What are you currently playing?

[laggyteabag]

Playing The Last of Us 2, and im enjoying the "video" part of "videogame", bit not necessarily the "game" part.

The main issue, is the more open-ended level design, combined with the necessity to scavenge.

Im interested in the story, I like the characters, the game is goddamn gorgeous, and the combat is visceral, but it is so hard to enjoy all of these aspects, when you are spending so much time rummaging through drawers, and checking counter-tops.

I don't have a problem with needing to scavenge, because it is a thematic necessity for the setting, but combined with larger, more open levels, it completely destroys the pacing.

In the first game, you were presented with a linear path through each level, and then there were sometimes 1 or 2 rooms that you could explore to scavenge resources, or be presented with a mini story via a note. This means that you still get to scavenge for supplies, and engage with the world, but then immediately get back on track with the story, without too much delay.

Conversely, in Part 2, you are often presented 2-6 or more of these extra rooms - or in a lot of cases, entire houses - to explore, which causes a significant delay in engaging with the plot - which subsequently causes any and all urgency to be lost, as you put the story on hold to find that extra handful of bullets.

And god forbid you get dropped into one of those more "open world" sections.

I like the game. I like the story. I just wish I could spend more time with the stuff I like, instead of spending so much time on the stuff that really isn't too interesting. Its just a shame.

Maybe there are some settings that I can play around with.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I've been thinking of getting Odin Sphere Leifthrasir on PSN but $30 seems like a little too much for a 4 year old remaster of a 13 year old PS2 game I've already played to death and know like the back of my hand anyway. And $30 is half off, nominal price is a ridiculous $60. Dragon's Crown is $10. What the hell?

 

[BrawlMan]

I've been thinking of getting Odin Sphere Leifthrasir on PSN but $30 seems like a little too much for a 4 year old remaster of a 13 year old PS2 game I've already played to death and know like the back of my hand anyway. And $30 is half off, nominal price is a ridiculous $60. Dragon's Crown is $10. What the hell?

I still reccomend getting OSL for the redone combat alone. I get where you're coming from though. That reminds me, I gotta finish Dragon's Crown. And the art work looks so beautiful in HD for both games.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I still reccomend getting OSL for the redone combat alone. I get where you're coming from though. That reminds me, I gotta finish Dragon's Crown. And the art work looks so beautiful in HD for both games.

I'm probably gonna get it before the sale's over this month, just because I've never played Leifthrasir and Odin Sphere is like the last game I'm missing from my top favorites on PS4. I just don't like the nagging feeling that I'm getting ripped off.

Shame Grim Grimoire isn't on PSN too.

 

[Glitter]

Currently Playing

• Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
• My Hero One's Justice 2
• Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers
• One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows
• Revenant Dogma
• Sonic Forces
• Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

I have three games on that list that I'm mainly trying to do online events for. The other games I'm just trying to unlock stuff or complete the game.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

When I found out that Bamco were holding a Steam sale, I decided to check if Dark Souls 2 was on the list, since it's the only one from that series that I don't already own. Turns out, it was, so I bought it and now I'm starting that. I only got a little way into Nioh, so I should be able to just leave it there and pick it back up later without having to relearn too much.

To be totally honest, I'm often more interested in divisive games than universally praised ones. Dark Souls 2 is about as divisive as it gets, from what I've seen, so I'm hoping that it'll be interesting in that way.

 

[Dalisclock]

When I found out that Bamco were holding a Steam sale, I decided to check if Dark Souls 2 was on the list, since it's the only one from that series that I don't already own. Turns out, it was, so I bought it and now I'm starting that. I only got a little way into Nioh, so I should be able to just leave it there and pick it back up later without having to relearn too much.

To be totally honest, I'm often more interested in divisive games than universally praised ones. Dark Souls 2 is about as divisive as it gets, from what I've seen, so I'm hoping that it'll be interesting in that way.

It's interesting, without a doubt. It's certain mechanics *COUGHSOULMEMORYCOUGH* that are divisie and the layout of the game in general. There are some rather Crap bosses(notably some really low effort ones.....you'll know soon enough) and areas in DS2, though the DLC areas(if you got the SOTFS edition on steam) are generally considered a step above the base game in both those areas.

I will avoid saying more and let you discover for yourself.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It's interesting, without a doubt. It's certain mechanics *COUGHSOULMEMORYCOUGH* that are divisie and the layout of the game in general. There are some rather Crap bosses(notably some really low effort ones.....you'll know soon enough) and areas in DS2, though the DLC areas(if you got the SOTFS edition on steam) are generally considered a step above the base game in both those areas.

