From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


Well, that's it for September. We're now officially into Autumn (or
Spring, if you live in the UpsideDown), which not only means cooler
(warmer) weather, but it also becomes more exciting time for
game-players. We're revving up to the holiday season, and all sorts of
new games are coming out. It just inspires me to play even more games!

Like, for instance, the ones I played below:

[Note: I'm trying something new by adding URLs to Steam
(or elsewhere, as necessary) so you can, if interested,
see screenshots or get other information about the game.
Let me know if you think this is a good idea or if you
think it's just wasted effort.]


Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Eastern Exorcist
* American Truck Simulator: Missouri
* Banishers of New Eden
* Aliens: Dark Descent


Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* Eastern Exorcist
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1120810/Eastern_Exorcist
I wish I could recommend "Eastern Exorcist". It's such a pretty game,
and it does have some satisfying combat. But it's one of those games
where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Then again, I have to wonder if my dissatisfaction has more to do with
the cultural divide between myself, the developers, and the intended
audience. This is very much a game made by a Chinese company for a
Chinese market; the English version is something of an afterthought.
It is quite possible my unhappiness with the game's narrative and
pacing are due more to my Western outlook and that "Eastern Exorcist"
is considered high art by Chinese gamers. If this is the case, I can't
call "Eastern Exorcist" a bad game; just not a game made to my tastes.

But it sure seems like a bad game.

It's not the mechanics per se. The combat is actually quite enjoyable.
The game is a side-scrolling action game similar in concept to games
like "Shinobi"; you run left and right and whack things with your
sword. You have a wide variety of moves and can level up and learn new
powers as the game advances.

The problem is how the game presents itself. Each level is about two
or three screens wide (a few are larger than that) and have maybe
three to six enemies on it. You can't exit the level until all the
enemies are dead, but once you do the game loads the next level. This
results in a lot of starts-and-stops to the gameplay; there's no real
flow. Worse, every time a level loads, or new enemies appear, there's
a momentary pause as your character freezes in place. This isn't a
technical issue; it's obviously a game design choice, a moment of "get
ready to enter battle" for the player. But it's extremely disruptive
to the game's pacing.

The visuals are quite nice, at least if looked at in a still frame. In
motion, everything appears a bit jerky; the art design owes at least a
little to Chinese shadow puppetry. The narrative is fairly weak.
Again, this may be a translation issue; perhaps in the native Chinese
there's more poetry to the story. In English, everything sounds a bit disjointed, and the voice-work is second rate. It also sort of just
ends, with a shaggy dog finale that offers no payoff.

There's a lot of technical expertise in evidence in this game. It just
doesn't come together as a fun experience. But whether that's because
of a fault with the game or my own biases is just to difficult for me
to say.




* American Truck Simulator: Missouri https://store.steampowered.com/app/2730870/American_Truck_Simulator__Missouri/ Look, I get it. By my count, this is the fourteenth time this game has
appeared in the "What Have You Been Playing" thread. You don't want to
hear more about the game. In some ways, I don't want to write any more
about this game. But goddammit, I played it this month, so what are we
gonna do; ignore that fact?

More specifically, I played the game with the "Missouri" expansion. I
actually purchased "Missouri" some months ago, but I've been avoiding
this game because, well... recent USAian politics have made me
reluctant to play in a game that celebrates that country. But it was
inevitable I was going to return eventually. How can I resist driving
down their big open highways?

But there is not much to say about the Missouri expansion that I
haven't said about earlier expansions. The skill of the map designers
improves with every iteration, and Missouri ranks up there as one of
their better works. It really is noticeable if you go back to regions
they designed earlier; the new maps have much more natural curves and
dips, and the open areas look a lot less artificial. The developers
are a lot less reliant on pre-built templates for all their buildings
and locations; each location --whether it's a factory, or gas station,
or the center of a town-- looks a lot more unique. The wilderness
areas are much better looking too. Special kudos to the designers for
making the Gateway Arch in St. Louis look so impressively imposing
too.

Beyond that, there game remains mostly the same. These days I'm
particularly enjoying the "lane keeping" function; combined with
dynamic cruise control, it makes the driving much more hands-off,
should I want that. Seriously, on one cruise I literally had time to
jump out of my seat, rush to the kitchen to grab a sandwich and get
back to the game while hurtling down Interstate Route 10 the whole
time. While this is a sillier example of the feature, it does allow me
to better enjoy the visuals around me without focusing entirely on
keeping in my lane (I know: isn't that the whole point of a driving
game?). But after hundreds of hours of playing ATS, I'm happy for the
change.

There is some bad news for those of you tired of hearing me yammer on
about this game, though. I also purchased the "Iowa" expansion, so
expect a return visit from this game and coming months.




* Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ There's a lot to be said for putting your best foot forward first.
First impressions can be crucial, especially with video games.
Unfortunately, "Banishers" doesn't seem to understand this.

The game might be great; I don't know. But it doesn't start well and
the end result was that I gave up on the game just a few hours into
the experience. But I just cared so little about the world, the
characters and the mechanics that I felt no desire to keep playing. I
see the game's potential --in an alternate 17th century, you take on
the roll of magically-endowed 'banishers' who exorcise demons and
ghosts haunting a small town.

But the game put so little effort into making me want to keep playing
that I never got to see if it lived up to my expectations. The visuals
in the first few areas were extremely dated; the animations were
clunky, the combat was unsatisfying and I took a near-instant dislike
to the characters and had little desire to help them through their
problems. Plus, I've never much cared for 17th century settings. Is it
any wonder I abandoned my play-through of this game?

The game has very positive reviews on Steam, so I expect it's quite
good. But I'll probably never find out because it made so little
effort in showing why its so beloved. I've too many other games
waiting in the sidelines anyway.




* Aliens: Dark Descent https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150440/Aliens_Dark_Descent/
I've been hankerin' for some xeno-blasting recently. The Aliens are
always a fun video-game enemy to face off against, and they've made
frequent appearances in the media. But which game to play? The 1995
adventure game is just too janky; "Alien Isolation" is too scary. I've over-played all the "Aliens vs Predator" games and, c'mon, "Colonial
Marines" wasn't ever a real consideration. I guess it's "Dark
Descent", then.

"Dark Descent" is, overall, a fairly mediocre game, but it is hard for
me to put my finger on why I feel that way (not that's going to stop
me from trying to figure it now). Visually it's quite good looking,
capturing the sci-fi industrial grunge look that the franchise pretty
much created. The game benefits from it's god's eye, top-down view
--there's no need for excessive detail when you only see things from
20 meters above-- but I think even were the game in first-person view
it would still hold up. The setting is the usual predictable "Weyland
Yutani" shenanigans, but enjoyable for all that it's generic nonsense.
The characters are all comic-book archetypes, but this game isn't in a
genre where you expect deep revelations about human nature, so that's
fine too.

But it's the gameplay where "Dark Descent" falls short. An
action-strategy game, "Descent" has you moving your squad of four
marines across vast maps, shooting aliens and completing mission
objectives. In between missions, you tend to your wounded warriors
(who, in addition to physical anguish, also suffer from stress-related
problems which make them less effective warriors unless treated).
Gathering supplies is an important part of the game too; you need them
for research and to upgrade weapons, and there's only a limited stock
of turrets and health packs (you have an infinite stock of ammo at
base, but can only carry limited supplies on mission). This means that
you need to scour the map to find enough gear to keep you going not
only through the current mission, but future operations as well.

The problem is that you're on a constant clock. In-mission, alien aggressiveness keeps ticking upwards; past a certain point, a
near-constant number of xenos will hound your team, with predictable
results as wounds pile up and ammo ticks down. You can, of course,
retreat back to base to reset the aggressiveness counter (you can
return to finish mission objectives), except you only get one mission
a day and you only have a certain number of days before a
pre-programmed nuclear Armageddon. I get that the developers wanted to
put the characters (and the player) under a certain amount of
pressure, but I felt it all a bit much.

It didn't help that you had comparatively little command over your
soldiers in the field. Yes, you can move them around... but only as a
unit. You can't position soldiers precisely for overlapping fields of
fire, or other strategic maneuvering. Triggering special abilities
(like using a secondary weapon) relies on another limited (albeit
freely regenerating) resource, and the characters are often so slow to
use them that they rarely are useful. Add to all that an annoying
stealth mechanic and AI that seems to know exactly where you are at
all times.

With its mechanics, "Dark Descent" plays like an action game; it's
fast and furious. But its pacing is more akin to a strategy title; it
demands a preciseness and forethought that its controls just don't
allow. There's a lot of potential in the game that goes unrealized
because it has unsuccessfully mashed the two genres together. Other
games have managed the feat; "Dark Descent" made a mess of it. I love
the game for its setting and what it could have been, but it's a real
trial to play it.



---------------------------------------

Back in the day, I used to be able to whip through ten or fifteen
games a month. In my more-elder years, I'm happy if I get three. So
playing through four whole games in thirty days is purest joy (you
should see the glee when I get through five or more; I'm like a puppy
with a balloon! ;-).

Anyway, that's my playlist. What about you:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/1/2025 8:03 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, that's it for September. We're now officially into Autumn (or
Spring, if you live in the UpsideDown), which not only means cooler
(warmer) weather, but it also becomes more exciting time for
game-players. We're revving up to the holiday season, and all sorts of
new games are coming out. It just inspires me to play even more games!

Like, for instance, the ones I played below:

[Note: I'm trying something new by adding URLs to Steam
(or elsewhere, as necessary) so you can, if interested,
see screenshots or get other information about the game.
Let me know if you think this is a good idea or if you
think it's just wasted effort.]

Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Eastern Exorcist
* American Truck Simulator: Missouri
* Banishers of New Eden
* Aliens: Dark Descent

Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* Eastern Exorcist https://store.steampowered.com/app/1120810/Eastern_Exorcist

Handy

The visuals are quite nice, at least if looked at in a still frame. In motion, everything appears a bit jerky;

Yeah, looking at the steam page, that was my 2nd thought after "Ugh,
side scroller." Looks great... oh wait, it's like those paper puppets
with pins/rivets for joints.

It just
doesn't come together as a fun experience. But whether that's because
of a fault with the game or my own biases is just to difficult for me
to say.

Ratings are Very Posititve. I briefly looked at a few reviews, and some appear to be from Chinese, so at least a portion of it is lost in
translation.

