Video Games Randomness - Prioritize specific game threads!

[Brian]

I have the HD version in. Want something like it but newer...made better with more newer parts to it.

Maybe Landinar. It sorta feels that way.

I saw you post about it before and its been on my wishlist since.

I threw it in my wishlist as well.

I've watched a few gameplay videos and it looks fun for at least a little while. I did see a few broken or incomplete quests which I would put down to it still being in early release.

The price is right but I still find myself unable to pull the trigger right now.

[Max Peck]

[morlac]

I'm holding out for Minecraft: Milking the Cow by Mojang! I'm sure my daughter will love it.

[Daehawk]

Watching the GOG 10th anniversary video it hit me why I think I loved the Caesar games so much especially Caesar 4. Building aquaducts! I love the real ones of ancient Rome and seeing them built and fill with blue water in the game was fun to me. More than it should have.

[Hipolito]

IFComp just keeps getting bigger and bigger. This year, there are 77 entries!

One of them is about a Corgi, in case you're into that sort of thing.

I used to judge this competition every year, then kinda fell out of it. I might just get back into it this year, and post some recommendations when I'm done.

[MonkeyFinger]

IFComp just keeps getting bigger and bigger. This year, there are 77 entries!

One of them is about a Corgi, in case you're into that sort of thing.

I used to judge this competition every year, then kinda fell out of it. I might just get back into it this year, and post some recommendations when I'm done.

[Max Peck]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, mein Führer!

[GreenGoo]

Neat!

[Daehawk]

Play crazy eights / uno free...

http://kbhgames.com/game/crazy-eights

[Kasey Chang]

Playing steampunk tower 2, it's a very good tower defense game.

[Carpet_pissr]

Playing steampunk tower 2, it's a very good tower defense game.

Web based? Steam? Other? Love me some TD.

[Kasey Chang]

Steam, dude. It's even on sale at the moment, or it was last week.

[dbt1949]

Got a new game (Strategy Tactics Wargame Collection) today. Started playing it and it was in Russian! After a few seconds I noticed the language selection and was able to change to English okay but that's the first time I've seen the default as Russian.

[Max Peck]

From the This Will End Well file: Sources: Microsoft Is Close To Buying Obsidian

Microsoft is finalizing a deal to acquire the independent development studio Obsidian Entertainment, according to three people briefed on the negotiations. We don’t know if ink is on paper yet, and plenty of major acquisition deals have fallen apart in the final hours, but those close to the companies believe it is all but done.

One person with knowledge of the deal told Kotaku they’d heard it was “90%” finished. Said a second person: “It’s a matter of when, not if.”

[Daehawk]

Dash it all. that sucks. MS knows and cares nothing for gaming .Why would they do this??

[Rumpy]

I keep thinking back on Bungie, in how they managed to stay alive under MS but were ultimately unhappy enough to go back to being independent. I think I remember reading the reason being that many felt they were working in a draining environment and that they didn't feel enough like themselves after having worked almost nonstop on Halo titles.

My thinking is that MS wants them so that they can have an RPG developer. It's a genre that has been making a big comeback lately. Maybe they'd want them to develop their own Witcher-style franchise?

But I'd hope that those at Obsidian have reached out to those who've worked at Bungie's MS era for a little insight and advice before signing on the dotted line. Bungie's rare in the sense that they've lived the tale of acquisition and back again to independence when many are simply milked dry before being axed.

[GreenGoo]

The PC world lost a great developer when they lost Bungie, but the xbox world gained a great one. Halo was by all accounts a huge success. Good for them.

Sucked for me though. Myth was amazing.

[Paingod]

My thinking is that MS wants them so that they can have an RPG developer. It's a genre that has been making a big comeback lately. Maybe they'd want them to develop their own Witcher-style Minecraft franchise?

FTFY.

Microsoft spent a billion dollars getting Minecraft. I'm sure they want it in everyone's face for the rest of eternity, in a thousand incarnations, like Mario for Nintendo.

[Rumpy]

Well, an RPG-style Minecraft spinoff is already being developed, so it isn't like it's not happening.

The PC world lost a great developer when they lost Bungie, but the xbox world gained a great one. Halo was by all accounts a huge success. Good for them.

