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NerfedFalcon

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Devolver Digital has a Steam sale so I picked up Gris, Katana Zero, Hotline Miami and The Red Strings Club. Haven’t played any of them yet but they were cheap for when the mood strikes.
I haven't played Gris or The Red Strings Club yet, but Hotline Miami is solid and Katana Zero is, IMO, the best Hotline Miami-like that's been released. I actually like it even better than Hotline Miami. Hope you have fun with them!
 
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NerfedFalcon

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Sonic 06: Well, after rather a lot of pain and suffering, I finally managed to finish Sonic's story. None of it's really good, but there's definitely parts that aren't terrible, and might even be worth some unironic enjoyment. Egg Wyvern, the final boss of the route, is a particular highlight. And somehow, Kingdom Valley even has a Mach Speed section that manages to not be the absolute worst. Crazy, I know, but it's one of those things you can only really understand by playing it personally.

Still gotta get through Shadow and Silver's parts, but I'm definitely not feeling ready to quit by a long shot yet.
 
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Ezekiel

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Played the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds demo. Pressed Alt + F4 after five minutes. God, I hate Sonic Team.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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Persona 5 Royale

Yeah I guess I've just totally been sucked into this series. I was gonna wait until after Persona 3 Reloaded came to Switch and save P5 for last but I just fell off whatever else I was checking out and this happened to be on sale.

After completing the first palace (dungeon) I'm mostly liking the additions and changes from P4 in gameplay and impressed about how much is the same but just changed up enough to make it interesting. So far none of the character are annoying which is the most impressive thing (P4 had Teddy who was a real drag on everything).

I think dungeon crawling is going to be rougher because it's a lot harder to move around and explore without getting into more battles so I'm just gonna play on Easy setting as I was already fed up by the end of the first dungeon and I'm sure they're just going to get longer. On the one hand I do like that the levels are more 3D-like, with some puszles and environmental awareness instead of just corridors, but on the other hand it makes the respawning enemies kill the fun of just exploring. I'm afraid by the end of the game or series I will end up adding "respawning enemies" to the growing list of gameplay mechanics I feel should be excised from modern gaming.

It just goes to show how important a gamer's headspace is when I trying a game. I first tried P5 a while back when it was available on some subscription and hated it. The confusing dungeon crawling, the turn-based combat, the jRPG high school tropes, the try-hard to be cool style of everything, the outright silliness (look a talking cat!)., the tedium of managing a calendar and NPC relationships. But now I love it and I just wanna keep playing.
 

Worgen

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Persona 5 Royale

Yeah I guess I've just totally been sucked into this series. I was gonna wait until after Persona 3 Reloaded came to Switch and save P5 for last but I just fell off whatever else I was checking out and this happened to be on sale.

After completing the first palace (dungeon) I'm mostly liking the additions and changes from P4 in gameplay and impressed about how much is the same but just changed up enough to make it interesting. So far none of the character are annoying which is the most impressive thing (P4 had Teddy who was a real drag on everything).

I think dungeon crawling is going to be rougher because it's a lot harder to move around and explore without getting into more battles so I'm just gonna play on Easy setting as I was already fed up by the end of the first dungeon and I'm sure they're just going to get longer. On the one hand I do like that the levels are more 3D-like, with some puszles and environmental awareness instead of just corridors, but on the other hand it makes the respawning enemies kill the fun of just exploring. I'm afraid by the end of the game or series I will end up adding "respawning enemies" to the growing list of gameplay mechanics I feel should be excised from modern gaming.

It just goes to show how important a gamer's headspace is when I trying a game. I first tried P5 a while back when it was available on some subscription and hated it. The confusing dungeon crawling, the turn-based combat, the jRPG high school tropes, the try-hard to be cool style of everything, the outright silliness (look a talking cat!)., the tedium of managing a calendar and NPC relationships. But now I love it and I just wanna keep playing.
Its actually pretty easy to avoid enemies with a little patience. You can usually hide and sneak around them. Also the first dungeon is one of the hardest, especially the boss. Most of the others are much more manageable. I played on hard and nothing gave me as much trouble as the first boss, aside from the 4th boss and that one really requires using all the tools at your disposal and use the baton pass to maximize your damage. One really cool thing that the rest of the dungeons have that the first one doesn't is really good music. For some reason the first dungeon just has really boring music.
 
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Old_Hunter_77

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Its actually pretty easy to avoid enemies with a little patience. You can usually hide and sneak around them. Also the first dungeon is one of the hardest, especially the boss. Most of the others are much more manageable. I played on hard and nothing gave me as much trouble as the first boss, aside from the 4th boss and that one really requires using all the tools at your disposal and use the baton pass to maximize your damage. One really cool thing that the rest of the dungeons have that the first one doesn't is really good music. For some reason the first dungeon just has really boring music.
OK I'll keep that in mind. For sure if I end up completely bored or tuned out of combat I will raise the difficulty. One thing I find interesting is that the dungeon is gone after you defeat the boss- it's the biggest change from P4 so far because I would go back to previous dungeons to farm for quest items (so I'm wondering if that means there are no such fetch quests in P5?). And when I did old dungeon farming, I dropped to very easy.

