The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (Feb 13 - 19)

[Zloth]

Oh, looks like my Mass Effect play-through is nearly done already! I'm closing in on 40 hours, which used to be the target game length, so I guess that makes sense.

Ashley's practically throwing herself at me. I don't really know why - I was just being polite. Suddenly we're a thing!? I'm trying to save myself for Tali! Had to kick her out of my bedroom before the Big Battle.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

God of War and Crusader King 3 still for me.

Trying to wrap up GOW before Elden ring in 8 days, but every time I try and get on with it I find myself hanging around and doing side quest and puzzles just because its a lot of fun to do them. Hopefully I'll at least finish off the story before 22nd.

Crusader Kings 3 I founded the Empire of Denmark and changed faith to Catholic so I could rush though adopting feudalism and improve my baronies with better buildings. Turns out that can annoy the peasants even if you manage to convert almost all of your vassals. At the same time I was trying to marry off my grandchildren to one another while waiting for Sweden to finish its war so I could pay to usurp the title, just for the fun of it, Unfortunately one of my more powerful Jarls got proactive and conquered it under my nose. Only noticed when the map suddenly went pink.

I thought it didnt matter, because my son and heir was first in line for the Swedish crown somehow, probably due to previous inbreedings. Unfortunately though he managed to get himself maimed and died shortly after all that. This left me without a decent son for an heir. Thankfully Scandinavian elective let my infirm and old but still well liked king decide who was up for the other kingdom titles and so I got to choose another heir. What I didnt account for was that when my PC died confederate partition sent all of my lovely developed counties to my old characters son, and my elected heir was left with Iceland and the single county of Roskilde, with the son of my old character as his angry vassal because I had taken his daddies Duchy and capital county.

Cue revolution due to Asatru religion peasants rebelling against my Catholic government, followed by several factions forming genral bribery, friend making swaying and chaos. The son of the previous character still revolted and as it turned out his faction had a bigger and better army then I did. I was forced to frantically sell my younger children for alliances, even if their spouses didnt have either good stats or traits in return.

Its all settled down for now, but as you can see if you made it this far Crusader Kings 3 tends to get out of hand when I play it, much like this post did.

 

[Withywarlock]

Very nearly done with my Halo: Infinite Battle Pass, so I will mostly just be logging in for the weekly reward or my mate if he doesn't fancy the Master Chief Collection (MCC.)

I'm going to give that Neverwinter MMO a try, just to get my D&D fix when I'm not playing on Saturday. I don't expect much, other than to drop it quickly because I've got FFXIV on the backburner. And I'm in the process of trying Battlefield V on that Xbox-EA Game Pass thing, but only for 10 hours. I'll see how that goes.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Looking like I'll have to play Horizon Zero dawn at some point now if I'm going to grab Forbidden West in a few years.

Could anyone comment on how it compares to Assassins Creed/Far Cry in style. I'd assumed it was a similar open world-athon and my brain skipped it.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

In Horizon: Zero Dawn, I'm down to my last 2 quests before the final boss. Pretty crazy stuff.

 

[Ryzengang]

I gotta say that seeing the Horizon Forbidden West reviews come in I really wish it was on PC day one. I enjoyed HZD quite a lot and it looks like FW is a great sequel.

I should be playing God of War at the moment but naturally I got side tracked and dropped over 30 hours into Final Fantasy XIV because I was going to "give it a shot"...

 

[Zloth]

Could anyone comment on how it compares to Assassins Creed/Far Cry in style. I'd assumed it was a similar open world-athon and my brain skipped it.

A bit more RPG'ish than those, assuming you mean the earlier Assassin's Creeds. It's not too far off from the newer ones, though. You've got your big, open world. You've got a main quest with the most interesting story. You've got some big'ish side quests with somewhat interesting stories. You've got a bunch of little quests that are mostly pretty weak stories, but they give you an excuse to fight things. You've got a bunch of collectables, which you can easily ignore. There's even climbing things to reveal icons on a map - though the "high points" are giant, robot dinosaurs that wander around, which is way more fun to climb than a building.

It's got a couple of really strong points, though: the combat is great fun and the science fiction, once it gets going, is well done.

In Horizon: Zero Dawn, I'm down to my last 2 quests before the final boss. Pretty crazy stuff.

