What are you currently playing?

[Xprimentyl]

To be fair, it's fairly tutorial heavy early on. Later it lets you wander around the camp and collect stuff, power up your abilites and the real good stuff comes a little later on when you get to do the stages like the milkman conspiracy, Waterloo world and Black Velvetopia.

Though to be fair I haven't played it since around the time it came out so honestly It could be a lot worse then I remember it being. At some point when I'm in the mood I'm gonna replay Psychonauts and play Psychonauts 2 back to back and see how it all shakes out.

Double Fines stuff is really hit and miss it seems. Psychonauts is considered good or great, Brutal Legend is really good for at least the first half and possibly a lot less good in the second when there's a very noted shift in the gameplay from action adventure to 3rd person RTS and Broken Age had this really wierd thing where it was really good except when it totally wasn't(notably around the 2nd half where the twist ending of act 1 totally isn't supported by anything you learn in act 2). And of course, you have to be onboard with DF's brand of humor and quirk to really get into it. THen there was one game they just abandoned on the internet before finishing it and told the fans to deal with it.

Man, remembering Brutal Legend makes me wish it had really been done differently.

Still playing it; it's starting t grow on me a bit. Platforming still sucks a bag of dicks, but it still manages to be pretty fun. Got past the Milkman bit, and yes, t'was pretty good, but the bit after it (in the theater) tested my patience. I managed, though. Will play more tomorrow.

 

[Dalisclock]

Still playing it; it's starting t grow on me a bit. Platforming still sucks a bag of dicks, but it still manages to be pretty fun. Got past the Milkman bit, and yes, t'was pretty good, but the bit after it (in the theater) tested my patience. I managed, though. Will play more tomorrow.

Glad you're enjoying it. I think it gets a lot of leeway because at the time there wasn't really anything like it and even now there's not much that really hits the same notes. And then it ended on a cliffhanger which wasn't resolved for like 15 years.

On a tangentially related note, Beyond Good and Evil probably isn't going to be nearly as lucky as Pyschonauts was in that regard. We're probably never gonna see a sequel or any real follow up to that game.

Sit down Ubisoft! I see you getting ready to say something stupid over there.

 

[Dalisclock]

For dragon age, the previous civilization is still around, think of the roman empire after the schism, the game take place in the former western roman empire while the eastern one is still very much alive (and getting its ass kicked by the mongol). Supposedly the next dragon age takes place in it.

Definitely caught the Roman Empire vibe from the fallen Tevinter Imperium but not so much that part of it is apparently since extent? Maybe that comes up later.

I've finished all but the Dwarf Noble Origins now. I can kinda guess why they didn't do the Human Commoner now, considering between the Alienage Elf and Casteless Dwarf, you've got the extreme poverty and socially downtrodden angles pretty well covered. So unless the Human story was some kind of Merchant class or something it probably wouldn't have contributed much new.

And along with the murder spree at rapey mcrapeyson's Palace in the City Elf Origin, the bit in the Commoner Dwarf story when you take off your helmet during the proven to show "Yes, this lower class Scum just bested your best warriors. Suck on it!" is a great moment.

On a side note *Puts on armchair military strategist hat* the plan at Ostagar wasn't a bad idea in itself. It's apparently a natural chokepoint where a smaller force could easily hold a much larger force such as the HORDE and the idea of using a Hammer and Anvil is a solid plan. But it went horribly wrong because 1.) The hammer part of the Hammer and Anvil never actually happened because Loghain just fucked off with his troops and 2.) Because the Anvil Part of the plan involved the defenders leaving their defensive line to bait the horde, they were easily taken down by the larger numbers. And even worse, if the wiki is to be believed Logahin was the one who came up with the plan to begin with. And the most damaging part of this is that the Elite of the armies were right there getting slaughtered, except for Loghains troops.

True, the idea of the King fighting next to the grey wardens was pretty dumb, Loghain leaving them to die meant 1.) Dead King, 2.) Succession Crisis because Dead King 3.) Devastated Grey Wardens who you also criminalized so they aren't gonna do much to help 4.) The Vanguard of the Army dead and 5.) The Darkspawn horde are past the Ostagar chokepoint and now overrunning the rest of the fairly flat country with little opposition.

