My uncle once treated me to an almost full campaign of Time Crisis. Apparently, we spent almost a hundred dollars.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.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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Streets of Rage 4 again. I did my first Mania Arcade Run with Max. I got the S Rank.
Been playing a lot more Baldur's Gate 3, and I got to Moonrise Tower again to witness the newly patched event, I guess, if you knock out Minthara at the Goblin Camp. She'll be held to trail and you can save her life and break her out of prison, and she'll suggest joining your team, which you can then agree or disagree to. I agreed, but it's weird... This new patch allows you to recruit Minthara without murdering everyone at the Grove, but if you didn't murder everyone at the Grove this means Halsin will be at your camp. Halsin who was kidnapped and imprisoned by Minthara (or at least by Minthara's side) at the Goblin Camp, and who ushered you to kill Minthara when you rescued him at the Goblin Camp. And now here they are together at your camp, which would be interesting if there was at all any interactions between the two - like how Lae'zel and Shadowheart are initially at eachothers throat - but no, there's nothing, not a word spoken to or about one another. Almost like it was never written in the first place because these two were never planned to exist in the same path, and this newly patched path shoves how broken this in right in your face. Both characters even share the same tent, standing not two feet away from one another. 
I think I'll just reload and let Minthara get the axe at Moonrise, because this feels too split as is.
I think I'll just reload and let Minthara get the axe at Moonrise, because this feels too split as is.
I got gifted a copy of Diablo 4 over Christmas, and I have so far been exclusively playing it on my Steam Deck. You can play the game on mostly medium/high settings, with the framerate locked at a solid 40 FPS (though I hear you can go higher), and it plays like a dream, and looks great on the Deck's screen.
Well i've just arrived home, downloaded Diablo 4 on my PC, cranked all of the settings up to Ultra, and got ready to play with a Mouse and Keyboard for the first time... and I hate playing it on my PC. M&K feels so unintuitive for Diablo (which is ironic, I know), so I feel like i'll have to go back to playing with a controller. But then if im going to be playing with a controller anyway, I may as well play it on my Steam Deck.
I love that thing.
Well i've just arrived home, downloaded Diablo 4 on my PC, cranked all of the settings up to Ultra, and got ready to play with a Mouse and Keyboard for the first time... and I hate playing it on my PC. M&K feels so unintuitive for Diablo (which is ironic, I know), so I feel like i'll have to go back to playing with a controller. But then if im going to be playing with a controller anyway, I may as well play it on my Steam Deck.
I love that thing.
Finished Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, made a post in the subreddit which I might as well post here as well. There will be a bit of repetition with what I've already said about the game:
So after ascending my first character, an axe wielding minotaur fighter follower of the god Ru, with 3 runes and the Orb of Zot after 68 characters and about 33 hours I feel the need to write out my impressions of the game thus far. I'm going to be making some heavy comparisons to Nethack since that's the only other old-school roguelike I've spent much (read: a ridiculous amount) of time with. Also, bear in mind I pretty much exclusively played the above character combination so I have next to no experience with spells, piety (I chose Ru because he seemed a very straightforward god), and wands/magical artifacts (sacrificed artifice on most of my decent runs).
First off, I will say that I had fun. It's nice that the game can be won without extensive use of the wiki. Finding new artifacts was always exciting and exploring the different branches looking for new ones was the highlight of the game for me. I didn't do much exploration on my winning run because I learned my lesson on my first really promising run when after collecting two of the lair runes and the Abyss rune I kept exploring I eventually ended up in a dead end in the Tomb surrounded by mummies that kept draining half my health when I killed them unable to teleport because of Ru. There's a lot of game left for me to experience if I do decide to play some more.
