What Game(s) Did You Last Get and What Are You Playing?

[Melos]

League of Legends and ArenaScape today.

[Melos]

Can't wait for Assassin's Creed: Origins!

[Rainy_Day]

Bought Portal Knights today to include the Mrs in some gaming..

 

Currently playing Mafia III, it's terrible.

[Estonian dude]

Borderlands. Just due to the humble bundle.

 

And my laptop doesn't wanna handle it.

[Randox]

Rise of the Tomb Raider was on a good sale, so I picked that up. I enjoyed the first game a fair bit, and so far I'm liking the second one. That said, the increased focus on scavenging/crafting is an unwelcome one to me. It reminds me too much of equipment crafting in far cry 3/4. It's a chore.

 

This is also the first game I've gotten a chance to run in DX12. Performance gains aren't huge, but they're there. The post process AA really struggles, and the final solution has been to use virtual super resolution to mimic the in game SSAA (at x2 because that's all my RX 480 can really manage), and then set the game to use the SMAA filter. x4 SSAA would be better (I can't believe after all this time the computer industry has come full circle back to SSAA, or that the hardware is now powerful enough to use it), but this works (I went back and checked, and I can manage x4 SSAA in the 2013 Tomb Raider).

 

I've also ended up changing drivers a couple times because AMD loves to break things, and the trick is to find the islands of stable drivers in a sea of nonsense (the most recent island being 17.7.1, which I am now using).

[Noxx]

Played some Diablo 3 last night for the first time in a while. Didn't play that much last season just because the build i use didn't get much love, but since everything was buffed this season i thought i'd give it a go and see how things look now. Managed to clear a 97 (my previous highest was 95) with my Crusader, and still had about 2 and a half minutes left. Figured i'd just go balls deep and try a GR100. Managed to clear it easily with over 2 minutes left, and only 1 death (honeslty not even sure how that happened). The GRift itself was kinda shitty too. Not very favorable mob set. I figure with minimal amount of luck i can push to 105 quite easily. Might even be able to go to 110 if i am willing to farm a bit. I am low on Paragons though. Sitting at only 1370, i think i might have to grind a few Paragons in the near future before i start pushing for 110.

[Randox]

I finally decided to get Viscera Cleanup Detail. It's been on my radar for...I guess years now. I got Santa's Revenge a while back, and I decided to give it another spin the other day but it's too early. So despite never having even completed that little stand alone in at least 2 years of having owned it, I got the whole game instead, and it's pretty fun.

 

Or maybe that's the wrong way to put it. It's relaxing in the same way as any game with repetitive play can be, and finishing a level is immensely satisfying. So it's not fun in an excited to play way, and I find it can be rather overwhelming as you start out in a given level, but damn, when you drop 3+ hours getting a level clean, fixing the damage, and getting things organised...it feels good.

 

Plus I love doing the whole CSI thing at the start of the level (where you basically work out how everyone got killed for bonus points).

 

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but playing the game I feel like I'm less a cleaner in the janitorial sense and more in the criminal sense. That is, I'm pretty sure my services are being engaged to cover up these 'incidents' entirely. At least, I like to think that. Helps me take pride in doing a good job.

[super sweety]

Last game i bought was Need for Speed Payback

[Melos]

Played some ArenaScape today, and yesterday I was playing some Assassin's Creed: Origins under hard and getting my butt handed to me by the War Elephants lol -.-....

[Randox]

I've owned KOTOR 1 and 2 for a while now. Started on the first game a while back but got distracted by other things. One of my friends saw it in my library and told me I should give it another shot, but the first game crashed and I forgot the fix, so I started into the second game instead and it's fantastic (the first level is a bit long though). It's been a long time since I got hooked on a game this bad (the last games to do it were Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim. Games that hook you so bad you'd forgo sleeping and eating if you could).

