The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

Man what did they do to the crystarium (skill upgrade tree system) in FF13-2? It's awful! Who thought this was a good idea?

Finally got a PS4. Infamous is fantastic. New powers are super rad.

---

PS4 is an amazing console experience. I super wish consoles were more accessible for hacking though rather than Sony et al. locking them down and removing what would otherwise be an enormous opportunity for teaching children systems programming and implementing algorithms in the real world. Ideally in my mind it is possible to pay more for the console so that it isn't being sold at a loss to enable this ability, much like how useful the PS3 was for making cheap and powerful clusters before accessing Linux on it was removed as a feature. It was great for small labs where getting time on a local supercomputer is congested, even small grants covered funding that setup. A huge swathe of hackers cut their teeth on the commodore 64, and it would be nice to have such a situation available in modern consoles.

Bought a PS3 last week. Got Dark Souls, Skyrim, and some Ratchet and Clank game.

Skyrim I've only played through to the overworld. It's ok. The intro scenario is kind of interesting from a narrative perspective. Found the dialog irritating for some reason. Laughed at some of the names of things: Hammerfell, Winterhold, Whiterun, Dragonborn. Seriously, can you copy GRRM any harder?

Did find the intro annoying though, for someone who hasn't played any other Elder Scrolls game or in fact any console game since the PS1. First I couldn't figure out what to do in the tower, though I wasn't stuck for very long and then I couldn't figure out where the stupid keep was where I was supposed to run to. After an eternity of running around in circles trying to figure out where I was supposed to go the dragon killed me, so I watched a let's play. Then I was faced with a classic retarded pointless RPG blind choice where I have to follow Hadvar or Rolof. Both of them seem like tools so I randomly followed Hadvar. Exploring the dungeons and cave to the exit was kinda cool though the combat was kind of button-mashy and a little annoying. At one point I tried to chop Hadvar's head off by accident but he didn't seem to mind.

Dark Souls, on the other hand, fucking rules. At least, it will rule until I hit an encounter that's too hard and I ragequit. In fact I think I'm going to go play now instead of post about it.

This is kind of nitpicky, but I wouldn't really call Skyrim (or any Elder Scrolls game) a "console game". While it technically is on console, that's not where the design itself originated. It's simply a matter of reaching an audience. Elder Scrolls games are basically big giant areas where you do whatever you want. The core systems sort of suffer as a result though, in my opinion.

Try Dragon's Dogma next. It's more like Dark Souls than Skyrim. I was gushing about it a few months ago. I still need to beat it actually, Destiny sort of sidetracked me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goladus

Bought a PS3 last week. Got Dark Souls, Skyrim, and some Ratchet and Clank game.

Skyrim I've only played through to the overworld. It's ok. The intro scenario is kind of interesting from a narrative perspective. Found the dialog irritating for some reason. Laughed at some of the names of things: Hammerfell, Winterhold, Whiterun, Dragonborn. Seriously, can you copy GRRM any harder?

Did find the intro annoying though, for someone who hasn't played any other Elder Scrolls game or in fact any console game since the PS1. First I couldn't figure out what to do in the tower, though I wasn't stuck for very long and then I couldn't figure out where the stupid keep was where I was supposed to run to. After an eternity of running around in circles trying to figure out where I was supposed to go the dragon killed me, so I watched a let's play. Then I was faced with a classic retarded pointless RPG blind choice where I have to follow Hadvar or Rolof. Both of them seem like tools so I randomly followed Hadvar. Exploring the dungeons and cave to the exit was kinda cool though the combat was kind of button-mashy and a little annoying. At one point I tried to chop Hadvar's head off by accident but he didn't seem to mind.

Dark Souls, on the other hand, fucking rules. At least, it will rule until I hit an encounter that's too hard and I ragequit. In fact I think I'm going to go play now instead of post about it.

---

I'm going to go ahead and say, Give Skyrim a chance.

Elder Scrolls games have a tradition of opening a certain way, at least since Morrowind, with a formulaic way of establishing your presence in them. It is quite hokey the first time you experience it (for me Morrowind), but as you play the games that strange introduction becomes a little bit better understood.

After the first 2 hours of the game, I guarantee you, you will be having an absolute blast. You do not have to follow the main quest, although, the first time you play, I recommend you do. It establishes itself rather quickly after following Rolof or Hardvar, and you will be able to witness many different things that make the game excellent.

First, and foremost - there are no wrong choices. The developers go to great lengths to make every single character, and every single plot point completely capable of allowing you to enjoy the game to its entirety regardless of any "bad decisions" you might make. Nearly every "bad decision" is repairable. And even if you accidently kill a main-plot character (which is possible), someone else related to them will come into take their role.

It is almost an awkwardly fantastic game, to the point that you might find yourself a little bit jaded in coming back to reality. The best part, is that unlike EQ, there is a save button that works extremely well.

I'm also going to go ahead and say, Skyrim is part of Elder Scrolls, with is part of a franchise dating all the way back to 1996, which is about the same year GRRM started ASoIaF.

They've been throwing around concepts identical in the game since then. THey are really one of the few great and original developers out there that have a very original foothold in developing such amazingly conceptual games. I believe they haven't copied GRRM anymore than GRRM has copied Tolkien - they might have similarities in concepts, but everything that makes them great is completely unique.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goladus

Bought a PS3 last week. Got Dark Souls, Skyrim, and some Ratchet and Clank game.

Skyrim I've only played through to the overworld. It's ok. The intro scenario is kind of interesting from a narrative perspective. Found the dialog irritating for some reason. Laughed at some of the names of things: Hammerfell, Winterhold, Whiterun, Dragonborn. Seriously, can you copy GRRM any harder?

Did find the intro annoying though, for someone who hasn't played any other Elder Scrolls game or in fact any console game since the PS1. First I couldn't figure out what to do in the tower, though I wasn't stuck for very long and then I couldn't figure out where the stupid keep was where I was supposed to run to. After an eternity of running around in circles trying to figure out where I was supposed to go the dragon killed me, so I watched a let's play. Then I was faced with a classic retarded pointless RPG blind choice where I have to follow Hadvar or Rolof. Both of them seem like tools so I randomly followed Hadvar. Exploring the dungeons and cave to the exit was kinda cool though the combat was kind of button-mashy and a little annoying. At one point I tried to chop Hadvar's head off by accident but he didn't seem to mind.

Dark Souls, on the other hand, fucking rules. At least, it will rule until I hit an encounter that's too hard and I ragequit. In fact I think I'm going to go play now instead of post about it.

---

Demon's Souls is really good too. Dark Souls 2 kind of sucks though and not really a worthy entry, basically what happens to everything that becomes popular, it becomes tailored to the lowest common denominator and diluted. See: everything since always. Where as smaller games/studios take huge chances at times and end up rocking, usually on the PC for this though due to much better extensibility and ability to unretard some implementations. I would love for a release of The Last of Us for the PC. The world is really great, perfect IMO, however some aspects of the game are tedious or obnoxious for no reason other than dev sadism. It is very sensible for allowing users to make new levels and challenges as well that raises the stakes for the players tremendously.

Icewind Dale 2 :)
got the Icewind Dale 1 Enhanced Edition, and it iis very good! but..I can't stand the 2nd ed AD&D mechanics any more, sigh
so doing Icewind Dale2
it doesn't have true 3rd ed Stealth skills per se (no spot vs hide) but rest is much better than clunky 2nd ed.

I'd recommend a party like this

Dwarven paladin, tough as hell!

Monk, human or half orc, have to work on these a LOT until they get about lvl 12, need to buff them with Armour, barkskin, Bulls Strength to get them any good but when they do get good...wow!
Dodge feat is a must then eventually Power attack/Cleave because they can do huge damage and rip through enemies

Rogue, Halfling dwarf or Human, if human take Luck of heroes, and Dodge feat for all at start or Iron Wil if wish, and always "weapon finesse" for all when 3rd level, work on Will save feats maybe Fortitude as well

Human wizard, maybe take luck of heroes feat for better saves, and work on Spell Focus feats
I usually buff rogue with Cat's grace, increasing their AC AND since they have Weapon Finesse boosts their attacks, add Stoneskin if you plan on backstabbing to keep the rogue alive
Him or the cleric buff paladin with Bull's strength

Aasimar cleric of Lathander, they really rock! later on, a combo of wizards Web, Druids Entangle or Spike stones, and the Assimar cleric drops a Firestorm on the bunched up enemy, I love the smell of napalmed snow troll in the morning, it smells like...burger time! :P

Druid, with Barkskin to buff folk they make tanks/rogues WAY more survivable, their summoned minions will really mess enemies up. Entangle and Spikestones absolute rule for screwing enemy groups up

:)

Destiny has sort of gotten in the way of me playing anything else lately, but I'm finally done with it. At one point my internet was down so I started playing a Vita game, Gravity Rush, and am now working to finish it before Dragon Age comes out.

It's kind of cool, but it's got a lot of problems. It's a game where you play as a girl who can shift her own focus of gravity, letting any wall or ceiling be your "ground". But being an early Vita game, the controls and camera are absolutely terrible. As a result, you don't really spend much time platforming/walking if you can help it, and you end up spending all your time "falling" as you use the gravity mechanic to essentially fly through areas.

The enemies are also not fun to fight, but on the plus side the characters and story are decent. Cutscenes take the form of semi-dynamic comic panels that you flip through. They are pretty good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Goladus

Skyrim I've only played through to the overworld. It's ok. The intro scenario is kind of interesting from a narrative perspective. Found the dialog irritating for some reason. Laughed at some of the names of things: Hammerfell, Winterhold, Whiterun, Dragonborn. Seriously, can you copy GRRM any harder?

---

Arena, the first game in the Elder Scrolls series and where those location names first appeared, predates A Game of Thrones by two years.

See: this map from 1994.

damn, i wasted so much time in Arena, and even more in Daggerfall. Would love a higher-res update.

Herbert
they were amazing games considering the date :)

i never really got into the subsequent games, bought them but never played them to the same degree. i suppose MMO's had come out by then, which continue to take my (now limited) gaming time.

I assume you've tried Skyrim? with mods it is amazing :)

i tried it for about a week, but not with mods...i keep thinking about trying it again but always go back to WoW instead ;)

Herbert
On PC with good mods, it's amazing ;)
couple of mods add a Dwarven "TARDIS", haha!
I like the one that adds a floating home
and tons of ones that add lot of plant life, lights, etc to town
I love the real art of some of the weapon mods, really beautiful work in some of them, fave artistically is one that alters the "Skyforge" weapons/armour and another adds more crossbows
another adds effect of cold, so you have to use tents, fires, potions etc to avoid hypothermia and it gets worse in the mountains or water etc, makes the game much more tricky/lethal

and mods for crafting traps (adore using booby traps from playing Fallout 3/NV so much, hehe)

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36815/?


Attachment 3787

That post about Icewind Dale got me thinking about how the original Dragon Age was basically supposed to be a modernization of that type of game. I still like them, but boy have they drifted from that goal. Thanks consoles! :D

EVER QUEST main is a Wizard.

Diablo III

Mech Commander

StarCraft - As always, still very fun.

Final Liberation Epic 40K. I love all the 40K stuff all my life.

Homeworld

StrongHold

Dawn War Soulstorm

Between Destiny and Dragon Age, I haven't played enough other games to post much here for months. Well get ready for a big one, as I've swiftly been making up lost time. Primarily I've been playing the games I got in the Steam Winter Sale. I was originally planning on posting about them in the Steam Sale thread, but it seems pointless to bump it now. Nearly all of these games only took a few days to beat, so bear with me and this insane wall of text that is incoming.



