What are you currently playing?

[BrawlMan]

Did a few rounds of DMCV and SFV. I must say, I never expected a Witch Time mechanic in a Street Fighter game and be awesome. V-Shift is fun and addicting to use. The Season 5 Pass I will buy at some point...lets saaaayyyyy....summer, I guess. When Rose comes out by that point. I am more so just waiting for Akira and Oro. I bought Dan with the in-game fight money I collected, so I don't have to spend money on him.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yup.

There are tons of people who love Nioh. One of my friends got to like NG+5 in the first game and is currently playing the second.

I got bored about 2/3 of the way through and never finished it. Couldn't stand the inventory management, wasn't really liking the levels (and really didn't like the fact that my preferred gear would have required me to grind the level I disliked the most). It didn't feel like there was enough variety in the environment or enemy types. I found that I liked the combat and hated pretty much everything else.

I probably would have pushed through and finished it if the story felt at all worthwhile, but it isn't.

It's unfortunate because I really wanted to like the game. I probably put like 20 hours into it, and I think there's quite a bit that it does well. I really like being able to see enemy stamina for example, and I love that the enemies have the same stamina limitations that the player does. I really like the stances and the nuisances that they bring to your move-set. They even managed to make guns and bows feel worthwhile and control much better than the souls games.

I think that's exactly right. I like the combat and the challenge but the stat/inventory management is tedious and the repetition, lack of variety and absent story is discouraging.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I think that's exactly right. I like the combat and the challenge but the stat/inventory management is tedious and the repetition, lack of variety and absent story is discouraging.

Basically it sounds like the game could’ve been an arena fighter and skipped everything else. Pick your weapons from a rack while waifu gives you updated powers with every win, done.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Diablo 3. What an absurd stealth power fantasy. I haven't even bothered to check if all the health potions being picked up are hitting a cap or whether they're just stacking forever, it's that easy. A few levels in as a necromancer type, I already got a constant posse of skellies by my side, seemingly limitless summons of ghost poison archers, a spammable ability to turn any corpses into vicious homing spikes, a main attack that drains life energy you can press as fast as you're able, never need to aim and goes through walls, another ability to cover yourself in your enemies' bones while increasing attack speed and crits...oh and then you have your companions!
I just been playing this like a glorified clicker mobile game, turning off the brain while concentrating on politically radicalising podcasts, eating sandwiches and petting animals. Luckily the story is tepid fantasy fluff where nothing is missed by skim/speed-reading too. Minimal effort for maximum...well, potentially maximum rewards.

 

[happyninja42]

Diablo 3. What an absurd stealth power fantasy. I haven't even bothered to check if all the health potions being picked up are hitting a cap or whether they're just stacking forever, it's that easy. A few levels in as a necromancer type, I already got a constant posse of skellies by my side, seemingly limitless summons of ghost poison archers, a spammable ability to turn any corpses into vicious homing spikes, a main attack that drains life energy you can press as fast as you're able, never need to aim and goes through walls, another ability to cover yourself in your enemies' bones while increasing attack speed and crits...oh and then you have your companions!
I just been playing this like a glorified clicker mobile game, turning off the brain while concentrating on politically radicalising podcasts, eating sandwiches and petting animals. Luckily the story is tepid fantasy fluff where nothing is missed by skim/speed-reading too. Minimal effort for maximum...well, potentially maximum rewards.

Yeah D3 can be very easy until you actively start boosting the difficulty on various factors to improve loot and such.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Yeah D3 can be very easy until you actively start boosting the difficulty on various factors to improve loot and such.

I played with a friend and we quit just because of how easy it was. We just plowed through everything doing the same thing over and over with barely any kind of input on our end.

 

[happyninja42]

I played with a friend and we quit just because of how easy it was. We just plowed through everything doing the same thing over and over with barely any kind of input on our end.

I played it mostly for the cinematics, as Blizzard always has awesome ones. Then it just kind of became my "default" game to kill time. Like the bear said, it kind of became an Idle Clicker kind of engagement for me. Something to pass the time. Though it was fun to find ridiculous gear sets with insane power combos, and making a build for a character that was just insane. At that point it became a test of "ok how much difficulty can this build take and still casually walk through it?" which was fun for a while, but I stopped a long time ago, as everything just became a grind that was no longer engaging.

 

[Worgen]

I finally finished up Ori and the Will of the Wisps and then ended up getting into No Man's Sky again, hardcore. Like the only other thing I've really played in over a week was my daily Smite match. The rest of my gaming time is just No Man's Sky. I'm still having fun with it, but I do look forward to getting burned out since I do want to play other things, but I have critters to make companions out of, bases to build, ships to find, new multitools to get.

 

[happyninja42]

Picked up Curse of the Dead Gods.

It's fun. Similar to Hades in basic setup of mechanics, but also with a bit of Slay the Spire in it. At least as far as the "choose your path up the temple" part at least.

