Executor Akamia

So, Patch 2.3 released this morning with the Ancient Relics story pack! That means two new Precursor empires can be discovered, and archaeology in general has been greatly expanded upon. I've not yet tried the story pack myself, but I'm honestly looking forward to seeing how it works out!

Long as the framerate is consistent, I don't particularly care what it is.

If it's one where I can't play with other people in any capacity, I usually use my real name. In ones where multiplayer options exist, I usually go with my usual screen name, Akamia.

Stellaris again Closing in on the end of that Determined Exterminators co-op run I was playing with my friend. We've utterly annihilated all the Fallen Empires, the endgame crisis, the Marauder Clans, the Caravans, and most of the Leviathans. All that's left are primitives, a brand new empire that used to be primitives, and some Driven Assimilators who seem oddly determined to protect these organics. Since we have a Colossus, we were able to kick those Driven Assimilators over as if they were any regular organic empire via a Colossus casus belli, and once they and the filthy organics hiding in their ring world are gone, the galaxy will truly belong to machines.

I really enjoyed playing it as a variety of different types of empires. Everything from pacifists to outright genocidals. But while I enjoy the single player well enough, the multiplayer is where I really have the most fun. The AI is too predictable, and the simulated politics of the game matter a bit more when it's actual humans who know what they're doing that you're dealing with rather than bots that can't even keep rebellions from occurring within their borders reliably. lol

Hahaha... Yeeeeeaaaaa too late. Even if I got my recording software in order again (which doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon) I'm not restarting the game for the sake of an LP. Not this one in particular, anyway.

Undertale. At least, I don't remember planning on playing it. @UleTheVee, however, kind of dragged me into playing it for a Let's Play on YouTube many years ago, and while he didn't like it, I did. We never properly finished that LP; at some point we abandoned it. Don't remember why, but the recording software I was using at the time eventually became out of date, with the update frustratingly not only not being free, but also freakishly expensive, so I could not keep going with that LP even if I wanted to. I did eventually finish the game on my own time, though.

I've only mentioned it myself about 50 other times. 😂 Currently have over 300 hours on it, and I'm not planning on stopping any time soon.

As a layperson, to me, it sounds like a symptom of a bigger problem, but it's nevertheless believable. Without reading papers on the subject, I don't know what the threshold is exactly for "significant impairment". Without anything specific to work with, it could come across as arbitrary.

Well, just the three examples you mentioned are what make me question how you can find the appeal in anything. 😕 Well, actually, just two out of the three... This doesn't sound like not finding the appeal so much as being frustrated with a tutorial segment that over-stays its welcome. And, I mean, fair enough I suppose, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the appeal of the game, per se. With a name like Assassin's Creed, I think the appeal is pretty in your face about it. It's like playing Spy in Team Fortress 2; you get to feel like a sneaky son of a bitch! How can you say no to that? 😂 There is a disturbing amount of games you can similarly reduce with reasoning like that, and I bet dollars to doughnuts most of the games you like are among them. I never played GTA. Never cared to; it's not in a genre I'm actually interested in. But I have played at least one other game in that genre, Crackdown, and while the premise is slightly different, it really does boil down to beating people and commandeering cars. Difference is you're playing as some kind of supercop, and your boss in-game will get mad at gratuitous death and destruction with regard to civilians, but y'know... Details... Granted, I don't know where the "arena fighting game" remark is coming from. Sounds like Tekken more than it sounds like Halo, but whatever.

Pikachu looks perfectly fine to me. Which is far more than I can say about Movie Sonic. I'm glad they decided to change it. Hopefully something much closer to either of the major Sonic designs from the games, but I'll accept something resembling Boom Sonic too. ... Just so long as they fix the shoes. Give him the shoes he's always had, or at least something similar that doesn't fully compromise the aesthetic. I'll accept the Adventure 2 soap shoes over those things his original movie design was wearing. Although to be honest, the soap shoes looked pretty neat, actually. I wish they brought those back sometimes.

To be honest with you, after what you just put down, I'm not sure how you find appeal in anything. I mean, there's nothing that attracts me to GTA either, especially since I have plenty of other sandbox games to play with. I guess there's a social aspect to GTA that most other such games lack in some respects, but otherwise, it's not really a game for me. I'm not sure where you miss the appeal of a Halo game. The fantasy of playing a badass super soldier fighting and winning a war that was going south for humanity the last few decades in-universe is where the appeal is, from my perspective. And after you've been through that, there's always taking to the multiplayer and seeing how well you measure up to other players who have probably done the same stuff you just did and more. With that said, I guess the kind of game I don't get the appeal of isn't actually a video game, and even then, it's more a matter of taste in settings than anything else. I don't particularly care to play anything to do with Dungeons & Dragons. Games using similar systems, maybe, but not that game in particular. I'm not attracted to the high fantasy genre; I've always been more of a science fiction/science fantasy person. Low fantasy I can work with; that's what the setting of Monster Hunter is. But it's difficult to sell me on a high fantasy. I have this same problem with Magic: The Gathering. It almost turned me off from YuGiOh! too, but it was redeemed for me when I discovered there were science fiction "monsters" in the game, too; stuff from AI constructs and aliens to full-blown robots and mechs. I eventually warmed up to some of the fantasy stuff the game had to offer, but I wanted the science fiction first.

