From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


Quick! Look at your calendars! Do you see what I see? It's the start
of a new month. Which, more importantly, means that we've just
finished an OLD month. 30 long days during which we all had time to
spend playing computer games. But what games were we all playing? Oh,
if only we had some sort of forum thread where we could share our
monthly playlists....


Hey, wait! We do! ;-)



Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* The Surge 2
* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
* Unpacking



Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* The Surge 2
It's all about the level design, really.

That's the reason I didn't have much fun with this game. You'd think
it might be the mechanics; "The Surge 2" is a Souls-like game and
that's not really my thing, usually. And I'll admit, I'm not crazy
about the gameplay either. But I don't hate it. It's fine, for what it
is.

The game's gimmick is that --in addition to the usual slash-n-block
common to the genre-- you need to target body parts. When they get
weak enough, you whack them off, and then you use those limbs to get
new gear. It's actually quite rewarding to pull off a combo and get
the schematics for new armor or weapons; it's not always possible to
pull off. With some enemies, it's easier to target unarmored limbs
because they'll die faster... at the cost to your equipment. So
there's actually some strategy in the fights.

I could have done without all the crafting though; lopping off limbs
gets you the plans for the gear; you still have to salvage the parts
to actually build it all. Salvage is found either through exploring or
(you guessed it) lopping off more limbs. But it can really expensive
to build and max-out a suit of armor and the best weapons... and that
can require a lot of grinding monsters by revisiting already explored
locations to kill all the re-spawns.

Which gets me back to the level design... because navigating the map
just isn't much fun. None of it is particularly imaginative in design,
and very little of it is interesting to look at. You wander the ruins
of a futuristic city and it all looks very bland. It's fairly small
too, and the straight path is always blocked off; getting from point A
to point B always requires two or three detours. It gets worse at the
halfway point of the game too, when a disaster hits the (already
devastated) city. Not only does this make the navigating the city even
more convoluted (say goodbye to your internal map) but everything is
covered in rather drab looking techno-goop that makes everything even
more of an eyesore. I really disliked the map of this game.

The first "Surge" game wasn't particularly novel in concept either,
but it had a vision to it that this game lacks. "The Surge 2" has no
distinct character to it; it feels like the mechanics of the first
game bolted to a fairly uninteresting open-world concept and an
uninteresting story and character. Whacking the monsters are fun (even
if they do lack in variety) but it's not enough to carry the game by
itself... not when all the other elements are working against it. If
you want a sci-fi "Dark Souls" game, play the original "The Surge".
That game had character. The sequel feels drab and lifeless in
comparison.



* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
It took me a while to get into "Bannerlord". I'll be honest; this
isn't really a game that's up my alley. I tend to prefer games with a
more focused narrative over open-sandbox titles. Still, I'd had fun
with the first game, and I was hoping to recreate that experience with
the sequel. But my initial reaction was quite cool; I was having
difficulty wrapping my head around what the game was expecting from
me. Then, it struck me: this game is "Elite"... but medieval.

It's not really, of course. "Elite" (and its various successors) have
these huge algorithmically-generated universes and the world of
"Bannerlord" is identical to all playthroughs. But there are
similarities too. You can play the game as a raider, or as a trader,
or just an adventurer... or you can try to amass influence and work
your way up to supreme leader of the world. In truth, there are likely
as many differences between "Elite" and "Bannerlord" as there are commonalities... but that early epiphany was what allowed me to keep
at the game.

"Bannerlord" is a weird cross between Elite-style open-world
adventure, RPG and strategy. It's actually the latter that sets the
game apart from its competitors; in this game, you're not just limited
to parties of six or ten or even twenty. You can --with enough time
and effort-- field truly massive armies of several hundred soldiers,
and watching them tear across the battlefield to smash into the enemy formations is what I find most impressive (and fun!) about this game.
As a strategy game, it's fairly limited; you've only limited control
over the tactics your units use, and --because you're in the field
with them-- little time and ability to oversee their actions anyway.
Then again, this is fairly realistic to how chaotic medieval scrums
really were, and the game captures the mad and deadly press of melee
combat fairly well. It's a shame the AI isn't good for much more than
'charge at the enemy en masse' though.

