Far Cry 5 was a big letdown for me too. It actually feels like a kinda crappy prequel to Far Cry 4. The game feels smaller, with fewer weapons, a smaller map, more general annoyances (oh my god enemy spawns), and the story is just lol even by Far Cry standards.

It's kinda just... not very good?

 

Far Cry 5 is just "Far Cry: Another One". It's pretty much identical to the previous games, minus the crafting and with hilariously shit writing.

It's a good time if you treat it purely as a sandbox to fuck around in, but in all other respects is mediocre at best.

 

I'm looking for something new to play. Anyone know of any lesser known but recent arpgs?

 

Inquisitor: Martyr is a pretty good time, especially if you're into Warhammer 40k. It's early access at the moment, with a recent delay of the launch to June 5 from early May, but I've put a good 40 or so hours into it and it's a good time even as-is. There's been pretty steady progress and improvement over the last few months as they polish it up, and while it's not perfect, if you're at all a fan of 40k the aesthetics and feel of the game more than makes up for a couple of niggling issues.

I'm also told Grim Dawn is pretty good. It's definitely got an interesting class system, where you can mix and match classes to get a highly customized build, but I've never gotten into it myself, mostly due to a lack of time. I've got a bunch of friends that swear by it though.

 

The problem is that after farcry 3 once you've played one farcry you've played them all, exactly like AC. It is a beautiful game though and can be very fun mechanically wise, and the story definitely has it's high points every now and then. If you are starting out in farcry this game would be great, but when you find yourself taking outposts again and again with no new challenges... it will get repetitive. Especially if you play a bit of AC aswell.

I haven't tried out the arcade yet though, sounds like there could be some gems in there.

 

Bound by Flame.

 

Found a game called Frostpunk. I think it came out today. It's pretty sweet. Survival RTS along the lines of we are billions, except instead of zombies, it focuses a lot heavier on the survival aspect in a frozen ice-age steampunk world.

 

I'm super excited for the Cultist Simulator. These last 5 weeks of waiting are pretty agonizing.

 

Janky, kinda fun, overall mediocre but secretly has one of the best soundtracks out there

 

I'm still playing Frostpunk. It's kinda addicting, in the same way We Are Billions was, but it's not as punishing (mostly because you can save, though there is an ironman mode). It's a difficult game, though it comes in bursts. One minute, you think you're doing fine, and then the next, it's panic mode. Case in point for me last night. I had an overflow of civilians, and not enough jobs for them to actually do, and I was pretty much topped off on every resource. And then the end game hit, and I was not prepared. I only had like 500 food rations saved up, but the game said I needed 3500. I managed to make it, but just barely, and that was just what I needed for the start of the end game, and I had no idea how long it would last.

Long story short, I managed to complete that scenario and move on to the next one, and the next one is ridiculously hard, even on normal difficulty (though I could just be bad). To start, the premise of the whole game is that you have to survive a frozen hellhole. You start with the main generator and build in a concentric ring outwards from it. The generator heats up all of your buildings, but it consumes coal, so you need a lot of it. There's also wood and steel as the main building materials, and "steam cores" for advance tech, and raw food and rations. Anyways, the main thing is that you have to control the heat levels of everything, and the temperature works in increments of 10. So, the game starts at -20C and you don't even need the generator on for that, but it slowly gets colder and colder (and occasionally warmer) so you have to keep upgrading your tech to get better heating, and there's tech for better insulation as well, and better resource gathering, etc.

The scenario I just got to has you safekeeping a group of 4 seed vaults, containing all of the earth's seeds in hopes of one day the earth no longer being frozen over. That means you need to stay on top of your heating tech, but you also have to make sure you have adequate coal income, and that was the tricky part for me. It's a special scenario, where you only start with about half of the workers that you do in the first scenario (though technically they're not workers, they're engineers, which is a different type of unit). And, as far as I know, you can't really get any new citizens in this scenario, meaning you have to rely on automatons. So that means that because you need so much extra coal for the seed vaults, not having enough workers to actually get the coal, and with automatons only default working at 60% as effective as humans, it's pretty rough.

 

Having been fairly positive about Far Cry 5 previously, I've now finished it and can confidently say that it's one of the hollowest experiences I've had in any medium, never mind video games. Mostly great fun to just mess around in, but there's absolutely no substance to it at all.

 

Anyone played Divinity Original Sin 2 yet? Any good?

 

sooooooooo good.

Mostly because I'm actually engaged in the storyline and for the first time, like... ever, I actually feel like I can really roleplay my character. It's a pretty superb game and I highly recommend buying it - especially since there's a ton of really cool mods on the workshop that can shake up how you play.

Pro tip though:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1142608415

Install this mod (or another equivalent) to reduce the scaling because by default the differences in health and damage as you level up are incredibly high, to the point that attacking enemies even one level above or below you becomes an exercise in tedium. As soon as you level up, pretty much all your old equipment is instantly made obsolete. I didn't find it particularly fun, to the point i'm recommending a mod like this for your first playthrough, but that's the beauty of mods - it's up to you!

 

Original Sin 2 is great fun, especially with mates. Didn't really holy my attention solo, as most of the fun I had with it was funny (and sometimes unintentional) ability combos. Teleportation may just be the best spell in the game.

 

I posted about Divinity OS 2 a few months ago. My lasting impression is that while it improved upon some of the flaws of OS 1, it didn't improve upon them all, namely the combat, which to me was the biggest flaw of the game. Which is quite a blemish, since a lot of the game revolves around combat. Other than that though, the game was excellent. But, if you do like the combat system, then I guess there's no problem.

Anyways, Pillars of Eternity 2 came out last week. It's funny to me, because I feel like I went through this cycle a few years ago, where I played both Divinity and Pillars within a few months of each other. I ended up like Pillars a lot more, so I hope this one is even better, especially since the cast of Critical Role were involved. Not sure how I feel about the $50 price tag at the moment though.

 

I can't really find myself getting mad at the pricetags of games because tbh they haven't gone up with inflation, like, at all and I feel like it's good to account for that.

Same reason why I wouldn't be that upset if AAA games went from $60 to $70. The prices have been static for over a decade... it's probably only fair to bump up the prices a bit.

 

F1 2018 was announced today. Not looking forward to the Halo, very much looking forward to an extended career mode.

 

Decided to pick it up. Which Origin seems to have the best story?

 

I played Loshe, but I've heard pretty good things about them all. You'll get snippets of the characters you don't play. Of all of them, Loshe has a very compelling questline and I hear Beast is also pretty great.

I wouldn't go with the lone wolf guy on your first playthrough though.

 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is officially happening.

After so many years, so many dodgy crowdfunding campaigns and disappointments, my body is ready.