ITT I play every unplayed Steam Game in my library

[Ythan]

By the way have you ever played Fallout 3? 4?

Nope! I know a bit about them because my brother is a big fan, but I've never played any fallout game myself.

Ooh nice I hope you enjoy it when the time comes.

[vonflare]

Game #7:

Factorio

Factorio was something I got in sort of a mystery game trade. Myself and a friend both gave one another a game we thought the other would enjoy, I gave him Civ 5 and got Factorio. I think both of us had way too much going on at the time though so neither ever got played; glad to finally get to it!

I went in kind of knowing that it was about crafting and mechanising things, but I didn't know any of the specifics. Was very surprised to find enemies in the game, because I thought it would just be a sandbox! I'm very glad they were there though, I think it added a fair bit. I didn't get all that far in the game - I finished the third mission of five in the tutorial - and I'm fairly sure it gets a lot more complex further on, but as far as I got it was about mining resources, and crafting things with those resources to a) defend yourself and b) automate the resource gathering.

It's a slow game, but an extremely satisfying one. Even at the early stage I was at, putting together everything into a big chain - the mining rigs, the conveyer belts, the weird arm things that would take the resources off the conveyer belts and stick them in the smelter - felt great to sit back and watch afterward. Although there was always

something

you'd have to do manually, usually moving coal from one location to another or taking resources out of the smelters. Wasn't really a point against it because it meant there was reason to still actually play! And I'd imagine these become automatable later on, once you've found more stuff to do.

Fun moment at 34:26 in the video when the enemies show up and I don't have enough ammo to deal with them, so had to leg it around the base trying to craft ammunition while being attacked. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do in this situation if you don't have spare resources, you might just die?

Anyway, thumbs up. Even though it was slow, I really enjoyed it. I hear it's multiplayer too - this is absolutely something I'd play multiplayer.

awesome! yeah it definitely ramps up in complexity and you absolutely can automate everything. you eventually get up to constructing fully automated railways with train signals and stations, and construction robots that can automate building for you, logistics drones that can deliver resources directly into your inventory up to a specific amount that you set, everything.

here's a small section of one of my bases in my current save, I'm still working on expanding it though

Spoiler:

more zoomed in version:

Congrats! I assume that's a bonus level?

I don't actually remember it was quite long ago when I played it. I do remember that the boss fight was an absolute pain

[MURDERCAT]

I'm gunna recommend playing Subnautica, it's a great game I really want to find time to go back and finish

[CaptainMeme]

Game #8:

Steins;Gate ELITE

Fun story as to why I own this game, I saw it on sale and thought I remembered a friend recommending it to me, so I picked it up. I then went and told said friend, and they told they'd actually recommended another game called Code:Vein and had no idea what Steins;Gate was. So I went into this completely blind, aside from knowing that it was a VN and having the advice from Pie about going with ELITE rather than just Steins;Gate.

First things first, it's a Visual Novel, so it's long. I usually allocate ~1h for these first impressions, and in this game that was enough to get through the Prologue. As far as I saw, there were no game mechanics, it was just pure Visual Novel - I'm not sure if this changes later. The way the story was talking about butterfly effect makes me think it will likely just be choice-based gameplay, which is honestly fine if the story is good enough.

The Prologue was pretty much entirely about fleshing out the main character. It was... confusing, but amusing. Your character initially seems like a secret agent of some sort trying to fight against 'The Organisation' but as you progress, it becomes more and more evident that the Organisation doesn't really exist and he's making stuff up as he goes along. It very much struck a chord with me, as someone who spent the last month or so pretending to be a secret agent fighting ALPHA-SEVEN in a Survivor game; it was exactly the same style of silliness. The weird part is that there are a few serious things happening in the background here - it's heavily indicated that time travel is occuring, and someone who says they've met you when you've never met them promptly gets murdered.

It's intriguing. I'm very interested to see how this goofball ends up reacting to a serious situation.

I don't think I've played enough of it to give it a proper review, but I'm going to play more, so I think that warrants a thumbs up!

[Ythan]

Fallout: New Vegas (UP NEXT)

Make sure you turn on the radio.

[Flea The Magician]

Spoiler: Rarest Psychonauts achievement I've got.

[vonflare]

Spoiler: Rarest Psychonauts achievement I've got.

impressive

[CaptainMeme]

Fallout will be tomorrow! Have slacked off a bit on this

In the meantime, have this very exciting speedrun:

[Ythan]

Hype.

[CaptainMeme]

Game #9:

Fallout: New Vegas

I know a little about Fallout because, well, who doesn't? But I've never played a fallout game and wasn't even aware I owned one before I started doing this. It's a post-apocalyptic RPG/first person shooter, which has probably been the main reason I've tended to shy away from the series - as I've mentioned before, FPS is very rarely my kind of thing.

