The Currently Playing & Random Game Thoughts Thread (March 27 to April 2)

[ZedClampet]

Tomorrow morning is going to be hectic for me because I refuse to pack anything until the day I actually leave unless I have a 5 am flight or something, so I decided to go ahead and post this tonight.

I will be chaperoning high school kids at two engineering competitions. I can't participate (darn it), so I'm going to take my laptop and look for a chair and an outlet. Otherwise, that will be about 50 hours of fiddling with my phone and daydreaming. Or maybe they'll have a job for me to do while I'm there. Or maybe they'll make me leave. I really have no idea. My daughter did these a few years back, but I wasn't a chaperone.

I told my boss I was only taking 4 days of vacation since Friday was a holiday, but he didn't agree that April Fool's Day was a holiday.

Anyway, I may play a lot this week or I may not play at all. Will find out on Monday.

 

[Brian Boru]

I will be chaperoning high school kids

Which training video did you study?
I recommend this one, mainly for motivational value:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

 

[Zloth]

We're talking about engineers here! You need to make sure they don't take your car apart and re-assemble it on the roof!

 

[ZedClampet]

All ready to go. As far as packing goes, my philosophy is, "There's always a Wal-Mart not too far away."

 

[Frindis]

Elden Ring and PUBG have pretty much been the games I have played for some time now. I do log into Lost Ark and Runescape daily, but that is only to get the daily login rewards.

 

[ZedClampet]

Had enough sleep. I've decided to play Mars Horizon until I need to get up. It starts off in the 1950's, and you are put in control of someone's space program with the eventual goal of putting a human on Mars. You can play as the US, Europe, Soviet Union, China or Japan.

You decide what research, out of several large research trees, that you currently want to focus on. You build your space headquarters with various facilities. You design rockets and plan missions. And, of course, you launch rockets/do missions. Doing a mission just involves selecting different things to do while your craft is in space.

So far I've only had one rocket blow up, and it was unmanned (I haven't quite gotten to putting humans in space yet). right now I have a dog in space, partially because it gets a lot of publicity, which you need to have at the end of each year to get a good budget.

Having a lot of fun with it.

 

[Brian Boru]

Having a lot of fun with it

Sounds great, wishlisted after reading a bit on Steam—there's a great review there by TNTFTB, thanks to @Zloth for correct link in next post

Dev's blurb says "Created with support from the European Space Agency", which is cool.

[Edited to remove bad link]

 

[Zloth]

That goes to his profile (jeesh, he's got almost as many reviews as I have games!). Here's a link to the review:

Steam Community :: TNTFTB :: Review for Mars Horizon

A fantastic journey through space history management, with a slightly lacking interface. Play as the space agency of your choice You start at the dawn of space exploration, with launching a sounding rocket. You follow the events that happened in earths history, so next you can launch a satellite...

steamcommunity.com

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I started playing No Man's Sky for the first time. I got to where my ship is repaired before I had to quit. Probably not going to be in my Top 10 or anything, but so far, I'm enjoying it.

 

[ZedClampet]

I started playing No Man's Sky for the first time. I got to where my ship is repaired before I had to quit. Probably not going to be in my Top 10 or anything, but so far, I'm enjoying it.

You actually haven't started the real game yet, so hold off on that top 10 pronouncement just a bit.

Really enjoy that game. There is just a ton of stuff to do, which you will find out later. Dogfights are great. Stories are fun to do. Exploration is very, very good, and base building is a lot of fun. They are constantly making the game better and better. Co-op works very well.

One of my favorite things to do is to visit the space stations and look for new ships to buy, or to see how much people want for their freighters. Probably be a long time before you have that kind of in-game money, though.

In other news, Sager wants me to send my gaming laptop back to them, so when I get home, I'll do that. There's some problem, probably with the motherboard. I've been looking for an excuse to use my desktop more, so this will be it.

 

[ZedClampet]

Putting my space race on hold, I'm playing some of The Planet Crafter today. I'm enjoying it okay, but I'm having a problem getting over the fact that making oxygen requires two cobalt (when there's water ice all over the place) and that part of terraforming involves setting bread-box sized heaters around. I think someone misunderstood the Wikipedia entry on terraforming. But even if it involved manually heating the planet up, I'm not sure space heaters are the way to go. Actually, if you really think about it, that's kind of hilarious. I wonder how far away you'd have to stand from a heater that was actually causing the planet to get hotter?

 

[McStabStab]

I've been in a gaming lull this week. I went back and played MGS V: Ground Zeroes to see if I should start Phantom Pain. I think I'll give it a whirl. I also still need to finish AC: Odyssey. But by the time I'm home from work, gotten the kids fed and to bed, had dinner with the wife, and wrapped up any work left for the day, sometimes I just want to melt into the familiar cycle of MTG:A.

We'll see where I end up by this weekend. Death Stranding directors cut is out tomorrow and I'm wanting to try it.

 

[McStabStab]

You actually haven't started the real game yet, so hold off on that top 10 pronouncement just a bit.

Really enjoy that game. There is just a ton of stuff to do, which you will find out later. Dogfights are great. Stories are fun to do. Exploration is very, very good, and base building is a lot of fun. They are constantly making the game better and better. Co-op works very well.

One of my favorite things to do is to visit the space stations and look for new ships to buy, or to see how much people want for their freighters. Probably be a long time before you have that kind of in-game money, though.

