What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

[Spalls Hurgenson]

Another month down! Time keeps creeping onward and there's never
enough time to dedicate to our hobby. Which is playing games. But
which games are we playing? That's what this thread is about! So let's
do this thing!



The Games In Short
---------------------------------------
* Days Gone (new)
* Ion Fury (new)
* Project Zomboid (new)
* Beyond a Steel Sky (new)


The Games Made Long
---------------------------------------

* Days Gone (new)
"Days Gone" apparently was panned - or just ignored - on its initial
release. But there has been a recent trend where fans of the game have
been promoting the idea that the game isn't as bad as initially
reported. I'm here to confirm that promotion: "Days Gone" is not a
terrible game. That doesn't mean it is necessarily a good one, though.

It is just so incredibly average. It is a game that almost revels in
its mediocrity and paint-by-numbers design. There is almost nothing
this game does that is in any way original or exceptional. Everything
you see or do in this game has been done first and better in other,
more interesting titles. It's a uninspired effort that, even if the
final result isn't an eyesore, neither does it impress.

The gameplay is completely rote. Big open world, lots of enemy maps, a
handful of safezones, a huge number of collectibles; if you've played
any open-world game in the last ten years, you know the drill. "Days
Gone" doesn't do anything really exceptional with this world; it's not
particularly reactive or interesting. The map design is poor - with
too many unclimbable walls limiting your progress that are poorly
melded into the terrain (seriously, developers, I'd rather an
old-school invisible wall than all these immersion-breaking cliffs).

The gunplay is passable, but not exciting, and everybody's favorite
mechanic - breakable weapons - rears its ugly head. The game is
heavily reliant on its stealth mechanic (unsurprising, given that
you're usually outnumbered hundreds-to-one) but your sneaking
abilities are given short-shrift. The motorcycle is fun to drive, but
it doesn't feel too different from any other motorcycle you've ever
driven in a video game, and there really isn't anywhere INTERESTING to
drive; mostly, it's just a method of uninteresting transportation.

The game flubs several important aspects too. Most immediate is the
save feature: it's limited to only when you are near your motorcycle,
so if you leave the noisy beast a ways behind, be ready for a long
hike before you can save again. The voice-acting - especially that of
the protagonist, who seems to mistake VOLUME with emphasis - is often
laughably bad. The characters are trite and predictable ("Oh, that's
the guy who will betray me." "That's the reasonable military figure
who will help me out when the army-guy-in-charge inevitably goes
rogue." "That's the nice old dude who has to die to show that Now
Things Are Serious") and they lack any real arcs or personality. The
writing is sophomoric action-movie schlock that further suffers from
terrible pacing and editing. And the game suffers from a number of
bugs, ranging from monsters suddenly despawning, or flying into the
air, or doors not opening, or crash-to-desktop dumps. These
programmatic flubs weren't so serious as to prevent me from finishing
the game, but they reflected the general lack of polish the entire
game suffered beneath.

And it's all so unfortunate, because it is obvious the developers have
put a lot of love and effort into the game. But the whole thing
ultimately smacks of a cash- grab. I can imagine some C-level in 2015
going "Hey, "The Last of Us Is" is popular! "Sons of Anarchy" was a
hit. Let's make a game that combines both!", thus birthing "Days Gone"
with little regard to how to adequately meld those too ideas or even
wanting to put in the time and money to make it all work. "Just make
the game like Far Cry 3!" seemed to have been the extent of it. But
why play "Days Gone" when we already have "Far Cry" or "The Last of
Us" or any of dozens of games which are better and more fun?

So, no; "Days Gone" isn't a terrible game. But it's not worth spending
your time playing either.



* Ion Fury (new)
I purchased "Ion Fury" on a whim (and because it was on sale). It's a
retro 'boomer shooter' based on ideas first developed by 3DRealms as a
sequel/spin-off to "Duke Nukem 3D", albeit with a slightly more
advanced version of the Build engine that powered that classic game. I
have a fondness for those older titles; sure the old-school gameplay
wouldn't wow me, but I figured that I would manage to eke a minimum of
fun from the title. Yeah, I was wrong about that.