Oh, and the refugee crisis and bandit problem because the the army is dead or pulled back and everyone else is either turning to banditry or fleeing the horde. Also FOOD CRISIS because nobody is working the farms now because they're too busy fleeing the horde or being dead. So yay Loghain? *Slow Clap*

Now if I missed something important, I apologize, I'm still in the early game so I'm going off what I've seen thus far(and what little I remember from the last times I played it). However, if there was some kind of BETTER plain Loghain had after he decided to fuck off and leave the king and army to die at Ostagar, I'm at a loss so far what it is, because now he has to raise a new army, without any grey wardens to assist, I suspect nobody else is coming to help so he's got whatever bannermen he can raise in the next month or two before the country is overrun by not-orcs and again, the whole incoming famine and trade no doubt grinding to a halt is gonna be a really bad year or so for the country assuming anyone survives. Gondor may call for call for Aid but no Calvary is coming and orcs have broken the gates.

Thank you for attending my TED talk.

 

[Silvanus]

Isolating with Covid, separated from my PS4 down in the living room, so playing PC games. Currently ticking off FF1 (the pixel remaster).

 

[Dalisclock]

Isolating with Covid, separated from my PS4 down in the living room, so playing PC games. Currently ticking off FF1 (the pixel remaster).

Hope you're doing okay and having to isolate is the worst of it.

 

[Silvanus]

Hope you're doing okay and having to isolate is the worst of it.

The symptoms were quite grim to begin with, but I'm pretty much over them now.

I think this was my first infection (my old job had us testing daily, and I was always negative), so I had a damn good run holding out this long, to be honest!

 

[09philj]

Deathloop

So, first the positives. Deathloop's premise, setting, and maps are great. The game has a striking visual style and it feels good to traverse and explore the areas, gradually building up your knowledge of them and their inhabitants. Splitting the island up into four discrete chunks you get to see one of per section of day is a good choice that allows each area to evolve and have different things to offer as the day progresses. Also, the shooting is good and stealth and chaos both feel like acceptable choices.

The big negative is how progression is balanced, or rather not balanced. In his ZP review, Yahtzee mentioned getting a silenced SMG early that absolutely annihilated the balance of combat. I also got this weapon early on because it's a guaranteed drop in an area you need to go to in order to get the ability to retain gear across loops. Allowing this gun to be silent was a huge mistake on Arkane's part. Before you get the silenced SMG, the silent weapon you'll have is the nailgun. The nailgun is balanced by the fact that it's short range, not super accurate, and requires shots to be charged before firing. Avoiding detection while using it requires some skill. Then you get the silenced SMG which fires a highly accurate laser of bullets at a very long range at a high fire rate. It's much easier to aim, and even if you don't get a headshot a few bodyshots will do the same job. This makes stealth fairly trivial, even without the Nexus power that makes enemies die together. Also having picked up Nexus and Shift (the traversal teleport/dash) I see no reason to collect any other powers because you can only have two equipped and none of the others will measure up to being able to have better movement and being able to make a group of people die from one shot.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

For some reason got the urge to retry Transformers Devastation, after realising I'd not completed it fully perhaps, along with some vague memory of being stuck in a weaponry type screen for non-insignificant lengths of time. It was fun nonetheless, so put the name in the search bar to find to redownload.

Except they've removed it from all digital stores. The interwebs says it's activision not bothering to keep the licensing, so just took all transformers games (but one?) down. So it's physical copy or get fucked basically. Though I did remember parting with legitimate money for it, so kinda started feeling mad until realising how to find the full library of game purchases on the console. It's still a blast, but that weapon infusing menu instantly brought back why a percentage of memory dedicated itself to something generally forgettable. I gotta optimise these bloody numbers you know!


Unrelated, but some days back a game called Slaycation came out on all platforms (including stadia) with like preorders and seperate versions, but not a single asshole has bothered reviewing it to this day;

Slaycation Paradise Reviews

Time for a getaway? Our expert team of travel agents nestled deep in the heart of the galaxy are ready and waiting to warp you away to the alternate Earth action scenario of a lifetime. Explore beautiful and chaotic holiday destinations with an all inclusive arsenal of bizarre and brutal weapons...

www.metacritic.com

Not even on stadia!

Slaycation Paradise Reviews

Time for a getaway? Our expert team of travel agents nestled deep in the heart of the galaxy are ready and waiting to warp you away to the alternate Earth action scenario of a lifetime. Explore beautiful and chaotic holiday destinations with an all inclusive arsenal of bizarre and brutal weapons...

www.metacritic.com

Totally ignored for some reason. Oh well, I ain't making the first jump though.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Deathloop

So, first the positives. Deathloop's premise, setting, and maps are great. The game has a striking visual style and it feels good to traverse and explore the areas, gradually building up your knowledge of them and their inhabitants. Splitting the island up into four discrete chunks you get to see one of per section of day is a good choice that allows each area to evolve and have different things to offer as the day progresses. Also, the shooting is good and stealth and chaos both feel like acceptable choices.

