What game are you playing today?

gaming
682

Catching up with MW5:Mercs. The cheat mode that suddenly appeared suddenly disappeared a few days later. I used it to double my bank account (from 5 billion C-bills I earned on my own to 10 billion) and to stock up on the better weapons, but I should have kept adding a bunch more of them. I need to find the mod that has crafting so it can use the lower-rated weapons to make higher-rated ones. I actually just need to install mods so I can play this as close to MechWarrior 2 with its cheat modes activated as I can.

The team manning the laser weapons on my Leopard drop ship are just as much of idiots as my lancemates and the allies that show up on beachhead missions. The moment an enemy is destroyed with a laser, it immediately starts swinging around to me while it is still firing.

Lancemates are also stupid about keeping pace with you. If they are faster than you, you’ll watch them repeatedly alternate between full throttle and slowing down instead of maintaining a slower speed. In one case, I was walking slowly and the one next to me was shaking because it kept trying to go fast and go slow at the same time.

The allies are generally useless because my group can handle things by ourselves and they like to crowd around me until the enemy is close enough that they finally spot them and then they start attacking. There’s been more than one time they’ve shot me because I was in between them and an enemy. In return, when the mission is complete and we watch the bigger dropships coming down, they tend to get repeated double barrel blasts in the cockpit from my Gauss weapons.

The game has a few glitches still. Enemies occasionally fall through the surface and move around underneath it. If you’re supposed to clear out a certain number and this happens, you either need to move far enough away that the game erases it and pops in a new enemy, or you restart the mission.

If an enemy is killed or a mission ends while a laser is firing, sometimes the sound from the laser will keep playing and drown things out a bit. Really annoying when it happens early in a mission. Things like ECM can still be active after an enemy is killed. Might make sense if they have their own internal power source, but that’s not explained in the game.

Two other glitches to watch out for. If you sell a lot of weapons one right after the other, it can cause a memory leak that will take up all of your available RAM and crash the game. Similarly, when you have a lot of saved games, it takes a lot longer to delete individual saves. About a month ago, I kept getting notifications that my cloud storage was getting full. The save files are not that big, in the KB range, but there’s a limit of 250 or so that you can have.
 

That teleportation/spawn point I mentioned before is probably an anti-camping measure in the game. If it detects you’re staying in one spot and picking off enemies from afar, it may make one suddenly appear close to you if you move.

If you’ve got time during a mission, like when you’re waiting for a new round of enemies to show up during a battlefield or warzone mission, use an energy weapons to carve away at buildings and obstacles. It can give you a better line of sight. The buildings will have jagged edges as the internal structure is exposed, but that lets you see slightly more in between and you can spot enemies better.

There’s probably better weapons for other situations, but the Gauss still works best for me. At extreme distances of 2+ km, it doesn’t do much beyond a light tapping on the door, but someone usually answers the door and I can go into woodpecker mode as they head towards me. But if you’re assigned to destroy a building that has the metal walls that crumble when they’re hit, the Ultra AC/5 works really good on those.

The designers of the game probably didn’t account for players like me that just keep playing for a long time after the campaigns are done. I think my character is approaching 300 years old and still looks like he’s 30.

683

Still getting through ME3, taking it slow actually so I can enjoy it more. In the middle of this, I started playing Warframe so I have something action-oriented that I can play in short bursts and not worry about finishing eventually. 10 hours in and it’s been enjoyable so far. Haven’t spent a dime on it and don’t plan to yet.

684

Helldivers is back baby!

Also, Warframe is addictive.

685

I like both those games. But im 100% broken, im not a multiplayer fan, and I love stories, but games get about 1 week from me before I burn out.

I have been “playing” war frame since Alpha. Great game, the mobile port is insane in how perfectly it carbon copies the PC version.

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686

I think I figured out why I like the Nightstar so much. Not only is having the two Gauss rifles great for long distance weapons, but it’s the closest 'Mech that MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries has to the ED-209.

687

A few more MW5:Mercs tips and info.

Get in the first and last shot. The Mechs being dropped from a hovering drop ship aren’t fully powered up yet, so hitting them while they’re dropping may inflict heavy damage. Likewise, when you reach the pick-up point, your enemies stand down and you might be able to take one more out with an alpha strike or double Gausses.

Similar to this, it doesn’t matter where your lancemates are. As long as you’re in the pick-up circle, everyone gets a ride home.

When selling off excess inventory, only sell the level 0, 1 and 2 items. Keep level 3 and above. Some of the side jobs you get at the Cantinas are looking for level 3 or 4 equipment.

You have unlimited capacity for Mechs in cold storage. If you have plenty of cash, dump bigger Mechs you get from winning battles in there. Rewards from Cantina side jobs for specific Mechs are usually higher than what you could sell them for.

The only physics of consequence in this game involve gravity. You can climb up any surface as long as it isn’t too steep or the ledge is above where you would step. Doesn’t matter if it’s ice. You won’t slip. And as long as you have one foot standing on a surface, you won’t tip over.

If you just want to have some battles and rack up cash, look for missions rated between 25 and 50. Below 25, Warzones and Battlefields are slow paced and you’ll get bored waiting for the next group to show up. That’s most of the time. Sometimes the game ramps up the difficulty mid-battle. Above 50, you’re putting more into repairs after the battle.

For the Beachhead missions, if you’d rather not having the allies crowding around you, don’t destroy all of the radar dishes. That will prevent them from being added to the mission. You can also destroy as much of the area as you want. You’re not penalized if you happen to hit the big guns you’re trying to capture, even if you accidentally do it so many times they blow up.

