Video Games Randomness - Prioritize specific game threads!

[Chraolic]

It does exist... just... not quite yet. You can download the demo though...

Ah, that's cool, I'll check that out. I actually learned quite a lot from picking apart guns in Gun Disassembly, like how the curved grip on a revolver is because the hammer spring needs somewhere to be, or how a minigun is secretly half a dozen machine guns that have been bolted together.

[jztemple2]

It does exist... just... not quite yet. You can download the demo though...

Ah, that's cool, I'll check that out. I actually learned quite a lot from picking apart guns in Gun Disassembly, like how the curved grip on a revolver is because the hammer spring needs somewhere to be, or how a minigun is secretly half a dozen machine guns that have been bolted together.

Are we talking about the game World of Guns: Gun Disassembly? I first played back in 2014, and then got the full access when it was on sale a year ago during the Steam sale. I don't have too many hours on it, but I fire up the game occasionally when they announce the release of a new model.

[Chraolic]

Are we talking about the game World of Guns: Gun Disassembly? I first played back in 2014, and then got the full access when it was on sale a year ago during the Steam sale. I don't have too many hours on it, but I fire up the game occasionally when they announce the release of a new model.

Yeah, it sure looks the same. It used to be just Gun Disassembly back when it was a Flash game, which has since ceased to exist since everybody realized Flash hadn't been updated for about a decade and was horribly insecure to use.

[jztemple2]

And switching gears.... let's look at Heist Simulator

From the Steam page,

Lights, Camera, HEIST! Grab your perfect team and hack, unlock, disguise and explode your way to stealing England's finest tat and treasures. Plan your way around lasers, guards and locked doors in some famous locations... Then build your own to share with the world!

I learned about from a posting on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Heist Simulator lets you craft your own capers and share them with the world

Heist Simulator has a plan. Look here. See that bit I’ve circled? That’s where your little team of reprobates break into a fancy mansion, or a bustling casino, and make off with the spoils. No fuss. Seems simple, yeah? Well, look over here. This is where the players will be able to set up the heists themselves. They create and publish their own missions, using complex tools to build the levels, hide the loot, and set traps. Not so simple after all. Things could get tougher than an overcooked steak that’s been marinated in diamonds.

The next game from publisher No More Robots is an interesting prospect. It’s a strategy game where you plan out a heist. Your character(s) will only be able to see what’s in the room when they get there, but in the first level I tried I could walk around and inspect things, like a mouse-controlled Agent 47, feeling out what’s good to steal and how best to steal it.

It’s immediately clear that there will probably be a lot of lateral thinking, because in order to steal a book you need to distract an old lady with a microwave. What a heist! It’s just a couple of rooms, but if there’s a whole mansion to explore then the heist could get tricky.

Players can, and probably will, build their own heists for others to attempt. The level editor looks like a friendly version of proper developer tools, letting you build and bend walls, set puzzles, and even create interactive elements with NPCs. The game comes with over 8,500 assets, which is almost certainly enough for you to trap visitors in a decent facsimile of your childhood home. You get to vote on how much fun the misson was, so the good ones should be pretty obvious.

It’s got a plucky vibe to it. With a two-man development team planning and plotting the game, it's a smart move to shunt some of the dastardly designs off to the community. Make them accomplices. They'll also do things with the game that the developers never, ever imagined, and it's those mission that I want to play.

It’s playable right now on Steam as a playtest. Go on, take it.

As they said, you can sign up (you press a button!) on the Steam page to gain access to the playtest. It's a 4.4 GB download. I'll post some impressions if I have any.

[Skinypupy]

The Olympic Opening Ceremonies featured a ton of video game music.

Nintendo was a notable absentee on the Opening Ceremony's playlist, but a host of tracks from some of the finest video games and series to come out of Japan scored much of the ceremony, including music from Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, NieR: Automata, Chrono Trigger, Gradius, Soul Calibur...

[Daehawk]

Weirdest Olympics ever.

[Daehawk]

Another great video. I may have to replay Tie Fighter.

[Daehawk]

Its been 20 years of Max Payne

[TheMix]

Made me smile. I so enjoyed the first two games.

