Video Games: Next Stop... Andromeda

[KiDisaster]

Got to the Bellower fight in Banner Saga and got my ass handed to me on the first attempt. It's actually the first fight I've failed all game thanks to the weaken but don't kill them advice. Though I always ended up with at least a couple of people getting wounded in every fight. 

I'm assuming this fight is pretty much the end of the game, and the last little while traveling to this city really felt like a struggle. I just couldn't get enough supplies and kept hemorrhaging people to starvation and desertion, though I'm not sure if that's because I fucked up on my resource management (wasting Renown on upgrading units who later left the damn party or died ) or if you're pretty much always meant to end up struggling to reach that last city. 

One thing I've found slightly annoying is that the game seems to always punish you for being nice. Every single time I've let some hungry, struggling people into my caravan they've stabbed me in the back (in some cases literally). Maybe the ruthless options end up biting you in the ass too, I guess I'll have to play through again and find out. I want to see how some other choices change things too, whether certain people can be kept alive and certain misfortunes can be avoided because I feel like I hit the bad result on every crossroad this time around, but again I don't even know if there are any good ones. 

And that's pretty cool really. That last march into the city, trying to hold out there with too many things to do and not enough time to do them, watching my number of fighters and varl drop to zero because I had to find food and couldn't defend the walls gave me this real feeling of desperation and hopelessness. I don't foresee any happy endings

Really loved this game. Now trying to decide if I want to play through it a second time or go straight on to part 2 with this save file. 

[KiDisaster]

The second of the Gameplay Series videos for Andromeda went up this morning. Gotta admit I'm not really a fan of the swapping between favorites mid battle thing. I'd prefer a regular action bar like the series has always had on PC, but since you're also swapping between different profiles I guess that doesn't really work. I've never liked the whole "your character can do anything" thing in Bethesda games and I know I won't like it here, but oh well. 

Also Natalie Dormer is the ship's doctor, so that's pretty cool. Guy who played Renly is also doing a voice for the game. 

[Red Tiger]

http://imgur.com/a/FwOVQ

I can work with this.

Also find it hilarious how female fans are going crazy over Jaal. Following in the footsteps of Thane Krios and Garrus.

[Fez]

23 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Don't bother starting wars with other Elector-Counts. It becomes much easier to confederate once Chaos appears. And you'll probably be at war with the Vampires and Greenskins as well, so there are plenty of enemies to worry about. The only human faction I would conquer as soon as possible is Marienburg because of the rich economic bonuses that city gives you.

22 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

If you need to war with a Elector Count, Marienburg is a very tempting target. Their port supplies you with very significant amounts of money something like 1500 gold per turn by its lonesome, and they tend to go around bullying other Empire factions so they're a bit of an easy target sometimes. This allows you far more leeway when it comes to keeping a standing army while also developping technologies, because you're going to need some armor-piercing units to take on Chaos. Greatswords are a bit of a must, because Chaos Warriors and Chosen will carve a bloody path through normal State Troops very, very fast. Cannons are also very useful, the AI can have a tendency to just waddle into firing range and get their most expensive units obliterated.

Alright, thanks. I reverted my save to right before I attacked that Northern elector and took Marienburg; only to immediately lose two of my cities, one to a beastman army and one to an orc army. So I reverted my save again, and am going to focus on trying defeat these roving armies. I will eventually stop save scumming so much; I'm only doing it while I get the hang of things.

 

1 hour ago, KiDisaster said:

Got to the Bellower fight in Banner Saga and got my ass handed to me on the first attempt. It's actually the first fight I've failed all game thanks to the weaken but don't kill them advice. Though I always ended up with at least a couple of people getting wounded in every fight. 

I'm assuming this fight is pretty much the end of the game, and the last little while traveling to this city really felt like a struggle. I just couldn't get enough supplies and kept hemorrhaging people to starvation and desertion, though I'm not sure if that's because I fucked up on my resource management (wasting Renown on upgrading units who later left the damn party or died ) or if you're pretty much always meant to end up struggling to reach that last city. 