 

On a side note, I've tried to get up to speed with some of the surrounding lore while trying to dodge spoilers, and god damn I'd forgotten just how stupid some of the EU lore is. I'm not a big fan of comic books stories, largely because the stories tend to keep escalating past the point where they devolved into absurd nonsense that no longer has much bearing on the original source material or ideas. See the endless clones of palpatine or the Sith Lord who led the Sith to Victory over the Republic, only to withdraw from public view so that he could found an entirely new empire to reconquer the finally victorious Sith Empire he was still Emperor of. Too much of the EU lore came from comics that did that. Plus you had to set your story like 6000 years before or 2000 years after the first movie if you wanted to make new lore that didn't tie into existing material.

[Estonian dude]

Completed AC: Syndicate and playing Watch Dogs 2. Quite fun. The zipline thing was better in Arkham games, but overall was impressed.

 

Watch Dogs 2 is quite good. A GTA clone, but the hacking system and specially the RC stuff is fun.

 

Currently trying to get into the LAN party with my mates back home. 6 of them playing in local LAN and me trying to enter with Tunngle or Hamachi... So far nothing has worked.

[Noxx]

Tried Wildlands PvP today. Shit was tough, but really fun. I can see myself getting into it easily. 

[Randox]

Now that I have a PC wheel I've decided to give iRacing a try.

 

It reminds me a bit of DCS World insofar as it doesn't baby you. I've stated with road racing, and for bonus points my first course is Charlotte, which seems to be a bit of a baptisim by fire kind of course. Seems like a good intro though. The course has a bit of everything, but nothing too complex, so it seems a good place to start. I always knew I liked to turn early in racing games; didn't realize just how early though (I'm turning in like 2 car lengths early, which often puts my exit trajectory in a field). Also getting used to over steer. It's kind of unnerving at first, but it also seems like it will be a massive amount of fun with practice.

 

I've entered 2 races so far. On the first one I got rear ended and wasn't able to finish. Not sure if it was my fault or not. I think it was mostly a case of the guy infront of me braked, and I braked in time, but the guy behind me didn't. The second race I got to be the one who went off the track in turn 4, over corrected, and got t-boned crossing the track sideways as I spun out. The damage to me was relatively minor and I was able to finish that race (last, of the people who didn't wreck out). Was like a minute out from my third race today when they decided to roll out a hotfix. A shame because I had just set my personal best time in qualifying on my second lap after binning it in the first. To be able to do that in qualifying when I'm mostly focused on staying in control (any mistake like going off the track voids your time) makes me happy. As of the posted results, I would have started in fourth (which likely would have put me ahead of any first lap crashes, assuming I wasn't the one who lost control). Ah well.

[Estonian dude]

Finished Watch Dogs 2. Surprisingly good game. Really worked. And I enjoyed the story, kinda too on the nose, but maybe not.

[Melos]

RuneScape and League of Legends, surprise surprise? lol

[darkace21]

Civ6 Rise and Fall expansion.

[Nabbagad]

Splatoon 2

[Boris5000]

I finally bought Rune Factory 4 after much uhming and ahhing. I normally have no interest in Harvest Moon-style games but this one sort of enticed me as an entry to the genre.

[Kalphite]

I finally bought Rune Factory 4 after much uhming and ahhing. I normally have no interest in Harvest Moon-style games but this one sort of enticed me as an entry to the genre.

 

Have you played stardew valley at all? That was my first exposure to the genre, I never thought I'd be into something like that but then I played like 30 hours in 3 weeks lmfao it's ridiculous how addicting these kinds of games are

[Boris5000]

 

I finally bought Rune Factory 4 after much uhming and ahhing. I normally have no interest in Harvest Moon-style games but this one sort of enticed me as an entry to the genre.

 

Have you played stardew valley at all? That was my first exposure to the genre, I never thought I'd be into something like that but then I played like 30 hours in 3 weeks lmfao it's ridiculous how addicting these kinds of games are

 

I tried it some time awhile last year when i had no internet (or any furniture for that matter). I didn't like it as much as I am liking RF4. 

