What are you currently playing?

[Bartholen]

I think the problem I have and reason I skipped XVI is that Square seems like they've long "lost the plot" pun intended, on final fantasy story telling. I'm all for an interactive movie game. Gimme an interactive Yakuza movie with minigames and QTE, but at least that would have a cohesive plot you can follow.

It's honestly kind of confusing on how Square seems to insist on reinventing the wheel for every major entry in the series: gambit system in XII, the paradigm system in XIII, the rough-draft, pseudo-real time combat of XV and VII Remake, and finally XVI's full action combat that feels like 20 years behind the times. All the while games like Baldur's Gate 3 and the Octopath Traveler games show that turn-based combat absolutely still has a market, and Square already had a damn good system with X.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Bulwark: Falconer Chronicles
Chill building sim (chuilding?) based in The Falconeer universe, where is like waterwolrd but the water looks way more pissed off. Less falcons, more bridges. Apparently a one person dev project, though could've sworn I saw like 3 names in the opening credits.

Am currently building my peoples towards Smelly Logfloater.

 

[Worgen]

Started playing Atomic Heart. Its USSR bioshock. The world it takes place in is interesting, but so far its also pretty "yay USSR," not sure if it will have the usual "Everything fucked up because of the system" or not. Either way, graphics are good, gameplay is decent, its got a nice feeling to the exploration, the respawning repair bots can eat a bag of dicks. Quite curious to see where it goes.

 

[meiam]

Started playing Atomic Heart. Its USSR bioshock. The world it takes place in is interesting, but so far its also pretty "yay USSR," not sure if it will have the usual "Everything fucked up because of the system" or not. Either way, graphics are good, gameplay is decent, its got a nice feeling to the exploration, the respawning repair bots can eat a bag of dicks. Quite curious to see where it goes.

its on sale atm so I'm looking at it since I like immersive sim, but iirc the review for it were pretty middling.

 

[Gordon_4]

It's honestly kind of confusing on how Square seems to insist on reinventing the wheel for every major entry in the series

Because I imagine if they didn’t then they’d get blasted for having stagnant game design/gameplay.

Now I’m not saying that would be fair or right, but I consider that to be a likely reason. Or they’re genuine lunatics.

 

[BrawlMan]

RE5 Desperate Escape - It's fine and can be completed in about 30-45 minutes, but I am never coming back to it. The game just throws tons of enemies at you in the cheapest way possible. I only died once though.

Playing The Lost In Nightmares Scenario, now. It is so much better and a nice throwback chapter to the RE1.

EDIT: Just finished. It's so much better than DE. It doesn't overstay it's welcome either. It can be completed in about 35-55 minutes on your first run.

 

[Worgen]

its on sale atm so I'm looking at it since I like immersive sim, but iirc the review for it were pretty middling.

Id say its pretty decent. Probably worth the sales price. If you want another bioshock with more interesting art design and less interesting plasmids then it works. Just be warned that your main character talks a lot and hes an ass.

 

[Silvanus]

Finally got the Platinum for Baldur's Gate 3. I wasn't sure going in that it would be for me, but after 200 hours I can see why it won GOTY.

3 playthroughs: First Balanced/medium difficulty (Wizard custom char), then Tactician/hard difficulty (Bard Dark Urge), and finally Explorer/easy (Paladin) for trophy cleanup and to do some side quests I'd missed on the others (like Minsc).

Afterwards I finished off a few games I'd started but stalled: Spyro 2 (in Reignited), Fran Bow (a horror puzzle point-and-click), and Quake (the original).

Next to finish Metroid Prime Remastered. I'm about 80% of the way through. And the most recent Guild Wars 2 chapter.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Finished Halo Reach. It's... basically fine. Several parts are kinda frustrating, though maybe it was just my experience of them, like getting crashed into by an allied fighter in the fighter jet section, insta-killing me and forcing me to start over because there aren't that many checkpoints. Final couple of missions were pretty cool. Game feels pretty good to play but I still think Halo 3 was a better overall package.

