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[Telgin]

I've been replaying Red Alert Remastered, and was reminded that it had a lot of improvements over Tiberian Dawn, but a lot of frustrations that games of its time had.

For one thing, the AI can't cheat and build construction yards directly like it can in Tiberian Dawn, so if you manage to destroy them you can actually cripple the AI in a fair manner.  It's also nice to have medics to help keep infantry alive, since infantry are generally terrible in Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert.  The overall expansion of options in Red Alert is nice.

But boy, adding on to the comment about infantry being terrible, I was reminded how much I hated the commando / no build missions.  They're extremely frustrating and were obviously designed to only be won through trial, error, and liberal saving between fights.  It's trivial to walk into a room and lose like 3/4ths of your army because the vision range is so short and there was a flame turret in the room, or even just a vehicle that runs over 5 soldiers and your medic before you realize it's even there.  Or the pathfinding means your soldiers get shot at for a few seconds before they return fire and die.  Reloading and retrying the exact same thing can have totally different outcomes.  Also, Tanya and attack dogs are the worst combination.  She never proactively shoots anything, so she'll stand there and let one eat her.  Or, you target a dog and the bad AI forces your soldiers to move 90% of the way before they stop to shoot, so the dog eats your medic / Tanya.

The final Allied mission is particularly funny and bad in this regard.  You can lose in the first 5 seconds if you don't immediately select Tanya and move her or kill the attacking soldier, otherwise exploding barrels kill her and the thieves with her.  Lots of ways for her to die to dumb stuff in the first half, like dogs or flame thrower soldiers she won't shoot unless you tell her to.  It's at least funny that the game allows her to die in this mission, which is good since it's impossible to keep her alive in the second half.  You can stick her in a safe spot in your base, but you'll inevitably get a Yak flyover at some point that misses your AA guns.  "Unit lost."

Also, is it just me, or is the chronosphere totally useless in Red Alert 1?  It can teleport 1 vehicle, and that's it.  No infantry in APCs either.  So, the best you can do is teleport a single medium tank into the Soviet base and shoot at something for 10 seconds before it's destroyed.  And there's a 20% chance for it to spawn chrono vortices or time quakes when you use it.  I guess it's probably more useful in multiplayer where players are less likely to keep lots of tanks and infantry scattered around in defense like in the single player missions.

[AlStar]

After finishing off my Satisfactory and Factorio playthroughs, I've decided to take a break from the genre before I burn out.

Playing Cassette Beasts; which is a really well done Pokémon-like with excellent music, and - bonus - doesn't have you playing as a literal child who's been yeeted out of their house in the name of "gotta catch 'em all."

The mix of monsters is quite fun. In addition to the regular types (Fire/Water/Earth/Air), they've also got refined materials (Plastic/Metal/Poison/Glass), as well as some other oddballs (Beast/Astral/Ice/Lightning/Plant). Interactions between the elements are funky (in a good way) - for instance, hitting Earth with Lighting turns the Earth type into Glass Type; hitting Metal with Poison gives the Metal type a contact poison attack that it inflicts on anything in melee with it; or hitting Lightning with Plastic will cause the Lightning's area attacks to be reduced to single-target.

Pretty big explorable world, with a bunch of minor Legend of Zelda-like terrain puzzles.

I'm enjoying myself.

[martinuzz]

I'm giving Kingdom Come Deliverance another try. I really would like to play it, but dayum.
The guy who thought up the lockpicking mechanics there should be put in the stocks. It is the worst system I have ever seen. Just not fun.

[Robsoie]

I'm giving Kingdom Come Deliverance another try. I really would like to play it, but dayum.
The guy who thought up the lockpicking mechanics there should be put in the stocks. It is the worst system I have ever seen. Just not fun.

It's really crap when Henri is still low level at lockpicking, with how easy the tools break at low level.

Make sure to talk to the miller at Rattay (Theresa's uncle that work in shady business) to train lockpick, he'll lead you to a chest that can be lockpicked a lot of time (and give you some more lockpicking tools), training effectively your lockpicking level
After a few level up in the skill, lockpicking will become a lot more forgiving

[martinuzz]

I would need to get to Rattay first and I first need to unlock a chest to get guards armor to leave the castle. No lockpicks, the 4 in starter town all broke..

