I'm 50 hours in to Morrowind, and I have been loving everything but the handful of times a crash combined with not saving has ruined progress.

I want to get into Morrowind and Arx Fatalis on a modern PC with mods.. Havent looked into which ones to use with either of them yet though.

My stepdaughter Shafa has always been an avid mobile gamer. I have tried to convert her to PC gaming since I married her mother, but I haven't been very successful --she always prefers watching me play rather than playing the PC games herself. Last Saturday night, however, was different; apparently she couldn't resist the temptation of playing Midtown Madness using my old Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel. The game needs some tinkering to run on Windows 7 64-bit, but the steering wheel works out of the box.

It didn't take long for Shafa to win a race, she's got talent for sure!

My 18 months-old Tria took her turn as well. Actually, she was the reason why we gathered in my home office and played Midtown Madness. I don't know why, but lately she has been showing great interest in cars --which she called "Vroom vroom." Originally I wanted to test my Sansui AU-7900 with NHT SuperZeros again (long story), but after dinner she kept saying "Ayah" (daddy) and "Vroom vroom," so I decided to unearth my old MS Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel instead. Believe it or not, her driving skill wasn't bad at all! No, she hasn't won any race yet, but she managed to keep the car on the road most of the time, which is not bad for a toddler! 😀

Despite her age, Tria seemed to take her driving seriously!

Suffice to say that we were all having a good time. Even my wife, who is not a gamer by any means, took her turn as well.

Nonetheless, games come in all shapes and sizes. In the previous morning Evi and Tria played a non-computer game of peek-a-boo, and we were all having a good time!

My wife and daughter took a selfie after playing a game of peek-a-boo.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-12-12, 18:56:

Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel

How's that thing holding up? I can imagine that thing must be fairly old... I still have a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick somewhere unless my Father threw it away to the "electronic waste recycler"...

I've been wanting to get these old joysticks going again but I'm at a loss on what to use. I've been under the general impression Gameport -> USB is not a straightforward process.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-12, 09:55:

I want to get into Morrowind and Arx Fatalis on a modern PC with mods.. Havent looked into which ones to use with either of them yet though.

If you look up the STEP Morrowind guide, you can have a mostly vanilla game with modern graphics. It's only managed to randomly crash like three times in the past 50 hours.

I am currently 27 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and so far I really love the game

It's a little glitchy, but still very playable.

schmatzler wrote on 2020-12-12, 21:09:

I am currently 27 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and so far I really love the game

Whoops I didn't even realise it was out! I usually go mad for an open world RPG and particularly one by CDPR, but the setting doesn't do it for me and the reports of bugs are putting me off so I'll wait a little while before diving in.

Let us know how it goes as you progress 👍

appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-08, 10:07:

I finished Act II of Pillars of Eternity and with a Level 13 party at the conclusion of Act II it feels like the rest of the game will be a faceroll. The developers seem to have implemented a level scaling option for Act III and White March Pt. 2. How well that works, I don't know, but at least it would give me more meaningful XP. Regardless, it will probably end up being the only game I get to finish in 2020 at this rate. At this point I can say that this game checked all the boxes I needed for a grand old school RPG epic, it reminds me of all the good parts of Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale II and Neverwinter Nights 2. If you enjoyed any of these games, please get this game in the next season sale and play it.

Currently free at Epic Games, for anyone interested in trying it.

I'm currently 7.5 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and am finding it kind of middle of the road. Despite running this with RTX enabled, there's something thats still so bland about a concrete jungle. It's got none of the setting beauty like the Witcher games, so it feels drab despite all the next gen effects going on. I also really don't like RPG shooters, there's nothing like shooting someone in the head 3 times before they die, call me weird but even if you are running an pen and paper kind of RPG a headshot is a headshot...

I'm hoping it draws me in, right now I'm not looking to do all the things, only just try and meander through it...

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-12-13, 06:14:

I also really don't like RPG shooters, there's nothing like shooting someone in the head 3 times before they die, call me weird but even if you are running an pen and paper kind of RPG a headshot is a headshot...

Agreed. If there is one thing that differentiates the best era of gaming (90s) from today, it is this bullshit.

I've also been playing Cyberpunk and it seems to be a very "on-rails" experience during the first few hours, hopefully the game opens up soon. The character origin also doesn't seem to have much effect besides the very first sequence and some dialog options so far. Gameplay is OK for a shooter I guess, but I'm not very impressed by the RPG aspects to be honest.

Performance-wise, it plays and looks nice at 1440p on my PC (Ryzen 3600 + Radeon 5700XT), though there have been a few instances of characters clipping through doors, T-posing and that kind of stuff.

After you hit the 8.5 hour mark or so the game actually starts, the whole first 8 hours or so is like an extended intro. At least at this point there is starting to be a big story line, hope it cleans up a little and hooks me.

