The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Grey Fox]

Good Choice.

[Josquius]

I had a bunch of vouchers expiring soon and no other things that immediately needed buying so I finally did it and bought a switch.
Shiny.

Yeah that thing is great for parents

I'll be on the couch playing Zelda while the little one stumbles around in the living room and I can quickly put the Switch into sleep mode if I need to attend to her. Games are solid too (Breath of the Wild and Hades  )

Sounds lovely but definitely not an option with mine. No way would he leave me alone on the sofa
But being able to quickly sleep and dip in and out is an appeal.

Hades is probably top of my list to get. So far got Mario Kart, Disco Elysium, Goose Game, and Astral Chain. I like how many games have demos on the store too, helped me eliminate dbz kakarot from any consideration.

[Grey Fox]

I have my eye on Baba is You. Dice Dungeons was pretty fun, especially in waiting rooms or when my kids swim* or play hockey*.


*Because of covid restrictions, parents are not allowed inside.

[frunk]

I have my eye on Baba is You. Dice Dungeons was pretty fun, especially in waiting rooms or when my kids swim* or play hockey*.


*Because of covid restrictions, parents are not allowed inside.

Baba Is You is great if you like puzzle games that make you progressively think more and more outside the box.  Otherwise it will be an exercise in frustration.

Some of the later puzzles I'm not as much a fan of when you have to execute a bunch of complicated actions in the right order, and if you mess up early the whole sequence is shot. 

[FunkMonk]

I have my eye on Baba is You. Dice Dungeons was pretty fun, especially in waiting rooms or when my kids swim* or play hockey*.


*Because of covid restrictions, parents are not allowed inside.

Baba Is You is great if you like puzzle games that make you progressively think more and more outside the box.  Otherwise it will be an exercise in frustration.

Some of the later puzzles I'm not as much a fan of when you have to execute a bunch of complicated actions in the right order, and if you mess up early the whole sequence is shot. 

Yeah Baba is great but holy crap do some of the puzzles frustrate me. Still haven't finished it 

That Goose game is cute fun.

[Syt]

RPS have posted an excellent list of plot twists in video games: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-9-best-plot-twists-in-pc-games

[Sheilbh]

Oh this is sad - apparently a lovely game too:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/914800/view/3197000290665001626

I'll probably buy just for that.

[Maladict]

Oh this is sad - apparently a lovely game too:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/914800/view/3197000290665001626

I'll probably buy just for that.

That does look like a worthwhile purchase. 

[Sheilbh]

Oh my:
https://twitter.com/devolverdigital/status/1510995585138147333?s=20&t=Cre6zylKHgM2KTZN3iceVA

[celedhring]

Oh my:
https://twitter.com/devolverdigital/status/1510995585138147333?s=20&t=Cre6zylKHgM2KTZN3iceVA

 

I dig the decanonization of the Gilbert-less ones.

[FunkMonk]

https://kotaku.com/april-2022-game-pass-lost-in-random-life-is-strange-tru-1848750844

Games available on Game Pass starting this month

April 5
Cricket 22 (Cloud, Console)
MLB The Show 2022 (Cloud, Console)

April 7
Chinatown Detective Agency (Cloud, Console, PC)
Dragon Age 2, via EA Play (Cloud)
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, via EA Play (Cloud)
Star Wars: Squadrons, via EA Play (Cloud)

April 12
Life is Strange: True Colors (Cloud, Console, PC)
Panzer Corps 2 (PC)
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk (PC)

April 14
Lost In Random, via EA Play (Cloud, Console, PC)

[crazy canuck]

Having played a few games of Distant Worlds 2 now, I can explain a bit more about the differences with Stellaris.

Stellaris is more of a macro management game.  The economic model is very basic and resources are reduced to two things. Games also feel very similar.  The main difference is the ascendency you go for but even then the game plays out pretty much the same despite all the bells and whistles.  Also, games are long - I have never actually finished one.

Distant Worlds 2 is much more of a micro management game (although you can choose to automate as much of it as you want and step in at any time to give specific orders).  It has a complex resource system that can dramatically effect how each game plays out - you need specific resources to build specific things.