However, there's also some aspects of the game I'm not sure I really like that much. First is that the dungeon floors are too big and there are far too many monsters. The developers have tried to alleviate this by including some very robust auto-explore and auto-fight functions, the problem with this is it's still boring, but now you're barely even paying attention to the game. In a game of Nethack, the dungeon is smaller but much more memorable because you personally explore every inch of it, and generally have much more interaction with your surroundings. Often as I'm ascending on Nethack I'll remember certain floors and the events that took place on them, but in DCSS I've got nothing, just a blur of autoexplore. Like, for the first 10 minutes I don't even have to actually play the game, just alternate between pressing 'o' and holding tab until DL6 or so. This contrasts to Nethack where the early game is the most interesting because you need to pay attention to every move you make. The quantity of monsters reminds me of the Astral Planes on Nethack where you are drowning in message spam from the attacks of the dozens of monsters all around you, except in DCSS this is at least 50% of the game. There are also just so many different types of monsters with so many spells that about halfway through I generally stopped reading monster descriptions. My character was strong enough that I could generally just melee without a care and only needed to worry when my screen started to flash red or I realized that the stupid fireball had given me 5 different negative mutations.
In general, I feel like you have far fewer option here than you do in Nethack, especially in the early game. I feel like if the RNG doesn't give you what you need by around DL7 there isn't a whole lot you can do. There are no random monster spawns so you can't stick around a floor and grind for drops or experience if you happen to be underpowered. You also don't have the many, many item interactions that can be useful in fringe situations like Nethack. There's also no polypiling, sacrificing, wishes, alchemy or stealing from shops, it's just 100% dependency on RNG to get what you need. Scrolls of enchant armor are also incredibly rare for how underpowered they are. The weighting on them is also weird in that I consistently find twice as many scrolls of enchant weapon as I do enchant armor, despite the fact that I have 5x as many pieces of armor as I do weapons. I also didn't find most potions or scrolls to be very useful. I don't know, maybe it's because I don't understand them, but most of them sounded as likely to hinder me as help or were just too rare to ever use, like silence which I ended the game with 4 and never used.
Overall Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup feels like a very streamlined experience, and that's not entirely a good thing. I might come back to the game and try a spellcaster some time later. I'm not even sure how you are supposed to survive without armor, though.
Edit: oh also I found it somewhat unsatisfying that there isn't a special screen when you ascend with the orb. Nethack makes it feel a bit of an achievement by showing you a dungeon overview and listing all the monsters you killed.
So after ascending my first character, an axe wielding minotaur fighter follower of the god Ru, with 3 runes and the Orb of Zot after 68 characters and about 33 hours I feel the need to write out my impressions of the game thus far. I'm going to be making some heavy comparisons to Nethack since that's the only other old-school roguelike I've spent much (read: a ridiculous amount) of time with. Also, bear in mind I pretty much exclusively played the above character combination so I have next to no experience with spells, piety (I chose Ru because he seemed a very straightforward god), and wands/magical artifacts (sacrificed artifice on most of my decent runs).
First off, I will say that I had fun. It's nice that the game can be won without extensive use of the wiki. Finding new artifacts was always exciting and exploring the different branches looking for new ones was the highlight of the game for me. I didn't do much exploration on my winning run because I learned my lesson on my first really promising run when after collecting two of the lair runes and the Abyss rune I kept exploring I eventually ended up in a dead end in the Tomb surrounded by mummies that kept draining half my health when I killed them unable to teleport because of Ru. There's a lot of game left for me to experience if I do decide to play some more.
However, there's also some aspects of the game I'm not sure I really like that much. First is that the dungeon floors are too big and there are far too many monsters. The developers have tried to alleviate this by including some very robust auto-explore and auto-fight functions, the problem with this is it's still boring, but now you're barely even paying attention to the game. In a game of Nethack, the dungeon is smaller but much more memorable because you personally explore every inch of it, and generally have much more interaction with your surroundings. Often as I'm ascending on Nethack I'll remember certain floors and the events that took place on them, but in DCSS I've got nothing, just a blur of autoexplore. Like, for the first 10 minutes I don't even have to actually play the game, just alternate between pressing 'o' and holding tab until DL6 or so. This contrasts to Nethack where the early game is the most interesting because you need to pay attention to every move you make. The quantity of monsters reminds me of the Astral Planes on Nethack where you are drowning in message spam from the attacks of the dozens of monsters all around you, except in DCSS this is at least 50% of the game. There are also just so many different types of monsters with so many spells that about halfway through I generally stopped reading monster descriptions. My character was strong enough that I could generally just melee without a care and only needed to worry when my screen started to flash red or I realized that the stupid fireball had given me 5 different negative mutations.
