From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy
I'm still enjoying it, but feel like it should be over soon. It's unfortunately open world, and really isn't worth exploring after the
initial bit and what quests take you on. Everything is very similar, multiples of the same type of puzzle with the same solution just the bit
in slightly different places, enemy camps are basically one of 4 types goblins, dark mages, wolves or spiders, etc. You can't do most of the
puzzles early either as you need certain spells to do some of them, and
you get the spells rather slowly.

So I'm working on the quests only now. Unfortunately one of the side
quests is locked behind a door with a very long and grindy find the
hidden things to get the power to unlock level 3 locks. I'm only
missing the last one, but it could be anywhere in this giant open world.
If I happen to stumble upon it, great, otherwise I'm not bothering.

While there is flying and I love that, the controls for it are not great
as you have up-down and *camera* left-right on the right stick, and
left-right on the left stick (which does nothing on up down.) You can't
change controls, though you can use the gyroscope thing to fly around by changing the angle you're holding the controller. I found that quickly
tiring, and after trying it awhile, still worse than the stick controls.
Apparently there's a mod for it... on PC, but I'm playing on the PS5
with the PS+ I still have (accidentally auto-renewed.) I've got one more
month left of it.

----------------------------------------------

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

I tried playing PW's new title "Diaper Wipers"
but it refused to even install. PW is really a
total douchebag.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders.

Arc Raiders only came out on the 30th but I had played the "server
slam" test prior to that and already knew it was a keeper. Brilliantly
well done. I wrote a longer post about it (who its for and who its
not) but I'm not seeing it in the list of messages... it might be one
of those things where it's queued up somewhere and the message shows
up later.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I got BUSY. :(

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I got none due to my rural area. Good. Get off my lawn! ;P

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

Where did you go?

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

...

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Same games! I finally resumed Pulsar with my friends, but we all forgot
how to play. Haha.

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Ditto. :(
--
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." --2 Corinthians 10:3-5. Scary day!
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

(apparently my earlier posts aren't showing up. I guess
that's what happens if your NNTP server doesn't get used
for a few weeks; it gets rusty and rops posts. So I'm
reposting everything. Apologies if you see double-posts
now. But hey, you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)


On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 09:00:04 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

Man, if you can't even depend on Ant these days...

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy

I finally broke down and bought this one. Mostly because the deluxe
version was going for < $10 USD, but also because the visuals looked
so nice. I still haven't played it (I suffer from Harrypotterphobia)
but I'm now one step closer to that happening ;-)



Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Atuel
* American Truck Simulator: Iowa
* Tiny Glade
* No One Wants To Die
* Evil West


Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* Atuel
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2794330/Atuel/
I played Atuel because it was free, because it was short, and because
it looked like it might have had something interesting to say (or at
least --with its surreal visuals-- something interesting to _see_).

Well, I was right about two out of three of those things.

I honestly don't get the point of this program. It's a game (if it can
be called a game) about the Atuel River, a minor waterway in
Argentina. The program has you trace its (abridged) path through a
colorful, dreamlike world as a narrator utters some completely trite
and uninteresting things about the river. Things like how the water
flows downhill, how indigenous people saw it as a spirit and asked
permission before taking its water, how it carves its way through a
variety of terrain, and how it's important for people not to abuse and
overuse the water and the environment it supports. Your control is to
hold down an arrow key which advances your on-screen avatar (which
varies from moving the waters of the river itself, to becoming a fish
swimming downstream, or a cloud, or a fox) forward along a
predetermined path. You can't move off course, you can't explore. You
can just keep going downstream at an incredibly sedate path.

It's not that the messaging has no worth, or that the visuals aren't
nice; it's just that it's all so generic and pointless. Nothing they
say about the Atuel River couldn't be applied to any other river, and
none of the visuals capture anything that makes the Atuel unique. I'd
have loved to learn more about the people or wildlife living around
the river, or explored more of its ecosystem, but the game stubbornly
refuses to give any detail. You could literally call this game
"Amazon" or "Danube" and pretty much it would be the same experience.
It comes across as incredibly pointless.

It only took 22 minutes to finish, which is fortunate since the lack
of any interesting content was grating half-way through the
experience. Which is odd because, like I said, I wouldn't have minded
a longer game... if there had been anything to it. The mood was nice,
the visuals were dreamlike and I can't argue with its conceit. It just
lacked any depth whatsoever.




* American Truck Simulator: Iowa https://store.steampowered.com/app/3025440/American_Truck_Simulator__Iowa/
I mean, I *did* warn you this was coming.

Although to be honest, even _I_ didn't expect I'd be replaying the
game so soon. I thought I'd put ATS aside for a month or three, after
having spent so much time with it roaming around Missouri. But all
those thoughts about all those unexplored roads in Iowa gnawed at me,
and it wasn't long before I fired up the game again.

Even so, I resisted. Normally when I get a new expansion to the "Truck Simulator" games, I do an intensive drive-through of the new map. It's
always my goal to mark every new road as "explored" and --when every
ramp, byway, and alley is considered a separate path-- one-hundred
percenting the map legitimately (e.g., by obeying all traffic laws and
visiting the new region while on missions) can be quite slow. So
instead, when I decide to explore a new map --like I did for Missouri
last month-- I usually break a few rules. I disable damage to my
truck, turn off traffic infractions, and basically become the world's
worst driver for the interim. You know, like driving down a highway at
120kph, then suddenly crossing the median to make a u-turn to go up an
entrance ramp. Sure it might cause a few accidents, but I save a lot
of time! ;-)

This time, though, I resisted that urge. I told myself that if I was
going to explore Iowa, I was going to do it honestly; on-mission and
obeying all traffic laws. This meant I was covering and re-covering a
lot of roads I'd already explored (I must have driven down Interstate
80 a hundred times!), but by-gosh I was going to see Iowa the way the developers expected me to see it!

That stubbornness last for about 60% of the map. After I covered the
majority of the highways, I looked at the cut-offs and ramps scattered
across Iowa, and realized that the only way I'd mark all those as
"explored" was if I cut a few corners. So corners got cut in the end.
Damage was disabled, laws were ignored, and the accident rate on Iowa
highways skyrocketed. But I'm still proud of how close I came to doing
it honestly. ;-)

The map itself is... I guess it's fine. I was far less impressed with
this expansion than earlier maps, like Arkansas and Missouri. I'm hard
pressed to decide whether this was the fault of the designers or with
the state they're representing. Iowa is _boring_. There's only so many
ways you can show off farms and corn-fields and tiny cities before you
start running out of ideas. Some parts of the map are better designed
too, with the more realistic terrain found in other recent expansions.
But a lot of areas suffer from the 'flat-world' syndrome that plagued
the earliest regions of the game, where any elevations are only far
away from the road you're on. The driving was okay; the highway system
was well designed (well, except for a few awful spaghetti-junction
exits) but mostly Iowa felt like a state you don't visit so much as
you just drive through. It's not a destination, it's transit between
more exciting parts of the world. But I guess I can't blame the
expansion for that; it's just representing the reality of the region.

Anyway, there's no _new_ new map expansion released for the game, so
you'll hopefully get a break from hearing about Truck Simulators next
month.



* Tiny Glade
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/
"Tiny Glade" isn't a game. It's more of a software toy / 3D modeling
tool, akin to programs like "Townscaper" or "World Box". It's a
program for creating small dioramas with a clever --if limited--
toolset.

As the title would suggest, the essence of any art you create is
picturesque, fantasy-themed scenes. You've only a small canvas in
which you can build your world, and a similarly small number of assets
that you can create with. The toolset is surprisingly robust in how
much you can modify each piece, but this is a toy where you build
scenic castles and hamlets, not starscapes or battlefields.

Construction is incredibly easy; grab a basic structure type (there
are only a handful: towers, square buildings, walls, fences, and
stairs), and plop them down on the map. Each structure can be
manipulated in different ways; buildings can be stretched in three
directions, or stacked upon one another, or flattened to form things
like bridges. Stairs can be twisted to serve as arches. Each item
snaps to another, so even if each individual structure is simple, with
some time and (fiddly) work, you can create some complicated
constructions. You can also add details (like windows, ground-clutter,
streams, flags and lights) to enliven the scene. The engine does a lot
of the work for you. Obviously, the more effort you put into it, the
more rewarding and complicated a scene you'll get out, but even with
no expertise you'll probably be able to whip up a pleasing landscape
within an hour or two.

Beyond that, though, there is no gameplay. There are no NPCs who will
wander your creation, no monsters to tear it down, no worries about
resources or inhabitants whose needs you must manage, and no story or
lore to follow. It's all about your own creativity; imagine a scene
and then do your best to create it. It's soothing, easy and fun but, I
imagine, not the sort of thing that would appeal to everyone.

My initial impression --after briefly marveling at the technology--
was one where I wondered about the game's longevity. Sure, it had nice
visuals and a soothing approach to construction, but its toolset felt
so _limited_. I built a small hamlet, and a castle, and a requisite
'glade'... but what could I possibly do after that? I was sure that
after five or ten hours I'd leave the game behind, pleased with the
purchase but having expended all its possibilities.

But the more I played around with it, the more tricks I was able to
learn. It is, undeniably, a limited toolset and could desperately use
some more varied assets. But even within those constrictions, I was
still able to make a surprisingly varied city-scape, and --looking at
some of the creations other users have posted-- I'm still only
scratching the surface.

