The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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?

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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/?


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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.