What games have you been playing lately?

Gbear

The way the football season ended felt a bit anaemic, even for me as a Liverpool fan. The games were robbed of atmosphere and after such a long gap I lost the thread of the season.

It gave me a hankering for some Football Manager. The most recent version I have is 2016, so I've decided to take a dive into that.

Honestly, I don't really care that much about the mechanics of the game. I endlessly savescum. I'm mostly interested in crafting a narrative and role-play.

I've thus far managed Portsmouth back into the Championship and I've done the thing where you create another manager to get Man City to buy your **** players for £50m a few times, but it's not like Messi wants to play in League 2, so I've still had to spend time looking for bargains and unknowns, as well as a few wonderkids that every edition of FM has a list of online.

Tbf, it sounds like you're robbing your game of atmosphere as well... Where's the excitement.

ancapailldorcha

I play Paradox games and hate save-scumming unless it's something I feel is unfair or something that'll kill my entire run.

Games are supposed to be fun though. To each their own.

Gbear

Deleted User wrote: »

Tbf, it sounds like you're robbing your game of atmosphere as well... Where's the excitement.

Well I'm not playing it for excitement.


I'm pretending to be a manager following a particular fantasy run.


In a sense, I'm not actually particularly interested in the game itself. It's a vehicle for me to muck around with.


I have a similar experience with Cities Skylines.

One could approach the game as a challenge that involves slowly building up a city while managing budgets and the demands of citizens, but when I play it, I pick a giant flat map with all regions unlocked, unlimited funds, and a single big river running through the middle of it, and I build a city based on my whims.

The challenges, in as much as they exist, are the little optimisation puzzles, such as smooth traffic flow given infinite resources in Cities Skylines, or finding a team and staff that are satisfying to me in how they play, or who they are (like getting a player who's a known superstar in 2020 and getting them in your team when they're a 17 year old purely for the novelty), in FM.


It's just comfort gaming to me. Stress free. I stick on a podcast and craft the footballing narrative of my choosing.


If I want an actual challenge I stick to puzzle games. Opus Magnum or that sort of thing. I've ultimately bounced off of games like Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami, and I have no interest anymore in competitive online gaming because they just seem like too much hard work to me.

Taylor365

Gbear wrote: »

Well I'm not playing it for excitement.


I'm pretending to be a manager following a particular fantasy run.


In a sense, I'm not actually particularly interested in the game itself. It's a vehicle for me to muck around with.


I have a similar experience with Cities Skylines.

One could approach the game as a challenge that involves slowly building up a city while managing budgets and the demands of citizens, but when I play it, I pick a giant flat map with all regions unlocked, unlimited funds, and a single big river running through the middle of it, and I build a city based on my whims.

The challenges, in as much as they exist, are the little optimisation puzzles, such as smooth traffic flow given infinite resources in Cities Skylines, or finding a team and staff that are satisfying to me in how they play, or who they are (like getting a player who's a known superstar in 2020 and getting them in your team when they're a 17 year old purely for the novelty), in FM.


It's just comfort gaming to me. Stress free. I stick on a podcast and craft the footballing narrative of my choosing.


If I want an actual challenge I stick to puzzle games. Opus Magnum or that sort of thing. I've ultimately bounced off of games like Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami, and I have no interest anymore in competitive online gaming because they just seem like too much hard work to me.

What? You tryna say getting Exeter City to Champions League winners ain't a challenge!?


:pac:

Headshot

I don't understand why developers refuse to have cut scenes in 21:9 but have no trouble having game play as 21:9

so ****ing irritating

ShiverinEskimo

For most it's because a lot of cutscenes are pre-rendered videos - not live scripted gameplay. Given consoles exclusively operate in 16:9 they make them once. It's a tiny compromise. Doesn't bother me in the slightest and I play at 32:9.