[Estonian dude]

Started Doom on PS4. God how I love the Super Shotgun, just a shame that it eats ammo. It really is quite different to most of the shooters I have played before.

Also, the maps are crazy. I think I explore all nooks and crannies and I find like maybe 1 of 8 collectibles...

[Melos]

Played some League of Legends today... been trying to level up my smurf accounts. My Ashe account is level 14 right now... but man my Ashe game is rusty and terrible XD. My Shyvana account is level 24, but the MMR is already near Diamond level because I'm constantly fighting Diamond smurfs... or when I'm playing with my silver friends, fighting Diamond & Platinum ranked accounts -.-.

[Randox]

Getting back into Crusader Kings 2 a bit. Took a while to get back up to speed, as these games do. When I was last playing, my previous ruler, Alfred the Bewitched (A cruel and deceitful possessed lunatic impaler who was also proud, lustful, greedy, wroth, slothful and gluttonus, among other awesome things) took enough time out of being pants on head crazy to form the Kingdom of England before converting to Catharisim, a catholic heresy, because he had a crazy quota to meet. I think where I picked up (which is at least a year since I last played), my current ruler, King Eric the Just, had finished putting down some revolts and expanding territory. There is one county that should be part of England that is somehow independent, but I also have about half of wales and the southern bit of Pictland (Scotland).

 

Anyway, one of my aims right now, other than acquiring more land (I am shooting for the Empire of Britannia), is taking advantage of becoming Cathar to change my succession laws to Absolute Cognatic, meaning men and women would inherit on equal grounds. To do that, all my vassals need to like me, and while I've won many of them over a large group of them (rightly) consider me a heretic for being Cathar. But toward the end of today's session I remembered that I can revoke titles from Catholics, or anyone who isn't Cathar, without loosing standing with my other vassals because they're a different religion (tolerance!). Once I am no longer at war, I'll have a chance to clean house and ride the goodwill of handing out titles to changing some laws.

 

However, I believe I also need to wait until the next ruler takes over. I have only one (legitimate) son, and my eldest is Queen of West Francia and first pretender to the throne. If I became absolute cognatic, I believe she becomes the heir, and that would be bad (since her children won't be of my house). I think I would have control of her in that case and could transfer the ducal and lesser titles back to someone with a better line of succession, but I'd lose the King title.

 

So my line of succession is certainly a little tense right now. Fun times.

 

EDIT: The succession has not gone to plan. My planned heir died before he could ascend the throne, and as the only son of King Eric, the line of succession reverted to his elder sister. With no feasible way of keeping the Kingdom in the dynasty if that happened, I legitimized King Eric's bastard son, who as a man, would gain priority in the line of succession. Of course, he'd already had two children by that point, and since he was a bastard at the time, those children weren't of my dynasty either. Three nerve wracking years later, those two grandchildren had died, two dynastic grandchildren had been born, and Eric's bastard son was extremely upset with his dad over the whole 'child murder thing'. Then King Eric's daughter up and got herself killed anyway. However, I did manage to test it out, and switching to Absolute Cognatic causes the line of succession to run through one of the daughters to her non dynastic grandchild, so I did need to legitimize the bastard and kill my newphews to make this all work.

 

Anyway, King Eric still didn't want to die, so I've figured, what the heck. He has a lot of prestige, piety, and gold he can burn to take Pictland very quickly and form the Empire of Britannia (he's also the King of Wales now). He's now leading troops into battle at 66 years old, because this ruler is just way too awesome. Not sure I can keep him going long enough to get it done, but if he does, I think I'll figure out how to change his nickname from 'the Just' to 'the Great' to match his deeds. He inherrited a Kingdom in complete turmoil, the last king going crazy and all, and had to put down a revolt out of the gate. He's massively expanded the kingdom since, in between 'waging peace' against his own vassals and peasantry as needed, all while being generally well liked by his countrymen (I've managed to have no negative vassal opinion with him multiple times). Oh, and he's chiefly responsible for the massive surge in the power and spread of the Cathar Heresy, which among christian religions is second in authority only to the Orthodox Church (admittedly it's a big gap, but the Orthodox Church has the Byzantine Empire running it's holy wars, and more than one holy site).

