Having briefly gone back to Lord of the Rings Online for nostalgia purposes (they have a code to permanently unlock a load of content for free right now and solo DPS is way higher than it used to be), I am now foolishly heading back into Elite: Dangerous.
It’s ridiculously complicated. I have a Python outfitted for mining but for some reason bought a Corvette last time, and just looking at how to set that up for mining has me knee-deep in technical specs.
I mean, this is what “fun” looks like, right?
(Possibly the wrong forum for this, given the number of MechWarrior fans on here).
Gods I love Elite Dangerous… but I won’t! I can’t! I musn’t!..
Lots of changes in the last year or so, including a bunch of new ships.
I’m just remembering how to get places without exploding for now.
Got through Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 + 2 as of last night. Need to replay the second one and finish in under 6 hours to get all the trophies. Such a great game, story-wise. Awesome voice acting and a cool plot help augment the very dated play control and puzzles.
The very first game of the series, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen was available for free on the PlayStation store a while back, so I might go back and play that, too, as I haven’t played it since college, and it would help flesh out the storyline. The recap at the beginning of SR1 gets the overview, but I want to remember the details.
Sadly, SR2 ends on quite the cliffhanger, and I have no idea if Blood Omen 2 and Defiance remasters are in the works or not. Would have to dig out my PS2 copies to finish the story.
But, most likely, I am going to move on to Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. Loved that game back in the day, played the PS3 remaster and also on my PS Vita, and I am eager to see it with current gen graphics.
Stronghold Crusader - nostalgia time!! Simple and fast pace RTS that is still dear to me after not playing this for decades(?).
I’m more skilled now than younger me. Finished Mission 1 and 2 of the first campaign easily. My tactics still the same as younger me.
). What’s different perhaps was the lack of walls. When you have these machine-gun-like fire archers at different towers, you kinda get lazy at even building walls.I don’t bother with the rest unless I need Slaves to dig up moats. Maybe tactics will change when I get into the more difficult missions. European Swordsmen might be a good defence force if the AI still keeps sending waves at me. I still don’t see the point of these expensive European Knights.
King of the Dragon Pass - set up a war clan. Keep raiding the same neighbour. The carls are complaining that we keep raiding over focusing on farming. Bro! Look at all these cows we looted! What to do?
Rome: Total War 1 - I know RTW2 exists. But this is more for nostalgia. Playing as the Western Roman Empire because I like being beaten badly.
I’m deep nostalgia on Final Fantasy Tactics at present.
Still holds up and firmly among the greats for me.
I finished both the main quest line and leveled up to max-level (50 currently) in Borderlands 4 this weekend. My partner says I am probably the only one who hit max level before finishing the main quest…. did too many side quests and shooting exercises on the way.
The story is fine I guess. My partner who is a super-fan of the series is a bit disappointed. My main complaints are that quests are frequently misleading you in some way or other, that the texts in the mission log are too short, too much is said in dialog that you cannot look up again later. Too many weirdly precise jump sequences that are very obvious to find but for me at least hard to execute… this is a shooter not some platformer…
But besides all those story complaints (I am not big on story anyway) the game play is fantastic. The changes they made to weapons and to how you move in a fight…. really really good. I can easily see myself playing until I hit the final difficulty level to get the „Gear Five“ achievement (if only for the One Piece reference).
I played most of the campaign solo because I needed to know that I can do it. When we play as a group my partner and one of the others are so good at this that I feel I barely contribute. But having done almost all the fights (we did two of the vaults together) solo, I feel I can participate in multiplayer now 
Apparently there is a Quality-of-Life patch coming. And it can‘t come soon enough. It is very necessary. When the player dies, Echo 4 says: „User experience failure detected.“ As if it knows … so many small niggles with the UI: no minimap? lost loot automat sorting is botched? you can‘t change inventory filters to other defaults? inventory glitches out all the time…
Despite all that and playing at lowest graphics settings on my old laptop: good game in a great series. Greatness will be determined once I know how the longterm end-game works out.
