one thing I like that HOI does that the other Paradox series don't is have an expansion pass subscription where you pay $5/month and get access to all the DLC. Thats a lot more affordable than shelling out $100+ or whatever for say Stellaris DLC!
EU4 has this as well, it's $7.50/month instead of $650. Of course, I already own all the non-cosmetic DLC, so it doesn't help me.
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ArmsForPeace84Your Partner In FreedomRegistered Userregular
Brain Spiders wanted me to look up this game after playing its sequel years ago but they appear to have disappeared from steam
Played like Halo moving towards 40K but not quite as bloody
Edit: it was an atari title, that explains so much
I played it ages ago on 360. Generic military sci-fi setting, design, and combat. It wasn't bad at the time, certainly not an embarassment like Haze on PS3, but it was already enough of just-another-shooter-with-spaceguns that it would probably feel a bit underwhelming 14 years later.
A more recent game that didn't find much of an audience, with combined arms space and ground combat that I was hoping to get into with some matches against what are supposed to be fairly capable bots, is Angels Fall First. While I wasn't feeling it, after trying a couple missions, it had enough going for it in terms of visuals and premise that I didn't refund it, and plan to explore it further at some point.
Also, I like rewarding developers and publishers, even if I'm late to the party, who include a robust bot match for offline play. Games in this genre tend to last weeks, at best, never filling up a single match. So if anything, far more effort should go into the bots than shipping with a bunch of modes and playlists that will just divide the player base further.
Section 8 was a GFWL game, so that sort of explains the absense. I have S8: Prejudice, but I can't say I've played it any, to be honest.
Back in those days every publisher was chasing the "Halo Killer" crown, and quality was not really guaranteed.
And again, it wasn't bad, it just didn't have a hook to keep me playing. My reception of it was probably more ho-hum than your average console player, as I was comparing it to Tribes and Planetside and Battlefield 2142.
ArmsForPeace84 on
Nothing personal. It's just business.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Adventures in Quake 2 64 continue.
After a level with a ton of high level enemies and almost no ammo or health pickups, I'm now stuck in a room with 2 Commanders, a Gladiator and all I have is 30 energy cells, 4 bullets, my pistol, and 40hp. There's cell ammo on the ground near the commanders who will kill me by looking at me.
Fuck you game designers who made this game. If you're going to do a large battle, do some health and ammo pickups before it happens.
Hmmm. Ghost Recon Breakpoint is 80% off. I wonder if it's worth it at that price.
It was ok. Probably better things to spend your time with. Not terrible but also not particularly good.
Yeah. Breakpoint seems in almost every respect to be like the less-good predecessor to Wildlands, like how lessons would have been learned and every aspect improved, right? That it in fact was made after, and came out two years after Wildlands (and indeed is also set after it), is just astonishing.
I loved Wildlands (played it to completion on both Xbox and PC) and Breakpoint just felt like a letdown after that. It's not terrible but it's a very substantial step back in almost every way.
Honestly, I want a Quake 4 remaster. I enjoyed it and I’d play it again if I didn’t have to jump through hoops to get it to run ultrawide and on modern hardware.
Count me as someone who prefers BREAKPOINT in everyway except the setting when compared to WILDLANDS. Graphical fidelity, gunplay, progression system, squad interaction (I didn't even bother with squadmates in WL) - just about everything to do with the beat-to-beat gameplay was better for me. For sure South America is a much better location than the Island in BP, and the story and characters in WL is also much better than BP, but I can get over that easy when all I want to do is just shoot things.
. . .I will say, BP at launch was definitely a victim of UBI's greed and need to MTX-ize EVERYTHING in EVERYGAME. Developers have been allowed to negotiate their way away from that and BP added in an immersive mode that turned off the "arcade-ness" of the weapons (which I don't use as the gear grind isn't bad and gives a "constant treadmill"). Some of that UBI-grossness is still there, but overall it is a much better experience - again if you just like to shoot things (and UBI makes some pretty good games to just load up and shoot things in).
Count me as someone who prefers BREAKPOINT in everyway except the setting when compared to WILDLANDS. Graphical fidelity, gunplay, progression system, squad interaction (I didn't even bother with squadmates in WL) - just about everything to do with the beat-to-beat gameplay was better for me. For sure South America is a much better location than the Island in BP, and the story and characters in WL is also much better than BP, but I can get over that easy when all I want to do is just shoot things.
