What are you currently playing?

[laggyteabag]

I've been playing Forza Horizon 4, and it is one of the most unstable games that I have played in years.

Freezing whilst driving, freezing whilst in menus, crashes to desktop, lost save progress, and I even fell through the floor once. To top it off, there is a bug that was introduced late-last year, where newer Nvidia drivers would make this issue even worse, and you have to manually locate and install a driver from October 2022, which is obviously inconvenient if you want to play multiple titles simultaneously, and one of them is a recent release. I have yet to sit down and play this game, and not encounter at least one game-breaking issue. It is getting quite frustrating.

And honestly, im not even convinced that it will get fixed. The Forza support page has acknowledged the issue, but Forza Horizon 5 is out now, this is a PC specific issue (and presumably only effects Nvidia-users), and if Forza Horizon 3 is anything to go by, 4 might be removed from digital storefronts in the near future. It might not even be worth the time to look into, if a workaround has been established.

And it is a shame, because the game is otherwise pretty great! The map is beautiful, the different seasons look great and add a lot of variety relating to the road conditions, there are loads of different types of cars to choose from, and there is a great variety of races and other scenarios that you can take part in. I am really enjoying myself, and It is probably one of the best racing games that I have ever played. It is just a shame that it is severely hampered by some pretty serious technical issues, which ultimately means that I cant really recommend it - at least not the PC version.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

this is a PC specific issue (and presumably only effects Nvidia-users)

This seems likely, as I've put in 180 hours in Horizon 4 on two separate AMD cards and never had so much as a hitch.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So i decided to play Dark Souls Remastered for the nth time. I was worried that Elden Ring had spoiled me, with Dark Souls nowhere near giving me the sense of freedom.

But to my surprise, it turned out to be quite the banger still. I don’t think it’ll ever feel outdated. Sure, the inability to cancel some animation is annoying, but i began to see myself adjusting my playstyle accordingly. And I love the closely-knit experience.The way this game connects each area like spiderwebs is still amazing.

The hitbox and only being allowed to dodge roll four directions is still weird, though.

DS never had omnidirectional input? I thought for sure that was only true of the original Demon’s Souls. Damn I guess I’ve played so much Souls since that I took it for granted.

 

[FakeSympathy]

DS never had omnidirectional input? I thought for sure that was only true of the original Demon’s Souls. Damn I guess I’ve played so much Souls since that I took it for granted.

Correcting myself; four-way input only when you're locked onto an enemy. With no lock on you can roll in any direction. Although, using high poise and heavy armor kinda makes this problem obsolete, and you can just tank damage for days without getting staggered. I even just beat Artorias, Manus, Kalameet, and Gwyn with relative ease, all because I had havel set on

Come to think of it, I think that may be why poise was re-worked in later games, because with better movement controls you are expected to dodge rather than tank.Heavy armor still can soak damage, but at the cost of getting staggered easily. IDK, I'm not an expert

 

[Piscian]

I finished GOW and started Ragnarok.

TBH I was a little disappointed. The game left a lot of story unfinished and I'm not sure how I feel about it. In context it was a full game, but it ended up not being as big as Id thought at first. More branching than open world. The average play through is 20 hours. Might have taken me 30-40 as I really tried to do all the extra stuff. After it ended I was suddenly left completely divested of interest in collecting and upgrading, especially considering none of your gear transfers over afaik. I worked really hard unlocking armor and had all these plans to upgrade it only to find out I didn't really need it unless I wanted to do one specific quest after the game that has a kind "meh" solution. Thank god for youtube I guess.

Still a great game, just left me wanting more. Ironically I'm glad I waited until the sequel came out so I can just finish the story I felt was missing from the first one. I'd be much more disappointed had I played it on release.

 

[Dalisclock]

I finished GOW and started Ragnarok.

