Fallout 4
After completing Fallout 3 and putting some serious hours into New Vegas, I decided to put NV aside for a rainy day (I really like it, and would prefer to save it for last as sort of the "true Fallout 3") and instead resume my year+ old save in Fallout 4. However, I was actually stunned to find that this game is pretty fun. The story is perhaps even worse than Fallout 3 (the dialog definitely is worse), but as an exploration looter shooter it's far superior. The world is a lot of fun to explore, and all of the little "dungeons" and what have you feel a bit more memorable and unique than the many copy-and-paste areas of Fallout 3.

Having said all that, this game also kind of sucks.

The new dialog interface is unbelievably bad, with your response choices so terse that it's often impossible to figure out what you are trying to say. You also run into a lot of situations where every response is basically the same thing just said differently, and it's extremely annoying how skipping dialog forces you to hear your main character say "uh huh" "yep" "okay". Finally, giving the main character a voice was a huge mistake, and it's made even worse by the fact that the voice actor is horrible.

Quests are so dumb now that you are basically just following a quest marker for most of the game. They didn't even bother to write the quests so that they make sense. During one quest you have to find out who's been stealing supplies, and at one point your next step is to "find evidence." You have no leads, aren't given any information, and have an entire open world to search... but luckily your PIP BOY points you right at the footlocker containing the evidence you need. My problem is not so much with the quest marker (it's just how games are made now), but at least write the quest so that you're given enough information to find it on your own, with the quest marker serving just as a reminder or something. All it would take is for the guy giving you the mission to ask you to chat with people to get some leads, then have the first person you talk to say, "Oh I saw Lucia acting suspicious and putting something in her footlocker last night." It's a tiny thing, but it would go a long way toward making the game feel a bit more like you're solving a game and less like you're an Amazon driver delivering packages.

The game really wants you to get into the crafting and base building, which to me feels like Bethesda just jumping on a bandwagon, but it's fine because you can completely ignore it all. It's only annoying because 99% of what you find in containers is crafting trash, which makes exploration feel a bit useless.

That's a lot of complaining up there, but much like Skyrim, something about Fallout 4 just works, and you can (usually) overlook all the dumb stuff and enjoy looting and shooting in the open world.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-22, 16:53:

Fallout 4

I couldn't tolerate Fallout 4. Never finished and never felt like getting back to it. I liked the new power armor and deathclaw designs, but that's about it.

Fallout 4 to me felt like a decent open world first person shooter, but a very dull RPG. I did enjoy messing around with mods for it, although Bethesda made this harder than their previous games initially. Their efforts with this game (and the little I've seen of Starfield) make me very pessimistic about the next Elder Scrolls game, if it ever appears.

Got though three more levels in Mirror's Edge. Can't say that I'm having such a good time anymore, as the combat has gotten way too hectic, and the maps have become overly maze like for my taste. The warehouse level which I just completed (Chapter 6) was particularly guilty of both, and it also had some of the most annoying platforming segments so far.

I think I've gotten slightly better at the gameplay, but I'm not sure if that will be enough to carry me through the rest of the levels. Once you get a feel for the rhythm, Faith's movement becomes very smooth, and she can just zip past obstacles and enemies at full speed. But every now and then, there's an unintuitive platforming section, where you're bound to fail a few times until you figure out what exactly needs to be done, and how to time your moves perfectly. Failure means restarting from the last checkpoint, which can get overly repetitive, especially if it sets you back more than a few minutes of gameplay.

On the plus side, the graphics in this game are amazing, especially if you consider when it came out. I think Mirror's Edge uses some sort of baked-in global illumination, which almost makes it feel like you're playing a modern game with ray tracing. Coupled with the art style that the game uses, this looks simply phenomenal. The music is also superb, with lots of chill ambient tracks that play during the quieter moments, and some faster paced bangers which pop up during combat. Great stuff.

I've been playing Drova - Forsaken Kin, which is an isometric 2D pixel art open world RPG. Every second review claims that it's "2D Gothic", which is dubious but got my attention. The pixel art thing rings alarm bells for me too but I'm enjoying it so far. There's a day/night cycle, crafting, rewarding exploration, fishing, mining, lock picking, cooking, and factions. It's a reasonably dark setting and the story is interesting enough, but the dialog is pretty tame.

Combat is real-time and a little bit too twitchy for this old adventurer. It's reasonably tactical though, with ranged or sword + shield, timed abilities, and the option to use traps, etc. But once you have more than 1 enemy to deal with it can get a little bit button mashy. Enemies are initially quite hard and I've been dying a lot, so that's a bit Gothic I suppose.

