Videogames 2023 pt. II: Can We patreon This Man an Alienware Already?

[Toth]

11 hours ago, Rhom said:

Everyone over here playing these brand new games and I'm just proud of myself for beating the original Red Dead Redemption on PS3 this morning.   

Lol, I recently installed Pharaoh again and did a few missions because I suddenly felt that could be relaxing. And I am not talking about the remake!

 

But oh well, my gaming endeavors have been quite crazy these days. Continued playing Skyrim a little whenever I have only little time. Also continued ESO. They now did back-to-back events which somewhat did distract me from the main quest... or the fact that I horrenduously overestimated how many skill points you get to put into your perks because you don't get any from leveling anymore after reaching level 50. And I put almost all of them into crafting, so my character is increasingly becoming a wet noodle in combat...

I had also looked into The Crew 2 again for a new motorpass event, but... oh god, after playing Forza with its very "grippy" and comprehensible driving physics, I had an extremely hard time with the extremely floaty, prone to randomly oversteering and understeering cars that leave you constantly fighting against your own overcorrections. It doesn't help that, seriously, 90% of the cars drive so horrible that you have to ignore them for most events, since they all only consist of very narrow 90° corners where you end up hitting EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. WALL. because your car refuses to react to your inputs. So no goofing around with silly cars in a silly car game...

I'm also wondering whether I should go back to No Man's Sky. They have just dropped a new update reworking combat and introducing capital ship combat... I am very curious how exactly they implemented that given the passive nature of capital ships last time I had one.

[Werthead]

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is free on Steam all weekend. Strongly recommended, an unexpectedly great game (and the DLC makes it even better).

[Werthead]

XCOM: 40K proved a bit too repetitive and similar to other tactics games. I'll get back to it, but I needed something less strategy-ish.

Fired up Far Cry 6 and it's probably the most straightforward of the Far Cries to date. No BS dream sequences, no obnoxious forced player imprisonment scenes, none of the non-sequitur randomness of FC5, just the series at its most meat and potatoes. The core gameplay loop of taking over camps and liberating POWs and helping a rebel leader replace a dictator with the vague feeling they'll just be the next dictator, some shallow chortling over cynical US foreign policy and then more guilt-free mass violence with a comical animal companion. It's very rote by now, but it's fun.

Also the map is enormous (easily the biggest in the series to date) but they make it very easy to get around. I've liberated more than a third of the map in under 10 hours of gameplay, so probably about a 30-hour game unless you really want to arse around with optional Ubisoft gumpf.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Fired up Far Cry 6 and it's probably the most straightforward of the Far Cries to date.

They're up to a sixth game in the series? Madre de Dios...

[IlyaP]

Really really enjoying Kingdoms of Amalur: Rereckoning (silly re-release title notwithstanding). They've managed to address the frustrations I had with the original game, and I no longer need a widescreen mod to increase the FOV, to better appreciate the stellar art and design 38 Studios has on display pretty much every single second of the game. This is a labor of love and it shows. And ye gods I'd forgotten just how much lore and background depth R.A. Salvatore gave this game. 

And Grant Kirkhope's score? Mwah. Marvellous stuff. 

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, IlyaP said:

They're up to a sixth game in the series? Madre de Dios...

Nine, including the stand-alone spin-offs (Blood Dragon, Primal and New Dawn).

[Darryk]

I really wish they'd do a remastered version of Far Cry 2. None of the ones that followed really captured the same magic fror me.

[Poobah]

Made my way up to covenant rank 25 and unlocked the expert challenges on Monster Train. Very much enjoying all ways you're able and expected to "break" the game. Completed my first expert challenge which I was drawn to because in addition to the bad stuff it out googly eyes on all units 

[IlyaP]

Put your feet up folks, it's gonna be a long night for CD Project Red. The 1.62 patch for Cyberpunk 2077 has not landed well. Numerous players are reporting serious issues that result in the game refusing to load.  And - this is what's really astonishing! - this is occurring among both modded and unmodded versions of the game.

While it does seem to work for some, a significant number of players are reporting auto-crashes, with the game outright refusing to load, even after editing specific *.json files.

[Jace, Extat]

The Betas Strike Back

[Rhom]

I finished Chained Echoes last night.  Just an absolute love letter to classic JRPG era gaming.  Loved every minute of it.  There were some aspects of the skill system that just didn't quite work the way I think they were intended, but other than that it was just a great game.

In my effort to continue on with the victims of my gaming ADHD backlog, I picked up Jedi Fallen Order this morning.  I played it for about three hours last summer.  So today, I started over and just stuck it on story mode.  Since I have some catching up to do, just wanted to make it as smooth a process as possible.