Super Time Force Ultra - This game is amazing, and probably my #1 most recommended from this list. Imagine Contra, with light puzzles and platforming, the ability to rewind time, and multiple characters with multiple powers that you unlock as you play. The kicker is that any action you do is saved, and is still carried out after you rewind and restart time.

Imagine you are a shooter guy and you get killed, you then rewind time and pick shield guy and block the bullets that killed you, you then rewind one more time and play shooter guy again, you now have a phantom you that blocks the shots and lets you progress. It becomes particularly amazing on long boss fights, where by the time you have beaten them you have a veritable army of yous on the screen just blasting away at it. The replays at the end of a stage are also highly amusing, as you watch guys get summoned out of nowhere like a jrpg or anime or something, blow something up, then warp away. It's good.

South Park: The Stick of Truth - I'm not much of a South Park fan, so a lot of the humor and references didn't do much for me. The progression of the plot is good though, and I did like several of the jokes about fantasy, games, etc. The gameplay core is extremely solid, although I felt like you leveled up and progressed too quickly for any kind of strategy in your build to have any real meaning. You might get something cool that let's you do one thing, but then immediately get something else to replace it with before you even make use of the previous gear.

I will say that I found the content of the game to be, uhh, unexpected. It starts off pretty benign and gets more and more ridiculous. At first it was just a grosser version of Costume Quest, then it became what I expected out of South Park, then it became... I don't know. I don't watch many episodes so can't say for sure, but it's almost like they put stuff in the game they knew wouldn't get aired on TV. Maybe I'm wrong, but that final chapter... god. Definitely gets some points for shock value. I can't say having something that actually managed to surprise me for a change is a bad thing either.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Not a lot to say about this. I liked the previous game, and this is more of that, except more refined and with more/better content. It surprised me in how long it was though. It's the only game on this list that took a significant time investment to finish, probably partially because I played it on hard. I have a feeling I made the same mistake with the previous game.

Murdered: Soul Suspect - This game went virtually ignored after release. It was criticized for having poor gameplay, which I agree with, but I found the murder mystery to be fun enough to make it worth my time regardless. I won't say I didn't mostly figure out what was going on, or that the story was amazing in particular, but the way it is presented is done so well that it's easy to recommend for anyone who finds the premise to be interesting. Even as I decided whodunnit, I still had enough uncertainty to be engaged in seeing what happens next.

Shantae: Risky's Revenge - This is a port of an old DSi game. It was probably one of the standouts on the service, and one of the first "indie" games to make significant splash on Nintendo platforms. Having said that, I thought it was good, but it wasn't that good. Perfectly competent, if short, puzzle platformer. The best part of it is probably the sprite art. The worst part is a save glitch, but I discovered you could avoid it by playing in offline mode.

Goodbye Deponia - Classic style puzzle adventure game. Last in the series. I would say the crazy scenarios are the best yet, but I still think the story in the first game was better.

Battlefield 4 - Not technically a Steam purchase. I had a free week of game time in it from a promotion with EA, that I just didn't make time to start until I saw that DA:I (and thus BF4) could run on my computer. I still haven't found time to try multiplayer, but I would say the single player was competent. It's basically a CoD campaign. It was better than I was expecting after all the horrible things I've heard about it, but I still wouldn't say it was fun. I did decide to go ahead and pay $5 for it after finishing it, however.

The Legend of Korra - Actually got this on my PS4, but purchased and played it within the same time frame. Made by Platinum games (Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising), so it had good action pedigree, and I used it as a launching point to catch back up on the series. It was decent for a budget title, and it's incredibly obvious that it was a budget title. To put it simply, this is a game that looks like it took 6 months to make, but the combat was decent enough to entertain me for the few hours it took to complete it. If this wasn't a budget title I think a lot of people would have been very angry for what you get out of it. Aside from the name, there isn't much here you couldn't get from indie games on Steam.

The Swapper - Another PS4 game. It was on my list of games to get during the Steam Sale, but then I saw that it was a PS+ for January and held off. This game is very easy to overlook because of the boring name and the even more boring graphics, but it's an extremely solid puzzle game. I would compare the quality to something like Braid. The gist is that you are on an abandoned space station. You have the ability to clone yourself in space, and then swap between clones. The environmental puzzles revolve around level geometry, lights that block either your clones or your swaps, and switches you have to stand on. It's very good. In the background is a plot asking questions about personal identity and souls that tie into the gameplay in obvious ways. Recommended.



I think... I think that's it. The only PC game left from my purchases in December is Assassin's Creed Black Flag. That will probably take a couple weeks and I've decided to put it off for now. I'm also putting off the various PS3 games I bought in December for a bit as well, and going even further back, to the Vita games I got last year and never played because of Destiny.

More specifically I started Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. This is another murder mystery game with light puzzle elements. The premise is that you and a bunch of other anime high school kids get abducted and forced to endure a sick game/experiment in which you cannnot escape unless you murder someone else, and get away with it. If you murder someone and get discovered, you are executed. If someone murders and is not discovered, everyone else is executed. It's got a dark humor in which horrible things are sometimes presented in silly ways.

The quality is higher than I was expecting. Stills of the graphics looked flat and cheap, but in motion there is a certain amount of artistry to how they are presented. Almost like a paper mario game, as scenes spring up to life around you when you change rooms. And instead of trying to pretend the 2D images of characters are actually 3D by continually rotating them to face you, they remain facing in one single direction and as you pan around them they appear to be cardboard cutouts. It's a very interesting style. The music is also good.

The "courtroom" sequence in which you debate who the killer is is also extremely lively and well presented, and during the finale you get a really cool comic panel story summing up what happened. I look forward to playing more. But now, rest, from all that dang typing.

It's been a month, I finished Danganronpa and after a week off played the second one. It's a good sequel, but I liked the simplicity of the first one a little more. There were a few things I hated about it, but were resolved by the ending. There were some pretty good story segments in the last half of the game.

After my PC died and I was no longer able to play Black Flag, I decided to get Shadow of Mordor on a whim (it was on sale on PSN). This was hyped a lot at the end of last year but I had low personal expectations so never got around to it. I found I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I wouldn't say anything about it was particularly amazing, but it was a solid and somewhat unique experience.

Lastly, I decided to ease myself into my PS3 games again and decided to play Ducktales. I had seen some of you complain about it before, specifically the final level, and brushed off the criticisms, assuming I would find it difficult but doable. You were right. I'm sorry. In another time I could beat it, but I don't hate myself enough to put myself through it. I am flabbergasted that anyone thought that was a good idea.

Now that my PC is (maybe) fixed, I went back and played the last game I got during the previous Steam Sale: Assassin's Creed Black Flag.

The Naval stuff is fantastic, but I hate almost everything else about it. I almost wish they dropped the Assassin's Creed baggage and just doubled down on the naval simulation. Mixing this gameplay with a content structure similar to a PC space sim like Privateer in which you can go anywhere and do anything would be great. As it is, the enemy ships just spawn into the world to be destroyed by you. But what if they all had routes and economies and etc etc? Instead half the game is full of annoying as hell "follow this guy but don't be seen" missions, because that's what being a pirate is about.

I spent most of last month playing Oreshika on the Vita. It took me a lot longer to play than I thought it would. I was thinking of making a thread on it, but I haven't found the time/energy/motivation. It's basically a jrpg about genetics, and its very good for anyone who thinks the genre is stale.

Mostly these days I'm playing Eve and coop Divinity:OS.

Eve is an awesome game for parents of toddlers. In many cases if you need to walk away for a few it isn't an issue.

Quote:

---

it's almost like they put stuff in the game they knew wouldn't get aired on TV.

---

I don't know... http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Pee

Quote:

---

Meanwhile, a scientist urges the owner Mr. Pi-Pi to shut down the water park, explaining the water in the park is 98% urine and 2% water, where the safe levels are below 83% urine and if he doesn't shut it down, the park will fall victim to a huge event. Inevitably, Pi-Pi's assumed lawyer refuses to shut the park down. It doesn't take long for the pool to get to 100% urine, and when it does, a large tidal wave of urine sweeps across the park, destroying all in its path. Cartman manages to stay afloat in the pee, Kyle climbs up a high water slide, and Stan, Butters, and Jimmy get to higher ground atop the Mount Everest ride. Unsurprisingly, Kenny doesn't make it.

[snip]

Kyle is forced to drink three cups of urine, so he can safely travel down into the depths without his body having to endure the effects of fluid pressure. A now incredibly irritated Kyle insists that he will not, despite that if he doesn't, they will all die. Another vaccine is formed, which turns out to be a simple banana (once again demonstrating the military's stupidity), they test the cure out on Stan's father who, while very annoyed that they were peeing on him, doesn't mutate as everyone believed he would. As Kyle finishes his third cup, a helicopter flies in and saves them, much to his anger having drank pee for nothing.

---

Then there's the tale of Lemmiwinks

Spoiler for Lemmiwinks:

a great adventure is waiting for you ahead
hurry onward Lemmiwinks or you will soon be dead
the journey before you may be long and filled with woes
but you must escape the gay man's ass or your tale cant be told

Lemmiwinks (x4)

Lemmiwinks journey a distance far and fast
to find his way out of a gay man's ass
the road ahead is filled with danger and fright
but push onward Lemmiwinks with all of you might

TALKING:
Lemmiwinks you are coming to the entrance of the small intestine
there you must seek out the sparrow prince

the sparrow prince lies somewhere way up ahead
dont look back Lemmiwinks or you'll soon be dead
Lemmiwinks Lemmiwinks the time is growing late
slow down now and seal your fate

SPARROW PRINCE:
I am the sparrow prince
long has my spirit been trapped in this place
before you lies the maze of the small intestine
one path leads to the stomach the other to certain doom
take with you this helmet and torch
let them be your guide

take the magic helmet torch to help you light the way
there's still a lot of ground to cross inside the man so gay
ahead of you lies adventure and your strength still lies within
freedom from the ass of doom is the treasure you will win

Lemmiwinks came to the stomach god
beneath the depths of the lungs and heart

CATATAFISH:
you chose your path wisely Lemmiwinks
i am the catatafish

Catatafish of the stomach's cove

CATATAFISH:
if you answer this riddle the esophagas will let you pass

catatafish's riddle will soon be told

TALKING:
hang on Lemmiwinks
you solved the catatafish's riddle
now your trials are nearly through

Lemmiwinks has made it out
the tale is nearly through

great job Lemmiwinks

thanks to you we are all free

but your adventures are just beginning
for you are no ordinary gerbil Lemmiwinks
you are the gerbil king

ALL HAIL THE GERBIL KING

Now the ger the gerbil king has more adventures to go on
fly away to faraway lands into the setting sun
there's still so many enemies and battles yet to fight
for Lemmiwinks the gerbil king is to be told another night

le-lemmiwinks le-le-lemmiwins le-lemmiwinks
lemmiwinks lemmiwinks lemmiwinks (x2)

gerbil king

Then, of course, there's the Cartoon Wars episode with the censored Muhammed and the satirical speech that I still haven't been able to find though I've heard you can get it with bittorrent.