The problem isn't that the game is old-school. I can pick up games
from that era - "Doom", or "Dark Forces", or "Hexen" - and still have
a blast with them. The problem with "Ion Fury" is that it is a BAD
old-school game. It's the modern-day equivalent of "Island Peril" or
"Terminator Rampage" or "Depth Dwellers" (don't worry if you aren't
familiar with any of those; they've been forgotten by history for a
reason). It's an FPS that apes its betters without understanding why
those other games were so memorable.

"Ion Fury" wasn't totally without merit. I found some of its weapons
quite imaginative and fun (in particular, I liked the sub-machine guns
that set people on fire, and the puck-bomb that exploded into a dozen
mini-bomblets). The soundtrack was quite nice too; sure, it was a
terrible match to the gameplay, but I could easily see myself
listening to it on its own. The visuals were very impressive for a
Build-engine game, with a lot of extraneous detailing and pretty
colored lighting effects.

But the game wasn't any fun to play. At all.

The main issue with the game was its map layouts. "Ion Fury" leans
hard into the old-school maze-and-keycard design, but does a very poor
job at indicating where the player is supposed to go next. This means
you'll scour a level looking for a switch, and then repeat the process
to figure out what that switch just activated. The cluttered levels
don't help; too often I would walk by a door or toggle not realizing
it wasn't just a wall texture or random detailing. The end result was
a lot of very tedious wandering through unpopulated maps. Later levels
improved on this problem somewhat but it remained a tiresome problem
throughout the game.

The gunplay was average at best. While a few of the weapons stood
above the rest, none of them were exceptional, and all of them had
significant disadvantages. The enemies were either completely
forgettable or grievously annoying (small floor-level enemies? Fine.
Tiny floor-level enemies that bounce unpredictably? No. Tiny bouncing
floor-level enemies that constitute 20% of the bad guys I'm going to
encounter? Fuck right off). None of them inspired any interest or
excitement (I'm not even sure if the bad guys were supposed to be
aliens or undead or robots or what, and the game gave me no reason to
care enough to find out).

Although story was often considered an inconsequential part of 'boomer
shooters', most at least attempted some sort of narrative and
atmosphere. Here "Ion Fury" failed as well. Yes, some of the maps were
visually interesting, but I've no idea who my on-screen avatar was,
who she was fighting, or why it mattered. The end result was of me
shooting a near-endless stream of faceless goons wondering why I was
even bothering. The game lacks all character beyond 'here's a gun and
there are bad guys', resulting in a total lack of intensity and
emotion. It was flat and dull.

The whole thing felt amateur, like a total-conversion to a better game
made by first-time developers. Had it been a free mod, I might have
been more forgiving, but this is a game for which they charge $20 USD,
and published by the same guys who created "Duke Nukem 3D". I expected
some attempt at quality. It's an endurance test of uninteresting ideas
that goes on for far too long with too little regard for the player's
time or entertainment. There are dozens of better retro-FPS games
available; there is no reason to play "Ion Fury".



* Project Zomboid (new)
"Project Zomboid" is one of those games that I really admire... even
if I don't actually enjoy playing it that much.

A top-down action/strategy/survival game, "Project Zomboid" isn't
going to win any awards in the visuals department. It looks like a
game released 20 years ago (it has shades of "Fallout 2", except with
higher resolutions and slightly sharper textures). Similarly, it's
sound design is understated; there aren't a lot of effects, almost no
voice-work, and if there was a soundtrack I honestly can't remember.
But it wasn't the presentation that turned me off. It's fine; it gets
the job done of presenting its post-apocalyptic world well enough, and
isn't an eyesore.

