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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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December 12, 2023
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December 07, 2023
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River Wild Board Game Review

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November 30, 2023
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Outback Crossing Review

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13 Dec 2021 10:27 #328749 by Rliyen

hotseatgames wrote: Temple of Elemental Evil is now playable with cheats that allow you to manipulate all sorts of things, so you can actually play the game instead of fighting it. However, even with cheats this game is HARD.

As for Cyberpunk, I played through the whole game back when it came out, and completely ignored all of this vending machine nonsense. I crafted pretty much nothing, just took the gear that was given to me at various plot points, and had a good time. There is no need to engage with subsystems that are convoluted and not fun. Life is too precious.


I remember rage quitting at the Earth's section of the Temple, where you have to fight that golem-esque monstrosity. I swear to God, it felt like I was fighting Iron Man with Nerf guns.

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13 Dec 2021 10:35 #328750 by Shellhead

hotseatgames wrote: Temple of Elemental Evil is now playable with cheats that allow you to manipulate all sorts of things, so you can actually play the game instead of fighting it. However, even with cheats this game is HARD.

As for Cyberpunk, I played through the whole game back when it came out, and completely ignored all of this vending machine nonsense. I crafted pretty much nothing, just took the gear that was given to me at various plot points, and had a good time. There is no need to engage with subsystems that are convoluted and not fun. Life is too precious.


The only time that I might be tempted to use cheat codes in ToEE would be in the final battle with Zuggtmoy. And even then, only because she spams out so many minions that the initiative track completely fills up and my slowest dudes don't get actions until I have killed a bunch of enemies with my fastest dudes.

I'm glad to hear that crafting is strictly optional in Cyberpunk 2077. I got the game last year, but after a glitch stopped me partway through the tutorial, I set it aside until I finished replaying Vampire: Bloodlines. I'm sure that they have since fixed that glitch and many other glitches in the game, but that patch file is big and my best computer is a little below spec for CP2077. The crafting sounded right for a Techie character, but totally wrong for a Solo or a Fixer or a Rockerboy in the tabletop game that I played way back when. Once the current chip shortage is resolved, I plan to buy a better computer and use that to play CP2077.
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13 Dec 2021 10:44 #328751 by RobertB

hotseatgames wrote: Temple of Elemental Evil is now playable with cheats that allow you to manipulate all sorts of things, so you can actually play the game instead of fighting it. However, even with cheats this game is HARD.

As for Cyberpunk, I played through the whole game back when it came out, and completely ignored all of this vending machine nonsense. I crafted pretty much nothing, just took the gear that was given to me at various plot points, and had a good time. There is no need to engage with subsystems that are convoluted and not fun. Life is too precious.

The crafting is the juice.

(Apologies to Heat)

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13 Dec 2021 10:49 #328753 by Shellhead
Now I am really missing ToEE. I downloaded some really nice mods for the game several years after it came out, and played the whole game a couple more times. The mods added nastier traps to various loot sites, gave the enemy spellcasters better AI, and added some interesting contingent behaviors to various NPCs. The day that Gary Gygax died, I booted up my then-current ToEE game and finished clearing the moathouse after a tough fight in the lower level. My party left through the secret back exit... and ran into a rival party made up of several NPCs that we didn't hire back at the inn! This had never happened in my previous plays. That was a fun but tough fight, since their party was fresh and my was battered.

The computer holding all my ToEE stuff was my trusty old 2003 HP running XP, and that was a very reliable build that ran great up until about 2014 or so. I did back it up from time to time, and when it failed, I intended to have the hard drive removed and set up as a slave drive in a replacement computer. But when I finally did that, I forgot that I had added some additional memory many years ago, and forgot to mention that to the computer tech who relocated my hard drive. So I lost a lot of stuff, including all of my ToEE mods and installations, and my incomplete backup was also missing those files. I still have the original discs for the game and could theoretically re-install it, but getting an old game to run on Windows 10 will be a hassle.
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13 Dec 2021 14:42 #328759 by RobertB
My take on CP2077 crafting. hotseatgames is right - the drops are fine. And you have to level up crafting at the expense of some other skills. But IMO, the highest level crafted orange and purple weapons can be better than drops, especially at higher levels.