But then again, "Tiny Glade" is intended to be a casual tool for
making quick and easy scenes; it isn't intended to replace a true 3D
modeling program. And it does this fairly well, so maybe adding more
layers of complexity would be counter-productive.

Anyway, I had fun with it. I built a few locations from my table-top
campaigns, and despite my lack of skill, was fairly impressed by the
results (more due to the program than any artistic ability of mine). I
think it's going to remain on my hard-drive for a long time; it's not
the sort of thing I'll engage with deeply for long periods of time,
but happily will fire up to tinker with for an hour or two as I watch
a video or talk to somebody on the phone.

But I do hope the developers add at least a _few_ more assets to the
game.




* Nobody Wants To Die https://store.steampowered.com/app/1939970/Nobody_Wants_to_Die/
The thing that makes for good science-fiction, they say, is that it
should limit itself to one unbelievable thing; one advancement or
situation that pushes the realm of believability. That one thing could
be aliens, or psychic powers or cyberspace or faster-than-light
travel, but the more you add to the setting, the worse the story will
get.

"Nobody Wants To Die" postulates a world with a neural lace that
allows you to survive death, a hand-held scanner that can reverse
time, a portable x-ray device, flying cars, a future where everything
is art deco, and a world without oceans or plants.

So... it's not the greatest of stories, no.

Which is a major weakness for a game that is pretty much all about its narrative. While its gameplay has a little bit more to for you to do
than your average 'walking sim', at heart it's still a game where you
have no chance of failure and no real influence on how the game ends
up. You move around the maps, interacting with the hotspots in a
pre-determined order and listen as the story unfolds around you. It
isn't a game completely without agency; your discovery of certain
clues and a few dialogue choices (and a mostly innocuous choices)
unlock certain responses from NPCs, and a single choice determines
what ending you get, but beyond that, you've got precious little
freedom.

In and of itself that's not a terrible thing, of course. The same
thing could be said for games like "Doom Eternal" or "Call of Duty"
after all; even if those games do offer a better illusion of choice,
you're still constrained by the decisions of the developer. But games
like "Doom Eternal" are bolstered by satisfying gameplay, whereas
"Nobody Wants To Die" is extremely lacking in this area. All it has is
it's narrative and style, and the former -as mentioned- is nothing to
write home about. It's a fairly staid and unoriginal trope, asking
about the cost of immortality (with a few stabs at the ultra-wealthy
too). It doesn't really _say_ anything new, and doesn't tell the story
in an interesting way either.

The game does have its own style. It's visuals --Unreal Engine
powered, naturally-- are gorgeous, with almost every scene filled with scrumptious detail and movement. It's futuristic New York is portrayed
in a mix of cyberpunkian dystopia and 1920s detective noir; think
Bladerunner by way of Bioshock.

But beyond that, it's not a very good game. It's not fun to play, the
story and dialogue are trash, and the setting is nonsensical. The
puzzles are, as mentioned earlier, nothing more than moving from one
hot-spot on the map to the next, pressing the right key to use the
appropriate tool to reveal the next clue/hotspot. Despite appearances,
the world is extremely closed and linear. Unlike many other narrative
games, there's no sense of exploration; of discovering things about
the world for yourself. Instead, you are spoon-fed the setting.

So, ten points for visuals and style, but minus a hundred for
everything else. Even as a walking sim, this game was extremely disappointing... and if you don't like the genre, this one will only
make you dislike it even more.



* Evil West
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1065310/Evil_West/
"Evil West" reminds me of a similar game: "Damnation" a long-forgotten
shooter from 2009. There are some obvious superficial resemblances;
both games feature a steampunk 'weird-west' setting; both games use
the Unreal Engine; both games are third-person over-the shoulder
shooters which have almost as much emphasis on the platforming as they
do the combat. But it's more than that where I see similarities.

Like "Damnation", "Evil West" is a game with bigger ambitions than its developers could actually realize. Both games wanted to be these vast,
epic stories, and both games were let down by some fairly average
gameplay, poor pacing and unengaging narratives. Similarly, neither
game was truly awful and I could appreciate each for what they were
TRYING To do... but still, it's hard to recommend either when there
are so many better titles available.

"Evil West" is the better of the two games, though. "Damnation"
struggled to achieve mediocrity, and even if it crossed that low bar
in the end, it was a close thing. "Evil West" is generally a more
polished experience; for all its flaws, it has the better story,
controls and gameplay, and much improved visuals. You _can_ find
enjoyment in "Evil West", don't get me wrong. If you happen to already
own the game and want something a bit different (and don't mind
playing a flawed game), then sure, give it a try. But it's not the
sort of game I'd recommend you rush out to buy.

It's certainly the gorier of the two games, "Evil West" is. It's more imaginative and varied too. Right to the end the game was still
throwing new monsters and weapons at me. The skill-tree modifies
weapons enough that each new skill makes meaningful changes to the
combat; there are no "5% damage buff" nonsense here. If anything, the
whole thing was a bit TOO much variety; rather than focus on making
the combat satisfying in its own right, it felt like the developers
were more interested in just tossing more and more variety at you. It
all felt a bit messy and unfocused.

Which can be said about the gameplay in its whole too. If I were
attempting to describe the game, I'd have to ask you to imagine
"Outlaws" (for its Western setting) crossed with "Doom" (for its gore
and fantastic monsters) crossed with "Painkiller" (because of its
arena combat model) crossed with "Tomb Raider" (all that platforming)
with a touch of "Gears of War" (the game's chunky visuals) on the
side. It's sort of all over the place, and it doesn't make for an
entirely satisfying combination.

"Evil West" is a solid B-tier game; its hard to hate. But it's not
something you'll love, either.

----------------------------------------------

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Geez, a person can't take a vacation without y'all going nuts about my
absence ;-)

(That said, I did hope to make my reappearance yesterday on my return
to the country in order to make start this thread, but just catching
up with everything --including the hundreds of posts on UseNet!!!--
made me reconsider that idea. ;-)


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Alan Wake 2
I thought this would be a good spooky halloween-adjacent mystery-thriller to play, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit, with some minor frustrations. If you recall, previously on Alan Wake Alan himself disappeared mysteriously at the end of the game, after battling an evil supernatural force. Now 13
years later, a pair of FBI agents are investigating murders & spooky happenings in the same area, and you play as one of them, exploring and gathering clues, solving puzzles, talking to folks, and battling the odd
ghoul with an assortment of projectile weapons and light-based tools. But Wake himself is neither gone nor forgotten, and leaves notes for Saga the agent as a connection develops her and the trapped-in-a-shadow-dimension
Wake. Soon you are able to play as Wake himself in a shadow-NewYork as he searches for a way back to real life, and can switch between the two characters. As in the original game, Alan's story-writing can affect real-life and vice-versa, with many plot convolutions following this idea.

It's a lovely game -- on a fast system -- with detailed environments and advanced lighting effects, and I like this style of gameplay loop: A friend described it as more of an 'interactive movie' than a game, and that's
exactly the game that appeals to me: plot-based, telling a complete story
in an immersive world, with interactive elements to keep me engaged and involved, and Remedy does this kind of game well. There are lots and lots
of hidden sidequests and items to collect (I'm trying to find all the deer heads!), if you like that. Minor frustrations would include the very dark environments -- I suspect an OLED monitor would display these better -- and the sometimes confusing change in environment when using Wake's 'lamp' tool. I'm nearly at the end, and will certainly do the DLC as well. Thumbs up!

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)

Yay! Welcome back!

**** Hogwarts Legacy

I saw the sale also, but the more reviews I read the less interested I became.

* Atuel

This sounds like a 'south american developers contest winner' like
another game I bought years ago, who's title escapes me. Only 20min, I'll keep it in mind.

* Evil West

I'll keep this mind too

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 01 Nov 2025 20:06:18 -0400, Rin Stowleigh <[email protected]>
wrote:

Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders.

Arc Raiders only came out on the 30th but I had played the "server
slam" test prior to that and already knew it was a keeper. Brilliantly
well done. I wrote a longer post about it (who its for and who its
not) but I'm not seeing it in the list of messages... it might be one
of those things where it's queued up somewhere and the message shows
up later.

It's kind of an odd coincidence that the message above mentioned
queuing my my Usenet messages as a possible culprit. So these evening
I tried to jump into a game of Arc Raiders, and apparently the
popularity of it is overwhelming their servers because just launching
the game tells me I'm "In Queue".. And also Spall is reporting some
messages he reported did not go through.

Hopefully it's not one of those deals where they just didn't architect
the game for scalability well enough from the get-go and it will end
up taking months to work out. To be fair they did have the "server
slam" event, but that's not necessarily enough to predict load demand
once the game is released and it becomes the "hot ticket".

Hmm.. So in the last couple of weeks there have been major
infrastructure hiccups in cloud services like Azure and AWS (which,
these days realistically control all the infrastructure that these
queues exist in).

Not sure if it's related or not, but definitely a bit disappointing to
load up a game to find I'm on a waiting list.