As an RPG, the game reminded me most of the old Microprose classic, "Darklands". The combat is a lot more action oriented (it's very
click-heavy and, mechanically, feels similar to an easy-mode Souls
game) but the division between menu-based interactions, and zooming
out for long-distance travel and zooming-in for close-range
adventuring is very much like the 1992 game. Similarly, a major goal
of the game is leveling up your influence and fame; that's almost more important to your success than how well you fight or how much gold you
have in your pocket. Heck, there's even a seasonal cycle where the
terrain moves between snow-covered ground and the greenery of summer.

But what "Bannerlord" lacks is character. It all feels so very generic
and procedural. Despite having played dozens of hours, I couldn't name
a single character from the game, and none of the civilizations you
encounter stand-out from one another. Everything feels very mechanical
and rote. Of course, the fantasy of the game is that you make your own narrative --'How I started as a no-name bandit and became a king of
the Battanians!'-- but because the characters in the game are so
formulaic, that story has no depth or twists. It's what I disliked the
most about the original, and what I find most tiresome about this game
too.

Still, there's nothing like the rush of riding alongside fifty knights
as you slam into a troop of infantry, or swallowing your fear as you
clumsily climb up a siege ladder knowing there will be dozens of
enemies waiting to chop you down the moment you crest the
crenellations. Even if the overall experience is lacking, the
individual moments in the game can be quite compelling. While I'll
never consider "Bannerlord" to be one of the greatest games (or even
one of my favorites), I'm happy with the time I spent with it.




* Unpacking
"Unpacking" is not what I expected. I thought it was going to be a
'cozy' puzzle game where you move into a room, arranging your belongs
to suit your tastes. And, well, I guess it is that, mostly. What I
didn't expect was that it would also tell a subtle tale through its
mechanics.

Because in "Unpacking", you aren't unpacking YOUR belongings. You're
doing the moving for a faceless and nameless protagonist and, in doing
so, learning about her likes and life. You pick up quickly that she
enjoyed art as a child and she played tabletop role-playing games in
college. You can tell her first serious relationship isn't going to
end well when her partner gives her practically no room for her
belongings. You realize she's made it as an illustrator of a
children's book when you unpack a half-dozen copies of the same
volume. The game doesn't tell you any of this directly; it only hints
at it through what belongings she keeps and discards through her
various moves. It's actually rather touching (if a bit voyeuristic).

It's not much of an actual game, though. There's a slight bit of
puzzling to it; there's only limited space where you can put all the
items, and certain items are only allowed in certain rooms
(roach poison, for instance, has to be put in the kitchen). You're
still given a lot of leeway, however, and it's never really difficult
(the only part that caused me any hardship was figuring out where to
put the protagonist's diploma in her 'first relationship' move; there
was no available wallspace to hang the thing. The answer was to hide
it under the bed. Like I said, that relationship wasn't going to
last). It's also not a very long game; I finished it in around two or
three hours. You can add some longevity to the gameplay by finding the
item combinations that unlock the various achievements, but even then
I can't imagine it'd give you more than a couple hours extra.

Personally, I would have preferred --and was expecting-- something a
bit more sandboxed and puzzley; an opportunity to make these rooms
more 'mine'. Still, even if it wasn't quite the game I wanted, neither
can I say I was disappointed with the experience. It was clever, it
was sweet and it didn't overstay its welcome. It was an unexpected
surprise and while I can't imagine I'll ever play it again, neither am
I sorry I spent the few hours I did with the game. It was a nice
change of pace from my usual.



---------------------------------------


Only three games this month. Then again, two of them featured vast
open worlds to explore. I need to stick to smaller, more linear games
if I want to get my monthly play-count number up. (It's all about the
Numbers with me ;-). But regardless of how many games I played, I had
fun.