TheRepentent

Just bought Hell Let Loose..ww2 FPS (more a mil sim I would think) enjoying it so far but its fairly unforgiving and near impossible to squad up without a mike. Oh and it has Carentan as a map

stuff.hunter

TheRepentent wrote: »

Just bought Hell Let Loose..ww2 FPS (more a mil sim I would think) enjoying it so far but its fairly unforgiving and near impossible to squad up without a mike. Oh and it has Carentan as a map

its a great game mate, all you need is a squad where guys using their mikes
btw, if you're looking for someone to play with, our clan is recruiting for both, competitive and casual gaming
details on www.1ad-clan.com or drop me a dm

TheRepentent

stuff.hunter wrote: »

its a great game mate, all you need is a squad where guys using their mikes
btw, if you're looking for someone to play with, our clan is recruiting for both, competitive and casual gaming
details on www.1ad-clan.com or drop me a dm

I will.....just waiting on an adaptor so I can use my headset (texting in sqaud chat just doesn't cut it.

Thanks

Glebee

65% through Far Cry:Primal at the moment and the bloody thing has started to crash on every game load. . Some sort of graphics error I think. Its a decent Far Cry game but as with all Far Crys gets very repetive after a while.

ancapailldorcha

Glebee wrote: »

65% through Far Cry:Primal at the moment and the bloody thing has started to crash on every game load. . Some sort of graphics error I think. Its a decent Far Cry game but as with all Far Crys gets very repetive after a while.

Windows has some sort of touch interface that makes Far Cry 3 crash. I had to disable it.

Have you checked PCGW?

Glebee

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Windows has some sort of touch interface that makes Far Cry 3 crash. I had to disable it.

Have you checked PCGW?

No, its only just started happening. Maybe its because of a graphics driver update.. I load into the game, screen flickers for a few seconds and then freezes. Ive tried reducing the res but still no luck. Whats this PCGW?

ancapailldorcha

Glebee wrote: »

No, its only just started happening. Maybe its because of a graphics driver update.. I load into the game, screen flickers for a few seconds and then freezes. Ive tried reducing the res but still no luck. Whats this PCGW?

Pcgamingwiki. It's how I solved my issue with Far Cry 3.

Glebee

And all of a sudden without doing anything Farcry:Primal works again... I dont think I have too much of the main story left. Time to finish it off and move on.

Retr0gamer

In the post game of FF13-2. It's a truly disgusting conversion and even the fan patches cant get it to run at a steady 60 fps. It's more 30 FPS with drops to 15. Also needs fan patches to get the game working properly with surround sound headphones as well as to stop it crashing when it exceeds 512MB RAM usage

But I've really enjoyed playing it. But I'm just glad we are beyond the days of painful conversions like this. Apparently the XBOX One X version has been heavily optimised back to run at a constant 60 FPS but very much doubt we will see those improvements back ported until the inevitable FF13 collection.

ancapailldorcha

Retr0gamer wrote: »

In the post game of FF13-2. It's a truly disgusting conversion and even the fan patches cant get it to run at a steady 60 fps. It's more 30 FPS with drops to 15. Also needs fan patches to get the game working properly with surround sound headphones as well as to stop it crashing when it exceeds 512MB RAM usage

But I've really enjoyed playing it. But I'm just glad we are beyond the days of painful conversions like this. Apparently the XBOX One X version has been heavily optimised back to run at a constant 60 FPS but very much doubt we will see those improvements back ported until the inevitable FF13 collection.

The Lightning Returns port is actually decent. Not amazing but it runs reasonably well whereas this sounds truly horrendous.

I just completed Homeworld: Deserts of Karak

Picked it up for like 3 euro

Such an underrated RTS

Glebee

Was between games so subbed to Uplay plus for a months to try out some games id missed. After finishing Farcry:Primal started into Ghost Recon:Breakpoint, christ it runs very poorly for me.. Wildlands ran great. Breakpoints seems to have a very different feel to it from Wildland, dont think Ill stick with it, it runs so poorly. PC is starting to show its age I guess.

Glebee

Glebee wrote: »

Was between games so subbed to Uplay plus for a months to try out some games id missed. After finishing Farcry:Primal started into Ghost Recon:Breakpoint, christ it runs very poorly for me.. Wildlands ran great. Breakpoints seems to have a very different feel to it from Wildland, dont think Ill stick with it, it runs so poorly. PC is starting to show its age I guess.

