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Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

What are you talking about, all you do is survive

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RandomBlue
Dec 30, 2012

hay guys!


Biscuit Hider

Tiny Timbs posted:

What are you talking about, all you do is survive

oh poo poo, I been looking at this backwards

Anime Store Adventure
May 6, 2009


You don’t need to jump on the Snowrunner DLC right away unless something catches your eye. I bought a bunch when it was on sale at some point and haven’t touched it. The stock game, if you try to 100% a map, has endless hours of content. In the bright side if it clicks with you, you’ll never run out of stuff to do.

lordfrikk
Mar 11, 2010

Oh, say it ain't fuckin' so,
you stupid fuck!

RandomBlue posted:

The only bad part about Snowrunner is you can't die so it's not a survival game.

Honestly dying would make the game easier sometimes

YerDa Zabam
Aug 13, 2016



Pacific Drive demo is up on Steam

-edit-

And it's great. Pretty short, not the same demo that previews and streamers have, but enough to get the flavour.
I was pleased to see that it's going to have a physical version for the PS5, but it doesn't come out until April, nearly 2 months after launch. That's a shame, but at least it is a low price.

YerDa Zabam fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Feb 5, 2024

bgreman
Oct 8, 2005

ASK ME ABOUT STICKING WITH A YEARS-LONG LETS PLAY OF THE MOST COMPLICATED SPACE SIMULATION GAME INVENTED, PLAYING BOTH SIDES, AND SPENDING HOURS GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND TO ENSURE INTERNET STRANGERS ENJOY THEMSELVES
I really enjoyed my time with it, took it very slow. Lots of tension, and the crafting is fun enough. The upgrade menus are pretty deep, seems like it might have some legs.

It is partially a run-based extraction game, which I don't know that I was aware of before I played the demo.

The driving is pretty meh though, and I spent a lot less time driving than I did digging through containers and tearing apart wrecks.

TeaJay
Oct 9, 2012


Sounds good. Since the release is so close, I don't think I'll even try the demo, but rather go in blind when it actually releases.

LordSloth
Mar 7, 2008

Disgruntled (IT) Employee
So I was recently clearing Breathedge from my backlog, and while I didn't finish it, I did remove it from my backlog, never to complete.

I was wondering, which survival games have you played where you encountered the sunk-cost fallacy? And did you manage to snap yourself out of it before full completion, if not 50% (going by steam achievements)?

I picked it up a day after release and before I was properly aware of its "humor" and downward gameplay slope. Sometimes spoiling yourself can be a good thing, but other times the conceptual appeal of a Space Subnautica can lead to you willfully blinding yourself to the obvious warning signs from various sources.

lordfrikk
Mar 11, 2010

Oh, say it ain't fuckin' so,
you stupid fuck!
If it's not strictly story-based then it's easier for me to drop a game before it's done. In Breathedge, I think I stopped like 10 minutes in because I couldn't take the "humor".

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
Breathedge was like that too, for me. The jokes got on my nerves, and the gameplay wasn't fun. It felt half-baked and not in a good way.

Goa Tse-tung
Feb 11, 2008

;3

Yams Fan
in the Ice Subnautica I became so fed up I started just cheating myself the story materials, bee-lined for the end and uninstalled

Trivia
Feb 8, 2006

I'm an obtuse man,
so I'll try to be oblique.
Breathedge is terrible. I too have up after 15 minutes.

Antigravitas
Dec 8, 2019

Die Rettung fuer die Landwirte:

Goa Tse-tung posted:

in the Ice Subnautica I became so fed up I started just cheating myself the story materials, bee-lined for the end and uninstalled

I used a prawn for the land sections. That made them bearable.

HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?
I don't really encounter the sunk cost fallacy in games. I'll drop games all the time for any reason or no reason. That said it leads me to buying *way too many* games just to try once. ADHD or just irresponsibility, who knows

Ragnar Gunvald
May 13, 2015

Cool and good.

HopperUK posted:

I don't really encounter the sunk cost fallacy in games. I'll drop games all the time for any reason or no reason. That said it leads me to buying *way too many* games just to try once. ADHD or just irresponsibility, who knows

I have exactly the same problem. But it also means if I'm enjoying something I get easily distracted too.

I've been meaning to replay cyberpunk since release.

TeaJay
Oct 9, 2012


Particularly in this genre my issue is that when an EA game is released, me and my friends play it so much that we have absolutely no interest to return to it when it's finished even if it would have great new content and functions. It happened with Valheim, it happened with V Rising, it happened with Sons of the Forest (although I do plan to play it when 1.0 releases), somewhat with SCUM and I'm gonna start Enshrouded soon, dunno if it'll be the same, even if the game is 60% finished or so according to some reviews.

