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Zombie Army 4 came out today on Game pass, and I am pleasantly surprised. I am a HUGE fan of Sniper Elite, particularly parts 3 and 4. Zombie Army is an off-shoot of this series, but only in the most superficial of ways. I have played a couple of the early entries, and they really sucked, in my opinion. Perhaps I was wrong to expect Sniper Elite gameplay pasted into a zombie game, but that seemed to be what they were hinting at and not delivering.
Part 4 is still no Sniper Elite. But it is fun. I imagine it's much better in co-op but haven't gotten to try that yet. I don't really *do* multiplayer on xbox much.
I keep yo-yoing back and forth on Red Dead Redemption 2. I think I've settled into the opinion that it's a masterpiece of open world design from an artistic perspective hamstrung by its writing, some of its characters, and its ideas. Which means it's still a pretty ok game but that the missions and perspective are often just insufferable Rockstar "nobody and nothing are good see haha" late-1990s South Park cynicism. I'm reminded of the South Park episode making fun of Al Gore for being so strident in his concerns about global warming. Haha, whoops, he was right, the world is melting down and it turns out some things *are* better than others.
Fights in Tight Places (Steam beta release) is absolutely brilliant.
Its basically a hand management game (move left, strike, back flip, move, block) but really well done.
I sunk 100 hours into it and I'm still learning the nuances of grapple cards, kick cards and intimidate cards. Go get it. Super addictive though.
Keeper RL is absolutely the best game in the genre of dungeon keepers. Super deep with no hi res graphics to speak of. Feels a bit like Dwarf Fortress but more approachable and better graphics.
Succubi are currently shagging all my fighters (when they're asleep) in order to get pregnant and have powerful monster babies, as an example of the crazy shit that happens. Also have an insane werewolf called Ronald who keeps losing his shit in battles etc etc and occasionally attacking randos in my own dungeon. Eventually had to lock him up for his own good.
Each individual guy is controllable in a battle and they all have special abilities etc and need kitting out. So, a fair bit of min maxing is needed. It's also rogue like (hence RL in the name).
So its basically a tactical version of Dwarf Fortress with a killer AI.
Super fun and also very addictive.
Master of Magic (Steam beta), the old 90s much loved 4x game, has been released, included are 270 pages of bug fixes and balancing under the title Caster of Magic for Windows (all included in the Steam package).
This is a very deep 4x Wizard v Wizards game across a random map with armies, buildings, research and big honking spells !
Well worth looking into. Graphics are, of course, dated but will be the last thing updated (as well as the clunky UI) while remaining balance issues are fixed.
The pathetic Stardock bought the rights in 2000 odd and did nothing with it. Slitherine bought from them in 2015 and have been working hard since then to update.
Combat calculations are transparent and hence tactics can be planned accordingly.
This is a great game and pretty cheap at the moment maybe $7 or so (maybe cheaper for other countries in line with Steam's country specific pricing mode)
Go get it and try this deep game with really good associated documentation.
ThirstyMan wrote:
Succubi are currently shagging all my fighters (when they're asleep) in order to get pregnant and have powerful monster babies, as an example of the crazy shit that happens.
Being shagged in my sleep by a succubus in order to breed a ragnarok monster is pretty much my end goal in life so I am ABSOLUTELY gonna get this one.
Also, I lost maybe a year of my youth to Master of Magic, I can't touch a re-release with a 10 foot pole lest it happen again and I end up divorced and living on the streets!
I started Ni No Kuni 2, since it was on sale for like $8 on psn. It's been a long while since I've played a jrpg, and this one seems fine. I 100%d the first NNK and really enjoyed it, but this one seems to have jettisoned almost everything gameplay wise from the first game. The combat is a super simple real time button mashing action affair, which is fine? It doesn't seem worth the time to load into a fight from the overworld so far, because you just hammer attack and everything dies in like 4 seconds. I'm only 4-5hrs hours in, so I'm still definitely in the training wheels section of the game, so we'll see. They patched in difficulty levels though so if it doesn't get more interesting I'll try bumping it up eventually. The style and writing and stuff is all cute and enjoyable, though not up to the level of the ghibli assisted first game. I wish they had gone fully FF12 and ditched the chibi overworld that you have to just into fights from. The dungeons have all the enemies wandering the map and fights happen right there, and I think the overworld would have been much better served that way. Basically it seems like a totally fine modern jrpg so far, though 4-5hrs in it's hard to say much beyond that.
