For a moment I thought you were recommending Left Behind Eternal Forces, the game based on the movie based on the books based on the good book.
Gaming thoughts, bite-size chewables - new orange flavor!
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You missed one part (also, my favorite game review on Ars, because it has this amazing Eric Bangeman extended footnote on dispensational premillennialism)For a moment I thought you were recommending Left Behind Eternal Forces, the game based on the movie based on the books based on an eschatology of the last book of the good book.
Finished up Greedfall today. It was surprisingly good and much more of a solid game than I was expecting given the studio's track record. It actually manages to out-do Bioware in a few key ways. First up is the fact that every single major character has an awareness of the previous quests you've finished and how you did them. Meeting a character for the first time? They might have heard from another character in their faction (that has reason to tell them something) that you helped them. Coming back to a character? They might now know that you resolved another conflict in a manner that does not benefit them. Most of the time this awareness is simply flavor but in several key situations where a skill check might normally be required your actions mean that the character will, instead, help you without the skill check.
The companions are, mostly, Bioware-lite but in one key difference: when they have something to say during a conversation it's not just a throwaway bark the way most companions in Bioware titles are. Instead they interact with the conversation and, sometimes, even appear to sway the conversation away from requiring a skill check. They're also available to be called on in lieu of a skill check if you're talking with their faction but that doesn't always work out the way you'd expect.
Finally, the major characters have a strong feeling of having their opinion of you changed as you progress through the game. Members of the Teer Fradee natives are almost universally distrustful of you when you first meet them...except later in the game you'll meet characters from that faction for the first time and they'll explicitly reference the things they've heard that you've done for them and start with a more modulated (not really "welcoming" though) tone. Instead of being defensive they're open to hearing you out. With most characters this is probably just smoke and mirrors based on your faction standing but the frequency with which some of them reference previous quests (that they may not have even given you) makes me wonder if there aren't some specific dialogues written based on which quests you've completed in a given direction.
Next up is...I don't know. Two big RPGs back-to-back (with Ikenfell in the middle so make that a third smallish RPG) and I'm hankering for something shorter and more braindead. Didn't see any shooters on GamePass (Console) that stood out to me. Maybe Black? I'm installing River City Girls, CrossCode and SuperHot MCD but not sure which one I should go with. Maybe Black (but, as I recall, that wasn't a particularly good game back when it was released). I might bite the bullet on Hades and see if I end up liking it more than I do most RogueLikes but I'm not too sure about the mindlessness of it.
The companions are, mostly, Bioware-lite but in one key difference: when they have something to say during a conversation it's not just a throwaway bark the way most companions in Bioware titles are. Instead they interact with the conversation and, sometimes, even appear to sway the conversation away from requiring a skill check. They're also available to be called on in lieu of a skill check if you're talking with their faction but that doesn't always work out the way you'd expect.
Finally, the major characters have a strong feeling of having their opinion of you changed as you progress through the game. Members of the Teer Fradee natives are almost universally distrustful of you when you first meet them...except later in the game you'll meet characters from that faction for the first time and they'll explicitly reference the things they've heard that you've done for them and start with a more modulated (not really "welcoming" though) tone. Instead of being defensive they're open to hearing you out. With most characters this is probably just smoke and mirrors based on your faction standing but the frequency with which some of them reference previous quests (that they may not have even given you) makes me wonder if there aren't some specific dialogues written based on which quests you've completed in a given direction.
Next up is...I don't know. Two big RPGs back-to-back (with Ikenfell in the middle so make that a third smallish RPG) and I'm hankering for something shorter and more braindead. Didn't see any shooters on GamePass (Console) that stood out to me. Maybe Black? I'm installing River City Girls, CrossCode and SuperHot MCD but not sure which one I should go with. Maybe Black (but, as I recall, that wasn't a particularly good game back when it was released). I might bite the bullet on Hades and see if I end up liking it more than I do most RogueLikes but I'm not too sure about the mindlessness of it.
