What are you currently playing?

[Chimpzy]

Still playing Sin & Punishment 2. After I last commented on this game, I checked if you can rebind the controls, and you can. To whatever you want really. Shuffled some buttons around asap. Made a huge difference, both in comfort and enjoyment. Made it to level 6. Feels oddly less difficult than the previous one, tho maybe I'm just acclimating to it, optimizing my strategies and all that. Still regularly leaves my buttocks sore tho.

Anyway, to cool down in between spankings I've also been playing Pentiment. Given it's from Obsidian, I assumed it would be an rpg in a medieval setting, but it's not. Not really. It's really more a murder mystery adventure game, but with a typical Obsidian dialog system. You know, "they will remember this", which can increase or decrease your standing with a character, and help you or screw you later on. There's no stats outside of a few background traits you can pick, but these mostly serve to add flavor to your dialog options rather than beneficial perks. Anyway, I'm quite enjoying the characters and the setting, the historical factoids, the factions, their politics, and your character right in the middle, trying to balance things (or not) while trying to find the culprit of the murder du jour. Which, interestingly, you never find. Not really. Evidence? Sure, but due to the limitations of the time period, none of it is ever conclusive. You make a case as best you can, present it, and then justice is dispended, and whether you were right or wrong is up to god.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Picked up Dead Rising Delux Remaster, and I've actually been having a pretty good time with it. I wasn't going to bother initially, I was too peeved about Frank's face getting redone and some of the other dialoge changes, but curiosity got the better of me.

I don't really know where to start on the gameplay changes, since it's kind of a domino effect. One thing that was instantly noticeable was how much faster you level up. You can already get to level 2 just from the intro sequence where you're photographing from the helicopter, and during the inciting Madonna induced zombie break-in I was already at level 3. Guns also are far more reliable weapons now since you have normal third-person aiming. This in turn makes Boss fights far more manageable than they used to be. There's also less injuries due to the awkward controls, meaning less need for food items to clog up your item slots. All of this drastically helps in saving time, which means more time to help survivors and doing other things.

Visually the game is not the best. It can look alright, nice skin textures and gore effects. There's even a pretty cool sunrise added now. But at night this game looks really weak. Once the lights are off and it's dark outside it's like you're looking at 50 shades of grey. The washed out grey filter was always a problem with the RE engine, but here it's like they didn't even bother trying make it look decent. Jessi still looks hot though so I guess I can't stay too mad.

The added voice acting during in-game conversations is big plus, and actually makes for one very entertaining interaction between Frank and the two Japanese tourists now.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Which, interestingly, you never find. Not really. Evidence? Sure, but due to the limitations of the time period, none of it is ever conclusive. You make a case as best you can, present it, and then justice is dispended, and whether you were right or wrong is up to god.

That's just wrong, I hate it when games do that sort of thing. What's the point of a murder mystery that doesn't tell you the murderer? It's like a puzzle game where after you enter your solution the game just goes "Eh, maybe you got it right, who knows?"

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I started up The Plucky Squire, but I honestly don't know if this'll be a keeper. I was looking forward to this game, it looked fun and colourful, but there's something missing, besides good comedy. Also, forced stealth in 2024 is grounds for a pie in the face.

I think what's missing is something beyond the style of the game.

I just finished it. The game relies on two things:
1- The gimmick, the 2D/3D thing, what intrigued me and most who saw those trailers.
2- The art and tone, the charm of being in a literal story book, in a story about the magic of stories and childhood and all that stuff.

Those are things that carry a lot for a few hours.

But this is, mostly, a babbie game. The combat is incredibly forgiving and the puzzles never get challenging at all. I did get stuck on a couple of the minigames which you can skip anyway. But it's incredibly easy.
As for the humor- it's not trying to be funny. It's trying to be cute. Like when you're reunited with your friends in the game and you do a little dance- that is incredibly corny but charming if you're into the game's vibe.

In retrospective- of course it's for little kids, look at it! But I think if you're into indy games, we've become so used to this "subversion" of using cute imagery to convey brutality, irony, hardcore gamr challenge. Hollow Knight, Celeste, Cuphead- so cute, so hard, so deep man. Plucky Squire shows you kiddy stuff and delivers kiddy stuff.

