The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I'm the (self-proclaimed, but with good reason*) grandmaster of MMA Rivals now:grin:!

Yes, it's a mobile phone game. But it's very, very good for the amount of resources it consumes.
How good is it? Well, it represents MMA better than many fighting games, and not only mobile ones, (though not in the graphics department). And I'm not saying such things lightly, as you know, so I'd say...quite good:gunslinger:.

I'm also a voluntary beta-tester, so take this with as much salt as you think is warranted:shade:.

*I've got the titles for most submissions ever, and most wins by points, and am close to the top in all other categories:thumbsup:.
 
I've taken a brief break from Dwarf Fortress to play the new expansion of HOI4.
I wanted to play the new Italian focus tree. I made quick work of Ethiopia, who stood no chance against my sudden massed bomber formations shifting to overwhelming close air support. After which I began a program of massive industrialization, as well as refitting the entire Regia Marina with Radar.
When the Germans came a knocking with the promises of a fair and equal alliance I said "Screw you I'm going to make my own faction! With Blackjack and Hookers" and threw the Pact of Steel out a window. The Bulgarians joined right away, eager to help me carve up Yugoslavia. While the Hungarians needed me to bribe them with support for their claims in Vojvodina and Transylvania.
While the Germans were making the same mistakes they did in real life by invading Poland, and the Japanese launched it's dreadful war against China, my Italian league sat around building up our military and industry to better prepare for our inevitable domination of the world. Come 1940 the Army and air force was good enough to do a little invasion of Yugoslavia, who foolishly made their own faction with a now non-existent Czechoslovakia (It had allied with Romania and Yugoslavia, yet still caved to the Germans in 1938 despite likely being able to take them). The Romanians left the faction after taking a political turn towards the Axis so my allies and I made quick work of the poor nation. I went and literally balkanized the Balkans, handing Vojvodina to the Hungarians and Macedonia to the Bulgarians. As for myself I only took a little land, Dalmatia, while also puppeting portions of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and what was left of Serbia. Each a protectorate as they clearly needed protecting form the German menace!
At this point the Germans had made quick work of Poland, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, and Denmark, whilst also allying themselves fully with the Romanians. Their invasion of the Soviet Union would be soon. Japan was making great gains into China, far better than IRL.
I meanwhile turned my eyes towards Greece, Il Duce demanded that I occupy it and the Regia Marina had finally finished refitting all its ships with Radar This quickly led to Greece allying with the Allies, and dragging me to war with them. While a Mountaineer Army and my Bulgarian Allies took care of the mainland of Greece, the Italian Africa Corps made stupendous gains in Egypt! A handful of undermanned and under-equipped colonial divisions in Libya drove a surprise thrust into the western desert of Egypt, encircling the lightly defended British garrisons. It was not long before the Suez Canal fell, severing the route to India. Meanwhile Turkey made a surprise alliance with the Germans and attacked free french positions in Syria. The remainder of French North Africa was under control of the Vichy Government, and as such was neutral in this conflict.
The Italian East Africa Corps also made great gains, encircling dozens of British and South African divisions in Sudan and Kenya. Unfortunately, the lackluster infrastructure led to their lightning advance slowing to a crawl around Chad and the Congo.
It was at this point in mid-1942 that 2 significant events happened. Japan conquered China (twice, once from the Nationalists and once from the Communists) and Germany launched their invasion of the Soviet Union. Strangely Japan hasn't attacked the USA, or really done anything since taking over China, and is presently sitting there doing nothing.
I took this respite from major frontline actions (Aside from the slog that is central Africa) to mop up the British Mediterranean islands, take Gibraltar, Ally Portugal and rebuild my fleet (which got severely thrashed by the British fleet, before they got beaten back by my naval bombers). Around early 1943 the Germans had failed miserably in their war against the Soviets, being pushed back to Poland after some initial gains.
noticing their weakened front lines, and desiring the reclamation or Savoy and many other provinces held by Vichy France I began my preparations for the invasion of Germany.
It went so well that I had finished them off in 3 months. Most of their forces were deployed on the eastern front so I simply walked into Austria and Czechoslovakia without any resistance. I even beat the Soviets to Berlin.
The only difficulty i had was in fighting the Vichy french, who hilariously joined up with the Allies instead of the Axis when I attacked them.
The peace conference was messy, more so with the newly reworked system (There were 3 different Germany governments one of which was literally an independent Democratic Stettin allied to no one). I admit that I used some console commands to clean up the border gore, but after that turned my focus to dealing with the allies.
It's early 1944 now and I've reoccupied The Netherlands, Belgium and the whole of France, while also allying the Spanish.
The USA still hasn't joined in with the Allies, who are pretty much being carried by the British, who I hope to launch a landing on as soon as my navy is back up to strength.
The Soviets seem to be content with their Gains in Poland, Half of Turkey, Iraq and parts of Romania. But I doubt that will last.
Japan is still sitting around doing nothing, seemingly content with owning all of China.
Also Australia randomly broke away from the British and formed their own Democratic alliance. I guess they didn't want to risk another Gallipoli (Which the British did try to do early in the war, but failed when I recaptured Rhodes).
So just as a follow up, today I was less than a month away from launching a landing in Britain when without warning my ally Portugal decided it was an optimal time to declare war on the Soviet Union. I was forced to do a rush job on the Britain Landing before moving a majority of my forces to help the Bulgarians and Hungarians against the red wave. Tomorrow I hope to finish up the Soviets and end this campaign.
 