I'm still downloading it, but if anyone wants something to play for the low, low price of free (assuming you own Fallout: New Vegas and it DLC), the biggest Fallout mod to date was just released, The Frontier: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/68009?tab=files
The mod is bigger than the game, amusingly. I'm guessing that is due to using larger textures and the like. But one interesting thing they've done is each of the three faction storylines you can participate in use different narrative structures to move things along. Want dialog? choose one faction. Want a run-and-gun action movie? Choose another faction. I'm very interested to see how that all plays out.
Also? Vehicle combat. Who knows if it's any good, but that's a hell of a mod into Fallout.
The mod is bigger than the game, amusingly. I'm guessing that is due to using larger textures and the like. But one interesting thing they've done is each of the three faction storylines you can participate in use different narrative structures to move things along. Want dialog? choose one faction. Want a run-and-gun action movie? Choose another faction. I'm very interested to see how that all plays out.
Also? Vehicle combat. Who knows if it's any good, but that's a hell of a mod into Fallout.
I finished downloading and just launched it, and I have to say if you go through their mandatory and recommended mod list, it's the best F:NV has ever looked, and I'm not even to their content yet. (You have to be level 11, and I wanted to make a new character for the playthrough)
The handful of times I've seen vehicles tried for Fallout they've never worked well. The best was a "motorcycle" that was basically a gas based fast travel limiter/replacement. I think it has to do with having the vehicle be, essentially, the player character with a new skin and a slightly tweaked movement style (i.e. no strafing) and collision. Maybe they managed to find a better way to do it.
Don't think so.
There are some vertibird mods that are fun / interesting. The bike... eh... at least last I tried (early 2020.)
They claim it's the best vehicle controls in a Fallout mod. Fingers crossed it doesn't suck. Gotta get my character to level 11 to see! I set up a bit of a run and gun energy/explosive character. I rarely skill up in those two in Fallout, and the mod emphasizes lots of cool guns, so I figured I'd lean into it.
Finally got through my first campaign in Total War: Three kingdoms and ehhhh. Technically it’s been very good, but some design choices left me underwhelmed. The biggest is being army sizes, with the appear to max being 6 per general. This forces you to specialize your army build and link up with other generals to make an effective combined force, though this may lead to gaps in your defenses as the AI starts to dogpile on you. Personally I’m not a big fan of only for the fact I like my huge battles and IIRC, this period in China’s history had some of the largest in the world until WWI or WWII. Also I’m not sure what to make of Romance mode vs Records as I’ve only did a couple of battles in the latter. Romance mode makes the Generals absolutely ridiculous, with a couple (Lu Bu being the stand out) being able to solo 2 or 3 armies if properly equiped, leveled, and micro’d. Total War:Warhammer had me somewhat used to OP heroes/generals, but with the small army sizes it’s so much worse here. However, this was a blessing in my campaign as the Yellow Turban’s He Yi, as he could knock out entire units on his own when managed well. When I started to gain ground and the AI started dogpiling me, he was a major part of my strategy to counter the 3-5 army death stacks headed my way. Usually, I used my other, more expendable, generals to locked down the enemy’s generals and just let He Yi loose with a couple of units backing him up. Seems to have worked well, but it felt cheesy at times. City management wasn’t too bad, though it was a constant struggle to balance food production with everything else, particularly happiness. Rebellions got to be real annoying late game as I was forced to ignore sieges in favor of capturing the victory points to get the Mandate.
Overall I feel it was solid, but how armies are handled knocked it down for me. I probably rate it at or just below Medival 2 and below Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai and Warhammer 2.
Overall I feel it was solid, but how armies are handled knocked it down for me. I probably rate it at or just below Medival 2 and below Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai and Warhammer 2.
I won't be playing it myself, as I currently lack any gaming hardware more powerful than my Nintendo Switch and my old MacBook Pro, but I am looking forward to watching Many A True Nerd play through the missions to expose the story (something he is meticulous about in his Hitman play-throughs), Eurogamer's Ian Higton's play-through of it in VR, and the Outside XBox "3 ways to play" videos of it for the hilarity.