TBH I was a little disappointed. The game left a lot of story unfinished and I'm not sure how I feel about it. In context it was a full game, but it ended up not being as big as Id thought at first. More branching than open world. The average play through is 20 hours. Might have taken me 30-40 as I really tried to do all the extra stuff. After it ended I was suddenly left completely divested of interest in collecting and upgrading, especially considering none of your gear transfers over afaik. I worked really hard unlocking armor and had all these plans to upgrade it only to find out I didn't really need it unless I wanted to do one specific quest after the game that has a kind "meh" solution. Thank god for youtube I guess.

Still a great game, just left me wanting more. Ironically I'm glad I waited until the sequel came out so I can just finish the story I felt was missing from the first one. I'd be much more disappointed had I played it on release.

Yeah, I kept telling myself I was gonna do all the extra stuff(the valkyrie bonus boss fights) and never really got around to it. I think I did one or two rooms in the firey bonus area(Muselhiem?).Once I reached the end of the story I was ready to call it good and running around powering up just to beat a bunch of bonus bosses for no other reason then to say I could didn't really appeal to me at that point. I think I found one of them like....twice, quickly died and never went back to try to kill them.

 

[gorfias]

I've been playing Forza Horizon 4, and it is one of the most unstable games that I have played in years.

... this is a PC specific issue (and presumably only effects Nvidia-users), and if Forza Horizon 3 is anything to go by, 4 might be removed from digital storefronts in the near future.

Scared me! I have AMD graphics card. I have 3 and 4 play anywhere on Xbox and PC. You write that 3 is off of the store front. Hope I can still download it onto my next PC build.

ITMT: How much do I stink! Four years to figure out that Kratos CAN jump but it is context sensitive. I just had him wandering around this cliff not knowing what to do next. See at 13:50ish.

It's like I got a new game as I can continue now. I love that I can throw the axe and then have it do damage to enemies as it comes back to me if it whacks them from behind. Very cool game.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Scared me! I have AMD graphics card. I have 3 and 4 play anywhere on Xbox and PC. You write that 3 is off of the store front. Hope I can still download it onto my next PC build.

ITMT: How much do I stink! Four years to figure out that Kratos CAN jump but it is context sensitive. I just had him wandering around this cliff not knowing what to do next. See at 13:50ish.

It's like I got a new game as I can continue now. I love that I can throw the axe and then have it do damage to enemies as it comes back to me if it whacks them from behind. Very cool game.

In case you haven't yet, try throwing it at their feet too. There are limits though. Trolls are a big one.

 

[BrawlMan]

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (PS4) - I played the Japanese version on T-16, but never got around to committing to it. I might go back to that one, because of the save states. Right now, I made it to Stage 4 and stuck there at the moment. I already unlocked Maria, but she's basically the game's easy mode. As far as the Holy Grail of Castlevania games, I think RoB has been overpraised due to lack of availability at the time. I remember all those retro reviewers and old-school experts goings nuts. Saying it's a "must own or worth the money to import!".

I will say the game has impressive achievements in terms of art style, graphics, tech, and ending the system on a high note. Music is a banger and I love the remixes they throw in. There are alternate paths you can find and women that need rescuing, if you want 100% completion. That includes fighting bosses too. The good news is that you can select any stage you beat at any time, by going to stage select, so you can alternate paths, or rescue the women. My problems are Richter is slower, lacks mercy invincibility of past and future vampire hunters, and does not get the mutli-directional whip. He doesn't even get Johnny's downward whip jump, nor upper angular whip/whip swing. I know Rondo came out first, but Super Castlevania IV came out before Rondo with all of the whip improvements. What doesn't help is that enemies have way too many advantages over you or move quicker than Richter. This supposed to be a young guy, he should be able to move faster than that. I know it's old-school difficulty design, but it's what I don't like about some of the older Vanias. Rich has that backwards flip, but it's only useful for speedrunners and very specific situations. Also, most bosses have a suicide/last desperation attack after draining their health. I don't care much for them. Thankfully, they don't insta-kill you, but you're gonna want to have at least half health before it happens. I am glad Konami never tried something like that again.