Quote:

---

KYLE: That's because there is no goo, Mr. Cruise. You see, I learned something today. Throughout this whole ordeal, we've all wanted to show things that we weren't allowed to show, but it wasn't because of some magic goo. It was because of the magical power of threatening people with violence. That's obviously the only true power. If there's anything we've all learned, it's that terrorizing people works.

JESUS: That's right. Don't you see, gingers, if you don't want to be made fun of anymore, all you need are guns and bombs to get people to stop.

SANTA: That's right, friends. All you need to do is instill fear and be willing to hurt people and you can get whatever you want. The only true power is violence.

---

I do vaguely remember an episode with Lemmiwinks in it, but I definitely do not remember

Spoiler for South Park Game ending:

the cast actually crawling into a man's anus and walking past all the crazy things he has shoved in there.

Anyway, I want to briefly talk about the first Witcher game, but I don't want to muck up the Witcher 3 thread with it. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, from the way people talked about it when it came out. Aside from some jank, it was pretty solid and very reminiscent of Bioware games of that era. I do want to note that the things people didn't like about it (the combat) didn't bother me so much, and the things people raved about didn't impress me much.

Specifically the choices and the world. Maybe this, too, is a sign of that era, but going back and reading all the praise for the hard/gritty/grey choices with no clear right or wrong and blah blah blah, I'm just not feeling it. It usually wasn't a matter of choosing between two hard sides with clear good and bad points (what they were going for), but more a matter of being forced to choose between two different equally bad piles of shit. The only right choice would be to not make one at all, but they don't let you do that (not really). I mean, who has a bank robbery and thinks "quick, go get someone whose sole existence is to slay monsters!" It was dumb. In the end it isn't that big a deal, I just wasn't feeling the hype. I understand the sequel has much more gameplay oriented consequences which I will look forward to.

More than that though, I didn't like the world that everyone talks up so much. I keep hearing how real it feels for example, but there's really no rhyme or reason to the ecology of this world. There is a ton of hand waving magic bullshit. It's like a world of nursery rhymes pretending to be more than what they are, rather than a world simply inspired by nursery rhymes. I'm doing a real bad job of explaining this, and I apologize.

Specifically I really do not like this weird non-fiction cross-world pollination going on. I don't know the proper term for it. The constant pulling in of real world history and fiction and just renaming it and pretending it's a fantasyland version instead. So the one example I remember from very early on was when a character casually mentioned that a gnome named Alfred Nabel invented what is basically dynamite. There is a ton of this and it feels lazy. Another npc goes on this protracted rant/critique of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". It's out of place.

So far the only thing I like about the world is the concept of a witcher itself. Humans that undergo mutation in order to protect other humans from monsters that may or may not actually belong in this world. These mutants are then ostracized for being freaks, despite the sacrifice and service they provide. That's a fun story premise.


The story itself seemed okay. I didn't like it for a long time, but the final area was pretty fun. The gameplay was clunky in the way a first game often is but was okay otherwise. I'll wait and see if the more original aspects of the world appeal more to me over time, but I haven't really seen anything to get that excited by yet. Characters seem okay. Overall I liked it, just not for the reasons other people did (apparently).

I went ahead and jumped right into the second Witcher game. I can see why people went crazy for it. Massive improvement over the previous game, and even taken by itself, it holds up compared to anything released today. There are only a couple of changes I don't like so far. The potion buff durations suck, for example. Dialogue is leagues better though.

Just played through Talos Principle. It was worth what I paid for it ($13.59 current sale price), but I think their normal price is a bit outrageous. If you like Puzzle games, pick this up, but I wouldn't go over ~$20.

1) 80% of the puzzles are incredibly easy. Difficulty either comes from monotony, or because they'll introduce a new concept in the middle of a puzzle. Portal did a really good job of showing you how mechanics work, and a few minor changes in this game would have helped considerably.

There was one puzzle I failed at over and over and over again, it was the only puzzle sigil I had left to finish the game, so I eventually pulled up a walkthrough video. Turned out it was one of those "Stand on exactly this pixel" situations that dealt with something it had always subtly punished you for trying on any other level in the entire game.

2) The monotony of some of the puzzles is mind numbing. It isn't too bad until you get the replay ability. This basically lets you record everything you're doing, then play it back later. All items you interact with or could interact with get duplicated. So there is a lot of the following puzzles: hit record, stand on switch. wait, go back hit play, run through obstacle, grab item, run back through obstacle. Repeat, but make it one step further. These puzzles are monotonous, because while you can clearly see the immediate objective, you often can't see the later objectives until you're pretty far in. Which means sometimes you just spent 10 minutes working on a puzzle, and have to scrap it all and restart, and then you spend the first 5 minutes of that repeating the same actions you did before. The "Reset" option should have just been a "rewind" option similar to the newer Prince of Persia games.

3) These to problems combined make it kind of like playing Portal while inside of a labyrinth. The worst situations usually occur when you're on a level with a Star. These are often items that require you to place items on one level to use on another level (such as firing a red laser out of the level and into another one that only has blue lasers). But meanwhile you're trying to get somewhere to solve the puzzle that you can't actually reach without additional assistance.

4) On top of that, besides the Stars and silver sigils, you basically have to complete every single puzzle in the game. 105 Puzzles, each rewarding you a Tetris shape. They should have made 105 Puzzles, and required 91 of them, allowing you to skip up to 2 of each red sigil piece.

It's a fun game, It took me ~13 hours, and I feel like the last 3-4 hours were the frustrating parts. Thats when I started powering through the puzzles I had skipped due to how obnoxious they were.

As for the story, I know it was philosophy, and I tend to hate that in games because they try to do "tell" instead of "show" but I think this game handled it correctly. The only problem with it was much like my problem with the rest of the game: it was about 20% too much. You reach a point where you've covered the philosophy they're showing you, and then it keeps going. The Meta Story of religion and the audio logs did a lot better.

After half a year of saying I would do it, I finally went back and finished the last of my PS3 games. Lightning Returns and Tales of Xillia 2, in particular being the ones requiring a legitimate time investment to complete.


When Lightning Returns came out, I remember a couple of you giving it a shot and talking about it. I vaguely recall at least one person finding themselves incredibly pressured because of the time mechanic, never feeling like you had a proper opportunity to explore. I think reviews mentioned this as well, but I found I had the opposite reaction. I took a methodical approach and made use of the time stopping ability and ended up completing every required story quest and most of the sidequests long before the final day.

All that was left for me to do was grind monsters, so I spent the last 4 or 5 days resting in an inn to pass time faster. When you forget it's a game, that's kind of an amusing way to treat the end of the world. Anyway, I liked it more than I thought I would, but not enough to call it great. Also, I want to mention the steep learning curve. It was not kind to new players.


On the other hand, I liked Xillia 2, but perhaps not as much as I thought I would. Still a good game, but it had a few flaws. The combat tried to be more challenging and ended up annoying as a result, and while it isn't unusual for a sequel of this type, I think they leaned on previous content a little too heavily. Xillia was a long game, and I didn't really feel a need to revisit every area in a followup with a shorter story. The characters were still good though, and I liked the new ones in particular. The story is surprisingly bittersweet and melancholic.


I've also played a few of my 3DS games, and finished up the stuff I got during the Steam Sale, how much of it I am not sure I mentioned elsewhere.


I played Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (the sorta sequel to 9 Persons 9 Hours 9 Doors) because the next game in the series has finally been announced. It was good but not as good as 999. This is a visual novel with choices that affect the path of the story, with many of the choices being whether or not you "ally" or "betray" with another character. I had a few frustrations as a result of this mechanic, but on the whole, it's a decently enjoyable science fiction puzzle adventure. It leans a little closer to pseudoscience than philosophy, but covers some of the same ground.


Since I played that, I also started Kid Icarus: Uprising. It's pretty good as a rails shooter, though the controls are awkward and the levels go on for far too long. The dialogue is also pretty amusing, but it's hard to pay attention to it and the stuff trying to kill you at the same time.


Finally, quick rundown of the PC games I played.

Homeworld: First one actually kind of annoyed me a little. Second one was a good improvement, but was also much harder.
Wolfenstein: Thought the shooting was great, everything else notsomuch.
DmC: It was good, though perhaps not as good as I was hoping. Controls were a little awkward.
Ori and the Blind Forest: Almost my perfect kind of game.

Not sure what next. I'm looking forward to MGS5 in about 2 weeks, so won't play anything that takes longer than that before then.

I think I was the one who felt pressured. That was true early on when you're staring at a wall of 40 quests and have no idea how to go about finishing them all. The more I played the more that feeling went away though. I remember you could abuse an ability that essentially kept the clock frozen the whole game and then it just became a matter of doing stuff efficiently and then advancing the clock again to do the next batch of time sensitive quests.

Ultimately my biggest problem with Lightning Returns was that it was using a similar combat system designed for 3 characters and they made the focus on Lightning. Lightning isn't particularly likable and it was asking a lot to have her carry the whole game on her shoulders. It also doesn't help that Final Fantasy plots can get convoluted enough when it's just one game. But having 3 games of plot (and time travel!) just turn things into a mess. Despite that I did finish and even platinum the game.

I also finished Xillia 2 recently. I liked the first better. I hate the silent protagonist gimmick and everything just felt so much smaller. I also hate when bosses level with you. Bosses were stupidly and artificially hard because of that.

That makes sense. The beginning was really harsh to get through. I remembered that initial impression and compared it to that first hurdle, which is why the relief of eventually not having the problem stuck with me.

I didn't mind Lightning as much as most people did, but I also didn't think the story was worth investing much in either. It was a cool idea that they didn't do anything that interesting with. The world is ending and you constantly get sidequests that seem to ignore this, with characters acting like they would in any other rpg. Complete wasted opportunity to not instead explore the psychology behind what matters to people. The production values of the main story beats were probably what kept my attention more than anything else.

As for three games of plot go, even though they are technically sequels, I don't really treat them as such. Each successive game "loses the plot" just a little bit more as they retroactively add more nonsense. While 2 and 3's stories clearly weren't in mind when 13 ended, even the jump between 2 and 3 feels weird and contrived, like they are just making it up as they go. They are easier to digest if you don't worry about the whole, and just accept whatever weird Twilight Zone fan fiction story they want to tell.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silke

I also finished Xillia 2 recently. I liked the first better. I hate the silent protagonist gimmick and everything just felt so much smaller.

---

I forgot about that part. I don't mind silent protagonists in certain games, but it definitely doesn't work in a Tales game. Here you have a very specifically designed character surrounded by characters that never stop talking, and all he ever does is grunt at them. It was super weird. There is no point at which the player feels like they are that character, which is half the point to a silent protagonist.

As for bosses, my main problem was that the game was apparently designed to have you exploit an enemy weakness and then combo into another one, but the dang bosses never stay vulnerable for longer than half a second. It was stupid. To win you end up having to spam the super attacks from pairing and chronowhatever.

I've been playing 7 Days to Die lately.

It's an Alpha build - steam early access (I grabbed it on sale a while back). Voxel based crafting/zomebie horde survival game. While it's an Alpha build it's quite playable. (though there are weird glitches here and there).

I just picked up Witcher for $1.50 and Witcher II for $2.99 on Steam lol, couldn't pass those up; I've never played them. Just goofing around waiting for the new Deus Ex and Mass Effect.

After I finally tore myself away from MGS5 I played two things last month: Steins;Gate and Borderlands 2.

In the case of Borderlands 2, I got the Telltale series for cheap in a Humble promotion and need to play 2 first. I had been putting it off because of how much of a time commitment I perceived it to be. They are fun games but they are kind of bloated with regards to content.

