danutz_plusplus said:
That being said, and coming back to Stalker, I've kind of had enough jank with Stalker. So I don't think I'm in the mood right now to even try Call of Prypiat.
Clear Sky I'll probably not even continue, since I watched a few reviews and it was mentioned that this one has constant gunplay, unlike the original. That certainly is not what I appreciated most in the original.
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I think you might be burning yourself out. Space out your gaming sessions a little more, and try turning the difficulty down a notch.

I used to always play on the hardest difficulty too, because I enjoy the challenge, but then I realized that, with most games, it doesn't actually make the game more challenging in any meaningful way, it just makes it tedious. So now I go with whatever the second-hardest difficulty is and usually find that to be a good balance.
 
Redglyph said:
I haven't played Starfield because I'd need a new computer to do that, but from what I saw, it didn't feel jank at all. It's actually more ambitious, so much so that they couldn't quite make it. Space exploration is one of the most demanding type of games because you must make many worlds available, and they mustn't feel empty or copy-pasted. Bethesda isn't the first one failing (if that's what they did, but it sounds like it).
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Starfield is definitely their most polished game. I had fun with it, but ran out of steam before the end. I still put 158 hours into it though. I might go back and finish it.

I think it's much better than user-reviews would have people believe, but it's not their best best game for me or even close.
 
JDR13 said:
I think you might be burning yourself out. Space out your gaming sessions a little more, and try turning the difficulty down a notch.

I used to always play on the hardest difficulty too, because I enjoy the challenge, but then I realized that, with most games, it doesn't actually make the game more challenging in any meaningful way, it just makes it tedious. So now I go with whatever the second-hardest difficulty is and usually find that to be a good balance.
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There's something about Stalker. I'm either masochistic or there's something to it, but I keep wanting to best it. I think I need to run away from my current predicament and just regroup. I kind of sprinted ahead of all my comrades when assaulting the current base. So I think I'm not done with Clear Sky.
 
Yeah, I lowered the difficulty from Veteran to Stalker (second after the easiest). And even so I got myself into a swamp truck predicament I'm sure I would not have gotten out of otherwise.
The AI is sometimes very impressive. After I cleared some bandits from around a truck in the swamp, I noticed 4 more were en-route to the truck. First I tried sprinting to them, to ambush them from behind a boulder but they had smgs and just tore into me. I then decide to retreat back to the truck where I thought I would pick them out from afar. No chance. While I was busy with two of them, taking pot shots, the other two went around the truck on the other side and flanked me. God damn, some times it's really impressive. Not sure if it's accidental, but it's nice to see.

On the camp assault, seems I had indeed rushed ahead for no reason. I was supposed to wait for 3-4 of my dudes to help in the assault. So, I officially done with the swamp. I can now go to Cordon, and start exploring the areas I walked in SoC. That'll be interesting to see, the areas before they ended as they did.
 
I finally tested the demo of Swordhaven. Their dialogue style is easily recognizable. ;)

I liked what I saw, especially the fact you could learn skills by watching people doing something.
 
I've reached level 10 in CP2077. The golden level.
The one where I get my sandevistan, so I can slow-motion my way to their throats with my blade.
And I also get my favorite double jump leg implants. Now I just need my air-dash and I'm truly golden.

Honestly, it's also a lot of fun abusing the ability to block bullets, as long as I have stamina, and even aim them back at their heads. Can't count how many I've taken out that way. That is also extremely abuse-able against the cyberpsychos.
Wish there was a way I could somehow link the bullet blocking with the cooldowns on the sandevistan. That would be amazing.

My one big annoyance with the melee system, is that they didn't integrate chopping heads off while in stealth. You always just strangle them.
I'd would've also appreciated a fall on top of them animation using the blade. The fall-on-them-and-knock-their-head-to-the-ground animation is really getting old.
But apparently, there's one interesting skill I will want to checkout. Apparently you can lunge at enemies, even while in mid-air, and the height difference also plays a role in amplifying damage. That'll be interesting.
 
After a lot of deaths and retries, I got past Royce. I kind of needed to constantly hide, and only attack him when my slow-time augmentation cooled down.
Also interestingly, since I attacked the Maelstrom turrets upon entering their base and skipped the whole dialogue with Royce and his boys, and just went directly to attacking them all, at the end I was left with the militech datashard with the 10k credits I was supposed to give them. And apparently you can crack the datashard and get to keep the 10k. Nice.
 
danutz_plusplus said:
Played a little of Manor Lords, and I have to say it looks solid. And you can also play it without any enemies, just simulating the economic systems.
If the dudes build on it, especially if they actually manage to build a little narrative campaign around it, it has a lot of potential.
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Oh cool - I saw it and was thinking about grabbing it for my Steam Deck (it is listed currently as 'playable' so good enough)
 
Stellar Blade (PS5)
Yes, the character design is outlandish, Yes, the story is a Penguin Classics For Children version of Nier:Automata.
...but the gameplay rocks, the graphics is exceptional, the atmosphere is spot on, and the whole stuff just reeks of that old-skool insanity of Devil May Cry (exchanging the outlandish macho bravado to suicidal goth Lolita complex). Highly recommended for fans of technical TP brawlers (DMC, Bayo).
 
Goblin Stone FINISHED!!

Three MegaBoss fights in Goblin Stone are fun. At least! They are tied into narrated story screens, which also have a nice comics/cartoon style giving many laughs!

