What are you currently playing?

[meiam]

Genshin Impact's next major update, 3.3, is a couple of days away, and for the first time since the developers started putting up two 5-star characters at once and letting you pick which one to aim for, I'm genuinely considering both of them as viable options. Itto is a known quantity, a great character and a strong unit who I have every teammate and weapon to help succeed. But Wanderer is brand new and one of the most anticipated promoted-to-playable characters in the game; while I don't like him as much in the story so far, the latest MSQ made me rethink my position on him a little bit, and the new quest could do that again.

Obviously the chance still exists that I won't get either, especially since I'm dedicated to not spending money on one-time gacha packs - the only money I spend is on the "subscription", and that's all I'll ever spend on it. (Save the lectures about predatory monetization, I made my peace with that demon long ago.) And that isn't even necessarily bad, since the characters announced to be coming after those two are Raiden (who I have already, so a non-issue) and Ayato (another rerun I've been hotly anticipating). And it's not just new characters joining the roster, but potentially a new area and definitely a new minigame too, and it looks really interesting. Once again, Genshin's about to take over another couple of weeks of my life, it looks like.

Meanwhile, I finally got my Minecraft farm established, found some iron (which I swear is a lot harder than it used to be), and even a set of diamonds, either above or not far into the negative Y coordinates (sea level is Y=63 I believe). I even found a ruined portal near my base with exactly enough obsidian in the chest to repair it, meaning I don't have to build my own by mining for more diamonds and obsidian. Everything's coming up Falcon; an opinion I'll probably revise as soon as I go into the Nether and die instantly.

Itto is very limiting because Geo is very limited since it doesn't play nice with every other element, I don't think they know what to do with the element and thats why we haven't seen really seen many new geo character(3 in one year iirc). His one viable team is good, but can only work well against certain comp (no elemental shield and such).

Wanderer look like he has a fun kit, but anemo is very focused on support and he look like a main DPS, which means you'll probably need another anemo to VV for him, leaving little room for the rest of the team to lay element down. I really like Heizou, but there's no denying that he suck and wanderer seems to be his premium version.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

The sororitas is a decent class. The banners, acts of faith and Exalted Saint Mode mix shit up a bit, especially if you like setting things on fire because ESM is all about burning the fuck out of everything. The combo weapons are good-ish, cutting a lot of bullshit out of equipping 2 1-handed weapons...

But if you ignore all that it's mostly playing the Crusader with a pair of tits (and no heavy weapons).

I've not played much with the crusader, got to about level 10. I played mostly with the assasin as a sniper as that's what I usually go for in the ES/FO games, but I guess maybe it's not such a good choice for a diablo style game. My inability to use the dodge properly hasn't helped either. Is a double tap dodge so hard to implement?

Either way I have found the game to be just dull to play. The story kept me going until I got to the end of it around level 30 and since then it's generally been samey missions. I really want to like it, every few months I install it again, play a couple of missions and then give up as it's just the same as I remember it before.

It sounds like you've played a fair bit of it. Are there any speedy characters? It feels rather static and half the time I'm not quite sure where I am on screen, I just click the headshot skill on the long las with the cooldown eliminator perk until everything else is dead.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Itto is very limiting because Geo is very limited since it doesn't play nice with every other element, I don't think they know what to do with the element and thats why we haven't seen really seen many new geo character(3 in one year iirc). His one viable team is good, but can only work well against certain comp (no elemental shield and such).

Wanderer look like he has a fun kit, but anemo is very focused on support and he look like a main DPS, which means you'll probably need another anemo to VV for him, leaving little room for the rest of the team to lay element down. I really like Heizou, but there's no denying that he suck and wanderer seems to be his premium version.

I have plenty of viable main DPS characters already in a number of different elements. Just off the top of my head I can throw Ayaka, Yoimiya or Razor at a problem, plus Tighnari though he's a bit different, and between those four and their respective support teams, there isn't much I can't handle. Most of my interest in new characters at this point is for their aesthetic or story, getting to see how they really work as their story and voice lines unlock as well as trying to take a different approach to things in battle, and while I've got Ningguang and Heizou, they still don't seem to have exactly the same fighting style as Itto and Wanderer respectively.