Have you gotten all the pieces for the special armor? Did you find the special armor quest? Have you managed to bring down a stormbird? (I had to look up the name for those. I just called them "blue dragons.")

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

A bit more RPG'ish than those, assuming you mean the earlier Assassin's Creeds. It's not too far off from the newer ones, though. You've got your big, open world. You've got a main quest with the most interesting story. You've got some big'ish side quests with somewhat interesting stories. You've got a bunch of little quests that are mostly pretty weak stories, but they give you an excuse to fight things. You've got a bunch of collectables, which you can easily ignore. There's even climbing things to reveal icons on a map - though the "high points" are giant, robot dinosaurs that wander around, which is way more fun to climb than a building.

It's got a couple of really strong points, though: the combat is great fun and the science fiction, once it gets going, is well done.

Thanks. I think I'll have to give it a shot on a sale sometime. I was luke-warm on Odyssey after enjoying the first few hours it got a bit samey. I probably would have preferred it with giant robot dinosaurs.

 

[Brian Boru]

Horizon: Zero Dawn

A bit more RPG'ish

Thanks for that info. So it's not heavy RPG then? I might be interested if it doesn't get too wound up in the RPG or story sides—I like FC's leveling, skill tree, base building, stories, crafting, side quests …which are all sufficiently light touch that they don't detract from the main gameplay.

way more fun to climb

Good to hear, the towers in FC 3 & 4 were a pain, which make me rethink replaying them.

combat is great fun

I've only seen a few short excerpts, but looked like a lot of dodging and flailing involved, which I don't enjoy. How playable is it at range?

 

[Colif]

i had a random thought on 1st day, why was thread started on Tuesday... and then realised I am only one here in the future.

 

[Frindis]

I'm playing the Lost Ark EU queue game and it is really funny! When you do get in, it is actually not that bad. The story/quests are so far its weakest points, so weak I ended up just skipping everything. There are still some unskippable scenes, so at least I get a grasp of what is happening around me.

Combat feels really nice with A LOT of customizations and the ability to respec without any cost is something more MMOs should be doing. Plenty of farming and your own stronghold to upgrade, which is something I can see myself spending hours doing. Level 37 now, so going to take some time more before I get to end game stuff. It's PTW (real shocker there) but at least for now, it does not interfere with my progression in the game.

 

[Pifanjr]

My daughter has learned how to use the inventory in A Short Hike and has been having fun dousing camp fires with the water bucket. She's also generally improved a lot on just navigating the world. It's really fun to see how fast she's learning.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Have you gotten all the pieces for the special armor? Did you find the special armor quest? Have you managed to bring down a stormbird? (I had to look up the name for those. I just called them "blue dragons.")

No, I didn't get the special armor. Are you talking about that underground armory where you have to find several power cores to open it up? If so, I've only found like 2 power cores. I haven't focused on it.

As for the Stormbird, yes I did end up taking it down. That thing was a pain in the backside, too. But yes, I got it without taking an extreme amount of damage. But even getting to the Stormbird in the first place was rough. I had to go through a section with 3 Stalkers and a bunch of Watchers. Then immediately to a section with 3-4 Ravagers, 3-4 Glinthawks, and some Watchers. Then immediately comes the Stormbird. That was one tough succession of enemies all at once. But I made it and ended up getting the lance with the master override.

Now I've been through the part where Meridian is making all of the preparations, and I'm about to go into the final battle.

 

[Zloth]

Thanks. I think I'll have to give it a shot on a sale sometime. I was luke-warm on Odyssey after enjoying the first few hours it got a bit samey. I probably would have preferred it with giant robot dinosaurs.

Those help everything. Sadly, there's no lasers coming out of their eyes, but it's still the first game in the series.

I've only seen a few short excerpts, but looked like a lot of dodging and flailing involved, which I don't enjoy. How playable is it at range?

Hmmm, depends on the enemies. You've got to use range against the flying enemies. Against the earliest enemies, you can often take them down before they can get to you. Once the bigger enemies start showing up, though, they're going to come charging in.

The way I played was stealthy. Early in the game, I would hide in the bushes and whistle over a bot, then <ahem> retire it with one sneak attack. Eventually, the sneak attack damage wasn't enough, but that's also about when the ability to take over smaller bots became available. So, I would turn one or two smaller bots to my side, let them soften up the others. There was still plenty of Dodge-Dodge-TryToShoot by the end, but I didn't mind. (Against humans, sneak attacks and head shots were always the way to go.)

