I bought Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition recently to play with some friends and just couldn’t get into it. The last RTS I played was Starcraft (1), and it’s been 99% FPS’s with 1% MMO sprinkled in since then. The game looks great, plays great, but I’m just all thumbs and can’t find the motivation to relearn how to micro. Back to the bang-bangs for me.
I’ve gotten back into ESO. I forgot how much shit there is to do.
Total War is probably one of the more complicated games out there to digest. Each one is similar, but new mechanics are always introduced and it definitely takes some effort to learn.
I also picked up Fallout 76 on sale for some mindless bang-bang and treasure hunting. It has been disappointing so far, but it did come with free copies of Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics. IIRC, I played Fallout 1 on a x486 processor with 4 megs of RAM running DOS 6.0. Good times.
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Total War: Attila, playing as the Western Roman Empire is probably the most infuriating and challenging activity in strategy gaming.
I’m thinking about picking that one up because they’re all on sale. I’m just now getting my head around the mechanics in Three Kingdoms, so I’m unlikely to play Shogun or Atilla until I’ve had my fill of Three Kingdoms.
I’ve got many hours in Rome II. Lots of great civs to play with there!
i got Alien Absolution a few days for very cheap, it’s actually really good. but scary.
Green or purple.
Choose your team!
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I downloaded The Long Dark on PC from steam, presently on sale for 8 bucks.
I got sucked in and played two hours straight last night. I was really surprised. It reminded me of Fallout: New Vegas on hardcore mode without the shooting action. It is a very cool resource management and survival game concept that really took me by surprise.
Best 8 bucks I’ve spent on a game in a while.
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I just tried Warzone. Seems interesting…
Update on The Long Dark.
It is really, really good. I’m playing the base game, which is essentially “survival mode”. There is a story mode that was added later and I have not played more than 20 minutes of that yet.
I generally like to play a game through before I look for help online, but I did cheat just a little bit to understand a few mechanics. I wish I hadn’t, because this is essentially a survival and discovery game. There is no help. You don’t have a map. There is no tutorial. You’re going to die.
Whatever you do, don’t look at the maps online. I only did for one region and, again, wish I hadn’t. Fortunately, the game is huge and there’s tons of stuff left for me to figure out on my own.
This might be the best game I’ve ever played for under $10, and I’d put it in the top 5 of the last year or so for me already. The steam sale is over, but it is worth the normal price of $29.99.
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I played it a bit through Xbox gamer pass. It’s definitely a pretty cool game conceptually.
Is anyone getting maneater?
It looks hilarious.
They just updated navigation in the game. https://www.thelongdark.com/
They added spray paint cans so you can mark trails, and elevation is taken into account when you’re drawing a map. They also added a cache system where you can make an outdoor storage place for food. The food cache will be super helpful to since storing food outside is the only way to limit spoilage.
Maneater looks like a blast. The reviews have been pretty positive.
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After nearly 20 hours of play, I can safely say that the FF7 Remake is not as good at the original.
I am slogging myself through it out of a sense of loyalty, but the only parts I find myself enjoying is when they’re recreating something that’s actually from the original game. All the crap they’ve added on is a chore, it feels clunky, and is not what I’d call “value added”. They’ve also mutilated the story.
I got Shenue 1 and 2 to play through after this, which I’m excited about. I had it for the Dreamcast but could never set aside time to really experience it, and now I don’t need to go re-set up my dreamcast to play it.
Final Fantasy is a game that’s made me question if all of my childhood imagination and sense of wonder has finally been choked to death by adulthood. I was captivated by the first three on NES and SNES and even enjoyed FF7 in my late teens.
Whatever magic the series had for me is dead now, taken out back behind the shed and unceremoniously dispatched with a shovel at some point in the last 20 years. I’ve tried a few different Final Fantasy games and just can’t find that magic anymore.
Maybe I need to fire up the emulator and play a little Ogre Battle to make me feel better about getting old.
I can still have a blast playing the classics (I beat FF7 again a few months before Remake came out) but can’t get myself to pick up any different ones.
I played the shit out of the remake, and it’s amazing, but definitely… shallow. The sidequests were mind numbing, the NPCs are the least interesting they’ve ever been… and Jessie is fucking THIRSY, christ that chick needs a wet-vac. Personally a much larger fan of the old games, 4 and Tactics specifically.
Also for the thread:
I think I mentioned it previously, but i just finished replaying Control, best game on PS4 aside from Bloodborne in my opinion, hands down. Anyone that enjoys SCPs… seriously, just play the damn thing, it’s an easy 10/10 for me.
Aside from that… I’ve been generally unimpressed with recent releases, still biding my time for Cyberpunk 2077
This was something I noticed right away. I legit talk to EVERY single NPC in RPGs because I want to learn the story and the lore, and because SOMEONE took the time to program all that stuff, but in THIS game…I just don’t care.
I wish someone would do another re-release of FF6. I need another reason to play it. I got a SNES classic, so maybe that’s enough, but I gotta figure out some challenge to make the game interesting. I’ve already done a natural magic game, and that was really cool.
I actually missed that one.
1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15. Just… missed 6. I hear nothing but good things about it. I plan on getting a laptop to emulate some retro games, and that’s definitely high on my list.
But yeah, FF definitely lost its luster since like… well, 9 was the last game where I gave a shit about NPCs. 2 or 3 lines of relevant dialogue were perfect. Now they all talk like you’re not there. It’s nice to see the environments though, definitely gets the nostalgia juices going.
The biggest thing FF6 struggles with is lack of difficulty. It’s why I have to keep finding challenges to make it fun. It actually IS one of the things I dislike about most RPGs in general: you’re kinda penalized for playing it. Although I guess it depends on the kind of gamer you are: some dudes love getting so overpowered that you 1 hit KO the boss, but for me I feel like I’m being punished for enjoying the game by going out and fighting a bunch and getting “too powerful” to the point that no fights are fun anymore.
The Elder Scrolls did a decent job of approaching this with level scaling. That, of course, ran into it’s own issues, but at least they were different issues.
I absolutely agree. I have a similar complaint with Castlevania SOTN, it’s my favorite game of all time, but I’m fully confident i could beat that game with fists and fully unequipped. It’s a delicate line. It’s just super hard to do in turn based games. I’m playing Persona 5 on hard right now, and it’s still not that difficult, but it’s not uncommon to walk into a fight and get wiped before you can make a move, which can send you into a rage.
Fallout New Vegas did a kick ass job with Hardcore mode. I went from hating that game to it being a close contender to Fallout 3 for me, just for the survival implementation.
You might get a kick out of darkest dungeon. Turn based roguelike, fantastic game, just dont expect to beat it your first few attempts. There is no guide, just extremely thorough and planned out dungeons, with a hefty dose of -on the fly response- RNG.
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