What Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Foxbat]

What difficulty are you playing on?

Normal difficulty level.

I’m not particularly good at these games but enjoy the landscapes. So far, I’m just exploring and have only done a couple of quests. I couldn’t even imagine taking on a deathclaw on survival level. I think I would need to find some new underwear as well as a ton of stimpaks

 

[Venusian Broon]

Normal difficulty level.

I’m not particularly good at these games but enjoy the landscapes. So far, I’m just exploring and have only done a couple of quests. I couldn’t even imagine taking on a deathclaw on survival level. I think I would need to find some new underwear as well as a ton of stimpaks

Hee-hee!

On my survival run, basically level 1-2 and with armour and hp that made me likely to be killed by a stiff breeze, I stumbled across a radscorpion immediately after Concord, then while carefully trying to get to the car plant an hour or so later and not much more experienced, I saw a deathclaw in the wild 'patrolling'* that had just spawned in, thankfully just wandering off away from me. In both instances, flight and hiding was the only safe option .

There are a number of places where deathclaws are more or less guaranteed to appear when you reach them....but I'll leave that for you to discover . Oh and there are the guaranteed spawns of really nasty Behemoths (scary), Mirelurk Queens (very scary) and assualtrons (brown trouser time, at least for me, they are evil!)...

Oh and when you've got comfortable, built up experience, good guns and you feel you can take on everything, raiders called rust devils start to appear. I'll again let you figure out if they are nice or not....

p.s. look out for an UFO actually crashing! I forget what causes it to occur, but you actually can hear and see it...

======================================

* Deathclaw in the wild is much more dangerous than the first scripted one you meet, as you are given items to help you defeat that latter. Plus you can hide in the shops!

 

[RDArmstrong]

Anyone playing Starfield? The reviews look pretty good.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Anyone playing Starfield? The reviews look pretty good.

Yep! Have been doing a lot of starter stuff, so not quite in the main game - i.e. I have just landed at New Atlantis - but will be back with more when I get there. Computer hasn't melted with being overtaxed....yet.

Has the vibe of Fallout 4 in space so far, fingers crossed they've worked on the plotlines a bit better....

 

[RDArmstrong]

Yep! Have been doing a lot of starter stuff, so not quite in the main game - i.e. I have just landed at New Atlantis - but will be back with more when I get there. Computer hasn't melted with being overtaxed....yet.

Has the vibe of Fallout 4 in space so far, fingers crossed they've worked on the plotlines a bit better....

Nice. Yeah there looks like alot to do in that game.

Seems like the main plot is pretty good, or at least it gets good.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Nice. Yeah there looks like alot to do in that game.

Well we've now got 5 years or so for Elder Scrolls 6, so this should fill the gap

(Although I have yet to officially finish Skyrim, Fallout 4, New Vegas etc....so really I probably will be uncompleted in this as well by 2028 )

Seems like the main plot is pretty good, or at least it gets good.

Looking forward to it!

 

[thaddeus6th]

Been playing Baldur's Gate 3, but less than expected due to the heat.

I like a lot of it but do have occasional gripes regarding choices (and, to be fair, these are mostly excellent) not having the option I want or unforeseen immediate consequences. Annoyingly, I 'killed' a character I was meant to save due to magic uncertainty over identity, but had non-lethal damage on, so she still had 1hp. But it counted as her being dead for quest purposes and I couldn't revive her, which seemed a bit unfair.

Still really good overall, though.

 

[Toby Frost]

I was quite tempted by Baldur's Gate, but I was put off by its huge size and the very generic D&D setting, which I'm getting very tired of. I've been playing Dishonoured 2, which is pretty good (although Thief 2 remains a better stealth game, perhaps the best ever) and a bit of Fallout 3 on the "hard" setting. Fallout 3 is starting to feel dated and a bit drab, but it's still good stuff.

 

[Foxbat]

I came across a Deathclaw in Fallout 4. I spotted it through a sniper scope and was distant enough that it hadn’t clocked my presence. So I sneaked up on it and hit it with my only Fatman mini-nuke. Not exactly an act of heroism but it blew the beast apart. I just hope there are no more in the area or I’m probably toast without my nukes.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've been playing more of Dishonoured 2. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a good adventure game where you fight people with magic, and not a very good stealth game. It lacks the "technical" feel of Thief 1 and 2, where you can do clever things and know that they'll work, but it doesn't feel as intuitive as Alien Isolation, where you're basically a normal person without magical trickery. Still, Dishonoured 2 is enjoyable, although it has to be played very slowly and carefully, with a lot of reloading.

 

[Rodders]

Hardspace Shipbreaker was on sale on Steam, so i thought i'd get it. It's a very interesting idea and i'm only in the tutorial phase at the moment. Not sure its my thing, but it is proving to be quite enjoyable.

 

[Vince W]

Hardspace Shipbreaker was on sale on Steam, so i thought i'd get it. It's a very interesting idea and i'm only in the tutorial phase at the moment. Not sure its my thing, but it is proving to be quite enjoyable.

I enjoyed the game very much. I need to go back and get all the achievements.

 

[Berlyn]

My friend and I have been playing a lot of Diablo 4 since it came out. We've kind of wrapped up our characters now though, so we haven't been jumping on much. I think we'll get back into it when Season 2 starts, make some new characters. I was considering trying out Elder Scrolls Online.

