What are you playing this weekend/these days?


I bought a $1 trial of Xbox Game Pass for PC. Yeah, um, you guys probably aren't into it. It comes with EA Play, so the first thing I did was install Spore, which wouldn't launch. Installing the version of DirectX from inside Spore's directory fixed that though.

Spore still crashed on me once after I beat the first phase of the game. Not sure if I feel like continuing.
 
I'm sure I heard somewhere that Spore was a massive disappointment. It's one I was interested in before it was released, but for some reason or other, never actually played it.
 
I'm sure I heard somewhere that Spore was a massive disappointment. It's one I was interested in before it was released, but for some reason or other, never actually played it.
I played the game without any kind of expectation after a lot of years from release, so it was complete with all the later addons, and I really can't understand all the hate it got... it is a really massive game, it has so damn much content even in single player that at some point I had to force me to stop playing... it has ALL, but the strange thing is that the real game starts at what seems to be the end...
There are 3 or 4 stages at the beginning that seems like minigames, from a snake-like game to early simple RTS stages that are meant to define the evolution of your race, and after that, WTF !! You find yourself in a full space civilization simulation with a massive galaxy to explore, planets to conquer and even landing missions, there is religion, politics, research for upgraded buildings and ships, and almost everything can be customized by you piece by piece !!
You want a space ship with a lot of firepower ? Choose a base model and put all the weapons you want where them can stick, but well, it will be super slow and heavy in the end.
You then want one super fast for exploration ? Just put reactors everywhere on it !!
Colors and shapes are all customizable !!

And if this is not enough, just use the online functionality to access all the aliens life forms and stuff designed by other users !!

One day I'll find the time to play this seriously, because it is really difficult to find a space sim game with more contents than this, even after so many years.
 
I started Spellforce 3: Soul Harvest and even from the beginning I can see a lot of improvements over the original game, the interface is more clean and you don't need anymore to switch between a lot of tabs to select the things you want to use/build/cast, also there are hotkeys to select all your attack forces, finally !! In the previous game I had to go around the map to manually select the troops to make a group, but it was useless because they constantly die so the group was always empty... now I can just press "U" and all of them are selected !!
Also I can CTRL+RMB to make an attack movements directly on the minimap !! Before was like click on the minimap to jump to the map zone where you want to send them, then "G"+click on the map but only in already explored areas !!
Spells and skills of the team are also put in an upper bar and in all the function keys, now them are really straightforward to use !! In the previous game the system was so complex that I wasn't even able to find the time to level up my characters during a mission !!
It is really starting to feel like Spellforce 1, and in my opinion it's a good direction. (I still miss the third person view from behind, but this engine, even modded, can't offer the same old experience :()

With this game you can also replay Spellforce 3 with the new system, and this is really an interesting thing... (that could have really just been a patch for the first game instead of a new game that uses the contents of the previous one...)
WARNING FOR GOG USERS: at this time this function is working only for the Steam version of the game, and seems like the developers are not at all in a hurry to make it working for the GOG version... this limits also the selection of other races during online battles, because the game is not able to recognize if you have installed the previous game...
 
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So it's an RTS?
It's an RPG with RTS battles in it. You have an avatar or a group of them, but in some maps you can also build an army in a classic RTS way, build base, get resources , create troops, etc...

This series it's pretty unique. I have seen many experiments to merge the two genres but Spellforce is still the best result.
There are anyway many differences between the Spellforce 1 trilogy, the Spellfoce 2 quadrilogy and the Spellforce 3 trilogy, and personally I still like the Spellforce 1 games more than the newer ones... anyway "Spellforce 3: Soul Harvest" seems taking more and more from the Spellforce 1 road, because I just found out that they added even numbers hotkeys to chose dialogs lines, that is faster than click them with the mouse, and this is exactly one of the cool things of the first games !!
 
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I made some vacation from Skyward Swords and drove a bit Trucks in Muddy Envroivments on the Switch (Snowrunner),
I know i shouldnd make the other Maps that early (im Level 11), but im now in Tamir (Russia) and try to deliver some Wood to the Farm,
because whit Level 12, i will get the Mud Tires for my Bandit Truck, and allthough there is a new Tatra from the DLCs i still prever the Bandit because there is a Jacket hanging in its Driver House which is animated and swings when you drive offroad which is quite cool.. and its Mud Tires will be Balloon Shape which is also cool ..
Problem is though it needs 6 Packs of Wood, and you can only take 1 Pack per Tour, and i ditnt found out how to take 2, maybe my Truck is too short for the Wood Loading Area and the Trailer..
 