Anyway I was pretty happy with it. Almost everything about it was a large improvement over the first game. I know this because before I committed to playing it I played the DLC from the first game instead. I just needed a short distraction but ultimately ended up deciding to play the entire set, all the way up to the last of the Borderlands 2 DLC as well.

I only had two complaints. One: crappy audio mixing. Specifically, there were numerous times when I could not hear important npc quest dialogue because there were psychos nearby screaming their heads off, which for some reason took priority instead of being dampened like in any other game. I often just followed the quest markers without knowing what I was supposed to be doing, or why. And unlike the first game, you can't replay old audio tapes. Really annoying.

Two: The first game had issues with light scaling in which very little change seemed to occur. This made the game easy and provided little reason to upgrade weapons once you found something you liked. The second game fixes this, but goes way overboard and actually makes most gear feel expendable and useless, no matter how good it is. The scaling in general was just way way off.

So I kept dying even with good equipment. A single shot would take out my shields and leave me with a few hundred hitpoints left. I took a look at the numbers and discovered that instead of having a smooth curve, they were inflating at ridiculous rates every level. At level 33, a common junk shield had twice the hitpoints of my rare level 30 shield. Guns behaved in the same way. Unfortunately, whether it's by taste or design, a lot of the guns in the game are junk, and I often found times when the stuff I liked wasn't able to compete against the insane scaling of the enemies.

Anyway, I got carried away there, but in conclusion Borderlands 2 is good. Tiny Tina's D&D DLC is fantastic. Pirate DLC is decent, Arena DLC is okay, Hunt DLC is obnoxious and annoying. Though I did like how the badguy dies in that one. Oh, and the DLCs have more loot as a reward than the rest of the game combined. Very strange.


Not done yet, the reason why I needed a distraction was because of Steins;Gate. I played it because I was in the mood for something with a heavy story, but didn't quite get what I bargained for.

It wasn't what I expected it to be. Steins;Gate is a story about some college students who discover a way to send text messages back through time. I found this to be a fascinating take on time travel, and was expecting a pretty hard-boiled science fiction story about the consequences of messing with the past. It ended up being a lot more anime drama than serious science fiction, with some impossible to take seriously conspiracy plotlines thrown in for good measure.

But the goofy anime shenanigans provided a lot of character development, so that when the story finally turns about 75% through, it turns hard, and ended up being one of the saddest things I've ever played. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was very good for what it was, and I sort of decided to stick to light stuff for awhile after playing it, hence the Borderlands binge.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nerkahia

I just picked up Witcher for $1.50 and Witcher II for $2.99 on Steam lol, couldn't pass those up; I've never played them. Just goofing around waiting for the new Deus Ex and Mass Effect.

---

Those prices are almost criminal with how good those games are. Even the first one was a lot better than I was expecting.


P.S. I've seen a little 7 Days to Die. It kind of reminds me of Wurm. Which is. amusingly enough, getting a Steam release this month.

I played Daikatana. It was only a dollar and I was curious.

Don't play Daikatana.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

So I kept dying even with good equipment. A single shot would take out my shields and leave me with a few hundred hitpoints left. I took a look at the numbers and discovered that instead of having a smooth curve, they were inflating at ridiculous rates every level. At level 33, a common junk shield had twice the hitpoints of my rare level 30 shield. Guns behaved in the same way. Unfortunately, whether it's by taste or design, a lot of the guns in the game are junk, and I often found times when the stuff I liked wasn't able to compete against the insane scaling of the enemies.

Anyway, I got carried away there, but in conclusion Borderlands 2 is good. Tiny Tina's D&D DLC is fantastic. Pirate DLC is decent, Arena DLC is okay, Hunt DLC is obnoxious and annoying. Though I did like how the badguy dies in that one. Oh, and the DLCs have more loot as a reward than the rest of the game combined. Very strange.

---

I agree Tiny Tina's D&D was a lot of fun. Not very difficult, but I enjoyed it a lot. It's worth picking up some of those DLC's but I wish they would take it easy on the skin packs. I don't care enough about how my toon looks to use the skins I pick up, much less buy a skin pack for them.

Finishing up on Far Cry 4. 9/10. Only issues are it's a little buggy , but nothing like 3, and there's almost too much action. Hard to accomplish missions when random events constantly get in your way. Also, it4's a bit PG-13ish, I'm finding I like more mature content at this point. Next up if I have the time GTA5 (PC), then I guess I'll have to try Fallout.

I forgot to post about it, but Batman Arkham Knight on PC is about as fixed as it's likely to get at this point, so I played it before Legacy of the Void came out.

I was lucky and it performed just fine on my machine. I remember hearing that it was probably the weakest Batman game, but I actually found it to probably be the best. It's hard to compare it to Asylum, with how much older and tightly designed that one is, but I liked it much, much more than Arkham City. For one, I actually liked the story this time. It did some really cool things and managed to avoid doing some really dumb things that the previous two games did.

I have to say though, the riddler trophies went full on stupid in this one. It wasn't as offensively bad as much as much as it was needless. I was tempted to skip them, but the game encourages you to complete them with something you should get with much less effort. They aren't hard to get, but took me a couple of days of just mindlessly running around to complete.

Spoiler for what you get for 100% completion:

The full ending. It isn't that much longer, but you don't even get a credits sequence until you do this. It makes the end feel kind of disjointed and weird.

I recommended two of the games I got during the Steam Sale in the PC Recommendation thread, but I also got (and played) Shadowrun Hong Kong and Her Story.

Her Story is a game where you search for keywords in a police database to find video of a woman being interviewed about the death of her husband. It was a cool idea but I found it to be kind of disappointing, as a relatively benign word choice on my part in the first five minutes brought up a video that essentially spoiled the mystery I was hoping to investigate.


Shadowrun Hong Kong was fun, but I'm not sure if it was better than Dragonfall. I think I partly benefited from not playing Dragonfall until it got re-released with extra content, as Hong Kong seemed significantly buggier in my experience. I also did not like the redesigned decking. I didn't like decking much in the first place, but at least in Dragonfall you got some cool missions where it felt like "meatspace" and matrix sequences were integrated fairly well. In Hong Kong those sequences just felt belabored and tedious.

There were also some issues with level design in general that I didn't like, but I did like the characters and the story, so it was still good overall. Story might have been better in this one actually.


Oh right, and I also finally got around to playing the Metro games. I chose to play the original 2033 and the Redux version of Last Light, to get a fair glimpse at how much the series changed. I played them both on hard mode, as fans seemed to think this enhanced the tense atmosphere, but I didn't much care for it in retrospect.


I did not like Metro 2033 much at all. Enemies were clairvoyant and had immediate pinpoint accuracy once combat gets initiated. If I didn't make sure I was in pitch darkness, enemies would see me through walls. It was a little ridiculous. I also thought the story and dialogue would be better since it was based on a book. The one thing I really liked about this game was the atmosphere. Fog, light, etc was used to amazing effect.

Metro Last Light was a huge upgrade in my opinion, though I still had a few problems with it. It made a great first impression, with some amazing visuals, though the last part of the game didn't do much for me. Fans that complain they did a 180 and made the game too easy are also correct. Story is a mixed bag. In some ways it did a better job than 2033, but in some ways it actually seemed worse. I wasn't impressed by the attempts at moralizing in this game. I still liked it overall though.

Didn't really feel like either game really fulfilled the promise set forth by the concept. The idea of surviving and having to choose between using ammo to kill or as currency for example. I never knew what to spend it on, so by the end of both games I had a small fortune in special ammo that I just wasted on enemies in the final levels.

Was looking over my list trying to find something new (old) to play, and realized I had a Steam Sale game that I forgot about. I wasn't sure if I should recommend it in the PC game thread, so I'll talk about it here instead.

Divinity: Dragon Commander is a spinoff of the series of the same name. But instead of being an rpg, it's a multi-layered strategy game. The first round is strategic (Risk) in which you control territories and manage armies. The second round is an RTS that is initiated when two armies share the same region. There have been a few other games in the past like this, but this isn't what makes the game interesting. There is a third phase that takes place in between rounds on your flagship, in which you must manage the political needs and wants of the various fantasy races that serve under your banner as you conquer the world.

The issues you are presented with are parodies of real world issues (gun control, legalization, immigration), and each fantasy race represents an extreme political view. Dwarves are capitalists and conservatives, Elves are socialists and liberal, Imps favor science, while Undead favor religion. You are presented with an issue and you have to choose which faction to support, as they will not all see eye to eye. You as the player have the choice to follow your own real life convictions, try to compromise and stabilize the various factions, or choose on the merit of practicality. That is to say, the benefits or drawbacks to enacting the policy. Government Healthcare would make your citizens happier, but would enact a gold penalty that you could be using on your armies. How much each faction likes you also determines their performance in the various regions you can control.

While it is not a fully dynamic campaign, these choices were still fun and interesting to explore. There are also various character storylines to also explore, and the writing and voice acting in general is thoroughly excellent. The characters have great personality, even when that personality is specifically designed to get under your skin. There are a couple of grade A assholes that are hilarious in the contempt they generate, and the devs know this too. They will manipulate the player by having someone say something right in the wrong way, seeing if the player will rule with their emotions and say no just because their pride was offended.

Conversely, the RTS combat was the weak link in the experience. It wasn't bad, and was designed to be fast and of minimal hassle, but it wasn't that compelling either. There weren't many units, and so they all end up being hard counters to each other. Winning feels like a matter of massing the largest blob and outmaneuvering the AI when their blob is bigger than yours.

It was also fairly funny. I've never played a Divinity game before, so didn't take much stalk in what others said about them. Maybe I'll pay more attention in the future.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

I played Daikatana. It was only a dollar and I was curious.

Don't play Daikatana.

---

Do you feel like John Romero's bitch now?

I don't really like the RTS/strategic games like Total War. I think it's mainly because I don't like RTS anymore. Too twitch for me. Still love grand strategy war games, though, and probably always will.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daxil Solshok

I don't really like the RTS/strategic games like Total War. I think it's mainly because I don't like RTS anymore. Too twitch for me. Still love grand strategy war games, though, and probably always will.

---

This is my problem with RTS games too. They have almost nothing to do with strategy, but mindlessly clicking a specific build order faster or more efficiently than your opponent isn't a strategy. Coming up with that order is strategy. Copying it from a guide isn't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nadiar

This is my problem with RTS games too. They have almost nothing to do with strategy, but mindlessly clicking a specific build order faster or more efficiently than your opponent isn't a strategy. Coming up with that order is strategy. Copying it from a guide isn't.

---

I don't think this is exactly true. What you are describing comes from human nature always trying to min/max any challenge until it boils down to a path of least resistance, especially in a competitive context. It's going to happen in every game, regardless of genre.

At the very most basic level, strategy is very important, all other things being equal (balance). You need to be aware what your enemy is doing, and you need to know what the proper counter to it is. In battle, you need to know how to organize your units efficiently, and you need to be able to make decisions about your economy to not fall behind.

Regardless, these problems are only apparent if you play competitively. I like the genre vs AI because I like managing armies and poking holes in defenses.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daxil Solshok

I don't really like the RTS/strategic games like Total War. I think it's mainly because I don't like RTS anymore. Too twitch for me. Still love grand strategy war games, though, and probably always will.