I will avoid saying more and let you discover for yourself.

I found the DLC more of a case of "lots of enemies at once to make hard game harder" than over any real quality. I like 2 way better than 1 but i did not like the dlc.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Playing Disney's Marvel's Sony's Spider-Man

Tried it out when it came out a couple of years ago on a friend's PS4, finally got around buying a copy. The combat and traversal are a lot of fun, fluid and varied, although the close-but-not-quite Arkham combat was disorienting and took me a while to get the rhythm to it. I'm maybe one of three people in the world that actually like busywork mini-games so I enjoy the transmitter/lab sidemissions too. The MJ interludes, on the other hand, can go fuck themselves. (On a sidenote, there's something off about Peter's and MJ's face models. Can't quite put my finger on it.)

As for the story, I don't much care for it. I don't have a strong opinion on Spider-Man but I like anybody voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. Spidey's rogues I've always liked how colorful they are, even if none of them brings much to the table. What I like about Batman villains is that most of them either reflect back some kind of aspect about Bruce/Batman or at least have some kind of personal history with either. Whereas most of Spidey's villains are just thugs in costumes, with little variety between them except for the gimmick.

 

[Chimpzy]

Anachronox

Ok, I don't really know where to start, because this game is kind of hard to describe. I can't of any game to compare it to. Genre-defying is a trite way of explaining it, but it does fit the bill. Anachronox is part adventure game in a 3D world with third person controls, but there's also rpg elements with jrpg-style combat, but then there's also a bunch of different mini-games, and one of your party members is a miniaturized planet. No really, a planet. It's world and characters are perhaps not the deepest, but they are fun, charming, creative and endowed with a nice sense of humor (remember, planet). Tho it's not much of a looker in the visual department. I mean this came out in the same year as FFX, Rogue Leader, MGS2 and Halo. But in a way it is still impressive, given it runs on the Quake 2 engine, which was already virtually ancient at the time. You can't fault this game for a lack of ambition. Too much perhaps, because methinks in trying to make iDTech 2 do things it never was intended to, the game is sort of left glitchy and clunky. Interesting and unique, but still pretty messy. Not that I'm implying I hate it. I don't.

Come to think of it, Ion Storm's output can pretty much be summed up as "ambition that outstrips either the available tech or the skills of the developers" to some degree, tho in some cases with a healthy helping of piss poor management.

 

[BrawlMan]

Street Fighter V: Champion Edition - Despite all the trouble and rushed production of the original iteration, it's nice having the complete package as predicted. So I don't have to buy any season passes. There is a code you have to download to unlock other characters, but it still comes with the game if bought new. The Capcom Cup stages are locked behind a paywall, $9 each. Fucking stupid. Gameplay wise, it's fun. I don't know what it is, but have an easier time pulling off moves and combos than I did in SFIV. What probably helps is that I use a fight pad, and use short cut keys for certain button commands. I've been dipping and dabbling in arcade and training mode mainly. I am nowhere near close to online ranking matches yet. The main story mode I saw when Max played it on his stream in 2016, so I have little interests outside of getting an achievement. The personal story modes I will try since they are so short, easy, and can be done in 20-30 minutes. The MK/Injustice games still do single player story the best, followed by Tekken 7. Every other fighting games does a mediocre to terrible job. Another thing I noticed with the gameplay is that SFV takes a lot from Killer Instinct (2013). The V-Triggers are the Instinct Meter (right up to healing you with some health regeneration), but still feels like a Street Fighter game.

Speaking of which, I got all of the Street Fighter games on one console now and have a folder specifically for them.

 

[09philj]