I'm still in my weekly mmo session of LOTRO

With the same group I started doing it 15 years ago!

We played the original LOTRO game, then moved onto several other mmos, went back to lotro, moved on again, then went back about 2 or 3 years ago and stayed. It's kinda like home now, and we don't overdo it, we typicaly just show up once a week in the evenings after work and use it as a voice chat banter while we grind away some quests.
We all love Middle Earth, so its the best game for lore consistency, it's likely much more consistent with the books than New Line or Amazon's versions.

Anyway, we still love LOTRO after all these years...
Y'know, I didn't realize LotRO was still running.
 
There's new expansions regularly coming out!!!
We joke that the support team are running LOTRO for just our group and a handful of others, heh heh
:grin:
Then what the hell am I remembering? Did it get sold to someone?

Edit: There it is! Warners farmed it out to another studio. Christ. Along with DDO apparently.
 
Then what the hell am I remembering? Did it get sold to someone?

Edit: There it is! Warners farmed it out to another studio. Christ. Along with DDO apparently.
Ah yeah that happened some years ago, I forgot about that
It's been going pretty good since then, considering its a legacy game
It's all free-to-play now, although subscription gets you goodies and increased access etc
I typically subscribe for half a year, then go free-to-play for the other half, it's been working fine
The immersive setting still sells it for us
 
Last edited:
I'm still in my weekly mmo session of LOTRO
I wish I could play. LT sub, but the whole server shut down happened when I wasn't playing so all of my toons are on a dead server with no way to transfer. I just don't feel like starting over.
 
If you can prove you had an original account they will may allow you to start up with legacy benefits if you subscribe - you get a few tokens level up some toons quite high - enough to max out all the original game content and early expansions
It may be worth looking into in any case
 
If you can prove you had an account they will probably allow you to start up with legacy benefits if you subscribe - you get a few tokens level up some toons quite high - enough to max out all the original game content and early expansions
It may be worth looking into in any case
Oh, I can get into my account, and it's a LT sub. That still works. But they keep saying they're going to enable transfers from dead servers, but they haven't yet. At least not the last time I checked.
 
Ah yeah that happened some years ago, I forgot about that
It's been going pretty good since then, considering its a legacy game
It's all free-to-play now, although subscription gets you goodies and increased access etc
I typically subscribe for half a year, then go free-to-play for the other half, it's been working fine
The immersive setting still sells it for us
I still play WoW sometimes. I let it lapse last year but imma play the new expac when it releases, at least for a bit.
 