What about you? Did you have fun playing with video games this month?
And which video games specifically were you playing? See, what really
I'm asking is:

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Rolled credits on two yes two! games!
Resident Evil 3 Remake (R3Make for insiders)
I 100%'d this game: 100%!! For this title that meant playing through multiple times up to the hardest difficulty, under a certain time limit, getting all the collectibles, etc. I mostly just never do this in titles,
but playing as Jill was so fun -- her attitude, the voice-acting quality mostly -- was so pleasurable I just kept coming back over and over. The
very final boss battle on the hardest difficulty was so frustrating -- and
had me questioning my life choices repeatedly -- but finally I got the hang
of the monster's attack 'tells' (in particular, and this is my big tip, remembering to keep looking as far up as possible so as to judge and anticipate his overhead slam move, and waiting to attack until you did a 'perfect dodge', which gives additional damage) and finished the last challenge: Immediately uninstalled the game after that haha! I'd done absolutely everything there was to do. It occurs to me I could attempt this again with say RE2make or RE4make, but it would very much depend on whether infinite ammo weapons are easy to get, which I haven't looked at. Anyway, a very fun pure action fps, and though generally regarded as inferior to RE2&4
I enjoyed it more than either of those titles.

REPLACED
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1663850/REPLACED/
This is a sidescroller, with some platforming, a limited form of
batman-arkham combat, and some talking to NPCs about their and your own circumstances, and learning more about the gameworld. To my mind, all these were engaging and interesting, with a couple big caveats: The main one for
me was traversing empty corridors took several beats longer than was necessary, as you go by repeated environmental elements with nothing to interact with. The thing is you traverse probably 100 of these corridors by the end, and the time really adds up; shortening these segments would have only have helped the game. The combat can seem repetitive, and requires
good twitch reactions; making powerups available earlier might have helped here. Otherwise, the plot is quite good, though it takes some patience to experience, and the environmental art is just outstanding, with superior lighting effects a standout. Do play on Easy difficulty -- you'll die a number of times mastering the combat -- and have some patience with
REPLACED's quirks, and you'll have a great time. Recommended! I played
this on PC Gamepass.

(I meant to finish up The Room -- still have two puzzle boxes to solve --
but just didn't get to it, hopefully soon!

rms

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 5/1/2026 8:46 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Quick! Look at your calendars! Do you see what I see? It's the start
of a new month. Which, more importantly, means that we've just
finished an OLD month. 30 long days during which we all had time to
spend playing computer games. But what games were we all playing? Oh,
if only we had some sort of forum thread where we could share our
monthly playlists....

Hey, wait! We do! ;-)

Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* The Surge 2
* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
* Unpacking

Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* The Surge 2

I still need to get around to this, I have it in GOG. Supposedly the
combat is better, overall game worse. *shrug*. I barely got through
the first one, with all the twisty little passages.

* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
It took me a while to get into "Bannerlord". I'll be honest; this
isn't really a game that's up my alley. I tend to prefer games with a
more focused narrative over open-sandbox titles.

* Unpacking

Personally, I would have preferred --and was expecting-- something a
bit more sandboxed and puzzley

Some conflicting signals here. You want more focused narrative, but
they you want more sandbox.

What about you? Did you have fun playing with video games this month?
And which video games specifically were you playing? See, what really
I'm asking is:

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Well I had fun too.

TL;DR
*** Crimson Desert
*** Goat Simulator 3
*** A Game About Digging a Hole
***** Alan Wake
** Spaceborne

Verbose Mode
*** Crimson Desert
I've been playing it a little, just like 45 minutes at lunch since I
don't want to overlap with my son's time since I'm playing it through
family sharing. I'm still somewhat intrigued by it, even though I'm
finding the controls annoying, the inventory junk too much, and figuring
out where to go / what to do difficult. Even though I'm not normally
much of a graphics whore, it still looks amazing. It feels more true
medieval than most games of it's ilk, notwithstanding the weird powers.

I suppose I can try to set it up to play offline? I'm not sure if that
will work since it's my son's not mine.

*** Goat Simulator 3
Well we had a blast the first couple times my daughter and I played it.
But that didn't last. Last weekened we only played it a little while.
Hey, it was 'free' (with Prime on Luna)

*** A Game About Digging a Hole
Another 'free' game on Prime with Luna. Destructible environment while digging a hole in your backyard. Mine stuff, sell stuff, get upgrades.
It's not a very long game, I maybe put 10 hours into it. It was
engrossing for that time. The end was not great. *shrug*.

