What are you currently playing?

[Dreiko]

Just started Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. Only a couple hours in but the game is just so much fun already. Something about the controls just feels very tight, responsive and gratifying. The game is a pretty standard action game with minor rpg elements and incredibly awesome music, you are in the middle of seeking adventures on a ship but it ends up going too close to this cursed island that has a legend about ships always mysteriously sinking if they go too close to it, kind of like a mix of Sirens from Greek myth and the bermuda triangle sort of thing, an island nobody goes near cause of the curse where if you get shipwrecked you're SOL. Well, sure enough a huge kraken type of monster attacks your ship and you're shipwrecked there. You gotta build a base to survive while saving all the various passengers in the ship and trying to make an escape vessel. Also I expect having to solve the mystery of the island's curse will take top priority here. Interestingly enough there seem to be an isolated ecosystem in the island like in the galapagos so there's a ton of unique monsters, there's pigbats and a huge dragon/velociraptor beast and aggressive giant starfish. Lots of crazy monsters to fight haha.

So far I've got 3 chars, our classic hero swordsman Adol and his red mop of hair, a prissy rapier girl with juicy thighs and an attitude and a jovial fisherman who hits things with an anchor and is kinda gross and awesome at the same time. Those Ys games always bring you a totally new cast of supporting chars and this game in particular by having you all be incidentally traveling together on the same ship and forcing you to survive like a small village together definitely lives on that supporting cast.


But yeah this series is all about the gameplay, and tight controls with flashy fun attacks and cool enemies on an epic soundtrack make for a promising experience.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

We're probably going to do Ada's campaign as well, and then I'm never going to touch RE6 again.

Ada's campaign is the worst by far. Completely slapped together and didn't need to be in the game at all. It was also kind of a glitchy mess for my friend and I when we played it in coop. Had to restart more than a couple of times from one of us falling through the floor or getting stuck on the environment and unable to move.

 

[Gergar12]

I don't remember chases much in that one. Which bits are you referring to?

The rhino chase.

 

[happyninja42]

The rhino chase.

Ah, I actually liked that bit, luckily the game didn't have too many of those, but I seem to recall some of the banter from Miles was amusing during that sequence.

 

[sXeth]

Ehh, I think you are oversimplifying it. You have the UAC which has found ruins on mars and a portal to hell which it is using to syphon energy off of to feed earths energy thirst. One of the lead scientists has been snackrificing her co-workers at the promise of one of the demons of hell for something. Things go out of control and demons from hell invade mars. One of the things the CEO of the UAC, Hayden found was a dude in a sarcophagus who the demons fear so he lets him out in hopes he will kill the demons and not damage the facility. He damages the facility but also kicks the demons well toned asses and saves the AI that controls one of the facilities, then gets tricked into giving Hayden a sword thing and put back into stasis.

Doom Eternal really just has much much more lore but almost totally ignores what came before and almost feels like an obsessed fan fic author wrote it. You know, someone who is super duper into something and wants to find reasons for every little thing that happens and writes a hyper indepth story about why so and so wore red shoes that one day, but they also have some super awesome original characters you guys, one is god but we dont want you to kill god so lets call her a mayker and the other is this traitor guy who was never mentioned but is super important you guys.

Plus somehow the UAC ended up being totally controlled by the demon worshippers despite them all being dead from snackrificing themselves to demons and Hayden is not the CEO anymore and now runs some organization called ARC which all the governments give power too since they are the world leader in demon killing despite sucking at it. Really Doom Eternal feels like the plot was just kinda thrown in by someone who was super excited to go way into detail about every little thing.

Also you might want to drop the argument of not being the most interesting time thing. It never really applies since you will always have more interesting times, and it super doesn't apply to this situation since its heavily implied that the Doom Slayer is our beloved Doom Guy from the other games. Meaning we did see the more interesting times, unless you mean the abandoned Doom 4 game? Which could have been pretty cool.

Yeah theres an unexplained gap in between 2016 and DE.


In 2016, Hayden is the director of the UAC. Granted, "Director" is a kind of vague title, he may not be the sole controller of the corp, and he cetainly seems at odds with some of the ideals espoused by the comedically dark holograms even in 2016. He is clearly at odds with Oliva Pierce who enacts as the major villain. OF course, we do also see Pierce being directed by someone else duyring the course of 2016.


