What are you currently playing?

[Dreiko]

So I got through Hades three times in my third session, seems like the lingering projectile type attacks are super OP, be it those ice beam turrets or the lightningrods, especially the latter allowed me to do a no death run. Now it seems the game wants you to keep beating it to get the rest of the story, while adding some more difficult stuff in the mix. Can do since I still need to test a whole bunch of different power combinations and use the bloods I've been getting to power up my arsenal. Also the gun is OP, especially with the loadout I had where the grenade launcher turned into a bazooka and then into a shotgun bazooka, it was MELTING faces. In general I get the feeling that long range weapons are better in this game cause most enemies don't have that long of an attack range so you can kinda space em out (and I am counting the shield as a long range weapon cause the way I used it was mainly with doom on the Captain America shield toss and those ice turrets holding down the base while I ran around or blocked near the turrets so I can redeploy em asap).

 

[Drathnoxis]

Continuing with my 'random PS3 games I was always interested in but never played' with Driver: San Francisco.
As an action racing game so far it's solid, with good controls, varied missions, and a decent variety of cars. And then there's the 'shift' mechanic, which lets you spiritually jump between different vehicles an take control of them on the fly. It adds an extra layer to the gameplay and mission structure, while also being a focal point of the story.

The game's aesthetics, music, and missions also do a great job at making you feel like some kind of 80s buddy cop super car action hero.

That game was great.

The shield can be obscenely broken with the right setup, like "stand still while the entire room die" broken.

I seem to remember Zeus powers being really good on the shield.

 

[meiam]

I seem to remember Zeus powers being really good on the shield.

Yeah pretty much, you just let it whirl on the enemy while you just focus on avoiding and it hit often so it'll trigger Zeus like crazy and melt almost everything.

 

[BrawlMan]

A few days ago, I played as Raph in TMNT Tournament Fighters NES on Hard mode. You get nothing for beating it on that difficulty. No extra endings, nor anything. Meaning the message that comes up on Normal mode is full of shit. Fight n' Rage I had to quite yesterday, because I was having a huge headache and slight nausea. I'm better now though. I do not like playing as Gal, because her defense is way too low on Hard, and they throw so many enemies at you. I do favor Norris and Ricardo heavily. Next time I play, I'm just going to do pick one of those two again.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Welp, I am officially done with AC Origins.

At first I was gonna explore every part of the map and do all side activities, but after reaching the max level of 40 and getting that amazing Isu armor, I just couldn't care anymore, and so I proceeded to finishing up the story.

The story was really freaking cool. I love the idea of how the brotherhood came to be, and how both them and the templars have been around for centuries. Especially how Aya practically found the Roman Bereau, which would eventually lead to Ezio.

As I've said before, when it comes to gameplay, it works as a Assassin game, but full-on combat just doesn't feel great. IDK, feels like enemies blocks all your attacks, dodge doesn't work half the time, and they can drain your hp in seconds.

Sort of like with Witcher 1, I loved the story of the game, but I don't think it's enough for me to come back to it. I'm also doubting if I'll enjoy odyssey or valhalla

 

[Dalisclock]

Welp, I am officially done with AC Origins.

At first I was gonna explore every part of the map and do all side activities, but after reaching the max level of 40 and getting that amazing Isu armor, I just couldn't care anymore, and so I proceeded to finishing up the story.

The story was really freaking cool. I love the idea of how the brotherhood came to be, and how both them and the templars have been around for centuries. Especially how Aya practically found the Roman Bereau, which would eventually lead to Ezio.

As I've said before, when it comes to gameplay, it works as a Assassin game, but full-on combat just doesn't feel great. IDK, feels like enemies blocks all your attacks, dodge doesn't work half the time, and they can drain your hp in seconds.

Sort of like with Witcher 1, I loved the story of the game, but I don't think it's enough for me to come back to it. I'm also doubting if I'll enjoy odyssey or valhalla

As someone who dove into Odyssey after really digging Origins, Odyssey is so MUCH bigger and by the time I finished it I was really burned out on it. Origins pretty well paced in comparison as well, discounting the ending sequence where Aya goes to Rome to Stab Caesar in the Forum which feels both incredibly rushed and there to give Aya something interesting to do on-screen even if only seems to be there because it's famous and not because it fits in with the actual plot.

