What are you currently playing?

[Worgen]

RE8 - Killed tall vampire mommy and her three daughters. The boss fight wasn't tough and only got hit once. Helps that I upgraded the power of my guns early on. I am stopping for tonight.

For as thirsty as the internet got for her, she doesn't last long in the full game. I have a feeling Capcom was kicking themselves for making her the first boss and her staying dead.

 

[BrawlMan]

For as thirsty as the internet got for her, she doesn't last long in the full game. I have a feeling Capcom was kicking themselves for making her the first boss and her staying dead.

Eh, she lasted for the right amount of time for me.

 

[Kyrian007]

Went back to working on my backlog. Just finished Dishonored 2. Just found out there is another Dishonored game after it, had no idea. I'm as torn on this one as I was on the first. Story is utterly forgettable and unimportant. Gameplay is fine... fun at times even. I can see it being really awful for 100% completionists. I was going low chaos, and was still accidentally killing 1 - 4 dudes a level on average. When all outsider powers seem centered on either traversal or killing... non lethal is kind of tough. Don't know if I'm going to bother with Death of the Outsider. Luckily it isn't on the backlog, so that's a question I don't have to answer until I see it for like a buck or something.

Not sure what I'm moving on to next. Nothing on my Steam backlog seems to be calling. But the list of games I claimed free on Epic has some interesting possibilities. I'm thinking either Breathedge or Control.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

@Old_Hunter_77, if you're interested in 3D platforming, there's Penny's Big Breakaway. The Sonic Mania Team, now called Evening Star Studios, made the game. I completed it earlier this week and had blast. The boss battles are all weak though.

I have been seeing that name being dropped around, I'll give it a look.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Playing Tunic. I'm on a roll with cute, ingenious indie games.

Ditto.
Tunic is pretty great but I wouldn't have pushed through the early stages if like the whole internet wasn't telling me it was great, I'll admit. But I'm glad I did. And as someone who has no shame in looking up stuff online, I even enjoyed its insanely obtuse alternate ending. Oddy enough, Tunic was the last game that fulfilled that weird feeling of like- there's a game, but then there's this whole 'nother game underneath, a feeling that Dark Souls introduced me too.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

For as thirsty as the internet got for her, she doesn't last long in the full game. I have a feeling Capcom was kicking themselves for making her the first boss and her staying dead.

I wonder if that brought down the completion rate, or for replays. By “completion” rate I do mean the game.

 

[Piscian]

I think when I beat persona 3, I'm gonna sit down and try to play Monster Hunter World. It's weird to think it's practically a retro game at this point. It's weird how time flies. Like when I was a kid we were still playing Mario Bros like 5-6 years after it came if not later. Today streamers "I'm gonna go back to the stone age and play Dark Souls II".

I was really hoping I'd finish Persona 3 this weekend, but it had that "this is it!, This is really it, final boss! We swear this is the end of the game!"



Yeah we get it, big twist coming and 20h more hours of gameplay.

Persona 3 takes the anime trope route of introducing a new character to cuddle you up to that it very obviously plans to kill off in a big heartbreaking moment. That said it kinda works. I certainly cared more about this character than Aerith. One of my buddies said he felt like Persona 3 was darker in comparison to the other games. I can empathize, but only on a surface level. More people die in this game, but it's all anime "ur parents are all dead" sad stuff where as in Persona 4&5 there are a lot more squirm in your chair traumatic stuff. Persona 5 is like "Your parents are dead, also they probably didn't love you, kill urself". So maybe Persona 3 is a bit of fresh air in that regard.

I'm still wobbly on the edge of 8/10. Strangely part of it "is" that it's shorter. P5Rs 140h run time was honestly more traumatic than any of it's actual story.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I was really hoping I'd finish Persona 3 this weekend, but it had that "this is it!, This is really it, final boss! We swear this is the end of the game!"

View attachment 10779

Yeah we get it, big twist coming and 20h more hours of gameplay.

Persona 3 takes the anime trope route of introducing a new character to cuddle you up to that it very obviously plans to kill off in a big heartbreaking moment. That said it kinda works. I certainly cared more about this character than Aerith. One of my buddies said he felt like Persona 3 was darker in comparison to the other games. I can empathize, but only on a surface level. More people die in this game, but it's all anime "ur parents are all dead" sad stuff where as in Persona 4&5 there are a lot more squirm in your chair traumatic stuff. Persona 5 is like "Your parents are dead, also they probably didn't love you, kill urself". So maybe Persona 3 is a bit of fresh air in that regard.

I'm still wobbly on the edge of 8/10. Strangely part of it "is" that it's shorter. P5Rs 140h run time was honestly more traumatic than any of it's actual story.