One thing I've found slightly annoying is that the game seems to always punish you for being nice. Every single time I've let some hungry, struggling people into my caravan they've stabbed me in the back (in some cases literally). Maybe the ruthless options end up biting you in the ass too, I guess I'll have to play through again and find out. I want to see how some other choices change things too, whether certain people can be kept alive and certain misfortunes can be avoided because I feel like I hit the bad result on every crossroad this time around, but again I don't even know if there are any good ones. 

And that's pretty cool really. That last march into the city, trying to hold out there with too many things to do and not enough time to do them, watching my number of fighters and varl drop to zero because I had to find food and couldn't defend the walls gave me this real feeling of desperation and hopelessness. I don't foresee any happy endings

Really loved this game. Now trying to decide if I want to play through it a second time or go straight on to part 2 with this save file. 

My caravan ended up in a bad spot at the end there too, but I'm almost certain it was because I made a couple of bad choices at the end. I've only played through the game once though, so maybe all roads end the same way there. 

There are at least a few times that being nice is beneficial (though maybe more of that was in part 2; the two games are pretty blurred together to me), but yeah, a big theme of the series is that the world is so dire that most people are only out for themselves and you need to prioritize the needs of your people to protect them.

 

36 minutes ago, KiDisaster said:

The second of the Gameplay Series videos for Andromeda went up this morning. Gotta admit I'm not really a fan of the swapping between favorites mid battle thing. I'd prefer a regular action bar like the series has always had on PC, but since you're also swapping between different profiles I guess that doesn't really work. I've never liked the whole "your character can do anything" thing in Bethesda games and I know I won't like it here, but oh well. 

Also Natalie Dormer is the ship's doctor, so that's pretty cool. Guy who played Renly is also doing a voice for the game. 

Gameplay continues to look good to me. On the character skills, I watched a video over at Giant Bomb, where one of the editors said that when he went to Bioware to play the game for a bit, the developers said it would take a lot of grinding to learn everything (and it wasn't clear if that could happen in one playthrough or only in a NG+). It sounds like for at least most of the game you will need to be making choices about what abilities you have.

I'm not sure about the different profiles either. But I'm going to be optimistic and take it as a sign that the combat is varied enough that you wouldn't be able to easily beat it with only access to only a handful of skills at a time; which is the way the series ued to be.

[Werthead]

On 22/02/2017 at 3:29 PM, Fez said:

Ended up playing a few hours of TW: Warhammer. It seems fun, but quite a bit harder than I remember these games being. I've only played the original Medieval and Rome ones though, and those were a while ago. Its mostly the strategic map that's tricky, balancing trying to expand while having to deal with these beastmen armies that roam with impunity is hard to do when I can only afford one full-size army. The battles themselves I'm pretty much fine with; although I feel like the heroes a little too overpowered (and its a bit silly when they rout but none of my regular soldiers do enough damage to kill them; so there's a single guy running away while a few dozen soldiers ineffectually slowly chase him).

Yup. The Total War games used to be simulations: they gave you the tools to build cities and build armies from those cities, and they gave you the freedom of how to approach that task. Now they're games, with things that happen "because we say so" rather than due to logic or history.

Unfortunately, CA were simply incapable of creating good AI. Mods generally had better AI than the base games, but for whatever reason CA couldn't nail the AI problem. Eventually they decided the way forward was dramatically reducing the amount of freedom the player had. So cities now only have a few building slots apiece. You also can't have lots of small troops marching around on patrol or heading for a mustering point to form larger armies, since all armed forces need generals, and the number of generals is restricted. Basically the game developers have restricted player freedom and insisted on putting training wheels and sometimes arbitrary restrictions on what you can do.

I think the series really peaked with Medieval II, although Shogun II also had its moments with its splendid focus and the way the geography made the enemy AI at least appear to be more competent. Rome II was awful. Total Warhammer is kind of fun for a while, but those arbitrary restrictions soon kick in and makes the game more work and tedious than it should really be.

