No. There's also patently pretentious pseudo-philosophical prattle.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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There's no story. You solve puzzles and pick up audiologs on existential musings. The ending is just stepping into an elevator that resets every puzzle on the island and takes you to the beginning of the game.
No, though I understand the confusion. It's from Jonathan Blow, who also made Braid, another game I couldn't finish.
Funnily enough, Borderlands 3 improved on that specific aspect to basically perfection (I don't know if you played it). All the guns in that game are incredibly satisfying, the revolvers being a highlight for me. And the reload animations, good lord. So punchy, to detailed! But BL3 stumbled critically in other areas, to the point where I've had zero desire to go back to it. Most bafflingly, it was the drop rates that killed the game for me. BL2 was way too strict, mandating farming, and BL3 was insanely generous, which pretty much killed the entire appeal. You're just bombarded with purple and legendary guns in that game faster than you can try them out. What's even more weird is that they already got it right with the Pre-Sequel. I have no idea what happened in between that they managed to screw up such a fundamental building block so badly.
Yeah, I played 3. The guns were an improvement in feel over 2, but still nowhere near as good as 1. None of 3s vault hunters had builds as fun as 2's characters, or even pre-sequel's. And they completely ruined Maliwan weapons, making especially the Maliwan sniper rifles an instant sell no matter how good their stats were. They really made most manufacturers weapons worse, except Jacobs. It was bad to the point where I was only picking up blue or lower level weapons IF they were Jacobs. Nothing else was worth even giving a chance to. I played through it with each character, but then no new DLC vault hunters, no real TVHM... It just doesn't give me much reason to want to go back to it. I've been told they gave each vault hunter a new skill tree. So maybe some will have a decent build now, I just don't foresee any of them being shock and burn Gaige, or sniper Salvador, or cloudkill Maya levels of fun and OP. I haven't checked in to them yet.
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I would say 3 is the best Borderlands game, but you are right about the legendries being way too common, to the point of even taking away some of the fun since it felt like you had to use them and you couldn't even experiment with blues and purples. I almost wonder if a system like Destiny where you can only have one legendary weapon on at a time would have helped. I know I started having more fun again when I forced myself to limit how many I used.
I've been going through the Beat'em Up Bundle again. I played some rounds of Final Fight and Battle Circuit. I have to say King of Dragons and Warriors of Fate (I can't even remember the Japanese name) are weakest of the collection. KoD at least moves at a fast pace despite the limited move sets. WoF on the other hand tends to drag, and is only fun when you do co-op. Otherwise, it only feels like Final Fight 1.75. This game while having weapon and enemy variety, took out dashing (unless you're on horseback) and only has slightly more moves than FFi. This came out after Captain Commando. CC allows universal dashing, and this would only get perfected later Capcom brawlers and BC especially.
Captain Commando is what I love about gaming and Capcom in the 90s. Go crazy to standout. You have an alien mummy that dual wields poisonous knives, a cyborg, a ninja, and a genius baby piloting a mini-mech as your roster of playable characters. Battle Circuit only went even further with the wackiness, that it makes CC look grounded by comparison. CC is basically the second Final Fight, before the actual official sequel. The game does take place in Metro City's far future of 2026, therefore sharing continuity with Street Fighter and Final Fight.
One question that is never far from mind: How the hell did Capcom get away with Carol and Brenda?
Captain Commando is what I love about gaming and Capcom in the 90s. Go crazy to standout. You have an alien mummy that dual wields poisonous knives, a cyborg, a ninja, and a genius baby piloting a mini-mech as your roster of playable characters. Battle Circuit only went even further with the wackiness, that it makes CC look grounded by comparison. CC is basically the second Final Fight, before the actual official sequel. The game does take place in Metro City's far future of 2026, therefore sharing continuity with Street Fighter and Final Fight.
One question that is never far from mind: How the hell did Capcom get away with Carol and Brenda?
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Played an early stealth mission in Ghost of Tsushima
I got to play on a Xbox Series X at nephews house on an 85" TV. Very pretty but I can't write I see much of a difference between it and my Xbox 1 X on a 75" in a smaller room.