***** Alan Wake
Wow, I can't say how much I liked this! I did finish it, I'd say it was
short but I was ready for it to end before it did. Somehow I'd
accidentally played it on hard, which explains why it was so... hard.
Somewhat like being in a Steven King novel, with lots of deadites to
kill. I would've never played this if it weren't for Control, horror
games I usually dislike.

** Spaceborne
A space sim "open universe" where you take missions, can mine, etc. Everything's very janky, and feels old, I had to look up how to continue
in the beginning as it's not obvious. You need to talk to a woman in
the slave pens, which I didn't think you could talk to because she was
in the slave pens. Getting repetitive 17 hours in doing the same fights
over and over again.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Same games. I finally resumed SW:TOR a couple days. I hope to do more
this weekend. Dang life!


Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Quick! Look at your calendars! Do you see what I see? It's the start
of a new month. Which, more importantly, means that we've just
finished an OLD month. 30 long days during which we all had time to
spend playing computer games. But what games were we all playing? Oh,
if only we had some sort of forum thread where we could share our
monthly playlists....

Hey, wait! We do! ;-)

Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* The Surge 2
* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
* Unpacking

Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* The Surge 2
It's all about the level design, really.

That's the reason I didn't have much fun with this game. You'd think
it might be the mechanics; "The Surge 2" is a Souls-like game and
that's not really my thing, usually. And I'll admit, I'm not crazy
about the gameplay either. But I don't hate it. It's fine, for what it
is.

The game's gimmick is that --in addition to the usual slash-n-block
common to the genre-- you need to target body parts. When they get
weak enough, you whack them off, and then you use those limbs to get
new gear. It's actually quite rewarding to pull off a combo and get
the schematics for new armor or weapons; it's not always possible to
pull off. With some enemies, it's easier to target unarmored limbs
because they'll die faster... at the cost to your equipment. So
there's actually some strategy in the fights.

I could have done without all the crafting though; lopping off limbs
gets you the plans for the gear; you still have to salvage the parts
to actually build it all. Salvage is found either through exploring or
(you guessed it) lopping off more limbs. But it can really expensive
to build and max-out a suit of armor and the best weapons... and that
can require a lot of grinding monsters by revisiting already explored locations to kill all the re-spawns.

Which gets me back to the level design... because navigating the map
just isn't much fun. None of it is particularly imaginative in design,
and very little of it is interesting to look at. You wander the ruins
of a futuristic city and it all looks very bland. It's fairly small
too, and the straight path is always blocked off; getting from point A
to point B always requires two or three detours. It gets worse at the
halfway point of the game too, when a disaster hits the (already
devastated) city. Not only does this make the navigating the city even
more convoluted (say goodbye to your internal map) but everything is
covered in rather drab looking techno-goop that makes everything even
more of an eyesore. I really disliked the map of this game.

The first "Surge" game wasn't particularly novel in concept either,
but it had a vision to it that this game lacks. "The Surge 2" has no
distinct character to it; it feels like the mechanics of the first
game bolted to a fairly uninteresting open-world concept and an
uninteresting story and character. Whacking the monsters are fun (even
if they do lack in variety) but it's not enough to carry the game by itself... not when all the other elements are working against it. If
you want a sci-fi "Dark Souls" game, play the original "The Surge".
That game had character. The sequel feels drab and lifeless in
comparison.

* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
It took me a while to get into "Bannerlord". I'll be honest; this
isn't really a game that's up my alley. I tend to prefer games with a
more focused narrative over open-sandbox titles. Still, I'd had fun
with the first game, and I was hoping to recreate that experience with
the sequel. But my initial reaction was quite cool; I was having
difficulty wrapping my head around what the game was expecting from
me. Then, it struck me: this game is "Elite"... but medieval.

It's not really, of course. "Elite" (and its various successors) have
these huge algorithmically-generated universes and the world of
"Bannerlord" is identical to all playthroughs. But there are
similarities too. You can play the game as a raider, or as a trader,
or just an adventurer... or you can try to amass influence and work
your way up to supreme leader of the world. In truth, there are likely
as many differences between "Elite" and "Bannerlord" as there are commonalities... but that early epiphany was what allowed me to keep
at the game.