[Daehawk]

Made me smile. I so enjoyed the first two games.

Same here. Took me a couple tries but I finally enjoyed the 3rd. But I wouldn't call it a Max Payne game.

Is it just me or does McCaffrey look like an older version of the late Luke Perry?

[dbt1949]

So I've been playing Xcom here lately. How many other people out there would rather shoot Bradford than the aliens?

[jztemple2]

So I've been playing Xcom here lately. How many other people out there would rather shoot Bradford than the aliens?

I'd like to send Bradford on a tactical mission and let him Leeroy Jenkins himself against the aliens

[Daehawk]

BF1's 2nd campaign blue screen of death'd on me. Not seen that in a long while.

[hitbyambulance]

Garry Kitchen summarizes the process of writing the Atari 2600 port of Donkey Kong in three months (spoiler: it was not enough time):

[Fardaza]

So I've been playing Xcom here lately. How many other people out there would rather shoot Bradford than the aliens?

I'd like to send Bradford on a tactical mission and let him Leeroy Jenkins himself against the aliens

Been playing it as well. Am ready to tackle the final mission. Sometimes when I playthru I stop here because I hate this last mission with the teleporting avatars. I'm still not sure if I will play it or just start a new game.

It would be nice to see Brad go on a mission. Having a knife strapped to his shoulder in the base ship seems totally weird.

[dbt1949]

I've stopped twice now just before the last mission. Going for a third game in a row. I keep watching youtube play and seeing how I can play better. (I think)

[jztemple2]

It would be nice to see Brad go on a mission. Having a knife strapped to his shoulder in the base ship seems totally weird.

Probably the filet mingnon is too tough for his sensitive palate.

[Paingod]

I've stopped twice now just before the last mission. Going for a third game in a row.

/waves hands at the screen

Mind control...

It's how I got the achievement for beating the last mission with basic weapons. Basic weapons and f'n Gatekeepers.

[Fardaza]

I've stopped twice now just before the last mission. Going for a third game in a row.

/waves hands at the screen

Mind control...

It's how I got the achievement for beating the last mission with basic weapons. Basic weapons and f'n Gatekeepers.

I salute you Paingod! I've never even attempted that achievement, and I have over 700 hours in the game.

[Max Peck]

Anyone jumping in on Chernobylite now that it's out of Early Access? Or played it while it was in EA?

I'm slightly interested in it, but it's not high enough on my priority list to purchase sight-unseen, or even to start a thread for it.

[Daehawk]

Its my 2nd most wanted game behind Valhalla. But I cant afford it until it hits the $10 mark or so.

[coopasonic]

Anyone jumping in on Chernobylite now that it's out of Early Access? Or played it while it was in EA?

I'm slightly interested in it, but it's not high enough on my priority list to purchase sight-unseen, or even to start a thread for it.

I watched a couple streamers play a little bit of it over the past couple weeks and it was enough for me to buy it. I will threadify it and put initial impressions there.

[Jaddison]

Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg. Sort of like a souped up Panzer Corps/Panzer General with some interesting takes on armor being able to overrun, also supply is important and modeled in way that makes it easy to understand but critical for ops.
Start out with the German intervention in the Spanish Civil War......and this is where it gets weird for me. They have actually cut scenes of you being assigned to intervene in Spain and this happens by you having a conversation with Herman Goering. So no being able to ignore the fact that when you play as Germany in WW2 that you are inherently a part of the Hitler crowd. Not that Germany were saints to civilians in occupied territory during WW1 but interviews with Goering????? Not so sure I can continue even though the game play is pretty darn good.

[dbt1949]

It looks interesting but the colors and the lighting make it hard to see things.

[Kasey Chang]

Trying out "Command Line Pilot", which is really a card-based mech game where your moves are limited by the cards you draw: move, turn, or attack. It's only $1.99, so not expecting much, but it's an interesting diversion. There are some mechanics where if you play cards of same color consecutively you get power up so the card goes into phase 2 or phase 3 (move further, shots hit multiple enemies, etc.) The enemies are a bit more frustrating in that they die easily, but if they touch you, your gyros are scrambled and you end up facing a random direction. And some of the later attacks scrambles your "deck" of up to 4 cards. Each turn the mech executes your deck (shoot, move, turn) if it can. And the objective is to "win" the scenario by doing it within the time constraints, usually, or not being touched/attacked so many times. Interesting tactical puzzle, if a bit too abstract.