The alternative approach - that CA hire some decent fucking AI programmers - clearly seems to be beyond them.

[MerenthaClone]

5 hours ago, Fez said:

Alright, thanks. I reverted my save to right before I attacked that Northern elector and took Marienburg; only to immediately lose two of my cities, one to a beastman army and one to an orc army. So I reverted my save again, and am going to focus on trying defeat these roving armies. I will eventually stop save scumming so much; I'm only doing it while I get the hang of things.

 

Ambush stance is your friend for trying to fight Beastmen and to a lesser extent Greenskins.  Beastmen are a roving horde so by killing that army you're killing their city too, and the best way to force a fight is by ambushing them.  Plus, like orcs, Beastmen generally have shit morale, so between the morale malus from being ambushed and the fact that you can surround them for more morale penalties means they'll crumble really fast.  It seems counter-intuitive to want to close to melee with Beastmen, but if you can ambush them you'll crush them handily.  They really rely on being a fast-moving, hard-hitting glass cannon that hits one point on an enemy line hard and either splits a formation or rolls up a routing flank.  If they start ambushed they can't get that momentum going.  Orcs are all of the above but to a much lesser extent.  

If you're really struggling and haven't played a TW game before, try switching to the Vampire Counts.  The Empire start has gotten a lot harder since the release of the DLCs introducing the Beastmen, Angrund, and Wood Elves, especially Beastmen.  Tactically, the Empire might be the most flexible, but if you can't leverage that flexibility because you don't know what you're doing yet, its not a strength.  The VC have a simpler political situation, better economic position, and since they lack ranged units entirely will get you very good at using the hammer/anvil tactics that make up the bulk of TW combat. In some ways I think the vast amount of options given to you as Empire can be overwhelming, especially in the mage department.  While it fits lore-wise, I think giving them access to every spell school was a bit of a mistake.  

Also:  Build walls everywhere ASAP.  The difference between a garrison in the open field and one behind walls is insane, not least because they'll force the AI to build ladders (if they don't have siege) which gives you at least a turn to get reinforcements towards the area.  

e:  Actually ambush stance is your friend in general.  It doesn't always work, but when it does, the enemy armies won't see yours on the map at all, so weaker armies won't try to flee from you constantly.  A good tactic if you see an enemy army beelining for a city of yours is to put your army in ambush in the path of the oncoming army, preferably within reinforcement range of your city.  Either they see your stronger army and flee, or they don't and blunder into the ambush.  As a third option, even if they don't fall into the ambush, they'll still often put themselves in range of your army once its your turn.  You can also do this with two armies by using a much weaker army in plain sight while the stronger army waits in ambush.  This is also an excellent way to draw an army out of a city so you don't have to assault the walls with both a garrison and the defending army.  Once the VC DLC LL Isabella comes out I'm pretty sure that's all I'll be doing with Vlad and Isabella armies in tandem.  

[Rhom]

6 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

The second of the Gameplay Series videos for Andromeda went up this morning. Gotta admit I'm not really a fan of the swapping between favorites mid battle thing. I'd prefer a regular action bar like the series has always had on PC, but since you're also swapping between different profiles I guess that doesn't really work. I've never liked the whole "your character can do anything" thing in Bethesda games and I know I won't like it here, but oh well. 

Also Natalie Dormer is the ship's doctor, so that's pretty cool. Guy who played Renly is also doing a voice for the game. 

You know, my initial reaction to hearing that you'd be able to switch in combat was decidedly negative; but that gameplay video makes it look seamless and set up a very realistic fight situation to allow the use of all the skills.

Considering that my ME2 playthrough just now was a Vanguard that took sniper training mid-game, I can see the benefits of both.  My playstyle really did have me pick a few off from range with that and shockwave and then biotic charge in and give them a shotgun to the face.  So I can see how I could use the gameplay in that video.

[MerenthaClone]

40 minutes ago, Rhom said:

You know, my initial reaction to hearing that you'd be able to switch in combat was decidedly negative; but that gameplay video makes it look seamless and set up a very realistic fight situation to allow the use of all the skills.

