What are you currently playing?

sXeth

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First Impressions of Space Engineers:

Rare to see a game in beta/early access on the PS5.

it's another buildathon, but with space stations. And spaceships! And space tanks??

Oh hang on, the controller sensitivity menu option doesn't work, like at all. It does not respond.

Oh wait, the tutorial page is just a list of web links to YouTube vids. Lol.

There is gun! Long live the gun!

Already completed, uhh...the campaign? Huh? What just happened? 5 short unexplained stag...you know what, nevermind it's beta I spose.

Still haven't built anything apart from a mission mandated battery I never got to use, just blew up loadsa shit. Quite cathartic destruction like torpedoing science Legos.

Fine! I'll watch the bloody tutorial videos if you incessantly insist!
Oh right I looked at that but it just came of as the boring "realistic" (I mean, space tanks) version of No Mans Sky.
 
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Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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There are some issues, though nothing major. The foremost one is the sound, specifically the lack of proper surround sound. This really starts to grate on you when you're fighting enemies whose positioning is extremely vital to be aware of, because there's no way to gauge distance based on sound effects: they play as loudly whether an enemy's right next to you or 60 feet away.
The remasters of this game fucked up the soundmix in general. The OST for example is not supposed to cut out instantly after killing the last enemy in the area, but instead fade out more gradually.
 

Bartholen

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The remasters of this game fucked up the soundmix in general. The OST for example is not supposed to cut out instantly after killing the last enemy in the area, but instead fade out more gradually.
Was there some issue with the FOV as well in the remasters? I watched some bits of longplays on youtube and I could swear the FOV on my port was way more claustrophobic.
 

Bob_McMillan

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I finally fucking finished Warhammer 40K Space Marine. I graduated from college before I finished this damn thing, and I bought this game in high school. And all it took for me to finish it was to lower the difficulty down to easy.

Because this game is fucking hard man. The "correct" way to play it is to hang back, somehow find some cover your refrigerator sized ass can fit behind, and pick off all the annoying enemies with whatever overpowered weapon you have. The incredibly unrewarding gunplay on the most ubiquitous weapon types is pretty confusing. Sometimes it feels like headshots do less damage than just spraying fire in the enemy's direction. Speaking of enemies, yeah the lack of orks in the later game realllly makes the game suffer. Another confusing choice by the devs.

But at the end of the day, it's a decent 40K game. My understanding is that is incredibly rare, and I still had fun with it. Really hoping that Space Marine 2 will be a BIIIIIG step up. Kind of worrying that it doesn't have a release date yet, but a man can hope.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Because this game is fucking hard man. The "correct" way to play it is to hang back, somehow find some cover your refrigerator sized ass can fit behind, and pick off all the annoying enemies with whatever overpowered weapon you have. The incredibly unrewarding gunplay on the most ubiquitous weapon types is pretty confusing. Sometimes it feels like headshots do less damage than just spraying fire in the enemy's direction. Speaking of enemies, yeah the lack of orks in the later game realllly makes the game suffer. Another confusing choice by the devs.
Err, not really, you want to get into the melee to be able to execute enemies and get your health back. Your armor regens when you are out of combat, but there aren't many parts where its better to just hang back then trying to get into the thick of it. Its a bit more useful when chaos shows up, but certainly not for most ork encounters.
 
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Bob_McMillan

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Err, not really, you want to get into the melee to be able to execute enemies and get your health back. Your armor regens when you are out of combat, but there aren't many parts where its better to just hang back then trying to get into the thick of it. Its a bit more useful when chaos shows up, but certainly not for most ork encounters.
I very much disagree that it's a "bit" more useful when chaos shows up. There are plenty times when melee isn't even option, they'll just spawn a chaos marine or a psyker or hell even just a regular fucking ork in an inaccessible location and you're just strafing back and forth praying to the Emperor they won't melt you with their Death Star lazer. Like the godforsaken turret level. I genuinely do not understand what tactics the devs thought the players should employ there.

Melee has its place in the game, but it is significantly less impactful once the orks leave. Melee takes care of demons really well, but they have such huge heads that walking slowly backwards while firing is just as easy. I think there are probably a few mechanics I missed out on, especially with Fury, but the game is pretty awful at teaching you new things. I think got a third of the way into the game without throwing a grenade because you can't actually change or view keybindings without quitting to the main menu. If they have tips on loading screens, they went by too fast for me to see.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I very much disagree that it's a "bit" more useful when chaos shows up. There are plenty times when melee isn't even option, they'll just spawn a chaos marine or a psyker or hell even just a regular fucking ork in an inaccessible location and you're just strafing back and forth praying to the Emperor they won't melt you with their Death Star lazer. Like the godforsaken turret level. I genuinely do not understand what tactics the devs thought the players should employ there.

