SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I received a notification that Stardew Valley got a major patch on PC so I'm giving it a try after having bought it a couple years ago and done little or nothing with it. It's been quite a while since I played a farm sim/dating game (Rune Factory 4 on 3ds [!] was the last). Holiday season is good for soothing games like this that can be played in short sessions... if you aren't tempted into the "just one more game day/quest" loop. Not that that ever happens to me!

Beth wrote: "...if you aren't tempted into the "just one more game day/quest" loop..."

Speaking of which, I've been playing BattleTech again after picking up the Urban Warfare and new Heavy Metal DLCs at a discount.

"...What? It's 3:00 AM already? … F@#&."

Factorio.... That game is way more addicting than it has any right to be. Vanilla is good, but there are also a ton of mods for it. Bob's makes everything much more complicated for when you decide you're not enough of a masochist =P

Ended up caving and buying Outer Worlds during the Black Friday sales, so I'm playing that right now. Only a little bit in, but I like it a lot so far.

Anyone else want to talk about video games again? I am learning to play for the first time in my life, now that I have some time and a constant need for distraction. I've had several conversations about games being easier to focus on than books sometimes, and that's been really true for me.

I've been playing Limbo and Inside, which have been a really great place to start, and we just picked up a bunch of other games on sale that I'm pretty excited about. What have you all been playing?

My gaming guild had a nostalgia event where we did a dungeon in Guild Wars so I've been playing it ever since despite its age. Also been playing some Maplestory.

I'm playing Control on PS4. It's so creepy.

How timely: I just last week fished out two of my Nintendo DS games from a box of scraps (Yoshi's Island and... the abhorrent Super Princess Peach).

My only gaming consoles are an old Gameboy Color and a couple of Nintendo DS Lites (um.. also well old by now), with a bunch of Mario games for them. Despite attempts, I've never been able to get too much into gaming, but it would be nice to try again... if only I remembered where I've hidden the chargers!

Super Mario Bros is still enough of a thing, tho <:D So, just a couple of AA-batteries for the Game Boy might be sufficient for my meager gaming needs *ha*

Sarah wrote: "I'm playing Control on PS4. It's so creepy."

Are you enjoying it? The story sounds potentially really interesting.

Kaa wrote: Are you enjoying it? The story sounds potentially really interesting."

I'm really enjoying it. The main character has some very interesting abilities.

Instead of playing one of the many games I own but haven't gotten around to starting, I've been playing the Mass Effect series again. I can't help myself, it's my favorite.

Kaa, what other games did you get? I have a problem just like with books, that I buy things on sale and then don't get a chance to play them.

Mass Effect is the best! I got Greedfall for Christmas and am still working through it.

Lol, Bobby, I can completely understand that. We got:
Borderlands 3
Witcher 3
Fallout 4
The Last of Us
Skyrim
The Last Guardian
And I think we will probably also end up getting the Bioshock collection and Assassin's Creed: Origins.

Also, the problem with starting conversations about these things is I'm always adding more things to my list! So far we've just been getting games for the PS4, but at some point I'm going to have to get Portal and now also the Mass Effect games on PC as well.

Oo, classics, Kaa! Those are all a good start.

We finished the "new" God of War and it was phenomenal. We started Detroit: Becoming Human and it's cool but I haven't had a strong urge to go back to it. (Both for PS4)

Recently finished Red Dead Redemption 2, omg so good!!!

Kaa wrote: "Lol, Bobby, I can completely understand that. We got:
Borderlands 3
Witcher 3
Fallout 4
The Last of Us
Skyrim
The Last Guardian
And I think we will probably also end up getting the Bioshock collec..."

Okay, did you just raid my unplayed games collection? Haha I have most of those still unplayed. I've played the first 2 Bioshock games and they were great. It took me a couple tries to get into the first one, but once I did, it became one of my favorites.

Allison, I really liked Detroit: Become Human, but I'm a sucker for anything like that where you make choices. I definitely want to play the new God of War too. I played the older ones on PS2, and never got a PS3, so it would be nice to get back into that world.

I've been playing Crusader Kings 2, which is free now. It's a Middle Ages simulation that focuses on nobles, who are rulers, advisors, and courtiers in various feudal realms.

I brought my Nintendo Switch with me from the Beach but haven’t plugged it in yet. I was playing Super Mario Odyssey before. My son bought me the Switch and the game for Christmas. We also have a NES, 64, GameCube, Wii and WiiU up there. Yeahhhh I love Nintendo. Won’t be bored if we end up going home to the beach.

So many great games. Kaa- I absolutely am head over heels in love with The Last Of Us. I think it’s probably one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever played...

I’ve been waiting for the sequel for I think eight years now. I have it preordered from GameStop but I don’t know if they’ll be open for me to pick it up. If when/you get around to finishing, I’d love to know your thoughts on the ending.

The Dragon Age Games are great and I really like Fallout 4. (It’s the only one I’ve played.) also sank 500+ hours into Witcher 3 and Skyrim.

