What are you currently playing?

[Silvanus]

Did you finish that last level after the credits that's pretty much as long as the rest of the game combined and 5x as difficult? I think it was chapter 9. I stopped about halfway through that one after 3 or 4 hours, and haven't been able to bring myself to go back to that and learn all the glitchy exploit moves required to make progress.

I'm only on chapter 6 atm-- just finished the Mirror Palace.

Is chapter 9 the one that requires crystal hearts (or something) to unlock? Think I read something about that being a requirement somewhere.

 

[meiam]

So after the Eye of the Storm campaign in Total Warhammer 2 spawned three ultra-beefy chaos armies right at my doorstep to absolutely rail my ass, which I had no reasonable way to prepare for, I decided to ditch that shit and try out the Mortal Empires campaign with the Beastmen. And hooooly moley is it a whole load more enjoyable. There was definitely a learning curve since the Beastmen playstyle is so different, but once I got into grips with it I've been whittling the ours away like it's nothing. The Beastmen have a very engaging, active playstyle that constantly pushes you forward, because pretty much the only way to accrue currency reliably is to raid foreign provinces. But that won't last forever either, so you're pretty much constantly on the move, raiding provinces and leaving them desolate in your wake. It really captures the feeling of a roving, rampaging barbaric horde. It's really fun.

But good god, I do not understand how I'm supposed to do the real-time battles. I've been using auto-resolve pretty much exclusively, because how the fuck am I expected to handle these fights? It is the single most overwhelming thing I've ever seen in at least any strategy game I've played. The units are so teeny tiny that there's essentially no way to tell them apart from size, and even that's a slim help. A lot of the time they just fade into the background completely and I'm left staring at a whole load of murky nonsense. The minimap is shit and too small, there's close to no feedback on who's getting attacked and where and how hard, high-level heroes have so many abilities that it's like playing Diablo on top of an insanely overwhelming RTS. The banner icons are no help either, because units often get broken up and mush into each other, so the icons swifly disappear beneath each other. Some units benefit from having them charge, disengage and charge again which is a whole lot of micromanagement with armies as vast as these. And all of this just makes me sad, because there's so much care and attention put into the animation and detail of these units. But I can never look at it for more than a few seconds before I'm back to managing other units. Sad, man.

You can control time in battle, good idea to set it to slower than real time and use the pause feature a lot.

Never really played beastman so I can't really comment on them, but the most basic strategy in total war is hammer and anvil, leave a line of infantry, let the other side crash into it, then smash into it's behind with cavalry. Cavalry need a bit of a run to be considered charging so give them space, let them crash into their target, then have them retreat so they can charge again. Cavalry does require a lot of micro, but the rest of your army should essentially require 0 time, so you can just focus on controlling them. Your goal isn't to kill every unit, its to break the units moral, which greatly decrease when charged from behind. But if you really don't want to use cavalry, there's plenty of army that don't rely on them (Skaven and dwarf for example), instead they focus more on...

The other important aspect to learn about is long range dictate the pace of the battle, if you have a long range artillery piece, you can sit back and the enemy will have to charge you, in that case don't even move, let them come to you, especially if you have a lot of archer. If you have to charge them, try to use forest to protect your unit from range fire. If you don't have artillery, you can use mage character instead.

If you need to tell unit apart, mouse over them to have an arrow show what individual unit (called "entity" in game) is part of what unit. If you need bigger minimap, you can zoom out to have a bird eye view of the fight. Don't worry too much about ability, start early game and most hero have 2 at most with long cooldown so you'll use them maybe twice in an average fight, and almost all boil down to either buffing your character or attacking the enemy like a magic. You can rotate the map to see icon better if you have a hard time seeing them. Fight looks complicated, but they're far simpler than RTS since they require very little micro management and you can always pause to queue a bunch of order.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

But good god, I do not understand how I'm supposed to do the real-time battles. I've been using auto-resolve pretty much exclusively, because how the fuck am I expected to handle these fights? It is the single most overwhelming thing I've ever seen in at least any strategy game I've played. The units are so teeny tiny that there's essentially no way to tell them apart from size, and even that's a slim help. A lot of the time they just fade into the background completely and I'm left staring at a whole load of murky nonsense. The minimap is shit and too small, there's close to no feedback on who's getting attacked and where and how hard, high-level heroes have so many abilities that it's like playing Diablo on top of an insanely overwhelming RTS. The banner icons are no help either, because units often get broken up and mush into each other, so the icons swifly disappear beneath each other. Some units benefit from having them charge, disengage and charge again which is a whole lot of micromanagement with armies as vast as these. And all of this just makes me sad, because there's so much care and attention put into the animation and detail of these units. But I can never look at it for more than a few seconds before I'm back to managing other units. Sad, man.

I ended up getting the game for myself as an intro to real-time strategy warfare after watching a YouTuber make the mechanics look easy, and I slammed into many of the same problems myself. It didn't help that units seemed to take my commands as gentle suggestions.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I'm only on chapter 6 atm-- just finished the Mirror Palace.

