What are you currently playing?

[Worgen]

Grabbed Dread Templar since it was on sale and I am apparently a game nomad at the moment. Its better then I expected. I played an early demo of it awhile ago and it was pretty meh, but the release at this point is pretty good, gun play feels decent, enemies are good, music and sounds are fine, levels are quite good with some cool secrets. I do wish enemies did more then ragdoll on death since that is one of my pet peeves, especially with retro style games.

Still working on Anomaly Collapse also, the new characters I've unlocked are fun and the progression with new character abilities and passives you get are nice. Still haven't had a successful run though, mainly cause I have kept trying to do fights that I should avoid since I know they are really strong cause they have killed me before. But gonna keep at it, its a fun game to just do a run through every now and then and its got a really cool take on turn based combat that other games could learn from.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Finished a quest in Runescape just now that everyone I know (and a lot of people I don't) told me was easy. Well, it's probably easy if you have much higher levels and better gear than mine, because for me it was an exhausting slog. You can refight the quest bosses for some fun loot, apparently, but I really don't want to do it, at least not without a way better setup first.

Also got through Doom Hunter Base in Doom Eternal, that was pretty fun. I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of it; even on Ultra-Violence difficulty I died a lot less on that level than Cultist Base just before it. The Doom Hunter boss fight was also very enjoyable, which is interesting because most FPS bosses aren't very good, and Doom 4 suffered from that a lot.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I am considering just playing the Arkham games again after two disappointing Arkham-esque games in a row. I never actually got to play Arkham Asylum, so it might finally be the time.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I have recently reached 300+ cumulative hours in Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[BrawlMan]

I have recently reached 300+ cumulative hours in Baldur's Gate 3.

View attachment 11026

How do you like it? How do you feel? You got 300+ hours, but at what cost?

I got 760+ hours in Streets of Rage 4.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

I have recently reached 300+ cumulative hours in Baldur's Gate 3.

View attachment 11026

 

[Casual Shinji]

How do you like it? How do you feel? You got 300+ hours, but at what cost?

I got 760+ hours in Streets of Rage 4.

Now I feel worse... or maybe better.

Many bears laid down their lives.

 

[BrawlMan]

Now I feel worse... or maybe better.

​

 

[Dreiko]

Eiyuuden early access has finally begun! Major hype. It took em nearly 4 years but finally the spiritual successor to suikoden is out.

 

[Worgen]

Eiyuuden early access has finally begun! Major hype. It took em nearly 4 years but finally the spiritual successor to suikoden is out.

My body is ready for the release.

 

[BrawlMan]

Final Fight One: Arcade Edition - A GBA rom hack where the colors are restored to look more like arcade version, the proper music is placed back into stage 4, the second bonus stage is in the correct order now coming after stage 4, and putting back in Poison and Roxy, thus playing closer to the Japanese version, but having the American version's Very Hard, instead of the Japanese Super Hard. There goes another reason for me not pop in my GBA cart of this game ever again. The hacked version is the best version of it now, and I can play it on my Miyoo Mini.

 

[Bedinsis]

I started playing Higurashi: when they cry. It starts off as a boilerplate anime slice-of-life story, which I found uninteresting, but something just happened that I suspect the overarching plot will be about which sounds promising.

 

[Worgen]

I started playing Higurashi: when they cry. It starts off as a boilerplate anime slice-of-life story, which I found uninteresting, but something just happened that I suspect the overarching plot will be about which sounds promising.

Wait, you haven't seen the anime and your playing the game...? Uhh, don't look anything up, just keep going.

 

[BrawlMan]

I decided to play Final Fight 2: Readjusted again. This time as Maki on Hard mode. I only used one continue this time. I am not touching Expert mode. I beat the game on Normal and Hard, so that's enough. I am not going through all that again to look at one extra ending screen.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Dying light 2 snuck another dlc story expansion out while was distracted by [REDACTED]~•°"DO∆NOTπWATCH§THE¶°•~[REDACTED]e" so thought to catch up cos the setting of a hippie commie music festival gone wrong was too much temptation for my meek n feeble mind. Had a chuckle at the first new zombie type of a country singer welding their own intestines as a cowboy whip lol - innovation in zombie design is rare enough to be worth celebrating wherever they thrive.

uh no ffs not again, it's Dead Island 2, not Dying Light 2, always getting tripped up by this tweedle dum and tweedle dee of the videogame world!

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

^ Aye, just realized this was the wrong thread for that. If there’s a mod around feel free to move to the videos thread.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth.