No story at all, which is a big letdown compared to Hades. It was very fun having all the little stories and dramas between the characters to motivate various objectives each run. So far, I haven't seen any of that in CotDG. You're a dude, you went into a temple, you got locked in. Try and get out is the extent of the setup before you are playing. No dialogue.

It's got an interesting component to it, the light and dark mechanics. When it's "Dark", you can't see traps (and there are lots of those), and if you are hit by an enemy, you take more damage. So, you want to keep your torch out, but you can't swing a weapon with your torch out...even if it's a one handed weapon. Which....is definitely a choice when it comes to logic, I guess. But it makes for an interesting system of timing when you put out the torch and do damage. You can find braziers lying around the map that you can ignite, but they can be destroyed by some enemy attacks, and also by random explodey barrels. The curses you can get if your Corruption meter reaches 100, and holy shit do you get curses fast in this game, can sometimes make that irrelevant. Like one curse that I get pretty often is one that makes it where my torch doesn't actually light up anything around me, as far as actual illumination, it's a Shadow Torch now. It will let me see traps, but I can't use it to ignite any braziers, or flammable objects. But, I also now don't take more damage when it's dark so, yay? Honestly the various Curses have an interesting mix of pros/cons, usually making it not that big of a problem to pick one up. It just alters your playstyle a bit.

It's fun, the various unlocks of new weapons an upgrades are interesting. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Started playing Hades.

Yup, it's as good as everyone has been saying.

Also bought myself an Xbox Series X controller to replace the Xbox 360 controller I've been using with my PC. I have to say, it actually liked it way better than the Xbox One controller. People keep saying that they're basically the same, but they really aren't. The texturing on the Xbox Series X controller feels really nice, and the d-pad and bumpers feel better than on the Xbox One controller.

Personally I liked the Xbox 360 controller better than the Xbone controller (d-pad not withstanding), but the Xsex controller is definitely better.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Finally got the hang of Spider-man PS4. I just live web swinging, how Insomniac pulled this off is kinda magical. I've always enjoyed collectibles in games where traversal is fun, so in a single day I've collected maybe a fourth of all the collectibles in New York.

Also really fun to see places I've been to in real life. Times Square looks amazing.

 

[Dalisclock]

Loop Hero Demo

So basically, the world got itself destroyed and only you remain, or the hero I should say, because you don't so much play the hero as a kind of DM. Each time the hero goes out into the world, a loop is created the leads back to camp and at first it's empty but soon enough you get cards you can plop down to create different types of terrian either on the path or next to it, and each type of terrain spawns monsters and resources when you place it, so you gain more stuff but also create more monsters for the hero to fight, so the hero runs around the loop, fighting monsters on auto, but as the hero fights monsters (s)he gains experience and weapons/items drop you can equip on him/her(it's unclear from looking at the hero, honestly), deciding which weapons/armor will help the most. Once you've decided you've gone around enough, you can choose to go to camp(and possibly lose some of the stuff you picked up depending on how far along the loop you are at the time) which you can upgrade for benefits and such, and when you go back out it regenerate the loop and you have the start from scratch with the equipment. So it's effectively a rouge-lite. It also looks like a Sega/SNES game from the mid-1990's. Not that that's a bad thing.

I played for about an hour and rather enjoyed it but I'm not sure if it's a game I went to spend time and money on right now.

Vesper Demo

It's a puzzle Platformer where you play as a little robot guy running across a world that looks like it's been through hell and hostile robots patrol with an urge to kill you because....reasons, I guess. There's little plot that I can tell, though I did stumble across log detailing a space battle(or the aftermath of one) which I guess will fill in the backstory/lore eventually. Most of the gameplay seems to come from using a special tool to manipulate light to remove obstacles and it's fine. Really, the only standout is the graphics, which look really nice and some beautiful uses of color and light in the dark, desolate world but the rest of it is meh. Gonna pass on this one unless the full product ends up being much better.

Total War Saga: Troy

I got this for free when EPIC was giving it away, though I would have eventually purchased it regardless due to liking the idea for the setting. So far it seems pretty good, though I'm still trying to figure out all the different facets of the gameplay, like how to properly exploit the different features. I haven't played a Total War game since the first Rome from 2004 so part of it is me taking it slow so I can reinstate myself into the playstyle and learn how all this shit works. I've fought a couple battles, taken one city near me and playing around with the diplomacy stuff a bit. I like the bronze age ascetic(with the terracotta background) though I haven't had a chance to recruit the "myth" units yet. I'm also lead to understand it's a little different then other games in the series that have come out recently. I know I'm gonna be playing it for a while regardless, especially since sieging cities seems preferable to assault , at least at this early stage of the game.

 

[meiam]

Total War Saga: Troy

I got this for free when EPIC was giving it away, though I would have eventually purchased it regardless due to liking the idea for the setting. So far it seems pretty good, though I'm still trying to figure out all the different facets of the gameplay, like how to properly exploit the different features. I haven't played a Total War game since the first Rome from 2004 so part of it is me taking it slow so I can reinstate myself into the playstyle and learn how all this shit works. I've fought a couple battles, taken one city near me and playing around with the diplomacy stuff a bit. I like the bronze age ascetic(with the terracotta background) though I haven't had a chance to recruit the "myth" units yet. I'm also lead to understand it's a little different then other games in the series that have come out recently. I know I'm gonna be playing it for a while regardless, especially since sieging cities seems preferable to assault , at least at this early stage of the game.

