What are you playing?

It's certainly lessened later on, and mitigated almost entirely once you have enough credits to just buy what you need, but it's tough pushing past that and has scared more than a few people I've tried to get into it away.
 
I actually don't have a problem with that model, so long as the acquisition/consumption scale isn't balanced like some kind of FTP mobile game.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Apparently, when I wasn't looking, Darkest Dungeon got a PVP mode.

It's interesting. As nerve-wracking as most boss fights, despite having no consequences for your single player games... and RNG plays a little too much into it (I had one opponent resist FOUR deathblows in a row to the same character)... but overall it's pretty fun turn-based combat.

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That one 3 minute match with Dakoz, he ragequit as soon as he saw my sweet "I've beaten all the bosses in the game AND in Crimson Court" banner at the start of the match, I guess.
 
You know what. I'll retract the comic I had posted earlier, with the caveat that it applied years ago but doesn't anymore. I played No Man's Sky all weekend after I read about some of the recent changes and it's much less grindy than it was previously and, even though I enjoyed it prior, it's in a much better place now for sure.
 
Given all the hullabaloo about it over the last few months (hullabaloo's still ongoing, in fact) I'm wondering what it's really like.
 
I am, not far though.

It's much of the same as the first one. Always brutal, unforgiving, and interspersed with small touching moments.

It is an absolutely beautiful game, visually, for PS4 anyway. There is a part in the Pacific Northwest early on, hiking and horseback riding through a forest that reminded me a lot of some hikes I've been on out this way, to nostalgic levels.

I steered clear of the leaks, as well as people discussing how they feel about them, will look them up after I finish so I can maybe get some context about what everyone was so upset about.

Joel is killed early on, my assumption is that is part of what the complaints were regarding.

I cried, but I'm not surprised it happened. He was a "hunter" for years before the first game and did some pretty awful shit to people, it was bound to catch up to him. The tears didn't so much occur while it was going on, more I was angry then, but afterward when they show how many lives he's touched in Jackson, and how Ellie and Tommy react to everything and when going through his home.
 
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I have enough other games to get through and it feels I have never enough time. The Last of us 2 is not on the list. However I got spoiled a bit about something that happened a bit later in the game. Nothing really about the story more about gameplay. But I can see some people being really pissed about it.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I tried playing Miasmata, an 8 year old indie survival/crafting game.

Don't bother. It's an extremely tedious walking simulator, with egregiously unintuitive game mechanics, stupid time sinks, and worst of all, terribly clunky controls. Bleh.
 
I grabbed Torchlight 2 to play with our son. It was on sale which was awesome and we each had Nintendo coins on our accounts so neither of us paid much for it. I have promised to never play without him. It seems really fun so far. I love that my pet can go to town and sell extra items and shop for me. It means that I’m not going to town all the time to sell like in Diablo. My pet is a pink fox named Pancakes which is super cute. That was the random name given to her and it was too cute to change.

I also grabbed Stardew Valley as it was also on sale. I played it a bit and it seems fun. I had to repeat Day 2 due to me not understanding how saving worked lol.
 

Dave

Staff member
I grabbed Torchlight 2 to play with our son. It was on sale which was awesome and we each had Nintendo coins on our accounts so neither of us paid much for it. I have promised to never play without him. It seems really fun so far. I love that my pet can go to town and sell extra items and shop for me. It means that I’m not going to town all the time to sell like in Diablo. My pet is a pink fox named Pancakes which is super cute. That was the random name given to her and it was too cute to change.

I also grabbed Stardew Valley as it was also on sale. I played it a bit and it seems fun. I had to repeat Day 2 due to me not understanding how saving worked lol.
I love Torchlight 2. Great game.

And Stardew Valley is my bacon. I keep trying it because I can't remember why I don't care for it, and then get rid of it. But everyone loves it and talks about it so glowingly I always want to like it.
 

Dave

Staff member
I hate hate HATE the PoE currency system. The fact that you have to get a PhD in economics to trade anything is just silly. And while the game itself is okay (Pat & I have waxed poetic on it's many foibles) the currency system is just overly complex for the sake of being overly complex.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I hate hate HATE the PoE currency system. The fact that you have to get a PhD in economics to trade anything is just silly. And while the game itself is okay (Pat & I have waxed poetic on it's many foibles) the currency system is just overly complex for the sake of being overly complex.
I will admit the bartering-on-steroids "look how far we can bend over backwards not to have a unit of currency" thing is a bit of iconoclastic nonsense.

But Grim Dawn just started getting boring after level 30 or so... whereas multiple playthroughs on PoE still haven't made me tired of it.
 
I'm playing the C&C Remaster (yes, I gave money to EA, shoot me).
I don't remember this game being this hard - I'm really struggling with quite a few missions halfway through the NOD campaign, and most used to be a breeze. Either I'm old, or the balance has been changed. GDI tanks are killing my infantry left-right-center where they used to be mostly ineffectual against infantry, having to runt hem over instead.
 

Dave

Staff member
I will admit the bartering-on-steroids "look how far we can bend over backwards not to have a unit of currency" thing is a bit of iconoclastic nonsense.

