Hogwarts Legacy is at the lowest price I've seen-57% or just over $30 at Fanatical in a limited time "Star Deal" for my fellow last second Xmas shoppers

already have it

worst xmas ever. not only was i hacked but because my password was changed and steam guard reset, i can't trade or buy any steam cards until after the sale :(

i think bah humbug! is about the only reply i can give that. sorry CF!

I'm glad you mentioned this. I got the links sent to me but I didn't click them. I was going to PM you to see if they were real.

dola:

And looking at the links again I should've been instantly alerted by the link itself. I'm not posting the exact name but it looked similiar to steamcommunity.com/activation/randomcharacters

i have a feeling macroguru clicked on them

i clicked on it because my keyboard died and i couldn't chat with cf to see if it was real or not. got an AVG virus warning

only my boobs are real

Everyone should routinely check their logins on sites that allow it like Steam. A few years ago there was someone from Iran regularly logging into my account. They didn’t buy anything or change my password they were just logging in and playing my games. I changed my password and nothing like that since.

I once had an attempted log on from Russia.

Horizon Zero Dawn at -75% ($12.50) was too good for me to pass up. Had it on my radar for a long time for obvious reason.

Also picked up Trombone Champ for < $5, which is hilarious (I've been a professional trombone player for 30+ years now).

I don't know if I could play it, but the videos have been cracking me up ever since it got released.

Still not a big sale on rimworld, but Fanatical has it 30% off the next couple days.

Lacuna, a sci-fi noir detective adventure game is free to claim at Gog.com

I haven't seen Tiny Rogues mentioned here - a rogue-lite bullet hell top down game, it's still in early access but they released a massive content patch recently and there's a lot of replayability for a $10 game, worth checking out if this is your type of game.

I picked up Baldur's Gate 3 yesterday. I know my gaming skills have been in decline but dear lord I had no idea it was this bad. I think I've died 4 times in the first couple 'scenes' of the game. I don't want to frame it in 'minutes' or 'hours' since I imagine 16-year old me would have blown past this content in 15 minutes vs the 2.5 hours it has taken me so far as I stumble around mumbling things like "how do I open my journal again?" and accidentally walking into my own death.

Welcome to the "i'm getting old crowd":) At least you will have more time to enjoy the game now,

Yeah. I love the game. I think it’s fantastic. That being said, despite having played video games for over 45 years, D&D for almost 44 years, and having played both prior Larian games, I feel overwhelmed at times and make mistakes all of the time.

Playing videogames is one of the few things in life that the more time I spend doing it the worse I have gotten at it.

I'm 52 years old. I tried playing Call of Duty online last year. Never doing it again. Now it's PvE games, or strategy games, my time with twitchy gameplay is done.

56 and to my surprise I still play MW3 at basically the same middy level I've always played it.

I suspect there's something about "when you're not good, you have less to lose" in there somewhere

:D

I've been playing Overwatch since launch and have been in Bronze or Silver (the two lowest competitive tiers) the entire time. And I was a passable CS player back in the day....

I just picked up BG3 as well and I'm in that 50-something age bracket. The first thing I thought was that I don't need all detailed graphics. It's great if it was seamless but I notice the half-second wait as it loads things up going from 3rd person to "closeup conversational view" or whatever. I do like having more than 5 pixels that represent a red shield on this fighter and a blue shield on that fighter but I'd rather they spend those 50,000 man-hours on gameplay rather than graphics (looking at you, Madden).

My second gripe is that the ALT button doesn't actually highlight everything that I can interact with. I can open that barrel over there and there definitely are things in there but you didn't highlight that for me.

Other than those old-man-yells-at-clouds complaints, great game.

I came to this conclusion after someone gifted me Elden Ring.

I got plat in league of legends this year and it felt like a great accomplishment for my age (I had been plat a number of times years ago). Of course, I have a ton of free time for gaming so when I decide I'm going to obsess about my rank I can really put in some gaming volume.

I definitely prefer leaning into strategy games like Teamfight Tactics though where there's a legit chance to be good if you put in the effort and time.

Now I know I won't be buying

I've played 'old man' video games since I was young. I've never really had any enduring fascination, largely due to a lack of skill in them anyway, in arcadey/twitchy ones. So in that sense, age doesn't really hurt me, at least until senility arrives.

South of the Circle-an atmospheric narrative game where you play as an English academic who crashes lands in Cold War Antarctica and must find a way to escape and make his way back to his life in England. you will experience many flashbacks to his life there as part of the game.

I'll second both of those gripes. I have been playing on both my main PC (which handles the graphics no problem) and the steam deck where I had to lower many settings, and aside from wishing the text was bigger on the steam deck I do not care about the graphical differences one bit. Just make the game fun (which they have also done, to be fair).


I just used the 'go to camp' feature for the first time because it felt like I needed to do some kind of rest and so far there has been no indication of what the implications of rest (short or long) might be aside from the positives like recharging spells. It seems to be a pattern in the game where you learn about how things work _after_ you choose to do them, which feels a bit backwards.

I don't know if I'm expected to be a D&D 5e player and know all this stuff or if it's just that I know that others already know and have optimized "builds" and whatnot ("you mean you didn't select Fast Foot so that she could convert to Spell Dancer at 7th level!?") but I do feel like I'm behind the curve here on what I'm supposed to know, ya know. No?

The game doesn’t do much, if any, handholding. I’ve never played 5E (still playing 3.0/3.5).

I did play through all three of the Solasta games, which are basically 5e, and not nearly as complex as BG3 and does help get your feet wet in the system and get familiar with some of the concepts.