In general, I feel like you have far fewer option here than you do in Nethack, especially in the early game. I feel like if the RNG doesn't give you what you need by around DL7 there isn't a whole lot you can do. There are no random monster spawns so you can't stick around a floor and grind for drops or experience if you happen to be underpowered. You also don't have the many, many item interactions that can be useful in fringe situations like Nethack. There's also no polypiling, sacrificing, wishes, alchemy or stealing from shops, it's just 100% dependency on RNG to get what you need. Scrolls of enchant armor are also incredibly rare for how underpowered they are. The weighting on them is also weird in that I consistently find twice as many scrolls of enchant weapon as I do enchant armor, despite the fact that I have 5x as many pieces of armor as I do weapons. I also didn't find most potions or scrolls to be very useful. I don't know, maybe it's because I don't understand them, but most of them sounded as likely to hinder me as help or were just too rare to ever use, like silence which I ended the game with 4 and never used.
Overall Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup feels like a very streamlined experience, and that's not entirely a good thing. I might come back to the game and try a spellcaster some time later. I'm not even sure how you are supposed to survive without armor, though.
Edit: oh also I found it somewhat unsatisfying that there isn't a special screen when you ascend with the orb. Nethack makes it feel a bit of an achievement by showing you a dungeon overview and listing all the monsters you killed.
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Finishing up (what I assume are) the final levels of the Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty missions, and man oh man, do I hate invincible instant-kill enemies.
So Im being stalked by this robot Alien: Isolation style, and for reasons that I am currently unsure about, this guy is invincible, fast as hell, and can one-shot kill you. There isn't really anything that you can do about it but hide, and even so, it will sometimes just decide that it can see you, and send you right back to the last checkpoint.
Just really isn't my thing, and it sucks the horror right out of the scenario, and it just becomes frustrating.
If I fuck up, and get overwhelmed by (otherwise killable) enemies, then fine, my bad. But something I cant do anything about just feels unfair, and unfun.
Its cool that this guy is seemingly limited to a single section of this game, but im looking forward to never seeing it again.
And if you are wondering, yes, I am currently writing this after pausing one of its unskippable death animations.
So Im being stalked by this robot Alien: Isolation style, and for reasons that I am currently unsure about, this guy is invincible, fast as hell, and can one-shot kill you. There isn't really anything that you can do about it but hide, and even so, it will sometimes just decide that it can see you, and send you right back to the last checkpoint.
Just really isn't my thing, and it sucks the horror right out of the scenario, and it just becomes frustrating.
If I fuck up, and get overwhelmed by (otherwise killable) enemies, then fine, my bad. But something I cant do anything about just feels unfair, and unfun.
Its cool that this guy is seemingly limited to a single section of this game, but im looking forward to never seeing it again.
And if you are wondering, yes, I am currently writing this after pausing one of its unskippable death animations.
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55 hours into Cyberpunk 2077, just installed Phantom Liberty today, and no end in sight. This has been a monster of a year with RPGs for me: Dragon Age Origins, Baldur's Gate 3, Final Fantasy XVI and VI, Cyberpunk, Outer Worlds, my brushes with the Pillars of Eternity games. But out of all of them not even BG3 has impressed me as much as Cyberpunk. If the game had been released in this state, it'd have swept the awards season and been hailed as an all time classic. I've run out of superlatives to use for this game, and I'm having serious doubts if any game will ever be able to make such an impact on me ever again. It embodies all the best aspects of video games for me, but also the worst aspects of the gaming industry. Night City is a world realized on a scale and level of detail I doubt we'll see for a very, very, very long time, barring perhaps other CD Projekt Red releases. When I realized there's a whole ass airport (well, at least an arrival area and a fully built transit hall) my jaw simply dropped. It's an area you have to go out of your way to visit and there's nothing there, but it's still built with every bit as much care and detail as any location in the main story. But at the same time you can't escape the feeling that all this wonder was the result of tons of overwork, exploitation and misery on the part of the devs, and it kind of leaves a guilty taste in my mouth.