. . .I will say, BP at launch was definitely a victim of UBI's greed and need to MTX-ize EVERYTHING in EVERYGAME. Developers have been allowed to negotiate their way away from that and BP added in an immersive mode that turned off the "arcade-ness" of the weapons (which I don't use as the gear grind isn't bad and gives a "constant treadmill"). Some of that UBI-grossness is still there, but overall it is a much better experience - again if you just like to shoot things (and UBI makes some pretty good games to just load up and shoot things in).
Breakpoint has legitimately some of the worst menus I've ever seen in a game. It's just a big convoluted mess of live service and MTX bullshit.
last night, ahead of today's latest Hearts of Iron IV DLC releasing in a few hours, I played as Egypt and through helping the UK fight the Axis in North Africa and Malaysa, I was able to peacefully transition from puppet of the UK to a free country, nabbing me a rare cheevo. During the war, the Allies for the first time in my game also managed to fully decrypt all of the Axis countries' ciphers granting me an additional rare Steam cheevo!
I really hope HOI is PDX's tentpole game next year and it gets the tutorializing that CK3 and V3 got. Like, sure I can go in and watch hours of videos to understand interactions, but by the time I get through a video, my interest had waned (whereas for sure I'd still be playing if the instruction was going on in game).
. . .that or EU (honestly, I would rather it were EU, though it feels a bit too familiar to CK3 to me). STELLARIS 2 I'm sure is years away.
I do agree HOI4 is a huge deep dive, it's even more complicated than CK2 since at least with CK2 you can wrap your head around a single RPG character ruler. but with HOI4 it's basically a logistics simulator; you don't need spreadsheets as it does all of that for you and tells you whats needed, how long it will take to produce, etc., but it's a LOT.
it reminds me of those old PC games that came with huge chonky manuals!
one thing I like that HOI does that the other Paradox series don't is have an expansion pass subscription where you pay $5/month and get access to all the DLC. Thats a lot more affordable than shelling out $100+ or whatever for say Stellaris DLC!
the new DLC adds some interesting new mechanics as well as focus trees for Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. As Denmark, I managed (and trading Greenland to the USA in exchange for protection and supplies) within a few hours of release today to not only stop the German invasion of Denmark, but then push all the way to Berlin! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2183930/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Arms_Against_Tyranny/
In case anyone is interested, they also added a mode where you can sell arms and materiel to all sides and become a Lord of War
+3
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
last night, ahead of today's latest Hearts of Iron IV DLC releasing in a few hours, I played as Egypt and through helping the UK fight the Axis in North Africa and Malaysa, I was able to peacefully transition from puppet of the UK to a free country, nabbing me a rare cheevo. During the war, the Allies for the first time in my game also managed to fully decrypt all of the Axis countries' ciphers granting me an additional rare Steam cheevo!
I really hope HOI is PDX's tentpole game next year and it gets the tutorializing that CK3 and V3 got. Like, sure I can go in and watch hours of videos to understand interactions, but by the time I get through a video, my interest had waned (whereas for sure I'd still be playing if the instruction was going on in game).
. . .that or EU (honestly, I would rather it were EU, though it feels a bit too familiar to CK3 to me). STELLARIS 2 I'm sure is years away.
I do agree HOI4 is a huge deep dive, it's even more complicated than CK2 since at least with CK2 you can wrap your head around a single RPG character ruler. but with HOI4 it's basically a logistics simulator; you don't need spreadsheets as it does all of that for you and tells you whats needed, how long it will take to produce, etc., but it's a LOT.
it reminds me of those old PC games that came with huge chonky manuals!
one thing I like that HOI does that the other Paradox series don't is have an expansion pass subscription where you pay $5/month and get access to all the DLC. Thats a lot more affordable than shelling out $100+ or whatever for say Stellaris DLC!
the new DLC adds some interesting new mechanics as well as focus trees for Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. As Denmark, I managed (and trading Greenland to the USA in exchange for protection and supplies) within a few hours of release today to not only stop the German invasion of Denmark, but then push all the way to Berlin!
snip https://store.steampowered.com/app/2183930/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Arms_Against_Tyranny/
In case anyone is interested, they also added a mode where you can sell arms and materiel to all sides and become a Lord of War
the main upside to this is that mechanic has suddenly made playing minor countries much more interesting and viable; previously you were largely restricted to building stuff with your own resources or expensive trade, now you can access a market system. this should also be a pretty neat feature for mods to support, I can see the Fallout mod making great use of it for example since there's a ton of smaller factions to play
Dunno why long dark had my fans spinning up like a jet engine but it was breaktime anyway.