Sky Rogue, a roguelite aerial combat game I got in that gargantuan itch.io BLM bundle. It's rather good, albeit a little limited in some areas. Each level tasks you with shooting down specific enemy aircraft or blowing up certain buildings. You need to beat fourteen of the procedurally generated levels in succession to beat the game; if you die, you have to start again. Each run grants tech points that can be exchanged for new weapons and aircraft after you die. A significant portion of the challenge comes from choosing the right aircraft and selection of weapons for the mission. Each aircraft has a payload allowance and avionics allowance. More payload means more powerful weapons, while more avionics means more weapons with automated targeting, which are pretty important when everyone's flying through the air at high speed. Taking an interceptor armed with air to air missiles will chew through enemy aircraft with ease, but will struggle to take out ground based targets. Conversely, a bomber has a lot of options for dealing with ground targets but can't handle dogfights as well. There are also fighter-bombers which are jacks of all trades but masters of none. On top of that there's the matter of whether you'd prefer a light, medium, or heavy aircraft. Light aircraft are faster and more manoeuvrable, but can't take as many or as powerful weapons, while heavy aircraft are big and slow but can take much bigger payloads. There's even swing-wing variants of medium aircraft that are much faster but aren't as tough and can't turn as quickly. The flying itself feels nice, a good balance between arcade simplicity and satisfying realism. You get infinite ammunition for your weapons, but they have different amounts of reserves of ammo and recharge times, and often need to be carefully lined up to work. You can usually beat the objective of the early missions very quickly once you get the hang of the game, but you're given an incentive to play the levels for longer as blowing more stuff up grants more money to spend on upgrades between missions. There's not a great deal of variety in the mission types, but there's enough variety in aircraft and weapons to make sure you keep seeing new stuff until you manage to win. The graphics are really appealing brightly coloured low poly 3D, and some of the planes are really neat designs. I'm a particular fan of the Kondor light bomber. It's normally £15 on Steam, which may or may not be a fair price depending on how much you can get into the core gameplay loop. If you can get it for less, absolutely pick up Sky Rogue.

 

[Dalisclock]

I found the DLC more of a case of "lots of enemies at once to make hard game harder" than over any real quality. I like 2 way better than 1 but i did not like the dlc.

That's ironically my issue with the base game, where I felt there were a lot more gank encounters then in DS1 and pulling one or two off wasn't really feasible, and poor level design reinforced this. I felt the DLCs helped mitigate this issue somewhat.

It also matters that the DLCs are endgame content while you could easily run into gank squads from the beginning of the base game where you're totally underprepared to deal with them. Forest of Fallen Giants is full of such encounters.

Writing on Games and Matthewmattois nicely summed up my issues with the game when they tackled the subject.

 

[wings012]

Kingdom Come Deliverance. I don't care what more hardcore fans think, I'm using the save anywhere mod.

I'm absolutely terrible at the combat, but I'm enjoying myself. I put off the main quest too long and didn't know I'd get hooked up with a trainer that'd set me up with absolutely necessary moves(perfect blocks, master strikes) so I was flailing my weapons around like an absolute peasant while living on a prayer.

I'm trained up and geared up now, but still get my ass handed to me here and there. Being outnumbered is still a recipe for death. I once waltzed into a bandit camp thinking I would be fine... I was not fine. Now I shank sleeping people or kite them with horse archery.

I'm tempted to get a crosshair mod for the bow.

 

[Ezekiel]

Beat Luigi's Mansion 3 a couple of days ago and am probably not gonna be playing anything for a long time again. Such a good game. Wish there was some way to go back and continue collecting. My auto-saves are all after the point of no return.

Never mind, the second auto-save is safe.

 

[SupahEwok]

Anachronox

Ok, I don't really know where to start, because this game is kind of hard to describe. I can't of any game to compare it to. Genre-defying is a trite way of explaining it, but it does fit the bill. Anachronox is part adventure game in a 3D world with third person controls, but there's also rpg elements with jrpg-style combat, but then there's also a bunch of different mini-games, and one of your party members is a miniaturized planet. No really, a planet. It's world and characters are perhaps not the deepest, but they are fun, charming, creative and endowed with a nice sense of humor (remember, planet). Tho it's not much of a looker in the visual department. I mean this came out in the same year as FFX, Rogue Leader, MGS2 and Halo. But in a way it is still impressive, given it runs on the Quake 2 engine, which was already virtually ancient at the time. You can't fault this game for a lack of ambition. Too much perhaps, because methinks in trying to make iDTech 2 do things it never was intended to, the game is sort of left glitchy and clunky. Interesting and unique, but still pretty messy. Not that I'm implying I hate it. I don't.

Come to think of it, Ion Storm's output can pretty much be summed up as "ambition that outstrips either the available tech or the skills of the developers" to some degree, tho in some cases with a healthy helping of piss poor management.

All of that is true and I enjoyed it, but I don't think I even got a third of the way through the game before dropping it. The time for backtracking for sidequests as you go, and the fairly terrible combat, just made it a slog. And I think I was a good 15-20 hours through it and hadn't even unlocked the magic system. The game was just too much padding for me.

