For what it's worth, Rock Paper Shotgun is pretty cool on both Frostpunk and BattleTech. In the first case, impersonalization of the individual taking the bite out of moral choices, and in the second, battles being a slog that just take far too long. I'm not a particularly Battletech guy, but hasn't that always been the case?

Interestingly, both are doing quite well overall/Metacritic wise, etc. I will say with regards to Frostpunk, which I'm going to be playing far, far too much the next couple of days, a significant minority is really cheesed off. The campaign is scripted, linear in some respects, and shorter than many expected. People who want Skylines or Banished in cold weather aren't going to get it -- it's not open-ended like that. The devs never said it was either, but a lot of people jumped to that conclusion because it has city-building elements. On the other side of the coin, I've seen multiple professional reviews say 'the game criticizes you for action X that you have to do to survive'. Well no, you don't have to at all. It's just easier that way, but that's the point; taking the low-hanging fruit is the easy path, but it's not at all required.

Just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone considering these two. Both definitely seem to be quality overall.

For what it's worth, Rock Paper Shotgun is no longer the quality website it used to be. Their sum total of "recommended" games so far in 2018:

Minit
Final Fantasy XV
Churchel
Close Combat 2 and 3 (yes, from twenty years ago)
Fe
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

That is, I will submit, a rather shit list. Their commentariat is no better; most of the names I used to enjoy reading in the forums and comments are gone, to be replaced with what appear to be random Steam and Youtube commenters. The new hires seem to have all taken their cues from Walker, which means they do nothing but shit all over games. It's just a terrible website run by terrible people at the moment.

RPS is still a solid site for news, but I only read their reviews when I want to see the negatives of a game anymore. They've become too artsy and indie leaning in their reviews for my taste and I think there are certain genre's their reviewers just don't seem to like.

I still read the site every day, but their opinions don't carry the same weight they once did.

Hard to argue against this.

What video game websites/video game review websites would you recommend?

Anyone snagged the new battletech game yet?

Yogscast get an early look at Phoenix Point, by the creator of XCom:

THE NEXT XCOM? | Phoenix Point - YouTube

I lost my wish list on Steam. Anyone else?

I like Strategy Gamer but that's just my personal choice.

I'll get Frostpunk first just because #1 it's cheaper and #2 from what I've read it's not huge time sink. Then once Battletech gets a few patches and goes on sale, I'll snatch it up and dig into it.

Mine's fine

Try updating Steam (exit and reopen).

That worked. Thanks

I picked up FrostPunk yesterday, from the reviews and watching some youtube BattleTech seemed a bit too clunky and buggy for a first day purchase. Maybe in a patch or two's time.

I was hoping for FrostPunk to be Banished in cold weather originally, but youtube cured me of that hope. So far I'm liking it well enough, it's kind of fun without being blown away. I'm skeptical about replayability though, think it's one and done. I could see some people getting through the main campaign in 2 hours if they watched some youtube for spoilers/hints and played at high speeds, but for me that's ok. I'll stick to slow and I stopped watching youtubes when I realized the campaign was scripted and spoilers would spoil.

But for the moment, there's a new Surviving Mars patch out so FrostPunk is back on the shelf.

Some random things from posts above:

Phoenix Point looks more like an XCOM remake than a new game. I'd rather a new XCOM where I could play as the aliens and crush human scum.
I lost my Steam Wishlist tonight too. But restart and it came back.

My impression of Battletech. Good game, I have not experienced any major bugs. It is slow, but I would not call it a slog. The missions are well done, and as a good Battletech player on TT, the fact I have had to start over once is a good sign. The game is not a port of the TT game to the computer, and that is not a bad thing.

I downloaded it yesterday and I have played it as much as I am able to. I was very skeptical of the changes they made, but they have been well done.

I've never played the table top version of Battletech either but I enjoyed the Mechcommander games. I haven't had time to play it as much as I have but I am enjoying the game and I haven't run into bugs. I have to get used to the interface (such as paying attention to the heat gauge, I wish their was a bigger warning when you're about to overheat your mech). The speed of the game is fine for me except for a mission where I was escorting trucks. There was 4 of them and they move one at a time and you can't control their speed. In this game when there's no immediate threat your mechs will move at the same time to make things faster.

Yeah, relatively underwhelmed with Frostpunk. There's definitely a formula, and I can't see any replayability either. Maybe a good $10-15 game, not at full price would be my advice.

Spent a few hours on Battletech last night. Never played the board/tabletop games, but always loved the idea of it. Right up my alley, especially with the turn-based gameplay. I'm thankful for all the auto-saves as well because my first run through I didn't take into account how quickly your debts eat away at your total cash and I quickly went bankrupt restocking my mechs after a couple of tough, long missions... Was thankful I could go back to the point where I'd started stuffing up without needing to just start from scratch again.

Picked up Frost Punk. Beat the first scenario a few times already, last game had 580 survivors. Seems kinda easy, im hoping the next scenarios are a good deal harder. Reminds me of Banished, but with much better graphics a slightly deeper gameplay. I think for 30$ its a tad high, but I might change my mind if they add more scenarios or they get more complex and lengthy as they go.

Curious what difficulty you did it on. I agree the game is quite easy unless you're doing it on hard, which does make startup more difficult(particularly if you choose more philanthropic choices). There are also reviews out there saying it's hard even on easy, which is totally ridiculous, so -- different things for different people.

250k sold already so 11Bit is quite happy.

Oh, hah.... didn't notice there were other difficulties. I guess that explains it. I'm tired of the first scenario, so I guess I'll continue on at this difficulty until I finish them all.

