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Trackmania. It's always what I go to when I run out of things to play
Woah, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Are they still developing new games, or are you just playing the classics?
A new one was released in 2020 on epic games and I think it's on steam now. It's a remake / remaster the TMNF/TMUF games. It's just called Trackmania but most people call it TM2020. It's a subscription based game with tiers, which sounds shitty but the prices are pretty normal. Like the best tier is $60 for 3 years and that's how long most people play $60 games anyway...
anyway I'm currently mostly playing TMUF.
Is there enough people to play against to make it worthwhile? Over just playing one of the older games I still own on Steam…
Player numbers aren't that great daily on steam (considering most owners bought the epic version anyway), but all of the developer tracks plus most of the community tracks have leaderboards in the tens of thousands, even the hundreds of thousands for the seasonal track releases. There's also a daily community highlight where players can race and compete on a community track hand-picked by Nadeo staff, so that really bolsters numbers on community tracks.
Multiplayer is kinda dead compared to the older games, but I also don't think a lot of players play the game for the multiplayer anyway. There are even community playlists of tracks that you can play in singleplayer that go up to I think 50 tracks in size. So you can just pick one of those and play through a bunch without ever having to connect to a community server.
Final Fantasy IX Remaster
- I've never finished FF9 on PS1 (my optical drive died), then I got distracted playing FF9 remaster a few years earlier. Finally decided to stream the game with a guide
- The battle is slow, even with fast forward, the animation seems to be slower than FF8 or FF7
- The fast forward in this remaster is not implemented as good as FF8 remaster's.
- It's only either 1x or 4x speed
- If you started the fast forward and forgot to turn it off before a cutscene, then the cutscene will play at 4x without any way to reset the speed.
- Despite all that, I am enjoying the game, characters are likable. I'm currently at Disc 2, after the Clerya section
Resident Evil Remake
- Again, I'm following a guide to get unlimited rocket launcher. I really dislike that 3 hour time limit. Or maybe I just really dislike time limit in games.
- I'm not into survival horror, but I enjoy the shooting / action part of Resident Evil
- So far, not enjoying it, since I'm just kiting zombies, skipping cutscenes, etc. My aim is to get unlimited ammo, then finally play both Chris and Jill sections without the ammo, and in some ways, inventory constraints.
Mostly waiting for Lies Of P to land in a day or two. I have spent more time with Starfield, but as I mentioned in a previous comment, I think I'm reaching the end of my time with that one.
I don't think it's 'bad', but I do think it's a severely compromised game that underwhelms more than it should for a game of it's budget and the team behind it. There's moments where you can see so much potential but it is always somewhat hidden by this mid 2000s design that I thought we'd moved past.
Playing:
Remnant 2, really fun!
Doorkickers 2, a new update came out with new missions I have to conquer!
Hell Let Loose got better again with the latest update, so I play that if I have the energy to shout orders into my mic (because no-one wants to be squad leader).
Sons of the Forest is coming along nicely.
Stopped playing:
Gave up on Starfield. What a mediocre janky game with generic story. Frustrating and time consuming menus. It's not massive at all. It's just big empty rooms behind loading screens. There has been like 5% technical development since Fallout 4. They didn't even bother to fix the mannequin NPC faces for their game "that has been in development for 12 years" or whatever.
I cannot fathom how some people swallow that stuff and goes "10/10 game of the century" and pay 80€ for it.
Sorry for rant.
Looking forward to:
Cyberpunk 2.0
The infantry combat overhaul for Squad.
I absolutely love your description of the game being 'big empty rooms'. I think I've come to the same conclusion in the last 24 hours. The space stuff and the on-planet stuff feels disjointed and unconnected. The way you traverse the universe is incredibly underwhelming (so many menu's) and the actual game design just feels so 2008.
Still playing Final Fantasy XVI since release.
Getting to the end of it and I've really loved it. The Eikon abilities have really flourished throughout the game starting as supplemental to combat to being a cornerstone of combat.
Other than that, the story has been great as well as the subplots. I can't express how happy I am with this game after the disaster of Final Fantasy XV and the all of the FFVII stuff.