So overall it was a nice past time but really not particularly special.

Also I'm missing just one stupid trophy and apparently it's pretty much impossible to get it without a whole replay so I'm mad that I missed out a on a platinum, oh well.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Started Cocoon. So far, I'm liking it; if nothing else, it's a nice reprieve from the self-flagellation of Elden Ring that's been dominating my gaming time for nearly two YEARS now, and nice change of tone from the depressing horror of Little Nightmares 1 & 2.

2- The art and tone, the charm of being in a literal story book, in a story about the magic of stories and childhood and all that stuff.

@Old_Hunter_77, have you ever played So Many Me? It looks like a cute 2D side-scrolling platformer, but what it actually is is a brutally difficult game that requires precision and finesse as it stacks mechanics on your plate. I'm the only person I know who's played it (years ago,) and I recall pulling my hair out in frustration that such an adorable game was giving me literal fits of rage. I ended up 100%-ing it out of spite, like shooting someone again after their dead just to make sure they stay dead. I'd like someone else's take on that game (misery loves company.)

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Started Cocoon. So far, I'm liking it; if nothing else, it's a nice reprieve from the self-flagellation of Elden Ring that's been dominating my gaming time for nearly two YEARS now, and nice change of tone from the depressing horror of Little Nightmares 1 & 2.



@Old_Hunter_77, have you ever played So Many Me? It looks like a cute 2D side-scrolling platformer, but what it actually is is a brutally difficult game that requires precision and finesse as it stacks mechanics on your plate. I'm the only person I know who's played it (years ago,) and I recall pulling my hair out in frustration that such an adorable game was giving me literal fits of rage. I ended up 100%-ing it out of spite, like shooting someone again after their dead just to make sure they stay dead. I'd like someone else's take on that game (misery loves company.)

No I have not but honestly you're really not selling me on it lol

 

[Xprimentyl]

No I have not but honestly you're really not selling me on it lol

Didn't think I could sell it, but you know when you smell something really bad, and you can't help but ask someone else to smell it too? That's what So Many Me is for me. I downloaded it thinking it looked cute and would be some quick and easy Gamerscore to burn up a lazy Sunday afternoon, but it took me a week's worth of rage quitting and hate playing before I got the final achievement. That game kicked my ass and ego in equal measure. I mean, look at it; how adorable is that?!? Who'd have thought those pinchable cheeks were hiding a hundred rows of razor-sharp teeth??

 

[Agema]

Tactical Breach Wizards

Magical SWAT team! Turn based tactics game where you kick doors in and then kick enemies out (of windows). Has a nice mechanic: each turn allows you to test out actions and then just rewind at will until you work out the best combinations - although if you need more than one turn, you'd better also get your positioning right for the next, because you don't get to rewind to a previous turn (well, unless you hit the "Restart Level" option). Effectively, you can't (or shouldn't) ever lose, it's just how long it takes to work out the way to win - ideally grabbing as many bonuses and being as stylish as possible. You've got a team of wizards with different skills/spells - level them up and so on.

Plenty of plot and dialogue to stitch together the levels, it's comedy and generally well done.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Welp, with the new Yakuza/Like a Dragon game being announced, it's as good an excuse as any to try and finally finish Yakuza 7 and get caught up on the timeline again. Might not happen, but I've been a fan of those games for so long.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finished Astro's Playroom. That was a blast! Just so much charm, such great use of tech, and the game was actually pretty fun to play and control, especially in the speedrunning challenges. I even had fun with that awful touchpad controlled ball in the speedrun, it's actually my best global ranking out of any of them. The music was great too, and I love a game where you fight the credits. I'm definitely looking forward to playing Astro Bot someday when it's on sale now!

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Back to Erdtree dlc after my longest break. Still committed to blind progression, and stumbled upon the Fogr Rift Fort, which had the item I’ve been wanting to try, but to get the most of it I’d have to respec back to STR/FTH. That’s the biggest conundrum with this game for me, is sticking with a build type for any length of time as there’s always something else I want to try. Also still trying to figure out how/where to get to the upper levels of the pleasantly lush looking ruins place.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I think... I might have played Arkham Knight too much back in the day. The game is almost as a good as I remember, but my fingers are performing moves that I have yet to unlock, which is making things a little frustrating. I am now considering seeing if Space Marine 2 can run on my PC while I wait for Monster Hunter Rise to go on sale.

