What are you currently playing?

[NerfedFalcon]

-snip-

Allow me to be clear on the problem regarding Dark Souls, since I'm past the edit time limit.

I have quite a few spoilers for that game already, but only in terms of the story. I don't know much about the gameplay or the world's layout, and that was fine. Exploring the world and discovering its secrets was something that I really liked about the game. Then you jumped in and told me what to do, without even putting it in a spoiler block.

Now that I've been told where to go, any time I spend searching Darkroot Garden will feel wasted, since it's not where I 'need to start working my way down' to. On the other hand, if I search the Undead Burg, then I'm doing that on your initiative and not my own, which feels like a hollow victory where I took a shortcut and gained nothing.

I was musing on the fact that I didn't know exactly where to go, but had a lead on it. I was not asking for help.
"It's sad that you don't know the difference."

To be honest, I don't even feel like playing anymore.

 

[Hawki]

Wow. I didn't even remember that part. Compared to that, "Prisoners use nothing without supervision, not even a pencil" seems like good writing.

So, bear in mind that I've only seen Ace Combat through cutscenes/playthroughs for the most part, but from what I've seen, I'll say this - in comparison to the others, Assault Horizon might not have a good plot, but it does have good storytelling. And yes, while the terms are often used as synonyms, they're actually distinct, at least under the Five Aspects of Story paradigm.

The reason I say this is that while Assault Horizon does have a simple plot with a dearth of theme, it does present its plot quite well. It has prominent, albeit stock characters, a good sense of flow, and the plot unfolds at a steady pace. In contrast, I've noticed that numerous Strangereal AC games rely on monologues to present their stories, with characters passively narrating events. This isn't generally considered to be good storytelling, and arguably violates the "show, don't tell" rule. Even the fanbase seems to recognise this to some extent, with "go fly with the angels" being the equivalent of Sonic's "find the computer room," and AC7's story criticized for not lining up with what's going on in the game until towards the end.

Granted, not really the best person to comment on this, but it's just what I've noticed.

 

[Dalisclock]

Allow me to be clear on the problem regarding Dark Souls, since I'm past the edit time limit.

I have quite a few spoilers for that game already, but only in terms of the story. I don't know much about the gameplay or the world's layout, and that was fine. Exploring the world and discovering its secrets was something that I really liked about the game. Then you jumped in and told me what to do, without even putting it in a spoiler block.

Now that I've been told where to go, any time I spend searching Darkroot Garden will feel wasted, since it's not where I 'need to start working my way down' to. On the other hand, if I search the Undead Burg, then I'm doing that on your initiative and not my own, which feels like a hollow victory where I took a shortcut and gained nothing.

I was musing on the fact that I didn't know exactly where to go, but had a lead on it. I was not asking for help.
"It's sad that you don't know the difference."

To be honest, I don't even feel like playing anymore.

I apologize. I read your post and interpreted it as a request. That was my mistake.

I also didn't realize you would consider "head down, start here" as a spoiler. If I ruined the game for you, I'm sorry.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Started playing Halo: The Master Chief collection with some friends.

Holy shit the game did not run well. I don't know if my friend's internet connection couldn't handle being host, or if it was an issue with my connection but the game was barely playable for me. Constant stuttering and frame drops. Everyone else in the lobby didn't have it as bad as I did, but they did confirm that the game was much less responsive than normal and with higher input lag.

Loaded it up myself a little later and the game was running buttery smooth (as it should, my new graphics card should be absolutely destroying a game that was out on the xbox 360).

Is the peer to peer network code in this game borked?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I apologize. I read your post and interpreted it as a request. That was my mistake.

I also didn't realize you would consider "head down, start here" as a spoiler. If I ruined the game for you, I'm sorry.

...Apology accepted. I think I've gotten over it a little now, so I'm sorry for reacting so badly as well.

 

[Dalisclock]

...Apology accepted. I think I've gotten over it a little now, so I'm sorry for reacting so badly as well.

Is okay. I think we're all a bit stressed right now.

*Closes blinds, turns off TV, deactivates facebook*

 

[Chimpzy]

There's nothing on my radar til july, so I'm working the backlog. Only 39 left, like 20 of them 40+ hour rpgs. Sigh, yaaaaaaaaay. But no rest for the wicked, so get to it, stupid ape. But I'm lazy and can't decide. The obvious solution is then to let you lot do it. 5 systems, 5 games. Whatever is picked most, I will play start to finish:

• Front Mission 3 (PS1)
• Suikoden V (PS2)
• Skies of Arcadia: Legends (GCN)
• Anachronox (PC)
• The Last Story (Wii)

 

[Catfood220]

There's nothing on my radar til july, so I'm working the backlog. Only 39 left, like 20 of them 40+ hour rpgs. Sigh, yaaaaaaaaay. But no rest for the wicked, so get to it, stupid ape. But I'm lazy and can't decide. The obvious solution is then to let you lot do it. 5 systems, 5 games. Whatever is picked most, I will play start to finish:

• Front Mission 3 (PS1)
• Suikoden V (PS2)
• Skies of Arcadia: Legends (GCN)
• Anachronox (PC)
• The Last Story (Wii)

Skies of Arcadia: Legends. It has probably not aged as well as my nostalgia has. It was already pretty dated when I played it, but its a good fun. Be prepared for a lot of random encounters though, Aika's "Lamda Burst" move will become your best friend.