Started playing RDR2 after playing almost all games from the top of my backlog. Folks kept telling me RDR2 would ruin other games for you, so I saved it for the last. I'm still in the first chapter and I like it a lot. I like how it's slow paced, feels more like a simulator so far. I'm also bit worried as folks told me you can miss certain side quests if you advance too fast, so I want to ignore all the main quest missions as much as possible. This caused my horse to die due to harsh winters right in the beginning coz I thought I should venture out a bit :p
I've also started playing Metro 2033, it's a slow start and the controls are a bit wonky, but seems like a simple linear game so far.
I’m also bit worried as folks told me you can miss certain side quests if you advance too fast,
Yeah if you're wanting to do as many side missions as possible, it's best to do all the white colored missions first. The yellow one's aren't going anywhere and they are sometimes chapter milestones that can lock you out of side missions. But I wouldn't worry too much about it. A. There are so many quests that are only available at a certain time/place or after certain events, you'll never hit them all in one play through. and B.
Take your time and enjoy it, definitely worth it.spoiler
You can play a lot of the side missions you missed in the epilogue. Albeit with different dialog.
Now I'm going to have to fire it up later just to spend a couple hours roaming the wilderness camping, hunting, and fishing with my "Never leaving chapter 3 Arthur"
After more than thirty hours and hours of discussions with a friend who knows Pathfinder and stuff, I've finally beaten the first boss of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous!
My character finally created, I got through the intro cutscene thingle, threw a dart, saved, and am in bed waiting to become asleep 🤣
(The joke is that the character creation is so interesting, involved, and/or difficult that it counts as a boss fight just choosing a character class to start with 😅 Also yes it did actually according to Steam take me nearly forty hours to defeat said boss 😅)
Good Ness, I was going to express concern for you for spending that much time on character creation, but then I watched the Mortismal new player guide and...that looks overwhelming in a possibly good way.
Starfield. I love it and I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Fallout 76 was a bad game, Starfield is amazing comparatively.
Yeah. I think I can understand the complaints people have. But dang I'm just so into it. It's hitting all the right notes for me. I absolutely adore everything about it. I wish space stuff was more important. But that's really it for me. I love surveying planets. Going all around and exploring different places. I love the aesthetic. So far for me all the quests have been interesting and cool, and do a great job showing you places you may not otherwise have come across.
My main game continues to be Overwatch.
I've also been playing some Diablo IV. I've been taking my time - there is a lot to enjoy in that game. I just teamed up with my brother to finish the last act of the main story.
Been on that F-Zero 99 grind. Got myself up to A- rank, so I'm not doing too badly. :)
Still Snowrunner
Finished up my time with Starfield for now. If you'd told me a month ago that it would be the main story that would keep me playing, I wouldn't have believed you. The story was way better than I was expecting and far and away my favorite one in a Bethesda game. As for the rest, ehhh. There are a lot of steps back here, and I really don't like the visuals. Felt like my character was smoking inside her helmet or something. Having framerates regularly dip into the 40's even with DLSS and tons of other tweaks really didn't help.
I will say this: aside from some sounds with oddly harsh high frequencies (there's a mod for that), the audio team really nailed this one. The voice acting is phenomenal, and I'd love to hear this soundtrack performed live.
Feeling non-committal at the moment. Was considering replaying Disco Elysium, but really I'm just waiting for the new Cyberpunk content.
My wife really wanted me to play Lost Ark again with her, so I am playing that.
Also while at work I usually play The Binding of Isaac.
When holding my son's hands until he sleeps I play bloons TD6, as it only requires one hand.
And I also returned to League of legends
Apart from my oxygen that is Factorio, I play Heretic's Fork. The game desperately needs a manual, but I'm enjoying it.
I've been replaying Cyberpunk 2077, in preparation for Phantom Liberty coming out shortly. The storytelling in this game is so damn good.
Why not wait and play it with the base game patch as well?
Thats what Im doing. I heard the game patch was basically going to make it a whole new experience, and Im only 1hr in, so Im just going to start over after it drops on the 21st.
