The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Josquius]

I've been playing Ff15.
As said it's a flawed game. A lot wrong. Tonnes clearly unfinished and half arsed.
At some points the plot just skips and goes unexplained for no reason.
Not to mention it being reliant on a crappy netflix film for the first chapters to make sense....

But still it's engaging. I find myself falling into my horrid habits of trying to do everything. Some side quests demand redoing dungeons, there's one I find too annoying to do even once, I shouldn't do those and should just play the game.
The game is a real what might have been if they'd had their act together on it.

Weirdly though a lot of the commentary online is about the world not making sense. If there's monsters roaming about how come cities don't have walls. Where do all these people live, there's not enough houses. So on.
All valid points.
But....have people never played jrpgs before?

Found today. A release tracker for Mega Drive game.

https://md.restartmag.com/

That is recent and future mega drive releases.
This is a thing.

Yeah 1990s retro gaming is really into overdrive nowadays. One of my friends who never cared for consoles when he was of the proper age now has bought a retro SNES 

Nostalgia is quite the drug. I think it helps that pixel art graphics aged better than early 3D, and the simpler (in a good way) gameplay is a bit of a palate cleanser compared to modern games.

The retro gaming fad annoys me.
Back when I lived in Japan it was quite a hobby to go into second hand shops and pick up snes games in bulk for a dollar each.
I must have well over a hundred or two from this (some more than once as its hard to remember what I have...).
When I visited Japan the year before covid though... This was no longer an option. Prices have shot up and selections are slim. So many foreigners are buying them up en mass to sell on ebay.

But yeah. That retro gaming is big I get. That development for retro consoles is becoming so huge.... I think I've talked about this before. It's awesome and carries huge nerd cred. But wow that requires some serious skills to be applied towards dead ends that do nothing for career prospects.

[Norgy]

I did what most Red Dead Redemption fans have done and bought it for PC.

And if the election was a disappointment, this goes as a very decent second place.
I remember trying it on the old Xbox, and it looked so good. In 2010.

In 2024, even a modded Oblivion looks better, and the combat system of Morrowind looks good. What a load of shite to pay 65 Euros for.

I will obviously try some mods, but this was a sad excuse of a game for 2024.

[celedhring]

I've been playing Ff15.
As said it's a flawed game. A lot wrong. Tonnes clearly unfinished and half arsed.
At some points the plot just skips and goes unexplained for no reason.
Not to mention it being reliant on a crappy netflix film for the first chapters to make sense....

But still it's engaging. I find myself falling into my horrid habits of trying to do everything. Some side quests demand redoing dungeons, there's one I find too annoying to do even once, I shouldn't do those and should just play the game.
The game is a real what might have been if they'd had their act together on it.

Weirdly though a lot of the commentary online is about the world not making sense. If there's monsters roaming about how come cities don't have walls. Where do all these people live, there's not enough houses. So on.
All valid points.
But....have people never played jrpgs before?

Found today. A release tracker for Mega Drive game.

https://md.restartmag.com/

That is recent and future mega drive releases.
This is a thing.

Yeah 1990s retro gaming is really into overdrive nowadays. One of my friends who never cared for consoles when he was of the proper age now has bought a retro SNES 

Nostalgia is quite the drug. I think it helps that pixel art graphics aged better than early 3D, and the simpler (in a good way) gameplay is a bit of a palate cleanser compared to modern games.

The retro gaming fad annoys me.
Back when I lived in Japan it was quite a hobby to go into second hand shops and pick up snes games in bulk for a dollar each.
I must have well over a hundred or two from this (some more than once as its hard to remember what I have...).
When I visited Japan the year before covid though... This was no longer an option. Prices have shot up and selections are slim. So many foreigners are buying them up en mass to sell on ebay.

But yeah. That retro gaming is big I get. That development for retro consoles is becoming so huge.... I think I've talked about this before. It's awesome and carries huge nerd cred. But wow that requires some serious skills to be applied towards dead ends that do nothing for career prospects.

Oh wow, just saw that my Dragonball SNES games go for 200-300 euro a pop, even used.

Then again, the fuckers were already like 60 euro back in the 1990s - cartridge games were so expensive back then...

[Grey Fox]

I've been playing Ff15.
As said it's a flawed game. A lot wrong. Tonnes clearly unfinished and half arsed.
At some points the plot just skips and goes unexplained for no reason.
Not to mention it being reliant on a crappy netflix film for the first chapters to make sense....

But still it's engaging. I find myself falling into my horrid habits of trying to do everything. Some side quests demand redoing dungeons, there's one I find too annoying to do even once, I shouldn't do those and should just play the game.
The game is a real what might have been if they'd had their act together on it.

