Sore Thumbs III: What Non-BT Video Games Are You Playing?

[Vehrec]

Hades 2 is out in early access.  The bisexuals are eating well today.  Hephestus is my personal choice for 'hottest bod' with his paunch, above-the-knee amputation, beard, muscled arms, and wheelchair.  Aphrodite Aeria is doing pretty well on her own however, wearing stylized arm and leg armor, wielding spear and shield, and letting her hair do any remaining duties to modesty.  And then there's Eris, goddess of discord, with her buzz-cut, big gun, and skirt so short...

Oh, and the gameplay's nice to.

[Prospernia]

In Tiberium-Sun, I usually milk the enemy bases for kills; I disable them, so they can't fire ion-cannons or missiles at me, then, I let them produce and attack me.  However, I got owned that this base took over other bases, and I had to destroy their contruction-yard, messing up my plans for thousands of units killed!  :(

[Akamia]

New warbond in Helldivers II dropped this morning. In an objective sense, it's far from ideal; general consensus seems to be, it's the worst one yet.

I have it, but I don't have any of its content unlocked yet, so I haven't tried any of it myself to determine if it really is as bad as people are reporting, at least for my purposes. I do hope that these weapons get some adjustments to make them better by the time I get to unlocking them, though. Same for some of the stuff we've got already.

Arrowhead's CEO mentioned they were going to be re-evaluating their approach to balance on Twitter; it seems they, or at least he, noticed an undesired pattern as well. I'm not as hardline about these sorts of things as some other people, but I can see kind of where people are coming from.

In other news, the major order is nearly complete. If we can tough it out, we might be able to clear things up before time... I'm kinda tired of fighting Terminids. Never been a fan of fighting them, really. Give me more Automatons to fight, and I'll be happy. lol

[Sapphirus]

several hours ago I finished the main story of Touhou: Hero of Ice Fairy but...[spoiler]not 100% complete because I need to do all Challenge mode fights in order to get the true ending, funny enough[/spoiler]

[Bedwyr]

I am currently in the middle of Planet Crafter, kind of a hybrid between an FPS base builder with Satisfactory vibes, Surviving Mars the video game or Terraforming Mars the board game, and No Man's Sky if you restricted it to just one planet or area.

The terraforming part is obviously unrealistically compressed (there's not, like, generations of humans), but if you roll with it it's lots of fun to watch the sky turn blue and then water filling up basins. There's a number of biomes and mysterious crashed spaceships to explorer and the tech progression is generally satisfying. I quite like the game as a kind of different take on the terraforming idea.

[Luciora]

I'd be playing Homeworld 3. But apparently I need a new laptop.  I should probably finish off Super Robot Wars 30 and Front Mission 1 on Switch first. 

[Prospernia]

I am currently in the middle of Planet Crafter, . . .The terraforming part is obviously unrealistically compressed (there's not, like, generations of humans), but if you roll with it it's lots of fun to watch the sky turn blue and then water filling up basins. . . .

That's what we call a, "Shake N' Bake", colony.   I also saw pictures of two-large moons, which isn't plausible, given the orbital-dynamics. But it's sci-fi.

Edit: and I'd like to see the characters in the game grow old and be replaced by their next of kin etc.  But, a game can only do so much.

[Darth Nichos]

Unicorn Overlord; complete game, not the Demo. Absolutely love this game and the customization for your squads is quite enjoyable. Also very punishing too if you mess up; Thank Heavens permadeath is not a thing unlike the Fire Emblem series

[Bedwyr]

That's what we call a, "Shake N' Bake", colony.   I also saw pictures of two-large moons, which isn't plausible, given the orbital-dynamics. But it's sci-fi.

Edit: and I'd like to see the characters in the game grow old and be replaced by their next of kin etc.  But, a game can only do so much.

For sure. It's basically an aesthetic for the vibes. I'm really enjoying it.

Unicorn Overlord; complete game, not the Demo. Absolutely love this game and the customization for your squads is quite enjoyable. Also very punishing too if you mess up; Thank Heavens permadeath is not a thing unlike the Fire Emblem series

Have you played Ogre Battle or Ogre Battle 64 before? That's the lineage.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Trying Fallout 4 again after having not played since 2017.

Honestly, the game was fairly ugly when it was brand new and the graphics are a whole lot worse now.

[Bedwyr]

Trying Fallout 4 again after having not played since 2017.

Honestly, the game was fairly ugly when it was brand new and the graphics are a whole lot worse now.

I must be easily pleased. Most anything in the XB 360 and later era has seemed fine for me. Maybe just becoming a fogey.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Eh, I'm just doing things like looking at how a "rock" is obviously a pile of flat edges with a "rocky" texture applied to the surface and even games that were FO4's contemporaries, like Horizon Zero Dawn, were putting a lot more effort into graphical stuff, much less modern games.  The game was released almost a decade after FO3, on the next generation of game systems, yet there really wasn't that much progress made on the graphics.  That's unimpressive.

[Darth Nichos]

I've heard of Ogre Battle and Ogre Battle 64 but never really played them; didn't know they had a connection to Unicorn Overlord

[Bedwyr]

I've heard of Ogre Battle and Ogre Battle 64 but never really played them; didn't know they had a connection to Unicorn Overlord

Ogre Battle was one of my favorite SNES games. If you work the lineage backwards, combine the slow RTS placement of units in Unicorn with the breadth of class changes from Final Fantasy Tactics and you'll get the idea. The other big element was an alignment system. Evil and good units worked best with their own, city liberation usually preferred good units, and fighting higher level enemies raised your alignment while beating down on lower level enemies lowered it. In this way you could recruit and steer whether a dragon became a virtuous metal dragon or an evil zombie dragon.