Keyboard and mouse work well but I prefer a controller these days for ergonomic reasons, and it's well supported here. It's also a highly configurable game which is always much appreciated - there's no voice acting for example, the NPCs just say "Hmm", "Umm", etc like in Stardew Valley, but this can be turned off thankfully. If you don't like the mining mini game (I do) then this can be turned off, and most of the controls can be remapped which is nice.

The quests are quite simplistic and I'm finding it hard to shake the feeling that I'm playing "Stardew Valley the RPG", but I keep coming back to it so there's definitely something here. I do love exploring an open world and the leveling up has been satisfying. It's available from GOG too which is so nice - no launchers or BS, just load the game and you're playing within seconds.

Worth checking out if you're in the market for an old-school RPG that's been simplified and given a convenient, modern UI.

Modern: i'm playing a free gotcha game called Snowbreak. I never play games like this but it hooked me and I have over 100 hours in now..

Retro: I'm playing Maniac Mansion for the first time. I think that i screwed msyelf this playthrough and may need to start over.

Drakan Order of the Flame. Trying to finally beat this game as I bought it when it was new and never played past the first world...

Finished Mirror's Edge. The last three levels were interesting, to say the least. In some of them, you encounter new enemies who are almost as fast as Faith, and are nearly impossible to defeat in combat. Fortunately, you can outrun them if you're observant of their movements and mindful of your surroundings. Also, platforming in the penultimate mission felt a bit unintuitive to me. Specifically, I'm talking about the building with the atrium. A few times, I actually had to look up a video walkthrough to figure out how to perform some of the more difficult jumps. But I made it somehow, even with my rusty reflexes.

The final mission was much easier in comparison, except for the bit where you're jumping across rooftops while being targeted by multiple sniper enemies. This was nowhere near as hard as the atrium level, but retrying that section several times (until I got the timing right) did feel a bit repetitive. I didn't find the story particularly impressive, but that's not the main focus of this game, so I'll give it a pass. There was some cool PhysX stuff with steam and fog during the last level, but I didn't pay that much attention because I was rushing toward the finale. Fortunately, the game allows you to revisit all areas that you've completed at any time (including each checkpoint) so I might take another look at some point.

All in all, I enjoyed Mirror's Edge a fair bit, except for the combat, which wasn't really my cup of tea. But the superb visuals, excellent sound design and fun gameplay made up for that. In particular, once you get accustomed to the game's mechanics, performing complex parkour stunts at high speed feels absolutely exhilarating. One more thing to note, this game is pretty short, consisting of 9 levels (chapters) total. That's without the tutorial and the prologue, as they don't count as official chapters. But each of these levels has something unique to offer, so the game never feels dull.

BTW, don't do what I did and limit the FPS to 30 to get higher quality SGSSAA. It's not worth it, because you'll have a much smoother experience at 60 FPS. I mean, that's true for any game, but you can really appreciate the extra responsiveness in a platforming title like this. Also, the benefit from SGSSAA over the default 8xQ isn't that visible during fast movement, which is how you'll be spending most of your time.

P.S.

I'm pleased to say that I never felt any motion sickness while playing Mirror's Edge, whether it was at 30 or 60 FPS. And that's despite this being a first person platforming game with full body awareness, which usually gives me problems. From what I've read here, the developers tied the viewport mechanics to Faith's eyes, and not the movement of her head, which makes things feel much more natural. Kudos to them for doing this!

On Friday night 21/3/25 I played the following games on my Apple Imac G3:

1. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis floppy version (Wits path)
2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
3. Broken Sword
4. Doom II

Not one game, but a few - some casual browser games; puzzle, driving and so on

My reflection is that they often look better than they play but also that some of them are actually really accomplished - there are some sandbox and (online) open world games featuring driving and third person action which, while lacking depth, are still mechanically fun. Some of the driving games in particular look like something from early ps3 days. Underneath is suspect they are often the same game with different skins, maps and tweaks to physics though.

Still, for those who remember the early days, when a java applet was amazing and a javascript snippet that caused rollover effects were cool, these games would have seemed unimaginable

I kicked off a Dungeon Siege play through over the weekend. I hope to get some single player maps so I can play through veteran and elite modes which I've never done before.

Its just as much fun as I remember, had to hold myself back at Jeriah's Trading Post after about a 6 hour session or I would have just kept going!

Apart from the engine being a bit of a shambles, performance is just not what you'd expect for my little XP machine, not a buttery smoother 60 but certainly playable. It holds up well even 20 plus year later.

Over 20 years... I feel old.

Dan9550 wrote on 2025-03-25, 21:42:

I kicked off a Dungeon Siege play through over the weekend. I hope to get some single player maps so I can play through veteran […]
Show full quote

I kicked off a Dungeon Siege play through over the weekend. I hope to get some single player maps so I can play through veteran and elite modes which I've never done before.

