What games are you playing now?

Playing Eastward, and pleasantly surprised. I'm about to go to bed after playing it for what feels like every waking hour of the weekend and I'm sad that tomorrow is a work day and I will have to wait until the evening.

The music, the art, the characters, the whole game feels so inviting, I just want to ride the nice feeling it gives with almost no notion of the time that is passing.

It is rare for me to get immersed in a game that doesn't have complex or challenging combat mechanics, but Eastward just feels kinda magical.

I will also say it's not a game for everyone, which sounds like a no-brainer, but I feel it takes a particular type of player to enjoy Eastward to the fullest. If that player is you, treat yourself. It's really worth it.
 
I'm all about Encased right now, with around 50-something hours into it so far. That said, while I love the game, I did find a major flaw. You can't level up companions skills.

Instead, the companions are auto-leveled up, and that means they can do really bad decisions in allocating their skill points, which can be critical in messing up your enjoyment of the game.

It's baffling why they (the developers) did this type of companion level up system.

For example, I was looking forward to concentrating on improving my companion's melee weapons skill, because she was very close to getting the next set of abilities in the ability tree. But when she leveled up, that skill wasn't chosen to get any points.

So now, I'm wondering when the hell she will get the next level of melee skills which would make the battles far better, more strategic, and also those new abilities would make some of the more difficult battles easier to win, and also more fun for me, as a player.

Really don't understand why the developers did this, and there are no mods to fix it, the developers have not made their game mod accessible, as of yet anyway.
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
2,244
Location
Pacific NorthWest, USA!
Kept at Days Gone, reached Lost Lake and pretty much explored everything in this map also. But I might be at the end, if my playthrough has indeed been bugged, as I suspect.

I cleared the Sawmill of the whole horde this early in the game (took a lot of running back and forth and teasing them out in smaller groups). And after 30 mins of that, I can't get the "Sawmill Horde killed" popup to trigger. I was afraid of this. I went to reddit and got some other feedback and it seems others have encountered the same thing. Apparently the 3 hordes that are part of the main quest line cannot be finished before that story element. Which, ok, fair enough. But apparently some have then reached that story point, and still couldn't get it to trigger. I'd kinda hate myself if I played the rest of the game up until towards the end (iirc that's where that mission is) and got my game bugged. So, what to do, what to do? :(
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,247
You can't level up companions skills.

Instead, the companions are auto-leveled up, and that means they can do really bad decisions in allocating their skill points, which can be critical in messing up your enjoyment of the game.

It's baffling why they (the developers) did this type of companion level up system.
I have an idea of why.

There was even less control over the companions before, it was only possible to play their moves during combat, but otherwise they'd just follow and nothing else was possible.

Now they share the inventory, have a few basic orders and it's possible to play with them anytime, to explore or use their specific stats to interact with the environment.

So they started with a completely player-char-centric view, unlike other games that treat any party member identically. They added more control over the companions but it requires more work because of their initial architecture.

I don't know if they plan on adding custom level-up for them, it's not impossible.

Was it possible in ATOM RPG?
 
Joined
Aug 29, 2020
Messages
10,157
Location
Good old Europe
Right now I'm replaying a game I played some years ago, called Heroes of a Broken Land. It combines many things I enjoy in a game, exploring an overland map and then ducking into a nearby dungeon, finding new people to recruit in town, lots of various ways to scratch that exploration itch!
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
18,788
Location
Holly Hill, FL.
Right now I'm replaying a game I played some years ago, called Heroes of a Broken Land. It combines many things I enjoy in a game, exploring an overland map and then ducking into a nearby dungeon, finding new people to recruit in town, lots of various ways to scratch that exploration itch!
I had a bit of fun with that game. The only negative I had was that a bit more variety in the dungeon tile-sets would have been nice, especially in the overland encounters. Going into the same square room over and over when encountering creatures in the overland map got a bit old, and having an "outside" battle map with appropriate random obstacles would have spiced up combat a little.
There's a spiffier looking sequel in Early Access now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1006140/