Finally, a technical note. If you’re a bit frustrated that there is only a 2x zoom in a game set in a future with technology beyond what we have now with higher optical zoom on cameras and interpolated zoom, it’s a limitation of the game. The playfield is rendered at 1x, 1.35x and 2x scale. (Why 1.35x and not an easier 1.5x?) Higher resolutions would take up more memory. Any mods to increase the resolution are just scaling what’s there and may look worse.

688

So, I’m still stuck on playing Warframe. I think I’m on day 105 of playing the game going by the daily login reward count and it’s been a fun experience still. I have spent money on it, but compared to Division 2 (another game I spent money on after initial purchase), I feel better spending it since the devs seem to be very active for such an old game.

689

Here’s a game that’s releasing next year: Desktop Survivors 98, the “chaotic roguelite dungeon crawler that unfolds right on your desktop.” Endless waves of enemies and randomly generated rooms in short bursts for easy gameplay and taking a break whenever you want. There’s a little bit of Robotron: 2048 thrown in as well.

In the system requirements on the Steam Store page, it’s playable on Windows 7 and 8 with DirectX 9.0c, but the Steam client requires Windows 10, so that implies there should be a way to buy it without using Steam.

Here’s the trailer so you can see it in a larger version than what’s on that page.

 

And since it was mentioned in the comments as an inspiration, here’s the original “Animator vs. Animation” video.

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690

Thinking about buying Civilization VII when it comes out… Not like I need another game to play, but… :woozy_face:

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691

I know the feeling - Diablo IV keeps going on sale at the Steam store… still not sure I want to pay $35 for it, though.

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692

I’m playing Rogue Trader, the other western RPG that came out last year. Fun in the Warhammer 40k setting, so over the top ridiculous, with a bit too much system mastery for me. Combat can be very swingy.

693

I was looking at BAR (Beyond All Reason) for a while yesterday. It’s free. It’s a bit too much for me. I like strategy games, but only as a casual player.

694

Hunh, Total Annihilation III is out I see. Or Maybe Supreme Commander III?

695

A buddy of mine played through it and he’s got a couple thousand hours on Diablo three and said four was pretty meh, and only worth it if its $20

696

Coming soon to an arcade near you:

697

Does it have really frustrating refueling and landing sequences like the classic NES Top Gun?

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698

Don’t know. It probably also won’t let you return to base upside down like F-15 Strike Eagle did.

If Squirrel With a Gun was not to your liking, but you like puzzle games, maybe give Squirreled Away a chance this summer.

699

Who decided that a megacity in MW5: Mercs should have active artillery? Did the city government or planetary government decide they hate the people living there? There is no way for them to repel invading mechs without causing serious damage to their own buildings.

700

Yet more MW5: Mercs tips.

On the Beachhead missions, sometimes it does matter if you blow things up or take out your annoying allies. On some of the harder-rated missions, it gave me nothing at the end because I did. The bad thing is sometimes shooting one of them is unavoidable because they crowd around you like idiots and will dance around you while you’re trying to shoot.

Something I completely missed is when you’ve taken a multiple-mission contract, you can check the details of each mission in between battles. I was trying to remember what type of mission each one was and was walking blind into the 2nd, 3rd or 4th battle. (I still have the gripe that because you travel by dropship, you should be able to see the terrain before you start the mission.)

Related to that, if your multi-mission is on a planet with a cantina, don’t forget to check it in between missions. You can pick up more new tasks that way. If you’ve got room, take a task you know you won’t complete to free up a spot in the cantina, then abandon it when a good task shows up.

Jamie Hyneman may want big boom, but you do not. Watch out for red cylinders on the ground next to buildings. Some contain flammable gasses that will damage your mech if you walk over them.

If your lancemates have their weapons pointed in a specific direction, it means there’s an enemy thataway. Might be too far for them to do anything about it, but maybe you can.

Though your Gauss can reach out and touch someone far away, you might have to send your lancemates within 600 meters to get that someone to wake up and start moving towards you. Recall the lancemate as soon as the other guy can be seen.

I finally added some of the newer DLC packs. The one I activated is for a specific timeframe, so I will have to start a completely new campaign to get the full benefit, but it’s already added interesting things:

  • Two new Mechs: The Crusader and the Longbow. The latter is a heavy mech that can use hand weapons for melee fights. The Longbow is a missile launcher with an extremely wide body. It can get stuck when it bumps up against things.
  • New Infiltration mission. Go all sneaky with a quartet of light mechs during bad weather to find things. Occasionally will have to rescue an ally or destroy a powered-down enemy. Still learning how to play these as it’s way different that my usual style.
  • Competing mercenary groups. Some will fight alongside you, some will fight you. Your dad’s friend cuts you in on the deal he had with your dad: get intel on friendly and unfriendly mercenary groups and get big bucks.
  • When merc groups fight with you, they’re just as useless and all of the other allies since there’s no “go away, son, you bother me” commands for them.

There’s also new terrains:

  • Hoodoo Desert: stone columns with dust devils and other ground-level wind.
  • A Rubellite version of the Tourmaline Desert. Instead of all rocks, some of it is pretty translucent crystals. (The regular rocky Tourmaline Desert is now labeled as “(black)” to distinguish it from Rubellite.)
  • Scrapyard: a Tourmaline Desert (black) where lots starship hulls and other scrap metal has been collected. The wind picks up resonances from the metal and makes it harder to hear aircraft before you see them.

Whichever version of the Tourmaline Desert you fight on, I haven’t found a reason why so many starships have crash-landed on them, turning into rusted-out husks and embedded into the landscape.

701

I’m still playing Warframe, but now also occasionally playing Anno 2205 for when I just want to build stuff. I like building stuff, but I noticed I’m more casual with it than I thought. I don’t find the more serious building games like Factorio or Cities: Skyline to be as fun.

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