Nice, which character did you choose? I’ve just hit level 26 with my first character (Vex) and have just started my second of the three “defeat these major story bosses in any order” missions. Will be interested to see what level I finish the main story at - I tend to divert from whatever I’m doing whenever I come across a side quest / shiny collectable, so maybe you won’t be the only one to finish at 50!
I agree about the QoL updates: no minimap and inventory filters that reset when you exit the menu are frustrating. But the addition of the “pick up as junk” button is a godsend and something that I have wished all loot-based games included since I first played one.
I’m generally having a great time. Vehicles that can be summoned almost anywhere are a good addition, as is the double jump. I think my favourite change has been that grenades now respawn on a timer, which makes me much more likely to use them rather than horde them. The only other complaint I can think of is that I feel that fast travel points are maybe a little but too far apart. This might not be so bad given our vehicles… if we actually had a minimap, so I didn’t have to pause to open the main map so often!
I am playing as Vex. I playeda Siren in BL3
Yes grenade on timer may already have been in Tiny Tina it doesn’t feel that new to me somehow.
The double jump is awesome. Air-time during boss-fights is very high up there, too 
Vehicles for summon absolutely ftw. Now if only the Echo4 Pathfinding wouldn’t keep leading me into walls 
My partner who watches BL4 streamers non-stop and spends significant amounts of time researching builds and items… has mentioned that more fast travel points may be in the works. Sometimes though I just found the safe houses too late.
Very helpful for the silos is the upgrades you get from the vaults… do the vaults they aren’t needed for the main quest but the bosses are cool and the fights are good and the reward is incredibly useful.
edit: Oh I really like the new weapons system. If you play anything like me … if you find a Maliwan Sniper with good elements and Jacobs and Torgue Impact Modifiers… try it out! I played with mine for nearly 10 levels and I am really hoping to find another. I really think that it’s a great addition because it makes the really good random drops more valuable compared to legendaries. I find mit much easier to grasp than previous systems.
My favourite FPS weapon array was in Duke Nukem 3D.
As you might imagine, several of these were Great Fun in deathmatch play.
There was a FPS that had a nailgun that fired 9 inch nails.
The ammo boxes, confusingly, were labelled as NIN, but one of the Ns was backwards for some bizarre reason…
Great soundtrack, too.
Quake, I think.
T’was indeed Quake.
The band Nine Inch Nails created the soundtrack for Quake. The band’s logo is NIN with the second N backwards.
Rainier Wolfcastle.gif
That was the joke…
It was pretty funny seeing someone read that and think “this person is seeking answers and I will provide them” though.
So I picked up the exceptionally inexpensive Slots & Daggers, and it was good for a few hours. Neat loop, fun, good combination of graphics and gameplay (although a few mechanics I am still unsure what they did, specifically the dice that would periodically announce when they were now a triple of something). For a few bucks? Totally worth it.
Now I am working on Star Wars Outlaws, which is surprisingly fun albeit very crash-prone. I’ve had it crash out on me approximately daily, although I usually get at least a few hours of gameplay in there first. I have two tiny diagetic complaints:
Anyway. I’m having a lot of fun with the game aside from the periodic crashes. It even has a half-decent Sabacc variation (“Kessel Sabacc”) that’s kinda like blackjack but with modifers and two distinct decks of cards. Not great, but good. That actually applies to the game overall. If I had to guess I’d say I’m about 20 hours and halfway through? Maybe after I finish I will take another running swing at Star Wars Survivor, which I got a bit into and then bounced off of when the difficulty started swinging all over the place (a problem I had with the first one, too, actually… great game until The Frog, and gosh was it ever hard to get past The Frog without worrying the rest of the game would somehow be awful… great ending, though).
I finished the main story of Borderlands 4 a couple of days ago. I was also level 50 before the end, I think I hit it in either the penultimate or last sector of the final city. I was surprised how much more there was to do after defeating the previous three main story bosses!
Overall I think the game is really good. It continues to improve the series’ gameplay while having a much better executed story than Borderlands 3.
