus, a Stegadon and a Star Dragon. I seriously thought that since the game just started it would be easy, but I backed out of it.

 

[Zloth]

The end chapters of the first book are really something. Read Mistborn a couple of years ago and while I enjoyed it, I think this is where I should have started.

There was one bit early on that I really loved: the axehounds. Sanderson doesn't describe them, but they are just some sort of dog, right? Why describe a dog? Then, hundreds of pages in, one of the characters casually mentions that it has six legs or some such. WHAT!?

That's the kind of trick that only works in books.

Playing some more Death Stranding. Been making more roads, so the likes from other players have been increasing, which is cool. Death Stranding is basically a social platform, perhaps you could even say it is a way to be more self-reflective about the reaction you have towards getting more and more popular.

I got quite a shock when I realized that the distribution center south of Lake Knot is actually a 3-way intersection! So many roads to build. And repair - I'm far enough along that several sections are under 50% now.

I've never figured out how player contributions work on those highways. The very first section seems to be all your responsibility and, until you finish it, no contributions show up from any other players. Once you finish it, though, the flood gates open and you get bunches of messages about contributions. For me, the road got completed all the way to the Craftsman in just a few minutes. Since then, the progress gets about half way along, then stops and waits for me to complete the rest.

OK, so it gave they made the first few sections easy as an introduction, then make me do more later. Makes sense. But a few days ago, I had a couple more road sections complete! Sections I never put anything into at all! Why?? <shrug>

Other than that I am playing on Willjum's Solo-only vanilla server since it is the monthly full wipe for all servers in Rust and that server has some of the most sweaty players.....

Sweaty!?!?