Maybe that's the cost of AI and the increased load on datacenters?
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

The same, for the most part. Oblivion Remastered and Battlefield 6
offline campaign. I was planning on playing some spooky games on
Halloween night but had friends over for dinner and they wanted to
watch Young Frankenstein again together for the zillionth time. But I
did watch The Birds tonight for the first time since I was a kid I
think, and played a little RE4 and Silent Hill 2 from last year (but
such a long time between check saves so I doubt I will start it up
again).
Of course, I installed others to play that night like Alien Isolation,
and L4D2 but no time.

-pw
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls
is MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's
off staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit
as usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab
a handful of candy.

Nice. All we get here is drunk-or-drunkers, but that's to be expected
when we live in apartment buildings and Halloween in europe translates
to "Get drunk all night, but wearing a costume this time".

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Just one single game this time:

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth --------------------------------------------

First half of the remastered collection that was released one year ago.
I was running out of games that allow saving at anytime, which is non-negotiable for me when I play on the Steam Deck during my daily
train commutes.

As usual with these collections, They improve on some things, and the traditional capcom cheapness sticks like a sore thumb in others. While
the characters and portraits were redrawn from scratch, a lot of the backgrounds in conversation view stink badly of upscaling and filtering,
with only the important objects and text having been manually redrawn (seriously, you made the game in 2009 and you already lost the original development assets?). This gets a lot worse the bigger the
screen is. While not terrible on 7 inches, it's more annoying in 24",
and at 27" 1440p is when you realize that the new character art is
vectorised, but the backgrounds are not and the game was not designed to
be played at resolutions higher than 1080p.

There are some good things, at least. This time the eyes preserve the
smooth blinking animation of the NDS version, instead of being 1-2
frames like the original trilogy remaster. Rather than cropping the game
to fit a 16:9 window, they choose to extend the scenarios and zoom out
the character art so it does not get cropped. The game adds a few QoL
features not present in the original: Text log in case you missed a
dialog line and need to go over a testimony again, easier saving and
loading like the Great Ace Attorney Collection, text skip and fast
forward if you choose to enable it.
I haven't noticed any changes to the script, so we still get a cameo of
a certain character that communicates in L337 speek.

25 hours into it, and I hope that during this week I will be able to
complete the final episode.
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Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

(apparently my earlier posts aren't showing up. I guess
that's what happens if your NNTP server doesn't get used
for a few weeks; it gets rusty and rops posts. So I'm
reposting everything. Apologies if you see double-posts
now. But hey, you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)

On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 09:00:04 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

Man, if you can't even depend on Ant these days...

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy

I finally broke down and bought this one. Mostly because the deluxe
version was going for < $10 USD, but also because the visuals looked
so nice. I still haven't played it (I suffer from Harrypotterphobia)
but I'm now one step closer to that happening ;-)

Lucky for you it's set in a prior age, so no Potter at all.

Doing the wand motions to learn each new spell is annoying, but at least
you only have to do it the once.
I had feared briefly that is was going to be Arx Fatalis style where you
had to do the motion every time, and that woulda got old real fast.

Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Atuel
* American Truck Simulator: Iowa
* Tiny Glade
* No One Wants To Die
* Evil West

Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------

* Atuel
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2794330/Atuel/
I played Atuel because it was free, because it was short, and because
it looked like it might have had something interesting to say (or at
least --with its surreal visuals-- something interesting to _see_).

Well, I was right about two out of three of those things.

I honestly don't get the point of this program. It's a game (if it can
be called a game) about the Atuel River, a minor waterway in
Argentina. The program has you trace its (abridged) path through a
colorful, dreamlike world as a narrator utters some completely trite
and uninteresting things about the river. Things like how the water
flows downhill, how indigenous people saw it as a spirit and asked
permission before taking its water, how it carves its way through a
variety of terrain, and how it's important for people not to abuse and >overuse the water and the environment it supports. Your control is to
hold down an arrow key which advances your on-screen avatar (which
varies from moving the waters of the river itself, to becoming a fish >swimming downstream, or a cloud, or a fox) forward along a
predetermined path. You can't move off course, you can't explore. You
can just keep going downstream at an incredibly sedate path.

It's not that the messaging has no worth, or that the visuals aren't
nice; it's just that it's all so generic and pointless. Nothing they
say about the Atuel River couldn't be applied to any other river, and
none of the visuals capture anything that makes the Atuel unique. I'd
have loved to learn more about the people or wildlife living around
the river, or explored more of its ecosystem, but the game stubbornly
refuses to give any detail. You could literally call this game
"Amazon" or "Danube" and pretty much it would be the same experience.
It comes across as incredibly pointless.

It only took 22 minutes to finish, which is fortunate since the lack
of any interesting content was grating half-way through the
experience. Which is odd because, like I said, I wouldn't have minded
a longer game... if there had been anything to it. The mood was nice,
the visuals were dreamlike and I can't argue with its conceit. It just
lacked any depth whatsoever.

So basically it's like if Sheldon Cooper stopped doing "Fun with Flags"
and did "Interesting Facts about Rivers" and this was the first episode?

<snip>

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

The usual really;
Black Desert Online, mostly AFK fishing, Star Trek Online at least for
the current event and daily endeavors, a tiny bit of SWTOR mostly just
logging in for the daily freebie thing, some Hogwarts Legacy and most
recently Cyberpunk 2077 (heavily modded, but mostly things like clothes
and cars added and often nearly instantly removed.)

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Geez, a person can't take a vacation without y'all going nuts about my >absence ;-)

I think you need to tell people you are going on vacation rather than
simply vanishing if you want to avoid the drama.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Good review.

rms
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sun, 2 Nov 2025 16:13:41 -0700, "rms" <[email protected]> wrote:

* Atuel

This sounds like a 'south american developers contest winner' like
another game I bought years ago, who's title escapes me. Only 20min, I'll >keep it in mind.

It's probably the same one. At the very least, the store page
repeatedly harps on the fact that it's an 'award-winning game' and the
Atuel River is in Argentina (which, for you USAmericans out there who
don't know such things, is a country in South America ;-) ;-)

It's not really that I dislike the concept of the game. Its visuals
are interesting, after all, and --even if it is a bit heavy handed--
its environmental message is welcome. But it's so generic and bland
that the message becomes meaningless, leaving you only with _really_
subpar gameplay.

The whole thing might have been better done as a CGI film than trying
to make a game out of it, but even then it doesn't actually SAY
anything. I'm honestly surprised it won any awards.


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action



"Spalls Hurgenson" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

On Sun, 2 Nov 2025 16:13:41 -0700, "rms" <[email protected]> wrote:

* Atuel

This sounds like a 'south american developers contest winner' like
another game I bought years ago, who's title escapes me. Only 20min, I'll >keep it in mind.

I found it, not terrible at all, just short and very indie; I still remember it today after all :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/320820/Toren/

rms

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

===TLDR ZONE BEGIN===

A foreword for the benefit of the typo police, I realize there were
multiple fast-typed errors in that last message. There are a few
things that contribute to this, the primary one is that I have a habit
of typing rapidly in an almost haphazard way, then making a second
pass through it all in order to proofread / edit. Except�. the level
of effort that goes into that second pass, or whether the second pass
happens at all, depends completely on how important it is to me that
what I�m writing is connecting with someone�s reading comprehension
level on the other side. Unfortunately, I must confess that gaming
related discussions on Usenet are such a low priority for me these
days (and my level of Give-A-Crap� is non-existent) that the initial
blast has become particularly careless, and I rarely even do the
second pass to make corrections at all. The only reason I still write
(and occasionally read others posts) on Usenet at all is really more
of an appreciation for nostalgic tech and the idea of increasingly
rare unmoderated Internet discussions.

That said, I think I am going to start putting a little more (sorry,
it will probably never be a lot more) effort into correcting typos and
goofs.

===TLDR ZONE END===

�Back to the subject of Arc Raiders�

�I�m not sure if my first post about the game ever actually propagated
across servers and appeared for others, but I basically described it
as a game to be avoided by folks who aren�t able to handle the stress
of dying at the hands of other players, but a fantastic game if you
don�t mind that.

At the moment at least, that dynamic seems to be changing since the
game was released. I�m noticing an uptick in players indicating that
they are friendly, and mutually agreeing to avoid conflict. This can
be both a good and bad thing. In the beta and in the first few days
of release, the danger presented by other players was orders of
magnitude greater than the danger presented by the �AI� bots when it
comes to the primary game loop. This changes how the game is played,
because it increases the amount of stealth play required such as
listening for footsteps, stopping and monitoring your surroundings
before proceeding, etc. If the majority of players agree to avoid confrontations with other players, the need for that caution is
removed and it really impacts the �feel� of the game. It may be
interesting to see how this evolves over time.

In the meantime, even in the warmer-and-fuzzier world of online
cooperation, betrayal can and does happen � it�s a normal part of the
game and I hope it doesn�t fade away. Someone can agree to ally with
you, and that at any point in time decide that the XP and loot they
will gain by killing you is far more important to them than making yet
another random friend. I personally have not done that yet � in order
for me to be the betrayer it will require me to unlearn some of my
teamwork skills. But I have been on the other end of that a couple of
times and gotten shot in the head from behind by someone I was
supposed to be working with. And I have to say, I like the element of
danger it adds. It�s part of what adds �tension� to the already
immersive world.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

rms wrote:

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Good review.

rms

And now I realise that I haven't even talked about the gameplay, plot,
etc, focusing only on the technical aspects. Yeah, what a "review".
Sigh. I completely forgot to write the second half.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Sun, 2 Nov 2025 16:13:41 -0700, "rms" <[email protected]> wrote:

* Atuel

This sounds like a 'south american developers contest winner' like >>another game I bought years ago, who's title escapes me. Only 20min, I'll >>keep it in mind.