I also am a big NMS fan. Welcome to the Universe!

 

[Zloth]

How many days do we wait before we start throwing "visit these coordinates" messages at @WoodenSaucer?

I guess first we need to get him used to the whole jump-melee thing. Lovely example of a serendipity bug.

 

[ZedClampet]

How many days do we wait before we start throwing "visit these coordinates" messages at @WoodenSaucer?

I guess first we need to get him used to the whole jump-melee thing. Lovely example of a serendipity bug.

Tell him to "visit these coordinates", but don't tell him about the portals.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

You actually haven't started the real game yet, so hold off on that top 10 pronouncement just a bit.

Really enjoy that game. There is just a ton of stuff to do, which you will find out later. Dogfights are great. Stories are fun to do. Exploration is very, very good, and base building is a lot of fun. They are constantly making the game better and better. Co-op works very well.

One of my favorite things to do is to visit the space stations and look for new ships to buy, or to see how much people want for their freighters. Probably be a long time before you have that kind of in-game money, though.

In other news, Sager wants me to send my gaming laptop back to them, so when I get home, I'll do that. There's some problem, probably with the motherboard. I've been looking for an excuse to use my desktop more, so this will be it.

Got a chance to play a little more today. I took off from the first planet and ended up on some other planet where I had to create a base computer and start creating my first base. I built a building the size of 4 floor squares. I was just learning how it works and trying to hurry up and beat night time and a storm coming. Now that it's built, I wish I would have built it bigger. But it's nice having a place I can recharge and be safe. Found a few buried tech modules and built a teleportation/portal device, which I haven't figured out how to power yet.

I know I'm very early into this and there is a lot more to discover and do. It's pretty fun. It's not going to be my favorite game, but I'll probably stick with it for a while.

 

[ZedClampet]

I know I'm very early into this and there is a lot more to discover and do. It's pretty fun. It's not going to be my favorite game, but I'll probably stick with it for a while.

for me, it's mostly about exploration, survival and building and running a base, and if those things aren't high on your list of gaming things you like to do, then it may not click with you, but you still have barely started, so give it some time.

so our first competition is over. we won an award for being the best engineering club in the state, so that was good, but despite that honor, we were third in the actual engineering competition.

tomorrow it's down to chattanooga for the next one. i told them they had better get a lot better or i was leaving them in chattanooga. they're teenagers, so they liked that idea.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

tomorrow it's down to chattanooga for the next one. i told them they had better get a lot better or i was leaving them in chattanooga. they're teenagers, so they liked that idea.

Chattanooga is awesome. Are you from TN? Do you ever go to Chattanooga to see the sights? Rock City is a really cool place.

 

[Brian Boru]

the best engineering club … third in the actual engineering competition

So prize due to awesome chaperone, but not so much for actual members.

tomorrow it's down to chattanooga

Traveling by choo-choo, I presume.

 

[ZedClampet]

Traveling by choo-choo, I presume.

They have a fun restaurant in the former train station. It's been years since I ate there. Loved it as a kid. You order at the ticket booth by picking a destination. And, of course, the interior of the restaurant is all train themed (besides actually being an old train station).

 

[Ryzengang]

So, I've been mostly playing some indie lately. I've played a lot of Risk of Rain 2 and, more recently Deep Rock Galactic. Both are excellent games, and Deep Rock is particularly great as a coop game. I've also tried out a smaller indie in the last couple of days, Roboquest, which is a fast-paced roguelite FPS. It's still in early access and I think it could be fleshed out a bit more, but the core gameplay and systems are very strong as is.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Elden Ring when I get a chance. Still feel like I'm going to do everything in the game, just a shame I cant binge it like I want to, or maybe its better this way.

What a game, what a game. People say the last few bosses are really tough. Not sure how much more I have to go, around 75 hours in I'm still feeling like I'm just going to roll straight into a second playthrough.

Also playing Luigis Mansion on the Switch with the nipper a little. Its a bit frustrating as its not always clear to me what your supposed to do, and the boss fights often end up with me running around for ages trying to figure out what the gimmick is to win. The little one finds it funny so thats the main thing.

 

[Zloth]

I didn't do much base building in No Man's Sky. Heck, there wasn't any base building in the game for the first year or two! Just make a room to hide in when storms come and plop down a bunch of vault things outside to store all your stuff.

The teleporter is used to get between your bases and your freighter.

In my gaming - I think Greedfall may be getting ready to wrap up. Side quests are starting to dry up. Like so many RPGs, I find that I'm not even bothering to spend my skill/talent/attribute points now. Even on Hard difficulty, everything has gotten pretty easy, so why make it even easier by spending my points?

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I didn't do much base building in No Man's Sky. Heck, there wasn't any base building in the game for the first year or two! Just make a room to hide in when storms come and plop down a bunch of vault things outside to store all your stuff.

I'm very, very early in the game, but one of my problems is I don't have nearly enough space in my inventory. How do you create vaults like you're talking about?

 

[Zloth]

You build them, using the building tool. I think the base computer gives you some quests to so, and the storage container recipe if the first reward. According to the Wiki, you'll need 35 magnetized ferrite and 20 sodium. Also, it will need to be powered (like the teleporter). You can power a vault with a solar panel or a biofuel reactor. It might be harder to get those blueprints, depending on how you are playing.

There are other ways to expand your storage, though - both on your ship and on your own back.