[champ]

Man, I really slept on Sea of Thieves... picked it up and been playing with a couple of mates, damn this game is so much fun with the shenanigans you can get up to.


POV from my mate the other night, cannot hear my audio unfortunately...


http://youtu.be/ma1Q...zLSWti-uel15iv7

[Mentalist]

IT'S GORI TIME!!!!!!




EDIT: finished. Trying AoM Retold campaign. And on "Hard" the new AI is quite vicious

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 09 September 2024 - 06:55 AM

[Maark Abbott]

Played some Age of Mythology Retold last night. It's a lot more fun for me than AoE2 was, I think largely because it feels much more streamlined, the resource management is (to my perception) easier as well. I quite like the Myth units, they spice gameplay up a lot.

[Tiste Simeon]

So I'm going to need a bit of guidance here... Today I started playing Fallout 4 and I'm already sending I've got a massive task on my hands here.

What's the generally accepted wisdom on where to put your upgrade to points? Like should I be spreading them out as evenly as possible or are there certain areas that really help in the early game? For example the Intelligence one seems to help with gaining more experience so I figure that one is quite good to begin with but I've generally tried to keep it even.

Also I stopped playing AC Valhalla which is the first one I've not completed. I just wasn't loving it sadly.

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 18 October 2024 - 08:17 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

Tiste Simeon, on 16 October 2024 - 08:59 PM, said:

So I'm going to need a bit of guidance here... Today I started playing Fallout 4 and I'm already sending I've got a massive task on my hands here.

What's the generally accepted wisdom on where to put your upgrade to points? Like should I be spreading them out as evenly as possible or are there certain areas that really help in the early game? For example the Intelligence one seems to help with gaining more experience so I figure that one is quite good to begin with but I've generally tried to keep it even.

Also I stopped playing AC Valhalla which is the first one I've not completed. I just wasn't loving it sadly.

And Fallout 4 is definitely not for me. I don't know what it is but I have basically been very frustrated since starting it and I'm just not enjoying myself.

[Mentalist]

We back in the Zone. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.ing away.

Veteran difficulty was a mistake. The first bloodsucker in the tutorial area took me 15 tries to kill.

The game's jaw-droppingly gorgeous though.

[Werthead]

Thoughts on STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl after 4 hours in the game.

It's oddly similar to the original game, with a similar introduction and route to the first safe town/hub, skirting anomalies. The graphics are obviously vastly superior and this game is much more forgiving, although this is only relative to the first (insanely harsh) game. The first zone mutant you meet is an invisible bullet sponge guy that will likely kill you a few times before you get its attack pattern sussed. However, ammo is easier to come by, weapon degradation is not as ludicrous and virtually all human enemies will go down with a single shot to the head. Less than 4 hours in, I stormed a heavily-guarded paramilitary outpost and killed a couple of dozen guys inside through stealth and the use of a silenced pistol. It was still considerably harder than most modern FPS games, but satisfying. Because the game is systemic rather than proscripted, you can also cheese it a little in places, but not too much.

One complaint is that there's a few pretty cool action setpieces that happen in cutscenes when they would have made for good gameplay sequences. For a game as open-world as this one, that was an odd choice.

The English language VO is utter drivel. Play in Ukrainian with subtitles of your choice.

The game mostly feels like a cross between Far Cry 2 without the annoying regenerating enemies bullshit and Fallout: New Vegas in survival mode with the difficulty ramped up to Hard even when you're playing on Normal. A more punishing, less whimsical Fallout is probably the closest touchstone, which will likely irritate STALKER fans as the first STALKER predated all of the modern Bethesda Fallous, but still. So far, so outstanding.

Bugs were not too bad. One CTD, one wounded guy in a bed I was talking to decided to levitate up to around 3 feet above the bed to continue the conversation (alas, he did not say, "There is no Dana, there is only Zuul"), and one guy took shelter from an Emission Storm next to a tree rather than the town's hardened shelter, which resulted in his very rapid death. Not sure if that was a bug or the game saying, "some people are just really stupid, right?"

[Maark Abbott]

Is the breeki still cheeki?

[Mentalist]

Been going thru PoP Lost Crown.
Decent MV, but light on bosses, compared some of the genre's recent greats.


Also been messing with a bunch of demos. Eternal Strands (the game from the director of DA:O) sold me without even finishing the demo. Fighting the first small colossus thingy was enough. The magic powers in the game are really cool and intuitive.

Also spent an evening going thru the demo for "The First Berserker: Khazan", which is a nice, cel-shaded soulslike. Also ran really smoothly- feels like some of the smaller devs are finally figuring out how to make UE5 games w/0 stutter. And MY GOD, the snow deformation is sooooo pretty, even on weak settings I'm putting all these games down to.

-Though I'm unlikely to Day 1 Khazan, cuz it happens to release the same day as ANOTHER cel-shaded soulslike, AI Limit (which also had a demo I played in Oct during the NextFest), and that one, being a sci-fi thing just happens to catch my attention more.

All in all, the year is shaping up to be pretty crazy good, despite the fact that I'm indifferent to most major upcoming releases.

[Tiste Simeon]

Playing Cyberpunk 2077. It's intense and has a lot going on! Enjoying it though I'm fairly sure I'm going to suck at it as there's too much to remember.

[Mentalist]

started chopping at the backlog. Finally played Killer7. It's interesting to see how much Resident Evil DNA there is in this game.

Currently messing with X-Blades HD. Which is... uhh
It's sorta like Devil May Cry? You have sword, and guns, but mostly you chop a few times to build up your mana Rage meter and then spam magic attacks, which are mostly AoE with lavish animations that take 10-15 seconds at a time, and do minimal damage.