[Kasey Chang]

Trying CTA (Counter Terrorist Agency). Interesting idea, if a bit abstract. Sort of Sid Meier's Covert Action without all the actioning and minigame bits. Basically, you have almost global wiretap and hacking powers (depends on each country) and your job is to thwart terrorist attacks by taking out key players, but first you need to gather intel to identify them, and properly categorize each player. There are sometimes you need to take extreme sanctions, such as send in elite operators to neutralize the target... Or even a drone strike, if you want to go that far. There are also other means, such as ability to interrogate suspects, enhanced interrogation, and perhaps even... the t-word. Obviously, those can blow up in your face if the actions leaked. And countries may not be pleased with your actions and withdraw their support (reputation drop and resources lost). On the other hand, you may be able to gain new support by diplomacy, lobbying support to gain additional resources, and PR support to improve your reputation. So the idea is to keep playing with a bit of ebb and flow as you keep taking down organization soldiers and leaders (arrest or kill?), avoiding false positives (are these cosplayers or genuine terrorists? Is this suspicious money transfer between terrorist cells or just innocent citizens?), while chasing down leads, and keep trying to improve your standing around the world, not just in Western countries but all over the world. As you progress, the arrest and categorization are "graded" and points award. To get best score, you need to both arrest all the members, and correctly identify their roles in the organization. If you arrest them but got the wrong role you get less points. If you manage to prevent an attack you get extra points. And you need those points to buy "upgrades", such as enhanced hacking, enhanced wiretap, and mentioned above, interrogation and enhanced interrogation, and so on.

Not a bad "spinning plate" type of game, with a lot of basis to cover with limited resources. Each country only can support so many operations in 5 areas: wiretap, hacking, police (ability to arrest), investigation (generate leads), and special operators (neutralize). Lobbying can lead to increased allocations, but goofs may lead to withdrawal of support. And overuse may lead to depletion when you really need it.

Definitely worth $5, maybe even $10, if you sorta like the subject matter.

[Skinypupy]

One of my pet peeves is games (mainly MMOs) that don’t allow you to restart.

I tried Genshin Impact when it first came out. It was ok, but I only stuck with it for a couple weeks, probably 15-20 hours. I’ve heard that over the past year, it has improved significantly and wanted to give it another look. Problem is, there’s no way to “reset” the game or roll a different toon. I have to pick it up at the same place I stopped months ago. But I don’t remember how anything works at all, any of the story beats, how the systems work, what I’m supposed to be doing, etc. Theres no way to even reset the tutorials, find a “when we last left our heroes” summary…nothing. You’re pretty much just out of luck if you don’t remember what was going on.

I spent nearly an hour tonight trying to wrap my head back around it, before simply uninstalling it in frustration. Same thing happened with Skyforge. Oh well…guess I won’t be spending any money with them.

[Isgrimnur]

Players can reroll by restarting the game from the very beginning and achieving Adventurer Rank 5, which unlocks Wishes. Then, players can use a Wish to try to obtain a better character.

[Skinypupy]

Players can reroll by restarting the game from the very beginning and achieving Adventurer Rank 5, which unlocks Wishes. Then, players can use a Wish to try to obtain a better character.

On PC, you can create a new account and start over pretty easily by just using a new e-mail address.

On PS4 (where I was playing it), however, your character is tied to your PS account. So the only way to restart the game is to create a separate PlayStation account in a different region (i.e. Japan), which is a rather messy process.

[jztemple2]

Interesting article from PC Gamer, How many frames per second can the human eye really see?

The answer is complex and rather untidy. You might not agree with parts of it; some may even make you angry. Eye and visual cognition experts, even those who play games themselves, may well have a very different perspective than you about what’s important about the flowing imagery computers and monitors display. But human sight and perception is a strange and complicated thing, and it doesn’t quite work like it feels.

