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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2543 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026

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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Video Game Thread

What are you playing? Did you pick up anything great in the Steam summer sale?

I'm working my way through Half-Life (1998) and its expansions. It's pretty great even beyond the nostalgia, and I like the general feel of the engine and how you move around in it. Even the much-criticized Blue Shift is kinda fun. The engine was always one of the main strengths of HL and played a large part in its many mods' successes too, IMO. I'm playing with the 'original models' because I prefer how those weapons look and sound. I tried Black Mesa again briefly but I don't really like many of the changes they made. It's not a faithful remake.

I've been slowly working my way through Deltarune on stream, and for multiplayer fun I've been playing Deadlock (when I'm feeling alert enough) and SkillShot City (when I feel like playing something more casual).

I picked up Risk of Rain 2 in the Summer Sale, and I've played it a bit, but honestly I don't really have the energy to be playing four games at once (in fact I usually limit myself to two).

I’ve got about 30-40 hours left in modded Cold Steel III.

I’ve also been following the slow moving crash of Civ7 on CivFanatics now for past year+. Amazing stuff going on there. It motivated me to reinstall Civ4. I mainly play Civ5 Vox Populi, but for whatever reason I want to give modded 4 a spin now. I found AdvancedCiv mod for 4. A moderate gameplay mod that improves the difficulty curve and does some UI updates. I’m a bit torn though between this and vanilla gameplay. Civ4 is not flawed like 5 is, so ai tweaks being a positive or negative is hard to assess.

I guess my thought process is this: I have 1000s of civ hours over the course of my life. If there is a mod for a 20 year old game that still has an active forum and active development, I reckon they will have it better tuned for my tastes. Better than even peak Firaxis who is still catering to a much broader group than players like me.

I’ve also been following the slow moving crash of Civ7 on CivFanatics now for past year+. Amazing stuff going on there.

What are they getting up to, if you're willing to summarize?

Learning the ropes (and bugs) in Empire of the Fading Suns.

Basically space Rome's fall leaves 5 great houses in a dark age with a fraction of a planet and a few examples of lost tech they can't build yet and the first tremors of an alien invasion. You rule one great house with the goal of being elected regent twice in a row. 5 houses and two NPC factions (the church and the trade guild) get votes for regent.

The UI and bugs are something only a 90s era strategy gamer could tolerate (you right click to select and there's no map moving except clicking and one pixel of border movement around the map). It's got the potential to require your tiny freighter fleet to move all the 15 materials (including food so your invading troops don't starve and rebel) to where they're needed.

I've really enjoyed rediscovering lost tech like building air planes and then dominating rebels with air superiority. But the rebels sometimes have lost things I can't make (like Fusion powered weapons surprise). And votes are done by nobles I'm a certain place at a certain time so sniping irreplaceable nobles is a thing!

It along with Star Fleet II are probably the two games I'd love to see get a take that modernizes the game keeping as many mechanics as possible while modernizing the interface.

Just put a picoboot in a gamecube; i've been playing crazy taxi and star fox adventures. good nostalgic times.

Picoboot is a RPi2040-based modchip, do I understand that right? And the main thing you can do with it is play burned games? Just thinking about whether I need to do this myself, or whether my softmodded WiiU is going to be enough to keep me busy.

Yep exactly. It's got a clever little ribbon cable that inserts between the board and the disc drive, so it retains disc drive functionality unlike some of the past mod chips. It can run burned games, various cheats can be loaded in, and in theory you can boot up the gameboy player attachment without the startup disc (haven't tried that yet).

A softmodded WiiU should be able to run most of the same games, as I understand it.

I happened to pick up a gamecube for cheap at a thrift shop and wanted to do something with it. I've got a Japanese WiiU in my project closet and plan to softmod it eventually, but with the language stuff I think it'll take a fair bit longer.

Very cool. The WiiU is a lovely little machine because you can emulate so much with it. Underappreciated in its day.

Playing the new-ish Rogue Trader Trazyn DLC. Owlcat does make a nice CRPG. I'm trying to go for a balanced alignment run where I don't exceed rank 2 in any alignment. They show a mirror universe character with that affliction but I'm not sure its possible with all the colony buildings.

rrazyn

Donny Jones makes a guest appearance.

lol typo.

I loved the Owlcat Pathfinders and Rogue Trader, but with RT, it felt like I could see the rails on the universe much more clearly than with the others. It felt smaller. Not sure if it actually is, but it feels that way. Maybe it's that a lot of the tedious mechanics (e.g. wealth, inventory) are handwaved because you're a Rogue Trader who doesn't need to deal with such trivial inconveniences, and those are actually load-bearing on the immersion. Maybe it's the reduced narrative complexity and choice branches. I don't think I could bring myself to start another RT playthrough today, whereas there are still things I'd like to try in WotR or KM.

and those are actually load-bearing on the immersion

(Disclaimer: I've never played the tabletop game nor do I know anything about 40k.)