Considering that my ME2 playthrough just now was a Vanguard that took sniper training mid-game, I can see the benefits of both.  My playstyle really did have me pick a few off from range with that and shockwave and then biotic charge in and give them a shotgun to the face.  So I can see how I could use the gameplay in that video.

Yeah, but I like how specialization can force you to approach certain battles differently.  If I am the best at shooting people in the face with a shotgun, some fights are going to be easy and fun because I chose to specialize in that way while others are going to require more care in the approach.  Conversely, a sniper might struggle with fast-moving close quarters fights but deal well with an open area.  Being able to be both at once without any downside just means that combat becomes "find the optimal solution for every fight" instead of "use the tools that you've picked".  Your ME2 Vanguard became more of a generalist, but that came at the cost of not being able to carry the biggest goddamn shotgun.  That's ok!  You covered your weakness instead of leaning into your strength, and that's a valid choice.  But this new system doesn't look like it features that because everything you do is strengths.  This is a huge factor in driving replays.

That variety also changed my companion choices which also drove replays.  If I'm a biotic, I'm going to struggle with things with shields.  Cool, that's fine.  So I bring an engineer companion to help with that.  If I'm an engineer, shields are basically nonexistent the second Overload comes off cooldown, so having another engineer along isn't that helpful.  Now I'm going to get different banter, different squad combinations, different synergies, because my class has strengths and weaknesses.  Giving me everything at once is just boring.

In the video, I think it'd be a lot more interesting to have to use the talents I've invested to figure out how best to deal with the situation presented, eg using cloak and the turret to draw attention while I move to another position to snipe, or deciding whether to plink with a pistol because charging out of my cover would get me killed.  Now, this requires a few things:  that playstyles and skills are equally useful across the game, that combat is sufficiently varied so that you have battles that play to different strengths, and that  all of these will be communicated to the player.  This is hard to design well, granted, but allowing respecs out of combat, on the ship, would alleviate that somewhat.  Imagine putting all your points into overload only to find that there isn't a single enemy with shields past that point in the game.  Oops.  But covering for lazy game design with "but you can do everything!" isn't the answer, in my opinion.  ME2 and ME3 especially did this very, very well so I'm not sure why they're moving away from it.  

e:  Hell, the best example is ME3's MP.  It worked so well because you were so limited in some neat skills. Even going from that to Shepard made you feel like you were too good at too many things, being able to change class on the fly would have been shitty.  

[Rhom]

8 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

Snip

The replays argument is, I think, the biggest argument against the any skill set up.  I think you really saw it with the comparison between Diablo 2 and 3.  D2 was famous for people sorting out bizarre skill combinations that still somehow worked and gave an enjoyable gameplay experience.  (i.e. the "Ranger" set up which was a Paladin that used bows...)

I also did have some concern that I didn't see much of the companions in the first part of the video, but I'm fairly certain that there would be times in ME2 or 3 that you wouldn't see my companions much during an average fight as well.

Either way, the game looks gorgeous and fluid with the combat.  I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.

[Werthead]

 

The Long War 2 mod for XCOM 2 now has its own mods, improving map variability (and adding over 200 cities to the world map!) and adding a more in-depth UI. Also red bandanas and power axes, if that's your thing.

[MerenthaClone]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

 

The Long War 2 mod for XCOM 2 now has its own mods, improving map variability (and adding over 200 cities to the world map!) and adding a more in-depth UI. Also red bandanas and power axes, if that's your thing.

It also has a ton of mods that rebalance some of the more mindnumbing decisions Pavonis made.  Like LW1, they have a ton of great ideas that they also bog down with a ton of confusing ones.  Their love of obfuscation of basic mechanics is one, as is their obsession with making cover rock-solid.  I get that having the premier strategy always be cover-removal is boring and needed revamping, but increasing the value of cover, increasing the strength of cover, and making any kind of removal unreliable to impossible wasn't the way to do it, especially not with the increased alien pod coverage making flanking maneuvers even more dangerous.  I really like the mod and it got me back into XCOM, but goddamn are some of their decisions frustrating too.  

e:  Be careful if you add map-packs, LW2's mission timers can be incredibly tight even compared to XCOM2, and a lot of the map-packs feature large tiles that take up a lot of space and can move the evac zone even further away.  

