The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

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We've had Don't Starve for while and I finally gave it a try. After 8-10 hours, I got the gist of it and decided it's mainly tedium. I got a farm set up and did ok. I could spend 100 hours and get really good, but why? I spend all my time gathering materials and food. It's like a tougher, clunkier version of Minecraft.

My wife is really good at this game, you can adjust the difficulty and install a load of fun mods.
 
I got No Man's Sky because my friends won't stop pimping it to me. Anyone got any tips for me?

I got a softcore game called She Will Punish Them because my spouse's GPU can't handle it. You play erotic Barbie dress up and doll house with succubus MC and her crew, then clear levels of undead and daemons. The female renders are good but gameplay is a little rough around the edges. I imagine this would be a big hit if it got AAA treatment.
 
Aliens: Fireteam Elite just dropped and it's basically a third person wave shooter with the Aliens IP tacked on. It's fun, but not groundbreaking by any means. It's clear to see that corners were cut - off the bat the conversable NPCs have no mouth-movement animations when speaking, and their dialogue lines are choppily put together. The levels seem to be very linear and don't inspire much in terms of environmental storytelling. There are audio spikes whenever you get headshots that have a score accompaniment which is an ... interesting choice, I don't love it but I don't hate it.

It's not as bad as Gearbox's last foray into the Universe so I guess there's that, but it's not going to blow anyone away. I have yet to try with some friends and I imagine that might be a more fun run-through.
 
Aliens: Fireteam Elite just dropped and it's basically a third person wave shooter with the Aliens IP tacked on.

I had seen this up for pre-order for the past several weeks on the PS store. Initially I got excited, because the title had a vibe that it might be an "X-Com but..." game.

"X-Com but..." games are what I call the genre that sprang up after X-Com: Enemy Unknown. They're games that use the same basic tactical engine, but a different setting/style. X-Com but the Wierd West (Hard West). X-Com but spies (Phantom Doctrine). etc. Aliens seems like it would be a complete no-brainer for that type of game.

Then I saw that Aliens:Fireteam Elite was just another shooter. Meh. Not for me.

I had been interested in King's Bounty II. Then I saw that instead of the exploration parts being distant overhead third person view, it's an over the shoulder third person exploratory like a shooter. For some reason that little quality eliminated all my interest in the game. Admittedly, my interest in the game was somewhat tenuous, because it had the most bland vanilla modern videogame medieval fantasy aesthetic imaginable. Having to explore that like an RPG filled me with a surprising level of disdain.
 
From what I can tell Fireteam Elite is basically just Aliens themed Left 4 Dead. Which to be fair I like Left 4 Dead.
Yep, just a third person wave shooter. I've sunk about four hours into it now and it's fun, it's not going to win any accolades though. They are also leaning into the more modern Ridley universe he created.
 
I’ve been playing Fallen London since 2015, but since the updates they did for the game’s tenth anniversary last year it’s lost a lot of its luster. An example of that is that I’m at a point in the game where to increase one of my four main stats I have to participate in three battles, one for each of three different factions. I’d been putting off one of the battles until now, as I gave to support the creatures who have been showing up in-game for years and possessing people for their own purposes.

Not really the kind of people I want to be supporting, but ever-increasing difficulty bars for tasks means I can’t put it off any longer.
 
Still slaving away at the rat mines in Vermintide 2.

440+ hours in and Mrs. The Butcher and I finally feel at ease tackling Legend difficulty.

Keep getting out asses handed to us but can’t stop playing.

This game, I swear. This fucking game.
 
I've played a ton of Point and Clicks over the last while and would really recommend "Whispers of a Machine" and "The Journey Down". The former has puzzles that make sense in the world given who you are and the story stays nice and grounded (i.e. you don't end up saving the world etc). The latter is an Afro-Carribean mythic Grim Fandango like game with great music and quite leisurely to play.
 
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I've played a ton of Point and Clicks over the last while and would really recommend "Whispers of a Machine" and "The Journey Down". The former has puzzles that make sense in the world given who you are and the story stays nice and grounded (i.e. you don't end up saving the world etc). The latter is an Afro-Carribean mythic Grim Fandango like game with great music and quite leisurely to play.