---

For what it's worth, you don't actually have to play the RTS bit; if your strategic mode army is strong enough you can win with autobattles. Furthermore, one of the things I don't like about the RTS portion, the imprecise controls, make twitchy strategies somewhat ineffective, hence the blob tactics I used.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nadiar

Do you feel like John Romero's bitch now?

---

I'm going to say no. I don't think his ultimate plan was to ruin his career and company so that in twenty years someone would play a bad game and wish they hadn't.

That ad campaign was such a disaster. Can you imagine if someone tried it today? You would have to move to the moon to get away from the disdain you would earn.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

I don't think this is exactly true. What you are describing comes from human nature always trying to min/max any challenge until it boils down to a path of least resistance, especially in a competitive context. It's going to happen in every game, regardless of genre.

At the very most basic level, strategy is very important, all other things being equal (balance). You need to be aware what your enemy is doing, and you need to know what the proper counter to it is. In battle, you need to know how to organize your units efficiently, and you need to be able to make decisions about your economy to not fall behind.

Regardless, these problems are only apparent if you play competitively. I like the genre vs AI because I like managing armies and poking holes in defenses.

---

It isn't strategy where both would play the first 90% of any game identically without fog of war, every single time. When the meaningful metric is APM, you're an action game.

Yeah, I actually kind of like playing it in Single Player, unfortunately most new RTS games have a lot of weird support for that now. The way you play them isn't really a "vs AI" setup so much as playing through a pre-configured script for each level.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

I'm going to say no. I don't think his ultimate plan was to ruin his career and company so that in twenty years someone would play a bad game and wish they hadn't.

That ad campaign was such a disaster. Can you imagine if someone tried it today? You would have to move to the moon to get away from the disdain you would earn.

---

Hah, it didn't even do that well back then. It was both tone deaf and ignorant of the fact that in general people don't know who the fuck make the things they enjoy. They can tell you about stars in them, but they probably can't tell you who directed most movies unless the media makes a huge deal out of the director first.

I used to really enjoy RTS until I encountered some of the elite level players so to speak. Mass spamming hotkeys and quickly organizing and pushing things around isn't really any fun. May as well be a dot matrix game for as much as they pay attention to all the minutia. Makes my shoulders ache thinking of it.

I played Dark Souls last month, which I talked about in the thread Goladus made for it. I then started playing a PSP game on my Vita called Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time. It took me longer than I expected so I'm going to briefly talk about it.

This is part of my quest to beat all my old Playstation games that I never made time for, although this one was a new addition. During some PSN sale or another last year, I was reading a thread about the various deals and people kept raving about this game I had never really heard of before. The graphics were ugly, and it was one of those games that went completely ignored when it came out, but they kept insisting the story was good so I picked it up ($5).

It ended up being a lot better than I was expecting. The story was good, but not great. It attempted to do some interesting things but seems a little over ambitious for what it actually accomplishes. It also felt unfinished near the end, but that's probably due to the fact that I played it on the original PS2 story route. The PSP version got additional content that you can unlock by making certain choices in the game. The combat system was a kind of real time strategy rpg. It was interesting.

The thing I liked the most about the game was the character art. It used an art style that I find incredibly nostalgic, though it also threatened my assertion that games and anime years ago weren't so dependent on pandering and fan service as they are now. This is still true, but there certainly is a lot of it in this game. Luckily despite being fairly blatant, it doesn't feel quite as gross or hyper-charged as the stuff now. I'm not sure if this is just a perception thing or what.



I've been talking about this backlog in this thread for what seems like two years. I beat the PS2 games, the PS3 games, and only have three PSP games to go. Of course, my Vita also has about 10-12 PS1 games on it, but let's not think about that quite yet...

Next I'll be playing Ryse: Son of Rome (?), which I saw on Steam for $5 the other day, before getting back to the PSP stuff.

Ryse was great if all you care is about a spectacle, as the visuals were pretty amazing, but it wasn't very fun to play. I remember it getting a lot of crap when it came out, but it seems fine as far as typical console launch games go. The story was almost interesting but didn't really come together for me. I remember not thinking I would care about the historical inaccuracies that others complained about, but in effect I agree they were strange and pretty jarring.

Friend of mine sent me an Early Access copy of 7 Days to Die, after trying to get me to pick it up myself for a couple of weeks, so it's practically the only thing I've played this month. It's basically Zombie Minecraft. I hated it at first, and have great difficulty playing online with friends, so largely ignored it until one of their bases got wrecked by a swarm. They were also new and expressed great frustration in not being able to keep up with the others, so I spent a day just fixing their perimeter for them. My skills got high enough that I decided to then make my own base. A couple days later I regretted the amount of time and work it was taking, and then my computer started crashing, so hurray for that.


Also messing around in Final Fantasy 5. Every year there is this "Fiesta" event on the internet where you get assigned random jobs from the game and have to complete it using only those jobs. I've never played it before but enough people I know do this that I decided to try it myself.

I realized I haven't posted here in a while. Partly because I didn't play much in each individual month, but looking back there is a lot I didn't mention. I did finish all my backlogged PSP games, as I had kept mentioning. I never decided what part of the backlog to tackle next, and so have only been playing new things.

Darkest Dungeon I talked about in the recommend a PC game thread, when it came out. I finally played it, and it was almost exactly what I wanted it to be. Dark and brooding and stressful. It was very, very good at what it set out to do. But. But, the last stretch of the game became kind of a tedious slog. This is a game with permadeath but with upgrades in your town that make it relatively easy to continue forward momentum. The difficulty spikes at the end, as well as the time sink involved in training up new characters and getting enough gold to equip them, was incredibly unfun and nearly ruined the game for me.

Still good, but I'm not looking to marry a damn video game, thanks. It's the same reason why I stopped playing Monster Hunter halfway through, and don't really play MMOs anymore. I guess I didn't mention that either. I picked it up after mentioning it in a release thread. Controls take getting used to, but the base combat is interesting and some of the monsters are pretty cool. I didn't mind the repetition or the farming/grinding too much, until you get to high rank. Once I realized I would have to fight the same 30 minute encounter 30 times to finish an armor set I lost all interest. There are too many other worthwhile things to play.


Moving on, after Darkest Dungeon I wanted something casual. Luckily my last remaining Steam Sale game was Stardew Valley, a Harvest Moon clone. It's a pretty good one. It isn't exactly balanced perfectly, but neither are the Harvest Moon games. Not much to say regarding this, except that I think I finally figured out why I have so much trouble finishing these games. I love the first dozen hours, then tend to lose interest. It's because after the first year, you very quickly run out of long-term goals. Get a big house, get married, and then all that's left to do is make as much money as possible. Which gets pretty old.

Stardew Valley had the benefit of having a subquest to restore a community center, but aside from one annoyingly rare item, wasn't that hard to do. Edit: Oh right, for anyone not aware, Harvest Moon is an isometric farming sim with jrpg level npc interaction, though the npcs do have schedules that change based on the day of the week.


Oh right. I also played Banner Saga 2. Which was what you would expect it to be, more Banner Saga. Which is also exactly what you want it to be. Now I'm waiting and looking forward to the things I want to pick up before or during the next Steam Sale.

I just played a few rounds of Insurgency. The latest update is just amazing.

Quote:

---

Darkest Dungeon I talked about in the recommend a PC game thread

---

This was the only game on my steam wishlist. It went on sale right before Christmas but I decided not to buy it, still have other games in the queue.

So currently playing FFX. It's OK although it hasn't sucked me in yet. The opening cinematic was striking and the first few combat sequences were easy and fun. But I didn't enjoy so much spending the next hour lost and disoriented. I mean, I do appreciate that it's on purpose to make the player feel like a fish out of water because that's what Tidus is going through. But I have to say that is a somewhat odd way to introduce a player to your game. Especially since, unless I missed something, there's no inn, healing spring, or anything like it until you reach Besaid village (which for me was 2 hours in). Again, great to really emphasize the feeling of being stranded in an unfamiliar world with no food or place to rest, but a rather unwelcoming way to introduce a player to the world.

For all I've heard about the bad voice acting, it's not really bothering me so far. Yeah Tidus is a bit of a turd, but he's cheeful and optimistic enough to be endearing. I kinda like Tidus in spite of myself (at least so far). I also like Wakka. If I had a criticism, it's that awkward silences between lines often disrupts the flow of conversation. It feels like technical issues related to editing, as if each line is an individual recording that needs to be cued at the right moment and the cues aren't always aligned properly. Though overall I think I'd just prefer there to be less voiced dialog for the sake of pacing, it's not driving me crazy or anything. Also, I haven't liked any of the dreams/flashbacks so far but we'll see where that goes.

The fixed, pre-planned camera angles that change automatically depending on where you are on the screen was a bit disconcerting at first. But once used to it, this method definitely facilities very FF-like movement patterns. Sometimes it's a bit hard to tell where boundaries are, and invisible boundaries just get thrown up to funnel you into going one specific place. But walking around feels like classic Final Fantasy despite the fully 3D environments.

Not sure what I think of the Sphere Grid. Initial impression is decidedly mixed, so I'm just going to keep playing and see where it goes.

I went and picked up a cheap tablet game called Dungeons of Chaos. It's a throwback to 2d dungeon CRPG games like Ultima I suppose. It's not fully polished, but it does seem reasonably well-balanced so far. You take your group somewhere it doesn't belong at your level and your group splats. You go easy mode against peons and your casters are OOM when they need it against the tough encounters.

A few grumbles though.
First, the overworld can feel practically bereft of encounters. If you go to spots near dungeons you can farm there, but just roaming from one part of the map to another your chances of hitting a random encounter are pretty low.
At first I didn't understand the spell leveling system. Now I have a better feel, although I practically stumbled across it.
It'd be GREAT if I could work the map based on tablet touches instead of having to use the hokey arrow keys to scroll around.
Lastly, you get these conversational keywords that NEVER GO AWAY. I don't want to ask this NPC about some quest keyword from a quest I completed days ago, and eventually you end up with more keywords than will fit on a screen easily.

My group's level 5-6 right now and they just got PULVERIZED by a monster encounter because I have no resist magic gear. I'll need to spend time gearing up to get that fixed. So far it's definitely worth the $3.99, despite the grumbles.

After finishing Persona 5 I took a break from jrpgs, which make up the majority of my backlog. I've still got 3 or 4 unfinished PC games to choose from, and went with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I think I was drawn to it because the class system reminds me of Andromeda. Being able to mix and match abilities and then having a profile with unique bonuses.

Anyway, I'm probably the last person to have played it at this point. I feel like the core of the game is fairly solid, but it's ultimately not very satisfying. It's also a big lesson in how sometimes less is more. I remember reading countless suggestions to just skip all the sidequests and for some reason I decided I wanted to do them anyway. This was a terrible, terrible decision, and for awhile my stubbornness wouldn't let me stop what I had started. If by some chance someone reading this has not played this game yet but intends to, do not make this same mistake! This game doesn't have the depth to be entertaining for that long. I even eventually found the faction quests (the better of the sidequests) to be kind of abominable.


I liked the combat but even with constantly respeccing it gets pretty old. The balance of the game in general is way off. Fully specced warrior and you are unkillable, but the constant combat becomes plodding. Fully specced mage and you walk into a room, push a button, and then everything dies. Also boring.

For me, I've found the only to have fun is to spec at least partially into rogue and concentrate on weapon skills. You are squishy enough that you have to pay attention to what you are doing, but the constant crits means things don't take forever to kill. Though, I've also broken this build now by crafting some armor instead of using dropped stuff. I'm now both unkillable and everything dies in two hits. Oh well.