Finished red dead redemption 2. Enjoyed it but it slots in somewhere around pretty good. I have a billion thoughts on the game but I need to sit with them a bit.
Started Control, which is absolutely incredible so far. It also does ray tracing which blew me away with how cool it is in person.
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Hades. Picked it up after reading on it earlier in the thread. Over the past 2 months I have attempted escape maybe 60 times. Successful clears maybe 10 to 12. Punishment pact level 3 (verge of 4). A person is now standing near the dog.
Usually I am done with a game at this point. I cannot stop. Once the kids are in bed, if I spy my wife settling into her Facebook veg session, it’s time for another run. I am getting the same experience as when I would play the same pinball machine between study sessions in college (Red and Ted’s Roadshow). At this point, if there was a Hades arcade cabinet I could buy, I might just do it. Fantastic game.
Started playing Subnautica of xboxlive. LTTP on this one but for an aquatic survival game that is basically Swiss Family Robinson (or maybe Robinson Crusoe since you are alone) on an alien world that has you scuba diving around, scavenging parts of your wrecked ship, rebuilding technology, and exploring the wild seas it has been pretty fun. The initial learning curve is STEEP, though maybe it is all routine for this genre, I don't play these types of games often. But once I got some upgrades, figured out the flow, and learned to gather resources quickly and efficiently to keep the ever present starvation/dehydration counters full, it is a very chill game to just swim around and see what's going on as most of the fish AI have little lives of their own. As an avid scuba diver, it captures that feeling of seeing the surface waaaaaaaaay up there and wondering if you can make it as the air runs out really well.
Contemplating running through Witcher 3 again or just skipping to the expansions, which I have not played. Reading the books and anticipation of Season 2 of the show is whetting my appetite for all things Geralt. Alas, W3 isn't a game I can play with my kids around, unlike Subnautica which has my 4 year old constantly getting me cups of water and snacks because I'm always moaning about being hungry/thirsty
Gary Sax wrote: I get that it's what they're going for... but giving you NO guidance initially, I don't feel like that's great design in Subnautica.
For sure. I think I played for 7+ hours, getting the little mini-sub thingy and building out my first hab before I realized that radio box icon was telling me to listen to the pod/hab radio for MISSIONS that would send me to places that had most of the stuff I was accidentially finding. I'm now waiting for it to send me to places I've already found just in case there are events there only activated by that radio message.
The draw distance is a bit short for what I'd expect for an xbox X but damned if that initial dive down into the depths an awe inspiring feeling.
So the truth about Returnal is that yes it is $70, no there is no auto save and maybe it is the first great game of this generation.
It’s a really unusual thing- it plays like an indie rogue like, the kind we’ve seen a billion of over the past five or six years, but it has sky high production values and somehow manages to feel something like a Platinum game without the arcadey combos. It’s like a 3rd person bullet hell game, which is pretty wild. The monster attacks are all danmaku style patterns of bullets and lasers. There’s more than a little Metroid Prime in it, and the environment could be a Metroid planet for sure.
It’s creepy but not really scary...I’ve been thrilled every time I walk into an area and there’s a crazy tentacle wolf thing rushing through the grass. The loot is interesting, there are debuffing parasites and malignant objects as well as more friendly pickups. The weapons are interesting and have multiple alt-fires.
So far so good, maybe 10 runs in and just for to the first boss, which was a nail biting loss. Definitely has a cool Mothership-y sci fi horror vibe and the soundtrack is -amazing-.
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