What are you currently playing?

[Bartholen]

Well, I finally did it and broke free of Baldur's gate 3's yoke, uninstalled it, and reinstalled Total Warhammer 2 in its place. And I'm probably going to uninstall that too, because it's really not good for me.

It's the kind of game I think I could play for 12 hours straight without even realizing it, because I did play it for like 15 hours in 2 days. Once you get over the high learning curve, it's a bottomless pit of a timesink. There's so much to do, the victory conditions for each campaign take astronomically long to complete, but it never feels boring or repetitive. Even if the Mortal Empires campaign ultimately has you running around basically the same map regardless of what faction you play, their playstyles are so decidedly different that it feels fresh each time. You always feel like you're inching towards a greater goal. There's so many layers and approaches you can take, and I haven't even touched on the real time battles yet, which can turn into nail-biting chases of snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.

So yeah, a phenomenal, preposterously huge game, but I'd like to have a life as well, thanks.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Well, I finally did it and broke free of Baldur's gate 3's yoke, uninstalled it, and reinstalled Total Warhammer 2 in its place. And I'm probably going to uninstall that too, because it's really not good for me.

It's the kind of game I think I could play for 12 hours straight without even realizing it, because I did play it for like 15 hours in 2 days. Once you get over the high learning curve, it's a bottomless pit of a timesink. There's so much to do, the victory conditions for each campaign take astronomically long to complete, but it never feels boring or repetitive. Even if the Mortal Empires campaign ultimately has you running around basically the same map regardless of what faction you play, their playstyles are so decidedly different that it feels fresh each time. You always feel like you're inching towards a greater goal. There's so many layers and approaches you can take, and I haven't even touched on the real time battles yet, which can turn into nail-biting chases of snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.

So yeah, a phenomenal, preposterously huge game, but I'd like to have a life as well, thanks.

Yeah, I put about 1300 hours into TW2 before I got to the point where I was done with it, plus 300 odd in TW1. On the one hand, it is potentially a very good value proposition in terms of hours of entertainment per buck, but on the other there are much better things I should be doing with my time. They might take a bit more effort to do but certainly feel a lot more rewarding.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Yeah, I put about 1300 hours into TW2 before I got to the point where I was done with it, plus 300 odd in TW1. On the one hand, it is potentially a very good value proposition in terms of hours of entertainment per buck, but on the other there are much better things I should be doing with my time. They might take a bit more effort to do but certainly feel a lot more rewarding.

Or, you know, 1,300 hours could be just an hour a day. If you play for three and a half years…

 

[Bedinsis]

I finished playing through the demo for Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue. A game made by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who also made the Zero Escape trilogy.

The premise: eleven strangers are kidnapped onto a tropical resort where they have all amenities available and those that survive for half a year will receive a large sum of money. The kidnappers claim to be producers for a reality TV show, and said that if the participants won't make things sufficiently interesting for the viewers they'll intervene to ensure that something happens.

Since I've played through two of the Danganronpa games and the Zero Escape trilogy for the first time during this year I can definitely see where the game has had its inspiration. From the premise alone it sounds how Uchikoshi would make a Danganronpa-style game, since he favors character above high school age and the youngest character here is 18. I remember when playing through Danganronpa thinking of alternate scenarios to ensure a bunch of strangers were in an isolated place with competitions and danger of death and thinking "Why not make it a reality TV* show... with a deadly twist?". A solution I thought was obvious, right up until I checked up on Wikipedia and found out that the grand daddy of competitive reality TV, Big Brother, has never had a Japanese version, and Survivor, the other major big one, only aired for one year before they gave up on it. So it's probably not a form of show popular in Japan and therefore less relatable to players there, which is probably why all the eleven characters are from Europe. A Norwegian, a Finn, a Swede, an Estonian, a Dutchman, a Brit, a German, a Frenchwoman, a Portuguese, an Italian and a person of origin heritage all are present.

*I realize that the term "reality TV" is a lot more broad than the term that I want to use (isn't Keeping it up with the Kardashians an example of reality TV?) but the term I'm trying to use would if translated to English be documentary soap opera. i.e. that the objective of the producers is to use real people in isolation to manufacture a soap opera.