Weirdly though a lot of the commentary online is about the world not making sense. If there's monsters roaming about how come cities don't have walls. Where do all these people live, there's not enough houses. So on.
All valid points.
But....have people never played jrpgs before?

Found today. A release tracker for Mega Drive game.

https://md.restartmag.com/

That is recent and future mega drive releases.
This is a thing.

Yeah 1990s retro gaming is really into overdrive nowadays. One of my friends who never cared for consoles when he was of the proper age now has bought a retro SNES 

Nostalgia is quite the drug. I think it helps that pixel art graphics aged better than early 3D, and the simpler (in a good way) gameplay is a bit of a palate cleanser compared to modern games.

The retro gaming fad annoys me.
Back when I lived in Japan it was quite a hobby to go into second hand shops and pick up snes games in bulk for a dollar each.
I must have well over a hundred or two from this (some more than once as its hard to remember what I have...).
When I visited Japan the year before covid though... This was no longer an option. Prices have shot up and selections are slim. So many foreigners are buying them up en mass to sell on ebay.

But yeah. That retro gaming is big I get. That development for retro consoles is becoming so huge.... I think I've talked about this before. It's awesome and carries huge nerd cred. But wow that requires some serious skills to be applied towards dead ends that do nothing for career prospects.

Oh wow, just saw that my Dragonball SNES games go for 200-300 euro a pop, even used.

Then again, the fuckers were already like 60 euro back in the 1990s - cartridge games were so expensive back then...

Yeah, it's something we're always reminded of here. Some N64 games were 90-100$cad back then.

[Josquius]

Street Fighter 2 on the mega drive.
One little game and it was my main christmas present. Nearly £100. Insane.

[Syt]

I remember seeing MS-DOS RPGs for 140 German Marks (70 EUR) in store. And I think I paid 120 or 140 for The Legend of Zelda on NES (and similar prices for SNES later on; DM 120 was the baseline, some a bit cheaper, some a bit more expensive).

[Syt]

For the Navy-Heads, Sea Power is now in Early Access:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1286220/Sea_Power__Naval_Combat_in_the_Missile_Age/

After hostilities have broken out in Central Europe, the race is on as a pressured US Navy escort force battle off Soviet bomber and submarine attacks on a perilous quest to reinforce NATO defenders in Europe. Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, the conflict between Iran and Iraq risks escalating into a larger confrontation between superpowers as both sides indiscriminately attack neutral merchant shipping. And in the Norwegian Sea, an outnumbered Soviet surface force challenges the might of a massive US Navy amphibious force bound for occupied Norway...



Brought to you by the lead designer of Cold Waters, Sea Power lets you control NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in a modern naval conflict. Whether it's gunning it out with Boghammars in a surface duel, fighting off aerial attackers armed with long-range missiles, or hunting for enemy submarines with aircraft and surface ships, advanced weaponry and sensors are at your disposal.



Can you successfully hide your forces while detecting and tracking theirs? It is up to you to play an advanced game of cat and mouse on the high seas, to seize the initiative and attack with the advantage of surprise on your side. And at all times, you have to observe rules of engagement and take care not to cause an unnecessary incident that could lead to escalation. After all, you cannot really be sure just who that radar contact at 30.000 feet is, can you?



Features List

• Cold war era between the '60s and '80s
• Theatres including North Atlantic, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Tonkin and Mediterranean Area
• Dynamic Campaign - theatre scale [Alpha version launching Q2 2025]
• Rich variety of historical and fictional single scenarios
• Over 150 Naval units, including original ships and more than 60 aircraft
• Pausable real-time controls with time compression options
• Dynamic time of day and weather per engagement
• Custom soundtrack
• Realtime combat
• Advanced flight and ship physics
• Advanced sensor modeling
• Full user scenario editor
• Save games everywhere/every time [coming Q1 2025]
• Detailed and accurate 3D graphics
• 130 weapon systems and 50 different ground objects
• Land facilities and real-world terrain

[Maladict]

MicroProse still exists? 

[grumbler]

"Tactical Action Officer, this is EW.  Downbeat radar has shifted to high PRF."

"All stations, TAO.  Warning red, weapons free."

Every USN/NATO tactical exercise of the 1980s.

[celedhring]

MicroProse still exists? 

Somebody bought the brand recently and is trying to revive it. The strategy youtubers I watch seem pretty excited about the announced projects, if they really come to pass.

[Syt]

"Tactical Action Officer, this is EW.  Downbeat radar has shifted to high PRF."

"All stations, TAO.  Warning red, weapons free."

Every USN/NATO tactical exercise of the 1980s.