I have an odd relationship to point and clicks, I love them but already suck at puzzles and many of them have particularly obtuse puzzles on top of it.
 
I have an odd relationship to point and clicks, I love them but already suck at puzzles and many of them have particularly obtuse puzzles on top of it.
My Dad started playing a few recently and it was a real laugh. "Why the fuck would he mix the duck and the fire extinguisher to blow the wall open when he could just break into the place through the window?!"

The ones I gave above are quite good in that the puzzles just flow very nicely, aside from one or two cases.
 
Found out Final Fantasy 14 has a free trial. So that has completely absorbed me the last few weeks. I’m not usually big on mmos, I’ve dabbled here and there, but something about ff14 has its hooks in me. Maybe because it’s so chill most of the time?
 
Finished my very first playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas this weekend (including all the DLC) and loved it. I had started in April, and took a break for about a month and half to play some other games, before coming back to it in August.

Of all the Fallouts I've played (1, 2 ,3 and NV) it is definitely my favorite. I am already thinking about my next playthrough with different choices.
 
Finished my very first playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas this weekend (including all the DLC) and loved it. I had started in April, and took a break for about a month and half to play some other games, before coming back to it in August.

Of all the Fallouts I've played (1, 2 ,3 and NV) it is definitely my favorite. I am already thinking about my next playthrough with different choices.
What ending did you get?
 
What ending did you get?
I backed the NCR, so I won the Second Battle of Hoover Dam for them, defeating Lanius in battle after storming his camp with Boone, ED-E, and Cannibal Johnson from the Remnants. I tried to speak with Lanius directly, but that didn't work, so he got a few drums of .45 SMG ammo instead.

I had decided early on not to support the Legion, and didn't go far with House, having decided to part ways with him after he upgrades the Securitrons. However, I did work with Yes Man for a while. up to the point where it starts to get you in trouble with the NCR. I had a feeling his support would turn out to be too good to be true, and in reading about the other endings, the Yes Man ending indeed seems to hint at that eventually.

As far as the DLC goes, I really liked Honest Hearts (my favorite) and Lonesome Road, thought Old World Blues was okay, and probably wouldn't play Sierra Madre again, though I am glad I did once for the story.

I am thinking my next playthrough will be a pro-House one, with a more mercenary/amoral character, compared to my virtuous NCR supporter.
 
I backed the NCR, so I won the Second Battle of Hoover Dam for them, defeating Lanius in battle after storming his camp with Boone, ED-E, and Cannibal Johnson from the Remnants. I tried to speak with Lanius directly, but that didn't work, so he got a few drums of .45 SMG ammo instead.

I had decided early on not to support the Legion, and didn't go far with House, having decided to part ways with him after he upgrades the Securitrons. However, I did work with Yes Man for a while. up to the point where it starts to get you in trouble with the NCR. I had a feeling his support would turn out to be too good to be true, and in reading about the other endings, the Yes Man ending indeed seems to hint at that eventually.

As far as the DLC goes, I really liked Honest Hearts (my favorite) and Lonesome Road, thought Old World Blues was okay, and probably wouldn't play Sierra Madre again, though I am glad I did once for the story.

I am thinking my next playthrough will be a pro-House one, with a more mercenary/amoral character, compared to my virtuous NCR supporter.
On the DLC, it's a toss up between Honest Hearts and Old World Blues for me. HH has a great story and setting, but OWB has some amazingly hilarious dialogue. The DLC's all feel like they're based on different styles of Post-Apocalyptic novels. Honest Hearts is Canticles for Lebowitz, Old World Blues is like A boy and His Dog, and Lonesome Road has been stated to be based off of Damnation Alley. I don't know if Dead Money was based off of any PA fiction, but I do know it's plot is similar to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" a western movie.
Dead Money is a weird one for me, when I first played New Vegas, the computer I had could barely run it and there was a section near the very end of the DLC that lagged the game so bad that I was unable to proceed due to a radio causing my bomb collar to go off. So I only finished it years later when I got an upgraded computer. It creeps me out, the Ghost people, the holograms spouting dead peoples last moments, etc. But it's also very sad to see how a guy built the whole resort for someone who never loved him. I think the mechanics could have been better implement to make it less frustrating.
 
