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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   1437 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 2, 2024

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General video game thread time once again.

Has anyone here played Outward? Holy shit it's so fun. I've been playing with my fiance and I've got to say, I haven't been this excited about a game in a looooooong while.

It's a standard medieval fantasy RPG, but more 'realistic' so to speak. You have to carefully prep your food, water, and really read all the tips and plan your routes to get places. In the beginning you will get your ass beat by hyenas if you aren't careful and strategic about fighting. It's also built for co-op, so there's online and couch co-op right out of the gate.

Good God I wish more RPGs had couch co-op!

There's no fast travel, no detailed quest log, you can't even see where you are when you open the map. You have to plan for the weather or slowly get diseases and die of cold and/or heat stroke; then again you could just get a disease from a hyena bite that will kill you as well.

The game has magic, but it's locked behind a tough dungeon in the beginning, and you have to sacrifice health and stamina to get it. You don't just get to pick mage at the beginning and get some cool magic missile or whatever.

But what's most impressive about the game is that the world feels alive. The characters have realistic motivations, there are serious, major consequences for bad decisions right off the bat. There are very few elements of the world that are just taken for granted. I think the difficulty and all the planning/weather/food stuff adds to this as well, by having to take care of survival needs you really get into the mindset of "Okay I'm here, I'm planning a trip here, what exactly do I need?" instead of just clicking a button and porting to another city.

I haven't played too far into it so please don't spoil anything, but damn I love this game. If anyone else has played it and liked it, I'm curious! And if you haven't, well it frequently goes on sale for $6 or so, so I'd recommend checking it out.

Victoria 3 has received a lot of criticism for betraying the ideals of Victoria 2. I don't have a strong opinion on that controversy. I'm just having fun with modding the game and watching the AIs duke it out in the modified copy.

  • By default, the game makes only five autosaves before overwriting the oldest one. But you can correct this behavior by editing a single line in a plaintext file.

  • By default, the game uses several different fonts—some nice, some ugly. But you can correct this behavior by editing a few lines in a single plaintext file.

  • By default, the game allows countries to build only the Suez and Panama Canals, and they cost exactly the same quantity of resources to construct. But you can correct this behavior (to add, e. g., the Kiel, Nicaragua, Tehuantepec, Atrato, and Kra Canals, and to make the Panama Canal more expensive than the Suez Canal) by editing a few plaintext files.

  • By default, the game's map is divided into several hundred "state regions", of which each (1) can be split between multiple different countries and (2) can contain both rural and urban buildings. This results in many weird situations. For example, (1) a great power that is rebuffed by Colombia in its efforts to build the Panama Canal will get a claim on the entire state region of Panama rather than on the single province where the canal can be built, and (2) a revolution of the "rural folk" interest group will also rally major cities to its banner. But you can correct this behavior by editing a few dozen plaintext files (plus one PNG file) to split all the state regions into separate rural and urban portions.

Et cetera.

I am thinking of buying Rogue Trader, as I bounced off of BG3 and wouldn't mind playing a good CRPG, but I have no time for a proper session when I still have unread emails after a 54-hour work week.

Looking for recommendations: I don't really play video games. The last one I played seriously was WoW circa WotLK. I'm looking for an engaging but not overly complex strategy game for an Android tablet or MacBook air.

Antiyoy is a fun, simple empire builder.

Slay.

I saw your comment and thought what low effort ironic bullshit is this? Then saw the context.

I’ve played outward!

The first time, I had no idea what I was doing. I was going to eschew magic and put together a greatsword paladin. I trekked across the great swamp and joined the crusade, learning recipes, scraping together cash, and trying to stay alive. This led me to giant anthills and a lich’s tower. I spent a lot of time being thrashed by dogs and constructs. It was very cool.

I certainly remember, after gathering gear and a couple skills, planning a triumphant trip back to Cierzo. I’m sure you know what I found.

Much more recently, I started a new run to co-op with my girlfriend. We struggled even in the tutorial, but started to collect gear and money. Once we got to the forest city, though, things got out of hand. Even scripted story missions spawned overwhelming enemies. We left town to do normal missions and ran into a terrifying bandit chief. Apparently, this was the next step in a poorly explained mission, but we’d followed his road by accident. I wasn’t sure if it was worse to get respawned next to him (with a good chance to be put back under before even drinking water), or in a “neighboring” cave (adding a five minute walk, followed by the same trip to dreamland). It was vicious.