Come Eternal, the demons are still pouring out of Mars even though we shutoff the well. Hayden has become a resistance leader, which is fine. But the UAC is now seemingly retconned to be run by the Deagic Priests directly, who have been on Earth for centuries discreetly. With Hayden being fully exposed in the DLC as a Maykr, it seems impossible that he wouldn't recognize that a bunch of Deagic D'nur survivors were mucking about in his company, given his whole schtick is dealing with that.


Eternal also has the Slayer start out just on the Night Sentinel Doom Fortress, without a wiff of explaangtion as to how he got out of Hell after Hayden took the Crucible, with no tethers or any way to return. The closest it comes to acknowledging that is that he's abandoned the 2016 Praetor suit (Whcih Hayden had installed the controller on) for new armour (in a rare in Eternal bit of show, don't tell, story)



Its like there was an obvious thread where Hayden would keep f-ing about with Argent on EArth, and open up a new Hell portal, also releasing the Slayer in the process. But instead there's this convoluted mess where either things were just ignored or there's massive chunk of storylien left out entirely to get from 2016 to Eternal.

 

[Worgen]

Yeah theres an unexplained gap in between 2016 and DE.


In 2016, Hayden is the director of the UAC. Granted, "Director" is a kind of vague title, he may not be the sole controller of the corp, and he cetainly seems at odds with some of the ideals espoused by the comedically dark holograms even in 2016. He is clearly at odds with Oliva Pierce who enacts as the major villain. OF course, we do also see Pierce being directed by someone else duyring the course of 2016.


Come Eternal, the demons are still pouring out of Mars even though we shutoff the well. Hayden has become a resistance leader, which is fine. But the UAC is now seemingly retconned to be run by the Deagic Priests directly, who have been on Earth for centuries discreetly. With Hayden being fully exposed in the DLC as a Maykr, it seems impossible that he wouldn't recognize that a bunch of Deagic D'nur survivors were mucking about in his company, given his whole schtick is dealing with that.


Eternal also has the Slayer start out just on the Night Sentinel Doom Fortress, without a wiff of explaangtion as to how he got out of Hell after Hayden took the Crucible, with no tethers or any way to return. The closest it comes to acknowledging that is that he's abandoned the 2016 Praetor suit (Whcih Hayden had installed the controller on) for new armour (in a rare in Eternal bit of show, don't tell, story)



Its like there was an obvious thread where Hayden would keep f-ing about with Argent on EArth, and open up a new Hell portal, also releasing the Slayer in the process. But instead there's this convoluted mess where either things were just ignored or there's massive chunk of storylien left out entirely to get from 2016 to Eternal.

It feels more to me like they just almost totally ignored the story of 2016 and threw it off a bridge but the character names managed to swim ashore and ended up in Eternal but in different roles, kinda. At least Hayden.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Battlefront 2.

I normally don't get on with online multiplayer, I'm too shit to have any fun but it was free so I gave it a go, and I'm really enjoying the 4 player co-op missions. I have improved a hell of a lot in the few days I've been playing, although I'm under no illusion about how well I'd fare against human opponents.

 

[laggyteabag]

Just finished Watch_Dogs 2.

It is similar in a lot of ways, but different enough in its core gameplay loop, where it doesnt exactly invalidate the game before it, gameplay-wise, like a lot of sequels do.

Whereas the first game was heavily focused on combat, with multiple weapons, and a slow-mo button, the sequel is much more focused on stealth, with different robots to control, but with a much less generous health pool, and weapon limit to compensate.

Its enjoyable enough, but I wouldn't say that it was any better than the first game. Sure, the characters were more fleshed out (or at least had more screen time) than the characters in the first game, but the story was little more than "evil corporations being evil". Sure, the first game's plot was an equally generic revenge plot, but I feel like the Aiden Pierce's motivations were much stronger than Marcus'.

Also, one large gripe: the game has a Batman Arkham-style detective vision, which is to say that you are actively putting yourself at a disadvantage if you aren't using it every second. So, im sure the game looks great, but most mission environments were reduced to blue outlines, and red bad guys. Its a shame.

Otherwise, i've just started to replay Assassin's Creed 2, which according to my save-files, I haven't played since 2014(?!)

