What are you currently playing?

[Worgen]

Does it hold playing alone?

Yeah, it works well playing it solo, you can easily swap characters and each has their pretty different playstyle and moves. It really reminds me of something like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, where there is a lot of combat but also a lot of puzzles and such too. Some of the jumping things are awkward because of the perspective but they mostly work fine and the game isn't very punishing of missing a jump.

 

[Bedinsis]

Chip's Challenge. I saw it was free on Steam, and even though the implementation there is less than solid I am still having fun and a retrokick by playing through it.

The level Blobnet is still as annoying as it was back in the day though.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Dark Souls 3: All good things must come to an end.

It's done, at last. The ringed city is a beatiful, intricate level that was fascinating to explore....and absolutely a bear to get through parts of it. Especially the long stairway with big beefy enemies rolling deep. At least the swamp at the bottom isn't poison, so one small mercy from FROM. OTOH, some fun invading red phantoms along the way, a harassing dragon on the bridges, because why not bring back an old favorite at the end?

Finally reached the Church of of the napping goddess and fought the....Spear of the Church, AKA "DO you like PVP? Haha if you don't, fuck you". Yeah, not a fan of PVP battles, not fond of one as a boss. What makes it really interesting is that you can be drafted to serve as the boss. This happened to me a few times and the first time was amusing, even if I wasn't prepared and didn't win. When it happened another time or two, I was getting irritated with getting drafted for invading instead of the co-op I wanted to do, so I might have taken a dive as a solid to someone else. You're welcome, random guy.

All that left was Gael and yeah, that was a beast of a fight. Considering its the final boss of a Dark Souls DLC, I expected but yeah, the guy is a fucking beast. And of course, the whole thing is sad, considering the history and lore behind him. going back to painter girl is just an extra twist of the knife I wonder when Uncle Gael will return..... Oh, and I found Shira in a ruined building, who might be one of the last humans left at that point....or maybe half human, either way, yeah, I put her out of her misery(not just because I owed her one for ambushing me and smacking me a couple times).

And with that, it's over. Sure, I could fuck around some more but really, there's nothing really of substance to do, so after a brief tour of some of the sights, I brought it to an end by going to that last bonfire in the middle of the pygmy circle, and taking a seat, the last (un)living thing in a field of ash that used to be the world. Because isn't that where it logically all ends?

Anyway, Yeah, I had a great time with the game. One of my favorite Soulsborne games, I think and I'm glad to check it off my list after years of working up to this point. I can finally stop posting these damn musings in the "Current playing" thread(You're welcome, HappyNinja), though I plan to post a bunch of my musings on the lore and setting sometime in the next week(Spoilers all the way in its own thread).

*Raises a Siegbrau*

Congrats.

One of my friends really wanted to get summoned for the Spear of the Church bossfight and RNG was never in his favor. He was planning to use this build:

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider. More of the same, now with less combat setpieces apparently. Lara is still annoying.

Couple of things:

1) The Maya never made it that far down South America. Peru is Inca territory.

2) The Inca - or for that matter any other Pre Columbian civilization - never implemented the wheel as a tool for transport or machine work. To see them factor so heavily in platforming and puzzle solving, I call bullshit on the research.

 

[blockhead77]

I wasn't able to move and got killed by the first boss lol

 

[Drathnoxis]

Dodge/Punch build with Malfon (the gloves) and Lambent Feather is still, by far, my most ridiculous build. Even on a "bad" run with that setup, I'm rocking like 80+% dodge chance. And if I pick up that Hermes boon that just gives you +10% dodge chance, well....it's just OP. And I love it. Basically running around as an Infernal Bruce Lee, flurry punching and dragon uppercutting everything in my path. It's glorious.

I can't make the gloves work for me at all. I find most of the time The damage just doesn't keep up well enough to keep clearing rooms quickly and the enemies spawn in so slowly that I don't get many feather buffs past Tartarus. I end up with like 20% dodge from the feather and 10% from the gloves and it doesn't even help at all for my consistently terrible performance against Hades.

I'm getting a little tired of the game, really. I can get to Hades almost every time now, usually only using up maybe one life but he has so much health and does so much damage that I almost always die after draining his first health bar. Which sucks because it's getting boring fighting 40 rooms of the same respawning mooks over and over to no purpose.

 

[Dalisclock]

Congrats.