It's game-play is the usual mixture of scrounging, sneaking, crafting
and beating on monsters that you find in similar survival games. The
selection of weapons you can use feels somewhat limited compared to
its rivals - maybe twenty or thirty guns and melee weapons, tops? -
but it has an impressive number of usable inventory items. Many of
these items are context sensitive, and you won't even know that they
are usable until you come across something in the world that they can
be used with. This can make the game a bit arcane at times - for
instance, you might never discover that you can hotwire a car unless
you have scraps of wire in your pocket - but the depth of the
simulation is impressive.

Similarly, there's not much variety in the types of enemy you face;
basically, the game is limited to slow-walking zombies and -
occasionally - slightly faster zombies. Oh, and human enemies if you
play online. Still, the sheer amount of zombies in the game - and the
ease with which your avatar takes damage - makes even the common
shambler a real threat. Health and disease are a constant problem in
this game; unlike most zombie games, even the smallest scratches can
cost you. Armor, weapons and clothes all degrade with use, so there's
a constant need to scrounge for replacements. The are a lot of systems
that need to be monitored - food, resources, health, temperature, and
more - and it can sometimes be overwhelming. But none of that is why I
disliked the game either.

No, the main problem I had with the game is... well, the pointlessness
of it all. The game is a giant sandbox, and I get that the goal of
such games is to 'make your own stories', except that the only real
story available in "Project Zomboid" is 'how long can I survive'?
There's no narrative, no over-arching mystery to solve. You run
around, scrounge for goods, try not to get killed (by zombies, or the
weather, or starvation, or online assholes). Maybe you master the
systems enough that you level up your skills to the point that you can
start building a base... but even then, all that does is help you keep
alive another day.

Do not mistake me; I am really impressed with the game itself, and I
completely understand that some people absolutely dig this sort of
gameplay. But as for myself, I prefer some sort of narrative and goal
beyond simple tedious day-to-day living. For that, I have a job and
all the chores Real Life entails. I play computer games to escape the
grind, not recreate it.



* Beyond a Steel Sky (new)
I'm so disappointed with myself regarding this game. It deserves more
effort from me. But I have a hard time getting engaged with its
fantasy.

Maybe the problem is that I was never the biggest fan of the game's
predecessor, "Beneath a Steel Sky". A cult-classic, I've played it and
even, to some degree, enjoyed it, but it was never a favorite. It was,
to me, just another run-of-the-mill, largely forgettable point-n-click
classic adventure game from the DOS era. Its puzzles weren't
particularly good, and its writing was of mixed quality. It wasn't a
memorable game, hardly deserving of a sequel.

Still, adventure games are still a fairly rare commodity, and -
beloved or not - it was a follow-up to a DOS-era game, so it was
inevitable I would pick up "Beyond a Steel Sky" too.

In truth, I haven't played very much of this game. But every time I've
had the opportunity, I've usually found something else to do instead.
The game - or at least the small bit I've engaged with - just isn't
very compelling. It doesn't make me want to come back and play more of
it. I'm hard pressed to say why, though. It's not all that visually
impressive, but neither is it an eyesore (although the opening
cut-scene isn't very good). The voice-acting is underwhelming but
sufficient to task.

But I think the biggest sin - and the thing that keeps me from
enjoying the game as much as I would like to - is the game's use of a
third-person viewpoint, similar to "Tomb Raider" or "Uncharted". This
viewpoint works well with action games, but no so well with adventure
games, where it is the environment and characters that are the focus.
I had similar issues with "Kings Quest (2016)", where there just
wasn't enough opportunity to click on things and bask in the narrated
detail of the setting. Instead, the interface expects players to whiz
past the terrain, shorting a lot of the character of the world.

Is "Beyond a Steel Sky" worth playing? I'd like to believe it is but
it's not making the effort to make me want to discover its worth. I
still haven't uninstalled the game, so maybe I'll find out next
month... but I wouldn't bet money on that happening.



