What are you currently playing?

[Old_Hunter_77]

Cocoon

...Game is kinda brilliant at training the player wordlessly, which is always something that I admire in design. ...

I realized this is like my favorite video game thing now. In fact I think I'll go expand on this in the hot take thread...
Glad you enjoyed it- it was my favorite game of 2023.

So.. happy new year folks!
I decided to kick off 2024 by going all-in on Final Fantasy 7, a game I actually never played. But I after some time away from both gaming and, well, my actual home in which I play said games (y'all, New Orleans French Quarter in the dead of winter is.. interesting..lol), I'm ready to do some challenges and trophy hunting and franchise obsession, hardcore gamr style.

So I bought Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion, which is a remake to a prequel of a franchise sequel, or something... anyway, I was kind of shocked at how similar it is to FF16 in that you control one dude and it's all action. It's 10 chapters and pretty easy on Normal mode. But then there's literally 300 side missions that are just fighting things and huge difficulty spikes that are supposed to be met with clever use of the hilariously complicated upgrade mechanics. This combination of accessible gameplay and dorky management sim has triggered my goal-oriented completionist brain in such a way that I bum-rushed to the save point right before the final boss and have now started trying to following guides to max out and grind through as much as I have patience for.

I did play FF7 remake but I'll buy Intergrade and I'm buying all the FF PS5 games physical so I can share them with a brother-in-law who is the real legacy FF fan.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

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 wonder if this is a response to all the complaints about games like the recent Assassins Creeds where people felt "forced" to do side content. The fact with these open world games is that some want to linger and hang out and do a lot of side stuff and explore- which is me, and kind of the point of these games I figured- and apparently a vocal group on the internet who have decided that one should be able to bum-rush the main campaign quickly if they want. And frankly I don't think it's really possible to have both in one game AND make it a satisfying narrative.

 

[Summerstorm]

I wonder if this is a response to all the complaints about games like the recent Assassins Creeds where people felt "forced" to do side content. The fact with these open world games is that some want to linger and hang out and do a lot of side stuff and explore- which is me, and kind of the point of these games I figured- and apparently a vocal group on the internet who have decided that one should be able to bum-rush the main campaign quickly if they want. And frankly I don't think it's really possible to have both in one game AND make it a satisfying narrative.

He that was a point even before the DLC. People joked that the "Meet Hanako at Embers" was either the longest quest, or fixed part of the HUD. "She waited a LOOOOOONG time"

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Well, I'm not entirely certain how I did it, but I managed to get through all of Call of Duty 4 on Hardened difficulty for the first time. Onto the next one, World at War. Probably on Hardened again because I haven't learned my lesson yet.

 

[Silvanus]

Metroid Prime and Super Mario RPG remakes on the Switch. Not quite finished Prime, but nearly there. Beat Culex on Mario RPG, but not yet beaten all the new rematch fights.

Last Faith. Which is a very fun game, but criminally derivative of Blasphemous and Bloodborne. Gotta wait for the NG+ for the Platinum, though, because a few of those trophies are bloody missable and I missed 'em on my completed playthrough. Have got all 3 endings though.

Turok 2. Nostalgia fest right here. Damn, it expects a lot of exploration and backtracking. Only one Primagen key left to find.

Aaaand Sea of Stars, which I only started the other day. So lots on.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I started Lords of the Fallen 2023.

The best way I can sum up this game is it's Dark Souls 2 remake for this generation of consoles. It has tons of great ideas going on, especially the dark world mechanic. But that doesn't save you from experiencing the janky combat.

Some areas are just filled with mobs, and the "difficulty" comes from the sheer numbers, not necessarily because they require special tactics. The boss fights has some questionable hitboxes or require gimmics to make the fights somewhat berable.

But it also has some of the best world-building, and similiar to dark souls the lore and back story are told through NPC dialogs or item descriptions. The weapon varieties are nice, and the armor designs are dope as well.

IDK, it's one of those games where I both wanna keep playing and not want to play anymore

 

[Ag3ma]

Rogue Trader

From Owlcat, and it's a cRPG much like their previous games (Pathfinder: Kingmaker & War Of The Righteous), except now set in Warhammer's eponymous 40K RPG spinoff and without the D&D knock-off system. There's a lot to like in the way it presents the setting. I particularly like the way it makes clear 40k computers ("cogitators") are in reality just f***ing computers as we would understand, except the weird, sclerotic Imperium of Man has mysticised them with a machine cult and ritual flim-flam. Anyway, it's huge, reasonably written, it's got an exploration mode, and a tactical spaceship combat mini-game that's... okay.

It has one truly massive downside though, and that's the skill / abilities system. There are a number of archetypes, each with skills, and then development seems to be sifting through a genuinely absurd number of skill choices most of which seem to be dicking around with another 5% or 10% here or there or small-scale buffs/nerfs. It is 50% overwhelmingly impenetrable and 50% hours of Excel spreadsheet math nerd bullshit to work out what the hell you should be doing with it all. Levelling up should be fun. Killing that fun (like Bethesda did in Starfield) hurts games. It then means combat is about a load of clicking on these esoteric bullshit abilities to do stuff and add tokens, buffs and nerfs to things and allegedly do something useful as if you had any idea, every damn turn, and occasionally you take a break from this wildly inefficient clickfest system to actually move and attack the enemy.

 

[Worgen]

Beat Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. Its neat, but kinda buggy and the last real mission is a pain in the ass, at least till I learned about using deep strike, that helped a lot, still a pain in the ass but manageable. Story was decent but kinda rushed at points, didn't end on a cliff hanger, but did end rather suddenly. The conquest mode I don't really see myself playing since it seems like its just skirmish mode with challenges and lives (lose a mission and lose one).

Also grabbed Black Skylands as a final steam sale game. Its pretty neat, flying around the sky in an airship, liberating islands and blasting pirates. Its also much bloodier then I expected, considering how its got an anime kinda cute style.

 

[meiam]

Beat Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. Its neat, but kinda buggy and the last real mission is a pain in the ass, at least till I learned about using deep strike, that helped a lot, still a pain in the ass but manageable. Story was decent but kinda rushed at points, didn't end on a cliff hanger, but did end rather suddenly. The conquest mode I don't really see myself playing since it seems like its just skirmish mode with challenges and lives (lose a mission and lose one).

Also grabbed Black Skylands as a final steam sale game. Its pretty neat, flying around the sky in an airship, liberating islands and blasting pirates. Its also much bloodier then I expected, considering how its got an anime kinda cute style.

So how is age of sigmar compared to dawn of war 1/2?

 

[Worgen]

So how is age of sigmar compared to dawn of war 1/2?

Dawn of War 1/2 are way better. The way combat works in age of sigmar is interesting though. Initially I was annoyed that your units were stuck in melee and could only retreat, but it makes some neat tactical choices, like you don't want to just send all your melee at an enemy unit cause they will be locked up and the ranged unit behind them will start peppering you. Choke points can be annoying, but that works on both sides, you have to choose your battles a bit more carefully then most rts games since positioning and out of combat units can make a difference. But, the ai is pretty simple, kinda like the ai in the dow games.

The DOW games are better, but age of sigmar is fun but flawed and buggy.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Ran into a bug in World at War during the seventh mission, 'Relentless', where Polonsky got lost and wasn't able to reach his cue for the ending cutscene, so it just didn't play to properly end the mission. I ended up replaying it on Recruit because the Steam version of the game doesn't have achievements, so it doesn't actually care that I didn't technically finish all of the missions on Hardened; I know that I did (will) and that's good enough for me.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I started Lords of the Fallen 2023.

The best way I can sum up this game is it's Dark Souls 2 remake for this generation of consoles. It has tons of great ideas going on, especially the dark world mechanic. But that doesn't save you from experiencing the janky combat.

Some areas are just filled with mobs, and the "difficulty" comes from the sheer numbers, not necessarily because they require special tactics. The boss fights has some questionable hitboxes or require gimmics to make the fights somewhat berable.

But it also has some of the best world-building, and similiar to dark souls the lore and back story are told through NPC dialogs or item descriptions. The weapon varieties are nice, and the armor designs are dope as well.

