The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[celedhring]

I've been watching Dastactic's Forbidden Gods coverage and the concept and mechanics look really interesting and intriguing. It also should make for killer AARs.

I'll probably add it to my wishlist and keep track of the development.

[Josquius]

The Graviteam developers seem to be plucking away at their game, war or no. They're based in Kharkiv, though I don't know if that's from where they operate at the moment (probably not?). Just before the war started they released an Iran-Iraq War DLC for Mius Front, and this week, the released a DLC based on September 1943 operations in the Kharkiv region (where they base a lot of their WW2 content). September '43 is the latest date in their WW2 catalog (they have a few August 1943 scnearios); the devs have said previously they have no interest in any 1944/45 battles.

That's kinda sus.

[Syt]

Card Shark. If you ever thought that part of Barry Lyndon where he's a hustling gambler and duelist should have been a video game, I guess.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371720/Card_Shark/

[FunkMonk]

Through Moonlight I can now stream games like Diablo 3, Halo Infinite, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Microsoft Flight Simulator from my beefy desktop PC to my podunk work laptop with very little lag and rock solid frames.

 

[celedhring]

Terra Invicta let's play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU4E2NtvRlM

The concept is cool, but the gameplay feels like somebody saw the world map bits of the XCom games and decided that's the best part of the game. Dunno.

[Josquius]

Through Moonlight I can now stream games like Diablo 3, Halo Infinite, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Microsoft Flight Simulator from my beefy desktop PC to my podunk work laptop with very little lag and rock solid frames.

 

Curious.
I tried this with steam play once... Witcher 3 was pretty unplayable with the input lag. Not tried moonlight.

[Syt]

Terra Invicta let's play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU4E2NtvRlM

The concept is cool, but the gameplay feels like somebody saw the world map bits of the XCom games and decided that's the best part of the game. Dunno.

Yeah, it keeps cropping up in my recommendation. It's from the makers of The Long War mod for XCOM, which is not a recommendation for me - yes, let's have the people who thought XCOM was way too short and easy a game design their dream game.

[FunkMonk]

Through Moonlight I can now stream games like Diablo 3, Halo Infinite, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Microsoft Flight Simulator from my beefy desktop PC to my podunk work laptop with very little lag and rock solid frames.

 

Curious.
I tried this with steam play once... Witcher 3 was pretty unplayable with the input lag. Not tried moonlight.

Yeah Steam's streaming service is crap honestly, and of course you can only stream games from your Steam library. Moonlight and Parsec allow you to stream basically any game installed on your host machine.

I've tried Parsec and Moonlight and Moonlight seems to work best for me. Both are free to download and fairly easy to set up. Parsec is a little more user-friendly but once I got remote desktop working with Moonlight it is like night and day.

[Syt]

I've been playing some Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster. Now, the conventional suggestion for people interested in getting into the Final Fantasy games is to skip the first 3 games and otherwise start with whatever main series game looks most interesting to them. And now I better understand why.

The gameplay loop of FF1 is fairly basic by modern standards. Grind XP and money in random encounters till you're ready to get past the next story challenge.

And I'm using the term "story" very loosely. The series is now known for its strong narrative focus, and FF1 is not there yet. From what I've seen in my 6 hours of play (again, 80% of it grinding levels in random encounters while listening to 3 Moves Ahead podcasts) it's mostly fetch quests.

E.g. I went to the marshy cave (FUCK that place ... ) to get the crown for the sad king who turned into a boss who dropped the crystal eye that I took to the witch who gave me a potion that woke the sleeping elf king who gave me a key that let me pick up explosives that I took to the dwarves who opened a canal to unlock the rest of the world map. And the village I got to after that promises more of the same.

Not sure I feel like finishing the game, tbh, because there's just not much there.

From what I see on the Steam discussions, the difficulty of the remaster has been significantly nerfed from the original and various other iterations of the game. The veteran player community seems split between "The game is ruined because it caters to casuals" and "Thank FUCK they reduced the grind and difficulty, because grind for grind's sake SUCKS."

