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[nenjin]

Yeah. There isn't a lot of content and frames drop to shitsville near the end of the match. But there's something undeniably fun about it. It's got a great vibe, people get into it and RP and things do often go batshit crazy in the way you'd expect from the movies. Based on their success I expect better things from it in the near future. As it is, we'll play about 4 or 5 games before people are ready to call it but I'd say that's pretty good for a big MP PvE shooter.

[Robsoie]

On my new Fallout 3 run, i had installed the "Ties that bind" mod :
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19941/

Its main purpose is adding a new NPC (that will also be a companion) : your sister.
The NPC integrate really well in the game, from the start of the game when you're a baby walking around the room she's around as a kid, then when you're a kid you can see her as your big sister in the Vault.
And once you're in the Wasteland, she's with you on your exploration and in the game missions, talking about subjects that are relevant to the situation

The character is fully voiced, and lots of things happen around or related to her at various part of the game progression.
All in all it's a very interesting take on the companion system, and feels naturally part of the story instead of just being a meat shield.

It reminds me a bit of the very excellent Vilja companion for Oblivion that was very developped and also fully voiced.

[Sirus]

Oh yeah, I remember trying the Ties That Bind. The VA's accent didn't really fit the setting at all, but the mod overall was so well done that the accent was only a minor issue.

[Iduno]

I found a free game, Hyperhell. It's a bullet hell roguelike that looks like it was drawn in MS Paint and takes up 132 MB of space. Steam only, sadly.

Ronald Reagan stole your refrigerator full of food, so you need to fight through cities full of demons to take it back. Avoid getting hurt and kill as much as you can.

It's tough to say if it's good or bad, but the earlier description should let you know if you'll like it or not.

[Niveras]

Given the highly crunchy music you get blasted with when you open the game, I would say it is "bad" and deliberately, intentionally so.

There was a splash screen indicating it is intended as a parody. I'm not sure what else that screen said as the font used made it a bit difficult to parse quickly and it wasn't up for long.

[Robsoie]

Toyed for a bit with that Path of Achra (the itch.io version, that is considered as the demo on steam) and found it surprisingly good.

I got a good run with my 2nd character, after a difficult start i had some good loot and progressively started to feel unstoppable after a while (even got a prestige class from the killing with fire) , but in the level just before the last, i ran into incredibly high damaging units suddenly, that additionally came in pack of a lot of them and were outdamaging my healing (from active or passive ability or equipment), probably helped by applying lots of nasty effects to my character.

And because the game really wanted to kill my character, it made me spawn in a very open field without any kind of wall, so i couldn't reach anywhere in time to lower the amount of direction from where the rain of missiles were coming and their number

Spoiler: he was a good fellow (click to show/hide)

Damn them whatever they are thingies : 

[Frumple]

The upper level irga critters, iirc, though I forget the exact names. They can be kinda' nasty but they're usually not that bad for that point in the game, heh, though yeah, wide open area without a way to bottleneck is worst case scenario for dealing with them, usually.

Biggest thing probably was that irga critters are generally fire resistant, iirc, so you were likely not doing terribly much damage to them. Damage variety can be pretty important if you're doing something only moderately busted!

... anyway, my PoA note of today was finally getting the current last steam cheevo, landing a 1+ million damage hit. Did it the lazy way (master repulsion and some healing + green wyrm + autohotkey holding down space for a few hours), but it worked

E: There's a much less lazy way involving a specific item (crystal rod) and high willpower, too. Less sure about other ways of managing it, it's pretty hard to deal that much damage in one instance in the game.

[Il Palazzo]

Was it you, Frumple, posting a screenie on Steam with a 12th cycle victory? The avatar looked familiar.
In any case, I'm at cycle 9, and it's getting hard to even leave the first room without picking one of the safest combinations.

[Frumple]

Yeah, that'd be me.

Late cycle starts do sometimes take some luck, though, if you're not doing something that gives a specific sort of edge... I wouldn't call it safer combinations, exactly, but you need something that actually lets you kill stuff, which can be difficult in the beginning with a lot of builds.

There's times where I just keep rolling starts until I get something actually survivable -- 1st floor hobgoblins in 12th cycle is likely to kill just about anything, to the point I usually just hold down 5 until they kill me when I start with them, but ratmen or wyrms (if you have some range) are more generally survivable. Might take five or six tries just to survive long enough to get a foothold, heh. Fortunately it's real easy to restart, you just hit enter a few times and it'll start you back with the exact same generation combo.

... and some builds are just not viable in high cycle early game. You're pretty unlikely to make it doing any sort of melee range defensive build from the start in 12th cycle. Transitioning into it is viable-ish, but starting... stuff just hits too hard, and you have too little HP no matter what defensive powers you've picked up.

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, I'm starting to feel all that. Been doing a run or two with a psiblade pugilist build again, and I'm killing everything easy peasy. No competition. And then some rando monster comes 'round a corner and manages to score a single lucky hit, suddenly one-shotting me for 1.5k HP. Never mind hundreds of armour from repulsion or anything else for that matter.
It is a bit silly at this point. But it's been a good twenty hours or so of surprisingly well-crafted fun.

[Robsoie]

So close to a victory, to avoid running into a "can't damage that guy fast enough" wall by focusing on an element (and obviously running into a group of monster that are impervious to it), i went to fire and death skills.
Worked nicely and reached the last level of the cycle.

But that horror golem in the last level was just too much for my guy, crippling my character with 3 or 4 nasty effects every turns, allowing it to deal massive damage each turn despite my good armor and damage reduction.