So, I can definitely say I'm looking forward to it, even though it doesn't apply to me.
(sometimes gaming vicariously through others isn't all that bad
)To be honest, the idea that it does nothing significantly different from Hitman 2 is a plus in my book. I mean, if it isn't broken, *don't* fix it; seriously, *don't*.
That said, I do indeed have to take it back, I have heard one bad thing about it, specifically, that it has a (particularly bad) sixth level epilogue. I mean, a train as a setting for Hitman? What were they thinking? (Also, didn't they make that mistake once before?)
But still, five more levels of Hitman 2 is pretty much all I wanted from them (well, I wanted ten more levels, but.... beggars, choosers, etc).
I picked up Hitman 2 way back when and I started it, but only got through one or two missions. It's not bad at all, it was really fun. But those games I tend to treat as "I'll play a mission here and there" rather than as a cohesive, structured story.
The Hitman 3 title apparently includes Hitman 2 and maybe both 1 and 2 so you can play them right from the menu if you want. So I've heard. I think that's very cool.
You need to own Hitman 1 and 2 to be able to play those levels on Hitman 3. They are not free.
Full info here: https://www.ioi.dk/hitman-3-pre-launch-guide/
Might & Magic Heroes VI. I asked for a refund, no idea if it went through.
I used to play RealRacing 3 (by EA( on my phone, until 2 years ago. This is a F2P game, with progress limited by artificially scarce "gold", one of two in-game currencies. Of course, the game constantly tries to fool you into spending gold on non-progress things. At the time I left, the most efficient way to get money was to race and win, with the daily bonus, a ~30 minute race. This most efficient race gave you, IIRC, about 0.3 gold per minute. But you also earn gold by watching ads! One gold per ad, maximum 30 seconds, so no less than 6 times more efficient than actually "racing".
It turns out ads were limited to 10 per day (yes, limited ad watching, who'd have thought). But if you had the temerity of buying _anything_ the game limited your ad watching to 2 per day! Result? Buying "gold" was a surefire way of stalling your progress for good.
EDIT: I have also played the heck out of the Dots series: Dots, Two Dots, and Dots & Co. In the year or two it took me to go through the Dots & Co levels, Two Dots went from a very pleasant, pretty much unobtrusibe "pay to increase win%" to the most egregious sort of mobile game. I was flipping pissed to see such a change for the worse.
I got Hitman with an RX 470, but never played it. Does this mean it renders the levels from the first game in the new engine?
Are you in Europe ?
I get something like this
5 Gold ads - 20 R$ ads - 5 Gold ads - 50 R$ ads - 5 Gold ads - 100 R$ ads - 5 Gold ads.
I have actually played 30 ads one day just to see what happened. Got 10 gold. Didn't bother going higher.
Got annoyed with the auto playing ads after each race and bought the lowest cost IAP using expiring google rewards money. Nowadays I run through 5 ads per day on the background while working on the computer.
The ads are not even useful. Often they are for shitty mobile games that is 30 seconds video and then 15 seconds interactive screen which is supposed to allow you to play a demo but which often takes you straight to play store. Or they are ads for shady stuff like binary options -- not even sure if they are legal for me. On the rare occasion I get a local ad, it will be for 15 seconds or less and will always allow me to skip after 5 seconds.
I like the game, with new tracks, M$ and F1 racing, it is interesting. Fixed maximum M$ per day has made it easy for getting new cars. But IAP costs are still wacky with some IAP purchases costing more than my entire monthly spending for everything.
See, for some reason I'm not surprised this was the answer. I'd like to play M&M Heroes VI and VII, but stuff like this makes me not want to.
Yes, but, because Epic, on the PC you will have to rebuy the Hitman 2 levels which are 80% off for a few days. The Hitman 1 levels will be free for that period.
In other news, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is pretty excellent so far.
