I have rebounded in No Man's Sky again. I have speedrun the expedition 20 event and holy all these new features are so cooooooool.
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
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I got Krita on Steam, am drawing
Cult of the Lamb, it's well suited to Steam Deck gaming and my desktop is currently in the back of a moving truck
Good luck with your move! We moved, one year, from Vancouver to Ottawa, and for 6 weeks the movers had No Idea where the truck was. It was so stressful!
Assetto Corsa
Been driving various racecars on Tail of the Dragon. Good fun.
I never got to finish FFX and lost my PS2 memory card, but recently got another copy and played a little bit of it earlier this week. So I am excited to some day get back to where I was. I basically got to the level up map thing before turning off for the night.
I am also excited because I'm waiting until I have time this weekend to experience Viva Piñata basically as blind as I can on 360 this weekend since I think the last time I played was a demo from around the time the first version of the 360 came about.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Need to play it again for the fourth time now
Currently pulling my hair out with Tactics Ogre: Reborn. Got kind of fed up with the changes from the older games so halfway through I decided to blitz through the game and avoid anything optional; currently at the last few fights before the final boss and am feeling very afraid I'm going to get stuck at the end...
You're not the only one working your way through it. There's so much I like about it, but, damn, it's hard to love. I just got to act 4, myself, and keep having the thought "this would be nice to have a friend who has played the shit out of this game to give me some guidance here and there"
Lol I feel you. I did just manage to beat the game yesterday without too much headache so hopefully you can too. As long as you can keep clearing battles without a ton of restarts I think you'll be ok. Just make sure to have a lot of mana restoration items haha
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Still dividing my time between trudging through the Chernobyl exclusion zone in STALKER: Anomaly and perusing scripts and configs to resolve conflicts and crashes as I either discover them or provoke them by continuing to either tweak existing mods on my list or add more to the pile.
I get like this frequently with modding, I don't know if it's a latent perfectionist streak or just your garden variety hyperfixation but I tend to lose myself in the desire to make everything just right and get stuck on that over actually playing. But I think I'm having fun with it as I'm hacking my way through making compatibility patches so maybe it doesn't matter?
It would be fun to actually finish the Mercenary storyline though. I haven't even progress past the starting areas of Cordon/Meadow/Garbage yet...
There's a reason why heavily moddable games tend to bring comments like "yeah, so I played the game for 3 hours and spent 20 modding it" - the latter can be just as fun as the game itself.
I'd be curious about more of your thoughts about Anomaly as you continue your playthrough. While I'm not planning to jump back into Stalker any time soon, I'm always on the lookout for what to do when I do so more info could be useful. No pressure though!
This is far from my first time in Anomaly, so I think that's a reason my posts have been a bit briefer than my usual rambling. But I can try to be a bit more elaborate going forward. What to do in Anomaly is so heavily dependent on what modpack (or custom modlist) you're running though. They can play out completely differently and sometimes have entirely different approaches. Like, playing GAMMA and playing EFP are entirely different animals.
How much have you played before?
Anomaly? Never tried it. The only big Stalker mod I played was Call of Chernobyl, other than that I dabbed with small balancing mods, gear additions etc.
Besides, all of my Stalker modding experience happened 5 or so years ago, I'm sure things changed quite a bit since then.
Best way to think of Anomaly is as the successor to Call of Chernobyl. It's really an incredibly impressive project. As I'm sure you know from your time modding the landscape used to be a complete clusterfuck with CoC and Misery and hundreds of forks and submods and what have you. Anomaly basically collected and unified everything into a single stable common platform to work from.
At this point the modding scene of STALKER is probably on the level of non-Skyrim Bethesda games and there are not only thousands of mods but dozens of high quality precompiled modpacks that let you plug-and-play modlists with hundreds of mods without issue. Or you can be a deranged nutter like me and setup your own modpack.
If you used to play close to vanilla CoC back in the day you'll be amazed what the community have been able to wring out of this old ass engine.