I haven't seen a PS5 for real yet. 2 years on. I hear that the controller is what makes it special. But I can't wait to see one perform for real.
ITMT: It's been said before about earlier gens that hit a peak. I cannot imagine where they go from here.
I got to play on a Xbox Series X at nephews house on an 85" TV. Very pretty but I can't write I see much of a difference between it and my Xbox 1 X on a 75" in a smaller room.
I haven't seen a PS5 for real yet. 2 years on. I hear that the controller is what makes it special. But I can't wait to see one perform for real.
ITMT: It's been said before about earlier gens that hit a peak. I cannot imagine where they go from here.
Sooo... I installed Solasta: Crown of the Magister, booted it up, made a party, watched the beginning cutscene and... then the game crashed in the first second of gameplay. No biggie, reboot, make the party again, cutscene, crash. But now my monitor won't go fullscreen. And when I boot up the game it plays at like 2 FPS, when it was previously smooth. And when I try to install new graphics card drivers it crashes again, and now my computer won't start.
I'm pretty sure this mid-range RPG may have actually bricked my graphics card. I've yet to try a full reinstall of my operating system to see if it does anything, but my computer was on the way out anyway, being about 5,5 years old. But this is still quite the turn of events. I'm very tempted to leave a negative Steam review merely saying "literally bricked my computer", but that would just be petty.
I'm pretty sure this mid-range RPG may have actually bricked my graphics card. I've yet to try a full reinstall of my operating system to see if it does anything, but my computer was on the way out anyway, being about 5,5 years old. But this is still quite the turn of events. I'm very tempted to leave a negative Steam review merely saying "literally bricked my computer", but that would just be petty.
Still wouldn't be as bad as the negative reviews on Early Access games that say "game is incomplete".
Superhot
FPS meets RTS: time moves when you do (or do anything, really) so the whole game is you coordinating a balletic Matrix-y gunfight in slow motion. You die in one hit but so does everything, which always feels like a fair conceit. You die fast, you reload fast and the game ends pretty fast too. There's only a few levels and the story's very thin and meta so it doesn't do anything for me. Fun action concept that I wish were built around a different game. Like My Friend Pedro and Absolver.
FPS meets RTS: time moves when you do (or do anything, really) so the whole game is you coordinating a balletic Matrix-y gunfight in slow motion. You die in one hit but so does everything, which always feels like a fair conceit. You die fast, you reload fast and the game ends pretty fast too. There's only a few levels and the story's very thin and meta so it doesn't do anything for me. Fun action concept that I wish were built around a different game. Like My Friend Pedro and Absolver.
Otoh, bricking your computer is pretty bad. And "Game immediately crashed" isn't a ringing endorsement either.
As much as I like to judge games on content, inability to even play it for stupid shit like that is a pretty bad sign
I have some reason to believe it might have been a driver issue: I hadn't updated them in forever, and the component control did express an error with my graphics card. But I moved to this game after playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which was also released last year and is to my understanding a more graphically demanding game. Eh, I was looking into buying a new PC anyway, and all my important stuff is saved on the cloud and external drives. But this does mark yet another consumer electronics product that's crapped out on me over the past year: my internet modem, my wireless Wi-fi adapter, my (previous) external hard drive and now my PC have all broken in that time.
Still Darkest dungeon. I hate this game so much! One bad round at the very last battle of a dungeon can just ruin hours of progress. Everybody just kept missing the entire fight, then my gravedigger got killed and the rest of the party was taken to death's door, I tried to escape and it failed and 2 more died. Now I've lost 3 level 4 characters and all the very rare trinkets I've been collecting the whole game. This just sucks so much because it takes literal hours to level a character to level 4, and I may not see those trinkets again for a very long time. Hmm, I think it's time to find out where the game hides it's save file.
Edit: actually it looks like I can recover the trinkets by fighting an new boss that appeared. That's not too bad,since I'm almost to the point where I can upgrade the coach to give level 3 heroes.
