I think this thread is okay for this post (if not, a mod can feel free to move it)

The release of Oblivion: Remastered marks the first time in my life I've ever streamed anything via Twitch. The ability to do so directly from XBox just makes it too easy.

And I have to hand it to Twitch, their own Export directly to YouTube has worked like a charm, literally a single click (once you link the two accounts) and it does it in about 1/3rd of the time it would have taken me to upload it myself directly.

So in case anyone might be entertained by watching/listening to me slowly play back through a nearly two decade old game, by all means.

The Twitch is here https://www.twitch.tv/jonsthreecents

Handier though (since Twitch deletes VOD after just 7 days) is probably my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@middlega

There's 3 episodes of about 90 mins each up so far.

I'm interested in this one, so I'll give your streams a look. Although I have some Atelier and Trails games still to buy, this one might jump up the priority list.

Cool.

Fair warning, I'm slow playing the fuck out of this. Kind of the opposite of meta gaming it.

I mean, I don't get anything from speed running it, so I'm trying to be a little bit more "organic" (?) about it than a lot of content creators.

I figure probably 25% of any views it gets will be people I know IRL that aren't really big gamers/aren't that familiar, etc so I kinda keep that audience in mind. Hardcore gamers have countless options to watch that are way better than me.

Oblivion is superior to Skyrim and I'll die on that hill. Better story, better game mechanics, more interesting world.

The remake/remaster is fantastic IMO. It strikes the perfect balance between remaster and full remake. It maintains the best jankiness of Bethesda games and smoothes over the other rough edges.

Seeing reports of low FPS/poor optimization. Are you guys seeing that?

I have a new build that's overkill for it so I'm not seeing it. I've run into one crash that was likely because I went of script during one of the scripted events during the intro in the catacombs/sewers.

I've been playing entirely in 3rd person and love it. One thing I'd strongly recommend is changing the FOV settings. Default in both 1st and 3rd person is 75 when 90/95 really should be default. Anything less than that can be motion sickness inducing for those sensitive to it.

Yeah, I've crashed like once in 40 hours (5600X, 3070), and even that was probably because I'm already dabbling with mods.

I've seen some FPS dips, but nothing unbearable. The ship seems to right itself if you give it a second. It's most noticeable for me when exiting to an exterior cell -- and you just get the sense that it's loading assets and shaders. Not unplayable by any stretch.

(But I've also played a *heavily* modded Oblivion for the last fifteen years, so dips and artifacts are something I expect. If it turns out that I paid $60 just so it wouldn't crash every two hours, I'll consider that a huge win.)

Now, if some genius out there could just do something about the horrific inventory management...

Some interesting games included with Prime right now and they redeem on GOG. Mafia 2 and 3 definitive editions as well as the Saints Row 3 remaster among other games. My understanding is they are yours to keep after you redeem them.

It's May the 4th Be With you Star Wars week, so you should find some good prices on various Star Wars games if you look around

Definitely want to try out the Oblivion Remaster, but also definitely need to upgrade my 10-year-old rig first.

A pretty good look from Quill18 at the just-announced EU5. He's had hands-on time with it, though he can show very very little right now. But it's just short of 30 minutes, about half scripted to cover the changes (quite a few) and about half just him talking about his reaction to those

- YouTube

Stellaris is free to play this weekend on Steam and 75% off if you want to buy. Paradox did this free weekend to coincide with it 4.00 version of the game which is reworking a lot of the game play. I haven't had the chance to play yet, but I did notice some changes in how you manage your empire and colonies, and (I think) they give rewards now for finishing tasks from the tutorial.



But they have already had to apologize about how badly 4.0 has been running, lots of crashes and other problems. The good news is they are fixing them quickly as we are already up to 4.05. So may be a good "look-in" to see the new changes but know that's its likely to get better over time.

If you use Steam your account details probably just got leaked on the dark web. 89 million accounts were leaked. Steam only has 132 million accounts so odds are good someone has your user name and password.

Or maybe not?

Twilio denies breach following leak of alleged Steam 2FA codes

Well they still confirmed that the data exists just that it isn’t from them. Still a good time to be safe and activate Steam guard on your phone and do a password change.