The game also has a bit of a Far Cry 3 problem, in that you can reach the highest tier of equipment and abilities relatively quickly compared to how much content there is in the game, so the challenge and power curve kind of plateau, and you're just left repeating a lot of the same motions and using the same tactics. The combat's still fun as hell, which feels weird to even say for a first person RPG, but I kind of wish they'd given more. I've been using a stealth hacker build, and the limits of a quickhack-focused playstyle have been apparent for a long time. Knocking out people from afar, setting them on fire or making them turn on their enemies stays fresh for only so long when it's all you can do.
Also, the game has offered me kiss dialogue options with both the male romance interests, yet neither Judy nor Panam gave me the time of day. Either my V's got mad gay rizz, or the game's calling me out on my romantic ineptitude. I'm probably going to be replaying a good chunk of this game just to romance Panam. And just to cope I'll keep thinking that Judy's into girls exclusively, since the game makes some pretty heavy allusions to it.
The game also has a bit of a Far Cry 3 problem, in that you can reach the highest tier of equipment and abilities relatively quickly compared to how much content there is in the game, so the challenge and power curve kind of plateau, and you're just left repeating a lot of the same motions and using the same tactics. The combat's still fun as hell, which feels weird to even say for a first person RPG, but I kind of wish they'd given more. I've been using a stealth hacker build, and the limits of a quickhack-focused playstyle have been apparent for a long time. Knocking out people from afar, setting them on fire or making them turn on their enemies stays fresh for only so long when it's all you can do.
Also, the game has offered me kiss dialogue options with both the male romance interests, yet neither Judy nor Panam gave me the time of day. Either my V's got mad gay rizz, or the game's calling me out on my romantic ineptitude. I'm probably going to be replaying a good chunk of this game just to romance Panam. And just to cope I'll keep thinking that Judy's into girls exclusively, since the game makes some pretty heavy allusions to it.
Well, Phantom Liberty just slipped to the bottom of my "to buy" list. It's only 2 games long, so it's not really that big a fall, but still, boo!
Kerry and Panam can only be romanced by a Male V, and Judy and River can only be romanced by a Female V.
To be perfectly fair, this is one enemy, that is found only in one mission, that is only 30 minutes long max out of an ~80 hour game, and getting to do this mission in the first place is entirely determinant on your story choices.
I think you would be doing yourself a disservice if you skipped the whole game because of this.
Decided to finally boot up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare again for the first time in over 10 years, because I wanted to play the campaign again after seeing a friend play through the reboot, which was... fine, but it just can't live up to the original experience. It's still just as good as I remember, though I also don't remember playing this well the last time. Got recommended Hardened after the tutorial speedrun, and so far I've only died a couple of times per mission on that level. Never touched Veteran back then and I have no plans to now.
After finishing this, I picked up World at War from the Steam sale and I'm looking forward to actually playing a Treyarch CoD for the first time. Well, second, I played a bit of Black Ops Zombies with a friend once, didn't really feel it.
After finishing this, I picked up World at War from the Steam sale and I'm looking forward to actually playing a Treyarch CoD for the first time. Well, second, I played a bit of Black Ops Zombies with a friend once, didn't really feel it.
Cocoon
You know those river crossing puzzles where you have to figure out how to ferry three different things from shore to shore without the goat eating the cabbage or a woman cheating on her husband? That's this game but with balls. Balls, balls, balls. Put them on pressure plates. Roll them down pipes. Dive inside a ball, pull another ball from a maze, now hide the first ball within the second ball so you can smuggle it past a grid. And so on. Things get Inception-crazy pretty quick. You do like a hundred different variations of the same game, but it doesn't get boring. Game is kinda brilliant at training the player wordlessly, which is always something that I admire in design. Could've swore that was the sad/whimsical chiptune music from the Fez/Hyper Light Drifter dude but nope, different dude.