It's not that different, other game only have one resource, gold, whereas Troy has multiple. That's pretty much the only major difference (aside from a couple stuff like the religion, but every TA game as a few gimmicky system like those).

Also you really want to avoid sieging, it takes way too long and you really need to use the time on other stuff. Think of it as a siege costing you your army upkeep every turn.

 

[Dalisclock]

It's not that different, other game only have one resource, gold, whereas Troy has multiple. That's pretty much the only major difference (aside from a couple stuff like the religion, but every TA game as a few gimmicky system like those).

Also you really want to avoid sieging, it takes way too long and you really need to use the time on other stuff. Think of it as a siege costing you your army upkeep every turn.

What's a good way to take a city without taking massive losses?

 

[deleted20220709]

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[happyninja42]

Finally got the hang of Spider-man PS4. I just live web swinging, how Insomniac pulled this off is kinda magical. I've always enjoyed collectibles in games where traversal is fun, so in a single day I've collected maybe a fourth of all the collectibles in New York.

Also really fun to see places I've been to in real life. Times Square looks amazing.

Yeah they really captured the appeal and fun of the PS 2 Spiderman 2 game, as far as the addictive zen chill of webswinging that is. I'm not a huge fan of collectibles, but it was fun getting them in that game, because they made it easy. They are clearly marked on the map, and you have ridiculous travel powers, so it's not a case of spending 10 minutes slowly scaling a tower from the bottom up, being forced to go along handhold tracks. Nope, just swing over there, zip line directly at the item, plaster upside down to the building and just grab that backpack! Off to the next one!

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Finally nabbed the RDR2 Platinum. Finished the run with the Gold Rush trophy, which requires 70 gold ranks in missions; last of which I got first try (well, on second play through at least) on the Sadie Adler: Widow mission, ending on a somewhat thematically pleasing arc. The whole process was certainly the longest for me personally, easily eclipsing that of Demon’s Souls which was likely acquired in about half the time.

Having said that though, most of the journey was enjoyable, barring a few ridiculous challenges, borderline masochistic nature collecting tasks, running my horse into trees and tree stumps, etc. Repeating most of the timed story mission requirements can bugger off too, especially when they’re full of walk n talk intro’s. What’s funny is while it felt like a bitter-sweet relief that I can move on to my other backlog items, I spent a good hour on top of an already later than late night just roaming the map and letting the last few hundred hours spent therein set in a bit, heading back east towards Beaver Hollow through the Grizzlies. Ended up finding a couple things I hadn’t seen yet, and just kinda basked in the serenity of this incredible rendition of a digital landscape, not quite ready to leave yet. A thunderstorm had just rolled in adding a vibrantly wet sheen to everything, and I wrestled with the realization that whatever game world I go to next will likely be a step or two down from this.

Then, true to the territory’s name, my scavenging is interrupted by the roar of a damn grizzly who proceeds rush me down, and my TB-ridden body barely escapes death (or a mercy killing?). Luckily I’d unpacked my semi auto shotgun beforehand. Looks like the camp will eat well (if they even feel like eating at this stage of the game), whenever I decide to make my way back there. And Jack can have the damn Penny Dreadful book I found him, the damn bookworm that he is. Kid needs to learn how to hunt, fish, and shoot a gun, as he may need those skills someday...

Back to earlier, I also found it kinda oddly fitting that the platinum popped at 2:41, seeing as how it is of course RDR2, and my first (and probably last) one of these things for a Rockstar game. That’s my ocd brain, making crazy numerical connections with trivial things.

 

[Gergar12]

The only other thing I can think of is "Wargame:Airland War", but I haven't played it so I can't comment on quality.

Or if you want to play something a bit older, the Steel Panthers games, which are turned based but fairly robust and customizable. I remember having a lot of fun with it back in the day even if it might feel a bit antiquated by today's standards.

Wargame is a strategy game, and you don't get to drive the tank, attack helicopter, and CAS plane.

 

[Dalisclock]

The most reliable way I found was to have Giants (preferably the ones with shields) smash down the gate and then flood it with medium or heavy infantry units. Having a general that can hold their own also helps a lot (in my Achilles campaign I kept using his duel ability to murder the enemy general). Siege battles in Troy really, really favor the defender and you don't want to fight on the walls if it can be at all helped.

I'm still in the early game so I don't have giants yet. I don't have centaurs either. I've captured one of the cities adjoining my initial territories and trying to decide which ones to scoop up next(apparently you can confederate or vassalize eventually but right now it doesn't look like it's doable). I have a level 3 city with some renowned slingers and shielded club/spearmen as my top tier units right now. And I can build those battering rams for the city gates.