2026 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[Casey]

Welp, I might be dropping ARC Raiders down a peg or two on my games rotation, I guess. The changes they made to the expedition with damage output instead of $3m coins pushes the game heavily towards PvP, since ARC kills hardly count for progression (example: it would take you, and you alone, killing a Bastion 21 times to get 5 skill points after the reset).

Was it so fucking hard to farm $3m in 2-3 months? My god. I’m pretty sure they saw people like Peanut, Ninja, TimtheTatman, etc all leaving the game and sees their remaining player base just interested in PvP now and pivoted towards this. Oh well, I got way more than my money’s worth - 304 hours is a lot of time.

[StevieNippz]

There's still so much I'm finding to do in Hades 2 but finally started another game, Vampire Crawlers. I didn't love Vampire Survivors but this one is pretty damn fun, and gives me something else to play on my Switch

[Cliff Hanger]

Why do I keep trying to enjoy Maximum Carnage and Separation Anxiety? There are better games in that package, I have better, more modern belt brawlers, and if I just want to play as Spider-Man I have the PS5 game that I need to finish. I am, by and large, doing better about late night mindless gaming, but these two bullshit games keep daring me to play them.

[Craig H]

11 hours ago, Casey said:

Welp, I might be dropping ARC Raiders down a peg or two on my games rotation, I guess. The changes they made to the expedition with damage output instead of $3m coins pushes the game heavily towards PvP, since ARC kills hardly count for progression (example: it would take you, and you alone, killing a Bastion 21 times to get 5 skill points after the reset).

Was it so fucking hard to farm $3m in 2-3 months? My god. I’m pretty sure they saw people like Peanut, Ninja, TimtheTatman, etc all leaving the game and sees their remaining player base just interested in PvP now and pivoted towards this. Oh well, I got way more than my money’s worth - 304 hours is a lot of time.

I got close to 400 hours but I'm done, but for different or similar reasons. It's the same shit as Helldivers 2, Path of Exile 2, Diablo 4, etc. where these games that are primarily PvE continue to nerf the fuck out of weapons or abilities good for PvE, ignore other weapons that clearly need a buff or some attention, buff clankers or enemies instead, give a meaningless buff to a weapon or ability no one uses, and introduces enemies that are mildly at best slightly different than what was already in the game. Yeah, Arc has PvP in it, but by Embark's own estimates only 30% of the player base is engaged in PvP. People want to go and fuck shit up and do so in fun ways. Just fucking let them. This isn't a competitive shooter, them making any of the yellow weapons anything more than totally worthless isn't going to tilt PvP to being completely degenerate because they're only good against Arcs, and the PvP shit that should get some attention doesn't get the nerfs they should, but sure, let's completely cut the balls off of the Renegade or any other blue weapon that would be good for Trials and make Trials an even bigger pain in the dick. Not to mention, the nerf to the Photoelectric Cloak or whatever it's called because I never get it right is so fucking dumb. Using it now quickly turns you into a magnet to get one-shot by anything. Who fucking cares if it let you escape from swarms of flying Arcs or Bastions or Bombardiers or whatever. That's why it's there. Again, it doesn't help with PvP, it gave you greater survivability against overwhelming bots. Now there's no point to even using it.

Some changes I get, like lowering how much energy cell clips would give you because that was my primary source for making money for expeditions. It was clearly an exploit that wasn't an exploit and it should have been nerfed. It also made the economy make no sense. But all of the other changes they continue making just turn the game into another example of game devs not wanting their player base to have fun.

