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Post by Buzzfly on Apr 20, 2020 19:07:50 GMT -8
What games are people currently playing? Which ones do you recommend?
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Post by Evan on Apr 20, 2020 20:23:36 GMT -8
I like to fire up some jackbox party pack every time I'm going nuts from isolation, I'll make a night for mildville to play, soon.
Otherwise, I just slay the spire during like 90% of my free time. Other than that I play poker night 2 because it's super fun(and my best friend was the lead programmer)
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Post by stinkypete on Apr 20, 2020 20:39:04 GMT -8
Heat Signature is one of my favorite go-tos. It's like Hotline Miami but you can pause at any time to switch weapons/devices, aim, and use them. So you kill someone and then immediately pause to figure out how to survive the 4 other guys who just saw you, whether you use a teleporter item, or a shield, or firing another shotgun while the first reloads, etc
Since it's all on space ships, you can also shoot windows in some rooms to suck all the people out, including yourself (or teleport away in time or shoot at an angle from another room) and you can catch yourself in space before you run out of oxygen by controlling your pod that you use to board enemy ships
I also might get back to Factorio at some point, although it's starting to feel tedious seeing how I have to make all the conveyor belts and supply chains work. I'd rather just connect one thing's output to another thing's input by decree, or have it all in a global inventory. On the other hand Frostpunk is more like what I want but it's so incredibly dire, I don't like scraping by that's not my idea of a game I can play to unwind.
I got Styx and it's alright if you like stealthy games like Dishonored and just need a new fix.
And then Stardew Valley is great of course, but I end up falling away from it because I don't like not being able to save unless you spend a certain amount of time playing or waste the day, and having deadlines like people's birthdays or whatever
I'll do a quick review of Half Life: Alyx later.
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Post by Will Button on Apr 21, 2020 9:21:00 GMT -8
I bought VR a while back, went through Half Life Alyx recently (pretty damn incredible) and I keep going back to Pokerstars VR because it's relaxing. I love Jackbox party but haven't had the chance to play too much of it. I joined a game on a stream online but there was a delay that made it not so fun.
I actually tried out that Apex Legends free to play game and it's fun as hell. I suck, but it's fun.
Stinky, I just looked up Heat Signature and I almost don't want to buy it because it seems like I'll get hopelessly addicted. It looks like super fun game mechanics and a large world. I'll probably buy it today. Thanks a ton for that recommendation.
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Post by stinkypete on Apr 21, 2020 10:30:15 GMT -8
Heat Signature is a great one because I do get tired of it after a certain amount of session time, but I can always come back for a quick run and there's always something to try, especially when you realize how expendable your characters are, and get to the point where you know how to do medium/hard missions with just a wrench, so you can make money with a new character quickly
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Post by Ron Wednesday on Apr 26, 2020 13:53:56 GMT -8
I bought VR a while back, went through Half Life Alyx recently (pretty damn incredible) and I keep going back to Pokerstars VR because it's relaxing. I love Jackbox party but haven't had the chance to play too much of it. I joined a game on a stream online but there was a delay that made it not so fun. I actually tried out that Apex Legends free to play game and it's fun as hell. I suck, but it's fun. Stinky, I just looked up Heat Signature and I almost don't want to buy it because it seems like I'll get hopelessly addicted. It looks like super fun game mechanics and a large world. I'll probably buy it today. Thanks a ton for that recommendation. Ooh, cool, you guys have played Alyx? Does it get better? I played like 30 minutes and am unsure if the naseua vs story will be worth it. But I want to try, the feel is good so far, but i've never been great at VR without getting sick. I haven't found anything I really love in VR yet, but I just got it setup recently, so trying out a ton of what feels like partially finished games. I've been playing 'surviving mars', felt like a nice isolating sim to relax with.