"Bannerlord" is a weird cross between Elite-style open-world
adventure, RPG and strategy. It's actually the latter that sets the
game apart from its competitors; in this game, you're not just limited
to parties of six or ten or even twenty. You can --with enough time
and effort-- field truly massive armies of several hundred soldiers,
and watching them tear across the battlefield to smash into the enemy formations is what I find most impressive (and fun!) about this game.
As a strategy game, it's fairly limited; you've only limited control
over the tactics your units use, and --because you're in the field
with them-- little time and ability to oversee their actions anyway.
Then again, this is fairly realistic to how chaotic medieval scrums
really were, and the game captures the mad and deadly press of melee
combat fairly well. It's a shame the AI isn't good for much more than
'charge at the enemy en masse' though.

As an RPG, the game reminded me most of the old Microprose classic, "Darklands". The combat is a lot more action oriented (it's very
click-heavy and, mechanically, feels similar to an easy-mode Souls
game) but the division between menu-based interactions, and zooming
out for long-distance travel and zooming-in for close-range
adventuring is very much like the 1992 game. Similarly, a major goal
of the game is leveling up your influence and fame; that's almost more important to your success than how well you fight or how much gold you
have in your pocket. Heck, there's even a seasonal cycle where the
terrain moves between snow-covered ground and the greenery of summer.

But what "Bannerlord" lacks is character. It all feels so very generic
and procedural. Despite having played dozens of hours, I couldn't name
a single character from the game, and none of the civilizations you
encounter stand-out from one another. Everything feels very mechanical
and rote. Of course, the fantasy of the game is that you make your own narrative --'How I started as a no-name bandit and became a king of
the Battanians!'-- but because the characters in the game are so
formulaic, that story has no depth or twists. It's what I disliked the
most about the original, and what I find most tiresome about this game
too.

Still, there's nothing like the rush of riding alongside fifty knights
as you slam into a troop of infantry, or swallowing your fear as you
clumsily climb up a siege ladder knowing there will be dozens of
enemies waiting to chop you down the moment you crest the
crenellations. Even if the overall experience is lacking, the
individual moments in the game can be quite compelling. While I'll
never consider "Bannerlord" to be one of the greatest games (or even
one of my favorites), I'm happy with the time I spent with it.

* Unpacking
"Unpacking" is not what I expected. I thought it was going to be a
'cozy' puzzle game where you move into a room, arranging your belongs
to suit your tastes. And, well, I guess it is that, mostly. What I
didn't expect was that it would also tell a subtle tale through its mechanics.

Because in "Unpacking", you aren't unpacking YOUR belongings. You're
doing the moving for a faceless and nameless protagonist and, in doing
so, learning about her likes and life. You pick up quickly that she
enjoyed art as a child and she played tabletop role-playing games in
college. You can tell her first serious relationship isn't going to
end well when her partner gives her practically no room for her
belongings. You realize she's made it as an illustrator of a
children's book when you unpack a half-dozen copies of the same
volume. The game doesn't tell you any of this directly; it only hints
at it through what belongings she keeps and discards through her
various moves. It's actually rather touching (if a bit voyeuristic).

It's not much of an actual game, though. There's a slight bit of
puzzling to it; there's only limited space where you can put all the
items, and certain items are only allowed in certain rooms
(roach poison, for instance, has to be put in the kitchen). You're
still given a lot of leeway, however, and it's never really difficult
(the only part that caused me any hardship was figuring out where to
put the protagonist's diploma in her 'first relationship' move; there
was no available wallspace to hang the thing. The answer was to hide
it under the bed. Like I said, that relationship wasn't going to
last). It's also not a very long game; I finished it in around two or
three hours. You can add some longevity to the gameplay by finding the
item combinations that unlock the various achievements, but even then
I can't imagine it'd give you more than a couple hours extra.