I only heard a little bit of Anomaly in the past but I'm glad it got to such point now. Looks like I'll have plenty to play with once I get back to it.
Does Anomaly use the updated open source version of the engine or is it running on the game one?
Yep, Anomaly is built on the 64-bit Xray-Monolith engine, which is derived from GSC open sourcing the X-ray Engine back in the day. Though a lot of work has been done on it over the years at this point. Hell, there are two recent further engine forks being worked on right now that will hopefully be merged into main one day: one implementing dual-render PiP scopes in a very smart way with negligible performance loss and one implementing rudimentary multithreading that can give particularly weaker systems a huge performance boost.
The engine guys working on Anomaly are wizards. Those and the guys making custom shaders. The game looks absolutely fantastic these days, almost as good as STALKER 2 - and that is UE5.
Sounds exciting, especially the multithreading part since CPU has always been my main bottleneck. Hopefully it'll make it in by the time I decide to give it a shot. Not gonna lie, while I was hopeful about Stalker modding in the early days I didn't expect it to go this far. It's a nice surprise.
CPU has been a bottleneck for CoC/Anomaly forever since Xray was originally made in that time when people thought super fast single core processing was the future. So GSC optimised it for that idea. Instead it turned out clock speed has pretty much flatlined since then and multithreading was the future. Plus it doesn't help that all the offline simulation of what the world is doing in the background offsceen is incredibly CPU heavy.
STALKER modding is absolutely crazy, not quite as large as Skyrim but also harder to quantify since in addition to the by-now massive Anomaly scene there is also a massive scene that's still spread out over other older offshoots, particularly in eastern Europe. They're very big on modding and remaking the original trilogy there (STALKER is huge there in general). Hell, I actually have Oblivion Lost Remake installed and ready to go, which is a fan-recreation of the original vision of Shadow or Chernobyl, recreated from design documents and early dev builds that have been leaked. GSC famously had to cut down their vision massively to get the game out the door and OLR 2.5 has been described by many as the closest thing we're ever going to get to what they actually wanted to make (Oblivion Lost was the original title before it became SoC).
Yeah, I spent WAY TOO MUCH time with Crysis (both playing and modding) so I'm familiar with the CPU issue. Can't predict everything, unfortunately.
Good to know about the Oblivion Lost remake - I did play one of the leaked beta builds before so seeing a more finalised version of what could've been should make for an interesting experience. I have a lot to look forward to, thanks!
You're welcome, always happy to talk STALKER! If you want to try OLR, make sure you grab the 2.5 version as they apparently started inserting more liberal/fanfictiony changes in version 3+. You can download it here (don't worry, the installer lets you chose English as language).
Ohh, that's some important info. Appreciate the warning.
I heard the A-life implementation in 3.0 is very impressive, so there's that. But yeah it's kind of unavoidable with projects like this. Same thing goes for the Unofficial Patch of VtM: Bloodlines. Eventually the fan group dev team starts running low on material to restore but want to keep working and so start extrapolating single lines of unimplemented code references into full fledged quests and taking throwaway sentences from design documents and turning them into wholesale mechanics and stuff like that.
Eh, I survived retail A-life I can survive an imperfect one in a mod if it means no fanfic additions. They might be interesting for later playthroughs but I'd rather play something closer to the original vision. Actually, did they specify which version they're basing this on? Oblivion Lost had quite a few changes during development if I recall correctly, I'm curious which was the chosen one.
Anyway, as long as older versions are available it's fine. At least they aren't trying to justify those new changes as "lore accurate" and push them on everyone like a certain Skyrim modder who shall not be named, right? Please say yes.
I think OLR is based around circa build 1935, but it's using stuff from all the early builds and also incorporating material from the design documents heavily.
Anyway, as long as older versions are available it's fine. At least they aren't trying to justify those new changes as "lore accurate" and push them on everyone like a certain Skyrim modder who shall not be named, right? Please say yes.
I'm not sure about this honestly as a lot of the community is in russian, but they have the older version up at least so that's a good sign.