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13 Dec 2021 17:39 #328764 by mtagge
Dunno about the glitch being fixed. I got one in the tutorial where I was supposed to "mark" some enemies and couldn't. Had to reload the save from before the ten minute cutscene and learn about the skipping feature. Got through the tutorial the second time. The funny thing is the tutorial never told me "why" I would ever mark an enemy. Gotten a few dozen hours into the game without needing to mark anyone. The tutorial also had me force a guy to explode a grenade in their hand. Haven't run across a single instance where someone was holding a grenade standing around. Shrug. Also taught me that I could do non-lethal takedowns, but I don't see any reason why I would do a non-lethal takedown.

I think the skills upgrade with separate XP tracks. I'm still getting frustrated by character stat lockouts and find myself with more skill upgrade points than skills I can buy due to insufficient stats. Also finding that some sidequests and shortcuts in missions are stat locked (must have 7 technical to open this door, must have 6 body to open this grate). Heh, a build with 6 body would just katana slice everyone in the way instead of sneaking around neck snapping all the dudes and throwing them in dumpsters.

For the money cheat I just have a memory editor program (Cheat Engine) on my machine. You open it up and point it to the process. Put in a fixed number like you have 12 dollars put in 12 and scan. It pulls up all the address spaces with that in a variable. Sell something for 2 and rescan at 14. It only scans from those pulled up initially. Might have to sell one or two more things if the game is tracking a boatload of variables. After that you can change the number on the fly. I also do it unabashedly for games where new ways of playing are locked behind achievements. One of the latest GamePass indie games I played was Ring of Pain. It was a fun puzzle game where you fill up gear slots and have five choices at any given time (1. Interact with left card, 2. Interact with right card, 3. Go left, 4. Go right, 5. Use spell). Gotta survive enemies and upgrade gear. Well they unlock new gear by defeating challenges such as never upgrade, only use five items, never take an item rarer than uncommon, etc. I'll just health hack my way through those. That was only after I had already put in perhaps 100 hours into the game and was about to move on anyway.

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13 Dec 2021 23:57 #328769 by Michael Barnes
Do you know I have a Cyberpunk 2077 hoodie? It’s actually a Run the Jewels hoodie but they did it as a limited run when they had a song on the soundtrack. It has the game logo on one of the sleeves. As much as I love RTJ, I’m slightly embarrassed to wear it.
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14 Dec 2021 14:32 - 14 Dec 2021 14:34 #328785 by RobertB

mtagge wrote: Dunno about the glitch being fixed. I got one in the tutorial where I was supposed to "mark" some enemies and couldn't. Had to reload the save from before the ten minute cutscene and learn about the skipping feature. Got through the tutorial the second time. The funny thing is the tutorial never told me "why" I would ever mark an enemy. Gotten a few dozen hours into the game without needing to mark anyone. The tutorial also had me force a guy to explode a grenade in their hand. Haven't run across a single instance where someone was holding a grenade standing around. Shrug. Also taught me that I could do non-lethal takedowns, but I don't see any reason why I would do a non-lethal takedown.

I think the skills upgrade with separate XP tracks. I'm still getting frustrated by character stat lockouts and find myself with more skill upgrade points than skills I can buy due to insufficient stats. Also finding that some sidequests and shortcuts in missions are stat locked (must have 7 technical to open this door, must have 6 body to open this grate). Heh, a build with 6 body would just katana slice everyone in the way instead of sneaking around neck snapping all the dudes and throwing them in dumpsters.

For the money cheat I just have a memory editor program (Cheat Engine) on my machine. You open it up and point it to the process. Put in a fixed number like you have 12 dollars put in 12 and scan. It pulls up all the address spaces with that in a variable. Sell something for 2 and rescan at 14. It only scans from those pulled up initially. Might have to sell one or two more things if the game is tracking a boatload of variables. After that you can change the number on the fly. I also do it unabashedly for games where new ways of playing are locked behind achievements. One of the latest GamePass indie games I played was Ring of Pain. It was a fun puzzle game where you fill up gear slots and have five choices at any given time (1. Interact with left card, 2. Interact with right card, 3. Go left, 4. Go right, 5. Use spell). Gotta survive enemies and upgrade gear. Well they unlock new gear by defeating challenges such as never upgrade, only use five items, never take an item rarer than uncommon, etc. I'll just health hack my way through those. That was only after I had already put in perhaps 100 hours into the game and was about to move on anyway.


Locking: maybe a smart weapon will stay locked? TBH I never used locking a target either.