By the way, anyone who's been interested in the Battletech/Harmony Gold lawsuits of the last couple decades might be interested to know that the courts are seemingly deciding against Harmony Gold

Harmony Gold's Copyright Claim Against BattleTech Developers Dismissed by Court

I never played the tabletop game either, but I'm having a total blast with Battletech. It seems to hit the sweet spot for me for a TBS game. Not too complicated but not too simplistic.

Thus far I am enjoying Frostpunk bunches

I've gotten my money's worth out of it already. The third character is now available if you turn on beta mode. I'm still messing around with the second one, and still have ascension levels to play with.

Some games I played through recently:

Far Cry 5 - 8/10: IMO the best Far Cry game in the series, but if you're not a Far Cry fan it's not something that's going to make you one. Gameplay is fun and varied, but the ending kind of sucks. The story is hit and miss. I think they were afraid to get too political so they didn't get too deep into the evils of a religious cult. Sometimes it's just enjoyable to run around in a huge open world shooting things.


Telltale Batman Season 1 - 6.5/10: A new take on the Batman story, but it's a paint by number Telltale game with choices having minimal impact. I've heard Season 2 is outstanding so I was mostly looking forward to getting to that, but I probably wouldn't have bothered with Season 2 without hearing how good it was because this game was so mediocre.


Orwell - 8/10: I really enjoyed this. It's a fun and interesting story game where you play someone contracted to spy on citizens after a terrorist attack. It's about 6 hours of gameplay with some replay value to uncover the entire plot. Definitely worth the price (I picked it up in a bundle with Beholder for $11).

Anyone picking up Thrones of Britannia tomorrow?

I've not played this myself, but I've watched Hannah of the Yogscast play season 1 and 2, and 2 was pretty gut wrenching at times given the events and drama. The "friendship" that Bruce Wayne has with the man who could become the Joker is tested and could go either way. There's the potential for some pretty main characters to die and/or leave Gotham. So season 2 is very worth it in my opinion.

I decided to start again with Battletech after some n00b mistakes left me with long repair times and short of cash. Fired up a new game, annoyingly played through the tutorial and intro mission again (wish we could jump straight in to the actual game), only to have the main storyline story not occur. Played about 10 battles since, all half-a-star difficulty for peanuts, and the storyline mission still has not fired. Think I have no choice but to start all over once again. Annoying.

An upcoming patch is supposedly making the intro tutorial mission optional.

Sounds like you'll be suffering a Groundhog Day type situation with Battletech.

In case you guys aren't aware, there's a way to speed up battletech so that it feels less clunky. Plus delete your saved games, they slow down performance.

How to speed up besides deleting saved games?

Sorry should have listed the link: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...ech-speed-fix/

No problem, I found it thanks to google. Enjoying the game much more with the speed ups. Thanks for letting us know about them.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire - Divinity 2 was a brilliant game and fair or not this game is going to be compared to it because it set the bar for CRPGs. Divinity 2 pushed its way into my top 5 as far as RPGs go and I thought the first Pillars game was good, although fairly straight forward.

I'm about 20 hours into Deadfire, and I'll be honest, the first 5-6 hours had me liking the game, but not exactly loving it. It's been steadily trending upwards since then though and it's definitely in the same discussion as D2. The way you can interact with the different factions and play them off one another is very reminiscent of Planescape: Torment and the psuedo-open world game play is something new and different in CRPGs.

What's nice is the game doesn't try to nudge you in any particular direction. Play as a noble privateer, play as an awful pirate, or something in between. The options are there. Ship combat is played out in text and very tactical in nature. Ship upgrades and plentiful and each ship type plays a bit differently.

Highly recommended if you enjoyed Pillars 1 or Divinity 2.

I'm loving the game but I think it's very, very different to Divinity. The battles in Divinity really were the game, the epic chess match with all the surfaces and spells and summons and stuff. On the flip side character development wasn't all that important other than leveling up and collecting as much divine gear as you possibly could, the story was dumb and there wasn't a ton to do other than take quests and get into mad battles.

On the flip side, POE2 is much more of the classic 2D RPG game, the battles and the graphics are nothing special but the character development and story is absolutely top notch and there's a ton to do all over the place. They've really invested in the world and all the backstory and it shows.

Both great games, but I think I prefer the substance of POE2 over Divinity so far.

Paradox sale at Green Man Gaming, Stellaris, Pillars of Eternity, etc and expansion packs all on sale, and you can get an extra 22% off by using the code PDX22


Paradox PDXCON


Edit; GOG.com also having a Paradox sale

Ugh, I just ran into a game-killing bug in Battletech. Essentially your financial report report won't fire but most crucially your mechs won't repair.

I'm really enjoying the game but it looks like it will be going on the digital shelf until a patch comes out.

ETA:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...reton.1097564/

It looks like plenty of other people have the same bug and it may be caused by the latest patch.

ETA: They fixed this in the May 22nd patch

Unreal Gold for free for the next couple days at GoG.com

Ancestors Legacy has been a blast so far.

I held off a few days, but picked it up. It's a bit meh.

Now I'm holding off on Total War until the Warhammer update at the end of the month.

I've been playing WH 2, still have a ton to learn though.

BIg event this weekend on steam. Get badge levels for lpaying stuff in your library as well as you get to try out some new games for free.

Tyranny is free to play this weekend

Football (soccer) tactics and glory was released today. It's a turned based game getting very good reviews.

Might have to try the demo.

I'm just looking at some Youtube videos of it right now, it looks interesting.

Looks like something right up my alley being a TBS fiend that I am.

It's a good game. haven't played it in a while, but I'm sure the recent updates made it even better.