 

[SilentPony]

Started playing Halo: The Master Chief collection with some friends.

Holy shit the game did not run well. I don't know if my friend's internet connection couldn't handle being host, or if it was an issue with my connection but the game was barely playable for me. Constant stuttering and frame drops. Everyone else in the lobby didn't have it as bad as I did, but they did confirm that the game was much less responsive than normal and with higher input lag.

Loaded it up myself a little later and the game was running buttery smooth (as it should, my new graphics card should be absolutely destroying a game that was out on the xbox 360).

Is the peer to peer network code in this game borked?

From what ive been seeing the remastered collections are an absolute fluster cluck. Glitches and bugs from the original games are still in it, the Halo games haven't aged well at all, and the co-op/versus games crash more often than they stay.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

From what ive been seeing the remastered collections are an absolute fluster cluck. Glitches and bugs from the original games are still in it, the Halo games haven't aged well at all, and the co-op/versus games crash more often than they stay.

I fixed it.

The fix was really stupid. Apparently using Logitech G-Hub somehow interferes with Halo MC collection, but it was only happening when I played coop online. I have no idea how that glitch makes any sense.

I still think the Halo games hold up fairly well. They've always been fun, and I'm pretty excited to get to go through Halo 1 in 4 player coop which didn't used to exist.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I apologize. I read your post and interpreted it as a request. That was my mistake.

I also didn't realize you would consider "head down, start here" as a spoiler. If I ruined the game for you, I'm sorry.

You ruined the game for me too. And I've already completed it 4 times.

 

[meiam]

There's nothing on my radar til july, so I'm working the backlog. Only 39 left, like 20 of them 40+ hour rpgs. Sigh, yaaaaaaaaay. But no rest for the wicked, so get to it, stupid ape. But I'm lazy and can't decide. The obvious solution is then to let you lot do it. 5 systems, 5 games. Whatever is picked most, I will play start to finish:

• Front Mission 3 (PS1)
• Suikoden V (PS2)
• Skies of Arcadia: Legends (GCN)
• Anachronox (PC)
• The Last Story (Wii)

Of the one I played.

FM3 is kinda interesting. All the FM seems to work with the "one step forward, one step backward" system. FM3 has really strong world building, you can go on the in game internet and there's a very large number of website with plenty of cool details. You can also play the game twice from two different perspective to get a better idea of the motive/action of all actor involved. Sadly the actual story isn't that interesting and the main character is kinda of a huge jerk who never evolve (not to mention he as a creepy sister complex). Tactical fight are pretty short with the mech customization not being that interesting, there's an interesting system where you can steal enemy mech to use their part, but it's very rare that you fight enemy that use mech you can't already buy so you mostly just use the system to get additional money.

Suikoden 5, the return of true suikoden after the massive disappointment that was 4. It's good but doesn't reach the height of 2/3, the gameplay system hasn't evolve much and it's starting to show it's age. Storywise there's a couple of really interesting hook, but sadly the dialogue are very anime-ish in all the worse way (this game also has a creepy brother x sister thing going on, except here it's a liitle sister being super attached to her brother).

Skies of arcadia, (that'd be my choice tbh). Nothing special but it's a game that's more than the sum of it's part, everything works pretty well together, the world and character are pretty interesting, game play is decent (a bit on the easy side iirc).

The last story... I can't say much because I dropped the game pretty quickly and never went back. It just doesn't really do anything to differentiate itself except the weird control scheme which doesn't bring anything.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

From what ive been seeing the remastered collections are an absolute fluster cluck. Glitches and bugs from the original games are still in it, the Halo games haven't aged well at all, and the co-op/versus games crash more often than they stay.

Are you implying that now that the novelty has worn off, they might’ve never really been as good as they were originally thought to be?


On topic, and one I’ve heard so much about, finally squared off with Dark Eater Midir for myself. The initial encounter is a neat little tease of what’s to come and yeah, he ain’t playin. He’s a bit of a showboater to start, and tries to intimidate with a lot of huffing, puffing, and dragony posturings, but then it seems to be all about gaining and holding a superior position, which is still dangerous as all hell.

