What are you currently playing?

[Old_Hunter_77]

Hi-Fi Rush
Started this on my Steam Deck and got through the tutorial and first boss, the big lady.
It's ok so far, I'm iffy on the whole rhythm combat. One the one hand, it's nice that your attack "always lands on the beat," whatever that means, so it's easy to get into a combat flow. The flip side is that it's so easy so far, though I'm sure at the end it will be impossible because that's how games work. I'm in Normal mode as I always do for a new game so maybe I'll jack up the difficulty and see what happens. Especially since I don't care about the grade I get and I'm just interested in progressing.
The presentation and animations and stuff and of course the music is very nice.

Dead Space remake
Bought a physical copy but it didn't work. And now I remember why I stopped doing that for, like, 20 years, lol. So while I'm waiting for my replacement...

Witcher 3
This will definitely be my last play-through. The new update actually makes the game a lot easier by mid-game. For one thing, upgrading sklll points has been made easier, and I also think they award more XP because I'm at the end of the main campaign and I'm at level 36 already. In previous play-throughs I'd be level 33 or 34 max.
I also started playing with ray tracking on and, I dunno, it's nice I guess, but not always great? Or I don't know if it's that or other upgrades.

So the quest where you travel to other worlds with Avallach looked amazing. That first desert world with the crab things? Gorgeous!
But then there's the part you can have a snow fight with Ciri and the light or whatever makes Geralt look blonde, lol. So weird.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished Carrion, replayed all of Overcooked! + DLCs with my girlfriend, now replaying Cursed to Golf too.

 

[Dalisclock]

WInd Waker I'm slowly collecting the Triforce pieces and heart containers near the end and it's kind of a drag, So in the meantime I've started Pathfinder Kingmaker because focus is for suckers and people with attention spans.

After finally figuring out what I wanted roll for a character(Sylvan Sorcerer) and setting that in stone, I started it up and the opening is fine. You and a bunch of other adventurers are offered a deal, go to the Stolen Lands(an area that none of the neighboring nations have been able to conquer and hold and is currently a bandit kingdom), deal with the current bandit leader, the Stag Lord and whoever kills the Stag Lord will be made a Baron/ess and given control of the area to rule(or at least the Barony will be recognized by at least one of the nearby nations). When asked "Which of us 30 or so people actually becomes the baron/ess?" the answer is "Whoever you as a group decide" which is less than helpful. Then everyone is sent to their rooms in the palace before heading out in the morning.

It turns out the writers decided to narrow this down pretty fast by having assasins attack the palace you're spending the night in and kill most of the applicants/adventurers, with acts as a tutorial dungeon, introduces you to party members one by one and gets you familiar with the combat. After which, you're accused of being a spy(along with a shifty gnome, who SPOILERS is the actual spy. The fact he tries to frame you for being the spy is kinda of a dead giveaway) and the remaining characters join either party before the game proper begins. I'm also given a 90 day time limit to kill the stag lord, which I'm informed is PLENTY of time and the only way to really fail it is intentionally fuck around to run the timer down.

So not a bad start, though so far most of the game since then has been wandering around trying to explore the stolen lands and doing quests in an effort to find the stag lord while dealing with various bandits. I'm told the early game is quite slow and it picks up after the stag lord is dead, which is good because so far the most interesting thing so far is the dickhead gnome causing problems for...reasons. At least now I have a full party assembled and kinda know what I'm doing. It's just the Old Sycamore tree dungeon is basically a series of Dark Caves with a bunch of spiders and centipedes without much that's really interesting or in the way of story. There's the whole Kobald/Mite war going on that's been provoked by the evil gnome pretending to be a kobald but mostly I'm just kinda wandering around in the dark trying to figure out where the fuck I am and what I'm looking for. Also, remembering the whole "You have to camp before you can get all your spells/ability charges back" thing that D&D does.

On a lighter note, taking "Grease" as a spell early on means I can make a giant slippy puddle in the middle of a fight and watching everyone repeatedly slip and fall becomes unintentionally hilarious like watching a deadly slapstick routine.

