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practical_romantic  1yr ago (text post)   2870 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 21, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I played through the first Chapter of Hard West 2 and it's pretty good! There are some flaws that can be pointed out and I don't think it's likely to have much replayability, but the aesthetics and combat mechanics are quite good. If you like turn-based tactics, this one is worth taking a look at for $24.

What are you playing?

Having two young kids in unsurprisingly not a conductive environment for gaming. The last time I had some time to get into a game was in the summer for two holiday weeks, when I played Into The Breach with the new patch (new bots etc.), and before that in Christmastime, when I played a lot of Griftlands. I find "Spirelikes" - ie. single-player roguelikes with collective card mechanisms like Slay the Spire - very interesting, and sort of a proof that there are still innovations to be discovered within the sphere of gaming in general.

Since my second kid was born, I haven't been able to do much gaming at all so I empathize with you. My oldest is now just old enough that she can play games with me, so I've started playing Stardew Valley. It's good for her (nothing scary, and if you stay out the mines they're no enemies to worry about), and it's good for me because she likes to watch me play. We take turns, at her direction: a day with my save file, a day with hers. It's been nice.

I should note that summer was before kid no 2 was born.

Hated the CYOA nature of HW1 and was unimpressed by the tactics.

Right now I'm mostly just letting Distant Worlds 2 play itself while I do other things. I occasionally dip into Cyberpunk 2077 to marvel at the production quality, sometimes Terra Invicta to see how the Early Access is going, but I'm not sticking around much.

I occasionally dip into Cyberpunk 2077 to marvel at the production quality

Huh. That's not a sentence I expected to see based on what I've heard.

There's a resurgence in the player base lately. Apparently the latest patch fixed a lot of the issues.

Edgerunners seems to have driven a lot of new players too.

Sure, bugs. Absence of balance. Narrative issues. Too much of some kinds of content, too little of others. A lot of unfulfilled promises and unfulfilled potential. The launch, from what I hear. Keanu Reeves being really not into his role, IMO. Player choice really not having at all that much impact. The AI being as retarded as in any other game. But the product as it currently is is still fairly impressive. Visually for one, the atmosphere is pretty good, the writing is unusually good for a video game, the setting is very consistently realized, the gameplay is fairly varied and all parts are at least technically solid while some are actually quite good. It may not be a masterpiece, but in my view it's far better than its reputation and - and that's always the part that most interests me - it's very ambitious in many aspects and manages to go relatively far towards that ambition, with a relatively large scope and relatively high quality. In the end it's still just vidya, and it has a cornucopia of problems, and its ambition could be summed up as "do an immersive sim, bigger and more mature than the others" which isn't exactly revolutionary, but I'd say that Cyberpunk 2077 comfortably occupies a niche that you can find by starting somewhere near Deus Ex: Human Revolution (or maybe Mankind Divided, I never finished that so I can't say), then adding on a ton of quantity and quality. If Human Revolution was a decent or good game, then what is Cyberpunk 2077 if not a better one? One can hardly claim that it's less, or worse, than HR.

Of course in the end, Cyberpunk 2077 still suffers from one fatal flaw that I can't forgive - it's far too easy. I start it up, take a look around, go "oooh this is nice", murderhobo some gangsters with complete impunity or breeze through some story mission and close the game again, thinking what a shame that it's a walking simulator with no sense of challenge whatsoever.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which has completely subsumed any desire I had to pay for other roguelikes.

Modded Minecraft, with the intent of getting a couple friends to a server for the first time in years.

And, intermittently, Starsector, an incredible space combat/trading/exploration game. Basically Mount and Blade with combat distantly derived from Star Control, except set in an Alastair Reynolds book. Very aesthetic. Very moddable. One of my favorites of all time.

I have been playing Horizon's Gate, which I probably talked about on the sub, but has recently gotten an update, dragging me back in. The easiest way to describe it is as Uncharted Waters 2 in a fantasy realm with modern qol enhancements. You sail around an open world, pirating and trading and exploring. Because it is so open ended it can be daunting at first, but it does a good job teaching you how to get ahead. And when I just want to kill stuff for 15 minutes I have been playing Nova Drift, which also got a nice update recently. If you are unfamiliar with Nova Drift, it's one of those auto action rpgs like Vampire Survivors - one of the oldest and also one of the most polished. Vampire Survivors also got updated recently, but more people should play Nova Drift.

The comments made it seems like many of the battles only had one correct answer. In that sense it's more of a puzzl game than a squad tactics game. That's why I passed on it.

I was surprised to find that really irked me about Age of Decadence an otherwise very well made RPG, by making all of the tests skill hurdles, I felt very constrained. I get that that was the point of the game design, but I didn't enjoy it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that they only have one correct answer, but there's absolutely a puzzle feel to many of the battles. For example, there's a train heist where one of the optional goals (with a nice reward) is completing it in one turn. There are probably a couple ways to pull that off depending on what group you're running, but the way you have to approach it is severely constrained by that goal. If you ignore that goal, you've got options, but it's still going to be somewhat linear because the level design (in this case) is straightforward. This is what I mean about it probably not having much replayability.

The combat ain't XCOM, but it's still enjoyable enough to knit together a fun game.

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