Ragnar Gunvald
May 13, 2015

Cool and good.
Me and my wife have that exact issue. Well, I do..she's happy to return to stuff after we play it to death and I'm always the one more burnt out.

I'm prob gonna do Sons again, but I'm Intentionally staying away from Enshrouded right now for that reason. I want to enjoy it more later.

I don't think I'm going to be able to hold off playing nightingale though.

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice
The answer I eventually landed on was to not buy stuff straight as much. If I'm interested put it on my Steam wishlist and then buy it on sale years later when it's done and cheaper.

Edit: Frostpunk 2 will probably be breaking this trend.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
Can anyone please sum up what kind of game Skull and Bones is? Server or local host? If server, one or many? Persistent characters? Pvp? Non consensual pvp?

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Jack B Nimble posted:

Can anyone please sum up what kind of game Skull and Bones is? Server or local host? If server, one or many? Persistent characters? Pvp? Non consensual pvp?

It's trash. I got into the closed beta and did a bit of a write-up over in the TFR video games thread, I'll go see if I can dig it up.

But the long and the short is that it's a 100% server hosted (as in Ubi's servers) open world train wreck. I believe that it's broken up into multiple instances (so if you want to hang with a friend you'll have to make sure to join a party with them) but it's not like there are separate worlds a la Warcraft. Characters are persistent, PvP is via flag. Can't remember if there were mandatory PvP areas, but it's kind of standard for the genre so I would expect so.

But, again, it's trash. Not even so bad it's good trash, just exceedingly mediocre. It should be a F2P title and probably will be in six months when they're desperate to prop up player count.

Basically you know that new Suicide Squad game? It's that with boats. Think less open world survival and more trying to clone Destiny 2.

explosivo
May 23, 2004

Fueled by Satan

Yeah the combat felt more like a boat based MMO or something than (how I remember) AC4's combat which I enjoyed quite a bit. Really feels like someone somewhere was like "we need this to be esports ready goddamnit!!" and then they extruded this game out of their quadruple A games factory to fit that mold the best they could after being remade, i dunno, like 4 times over the past howevermany years it's been in development.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Here is what I posted over in TFR when I was semi-live blogging the closed beta in the games thread there. Skip to the end if you want the final thoughts but the tl;dr is "game bad OP."

Cyrano4747 posted:

Ok, some initial impressions:

The graphics are about on par with the remastered Black Flag. Valhalla looks better TBH. Hair textures in particular are bad.

Despite that it's pegging my 2080 at 95% load. All settings maxed, no frame gen or upscaling.

Looks fiiiiiiiine, but very much like a game that could have launched in the PS4 era.

Combat: yep, sure is Black Flag with the serials filed off.

Story is the most generic fantasy pirate thing ever. "The British suck, they are capitalist monsters, we noble free spirits are searching for Pirate Paradise (a literal term they use) and here random shipwrecked Chosen One have a map that will lead us there we will be your loyal crew"

Everyone talks with this hosed up weird accent that's trying to decide if it's Jamaican, a bad Vietnamese accent, or French. Like, not that they're a polyglot group of diverse ne'er do wells creating their own unique pidgin, it sounds like a French guy who speaks really good English trying to do a rasta accent after one too many beers. They all sound like that so far.

edit: Plot is basically Pirates of the Carribean fanfic. gently caress, there's probably erotic Jack Sparrow fanfic that is better written.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Your PC isn't voiced. Lots of Division vibes (in a bad way) with how the quest givers monolog at you while you nod along silently.

Cyrano4747 posted:

There is no animation for getting on and off your boat. You just walk up to an anchor that says "set sail" and it teleports you onto your ship. Compare this to the various asscreeds w/ boats where you, you know, walk onto your ship and sail away.