The remastered soundtrack is quite good, though. (It doesn't seem to be on Spotify, only the old 8bit version.)

[Josquius]

Yeah. I tried the early FFs some time ago. 1 to 3 are skippable like all NES RPGs.

I don't remember much of 4 but I think it was a bit more proper whilst with 5 they got somewhere. 6 of course was fully formed and great. And in 7 they went mainstream.

[Razgovory]

2 and 3 never came out in the US for the NES.  4 was released as 2 and 6 released as 3.  So I never played the ones unreleased in the US.  I played the hell out of 1 but that was 30 years ago and it probably hasn't aged that well.  I do remember the marsh cave.  It was full of squid wizards or something.

[Syt]

The main strike against the marsh cave is that it has you go through 3 floors, with tons of random encounters that can be pretty harsh if you haven't leveled enough. On top of it, you can't rest to refill your magic or hit points, AND you have to backtrack all they way back to the entrance once you have the quest items (other dungeons with boss fights will generally warp you back out again), so you better bring tons of potions - because the drops from the monsters are also quite scarce.


Played some Battletech. I made it somewhat into the campaign, raised the Argo, and now have to upgrade my squad for the next story mission. It's fun enough, but I feel even at this early stage the mercenary contracts become a bit repetitive (attack base, defend base, destroy enemy mechs, escort convoy, destroy convoy). Maybe it becomes more varied later, but it starts to feel a bit "meh" already.

[Syt]

Footnote to Battletech: It mostly made me wish there was a conversion mod for Star Dynasties.

Also: I've played the tutorial of Star Dynasties. It's set during a time when the prosperous Empire has collapsed and various noble houses vie for control; no incredibly original, but what these days is?

On the surface it does much of what CK2 does - Kings, Dukes, Counts (albeit relabeled), traits, marriage etc. plus events. You also get a council and can assign your councilors to missions- There's spies, inheritances, claims and all that stuff. There's a strong honor system, i.e. if people "misbehave" (e.g. your wife and a courtier have an affair) then you should mete out appropriate punishment.

But there's some differences. For one it's turn based. And it pulls an Old World on you: you only have a limited amount of actions per turn, so you better choose wisely. Warfare is a lot more abstract. You assign an attacker to a target system, and the defender does same. It's then a bit of a tit for tat as each side can can keep adding levies from your vassals to the attack (hoping they agree to show up). I assume this can get interesting once you plan more than one battle in a turn and have to consider how many forces to commit where.

You also only rule your own planet, with all other planets ruled by local rulers. So any expansion requires adding vassals. I started a random map, and it immediately started me off with 4 vassals when I could only handle 3 without penalty (which can be expanded with various traits/decisions/investments), so I had to figure out how to promote one of my vassals and assign her one of my vassals.

There's some "dead" colonies, either never colonized or abandoned. Some, I think, can be recolonized? Also, many buildings on planets aren't "built" but rather are remnants of the old Empire that you return to working conditions; some have effects that extend beyond the planet they're on. And to every construction you must (should?) assign a minion who will speed up/hinder the process. Technological advancement, on the other hand, plays a limited role.

I've only scratched the surface, but I'm willing to try more to see how much depth and gameplay there is. And again, I feel there's some good groundwork for a Battletech themed mod IMO.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah the campaign in Battletech kind of drags on. The tactical battles are still the best in gaming though. I still open up Battletech and play a random skirmish against the AI every now and then because it's just so good.

[Syt]

I'm also not convinced of the game's trajectory that seems to be going full heavy in the long run, with no reasonable use for light mechs. Now, you could get around that with drop limits (I think Mech Commander had that?), i.e. how much tonnage you can deploy in any encounter (with the same going for opposition). But looking at mods that would up variety they almost inevitably also skyrocket the difficulty (esp. Rogue Tech). I'd be happy with just getting more mission and map variety.