 

[BrawlMan]

My Friend Pedro (Switch Physical Copy). Another game in the genre of Hotline Miami, but with more humor. It's basically a Deadpool game without the actual Deadpool. A better Deadpool game than the official licensed game. Out of all the Hotline Miami clones, this is the best one so far. It's certainly easier compared to Hotline and Hong Kong Massacre. I like those games too, but both can overboard on the difficulty by throwing so many enemies that can kill you in one hit. Or shoot you from off screen. I completed the first chapter and work my way on the rest later.

 

[Dalisclock]

Kingdom Come Deliverance. I don't care what more hardcore fans think, I'm using the save anywhere mod.

Does it still use that terrible sounding save system where you either have to sleep in a bed(that you own) or drink a potion, sans mod? Thats one of the things I remember hearing about it when it launched.

 

[meiam]

Sky Rogue, a roguelite aerial combat game I got in that gargantuan itch.io BLM bundle. It's rather good, albeit a little limited in some areas. Each level tasks you with shooting down specific enemy aircraft or blowing up certain buildings. You need to beat fourteen of the procedurally generated levels in succession to beat the game; if you die, you have to start again. Each run grants tech points that can be exchanged for new weapons and aircraft after you die. A significant portion of the challenge comes from choosing the right aircraft and selection of weapons for the mission. Each aircraft has a payload allowance and avionics allowance. More payload means more powerful weapons, while more avionics means more weapons with automated targeting, which are pretty important when everyone's flying through the air at high speed. Taking an interceptor armed with air to air missiles will chew through enemy aircraft with ease, but will struggle to take out ground based targets. Conversely, a bomber has a lot of options for dealing with ground targets but can't handle dogfights as well. There are also fighter-bombers which are jacks of all trades but masters of none. On top of that there's the matter of whether you'd prefer a light, medium, or heavy aircraft. Light aircraft are faster and more manoeuvrable, but can't take as many or as powerful weapons, while heavy aircraft are big and slow but can take much bigger payloads. There's even swing-wing variants of medium aircraft that are much faster but aren't as tough and can't turn as quickly. The flying itself feels nice, a good balance between arcade simplicity and satisfying realism. You get infinite ammunition for your weapons, but they have different amounts of reserves of ammo and recharge times, and often need to be carefully lined up to work. You can usually beat the objective of the early missions very quickly once you get the hang of the game, but you're given an incentive to play the levels for longer as blowing more stuff up grants more money to spend on upgrades between missions. There's not a great deal of variety in the mission types, but there's enough variety in aircraft and weapons to make sure you keep seeing new stuff until you manage to win. The graphics are really appealing brightly coloured low poly 3D, and some of the planes are really neat designs. I'm a particular fan of the Kondor light bomber. It's normally £15 on Steam, which may or may not be a fair price depending on how much you can get into the core gameplay loop. If you can get it for less, absolutely pick up Sky Rogue.

It was fun for a few hours, but it got insanely repetitive for my taste way too fast. I also wasn't a massive fan of the art style. It scratch that ace combat itch for a little bit of time but I actually didn't end playing much of it in the end.

For dark soul 2, I'll also second Mathewmatosis video of it (most of his video are excellent, the only one I didn't like was his god of war critique). It's not a bad game but it's easily the weakest entry and it feel like a massive step back after dark soul, like the world isn't interconnected and you're back to having to farm item in between run (plus there's a part of the game that's so stupidly obtuse I doubt many people get trough it without a guide).

 

[Dalisclock]

It was fun for a few hours, but it got insanely repetitive for my taste way too fast. I also wasn't a massive fan of the art style. It scratch that ace combat itch for a little bit of time but I actually didn't end playing much of it in the end.

For dark soul 2, I'll also second Mathewmatosis video of it (most of his video are excellent, the only one I didn't like was his god of war critique). It's not a bad game but it's easily the weakest entry and it feel like a massive step back after dark soul, like the world isn't interconnected and you're back to having to farm item in between run (plus there's a part of the game that's so stupidly obtuse I doubt many people get trough it without a guide).

Level design, beyond how conceptually dumb it looks at times (the infamous windmill elevator or how landmarks seen from Majula look like Diorama sets and not the actual landmarks), has such gems as reaching a bonfire in Huntsman's Copse which is right next to a shortcut you can open to before, but since you can fast travel between bonfires to start with, there's little reason for that shortcut to even exist(especially considering how linear most of the levels are). It felt like the designed the levels and later decided to have fast travel be active from the start.

Then again the game was apparently heavily rebuilt around the halfway point in development which explains SO SO MUCH about it(like how the Intro move doesn't really tie into anything else in the actual game).

I really want to like DS2 more than I actually did. There's so much potential there and only a fraction of it was realized.