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[Robsoie]

I gave a try to Tharsis, one of this week epic store freebie and had some fun.

Tharsis isn't a normal PC game, it's actually a boardgame in which you solve the problems that appears every turns with dices.
By example there's a O2 loss problem in the greenhouse section of the ship, difficulty set randomly to 10 (that's very generous, it is not rare some events random difficulty got above 20)
You have to send a guy (or more after him) to repair it, let's say the guy you sent have 3 dices, with those 3 D6 he'll have to get 10 to repair things.
If he does not reach 10 you'll have to send another guy with his own dice for complementary points as if a repair is not done it can impact people health and the ship hull.

Sounds simple, but from there you have more to do with your crew member dices, some dice combinaison or results, depending on the crew member own ability and the ship module you're in can give you various bonus (by example in the greenhouse you can harvest food, in other modules there are other things to obtain) , you can also send dice to a research bar to unlock some random researches every turns.
So in the end you have to think and manage your dice in order to keep food, health, stress , dice numbers and repairs in order to surviving .

There are also additional disaster randomly i a module a specific number in a dice can be frozen (you can't reroll it) , a number can actually hurt your crew member (managed to kill one of my full health crew like that in a stroke of bad luck) or a number can just make a dice disappear (so no re-roll for it and no use for it).

You have to survive 10 turns to win a game, each turn there are 2 new disasters hitting randomly 2 module sections (and unrepaired module add their own damage) .
My first game i lost my whole crew at turn 5

The game is -very- heavily dice based and the events are very random so you'll have games in which it will be just impossible to survive a few turns and sometime the game will be very easy on you.
So it's a very interesting boardgame with several mechanics, but it seems the odds are always stacked against you (unless you have some natural good luck ), as even if you have dices to spare to collect food/heal wounds or stress, or other module special actions, those actions will still depend on your dices so if you have a streak of bad luck, things are going to get impossible to fully deal with very fast

[pikachu17]

Deltarune chapter 2 is out.

[AzyWng]

Mainframe Defenders

Turn-based randomized (as in, missions, levels, and what rewards you get are random) tactics game about cyberspace mechs fighting a corrupted computer system, or something to that effect. No hit-chance gripes, just damage ranges and stuff. It's also got destructible terrain and a variety of different enemy types, like some that take much less damage from status effects, or some that can heal others (tip: shoot them first), which encourages varied builds. I'm enjoying it so far.

[Robsoie]

Managed to beat the giant centipede-thingy at the end of the poison-filled mines that is on the 2nd map of Nioh.
I was pleasantly surprised that for once the boss did not felt way too hard and was very nicely balanced for the level/equipment i had without a need to grind more and more until i had way better equipment.

Though on the 1st map there's a very good side mission ( "Request From Ginchiyo" that will be unlocked only after you beat the 3rd main mission) in which you're actually not alone but an AI NPC is teaming up with you for the whole mission (i wish you could hire such AI NPC in other missions), the chest goal location is randomized so it's always good for a replay.
And in this one i managed to kill several revenants that allowed me to gather from their drop the full set (minus the bow) of the warrior of the west armor.

Much better than what i had in term of all the additional abilities that comes with it, this probably helped (a lot) my character survivability so far.
Too bad it's not light enough to keep me in agility rank A, but fortunately (with some stamina level) it does not throw me in rank C (where you start to suffer high stamina drain for every strike/running/dodging you do)

[Iduno]

I tried out Tharsis. It's an interesting game. I finally made it to day 10, but died and also the ship blew up.

It's very much a game where once you start doing well or poorly, it just keeps going that way. Roll well? Go make some extra food so you have more dice to roll well next turn, or use powers, or repair the ship so you have more room for ignoring problems later. Roll badly? Enjoy having fewer dice, or fewer characters (also fewer dice), and also you still have unfinished problems added to the new problems that just showed up.

It looks neat, and has a (somewhat predictable) story, but it's not well-designed.