I liked it, while it is basically "just" a Castlevania clone it has one particular mechanic that made it interesting in its own way.

You get Wind and Fire magic early on. You can switch between them, one is always active. You level up magic by landing hits (up to 3 levels), but it levels down whenever you get hit. When you reach level 3 with an active magic, you regen HP constantly. So if you're like me you'll always attack while the lowest level magic is active, then switch over to level 3 during brief respites to get your health back, then switch back whenever you're about to jump back in or get hit.

This becomes complicated with the introduction of enemies that only take damage when a specific magic is active, and AoE attacks you can nullify with the correct active magic, and barriers you can cross depending on what you have active, etc. But never to the point of where it becomes frustrating. It simply becomes a game of switching gears and trading off advantages.

The other thing I would note, as short as the game can be, is that it's excellently paced and keeps throwing new things your way to keep you engaged. Different kinds of hurdles, abilities, enemies, bosses, whatever. You're always a few rooms from something new. The pacing never really wavers. Although I did find the story beats got old and repetitive pretty fast.

The ending accounts for the fever dream narrative but I'm not convinced it was worth it.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I know I've said I was done with Dragon's Dogma 2, but I've decided to just pus through it, and even got he true ending. Took me just around 57.5 hours.

Overall, while the game has so much jankiness, I am glad I got a chance to experince this game. It is such an unique game in the fantasy RPG genre, both in terms of lore and gameplay. BUUUTTT I don't think I'll be coming back for a good while for several reasons.

While the world is unique, I feel the game is purposely designed to slow you down. And I am not talking about the game not having dedicated fast-travel; Those I can get by. However, there are many things working against you to keep hammering away at this game. Health Gauge loss, while interesting, forces you to rest at inn, camp, or your private residence. Granted this is probably more "realistic", but problem is the gauge loss can happen in an instant if you get surrounded or rag-dolled. Oxcart travels are nice, but I found the raids to happen way too often, with each raids destroying the oxcart. So now you gotta either walk to the city you were heading to or use one of your precious ferrystones.

The side quest varieties are nice, but the game doesn't;t tell you some of them are related, on top of being time-sensitive. I was doing a quest to help a young man not do anything stupid by challenging a dangerous bandit captain. Turns out I can offer him a honest job, but to do that I gotta go complete some other side quests first. So I complete those first, came back to look for him, out to find out he did attacked the bandit and they killed each other. IT was super confusing and I had to look it up on internet just to learn of its time sensitivity.

Also there are multiple endings to the game, but to reach the true ending you need to do something that is a tad bit obscured. I mean the game does throw a hint at you, but you wouldn't know it. Once you do the need, you end up in the near-apacolyptic world, and you have in-game 7 days to do the last bit of main quests and reach the true ending. I mean the world in such state is cool and some areas open up to explore, but with the time limit you likely won't have time to fuck around. I had to rush it to the end.

The story I feel is the weakest part of this game; They use many terminologies that sounds important, but ultimately don't mount to anything.

They do have new game +, but I think I'm good.

Now I'm moving on to No Rest For The Wicked. Need to play more to give my thoughts on it

 

[Xprimentyl]

I think it was @Chimpzy who recommended Planet of Lana to me a while back because of my love of Playdead's INSIDE, but it wasn't available on Xbox at the time. It finally made it to Game Pass, so I started playing it. Right of the bat, strong INSIDE vibes. Though a bit more colorful and whimsical so far, it definitely feels like an INSIDE wannabe, and for me that's a good thing. My expectations are tempered, but I am hopeful. Anything to distract from my looming failure in Elden Ring for a bit; next boss is Maliketh, and from the videos I've watched, I don't see myself beating him any time soon...

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

I think it was @Chimpzy who recommended Planet of Lana to me a while back because of my love of Playdead's INSIDE, but it wasn't available on Xbox at the time. It finally made it to Game Pass, so I started playing it. Right of the bat, strong INSIDE vibes. Though a bit more colorful and whimsical so far, it definitely feels like an INSIDE wannabe, and for me that's a good thing. My expectations are tempered, but I am hopeful. Anything to distract from my looming failure in Elden Ring for a bit; next boss is Maliketh, and from the videos I've watched, I don't see myself beating him any time soon...

Did you get to try Somerville by some ppl from same dev studio? Kinda reminds more of that on the overall premise side of things. Or like they mashed both the games together with a double dose of pleasing graphics. Am overly fond of the genre, whatever it's called. Seen some use the term "cinematic platformer" for genre, seems fine enough. Might benefit from less syllables if they hoping to popularise it with the masses though.