The Single Malt Strategy podcast had an episode with The Historical Gamer, Tortuga Power, Wolfpack345, and Finnish Jager (the latter three focus on navy games IIRC?) about the game and they talk about its strengths and weaknesses while having gameplay footage running in the background:

[Syt]

Slitherine, please stop, you're confusing everyone. 

In 2007, they released Commander: Europe at War, a beer & pretzels operational wargame about WW2 in Europe, made by Firepower Entertainment:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/39277/commander-europe-at-war/

Firepower made a kinda sequel, Commander: Napoleon at War.

There was Commander: The Great War but that was done by The Lordz Games Studio who started with this game, made the Battlefield Academy games and then the popular Panzer Corps. (Note that Panzer Corps 2 was NOT made by Lordz but rather Flashback Studios. There's also the similar Order of Battle game, also from Slitherine, but developed by The Aristocrats, not The Lordz.)

Which brings us to Fury Software. They got their start with Strategic Command: European Theater in 2002 which was released by Battlefront. Sequels followed (SC2: Blitzkrieg, WW2 - Pacific Theater, World War I). Those games still used squares instead of hexes, presented in a faux isometric view (think Civilization II).

In 2016, published by Slitherine/Matrix, they kind of rebooted their series, starting with Strategic Command: WWII - War in Europe, followed in 2018 by World at War (using a full world map), World War I (2019), American Civil War (2022) and the latest being War in the Pacific, released this year. I like these games - not too complicated, good beer & pretzel operational fodder. There were also scenario DLCs for some entries (like Balkans Wars and Russian Civil War for WW1, or Franco-German War 1870/71 for American Civil War).

Anyways, now they're working on a remake of the original Commander: Europe at War: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3225360/Commander_Europe_at_War/

To summarize, we have two series of similar games: Commander & Strategic Command (not counting DLC, "Classic" editions etc.):

2002 - Strategic Command: European Theater (Fury Software)
2006 - Strategic Command 2: Blitzkrieg (Fury Software)
2007 - Commander: Europe at War (Firepower Entertainment)
2008 - Strategic Command: WWII - Pacific Theater (Fury Software)
2008 - Commander: Napoleon at War (Firepower Entertainment)
2010 - Strategic Command: WWII - Global Conflict (Fury Software)
2012 - Commander: The Great War (The Lordz Games Studio)
2016 - Strategic Command WWII: War in Europe (Fury Software)
2018 - Strategic Command WWII : World at War (Fury Software)
2019 - Strategic Command: World War I (Fury Software)
2022 - Strategic Command: American Civil War (Fury Software)
2024 - Strategic Command WWII: War in the Pacific (Fury Software)
202? - Commander: Europe at War (Fury Software)

I like the graphics of the upcoming game, but not quite sure why I should buy this if I already have their games from 2016 onward?

[Tamas]

In my, like, one hour between putting the kid to bed and passing out myself, I wanted to try MS Flight Sim 2024, but I am stuck in a queue with no progress indicator, as too many users are trying to log in. Just WTF.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

In my, like, one hour between putting the kid to bed and passing out myself, I wanted to try MS Flight Sim 2024, but I am stuck in a queue with no progress indicator, as too many users are trying to log in. Just WTF.

airport security...

[Syt]

Armored Brigade 2 is out on Matrix (to come to Steam in a few months).

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/armored-brigade-ii

AB was a fun game, covering (with DLC) the cold war era from 1965 to 1991 in tactical combat, featuring USA, USSR, FRG, GDR, CSSR, UK, Finland, Poland, Netherlands, France, Italy, Belgium and Yugoslavia.

One of its interesting features is that it featured real world maps, and for skirmishes you could select any section of the larger map to play on. There was also a very popular WW2 mod.

The new game has QoL changes, and most importantly features a 3d map (the 2d of the original was functional but not flashy). It's not the greatest 3D ever (don't expect Graviteam Tactics or WARNO graphics, it's almost "low poly" style, but not as basic as Second Front), actually it's a bit basic. But a big improvement over the 2D map, if only for the fact that you can more easily see the entire battlefield by tilting the camera. It also has new maps (like the Hof Gap, or - which tbh made me pick it up - the area between Lübeck and Bad Oldesloe.). Haven't checked if it has all nations/units from the previous game.

Quick skirmish as 1983 Bundeswehr vs. Red Army near Bad Oldesloe ended in a draw. I moved my Leo-1s in way too close, making them easy pickings for a Mi-24, though I took out plenty T-62. (I keep forgetting that engagement ranges for tanks in 80s are "a bit" longer than in WW2 ) My Alpha Jets helped, though, as did an F-104 with Napalm.

It's pretty smooth to pick up and play if you've played Combat Mission or the likes before, though hard to judge yet how much is happening under the hood. I hope they scale the UI, though.