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[malyzar]

@andrewelmore I am a few hours into the DLC and yeah, it rules.

@breakfastcowl BG3 is extremely good. Took me a very long time to get used to the controls, as well. But I also feel like the game lets you ignore a lot of stuff, if you want. (Depending on difficulty selection, I'm sure.)

[Dan]

Been working my way through Space Marine 2, it's a bit clunky but it feels deliciously old-school. It's like if an xbox 360/ps3 era 3rd-person shooter was made in 4k.

[breakfastcowl]

Trying out a little game called Hades anyone heard of it?

I'm so late to everything...

[Fruitality]

Oh dude Hades is so good, and probably a great time to get into it now with Hades 2 around the corner. Which I have been playing on and off through Early Access. It's also fantastic.

I finally finished Alan Wake 2 over the weekend. Fantastic game. Loved it, for the most part. I really dig the multi-media experience that they baked into that game. Wild stuff. I'll jump back in over the next week do run through the new Lake House DLC.

I've also been playing Black Ops 6 through a free Game Pass trial. It feels like the best Call of Duty in recent years, or at least one that's clicked with me the most. It's super fast and super slick. It's been very fun to jump in for a couple of games when I've had time.

I really just wish there was more competition for casual deathmatch FPS games. Most of the US Military trimming and gun fetishism surrounding CoD games gives me the icks, and it's a shame that the only other real competitor in that space is Halo. The Black Ops series probably clicks with me a little more because it at least has a thin veil of sci-fi over the whole thing.

[andrewelmore]

Sounds like we need to get a Quake III server goin

[Kai]

While we are talking about stylish FPS: I am currently playing the second game from the developers of severed steel and it’s super fast hectic FPS game where you do cool tricks with your skateboard. I really love it!! I hoped it would be on sale for the steam scares whatever sale but sadly nah. Still got it!

[breakfastcowl]

Just want to say I'm astonished at how well modern emulators can nail the look, feel, *and* issues of an old crt on a modern flatscreen

Thousand_Arms_USA_Disc_1_2024-10-28-17-35-45.png (782.09 KiB) Viewed 118 times

[Fruitality]

Yeah I've been tinkering with a RetroArch setup recently and was having fun running through all the shader options. I never quite found one in there that I thought really nailed it (at least, of the built-in ones).

What emulator/shader/setup etc is that you're running there?

[breakfastcowl]

@Fruitality the one there is on Duckstation, and under its "Post-Processing" menu I added the crt-lottes and ntsc/ntsc-adaptive-lite entries. There are a host of others I haven't yet tried, but thing is with the slider controls within each of them you can control the intensity of any one value, so based on my eyesight and viewing distance from our living room TV my jaw dropped when I found what worked for me.

And pretty much the same with Mesen, applying NTSC (blargg) and adjusting further from under the "Video > Picture" sliders

[breakfastcowl]

Still making my slow, slow way through Baldur's Gate 3 over here. I feel like I've been having to learn DnD mechanics from the ground up, shooting myself in the foot constantly haha, not understanding how certain spells work, or internalizing that every action is about math and probability rather than "press button, receive action"... which playing with a controller a bunch lulled me into that 3rd person adventure expectation constantly lol. Switching over to keyboard/mouse now at 60 hours in and having to re-learn where things are and how much more robust inventory management is now that I have all this power. And don't get me wrong, I am actually having fun! Thankfully there's so many hundreds of branching ways this game can go, I'm already thinking of how the second and third play-throughs are gonna unravel.

edit: oh and I'm definitely still not "thinking with portals", so to speak, when it comes to any of the game mechanics; height advantage, buffs, making the most of the environment, how anything with character builds work, and on and on lol. whew. Been watching so many yt vids to try and get a handle on what's what

[Fruitality]

Baldurs Gate 3 has been on my pile of 'games I need to return to and finish' for a while. I was absolutely loving it but eventually got bogged down a bit in how much time was required to set your character builds optimally. I think that's just a blessing and a curse for making a game with so many options for player creativity and customisation.

I've still been playing Black Ops 6 on and off since it launched, but the inevitability of that kind of game's monetisation has really started to get to me. As soon as 'Season 1' kicked off the experience of playing has just become getting absolutely bombarded with battle pass sales pitches and progression bars, sluggish menus, and every day they add a new skin which is uglier and less appropriate to the setting than the last. It really sucks that they have to do this to a game which plays so well at its core. Oh well. I'm glad I have this free game pass trial and didn't buy it at launch after all.

It's also become really apparent that a bunch of the assets for that game (emblems, banners, loading screens, descriptions) are all AI generated, and now I can't help but get a real funk over me every time they pop up on-screen (which is very frequently).

Anyway,

I've been playing Dredge. It's great!