Happy Presents Day everyone! Hopefully the legendary holiday presents mythical elf human hybrid brought you everything you wanted. Regardless, you can get the recent Bethesda game Prey for free today on the Epic Game store on PC RIGHT NOW!
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 12/30/2021 at 10:42pm
Thanks! I haven't played these games (nor any we've mentioned in this post, heck I haven't really played many games I've claimed). There's someone on YouTube who uses one of these games for benchmarking.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 12/31/2021 at 07:21pm
"There's someone on YouTube who uses one of these games for benchmarking. "
Wow. This is our lives now. Can't play all the games, but see how well they could run on our PC's.
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 12/31/2021 at 09:45pm
So I guess...if you want to find out how good your PC is play Tomb Raider. If you want to find out how bad your PC is play Ark. š
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
I noticed a new update to the Quake remaster in the gaming press and word of a new multiplayer Horde mode. This a popular mode in Unreal Tournament and other shooters and it seemed like a great fit for Quake. Recently I picked up the Quake remaster on the Series X and felt Horde mode was worth a try and friendsā¦ let me say Quake Horde mode is superb. If you were waiting to try the Quake remaster this is the time to give it a shot because just playing this with bots is well worth it. Iām excited to have friends over to try split screen at some point too.
āExperience the all-new Horde Mode and Add-ons for Quake, free to all players. Grab your guns and drop into Horde Mode - play solo, with friends online, or in local multiplayer split-screen. Unlock powerful weapons and power-ups and battle your way through endless waves of monsters.
Plus, expand your Quake experience with the free Honey Add-on and delve deep into the darkness to conquer a deadly plague infecting the land. With even more free add-ons coming soon, thereās never been a better time to play Quake!ā
I love that they keep adding new content. It was such a great re-release and the new episodes made by MachineGames managed to be at least as good as the originals.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 12/24/2021 at 12:51am
ā¤ļøš«
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
The Analogue Pocket is out now and seems to be getting universally high praise. Pretty impressive considering they have a slate of updates coming to the system next year. I thought Valveās Steam Deck would launch sooner but Iām happy to see Analogue beat them to the Holiday rush. Originally I wasnāt going to pick this up but the retro community reviews are so glowing I wonder?
Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member
wrote on 12/21/2021 at 07:39pm
Shantae!
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
Now that presents time is upon us I was wondering what everyone is playing? Before you go Iāll dish up a side of ham and Borderlands 3. Originally I picked this up on sale on PC and quite enjoyed it but solidly changed my gaming focus to the XBox when the Series X came. Recently Gearbox released a Borderlands 3 Legendary Edition that features the base game plus all DLC (base game disc, DLC code on paper) and Iāve been playing that here and there. I also got Forza Horizon 4 for cheap during Black Friday. Needless to say these are more than enough to tide me over plus the incredible backlog I have already (the woe, the lamentation).
What are you playing? Also if you want, dish up what youāve been watching too. Iāll put my watching in the comments.
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 12/17/2021 at 04:48pm
Ark just released a new community-made map (not the first time) that contains three new creatures. On the same day, the Winter Wonderland event started, so I'm doing that until I feel done, then I might return to Skyrim Anniversary Edition. I almost always return to Ark for holiday events.
As for what I'm watching that would be Hawkeye, though there's only one episode left. I went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home last night. The Witcher season two is out today, so I might watch that soon.
Also, I'm actually not planning on buying anything during this year's Steam Winter sale. I'm trying to save for a new monitor and I can't think of any games that I want really badly right now.
Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member
wrote on 12/17/2021 at 06:24pm
I am playing the original Halo remastered edition, Psychonauts, and probably something on my pocket once it arrives.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 12/19/2021 at 09:05pm
As to what I've been watching, it's a potato mashup of things. A lot of old Christmas things like The Leprechauns Christmas Gold and The Year Without Santa Claus. But also trying to strike ground with new to me old Christmas stuff like The Flintstones Christmas Carol and Yogi Bears Holiday Something Something or Other.
I've tried to watch Hawkeye but fell asleep each time I tried. I am not saying this show is bad, I just don't think I'm in the Marvel show mood at the moment. I've really enjoyed everything so far, just not sure what's up here.
Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member
wrote on 12/20/2021 at 06:24pm
Livin' life large and playing Shantae on my Pocket. Such a great game on some solid hardware.
