What Are You Playing Right Now? (Gaming Thread)

[Scoot26]

I've been playing Grand Tactician: The Civil War the last couple weeks.

If you have interest in the American Civil War and have been waiting for a real try at making a strategy game for the genre, this one is it.

It was just 1.0 released last month, and it is raw in terms of there being little to no help online when you can't figure out how to do something in the game, but I'm finding answers in the tooltips/help book they offer.

However, it is a game that feels like a Paradox strategy game had a baby with Ultimate General Civil War.

The battles take some getting used to if you've played UG:CW, but they are better.

The whole game is just better than anything in the genre before IMO, even if the graphics and quality of life have a ways to go.

If they keep up development and polish this game, it will be a gem that sets a standard for the genre.

- Full North American campaign map
- Campaign starts 1861, 1862, 1863, or 1864, so you can jump in where you prefer.
- You form and raise each Army/Corps/Brigade and decide on commanders from your officer corps
- You decide where they go, offensive/defensive, scouting/raiding, transport methods (rail/river/sea/march)
- Can autoresolve battles or fight them personally, ala Total War.
- You form and raise fleets and choose what ships to build, and commanders for each fleet, though this is skeleton and needs work.
- You decide where each fleet goes, offensive/defensive, blockade/patrol/raid.
- All fleet battles are autoresolved, again they may add on to this in the future, though TBH I prefer the mostly automated version they have now.
- Army battles are fought on pre-defined maps, they need to make more of these, and they are.... I'd imagine future developments may include procedural generation based on location.
- Every system seems to have good bones and works well once you wade thru the learning curve muck.

I'm gonna need to look into this. Perhaps it'll be my winter game this year.

 

[Ares]

I'm gonna need to look into this. Perhaps it'll be my winter game this year.

It has that Paradox style learning curve, but you've been thru it.

The game needs more meat on the bones, but it is impressive, what they have, even now.

 

[fatbeard]

Played Hellblade this weekend. Very enjoyable, but I think impact of the ending is undermined by the fact that it's obvious the vikings you're fighting the entire game are just figments of Senua's mind (I mean, they literally just materialize out of thin air), so the "big reveal" they try to pull off doesn't quite work--it makes perfect sense, but it's not really a twist in the way I think they wanted it to be. I did think the middle of the game (after you lose your sword) really started to drag since there's nothing to break up the puzzle/walking monotony until you get your sword back. They absolutely nailed the sea of corpses portion. Genuinely hellish. Some real intense parts in other areas, too. Also really appreciated that it's fine not trying to be some 120-hour AAA slog stuffed with filler to make it artificially longer.

 

[Ares]

After quite a bit more play on GT: CW I must say, while I do enjoy this game, it is currently seriously flawed by the broken links between modules.... the link between campaign map and battle maps only really works okay when you keep all your armies on offensive stances and presume you need to rush forward on every map in order to get proper ground for any kind of defensive battle.

Basically what I am finding is that they have a very limited set of battle maps, and so you can often end up in odd situations like the following:



I have an Army Corps of 23000 in Defensive stance camped on Washington D.C. with 2 other Army Corps nearby in Offensive stance, so they can/will reinforce if my Defensive Army Corps is engaged in battle.

The game is built for you to do things this way, and obviously this is how things worked in the real world.

Even when you begin the battle, you are given substantially more engineering points to use on digging/building entrenchments, so a Defensive stance leads you to believe a defensive battle will result where your Army Corps here will be sitting on or near good defensive ground, on or near the objective points of the map.

However, said battle begins and the objective points are owned by the enemy, which makes sense because they sit all the way across the map, on the high ground, right next to where the enemy owns 2 spots where they will enter the battle map.

If I replay it with my primary Army Corps on Offensive stance, the objectives shift to spots right near my Army Corps, and allows me to pretty much entrench right on the high ground points near where I begin the battle, but of course I have very few engineering points to use because I wasn't on Defensive stance.



The devs are definitely working on this game, an update came just yesterday.

About half of it made the AI much more tolerable once in said battles, while it somehow caused the pause button to now no longer be able to also unpause the game in battle or campaign, so who tf knows what is going into these updates lol

I'd recommend waiting 3-6 months and buying it on a Steam deal.... well worth it at 20-50% off, but if you buy it now, expect some of these growing pains.

The good thing is you can kinda play/work around some of these issues, but they are serious flaws for now.

 

[Ares]

Facing f***ing whomst?

CC: @Scoot26

 

[Tjodalv]

I picked up the most recent Tomb Raider recently for shits and giggles. Pretty much what one would expect, I've enjoyed picking through it here and there.