[Robsoie]

Only managed to get to turn 9 on a run in which the game have been very generous in the beginning with my dices results and each repair difficulty level, allowing me to get more food and more assists for a while to help with the horrible random modifiers that can pop up.

Then out of the blue, the game decided to killed one of my guy (one of the random modifier/condition in a moduel repair was 5 = wound) , guess what : that crew member got his 4 dices resulting in a "5" , immediately killing him, and for several turns in a row the guy i had in the food production decided to never make anymore 2 similar dices...

Then on turn 9 , the game spawned lots of 3 damage points modules (so absolutely no way to repair them all before the 5 remnant ship hit points were gone.
And that was my most lucky attempt

Unfortunately the game is too much luck based for me (as even the management and planning decision you make are subject to roll dice), but it's fun for a while .. at least until you have enough of your bad luck.

[Robsoie]

Noticed that gog was selling "Hitman" , the one from 2016 i mean (as they were already selling the original Hitman from 2000).

It seemed like something not important enough to mention here as i didn't cared myself ... until i started looking at the user comments that were very negative :
What's happening is that with this Hitman from 2016 gog is actually selling a game that is using DRM, as without an internet connection the user will then not be able to access half of that game content (several missions, gametypes and progression unlocks and apparently even saves require online).

So does that mean that gog isn't sticking anymore to their no DRM policy that was what made them popular ? If that's the case it wouldn't be surprising if they lose a lot of the customers that trusted them, because -no DRM- was the whole point in wanting to buy your game at gog.

[JimboM12]

DRM

well, this depends. is it GOG doing it or is it one of those built in DRMs like games made by ubisoft have where it doesn't matter where you dl it, it makes you install and open that stupid ubisoft connect?

[Robsoie]

I don't think it depends, if a game does not allow the customer to use part or all the content that comes with it without forcing the user to be online (out of an online-only feature being multiplayer only of course as it makes sense for that as most servers are privately owned by a company that isn't gog, unless there's a LAN or IPtoIP option), that's a DRM , a way for a company to control your right to use what you purchased.

There's no way gog didn't knew the version of Hitman they are selling had DRM despite their store mention it is about DRM-free games, as they even mention many features requiring being online on that game page.
Less i can say is that the gog users aren't exactly happy
https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/pt9wcl/hitman_2016_has_released_on_gog_with_online_drm/

[Ulfarr]

They've been compromising for a while. Stellaris is another case were some features are soft-locked behind logging with a paradox account, though it's only for the multiplayer and the achievements.

[JimboM12]

its the sad reality that gog can't sell certain modern games without compromising because modern developers and publishers demand this online stuff so gog's only recourse to keep drm free is to just not sell the game.

hopefully they can negotiate with IOI (lol just realized that that's the evil monolith company from ready player one and they're the ones doing this) to mod/patch/remove all the online features but that's up to IOI.

[Robsoie]

Hmm, gog is certainly playing a dangerous game then if they start accepting DRM-ed games as most of their customers have been attracted to gog for 2 major reasons : there's no DRM on a game you purchase and you are not forced to use their galaxy launcher as you can get a full offline installer.

But now they're selling some games that have DRM (at least in parts) and there are some games that requires the galaxy launcher. I just hope it's not going to become the norm.

[n9103]

and there are some games that requires the galaxy launcher

What? I couldn't find anything to support this, other than Gwent. And, come on, it's a minigame in Witcher 3. And free.

[Robsoie]

So far there's the multiplayer of Hellpoint and multiplayer from the 2 Star Wars Battlefront that require galaxy (though in the case of the battlefront games, the lan should still work without galaxy) , probably more as i don't have much multiplayer games on gog, but that's all i saw first hand with a galaxy requirement.

[Aoi]

One thing that kind of drives me nuts about GoG is that the devs often tend to treat it as an afterthought. One game I grabbed on GoG had a fairly sizeable rebalancing update not get released... at all, while it was available on Steam (devs also acknowledged and disregarded an inquiry if GoG would be getting that update). The update was finally leapfrogged months later with a significant content update that saw a simul release.