* American Truck Simulator: Missouri https://store.steampowered.com/app/2730870/American_Truck_Simulator__Missouri/

The skill of the map designers
improves with every iteration, and Missouri ranks up there as one of
their better works. It really is noticeable if you go back to regions
they designed earlier; the new maps have much more natural curves and
dips, and the open areas look a lot less artificial. The developers
are a lot less reliant on pre-built templates for all their buildings
and locations; each location --whether it's a factory, or gas station,
or the center of a town-- looks a lot more unique. The wilderness
areas are much better looking too. Special kudos to the designers for
making the Gateway Arch in St. Louis look so impressively imposing
too.

Cool to hear they're actually improving as time goes along instead of
just releasing money grab DLCs. Sounds like a labor of love. It's still
not something I could actually see myself playing.

There is some bad news for those of you tired of hearing me yammer on
about this game, though. I also purchased the "Iowa" expansion, so
expect a return visit from this game and coming months.

Oh no, not more! :)

* Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/

Looks possibly interesting, but I can see why you didn't care for the characters after watching 30 seconds of the trailer.

For others there's a demo if anyone wants to try it without buying. I
may give it a try. I added it to my wishlist as a reminder to try the
demo, but I've got a lot of stuff I want to try again, replay, or just
try, and a couple games I'm currently playing I'm enjoying. So it's
probably just going to be clutter on my wishlist.

* Aliens: Dark Descent https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150440/Aliens_Dark_Descent/
I've been hankerin' for some xeno-blasting recently. The Aliens are
always a fun video-game enemy to face off against, and they've made
frequent appearances in the media. But which game to play? The 1995
adventure game is just too janky; "Alien Isolation" is too scary. I've over-played all the "Aliens vs Predator" games and, c'mon, "Colonial
Marines" wasn't ever a real consideration. I guess it's "Dark
Descent", then.

I re-watched the original movie with my Daughter last weekend. She
Enjoyed it, (perhaps surprisingly, considering the very slow pacing
compared to modern movies. I still enjoyed it, but my love has always
been the 2nd one.)

Back in the day, I used to be able to whip through ten or fifteen
games a month. In my more-elder years, I'm happy if I get three. So
playing through four whole games in thirty days is purest joy (you
should see the glee when I get through five or more; I'm like a puppy
with a balloon! ;-).

Speaking of that, I can't seem to get through more than a couple hours a
day with the mouse anymore. Controller is a bit better, but I prefer kbm.

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

*** Dead Space
*** Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
***** Hogwarts Legacy

TDLR;

*** Dead Space (PS5 version)
I played a little more, I really liked having an actual sequence in zero gravity. I was having trouble getting access to the PS5, so I put it
aside with every intention to get back to it.


*** Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.
I was initially loving this game, It's basically Skyrim with Arthurian
legend, better NPCs, better magic & combat, and darker aesthetics (which
I like.) The first act was great. They came out with a huge patch right
as I got to Act II and from what I've read Act II was greatly improved.
I started to lose interest in Act II a little, but it improved once I
managed to push myself to the city which was harrowing. Act II
definitely still isn't up to how great Act I was though. Then I got to
Act III. So far it seems kind of empty and uninteresting still, it
might need another 3-9 months to cook, but definitely something to keep
an eye on for anyone who liked skyrim.

I've been playing on hard (the hardest) and each act so far has started
off somewhat hard, then became increasingly easy. I imagine it'd be a
no challenge were I playing on even normal difficulty.

Between Act III being disappointing so far, and my wrist issues I
decided to start back up with Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) when my wrist isn't
up to the mouse on PC. Unfortunately the PS5 controller still impacts
my hand, even if I can go for longer, so I haven't been up to Tainted
Grail, even though I don't have as much opportunity to play the PS5.


***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)
So I played this a little bit a couple months ago, but not much, again
because it was on PS5 which I have less access too. My son hasn't
touched the PS5 in a bit, and with my wrist problems I thought playing
on a controller would be better. I also accidentally forgot to
unsubscribe to PS+, and since we don't own this, I figured I'd get back
to it, remembering having enjoyed what little I played of it.

After finding Jedi Survivor was no longer available on PS+ anyway :/ I
really didn't like the large amount of 3d platform puzzles in that as
far as I'd got though, and I'm really enjoying this.

I'm absolutely loving this game. o.k. so I was playing the character my daughter and I were switching back and forth with and I was finding the
game a bit too easy. I was going to check the difficulty and change it
to the hardest, but couldn't find it, and it was a girl character and I
found myself wanting to play as an insert self into the game (unusual
for me.)

So I made a new male character, initially making him blond with long
hair, which I very quickly regretted as looking like one of Hanson. I
was so relieved when I finally got to the point I could change his hair.

The hard difficulty was actually perhaps a bit too hard. It probably
took me 30 tries to get past the first school duel (that's on the level
of the hardest boss in the ER DLC for me!) I need to check on what
difficulty I have the other character on, If it's not on normal I might
need to put this one down to normal. The problem is more of too many
enemy combatants and too much pressure where it feels like you don't
actually have time to attack at all. I'm not good with that in souls
games, and even in souls they tend to limit you to being attacked by two
at a time. That's the same reason I eventually had to lower the
difficulty in En Guarde' on the last combat. In the duel you do have a partner, but they're somewhat ineffectual. Also on hard I found myself
going through all my heal potions and they aren't easy to get yet, so it
makes later combats harder. Fortunately in the duels it automatically
returns your potions after you lose (It didn't seem to do that in some
other later fights though.)

The combat feels far more magical than anything I've actually played,
with reasons to actually use a number of different spells instead of
mostly pew pew pew in ER and many other games. (You can somewhat just
pew pew pew against a single opponent, but that doesn't happen as often,
and it's really slow and dangerous at least on hard as compared to using
other spells more.)

The game is visually beautiful, even more than Elden Ring. Except the
people who are a bit more BBC show unattractive (except somehow my
Hanson lookalike, which at least some different hair color fixed,) not particularly uncanny valley at least. It's a wonderful blend of english countryside and the magical. While I sort of enjoyed the Harry Potter
movies, I was never really into them, the game really immerses you in
it, and I find myself quite awed by it all.

I am tempted to buy it on PC, but playing it on the big TV feels like it
might give me a better view of the spectacle. On the other hand I
really don't like the PS5 controller for it, I find the triggers hard to press, and for two of the buttons I find myself pressing the touch-pad
thing and opening up the map in the middle of combat frequently, which
gives a slight delay enough to get me hit, and interrupts the flow.

Finally a game where you can use fantasy magic and actually fly (on a broomstick!) turn (somewhat) invisible, conjure light, telekinesis
things to you, and I'm only in the beginning I think.

I don't even mind the puzzles! They feel like something that would be
left around by mischievous wizards at a magic school.

It's funny I like the game so much more than the movies, or the books
(well I only got a little bit into the first book, the kids weren't into
it when I was reading it to them when they were smaller, and it wasn't
any better than the movies.)

I'm not sure how Replryable it is, but I have found some differences
between my daughter's Hufflepuff and my Ravenclaw in the story, for one
bit the Hufflepuff ended up visiting Askaban and getting info from a
prisoner, while my Ravenclaw ended up doing a puzzle in a tower for that
same bit. Choices don't seem to matter much at all beyond that, as most options seem to give the same results, being snarky and or saying you
don't really want to do a quest still results in the same quest. Though
I haven't gone too much off my previous play to test that in a lot of
ways.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

I wrote earlier about the KSP2. Haven't played it after
that. Where I left off, I had a mission to Ike and Duna
with the lander on Duna (after visiting Ike).

I had to go back to a quicksave from earlier on my first
descent, because I went full-throttle too late, and ended
up in pieces on Duna. That's a no-good way to fly.

Remember: F5 for safety!
--
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090Ti 24G
OS: Linux 6.17.0 D: Mint 22.2 DE: Xfce 4.18
NVIDIA: 580.95.05 Mem: 258G
"If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished!"
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/1/2025 10:08 AM, vallor wrote:

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

Speaking of AI, I tried to get Claude to write me a Dungeon Robber clone
with text only and in Javascript instead of Flash. It threw out what
looked like hundreds of pages of code, but I couldn't even get it to do character creation right, and it didn't do text only. It was able to
have you fight random monsters (all the same other than name, all you
could do was attack.) but it was not even to 'tech demo.' I only gave it
a couple hours of getting nowhere further than the initial code before I
threw up my hands and rage quit.

PS.
Yes, I have almost no idea what I'm doing either with programming or AI.
Furthest I got successfully was my rock-paper-scisors-lizard-spock me writing in JavaScript, not AI.

https://sites.google.com/site/justisaursdd/rspls

I had a bunch of ideas how to further improve that, but that's not what
I wanted to do, I want a text only version of Dungeon Robber/The Wastes
in Javascript. It might be better to persue building on RSPLS (which I
now just realized I have the acronym in the wrong order *facepalm*)
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/1/2025 8:03 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

* Eastern Exorcist
The visuals are quite nice, at least if looked at in a still frame. In
motion, everything appears a bit jerky;

Yeah, looking at the steam page, that was my 2nd thought after "Ugh,
side scroller." Looks great... oh wait, it's like those paper puppets
with pins/rivets for joints.

It's not a bad effect, especially if you are aware of Chinese shadow
puppetry. But it doesn't fit well with the genre of game. It would
have been more appropriate for an adventure game... or perhaps if it
was just limited to the cutscenes.

* American Truck Simulator: Missouri
There is some bad news for those of you tired of hearing me yammer on
about this game, though. I also purchased the "Iowa" expansion, so
expect a return visit from this game and coming months.

Oh no, not more! :)

Sorry. But it's my goal to 100% the map, and the developers keep
releasing more expansions. If I wait too long, it will take forever
for me to explore the new areas (which is actually a problem I have
with the European iteration of the game. I've covered 93% of the
American game, but only 40% of Europe... mostly because I wasn't very
dilegent about exploring the expansions as they released in ETS2.)

* Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/

Looks possibly interesting, but I can see why you didn't care for the >characters after watching 30 seconds of the trailer.

For others there's a demo if anyone wants to try it without buying. I
may give it a try. I added it to my wishlist as a reminder to try the
demo, but I've got a lot of stuff I want to try again, replay, or just
try, and a couple games I'm currently playing I'm enjoying. So it's >probably just going to be clutter on my wishlist.

Just looking at the Steam page, it looks like there's lots of
interesting stuff further on. The game LOOKS good, and looks like
there's a lot of imaginative stuff. But the game has such a slow start
that I can imagine a lot of people, like myself, gave up on it long
before they reached that point.

