The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (9 October to 15 October)

[ZedClampet]

Besides my usual Forza and Total War, I've been playing Bendy and the Ink Machine (horror) and a ton of demos.

Several of us have posted in the demos thread about what we've tried during this week's Next Fest on Steam, but my favorite so far is Techtonica, a new first person factory automation game.

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My Tennessee Vols went on the road and beat LSU 40 - 13. We're 5 - 0 and play Alabama at home next week. We'll probably lose, but if we somehow pull it off, I will be even more insufferable.

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Speaking of suffering, I reinjured my knee yesterday, so it's back to sitting at my PC with an ice pack wrap.

 

[Brian Boru]

I will be even more insufferable

Nah you won't, that's not possible

My team Munster have had their worst season start in a long time, currently 1-3 after a loss away to Connacht—who are now also 1-3. It was a pretty dire game, totally befitting two 1-3 teams. We may not make the playoffs this year, which would be a big rarity.

The South African teams are really strutting their stuff this season, have made a great start. Watched a great game between Leinster and Sharks earlier, it was a feast of great play. The URC is shaping up to become a great league with their addition—it was getting way too monotonous with the Irish sides dominating every year.

… — … — … — … — … — … —

Poked around in my Steam TBP pile:

Art Of Gravity looks an interesting puzzle.

Antichamber gave me a pain in my brain, MC Escher take a bow.

Antenna is a very short sound-based puzzle—quirky and free.

 

[Pifanjr]

So I went back to the Gloomhaven scenario I lost yesterday, this time on hard instead of brutal. I won, with all of my characters alive, though some of them were close to exhausting.

However, this revealed a bit of a problem: hard seems easy enough that I expect I can win every scenario in one try, provided I don't **** up in some major way, but brutal seems so hard that it feels like I can do everything right and still lose because of RNG.

This is a problem I have with other tactics games too, but in other games there have been other mechanics that kept me playing, like the story or unlocking new mechanics. However, Gloomhaven doesn't really have a story and it takes several scenarios, which take about an hour each, to level up your characters and that only gives you a single new card to use. You also get money pretty slowly and most items have a fairly minor impact on the gameplay.

When playing the physical board game this hasn't really been an issue for me. For one, the game promotes each player to be somewhat selfish, meaning that if a scenario is going well the players will work together less to instead chase their own goals, which regulates the difficulty somewhat. Also, playing together just makes it easier to stay engaged for me, regardless of a lack of story or progression.

 

[ZedClampet]

I suddenly remembered that I bought Need for Speed Payback a few weeks ago when it was $2.99, and I wanted to give it a try. The beginning is a @Brian Boru nightmare. It took more than 30 minutes to get to the first race. They might as well leave the stories out of these games because they are basically all the same, at least the ones I played are. Driver gets double-crossed and spends the rest of the game fighting his way back to take revenge.

The driving, which I couldn't really remember, is as arcade as it gets. It requires decent reflexes but no skill at all which is a downer

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

@Pifanjr Got Gloomhaven free on Epic and must give it a try sometime, I nearly started the other day. Instead I went back to Battle Brothers. Its so easy to leave and come back to while your doing other stuff around the house and with family, and its also still really tough to me, as well as having randomly generated maps which keep me coming back to try and actually see everything.

I also started playing Shadow Run: Hong Kong, because its the only one of the Harebrained schemes game I havent finished. Great soundtrack, atmosphere and really good writing in those games overall, Hong Kong starts pretty well so hopefully it continues.

To tired to finish Doom Eternal, I'll come back to it when I can spend some day time hours on it maybe, its exhausting to play in late evening or early morning, which is the only time I have for it at the moment.

 

[mainer]

My Tennessee Vols went on the road and beat LSU 40 - 13. We're 5 - 0 and play Alabama at home next week. We'll probably lose, but if we somehow pull it off, I will be even more insufferable.