Melee has its place in the game, but it is significantly less impactful once the orks leave. Melee takes care of demons really well, but they have such huge heads that walking slowly backwards while firing is just as easy. I think there are probably a few mechanics I missed out on, especially with Fury, but the game is pretty awful at teaching you new things. I think got a third of the way into the game without throwing a grenade because you can't actually change or view keybindings without quitting to the main menu. If they have tips on loading screens, they went by too fast for me to see.
I mean there are parts when shooting needs to happen, but its still mostly a melee focused game where getting in with the enemies is the way to go. It's been awhile since I played it but I did beat it on hard mode and don't recall having too much trouble. The final boss was tedious but its just a lame final boss that goes on too long.
 

Bartholen

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Bought and started Pillars of Eternity. After finally getting properly adjusted to real time with pause systems in Dragon Age: Origins, and Pillars II starting a bit confusingly with a boatload of spoilers, I figured the first game would be a proper point to start playing. I'm only about an hour in, but I'm really enjoying it so far. It has one of my favorite things about RPGs, which is a humble beginning. Pillars II starts very much like an action-packed sequel, what with a god rising out of the earth and a shipwreck. Here you're just traveling on a caravan, and the first combat encounter comes from something as small and innocuous as fetching some water from a nearby river. Obviously there's already hints of something bigger, but I haven't yet been declared chosen of the gods or something. It's also much easier to settle into roleplaying when my character has no established history or relationships with any of the characters unlike in Pillars II, where the game (by necessity) was making references to what my character had done previously right from the outset.

To my understanding both these games are massive-ass huge, so I'll probably be posting updates about them for a good while.
 

Drathnoxis

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Finished Nier: Automata. Honestly, I still think it's over-rated. I heard this called a masterpiece so much when it was released, I was really expecting something more. The combat was there, and that's all that can be said for it. You just hold down target and fire while mashing attack. Use one of your 300 healing items when health gets low. I tried for an hour to kill the secret final boss, Emil, at level 59, but I eventually gave up. I could get him down to something like 5% health by using vengeance chips, but at that point he stopped taking damage from that and I did 0 damage with my attack buffed as high as I could, I also couldn't hack any more for some reason and then he'd do an attack that would 1HKO even with my health and defense buffed.

There were a couple nice moments, like that bit where A2 and 9S were fighting bosses in tandem and it ended up turning into a joint fight, but that was also let down by the lousy combat and the fact that the game wasn't putting up even cursory resistance on normal difficulty.

The story was kind of obtuse, and I'll admit I don't entirely get it. Something about nihilism, but I'm not really sure what the point of playing through the game 3 times was, other than to maximize asset reuse. The characters other than 9S were uniformly flat. I did end up doing most of the side-quests and did enjoy some of them, most were busywork though.

I was hoping to finish the end credits alone, but it's just ridiculous. I tried for probably 4 hours and only made it as far as Localization about 5 times. Then I looked up how much was left and decided, screw it. I was wondering if I would actually be able to connect, because I don't have PS+ but I was. After accepting help someone from Germany said something encouraging and then the whole sequence became a joke. Kind of was a let down, but I wasn't spending days on this. Bullet Hells aren't really my genre. Then I left a motivational message to pass on consisting of "Life is nothing but hardship. However, you're useless at video games." built from preset messages.

I have the Game of the YorHa edition, which is supposed to come with the DLC, and I was pretty sure I bought it new, but there wasn't a code in the box and the DLC isn't on the disk, so that's kind of a rip. But, honestly, I don't want to play the game any longer so it doesn't really matter. Kind of ticks me off on principle, though.

And that's kind of all I have to say. The game was ok for a JRPG, I guess. I mean, I didn't need to grind so that was good. I got the platinum trophy on this one too, but only because they let me buy the achievements with the 1 million G I had sitting around. The sound track was pretty nice, though.
 
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Jarrito3002

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Right now Advanced War Reboot Camp has returned to me my beloved. I hoping this gets the franchise some love after starving in the corner while Fire Emblem got fat.

Plus Horizon Forbidden West pulled me back in with Burning Shores. I will say its pretty short if you campaign straight through but I was distracted by side activities to make it last. Had fatigued but Burning Shores brought back to spark now have been hunting for machine parts, cauldrons and doing quest here and there. I love how all the dialogue is aware I beat the game and all the cool shit I did before the DLC. I can't remember a game that did that in the AAA sphere.
 
