What Video Games Have You Been Playing? IX: Now With 4K VR!

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm playing Pokemon SoulSilver. I love the walking Pokemon, although it can be a bit...nightmarish at times:

"Winston is jumping for joy!"

Winston is an Onix. And I'm in a Pokemon center.

"Jupiter began poking you in the stomach." Jupiter is my Nidorino. Ouch.

 

[Phrossack]

Shogun 2: The Oda clan drives all before its double walls of spears. Ashigaru are so upgradable and affordable that there's no need to get samurai at all. My archers started with 30 accuracy but now start with about 60. My spearmen started with meager stats but now have doubled or tripled their stats in morale, attack, defense skill, and armor. Two ranks of yari ashigaru in yari wall, backed by more ranks of long yari ashigaru in yari wall, can eat samurai like rice. They're even better now that Oda Nobuhide grants them at least +4 morale and attack without even activating Stand and Fight.

Their colors may look like clown vomit, but they annihilate all before them.

In Mount & Blade: Viking Conquest, I'm trying an abolitionist playthrough. My character's background was a life as a slave, and after the usual trade routes I could afford a large longship and crew. I'm trying to attack every slave trader convoy I see, enlist the freed slaves, and repeat.

It's not going well. See, slaves upgrade to lowly farmers, and still need 110+ peningas to upgrade. Farmers are an absurd level 12 experience and take even more money, time, and training skill to upgrade to lowly watchmen, and so on. Building a refuge and hiring a trainer could help but it's not cheap at all. To make matters worse, I'm alone in my anti-slavery sentiment in Dark Age Britain, so attacking slave traders hurts relations with the ports whence they came and whither they sail.

 

[cardgame]

That's why you have to start your own kingdom, so you can have enough resources to train them and disregard the port relationships.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Games I have played the most in the last couple of months have been Rimworld, Rule the Waves and Aurora 4x. I am beginning to wonder why I have a 1080Ti.

I use my 750Ti to play Civ2, Blood 2, Quake 2 and UT99........

my computer can run Skyrim perfectly, with all mods, all settings cranked to absolute max, flawless. yet I went out of my way to turn the graphics down, get rid of anistropic blah, 8x this, 16x that, detailed objects, decals, textures. I think the game looks way better now. I just hate the polished Skyrim aesthetic with it's disgusting solar flares, reflecting water and oppressive amount of clutter. get on my level

 

[Phrossack]

That's why you have to start your own kingdom, so you can have enough resources to train them and disregard the port relationships.

That takes absolutely forever to build up relationships and a large, trained army. Especially in VC.

Tried building a kingdom there and got dogpiled instantly.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

In Pokemon SoulSilver, I managed to beat Whitney and her Miltank to get the Plain Badge, but not before that thing knocked out half of my Pokemon with Stomp, which resulted in constant flinches. I used my female Raticate to get her speed down with Scary Face (stopping any flinch-locking), got my Drowzee to disable the Attract move (did try putting her to sleep as well, but Hypnosis didn't hit), then let Nidorino go wild with double-kick. While Miltank went wild with Milk Drink. It...took a while.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You could always play Civ2.......

I enjoy that one and was expecting something like it with Civ 1 but nope, it's just garbage.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I enjoy that one and was expecting something like it with Civ 1 but nope, it's just garbage.

Civ1 was revolutionary when first released. Especially if you got the Commodore Amiga version.....not that i've played any version of civ1.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah I should probably credit it for that. And I'm sure the SNES version was worse than the standard version on all counts.

Still. It wasn't fun. The main problems were a confusing and ugly UI and graphics that are somewhat indecipherable.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

my computer can run Skyrim perfectly, with all mods, all settings cranked to absolute max, flawless. yet I went out of my way to turn the graphics down, get rid of anistropic blah, 8x this, 16x that, detailed objects, decals, textures. I think the game looks way better now. I just hate the polished Skyrim aesthetic with it's disgusting solar flares, reflecting water and oppressive amount of clutter. get on my level

I don't get to such extremes, i like spectacular graphics as much as anybody and play with things as vegetation and view distance at max if I can. Hate to see the ground texture in games like Skyrim and such. It is only that, as i get older, most games i find deep and interesting could be run on a pocket calculator, or at least they are invariably much more CPU intensive and don't use the GPU at all. Even the ones that do, as KSP or Arma 3, are much more CPU than GPU intensive. Dont know if it is all about the kind of games I like or about engines being unable to use modern PC power properly.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Civ1 was revolutionary when first released. Especially if you got the Commodore Amiga version.....not that i've played any version of civ1.