EDIT: selling some stuff at the trader, buying a lockpick, aand 20 save reloads later... Success!!! Oh. Wait. No. I get arrested. Another 10 save reloads later, finally, success.

[Akura]

I don't think I ever had trouble with that chest. The lockpicking isn't too bad once you get the hang of it. I don't know how bad it is with a controller, but on a mouse it's largely about moving in a decent circular motion. If the marker starts shaking too much, or if you find it's taking a bit too long for you to open the lock on that try, just release the mouse so the pick doesn't break. Try again with a better idea of the motion you need. If you're having a hard time with the particular rotation path, exit the lockpicking mode and re-enter; this resets the position(and path) to a hopefully easier one.

Like a lot of other skills in the game, it takes practice to get good at it. Once you do though, the game is now completely broken. If you're decent enough of a stealthy bastard and have a high enough lockpicking skills, you can, say, steal everything from the armor shop at night which is thousands of groschen's worth.


You can buy more lockpicks from Votava, and if you need money, Lady Stephanie will give you some. Plus there's a lot you can steal without it being flagged for stealing which you can sell.

[martinuzz]

I had to turn down the mouse sensitivity even more, both in game settings and on the mouse itself

[Robsoie]

I would need to get to Rattay first and I first need to unlock a chest to get guards armor to leave the castle. No lockpicks, the 4 in starter town all broke..

EDIT: selling some stuff at the trader, buying a lockpick, aand 20 save reloads later... Success!!! Oh. Wait. No. I get arrested. Another 10 save reloads later, finally, success.

Ah yeah, i forgot the very early game, indeed that chest is super annoying at first (i had to do a few reload too until i figured out how it actually worked)  but fortunately once you're done you're not going to be stuck like that anymore, the story will start to move once Henri will go back to bury his parents and you will find yourself in Rattay very soon , that chest training will be there

[Funk]

Helldivers 2 and 40k darktide.

[delphonso]

I've been playing a lot of Digimon Cybersleuth. It's very Persona, but with goofier (and admittedly poorer) writing. The digimon side is an interesting evolution and de-evolution system that I haven't seen elsewhere. It's fun, and the cases (quests) are very self contained and can actually make me feel creeped out sometimes. The localization is...not perfect. There's a few errors (mostly missing a word, which is small, but in some quests, the dialogue is notably written around a male protagonist that weren't edited for if you chose a female protagonist). Overall I've really been enjoying it, despite the errors and campy writing.

[AlStar]

Speaking of, I've recently got into the world of Persona with Persona 4 Gold, which came with one of my Humble Bundles.

I'm really enjoying the mix-up between adjusting to life in a new town, making friends, studying, doing part-time work, solving a murder mystery, and fighting eldritch horrors.

Excellent writing, and a fun combat system; although I feel like the HP of the bosses are a little over tuned.

[martinuzz]

Revisiting two old freeware games.
BAR (Beyond All Reason), RTS. Captures the good old Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander + Forged Alliance vibe real well. Also has wave battling AI.

And Widelands. Heavily Settlers 2 inspired but with extras.

Both have seen a lot of improvements and polish over the years.I am enjoying both of them. Can recommend playing through the Widelands campaigns for the various tribes! Well done fan remake!

[MCreeper]

I've been playing a lot of Digimon Cybersleuth. It's very Persona, but with goofier (and admittedly poorer) writing.

"I do not want to see
I can hear and that's enough!"

I'd think, from what little I played Persona 3 and 4, that their writing is already as cheesy as it gets. And I'd reccomend skipping dialogue in Persona 5 altogether if not for faint recollection that some of them were not a crime against humanity. How terrible can it get?

[delphonso]

I pretty much only played Persona 4 (some P3 on the PSP), Cyber Sleuth is overall lighter, playing into tropes far more, and going for punchlines or recurring bits. Most of this misses, for me, and only when they try to go serious/spooky do I feel a bit of 'yeah, this was great.' I like the characters, even if they're not well-written. The cast is tight enough and distinct enough that I'm getting to know them in the Persona sense. They're much shallower, but hey...it is about dinosaurs who wear jean shorts, so...

[Yolan]

I've been giving Citizen Sleeper 2 a shot. I really liked CS1, and it was a tough act to follow. The sequel is quite nice, but the mechanics and narrative for me aren't hitting on the level of the first game.