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09philj

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Crusader Kings III

Obviously it's just more Crusader Kings, except better, so I made an immediate beeline for the best new feature which is being able to fully customise your starting character. This of course meant the creation of Gigachad of house Alpha, a demigod with maximum stats and as many positive traits as possible, who for maximum comedy value was also a witch and a member of the minor Christian sect of Messalianism. During his time on Earth, Gigachad rose from Duke of Northumbria to Emperor of Britannia, a realm that included all of Britain and Ireland along with Iceland, much of what is now northern France, and Frisia. Because he was both massively religious and a follower of a faith that nobody else had, he could declare holy wars to seize neighbouring regions as much as he wanted. Also as a Messalian who converted much of his realm to the same faith, it was wholly acceptable for him to shag whoever he wanted, and since he was the most desirable man in all of Europe he was able to father a large number of children with multiple women, many of whom weren't his wife. The long term stability of his dynasty is ensured by the empire being elective and almost every available candidate being a member of his house due to the success of his conquests, both military and sexual. His successors have so far secured the remainder of the shattered Kingdom of France, and are now getting to work on the Kingdom of Maine which split from France after an earlier conquest of the Kingdom by Gigachad which briefly placed his son on the throne but led to a civil war that split it into multiple smaller realms.
 
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Absent

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🙄

Many years ago, I used to be good at FTL.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Crying Suns had a final patch that came out, I remembered that I enjoyed that and started playing it again. Totally restarted, beat the first chapter or whatever, pretty fun, but the combat... Its kinda real time rock paper scissors with drones killing frigates, frigates killing fighters and fighters killing drones. With ship weapons and such added, but that means that if the ai can call in enough support then you are just kinda screwed, rest of the game is quite good, but I wish they redid the combat style, right now its fine, but I think Im getting close to where I stopped before because of it.

I also forgot that I had a second uncharted game to play in Uncharted Legacy of Thieves edition. Pretty cool so far, just finished a grand escape from some ruins and had some delightful drama with my team member. Gunplay still feels good, climbing still feels good, graphics are beautiful, writing is good if a bit cheeky, so yeah, its good.
 
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Bedinsis

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I started a Crusader Kings II run. I started as a Pomeranian two county ruler of Slavic faith and now control one and a half kingdom.

The most noteworthy thing that happened was when I noticed that my unwed daughter was pregnant I thought I better find her a husband. I then visited her tab of Relationships to find out who the father was, since presumably it would be listed under Lover. I noted only one listed lover there, who happened to belong to the same family, with whom she must've gotten pregnant.

The fact that they were related had me worried. I didn't want to accidentally end up with a family member with the Inbred trait, and since I had had extramarital affairs myself I had not complete track of every character but I wanted to make sure they were not accidentally cousins born of cousins or something. I then hovered over the lover and found out he was my son. In other words, two of my children had bumped uglies with each other and a child was forth coming.

I then went "Gah! Oh gods! Ew! Why would you...? Gross!" and was a bit surprised since I did not expect the game to spontaneously form an incest between two siblings, unless it was something the religion approves of and therefore encourages the AI to do. I then checked a bit more about the lover pair. I found out they were also each other's twins which I felt was even worse.
 
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meiam

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Crying Suns had a final patch that came out, I remembered that I enjoyed that and started playing it again. Totally restarted, beat the first chapter or whatever, pretty fun, but the combat... Its kinda real time rock paper scissors with drones killing frigates, frigates killing fighters and fighters killing drones. With ship weapons and such added, but that means that if the ai can call in enough support then you are just kinda screwed, rest of the game is quite good, but I wish they redid the combat style, right now its fine, but I think Im getting close to where I stopped before because of it.
I liked crying sun, but I don't really feel like doing another run since, unlike most roguelike, it has a pretty strong focus on story and replaying it after finishing the story once feel pointless. It did have a pretty satisfying conclusion.

Started playing Ixion, its like frostpunk in space. Before buying I saw a bunch of review that mentioned how tough it was, but right now its extremely soft and feel more like a relaxing city builder than a survival game. Maybe they really nerfed the difficulty since the reviews came out, but it might also be because the game doesn't really have any system to push the player to move faster than they need to, so you can hang around a solar system for a long time and strip mine everything so you have a massive surplus of resources, but some player might move on before and so are always short on resources.

The main interesting aspect is that space (ie the are where you can build building) is really limited. You can expand it more, but doing so weaken your ship and force you to spend more alloy (think coal) maintaining it. That would be a major limiting factor, if it wasn't for the fact that I have such an insane supply of spare material available at any time. Otherwise its the usual stuff of your people being really petty and constantly asking you to do dumb stuff that will make surviving much harder, which makes it hard to really care about them since they seem bent on crippling themselves. But at the same time, ignoring their demand is pretty easy and has negligible punishment so I usually do that and the worse that happen is they steal tiny amount of resource.
 
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