What are you currently playing?

Bob_McMillan

Elite Member
Aug 28, 2014
5,424
2,047
118
Country
Philippines
Finished Ghost of Tsushima. Maybe it's because I dove straight into all the side quests, but the game HEAVILY loses steam in the 3rd act. Nothing new to throw at you in terms of enemies or techniques. The story is also incredibly weak. The finales to all the side character arcs fell flat, Lady Masako's especially.

So yeah, kinda sad to be ending the game on a sour note. The sheer beauty of the game world could outshine the mundanity of the tired open world formula only for so long.

I think the biggest problem, story aside, is that the game just never forces you to BE the Ghost. Every single upgrade is an option, every single move is an option, and sadly all these options are never quite as fun as stomping to the front gate and cutting down Mongols as a samurai.

For a sequel, I'd really like to see the combat become more intense, but more forgiving (the parry and dodge system need to feel MUCH better). The terror system needs to take notes from the Arkham series. It is NOT fun to have enemies just piss their pants and run away, I feel like I'm being robbed of fun combat. GoT takes a lot of inspiration from The Witcher 3, GoT 2 needs lean harder into that and have some sidequests worth a damn.

I'd give this a strong 7.5. With better writing and slight tweaks to gameplay, this game could have been generation defining.
 

Old_Hunter_77

Elite Member
Dec 29, 2021
2,120
1,950
118
Country
United States
I just could not muster the will to continue Code Vein or my Elden Ring replay. I need a break from that kind of crap. Also gonna reshuffle my hardware.

Anyone else take game breaks? Like a week or two of no games- catch up on your reading. I'm watching old Columbo episodes and listening to 60's soul music and blues records from the 1930's and the Allman Brothers Band. Also the weather is getting warmer and going for nice walks.

Then I'll probably impale myself on Wo Long or some crap when I'm ready again lol.
 

hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
Legacy
Nov 18, 2010
8,738
5,910
118
I just could not muster the will to continue Code Vein or my Elden Ring replay. I need a break from that kind of crap. Also gonna reshuffle my hardware.

Anyone else take game breaks? Like a week or two of no games- catch up on your reading. I'm watching old Columbo episodes and listening to 60's soul music and blues records from the 1930's and the Allman Brothers Band. Also the weather is getting warmer and going for nice walks.

Then I'll probably impale myself on Wo Long or some crap when I'm ready again lol.
Sounds like you have more than enough time to game, which can easily lead to burnout. It’s always good to step out/away every so often to recalibrate with other life stuff.
 

Old_Hunter_77

Elite Member
Dec 29, 2021
2,120
1,950
118
Country
United States
Sounds like you have more than enough time to game, which can easily lead to burnout. It’s always good to step out/away every so often to recalibrate with other life stuff.
Man you know what takes up a lot of time? Finishing your master's degree. Oh, and getting an industry certification. Finishing that sure gives you time to screw up Elden Ring replays. Once the summer hits and I have to go to destination weddings and crap I'll look back fondly on this period of having too much gaming time.
 

MrCalavera

Elite Member
Legacy
Apr 30, 2020
906
981
98
Country
Poland
Now you mention it, how does that fight work on pc? Do they make you use the keyboard, of if already on keyboard, an odd set of keys?
You have to switch from a controller to a keyboard, ye. I can't exactly remember, but there might be something they prepared for kb-only play too.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Chimpzy

Hawki

Elite Member
Legacy
Mar 4, 2014
9,651
2,175
118
Country
Australia
Gender
Male
So I did a mammoth playthrough session yesterday and managed to progress through Path of Radiance, to the point where I'm at where Ike leads his forces against Daein. Recording general thoughts/occurrences as I go along:

-So I lost Volke on the pocher/slaver mission. Thought I'd get some XP with him, but nut, criticals gonna critical, and he's out. Really, it's my own fault, and I've since had to rely on Soothe when I need a thief.

-Concerning Malakov...okay, quick question, why does he have no supports with Marcia? This is purely a question of storytelling, but Marcia's motivations up to this point in the story are finding her in-debt brother. So after finding him in the above-mentioned mission, they promptly never talk to each other throughout the rest of the game (least in support conversations). This isn't the only oddity, there's no supports between Rolf, Boyd, and Oscar, despite the three of them being brothers.

-On the other hand, I love Malakov's info conversation with Ike, which can basically be summed up as:

Malakov: "Huzzah! I'm free from my debtors!"

Ike: "Actually, I just paid them off, now you owe us money. That means you're stuck with us, your debt will be taken from your pay, and from the looks of things, you'll be serving with us for a very long time."