---------------------------------------

That's it for me this November. December - and a whole new selection
of games - awaits... but you'll hear about THOSE in thirty one days.
Meanwhile, all that is left is for me to ask:

What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

[candycanearter07]

On 12/1/23 09:59, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> ---------------------------------------
>
> That's it for me this November. December - and a whole new selection
> of games - awaits... but you'll hear about THOSE in thirty one days.
> Meanwhile, all that is left is for me to ask:
>
> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

More spess station 13, and i've also been playing Super Mario RPG (the
original one bc i think it looks better). However, I have no idea where
to go and might be softlocked so
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

[Dimensional Traveler]

On 12/1/2023 7:59 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> That's it for me this November. December - and a whole new selection
> of games - awaits... but you'll hear about THOSE in thirty one days.
> Meanwhile, all that is left is for me to ask:
>
> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?
>

'My Time at Sandrock'
It came out of Early Access at the beginning of the month so I started a
new game of that. LOTS of bugs, especially with the new features and
story line. Some complaints by others in the Steam forum about shoddy
new features that are difficult to impossible to actually use, lots of
bugs resulting in a number of "hot fix" patches in the less than a month
since "full" release. Said "hot fixes" fixing most of the bugs they
claim to while introducing new bugs, about 1/2 as many as they fix. So
I guess that is progress. But the basic game is still good, I still
like it (probably largely helped by the fact that I haven't been bitten
by many of the reported bugs which are concentrated in the newer, late
game, parts which I haven't reached yet).

In short, a good game at its core but Pathea's quality control is poor
and there are a couple of features/aspects that they didn't think
through resulting in near impossible to use interfaces for things like
building and expanding your home.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

[rms]

>What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

I believe I promised to work on PS5 games (like God of War) last month --
before my PS+ subscription expired -- and failed miserably. Well, those PS+
games I was careful to add to my collection every month don't go away, they
just aren't accessible until you resubscribe, which I'll do eventually. In
any case, I did buy and complete a PC game, wonder of wonders!

Resident Evil 4 Remake
[my comment immediately after finishing the main campaign]
So I finished RE4Remake last week, regretting buying it for about all of the
playthrough, since all the story beats and locations have been etched into
my brain for years, and I could've been playing AW2 instead. Afterwards, I
looked at the start of a S+ Professional playthrough for which the
'suggested requirements' were the chicken hat & ashley armor, which are only
gotten by even more playthroughs. That led to a rabbit hole of what
unlockables are there (a whole bunch) most of which require previous
speedruns of varying lengths.

I thought how hard can it be, and started a Assisted S+ run to get the
easiest unlockable 'wolf's tail' (reduced damage), not realizing that
re-loading after dying still added onto the playthrough time, unless you
reloaded from the main menu. I'd played through about 1/3 the game again
before figuring that out and giving up. In despair I looked again for some
useful unlockable to boostrap from, which would be the infinite ammo rocket
launcher for 2M pesetas, and started and finished another NG+ playthrough,
acquired the RL near the end, which made the boss fights trivial, finally
concluding this was all a complete waste of time and I was a fool for going
down this path.

So now I'm working through the Separate Ways DLC, and upon finishing cannot
uninstall this damn game fast enough. And there is my Resident Evil 4 Remake
rant for the day.

[now I've finished Separate Ways, not being too concerned with
completionism, and enjoyed it more, but I still uninstalled the game
immediately after lol. It's just too close in gameplay and look to the
original game]

rms

[Dimensional Traveler]

On 12/1/2023 10:31 AM, rms wrote:
>> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?
>
>   I believe I promised to work on PS5 games (like God of War) last
> month -- before my PS+ subscription expired -- and failed miserably.

That is commonly known as "success by accident". ;)

[Ant]

Diablo 4 in my PC and Duo Lingo's math in my iPhone. I don't remember any free weekend games on Steam. I might try https://store.steampowered.com/app/671860/BattleBit_Remastered/ soon.