It's probably the same one. At the very least, the store page
repeatedly harps on the fact that it's an 'award-winning game' and the
Atuel River is in Argentina (which, for you USAmericans out there who
don't know such things, is a country in South America ;-) ;-)

I think in America it's known as Beef Mexico.
(As Opposed to Oil Mexico (Venezuela) and Cocaine Mexico (Columbia)
etc.) I think maybe Venezuela is heading towards becoming "Terrorist
Mexico" they way they are feuding with Trump.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote at 16:00 this Saturday (GMT):

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy
I'm still enjoying it, but feel like it should be over soon. It's unfortunately open world, and really isn't worth exploring after the
initial bit and what quests take you on. Everything is very similar, multiples of the same type of puzzle with the same solution just the bit
in slightly different places, enemy camps are basically one of 4 types goblins, dark mages, wolves or spiders, etc. You can't do most of the puzzles early either as you need certain spells to do some of them, and
you get the spells rather slowly.

So I'm working on the quests only now. Unfortunately one of the side
quests is locked behind a door with a very long and grindy find the
hidden things to get the power to unlock level 3 locks. I'm only
missing the last one, but it could be anywhere in this giant open world.
If I happen to stumble upon it, great, otherwise I'm not bothering.

While there is flying and I love that, the controls for it are not great
as you have up-down and *camera* left-right on the right stick, and left-right on the left stick (which does nothing on up down.) You can't change controls, though you can use the gyroscope thing to fly around by changing the angle you're holding the controller. I found that quickly tiring, and after trying it awhile, still worse than the stick controls.
Apparently there's a mod for it... on PC, but I'm playing on the PS5
with the PS+ I still have (accidentally auto-renewed.) I've got one more month left of it.

----------------------------------------------

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

I recently found a different gambling rougelike I've been enjoying
called CloverPit, other than that nothing ig
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

PW <[email protected]> wrote at 03:23 this Monday (GMT):

The same, for the most part. Oblivion Remastered and Battlefield 6
offline campaign. I was planning on playing some spooky games on
Halloween night but had friends over for dinner and they wanted to
watch Young Frankenstein again together for the zillionth time. But I
did watch The Birds tonight for the first time since I was a kid I
think, and played a little RE4 and Silent Hill 2 from last year (but
such a long time between check saves so I doubt I will start it up
again).
Of course, I installed others to play that night like Alien Isolation,
and L4D2 but no time.

-pw

I'm more suprised that the big shooters are still bothering with
campaigns.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Sigh. I completely forgot to write the second half.

We're still here!!

rms
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

At Sun, 02 Nov 2025 13:37:41 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> wrote:

(apparently my earlier posts aren't showing up. I guess
that's what happens if your NNTP server doesn't get used
for a few weeks; it gets rusty and rops posts. So I'm
reposting everything. Apologies if you see double-posts
now. But hey, you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)

On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 09:00:04 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

Man, if you can't even depend on Ant these days...

I know, huh!


[...]

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Guess. ;P

Okay, Elite Dangerous Odyssey, mostly a community goal
which got me a pre-engineered size-5 cargo rack with
extra cargo capacity. I said, "oh, cool!" and went
to add it to my Panther Clipper II, only to discover that
I already had pre-engineered cargo racks in both size-5
slots. So, I put it in my new mining ship, a "Type 11 Prospector".

https://ibb.co/tMJFVt8s
--
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090Ti 24G
OS: Linux 6.17.7 D: Mint 22.2 DE: Xfce 4.18
NVIDIA: 580.95.05 Mem: 258G
"Ethernet n.: something used to catch the etherbunny."
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

candycanearter07 wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote at 16:00 this Saturday (GMT):

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off
staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy
I'm still enjoying it, but feel like it should be over soon. It's
unfortunately open world, and really isn't worth exploring after the
initial bit and what quests take you on. Everything is very similar,
multiples of the same type of puzzle with the same solution just the bit
in slightly different places, enemy camps are basically one of 4 types
goblins, dark mages, wolves or spiders, etc. You can't do most of the
puzzles early either as you need certain spells to do some of them, and
you get the spells rather slowly.

So I'm working on the quests only now. Unfortunately one of the side
quests is locked behind a door with a very long and grindy find the
hidden things to get the power to unlock level 3 locks. I'm only
missing the last one, but it could be anywhere in this giant open world.
If I happen to stumble upon it, great, otherwise I'm not bothering.

While there is flying and I love that, the controls for it are not great
as you have up-down and *camera* left-right on the right stick, and
left-right on the left stick (which does nothing on up down.) You can't
change controls, though you can use the gyroscope thing to fly around by
changing the angle you're holding the controller. I found that quickly
tiring, and after trying it awhile, still worse than the stick controls.
Apparently there's a mod for it... on PC, but I'm playing on the PS5
with the PS+ I still have (accidentally auto-renewed.) I've got one more
month left of it.

----------------------------------------------

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Wizardry 7

Class changed a thief to a bard. Got three characters to level 10, the samurai, mage and monk will follow soon.

Civilization 5

Made major strides in this game while on an easier mode. Learned how
easy the game can be when the economy is booming.

Heroes of Might & Magic III complete

I finished the first campaign, Armageddon's Blade. It was nice to
reunite with Gelu, the Dark Elf who rebel snipes at the forces of
Krewlod. Currently running the Mutare campaign, scenario 3. It's a
little strange, with a whirlpool right in the direct path. I've been
doing poorly up to this point and I think my focus is on RPG right now.
--
The esssential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, and passion.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/1/2025 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I got BUSY. :(

I got busy the last few days.

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off
staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I got none due to my rural area. Good. Get off my lawn! ;P

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

Where did you go?

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days
of 'vacation'.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/3/2025 12:59 PM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

===TLDR ZONE BEGIN===

A foreword for the benefit of the typo police, I realize there were
multiple fast-typed errors in that last message. There are a few
things that contribute to this, the primary one is that I have a habit
of typing rapidly in an almost haphazard way, then making a second
pass through it all in order to proofread / edit. Except…. the level
of effort that goes into that second pass, or whether the second pass
happens at all, depends completely on how important it is to me that
what I’m writing is connecting with someone’s reading comprehension
level on the other side. Unfortunately, I must confess that gaming
related discussions on Usenet are such a low priority for me these
days (and my level of Give-A-Crap™ is non-existent) that the initial
blast has become particularly careless, and I rarely even do the
second pass to make corrections at all. The only reason I still write
(and occasionally read others posts) on Usenet at all is really more
of an appreciation for nostalgic tech and the idea of increasingly
rare unmoderated Internet discussions.

I've started slacking off on my editing too, though more on reddit.
Partially becase if yuo're too good, people start thinking you're an AI
bot. Also because it poisons the posts for AI. Mwhahahah!

(I Deliberately left my typos for this bit, to show you how it looks.
It's hard to resist fixing.)

…Back to the subject of Arc Raiders…

I really didn't like Nightreign which is kind of a survival shrinking
world timed thingy, only Souls based, so I can't imagine liking it.

There's no real PVP currently (though they call it as being a pvpe game,
the only pvp is hitting anyone who's down to get them back up.)

At the moment at least, that dynamic seems to be changing since the
game was released. I’m noticing an uptick in players indicating that
they are friendly, and mutually agreeing to avoid conflict. This can
be both a good and bad thing. In the beta and in the first few days
of release, the danger presented by other players was orders of
magnitude greater than the danger presented by the “AI” bots when it comes to the primary game loop. This changes how the game is played,
because it increases the amount of stealth play required such as
listening for footsteps, stopping and monitoring your surroundings
before proceeding, etc. If the majority of players agree to avoid confrontations with other players, the need for that caution is
removed and it really impacts the “feel” of the game. It may be interesting to see how this evolves over time.

I do get a thrill out of helping people against invaders (PVP or "Bad
red man") in souls games. I have tried some PVP, but don't really enjoy
it much, unless I do friendly invader, or crazy invader (DS3 only)

In a way 'friendly invader' is the only real way to betray people
(unless you're a hacker, fucking up someone else's game just to be an asshole.) but you're betraying the other PVPers. I've gotten called out
for doing that, but too bad, it's not like it's not part of the game.

In the meantime, even in the warmer-and-fuzzier world of online
cooperation, betrayal can and does happen – it’s a normal part of the game and I hope it doesn’t fade away. Someone can agree to ally with
you, and that at any point in time decide that the XP and loot they
will gain by killing you is far more important to them than making yet another random friend. I personally have not done that yet – in order
for me to be the betrayer it will require me to unlearn some of my
teamwork skills. But I have been on the other end of that a couple of
times and gotten shot in the head from behind by someone I was
supposed to be working with. And I have to say, I like the element of
danger it adds. It’s part of what adds “tension” to the already immersive world.