Yeah I should probably credit it for that. And I'm sure the SNES version was worse than the standard version on all counts.

Still. It wasn't fun. The main problems were a confusing and ugly UI and graphics that are somewhat indecipherable.

Civ 1 was a game changer in its day. Simply awesome and unlike anything else. We owe Sid a great deal.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't get to such extremes, i like spectacular graphics as much as anybody and play with things as vegetation and view distance at max if I can. Hate to see the ground texture in games like Skyrim and such. It is only that, as i get older, most games i find deep and interesting could be run on a pocket calculator, or at least they are invariably much more CPU intensive and don't use the GPU at all. Even the ones that do, as KSP or Arma 3, are much more CPU than GPU intensive. Dont know if it is all about the kind of games I like or about engines being unable to use modern PC power properly.

KSP is an example of crap programming. I believe the move to Unity and 64 bit programming helped clean up a bit but the base code was pretty bad.

That sounds harsh but I actually say that with adulation - the guy that started KSP had never seriously coded before he made the game. He was a graphic artist at an ad company in Mexico City that had a dream about a space game. The company weirdly decided to back him and let him learn to code and make the game on the clock. That he built such an amazing game with no background in the profession makes up for the shoddy workmanship.

He and the team he built up did their best with that game.

But yeah I wouldn't use the CPU/GPU utilization of that game as indicative of any trends in your gaming habits; it's more coincidental in my opinion.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

KSP is an example of crap programming. I believe the move to Unity and 64 bit programming helped clean up a bit but the base code was pretty bad.
That sounds harsh but I actually say that with adulation - the guy that started KSP had never seriously coded before he made the game. He was a graphic artist at an ad company in Mexico City that had a dream about a space game. The company weirdly decided to back him and let him learn to code and make the game on the clock. That he built such an amazing game with no background in the profession makes up for the shoddy workmanship.

He and the team he built up did their best with that game.

But yeah I wouldn't use the CPU/GPU utilization of that game as indicative of any trends in your gaming habits; it's more coincidental in my opinion.

While you are obviously right about KSP being a mess, it is also true what many of the calculations involved like physics, collisions, trajectories are tipically CPU intensive unless they use esoteric things like CUDA and PhysX which very few games really do. Hell, most games continue using fundamentally a single CPU core. Game developers are a lazy bunch rooted in medieval programing practices.

 

[caketastydelish]

I've mentioned this before but I'm still obsessed with Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the new one that came out near the end of 2017). I play it on the Origin App on PC. If anyone else would like to play with me, I would be more than happy to oblige.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

In Pokemon SoulSilver, I managed to beat Whitney and her Miltank to get the Plain Badge, but not before that thing knocked out half of my Pokemon with Stomp, which resulted in constant flinches. I used my female Raticate to get her speed down with Scary Face (stopping any flinch-locking), got my Drowzee to disable the Attract move (did try putting her to sleep as well, but Hypnosis didn't hit), then let Nidorino go wild with double-kick. While Miltank went wild with Milk Drink. It...took a while.

Whitney is genuinely the strongest leader in G/S and HG/SS. Your mistake was not having a mon with a base speed stat of over 100 and not having a Rock Type. Rock Types resist literally every one of Miltanks moves, as do steel types. Miltank looks pretty fat, but is actually insanely fast. So you either have a very fast, powerful mon: Scyther, Fearow, Fire Starter, Haunter, Kadabra etc, or you have Thunder Wave, or you have a solid tank. Double-Kick is also pretty weak, even though it is "super effective" and probably your best move option for Miltank. Quick comparison:

Double kick does 30 Damage x2, so 60 Damage to a neutral target. Meaning a super effective hit will do 120 Damage.
Quilava's Flame Wheel (learned on lvl 20) is base 60. STAB bonus adds 50%, meaning it goes up to 90. Quilava has higher SpA than Nidorino does Atk, so the damage between the two is almost equal. If "Blaze" is active, the neutral Flame Wheel will actually do more.

I haven't played Pokemon in so long, maybe I'll pick it up again sometimes this year.. I love nerding out over simple things.

j/s, miltank is faster than this boy:



"Arcanine is known for its high speed. It is said to be capable of running over 6,200 miles in a single day and night. The fire that blazes wildly within this Pokémon's body is its source of power."
"A Pokémon that is described in Chinese legends. It is said to race at an unbelievable speed."
High speed my ***.