Hmm, I think that's a later version than what I tried. Makes sense though since that was one of the most "finished" of the old versions, I believe. Sounds good.
Still playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance but it's becoming a bit of a chore now so Colin McRae Rally 2.0 on PS1 also gets a shout out.
FFTA was the game that got me into trpgs. Absolutely love it. Character progression feels so good and I love the ability to pull a little bit from one job to another via the way the skills system works. I've been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn lately and it certainly has a much better plot, but I'd like it if character growth was closer to FFTA.
I have a lot of opinions about the plot to FFTA though. Marche frankly feels like the villain to me. His stated goal is literally to destroy the world.
Broke out the GameCube. SSX3 and Double Dash.
Ssx3 is so good, I think it might be a perfect game.
Finally started (and finished) Mario Odyssey. Wonder what happened to Nintendo, cuz this game is a pure love letter to Mario fans. Currently doing after game bonus stuff.
Witcher 3. Only 15 minutes in and I want to stop playing it already, which is a new record for how quickly I've got bored of this game in the half a dozen times I've tried to stick with it in the past.
I need to stop listening to people who tell me to give it one more try. I just don't like this game.
I don't know how you would know that after 15 minutes, buy ok...
the half a dozen times I've tried to stick with it in the past
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The recent bloodletting of New World and release of its expansions for free drew me back to check things out a bit.
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Wildmender which I'm sure I got in a humble bundle. Both me and my wife have one. I ran into it as I was browsing my massive steam library for a casual game.
Its an open world sandbox survival. Clean simple graphics. Not really building but I get Don't Starve vibes but it's extremely forgiving.
The best part is the survival mechanics. You awaken in a ruined dessert world and work towards restoring it.
You need to stay hydrated and fed. So you need to grow stuff to eat and keep your water bottle topped off.
Its extremely gratifying to start off with just a desert with a small pool of water and end up with an oasis.
You can play solo or up to 4 player online/LAN.
The storyline is pretty good too. Combat is fairly easy but that's coming from a seasoned gamer. I don't think I'd die except from fall damage.
Getting back into overwatch 2 cos they brought back 6v6 open que.
And it's free, works on Linux without anti-cheat hassles.
I'm replaying Witcher 3 Blood and Wine. I had a completed game save that I jumped into. It only took me an hour or two to get back into the control scheme, which was a pleasant surprise.
Went back to Celeste to do some D-sides. Best platformer ever, no contest :)
Some Dune Imperium on the iPad with some Ballatro games mixed in.
Some WoW, some Zero-K.
Which version of WoW?
The mainstream, not the classic, usually horde on Staghelm. I did try Classic a bit, as I missed the challenge, but I had no playmates n classic for a while and when I came back they'd gotten to Cata; and that's when I noped out.
Halo 2: Anniversary
I'm gonna be honest, "Gravemind" broke me, I wasn't able to finish the game on Heroic. It just made me miserable and not wanting to play at that point - I like challenge but this ain't it.
This sucks because Normal was both too easy and the unnecessary tip pop-ups often showed up in the middle of combat, blocking anything in the centre of the screen.
Outside of difficulty, this level, as well as the rest of the game, was really cool. Infighting was a nice mix-up of the usual game flow, Covenant city (both versions) looks great, though that's pretty much a given. All in all a solid experience, even if I'm kinda meh on the story (and I definitely could not care less about Gravemind itself).
The ending was as sudden as I've heard, I'd probably be pretty annoyed if I wasn't able to jump straight into 3.
I appreciate them doing something new with switching between the Chief and Arbiter but It feels like they could do more to differentiate the two, if only gameplay wise.
Anniversary soundtrack is a bit more of a mixed bag compared to H1A. I find myself more prone to switching to the old style just due to music - something that didn't really happened before. It's not bad but there are times where it's noticeably worse than classic.
One thing that caught my attention when flipping between the new and remastered presentation was the art styles, specifically Cortana's. I finally had a chance to take a closer look thanks to her showing up as a decently sized hologram and all I can say is: something about her face just looks off.