Is chapter 9 the one that requires crystal hearts (or something) to unlock? Think I read something about that being a requirement somewhere.

Oh, huh, for some reason I misread your post as saying you had finished the game. As for your question, ummm, maybe? It's been a couple years so I don't really remember. I think I was getting all the berries and hearts as I went so I didn't get blocked by anything myself. Looking it up the wiki does say that crystal hearts are required.

 

[gorfias]

I remember liking the campaign in Medal of Honor 2010 well enough when I originally played it, but on trying to play it a second time a few years after, I couldn't even get past the 2nd level, it was so dull and played so much worse then I remembered and just, blegh. Every now and then I'll get the urge for CoD and replay the campaigns in a bunch of those games (I really should do that again since I've wanted to replay Infinity anyway), but MOH... just super weak compared to even the worst of CoD... well mainline cod anyway.

Oy my pile of shame. Infinite is one of my 1st Gen 8 games and I got distracted by another shiny object and didn't get further into it! On my radar to get back to!

 

[gorfias]

Argh. Sometimes try to post youtube vids only to get previously posted vids.

 

[BrawlMan]

I did another run of Double Dragon Gaiden with nearly all of the difficulty settings pushed to the max. The revive cost I set to default, because fuck that shit! Did a complete Lee Brothers run and managed to only use 4 continues when on the stage for the 5th and final boss. Still an unfair son of a dick, but I am more familiar with how he ticks now. The tokens are now useless, because I unlocked everything now.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Started Fear & Hunger, not really sure if I'm going to continue. Started on the second difficulty, after a couple of hours I'm restarting on the lowest, though I'm not entirely how much of a the difference is. The main problem is that pretty much every enemy encounter inflicts debilitating, potentially game ending status effects that need to be cured with limited and randomly acquired items. Health is easy to lose and difficult to recover as well, so you really want to avoid combat as much as possible, and that kind of turns the game into a stealth 'em up with bad controls. You don't gain XP from fights so there doesn't seem to be a lot of benefit from combat either. I get that horror game developers these days seem to think it's more scary to run away from a monster than fight it, but disincentivising half your gameplay kind of sucks. Probably suffering more than necessary because I'm trying to keep the girl alive, should probably just feed her to something and save myself restoratives, but I don't want to.

The game also has probably the worst save system I've ever seen. When you go to save you flip a coin, and if you lose you don't save and potentially get a game over. Yes, this is a game that gives you a 50/50 chance of death when you try to save. Yeah, I know you can increase the odds a bit through a very limited resource, but it's still insane. Like, if you don't want me to save, just build your game around permadeath, don't just make saving be a chance to instantly lose progress, what's even the point? That only makes it necessary to save more so you don't lose too much progress attempting to save it. And then if messes up your plans because you probably will get completely different items due to the random spawns.

One more nitpick, diagonal hallways look very nice, but if your game has four directional control they make it seem so incredibly jank and awkward to control.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

So after the Eye of the Storm campaign in Total Warhammer 2 spawned three ultra-beefy chaos armies right at my doorstep to absolutely rail my ass, which I had no reasonable way to prepare for, I decided to ditch that shit and try out the Mortal Empires campaign with the Beastmen. And hooooly moley is it a whole load more enjoyable. There was definitely a learning curve since the Beastmen playstyle is so different, but once I got into grips with it I've been whittling the ours away like it's nothing. The Beastmen have a very engaging, active playstyle that constantly pushes you forward, because pretty much the only way to accrue currency reliably is to raid foreign provinces. But that won't last forever either, so you're pretty much constantly on the move, raiding provinces and leaving them desolate in your wake. It really captures the feeling of a roving, rampaging barbaric horde. It's really fun.

But good god, I do not understand how I'm supposed to do the real-time battles. I've been using auto-resolve pretty much exclusively, because how the fuck am I expected to handle these fights? It is the single most overwhelming thing I've ever seen in at least any strategy game I've played. The units are so teeny tiny that there's essentially no way to tell them apart from size, and even that's a slim help. A lot of the time they just fade into the background completely and I'm left staring at a whole load of murky nonsense. The minimap is shit and too small, there's close to no feedback on who's getting attacked and where and how hard, high-level heroes have so many abilities that it's like playing Diablo on top of an insanely overwhelming RTS. The banner icons are no help either, because units often get broken up and mush into each other, so the icons swifly disappear beneath each other. Some units benefit from having them charge, disengage and charge again which is a whole lot of micromanagement with armies as vast as these. And all of this just makes me sad, because there's so much care and attention put into the animation and detail of these units. But I can never look at it for more than a few seconds before I'm back to managing other units. Sad, man.