I'm definitely very 'team' as well, but I do enjoy playing the monsters
in D&D & 99% of the time "losing."
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/2/2025 10:37 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

(apparently my earlier posts aren't showing up. I guess
that's what happens if your NNTP server doesn't get used
for a few weeks; it gets rusty and rops posts. So I'm
reposting everything. Apologies if you see double-posts
now. But hey, you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)

Yea you're back! Usenet & Eternal September have been a bit more spotty
than usual especially since GG was... what's the right word? Stopped?
ended. Oh I got it, frozen! Archive only.

On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 09:00:04 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

**** Hogwarts Legacy

I finally broke down and bought this one. Mostly because the deluxe
version was going for < $10 USD, but also because the visuals looked
so nice. I still haven't played it (I suffer from Harrypotterphobia)
but I'm now one step closer to that happening ;-)

I just finished it. End was fine, kind of hate to leave it, but I'm not interested enough to replay it yet or finish up all the collection
quests. Apparently the different houses only have a short quest that's different, as I mentioned, and it's not really worth playing again just
for that. I suppose I could play again as a full goody-two-shoes or
totally evil MFer, but apparently there's not really much if any
difference of outcome. I'd also really miss the curses, especially the
charm, if I went full good.

Trying to figure out what to play next, I can't seem to bring myself to
go back to Tainted Grail. Maybe go back to Deadspace. Probably just a
break from gaming a bit.

* American Truck Simulator: Iowa https://store.steampowered.com/app/3025440/American_Truck_Simulator__Iowa/ Iowa is _boring_.

Yep. The drive at least. I have some fond memories from childhood when
we went to Sun Valley resort when I was a kid for some reason having to
do with my mom's involvement with some new-age group. Like when I
tripped and fell on the cement in front of their pond taking it on the
chin where I now have a scar. I mean fought a bear!

They had a couple pinball machines and I got pretty good at; some
western themed one I don't remember the name of, and a poker based one.

Got to hang out with the only other kid there too, a girl I liked, which
of course I ruined by being a bad DM when I introed her to D&D there
having her go through B2. But that's too much tangent.

* Nobody Wants To Die

Trailer looks o.k. But what you describe is definitely not my type of game.

* Evil West

This sounds cool, but the visuals look really bad to me, in a mixed
style kind of way. Looks like they took old west, mashed Borderlands
and D&D into it, really turning me off.

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Geez, a person can't take a vacation without y'all going nuts about my absence ;-)

LOL, sorry. No one cared when I was gone on vacation :(
I don't post as much as you though.

Just let us know you're going and when to expect you back.
No I'm not a clingy housewife, really. :P
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 10:49:23 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

On 11/3/2025 12:59 PM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

===TLDR ZONE BEGIN===

A foreword for the benefit of the typo police, I realize there were
multiple fast-typed errors in that last message. There are a few
things that contribute to this, the primary one is that I have a habit
of typing rapidly in an almost haphazard way, then making a second
pass through it all in order to proofread / edit. Except�. the level
of effort that goes into that second pass, or whether the second pass
happens at all, depends completely on how important it is to me that
what I�m writing is connecting with someone�s reading comprehension
level on the other side. Unfortunately, I must confess that gaming
related discussions on Usenet are such a low priority for me these
days (and my level of Give-A-Crap� is non-existent) that the initial
blast has become particularly careless, and I rarely even do the
second pass to make corrections at all. The only reason I still write
(and occasionally read others posts) on Usenet at all is really more
of an appreciation for nostalgic tech and the idea of increasingly
rare unmoderated Internet discussions.

I've started slacking off on my editing too, though more on reddit. >Partially becase if yuo're too good, people start thinking you're an AI
bot. Also because it poisons the posts for AI. Mwhahahah!

(I Deliberately left my typos for this bit, to show you how it looks.
It's hard to resist fixing.)

�Back to the subject of Arc Raiders�

I really didn't like Nightreign which is kind of a survival shrinking
world timed thingy, only Souls based, so I can't imagine liking it.

There's no real PVP currently (though they call it as being a pvpe game,
the only pvp is hitting anyone who's down to get them back up.)

At the moment at least, that dynamic seems to be changing since the
game was released. I�m noticing an uptick in players indicating that
they are friendly, and mutually agreeing to avoid conflict. This can
be both a good and bad thing. In the beta and in the first few days
of release, the danger presented by other players was orders of
magnitude greater than the danger presented by the �AI� bots when it
comes to the primary game loop. This changes how the game is played,
because it increases the amount of stealth play required such as
listening for footsteps, stopping and monitoring your surroundings
before proceeding, etc. If the majority of players agree to avoid
confrontations with other players, the need for that caution is
removed and it really impacts the �feel� of the game. It may be
interesting to see how this evolves over time.

I do get a thrill out of helping people against invaders (PVP or "Bad
red man") in souls games. I have tried some PVP, but don't really enjoy
it much, unless I do friendly invader, or crazy invader (DS3 only)

In a way 'friendly invader' is the only real way to betray people
(unless you're a hacker, fucking up someone else's game just to be an >asshole.) but you're betraying the other PVPers. I've gotten called out
for doing that, but too bad, it's not like it's not part of the game.

In the meantime, even in the warmer-and-fuzzier world of online
cooperation, betrayal can and does happen � it�s a normal part of the
game and I hope it doesn�t fade away. Someone can agree to ally with
you, and that at any point in time decide that the XP and loot they
will gain by killing you is far more important to them than making yet
another random friend. I personally have not done that yet � in order
for me to be the betrayer it will require me to unlearn some of my
teamwork skills. But I have been on the other end of that a couple of
times and gotten shot in the head from behind by someone I was
supposed to be working with. And I have to say, I like the element of
danger it adds. It�s part of what adds �tension� to the already
immersive world.

I'm definitely very 'team' as well, but I do enjoy playing the monsters
in D&D & 99% of the time "losing."

In Arc Raiders, the dynamic around betrayal is different than in most
games. It may be one of those things that's impossible to explain and
that you have to experience.

The "emotes wheel" menu mostly exists to streamline your communication
with any players you encounter, with options like "don't shoot!",
etc., and it does get used often (in conjunction with proximity voice
chat). So, with this game's atmospheric sound effects (which are
outstanding) and overall design that really make the world feel
immersive and dangerous, they've made it so it seems to "mean
something" when you ally with another random player, because the two
of you have a much better chance at fending off other players and bots
when you're working together. And if you do that, only to get shot in
the back later and robbed, there is something about it that seems
spectacularly cold about it. I know that doesn't sound all that new
-- the mechanic is easy enough to explain, but the way it feels
different in this game is difficult to convey.

People do the betrayal thing occasionally, and it's part of the game,
but it's one of those things I don't really like to add to my
conscience just for the sake of a little more loot. So I usually make
the decision on whether to shoot or ask questions right when I
initially see the player... it's not uncommon for me to just start
shooting, no conversation involved, often because I don't feel like
taking chances and losing my stuff before I extract. But teaming up,
using them to achieve my goals, then disposing of them for some loot
is too far of a roleplay stretch for my taste I guess.

But yeah, there is a timer involved. There's not a shrinking circle
like in battle royale games, but you can only extract at specific
locations, and they don't all stay open and available for the entire
round duration, so that's one more element that adds tension. I
suppose the entire genre is designed around the idea of working under
pressure.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

On 11/1/2025 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I got BUSY. :(

I got busy the last few days.

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off
staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I got none due to my rural area. Good. Get off my lawn! ;P

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

Where did you go?

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days
of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need to check out its Galaxy's Edge!
--
"If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin..." --Romans 6:5-6
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 09:00:04 -0700, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

Man, if you can't even depend on Ant these days...

Don't depend on me. Depend on all of us! Way too busy and tired. :(
--
"If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin..." --Romans 6:5-6
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Ant wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

On 11/1/2025 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I got BUSY. :(

I got busy the last few days.

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off >>>> staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I got none due to my rural area. Good. Get off my lawn! ;P

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

Where did you go?

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days
of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need to check out its Galaxy's Edge!

One of the items on my bucket list is to never go to Disneyland or Disneyworld.
--
The esssential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, and passion.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur <[email protected]> writes:

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Really just Borderlands 4. Some Outer Worlds but that just doesn't grab
me the way Fallout games do, despite all the similarities.

Finished the BL4 main campaign bit last night although it says 88% of
campaign done so I guess there's still something.

I don't know, it's the same old with some new twists. Way less story,
more fun in the shooting, legendary loot is fairly scarce but very
effective and long lasting.

Funny bit, the game says I have 56 hours played with my single
character, Steam says 76 hours. So 20 hours of waiting the game to load, waiting for shader compilation and wandering around in the menus? Seems
crazy but oh well...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/5/2025 9:51 PM, Ant wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

On 11/1/2025 7:02 PM, Ant wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote:

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I got BUSY. :(

I got busy the last few days.

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off >>>> staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I got none due to my rural area. Good. Get off my lawn! ;P

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

Where did you go?

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days
of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need to check out its Galaxy's Edge!

It's always crowded. Their latest iteration of fast pass is much better
than last time we went though, so was able to mostly skip the line for Galaxy's Edge.

We went previously and did Galaxy's Edge, which we waited for about an
hour and a half for. which was too much for me - acrophobia and drops I didn't know was on it.