* Aliens: Dark Descent

I re-watched the original movie with my Daughter last weekend. She
Enjoyed it, (perhaps surprisingly, considering the very slow pacing
compared to modern movies. I still enjoyed it, but my love has always
been the 2nd one.)

They're really such completely different types of movies that I can't
really compare them or pick favorites. The original "Alien" is a
haunted-house horror movie (In Space!!!) and "Aliens" is a space-war
adventure. I love them both, but watch them for different reasons.
When I want to be spooked, the first is unbeatable. The second is
great for its raucus action.

For obvious reasons, the second movie has been emulated more often in
video games; just the fact that the first movie only has ONE bad guy
makes it hard to translate into game format. Not being able to defeat
any opponents over a ten-hour playtime generally makes for a poor
experience.

*** Dead Space (PS5 version)
I played a little more, I really liked having an actual sequence in zero >gravity. I was having trouble getting access to the PS5, so I put it
aside with every intention to get back to it.

That's the 2023 remaster, yeah?

It was a good game, but when I played it, I felt all of its strengths
came from the original experience. The updated visuals tended to
distract me more than impress, and the various gameplay changes
(fortunately minor) just felt out of place. The original is one of
those games that has really held up well over time.

*** Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.
I was initially loving this game, It's basically Skyrim with Arthurian >legend, better NPCs, better magic & combat, and darker aesthetics (which
I like.)

Well, you've sold me on the game. I adored Skyrim, and what fantasist
doesn't love themselves some Arthurian legend? I haven't bought it,
but I added it to my wishlist.

The only problem is that it's another big open-world game, and I
generally have been avoiding those these days, even when I'm sure I'd
love them once I start playing. (I've installed and uninstalled
"Kindgom Come Deliverance 2" four times since I've purchased it. I
just can't make myself take the step to start playing). I fear
"Tainted" might suffer the same fate were I to actually buy it.

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

Everything I see and hear about this game makes me think I'd quite
enjoy it... except that it's a Harry Potter game. I just never could
warm up to that franchise the way everyone else seems to have done.
It's just too nonsensical. The world-building is shit and the
characters are awful.

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

;-)

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:08:10 +0000, vallor <vallor@vallor.earth>
wrote:

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

While I wouldn't resort to CHatGPT for the purpose, I really do need
to find a better newsreader. Forte Agent v1.9 is really long in the
tooth ;-)

Honestly, these days I'm as likely to resort to newsgrouper as fire-up
Agent.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur wrote:

On 10/1/2025 8:03 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, that's it for September. We're now officially into Autumn (or
Spring, if you live in the UpsideDown), which not only means cooler
(warmer) weather, but it also becomes more exciting time for
game-players. We're revving up to the holiday season, and all sorts of
new games are coming out. It just inspires me to play even more games!

Like, for instance, the ones I played below:

      [Note: I'm trying something new by adding URLs to Steam
       (or elsewhere, as necessary) so you can, if interested,
       see screenshots or get other information about the game.
       Let me know if you think this is a good idea or if you
       think it's just wasted effort.]


Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Eastern Exorcist
* American Truck Simulator: Missouri
* Banishers of New Eden
* Aliens: Dark Descent


Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* Eastern Exorcist
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1120810/Eastern_Exorcist

Handy

The visuals are quite nice, at least if looked at in a still frame. In
motion, everything appears a bit jerky;

Yeah, looking at the steam page, that was my 2nd thought after "Ugh,
side scroller." Looks great... oh wait, it's like those paper puppets
with pins/rivets for joints.

It just
doesn't come together as a fun experience. But whether that's because
of a fault with the game or my own biases is just to difficult for me
to say.

Ratings are Very Posititve.  I briefly looked at a few reviews, and some appear to be from Chinese, so at least a portion of it is lost in translation.

* American Truck Simulator: Missouri
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2730870/American_Truck_Simulator__Missouri/

The skill of the map designers
improves with every iteration, and Missouri ranks up there as one of
their better works. It really is noticeable if you go back to regions
they designed earlier; the new maps have much more natural curves and
dips, and the open areas look a lot less artificial. The developers
are a lot less reliant on pre-built templates for all their buildings
and locations; each location --whether it's a factory, or gas station,
or the center of a town-- looks a lot more unique. The wilderness
areas are much better looking too. Special kudos to the designers for
making the Gateway Arch in St. Louis look so impressively imposing
too.

Cool to hear they're actually improving as time goes along instead of
just releasing money grab DLCs.  Sounds like a labor of love. It's still not something I could actually see myself playing.

There is some bad news for those of you tired of hearing me yammer on
about this game, though. I also purchased the "Iowa" expansion, so
expect a return visit from this game and coming months.

Oh no, not more! :)

* Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/

Looks possibly interesting, but I can see why you didn't care for the characters after watching 30 seconds of the trailer.

For others there's a demo if anyone wants to try it without buying.  I
may give it a try.  I added it to my wishlist as a reminder to try the demo, but I've got a lot of stuff I want to try again, replay, or just
try, and a couple games I'm currently playing I'm enjoying.  So it's probably just going to be clutter on my wishlist.

* Aliens: Dark Descent
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150440/Aliens_Dark_Descent/
I've been hankerin' for some xeno-blasting recently. The Aliens are
always a fun video-game enemy to face off against, and they've made
frequent appearances in the media. But which game to play? The 1995
adventure game is just too janky; "Alien Isolation" is too scary. I've
over-played all the "Aliens vs Predator" games and, c'mon, "Colonial
Marines" wasn't ever a real consideration. I guess it's "Dark
Descent", then.

I re-watched the original movie with my Daughter last weekend.  She
Enjoyed it, (perhaps surprisingly, considering the very slow pacing
compared to modern movies.  I still enjoyed it, but my love has always
been the 2nd one.)

Back in the day, I used to be able to whip through ten or fifteen
games a month. In my more-elder years, I'm happy if I get three. So
playing through four whole games in thirty days is purest joy (you
should see the glee when I get through five or more; I'm like a puppy
with a balloon! ;-).

Speaking of that, I can't seem to get through more than a couple hours a
day with the mouse anymore.  Controller is a bit better, but I prefer kbm.

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

*** Dead Space
*** Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
***** Hogwarts Legacy

TDLR;

*** Dead Space (PS5 version)
I played a little more, I really liked having an actual sequence in zero gravity.  I was having trouble getting access to the PS5, so I put it
aside with every intention to get back to it.

*** Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.
I was initially loving this game, It's basically Skyrim with Arthurian legend, better NPCs, better magic & combat, and darker aesthetics (which
I like.) The first act was great.  They came out with a huge patch right
as I got to Act II and from what I've read Act II was greatly improved.
I started to lose interest in Act II a little, but it improved once I managed to push myself to the city which was harrowing. Act II
definitely still isn't up to how great Act I was though.  Then I got to
Act III.  So far it seems kind of empty and uninteresting still, it
might need another 3-9 months to cook, but definitely something to keep
an eye on for anyone who liked skyrim.

I've been playing on hard (the hardest) and each act so far has started
off somewhat hard, then became increasingly easy.  I imagine it'd be a
no challenge were I playing on even normal difficulty.

Between Act III being disappointing so far, and my wrist issues I
decided to start back up with Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) when my wrist isn't
up to the mouse on PC.  Unfortunately the PS5 controller still impacts
my hand, even if I can go for longer, so I haven't been up to Tainted
Grail, even though I don't have as much opportunity to play the PS5.

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)
So I played this a little bit a couple months ago, but not much, again because it was on PS5 which I have less access too.  My son hasn't
touched the PS5 in a bit, and with my wrist problems I thought playing
on a controller would be better.  I also accidentally forgot to
unsubscribe to PS+, and since we don't own this, I figured I'd get back
to it, remembering having enjoyed what little I played of it.

After finding Jedi Survivor was no longer available on PS+ anyway :/  I really didn't like the large amount of 3d platform puzzles in that as
far as I'd got though, and I'm really enjoying this.

I'm absolutely loving this game.  o.k. so I was playing the character my daughter and I were switching back and forth with and I was finding the
game a bit too easy.  I was going to check the difficulty and change it
to the hardest, but couldn't find it, and it was a girl character and I found myself wanting to play as an insert self into the game (unusual
for me.)

So I made a new male character, initially making him blond with long
hair, which I very quickly regretted as looking like one of Hanson. I
was so relieved when I finally got to the point I could change his hair.

The hard difficulty was actually perhaps a bit too hard.  It probably
took me 30 tries to get past the first school duel (that's on the level
of the hardest boss in the ER DLC for me!)  I need to check on what difficulty I have the other character on, If it's not on normal I might
need to put this one down to normal.  The problem is more of too many
enemy combatants and too much pressure where it feels like you don't actually have time to attack at all.  I'm not good with that in souls games, and even in souls they tend to limit you to being attacked by two
at a time.  That's the same reason I eventually had to lower the
difficulty in En Guarde' on the last combat.  In the duel you do have a partner, but they're somewhat ineffectual.  Also on hard I found myself going through all my heal potions and they aren't easy to get yet, so it makes later combats harder.  Fortunately in the duels it automatically returns your potions after you lose (It didn't seem to do that in some
other later fights though.)

The combat feels far more magical than anything I've actually played,
with reasons to actually use a number of different spells instead of
mostly pew pew pew in ER and many other games.  (You can somewhat just
pew pew pew against a single opponent, but that doesn't happen as often,
and it's really slow and dangerous at least on hard as compared to using other spells more.)

The game is visually beautiful, even more than Elden Ring.  Except the people who are a bit more BBC show unattractive (except somehow my
Hanson lookalike, which at least some different hair color fixed,) not particularly uncanny valley at least.  It's a wonderful blend of english countryside and the magical.  While I sort of enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, I was never really into them, the game really immerses you in
it, and I find myself quite awed by it all.

I am tempted to buy it on PC, but playing it on the big TV feels like it might give me a better view of the spectacle.  On the other hand I
really don't like the PS5 controller for it, I find the triggers hard to press, and for two of the buttons I find myself pressing the touch-pad
thing and opening up the map in the middle of combat frequently, which
gives a slight delay enough to get me hit, and interrupts the flow.

Finally a game where you can use fantasy magic and actually fly (on a broomstick!) turn (somewhat) invisible, conjure light, telekinesis
things to you, and I'm only in the beginning I think.

I don't even mind the puzzles! They feel like something that would be
left around by mischievous wizards at a magic school.

It's funny I like the game so much more than the movies, or the books
(well I only got a little bit into the first book, the kids weren't into
it when I was reading it to them when they were smaller, and it wasn't
any better than the movies.)

