The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Syt]

Oh wait, they also released a Gettysburg game in February, for €67.99

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1868730/Gettysburg_Fields_of_Valor/

Gettysburg: Fields of Valor (c) is a turn-based two-player historical war game that is played on a hex grid using a multiple phase movement and combat system, with many features that make it fast to play and easy to enjoy:
- American Civil War battle of Gettysburg simulation
- Turn-based, streamlined multi-phase movement and combat
- 50 x 35 topographical hex map of the entire battlefield
- All brigades, artillery batteries, and commanders modeled
- Brigades occupy multiple hexes according to size
- Multi-counter brigades move and fight as cohesive units
- Brigade counter values change with combat results
- Reinforcements and replacements automatically scheduled
- Enemy range of influence automatically calculated
- Unit movement range display and movement undo capability
- Available artillery and targets automatically calculated
- Automatic retreat and advance after successful assault
- Save and reload games from your game library
- Automatic game snapshots for replay and alternate scenarios
- Progress, casualty and objectives report continually updated
- Single-computer (2-player) and play-by-email modes
- Available for Windows and MacOS
- Full details in the Game Manual

P.S.: This one has no AI opponent, acording to the discussion forums ....

[Solmyr]

Map sucks.

[Syt]

Been playing a bit of Graviteam Tactics recently. Never really spent as much time with the game as it deserves. It's possibly my favorite game in terms of realism, and the campaigns tend to be fairly unpredictable due to the WEGO nature of the operational map out of which the tactical battles are generated, and the persistence of the battlefield. If you keep fighting over a town, its buildings remain destroyed, some bodies remain in the field, and destroyed vehicles dot the landscape where they died. Unfortunately, the UI (while greatly improved) is still all kinds of alien, and provides the highest barrier to entry for newcomers. That, and no one *really* seems to know how the logistics of the operational map work (supplies, replacements, repairs ... ), though my impression is that it's better ... mostly because more of it seems to be automated now.

I was playing the Stepanovka campaign (Oct '41, I think) from the original game the other day. It's a relatively short one, with few units under your control on the if you play as Germans. You have other allied units who do their thing on the Northern side of the map, while you do your stuff in the South (you can opt to control your allied units, too). It was a fairly mellow affair, and in ten turns I only had 3 engagements, mostly because I was extremely cautious. Additionally, I only had a few infantry units with their gun support (arty, mortars, some AT), so I was worried into running into armored units (I kept fighting against a tank division HQ, but the tanks were nowhere near me, in hindsight).

I can tell you, though, no amount of smoke makes it comfortable to be on the offensive with only infantry against enemy units of unknown strength when the battlefield looks as open and flat as this:





Another campaign, set in the same general area, has a different rhythm to it. It's July '43, and the Soviets attack the German lines. The first round has the Reds attack a sector of mine in strength. I assume it's a surprise attack, because I was not allowed to deploy my troops and had to deal with them as they were positioned. I had 9 StuGs, that I tried to get into the flanks/rear of the attack while trying to reposition troops and guns in the little town of Marinovka. And it would probably have worked if there hadn't been a whole bunch of Il-2 circling over the battlefield, strafing my troops and dropping bombs on my poor little tanks.

Anyways, it became clear fast that I was outmatched. There were a whole bunch of T-34 and KV-1 and hordes of soldiers rushing towards (and through) my lines. I managed to take out 3 tanks. Well, two. One got stuck in a gully. I gave the retreat signal, but losses were still bad. I managed to salvage 3 StuGs, and a few men and guns, but about 70% of the initial force in that sector was gone while dealing minimal losses. Tbf, they were outnumbered about 4:1.



Another clash a bit further on my right flank at least allowed me to reposition my troops. 3 battalions, a whole bunch of guns. I set up defenses in a town and a treeline that flanked the Soviet lines on the right. To take the town the Russians would have to come down hill, cross a little creek, and then come up onto my hill. I managed to misplace a few spotters for mortars (leaving them uneffective), but overall, this went much better, but it was a crazy slugging match. My troops halted the initial push, but afterwards the Russians were sitting on top of their hill shelling mine, having put a whole bunch of guns there. Fortunately, my flanking troops had a good view, and could bring in arty on them before sending in a bunch of infantry to clean them up.




(love details like these - small arms fire kicking up dirt and ricocheting off the gun)



Once I had cleared the guns and I thought I was about to wrap thing up I realized that the whole far side of that hill was crawling with enemy infantry. My front line defenders opposing them were exhausted, some of them retreating, so I used some fresh platoons to plug the holes, but it wasn't pretty. My troops on the hill were too exhausted to assault them, my arty had no spotters/comms to shell them efficiently, and my other defenders would have had to attack them across the same valley/river that helped me repulse back the first wave. After well over an hour of battle, much of it near the end just firing at range, the Reds offered a ceasefire and I gladly accepted. Losses were about 20-40% on each side (depending on how many wounded/missing will return to combat). I lost a Marder III and two infantry guns, but otherwise my heavy equipment survived. The Russians lost 7 or 8 guns out of 20, a command unit, and a signal troop, so I think I came out *slightly* ahead.