There's a long thread on D3, and an Ars clan in game.
It doesn't sound like there's a fix at launch but they've announced that will no longer be the case.
My guess is that Epic doesn't have an account link option between other platforms and they have to build it. It's essentially adding in the GOG Connect feature to their store. Once they can connect and enumerate the games on an account in other stores it's just a matter of getting the permissions to add them to your Epic Games account.
I am, but I stopped playing a couple of years ago, shortly after the "retro" events and the fully upgraded series were introduced, having made it to the Ferrari 412.
To be honest, I found the driving dynamics _a lot more fun_ than Grid Autosport on the switch.
Cool. Thanks for the clarification. I’m going to hold off until they’re done patching in some of the upcoming graphical features and until it is no longer an Epic exclusive, but good to know.
I don’t begrudge the companies for taking Epic’s money, but Steam’s cut is significantly smaller than the 50% off Steam release day sale * Steam’s cut that they end up getting from me.
All I've seen are rumors from the last week. Nothing official.
Remember Microsoft does not yet own Bethesda so they (MS) can't dictate what they do until then which is expected to be Q2 2021.
Cheers. I posted there, but I won't be investing more time in the game. I love it, it's great fun, but Blizzard games will eat up all of your free time if you're not careful. I already can't bring myself to uninstall Starcraft 1, 2, or Hearthstone from my PC, I'll just have to make an effort with this one.In other news, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is pretty excellent so far.
There's a long thread on D3, and an Ars clan in game.
Having played a few hours, I can confidently say that the Fallout Frontiers mod is good, and definitely keeps to the Fallout ethos and writing intent.
Cheers. I posted there, but I won't be investing more time in the game. I love it, it's great fun, but Blizzard games will eat up all of your free time if you're not careful. I already can't bring myself to uninstall Starcraft 1, 2, or Hearthstone from my PC, I'll just have to make an effort with this one.In other news, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is pretty excellent so far.
There's a long thread on D3, and an Ars clan in game.
I love D3. But, like you, I have to watch myself. Instead I just install in every few months, play for a week or so and move on.
Finished game 1 of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy. That was entertaining, but some of it just dragged along. Also, having to use anime logic to break open cases is a bit trying at times. On to game number 2.
Picked back up an old game, Renowned Explorers. The game setting is early 20th-century bombastic and/or culturally diverse explorers, a rougelite of going on expeditions into mini-world maps with silly stories, skill checks and tactical battles. Think Indiana Jones, or Lawrence of Arabia, explorers of Egyptian tombs, but really more in the vein of pulp explorer books, like Clive Cussler would have written 100 years ago. You pick a team of 3 with different aptitudes that will affect various skill attempts, and different combat stats. The most interesting twist is that you have both physical attack/defense as well as Speech attack/defense, and so in the (somewhat lopsided, not always 6-sided) hex tactical battles, you can use Friendly or Devious speech abilities, which damage "Spirit" (Hit Points by another name) as well as attacks, but they can also cause various positive and negative conditions. There's also a rock-paper-scissors field effect with the overall attitude of each side.
The basic flow of the game is Go on Expedition -> Explore node to node each site of the area, within the limits of your Supplies, collecting various resource types, getting in some combats, and finally doing the final node, with a tougher-than usual battle. Then you go back to the world map, which is basically a fancy menu of upgrade options spending your various currencies. Then new Expeditions (harder) unlock, and you pick a new Expedition. The ultimate "goal" is collecting Renown to be the Most Renown Explorer, though there is a "beat your rival" Expedition that is the hardest possible Expedition, and requires a really solid run.
There's some mild unlocking between runs that gives some fun feeling of advancement and opens up some party options, but the vast bulk of your improvements is through just getting better at the game, both between mastering the game and getting a better feel of how dangerous each Expedition is. The fact you don't HAVE to play the next-harder difficulty Expeditions each time lets you back off the difficulty if you team just isn't quite coming together without just faceplanting as most roguelites would force you to.