[jztemple2]

Not quite at the point for having individual threads for these games, but worth a mention....

From Ubisoft, Tom Clancy's XDefiant Closed Test starts August 5th, invites have been sent out. I've invited a few folks from my Ubisoft Connect friends list if they care . I probably won't be participating too much since my geriatric reflexes aren't up to MP gunplay, but I'm interested in seeing what it is all about.

Patron from Overseer Games comes out on the 10th. It is (and they say it themselves) a game in the image of Banished, but with more social interactions, a tech tree, and some other bells and whistles. A demo is currently available and the manual can be downloaded. I've tried the demo and while there are some nice ideas there, it seems a bit unpolished for being a week from release.

Finally, scheduled for release on the 9th is City of Gangsters from SomaSim, who made Project Highrise which I really liked. It is in the same general design as 2013's Omerta and the more recent Empire of Sin. Omerta had some promise but needed months of updates to add enough content to make it interesting. Sadly this was rather the case with Empire of Sin, it followed the recent Paradox Games model of releasing a game with major issues and a lack of interesting gameplay and has been patched repeatedly to add new content.

I've been following the development of City of Gangsters and I think SomaSim might have a better handle on what not to do with a gangster management sim. Certainly it seems to have promise and since the devs fully supported Project Highrise post-release with patches and new content I have hopes that City of Gangsters will be treated the same way.

[Daehawk]

Maybe 2 people will get this.

[Blackhawk]

Just a general rant.

Why in !#*$#& sake does a modern multiplayer game require a server that you have to set up yourself with nothing but !#*$#& command lines and some sort of nested text and config files? It isn't nineteen ninety-!#*$#&-four. I have any !#*$#& idea how to actually do this, because in 20 years of multiplayer gaming I've never been expected to, not once. I shouldn't need !#*$#& degree in computer science to play !#*$#& game. !#*$#& morons.

[Daehawk]

Reinstalled Destiny 2 to try again ......after the tutorial mission completes Im supposed to fast travel to the camp. Yet it locked me behind closed gates and I cant get out and I cant fast travel to where Im supposed to go. I can fast travel BACK to the tutorial area again but I cant chat there to explain the problem. Stupid bug. Seems its a pretty frequent one too according to posts online. DELETE.

[Skinypupy]

Just a general rant.

Why in !#*$#& sake does a modern multiplayer game require a server that you have to set up yourself with nothing but !#*$#& command lines and some sort of nested text and config files? It isn't nineteen ninety-!#*$#&-four. I have any !#*$#& idea how to actually do this, because in 20 years of multiplayer gaming I've never been expected to, not once. I shouldn't need !#*$#& degree in computer science to play !#*$#& game. !#*$#& morons.

What game?

[Brian]

Insurgency

[Blackhawk]

Yeah, I've decided the simplest thing will be to just set up a dedicated server on my laptop (I just hope people can connect to it.)

[Blackhawk]

I'm updating my Is There Any Deal lists right now, and wanted to get some feedback on the available tracked stores. Other than those I already have checked, can anyone vouch for any of the other shops on this list as having legitimate game keys (I'm not interested in pirated/stolen keys/keys bought with stolen cards/etc.)



For those that don't know about it, Is There Any Deal is a wishlist site that tracks the best price on multiple stores, shows historical low prices, and lets you put a game on a list to be notified when it drops below a certain price on any of those stores. It's completely replaced the Steam wishlist for me, and is superior to it in pretty much every way. These are the people responsible for Enhanced Steam. I highly recommend it.

Even if you don't use it for your wishlist, it's worth checking before you buy a game to see where it is cheapest.

[Lorini]

The problem with buying codes and then putting them into Steam is that you can't get a refund that way. I suppose you can buy the game on Steam, play it, like it, refund it, and then buy it there, but if there's too much of that going on, I'm afraid Steam will change/end the refund policy.

[Blackhawk]

I think I have only refunded two Steam games ever. If I impulse buy it is games that are only a couple of bucks, and not worth the hassle. If it is a higher priced game, I do tons of research before I spend.