What are you currently playing?

[Worgen]

I grabbed Remnant 2 as part of the steam holiday sale, along with some other games that I have yet to install since I've gotten much more into Remnant 2 then I expected too. I'm only on the 3rd area but the concept of bringing an lmg into a fantasy world is fun as is the execution. Plus I have a staff that summons a ghost doe and its awesome. I always thought that Remnant was a souls like, but its closer to a normal ARPG (like diablo) with a few souls elements. The story is also much more interesting then I was expecting based on the start where it feels like a normal post apocalyptic setting, just with more and weirder trees.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Huh, I just redownloaded Remnant 2 also, though more from a sporadic craving, and hopefully to try unlocking that secret class the internet assured me exists. Might miss doggo class unfortunately, but am closing my heart to it boy.

Wall World.
Is what it says on the tin, mate. It's about a world that's a wall. Yup, just a wall. Forever. Like flat earth conspiracy was real but the flatness was only a seemingly infinite wall. Truly an existential nightmare am not comfortable thinking too much about living in.

You play as the pilot/miner/jetpacker of a giant robotic mining spider moving up or down the wall seeking spots to mine, poke a hole in wall, then jetpack around hoovering up whatever bullshit you can before small timer runs out, unleashing increasingly threatening waves of alien beasties to attack your robo ship, forcing you to defend with a slow-as-fuck turret quick as you can so you can return to the zen task of hoover mining. The resources you collect can be spent at robo ship between upgrading robo spider, your jetpack suit, and whatever other helpful curiosities you discover along the way, feeding a pleasing sort of loop between the gameplays.

When saying "small" timer, that wasn't being cute: tear such twee nonsense out of your skulls right now before it kills us all. No, there's also a big timer! Though not that much bigger, it's more the size of the alien monster you gotta look forward to instead.

On an unrelated note, death! Ah the sweet embrace of suffering's escape. What universal mercy it brings! Except here. Sorry, just as the comforting hug of DMT cradles you towards the inner peak of heavenly light, a curtain hook sternly pulls you back down, cause you bet your ass this is a goddamn rogueylikeylitey, so get tf back to work slacker! Ain't usually a fan of the genre, aside the finer delicacies. Luckily so far has been giving enough money each run to buy a new upgrade on the main menu screen, all feel significant enough to help conjour the alluring addictive thought of "oh ok okay, yeah last run fucked up bad. buuuuuuuuuuut...with this added boon surely I cannot fail again if I start right now, ahah!"

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I'm actually cool with playing Roguelites overall. I probably have a couple hundred hours in Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon, but both of those have a lot more variety in terms of builds and boss fights.

Hades feels like a Roguelite where they spent more time on the story and dialogue than on the actual gameplay, and that's the biggest problem. It wants you to play it for 100 hours like Binding of Isaac, but it has less than 10% of the content so the gameplay loop gets stale.

Getting 1-2 new conversations per run just is not enough to justify continuing to play the game. The game would have been a lot better (and a lot shorter) if after every run you did every character you had unlocked had a new conversation.

I was annoyed enough to install a "quality of life" mod that lets me just force one of the characters to spawn. Even with that, it took me close to an hour to complete their questline. The sheer randomness of the story encounters is just ridiculous.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Alan Wake 2 is completed! Due to this game being a horror game, I wasn't expecting a happy ending. But man that ending was still hard to see.

The game is nearly perfect, although I do think the final stretch of the game was tad bit drawn out. That final battle was really annoying to live through, and afterwards it was just a walking simulator without much happening action-wise.

Still I enjoyed the game, but will probably hold up on going for new game +.

Now I'm moving onto Valkyria Chornicles! I must say the core gameplay is fun, but I hate how cutscenes are divided in chapters. It slows things down with dialogs already feeling slow

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Huh, I just redownloaded Remnant 2 also, though more from a sporadic craving, and hopefully to try unlocking that secret class the internet assured me exists. Might miss doggo class unfortunately, but am closing my heart to it boy.

Wall World.
Is what it says on the tin, mate. It's about a world that's a wall. Yup, just a wall. Forever. Like flat earth conspiracy was real but the flatness was only a seemingly infinite wall. Truly an existential nightmare am not comfortable thinking too much about living in.