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Post by Will Button on Apr 26, 2020 14:23:37 GMT -8
I bought VR a while back, went through Half Life Alyx recently (pretty damn incredible) and I keep going back to Pokerstars VR because it's relaxing. I love Jackbox party but haven't had the chance to play too much of it. I joined a game on a stream online but there was a delay that made it not so fun. I actually tried out that Apex Legends free to play game and it's fun as hell. I suck, but it's fun. Stinky, I just looked up Heat Signature and I almost don't want to buy it because it seems like I'll get hopelessly addicted. It looks like super fun game mechanics and a large world. I'll probably buy it today. Thanks a ton for that recommendation. Ooh, cool, you guys have played Alyx? Does it get better? I played like 30 minutes and am unsure if the naseua vs story will be worth it. But I want to try, the feel is good so far, but i've never been great at VR without getting sick. I haven't found anything I really love in VR yet, but I just got it setup recently, so trying out a ton of what feels like partially finished games. I've been playing 'surviving mars', felt like a nice isolating sim to relax with. I experienced major nausea early on. I followed the rule of stopping and not trying to jump in until I felt better. Same thing happened with Boneworks. There's just certain games with smooth locomotion that will really do it to you. It went away eventually, and yes, the game is totally worth it. Every chapter is better than the previous I think. One of my favorite games has been Moss. Check out gameplay sometime. It's very immersive and simple to play. Which headset do you own?
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Post by sonletmein on Apr 26, 2020 21:08:39 GMT -8
Been playing the hell out of warzone. Its free.
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Post by Ron Wednesday on Apr 27, 2020 9:45:32 GMT -8
Ooh, cool, you guys have played Alyx? Does it get better? I played like 30 minutes and am unsure if the naseua vs story will be worth it. But I want to try, the feel is good so far, but i've never been great at VR without getting sick. I haven't found anything I really love in VR yet, but I just got it setup recently, so trying out a ton of what feels like partially finished games. I've been playing 'surviving mars', felt like a nice isolating sim to relax with. I experienced major nausea early on. I followed the rule of stopping and not trying to jump in until I felt better. Same thing happened with Boneworks. There's just certain games with smooth locomotion that will really do it to you. It went away eventually, and yes, the game is totally worth it. Every chapter is better than the previous I think. One of my favorite games has been Moss. Check out gameplay sometime. It's very immersive and simple to play. Which headset do you own? I'll keep trying, I feel like I haven't hit the core of the game yet and I played arizona sunshine and it got better over time. I've got a vive cosmos elite, but picked up the index controllers. It performs nicely after picking up another video card.
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Post by stinkypete on Apr 27, 2020 9:49:58 GMT -8
Alyx was so cool. I'll link some screenshots later.
They really paved the way for good features in VR games. There are a lot of questions for game designers about how to put intuitive controls into your gestures without the player doing things accidentally, and they answer them with ideas like the wrist pockets.
You can keep grenades/stimpaks in wrist pockets, which open up when you turn your wrist palm-up. That frees up buttons for other things. Another good one for item/option management is weapon switching. Rather than hoping you click the desired direction on a circular pad to choose weapons, you click-hold one direction (up) and it shows your available weapons around your hand and you move your hand to the one you want to switch to.
The guns are just the right amount of realistic. The clips have the exact bullets they have, so when you eject it, any bullets that were in it are wasted (unless you go put it back in later). You pick up clips and drop them behind your back to keep them, and you reach behind you to grab a clip from your backpack, and put it into the pistol. The extended magazine for the pistol makes this a lot more forgiving. You put in a clip but all the bullets are drawn into a respository. Then you eject that clip and the next clip you shove in is consumed one by one with each shot, so you have 20 shots before the action has to be reset manually with your reload.
You load shells into the shotgun and flick your wrist back to bring the barrel back into position, then you pull back a lever. With the automatic Combine rifle it's battery packs that have to be consumed completely before you're even allowed to replace them, so there's an interesting tactical constraint to everything.
One of the most memorable moments for me was when I came out of this tunnel slowly moving around these barnacles because I didn't want to waste bullets, then cleared this big open area and activated like a crane or something. Then a bunch more Combine came in from that same tunnel, so I started shooting and running for closer cover, but panicked when I saw how much firepower they had. So I bolted straight past them back through the tunnel and behind a car I knew about because I checked for loot there. I had to physically take a knee and slightly peek out to see whether I could get a good target. Then one of them ran into the tunnel and got absolutely gibbed by one of the barnacles I kept alive, and I finally managed to attrition them down and kill the last guy with peek shots. The scopes are really helpful because they highlight the enemy in white on an orange background and show the exact dot where your bullet will land so you can get headshots without learning marksmanship and adjusting your stance.
Finding the material that upgrades your weapons is rewarding, and there are good reasons to use each gun. One thing I wish I had exposition on is the Xen grenades, didn't understand what they were for a while because they have a ball but it looks connected to the organism because when you try to pull it with telekinesis it just retracts a little. Eventually I realized I could swipe it quickly with my hand. I knocked over some stuff on top of my bookshelf that way a couple times, lol.