Eh, 'value' is a complicated subject. I get it, but I'm probably still going to try rather than wait for Ayato. And since I have all the current 4-stars, I have to swing at one of them in order to hit Faruzan anyway.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I've not played much with the crusader, got to about level 10. I played mostly with the assasin as a sniper as that's what I usually go for in the ES/FO games, but I guess maybe it's not such a good choice for a diablo style game. My inability to use the dodge properly hasn't helped either. Is a double tap dodge so hard to implement?

Yeah, the dodge mechanic is derped. For my assassin I use the perk that disables it and instead gives a boost to the attribute of dodge/deflect/whatever.

As for the Crusader, it's the tankiest class but also a pretty good damage dealer. Sometimes it's good to stand out in the open and mow everything down with a heavy bolter.

Either way I have found the game to be just dull to play. The story kept me going until I got to the end of it around level 30 and since then it's generally been samey missions. I really want to like it, every few months I install it again, play a couple of missions and then give up as it's just the same as I remember it before.

Yeah, it does get samey real quick once you're done with the storylines... but I picked up the bundle of Martyr, Prophecy and all the DLC so there was more story to chew on and some of the DLC missions were interesting.

It sounds like you've played a fair bit of it. Are there any speedy characters? It feels rather static and half the time I'm not quite sure where I am on screen, I just click the headshot skill on the long las with the cooldown eliminator perk until everything else is dead.

Is 500+hrs a lot? It sounds like a lot sometimes.

Speedy characters? Not really because speed boosts are mostly gear or skill based. The assassin *feels* speedier to me but I dunno if that's an actual thing.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Started playing Tunic. The game is really pretty, the combat feels a little clunky, but not that bad. It's kind of annoying finding all these items in chests that I don't want to use because I don't know what they are and they have limited use, but I'm assuming I'll find something sooner or later that tells me something more about them.

The worst thing about the game so far is the music, it's so gentle and boring it's putting me to sleep. Would have been nice to have a bit more energy to it, at least in dungeons.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Need for Speed: Unbounded?
While the last few entries of this series have been uninteresting and bland, the rumbling of Criterion being involved and aiming for the "NFS Underground" vibe is what drew me to this one. Admittedly, hearing about the "anime" style additions did cause a bit of doubt. But seeing it in motion does quell such concerns, as it's not anime at all, just cel-shaded humans. And the visual effects on the cars actually looks kinda cool, like pleasant flourishes of explosive colour, especially on the wheels everytime you pull a turn. Plus the boost mechanic has been tinkered to provide more regular boosting out of corners and slipstreams, in which I shall try to explain: the boost bar is made of 2 overlappy layers - the background blue long-term boost you earn from general driving, and the bright yellow excited short-term boost you earn from drifts, slipstream and airtime which quickly disappears if you don't use it. This encourages much more risky driving, and coupled with the explosions of colour everytime you (and any of the other cars with their own vibrant effects) boost it does make for quite a fun visceral experience. The story isn't even insultingly bad! Yeah, it's still basic, but it doesn't lean into the "hello fellow kids" kinda cringe the others kept going for.

The campaign system is different too, also encouraging more risk. Every time you leave the garage, it forwards time from day to night, to the next day on the calender. Buuuuuuut, the police heat you gain from races and the number of retries you get only reset once you complete a full day. Plus you can only bank your race winnings once you return to the garage, so the longer you're out doing races, the higher that risk builds. It's an interesting dynamic that keeps pushing you forward, towards special dates for big races on the calendar you should try and prepare for. It injects some necessary tense direction that other open world racers tend to lack. The customisation is quite extensive too. I am pleasantly surprised by this entry. Is frustrating EA seemingly has not bothered marketing it much this time though, as it's certainly a step above the last few entries and then some.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Played through Tail of the Sun for the PS1. For some reason watching SGF try out the game made me think "I need to play this." Probably there's something wrong with me. It was exactly as bad as it seems. Bear in mind, this is a game where you cannot rotate the camera more than 60 degrees, when you need to run to the south you simply run toward the camera the entire time and cannot look where you are going. Honestly, that alone should tell you everything you need to know about the game. When your character is tired, they fall asleep instantly, even if you are running at top speed you immediately faceplant and go skidding across the ground. I also ate almost nothing but food that boosted my brain, like 200-300 of them, but brain was still in third place behind my propagate and my legs.

