What games are you playing now?

[Shagnak]

I'm surprised it ran that fast at almost 4K on a 1080ti. If that's the case, I'm guessing I can probably run it with mostly high settings @1920x1200

Thanks

My daughter is currently playing it on a 4GB RX570, but only at 1680x1050 (it's a spare computer made up of old bits that I put together for quarantining purposes) and it runs really well and looks surprisingly good, graphically.

Before that she was running it on an 8GB RX580 at 1080p, and it looked great. I imagine your 1080ti won't have any issues at all on high settings.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I'm surprised it ran that fast at almost 4K on a 1080ti. If that's the case, I'm guessing I can probably run it with mostly high settings @1920x1200

Thanks

It very much depends on what you turn on and to what degree. But at your resolution I think you should be safe.

 

[DArtagnan]

I have a 1080 ti in another computer - and if we're talking something close to 1080p - that should be fine with decent settings, especially with Vulkan.

That said, I very much doubt I would be able to live with the performance at ~4K - but, then again, I'm difficult in that way.

 

[DArtagnan]

Jumping back and forth a bit between games.

I have a two week vacation coming up, so I'm trying to find something that might keep my interest - which is ever more difficult these days.

Obviously, I should focus on game development - but....

Not long ago, I completed Resident Evil 2 Remake - which I really enjoyed.

The thing about it, though, is that you're supposed to complete the campaign at least twice to get the whole story - but I didn't find the replay with another character sufficiently different to bother.

I guess I'm more into different gameplay than experiencing the same story from another perspective.

But the game was extremely competent in a technical sense, and looks just wonderful - and the mechanics were nice and tight.

Since I have this thing with wanting to experience the "whole franchise" when I start being invested, I bought Resident Evil 3 Remake - and I'm already having a good time. If possible, it's even better looking than the previous entry.

However, what to do AFTER? That's the question.

I know RE4 has a HD version - which I've tried and it looks ok. But I hear bad things about RE5 and RE6. Since 4 is being remade as we speak, it sort of makes sense to wait until more games are remade.

I wonder if going straight to 7 from 3 will be a big problem for story cohesion?

Anyone played all of these games with some insight?

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I'm starting to lose steam with RDR2. The completionist in me wants to do most side content, missions, bounties and whatnot. But that puts a strain on the rhythm of the main story, I feel. There's just so much stuff to do that I feel it kind of dilutes the main story. At this rhythm I've basically averaged one or two, what feel like, significant main story missions every couple of hours. Even 3-5h wouldn't be stretching it, I think.

Maybe I should just focus on the main story and then go back to other activities, if it's worth it. The thing is, while the side activities are ok, they're not really anything on the caliber of sidequests, in say Witcher 3. They're at most sort of interesting, with a few exceptions that stand out. Or worst, kind of generic "fetch quests".

I even started using coaches, and not just riding everywhere, gazing at the scenery.

 

[JDR13]

Jumping back and forth a bit between games.

I have a two week vacation coming up, so I'm trying to find something that might keep my interest - which is ever more difficult these days.

Obviously, I should focus on game development - but....

Not long ago, I completed Resident Evil 2 Remake - which I really enjoyed.

The thing about it, though, is that you're supposed to complete the campaign at least twice to get the whole story - but I didn't find the replay with another character sufficiently different to bother.

I guess I'm more into different gameplay than experiencing the same story from another perspective.

But the game was extremely competent in a technical sense, and looks just wonderful - and the mechanics were nice and tight.

Since I have this thing with wanting to experience the "whole franchise" when I start being invested, I bought Resident Evil 3 Remake - and I'm already having a good time. If possible, it's even better looking than the previous entry.

However, what to do AFTER? That's the question.

I know RE4 has a HD version - which I've tried and it looks ok. But I hear bad things about RE5 and RE6. Since 4 is being remade as we speak, it sort of makes sense to wait until more games are remade.

I wonder if going straight to 7 from 3 will be a big problem for story cohesion?

Anyone played all of these games with some insight?

I'm a big fan of RE and have played most of the games with the exceptions of 7-8 which I just haven't got around to yet.

Since you skipped right to the RE 2&3 remakes, I'm assuming you don't have much interest in the older isometric titles?

The Resident Evil 4 remake has a March 2023 release date, so you won't have to wait very long assuming there are no delays. The current version on Steam is still very playable though.

Resident Evil 5 isn't bad. It's a little more action focused and is the first game to have co-op. I seem to remember the AI doing a pretty good with the companion in single-player. I never tried co-op, but I think it's the type of game that could be a lot of fun with a friend.

I thought Resident Evil 6 was pretty bad, and imo it's the worst game in the series. There's little of anything that resembles survival-horror in it.

 

[Shagnak]

Resident Evil 5 isn't bad. It's a little more action focused and is the first game to have co-op. I seem to remember the AI doing a pretty good with the companion in single-player. I never tried co-op, but I think it's the type of game that could be a lot of fun with a friend.