--
"Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever." --Daniel 12:3. Winter and last month, of the year, are here! Dang delays.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

[rms]

>* Days Gone (new)

>* Beyond a Steel Sky (new)

I'm still interested in both these, especially Days Gone, as Rin
Stowleigh championed it. Haven't decided yet what game I'll play next

rms

[Rin Stowleigh]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 18:29:35 -0700, "rms" <rsqui...@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:

If it's a toss up between the two, I'd head to Metacritic and look at
the difference in *user reviews* (not to be confused with pro reviews)
between the PC version of each to make the final call.

Personally, I have found that the consensus of user reviews on
Metacritic is generally a decent guiding metric toward whether or not
I will like a game versus wanting to refund it. It's not fool proof,
but over the years it's proven to be one of the better gauges I've
found.

I totally respect that Spalls has his opinion that the game is not
very good, and for those looking for sheer quantity of content in this
particular group nobody can deny he is MaxQuantityContributor :) He
is passionate about his hobby and I get that. But the point is a LOT
of people enjoy Days Gone on the PC. I'm not sure that he's quite
latched onto the fact that gaming tastes differ and not everyone
should necessarily like what he likes, so it puzzles why he speaks in
absolutes about something as subjective as gaming preferences.

When someone asks me what I recommend (doesn't matter if it's software
architecture or tech related, music gear related), my recommendation
is usually going to come with some conditions or caveats. I
acknowledge that I can't recommend winners for everyone because
different folks have different tastes. So I generally like to preface
my feedback with some basis for comparison, like "if you like A or B,
you will probably like this".. And, it doesn't matter if I disliked A
or B or whatever, opinions are what they are (a component of
individualism).

For Days Gone, I can only highlight the strenghts as I see them.
Others may find what I consider strenghts in the game to be
weaknesses.

To me, one of the more refreshing aspects is the theme and the fact
that the dialog didn't seem to assume I'm 12 years old.. It's a
little more relatable, at least for me, than many games because I
don't have the type of imagination that lends itself to highly sci-fi
or fantasy scenarios. That won't be everyone's cup of tea, and
honestly it would be boring/trite if every game went that route, but
because so few of them do, I think it makes the game stand out.

It's definitely not a perfect game. It's LONG... The title "Days
Gone" may have been more cleverly conceived than it appears on the
surface... lol...

But, it's also easy to pick up and put down for long periods of time,
which is one of the reasons I thumb it up. There are some missions
later in the game that I think reward the player for sticking to it,
even if it's a bit of a slow burn. One of those games where you
either dig the vibe or you don't I guess.

[Justisaur]

On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 7:59:14 AM UTC-8, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Oy. Well I do like the motorcycles best in the GTA series, and in
Cyberpunk, but it sounds like it's just for getting to point a to
point b. At least in my favorite GTA - Vice City there were tons of
stunts and jumps and doing drive-bys you could do on one. Sure it's
essentially just point a to b in Cyberpunk so maybe I'd like it.
Disclaimer, I've only ridden on the back of a motorcycle once, and it
was not for me, but I still enjoy it in games for some reason. I've
never watched an episode of SoA either.

I don't know that I have the patience for another open world game
either. I haven't played that many, but I've probably only barely
finished more then those I haven't finished.

Speaking of motorcycles there's a new rather large patch coming out for
Cyberpunk which is supposed to make them much more usable in combat,
apparently letting you through knives from them, and add jumps and
flips, along with repeatable car races. A huge boss rebalance, and
romance rebalance. I'm still waiting to see if they fix the cyberware
bug though. I'll probably be playing Bloodborne for 3-6 months if the
past with From Soft games holds true so I'm not really in any hurry.

> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

TD;LR list:
*** The Wasteland
** Warsim: The Realm of Aslona
**** Bloodborne

*** The Wasteland
https://www.reddit.com/r/Thewastes/comments/3qd1cs/the_end_of_the_line/
I've mentioned this one before, it's a text game made by a single
programmer. A fun little game similar in some ways to Dungeon Robber,
but more of a Gamma World rendition, but the programmer had a hdd crash
and left the game in a bit of a sorry state, only the exe available and
no way to update it even to patch bugs. Trying to save results in the
game crashing and losing all your progress. Eventually I managed to
overcome that by mentally calling it the suicide option. However it
still has a number of other bugs and it appears a memory leak, so when
I got a bit past level 101 it finally crashed. I played it a bit more,
but the bugs kept hitting me and I eventually gave up. Still I got
many hours of play out of it.

