The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
It's no worse than Steam. Which is to say they're ALL terrible. Why do I need an extra layer of useless software to play my games?
Steam provides other functionality though, and doesn't take much in the way of resources.
 
Eh? Last time I checked you could download and run the games without using Steam. You just need Steam to do the downloading.
Tried, doesn't work. My point is, all these 'store fronts' are all the same. I just don't how anyone could like one over the other. Steam, in fact, did everything that all the others have been accused of back in 2008. But I'm not here to stop anyone from doing anything.

I tried The First Descendant's Beta, and it's not really grabbing me. And I like that sort of action shooter.
 
I've been playing more Hoi4. I did a Historical America campaign where I knocked Japan out of the war in mid 1942 and probably could have taken out the Germans in mid 43 If I didn't bother with North Africa. I wanted to take on the Soviets after finishing off the Germans, but by the time I was even remotely ready it was late 1946 and the game was slowing down from all the units.

Then I wanted to do a China game, I wanted a challenge so I set some goals:
1. Start as the Guangxi Clique and usurp Chiang Kai Shek as leader of China.
2. Push Japan out of Manchuria and Korea.
3. Go democratic, end the Chinese united front and join the allies.
4. Invade the Soviet Union and reclaim Outer Manchuria, Mongolia and Tannu Tuva.
My first attempt went well, I turned off historical AI focuses so I had some breathing room before the Japanese invaded. I managed to get the first goal completed before Japan invaded in late 1938. The war went some what ok, I withdrew from Bejing and hold a defensive line at the Yellow River. That went well until my coastal garrisons tried to spam attack a single tile across the yellow river, but still part of Shangdong province, instead of guarding the coast around Qingdao. The Japanese managed to land some troops there and the whole line began to collapse.
At that point the lack of historical AI really began to show. Manchukuo broke free from Japan and tried to make the Qing Dynasty a thing again. They stole several of my warlord allies, stayed at war with me and then joined the allies, ruining my chance for the 3rd goal. Eventually that game got even weirder and I somehow ended up at war with the Axis, the Allies, and the Comintern. The only countries still willing to be remotely friendly with me were a bizarre coalition of Mediterranean nations led by a communist Italy and Democratic (but expansionist?) Turkey. I gave up after the Germans defeated the Soviet Union and started to invade through Mongolia.
I tried 2 more times as Guangxi with historical AI on but kept running into the same wall where I had to spend exorbitant amounts of command power promoting officers and never had enough to spend on crucial command abilities for combat.
Finally I scrapped the 1st goal and started as regular Nationalist China. The war with Japan was a hard struggle and I made them bleed for every inch of territory they took before finally pushing them off the mainland in 1943, succeeding at my 2nd goal. Meanwhile the Allies really struggled this game, they finally finished off the Germans in 1946 by D-daying in Bordeaux and Genoa. Despite this, the Germans were still holding out on the outskirts of Moscow and Stalingrad when the Dutch rolled into Berlin via a 2nd D-day in Hamburg. Poland remained an independent democracy and there were 4 Germany's, including an independent communist one in Austria, 2 democratic ones both lead by Conrad Adenauer (one was historical west Germany and the other was literally the modern day Kaliningrad Oblast) and historical east Germany. The Allies also have failed to knock Japan out of the war at all, I suspect my pushing them out of China freed up their troops for greater southeast Asia conquests.
Unfortunately old Mao Zedong then left the faction, declared war on me and JOINED THE GODDAMN ALLIES. Now I'm in some bizarro world where Truman has allied with Mao Zedong and Stalin fighting WW3 with the Allies in Romania because Poland won't join a war Portugal started (Seriously this keeps happening and I don't know why Portugal keeps starting WW3). I've kept it running for a while after but the fun is mostly lost so I think I'm going to call it.
For my next game I think I might do a Trotsky takes over Europe Soviets run.
 
I've been playing more Hoi4. I did a Historical America campaign where I knocked Japan out of the war in mid 1942 and probably could have taken out the Germans in mid 43 If I didn't bother with North Africa. I wanted to take on the Soviets after finishing off the Germans, but by the time I was even remotely ready it was late 1946 and the game was slowing down from all the units.

