2024 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[Cliff Hanger]

On 2/15/2024 at 4:14 PM, odessasteps said:

For people wondering about Mario v DK, I saw that someone streamed the whole game in under 5 hours today. 

I wonder if this is someone who has obsessively played the original for years, because I could probably have done it in that time twenty years ago, but only because it was my bus commute game for a solid year.

[odessasteps]

And that was also them talking to their stream, so if you were concentrating, im.sure you could cut that time down. 

I've heard it's a fun updating of a GBA game but prob not worth $50. 

[SirFozzie]

Putting it here because the game is playable (demo, full release in three days)..

 

Balatro is fucking digital CRACK.

 

At its heart, you're building poker hands using a standard deck of card. You play up to 5 cards at a time, and try to make poker hands (Straights/Flushes etcetera require five cards) You get points per scoring card (so if you say, put forward two pair, the fifth card won't score) and the type of hand you play as a modifier. You have a limited number of discards each round to help you get rid of cards that don't fit your goals in poker building.

 

Sounds pretty yawn inducing, right?

Enter the Jokers, The Planets and the Arcana. they modify the rules in different ways. Jokers for example, may give you a bonus every time you score a card of a certain suit, or odd/even.. Planets allow you to muck about with cards, adding modifiers (like a random chance to earn a ton of bonus/cash), or change their suit and rank.

So, as you get deeper and deeper into a run, you might need a score of say, 6,400 compared to 300 in your first round, but you have a LOT more strategy.

You can have up to five jokers, and there are some extremely busted combos (in my demo beating run, I had a Joker which increased all the Jokers values by 1 after each round, and another Joker that gave you a multiplier bonus for each dollar your Jokers are worth. Needless to say, it ramped up QUICKLY, especially when I had a joker that provided 30 chips (before the multiplier) for each diamond I played in a hand

It's roguelike in that you make decisions on what to do with each run, but progression is limited in the demo

 

Seriously, if you like brain stretching combo strategy games, try the demo free on Steam, and buy it when it comes out in three days.

[Andrew POE!]

I ended up buying Skull & Bones and Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel III/IV on PS5 yesterday. Along with Suicide Squad earlier this month.

Skull & Bones and Suicide Squad will end up being priorities due to a server shutdown in the not too distant future although I may start both earlier while people are playing them.

 

[Zimbra]

19 hours ago, tbarrie said:

My big beef with House Flipper is that every time I see the name I have to remember it's a game about flipping houses, not about the scions of the famous dolphin vying for power with the other noble houses of the sea.

You can imagine my constant disappointment.

Fuck, now I have to learn how to make Crusader Kings mods so I can make Cetacean Kings.

[Craig H]

I feel pretty fortunate that my closest friends are the same ones I’ve been playing games with since Goldeneye. We all got Xboxes, Halo, and would bring tvs over to a friends house to hook everything up to a LAN. And then lately it’s been Dota or Valorant or, briefly, D4, but now we have a solid 4 of us that are straight up hooked on Helldivers 2. There’s a few others who aren’t into it and that’s fine because they’re working on playing Path of Exile or FF14 or whatever. And I’m sure we’ll wind up with a group of 4 to play Last Epoch since we do crave some Diablo action that isn’t a shitshow. I’m sure we’d all play Enshrouded together if setting up a private server wasn’t a total mess. 

But for now, HD2 is where it’s at, although I’m kinda looking forward to Last Epoch, but I’m going to wait until a couple of us that aren’t playing HD2 get it and can vouch for it.

[Andrew POE!]

On 2/16/2024 at 4:35 PM, tbarrie said:

My big beef with House Flipper is that every time I see the name I have to remember it's a game about flipping houses, not about the scions of the famous dolphin vying for power with the other noble houses of the sea.

You can imagine my constant disappointment.

Apparently, there's a whole genre of video games where you do real life shit in a video game. There's (and I'm not kidding) PC Building Simulator, Crypto Mining Simulator, Bus Driver Simulator, Car Mechanic Simulator, Car For Sale Simulator, Cafe Owner Simulator, and Garden Simulator among others. I just want to do awesome stuff and pretend I'm a ninja through video games, not replace a simulated gasket on a simulated car.

Oh and all the ones I mentioned have Platinums.

[Travis Sheldon]

I've played PC Building Simulator and the car mechanic one.

They're fun for a bit, but they remind me how tedious some of it can be.

I mean trying to make a living wage is already fun as hell. Just have to provide your own platinum trophies.

[Tabe]

3 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Apparently, there's a whole genre of video games where you do real life shit in a video game. There's (and I'm not kidding) PC Building Simulator, Crypto Mining Simulator, Bus Driver Simulator, Car Mechanic Simulator, Car For Sale Simulator, Cafe Owner Simulator, and Garden Simulator among others. I just want to do awesome stuff and pretend I'm a ninja through video games, not replace a simulated gasket on a simulated car.

Oh and all the ones I mentioned have Platinums.

PC Building Simulator has a sequel, too.

I have PC Building Simulator and it's pretty fun.