Did you try the DLC for Origins? The Hidden Ones is okay but the Curse of the Pharaohs one is pretty cool.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Just got back from a long trip out of state when I basically didn't have access to anything except a smartphone, so my gaming time there was basically all spent keeping up with my Genshin Impact dailies. The new update is coming out in a few days, and that's bringing the next Archon Quest (MSQ) and some new characters, though I'm not sure if I'm going to go after any of them yet.

In the meantime, decided I might give Devil May Cry 5 a proper shot. Bought it on Steam a while back (before it automatically came with the Vergil DLC) and never got around to it, but I enjoyed 1 and 4 a lot, and 3's still one of my all-time favorites.

 

[BrawlMan]

In the meantime, decided I might give Devil May Cry 5 a proper shot. Bought it on Steam a while back (before it automatically came with the Vergil DLC) and never got around to it, but I enjoyed 1 and 4 a lot, and 3's still one of my all-time favorites.

Since you're a PC player, check out the costume mods; they're insane! There is a fan made LDK mode, since 5: Special Edition went next-gen consoles only. Cruel and ironic, since LDK mode started DMC4 PC first.

 

[wings012]

I spent a good 40-50 hours on Days Gone and it's done. I agree with the ZP review for most part, it's the blandest experience and Deacon is an unrelatable spaztic.

The whole part with the southern camps was really dumb.

Spoiler

There's a whole chunk of the story that's supposed to be about moving on, but then bim bam Deacon's dead wife is actually still alive. Then there's a weird little arc about his wife having been responsible for the zombie apocalypse and trying to cure it but it doesn't really go anywhere. The whole Nero thing was really half baked and there's some weird secret ending where it turns out they were zombies, but SMART.

The game just feels incredibly padded and has a lot of half cooked ideas.

Hordes are pretty fun though when they do appear. Though they are annoying initially since you don't have the tools to effectively deal with them so you just have to run.

The reception is weirdly incredibly polarized though. People seem to either love the heck out of the game or think its utter trash. I just think it's incredibly mediocre. There was potential in there somewhere, but it doesn't feel realized.

It also kinda felt like State of Decay, except with a proper narrative rather than procedurally generated bits pieced together.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I think Days Gone is the perfect example of that thing where critics, reviewers, and people who live and breath games have a very different experience than regular folks. Many of the latter just want a fun game to mess around with, that works, offers cool shit to do, and wraps it in some kind of story, and Days Gone is exactly that. It delivers what it promises and what many people want, well. But critics and hardcore gamers are like- been there, done that.

Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Call of Duty, Madden, Fifa- such games should only be reviewed for glitches and graphics at this point, as a buyer's guide. Days Gone is in that category too.

 

[meiam]

I spent a good 40-50 hours on Days Gone and it's done. I agree with the ZP review for most part, it's the blandest experience and Deacon is an unrelatable spaztic.

The whole part with the southern camps was really dumb.

Spoiler

There's a whole chunk of the story that's supposed to be about moving on, but then bim bam Deacon's dead wife is actually still alive. Then there's a weird little arc about his wife having been responsible for the zombie apocalypse and trying to cure it but it doesn't really go anywhere. The whole Nero thing was really half baked and there's some weird secret ending where it turns out they were zombies, but SMART.

The game just feels incredibly padded and has a lot of half cooked ideas.

Hordes are pretty fun though when they do appear. Though they are annoying initially since you don't have the tools to effectively deal with them so you just have to run.

The reception is weirdly incredibly polarized though. People seem to either love the heck out of the game or think its utter trash. I just think it's incredibly mediocre. There was potential in there somewhere, but it doesn't feel realized.

It also kinda felt like State of Decay, except with a proper narrative rather than procedurally generated bits pieced together.

I played about half of days gone and I enjoyed it well enough, but gameplay got repetitive very quickly and the game didn't do anything to keep things fresh. Similarly, there just wasn't enough stuff to justify exploring the map so I never bothered which meant the fact that its open world felt kinda watsed.

Shame about the wife being alive, that definitely makes the story worse and remove one of the only unique things about the game.

 

[Dalisclock]

Return To Monkey Island.

I'm a couple hours in and reached act 2(of ?) and so far I'm enjoying it. It's clicking pretty much how a monkey island game should and that's really all I wanted from it. There's a bit of fanservice to be sure but that's kind of expected for the first MI game in a decade and the first MI game in 25 years that feels like it knows what it's doing(Escape and Tales.....not so much).

