Video Games - Sequels of Dread and Anticipation

[aceluby]

15 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Popular spot here:

https://www.updownarcadebar.com/minneapolis/

It's got Rhom's X-Men 6 player, but the place you're describing sounds a lot bigger.

Up Down can be fun, but pre-pandemic it was always super packed and hard to play games unless you go right when they open.  I have a buddy who lived down the street from there and had to of spent $500 on pinball over the course of ~3 months after his divorce.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Meet the Fallout 4 UI mod of your dreams. 

That does not really help with the settlement interface and settlement building though. You still have this to use the arrow keys to navigate those menus and anything above ground level can be extremly finicky.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

Up Down can be fun, but pre-pandemic it was always super packed and hard to play games unless you go right when they open.  I have a buddy who lived down the street from there and had to of spent $500 on pinball over the course of ~3 months after his divorce.

You can't move in that place.

[aceluby]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You can't move in that place.

When I was in college there was a bar with a similar concept, except instead of quarter games they had a TV at every table with an old console (NES -> ~N64) and a bunch of old games to choose from.  Unfortunately I don't think the idea really took off as much as I would have expected.  It was hard to go with a group larger than 4, that's for sure.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

35 minutes ago, aceluby said:

When I was in college there was a bar with a similar concept, except instead of quarter games they had a TV at every table with an old console (NES -> ~N64) and a bunch of old games to choose from.  Unfortunately I don't think the idea really took off as much as I would have expected.  It was hard to go with a group larger than 4, that's for sure.

I went to a place like that in LA once.

[Toth]

Oddly enough this week I had a bit of free time, including an unexpected holiday. The moments I spent those gaming were used... erratically to say the least.

First I got the itch for a simple simulation game and looking through my library got the idea to install Prison Architect again. I never got out of the tutorial the first time. I was dicking around a bit in sandbox, but once I had two regular wings, protective custody and death row set up, I got bored and dropped it. I guess it isn't helping that I have come to realize how you have infinite money by setting up a large forestry south of your prison, so the prison becomes more of a side gig.

Then I got the urge to play something something farming. I still had My Time at Portia installed from back when it was free on Epic. It's actually a surprising mix of comfy and super stressful. It's your regular Harvest Moon clone similar to Stardew Valley, but with nicer graphics and instead of a farmer you are a "builder" which essentially means you are the town's Ikea (I'm mad as hell I realized that too late to call my workshop that. XD). The focus on the game therefore lies on crafting and fulfilling random daily missions for the townsfolk to assemble stuff that they need. Unfortunately for that you need to refine resources through smelting or cutting or the like, but every process like this takes absolute ages, so you have to set up parallel machinery focused on refining one specific item each and keep them all fed all the time to not constantly run into a resource shortage when actually assembling shit.

You also have a limited amount of stamina that gets used up with every action you take, but the interior of your house modifies your stats. Very early on when exploring a ruin I stumbled into a randomly generated corridor filled to the brim with tacky pink leather couches that drastically increase my stamina, so I piled them all up in my house and now stamina isn't an issue anymore, the ridiculous shortness of the days is. Basically just walking from the shop to the town to get a mission costs you three hours and you can only be awake from 7 am to 3 am the next day (apparently the poor bugger only needs 4 hours of sleep... but then again it explains how he violently drops unconscious at point 3). So you are in a constant race against time to get as much done as possible in a day while the clock is ticking and every quest comes with a time limit of just a couple of days.

I guess the most interesting idea of the game is the fact that while it seemingly takes place in a cutesy fantasy world with comically silly monsters, it turns out early on that this is a post-post apocalyptic world, what with the background landscape being littered with overgrown bombed out skyscrapers and 'mining' amounts to digging through filled up ruins of our world where you are constantly finding artifacts like glasses or portraits. The characters mention that just a couple of generations ago people were still huddling underground during a nuclear winter and people are in a weird spot of both demonizing technology while still being utterly reliant on it. The story barely touches it though, but I get the feeling that the developers put a lot of effort into the world-building, what with the constant references to other city-states and their relationship to each other, and the conflict between church and scientists.