You play as the pilot/miner/jetpacker of a giant robotic mining spider moving up or down the wall seeking spots to mine, poke a hole in wall, then jetpack around hoovering up whatever bullshit you can before small timer runs out, unleashing increasingly threatening waves of alien beasties to attack your robo ship, forcing you to defend with a slow-as-fuck turret quick as you can so you can return to the zen task of hoover mining. The resources you collect can be spent at robo ship between upgrading robo spider, your jetpack suit, and whatever other helpful curiosities you discover along the way, feeding a pleasing sort of loop between the gameplays.

When saying "small" timer, that wasn't being cute: tear such twee nonsense out of your skulls right now before it kills us all. No, there's also a big timer! Though not that much bigger, it's more the size of the alien monster you gotta look forward to instead.

On an unrelated note, death! Ah the sweet embrace of suffering's escape. What universal mercy it brings! Except here. Sorry, just as the comforting hug of DMT cradles you towards the inner peak of heavenly light, a curtain hook sternly pulls you back down, cause you bet your ass this is a goddamn rogueylikeylitey, so get tf back to work slacker! Ain't usually a fan of the genre, aside the finer delicacies. Luckily so far has been giving enough money each run to buy a new upgrade on the main menu screen, all feel significant enough to help conjour the alluring addictive thought of "oh ok okay, yeah last run fucked up bad. buuuuuuuuuuut...with this added boon surely I cannot fail again if I start right now, ahah!"

Too late for the post edit window, but forgot to add the game at full price is like 8 quid (£7.99) too. Usually anything else on the storefront released that cheap are cocktails of shovelware and mobile ports of shovelware. Is part of reason I initially glazed past it so easily before, admittedly.

 

[Piscian]

I finished Blue Dragon this morning. Man my feelings on this game are severely mixed on this game.

At it's core it's a fairly competent JRPG. I think the most succinct emotional description I can give is that, at the end of the game you get an airship and maybe 5-10 sidequest/boss monsters to fight. I got maybe three in and was thoroughly ready to finish the game and uninstall it. There's some really basic tweaks I think could have made the game more compelling.

1. There's only one map in the game and its very 100km view of the planet. It provides no ability to even hover or investigate objects or towns. Other than providing a bit of a compass it's all but useless. The limited overworld map isn't such a big deal, but having no dungeon/town map is a complete travesty. Not all RPGs need maps, but the dungeons in this game are designed with tha early 3D art style where all the walls look the same and there's no character to them. I never got thoroughly lost, but there's enough puzzles and backtracking involved in each dungeon that it's discouraging. When I'm playing Older RPGs I try to remember to be patient, but then I remember the handpainted and characterized environments of FF games and I think "jesus christ this is an X360 game?"

2. The combat feels very "vanilla". 90% of the monsters in the game, which are largely reskins of the same 10-15 monsters, can be approached in the same way. It's a strange feeling as theres a lot of depth to your job classes and skills. The job/skills are reasonably deep, but it feels like, beyond a smattering of bosses and enemies, strategy isn't required. You can get through most of the game spamming Flare/Fight. I'm not asking for Persona level complexity, but the combat never felt very interesting or rewarding. Even with bosses you only needed to try one or two elemental attacks before you figured out what works and then you could just go on auto-pilot. They also do that egregious shit where the "Support" class with all your silly, quick, slow etc skills is useless and against bosses and pointless anything else. Developers who do that shoudl go to RPG jail. Its annoying as fuck. Don't give me joke classes unless its a part of some interesting story or gameplay element.

3. Speaking of the Airship, yeah odd choice. You literally get the airship at the end of the game and can fly straight to the boss. Alternatively there's a few minor sidequests and things to investigate, maybe 5-10 hours at most of oddities to do like go open chests you didn't have the keys for originally though this does mean rehashes those samie dungeons. This feels like something that should have happened in the middle, not the end of the game.

4. The average playtime says 46h for the main story and 86 for 100%. I call horseshit. I'm a notoriously slow RPG player, I think PS5 Royal took me 145h. I only have 50h in the game and I absolutely did everything worth doing in the game outside of one end game dragon and one dudgeon which I coulda done in maybe another 5 hours. If I was actually trying I'm confident I could knock this out in under 40h. For a big X360 release this felt very short. Now I'm not saying RPGs need to be an particular length, but I swear this one feels very shallow. I kept expecting the same half of the game to be "The real villain" battle ala FF, but no just one guy.

In the final "stage" of the game I actually had to take multiply breaks because I was just "bored", like fuck can we just get this over with? Actually that happened a lot throughout my playthrough. I'd play the game for an hour and need to go do something else to avoid numbness setting in.

On the positive side it was perfectly "fine". The music was pretty solid, I liked most of the characters and the story was easy to follow. At times I did "have fun". I can't see myself recommending it though. Too many other more compelling RPGs out there. Hell the two Evolution RPGs on dreamcast were better, if nothing else than because the mechanics were more "fun".

 

[BrawlMan]

I did some replaying of DMC5SE last night. I forgot I have to complete Vergil Mode at some point, but I'm in no rush since I already unlocked nearly all of his moves. My problem with the game is that some stuff is still DLC you have to pay for, such as 3 extra bonus tracks, despite being the Special/Complete Edition. I got my copy used, so maybe there was a DLC code in new copies. The price is cheap, but at the same time, it should have been in the complete version like all of the other once DLC items.

The night before last night I played Metal Slug 2 on the MS Anthology Collection.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Played Half Life: Alyx for a couple hours at my cousin's. Just WOW! It's amazing! The physics and world are so detailed I spent probably 20 minutes in the first couple rooms just picking up every room and looking at it before throwing it off of the balcony. Everything just looks so good I would frequently catch myself about to start walking forward to move instead of moving the analogue stick. VR might be the future of gaming after all.

In other news I'm getting better at Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. I had one game that I probably could have won, but I kept exploring the branch dungeons and ended up against a crowd of elite mummies that could cut your HP in half when they died. It took me too long to figure out what was going on, I couldn't use scrolls in combat because I sacrificed that ability, and I couldn't go back to a previous floor because I'd gone through one way stairs. Darn. I also lost another promising game after being banished to the abyss. I was just barely surviving and I knew I shouldn't try to get the rune because I almost died getting it on my other game that was much further along, but it was right there! I died on the square next to it. Oh well. A problem with the game is still that the early game is just kind of boring, you just alternate between pressing 'o' (auto-explore) and holding tab (auto-fight) for about 15 minutes until the game starts getting challenging. Nethack is completely opposite.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I finally uninstalled Hades. I really enjoyed this game, but good lord I think it is quite clear that majority of the people who voted this as GOTY never actually finished it. 100 hours, "180" runs, two sleepless nights later, and I am still not finished with this game.

I really do not understand the game design at play here. If your concern is advancing the story, you would be better off dying again and again to Theseus and the Minotaur. Heck, before I stopped playing, I'd just kill myself once I got to Asphodel. And I don't think this is something they couldn't have fixed either. The priority system they have for story encounters is so out of wack, you are more likely to encounter filler conversation than dialogue actually advancing the plot.

I never got the threesome, and that will haunt me to the end of my days. But I just cannot bear playing this game anymore.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Cobalt Core, another Roguelike. It's like if you combined Monster Train with FTL. The bones are like FTL but it has multiple characters that you can mix and match for your runs. The different characters have different cards and some relics associated with them so finding ways to work with the various synergies is really fun. It also has a nice... ?"flippant friendliness"? to its humor that I enjoy. It's kind of like Season 1 of Fairly Odd Parents.

 

[BrawlMan]

Finished Vergil on LDK mode for DMC5SE.