The economic system feels a lot more alive - you can see the private sector ships doing their thing - transport ships, freighters, private miners etc.  You can also make strategic decisions to spur on private economic development, mainly through developing mining rigs on distant worlds - hence the name 

Also, and I think most importantly, games have a reasonable length.  I have finished three games now.

There is also a lot of variability amongst games - I think owing to the fact that it does not have to balanced for multiplayer.  That means that even if you are using the same civ with the same settings the game can play out very differently.

I think both games are good, but they are good at different things.         

[Syt]

Thanks for the summary, CC. Sounds very similar to DW1 then.

Galactic Civilizations IV will come out soon. I will likely hold off for a while unless reviews are raving - GalCiv3 was fine IMHO, but it needed a few expansions to go from mediocre to good.

The product page has some interesting ideas, though:

https://www.galciv4.com/gameplay

Previous Galactic Civilizations games existed in a single map of various sizes. Players who enjoyed big maps had to deal with the downside of much of the map being "empty" (no stars or planets). Moreover, exploration of the game was the same on turn 1 as it was on turn 300.

Galactic Civilizations IV introduces star sectors. Each sector is akin to a map in Galactic Civilizations III. Most of these sectors are similar to tiny to large GalCiv III maps that represented a section of the overall galaxy that the player was trying to conquer. Now, there can be anywhere from one to dozens of star sectors to explore.

The early part of the game involves the traditional exploration phase. However, other star sectors can only be reached through subspace streams which require a technology to reach. Thus, a second phase of exploration and conquest is entered once this technology is achieved.

Star sectors allow us to have much bigger maps since we are able to do away with the dead-space tiles which in previous games still consumed memory and more relevantly, giant pathfinding tasks which always forced us to limit the maximum sizes of maps.

Didn't Warlock 2 have a system like that where you were expanding over various "plains" that were essentially linked maps? Also call back to Deuteros on Commodore Amiga where you could expand beyond the solar system and create colonies in other systems that were for all intents and purposes separate game boards (and also accounted for time dilation IIRC). Curious to see how this improves gameplay to break up the map like that.

This one has me interested, though:

In previous games, players had to manage every single planet no matter how marginal it was. Players could assign an AI governor to the planet to automate this process but this was rarely satisfying.

GalCiv IV flips the concept of governors on its head: By default, planets aren't managed at all. They simply provide resources (tech, minerals, wealth, food) to the nearest "core" world. Players can then decide if they want to manage a world by assigning a governor to it, which turns that colony into a core world. The governor doesn't manage anything but instead provides a series of bonuses to the planet based on their character. Of course, have too many colonies feeding a core world and that governor may decide he or she doesn't need you anymore and rebel.

Having true colonies is a feature that is so obvious in hindsight that we're baffled we didn't come up with it sooner. In 4X games, the late game stall is almost entirely caused by having to micro manage too many planets, cities, whatever. Here, players will tend to only want to manage the top handful of worlds and leave the rest as colonies whose resources supercharge their associated core world.

Microing your planets and colonies is always the most tedious aspects of these games. So dividing them into "core" worlds that function as usual and "colonies" that are backwaters feeding core worlds sounds interesting, not least from an RP perspective. It could also add interesting decisions - should you turn this world into a core? If you do, how will this affect supply to other cores? I feel a system like this existed somewhere already. Didn't Stellaris have something like that where colonies had to "grow" into proper worlds, some time ago?

Other changes seem less exciting. Leaders seem to be basically pops as you had them in MoO2 or in Stellaris, if I read the text correctly? A research model that makes you pick from options (like Stellaris), though unclear if choice might be exclusive (if you choose A you can't choose B, ever)? Events and quests (like Stellaris), and an expanded ideology system (7 instead of the previous games' good/evil/bad trichotomy (is that a word?)). Executive orders seem to be similar to edicts from (all together now!) Stellaris.

[Jacob]

I have played a good 4x space game for quite a while (or a crappy one either, for that matter). What are the best options on the market right now?

[Darth Wagtaros]

Hail to the Queen, played it for the first time in years. I got 33 weeks in, which I think is a personal best.