What Game Are You Currently Playing?

[thaddeus6th]

Played the FFXVI demo. Really liked it... but a starting price of £70 is still something I'm less than delighted with.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think I've reached a point where finding new games is extremely difficult. My laptop is reasonable, but it has a small hard drive and can't run or fit very modern games. More than that, I find it difficult to find games better than the ones I've enjoyed. There are lots of roleplaying games, but none are going to be as well-made, fun and engrossing as Fallout 4. Likewise, whenever I play a Baldur's Gate-type game, it's almost certainly not going to be as good as Shadowrun: Dragonfall. (It's probably notable that neither of these games is set in a banal D&D fantasy land.)

Every often, I do find a new game that I like a lot, like Aliens: Fireteam Elite. But a lot just have something wrong with them that spoils them, or aren't enough fun to be worth bothering with. I suppose that, unless I buy an entirely new PC, I'll be starting Fallout 4 again...

 

[Rodders]

Aliens: Dark Descent is out now, Toby. Is that of interest?

 

[Toby Frost]

Thanks! I'll give it a look, but as with all Alien-based stuff, the games are very hit-and-miss. Alien: Isolation and the 2000 Alien v Predator are great, but the others that I've played have been ropey. It might well just be too big for my PC - anything larger than 40GB is pushing it.

By the way, I played Disco Elysium recently. It seemed to be a stylish point-and-click adventure, with some extra mechanics involving the lead character's confused mind. Apparently it's a real work of art but to be honest, I couldn't really see what the fuss was about.

 

[FibonacciEddie]

Thanks! I'll give it a look, but as with all Alien-based stuff, the games are very hit-and-miss. Alien: Isolation and the 2000 Alien v Predator are great, but the others that I've played have been ropey. It might well just be too big for my PC - anything larger than 40GB is pushing it.

By the way, I played Disco Elysium recently. It seemed to be a stylish point-and-click adventure, with some extra mechanics involving the lead character's confused mind. Apparently it's a real work of art but to be honest, I couldn't really see what the fuss was about.

Hey Toby,

Ditto ...

I'm a big Fallout 4 fan, Skyrim, Wastelander 2&3
I also couldn't get excited about Disco Elysium

I played Planescape (1999) but couldn't get into the remake Torment Tides of Numenera

I'll give Dragonfall a go

nick

 

[Toby Frost]

It sounds as if we're into similar games! I didn't really get into Torment either - it was just too weird. It was very hard to figure out what was going on. It's not the same but I quite liked The Banner Saga.

Fallout 3 is well worth a look too, although it's inevitably more primitive than Fallout 4. Dragonfall is excellent and the third game, Hong Kong, is really good too. Shadowrun Returns is alright, but not quite up there with the other two. You might enjoy The Outer Worlds. I found it a bit one-note, but it's a little like the Fallout games.

 

[Foxbat]

I've not been able to get into any of the Shadowrun games (bought the trilogy in a sale at GOG) and maybe I should go back and try again.
Meanwhile @Toby Frost maybe you should do what I do: instead of going forward, go back. I've just managed to get Space 1889 running on Windows 11 (I copied and pasted Dosbox from another game and faffed about with the batch file until I finally got it working). Now that's over, I have idea how I'll get on with the game - only 1.5MB with Dosbox adding another 5MB, perfect for those of us with small hard drives.
Real old school, and I suspect the challenge of actually getting it running might be more enjoyable than playing it.

 

[Toby Frost]

Wow, that is old! It reminds me of the ancient games I used to play on the Amiga. I'm quite tempted by the small Amiga you can get now, which comes pre-loaded with a bunch of games, some of which are very good.

I sort-of took your advice, and bought a few discounted games last night in a sale on Good Old Games. We've got Vampire the Masquerade (I remember this as pretty decent but hopelessly bugged, and apparently the bugs have been sorted out); Flashback (an Amiga classic, but difficult to play on a keyboard); Deus Ex 2 (not as good as the original, but still good, it seems) and some weird thing about space Vikings. All of these are pretty small. I also found a weird game that I don't remember playing, about people looking for salvage on ruined spaceships. No idea where that came from (it's probably a freebie that GOG gave away) but it was quite fun.

 

[Toby Frost]

Last night I had a go at a couple of these. Deus Ex 2 has awful voice acting: everyone sounds as if they're fighting off sedatives. That said, the lead chap in Deus Ex 1 delivered his lines in a monotone, so maybe all that cyberpunk pollution has affected everyone's vocal chords or something.