 

[Piscian]

Hot take, but you know..I just don't like Panam in Cyberpunk 2077. Shes pretty and nice I get it, but her entire character arc feels like a spoiled brat. Like I get that she desperately wants to help her clan and is a "rebel", but it just feels like every mission is "Panam fucked something up better save her!". Im not feeling the same nuisance to her character that you see with Judy. I feel like they could thrown in a couple missions that show more depth to her character. Shes that craxy girlfriend character, whos texts you leave on unread.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Humanity, humanity, oh the hue manitee! Shuddup, no I didn't confuse this with the game Humankind for ages on the PSN storefront, left wondering if I'd imagined playing the demo entirely back from whenever, so whoever told you that is a rotten cauldron of lies! This puzzly lemmings type experience has sunk its rusty hooks deep Into these tainted bone marrows, no level is abandoned without squeezing every last pointless - but exquisitely shiny - side objective for all its worth. Seems to be hinting some kind of story, though am guessing the title and concept make for fairly easy assumptions as to its intentions.


Tunic. More rusty hooks in tainted bone marrow. Is intensley overwhelming with its magical wonder and cuteness, never thought drip-fed instruction book pages written in alien font could illicit much if anything along the spectrums of emotional reward. Just grows intrigue the more it progresses. A true humble phantasmagorical gem. Filing alongside Cocoon for big arts! (Disclaimer: had to go looking online for a couple of helps at times due to its obscure approach towards informing player of as little as poss, but was digging the 'ponderous bright-eyed explorer in mystical foreign or even alien land' vibes far too much to feel impotently annoyed by own gormless idiocy by then)

 

[Gergar12]

I currently am playing Jedi Survivor Fallen Order. I got bored of Genshin and Skyrim. RE2 Remake is killing me with puzzles right... So why not? As soon as I get into the game. It crashes.

Yeah if you have a 3080 Ti, maybe wait a little longer.

 

[Piscian]

I hate to say this because I adore rick & morty, Im 30 minutes into High On Life and so far its just not grabbing me. The humor all very... observational? but not like mitch hedberg observational humor. I mean things are constantly pointed out as absurd and Im just supposed to laugh. Idk I find rick & morty extremely funny, but its very clever gag stuff. Im not sure Ive seen a single actual gag its just like "wow that sure is bizarre!" *cue laughter*.

Hopefully I just need to give it more time.

 

[BrawlMan]

"wow that sure is bizarre!" *cue laughter*.

That's about 90% of the humor. It gets tiring really fast for me. Plus, I hate R&M. Though if you're having fun, then keep enjoying. I am happy for you.

 

[meiam]

Hot take, but you know..I just don't like Panam in Cyberpunk 2077. Shes pretty and nice I get it, but her entire character arc feels like a spoiled brat. Like I get that she desperately wants to help her clan and is a "rebel", but it just feels like every mission is "Panam fucked something up better save her!". Im not feeling the same nuisance to her character that you see with Judy. I feel like they could thrown in a couple missions that show more depth to her character. Shes that craxy girlfriend character, whos texts you leave on unread.

No argument that she's worse than Judy, but I don't particularly dislike her and find her much better than both male love interest. I'd say the bigger problem is that she never really convince Saul that her plan work, she just constantly get saved by Rafen attacking the camp and her (ie you) helping out. That would work if Saul was trying to get closer to Raffen or something, but he's really not.

Her story is her leaving the clan because Saul want to work with corp, there she work with Raffen and get screwed by them and you help her. She then help you take out the flying transport, but in the process accidentally screws up her clan and get a bunch of them killed. After this she rejoin her clan but still butt head with Saul over working with corporation. Sault then get captured by Raffen and she (you) rescue him. They keep arguing with each others over working with corp, at which point she decide to steal a corp tank and come back to her clan coincidentally as they are attacked by Raffen. At which point Saul agree that working with corp isn't a good idea... because? She doesn't really change beyond deciding to rejoin the clan.

 

[Piscian]

That's about 90% of the humor. It gets tiring really fast for me. Plus, I hate R&M. Though if you're having fun, then keep enjoying. I am happy for you.

I returned it. I hate to be fruggle about these things, but I got an hour in and realized I was less engaged and more just dragging myself through it like a cat on a leash. I figured "Why am I paying $30 for this?" and decided Ill catch it some other time when its $5.

The comedy in High on life was just kinda bland and infantile.

 

[BrawlMan]

The comedy in High on Life was just kinda bland and infantile.

​

 

[gorfias]

Made it all the way to the last fight with my new nephew in law. We didn't make it :-( Happily, losing did not cost us so much as a quarter.