All in all, it was an enjoyable experience but also my least favourite one among the four games I played so far.
Halo 3
Just started the game so things will probably change but so far playing on Heroic feels way better than anywhere in H2. Lets hope it stays that way.
As for the game, it started rather weirdly if taken in context of H2's ending. Dunno if this will be explained or not but it gave me a bit of a whiplash. It looks really good though.
I'll write a bit more once I get a bit further into the game.
Stardew Valley
I decided to check out the game on a whim and haven't really spent too much time with it but so far my main takeaway is "man, this music makes me want to play The Sims", which is exactly what I did (I went with TS3 this time). I mean... it nice, I guess?
I like my cosy vibes as much as anyone but SV doesn't really do it for me. I have no idea why but something just doesn't gel with me in this game.
What I do know is that I hate games that make me feel like I need to constantly be on the move and trying to "catch up" due to time speed - SV's time scale does exactly that. Thankfully this issue was easily resolved since there's a mod that let you control this part of the game in a pretty granular fashion. I'd say this should be a basic option in every single game with day/night cycle but people (especially devs) can be really touchy about giving players the ability to customise their experience so I'll take what I can get.
I want to like it and I do think it's a good game so I'll give it a bit more time. Maybe it'll work out once the early game adjustment passes.
I’m glad you made it through Halo 2 okay. I think I mentioned it a few weeks back but I definitely found 2 to be the hardest in the series on higher difficulties. Most of my love for Halo 2 came from the multiplayer actually. Dual wielding SMGs on Bloodgultch was peak video gaming for me. I still think CE is overall my favourite Halo game but 2 has always held a special place in my heart.
Yeah, you certainly did. It's not a huge issue honestly - difficulty was high? That sucks but I simply lowered it, whatever.
My main problem, which isn't even a real problem, has to do with the atmosphere. Playing MCC made me realise that I simply prefer the (early?) book and Reach approach of subdued, bittersweet and somewhat tragic tone over the "action hero saves the day" of the mainline games. That's just personal preference though.
Overall, my issues with the game aren't with its quality, it's more of a "me" thing.
I have no doubt multiplayer, whether co-op or versus, would be a good fun, it's just not something I can comment on. I have no one to play with in co-op and I don't really care about PvP any more. Gameplay does feel like it would work great in that environment and the nostalgia factor can not be understated - I also have plenty of games that might not be my favourites (or the best at what they do) but my memories with them leave me with a soft spot that doesn't care about objective facts.
It was an engaging experience and that's exactly what I hoped for when starting MCC for the first time.
Fair enough. Nostalgia is definitely a huge part of why I love the Halo so much. I still think I’d like them if I tried them today for the first time, but my history playing the game for so long definitely improves my opinion on it for sure. I’m glad people like you are still able to enjoy the game without the decades of nostalgia for the series to sway you. The early games are fantastic.
The fact these games hold up as well as they do is a testament to their quality. There's plenty of even newer titles which can't boast about similar results.
Also, I'm a bit "specific" (well... weird) in terms of what does or doesn't gel with me and I often tend to prefer less popular or worse options. Going back to hugely successful titles can be a rather unique experience for me - every game is a surprise in that way, I guess.
Seeing these remarks on the H2A soundtrack after having previously gone back and forth a bit on it makes me feel guilty, hopefully the callout of the difference didn't lessen the experience. I don't know about you, but I'm often blissfully ignorant until something just slightly negative is pointed out and then it becomes a bother. Glad you enjoyed it, either way! The H3 start was jarring for everyone though. I think one of the books gets into the details for what happens between 2 and 3, but not any of the ones I read. The short version is "Chief really wanted to go home to earth, so he got on a covenant ship going home. When they didn't go straight to the surface, he tried to do the sonic adventure 2 opening and surfed on a door from orbit down to the ground"
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Lollipop Chainsaw Repop. It's very silly and mostly fun, but very button-mashy, I can't reliably trigger the more lengthy combos, and the cut scenes go on way too long.
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