My team Munster have had their worst season start in a long time, currently 1-3 after a loss away to Connacht—who are now also 1-3. It was a pretty dire game, totally befitting two 1-3 teams. We may not make the playoffs this year, which would be a big rarity.

The South African teams are really strutting their stuff this season, have made a great start. Watched a great game between Leinster and Sharks earlier, it was a feast of great play. The URC is shaping up to become a great league with their addition—it was getting way too monotonous with the Irish sides dominating every year.

I don't actually watch sports anymore (no television, by choice), but I do follow certain teams in various sports by reading the news or watching highlights. One such team is the Cleveland Guardians (formerly the Cleveland Indians) whom I've followed since I was around 5 years old and living in Ohio. They've had some brutal seasons over the years (once loosing over 100 games out of 160), but last night they won the Wildcard Round of the ALCS in dramatic fashion.

15 scoreless innings, 16 pitchers and 39 strikeouts combined (both teams), the game took over 5 hours, and was ended when one of the rookies, Oscar Gonzalex, hit a walk-off in the bottom of the 15th.

View: https://youtu.be/Te_1BAFPCzo


They probably won't make it past the next series with the potent NY Yankees, but for one night, Cleveland rocked. Congratulations Cleveland!

 

[PointnClicker01]

Just stumbled over this game here thats 90% off for the next 23 hours:

Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders on Steam

The ABC Murders is an adventure and investigation game adapted from the classic Agatha Christie novel. You are the famous private detective Hercule Poirot and, once again, you find yourself up against a mysterious serial killer who goes by the name of "ABC".

store.steampowered.com

I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan, so I'm downloading it now. As the discount time is very limited, I wanted to post it now - in case there are other AC fans around

 

[Pifanjr]

I decided I needed a game with more purpose and action. I still have a Warhammer 2 campaign and a Rimworld game I want to get back to, but both of them have a lot of moments where you're just taking care of trivial stuff. Gloomhaven doesn't really have that, but it requires you to be quite deliberate in your choices and is therefore pretty slow. I think I need something with less management and consideration and with more action and story, so I've downloaded Control.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just stumbled over this game here thats 90% off for the next 23 hours:

Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders on Steam

The ABC Murders is an adventure and investigation game adapted from the classic Agatha Christie novel. You are the famous private detective Hercule Poirot and, once again, you find yourself up against a mysterious serial killer who goes by the name of "ABC".

store.steampowered.com

I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan, so I'm downloading it now. As the discount time is very limited, I wanted to post it now - in case there are other AC fans around

That's a good game. The story, of course, is excellent and the investigative mechanics are solid.

 

[ZedClampet]

I decided I needed a game with more purpose and action. I still have a Warhammer 2 campaign and a Rimworld game I want to get back to, but both of them have a lot of moments where you're just taking care of trivial stuff. Gloomhaven doesn't really have that, but it requires you to be quite deliberate in your choices and is therefore pretty slow. I think I need something with less management and consideration and with more action and story, so I've downloaded Control.

I might pick that back up. I only quit because of the save system (checkpoints only). I was trying to play in short sessions, and the damn thing didn't save my game twice in a row because I apparently didn't get to a checkpoint, but it was at a point where there was a lot of dialogue. I feel strongly that after you've gone through a character's extensive dialogue tree that the game should save.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Control is a super good game, not only beautiful and plays well, but actually had me laughing out loud a few times with the writing and a couple of the cut scenes. Theres one segment in particular maybe 2/3 of the way through that really stands out to me like nothing else did before.

I said it before somewhere here, but the checkpoints/control points are basically like bonfires from a souls game, which is why I never questioned it. I can see that kind of system might be frustrating if you werent looking at it from that angle.

 

[ZedClampet]

Control is a super good game, not only beautiful and plays well, but actually had me laughing out loud a few times with the writing and a couple of the cut scenes. Theres one segment in particular maybe 2/3 of the way through that really stands out to me like nothing else did before.

I said it before somewhere here, but the checkpoints/control points are basically like bonfires from a souls game, which is why I never questioned it. I can see that kind of system might be frustrating if you werent looking at it from that angle.