[Melos]

One hour one life

 

Hilarious concept. Its entirely online with no human NPCs.

 

You start the game as a baby with another player as your mother. As a baby you are literally useless, so your survival is entirely dependant on another player taking care of you until early childhood - which means you will get abandoned A LOT.

 

If you reach adulthood as a female character then babies will randomly pop out as players log in, as long as your in the right age range.

 

The meta challenges of this game are, how to sustain a society across time. Since you will die after an hour with no control over where you respawn next. The challenge is to build a farm that can support a large enough population to sustain. While not so large that food runs out or that you ravage the land. Because resources can be permanently depleted if you aren't careful.

 

So far the longest surviving lineage was 22 generations.

 

 

 

 

The game play is essentially don't starve on hard mode. But the meta challenges this game offers are what make it worth the buy for me.

 

 

 

Yesterday I was playing it and there was 3 generations on this farm I was born into. And nearing the end of my characters life 50 mins later, I realized I'm the new matriarch with 3 generations beneath me on that same farm

 

That actually sounds like an interesting game... although I would be a bit worried with babies popping out of me left and right when I hit 13 lol -.-'....

[Randox]

Skyrim Special Edition.

 

I walked away from classic Skyrim a while ago when I ran into an issue with the sun shining through solid objects and broke my load order trying to fix it. It happened when I upgraded graphics cards, and I suspect it was a driver issue (as in, I would need to use an ancient driver to play the game now). I filled that hole in my life with Fallout NV and 4 while waiting for the special edition mod scene to get to where I wanted it to be.

 

But Gopher, on youtube, recently started a new Skyrim series in special edition, so I decided to take a look at the mods. It looked good, so I did what I've done in a past which is use Gophers mod list as a template for my own game, and then flesh it out to taste (I use his list to get an idea of what is available, and under the assumption it will point me towards compatible mods). I've got some old favorites returning, and some new mods to fill in holes by other mods that special edition doesn't have, and a lot more in total than I expected. I thought it would be 30-40 mods, not my current 80, with almost 100 plugins.

 

One of the very useful skills I picked up in my time with Fallout 4 is making custom patches. The problem you run into is that mods overrite eachother based on whole records/objects. For example, an NPC is an object. If one mod wants to change that NPC's equipment and another mod wants to change their appearance, only one mod or the other can win because both mods modify records attached to the same object. Some mods come with compatibility patches that solve these kinds of issues for you, but if there isn't one available, the only way to make mods play nice is to make your own patch by manually combining the changes from multiple different mods into a new one. One of the mods I'm using this time around retextures everyone (or close to it), largely because you can't make a female Breton who doesn't look 60 in vanilla:

 

[hide]

[/hide]

 

This conflicts with a couple of my other mods with modify NPC equipment, stats, and quests. The quest one is really important. If the texture mod wins I end up with 'dark face' because the lighting or whatever doesn't match the new textures. If the mod adding the quest doesn't win, my game implodes. So I spent longer than I cared to fixing stuff like that. Learning to use TESVEdit to examine, and where necessary, resolve conflicts is probably the biggest skill I picked up for modding Bethesda games. You can head off a lot of bullshit by taking a gander at the conflicts provided you have a solid understanding of what the mods in question are trying to do.

 

Anyway, it took a couple days, but I think I finally got the game about where I want it. It looks pretty good, combat has been made a bit more interesting, I have a whole new perk overhaul I've never used, and some other gameplay is a bit expanded. So far, so good. Oh, and a bunch of quest mods I never tried out in the classic game.