What are you currently playing?

[Drathnoxis]

Finished Sonic Adventure 2 in about 6 hours over four (and a bit) play sessions. I intended to do the last few stages of Dark and Last Story in the same session but I started a little late and had to do Last Story today instead.

In terms of basic mechanics, the game's fine. It (mostly) works, though it's pretty painful when it doesn't, and there's a few things like the Homing Attack having no indicator for when something's in range or what it's aiming at that were done a lot better in later titles. Not having to charge the Light Dash helps avoid breaking flow in Sonic and Shadow's stages, but it can be a little finicky to get the timing right at speed. Not having the hub worlds in between stages helps the pacing compared to Adventure 1, but having to track down upgrades in the middle of stages kills the pacing whenever they're mandatory to progress and you have to take a detour to find them, which is more often than not. Knuckles's stages are a pain, and while most of Rouge's are better, Mad Space is just not fun. Tails and Eggman ironically play the best due to not being too fast for the camera to keep up with. Ultimately, though, where the game's really let down is in its level design; aside from a few standouts, it's just not very good, leading to a lot of stages and bosses - particularly, several points where there's several in a row that aren't fun - that make the game kind of a chore to play.

The story does get better in Dark Story, partly because compared to Team Sonic (summed up by Sonic himself, "What you see is what you get!"), Shadow, Rouge and Eggman are more rounded and complex characters suited to a darker and more thematic story. And while being foils to Sonic, Tails and Knuckles wasn't a bad idea, the follow-through isn't totally there. Last Story does manage to stick the landing, though, all plotholes aside.

The story is the best part of the game, but is it worth playing through all 31 levels and about a dozen bosses to get to? YMMV on that, but in my opinion, I don't think I'll be coming back to this one for a while. And I'm definitely not going to try and get all 180 emblems; that's for people with a lot more free time and patience than me.

What's next: Probably Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth once I'm no longer bound at the hip to Old School Runescape.

A new day brings new adventure. But for now... Rest easy heroes. [sic]

Ok, but what were the stats on your Chao? You didn't even touch on the main game!

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Ok, but what were the stats on your Chao? You didn't even touch on the main game!

I have no real interest in Chao Garden. Simulation games don't do it for me, even stuff like pet-raising. I know that a lot of people have strong memories of Chao Garden and completely skipping it means I'm skipping a lot of the game that isn't even directly about replaying the levels to get those A-rank emblems, but I'm not here for that and I don't expect to ever do much with it. And I didn't in the first Adventure 15 years ago either. Not saying it's not good, just that I'm not about it.

You may now burn me at the stake as a heretic.

 

[Ezekiel]

Disagree. Have to start the second campaign over on "Hurt Me Plenty" because "Ultra-Violence" is too much.

 

[Worgen]

Disagree. Have to start the second campaign over on "Hurt Me Plenty" because "Ultra-Violence" is too much.

Ahh, oh well, at least your having fun with it.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ahh, oh well, at least your having fun with it.

Ultraviolence is so much easier on Doom PSX and Doom 64's "Watch Me Die@", because enemies don't respawn nor revive. Due to both consoles' hardware limitations. I actually prefer it that way.

 

[Worgen]

Ultraviolence is so much easier on Doom PSX and Doom 64's "Watch Me Die@", because enemies don't respawn nor revive. Due to both consoles' hardware limitations. I actually prefer it that way.

Nightmare is the difficulty that revives enemies in Doom and Doom 2. Ultraviolent is supposed to be hard, but I find it rather easy, but I'm also bad at judging fps difficulty since I am very good at fps games. I'm playing Heretic on the hardest and not having much trouble, its nice to feel like I occasionally have to use items.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Started Sekiro it's pretty good so far. The combat system is really fun. I was a little shaky on what I was really supposed to be doing, but after an old woman stabbed me for an hour I eventually came to grips with how it works. The game patronizingly told me that I could always come back to her later, but I thought, screw that! I eventually killed her, and I think it was the right choice.

I'm not in love with losing half your gold every death with no chance of recovery, especially since bosses cut off your escape route. I had 3000 gold prior to the old woman, and now I have almost nothing. I guess it doesn't really matter because even up to the gate battle there hasn't been anything to spend money on. Still, I feel like I'm losing out.

Yup, that's the fight that made the game click for me, and I stubbornly stayed with it early on. It's worth it to buy coin purses from merchants especially early on. They cost 10% of your gold total but keeps your gold safe up death.

Ah, Lady Butterfly. That legit might be my favorite boss of all time. It does that thing I love where you're dealing with all these scary monsters and big warriors, ok, and then a granny comes out and oh shit that's when you get really scared! Love it.
I do kinda hate her second round though, with the homing butterflies. Ugh. But the first round of that fight is *chef's kiss.* The "dance" of it, that rhythm, the way that you can shoot her down with a ninja star if you time it right, her move set included her foot stomp at the end of combos. So good.

The nice thing about this fight is with enough pressure the butterflies don't even factor into it, thus thwarting her namesake rather embarrassingly.

 

[BrawlMan]

I'm playing Heretic on the hardest and not having much trouble, its nice to feel like I occasionally have to use items.

Night Dive did re-balance all difficulties. The enemies die much faster now, even on the hardest setting.

I traded in my ONE X for a 220GB 360 Slim, and I don't regret it. I kept my profile and save files on a gaming thumb drive, so I have everything I need. Played some FEAR1 just to test the machine out. I played some Killer Is Dead as well.