I highly recommend adding Hack Plus (and toning down the values in the ini significantly), extract alien corpses, and extra guerrilla mission types.  Adding both manufacturing and guerrilla jobs to the Havens can help the punishing economy and give you a little more control over Advent's strength in a region, which normally you have very little over.  All of these will make the game easier, but a lot of that will be on the strategic instead of tactical layer.  Extract alien corpses also has the advantage of giving you more tactical considerations and makes you wonder whether its worth risking an overwatch fire to grab a sectoid body to dissect or not.  One of LW2's strengths is how the strategic and tactical layers have more interplay and extract corpses adds to that.  

[Fez]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yup. The Total War games used to be simulations: they gave you the tools to build cities and build armies from those cities, and they gave you the freedom of how to approach that task. Now they're games, with things that happen "because we say so" rather than due to logic or history.

Unfortunately, CA were simply incapable of creating good AI. Mods generally had better AI than the base games, but for whatever reason CA couldn't nail the AI problem. Eventually they decided the way forward was dramatically reducing the amount of freedom the player had. So cities now only have a few building slots apiece. You also can't have lots of small troops marching around on patrol or heading for a mustering point to form larger armies, since all armed forces need generals, and the number of generals is restricted. Basically the game developers have restricted player freedom and insisted on putting training wheels and sometimes arbitrary restrictions on what you can do.

Yep, I've noticed all of that. And its one of the reasons the strategy map has been more challenging to me. I'm used to being able to do a lot more on the map; whereas now there's only a few things to do; which makes each of them much more important.

 

I am having more success as I figure things out though. I took Marienburg again, and that boosted my economy so much that I'm on a major development kick right now; I also created a second army, though its not quite as large yet. I destroyed the skullsmashez and one of the Beastman armies, and someone took out the other that was roaming around me. So my lands are feeling relatively secure now. Meanwhile, a bunch of Bretonnia provinces to my south are unoccupied after razings; I've colonized the one bordering me and planning to expand from there. I've gotten pulled into a couple wars with factions nowhere near me, so there's been no battles from that. I just got Aldorf to lvl 4 though, which means its time to start getting some more advanced troops and figuring things out from there.

Also been playing Rise of the Tomb Raider. I like that game a lot. It feels a lot like the first new one, but I liked that game a lot too. It does feel like they went a bit overboard on the collectables, but I'm not trying to get everything. I like how much larger and more involved the optional tombs are this time around. The only downside so far (and maybe this will change later, I'm only 9 hours in) is how static a character Lara feels this time. She started as a badass with some unresolved father issues, and that's exactly what she is where I am in the game too. I get that the game can't do the same journey as the first game, but she is so easily taking everything in stride now that it lessens the impact of everything.

[Jasta11]

15 hours ago, MerenthaClone said:

It also has a ton of mods that rebalance some of the more mindnumbing decisions Pavonis made.  Like LW1, they have a ton of great ideas that they also bog down with a ton of confusing ones.  Their love of obfuscation of basic mechanics is one, as is their obsession with making cover rock-solid.  I get that having the premier strategy always be cover-removal is boring and needed revamping, but increasing the value of cover, increasing the strength of cover, and making any kind of removal unreliable to impossible wasn't the way to do it, especially not with the increased alien pod coverage making flanking maneuvers even more dangerous.  I really like the mod and it got me back into XCOM, but goddamn are some of their decisions frustrating too.  

e:  Be careful if you add map-packs, LW2's mission timers can be incredibly tight even compared to XCOM2, and a lot of the map-packs feature large tiles that take up a lot of space and can move the evac zone even further away.  