I got sucked into Pathfinder: Kingmaker hard. I hate the Pathfinder system but man this game is a great example of sandbox D&D and domain management.

I just picked this up on xbox. The interface is a bit annoying at times but I think that’s just the pc to console port more than anything. There are little things I find annoying (like swarms….just ugh) but overall it seems pretty good. I’m not far along so I haven’t gotten to the kingdom stuff at all yet.
 
The problem with swarms is they are introduced in Kingmaker when you don't necessarily have a character who can deal with them well. You don't have a good damage caster unless that is what you make your main character. So your option feels like "I swing at it with a torch".
 
The problem with swarms is they are introduced in Kingmaker when you don't necessarily have a character who can deal with them well. You don't have a good damage caster unless that is what you make your main character. So your option feels like "I swing at it with a torch".

Yup that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Plus, I only have one torch for some reason. So one dude is poking them with a torch, and the bard gets a couple of sonic attack spells and that’s it.

Just poorly thought out, really. Another level or two and it’s a non-issue. But I worry about similar missteps.
 
EmperorNorton EmperorNorton is correct. The swarms are a real problem in an early encounter. I ended up having to retreat back to base for alchemist's fire.

If you are one of those players who has to find all the secrets and gets mad when you don't make the optimal choices you should play using a guide or maintain a lot of saves. I am aiming for a 100% honest, zero savescum play-through but it is tough! Sone of these decisions can have painful consequences and you often have to make decisions without a lot of information. I missed out on a powerful artifact for my cleric (a friend mentioned it to me) because I misunderstood some quest verbiage and I was sooooo tempted to reload even though it would have cost me hours of progress.

A lot of the stuff people complain about are things I like. The combat encounters aren't scaled and you can easily blunder into really difficult if not impossible combats. There is time pressure on objectives which I enjoy as unlimited resting makes the game challenge trivial (looking at you Baldur's Gate).

Encumbrance is a thing so pick up cheap Bags of Holding for 2500 gold a pop. I found a larger one for 25000 gold in my capital but haven't felt the need to buy it- yet.

The game can be tough for people unfamiliar with Pathfinder. "Normal" difficulty is roughly 80% of tabletop difficulty and "Challenging" is close to Pathfinder RAW. I am not super familiar with Pathfinder optimization and at the time of writing find "Challenging" to hit my sweet spot. I recommend that you play out combats in turn-based mode until your party gets to the point where the trash encounters can be handled in real time with minimal micromanaging. That being said, my friend advised me that the difficulty becomes trivial if you invoke system mastery using optimized builds and multiclassing shenanigans. So if you are a Pathfinder guru like him you who knows all the tricks you might need to increase the difficulty

Persuasion, Perception, and Trickery seem to be the most useful skills. A high Persuasion on your MC is strongly recommended but you probably already know that if you play CRPGs. I have at least one of each skill at a high level in my party.

Stock up on acid vials for swarms and other things.

You can respec your dudes so don't be shy. You get 3 free respecs, the it starts to cost money (which comes easily). I had to respec a couple characters multiple times because I didn't grok how their class worked. There are sooo many trap feats in Pathfinder, it is one of the reasons I strongly dislike the system. My general rule is that Melee dudes get Outflank while Ranged get Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot.

Communal Delay Poison, Communal Resist Energy and Communal Protection from Energy, and Haste are great spells. Keep them on hand at all times.

I don't have a lot of domain management advice. Keep at least 100bp on you at all times and you can also buy bp for 80 gold a pop. Prioritize problems because they can fuck you up badly. Visit your settlements for the artisan quests.
 
Good stuff, thanks Brock Savage Brock Savage . I’m familiar with Pathfinder and I’m comfortable with most of the conventions, even if a lot of them drive me bonkers in tabletop.

The alchemist’s fire on swarms is something…I think I have some vials of it, and I’ll pick up some more.
 
