What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

I loaded up Sunless Sea and realized it's not the kind of game you can just jump in and play, like more action-oriented games. It'll take a bit a learning for the interface and what not, which I don't have the time for right now. I'll just buy it later down the line when I'm not on a tight deadline to play it.

So instead, I just bought The Witness. Sadly, I have a Twilight Struggle game I need get to, so I probably wont get to start it until tomorrow.

How's that sad?!?! I WISH I had a TS game to get to. That's like saying I just bought a Honda S2000 but sadly I have to have sex with a bunch of young women first.

More Endless Legend. My enthusiasm has been tempered down quite a bit because as a newbie it's extremely confusing. You have lots of susystems and niggles which are never explained anywhere and that create a massive overhead. For example:

1) You have heroes, which level up and get abilities from a huge pool and can equip tons of different weapons each with a bunch of +X% and abilities. Weapons that you have to build and which have different costs.
2) Your army is composed of faction and non-faction units. There's at least 10 of the latter, each with tons of different abilities and stats and minor differences that you must learn.
3) To get this units you have to engage in the "pacification" subsystem and do quests for minor factions. So you have to keep 5-7 missions on your head or check a menu because once they are out of sight, the symbol you can click on to read the quest dissapears. Baffling.
4) Units and heroes get different stats and upgrades through technologies. So you have to remember a bunch of technology changes.
5) You have a ton of different weapons to equip your army. And it's not automatic, each unit has to be retrofitted.

This is a ton of stuff and just for a very small part of the game. Then you have luxuries, trade routes, faction abilities, diplomacy, a very complex tech tree with 12 techs per level, wonders, lots of different terrain bonuses...the game is incredibly complex and I keep thinking whether it really needs to be. I'm still not knowledgeable enough about the game to judge, but I wouldn't be surprised if the game ended up being fun but less than the sum of its parts.

So yeah, it looks fun but there's decididely a lot of non-fun workload to get over first.

SaMoKo wrote: More or less a reboot of Master of Magic, but with far more personality and better gameplay.

Woha, you are totally right! I don't know how I could miss that.

I admit, I had to get a "hint" in The Witness. It wasn't so much a hint, though, as a confirmation that a puzzle element worked the way I thought it worked (it did). I'm sure you know the element I'm talking about, it's a tricky one to verify. Also had a pleasant moment yesterday when my wife, who usually doesn't take much interest in the videogames I'm playing, was working out with me how to solve one of the puzzles and how the "suns" work.

I don't recall how I became interested in The Last Story since I usually despise JRPGs, but man am I glad I did. Just finished it last night, enjoyed it very much. Decent enough story but the combat was terrific, and that's where the genre always loses me. I loved FFVI and Chrono Trigger in high school, but the combination of that boring combat system and emphasis on FMVs over compelling gameplay (see FFVII, aka Officially The Worst Thing To Happen to Gaming Until the Advent of Day One DLC). But I digress, this game was fun and would like more games like it.

Legomancer wrote: I admit, I had to get a "hint" in The Witness. It wasn't so much a hint, though, as a confirmation that a puzzle element worked the way I thought it worked (it did). I'm sure you know the element I'm talking about, it's a tricky one to verify. Also had a pleasant moment yesterday when my wife, who usually doesn't take much interest in the videogames I'm playing, was working out with me how to solve one of the puzzles and how the "suns" work.

Man, there are about a thousand of those, so no, I don't know. I have two sheets of graph paper and about 50 screenshots that say the game is tricky in all kinds of ways. I have seen the end though, (through some chicanery!) The end sequence is pretty cool, we'll talk later, &c. But I went back in and kept playing. I am around +35 or so and pushing 180 panels. I will provide hints as able to y'all. Limiting the damage as best to avoid spoilers.

If you just want your shit spoiled, I am streaming it when I play on PS4 (jeblucas, there and on Twitch). I don't have Chat or Announcements on, to avoid folks spoiling it for me; so I can't interact with anyone on stream.