Yeah you can hide and sneak around enemies but when I'm backtracking to try to figure out where to go, that is just way too annoying. But that's the great thing about difficulty setting- being able to change on the fly.

Interesting point about the music- P5's music is one of the things I see a lot of praise for and I didn't really think about it in that dungeon. I liked the songs in P4- I mean they were so damn catchy, I was going about my day humming "heartbreak, heartbreak.." for a month. I do like that Japanese jazzy pop thing that is in these games so I look forward to that.

The baton passing is an interesting mechanic and I hope to figure out how to use it effectively. I mean I guess you have to remember that this enemy is weak to that element and this ally is strong in that, that kind of thing. That gets into my biggest problem with jRPGs which is all the crap you have to remember, and why I am using a guide to help me along.
 

Worgen

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OK I'll keep that in mind. For sure if I end up completely bored or tuned out of combat I will raise the difficulty. One thing I find interesting is that the dungeon is gone after you defeat the boss- it's the biggest change from P4 so far because I would go back to previous dungeons to farm for quest items (so I'm wondering if that means there are no such fetch quests in P5?). And when I did old dungeon farming, I dropped to very easy.
There is something else.

Interesting point about the music- P5's music is one of the things I see a lot of praise for and I didn't really think about it in that dungeon. I liked the songs in P4- I mean they were so damn catchy, I was going about my day humming "heartbreak, heartbreak.." for a month. I do like that Japanese jazzy pop thing that is in these games so I look forward to that.
Yeah, p5 has some just fantastic music, like really top tier, its so weird how just dull the first dungeon music is, all the others are bangers.

The baton passing is an interesting mechanic and I hope to figure out how to use it effectively. I mean I guess you have to remember that this enemy is weak to that element and this ally is strong in that, that kind of thing. That gets into my biggest problem with jRPGs which is all the crap you have to remember, and why I am using a guide to help me along.
You have ingame stuff that helps with that after you fight an enemy once or twice, sometimes even the first time. I think there is a data/info option in battle or something that will let you look at enemies and their weaknesses/strengths, plus ally stuff. When you are doing an attack against an enemy it will also show you if its strong or not, but I forget if you get that at the early point in the game you are at.
 

Ezekiel

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I don't think Arkham Knight even has a good city. The batmobile is largely to blame.

The generous width of the streets results in a Gotham City that lacks density, and the problem is exacerbated by the high number of curving streets that keep the rectangular buildings from being closer together.








Look at all that open space. Even the sidewalks are huge.

The batmobile isn't even satisfying to drive, because the grip of the tires and the turning of the back wheels makes turns too easy and concrete walls on many corners break easily away. There is very little traffic, with the few cars that there are blown away like crumpled paper.

The abundant tank battles confirm that Rocksteady never understood or cared about Batman. How convenient for the pacifist that the other tanks are unmanned, controlled remotely. How convenient for him that the city was evacuated. He can ram his tank-car into cars, public property and people, who are electrified and sent flying.
 
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thebobmaster

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Its actually pretty easy to avoid enemies with a little patience. You can usually hide and sneak around them. Also the first dungeon is one of the hardest, especially the boss. Most of the others are much more manageable. I played on hard and nothing gave me as much trouble as the first boss, aside from the 4th boss and that one really requires using all the tools at your disposal and use the baton pass to maximize your damage. One really cool thing that the rest of the dungeons have that the first one doesn't is really good music. For some reason the first dungeon just has really boring music.
You mean the fifth boss, right? Haru's father. Fourth boss was Futaba's griffin mother thing. She could be somewhat tough, but the baton pass is CRITICAL for Haru's father.
 

Worgen

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Finally beat Cobalt Core. Its got a really touching ending and its just so damn charming. Ok, its a card building roguelike. You choose 3 characters and a ship and go down a path, beat enemies, get new cards and artifacts. The card game aspect of it is good, but not as good as something like Monster Train or Slay the Spire. Where it does beat those is in character. The graphics and characters are just so damn charming. The story and characters are really good and just damn charming. I played awhile but got distracted by other games and a string of bad runs.

 
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NerfedFalcon

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Today in "things I didn't know about Sonic 06 until I played it myself": A boss (Shadow's Egg Cerberus) that actually works extremely consistently... until it gets down to its last hitpoint, after which it only works intermittently despite being basically the exact same as it was before. I don't even know how they managed to pull that off.

This game.
 

Worgen

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Hades 2 released and its awesome. Familiar but different.
 

Worgen

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Have they improved the proc gen or is it still just premade rooms with random enemies?
Probably premade rooms, but I haven't played enough to really tell. But the rooms look way too good to be proc gen.
 

Worgen

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Ah, that's too bad. Repetitive room layouts was the biggest flaw from the original.
Was it though? I don't see how randomly generated rooms would be better, those always look like a weird hodgepodge of stuff.
 
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Drathnoxis

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Was it though? I don't see how randomly generated rooms would be better, those always look like a weird hodgepodge of stuff.
Because they're always a little bit different and require more on the fly adaptation. Procedurally generated rooms/terrain is essential for a really great rouguelike in my opinion, and the more variety there is in the generation, the better. Hades also had a rather low number of rooms and you become intimately familiar with them long before you've finished with the story.