Skills - yeah, you run into max skills pretty often unless you lean on a single ability pretty hard. Which can make the game tougher.

Cheat Engine: that sounds like the sort of thing people used SoftICE for back in the dawn of time. People would say, "SoftICE? That's a Diablo hacking tool!" Well, sort of, in the sense that a bulldozer is a snowplow.
Its real purpose in life was as a way to run software under SoftICE's own code. That way, bad DOS apps wouldn't necessarily crash the whole machine, and you could debug on the same problematic machine. I was an MS-DOS/Windows developer (am still one) back in the day, and if you needed to use SoftICE to try to debug something, you were in a bad way.
Last edit: 14 Dec 2021 14:34 by RobertB.
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20 Dec 2021 18:19 #328968 by Gary Sax
Currently down an oxygen not included hole. I'm not feeling overly bad or anything but ONI is some real depression gaming.

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21 Dec 2021 00:03 #328970 by Shellhead
Back playing Vampire: Bloodlines, with the Clan Quest mod from just three years ago. Finally got to play the legendary Library mission, featuring a Lasombra vampire.

First time I fought him, I was caught off guard by a janky cutscreen and suddenly found myself getting shot for serious damage. My crazy vampire prefers melee combat, especially sneaking up and hitting someone for extra damage by surprise. Unfortunately, this Lasombra preferred shooting me at range with an Uzi. And if I got close enough, he would just brutally beat me with superhuman strength. To make matters worse, I could use my supernatural stealth to briefly hide, but he would see through it and start shooting me again after less than a minute. I pulled out my crossbow, but the lighting was bad so I usually couldn't even take a shot until I spotted muzzle flash while he was already shooting me again. If I hit him a couple of times, he would teleport away from shadow to shadow, and resume his attack before I could determine where he went. I died.

So I went back to the last save and went after him again, this time with a very different strategy. I equipped my Jagerspas-15 semi-automatic shotgun. When the violence broke out again, I traded some shots with him, then ran back to the entrance, using pillars for cover when possible. The entry area was lit with an eerie green light from wall sconces, leaving him no shadow for teleportation. I kept retreating to the entry area to reload and hide, then would sneak out until I spotted him again, then shoot him a couple of times until he teleported again. It worked well except for the one time that he teleported right next to me after I shot him. This time I was the victor, and it felt good to quickly overcome such a lethal threat.

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21 Dec 2021 07:28 #328971 by Ah_Pook
I've been pretty heavy into Babble Royale lately. It's a free to play game on Steam that's basically a mashup of Scrabble and a battle royale game. 16 players drop into a grid with their first letter, and you spell words to move around the map and pick up powerups and earn money and attack people. The money let's you buy more letter slots, faster letter spawn times, powerups, etc. Your most recently spelled word is your location on the map. You can only spell off your current location, and if you connect to someone else's current location you kill them. The safe zone shrinks and forces everyone into the middle, and the last one standing wins. When you win a big banner pips up and says "You had the LAST WORD!" which is a delight. So yea... It's intense and fun as hell... Assuming your like Scrabble and are handy with Scrabble type words (ie 2 and 3 letter words). It's free and extremely worth downloading.
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22 Dec 2021 11:32 #328993 by RobertB
Out: New World - too grindy. Could be just me. Maybe I'll go back.

In: Halo Infinite, Campaign Mode - I wanted to shoot something. I'm now shooting something.

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22 Dec 2021 11:50 #328994 by hotseatgames
The shine of Halo's campaign has worn off... the cut scenes are boring and seem to think that I care about any of the characters. "Tougher" enemies have shown up, but in this game, it seems that tougher just means more annoying.

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23 Dec 2021 08:54 #329001 by the_jake_1973
Finally jumped into Disco Elysium. I'm only in the cafe, but I can tell this will be a pleasure to play. The voice over is top notch with very amusing writing. A high Electrochemistry suggested I lick dried rum off the bar. I did.
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01 Jan 2022 23:48 - 01 Jan 2022 23:49 #329215 by Gary Sax
Been playing a lot of Deathloop. Having a really good time with it. Super refreshing to play an Arkane where breaking stealth or going in fully hot is not a problem at all. Prey was good about this too but in deathloop you're a killing machine and failure is baked into the narrative.
Last edit: 01 Jan 2022 23:49 by Gary Sax.
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