Rondo is a good game to be respected, but it takes some steps back and age only hurts it further. I do like the game, but Bloodlines still the best of the 16-bit Classicvania games.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

FInished Axiom Verge 2. It somehow irons out all the kinks from the first game and generally feels more well-rounded. Story kept pulling me out of it though. It's weird and inscrutable and has that air of "one dude made everything" whenever two characters interact.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Snip

I wasn't really talking about VLR specifically, just the prisoner's dilemma in general and how I felt about it when I was at the start of the game. Also, I only asked because I don't remember who the partner choices were in each of the rounds. If you are able to divine a spoiler from anything I wrote, that's pretty incredible and you should probably be using your powers to find buried treasure or something.

I am enjoying reading your perspective so please keep doing these posts. I'm looking forward to your reaction to some of the events later in the game.

 

[gorfias]

Marvel's Avengers. I'm on a heli carrier as Ironman and I'm walking around. Tried to accept a daily mission with an expiration time and a regular mission. No luck. Just wandering around. Talked to Winter Soldier a couple of times. He has been no help. No idea what I'm supposed to do to get this game to start.


Maybe need to try to start a brand new game. What I've got going on looks nothing like this part 1 of a walkthrough



EDIT: There was a training session I had to do in a X-men style holo danger room before the game would open up and let me actually play it. Not particularly intuitive. But once done, the game does seem to have its charms.

 

[Bedinsis]

Played some more Virtue's Last Reward. I once again encountered a no-ending, though one that promised that if I gather enough info I probably would get to continue along that path. I am incredibly lost since a lot of things happened, so much that I almost have given up on understanding what's going on. Being ill drains my energy.

Spoiler: the plot so far

As stated, I went back to the start of the game and went into the chamber that made Luna my partner. Afterwards I voted Ally. As things turned out Alice was my other Pair-partner and we paired up with Luna, again. Once the time to vote Alice was not part of the voting and we voted Ally, so only one more Ally-vote and I have the 9 BP required to leave the facility. Why Alice was not part of the vote? Well I don't remember in what order things happened but the key aspect is that Alice is dead. The events so far have left me thinking that unless the other half contains Clover, she won't vote Ally, so it is possible that someone had her killed to ensure that the vote would go to Ally. What's more interesting is that later on Luna died.

After I later went into the puzzle room with Phi(the third party was present in the form of a bracelet) we found footage of the Luna's death. First Clover and Luna had an angry confrontation, which went out of frame from the security footage, afterwards Clover left and Dios entered and went out of the frame where Luna's corpse was eventually discovered, then he left and K entered and went out of the frame where Luna's corpse was eventually discovered. The game here presented the question of who I thought had killed Luna. I said Clover.

My reasoning is that Clover and Alice had some sort of connection and right before we discovered Luna's body we had discovered both that Clover had discovered something that implicated Luna and the something that implicated Luna. My read is that Clover concluded that Luna had killed her friend Alice, and as vengeance she killed her.

Afterwards Clover and Tenmyouti was found dead, handcuffed together to a sink, and then Dios and K were also found dead, the latter of whom in a way that makes it unlikely that a child such as Quark could have done it.

Can you understand if I am a bit lost at the moment? I honestly am mostly reminded of one of the routes in AI - The Somnium Files where all the central characters had been killed in a string after each other in a way that made it seem like the most likely suspect was killed in the very next murder on the string.

Anyway: there was too much info about the murders for me to process, so my default explanation falls down on the rather boring "Quark did it in a fit of Radical-6 induced madness", but that does not explain how he was able to kill Dios and K. I think the authorial intent is that I am supposed to feel incredibly lost. Clover had apparently written 016 on her thigh before dying; I have no idea what that means.

Also: while I attributed Luna's death to Clover (and the game explicitly asked me about it and more or less said, "Yeah, that is the most likely explanation") I don't think she is Zero. Her being a murderer is as I said a result of her concluding that Luna killed her friend Alice, and her vengefulness is just that, not due to an overall plan to play a murderous game with 8 strangers.

Apart from that, Phi is getting a bit annoying. She always feels like she is one step ahead of me and basically explaining the plot for me. My read is that she is someone that is also playing through the game, of travelling through time once she hits a dead end to figure out a solution where everybody lives.