The name of the game will be to delay the Soviet attacks while shoring up defensive positions, all the while waiting for my reinforcements to arrive/be released.

[Syt]

Oh, I was wondering when a new DLC would come out ... just released one. September '42, Voronezh area. I will buy it, just to support the devs, but man, those battlefields scare me.







I mean yeah - it's Russia, and they use real topographies and historical maps, but sheesh.

[Tamas]

Thanks Syt, I really need to gather my resolve and learn this game.

[Syt]

Word of warning, though: the devs discourage micro managing and add uncertainties. While you have decent control of your units (limited by command points that replenish fast or slow depending on side, communications capabilities etc.) in general, most of the time it will be sufficient to order them into certain positions, attack certain areas or so (you do have control over formation, whether to use covert movement (if possible) and other things, but using the preset defaults for commands will generally be fine). However, it's also possible that a unit or commander decides to do a bit of their own thing at times. Pursue an attack further than you told them to, engaging a different enemy than you ordered them to, or moving to a slightly different position than you told them.

[Syt]

There's a few decent YouTubers for GTMF, btw. I recommend Warsimmer and Tonci87. I found Tonci only recently. He has a really good (new-ish) overview video, and a series of campaigns he plays, with pretty good commentary explaining his strategy and tactics:

https://youtu.be/w0uud0Fv-Lw?list=PLOWnCqHDRIVIZODX4e2YiM_rWWaZwKB7C

I especially like his advice for people put off by the amount of DLC. Buy the game, play the base campaigns. Then buy a DLC that looks interesting and play that. Then the next one. Etc. All campaigns are standalone, and if there's a patch deployed at the same time it's always rolled into the main game.

There's also various tutorials online; just be sure to find one that's somewhat recent, like Warsimmer's video about use of off-map artillery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY1L0OrmpJo&ab_channel=TheWarSimmer

[Alcibiades]

You make it sound very interesting, I'll have to check it out too,

[Syt]

Again, I recommend watching a few videos to get a better idea of how it plays.

[Syt]

So I think I will never finish Elden Ring. I pinged away at i some more, but that game is massive. I have 130 hours in Dark Souls III (about 75 of it in my "longest" run) and have yet to finish it. My original DS1 run, with walkthrough, took me well over 100 hours - including a lot of farming, and progressing very slowly and carefully through the levels.

In Elden Ring I have well over 50 hours in one character. I've looked up full map of the game just to get a feeling how much I've done. I'd say maybe 15%? 20 tops?

Now, that's absolutely on me. Slowly progressing through areas, taking my time to explore every nook and cranny, and taking out enemies not in a headlong rush, but methodically and carefully, if I can (unless I've become comfortable enough with an area to do it on muscle memory) and only moving on when I feel an area is truly "done".

Anyways, with me wanting to explore every square centimeter of the map (including various underground sections) I'd probably look at a 250, 300 hour playthrough; and then I'd probably still miss a lot because this is a FromSoft game, and quests, secrets, special events/bosses etc. can be hard to find or trigger. Great for replayability if you want to figure shit out by yourself, but all kinds of confusing.

So I've been watching LobosJr's first playthrough on YouTube. It's 22 videos, of 4-7 hours each. I'm guessing 100 to 120 hours? (To be fair, he can spend quite a lot of time on bosses to learn their entire movesets and figuring out how to counter them, even if he could easily beat them.)

I'm on Ep. 9 and he keeps finding places, dungeons, bosses, NPCs ... and I'm thinking, "Yeah, never would have found this place or beaten those enemies." At the same time, it's IMHO by far the most creative world FromSoft have ever done, and with more exposition than usual (besides item descriptions and vague hints from mad NPCs). It has shades of their older games, esp. Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but they also put a lot of their lessons from Sekiro to use.

As far as their Souls/Bloodborne games go, I'd say it has the best combat, and even horseback combat feels awesome once you get used to it. It allows crafting of tons of consumables (though you'd probably focus on ones that are useful for your build instead of doing it all the time). And it has surely the biggest variety of equipment of any game of their series (and you can augment them with special attacks).

