What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
- Start date
- Apr 1, 2009
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.
If you die in the wrong place you will be unable to finish the game since you drop all your good gear.
I don't intend to die at all since there's a trophy for that, so I keep a cloud save handy just in case.
The last time I softlocked myself was when I saved before the Tyrant fight on the cargo hold in Code Veronica with like 4 bullets and a dead Tamagochi to my name.
And people have beaten Elden Ring with no weapons, only punching every enemy and boss to death. Doesn't mean anyone present can or wants to do that.
Slave Zero X - I am about 60% of the game done. I am on Zone 5, and after that, Zone 6 is the last stage. These levels have great background design, but I hate some of the fake difficulty of just crowding the screen with enemies. I don't bother buying the alternate color palettes, other than the one that came with the free code, because the upgrades for those are too expensive, and better off saving for your stat upgrades. I really wish the upgrades were cheaper from the start, or do away with the stat upgrades in general.
There's is some awful check pointing too. Some of these levels aren't long, but there's no excuse for the bad checkpoints. All of those patches and y'all couldn't have done these either. I know this a throwback game, but let's not do old game design bullshit. This is is not a bad game, but it could've been so much better. in other regards. Right now it's a 7/10 bordering on almost 6/10 depending how screwed up the final stage is. This a PS1 game my older brother and I would have bought for $20 or rented at Hollywood Video for curiosity. We would have played, probably beat it, and then moved on.
There's is some awful check pointing too. Some of these levels aren't long, but there's no excuse for the bad checkpoints. All of those patches and y'all couldn't have done these either. I know this a throwback game, but let's not do old game design bullshit. This is is not a bad game, but it could've been so much better. in other regards. Right now it's a 7/10 bordering on almost 6/10 depending how screwed up the final stage is. This a PS1 game my older brother and I would have bought for $20 or rented at Hollywood Video for curiosity. We would have played, probably beat it, and then moved on.
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I've been replaying Remnant: From the Ashes (a.k.a. "the only Souls-like I can tolerate"). It's been a lot easier for me this time around than last, primarily because I hit upon the strategy of sticking with the medium-range pistol and close-range shotgun and buffing the hell out of both (along with the light armor set that makes powers last twice as long), and taking advantage of the fact that bosses can only summon a handful of minions so it's typically better to ignore them and focus down the bosses. In fact, I only needed to skip one boss fight as being too difficult for me when I encountered it (so I came back later when I was far better equipped and curbstomped it).
Played the prologue of Robocop: Rogue City last week after finding the game on a very, very nice sale (80% thru March 20th, finally lightening my wishlist by one at least). First off, I’m pleasantly surprised at how well it looks and runs on my old ass GPU. The game initially feels like a love letter to the movies, albeit on a fairly noticeable budget. It goes heavy on mocap for voice performances right out the gate, which initially feels like a poor choice given the team’s limitations, but strangely enough it looks better the more oddball the facial designs get; not the least of which includes the protagonist.
Gameplay-wise for what little I’ve played so far it’s kinda niche and neat with a tanky feel that mimics how Murphy moves. No crouching, jumping, sliding, leaning, etc. but you feel like a powerful robot that can grab, break and throw both objects and enemies. Reminds me a bit of Crysis strength mode in that respect. Even the handgun feels powerful, with some good hit responses and bloody, pulpy mist effects from plugging fools in the head. There are mild RPG elements like boosting different stats and abilities ala Deus Ex, while also dabbling a bit in open mission design that’s tracked by location and bullet point objectives (no pun).
It’s all loosely tied together by a narrative of Murphy’s *condition* needing work, similar to Cyberpunk: 2077. So it certainly borrows a lot of things but still feels like it fits the game type. I’m hoping it maintains and expands on this execution as the game goes on. Will play more when I’m back from my trip.
Gameplay-wise for what little I’ve played so far it’s kinda niche and neat with a tanky feel that mimics how Murphy moves. No crouching, jumping, sliding, leaning, etc. but you feel like a powerful robot that can grab, break and throw both objects and enemies. Reminds me a bit of Crysis strength mode in that respect. Even the handgun feels powerful, with some good hit responses and bloody, pulpy mist effects from plugging fools in the head. There are mild RPG elements like boosting different stats and abilities ala Deus Ex, while also dabbling a bit in open mission design that’s tracked by location and bullet point objectives (no pun).