Sucked for me though. Myth was amazing.

Oh, MS certainly did well with them and it was perhaps the most symbiotic relationship they've had with a developer. I just find it amazing that Bungie had had enough and managed to safely extricate itself. That's not something you hear often at all in a world of developers.

[morlac]

Steam, dude. It's even on sale at the moment, or it was last week.

It's been on my "list" along with another 200+ games. I do love me some TD and steampunk so yea. I will transfer this from my wish list to backlog list very soon I bet.

[GreenGoo]

MS Security Essentials just identified the executable (ICYFrostbite.exe) for ICY: Frostbite edition as containing W32/Detplock. It seems pretty confident about what it found. Of course this is a steam game and I'd like to believe that they'd catch something like this, but I've removed it anyway. Luckily it was cheap and I never really got into it so it doesn't matter to me if it's a false positive or not.

A quick look around shows I'm not the first (obviously) but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer.

Shrug.

edit: Developer claims it's an issue with the Unity engine that causes a false positive to occur randomly.

Shrug again.

[Daehawk]

Think I may now pick up Landinar. Its $15 and I can still get Odyssey next month. But Starpoint Gemini Warlords is calling me for only $8. But I own Starpoint Gemini 2 so not sure theres enough difference to warrant me buying Warlords. I dont think so.

Maybe Ill get Landinar and Shogo since its $2. Did Landinar stay fun or is it a buggy boring mess?

[GreenGoo]

15 upcoming games that are similar to Xcom.

[Daehawk]

I did not pick up Landinar.

[Skinypupy]

I really need to get in the habit of just cancelling MMO subscriptions as soon as I do them. Signed up for 90 days of ESO over the summer. Haven't been back to it much in the past month, so I didn't realize that it was due to auto-renew for another 90 days until the charge hit my bank yesterday. Guess that means I'll go back and give it another look.

Same thing happened with WoW. Quit playing, but forgot to turn off the auto-renew and got dinged for another month. I'm an idiot.

[Fardaza]

I feel your pain. I was paying LOTRO $15 a month for 4 months after I stopped playing. Finally cancelled yesterday.

[Kasey Chang]

You don't want to know how long I've been paying for AOL. Let's just say, my old AOL screen name was 3 or 4 letters long. That's how old it was. The reps were absolutely amazed.

[Kasey Chang]

Still playing Steampunk Tower 2, I'm relatively decent at it, it seems. Sometimes I have trouble with the bosses, but this Badger 666 wasn't that bad. I was able to survive it with some careful turret shuffling. Now it's conquering the last factory, build some level 5 rocket turrets, and go for the finale missions, which I can guess would be a doozy.

EDIT: So far, I've defeated "the Cult General" which resorted to "rushes" for the final few missions against him. However, there's still "The Dark Lady" and the "Cult Leader" to contend with.

I've upgraded virtually EVERYTHING that can be upgraded because I grinded a bit to power up the tower. Not on purpose, but the way this game juggles "Etherium" and "Gold" it's a bit weird. You need to spend gold to send your agents out to get Etherium. The further away, and the more suited the agent is to the task, the more E you get. (There are 3 types of mission, and 3 agents)

Building the turret starts with E, but subsequent upgrades require special parts, misc parts, and lots of gold. Up to 300 regular parts and 3-4 special parts which require conquering factories. The way you get gold is fro mission rewards and upgrading your "town" and collect taxes periodically. And the best way to collect the taxes is to go on missions, so you end up doing a lot of the easy early missions (where you don't even need to interfere) to wait for the taxes to cycle. But you only get like 2000 per tax cycle and your coffers are like 50000 max, and you can spend up to 7000 at a time upgrading a turret (and each turret requires multiple stages of upgrades)

The turret upgrade tree is also a bit of a PITA. You have to choose between firepower and speed, or larger magazine vs. faster reload, and so on. It gets complicated, yet the difference in gameplay didn't feel that significant. Right now, I have to guns usually going for max "recharge", which means the guns will charge up its "special ability" faster. Most turrets have a special ability like rapid fire, burst fire, supershot, and so on you can engage. And some of the bigger enemies need to be hit with a supershot to die quickly. So recharging faster helps a lot.