When I did background research on Rogue Trader, I wanted to learn about mechanics and gameplay, but (I guess because its a TTRPG) all the answers online are explaining the 40k lore or what a Rogue Trader is. I don't care! I had the same problem when trying to google "Difference between Warlock and Wizard 5e" -- I guess these games are for theatre kids instead of mechanic enjoyers.

It took me awhile to adjust to the shop system and the cargo system, because the game explains them in in-universe immersion terms. It took me too long to realize cargo was your cash and the items themselves are free (its mostly about the reputation, I think?). If you want tedium, I hear min/maxing cargo turn-ins requires you to micromanage to avoid overfilling units.

There's also the space combat minigame (I think it's quite complex for a minigame), that is prohibitively difficult compared to the rest of the game. I really like that it has it though, because I think it is immersive! I feel like the gameplay is reflecting (what little I've read) about the Rogue Trader fantasy.

The only immersion-breaking thing is that I am swinging a sword at all. That is Abelard's job, hello?

I did RT then WoTR so that probably colors my opinion. I really hated the army part of WoTR. I think the planet exploration is just a better version of it, and the battles are better. I noticed the rails in both, WOTR just had more "options". I think I also just like the 40k setting more than generic D&D fantasy setting. But I've definitely had some friends with your opinion, I think its just a matter of taste.

Also I like doing character builds more than story which might impact it a bit. I mostly replay to try different compositions and builds.

The only real complaint I have with Rogue Trader is that if you have any idea of how the universe functions, you're basically going to be so goddamn hardline in worshipping the Emperor, purging the mutant and killing the heretic you will give your Inquisitor conniptions fits because you're more hardline than he is and it drives him nuts.

...which, admittedly, I take great delight in, so maybe I'm a little bit biased. Xeno artifact whispering in my head? Into the energy reactor it goes. Demon-infestes super computer? Arengta, be a dear and please bathe this foul artifice with plasma. Chaos-corrupted nobles on my planet? Fire. All the fire.

I will never forgive Games Workshop for denying us a romance route with the Sisters of Battle, though.

you have any idea of how the universe functions

The fun part is you can role play as not knowing. Dogmatic is often the smart way to play but playing as a heretic is enjoyable, and trying to thread the needle on iconoclast between stupid and non-zealot is fun.

I will never forgive Games Workshop for denying us a romance route with the Sisters of Battle

I just want to romance my cog boys. Argenta is whatever.

Coming into it with barely any knowledge of the setting, dogmatic seemed lawful-stupid, or even pointlessly cruel. Look, I can get behind "for the Greater Good", or even "My Country Right or Wrong", but the choices were like:

  • [dogmatic] execute this poor commoner for having a reasonable complaint
  • [heretic] execute this poor commoner for the lulz, cackling maniacally
  • [iconoclast] don't execute the poor commoner

and like, it didn't do a great job of selling the appeal. I was interested in heretic initially because the evil artifact that will obviously obviously corrupt you seemed like a solid roleplay arc, but then the early heretic choices were chaotic-evil right off the bat. I was hoping they'd start off being written as neutral-evil power seeking and then by late game, you'd have frog boiled yourself into a servant of chaos.

Then, iconoclast was completely normal western liberal morality, and the game doesn't punish you for picking those options, so why not pick them?

Exception: idira - this was done well, and it's a rare thing in RPGs that the player gets the option to summarily execute a companion early on, and can reasonably decide it's the right choice.

Then, iconoclast was completely normal western liberal morality, and the game doesn't punish you for picking those options, so why not pick them?

The Void Shadows DLC takes advantage of the iconoclast naiveté very well. It absolutely punishes you for it, in very hilarious ways. The in-game lore optimal route is probably a mix of dogmatic and iconoclast. I agree that heretic is chaotic evil straight off of the bat, it would have been nicer to have different flavors of evil as well, or a slow build up. I don't think Owlcat's writing is particularly good, but I do appreciate that it doesn't morally railroad you in quite the same way as something like BG3.

I think with the DLCs increasing the number of alignment points that are available, you don't need to go hard down one path to be able to reach the end trees, allowing you to kinda set the pace in your own story a bit more.

the obvious way to fix this would be to adjust the events/choices such that strict hardline Emperor Worship is slow suicide, and you are going to need to bend the rules a bit in order to make ends meet.