It’s all loosely tied together by a narrative of Murphy’s *condition* needing work, similar to Cyberpunk: 2077. So it certainly borrows a lot of things but still feels like it fits the game type. I’m hoping it maintains and expands on this execution as the game goes on. Will play more when I’m back from my trip.
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Finished the tutorial, some initial impressions:
-I'm gonna have to get used to not panic blocking, because the last time I played Sekiro was about five years ago, and Elden Ring's defense was largely built around either dodging or keeping your shield up permanently. Or parrying, but I never got the hang of that.
-Got beat up by the big puppet guarding the key to the train station, but Parade Master didn't get me (even though I failed to block a single red hit). Recharging your last Estus by landing hits is an interesting way to handle it, and in practice Elden Ring's method of recharging Estus tended to not work whenever I actually needed it to, so this game's method already feels better to me.
-I need to remember to actually use other consumables this time, throwing bombs and weapon infusions. I forgot to through most of ER. Also gotta remember my Weapon Arts - sorry, Fable Attacks and Legion Arm.
-Game looks and sounds nice, but that's a given in 9th-gen titles. So far I haven't seen anything that impressive, but nothing I genuinely dislike either.
-Don't worry about story spoilers for my sake, I already know basically all of it.
-I'm gonna have to get used to not panic blocking, because the last time I played Sekiro was about five years ago, and Elden Ring's defense was largely built around either dodging or keeping your shield up permanently. Or parrying, but I never got the hang of that.
-Got beat up by the big puppet guarding the key to the train station, but Parade Master didn't get me (even though I failed to block a single red hit). Recharging your last Estus by landing hits is an interesting way to handle it, and in practice Elden Ring's method of recharging Estus tended to not work whenever I actually needed it to, so this game's method already feels better to me.
-I need to remember to actually use other consumables this time, throwing bombs and weapon infusions. I forgot to through most of ER. Also gotta remember my Weapon Arts - sorry, Fable Attacks and Legion Arm.
-Game looks and sounds nice, but that's a given in 9th-gen titles. So far I haven't seen anything that impressive, but nothing I genuinely dislike either.
-Don't worry about story spoilers for my sake, I already know basically all of it.
FF7 is so weird, it's kind of amazing that it became as popular as it was for how janky it is. The translation is not great, and the story and world don't make a ton of sense. Also the game is actually really silly at times, which is funny for how seriously Square Enix and the fans have treated the game since. Like you'll have Sephiroth walk through a place leaving a trail of corpses and blood on the floor and then you'll immediately go to a resort town and run into the evil scientist that tried to forcibly breed Aeris with a lion thing just getting a tan on the beach... in his lab coat, surrounded by bikini girls. It's so weird.
Edit: Also it just clicked on this playthrough that Marlene is actually Dyne's daughter. I always thought it was weird that Barret was so enthusiastic about bringing Dyne to see that his daughter was alive, but obviously it's Dyne's daughter. For some reason I never even thought about the fact that they had different skin colors before.
Edit: Also it just clicked on this playthrough that Marlene is actually Dyne's daughter. I always thought it was weird that Barret was so enthusiastic about bringing Dyne to see that his daughter was alive, but obviously it's Dyne's daughter. For some reason I never even thought about the fact that they had different skin colors before.
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Better men than I am, Gunga Din.
Reached my first ending of Ever 17. It was a bad end. There were many go-nowhere plot points and the story felt very much of a "and then that happened" nature. I however suspect that the idea is that by making different choices on subsequent playthroughs the go-nowhere plot points will lead somewhere.
Playing Machinarium, a Czech point and click game about a robot. Same studio that later did Creaks. They definitely have a thing for pantomime storytelling and hand-drawn junkyards.
My one problem with it is that it's often kinda hard to make out what you can interact with, and what are the things in your inventory (since there's no description and the graphics make everything slightly ambiguous).
As a matter of personal preference I've always liked the Monkey Island formula of letting you roam unhindered across a large map and several screens. Here you're essentially escaping one room after another, which is fine, but more often than not this funneling structure means the mechanics involved in solving most puzzles are immediately evident.
My one problem with it is that it's often kinda hard to make out what you can interact with, and what are the things in your inventory (since there's no description and the graphics make everything slightly ambiguous).
As a matter of personal preference I've always liked the Monkey Island formula of letting you roam unhindered across a large map and several screens. Here you're essentially escaping one room after another, which is fine, but more often than not this funneling structure means the mechanics involved in solving most puzzles are immediately evident.