EDIT: Finally hit a wall. Was breezing through the missions, except the margins are getting closer and closer. Then came the "final offensive". The "cult" has control around Germany, and I need to take back Frankfurt. I saved up a ton of money and bought all the single shot superweapons I can afford, which means 10 single shots artillery, 5 "rockets" salvos, and 5 electric zaps. I also bought the extra powerups for one missions only. And It's STILL not enough somehow. ARGH. I was within last 30 seconds of the mission, just need to kill a couple more enemies, but my tower gave up first. ARGH.

[Daehawk]

Ive not gotten to the world of warplanes or tanks video update yet but the warships Halloween stuff looks really fun. Theres even octopus camo!

[Kasey Chang]

Got past that mission in Steampunk Tower 2. Saved up and bought 15 of each supershot and made even more money. Didn't even have to cheat (though I can't get Cheat Engine table to work on this any way). Looking forward to the final showdown, which will be, no doubt, one heck of a mess.

EDIT: WTF? The final showdown featured an enemy that made no sense.

1) The enemy boss has jump jets, so you can only engage it with ONE side of weapons at a time.

2) Enemy boss has multiple weapons, from cannons to EMP cannons to missile launchers to tank droppers (yes, it drops additional tanks, unlimited QTY)

3) You have to charge up the weapon with "extra steam", then use the supershot of the right weapon while the enemy is vulnerable (which is only like a few seconds window), and do this multiple times (each part is vulnerable to a different weapon) while your other turrets fight off the dropped enemies, and you have to do this fast enough so your tower still stands, WITHOUT the use of any superweapon or powerups. Yikes.

4) I figure I have to rebuild my weapons all to "extra steam charge" (which I didn't before) and that means grind through the missions again, build up gold, and so on. I am also building the weapons to extra firing speed rather than magazine size. If most of the damage is done by supershot, then the faster the regular shots can go , the better.

[Max Peck]

If you are the sort that wished that Pathfinder Kingmaker was turn-based instead of RTWP, you might want to keep an eye on Realms Beyond.

• A complex turn-based combat system featuring hundreds of spells, feats and actions, based on the rules described in the (3.5e) Revised System Reference Document (SRD) covered by the Open Game License v1.0a (OGL) by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
• Custom-built, isometric graphics engine that combines zoomable 2D and 3D technology to bring never-before-seen levels of detail to life in massive, hand-crafted levels
• A bustling open world spanning entire continents, replete with believable NPCs, complex cultures, factions, societies and a fascinating centuries-long history
• Create a party of up to six characters where you can choose from 7 different races and 8 different classes and completely customize their appearance, equipment, feats, and skills
• More than one hundred spells, each with unique, stunning visual effects
• Over a thousand individual items to use and interact with
• An epic background story, massive quests, uncounted missions, hordes of monsters and a world that is steeped in lore and mystery
• Create your own adventures, campaigns or even entire worlds using the powerful RPG Engine of Realms Beyond

It looks really good, but not throwing-money-at-Kickstarter good (for me, YMMV). I'm not sure that anything will ever be throwing-money-at-Kickstarter good for me again. Thanks Obama Roberts!

[Daehawk]

I must have clicked 15 times through that video to FF it and every time but one all the units were just standing there. Too slow and boring for me these days. In the old days turns based games were my favorite.

[dbt1949]

I'm play Xcom Enemy unknown and I just had to reset it a second time.
First time I didn't know the importance of satellites and the second time I let my squad count get too low.
Crap. 50 hrs in.

[jztemple2]

I'm play Xcom Enemy unknown and I just had to reset it a second time.
First time I didn't know the importance of satellites and the second time I let my squad count get too low.
Crap. 50 hrs in.

These kinds of things are why I've started playing a lot of games on Easy difficulty. I just don't have the dedication to put hours and hours into a game, then restart it because things are going south. It's one of the reasons I enjoy games like Fields of Glory II, I don't gave if I win or lose a battle, I just like the experience.

[dbt1949]

I AM playing easy.
Only because there's nothing easier.

[Kasey Chang]

Ah, the Firaxis one? I've finished it twice, including Enemy Within. Satellite coverage is difficult indeed, long lead time and all that. I'm sure I have a playthrough here somewhere.

