What games are you playing now?

Psychonauts 2. God do I suck at it. This is why I don't play platformers.

Oh man, I remember how bad I was with the first Psychonauts, that's enough to warn me that the second isn't for me!

And after finishing Peaky Blinders earlier today, I dove straight into Dark Deity, a game which I got as a Father's day gift a few months back. I've only done two maps so far, and enjoying every second! Good, tight, challenging battles.

I started playing the Project Haven demo.

First and foremost, I confess I have a soft spot for tactical squad games, so my impression will be, yes of course, totally biased


Settings Menu: Simple and functional, it also has the Keybindings submenu (I won't show it here but it's pretty much the same as always). I don't know if the devs have plans to implement more graphics options, not that I miss them. I'm OK with the options presented here. The Profanity Filter option was previously presented here.


HQ Screen: Where we get missions, buy weapons bla bla bla. After the first real mission in the demo I had $15,000. I saved and reloaded and my money vanished Certainly some demo weirdness, I already posted this on Steam discussions page.


Sample of Weapon Modeling: The saddest part of having zero money is not being able to buy a beauty like this.


Our starting team, ready to kill!


This screen shows the characters' Attributes and the assortment of Skill Trees we'll have access to (some of them - like the Light Armor - are unavailable in the demo).

I didn't finish the demo yet. Having said that, I will share here some few impressions:

-The first "mission" is, in fact, a very short tutorial where we'll learn the basics (moving, shooting, line of sight, reloading, changing stances, the usual drill);
-The demo lacks an Autoloot feature/button when mission ends, which would be very useful. In the demo we have to manually get near the downed enemies and retrieve their gear;
-That goes without saying the game is turn-based with Action Points;
-There is an Overwatch-like feature, called Interruption. As soon as the enemy enters your LoS, you can act (shooting etc) as long you have AP left to do it. Yes, enemies can and will Interrupt you too;
-For those who like some degree of customization, there is no such menu in the demo. Perhaps in the final version, who knows;
-Some chars can heal others, provided they have the means to do that (e.g. medkits). Having said that, in the first mission Scarlett healed Fang when he got shot, but when she herself got hit and started bleeding, she couldn't heal herself (even if her medkit still had one use left). All she could do was crawl around the scenario, she couldn't even shot at the enemies. Since Fang couldn't help her either then she bled out to her death and I had to restart the mission. I don't know if I made some mistake but anyway I think this could be avoided if she (while conscious, of course) could heal herself as well;
-One thing I always get myself complaining about is the text font size, but this time it won't be a concern. The text is crisp and the font used is similar to that one from XCOM2 (if not the same);
-I like the graphics, I am not a graphics-whore. As for the voiceovers, they are nothing to write home about, ranging from average to plain boring in some cases. But this don't detract from the fun I'm having

Final Score: Wishlisted!

EDIT: I added a screenshot showing the Attributes and Skills.

Falling in love with Fallout 3 all over again thanks to Tale of Two Wastelands. It's an entirely new ballgame when you can infuse that old game with the quality FNV mods that have really taken off in the last few years thanks to .dll libraries expanding the engine's capabilities.

Hi Everyone,

As I've written above, I also posted some of the suggestions/impressions I have on the Steam's game discussion page. And the devs quickly answered (post #2 here), I'll copy-paste their answer below:

"Hey! Thanks for the feedback! The money issue is actually just visual, if you spend any money the correct value will show up. Will fix though!
We'll also have a end-mission screen where you can select what loot you want to pick up (up to your characters weight limit).
As for the healing, we don't mention it anywhere but if you get close to Scarlett with Fang, you can pick up her first aid kit and have Fang heal her. Self-healing will be a skill!

Thanks again!"

+1 for the devs being so kind and quick to answer.

I tried playing Mutant: Year Zero. It started out great, but it grew pretty tiresome. The battles are very stealth oriented. Once you fire a noisy gun, everything comes after you. If you're outnumbered by more than a little, you probably aren't going to survive. So you need to pick apart every spawn, using silent weapons and mutant powers to take down as many enemies as you can - then finish off the ones you can't stealth.

Thing is, the game doesn't tell you this, or at least I sure didn't get the memo. Putting precious upgrade points into noisy weapons made the game a lot harder than it should have been. Even if I hadn't, though, taking a spawn of enemies apart one by one gets incredibly tedious.

So now I'm playing Mechwarrior 5. MUCH more fun! The modding scene is doing quite a bit to help the game out, so I've been having a good bit of fun. Even with my limited Battletech-world exposure, it's a bit weird to hit a Locus in the back with an L laser even once without having it explode, but battles would be over in 30 seconds if they stuck with the rules I've grown used to.