I leveled my tribe up all the way to the max and got access to the spear, and then I killed a few mammoths and if I wasn't playing on emulator that is where I would have stopped. You need to kill something like THIRTY mammoths to complete the ivory tower to the sun and end the game. You need to run all the way to the top of the map, kill a mammoth, click yes to return home with the bones, and do that again THIRTY times. It's insane, but then, the entire game was. It still took around half an hour at 10x speed or whatever the emulator was running at. It would be like a 20 hour game, just grinding out the same path to the mammoths over and over. It took me 4 1/2 hours as it was. And there are 9 endings. They expected you to play through this multiple times! Unbelievable. I don't even know why I played it once.

I got the flesh ending. I don't know why. I guess I ate a lot of meat, maybe that's it. My propagate was my highest stat, so I thought I would get the lust ending, but whatever.


Why did I play this instead of Tunic?

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Yeah, the dodge mechanic is derped. For my assassin I use the perk that disables it and instead gives a boost to the attribute of dodge/deflect/whatever.

As for the Crusader, it's the tankiest class but also a pretty good damage dealer. Sometimes it's good to stand out in the open and mow everything down with a heavy bolter.

I hadn't noticed that perk, I'll have a look see if I can swap something out for it.

I did give the crusader a go with the heavy flamer last night and I liked it a lot more than my assassin build. Assassin doesn't seem to have much decent AOE, and in a game full of hordes of enemies that does suck. By the look of it the Sororitas doesn't get the heavy flamer

Is 500+hrs a lot? It sounds like a lot sometimes.

5 times more than me, but I would guess a lot less than some.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I did give the crusader a go with the heavy flamer last night and I liked it a lot more than my assassin build. Assassin doesn't seem to have much decent AOE, and in a game full of hordes of enemies that does suck. By the look of it the Sororitas doesn't get the heavy flamer

Yeah, assassins don't get much in the way of AoE... shotgun, bolter, plasmagun and meltagun all have a single AoE attack, iirc. The best solution, IME, to that is find a weapon with the 'target explodes on single-hit kill' attribute so most shots on horde and regular enemies turn into AoE attacks (in fact you can vaporise entire swarms of horde levels with a single shot).

Flamer is all sorts of fun against horde and regular enemies. Sororitas don't get the heavy flamer but do get the standard (I guess) flamer that's functionally the same. There's also the handflamer that comes as part of some combo weapon sets but I haven't really used that so far.

 

[BrawlMan]

The Giganto fight is awesome! It's the Sonic equivalent of the first boss fight in Metal Gear Rising. I already know about the new music memes crossed over with that game and DMC5. Sonic Frontiers, you just keep impressing and exciting me! I like the overworld music on the first island. It has this soft melancholy straight out of a Miyazaki film. Not the first Sega has borrowed from him.

 

[wings012]

Well I finished Persona 5. Decided to get it on Gamepass instead of buying the game due to the big SAVINGS and I'll probably never play these sort of games again. I'm way beyond replaying JRPG length games, much less one as meaty as a Persona game. Seriously the longest one I've played, clocked in just under 100 hours(shy of a few minutes). I remember my P3/4 runs being around 70-80 hours. Also the first Persona game where I managed to complete all social links. I remember being quite a few short in P3, and there were links I didn't discover at all. I think I did manage to discover all the links in P4, but came short to maxing out Kanji and Naoto among others. I had a fair bit of spare time left in P5 and jazz clubbed it.

I did look up a guide after 40 or so hours just for the dialogue options though, so that probably saved me some time. But one thing P5 did I don't remember P3/4 doing were a lot of free social stat increases. A number of social links also improve your social stats, so you can prioritize those first instead of spending time solely on social stats. Like towards the end you can focus on Tower to help shore up your Kindness to finish off Hierophant and tackle Hermit which have Kindess requirements. I just winged the schedule for most part and some of the later social stat areas were basically useless to me since my stats were already maxed in those departments - such as the Maid Cafe. Though honestly, going out of your way to increase Charm is pretty pointless since so many links give you Charm - Devil, Sun, Hierophant... not sure what else. There's also a number of days where the game locks you in your room and you have to spend the night there, so that's when you wanna use up some social stat activities like DVDs or books instead of doing it on a blank day you could be using to progress links.