Spoiler: close but no sugar (click to show/hide)

[Frumple]

Yeah, I'm starting to feel all that. Been doing a run or two with a psiblade pugilist build again, and I'm killing everything easy peasy. No competition. And then some rando monster comes 'round a corner and manages to score a single lucky hit, suddenly one-shotting me for 1.5k HP. Never mind hundreds of armour from repulsion or anything else for that matter.
It is a bit silly at this point. But it's been a good twenty hours or so of surprisingly well-crafted fun.

Yeah, high cycle you have to be a lot more deliberate in how you move, basically, even if you're mulching everything you touch. Corners are the devil, heh (any of the stand-still-do-damage hats are really helpful for this, incidentally, as it gives you an easy way to see if there's something back there), and any personal HP count below like 2.5-3k is functionally irrelevant, might as well be 1 hp 'cause you're still in 1-shot range. It's one of the places in the game you can really notice the traditional roguelike influence in it, because it's definitely willing to blow you up if you move wrong.

The defensive stats are interesting things that are way, way better tuned for low-cycle runs (which, in fairness, is explicitly what the game's balanced around -- the dev is building this thing for 1st cycle, everything after that is just for fun, not reasonable design), because they've all got an unmitigable 10% chance to fail. Low cycle, not much is going to be both reasonably able to get close to you and able to blow you up with a 2k+ hit, so that 10% failure chance isn't much of a "your run ends" 10% chance.

High cycle, though. High cycle it is. High cycle, defensive stats are a roulette that might get you through the game but you're pulling the trigger every time something with a hit stat higher than your HP takes a swing at you, and there's going to be lots of things with a hit stat higher than your HP. You can usually play around it, barring a remarkably terrible spawn, but building around it is somewhere between difficult and impossible. Not relying on just one of them reduces the chance something rolls a 90 and invalidates it, but it never entirely removes it.

[Il Palazzo]

Melee Blood Lochra with Sparkform is fun in the 'more lottery, please, lol' sense. You start each level with the extra 30 speed from sparkform, and begin damaging yourself in combat for even more speed. The idea is to have so much speed enemies don't get to act before you finish them all off.
But then, ofc, one of them just might. And as you say - at high cycle in melee it might just as well end your run.

[Robsoie]

Finally completed New Vegas

Spoiler: my ending (click to show/hide)

After upgrading his secret legion of securitron, i got rid of Mr House, then took over the Lucky38 thanks to Yes Man and went to the Hoover Dam and diverted the electricity toward the bunker holding the secret legion of securitron to get them to join later.
There after killing the Legion , i decided to do the same to the NCR (thanks to the legion of securitron that arrived) because why not at that point of the story and in the end i became the leader of an independant New Vegas with enough securitron to make sure none will ever try to approach the Mojave again.
Apparently it was a good ending from the various cutscenes that launched

Important note : playing the last mission of the story will automatically ends the game, i mean unlike Fallout 3 (thanks to the Broken Steel DLC though as without it the game ended at the last mission too) you have no post-game content and can't roam around anymore, either you load an old save or you start New Vegas again from scratch.

So in case you have a lot of side mission or DLC mission waiting to be played, make sure to keep saved game from before the Hoover Dam mission.
Because if you have no such save, you will be unable to do any of those missions in post-endgame (because there's none) as you will have to start New Vegas from scratch.
Good i had a bunch of pre-Hoover Dam save , would have been going mad considering i didn't do a bunch of side mission and there's all those DLC content still unexplored.

Spoiler: thoughts on my New Vegas experience (click to show/hide)

Anyways, overall New Vegas was great, i found it closer in atmosphere to Fallout 2 (without the Enclave) because you'll run into several characters that will be familiar (Marcus the supermutant by example) and learn about what they did afer Fallout 2, additionally similarly to Fallout 2 you'll find humanity mostly repopulated settlements and are solidly thriving (out of gangs attacks).
I also iked that one of the New Vegas possible companion is actually the daughter of one of your Fallout 2 companions  (Cassidy)

But i liked the Fallout 3 atmosphere a lot more as it felt more grim and desesperate than in New Vegas : more post-apocalyptic as you felt human settlements were mostly all in precarious situations and their survival was always at stake in the mission.

Also i felt Fallout 3 ladnscape and scenery were more open to exploration, while New Vegas felt more "railroaded" in some way and the New Vegas wilderness (the areas in between locations) felt a lot less wild and dangerous , and much smaller (as you didn't had to explore much to reach each locations).

Still New Vegas is a very good game, even if i prefered Fallout 3, the missions were as varied and numerous as in F3, but the most epic ones in New Vegas still was not as good as the epic and hilarious at the same time "Liberty Prime" mission in Fallout 3.

At least that was for the main missions and the few side ones i did, i still have a bunch of side missions and dlc missions to play around.

But after the Enclave in Fallout 3 being the main antagonist it was hard to take the Legion in New Vegas as seriously for the main threat.
Because at their core they are roman legionnaires cosplayers with their roman armor for some reason being absurdly resistant despite protecting only few part of the body visually and being nowhere as thick as a power armor.

But i guess to give an incentive to consider them as a threat, New Vegas made the Legion all about a gathering of murderers, slavers and rapists people with large numbers, so you'll feel you need to stop them because they're massive piece of shits.
Still i found the Enclave in F3 much better as antagonists like they were in Fallout 2

[King Zultan]

Your thoughts on Fallout NV are pretty close to mine on the matter, the game always felt rushed to be given the lack of stuff out there to look at and do.