-With the desert mission, I'm not exactly sure what Sanaki's plan is. She sends Ike and co. into the desert, obstensibly to deal with bandits, but they turn out to be the Laguz Emancipation Army. Which...okay, sure, but how many of those 'bandits' did my team kill before that was revealed? And how do the survivours feel about the whole "yeah, sorry for killing a lot of you, but we're besties now, right?"

-Getting into Serenes Forest, it's absolutely gruelling since you need to play 4 missions back to back, but I actually like the mechanics here, how you get to choose two reinforcements per mission, who are also going to be your only source of new items. I wouldn't want a whole game styled around this format, but as a one-off thing, it works.

-Damn hawks turn up in the last mission, stealing my kills and XP, the bastards.

-Getting with the Serenes Forest genocide of the herons, I'm really mixed on this. On one hand, I applaud the game for having the guts to deal with what is unambiguously genocide, and showing the effects on the survivours (e.g. Reyson, who understandably, despises the beorc), as well as the perpetrators (while not shown directly, it's often stated how the mob that torched Serenes was consumed by guilt and loathing, hence why Sanaki taking it upon herself to apologize works well as a moment). Out of all the Fire Emblem games I've played, it's probably the weightiest subject matter that I've seen the series dealt with, and for the most part, it deals it with the sombreness you'd expect.

On the other hand, things wrap up far too neatly for my tastes. Sanaki apologizes, Leanne accepts her apology, and Reyson, albeit grudgingly, accepts it as well, since Leanne's his sister, so by extension, the hawk laguz sort of forgive the whole genocide thing. Maybe. And then Reyson and Leanne sing a song and Serenes Forest bursts back into life, which goes to show you that all you need to get over genocide is just good will and a galdr. This might sound glib, but from an in-universe standpoint, I'm not sure if Reyson (and certainly not Leanne) are really in the position to forgive Bengnion, because even if they can, what about the surviving herons? What about the fact that many of the people who slaughtered the herons are still alive? If this was an event that occurred hundreds of years ago, sure, but in-universe, a mere 20 years have passed, and Bengnion doesn't really need to do anything bar its empress (who's the innocent party in this scenario) apologizing and getting it from winged angel birds. So when Nasir says that the divide between beorc and laguz has shrunk...really? Um, okay, Mr. Optimist.

So, yeah. Great setup, not so sure about the conclusion.

-So Ike literally becomes a lord (fun fact, I'd maxed him out by the Serenes missions so tried to use him as sparingly as possible), which kind of makes sense, and is then given an army to command. Um...okay. I'm not sure how commanding a mercenary trope of maybe up to 30 individuals (less if you've been losing units) is the same as commanding over 800 soldiers (Sanaki uses the term "regiment," so assuming the terminology holds true, that's probably between 800 to 1000 soldiers under his command), but to be fair, Ike is uneasy about this as I am, and is shown to be relying on more experienced officers such as Tanith.

-Also, minor nitpick, but it's established that the Crimean Liberation Army marches on Daein at the onset of winter. Um, okay. I'm not an expert on warfare, but generally, marching during winter isn't the best move in the world to make. Just saying.

-This might be reading too much into things, but there's an interesting possibility that's raised in the support conversations. Tanith tells Ike that Ashnard came to power 18 years ago, whereas 20 years ago, a great plague struck Daein (I think elsewhere as well), killing thousands of beorc and laguz alike. What else happened 20 years ago? The Serenes Massacre. I can't help but wonder if the plague occurred BECAUSE of the massacre. As in, nature's out of whack (Sanaki says earlier that the laguz are vital for maintaining nature or some other stuff that's a bit Noble Savage, but okay), so a plague occurs. Of course, it could be coincidence of just saying "twenty years" at random, but still...

So, yeah. Looking above, I've probably listed more gripes than praise, but still, the game remains solid both in gameplay and story. Assuming things remain at this level, at the least, this will probably end up being my #2 or #1 FE game.
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,286
7,082
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
Anyone else take game breaks? Like a week or two of no games- catch up on your reading. I'm watching old Columbo episodes and listening to 60's soul music and blues records from the 1930's and the Allman Brothers Band. Also the weather is getting warmer and going for nice walks.

Then I'll probably impale myself on Wo Long or some crap when I'm ready again lol.
There's definately nights where I'm too tired to sit down and start gaming or I spent too much time goofing on the internet and then I decide I'm not gonna bother so I either go chill in bed or something.