I finished the main game of P3 at 104 hours and didn't play The Answer, so I'd imagine that with that it'd be pretty close to 140 hours.

Have you finished all 264 floors of Tartarus? Because I hope you haven't been slacking off thinking it wasn't mandatory or anything like that. You don't finish the game until you finish Tartarus. It's one heck of a slog if you leave it all for the end. Actually it's one heck of a slog regardless. I don't know, maybe it's been improved in the remake but a save point every 10 floors combined with instant game over enemy attacks really sucked.

 

[Bartholen]

I've played a little bit of Children of Morta, and I'm not sure I like it. It feels like a game of mismatched elements: it's a story-focused roguelike falling somewhere between Diablo and Binding of Isaac gameplay wise. Story-focused roguelikes can be executed well (Hades being the foremost example), but here the story and gameplay design simply do not match. First of all, it takes way too long to start a game for a roguelike. Second, after each run the game has pretty lengthy story cutscenes which get well in the way of getting back into the action. So it takes too long to get started, and too long to get back in the action. Not good for a roguelike.

The presentation is also mismatched. It's presented in a pixel art style, but an incredibly high-fidelity one where if you squint your eyes it can easily pass for hand-drawn 2D bacgkround art. This, and a lot of other things then clash massively with the extremely simple character models which are about 2 pixels short of Commodore 64 territory. This is done presumably for gameplay readability purposes and it works for that, but then it clashes further with the incredibly smooth and lifelike animation and the quite serious story presentation. The game isn't trying to be humorous like Rogue Legacy or cartoonish like Binding of Isaac, it's played very straight. And it's more than a bit hard to take seriously when the characters' faces consist of like 10 pixels.

The little gameplay I've felt with one of like 8 playable characters feels kind of awkward for one simple reason: there's a separate block button. In every significant action roguelike I've played, shield or blocking abilities have pretty much always been passive, or triggered with a special ability. Children of Morta takes a Dark Souls approach where you have to actively block, mind the direction you're blocking in, and blocking stops your stamina regeneration. The problem with this more deliberate, methodical system is that the enemies don't seem to support it as a combat system: they swarm you from all directions quickly and will kill you very fast if you're not careful. There's often no time to take a more cautious approach, but neither is manic dodge rolling viable, because dodging is very limited.

The game feels like it could use either a reduction or an increase in scale: Either bump up the story and make the gameplay a full on Diablo-style dungeon crawler without the roguelike elements. Or scale the story back, increase the pace and emphasize the roguelike. Instead it occupies an awkward middle ground where its story ambitions are too great for its gameplay loop, and its gameplay feels too arcade-y and almost throwaway in comparison with its heavy emphasis on storytelling.

 

[Piscian]

I don't know, maybe it's been improved in the remake but a save point every 10 floors combined with instant game over enemy attacks really sucked.

I think Im at maybe floor 170. Yeah, Ive been cheating the whole time looking up the weaknesses and strategies. I would prefer not to, but the game is really cavalier with instant death stuff, much more so than 4 or 5. The bosses are really cheap and it feels more gotcha, than strategy. Im about 80h in with one quarter left in the main game, but I think a sizeable amount of that is me leaving the game on.

 

[meiam]

Went back to working on my backlog. Just finished Dishonored 2. Just found out there is another Dishonored game after it, had no idea. I'm as torn on this one as I was on the first. Story is utterly forgettable and unimportant. Gameplay is fine... fun at times even. I can see it being really awful for 100% completionists. I was going low chaos, and was still accidentally killing 1 - 4 dudes a level on average. When all outsider powers seem centered on either traversal or killing... non lethal is kind of tough. Don't know if I'm going to bother with Death of the Outsider. Luckily it isn't on the backlog, so that's a question I don't have to answer until I see it for like a buck or something.

Not sure what I'm moving on to next. Nothing on my Steam backlog seems to be calling. But the list of games I claimed free on Epic has some interesting possibilities. I'm thinking either Breathedge or Control.

iirc death of outside is like 1/3 the length of 1 or 2.

Yeah trying to get 100% non lethal can be tedious in the first few level, and involves a lot of restart. But once you unlock some more power it gets much easier and later you can go trough large section without a single restart.

 

[Catfood220]

Well, I was going to talk to you about the demo for Vanillaware's new tactical RPG and tell you how it is gorgeous to look at full of their usual guys and girls in really heavy looking armour. And big breasted magic users who are wearing their pyjamas. The main game is the the tactical RPG bit where you spawn your teams of warriors and send them marching towards the enemy to do battle. The enemy will do the same and then action happens, different units having different strengths and weaknesses again others. For example, an archer is great against a nimble thief while magic users are useful heavily armoured units. At the end of every confrontation, you are either a winner or a loser. If you win, you can continue your march and if you lose, you are stun locked for a set time. You do have a time limit, but that pauses when you are trying to figure out what you're doing and your teams come with a set amount of stamina points before they can't attack anymore, so you can't just rush every stage with your best team without having to rest or visit a base.