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I finished Chained Echoes last night.  Just an absolute love letter to classic JRPG era gaming.  Loved every minute of it.  There were some aspects of the skill system that just didn't quite work the way I think they were intended, but other than that it was just a great game.

In my effort to continue on with the victims of my gaming ADHD backlog, I picked up Jedi Fallen Order this morning.  I played it for about three hours last summer.  So today, I started over and just stuck it on story mode.  Since I have some catching up to do, just wanted to make it as smooth a process as possible.

All the way!!!

[Corvinus85]

Wartales is getting its official, full release today, ending its EA period that started in December '21. The game has had quite a few developments since then, and I've not played in some time, so despite creating a kick-ass party of mercenaries named after ASoIaF characters, I'm going to start from scratch to properly take in all the new stuff. 

But tomorrow, the Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs DLC will be released for TW: Warhammer III, so that might take more of my time in the near future. The Chaos Dwarfs look to be a really interesting culture to play with.

[Fez]

I've got my eye on Dredge, an eldritich horror/fishing sim game. It's out already and has kinda blown up on Steam, at least as far as a single player, linear indie game can (i.e., still has 6k concurrent players right now, 2 weeks after release). But I've spent too much money on various things the past couple months so I just can't justify buying any more games right now. I'll definitely get it at some point though. 

Some upcoming games I'm looking forward to as well are:

Roots of Pacha- Seems to be a stone age-themed Stardew Valley clone. It got a spot in an Xbox live stream last year though, so I assume it's not just a cheap asset flip.

Age of Wonders 4- Latest in the 4x series. RPS had an article on it a few months back that sounds like they've got some kinda unprecedented degrees of freedom when it comes to faction customization.

Miasma- Latest tactics game from the devs who made Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Which wasn't a perfect game, but was fun and I'm curious to see what their latest offering is.

Mask of the Rose- It's by the devs behind the Fallen London/Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies games. But apparently it's a visual novel/dating sim set in that world. I'm very curious to see what this is.

[IFR]

I did a text adventure using ChatGPT. I had the setting as Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, and thought it would be fun to interact with the world. ChatGPT does a surprisingly good job generating random scenarios and characters to interact with.

The problems are that it has a limited memory (so you have to frequently re-inform it what is happening), and it is heavily filtered. I tried to trip one of the City Watch, and ChatGPT wouldn't allow me because it apparently goes against the spirit of Jordan's world. It allowed me more license in Martin's world, but limits actions such as murder and such. If you try stealing, it goes into a lecture on how that's unethical behavior, etc.

Also, while random, generic character interaction is sufficient, known characters (eg Moiraine) are not nearly as well done. They are not completely alien to their book counterpart, but they just lack much of the personality in a very conspicuous way.

These limitations are obviously a problem. But if this is where AI is at in its infancy, then the future looks very promising. And hopefully competing models will not be as obsessive about the filters.

Edited April 12, 2023 by IFR

[polishgenius]

Fucking ace. A lot going on in that trailer. Can't wait. 

 

Spoiler

Fairly sure the time travel speculation will prove true. Zelda holding is an unbroken master sword when Link's is broken, the shining castle... my guess would be when she falls into the pit she falls back in time. But I'm guessing.  

 

Either way, hyped.

[Rhom]

Bit of a quandary… just finished Red Dead on PS3.  Not gonna get into Red Dead 2 for a while, but the Ultimate edition is available on PS spring sale for 70% off.  ($30 instead of $100.)

Im a bit torn because I had figured I would get it on Steam Deck for convenience.  But that is a large discount.  

Tekken 7 is also just $10.  That is tempting for the nostalgia alone

[Slurktan]

19 hours ago, Rhom said:

Bit of a quandary… just finished Red Dead on PS3.  Not gonna get into Red Dead 2 for a while, but the Ultimate edition is available on PS spring sale for 70% off.  ($30 instead of $100.)

Im a bit torn because I had figured I would get it on Steam Deck for convenience.  But that is a large discount.  

Tekken 7 is also just $10.  That is tempting for the nostalgia alone

Out of curiosity but why the ultimate edition? 

[Rhom]

22 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Out of curiosity but why the ultimate edition? 

That’s what I saw was on sale… dunno what’s included in it yet.   

Just has me wondering if I should get it for PC or PS5

[RumHam]

8 minutes ago, Rhom said:

That’s what I saw was on sale… dunno what’s included in it yet.   

Just has me wondering if I should get it for PC or PS5

Is sony usually pretty good at letting you keep your old digital stuff? Microsoft is, Nintendo famously is not. I dunno I'd want to get it on steam just because steam is never going to say "we're ditching backwards compatibility for the steam deck 3" 

I've seen it on Steam for $30 during the sales. Green man gaming has it for $17.42 or $26.40 right now, but the epic store version. If you did all that heroic launcher stuff I assume that will run on the deck. I never bothered myself.