Vampire: the Masquerade is actually pretty good. I chose my character purely on the basis that she looks like a cross between Wednesday Addams and a librarian. There's a lot to see and do. I suspect that you could play it in quite a lot of ways depending on your sub-species of vampire. The incidental music sounds just like Massive Attack's Mezzanine, which can't be a bad thing.

Both games are from the early 2000s, and I find something weirdly comforting about their aged graphics. It's as though the graphics are just good enough to be clear about what they're depicting, but your imagination can fill in the gaps. Perhaps it's just nostalgia, as I had a lot of fun around that time.

 

[Foxbat]

I’m back playing Rule The Waves 3. My previous game as Japan ended in disaster when I lost all my carriers and never laid a glove on the enemy Russian carriers. I went back to the drawing board (or in this case, the manual) and re-read the section on aircraft. This time around, playing again as Japan, has gone much better so far. I had a war with Germany and mounted a surprise attack on their naval base in the Shandong Peninsula in China. From experiencing my very own Midway in the previous game, I’ve had my own Pearl Harbour success this time around. The Germans lost a good chunk of their Far East fleet and only had a light carrier, one light cruiser and a few destroyers left. Their forces were scattered around the globe protecting their numerous territories and their disaster at Shandong gave me an overwhelming localised force.

It wasn’t long before they came to the negotiating table. Yamamoto would be proud

 

[Toby Frost]

Vampire: The Masquerade turns out to be very good, especially for its time. As might be expected, it's pretty adult, but at times surprisingly funny. The missions are fairly interesting, although the weakest aspect is the combat, which is pretty dated. There's a lot of bickering between different sorts of vampire, which isn't very interesting (half the population of the world seems to be undead, which must make for a pretty odd food chain). Exploring the setting is good fun, and there are some good set-pieces (one in a haunted hotel is particularly good). It reminds me of going to Whitby Goth Festival, although I didn't murder anyone there.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Still playing Age of Wonders 4. I like the look of the dragon DLC but will perhaps wait for a sale. Currently playing as Grace Magic Fingers, leader of the Elficron Dogooders, talented magic users who prance around on unicorns (which have a fantasic phase ability that's very handy in battles).

 

[Rodders]

I thought i'd try my hand at the Blade Runner game.



I have the original disc in my loft, somewhere. I remember the game, but didn't progress too far in it.

 

[Toby Frost]

It's really good for its time. The multiple endings are very impressive.

 

[Foxbat]

I've gone back to Underrail to give it another go. I didn't just suddenly decide to do that. I bought the game and I at least wanted to spend some time playing it so I did a bit of searching on the internet and found a console command that lets me circumvent the 'cooldown' (see my previous post on Underrail for an explanation). It's a bit tedious because you have to input the command in each combat round you wish to avoid cooldown but it works.

I still think cooldown is a load of nonsense. It's obviously designed to force you not to use a certain tactic (like grenade throwing) too often but, let's face it, in real life, if I was a poor shot and terrible at melee, I'd just keep lobbing grenades at an enemy until they croaked it. It's all about survival and not 'oh, I have to wait so many turns before I can lob another grenade'.

I've made a bit of progress in the game - so much so that I rarely have to circumvent cooldown any more. I've also found another way around the problem. If you are taking too much punishment from a foe, just head for a zone transition area. Hop into the next zone and combat ends. You can get yourself all healed up, hop back and start fighting again. All cooldown periods are also negated. And here's the thing. The enemy is still there but probably unhealed. It seems like most enemies only have one healing pack and once that's gone, it's just a case of grinding them down. You might have to hop between zones a few times but it works a treat.

It seems a monumental act of stupidity for a game to have cooldown but to allow zone hopping. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of what the programmers were actually trying to achieve.

That all being said, I'm not really playing the main quest, I'm just exploring, killing and doing a few side quests. I quite like the crafting system and there are plenty of zones to explore. I might never finsh the game (I suspect the main quest will get incredibly difficult and frustrating) but at least I no longer feel like I've wasted my money

 

[Toby Frost]

That sounds like a less slick version of Shadowrun Dragonfall, which I would strongly recommend.

I'm still very impressed with Vampire: The Masquerade. The story is quite interesting, and it's good at giving you things to do, especially in the side-missions. Unfortunately, as it goes on it seems to become more action-orientated, which is its weakest aspect (not surprisingly, given its age). It's got that Skyrim problem that the basic mechanic is to press the "attack" button a lot, while occasionally drinking a health potion. Also, the stealth system is hilariously broken, to the point where a guard ended up repeatedly walking into my character whilst saying "Is anyone there?", because I am apparently so good at hiding.