 

[Chimpzy]

There's a Next-Fes on Steam, with demos for a number of games that caught my eye, so that'll be the remainder of my week. So far I tried:

System Shock
Not sure if this is the demo that's been out for a while again. Regardless, I rather like it. Takes a little while to get used to its sort of garish visual language and kind of throws you in the deep on what to do and where to go, but that kind of refreshing. Other than that, it's System Shock, pretty much what I expected it to be.

Afterimage
Chinese made metroidvania. Looks very pretty. Controls quite well. Voice acting kind of cringe. Overal, seem like it could turn out ok to good, some problems notwithstanding. Like it could do a better job teaching its mechanics e.g. I figured out by accident that some projectiles can be blocked or even reflected with your sword, but the game never tells you. Or how grabbing a new item has this pop-up showing what you just picked up that freezes you in place until you press a button to make it go away, but the rest of the world is not frozen and enemies can still attack you.

Slave Zero X
Yes, it is related to the Slave Zero game for Dreamcast/PC. Not a third person shooter with giant robots tho, but a 2.5D Strider-like. Didn't like it much tho. Controls a bit too sluggishly, enemies can take an annoying amount of hits and are invulnerable when knocked down, which they do easily. Also, you can't swing your sword as fast as you press the button. Blasphemy. Refused to go fullscreen for some reason.

 

[laggyteabag]

I completed Dead Cells on my Steam Deck (by which I mean that I have completed a run, and rolled credits). Owned it on the Switch, but never played it, then eventually sold it.

Bought it again during the Steam Christmas Sale, alongside all of the DLC, for about £20.

As far as Rouge-lites go, this is a pretty strong one. I feel a bit spoiled from a story perspective, coming from something like Hades, but I am very happy with the weapon variety - and there is still so much more to unlock.

This game definitely feels like a passion project.

It also runs like a dream on the Steam Deck.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Started up some Destiny 2 to check out monthly free game with some DLC. Paused it during the intro mission to go bathroom, tho came back to see it logged me out. Logged back in, but it seem to have skipped intro mission and just dumped a load of content unlock titles on me followed by a map selection screen with not a hint as to what was supposed to have just happened. I've no bloody idea what it wants from me now. Or whether there's an option to replay intro. I swear this happened last time I tried to play this damn game. The toilet torments me so!

 

[Drathnoxis]

I completed Dead Cells on my Steam Deck (by which I mean that I have completed a run, and rolled credits). Owned it on the Switch, but never played it, then eventually sold it.

Bought it again during the Steam Christmas Sale, alongside all of the DLC, for about £20.

As far as Rouge-lites go, this is a pretty strong one. I feel a bit spoiled from a story perspective, coming from something like Hades, but I am very happy with the weapon variety - and there is still so much more to unlock.

This game definitely feels like a passion project.

It also runs like a dream on the Steam Deck.

Playing Dead Cells never really felt very good to me. Like the controls just feel kind of sluggish and not great. I won a couple runs but it doesn't really feel like I've completed the game and it's been sitting on my desktop for a couple years because I've been kind of intending to go back and play it more, but haven't worked up the desire.

 

[BrawlMan]

Slave Zero X
Yes, it is related to the Slave Zero game for Dreamcast/PC. Not a third person shooter with giant robots tho, but a 2.5D Strider-like. Didn't like it much tho. Controls a bit too sluggishly, enemies can take an annoying amount of hits and are invulnerable when knocked down, which they do easily. Also, you can't swing your sword as fast as you press the button. Blasphemy. Refused to go fullscreen for some reason.

Well now I have concerns. Hopefully, they fix this in the final release.

 

[Chimpzy]

Well now I have concerns. Hopefully, they fix this in the final release.

It's not bad, just different than what I expected. It moves mostly like Strider, but it doesn't fight like it, if you get me. You can't mash attack and just annihilate an enemy with sword swings, it seems you need to be slower and more methodical, and I think maybe juggle enemies to keep your combo going, tho I haven't managed to get the hang of that.

Anyway, today I tried the demos for:

Gestalt: Steam & Cinder
Amother Metroidvania with quite nice steampunk pixel art. Mechanically pretty similar to Afterimage, the one I played yesterday. They both have Igavania-ish traits like gear, consumables and a leveling system with stats and skill points, but I like this much better. You get a bigger, more versatile move set from the get go, enemies are more varied and fun to fight, and overal it feels more intuitively designed, resulting in better, tighter game feel.