[Death From Above]

I've gotta say, as a super latecomer to the modern Hitman trilogy, I expected it to be good but not this good. I haven't had this much fun with any game that used stealth mechanics of any kind in years. Almost all the maps having several different "stories" you can go through gives it a ton of replayability, and that's not even getting to if you play on the hardest difficulty where you can't load back mistakes. Almost all the maps are genuinely fun to explore. It's wild how the game can alternate between extremely serious and deeply unserious based totally on how you feel like playing at the moment, and both absolutely work within the same space. If IOI's next game is supposedly the liscenced James Bond game I'm all in on seeing what these people do with that, because they certainly have all the tools already to make that completely sick.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

9 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Apparently, there's a whole genre of video games where you do real life shit in a video game. There's (and I'm not kidding) PC Building Simulator, Crypto Mining Simulator, Bus Driver Simulator, Car Mechanic Simulator, Car For Sale Simulator, Cafe Owner Simulator, and Garden Simulator among others. I just want to do awesome stuff and pretend I'm a ninja through video games, not replace a simulated gasket on a simulated car.

Oh and all the ones I mentioned have Platinums.

Ah, but yes, if you do all those things in real life, you get sweaty and that's gross.

Also, I live in an apartment. How am I supposed to mow a lawn?! Thank YOU, Lawn Mowing Simulator!

[Craig H]

The newer Hitman trilogy are the best puzzle games ever made. There were so many missions where I, or my daughter and me, would just sit there wondering, ok, what do we do here. Ok, let's try this. And then try this. Ok, that worked, so let's try that again, but then do this other thing differently.

If you were a streamer when those games came out, it was just endless content you could milk. Plus, if you had a decent following, that's just more help you could get from people. 

[SirSmUgly]

I've known people who have tried to build a PC and fucked it up with expensive consequences, so the idea that you can practice via a video game before doing it IRL is pretty great.

All the cleaning simulators are comforting podcast games for people (like me), who enjoy scraping gunk off of things and making them cleaner, but not to the point that we want to actually get up and do it.

(I get satisfaction to the point of endorphin release after I floss and water pick every night.)

[Death From Above]

On 2/17/2024 at 4:38 PM, Craig H said:

I feel pretty fortunate that my closest friends are the same ones I’ve been playing games with since Goldeneye. We all got Xboxes, Halo, and would bring tvs over to a friends house to hook everything up to a LAN. And then lately it’s been Dota or Valorant or, briefly, D4, but now we have a solid 4 of us that are straight up hooked on Helldivers 2. There’s a few others who aren’t into it and that’s fine because they’re working on playing Path of Exile or FF14 or whatever. And I’m sure we’ll wind up with a group of 4 to play Last Epoch since we do crave some Diablo action that isn’t a shitshow. I’m sure we’d all play Enshrouded together if setting up a private server wasn’t a total mess. 

But for now, HD2 is where it’s at, although I’m kinda looking forward to Last Epoch, but I’m going to wait until a couple of us that aren’t playing HD2 get it and can vouch for it.

I've never played Helldivers 1 but I just saw a review of it today, and honestly it looks like Remnant and Starship Troopers had a baby, which is fucking awesome. Added it to my wishlist.

[Craig H]

We’d play Helldivers here and there on the PS4 or sometime on the PC if we wanted a change of pace. The only game I could kind of compare it to just from how different it was to everything else was Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. The two games aren’t the same, but the style and how it played was just so different than everything else. HD1 was sort of a twin stick shooter where you get a loadout, fight hordes of aliens or cyborgs, complete objectives, die a bunch, and then try to hold out for a drop ship.

HD2 goes from that top down, twin stick shooter style to one of the best and most competent 3rd person shooters I’ve ever played. The level of chaos is insane at times. My group is now playing some missions on Suicide difficulty, which is one step down from the toughest difficulty. There are 9 difficulty levels in all. Each level adds in more insanity, tougher enemies, etc. 

The neat thing is that at the higher difficulties, enemies don’t just become more of bullet sponge. They still die all the same. What does change are their tactics. There are way more of them and they’re smarter. Bigger bugs or robots get more agile, their patrols which you can avoid are more sensitive to your movements and can spot you and call in drop ships or more bugs rupturing from the ground, and so on. But again, killing then works the same at medium, level 3, as it would at suicide, level 8. 

And the sheer amount of craziness that happens at all levels is awesome. Even when we get stomped we’re not mad. We’re laughing and then trying to figure out what to do differently.

