Reply With QuotePIcked up Animal Crossing today and boy is it ever the salve we need at this time, its so innocent and soothing.
Needed a game to play, chose Black Mesa, I loved Half-Life back in the day! My system is a bit older and I figured the system requirements wouldn't be that high, this being a game based on a 2004 engine. Indeed, it runs very well on full HD with most settings on medium or high. I like it so far, brings back good memories and I also like the subtle deviations from the original game. Voice acting is very well done too, very true to the original spirit. I think this will be a good game to take my mind off of current events in the evenings and during the weekend, at least until I finish it.
PIcked up Animal Crossing today and boy is it ever the salve we need at this time, its so innocent and soothing.
I've been playing Climbros, it's really good! I've been hankerin' for a good full-length 2D climbing game since GIRP and that Vertigo game that never got released. This is a lot more fast-paced than those, but the movement-mechanics are really fun, and the levels quite varied.
Anyway here's some gameplay:
I recently picked up Far Cry Primal, and it's actually really fun, and a nice change up to the typical FC formula. Initially it takes some getting used to with such primitive weapons (club, bow, spear), but if anything it ends up being a bit more brutal because most of the combat is up close and personal (for the record, it's fairly gratifying beating the crap out of the evil cannibalistic tribes that are trying to kill you). It's also got some cool new (I think?) features where you can tame animals to fight for you, and also there's this nifty setup where you can send your owl out to scout out an area ahead of you and mark enemies.
The game is really gorgeous too, I just bought a new GPU and this was a great game to try it out on. And it runs super smooth. Nighttime can get really crazy with tons of wild animals running around. Everyone's mileage may vary on that as it can get to be tough to even walk around from place to place without getting attacked every 50 feet.
As a bonus, you get Adam Jensen's ancestor as the protagonist, although he doesn't speak English. (Kinda cool side note, the devs brought in an actual linguist to come up with a unique language for the game, but fret not, everything is subtitled).
Anyway, it's only 6 bucks on the current Steam sale, so I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot.
Phew, I can cross Assassin's Creed: Syndicate off my list at last! I was expecting a modern(ish) AC game to be a bit less grindy, but boy was I wrong - not much seems to have changed in that department. I really enjoyed the first few hours, but repeating the same sort of quests over and over again becomes a bit of a chore very soon. So yeah, AC: Syndicate is definitely more about quantity than quality. The city of London looks fantastic but apart from some virtual sightseeing there's not much else to do. The story isn't very well executed and it failed to keep me interested enough to really care about the characters and about the big picture. Which is a shame really, because the city is obviously built with so much love and detail that it deserves better. A wasted opportunity. It could have been the perfect setting for some Sherlock Holmes game for example.
Sadly, I've found that sort of gameplay in Assassin's Creed games to be little more than "Switch on Eagle Vision, check all the clues, follow the glowing breadcrumbs, rinse and repeat." There is the occasional 'detecting' to be done (IIRC especially in Unity), but there's very little. I may misremember, but the most thinking I remember having to put in in an Assassin's Creed game was the music boxes in Syndicate, where you have to figure out from what you can see in the clues where the picture was taken.
Every single AC game is like that. And, most of the modern games are like that as well. They rather feel like a film, than a actual game, where you can take your own decisions, and actually have to make a effort to advance.Originally Posted by Tomi
Ok, used the EA Access to play a bit of Need For Speed (2015). As someone who loves racing games of all shapes and sizes, I do not understand how the NFS franchise is still alive. The last good game in the series was Porsche Unleashed, and that one came out TWENTY YEARS AGO. The driving physics in these games just don't feel right. Drifting seems to have less to do with what tuning you set up in the garage than anything you do behind the wheel. Without the right settings it's just about impossible to drift, but tune it to "drifty mode" and you just have to turn right at high speed and it'll toggle into drift mode, which feels very artificial. With so many other, better racing games out there, who is still buying these damn things? After this I started playing Watch Dogs 2 again and even that has better driving than NFS.
Sounds interesting, but like I predicted, I'm now all AC'd out again for a while. I wanted to play AC: Origins next, but we'll see about that...
I too remember liking the glyph puzzles in the earlier AC games, so it's a shame that they're not in the newer ones. These games desperately need some variety in the gameplay. AC: Syndicate has the crafting and gang stuff and all sorts of upgrades of course, but they don't really make the game any better in my opinion. And just like every other AC that I've played, this game is also so ridiculously easy that it's just kind of disappointing. Repetitive (and therefore boring) content with non-challenging gameplay is like the worst possible combination.
