What are you currently playing?

Chupathingy

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Finished Warriors: Legends of Troy. It was decent overall, but with plenty of room for improvement, especially in regards to the battles and variety between character movesets. Shame the game did so poorly critically/commercially and Koei Canada was closed down 'cause I would love to see some more western musou games (not necessarily made by westerners, but just western settings).
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Been trying out a bunch of demos on Steam since Next Fest is going on and that means a ton of demos. So far the best are Hunt the Night, Fallen Aces, Inscryption, Instruments of Destruction and Supplice.
 

BrawlMan

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Oneechanbara Origin. All my thoughts are in the thread for the game.

 

Silvanus

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Currently practicing for the Pantheon of Hallownest. What an absolutely insane ask...

Beat Sisters of Battle first try, so I don't think they'll pose a problem in the Pantheon. And I can kill Nightmare King Grimm... maybe once out of every three tries. Gonna need to practice him more.

Only beaten Pure Vessel once, after about 20 deaths. Lots of practice needed there.

Am I going to cry?
 
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So I finished the campaign for Oneechanbara Origin. A total of 25 missions. Pretty good, but a lot of the levels are not that interesting or barren. Not much memorable other than you'll be in the sewers at the end of each half. The only difference is the second time, it's filled with blood and has a more cerebral look. Boss fights are good for the most part, but fighting towering enemies are not that fun. The human sized opponents are the highlights. I noticed sometimes parrying does not work, even when the animation plays. It does not happen that often, but it is annoying when you did a perfect parry and did not count for some reason. I found dodging more useful a majority of the time and more fun.

Also, this game has one of the BEST! VILLAIN DEATHS! EVER! You're sorta ally, Rei, kills the big bad, Eva for you after beating the latter. Rei comes out of nowhere, drives her hand through Eva's chest, rips out the biatch's heart, tosses her, and shoots her in the head while flying in the air, and drops dead in to a pool of water. That head shot just added extra insult to injury. I shit you not!

 
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Silvanus

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Currently practicing for the Pantheon of Hallownest. What an absolutely insane ask...

Beat Sisters of Battle first try, so I don't think they'll pose a problem in the Pantheon. And I can kill Nightmare King Grimm... maybe once out of every three tries. Gonna need to practice him more.

Only beaten Pure Vessel once, after about 20 deaths. Lots of practice needed there.

Am I going to cry?
Update: with the help of a 4-pack of Guinness and the supportive presence of a mate, I beat the Pantheon of the Knight, and got through 37 of the 41 bosses in the Pantheon of Hallownest. My hand feels numb and its 1am in the morning.
 

Drathnoxis

Became a mass murderer for your sake
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Finally got around to starting Driver: San Francisco and, I gotta say, it holds up to all the praise Yahtzee heaped on it during his review so far. It's funny and has a light tone that keeps me smiling through all the side missions, the gameplay is a completely unique take on driving games, and all the character banter is great! I'm not too far into the game yet, so I hope it holds up until the end.
 
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Dalisclock

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UnMetal.

I'm about half way through(glacing at a guide) and I'm enjoying it. It takes a little while to take off but it's very much a love letter to the early Metal Gear games(notably the NES/MSX 2d ones) without being an explicit rip-off(Okay, it's very obviously supposed to be Metal Gear but without IP rights but it's also firmly a parody).

Basically, Jesse Fox is framed for a crime he didn't commit(and is arrested by soldiers who say "We're arresting you for a crime you didn't commit" in the intro) and is tossed in jail in a military base...somewhere. He escapes and the apparent goal of the game is to escape from the enemy but also find out of about the mysterious "Project Jericho(or Jerico, as the game spells it)". It's divided into linear stages, and once you complete one you can't return to an earlier one that I can tell) but you get a fair bit of leeway to explore within those stages and find ways to bypass obstacles and deal with guards.

It works fairly well and the game is decent about hinting at how to deal with certain obstacles(via radio calls ala Metal Gear) or just giving you a hint when you die(and you will die). There's a fair bit of scrounging for items to bypass traps and obstacles, and weapons to allow you to deal with enemies(like you need a pistol to deal with at least one boss you encounter). In one section you need a flamethrower but because the flamethrower has been repaired in the field with stuff you've found, it overheats very quickly so you can't just spray forever and have to use it in short bursts to allow it to cool. Overheating it causes it to explode and instant kill you. And this becomes really interesting when you fight a boss with it later because want to take advantage of when the boss is vulnerable to fry it, but you also don't want to kill yourself with the flamethrower and the boss also summons rat swarms you also need to use the flamethrower to burn. Also, it doesn't seem like you can leave a stage without getting the required items to proceed later on but you can miss some optional ones(like more bullet capacity or a health boost).