I highly recommend adding Hack Plus (and toning down the values in the ini significantly), extract alien corpses, and extra guerrilla mission types.  Adding both manufacturing and guerrilla jobs to the Havens can help the punishing economy and give you a little more control over Advent's strength in a region, which normally you have very little over.  All of these will make the game easier, but a lot of that will be on the strategic instead of tactical layer.  Extract alien corpses also has the advantage of giving you more tactical considerations and makes you wonder whether its worth risking an overwatch fire to grab a sectoid body to dissect or not.  One of LW2's strengths is how the strategic and tactical layers have more interplay and extract corpses adds to that.  

 

Long War has always been like that to me; tons of good ideas, somewhat ruined by incredibly fun-killing ones. LW1 had the Fatigue system, the superpowered EXALT and poorly balanced mission difficulties (pods of 6 super-Outsiders ahoy!). LW2 has the rock-solid cover that I can sorta live with (bring moar Technicals, Grenadiers and Gunner with Suppression/Hail of bullets) but the very high concentration of pods, the poorly-defined ''sound'' system that sometimes allows pods to fire on your troops the turn they are activated, and the insistence on shoving impossible missions at you are just exhausting. 

I especially hate the last two; it's a rule of the game that pods cannot fire when revealed. You plan many of your tactics around this fact. Except in LW2, you can experience that time where one of them bumps into you in the middle of a firefight, have an Officier move to flank one of your best soldiers, and immediately send them to XCOM heaven with a crit. There is no realistic counterplay to this, you cannot react, you just watch as your soldier is helplessly killed or reload in disgust.

Other times, you can Infiltrate a mission to 118%, and it will be relatively smooth sailing... until the game goes ''fuck you'' and drops 4-5 reinforcements in as many turns, in what seemed like a routine mission. There is no way to beat that unless you copiously reload or are insanely lucky. I played by the game's rules and Infiltrated like a good boy, but I still get slapped by RNG or something. It's also highly annoying to be given missions that have less than a day before expiration, even when you concentrate on Intel duty, and even moreso when said missions are meant to counter those now-permanent Dark Events.

It's why, as much as I appreciate LW2, I prefer the vanilla game this time around. I always feel like I'm in control, that there is counterplay to everything the aliens throw at me. Vanilla Legend is hard, but rewarding. Long War 2 sometimes feels like hoping I'm not fucked over by the crazy randomness and the game deciding to ignore its own rules for the sole sake of screwing with the player.

Sorry, this turned into a rant, but I had high hopes for LW2 and they were sorta dashed. If I ever do another XCOM 2 campaign, it's going to be vanilla with my own set of mods.

[Corvinus85]

I think what I hate most about TW Warhammer right now is the AI abuse of the Forced March stance. This was pretty heavily abused in Rome 2 and Attila, too, but it feels worse in this one. I think the army stances were not thought through very well. In Rome 2, the forced march stance had the consequence of having to defend in an ambush if an enemy caught you, which is bullshit. I think the forced march stance should be limited to maybe a couple of turns, and then attrition should kick in. 

I also agree with Werthead's comments about restricting these games have become. Siege battles are not thing that became more and more restricting, and it would probably by the 2nd thing I hate the most about Warhammer.

[briantw]

I played the Ghost Recon: Wildlands beta with one of my friends last night and holy shit is that game awful.  It ran like hot garbage on the recommended settings (which were High for me I think), which was strange considering I can run For Honor on max settings at a pretty constant sixty FPS.  I get that it's a huge open world, but I was getting regular frame drops and stuttering through most of the hour or so we played.  The gameplay itself isn't anything special.  It felt like a generic third-person shooter.

You could tell the game was poorly optimized for the PC as well.  Vehicle controls were damn near impossible with a keyboard.  A light tap of A or D sent cars careening off the road.  The dirt bike I found was completely inoperable due to the awful controls.  I tried to do a slight turn and ended up driving off the edge of the road and down a mountain, and then couldn't get the bike back up it despite it existing for that type of traversal.  I didn't get to try piloting a chopper, but based on how many times my buddy almost crashed into things, I'm guessing those controls were shit too.