Snowrunner (Switch), i think it wouldnd make much sense to make the Mission i was on Sunday as im just to low level to have a good truck for this, so i decided to make some other missions first, so im now in Alaska and try to trow the big Trailer to the Haven,
therefor i bought the biggest 4 Wheeler Truck i can get from Russia, so i hope this will work out
Its only 600 XP but its not that difficult like the Wood Quest..
My Plan is also to open some maps and building Bridges so it might be more easy, also this brings some XP anyway..

This is one of the Games, i bought this Mobile Headphone Jack Mixer for, so i can play on the Switch, and listen to my Music from the Iphone (via Headphone Jack Adapter)..
 
Another Round of Snowrunner (Switch) this Weekend, i wish whe had such an Offroad Truck Game (Rigs of Rods is Opensource by the Way) on the Pyra..
I made the Quest whit the big Crane in the Alaska Map, and some smaller delivery quests on the first Russia Map (which was originally in the Game), so i got Level 12 and Later Level 13, so i have now these Awesome Mud Tires on my Bandit Truck from an DLC,
My next goal is to reach Level 14 for the Snorkel so i can use the Truck also in more wet envroivments , everything that gos over my bumper is dangouros for the engine now..
 
 
Just finished Spellforce 3: Soul Harvest and made me happy, the characters were very very deep and there was even the possibility to date some of them, so to have even more knowledge about their story.
I'm not sure if it was just an impression or there were a lot of possibilities, but seemed to me I was really interacting with the main story... maybe it was fixed anyway but they did a good job in hiding it well, I felt really involved in this game.

Now I'll start Spellforce 3: Fallen God... I hope there will be even more improvements over the previous one, cause I still hope for some better combat system... also I'm curious to see if a Trolls story will catch me as the other games.
 
Finished Megaman 7.
I played it with the "refit" romhack that fixes some of the main frustrations people had with this game.

It started pretty good: Megaman 5 and 6 looked pretty good compared to the earlier games but the jump to 16 bits graphics is a very impressive change. It's a shame the music don't benefit much from the upgrades. They're ok, as far as SNES music go, but compared to the masterpieces that some of the NES games had, none of them really stand out here.

The first levels were good, the one in the sky with the machines that make it rain and turn to snow if you shoot them with the blizzard gun was a great experience. But then they got a bit boring. Many of them have secrets, which requires you to replay them multiple times to get everything but I didn't feel like doing it. Similar to the rest of the game, Wily's castle started interesting but outstayed its welcome, and the final boss was a pain, I had to look up a guide to discover an unexplained feature that made the fight much easier.

So all in all, even with the romhack to fix the main issues, I still get why people didn't like this one. I'll probably stop here for the megaman main series. Maybe I'll give the X series a try later. For now I think I'll switch to the mario series.
 
Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast (That is OutRun 2 + OutRun 2 SP + more stuff)

This is a dream game !! I have no words to describe the awesomeness of a sequel it is !!
For some reason I only found out lately about the existance of this game, I always liked the "adventure" feeling that the original Outrun gave but I never felt it's previous sequels at the same level (Turbo Outrun, Outrunners, Outrun 2019, etc...).
Outrun 2006 instead have the original soul, but improved, in many ways, it not only have more cars, more music tracks with remixes too, better spectacular backgrounds with additions like birds too, but it has also one of the best improvements ever, a girl that actively "participate" during the run !!
The last thing alone it's able to add a lot to the "adventure" factor that made the first game one of my favourites, seeing her waving her arms during a drift or pushing the driver if you are going too slow is very fun and gives really the impression to have actually 2 people in the car.

It's sad that SEGA can't sell this game anymore because it has no more the license to use the Ferrari stuff... :(

Maybe the only thing that could be criticized is the drift system, you have to use brake and accellerate to start drifting, and while it's not a complicated thing to obtain, it seems overcomplicated for this type of arcade game, considering that there's also the possibility to have automatic change, but drifting must be made manually.
 
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I liked the predecessor to Coast to Coast, but never felt the need to pick that game up because Outrun 2 (I think it was called) did all I needed.
Outrun 2006 C2C is Outrun 2 (15 zones) + Outrun 2 SP (15 new zones) so with 30 zones and more of everything.
The only downside is that this edition was for multi consoles (and PC), so the graphic was a little inferior in comparison to the Outrun 2 XBOX exclusive.

But there's a mod called FXT that can improve many graphic things and also add many controller stuff, like rumble and wheel support, and also makes you customize many things like the music and roads lists.
The mod works only on the CD version of the game, so the Steam version called "Outrun Online Arcade" can't be used (it also had less contents anyway).
 
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