The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (April 17 to April 23)

[ZedClampet]

Bought Among Trees and played some Outpost Glacier (free alpha of a survival game on itch(dot)io.).

Among Trees is a survival game that seems to be mostly just wandering around looking for the non-respawning materials. I've played for 45 minutes and haven't crafted anything yet. Just endless wandering around. The inventory system sucks, and I refuse to build anything but the storage room first because once your inventory is full, you are stuck either dropping items that then despawn or not picking up anything else. If the items respawned, I would drop things, but you have to always go farther and farther from your base to find anything. I'm going to play it again today, but I can't promise I'll play it after that depending on how that play session goes.

Playing a little Total War Warhammer 3. Having some mod problems. Someone messed up their mod so badly that it ruined your old save files, so both my single player and co-op campaigns had to be started over. Also, the bad thing about early access (and let's face it, TWW3 is in early access) is that by the time the game is finished, most of the mods won't be working, and you have to fix them yourself if you want to use them. But after this modder got messed up by an update and screwed up the fix, I'm thinking about picking the mods I want to use and just making a copy of them that I manage myself.

I'm looking forward to a game called Prehistoric Kingdom that is coming out in a little over a week where you build a zoo for extinct creatures. Hopefully the game isn't impossible to play for the vision impaired like Frontier games are.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, now I kind of have to look at it, don't I?

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Still playing Elden Ring. I quite like it.

 

[ZedClampet]

Hmm, that was disappointing. I mean, you can do anything in a video game, and that looks just...standard faire with ridiculous looking body models.

 

[Zloth]

I wonder what Steam searches on when you just leave the field blank, sorting by relevance? Empty string should match everything with equal relevance, so it has to fall back on whatever options they have going on behind the scenes. Maybe search popularity?

I get this when I show hidden games:

(Image thumbnail is cutting some off - click to see the full list)

 

[Frag Maniac]

I'd been searching for something other than my usual walkthrough games to play recently, and couldn't help but think I'd put off going through Halo TMCC on Legendary. I've only ever played Infinite on Legendary, and I know the other games are harder to play on that mode, so I wanted to be in the right state of mind before taking it on. Well after 4 missions through Combat Evolved last night, I realized for the first time how hard it is on Legendary. It's not that it's holistically hard, really only a few segments are what take a lot of retries.

Oddly enough I've made it through pretty much all the Hunter battles with no deaths or retries, but there are some minute parts of the game that are just nerve racking. For instance, the mission I'm on now called Assault on the Control Room starts with you on a sort of huge balcony on one side of a chasm. After a couple seconds, two Elites and about 4 Grunts come piling out of a nearby door. There's a Covenant turret on either side of the door, but every time I tried jumping in the nearest one immediately, I got taken out by their fire, grenades, or one of them jumping in the other turret.

The thing that finally worked was tossing the 4 UNSC grenades I had well to kill the 2 Elites, then crouching behind the turret to take out each Grunt with my pistol one at a time as they emerged from the door. Even though I knew I had a great result just killing the 2 Elites with 4 grenades, I was really worried one of those clever Grunts would evade my pistol fire with a mad dash to the other turret, or toss a grenade. A grenade toss was much less likely due to the distance, but I felt the possibility of one scampering to the turret while just missing my fire was a real threat. Thankfully it was all over in less than a minute for what took at least a half hour or more it seemed.

I knew I probably should have called it quits when I noticed it was 11:30PM, my usual bed time, and hadn't even eaten dinner yet. Instead I got sucked into the marvel that this game is, and didn't get to bed until 6:30 AM. My eyes paid for it both last night, and late this morning when I woke up.

 

[Zloth]

Finished up X4:Foundations last night. I popped back in for a few days so I could finish the Paranid unification quest.

The game has a feature that watches your save files for key events. If you start a second game, you can select a custom start that will allow you to skip some of the quests if you've already completed them, start with a (small) station, be friendly with (or enemies of) some factions, and the like. Finishing that quest means I can start with the Paranid unified next time I play.

 

[ZedClampet]

Finished up X4:Foundations last night. I popped back in for a few days so I could finish the Paranid unification quest.

The game has a feature that watches your save files for key events. If you start a second game, you can select a custom start that will allow you to skip some of the quests if you've already completed them, start with a (small) station, be friendly with (or enemies of) some factions, and the like. Finishing that quest means I can start with the Paranid unified next time I play.

that's an awesome feature

 

[Pifanjr]

Finished up X4:Foundations last night. I popped back in for a few days so I could finish the Paranid unification quest.

