I needed to de-stress a bit and am doing so by playing the old Star Wars games like X-Wing which due to being a Mac person I somehow totally missed.
(Hey, it’s cheap!)
For the record, I am totally garbage at X-Wing but have some questions:
- How many keys do you really need to ‘know’? After playing a few hours, I got the hang of the basics: Switching weapons (and modes), changing targeting, some energy reallocation. But I haven’t touched a bunch of oddball keys for comms and such.
- Is this totally worthless, or at least better than a mouse for flight sims?
- I got the GoG.com edition because, hey, it was $3. On Mac, this gets me three downloads: The original '93 release, the '94 CD-Rom release, and a '98 Edition which looks to have upgraded the graphics quite a bit. The Steam release is only the Special Edition: Any idea if this will get the better graphics on Mac?
- Any other tips?
It’s still a fun game even if the graphics are kind of garbage. Putting on my big over-the-ear headset to zone out for a bit really helps de-stress and not feel like I’m doing work if I happen to be at my desk.
Christmases is the bomb.
And wow auto correct. Thrustmaster, not christmases.
I’ve had three, with the first being about $100, in 1994 money and chunky as hell. Bought for this game, along with a 345 mb hard drive for 340 dollars.
My Pathfinder group had its first Roll20 session last Saturday, the first one in well over a year due to scheduling conflicts. It was awesome!!! In some ways, it actually worked better than a F2F gaming session. We used Discord for the audio. It took us about half an hour to get up to speed - fortunately we have some veteran Roll20 players, and they were able to help us newbies - and we played for about five hours. Worked so well that, as we’re all housebound for the foreseeable future, we’re planning to play every two weeks.
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I’ve wobbled back and forth on suggesting an online game to people I know who might be interested. It’s tough normally but, as you said, everyone is stuck home anyway.
I’m just playing Witcher 3. I started playing it before the TV series came out, and recently watched the TV series because I’d been playing the game. Absolutely loved the TV series, and love the game too.
One problem I have with the universe though is the Skellige sense of honour, which is anything but honourable. For example:
Birna Bran plotted to get her son the throne of the Skellige islands and arranged to have all her son’s rivals murdered. Punishment was to be staked out to die of starvation and / or pecked to death by birds. Harsh, but probably understandable.
Birna Bran’s son knew nothing about the plot. When he found out he was horrified and gave crucial testimony that led to Birna’s conviction. He ended up with a choice of being banished or put to death.
How on earth is her son’s punishment fair or honourable?
After not touching my Xbox One for about 18 months, I started playing Borderlands 3 after finding a great deal on the game. I had given gaming up as I got older, but I don’t seem to much else to do at the moment and a good friend recommended I pick it up since I loved the other games in the series years ago. I forgot how much I loved gaming and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. lol
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12 posts were split to a new topic: Roll20 info
Been playing a fair bit of the following:
7 Days to Die (roommates are into it so we’re 3-manning a server instance)
Risk of Rain 2
Doom Eternal (though I finished the campaign, so now it’s mostly occasional trips back into it to hunt for secrets)
Stardew Valley
…And I picked up Animal Crossing for the Switch so now I’m in debt to the raccoon mafia on a deserted island.
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This is a phrase that gets even better if people don’t know you’re talking about games.
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I don’t understand why so many people do this. I realize when you have kids that you won’t have as much time, but surely you can sneak in some time every now and then. You don’t have to stop having fun just because you reach a certain age.
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My gaming habits have changed over time. Mainly due to ‘other responsibilities’ and such, but in general I don’t have bandwidth for ‘deep gaming’ sessions the way I used to.
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For me it’s largely a function of time, but also other interests. I’d rather spend the time and money on other things these days. I go through phases, but right now it’s music again: a drum sequencer, MIDI keyboard/sequencer, analog synth, another ukulele, bass guitar preamp–just in the past six months. (All but one used or deeply discounted, in fairness.)
Photography has replaced a lot of the time I had spent gaming. Myself getting back into that hobby was right about the time I started tailing off on playing video games.
Well, it looks like I’m about to join in on an already running online play-by-email game.
I was one of the original members of a D&D Blackmoor game about 15 years ago. Apparently, I left quite an impression with them and they want me to rejoin their game after all of this time.
The DM was fanboying on me a bit, which was unexpected and weird. It kind of made me shake my head and smile to hear someone say that the group had been talking about me and missing me and awaiting my return.
He made me a 20 minute audio recording on CloudFlare to let me know everything I’d need to join in, kind of like leaving a voice mail message on my phone.
How in the world could I say no to that? I’m flattered and also really interested. This should be a lot of fun.
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Holy crap! I haven’t played any kind of game like this since I was last with them. Games have changed a lot. I’m trying to figure out this D20 character generator and it makes me want to give up on the whole thing already.
deep breath
Give it a minute, ask the DM for relevant info, go from there. He’s taken the time to invite me in and probably already made extensive plans for my introduction. I should give it more than just a casual attempt.
I’ve just started Half-Life Alyx and it is freaking awesome.
I’ve only just started the game (last night for about 30 minutes) so I can’t say if the story is good or, well, anything much really. But so far, the game has been worth the price of the headset on its own (yeah, maybe a bit of hyperbole there as the headset is not cheap).
At one point fairly early on you get a strider walk past you in the street and it is pretty freaky.
I’ve had some issues with the headset - it wouldn’t work with the PC. It looks like it might be an issue with the PC itself as setting up power management so that it never turns the USB ports off seems to have kicked it into life. Oculus support were actually very helpful there.
I also had to re-map the standard controls as I couldn’t actually jump how they were set up - and one of the first tasks you get is to jump.
But the hassle has definitely been worth it so far.
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Having now played the game a bit longer, I am, if anything, even more pleased with the game.
It keeps the feel of Half-Life 2, but adds a whole extra dimension to it. Where HL2 was a bit scary in places, HLA is genuinely terrifying (in a good way). Places where you are in the dark with a whole lot of zombies, in HL2 the monitor was dark, and the zombies are only a few inches tall. In HLA, you are in the dark completely, and the zombies are the same size you are - and it is so much more scary that way.
I’ve read a review where the reviewer didn’t like it, because it wasn’t immersive enough. But if it was any more immersive you’d probably die of a heart attack 
. He has a bit of a point in some cases though. You change guns using a menu system - which isn’t particularly “immersive”, but I can live with that. If you have been using the headset controllers for a while this game might not be the best for you, but as a complete newbie, it’s fantastic.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have faults though. Rhys Darby is a slightly discordant note. I’ve seen him in several different things now, and he has played the same character in all of them - including HLA. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as he is actually funny, but a few times I have caught myself thinking “Ah yes, that’s Rhys Darby”.
All in all, I’d say it’s well worth the money.
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Bought Prey as part of GOG’s summer sale. Pretty darn fun so far despite the difficulty. Fulfills the need for a BioShock/System Shock type of game really well. Hard to imagine the developer went from Arx Fatalis (which I also played and enjoyed so many years ago) to this. It definitely makes me want to try out the Dishonored series as well since it’s from the same dev.