The region I am running through has a unique narrative and I want to go balls to the wall to reach the top, but don't want to use a guide. But if I don't, I'll die as pathetically as I did those first few runs.
This is the last region I have to survive before finishing up in the starting region, so there is a brass ring temptation.
But anyway, is it weird that I stalked a bear, antagonized it, wounded it, tracked it down after some time, butchered it, and then left its hide and guts to cure in its own cave?
It bears mentioning that deer bucks and moose have similar silhouettes, so in middle of a snow covered field or a decent snowfall, one shape would run away while the other would .....lets just say i would finish the challenge before i healed
For those of you who like Slay the Spire, I've been playing Tainted Grail and I think it's....okay to pretty good? It looks like a 3d action game but the actual combat is literally StS. You move around in 3d to explore and pick fights and meet people who join your village for future runs.
Some of the mechanics feel a bit off. I'd say at times there's too many resources to manage and look after, but for the most part the game's pretty good, the cards are interesting, etc.
There's also 9 classes, which you don't seem to have to reach specific criteria to unlock, you just have to play the game to unlock them, which I like. Switching to a summoner and managing my summons was a lot of fun, but I'm also a huge Pet Class aficionado so I'll say anything good about a pet class in any game. After 3 runs I have 3 classes to pick from now.
My only two gripes, really, are
1. that the camera kinda sucks and moving it around, there doesn't seem to be a good place to put it where I can just see all the shit that's going on and be able to point to the right characters each time. I have to keep fiddle fucking around with it during each match to make sure I can see everything, often because the enemies are different sizes, or they summon an enemy that's much smaller or much larger than everyone else.
2. The combat animations don't seem to be enjoined with sound effects half the time? Or at least it's not always obvious what's hitting what? It's not a big deal but it's kinda deflating.
Overall, though, I'm hooked, and I'm probably going to be in this one for a long time now.
TG was fun for what I played of it; it definitely was oozing style and was more produced than other deckbuilders out there. It never hooked me in though like other games of the genre, despite really liking the gameplay overall (I recall some odd difficulty spikes/"unwinnable" encounters and just dog-shit performance). STEAM says this was back in 2021 so who knows if I even played the full release.
. . .they also have an RPG out (in EA) set in the same world as TG if folks find the lore interesting.
Command and conquer renegade murdered a few of my grades with the demo. Said demo was too perfect and would have been a great model for games as a service.
hmmm... do I want to pre-order Star Trek Infinite? *zavian checks Star Trek Infinite Steam page*
snip
This is like the Gollum Sildaron voices DLC, which should have been for everyone.
i actually might have to turn it off because while its fun at first, it quickly becomes 'i have no idea what this guy is telling me because I actually don't speak Klingon'
hmmm... do I want to pre-order Star Trek Infinite? *zavian checks Star Trek Infinite Steam page*
snip
This is like the Gollum Sildaron voices DLC, which should have been for everyone.
i actually might have to turn it off because while its fun at first, it quickly becomes 'i have no idea what this guy is telling me because I actually don't speak Klingon'
Meanwhile some terminal Star Trek fan is turning it off because it's not Grammatically Correct Klingon
I've been chasing the next Slay the Spire for ages, so this Tainted Grail is intriguing. Though it does seem pretty grimdark fantasy to me.
It is absolutely grimdark. I don't know enough about the lore in this genre, but if you played or know about the game KING ARTHUR that came out this year, it is like that. Just as a deckbuilder.
hmmm... do I want to pre-order Star Trek Infinite? *zavian checks Star Trek Infinite Steam page*
dammit, they know how to get me
That doesn't look like Gowron though. He's the only Klingon I want advising me!
That's General Martok. If memory serves Worf killed Gowron for trying to start a war with the Federation while already stuck fighting a war against the Changelings in DS9. Worf refused to become Chancellor and named Martok, and Martok made Worf a part of his House.
