What games do you guys play other than POE?

Solar Ships were added with the Pirate update Outlaws (April this year), which brought us rogue stations, smuggling, a fucking cool hooded cape, and recruitable NPC ships for a summonable squadron. Oh, and in-atmosphere frigates which is just the fucking coolest shit.

https://www.nomanssky.com/release-log/

I mean, just look at that. For absolutely *no* extra cost. Everyone has their own threshold for when a company has proven itself redeemed, but for me it was No Man's Sky Next, when they finally got multiplayer in and delivered on the main thing they genuinely oversold with release...but I think of all the updates, it was Sentinel that surprised me the most. A complete overhaul of the multitool enabling much more engaged gunplay requiring more careful consideration of combat than 'chuck grenades, hide'.

Organic ships also affect the passive reward system of frigate missions, which is neat. Also, you can see in the galactic map where your frigates are once on-mission which is a nice touch.

Also yeah, I don't like survival games either. I tried Conan Exiles, Valheim, V Rising (that one's fun but we've sort of bled it of all content for now)...all too fiddly and focused on trying to make a fairly small world feel huge. Which is fine, but sometimes the opposite can work too. There are lots of comfy loops and pursuits in No Man's Sky, backed up by a much more streamlined UI than any of the aforementioned games. Before the game had those, I completely agreed that it was 'a mile wide and an inch deep' in the worst of ways. Now it's more like 'a mile wide and 12 inches deep' so at least you can comfortably submerge your feet into it and enjoy the communal warmth of Every Man's Sky.

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FCK42 wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

*won't say I told you so because he's way too mature for that*

Honestly, the amount of updates it gets is astonishing to say the least.

As for why I was sceptical to buy it for a long time... I'm normally not really interested in survival games. Like... at all. Really not. I'm also rather bad at base building, so that'd make two aspects of the game I'm not really interested in.

Turns out that it doesn't matter because it offers oh so much more.

Just to piggyback this, I let myself be sucked into a 'I wonder what Star Citizen is like these days?' clickhole after seeing it offer $40k ship packages on a reddit post. My god, I didn't even know a tenth of the story -- it's fucking wild what went on behind the scenes. Fucking. Wild. Stalking. Physical abuse. Seduction. A shady as fuck lawyer who scammed millions from a German tax loop. Video game mismanagement on an unprecedented level. It's gonna make one banger Netflix docco sooner rather than later, I reckon. And no doubt the Roberts will make a buck from that too.

Anyway, it's up to a cool $500m US in funding and isn't even out and somehow we live in a universe where that can happen *and* some people still call No Man's Sky a scam.

I'm looking forward to the big V Rising expansion. I really enjoyed playing on a server with my brother. The game has good combat.

I've mainly been playing SCUM. I have planned to pick up NMS again. I have a few hundred hours in that game, but haven't tested the last 2-3 patches/expansions. The same goes for Valheim and the latest Mislands update.

But when it comes to upcoming games, I can see myself diving deep into Nightingale. That game looks like my cup of tea. Or coffee, as I don't really drink tea.

Killed a day playing The DioField Chronicles having picked it up for half off. Not everyone's thing but I like the real time tactical approach and the emphasis on well-timed skill usage. Valkyrie Elysium aside, it seems I have a strange taste for AA Squeenix games.

Back into Alaloth. Devs just keep adding stuff, but I will admit the limited combat styles (sword and board, two handed weapons, dual wield) and the very slow accumulation of skills (weapon independent) might get old but for the fact that the world is so damn big and I'm hoovering up quests like crazy.

Marvel Snap has replaced Titan Quest as my 'play in bed at the end of the day' fix. I'm shit at it but it has a fail-upwards style so even if you lose you can complete missions and unlock new cards/upgrade existing ones. That and the random nature of the in-play area modifiers means even a really well tuned deck can get wrecked by a scrub like me. :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1552080/Deepest_Chamber_Resurrection/

About to try this EA. Saw an ad for it on reddit, seems to have everything I like -- deckbuilding, gear, roguelite structure, fantasy setting, very responsive and involved devs. Will report back soon.

Well, that was a quick-as-hell 4 hours. This is awesome fun. Learning which cards to play in sequence is a bit tricky but once it clicks it makes sense -- playing a card boosts the two next to it, basically, and boosts remain on the card until used even if discarded. I like that all three party members have their own health pool and you can largely control which one takes the brunt of enemy attacks. Each also has a full set of equipment slots that you can fill either by playing through the dungeon or at a shop back at the start of the run.

This is a really good deckbuilder-roguelite. Not as tight as Slay the Spire but more meat on its bones per run. Twice now I've managed to do quite well starting combat with three almost dead heroes and ending combat with three almost dead heroes.

Recommended.

Picked up Cloudpunk on PSN last night after seeing it go on sale (I probably should have paid full price to support the indie devs) and can say it actually captures the cyberpunk thing better than CP2077 most of the time. The writing is great (games like this tend to live or die on their writing), the basic gameplay of driving a flying car through a city that has no tangible connection to the ground is immersive and satisfying. Someone wanted to make Snow Crash x Blade Runner so they did, and I really like it.

I also picked up Patapon 1 and 2 remastered because PATA PATA PATA PON PON PON PATA PON PATA PATA PATA PON!

I've lost myself in Elden Ring since it came out, and I can't get enough of it.

Picked up another oddity on the cheap (60% off): Sands of Salzaar. Clearly Chinese-made by the aesthetics but oddly just a single paid product with a few small expansions. Some dodgy translations but so far, playable enough.

Mount and Blade meets Diablo in a setting that would probably make Westerners think 'Middle East' but to me seems more North-West China/Xinjiang. The first rando faction I fought wore yellow turbans, and I suspect they're a clear reference to, well, the yellow turbans rebellion. Still, a weird mix of aesthetics.

ARPG-wise, it has the perspective down. Quite a few classes (none of them stock-standard fantasy fare either), a lot of skills, talents (passives), items, quests, all that. The Mount and Blade aspect is in the customisable main character, recruitable troops, big open world and constantly changing conditions. It's pretty deep-end but not overwhelmingly so.

I'm quite a fan of the cel-shaded graphics, if only because they maintain high framerate even on a clunker like a GTX970.

I can see myself getting a good 100 hours out of this.

And for like 10 bucks, why not?

edit: most reviews choose to call it a mix of Mount and Blade and a MOBA, which is an understandable interpretation given MOBAs are way...way bigger than ARPGs, but I think the RPG aspects (complexity of skill trees, full inventory for gearing, quests) skews it closer to an ARPG.

An odd couple of days for some of my regular games.

New expansion for Mechwarrior 5 dropped, using yet another of the so-called Unseen mechs (copied from/inspired by Macross, so stuck in legal hell for ages) and adding a rival mercenary system to the star map. So far, so interesting.

The third and likely final expansion to Stranger of Paradise: FFO dropped as well. It adds the gun as a base weapon and three jobs specialising in it (Marksman, Hunter, Gambler), and I have to admit I never thought I'd enjoy cosplaying as Irvine from FFVIII quite this much. I expected Machinist/Gunbreaker from XIV, but I think Irvine is way...way cooler. I think this 'final' version of the game will hit Steam as an underrated but still niche title.

A new hero for For Honor announced -- Afeera, a female Arabian mace+shield wielder. Many bonks. Many flips. I dig. Unlike the last few heroes, Afeera clearly has new mo-cap and moves rather than repurposed existing ones, so FH must be doing alright in the financial department.

That's all from me for now.