One of my friends really wanted to get summoned for the Spear of the Church bossfight and RNG was never in his favor. He was planning to use this build:

Yeah, I'm not sure what influences getting summoned. I think I had a co-op white soapstone sign down each time but I've heard people say online you can get pulled if you're anywhere in the Ringed City. Not sure how much stock I put in that since it took me a few hours to get to the church and never got drafted until I was already there near the gate, and I don't think it's reliant on being embered because I think I was drafted when unembered.

Sorry your friend didn't get a chance to try.

 

[Dalisclock]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider. More of the same, now with less combat setpieces apparently. Lara is still annoying.

Couple of things:

1) The Maya never made it that far down South America. Peru is Inca territory.

2) The Inca - or for that matter any other Pre Columbian civilization - never implemented the wheel as a tool for transport or machine work. To see them factor so heavily in platforming and puzzle solving, I call bullshit on the research.

I'm not convinced the Tomb Raider games bother with Research beyond two seconds of skimming wikipedia. The first game, notably, had a US Coast Guard plane get shot down above the island....except the Island is near Japan, so it would make far more sense for the Japanese Coast Guard to be the ones to pick up the call and respond.

Also the whole wierdness of how nobody can presumably get off the island once they get shipwrecked there due to the storms, but somehow people were able to construct bunkers? How the hell is that consistent?

 

[Dreiko]

About to start Shin Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars in the US).


This is a series that has mostly been exclusive to Japan but has been ongoing since the mid 90s, they I think released a wii version of like, the fifth or sixth game in the series back in the day but I didn't know anything about it and it's pretty late to jump into it anyways without having played all of the older games since it had the same cast of chars and it wasn't even dual audio so I never got that.

My first actual exposure to this franchise was in Project x Zone where they had a bunch of chars from that series and I couldn't resist the banter and characterization provided so I always hoped they'd do something more with it.


The feel of the world is a steampunk 1940s Japan in an alternate history where the whole world is fighting against these demonic invaders using steam powered mechs and martial arts. It does that thing where half the people are in modern-like clothing and the rest are in hakama and kimono, and it mixes gunplay and katana and stuff very seamlessly with more fantastical elements. And the main cast of characters is like a secret agency so their front is, of all things, a theater troupe! So you have this game where you're staging plays and have romance and slice of life elements, and then the demons attack and you gotta kick ass, that sort of thing.

So now with Shin sakura taisen we see a reboot of the franchise and they actually released it over here too which is incredible. The game shifted to a more action battle game as opposed to the strategy rpg of the older ones. I had it on my radar but it came out right when ffviiR and persona 5R did so I put it off, but finally the time is now.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

About to start Shin Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars in the US).

I forgot about that for a while! Meant to pick it up when I heard about it, since I enjoyed the first one (played the PSP port) and the Sakura Taisen contributions to Project X Zone, but never quite got around to it. I'll be interested to see if it turns out good or not.

Resident Evil 6: Started Chris's campaign, and so far it's been... not terrible. Having a direct major in the 'Michael Bay stuff' at least keeps it focused and coherent compared to Leon's all-over-the-place story.

 

[happyninja42]

I can't make the gloves work for me at all. I find most of the time The damage just doesn't keep up well enough to keep clearing rooms quickly and the enemies spawn in so slowly that I don't get many feather buffs past Tartarus. I end up with like 20% dodge from the feather and 10% from the gloves and it doesn't even help at all for my consistently terrible performance against Hades.

I'm getting a little tired of the game, really. I can get to Hades almost every time now, usually only using up maybe one life but he has so much health and does so much damage that I almost always die after draining his first health bar. Which sucks because it's getting boring fighting 40 rooms of the same respawning mooks over and over to no purpose.

Well one thing I forgot to mention about my dodge build is that you assign that mirror effect, that gives you +50% damage/dodge chance when you dash for 2 seconds. It's the green variant of the dash ability, that lets you start with 2 dashes. That coupled with the gloves and lambent are what make it really sick. In fact, I was apparently not even rocking the +dodge perk on the gloves. I thought all the things you unlocked applied at the same time, not just the one you select. I was using the 3rd aspect, that gives you a powerful uppercut if you land 12 Attacks first.