That's nothing close to the only way to play Horizon: Zero Dawn, though. I saw some folks on the boards bragging about how they only needed the spear. Others said that freezing skills were really effective - shoot them with freezing arrows/slingshot grenades until their freeze meter maxes out, then shoot with high damage arrows against weak spots for massive damage. There's plenty of traps you can leave lying around as well, though they didn't seem that strong to me. Oh, and the rope arrows! I never touched them, but a few of those should hold the botty beasties back.

There's not just "the combat" - there's a few combats, and they change over the course of the game.

No, I didn't get the special armor. Are you talking about that underground armory where you have to find several power cores to open it up? If so, I've only found like 2 power cores. I haven't focused on it.

Yep. That's pretty serious armor.

That was one tough succession of enemies all at once. But I made it and ended up getting the lance with the master override.

Oh THAT stormbird! I took one look at that one and just hoofed it to the next area. I brought down a couple of others earlier, I was NOT going to mess with that one after all the trouble the previous group gave me.

Now I've been through the part where Meridian is making all of the preparations, and I'm about to go into the final battle.

That's where I broke off, snagged the special armor, and headed up north to the DLC. If you have trouble with the final battle, you can get some nice armor and somewhat better weapons up there, then come back and finish the game instead of going up after the battle.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Oh THAT stormbird! I took one look at that one and just hoofed it to the next area. I brought down a couple of others earlier, I was NOT going to mess with that one after all the trouble the previous group gave me.

That's where I broke off, snagged the special armor, and headed up north to the DLC. If you have trouble with the final battle, you can get some nice armor and somewhat better weapons up there, then come back and finish the game instead of going up after the battle.

Haha. I just found out you have to fight a bunch of Stormbirds in the final battle. I just beat the main story of the game. Wow, that was tough! I remember back when I thought a single, non-corrupted Sawtooth was hard. Haha.

What a great game, though!

 

[Zloth]

Time to head North, young @WoodenSaucer ! @Frindis snuck around yonder scorcher, but you are MIGHTY!

(Mighty flammable, that is)

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Those help everything. Sadly, there's no lasers coming out of their eyes, but it's still the first game in the series.
There's not just "the combat" - there's a few combats, and they change over the course of the game.

I was almost out on the lack of laser eye dinos, but you pulled me back in with the rest.

 

[Pifanjr]

I played a bit more Warhammer 2 this morning, continuing with my Direfin Vortex campaign. I've decided to just play as a pirate and just sack and raze settlements and install pirate coves in port settlements instead of occupying any, after the first four settlements I conquered kept having rebel problems and defending them from enemy armies was too much of a hassle.

My income is in the negative most of the time, but as long as I can keep looting it's not a problem. The several sources of upkeep reduction help as well. Too bad one of my pirate coves got razed.

I sent my second army to the Order of the Loremasters to create some more pirate coves, but they ended up having more armies than I'd hoped. I camped right outside their city in the hope they would attack me (and I could defeat them). They came at me with 3 armies, about 30 units total probably, and the autoresolve indicated a valiant defeat. Once on the battle map, it showed that the reinforcements were coming in from my side of the battle map, so I had to fight the battle on two fronts. Luckily there was a big hill on one side of the map I could put my army on so I wasn't just fighting back to back.

It honestly went perfectly according to plan. My artillery did its job, my chaff tied the enemy units down while the ranged units shot them from the sides (though I did miss two of my ranged units not having line of sight for a bit while they were being peppered by arrows). I probably still would've lost if I hadn't managed to cast two of the best aimed and executed spells I've done, giving me about 300 kills and destroying enemy leadership.

In the end I lost I think 5 cheap units which I could immediately replace with the Raise Dead mechanic. Next time I continue I'll have to actually siege their city, which the autocomplete also gave me a valiant defeat for. I think it should be doable by just letting my artillery thin their ranks first before moving in.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

[Mod edit: topic is Half Life Alyx VR, spammer's quote removed.]

I bought that game over a year ago when we got our Quest 2, and I still haven't even played it yet. I never did go to the trouble of connecting my Quest to my PC.

 

[ZedClampet]

Wasn't going to post until work calmed down, probably in April, but I tested positive for Covid yesterday, and the boss gave me the rest of this week and next off even though I work from home. I really don't feel that bad. It's like my allergies are a bit out of control, and I'm extremely tired, but as long as it doesn't get any worse than this, I'll be happy.

