I’m currently playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I’m done with 1 and am now working through 2. Great games so far!
Enjoy! I’ve been wanting to get back into the ME series again, but the stupid EA launcher requirements have halted me. I know you can modify some files to get around it, and I did do that and it worked, but the next time I tried to open the game steam verified the files and corrected them. I haven’t gotten around to removing the launcher requirements again yet.
I recently started playing Revenge of the Savage Planet. So far I really like it. I’ve never finished the first release Journey to the Savage Planet, but it was a nice game.
I’m back in skyrim VR but i’m using VRocker that let’s me walk or run in place to move in game. It’s been pretty fun. :)
I just got back into modding Skyrim again. It’s my first time modding on Linux, it’s been far smoother than I was told it would be. I’m using ModOrganizer2, it’s been great for the most part. It’s a little iffy to start up, sometimes it forgets I’ve used it before and I need to reboot a couple times which is pretty annoying, but as long as I don’t fully close MO2 it works as expected.
I’ve had Airship: Kingdoms Adrift for a while and gave it a go. It’s got neat broadside naval combat in the air and you can customize components in ports. There’s a small chance to capture enemy ships under certain conditions and make yourself a fleet or send trade convoys on their own from port to port.
It has a main mission though and kinda acts like a tutorial so, not sure how far along one has to follow it to unlock everything.
Butt the mission rewards are kind of silly. Gave me some warehouse plans to increase port storage, but no idea when I’ll get to use it or where, if at all.
Need resources probably, but i didn’t get that far and the costs are way above what i can poach.
Then gave me a piece of equipment too big for the ship I have, so again, useless at the moment.Anyway, feels off. Maybe I’ll get back at it, maybe not… Who knows.
Just picked up Ark Survival: Evolve and No Man’s Sky
Been playing a lot of survival craft games with my son in law lately which has been great fun
Does No Man’s Sky count? I just got it a few weeks ago on sale and have been having a blast!
I have barely been playing any games at all this week. I have managed to finish a grand total of one chapter of Alan Wake 2: Final Draft I think.
Instead I’ve been spending pretty much all my time modding and fiddling with STALKER: Anomaly. Yes, I’ve relapsed. I can’t help myself. I said I shouldn’t do this anymore and should focus on finishing complete narratives instead of playing around in the Chernobyl sandbox but I just got the craving again. And tweaking your modlist until it’s perfect is just an addiction in itself - making everything work together and throwing together patches in WinMerge.
Maybe when I feel my modlist is finished and ready to play my hyperfixation will give out a bit and I can at least finish AW2.
I’ve relapsed too, I’m back to modding Skyrim again. It’s been a while for me, but after talking about it on lemmy a few days ago I got the itch. I’m currently running an evil mage build. Used Alternate Start to start with Windstad Manor, which actually comes fully furnished aside from the add-ons. It’s in the swamp which I think adds to the vibe of my character. I’m also messing around with the Ordinator Perk Overhaul and Apocalypse Magic mods, along with a bunch of graphics mods and smaller gameplay mods. I’m going to explore Bruma again soon too, haven’t played with that mod in several years.
I really need to get into modding Skyrim at some point. After playing and modding Morrowind and Oblivion heavily back in the day I just never got into it with Skyrim. I never played Skyrim much at all frankly. I was too invested in playing and modding New Vegas at the time. And then later on I found other games, and recently over the past years it’s been STALKER Anomaly filling the craving of “heavily moddable sandbox game”.
You should really give it a shot. It’s the most modded game on Nexus by a very large margin. To give you an idea, there are 18.7b downloads and 766.5k mods on Nexus. Skyrim Special Edition is in first place with 9.2b/118.9k. Fallout 4 is number two with 1.9b/68.4k, and Oldrim (Skyrim non-special edition) is at third with 1.9b/72.5k. SSE alone is just under half of all downloads, and combine the two Skyrim versions and you’re at nearly 60% of all mod downloads being for Skyrim. Pretty crazy.
Do you have any large and complete modpacks to recommend? I don’t know that I have it in me to learn the lay of the land from scratch.
Also, have you used the Mantella mod any? It’s actually a similar mod that got me back into STALKER Anomaly. Really fun immersive use of AI for roleplaying and forming attachment to your companions.
I’ve never used a modpack before, I actually like doing the research and finding which mods to use. In general I actually quite like the look of vanilla Skyrim so my graphics mods tend to be pretty tame.