It's totally brainless, and the character model for Ayumi is beyond ridiculous. I wonder how long it takes to unlock a sensible skin?

Still, brainless isn't bad, albeit there are some annoying clipping bugs where you can jump into a wall and get stuck, necessitating a level reset. Thankfully levels are pretty short.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 21 February 2025 - 04:57 PM

[Mentalist]

Been messing with The Technomancer, the one Spiders Eurojank RPG I haven't played yet. Mostly because it's set in the same world as Mars: War Logs, and that game was... mediocre.

Thankfully, the Technomancer is better. Primarily because they improved enemy variety. Mars has more hostile critters now, and run-of the mill enemies are the same 3 classes as what you can spec into, so there's a decent amount of challenge- especially since I picked Hard difficulty.

At it's core, it's still the same Spiders RPG formula- a Witcher 2 crossed with a Bioware-lite. 4 skill trees, separate characteristics and perks upgrades, with gear that can boost your perks like Lockpicking when you equip it- basically all the stuff we've seen further refined in GreedFall. The quest and character writing is also miles better than Mars: War Logs, which had a million quests, but only like one side quest was actually interesting and not a simple fetch quest.
The crafting is just as over-elaborate and ignorable as always. The story is... eeeeeeeh. I'm guessing I'm about halfway into Act 2 (of 4 or 5, not sure due to achievements description), and it's all very vague. But grinding Martian critters to level up and doing side quests for various factions and companions is neat, and I don't feel bored doing it, so that's a plus.

[Mentalist]

Wrapped up "The Technomancer". The ending was unexpected, the boss gauntlet was a bit ugh. Act 3 was pretty cool, but the ending was a tad underwhelming- could've used a more elaborate cutscene there.

Currently started "Steel Seed". After 1 hour of climbing, running and a bit of smashing robots, this seems to be filling the hole in my heart left by lack of platformy action-adventures like Enslaved and Remember Me.

Oh, yeah, in April I also took a detour to beat South of Midnight and the Gunk and Skabma: Snowfall. All were pretty decent, the whole "heal the world, purge corruption" visual theme really worked for me this month.

[Werthead]

20 hours through superhot game of the minute Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It's a JRPG made by a French studio which is about a fractured future world where people are stuck on an island city (possibly a shattered remnant of Paris) and are ticking down to extinction through a creepy-AF mechanism. Every year an expedition is launched to try to destroy the threat and stop the countdown, and every expedition has failed. Obviously this expedition has a better shot because it's the one under the player's control.

Very unusual world, brilliant soundtrack, interesting and impressive combat (think Final Fantasy with a touch of Dark Souls, turn-based but with realtime parries and counters), great characters. It feels like a China Mieville novel come to life. Very compelling so far. My only complaint is that the game is not well-optimised for mouse and keyboard (it frequently misses keyboard inputs for some reason, whilst registering them fine on controller), to the point that I had to drop the difficulty to "Story" to get on with it. Of course, I then found that "Story" difficulty in this game is what most people would call "Normal", whilst actual "Normal" is "Really Hard," and "Expert" is "Supernatural Reflexes Only Needed."

[Maark Abbott]

You had me up until parries and counters tbh. Shame but sounds like a miss for me (I hate combat systems based on parries and counters).

[champ]

Werthead, on 10 May 2025 - 11:42 PM, said:

20 hours through superhot game of the minute Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It's a JRPG made by a French studio which is about a fractured future world where people are stuck on an island city (possibly a shattered remnant of Paris) and are ticking down to extinction through a creepy-AF mechanism. Every year an expedition is launched to try to destroy the threat and stop the countdown, and every expedition has failed. Obviously this expedition has a better shot because it's the one under the player's control.

Very unusual world, brilliant soundtrack, interesting and impressive combat (think Final Fantasy with a touch of Dark Souls, turn-based but with realtime parries and counters), great characters. It feels like a China Mieville novel come to life. Very compelling so far. My only complaint is that the game is not well-optimised for mouse and keyboard (it frequently misses keyboard inputs for some reason, whilst registering them fine on controller), to the point that I had to drop the difficulty to "Story" to get on with it. Of course, I then found that "Story" difficulty in this game is what most people would call "Normal", whilst actual "Normal" is "Really Hard," and "Expert" is "Supernatural Reflexes Only Needed."

The soundtrack is absolutely banging, made me think a bit of Metaphor: ReFantazio.


I'll be picking up the game next.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yeah I'm not sure I'd be any good at turn based combat. The game looks stunning and I love the plot concept but the combat is something I think might get frustrated with.

Having said that, I play every game at the lowest possible difficulty because I'm just not very good so I might be ok.

[Mentalist]

I am quite liking the demo for "Blades of Fire", the not-Severance-Blade-of-Darkness game from MercurySteam.

It's actually making it fun to play a 2handed weapons build, which is probably the highest praise I can give an action RPG, being a thief/rogue/dex & con build player.

[Mentalist]

Had to put down "Captain Blood", b/c there's a bug that kills profile saves past a certian point (so you can't quit and reload, b/c your global progress isn't saved)

So I've been messing around with "Venetica". It's a glorious, janky late 2000s Euro-RPG. So much weird stuff, with influences of Soul Reaver and The Witcher in its mechanics.
it's pretty great, although there are also some occasional bugs.

[Mentalist]

Demo season is afoot!

Stellar Blade demo came out today, and Hell is Us demo will be out on Monday.

Considering this summer I'm sticking with my underpowered PC, demos are good for me to check out performance for all these upcoming titles.