Personally, I would have preferred --and was expecting-- something a
bit more sandboxed and puzzley; an opportunity to make these rooms
more 'mine'. Still, even if it wasn't quite the game I wanted, neither
can I say I was disappointed with the experience. It was clever, it
was sweet and it didn't overstay its welcome. It was an unexpected
surprise and while I can't imagine I'll ever play it again, neither am
I sorry I spent the few hours I did with the game. It was a nice
change of pace from my usual.

---------------------------------------

Only three games this month. Then again, two of them featured vast
open worlds to explore. I need to stick to smaller, more linear games
if I want to get my monthly play-count number up. (It's all about the
Numbers with me ;-). But regardless of how many games I played, I had
fun.

What about you? Did you have fun playing with video games this month?
And which video games specifically were you playing? See, what really
I'm asking is:

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

--
"Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." --Hebrews 11:6. TGIF & Lakers' win on May Day?
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 5/1/2026 1:24 PM, Justisaur wrote:

On 5/1/2026 8:46 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

TL;DR
*** Crimson Desert
*** Goat Simulator 3
*** A Game About Digging a Hole
***** Alan Wake
** Spaceborne

As usual, I forgot some

*** Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II
** Skydrift
** Reus
* Steredenn Binary Stars
* Tales of Monkey Island 1
** Besiege
* Simulakros
* Streets of Rogue

All of those were previous Freebies on Prime, with the exception of
Streets of Rogue which was on GOG (probably from Prime too though.) I
went through all of the games on Amazon Games I wanted to try in case
they were getting rid of them with Luna.

*** Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II
(freebie with Prime)
I played this a bit, I don't remember why I quit. Just long missions
maybe I can't save in the middle of, not a big deal as I could just
leave the game on? Might have just been too much management of units as
they each have several abilities and you have to keep switching between
them to use each. Seemed alright. It's interesting I think of rts more
like warcraft with all the build and resource management, where this
seems more like an rpg in that you have like 4 units to choose from and
use, each of the units has sub unit though and make sorties against the
enemy.

** Skydrift
Well for what it is, it probably deserves higher marks, but it's
basically an airplane arcade racing game, similar to mario cart or
whatever. Those type of games don't do it for me for long.

** Reuse
A sort of god game where you direct your giants to change or create
oceans and woods and then make some specific changes like adding mines
or evolving from rabbits to something else. It was fine the first few
levels but started getting too complicated with all the combos of stuff.

* Steredenn Binary Stars.
I know I played this, but It was near the beginning of the month and it
was so short I don't even remember anything about it. It can't have
been very good.

* Tales of Monkey Island 1
The Teltale version of Monkey Island, I wasn't enjoying the voice acting
or the puzzles. I got stuck early on a puzzle about putting something
on my sword and quit.

** Besiege
Construct a battle machine to attack and take objectives. Sort of a
puzzle game in how to build a machine in 3d. I found it quickly got to
a point I couldn't come up with anything that worked, and tore itself apart.

* Simulacros
A somewhat fun fps roguelite, but it had a point early on where it hung
I wasn't able to move or do anything. I wasn't willing to give it
another chance.

* Streets of Rogue
I was expecting something more from this as it was supposed to be a
excellent roguelite. It wasn't. The firing controls were poor to say
the least.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 1 May 2026 13:24:29 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
said this thing:

On 5/1/2026 8:46 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

* Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
It took me a while to get into "Bannerlord". I'll be honest; this
isn't really a game that's up my alley. I tend to prefer games with a
more focused narrative over open-sandbox titles.

* Unpacking
Personally, I would have preferred --and was expecting-- something a
bit more sandboxed and puzzley

Some conflicting signals here. You want more focused narrative, but
they you want more sandbox.

Not really. I said that I generally prefer games with narrative but I
don't limit myself solely to games of that type (see my sad love of
truck simulation games ;-). When I installed "Unpacking", I went into
it expecting the 'other type'; a game that was narrative-light,
focused more on the building and puzzle aspects. So I was disappointed
when the game didn't match my expectations.

What about you? Did you have fun playing with video games this month?
And which video games specifically were you playing? See, what really
I'm asking is:

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Well I had fun too.