The main story seems interesting, but most of the rest of the plot is not. The writing in general didn't bother me too much, but there are a few instances in which I wanted to tear my hair out. I'm not too keen on the world itself either.

I haven't bumped this thread in awhile. Other than the stuff I've mentioned in each monthly release thread, I've mostly been working on my backlog of old handheld games. I've probably mentioned it before, but I basically told myself I wasn't allowed to get a Switch until I had done so. I also didn't buy much this year, and had one period where my computer was down (hard drive failure), so didn't have many alternatives. :p

I've finished all my DS games, all but one Vita game (Persona 4), and all but two 3DS games (Persona Q, SMT4).


A few of the standouts worth mentioning:

Chrono Trigger - I didn't have a SNES so didn't play this when it originally came out. It holds up really well. This is still a great game.

Kingdom Hearts 3D - It was better than I thought it would be, but the story continues to get stupider and stupider. I did like the The World Ends With You stuff though.

Atelier Rorona - I mention these games fairly often in release threads, but this is the first I've actually played. It's a jrpg more about crafting than dungeon crawling, and was really good. I was trying to retire my old handhelds, but I might actually buy the other two Vita games in this series now.

Cyberdimension Neptunia - Anime nerds love these games, and I can see why. I thought it was hot garbage and will not be playing another. No offense to anyone who does like it. It's just not for me.



I also played Until Dawn (PS4) for Halloween. It was pretty good. Interesting enough for me to momentarily forget how much I hate horror movies.

Next up are a few things I got during Black Friday. Horizon Zero Dawn, which was one of my most anticipated games this year, Titanfall 2, and Pyre. These will probably keep me busy for most of December.

Titanfall 2 was probably the most satisfying no frill cod style first-person shooter campaign I've played in a long time. Pyre was beautiful in the way you expect from Supergiant with some pretty solid game design, though the weird pacing kept it from possibly being their best game. Also, Paper Boats is still their best ending theme. (Transistor)

Horizon Zero Dawn was amazing, and far bigger than I expected it to be. I had very few complaints, and the ones I had were a consequence of it being open world. Still, the world is beautiful and I wouldn't have it any other way I think.

I've been having a great time playing Subnautica these past couple weeks; I had picked it up as an Early Access quite a while ago, played a couple of hours but didn't get into it at the time. Now, in January it has reached full release status, and I've been having a great time with it. Incredibly atmospheric game.

It's managed to captivate me in a way games haven't for a couple of years now.

Before Hearthstone and WoW got their hooks into me again, I spent most of this year catching up on old PS1 games I never got to play when they came out. Grandia, Wild Arms, Suikoden, Dino Crisis, etc. For Halloween I played the Parasite Eve series, which were probably my favorite of these old games I played. All I've got left is Breath of Fire 4, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears but I need a break from both jrpgs and my Vita, and so I have started playing PS+ games from the year on my PS4.


The most recent (and reason why I'm bumping this thread) was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This game got a lot of flak when it came out, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. My only real criticism is that some of the level design was unsatisfying. It's hard to describe what I didn't like about it, but I sort of felt like exploration was a waste of time. The environments were pretty large and it would take a ton of time to explore every nook and cranny, most of which would only reward you with a few items you don't need and emails with no context. Meanwhile a lot of alternate routes are a bigger pain in the ass than simply taking the more obvious ones.

Example. Early on you have to pass a security checkpoint. There is a door to the left and a two doors to the right. The doors to the right are locked. The door to the left has the key card to one of the doors to the right. When you enter the other door to the right, you find a datapad telling you there is a keycard in the door to the left, as well as a grate that bypasses the door that the keycard works on. Once you continue on the path to the right, you bypass a few other obstacles to get to a destination. Oh right, and the door to the left also has a grate that bypasses ALL of this. :wtf:

Later in the game there are examples of alternate routes you only get hints to after you had already infiltrated the place. It feels like they are sacrificing tight level design in order to satisfy people who want overly complex but ultimately useless options.

People said it was too short, but I felt like if I played it any longer I would have gotten sick of it. It was also kind of janky, but less so than the previous game was honestly. I think this game is another example of how publishers can ruin public perception of a game to the point where the players find problems that don't really exist, just to satisfy their negative feelings, because like I said, despite my criticisms I thought this was a good game.


I also finally played Knack. It was terrible. Dreadful. It was actually made very well, but it's based off incredibly dated game design and I just cannot stand it. I'm the type of person that likes to beat the games I play in order to form a complete picture of them, but I was pretty tempted to just uninstall this.

I really liked Deus Ex mankind Divided :) but as you say it was a bit...lacking compared to the prior game


was playing Pathfinder Kingmaker for a while there, bit burned out and weather's gotten worse here so just reading currently rather than gaming
as the devs finally fix issues with Kingmaker it's a game I'd seriously recommend, LOT of good things about it if you liked Baldur's Gate style games
though, I do prefer turn based rather than "real time with pause".
Temple of elemental evil allowed tactical fun you cannot exactly replicate even with the good system Kingmaker has for pausing

I cheat though, as I HATE with a virulent passion games that force you to use "stat point buys", grrr!
let me roll frigging DICE to make my characters, ya bastards!!
*old school grump* :p
so I use an editor to set points how I want, oh and since all the bugs etc made me replay the game so much, sod it, few million gold pieces as well, I am NOT fiddle farting around with making money in game again and again....


oh played Temple of Elemental Evil again for few days there, was shocked when I legitimately rolled a character with stats of, iirc
18 17 15 15 14 12
on about 5th roll
COWABUNGA!! I'll buy that for a dollar! :p
thus she became my paladin. ya gotta luv a tank with +4 to all saves from Charisma....

I don't mind stat point purchases, because it beats hammering the "reroll" button until I get the minimum number of points I want. I've done several different characters in BG/SoD/BG2, and I can't think of one that did not have "18 in primary stat, 16/18 in CON depending on class, 18 DEX, 18 CHA, nothing else below 10". Oh, wait, there was one character that had average DEX because of the other stats I wanted, the dual Fighter to Cleric for the "cleric to 30" achievement run. She wore the DEX gauntlets all game.

Stat spreads can be fun, I've found that I don't mind when games leave them out altogether. The dynamics between tabletop and a computer game are just too wildly different for them to mean the same thing. A computer game is very specifically designed, while a DM can change things on the fly to fit the needs of the players. Rolling bad stats in a tabletop game presents interesting character opportunities, but rolling bad stats in a computer game often just makes it harder on yourself with no real benefit.

Really the only reason I can think to still include it (beyond nostalgia) is because some people really, really like min-maxing numbers. They get as much enjoyment out of having the best stats as someone else might from a story, or from a particularly challenging encounter.

Wool, being the terrible influence that he is, got me to pick Hollow Knight back up after letting it sit for over a year.

I'm not as good as a quick platformer as I used to be but I'm enjoying it quite a bit now that I'm not frustrated with it. Though, dying twice in succession several times has lost me over 4k of geo, and a couple of times it was while on my way to the actual bank.

If it makes you feel any better, you get more than enough money for anything you will need or want in the normal campaign. Though you may feel the sting if you want the optional convenience items you can buy in the Grimm Troupe update.

Picked up a couple things I wanted to play from 2017 and just never made time for. Right now I'm playing Mario+Rabbids XCOM. A lot of people seemed to lose interest in this fast once it came out, but I think it's pretty good. Very solid design, my only complaint is how expensive the weapons are.

That's not what I'm back in this thread for though. Last month I played Nier Automata. The previous Nier was an interesting game in that it had a great story, but the presentation and gameplay were poor. They fixed that (mostly) this time around, and I feel like their sails got a gust of wind when Mass Effect Andromeda failed. This game's popularity blew up in ways I did not expect and people raved about its story all year.

Perhaps as a result, I spent most of my own playthrough very mildly disappointed and waiting for it to "get good". That isn't to say it isn't good, I just wanted it to be so much more. It's got a really good premise but it always fell just short of delivering a good story. All the ingredients are there, they just aren't cooking them long enough. And each new ending you get is actually less satisfying than the one that came before.

For anyone not aware, most (all?) of this guy's games have a heavy emphasis on multiple playthroughs and multiple endings. Each time you play through the game it is very slightly different, and you keep your levels and upgrades so each playthrough is faster. It wasn't until I got the final ending that I think I really understood why people raved about this game so much. It was extremely clever, and I am going to spoil it shamelessly below.

Spoiler for for the curious:

Without getting into specifics, the story is set up as a tragedy. The main characters are androids fighting a never ending war against machine invaders and die over the course of the game. You grow to like the characters though, so this naturally makes you feel bad. No matter how many endings you get, they still die.

But when I got the final ending, something interesting happened. While the credits are rolling, the AI helpers your characters utilize throughout the game start talking to each other. With their ward's gone, it was now their duty to erase all data of their existence so that future androids could repeat the cycle. Part of the tragedy is that the fighting is cyclical and pointless.

Before data deletion can begin, one of the AI refuses to comply and states he/it cannot accept this resolution. "You hoped they would live too, didn't you?" The AI gain a sense of self and rebel against their creators by trying to restore the androids' memory from backups. At this point the credits turn into a top down schooter and you have to protect the AI from bullets fired by the credits. In the opening monologue the main character wonders if she will ever get the chance to kill the god that cursed her to her fate, and here you are doing exactly that, shooting the names of all the people who made and are responsible for the game (and by extension, her fate).

This sequence gets harder and harder, until it starts to seem impossible. Every time you die the game asks you if you want to quit. Every time you die, it starts to taunt you more and more with the hopelessness of your situation. Just stop, why waste your time, games are just silly little things, etc etc. And every time you die, a different message appears in the background. A message from another player who has already beaten the game giving you encouragement to continue on. The excellent credits song, originally in Japanese, switches to English.

Eventually you have an entire background of people cheering you on, and then the next time you die you receive a message. Another player wants to help you, do you accept? The soundtrack erupts in a chorus of multiple voices, a half dozen other AI "ships" surrounds your own as you continue to shoot the credits. But this time, whenever you get hit by a bullet, instead of respawning and starting over you continue at the cost of the "data" of another player. Their ship explodes, and you get a message that "Soandso's data has been deleted", before another takes its place.

And then when it's all done, you come out victorious and you receive a cutscene that is easily the closest thing to a happy ending a Yoko Taro game has probably ever had. It's not guaranteed, but at least you have hope now. The AI then talks to the player and asks if you too would like to leave a message for anyone else struggling with the game. You are then told that the person who rescued you did so at the cost of their own save data. You can now choose to make that sacrifice yourself if you so wish.

I'm not sure if words alone can express how exciting and uplifting this entire sequence is. I personally don't really feel any attachment to other people who happen to play the same games as me. But this sequence made you feel like you were all fighting together against the same hopeless (though fictional) fate. It was very powerful, in its way.

P.S. I do begrudgingly agree that the music in this game is probably better than the music in Persona 5. It hurts to say, but it's very, very good.

It's me again. It took awhile, but I finally finished my backlog of old PS1 classic games. I've now played almost every old Playstation game I regretted missing when I was younger. I've got one last Vita game and then I can retire it. (Persona 4 Golden, saved the best for last)

Those last three PS1 games though. Breath of Fire 4, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears. The latter two being fairly legendary in the genre.