I'm not sure how Replryable it is, but I have found some differences
between my daughter's Hufflepuff and my Ravenclaw in the story, for one
bit the Hufflepuff ended up visiting Askaban and getting info from a prisoner, while my Ravenclaw ended up doing a puzzle in a tower for that same bit.  Choices don't seem to matter much at all beyond that, as most options seem to give the same results, being snarky and or saying you
don't really want to do a quest still results in the same quest.  Though
I haven't gone too much off my previous play to test that in a lot of ways.

I don't think you need to. This is akin to finding every way to die in
Zork - you're not making any progress.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

vallor wrote:

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

I wrote earlier about the KSP2. Haven't played it after
that. Where I left off, I had a mission to Ike and Duna
with the lander on Duna (after visiting Ike).

I had to go back to a quicksave from earlier on my first
descent, because I went full-throttle too late, and ended
up in pieces on Duna. That's a no-good way to fly.

Remember: F5 for safety!

My all-star Wizardry 7 team started meeting difficulties -- we'd done everything, what to do next that won't destroy me. I think it dawned on
me that there is so much more strength to an imported party and I went
back into Wizardry 6 with my new party-forming tactics and created a
monster that killed Cap'n Matey yesterday. (maybe 4 days (not full
days; days of the week, etc.) playing -- that's got to be a record)
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur wrote:

On 10/1/2025 10:08 AM, vallor wrote:

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

Speaking of AI, I tried to get Claude to write me a Dungeon Robber clone with text only and in Javascript instead of Flash.  It threw out what looked like hundreds of pages of code, but I couldn't even get it to do character creation right, and it didn't do text only.  It was able to
have you fight random monsters (all the same other than name, all you
could do was attack.) but it was not even to 'tech demo.' I only gave it
a couple hours of getting nowhere further than the initial code before I threw up my hands and rage quit.

PS.
Yes, I have almost no idea what I'm doing either with programming or AI.
 Furthest I got successfully was my rock-paper-scisors-lizard-spock me writing in JavaScript, not AI.

That's probably the main reason it was as primitive as it is. My career
focus is programming at present. I have the AI review my code sometimes
and also make design suggestions, but I don't let them write a line of
code. On the Programming online judge I was picking up some new
language from, the AI suggestor tells you to do it one way then after
awhile tells you to do it a different way. Often it says, you can
improve this *wrong* aspect, and then produces the same code as its
"novel" answer that I can use as an example of what it is referring to.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/1/2025 10:56 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/1/2025 8:03 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

*** Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.
I was initially loving this game, It's basically Skyrim with Arthurian
legend, better NPCs, better magic & combat, and darker aesthetics (which
I like.)

Well, you've sold me on the game. I adored Skyrim, and what fantasist
doesn't love themselves some Arthurian legend? I haven't bought it,
but I added it to my wishlist.

The only problem is that it's another big open-world game, and I
generally have been avoiding those these days, even when I'm sure I'd
love them once I start playing. (I've installed and uninstalled
"Kindgom Come Deliverance 2" four times since I've purchased it. I
just can't make myself take the step to start playing). I fear
"Tainted" might suffer the same fate were I to actually buy it.

Yeah, it's not THAT big like ER or even Skyrim or Oblivion, but the
'open world' probably does contribute to my feelings waning on in in Act
II a little and Act III more so. I'd say like maybe 2x too big, vs. ER
being like 10x too big, and Bethesda being like 5x too big.

Almost everything feels related to the overall quest in some way or at
least the theme of it. But give it another 3-9 months for some more
polish before trying it.

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

Everything I see and hear about this game makes me think I'd quite
enjoy it... except that it's a Harry Potter game. I just never could
warm up to that franchise the way everyone else seems to have done.
It's just too nonsensical. The world-building is shit and the
characters are awful.

That's part of what I was trying to say. I didn't really care much for
Harry Potter, which I find horrible in some bits, but somewhat
entertaining more for it's tangential relationship to D&D/fantasy. It's
very easy to ignore most of it having anything to do with Harry Potter.
It's set in Victorian times, so long before Mr. Potter or anyone in the
movies came along, even Voldemort.

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

We'll see if it holds up throughout, I'm only really in the early game.

Also there's lots of cats to pet. Huh? Huh? :)
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

Darksiders 1 (Warmastered)
The gameplay is just as straightforward and fun as I recalled from a first playthrough years ago, but I seem to recall having a better grasp of the
plot and characters back then -- now, the story seems quite sketchy with no in-game glossary that I can see. Nearing the end-game, I've had to go
looking for more gameworld history in wiki pages and just now discovered a comicbook in the game directory. I have a couple hours left and then for
sure will continue on to Darksiders 2.

rms

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

* Aliens: Dark Descent

I was gifted this but haven't fired it up, sounds decent at least! I
have played Alien: Fireteam Elite, and rather enjoyed it. Gameplay had similar clumsiness, but was engaging and evoked the movie spirit well. The timeline was I believe post-WY, closer to Alien: Resurrection, and what
there was of it fun to read.

rms

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Same old. I finally resumed SW:TOR on Caturday. Being old sucks. :( Oh, I did play Unrailed 2 free weekend. It was still annoying.


Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, that's it for September. We're now officially into Autumn (or
Spring, if you live in the UpsideDown), which not only means cooler
(warmer) weather, but it also becomes more exciting time for
game-players. We're revving up to the holiday season, and all sorts of
new games are coming out. It just inspires me to play even more games!

Like, for instance, the ones I played below:

[Note: I'm trying something new by adding URLs to Steam
(or elsewhere, as necessary) so you can, if interested,
see screenshots or get other information about the game.
Let me know if you think this is a good idea or if you
think it's just wasted effort.]

Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Eastern Exorcist
* American Truck Simulator: Missouri
* Banishers of New Eden
* Aliens: Dark Descent

Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* Eastern Exorcist https://store.steampowered.com/app/1120810/Eastern_Exorcist
I wish I could recommend "Eastern Exorcist". It's such a pretty game,
and it does have some satisfying combat. But it's one of those games
where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Then again, I have to wonder if my dissatisfaction has more to do with
the cultural divide between myself, the developers, and the intended audience. This is very much a game made by a Chinese company for a
Chinese market; the English version is something of an afterthought.
It is quite possible my unhappiness with the game's narrative and
pacing are due more to my Western outlook and that "Eastern Exorcist"
is considered high art by Chinese gamers. If this is the case, I can't
call "Eastern Exorcist" a bad game; just not a game made to my tastes.

But it sure seems like a bad game.

It's not the mechanics per se. The combat is actually quite enjoyable.
The game is a side-scrolling action game similar in concept to games
like "Shinobi"; you run left and right and whack things with your
sword. You have a wide variety of moves and can level up and learn new
powers as the game advances.

The problem is how the game presents itself. Each level is about two
or three screens wide (a few are larger than that) and have maybe
three to six enemies on it. You can't exit the level until all the
enemies are dead, but once you do the game loads the next level. This
results in a lot of starts-and-stops to the gameplay; there's no real
flow. Worse, every time a level loads, or new enemies appear, there's
a momentary pause as your character freezes in place. This isn't a
technical issue; it's obviously a game design choice, a moment of "get
ready to enter battle" for the player. But it's extremely disruptive
to the game's pacing.

The visuals are quite nice, at least if looked at in a still frame. In motion, everything appears a bit jerky; the art design owes at least a
little to Chinese shadow puppetry. The narrative is fairly weak.
Again, this may be a translation issue; perhaps in the native Chinese
there's more poetry to the story. In English, everything sounds a bit disjointed, and the voice-work is second rate. It also sort of just
ends, with a shaggy dog finale that offers no payoff.

There's a lot of technical expertise in evidence in this game. It just doesn't come together as a fun experience. But whether that's because
of a fault with the game or my own biases is just to difficult for me
to say.

* American Truck Simulator: Missouri https://store.steampowered.com/app/2730870/American_Truck_Simulator__Missouri/
Look, I get it. By my count, this is the fourteenth time this game has appeared in the "What Have You Been Playing" thread. You don't want to
hear more about the game. In some ways, I don't want to write any more
about this game. But goddammit, I played it this month, so what are we
gonna do; ignore that fact?

More specifically, I played the game with the "Missouri" expansion. I actually purchased "Missouri" some months ago, but I've been avoiding
this game because, well... recent USAian politics have made me
reluctant to play in a game that celebrates that country. But it was inevitable I was going to return eventually. How can I resist driving
down their big open highways?

But there is not much to say about the Missouri expansion that I
haven't said about earlier expansions. The skill of the map designers improves with every iteration, and Missouri ranks up there as one of
their better works. It really is noticeable if you go back to regions
they designed earlier; the new maps have much more natural curves and
dips, and the open areas look a lot less artificial. The developers
are a lot less reliant on pre-built templates for all their buildings
and locations; each location --whether it's a factory, or gas station,
or the center of a town-- looks a lot more unique. The wilderness
areas are much better looking too. Special kudos to the designers for
making the Gateway Arch in St. Louis look so impressively imposing
too.

Beyond that, there game remains mostly the same. These days I'm
particularly enjoying the "lane keeping" function; combined with
dynamic cruise control, it makes the driving much more hands-off,
should I want that. Seriously, on one cruise I literally had time to
jump out of my seat, rush to the kitchen to grab a sandwich and get
back to the game while hurtling down Interstate Route 10 the whole
time. While this is a sillier example of the feature, it does allow me
to better enjoy the visuals around me without focusing entirely on
keeping in my lane (I know: isn't that the whole point of a driving
game?). But after hundreds of hours of playing ATS, I'm happy for the
change.

There is some bad news for those of you tired of hearing me yammer on
about this game, though. I also purchased the "Iowa" expansion, so
expect a return visit from this game and coming months.

* Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ There's a lot to be said for putting your best foot forward first.
First impressions can be crucial, especially with video games.
Unfortunately, "Banishers" doesn't seem to understand this.

The game might be great; I don't know. But it doesn't start well and
the end result was that I gave up on the game just a few hours into
the experience. But I just cared so little about the world, the
characters and the mechanics that I felt no desire to keep playing. I
see the game's potential --in an alternate 17th century, you take on
the roll of magically-endowed 'banishers' who exorcise demons and
ghosts haunting a small town.

But the game put so little effort into making me want to keep playing
that I never got to see if it lived up to my expectations. The visuals
in the first few areas were extremely dated; the animations were
clunky, the combat was unsatisfying and I took a near-instant dislike
to the characters and had little desire to help them through their
problems. Plus, I've never much cared for 17th century settings. Is it
any wonder I abandoned my play-through of this game?