I had to hype myself up for it this time and do it on the second day
when I was too tired to care as much. The drops just seemed pretty mild
this time, must've been the surprise last time. It was newer though and
the new order actors were better originally. There was one this time
who really nailed it though.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/2/2025 7:23 PM, PW wrote:

The same, for the most part. Oblivion Remastered and Battlefield 6
offline campaign. I was planning on playing some spooky games on
Halloween night but had friends over for dinner and they wanted to
watch Young Frankenstein again together for the zillionth time. But I
did watch The Birds tonight for the first time since I was a kid I
think, and played a little RE4 and Silent Hill 2 from last year (but
such a long time between check saves so I doubt I will start it up
again).
Of course, I installed others to play that night like Alien Isolation,
and L4D2 but no time.

Oblivion has lots of demons at least.

I was too busy to play or watch anything with all the trick-or-treaters,
but my wife put on Mary Shelly, which she swears she hadn't seen before,
but I have, and I don't think there's any way I watched it by myself.
Too busy to actually catch more than a few minutes, and after it was
over she said it was a romance not a scary movie. She put on Muppet's
Haunted Mansion after that which is one of her favorites, and the trick-or-treaters were starting to thin out by then so I caught enough
of it. I didn't really want to watch it, but it was fun. Again not an
actual scary movie.

My daughter watched Alien for the first time with us a couple weeks ago,
which she liked. She'd got an alien shirt not long before as she liked
the alien on it, so we had to watch it. I've got to show her Aliens
still which I like much better, but it's not on the same streaming
service Alien was on... sigh. I might just have to purchase it.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/5/2025 11:12 PM, Anssi Saari wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> writes:

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Really just Borderlands 4. Some Outer Worlds but that just doesn't grab
me the way Fallout games do, despite all the similarities.

Finished the BL4 main campaign bit last night although it says 88% of campaign done so I guess there's still something.

I don't know, it's the same old with some new twists. Way less story,
more fun in the shooting, legendary loot is fairly scarce but very
effective and long lasting.

Funny bit, the game says I have 56 hours played with my single
character, Steam says 76 hours. So 20 hours of waiting the game to load, waiting for shader compilation and wandering around in the menus? Seems
crazy but oh well...

Holy shit that's way too high of a percentage. You were making it sound
good, but I'd have steam coming out my ears with that much waiting
around just to get in the game. That sounds worse than waiting for
games to load from tape on a C-64.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Justisaur <[email protected]> writes:

Holy shit that's way too high of a percentage. You were making it
sound good, but I'd have steam coming out my ears with that much
waiting around just to get in the game. That sounds worse than
waiting for games to load from tape on a C-64.

:) One of my earliest memories of the C-64 is someone was loading a game
from a cassette in a store and the game itself put up this notification
on screen that load time is about 18 minutes. No idea what the game was, though.

Now, some of that 20 hours has to be that I left BL4 sitting in the menu
or paused for calls/food/bathroom/whatever. But I have no idea how
much. And yes, the game takes a long time to start and that's annoying
and the shader compilation also takes a while when it happens. More CPU
would probably help with the shader compilation, I have a 5600X.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Anssi Saari wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> writes:

Holy shit that's way too high of a percentage. You were making it
sound good, but I'd have steam coming out my ears with that much
waiting around just to get in the game. That sounds worse than
waiting for games to load from tape on a C-64.

:) One of my earliest memories of the C-64 is someone was loading a game
from a cassette in a store and the game itself put up this notification
on screen that load time is about 18 minutes. No idea what the game was, though.

Now, some of that 20 hours has to be that I left BL4 sitting in the menu
or paused for calls/food/bathroom/whatever. But I have no idea how
much. And yes, the game takes a long time to start and that's annoying
and the shader compilation also takes a while when it happens. More CPU
would probably help with the shader compilation, I have a 5600X.

It takes about 18 minutes to load a game on my PS4 for the first time
too. What does that say?
--
The esssential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, and passion.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 05:51:05 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] (Ant)
wrote:

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days
of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need to check out its Galaxy's Edge!

I thought they closed it. https://mousetrapnews.com/star-wars-galaxys-edge-closing-permanently/


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 05:51:05 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] (Ant)
wrote:

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days >>> of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need to check out its Galaxy's Edge!

I thought they closed it. https://mousetrapnews.com/star-wars-galaxys-edge-closing-permanently/

There's only one correct answer and that is to avoid Disneyland &
Disneyworld entirely.
--
The esssential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, and passion.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 12:01:59 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Got to hang out with the only other kid there too, a girl I liked, which
of course I ruined by being a bad DM when I introed her to D&D there
having her go through B2. But that's too much tangent.

Hell if it is! I wanna hear about the adventure! Although starting
with "Keep on the Borderlands" as the introductory adventure? That's
risky! ;-)

* Evil West

This sounds cool, but the visuals look really bad to me, in a mixed
style kind of way. Looks like they took old west, mashed Borderlands
and D&D into it, really turning me off.

Visually, it reminded me a lot of the mid-2000s console-shooters like
"Gears of Wars"; it was something in the design of the characters and
how they moved, I think. Maybe the lighting. It was all more advanced technically, of course; it was more of an artistic resemblance. I was
never a big fan of those sort of games, so the similarity didn't give
me any feelings of nostalgia but I didn't mind it too much.

It was a pleasantly gory way to end October (the spooky month!), even
if the game was pretty itself 'mid'.

LOL, sorry. No one cared when I was gone on vacation :(
I don't post as much as you though.

Aww, I care! ;-)


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 03:35:28 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

My daughter watched Alien for the first time with us a couple weeks ago, >which she liked. She'd got an alien shirt not long before as she liked
the alien on it, so we had to watch it. I've got to show her Aliens
still which I like much better

They're such different movies the comparison isn't really valid. I
love both, for different reasons. But one is a horror movie and the
other is an action flick; they're both great but they're going for
completely different reactions, and I don't think it's fair to judge
the one by the other.

(That said, I myself personally prefer "Aliens" too... but I've always
leaned more towards action than horror anyway.)

But be a good dad and don't let her watch any of the sequels. Well,
maybe "Romulus" (and, if you absolutely have to, "Alien 3", which is a tolerable rip-off of the first move). But "Resurrection", "Prometheus"
and "Covenant"? They never happened. ;-)

And if she really loves the first movie, inflict "Alien: Isolation" on
her. But make sure you have the phone number of a therapist on
speed-dial first; it's a scary game ;-)

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 10:49:23 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I've started slacking off on my editing too, though more on reddit. >Partially becase if yuo're too good, people start thinking you're an AI
bot. Also because it poisons the posts for AI. Mwhahahah!

I enjoy fucking with the AI whenever I get forced into a CAPTCHA. Why
yes Mr. Computer, that picture of a cow _does_ look like a bus to me.

I mean, eventually if you want to actually progress to whatever page
you meant to visit, you have to give it correct answers... but I enjoy poisoning the well a few times first.



--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 10:49:23 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

I've started slacking off on my editing too, though more on reddit.
Partially becase if yuo're too good, people start thinking you're an AI
bot. Also because it poisons the posts for AI. Mwhahahah!

I enjoy fucking with the AI whenever I get forced into a CAPTCHA. Why
yes Mr. Computer, that picture of a cow _does_ look like a bus to me.

I mean, eventually if you want to actually progress to whatever page
you meant to visit, you have to give it correct answers... but I enjoy poisoning the well a few times first.

I used to never be able to solve these because I was a completist. If
there was any any at all part of the stoplights in the tile I would
select it. I didn't start passing this kind of captcha until sometime
earlier this yr. I like the new one I've seen where you have to align
the directional facing of two objects to the same direction. Pretty easy
for a person, and I guess complicated enough to rule most comps out.
--
The esssential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, and passion.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/6/2025 7:40 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 05:51:05 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] (Ant)
wrote:

Disneyland! One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real days >>> of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need to check out its Galaxy's Edge!

I thought they closed it. https://mousetrapnews.com/star-wars-galaxys-edge-closing-permanently/

Oh damn, I was thinking Rise of the Resistance and didn't bother to
check the name assuming it was Galaxy's Edge.

*embarrassed*
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/6/2025 7:50 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 12:01:59 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Got to hang out with the only other kid there too, a girl I liked, which
of course I ruined by being a bad DM when I introed her to D&D there
having her go through B2. But that's too much tangent.

Hell if it is! I wanna hear about the adventure! Although starting
with "Keep on the Borderlands" as the introductory adventure? That's
risky! ;-)

Especially as it was just her with a starting character. I don't even remember what she played, but might have been a fighter. I'm about 99%
sure it was 1e AD&D (this was early 80's) because I remember throwing
out the female str & con limitations, which is about the only good thing
I did. I remember something about a horse she bought with starting gold
she named White Lightning, I think she had a horse toy/figure for it,
and may have drawn it as well.

First encounter She got captured by orcs. Well o.k. 2nd good thing,
since that's better than just killing her. Bad things happened, the
end. So maybe not good, there's worse things than death. That whole
debacle isn't part of my fond memories, but it was definitely a learning experience.