Its just as much fun as I remember, had to hold myself back at Jeriah's Trading Post after about a 6 hour session or I would have just kept going!

Apart from the engine being a bit of a shambles, performance is just not what you'd expect for my little XP machine, not a buttery smoother 60 but certainly playable. It holds up well even 20 plus year later.

Over 20 years... I feel old.

Looks like an interesting game. I never got to play it back in the day. I might give it a go. What are the specs of your XP machine?

I dusted off Terminator: Salvation. There was a discussion about PhysX in the other thread. This game depends on PhysX, won't start without it. AGEIA is mentioned on copyrights screen.

These is this in context.xml file:

1<physics settings="\data\settings\physics_settings.xml" fps="60" physx_effects="hardware" multithreaded="true" />

But the referenced file doesn't exist. There was this demo:

Terminator Salvation PhysX Demo
NVIDIA DX Compute and Terminator Salvation PhysX Demo

There was supposed to be an expansion (with PhysX enabled) that never came. Those effects in the demo don't seem to be present. I wonder if it could be enabled by adding a secret XML config file.

Fallout 4
I've become pretty addicted to this game, even though I realize it's sort of trashy. It reminds me of Skyrim, of course, in that it seems complex and rich at first glance, but the more you play, the more you realize that there really is no depth to anything. The weird focus on crafting and settlement building would be an intriguing concept for a game taking place immediately after the apocalypse (a game like Fallout [1997], for instance), but makes no sense in a game taking place 210 years after that! Think of how much society advances over any 200+ year period (1815 to 2025, for example); it's completely bonkers that in the world of Fallout 4, people are still living in shacks built from salvaged parts. Meanwhile, there is also true AI, sentient robots, and gangs running around wielding laser rifles.

However, while it's a poor RPG (and poor Fallout game), it's a better looter shooter than any of the Far Cry or Borderlands games I've played. I normally hate crafting, but spent a couple hours last night running around gathering materials to upgrade all my weapons and apparel, and it felt sort of satisfying to max everything out. The world design is also much more interesting than Fallout 3, with some really memorable and unique areas. It also looks and runs pretty great, even on my years-old gaming laptop.

I just hit what I guess is the major twist...

... and I don't think there's really much left in the main story. I do plan on playing through the Far Harbor expansion, but I probably won't bother with all the other DLC (currently disabled in my game).

Took a break from Final Fantasy 7 Intergrade and played a "retro" game I picked up on the Steam Spring Sale, Astrolancer. It's a lot of fun, basically, a old school NES style shooter. I just love the fact people are still making games like this.

zuldan wrote on 2025-03-26, 08:27:

Dan9550 wrote on 2025-03-25, 21:42:

I kicked off a Dungeon Siege play through over the weekend. I hope to get some single player maps so I can play through veteran […]
Show full quote

I kicked off a Dungeon Siege play through over the weekend. I hope to get some single player maps so I can play through veteran and elite modes which I've never done before.

Its just as much fun as I remember, had to hold myself back at Jeriah's Trading Post after about a 6 hour session or I would have just kept going!

Apart from the engine being a bit of a shambles, performance is just not what you'd expect for my little XP machine, not a buttery smoother 60 but certainly playable. It holds up well even 20 plus year later.

Over 20 years... I feel old.

Looks like an interesting game. I never got to play it back in the day. I might give it a go. What are the specs of your XP machine?

I'm using one of these HP thin clients, the t620 Plus a nice space saver but the main weakness in my opinion is the single thread CPU performance its using an AMD SOC (GX-420CA).

Currently have that paired with a Radeon HD 7570, going to swap it out with a Quadro K1200 today and see how it compares, I don't expect much of a change for Dungeon Siege.

I did however find that pinning DS to a single CPU core helped with performance.

I'm still working on Doom 2016. I just got to the Kadingir Sanctum and my first attempt was a complete disaster. Looks like this will be the toughest level yet.

edit: it had been a couple of days since I played Doom 2016 and I obviously remembered wrong. Kadingir Santum has not been hard yet, it was the big boss style battle just prior at the end of the Argent Energy Tower level.

I also purchased Kingdom Come Deliverance II on GOG on Friday afternoon and downloaded the game installation files to store on my file server. I did install it and started tuning the graphics, but I'm not playing the game seriously yet. I got through the initial battle sequence (which was amazing!), and am at the part where several of us are riding on horseback to do some bartering with another city. I'm replaying that sequence while adjusting graphical settings.