** Warsim: The Realm of Aslona
https://store.steampowered.com/app/659540/Warsim_The_Realm_of_Aslona/
A text 4x kingdom management game with many sub-games within it. This
is by the same programmer that made the Wasteland. A bit of a different
genre in some respects. If you ever played the ancient mainframe game
Hammurabi, it's a bit like that only with a heck of a lot more to it.
You can attack other lands raiding them for money or invading for land
, they can attack you, you can hire mercenaries to attack them, you can
explore and find items and places, some of them you can attack as
well. Learning the arena and pit fights and betting on them is very
profitable. There's also visitors to your throne room where you can
choose what to do with those arrested for various crimes, settle
disputes between farmers, and other visitors. It's a charming and
funny little game. It's a bit expensive for what it is at $9, but
considering I loved The Wasteland so much and that was free, I threw a
bit of compensatory money his way.

**** Bloodborne (PS Premium sub)
I'm playing this through Sony's streaming app on PC, paying the price
of $18 a month for their subscription. I started monthly. I had also
bought a PS4 controller to do so which works fine, I just prefer the
layout of the xbox controller better as it's possible to keep moving
while changing weapons, which isn't possible on the PS4 controller. It
plays o.k. it feels like there's probably a bit more delay than if I
was playing it on a PS4, and it has rare drop offs where it keeps you
moving/doing whatever you were doing for a couple seconds. I'm sure it
doesn't help I'm on my wifi. I got lost in the first area and
eventually looked up a walkthrough to figure out how to get to the
first boss after playing for 6 hours. I managed to get through the
first couple bosses without spoilers on them, but I was already being
sucked into the walkthroughs as I hate not knowing how to get anywhere,
maybe just a map without other spoilers would help better? Anyway 3rd
boss I'd run across enough spoilers to know what to do that I probably
wouldn't have ever figured out what to do without. The game feels very
souls like, and some of the mechanics I like better - rally for
instance which allows you to heal back the damage of the last attack
you took by doing damage within a couple seconds. There's also
procedurally generated dungeons if you want, though it appears they
aren't necessary to complete the game you can get some weapon gems in
(similar to diablo) that will make you more powerful. What's odd is
that idea doesn't seem to fit the game well, whereas it would've fit
any of the DS games, none of which had that. There's no magic exactly
though so I can't play my favorite class like I could in all the DS
games and ER. There's a very small number of weapons comparatively too,
I generally like experimenting with different weapons, but there's not
that much. Generally this is regards as the best game Fromsoft put
out, so far for me it's near the bottom of the pile (but still above
DS2,) but it has taken me a lot of time to fully appreciate the other
games, so maybe I just need that time of play. The aesthetics of 1800's
London mixed with the dark muddy colors of DS aren't really my thing
either, but I do like werewolves of which there's lots of (though
they're just called beasts.)

I understand "Lies of Pi" is a game that's greatly inspired by
Bloodborne and available on PC, a number of people playing it are
saying it's actually better than any of the souls games/bloodborne. It
also has the advantage of playing natively on the PC. I just this
morning looked at a little bit of play, it's much more colorful, but it
ends up looking a bit cartoonish due to that, it seems the enemies are
more in the steampunk robot aesthetic, and it reminds me a bit of FNaF
which makes me roll my eyes (Five Nights at Freddy's, imagine if Chucky
Cheese animatronics became haunted in a horror game for kids.) I might
try that one some time after I get tired of bloodborne, or just get
tired of paying $18 a month.

On the other hand what other games are there I might want to play?
There's a lot of games, but I don't really follow PS games so I don't
know what if anything I'd like. I'd be tempted to try the DS games on
it as I enjoy co-op but the pvp cheating/exploiting is too rampant on
PC, however it appears none of those games are available through
PlayStation streaming.