In my defense I was somewhere between 10-12 and it was probably only my
second time DMing if you don't count solo, my first being with my best
friend I DMed a few games (he also DMed for me once.)
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/6/2025 8:55 AM, Justisaur wrote:

On 11/6/2025 7:40 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 05:51:05 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] (Ant)
wrote:

Disneyland!  One day driving there and one day back, so only 2 real
days
of 'vacation'.

Ah. I haven't been there since uhh 2008? Was it crowded? I still need
to check out its Galaxy's Edge!

I thought they closed it.
https://mousetrapnews.com/star-wars-galaxys-edge-closing-permanently/

Oh damn, I was thinking Rise of the Resistance and didn't bother to
check the name assuming it was Galaxy's Edge.

*embarrassed*

So further info: Galaxy's Edge is basically Star Wars Land. That's
still in Disneyland (California.) They just closed it in Disneyworld (Florida.)

It is fun to walk around there. I got to try blue and green milk. I
like green milk better, but apparently blue is more popular. There's a
few robot displays where kids can make them do stuff with some app.
Also new order and various characters walking around like Chewy. I
would've liked to go in the Cantina, but no one else was interested.
It's a restaurant, but it looks like the Mos Eisley Cantina and they had
a live performance going on.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

The World of Is! <[email protected]> wrote at 18:32 this Wednesday (GMT):

candycanearter07 wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote at 16:00 this Saturday (GMT):

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off
staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy
I'm still enjoying it, but feel like it should be over soon. It's
unfortunately open world, and really isn't worth exploring after the
initial bit and what quests take you on. Everything is very similar,
multiples of the same type of puzzle with the same solution just the bit >>> in slightly different places, enemy camps are basically one of 4 types
goblins, dark mages, wolves or spiders, etc. You can't do most of the
puzzles early either as you need certain spells to do some of them, and
you get the spells rather slowly.

So I'm working on the quests only now. Unfortunately one of the side
quests is locked behind a door with a very long and grindy find the
hidden things to get the power to unlock level 3 locks. I'm only
missing the last one, but it could be anywhere in this giant open world. >>> If I happen to stumble upon it, great, otherwise I'm not bothering.

While there is flying and I love that, the controls for it are not great >>> as you have up-down and *camera* left-right on the right stick, and
left-right on the left stick (which does nothing on up down.) You can't
change controls, though you can use the gyroscope thing to fly around by >>> changing the angle you're holding the controller. I found that quickly
tiring, and after trying it awhile, still worse than the stick controls. >>> Apparently there's a mod for it... on PC, but I'm playing on the PS5
with the PS+ I still have (accidentally auto-renewed.) I've got one more >>> month left of it.

----------------------------------------------

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Wizardry 7

Class changed a thief to a bard. Got three characters to level 10, the samurai, mage and monk will follow soon.

Civilization 5

Made major strides in this game while on an easier mode. Learned how
easy the game can be when the economy is booming.

Heroes of Might & Magic III complete

I finished the first campaign, Armageddon's Blade. It was nice to
reunite with Gelu, the Dark Elf who rebel snipes at the forces of
Krewlod. Currently running the Mutare campaign, scenario 3. It's a
little strange, with a whirlpool right in the direct path. I've been
doing poorly up to this point and I think my focus is on RPG right now.

Very cool. did you misclick and reply to me by accident lol?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote at 20:01 this Wednesday (GMT):

On 11/2/2025 10:37 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

(apparently my earlier posts aren't showing up. I guess
that's what happens if your NNTP server doesn't get used
for a few weeks; it gets rusty and rops posts. So I'm
reposting everything. Apologies if you see double-posts
now. But hey, you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)

Yea you're back! Usenet & Eternal September have been a bit more spotty than usual especially since GG was... what's the right word? Stopped? ended. Oh I got it, frozen! Archive only.

I do kinda wish they would just lock people from posting from it and
keep the archive going, but theres other sevices that can fill that
too.
[snip]
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candycanearter07 wrote:

The World of Is! <[email protected]> wrote at 18:32 this Wednesday (GMT):

candycanearter07 wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote at 16:00 this Saturday (GMT):

Ant! You were sniping this topic from Spalls, but now that Spalls is
MIA you just stop? Boo! Boo I say!

I had lots of trick-or-treaters last night, was fun. My daughter's off >>>> staying and trick-or-treating with a friend. My son was hermit as
usual, staying in his room except to come out for dinner and grab a
handful of candy.

I went on a trip for 4 days at the beginning of the month, and wasn't
really interested into getting back into playing anything, but
eventually slowly started getting back into one.

WHAT I PLAYED IN OCTOBER:

**** Hogwarts Legacy
I'm still enjoying it, but feel like it should be over soon. It's
unfortunately open world, and really isn't worth exploring after the
initial bit and what quests take you on. Everything is very similar,
multiples of the same type of puzzle with the same solution just the bit >>>> in slightly different places, enemy camps are basically one of 4 types >>>> goblins, dark mages, wolves or spiders, etc. You can't do most of the
puzzles early either as you need certain spells to do some of them, and >>>> you get the spells rather slowly.

So I'm working on the quests only now. Unfortunately one of the side
quests is locked behind a door with a very long and grindy find the
hidden things to get the power to unlock level 3 locks. I'm only
missing the last one, but it could be anywhere in this giant open world. >>>> If I happen to stumble upon it, great, otherwise I'm not bothering. >>>>
While there is flying and I love that, the controls for it are not great >>>> as you have up-down and *camera* left-right on the right stick, and
left-right on the left stick (which does nothing on up down.) You can't >>>> change controls, though you can use the gyroscope thing to fly around by >>>> changing the angle you're holding the controller. I found that quickly >>>> tiring, and after trying it awhile, still worse than the stick controls. >>>> Apparently there's a mod for it... on PC, but I'm playing on the PS5 >>>> with the PS+ I still have (accidentally auto-renewed.) I've got one more >>>> month left of it.

----------------------------------------------

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

P.S. We miss you Spalls!

Wizardry 7

Class changed a thief to a bard. Got three characters to level 10, the
samurai, mage and monk will follow soon.

Civilization 5

Made major strides in this game while on an easier mode. Learned how
easy the game can be when the economy is booming.

Heroes of Might & Magic III complete

I finished the first campaign, Armageddon's Blade. It was nice to
reunite with Gelu, the Dark Elf who rebel snipes at the forces of
Krewlod. Currently running the Mutare campaign, scenario 3. It's a
little strange, with a whirlpool right in the direct path. I've been
doing poorly up to this point and I think my focus is on RPG right now.

Very cool. did you misclick and reply to me by accident lol?

I guess I just wanted to get in a word on the thread, anywhere. I used
to own Hogwarts for the PS4, but that battle you talked about doing 30
times before getting past it - I gave up there and gave away my copy.
The wizard is extremely under powered in this fight needing 3 or 4 hits
per enemy and the enemies seem endless...
--
The esssential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, and passion.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 03:35:28 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

On 11/2/2025 7:23 PM, PW wrote:

The same, for the most part. Oblivion Remastered and Battlefield 6
offline campaign. I was planning on playing some spooky games on
Halloween night but had friends over for dinner and they wanted to
watch Young Frankenstein again together for the zillionth time. But I
did watch The Birds tonight for the first time since I was a kid I
think, and played a little RE4 and Silent Hill 2 from last year (but
such a long time between check saves so I doubt I will start it up
again).
Of course, I installed others to play that night like Alien Isolation,
and L4D2 but no time.

Oblivion has lots of demons at least.

I was too busy to play or watch anything with all the trick-or-treaters,
but my wife put on Mary Shelly, which she swears she hadn't seen before,
but I have, and I don't think there's any way I watched it by myself.
Too busy to actually catch more than a few minutes, and after it was
over she said it was a romance not a scary movie. She put on Muppet's >Haunted Mansion after that which is one of her favorites, and the >trick-or-treaters were starting to thin out by then so I caught enough
of it. I didn't really want to watch it, but it was fun. Again not an >actual scary movie.

My daughter watched Alien for the first time with us a couple weeks ago, >which she liked. She'd got an alien shirt not long before as she liked
the alien on it, so we had to watch it. I've got to show her Aliens
still which I like much better, but it's not on the same streaming
service Alien was on... sigh. I might just have to purchase it.

*---
NEver heard of Mary Shelly, Muppets - pretty funny. Good dad thing to
do!

I was stunned by the original Alien movie when it came out in the
theatre. Blew me away. I did not expect anything like that or seen
anything like that before. Totally classy. Especially Sigourney
Weaver in her underwear. Perfect body lol!

-pw
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On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 09:16:43 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

On 11/6/2025 7:50 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 12:01:59 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

Got to hang out with the only other kid there too, a girl I liked, which >>> of course I ruined by being a bad DM when I introed her to D&D there
having her go through B2. But that's too much tangent.

Hell if it is! I wanna hear about the adventure! Although starting
with "Keep on the Borderlands" as the introductory adventure? That's
risky! ;-)

Especially as it was just her with a starting character. I don't even >remember what she played, but might have been a fighter. I'm about 99%
sure it was 1e AD&D (this was early 80's) because I remember throwing
out the female str & con limitations, which is about the only good thing
I did. I remember something about a horse she bought with starting gold
she named White Lightning, I think she had a horse toy/figure for it,
and may have drawn it as well.