On the other hand, the setting is surprisingly deep, the characters are decent and improving your person is fun. I find bog-standard D&D fantasy settings really dull, and this makes for a nice change. Vampire Librarian Lady now has an enormous coat, which is weirdly well-animated. For a game from 2003, this is really good stuff. It also reminds me of Evil Willow from Buffy, which my 2003 self would definitely have considered to be a good thing.

 

[Rodders]

I thought i'd give the Mad Max game a go. First impressions are pretty good and the world, though sparse, is interesting.

 

[Foxbat]

I've been playing Open Wheel Manager (I think probably so-called to avoid any litigation regarding F1 trademarking).
I bought it for under £6 from GOG so wasn't too worried if it turned out to be a turkey but, luckily, it's not too bad. Driver names and teams are fictitious but you can pretty much guess who the teams are supposed to be. I believe you can change the driver names within the game.

It's very far from perfect with simplistic graphics - but remember, this is coming from somebody who shouts at a spreadsheet (Rule The Waves 3) despite loving that spreadsheet dearly.

I suppose to give a comparism graphics-wise, think Championship Manager.

The mechanics are fairly straightforward. You have a racing team and a budget. You need to develop the car, negotiate contracts, find an engine supplier, drivers, engineers and designer. If you wish (and I wish) you can go to races, which is a 2D representation of dots moving around a track. If you don't want to, you can just get an instant race result.

Overall, I'm quite enjoying it but suspect I will get bored with it fairly quickly. There's just not that much for the player to do and it looks like every season will be the same repetitive steps. There doesn't seem to be any random events generator (you could have a driver get injured or maybe contract disputes, maybe even team mates fallout and do the dirty on each other, maybe you could have data stolen by a rival team or be able to protest a result).

Another criticism is race day. Qualfying is automated and then you get to pick the tyre strategy at race start. You have a selection of tyres and their probable lifespan. You also get to set fuel load (despite this not being a part of F1 for many years, it still exists in this game) and then you have the weather. The problem with all this is, say you decide to change your strategy halfway through the race (e.g. rain ends quicker than expected) but can't remember the probable tyre life of your preferred option then you're up **** creek with no airgun. You only get that info pre-race and there seems no way to access that info during the race. You have race engineers so why not have the ability to ask them for advice?

I think I'll get a few days fun out of this and hopefully a patch will come along and improve things

 

[Venusian Broon]

I've been playing Open Wheel Manager (I think probably so-called to avoid any litigation regarding F1 trademarking).
I bought it for under £6 from GOG so wasn't too worried if it turned out to be a turkey but, luckily, it's not too bad. Driver names and teams are fictitious but you can pretty much guess who the teams are supposed to be. I believe you can change the driver names within the game.

It's very far from perfect with simplistic graphics - but remember, this is coming from somebody who shouts at a spreadsheet (Rule The Waves 3) despite loving that spreadsheet dearly.

I suppose to give a comparism graphics-wise, think Championship Manager.

The mechanics are fairly straightforward. You have a racing team and a budget. You need to develop the car, negotiate contracts, find an engine supplier, drivers, engineers and designer. If you wish (and I wish) you can go to races, which is a 2D representation of dots moving around a track. If you don't want to, you can just get an instant race result.

Overall, I'm quite enjoying it but suspect I will get bored with it fairly quickly. There's just not that much for the player to do and it looks like every season will be the same repetitive steps. There doesn't seem to be any random events generator (you could have a driver get injured or maybe contract disputes, maybe even team mates fallout and do the dirty on each other, maybe you could have data stolen by a rival team or be able to protest a result).

Another criticism is race day. Qualfying is automated and then you get to pick the tyre strategy at race start. You have a selection of tyres and their probable lifespan. You also get to set fuel load (despite this not being a part of F1 for many years, it still exists in this game) and then you have the weather. The problem with all this is, say you decide to change your strategy halfway through the race (e.g. rain ends quicker than expected) but can't remember the probable tyre life of your preferred option then you're up **** creek with no airgun. You only get that info pre-race and there seems no way to access that info during the race. You have race engineers so why not have the ability to ask them for advice?

I think I'll get a few days fun out of this and hopefully a patch will come along and improve things

Definitely giving off Football Manager vibes (The 1982 ZX Spectrum version is burnt into my mind!)

Talking about "management" games, I have seen (and been tempted by) Dave the Diver.

Dive and fish during the day, run a sushi restaurant with your catch at night....is sort of the basic loop, but then loads of other weird stuff happens. Mad as a box of frogs.

 

[Toby Frost]

There was a recent game like that where you caught fish in a sea full of Lovecraftian monsters, and then sold them to Deep Ones. It looks quite fun.