Here’s some mods I like to use, with links to their Nexus page. A lot of these have prerequisite mods so you’ll need them too obviously, but I didn’t bother writing them out here. The mod pages will link to their required mods.
Absolutely necessary mods for every playthrough, even vanilla:
Skyrim Special Edition Unofficial Patch - fixes many, many bugs and exploits in the game.
Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE64) - not really necessary if you’re just running the mods in this section as all it does is allow certain mods to work, but I always keep it enabled anyway since it doesn’t hurt at all.
SkyUI - if you’re using mouse and keyboard. The original UI is great if you’re using a controller but it’s definitely not designed with M+K in mind. SkyUI makes playing Skyrim with M+K so much nicer. I’m sure it also works well with controller too.
Mods I always use:
A Quality World Map - makes the map much nicer to look at. There’s a few versions, pick your favourite. I like Vivid with Stone Roads personally.
Realistic Water Two - self explanatory. Makes water look way better.
Alternate Start - definitely necessary to me, lets you choose how to start the game. It’s the main reason I’m able to have so many playthroughs of the game.
Immersive Patrols - adds patrols for different factions, and they can interact with each other too.
Cutting Room Floor - adds cut content to the game.
Blended Roads - fixes weird visual problems with some roads.
Footprints - adds footprints when walking in the snow and ash.
Open Cities - makes cities part of the overworld so there’s no load screens when entering/exiting, similar to Morrowind.
JK’s Skyrim - improves cities.
Some mods I’m using right now:
Obscur’s College of Winterhold - vastly improves the college, which is by far the most underdeveloped major area of the game in my opinion.
Lightened Skyrim - removes some objects you can’t actually see (rocks under the ground and stuff) which makes the game run a fair bit smoother without a noticeable difference in the landscape.
Magic Sneak Attacks - using magic while sneaking counts as sneak attacks. Not sure why this isn’t in the base game but it’s getting used on all future magic runs for me now.
Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim - adds a ton of new spells to the game, great for a mage playthrough.
Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim - overhauls the perk trees. Works really well with Apocalypse.
Remember Lockpick Angle - when lockpicking, if your lockpick breaks, the new one starts in the position where the previous one broke, making it much less annoying.
Instantly Skip Dialogue - lets you skip unskippable dialogue. Most dialogue is skippable but some of the annoying monologues aren’t. This fixes that.
Beyond Reach - content expansion. Haven’t used yet, so I’m not sure what’s involved with it. I’ve got it loaded on my current character but I haven’t explored there. It’s supposed to be really good though.
Beyond Skyrim - Bruma - adds Bruma from Cyrodiil to the map. It’s so cool to see what the city (and surrounding area) looks like post-Oblivion crisis. It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, I’m really looking forward to going back again. It’s probably my favourite content mod.
Medieval Markets - vastly improves the markets in the cities.
Glorious Doors of Skyrim - new door designs. They look way better than vanilla to me.
I’d recommend getting an ENB, as well as Lux. I don’t usually, since I like the vanilla look, but ENB+Lux definitely looks objectively better.
Thanks, I’ll definitely save this for some day in the future!
I also tend to enjoy the process of setting up your own custom modlist, but after being deep in that rabbit hole before with Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout: New Vegas, Baldur’s Gate 2 and STALKER (all 4 games + Anomaly) I don’t know if I have it in me to learn the ins and outs of another mod landscape 😅
Glad I could help! Hopefully in a future Weekly Recommendations Thread I’ll see you saying you’re modding Skyrim and I can ask how it’s going.
I get what you mean, Skyrim can especially be a bit daunting to mod with just how massive the modding community is. Like I mentioned earlier, nearly 60% of all mod downloads are for Skyrim, it’s crazy.
Going back to Spider-Man one because I remembered I have a lot of DLC I hadn’t done.
I’m getting to the time of year I do my superhero binge. Right now is my Bethesda binge and then I’ll do the Batman Arkham games followed by the Spider-Man games.
Ninja Gaiden Black, actually. I was watching the Combat Overview video on it, and it made me realize I never really gave it a fair shake because I prefer NG2 by a lot.
BTW, if you in any way like action games, do yourself a favor and follow Combat Overview on YT. No one does what this guy has been doing for last couple of years, sadly. It’s been my go-to channel for long form breakdowns of action games since matthewmatosis shifted focus to making his game and TGBS moved on from making videos covering action games altogether.