I picked up Trepang2 on sale on Steam and, yeah, so far it's basically F.E.A.R. without the little girl with daddy issues; it's nice to see that my reflexes can still keep up twenty years later. Annoyingly, the modern-gen graphics make picking enemies out of dark backgrounds more difficult, and there's plenty of dark areas to go around.
Made it through Chapter 2 of Lies of P, and I have a few more thoughts:
-I've noticed, fighting the Scrapped Watchman (pretty tough boss for how few options you have at this point BTW), that enemies - especially bosses - can recover a little bit of their health if you stop attacking them for long enough. I feel like this is supposed to be like how in Sekiro, enemies will recover their posture if you stop attacking. However, I think I have to give the edge to Sekiro's implementation, since even if an enemy recovers posture, they've still lost their health, and having lower health makes their posture recharge slower. In Lies of P, if you let up the aggression too long, enemies will get both their health and posture back, and you lose a lot more ground. I'm aware that Fatal Attacks will clear an enemy's rally health, but that doesn't change that you basically can't pump the brakes at all.
-Also, with dodging mostly relegated to a secondary defense but still being necessary to evade grabs, it hurts a lot that grabs don't have a specific tell the way Fury Attacks do, and you have to learn specific tells for grabs for every individual enemy. Especially since grabs tend to be the most damaging moves in an enemy's arsenal if they have them.
-Giving you mostly electric-type buffs and then making you fight a boss that's strongly resistant to electricity due to using that element itself is a pretty mean prank. If this was a Souls game, it'd probably be weak to electricity rather than using it, or you'd be offered more fire-type consumables. (Phalanx is the obvious example, but at least Taurus Demon and Vordt aren't strongly resistant to fire, and for Vordt you can get Gold Pine Resin in High Wall.)
-I have wasted my Fable gauge at least once by executing a super attack into a ladder while trying to climb it because of having played Elden Ring for 35 hours. (This is on me.)
-It could be clearer that you need to fill all the slots of a P Organ node in order to get the buff from it, though maybe that's just me being stupid.
-I've noticed, fighting the Scrapped Watchman (pretty tough boss for how few options you have at this point BTW), that enemies - especially bosses - can recover a little bit of their health if you stop attacking them for long enough. I feel like this is supposed to be like how in Sekiro, enemies will recover their posture if you stop attacking. However, I think I have to give the edge to Sekiro's implementation, since even if an enemy recovers posture, they've still lost their health, and having lower health makes their posture recharge slower. In Lies of P, if you let up the aggression too long, enemies will get both their health and posture back, and you lose a lot more ground. I'm aware that Fatal Attacks will clear an enemy's rally health, but that doesn't change that you basically can't pump the brakes at all.
-Also, with dodging mostly relegated to a secondary defense but still being necessary to evade grabs, it hurts a lot that grabs don't have a specific tell the way Fury Attacks do, and you have to learn specific tells for grabs for every individual enemy. Especially since grabs tend to be the most damaging moves in an enemy's arsenal if they have them.
-Giving you mostly electric-type buffs and then making you fight a boss that's strongly resistant to electricity due to using that element itself is a pretty mean prank. If this was a Souls game, it'd probably be weak to electricity rather than using it, or you'd be offered more fire-type consumables. (Phalanx is the obvious example, but at least Taurus Demon and Vordt aren't strongly resistant to fire, and for Vordt you can get Gold Pine Resin in High Wall.)
-I have wasted my Fable gauge at least once by executing a super attack into a ladder while trying to climb it because of having played Elden Ring for 35 hours. (This is on me.)
-It could be clearer that you need to fill all the slots of a P Organ node in order to get the buff from it, though maybe that's just me being stupid.
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I completed World Tour Mode mode of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PSP). I used Karin Kazunki. I never played her much before. But i'm really liking her play style. She has her own dedicated counter and she has some of the best juggles in the game. This port uses the Dreamcast version of WT, so it's not as good as PS1/SAT version. It's still fun though. It has encounters and matches unique or does specific fights the PS1 version doesn't have. I have no idea why Capcom still won't port this version to modern consoles. I don't like Ingrid being the roster, but the worst I can say about the game. It has all these bonuses and single player content that still stuck on the PSP. There's even sevreral different styles of survival mode, and a tag mode!
