Video Games - Legendary Edition

[Martell Spy]

54 minutes ago, Werthead said:

They do seem to be pretty good. Urban Combat adds varied battlegrounds, Flashpoints adds more multi-mission story-esque campaigns and Heavy Metal adds a bunch more iconic mechs to the game (the Annihilator and Rifleman, which are both in MW5 as default mechs) plus a new story campaign. I think the QOL improvements they added (like being able to hit enemy units with fire that misses the main target) were patched in for free though.

Yeah, the scattered shots are definitely in there. I forgot that they weren't in there before. 

[Fez]

Think I'm going to drop Trails of Cold Steel 2. It's just way, way too shonen anime; undercutting what is supposedly a relatively dark story with constant nonsense.

Anyone have any recs for JRPGs on PC or Switch that are actually dark? I'd be in the mood for one of those. Do any games like Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Xenogears still get made?

[Werthead]

Portal 2 turns 10 this week, which is clearly erroneous, as by my memory it came out a week last Tuesday. Spaaaaace, cake, etc.

The Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games got an update overnight, lots of new character portraits, bug fixes and a whole new voice set for each game from Mass Effect's Mark Meer. I think that makes Baldur's Gate the oldest game currently still getting official bugfixes and support (beating Age of Empires II by a few months), after Blizzard stopped updating the original StarCraft a while back.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

 I think that makes Baldur's Gate the oldest game currently still getting official bugfixes and support (beating Age of Empires II by a few months), after Blizzard stopped updating the original StarCraft a while back.

GemStone IV a MUD from 1988, is still active and got its most recent update last Monday. That's probably the oldest, but I'm not positive.

There's also Ultima Online from 1997, if you want something a bit closer to modern games. That still gets regular patches.

[Ran]

GNU Chess and Nethack both were updated last year, and both date from 1987. But these are open source games. For commercial games, yeah, Ultima Online seems right, and then BG for commercial single player game with the longest continuous development. 

[Fez]

25 minutes ago, Ran said:

GNU Chess and Nethack both were updated last year, and both date from 1987. But these are open source games. For commercial games, yeah, Ultima Online seems right, and then BG for commercial single player game with the longest continuous development. 

There's also DOOM, from 1993; sort of. John Romero has released additional levels for it in 2015 and 2019. Not sure if they count as official though; or if he plans on making any more.

[Derfel Cadarn]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

GNU Chess and Nethack both were updated last year, and both date from 1987. But these are open source games. For commercial games, yeah, Ultima Online seems right, and then BG for commercial single player game with the longest continuous development. 

I still occasionally log into Ultima now that its free to play. My oldest characters are 20 years old

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I still occasionally log into Ultima now that its free to play. My oldest characters are 20 years old

Nice. Oldest character I have on an online game (ElendorMUSH, a Tolkien game that's no longer active and hasn't  seen any serious play in some years) just hit the 26 year mark last month. 

[Poobah]

1 hour ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I still occasionally log into Ultima now that its free to play. My oldest characters are 20 years old

Oh wow, you're making me nostalgic for some UO. I only ever played on unofficial shards though so nothing left but the good memories, and the memories of yelling at my mum because she picked up the phone to make a call when I was trying to play

[Werthead]

I forgot how monstrously tough BattleTech is on the first few missions. I did save Dekker, though only at the cost of my commander taking heinous injuries and their mech almost being destroyed on the second mission, with them spending 3 months in the medbay. Fortunately you get a spare mech (two, in fact) and a spare pilot to pick up the slack.

I must admit, whilst it is somewhat shallower, the metagame in MechWarrior 5 is a lot faster and more instinctive to get to grips with. Bearing in mind I already have 60 hours down with BattleTech, most recently about eighteen months ago, it took me a while to get back into the interface. In particular, I forgot that BattleTech lists all available missions in the local cluster, not just the star system you're in, so almost bankrupted myself by sending the ship to another system too early. Fortunately there were quite a few missions to do there so I was able to claw back some cash.

[Jon AS]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I forgot that BattleTech lists all available missions in the local cluster, not just the star system you're in, so almost bankrupted myself by sending the ship to another system too early. Fortunately there were quite a few missions to do there so I was able to claw back some cash.

It only lists a couple of missions in nearby systems (and if you travel there without taking the contract first, that particular mission won't be available once you get there), but if you take on a travel contract you don't pay travel expenses, so you only invest travelling time during which you can't earn money through contracts.

I relly like the game, though I could never muster the motivation to get particularly far in carreer mode. It's just a bit too unfocused, and I already completed all the flashpoints in campaign mode, so nothing new to explore there.

[Werthead]

9 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

It only lists a couple of missions in nearby systems (and if you travel there without taking the contract first, that particular mission won't be available once you get there), but if you take on a travel contract you don't pay travel expenses, so you only invest travelling time during which you can't earn money through contracts.