I love both games. I think NGB is a better game, but NG2 has higher highs. The combat in NG2 is more viscerally satisfying and fun to play around with, but the game is an unfinished, untested and unbalanced mess. I still love it, and Chapter 1 of NG2 is the best Ninja Gaiden level or the whole series, but NGB feels much more complete and balanced.
From the shit Flying Swallow to the nonlinear level design, my issue with NGB is it’s less committed to being an action game.
To me, NG2 is 3D Ninja Gaiden finding and accepting what it is: a brutal action game where nothing matters but combat interactions. Level design and balance be damned: it’s combat, combat, and more combat.
In that way NG2 is one of the most unique games out there. I can maybe liken it to God Hand, but NG2’s commitment to nonstop combat is so singularly deranged.
For that same reason I always found it difficult to compare them because they clearly set out to achieve different goals. It just happens that what NG2 tried to do is exactly what I need as an action game fan.
If they would have finished and polished NG2 then it could have been the best action game of all time, for sure. It still delivers that “playable cocaine” feeling that’s very unique, and Chapter 1 of NG2 is probably the best level in the whole franchise and one of the best action game levels of all time.
The problem is all the absolute nonsense in the game, and the abundance of pretty much garbage levels. I think like half the levels in the game are outright bad. Also stuff like how completely broken UTs are. It’s obvious the game wasn’t fully playtested and balanced, and so the super powered UTs were slapped on as a bandaid. But they’re not really fun to use and end result is a mechanic that you at best feel forced to resort to just to get through levels, but most of the time try to actively avoid using in order to actually have fun.
The problem is all the absolute nonsense in the game, and the abundance of pretty much garbage levels. I think like half the levels in the game are outright bad.
I don’t think it has more garbage levels than Bayonetta or The Wonderful 101, for example. Like 3 or 4 bad levels? Predominantly where you have water, bow and arrow, and bullshit enemy behavior/checkpoint placement segments.
Most bosses suck in both games, and in most action games, TBH. I don’t understand why they’re hellbent on serving us giant monstrosities. Action games need more humanoid bosses overall.
Also stuff like how completely broken UTs are. It’s obvious the game wasn’t fully playtested and balanced, and so the super powered UTs were slapped on as a bandaid. But they’re not really fun to use and end result is a mechanic that you at best feel forced to resort to just to get through levels, but most of the time try to actively avoid using in order to actually have fun.
How are they broken? You absolutely have to earn using them and be strategic about it. Enemies will mess you up if you misuse OTs on higher difficulties.
IME, most action games feel messier than they actually are on the first playthrough and the more you replay them, the more patterns start to emerge and first playthrough issues fade.
Now, if you didn’t enjoy the first playthrough enough to go back for more that’s fair, and a rather big risk these games typically take.
UTs were perfectly balanced in NGB in my opinion. You need a perfect equilibrium between the power/damage of the move, the amount of safety it gives you (i-frames), the charge time it requires and the enemy count (essence generation). NGB hit all of these were UTs were a powerful tool that felt earned whenever you pulled them off and never too powerful.
In NG2 you get an eternity of i-frames, insane tracking that often has you teleporting around the room between enemies (like Tonfas) and a delimb system that means it’s easier for UTs to feed themselves. Which is exacerbated by the design philosophy being “kill hordes of enemies quickly” without tweaking the 2-essence-cost of a full charge UT and even reducing the basic charge time.
See, this is why I think the comparison doesn’t work. They may be called UTs and function the same as they do in NGB, but enemies behavior is different. If my only strategy is UT spamming regardless of context, I’ll get my teeth kicked in because enemies are too aggressive, volatile, and while they’re not as tanky as they are in NGB, they attack in larger numbers.
Timing is also key if I aim to use essence to instant charge UTs/OL UT. I windrun at the wrong time, and enemies will hunt me down because their tracking is also ridiculous, never mind suicide runs.
All that space between UTs is not exactly a walk in the park and there’s so much to be aware of and get right before you can reliably pull them off to the extent that undermines difficulty in a game where one mistake can easily snowball into a good chunk of your health gone.
Finally playing through Cyberpunk 2077. It still has some bugs but nothing that prevents me from enjoying it. I picked up the game and dlc like 40% off recently.
Seems like it was worth waiting for, it’s actually really fun!
Trying to mod/ROM hack !pokemon@sopuli.xyz Soul Silver, so that also necessitates playtesting that. Never actually fully finished playing the first time around.
You might want to edit the title to Recommendations instead of Recommendstions
Fixed the title, thanks.
final fantasy 12
Victoria 3 , its 3rd year aniversary and it has a nice balkan update , so im playing a bit having some dumb fun
I rewarded myself this week with a newer release than what I would normally be drawn to when I saw a game in the bargain bin.