Slave Zero X I'm still stuck as specific section as i've not touched it in a minute. The other thing I don't like about this game is that bosses nor mini bosses get health meters, so you're just slashing away until they finally die. I hate that type of health pool design. Especially when they take so many hits, and you're fighting way too many enemies on screen at once. If I can't get past this one section, I'm probably just gonna give up and trade in the game for something else. This game really needed difficulty modes.
Slave Zero X I'm still stuck as specific section as i've not touched it in a minute. The other thing I don't like about this game is that bosses nor mini bosses get health meters, so you're just slashing away until they finally die. I hate that type of health pool design. Especially when they take so many hits, and you're fighting way too many enemies on screen at once. If I can't get past this one section, I'm probably just gonna give up and trade in the game for something else. This game really needed difficulty modes.
Played through Ever 17 again.
After the first playthrough which was explicitly labelled a Bad End I tried to repeat but this time make the precise opposite choices. The storyline diverged significantly and I missed out on some scenes from my first playthrough while instead getting new scenes. The exclusive scenes concerned specific characters so I probably ended up being closer with the characters in question... though I still ended up with the same Bad End.
After that I consulted a guide and were on more or less permanent Skip Mode (and I've read enough to be able to figure out where I think it is going), and got a specific Character Ending. Will consult the same guide to get the other endings.
I realize that the only "gameplay" is to load and reload to see how things turn out differently, but this Character Ending contained scenes that I already had seen completely in my first Bad End playthrough. It was only at the very end that I got additional scenes with the character in question that revealed that "Hey, you got it right this time. Congratulations.". How am I supposed to figure out if I'm getting to the Character Endings if the road there is not that different to the Bad End? That doesn't sound like good game design. I am consulting a guide and not feeling bad about that, but I'm trying to figure out how someone else would defend this as good design or something to strive to.
After the first playthrough which was explicitly labelled a Bad End I tried to repeat but this time make the precise opposite choices. The storyline diverged significantly and I missed out on some scenes from my first playthrough while instead getting new scenes. The exclusive scenes concerned specific characters so I probably ended up being closer with the characters in question... though I still ended up with the same Bad End.
After that I consulted a guide and were on more or less permanent Skip Mode (and I've read enough to be able to figure out where I think it is going), and got a specific Character Ending. Will consult the same guide to get the other endings.
I realize that the only "gameplay" is to load and reload to see how things turn out differently, but this Character Ending contained scenes that I already had seen completely in my first Bad End playthrough. It was only at the very end that I got additional scenes with the character in question that revealed that "Hey, you got it right this time. Congratulations.". How am I supposed to figure out if I'm getting to the Character Endings if the road there is not that different to the Bad End? That doesn't sound like good game design. I am consulting a guide and not feeling bad about that, but I'm trying to figure out how someone else would defend this as good design or something to strive to.
FF7.
What even is Cait Seith? Is it a stuffed animal controlled by Reeve or is it alive? The game seems really inconsistent on this and I don't understand why. Maybe it's just the awful translation shining through that it makes no sense. I also don't understand why they even let a giant fortune telling stuffed animal join them to begin with, even before he started threatening them. The whole concept is just strange.
What even is Cait Seith? Is it a stuffed animal controlled by Reeve or is it alive? The game seems really inconsistent on this and I don't understand why. Maybe it's just the awful translation shining through that it makes no sense. I also don't understand why they even let a giant fortune telling stuffed animal join them to begin with, even before he started threatening them. The whole concept is just strange.
Return of Monkey Island
Latest in the line-up. You know the deal. Zany pirate themed adventures. Silly puzzles, tho the usual moon logic seems mostly absent so far. Wacky character to dialogue tree with. New art style. Very different from previous games, but I'm digging it. Not so fond of the voice acting. It's not actually bad per se. Would be fine in a game that isn't Monkey Island. But the delivery is often too flat and with poor comedic timing, and it kills the humor dead a lot of the time.
Latest in the line-up. You know the deal. Zany pirate themed adventures. Silly puzzles, tho the usual moon logic seems mostly absent so far. Wacky character to dialogue tree with. New art style. Very different from previous games, but I'm digging it. Not so fond of the voice acting. It's not actually bad per se. Would be fine in a game that isn't Monkey Island. But the delivery is often too flat and with poor comedic timing, and it kills the humor dead a lot of the time.