Naturally the fights and special moves of Goblins become quickly BORING. If you try the extremely boring grind it will be the Death of your Goblin Stone gameplay. So i near entirely bypassed the unbelievable BAD Grind..

Even without grind, you must fight your way to story events, which only unfold at the end of maps and even those fights become quickly BORING. Since Goblin powers remain same from Midgame, there are no new Guild Powers/Spells Upgrades offered. Well for me, who hacked and maxed out everything grindable by midgame... So when a longer fight-special attack-spell sequence started I just ALT+TABBED out of Goblin Stone and was eagerly reading the supremely exciting South Korean SOLO LEVELING WEBTOON as CBR with SumatraPDF, which is the best amazing smooth-scrollable + smooth zoomable Webtoon/COMICS CBR reader in the world!!

You just have to fine-set its zoom levels. I just manually entered increments until 140, IIRC. So I could smooth-zoom the supremely beautiful "comic book pages"!! Also made many screenshots - as I always do, when encountering HIGH QUALITY ART in movies, TV Shows, cartoons and now Webtoons! For my diary titled, "Monster-Ideas / NPCs Compendium" for games development.

This way, the boring fights in my grind-hacked Goblin Stone were tolerable.. :D

The Steam MIXED rating is totally justified as well. It was mainly for the bad bad bad grind and early bugs..

I hacked and thus nullified all grind and mostly went for the story. In the end the game grind for 'Access Badges' that allow progress into new maps was sooOOooo BORING that I was forced to hack he badges as well (game said I had 8/14, so I hacked it to 14/14 so I don't have to fight those boring grind-maps again and again just for these stupid badges) and also I created DemiGod Goblins. The usual maximum stat is 13 for Body = HP. 11 for Mind, which governs critical hit chance and about 12 for Spirit, which is for healing and priest attack spells. I set my characters around 47 to 30 in each of these. As a result, their HP increased drastically improving their survival rate and also their critical chance, plus they got bonuses to their POWER = Weapon Damage too. This way I could end boring fights quickly. The Gene-Mix minigame - to breed more powerful genes / Goblins I stopped, since I already made my six Goblins superpowered.. Also it became a time waster.
I could also eloquently bypass power-offering Dark Shrines, which permanently enhance goblins with dark power. But chance of failure at these Dark Shrines is high and then you can totally lose your goblin you are trying to enhance this way...
"- He ran away maddened by dark power..."
Even with DemiGod goblins the MEGABOSSES were able to kill a party member or two, if I didn't pay attention!

As a bonus, the game allows re-loading savegames between turns. Since I made backup copies of my save folder regularly, it was like re-loading a save. Normally the game only works in Ironman mode, but I didn't want to waste time with re-trying all stupid chance-tests, Dark Shrine failures = you lose your fav goblin and soldier-losses during fights.... Which were dramatic and felt exciting for about 3 hours, then the insanely bad grind quickly killed this soldier-losing drama fun as well. Plus I have little time for games nowadays, so I reduce game-time via hacking my way through hundreds of hours of grind in games to get through those in just a couple hours..

Also there are frequent Attribute Checks in form of special events. If your attributes are low, you are naturally FAILING these. But since I already increased all attributes to DemiGod level, I passed all such tests. There is an extreme test, where each of your attributes are tested THREE TIMES and you must - nigh impossibly - succeed. The end reward for this sole ingame Mega-Test was totally disappointing. I barely got a regular chest-worth of treasure... :( :D

So the Steam game rating of MIXED is justified. With the latest patches / fixes the developers at least made the Mid-Endgame stretch way less annoying. So I could finish the story.

There is a NewGame+ offered, but I immediately rejected the offer with a crafty UNINSTALL. GOOD RIDDANCE!!!!!!! I just wanted to see the story, because the concept artist drawing the black&white story pictures is talented and the jokes were spot on! :D :D

Anyway, I'm glad, I could get through this game at least. :D

Onto finishing Wasteland 3 then!
With considerable hacks as well. :D Attributes = playing 'All Builds During One Playthrough', money and of course I play 'Gaining the Bonuses of The Other Decision-Outcomes As Well'. By editing the savegame to give me all the bonuses, from the two other different story-decisions I didn't select. :D
 
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Tony said:
Playing Broken Roads gave me the itch to play Fallout 1 again but I just can't get into games that old anymore, so I installed Encased and started a new playthrough. I'm liking it more this time. I have a psychic build this time, so maybe that's why.
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Dark Crystal Games shut down before they could issue the patch that was supposed to fix the balance. The devs allegedly made the patch available to the publisher, who refused to release it (according to one dev). It's still a good indie game, but some builds are easier than others at the beginning. You can either choose another class or find the right companions to compensate.
 
Redglyph said:
There's no cost. I was simply passing by some NPC doing I don't know what any more, and it gave a skill point.
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I remember a sidequest where you guarded a guy's cart and donkey while he went into town, and then you gained a point in crafting from watching him fix the wheel on the cart. Is that the one you're referring to? I thought it was pretty cool that you could get a skillpoint from that.
 
JDR13 said:
I remember a sidequest where you guarded a guy's cart and donkey while he went into town, and then you gained a point in crafting from watching him fix the wheel on the cart. Is that the one you're referring to? I thought it was pretty cool that you could get a skillpoint from that.
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It had to do with that, but I was the one who had to go to town and fetch a new wheel. Either it was when he fixed the wheel or when the blacksmith was working. Yes, it's rather cool. You must pass an intelligence difficulty check to get the skill point, and that's all.
 
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