I've not really been playing anything this past week. I'm putting off a second playthrough of BG3 as I want to wait for at least one more major patch and some more mods to come out/get refined, but after seeing some of the fanservice for fans of the older games in Act 3 (both good and bad) I got the itching to play through BG2 again, including a full playthrough of Throne of Bhaal with Ascension installed this time (I rarely push through ToB after finishing BG2). I never did it before out of fear for the difficulty, but I see that the Tougher Battles module is optional in the rewritten 2.0+ version Ascension.
Naturally this was an opportunity to revamp my BG2 modlist, so the past week has been an exercise in frustration as I've been re-exploring the wonders of WeiDU and trying to figure out the correct install order of everything, which can be extremely finicky. Hopefully I'll get to start playing this week.
I am close to finishing The Outer Worlds. The game has a somewhat mixed reception when it comes up in discussions online and I think it's mostly because the developer Obsidian made New Vegas and Outer Worlds apparently is the worse game. So, I never played New Vegas and therefore can't compare the two. I do enjoy my time with Outer Worlds very much!
- it's basically the same formula as Fallout 4 but in a humorous space setting with better gunplay. Or, alternatively Borderlands with a ton more talking and decisions and worse gunplay. In any case a lot of shooting and looting.
- different builds are possible but not as significant different as in Borderlands. But since it's not a massively big game it didn't matter that much to me. After a couple of changes I kinda kept investing mostly in my handgun, my companions and personality skills to pass more skillchecks.
- what I like: the stories the game tells! Be it the main quest line or quests for factions or your companions. All have a nice sense of humor to them without getting too silly. For example there is a dude in a wurst factory and you get sent there to end whatever he is doing there (hint: it's more than producing wurst from spacepigs). And there are a number of ways you can approach this: guns blazing, trying to sabotage the factory or sneak in and just kill the guy.
- also: great soundtrack and overall sound design! The jingle that plays when you level up is just great!
- also: while not a massive big game there are a lot of different places to go and explore. From abandoned settlements in some sort of desert to a big city where only rich people live and everything in between.
- meh: so many drinks, lotions and food items that give you different boosts. Problem is that there are so many different items it's hard to keep track which one does what. I abandoned pretty much all of them and only kept Adreno (restores energy).
- meh: fast travel can be annoying because most of the time you have to fast travel back to your ship and then from there select another planet/spacestation and then land your ship and then again fast travel to wherever you need to go to. So it's potentially three (not very long, though) loading screens if you need to go someplace different.
- decisions do matter in quests but the general direction of the story is set.
I say: if you like stuff like Fallout, Borderlands and generally combat heavy action rpgs, this game may be right up your alley. And since it's kinda old at this point it's also pretty cheap most of the time.
Is the loot more like a Diablo or Borderlands, where it's a treadmill and you're constantly getting objectively better equipment with higher numbers? Or is it more like a tabletop RPG or the old-school Fallouts where there's often nothing wrong with your starting equipment and you could feasibly play through the entire game with some or most of it? Baldur's Gate 3 has had me building a list of all the RPGs I wanted to play but missed, and your talk about the loot is making me reconsider this one.
It's not like Borderlands, where there is a infinite amount of new but also more ore less the same weapons with differing numbers! You can upgrade (called tinkering) any weapon with money. It costs more with each upgrade and only upgrade it five levels above your own, so you can't just grind money and get overpowered. But yeah, you can finish this game with one gun you like!
I was close to the end last week, but I've finally finished Pillars of Eternity. It only took 8 years. I'll not start with the expansions right away, but to do them I'll have to load a save before the final dungeon, which kinda sucks.
I'm also taking a break from Quake 2 currently, although not by choice. It's because of a bug halfway through the second mission pack, Ground Zero, where my game would crash consistently. Maybe restarting the level could help, but I'll just wait. An internet comment I read mentioned that the devs are aware, and it'll get fixed in a patch, hopefully that'll happen soon.