Anyway it was good fun to finally jump back into a Persona game after more than a decade. P5 is a pretty old game, but I haven't owned a console since the PS2. So the last time I played a Persona game was P4 on the PS2.

 

[Bartholen]

I've finally gotten into Doom Eternal, and so far I'm not too sure how I like it. The way they've changed the formula dips firmly into overcomplication: different weapons, chainsaw, glory kills, blood punch, frost grenades, flamethrower... I'm not even 3 hours in and it already feels overwhelming. Playing on Ultra-Violence (or whatever Hard difficulty is called) I find myself often dying and barely knowing what killed me. The arenas are both big and multilayered, and you barely have time to even take stock of what you're up against. Not that it matters much, because all the enemies move around so quickly that it's easy to lose track of them completely and get into crossfire. The game's extreme stinginess with ammo means that you're basically forced to play it like a resource management game, which can often feel frustrating. It feels like there's very little freedom in how enemies are supposed to be handled: shoot the turret of the arachnotron, sticky bombs for cacodemons, precision shot for Mancubuses and so on. Focusing bigger targets down first doesn't feel viable either, because at any given time there's like 5 more aiming for you, leading to quite a lot of running away in the combat encounters.

 

[Worgen]

I've finally gotten into Doom Eternal, and so far I'm not too sure how I like it. The way they've changed the formula dips firmly into overcomplication: different weapons, chainsaw, glory kills, blood punch, frost grenades, flamethrower... I'm not even 3 hours in and it already feels overwhelming. Playing on Ultra-Violence (or whatever Hard difficulty is called) I find myself often dying and barely knowing what killed me. The arenas are both big and multilayered, and you barely have time to even take stock of what you're up against. Not that it matters much, because all the enemies move around so quickly that it's easy to lose track of them completely and get into crossfire. The game's extreme stinginess with ammo means that you're basically forced to play it like a resource management game, which can often feel frustrating. It feels like there's very little freedom in how enemies are supposed to be handled: shoot the turret of the arachnotron, sticky bombs for cacodemons, precision shot for Mancubuses and so on. Focusing bigger targets down first doesn't feel viable either, because at any given time there's like 5 more aiming for you, leading to quite a lot of running away in the combat encounters.

It took me entirely too long to get used to using the chainsaw all the time. The game is actually really generous with ammo, but you need to get used to thinking of the chainsaw as a use all the time skill and not a "fuck that big thing" skill. Might also be more enjoyable to turn the difficulty down till you get more used to the game loop, cause it really is its own thing that not much before it played like.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I've finally gotten into Doom Eternal, and so far I'm not too sure how I like it. The way they've changed the formula dips firmly into overcomplication: different weapons, chainsaw, glory kills, blood punch, frost grenades, flamethrower... I'm not even 3 hours in and it already feels overwhelming. Playing on Ultra-Violence (or whatever Hard difficulty is called) I find myself often dying and barely knowing what killed me. The arenas are both big and multilayered, and you barely have time to even take stock of what you're up against. Not that it matters much, because all the enemies move around so quickly that it's easy to lose track of them completely and get into crossfire. The game's extreme stinginess with ammo means that you're basically forced to play it like a resource management game, which can often feel frustrating. It feels like there's very little freedom in how enemies are supposed to be handled: shoot the turret of the arachnotron, sticky bombs for cacodemons, precision shot for Mancubuses and so on. Focusing bigger targets down first doesn't feel viable either, because at any given time there's like 5 more aiming for you, leading to quite a lot of running away in the combat encounters.