There's a boss or two per level and most of them require different tactics to deal with. Luckily when you die you restart from just before to began the boss fight so you aren't trapped by it,and you can skip the dialogue that plays out each time you start a battle.

Probably the most interesting thing the game does is set it up as Jesse telling the story to an interrogator(and also his girlfriend at a presumably later date, which is weird) and there's a sense that there's a (very) unreliable narrator at work here. Since Jesse is telling the story, certain things won't appear on screen until he explicitly mentions them and in other bits, he'll be asked a question about a certain thing that happens and the player is given a choice what he says, which changes what happens on screen. Sometimes this can make the encounter easier or harder depending on how you answer, sometimes it's just flavor text. The game knows you'll notice this eventually and will eventually fuck with you with it. For example, one boss is a trash squid thing that initially doesn't attack. After you damage it enough, you're asked if it had tentacles and are given a choice of 3 numbers(2, 4 and 6)Choosing 6 means the monster has 6 tentacles and is actually easier to fight, while choosing 2 means it has 2 DOZEN tentacles and thus much harder. I found that clever if not slightly annoying.

Jesse also comes across as a bit thick a times, which makes you wonder just how much of this is real, among other things. At one point he finds a truck to hopefully escape with, and looks at the engine to see if it works. He then says "I realized I couldn't use it. It had a diesel engine and using it would pollute the air, so I'd have to find another transport method". I appreciate jesse's concern about the environment but it does feel like a convenient excuse why he couldn't just escape right then and there(and he'll eventually try to stow away in the back of a different truck, only to be thwarted in his attempt). Jesse is doing a decent Solid Snake impression and while the sound and art is a little amateurish, it's an indie game and I'm willing to cut it slack because it's consistently amusing(though how funny you find the jokes is totally subjective). It also seems to get what made Metal Gear fun on a gameplay level and plays to that, but doesn't attempt to replicate Kojimas long winded feelings about...well, lots of things. This is probably for the best because trying to parody Kojima there, would be....I'm not even sure you could do it.

Added:

I'm getting closer to the end and it's definitely hit its stride. The plot still isn't particularly good but it's serviceable. Tell me, children, what do you think the core component of the Bad Guy's evil plan is? Spoiler: It's a Nuke. It's always a nuke. And for what this is making fun of, that's totally fine to drive the action. I'm waiting to see if there's a mech waiting at the end of this to go with the aforementioned nukes.

I'm kinda digging some of nods to Metal Gear, including one bit where a guard says "I feel Asleep", which prompts Jesse to call out "It's 'I feel sleepy!' " to which the guard corrects himself and then falls asleep. There's also a amusing bit where you walk into a room, hidden from view, where 3 guards are all playing DnD on duty and when they hear you, they think it's their boss coming to check on them and all hide in Cardboard boxes. Cheeky.

The Boss fights do prove to be varied and interesting, all involving a puzzle of figuring out the proper way to fight them. Ironically none of them take that many hits to take down and done correctly each boss fight can be over in 2 or 3 minutes, but that's assuming you're doing things right and likely you'll die a couple times figuring that out. But since the autosave is always just before you initiate the boss fight(so you're not trapped in a death loop) you can easily either go back to get more supplies or can easily pick up from the beginning and try the fight again fresh to get it right this time. There's also an amusing bit where you get into a "boss" fight with a nasty drill sergent where you're picking the right lines of dialogue to defeat him(but if you pick the wrong ones you die) in a rather weird manner. It's trial and error but it's not that crazy and being able to skip dialogue you've already heard makes the repeat rounds go faster. The punchline is that whoever says they're from Texas loses the fight, because only two things come out to Texas.....Propane Accessories and Assholes

It also has one of the more interesting save/quicksave methods I've seen. Aside from Autosaves, which happen at key parts of the game, you save manually by going to a Restroom/WC and using the urinal. You can also find little portable potties that go in your inventory, and those act as quicksaves. However, you can only save when you're in a safe spot and when using a little porta-potty, it fills up with pee and has to be dumped in a WC before you can use it again, and if you quit before dumping them, you lose them apparently. So that's interesting.
 