[red snow]

I played "brothers" last week which is a charming game with some really nice level designs - I particularly enjoyed the giant's battlefield level. The gameplay was also a but different and challenging in the sense you were controlling two characters simultaneously. It's a bit on the short side (but it cost very little) and the ending was very different to what I was expecting but fit the norse vibe.

Also finished "concrete genie" which felt a bit like a video game version of a laika or ghibli movie. Again, it featured a slightly different control system although I don't think i ever fully embraced the graffiti in terms of trying to make nice pictures - i tended to do it for functional reasons.

 

Not sure what to play next. Was considering "everyone has gone to the rapture" or "control". I'm more in the mood for short games at the moment so will maybe go for the former or do "the wolf among us" instead.

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, red snow said:

I played "brothers" last week which is a charming game with some really nice level designs - I particularly enjoyed the giant's battlefield level. The gameplay was also a but different and challenging in the sense you were controlling two characters simultaneously. It's a bit on the short side (but it cost very little) and the ending was very different to what I was expecting but fit the norse vibe.

Brothers is outstanding. An odd game to come out of Starbreeze, previously responsible for the surprisingly excellent Chronicles of Riddick tie-in games and the absolutely terrible Syndicate FPS.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I've finally cleared the entire first island in GoT. Let's see what island two has in store.

[Fez]

Whole lotta Bethesda games showing up GamePass now: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/03/11/20-bethesda-games-now-on-xbox-game-pass/

Quote

 

Dishonored Definitive Edition (Console, PC, Cloud)

Dishonored 2 (Console, PC, Cloud)

DOOM (1993) (Console, PC, Cloud)

DOOM II (Console, PC, Cloud)

DOOM 3 (Console, PC, Cloud)

DOOM 64 (Console, PC, Cloud)

DOOM Eternal (Console, PC, Cloud)

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Console, PC)

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Console, PC)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (Console, PC, Cloud)

The Elder Scrolls Online (Cloud, Console)

The Evil Within (Console, PC, Cloud)

Fallout 4 (Console, PC, Cloud)

Fallout 76 (Console, PC, Cloud)

Fallout: New Vegas (Console)

Prey (Console, PC, Cloud)

RAGE 2 (Console, PC, Cloud)

Wolfenstein: The New Order (Console, PC, Cloud)

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (Console, PC, Cloud)

Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Console, PC, Cloud)

 

I've never actually played any of the old DOOM games, so this might be my chance. It's cool about the all modern games, but I already own most of them.

I wonder what's up with Fallout 3, RAGE, and the handful of other games that aren't available. And also why New Vegas is console only, not PC.

[Mexal]

This week in Valheim, we're making a circular dock with a big lighthouse while I scout a big ass Mountain for our future castle. Fun times.

[Werthead]

 

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

I've never actually played any of the old DOOM games, so this might be my chance. It's cool about the all modern games, but I already own most of them.

Buy Ultimate Doom on Steam for *checks* $7.45 and then install GZDoom. It's the best way to play it. 

[Argonath Diver]

38 minutes ago, Mexal said:

This week in Valheim, we're making a circular dock with a big lighthouse while I scout a big ass Mountain for our future castle. Fun times.

My brother and I are still puttering about in Black Forest biome stuff. The Elder is a significantly long journey away on the map. I stocked up pretty well, took portal mats with me, and spent about three hours just trying to get around islands to reach his. I had to make a forced landing due to a Serpent attack, and the Black Forest Biome at the immediate coast with meadow behind it - nope that was actually Plains. Two goblins gleefully saw my emergency beachhead and one-shot me. Whole lot of mats and time lost, but that's viking life. 

My next trip I will take a slightly more efficient route, and be fully aware of where I'm landing. I really need to get to that body, it had three skelly tombs worth of goodies for more portals.

[Fez]

52 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Buy Ultimate Doom on Steam for *checks* $7.45 and then install GZDoom. It's the best way to play it. 

That would defeat the purpose of playing them for free on Gamepass.

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

That would defeat the purpose of playing them for free on Gamepass.

But...you can play it with a proper Y axis! To have proper freedom of movement! And circle strafing! 

