What PC games are you playing?

The Talos Principle. About the third time I’ve played this but it still gives great satisfaction when those tetrominoes start piling in. If there’s one game out there that needs a sequel, it’s this.
 
About 20 hours into Encased now. It's got some rough edges and some annoyances, but also a stylish vibe, decent combat, lots of branching dialogue, multiple routes through, reasonable skill and tool system, and a somewhat novel setting.

I don't like the way most of your xp seems to come from looting containers, as it pushes me to loot everything even when I'm over-encumbered and don't want the stuff I'm finding. And there are sooo many containers everywhere. Too much of the game is like a pixel-hunting container hunt if you want to keep the xp coming.

And there is much, much too much junk/clutter/crafting ingredients. I can't possibly carry it all, it's not clear what I need to craft what, so I repeatedly lug it to my personal store, where it sits pointlessly.

You need to pay attention to enemy resistances to do well in combat, which is somewhat interesting, but also a trap for a lot of builds that can't put out a variety of damage types.

Companion pathfinding is some of the worst I have ever come across. There are ways around it, but micro-managing your companions' movement so they don't run the opposite way around the map after deciding your PC is blocking the shortest route, and aggroing everything on the way (or run over a mine, into poison or radiation, etc...)

It's more of a Roadside Picnic than post-nuclear apocalypse setting, which is a plus for me, as I am a really huge fan of the Strugatsky brothers and I get something of a vibe of their world-building from this (more so than a Fallout vibe, which is what it usually seems to be compared to). Stalker took some ideas from Roadside Picnic in a pretty gritty direction, but the Strugatsky's work is also shot through with humour and a sense of the absurd, and I see this realised in this game a bit more.

So overall I am getting a bit tired of the container looting, companion pathfinding and inventory clutter, but enjoying most of the rest of the game quite a lot.
 
dualsense1673 said:
i play black mesa right now. it is so fun, they did a nice take on the original. the fact that valve embraces this fan made version of remake half life is so heartwarming for me.

them new xen graphics are so cool. we never got to see those alien world stuff in half life 2 and onwards!!
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Ive found myself getting stuck and lost quite a lot on it, dont remember the OG half life being so brutal!
 
Pathfinder WoR, this game is big and dense. 100 hours in and reached end of Act 3, 3 more to go it seems! massive game in most ways and so many routes and branching narratives can only imagine the work boards they must have had in office to map certain paths story choices.
 
World of Tanks... are anyone else hopelessly addicted to this game to the point where it's ruining their life, like me? Also I play a lot of Tarkov, whenever they wipe the game, I tend to play it for a month or two before it starts getting boring, and I wait for another wipe.
 
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Elder Scrolls Online is my main game
Battlefield 1,3 & 4 (5 occasionally but it's crap)
COD Cold War
AC Valhalla but struggling to get into it
Metro Exodus (which I'm not really enjoying so far)
Half way through Shadow of the tomb raider but lost my game saves upgrading to windows 11
Witcher 3 (again!)
Middle Earth Shadow of War
Horizon Zero Dawn
Just got Riftbreaker
Words with friends ;)
 
I've been back and forth with Encased. 7 to 8 hours of play and I haven't even got a save file to show for it
First character I ditched after the prologue because I didn't like the orange wing, second character deleted because I missed the three part relic in Nashville and wanted to restart to get it
Then the third character I got to level 3 and went to take Observant like the guide I was looking at suggested, only to find they didn't even have enough Perception for it. I HATE when people post builds that they clearly haven't even tested properly
 
Frubeling said:
I've been back and forth with Encased. 7 to 8 hours of play and I haven't even got a save file to show for it
First character I ditched after the prologue because I didn't like the orange wing, second character deleted because I missed the three part relic in Nashville and wanted to restart to get it
Then the third character I got to level 3 and went to take Observant like the guide I was looking at suggested, only to find they didn't even have enough Perception for it. I HATE when people post builds that they clearly haven't even tested properly
Click to expand...

I went through the whole game thinking I had missed the relic in Nashville. It was only when I had to open my crafting menu later for something else that I realised I had all three parts and I just needed to assemble it. (In case you are as in the dark as I was on this - you don't craft it at a bench, but in your inventory crafting menu, which I didn't even realise was a thing until the last couple of hours of the game) :o

Anyway, my build turned out to be ridiculously OP, so I can share that:

M 1
G 6
P 9
B 10
D 2
F 10
P 1

I went Silver Wing (25 skill points per level with observant) and took Bossy for the extra stat points to Cha. Losing a bit of precision is neither here nor there after a short time, and the recduced starting encumbrance is slghtly annoying, but fine once you get a companion. By then end my party could carry over 300 weight anyway. Basically two free points for very minor inconvenience.

In retrospect I would have put D to 1 and raised G to 7, and had the self-improvement perk give a boost to three stats later on instead of two.

I focused on high-tech weapons, tech, science and criminal (but in the end I had maxed out all the non-combat skills and two weapon skills).

I took observant at lvl 3. The build becomes incredibly powerful later on with some key perks: mysterious patronage gives you a perk every two levels instead of every three; blitz gives you +2 AP in the first two rounds, all as planned gives you 100% crit in the first round, and soldier of fortune gives you +100% damage for a round after a kill.

The icing on the cake comes as soon as you can level your resilience to 70 (max psionics for the boost, take the badass perk and you're pretty much there) and take The Voice, which now gives you +3 AP per round with no penalty. (Note: do this before you take self-improvement, or else having Psyche at 2 will preclude you from taking it)

Enjoy having 15 AP for two rounds then 13 per round (I had the plot armour coat as well), and guaranteed critting on round one. Starting combat from stealth with a Kraut or Wasp dart gun (depending on enemy resistance) with a critical Relic Dart will kill most things outright. You can follow up with a critical normal shot, use second wind to fire a second relic dart, switch to another opponent for +100% damage after a kill. It's bonkers.
 
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AC: Odyssey - I've completed this previously on a 1080ti/X34a combo and really enjoyed it. I'm now replaying from the start on my 3080/CX48 combo and it still looks fantastic. Great performance, too.

Bang goes another 100 odd hours. :)
 
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