What single player FPS campaign are you playing?

[Arenegeth]

These are the achievements:

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I'm still waiting for a physical release of Dusk to be announced, I know they said something about making a Limited Edition some time ago, I don't know if there's been any recent updates.

[Ack]

I spent a few minutes last night tackling the new achievements in Dusk. The hardest one is probably "Somebody's Poisoned the Waterhole!" only because it is slightly more involved than the others. You have to use the green crystals for it, so you have to unlock the entrance to the Chomper boss, find a green crystal, and carry it down there.

I also put more time into Project Warlock. I'm about midway through the Egypt levels. For those of you playing on PC, are you able to adjust anything in the options menus? I can't change things like volume controls or mouse sensitivity. Also, I've found the stars of Blood, Shadow Warrior, and Serious Sam. Any ideas where I can find the bodies of Duke Nukem, Quake, and DOOM?

Finally, Deep Rock Galactic had a major update in February and a free weekend last weekend, so I picked it up along with Fastbilly and our buddy Xen. We've been enjoying our time as space dwarves. We get drunk, we mine, we kill swarms of aliens coming after us. 'Tis a great co-op experience.

[MrPopo]

To be honest I don't recall changing any options other than my keybindings. I've also only found Shadow Warrior and Serious Sam, so can't help you out there.

[Ack]

To be honest I don't recall changing any options other than my keybindings. I've also only found Shadow Warrior and Serious Sam, so can't help you out there.

Caleb is in a secret in the cemetery levels of the first world. In fact, I believe it's the first level of the cemetery set, and the secret is the wall directly in front of you when you spawn in.

What weapon load out did you end up going with, Popo?

[MrPopo]

I used Bomberman for a long time, then switched to Sammoner late game (which lets you turn mana into ammo) once I unlocked it.

Weapons-wise, I did Flaregun on the pistol, Slugshot on the shotty, Nailgun on the SMG, Heavy Bolter on the minigun, Napalm on the Rocket Launcher, the Stake Launcher on the crossbow, Fire Lance on the Flamethrower, and Railgun on the Laser Cannon.

I found Flaregun was great for episode 2, as it adds a lot of damage to your pistol that stacks (fire damage stacks on each application) and let me conserve a bit. Once I unlocked the upgrade to the crossbow that became one of my primary guns, as the damage was huge (one shotting about half the enemies and only a few shots for big stuff) and being able to pick them up again saved a ton of ammo. I tended to use either the SMG or the Minigun as a general backup for areas that were more densely packed with ranged mobs, as the refire rate of the crossbow got in the way (especially since I'm not using crosshairs). Personally, I would have done dual SMG instead of nailgun; while at best the nailgun does a ton of damage from the piercing ricochets it also did a ton of self damage. The rocket launcher was great for bosses and a few big enemies in episode 4, but it's harder to use without crosshairs. The railgun upgrade for the laser cannon makes it become a higher damage crossbow where you can't pick up the ammo; I'd probably switch to the rapid fire upgrade instead just to see, but honestly it might just be in an awkward spot of being better but not better enough than two existing guns. The flamethrower was amazing; the flame lance makes it have a very long range and it racks up damage incredibly quickly. I'd say it was the highest DPS of all the weapons I used against regular enemies. I'm not sure if the flame effect hits bosses, though. I was super disappointed with the slugshot; again, this is mostly a victim of me not using crosshairs, as it basically makes it a second magnum, so it loses a lot of effectiveness in a horde of weak enemies scenario. I was missing a ton of shots, so I ended up pretty much only using the double barreled shotty to spend my shells.

[Ack]

It sounds like we had some similarities in our approach.

I went with the flare pistol for my initial run, though I wasn't that impressed with it. Truth be told, the axe is effective, especially with the range increase that also gives you health on each hit, so on my second I am trying the magnum and loving it. I never play using the magic trident thing, so I can't say one way the other about that.

I haven't tried the slugshot for the base shotgun, but the auto-feed version worked well enough I suppose. The shotgun's problem is that the double-barrel just does what it does better. And the double-barrel can be turned into the flak cannon, which gets two shots before reloading and lights things on fire, removing the need for the flare pistol. I went with dual SMGs too, because self-damage sucks, and with the minigun I removed the spin-up time; it became my general workhorse once I did. The only problem is that it eats ammo, and with that upgrade, there is no reason to go back to the dual SMGs ever.

I initially tried the proximity upgrade for dynamite and found it ok if I was strategic, but it had less general use for me than the dynamite. I'm now trying the frag grenade, and hey, lots of self-damage again, so I may not bother in the future. I also went with the napalm upgrade for the rocket launcher. The speed is good enough, but the blast radius for fire is spectacular and took out a lot if I did a quick volley into a crowded room. As for the crossbow, I also did the ballista and enjoyed tagging things like it was the stake gun in Painkiller.

The flamelance was fantastic. It also eats ammo, but it chunks enemies, so I only used it for the biggest stuff anyway. I did go with the rapid fire version of the laser cannon, but neither it nor the rail version seem to work as well as I want; the gun was just overshadowed.

For spells, the only one I really used was Sammoner to get my ammo back because of how quickly I could go through it on the minigun and flamelance. You have to remember not to spend all of your ammo so you can keep the weapon out for the spell; otherwise you can't bring it up to cast.

I'm about to pop into a meeting, but I also have some thoughts on the best way to level up the warlock. I did the first run on the Casual mode so I could play around with the different weapon designs and abilities, but doing it on the Normal difficulty now with a solid idea of how to approach it has led to success. I've already run through the first two worlds without a problem.

[Xeogred]

I binged Near Death last weekend and had an amazing time with it. I would say ultimately, it felt like SOMA Lite and only took a few hours. Check this one off for another "walking simulator" adventure type that I really dug. I think I'm starting to learn my preferences for these that work really well for me... completely isolated solo ventures with no NPC's and a dreadful/horror-ish atmosphere or story/scenario. Those simple ingredients and I'm all in. I definitely recommend this one if it looks interesting to you:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/327560/Near_Death/

The OST was amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61GKx2x-lD0

[MrPopo]

So Amid Evil is out. It's Heretic with Hexen's ammo system (and projectile reflecting enemies in one episode) and Quake's difficulty select system. One interesting thing is does is it's divided into seven episodes of three levels plus a boss fight each. You have to do the first two in order, but then the next four can be done in any order. Then you have a final episode. Since it does the old school thing of resetting your inventory it can let you do things in any order and not worry about the player getting in over their head. Also, the short episodes and disappearing inventory helps fight that tendency to horde the best stuff in case you need it; you're going to lose it anyway in a short while so you can be more judicious.

[Ack]

I'm glad you did a quick blurb, because I've been interested in this a while and noticed you were playing it. How are the weapons? Any awkward control issues? Is the level design similar to Heretic and Hexen or totally different? I'm really curious.

[MrPopo]

Level design I'd say is somewhere between Heretic and Quake. They don't have any of the engine limitations that Heretic had, but aesthetically they all try to create real structures like Heretic did (whereas Quake was much more "what looks cool that is mostly underground" due to not really being able to do sweeping skies well. All the weapons are useful, and I find myself switching between different types regularly (and not just because of balancing mana usage). So the weapons that share a mana type don't have one being obviously better than the other (like how when you get the chaingun in Doom you never use the pistol again). I have noticed one control issue; every so often it decides to drop my inputs; this seems to be when I start two inputs at the exact same time. So if, from a dead stop, I decide to both start strafing and firing one of the two won't trigger. It's never killed me, but it has led me to taking some damage. I'd say it happens to me about once or twice a level (and the levels are fairly large).