The feedback doesn't seem as positive, but it's early access, so -
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,245
Location
New Zealand
I completly spaced out that D2R just released today. Played a little bit with the assassin. God damn does the game look good. But god damn did I quit out after 30 mins of clicking on Fallen imps. I found myselft completly spacing out while playing. I even had an out-of-body-like experience where for a second I just became self aware that I was just mindlessly clicking enemies to kill them. Yeah, I'm not sure I can play this game anymore. Maybe when I'll have time to waste while also listening to something else in the background.
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,247
I completly spaced out that D2R just released today. Played a little bit with the assassin. God damn does the game look good. But god damn did I quit out after 30 mins of clicking on Fallen imps. I found myselft completly spacing out while playing. I even had an out-of-body-like experience where for a second I just became self aware that I was just mindlessly clicking enemies to kill them. Yeah, I'm not sure I can play this game anymore. Maybe when I'll have time to waste while also listening to something else in the background.

I still kinda like Grim Dawn, but that's my experience playing pretty much any of the Diablo style ARPGs. I feel kinda…dirty when I play them. Like that feeling of wasting time I low key get from playing games, but x1000. Diablo 3 is the easiest game I've ever played, to the point it was insipid. I could put my hands in my pockets and my character would never die.
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2013
Messages
4,881
Location
Portland, OR
I still kinda like Grim Dawn, but that's my experience playing pretty much any of the Diablo style ARPGs. I feel kinda…dirty when I play them. Like that feeling of wasting time I low key get from playing games, but x1000. Diablo 3 is the easiest game I've ever played, to the point it was insipid. I could put my hands in my pockets and my character would never die.

Yeah, Diablo 3 really takes that to the extremes. Nothing exemplifies that more than when I randomly stumble onto a high-end D3 stream on twitch and the screen is full of enemies with so much life points that the dude basically just holds down whirlwind and moves up and up, up and down, lawn-mower style, over the same group of enemies for 2 mins straight until they're all dead.

The fact that D3 allows you to scale your own difficulty (and inflate/deflate enemy toughness) killed it for me. I mean, at that point, why do bother playing.

The only way I usually play these sorts of games nowadays is if I also want to listen to some podcast and just relax. Otherwise it's really mindnumbing. And D2 in particular is a lot better at the higher end of play, but the first levels are so slow. I'll probably play D2R at least once front to back, since it's so unbelievably pretty, and I want to see it all. All locations, characters, cinematics. But I also can't believe how much time I wasted in D2 as a much younger self. You have so much time when you're young. And you generally waste on all sorts of stuff. I think that's the only thing I envy, now as an adult. Otherwise, it sucks. No freedom. :lol:
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,247
Kept at Days Gone some more, and found a funny glitch. I reached the quest where you're supposed to retrieve Boozer's bike, and bring it to Lost Lake. And I think I remember that during my first playthrough I put off that quest until the game actually solved it for me, by having Addy send for someone to bring it down.

Well this time, I made the effort to walk on foot all the way to our first base and brought it down myself. And immediately after the cutscene with Boozer I get the same call telling me that they sent someone to get Boozer's bike. When I just went there myself. Sounds like a glitch, but I wonder if they made that quest as a joke, not expecting anyone to make the trek on foot? But if that's so, then why not play into it more. Nah, I think it was glitch and I wasn't supposed to hear the same line on this branch of the narrative tree.
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,247
Kept at Days Gone some more, and found a funny glitch. I reached the quest where you're supposed to retrieve Boozer's bike, and bring it to Lost Lake. And I think I remember that during my first playthrough I put off that quest until the game actually solved it for me, by having Addy send for someone to bring it down.

Well this time, I made the effort to walk on foot all the way to our first base and brought it down myself. And immediately after the cutscene with Boozer I get the same call telling me that they sent someone to get Boozer's bike. When I just went there myself. Sounds like a glitch, but I wonder if they made that quest as a joke, not expecting anyone to make the trek on foot? But if that's so, then why not play into it more. Nah, I think it was glitch and I wasn't supposed to hear the same line on this branch of the narrative tree.