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BrawlMan

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More Oneechanbara Origin. I played a little bit of infinite survivor mode. I got to level 25 and then decided to kill myself off, because it was getting late and I need to go to bed. I got a whole bunch of experience and upgrade points out of it, so I'm not complaining. I maxed out on attack power for Aya and Saki. I still have to level up Rei but I'm going to wait on her. Out of the three, I do like Saki the most. She fights like a young woman with nothing held back...admirable. then again, she was one of my favorite to play in the previous game, Z-II: Chaos. Also, there's just something so satisfying about suplexing zombies or power bombing them.
 

meiam

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Started Genshin impact after a friend got into it. It's good... when the gacha mechanic are kept at bay. Large world full of secret, those aren't show on the map so you actually have to explore to find stuff. Loot is resonably useful since you can use the piece you don't need to level up the piece you do use. Combat is okay, its hard to judge for now because it's very easy to be either under or over leveled. But damn those gacha/F2P mechanic are annoying, there's like 10 different currencies and I don't plan on spending any money so I'm trying to figure out how to spend the currency I do get to maximize getting stuff that I cannot get playing normally but its hard to figure out what that is. Like, should I buy new character or will I naturally get those playing the game story? What about legendary weapon/accessory? If I do buy those, will they become obsolete as I level up? Are higher rarity character better than others or are they all viable?
 
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Started Genshin impact after a friend got into it. It's good... when the gacha mechanic are kept at bay. Large world full of secret, those aren't show on the map so you actually have to explore to find stuff. Loot is resonably useful since you can use the piece you don't need to level up the piece you do use. Combat is okay, its hard to judge for now because it's very easy to be either under or over leveled. But damn those gacha/F2P mechanic are annoying, there's like 10 different currencies and I don't plan on spending any money so I'm trying to figure out how to spend the currency I do get to maximize getting stuff that I cannot get playing normally but its hard to figure out what that is. Like, should I buy new character or will I naturally get those playing the game story? What about legendary weapon/accessory? If I do buy those, will they become obsolete as I level up? Are higher rarity character better than others or are they all viable?
The best option is to not play and find something better. If I want to play a hack and slash with a bunch of anime waifus, there are over a dozen thousand better options.
 
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NerfedFalcon

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Started Genshin impact after a friend got into it. It's good... when the gacha mechanic are kept at bay. Large world full of secret, those aren't show on the map so you actually have to explore to find stuff. Loot is resonably useful since you can use the piece you don't need to level up the piece you do use. Combat is okay, its hard to judge for now because it's very easy to be either under or over leveled. But damn those gacha/F2P mechanic are annoying, there's like 10 different currencies and I don't plan on spending any money so I'm trying to figure out how to spend the currency I do get to maximize getting stuff that I cannot get playing normally but its hard to figure out what that is. Like, should I buy new character or will I naturally get those playing the game story? What about legendary weapon/accessory? If I do buy those, will they become obsolete as I level up? Are higher rarity character better than others or are they all viable?
Allow me to answer all of those questions one by one from the perspective of someone who actively plays the game and is currently caught up on the MSQ:

You'll receive six characters from natural story progression. After that, you'll need to use the gacha to get new characters. Every 10th pull is guaranteed to have a 4-star character or weapon; I recommend only spending your Primogems on the current banner, since there's some special mechanics there that make it easier to get new characters and those are more useful at first than new weapons. If you want, I can explain in more detail later, but for now just keep in mind that for loose Primogems, always go for the timed character banner.

You can't 'buy' weapons except for a specific set that can be forged using special items; you can buy a few 'billets' of each type from spending sigils in each city, and receive them from certain quests, but you mainly earn them from weekly bosses. All of the forged weapons are 4-star quality. Side note: Don't level up 1- or 2-star weapons ever, and equip your characters with 3- or 4-star weapons as soon as you can; the game tends to give you a lot of 3-star weapons just from exploration, so it's easy to outfit someone with a weapon that fits and raise its Refinement to boost the special ability. Make sure to carefully read each character's Talent list to get an idea of which substat and bonus works best.

As a general rule, a 4-star weapon with either a substat or ability that fits the wielder is better than a 3-star with both, but a 3 with both beats a 4 with neither. You'll need to use your own judgement to figure out the best way to go, or look up other people's builds on the Internet. Search for 'f2p' builds specifically to limit it to 3-star and forged weapons. You also won't ever need a 5-star weapon to get things done; 4s and synergistic 3s are plenty.

You can't 'buy' artefacts. You get them from opening chests, defeating 'elite' enemies (the ones that drop green monster parts), or later on from clearing artefact domains. Again, 1 and 2 star artefacts are only useful for giving EXP to better ones, and eventually you'll move past 3s as well. Don't worry about set bonuses for now; single strong artefacts will give you more benefit than sets.