The irony is that the leak appears to be centered around 2FA kinda stuff (I gather that's what Twillio does, as a 3rd party)...problem is that Valve says they don't use Twillio

Somebody or somebodies major got hacked, hearing about quite a few things in the industry that I assume is due to downstream places having to deal with huge amounts of second hand compromised credentials.

Wonder if there wasn’t a day zero that the white hats didn’t manage to get ahead of in time. Just the amount of apparently unrelated noise in the last 24 hours, not sure it’s unprecedented but definitely unusual.

Thanks for the heads up. Changes made, better safe than sorry.

Common gamer problem I believe. I have been having a hard time getting into a game recently. I keep starting stuff, or thinking about starting stuff, and just can't keep motivated. Then last week I jut started playing around with Farm Simulator 25. Just as I was getting into it I saw a YT of someone playing Rimworld with mods and stating at neolithic technology level, and that looked really fun, so I get really into that. This morning my YT was flooded with Captain of Industry because major update 3 came out which added trains. So of course now I'm all hyped to play that. The good news is my wife is leaving for the weekend tomorrow. Marathon gaming weekend coming!
Any one else have that same issue? Either you are having a hard time getting into something, but then you suddenly get flooded with stuff you want to play.

I more or less have ADHD when it comes to gaming nowadays. I dive into one game and then an hour later I'll want to jump into another, then another etc...

I do find I have less patience to "learn" games. So the deeper strategy games or simulations tend to get a pass from me whereas before I would've spent hours trying to learn them.

Guilty as well, especially with RPG's-I will start one play it for a couple of days and move on to something else. I just have too many games and can't seem to stay with one long enough to finish it.



That reminds me gotta get back to Stellaris 4.0...but wait Palia just had a major update, gotta check that out...

Spellrouge is a rogue-like dice game which has been a lot of fun

This is me (I mean, as well as the ADHD). I'm just not as willing to climb that learning curve like I used to be. I have more time now but less desire to put in the time in to get into a new game. Some of it is that I feel like there's not much new that I haven't seen before. I'll start working my way up that learning curve and then see this is similar to Civ or Rimworld or Darkest Dungeons or Dominions or whatever. Why don't I just go play that?

I put in about 380 hours on Farming Simulator 25 this year. I've been holding off on Baldur's Gate 3 to avoid that confusion, I knew that once I started playing another game, I'd draft away from FS. I waited until I had done everything that I set out to do (full cake production cycle), and then I put it away and now starting to work on BG3.

I'm enjoying BG3 so far, but it doesn't fill my "it's late, my wife went to bed, and I"m going to struggle to stay awake for a few hours of gaming before I follow". So I have been doing more of the old man thing of putting on music on my stereo and instantly falling asleep.

It is a surprisingly addictive game for sure.

Just tagging onto the notion of jumping from game to game.

I've been on my "about once a month for a week" run with HOI4 again, and in the early morning hours today had something I'd never gotten: assassination of the {ahem} German leader. And no, I did NOT pick the widow to be his successor.

1,379.6 hours played and never ever got that event myself before.

Wait, I've never seen that. Was Germany at war with Czechoslovakia and the Czechs were holding their own? I can't think of a scenario where it would trigger.

Some game called "Nubs" is free on steam. Probably not a reference, but when I went to college, NUBS (North University Building Something) was the computer lab that was open 24/7 and had Unix consoles, so that's where the real nerds hung out.

Save 100% on Nubs! Arena on Steam

Nope, though in this non-historical playthrough I'd been told to get stuffed on Sudetenland demands. Hadn't dealt with them yet after, dunno, several months, maybe that was the trigger.

Nothing obvious, no ticking timer or anything, party popularity was near complete though i believe the flavor text said something about waning popularity (it wasn't)

I wondered if maybe the "Inner Circle" mechanics caused it but since none of those characters was said to be involved (and all remained Inner Circle after the event) I doubt that was it either.

I glanced at the event scripts last night and there were a couple events that had some kind of "Hitler Blunder" variable. That needed to be at least 2 for the removal events I saw to trigger. So maybe be told to get stuffed on Sudetenland was one of those blunders.

Been playing a roguelike called Spellrouge. Entertaining game.

It's one of the most .. unusual? variable? bizarre? ... games I can recall in a very long time.