Mika and the Witch's Mountain
I thought this would be a 3d platformer, and it kind of is, but also not really. Good thing too, because they put jump on the Y button. Anyway, seems it's more a casual game about flying around an island on your broom and doing oddjobs like deliveries for people with reaching the top of a mountain as the ultimate goal. A little bit like A Short Hike. Looks cute, art style a little reminiscent of Windwaker.

 

[Silvanus]

Replayed Little Nightmares II for the Platinum. Such an awesome aesthetic.

Also finished Unravel 2. But... the time trial trophies on that game seem to assume you'll be playing it co-op, and are borderline impossible solo. A shame.

ALSO also played through Concrete Genie, a charming and visually lovely (albeit too short) game about how a town has been brought to ruin by an unregulated oil company, and I am reminded of the fun time tstorm tried to convince people that video games as an art form were inherently conservative. Lol, good times.

 

[BrawlMan]

Played a little bit of RE5 Mercenaries Mode, and did some runs of SOR4 again.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Scanner Sombre. Someone apparently took the main gameplay mechanic of LIDAR.EXE and stretched it out into a full experience. It's remarkably well-done. I'mma be dropping some screenshots in the relevant thread.

 

[BrawlMan]

I've been bouncing around between NG Sigma 2 and Razor's Edge. I've been doing the survival challenges and definitely prefer the ones in Sigma 2. Both of them have co-op, but were removed in the Remastered Trilogy. Sigma 2 at least lets you have an AI partner you can switch between. Razor's Edge doesn't get that benefit and makes them way too tough to beat on the harder difficulties. I unlocked Ryu's blue ninja outfit from the NES trilogy completing all the Acolyte Missions.

 

[meiam]

Playing spellforce : Conquest of Eo, if you ever wanted a 4x more focused on RPG element or a HoMM with more interesting long game you should look into it. It's devoured my time something nasty but its super niche and as quite a lot of problem at the moment but is pretty unique (similar to Thea but more focused, for the 5 people who played that)

 

[Thaluikhain]

Magical Diary: Horse Hall

Which is basically about you being a muggleborn girl going to the US version of Hogwarts, but it's really good and the creator isn't a TERF claiming to be oppressed.

 

[Chimpzy]

Scanner Sombre. Someone apparently took the main gameplay mechanic of LIDAR.EXE and stretched it out into a full experience. It's remarkably well-done. I'mma be dropping some screenshots in the relevant thread.

Seen the screenies. Looks neat. Reminds me a little of sort of similar game where you play a blind person and have to navigate through echolocation. I think it's called Perception.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Seen the screenies. Looks neat. Reminds me a little of sort of similar game where you play a blind person and have to navigate through echolocation. I think it's called Perception.

There were a few of those out, as far as I remember. There was another one called Devil's Tuning Fork.

 

[Absent]

Yeah, Scanner Sombre was awesome. There's a couple interesting games that focus on sound, such as Unheard, where you must piece up what happened in a crime scene just by listening to sound recordings and following their surces on a map, and Dark Echo, where youavigate top-down corridors by sending sound waves aheead of you. But none are as visually gorgeous and haunting as Scanner Sombre. I always loved these throw-flour-at-invisible-shape scenes, in fictions, and the Daredevil series' clever opening titles. A whole game based around this effect was bound to thrill me.

 

[Piscian]

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I'm about 15 hours into Tales Of Arise.

I think after Stick Of truth I was hankering for another JRPG, but worryingly not because of any passion I have for JPRGs but because work has been really stressful lately.

I'm a sort of integration engineer. I don't develop software or hardware I develop implementations. Like when a user clicks "install MOBA" I design what needs to happen when, in what order, what the user needs to see, what telemetry needs to see, what are the requirements for the api integration, how much bandwidth does the app need blah blah. Basically I'm like that guy in Dark City whos drawing spirals all over his apartment, but mine have to make sense and have to be drawn in such away that 50 people from 4 different companies know what they need to do.