Sounds like the kind of game I’ll play on easy mode to breeze on through. I’m about halfway through DOOM 2016 on Ultraviolence and it’s been staying fun though, probably because it was designed with a more old school feel in mind.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The way they've changed the formula dips firmly into overcomplication

This was a big part of my problem with the game. It felt like they were tacking things on just for the sake of it.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Soul Caliber 6
I got this both for nostalgia and as something to put my new Steam Deck through the ringer and because it was on sale. It's pretty good! Though unfortunately I started with some dumb story mode with tedious dialogue to read (which also has some tutorial built in so it's still a good place to start). Once I abandoned it for arcade mode I was having fun with it. It's so much faster and more hectic than I remember fighting games being,
There is a story mode where you get to be all the characters and I will save that for when I'm traveling. But so far this is the perfect "oh looks it's part of a Steam sale" game.

Rollerdrome
I was curious about it since it came out and since I played through the big PS5 releases finally bit the bullet on this one. It is great! Not the kind of game I can play for long stretches but that's ok.
So this is Rollerball the game (original movie with James Caan = good; remake with LL Cool J = bad). But since it's a game it's more flips and bullet time. AKA, the Tony Hawk with guns game. The combination of that 1970's aesthetic with perfectly designed sound cues and projectile impact makes this the kind of game that limits the inevitable feeling of frustration when I fail because, man, this game is hard. You gotta do these combos and tricks to complete challenges but also pressing dodge to not get hit interrupts you, so it can get really annoying. But killing enemies always feels good here so when you take out a couple then land the challenge, it feels good.

I'm only past the opening stages so I'm sure the difficulty will be brutal. I for sure will be taking advantage of the "Assist" options to slow things down and let me complete the game at some point.

 

[Dalisclock]

Donut County

My Wife grabbed a couple games for the Switch and this was one of them. Played through it in a couple hours and had fun with it. Basically it takes a lot of inspiration from Katamari Damacy but instead of a ball rolling stuff up you control a hole that gets slowly bigger as you swallow more stuff in the hole, so you pick up smallest things so you can pick up slightly bigger things and so on from there. New mechanics are introduced along the way so it's not just that repeated over and over again and the humor worked for me though I don't think it would for everyone. There's not much plot really but rather your playing the game is slowly swallowing the town and everyone in it and there's cutscenes between levels where the people in the town are talking about it and arguing with each other. The game doesn't take itself remotely seriously considering like half the plot is about Racoons using the holes to steal people's garbage and buy drone quadcopters they can ride on(Is that even a spoiler?).

It's not as intensely weird as Katamari but you also don't have the time limits of Katamari either so it's overall easier. For me it was a fun couple hours of light puzzling and humor that worked for me(obviously YMMV). It's also like $12 on steam and this is a game that can be played in short bursts since none of the levels are more then like 10 minutes long(maybe the last one is a bit longer).

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Yeah, assassins don't get much in the way of AoE... shotgun, bolter, plasmagun and meltagun all have a single AoE attack, iirc. The best solution, IME, to that is find a weapon with the 'target explodes on single-hit kill' attribute so most shots on horde and regular enemies turn into AoE attacks (in fact you can vaporise entire swarms of horde levels with a single shot).

Flamer is all sorts of fun against horde and regular enemies. Sororitas don't get the heavy flamer but do get the standard (I guess) flamer that's functionally the same. There's also the handflamer that comes as part of some combo weapon sets but I haven't really used that so far.

Didn't know that was a thing, I 'll have a look out for them, or I suppose I might be able to craft one and change the stats, I think that's a thing.

I suppose a flamer will do, I just hope I don't stumble into any heavy flamer grade heresy.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Norco

It's an 8-bit point-n-click adventure title that got loads of positive reviews, and I was looking for something casual to fall back on after my daily fisting by Elden Ring, but it just reeks of pretentiousness right out of the gate. Lots of ominous, arthouse language had me skipping through the opening bit just to get to gameplay, and even then, it threw more nonsense at me. I might give it another shot, but I'm in no hurry.

 

[Dalisclock]

Norco

It's an 8-bit point-n-click adventure title that got loads of positive reviews, and I was looking for something casual to fall back on after my daily fisting by Elden Ring, but it just reeks of pretentiousness right out of the gate. Lots of ominous, arthouse language had me skipping through the opening bit just to get to gameplay, and even then, it threw more nonsense at me. I might give it another shot, but I'm in no hurry.

Is it an adventure game or an RPG or what? I've vaguely noticed it but know nothing about it.