The PC port is pretty dodgy, with the game not recognising my Xbox One controller as anything other than some generic pad, so the triggers didn't work, and the button mapping was a complete disaster, but a quick download seems to have solved that problem. Another quirk of this port is that the button prompts dont show a button, but an action - so if the game wants me to press B to interact, the game will instead show me a red icon of a fist, which is my "unarmed hand" button. I have no idea why the game does this, but it is super janky.

Otherwise, playing the game at 4K, and without having to play that ugly looking "remaster" that was released a few years ago, is really nice.

Onto the game though, and I have just assassinated my first target. I honestly could not remember how boring the introduction of this game is, because it is painfully slow. You go through a modern-day sequence, and have a bit of a fight. Then you run around as Ezio for the first time, and do basically nothing but get into a couple of fist fights, and fetch quests. It take about an hour before you even get a sword. Honestly, if it wasn't for the pure sense of 2009 nostalgia, I would have been bored out of my mind, up until this point.

That said, some things have actually aged better than I would have remembered. The combat, whilst it can be cheesed with counters, is actually quite fun if you care to play that way, and the game looks alright for a 2009 game, even if a lot of the geometry is simplistic, and the colours are washed out, but it actually looks decent - which is a nice surprise.

So yeah, onto AC2, and maybe the rest of the Ezio trilogy, if I care to continue.

Weird how I harp on Ubisoft games a lot, but literally all of the games that I have played this year have been Ubisoft titles. Maybe it is just my lizard brain kicking in, or something.

 

[BrawlMan]

Decided to play Final Fight and Battle Circuit in the Capcom Beat'em Up Bundle. Yep.Final Fight is where all started for Capcom brawlers in the arcades, and Battle Circuit was their last arcade brawler. Why BC never got a release until 2018 in the States is beyond me. I know the arcade scene was waning, but it was no excuse to shut out USA completely, but UK/EU gets the game the same time frame as Japan. Capcom would have not missed out on much money, and got a little extra cash. Keep in mind, Battle Circuit came out in 1997.

Anyway, Final Fight laid the groundwork for a lot of brawlers from Capcom and the competition. FFi started the power trio or more with playable characters that can all play differently from each other. Fast guy, Slow guy, and Jack of All Stats. Guy could jump off walls and vertical surface. Which surprisingly has a good amount of invisible walls you could jump off of. This is more so the arcade version as the console ports reduced these making Guy's abilities way less useful. Cody is great with knives and never throws them unless you're a certain distance away from an enemy. Capcom would experiment with type of play style in The Punisher and Cadillacs' and Dinosaurs. Haggar's the strong guy that can carry dudes and pull off wrestling moves. As much as I love the game FFi, is really basic now compared all of the 2D brawlers that came out over the years. The move sets are limited, you can only wield 3 weapons, only one enemy type can wield knives or Molotov cocktails, and there are times you wish there was a back attack button. Still a fun game, but there are better games out there.

Battle Circuit basically was the prototype of what we would see the console market for games like Viewtiful Joe and Devil May Cry. Moves can be upgraded in a shop at the end of each level, an emphasis on juggling, and each character having a super mode. You can't pick up any weapons in this game, but your characters are a Cyborg, Cat Girl, a little girl riding a pink ostrich, a man eating plant, and a Russian superhero with ice powers. Weapons would be redundant and not add anything. Like I said before, you're given a nice amount of moves that can be upgraded or gain new attacks. The game can go up to 4 players, so if you want to co-op, I highly recommend it.

 

[sXeth]

Just finished Watch_Dogs 2.

It is similar in a lot of ways, but different enough in its core gameplay loop, where it doesnt exactly invalidate the game before it, gameplay-wise, like a lot of sequels do.

Whereas the first game was heavily focused on combat, with multiple weapons, and a slow-mo button, the sequel is much more focused on stealth, with different robots to control, but with a much less generous health pool, and weapon limit to compensate.

Its enjoyable enough, but I wouldn't say that it was any better than the first game. Sure, the characters were more fleshed out (or at least had more screen time) than the characters in the first game, but the story was little more than "evil corporations being evil". Sure, the first game's plot was an equally generic revenge plot, but I feel like the Aiden Pierce's motivations were much stronger than Marcus'.

Also, one large gripe: the game has a Batman Arkham-style detective vision, which is to say that you are actively putting yourself at a disadvantage if you aren't using it every second. So, im sure the game looks great, but most mission environments were reduced to blue outlines, and red bad guys. Its a shame.