So I'm locked in the main bedroom with my laptop so I don't spread germs around the house. I'm so tired that I don't feel like playing anything, but I'm going to try to play some Total War Warhammer 3 here in a minute, anyway, because I've been looking forward to this for ages.

Before getting sick, my son and I had started playing Atlas again. Game is an absolute CF (where the "C" stands for "cluster"), but it's really fun anyway even though I am compelled to back up my save file every 30 minutes or so.

We were trying to take over an island the other day. To do that you have to clear out the pirate camps and defeat any ships they have patrolling the island. So the last pirate camp on this island was an absolute mess. It had spawned about 9 times right on top of itself and half underground. We tried to claim the camp, but the game told us there were still 3 pirates left and showed us where they were. They were under the map. So I entered the console command "ghost" and dropped under the map and found them, but while I was in ghost mode I couldn't hurt them, and when I came out of ghost mode, I immediately popped to the surface. So I looked up the rest of the console commands. There was one called HurtMyTarget that was bugged and didn't work. The only other one that looked like it might help was KillAllEnemies. The description said, "Kills all enemies. They eventually respawn." Sounded good to me, so I typed it in. As soon as I hit <enter>, my son yelled, "What happened!" Not only did the command kill all enemies, it killed all our pets and our ships, as well. Everything we owned was on those ships, and the pets are not easy to get. Time to load a backup save.

Then a couple of days ago, we were just sailing around and crashed to desktop. When we went back in, our ships and everything on them were gone.

Then there was the time all the islands disappeared and wouldn't come back even when we shut the game down and reentered.

Well-made game.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Welcome back and hope it doesnt get too bad @ZedClampet. Our little one come down with something just now and theres been Covid in her daycare group this week, so might be in a similar situation soon.

In other news Overhype announced a final DLC for their nearly 5 year old game Battle Brothers, which I may have mentioned a time or ten. It's totally free! They could easily have charged 5 or 10 and I bet the smallish community that's still playing it would have all happily forked out for it. Shout out to them for going above and beyond.

 

[Colif]

EA held a townhall about BF2042 and essentially said that people didn't buy their unpolished turd because Halo was released and they bought that instead.
That isn't an excuse, guys. Its acting its like it is Halo's fault that you couldn't get more suckers to buy your game from lack of choice. Were you back stabbed by another better game being released? Didn't Microsoft get the memo, only bad games now.. nothing to make competitors look bad.

In a perfect world, in EA's mind, only one really crappy game is allowed to be released each year, per genre, so that people have to buy it. It works for their sport games.

Re releasing games, and replacing older better games with garbage ones is just a way to make people stop comparing your crap to other better games made by people who cared. It was working for Blizzard.

I wonder if that Diablo mobile game will be released now Microsoft own them.

 

[Zloth]

As long as I'm not TOO tired, I find games really help when I'm sick. The best way to have a coughing fit is to wonder if you're about to have a coughing fit - which you're likely to do when you're bored. You're much less likely to do so if you've got the adrenalin pumping because a robo-dino is charging you or you're trying to work out whether you should build more bombers or settlers.

Games that screw up often work well, too. You're too busy raging against the machine to cough. Not advisable for anyone with high blood pressure.

 

[Sarafan]

I finally made C&C Tiberian Sun run quite properly on modern hardware. It was a real challenge given the fact that even the community patch which was supposed to make it playable on Win10 didn't do its job properly. After hours of tries and thanks to dgVoodoo2 and disabled fullscreen optimizations the game runs almost like a charm. It has a few minor quirks, but who cares? I can finally return to this wonderful title without major issues. It needs a remaster similar to the one which the first two C&C games received. Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 of course.

 

[Zloth]

This morning, I found that that you could drop your own screenshots into a directory and have Subnautica: Below Zero use them in picture frames you can put on base walls. I jumped into "creative mode" and started making a gallery.

Yep, this is going to be fun!

Then I found out something else: you can also drop mp3/flac/ogg files in a different directory and have the jukebox use them! I haven't had a game let me do that in a terribly long time! I haven't had a game let me do custom pictures AND custom music ever!!

I ended up spending the whole day gathering screenshots and MP3 files. I need to get back to normal mode and play the game properly again before I get used to the infinite-oxygen of creative mode.