As for glitches, in the big heist at 7.5 hours there were a lot of glitched enemies which didn't do much for the immersion factor. It does look like performance improved with this last patch though. If you are playing through pre big heist I don't recommend getting into side quests, follow the storyline until you hit the title screen, then watch another hour, then decide how you want to play =)

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-12-13, 06:14:

Despite running this with RTX enabled, there's something thats still so bland about a concrete jungle.

Yes that's my concern - GTA V for example has an epic urban world but meh, I get lost in it all. I want the wide open spaces to explore in my RPGs. I'll still be trying this out at some point though, games like this don't come along often.

DracoNihil wrote on 2020-12-12, 20:04:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-12-12, 18:56:

Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel

How's that thing holding up? I can imagine that thing must be fairly old... I still have a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick somewhere unless my Father threw it away to the "electronic waste recycler"...

I've been wanting to get these old joysticks going again but I'm at a loss on what to use. I've been under the general impression Gameport -> USB is not a straightforward process.

Oh, definitely yes. As a matter of fact, my MS Sidewinder FF Wheel still works flawlessly, including the force feedback. Some may argue Microsoft makes lousy software (Windows 10, Windows Vista, Internet Explorer, etcetera), but Microsoft hardware are well-built. Too bad MS has discontinued many of their hardware.

However, some of the buttons do not work anymore. The Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel has six buttons around its center pad; three on the right, and three on the left. On my Sidewinder FF Wheel, all the three buttons on the left have stopped working. I wonder why. How hard to make the buttons work again? If it's merely broken contacts, then it's probably easy to repair. But I wonder if the damage is chip-level, which I imagine would be quite hard to repair.

badmojo wrote on 2020-12-13, 01:43:

Let us know how it goes as you progress 👍

I am now 35 hours in and I really love the game.

It's got a really slow start, though. I didn't like the gunplay at first, because all of the weapons were weak as hell. But the world really opened up in Act 2 (after 7 hours for me).
Once I got more features like iconic weapons and smart guns, the gunplay started to get very satisfying.
Since I already leveled myself up to a badass Samurai with a lot of Katana skills, I mostly just run through the levels and let everyone feel the wrath of my blade now, though. 😁 Adding Katanas into the game was one of the best decisions CDPR made. It's so much fun.

The game is full of bugs, though. None of them break quests or anything major, they're just annoying. The main quest feels very polished, but the sidequests are really broken sometimes, with companions getting stuck in the map and disappearing, animations glitching out etc. That rips me out of the immersion sometimes. I really hope CDPR will put out a ton of fixes so I can play the game again next year with less bugs.

I was also really surprised to see that Keanu Reeves has a big role in the game. At first I thought they were just using the marketing hype around him, putting him into a small side mission.
But no, he's everywhere in the game. With a ton of voice lines and fitting right into the main quest. Awesome. The game is well worth the 60 bucks, despite the heaps of glitches.

I am playing this on a GTX1060 with two Xeons (2620v3) on Medium settings and it works well.

Generally I'm not much of gamer nowadays, but this one, I do like:

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Very appropriate setting, for these pandemic times.
NetHack & DF veterans, go ahead check it out if you haven't already!
Everyone else: Prepare for a *steep* learning curve...

I think you can also play CDDA via ssh (as many/most other roguelikes), but the game likes high resolutions and colors. So I don't think this is a viable use case for your 70s terminal, sorry 🙁

Tyranny is free on Epic so I took it. A nice Pillars of Eternity (also free atm) clone from the same makers. It seems that the maps are somewhat smaller (in the beginning anyway) and it's easier to just pick up and play every now and then without having to continue at level 5 of some large dungeon and not remembering what the hell you were doing there in the first place. Also there seems to be less dialogue which is why I never really got into the first Pillars as most of it was just utter drivel and in the end I really didn't get the big picture or how my actions were related to anything. To me it was just chasing some robed baddies that made nasty things....probably.

sf78 wrote on 2020-12-14, 12:35:

Tyranny is free on Epic so I took it. A nice Pillars of Eternity (also free atm) clone from the same makers. It seems that the maps are somewhat smaller (in the beginning anyway) and it's easier to just pick up and play every now and then without having to continue at level 5 of some large dungeon and not remembering what the hell you were doing there in the first place. Also there seems to be less dialogue which is why I never really got into the first Pillars as most of it was just utter drivel and in the end I really didn't get the big picture or how my actions were related to anything. To me it was just chasing some robed baddies that made nasty things....probably.

You ought to really give it another chance; things come together really nicely in Chapter 3..

I'm currently bouncing between Unreal, Syndicate and Age of Empire. Although I think I'm having the most fun in Syndicate. I will say though, when that game decides to roll you, it rolls you hard. Easy enough to reload a mission though.

I'm glad I constantly rotate through all the save slots though, because the damned thing hard locked when I went to save after an especially difficult mission. Lost the progress I'd made. At least it was only 10 minutes worth. Hate when that happens.

I prefer the sequel Syndicate Wars. The 3D engine and free camera movement imported from Dungeon Keeper is very nice.