The game has a feature that watches your save files for key events. If you start a second game, you can select a custom start that will allow you to skip some of the quests if you've already completed them, start with a (small) station, be friendly with (or enemies of) some factions, and the like. Finishing that quest means I can start with the Paranid unified next time I play.

I happened to notice there's a Humble Bundle for the X series on sale now. I have to admit I got tempted for a split second, the series has always sounded fascinating with the amount of content in them.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Finally someone besides me talks about Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and the thread got shut down for being a duplicate topic!

Just for proof that I'm not the only one who enjoys that stellar game:

What is your favourite game

I'm an avid gamer, but I've been trying to think of the first games I remember playing and really loved. I remember sneaking into my cousins dad's study to boot up his mac to play Monkey Island, where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? And Myst (which I wasn't very good at). If you're a gamer...

forums.pcgamer.com

 

[Frindis]

Amazingly enough, I have been playing Fortnite. I hate building in the game, so the newly implemented no-build mode makes it fun. Other than that I'm going to jump into LOTRO because of the 15th anniversary where they are going to give out some free expansions/quests - https://www.lotro.com/news/lotro-15th-anniversary.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Well I've officially conquered Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary on Legendary now. I even played it less efficiently than I could have, as I generally wasn't using the combo trick where you overcharge the Covenant pistol to strip shields of tougher enemies like Elites, then take them out a LOT quicker (and with less ammo). Thus the classically renowned Convenant pistol/UNSC pistol arsenal many use. As a result I had to scrounge for ammo and backtrack far more than I should have for both ammo and health.

As usual, the ending of The Maw mission where you need to open and destroy the reactors, took many tries, as did it's escape game ending where you're at the mercy of the pitiful handling Warthog. Again though, I realized later (this time after reading a walkthrough on it) that it was largely my naivety, trying to push the pace, and game settings that caused the retries. I guess I didn't know as much about this game as I thought I did, and it can certainly make a big difference on Legendary.

I was down to a sliver of health when I got into the engine room to shut down the reactors, and I didn't realize there were health packs beside computers on the main floor. In my hurried pace I also tried to shoot Carriers when too close to them. Often times on Legendary too close is MUCH further than you can get away with on lower difficulty levels, because when Carriers explode, they'll also explode any nearby plasma grenades other Flood have dropped, and in the hallways it was happening in, the splash damage is amplified. I also found disabling Vsync and setting the frame limiter to 120 allowed the Warthog to drive a bit faster, with no noticeable tearing.

To my defense though, Halo Infinite in many ways is everything the first game should have been, but perhaps couldn't be due to the tech and/or hardware performance at the time. For instance, in Infinite it's easy to see when an enemy has their shields, as it's clearly visible. This means no wasting Covenant pistol ammo, a gun that doesn't have much to begin with. The enemies will also usually bemoan that their shield or armor has broken when you breach it. To CE's defense though, at least you know if you landed a charged Cov pistol shot, because it leaves glowing green plasma on them, with a short trail.

As well, the plasma rifle in Infinite is very effective at destroying shields, so you don't have to gimp your arsenal with a weaker weapon with little ammo. Pretty much everything to do with weapons and ammo in Infinite is better, yet easier to pick up strategically. Kinetic weapons/ammo break armor, plasma weapons/ammo break shields, and the ammo is even color coded. They still keep you on your toes though, because some enemies can regen their shields, so many times it's a matter of weighing speed and potential exposure risk, vs cover and possibly having to strip shields again and spend more ammo. This is because enemies in Infinite will often take cover to regen their shields when they're stripped.

All things considered, if you play Infinite like I did on Legendary but with no upgrades and tool wise only use the grappleshot, it's about the same in difficulty as playing Combat Evolved on Legendary with the combo shot trick. In fact many of the fights in Infinite are as tough if not tougher, like dealing with cloaked enemies with no threat sensor (the way you have to in CE) the 2 red Hunters in a fairly small room, and the final boss fight. So if you love Halo and have not yet tried Infinite, it's campaign is well worth playing, and there's so much you can do in it, both in gameplay content and tactics. I for one am glad they chose Infinite as a base platform to use for some time, as I can't wait to see what comes next.

 

[Zloth]

that's an awesome feature

New Game Plus done right! Hmmm... actually, I think we did have a topic on that already. Oh well.