TL;DR
*** Crimson Desert
*** Goat Simulator 3
*** A Game About Digging a Hole
***** Alan Wake
** Spaceborne

Verbose Mode
*** Crimson Desert
I've been playing it a little, just like 45 minutes at lunch since I
don't want to overlap with my son's time since I'm playing it through
family sharing. I'm still somewhat intrigued by it, even though I'm
finding the controls annoying, the inventory junk too much, and figuring
out where to go / what to do difficult. Even though I'm not normally
much of a graphics whore, it still looks amazing. It feels more true >medieval than most games of it's ilk, notwithstanding the weird powers.

I suppose I can try to set it up to play offline? I'm not sure if that
will work since it's my son's not mine.

*** Goat Simulator 3
Well we had a blast the first couple times my daughter and I played it.
But that didn't last. Last weekened we only played it a little while.
Hey, it was 'free' (with Prime on Luna)

*** A Game About Digging a Hole
Another 'free' game on Prime with Luna. Destructible environment while >digging a hole in your backyard. Mine stuff, sell stuff, get upgrades.
It's not a very long game, I maybe put 10 hours into it. It was
engrossing for that time. The end was not great. *shrug*.

Huh. I always thought this one was more along the lines of open-world
survival; something more akin to "Hydroneer" where the goal is more to
just build than push towards an end-game.

***** Alan Wake
Wow, I can't say how much I liked this! I did finish it, I'd say it was >short but I was ready for it to end before it did. Somehow I'd
accidentally played it on hard, which explains why it was so... hard. >Somewhat like being in a Steven King novel, with lots of deadites to
kill. I would've never played this if it weren't for Control, horror
games I usually dislike.

"Alan Wake" is special; it's one of those games I recommend everyone
at least try. It's not without its imperfections but it has fairly
solid (if somewhat repetitive) gameplay, good visuals, neat physics
effects, and a fun story. It got a really bad reputation amongst PC
gamers when it first released, because it started out as a PC game and
then became an XBox exclusive for a while... and that made a lot of PC
Master Race fans grumpy. But it's earned back a lot of good will since
then.

I'm less sanguine about the expansions and sequels. Yes, the story in
"Alan Wake" had a very open ending, but that was part and parcel of
its narrative; as its opening line says, you don't explain the mystery
in a horror novel. Not knowing what happened to Alan after the end was
the whole point. So following his adventures in the expansions and
sequel sort of weaken that message.

But I do like the 'spin-off' games ("Control", "Quantum Break") set in
the same universe that don't directly deal with Alan but do reference
his adventure.


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On Sat, 2 May 2026 01:51:30 -0000 (UTC), ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) said
this thing:

Same games. I finally resumed SW:TOR a couple days. I hope to do more
this weekend. Dang life!

Keep at it. You'll get to the end eventually! (The game, not life.
Although that too. At least until they invent immortality ;-). And
when you're done, you can replay the other character classes. The
stories aren't /completely/ unique between classes, but they are
enough differences to make it worth it... if you can endure the
gameplay.


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On Fri, 01 May 2026 11:46:22 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Dying Light : The Beast

Total single player campaign playtime (with some sightseeing, watching
most of the cutscenes, some side quests but not picking up every small
job, etc.) came in at about 28 hours.

It has been quite a while since I sank that much time into a single
player campaign, so I suppose that's an indication of how much I
enjoyed it.

Techland did a good job on this one.

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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 2 May 2026 01:51:30 -0000 (UTC), ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) said
this thing:

Same games. I finally resumed SW:TOR a couple days. I hope to do more
this weekend. Dang life!

Keep at it. You'll get to the end eventually! (The game, not life.
Although that too. At least until they invent immortality ;-). And
when you're done, you can replay the other character classes. The
stories aren't /completely/ unique between classes, but they are
enough differences to make it worth it... if you can endure the
gameplay.