I have the least to say about Breath of Fire 4. The character sprites were fantastic, but everything else about the game was dull. At best. The longer it went on, the less I liked it. I might have been more receptive to it when it first came out, but now? Not so much.

Chrono Cross was extremely disappointing for me. I had always heard it was a divisive game. People either loved it or hated it. I thought I would love it, because the things people said about it (that it was a good game, but not a good Chrono Trigger sequel) were things I thought I could appreciate. It turns out it's bad for a whole separate set of reasons. It's ambitious, I'll give it that, but so much of it feels flat out bad to me. The plot was so bad that I feared Xenogears would be similarly disappointing. I want to say it's preachy in ways that it does not deserve, and that it isn't as smart as it thinks it is. This was months ago now, impressions have faded a bit.

Xenogears on the other hand, ended up being one of the better PS1 classics I've played. The story is all over the place and kind of sloppy, but it's still pretty impressive for its time. The tone of the story shifts dramatically between disc 1 and 2, and it's very long. It almost seems like it should have been two games. In disc 1, the religious imagery seems fairly shallow, but it finally means something in disc 2. This is particularly noteworthy to me having played Xenosaga first.

I should point out one thing I found fairly amusing. Xenogears is infamous for an unfinished disc 2. They ran out of budget. I've always heard people saying it's mostly just characters sitting around talking in chairs. I took this to meant that there were a lot of standard dialogue sequences of characters talking to each other.

But no, they were being literal. A significant amount of disc 2 is literally a single character sitting in a chair and narrating the story, while screenshots of what they are talking about are shown in the background. It's pretty funny.

For the past couple of weeks I've gotten back into LoTRO after not having played it since 2007 or 2008. I think I'll stick with it as a casual gaming thing for awhile, although it's essentially a single-player experience until you hit level 120, but I knew going in that it would be that way, given the age of the game. Fortunately, they created and fleshed out such a rich and detailed Middle-Earth that it actually makes for a pretty good open-world single player RPG, and although the graphics are dated by today's standards, they still look pretty in my eyes. All things considered, I'm impressed that it holds up as well as it does.

Anyone here still play this thing?

I only ever played the beta. I don't remember anything about the gameplay at all, but I remember being impressed by the phasing world. It and FF14 are two games I thought about trying time and time again, but ultimately there are too many other things I want to play more.

Fallout 4, again. lol

never yet managed to finish the main quest line, always too busy enjoying exploring and settlement building, or the game got bugged hopelessly
so decided to comeback to almost done game and....it bugged out and crashed as I'd added the superb "Settlement ambush kit" mod, sigh
thus re-started for the umpteenth time, lol

had to re-learn using my fingers a bit as neuropathy has fubared me so much but that was kinda helpful physio
4838 hours clocked up in it, yeesh!
but since I can't grab my air rifle or fishing rod and dog and off we'd go roaming, or run D&D games, or paint/build miniatures/dioramas as I once did, I damn well need to somehow and this does it in a way.

The Settlement Ambush kit for Fallout 4 actually fixes one of the games most annoying damn bugs:
the bed/water problem
sometimes a settlement will show zero beds, water or food, dropping happiness etc into the toilet
not good when you spot this in your Pipboy when your on the other side of the damn Commonwealth :p

however
the Settlement Ambush Kit add "security cameras" and TV monitor you can build
when you use the security cam video screen it actually kinda of "virtually spawns you" temporarily in the chose settlement, which resets the settlements beds/production etc and thus, fixes the bug at that settlement (until it happens again of course)

also lets you run a minigame that spawns enemies you can beat in successively harder waves
success = flags for each stage of the waves, put the flag up it ensures if you start the minigame again it starts at that particular wave and adds an increasing happiness boost to the settlement
pretty damn tough by the way, huge numbers of enemies and turrets over heat and shut down as it gets harder tooffset making it too easy against melee mobs who couldn't reach properly positioned turrets


note
I use the "scaffolding" constructions to build "flak towers", with 3 or 4 layers of turrets one above each other
put those in right places, right heights, and you get huge coverage of your settlement!
the layers also provide some protection to the ones below/above from explosions/grenades

So one of the games that came up when I did the release thread this month was Persona Q2, a dungeon crawler where you map out floors yourself. I had an urge to try it, but I still had the first Persona Q, so I played that instead. It was convenient because as a handheld I could play it while watching/listening to all the E3 stuff this month.

I liked it more than I always thought I would. When I was a kid I played a lot of freeware PC dungeon crawlers, but I sort of figured mapping out dungeons yourself was something I wouldn't have patience for anymore. It was good though, and I enjoyed the story as well, which is a surprise for a Persona spinoff game.


Before E3 started I played Sonic Mania. It's the most faithful adaptation of a classic series I have ever seen. I'm very impressed, unfortunately that also includes all the things I never liked about Sonic.


And then yesterday I played Battle Chef Brigade and had to force myself not to binge through it. It's so good.

It's a Match 3 puzzle rpg with simple action combat. The central premise is that you live in a world where monster meat is prepared as food, and an elite order of chefs hunt the monsters for society. The main character is trying to join this order, while also discovering the cause of an epidemic.

When a match starts, you run off and fight monsters for a couple of minutes and collect their ingredients. You then run back to the kitchen and mix them together in a puzzle game. Each match has criteria to meet, and you can upgrade your cookware in interesting ways. One pot might let you match 2 instead of 3, but only of a single element. One might upgrade elements automatically while you are out getting more ingredients, etc. It's great.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Silverblade-T-E

4838 hours clocked up in it, yeesh!

---

Woah, those are some mmo numbers there.

You never said anything about The Outer Worlds by the way, the new Obsidian thing. Are you looking forward to that?

Wool
5056 hours now :p
yeah used to play Everquest a LOT ;)


sigh I don't fancy The Outer Worlds, much as I love Obsidian's work
(well, I found the Pillars of Eternity series BLAND! ugh, nice touches, good art etc but...bland)
Scifi doesn't really do much for me compared to fantasy, Fallout being an exception and even then its much more than typical "scifi"
really wish they could have done Fallout New vegas 2 or whatever

be a while afore Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 is out but that's one to look forward to!

been playing some pathfinder kingmaker and went back to Icewind Dale 2 (which is easier on me)
real shame Beamdog said the IWD 2 original files were all lost so they couldn't do an Enhanced Edition of that :(

I finally started playing Breath of the Wild after owning it for like two years. I kept putting it off for various reasons, including thinking I would need a pro controller for it (and wanting headphones that work with the switch). Never got either, but I decided I've waited long enough.

It's very good. The scale of the world is very impressive, especially for Nintendo. They just don't make games like this. Didn't? The two things people complained about it (rain, breaking weapons) don't bother me, but I am surprised at how weird and awkward the controls are.

I picked up Wolfenstein: New Order and Wolfenstein: Old Blood together for $15 on the Steam sale. Pretty cool so far!

I haven't posted in here awhile. I blame WoW.

After Breath of the Wild (fantastic) I ended up playing the rest of the Dark Souls series (2 and 3). I enjoyed both of them a fair amount, but playing them back to back really drained my energy. I thought 3 was probably the best in the series (though 1 still did certain things better) but I quit playing it almost immediately after beating it because I just couldn't take it anymore.

For what it's worth, 2 was also good but I was often frustrated with it. It fixed a lot of my technical problems with 1 but a lot of the other changes didn't feel very good to me. I also got invaded in it more than in every other Souls game combined. Like, constant invasions. It was pretty crazy.


After finally breaking from WoW a month ago, I decided to play a bunch of my PS+ games. I played Darksiders 3 and Nioh. I liked both a lot more than I thought I would. Both took mechanics from Dark Souls like bonfires and lost experience but were still very largely their own thing.

Darksiders 3 suffered from some pretty mediocre reviews when it came out, and then was quickly forgotten. I thought it was a pretty solid action game personally, but it had some serious performance problems which would have made buying it at release a bitter pill.

Nioh on the other hand has become fairly popular. It sort of plays like a halfway point between an action game like Darksiders and a more methodical game like Dark Souls. I did not like the constant loot drops and felt like they slowed the game down too much, but the weapons and the base mechanics were fantastic. There are less weapons than in Dark Souls, but the movesets are more advanced and each weapon can switch between high, medium, and low stance which expands combat options even more.

Aside from the loot grinding, my only other complaint is the difficulty scaling. It felt broken to me at times, but I guess that's what people expect from Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden is also notoriously hard).

I had to start replaying the Witcher games after that fantastic TV series!

They still hold up pretty well!

:grinyes:

I bought Thronebreaker for similar reasons, but haven't played it yet because of Red Dead. Very good incidentally, I don't understand why everyone griped about it so much. From the way everyone complained I thought it was going to be some kind of ridiculous hard core simulation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nerkahia

I had to start replaying the Witcher games after that fantastic TV series!

They still hold up pretty well!

:grinyes:

---

yeha back playing Witcher 3, lol never did get beyond starting in Skelligie before (though always cleared velen)
with the 2 DLCs much more to do
kills my hands though, all the dodging but ye gods, it's so beautiful to roam around!! :)

Red Dead Redemption 2 was good but way too long. I'm fairly certain they are obsessed with making the biggest worlds possible and then find themselves trying to justify how big the world is with sometimes lackluster content. It was an amazing game but the longer I played it the more the flaws and poor design decisions drove me batty. They also tried to do too much with the story, which also negated the impact personally.

Anyway I spent all of January playing that game and nothing else. That's one month off my 3 month Game Pass subscription that was going unused, which chaffed so I spent all of February playing as many games on the service as possible. I was planning on playing certain games ahead of Ori's March release, but on a whim tried two other things that consumed most of my time.


The Outer Worlds - I was in the mood for an rpg with perks and whatnot, and I heard it was really short (20 hours). It was not. Anyway, this is a very good game. Extremely well polished, no hideous bugs or anything. Aside from my personal disinterest in "loot everything in sight" gameplay, the only bad thing I have to say about it is that nothing about it really blows me away. It's solid but not amazing. The most impressive thing about it is simply how much better made it is than any of Bethesda's Fallout games.

Two Point Hospital - The Outer Worlds was taking me longer to finish than I liked and I needed a break. I figured this would be a good couple hour diversion. It was not. I was obsessed with this for weeks. I'm technically still playing it, but the AI problems in this game have got me frustrated as does the insane amount of time it takes to 100% each level. This is still a very impressive game though, designed far better than I initially assumed.

Two Point Hospital recently released a teaser for their fourth expansion, so I'm looking forward to that. (It's on prerelease sale on steam at only ~$9, So I'll probably pre order.)

I just checked and it comes out in two days...

--

I bought Founders Fortune a few days ago and am still working on getting my colonists to survive their first winter.

Last night I got them to survive until the second spring's tomatoes were ready to harvest. But by then none of them had the energy to work the field, and they died with a field full of food rotting on the vine. :madcomp:

I've never played any of the Batman: Arkham games before. I just finished Asylum; it was pretty cool! Will probably do City next, then Knight.

I'm playing through Doom Eternal now, and it's a nice game but the amount of jumping puzzles really drags down an otherwise good game and makes it not near as great as the previous Doom.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Milton Finkelstein

I'm playing through Doom Eternal now, and it's a nice game but the amount of jumping puzzles really drags down an otherwise good game and makes it not near as great as the previous Doom.

---

That's depressing. I really loved the last one! Was looking forward to this one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nerkahia

That's depressing. I really loved the last one! Was looking forward to this one.