Next, I finished two more games, first Shadowrun Returns. It wasn't that good. I'm not a big fan of tactical turn-based RPGs, and this game didn't help. As for the story, it's like they got two completely separate scripts and stuck them together. After like two thirds or something, the game takes a sharp turn and goes completely off the rails. The first part was really clichéd and predictable, but I still enjoyed it, and I wish it could have ended there. The "class" I chose also sucked, I guess, a melee hacker (or Decker in this universe). The hacking is 90% useless in the game, and melee feels like it's just massively disadvantaged, compared to ranged attacks. The game is also a bit buggy at times and the UI can be really clunky. I don't think I'll play the other two games in this trilogy unless I get really into TRPGs in the future.
The final game I finished was Katana Zero, which was a bit mediocre, with some bright spots. It's an action side-scroller where you need to kill every enemy in a room, without getting hit, to move forward. Dying resets the current room, and you have to start from the beginning, à la Super Meat Boy. However, there was a bit too much randomness in enemy placement and movement, to really get that perfect run done. The story could be interesting, but I didn't like the way it was told at all, however I did like the dialog system. When talking to someone you get a timed response, which you can hit, while the other is still talking, interrupting them, or wait for them to finish and choose from a few options. I really liked that. The game also looks great and has very good music. It's pretty short, I clocked out after less than four hours, but you're supposed to play through it at least twice I guess, because of the story. I didn't care for the basic gameplay enough, so I'm fine with just my single run.
I finished the story mode for Mortal Kombat 1, and it's another fun NRS story mode, but this one might be their weakest. The opening takes a while to get going, and some of the dialogue can be overly stiff, plus Megan Fox's delivery sucks on every other line. Still, it does pick up, and it's got some ideas. Unfortunately, I'm now left grinding the Invasions mode that I'm not really enjoying so that I can unlock the last few kameo fighters, because 5 of them are still locked when you finish the story mode. I'm not sure yet if MK1 is going to be a regular in my rotation of games I compete in, but it's got a decent shot.
Once I've had my fill of that, it's back to Baldur's Gate 3, where I'm finally in Act 3. I've still yet to arrive in Baldur's Gate in the game called Baldur's Gate.
Arkam asylum. I decided I like when games have hidden collectibles everywhere and the title screen shows what percentage of the game you've completed.
Also the surge. Don't play long at a time because I keep dying and it's frustrating to face the same enemies again and again when going back.
Edit: and Darkside detective.
Starfield, Fae Farm, and Icarus
I got into Voices of the Void recently and am enjoying it. I love sims and the idea of a sim about looking for signals from alien life grabbed me.
Tf2 and rimworld. I started playing tf2 very recently and I enjoyed heavy and medic. Then I played some 2fort and now I can't stop playing sniper
Since Blasphemous II came out, I decided to give the first game of the two a try, and I’m amazed. For me, this is as good as a hollow Knight in terms of the map size, exploration, combat, music, everything. It’s phenomenal. The odd art style put me off at first, but it was unfounded. The game is awesome. If you’re on the fence about it like I was, take this as your sign that it’s a good metroidvania. Your mileage may vary, but I don’t usually give annoying or tedious games the light of day.
still playing starfield. and some backyard baseball sometimes when i get the urge. occasional fortnite with buddies
I beat Kingdom Hearts 1 last week, so this week I'm doing Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories! I think I'm about halfway through now, just finishing floor 12 I think, but the battle's been rough on me to say the least. I think I'm gonna need to grind up some cards and levels today to get past it.
Still playing Elder Scrolls Online. It's my go-to these days. There's just do much to do in that game.
Still working on seasonal stuff for Diablo 4. I got all my world bosses done, now I'm just trying to level up for the rest of it. I got a weekly game plan for myself, so I think I might finish it before the season end on Oct 17.
In the meantime I've been replaying (again) 2015's Mad Max. I've had a lot of irl stuff going on that sucks and it's been very cathartic to play. Just drive around and punch mutherfuckers? Hell yeah.
Been thinking about picking up Gungrave G.O.R.E since it's on Xbox Game Pass. There's an anime that goes with it I guess? Nobody I've talked to know a lot about it, so I think that might be my next game to play just for the hell of it.
I am grinding ranked in Splatoon 3. I wish this game wasn't so underrated as a competitive game outside of Japan.
