Jump to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Surly Horns

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

General Gaming Thoughts That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

Featured Replies

So in summary, nerds in their parents basement want hot chicks to fap to, as that's all they got?

 

  • Author
8 hours ago, thunderlounge said:

So in summary, nerds in their parents basement want hot chicks to fap to, as that's all they got?

Or they want to fap to Ellie and Joel from The Last of Us.

  • Author
9 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

5oabdb136j7e1.png

If you had a game where those two fought one another, I know which one I’m putting money on. 

This is the first year EUIV hasn't been my top game in probably a decade. I need to reevaluate why my life has become less colonial this year (He says as NMS and HoIV are in his top 5).

Edited by SimonBolivar

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:
  1. Naval Combat
  2. World War II
  3. City Builder
  4. Economy
  5. Immersive Sim
  6. Massively Multiplayer

Lots of Sid Meier's Pirates! eh?

JWE2 baby
 
Screenshot2024-12-22111203.png.87254fda3badf9ba59417ec4416447ef.png

Nice. You been playing a lot of Ark too?
  • 2 weeks later...
28 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

My kid asked which was the best year of videogames. I wanted to toss out something in the 90s when Sierra, Origin, LucasFilm, etc. were peaking…and 1990 could be a strong contender..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_in_video_games#Game_releases

But damn, 2004 was huge in terms of influences still being felt today,

image.thumb.jpeg.038c737919152d2682e9556595f8c70d.jpeg

2007 was also a banger: Portal, Halo 3, Skate, COD4: Modern Warfare, Rock Band, Oblivion....

It really was the best time to be a kid with an xbox

On 2/26/2023 at 9:38 PM, atomheartbevo said:

I was in Discord playing WOW with a friend's group.  They are all casual gamers and not doing hardcore raiding or anything approaching that.

Anyways, one of the younger players asked me if I was using WASD to move around "because it's so obvious you're stuck in the past with WASD".

So apparently that's a fucking thing, because you know, having a little gray hair doesn't peg me as old-school I guess.

I told him I was playing Tribes, Quake, and Half-Life with WASD before he was born, and I have no intention of changing.

He seemed to think I was joking, but I basically had this expression.

Jim Carrey Reaction GIF

Real talk.

  • 2 weeks later...

Damn Mouthwashing was great. I love short, story intense games like that one (I finished it 2.5 hours). I enjoyed it so much that I gifted it to family members on Steam.

Mouthwashing review: this low-poly horror masterpiece will haunt me for a  long time | TechRadar

 

Apparently "Avowed" is now the rage bait topic du jour for the culture war grifters.

  • Author
16 hours ago, CurlyDumps said:

Apparently "Avowed" is now the rage bait topic du jour for the culture war grifters.

Yeah, a friend does the CRPG reviews for a gaming site, and said they catch shit from the incels in comments/social media when they write about it, and the main thing apparently pissing these people off is that it has pronouns in the character creation tool.

Which Baldur’s Gate 3 had.

But apparently none of these people played BG3.  Or a tabletop RPG. 

When I talked to him a few weeks ago, he had played a preview build a few weeks before that. He said it was “competently made” (which is high praise from him) if you are a Pillars of Eternity fan, but it felt like at times they just checked off a bunch of boxes on a list of RPG elements.  I’ll wait until it’s on sale (heavily discounted) because I haven’t even finished POE II.

  • Author

Anybody else playing Arma Reforger.  Played it a a friends this weekend.  It’s fun as hell, like I haven’t had that much fun since Battlefield 1942, at least vehicular-wise.

  • Author

If you are a big fan of IndyCar Racing II, somebody has put a lot of effort into a wrapper that upscales it to modern resolutions.  Only $10 for the wrapper.  Here's hoping they make enough to work on some of the expansion tracks.

 

CES is generally all crap, but there were some interesting tech announcements around Nvidia and their RTX accelerator software. Using neural encodings for textures achieves way higher levels of texture compression, and they're also bringing radiance caching to "store" previously traced rays and include them in the render.

Gonna be a while before we start to see benefits from the tech, but I'm particularly interested in the possibility to upscale and uprez old games

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap just came out and it's on Gamepass. If you like all the other ones you'll probably like this one.

It adds a sort of roguelike style to the old formula, but all the trap carnage is still there.

DLSS4 drivers hit today, I'm very curious to see how the generalized transformer DLSS model does

  • Author
On 1/30/2023 at 7:04 PM, atomheartbevo said:

My kid recently got into World of Warcraft, and got me to reactivate my old account.

We stopped playing for a long while, but I just got a notice that Blizzard is adding housing later this year or early next, and we will have to come back.  Only 21 years after everybody asked for it, and 27 years after it was in Ultima Online.

Building in Azeroth: A First Look at Housing

And they are doing it right.

  • Easy and cheap to get - they want everybody to have a house.
  • No maintenance costs - once you get it, it's yours, even if you take a break and your subscription lapses, it won't be demolished.
  • You'll be in instanced neighborhoods (sounds like you can change neighborhoods) with up to 50 other houses, so you won't be scattered across Sosaria Azeroth - there is a zone for the Alliance and one for the Horde.  This is good because it won't lag the shit out of you when you are running around various areas.
  • Groups can cluster together and build their own neighborhoods.
  • Meant to be a social aspect.
  • Extensive decoration/building features with new content added all the time, and all of your characters can access it, even if they are from different factions.  Some cash shop items, but most items are earned/bought in-game.