[Argonath Diver]

Catastrophic failure in Valheim. Spent a good four hours lugging back tin and copper and foraging to prep for another long voyage to rescue the body filled with my best loot from my first failed expedition to reach the Elder. Got to my body on the shoreline in about 45 minutes of straight efficient sailing. Not exactly fun so far. Killed a bunch of dwarves, didn't aggro anything from the nearby Plains, but the last Brute had me pinned, only to mysteriously die. Oh, there's absurdly tiny Mosquitos that one shot through bronze armor. Oh, he's going for my boat. RIP ~10 hours of gameplay, and now have to use a land bridge eons away to get to more Black Forest shoreline to get Tin. Game got incredibly frustrating really fast. I don't know if I have an unlucky game seed, but spawning the Elder three huge continents away was a huge bummer. It's on the shelf for a few days.

My game of choice, Path of Exile, released a development manifesto today that has received massive negative feedback from the always-angry-and-elitist Reddit sub. It's a colossally complex and unforgiving ARPG with an unwieldy but powerful crafting system that is generally a terrible crapshoot. A newer added system has given players the incredible power of nearly completely determinable crafting, resulting in the sharpest power creep in years (the expansion also features by far the most difficult content in the game). Well they're nerfing the everliving shit out of the deterministic crafting system, telling us all we're supposed to have fun with our 1/400 chance success rolls. Players are furious, as the crafting let casual and solo self-found players reach new endgame content for the first time. I personally got to kill some bosses I'd previously considered impossible with my own terrible technical gameplay skills.

I really wish Diablo 2 Remastered would release next month; clearly, grindy timesink games are my jam, and that one is the grand-daddy of them all. I adore it. I hope it doesn't hide from us until the holiday season.

[TrueMetis]

On 3/10/2021 at 11:47 AM, Ran said:

This fires up some real nostalgia. Remember playing the first game in the series in the arcade with my brother and friends.

And yes, this sort of retro-ish, cartoony 2d graphics is perfectly fine because it looks good!

Love that they took the time to create individual running animations for the turtles.

ETA: Never played the original arcade version, I did play a port, or a sequel, or something for I wanna say the SNES. My experience with arcade games was the little arcade on the ferry, which didn't have much of a selection, or Barcadia in Kingston which is also not huge, but drinking and playing those old games is a lot of fun.

[Poobah]

6 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

My game of choice, Path of Exile, released a development manifesto today that has received massive negative feedback from the always-angry-and-elitist Reddit sub. It's a colossally complex and unforgiving ARPG with an unwieldy but powerful crafting system that is generally a terrible crapshoot. A newer added system has given players the incredible power of nearly completely determinable crafting, resulting in the sharpest power creep in years (the expansion also features by far the most difficult content in the game). Well they're nerfing the everliving shit out of the deterministic crafting system, telling us all we're supposed to have fun with our 1/400 chance success rolls. Players are furious, as the crafting let casual and solo self-found players reach new endgame content for the first time. I personally got to kill some bosses I'd previously considered impossible with my own terrible technical gameplay skills.

Yeah I gave up on Path of Exile when it became increasingly clear that the game's designed was not moving in a direction that allowed someone like me to just have fun. Sounds like they accidentally changed it in a way that would have made it enjoyable for me to gotta get rid of that right away. I'm a little curious about your comments on the PoE reddit - I do agree that it tends towards very elitist, but in this case appear to be showing some very anti-elitist and sane sentiments by downvoting the shit out of this announcement and most of the comments I see are talking about what a terrible idea it is to make the game less fun and accessible.

[Rhom]

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Love that they took the time to create individual running animations for the turtles.

ETA: Never played the original arcade version, I did play a port, or a sequel, or something for I wanna say the SNES. My experience with arcade games was the little arcade on the ferry, which didn't have much of a selection, or Barcadia in Kingston which is also not huge, but drinking and playing those old games is a lot of fun.

My early middle school birthday parties pretty much always wound up at the arcade in the local mall.  Parents would give us each $5 worth of quarters and we'd all go nuts.  TMNT was a major quarter sink for most of my friends.