What Video Games Have You Been Playing VII: The Real Ending is Locked Behind a Paywall

[Akka]

I'm using the 2.02 beta version of Stellaris and it's wonderful. I'm really liking the new changes, but they did bork the UI a little bit. IT's a little harder to get your construction ships and science ships to do their stuff. More clicking involved, but once you figure it ou, it's really not much of a hassle.

I like a lot of the new additions, but I really HATE the FTL slaughter, and I heavily dislike how they changed the battle and ship designer. It lost a LOT of immersion, and I feel this version is overall inferior to the previous one.
Especially grating as NOTHING required said FTL gutting in the end.

 

[Broken_Erika]

You should have seen the french version... It was somehow google-translated (or something like that) from the english version. It was so mangled, I didn't understood many dialogues until I started to read the sentence as if they were written in english but with french words.
I only managed to get the story once I replayed it in the english version.

Nothing will ever beat "All of your base are belong to us!"

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Nothing will ever beat "All of your base are belong to us!"

Make your time!

 

[Broken_Erika]

Someone set up us the bomb!

 

[Arwon]

I like a lot of the new additions, but I really HATE the FTL slaughter, and I heavily dislike how they changed the battle and ship designer. It lost a LOT of immersion, and I feel this version is overall inferior to the previous one.
Especially grating as NOTHING required said FTL gutting in the end.

If you're referring to removing the other FTL methods, pathfinding was a massive hog on system resources in late game. I'm finding the game performs way better and I can play on larger galaxies now.

Also the new jump drive, gateway and wormhole mechanics are excellent.

 

[Commodore]

Really short game. Kind of lackluster ending. Sort of feels like there was more planned and they just didn't do it

I think they were really banking on turning it into this big franchise and that just never panned out. The ending was clearly sequel bait and they were setting things up for what seemed like an "America strikes back" sequel that never happened. Disappointing, since I actually had fun with Homefront. I thought it was an interesting setting and the game was fun to play.

On to what I've been playing: I'm taking a break from 4x games and RTS games (which seems to be all I play lately) and venturing into the world of roguelikes. I'm starting with Sword of the Stars: The Pit. I love the Sword of the Stars setting, and The Pit has nothing but absolutely glowing reviews, so I figured I'd give it a shot, even though I've never played a roguelike RPG in my life. So far I've only completed the tutorial and the first few floors, but it does seem fun so far.

 

[Akka]

If you're referring to removing the other FTL methods, pathfinding was a massive hog on system resources in late game. I'm finding the game performs way better and I can play on larger galaxies now.

Yes it was a resource hog, but I was still able to play the game to the end with a 7 years old computer. I'll gladly accept a slowdown toward the end to have an interesting game in space with variety and not a bland copy-paste of ground warfare.

Also the new jump drive, gateway and wormhole mechanics are excellent.

Yes, but again they didn't require to remove the other FTL methods in any way.
That's precisely the very annoying point of this update : it adds a lot of interesting things, but it guts the core of the game in a totally unrelated way, while I would have liked to just get the improvements.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, "slowdown toward the end" often meant a couple of minutes just to run a whole year on "full speed", which is part of the reason I have only ever "won" two games (the rest being abandoned to lag, tedium or Kobayashi Maru scenarios).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What ? FF7 involves next to no grinding. In fact, it's so comically easy to outlevel the game that you can literally kill the most powerful incarnation of the final boss in two attacks (and I'm not talking about the last cinematic fight, but the real one) rather easily.

Hmm interesting. I was pretty young when I played it so perhaps I was just doing it wrong.

 

[PhroX]

It's pretty consistent in FF games that if you want to get to the end of the story you have to do little if any grinding. On the other hand, if you want to complete all the content, you have to do plenty....

Killing the final boss in one or two shots is normal. Because the final boss isn't even close to being the strongest enemy in the game.

 

[Kozmos]

Really? I remember always being punched down to my last guy(s) and I did a fair bit of grind for side content.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's pretty consistent in FF games that if you want to get to the end of the story you have to do little if any grinding. On the other hand, if you want to complete all the content, you have to do plenty....

Killing the final boss in one or two shots is normal. Because the final boss isn't even close to being the strongest enemy in the game.

Maybe we have a different definition of grinding...

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

More Sims 2:

No, I don't want to know either!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

More Sims 2:


No, I don't want to know either!

I do!

For the first time ever I see some interest in a Sims game. I would certainly be following those two and trying to figure out what that was about. Is there any kind of decoder for their little symbol language?

 

[GoodSarmatian]

It's a commentary on the state of American culture and politics. Here you have a gay white man trying to hook up with a gay black man who's having none of it because the white dude is a Republican.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Amusingly, you're not too far off the mark with their sexual orientations. The black dude is gay, and the white one's bisexual. But it was the black guy who rolled a want to flirt with his friend!

There's no actual decoder for the speech bubble figures, but some people have figured out pieces of Simlish just from context. A few I can think of off-hand:
nooboo - baby
woofum - dog
gerbit - llama
timle tourneau - marco polo (amusingly, this was named after one of the developers)

 

[EgonSpengler]

Anybody else looking forward to Frostpunk? (The name makes me cringe a little, but whatever.) Supposedly it'll be out this month, but I'm hoping they're on a "when it's ready" schedule.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, "frostpunk" would 'normally' refer to an alt-history culture using the power of winter to drive their society. Using it to simply mean an alternate timeline where the snow is really bad is warping the accepted use somewhat.

 

[Synobun]

Batman: A Telltale Series.

The performance for this game is... not good. I couldn't run it. This is fine because the opening sequence was lame-o spaghetti-o. The QTEs pop up on your screen for a fraction of a second and then you get shot dead because you missed too many triggers in a row. My reflexes have certainly degraded over the years but I still feel QTEs should be on the screen for more than a flicker. Maybe it was performance related.

Sacred 2.

Wouldn't even run. Too many hoops to jump through to make it work, hoops that I'm unwilling to deal with given that the game isn't even interesting to me and was simply a relic from a Humble Bundle long, long ago.

Risen 2.

Performance was bad and the story wasn't very endearing. It wasn't worth powering through the lag.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

Too hard. I don't mind challenge, but the difficulty scale in this game is outrageous. The US military is allied with Russia and helps them in a war against China. You follow the antics of two fire squads who are involved in establishing a beachhead on an island.

That's fine and dandy, except the missions inevitably put you up against overwhelming odds. This doesn't really make sense. I doubt the US military would send 4 marines to take on a horde of APCs, tanks, attack choppers, and 50+ trained Chinese soldiers. In a bullet hell game like Call of Duty these odds would be fine. Operation Flashpoint, however, stresses the point that every shot counts. It's very likely that you'll be shot once and be dead. With 'realism' like that I'm not super keen on the game throwing an army at you.

I moved onto Dead Rising 2. I vaguely remember playing this game in the past... I think? Or I watched somebody play it. I don't know. Good fun. I don't like how hitting survivors makes them turn on you, given that the majority of your time is spent surrounded by dozens of zombies swinging wildly away. There's bound to be some contact with NPCs who just run around aimlessly.

Sims 2.

I got promoted to Magazine Editor. My Sim had a fight with a subordinate, and this resulted in my Sim being demoted. Wat?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Sims 2.

I got promoted to Magazine Editor. My Sim had a fight with a subordinate, and this resulted in my Sim being demoted. Wat?

Chance card? You just got an unlucky roll of the dice:
http://www.snootysims.com/thesims2index.php?id=careercards18