If you are playing this on PC, be warned, you need a GOOD graphics card. Don't get the game if you don't--some puzzles are undoable without nice graphics. Confirmed by my brother-in-law.

I am liking The Witness, but I am getting stuck early enough to cast some serious doubt on how far I'm going to get in it.

jeb wrote: Man, there are about a thousand of those, so no, I don't know.

Hah. I was thinking the same thing.

jeb wrote: If you are playing this on PC, be warned, you need a GOOD graphics card. Don't get the game if you don't--some puzzles are undoable without nice graphics. Confirmed by my brother-in-law.

My PC is choking to death on anything but low settings. So far I've only run across a puzzle or two that, while not un-doable, helped a lot to bump it up to high just for that puzzle. Too bad I have to restart the game to change graphics settings. But I love the game so much that I don't care.

www.giantbomb.com/videos/kerbal-project-...-part-08/2300-10965/

I was talking up the Kerbal Space Program Giant Bomb series. Last one was just kidn of funny but mostly depressing, but this one is absolute gold. The moment at 1:13 or so. I was laughing uncontrollably out loud in my office. Austin is funny as fuck.

"We could BURY him."

SaMoKo wrote:

metalface13 wrote: Whoa I have not heard of Endless Legend, I see it's one of those rare games that's available for Macs. Tell me more ...

Best 4x game on the market so far. It takes the formula of "almost great" from Endless Space, and addresses almost all criticisms to make it great. More or less a reboot of Master of Magic, but with far more personality and better gameplay. The only other strategy game up to it's par from recent that I've personally played is Age of Wonder III, which is a different take on strategy game (tactical battle focused).

How is AOW3? I've been curious about that too. I played quite a bit of AOW my freshman year of college, but not nearly as much as HOMM3.

I was a huge AoW2 fan. Played it to death. My army of leprechauns tore through the competition.

Black Barney wrote: I was a huge AoW2 fan. Played it to death. My army of leprechauns tore through the competition.

I think my favorite unit was the Dwarf mole rider. Best unit ever.

Could they go underground? I can't remember.

My favourite unit was those airships. I had so much fun shuttling armies around the map. AND they fight! Well, I guess my favourite unit were knights actually cuz my airship stacks would contain:

1 airship
1 hero/wizard
the rest are knights. I loved knocking down castle doors with the knights.

Favourite spell of course was Mana Mastery (or whatever it was called) that changed all the wells to your colour. Talk about a game ender.


...uh oh, I'm getting a little heavy into the AoW2 talk. Here's something for everyone else. See how the T-Rex was actually nature's stealth hunter!

Josh Look wrote: I don't recall how I became interested in The Last Story since I usually despise JRPGs, but man am I glad I did. Just finished it last night, enjoyed it very much. Decent enough story but the combat was terrific, and that's where the genre always loses me. I loved FFVI and Chrono Trigger in high school, but the combination of that boring combat system and emphasis on FMVs over compelling gameplay (see FFVII, aka Officially The Worst Thing To Happen to Gaming Until the Advent of Day One DLC). But I digress, this game was fun and would like more games like it.

You ever play Nier (PS3/360)? That's an odd one that the masses sort of missed, but went on to become a cult classic of sorts. It's distinctly Japanese, but much less Final Fantasy and much more batshit insane action RPG. Certainly worth checking out.

Jeb, some Witness help for your brother-in-law (or anyone else):

Apparently the Medium and Low settings default to 720p, so it can look blurry on a 1080p monitor (causing puzzle problems). All he needs to do is add some text to a text file and he can run low settings but at 1080p, which is what I'm doing. Except for the shadows looking a little rough, it still looks pretty good on low doing it this way.

If on Steam, right click the game in your library and select Properties. Then the Local Files tab, and click Browse Local Files. In the 'data' folder, open Local.variables with Notepad and add to following to the end of the file:

For medium:

For low

He can go here for a more detailed descriptions of each variable if he wants to fine tune the settings.