The map is broken up into pieces and you unlock these pieces by beating the battles that happen there. Once you've beaten the battle, you can explore the bit of map for collectibles, visit towns or hire units to help you fight.

Needless to say, this game is right up my street, its the sort of thing I wished the last Fire Emblem game was and was gearing up to play this this week.

But then I was browsing the PS store and I saw a game called Balatro and was intrigued. The very next day, I saw a review raving about it. So, I took the plunge and bought it and couldn't stop playing it last night.

So, do you like poker? Do you like rogue-likes? Balatro might be for you.

As you might of guessed, this is a card game where you have to build the best poker hands (pair, straight, flush, etc) you can from the cards you are dealt to score points to beat the level. You don't need to play 5 cards, just the poker hands will score you points. You can buy Jokers that can add multipliers or points if you meet certain conditions and you will need those as you progress through the stages or ante's. Each ante is broken into three blinds. Small, big and boss blinds. The boss blind is you could guess, a "boss" which will do annoying things to stop you winning, like stop certain suits from giving you points or turn cards over so you can't see what you're playing. You can also get other cards which level up your playing cards and add bonuses to them and the multipliers you get for the hands you play. And that's about it really. Oh and when you lose, you lose all your progress and have to start again.

The game is pretty cheap, so if this interests you, then have a look.

 

[Worgen]

Beat Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Wrath: Aeons of Ruin.

Like a Dragon is awesome, characters are fun, combat is over the top, story is interesting. I did have to grind at a few points to deal with difficult bosses, but they added an arena fight thing at that point so I could just do those for a lot of money and experience. There is a lot of story and the game front loads it pretty heavily. I think it takes about 8 hours before your finally let off the leash and feel like you can really do stuff at your own pace... for a bit. But, even with the slow start its fun and Kasuga is a great character to follow.

Wrath: Aeons of Ruin... hrmm, well its a boomer style shooter. Its claim to fame is being made in the quake 2 engine, well, really a modified Quake 2 engine, I forget which source port and I'm too lazy to look it up. As I said before, the enjoyment of the game is really really dependent on the levels, the good levels make the game decent, the bad ones really make it an annoying slog. There are 3 hub areas, each with 5 stages and a boss fight. The final hub's stages are pretty decent, there is one where you will die in stupid ways because of the janky interaction with the terrain, thanks to the Quake 2 engine, it really likes things being flat. All the boss fights are pretty cool, not the best fps boss fights but certainly better then most manage. I'm not sure I would recommend, but I'm not sure I would recommend against either. When its good, its pretty good, when its not, its so tempting to go do something else.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles

gonna be brief, this came out of nowhere it seems. Anyone remember Weeble n Bob interweb animation sketch? Kinda feel like them but if they pivoted super hard to political history through the medium of a surprisingly competent game. Don't take my unreliable word for it of course, would never expect anyone to ;

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles Reviews

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is an oddball of a 3D platforming game with collect-a-thon spin! Become a reckless hero as you do missions, collect items and search for secrets rolling through various (inaccurate) historical events!

www.metacritic.com

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles Reviews

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is rated 'Mighty' after being reviewed by 18 critics, with an overall average score of 84. It's ranked in the top 9% of games and recommended by 72% of critics.

opencritic.com

20 quid ain't bad price either.



outlast trials.

Atmospheric Graphic n performance top tier. Internet dependency bottom tier.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I was stumped in Tunic for the longest time, for the dumbest reason - not realizing a door had opened. I went on a globetrotting quest across the world and completed everything just shy of that extra 1% skill/knowledge I was missing from going through that door in the first place. I'm pretty sure I went through the whole final area while technically being only halfway through the game's script? Explains difficulty ramping up like that.

So the game is obviously a big send-up to Zelda but more specifically has combined two other games to get there: Fez meets Hyper Light Drifter. It has the bubbly, playful personality of Fez with the wordless melancholy of HLD; it borrows the cubist naive playground aesthetic of Fez and the ominous alien geometry and LED-lined monoliths of HLD; both games also play around with limiting your perspective to conceal chests, pathways and crucial information (Fez is a 3D world presented in 2D; HLD is somewhere between top down and isometric).

The narrative is typically obtuse and boils down to collecting everything, or turning everything on (or off), but Tunic at least has its fable-like setting and hero's journey roadmap to fall back on for coziness and context. I'm less impressed by the in-game lore, whatever that may be, and more interested in putting together the pages for the little booklet that looks like a SNES manual. I'm leaning towards games that need a little deduction on my part.