SO FUCK sometimes I need to not think. I need to sit in a chair and stare at anime cat girls shooting guns and watch stats go up that only matter that they are blue and blue is good.

With that context I can tell you Tales of Arise does its job. It's "FINE".

It's not interesting or revolutionary, it doesn't add any new quirk or slant. In fact it's kind of a throw back. The story is the anime trope where the land has been enslaved by another race for 300 years and one day you decide to rise up with the help of a defector. It's shockingly simple, theres not a lot of exploration, you're basically going from story area to monster are to story area working your way to fighting The Beast King Lordgenome The lord of the Renans, while free each subkingdom with its own leader.

What it does fairly solidly is that the characters play off each other well. You're basically an happy go lucky good guy, but the girl defector "HAS HER OWN AGENDA" which she will remind you of ..constantly, being the typical tsundere anime trope girl. However, they do a good job of inserting some cute and funny dialog that makes the relationship charming.

What it does do well is the combat which combines the current Final Fantasy action battle formula with some more in the realm of devil may cry. Each attack skill is assigned a button and you have 8 total 4 ground and 4 aerial. You gain more attack types essentially through leveling and a skill tree. You have a regular attack which costs nothing and then all your other attacks cost one or two action points. The goal in this game is to chain as many as possible in a combo and then theres an assortment of actions that maybe appear based on timing that reset your action points so you can go infinite as long as theres enough enemies and if you manage to break the enemies defense you can do a sort of anime final attack fatality like action. Kinda reminds me of Killer instinct. At first I was button mashing, but after figuring out the loop its almost more of a rhythm game, but fighting. So even the sort of walk about fight random monsters has an legs because it's "fun" rather than something you'd want an auto battle button for.

Idk, so far its about a 7-8/10 out of ten for me. Lacking exploration or much in the way of interesting side quests its difficult for me to give it the 10/10 a lot of outlets gave it. It's just not doing enough in this day and age. Barring the graphics which are fine, around PS4 era (I'm playing the PS5 version, this could have come out on Dreamcast or PS3. It's a pretty ho-hum JPRG with a fun combat system.

Oh also theres a scavenger hunt system in the game where you can find accessories to put on your crew like cute cat ears and rabbit tails so fine whatever 10/10 best game ever.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I completed my PS5 platinum run of Witcher 3.
This time I added an extra challenge by ending the main story campaign with the platinum trophy. This meant getting every other non-DLC trophy before starting the last main quest. Mostly this is easy enough if you know the game as well as I do but the tricky part is the stupid combat related trophies, that are like "shoot 50 dudes in the head with your piece of crap crossbow" or "push 10 dudes off a mountain even though you like never fight on a mountain" or "use literally the worst skill in the game, the one where you can convert enemies to be your zombies but it never actually works" or whatever.

And the place where it used to be easiest to grind those trophies out is no longer available for that- the Devil's Pit location, where bandits would respawn, is now the location for the new quest added with the next-gen update. Fortunately, I found with the help of youtube another location in Skellige that spawns two dudes all the time, you don't even have to fast travel away and back, and it is actually at the top of a mountain.

I may or may not do the DLC's at some point in the future but this was definitely my final last for-real this time play-through of the base game.

Dead Space- man, that is not for me. I new the darkness would be rough but it's... well, too dark, lol. Nah man, sci-fi horror games are not for me, it's just too much squinting.
I do gotta say, the intro is a master class of pacing- setup, basic tutorial as you go- I really wish more current games did it like this. No endless fucking menus or pompous lecturing or waypoints all over the place to "remind" you of whatever bullshit, just pure game. Good stuff.
I was intrigued by the combat system, where you have to cut off limbs with engineering tools, that's what got me interested. But in practice, with the darkness, it was just too difficult and annoying for me personally. I think this is probably a wonderful game that I will not enjoy so I'm gonna return it while I can.

Hi-Fi Rush- just not feelin' this one either. It's.. fine, I dunno, cute, but silly. Part of me gets why it's a Big Deal but I think part of the hype is, like, to make some point about The Industry, too. Like it's a fine game, nothing against it, but whatever, man. *shrug*

Or I'm in one of my moods where I need a break from gaming for a few days. That happens, and then I'll find some new obsession.