So, what're you playing?

[Phildo]

Kingmaker is great if you mod it a little.  I use these two:

Bag of Tricks
Kingdom Resolution

The second one in particular is great if you start to find the kingdom management portion tedious and frustrating as I did.

[Zetor]

Kingmaker is pretty good, especially with the turn-based mode (and certainly a better implementation than POE2 Deadfire) -- just make sure to only enable TB for major setpiece fights or it really slows the game down.

I suppose P:K is on sale because the sequel is coming out in like 2 days.

edit: and beware of giant owlbears, some of them hit harder than ancient dragons and demon lords  

[Cyrrex]

Nearing the end parts in Witcher 3.  Crazy I waited until this long to actual play it through.  I am amazed at how good all the secondary quests and a lot of the other unnecessary quests are.

I am also kinda wondering just when and how the hammer is going to drop on Geralt...he may have accidentally had intimate relations with Keira Metz, Triss and Yennefer, who are all now waiting for him in Kaer Morhen.  Yen seems to have already pre-emptively forgiven him, but jesus christ.

[Khaldun]

(Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker) You absolutely HAVE to min-max and follow very precise directions if you want to win in the endgame and the game doesn't make it seem like that early on, it feels like you can explore and develop in all sorts of ways. You really can't--it's walkthrough or else. There turn out to be a few things that you simply have to weasel through or savescum or the game is over, even relatively early. It gets tedious later and kingdom management goes from "fun! I wonder how that story will turn out?" to "oh fucking balls, fine, I'll do that thing right now while I juggle six other things and try to make the budget work out there and oh shit the bloom event is coming soon and I didn't get that loyalty quest done in time".  I played the whole damn thing a second time just because I didn't realize on my first play that there was no way I was gonna make it through the endgame, because I was feeling OCD stubborn about. It had some really fun stuff but the bad parts were enough to spoil my experience overall.

[Endie]

I was able to enjoy the first few levels just fine. The two bits that hit were the dull and repetitive extra-planar mularkey with the giant vegetable threat, combined with the realisation that the kingdom-building bit really didn't matter that much.

[Sky]

Looks like MS managed to completely bungle their store's version of State of Decay 2's newest update. At this point, it won't update at all for me, and the only suggested fix is to install all windows updates, including optional ones...that are reported to cause instability with my hardware setup... Since the game won't even boot to the menu without the update, I can try a full reinstall or I guess I'm done playing that game.

So I decided to play a quick game of Madden after giving up on updating SoD2...

Playing the Browns exhibition (it's still only giving me week 1 preseason exhibition options), Mayfield and several other stars were taken out of the game with broken bones (5 players in one half!).

So Case Keenum took the team on his shoulders, including a 45yd touchdown run from a broken play, where he shed 2 tackles and avoided a tackle at the 1yd line (always at the 1!) because a WR dove in from about 15 yds away to somehow knock the defender out of the way.

It was awesome! But I can see why anyone who wants to actually play this as a serious football game might not be as enthused.

[Trippy]

For those wondering why Sky is talking about State of Decay 2, again, it's because they just released the original State of Decay Trumbull Valley map updated for SoD 2.

[Falconeer]

At a time when I have a hard time playing anything, Wildermyth is gluing me to the chair once again. What a great game, it does so many of the things I want games to do. Easily one of my favourite from the last 5 years and probably longer.
Pro tip: crank the difficulty up.

[Khaldun]

Playing some Shadow of Mordor. It's fine? A way to waste some time. The Nemesis system feels like it was kind of wasted on the setting--like it would be so much better in an original property. The lore work on both of these games with Talion/Celebrimbor is so labored in various ways.

I'm thinking of something like a Weird Western setting where when you blow into town, various challengers call you out for duels, ambush you, etc.

[lamaros]

(Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker) You absolutely HAVE to min-max and follow very precise directions if you want to win in the endgame and the game doesn't make it seem like that early on, it feels like you can explore and develop in all sorts of ways. You really can't--it's walkthrough or else. There turn out to be a few things that you simply have to weasel through or savescum or the game is over, even relatively early. It gets tedious later and kingdom management goes from "fun! I wonder how that story will turn out?" to "oh fucking balls, fine, I'll do that thing right now while I juggle six other things and try to make the budget work out there and oh shit the bloom event is coming soon and I didn't get that loyalty quest done in time".  I played the whole damn thing a second time just because I didn't realize on my first play that there was no way I was gonna make it through the endgame, because I was feeling OCD stubborn about. It had some really fun stuff but the bad parts were enough to spoil my experience overall.

I was enjoying it for the most part in act 1, despite the fact the class system is super fucking opaque and to need a manual to understand it.

But the kingdom system is kinda boring and very distracting from the rpg experience and now if hit that my energy to play has dropped right off.

Seems the new one that came out is full of bugs too, so dunno that that's an option.

[Khaldun]

The thing I find off-putting about it are the reviewers who have a lot of sympathy for the good aspects of the game but who report that you absolutely have to min-max your way through combats and that the NPC companions are mostly a really baffling mix of class choices who can seriously impede your ability to progress; I've been hearing that early on there's one battle that can go on for hours and you can't save in combat, so if you lose it you have to do it all over again--and it is apparently quite possible to lose it. That feels like it's what I don't like about Larian's game design choices but even more exaggerated and it feels like Owlcat didn't learn much from Kingmaker.

[Rendakor]

A lot of that is just the inherent challenge of porting something like Pathfinder or D&D faithfully to a PC game. You either set the challenge of the game low, so people who just pick whatever they want can get through it with some challenge while the min-maxers faceroll it, or set the challenge high and essentially require min-maxing. The obvious solution is a difficulty slider, and if these games don't have one that's certainly a bad design choice.

[Morat20]

(Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker) You absolutely HAVE to min-max and follow very precise directions if you want to win in the endgame and the game doesn't make it seem like that early on, it feels like you can explore and develop in all sorts of ways. You really can't--it's walkthrough or else. There turn out to be a few things that you simply have to weasel through or savescum or the game is over, even relatively early. It gets tedious later and kingdom management goes from "fun! I wonder how that story will turn out?" to "oh fucking balls, fine, I'll do that thing right now while I juggle six other things and try to make the budget work out there and oh shit the bloom event is coming soon and I didn't get that loyalty quest done in time".  I played the whole damn thing a second time just because I didn't realize on my first play that there was no way I was gonna make it through the endgame, because I was feeling OCD stubborn about. It had some really fun stuff but the bad parts were enough to spoil my experience overall.

I was enjoying it for the most part in act 1, despite the fact the class system is super fucking opaque and to need a manual to understand it.

But the kingdom system is kinda boring and very distracting from the rpg experience and now if hit that my energy to play has dropped right off.

Seems the new one that came out is full of bugs too, so dunno that that's an option.

That sucks, as the part I considered interesting was...well, running a kingdom.

But then, I liked building settlements in Fallout 4. I should finish that game. There are settlements still not fully optimized.

[Khaldun]

I was into the kingdom-running shit--that was one thing that annoyed me, which was that the game kept pulling you away from it and denying it any significance in the larger scheme of things. You can lose if you don't do it, but it doesn't make a positive impact or give you stories/questlines you wouldn't get otherwise.

[Zetor]

A lot of that is just the inherent challenge of porting something like Pathfinder or D&D faithfully to a PC game. You either set the challenge of the game low, so people who just pick whatever they want can get through it with some challenge while the min-maxers faceroll it, or set the challenge high and essentially require min-maxing. The obvious solution is a difficulty slider, and if these games don't have one that's certainly a bad design choice.

Both Pathfinder games for the PC have a fairly in-depth difficulty slider -- about 3 pages of options, with 7 pre-set difficulty settings... so I think that part is ok.

FWIW, I'm playing Wrath of the Righteous on Core difficulty and been enjoying it a fair bit*, also haven't run into any bugs yet (though I fully expect things to start breaking down in the endgame, just like in Kingmaker). But I'm also pretty familiar with the (very munchkinny) PF system... it has the nickname 'Mathfinder' for a reason  

edit: I never liked the kingdom management in the original game, but this one apparently has a HOMM-like strategy minigame instead. Hopefully it's more fun; if not, I'll just use a mod to make it go away.

[Cyrrex]

The Mass Effect remake is on sale, so I picked it up.  The 4k graphics are mostly crisp, though I cannot understand why they didn't do a bit more with the obviously 2007 faces.

Meanwhile, they could not figure out the 5.1 sound, which is pretty unforgiveable.  There is a workaround apparently, jesus christ.

Also picked up Wildermyth.  I see the potential, will have to spend some time.

[Rasix]

My RimWorld colony is going well. Slight setback with my best doctor taking a megaspider claw to the brain. Now he moves really slow and randomly places items in different places. I also had to forbid him from drug use, as he can't handle his smokeleaf and ended up requiring frequent rescuing. He's been reassigned to crop tending and occassionally handing out medicine during disease outbreaks (fuck you, malaria).

Figured out that you can convert prisoner's before you recruit them, which is a massively more efficient than them bitching about their religion not being respected.

I suppose I could start prepping the ship to get offworld, but I'm not sure I can handle a sustained barrage of raids. If I set up some scaled turret defenses, something stupid is just going to come along and wipe them out beforehand. My killboxes need to get a lot better and so do my colonists at shooting. We really didn't handle either the warg or megasloth manhunter packs very well. Some people lost digits.

[lamaros]

I'm still slogging away at P:K, absent anything else to play.

I'm mostly disappointed and how generic and unimaginative the narrative and itemisation is. And the level design. There's no collective sense of place or world, or developing narrative. Technically the systems and combat is ok, but it's also very repetitive.

[Cyrrex]

Nioh: Complete Edition is free on Epic.  Is this worth a crap?

[Trippy]

If you Souls-like games, sure.

[Cyrrex]

Well, I do.

[Velorath]

I like Souls games but I bounced off Nioh relatively early on back when it first came out on whatever Playstation it was.

[Trippy]

I never got out of jail.

[Gimfain]

Nioh was alright when i played it, nioh 2 i never finished since i had grown bit tired of the souls like games.

[Morat20]

I got one of the Sony invites for a PS5, which is now purchased.

Any PS5 titles work picking up? Or should I just enjoy the graphics upgrades on the PS4 catalogue I've got? (I have the original PS4, not a pro).

[Hawkbit]

I still haven't bought any PS5 specific games yet for mine. PS4 games do load incredibly fast on it though.

Ratchet and Clank is supposed to be good if you like platformers, I'm waiting for a christmas sale. Demon's Souls... well, you know what you're getting there. Deathloop is getting pretty rave reviews as a Dishonored-type game. /shrug

[Morat20]

I still haven't bought any PS5 specific games yet for mine. PS4 games do load incredibly fast on it though.

Ratchet and Clank is supposed to be good if you like platformers, I'm waiting for a christmas sale. Demon's Souls... well, you know what you're getting there. Deathloop is getting pretty rave reviews as a Dishonored-type game. /shrug

Thanks. I picked up a 5TB external drive (not SSD) for the old PS4 titles. I know you can't play PS5 titles from it, but I'm pretty sure you can PS4 titles. And even with the fiber upgrade I'm getting next week (fucking FINALLY), it's still quicker to move games to and from that than redownload them.

[arnulf2]

Quick reminder that some PS4 titles have free PS5 upgrades: from my digital only PS4 library I got Subnautica, SW: Jedi Fallen Order, Little Nightmares 2, Borderlands 3, No Man's Sky, CrossCode, FF7 Remake and A Plague Tale: Innocence as PS5 version just like that.

And Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is indeed a superb game.

Edit: forgot that Disco Elysium also has a free upgrade from the PS4 to the PS5 version.

[HaemishM]

After a few stops and starts with some wargames that I refunded on Steam because they just weren't my thing, I've finally settled on Call of Cthulhu as a game that's short enough that I can finish and hopefully not get bored with. This is the one made by Cyanide Studios and Chaosium that I hoped would be a worthy successor to Dark Corners of the Earth.

It is not. Don't get me wrong, it isn't so bad that I want a refund and since average playtime is around 9 hours, I'll likely finish it. But whereas Dark Corners was a taut, gripping FPS that told a story through gameplay, this is more of a walking simulator and pixel hunter where you trip through conversation trees and linear "investigation" scenes. It feels more like L.A. Noire than Dark Corners. The models are butt ugly (Bethesda level fugly here) and I can't tell if it's intentional or not - everyone on the Darkwater Island (which I'm assuming is going to turn out to be Dunwich Horror/Dagon style cultists) looks like they are either returning to or from the sea. There is a thin veneer of RPG to it, in that you have stats that you increase through use or character points, which you get for doing things. I haven't really felt like they mean much other than unlocking some conversation branches which may or may not change with replays. Not sure it's going to be worth a replay, so I'll never know. I got it for $8 and that seems to be the right price point.