There are so many things I liked about Outward. Temporary health damage. The role of consumables. Mages as devastating casters if and only if they have the time and resources to set up. Building your own class out of skills. Backpacks. More games could use things like these!

On the other hand, I found a lot of things that were just dated. Big, empty levels with impassable terrain and packs of idle enemies. Illegible animations. Lifeless NPCs. Clumsy stealth and melee and archery and—you get the idea. It was 2019, and lots of games had done one or another of these things better.

It’s an obvious pipe dream. I want the beautiful, traversable terrain of Breath of the Wild populated by dynamic, threatening enemies. I want it as lively as an Elder Scrolls game, but of course, without giving up the real time consequences. I want diegetic user interfaces that keep me immersed. I want to move through a dungeon with stealth mechanics worthy of MGSV, and when that fails, resort to brutal melee combat that’s as tightly controlled as Dark Souls.

Outward gestures at a surprising number of these wants! There are just too many places where it falls back on outdated mechanics. The overall effect was asking me “what could have been?”

Lately I’ve been playing STALKER: Anomaly, a fanmade entry in a Chernobyl survival series. It does remarkably well on the lively world, on the general combat, and on atmosphere. Map design is evocative and foreboding. You’ll equip yourself with clean water and radioactive food, and you’ll get excited when you find medical supplies or a repair kit, let alone some undaunted gear. A trip to the next camp is a tense and foreboding affair.

The game also has quicksave, and console commands, and lots of ways to cheese enemies. In a polished and curated product, I’d say these are unnecessary, or even distract from the experience. But STALKER is neither of these. Quest NPCs are going to die to random dogs. You’re going to walk into nigh-invisible hazards and end up burning on the floor. Tools that make the game easier also mitigate the frustrations that come from this chaos.

Give it a try, I guess. You might get something out of it.

Lately I’ve been playing STALKER: Anomaly, a fanmade entry in a Chernobyl survival series. It does remarkably well on the lively world, on the general combat, and on atmosphere. Map design is evocative and foreboding. You’ll equip yourself with clean water and radioactive food, and you’ll get excited when you find medical supplies or a repair kit, let alone some undaunted gear. A trip to the next camp is a tense and foreboding affair.

And then you spend half an hour cleaning your guns part by part.

And then it's all set in the grimy, depressing zone.

And then your character is hungry again for the tenth time within one hour and he has a 36 hour sleep cycle so you can't even sleep at night.

Anomaly is my favorite STALKER game and the modders have done an excellent job, but I'd still rather just not play it.

I still have mixed feelings on the weapon repair/cleaning. Why does it cost a repair kit use to swap in an undamaged part? I might as well have the smith do it for me, since I’ve got to pay him to even use the vice.

Crafting is more trouble than it’s worth, too. Found a recipe? Hope you’ve got enough scrap metal. But also held on to the two specific items you need for the recipe. And paid for the vice.

And don’t get me started on cooking. Worst value for money, let alone carry weight.

When I complete the main story I may start another run using GAMMA and see if it gives any reason to deal with that nonsense. Until then, I’m going to stick with high reliability gear and paying techs for their services, lol.

I might look into STALKER! I've heard a lot of good things about it. I just bought Kingdom Come: Deliverance on sale though so that's going to be the one I play first.

As to your complaints on Outward, totally get it. I can see how that would frustrate people. For me, especially playing with my fiance, I just don't mind. The planning of the route, the difficulty of the combat, the fun of slowly grinding up money/resources/backpacks has been a blast.

If STALKER or other games had local co-op then I'd probably enjoy them as much, if not more, but alas. It's just never as fun exploring an open world on your own.

Agreed on all points. I wasn’t even frustrated so much as…I wish it was just a little different, lol. I went on and on about my gripes but it was a very cool game and there were just as many “wow” moments.

And yeah. Maybe STALKER 2 will have it. Not holding my breath.

Yeah dude! The purple grass swaying in the sunlight. Incredible.

And it really is a shame how couch co-op has fallen out of favor. When I was first gaming that was the best thing I ever did. I still love it. Nowadays couch co-op games are kind of a niche market unto themselves.

Sounds intriguing, tbh.

I'll keep an eye on it. Atm it's selling for €40. I don't like the aesthetics too much, so..

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