Who do I think Zero is? At this point, I don't know.
If it were Alice then it is odd that a string of murders occurred after her death.
If it were Phi it makes little sense that she'd be helpful towards me and act like someone that is also trying to find the best route.
Quark is a kid and ill, and the game spelled out that he could not have done the last two murders.
Tenmyouti said that he was paid by Zero to participate; it feels odd that that would be the cover story if he actually is Zero, plus he seems to genuinely care about Quark.
Dios is a shifty, self-serving fella and he has most likely lied about having a child he worries about, but I want to dismiss him as a too obvious candidate.
Clover I suspect is intended as a false lead... though now that I mention it, may she killed K & Dios and then herself? But why would Zero kill themself?
Luna as Zero I want to dismiss because voting with her has proven fruitful and she seems like a nice person, but I do not know her backstory, and it is in her interest to escape even if she is Zero.
K has proven himself a stand up guy overall, which oddly enough makes me more suspicious towards him. He did knock out me and Phi to make sure we went into the chamber, but that was only because he wanted to make sure that as many people as possible could survive. (incidentally: I agree with K. It is unfortunate if all teams do not enter the chambers but the more BP people have the more people will be able to leave the game, no matter if some people will be forced to be left behind)
Finally: am I Zero? That is one of those far out twists that I imagine the author giddy, jumping up and down with excitement on the prospect of pulling it off, but I don't see it happening, unless it's some sort of self inflicted amnesia where the events are set up to happen in advance, but that sounds ridiculously improbable.

 

[Kyrian007]

Just finished Mages of Mystralia. Short fun little game with an interesting magic spell creation mechanic. Interesting, I'd like to see more of the mechanic if it were further fleshed out with some more options and results. Basically 4 different spell effects, 4 different elements, and a handful of modifiers you can throw on. Basic attack plus ice modified with a mastery equals a freeze attack. Missile plus fire modified with move and duplicate equals multiple fireballs... and so on. The only real problems are a: there are a lot of combinations that don't seem to do anything, and most of the ones that do are useless; and b: once you find the "rain" sigil, and can rain fire ice boulders and lightning from the sky... it's basically game over. Still, fun while it lasted. Didn't last very long though.

Next I'm going back through Dishonored to pregame a first look at Dishonored 2. Going through the first one high chaos killing everything to preload some catharsis for an attempt at a low chaos run on the sequel. Making a kind of 'fun sandwich' out of the experience I suppose.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Got on to the second story in Weird West, just in time as the last character wasn't the most inspired. But now? Now am Pig meat Frank! Meat chunk pig! Pig talk corpse! On the search for the suicidal tree of souls' 3 roots so we can euthanise the poor fucker! Want some Lovecraft thrown in as well? No worries, fam...your back is got: here, a cheeky taste for the road. And maybe - just maybe - learn something about our chunky pig flesh self along the way too. Finally scrimped and saved enough honest pennies (stole from everyone's bedrooms to sell their personal junk and heirlooms) to afford a lovely purple gold rifle, which has yet to be fired. Am motivated to continue this path of magic-tree euthanasia. It's all smooooooth sailing for now.

 

[Dalisclock]

Started playing Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak and enjoying it so far. It hits the notes I really appreciated about the first Homeworld for the most part(not so much HW2, which I didn't really like for a number of reasons). I do appreciate the feeling of your carrier(the land based equivalent of the mothership from the first game) was pretty much rushed into service because of time pressure(a bunch of religious nutters are attacking your bases) which explains why you have to spend the first couple of missions performing upgrades and retrofits on the go. Hell, the 2nd mission is the carrier pulling into a repair facility and you having to defend it while vital refit/upgrade work is going on with some limited resources to force you to focus on learning how combat and tactics work.