I, also, spent a fair bit of time reading a lot on builds and such. I enjoy reading and learning about it and love the game, but the barrier to entry is pretty high. It, also, likely helps that I am playing with three friends, so I really only need to pay attention to my character and not three others while playing.

I’m a thief-gloomstalker archer build and having a blast with it. I’m currently 4th level thief and 5th ranger. Next up is three levels of fighter!

I am surprised at how little help there is in the game when it comes to mechanics. I knew 5e so that helped, and I also was very familar with that type of game which also helped. Still there was a bunch of "oh, you can do that" all through the game.
Short rest gives you partial heals (amount based on class and Con bonus) and can recharge spells and abilities that are labeled "x per short rest." Long rest gives a complete heal including removing most conditions, recharges all spells and any ability mark "X through long rest."

Most abilities, especially early on, is recharged on a long rest, but a few recharge on short. Specifically items, but there are some class abilities as well. You just have to read the tool tips on the abilities to know. I know Warlock at some point gets all of their spells back per short rest.

I knew about the recharge aspects of the rests, though some of that is my own prior D&D knowledge and some was tool tips. But what I was hoping to have explained to me was the impact of rest on your overall game. If I rest in the middle of a crypt can/will I be attacked? Is there even a difference between the various outer/under world areas in that respect? If I rest does the passage of time impact the story in any way? Does going back to camp reset 'enemy spawns' or anything like that? When I leave camp will I reappear in the same spot I was at when I went to camp or a way point or something else?


Unless I missed it none of that stuff was explained in-game, so as a player you're kind of left to just learn by doing. Even when I did decide to finally just go to camp I discovered that I had to feed my characters 40 points worth of food. This had been kind of hinted at along the way with tips like "you'll need to feed your characters" but I don't remember any specifics like when or how much they would eat. It felt like pure luck that I had hoarded enough stuff beforehand to satisfy the requirement. And what if I had not? I don't think the penalty for being short on food was explained, either (though I'm not positive on that, I could have just missed or forgotten).

That's designed that way on purpose. They wanted a sense of mystery around time. For the most resting does not effect anything around you. There are only a couple of quests that have some sort of time limit, and they don't even tell you those in the quest. Just rest as needed, you not really going to miss much and it won't affect the main story line at all. You will never get jumped during a rest. If the game allows you to rest (some areas won't let you), then it does because the area is safe to rest through the night.
You need 40 points of rations to rest, and that shows on the screen when you try to rest. Lack of enough points means you don't full recharge with the rest. All that information is in the tool tip when you try to rest.

You should long rest as often as possible. A good portion of the story moves forward at camp during long rests and each rest can only trigger one scene. If you are not long resting you are missing entire story segments and quest chains.

No thank you Steam, I do not need a recap of 2023 that will show me exactly how many hours I put into Football Manager and Dorfromantik.

Wow thanks, this is helpful!

My controller jockeying (particularly FPSs) is basically a meme in my family. You know in “The Office” when Jim goes to the Scranton office where the employees there regularly play “Call of Duty” as a team-building activity, and he has no idea what he’s doing. I make Jim Halpin look like John Wick.

humble bundle has a digital board game bundle right now-35 games and some dlc's with Gloomhaven and Terraforming mars being the biggies.



https://www.humblebundle.com/games/p...m_medium=email

Nice collection. I'm only in need of a few DLC's among these, but not worthy of the purchase of the bundle.

Microsoft has a free weekend of their EA/Sports games like Madden, but you have to be certain levels of their GamePass.


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All Combat Mission games and DLC (except Final Blitzkrieg) on sale for 50% off for the next 6 days on Steam, Matrix, or Battle Front sites. Also an additional 10% if you buy complete bundles on Steam. I don't know if that extra 10% applies on the non-Steam sites.

I.....bought......paid more....F.

Oh no, that sucks. I picked up Normandy and Red Thunder, both complete on holiday sales. Picked up Fortress Italy Complete today. I've barely scratched the surface on Normandy, only so much time in the day. I'm sure I'll never really get my money's worth out of them, but the price was reasonable(?) (I'm sure many would not agree :eek:) and they are there when I get the urge.

I just got Black Sea complete. I had picked up complete Normandy, Cold War and Shock Force 2 during the winter sale at just the winter sale 10% discount :banghead:. I almost picked up Italy Complete today as well (Complete at less than the price of just the game is tempting) but I am enjoying the more modern versions better than the WW2 titles. I have been mostly playing Shock Force, and am enjoying it. I'm a little let down because of the time-frame of Cold War. 1979-81 puts the US equipment more on the back foot. I am way more experienced with the equipment of the 87-92 time frame.

Dominions 6: Rise of the Pantokrator just released. This review says it well:
Iconic strategy game with auto-battle combat. Some of the most interesting nation and hero mechanics of any game. A variety of ways to customise your nation and leaders. The new additions to the game have been long requested by the community and are a great improvement over Dominions 5. For anyone that enjoys strategy or 4x games, this is worth your money.

Fanatical has a bundle of 14 Star Wars games for just under $20:


Star Wars Collection | Steam Game Bundle | Fanatical

PC gamer has the details on how to get the excellent Endless Legend game for free if you don't already own it:


One of the best fantasy 4Xs on PC is free while the Steam keys last | PC Gamer

GOG.com has the game Mordheim:City of the Damned free to claim. Mordheim is part of the Games Workshop/Warhammer universe and is a turn based tactical game