I picked up Guilty Gear -STRIVE- at -30% for the Switch. Where I live, that made it cheaper than on Amazon and cheaper than the digital version has ever been.
I haven’t played any fighting game in ages and while I had seen clips of this game, I had never played it or any Arc System Works games (BlazBlu-, Dragon Ball FighterZ) so everything about it is a little knew to me. My fighting game experience is lots of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, some Street Fighter and Darkstalkers, about two hours of Skullgirls, and maybe an hour of Samurai Shodown, Red Earth, and Cyberbots.
My initial impressions are positive. There isn’t a soul online to play with, but I’ll be working my way through training for quite some time. Graphics are very impressive. Music-wise, it isn’t something that I’d ever listen to willingly, but it certainly suits the game and sets it apart from others in the genre.
Mechanics and controls are just right for someone like me, but I don’t understand their ranking system for online play. You have to play a match and the system ranks you on that and won’t allow you to play ranked matches below your level. Ranking me 6 out of 8 might be generous since I literally just mashed the same button.
Halo 2: Anniversary
The further into the series I get, the less enjoyable my Heroic playthrough becomes. I’m currently doing the first halo mission as the Arbiter and the amount of shotgun-totting floodlings who can one-shot me while running and jumping around like they’re on speed is… tiring, to say the least. I actually ended up taking a break for a few days for the first time since I started playing MCC due to this very level. Hopefully I’ll be able to start fresh once I’m back.Other than that I still like the game - not as much as Reach but it’s fun for the most part. Gameplay has a nice mix of on-foot and vehicle combat, levels are pretty varied (both visually and in terms of design). New weapons are alright, can’t say I like them more than anything I used in other games.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the story, will have to wait until I’m done before I decide on that.I mentioned it before but boy do I appreciate the presentation when using remastered graphics. All the colour, details and updated art style make the locations look appropriately sci-fi, otherworldly (when needed) and just overall beautiful and pleasant to look at. It’s a fantastic upgrade, one that hits even harder if you play like me - constantly switching between the two versions.
I’ve got another small but annoying problem to mention this week: why does my flashlight turns off randomly? Sometimes it’s after a few seconds, other times when moving between the rooms. Either way, it’s making it pretty much useless. Why? What possible reason could you have for that? It’s not like I’m running out of battery or anything, just let me use it when I want to.
The improved graphics look great for H2A, especially cutscenes, but it always bummed me out that it also changes the soundtrack. The original OST is just worlds better, with works from known artists (Incubus, Hoobastank, Breaking Benjamin), and the new music is just much more generic and mid.
I think the new versions of atmospheric tracks are pretty decent alternatives. Better? I can’t say I compared them this way but I’d say… a bit different and fitting with the new visuals for the most part. Dunno about the licensed stuff as my only experience with classic releases was playing the first game a few years ago.
I did find a few spots over all the games I played so far where I felt like the music was lacking a bit but I’m not sure if that’s just a normal experience or something exclusive to MCC/updated versions of the games. It wasn’t something that affected my enjoyment too much so I just moved on and focused on the good.
Yeah, admittedly I did play the originals on release so nostalgia is certainly a factor for me. I did have the thought “maybe it’s a licensing issue?” Until I realized the tracks are still in the game, just only if you’re using classic visuals. I would have liked the ability to shift between classic/remastered visuals and audio separately (though I think with the remastered cutscenes at least, this wouldn’t have been an option)
May be worth noting that, for the licensed music, in the game it’s all instrumental versions, regardless of whether the track has lyrics or not. Searching for the tracks online will probably provide versions with lyrics where applicable.
Speaking of cut scenes, I was a bit bummed there was no option to switch art styles during those (the in-engine ones at least). It would be just as, if not more, interesting comparison (depending on how much they changed) so I was really curious about that but alas.
Yeah, I THINK the reason this was cut is because some of them are shot a little differently and actually have slightly different run times
I’d still like to have that option but it’s completely understandable.
I don’t think I had this issue with H1 (or at least not to such extent) so I didn’t even think of it until now but I finally realised why I’m leaning towards remastered soundtrack as much as I do - original is more muted/less audible for some reason. I’m not sure if it’s the compression of old audio files or something else but when switching between both versions, original just doesn’t pop up as much. I might have to play around with sound levels.
Thanks for making me think about it, it actually made me stop to figure it out.
