What Have I Been Playing (2)

I haven’t written one of these in a while. Technically this would be the 3rd What Have I Been Playing posts, but the second one was hidden in my Switching Back To Linux post. The crazy thing is that not a whole lot has changed. So here’s what I’ve been playing over the past few many months.

WARDOGS

This has been my recent obsession and I kind of got bait-and-switched. During the play tests the game’s anti-cheat worked fine under Proton but at launch this was no longer the case, which REALLY sucks. I really really want to cut Windows out as much as possible. Luckily I only ever boot it to play a few games. But enough about that… WARDOGS. This game has been a real breath of fresh air for me lately. It’s kind of like a mix of Arma with Battlefield. Or I guess more accurately it’s Arma Light. Boiled down, there are 3 factions that are fighting for control of a single territory. It’s King of the Hill. 100 players. 3 teams. Buncha fun shit. Heli’s. Tanks. Urals to transport supplies between your home base and various player built “Forward Operating Bases” or “FOBs”.

I really like sniping in FPS games and OH BOY is the sniping fun in this game. The snipers feel really rewarding to use, if not a little clunky. But that seems pretty fair for a non-Call of Duty game. I’ve spent A LOT of time sniping and playing recon over the past couple weeks. Getting a feel for the different sniper rifles and DMRs. Playing with the different spotting scopes¹. Leveling it up high enough that I’ve unlock weapons that other players are willing to buy with the in-game currency system².

The past few days I’ve just been running logistics between various bases and selling high level weapons and gear to teammates, lol. I’ve really liked that I can enjoy different parts of the same game and still kind of feel like I’m contributing to the game. Except when we just fly around in a heli shooting grenades at enemy bases. That feels a little unfair sometimes.

This game has also led to some pretty funny and crazy moments. Here are a couple of my favorites so far.

I will say the game feels pretty clunky at times, but I have noticed some of the early bugs I was facing - like getting stuck in a door and dying - have been fixed pretty fast. One of my main complaints is that the character feels a little too floaty. Especially for how heavy some loadouts can be. I feel like it takes too long to fall to the ground when you jump, like the gravity is a little off. I’ve walked off of small ledges that, in any other game I’d just fall to the floor below, I’m in the air just a second too long and I float off the side of the building. I’m not explaining it well, but if you’ve played the game, you probably know what I’m talking about. All things considered I’ve been having a blast. But please get Proton support back up and running. There are many of us legit players that just prefer an OS without a bunch of spyware.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

If you read the last post then you already know I’m a fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and this time around I’m playing Heart of Chornobyl. I finished the story a few months back – Strelok’s ending, for anyone curious. But I decided to play through it again. This time taking a different path and slowing down my journey through The Zone. I’m playing this time with CLIKRAD’S ROADSIDE CINEMA mod collection. I’m also using UUUv5 to enable photo mode and get some nice photos from around The Zone. This game can look really good with some mods and a few setting tweaks. While using the Photo Realistic Zone mod I’m getting a pretty solid 80fps with everything maxed (with the exception of hair detail and draw distance) with DLSS and framegen. With PRZ off I get about 120fps. PRZ is pretty resource heavy but it makes the game look pretty cool and I still get a playable experience. If I was playing something competitive I’d want the best performance, but for a single player game, as long it’s not a choppy mess, I’m not really worried about squeezing the most performance out of my hardware. I happened to grab this lightning screenshot while playing the game regularly without the photo mode mod and I think it looks pretty cool and what a lucky shot lol. If you know, you know. I just think this game looks really good at times. I’m excited to see some of the other endings to the game but I’m just having a good time exploring the map. The free cam in the photo mod is a lot of fun to use. I still need to figure out how to really use it but I’ve been playing around with it. The mod also allows you to pause the game and use the camera in cut-scenes. I used it to get this shot. I’m thinking about maybe using Darktable and actually edit some of the screenshots I take.

Edit: Since writing the original draft of this post - forgetting about it, and coming back to it - I started playing again but exclusively on Linux. Still trying to use Windows as little as possible.

skate.

I’m conflicted about this one. The skate. series has been a favorite of mine since the original came out. They are a huge part of my childhood. Maybe not as much as the Tony Hawk series but still pretty big. I played many many hours of skate3 and I was so excited for a new skate game that was going to be available on PC.

Then they chose to make it Fortnite – skatenite? – whatever. It doesn’t look like a skate. game. It’s really disappointing. My biggest complaint is that there is like, almost 0 actual skate culture in this game. Not a SINGLE pro skater is in the game. None. The intro video for skate3 had more pros! And all of them were in the damn game!

They started adding some actual brands into the premium store (which is another problem I have with the game) which is nice but the game really doesn’t feel right without actual skaters in the game.

My last main gripe is that the game doesn’t work on Linux because of EA’s terrible anti-cheat. Why does a skateboarding game need anti-cheat? How are players going to cheat? The answer is… they aren’t. My belief is, the only reason they added anti-cheat is so people don’t find a way to exploit the store and “lose” money for EA. I feel like it was such a missed opportunity to market the game towards handhelds like the Steam Deck but nope, we got classic EA greed. I’ve actually been playing skate3 lately using RPCS3 and it’s been a lot of fun. Playing skate3 has made me realize how many tricks are still missing in the new game too. skate3 had underflips and stuff! I will say that skate. (not 4) does feel smoother all around. The controls feel great. Playing at 165fps feels amazing. The tricks that are in the game look really good. I just wish it wasn’t a live service, invasive anti-cheat-y, cartoony mess.

It’s also buggy as hell.

Edit: Since originally writing this they have added more brands and stuff into the game. They also added a single³ pro to the game for a limited time X-Games event.

Welp, there it is. I started writing this post back in May and I’m finally posting it in October. Luckily I don’t have to change much from my original draft because I’m still playing skate and Stalker but have just added WARDOGS into the mix. I’ve also been playing a lot of Solitaire on my Kindle and on late.