Basically, hold down the Attack button so you are doing a flurry of blows kind of thing. It ends after 4 hits but if you just tap the dodge button it will refresh the hit count. so you basically just punch, punch punch, dodge, punch punch punch, dodge, massive uppercut when it displays that activation. Since you are dodging all the time, you are going to have that +50% dodge going a lot, and thus will be doing more damage, AND more likely to just negate a hit.

I don't know what to tell you about slow room clearing on a high Heat score. The highest heat I'm running so far is 5, and that was mostly by adding on support limiters, stuff that mostly didn't effect combat.

Speaking of Hades, I did "beat" it last night. Insofar as getting the storyline ending, and the credits. I was right about how the story would end, which was neat. It was a fun little spin on the mythology. I'll keep playing to max out everyone's heart levels, and to continue my role as Infernal Wingman, and get people hooked up with their loves.

 

[Dreiko]

I forgot about that for a while! Meant to pick it up when I heard about it, since I enjoyed the first one (played the PSP port) and the Sakura Taisen contributions to Project X Zone, but never quite got around to it. I'll be interested to see if it turns out good or not.

Resident Evil 6: Started Chris's campaign, and so far it's been... not terrible. Having a direct major in the 'Michael Bay stuff' at least keeps it focused and coherent compared to Leon's all-over-the-place story.

So I put in about 3-4 hours so far and I'm loving it to bits!

They did a really innovative dialogue choice system, you only get like 5 seconds to pick a choice and there's a huge variety of reactions and ways scenes can play out due to that. Also some powerful lines you can choose not what you say but how you say them. There's an "intensity gauge" where you can select how passionate and loud you wanna be with the shown statement, and that also affects reactions.

So far, every main char has a very strong, standout personality, they're going into this in a pretty standard but soulful harem storytelling route.

Finally, the gameplay has elements of musou games to it, you fight in these giant but somehow still cute steam-mechs that have various colors of steam pumping out, the main char's mech has a freaking plane engine on its back, it looks super badass.

Since you've played Project x Zone you have an idea of the feel of the world, well, in this game it's 10 years past the events of those chars and involves mostly new peolpe, and the theater troupe is down on its luck, protag is a ship captain who is assign there to help revive it. The feel of the world is just really cool and nostalgic. Also the music, oh man that music, they have that march tune that plays during super moves in project x zone, once you watch the intro you'll know what I mean. Which reminds me, this game has a LOT of anime cutscenes during big moments, as well as an "on the next episode" bit after you finish a chapter that's like out of an anime ending, the graphics look cool and distinct as well. Audio is awesome too, all in all it's a very aesthetically pleasing game.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Well one thing I forgot to mention about my dodge build is that you assign that mirror effect, that gives you +50% damage/dodge chance when you dash for 2 seconds. It's the green variant of the dash ability, that lets you start with 2 dashes. That coupled with the gloves and lambent are what make it really sick. In fact, I was apparently not even rocking the +dodge perk on the gloves. I thought all the things you unlocked applied at the same time, not just the one you select. I was using the 3rd aspect, that gives you a powerful uppercut if you land 12 Attacks first.

Basically, hold down the Attack button so you are doing a flurry of blows kind of thing. It ends after 4 hits but if you just tap the dodge button it will refresh the hit count. so you basically just punch, punch punch, dodge, punch punch punch, dodge, massive uppercut when it displays that activation. Since you are dodging all the time, you are going to have that +50% dodge going a lot, and thus will be doing more damage, AND more likely to just negate a hit.

I don't know what to tell you about slow room clearing on a high Heat score. The highest heat I'm running so far is 5, and that was mostly by adding on support limiters, stuff that mostly didn't effect combat.

Speaking of Hades, I did "beat" it last night. Insofar as getting the storyline ending, and the credits. I was right about how the story would end, which was neat. It was a fun little spin on the mythology. I'll keep playing to max out everyone's heart levels, and to continue my role as Infernal Wingman, and get people hooked up with their loves.

Oooh, yeah, that might help.

 

[happyninja42]

Oooh, yeah, that might help.