As far as story, I think one of the most interesting things they did for immersion was near the beginning, where you have to put your hands up during the raid. It really puts you in the shoes of someone living in Fallujah in December 2004. A lot different than being told to press E on a trash can.
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Post by Will Button on Apr 27, 2020 11:11:35 GMT -8
I loooooooved the wrist storage. Incredibly handy. Yeah the guns were stellar! Ejecting a clip, putting in a new one, and cocking the gun comes so naturally only after a few tries at it. Those grenades you mention, I almost didn't realize you could snatch them until I tried it as a joke. How did you feel about the Jeff part? I think that was his name. Everyone said it was horribly scary but honestly I found the guy to be not so scary and pretty easy to distract.
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Post by stinkypete on Apr 27, 2020 11:36:58 GMT -8
I amdit even with my RTX 2080 there was some jittering sometimes, but I think it was the tracking rather than the rendering. When I placed my base stations so they had a bit higher vantage point, it helped, though I mostly did it to avoid those times when my hand suddenly flies away. Anyway if it was jittering too much and not stopping I would just put it down for a while and come back, maybe it's the way I was facing, maybe it's the temperature of the GPU
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Post by Ron Wednesday on Apr 27, 2020 12:17:42 GMT -8
Yeah, Alyx was the first game I had jitter on. I had another 2070 Super around, so I setup SLI last week. I just had to rig my strange open case in odd ways to make it work, but maybe that'll help. It seems a little debatable how well VR works with SLI though theoretically, they can render each eye on a card. I have been too busy with work to do tests on it to verify that's working.
I find the whole VR basestation setup system to be annoying and lacking good tools for debugging, despite it being pretty essential to the experience. It's still not very plug n play, which is fine by me, I like to tinker, but wish I had better some visualizaton tools.
Also, thanks for the writeup! I plan on trying to play tommorow when I get some free evening time.
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Post by stinkypete on Apr 27, 2020 14:56:46 GMT -8
Yeah Jeff was really easy once you actually know what you're supposed to do, and you realize you literally control his movements by throwing bottles (which are impossible to use all of without making it a job), and there was never much tension to get away and you could tell the safe spots. I just didn't realize I could lock the freezer in the first part. The second part was a joke, I kept forgetting stuff or not seeing the last item and going back and forth but there are SO MANY BOTTLES and even non-destructible objects to throw. It's just babysitting really. Nothing is that scary when you have quicksaves (admittedly the loading time is long).
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Post by Will Button on Apr 28, 2020 7:13:05 GMT -8
Yeah Jeff was really easy once you actually know what you're supposed to do, and you realize you literally control his movements by throwing bottles (which are impossible to use all of without making it a job), and there was never much tension to get away and you could tell the safe spots. I just didn't realize I could lock the freezer in the first part. The second part was a joke, I kept forgetting stuff or not seeing the last item and going back and forth but there are SO MANY BOTTLES and even non-destructible objects to throw. It's just babysitting really. Nothing is that scary when you have quicksaves (admittedly the loading time is long). Agreed, I think the amount of bottles in the area kind of made it easy. Major credit though: trying to grab a bottle from across a room and having it break really put some pep into my step. I think they placed a lot of those bottles so you might break them trying to get them into your hands. Smart game design. I honestly thought I'd hop right back in after beating it but I didn't really have much of an urge to go through it again. I don't know what that says really. I think if anything, it says I got everything I wanted out of it in one playthrough. The game is a bit linear, so I didn't think multiple playthroughs would be that much fun. I will say it's one of my top 5 games of all time just due to how immersive and next level it is.
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Post by Will Button on Apr 28, 2020 7:31:57 GMT -8
Oh forgot to mention: I've gotten addicted to Apex Legends. It's amazingly fun to hop into. It's a free to play battle royal game. What I love about it is I don't have to get any kills whatsoever to rank up/get points. Simply outlasting other teams gives you massive points, especially so if you make it to the top 5 (out of 20 that start I believe). So for some games, I'll just play hide and seek with other teams. Sounds boring, yes, but it truly isn't since the game constantly makes you move towards a random centralized location.
Many games I've gotten to the final two teams all by my lonesome and it's almost always 1v3 in those situations. I go balls to the wall and just try to do as much damage as possible at the end. Tons of experience points doing it that way, though not sticking close to your teammates will piss them off.
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Post by Buzzfly on May 4, 2020 16:49:22 GMT -8
I just picked up Jedi Fallen Order. The graphics are amazing! Anyone else played/playing?
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