- Justisaur

[Anssi Saari]

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> writes:

> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

Finally finished the System Shock Remake. I can't believe it took over
50 hours even though I was following a walk through. I guess I really
took my time and took in the sights.

I did have to do some backtracking in the form of searching my saves. I
had taken the explosives needed to blow up the antennas from storage
deck and dropped them *somewhere*. I looked for save game editors but
didn't find any, then found a cheat system where I could just spawn any
object needed. But after loading a bunch of old saves I found out the
obvious place. I'd dropped the explosives where I picked up an assault
rifle after fighting the first Cortex Reaver on the Flight Deck.

All in all, I found the System Shock experience great. I decided from
the get go I don't want to get a PhD in System Shock, hence the walk
through. Although now I regret it, I'll never know if I would've had the
sticktoitivness to get through this game which really doesn't hold your
hand. Although I think you can turn on a quest arrow.

I also set combat to easy which still didn't make combat that easy, I
got killed plenty.

The ending is a little light and doesn't say much at all about what
happens next... It's an interesting change from the original ending.

[Praetor Mandrake]

On Fri, 08 Dec 2023 23:27:54 +0200, Anssi Saari
<anssi...@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:

>Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?
>
>Finally finished the System Shock Remake. I can't believe it took over
>50 hours even though I was following a walk through. I guess I really
>took my time and took in the sights.

I've been playing Magic: The Gathering, Arena. The quality of
production is such that I don't really want to play anything else.
Very competitive game. In Novemeber I successfully achieved Mythic
rank in constructed decks. Now I have to come up with a new goal to
achieve such as ranking up limited for example. Drats are pretty fun.
One of the memorable games in my draft recently, a guy had a blue and
red pirate deck and he stomped me.

Also I'd like to vary the cards I use. Strong cards like Sheoldred
and Sheoldred, The Apocalypse get the job done but are frequent
targets for Murder-like instants.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:30:14 -0600, Praetor Mandrake
<j638...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> writes:

>>> What Have You Been Playing... IN NOVEMBER 2023?

<Looks at calendar. Looks at posting date. Looks at calendar again.
Shrugs.>

Well, better late than never. ;-)

>I've been playing Magic: The Gathering, Arena. The quality of
>production is such that I don't really want to play anything else.
>Very competitive game.

I have an instinctive negative reaction to anything M:TG that has
nothing to do with the game itself. But even barring that bias, I'd
hardly be in a position to comment* since the last video-game
implementation of M:TG I played was... oh, I don't even know.
Definitely way back in the days of Windows9x. Perhaps even as far back
as when Windows 3.1 was a going concern. But it's been a long, long
time.

So I'm always surprised when I read about somebody playing it online.
Yes, intellectually I KNOW this isn't the same version as I played
back in the 90s, but it always takes a moment for my brain to catch up
with that fact. "Wait, they're /still/ playing that game? Oh wait, it
must be an updated version..."

> In Novemeber I successfully achieved Mythic
>rank in constructed decks. Now I have to come up with a new goal to
>achieve such as ranking up limited for example. Drats are pretty fun.
>One of the memorable games in my draft recently, a guy had a blue and
>red pirate deck and he stomped me.

>Also I'd like to vary the cards I use. Strong cards like Sheoldred
>and Sheoldred, The Apocalypse get the job done but are frequent
>targets for Murder-like instants.

I mean, I'm sure this all makes sense to people in the know, but to
me, you might as well be talking about draxing the schnazzgullet to
perfloate the nurglebunny.** ;-)







-----
* like that EVER stops me. ;-)
** NEVER perfloate a nurglebunny. It's messy and they REALLY don't
like it.

[Praetor Mandrake]

I guess what I mean to say is that I want to choose cards that let me
hang tough during the end game. Those ones I mentioned can be
targetted. They are a type of Shock and Awe. If I let the opponent
live long enough, their cards usually go crazy and become formidable.