Then I wanted to do a China game, I wanted a challenge so I set some goals:
1. Start as the Guangxi Clique and usurp Chiang Kai Shek as leader of China.
2. Push Japan out of Manchuria and Korea.
3. Go democratic, end the Chinese united front and join the allies.
4. Invade the Soviet Union and reclaim Outer Manchuria, Mongolia and Tannu Tuva.
My first attempt went well, I turned off historical AI focuses so I had some breathing room before the Japanese invaded. I managed to get the first goal completed before Japan invaded in late 1938. The war went some what ok, I withdrew from Bejing and hold a defensive line at the Yellow River. That went well until my coastal garrisons tried to spam attack a single tile across the yellow river, but still part of Shangdong province, instead of guarding the coast around Qingdao. The Japanese managed to land some troops there and the whole line began to collapse.
At that point the lack of historical AI really began to show. Manchukuo broke free from Japan and tried to make the Qing Dynasty a thing again. They stole several of my warlord allies, stayed at war with me and then joined the allies, ruining my chance for the 3rd goal. Eventually that game got even weirder and I somehow ended up at war with the Axis, the Allies, and the Comintern. The only countries still willing to be remotely friendly with me were a bizarre coalition of Mediterranean nations led by a communist Italy and Democratic (but expansionist?) Turkey. I gave up after the Germans defeated the Soviet Union and started to invade through Mongolia.
I tried 2 more times as Guangxi with historical AI on but kept running into the same wall where I had to spend exorbitant amounts of command power promoting officers and never had enough to spend on crucial command abilities for combat.
Finally I scrapped the 1st goal and started as regular Nationalist China. The war with Japan was a hard struggle and I made them bleed for every inch of territory they took before finally pushing them off the mainland in 1943, succeeding at my 2nd goal. Meanwhile the Allies really struggled this game, they finally finished off the Germans in 1946 by D-daying in Bordeaux and Genoa. Despite this, the Germans were still holding out on the outskirts of Moscow and Stalingrad when the Dutch rolled into Berlin via a 2nd D-day in Hamburg. Poland remained an independent democracy and there were 4 Germany's, including an independent communist one in Austria, 2 democratic ones both lead by Conrad Adenauer (one was historical west Germany and the other was literally the modern day Kaliningrad Oblast) and historical east Germany. The Allies also have failed to knock Japan out of the war at all, I suspect my pushing them out of China freed up their troops for greater southeast Asia conquests.
Unfortunately old Mao Zedong then left the faction, declared war on me and JOINED THE GODDAMN ALLIES. Now I'm in some bizarro world where Truman has allied with Mao Zedong and Stalin fighting WW3 with the Allies in Romania because Poland won't join a war Portugal started (Seriously this keeps happening and I don't know why Portugal keeps starting WW3). I've kept it running for a while after but the fun is mostly lost so I think I'm going to call it.
For my next game I think I might do a Trotsky takes over Europe Soviets run.
I played a game where I had Trotsky take over Mexico. I'd done something to piss off the wealthy landowners, causing them to revolt, so Trotsky's military expertise was useful. After a long grinding war in the hills, the revolt was put down, leading to communist Mexico. My military was getting into good shape, and it got more experience in the Spanish Civil War.

However, godless communism was not going over well with the Catholics, so I had another revol on my hands. i had a decent military by this point, and assigned my forces to what looked like a slow by inevitable victory (Mexico has a lot of rough terrain, so cleaning out rebels takes a while). With my battle lines all set, I turned my mind to other things, until I noticed my troops were actually being pushed back. Looking at the situation, I saw that the Catholic rebels had bonded with Nazi Germany over their mutual hatred of communism and sent troops. Things rapidly began to sour.

However, at this point, the US decided they were done with all this communist and nazi crap going on over the border and invaded, wiping out the last of my forces.
 
I played a game where I had Trotsky take over Mexico. I'd done something to piss off the wealthy landowners, causing them to revolt, so Trotsky's military expertise was useful. After a long grinding war in the hills, the revolt was put down, leading to communist Mexico. My military was getting into good shape, and it got more experience in the Spanish Civil War.

However, godless communism was not going over well with the Catholics, so I had another revol on my hands. i had a decent military by this point, and assigned my forces to what looked like a slow by inevitable victory (Mexico has a lot of rough terrain, so cleaning out rebels takes a while). With my battle lines all set, I turned my mind to other things, until I noticed my troops were actually being pushed back. Looking at the situation, I saw that the Catholic rebels had bonded with Nazi Germany over their mutual hatred of communism and sent troops. Things rapidly began to sour.

However, at this point, the US decided they were done with all this communist and nazi crap going on over the border and invaded, wiping out the last of my forces.
OK, in this case I think the AI got it right:thumbsup:!
 
I played a game where I had Trotsky take over Mexico. I'd done something to piss off the wealthy landowners, causing them to revolt, so Trotsky's military expertise was useful. After a long grinding war in the hills, the revolt was put down, leading to communist Mexico. My military was getting into good shape, and it got more experience in the Spanish Civil War.