And Red Dead 2 I love but refuse to finish. MAJOR SPOILERS: (view spoiler)[In my world, Arthur lives forever. (hide spoiler)]

I do Flowscape on Steam. It's world-building and relaxing. I do it in the mornings with my morning coffee as a meditation.

Wonderful, I am feeling very affirmed in all my video game choices!

Primary: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Secondary: ESO and Mass Effect 1
As of this very moment, subject to change hour by hour...

I’m playing Star Wars: Fallen Order, which is very Dark Souls meets Tomb Raider. It’s kind of an odd collection of elements and I’m dying a lot, but I’m enjoying it. It’s nice to have a new story-based Star Wars game finally instead of a multiplayer.

I’m also slowly working through the new Control DLC, The Foundation. I loved the base game and the DLC is good, but there’s one side mission I’m stuck on with a great concept but frustrating execution so it’s taking a back seat right now.

I switched phones this week and discovered apps that I'd downloaded and never got round to opening. One of them was a game called unciv which is a competitive game of societies building through the ages. I lost a few days to this simple game, but finished it this morning. Can go back to reading and playing Star Realms in my spare time now.

Star Realms can be a lot of fun, have spent a lot of time playing that in solo mode.

I'm currently working my way through Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons.

Animal Crossing New Horizon's and ESO...
right at this moment, subject to change and any time...

Christopher wrote: "Star Realms can be a lot of fun, have spent a lot of time playing that in solo mode.

I'm currently working my way through Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons."

I've only ever played solo mode.

I've played a friend remotely before in Star Realms, but I find the stop/start nature of it less fun than solo. I've also played it pass & play with my wife which is fun, but generally solo is the format I've played the most of.

I was playing more of Stellar Tactics (one-developer indie game in early access) because a new update was released with some needed good stuff like salvaging gear and crafting … then the Early Access for Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord came out.

So I bought that but then found out that to download it on my crappy DSL internet would take 6+ days. Yes, days. Normally I'd just pack up the laptop and head off to Starbucks for half an hour and download it over their fast wifi but … coronavirus, man. Starbucks only has their drive-thru open and I doubt the cops would consider me sitting in the parking lot downloading a game as "essential" so …

Back to Stellar Tactics.

I was cleaning out my closet and came across all my ps1 games so I’m now playing Azure Dreams through an emulator on my computer.

I ended up starting Skyrim for the first time. It's right up my alley, and I don't know why I've never played it. This is one of those that is so open ended that after hours of playing I'm still not sure if I'm making the right decisions, but I don't mind if I mess up a few things here and there. I like to try to just go with whatever the consequences are in games like this.

Bobby, I just started Skyrim last week and since then I've probably spent more time playing than doing anything else. I love how open ended it is - I made a second character just to explore. That one dies a lot from running into opponents out of order, but it's been cool just to see what's out there.

Kaa, your list of games you got made me get into the mood to play one of my backlog and that just happens to be the one I chose. I've also been playing about a week.

Exploring is a lot of fun, and I definitely died a lot in the beginning. I didn't realize how many things were hostile, so I've run up to anything from a giant to a vampire thinking I should talk to them. Then they would just destroy me. The giant was hilarious. I saw him by a camp fire, so I walked up to talk...one swing of his club and I went flying.

Now I've been doing lots of quests and kind of waiting until I have a reason to go somewhere. The world is so huge that I know I probably will need multiple playthroughs before I experience everything.

Nice! Yeah, I'd watched someone else play Skyrim before, so I kind of had an idea, but it's even more engrossing than I'd hoped.

Hah, the first time I met a giant I died so many times before I figured out how to kill it. And I accidentally stole from this old lady who turned out to be super good at magic and almost died, and then ended up having to run away from some weird tree creatures a couple times because they were too strong for me to kill...

Even when I've been doing quests, though, I've focused a lot more on the side quests and miscellaneous tasks rather than the main quests. I'm sure I'll do several playthroughs, too, but I want to draw the first one out.

I've been playing DayZ lately.

Keeping socially-distanced from "The Infected" while sneaking through deserted streets in hopes of finding cans of peaches or beans seems very timely. Today I even scored a face mask and surgical gloves.

It could only be more apropos if toilet paper were a collectible.

I finally beat Greedfall.

Bobby wrote: "I ended up starting Skyrim for the first time. It's right up my alley, and I don't know why I've never played it. This is one of those that is so open ended that after hours of playing I'm still no..."

I haven't played it in a while but when I got my gaming laptop it was the first thing I started playing. If you haven't done so, sign up for Nexusmods.com and mod the f out of the game. There are so many quality of life improvements available for Skyrim from the modding community that playing it vanilla makes absolutely no sense. Everything from making the characters and world look better to getting rid of annoying load screens and making the use of horses actually worthwhile (improved magic and perks trees, new weapons and better combat animation, populating the world with more characters … the list is endless)

I downloaded so many mods right off the bat that I don't think I could tell you what was and wasn't in the original game.