Apparently I didn't understand what was happening.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Well, I guess it annoyed you which is fair enough. I just meant that it didnt cross my mind because I'd been playing a lot of Souls games and it felt normal to have that system.

I also played the Steam version, which apparently had some much better (more and closer) checkpointing around the boss fights than the original Epic version.

 

[Zloth]

I don't remember any particularly bad checkpoint saves in Control? I remember I had to use one near the refrigerator because I got killed off a lot trying to cross some high pathway not long after it. Mostly, I remember one vital point: all hair must be eaten. And that Dynamite song popping up out of the blue.

Wrath of the Righteous is still crashing for me. I tried uninstalling and it seemed to help, but I think I was just getting lucky. The game doesn't let you save in the middle of battles and there was a LONG battle last night. I crashed once real close to the start and had to wonder if I was going to even be able to complete it. But hey, might as well start and see how it works out. Roughly two hours later, I had finished it! (I'm playing in turn-based mode. I'm sure people playing in real time finish far, far faster.)

 

[SleepingDog]

I wanted something that would make me smile or even laugh out loud - so I bought a copy of "The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition". It worked! The lookout, the crazy pirates in SCUMM bar, the treasure maps in the town square, the Voodoo Queen all left me feeling happier. Well there's the 3 Trials to do - sword fighting, treasure hunting and thievery - wish me luck!

 

[ZedClampet]

The best move in the Forever Skies (survival game with airships) demo is to walk out onto your deck and leap off into the abyss. When you die, you just spawn back on your ship with all your inventory, and you aren't hungry or thirsty anymore. I'm sure that's going to change when it releases into early access.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, I guess it annoyed you which is fair enough. I just meant that it didnt cross my mind because I'd been playing a lot of Souls games and it felt normal to have that system.

I also played the Steam version, which apparently had some much better (more and closer) checkpointing around the boss fights than the original Epic version.

I wasn't being snarky or whatever. I literally didn't understand the save system. I played right after launch, and my game wasn't being saved, so I googled it, and whatever site came up said it was a checkpoint system. I tried playing a little farther, and it still didn't save, so I quit. I tried playing it again not all that long ago, but I only played for a few minutes. Now that I know it's got the bonfire system, I might reinstall it.

 

[Pifanjr]

I might pick that back up. I only quit because of the save system (checkpoints only). I was trying to play in short sessions, and the damn thing didn't save my game twice in a row because I apparently didn't get to a checkpoint, but it was at a point where there was a lot of dialogue. I feel strongly that after you've gone through a character's extensive dialogue tree that the game should save.

That's good to know. I'll make sure I have a decent amount of time to play when I start so I don't have to quit before reaching a checkpoint. I'll have to see if that becomes a problem.

I won't play Control if our daughter is around, so I'll probably still play some Rimworld in between as well. I'm feeling a lot better now, so I'll be going back to work tomorrow, which means I'll probably be able to update the thread about my Rimworld game during breaks, which will probably help me get back in the mood to continue.

I did consider changing the difficulty to peaceful when I continue until I'm properly settled in the new base I made. It was supposed to be a quick move, but a string of bad events forced me to delay it again and again while I scrambled to get my colonists patched up in time for the next event and with each event stuff just went slightly more wrong. One of my colonists has lost both of his eyes.

 

[Brian Boru]

for one night, Cleveland rocked

Isn't it great?
Two of the sports I played as a kid, we were a small rural club, so we never had a bunch of kids around the same age—eg I played U-21 the year after I played U-14. We used to regularly get hammered by 20-30 points by teams based in villages or towns. But boy, when we won a game—against one of the few other unfortunates like ourselves—did it ever feel so good!

Agatha Christie fan

I think I read all her books—definitely the Aircool and Marble ones—but seem to have only that one game from GOG. Good game, must try it again, should have it forgotten by now.
Btw there is a free demo, for anyone who missed the discount.