Edit: actually it looks like I can recover the trinkets by fighting an new boss that appeared. That's not too bad,since I'm almost to the point where I can upgrade the coach to give level 3 heroes.
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I'm not sure how to interpret this. Cute pupper though.Disney Dreamlight Valley.
So I've started playing Overwatch 2. And by Overwatch 2, I mean "Onlywatch," otherwise known as Queue Simulator.
Snark aside, this is hardly an objective review, but the thread is "what are you playing," rather than "what have you played," so my rough thoughts as they stand are as follows:
THE GOOD
-Push is a lot of fun.
-I may as well comment on the new heroes, from both the beta, and here. TL, DR, I like them all, but to varying extents. I can't really get the hang of Junker Queen, Kiriko is a precious cinnamon bun that's quite fun to play, Sojourn is basically Soldier: 76 with a much higher skill ceiling (in a good way).
THE MIXED
Alright, here's the clincher. I honestly think Overwatch 2 should be a separate game, but for the reasons you might think. The main problems of OW2 can be summed up as:
a) It replaces the original.
b) It plays differently from the original in notable ways.
c) It takes stuff away while also adding stuff (sort of)
And you can't tell me that it would be impossible to maintain both OW1 & 2 - even casting aside any legal/moral argument for maintaining the former, Blizzard's currently maintaining 3 versions of WoW alone, so you could easily have two versions of Overwatch. But here, we have this weird situation of "here's the sequel, which is an update, actually, but called a sequel, and if you liked the original, too bad." I'm not going to delve into the development hell the game supposedly went through, but the end result is that if a game is named Overwatch 2, regardless as to who forced the name (*cough*Kotick*cough*), it's fair to judge it as such.
So that covers issue a, and yes, I'm fully serious in suggesting that OW1 should be made playable in some form. But even if it was, how does the gameplay stack up?
-Key difference is the shift from 6v6 to 5v5, with teams now limited to one tank. I'm really, REALLY mixed about this. I can understand why this change was made, and if OW1 was still playable, I'd be less mixed, but while this might seem like a minor change to those who haven't played OW1, I can't stress enough just how much this ends up shifting the game.
First, I'll give you a lowdown of tanks in OW1 - often, least in my experience, players utilizing tanks could broadly be defined into two groups. There's the tanks that exist to protect/soak up-damage (think Reinhardt and Sigma) with shields, and the tanks who are more like "brawlers," with a mix of solid HP and ability to deal damage (think D.Va and Roadhog). What kind of tanks you use will depend on your situation, but basically, the presence of two tanks allowed you to take both options (or two of the same option if you felt like it). The removal of a tank slot, however, really changes things up, as the tank player now needs to decide where on the tank-brawler spectrum they want to be.
Now, on one hand, I understand the reasoning behind this choice. It arguably shakes the game up, and prevents 'shield spamming,' where tanks would overlap shields and drag the game to a standstill (usually on Assault maps). And since the game has shifted in other regards, the lack of a second tank kind of makes sense. On the other hand, I feel it makes some tanks less viable. This might be me, but, well, speaking personally, I quite enjoy D.Va, but without a heavier tank being present, she feels a bit redundant. So on one hand, you have gameplay that's faster paced and arguably more dynamic, with less 'clogs,' but on the other, it's gameplay that's different from the original, and gameplay that's more focused on individual actions rather than team ones.
-There's the question of taking stuff away. The key issue is the removal of Assault maps. Now yes, technically, they weren't removed, they can still be accessed from custom games, and yes, a lot of people were never fond of 2CP games, but still, it just feels off to take them out of regular rotation. A filter system would have helped, but no, if you choose Quick Play or Competitive, you won't get any Assault maps, period.