It's something the first HW did very well, where the Mothership was essentially undergoing sea trials when you get attacked by space assholes and you pretty much how to adapt on the fly because you expected to have significantly more time to get ready to depart. There's a real feeling of desperation in the first few missions where you have very little resources available so you need to be very conservative not to lose anything. Luckily, playing a mission from the menu allows you start with a default force, which means if you ended the last mission with few units and no resources, you can at least retry with a better chance out of the gate, due to the persistent force mechanic(anything you finish the last mission with carries over, which rewards success and punishes failure).

The only real downside is the auto checkpointing can fuck you hard here, because you if hit the auto checkpoint and you're doing badly, you might be completely fucked going forward because you might not have time or resources to bounce back and the only solution is to back out to the main menu and restart the mission completely.

This is also one of those games that does a good job of telling it's story by use of cutscenes and radio chatter. Notably in the first mission you're prepping the carrier to get underway as a justified tutorial at one of your bases and it's been mentioned these religion lunatics are striking bases up and down the line. So while you're running through the stuff the game tells you to do to get the carrier underway, you hear chatter/announcements over the base intercom alluding to nearby friendlies get hitting and it starts creating the sense that the enemy can show up at any time before you're ready to move. They don't show up in the first mission and you get away clear, but in the next mission you get hit while doing emergency refits/upgrades and can't move. You also learn the base you left from got leveled not long after you left. So far there's this constant sense that the enemy is maybe a step or two behind you and you can't stay in one place for two long to as a means to keep the plot moving.

 

[Bedinsis]

MoreVirtue's Last Reward.

Spoiler: the plot so far

So this time I entered the door with Tenmyouji, choose Ally, then entered the door with Tenmyouji, and choose ally. In the meantime, Quark fell ill in Radical-6 but got a dose of the medicine and appears to be healthy, although he was unconscious when it was time to vote. In this route I found out that Clover was indeed part of the previous Nonary games, i.e. she is the same Clover from the previous title 999, and she is a "coworker" with Alice. In this route we also found a broadcast from a week after the protagonist Sigma's kidnapping where it turns out a woman killed "all six of them, all six billion of them". After some consultation from Tenmyouji we found out that there apparently was a simulated Mars mission using a testing facility in Nevada where the Mars mission would be in radio shadow for an extended period of time, and the broadcast was the transmission from after they had left the simulated radio shadow. The full extent of this would require more than 10 minutes' explanation and the conversation was interrupted by the voting process. Afterwards Alice immediately left and Tenmyouji left to check on the unconscious Quark, and just as the conversation was to pick up, after Tenmyouji asked if I was sure, since it might destroy all joy I have left, Phi burst in to reveal that Alice was dead. Stabbed in the heart with a scalpel. This caused Clover to be furious, and she said that she will kill everyone within 10 seconds, and the route was ended with an infuriating "To be continued" note.

So I am starting to wonder about this whole facility. The sights Sigma has seen has led me to believe that this is set on the Moon... though one with artificially increased gravitational pull, but the broadcast made me think that either this is set on Mars or in a Nevada copy of the Mars base. Sending information through time is apparently part of the setting as per 999, and inspired by the last game I'm wondering if there will be a Nonary game on the Mars base and we are participating in the Nevada equivalent to either send information there or receive from there. That broadcast would then be information from the future... that for some reason found it's way into the broadcast.

New theory: we're in a scenario everyone tries to avoid: one in which Radical-6 spread and caused a worldwide pandemic causing a total of 6 billion deaths. These Nonary games are repeated in some way to make sure the disease never spreads. How this all sticks together and how this information could be passed through time I don't know. In that case our mysterious Zero might actually be a good guy, trying to save 6 billion people, by putting people in the sort of circumstances that activates the time-travel-communication. Though the "Scientific theory" has not yet been brought up by the plot so new players would be lost if that is the case.

Anyway: a thing I forgot to mention is that the body of the woman previously seen in the Luna route but not the Alice route could this time be found. I am still at a loss of who arranged this, but currently Phi feels most guilty. I didn't double check but I believe she in the Alice route said to "catch up in 20 minutes" whereas in the other routes said that the should catch up 5 minutes before time's up before the Chromatic doors. I think this discrepancy is deliberate and she was doing... something. Phi is my current candidate for Zero.