I do appreciate how the very first thing the game does is address that weird ending to Monkey Island 2 that has never really been explained or addressed until now and while it may not be entirely satisfying it's still appreciated, as is the fact the entire point of this game is Guybrush and Lechuck racing each other back to Monkey Island to find the Secret, for real this time(because you never actually find the Secret in the original game and it's been a running joke ever since then).

It's unclear exactly where this game is set on the timeline since it's pretty much all being told as a recollection by guybrush long after the fact but you know what, it's fine, it doesn't really matter so much and I suspect they kept it vague so they could what elements they wanted(like Murray the demonic skull) as well as whatever version of Lechuck he is now. It's apparently a direct sequel to 2 but the others are acknowledged here and there(notably in the scrapbook). This isn't a series that really takes itself seriously anyway.

Two interestings things to note. The first is that when you start the game you're offered Easy or Hard mode, which presumably affects puzzle difficulty. Not sure about this one but in MI2 when they did the same thing Easy basically just cut out and abridged some puzzles while the more difficult setting was the intended one. I mean, P+C adventure games gameplay is pretty much in the puzzles so that's presumably one of the reasons you're here to begin with. Also, the game gives you a hint book so I don't know why you'd really bother to do the easy mode. I suspect it's a joke, or maybe an accessibility option, because in both games there's a comment "Easy mode, for game journalist/reviewers".

More interesting in that in the options menu, there's a box you can check called "Writers Cut: More Blather, Worse Pacing". It's unchecked by default but if you turn it on, it seems to add more dialogue options and even some non-plot essential characters that aren't otherwise in the game. As far as I can tell this doesn't change anything as far as the plot or gameplay is concerned and the stuff that's added is mostly fanservice for people who played the older games and want more stuff related to those. What's really interesting is that it's not even advertised or mentioned. You have to dig into the options to even know it's there.

The new Artstyle is one of the most controversial things about this pre-release and while I was a little iffy on it when the first trailer dropped, I'm enjoying it now that I've gotten used to it. But yeah, so far I'm having a good time.

 

[meiam]

Return To Monkey Island.

I'm a couple hours in and reached act 2(of ?) and so far I'm enjoying it. It's clicking pretty much how a monkey island game should and that's really all I wanted from it. There's a bit of fanservice to be sure but that's kind of expected for the first MI game in a decade and the first MI game in 25 years that feels like it knows what it's doing(Escape and Tales.....not so much).

I do appreciate how the very first thing the game does is address that weird ending to Monkey Island 2 that has never really been explained or addressed until now and while it may not be entirely satisfying it's still appreciated, as is the fact the entire point of this game is Guybrush and Lechuck racing each other back to Monkey Island to find the Secret, for real this time(because you never actually find the Secret in the original game and it's been a running joke ever since then).

It's unclear exactly where this game is set on the timeline since it's pretty much all being told as a recollection by guybrush long after the fact but you know what, it's fine, it doesn't really matter so much and I suspect they kept it vague so they could what elements they wanted(like Murray the demonic skull) as well as whatever version of Lechuck he is now. It's apparently a direct sequel to 2 but the others are acknowledged here and there(notably in the scrapbook). This isn't a series that really takes itself seriously anyway.

The new Artstyle is one of the most controversial things about this pre-release and while I was a little iffy on it when the first trailer dropped, I'm enjoying it now that I've gotten used to it. But yeah, so far good times.

How are the puzzle? Some from the franchise were really good, but plenty were the "click on every pixel in the frame and rub every item on everything/everyone until something happens" variety.

 

[Dalisclock]

How are the puzzle? Some from the franchise were really good, but plenty were the "click on every pixel in the frame and rub every item on everything/everyone until something happens" variety.

So far pretty good. I haven't found anything obnoxious so far and the puzzles fit with how Monkey Island did puzzles before. There's one puzzle I felt like was trial and error because you have to write someone an apology note before they will help you and while they do give hints what they're looking for when they reject the letter, it feels like I was guessing most of the time the proper phrases. I looked it up and realized the answers are given other places in town but I forgot they were there to begin with.

There's also some Quality of Life features such as the fact this game lets you hit TAB on PC(not sure about the Switch version) to highlight all the interactable objects and the Voodoo Lady gives Guybrush a hint book as soon as you talk to her early in the game. The Nice thing about the Hint book is that it only gives you hints to puzzles in the portion of the game you're in and it starts out with a very vague hint and you can choose to get increasingly more specific hints if you keep clicking. Which feels like it's the best type of hint book to point you in the general direction and only eventually tell you exactly what you need to do.