-There's also another niggle, and that's a change to ultimates. In the original, a character's ultimate would steadily charge as you played them, charging faster as you did stuff, but if you switched hero, the meter would go down to 0. This introduced a layer of strategy where, if your hero isn't working, if you keep at it to keep the meter charging, or cut your losses and change hero. In OW2, far as I can tell, the meter is reduced when you change hero, but not reverted. Presumably this is an effort to make it easier to change heroes in a match. I could see people liking this system more (as it makes it more viable to switch heroes in a match), but personally, I prefer the old system.
THE BAD
-The new endorsements system sucks. In the past, you could endorse specific players for specific traits, here, it's just "endorse, or not, I guess."
-Play of the game is removed. Um, why?
-I really dislike the new monetization system. Based on polls, others may like it more than the old one, but speaking personally, I prefer the lootbox system. Why? Because while cosmetics and stuff was frosting rather than cake, it meant that in every match, I always got something. Here, however, aside from the battle pass (which gives you rewards as you level up), if you want something, you need to use in-game currency (that as far as I can tell, needs to be paid for) to get it. So on one hand, there's less elements of luck, but on the other, less bounty. Again, the old system is much, MUCH better in my eyes, especially since you could also earn credits to buy stuff directly. And that's not even dealing with locking heroes behind the battle pass. So far, I'm fine (I have instant access to Kiriko as I played OW1), but cut forward a few seasons, with more and more heroes locked behind grindwalls, and, yeah. I really don't see this working out well.
OVERALLwatch
Overall, I can't say this game is good. It's this weird pseudo-sequel that's simultaniously a major update patch to OW1, yet changes the game so significantly that it could easily be considered a sequel as well. And again, I could forgive that if OW1 was still playable, but it isn't. But what's the real clincher is that if I put OW1 and OW2 side to side, and I was asked which one I could play for the rest of my life at the cost of the other...well, at this point in time, I'd honestly choose OW1. It's a damning inditement that we have an update that frankly makes the game worse, and removes the original in the process.
Now, I could see that changing over time, with new heroes, the promised campaign, and various other factors, but at this particular point in time? OW2 is basically OW 0.5, and frankly, I'm tempted to just uninstall it, and maybe come back later.
Edits:
1: Play of the game is indeed part - maybe I missed it, or it was a glitch.
2: The queues no longer seem to be an issue.
3: I think the ultimate meter goes down by about 20-30% if you switch hero, rather than as a percentage of the hero meter. Still mixed on the change.
Snark aside, this is hardly an objective review, but the thread is "what are you playing," rather than "what have you played," so my rough thoughts as they stand are as follows:
THE GOOD
-Push is a lot of fun.
-I may as well comment on the new heroes, from both the beta, and here. TL, DR, I like them all, but to varying extents. I can't really get the hang of Junker Queen, Kiriko is a precious cinnamon bun that's quite fun to play, Sojourn is basically Soldier: 76 with a much higher skill ceiling (in a good way).
THE MIXED
Alright, here's the clincher. I honestly think Overwatch 2 should be a separate game, but for the reasons you might think. The main problems of OW2 can be summed up as:
a) It replaces the original.
b) It plays differently from the original in notable ways.
c) It takes stuff away while also adding stuff (sort of)
And you can't tell me that it would be impossible to maintain both OW1 & 2 - even casting aside any legal/moral argument for maintaining the former, Blizzard's currently maintaining 3 versions of WoW alone, so you could easily have two versions of Overwatch. But here, we have this weird situation of "here's the sequel, which is an update, actually, but called a sequel, and if you liked the original, too bad." I'm not going to delve into the development hell the game supposedly went through, but the end result is that if a game is named Overwatch 2, regardless as to who forced the name (*cough*Kotick*cough*), it's fair to judge it as such.
So that covers issue a, and yes, I'm fully serious in suggesting that OW1 should be made playable in some form. But even if it was, how does the gameplay stack up?
-Key difference is the shift from 6v6 to 5v5, with teams now limited to one tank. I'm really, REALLY mixed about this. I can understand why this change was made, and if OW1 was still playable, I'd be less mixed, but while this might seem like a minor change to those who haven't played OW1, I can't stress enough just how much this ends up shifting the game.