+5
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
For those of you who like Slay the Spire, I've been playing Tainted Grail and I think it's....okay to pretty good? It looks like a 3d action game but the actual combat is literally StS. You move around in 3d to explore and pick fights and meet people who join your village for future runs.
Some of the mechanics feel a bit off. I'd say at times there's too many resources to manage and look after, but for the most part the game's pretty good, the cards are interesting, etc.
There's also 9 classes, which you don't seem to have to reach specific criteria to unlock, you just have to play the game to unlock them, which I like. Switching to a summoner and managing my summons was a lot of fun, but I'm also a huge Pet Class aficionado so I'll say anything good about a pet class in any game. After 3 runs I have 3 classes to pick from now.
My only two gripes, really, are
1. that the camera kinda sucks and moving it around, there doesn't seem to be a good place to put it where I can just see all the shit that's going on and be able to point to the right characters each time. I have to keep fiddle fucking around with it during each match to make sure I can see everything, often because the enemies are different sizes, or they summon an enemy that's much smaller or much larger than everyone else.
2. The combat animations don't seem to be enjoined with sound effects half the time? Or at least it's not always obvious what's hitting what? It's not a big deal but it's kinda deflating.
Overall, though, I'm hooked, and I'm probably going to be in this one for a long time now.
TG was fun for what I played of it; it definitely was oozing style and was more produced than other deckbuilders out there. It never hooked me in though like other games of the genre, despite really liking the gameplay overall (I recall some odd difficulty spikes/"unwinnable" encounters and just dog-shit performance). STEAM says this was back in 2021 so who knows if I even played the full release.
. . .they also have an RPG out (in EA) set in the same world as TG if folks find the lore interesting.
You two are not helping with my impatiently waiting for my order on the old and new Tainted Grail board game set. I got "it all", so I'll have plenty of that.
Though I also remember playing Tainted Grail: Conquest (the 3D map crawling card battler/rogue-like) and Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon (EA first person RPG that feels more like Dark Messiah than Skyrim), and I enjoyed what I'd played of both of them. Just don't have either one yet.
I've been chasing the next Slay the Spire for ages, so this Tainted Grail is intriguing. Though it does seem pretty grimdark fantasy to me.
It is absolutely grimdark. I don't know enough about the lore in this genre, but if you played or know about the game KING ARTHUR that came out this year, it is like that. Just as a deckbuilder.
Let's see if I can remember the lore: King Arthur is rulin' and doing his thing and then a plague called the Red Death sweeps through the land, there's no cure, he takes his people (as many as he can, supposedly), and sails across the sea to Avalon, and does a colonizer on the place, taking over the land, pushing the people that lived there out, and pushing back a mist that's labeled . . . the wyrdness, I think? Anyways, everyone's doing great (except the natives) and then Arthur dies, and things start to kinda pull a Dark Souls world; the mist moves back in, people start dying all over, monsters arise from the mists and attack, etc. There's a cycle of things getting better and worse and better and worse and so on that aligns with the "return" of Arthur (sort of an analogue of lighting the first flame in the Dark Souls games). There's a lot of horror and dark fantasy elements throughout, and yes, there is plenty of grimdark. Like, Excalibur has spikes on its handle and pulls blood from the user to fuel its power*heavy metal guitar chords here*.
I like what they do with the King Arthur story, so I'm happy with most anything Tainted Grail, but as with many things YMMV.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I question how Arthur did a colonizer on Avalon of all places. The residents of which could all boot the entire Knights of the Round Table back across the sea with their little finger.
Morgan le Fay alone would stomp them all.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I question how Arthur did a colonizer on Avalon of all places. The residents of which could all boot the entire Knights of the Round Table back across the sea with their little finger.
Morgan le Fay alone would stomp them all.
Since I haven't played the original board games I'm only passingly familiar with who was on what side, but in the Tainted Grail lore, the "Fore-Dwellers" were fought off by Arthur and assumed through most of the materials to be extinct (though that is not so), and they all have four arms and each arm has two elbows. Because freaky. I do not know what, if any, side Morgan was on. All these happenings took place 600 years prior to where most of the video games (and the original board game's core campaign) are set, as far as I know.