I guess there's some potential for some cool operations planning, especially if you have four people playing co-op and working together tactically.  However, everything about the game was just so underwhelming that I didn't really have any urge to try that.  The most fun we had was killing civilians, although if you kill enough within a short period of time you get a game over screen, which feels dumb considering that you just reload at a checkpoint with no consequences.  Why even bother?  

Definitely won't be buying this one.  The beta had the exact opposite effect of the For Honor beta, which made me really want to buy a game I had barely even read anything about prior to beta time.

[Rhom]

7 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Looking forward to next Friday too - is anyone else getting the Switch? For the longest time I was going to wait, but I just plain want to play Zelda. From the sound of the previews, it should be pretty good.

I've thought about picking up the Switch.  Primarily for Zelda... yes.   

Finished up ME2 last night.  Popped in ME3 and started the frustratingly slow process of downloading the DLC content.  That game has some huge ones.  Left it going overnight, so I should be able to get rolling some tonight.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 2/23/2017 at 6:21 AM, MisterOJ said:

I might check that out.

Are you playing Ark on single player or multi-player? I tried both, but multi-player was pretty much impossible as a new player. I thought single player was pretty fun early on, but once I advanced to the point where I needed lots of metal and couldn't harvest it easily, I lost interest in the game. Then I found out about the cheat code that would give you unlimited resources and that made the game fun again for a few more days, but blasting dinosaurs with assault rifles was only fun for so long.

 

 

Yeah, I didn't even attempt multiplayer. I messed with the settings on single player a bit after my first hour or so of slow gains and dying a lot. A bit quicker harvest resourcing and leveling. I found the game is mostly a grind to get what you need. Like tame a couple trikes, go to some small rocks that are sturdy, break them up with up with a pick over an ax, and I've started collecting a nice bit of iron. Not nearly enough, of course, but maybe I can build some things that will help me GET OFF THE FRIGGIN' BEACH. Every time I make some progress, those damned long clawed duck monsters wander in and kill me and all my tamed dinos. So annoying.

[Denvek]

The XCom 2 mission name randomiser does come up with some odd combinations. Today I played through Operation Pungent Whale.

[KiDisaster]

Played a bit of the Ghost Recon: Wildlands beta (solo). The technical issues are pretty major. Had two crashes to desktop in about 3 hours of playing, it runs like dog shit and the vehicle controls are abysmal. Mostly ignoring those since beta is beta and hopefully they'll fix a lot of that with a day 1 patch. Not that I'm buying it day 1. 

It is not a Ghost Recon game. I wish they had called it something else. I understand the logic is that you use the name of an established franchise and people are more likely to buy it but it's not like Ghost Recon is Call of Duty or something with major, blockbuster recognition. And when you stray so far from the formula of the older games in the series you're only ever going to be compared to it disfavorably. This game wouldn't get anywhere near as much shit as it's going to if they just called it something else. 

That being said, it's an alright game for a generic third person shooter. Ignoring the shitty YEAH AMERICA WOO DRUG WAR THIS IS AN EFFECTIVE METHOD OF CURTAILING CARTEL VIOLENCE nonsense anyway. Using the Sync Shot thing to take down 3 or 4 enemies at once is pretty cool and is the only thing about this game that is even vaguely Ghost Recon-ish. The combat otherwise feels OK and there's lots to do, in typical Ubi open world fashion. 

It's the kind of game I'll pick up in a Steam sale in two years when it's dirt cheap and play while I'm listening to audiobooks. Assuming they've fixed all the technical problems. 

Now back to Banner Saga 2. This fucking axe thrower guy is amazing. 

[GallowKnight]

I dug up copy of Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004 version) and have been playing that all weekend. I wrapped-up my game today and managed to finish most of the main goals, which I don't think I have ever done before, I defeated the evil Marquis, I freed my family, discovered the lost Inca City, found all the Pirate treasure, defeated the 9 notorious Pirates, became a French Duke and survived the Dancing mini-game. I ended up retiring as a fat Bishop. This is easily one of my favourite games.