- Starfield on my Xbox Series S. I just love it. It's finally the perfect No Man's Sky. Kind of. With more story, even better graphics, a fantastic score and so on and so on. Just waiting for 60fps
- The Crew Motorfest Demo on my Xbox Series S. It's okay. Would be waaaay better without the Tearing problems. Waiting for patch. If they get rid of the Tearing problem I'll buy it.
Doing a rerun of the Mass Effect trilogy, and just started ME3. Mass Effect is my comfort game, I swear.
How do you feel about/have you played Andromeda? I love the ME trilogy, and I was a quarter through ME2 doing a trilogy replay as well, but then Starfield released. I'll get back to it eventually though. I haven't played Andromeda myself, but I feel like it couldn't possibly be as terrible as the kickback it got on release.
I’ve played Andromeda - quite a lot, actually, because before I started PC gaming, and after my PS3 broke, the only way to get my Mass Effect fix was to play Andromeda.
I think Andromeda got a bad rap. Or rather, people were a lot harder on it than it deserved, because the game was rough and, more importantly, Ryder wasn’t Shepard. Ryder is a very different character and folks wanted Shepard in a different skin. They wanted Paragon and Renegade when BioWare went with a more Inquisition feel to developing how Ryder can react. Add to that how the beginning act was easily the least polished section of the game at launch, and so people just dragged it. And once The Gamers as a collective decide a game is only fit to be made fun of, that’s it.
Now, Andromeda wasn’t perfect at all. The facial animations are not the best, and I still have no idea why they thought Ryder’s running animation was ok. I also really think the writing needed at least another two rounds of editing. But. The game play is really solid, easily the best of any Mass Effect game, and there was something there in the story (it just needed some rewriting). BioWare also made the mistake of putting in more for the sake of more - Inquisition was too big, and they decided to try to make Andromeda bigger, and there’s a lot of filler quests that shouldn’t be there.
I actually really enjoyed playing Andromeda, for all I got really irritated by a lot of the things I mentioned here - and I got irritated because I could see how close they were to something really, really special, and how they needed more time to get there, but didn’t have because of the mess they made of early development. There were enough things and decisions that I really wanted to see how they played out down the line, and I’m sad I probably won’t get to.
The best way to enjoy Andromeda is to go in thinking of it as less of a “Mass Effect” game, and more as a game set in the Mass Effect universe, if that makes sense.
It seems like it was cursed with "how the heck do you follow that up?" Syndrome. And sadly the facial animations seemed at the time to be the critical anchor that all the general issues surrounded and were exemplified by.
I hope in the future Bioware steps back from adding those "MMO side quest" style side content they began including for Inquisition, it did really change the feel of the whole game having those there.
Interesting to hear about the first act dragging, I actually think this is a problem echoed by Starfield, whose first 12 hours are confusing as you don't understand where and how to access the different types of gameplay at will, and it's too early on in your character's development to be able to really fully engage and figure out the ship and outpost construction. By then the people who don't have patience or weren't interested in the game to begin with have likely already had their opinions begin to solidify.
I wonder if Bioware will try an Andromeda 2 down the line, I think that universe deserves another shot.
I wonder if Bioware will try an Andromeda 2 down the line, I think that universe deserves another shot.
Sadly, with the closure of BioWare Montreal and them deciding to go back to the Milky Way for 5, I don’t think we will. Which is a really shame, because I still think Andromeda 2 could have really been special, because the Montreal devs said they learned a lot from Andromeda and had big plans for 2 and improving things.
A lot of people also compared Andromeda to the entire ME trilogy, which really wasn’t fair to it.
BioWare had a good idea with trying to do something new, but sadly, often times True Fans don’t want something new; they want the exact same thing. They couldn’t - or wouldn’t - let Andromeda be Andromeda.
That's sad news about the studio. I suppose some people forgot that the original Mass Effect had quite a few issues and it wasn't until 2 that it got real good, and having that bar set at a payoff that was only possible through three games of narrative choices and carryover was impossible to hit for Andromeda.
This week I played Euro Truck Simulator 2 after I don't know how long. I posted about it on my Mastodon server and there's a chance that this evening I'll play it multiplayer with three complete strangers.
Been playing brawlhalla with friends a lot, just started a new c-dda run aswell
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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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