 

[Pifanjr]

We finally made enough space on the desk to set up my desktop computer, so I was finally able to continue my Warhammer 2 Vortex campaign with Grom. Most of it was hunting Skaven, as I was at war with both Clan Mors and Clan Eshin and since I had a Waaagh I had plenty of troops to hunt with ( a Waaagh basically gives each army a secondary army of mostly low tier units that will reinforce the main army in battle).

However, after taking one of Clan Mors' settlements, they put one and a half stacks near the next one. Since I only had one army there with mostly low tier stuff, I decided to set an ambush as I figured they would try to retake their settlement. I spent a bunch of time finding a spot in the trees where my ambush chance was 80% and where the road was still in the ambush area. Apparently for nothing, as they not only spotted me, but ambushed me themselves (Skaven have a unique ability to ambush on an attack, instead of setting up an ambush and hoping an enemy walks near you).

So I had to fight about 30 units with only 17 units of my own, as it being an ambush battle meant the Waaagh reinforcements couldn't join. My army consisted of 8 goblin units, 3 goblin archers, 1 orc archer, 1 wolf cavalry, 1 snotling pump wagon unit (chariots), 2 rock lobbers (artillery) and my level 13 spellcaster lord. Which is all pretty low tier stuff. Luckily their army was mostly low tier Skaven units as well, though they had a few higher tier infantry units. The main problem though was that they also had 4 heroes and 2 lords.

The rock lobbers were the real MVPs of this fight. I was lucky that the AI is pretty stupid in this game, as they ignored my poorly defended artillery for most of the fight. Each of them got 300+ kills by the end of the fight and they were mainly responsible for most of their army routing, which gave me enough breathing room to start taking out their heroes and lords. I ended up losing my lord when it got intercepted by one of their heroes while it was chasing down their fleeing lord, which died only seconds later.

After a long battle, I had managed to route almost the entire enemy army, but almost my entire army was either wiped out or had routed as well. I had only 3 goblin units left, with only 25, 42 and 73 models remaining. They had only 3 Skaven slinger units left and one Warlock Engineer. I spend the next 5 minutes or so watching my goblins run after their slingers in circles, but since they had equal speed they could never catch up. Luckily, one of them was running clockwise while the other ran counterclockwise, so when they inevitable ran into each other I managed to trap one of them and run them off the map. I spend another 5 minutes trapping the other two while the Benny Hill theme played in my head.

The Warlock Engineer had just been milling about in the middle of the map during all of this. It still had about half of his health left and I wasn't sure if I could take him, but luckily my units had managed to hide themselves in a forest. There was still 20 minutes left on the battle timer and since they attacked me, I would win if it ran out. Out of curiosity I send the two weakest units against the Engineer to see if I could kill him, but a few seconds and two warp lightnings later they were both dead without doing any significant damage.

So I put the speed at the highest setting and just waited. It felt a bit cheap to win this way, but I rationalized it by pretending the battle timer was just the time it would take for my Waaagh army to discover the ambush and reinforce me so I would win the battle. Since most of their units had ran away their armies could just retreat after the battle (though with serious losses still), but the turn after I easily wiped them out with the help of the Waaagh reinforcements, as those were at full health still.

Finally someone besides me talks about Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and the thread got shut down for being a duplicate topic!

Just for proof that I'm not the only one who enjoys that stellar game:

What is your favourite game

I'm an avid gamer, but I've been trying to think of the first games I remember playing and really loved. I remember sneaking into my cousins dad's study to boot up his mac to play Monkey Island, where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? And Myst (which I wasn't very good at). If you're a gamer...

forums.pcgamer.com

My wife absolutely loves it as well.

 

[Brian Boru]

@ZedClampet

Weekend Sale: exciting split-screen and co-op games up to 90% off, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com

Download the best games on Windows & Mac. A vast selection of titles, DRM-free, with free goodies, and lots of pure customer love.

www.gog.com

Link is to forum thread, where 2nd post has a great list with title, price, discount.

 

[Brian Boru]

Gothic II lovers, nice freebie:

The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos

To play this game you will also need Gothic 2 Gold Edition The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Ar

www.gog.com

"is a free, total conversion mod for Gothic II: Gold Edition. It features a completely new open world, improved skills systems, gameplay mechanics and complex story"

 

[Johnway]

I was playing parasite eve 2 on my vita and i'm struggling to finish it. The game is wearing my patience down with its janky controls and the horrible/dickish combat mechanics (its more the weapons do so little bloody damage and how you can't easily switch between multiple weapons etc).

