Polekatt's Playground (updated Q1 '24)

Gaming
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I’m terrible at completing games, for the following reasons-

I play casually. I play what is fun, what I’m in the mood for at the moment. I do not play to complete the game.

So I thought I might try a new thread. I will still list games I complete, but I want to concentrate more on what I’m actively playing, and why, and hopefully try to keep that this to date.

Active Games and thoughts/updates

Disney Dreamlight Valley
Really enjoy this game. Its got everything I want in a relaxing, casually, low key time waster. Its fun, I can customize not only a house and character, but the entire game world. Quests are great, interesting, and entertaining. I’m also a sucker for the lore/world.

PGA Tour 2K23 - Best golf game out there, but crappy developers and customer service. Got back into this one with the new version.

Magic The Gathering: Arena -
I still play this one to several times a week. I absolutely love Magic The Gathering card game, but due to life circumstances, I can no longer play the physical version. This version is exactly what I want. The game plays perfectly, I can jump in at any time and make decks or play games. Games last from 10-30 minutes. I usually just play casual single games, or occasionally play my other favorite format, booster draft. Basically I play when bored and/or don’t have time to get into other games. I have spent ZERO dollars on this game. Its way too easy to get cards and packs just by playing. I don’t have any goal when playing this other than the fun of building decks and/or beating the snot out of who I’m currently playing.

Guild Wars 2 -
Actually been playing this one a while, just forgot to put it on here. Its my MMO of choice. Great game that you can start/stop/go back to at any time.

Baulders Gate 3 -
Obviously

Not really active but may play at any time games

Table Top Simulator
board games with friends
started up a Star Wars RPG using this system. currently on hold

PUBG Battle Grounds -
I’ve always enjoyed this one, and since going free to play, its gotten a little more customer friendly. Not much, but enough to make me pick it up here and there.

Die Young - great game, just no time to play it with everything else I play.

Planet Zoo - LOVE this game but no time left to play after the active ones

SCUM - waiting on this game to get patched to a point I like

Forza 5 - I love racing games and play occasionally this one when in the mood

Games on radar, after released or when on sale
Urban Explorer
Nightingale
Pacific Drive
Life By You

Completed games, as I complete or remember them
Tekken 8 Q1 '24
Starfield Q4 '23
Disney Dreamlight Valley - Q2 '23
Cyberpunk 2077 - Q2 ‘22
A Way Out - Q2’ 22
Back 4 Blood - Q2 '22
Acting Lessons - Q1 '22
It takes Two - Q1 '22
Operation Tango - '21
*Pre 2021, or can’t remember completion date
Bioshock Infinite
Elder Scrolls 1,2,3,4,5
Witcher 1,2,3
GTAV story
Red Dead 2 story
Fallout 3, 4, NV
Far Cry 1, 3, 5
Control
Xcom
Betrayer
Call of Jaurez
Firewatch
Wolf Amoung Us
Enola
Gone Home
Hard West
Life is Strange
Strange Brigade
The Park
Saints Row 3
Tomb Raider
Wolfenstien New Order

MMO’s I’ve played enough to consider ‘complete’
(Basically games that can go on and on, but I’ve got at least one character to max level, and played for a year or more, so I consider it complete)
EQ 1,2
Horizons
Dark age of Camelot
World of Warcraft
City of Heroes
Conan Exiles
Elder Scrolls Online
Fallout '76 - Q1 '23

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Good luck trying to beat Everquest. I loved the games back when WoW wasn’t a thing. Graphically, the games look more than outdated sadly. They also never fixed the UI which is really, really bad. I feel like Everquest could’ve been waaaaaaaay better than WoW if the UI wasn’t absolute salad.

Here’s an MMO to consider playing if the wuxia theme is your thing. Its story is based on the popular Chinese TV show Gujian and the gameplay from the Gujian games were basically copied into this. It doesn’t have any pay2win garbage. The game is insanely popular in China.

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Oh in my mind I “completed” Everquest. I edited the description of that category to denote what I consider completing an MMO style game is. :slight_smile: I plan for this topic to be updated as I change out what I complete or am actively playing. Its my attempt ya’lls completed game topics, just with active ones added in. :wink:

oh and thanks for that heads up on swords of legends, I’ll check that out!

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I do it usually this way: my way. I always like to see what I finished in a year and compare it how many games I finished last year. It’s kinda fun haha

It’s kinda sad that the MMOs aren’t getting more popular. I can only blame the devs for implementing these pay to win microtransactions in their games (im looking at you Archeage).