I also forgot to mention, that Red Death plague they ran from made its way to Avalon. So that's on top of whatever other shit things are happening to them. And there's a group abducting folks infected with the Plague to try and figure out how to cure it . . . mostly by vivisecting people.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I didn't know there was more to the lore than just this game, but that bit about Arthur is a bit of a spoiler, I've been doing a decent clip through the game and that hasn't been revealed.
Posts
EU4 has this as well, it's $7.50/month instead of $650. Of course, I already own all the non-cosmetic DLC, so it doesn't help me.
Section 8 wasn't really going after the Halo crown. It was more of a Battlefield type game. There's more about the gameplay here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_(video_game)
And again, it wasn't bad, it just didn't have a hook to keep me playing. My reception of it was probably more ho-hum than your average console player, as I was comparing it to Tribes and Planetside and Battlefield 2142.
After a level with a ton of high level enemies and almost no ammo or health pickups, I'm now stuck in a room with 2 Commanders, a Gladiator and all I have is 30 energy cells, 4 bullets, my pistol, and 40hp. There's cell ammo on the ground near the commanders who will kill me by looking at me.
Fuck you game designers who made this game. If you're going to do a large battle, do some health and ammo pickups before it happens.
playing this because I had it installed and never played it for years.
Actually made it past the breaking bad boss
edit:
Oh look, more galaxy trail games, and one I missed out on
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Yeah. Breakpoint seems in almost every respect to be like the less-good predecessor to Wildlands, like how lessons would have been learned and every aspect improved, right? That it in fact was made after, and came out two years after Wildlands (and indeed is also set after it), is just astonishing.
I loved Wildlands (played it to completion on both Xbox and PC) and Breakpoint just felt like a letdown after that. It's not terrible but it's a very substantial step back in almost every way.
Steam | XBL
Retreates back to start migrating to the mountain top.
Probably dont need everything, the struggle is the fun
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
And that's Quake 2 64 finished. Never to be played again.
Honestly, I want a Quake 4 remaster. I enjoyed it and I’d play it again if I didn’t have to jump through hoops to get it to run ultrawide and on modern hardware.
*The game is tracking the status of everything you dropped in very building and every world cell. Even the ones you have abandoned.*
Fuck
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Snow Crash
. . .I will say, BP at launch was definitely a victim of UBI's greed and need to MTX-ize EVERYTHING in EVERYGAME. Developers have been allowed to negotiate their way away from that and BP added in an immersive mode that turned off the "arcade-ness" of the weapons (which I don't use as the gear grind isn't bad and gives a "constant treadmill"). Some of that UBI-grossness is still there, but overall it is a much better experience - again if you just like to shoot things (and UBI makes some pretty good games to just load up and shoot things in).
Breakpoint has legitimately some of the worst menus I've ever seen in a game. It's just a big convoluted mess of live service and MTX bullshit.
I'm pretty sure I just woke the neighbors with how hard you made me laugh.
Anyway, turns out the game defaults to DX11 so the developers go around posting how to force it to DX9
-force-d3d9
Turned graphical settings to lowest from ULTRA. No real difference in gameplay.
Reached Timberwolf mountain, now we wait.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
In case anyone is interested, they also added a mode where you can sell arms and materiel to all sides and become a Lord of War
the main upside to this is that mechanic has suddenly made playing minor countries much more interesting and viable; previously you were largely restricted to building stuff with your own resources or expensive trade, now you can access a market system. this should also be a pretty neat feature for mods to support, I can see the Fallout mod making great use of it for example since there's a ton of smaller factions to play
Sharing some Starfield goodness. Spoilered for big.
The region I am running through has a unique narrative and I want to go balls to the wall to reach the top, but don't want to use a guide. But if I don't, I'll die as pathetically as I did those first few runs.
This is the last region I have to survive before finishing up in the starting region, so there is a brass ring temptation.
But anyway, is it weird that I stalked a bear, antagonized it, wounded it, tracked it down after some time, butchered it, and then left its hide and guts to cure in its own cave?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
*zavian checks Star Trek Infinite Steam page*
dammit, they know how to get me
*freezes in terror as a moose comes over the hill*
Fuck
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
For those of you who like Slay the Spire, I've been playing Tainted Grail and I think it's....okay to pretty good? It looks like a 3d action game but the actual combat is literally StS. You move around in 3d to explore and pick fights and meet people who join your village for future runs.