I'd put WD2s characters on a more generally relatable level. And Marcus doesn't suffed from Aidens weird mixed morality (which in itself seemed to be WD1 starting out as Driver before being retooled).


WD2 definitely has weaker story and mission design though.



With all 3 games out now, WD2 also seems like the odd one out. San Fran Dedsec seems almost to be an indy group using the name compared to the almost villains in WD1 and the much more militant group in Legion.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Finished playing The Master Chief Collection.

Man that's a buggy piece of shit. Games are still fun though.

 

[Hawki]

Was Han Solo a more interesting character before or after he got his prequel movie?

After.

The Khan Maykr kinda takes the place of god since the creator is afk. They have their "angels." Oh, right, I guess he was mentioned in how they managed to entomb the Doom Slayer... (I guess Doom Guy wasn't serious enough)

"Doomguy" has never been a serious name. Also, the demons entombed him, not the maykrs.

It would be cool to see them release Doom 4 now and I think they could get away with it since we have the Doom games that the audience craved, so they could do a side story now. Plus, I really want to see one of those giant robots do something, Doom Eternal is really good at environmentally blue balling you with indications that something awesome happened but not getting to see it.

Question is, do you set "Doom 4" in the continuity of Doom 3, or Doom 2016?

That aside, can't see it happening. Id's probably aware that they've been onto something with Doom since 2016, whereas Doom 3 has been argued to be a crisis of identity. And if that sounds familiar, think of Quake, which has had a crisis of identity since Quake II, peaked in Quake III, and to date, hasn't been able to get its mojo back. I doubt Id would be willing to risk a similar 'identity crisis' for Doom at this point.

 

[Hawki]

Started playing Crash Bandicoot via the N. Sane Trilogy. It's fun, but I don't know if I've gotten worse, if the game was always like this, or something went wrong, but I could swear the 'land detection' is off. Like, make jumps that I could swear were correct, but no, Crash goes falling. I've died more from falling than anything else.

Also, to the people who designed High Road and Road to Nowhere...fuck you. Fuck you and die. Die, and go to Hell, and as you burn in hellfire, I hope there's a demon that whispers in your ear "whoah!" from now until the end of days!

 

[NerfedFalcon]

So while we've been on a bit of a hiatus on Resident Evil 6, I decided to play the original 2. I bought it on the PS3 PSN forever ago, but never quite got around to it; I did both A routes for the remake, so I figured I'd see how the original held up. I've done Claire A up to entering the sewers, and it's... actually pretty different to the remake. I don't get Yahtzee's complaint that the remake was too faithful at all; if anything, it almost wasn't faithful enough. Still, I don't hold going its own way against the remake at all, and the original is still keeping me interested and invested.

Plan to do Claire A and Leon B (it's canon, according to 6) before moving on to something else.

 

[gorfias]

Finished playing The Master Chief Collection.

Man that's a buggy piece of shit. Games are still fun though.

I was just replaying the 1st Halo last night. I drive a Warthog into a chamber where I don't think you are supposed to be driving. A door is star trek style shutting in front of me so I hit the gas hoping to jam the doors open. Instead, the doors are closed and 1/5th of the vehicle is stuck in the floor and doors, along with the tip of a soldier's rifle. They're all stuck and vibrating. I can't back out. So, I'm supposed to be able to unlock it by leaving this tunnel and go to another tunnel in the distance, and then come back. Fingers crossed, when I come back, the vehicle isn't stuck anymore.

 

[Neuromancer]

Doom Eternal.

I'm loving the gameplay loop. Going into it on Nightmare from the start has been a wild ride in terms of challenge, but I get a kick out of it. Slayer Gates are absolute bonkers in a good way.

But what is this garbage storyline? Literally why the fuck weren't they joking about making a "Doomverse" back at Quakecon? Doom 2016's story worked great, because it wasn't taking itself seriously. Hell, Doomguy's "personality" perfectly illustrated what the game was about. Fuck exposition, fuck long-winded cutscenes, rip and tear until it is done.