However, godless communism was not going over well with the Catholics, so I had another revol on my hands. i had a decent military by this point, and assigned my forces to what looked like a slow by inevitable victory (Mexico has a lot of rough terrain, so cleaning out rebels takes a while). With my battle lines all set, I turned my mind to other things, until I noticed my troops were actually being pushed back. Looking at the situation, I saw that the Catholic rebels had bonded with Nazi Germany over their mutual hatred of communism and sent troops. Things rapidly began to sour.

However, at this point, the US decided they were done with all this communist and nazi crap going on over the border and invaded, wiping out the last of my forces.
Mexico can get brutal with those revolts.
My first attempt at a Trotsky Union ended with me getting bogged down in Manchuria, as Japan declared war on me almost immediately after I finished the civil war.
Attempt number 2 ended with my ally, Soviet Mexico, and I fighting against the whole world well before I was militarily ready.
My 3rd attempt was going well. I won the civil war and the went on a massive industrialization push, I even got close to finishing the 4th 5 year plan before Fascist Italy allied with communist Britain and declared war on my sole ally Bulgaria. So I invaded Romania and Communist Turkey to get to my ally. Romania fell pretty quickly because the bizzaro Allies were invading them too, but the peace conference was borked and they remained independent in a single province that cut me off from the Bulgarians. Meanwhile the Caucasuses front was a grinding stalemate so I tried a naval invasion near Istanbul.
Things went terrible soon after. The revived German Empire under Wilhelm the 2nd, and his Allies Poland and Finland attacked me, I lost 72 divisions in Transylvania due to encirclement and another 24 in northern Anatolia because the AI left the naval invasions sole port unguarded.
Today I do attempt #4.
 
Anyone playing Overwatch? Looking for new team mates!

I’ve been playing a bit since the upgrade to 2. Of the new characters, I like Sojourn. I kind of dig the changes they made.

Except Cassidy. They can’t seem to figure out what else to give him that fits the cowboy theme. They went from a flashbang to a sticky grenade.
 
Been playing a lot of Tekken 7 lately. Actually starting to get pretty good... but the better I get at the game, the more I realize that I don't really like it very much.
 
Trotsky takes over Europe attempt #4 ended poorly. So poorly that I gave up and started a 5th game on easy mode just so I could do it for fun. The Civil war went fast due to me cheating to get it over with quicker. I then spent about 3 years building up my industry and military, pausing briefly to do some mild conquering of Manchuria and the wayward nations of Mongolia and Tannu Tuva. Finally around 1941 I was ready to begin some medium conquering. I launched a full invasion of China and their ally Communist Japan, while also taking on Iran and Afghanistan. The Chinese United front was very weak, as the Communists took over peacefully through their Socialist Democracy focus and had yet to build large divisions or get rid of their combat malices. What took a while was the Afghanis and Iranians, due mostly to me assigning less divisions to them and their mountainous terrain, but once again Close Air Support won the day.
I finished with China, Iran and Afghainistan around early 1942, and then moved a majority of my troops to prepare for the invasion of Europe. I left an army of Marines and lower quality troops to land on Japan and mop them up. Naval Bombers took out a good chunk of their fleet and allowed my invasion of Kyushu to go off without a hitch. It was then that I discovered that japan had like 12 divisions on the entire island chain and they folded soon after.

While all of this was happening Europe went completely insane. Britain went communist and decolonized, Germany had a civil war and brought the Kaiser back. Italy took over Yugoslavia, only for the Romanians to take it from them. The Czech Entente didn't have Czechoslovakia due to Austria Hungary reforming and joining the resurgent Central Powers. And rather amusingly an Independent India led the Italian League after a communist France took out the Italians with the Romanians.

