What are you currently playing?

[Casual Shinji]

I much preferred Uncharted 4 to Uncharted 3. Uncharted 3 is the low water point with a story that's sort of shoddy to begin with and contains an entire section that goes nowhere (no matter how cool the sinking luxury liner set up is) before dropping you into a desert walk that's absolutely that in terms of fun. Uncharted 4 did some weird stuff, but it never went off the deep end in the same way that 3 did for me.

Pretty much.

It also suggested some super questionable shit from Sully with that flashback. Him taking a 14-year old child under his wing and nuturing his criminal ways. You know Naughty Dog put that section in there as some sort of Sully fanservice, but Jesus, did that backfire. And the funny thing is that this could've easily been fixed by having Sully go on his merry way right after he saves Drake's life by shooting that one goon. Then they could've had their young Drake meets young Sully scene without painting Sully as a goddamn monster.

That shipyard section could've also been fixed easily by just having it be about Drake needing to escape that place and ditching the whole 'Sully got kidnapped and held on the cruise ship' stuff. It would pretty much be the exact same sequence, but without the dumb.

Plus, they messed up Chloe's face and relegated her to cringey sidekick, Talbot was Kai Leng, and boy, did the shooting just utterly blow. I think the only thing I really liked was Cutter, and they wrote him out halfway through.

Uncharted 4 is like a good Uncharted 3, because it suffers from similar story (pacing) bullshit but manages to break even with actual good stuff.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Bought a switch just to play Hades

Come on Supergiant...that must earn me significant fanbear points by now? Oh, also got Mario and Zelda cause also a fanbear of those, but still...Suuupeeergiaant?

I suck at this

 

[BrawlMan]

I've been playing Miles Morales. You can see more details on my Spider-Man thread. I've already beaten the game last week, now I'm just finishing up side quests. I am going to play on the hardest difficulty for New Game+ so I can unlock the rest of the moves. I do think it's kind of stupid to have the final moves lock behind NG+. It just creates unnecessary and extra busy work for extended playtime.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Guacamelee! 2

It's more Guacamelee: same sprites, same color-coding, same moveset. Only real addition is giving the Pollo Power new combat/traversal moves. The story is aggressively tongue-in-cheek, moreso than the first game, which annoys me. Not that the first game did much than provide a comedy context for gameplay, but the sequel can't go a single line of dialogue without going for a laugh and every character has the exact same voice. As much as I'm ok with more Guacamelee I feel the sequel suffers the ill fate of being a "comedy" game first.

 

[BrawlMan]

Guacamelee! 2

It's more Guacamelee: same sprites, same color-coding, same moveset. Only real addition is giving the Pollo Power new combat/traversal moves. The story is aggressively tongue-in-cheek, moreso than the first game, which annoys me. Not that the first game did much than provide a comedy context for gameplay, but the sequel can't go a single line of dialogue without going for a laugh and every character has the exact same voice. As much as I'm ok with more Guacamelee I feel the sequel suffers the ill fate of being a "comedy" game first.

You playing on Switch or PS4? I got the physical double pack on Switch. I also still have my digital copy on X360.

 

[wings012]

Been playing Tales of Berseria lately.

Gameplay is... ups and downs. I'm dead certain there is a way to skillfully play the game, but the way the ability system is set up its hard for me to do anything but mash buttons. Skills are bound to each of the four face buttons, and they are contextual depending on order you press them in. Basically, you can set up 52 combinations plus additional skills activated mid combo, and ultimate moves. Your ability to use these depends on how many pips you have. You start each battle with three pips (so you can use 39 moves, up to three moves in a row) and stuff happens that either knocks a pip out of you or into you as the battle progresses. This... sounds awesome. But there's no way I can keep all this shit in my head, and I'm not interested in trying to be frank. I effectively have to set up four start points, four third points (the most common end point of a combo until you get good at gaining more pips) and then just hammer those buttons. I know where I'm starting and where I'll probably end but everything else is magic baby. It turns fights into a button mash jamboree for me because I don't see any point in trying to memorize optimal combos with so many choices.