[Rorke]

Homeworld 3.

I've issues with it, which pains me to admit as a fan since the start.  Pacing seems off, no time to regroup and missions
start automatically.  Which means regrouping and rebuilding aren't something you can do, prior to moving forward.  Then there's
units, which seem appallingly fragile in comparison to the originals.

But it's very pretty, and the Paul Ruskay soundtrack is as fantastic as earlier versions.

[Prospernia]

I just installed Steel Panther's MBT on my advanced computer (that runs on XP).  I was surprised it actually worked.   The graphics, were all fuzzy.  I think that one on a CRT-monitor, fuzzy-graphics are less noticeable because, everything's fuzzy; all the time.

I have to figure out how to speed up my mouse in the game.

[Darth Nichos]

Ogre Battle was one of my favorite SNES games. If you work the lineage backwards, combine the slow RTS placement of units in Unicorn with the breadth of class changes from Final Fantasy Tactics and you'll get the idea. The other big element was an alignment system. Evil and good units worked best with their own, city liberation usually preferred good units, and fighting higher level enemies raised your alignment while beating down on lower level enemies lowered it. In this way you could recruit and steer whether a dragon became a virtuous metal dragon or an evil zombie dragon.

Sounds very similar and its a shame that I missed it

Beat Unicorn Overlord with a 100% Achievement completion rate. I really enjoyed it and I would the sequel if they decided to make one; which is a possibility since its sold a good number of copies.

Now I am awaiting Trails Into Daybreak which comes out next month I believe

[Akamia]

Meridia is being prepared to be black-hole-bombed as we speak. Apparently there's a bug where everyone's only getting half credit for the completion of each op. If that bug is confirmed, I hope it's fixed well before the major order is over, or at the very least the order's time is extended; I don't expect we're supposed to fail this order by any means.

Anyway, between that (Helldivers II, by the way, for the uninitiated), Star Trek Online, and MechWarrior whenever I can squeeze it in, I'm also attempting to learn Space Engineers. I've had it sitting in my library for a while, but I kinda bounced off it the first time I played it. Not because I didn't like it necessarily, rather because I had other games I would rather spend my time on at the time. I kinda still do, but my partners are interested in playing it, so I figure I should at the very least have some basic idea of what I'm doing. lol

[PsihoKekec]

Had didly squat time for gaming, so I'm still playing Terminator: Defiance that I started in March, I think? Game keeps what I liked in Warfare/Syrian Warfare (nail biting urban combat) while adding more campaign options (upgrades, supply issues), but also keeps what I disliked (infinite ammo for the enemies), while adding too much chitchat for my liking.

[Akamia]

So Meridia blew up; there's a black hole (wormhole? Opinions are slightly divided) where it used to be. And now major orders are to make a big push on Terminid space. I think we're about to do the same thing to the Terminids that we did to the Automaton vanguard some months back.

Whether it is someday successful or not, I don't expect the Terminids to stay down for very long in any case. That black hole, or whatever it really is, might be a future problem though... lol

In other news, I'm making an attempt to learn Astroneer in addition to Space Engineers, and progressing the adventure mode of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 because I was putting that off and decided I wanted to finish it. The characters were hard for me to care for early on, which is why it took as long for me to keep going as it did, but I think they're growing on me a bit.

[elf25s]

Had didly squat time for gaming, so I'm still playing Terminator: Defiance that I started in March, I think? Game keeps what I liked in Warfare/Syrian Warfare (nail biting urban combat) while adding more campaign options (upgrades, supply issues), but also keeps what I disliked (infinite ammo for the enemies), while adding too much chitchat for my liking.

is that the rts one?

[PsihoKekec]

Yeah, it's built on Warfare/Syrian Warfare engine.

[Triptych]

Tropico 6. sometimes its more relaxing to get away from these violent wargames and take a nice vacation as a benevolent dictator el presidente of your own island paradise.  The Caribbean music is soothing too.

[Akamia]

Deciding to revisit my childhood a bit, I ran a Google search for Spybot: The Nightfall Incident, an old LEGO Flash game from the early 2000s that was meant to promote the short-lived Spybotics toyline, which I believe was some kind of off-shoot of the Mindstorms toyline. This game was a turn-based tactics game with puzzle elements.

The original game is probably unplayable today unless you use Flashpoint or something, but there are remakes out there, and I found one that was faithful to the original. It smoothed a few things over from the original game, but I found this to be for the better. It was a good time!

[PsihoKekec]

Heads Will Roll got new DLC so I checked it out



Great guy, I feel bad for killing him in previous playthroughs.

[Zeruel]

Homeworld 3.

I've issues with it, which pains me to admit as a fan since the start.  Pacing seems off, no time to regroup and missions
start automatically.  Which means regrouping and rebuilding aren't something you can do, prior to moving forward.  Then there's
units, which seem appallingly fragile in comparison to the originals.

But it's very pretty, and the Paul Ruskay soundtrack is as fantastic as earlier versions.

interesting to know, I haven't gotten the game yet, I probably still will regardless of any negatives

as for what I'm currently playing, I've recently returned to both Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Wrangler]

Playing Between the Stars, space ship game.  It's my speed. I am not big universe manager guy like Stellias and ye old later versions of Masters of Orion.

Its good for a casual gamer like myself, it's fun.

[Luciora]

One-Inch Tactics. 

Powerdolls lite, turn based hex combat that plays kinda like X-Com.  Loving it.

[Sapphirus]

whew!  I finally defeated Nitori when doing the challenge stages in Touhou Hero Of Ice Fairy.

[elf25s]

went back to play
star valor
an indie game with spaceships pirates aliens shooter....very relaxing andhad been keeping on its development for about 10 years