Problem being I get to play pretty much after my kid has gone to bed and maybe some of the days I'm off and the kid is at school. But once I finish any errands, chores, get a workout in, prep for dinner, stuff like that, which always takes me more time then I imagine it will.

So aprox an hour, maybe two, a day, which isn't very much especially for longer games where an hour means you maybe make a small amount of progress and why I will not engage with MMOs or Live service games at all.

It's hard to play when the kid is around because either supervision is required or she wants to "help" me play, which isn't very "helpful" or particularly fun for me. Like I started playing Unpacking and thought "Oh, she's busy watching a movie. I can sneak a level of Unpacking" and suddenly she right there next to me, ignoring her movie and helping me Unpack which I kinda don't want right now. I'm thinking "Come on, you have your movie that you picked and this is supposed to be my time"

So yeah.
 
Last edited:

meiam

Elite Member
Dec 9, 2010
3,593
1,821
118
Started playing phantom brigade, really interesting tactical game, think XCOM except sorta in real time with mech. You can see what the enemy will do in the next 5 second and give your mechs specific order (move there, then shoot, then use your shield etc...). Sadly, while it absolutely nail the core gameplay and has very good art style, everything else leaves a lot to be desired. The mech side is okay, you have mech made up of 4 parts+weapons, sadly a lot of part are worthless, heavy parts make your mech move much slower and really limit how often they can fire their weapon, making them all useless. Weapons also really suffer from balance issue, missiles can be fired often, in short burst, will go around obstacle, do really good damage and have exceptional range with no scatter (they home in), there's no reason to use any other weapon, its bizarre that no one caught that before release, they'are also really annoying to fight against because they're the only weapon the game doesn't show you when they'll hit your troops, you just have to sorta guess. There's also no skill system similar to XCOM, which means the gameplay is very stale, your unit will act the same the entire game with no change in gameplay. Most of the progression comes from parts level, ie tier 4 parts are better than tier 3 and so on, which means your just on a gear treadmill the entire game but with no gameplay variation, getting a really good piece of gear isn't very exciting when you know you'll be chunking it in the garbage soon for being outdated. You can upgrade your mobile base, but none of the upgrade really change the game, it just let you move around faster or harder to detect. This doesn't really matter since the game has no system to force you to go trough the campaign faster, if one region of the map become too dangerous you can just heads for another one.

The UI is also severely deficient, comparing parts is much harder than it has any right to be, something as simple as putting two part side by side for direct comparison isn't possible. This is even more annoying after battle because you have to decide which part that the enemy drop you want to keep, but you have literally no way to see which part you currently have equipped. After every "round" of battle, you can watch a replay of the round, except the game doesn't show you damage numbers that happenes (despite them being visible during the round itself), once you get to the large encounter you might have multiple fire fight happening simultaneously, making it impossible to observe all of them at once.

Fights themselves are very repetitive, the objectif is pretty much always to kill every enemy, sometime you can capture something, but its kinda pointless to do since killing the enemy will just give you everything. The game also has essentially no story, bad guy invade, kick them out, you know nothing of the conflict and the enemy are nameless and completely free of any information (I don't think the country you fight for is even named). This really make the entire game feel monotonous.

The game apparently spent some time in early access on the EGS, but it really doesn't feel like it, this feel more like a tech demo for an amazing game than and actual game.
 

Zykon TheLich

Extra Heretical!
Legacy
Jun 6, 2008
3,495
834
118
Country
UK
Anyone else take game breaks? Like a week or two of no games- catch up on your reading. I'm watching old Columbo episodes and listening to 60's soul music and blues records from the 1930's and the Allman Brothers Band. Also the weather is getting warmer and going for nice walks.
Breaks? I maybe get a few hours a week to play games. Half an hour or so after work on some weekdays and an hour or so some Saturday mornings. That's about it. Mostly I'm gaming vicariously through this forum.
I would like to play more, but then I only have so much free time and gaming isn't my first choice of leisure activity.
 

BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
Legacy
Mar 10, 2016
29,399
12,232
118
Detroit, Michigan
Country
United States of America
Gender
Male
Streets of Rage 4 Mania+ Mode is insane with with new update! The mode is even tougher now! Each stage has a cursed arcade machine. You'll fight a retro boss with boosted everything to go along with the mini-boss or mooks you're already fighting. When fighting an end boss their palette swap degraded form from Mr. X's Nightmare will spawn in at some point! The best beat'em up ever keeps getting better and better! Nearly 3 years later and this game is still getting updates. Fight n' Rage is still getting updates too, and it came out in 2017! @Worgen and @NerfedFalcon, you both have to check this out now!
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
Legacy
Apr 1, 2009
14,985
3,847
118
Gender
Whatever, just wash your hands.
Streets of Rage 4 Mania+ Mode is insane with with new update! The mode is even tougher now! Each stage has a cursed arcade machine. You'll fight a retro boss with boosted everything to go along with the mini-boss or mooks you're already fighting. When fighting an end boss their palette swap degraded form from Mr. X's Nightmare will spawn in at some point! The best beat'em up ever keeps getting better and better! Nearly 3 years later and this game is still getting updates. Fight n' Rage is still getting updates too, and it came out in 2017! @Worgen and @NerfedFalcon, you both have to check this out now!
Pretty awesome. I just did a run through SoR4 a few weeks ago, I should play it again, it really is top tier along with Fight'n Rage.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

NerfedFalcon

Level i Flare!
Mar 23, 2011
7,213
952
118
Gender
Male
Streets of Rage 4 Mania+ Mode is insane with with new update! The mode is even tougher now! Each stage has a cursed arcade machine. You'll fight a retro boss with boosted everything to go along with the mini-boss or mooks you're already fighting. When fighting an end boss their palette swap degraded form from Mr. X's Nightmare will spawn in at some point! The best beat'em up ever keeps getting better and better! Nearly 3 years later and this game is still getting updates. Fight n' Rage is still getting updates too, and it came out in 2017! @Worgen and @NerfedFalcon, you both have to check this out now!
You think pretty highly of me, if you reckon I'm good for Mania+ mode. I struggled with Hard the last time I played, but since difficulty levels aren't locked by clearing the previous one, I can still give it a try at least. And it's been a while since I played, so this is as good an excuse as any to get back into it.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
Legacy
Mar 10, 2016
29,399
12,232
118
Detroit, Michigan
Country
United States of America
Gender
Male
You think pretty highly of me, if you reckon I'm good for Mania+ mode. I struggled with Hard the last time I played, but since difficulty levels aren't locked by clearing the previous one, I can still give it a try at least. And it's been a while since I played, so this is as good an excuse as any to get back into it.
I was more so just excited to give you both news about the updates. SOR4 now has something that's in the original trilogy: co-op moves! You can also customize Survival Mode now.
 

gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
Legacy
May 13, 2009
7,372
1,958
118
Country
USA
There's definately nights where I'm too tired to sit down and start gaming or I spent too much time goofing on the internet and then I decide I'm not gonna bother so I either go chill in bed or something.

Problem being I get to play pretty much after my kid has gone to bed and maybe some of the days I'm off and the kid is at school. But once I finish any errands, chores, get a workout in, prep for dinner, stuff like that, which always takes me more time then I imagine it will.

So aprox an hour, maybe two, a day, which isn't very much especially for longer games where an hour means you maybe make a small amount of progress and why I will not engage with MMOs or Live service games at all.

It's hard to play when the kid is around because either supervision is required or she wants to "help" me play, which isn't very "helpful" or particularly fun for me. Like I started playing Unpacking and thought "Oh, she's busy watching a movie. I can sneak a level of Unpacking" and suddenly she right there next to me, ignoring her movie and helping me Unpack which I kinda don't want right now. I'm thinking "Come on, you have your movie that you picked and this is supposed to be my time"

So yeah.
How old is/are the kid(s)? My 1st real gaming experience A.K. (After Kids) was Fallout 3 GOTY on PS3. The kids were old enough to have friends over (around 13) and didn't constantly need Dad: though they tell me this was kind of sad for them, why were they not the center of my every waking hour anymore :) . You do describe some of my problem (tired, too much messing around on the Internet). Things have radically changed recently after a doc appointment went sideways and I've radically reduced sugar, carbs and alcohol in my diet. Now rather than snack and drink to excess, I am trying to put a dent in my pile of shame. Biggest issue there is AADD as there is a ton of content out there. Never mind free to play. I have Gold and PS+, free games from Epic weekly, Amazon Games, the occasional Humble Bundle (last one to help Earth Quake victims cost $30 for 72 games/items) and still buy the occasional game (Just bought Immortals: Fenyx Rising on Steam/connected to Ubisoft). Collecting for me is almost as fun as gaming itself.

