What games do you guys play other than POE?

Valheim proved ultimately too janky for the little group with whom I tried it.

I play Marvel Snap on the loo and while the Order of Pavelova train themselves up in TOR. I just pretend it's all bots.


My arms are sore from the drum game and my fitbit thought I was cycling. Heh.

I find Valheim is much better solo.
Cribbage is the loo game :)

Luckily my decent GPU and CPU is worth the money for running physics simulations or training neural networks. But for games, I mean, why should you bother.

Top PC Exclusive games 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ7wOKHMVSQ

I rather play a real boardgame than play that stuff on pc.

Ill just drop to vent my frustration with the latest valkyrie game...

Valkyrie profile is one of those franquises that never got the love it deserved, but that lifeless overpriced thing that elisium turned out to be brought me back bad memories from C&C4

I spent a pretty good chunk of PoE 3.19 playing through D3 Season 27. I think it's the first D3 season I pushed through to "completion" since like Season 3. And I gotta say, I enjoyed my time there a lot more than I enjoyed the modest amount of time I've spent messing with 3.19.

I've also been spending a fair amount of time in Satisfactory when not in the ARPG mood. That's been one of my go-to games when I want a change of pace for some time now.

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feike wrote:

Ill just drop to vent my frustration with the latest valkyrie game...

Valkyrie profile is one of those franquises that never got the love it deserved, but that lifeless overpriced thing that elisium turned out to be brought me back bad memories from C&C4

Of the slew of Double A games Squeenix released this second half of 2022, it's sad that the Valkyrie update proved to be the worst -- and the most marketed. They really struggle to read the room at times. I'd be more than happy with an HD remaster of Valkyrie+Lenneth with dual language audio options.

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Black Friday Ps5 sales. Oh boy. I am now the proud/sad/embarrassed/happy owner of Guilty Gear Strive, Jedi Fallen Order (again -- double dipped for 5 bucks just to not have to use the disc), Ghost of Tsushima (finally), Ace Combat 7 (that *music*), Shin Sakura Wars (nostalgia), and Darksiders III (completionism). And once I can pry the GF off the switch (no way I'd make her play Scarlet/Violet undocked) I might just try them. Ditto Rogue Legacy 2.

As an interesting aside, I tried GeForce Now, since I'm stuck on a GTX970 for now. My connection was up to par (amazing, for Australia) but, and this is a deal-breaker for me, it doesn't support ultrawide. Which means no matter what resolution I set it to, it's pretty blurry. A shame -- it was pulling very nice fps at any graphics setting on all my games. Oh well. Wait for 4000, try to nab a 3000 on the semi-cheap. I don't play PC games anywhere near enough to ride that wave.

And on top of all that I am feeling a strange pull back to The Lands Between. I really only scratched the surface of that game.

Will continue my Terraria Zenith seed run.

A few days back, I got an alert from steam that a game on my wishlist was on sale.

I don't ever recall using the wishlist function. It's just not in my nature -- ask anyone who knows me (...they don't post here, so you'll just have to take my word for it): if I see something I like I just get it. Usually it turns out okay but sometimes it's a big mistake but nothing that'll bankrupt me. When I told the GF about this wishlist thing, she expressed appropriate surprise for this reason.

So of course I had to buy it because whatever the fuck it was, clearly I was interested enough to bookmark it BUT concerned enough not to drop some cash at the time.

So Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms is a really weird, really exciting, really clunky little monster. I guess it was the 'dark souls meets baldur's gate' premise that attracted me, because I don't really like either of those games but I like what they do so maybe a combination of the two might somehow work for me.

So far: MAYBE?

I love, love, LOVE the set up. Basically a board game where enemies, friendlies and rivals all move across the overland doing their thing. Very Mount and Bladey in that respect. I like the notion of starting in different factions but with the same goal, which implies replayability beyond just different character styles. I am in single player mode but the default is multiple champions -- not multiplayer, but AI-controlled versions of 'you' all trying to complete the main goal (gather 4 thingies, enter final area, kill big bad, give or take). I can see how that might be a whole other level of tension.

I like the world itself. Plenty of hefty lore, all very Martinesque. Decent enough for window dressing for a game of this sort. Towns are small but well designed, serving as resting spots when you're not dealing with shit on the world map or in a dungeon.

I like the combat (with one qualification, see below re: controls). It's isometric souls, basically. That slower paced feel PoE apparently wants where every enemy is a threat and you have to be super tactical? Alaloth has that in spades. My gut says 'charge!', but I'm already figuring out how to isolate enemies, parry their attacks and be patient. Honestly, isometric souls is about a good a description of the game's combat as I can conjure.

I don't mind the UI and character stuff. It's all very familiar: paper doll, codex for lore, various level up upgrades. Your gear loses durability per death. You don't get much gold for random encounters.

I don't love the control system. A lot of earlier reviews decried that this was a steam game i.e. PC but the controls were pretty much solely for a controller. The devs have somewhat rectified this but it still makes clear that a controller is better. After about an hour I had a minor cramp from holding down alt+ctrl to run in the direction of the mouse cursor. Will I hook up a controller just to play it? Probably not. OTOH the controller focus tells me it might head console-ways, in which case I'll happily double dip.

I approve of the graphics: definitely Baldur's Gate level here, with static but nice backgrounds, amusing little RPG characters and, most importantly, very low demand on one's system. I'm on a humble GTx970 but with an ultrawide gysnc monitor and sit comfortably at 100+ fps. That's pretty insane, but it's that barebones. Crysis/Cyberpunk this is not.

So in the end the DS x BG selling point put forth by the devs only tells about a third of the real story. It's as much a digital board game as it is either of those, the quests are so far pretty uninvolved and just serve to give you an idea of where to go -- no BG level narrative here. The difficulty is, at least early on, definitely in Souls territory, but without the intricate combat dance for which FromSoft are so famous.

Anyway back to it. I honestly don't know how I feel about it yet but it has...something about it that draws me back.

Edit: hooked up a ps4 controller and immediately felt the difference. It's not unplayable with m+k but there's no denying this style of game just fits a controller. Yeah I can see myself burning a lot of time on this one.

Yeah i saw these reviews as well complaining about clunky controls.

The default keyboard settings look bad making your finges doing constant acrobatics resulting in RSI. I would definitely rebind some keys here and there for easier reach.

The main strain on finges is constant clicking for movement (in H&S games) or in this case constantly tapping WASD.

It has WASD for movement but i would rather bind force move to space and point your cursor in the direction you want to go. Less clicks or tapping in this game here. I'm doing this in PoE right now and it works good ,in my case, after i got used to it after a few hours.

Have you tried it how it feels like this way?

See my above edit. I have an excess of old controllers and steam makes it REAL easy to hook one up now.