The game has very positive reviews on Steam, so I expect it's quite
good. But I'll probably never find out because it made so little
effort in showing why its so beloved. I've too many other games
waiting in the sidelines anyway.

* Aliens: Dark Descent https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150440/Aliens_Dark_Descent/
I've been hankerin' for some xeno-blasting recently. The Aliens are
always a fun video-game enemy to face off against, and they've made
frequent appearances in the media. But which game to play? The 1995
adventure game is just too janky; "Alien Isolation" is too scary. I've over-played all the "Aliens vs Predator" games and, c'mon, "Colonial
Marines" wasn't ever a real consideration. I guess it's "Dark
Descent", then.

"Dark Descent" is, overall, a fairly mediocre game, but it is hard for
me to put my finger on why I feel that way (not that's going to stop
me from trying to figure it now). Visually it's quite good looking,
capturing the sci-fi industrial grunge look that the franchise pretty
much created. The game benefits from it's god's eye, top-down view
--there's no need for excessive detail when you only see things from
20 meters above-- but I think even were the game in first-person view
it would still hold up. The setting is the usual predictable "Weyland
Yutani" shenanigans, but enjoyable for all that it's generic nonsense.
The characters are all comic-book archetypes, but this game isn't in a
genre where you expect deep revelations about human nature, so that's
fine too.

But it's the gameplay where "Dark Descent" falls short. An
action-strategy game, "Descent" has you moving your squad of four
marines across vast maps, shooting aliens and completing mission
objectives. In between missions, you tend to your wounded warriors
(who, in addition to physical anguish, also suffer from stress-related problems which make them less effective warriors unless treated).
Gathering supplies is an important part of the game too; you need them
for research and to upgrade weapons, and there's only a limited stock
of turrets and health packs (you have an infinite stock of ammo at
base, but can only carry limited supplies on mission). This means that
you need to scour the map to find enough gear to keep you going not
only through the current mission, but future operations as well.

The problem is that you're on a constant clock. In-mission, alien aggressiveness keeps ticking upwards; past a certain point, a
near-constant number of xenos will hound your team, with predictable
results as wounds pile up and ammo ticks down. You can, of course,
retreat back to base to reset the aggressiveness counter (you can
return to finish mission objectives), except you only get one mission
a day and you only have a certain number of days before a
pre-programmed nuclear Armageddon. I get that the developers wanted to
put the characters (and the player) under a certain amount of
pressure, but I felt it all a bit much.

It didn't help that you had comparatively little command over your
soldiers in the field. Yes, you can move them around... but only as a
unit. You can't position soldiers precisely for overlapping fields of
fire, or other strategic maneuvering. Triggering special abilities
(like using a secondary weapon) relies on another limited (albeit
freely regenerating) resource, and the characters are often so slow to
use them that they rarely are useful. Add to all that an annoying
stealth mechanic and AI that seems to know exactly where you are at
all times.

With its mechanics, "Dark Descent" plays like an action game; it's
fast and furious. But its pacing is more akin to a strategy title; it
demands a preciseness and forethought that its controls just don't
allow. There's a lot of potential in the game that goes unrealized
because it has unsuccessfully mashed the two genres together. Other
games have managed the feat; "Dark Descent" made a mess of it. I love
the game for its setting and what it could have been, but it's a real
trial to play it.

---------------------------------------

Back in the day, I used to be able to whip through ten or fifteen
games a month. In my more-elder years, I'm happy if I get three. So
playing through four whole games in thirty days is purest joy (you
should see the glee when I get through five or more; I'm like a puppy
with a balloon! ;-).

Anyway, that's my playlist. What about you:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

--
"I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart on your laws." --Psalm 119:30, but Ant is struggling to do that. Also, itchy and leaky again. Behind again due to slammy colony days. :(
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 13:58:46 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

On Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:08:10 +0000, vallor <vallor@vallor.earth>
wrote:

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

While I wouldn't resort to CHatGPT for the purpose, I really do need
to find a better newsreader. Forte Agent v1.9 is really long in the
tooth ;-)

Honestly, these days I'm as likely to resort to newsgrouper as fire-up
Agent.

Well, Pan is good, and is in current development. That's
my "real" newsreader, the one I've used for years.

Unless and/or until this one makes the grade. It uses Tk/perl,
so not sure how well it will run under Windows -- but MacOS
has Tk, so there's hope there. Runs well on Linux, except
for all the nasty BOOOOGS...

Oh, and it has a unique feature that it supports multiple
news servers, keeping track of read articles by Message-id.
(Similar to how a news server works -- I even call the
Berkeley DB hash "history.db".)
--
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090Ti 24G
OS: Linux 6.17.0 D: Mint 22.2 DE: Xfce 4.18
NVIDIA: 580.95.05 Mem: 258G
"Upgrade: take old bugs out, put new ones in."
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

At Wed, 1 Oct 2025 13:41:26 -0500, Praetor Mandrake
<horchata12839@gmail.com> said:

Justisaur wrote:

On 10/1/2025 10:08 AM, vallor wrote:

At Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

A little Elite Dangerous, a little KSP2, and a lot of
"coercing ChatGPT5 to write a newsreader for me". ;)

Speaking of AI, I tried to get Claude to write me a Dungeon Robber
clone with text only and in Javascript instead of Flash.  It threw> > out what looked like hundreds of pages of code, but I couldn't even
get it to do character creation right, and it didn't do text only. > > It was able to have you fight random monsters (all the same other
than name, all you could do was attack.) but it was not even to
'tech demo.' I only gave it a couple hours of getting nowhere
further than the initial code before I threw up my hands and rage
quit.

I was lucky -- I know perl, and enough about Tk to be "dangerous", but
really, hadn't written any Tk/perl code for 10 years.

I told it what I wanted, generally, and it produced a working
newsreader. It had absolutely no capabilities to _post_ anything,
but it was a start.

Somewhere while adding features, I had it move the message pane
below the group overview pane, which made it seem that much more
real. (It's the same layout I use for Pan.) I also described
changes to its text-wrapping for posts that it seems to have
implemented properly.

A problem showed up when I would spend a lot of time composing
a post, much like I'm doing for this one, and the server would
in the meantime close the connection. Adding robustness to
all the functions took a while. For posting, it seriously
over-engineered handling the return code, causing the problem
that it would post successfully, but wouldn't detect that,
leaving me with a hung dialog (and application). So I went
in and fixed that.

There was also another point during this process that the
infernal computer demon seemed to have forgotten where we
were with the project. So I ended up sending it what I had
so far, in 200-line increments, so we would get "synced-up".

PS. Yes, I have almost no idea what I'm doing either with
programming or AI.
 Furthest I got successfully was my> >  rock-paper-scisors-lizard-spock me> > writing in JavaScript, not AI.

That's probably the main reason it was as primitive as it is. My
career focus is programming at present. I have the AI review my code sometimes and also make design suggestions, but I don't let them
write a line of code. On the Programming online judge I was picking
up some new language from, the AI suggestor tells you to do it one
way then after awhile tells you to do it a different way. Often it
says, you can improve this *wrong* aspect, and then produces the same
code as its "novel" answer that I can use as an example of what it is referring to.

I feel your pain. I'm going to have to go through this thing
before releasing the beta just to dig out all the dead subroutines
from different approaches to the same problem. "Oh, _that_
didn't work? Try _this_."

I've also had to refer to the documentation for Tk::MListbox
a few times to explain to the infernal beasty
how it should be coding something -- _then_ it gets it.
--
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090Ti 24G
OS: Linux 6.17.0 D: Mint 22.2 DE: Xfce 4.18
NVIDIA: 580.95.05 Mem: 258G
"Nobody can be just like me. Even I have trouble."
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/1/2025 5:03 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, that's it for September.

I have been playing way too much Red Dead Redemption 2. After years of
eying it, and then buying it and getting turned off at the rather
depressive beginning I finally got into playing it (spurred on by an
interest in the Boot Hill ttrpg).
And it is in fact quite depressive, as the whole story is basically how everything for this group of outlaws is going to shit, and especially
for the main character.
It IS a good story though, and a really good game. Although I am in the epilogue now and I haven't played for days because I kinda lost the
drive to finish.

Other than that I played a bit of Worldbox, which is a world simulator.
My kid wanted it and played it for quite a while, after a few hours on
it I felt a bit bored though. It's not my kind of game.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 17:19:10 -0600, "rms" <rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:

* Aliens: Dark Descent

I was gifted this but haven't fired it up, sounds decent at least! I
have played Alien: Fireteam Elite, and rather enjoyed it. Gameplay had >similar clumsiness, but was engaging and evoked the movie spirit well. The >timeline was I believe post-WY, closer to Alien: Resurrection, and what >there was of it fun to read.

I think that, in terms of gameplay, I enjoyed "Fireteam Elite"
slightly more, but that probably has less to do with the comparative
quality of the game and more with the fact that I just don't engage
with top-down games very well anymore. These days, I much prefer
first-person or over-the-shoulder third-person viewpoints.

But if pressed, I think "Dark Descent" was the _better_ of the two
games in gameplay. "Fireteam" felt a bit grindy and lacked
originality; it was a co-op FPS with an Aliens skin. "Dark Descent"
tries to do something different. I don't think it does it all that
well, but I valued its originality. ;-)


Let's see; if I had to rank the various Alien(s)-licensed games I
remember playing, I'd probably put them in this order:

- Alien Isolation (2014, Windows)
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite (23021, Windows)
Aliens: Dark Descent (2023, Windows) (tie)
- Aliens: Infestation (2001, GameBoy Color)
- Aliens vs Predator 2 (2001, Windows)
Aliens vs Predator (2010, Windows) (tie)
- Aliens vs Predator (1999, Windows)
- Aliens Resurrection (2000, PS1)
- Alien Armageddon (2014, arcade)*
- Alien Trilogy (1996, DOS)
- Alien vs Predator (1994, Jaguar)
- Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure (1995, DOS)
- Alien 3 (1993, SNES)
- Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013, Windows)

I suspect "Alien: Rogue Incursion Enhanced" (which just released and I
haven't played yet... but want to) would probably fall down in the
middle of the list.







* technically I never played this one; I just watched somebody do it.
It looked neat, though. Stupid, but neat.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 2 Oct 2025 11:20:41 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

On 10/1/2025 5:03 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, that's it for September.