That bundle came with Gotham Knights, which I've been playing on a Steam Deck. So far, I'm liking it but have only completed my first mission trying to discover who killed Dr. Langstrom (whom I don't believe is really dead: maybe he is and will come back via the Lazarus Pit". Fun to see it even runs on the thing!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dalisclock

Absent

And twice is the only way to live.
Jan 25, 2023
1,594
1,557
118
Country
Switzerland
Gender
The boring one
The Stick of Truth. First contact a bit rough but turns out addictive. I like the style of South Park, visually and sounds-wise. The humour is annoyingly stupid at times (yes, haha, alien anal probe, got it, haha, no yes already got it the first time) and its worldview even worse (haha al gore still harping about his climate change bullshit lol). It's still a pleasant experience. I enjoy the tone and the gameplay. I just wish it was more centered on the kid's high stake play-pretend ("good times with weapons" was one of my favorite episodes), and less on genuine events in the adult town (aliens, nazi zombie invasion, etc).

Also I hadn't realise how old South Park is. Revisiting it in this game suddenly makes me measure how much time has passed since I've been watching it. And I can't believe it's still running.
 

Bedinsis

Elite Member
Legacy
Escapist +
May 29, 2014
1,650
836
118
Country
Sweden
Finished the second trial of the first Danganronpa game.

I think the bullet time battles are completely superfluous and actively make the game worse.

What happens is that you first have series of can-you-spot-the-logic-flaw puzzles of different flavors, mainly the earlier described Phoenix Wright light sections but also questions of "which of these three choices is the correct answer?" variety. These are fine, and feel like detective work, even though I think their focus on making it smooth and stylish meant they had to simplify the logic too much for my tastes.

So far both trials have ended the aforementioned bullet time battles, and what is meant to feel like the ultimate triumph of a drawn out process feels like they suddenly decided they wanted an entirely different minigame to spice things up. You have the other person nailed down and they lets out a series of gradually increasing speech bubbles coming your way with a variety of non-arguments against what you have logicked out and there is a music track with a tempo meter and you are meant to press the right mouse button to the tempo of the music to lock onto arguments and press the left mouse button to shoot and destroy the speech bubbles, also to the tempo. Do this for a while until the game decides that "Yeah, you've convinced the other person now".

This control scheme is entirely different from all the other sections and I have to take a look at the manual each time this appears so I do not feel empowered and it does not actually feel like an argument or a logic puzzle, it just feels like busy work. All the more annoying that this is at the climax of the trial.

Anyway, so far I've felt a degree of sympathy for the murderer for both trials. So far the characters feel rather one dimensional, but I suspect this might change now; this trial revealed some more shades to some characters, so I expect more shades going forwards.

I also got a bit of background info, that ventures into spoiler territory:

After the trial, the guy arranging the whole affair ( a talking teddy bear called Monokuma) was apparently talking with one of the students, and revealed that they were cooperating with Monokuma. I have no idea who that might be. They are also referred to as the 16th student.
 

Bartholen

At age 6 I was born without a face
Legacy
Jul 1, 2020
759
843
98
Country
Finland
I've been off of playing games to focus on mini painting lately, but I've been playing Torchlight 2 with stuff to listen to in the background. It does the mindless button mashing dungeon crawler well enough. Thanks to the ridiculously unbalanced Far East expansion mod my character is probably like 3 times as powerful as they should be, since nearly all gear that expansion gives is well above everything else the game provides. I'm close to getting a character to max level (100) and it is very satisfying to zoom across the map as an unstoppable whirlwind of death.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

XsjadoBlaydette

~s•o√r∆rπy°`
May 26, 2022
1,094
1,376
118
Clear 'n Present Danger
Country
Must
Gender
Disappear
Clash...uhhh, - something bland and mobile F2P game sounding wtf was it, I gotta triple check - ah yes... Artifacts of Chaos!
Having already forgotten the sub-title as I type, this is by the ZenoClash peeps, ACE team. Known for their distinctive art designs and melee first-person combat, this goes third person (mostly, but shh!) and veers into a genre we're increasingly familiar with, I bet you can guess what it is too.

Not three guesses.

Not two.

Ok, not even one cause am just gonna fucking tell you, it's fucking darks souls of course it's fucking dark souls what else would it be, you gormless fool???

That said, it ain't so bad currently, taking into account the lower budget and price the series is known for. Animations are a tad stiff looking, but not everyone got a motion-capture studio so no issue there. Most attacks and movement do have a bit of a delay/build up tho, so it asks for a more steady and considered approach, with stamina being essentially your defence of which will leave you vulnerable to double-damage if run out.

Biggest concern has been the main playable character design...

PXL_20230312_000055618.PORTRAIT.jpg

Is like an alternative universe Homer Simpson who worked out, but swallowed a fancy exhaust pipe and fell into the Fly transporter machine. With his sketchpad.

Oh and they speak. With a voice. I'll leave it to everyone else to guess what that might sound like.
 
Last edited: