Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Rico]

loop hero is a really good way to lose eight hours without realizing it as most of the internet has made clear over the last week, but i come here bearing important news beyond "idle-deck-builder-rogue-lite is good at wasting your time and you should play it probably?":

open the goddamn variables.ini file before you do anything else and change "game speed" from 60 to 120. you can go even higher/faster if you want, but the game desperately needs a 4x speed function and switching it functionally from 1x/2x to 2x/4x will make those eight vanishing hours even more full of lich-killing goodness.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

[Mongrel]

Okay but what fucking game IS IT????

[beatbandito]

The latest Monster Hunter for Switch.

[Mongrel]

thank you.

[Yoji]

Against my better judgement, I have acquired a PS4 copy of Left Alive, a stealth game by Square Enix set in the Front Mission universe. It's gotten generally unfavorable reviews, but I'm just too curious and the price was right.

Haven't actually gotten around to playing it, though. Between getting enough sleep for work/school, keeping things together around the house, and my daughter staying up way too late, I've been way too drained and/or frazzled to play anything. But when I do, I want to try streaming it like all the cool kids. And sharing garbage is kind of a thing in this community, right?

Twitch is still the place to do that kind of thing, right? I think I'm still linked to the old Failmasters account. I have no idea how to handle voice chat, which I've wanted to try with the cooking nonsense I've been inflicting on IRC and Facebook lately.

I guess I'm not 100% sure what I'm trying to accomplish here. Maybe just "hey other people from outside the pandemic bunker, let's try this weird game! how are you holding up? anyone gotten their vaccines yet? wow okay this game stinks"

[Mongrel]

We're doing our garbage game sharing on Silver's Discord server. :D

[pacobird]

For me, the problem with finding a game tedious is often that talking about the ways in which it is tedious just feels tedious. Like, it's just dull! Everything takes too long, the game somehow manages to feel rote while still making you feel weak, the cast and story are trite and lifeless, and at no point do you feel like there isn't some thing you'd obviously much rather be doing. A bad game can be interesting in its badness but a boring game is existentially cruel.

So maybe don't bother with Bravely Default II.

[beatbandito]

After a long conversation about Saint's Row 3 vs. 4, I decided to go back and play SR2, the earliest you can get in the series without a working 360 and physical copy.

In every single aspect of this game (except for camera control) it is so, so much better than cyberpunk. Gangs react more reasonably based off what they're doing and how you interact with them, more weapons that feel different, better melee, better story. Easier to get where you're going because there aren't giant, basically unused blocks of buildings and mountains splitting areas up. The 'edgy' humor is less cringe, and the implication of police being just another one of the rival gangs is not only better represented in gameplay, but directly stated in the story because they're not too scared to actually try and make a point.

So I guess if you have a choice between the best CDPR can do, or the forgettable middle child of a joke series, you now know which one is the better experience.

[beatbandito]

the forgettable middle child of a joke series

Having just replayed SR2 and 3 back-to-back, SR2 is a much better experience. Better customization, the plot is actually a plot, combat feels like it matters instead of the laser storms of SR3. And with the 2019 update it's got much, much better control customization options and compatibility. 3 may have a lot of memorable moments, but they're a disconnected mess.

So if you replay a Saint's Row game, I highly recommend 2.

[Esperath]

[KingRoyal]

I'm quite amazed that Prey (2017) was a AAA release. Arkane really made their name Dishonored 1 & 2, drawing heavily on the Looking Glass design ethos while making the game appealing to mainstream tastes, but it's still surprising that Bethesda backed a bid budget immersive sim in the age of tactical shooters and cinematic play experiences. Especially since they borrowed an IP that they took in name only and is a followup in only the most spiritual of ways.

Prey's draws direct influence from System Shock 2, putting the player on a space station gone awry and leaving everything up the player. Objectives are marked on the map, but no guidance is given on how to get there and how to solve a puzzle. At times, the variety and paths of solutions to taking care of quests feels like it has the freedom of the original Deus Ex, where being stealthy or even just guns blazing are both valid ways to make progress. Or even just ignoring objectives if they're not to the player's taste. The creativity of the tools given to the player and the range of player expression isn't present in a lot of modern titles. It's not that those experiences are bad or invalid, just Prey offers something that hasn't been available in the mainstream for several years. I love it.

[Thad]

Enjoying Yakuza: Like a Dragon so far. I've never played any of the other games in the series (have a couple I've bought in bundles, thumb still can't handle button-mashing combat, maybe someday), but I appreciate the postmodern hook of explaining early on that the protagonist is a Dragon Quest fan and sees himself as a Dragon Quest protagonist.

Also I think this may be the first time I've ever been playing a game and said "I remember what I was doing that day."

So far it's pretty straight JRPG formula -- a hell of a lot of cutscenes and a lot of training-wheels tutorial stuff.

There's a time-jump early on, and I don't think the game does an effective job of handling it through the environment. I think part of that's because it happens so early in the game; it wouldn't be worth the investment to have you only spend an hour or so in an environment and then substantially change it to indicate the passage of time. (Seems like they could have at least not had the Virtua Figher 5 cabinet in the arcade in 2000, seeing as the game was released in 2006.)

But I appreciate playing with the DQ formula in a completely different setting. I like the combination of gritty mob story and silly over-the-top Hong Kong action movie. That's one of the things I've always liked about Sega RPGs; from Phantasy Star to Skies of Arcadia to Valkyria Chronicles, they've got a pretty long history of building RPG settings outside the standard high fantasy.

English localization and voice cast seem solid so far. (One interesting detail: apparently there are two English scripts; if you set it to Japanese audio with English subtitles, it uses a more literal translation instead of the fully-localized version.) Even the fully-localized script still retains a pretty Japanese flavor, what with all the bowing and apologizing.

It's still early and there's still a lot to see and do. But it's a strong start!

[Thad]

Though I forgot to mention it struggles a bit on the base PS4. Nothing that affects the gameplay as yet (it is a turn-based RPG, after all), but pretty frequent framerate drops, and cutscenes suffer from load-screens showing up in the middle of conversations.

[beatbandito]

an amazing idea

You might wanna check out Avorion.

In the new Star Control that's made by bad people, humans are a young race and your flagship is regularly referred to as a garbage can with a hyperdrive strapped to it(and full of nuclear arms).

That general limit to my own creativity is why I don't usually go for these types of games (advertising as "co-op" and "survival" didn't help, either. After a first day of play looping around empty sectors and shops I can't afford anything at, in a ship that can't do much, I finally found that titanium is easy to get and make a tube full of gun.

[Mongrel]

an amazing idea

You might wanna check out Avorion.

In the new Star Control that's made by bad people, humans are a young race and your flagship is regularly referred to as a garbage can with a hyperdrive strapped to it(and full of nuclear arms).

That general limit to my own creativity is why I don't usually go for these types of games (advertising as "co-op" and "survival" didn't help, either. After a first day of play looping around empty sectors and shops I can't afford anything at, in a ship that can't do much, I finally found that titanium is easy to get and make a tube full of gun.

Knowing the early-game, I'm going to assume of the ship is generator. :-D

There's a big update pending/in progress as well as the Black Market DLC so I really should get back in and start a new playthrough. Getting a little fatigued with 7D2D, so that will probably what I do soon if the first major post-release update is out.

I originally lost interest because the game gets very sterile in terms of stuff to do/lack of flavour/missions after a while (for example there were only 12 unique missions when I last played at release), but the 1.1 update is supposed to add a lot more of that kind of point-of-interest stuff as well as a bit of an update for differentiating the various factions/species you run into.

[beatbandito]

Okay I've gotta admit, I'm really enjoying Avorion. I usually can't get into these "Graffiti Kingdom-Likes" where custom design is the main feature, but it has just the right amount of SIM elements going on for a space shooter, in my book.