Kaa wrote: " ...The giant was hilarious..."

Yeah that's a case of a bug in the original game being so hilarious that they left it in as a feature.

However you'll soon find as you level up that giants and trolls no longer become a threat. Where I left my character off his bow skill was so good that he could one-shot a giant from half a mile away.

I remember the first time I tried to take out a troll on the way up to High Hrothgar. Yeah, it did not end well. I ended up having to find my way around it by climbing some stupidly high mountains.

Andy wrote: "I've been playing DayZ lately.

Keeping socially-distanced from "The Infected" while sneaking through deserted streets in hopes of finding cans of peaches or beans seems very timely. Today I even s..."

I have been playing 7 Days 2 Die with friends quite a lot for the same reason - and because we like the game, even though it's been in its alpha version for 7 or 8 years now.

I follow a few websites that track free (usually for a limited time) and discounted games. If you want a larger collection, you may find one or more of them useful.

GameDeals subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/new/
GG.deals: https://gg.deals/
IsThereAnyDeal: https://isthereanydeal.com/

Reddit is what I check regularly because posts can be ordered chronologically. GG.deals has the nicest formatting and draws attention to the best deals. IsThereAnyDeal has a great search engine and price history.

Oh man, Skyrim is so good. And so janky! I played it for over 125 hours on Xbox 360 (!). Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish it with my build (and 360 version doesn't have console commands), but my memories of it are almost entirely good. I loved exploring every corner of the world I could get to. And the unintentionally funny, absurd moments with the game's physics and NPC AI were icing on the cake. I laughed 'til I cried at least twice. :D

My own current games are (1) Solitairica, a combination of solitaire and Puzzle Quest, sorta, and (2) Kingdoms of Amalur, which is basically "Baby's First Skyrim" with a more colorful world and fast-paced, action-y combat. Playing full mage build this time around.

@Kaa: Beware the chickens and never try to kill one in Skyrim...

Giants: I love it when bugs are so funny they're left in the game. Just like Gandhi with his passion for nuclear weapons in the Civilization series (actually, that one is getting a bit old now). One that is still really funny: in Crusader Kings 2, if a battle you're participating in is going poorly and you would ordinarily be killed, you have a chance to escape if you have a particularly nice trinket you can just throw at the enemy and they'll grab the trinket while you run away. But thanks to a bug, this event can also apply to your nice armor, so that you sort of quickly gloopsh out of your armor in the middle of battle, throw the whole thing at the enemy, and run away while they look at it.

I'm about to start Jedi: Fallen Order.

Beth wrote: "Oh man, Skyrim is so good. And so janky! I played it for over 125 hours on Xbox 360 (!) ..."

Xbox 360 also didn't allow mods, did it? Without the mods it's almost too janky to play now. The mod community is what made Skyrim go from ugly stepchild to absolute brilliance.

Micah wrote: "Xbox 360 also didn't allow mods, did it? Without the mods it's almost too janky to play now."

Yep, no mods. Thankfully, the bugs I came across were more funny or annoying than game-breaking. (The "companion's carrying capacity dwindles to 0" bug is one I just remembered)

I've never tried mods, but do have the Steam version of the game now, so could easily apply some of the more useful ones.

We are currently playing without mods, but I can definitely see how they would improve a lot of parts of the game - a dungeon where one room was rendered as though it was underwater despite the absence of any bodies of water larger than puddles stands out. So far the weird glitches are mainly just funny, but I think later we'll try out some mods as well.

@Eva: The chickens, really? Lol, I think I might have tried at the very beginning, but I guess fortunately I must have missed and given up.

I'm also playing without mods, but I noticed there was a way to do that on the PS4. I figure I'll experiment with that after I do more of the story.

The mods now are so extensive for Skyrim that you can completely fine-tune the game pretty much as you like. My current build has a horse mod so that you can have a mount, train it up, store stuff in its saddlebags, and buy/use different horse bardings (for looks). Another mod I'm using treats the towns as part of the rest of the world ... there are no load screens when you go into a town and dragons will attack in town. I've got a ton of other mods to make the characters and world look better, plus a big mod that makes companions act more like real people (and you can have/use more companions at once). And one that lets me adopt more kids ... I've got at least 4 kids IIRC.

And most importantly there's a big mod that fixes a bunch of the bad bugs that weren't fun which Bethesda never bothered to fix, plus one that improves the UI a LOT.

You can go nuts with mods and make the game a survival game or ... well, it's just crazy. But you can really make the game play better, look better, and be more immersive with mods (or you can do cheaty stuff that doesn't seem fun to me). If you take a look at the most popular mods you'll see ... and once you start using them you'll probably end up installing 18 bajillion of them like I did. Good stuff!

One of my good friends has hate played Skyrim twice now and she ended up modding it so much that it crashed repeatedly until she had to reconfigure her mods. She doesn't enjoy it but she still played it on two different characters. I just laughed as she griped to me about it the whole time. I don't even remember why she did it the second time. The first was because she owned it so she had to at least use it.