Anyway, I've been playing Carcassonne (recent Epic freebie) now. I never thought that a board game like this would be any fun on a computer, especially when playing against the AI, but I've really enjoyed it so far. It looks good, like a proper board game without any unnecessary UI elements, and the gameplay is nice and simple. Of course it won't beat the real thing, but it gets pretty close!
I've played a lot of that version of Carcassonne too for ages now. It's a good mix of lowkey but still strategic.
I miss the time when I first learned it. We used to play it coop style, where the goal was to cooperate to beat our previous score together. It's one of those games where you can do that and it still be a game. Of course you couldn't do that here (I made a PC version on the Vassal engine where you could), but I wouldn't do that with the AI anyway because that was more about sharing the experience with someone, and I don't have any problems screwing over the AI.
I just bought Octopath Traveler and it suffers from a.... what the fuck is going on syndrome. I got dropped into a menu to select a character with no context - ok - so now I selected some dude and I'm solving a mystery of a missing tome in a library, and for some reason now I have to go into a cave.
It's been half an hour and I have no idea who I am, what I am doing and, most importantly, WHY I am doing any of this stuff.
Hopefully it picks up soon, because I have little motivation to keep going....
Just finished Wide Ocean Big Jacket.
It's good, and I'd recommend it to folks who like Night In The Woods. It's a similar kinda chill game where you mainly just hang out with cool characters.
On a -40% sale on itch.io right now!
Or if you need convincing it's gonna be worth your hard-earned $4.79 USD, play Turnfollow's earlier, free game Little Party.
Last edited by henke; 23rd Mar 2020 at 15:14.
Since it was less than a tenner, I got it on your recommendation, henke. If I hate it, you owe me CHF8.75, man!
How did you find out about it? I'd never heard of the game.
Following Turnfollow on twitter. Tho RPS and Polygon have also posted about it.
I very much enjoy the "historical tourism" aspect of Asscreed games... it's something I can't find anywhere else. I'll be loading Assassin's Creed 3 the next time I hit a block in DKCTF. But yeah, it is strange how consistently blind Ubisoft are to certain poor gameplay decisions.
The impending early access release of Bannerlord inspired me to install Warband, and based on the dates on my achievements it's been a full ten years since I last played it. Still a lot of fun unsurprisingly, although the combat controls in particular haven't aged well. Anyway I decided to try the total conversion The Last Days of the Third Age, sometimes referred to as the best Middle Earth game ever made, and I'd say it beats any I've played at least (which is probably most of them). It cuts out all the M&B mechanics other than fighting so it is a bit one-note, but the Middle Earth flavor brings enough to the table that I at least didn't have time to get bored. You can play as pretty much any faction you can imagine on either side of the war, and I have no idea if the evil side is any easier but it was pretty rough going for the good guys. The factions in the north (Erebor, Dale, Beornings) couldn't deal with all the goblins, Rohan got quickly overwhelmed by Isengard and was about to fall, Gondor was doing fine against Mordor but once Rohan fell it'd be game over for them, and all the elves in the middle just faffed about. So I decided to RP using the One Ring against the enemy, and enabled cheats. I figured I'd just take out the goblins quick so the rest of us could go south to help Rohan before they're wiped out and then disable them again, but the lure of such power corrupts and I just kept them on. The teleporting in particular was just too convenient. Anyway, the world was saved, by coincidence the very same day it happened in the books, March 25th, as I learned browsing Reddit afterwards.
The Bannerlord early access opens in about two hours and I haven't quite decided if I'll get it right away. I generally like to wait for full releases, but in this case there isn't much story to spoil–although apparently there is a story campaign now–so it's less of a concern. And there's a 10% off "because of the pandemic" and another 10% off from owning a previous installment, so I'll probably fold. And it might just end up being in early access for another eight years anyway.
Deus Ex GMDX. Somehow I never found out that thing existed and it's great. Brings back a lot of the tension from playing the first time.
This is some gooooood space-sim stuff here.
You like Lunar Flight? Are your favourite moments of Elite Dangerous when you're flying into and out of space stations? Then you gotta check out the Space Valet prototype! It's a game about parking space ships.