 

[BrawlMan]

I've been bouncing back between Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. I am getting the hang of the controls again. I do use one button supers, but a player still has to know how and when to use them properly. I've gotten good with online matches. I do casual matches, because I am going nowhere near the people who've been playing these games or one of these games for 20+ years.

 

[meiam]

Finished the ME Legendary trilogy, final playtime roughly 87 hours. Picked the Control ending this time, since I felt it fit my renegade Shepard the best. Throughout the trilogy she'd seen everyone bumbling around with incompetent leadership making bad decision after bad decision. So given the chance to be the ultimate overlord of the universe, she took it with zero doubt. There's not really anything new to say about it, so I'll just roughly copypaste what I thought of the ME3 ending 6 years ago:



The biggest crime of this ending really is the thematic pretense. A lot of people were understandably miffed at how little effect their choices made in the final climax, but for me the jarring tonal and thematic shift right at the finish line is what places this firmly in the "meh" category. It just comes out of nowhere and is given this huuuge dramatic weight completely unearnedly. Sure it's fleshed out in the Leviathan DLC, but the more it's fleshed out the more holes it pokes into itself. Why is the resolution to the supposedly inevitable organics vs synthetics conflict to wipe out organics? What makes this cycle so unavoidable? If the Reapers have been doing the cycle for hundreds of millions of years and are these galaxy-brained mega-beings, did it never occur to any of them that other options might be on the table?

As hard as the game tries to present the Reapers as these Cthulhu-esque forces of nature beyond our comprehension, their presentation even in the first game simply does not match that description. They're clearly capable of observing and understanding organics on a micro level and have personalities. They make bombastic villain speeches in booming voices for crying out loud! So ultimately the Reapers feel more like an army of stuck in their ways middle managers: powerful enough to stamp others beneath their heel, but not capable of enough original thought to consider doing things differently. So they end up feeling quite bland by the end, despite there being tons of interesting ideas about them you could have explored. In another timeline where Drew Karpyshyn didn't leave after ME2 maybe we got a better, more cohesive ending.

Eh, Mass Effect is still one of the greatest achievements in gaming history, and seeing how its accomplishments are very unlikely to be replicated any time soon, a rushed ending doesn't diminish its status.

Ultimately the problem is that they didn't really plan (or EA takeover derailed the plan). ME2 should have laid the groundwork for what the reaper stood for (theme) but also how to defeat them (in a way that would resonate with the theme). But instead, it spend almost all of its time introducing a new crew... just to discard them all in ME3. As much as I like ME2 (gameplay, character), it really feel like a side chapter that should have been more of a ME1.5 while the real ME2 was cooking. It'll never happen, but I would so love a ME remake that would do just that.

So ME3 just didn't have the proper time to get around to create a theme in just one game... but they still didn't try and instead most of the overarching plot of ME3 is spent dealing with Cerberus and Kai Leng, which doesn't feed at all into the organic V synthetic things. Its more about control... or something?

 

[Bartholen]

Ultimately the problem is that they didn't really plan (or EA takeover derailed the plan). ME2 should have laid the groundwork for what the reaper stood for (theme) but also how to defeat them (in a way that would resonate with the theme). But instead, it spend almost all of its time introducing a new crew... just to discard them all in ME3. As much as I like ME2 (gameplay, character), it really feel like a side chapter that should have been more of a ME1.5 while the real ME2 was cooking. It'll never happen, but I would so love a ME remake that would do just that.

So ME3 just didn't have the proper time to get around to create a theme in just one game... but they still didn't try and instead most of the overarching plot of ME3 is spent dealing with Cerberus and Kai Leng, which doesn't feed at all into the organic V synthetic things. Its more about control... or something?

I'm putting most of the blame on the way ME3 was rushed through development. There is probably a way to make the organic v synthetic conflict seem more thematically appropriate, or there could have been another direction altogether, but it being a really stressful production probably did a lot of damage to the writing. I did look up an article on what might have been Drew Karpyshyn's ending, but he himself admitted that it was never really fleshed out in detail, and per his words, "just as likely to disappoint".