As for TV Shows, we just finished up Succession Season 3. Finishing Hawkeye this week. Next week, Boba!
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 12/20/2021 at 09:46pm
Thanks for the Boba reminder, Will_Ball! I watched season two of The Witcher recently along w/ the animated movie The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. I'll finish Hawkeye this week, too.
The last game I played was Pocket Morty on my phone. It's a Rick and Morty version of Pokemon. Instead of collecting Pokemon, you collect different versions of Morty. It doesn't have elements like Fire and Water, but instead Rock, Paper, and Scissors. Now I'm about to go play Tale of the White Wyvern and then back to Ark. LOL
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and also drop the note of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day marathon. This year the extra bonus is that they are dropping the titles of the movies they are riffing for Season 13! So far the new announced movies in Season 13 are:
Munchie, Beyond Atlantis, Robot Wars, Santo and the Treasure of Dracula & Doctor Mordrid.
There are some real gems in there and I canāt wait to see how they riff Munchie!
jdodson gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
jdodson gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
It's a pretty well tried release strategy to release a main line shooter entry and then drop a gaggle of smaller DLC with it or one big story game alongside it using the engine of the game you just made. With the Wolfenstein franchise Besthesda drops one extra follow up story campaign alongside the main entry and Wolfenstein Youngblood was the follow up campaign that launched after New Order.
Originally I picked up Wolfenstein Youngblood on Switch and while it's not the optimal place to play it if you want the best graphics, it's a solid port worthy of the game. That said, when Wolfenstein: Alt History Collection (which contains each game in the new Wolfenstein series) was on XBox for cheap, I picked it up to play Youngblood and finally completed the main story portion of the game.
Wolfenstein Youngblood takes everything from the previous Wolfenstein games and builds on it to add some extra game mechanics in terms of character and weapon upgrades to give the series a new take. Whereas the new mechanics are interesting, they aren't very much fun. Early on when playing the game I didn't put much thought into the upgrade system until I hit a brick wall in terms of enemies being so hard I couldn't progress. When that happened I felt the game was forcing me to upgrade things I wasn't sure would make progression easier. In the end a combination of weapon and character upgrades along with staying ONLY on the designated mission path was the ticket to making progress in the game. Youngblood has a hub world system where you can veer off the mission path and if you do, the increased enemy difficulty will obliterate you unless you are some kind of shooter Godess.
Besides the upgrade system, the actual shooter part of the game is top notch. The guns feel great and I enjoyed each one quite a bit. Each enemy has a weakness to a particular gun type which forced me to use different guns beyond just camping out on the shotgun or machine gun.
Youngbloods story is about as good as anything from the main games but there isn't much of it, which is a shame. There is plenty of game here I just feel that the story that ties it together is pretty sparse and I wanted quite a bit more of it. According to Bethesda, Youngblood will the the springboard for the series right into Wolfenstein 3 which should be the conclusion of this new Wolfenstein game trilogy. I don't want to spoil any of the story, but what they did set up in Youngblood should make for a great ending to the Wolfenstein series.
While Youngblood isn't the best entry in the series, there is enough fun to be had to keep things interesting until the end. There is quite a bit more to play after the main campaign is over but I don't imagine i'll finish the remaining missions now that the story is over. If you haven't played any of the new Wolfenstein games I heartily recommending picking up the Alt History Collection.
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 11/14/2021 at 02:08am
No rating? I sometimes find it difficult to give games a rating.
You didn't mention the co-op part, which I think is a very big mechanic in the game. I know you don't have to play w/ another person (as per our conversation in another post), I was just asking if you thought it would be better. Perhaps the question I really mean is, how is the AI co-op? Does it also switch weapons depending on an enemy's weakness?
You said you hit a wall. I'm guessing I hit that wall much earlier in the game than you did. I barely played it and didn't enjoy the difficulty and just gave up.
Since you mentioned the Switch, I kind of feel sorry for the Switch. It does seem to be popular, and really it's the only current gen console I care about, but it seems incredibly weak. It seems to be getting the same games as the current gen, but they appear to be much worse, or at least very graphically unappealing due to the hardware. This makes sense for how the Switch operates, but I find it quite disappointing. Maybe some people care more about the ability to travel and play these games and that's more important than graphical quality and performance.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this!
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 11/15/2021 at 03:40am
> No rating? I sometimes find it difficult to give games a rating.
Ooops, totally forgot. It's pretty rad.