I’ll have to wait until I have more sleep to go back to him I think.

 

[Kae]

Still going on Fallout: New Vegas, currently on Lonesome Road while severely under-leveled (Suggests 25 I'm like 15), very interesting dialogue, I'm greatly enjoying Ulyses and am so far overall happy with my decision to play this game, I do have a few issues, mainly that with the instability of the game even when playing Vanilla w/only the unofficial patch, no crash & anti-stutter and I will admit that I lost a lot enthusiasm when I lost my first save due to not keeping any backup saves and getting stuck in the situation where the game auto-saved, but I can say I learned my lesson after that.

In any case I'm having a good time with a video-game that's also capturing my imagination, so that hasn't happened in a really long time so I can say I'm quite happy, at the same time it does feel a bit dumb, it seems it happens every time I get into a game where Chris Avellone is the lead writer so I should probably just play all of them.

 

[laggyteabag]

Got onto Splinter Cell Blacklist, which is another game that I have owned for a while, and tried to get into a couple of times, but ended up dropping it for one reason or another.

Compared to Conviction, this game is night and day. Conviction basically railroaded you into combat 99% of the time, whereas this game really encourages stealth, but lets you go on a killing spree if you want to (in some missions).

Gameplay wise, it just feels much smoother, and a lot more like what I would expect from a modern 3rd person shooter. The story is much more coherant, too.

Id say it is pretty solid, overall. I can't say whether or not it is a faithful Splinter Cell game, but I do know that it is fun for what it is.

 

[stroopwafel]

Got onto Splinter Cell Blacklist, which is another game that I have owned for a while, and tried to get into a couple of times, but ended up dropping it for one reason or another.

Compared to Conviction, this game is night and day. Conviction basically railroaded you into combat 99% of the time, whereas this game really encourages stealth, but lets you go on a killing spree if you want to (in some missions).

Gameplay wise, it just feels much smoother, and a lot more like what I would expect from a modern 3rd person shooter. The story is much more coherant, too.

Id say it is pretty solid, overall. I can't say whether or not it is a faithful Splinter Cell game, but I do know that it is fun for what it is.

Yep, loved that game when it came out. It's a slick stealth thriller that is just really enjoyable. Story was also better than I expected. ''A little less no and a little more go.''

 

[Chimpzy]

Skies of Arcadia: Legends. It has probably not aged as well as my nostalgia has. It was already pretty dated when I played it, but its a good fun. Be prepared for a lot of random encounters though, Aika's "Lamda Burst" move will become your best friend.

Skies of arcadia, (that'd be my choice tbh). Nothing special but it's a game that's more than the sum of it's part, everything works pretty well together, the world and character are pretty interesting, game play is decent (a bit on the easy side iirc).

Guess I'm off to become a sky pirate then. Thanks for enabling my laziness ... suckers! Runs off Zoidberg style

 

[laggyteabag]

Finished Splinter Cell Blacklist, and now im playing Ghost Recon Future Soldier.

The gunplay holds up really well, animations are well done, and the atmosphere is really well done. It is also oddly immersive for a third person game. Other than that, I dont have too much positive to say about it.

Its not a bad game, sure, but there isnt exactly anything that blows me away. The PC port itself is pretty miserable, too. 4K on a 1080TI/i5 9600K runs like ass if you play on DX11, and you cant change graphics settings anywhere but the main menu, so tweaking settings was a bit tedious. Textures are also really low quality, and the cutscenes look really bad, with the low FMV resolution, drab colour grading, and the chromatic aberration. Also, if you turn off subtitles, the subtitle background still appears, and the game still sometimes shows controller prompts, despite playing on M&K, without a pad plugged in.

Also, whilst the setpieces (visually) are really well done, it can definitely feel like a rail shooter at times, when you can only move forward, and you cannot aim in certain directions. Not to mention that the game also suffers from late 00's - early 10's "wait for your AI partners to open the door" linear game syndrome.

Its alright. I can imagine that it'll be pretty short, and it'll be another completed game to add to the list for 2020.

 

[Chimpzy]

So at the behest of Catfood220 and Meiam, I've started playing Skies of Arcadia: Legends. Just finished what I guess is the first dungeon. Encounter rate is pretty high, but not overly so. Feels par for the course for an old school jrpg tho. It comes off sort of archaic as a whole, but not in a bad way. It's kind of nice to play something simple. Also, you know, sky pirates.

another completed game to add to the list for 2020.

Looks like you still have your work cut out for you tho. Makes me feel a little better that mine is "only" double digits. Could be worse tho, seen 1000+ game backlogs...

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

What’s unfortunate is that like movies and books, there is only so much time in life for these things, and there will likely never be enough of it to experience everything one would like to. So, I suppose the motto here would be...choose wisely.