I have been playing way too much Red Dead Redemption 2. After years of
eying it, and then buying it and getting turned off at the rather
depressive beginning I finally got into playing it (spurred on by an >interest in the Boot Hill ttrpg).
And it is in fact quite depressive, as the whole story is basically how >everything for this group of outlaws is going to shit, and especially
for the main character.
It IS a good story though, and a really good game. Although I am in the >epilogue now and I haven't played for days because I kinda lost the
drive to finish.

RDR2 is one of those games on my "I intend to play it soon" list. But
it's been on that list for years, so "soon" may be a while. It suffers
from three issues:

1) I 'just' played the first Red Dead Redemption game
(admittedly, that was seven months ago, but it feels
like yesterday), and I'm just not ready for another game
like that
2) I have a really hard time starting open-world games
anyway, because they demands so much time to finish
3) I'm not the biggest fan of westerns

I know I'll get around to it eventually, because I KNOW its a good
game... but damned if I know when that will happen.

Other than that I played a bit of Worldbox, which is a world simulator.
My kid wanted it and played it for quite a while, after a few hours on
it I felt a bit bored though. It's not my kind of game.

I like the concept of these sort of games but I always find they
disappoint. They're either too fiddly to configure, or simulate the
world in ways I don't enjoy.

Still, I added this one to the wishlist. Maybe it will be the one to
convince me the genre has worth after all.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 2 Oct 2025 11:20:41 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

On 10/1/2025 5:03 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Well, that's it for September.

I have been playing way too much Red Dead Redemption 2. After years of
eying it, and then buying it and getting turned off at the rather
depressive beginning I finally got into playing it (spurred on by an >interest in the Boot Hill ttrpg).
And it is in fact quite depressive, as the whole story is basically how >everything for this group of outlaws is going to shit, and especially
for the main character.
It IS a good story though, and a really good game. Although I am in the >epilogue now and I haven't played for days because I kinda lost the
drive to finish.

I didn't get that far in the single player story, but spent an absurd
amount of time in RDR2 online. It can be a surprisingly solo
experience depending on how you want to play. You're basically still
running missions unless you specifically join the pvp events (which I
did because I enjoy that, but not mandatory). You'll see other
players, but to me that makes the world feel more alive anyway... and
unlike a lot of MMO games it's done in a way that adds to immersion
rather than takes away from it.

Because the game is so good I want to go back and finish SP (or maybe
even start from the beginning) some day. Just more toys than time at
the moment.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

<Snippety-do-dah>

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

Everything I see and hear about this game makes me think I'd quite
enjoy it... except that it's a Harry Potter game. I just never could
warm up to that franchise the way everyone else seems to have done.
It's just too nonsensical. The world-building is shit and the
characters are awful.

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

;-)

It's currently on sale on steam for 80% off, so now would be the time to
buy.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn
spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

<Snippety-do-dah>

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

Everything I see and hear about this game makes me think I'd quite
enjoy it... except that it's a Harry Potter game. I just never could
warm up to that franchise the way everyone else seems to have done.
It's just too nonsensical. The world-building is shit and the
characters are awful.

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

;-)

It's currently on sale on steam for 80% off, so now would be the time to
buy.

Oh and according to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iYCMs-0KIE
there is an extensive mod community, and mods are done from within the
game; modders submit their work and it's vetted by the Devs and added if
it fits with the setting and actually works and doesn't crash the game.

Only on PC, console peasants miss out.

Downside as shown in the video, is a savegame using mods is saved in a different menu from the regular unmodded saves.

I picked it up, figuring that even if it stinks, at a $15 price point
(80% off,) what the hell.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:23:23 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

It's currently on sale on steam for 80% off, so now would be the time to
buy.

It's a very tempting price, I admit. Except I already bought an
expensive (for me, at least) game from the Steam Autumn sale* and I
have to wonder: do I really need another?













* hey, I haven't done our usual "steam sales suck" thread. Can it be
an official steam sale if we aren't bitching about its pointlessness?
;-)


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/4/2025 7:26 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:23:23 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

It's currently on sale on steam for 80% off, so now would be the time to
buy.

It's a very tempting price, I admit. Except I already bought an
expensive (for me, at least) game from the Steam Autumn sale* and I
have to wonder: do I really need another?

Who are you and what have you done with the Real High Priest of The
Number Spalls!?!?!?!?

* hey, I haven't done our usual "steam sales suck" thread. Can it be
an official steam sale if we aren't bitching about its pointlessness?
;-)

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 4 Oct 2025 09:07:34 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

On 10/4/2025 7:26 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:23:23 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 10:06:20 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

***** Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

But it sure does look fun and pretty.

It's currently on sale on steam for 80% off, so now would be the time to >>> buy.

It's a very tempting price, I admit. Except I already bought an
expensive (for me, at least) game from the Steam Autumn sale* and I
have to wonder: do I really need another?

Who are you and what have you done with the Real High Priest of The
Number Spalls!?!?!?!?

If it reassures you any, The Number has increased by three since my
previous post.

But I still haven't acquired "Hogwarts Legacy". I seriously considered
getting it --as mentioned, that price /is/ very tempting-- but I
couldn't take the final plunge. It's the whole aesthetic of the game;
it just rubs me wrong.



























(Also, I've often suspected the whole "Spalls Hurgenson" bit is
something akin to the Dread Pirate Roberts; a nom de plume passed from
person to person ;-)



--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson

* Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden >https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ >There's a lot to be said for putting your best foot forward first.
First impressions can be crucial, especially with video games.
Unfortunately, "Banishers" doesn't seem to understand this.

LOL! I tried to buy it after you posted about it and Steam told me
that I already have it in my library! Who has the biggest backlog of
games now :-)

-pw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:45:54 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

LOL! I tried to buy it after you posted about it and Steam told me
that I already have it in my library! Who has the biggest backlog of
games now :-)

-pw

I can easily see this exact scenario happening to Spalls. But then
again, he does have a spreadsheet. So, maybe not.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 12:00:28 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:45:54 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

LOL! I tried to buy it after you posted about it and Steam told me
that I already have it in my library! Who has the biggest backlog of
games now :-)

It was part of the August 2025 Humble Bundle, so maybe that's where
you got it. Else, I can easily see it included in other bundles (like
from Fanatical); it just seems that sort of game.

I can easily see this exact scenario happening to Spalls. But then
again, he does have a spreadsheet. So, maybe not.

It is, in fact, why The Spreadsheet was originally created.* I kept
buying games (back then, from brick-n-mortar storefronts) that I
already owned. And this was waaaaay before The Number got as
abnormally large as it is today, bloated as it is by innumberable
freebies. I kept it on a Palm pilot and would refer to it before I
headed towards the register. Saved me a few bucks, that spreadsheet
did! ;-)

Nowadays, what with most of my purchases being made over the Internet
and at home, I tend to refer to Playnite (a launcher that combines all
my gaming libraries --Steam, Epic, etc.-- into one list), just because
it's slightly more convenient than firing up Excel.** But I still keep
the spreadsheet as a legacy back-up.

And yes, despite *all* the above, there _still_ have been a few times
when I have purchased a game only to realize after the fact I already
owned it on another storefront. ;-)














* That, and to keep track of where I'd stashed each game. Back when
most of my library was installed using CD-ROMs, I kept all the discs
in CD-storage binders, and the spreadsheet was helpful not only in
identifying which binder, but also which pocket. It minimized a lot of searching whenever I wanted to play a particular game.

** well, technically I use LibreOffice Calc and not Excel, but if I
said that 90% of you wouldn't know what I'm talking about ;-)

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 12:00:28 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:45:54 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

LOL! I tried to buy it after you posted about it and Steam told me
that I already have it in my library! Who has the biggest backlog of
games now :-)

-pw

I can easily see this exact scenario happening to Spalls. But then
again, he does have a spreadsheet. So, maybe not.

*--

That's who! :-)

-pw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

It was part of the August 2025 Humble Bundle, so maybe that's where

you got it. Else, I can easily see it included in other bundles (like
from Fanatical); it just seems that sort of game.

I bet it was Fanatical. Just remembered why I probably quit. Got
sick of waiting for the long intro to the game with no way to skip it.

I went and did a chore and let it played out. It is interesting and
looks great. But I do not want to play a chic. Q is supposed to be
to switch characters but I guess not whenever I want so I can't play
the dude. So, I will probably quit playing it again :-)

I like spreadsheets and I like systems!

-pw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 20:17:13 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 12:00:28 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:45:54 -0600, PW >><iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

LOL! I tried to buy it after you posted about it and Steam told me
that I already have it in my library! Who has the biggest backlog of >>>games now :-)

My current "not played" percentage is 56.79% of my library (a number
which is, sadly, growing). Given the total size of the library,
though, that 43.21% that HAVE been played represents a fairly
substantial number of games. ;-)

(And even so, that 'not played' game excludes a lot of games I only
gave a smattering of time with; not enough to end up on the 'what have
you been playing' list, but not completely untouched either. Which
just goes to show you how useless statistics are ;-)



--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 02 Oct 2025 11:12:16 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 1 Oct 2025 17:19:10 -0600, "rms" <rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:

* Aliens: Dark Descent

I was gifted this but haven't fired it up, sounds decent at least! I >>have played Alien: Fireteam Elite, and rather enjoyed it. Gameplay had >>similar clumsiness, but was engaging and evoked the movie spirit well. The >>timeline was I believe post-WY, closer to Alien: Resurrection, and what >>there was of it fun to read.

As an aside, "Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2" was just announced. Or rather, data-harvesters noticed that there's a listing for the game in the
ESRB database, which is a pretty good sign that there's a game of that
name under development. Beyond that, there are no details.

Still... I guess I'd better start making room for another xenomorph
game in my library.


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

Mostly just Borderlands 4. It's pretty much same old Borderlands with
some small tweaks to the gameplay. Writing isn't super annoying or super
lame, at least not yet.

I think I played a little of Outer Worlds in September too but it's
really been a filler game that I still don't like that much.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Top posting! Oh no!

Do you have any pointers for American Truck Simulator Spalls? I don't
really care too much about a career, I just want to do a few runs and
drive around. The pilons in the training are a bit** for me. Tried
both controller and gamepad. Do I really need to be that precise once
I get going?

Any other tips?

Thanks!

-pw

On Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:03:42 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <

* American Truck Simulator: Missouri >https://store.steampowered.com/app/2730870/American_Truck_Simulator__Missouri/ >Look, I get it. By my count, this is the fourteenth time this game has >appeared in the "What Have You Been Playing" thread. You don't want to
hear more about the game. In some ways, I don't want to write any more
about this game. But goddammit, I played it this month, so what are we
gonna do; ignore that fact?