I'm still in my weekly mmo session of LOTRO

With the same group I started doing it 15 years ago!

We played the original LOTRO game, then moved onto several other mmos, went back to lotro, moved on again, then went back about 2 or 3 years ago and stayed. It's kinda like home now, and we don't overdo it, we typicaly just show up once a week in the evenings after work and use it as a voice chat banter while we grind away some quests.
We all love Middle Earth, so its the best game for lore consistency, it's likely much more consistent with the books than New Line or Amazon's versions.

Anyway, we still love LOTRO after all these years...
I wish I had people to play with. I've got an elf who met a dwarf early on and he wondered why I was using a club/mace type weapon, and while it was only marginal RP, it was "there is just something satisfying about thumping someone with a big heavy stick." Man I miss that guy.
 
My current video games that are downloaded are:

* Beyond a Steel Sky
* Cyberpunk 2077
* Blade Runner
* Stray
* A Plague Tale: Innocence Lost

One of these is not like the others.
Is Stray your antidote to the depressing game overdose?
 
My current games I'm playing:

Mobile: Marvel contest of champions, Marvel future Fight, and marvel Puzzle quest
Steam Deck: Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, The Ascent, Tails of Iron, Dead Cells, Hades
PC: Elder Scrolls Online, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Wish I could figure out a good way to have discord queued up on the SD so I could play with my guildies on TTL on the SD.
 
I've had that game on my Steam wishlist for awhile. Post apocalyptic is my jam. I keep being tempted by it whenever it's on sale, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. At first, you were doing a great job selling it, but it sounds like it really laid an egg at the end. Overall, would you recommend it?
I am 50 hours into Mad Max. You'd probably like that as well. On one hand it's an easier game than I'd like and it has the grindiness common to open world games circa 2015. On the other hand if you are a fan of Mad Max: Fury Road and the gritty bleak vibe of post apoc you will love it.
 
So just as a follow up, today I was less than a month away from launching a landing in Britain when without warning my ally Portugal decided it was an optimal time to declare war on the Soviet Union. I was forced to do a rush job on the Britain Landing before moving a majority of my forces to help the Bulgarians and Hungarians against the red wave. Tomorrow I hope to finish up the Soviets and end this campaign.

Wait, are you Italy? And you beat the USSR?
 
Wait, are you Italy? And you beat the USSR?
No. I'm Italy and I got my ass handed to me by the USSR. My troops didn't get to the front quick enough and by the time I got there the Bulgarians were almost gone and the Hungarians weren't far behind them. I didn't have enough troops and there was no defensive preparations on the eastern front to stem the red tide. So the Soviets were just chewing threw the Bulgarians and Hungarians, (Note there was no Portuguese divisions).
Meanwhile the Irish gave me a ton of trouble. While my main army went off to die to the Soviets my marines were tasked with capturing the Isle of Man and Ireland. The Isle of Man was taken no problem, but when they landed on Ireland the Irish ran circles around them so I could never fully capitulate them. It was almost farcical. Eventually the Soviets steamrolled their way into North Italy and that was it.
 
Last edited:
I am 50 hours into Mad Max. You'd probably like that as well. On one hand it's an easier game than I'd like and it has the grindiness common to open world games circa 2015. On the other hand if you are a fan of Mad Max: Fury Road and the gritty bleak vibe of post apoc you will love it.

A lot of people hate that game, but I loved it! Yeah, its a little grindy, but aren't all games nowadays? But they nailed the whole apocalyptic driving thing...it was so much fun I have considered playing it again, even though I sunk like 80 hours into it the first time...
 
I'm actually dusting off Overwatch in light of the update (aka Overwatch 2). Mostly because it will have PvE in early 2023.

I used to love playing this game... before getting bored and annoyed at the Competitive players.

Anyone here playing it?
 
I'm actually dusting off Overwatch in light of the update (aka Overwatch 2). Mostly because it will have PvE in early 2023.