I felt the same about Berseria. My only prior Tales experience was some of Phantasia and half of Abyss - and I quite enjoyed the sidescrolling action gameplay those had. Those made sense. You had movement, you had regular attacks, you could dodge and miss attacks, you had skills on top of those.

I have no idea when in the flying fuck tales combat system turned into that mess that Berseria had, but by god it had gone somewhere seriously dumb. I also played it like an absolute mash jamboree. There's no proper "exchange" of attacking and dodging anyway, enemies lock onto you and you lock onto them. If something is determined to hit you, you're probably going to get hit. There's also basically no normal attacks. Every attack is a SPECIAL MOVE and it was a massive clusterfuck.

I just found combat to snowball heavily one way or the other. Either you mash to keep regaining more pips to mash some more and faceplant your enemies into the ground... or you get fucked, lose all your pips and all your fighting ability along with it. You can try to recover but I always found it better to restart. Can't remember if there were items that restored pips, it's been a while since I beat it.

I enjoyed Berseria still, it was alright. But god, the combat was an absolute mess.

 

[Mister Mumbler]

So, I guess watching the new season of Mandalorian has reawakened my inner space cowboy, because I decided to dust off Elite Dangerous and have been playing that. Normally I play pretty much as a space trucker (move cargo from A to B), but I've decided I'm going to try and visit the space frontier that is Colonia. So, quick run down is that it's a few hundred years in the future, and mankind has figured out FTL travel in the form of Frame Shift Drives, but they have only managed to colonize a relatively small portion of our galaxy (known as the Bubble). However, they have managed to set up one of the first, and largest, pocket of humanity known as Colonia, but the only problem(or rather, the one large problem that encompasses all of the other problems) is it's distance: about 22k ly from civilized space (keep in mind, some of the largest unassisted jump ranges possible by player controlled ships is ~80ly, though you can get longer jumps by sitting in the wake of certain stars but even then only ~300ly jumps), though fortunately there has been a "highway" of stations/bases/outposts between the Bubble and Colonia, however with 1k ly intervals between them it's still going to be tough going.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

You playing on Switch or PS4? I got the physical double pack on Switch. I also still have my digital copy on X360.

Digital on PS4, got both in an indie sale earlier this year.

 

[blue heartless]

Split between a first playthrough of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and achievement hunting on Killing Floor 1.

 

[Ezekiel]

​

Uncharted 4 was just a bad fanfic, and really showed how far naughty dog got up their own ass. The changing in writers was definitely not helping.

As for your trouble with Crushing. Here: just wait until you get the brutal mode.

Honestly, the only difference between Hard and Crushing is that you have to wait more. B-Cell was kind of right about health regeneration.

I agree with the others that Uncharted 4 is slightly better than 3. Still lost some of its identity and took itself too seriously, though.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Honestly, the only difference between Hard and Crushing is that you have to wait more. B-Cell was kind of right about health regeneration.

Health regeneration on its own isn't bad, but when you have little control over getting hit and no ability to heal yourself it becomes a real annoyance. It's ridiculous that in 5 games Naughty Dog never bothered to fix this and give the player some means to reset the damage/risk indicator any other way besides to sit behind cover and wait for the game to finally heal you.

 

[BrawlMan]

Honestly, the only difference between Hard and Crushing is that you have to wait more. B-Cell was kind of right about health regeneration.

I agree with the others that Uncharted 4 is slightly better than 3. Still lost some of its identity and took itself too seriously, though.

Health regeneration on its own isn't bad, but when you have little control over getting hit and no ability to heal yourself it becomes a real annoyance. It's ridiculous that in 5 games Naughty Dog never bothered to fix this and give the player some means to reset the damage/risk indicator any other way besides to sit behind cover and wait for the game to finally heal you.

That's the problem about 98% of cover shooters had back in the seventh generation.

@Ezekiel if you prefer 4 over 3, that's fine by me. like I said before, you are all not wrong with your criticisms and three, but I just didn't like the new characters in 4. Once again it boils down to it it feel like a bad fanfic. Especially with Sam. I will admit that 4 has better set peace moments compared to 3, but those are few and far between. Not to mention the slow chapters are really slow. But here's the thing though, for also has a chapter that is pointless in a complete waste of time similar to 3 (not as worse as the 3). You know the one with Sam's flashback chapter when escaping the prison. Talk about a good waste of a chapter when in reality it didn't happen. That was basically what made me start at the dislike for 4.