I relly like the game, though I could never muster the motivation to get particularly far in carreer mode. It's just a bit too unfocused, and I already completed all the flashpoints in campaign mode, so nothing new to explore there.

I completed the game before the flashpoints came out, so this is my first time through the game with all the DLC installed. I did try to do one of the flashpoints with my finishing lance but, blasting through them with Assaults seemed to be far too easy.

[Jon AS]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I completed the game before the flashpoints came out, so this is my first time through the game with all the DLC installed. I did try to do one of the flashpoints with my finishing lance but, blasting through them with Assaults seemed to be far too easy.

Yeah, only a few are really challenging with endgame 'mechs (and then the challenge usually comes from the game not letting you field an entire assault lance for that particular flashpoint) and if I were to do them again I'd definitely go for career mode. Every time I've started such a game my interest ran out after a handful of missions, though.

I might give it another shot, since I've also lost interest in the games I've been playing these past few months anyway.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Jon AS said:

Yeah, only a few are really challenging with endgame 'mechs (and then the challenge usually comes from the game not letting you field an entire assault lance for that particular flashpoint) and if I were to do them again I'd definitely go for career mode. Every time I've started such a game my interest ran out after a handful of missions, though.

I might give it another shot, since I've also lost interest in the games I've been playing these past few months anyway.

There was one interesting Flashpoint where for the final battle you can choose to face this guy you're suppose to kill alone, or bring a lance, though he might bounce if you do. So I did the honorable thing and went alone, but of course his treacherous ass brought friends. But his friends had piss-poor armor, and my character was leveled up to the max, and was driving a well built Hunchback with lots or armor and M lasers. I made short work of his reinforcements, but I didn't know his mech was a modified Crab built for melee, with flamers. He kept overheating my system, but luckily there was water nearby and once I took the fight there, it was only a matter of time before I ended him.

[Clueless Northman]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Nice. Oldest character I have on an online game (ElendorMUSH, a Tolkien game that's no longer active and hasn't  seen any serious play in some years) just hit the 26 year mark last month. 

Wait, that sounds loosely familiar. Back in 2001/2002 I tried a LOTR-based MUSH, game was set at the time of the quest for the Ring, and from what I read about, it was most probably this one, considering which races/peoples you could choose at the start. You began in supposedly easy areas and then could move towards more dangerous places - say Weathertop, Trollshaws and others -, and eventually there was Mordor, which was insane, most probably with plenty of PVP since advanced players could actually play evil guys. Iirc, you were more or less talked by Gollum if you went close to the Misty Mountains.

That MUSH I played for a couple of months had a very punishing system, you lost all your stuff on death and even lost a hefty amount of XP; being an utter newb, I was owned by bloody spiders or some other puny animals around Combe and actually lost a level after a few more untimely deaths (not to mention all my gear and money looted by passers-by). I was so annoyed that I eventually stopped playing. When WOW was released a couple of years later, I was like "No way, I tried a MUSH before, and I won't play another game in which you lose so much when dying", then saw that you only had to pay some gold to repair gear in WOW, no equipment loss, no XP penalties... On the other hand, a friend of mine became quite the expert at that MUSH, taking advantage of being student, she basically spent 1/6 of an entire semester on it - as in nearly an entire month worth of connected time, close to 30 days of played time over barely more than 6 months.

[IlyaP]

Please help me. I installed the Belzebub mod for Diablo and 15+ hours later I can't escape. It's completely consumed all my free time. 

Send help.

 

And maybe some pizzas.

[A True Kaniggit]

13 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Please help me. I installed the Belzebub mod for Diablo and 15+ hours later I can't escape. It's completely consumed all my free time. 

Send help.

 

And maybe some pizzas.

I ate some pizza tonight. Does that help?

[Ran]

@Clueless Northman

That game you're describing is a MUD, which has automated enemies ("mobs") and that sort of XP-based advancement.

There's quite a few Tolkien MUDs around still, but if I had a guess it was The Two Towers, also called T2T, one of the oldest still around since it was started in 1994 (Elendor dates from 1992). I know Mordor was T2T's lawless PVP area, although no doubt other Tolkien-based MUDs did similar things.

[Fez]

I refuse to get properly hyped for a Warhammer 40K video game, since even the best of them (Space Marine, Mechanicus, Inquisitor, etc.) are only decently average games and the vast majority are trash fires. But Necromunda: Hired Gun sure is looking like it's got potential. Absolutely going to wait for reviews though.

At the very least, I like the relatively non-grimdark tone it's going for; which fits for the underhive, gang war setting.

[Toth]

12 minutes ago, Fez said:

I refuse to get properly hyped for a Warhammer 40K video game, since even the best of them (Space Marine, Mechanicus, Inquisitor, etc.) are only decently average games and the vast majority are trash fires. But Necromunda: Hired Gun sure is looking like it's got potential. Absolutely going to wait for reviews though.

What is with Dawn of War (except III) and Battlefleet Gothic Armada?