Blog Your Current Game

[jmotivator]

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After finishing Dredge, Steam recommended Raft, so I played for a few days. At first it seemed fun and all, but the constant gathering of resources and plus you had to eat all the time felt like a chore in the end. Uninstalled and got a refund. Not for me. Rating 4/10

I've gotten to the point where I generally don't want to play survival games that don't let me adjust the hunger rate. The only one that slips in under that rule is Subnautica, but that's only because it's the best survival game ever made.

 

[Redress]

Factorio has a DLC out, and it should embarrass the big AAA companies like Blizzard or Bethesda. The DLC adds more, is better done, and a ton more fun.

 

[PoS]

Played Astroneer for about 15 minutes, but it reminded me too much of No Man's Sky, so I uninstalled and got a refund. Steam recommended The Planet Crafter next and... Im kinda hooked. The graphics are crude but time passes quickly, even when you're doing just mundane stuff like gathering resources and building the same stuff over and over.

 

[Redress]

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Played Astroneer for about 15 minutes, but it reminded me too much of No Man's Sky, so I uninstalled and got a refund. Steam recommended The Planet Crafter next and... Im kinda hooked. The graphics are crude but time passes quickly, even when you're doing just mundane stuff like gathering resources and building the same stuff over and over.

I really like Planet Crafters. Awesome chill game. The DLC looks cool, waiting for it to be on sale.

 

[Redress]

Mechwarrior 5: Clans is out. It is a stand alone game built kinda on the Mechwarrior 5 engine(?), except using Unreal 5. You play as a mechwarrior in the Smoke Jaguar clan. So far it is good, though flawed. First, whoever handles the character designs and animations for the cutscenes has issues. The movements are really unnatural, and the character's mouths are kinda too big and shaped just a bit wrong. It makes generally good looking cutscenes look really off. Playing as a clan pilot is really different. No more salvaging mechs for parts, you have access to pretty much anything you can afford, and money so far has been a complete nonissue. Your 5 pilots are all customizable with how they skill up, each having different areas to spend XP on. Mech chassis gets experience as well(or more accurately, the lance gets more experience with the chassis) allowing you to purchase different omnipods and bonuses for the mech chassis. Mech customization is wildly different for other games. Don't like the LBX a mech has in its arm, well change out the omnipod to one with an energy hardpoint, or missile hardpoint. Plus you can research upgrades for your mechs, with each weapon system getting several areas they can upgrade multiple levels.

Missions are fun and fast paced. Each map is hand made, not randomly generated, so they feel much better than MW5: Mercs. FIghting is faster, partly because you are using clan mechs against Inner Sphere mechs, so you tend to be able to burn down enemies quickly, though there tend to be alot of enemies. Combat looks fantasic, with the graphics of the mechs being way better than any previous game. Overal it seems to be a fun experience.

 

[jmotivator]

 

[jmotivator]

I have picked up Cyberpunk 2077 and decided to start over. All of the changes since I last played totally wrecked my old V, so I figured I would start from scratch.

So far so good... though I pretty much left the story behind the moment I could free roam.

My only complaint at this point is that the world bosses no longer drop the high level weapons, they just drop schematics for the weapons. Booo.

 

[PoS]

I really like Planet Crafters. Awesome chill game. The DLC looks cool, waiting for it to be on sale.

It reminds me a lot of Subnautica, which is a huge compliment. The main difference is theres no monsters trying to hurt you, your main problem is running out of food and air lol.

 

[jmotivator]

I've been bouncing around trying to find a game to get into and saw this morning that an old favorite game of mine had a major update so I have been playing Warhammer 40K Inquisition: Martyr again.

The major update was adding a new class to the game called the Hierophant, essentially a priest of the Inquisition. Their primary class mechanic is the Retinue. They are a "Pet" class.

I am enjoying the class a lot because this is the most interesting pet class I've ever played in a game. It kind of reminds me of the Diablo 3 mercenary/companion system but with a lot more depth. By the time you reach level 50 you unlock the 4 retinue characters who each line up with one of the other classes in the game, so when you have all your ret8nue unlocked you are essentially playing all of the classes in the game... sort of. The only class not in your retinue is the Adeptus Mechanics class, and that is because that class in the game's other pet class.

Each pf your retinue have their own (reduced) gear system and (reduced) skill tree, and they have their own retinue tagged gear, but you will have access to pretty much all the basic playstyles of all of the classes available. That is where this system really differentiates. Whereas all the other Pet classes in other games have specific roles to play (Tank/DPS and melee/ranged) the retinue roles are gear dependent. For instance you start with essentially a space marine as your sidekick, and you can either equip him with any number of heavy ranged weapons to make him a rather effective Ranged DPS companion, or give him a power sword and shield and he becomes your tank.

