bak = hmm + story 😀

Thanks robertmo and clueless1 for the suggestions and food for thought.

Will try at least to get through chapter 1 of the Witcher. Been watching some videos and come to the conclusion I haven't been stashing enuff crap!
I've a tendency to focus too much on the swordplay over everything else.

After that will get into SS2, if it has an enhanced version that my sys can handle I'll jump on it.

Best RTS ever made, Rise of Nations (Extended Edition) is at an incredible discount on the Steam Store right now.

robertmo wrote on 2020-04-04, 15:59:

bak = hmm + story 😀

There's quite some story.. but tbh it became increasingly opaque to me as the game progressed. Probably because I haven't read the novels?

Anyway, good, enjoyable game. A bit too easy, and I'm far from a hardcore CRPG-guy!

Lords of the Realm 2, on my 98se machine.

Guess.

Uhhh... Druid. That's what the png file says. 🤣 (and yes, I bought that game when it came out)

liqmat wrote on 2020-04-09, 16:48:

Uhhh... Druid. That's what the png file says. 🤣 (and yes, I bought that game when it came out)

Doh! 🤣

Well, I was playing through Faith and very rapidly finished it and its Chapter II.

It'll be interesting to see the completed third chapter when AirDorf finishes developing it.

I've been getting some mileage out of Everspace, since I'm on a bit of a space game kick & was looking for stuff to play with my HOTAS setup. It's a grind-y "roguelike", meaning that you're expected to spend countless hours doing the same thing over and over again to "get gud", and unlocking the upgrades so you can FINALLY progress through the story is miserably slow. That annoys me, but once you're actually in game it plays well and is pretty fun. Fortunately there's a known exploit that lets you duplicate your in-game money over and over again so you BETTER believe I'm gonna use that. It takes a bit of work to set up though.

So with that ho-hum review, why am I playing this? Well, look at it:

Holy shit.

Holy FUCKING shit.

Yeah, that's why. (Those are my screenshots from the in-game photo mode, not promo shots. It adds the logo automatically but you can turn that off.)

The music & atmosphere are pretty awesome too, and suit the visuals well. Going through the story is interesting, but I wish it would dispense with it more freely instead of making you grovel for it.

Unfortunately, the joystick support is a bit of an afterthought - it's one of those games that aggressively tries to shoehorn you into using an Xbox 360 controller. You can map any device you want, but there's no defaults for anything else, and the movement curves were clearly made with a tiny, imprecise thumbstick in mind. I got it working decently enough with my real flightstick but it took a LOT of fiddling around.

Overall - a bit of a mixed bag. Definitely worth playing for the atmosphere & environments, but it's trying to demand a hundred hours of grinding out of me that I'm just not going to give it. If you're interested in this, pick it up when it goes on sale or free, which is how I got it.

xjas wrote on 2020-04-11, 06:51:

I've been getting some mileage out of Everspace, since I'm on a bit of a space game kick & was looking for stuff to play with my […]
Show full quote

I've been getting some mileage out of Everspace, since I'm on a bit of a space game kick & was looking for stuff to play with my HOTAS setup. It's a grind-y "roguelike", meaning that you're expected to spend countless hours doing the same thing over and over again to "get gud", and unlocking the upgrades so you can FINALLY progress through the story is miserably slow. That annoys me, but once you're actually in game it plays well and is pretty fun. Fortunately there's a known exploit that lets you duplicate your in-game money over and over again so you BETTER believe I'm gonna use that. It takes a bit of work to set up though.

The music & atmosphere are pretty awesome too, and suit the visuals well. Going through the story is interesting, but I wish it would dispense with it more freely instead of making you grovel for it.

Unfortunately, the joystick support is a bit of an afterthought - it's one of those games that aggressively tries to shoehorn you into using an Xbox 360 controller. You can map any device you want, but there's no defaults for anything else, and the movement curves were clearly made with a tiny, imprecise thumbstick in mind. I got it working decently enough with my real flightstick but it took a LOT of fiddling around.

Overall - a bit of a mixed bag. Definitely worth playing for the atmosphere & environments, but it's trying to demand a hundred hours of grinding out of me that I'm just not going to give it. If you're interested in this, pick it up when it goes on sale or free, which is how I got it.

Thanks for your feedback on this game. I just went to GOG and looked it up. Lo and behold, I already own it! I must've gotten it for free awhile back. So what is the gameplay like? Does it compare to WC Privateer?

