What Video Games Are You Playing?

[Olivia Bauer]

[Skittler]

Been playing V-Rally 3 and Socom II on the PS2 a lot.

[ER]

We been finalizing our three-year run at the ever-glitchy Fallout 4 by walking through the Commonwealth Wasteland with our level 78 character and taking turns killing everybody everywhere for the heck of it.

[Olivia Bauer]

[Svengoolie 3]

I have learned something from playing this game: planets floating in space make a deep,  thunderous rumbling sound.  Hmm,  I've studied astronomy and never learned that before...

[Couchtr26]

Mount and Blade: Warband 1257 AD mod. It is my go to when I am bored or want to just mindlessly meander around in a game.

[ER]

Mount and Blade: Warband 1257 AD mod. It is my go to when I am bored or want to just mindlessly meander around in a game.

I have seen that on YouTube and thought it looked good.

[Couchtr26]

Mount and Blade: Warband 1257 AD mod. It is my go to when I am bored or want to just mindlessly meander around in a game.

I have seen that on YouTube and thought it looked good.

As far as Mount and Blade, 1257 is my preferred.  It's only downfall is it is no longer being developed or at least not actively being developed.  The time period is excellent high knights and chivalry.  My favorite memory in game was running through tournaments in Italy and knocking the pope out religiously.  He has a pompous attitude in game. 

Also, joined a massive French siege of London.  Base game is different in how they work.  You siege and initial fight on the battlements than fighting in the keep.  This one you can have a few stages of a siege capturing the outer wall, inner wall, main city and keep.  The rush into a tower and fighting as your allies, congested, press you from the back and you fight to move forward.  More historical than base, well base is more a historic amalgm. 

Usually, you'll end up back down.  I love to use that time in 1257 to fight tournaments in Eastern Europe or The Holy Land.  North Africa can be fun too but cities are a bit far between there.

Some other great options are L'Aigle (Napoleonic Single Player), Blood Eagle (Viking Conquest but Blood Eagle adds a few features), Gekukojo Daimyo Edition for the conquest of Japan, A Song of Ice and Fire for fantasy (can be hard as hell), high fantasy I don't prefer Pendor can't remember name but P also and has the Reich Des Drachen (also adds mercenary enlistment, great to win some coin without much invested), and Tainted Paths (huge, just huge).

If you haven't had a chance Mount and Blade is just great.  The more you are willing to invest in how you play and act as a character, the more fun it becomes.  Just grab Warband, with the change allowing for auto lance couching, base game just isn't worth it.  (I'm not sure if you have but giving a general endorsement.)

[Couchtr26]

I have learned something from playing this game: planets floating in space make a deep,  thunderous rumbling sound.  Hmm,  I've studied astronomy and never learned that before...

My issue as well but hey where else can you just space truck, lose a ship, come back to explore, set course for a new system, alt tab out to find a podcast and come back as you were hurtling into the star with all systems fried and it is just an inevitable wait for the end?

[ER]

We're slamming Red Dead Redemption 2. More of the same as RDR from 2010, so it's darn near flawless.

[Svengoolie 3]

[ER]

FALLOUT 76. UP TO LEVEL FIVE. ENJOYING IT SO FAR BUT IT'S DEFINITELY DIFFERENT. LIKE BEING IN FALLOUT PREHISTORY.

[ER]

Up to level seven and Fallout 76 is much better than I'd expected.

[Svengoolie 3]

[ER]

Okay, after nine hours of personal play (seventeen hours collectively) I will now detail Fallout 76's damning flaw, and that is the vending/economics system. It is so bad it hamstrings the game and might make me walk away (for a while).

All else works, in every other respect it is NOT a bad game, but this is almost insuperable.

In past Fallout games you looted, discovered, were awarded, or crafted items that you could then use or take and sell to vendors and buy upgrades and new weapons and armor and stimpaks, which function as the in-gaming healing potions. 76 also has vendors, all robotic, no problem, but instead of items you acquire coming in many prices, almost everything you bring in is worth a cap or two only, with robots themselves:

A. Carrying only 200 caps

B. When you buy something from them it doesn't increase their on-hand caps as it did in every other Fallout game I played

C. When one robot runs out of caps they all do across the game map since they share internal programming

D. They do not refill for.....and here no one is sure. Twenty-four in-game hours? Twenty-four real-world hours? Never?

In theory Bethesda did this to try to encourage players to craft their own materials and to trade with one another, but that does not work well. The result instead is I/we/everyone wanders this NPC-less world starved for ammo and better weapons and the ability to readily heal, making it so difficult to fight and heal and get better weapons gameplay loses all enjoyment, leaving a player fleeing fights she or he should be taking on.

Major mistake.

This design aggravated us so much last night my husband finally stopped playing and looked at me over where I was playing and said, "I can't take this anymore, you?"

Having just limped and sneaked my way across a quarter off the map for the last real-time half-hour to try to see if the robot vendor in a church in the west had caps yet (unlike the last two I'd visited) I wholeheartedly agreed.

Absent a game to play, we could think of absolutely nothing else to do alone in that room at night, so we went to sleep.