The big negative is how progression is balanced, or rather not balanced. In his ZP review, Yahtzee mentioned getting a silenced SMG early that absolutely annihilated the balance of combat. I also got this weapon early on because it's a guaranteed drop in an area you need to go to in order to get the ability to retain gear across loops. Allowing this gun to be silent was a huge mistake on Arkane's part. Before you get the silenced SMG, the silent weapon you'll have is the nailgun. The nailgun is balanced by the fact that it's short range, not super accurate, and requires shots to be charged before firing. Avoiding detection while using it requires some skill. Then you get the silenced SMG which fires a highly accurate laser of bullets at a very long range at a high fire rate. It's much easier to aim, and even if you don't get a headshot a few bodyshots will do the same job. This makes stealth fairly trivial, even without the Nexus power that makes enemies die together. Also having picked up Nexus and Shift (the traversal teleport/dash) I see no reason to collect any other powers because you can only have two equipped and none of the others will measure up to being able to have better movement and being able to make a group of people die from one shot.

I was never going to play this because it's first person (even though I did love Dishonored but one was enough for me) but I think the fact that you can get an easy weapon would make it more appealing in a game where you have to do the same stuff over and over again to figure out the ending. I mean, players that choose to focus on combat and stealth can just not use the OP weapon right?

Eh, maybe I'll try it when it's free/cheap some day.

 

[BrawlMan]

For some reason got the urge to retry Transformers Devastation, after realising I'd not completed it fully perhaps, along with some vague memory of being stuck in a weaponry type screen for non-insignificant lengths of time. It was fun nonetheless, so put the name in the search bar to find to redownload.

Except they've removed it from all digital stores. The interwebs says it's activision not bothering to keep the licensing, so just took all transformers games (but one?) down. So it's physical copy or get fucked basically. Though I did remember parting with legitimate money for it, so kinda started feeling mad until realising how to find the full library of game purchases on the console. It's still a blast, but that weapon infusing menu instantly brought back why a percentage of memory dedicated itself to something generally forgettable. I gotta optimise these bloody numbers you know!

Check your local second hand retailer, Amazon, Gamestop, or Disc Replay (if it's in your state). They're usually not too expensive yet.

Yeah, the license got lost along with the Ninja Turtles game by Platinum, and Legend of Korra. I think it got discontinued from digital stores in 2017/8.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

whew I beat Act 2 (of 3, I think) of Bloodroots. Lemme tell ya, this game gets hard.

In fit of petulance I went to options to see if there are difficulty options and there are... sorta? The options are to let you be invincible or to just clear the area you're in (if I'm reading it right). So instead of easy/hard whatever, they're just offering way to skip sections to get to the end.

Those options are on a screen that says something like "this game was meant to be challenging but we have options for you" or some such. I liked that, it made me feel like ok I'm not crazy this is hard, so I pushed through.

This game is the right kind of hard- like I get to areas and I feel it's impossible, especially when they add moving laser grids, ugh, so much jumping... but then I can just get it eventually. At least so far.

The boss fights are wacky, but they are proper boss fights- it's the same game mechanics is a larger context. But here's where the game is great- there are checkpoints in the middle of the fight! Like the Act 2 boss fight, it has clear stages, and if you die you start at the stage not all the way in the beginning omg I would die IRL.

Dear other games- be like this game, please and thank you.

 

[meiam]

Definitely caught the Roman Empire vibe from the fallen Tevinter Imperium but not so much that part of it is apparently since extent? Maybe that comes up later.

I've finished all but the Dwarf Noble Origins now. I can kinda guess why they didn't do the Human Commoner now, considering between the Alienage Elf and Casteless Dwarf, you've got the extreme poverty and socially downtrodden angles pretty well covered. So unless the Human story was some kind of Merchant class or something it probably wouldn't have contributed much new.

And along with the murder spree at rapey mcrapeyson's Palace in the City Elf Origin, the bit in the Commoner Dwarf story when you take off your helmet during the proven to show "Yes, this lower class Scum just bested your best warriors. Suck on it!" is a great moment.

On a side note *Puts on armchair military strategist hat* the plan at Ostagar wasn't a bad idea in itself. It's apparently a natural chokepoint where a smaller force could easily hold a much larger force such as the HORDE and the idea of using a Hammer and Anvil is a solid plan. But it went horribly wrong because 1.) The hammer part of the Hammer and Anvil never actually happened because Loghain just fucked off with his troops and 2.) Because the Anvil Part of the plan involved the defenders leaving their defensive line to bait the horde, they were easily taken down by the larger numbers. And even worse, if the wiki is to be believed Logahin was the one who came up with the plan to begin with. And the most damaging part of this is that the Elite of the armies were right there getting slaughtered, except for Loghains troops.