 

[Ezekiel]

Health regeneration on its own isn't bad, but when you have little control over getting hit and no ability to heal yourself it becomes a real annoyance. It's ridiculous that in 5 games Naughty Dog never bothered to fix this and give the player some means to reset the damage/risk indicator any other way besides to sit behind cover and wait for the game to finally heal you.

Combined with the fact that health regen games have less health in order to justify the system.

I try using as little cover as possible. When I do use cover, it is normally by standing behind a wall rather than using the cover button. I can't remember if I did this on Normal or Hard. Could never do it on Crushing, though.

That's the problem about 98% of cover shooters had back in the seventh generation.

@Ezekiel if you prefer 4 over 3, that's fine by me. like I said before, you are all not wrong with your criticisms and three, but I just didn't like the new characters in 4. Once again it boils down to it it feel like a bad fanfic. Especially with Sam. I will admit that 4 has better set peace moments compared to 3, but those are few and far between. Not to mention the slow chapters are really slow. But here's the thing though, for also has a chapter that is pointless in a complete waste of time similar to 3 (not as worse as the 3). You know the one with Sam's flashback chapter when escaping the prison. Talk about a good waste of a chapter when in reality it didn't happen. That was basically what made me start at the dislike for 4.

I found Sam okay. Didn't like Nadine. I've never replayed it in two and a half years. Will try now to see if it's still a 3/5 for me. The game doesn't have enough good battle arenas between it's over three hours of cutscenes and scripted events.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Assassin's Creed: Sengoku Jidai at long f***ing last(!)

It's been pretty compelling so far (started up this morning, only stopped for dinner). And it looks very pretty, though I've still got an AC:Ody brain switched on and it's taking forever to get used to the different controls. -.-

 

[Ezekiel]

The aiming in Uncharted 4 feels weird compared to the old games. It's like it's resisting or something.

Also, three hours of cutscenes doesn't seem right. Going by the first two chapters, it's more like five or six hours of cinematic stuff (cutscenes and walk and talk).

 

[happyninja42]

Assassin's Creed: Sengoku Jidai at long f***ing last(!)

It's been pretty compelling so far (started up this morning, only stopped for dinner). And it looks very pretty, though I've still got an AC:Ody brain switched on and it's taking forever to get used to the different controls. -.-

So I'm actually trying to find the game you mentioned, and while there is a Sengoku Jidai game, i'm guessing you are just being cheeky about Ghost of Tsushima?

 

[Dalisclock]

So I'm actually trying to find the game you mentioned, and while there is a Sengoku Jidai game, i'm guessing you are just being cheeky about Ghost of Tsushima?

That was my impression.

Honestly, Ubisoft shouldn't even bother making a Samurai AC game at this point, as Sucker Punch already beat them there.

And not that I think there was ever a plan to do a Western AC game, but that's what RDR2 is for.

 

[Ezekiel]

Some of these leads in Uncharted 4 feel like...

 

[SckizoBoy]

So I'm actually trying to find the game you mentioned, and while there is a Sengoku Jidai game, i'm guessing you are just being cheeky about Ghost of Tsushima?

Yeah, I was just being snide with that. AFAIK, there isn't any AC game set in Japan (there might be comics or alternate media, but that wouldn't be so surprising). The closest being the Chronicles games (close as in east of AC1's setting). -.-

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Finished the Call of Duty Cold War campaign. It was a lot of fun, and one of the better COD campaigns. Pretty creative levels and a lot more variety in the mission structure. I also enjoyed the little intel puzzles to do the side missions.

I'm honestly really curious about how your choices affect the ending so I'll be replaying it again (which should be easy enough, you can speed through it in like 3 hours).

I’m actually glad to hear this is shorter than WW2, because I want to finish it and delete it to make room for Cyberpunk: 2077. Kinda sad, but that’s my plan even though I paid more than my Cyberpunk preorder. Idk, maybe it’ll surprise me and I’ll leave it installed. It’s not like I’d be out of space, but I just don’t want it taking up that much space if I’d only play through it once.