You mention Cerberus and the seeming theme of control, but IMO there's another far more interesting angle they could have gone with: what if Cerberus/the Illusive Man had started advocating for synthesis instead? They had the funding, willingness, and by the end of ME2 access to tech no one else in the galaxy did. Since the Illusive Man's whole thing is furthering humanity's interests before everything else, maybe he could have become indoctrinated to believe not that he could control the Reapers, but that he could spare humanity by advancing their evolution into a new form of life? That would be both in character and much more compelling than his saturday cartoon villain speeches about controlling the Reapers. Since humanity would have become both organic and synthetic, you can see how they might fall outside of the Reapers' stated goals, right?

It would also have been a spin on the fate of the Protheans turned Collectors: they were enslaved by the Reapers by getting captured and forcibly changed, LOTR Orc style. Humanity under an indoctrinated TIM would have become servants of the Reapers, but willlingly, believing they were ascending to a new form of life, but ending up as slaves. That way the synthesis ending would probably have carried a lot more dramatic weight and moral complexity than being a catch-all feel good ending. It would also have made Shepard acting under his own will much more impactful, since organic life ascending to synthesis on their own terms would leave the galaxy much more open to possibilities.

I also straight up started another playthrough already, this time on Insanity as a full paragon Soldier maleshep. I've never actually played the Soldier class, so I'll finally get to use all those assault rifles in the games. I added some quality of life and graphics mods (skip the decryption minigame, unlimited sprint, removed camera shake, readjusted lighting and galaxy map tracking for each quest), and jesus fucking christ they make ME1 so much better. The unlimited sprint, while probably seriously messing with how the game's balanced, makes traversal so much faster it's insane. It does lead to a rather funny scenario where Shepard and his squad are bolting down the hallways of the Presidium on errands, weapons in hand. Skipping most of the dialogue also cuts out so much from the playtime. Insanity is where I finally feel like I have to actually pay full attention to the game, consider each level up and party comp. It's still not very hard, but definitely more fun than on lower difficulties.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I got all my speedruns on Astro's Playroom into the top 100k and I feel that's probably about the best I can do without looking up what strats the pros use, because I don't know how they possibly knock off another 10 seconds from something I would consider nearly perfectly executed.

Other than that I've started playing The Best Game of All Time, but I'm not very far into it.

 

[Agema]

As hard as the game tries to present the Reapers as these Cthulhu-esque forces of nature beyond our comprehension, their presentation even in the first game simply does not match that description. They're clearly capable of observing and understanding organics on a micro level and have personalities. They make bombastic villain speeches in booming voices for crying out loud! So ultimately the Reapers feel more like an army of stuck in their ways middle managers: powerful enough to stamp others beneath their heel, but not capable of enough original thought to consider doing things differently.

This is an interesting point, but I would argue that getting stuck in ones ways - decadent - is actually much more likely of eternal, absurdly powerful beings. What, ever, is their motivation to change? We change in large because we hit obstacles that we can't overcome by doing the same old thing, so what if you're so powerful to never need to? After that, there's ennui: sure, an entity might be able to appreciate an organism at the level of their individual character, but when it's the 240 billionth individual that that entity has encountered, they probably just blend into others: "Oh, another one just like X,Y,Z, I've done this before." Everything is just repeating some algorithm already used. It's easy to imagine that such an entity or race would become incredibly sclerotic.

 

[Bartholen]

This is an interesting point, but I would argue that getting stuck in ones ways - decadent - is actually much more likely of eternal, absurdly powerful beings. What, ever, is their motivation to change? We change in large because we hit obstacles that we can't overcome by doing the same old thing, so what if you're so powerful to never need to? After that, there's ennui: sure, an entity might be able to appreciate an organism at the level of their individual character, but when it's the 240 billionth individual that that entity has encountered, they probably just blend into others: "Oh, another one just like X,Y,Z, I've done this before." Everything is just repeating some algorithm already used. It's easy to imagine that such an entity or race would become incredibly sclerotic.