I finished the Project Haven demo and, summing up, I liked it. Last demo mission was tough (even playing the game on Normal mode), especially when our team fulfills the mission objective and has to go back to the extraction point.

The game has potential to be really good, and the devs are quick to answer questions/doubts over the Steam discussion page.

Fallout three is pretty awesome, it might have more to do for me with where it's actually set than anything else. I've played it through four or five times to date, and know I'll be replaying it again!

henriquejr said:

I finished the Project Haven demo and, summing up, I liked it. Last demo mission was tough (even playing the game on Normal mode), especially when our team fulfills the mission objective and has to go back to the extraction point.

The game has potential to be really good, and the devs are quick to answer questions/doubts over the Steam discussion page.

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Yeah, I think Project Haven has a lot of potential. I'm not sure how I feel about the manual aiming, but overall the mechanics seem solid.

The only thing that might keep me from getting it is the setting. I prefer some kind of sci-fi or fantasy in games like this. It gives more variety to the enemy types.

JDR13 said:

Yeah, I think Project Haven has a lot of potential. I'm not sure how I feel about the manual aiming, but overall the mechanics seem solid.

The only thing that might keep me from getting it is the setting. I prefer some kind of sci-fi or fantasy in games like this. It gives more variety to the enemy types.

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JDR13, I recommend that you (and everyone else interested in this game) check the Steam discussion page and read the feedbacks posted by the gamers. The devs address to most questions/comments (even one long, negative feedback comment) and they said they've already done some tweaks to the game that still didn't appear in this demo. They also share the ideas and features they wanna implement.

As for the manual aiming, their words:
Aim mode: (...) I understand that not everyone will prefer, but we feel it adds immersion and is overall a plus.

To each his own, of course. This is a game I intend to follow closely. If they release a new, updated demo, I'll play it again

Carnifex said:

Fallout three is pretty awesome, it might have more to do for me with where it's actually set than anything else. I've played it through four or five times to date, and know I'll be replaying it again!

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I've only played it twice, ever. Mostly due to the lack of a good narrative (ala Bethesda) but also because of how primitive the gameplay is. TTW definitely helps on the latter and I've really been enjoying a return to Gamebryo modding, for the most part.

Have you played it using TTW at all, Carnifex? The new FNV mods built on xNVSE, kNVSE, & JIP really mature the game into something truly wonderful. And it's stable than ever.

No, I've not played Fallout Three other than how it was originally released, with all the additional content. I don't have much luck figuring out how to implement mods for the most part, lol. Unless they do it automatically, those sometimes I succeed in!

I spent most of last night playing the demo for Everspace 2.

What an excellent demo. I wishlisted the game as soon I as was finished. It's available to be purchased now in early access, but I'm going to wait for the full release.

I've never been real big into space games, but this hooked me from the start. It's a space sim/RPG hybrid that plays similar to Freelancer. Many thanks to @Moriendor; for making me aware of it.

I'm glad to hear something positive about Everspace 2. It's been a long time since I've played a space game, so this just might be on my future shopping list.

Three games right now.

1. Atomic Society - It's a post apocalyptic city builder.
2. Star Dynasties - A smaller CK2 in space with more RPG mechanics.
3. Pathfinder - Wrath of the Righteous which need no description.

Probably a few more games this month as well so I'm busy.

I downloaded Freespace 2 from my GOG library and messed around with that for a bit. I never played it back in the day, but I've seen a lot of praise for it over the years.

Sheesh, talk about a learning curve. This game is a great example of how much more complex older PC games were compared to most games today. There's literally a different command attached to every single key on the keyboard and a bunch more with Shift+ keys as well.

Yeah man, Freespace two is really good and deep. And yeah, a total history lesson on how great games used to be, compared to most of what we see these days. The worm turns, and not always for the better.

Back when it first came out, I put about 40 hours into Skyrim and then set it aside for some reason. I always intended to get back to it someday. Now, almost a decade later, I finally have. I had to start over, but that wasn't too big a deal.

I may be the only person now playing vanilla Skyrim (well, vanilla with SkyUI) for effectively the first time.

I was a little bit nostalgic for it, even though it's not really been that long since I last played it, but I fired up a new game of Days Gone on Survival II difficulty, the highest. And after some stumbles I pretty much breezed through the whole tutorial area where you visit the gas station for a bike part. I abused the hell out of the stealth system, and when that didn't work I just shot 1-2 of them.

But if they ever get close to me, I'm pretty much a gonner. Knifing takes way too many swings to put down the basic zombie. But it still works surprisingly well. I remember when I initially started the game, 2-3 difficuty levels down, and I was struggling. But it helps so much to know how to use the systems.

Right now I kind of doubt I'll have the energy to put more than I little bit into it, especially this difficulty and knowing what I'll be up against later on. But I guess I just wanted an excuse to start the game.