Also playing Phoenix Point which is from the maker of the original Xcom games. Again it's what you would expect from that genre and quite well done.

Looking forward to the full release of Baldur's Gate 3. Several months ago I was bored and ponied up for the pre-release material just for a taste and, despite being obviously no where near finished (I think the final release is aimed at spring 2022?) the early material was encouraging.

Really hoping Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 eventually gets released.

 

[Tater]

Looking forward to the full release of Baldur's Gate 3. Several months ago I was bored and ponied up for the pre-release material just for a taste and, despite being obviously no where near finished (I think the final release is aimed at spring 2022?) the early material was encouraging.

Damn. I totally forgot about that game. It's been a long time.

 

[Ares]

I picked up the most recent Tomb Raider recently for shits and giggles. Pretty much what one would expect, I've enjoyed picking through it here and there.

Also playing Phoenix Point which is from the maker of the original Xcom games. Again it's what you would expect from that genre and quite well done.

Looking forward to the full release of Baldur's Gate 3. Several months ago I was bored and ponied up for the pre-release material just for a taste and, despite being obviously no where near finished (I think the final release is aimed at spring 2022?) the early material was encouraging.

Really hoping Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 eventually gets released.

Had it on my wishlist.... didn't even realize it was Early Access because of the 60$ price tag, dayum.

 

[wonky73]

I picked up Far Cry 6 for my PS5 for like 20 bucks at best buy. I knew it wasn't doing well but already $20. I loved Far Cry 3 but haven't played any since. After several hours in .it's ok. It's like the neutral planet of games. Fun at times annoying at times.. dumb story.

 

[Scoot26]

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Facing f***ing whomst?

CC: @Scoot26

Did the Confederacy coup Robert E Lee in your game?

 

[Leomaz]

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Facing f***ing whomst?

CC: @Scoot26

Bringing the thunder ..John Bonham’s great great granddad

 

[Ares]

Did the Confederacy coup Robert E Lee in your game?

They must have, cuz he hasn't shown up yet lol.

But the way this game automates building armies, I'd not be surprised if Robert E. Lee is a simple Colonel commanding a fort battery somewhere.

When you add new units you can do it manually, but that means:

Add Button -> State with enough volunteers selected -> Select unit type/size -> Recruit button

All to recruit 1 unit.... or you do it automated, where you just go to the management screen, select the overall unit to add to, then you select unit size/type and how many you want, and click the button and it generates the units using some algorithm to decide what State the unit should draw its volunteers from, and which commander it should have.

Idk how they coded that algorithm, but I did a shitload of autogenerate units for all the forts and ended up finding quite a few historical figures doing jobs unsuited to their talents.

Went thru all like 40 forts and found Buford, Hancock, Reynolds, Grant, Sherman.

I think Sherman was the only one of them with an actual background in artillery, so I have no clue how it decided to use them.

Its not arbitrarily using the best/highest-ranking commanders either, because to use these guys you gotta go dig them out of the lower ranks, they were not high ranking officers before the war.

Poor Confederacy, Lee stuck in a fort in Arkansas somewhere.

 

[Ares]

@Scoot26 they don't learn.

Also lol I have that fat old fuck Winfield Scott out in the field.

 

[Ares]

@Scoot26 he shows himself.

 

[Tater]

Has anyone played Sniper Elite 4? I'm interested in the coop part of it.

 

[Ares]

Has anyone played Sniper Elite 4? I'm interested in the coop part of it.

No, but I looked at the Sniper games recently and was interested.

If you end up playing it, please let me know how you do/don't like it.

 

[Tater]

No, but I looked at the Sniper games recently and was interested.

If you end up playing it, please let me know how you do/don't like it.

Will do. My friend has one of them (not sure which) and it looked really good.

 

[Ares]

Will do. My friend has one of them (not sure which) and it looked really good.

The one I started on, just the tutorial, was Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2.

Felt a little like Far Cry but clearly required you to try a bit more.

But I do mean, a bit, it still felt very "on rails".

 

[Tater]

The one I started on, just the tutorial, was Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2.

Felt a little like Far Cry but clearly required you to try a bit more.

But I do mean, a bit, it still felt very "on rails".

I read the SE4 has co-op and also 3rd person. That's what caught my eye.
It takes place in Italy during WW2.

 

[nvanprooyen]

I finally scored a PS5. Yay. Looking forward to playing Ghost of Tsushima. I bought it awhile ago but haven't been able to play it because my PS4 constantly overhears. Once the PS5 arrives I'll probably crack it open and try and improve the performance on the PS4 with some thermal paste, but I didn't want to risk component damage until I had something else to replace it with.