You know those river crossing puzzles where you have to figure out how to ferry three different things from shore to shore without the goat eating the cabbage or a woman cheating on her husband? That's this game but with balls. Balls, balls, balls. Put them on pressure plates. Roll them down pipes. Dive inside a ball, pull another ball from a maze, now hide the first ball within the second ball so you can smuggle it past a grid. And so on. Things get Inception-crazy pretty quick. You do like a hundred different variations of the same game, but it doesn't get boring. Game is kinda brilliant at training the player wordlessly, which is always something that I admire in design. Could've swore that was the sad/whimsical chiptune music from the Fez/Hyper Light Drifter dude but nope, different dude.
The airport terminal was only added was the 2.0 patch, so itself probably didn't require crazy overworking. But yeah, game is big, my first playthrough, pre 2.0, took 140 hours, but I did almost 100% (bug stopped me from buying the last car), never used fast travel and avoided using car outside of the desert area and tried to explore every area of city, so probably have most of my run time just being me running around.
It's a bit weird that the game only has 2 romance option depending on your character sex, it really limit option, especially since that means only one is straight/homosexual. If you're, say, playing male and want an homosexual relationship, but aren't really into the 70+ year old, multimillionaire Kerry you just don't have alternative. I think overall its better to have fix character sexuality rather than everyone being bi, but only if you have adequate number of option.
Oh I'll play it, falling to the bottom of a list of 2* games that I want to buy isn't really a big fall in real terms, it's still way above every other game in existence.
I've always been interested in the game for the CP2020 IP but just been put off by various other aspects.
*Actually, just remembered Rogue Trader, so it's a list of 3, and it might not be at the bottom anymore.
Finished Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty.
Not sure I really like Phantom Liberty's place in the main story, because it really ruins the pacing IMO, but as its own story, I think it was rather excellent, and I enjoyed it much more than the main plot.
I finished the whole thing in about 80 hours, with pretty much all side missions finished (aside from the gigs, because who cares). Though I did go back in an pick an alternative ending, because I found the one I chose to be rather depressing (I let Johnny Silverhand take my body, in which he basically ghosts everyone who knew V, without letting them know that they died).
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk, but it was far from perfect. The gunplay and driving are serviceable at best, and whilst the city look amazing, I didn't think that it was terribly interactive. But I think I will look back on my time in Night City rather fondly, and Im excited to see what they do with Cyberpunk 2 (and Unreal 5).
Not sure I really like Phantom Liberty's place in the main story, because it really ruins the pacing IMO, but as its own story, I think it was rather excellent, and I enjoyed it much more than the main plot.
I finished the whole thing in about 80 hours, with pretty much all side missions finished (aside from the gigs, because who cares). Though I did go back in an pick an alternative ending, because I found the one I chose to be rather depressing (I let Johnny Silverhand take my body, in which he basically ghosts everyone who knew V, without letting them know that they died).
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk, but it was far from perfect. The gunplay and driving are serviceable at best, and whilst the city look amazing, I didn't think that it was terribly interactive. But I think I will look back on my time in Night City rather fondly, and Im excited to see what they do with Cyberpunk 2 (and Unreal 5).
Is a wonderful lil surprise gem of game, agreed. wordless communication when done well is truly impressive in any medium (aside books? Are there wordless books? The dread within me senses there already are) It can be timeless and borderless, closer to a higher, more accessible essence of art.
Metroid Dread. Been too long, old friend. This is what would represent videogames in Plato's world of forms. It is pure, it is eternal. I am talking bollocks. This game is amazing though.
Baba is You. Huhhhhh, wow, this is cool game rule-tinkersome puzzling! Thought I'd be too dumb for it, but is actually pretty rewarding.
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- Apr 1, 2009
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I beat Remnant 2. That was pretty cool, but the story ending was pretty abrupt. I'll probably go back and play more on a higher difficulty or something cause it was cool and the weapons I got from the end are fun. Plus there are a lot of character classes to unlock.
Tried Age of Sigmar, it seems neat if kinda slow, but I encountered an immortal enemy in the second mission so I'm debating returning it since I don't know if I want to deal with more level breaking bugs like that.
Also Zombie Army 4 is fun.