One of the things I liked about Wrath of the Righteous over Kingmaker is that the starting companions you get feel like they work a bit better. Also it feels like you get a full party much faster. By the time you get out of the prologue, you have 3 companions, and you can get a 4th before even leaving the base location for the 1st chapter, and a 5th 2 minutes into the first major location of chapter 1. And they are a diverse enough group that you can cover most things.
 
I'm really getting into Predator: Hunting Grounds. (Thanks psplus).
It's only early days but I'm slowly grinding towards the smart disc and combi stick. I got the net gun but that sucks. Still, the game let's me play solely as the Predator. Let other schmucks play as special forces, I want to run along tree branches and be invisible.
 
One of the things I liked about Wrath of the Righteous over Kingmaker is that the starting companions you get feel like they work a bit better. Also it feels like you get a full party much faster. By the time you get out of the prologue, you have 3 companions, and you can get a 4th before even leaving the base location for the 1st chapter, and a 5th 2 minutes into the first major location of chapter 1. And they are a diverse enough group that you can cover most things.

I didn’t even know they made Wrath of the Righteous into a video game. I’m way behind.
 
Dead Money is a weird one for me, when I first played New Vegas, the computer I had could barely run it and there was a section near the very end of the DLC that lagged the game so bad that I was unable to proceed due to a radio causing my bomb collar to go off. So I only finished it years later when I got an upgraded computer. It creeps me out, the Ghost people, the holograms spouting dead peoples last moments, etc. But it's also very sad to see how a guy built the whole resort for someone who never loved him. I think the mechanics could have been better implement to make it less frustrating.

I'm pretty sure I know which exact radio you're referring to -- there's one in the vault where you really have to have to hustle to make it in time (right before a difficult hologram room as well). I can see where a lag would render it impossible.

I agree that a better mechanical implementation would have helped. In terms of story, atmosphere, and characters, it's great. But in my case, for example, I had a lot of points in Guns, but not really much in the other combat skills, so I was at a disadvantage early on. They were trying to make it different, which I respect, but ended up just making it frustrating, like you said.

OWB is one I would play again, and I enjoyed parts of it, though some parts got repetitive (the stealth suit tests, the school tests, etc). It also had a lot of side quests that were just go here and get this, which the other DLCs didn't have as much of. Some of the dialogue was pretty funny, though.
 
I have an odd relationship to point and clicks, I love them but already suck at puzzles and many of them have particularly obtuse puzzles on top of it.

The modern point and clicks, (anything from 2010 or so), have become much better about this. Some still have a couple of obtuse puzzles though.

I love puzzle games however, so I might not be the right judge. What I dislike with puzzles in some games, is then there clearly is multiple solutions, but the game only allow one. The Witness, an otherwise very good game suffers from this for example.

I have finally finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Really love the game, despite not liking PnP Pathfinder. Can't really give any character building advice, because I just picked what I found interesting. I also played with a couple of mods, so I wasn't playing completely vanilla game.
Combat wise, I felt the game was a bit easy playing with turn-based mode. The game clearly wasn't balanced with that in mind. I played with most combat related stuff set to Challenging, except with everyone rising after combat. This was to avoid lots of reloading.
Kingdom management I set to Effortless. Didn't really want to bother to much with it, but didn't want it fully automated either. This felt fine. I was a bit disappointed with this feature. Sure, you can visit all the villages you build, but not anything you build in your capital. Such a let down.
 
For the 3rd time I took a try at Dark Souls (1, remastered). I've gotta say this guys, but... I hate it.

The controls feel so cumbersome, and so many mechanics are never explained. There are so many "gotcha, newbie LOL" moments, like the designers, and its fans, are spiritually obsessed with the sacred mantra of "GET GUD".

I love the visual style and lore. I love the setup. I love the monster design and "metroidvania" premise. But I hate the actual game. It fills me with confusion and constant anxiety. No matter how many times I re-do the Undead Burg, I can never really "master" the basic goons there. If I hit the wrong button at the wrong time, I get murdered in ridiculous ways.