Horizon's Gate, which is something like Final Fantasy Tactics stapled to a nautical exploration and trading game.

Haven't touched it yet though - still researching classes / builds / team comp

That... sounds like a very promising concept.

Haven't had much time for gaming, but I picked up on Steam sale Tactics Ogre Reborn, HOMM Olden Era and RACCOIN (think Balatro but coin pusher instead of poker).

After years away, jumped back in to Diablo III latest season to get a Crusader set I never tried.

Picked up CoH3 (fun! I'm awful at RTS games!), Fields of Mistria, and SRPG studio. Yes, I'm aware I'm too lazy for the last one. No, I don't care.

So the 'old' Company of Heroes 3? I saw there's a new CoH 3 with some subtitle, coming soon.

Is Fields of Mistria good?

New CoH 3 is a... wave defense expansion pack/standalone, effectively?

Haven't yet fired up Mistria. What I really want is Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, legit and legal on PC, but in the old artstyle rather than the new remade 3d style, and I'm hoping this will be about as close as I can get to scratching that niche itch.

New CoH 3 is a... wave defense expansion pack/standalone, effectively?

Yes. That made me a bit skeptical too, but it looks pretty good graphically. I will try it.

I'm glad you're having the same experience that I did. I played HL1 stone cold for the first time in... 2009? Zero Nostalgia. Still loved every second. The magic was very much still there.

A Vtuber I watch who was born after HL1 played HL1 for the first time this year, and she liked it enough that she went right into HL2 and then the episodes, despite not being a big singleplayer FPS person. It's nice to see affirmation that the classics really are that good sometimes.

I'm surprised, since I would have held HL1 and HL2 as examples of a shooters that pushed the envelope at the time but aren't necessarily mechanically better than newer shooters. But if as you say she's not a big singleplayer FPS person, maybe it's a better intro to it than most since it's not expecting years of built up experience on other shooters.

The HL2 pulse rifle is one of the most satisfying guns.... ever. I mean, the whole repertoire is good, even the pistol and SMG are fun. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I find the gunplay in HL2 and Counter-Strike to be a lot more compelling than "Parkour with a Rifle" in modern shooters.

What do you mean by mechanically better? And what newer shooters do you hold to be the best ones?

I mean that if I were fully unaware of any video games, and you put in front of me Half-Life 1 and almost any major developer's first person shooters since, I don't know, Far Cry 1? it would feel boring and simple­. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of Half-Life 1 and 2, because they were pushing the envelope at the time they came out, but those things they did that were groundbreaking are old-hat now, and when it comes to pure shooting mechanics of it, I feel like some older games aged better too (the Doom and Quake series, for instance).

As for better newer shooters, sadly single-player shooters are a stale genre nowadays, with pretty much nothing but Call of Duties. But some years back (oh god, ten years ago! I'm old!) my mind was was completely blown by the campaign on Titanfall 2; if you haven't played that I highly recommend it. It doesn't even lean on open world to differenciate itself, it does the same linear, spectacle as Half-Life does but it does it with everything pushed to the next level. Like Half-Life 2 did, there's so much creativity and skill at work here that they could create and discard gimmicks for single levels that lesser devs would make the entire game revolve around. If anything was able to push the envelope from that point after, I was not made aware of it.

What bout Prey (2017)? I haven't played it, but its Gloo gun seems like a spiritual successor to HL2/Portal's building the games around creatively using a gimmick weapon. It looks pretty neat.

It sounds like you're not experiencing what some people appreciate about these 'simple' games. The simplicity is part of the design.

And your answer to my other question is basically that there has not been anything great in the last 10 years. Titanfall 2 came out in 2016.

The simplicity is part of the design.

I would argue that at the time, it was not designed to be simple. It seems simple in retrospect and whether you find that endearing is up to you. I do like simple games too. But I'm not convinced I would be impressed if I were in a mirror universe where it had never existed yet everything else about the industry was somehow the same, and someone released Half-Life 1 today as an indie game.

And your answer to my other question is basically that there has not been anything great in the last 10 years.

I know, but in between Half-Life 2 and Titanfall 2, pretty much all major first person shooters did what Half-Life (1 and 2) did as a matter of routine, and often better than it did. All the Call of Duty games pretty much have it beat in the "run a mostly set route between spectacular set-pieces". Titanfall 2, to me, set a new bar that's high enough above everything else before that it hasn't been cleared in 10 years, but after Half-Life 2 and until Titanfall 2, I thought the bar was being regularly cleared. It helped that it was an era of first person shooters proeminence and now isn't (at least, not single player FPS).

Name the games that did what HL1 and HL2 did, better than they did, between 2004-2016.

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