I used to love playing this game... before getting bored and annoyed at the Competitive players.

Anyone here playing it?
Honestly, I like it, but it really does feel like if you aren't playing with a group, the game is like, 1/10000th as much fun. There is so much actual strategy to the game that playing with randos is just unfun. Especially since I like playing tank and playing tank without competent healers is the worst experience possible in the game.

(I actually do watch their pro e-sports league though, so it is weird cause I love Overwatch the way it is played at high level, even if I can't do it).
 
Honestly, I like it, but it really does feel like if you aren't playing with a group, the game is like, 1/10000th as much fun. There is so much actual strategy to the game that playing with randos is just unfun. Especially since I like playing tank and playing tank without competent healers is the worst experience possible in the game.

(I actually do watch their pro e-sports league though, so it is weird cause I love Overwatch the way it is played at high level, even if I can't do it).
You're a tank eh? As a Mercy main, I like tanks.

Hint: are you looking for a team?
 
I restarted a HOI4 campaign as Italy again and it went better than last time. Right off the bat Germany went into a civil war and became a democracy, while Bukharin tried to oust Stalin in the Soviet Union and started a civil war. They then went and formed the Central European Alliance with Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and The Netherlands. Meanwhile Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania renew the Little Entente with each other. This works out great for me as it means that the British and French won't get on my ass about balkanizing the Balkans. So after finishing up Ethiopia I built up my forces, Allied with Hungary and Austria, and promptly kicked the Czech Entente's ass. Greece also conveniently joined them so I killed 2 birds with one stone. In the end I gained a lot of territory, puppeting a reduced Romania (Hungary got hungry for Transylvania), Bosnia, Czechia (Slovakia went to the hungry hungry Hungarians) and Serbia. Bulgaria finally stopped piddling around and joined my alliance after I gave them Macedonia.
Then the Falangists won the Spanish civil war, and instead of staying neutral like Franco did, they and the Portuguese Joined my faction.
It was at this point that all hell broke loose. The Soviet Union won its civil war against Bukharin, quickly invaded the Finns and Baltic States and Attacked Poland. Germany wouldn't have any of that so they declare war on the Soviets and for some reason the French join the Germans. It's around late 1940 so kinda late for the start of the war but still interesting. Japan meanwhile takes over china no problem just like my last game.
The French joining the Germans in invading the Soviet Union is super advantageous for me, as it leaves the British effectively all alone and vulnerable. So I invade Turkey, who the British have guaranteed the independence of. I pull off another coup de grace at El Alamein, occupy Malta, Cyprus and the Turkish coast while the Spanish take Gibraltar.
And then the British make a massive blunder. As I'm approaching the Suez canal the British blow it and seal half their fleet in the Mediterranean without a single friendly port to dock at. Open season for my naval bombers! They get pushed further south into Africa and, not having to deal with the Congo, I don't get bogged down in a morass of jungle with no supply.
It's around late 1941 and the German Alliance finishes off the Soviet Union. Amazingly the peace conference is extremely favorable for the Soviets. Poland took a weird chunk of Belarus, Kazakhstan was liberated in a single province, Finland, Lithuania, and Estonia were re-liberated (But not Latvia, because screw the Latvians I guess?) and the Government was changed to Democratic. No Demilitarization, no Disarmament. Nothing.
The now renamed Russian Federation immediately Joins the Allies (IE Britain and her dominions) and declares war on Finland, who joins the German Alliance.
I panicky rush a division over to my shared borders with Russia, only for them to not declare war on me. Perplexed but not looking a gift horse in the mouth, I ask the French for military access and perform a reverse D-Day, launching from Normandy through a mysteriously empty English Channel (Cough *shouldnthavetrappedyourfleetinthemed* cough) and handily finish of the British, ending my participation in the war. In the peace conference I scoop up a ton of British colonies, puppeted Turkey, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and took the entire British Fleet (I made the HMS Hood sail around Sicily just to rub it in the Englishes face). I also put Oswald Mosley in charge of "The Italian Protectorate of Britain". I also had to spend a lot of time convincing the Spanish that annexing a landlocked Yukon was not worth their time.
And then things went insane.
It's 1943 and the War with Britain over. I'm flush with all the resources of the former British Empire but don't have all the land I need to fulfill Italian Irridentism. So naturally I began to plan the downfall of the Germans and their annoying Central European Alliance, who once again, are pushing into Russia.
But this was not to be. Some weird event triggered where all of my non-puppet allies left my faction due to wanting to stay neutral in the coming conflict with the Russian Federation (Some kind of cold war set up I guess, but the Russians were definitely not a threat as they got beat by the Germans again).
Alone without friends I click a decision labeled "Form NATO" and now I'm in charge of NATO.
I like to imagine Benito Mussolini sitting alone in a big conference room playing with a box of sock puppets pretending he's in charge of a big military alliance.
And then the USA joined the Central European Alliance, the Hungarians and Spanish joined Japan's "Greater East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" and the graphics started to bug out so I said "Screw this!" quit, opened up Dwarf Fortress, immediately got invaded by Goblins.
Some days I swear.
 