You don't actually have to walk there to retrieve his bike. You can just ride and then swap bikes there. Your bike will be back at Lost Lake after the mission. It's a little unrealistic, but it beats walking all that way.

I didn't know Addy sends someone else if you wait long enough.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,130
Location
Florida, US
You don't actually have to walk there to retrieve his bike. You can just ride and then swap bikes there. Your bike will be back at Lost Lake after the mission. It's a little unrealistic, but it beats walking all that way.

I didn't know Addy sends someone else if you wait long enough.

Really? I didn't even think it would do that, teleport your bike back I mean.

I've advanced quite a bit further into my playthrough. I've collected almost everything that's collectible in the Lost Lake area also, killed most of the hordes (have 2-3 left, I think; the same in each of the other areas). And I think the story is about to move to the next area.

All this second playthrough has managed to do for me is settle even further the fact that this is a fantastic game. The story is also very nice, with some wonderful moments that have heart. But the main course has to be the world, the mechanics and gameplay. It's fantastic in its ability to create emergent gameplay.

The hordes in particular are a fantastic element. I just wrapped for the night, and also had one of the best scenarios with one of the hordes. This was a horde (that hibernates in Sherman's Camp in Lost Lake) that I kept returning to since I could never get the exact moment in order to catch it hibernating. So I tried that for a couple of times, and gave up, thinking that either it may be bugged or something is not triggering its spawning.

Then, after some time, I returned to that general area due to a different quest, and said, let's just see if it's there now. It was also a bit on the late side of the day. So I park my bike near the gas station, got a refill knowing that I'll need to kite the horde with my bike to have a chance. And just when I step into the actual town, about to head towards the building where I knew they hibernate, the weather does a complete 180 and turns to a frikkin blizzard where I could barely make out what was happening a couple of meters in front of me.

So I keep walking towards the building, trying to make out their silhouettes in the blizzard, but I couldn't see anything. I just assumed they're probably not there. And all of a sudden the music swells, and the horde crescendo music kicks in. And I knew I was in trouble. A firefight breaks out, I take out some but have to run away towards the bike to get the hell of out there and maybe have a chance to lure them in smaller chunks.

So I make it to the bike, take off, stop a couple dozen meters from there, thinking that I'll just do the old shoot as they come, and then run away. But I'm not sure what had happened, had they merged with some other horde, but all of sudden there were a lot more of then than I expected (I think I read before hand that that particular horde only had around 100 or some freakers). This horde felt a lot larger. Or maybe it was just my panic.

So I run away with the bike, and it's really weird what happens next. Basically I ran away toward the farms on the othe side of the river and I could swear I saw clumps of new freakers coming out from those farms. And these were not the small groups you usually encounter. They were considerable groups, and as agressive as the ones from the main horde.

It basically felt like either the game started spawning biggers groups all around me, or maybe parts of the horde that was chasing me originally got respawned by the game? But I had never seen that happen before. Anyway, all of it felt absolutely perfect. The sudden change of weather that I swear I suspect the game triggered on me knowing I was about to encounter that horde. I know, I sound paranoid. I could be. Then as I ran away from the flood of freakers, them also appearing from the farms where I thought I was surely safe (at least for how much it would take the horde to get there).

It was intense as hell. This game constantly does this sort of thing. And it's fantastic in these moments. But man is it also annoying when it keeps spawning ambush parties on you with the freakin wire they keep clothes-lining me. Or the randomly spawned sniper in some tree that takes me off my bike with pin-point accuracy. Or the freaking infected wolves that are constantly on my arse as I ride my bike. One time I was trying to get up to the Metolius cave horde, and it took me 3-4 tries to get up there. The game would keep spawning either marauders up there, waking the horde before I could get there, and then I'd have the horde on me in seconds.; or it would spawn wolves up there; or one time, both wolves and marauders. It was insane how many reloads I had to do there. But it's also intense as hell.
 