I've only played Res 5 co-op (a couple of years ago maybe?), and yep, it was a heap of fun. The only problem we had was that the boss fight bugged out at the end and we couldn't complete it. We ended up watching the climax on Youtube.

Res 6 is on our co-op must-play-one-day list, but I'm a bit sad to hear they've reduced the survival horror elements.

 

[JDR13]

Res 6 is on our co-op must-play-one-day list, but I'm a bit sad to hear they've reduced the survival horror elements.

To be fair, it's probably more fun in co-op, and it does have mostly positive reviews. I found it lacking in single-player though and didn't play for long.

 

[DArtagnan]

I'm a big fan of RE and have played most of the games with the exceptions of 7-8 which I just haven't got around to yet.

Since you skipped right to the RE 2&3 remakes, I'm assuming you don't have much interest in the older isometric titles?

The Resident Evil 4 remake has a March 2023 release date, so you won't have to wait very long assuming there are no delays. The current version on Steam is still very playable though.

Resident Evil 5 isn't bad. It's a little more action focused and is the first game to have co-op. I seem to remember the AI doing a pretty good with the companion in single-player. I never tried co-op, but I think it's the type of game that could be a lot of fun with a friend.

I thought Resident Evil 6 was pretty bad, and imo it's the worst game in the series. There's little of anything that resembles survival-horror in it.

Oh, I've played the original isometric games - including the remaster of the first game a number of years ago. I thought that was excellent.

This was one of my favorite genres once, when it was more popular. Started with Alone in the Dark (the origin of the infamous dog-thing jumping through window scare) - and my all-time favorite isometric adventure/horror game was Bioforge, which I still lament never got its sequel or never took off properly. It's still a great game even today.

But I never played any of the following Resident Evil games, because they were mostly on console - or the ports were crap.

RE4RE is so close? I'll probably wait in that case. Sounds like I should be playing the other games in co-op - which shouldn't be impossible.

I'm greatly enjoying RE3RE right now - and I'll probably give 7 and 8 a shot afterwards. I understand that most of the games are only loosely connected - so I'll just have to live with playing them out of order.

 

[JDR13]

I'd play RE4 if you never have. I think it's good enough to play twice, and remakes from Japanese developers are usually significantly different from the original game anyways.

 

[DArtagnan]

I'd play RE4 if you never have. I think it's good enough to play twice, and remakes from Japanese developers are usually significantly different from the original game anyways.

Well, since we seem to share preferences in several ways, I'll give it a decent shot - based on your recommendation

 

[DArtagnan]

BTW, for people into these games - they're practically giving Bioforge away at GOG

Bioforge

You don't know where you are, or who is in control, even the most essential concepts of i

www.gog.com

With the right filter and some increased CPU cycles - it's still quite playable, if you can live with the awkward keyboard controls.

We're talking a good 10-15 hours of excellent sci-fi horror with some of the best writing for the time.

Just saying!

 

[bjon045]

I've been playing Might & Magic X: Legacy and I am quite disappointed so far. I'm playing on the highest difficulty level but the game seems to be highly RNG based with a large number of bugs and highly questionable design features. There are annoying things like characters don't get xp when they are stunned if a monster dies and frustrating one hit death mechanics. While giving the illusion of being slightly open world it is highly linear - you basically have to do things in a certain order unless you want difficulty spikes. Some fights I will get handily wiped and then retry with the exact same tactics and barely get scratched - RNG at it's worst. I wonder if playing on a lower level makes it more tolerable but there were only 2 difficulty levels and I wanted something with a decent challenge. Sadly the only challenge seems to RNG based.

I've just started Act 2 and already I feel this is probably the worst in the series and I've played all of them from 1-9. 9 was my previous least favourite but I think X is a few points behind.

 

[Shagnak]

I've been playing the Saints Row re-boot. Don't worry, I didn't spend money on this disappointing game, got it free with a video card. Got a few hours out of it, but I'm about to uninstall it.

It's just... very mediocre. You might get some fun out of it if it's your first SR*, but for anyone else it's you basically doing the same sort of thing you've done in the last three games, but less fun, less funny, and pointlessly streamlined: no skill tree, just a linear track where you automatically get a specific skill when you level up. Money can buy you perk slots, but rather than buying your perks, perks need to be earned by doing the activities that you're trying to avoid because you're sick of them and they aren't as fun as in the previous games. Meh.

So, uh, yeah... all those reviews are pretty much right.

[*then again, maybe you should just play the remaster of SR3]

 

[Couchpotato]

Yeah I'm not liking the re-booted Saints Row either. I prefer the older versions. Though as I've been told by journalists it's Saint Row for a newer generation, not the older fan-base.

Agents of Mayhem was pure crap as well.

 

[DArtagnan]

After RE3RE - I checked out RE4 and RE7 respectively.

RE4 is (hard) locked to 60 FPS - which pisses me off, and the controls are awkward.

RE7 looks and feels great, but I hate the setting. That's on me obviously, but I just find the whole white southern trash trope off-putting. I didn't like it in Chainsaw Massacre - and I didn't like it in Deliverance.