I've been playing Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. This is the first game I've played that can actually take advantage of the GTX 1650 Super I got back in January. It's nice playing a modern game on Ultra details! Plus, it's as good as every other Wolfenstein I've played. Easily my favorite FPS series of all time. Very heavy on the cutscenes and exploration, which is actually my preference. And they added a manual save feature, so I don't have to make it to the next check point before quitting! That comes in real handy as my gaming time is more sporadic and random lately. I really take my time on the sub homebase sequences. I love walking around and listening to the NPC conversations and doing all the optional side quests (like getting potatoes from the kitchen and feeding the pig). I could easily see taking 30+ hours on this game because of that. The actual combat levels are not that time-consuming, but for me, it works out well. I can only take so much intense FPS combat before stress kicks in and makes me take a break, so interspersing the combat sections with the cutscenes and exploratory sections is perfect for me.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-04-11, 14:13:

Thanks for your feedback on this game. I just went to GOG and looked it up. Lo and behold, I already own it! I must've gotten it for free awhile back. So what is the gameplay like? Does it compare to WC Privateer?

I don't really remember how Privateer plays, but in terms of movement/dogfighting/physics Everspace is pretty arcadey. The ship control reminds me more of Descent than anything else - you can strafe up/down/left/right and even trichord, and the throttle acts as a speed slider rather than thrust. The game handwaves this by saying you have 'inertial dampers', which can get damaged in combat, making it behave more newtonian.

You progress in the game by flying from solar system to solar system - aside from ones with specific plot stuff scripted to happen, the systems are procedurally generated, so the standard progression goes "jump into an area -> fight off all the enemies -> fly around looking for loot -> jump out before the big baddies catch up." But even that basic formula is done well enough & it's always fun to find story areas that break that mold. If you got it for free it's definitely worth giving a try!

I'm having a little bromance with a game I haven't played in forever - Divinity 2: Ego Draconis. It's all about fun this one - lite on RPG and heavy on loot gathering and action, with a decent story and fantastic writing + voice acting. The controls are great and the battles are fast paced and satisfying. There's a constant stream of new gear and abilities to keep it interesting so it gets quite addictive - "I'll just see what's around this corner", repeat. It's 'open world' but the areas aren't huge, in saying that there are no invisible walls and lots of hidden stuff tucked away. You can swim and you don't take damage from falls - there's much verticality to the world and you're a leaping Dragon Slayer / Knight (it's complicated), so getting around is lots of fun; jumping off cliffs and high towers. You can fast travel, explore underground caves, save any time - so much to like.

The engine is a bit of a stinker and does this weird thing where some of the scene will only render at 30fps - I don't understand it despite scouring the interwebs. The end result is that it feels a bit choppy no matter what you do - my screen tells me that it's running at 100hz+, but it doesn't feel like it. I was able to force AA on via Nvidia Inspector and it looks pretty great at max settings, so I've managed to look past the strange FPS situation because the rest of the game is so great.

I just played through Pajama Sams 1-3 a few days ago out of curiosity. Even as an adult and having never grown up with any Humongous Entertainment games as a kid, I still got some genuine enjoyment out of them. The first one is the best, though. Makes me wish I did have childhood experience with them, but oh well.

Every ANZAC day for about 10 years me and a few mates had our "memorial ANZAC long weekend lan" mostly C&C 1,2 and RA 1,2
After moving to the UK I tried to at least have a skirmish game on ANZAC day.
This year did something bit different and finally finished the Aftermath expansion missions, only taken 21 years!

I'm about ready to jump into Wizardry 8 after finishing Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. I've got my Wiz7 party all transferred over to finish off the trilogy. Since I haven't started yet, I'm still toying with the idea of taking a detour in another RPG, maybe Avernum: Escape from the Pit or Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. I like jumping back and forth between RPGs and FPS...sinking 25 hrs into Wolf 2 was just what I needed to take the barnacles off from the 200 hrs it took me to beat Wiz7. I can only handle so much FPS (I get anxiety from running and gunning and much prefer stealthy FPS games), so playing one in between long, satisfying RPGs is a perfect change-of-pace for me.

I'm playing Tomb Raider using ATI CIF API on my ATI Rage Pro Turbo videocard and works very smooth, even in 800x600 game is completely playable and I'm now at collosseum level. And Fraps can show his frame counter there, strange.

Quake2 with real redbook CD audio. Quake1 gets a lot of recognition for it's soundtrack (deservedly), I think Q2's is pretty good in it's own right.

Playing Alien River - an addictive 13kb DOS game. Can even attach it, it's freeware.

Counter Strike 1.6, I just ported it to my Mac thanks to WINE and now been training with bots because I haven’t played it for almost 20 years