Thinking about as I write, this isn't entirely a new system, it is just a great old system that unfortunately nobody built on since. The old game is Dungeon Siege, and I'd say Dungeon Siege probably did a better job since you could change the character you controlled on the fly, and they were all fully fleshed out characters... but still, the Hierophant comes closest to implementing that system in an ARPG today.

When WH40K Inquisition was created, it was clear that the classes and the plot of the main campaign borrowed heavily from the excellent Eisenhorn book series, and the Hierophant class comes closest to playing Eisenhorn in a game.

 

[Slartibartfast]

I just finished up Dungeons of Hinterberg. Fun but short game.

I may go back into The Outer Worlds next since I never finished that game and have forgotten the plot at this point. Either that or I may go back into Octopath Traveller 2, but I am kind of bored from grinding levels right now.

 

[jmotivator]

I just finished up Dungeons of Hinterberg. Fun but short game.

I may go back into The Outer Worlds next since I never finished that game and have forgotten the plot at this point. Either that or I may go back into Octopath Traveller 2, but I am kind of bored from grinding levels right now.

I remember enjoying The Outer Worlds, but found that the crafting made it possible to render the combat very easy.. I don't necessarily hold that against the game, though. Sometimes it's fun to be overpowered.

 

[OrphanSlug]

In my replay of games I've had for a bit, still off and on with this one, but recently after some developer updates I've picked back up Captain of Industry.

Nothing more than resource and factory management and planning game, but the further you go the more difficult management of all this gets. Multiple finite and some infinite resources, all kinds of "recipe" paths to create products from resources, research functions for improvements, etc. Start on an abandoned island, go from there.

Super high positive reviews, historical and current. Fair warning, early access, has been for a long time now but the development path is solid. No bugs, no complications, refined game using PC resources as you would expect for so many revisions in.

My current build, hours and hours in, a little too reliant on truck transportations of base materials to finished goods, but workers are happy and the organization is getting there...

 

[Redress]

Picked up Project Zomboid since it is on sale and supposedly about the best post zombie apocalypse survival game. First game, I lasted 3 ingame hours(1 hour real time = 1 game day, so that meant I lasted about 7 minutes real time). Game is hardcore, but I am liking it so far. The challenge is not if you will survive, but how long you can last before the inevitable death. Skills are raised by doing, and the game has combat, base building and crafting all as major components.

 

[Deuce]

Playing a modpack for XCOM: UFO Defense called "The XCOM Files," a play on the X-Files TV show.

The XCOM series is about defending the world from alien invasion. Kill aliens, take some alive, capture their equipment, reverse engineer it, kick their butts off the planet. This modpack rewinds the clock a couple of years, before the alien invasion starts. You're not a large military organization that an international council of nations have put together to save the planet, you start as a tiny organization that has been reluctantly put together due to an increasing number of reports about strange/mutated creatures, cults, alien abductions, etc. You are initially responding to incidents with a rental car and two agents wearing FBI-like suits, basically Mulder and Scully. Over time you put the pieces together and start to unravel the alien plot behind everything, and the organization grows into the global defense force featured in the original game.

The concept is good, the gameplay is good. The writing is cringeworthy as fuuuuck. I'd swear the modmaker was sixteen years old if the modpack hadn't been developing for many years now.

There are some "are we the baddies?" moments, as for the first part of the game before the aliens show up you will often be fighting human opponents, or even just taking innocent farmers in for interrogation because they've seen things. Fight a large force of human enemies, kill a lot of them quickly, and it snowballs into mass morale failures for them, so the enemy turn mostly consists of screaming. Serves you right, EXALT, next time side with your own species. Also, if that lady in a french maid outfit didn't want to get involved in this raid on a Black Lotus mansion, she probably shouldn't have picked up a gun and started shooting at me.

 

[PoS]

Playing Marvel Rivals with my son. Its free and kinda addicting...

 

[jmotivator]

I've taken a break from POE2 to try some new games and came across the game TANKHEAD.

It is a rather cool explore/survival game where you play a robot that controls a tank. The game is in alpha, so there isn't much story, so right now it is driving around a map, finding other tanks and trying to blow them up with enough precision that you can salvage their gear. It's like the core of Mechwarrior, but with tanks, and the salvage is handles in game, rather than after missions.