Some of the mechanics feel a bit off. I'd say at times there's too many resources to manage and look after, but for the most part the game's pretty good, the cards are interesting, etc.
There's also 9 classes, which you don't seem to have to reach specific criteria to unlock, you just have to play the game to unlock them, which I like. Switching to a summoner and managing my summons was a lot of fun, but I'm also a huge Pet Class aficionado so I'll say anything good about a pet class in any game. After 3 runs I have 3 classes to pick from now.
My only two gripes, really, are
1. that the camera kinda sucks and moving it around, there doesn't seem to be a good place to put it where I can just see all the shit that's going on and be able to point to the right characters each time. I have to keep fiddle fucking around with it during each match to make sure I can see everything, often because the enemies are different sizes, or they summon an enemy that's much smaller or much larger than everyone else.
2. The combat animations don't seem to be enjoined with sound effects half the time? Or at least it's not always obvious what's hitting what? It's not a big deal but it's kinda deflating.
Overall, though, I'm hooked, and I'm probably going to be in this one for a long time now.
. . .they also have an RPG out (in EA) set in the same world as TG if folks find the lore interesting.
Command and conquer renegade murdered a few of my grades with the demo. Said demo was too perfect and would have been a great model for games as a service.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
This is like the Gollum Sildaron voices DLC, which should have been for everyone.
i actually might have to turn it off because while its fun at first, it quickly becomes 'i have no idea what this guy is telling me because I actually don't speak Klingon'
Meanwhile some terminal Star Trek fan is turning it off because it's not Grammatically Correct Klingon
It is absolutely grimdark. I don't know enough about the lore in this genre, but if you played or know about the game KING ARTHUR that came out this year, it is like that. Just as a deckbuilder.
I reached the top of Timberwolf mountain in The Long Dark.
It was fun.
Now how to descend with this nice as gun.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
That doesn't look like Gowron though. He's the only Klingon I want advising me!
That's General Martok. If memory serves Worf killed Gowron for trying to start a war with the Federation while already stuck fighting a war against the Changelings in DS9. Worf refused to become Chancellor and named Martok, and Martok made Worf a part of his House.
You two are not helping with my impatiently waiting for my order on the old and new Tainted Grail board game set. I got "it all", so I'll have plenty of that.
Though I also remember playing Tainted Grail: Conquest (the 3D map crawling card battler/rogue-like) and Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon (EA first person RPG that feels more like Dark Messiah than Skyrim), and I enjoyed what I'd played of both of them. Just don't have either one yet.
Let's see if I can remember the lore: King Arthur is rulin' and doing his thing and then a plague called the Red Death sweeps through the land, there's no cure, he takes his people (as many as he can, supposedly), and sails across the sea to Avalon, and does a colonizer on the place, taking over the land, pushing the people that lived there out, and pushing back a mist that's labeled . . . the wyrdness, I think? Anyways, everyone's doing great (except the natives) and then Arthur dies, and things start to kinda pull a Dark Souls world; the mist moves back in, people start dying all over, monsters arise from the mists and attack, etc. There's a cycle of things getting better and worse and better and worse and so on that aligns with the "return" of Arthur (sort of an analogue of lighting the first flame in the Dark Souls games). There's a lot of horror and dark fantasy elements throughout, and yes, there is plenty of grimdark. Like, Excalibur has spikes on its handle and pulls blood from the user to fuel its power *heavy metal guitar chords here*.
I like what they do with the King Arthur story, so I'm happy with most anything Tainted Grail, but as with many things YMMV.
Morgan le Fay alone would stomp them all.
Since I haven't played the original board games I'm only passingly familiar with who was on what side, but in the Tainted Grail lore, the "Fore-Dwellers" were fought off by Arthur and assumed through most of the materials to be extinct (though that is not so), and they all have four arms and each arm has two elbows. Because freaky. I do not know what, if any, side Morgan was on. All these happenings took place 600 years prior to where most of the video games (and the original board game's core campaign) are set, as far as I know.
I also forgot to mention, that Red Death plague they ran from made its way to Avalon. So that's on top of whatever other shit things are happening to them. And there's a group abducting folks infected with the Plague to try and figure out how to cure it . . . mostly by vivisecting people.