Gave up on Breakpoint. Switching between Division 2:Warlord of NY and Assassins Creed: Odyssey. WOW, two excellent games. Odyssey is the first game that might just be as good as Witcher 3. Think ill stick with 1 and stop switching so I can really get the most out of each game.

steve_r

I'd never played any of the Monkey Island games, so gave the remastered first one a go and really enjoyed it.

It holds up very well, puzzles are really good, story is entertaining, humour is subjective (I liked it but found it more amusing/entertaining than hilarious).

It doesn't outstay its welcome either, over and done with in a few hours and none of the padding that you might find in modern games.

I've started the second now. I've always enjoyed the point and click genre but sometimes the puzzles can be so frustrating - I'm thinking of something like Grim Fandango which I could never work out, and I've always heard to be a masterpiece.

Woshy

steve_r wrote: »

I'd never played any of the Monkey Island games, so gave the remastered first one a go and really enjoyed it.

It holds up very well, puzzles are really good, story is entertaining, humour is subjective (I liked it but found it more amusing/entertaining than hilarious).

It doesn't outstay its welcome either, over and done with in a few hours and none of the padding that you might find in modern games.

I've started the second now. I've always enjoyed the point and click genre but sometimes the puzzles can be so frustrating - I'm thinking of something like Grim Fandango which I could never work out, and I've always heard to be a masterpiece.

Have you tried the Broken Sword series? The are available on Steam and I played the first few recently. I found they held up well!

steve_r

Woshy wrote: »

Have you tried the Broken Sword series? The are available on Steam and I played the first few recently. I found they held up well!

I tried it very very briefly (on Android of all things) but I didn't stick with it.

Might give it another shot - good shout!

ShiverinEskimo

Just finished Halo Reach and started into Halo CE. Jarring transition to say the least going from all the polish of Reach to the original. But I'll say one thing - the sounds in Halo CE, particularly when it comes to the human weapons is far superior. Forgotten how punchy they used to be.

ShiverinEskimo

ShiverinEskimo wrote: »

Just finished Halo Reach and started into Halo CE. Jarring transition to say the least going from all the polish of Reach to the original. But I'll say one thing - the sounds in Halo CE, particularly when it comes to the human weapons is far superior. Forgotten how punchy they used to be.

I'm doing the same and have just finished Halo 2. Going to play something else before going on to Halo 3 as I'm all Halo'd out at this stage.

kearneybobs

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm doing the same and have just finished Halo 2. Going to play something else before going on to Halo 3 as I'm all Halo'd out at this stage.

Yeah. Halo CE/Halo 2 are games I can play for an hour and have to leave it fallow for a while. The variation on the level design, or lack thereof, makes it feel like a slog.

KilOit

steve_r wrote: »

I'd never played any of the Monkey Island games, so gave the remastered first one a go and really enjoyed it.

It holds up very well, puzzles are really good, story is entertaining, humour is subjective (I liked it but found it more amusing/entertaining than hilarious).

It doesn't outstay its welcome either, over and done with in a few hours and none of the padding that you might find in modern games.

I've started the second now. I've always enjoyed the point and click genre but sometimes the puzzles can be so frustrating - I'm thinking of something like Grim Fandango which I could never work out, and I've always heard to be a masterpiece.

They were my favorite games back in the day. Fond memories of beneath a steel sky and day of the tenticle. Don't think I'd have the patience for point and click these days

After finishing Halo 2, iv'e gone onto The Touryst. Nice relaxing game that looks very like Minecraft but obviously is nothing like it.

Manach

Completed the Division, fun to play but rather ironic as it is set in a virus hit NYC.

Starting an old school point and click, Broken Sword 5.

Dcully

MS flight sim 2020 thanks to game pass.
My first foray into flight sims and I ask myself why did I wait so long.
My new favourite chill out experience on a pc

I still suck but it's accessible to noobs and pros alike.