I think this has the potential to be a great game, and right now it is a rather fun distraction.

 

[PoS]

Watching my son play Starfield. even though Im a huge Skyrim fan, this game seems to be just meh. Totally generic.

 

[jmotivator]

Watching my son play Starfield. even though Im a huge Skyrim fan, this game seems to be just meh. Totally generic.

It is totally generic, and feels very dated. There is a stiffness to character animations that have become a signature of Bethesda games at this point that were easy to overlook 13 years ago, but don't cut it today.

I think the biggest issue that Bethesda has moving forward is that there insistence of creating their own game engines needs to be abandoned. Few developers will look at Starfield and think "I need that engine for my next game!" and if they can license their game engine, that was a lot of wasted development cost for a sub-par game.

 

[jmotivator]

Picked up Balatro yesterday to try during my snow day. 8 hours later: Hey, this game is addicting...

Definitely a "Just one more game" kind of game.

For thse who haven't heard of it, Balatro is at it's heart a solo game of poker that plays kind of like Texas hold'em except that you are dealt 8 cards and you job is to make the best hand out of the card you have. You have a limited number of discards, and a limited number of hands to score enough points to exceed the point goal for each round.

Each card that contributes to the hand gets shored points, and then is multiplied by the hand multiplier (ie. playing a pair has a lower multiplier than a straight)

Every play through has 8 antes, with a boss to defeat at the end that have random ball buster mechanics, like one boss might make it so that all heart cards score zero points. If your run is keying on heart cards you would essentially just lose.

Where the game gets addictive is in everything else that goes into scoring a hand. You earn money with each win, and between each round there is a shop where you can buy cards that offer certain accelerators, or buy special playing cards/

For instance, there are "Celestial Cards" which are just, at their root, upgrades to the bonuses for specific hands. Like playing the Mercury card increases the Point bonus and multiplier for a hand that conta9ins a pair.

There are "Arcana" cards that upgrade your playing cards in different ways, like there is a card that will tag a card of your choosing with a 50 point bonus if that card if scored in a played hand. You can also make a card "Gold" which gives you bonus gold in a win in the card is in your draw pile but not played... there are so very many of these kinds of bonuses that let you try to build a deck that accelerates in a given type of hand.

Then there are Joker Cards. You can have up to 5 (or 6 with the right deck) jokers in play that have a wide ranging list of effects on hands played, or wins... on suits played and not played, etc. etc. They can be extremely powerful, but they also generally force you into increasingly narrow optimal scoring hands. Occasionally you get lucky and get jokers that accelerate easy hands and the game becomes a blast of dopamine.

For instance, in the first run where I made it through all 8 stages I had the following jokers:

Joker 1: +1 Multiplier to each $1 in sales price of all played Jokers
Joker 2: This Joker goes up in value by $3 after every hand
Joker 3: Randomly adds between 0 and +20 Multiplier
Joker 4: x3 Multiplier on a hand that has already been played this round
Joker 5: x3 Multiplier for the last hand of a round
Joker 6: x3 Multiplier for in only Spades and Clubs are left in your draw pile when you play a hand

The the end of the game Joker #2 was worth $42 gold, which made Joker 1's bonus +42 multiplier, plus whatever Joke 3 threw in each hand, and then the crazy happened.

My strategy was simply to play a pair each hand, and then throw in all of the hearts and diamonds in my draw pile just so that I got the x3 for having only clubs and spade. My first hand wouldn't necessarily score very high even with the x3, but in my next hand when I played a pair I get an additional x3 for having already played a pair. By the third (and last) hand, or I could play a pair AND play all of the hearts and diamonds in my draw pile I get another x3 so my multiplier was

42 * ? * 3 * 3 * 3 .... if I pulled the average 10 from Joker 3 that would be a hand multiplier of 11,340.

The last boss only has a goal of 100,000, so I blasted through it pretty easily.

Also, one last tip!

Joker bonuses are applied sequentially from left to right, so when you get those nice multiplicative Jokers, place them all the way to the right so that they multiply last after everything else has been tallied.

Anyway, insanely good game that is also very low on hardware requirements so it will run well on non-gaming laptops.

I give it an 11 out of 10.

 

[jmotivator]

Also, I should point out that Balatro is also available for Android and iOS.

$15 on Steam, $10 on Android, and I'm guessing $10 on iOS as well.

 

[PoS]

It is totally generic, and feels very dated. There is a stiffness to character animations that have become a signature of Bethesda games at this point that were easy to overlook 13 years ago, but don't cut it today.