But Eternal is trying to be serious about its story for whatever reason. It's got a lot of cutscenes with one note characters nobody gives a shit about. It wastes time throwing around one cliche line after the other, and unlike in 2016 where Doomguy just fucks off and goes and kills demons, here we gotta stand around and wait for whoever the fuck this is to finish throwing threats/sucking our dicks so we can get back to the good stuff. Literally why give Doomguy an elaborate backstory? In 2016 he was a fucking force of nature. It didn't matter where he came from, only that he's an unstoppable entity of pure rage that has been killing demons in Hell for potential eons. That's all you fucking need. It's fucking DOOM. Rip and Tear! But no, we have to talk about how *SPOILERS* he was found by these Night Sentinel shits and was trained by them and became their champion and blah blah blah I am falling asleep at this insultingly basic storytelling the writers think is good to interrupt gameplay time and again.

Ah well. At least the music is still great. The levels great. Enemy variation is the best yet. Story is a turnoff but not big enough to spoil everything else.

 

[Worgen]

After.



"Doomguy" has never been a serious name. Also, the demons entombed him, not the maykrs.



Question is, do you set "Doom 4" in the continuity of Doom 3, or Doom 2016?

That aside, can't see it happening. Id's probably aware that they've been onto something with Doom since 2016, whereas Doom 3 has been argued to be a crisis of identity. And if that sounds familiar, think of Quake, which has had a crisis of identity since Quake II, peaked in Quake III, and to date, hasn't been able to get its mojo back. I doubt Id would be willing to risk a similar 'identity crisis' for Doom at this point.

Sure.

I didn't mean to imply the maykrs did, I mean the demons.

It wouldn't really matter since the links between the games are extremely tenuous as it is.

Probably not. Side game series aren't very common and it would need to be aaa budget. I'm just saying they could probably avoid a big fan backlash now if they did it.

 

[Worgen]

Doom Eternal.

I'm loving the gameplay loop. Going into it on Nightmare from the start has been a wild ride in terms of challenge, but I get a kick out of it. Slayer Gates are absolute bonkers in a good way.

But what is this garbage storyline? Literally why the fuck weren't they joking about making a "Doomverse" back at Quakecon? Doom 2016's story worked great, because it wasn't taking itself seriously. Hell, Doomguy's "personality" perfectly illustrated what the game was about. Fuck exposition, fuck long-winded cutscenes, rip and tear until it is done.

But Eternal is trying to be serious about its story for whatever reason. It's got a lot of cutscenes with one note characters nobody gives a shit about. It wastes time throwing around one cliche line after the other, and unlike in 2016 where Doomguy just fucks off and goes and kills demons, here we gotta stand around and wait for whoever the fuck this is to finish throwing threats/sucking our dicks so we can get back to the good stuff. Literally why give Doomguy an elaborate backstory? In 2016 he was a fucking force of nature. It didn't matter where he came from, only that he's an unstoppable entity of pure rage that has been killing demons in Hell for potential eons. That's all you fucking need. It's fucking DOOM. Rip and Tear! But no, we have to talk about how *SPOILERS* he was found by these Night Sentinel shits and was trained by them and became their champion and blah blah blah I am falling asleep at this insultingly basic storytelling the writers think is good to interrupt gameplay time and again.

Ah well. At least the music is still great. The levels great. Enemy variation is the best yet. Story is a turnoff but not big enough to spoil everything else.

Pretty much 100% agree.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Well the resident evils demo was a nice visual showcase. It even labels itself as one for the credits, so this is not an opinion, it's an irrefutable fact, you judgy wanker. Fulfilling the exact role to the letter of the Resi 7 demo - sans the video camera section - for presenting flavoursome bait to reel in salmon stuck on the underwater fence of jaded doubt. Seems they wanted to show they trying to tackle criticism of previous blob enemies by teasing dash-happy vamp bints and wolverine dominatrix tower. Curious why you aren't allowed to see your own body unlike 7 though, been wondering if there's a dumbass resident evil secret twist they're chugging downstream towards with it.

It’s probably...maybe...because they already turned Chris and wiped his memory. And the whole game is going to be discovering it for yourself and finding a “cure”. Which is probably taking out the giganta-lady. No not on a date!

Well, maybe at first. Just out of curiosity.

 

[Worgen]

It’s probably...maybe...because they already turned Chris and wiped his memory. And the whole game is going to be discovering it for yourself and finding a “cure”. Which is probably taking out the giganta-lady. No not on a date!

Well, maybe at first. Just out of curiosity.

With how much the internet has decided it loves the tall lady they could probably make it into an overly convoluted dating game and everyone would be ok with it.