 

[Worgen]

Prodeus finally launched the full version so I've been playing that while still playing Freedom Planet 2 and, Return to Monkey Island. Its pretty good, but so far I kinda feel like the developers didn't really use their early access time for much. But, I've only just gotten to where the early access ended, they added a double jump and dash upgrade, that feel a bit out of place on the old levels that you can feel weren't designed around them since its easy to sequence break them, but some secrets feel like they need them. Also the checkpoint system continues to annoy me, it respawns you but with all the enemies dead that you killed, so you can just brute force whatever with no real consequence, but the levels are long enough that starting over to avoid it can be really annoying. So yeah, its cool, but flawed, its no Hedon.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Done with Monster Train. I've beat the game with every clan as primary, beat the true final boss, and am covenant rank 7. I won 8/19 games. That's good enough for me. The game is starting to feel kind of samey and every run is blending together.

Wyrmkin are by far the worst clan. Crystals don't scale that well and reap is worthless since it only procs after combat is done so it's useless against bosses because you definitely aren't building hundreds of stacks against the boss. The first champion doesn't have any good abilities, but the second is okay with the return consumables. Best clan is Awoken. I feel like one of the spikey guys can carry the run basically alone, and you get tons of healing cards to keep them strong. Definitely the most consistent, if not the strongest. My most powerful runs were with Umbra and Hellhorned. That imp that gets rage with armor is just completely OP if combined with the double armor stat card. My Umbra run had an artifact that double ate morsels, an artifact that added +3 to X cards, and a card that let me eat morsels X times. I was eating a morsel that gave +6 14 times every couple turns, it was ludicrous. I forgot to get enough points to fight the true final boss again, so that was a little disappointing, but he would have tore him to shreds for sure. Melting were a little difficult to get a grasp of, but constantly reviving allies with buffed stats was really powerful. Stygian are just kind of a good support class, but aren't really that interesting.

 

[Worgen]

Done with Monster Train. I've beat the game with every clan as primary, beat the true final boss, and am covenant rank 7. I won 8/19 games. That's good enough for me. The game is starting to feel kind of samey and every run is blending together.

If you are looking for a new game of the card type then Arcanium just came out and so far its pretty neat.

 

[Drathnoxis]

If you are looking for a new game of the card type then Arcanium just came out and so far its pretty neat.

"just came out"
"Release Date: 8 Dec, 2020"

I think I've had enough of card games for the time being. I might check it out some time in the future.

Maybe I'll try out Rogue Legacy 2.

 

[Dalisclock]

Still enjoying Return to Monkey Island.

Yeah, it's pretty much playing as MI1 and MI2 happened more or less as we remember it but everything after that is very, very broad strokes or they're just taking the bits they liked from the games after that and ignoring the rest. Like the big Robot Monkey from Escape pretty much didn't happen, nor does the Carnival of the Damned from Curse seem to be a thing in this game

Also, there's a really wierd bit in the game you can unlock if you're persistant enough. So it's long been established Guybrush can hold his breath for 10 minutes underwater, though in this game it's down to 8 minutes and whenever you're underwater there's a ticking timer starting at 8 minutes. When it reaches zero you die. So what's interesting is that the entire frame story is Guybrush sitting on a bench telling the entire story to his son and if he dies his son calls him out for making stuff up, since he obviously didn't die or he wouldn't be telling the story. Now, if you manage to kill guybrush 3 times by drowning him, (possible spoilers) You cut to the bench after the third time, but this time it's empty and then there's some text that says Guybrush drowned for real some years ago and he had no childern .

Which comes across as fucking surreal for a moment considering, again, the frame story is guybrush telling this story to his kid and the game cuts back to the kid stopping to ask questions often enough that you never really forget it. You also get an achievement for this. There's at least one bit on the game where it's really easy to get this achievement because you don't have to wait nearly half an hour underwater to do it.

 

[Worgen]

"just came out"
"Release Date: 8 Dec, 2020"

I think I've had enough of card games for the time being. I might check it out some time in the future.

Maybe I'll try out Rogue Legacy 2.

I meant the full release. Goodluck with Rogue Legacy 2, I've never really been able to get into platformer roguelikes.