So. I think there's a certain kind of game that it's just really difficult to get a good overview of in the ~1h that I allocate for these, and this is absolutely one of them. RPGs in general, to be honest. I skipped a good amount of tutorial stuff to try to get further into the game, but I don't think I actually got to anything more than I would have otherwise, so that was a little pointless! Still, I got a chance to wander around the starting village a bit, turn on the radio, start doing a couple of quests, wander out into the wilderness, almost get blown up, find a fun-looking town and crash the game. I'll get back to that last one.

The backdrop is good and the setup of factions seems interesting, although it didn't really get expanded upon in the time I played for. It's got what you would expect from an RPG in tons and tons of possible conversations, and I'm the kind of person who really enjoys clicking through all of them and listening to everything, so it's something I appreciate (or would, if I wasn't trying to rush through the intro section). There was a stats system, and the effect it had in conversations was very obviously highlighted, with the game outright telling you what stats you needed to level to make certain things happen - that was pretty helpful!

The combat felt... off. I'd line up what I was certain was a direct hit, and it would somehow miss. I assume that maybe you have a certain chance of missing no matter how good your aim is, and I absolutely hate that in games. I'm bad enough at FPS games as is, when I finally manage to line up a shot correctly I want to be rewarded for it goddammit. It ended up at a point where I was either using the auto-targeting system (which was nice, but always had at least a 5% chance of missing and felt very unnatural to use) or charging at enemies with a razor blade. I'll admit, attacking with the razor blade was quite satisfying, but probably wouldn't work against the game's harder enemies.

Finally - when I told my brother I was playing this one, his response was 'good luck getting an hour in without it crashing'. I made it about fifty minutes before it crashed seemingly for no reason. Not a great look, and depending on how far back that sets you it might be a pretty hefty loss of progress. If it crashes so often that my brother was fairly sure it would crash within

an hour

of the start, that's always going to be massive points against it.

An interesting game by the looks of it, and I can see why people like it, but it's not one I'll be going back to. It felt very much like an Elder Scrolls game but much less suited to me; in fact, playing it just made me think about how much I'd rather be playing Skyrim.

[Ythan]

as I've mentioned before, FPS is very rarely my kind of thing.

This is as far as I've read so far but I bet it turned out better than you expected on this front.

[Ythan]

It ended up at a point where I was either using the auto-targeting system (which was nice, but always had at least a 5% chance of missing and felt very unnatural to use)

Oh...

[Ythan]

Also lol inevitable bugs in a one hour run of a Bethesda* game.

[Ythan]

Favorite and least favorite songs after one hour?

[CaptainMeme]

So, I definitely liked VATS more than the usual combat. I also think the dislike for it was a bit more about getting in my own head than the game itself?

Like, it's there as an additional thing on top of the standard FPS combat. The aesthetic does a great job of integrating it into the world, but moving from standard shooting to pausing the world and just clicking felt very odd, and since it's so much easier than the main combat it felt a little like a tacked-on cheat mechanism. Which I know isn't true, it's a mechanic I assume they included for good reason, but once that thought was in my head it felt bad to use it. I'd have been much happier if it was just VATS or just FPS, or if you could select which way you wanted to play at the outset, although I realise that just VATS probably doesn't work too well in an open world game like this.

[Ythan]

So Fallout 1 and 2 were tactical rpgs with a similar perspective to something like Star Craft. Vats is how shooting worked until 3. If the historical perspective helps.

[Davsto]

Amnesia TDD is a solid survival horror game. A little old and clunky in its mechanics but values atmosphere over jumpscares (though there are some jumps) and is pretty fun, albeit the resource management elements get a little weary.
Hellblade's fun and has great visuals and atmosphere, but the non-boss combat is a little dull.
No Time to Explain is a surprisingly fun 2D platformer with incredibly interesting and varied movement mechanics, the vibe of a flash game. by which I mean I'm 90% sure the original is flash and it runs like absolute ass so don't play it unless you have the remastered one.
Sonic Mania is an exceptional 2D Sonic game, with a lot of the problems of the classic sonics fixed. Also has tons of fun bosses throughout the game if you're into that.
To The Moon is entirely story and essentially gameplayless (wrt skill at least) but it's an exceptional story that's really well-told so I say it's good.
I remember giving up a certain way through Trine 2, as I found some of the physics and puzzles got really janky and the game felt just kinda slow. Then again, that may well have been partly to do with the shite hardware I'd have been running it on.

That's it for games I've played. I actually came across this considering making a similar thread of my own to do with general catching up on some of my backlog in my free-est to play summer for years but idk if I feel like threading it