But Grim Dawn just started getting boring after level 30 or so... whereas multiple playthroughs on PoE still haven't made me tired of it.
The problem with PoE is that if you don't follow a build you're perfectly fine until you hit a boss, when the kill you, rip off your face, and shit down your exposed throat hole. There are only very specific builds that work and if you don't have the gear you might as well roll over and have a dirt nap.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The problem with PoE is that if you don't follow a build you're perfectly fine until you hit a boss, when the kill you, rip off your face, and shit down your exposed throat hole. There are only very specific builds that work and if you don't have the gear you might as well roll over and have a dirt nap.
Huh. Maybe I just lucked into having one of those specific builds, because I didn't follow any guides or anything, I just put points where I thought they should go, and managed to solo my way through most of the game.
 
Huh. Maybe I just lucked into having one of those specific builds, because I didn't follow any guides or anything, I just put points where I thought they should go, and managed to solo my way through most of the game.
I did that as well, and to great success, but the build philosophy I started building back in alpha or whatever has obviously not weathered the patches and updates very well.

--Patrick
 
I had PoE for a time on my laptop before it died (thanks friend of oldest dropping it). I went with Torchlight 2 to play with my son because he’s 11 and gets frustrated by certain Monster Hunter fights being too hard.

I would like to try it again.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I'll tell you what really bugs me about Path of Exile... its patches are WAY bigger than they need to be. Like.. 30 gigs.

So if you, say, have it installed on a 512 gig SSD with only about 20 gigs free, you're gonna have a bad time every time it tries to patch.
 
Picked up Injustice: Gods Among Us for free a few days ago and did another runthrough of the main campaign. (I'd played the campaign before a few years ago, then refunded the game)

Still quite an enjoyable story and game. Also, I had a better appreciation for some parts of the story now, having read the prequel comics. Also, since I'd played the game before, I was better at it now, so I actually felt like a superhero rather than a useless guy in a cape and tights flailing around randomly.

Also Wonder Woman is hot.
 

Dave

Staff member
Just got Stellar Tactics on the Steam sale. This is an old school isometric sci-fi RPG. So far I'm absolutely loving it!

You start out the game on a ship and you and a crew of 3 others have to figure out just what's going on & then escape. You make it out but are stranded on a planet. You have to fight your way out of a cavernous area and then kill some bad guys to take back your ship. Then you voom into space.

That's the tutorial. If you choose, you can skip all of that and go right into space.

Things I like:
  • Turn based combat
  • No classes - your skills go up as you use them, unlocking perks at certain levels.
  • SPACE MINING!
  • Disabling enemy ships and boarding them. More dangerous than just blowing them up, but you get a whole ship out of it and a lot more $$! (I have yet to do this - I'm still in the starter ship.)
  • Melee attacks are very viable! Even if you are punching the snot out of the enemy.
  • Procedurally generated universe. You make a new seed every time you start a new game.
  • You find schematics and can craft your own gear. Not sure whether it's better to do that or just loot more. I'll tell you that later.
  • Don't want to craft? Don't break down the stuff you find. If you break the stuff down you get crafting materials, but then you can't sell it. And since you don't know what you'll get when you break something down, you don't know if you're better off or not. Of course, the higher your salvage skill is, the better mats you get.
  • Grenades. Grenades are sometimes the difference between a TPK and a narrow victory.
Things I don't care for:
  • Camera can be a bit wonky. There was a few times if I didn't rotate the camera I missed something vital. And you can't zoom in very far to your characters, which means if you are fighting in a tunnel, sometimes you can't see very much at all and it gets a bit frustrating.
  • Sometimes enemies just...appear. Like these spider things in the tutorial caves. Combat will start and you'll know there's an enemy there, but you can't see them to shoot at them at all. So you have to wait and then *poof* it's right there by your party. And if, like me, you have a dedicated sniper guy, he then has to switch to a pistol.
  • My quick saves haven't been saving. It SAYS it's saving, but it's not. That was a problem once or twice, but now I know better than to rely on it.
So far that's all the bad I've found. It's still in early access and has been since 2016, but the dev is VERY active on the message board (I was looking at a thread that he updated less than 4 hours ago as of this writing) so it's very far from abandonware. And he just put out an update about a week ago that added the ship boarding and has a very clear roadmap.

Right now the game is $14 and it's a single dev writing the whole game. If you like old school turn-based RPGs, I'd pick this one up.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Satisfactory is on Steam now (used to be an Epic exclusive). Only came down 10% during the Summer sale, but I got it anyway, pretty sure it would be my jam.

Oh dear god is this my jam.
 
Satisfactory is on Steam now (used to be an Epic exclusive). Only came down 10% during the Summer sale, but I got it anyway, pretty sure it would be my jam.

Oh dear god is this my jam.
I saw some funny videos from Let's Game It Out basically breaking the game in every single way, so now I'm interested too.
 
Been playing more Monster Train and boy are there some real bullshit enemy power combinations. I was playing as Umbra, which requires the use of 1 toughness morsel creatures to feed your units and I ran into an enemy group who had sweep (they hit all units in a row) and emberburn (any unit with a stack of ember burn reduces your ember by 1 in the next turn). So not only did they kill all morsels, I was left with no ember and couldn't play anything the next turn. That's just straight horseshit and I couldn't do anything about it no matter how my deck was built. Umbra cannot beat that.
 
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