After finishing off China and Japan I set to work building up my rail networks and military industry in preparation for a full invasion of Europe. By 1945 I was finally confident enough to launch my all out assault on the decadent bourgeoisie nations of the Central Powers and the wrong type of commuisim (wrongunissum) nations of the Czhechless Czech Entente.
The Die was cast with a simultaneous declaration of war on Finalnd, Poland and the French.
I also took the opportunity to invade India and the Guangxi and Yunnan Cliques. The war was a struggle, especially on the Polish front. Early on I managed to encircle catastrophic amounts of Polish and Austro-Hungarian divisions (seriously one encirclement caught well over 100 divisions, it was insane) but somehow for every one I destroyed, 2 more took their place. Meanwhile I secured India and was pushing into South East Asia in order to secure a reliable source of Rubber to fuel my aircraft industry. Additionally the Turkish front went back and forth for a little while, earlier on the French and Greeks had annexed all of Anatolia and I had set my sights on liberating the oppressed Turkish people from wrongunissum imperialism!
Eventually I managed to take all of Anatolia Proper but was unable to dislodge the French and Greeks from Rhodes and the Aegean Islands. Fortunately I had just invented Nuclear weapons and after a test detonation on Bucharest I used some tactical bombings to dislodge them from the Aegean.
It was 1946 and the war had started to turn against me. The Finnish and Polish-Romanian fronts had stalled totally, while my forces in South East Asia had been unable to dislodge Siamese troops from Bangkok despite numerous wave assaults. I was also only able to use tactical nuclear weapons intermittently due to the lack of proper air cover (I really wish paradox would fix the AI so that they would stop spamming out 10,000's of planes in one air theater).
Then the unthinkable happened. I ran out of manpower. On Scrapping the Barrel.
I literally did not have enough men to replenish my troops.
At that point I called it quits, Trotsky had taken over most of Asia and left a large portion of Lithuania a smoking radioactive crater, but he failed to take over Europe.
I think it's time to finally learn Victoria 3.
 
So I decided to finally load up the reboot trilogy of Tomb Raider I got in one of those "Mega Specials with all the games and DLC" from somewhere.

So, with all the crazy parkour, archery, climbing, swinging, etc. I only have one question.

Why the fuck isn't there a Green Arrow or Daredevil game with all these mechanics?

I love Lara Croft, but honestly, these games seem more like Rambo to me. Lara Croft should be dual wielding Mac-10's fighting dinosaurs, not racking up a mercenary bodycount to rival Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 
So I decided to finally load up the reboot trilogy of Tomb Raider I got in one of those "Mega Specials with all the games and DLC" from somewhere.

So, with all the crazy parkour, archery, climbing, swinging, etc. I only have one question.

Why the fuck isn't there a Green Arrow or Daredevil game with all these mechanics?

I love Lara Croft, but honestly, these games seem more like Rambo to me. Lara Croft should be dual wielding Mac-10's fighting dinosaurs, not racking up a mercenary bodycount to rival Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I played the first one, and it was fun, but it wasn't very good at being an actual Tomb Raider game. After hours of action and violence, I can remember hitting an actual puzzle in the game. Pleased at the change of pace, I took my time and slowly took in my surroundings. Before I could even complete that, Lara speaks from the screen, "Maybe I should try pushing that shelf to the left." The trend of instantly solving problems for players is especially annoying as any player can just look up answers online.

I found Jedi: Fallen Order to be a much more satisfying Tomb Raider experience.
 
I played the first one, and it was fun, but it wasn't very good at being an actual Tomb Raider game. After hours of action and violence, I can remember hitting an actual puzzle in the game. Pleased at the change of pace, I took my time and slowly took in my surroundings. Before I could even complete that, Lara speaks from the screen, "Maybe I should try pushing that shelf to the left." The trend of instantly solving problems for players is especially annoying as any player can just look up answers online.

I found Jedi: Fallen Order to be a much more satisfying Tomb Raider experience.
Have to try that one. Lots of exploring Jedi/Sith ruins and such?
 
Have to try that one. Lots of exploring Jedi/Sith ruins and such?

Not the OP, but yeah, there's a ton of fun exploring in that game. I tended to fight the Force controls, as they seemed contradictory to me compared to similar games, but was still fun. Oh, and its well worth it for one thing:

Vader!
 
So, I finally finished Control. Not sure why it didn't really get a lot of hype, the game is really fun. Controls are good, and make sense, and you get that same "gotta keep moving" feeling during combat as something like Doom (the remastered one.) And the music score is the shit, and so perfectly placed. I'll leave the Ashtray Maze here for your perusal:
 
So, I finally finished Control. Not sure why it didn't really get a lot of hype, the game is really fun. Controls are good, and make sense, and you get that same "gotta keep moving" feeling during combat as something like Doom (the remastered one.) And the music score is the shit, and so perfectly placed. I'll leave the Ashtray Maze here for your perusal:

Looks like an unbelievable game, that would give me a migraine so bad my eyes would explode if I played it too long.
 
I'm still waiting for a whole bunch of patches to hit, because man that game is in a rough state (as are all Paradox release titles...) .
But once they do, I also can't wait to dig in.
Yeah I've been hearing the same thing. Apparently the AI is dumber than a post right now. Sounds like they released a little too early. Oh well, Paradox has yet to let me down, just gotta be patient.
 
I'm giving Victoria 3 a little more time in the oven before I try it. I think one issue with response to Victoria 3 is that some people are just not going to like even after it is patched. It's not meant to offer the war-focused map-painting of EUIV or the character focus of CK3, so I can see a lot of fans of those games being disappointed about it being simply what it is.
 