Cyrano4747 posted:

- distant objects are laughably low poly. Like 360 era poo poo in the distance.
-god I can not over emphasize how bad the writing in this is. It's actively painful to listen to people talking.
- you have dialog choices that are meaningless. For example, early on you see a dude whining about owing some dude a bunch of money. Your choices are "I could trade to get that money" or "I could raid merchantmen to get that money" - the only difference being a single line of dialog laughing at your choice. Total illusion of choice BS.
- they do that annoying poo poo where they explain what words you know mean because they were said with a funny accent. e.g. "Why would anyone believe a Kapitaine (captain) with a puny ship like yours?"
- LMAO. Early on there's this quest to get wood and poo poo to build a new boat. There's an icon on a nearby island, inland. Figure you land on it and go get the wood, right? WRONG. You pull up to the shore nearby, a little saw icon comes up, and you play a "click in the green zone" mini game so your crew more efficiently harvests for you while you sit on the boat and click a saw icon. Goddamn.

more later after I drink more and ponder why I'm doing this.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Seriously, lmfao, this is gameplay in a 2023 title that they are planning on charging full AAA Game MSRP for. This would be mildly embarrassing in a mobile title.



Cyrano4747 posted:

Ok, more random thoughts while playing Skull and Bones this morning:

- early game sucks and is tedious. The tutorial area is awful and once you're on the main map you've got a lot of just dumb bullshit before they let you make your first ship. It takes about 30-60 minutes and even if the game was good it would really deflate the initial getting started process.

- wtf why does sailing require stamina? Seriously, it's a spring mechanic but with boats. It makes SOME sense in Odyssey and Valhalla because, you know, oars, but here it applies to movement by sails. Did the wind get tired?

- so many mispronounced foreign (non english) from characters who are supposedly speaking english as their second language and sprinkling in bits of their native tongue. E.g. "compagnie" is more or less pronounced like "company" with a flourish, but they go with this weird "com-PAN-NEY" thing where the emphasis is all on the wrong syllables. gently caress me Ubi I took like two semesters of French and I know better, you're a loving French studio, just have someone who's ever been exposed to these languages give it a sanity pass.

Like I know this is small ticky-tacky bullshit but it's emblematic of the general level of care on display. It's also uneven - some people pronounce it rights, others have the weird fucky pronunciation. My guess is two different studios doing the VO work?

- there's a weird focus on crafting. Like, you're in a shanty town talking to pirate outcasts and somehow the blacksmith is forging you entire new cannons - complete with a animation of smelting and pouring steel - rather than you salvaging or buying them. Imagine if some tent in the Jack Sparrow version of Tortuga had a cannon foundry in it to rival the loving Ruhr. Like, you CAN steal cannon from enemy ships and maybe that's the end game but it's just weird crafting all this poo poo. Ships too, apparently there's a shipwright on this poo poo little island that puts any great port to shame.

- lol I'm pretty sure kill stealing is a thing. I think I hosed with a dude by killing off his quest required targets.

- SO MANY COSMETICS GODDAMN. I spent all my money (no cash shop options yet, no idea how many of these will be real money only) and went from this:



to this:



Your ship has an equally insane number of options. I think I counted fifteen different distinct cosmetic hooks for your boat?



- zero crew management. Basically your ship is your character as that's where all the equipment etc is. I would have liked even a basic lieutenant system like Odyssey got.

- weird quest bugs. For example I got a quest to go get some better clothes at the shop and it auto-completed without actually making me, you know, do that.

- there are a lot of settlements that you just interact with from your ship. Like you don't even get off the boat, you just pull up and turn in a quest while still in your ship.

- there are some more really half-baked settlements where you get off the ship and walk to some random quest giver. They feel oddly lifeless and like weird place holders. This poo poo would be kinda OK in like an indy title or a AAA game from 10 years ago, but woof.

- there is a plunder mechanic where you can raid settlements. You stay on the ship while your crew assaults the town and your job is to fight off waves of reinforcing enemy ships. It's pretty lame, like loving OG Sid Meier's Pirates! at least had a basic town assault mini game.

- boarding exists but it sucks. You just get close and grapple the enemy ship and it insta-kills them and you get some extra loot. Really makes the optimal combat loop kinda unfun.

Cyrano4747 posted:

OK, a couple more meta thoughts:

They have no loving idea what they want the tone to be. Let me explain. With pirate games you've got two basic tacks that most people take: something more grounded, realistic, and based in something like history even if it's over the top and exaggerated, and something more fantastical. So Black Sails on the one hand where it's action packed and horny as gently caress and there are probably historians frantically scribbling about inaccuracies, but at the end of the day it's set in the world we live in. On the other you've got the magical fantasy Caribbean of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where cursed gold makes you into a skeleton and ghost ships do battle with squid monsters.