---

Yea, its a damn shame. Still if you loved the previous one, like I also did, then I think you should give this a try too. Just to get your hopes up for something as good as the previous one, and maybe see if you can get the new one at a discount if possible.

I wonder if that will mean I like or more or less than the previous one. I was very impressed by it, but I wouldn't say I liked it. I think Wolfenstein was maybe more my speed.

Incidentally I finally made time to play Wolfenstein 2 a month or so ago. After hearing mostly negative things about it I was surprised to find that it wasn't so bad! Really really really dumb though! I liked it enough to play Youngblood too, which also wasn't as bad as I was expecting after how hard everyone panned it. Not good mind you, but not bad either. Very clearly a budget title.

Currently playing Metro Exodus, which is just like all the other Metro games. Impressive visually, poorly optimized, good shooting, frustrating clairvoyant AI. Each one gets better while sort of staying the same.

I'm finally playing Tales of Vesperia, one of the few games I've ever port begged for. It still looks and plays great. My only criticism is that I feel like I'm unlocking a lot of combat options that I'll never actually make full use of before I beat it, and I've got too much other stuff on the waiting list to play it a second time.

Still, I can see why some people consider it to be the best Tales game.


I also played Battlefleet Gothic: Armada on Game Pass recently. From the screenshots and trailers I would have never known it was an RTS. I thought this game was extremely interesting mechanically, but the cheating AI sort of ruined most pretenses at strategy and I eventually just brute forced my way through the campaign. Very cool game though.

Oh right, it's based on Warhammer 40K and largely consists of very small naval battles. You will generally field 2-6 ships depending on class (I usually ended up with 3). They all have their own weight to them, with different accelerations and turning speeds. A fair amount of the strategy comes from positioning to take advantage of which direction your weapons are facing. My broadsides ships would use their thrusters to line up torpedo shots, then return to broadsides in time for the next salvo.

Meanwhile I also had fast forward facing attack boats with advanced boarding team abilities that I would teleport behind enemy vessels. It was cool. Versus anything other than Orks. Screw Orks.

I played a ton of spooky stuff for Halloween. I don't usually like horror games (or horror in general). Generally I feel like for something to be horror it has to make you uncomfortable, and to do that in a video game you usually do things that make it not very fun to play. Stuff like Amnesia or whatever is the worst because the main mechanic is hide and try not to be annoyed while the monsters breaths on your neck. Stuff like Resident Evil is better for me because they are actual games. Anyway here's what I played:


The Evil Within - I respected it more than I liked it. Monsters were very cool and I enjoyed the harrowing experience, but I was mostly just glad when it was done.

The Evil Within 2 - Does that thing that sequels do where the game is better but the horror is worse as a result. I had a really good time with this.

Days Gone - That Sony game about a biker guy looking for his wife in the zombie apocalypse. I was surprised at how fun it was. This is one of those movies/games that critics hate but audiences seem to like. Every negative thing I heard about it was true, but it was fun so I liked it anyway.

Resident Evil 7 - I had been putting this off for a long time on the slim chance I ever got a PS VR. I was still worried I was making the wrong decision when starting this now but that doubt quickly went away. This game was amazing, even for someone who doesn't like horror. It got a little stupid near the end (It's Resident Evil, so of course it did), but I was surprised at how much I liked it.

I finally got around to playing Mass Effect Andromeda. It wasn't very good, but I had an okay time with it anyway.

Dale got me back into randomizers - this time, Final Fantasy VI. The first seed we both completed I did in a hair over 9 hours. The second seed I did solo and finished in under 3. My current seed is a fuster, as the characters I've been given can't equip much outside of their initial starting gear, and I'm having trouble beating the randomized bosses to be able to get gear/characters/Espers.

Also got into No Man's Sky again shortly before the Expeditions update and have put a few hours into that over the last month or so (mostly in early mornings before work/on weekends before wife gets up).

My PC is in bad shape so I'm still messing around with my PS4. Played Borderlands 3 and Marvel's Avengers on PS Now. After that free BL2 DLC promoting the third game I was pretty sure I was done with the franchise but to my surprise I still found it fun. The writing was completely awful though. So so bad. Crazy bad. I also got sick of the loot pretty fast. The number of gun variations, how many you have to sort through, how often you need to upgrade/replace even the ones you like. It all got pretty irritating.

I only just started Avengers. I can already tell you I have no interest in the games as a service loot/exp grind. I just want to play the campaign. So far it seems fine but not great gameplay wise. The premise of the story kind of annoys me but I'm enjoying the ride. The portrayals of the characters themselves have been the best part so far. Every interaction/dialogue has been great. Kamala especially is a lot of fun. I know a lot of people probably weren't ready to move past the MCU, but this game is probably better for not shoehorning those likenesses/personalities in.

Oh right, I have also been playing Overcooked 2. I thought my niece might like it but it's too hard for her. But the dang thing is so good that I ended up playing the rest of it by myself.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

Currently playing Metro Exodus, which is just like all the other Metro games. Impressive visually, poorly optimized, good shooting, frustrating clairvoyant AI. Each one gets better while sort of staying the same.

---

Metro Exodus just popped up in my Steam recommendations. It looks very interesting to me and I'll probably give it a shot.

I've not played any of the earlier games though. I'm usually the type who will purchase the earlier games in a series to play through as they were released, if I'm interested in the latest. But if these in particular are pretty outdated and more focused on survival than RP / FPS, I don't know that I will.

What do you recommend?

I'm the same way. I like to start from the beginning, sometimes even if the beginning is bad, just to see the whole journey and see how much a thing improves. For example, I forgot to post about it here but I recently played through the old Warcraft games again and I started at Orcs & Humans despite remembering it being pretty bad.


Anyway, Last Light (the 2nd one) probably still holds up. I think I overall liked it the most. Fans will consider me a heathen, but I thought 2033 (the 1st one) was bad even back when I played it. Might still be worth playing if you want to see where it began or like dark tunnels. You spend most of your time in the Metro and the surface is basically thought to be hell, but each consecutive game spends more and more time there.

I wouldn't worry about survival mechanics. There is a bullet economy that I didn't really find that impactful and you have to manage mask filters, but that's about it. The real problem with the first one is just shoddy design. They did re-release both of the first two games in remastered "Redux" editions. I don't know if this makes 2033 any better or not, but they are pretty cheap on sale so your only real cost is time. The atmosphere is the general draw for all three of them, and each of them has a slightly different vibe.

I think Last Light is still worth playing. 2033 could be hard to go back to if you aren't prepared for frustration, but it's still just a shooter. Just don't play it on hard.

On my trip to Belfast, I played a number of hours of Ys 8 (in the hotel room bored after 8pm and avoiding TV) and a handful of hours on Smash Bros (on my flight home) on Switch.

Now that I'm back home, I picked up American Truck Simulator: Wyoming (for which I've been waiting months) and FFIV Pixel Remaster.

And my body is still on GMT :(

Previous "Metro" games sucked, IMHO because they were so terribly linear :(

awesome story, very eerie
but that damned forced, narrow game world was huge loss :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

I'm the same way. I like to start from the beginning, sometimes even if the beginning is bad, just to see the whole journey and see how much a thing improves. For example, I forgot to post about it here but I recently played through the old Warcraft games again and I started at Orcs & Humans despite remembering it being pretty bad.

Anyway, Last Light (the 2nd one) probably still holds up. I think I overall liked it the most. Fans will consider me a heathen, but I thought 2033 (the 1st one) was bad even back when I played it. Might still be worth playing if you want to see where it began or like dark tunnels. You spend most of your time in the Metro and the surface is basically thought to be hell, but each consecutive game spends more and more time there.

I wouldn't worry about survival mechanics. There is a bullet economy that I didn't really find that impactful and you have to manage mask filters, but that's about it. The real problem with the first one is just shoddy design. They did re-release both of the first two games in remastered "Redux" editions. I don't know if this makes 2033 any better or not, but they are pretty cheap on sale so your only real cost is time. The atmosphere is the general draw for all three of them, and each of them has a slightly different vibe.

I think Last Light is still worth playing. 2033 could be hard to go back to if you aren't prepared for frustration, but it's still just a shooter. Just don't play it on hard.

---

Cool, fair enough. I went ahead and picked up the bundle. I'll give it a go as soon as I finish my NG+ Witcher 3 campaign. :p

Been focused on Destiny 2 - traditional MMOs haven't been doing for me and I enjoy the looter shooter style, especially as it is done in D2.

I like to play a season appropriate game for Halloween and this year I tried Alien Isolation. I respect what it represents but I personally hated it. There is no tension or suspense when the monster is in your grill all the damn time, and the mechanics don't make that satisfying either. Ugh just ugh. I only got about halfway through it before giving up. Maybe I'll try again next year.

Since my buddy picked it up while down with COVID, I've started playing Magic the Gathering: Arena. I've cleared all the colour challenges, entered all the promo codes, and am at the point of doing daily quests with the premade decks. Haven't started deckbuilding or doing anything other than Play mode. First impressions: Play doesn't seem to do any sort of matching other than "are two people available", XP only being awarded on a win is bad (even Hearthstone knew to divorce wins from major rewards in the end), I'd forgotten how obnoxious mana screw/glut and "pauses for every phase to allow for instants" were, awarding premade decks as quest rewards to new players is a great idea. I hope there's in-game documentation for all the game modes, because there's a mess of them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wool

I like to play a season appropriate game for Halloween and this year I tried Alien Isolation. I respect what it represents but I personally hated it. There is no tension or suspense when the monster is in your grill all the damn time, and the mechanics don't make that satisfying either. Ugh just ugh. I only got about halfway through it before giving up. Maybe I'll try again next year.

---

I gave up on it as well.
I really loved the design of the environments, as it's very true to the original movie. But the game itself got really frustrating fairly fast, as it became more about hiding in a closet than actually going through the story.

I watched a Critical Role promotion for Elder Scrolls Online and it made me want to try it. But since I was in a penny pinching mood while waiting for sales this month I ended up finally trying FF14: A Realm Reborn instead. I don't like everything about it, but I've been having a good time. Especially since it's basically free. Not sure how long the server queues are going to be once their new expansion launches, so I'll probably just stop at the free version cap and try out the expansions everyone always gushes over another time. I'll probably be fatigued with it by then anyway.

I also finally got around to playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. It was a lot more fun than I was expecting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Milton Finkelstein

I gave up on it as well.
I really loved the design of the environments, as it's very true to the original movie. But the game itself got really frustrating fairly fast, as it became more about hiding in a closet than actually going through the story.

---

Glad it wasn't just me. I remember it being fairly well received and didn't feel good trashing something people liked. It probably didn't help that instead of being anxious about the monster like the game intended, I was constantly anxious about when the next point my computer was going to crash. No checkpoints meant I replayed the same sections more times than I would have liked.

Sorry, bumping an old thread. Playing Tales of Arise right now, fresh off finishing Scarlet Nexus at the start of the year. :D Anyone else into JRPGs?

That's what this thread is for. And I like jrpgs but I don't always find time for them. Haven't played Arise or Nexus yet. My next one is probably going to be SMT5.

Right now I'm playing Code Vein and then a few of the Yakuza games on Game Pass.

Anyone playing Lost Ark? It seems like all the streamers are going nuts for it right now. I'm still playing MtG: Arena. New expansion came out this week, just waiting for the quick drafts with the new set's cards to build up my collection.