First, I'll give you a lowdown of tanks in OW1 - often, least in my experience, players utilizing tanks could broadly be defined into two groups. There's the tanks that exist to protect/soak up-damage (think Reinhardt and Sigma) with shields, and the tanks who are more like "brawlers," with a mix of solid HP and ability to deal damage (think D.Va and Roadhog). What kind of tanks you use will depend on your situation, but basically, the presence of two tanks allowed you to take both options (or two of the same option if you felt like it). The removal of a tank slot, however, really changes things up, as the tank player now needs to decide where on the tank-brawler spectrum they want to be.
Now, on one hand, I understand the reasoning behind this choice. It arguably shakes the game up, and prevents 'shield spamming,' where tanks would overlap shields and drag the game to a standstill (usually on Assault maps). And since the game has shifted in other regards, the lack of a second tank kind of makes sense. On the other hand, I feel it makes some tanks less viable. This might be me, but, well, speaking personally, I quite enjoy D.Va, but without a heavier tank being present, she feels a bit redundant. So on one hand, you have gameplay that's faster paced and arguably more dynamic, with less 'clogs,' but on the other, it's gameplay that's different from the original, and gameplay that's more focused on individual actions rather than team ones.
-There's the question of taking stuff away. The key issue is the removal of Assault maps. Now yes, technically, they weren't removed, they can still be accessed from custom games, and yes, a lot of people were never fond of 2CP games, but still, it just feels off to take them out of regular rotation. A filter system would have helped, but no, if you choose Quick Play or Competitive, you won't get any Assault maps, period.
-There's also another niggle, and that's a change to ultimates. In the original, a character's ultimate would steadily charge as you played them, charging faster as you did stuff, but if you switched hero, the meter would go down to 0. This introduced a layer of strategy where, if your hero isn't working, if you keep at it to keep the meter charging, or cut your losses and change hero. In OW2, far as I can tell, the meter is reduced when you change hero, but not reverted. Presumably this is an effort to make it easier to change heroes in a match. I could see people liking this system more (as it makes it more viable to switch heroes in a match), but personally, I prefer the old system.
THE BAD
-The new endorsements system sucks. In the past, you could endorse specific players for specific traits, here, it's just "endorse, or not, I guess."
-Play of the game is removed. Um, why?
-I really dislike the new monetization system. Based on polls, others may like it more than the old one, but speaking personally, I prefer the lootbox system. Why? Because while cosmetics and stuff was frosting rather than cake, it meant that in every match, I always got something. Here, however, aside from the battle pass (which gives you rewards as you level up), if you want something, you need to use in-game currency (that as far as I can tell, needs to be paid for) to get it. So on one hand, there's less elements of luck, but on the other, less bounty. Again, the old system is much, MUCH better in my eyes, especially since you could also earn credits to buy stuff directly. And that's not even dealing with locking heroes behind the battle pass. So far, I'm fine (I have instant access to Kiriko as I played OW1), but cut forward a few seasons, with more and more heroes locked behind grindwalls, and, yeah. I really don't see this working out well.
OVERALLwatch
Overall, I can't say this game is good. It's this weird pseudo-sequel that's simultaniously a major update patch to OW1, yet changes the game so significantly that it could easily be considered a sequel as well. And again, I could forgive that if OW1 was still playable, but it isn't. But what's the real clincher is that if I put OW1 and OW2 side to side, and I was asked which one I could play for the rest of my life at the cost of the other...well, at this point in time, I'd honestly choose OW1. It's a damning inditement that we have an update that frankly makes the game worse, and removes the original in the process.
Now, I could see that changing over time, with new heroes, the promised campaign, and various other factors, but at this particular point in time? OW2 is basically OW 0.5, and frankly, I'm tempted to just uninstall it, and maybe come back later.
Edits:
1: Play of the game is indeed part - maybe I missed it, or it was a glitch.
2: The queues no longer seem to be an issue.
3: I think the ultimate meter goes down by about 20-30% if you switch hero, rather than as a percentage of the hero meter. Still mixed on the change.
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