Tried Age of Sigmar, it seems neat if kinda slow, but I encountered an immortal enemy in the second mission so I'm debating returning it since I don't know if I want to deal with more level breaking bugs like that.
Also Zombie Army 4 is fun.
- Apr 1, 2009
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Found a way past the immortal enemy and am enjoying age of sigmar. It does have issues like its weird that when a unit is engaged in melee, the only thing you can really do is use an ability or retreat. Can't have a unit move an engage something else when in melee, they are locked in melee till the retreat. Also wish it gave more background info into what happened to warhammer fantasy to make it Age of Sigmar and where the Stormcast came from. They might later, but right now I would be in the dark if I hadn't been watching some youtube vids, so I have some idea.
I have reached the point of no return in Cyberpunk 2077. And by that I mean I realized I had progressed way too far into the main storyline despite ignoring 75% of the game and all of Phantom Liberty. So now, I am working through the metric shit ton of content that I have left before actually doing the final mission.
I have to say... I find it weird that I was able to get to that point without the game telling me to slow down and do some side content. I genuinely felt like I wasn't rushing through the main story. In general, I find progression to be weird in this game. Playing as a stealth main with a little netrunning on the side, I never felt like I was encountering too much difficulty. I also got to the point where I am now with the cyberware you are provided at the beginning of the game. I had assumed that you would find cyberware in the world like you do with weapons, but nope, seems like you gotta buy em all. Which sucks, because some cyberware truly does completely change up the game, and I would have liked to have experienced it earlier.
Overall though, really enjoying it. I have heard some complaints that Night City can be a little dead, which I kinda agree with after playing Watch Dogs 2. I think the lack of named, persistent characters in the city ala Witcher 3 hurts the game in that regard. But the art design and worldbuilding more than make up for that in my opinion.
Also, apparently there was a whole controversy over Judy not being romanceable by a male V. Which I do find interesting, it does indeed seem like there is no bisexual romance option in this game. I was kinda hoping that I would be able to romance both Judy and Panam at the same time, ala Hades, but I guess that was too much work for CDPR. Not like they've done that before in their previous games... So yeah, while I find the romantic relationships believable and wholesome in theory, I do think there was a lot of room for improvement for actually making the romance mean something. You don't really spend so much time with your partner, I was kind of surprised when Panam wanted to get freaky in the tank. I didn't really catch the turning point of when I went from a coworker to soulmate.
I have to say... I find it weird that I was able to get to that point without the game telling me to slow down and do some side content. I genuinely felt like I wasn't rushing through the main story. In general, I find progression to be weird in this game. Playing as a stealth main with a little netrunning on the side, I never felt like I was encountering too much difficulty. I also got to the point where I am now with the cyberware you are provided at the beginning of the game. I had assumed that you would find cyberware in the world like you do with weapons, but nope, seems like you gotta buy em all. Which sucks, because some cyberware truly does completely change up the game, and I would have liked to have experienced it earlier.
Overall though, really enjoying it. I have heard some complaints that Night City can be a little dead, which I kinda agree with after playing Watch Dogs 2. I think the lack of named, persistent characters in the city ala Witcher 3 hurts the game in that regard. But the art design and worldbuilding more than make up for that in my opinion.
Also, apparently there was a whole controversy over Judy not being romanceable by a male V. Which I do find interesting, it does indeed seem like there is no bisexual romance option in this game. I was kinda hoping that I would be able to romance both Judy and Panam at the same time, ala Hades, but I guess that was too much work for CDPR. Not like they've done that before in their previous games... So yeah, while I find the romantic relationships believable and wholesome in theory, I do think there was a lot of room for improvement for actually making the romance mean something. You don't really spend so much time with your partner, I was kind of surprised when Panam wanted to get freaky in the tank. I didn't really catch the turning point of when I went from a coworker to soulmate.
Did they playtest that part of Modern Warfare with the ferris wheel on a level above Recruit? I feel like they can't possibly have, because there's no way anyone could play that and decide that 'none' is a reasonable number of checkpoints for a section that lasts ten minutes and has you fight off hundreds of enemies with no cover and only one guy for backup, who spends more time picking his nose than shooting.