Ninja may have left because he was a bitch and the game isn't sweaty enough for him. Peanut left, and with him Hutch, Gingy, Cloakzy, and others former sweats that Peanut converted, because the game stopped being fun. They never did anything to stop stream sniping, they dragged their feet with cheating, and when your biggest advocate that brings you nearly 100k viewers on a daily bases stops playing because it isn't fun and starts playing...A FUCKING GAME WHERE YOU'RE A DINOSAUR THAT HUNTS CHICKENS JUST BECAUSE THEY WANT TO KEEP HAVING FUN then you have majorly fucked up. But that's fine. Embark pushing away streamers that stopped being sweaty and started just having fun with games has given people a view into what it was like in the 90s and early 00s to fuck around in a game on a couch or online with your friends in shit like Halo or CS2. They way they played CS2 wasn't at some kind of a super pro level even though they're at that level, they played like how goofballs would wind up playing it. And now that gave birth to running a Rust server and soon a Day Z server to have even bigger playgrounds to laugh and goof around in. They're making gaming fun and showing that you don't have to be ultra competitive to have fun with a game, just make it so that people stop fucking with you via cheats and hacks. And it also exposed even more how whiny and bitchy people like Ninja or Shroud are. Like, if that's what you're into, then fine. But I'd rather see people laugh their asses off and clown around doing cool and silly shit in a game than dudes like Ninja, Shroud, Doc, etc. sweat it out in hypercompetitive contests.

I think Embark has really fucked up. They're making their game less like what it was when it drew in so many people and more like, ugh and eww, Marathon. They should have just kept it fun and gone full speed ahead on stomping out cheaters and exploits while coming up with as many different endgame opportunities as possible. Their big change to the endgame was to...make a low loot map with harder to kill Arcs and change Expedition to damage based. No one wants to stay on that same treadmill for forever. 

It really sucks. Arc Raiders was becoming one of my all time favorite games because I have never played anything else like it, and it wasn't the gameplay that did that (although I think the gameplay is really good), it was the community. Now it's just being funneled into the same trap that so many other games get funneled into.

[Casey]

Considering it took me around 300 hours to even get most of the blueprints before they added MORE with the update before this last one, I don't even know if I want to come back to the game after this second expedition. It's not all that grindy to find most of the basic ones and the pink ones if you know where to look/what map conditions they're on, but it's just so boring to build it all back up only to wipe two months later, again.

Re-doing quests AGAIN is miserable, and there's some blueprints that you only get from quests. The RNG for something like the Survivor augment is terrible. Upgrading workbenches, AGAIN, is also miserable. It was fun the first time because I didn't do the very first expedition so I had a long stretch of time where I was absolutely kitted out and had almost everything. Doing it from scratch like when you first started the game? Awful.

THAT'S the stuff they should have re-worked for the expedition, not how you get skill points. They'd already lowered the amount from 5m to 3m for the full points anyway. Now mainly PvE players are gonna have to farm like a motherfucker, or actually engage in PvP. Which I suspect is what they want - all live service games do this, where they want to suck up all your time so you're only playing their game. Don't want to do PvP to progress faster to get more points? Well, you're gonna spend hours and hours farming ARC kills.

[Craig H]

I was already used to farming arcs like a motherfucker for trials. Like, in the carebear lobbies I’m in, trials was basically everyone going to the 40 minute event in Blue Gate and skeet shooting hornets, wasps, and whatever else. But to have to do it for trials AND expedition Is crappy.

Co-signed on having to redo all of your benches and scrappy. I completely forgot about that. The story quest stuff too. More than enough people had the suggestion that when you go on Expedition you should be able to bring 10 BPs with you or any BPs you got from story quests would be available in your inventory after every expedition. They would have been better off doing the Marathon thing, the one good thing that game does, and once you’re done with story quests just create a bounties board to work through. Instead you’re just motherfucked on all of that

Man it’s disappointing to talk about Arc Raiders in this way. They really made something special and keep pissing it away. I want to believe they didn’t think it would be as big as it turned out to be and were unprepared for the player base and there’s no way they could have been prepared for Peanut.

[SirSmUgly]

15 hours ago, Cliff Hanger said:

Why do I keep trying to enjoy Maximum Carnage and Separation Anxiety? There are better games in that package, I have better, more modern belt brawlers, and if I just want to play as Spider-Man I have the PS5 game that I need to finish. I am, by and large, doing better about late night mindless gaming, but these two bullshit games keep daring me to play them.