IDK, it's one of those games where I both wanna keep playing and not want to play anymore

There’s always youtube! I uninstalled it after the “fix it” patch took it from running “smoothly” to “like a slideshow”.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Chants of Sennaar

I immediately love this game. Instinctively I hark back to my previous comments about wordless design; everything about Chants of Sennaar is very much about words, except every word is a glyph and you have to piece what each glyph means from your interactions with NPCs and environmental clues. You can tentatively assign meaning to each glyph in a notebook, which allows you to see a rough draft translation of speech bubbles, and glyphs get eventually verified when you tag them next to drawings in that notebook (which to my mind is a bit cheap since it gives you elbow room to guess, but whatever).

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Chants of Sennaar

I immediately love this game. Instinctively I hark back to my previous comments about wordless design; everything about Chants of Sennaar is very much about words, except every word is a glyph and you have to piece what each glyph means from your interactions with NPCs and environmental clues. You can tentatively assign meaning to each glyph in a notebook, which allows you to see a rough draft translation of speech bubbles, and glyphs get eventually verified when you tag them next to drawings in that notebook (which to my mind is a bit cheap since it gives you elbow room to guess, but whatever).

I was thinking about this one. I played the demo and I dug the idea but a few things kind of threw me off:
- There was this stupid stealth mission, like wtf?
- As always with puzzle games, I can lose interest pretty fast if the satisfaction of solving the puzzle doesn't exceed the frustration of trying to solve it. And by frustration I mean mechanical, not logical- like with Senaar you have to find all the symbols and then figure them out but I don't find a symbol because it was one orange next to another orange and I walk past it 100x that's the kind of shit that drives me nuts.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I was thinking about this one. I played the demo and I dug the idea but a few things kind of threw me off:
- There was this stupid stealth mission, like wtf?
- As always with puzzle games, I can lose interest pretty fast if the satisfaction of solving the puzzle doesn't exceed the frustration of trying to solve it. And by frustration I mean mechanical, not logical- like with Senaar you have to find all the symbols and then figure them out but I don't find a symbol because it was one orange next to another orange and I walk past it 100x that's the kind of shit that drives me nuts.

I've made it to the stealth bit and for what it's worth it reminds me less of something like Thief or Assassin's Creed and more of the typical point and click "stealth" section you might find in a Monkey Island or Space Quest, where you have to make someone look away over there while you do something over here. There's a simple if very specific order and rhythm to it.

Do I think Return of the Obra Dinn would've been improved by the addition of stealth encounters? Of course not. But so far I haven't found it to be terribly disruptive in Chants of Sennaar. There was also a box pushing puzzle that felt weirdly out of place but I don't mind it either. Felt like a nice playground intermission between rummaging around the dictionary.

As with most modern adventure games there's also an anti frustration button that marks anything that can be interactd with on screen. Not the most elegant solution but beats ye olde pixel hunt.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Baldur's Gate 3 still has me handcuffed to the bed and is having its way with me.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

(Horizon Forbidden West is downloading)

Girlfriend (walks past): Is that the one people complained that she was chubby?

(I'm playing Chants of Sennaar)

Girlfriend (walks past): Aww you're in Egypt.

(I'm playing Dredge)

Girlfriend (walks past): Aww you're a little boat. That makes me happy.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Might be worth double checking birth year on gf's ID just to be sure, tbh


Tabs
Totally accurate battle simulator, is, umm, how does an asshole idiot like me even begin to explain? Videos?

 

[BrawlMan]

(Horizon Forbidden West is downloading)

Girlfriend (walks past): Is that the one people complained that she was chubby?

(I'm playing Chants of Sennaar)

Girlfriend (walks past): Aww you're in Egypt.

(I'm playing Dredge)

Girlfriend (walks past): Aww you're a little boat. That makes me happy.

Can you get here to comment on Streets of Rage 4, RE4/RE4R, or Ratchet Clank: Rift Apart by any chance? These are adorable.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Can you get here to comment on Streets of Rage 4, RE4/RE4R, or Ratchet Clank: Rift Apart by any chance? These are adorable.

I think her main quips about RE4 were:

• "He hot"
• "She hot"
• "That looks tough"

And an extended one where she watches me play Mercenaries with HUNK, asks me who's that, I explain he's the Boba Fett of RE, then remind her who Boba Fett is, and she concludes HUNK to be the "besto" character because she likes the way he wags his fingertips after breaking someone's neck.