Apparently I didn't understand what was happening

I think Far Cry 3 was my intro to console-nerfed games—I could never work out where a game was going to restart me when I loaded it. I eventually found always fast traveling back to a safe house before quitting preserved whatever loot and accomplishments I'd gathered—which was still a comparative PITA if the action area was a long way off.

I'm feeling a lot better now

Go you

I'll be going back to work tomorrow

Or not… it's Columbus day

One of my colonists has lost both of his eyes

Well get the rest of the crew out looking for them—you should know by now that eyes are important, especially in a game

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Or not… it's Columbus day

Well, I was counting on getting a check in the mail to deposit into my bank account tomorrow. I guess I'm screwed all around!


(Just joking. Lol)

 

[ZedClampet]

That's good to know. I'll make sure I have a decent amount of time to play when I start so I don't have to quit before reaching a checkpoint. I'll have to see if that becomes a problem.

I won't play Control if our daughter is around, so I'll probably still play some Rimworld in between as well. I'm feeling a lot better now, so I'll be going back to work tomorrow, which means I'll probably be able to update the thread about my Rimworld game during breaks, which will probably help me get back in the mood to continue.

I did consider changing the difficulty to peaceful when I continue until I'm properly settled in the new base I made. It was supposed to be a quick move, but a string of bad events forced me to delay it again and again while I scrambled to get my colonists patched up in time for the next event and with each event stuff just went slightly more wrong. One of my colonists has lost both of his eyes.

According to his post they added a bunch of save areas to the beginning of the game now, so it probably won't be as bad. I actually beat the first boss and then did some other stuff, and at no time did the game say anything about a save system of any sorts, and I was picking up all the letters and everything, being conscientious about not missing anything. I beat that boss on 3 different occasions because the game kept putting me back near the beginning every time I logged in.

 

[Zloth]

I don't know what's screwed up with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, but the game just isn't going to work for me. I'll manage to play a few hours sometimes, then it goes into a crashing fit that kills the game inside of 5 minutes and doesn't stop until I uninstall everything and install it again. Now, even that doesn't work.

The forums aren't on fire with people screaming about how the game is broken so I presume it's not a common thing. I'll have to try again sometime in the future after some bugs are fixed.

 

[Brian Boru]

doesn't stop until I uninstall everything and install it again. Now, even that doesn't work

Hmm, bummer. Suggestions for the distant future, in order of preference:
♣ Install on a different machine.
♦ Try current machine after a fresh Windows install.
♥ Try install to a different drive on current machine & OS.

My guess is some repository like Registry or Appdata or ProgramData folders may have got corrupted for that game. I would recommend not trying to use a save game file from now, start anew.

 

[ZedClampet]

I don't know what's screwed up with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, but the game just isn't going to work for me. I'll manage to play a few hours sometimes, then it goes into a crashing fit that kills the game inside of 5 minutes and doesn't stop until I uninstall everything and install it again. Now, even that doesn't work.

The forums aren't on fire with people screaming about how the game is broken so I presume it's not a common thing. I'll have to try again sometime in the future after some bugs are fixed.

Does the game generate error reports?

 

[Pifanjr]

Go you

Thank you

Or not… it's Columbus day

Don't worry, I won't work too hard

Well get the rest of the crew out looking for them—you should know by now that eyes are important, especially in a game

They're keeping their eye(s) open for replacements. He's not the only one with missing body parts either.

According to his post they added a bunch of save areas to the beginning of the game now, so it probably won't be as bad. I actually beat the first boss and then did some other stuff, and at no time did the game say anything about a save system of any sorts, and I was picking up all the letters and everything, being conscientious about not missing anything. I beat that boss on 3 different occasions because the game kept putting me back near the beginning every time I logged in.

I'll keep my eyes open, I would assume there's some sort of indication the game is saving when it happens. I hate having to replay parts of a game, especially unnecessarily, so I'm really hoping I can avoid accidentally wiping out my progress by quitting before the game has saved.