There's a French/Czech faction ... an Italian faction ... the standard UK/US Allies faction (US was in by early 1940 IIRC) ... the Soviet commie faction (but minus Stalin) ... I've led the Axis but have sat out most of the action since my own civil war absolutely crippled both my army and my manpower

That's a lot of moving parts, not that unusual though, but what makes it all weirder is that almost everybody is at war with everybody else.

The Allies have separate wars vs Axis, Italian, French, AND commie factions. At one point me+Hungary(Axis)+fauxBelgium+Italy were all fighting the Danes/Swedes (allies) .... except that on the same front line, the Hungarians and faux Belgium (name escapes me) would be attacked periodically by Italy.

I was curious and did some searching on Reddit and apparently others have had it triggered but it seems really rare.

Haven't played as much as you but did once get a scenario where Hitler flees to Argentina and takes over the country. Had never seen that before.

Warhamme 40,000-Gladius is free to claim on Steam before May 26


Also can get it for free at GoG.com

Just checking to see if FOFC is down since nobody's posted since yesterday :)

I also thought it was odd, figured because of the US holiday?

I just bought Oblivion Remastered and Witcher 3 complete edition this weekend, so far I'm enjoying Oblivion! They did a great job with the remastering. I'm also working on Trails of Cold Steel 2 which I just started, finished the first one late last week at a crazy 105 hours! These games are so long!

Yeah that's what I figured but since we were down here recently, I just needed to check :) I am playing Blue Prince, trying out the new Stellaris changes, and tried out Fortnite Brick Life-a free game kinda Sims like.

My farm has been worked hard all weekend on Farm Simulator.

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I got Warhammer 40,000-Gladius for free on steam thanks to the post.

It's now on my "this looks good, I'll get to it right after I've watched a youtube vid teaching me how to play it" pile.

So never then? :)

I'm in the early stages of playing through Final Fantasy 7 on my Steam Deck. The base game was $6 on Steam and then you can get a bunch of mods that modernize the graphics. Seems fun so far but I almost never actually finish long games so we'll see where it goes.


I want to try Blue Prince at some point but I'll wait for a sale.

I use Courseplay, makes farm management easier.

I was up to 380 hours played when I moved onto Baldur's Gate 3 and Trails of Cold Steel. I had a full cake production, which is actually a lot, since you need butter, milk, sugar, strawberries and flour. Lots of different productions required to put it all together. Sugar was a huge pain, one of the reasons I'm not playing anymore. There are some crops that cannot be automated at all, and they kill me.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon recently left early access and it's a game that feels like the best parts of bethesda RPGs. The graphics aren't great by today's standards, it's janky, and doesn't do a whole lot of explaining anything. It's fun, though, and the world is interesting and encourages exploration. There aren't very many quest markers and you generally speak to people to find quests.

The story, though, is interesting once it gets off the ground. You've got some occult themes and weird, creepy Arthurian legend stuff along with tons of content and very little forced direction.

It's not a GOTY contender or anything, but it's definitely a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 from a AA studio that's punching above its weight with this game.

dunno if it will be on steam but just learned Everquest has a new expansion. holy crap yes that everquest

Yep 25th anniversary and still going strong

I still remember picking up Everquest at this local video game shop. Went home, had nothing else to do because I was still single. One of our best adventures was travelling from one major city to the other. We had maps printed out at our desks and had some close calls.
One of the first dungeons, the goblin one, we had the most interesting strategy. 3 Wizards, we attempted to pass aggro from one person to another so that you wouldn't take more than 1-2 hits. We'd wait until someone else had aggro and then would start nuking. Then stop as soon as they'd turn towards us. So dumb, but it was fun.
I have a 21 year old son now and will have been with my wife for 25 years in about 3 weeks, life definitely changes! Crazy that the game is still around (and that my wife still puts up with me)

You can show your son just how old you are by playing the game with you now and show him what the Ice Age of Gaming was all about then. :D

He's a big baseball fan, so I'll show him Earl Weaver Baseball on the Amiga and tell him how I used to have to type in all the stats to create a new season every year, because they didn't issue a new version or season updates every season.

And no quick play. That's old.

I still have PTSD from people calling out "Train!"

I still have a version that came in a metal collectors box.

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