Anyway: the fact that the people are older means they are a lot less obnoxious than in Danganronpa since maturity has set in. Apart from that there is some hints of what the full game will be like, where you get some moments where you get to pick what characters to hang out with but and learn more of but otherwise it seems a strictly linear affair. So far the characters reminds me of Danganronpa, since everyone has one gimmick to make them stick out.

The demo ends before any actual gameplay has occurred. They've managed to build a raft and is a far way from the island when suddenly one character gets cold feet, the others agree and everyone decides to return. I thought that came a bit out of nowhere; if they could sell how dangerous it actually is to paddle on unknown waters at night I might have thought it a more natural course of action but as is it felt a bit forced. I realize the plot obviously cannot be "and then they all escaped" but I think a better solution to ensure that outcome would've been if they discover that the raft had been tampered with by the producers so they'll have to return to shore. That would've ensured a "big brother is watching you" feeling.

I won't buy the full game when it releases in a few weeks. I am a bit fatigued by this kind of plot right now.

EDIT: I misread things. Kotaro Uchikoshi had no hand in this project; this is from Finnish developer Dreamloop.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Ever see a big creature in a videogame cutscene (or appropriate equivalent camera focusing) where you're not sure whether to let your guard down and release the controller to scratch your arse cause it isn't clear if they're gonna be hostile, friendly or just passing humbly by? Forgive me if am far too late, but after careful analysis with an international team of esteemed underpayed scientists, we have cracked the unspoken videogame language for signalling incoming hostility - no longer will you be insta-killed whilst your defensive extremities are too busy chasing a wandering itch elsewhere!

Is deceptively simple rule: if the fucker roars dramatically at the sky, recall arse scratch squadron - all hands on deck!


Bonus threat alert if screen goes blurry, stretched outward, bloomed and/or shaky during said roar.

 

[Chimpzy]

Played the demo of Phantom Fury, the sequel to Ion Fury that tries to evoke the 2001 Duke Forever trailer/early 2000s fps vibe rather than the Duke 3D/mid 90s build engine style the original had.

Ooof, that was not great. It looks the part. It does that right. Mostly. It's more a "what you remember 00s shooters looked like", that what they actually looked like. For some reason they went with a unfiltered pixelated texture look, similar to the System Shock remake, even tho that wasn't really a thing anymore by the early 2000s. But the real problem is the shooting. It's bad. Enemies are spongy, barely react to being shot, and have a tendency to just bumrush you. There's no hit markers, so you often have no idea where you're being shot from. Weak weapon design, but in terms of models, vfx and sfx. Also, for some reason they decided to demo with a train level, which I feel is not the type of level you'd want to show off. Got a physics puzzle tho. A really bad one.

Yea, not a good first impression.

 

[Bartholen]

Or, you know, 1,300 hours could be just an hour a day. If you play for three and a half years…

Including days when you're sick, out of town, hanging out with friends or family, going on a trip, having a celebration etc. etc.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ever see a big creature in a videogame cutscene (or appropriate equivalent camera focusing) where you're not sure whether to let your guard down and release the controller to scratch your arse cause it isn't clear if they're gonna be hostile, friendly or just passing humbly by? Forgive me if am far too late, but after careful analysis with an international team of esteemed underpayed scientists, we have cracked the unspoken videogame language for signalling incoming hostility - no longer will you be insta-killed whilst your defensive extremities are too busy chasing a wandering itch elsewhere!

Is deceptively simple rule: if the fucker roars dramatically at the sky, recall arse scratch squadron - all hands on deck!

View attachment 9726
Bonus threat alert if screen goes blurry, stretched outward, bloomed and/or shaky during said roar.

Or you can just pause the game to scratch where ever. That works too.

BTW, an El Gigante roaring after damaging him a lot lets you know you're making progress. Especially when performing a Action Command stun.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Or, you know, 1,300 hours could be just an hour a day. If you play for three and a half years…

Even better, play 5 minutes a day, then it will last you about 43 years, never need to buy another game again!

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Or you can just pause the game to scratch where ever. That works too.

BTW, an El Gigante roaring after damaging him a lot lets you know you're making progress. Especially when performing a Action Command stun.