To summerize whilst PE2 looks better, square took everything that was good with Parasite eve and tossed it in the bin. A shame as i can understand why they made those design decisions. Plus it does have a few germs of a good idea but on the whole the game has left a bad taste in my mouth.

i did try the 3rd birthday and yeah, after 20 minutes beaten the first mission i was satisfied that its not worth my time.

I've pretty much given up and moving onto playing my 3ds and playing luigi's mansion which i'm finding a lot more entertaining.

 

[Sarafan]

Currently doing a second playthrough of Fallout 4 and I'm actually having fun. F4 has the best shooting model in the whole series. The reception of the game is much better than during my first play. Maybe rest from Bethesda's open world formula did its job.

Besides that I'm still playing Diablo 2 Resurrected. I'm struggling to make a decision whether to get involved in the ladder that starts on April 29th. It's tempting, but will be very time consuming.

And now I see that there's a great deal for The Elder Scrolls Online on Steam... Damn, I'm buying more games that I'm able to play and now a very time consuming MMORPG will be added to my list? I don't know, but it's so tempting...

 

[Zloth]

I never did get around to Fallout 4. Lots of people were griping about it, so it just never got on my wish list. I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas, though not as well as Skyrim.

If you're playing a second time, clearly you like the game. What's fun about it?

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I never did get around to Fallout 4. Lots of people were griping about it, so it just never got on my wish list. I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas, though not as well as Skyrim.

If you're playing a second time, clearly you like the game. What's fun about it?

Fallout 4 would be a great game if you didn't spend 75% of your time waiting for a new room to load.

 

[Pifanjr]

I never did get around to Fallout 4. Lots of people were griping about it, so it just never got on my wish list. I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas, though not as well as Skyrim.

I'm exactly the same. One of my friends was recently streaming himself playing Fallout 4 and it looked pretty much exactly like 3 and NV and I've read more stories from people who really enjoyed it, which has made me want to try it. I don't think I'll get around to it any time soon though.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I'm exactly the same. One of my friends was recently streaming himself playing Fallout 4 and it looked pretty much exactly like 3 and NV and I've read more stories from people who really enjoyed it, which has made me want to try it. I don't think I'll get around to it any time soon though.

I think Fallout 4 is probably heavier toward the FPS side of gameplay than the others were. It's still an RPG, but I think it's more FPS than the others.

 

[Sarafan]

If you're playing a second time, clearly you like the game. What's fun about it?

Well, I guess it's a quite decent shooter. The characters aren't as memorable and well written as in Fallout New Vegas, but the game defends itself in many areas. If someone is a hardcore Fallout lore fan, he'll have a very hard time with the game. Bethesda decided to change many elements that were characteristic for the series. Let's take Power Armors for example. The suits are now something that resembles tanks in usage. And while this fact alone doesn't have to be against the lore of the previous games, the fact that there's limited "fuel" is.

If you can turn a blind eye for such details and approach the game keeping in mind that it bases on shooting things, you'll have loads of fun. Also there's a major story twist at some point and it's definitely worth playing to see it. The game isn't worse than Oblivion in my opinion.

Also I didn't have the occasion to play the DLCs yet, so this is a nice bonus for playing the game second time. I heard a lot of good things about Far Harbor.

Fallout 4 would be a great game if you didn't spend 75% of your time waiting for a new room to load.

That's a major downside. I'm considering to install a mod that's supposed to speed up the loading times. The open world in the city can load even two minutes on SSD because the loading process is dependent on the framerate. I know this sounds silly, but the data transfer is really capped along with the framerate. Higher than 60 fps speeds up the loading times but breaks the game physics.

I've read more stories from people who really enjoyed it, which has made me want to try it. I don't think I'll get around to it any time soon though.

I bought the GOTY version for around $10. Why not try it for such a price?

 

[ZedClampet]

I never did get around to Fallout 4. Lots of people were griping about it, so it just never got on my wish list. I liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas, though not as well as Skyrim.

If you're playing a second time, clearly you like the game. What's fun about it?

I'm exactly the same. One of my friends was recently streaming himself playing Fallout 4 and it looked pretty much exactly like 3 and NV and I've read more stories from people who really enjoyed it, which has made me want to try it. I don't think I'll get around to it any time soon though.

Fallout 4 is an excellent game. If you liked 3 and NV, then you will like this. People online think they win cool points if they bash Bethesda. I hear people all the time claiming that Skyrim is terrible without mods, and that can't logically be correct. We can expect the same reception for Starfield.

 

[Pifanjr]

I bought the GOTY version for around $10. Why not try it for such a price?

Because I already own at least 5 other games I really want to play as well