More specifically, I played the game with the "Missouri" expansion. I >actually purchased "Missouri" some months ago, but I've been avoiding
this game because, well... recent USAian politics have made me
reluctant to play in a game that celebrates that country. But it was >inevitable I was going to return eventually. How can I resist driving
down their big open highways?

But there is not much to say about the Missouri expansion that I
haven't said about earlier expansions. The skill of the map designers >improves with every iteration, and Missouri ranks up there as one of
their better works. It really is noticeable if you go back to regions
they designed earlier; the new maps have much more natural curves and
dips, and the open areas look a lot less artificial. The developers
are a lot less reliant on pre-built templates for all their buildings
and locations; each location --whether it's a factory, or gas station,
or the center of a town-- looks a lot more unique. The wilderness
areas are much better looking too. Special kudos to the designers for
making the Gateway Arch in St. Louis look so impressively imposing
too.

Beyond that, there game remains mostly the same. These days I'm
particularly enjoying the "lane keeping" function; combined with
dynamic cruise control, it makes the driving much more hands-off,
should I want that. Seriously, on one cruise I literally had time to
jump out of my seat, rush to the kitchen to grab a sandwich and get
back to the game while hurtling down Interstate Route 10 the whole
time. While this is a sillier example of the feature, it does allow me
to better enjoy the visuals around me without focusing entirely on
keeping in my lane (I know: isn't that the whole point of a driving
game?). But after hundreds of hours of playing ATS, I'm happy for the
change.

There is some bad news for those of you tired of hearing me yammer on
about this game, though. I also purchased the "Iowa" expansion, so
expect a return visit from this game and coming months.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Fags and diaper sniffers CANNOT drive trucks!
You're a retard and a fag. It ain't gonna work. Ever!
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/6/2025 6:58 PM, PW wrote:

Top posting! Oh no!

Do you have any pointers for American Truck Simulator Spalls? I don't
really care too much about a career, I just want to do a few runs and
drive around. The pilons in the training are a bit** for me. Tried
both controller and gamepad. Do I really need to be that precise once
I get going?

Any other tips?

Thanks!

-pw

You're a douche and should drive a toddler's Big Wheel
instead. You sniff the seats on them every chance you get.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/6/2025 7:19 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 20:17:13 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 12:00:28 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:45:54 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

LOL! I tried to buy it after you posted about it and Steam told me
that I already have it in my library! Who has the biggest backlog of
games now :-)

My current "not played" percentage is 56.79% of my library (a number
which is, sadly, growing). Given the total size of the library,
though, that 43.21% that HAVE been played represents a fairly
substantial number of games. ;-)

(And even so, that 'not played' game excludes a lot of games I only
gave a smattering of time with; not enough to end up on the 'what have
you been playing' list, but not completely untouched either. Which
just goes to show you how useless statistics are ;-)

"Lies, damn lies and statistics."
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/1/2025 8:03 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

My Time at Portia.

Again.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:58:36 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

Top posting! Oh no!

Do you have any pointers for American Truck Simulator Spalls? I don't
really care too much about a career, I just want to do a few runs and
drive around. The pilons in the training are a bit** for me. Tried
both controller and gamepad. Do I really need to be that precise once
I get going?

[Hey! You saw it. pw _asked_ about the game. Now I _gotta_
talk about the truck-sims! I didn't start it! ;-]

I never bothered with the training; in fairness, they only added the
tutorial a few months ago. But unless you want to engage with the game
in full-sim mode*, it's generally pretty forgiving. I doubt you'll
need the precision the tutorial is demanding.

That said, I've never played the game with a gamepad. For the most
part, I've stuck with mouse and keyboard. I tried it with a steering
wheel, and that's a blast... but unless you have multiple monitors I
still think the M+KB is the superior choice... just because this is a
game which requires a bit more situational awareness than most driving
sims. You're pulling a 20m / 30,000kg truck down the highway at
100kph; you need to know where everything around you is. If you have a multi-monitor set-up (or a VR/head-tracking headset) you can just look
around but if you're on a single screen, you're going to want one hand
on the mouse so you can turn your head to look at your mirrors.

But really, the biggest tip I can give is to remind you that this is
_not_ a racing game. You don't get points for getting to your
destination early. It's not a game where you're trying to overtake all
the other cars, or where swerving back and forth across the road
works to your advantage. It's a slow-n-steady game, and (at least in
my case) I find it works its magic best when you get into the zen-like
"highway hypnosis" as you trundle down the major highways.






* which is not the default. You'd have to muck around in settings to
achieve that. The defaults are made for more casual drivers... like me
;-)


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Tue, 07 Oct 2025 11:01:37 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:58:36 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

Top posting! Oh no!

Do you have any pointers for American Truck Simulator Spalls? I don't >>really care too much about a career, I just want to do a few runs and
drive around. The pilons in the training are a bit** for me. Tried
both controller and gamepad. Do I really need to be that precise once
I get going?

[Hey! You saw it. pw _asked_ about the game. Now I _gotta_
talk about the truck-sims! I didn't start it! ;-]

I never bothered with the training; in fairness, they only added the
tutorial a few months ago. But unless you want to engage with the game
in full-sim mode*, it's generally pretty forgiving. I doubt you'll
need the precision the tutorial is demanding.

That said, I've never played the game with a gamepad. For the most
part, I've stuck with mouse and keyboard. I tried it with a steering
wheel, and that's a blast... but unless you have multiple monitors I
still think the M+KB is the superior choice... just because this is a
game which requires a bit more situational awareness than most driving
sims. You're pulling a 20m / 30,000kg truck down the highway at
100kph; you need to know where everything around you is. If you have a >multi-monitor set-up (or a VR/head-tracking headset) you can just look
around but if you're on a single screen, you're going to want one hand
on the mouse so you can turn your head to look at your mirrors.

But really, the biggest tip I can give is to remind you that this is
_not_ a racing game. You don't get points for getting to your
destination early. It's not a game where you're trying to overtake all
the other cars, or where swerving back and forth across the road
works to your advantage. It's a slow-n-steady game, and (at least in
my case) I find it works its magic best when you get into the zen-like >"highway hypnosis" as you trundle down the major highways.

* which is not the default. You'd have to muck around in settings to
achieve that. The defaults are made for more casual drivers... like me
;-)

*--

I have a nice wheel, but never use it with any driving games because
just setting it up with the clamp, getting the pedals situated, etc...
takes longer than my attention span with driving games and
simulations. I will go back to the keyboard and mouse.

And I do have two monitors. Maybe I will see if I can get ATS working
with the 2nd one on my left. I also have an old TrackIR. That is
probably not supported.

I just want to drive around, maybe do a job here and there and that is
it.

Thanks Spalls!

-pw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the
little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a
vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No
dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little
too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am
able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

-pw
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:45:43 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

I have a nice wheel, but never use it with any driving games because
just setting it up with the clamp, getting the pedals situated, etc...
takes longer than my attention span with driving games and
simulations. I will go back to the keyboard and mouse.

I hear you. I had the same problem... except I can't say that I had a
/nice/ wheel (it was a cheap plastic thing with no weight to it).

Still, it made the driving experience of almost any (slightly simmish)
driving game the better for using it. But boy, what a pain to use;
there was no place for it! And then whenever you were done, you had to
stash the thing somewhere convenient enough that you could pull it out
again when you wanted to use it next time you played a game, but out
of the way enough that its bulky carapace wasn't interfering with your
other work.

Eventually I just got annoyed with the whole thing and --quite
unusually for me-- chucked it out entirely. Which, looking at the
prices that gaming wheels go for nowadays, is a decision I look back
at regretfully. ;-)

And I do have two monitors. Maybe I will see if I can get ATS working
with the 2nd one on my left. I also have an old TrackIR. That is
probably not supported.

_If_ you can get it working, multi-monitor support in ETS2/ATS is
really cool... but last time I checked, it's not that easy. The game
supports it, but for best use you have to tinker a lot with the config
files. I tried it once, but it proved a lot more hassle than it was
worth, and the frequent update cycle of the game broke the config too
often so I eventually gave up on it.

I never tried (or even owned, to my shame) a TrackIR device, but
supposedly it works quite well with the game. I just noticed there's a software-only solution that supposedly works with a WebCam, so maybe
I'll try that.

I just want to drive around, maybe do a job here and there and that is
it.

Just a note:

When you start the game, you don't have your own truck. You have to do
'quick jobs' until you earn enough cash to buy a garage, and then a
truck of your own (~$500,000 USD total, in-game) first. Only once you
achieve that lofty goal can you 'free-roam'. Early jobs will only earn
you $5-20K apiece (it goes up as you become more experienced and 'rank
up' so you can take longer jobs), so you're looking at maybe 20-50
'quick-jobs' you have to do first before you can just go where you
will.

(I mean, technically I suppose you can just start a quick job, then (optionally) ditch the trailer and roam about where you will. You
won't get paid and have to just accept whatever truck the job foists
on you, though.)

Presumably, there are mods or cheats to bypass this requirement. I
never bothered. Since the quick jobs had me on the highways anyway
(which was always the biggest appeal of the game to me) I didn't
really mind the requirement. It was nice once I got my own virtual
truck and could modify it to my taste though (including the addition
of three virtual kitties to make my trips less lonely ;-)


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the
little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No
dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little
too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am
able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

I looked it up and apparently there's only two difficulties - adept
which is super easy and expert which is super hard.

You can change the difficulty mid game, but I doubt you want super hard.

There's mods for difficulty which give better balanced options, but I
doubt you want to mod just for that. If I ever get around to
buying/playing remastered I'm sure I'll probably just suffer through
super hard again.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 11:07:57 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No
dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little
too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am
able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

I looked it up and apparently there's only two difficulties - adept
which is super easy and expert which is super hard.

You can change the difficulty mid game, but I doubt you want super hard.

There's mods for difficulty which give better balanced options, but I
doubt you want to mod just for that. If I ever get around to
buying/playing remastered I'm sure I'll probably just suffer through
super hard again.

*--

I thought it was this game that the difficulty couldn't be changed
once the game started. I guess that was another game. I wouldn't pick
the hardest one, that is for sure. So, I will keep it the way it is.

Thanks J!
-paul
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 11:07:57 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No
dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little
too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am
able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

One of the things I remember most about Oblivion was that it had the
most overly adaptive level scaling I had ever played.

All you had to do to be a bad ass was to play poorly, and the game
stayed dead easy.

They improved it somewhat in Skyrim but Bethesda has never really been
able to get this right.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/9/2025 7:43 PM, PW wrote:

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 11:07:57 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the
little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a
vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No
dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little
too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am
able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

I looked it up and apparently there's only two difficulties - adept
which is super easy and expert which is super hard.