[Kasey Chang]

Finished Steampunk Tower 2, finally. Didn't finish all the challenge levels, but those are more puzzles than combat.

Some spoilers on the "Final Battle"

Spoiler:

You face some sort of multi-weaponed "ball" that produces almost infinite number of tanks, as well as shoot you with missile launcher batteries, dual EMP cannons, drone cannon, and regular triple-barrel cannon. You have to use your weapons to do a full charge hit while each weapon is deployed. One hit on each weapon (the tank deployment door counts as a weapon) while keeping yourself alive. Once you performed all five hits, this somehow disabled the shields around the enemy (before then, the main body cannot take damage). Once the 5-segment display on the body is full, the main body starts to take damage. Then it's a matter of pumping enough damage into the enemy before you go down.

I had to cheat a little... I used CheatEngine's "speedhack" to slow the game to 1/4 speed.

[Kasey Chang]

Playing Bomber Crew, though I think I bought too many games recently. Maybe I should be playing Battletech.

Just had my most difficult mission ever. Flew out in the afternoon subhunting. Bombed two subs, got chased by a few fighters, took some damage. Then night came, and I'm circling in the dark with no target to hunt. Somehow I was able to go lean and stretched the fuel out to reach daylight, and voila, there's the sub, but then 3 fighters showed up. So I was running out of fuel, juggling multiple contacts, AND managed to bomb the last U-boat... Then 3 MORE fighters showed up. And my fuel is down to about maybe 6 minutes at regular flow. I went lean again, Reloaded everybody on guns, then ran for base. One of engines caught fire. I had to send the engineer out to repair it, but before the repairs can be completed, the engine fell off the plane. Gah! And I am down to virtually no fuel but my gunners manage to beat off the Luftwaffe, shooting two down, but hydraulics got damaged, so back to repairs again. I was like a few miles from the airport when one of the tanks ran dry, and the other is on fumes, but I did manage to land the plane safely.

Ten mission is the hardest yet... Bomb some sort of a launcher bigger than the V1.

I got overwhelmed by night contacts as I was trying to handle ground contacts and air contacts at the same time. There was a fire onboard, and I can't find the fire extinguisher. Three guys went critical as it was next to the electrical panel. I had to order the pilot to go high, then emergency dive to put out the fire, but I forgot to bring the rookie in (he was fixing the engine) and he went skydiving without a chute. I managed to stabilize two of the critical, but I ran out of first aid kits, so I lost my radio operator. I should have ordered the crew bailout near the base, as this game did NOT like landing without both wheels. (i.e. no belly landing). Once I landed with one wheel, kaboom, lost a gunner (which is why I have a rookie onboard). This time, I landed with both wheels up, lost 4 out of 7 (1 was the rookie that went skydiving, other ran out of first aid kits, so 2 died in the crash landing)

And my 3rd bomber got renamed the Flak Magnet.

[Rumpy]

What the heck is up with Crysis? Playing through the first game for the first time, well two if you count the aborted playthrough when I was having computer issues before I got my new card and moved to Windows 10, but I almost feel like the game is trolling me constantly. Maybe I'm going into it with the wrong mindset, but it looks and feels like a tactical shooter and the whole idea of going prone adds to that effect. But it's a game that I feel is constantly at odds with itself. It's also quite relentless at times. For example the first time it suggests using a boat after visiting the scientist in the dome, only a heli soon gets on your tail peppering you with fire shredding the boat. What are the vehicles made out of? Tin? I'm playing it on easy, but I'm constantly wondering how anyone would be able to survive in this game. It's very desperately unfun at times. Alas, I'm using invulnerability allowing me to at least see what this game has to offer. The best part so far have been playing around with the tanks. Just got to the crusher at the mine, and again, wtf, chaingun guys with biosuits, and again I wonder how the heck someone is supposed to survive this. Oh, there are helis overhead all the while this is happening too. It's a little too hectic. By this point, it definitely doesn't feel tactical.

I have the other games in my wishlist, but I'm assuming that I wouldn't enjoy them at this rate.

[TheMix]

Wish I could help. But it's been many years since I played Crysis. I don't recall any of that. So I don't have any words of wisdom.

I do recall enjoying all the Crysis games. I'm pretty sure I played at least one of them more than once.