I am getting closer to the “anything factory” with shapez.io at level 15 or 16… way too much of a Zeitgrab[1] though.
[1] Zeit = time, Grab = Grave/tomb.
4 Likes
It depends on how it is done in my opinion. Hades had an excellent model. It was almost complete, only some content after the final boss was missing. They handled that in a perfect way. I think the genre of roguelikes is well suited for that.
And while I haven’t played Trials of Fire as much as Hades, I still like what it offers. Because the game doesn’t feel like it is missing anything. Not like a lot of other Early Access games I saw or played (e.g. Gloomhaven).
But I understand why you want to wait. On the other hand games are usually cheaper before they leave Early Access 
2 Likes
I think go for the switch one for sure. Especially if you’re already used to the controller scheme from playing BOTW. Controller comfort is a huge factor, so there isn’t that ‘aggh which button is it’ moment when things go south.
1 Like
Finished the story mode of Star Wars Squadrons. Fun enough, although the game got really buggy at the end.
And the last few missions… weren’t much fun, really. They were neat story-wise, but capital ships chew through fighters like they are made of paper. And there’s no “safe” approach to attack them, unlike, say, ye olde Wing Commander.
Man, I still miss Privateer. I power it up and play for a while every once in awhile, but my memories of how good the game is are better than how good the game is. Anyway, just an aside. The original Wing Commander had capital ships that weren’t specifically a threat unless you rammed them: Wing Commander 2 had “flak cannons”, which were awful since they were fields of just constant damage, and the only way to damage capital ships were torpedoes, and the only fighter to carry them (the Broadsword) didn’t have boosters, so you had to crawl towards the capital ship until you were close enough that it wouldn’t shoot down your torpedoes and then crawl away to let your shields recharge and then repeat that horrible process 2-3 times. Wing Commander 3 was much better, and you could fly into the hangers of big capital ships and blow 'em up from the inside.
Anyway. SW Squadrons. Glad I got it, glad I played it. I may try the online game in a bit, although I am not holding out much hope that it will be great. I still had fun.
Oh, and I picked up Breath of the Wild, which I am enjoying on the “little” Switch while I wait for my Joy-cons to (hopefully) be returned to me at some point. It’s… fine? It’s fine. I’m very early on (I just got the paraglider), but I’m not a big fan of the constantly having to find new melee weapons. But apparently I’m heading towards stables, and I think I would like a horse.
1 Like
This thread is where I first head the term “joy-con” and wow, does it grate on my mind. I get it, I get how Japanese does this kind of thing all the time, but it’s jarring to hear it being done to English.
4 Likes
Why does it grate? what is the Japanese original term?
Oh, the Japanese is just joicon, which must be “joystick” and “controller” mashed together. I suppose it grates because a joystick is a controller, and has nothing to do with joy.
4 Likes
At some point in my youth I was watching the (sublime, but extremely weird) “Oruchuban Ebichu”, and learned that the Japanese word for ‘vibrator’ is ‘uniuni’.
Because of the noise they make. Still my favourite Japanese word.
2 Likes
Ooohhh, the good old Wing Commander… the memories…
2 Likes
I mean, technically ‘joystick’ would apply for the analog stick on the joycon. So it is in fact a controller with a joystick on it.
The WC-series as a whole are probably my favourite flight sims. In order: Privateer, WC1, WC3, WC5, WC2, WC4, Privateer 2 (although Privateer 2 has Clive Owens as the protagonist, and that’s worth the price of admission alone).
I’ve played some other great flight-sims (X-Wing was revolutionary for its time, Freelancer was fun for a while, etc…), but none as consistently good as the Wing Commanders… except for Freespace.
Freespace 1 and 2 were so good. They might be better than the WC series. Maybe. Maybe! They were so good…
I never tried Privateer, but did indeed own Privateer 2, and WC 3, 4 and Prophecy.
Ooh, and Freespace 1+2. Yes, they were damn good.