True, the idea of the King fighting next to the grey wardens was pretty dumb, Loghain leaving them to die meant 1.) Dead King, 2.) Succession Crisis because Dead King 3.) Devastated Grey Wardens who you also criminalized so they aren't gonna do much to help 4.) The Vanguard of the Army dead and 5.) The Darkspawn horde are past the Ostagar chokepoint and now overrunning the rest of the fairly flat country with little opposition.

Oh, and the refugee crisis and bandit problem because the the army is dead or pulled back and everyone else is either turning to banditry or fleeing the horde. Also FOOD CRISIS because nobody is working the farms now because they're too busy fleeing the horde or being dead. So yay Loghain? *Slow Clap*

Now if I missed something important, I apologize, I'm still in the early game so I'm going off what I've seen thus far(and what little I remember from the last times I played it). However, if there was some kind of BETTER plain Loghain had after he decided to fuck off and leave the king and army to die at Ostagar, I'm at a loss so far what it is, because now he has to raise a new army, without any grey wardens to assist, I suspect nobody else is coming to help so he's got whatever bannermen he can raise in the next month or two before the country is overrun by not-orcs and again, the whole incoming famine and trade no doubt grinding to a halt is gonna be a really bad year or so for the country assuming anyone survives. Gondor may call for call for Aid but no Calvary is coming and orcs have broken the gates.

Thank you for attending my TED talk.

I'm not quite sure what the plan with Loghain was, there's a few time where the game tries to pretend that Loghain had a good idea and the attack on the darkspawn was a suicide, but it never really demonstrate that and most of the time Loghain is just treated as a cartoonish villain.

But as far as the checkpoint idea, it wouldn't really have worked, the darkspawn move trough the deep road (underground highway the dwarf made), so even if the checkpoint would have held they would just have move left trough another hole somewhere else, possibly the dwarf city. The only way to stop the darkspawn is too kill the dragon, but he didn't show up at the battle anyway. Maybe the plan was to go in the deep road after teh battle, can't quite remember.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm not quite sure what the plan with Loghain was, there's a few time where the game tries to pretend that Loghain had a good idea and the attack on the darkspawn was a suicide, but it never really demonstrate that and most of the time Loghain is just treated as a cartoonish villain.

But as far as the checkpoint idea, it wouldn't really have worked, the darkspawn move trough the deep road (underground highway the dwarf made), so even if the checkpoint would have held they would just have move left trough another hole somewhere else, possibly the dwarf city. The only way to stop the darkspawn is too kill the dragon, but he didn't show up at the battle anyway. Maybe the plan was to go in the deep road after teh battle, can't quite remember.

Yeah. An enemy that can tunnel is hard to pin down and I'd forgotten when I wrote that the darkspawn had already infiltrated the camp from below. The whole reason you have to fight your way up the tower to light the beacon is because the darkspawn came in through the tunnels they'd discovered earlier. Which seems like a major security flaw to realize "Oh, this big tower in the middle of our camp that we need for part of the plan has a bunch of tunnels connected we don't know what they connect to" but I guess they didn't have enough time to do anything about it.

Yeah, Arguably the best way to stop the blights would be to send troops into the deep roads to root out the darkspawn once the surface was secure but apparently the dwarves have been trying that for a long time and it hasn't worked out. They're apparently down to their last two cities which are cut off from each other and the deep roads are infested and hard to navigate. Also the issue that the dwarves apparently don't breed very fast so they're have big problems keeping their population numbers up even without that.

 

[Hawki]

The symptoms were quite grim to begin with, but I'm pretty much over them now.

I think this was my first infection (my old job had us testing daily, and I was always negative), so I had a damn good run holding out this long, to be honest!

Maybe your white mage can help?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Went diving through my Steam library yet again and dug up a game called Monolith, which I saw at a GDQ once and decided to pick up based on that. It's a roguelike bullet-hell shmup, a bit like Enter the Gungeon, but it works pretty differently to that game, being a lot simpler and more straightforward. It is a bit easier, but only up to a point; it still gets pretty difficult starting from around the fourth floor, and especially after you finish the first run, things get a bit more difficult.

It has an expansion which adds a lot of complexity to the game, and while I do think the additions are interesting, it may be worth playing the vanilla version for a while to learn the basics before adding a bunch of extra stuff to worry about. Even if you don't normally like bullet hell, if anything can teach you how it works and why it's fun, Monolith is probably it.