Sounds like a mix of UO and FFXIV (which has a nice system except it's shit for costs and maintaining it and it's a pain to get and keep).

10 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

We stopped playing for a long while, but I just got a notice that Blizzard is adding housing later this year or early next, and we will have to come back.  Only 21 years after everybody asked for it, and 27 years after it was in Ultima Online.

Building in Azeroth: A First Look at Housing

And they are doing it right.

  • Easy and cheap to get - they want everybody to have a house.
  • No maintenance costs - once you get it, it's yours, even if you take a break and your subscription lapses, it won't be demolished.
  • You'll be in instanced neighborhoods (sounds like you can change neighborhoods) with up to 50 other houses, so you won't be scattered across Sosaria Azeroth - there is a zone for the Alliance and one for the Horde.  This is good because it won't lag the shit out of you when you are running around various areas.
  • Groups can cluster together and build their own neighborhoods.
  • Meant to be a social aspect.
  • Extensive decoration/building features with new content added all the time, and all of your characters can access it, even if they are from different factions.  Some cash shop items, but most items are earned/bought in-game.

Sounds like a mix of UO and FFXIV (which has a nice system except it's shit for costs and maintaining it and it's a pain to get and keep).

Man I wanted some property in the UC, sigh....

 

Also is Foundation like a modern Banished? That's right up my alley if so.

On 1/13/2025 at 4:06 PM, CurlyDumps said:

Apparently "Avowed" is now the rage bait topic du jour for the culture war grifters.

I'm hearing good things from the reviews. I can't wait to check it out.

  • Author
On 2/6/2025 at 10:12 AM, SimonBolivar said:

Also is Foundation like a modern Banished? That's right up my alley if so.

Well it’s still medieval, kind of in the style of Settlers, but more a solid city builder.  The style is kind of like World of Warcraft in a way. It’s very polished and the animations are great.  If you liked Banished and you like city builders sim general you’ll like it.

On 2/13/2025 at 8:57 AM, SimonBolivar said:

I'm hearing good things from the reviews. I can't wait to check it out.

Rad. As an Obsidian fan so I'm rooting for it. Not sure when I'll get around to actually playing it. So many games in my queue including KCD2. And I'm hoping to upgrade my 2080 but inventory and prices seem like a total shitshow atm.

Avowed is free on gamepass (pc and xbox).  It's worth a look.

I am only like 2.5 hours into it, but Avowed seems pretty cool so far. Combat is fun and the game is really pretty.  I'm trying out a ranged weapon kind of build first, but the different possible classes seem interesting.

I would have much rather had POE3.  POE was great, POE2 even better.

2 hours ago, Hozz said:

I would have much rather had POE3.  POE was great, POE2 even better.

It sort of is POE3, it's just not top-down anymore, now it's first person. Same world and background, and seems to take place after Dreadfire in the timeline from what I can tell. 

Edited by MillerEP

Yeah same setting but not a party based isometric CRPG with turn based combat, which is my thing.  It's been a while but I think POE was only RTWP but I believe POE2 had a legit turn based mode which, along with the island setting, is probably why I liked it more.

  • 1 month later...
  • Author

SpaceVenture came out on the 1st.  It's the "spiritual successor" to the Space Quest games, from the two guys who originally started the SQ series and...

and...well...the kickstarter was in 2012.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1374960/SpaceVenture/

As others have said, they made 5-6 SQ games in less time it took than to get this one out the door (or at least in Early Access) but they had health issues and financial issues (I think they stopped getting paid and Ken Williams stepped in to help).  If you backed it, check your email for the Steam key.

  • 2 weeks later...

Oblivion remake is out right now!

Looks pretty good if you're into it. Oh, and it's also Steam Deck verified.

Regular PS5 here.  I missed out on oblivion entirely.   Anyone know if it runs well on regular PS5?

I haven't touched my station in going on 2 years lol.  But this sounds worth it. 

I'm trying Oblivion, it's on Game pass so might as well.

Skyrim is the only ES game I've ever played.

An Australian themed knockoff of Animal Crossing fully released, called Dinkum. Seems pretty good if you want an Animal Crossing game on a PC without anthropomorphic animals.

I'm trying Oblivion, it's on Game pass so might as well.
Skyrim is the only ES game I've ever played.
An Australian themed knockoff of Animal Crossing fully released, called Dinkum. Seems pretty good if you want an Animal Crossing game on a PC without anthropomorphic animals.
Oblivion originally had a flawed leveling system, I remember I spent hours working my locking and sneak to 99 then the enemies scaled up to an almost invincible level. Never finished it because of that.
  • Author
2 hours ago, Dr Fear said:
8 hours ago, Hawndoh said:
I'm trying Oblivion, it's on Game pass so might as well.
Skyrim is the only ES game I've ever played.
An Australian themed knockoff of Animal Crossing fully released, called Dinkum. Seems pretty good if you want an Animal Crossing game on a PC without anthropomorphic animals.

Oblivion originally had a flawed leveling system, I remember I spent hours working my locking and sneak to 99 then the enemies scaled up to an almost invincible level. Never finished it because of that.

They've revamped the leveling system.

Looks pretty fucking good, and for the youngsters, they are basically getting a new Elder Scrolls game

 

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.