You can change the difficulty mid game, but I doubt you want super hard.

There's mods for difficulty which give better balanced options, but I
doubt you want to mod just for that. If I ever get around to
buying/playing remastered I'm sure I'll probably just suffer through
super hard again.

*--

I thought it was this game that the difficulty couldn't be changed
once the game started. I guess that was another game. I wouldn't pick
the hardest one, that is for sure. So, I will keep it the way it is.

Thanks J!
-paul

Oops, apparently there's 6 difficulties. Seems like it's harder and
harder to find good info via searches anymore.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/10/2025 3:40 AM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 11:07:57 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the
little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a
vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No
dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little
too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am
able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

One of the things I remember most about Oblivion was that it had the
most overly adaptive level scaling I had ever played.

All you had to do to be a bad ass was to play poorly, and the game
stayed dead easy.

They improved it somewhat in Skyrim but Bethesda has never really been
able to get this right.

Yeah, I hate scaling, and this is the game that really made me hate
scaling. I usually use mods that remove scaling, and do it by area or whatever.

Oblivion is especially weird, if I remember correctly, because unless
you deliberately stick to a very small number of skills, it keeps
getting harder and harder the more skills you get. Raise your
lockpicking up and the game gets harder, branch out into spellcasting
from melee it gets harder, even learn to use a shield instead of just a
sword it gets harder.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:40:26 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/10/2025 3:40 AM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 11:07:57 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the
little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a
vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No >>>> dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little >>>> too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am >>>> able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

One of the things I remember most about Oblivion was that it had the
most overly adaptive level scaling I had ever played.

All you had to do to be a bad ass was to play poorly, and the game
stayed dead easy.

They improved it somewhat in Skyrim but Bethesda has never really been
able to get this right.

Yeah, I hate scaling, and this is the game that really made me hate
scaling. I usually use mods that remove scaling, and do it by area or >whatever.

Oblivion is especially weird, if I remember correctly, because unless
you deliberately stick to a very small number of skills, it keeps
getting harder and harder the more skills you get. Raise your
lockpicking up and the game gets harder, branch out into spellcasting
from melee it gets harder, even learn to use a shield instead of just a >sword it gets harder.

Oblivion's scaling was one of the major points against it. That, and
the somewhat generic world. I didn't mind it so much mechanically
--the game itself was never that difficult-- but it destroyed the
immersion to face off against regular bandits consistently armed with
the most powerful arms and armor when before they came at me with
sticks whilst wearing paper caps as armor.

IIRC, the game scaled up enemies based on your level, though, and not
on your skills (of course, your skill set went up based on your level
too). The monsters themselves didn't really get more powerful; it's
just that more dangerous monsters appeared as you leveled up. So as a
1st-level nobody, you'd never encounter a lich (at least, not outside
of a placed encounter in a dungeon*) but you'll find them wandering
around the wilderness once you level up. But once the monsters
appeared, they were more or less fixed in power level, except maybe
the hit points went up (and, for monsters that used it, equipment
would improve). But past 20th level or so, you'd start facing off
against the strongest enemies and past that you'd start leaving the
hostiles in your dust, power-wise.

I get what the developers wanted to do, of course. The idea was to
make the game --and the quest-- as sandboxed as possible; something
you could take in any order you wished. But because the developers
wouldn't know how you'd go about your quest, they had to scale it so
that if you rushed through the adventure (rather than taking your time
to grind out sub-quests, for instances), you'd still have fun rather
than facing insurmountable enemies.

But the scaling was just too evident, which ruined the immersion and
led to meta-gaming. Later games were more subtle about how they did
it.

Myself, I always ended up relying on stealth, so the game never was
that hard. Even in the latest remaster, it's VERY easy to max out your
stealth score (especially since Oblivion has several quests where your
tasked with escorting an invulnerable NPC to various locations. That
NPC counts as a "foe" when calculating if an enemy sees you being
stealthy, so just crouch-walk around the world with your ally tagging
along, and your stealth score goes up automatically ;-)





* even then, there was usually some scaling since there was often a
variety in 'placed enemies', so if you entered the dungeon at level 1
the game might be configured to show you a troll, but at level 20 it
would be a Minotaur lord).


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:34:15 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:43 PM, PW wrote:

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 11:07:57 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 10/9/2025 7:49 AM, PW wrote:

So far, I see nothing mentioned here to want me to try and break my
little addiction toe Oblivion Remastered. The game cracks me up, the
little details are something. I finished the main quest a while ago,
and almost done with the Fighters Guild quests. I do not want to be a
vamipire (had to find a cure for that). or a theif, or a murderer. No >>>> dark knight. Just a good old fighting Knight (which has been a little >>>> too easy - I must have picked an easy difficulty when I started - I
rarely die or have problems. I even just use my fists sometimes and am >>>> able to whip everything that comes at me - something is "wrong").

I remember it being really really hard so I must've played on expert.

I looked it up and apparently there's only two difficulties - adept
which is super easy and expert which is super hard.

You can change the difficulty mid game, but I doubt you want super hard. >>>
There's mods for difficulty which give better balanced options, but I
doubt you want to mod just for that. If I ever get around to
buying/playing remastered I'm sure I'll probably just suffer through
super hard again.

*--

I thought it was this game that the difficulty couldn't be changed
once the game started. I guess that was another game. I wouldn't pick
the hardest one, that is for sure. So, I will keep it the way it is.

Thanks J!
-paul

Oops, apparently there's 6 difficulties. Seems like it's harder and
harder to find good info via searches anymore.

Don't know where I would change the difficulty level and if I can
change it again. I will try to remember to see what I can find
tonight.

Thanks!
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 10/10/2025 9:59 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:40:26 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Oblivion's scaling was one of the major points against it. That, and
the somewhat generic world. I didn't mind it so much mechanically
--the game itself was never that difficult-- but it destroyed the
immersion to face off against regular bandits consistently armed with
the most powerful arms and armor when before they came at me with
sticks whilst wearing paper caps as armor.

Yeah that's the worst part. Where did those bandits get Demon Lord
armor and weapons? Are the Demon Lords wandering around and giving it
out like candy?

I also found it ridiculous when the wolves still could kill you when
You're level 20 and armed and armored like a god (at least on the
hardest difficulty.)

I played a non-stealth melee fighter so that's at least part of why I
found it so hard. You pretty much have to play a stealth-archer, and/or alchemist in any Elder Scrolls game if you want to be powerful.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 15:22 this Thursday (GMT):

On Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:45:43 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

I have a nice wheel, but never use it with any driving games because
just setting it up with the clamp, getting the pedals situated, etc... >>takes longer than my attention span with driving games and
simulations. I will go back to the keyboard and mouse.

I hear you. I had the same problem... except I can't say that I had a
/nice/ wheel (it was a cheap plastic thing with no weight to it).

At least its not the Wii Wheel?

Still, it made the driving experience of almost any (slightly simmish) driving game the better for using it. But boy, what a pain to use;
there was no place for it! And then whenever you were done, you had to
stash the thing somewhere convenient enough that you could pull it out
again when you wanted to use it next time you played a game, but out
of the way enough that its bulky carapace wasn't interfering with your
other work.

Eventually I just got annoyed with the whole thing and --quite
unusually for me-- chucked it out entirely. Which, looking at the
prices that gaming wheels go for nowadays, is a decision I look back
at regretfully. ;-)

And I do have two monitors. Maybe I will see if I can get ATS working
with the 2nd one on my left. I also have an old TrackIR. That is
probably not supported.

_If_ you can get it working, multi-monitor support in ETS2/ATS is
really cool... but last time I checked, it's not that easy. The game
supports it, but for best use you have to tinker a lot with the config
files. I tried it once, but it proved a lot more hassle than it was
worth, and the frequent update cycle of the game broke the config too
often so I eventually gave up on it.

I have my laptop screen and an external monitor so I technically have
dual monitors.

I never tried (or even owned, to my shame) a TrackIR device, but
supposedly it works quite well with the game. I just noticed there's a software-only solution that supposedly works with a WebCam, so maybe
I'll try that.

I just want to drive around, maybe do a job here and there and that is
it.

Just a note:

When you start the game, you don't have your own truck. You have to do
'quick jobs' until you earn enough cash to buy a garage, and then a
truck of your own (~$500,000 USD total, in-game) first. Only once you
achieve that lofty goal can you 'free-roam'. Early jobs will only earn
you $5-20K apiece (it goes up as you become more experienced and 'rank
up' so you can take longer jobs), so you're looking at maybe 20-50 'quick-jobs' you have to do first before you can just go where you
will.

(I mean, technically I suppose you can just start a quick job, then (optionally) ditch the trailer and roam about where you will. You
won't get paid and have to just accept whatever truck the job foists
on you, though.)

Presumably, there are mods or cheats to bypass this requirement. I
never bothered. Since the quick jobs had me on the highways anyway
(which was always the biggest appeal of the game to me) I didn't
really mind the requirement. It was nice once I got my own virtual
truck and could modify it to my taste though (including the addition
of three virtual kitties to make my trips less lonely ;-)

That sucks, I love free roam stuff. Anything for realism, I guess...
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Anyway, that's my playlist. What about you:

What Have You Been Playing... IN SEPTEMBER 2025?

I kinda forgot about replying to this. Or maybe about Usenet in general. September has been pretty hectic between assisting for the first time to
a new LanParty (smaller scale, made me feel like I had travelled back in
time), classes starting again, and in general being a bit under the
weather in terms of both health and mood.

This will have to be short and as concise as possible:

- The Binding of Isaac: Repentance (without the Repentance+ DLC)
Part of a LanParty score challenge. It made me remember how much I hated
that DLC (+ really improved the balance). I don't want to touch this
game again in a long time, it's like a bad addiction.

- Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (PC)
Still runs pretty well in current hardware, although the controls feel a
bit weird. Although had played Outrun Online Arcade in PS3, that version
is pretty barebones compared to all the game play modes the PC version had.

- Pokémon Emerald:
Although I liked it a lot, I was hate playing it by the end. In
retrospective, Gen III has one of the lowest points in the franchise.

- Samurai Pizza Cats (NES/Famicom):
Not bad for a licensed game.

- Ducktales (GB):
Nostalgia meets the harsh reality. The music barely resembles the
original NES version, missing all the percussion.

- TMNT2 (GB):
Nice graphics for a kusoge. Thank God I got Super Mario Land 2 for
Christmas instead of this.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2