A couple of initial impressions: the game looks astounding and plays very well on lower end hardware. I've got an i5-12600KF and an RTX 2080. I'm playing at 1080p. So far even when I set it to Ultra, it's staying around 60 fps or higher. Turn on DLSS Quality and it goes up to 80-100 fps.

I honestly teared up a moment when I first saw Mutt running along side me. "That's a good boy!"

clueless1 wrote on 2025-03-30, 11:23:

I also purchased Kingdom Come Deliverance II on GOG on Friday afternoon and downloaded the game installation files to store on my file server. I did install it and started tuning the graphics, but I'm not playing the game seriously yet. I got through the initial battle sequence (which was amazing!), and am at the part where several of us are riding on horseback to do some bartering with another city. I'm replaying that sequence while adjusting graphical settings.

I've always wished games would have some kind of quick test level you could use to tune out the settings, it's not great having to fine tune them in the first level especially if it's some kind of intense railroaded action scene that won't let you stop to do so. It's also not great if the volume is so high it blows your ears out and nothing in the volume settings gave you an idea how low/high they are.

And that's just how it's always been, but now we are also deep in ray tracing/upscaling/frame generation and who knows what crap. Soon you need to reserve a full day for Digital Foundry level of research just to get your settings right.

I honestly teared up a moment when I first saw Mutt running along side me. "That's a good boy!"

Suddenly I got a renewed urge to give the first KCD a try. It looks like something I might like, but the combat just hasn't seemed very fun to me.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-03-30, 11:55:

I honestly teared up a moment when I first saw Mutt running along side me. "That's a good boy!"

Suddenly I got a renewed urge to give the first KCD a try. It looks like something I might like, but the combat just hasn't seemed very fun to me.

I'm not big on real-time combat, but KCD did it so well. I've heard the sequel is even better. Probably the most satisfying combat moment in my gaming life was when I hit someone with my bow from about 30-50 yards in one shot. It felt like I hit a hole-in-one on a 130 yd par 3.

It's astounding how attached I become to Mutt, the canine companion. If you do give the first game a try, you don't start with Mutt. He's actually an optional side quest, that if you complete, he stays with you for the rest of the game and is pretty damn helpful.

clueless1 wrote on 2025-03-30, 12:02:

It's astounding how attached I become to Mutt, the canine companion. If you do give the first game a try, you don't start with Mutt. He's actually an optional side quest, that if you complete, he stays with you for the rest of the game and is pretty damn helpful.

Sold!

Fallout 4
I finished the game a few days ago, and while I enjoyed it overall, it's a pretty poor RPG and an even poorer Fallout game... but a much better game in nearly every way than the almost insultingly bad Fallout 3. The key to enjoying this game is to play it like an open world looter shooter. It's certainly a better one of those than any of the Far Cry or Borderlands games I've played, thanks to the world being much more interesting to explore, and having actual replayability due to factions and unique character builds.

But oh boy is the setting dumb. It simply makes no sense, perhaps even less than the nonsense of Fallout 3. 200 years after the war to end all wars, society has barely advanced beyond the level of Fallout (1997). Meanwhile, you have small factions with access to real AI, teleportation, and giant robots. Any nation with access to that stuff today would instantly conquer the world, but both the Brotherhood of Steel and The Institute are waiting around for you, the chosen one, to deliver some packages here and there or to go into some abandoned building and kill a dozen raiders to recover some tubes or something.

A dumb setting is really no big deal if the setup is interesting or the writing is good. Sadly, neither is the case here. The game tries to get you emotionally invested in the story by dropping a spouse and baby on you in the intro, only to take them both away 30 seconds later. Who cares? Finding your son is just yet another blip on your map to follow, and I was completely ignoring it just an hour or so into the game. When I finally found my son, the game gave me a bunch of weepy dialog options that made no sense whatsoever coming out of the mouth of the psycho I had been playing for the last 40 hours of the game.

I had intended to play through Far Harbor, but I mostly hated it. It starts out pretty cool with a mystery on a foggy island, but you quickly realize that fog is really all that the island has to offer. You run into the Children of the Atom, which is what happens when you take the goofy atom bomb worshippers from Megaton in Fallout 3, and create an entire faction and quest chain from them. At some point you you have to play a repetitive minigame combining block puzzles and tower defense all from a first-person perspective, and I decided that I was simply not interested in doing all this just to help out some throwaway NPC I was only helping in the first place so that I could get her quest off my list and earn some experience points so that I could kill monsters even more easily.

Even with those complaints, however, I mostly enjoyed playing through the game, and I'd certainly rank it above Fallout 3, though far below Fallout and what I've played of Fallout 2 and New Vegas. I'd even consider replaying the game as a different type of character (smart and charasmatic sharpshooter?) or maybe using the survival mode.