[Morat20]

Quick reminder that some PS4 titles have free PS5 upgrades: from my digital only PS4 library I got Subnautica, SW: Jedi Fallen Order, Little Nightmares 2, Borderlands 3, No Man's Sky, CrossCode, FF7 Remake and A Plague Tale: Innocence as PS5 version just like that.

And Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is indeed a superb game.

Edit: forgot that Disco Elysium also has a free upgrade from the PS4 to the PS5 version.

Subnautica and NMS I have and are on my to-play list. Might have Fallen Order, don't recall. My wife's already switched to the PS5 version of FF7.

[Khaldun]

Some Stellaris tonight. I like the changes. But dang it really is one of those games where even if you make a small map etc. it's gonna take a while.

[Sky]

I'm still playing SoD2, the new content release. I had been playing the Heartland DLC (a modified ruleset, story-based) that is set between 1&2, it was nicely done. The new map expands on some of that, except with a standard map/rules, and follows up on a lot of what happened. So a nice mix of story stuff, cool events, and my usual poking around exploring. I haven't played the Daybreak DLC, which seems like a horde defense kinda thing, so a couple of the CLEO missions (based on that DLC) that summon hordes were a nice change of pace, even if I was sure I was about to watch a Jugg rip one of my folks in half a few times...(it ends with access to a base facility that make zombies in a radius explode, so that's cool).

Getting into Madden 22 a bit more. They've added coaching staff to the franchise mode, but mostly I've been doing the weekly exhibitions. It's nice having weekly updated and relevant commentary.

[Comstar]

The thing I find off-putting about it are the reviewers who have a lot of sympathy for the good aspects of the game but who report that you absolutely have to min-max your way through combats and that the NPC companions are mostly a really baffling mix of class choices who can seriously impede your ability to progress; I've been hearing that early on there's one battle that can go on for hours and you can't save in combat, so if you lose it you have to do it all over again--and it is apparently quite possible to lose it. That feels like it's what I don't like about Larian's game design choices but even more exaggerated and it feels like Owlcat didn't learn much from Kingmaker.

It's an early fight in chapter 1. Just play it in real time and kill the NPC's they tell you too.

So that's what I'm playing. I keep restarting. Buggy, but good. 

[Mandella]

After a few stops and starts with some wargames that I refunded on Steam because they just weren't my thing, I've finally settled on Call of Cthulhu as a game that's short enough that I can finish and hopefully not get bored with. This is the one made by Cyanide Studios and Chaosium that I hoped would be a worthy successor to Dark Corners of the Earth.

It is not. Don't get me wrong, it isn't so bad that I want a refund and since average playtime is around 9 hours, I'll likely finish it. But whereas Dark Corners was a taut, gripping FPS that told a story through gameplay, this is more of a walking simulator and pixel hunter where you trip through conversation trees and linear "investigation" scenes. It feels more like L.A. Noire than Dark Corners. The models are butt ugly (Bethesda level fugly here) and I can't tell if it's intentional or not - everyone on the Darkwater Island (which I'm assuming is going to turn out to be Dunwich Horror/Dagon style cultists) looks like they are either returning to or from the sea. There is a thin veneer of RPG to it, in that you have stats that you increase through use or character points, which you get for doing things. I haven't really felt like they mean much other than unlocking some conversation branches which may or may not change with replays. Not sure it's going to be worth a replay, so I'll never know. I got it for $8 and that seems to be the right price point.

If you "like" that one, you should also queue up Conarium next. And I put like in quotes because it has all the strengths and weaknesses of CoC, with maybe a little less logic but more interesting art.

But there seems to be some universal rule that Lovecraftian games now have to have such an anticlimatic ending that you actually yell at the credits and wonder if something glitched and you skipped a level...

Also Dark Corners of the Earth was such a buggy mess that the most I remember about it was getting constantly caught by clipping issues and trying to shoot some invisible creature through a periscope (the creature wasn't supposed to be invisible).

[HaemishM]

I played the Xbox version of Dark Corners. It was a little glitchy but I never experienced the mess of bugs I've heard other people had. The ending was good and the hotel chase scene was one of the all-time greatest video game sequences I've ever experienced.