Would've moved on to Titanfall 2 but Origin doesn't want to install the game, so I'll have to think of something else.

 

[CaitSeith]

So I started playing Final Fantasy XVI, and my thoughts frequently went "wow! Somebody at Square-Enix really liked Game of Thrones" during cutscenes. The violence and gore are a notch more graphic than the usual during the dramatic moments for the series (just compare the scenes when someone dear to the character gets murdered right front them against that same thing happening in Final Fantasy VII INTERMission: the later has droplets of blood strike the character's face when their dear one gets stabbed, and they still have enough time for a sad dramatic goodbye; while in the former half the character's face gets coated on their dear one's blood as they were slain in one swift bloody strike). Also the adult characters are a bit more explicit in showing their affection (or lack of it) in their relationships when in private (because Game of Thrones didn't shy from sex)

This makes me wonder, has any previous Final Fantasy game been this edgy? They have been dark, sure. Granted, FFVII was the edgier of the bunch back when it first released (specially when it came to the villains). Still, the vibes I get from FFXVI start makes my first impressions to be "this is the Shadow the Hedgehog of the Final Fantasy series, isn't it?"

 

[Bartholen]

Working through Lies of P, and I'm very impressed. This is probably the best non-fromsoft Soulslike I've played. It's really polished, the writing's good, looks great, the combat's really good, and it's got some minor quality of life improvements that should IMO be standard for the genre. Like being able to restore one charge of the healing item, incentivizing the player to keep pushing forward even when healing's out. Or how it shows how many souls you've left lying around after death.

It has its faults though. It feels like a Demon's Souls: coming out of the gate swinging, but marred by some obvious flaws, and not yet living up to its full potential. Like Demon's Souls, it's very linear compared to the Soulsborne games, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to go back to previous areas, and there's not a lot of clever looping level design. It's also obviously much smaller than its bigger contemporaries, the level spaces and exploration are pretty limited. I'm only a few hours in though, so hopefully that changes. I really hope this gets sequel or a spiritual successor like Demon's Souls did, because the systems in place are already incredibly polished. All it needs is that bigger scale and more ambitious level and world design to truly take it to the greatness it's grasping at.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Working through Lies of P, and I'm very impressed. This is probably the best non-fromsoft Soulslike I've played. It's really polished, the writing's good, looks great, the combat's really good, and it's got some minor quality of life improvements that should IMO be standard for the genre. Like being able to restore one charge of the healing item, incentivizing the player to keep pushing forward even when healing's out. Or how it shows how many souls you've left lying around after death.

It has its faults though. It feels like a Demon's Souls: coming out of the gate swinging, but marred by some obvious flaws, and not yet living up to its full potential. Like Demon's Souls, it's very linear compared to the Soulsborne games, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to go back to previous areas, and there's not a lot of clever looping level design. It's also obviously much smaller than its bigger contemporaries, the level spaces and exploration are pretty limited. I'm only a few hours in though, so hopefully that changes. I really hope this gets sequel or a spiritual successor like Demon's Souls did, because the systems in place are already incredibly polished. All it needs is that bigger scale and more ambitious level and world design to truly take it to the greatness it's grasping at.

How’s the parry system feel so far? That seems to be one of the bigger complaints regarding combat, where some boss fights are attrition-based affairs only for them to one shot you near the end if you mis-time a mandatory parry. I want to try it someday but stuff like that puts me off a bit.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Playing more of Total Warhammer 3 Kislev on immortal empires.

I had a bit of trouble dealing with Chaos on a battlefield level early game as outside of a couple of legendary heroes Kislev only really have the Boyars as a decent melee character and Chaos is overflowing with chonky armoured heroes and lords that can run in and wreck your lines in a hero ball of doom.

I tend to go Boyar, Tempest Ice Maiden, Patriarch, 4 cav (gryphon legion usually) 2 Little Grom artillery, 4 Tsar guard with shields. 4 Ice guard with glaives and 3 with swords.