Thief 2's Dracula Reloaded, The Dark Mod, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3 (whenever my 2 friends want to play) and Post Scriptum/Squad
I keep juggling those games around... its way easier now that i dont even leave home due to the Corona outbreak.
I've been playing around with some of the Arma 3 missions that we've been using or are thinking of using, especially the dynamically generated ones to figure out what works well and what doesn't. Yesterday I played a Dynamic Recon Ops mission set in Fallujah with an AI squad of eight - and I was surprised to find that it was a lot of fun. I was ordered to contact a informant and then find another civilian that was under threat from the local militia. Perhaps it's that urban combat offers better cover *and* visibility than when you're out in the countryside and there are trees and grass and other visual noise. In any case, while the mission proved tough, it was also exciting and never felt unfair - I did go down a couple of times, but the AI medic actually patched me up. The only thing that was perhaps a bit more frustrating than necessary was that towards the end it wasn't clear if there were still bad guys around I needed to kill or if a script had got stuck, so I spent about ten minutes checking the area in increasing circles, but eventually we found a few more enemy units and took them out, at which point I was able to call in the extraction chopper. Just as we were getting in, a truck with more enemies drove up and they started firing at us, while a badly wounded soldier on our side limped slowly and painfully towards the helicopter, but we managed to defend ourselves, the wounded guy finally made it, and we flew off into the sunset.
If the mission had gone like this during our multiplayer sessions (perhaps with some additional AI units), it would've been a great mission, and even like this it was tense, exciting and fun. I'm hoping that my getting to know these missions and the various parameters a bit better will help us run more enjoyable coop sessions.
I've been playing Forager lately. It's been kinda fun but at 4hrs im kinda getting sick of it. Stuff just costs too much and unlocks take forever, so it feels like grind grind grind. The world is sort of locked into a grid of islands and to unlock more of it, you have to purchase adjecent tiles, which is a cool idea, except, again, it gets really expensive really fast. And each new tile provides usually 1 new thing that isn't highly replayable.
So its lots of grinding to uncover new tiles you're gonna use up in a few minutes, and back to grinding
Also, dont get me started on the wonky build mechanics, it's almost impossible to build floors or dig holes because the game cant decide where it's trying to focus. Nope, it's not where you're standing! Is it in front of you? Above you? below you??? Who knows!
And if there is ANY intearctive object nearby, it will focus on it, so it will prevent you from placing floor or digging holes. So you have to go and destroy everything around to place floors, and even then, it's wobbly as fuck. This also means you cant build floors near your buildings because the game keeps focusing on them instead of empty floor next to it.
WHY you cant just place floor or dig on the tile you're standing on is beyond me. Overall, the whole UI is kinda shite in many places
Last edited by Yakoob; 1st Apr 2020 at 06:30.
I'm currently playing Tron: Evolution and it's actually pretty damn good. It's pretty much a classic Sands of Time era Prince of Persia game in the Tron universe. It's properly polished and fun. The game is a prequel to the TronL Legacy film (which is well worth a revisit. The film in retrospective was pretty damn good, made when Disney were briefly making decent blockbusters like John Carter and Prince of Persia.)
The game was de-listed from Steam last year because Disney was too cheap to renew the SecuROM authentication server license and they're too inept and/or lazy to strip out the DRM.
Feel free to pirate it, the game is abandonware.
Guides to run the game on modern PCs here.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil.../?id=471762880
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Tron:_Evolution
Honestly - Tennis Clash on mobile.
Great mechanic it seems.
I sidelined everything I was playing and have been replaying the games in Halo MCC. Reach and Halo 1 are ridiculously good, they absolutely shine on PC. It is such a joy to cap enemies with high precision weapons, using high precision controls.
In hindsight I'm glad that they're only now coming, in the current market climate publishers are taking PC seriously now, putting care into their ports. I dance on the grave of the Xbone, it died so that the likes of Halo MCC on PC, Age of Empires 2 re-remastered, Game Pass PC, etc may live.
My next purchase will probably be Modern Warfare 2 remastered when it drops on April 30th for PC. Just holding out to see if Green Man Gaming will stock it, because they sell heavily discounted keys.
I have recently finished Thief 2 for the first time, and am replaying it.
I definitely like the game a LOT more on replaying, and my opinions on all of the missions have changed tremedously.
Posting Permissions