While 5-star characters are generally a bit stronger than 4s, it's not like the difference between 4- and 5-star weapons, and most of the 4-star characters still have their own niche and playstyle that makes them both fun to play and a valuable member of a team. If you've ever played a Marvel vs Capcom game, it's like having a character who's more useful as a support call than as an actual fighter. Expanding your roster will improve your output by giving you options for more different situations, but even (most) of the free characters can still be useful and strong, and even Amber is valuable for exploration long after she's obsolete in battle.

I hope all of that helps, if you decide to keep playing. Genshin does have a great combat system, world and story, but I understand if certain elements of it put you off. I bounced off of it on my first attempt too.
 
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Dalisclock

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The best option is to not play and find something better. If I want to play a hack and slash with a bunch of anime waifus, there are over a dozen thousand better options.
For some reason Nier: Automata comes immediately to mind. Hell, Nier too probably but I haven't played it, just watched a LP a couple years back.
 
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BrawlMan

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For some reason Nier: Automata comes immediately to mind.
  • Onechanbara
  • Senran Kagura
  • Lollipop Chainsaw
  • Dynasty, Samurai, and Hyrule Warriors and Age of Calamity. Nearly anything from Koeo Tecmo and Omega Force.
  • Ninja Gaiden sequels and their expansions.
  • Project Eve and Project DT - Coming out next year.
  • Code of Princess - Nearly half the characters are waifus.
  • Guardian Heroes
  • Viewtiful Joe 2 - Though Silvia is the first unlockable secret character after beating the game on Adults mode in the first game.
I can go on forever.
 
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meiam

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The best option is to not play and find something better. If I want to play a hack and slash with a bunch of anime waifus, there are over a dozen thousand better options.
I don't even really see it as hack and slash, it's more about the exploration which is (as far as I'm aware) entirely free and not gated behind gacha. It's probably mostly cause I don't have a switch so can't play BOTW.

So the current wish thing, there's 4 character on the banner, but I'm assuming I can also pull other stuff (weapons, other characters) from it or is it just those 4 character? Also, the guarantee after 10 pull, is that if you do 10 pull at once, or can you do them individually? For character, Ember and the ice/sword guy you get have really useful passive (20% reduction to stamina and movement speed buff), are those ever going to be obtainable from other source, cause otherwise I don't see myself moving away from them (even though Ember kinda suck).
 

BrawlMan

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I don't even really see it as hack and slash, it's more about the exploration which is (as far as I'm aware) entirely free and not gated behind gacha. It's probably mostly cause I don't have a switch so can't play BOTW.
While it's clear the game is a clone of BOTW, it still has hack n slash elements.

You have this girl doing Vergil shit.

Before anyone starts, I know what it's called.

 

XsjadoBlayde

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Impressions of current PSN quasi-free monthly games;

Hell, Go to Hell? We're in Hell? War is Hell? Something to do with hell anyway
It's a squintier, uglier, less fun version of Battlefield WWII. I would've held out till the end of the first match before forming any opinions, but it never seemed to end, and the gap between me and the closing maw of sobriety was quickly disappearing, so I just quit. Not out of rage, but a total lack of excitement combined with confusion and eye strain from the horrid menu design alongside murky player models being so difficult to distinguish from the murky environment before they snipe you out of existence every time. I tried to extract some dopamine from this, even a single drop would be enough like my morning adrenochrome harvest, but no... it provided not even the minimal distraction required to avoid defaulting brain power to suicidal fantasies yet again.

[Insert famous golfer name here] PGA Golf 21
Can we all just agree right now that traditional/stereotypical golf clothing (not using the word "fashion") is the absolute worst of all sports? The epitome of upper-middle class conservative white christian inoffensive blandness completely void of even the slightest hint of self-expression.
Not the first thought that comes to mind when musing golf game priories, I know. But this game adheres very strictly to the clothing style, so if you are hoping to have something to look forward to spend on with all those hard-earned videogame cyber-bucks, well you best put on your shit-outta-luck pants you entitled wanker, cause that's all there is! Which makes their attempt at adding microtransactions for those currencies utterly laughable. And any excitement for reward rendered painfully null.

On the upside, it does visualise the embarrassing hopelessness of my thumbstick swings on screen: where instead of a clean back and forth straight line, it coldly presents a shape more akin to a drunken toddler trying to draw a "Z" with just their feet but changing their plans to an "S" halfway through. No wonder I can't get past the Skullgirls tutorials!
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Just cleared Mission 30: Skull Face in MGSV with No Traces bonus, which is basically an automatic S rank. I did get spotted by the spotlight guy like 50 feet from the elevator but thankfully restarting the checkpoint didn’t count against me like how the game adds cumulative completion time. Now I just have Metallic Archea Extreme and Code Talker Extreme to clear again for the S rank trophy.