I hope this will change with Sword of Legends Online. They actually started doing livestreams on Steam to show what the game has and to show that the only thing you can actually spend your money on are cosmetics with no stat change.

The only problem is that they are all Germans on livestream and they have that weird English haha

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Summer '21 update-

Moved Forza 4 to inactive but play occasionally section

Added Table top Simulator to active games. This is a Great game/gaming tool. Love it!

Added Hot Wheels and Forza 5 to games I’m looking forward to next quarter

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Played and finished Operation Tango this evening, with Scavenger.

Its not a long game, as we played the whole thing in one Sunday evening. took us around 4-5 hours.

We both loved it. Both of us agreed that it was worth every penny.

This is a co-op game where you don’t see each other’s screens, and you have to communicate and talk each other through their part of the game. It is made for two people to play.

One person plays the spy/secret agent, and the other person plays the hacker, which is overwatch, or whatever you want to call the person monitoring them out in the van, or back at headquarters. The spy is first person view, and the hacker has views of computer screen type stuff, like maps, surveillance cams, etc. The hacker has to constantly tell the spy where to go, what to do, stuff like that, while the spy has to constantly tell the hacker what they are seeing. It really gave us the feeling of these tv shows and movies you watch where people are doing that. great fun, for two friends to play.

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That sounds like a interesting concept. I might have to check that game out.

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Finished It Takes Two

delightful little co-op game. It was voted game of the year by someone, so Scav and I tried it. The votes didn’t lie, this game is very well done.

The gameplay is challenging enough to be be a challenge, but not too hard that you can’t do it or get frustrated. Everything works like you would think, and its really intuitive. Also, the gameplay changes slightly, every chapter. Every chapter you get different abilities so to speak, that slight change the way you play, enough to keep things interesting.
The graphics, sound, and acting are amazing. Its like watching a Disney pixar movie, and every bit as well done as the best of them.
The story is ok. The acting makes this part of the game, the story is pretty much predicable. Not bad mind you, just predictable. Part of the beauty is the details this company went to. The story will be rolling along, you are like, yeah, yeah, kind of expect this, but then you see little details literally EVERYWHERE that support the story, or are easter eggs, and those are what wows you.

Overall, the fun of playing this game with the presentation of it, makes me rate it 9 of 10. If you like co op games, this is one to try.

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Finished Back 4 Blood story last night.

This game has to be my most pleasant surprise purchase of 2021. I bought it when it came out simply to play co-op with Scav and Karma. Scav was the one wanting us to play it, so Karma and I obliged. It has ended up that Karma and I like it so much we’ve played it more than Scav.

I like the gameplay in it, and the variety of characters. The only downside is that this game is too difficult for a group of 50+ year old men. We started it, really liked it, then the devs started patching it, basically making it more difficult because people were beating it so easily. But we were just BARELY beating it on the lowest difficulty. Enjoy your youth, young’uns, those reflexes don’t last.

Anyway, I like the subject matter and fun of this game. If it were less difficult, and they let people start building levels for it, like Left 4 Dead did, it will be awesome. Still, I feel it was well worth the money I spent on it, and we plan to keep trying to play the expansions.

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Just finished A Way Out

Two player Co-op game, Scavenger and I played.

Great game for 5 hours, absolutely ruined (for me) by the ending.
It sucks because for 98% of the game I loved it.
If I had known the gameplay of the ending of the game, I would not have wasted my time and money on it.
I can’t say much more without spoiling it.

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I agree. The ending was surprising but in a bad way haha

There were probably 70 different ways to end the story that are way better than what we have now.
Similar happened to me when I was playing Dying Light. Fantastic gameplay and 99% of the game was superb…then the ending came and that alone made me not to buy the sequel.

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I have already finished the story in Back 4 Blood several months ago. That was on recruit (easy) difficulty.

Last night, I finished the game on veteran (normal, I guess) difficulty.

Updated review- This game is not as difficult as I originally indicated. You just have to really think about what you are doing, and YOUR Role on the team, and stick to that. Also, they changed the game in a recent patch, making it much more playable.

You have a deck of cards that give different things to your character. There are 15 total slots. Each card either gives something to your character, or the entire team, and most times will be balanced with a drawback. You choose 15 cards from TONS of options that you unlock by playing the game. Play the game on easy level, use lower cards, unlock better cards, then start using them to make your character better, and able to survive the more difficult levels.

Before the patch, you played one card per mission, from your chosen deck. It was really hard to do this way because had to play a bunch of missions, (without dying) to get to the combination of cards that you actually wanted. After the patch, now, you get your entire deck of cards from the start. Makes much more sense now, you make your character the playstyle you want, then you play that way from the start.