Anyway, stared playing again last week or so, and happened to pick through the options, and noticed the "skip combat animations" toggle, and suddenly runs of the game feel twice as fast, and they probably actually ARE twice as fast now that my knowledge of the game mechanics and flow is so much cleaner that my non-combat decisions are also much faster. I was cool on the game before, but now that I can try and fail, or just try and try again (they have different difficulties and conditions that affect nothing other than achievements, so you can savescum if you'd rather play it that way). So know I've played probably a dozen runs through, usually completing all 5 expeditions, and now I'm bending toward designing a party that can beat the final expedition.
TL;DR: Renowned Explorers. Fun atmosphere rougelite with plenty of adjustable difficulty to be as casual or as challenging as you want, and if you turn off combat animations, the flow is quite fast and fun.
The basic flow of the game is Go on Expedition -> Explore node to node each site of the area, within the limits of your Supplies, collecting various resource types, getting in some combats, and finally doing the final node, with a tougher-than usual battle. Then you go back to the world map, which is basically a fancy menu of upgrade options spending your various currencies. Then new Expeditions (harder) unlock, and you pick a new Expedition. The ultimate "goal" is collecting Renown to be the Most Renown Explorer, though there is a "beat your rival" Expedition that is the hardest possible Expedition, and requires a really solid run.
There's some mild unlocking between runs that gives some fun feeling of advancement and opens up some party options, but the vast bulk of your improvements is through just getting better at the game, both between mastering the game and getting a better feel of how dangerous each Expedition is. The fact you don't HAVE to play the next-harder difficulty Expeditions each time lets you back off the difficulty if you team just isn't quite coming together without just faceplanting as most roguelites would force you to.
Anyway, stared playing again last week or so, and happened to pick through the options, and noticed the "skip combat animations" toggle, and suddenly runs of the game feel twice as fast, and they probably actually ARE twice as fast now that my knowledge of the game mechanics and flow is so much cleaner that my non-combat decisions are also much faster. I was cool on the game before, but now that I can try and fail, or just try and try again (they have different difficulties and conditions that affect nothing other than achievements, so you can savescum if you'd rather play it that way). So know I've played probably a dozen runs through, usually completing all 5 expeditions, and now I'm bending toward designing a party that can beat the final expedition.
TL;DR: Renowned Explorers. Fun atmosphere rougelite with plenty of adjustable difficulty to be as casual or as challenging as you want, and if you turn off combat animations, the flow is quite fast and fun.
I bought and played Renowned Explorers when it was new. I enjoyed it, but found that it didn't have much replayability, in the long run - I ended up playing it for only ~20 hours total (According to Steam, anyway) before setting it down and moving on to something else. It was a little too shallow, overall.
It says I've got 24 hours in so far. They do have some new free areas since launch (notably, 2 new "final" areas), a new mechanic in the Campfire Stories, and an expansion. But I can see the basic content could feel repetitive, and you still do replay the small ensemble of Expeditions often (usually 3 choices for each of the 4 main Expeditions).
Renowned Explorers sounds like the gameplay is similar-ish to Crying Suns, which is fun for a bit if you can get it on sale. Space game, you explore planets and follow the story breadcrumbs, and the planet expeditions have you sequentially encountering various fight / skill checks and you get like 4 officers with different traits, sounds like a similar setup. Ship combat is hex-grid battle with fighters / sub-capital ships moving about and your ship and enemy ship at either ends of the board - move your fleet up to engage it directly, or focus on its fleet and use ship weapons, etc.
Huh! Yeah, I grabbed that for free, but looking at it now, they seem more similar than I realized.
I will say the art style of the Renown Explorers, topped with the combination of bombast and sillyness grab me in a way that the pixel art of Crying Suns doesn't, but I'm more tempted to give the gameplay a try now.
I will say the art style of the Renown Explorers, topped with the combination of bombast and sillyness grab me in a way that the pixel art of Crying Suns doesn't, but I'm more tempted to give the gameplay a try now.