Then what the hell am I remembering? Did it get sold to someone?

Edit: There it is! Warners farmed it out to another studio. Christ. Along with DDO apparently.
The development team bought it from them. Have played alot of both games.
 
I'm between games right now, but the Xbox port of Persona 5 is supposed to come out next Thursday on Game Pass, and I've heard nothing but good things?
 
Actually, now I've heard about how it seems like they really screwed over Bayonetta's prior voice actress Hellena Taylor, and to me that sort of thing hovers right on the verge of being a deal breaker.
 
Actually, now I've heard about how it seems like they really screwed over Bayonetta's prior voice actress Hellena Taylor, and to me that sort of thing hovers right on the verge of being a deal breaker.
I saw Hellena's video complaining that the devs offered her less money than she wanted. It sucks that they are being shitty and cheap by not offering her more the third time around but it's hyperbole to say they screwed her over. It wouldn’t shock me if the voice work for Bayonetta 3 only takes a couple of days because the process is highly optimized and studio time is expensive (IIRC the Bayonetta 1 VA was done in four 4-hour takes).
 
I saw Hellena's video complaining that the devs offered her less money than she wanted.
The reports of the figure don't sound good on the face of it, and it's hard to believe that somebody such as Jennifer Hale would take on work that was being paid like that, so it wouldn't seem like they actually saved on it.
 
Actually, now I've heard about how it seems like they really screwed over Bayonetta's prior voice actress Hellena Taylor, and to me that sort of thing hovers right on the verge of being a deal breaker.
So this has been suspicious to me.

According to her IMDB she's not gotten work since 2014. Why? Why won't her AGENCY, the people who NEGOTIATE for her, help her find more roles?

Second, they got Jennifer Hale to do Bayonetta, a much more prolific and expensive voice talent in the gaming industry. Did they offer HER the role for the alleged $4000? And did she accept it? If NOT, then why did they offer the ORIGINAL Bayonetta VA so little?

What is REALLY going on here?
 
Been playing fighting games... getting back into Tekken 7 and a friend of mine bought me Dragonball FighterZ for my birthday, which I haven't taken online yet.

Really want to spend more time with Street Fighter III, Street Fighter Alpha 2/3, and Garou: Mark of the Wolves; would dearly love any recommendations for newer fighting games that are more like this and less like mahvel or ArcSys or anything with team mechanics.
 
After several years, started a new campaign of Roguetech.

This time around I'm taking it slowly, without immediately purchasing the upgrades for bigger drops (which obviously immediately raise the difficulty). Still working my way to a roster of assault mechs... only got 1 so far (a missile boat) and 3 heavies. It's every bit as hard as I remember.
 
As someone that likes to mod games, is the Epic store still devoid of features, justifying its existence by paying for exclusives and freebies, or it still crap?
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?
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top