Here is the key to this game. You choose your abilities, your playstyle, based on the cards you pick plus your characters starting abilities. You MUST stay with that for this game to work well. On the higher difficulty levels friendly fire is on and a big thing. If you spec your character as a melee fighter, then you only take guns and shoot your teammates more than the zombies, you aren’t going to last long.

Still love the game, now to start a run at the Nightmare level. :slight_smile:

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Well I did it.

Finally finished Cyberpunk 2077. 150 hrs play time, every side quest I could find.

I thought the game was great. I loved the writing, a lot of the quests were even better than the main story. In fact, the game would not have been near as good just doing the main story alone.

Sure there were a lot of aggravating bugs, but nothing really gamebreaking. The most aggravating was random crashes, then I could duplicate the crash when I loaded the save. Thought that was a gamebreaker until I realized that, and figured out to just do something different and get by the crash and the game would run fine after that.

Other than that, I didn’t really get any of the bugs that others seemed to point out.

8.5/10, not in my top 5 of all time, but definitely in my top 20- mainly because of the great writing and immersion, points subtracted only for bugs.

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Now I want to play cp2077 again.

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Gonna record here that I’m calling Fallout '76 complete as of Q1 '23.

My active games for the last quarter, maybe two quarters, have remained the same, ongoing things without actual endings.

Fallout '76 -
I hit level 50 (the highest level you can get in game) and am basically playing the MMO endgame type content now.

I bought this game when it came out years ago. It was a mess. It is not a mess now. The game is really really good, as far as what I like to play. I’ve always been a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout universes. Fallout 76 has really interesting quests, and you can build your own base the way you want. Think more like customizable housing. Base is really a misnomer. You don’t have to defend your base against anyone other than random NPCs, and those are more nuisances than something you have to build a big defense for.

The game plays like a GTAV server. you log in, you get put on a server with 12 or 16 other people. Max says it is 24 people but I’ve never seen that many. PVP is there if you want it, BUT NOBODY DOES IT. Griefing is non existent because you can’t do anything to anyone else unless they allow it. Just keep the passive mode switch on, and don’t fire back,and if someone starts hitting you, just ignore them. They eventually go away bored. If they get too bad, just switch servers. if something were to happen to your nice thought out base, just switch servers, it comes right back how you built it. Its really easy, so all the griefers pretty much don’t bother because they can’t. Everyone I come across with works cooperatively, helps each other out, and pretty much just has fun together playing.

They have the usual pass system thing, but it doesn’t cost anything. They do have a subscription service, so if you pay, you do get more, and its worth it if you want that sort of thing, but you can participate and get PLENTY of good stuff for free. You get something neat or useful every level. its not bad stuff at all. Its just if you pay, you got something else.

The questing is interesting, there is a LOT of backstory, and a lot of it is tied together. You do one quest and then later on you’ll be doing another one and you see a reference to a character you saw in a prior quest, tying all the stories together. Being set in West Virginia, some of them are really really funny. If questing isn’t your thing, there are always events going on. EVERY HOUR, on the hour, an event happens, and in between at anytime, anyone can start one up on their own. Events are things that happen that you just go join in. Don’t have to party up, if you are in the area, you help, and get credit and rewards.

All in all this has turned into a very fun and enjoyable MMO game, and is quite well supported.

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Posts about Q1 '23 in a thread for Q3 '22…

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whoops! editted! :wink:

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Calling Disney Dreamlight Valley complete, even though I’ll continue to play it.

Finished the main questline, and got the credits to roll.

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updated for Q4, to include Starfield and Baulders Gate 3, and took off games I’m not playing at all right now.

I don’t think SF or BG3 need any explanations, LOL.

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Rolled the credits on Starfield

Its a better game than it was given credit for by the media I think, but not game of the year. It all depends on your play style. People expecting a normal Bethesda game that plays just like Skyrim or Fallout, (which was me) AND like those games, will like Starfield. People that believe the media hype that its the best thing out there and will change all space games will be disappointed.

Quests were very interesting and fun. IF you take the time to read all the lore and pay attention. If you blow through them, just building outposts wanting to fly space combat, the game will get boring very quickly, I would think.

The new game mechanic is very very interesting, something different. I can’t comment on that though without spoilers.

If you plan to play, stick mainly to the main quest, play it through, and plan to play it again for real. After playing it, I see exactly why they said initially to treat the main quest as the tuturiol and the real game doesn’t begin until thats over.

For me, and my usual play style, I do plan to play again, but as with all Bethesda games, I’ll wait a year or two for the mods I want to be made and perfected.

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