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,247
Well this sucks. I managed to kill the whole of the Iron Butte horde (the huge one that's part of the main quest and where during that you have those enhanced kerosene molotovs) before the main quest got to that point (since I already explored the whole map). Well, I managed to kill it all (from what I could figure) and just when I kill the last one the game crashes.

I was surprised how easy it was to clear, using the nearby explosive trucks and cans. But I don't have the patience to do it again, to see if it crashes a second time. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel differently.

edit: nevermind, did it again and this time it didn't crash. phew. i again hope this doesn't break my progress, but we'll see. from the forums posts of others it seems it shouldn't. So I'm 2/3 done with the biggest hordes in the game. One more for later on. :D
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
6,247
I'm still romping through Atom RPG, and having a great time. Two days ago I was exploring some vast underground area, finding some neat treasure and lots of scary monsters. Yesterday I wandered into some town, I think it was called Peregon maybe? I had a quest to do there, things started off ok and then the entire town turned on me for some reason, in the end it's now practically a ghost town. Thank goodness they all came in batches of two to five at a time, it made it manageable!
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
18,788
Location
Holly Hill, FL.
Playing Vermintide 2 with some friends last couple days. It's on sale on steam for about £5, and I'll say they were well invested. Steps to reproduce:

1. Invite some friends to play with.
2. You all know a bit about Warhammer setting, and find it interesting.
3. You all like Left4dead general gameplay, but with talents, item upgrades and crafting system.
4. You all got £5 spare.
5. You all get quite a good number of hours of fun, challenging and bonding experiences!
 
I'm bit short on leisure time at the moment, so I found this game called Winkeltje - it's a game where you run a shop and you can decorate it as well as you unlock more furniture to increase appeal of your shop. It's good when I'm short on time since 1 day in game is probably like 5 minutes long real time, so I can quit anytime.

I'm loving how my shop is turning out!

https://i.imgur.com/9ATvjI5.jpg
9ATvjI5.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zmmtngO.jpg
zmmtngO.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/MvS4dZr.jpg
MvS4dZr.jpg
 
Joined
Sep 4, 2021
Messages
1,367
I can quit anytime.
They all say that ;)

Funny to see the word "Winkeltje" (small shop). In my little country (Belgium), we have 3 national languages: Dutch, French and German. In practice, the country is mostly divided between French and Dutch communities constantly nagging at each other, and a much smaller and quieter German community. But anyway, this is a Dutch word - maybe one of the very few I still understand, the company that made the game is apparently in Holland, our northern neighbour, where Dutch is coming from.

Thanks for sharing the pics! :)
 
Joined
Aug 29, 2020
Messages
10,157
Location
Good old Europe
I started replaying The Outer Worlds on Switch now that both expansions have been released (and gotten at least one patch each). I am really dedicating myself to the science weapon melee skill tree this time - earlier I had tried a more ‘charisma’ based approach with dialog skills as well as combat, and will get there eventually, but right now just got the Prismatic Hammer and am emptying rooms without breaking a sweat :)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
14,932
They all say that ;)

Funny to see the word "Winkeltje" (small shop). In my little country (Belgium), we have 3 national languages: Dutch, French and German. In practice, the country is mostly divided between French and Dutch communities constantly nagging at each other, and a much smaller and quieter German community.

Hah, I lived in Antwerp for almost 2 years, feels like forever ago now. My partner back then showed me around Brussels one day and had some headbutting with a waiter in a cafe that insisted on speaking French when she was speaking Dutch, and there was this akward back and forth in which we finally got our drinks with nobody speaking a single word in the same language. I will always remember that event as an example of how dumb human beings can get.

All in all, I enjoyed Antwerp quite a bit, a lovely place. Also learned a lot about the culture and learned the Dutch language so, despite the eventual romantic experence failure, I can tell Begium is a place I remember with certain fondness - at least the Flemmish side. ;)
 
Back
Top Bottom