It also leaves you with just tons of unique stories from your battles. Last night we saw something absolutely crazy happen. I was tiring to fight off a couple cyborgs, which are really just Terminators. These were huge terminators though with multiple rocket launchers built onto their shoulders. I threw out a beacon to call down a huge rocket strike on them, but it wasn’t a direct hit and so they’re still there. I’m hiding behind a big rock yelling out I need help and my buddy who is off in the distance to my left throws out his beacon to call down a railgun strike from our ship from up above. This is a huge fucking railgun and if it hits, it’s a one shot kill on even the biggest enemies. So in comes this huge streak of red light, but it stops and then thins out into nothing before it hits the ground. We’re like, what the fuck?! They’re still alive! What happened…oh shit! What happened was as the railgun strike is coming down, a dropship full of terminators flies in off to the right to maneuver into position. As it flew in, it flew into the path of the railgun strike and then just crashed and skidded across the ground. Mind you, all of this happens in a matter of seconds. And we lose it, bursting into laughter and excitement like little kids. It was a happy accident that fucking ruled because up to that point we had never taken down a dropship before. We came close with turret fire, but the ship survived and flew off. Thankfully, the Steelseries software on my pc and the Xbox pc software on my friends computer both captured the moment so we’re going to splice it together and throw it on YouTube.

Despite the server issues which are happening only because the game was more popular than they ever imagined it would be, it’s the best $40 I’ve ever spent and even if it cost $70 it would have been worth it. 

We also played Remnant 2 and we’re not even looking back anymore. 

I just can’t believe the success of this game. This is practically a AAA game sold for $40 and because HD1 was a cult hit, people went crazy for this one. I think on day 1 they had server capacity for 250k players and thought that would be enough. They were short by 100k or more. That was last Thursday. As the weekend progressed, the amount of people trying to play the game kept causing their servers to crash so they had to implement a hard cap of 450k concurrent players leading to some queue times of 15 minutes or more. For us, most times it would take less than 5 minutes, but the longest was probably 30 minutes during the day yesterday. It looks and sounds like since we’re back to the week that they’re going to be and to quickly get some more server support pretty fast.

I feel bad for all of the folks at Arrowhead Studios because they were literally working around the clock this whole weekend, but at the same time, it was for the best of reasons. That studio is minted now.

[COLETTI]

Helldivers 2 doesn't interest me in the least but I'm still super happy that it's going over so well with a huge chunk of the gaming population. I felt the same with Baldur's Gate 3 - I love seeing people enjoy something, I guess?

[Villanova Grad]

On 2/16/2024 at 10:18 PM, odessasteps said:

I’ve heard it's a fun updating of a GBA game but prob not worth $50. 

It was worth my $50, for what it’s worth. I didn’t play the original, so it was new to me & I had a blast with it.  It’s on the short side & not terribly difficult but it’s also fun and charming.  The art style is gorgeous and will probably hold up for quite a while. Nintendo’s on a roll right now with their first-party games.  Lol, I am even looking forward to the Princess Peach game and I did not expect that to happen.

Bought Lies of P over the weekend, so i will probably start that  this week.  Been quite a while since i looked forward to a PlayStation or Xbox game this much.  Not a huge Bloodborne fan (it’s fine), but Bloodborne mashed up with an un-Disney-fied take on Pinnochio is a concept I can get behind.

[Technico Support]

On 2/19/2024 at 12:46 PM, SirSmUgly said:

All the cleaning simulators are comforting podcast games for people (like me), who enjoy scraping gunk off of things and making them cleaner, but not to the point that we want to actually get up and do it.

LOOOOOL I totally completed Power Wash Simulator while my actual pressure washer sat unused and my deck sat in desperate need of washing.

[SirSmUgly]

4 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

LOOOOOL I totally completed Power Wash Simulator while my actual pressure washer sat unused and my deck sat in desperate need of washing.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Tying a game's average length to completion into it's worth is such a strange thing to me, because it doesn't factor in whether you want to replay it or not. If a game can be beaten in five hours, but it's fun and I want to replay it multiple times, isn't that worth it to me? Much more so than a thirty hour game that I beat once and never want to touch again?

Personal value is definitely subjective, and if you're not the kind of person who replays your games, fair enough, but even if you play it just once, isn't a five hour enjoyable time better than a thirty hour slog?

[NikoBaltimore]

Try as I might I can't stop playing that damn powerwash game.  Working from home when works gets stressful it's nice to have something chill to do.  So count me among those that would rather replay a short game than a thirty hour one.

But what might be breaking my grip from Powerwash is Tavern Master.  I'm about 3/4 done with the research but I'm pretty damn addicted to it.

[A.M.B.]

My body is ready for the Elden Ring DLC trailer. Definitely gonna have to do another playthrough leading up to its release. 

[Andrew POE!]

My real life friends are losing their minds over Elden Ring Shadows of Erdtree being released tomorrow. We have a running bet that a friend of mine promised to beat Elden Ring before the DLC comes out. He still hasn't.

[Dolfan in NYC]

First trailer for Peacemaker in Mortal Kombat 1

 

[Cliff Hanger]

3 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

First trailer for Peacemaker in Mortal Kombat 1

 

He looks like fun. As for Janet Cage, I'm kind of torn; I was looking forward to a nice MK2 Johnny to go with the retro nature of the other Kameos, but the game desperately needs more women characters, and she at least will have a fun fatality and Fatal Blow.

 

Hope the gaps for the rest of the DLC are more like the one between launch and Quan Chi or Quan Chi and Omni-Man; I would very much dislike having to wait til May for Ermac.