 

[Foxbat]

I’m still quite enjoying Fallout 4 but the experience is slightly marred by the fact that I have to go online and find out how to do things like building an artillery piece and assigning a person to it. There is a help function in the game but there’s a lot of stuff that it doesn’t cover. To actually get to the artillery parts, I also had to search on line for the answer. It turns out you have to scrap the rubble blocking the tunnel (creating a bag of cement). At an earlier point in the game, I was searching for rubber and remember wondering why I couldn’t get some from all the tyres lying around. Now, after scrapping the rubble and getting cement, I’m thinking that maybe I can get rubber from tyres. It’s something I’ll have to try.

These annoyances could have been greatly mitigated by a well-written manual but that, I fear, is too much to ask for nowadays.

 

[Berlyn]

slightly marred by the fact that I have to go online and find out how to do things

Definitely one of my biggest pet peeves with a lot of games these days, especially survival/crafting style games. They can be so complex that the only way you can really discover how to do everything is by relying on some sort of wiki. I really love just diving into games, experimenting with the systems and discovering everything for myself. I don't want to be punished for playing that way.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Won't spoil it, but came across a marvellously creepy situation in Act 2 of BG3. Due to a few good rolls it had an... unexpected outcome. Glad I'm not of a nervous disposition.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I’m still quite enjoying Fallout 4 but the experience is slightly marred by the fact that I have to go online and find out how to do things like building an artillery piece and assigning a person to it. There is a help function in the game but there’s a lot of stuff that it doesn’t cover. To actually get to the artillery parts, I also had to search on line for the answer. It turns out you have to scrap the rubble blocking the tunnel (creating a bag of cement). At an earlier point in the game, I was searching for rubber and remember wondering why I couldn’t get some from all the tyres lying around. Now, after scrapping the rubble and getting cement, I’m thinking that maybe I can get rubber from tyres. It’s something I’ll have to try.

These annoyances could have been greatly mitigated by a well-written manual but that, I fear, is too much to ask for nowadays.

Nah, I'm the opposite. Most games would require telephone directories to actually contain all the information required. If you really need a hand, googling gets you to "manuals" in the form of Wiki's or posts on other sites - steam, reddit etc. or the possibility of short videos containing people demonstrating what you want to do.

This is necessary because a lot of games change over time, DLC gets added, the developers sometimes modify core systems.

A game that actually printed a manual would put me off it now (It must have been about 25 years since I bought a game with one!). I'd like to play the game and discover it as much as possible, not sit with a pot of tea and spend lots of time reading a manual.

Sometimes, for very complex games - just to get started, I tend to get a lot of information on how to play a game from watching a few "let's plays" of youtubers - paradox interactive, I'm looking at you...

However usually I really want to really look up stuff online that much either. I'm playing Starfield at the moment and Youtube is bursting to the seems with '10 things you didn't know you could do in Starfield' or '15 Easter Eggs in Starfield'. 'Seven of the most obscure side quests in Starfield' etc. I'm ignoring them all, just following my nose.

I note there is a Fallout 4 wiki that answers your exact question regarding rubber, including guaranteed spawns of material that contain rubber btw.

 

[Toby Frost]

I suspect that the whole episode with manning the artillery in Fallout 4 is to force the player to use the base-building mechanism, and is a sort of tutorial in itself. I too found it quite unintuitive, and I didn't make much use of the construction aspect of the game.

I'm still playing Dishonoured 2, which remains a mix of extremely polished world and awkward level design.

 

[Foxbat]

A game that actually printed a manual would put me off it now (It must have been about 25 years since I bought a game with one!). I'd like to play the game and discover it as much as possible, not sit with a pot of tea and spend lots of time reading a manual.

The problem is, as @Toby Frost says, the whole thing is quite unintuitive. I could have grown a whole tea plantation with the time I wasted trying to figure this problem out - not that I would grow a plantation - tea is the most revolting substance in the known universe. I'd rather drink sewage water (and it would probably taste better). I personally find it easier to sit with the manual by my side than have to constantly switch between game and wiki.

I fear we will have to agree to disagree (even though I know I'm right )

 

[Venusian Broon]

The problem is, as @Toby Frost says, the whole thing is quite unintuitive. I could have grown a whole tea plantation with the time I wasted trying to figure this problem out - not that I would grow a plantation - tea is the most revolting substance in the known universe. I'd rather drink sewage water (and it would probably taste better). I personally find it easier to sit with the manual by my side than have to constantly switch between game and wiki.

I fear we will have to agree to disagree (even though I know I'm right )

I think it comes down to my personal experience. I've been playing Bethesda games since about 2007 - I 'joined' via Oblivion, watched countless Let's Plays and had their janky Creation engine way of doing western RPG's almost drilled into my DNA I just feel comfortable slipping into one of their games, mainly because a lot of their mechanics are similar or build on previous games. (For example, Starfield is feeling very much like Fallout/Skyrim on steroids, and I've barely started exploring the smallest corner of its universe...)

Prior to that in the late 1990s I did have a PC and PS1 and games did come with manuals....but they were universally terrible, so I didn't bother reading them! They are the things, I suspect, that put me off written manuals!