This game has no loving clue which one it is. It's hypothetically set in the historical early 18th century Indian Ocean, but it doesn't use that setting for poo poo (more on that later). The British are put forward as Big Bads early on, but since then the nationalities of everyone you're killing is extremely obscured. There's this Compagnie that is obviously French-flavored (fleur de lis everywhere, french accents coming off the enemy ships, a white/blue/gold color scheme that is very on point for pee-Revolutionary France) but they never come out and SAY they're French. Then you've got a bunch of weird generic other factions. Like. . . were they afraid of offending someone? There's a lot of Chinese/Asian styled ships but no Chinese pirates that I've spotted which, for this era and place, is a notable exception. Don't get me wrong, there are Asian characters, but like I would expect a faction of Chinese or Indian pirates.

There is also zero mention of slavery which, OK, I get it. Ubi game, they just don't want that baggage. But if you're doing the historical thing that was kind of a huge part of Indian Ocean piracy and man you could really have a good story hook where your stereotypical freedom loving, anarchic pirates are trying to take down a slaver or something. Whatever, I get it, Ubi game, you're not going to get anything like that level of awareness.

But they also flirt with mystical/fantastical poo poo but in a really unsatisfying way. Probably the best and easiest way to illustrate this is the visual language they're using on the ships. Most of them go for some degree of "realistic enough for an Ubi game" but then you have the cosmetics that lean into this fantastical mad max at sea Davy Jones poo poo. It's one of those things where it's a bit hard to describe, but it kind of pokes at the back of your brain while playing.

Here's an example. The aforementioned "French as gently caress but we won't say French" ships:



And then this cosmetic option for your war rig to ride eternal shiny and chrome pirate ship:



The Indian Ocean setting is also just completely unused. I dunno, maybe you really get into it later on, but I'm a few hours deep and if I didn't know where it was I'd just have assumed this was a fantasy realm (which it was at one point in its development). I've heard some cynical grumblings that the Asian-focused location was an attempt to placate the very large Asian market, but frankly if it was they hosed that up because there's just no substance there. My guess is it's an Ubi half-measure where they wanted to tell the shareholders they were aggressively targeting the Asian market but they didn't want to piss off American/European capital-G Gamers so they watered it down to the point where it doesn't matter at all. Which is a pity. As much as I dig Caribbean stuff a lot in my pirate games, Indian Ocean and Asian piracy in general were a huge thing and are both interesting as gently caress and really under-represented in pretty much all media.

Cyrano4747 posted:

If anyone has questions or wants graphical examples of poo poo tell me, I've screen capped a few hours of gameplay so it's pretty easy to pull good screenshots.

I might have some more thoughts later but so far here is my summary:

This game isn't terrible. Like, it's a functional game where you get in a boat and kill other boats. I don't think it's going to catastrophically flop to the point where there are zero people playing on day ten. I suspect a fair number of people who aren't terminally online will see it in the Playstation store or whatever and go "hey, cool pirate game" and throw down their $70. But the critical reception is going to be awful and I don't see a long-term player base sticking around.

This would probably be an OK F2P title, and honestly I wouldn't be shocked if it goes that way in the future. As pirate themed Genshin Impact or Warframe? Sure. Gameplay's a little jank but you can hand wave that as F2P going for maximum accessibility, and that would also justify them trying to sell you a cosmetic for literally everything in the world.

But holy poo poo I would not recommend paying even $40 for it, and just lmao at $70. If you really want a pirate game right now may I suggest reinstalling Black Flag? It's this, but better. Alternatively the early 00 reboot of Sid Meier's Pirates! still holds up all these years later.

Bhodi
Dec 9, 2007

Oh, it's just a cat.
Pillbug

bird food bathtub posted:

The answer I eventually landed on was to not buy stuff straight as much. If I'm interested put it on my Steam wishlist and then buy it on sale years later when it's done and cheaper.

Edit: Frostpunk 2 will probably be breaking this trend.
I might also buy frostpunk 2 but the last game I bought sight-unseen based on how much I loved the first one was Darkest Dungeon 2. I got scammed. Never again. I'm at least going to watch 30 mins of gameplay first, even if I do end up paying full price.

Inzombiac
Mar 19, 2007

PARTY ALL NIGHT

EAT BRAINS ALL DAY


I blasted through Sons of The Forest when it first came out and have a hankering to do it again.

Have there been significant updates that would make it worthwhile?
I saw that you can set up blueprints now and tell Kevin to finish them all for you, along with filling up holders when there's room, which is rad.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat

Cyrano4747 posted:

Here is what I posted over in TFR when I was semi-live blogging the closed beta in the games thread there. Skip to the end if you want the final thoughts but the tl;dr is "game bad OP."

Thanks, I'll stay away. Sailing in Valhiem and Atlas was a delight but I'm waiting for a game to create enough friction and mechanics to make those journeys the entire game. This ain't it.