I like the sci-fi aspects of Resident Evil the most - and I also like the urban stuff. This deep south thing, no thanks.

It's not offensive or anything, I just don't feel comfortable in that setting. Not in a good way, anyway.

I do want to play both games, mind you - but I don't think now is the best time.

Instead, I recently found out about Tale of Two Wastelands.

In case you don't know about it, it's a mod that combines Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas - and it turns the FO3 part into NV in terms of mechanics.

It's a very elaborate mod, and it's NOT trivial to install, but I did it anyway. It has something like 15 required mods on top of it - that you have to meticulously install as well.

Anyway, the great thing about it is that I've been itching for a FO3 replay for a while - but I couldn't find a way around the terrible engine limitations, like the VSYNC and 60+ FPS issues.

Lo and behold, TTW fixes them all - and it makes FO3 much smoother and seemingly 100% stutter free.

What's even greater about it, is that it's supposed to make New Vegas much more stable as well, and I always wanted to play that game properly.

I've tried New Vegas something like 10 times - and it always ends up crashing on me, and I give up.

TTW seems to fix that entirely, based on my time in DC with zero issues - as it's the same engine. At least I don't see why going to Mojave would change that.

I've also added a few choice mods of my own, including some gameplay stuff that makes it harder and more realistic (I never liked modern Fallout mechanics/balance) - and some other stuff.

Now the thing is to find the time to play these huge games

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Man, some of the side missions in RDR2 get incredibly dark and mature. And it's all very much environmental storytelling that you have to search for to get the full picture. And again, you can interact with it in many ways, and get little tidbits of extra narrative context. I thought I explored one such mission fully, until I watched a breakdown of other ways it could go, on youtube.

Last one was the Aberdeen Pig Farm mission. And interestingly, I found about it after liberating an escaped convict by shooting his leg braces off. But apparently you can also hear about it from somewhere else. Very cool that they did that.

 

[lackblogger]

Wordle in a nutshell:

 

[DArtagnan]

I've mostly been playing the modding game for TTW

It's a dangerous game, because it's very hard to stop once you begin - especially for these games - as there are literally thousands of potentially interesting mods.

But I'm pretty educated on modern Fallouts and what I think aids the experience in a meaningful way. So, I haven't gone overboard - and have landed at around 86 mods, with a good mixture or visuals, gameplay, audio (radio) and so forth.

I can't really tolerate the default NPC faces, for instance - and you really need a few low-hanging fruit like texture packs for the environment.

For gameplay, I absolutely require a decent VATS alternative - as I was never a big VATS guy - especially in FO3/NV where it's more like cheating.

There's a great bullet-time mod that incorporates all the VATS related feats in meaningul ways - and I love how it can auto-activate as you aim, but only during combat - so that you can't cheese it as a sniper and so forth. It costs AP while active - so you have to be very aware of your pool and it doesn't feel like cheating like VATS. Without it, combat is a little too fast and awkward for my tastes.

This is one area where Fallout 4 is far superior, imo.

Modern Fallouts are also way too easy almost no matter what in Vanilla - so I need certain mods to make combat more engaging and enemies feel like a threat. I'm using the popular JSawyer mod (mod from one of the lead Vegas devs IIRC) combined with the excellent Bleed mod. These two combined means being shot is extremely dangerous - and you can't cheese things that easily.

For instance, I was just in a firefight with but two Raiders. One of them had a sniper rifle (I had my 10mm pistol) - and another was melee. So, my tactics were to take care of the sniper first - so I could safely engage the melee girl.

So, I finally get him down (very low health) - and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Then, the damned melee runs over to the dead guy and picks up the sniper rifle and shoots my head off

Other stuff like sprinting, grenade hotkeys, backpacks, immersive UI elements - and so forth will all help the experience without breaking anything.

For radio, I just need the Old World Radio mod - which brings a ton of 50s style spooky and sci-fi horror, which I find to be the perfect companion for exploring the vast landscapes.

Anyway, I forgot just how fantastic the Fallout 3 beginning is. Beth always made great intro levels, but FO3 is my favorite - and I think it's a nearly perfect combination of elements. It gives you just enough to work with to make it feel like you're actually growing up in a vault - but not so much that it feels like a needlessly long drag.

A wonderful concept as an introduction to the Wasteland. It makes that first step into the open world particularly impactful.

Anyway, I think this will be my game of choice for the forseeable future.

 

[JDR13]

I'm at a crossroads right now. After recently finishing Dying Light 2, I have several games I really want to play.

I had been planning to go to Elden Ring next. It seems like they're finally done patching it, and I've been looking forward to diving back into that world.

At the same time, I really want to play Red Dead Redemption 2. Seeing it talked about recently has put me in the mood for that setting, and I've been wanting to try it for a long time anyways.

I also want to go back to Doom Eternal. I finished the main game a few months ago but haven't played through the two expansions yet, and it's calling me to come back.

Decisions....