Literally slower than a lactating cow..

 

[civvver]

I keep thinking I should upgrade my 8 year old i5-750 cpu, which would basically entail upgrading my entire rig since I'll need a new mobo and ram. Cannibalize the hard drives and keep the gpu, but everything else would probably have to be new. But then I consider all the games I play the most run perfectly fine. In the past year it's been master of orion 2, civ4, a little dragon age origins and mass effect 2, faster than light, darkest dungeon, dota 2 and halcyon 6. Nothing that justifies a new cpu.

I think the newest game I've played is probably halcyon 6 but the newest demanding games I've played are probably the new tomb raider and mass effect 3, both like 5 years old.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Whitney is genuinely the strongest leader in G/S and HG/SS. Your mistake was not having a mon with a base speed stat of over 100 and not having a Rock Type. Rock Types resist literally every one of Miltanks moves, as do steel types. Miltank looks pretty fat, but is actually insanely fast. So you either have a very fast, powerful mon: Scyther, Fearow, Fire Starter, Haunter, Kadabra etc, or you have Thunder Wave, or you have a solid tank. Double-Kick is also pretty weak, even though it is "super effective" and probably your best move option for Miltank. Quick comparison:

Double kick does 30 Damage x2, so 60 Damage to a neutral target. Meaning a super effective hit will do 120 Damage.
Quilava's Flame Wheel (learned on lvl 20) is base 60. STAB bonus adds 50%, meaning it goes up to 90. Quilava has higher SpA than Nidorino does Atk, so the damage between the two is almost equal. If "Blaze" is active, the neutral Flame Wheel will actually do more.

I haven't played Pokemon in so long, maybe I'll pick it up again sometimes this year.. I love nerding out over simple things.

j/s, miltank is faster than this boy:



"Arcanine is known for its high speed. It is said to be capable of running over 6,200 miles in a single day and night. The fire that blazes wildly within this Pokémon's body is its source of power."
"A Pokémon that is described in Chinese legends. It is said to race at an unbelievable speed."
High speed my ***.

Literally slower than a lactating cow..

I did have a Rock-type. My Geodude, who had Rock Smash (which...is pretty crappy, but there's a decent chance that it lowers defence). But he was already a bit low on health (Clefairy's Metronome hit vine whip or something other super-effective), the Stomps kept flinch-locking him and knocked him out.

 

[Lexicus]

In Pokemon SoulSilver, I managed to beat Whitney and her Miltank to get the Plain Badge, but not before that thing knocked out half of my Pokemon with Stomp, which resulted in constant flinches. I used my female Raticate to get her speed down with Scary Face (stopping any flinch-locking), got my Drowzee to disable the Attract move (did try putting her to sleep as well, but Hypnosis didn't hit), then let Nidorino go wild with double-kick. While Miltank went wild with Milk Drink. It...took a while.

Well I am doing the Battle Tower in Heartgold and I made it to the first encounter with Palmer and OHKOed his Rhyperior and Dragonite with Starmie's bllizzard, then Milotic comes out and I hit it with Thunder, take it to red HP and paralyze. I then proceed to miss the next three Thunders in a row, while Milotic misses two Hypnosis then hits the third, then faints sleeping Starmie with Surf, then faints Umbreon with Surf, then faints Aerodactyl with Surf.

So incredibly frustrating. Not one single turn of Milotic being paralyzed and unable to attack. And the game displays Thunder's accuracy as 70% but I think it's really closer to 30% judging from the hit/miss ratio I see.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

So incredibly frustrating. Not one single turn of Milotic being paralyzed and unable to attack. And the game displays Thunder's accuracy as 70% but I think it's really closer to 30% judging from the hit/miss ratio I see.

If you can get a Rain Dance up, Thunder's accuracy gets to 100%. Though that would also boost Milotic's water moves.

 

[Lexicus]

If you can get a Rain Dance up, Thunder's accuracy gets to 100%. Though that would also boost Milotic's water moves.

No room for Rain Dance on my team. I think ultimately I'm going to have to switch out Umbreon for a different pokemon that can have a grass or electric move. I've been doing some research and Umbreon is bottom-tier of OU in gen 4.

The other reason this is so annoying is that I'm only doing the Battle Tower for the TMs, but they are the exact TMs I need to make my pokemon able to win in the Battle Tower.