Mortal Empires is the only way to play. Campaigns have never been great

There is a pause button for the real-time battles, unless you're some kind of maniac and play on legendary difficulty. IIRC there's a half time mode or something similar too, as well as high speed mode

Edit. Looks like Meiam already said this much better than me. Late to the party as usual

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I just heard Everspace 2 is out for consoles (I'm only playing on PS5 these days). This game looks pretty freaking rad! I think I'm gonna buy it and start it this weekend.

 

[meiam]

I just heard Everspace 2 is out for consoles (I'm only playing on PS5 these days). This game looks pretty freaking rad! I think I'm gonna buy it and start it this weekend.

It's okay, its like assasin creed (origin/odyssey) in space in the sense that its an open world with region marked, where you go and fight the same couple of enemy to collect color coded loot and level up on a treadmill forever. The various ship you can get aren't really that different, they're all WW1 front mounted machine gun, and most weapon are just a slight variation of machine gun.

Actually its pretty similar to another ubisoft game called starlink battle for atlas, just with a more boring combat system and no ground/planet.

 

[Worgen]

It's okay, its like assasin creed (origin/odyssey) in space in the sense that its an open world with region marked, where you go and fight the same couple of enemy to collect color coded loot and level up on a treadmill forever. The various ship you can get aren't really that different, they're all WW1 front mounted machine gun, and most weapon are just a slight variation of machine gun.

Actually its pretty similar to another ubisoft game called starlink battle for atlas, just with a more boring combat system and no ground/planet.

That's not even an accurate description of Everspace 1. Ignoring the fact that the first game was a roguelike and the second is open space.

 

[meiam]

That's not even an accurate description of Everspace 1. Ignoring the fact that the first game was a roguelike and the second is open space.

Why would it be an accurate description of everspace 1?

 

[Worgen]

Why would it be an accurate description of everspace 1?

Because its not an accurate description of 2.

 

[BrawlMan]

No More Heroes III (PS5) - It's going to be hard playing the Switch version again, other than replaying boss mode. The game runs so much smoother in and out of combat, and not just combat. There's some graphical detail improvements, and load times are so much quicker!

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I went ahead and bought Everscape 2. Only played the intro. I'm not gonna formulate an opinion until I get used to the controls which are very counter-intuitive to me because I normally play games where I'm a person walking around not piloting a ship with thrusters. So I was instinctively pushing the left joystick up to go forward which, when piloting a spaceship here, just makes it float up lol.
This is major reason I don't play multiple games at once- I gotta not be thinking about "which button do I press to move" to have a good time.

But what I do like- and probably the reason the trailer appealed to me- is that everything looks clear. It's pretty, but practical. So many games try to so hard to be realistic or gritty that it's like all brown or grey. Or they go the other way and it's particle effects and contrasting colors all over the place. I revel in the few games that are just... I dunno, normal looking or something.

 

[laggyteabag]

Played some Medal of Honor (2010) on PC. Only getting 60 FPS. Locked somehow?
COD: MW2 (2009) is my all time favorite combat FPS. It got very high ratings. Battlefield 3 (2011) came after, got better scores than MoH but I don't like it as much. The campaign anyway and maybe that is what makes all the difference. Because the campaign in MoH is very fun and playable and looks better than BF3. Not as good as COD:MW2 though. And I haven't played Warfighter much on PS3. Gotta give that some more attention.

Super linear corridor shooters are kind of my guilty pleasure. Just super hand-holdy spectacle. Watch something blow up, shoot some bad guys, and the whole thing is over in about 6 hours or less.

They're basically the perfect palette cleanser.

 

[gorfias]

Pretty fun VR game but I had to stand while playing. For an old guy like me, that's a big no-no.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Pretty fun VR game but I had to stand while playing. For an old guy like me, that's a big no-no.

Gotta be careful not to get too much exercise.

 

[BrawlMan]

Since my trophies don't transfer over to the PS5 version of Final Vendetta, I have to unlock them again. The same applies to the save file as well. The only good thing is I still have the Platinum Trophy for the PS4 version. Most of the trophies are easy to get, but I am not doing the Ultra 1CC Run again. I can still play the PS4 version whenever I want, and my save data for it still works.

I did some Dead Space Remake NG+ again on Wednesday night, and will try tackling the rest of the side quests during the middle of chapter 8.

Double Dragon Gaiden again, and tried one of the boss characters, Lady Okada, with Uncle Matin this time. I've heard players complain that's she too slow, attack wise. While that is true, she's not that slow, and you can't use her hap hazardly and button mash. Her attacks do have wind up, but the reach and range is long and strong. I guess players were expecting as speed sword/melee weapon character. Linda already fulfills that role with a rapid hitting weapon, but even certain special moves, still have wind ups.

Crazy exploit happened in my True Ending Run where I got all of the 4 bosses caught in a stun loop and managed it with using Okada's 3rd Super Special, and mixing it up with her basic attacks and finished up with her Shoryuken Special, getting a Special KO on all of them. So Okada kicked the ass of the other 3 gang leaders and herself? I've gone cross eyed.