Spanish Matlock
Sep 6, 2004

If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.

Jack B Nimble posted:

Thanks, I'll stay away. Sailing in Valhiem and Atlas was a delight but I'm waiting for a game to create enough friction and mechanics to make those journeys the entire game. This ain't it.

Wasn't Atlas the one that was literally just ARK running on the ARK engine so hard it even had the same turtle models from ARK and also sometimes called itself ARK in the console?

HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?

Bhodi posted:

I might also buy frostpunk 2 but the last game I bought sight-unseen based on how much I loved the first one was Darkest Dungeon 2. I got scammed. Never again. I'm at least going to watch 30 mins of gameplay first, even if I do end up paying full price.

Aw that's a shame. I liked Darkest Dungeon 2 but it was different in ways I don't think were made very clear pre-release, or at least they weren't clear to me.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
I managed to get the gyrocopter in 7days and the m60 so I basically won at this point. It's mostly just exploring out into the cold area and the wasteland some more for me.

The biggest issue is the map I chose, the 6000 pregen is kind of terrible. It's missing a bunch if pois and stuff is arranged in a very annoying way. I should of stuck with the navelgaze map.

I wish I had grabbed pacific drive over enshrouded. Enshourded has a bunch of mechanics that are very annoying and the fact I can't change any settings to avoid them is super annoying. Pacific drive seems way more interesting.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

HopperUK posted:

Aw that's a shame. I liked Darkest Dungeon 2 but it was different in ways I don't think were made very clear pre-release, or at least they weren't clear to me.

What was the deal with Darkest Dungeon 2? I liked 1 but was honestly never aware that 2 existed for the longest time because of the Epic launch and it just kind of fell off my radar.

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Its less gruelling and has way less booby mods

LordSloth
Mar 7, 2008

Disgruntled (IT) Employee
I wouldn’t have pegged Ark: Survival Ascended for including a Super Steamboat Willie side scrolling platformer.

Makes about as much sense as golf in Satisfactory I suppose.

30.5 Days
Nov 19, 2006
Who's taking off work for release day? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2786830/Epstein/

MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007


Lmao

LeFishy
Jul 21, 2010

Antigravitas posted:

I used a prawn for the land sections. That made them bearable.

I did this and enjoyed ice subnautica a lot.

Though now a lot of the buildings are available in real subnautica it probably loses a lot of its appeal. Can you get the seatruck in real Subnautica yet?

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
I played the Pacific Drive demo today! I enjoyed it a lot. Seems like more of a run-based roguelite esque game than I thought it'd be, but I vibed with it.

I can see it: this is gonna be one of those "animating humans is hard, so everyone else either just left before you arrived or is just gonna be a voice" types of games. I noticed you don't have a body either, which weirded me out a bit.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




Cyrano4747 posted:

Here is what I posted over in TFR when I was semi-live blogging the closed beta in the games thread there. Skip to the end if you want the final thoughts but the tl;dr is "game bad OP."

What does TFR stand for

Dave Angel
Sep 8, 2004

The Firing Range, SA’s firearms discussion forum.

A Sometimes Food
Dec 8, 2010

Cyrano4747 posted:

What was the deal with Darkest Dungeon 2? I liked 1 but was honestly never aware that 2 existed for the longest time because of the Epic launch and it just kind of fell off my radar.

It's a run based roguelite instead of a long campaign, so it lost a lot of its audience and it didn't pick up a lot to replace them for various reasons (Epic jail key among them).

HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?

Cyrano4747 posted:

What was the deal with Darkest Dungeon 2? I liked 1 but was honestly never aware that 2 existed for the longest time because of the Epic launch and it just kind of fell off my radar.

Yeah as A Sometimes Food said it's now a run-based game where you only have one of each class. That class is more fleshed-out in terms of character, and there's still a lot to like, but it feels quite different. There isn't the village-building aspect, or the collection of little characters. I don't think it's worse but it is sharply different in feel while keeping the same art style and narrator.

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Spanish Matlock
Sep 6, 2004

If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.

LeFishy posted:

I did this and enjoyed ice subnautica a lot.

Though now a lot of the buildings are available in real subnautica it probably loses a lot of its appeal. Can you get the seatruck in real Subnautica yet?

I also had a ton of fun with ice subnautica. To be fair it had been several years since I played the first one, so I was very much ready for more Subnautica. I don't know what else I'd really want from a Subnautica game, so I'm a little bit worried about whatever Subnautica 2 is going to be.

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