I think the biggest issue that Bethesda has moving forward is that there insistence of creating their own game engines needs to be abandoned. Few developers will look at Starfield and think "I need that engine for my next game!" and if they can license their game engine, that was a lot of wasted development cost for a sub-par game.

Its not just the game engine, but the writing is so bland. From the characters to the worldbuilding, its just the same old tropes. No alien characters either.

The one thing its got going though is the shipbuilder. It was the only thing that kept my interest.

 

[jmotivator]

I picked up BATTLETECH again to play around with everything that has been added since I last played, which is a lot.

I decided that I didn't want the full difficulty, because I just wanted to enjoy some of the new content without being overly stressed about budgets and such in game. To ease the stress of playing the game I editing the game file to up the absurd mark down on resale prices from 90% markdown to 20% markdown (ie. I could now resell mechs and gear for 80% of their market price)

That certainly fixed the budget problem, but it also broke the black market... which was actually already broken because of other settings. The default setting for the "Career" mode lets you build a mech from 3 components, and the black market sells components for random mechs in sets of 3, so a mech that might cost 16 million credits to buy in the store could be built from 3 components that cost 1.4 million credits each, or about a 75% discount.

So effectively I could buy pretty much any mech I wanted for a fraction of the price of the completed mech.

Since I was free to build what I wanted, I decided to experiment with lance builds that I wouldn't otherwise have sunk valuable resources into. Some of those builds are rather fun, and OP.

In one black market I found a NARC++ missile that added 75% to the incoming missile damage of an effected mech. I built a lance that consisted of one small fast mech equipped with the NARC++ and three heavy mechs loaded with LRM20s. I put a warrior with high piloting skill in the small mech and warriors with high tactics in the 3 other mechs and the combat just got very easy. The small mech would run around the battlefield tagging mechs with NARC, and my other mechs would then usually 1-Turn kill them.

My other fun build was just 1 mech. I had a fight where one of the enemies dropped 2 Arm actuators that each added 60 damage to melee, a Gyro that added to melee accuracy, and 2 Leg actuators that reduced leg damage from jump attacks by 20% each. I then built a mech that was essentially Ultraman. I was doing 200 damage in melee attacks and, since melee attacks have a high chance of hitting heads and Center Torsos, basically were a 1-Punch kill on most medium or smaller mechs, and could 1-Punch big mechs if they turned their back on me.

I am toying with the idea of merging the two by finding a light/fast mech with a missile hard point and turning them into a melee/NARC++ mech and just having them run around spotting for 3 Assault mechs packed with missiles.

I think I'll need a medium mech at minimum for the melee build, though, and they won't have the evade high enough to run around the enemy...

I'll play around with it tomorrow.

 

[Redress]

I was not going to do it, but I am weak: Civ 7 downloading now. Some of the youtube stuff on it looks pretty good, but I was still hesitant. 5 and 6 where not so good to me, but this one looks better, and Gwendoline Christie narration sold me.

 

[Redress]

Very early impression:

Game is gorgeous to look at. Graphics are just great, and not a tax at all on my computer.

Very, very complex. The UI could really use some love to make it easier to do things. For example, I wanted to befriend an independent city(cross between a city state and barbarian village from Civ 6), but could not figure out any way to see what independent cities I had found, and just had to click on the city. Next time I tried to check progress, and it did not work. No idea why.

Despite having watched a bunch of videos, I am still not sure how best to do a lot of things. This is normal for a new game, but there is so much to do it is kinda frustrating. The tutorial is decent, but could use a little more depth. My scout went to a goody hut, and after I selected to result(you get a choice), my scout was gone. No clue why(did I miss a detail in the text maybe?). The game is going to be hard, but so far I am having fun. Going to have to keep plugging away at it. Will take a screenshot or two later to show you all(both of you who read this thread anyway).

 

[Redress]

So, I finally had a reasonably decent start. First few tries, I kept running into waves of hostile independent powers(part barbarian, part city/state) armies. I did this time too, but I went ahead and bit the bullet and built a full army with leader, 2 slingers, 2 warriors. I am clearing out the nearby independent power villages and slaughtering their armies to get leader XP(units no longer get XP or level ups). Of course, now I got to get busy and get some buildings going. I have my capital, 1 town(which is not a city...towns send resources to cities), a settler on the way to form another town, need about 4 or 5 more fights for my leader to get another level and be able to form yet another town, and then I will be in position for a war. Maybe.