Because Maximum Carnage has dope music?

And it also has Cloak and Dagger?

...I can't explain the reason you're playing Separation Anxiety, though. 

[RIPPA]

Okay beat Typhon on my first try

That was a... weird fight

I just stood under him wacking away at, I guess his chin, until he was dead. It felt like something was... off

[Zimbra]

If you have some dodge or some healing and decent DPS it's not too hard to just facetank him.  It's when you don't that he's a real bear.

[SirSmUgly]

1 hour ago, Zimbra said:

If you have some dodge or some healing and decent DPS it's not too hard to just facetank him.  It's when you don't that he's a real bear.

He's also a decent challenge if

Spoiler

his old pal Chronos assists him in support.

I'm still trying to figure out if Vampire Crawlers is good. I think it is? Maybe? Yeah, it is, I think. It's so strange in that I do enjoy it, but after Vampire Survivors had me completely obsessed the first time through, I think I expected Crawlers to pull at me far more than it has. 

It's a promising podcast game, though. 

I hadn't bought anything on Steam in months and maybe years, but I got an alert that Stacking was on sale, and Stacking is one of my favorite puzzle games ever made, so I bought it, grabbed my OG Switch Pro, and picked up that cool game the ZSnes guy developed, Retro Endurance 8bit. I haven't had time to tinker around with that last game, but I'm looking forward to it.

[Casey]

7 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

He's also a decent challenge if

  Reveal hidden contents

his old pal Chronos assists him in support.

I'm still trying to figure out if Vampire Crawlers is good. I think it is? Maybe? Yeah, it is, I think. It's so strange in that I do enjoy it, but after Vampire Survivors had me completely obsessed the first time through, I think I expected Crawlers to pull at me far more than it has. 

It's a promising podcast game, though. 

I hadn't bought anything on Steam in months and maybe years, but I got an alert that Stacking was on sale, and Stacking is one of my favorite puzzle games ever made, so I bought it, grabbed my OG Switch Pro, and picked up that cool game the ZSnes guy developed, Retro Endurance 8bit. I haven't had time to tinker around with that last game, but I'm looking forward to it.

Crawlers has me hooked way more than Survivors ever did, if I'm being honest. My buddy at work is the complete opposite, though. He hates card games so he has no interest in it, but as put tons of hours into Survivors and has almost gotten 100% on the whole game. He originally only bought the game because of the Castlevania DLC, because he's a huge Castlevania fan.

Just like the original game, there's something really satisfying about finding the right combos of powers and power-up cards and just melting waves of enemies - especially as you get deeper into a level. It took me like 5 hours to find the right combos and character and arcana, etc. to get past the Milk Factory level, for example.

[J.T.]

Unlocked the achievement in Helldivers 2 for completing an Extreme-level mission without any deaths yesterday.

Dialed up an Escort High Value Assets mission and miraculously ended up with a no bullshit team that set up their defenses and let the sentries do the work. 

Just like you're supposed to.

Not being shot by a squadmate's sentry or obliterated by a friendly orbital strike felt almost cathartic.

Sadly, I cannot solo the last two achievements. My normal guys are all playing Crimson Desert so I may have to LFG for help if I start to get impatient about the platinum.

Edited April 30 by J.T.

[SirSmUgly]

11 hours ago, Casey said:

Crawlers has me hooked way more than Survivors ever did, if I'm being honest. My buddy at work is the complete opposite, though. He hates card games so he has no interest in it, but as put tons of hours into Survivors and has almost gotten 100% on the whole game. He originally only bought the game because of the Castlevania DLC, because he's a huge Castlevania fan.

Just like the original game, there's something really satisfying about finding the right combos of powers and power-up cards and just melting waves of enemies - especially as you get deeper into a level. It took me like 5 hours to find the right combos and character and arcana, etc. to get past the Milk Factory level, for example.

I think the issue is that the RNG in this game bothers me more than the RNG in Survivors. There's nothing more deflating than a four-card draw of all support cards, you know? I know that you can level up re-rolls just like in Survivors and that you can mitigate that issue by building out your deck as balanced as you can, but it still sucks. 