That's where the way the Reapers are presented is IMO at odds with itself. The first two games present them as fairy basic cosmic malevolent beings, who just do what they do because the game needs a big villain. In the third game this notion is clearly challenged and the Reapers are more fleshed out, by the ending and the Leviathan DLC in particular. Take the scene at the end of the Rannoch mission in ME3 where Shepard talks to the Reaper: that's to my knowledge the first time the reason for the Reaper cycle is hinted at the for the first time. The Reapers do it because that's what they were created for, it's their sole purpose. Then in Leviathan and the ending the Reapers are pretty firmly established to be just a tool, supposedly acting on strictly preprogrammed paths for a single end. The Catalyst even compares them to fire: is fire evil when it burns? That's a pretty clear analogy signaling a lack of deeper intelligence or individual thought.

But the way the Reapers act in the first two games does not IMO match that description. Sovereign, when encountered, does a whole "mu ha ha, insignificant mortals, you fail to comprehend my power" spiel. Harbinger clearly has a personal beef with Shepard in ME2. Sovereign allies with Saren personally, Harbinger employs the Collectors to capture humans specifically to construct a Reaper, which is further contradicted by ME3 stating that each extinction cycle ends with the birth of one... all this IMO signals pretty clearly that the Reapers in fact are capable of switching to a different method or paradigm. I guess you could say that their "programming" is just full of failsafes and "if [x] then [y]" statements to account for these possibilities, but to me that just seems like plot convenience.

 

[Agema]

That's where the way the Reapers are presented is IMO at odds with itself. The first two games present them as fairy basic cosmic malevolent beings, who just do what they do because the game needs a big villain. In the third game this notion is clearly challenged and the Reapers are more fleshed out, by the ending and the Leviathan DLC in particular. Take the scene at the end of the Rannoch mission in ME3 where Shepard talks to the Reaper: that's to my knowledge the first time the reason for the Reaper cycle is hinted at the for the first time. The Reapers do it because that's what they were created for, it's their sole purpose. Then in Leviathan and the ending the Reapers are pretty firmly established to be just a tool, supposedly acting on strictly preprogrammed paths for a single end. The Catalyst even compares them to fire: is fire evil when it burns? That's a pretty clear analogy signaling a lack of deeper intelligence or individual thought.

But the way the Reapers act in the first two games does not IMO match that description. Sovereign, when encountered, does a whole "mu ha ha, insignificant mortals, you fail to comprehend my power" spiel. Harbinger clearly has a personal beef with Shepard in ME2. Sovereign allies with Saren personally, Harbinger employs the Collectors to capture humans specifically to construct a Reaper, which is further contradicted by ME3 stating that each extinction cycle ends with the birth of one... all this IMO signals pretty clearly that the Reapers in fact are capable of switching to a different method or paradigm. I guess you could say that their "programming" is just full of failsafes and "if [x] then [y]" statements to account for these possibilities, but to me that just seems like plot convenience.

That's fine, I accept that. I think computer games can often be narratively weak: the designers have put much more effort into the game than the plot and characters - indeed the plot and characters often may need to be subordinated to the game in ways that diminish them. There are lots of ways the writers could get to that inconsistency (for instance that the games were designed individually rather than as a coherent whole), which perhaps isn't so important as the fact the inconsistency exists.

Interestingly, there's a SF series by Alastair Reynolds that have an enemy very much of one of those forms, called The Inhibitors: they were created to undertake a task, and despite being in many ways intelligent and even creative, are nevertheless absolutely bound into their overarching goal. An obvious problem a game-maker might have is thinking that the audience might more obviously want a "bad guy" to motivate them where a mindless, programmed enemy could come across as bland.

Although I think Alastair Reynolds has also said his stories set in the same universe are not necessarily consistent: the integrity and quality of each individual story is more important to him than the coherence of the wider universe across its multiple novels.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Caravan Sand Witch, demo, sort of

This game is presented as like Sable but with a van, basically. A chill explorathon. Which is cool. There's a demo, which is very cool. Unfortunately I couldn't make heads or tails of it because the demo puts you after the tutorials which is nice but then there's all this dialogue and I couldn't figure out how to leave the first town because I couldn't be arsed to read the dialogue.

Since the game is on PC and PS5 I figured I'll just wait until it's free or super cheap on PS+ or Steam sale.

I was interested in UFO 50, that bonkers game that's literally 50 games. But they're 8-bit style games and I just can't bring myself to go back that far. But if you're into the super retro scene, you need to check this out.

So right now, not playing anything until something really grabs my interest.