Aw, not unique even with light vs. dark sides? Bah. I think I am halfway done in its main quest.
--
"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us ? whatever we ask ? we know that we have what we asked of him." --1 John 5:14-15. Lakers destroyed Rockets on a busy TGIF's May Day!
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:46 this Friday (GMT): [snip]

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Nothing new, though I've now 200% cloverpit, making it one of the 5
games I've actually completed 100% on (the dlc is counted as an extra
100%)

i am planning on checking out this game called titanium court so ill
tell yall about that next month
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Ant <ant@zimage.comANT> wrote at 23:43 this Saturday (GMT):

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 2 May 2026 01:51:30 -0000 (UTC), ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) said
this thing:

Same games. I finally resumed SW:TOR a couple days. I hope to do more
this weekend. Dang life!

Keep at it. You'll get to the end eventually! (The game, not life.
Although that too. At least until they invent immortality ;-). And
when you're done, you can replay the other character classes. The
stories aren't /completely/ unique between classes, but they are
enough differences to make it worth it... if you can endure the
gameplay.

Aw, not unique even with light vs. dark sides? Bah. I think I am halfway done in its main quest.

No gameplay changes between light and dark? What is this, sonic
adventure 2?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Tue, 5 May 2026 19:10:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> said this thing:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:46 this Friday (GMT): >[snip]

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Nothing new, though I've now 200% cloverpit, making it one of the 5
games I've actually completed 100% on (the dlc is counted as an extra
100%)

Argh. I hate when DLC comes out and all your hard work at 100%ing a
game is ruined.

(I've been struggling to 100% the map in American Truck Simulator for
/years/ ;-)


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 5/6/2026 7:49 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Tue, 5 May 2026 19:10:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> said this thing:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:46 this Friday (GMT):
[snip]

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Nothing new, though I've now 200% cloverpit, making it one of the 5
games I've actually completed 100% on (the dlc is counted as an extra
100%)

Argh. I hate when DLC comes out and all your hard work at 100%ing a
game is ruined.

(I've been struggling to 100% the map in American Truck Simulator for
/years/ ;-)

So wait until you've 100%ed before adding the next DLC. Then you can
100% that, add another DLC, rinse, repeat, etc.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
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Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote at 00:47 this Thursday (GMT):

On 5/6/2026 7:49 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Tue, 5 May 2026 19:10:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> said this thing:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:46 this Friday (GMT):
[snip]

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Nothing new, though I've now 200% cloverpit, making it one of the 5
games I've actually completed 100% on (the dlc is counted as an extra
100%)

Argh. I hate when DLC comes out and all your hard work at 100%ing a
game is ruined.

(I've been struggling to 100% the map in American Truck Simulator for
/years/ ;-)

So wait until you've 100%ed before adding the next DLC. Then you can
100% that, add another DLC, rinse, repeat, etc.

How long would it take to 100% a dlc tho? I imagine ATS would have a lot
of content to complete and waiting a few years between DLCS would be
boring
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 7 May 2026 16:50:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> said this thing:

Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote at 00:47 this Thursday (GMT): >> On 5/6/2026 7:49 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Tue, 5 May 2026 19:10:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> said this thing:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:46 this Friday (GMT):
[snip]

What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2026?

Nothing new, though I've now 200% cloverpit, making it one of the 5
games I've actually completed 100% on (the dlc is counted as an extra
100%)

Argh. I hate when DLC comes out and all your hard work at 100%ing a
game is ruined.

(I've been struggling to 100% the map in American Truck Simulator for
/years/ ;-)

So wait until you've 100%ed before adding the next DLC. Then you can
100% that, add another DLC, rinse, repeat, etc.

How long would it take to 100% a dlc tho? I imagine ATS would have a lot
of content to complete and waiting a few years between DLCS would be
boring

It takes about a month, actually. When a new expansion comes out, I
spend the next few weeks driving down every new road and avenue trying
to get that percentage back to 100%. Which is how I'll be spending the
latter half of May 2026, as you'll find out on June 1st. ;-)

(To be honest, 100% the map is currently impossible. Various bugs mean
that you can't actually drive down every road without using console
commands because there are either a) impromperly placed invisible
walls, or b) the game doesn't allways recognize that you've driven on
a road. The buggy bits are tiny -- you can get to like 99.8%-- but
actually marking the entire map explored isn't actually possible at
the moment. But I try to get as close to 100% as I can).



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