 

[Worgen]

Night Dive did re-balance all difficulties. The enemies die much faster now, even on the hardest setting.

I traded in my ONE X for a 220GB 360 Slim, and I don't regret it. I kept my profile and save files on a gaming thumb drive, so I have everything I need. Played some FEAR1 just to test the machine out. I played some Killer Is Dead as well.

I did most of the Nightdive remaster on Ultraviolent, didn't get hard for me till I got to the new episodes and then I got distracted by other games.

 

[Ezekiel]

Tried to restart campaign 2 on "Hurt Me Plenty," but died in the second level, so then decided to just try again with my "Ultra-Violence" save, and now I'm almost finished with the campaign.

Some of those crushing ceilings are just cruel.

 

[BrawlMan]

@Worgen, I am playing Quake IV on 360. It feels so good to play an old-school Raven FPS again. I am still early in, but I love the game lets you save anywhere, even after a checkpoint. My only gripe is the frame rate issues the game has from time to time. You can tell this was a launch title 360 game and barely got running off what was a port from the PC version.

 

[Worgen]

@Worgen, I am playing Quake IV on 360. It feels so good to play an old-school Raven FPS again. I am still early in, but I love the game lets you save anywhere, even after a checkpoint. My only gripe is the frame rate issues the game has from time to time. You can tell this was a launch title 360 game and barely got running off what was a port from the PC version.

Nice, overall, I enjoyed Quake 4, but it does really suffer from actionmovieness in its story and characters.

 

[BrawlMan]

Nice, overall, I enjoyed Quake 4, but it does really suffer from actionmovieness in its story and characters.

I can live with that, since I am there to shoot up things any way. It honestly works better here than Modern Warfare 2 (2009). There's more earnestness to it in Quake IV.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

It's about an hour and a half long. Probably better if you don't look up anything about it before buying it. Just trust me, this is an hour and a half that I don't regret spending.

If you still aren't sure, the same developer made a free game called '20 Small Mazes' that's also available on Steam; it's a similar kind of puzzle design, and if you like it, you'll probably get a kick out of Strange Jigsaws too.

 

[Ezekiel]

Have almost finished the third and final campaign on Ultra-Violence.

I like scramming as the demons fight each other and coming back to finish off the survivors, enemy of my enemy briefly my friend.

Level design became too weird in hell. Stuck too much.

 

[Ezekiel]

I like scramming as the demons fight each other and coming back to finish off the survivors, enemy of my enemy briefly my friend.

Which is how I beat the final boss, the Spiderdemon. The Baron of Hell helped so much.

 

[thebobmaster]

Took a break from Robocop: Rogue City (for some reason, the game's audio got really glitchy and out of sync) and started Lies of P. I like the environment, and it's not bad so far combat wise...but I've been told that I really need to get parrying down, and I cannot seem to do so, so I don't know how long it will be before I bounce out of the game because of sucking.

 

[Ezekiel]

I didn't know you could move faster. Never tried to press Shift. Only realized after finishing the game and seeing an option in the settings called "Always run."

I have two versions of the game. Have owned them for years and only started playing two days ago. In Doom + Doom II the "run" is on by default and I see no way to turn that off. Don't really wanna play that version anyway. I'm used now to this reticle and don't want my time wasted by the main menu that has the seven other Doom-related games, which only appears after "Press any button to continue." Doom I Enhanced only has the new legal stuff and company splash screens.

Spoiler

Anyway, when I play Doom again, I will not be using the "run" very much. It's fast enough for me. I mean, I did beat it on Ultra.

 

[Worgen]

I didn't know you could move faster. Never tried to press Shift. Only realized after finishing the game and seeing an option in the settings called "Always run."

I have two versions of the game. Have owned them for years and only started playing two days ago. In Doom + Doom II the "run" is on by default and I see no way to turn that off. Don't really wanna play that version anyway. I'm used now to this reticle and don't want my time wasted by the main menu that has the seven other Doom-related games, which only appears after "Press any button to continue." Doom I Enhanced only has the new legal stuff and company splash screens.

Spoiler

Anyway, when I play Doom again, I will not be using the "run" very much. It's fast enough for me. I mean, I did beat it on Ultra.

You turn off autorun by starting one of the games then going into options and choosing gameplay and you can turn off autorun at the top. I think it should carry over to anyone of them that you play, if not then its always in the sameplace.

Also you can stop it from having company splash screens by right clicking the game in your steam library and properties then putting "%command% -skipmovies" without the quotes into the launch options.

 

[meiam]

Started shadow of doubt, I don't doubt that'll enjoy it at some point, but for now I feel like I'm having to use my detective skill on UI and the game more than the murder. So many things are intuitive (inventory/map management) plenty of stuff doesn't work (I tried looking up an addresses in the city ledger and it sent me at the wrong location, potentially a name was used twice in the same map?) some of the side mission are non sense (humiliate this person, also we know literally nothing about them) what you can and cannot interact with is really inconsistent (can't window for some reason) and its really hard to justify solving murder when stealing stuff is so much more rewarding (in the process of doing a side mission for 500$ I stole two upgrade worth many time that).

Also I wanted to play the game without ever having to bribe people for basic info (50 for name or such) but there's some many situation where it feel like thats the only solution. At least make it so we're like bribing someone at city hall for that info rather than themselves, if they know they committed a murder, why would they give their information to some random detective for such a tiny sum.

It feel more like a tech demo than a fully realized game.