I also tried putting up a grid of how people vote after the first door, to see if there was any patterns I could discern. The patterns I saw was that Luna votes Ally no matter what and that K&Clover votes Betray no matter what. Alice also seems to only Betray when she is opposite to me.

S&P	L	D&Q	T	K&C	A
(ally)	Ally	Betray	Ally	Betray	Ally
D&Q	L	K&C	T	S&P	A
Ally	Ally	Betray	Ally	(ally)	Betray
K&C	L	S&P	T	D&Q	A
Betray	Ally	(ally)	Betray	Betray	Ally

 

[Bartholen]

22 hours in to Dragon Age, currently in the Moria... sorry, Deep Roads section. I'm liking this game more and more. The combat's finally making sense and I don't feel like I have to be pausing every 2 seconds. The characters are deepening, and Shale is easily my favorite. He's such a hilariously sarcastic grump, I love it. There's so much to do both in the civilization sections and the dungeon crawls. I also finally figured out how to give party members gifts, which the game to my memory never bothered to tell. I was always trying to scroll over the gift button in my player character's menu, and I just assumed there was some prerequisite for being able to give gifts in the first place. I ended up selling a whole bunch of them because they were clogging my inventory, and now I just have to wonder if I fucked up and sold some vital item.

I keep getting surprised at just how in-depth this game's writing is. I was in Orzammar with Zevran, Morrigan and Shale, and Zevran started a conversation where he referenced both Morrigan and Shale. I can't help but wonder just how much more context-sensitive dialogue there is in this game, and what a staggering amount of effort must have gone into it, because it's basically all excellent. I always make sure to stop and listen to the party banter because it's so damn good. I'm kind of sad you can only have 3 party members at a time, because they're all well written and interesting. I definitely wasn't expecting it, but I've caught myself already planning another playthrough.

To be honest, I think the biggest thing holding this game back is the fact that it's such traditional, that is to say clichéd fantasy. The writing's so strong I can't help but feel it's constrained by the need to adhere to all these fantasy tropes we've seen before: dwarves in the mountains, elves in the forests, morally unambiguous hordes of baddies. It doesn't feel like it's even trying to put a new spin on them or subvert them somehow, they're just done a bit darker and bloodier than usual. It's like listening to a greatest hits album of fantasy tropes: good, but so very familiar. That's why games like Divinity original Sin 2 and The Witcher 3 were so refreshing: they really turned fantasy on its head and made something that stands out. Divinity OriSin 2 especially is like a waking nightmare of a fantasy world.

 

[Kyrian007]

Got on to the second story in Weird West, just in time as the last character wasn't the most inspired. But now? Now am Pig meat Frank! Meat chunk pig! Pig talk corpse! On the search for the suicidal tree of souls' 3 roots so we can euthanise the poor fucker! Want some Lovecraft thrown in as well? No worries, fam...your back is got: here, a cheeky taste for the road. And maybe - just maybe - learn something about our chunky pig flesh self along the way too. Finally scrimped and saved enough honest pennies (stole from everyone's bedrooms to sell their personal junk and heirlooms) to afford a lovely purple gold rifle, which has yet to be fired. Am motivated to continue this path of magic-tree euthanasia. It's all smooooooth sailing for now.

Second story is interesting. Third is my favorite. Still, it is fun being pigman... especially after the fairly standard western cliche that the first story was. Although it was probably best to introduce us to Weird West with as familiar a story as "bounty hunter coming out of retirement to save kidnapped spouse."

 

[Drathnoxis]

Played some more Virtue's Last Reward. I once again encountered a no-ending, though one that promised that if I gather enough info I probably would get to continue along that path.

VLR does this a bit too much. It seems to take forever to get your first actual ending.

I think the authorial intent is that I am supposed to feel incredibly lost.

It definitely is. Uchikoshi wants you to be confused for like 70% of his games. It's worth it when everything comes together well, though.

I'm getting excited about seeing your reaction when you start getting some answers based on your guesses so far.