I'm giving Victoria 3 a little more time in the oven before I try it. I think one issue with response to Victoria 3 is that some people are just not going to like even after it is patched. It's not meant to offer the war-focused map-painting of EUIV or the character focus of CK3, so I can see a lot of fans of those games being disappointed about it being simply what it is.
Yeah, not everyone is a fan of sexy sexy Victorian economic and political simulation. I actually don't mind the warfare change as it looks like I don't have to micromanage it like in Victoria 2. I got Hoi4 if I want to do that.
 
Looks like an unbelievable game, that would give me a migraine so bad my eyes would explode if I played it too long.

Luckily, its only that one section that does that weird stuff. Its really the metal song that is tied to the action in the Maze, like literally: it seems* to ebb and flow based on what you do, and how fast you go through the maze.

* some folks swear it was actually programmed that way, but I'm not sure that's the case...
 
So after my HOI4 Trotsky debacle I decided to really shake things up and do some achievement hunting as France. Specifically I wanted to get 3 specific French ones, one for occupying all of Germany with the little entente, one for redemiliterizing the Rhineland and one for having 150 destroyers and max level torpedo tech by 1945. My first run went ok and I capitulated Germany in 1941 and Japan in 1943. Unfortunately the borked peace conference system screwed me over on the first 2 achievements as someone released an independent Germany in the Rhineland, and being democratic I naturally couldn't declare war on them. Fortunately I was able to get the destroyer achievement on time.
My second run went super fast. Germany got finished by May 1939 thanks to it breaking out in a civil war after the Czechoslovakians occupied Berlin (How's that for a Munich Agreement?)
This led to the democratic side of the civil war joining my faction so I got the first achievement on the list, but was unable to demilitarize the Rhineland.
I plan on going for the final achievement this evening.
Overall it's been a fun challenge, as France is in a poor state politically and militarily at the start of the game and it can take some micro managing to see it survive intact.
 
Just finished the short 'storymode' of SUPERHOT on PS+, a fun sf/cyberpunk shooter. The core gameplay is so much fun I'll be diving into 'endless mode' now.




Also returned to Fallen Order, which I've really been enjoying but I was distracted by Elden Ring and I suck at puzzles so I needed my wife's help to get past an early puzzle and now its back to killing Stormtroopers. It nicks a lot of the gameplay from Dark Souls, Shadow of the Colossus and a number of other games but if you're going to steal, steal from the best.

 
Hit an insomnia patch. Put in 36 hours of Street Fighter III: Third Strike between Wednesday and Saturday. Still rank D in Fightcade.

I've beaten almost every other rank D I've fought, and I've run into almost every rank C like a bug runs into a windshield. I feel like maybe the system needs more than six ranks.
 
I've played hundreds of hours of Xenoblade Chronicles games in the past and love them to bits, and no moment has ever had me even half as much hyped as I am for this bit deep into the third game's fourth chapter (both cutscenes and boss fight).
 
Far Cry 4 was discounted 80% on Steam so I picked it up with all DLC. I just beat it, like the rest of the franchise it was pretty good if you enjoy the basic gameplay loop of claiming outposts, towers, and collectibles. Like all of the franchise the ending was a dark and twisted surprise which I enjoy. Still waiting for FC6 to arrive on Steam.
 
Far Cry 4 was discounted 80% on Steam so I picked it up with all DLC. I just beat it, like the rest of the franchise it was pretty good if you enjoy the basic gameplay loop of claiming outposts, towers, and collectibles. Like all of the franchise the ending was a dark and twisted surprise which I enjoy. Still waiting for FC6 to arrive on Steam.

That's my basic plan for almost all PC games, but especially Ubisoft games: Wait until they are practically giving it to me. Bonus points come from playing older games that my high end video card just eats for dinner. <moves all settings to Ultra!> :-)
 
So I’ve been playing Overwatch (support main) and I’m starting to hate it.

Every match I’m frantically playing whack a mole to keep my team alive but they do nothing to protect me from the enemy flankers. Tank characters (who used to be actual “tanks” and help protect their teammates) are just attackers. So no help.

the first 100 times I had goons spamming the chat with “heals ffs”, rushing over to help and have them fuck off and leave me to die was fine, but it got old real fast.

Keep losing games and getting blamed for the losses when I am literally doing nothing but healing my team and… well…

Why am I playing this again? None of my friends are. I’m done: maybe will rejoin once PvE comes online again, like they promised, or if they balance some of the characters so that brigitte and what’s her name with the damage orbs are actually healers rather than just another flavour of attackers… sigh
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top