> You didn't mention the co-op part, which I think is a very big mechanic in the game. I know you don't have to play w/ another person (as per our conversation in another post), I was just asking if you thought it would be better. Perhaps the question I really mean is, how is the AI co-op? Does it also switch weapons depending on an enemy's weakness?
AI co-op is a lot of fun. You have three lives that you share with your co-op partner so if one of you goes down you have some time to revive them without losing a life. That mechanic basically meant we didn't lose very many shared lives. Also, there is a cool mechanic where you can toss a death metal hand gesture in the air and send you and your partner more armor every 30 seconds or so which is very helpful.
That said, I didn't feel like I was babysitting my AI partner and she helped out quite a bit.
> You said you hit a wall. I'm guessing I hit that wall much earlier in the game than you did. I barely played it and didn't enjoy the difficulty and just gave up.
I hit it pretty early on, I just kept going with it. But it's really different than any other Wolf game and I just started the original Dishonoroed and you can tell Arkane made Youngblood because it feels a lot like Dishonored.
> but it seems incredibly weak.
Compared to your PC most of my computers are weak. š¤£
> Maybe some people care more about the ability to travel and play these games and that's more important than graphical quality and performance.
The mobile aspect of the Switch is a big draw to it for sure. That said, I've been playing nearly 100% XBox Series X lately but Celeste pulls me back to the Switch when my son wants me to play it which is generally whenever he is staying with me.
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 11/15/2021 at 03:55am
>AI co-op is a lot of fun. You have three lives that you share with your co-op partner so if one of you goes down you have some time to revive them without losing a life. That mechanic basically meant we didn't lose very many shared lives. Also, there is a cool mechanic where you can toss a death metal hand gesture in the air and send you and your partner more armor every 30 seconds or so which is very helpful.
>That said, I didn't feel like I was babysitting my AI partner and she helped out quite a bit.
Cool! Thanks for sharing that tidbit. I think that's an important thing to know about, since co-op is a main feature of the game.
>I hit it pretty early on, I just kept going with it. But it's really different than any other Wolf game and I just started the original Dishonoroed and you can tell Arkane made Youngblood because it feels a lot like Dishonored.
I think I hit that wall right away. Seeing that you hit it early on, too, makes me feel not so bad. Sometimes games *really* piss me off. I give up very easily, too. I've been trying to think that if a game really pisses me off that much then to give it up, it's not worth it. I can't say I've been good at following that, though. Part of Mad Max really pissed me off, but I stuck w/ it and eventually finished it, but it was brutal.
>Compared to your PC most of my computers are weak. š¤£
Yeah, but Travis has me jealous of his hardware now. LOL I very much want like a 3090 Ti (for some reason when it comes to PC hardware I pretty much won't settle for less than the best), but it'd take me a while to save up to afford one. I'm already hoping to save money to buy a monitor that's about as expensive, though I may end up settling for one that's about half the price. This is the same 1920x1200 60hz Dell monitor I got w/ the Alienware. It's still fine for me, but I want to experience new tech, which I'm sure it's going to drive me to want a new GPU, since it'll probably make mine look much weaker. (As an aside, my GPU currently costs double what I paid for it a couple years ago.)
>The mobile aspect of the Switch is a big draw to it for sure. That said, I've been playing nearly 100% XBox Series X lately but Celeste pulls me back to the Switch when my son wants me to play it which is generally whenever he is staying with me.
Yeah, some games on the Switch seem quite logical to me. Terraria is another great example of a game I think that's perfect for the Switch. But something like the new GTA remastered trilogy just doesn't make any sense to me. Ark is on it, too, which blows my mind (and I've heard it's the worst version of them all).
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts on Youngblood, I appreciate it!
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 11/15/2021 at 04:42pm
> Yeah, some games on the Switch seem quite logical to me. Terraria is another great example of a game I think that's perfect for the Switch
Due to its controls I havenāt found Terraria to be fun on any other platform than one with a keyboard and mouse.
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 11/15/2021 at 09:40pm
I barely played Terraria on the Wii U, but I agree with you.
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
Wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Halloween! This year I had a get together at my place with some friends and to celebrate this spook season we played co-op of the original Doom. It was fun to play Doom with friends and if you wanted upgrade things a bit you could play one of these Halloween / Horror themed Doom WADS reviewed by The Dean of Doom himself. I'm a sucker for the original Doom campaign but there are some really incredible WADs that in a lot of ways are better than the original campaigns but require you to be a bit of a Doom expert to complete.