In general I 'm liking various quality of life and UI improvements although there's a couple of annoying minor bugs on menu screens not had any problems on the main campaign map or battlefield. There's something slightly off about the look of it compared to 2, not wrong exactly but something about the visual design I don't like as much. And it's probably that I've spent so long playing the previous installments that I just don't take it in, but I certainly don't feel as "there" when playing. It kind of flies by withouy really sticking. Just like life really.

 

[Kyrian007]

Gotten a little sidetracked from my day to day on My Time at Sandrock and going through my backlog. Finished Dishonored 2 (ehh, its fine) working on Breathedge (also fine, just get bored with it awful quickly.) But I've gotten sidetracked going back to Fallout: New Vegas. Didn't have a specific build in mind like I usually do. Melee plus demolitionist is usually pretty fun. But mainly I fired it up because in a couple of weeks I picked up a quick side hustle/vacation opportunity delivering a car. And my route can take me on highway 15 right through the setting of New Vegas. I've got an overnight halt in Primm, I'm going a little out of my way to take some pictures in Goodsprings. NV is one of my friend's favorite game. Gonna surprise him with a picture outside the Goodsprings General Store. Should be a fun little trip.

 

[Dalisclock]

Started playing Atomic Heart. Its USSR bioshock. The world it takes place in is interesting, but so far its also pretty "yay USSR," not sure if it will have the usual "Everything fucked up because of the system" or not. Either way, graphics are good, gameplay is decent, its got a nice feeling to the exploration, the respawning repair bots can eat a bag of dicks. Quite curious to see where it goes.

I didn't play it. I watched some of the gameplay and cutscenes. Only thing I remember is the sexy robots honestly.

I don't feel like I missed anything.

 

[Worgen]

I didn't play it. I watched some of the gameplay and cutscenes. Only thing I remember is the sexy robots honestly.

I don't feel like I missed anything.

It plays pretty well and exploration is fun. Plus its really hard to tell which way its going to go. But, its also the closest thing to propaganda I have ever played. I've had multiple instances of characters outright say how great it is living in the USSR, which is just weird. I mean the plot does kinda look like it might go the direction of the system having issues and not just people, but its too early to tell if that will be a thing or not. It really is USSR fanfic.

 

[beazy]

I’m trying to finish up RE4, then going to jump to Cyberpunk and its expansion.

Kind of itching for a Souls game too, but I’m not going back to Elden Ring until the expansion. Might finally jump into Nioh 2.

 

[meiam]

It plays pretty well and exploration is fun. Plus its really hard to tell which way its going to go. But, its also the closest thing to propaganda I have ever played. I've had multiple instances of characters outright say how great it is living in the USSR, which is just weird. I mean the plot does kinda look like it might go the direction of the system having issues and not just people, but its too early to tell if that will be a thing or not. It really is USSR fanfic.

Isn't it just going the wink wink route like starship trooper though?

 

[Worgen]

Isn't it just going the wink wink route like starship trooper though?

So far, no not really, seems pretty straight faced.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Atomic Heart is trying to be another bioshock, vaguely anti-USSR - but fails because while bioshock puts the political ideology front and centre so you see n hear how the mechanisms naturally fall towards self destruction, AH doesn't care or understand much about anything beyond the basic aesthetic value. no commentary or critique of ideology or political groups in any generous interpretation of the words, is just a load of vaguey vibes chasing a better game's slipstream hoping noone will realise it has absolutely nothing to say. plus the downfall of the society has nothing to do with these concepts neither, which am sure even yahtzee pointed out in his vid too if am remembering correctly. one of the few times I can agree with him I spose.


Graphics are pretty though.



-~-

Wait, almost forgot!

The Curious Case of Benedict Fox (definitely an edition)
Metroidvania, lovecraftian, WW2, even part fckin Psychonauts, with own Darkness-esque monster friend who's a couple of drinks short of saying "Jaaaaackiieeeee, come hereee Jackie, another beeeeeer jackieee!"
Is mostly great, hooked, though performance often a little juddery with loading or whatever else it's doing, not quite the definitive version just yet I suspect.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox, sorry. Lol.

am really crap words today, trailer have make clear for you