Stellaris Continued the Determined Exterminator co-op playthrough with my friend. So far, everything seems to be going fine. My friend found the Sol system, with Earth Sol III in a Tomb World state. Humanity was apparently long dead before they could take to the stars; that means pre-sapient cockroaches rule the planet. And since my friend is planning to colonize the planet and we're both playing genocidal robots bent on cleansing the galaxy of organic lifeforms, those roaches are probably gonna die.

As something of a social gamer, I like to see at least co-op features in games where there are single-player modes. Especially an online co-op feature. I'm mostly in agreement with what you want to see. I'd also like to see more strategy games (RTS games especially, and particularly sci-fi ones) available for the PC, with Mac compatibility so that I can enjoy them as well.

Stellaris Doing a cooperative multiplayer run with a friend, both of us playing Determined Exterminators; machine empires that have one simple goal: Eliminate all organic life from the galaxy. We're gonna try to do just that, and divide the galaxy about 50/50 between us. Right now we're caught up in a defensive war against two organic empires working together to try to eliminate us. We weren't ready for war, or we would have been on the offensive instead. I'm hoping we can finish that war quickly so that we can focus on preparing to destroy the nearby Marauder Clan before it has an opportunity to become a Horde and completely thrash us both.

For me, it's Undertale. I've brought it up several times before, but it's worth mentioning again, especially since it's the first turn-based RPG since Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood to get me to take it seriously. Great characters, beautiful story, interesting setting, and unexpectedly (for me, anyway) fantastic gameplay. It also has amazing music.

The gameplay comes first for me. While a sufficiently well done story can get me invested enough to power through bad gameplay, if the game is unplayable in as literal a sense as can be short of the game just not starting, then whatever the story and characters have going on simply does not matter to me.

My favorite moments come from multiplayer games where some arrogant opponent declares that I've already lost the game for some reason or another, only for me to turn the game around and make them eat their words. This has happened to me during StarCraft II once. I described it in another thread, but basically it was Protoss vs. Protoss, and I was a Silver League player defending against a Gold League player who was using some very nasty cheese tactics, trying to get an easy win. What he didn't account for was the fact I had been cheesed one too many times that season and had figured out (on the fly, admittedly) how to defeat the ones he was using. He left without a GG.

Detective Pikachu 8/10

Well, that’s the beauty of Mindstorms, and LEGO toys in general; if you’re creative enough, you can build just about anything you want. I for one have ambitions to one day build a functional Protoss Dragoon from StarCraft out of it. As for YuGiOh!, I’m mostly interested in getting specific cards for my decks. I’ve got a Code Talker archetype deck planned out, but most of the cards I need to make it work aren’t available outside Japan yet; the majority of them come out of the Master Link structure deck, and one of them comes from an issue of V-JUMP magazine. I doubt that last one is getting an international release, but I can hope.

Avengers: Endgame – 10/10

I kinda-sorta have a LEGO Mindstorms collection, but most of the electronics are unusable to me at present; all I can actually use are NXT sensors and motors, and anything from EV3. Beyond LEGO stuff, electronic or otherwise, I also have a small collection of Transformers action figures. Got a handful of puzzles, too; a pair of 3x3x3 puzzle cubes – one of them an actual Rubik's Cube brand cube – a 2x2x2 puzzle cube, a skewb, a pyraminx, and a Fifteen Puzzle. I was also trying to build up an armory's worth of NERF blasters, but that's a really expensive hobby to maintain, so I ultimately decided against it. YuGiOh! deckbuilding is almost as bad, but at least I have better odds of getting some use out of YuGiOh! cards than the NERF blasters I have beyond some plinking around at random places in my house and occasionally having a shootout with my brother.

I wouldn't object to it, although I worry about how Bethesda might handle it... If it gets their usual treatment, I don't want their mitts anywhere near such a game. Give it to Obsidian or something; they'll know how to make it work.

If thinking doesn't work, try everything!

I can handle extremely hard, but I do prefer a game to be just hard enough that I can grow my skills without getting penalized too hard. It also depends on the game. If I don't care enough about it, I'm not gonna go for higher difficulties; I'm just gonna clear it once, and move on. If I am really dissatisfied with the game for one reason or another, I might not even clear it the first time and go do something else instead.