Steam Deck is the new Valve hardware that will play your Steam library on the go using Linux and a modified version of Wine. Because of that some games don't run perfectly and Valve has a new system to let you know what games work and what games might need some tweaking.
"Introducing Deck Verified: See at a glance how your Steam games run on Deck. "
Happy Halloween everyone! I watched this recent Digitial Foundry breakdown of the recent Diablo II remake and all the various console versions and wanted to share it and kick off a broader public discussion on your thoughts about it. Seems like the general consensus is the game is a great version of the classic game, however, some miss the quality of life improvements present in more modern games such as Diablo III. It's an odd thing to think given folks were trashing Diablo III because it wasn't more like Diablo II.
I've recently been in the process of moving and finally landed into my new apartment so I haven't had as much time to play Diablo II as I would have otherwise, but so far I really love the work they've done with it. I'm curious if Blizzard will do more with Diablo II in terms of expansions or new content or if they will save all of that for Diablo IV? Also wondering how the reception of the Diablo II remaster might effect development of Diablo IV? Also... will we get Diablo IV with all the problems Blizzard is having right now?
Azurephile Super Member
wrote on 11/01/2021 at 12:04am
I wish I had a "fond" experience with this game. I suspect I'm not doing the game play right. I have a neutral or slightly negative perspective of it. I've only been playing at 1080p and I've limited framerate to 60. I definitely prefer the remastered graphics. I have the D2 Battle Chest, but I could never get over the original graphics. This is probably because I was late to Diablo and started with D3. In comparison, the original graphics are terrible. I'm finding I'm picky about this although I have an "acceptable" range. I did play both Warcraft and Starcraft games when they were out and I really enjoyed them. If I was aware of the two Diablo I might have played them and would see how much it looked like those games so I'd probably be ok with it.
Thanks for sharing the video! I liked and subscribed!
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 11/01/2021 at 03:38am
I absolutely love what Vicarious Visions did with the game, and I imagine people who have continued playing it off and on are having a great time.
Iām kinda playing a few minutes here and there but mostly just get frustrated with it because the newer ARPG quality of life features have really gotten ingrained into me. Even if only the D3 style action bar was added I would have less trouble with it. Not being able to see a visual indicator of the skills you have equipped, plus the need to hit the number youāve mapped to and then click, really bring down the experience more than I would have expected.
I havenāt given up on it but I had a couple other things I wanted to play more so Iāve put it on the back burner. Hopefully they get the servers in better shape in the meantime!
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 11/02/2021 at 04:12am
> I havenāt given up on it but I had a couple other things I wanted to play more so Iāve put it on the back burner. Hopefully they get the servers in better shape in the meantime!
There is so much great stuff out there.
If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
RollerCoaster Tycoon is one of the best sim games of all time. As such it has a huge cult following and because of that was the first request fans made of NoClip for their retro documentary series "Greatest Hits." It goes over a lot of the games history all the way to it's modern incarnations and would be perfect except they weren't able to land an interview with the series creator Chris Sawyer.
If you love RollerCoaster Tycoon and are itching to play it there is a great open source project Open RollerCoaster Tycoon that is one of the best ways to play it on PC, Mac or Linux. If you don't have a PC and are mostly on your Smartphone or Tablet, RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is a great port of RollerCoaster Tycoon and it's sequel including all of the expansions.
"In our brand new series Greatest Hits, we celebrate the legacy of RollerCoaster Tycoon by exploring its original design and talking to the people holding the torch today. RCT was chosen by a subset of our patrons - to pick the next game, consider joining them."
Control is available today.
I picked up a ton of games from Epic store this holiday. Not sure if I'll play any of them, but I have them so... yay!
I'd like to get FFVII Remake and the Kingdom Hearts games from there, but money. LOL
https://kotaku.com/the-tomb-raider-reboot-trilogy-is-currently-free-on-pc-1848286866
Thanks! I haven't played these games (nor any we've mentioned in this post, heck I haven't really played many games I've claimed). There's someone on YouTube who uses one of these games for benchmarking.
"There's someone on YouTube who uses one of these games for benchmarking. "
Wow. This is our lives now. Can't play all the games, but see how well they could run on our PC's.
So I guess...if you want to find out how good your PC is play Tomb Raider. If you want to find out how bad your PC is play Ark. š