Obviously there's modular ship design from the basic premise, also faction relation management that's pretty in-depth for randomly generated existing groups, custom factions, all the trading and combat you'd expect. It's a bit of a drag in early exploration before you can get your hands on charts, afford gate travel, or know how to spot a likely wormhole from the map. But it manages to fall right in between a Starscape where you basically just upgrade and shoot, or a Starsector, where you need to remember to have your license prepared and broadcast the appropriate signals for the sector you're in before approaching a starbase (Or Elite Dangerous where you spend 5 minutes in warp going between stars, then wait another 2 minutes on line behind NPCs for docking clearance.

Early game isn't great. Basically you just mine for a few hours then hunt down a wormhole that brings you into at least the next tier of resources. You can find iron everywhere and some titanium in the start sector, and more titanium pretty close by once you know what to look for, but iron is basically worthless for building a ship, it feels kind of like a wasted step. But that's my only real complaint, otherwise I'm enjoying mindlessly exploring, trying to grow my flagship with a small mining crew financing me, while also mostly ignoring the 'quests' you can choose to take for various small tutorials and some amount of a main story that's there if I get bored.



Anyway, I recently learned that even thrusters and engines can be totally covered by armor without any issue and am actively stopping myself from just making a borg cube. I actually think the way armor works is it just increases some background number for total amounts of hull protection, but parking my masses of titanium in the middle of a fleet of pirates that are all firing into my while I take my time to pick targets seems to be going very well. Meanwhile when I think "oh that looks cool" on an enemy ship I immediate shoot that part and, what do you know, it takes a ton of damage and breaks.

If I can just find a decent quality turret mod or two, I'm almost at a point where I have 2-3 turrets positions to be able to hit any direction. So I'll be able to kill engines, turn on free look, and do a 360 degree circle of death on these poor, poor fools that were just "waiting for a friend".

[mharr]

Maybe build the cube but have one of the corners be the front?

[Mongrel]

Yeah Avorion seems to hit the sweet spot right in between all the different space sims of the past few years. Goldilocks approves.

Borg Cube is 100% a valid Avorion ship building strat (I'm fucking insane, so I build ships with sections of visible internals with workstations and everything). And yeah, finding good turrets is a real problem. You really want to sacrifice them to turn them into blueprints at a weapons factory when you do, but you need good relations with the owning faction for that.

When you say you have a small mining crew, you mean you have a mining drone beavering away for you, right? Because the best early investment you can make are some captains so you can build dedicated mining ships, even garbage ones made of iron with like, one titanium generator. If they're defenceless (very probably in the early game when money's real tight), no worries, just park them in heavily-occupied friendly sectors, freeing you to go do more stuff. Later you can make them armed or add armed escorts so they can mine unoccupied sectors.

Basically, this is not Minecraft; after the first hour or so you should never be doing your own mining. Unless you're on the edge of a juicy new resource region, where it would be dangerous to park unattended drones, but I only ever kept one mining laser, my best small-base one, on my flagship for that. You also shouldn't be doing your own fixed-route trading eventually, but that's a bit more complicated and won't matter for a while.

Also there's really only two mining belts where you're going to want truly massive amounts of a given mineral - since weight matters a lot, the bulk of ship building will tend to be with lighter materials. So Titanium is good for quite a while, then you end up relying heavily on Trinium, which you find early-midgame. Eventually you might armour-plate a (relatively) slower, heavier ship with Ogonite (which really isn't good for much else due to its awful weight ratio) and of course you will want components from the best of the other materials, but even late game, Trinium forms the bulk of most ship hulls.

[mharr]

Since you mention Minecraft, is Avorion a pure solo endeavor or can you set up small group servers?

[Mongrel]

AFAIK, you can do both. I played multiplayer with a buddy off his comp for a little while.

Main problem is that larger space battles can get pretty laggy and you can easily run into those by midgame. But again, we were both just running it on his computer while he also played from it. A dedicated server might work (a lot?) better.