1 Like
I love Wing Commander, I remember a summer in high school where I mostly just played it every evening on my parent’s desktop, back in the days when you didn’t need to upgrade them with graphics cards or the like, just expend a whole evening loading the half a million floppy disks and then enjoy for months on end…
3 Likes
I need recommendations.
Maybe the forum can help.
We’ve been playing Borderlands 2, now 3 all year with some of our friends. Now more people want to join in but at least 2 of them don’t have the right hardware to play the game and at the moment prices are extremely high due to Christmas and general low availability of next-gen consoles and next-gen nvidia cards. So no buying new hardware until way after Christmas. But both of these friends have a Playstation 4 (so do we but we also have gaming hardware). Borderlands is supposed to get Crossplay capabilities sometime in 2021… but that can be months away or never materialize.
So What I am looking for a–preferably–coop games that have crossplay with PC or possibly Switch (a couple of Switches are scattered around the friend circle but PC/Playstation would cover everyone).
My partner already suggested Starwars Squadrons–which I’ve been eyeing anyway, waiting for it to go on sale again during Christmas. What other games are there that I am overlooking?
1 Like
Deep Rock Galactic is a great coop game, it has no PS4 release (only Xbox and PC) but I don’t think it is too hardware demanding 
2 Likes
Red Dead Redemption?
2 Likes
Unfortunately I don’t think PC/console crossplay is very common and where it does exist it’s more often Microsoft’s consoles than Sony or Nintendo’s. You might be better off looking at low-spec coop games and/or local coop games that someone with a high end PC could stream to the folks with lower end machines via Parsec. (Which, if you’re not familiar, streams games such that the viewers can connect inputs and also control the game for remote versions of local coop. Like Steam’s Remote Play Together but with more people possible.) For example, the various Lego games, or the two Overcookeds.
2 Likes
Yeah that’s a good point.
@yashima And old coop shooter classics like Left 4 Dead (the first one) should be cheap and not demanding at all. Even the second game is pretty old now
Or the Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition which came out recently and is really well done and a great throwback into old times. RTS are good for coop too.
1 Like
What about those old D&D/Diablo style co-op games? A lot of them are PC supported and are as old as snot… Good Old Games probably has them for a song. Stuff like Torchlight or Dungeon Siege or Titan Quest et al.
In unrelated news: I have been playing a bunch of Gears Tactics. Surprisingly satisfying. A good XCOM clone… I was on the fence about picking it or Chimera Squad initially (they both released about the same time), and while I currently still think Chimera is better, I am really enjoying GT as well. Neat game. I am a sucker for a well-designed turn-based game (after hundreds of hours of Battletech, though, all I really want is a new version of that).
2 Likes
Thank you all for your suggestions 
I have realized this. There are a couple like Rocket League or Fortnite but … neither is going to make it to the adults among our friends. I’ve played both and we’re too old for that.
re: Diablo. We played Diablo to death already especially the Switch version… or else that would be the goto game. I tried bringing people to play Heroes of the Storm–actually playing right in a few minutes with said friend.
We haven’t tried any of the Diablo clones though. So that might be an idea.
re: RTS Our friend circle loves Total Annihilation and I’ve really really tried to convert them over to more modern things but the best we could get them to play was Planetary Annihilation (I favor Starcraft , if I want to build cities I play colony sims). And TA is such a horror to get a game running with everyone in it. Same with any of the recent Quake iterations. The online multiplayer just always manage to exclude one person. I will not play games that need me to install a vpn because their networking code is so old.
re: Red Dead Redemption. I think people would be split about wanting to play this. Half have already played at least one of the Red Deads. The others won’t touch it (I am one of the latter, I’ve watched enough of it sitting on the couch… I like my games a little less dreary
re: Deep Rock Galactic my partner says he knows it and we should look into it.
For now it’s a round of Heroes of the Storm which I really enjoy (I’ve only tried LoL once and didn’t get it…)
1 Like