It's kind of difficult to recommend, because while I think it's their most "mainstream" game yet, I think you would get the most out of it if:
- you like huge worlds to explore with very limited hand-holding (there's some guidance in the game on what to do, and hints, but there's no quest log, quest markers or similar - here's a world, go check it out)
- piece together the events preceding and happening throughout the game, and what every NPCs angle is (Morrowind's backstory with the various conflicting accounts of the Battle of Red Mountain comes to mind, or The Return of the Obra Dinn)
- you like to figure out the mechanics of a game through experimentation (Souls combat has a certain reputation and cadences - stamina management, blocking vs rolling, timing of attacks/combos ... IMHO it's fun once you get into it and stop button mashing; and Elden Ring, after Bloodborne's rejection of shields, embraces them again, with strong attacks after blocking an enemy's blow)
- you like figuring out how to overcome come challenges (depending on your character build, some enemies or bosses will be easier than others; at the same time the game gives you more tools to overcome them than previous ones IMHO, between weapons, consumables, summoning minions, and summoning NPCs and players)
- generous freedom in how to play - tanky with heavy weapons, nimble with quick weapons, ranged, magic (of various types) ... or a mixture of any of those, with huge variety of gear to match
- you like a dark fantasy world that's in decay, with some fantastic (in the true meaning of the word) environments and enemies, ranging from "dudes in armor" to the grotesque (though maybe not as much as Bloodborne); one trap may drop you into a dangerous area that looks like the cover of a heavy metal album, or an elevator might take you to a beautiful, dreamlike underworld, plus much more
- you're happy to put 100+ hours into the game
- have the patience in case you get stuck on a problem - be it a particularly nasty boss (there's probably something you can do/learn to make it easier) or "where to go next" (though unlike previous games, this time you have ample places to explore when stuck/need to take a break from what's blocking you, and fast travel is quite generous in this)

I still want to explore all the environments myself at some point because the game is incredibly gorgeous and has some awesome area and enemy designs, but I think I might download an invincibility mod or something when doing that.

[Syt]

A new Monkey Island game is out, led by original designer Ron Gilbert.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2060130/Return_to_Monkey_Island/

And it appears to ignore the ones that came after LeChuck's Revenge:

Return to Monkey Island is an unexpected, thrilling return of series creator Ron Gilbert that continues the story of the legendary adventure games The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge developed in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.

Not a big fan of the art style (didn't like it much even back in Day of the Tentacle, tbh, preferring the old engine's look from Maniac Mansion to MI2 and Indy4), but it sits at 96% positive reviews out of almost 500, which is a surprise, considering how fans often react to the return of beloved franchises.

[Valmy]

Sweet! I already bought it so I will play it once I get the chance.

I have hated the art direction ever since Monkey Island 2 because it should try to look as much like Treasure Island or whatever which makes the ridiculous nonsense the characters do and say so hilarious. It went very cartoon-y in the new (well very old now, but you know what I mean) games.

Still really liked Curse of Monkey Island despite that. Hoping I really like this one as well.

[Solmyr]

I've only ever played Curse and liked it just fine.

[Syt]

Speaking of 

A couple of weeks ago I talked to a co-worker about video games and what games we played when we were young, and what games we obsessed over. He grew up with bootleg consoles in Jaipur, with SNES/Genesis knock offs mostly (emulators?) in the 00s.

I mentioned how some games from my childhood and teens are "lodged in my brain," e.g. I still have all special moves for Super Street Fighter II on SNES still memorized, or how I could probably draw a reasonably detailed map of the Carribean from memory (or at least place cities) because I had played Pirates on C64 so much.

He asked what that game was about, and I said it was basically one of the first open world sandboxes. He didn't quite believe me, this being on an 8bit computer with 64k-ish RAM.

So I explained.

That you had 4 different starting eras, each with slightly different cities on the map (some show up in earlier scenarios, some in later ones), and how later eras had bigger, richer cities, more advanced ships, and busier trade routes.

That you could pick a background in the start from the 4 colonial powers - Spain, England, France, Holland.

That you could roam the map freely, looking for ships to plunder, or cities to attack. That you could search for lost treasures. That you could attack cities both from sea and land. That you had sea battles and sword fighting mini games (and land battles, but those were not good).

That the world kept evolving - cities would be hit by disease, or there would be wars between the powers where you could choose sides and attack enemy ships and conquer cities to give you more ranks. That you could court governors' daughters and marry them. That there was an overarching quest of finding lost family members.

That different ships with different rigging handled differently in various wind conditions, and that there were different winds blowing in different parts of the map, making some journeys harder than others.

That the copy protection (i.e. when the Treasure Fleet/Silver Train were in which harbor in which era) also worked as a way to plan robbing them.

That you had to manage your crew's morale, and you might have to pay them out and hire a new one to keep your journey going. That you had to pay attention to your health and retire in a timely manner. That you could be captured by enemies or marooned by your crew, but that it wasn't game over.

And more little things.

To be quite honest, for a 1987 title originally for C64, this was doing a whole of a lot that would not be regularly seen in games till later.

[Barrister]

Sid Meier's Pirates! was great.  Played the hell out of that game on my Apple II.

There was a remake in the mid-2000s that was pretty good as well.  Kept all of the same basic mechanics, updated the graphics completely.  They added a dancing mini-game, but that was about the only real change.