 

[Worgen]

Grabbed The Thaumaturge and finally installed Shadow Warrior 3.

So far the Thaumaturge is really neat. You investigate an area to find clues to peoples motivations and problems then you have a number of options to either convince or mind control or something else to resolve the conflict. Combat is turn based, you unlock new 'cards' as you level your flaws, as far as I can tell, the cards aren't random, they are just a representation of the actions you can do to your enemies, like attack, skill etc. But its possible as I get more abilities they will be somewhat random. It does have issues where the story feels disjointed. Like, I was trying to figure out a situation where a bunch of pissed off lumberjacks were going to burn a woman as a witch, and to be fair, she did kill the village leader with fire, but when I reminded her husband that he loved her, everyone was suddenly like, "now go away and don't come back" and suddenly the scene just ended. It was very weird.

Shadow Warrior 3, movement based fps game, mostly arena fights. Combat is pretty fun and fast, story is, there, Lo Wang is kinda annoying, kinda lovable, will probably end up being much more annoying by the time I finish it. Does seem to have a pacing problem, like the levels are cool looking and colorful, enemies are unique as hell, but it seems like its really in a hurry to get things over with. So far I have only had a few enemy encounters that didn't introduce a new level or enemy to fight and I am rapidly filling up the roster which makes me wonder if I'm already half way through at only an hour in a half in. Well, I suppose we shall see, I did hear the game was pretty short.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm lukewarm on FF7 Rebirth after 15 hours or so, though leaning more toward the 'warm', but not by that much. And the main reason is the open-world. While it's not terrible - there is some decent entertainment value to it - it takes away from what was fun about Remake, which was hanging out with these charming characters in this big steampunk world.

I mean, you're still hanging out with these characters in Rebirth, but the open-world doesn't create many character moments - you're just riding your big birds around to activate towers, find crystals, and fight enemies. And the most you get is combat one-liners. The side quests in Remake weren't great, but seeing as you always had one or two team mates with you there was always going to be something with said team mates talking to you or reacting to something. In Rebirth, with the inclussion of all the recurring open-world busy work and traversal, there's giant chucks of narrative empty space.

Remake was far more concentrated and Rebirth just feels like another open-world game. There's a moment about 7 hours into the game (depended on how much of the side content you finish) where you're funneled into a linear path for a bit, and the game instantly improves in its narrative, pacing and visuals. Though it does feel the need to pad this moment out by switching to the perspective of a different pair of characters for no reason other than more fights.

And the artifacting in this game is kinda nuts, specifically in regards to the foliage.

 

[BrawlMan]

Shadow Warrior 3, movement based fps game, mostly arena fights. Combat is pretty fun and fast, story is, there, Lo Wang is kinda annoying, kinda lovable, will probably end up being much more annoying by the time I finish it. Does seem to have a pacing problem, like the levels are cool looking and colorful, enemies are unique as hell, but it seems like its really in a hurry to get things over with. So far I have only had a few enemy encounters that didn't introduce a new level or enemy to fight and I am rapidly filling up the roster which makes me wonder if I'm already half way through at only an hour in a half in. Well, I suppose we shall see, I did hear the game was pretty short.

Wang is more annoying in SHW2 than in SHW3. They actually dialed him down a bit. Then again, his original self in the OG games are much more obnoxious than the modern versions. Though 2 is the closest he gets to his original incarnation. There are 11 stages total, and the game can be beaten in 5-7 hours depending on difficulty. I know the was somewhat rightfully criticized for being short, but at least it didn't take long for Flying Hog Studios to add in the NG+ update, added in survival mode, and didn't take too long to go on sale. Honestly, 3 is the best in the trilogy as far as I'm concerned, and the problem with SHW2 is the looter shooter aspect doesn't work, and the game drags on too long.

 

[Worgen]

Wang is more annoying in SHW2 than in SHW3. They actually dialed him down a bit. Then again, his original self in the OG games are much more obnoxious than the modern versions. Though 2 is the closest he gets to his original incarnation. There are 11 stages total, and the game can be beaten in 5-7 hours depending on difficulty. I know the was somewhat rightfully criticized for being short, but at least it didn't take long for Flying Hog Studios to add in the NG+ update, added in survival mode, and didn't take too long to go on sale. Honestly, 3 is the best in the trilogy as far as I'm concerned, and the problem with SHW2 is the looter shooter aspect doesn't work, and the game drags on too long.

Maybe, its been so long since I played SW2 that I don't really remember, but in SW3 he kinda won't shutup.

 

[BrawlMan]

Maybe, its been so long since I played SW2 that I don't really remember, but in SW3 he kinda won't shutup.

Somewhat true, about not shutting up, but I found him more funny here than 2. Wang really shines when bounces off of other characters.