Don't get me started on the mean-natured "tips" that other players leave around as glowing orange messages. Literally all of them are either obvious or sneaky trolling. They've made me flat-out ignore all of them, which may or may not be a good thing. They've actually made me paranoid about online help tips (are they just trolling me too? Is it part of the experience to have fellow players fuck around with you to waste your time?).

I get it, though, guys! I totally get it! It is a game series to make you feel superior to those "filthy casuals". REAL GAMERS play games that are ridiculously brutal. REAL GAMERS wank off to the good old days of losing their entire allowance at the arcade machine because of deliberately sneaky game design decisions that make you have to waste lots of time repeating the same tasks over and over until your muscle memory is right.

I'm a filthy casual, and I'm proud of it. I play games to relax and Dark Souls does the opposite of that.
 
It's "GIT GUD" you filthy casual.

Seriously, Dark Souls doesn't sound like your thing. It does take quite some time to learn the game, no argument there. One thing with the enemies is, that they always spawn at the same places. So you will learn what to expect. If you still want to try getting through the game, you could try a magic user.

One thing that bugs me in online discussions about Dark Souls, is the thing that is was the first. It wasn't. Demon Souls were the first. Even before that, plenty of From Software games had Dark Souls vibes. Try looking up a game called Evergrace, for one example.

As someone who really likes Dark Souls, the whole superior thing has always been weird to me. It's just a videogame for heaven's sake, so get over yourself. No one cares and your dick won't grow two inches from completing it either. But what do I know, I'm a filthy console peasant.

The first time I played Dark Souls, I was going through some tough things. So my experience playing the game, somehow ended up reflecting my real world struggles. This elevated the experience to me in some grand way. As I'm not good with describing these things, this youtube video comes really close.

 
The problem I have with the Soulsborne games is that they aren't hard, they are opaque.

Once you understand how the game works it isn't hard. It is 100% it just doesn't explain enough. The fact that it took someone monitoring the game memory for changes to actually understand and explain how Poise worked in Dark Souls 3 is kind of the poster child for these kinds of design decisions. Another fun one was in Bloodborne where you have to choose your starting stats with almost no explanation of what the hell the stats do.

It's just a an exercise in looking up how the mechanics work online and then memorizing attack patterns. That is just kind of the whole game.

(Also, yeah, they are clunky as hell gameplay wise. if I have to hear one more Souls fan talk about "WEIGHT" when talking about the controls... no, it is just antiquated. It's the reason why I could really get into Sekiro, it actually felt good to play).
 
I actually much prefer Demon's Souls to Dark Souls and Bloodborne and Sekiro are the best of the later games although I found Sekiro really hard.

The fandom for DS on PC/Steam is toxic and pathetic, who acts macho about a video game? Dude who got beat up too often in junior high I assume.

I found players on PS3/4 way less nerdmacho about the game, most of my PvP for DS 3 (which I think has the best PvP of the series) was quite good-natured and fun with lots of bows, laughs and co-op in contrast to the griefing and aggro of the PC Master Race types.
 
I feel like I've already talked too much about how much I love Jupiter Hell, and how my tabletop design work is taking inspiration from it, and on and on...

But I've had a colossally stupid idea pertaining to it as a digital game, and I just don't know how to convince anyone else to make it for me, so I'm doing two things: one, I'm poking around at the Unity engine trying to learn how to use it, and two, I am playing a lot of other new roguelikes.

Actual roguelikes, roguelike roguelikes, though I do have my share of action roguelites.

Dungeons of Dredmor, where I really like its design and really hate its sense of humor. Of course going back to my roots in DRL and AliensRL.
 
After I complete NES Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (which I think will happen this weekend), I'm thinking of jumping into a PC SSI Gold Box game.

I could just try Pool of Radiance again, but I started thinking that maybe I could/should jump into Champions of Krynn.

Pool of Radiance has the benefit of being nostalgic, as I've played the starting section of it multiple times. Champions of Krynn has the benefit of being something I've always wanted to play and being entirely new to me (never played it in the past).

Anyone want to recommend one over the other?
 
Anyone want to recommend one over the other?
They're both of roughly equal quality, although Pool of Radiance is general thought to be the better game. Krynn has harder and somewhat less tactical combat and less side content, but again it's very close.
 
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