It really did. While I wasn't watching the notifications as I was busy dodging and punching, my wife was watching, and she said the "Near Miss" notification was popping up all the time as I was dashing around. The one drawback, is the trade off you make for that 50% dodge perk, is only 1 dodge. So your timing has to be really good or you can find yourself dashing into a second attack and taking damage. You want to grab the Hermes boon that lets you get more dashes if it comes up, as that just makes things a LOT easier, and Divine Dash from Athena is of course, just...well, divine. Like I said though, I haven't really tested it with a high heat where you have a lot of offense/defense factors, making the enemies tough. And it does rely on you getting a decent number of fast room clears early on, when the enemies are easier (just assume when you get to Elysium that you won't be getting it very often, they are too tanky), but it is a FUN build to run around doing. If you are using the Aspect that gives your Special multiple hits (which is what I was doing), and you tie some good boon to it, you can do some serious damage. Like Artemis' "Supporting Fire" or some lightning stuff from Zeus. In fact Support Fire and Zeus make the "speedy punch Attack then uppercut Special" combo kind of insane, with all the shit flying around.

 

[meiam]

I can't make the gloves work for me at all. I find most of the time The damage just doesn't keep up well enough to keep clearing rooms quickly and the enemies spawn in so slowly that I don't get many feather buffs past Tartarus. I end up with like 20% dodge from the feather and 10% from the gloves and it doesn't even help at all for my consistently terrible performance against Hades.

I'm getting a little tired of the game, really. I can get to Hades almost every time now, usually only using up maybe one life but he has so much health and does so much damage that I almost always die after draining his first health bar. Which sucks because it's getting boring fighting 40 rooms of the same respawning mooks over and over to no purpose.

Get Zeus on basic on the first floor and just hold down attack while dashing, everything else is superfluous (don't even bother using the special or the blood stone). Every dash reset the punch sequence so you attack non stop that way and its super easy.

Other stuff worth grabbing is Athena on dodge and artemis support fire, but those are really just the cherry on top since you can't guarantee you'll get those unless you use their trinket every floor and you're better of switching to feather after the first floor.

 

[happyninja42]

Get Zeus on basic on the first floor and just hold down attack while dashing, everything else is superfluous (don't even bother using the special or the blood stone). Every dash reset the punch sequence so you attack non stop that way and its super easy.

Other stuff worth grabbing is Athena on dodge and artemis support fire, but those are really just the cherry on top since you can't guarantee you'll get those unless you use their trinket every floor and you're better of switching to feather after the first floor.

Yeah Zeus on basic is great, though I've found sticking Posiedon on it can be hilarious. Just wave punch dudes into a wall, and watch the Wall Slam damage crush them. xD

 

[meiam]

Yeah Zeus on basic is great, though I've found sticking Posiedon on it can be hilarious. Just wave punch dudes into a wall, and watch the Wall Slam damage crush them. xD

Yeah but can't slam boss into wall : (

 

[happyninja42]

Yeah but can't slam boss into wall : (

True, it does lessen on bosses, though I think they still are technically "moved" a little bit, so if you couple it with Rupture, it can be pretty lethal. But yeah, things like Hangover aren't as good for the gloves, since you so quickly reach the stack limit, it suffers from diminishing returns really fast. But even just Artemis with a high crit chance build is nuts too. Yeah it's not flashy, but you are critting so often things just DIE. xD

I've been wanting to try a Demeter chill/explosion build to see how nasty that could be. I forget the name of the boon, but she has one that will make them do a frost nova if you cap their Chill stack at 10. which is stupid easy with the gloves on basic attack. Never had luck with getting that boon combo while running the gloves.

 

[happyninja42]

Been playing some more Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It's just such a fun, chill game, that can go horribly wrong with a single mistake, making everything end in a ball of fire and death xD But you know, a totally chill game up to that point.

 

[meiam]

True, it does lessen on bosses, though I think they still are technically "moved" a little bit, so if you couple it with Rupture, it can be pretty lethal. But yeah, things like Hangover aren't as good for the gloves, since you so quickly reach the stack limit, it suffers from diminishing returns really fast. But even just Artemis with a high crit chance build is nuts too. Yeah it's not flashy, but you are critting so often things just DIE. xD

I've been wanting to try a Demeter chill/explosion build to see how nasty that could be. I forget the name of the boon, but she has one that will make them do a frost nova if you cap their Chill stack at 10. which is stupid easy with the gloves on basic attack. Never had luck with getting that boon combo while running the gloves.

I don't think the explosion is worth losing all the stack, her ability that cause constant damage when every enemy has her debuff is better imo, it does slightly less damage but enemy keep the debuff on them.

Hangover can work if you really heavily invest in them (the damage scale really well with pomegrenade) and there's a few really good duo boon (Artemis, Aphrodite and Ares), but its too RNG dependent.