First encounter She got captured by orcs. Well o.k. 2nd good thing,
since that's better than just killing her. Bad things happened, the
end. So maybe not good, there's worse things than death. That whole
debacle isn't part of my fond memories, but it was definitely a learning >experience.

In my defense I was somewhere between 10-12 and it was probably only my >second time DMing if you don't count solo, my first being with my best >friend I DMed a few games (he also DMed for me once.)

[crossposting to rec.games.frp.dnd and alt.games.adnd
'cause its more in topic there and anyway, those groups
need love ;-)]

Ouch. Keep is a complex adventure, and -even if its labeled an
'introductory adventure' is not really suited for new DMs. It's
definitely not suited to a single-player run. You were introducing a
new player to the game. And it's a D&D Basic game, so if you really
were using AD&D rules, you were just adding an extra layer of
complexity. You had EVERYTHING against you on that run! ;-)

But I don't mean that as a criticism. We've all been there, especially
at the start when we first discovered the game. Even more if that
happens when you're young. It's all part of the learning experience.

I was luckier, in that I started playing 'role-playing games' long
before I even knew what it was called; no rules, no dice, just me
describing locations and my friend(s) suggesting actions for the
heroes to take. This let me hammer out the basics of the what being a 'gamemaster' (not that I knew that's what I was!) without worrying
about whether it made sense or abided by the rules.

Once I translated this to D&D, it was also a fairly long time before I
actually started to DM. I wanted to (and god knows I had lots of ideas
and scenarios written) but the I felt the rules so complicated and
intimidating that it took a while before I had the courage to take
that step.

And I was older, and was playing with other experienced players. So I
had, comparatively, every advantage over your attempt.

And yet I still look back at those early days and cringe. My
adventures were both incredibly simplistic ("kill the foozle", or
"rescue the princess" or just "grab the loot" type scenarios with
little subtlety] and overly complicated in what I was trying to do
(like having a sealed dungeon where the oxygen supply time-limited how
long the PCs could survive).

Not to mention an annoying reliance on the rulebooks to determine the
outcome of pretty much everything.

DMing is easy. DMing _well_ is hard. And while I'd like to believe
that over the years I have improved somewhat (and my players were
generally satisfied with my abilities) I'm still not sure I'm a 'good'
DM. God knows what sort of game I'd run had I tried back when I was
twelve!

So I look at your story and, even if I smile, I also admire your
attempt. You may look back at that as your lowest point, but I just
see the love a player had for the game to attempt to share the game
with others.


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Spalls Hurgenson <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 03:35:28 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

My daughter watched Alien for the first time with us a couple weeks ago, >>which she liked. She'd got an alien shirt not long before as she liked >>the alien on it, so we had to watch it. I've got to show her Aliens
still which I like much better

They're such different movies the comparison isn't really valid. I
love both, for different reasons. But one is a horror movie and the
other is an action flick; they're both great but they're going for
completely different reactions, and I don't think it's fair to judge
the one by the other.

(That said, I myself personally prefer "Aliens" too... but I've always
leaned more towards action than horror anyway.)

But be a good dad and don't let her watch any of the sequels. Well,
maybe "Romulus" (and, if you absolutely have to, "Alien 3", which is a >tolerable rip-off of the first move). But "Resurrection", "Prometheus"
and "Covenant"? They never happened. ;-)

And if she really loves the first movie, inflict "Alien: Isolation" on
her. But make sure you have the phone number of a therapist on
speed-dial first; it's a scary game ;-)

You seem to have forgotten the two Alien vs Predator films as well.

From Horror to action to horror to weirdness in the first 4, then 2 avps
and covenant etc.

Quite the franchise.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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Justisaur <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On 11/5/2025 11:12 PM, Anssi Saari wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> writes:

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Really just Borderlands 4. Some Outer Worlds but that just doesn't grab
me the way Fallout games do, despite all the similarities.

Finished the BL4 main campaign bit last night although it says 88% of
campaign done so I guess there's still something.

I don't know, it's the same old with some new twists. Way less story,
more fun in the shooting, legendary loot is fairly scarce but very
effective and long lasting.

Funny bit, the game says I have 56 hours played with my single
character, Steam says 76 hours. So 20 hours of waiting the game to load,
waiting for shader compilation and wandering around in the menus? Seems
crazy but oh well...

Holy shit that's way too high of a percentage. You were making it sound >good, but I'd have steam coming out my ears with that much waiting
around just to get in the game. That sounds worse than waiting for
games to load from tape on a C-64.

Apparently in some recentish games the "Compiling Shaders" things is
just a cover for long loading times.

Start game, compiling shaders, load saved game, compiling shaders. Game crashes, restart and you guessed it, "compiling shaders".

Games that actual compile shaders tend only do it once, unless something
has changed, game patched, or mod added.

Others just lie about their unholy unoptimized console port code that
takes ages to load.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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On 11/6/2025 11:00 AM, candycanearter07 wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> wrote at 20:01 this Wednesday (GMT):

On 11/2/2025 10:37 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

(apparently my earlier posts aren't showing up. I guess
that's what happens if your NNTP server doesn't get used
for a few weeks; it gets rusty and rops posts. So I'm
reposting everything. Apologies if you see double-posts
now. But hey, you all were bitchin' about my NOT posting
for a while; now you get extra! ;-)

Yea you're back! Usenet & Eternal September have been a bit more spotty
than usual especially since GG was... what's the right word? Stopped?
ended. Oh I got it, frozen! Archive only.

I do kinda wish they would just lock people from posting from it and
keep the archive going, but theres other sevices that can fill that
too.
[snip]

Yes that would've been much preferred. I find it easier to find things
I or others have posted when I'm looking for them in the GG archive.
Not always, but most of the time.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/6/2025 8:16 PM, PW wrote:

On Thu, 6 Nov 2025 03:35:28 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
wrote:

On 11/2/2025 7:23 PM, PW wrote:

The same, for the most part. Oblivion Remastered and Battlefield 6
offline campaign. I was planning on playing some spooky games on
Halloween night but had friends over for dinner and they wanted to
watch Young Frankenstein again together for the zillionth time. But I
did watch The Birds tonight for the first time since I was a kid I
think, and played a little RE4 and Silent Hill 2 from last year (but
such a long time between check saves so I doubt I will start it up
again).
Of course, I installed others to play that night like Alien Isolation,
and L4D2 but no time.

Oblivion has lots of demons at least.

I was too busy to play or watch anything with all the trick-or-treaters,
but my wife put on Mary Shelly, which she swears she hadn't seen before,
but I have, and I don't think there's any way I watched it by myself.
Too busy to actually catch more than a few minutes, and after it was
over she said it was a romance not a scary movie. She put on Muppet's
Haunted Mansion after that which is one of her favorites, and the
trick-or-treaters were starting to thin out by then so I caught enough
of it. I didn't really want to watch it, but it was fun. Again not an
actual scary movie.

My daughter watched Alien for the first time with us a couple weeks ago,
which she liked. She'd got an alien shirt not long before as she liked
the alien on it, so we had to watch it. I've got to show her Aliens
still which I like much better, but it's not on the same streaming
service Alien was on... sigh. I might just have to purchase it.

*---
NEver heard of Mary Shelly

She wrote Frankenstein. The movie had someone else write it and Mary
Shelly got credit somehow, and it wasn't so much about Mary Shelly as it
was that other woman (bait and switch!) which I don't remember their
name. No idea if that's made up for the movie or not, a quick google
doesn't show that as a 'fact', but I didn't look to hard.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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On 11/7/2025 3:02 PM, Xocyll wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On 11/5/2025 11:12 PM, Anssi Saari wrote:

Justisaur <[email protected]> writes:

What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2025?

Really just Borderlands 4. Some Outer Worlds but that just doesn't grab
me the way Fallout games do, despite all the similarities.

Finished the BL4 main campaign bit last night although it says 88% of
campaign done so I guess there's still something.

I don't know, it's the same old with some new twists. Way less story,
more fun in the shooting, legendary loot is fairly scarce but very
effective and long lasting.

Funny bit, the game says I have 56 hours played with my single
character, Steam says 76 hours. So 20 hours of waiting the game to load, >>> waiting for shader compilation and wandering around in the menus? Seems
crazy but oh well...

Holy shit that's way too high of a percentage. You were making it sound
good, but I'd have steam coming out my ears with that much waiting
around just to get in the game. That sounds worse than waiting for
games to load from tape on a C-64.

Apparently in some recentish games the "Compiling Shaders" things is
just a cover for long loading times.

Start game, compiling shaders, load saved game, compiling shaders. Game crashes, restart and you guessed it, "compiling shaders".

Games that actual compile shaders tend only do it once, unless something
has changed, game patched, or mod added.

Others just lie about their unholy unoptimized console port code that
takes ages to load.

I wouldn't be surprised. I don't remember what game was doing that all
the time to me (didn't find me mentioning it in archive) but it was only
at start. Might've been Starfield? The load times on that were
horrendous just in game between areas.

Probably was just getting patches, but I still find it weird, and
annoying for games that're updated a lot. Also play the intro movie or something while it's doing that instead of just 'compiling shaders'

I read it's supposed to be faster on an nmve drive, which I have had
since Elden Ring came out, but still was taking forever, and was
definitely after that.

I do find it suspicious that it only seems to be a recent thing.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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