I'm up to the Teeny Bridge now. I had some time last night, made it through the third level in the Inlaid Library, and then thought about taking a shot at the Teeny Bridge, but I went upstairs to read instead. If this were Survivors, I would have played the level. I think, much like your friend, my brain doesn't get a jolt from card games of this type. 

It's a decent game for what it is, though! If I'm going to play a card game, this is probably the one for me. 

[Dragon]

Ripped 

[Cliff Hanger]

Got my first victory on Hades 2, surface path, using the Flames with Apollo's attack, Hestia's special, Heph's Cast and Total Eclipse. I really lucked out and got offered Athena's regenerating Death Defiance, and with that I was able to blast thru Prometheus and Typhon on my first attempt at either (albeit with God Mode on.) I then followed that up by dying vs Cerberus, just absolute shit luck on boons and hearts.

[RIPPA]

Ran the credits on Hades 2

Obviously still have a lot more to do but now that I got that far - I will start splitting my time with a second game

A second game of what is as yet to be determined

[odessasteps]

 

[Dragon]

 

[odessasteps]

Very late to the party, but going to add Fallout New  Eva’s to the rotation, since it’s on game pass.

[Technico Support]

Can anyone tell me if I'd enjoy Horizon Zero Dawn?  It on PS+ right now but its description as an "action RPG" is making me wary.  This is opposed to the fact that most games I like are described as "action adventure" by Wikipedia.  So for comparison, here are games I mostly enjoyed most recently:

• Huge fan of GTA and RDR
• The PS 4 & 5 Spider Man games
• God of War was okay, a little repetitive.  I started the second but couldn't get into it
• Stray
• Last of Us 1 & 2
• Control

So would I like Horizon?  I've never been a RPG guy and I hate, but tolerate, skill trees if they're not that complicated and accompany an otherwise good game.  I kinda hate puzzles and, in my Spider Man replay, used the option to skip all puzzles.  Because I am old and don't have a ton of time for gaming, I am casual as fuck and play everything in easy mode.  Shit, I turned on one-hit kills in Control   Is this game for me?

Edited May 4 by Technico Support

[Zimbra]

How do you feel about the Ubisoft open world games?  It's more similar in gameplay to an Assassin's Creed or a Far Cry (with a healthy dollop of Monster Hunter) in terms of using stealth and planning attacks than a GTA or RDR.  

My general feeling on it is that the actual robot dinosaur hunting gameplay is excellent, the story is good-for-a-video-game, and the ancillary stuff like crafting is fairly annoying.

[tbarrie]

22 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

My general feeling on it is that the actual robot dinosaur hunting gameplay is excellent, the story is good-for-a-video-game, and the ancillary stuff like crafting is fairly annoying.

"Robot dinosaur hunting gameplay" sounds like it would be awesome even if it were bad.

[Zimbra]

As story hooks go, it really doesn't get better than that.

[Tabe]

1 hour ago, Zimbra said:

How do you feel about the Ubisoft open world games?  It's more similar in gameplay to an Assassin's Creed or a Far Cry (with a healthy dollop of Monster Hunter) in terms of using stealth and planning attacks than a GTA or RDR.  

My general feeling on it is that the actual robot dinosaur hunting gameplay is excellent, the story is good-for-a-video-game, and the ancillary stuff like crafting is fairly annoying.

Yeah, this is a good description. 

Do you like open world 3rd person action?  If the AC games - think the Ezio trilogy - work for you, then you'll like the game.  I feel like calling it an "action RPG" is misleading.  It's not Diablo.

[Raziel]

I happen to be replaying it now, but yeah, there's not a lot of RPG to it that's different from classic AC.  Yeah, there's weapon stats and learning skills along the way, and there is some hunting stuff to do, and the story really works even if it's seeming more and more like the real world Overlords used it as an instruction manual instead of a cautionary tale.  

And yeah, planning out how to take down the Robot T-Rex was awesome.