Yeah pause is usually the recommended tactic - if only the Devs agreed with it too. Multiple single-player games recently either don't allow pause during cutscene, or removes the pause function in game entirely! *cough* Lies of Pies doesn't even have multiplayer, why you do this Lies of Pies? Why?? *non-covid cough* Also sometimes a quickie scratch is needed, you know? (though I only added the RE4 screenshot as an example of the roar, not of the anti-ass scratch games, lol)

 

[BrawlMan]

Multiple single-player games recently either don't allow pause during cutscene, or removes the pause function in game entirely!

Really?
Now you're already more than familiar enough that I don't play too many AAA single player games, but I find this shocking. Not even the first Hitman reboot removed the pause function. That game has always online servers for a single player game!

Dead Space Remake, Armored Core 6, and RE4R have allows you to pause either cut-scenes, walking sections, or never removed at all.

*cough* Lies of Pies doesn't even have multiplayer, why you do this Lies of Pies? Why?? *non-covid cough*

IMMERZIAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!.

 

[Worgen]

Played the demo of Phantom Fury, the sequel to Ion Fury that tries to evoke the 2001 Duke Forever trailer/early 2000s fps vibe rather than the Duke 3D/mid 90s build engine style the original had.

Ooof, that was not great. It looks the part. It does that right. Mostly. It's more a "what you remember 00s shooters looked like", that what they actually looked like. For some reason they went with a unfiltered pixelated texture look, similar to the System Shock remake, even tho that wasn't really a thing anymore by the early 2000s. But the real problem is the shooting. It's bad. Enemies are spongy, barely react to being shot, and have a tendency to just bumrush you. There's no hit markers, so you often have no idea where you're being shot from. Weak weapon design, but in terms of models, vfx and sfx. Also, for some reason they decided to demo with a train level, which I feel is not the type of level you'd want to show off. Got a physics puzzle tho. A really bad one.

Yea, not a good first impression.

Pretty much exactly my thoughts, which sucks since I was pretty stoked for it. At least the DLC for Ion Fury comes out tomorrow.

 

[Worgen]

Tried out some realms deep demos. As I said above, Phantom Fury... well, thats a shame.

The best demo was The Last Exterminator. It really reminds me of Duke Nukem in how it plays and how much you can interact with the world. You play as the last exterminator, shooting anthro bugs, mainly roaches. It just feels so good to play if you like the old school feeling.

Gunhead was kinda neat, its a fps version of Cryptark which was a side scrolling roguelike from years ago where you pilot a mech around a ship wreck, to take out systems till you can destroy the core, then rinse and repeat, this is just the fps version, feels pretty good.

Forgive me Father 2. I enjoyed the first game, the second seems ok, but they really really need an fov slider, cause... well, lets just say that this is one of the first fps games that made me stop playing because of discomfort.

Breachway. A card game with spaceships, I like the look of it and enemies explode nicely. I'm still not sure about it though, it works, but... I don't know. Something feels off, but off in a way that can be made to work.

 

[BrawlMan]

RE4R Mercenaries - I got Leon S++ on Village stage.

 

[wings012]

Been playing Everspace 2. Noticed it was on Gamepass and thought - they this looks like a more fleshed out version of the Starfield spaceship parts! It is in some ways, but in other ways not really. It's kinda like spaceship combat Diablo. Though only in terms of the randomized loot.

It's fun for a while and there's some linear story thing going on. Lots of randomized encounters for you to piss about in, which are similar to Bethesda's radiant quests. Spaceship customization isn't that interesting - you buy a ship of a certain class and just equip parts that alter parameters and swap out weapons. Basically the ship is the 'class', and the rest is just 'gear'. You can't really rip out its bits and change it dramatically.

It's just an okay game and I'm not sure if I want to finish it. Some of the mission design is fairly obnoxious. Go here, find the thing. Oh no, there's something blocking it. You better find a way to get past it! Which involves flying around aimlessly in 0G 360 degrees on a scavenger hunt to shoot a button, find a thing to insert into a slot, find a thing to insert into a slot with a time limit.... this is more obnoxious than Starfield's lockpicking.

The space combat is serviceable but kinda nyeh. It doesn't really do full on flight controls like in Ace Combat, you can kinda do a bit of wobbly on screen aiming and shoot off center of your ship. Only by aiming way off center does your ship turn towards the crosshair. Which makes trying to play it like I would a flight sim a bit awkward. There might be a way to jig the controls to make it more flight-simmy but I'm not sure if I want to play it like that anyway. Seems easier to just mouse aim.