 

[Hawki]

So, random thoughts on playing World of Warcraft:

NIGHT ELF DRUID

"Bloody hell, I hate murlocs. The little bastards never stop chasing you. Also, I'm a druid who's swimming undersea to collect lock-boxes from sunken ships, yet I can somehow conjure vines from the water itself to snag said little bastards, but I CAN'T do that while I'm inside the ship itself because it counts as being underground? What the fuck?"

UNDEAD WARLOCK

"What the hell is up with the Agamands anyway? How the fuck do they have so many people in their crypt? Is the family just that old, or were they just that reproductive? I'd be able to deal with that if the bastards didn't keep swarming me, forcing me to run for my life back up the crypt, only to discover that undead have respawned at the crypt's entrance, so I've got to keep running, leaving my little imp to die, and then try again."

DRAENEI PALADIN

"So, is it just me, or is literally every single thing that went wrong on Azuremyst kind of our fault? I mean, sure, the blood elves sabotaged the Exodar, and the Burning Legion has pursued us for millennia, but now giant crystals are everywhere that have mutated the wildlife, poisoned the water, and sent moonkin insane? Um, yeah...I'm sure the Alliance will be happy to see us now that we've succeeded in wrecking three entire islands. 0_0"

(Actually, to be fair, all of this is addressed in the game itself, but I still find it amusing that 90% of the issues on Azuremyst wouldn't exist if the draenei had never arrived on Azeroth in the first place. Also, comparing BC to Classic, it might be chance or preference, but I think the quest design is done much better, and Azuremyst is easily the most unique biome, or at least, the least tropish one).

 

[CastletonSnob]

I'm working on FINALLY 100%ing an old childhood favorite game, Ape Escape.

 

[Dalisclock]

Finished all the Origins, Lothering and moved on to some of the DLC stuff before I hit the main quests. Went to Warden's Keep/Soldiers Peak and that was a fun haunted castle side story. Shame we couldn't use the castle as a base but it was kinda cool how there were numerous ways to resolve it. End fight was a pain though, with 4 waves of demons to take down, which I needed to micromanage the hell out of my party to prevail because Morrigan would get up in the thick if it like an idiot and die.

Also did the Stone Golem DLC and that was fine. I really do wish there was a turned base combat option at times, because Real time with a pause means I have to herd fucking cats when some people COUGHMORRIGANCOUGH keep rushing into the thick of the battle and being squishy getting killed. Or Alister runs deep behind enemies lies without support and dies. I recruited Shale so I'm pretty much done with that. Seriously though, is everyone in Ferelden trying to summon demons? Because there seems to be a lot of this going on. It's hard to say the Chantry and Templars are wrong, because demons are no fucking joke and then we have the blood mage in the Wardens keep DLC who was running creepy mad science nazi torture experiments and summoning demons, which is pretty horrible. At least he helped fix his mistake.

Talking with Party members, I'm getting a much better feel for who these people are. Morrigan's snark attitude seems heavily tied to the fact her "mother" was honestly a pretty bad parent and while Morrigan laughs a lot of it off, there's some strong hints a lot of her childhood was traumatizing or at least very unhappy. The fact she was isolated from the rest of the world and had no idea how to deal with it once she started meeting other people only reinforces what a crappy hand she's been dealt and I can emphasize with the attitude a lot more. Alister, strangely, kinda has something similar going though he deals with his crappy childhood by self deprecating humor to cover up his lack of confidence. Bastard who was packed off a monastery, trained to be a Templar but never actually inducted, recruited for the grey wardens but barely been one before almost all of them were wiped out. Not to mention he's clearly taking the loss of Duncan quite hard.

Then there's the new guys on the team. Liliana, who is apparently the equilvent of a nun, I think(maybe someone more familiar with Catholicism and/or dragon age can help me out here what she's supposed to be), except she's clearly done a lot more then that. Since she's also a bard, probably a spy, she knows how to handle a blade and she's apparently French. So there's a lot going on there. And then there's Sten, who...well, he's hard to talk to and quite proud of that fact it seems. He also has a VERY black and white view of the world, since he seems to think it's impossible for a Woman to be a Fighter because Women don't Fight. Not "Women shouldn't fight" or "Women aren't strong enough to fight", but rather the whole "Women /= FIGHTER" full stop and it's like a paradox to him that he's having great difficulty resolving and the conversation about that is quite circular. But since Sten won't talk about himself or his culture it's hard to parse him.

 

[Dalisclock]

Maybe your white mage can help?

How about four white mages?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished LIttle Nightmares

Creepy game about pushing right and sometimes left. Looks like Jan Svankmajer's take on the bathhouse from Spirited Away. Story's buried somewhere in a wikia.