I feel like it would've been better as a shorter tighter experience, but it's kinda that shorter tighter experience that has a lot of random generation and tiered progression jammed in to pad it the fuck out.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'm playing Grimlord, which is basically a VR Soulslike. All the aggravation of the genre, plus clumsy inventory management, wonky obstacle detection when swinging weapons (which thankfully the enemies are also constrained by), and a mechanic where you drop your weapon if you block more than twice in a short period of time.

 

[Worgen]

Been playing a lot of shoot em ups again. Alltynex Second, Kamui, and RefleX. All made by a guy named SITER SKAIN, who is amazing at making shoot em ups. They are hard but they give you the tools needed to succeed. Alltynex lets you enter a sword form that does a ton of damage and also destroys enemy bullets, Kamui lets you fire a big fuck you laser that also destroys enemy bullets, Reflex gives you a shield that blocks everything but rockets and running into an enemy and it also reflects some enemy bullets. They are all amazing shooters with a fantastic sense of speed and satisfaction in destroying enemies and amazing sound tracks.

Also tried a couple more demos. This time for a couple gzdoom shooters. The first was Project Absentia, its got a... distinct art style, but also a really good sense of movement. Its neat.
The second is Relentless Frontier and its really awesome, the combat is super fun, the art is great, enemies are really satisfying to kill and great weapons. Really its only issue is massive levels and all that that entails. But its really good and has a great boss fight. Not to mention a really interesting mechanic called omnigel where you get a store of this gel stuff that you can turn into health, armor or ammo on the fly. A very interesting resource mechanic for a fast paced shooter.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Randomly, a friend of mine on Discord started streaming Super Mario RPG, and it occurred to me that despite my very heavy-handed opinions on the game, I'd never actually played it all the way through before. So, to do something different from my friend, I ended up playing the Japanese version, and just finished it.

Honestly, it was easier when I could just say 'it's not as good as what came after it'. My feelings on the game are kinda complicated to put into words now. While I still think it's got issues as an adaptation of Mario, and I've found some new issues with it as both an RPG and a platformer, it's still good enough to be worth playing despite that, and because it's simultaneously so different to what came after it, and similar enough that you can see how those games ended up where they did, iterating on Super Mario RPG's ideas and making them even better. It does well to stand on its own merits, and I don't think that I wasted my time playing it.

But even now that I can say that, it's still outdone by its successor in pretty much every way. People talk about 'sanding off edges' like it's a bad thing, but that's basically what Paper Mario did for Super Mario RPG: refining the jank in the platforming, battle mechanics, and story to a much higher level. And after all, a sequel's supposed to improve on its predecessor, right? It's a good thing that people can learn from old games to make better new ones.

Guess that's all the more reason to play those old games and learn those old lessons, what they did and what they didn't or couldn't do right.

 

[BrawlMan]

People talk about 'sanding off edges' like it's a bad thing.

In the video games sphere, you can blame that on the caustic critics and every wannabe AVGN from the late 2000s and early 2010s. Nostalgia Goggles can be a pain in the ass too. There were too many people going on about the whole, "I grew up on this/mai childhood!"nonsense. As if that automatically makes your favorite game or beloved classic flawless.

 

[laggyteabag]

I've dropped Divinity: Original Sin after the first act. I had stopped playing it for a little while, and now I have just realised that I can't really be bothered to pick it up again.

I did enjoy the first act, with the town surrounded by the undead that I had to slowly liberate, but after I finished Act 1, I realised that I wasn't invested enough in the overarching plot, or any of the companions that I was with, to spend another few dozen hours in the game.

The combat is really enjoyable, but DOS2 does it better, and with a more interesting story, and more interesting characters. It has in a way made DOS1 completely obsolete, so I might as well just replay that at some point.

So in the meantime, I've decided to revisit the Borderlands 3 DLCs. I had originally played the main game, the first DLC, and the first half of the second DLC, all back to back, but then I just realised that I had reached my limit, and needed a break. Now im finishing off the game, so I can finally uninstall it from my Steam Deck, and free up 130+ GB.

Afterwards, im going to play Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time. Im sure i'll definitely have opinions on that monster!