What are you currently playing?

[NerfedFalcon]

Zenless Zone Zero is a lot better than I was expecting, even having enjoyed previous games by the same developer. The amount of tech to it even at a basic level is surprisingly high, since the combo system isn't all that lenient; it feels closer to Devil May Cry than to Genshin Impact. Honestly, this is only a good thing: as much as I like Genshin, it's largely fairly basic mechanically outside of the character interactions, while individual characters in Zenless have a lot going on even before you start considering team lineups. The story is also gripping even from the beginning, without as much of a spin-up period as the other games have had. And of course, the graphics and music speak for themselves.

If it wasn't for gacha being a taboo basically everywhere, I'd recommend this to most people. As it is, @BrawlMan I reckon you'll probably go for it/hope you're going for it too.

 

[BrawlMan]

it feels closer to Devil May Cry than to Genshin Impact.

The game is basically DMC and Bayonetta than Genshin. With Billy playing like a better version of Gungrave than the actual Grave from GORE.

If it wasn't for gacha being a taboo basically everywhere, I'd recommend this to most people. As it is, @BrawlMan I reckon you'll probably go for it/hope you're going for it too.

I've been enjoying it a lot @NerfedFalcon. The only thing I dislike about it, are the level mechanics when trying to go beyond level 10 or more. You need specific materials and items, and I find that dumb. BTW, when do I start unlocking more characters? I am 50% in Chapter 1. The Prologue Chapter is pretty long and could've been 3 chapters.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Zenless Zone Zero is a lot better than I was expecting, even having enjoyed previous games by the same developer. The amount of tech to it even at a basic level is surprisingly high, since the combo system isn't all that lenient; it feels closer to Devil May Cry than to Genshin Impact. Honestly, this is only a good thing: as much as I like Genshin, it's largely fairly basic mechanically outside of the character interactions, while individual characters in Zenless have a lot going on even before you start considering team lineups. The story is also gripping even from the beginning, without as much of a spin-up period as the other games have had. And of course, the graphics and music speak for themselves.

If it wasn't for gacha being a taboo basically everywhere, I'd recommend this to most people. As it is, @BrawlMan I reckon you'll probably go for it/hope you're going for it too.

The game does make a really good first impression, I was immediately drawn in by how the parry looks and sounds. That said, what I have heard online about it so far doesn't sound too positive. I'm waiting for an in-depth review from a reviewer I trust before I consider trying it out.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess - Demo
Part tower defense, part hack n slash, part whatever genre those online F2P battle fad games with branching pathways to the other teams' side are called - with colourful chinese mythological art style and enemy designs. Your tower is a dancing woman, you gotta carve a magical path through varying pretzel-like maps, freeing villagers who can then be assigned upgradeable combat/defense/healing/tech roles. Parts of the map can be rebuilt or fixed to reach useful extras but require your armed villagers to stop looking tough for a moment to do the work the protagonist refuses to do themselves. All while a day/night cycle trundles on. Daytime is your safe working look-busy time, nighttime however is spoopy enemy combat time, where your dancing tower lady halts her laughably slow dawdling and magical gates begin their flow of spoopy monsters to murder until the morning happun or, uh, you die I guess? When spoops gone, get the bloody dancing tower girl to haul her glacial ass to the end gate asap so everyone can do a silly dance to wash away the evil or invasive vibe plants. Go to base in-between levels to upgrade villager roles and pet local deer. Throw in a boss or two for good measure.

The demo felt engaging enough, with new enemy types introduced seemingly every new area inside the available levels, their designs and animations somewhat fresh and weird enough to maintain curiosity. One detail I found particularly amusing was instead of using the tired naming conventions for anonymous evil we've seen many times before like "darkness" "corruption" "bile" "grandma's skidded underwear" etc etc, this game just goes with "The S e e t h" - I choice I cannot help but imagine as an eternal army of sexually frustrated 8channers beelining to the last sexy dance tower woman left in the land. Am indeed far too internet poisoned. Oh yeah, this and a few other games have noticed recently started asking what my age is before the main menu boots up, and every time I go with "0" out of spite but they accept it with no further questions, so fuck knows what the bloody point in asking was anyway.

 

[BrawlMan]

chinese mythological

Japanese.

d every time I go with "0" out of spite but they accept it with no further questions, so fuck knows what the bloody point in asking was anyway.

For Capcom's case, it's for their surveys.

​

 

[BrawlMan]

Super Crush KO - A fun single plane brawler that reminds me of Shank, but with DMC/Bayonetta style mechanics. It doubles as a run n' gun too.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I've been enjoying it a lot @NerfedFalcon. The only thing I dislike about it, are the level mechanics when trying to go beyond level 10 or more. You need specific materials and items, and I find that dumb.

I admit this took me a while to get a feel for in Genshin as well. Essentially, that's pretty much the extent of the 'mobile RPG' side of it, well that and the gacha system. Since unlike in the previous games, characters don't have entire features locked behind level cap increases, it isn't as big of a deal. As long as you keep your Attack units first and foremost as close to the new cap as possible each time it's raised, you shouldn't have a problem. The mobile RPG levelling can be a turn-off too, but try to stick with it for a little.

BTW, when do I start unlocking more characters? I am 50% in Chapter 1. The Prologue Chapter is pretty long and could've been 3 chapters.

By now, you should have 'Signal Search' unlocked in the menu. That's the gacha, and it's where you'll get basically all your new characters from. There aren't that many in the game yet, so you might actually be better off waiting a few patches for more to be released, but that's essentially a last resort - if it's that much of a deal-breaker, then (I mean this in the best way) Zenless might not be your thing after all.

Oh yeah, one thing that I forgot to mention last time: Within your first 50 pulls on the 'Stable Channel' generic banner, you'll receive an S-rank unit at random from the list of six generics. That's worth going for as quickly as possible, especially with all the standard-banner pulls you get early on. After that, at 300 standard banner pulls you get to select which one of the six you want to recruit the most and get them on the spot. There are some people who prioritized this in Star Rail, but I still wouldn't recommend forcing it quickly. You'll have enough units to make fireworks fly anyway.

 

[BrawlMan]

By now, you should have 'Signal Search' unlocked in the menu. That's the gacha, and it's where you'll get basically all your new characters from. There aren't that many in the game yet, so you might actually be better off waiting a few patches for more to be released, but that's essentially a last resort - if it's that much of a deal-breaker, then (I mean this in the best way) Zenless might not be your thing after all.

I got Ben twice and the drill guy from construction crew. I am not complaining too much, but I'll try to stick with it for now. I really don't like this method. I rather just have regular character unlocks, or give me a DLC character pack. Thank you for telling me, as I would have not figured that out. I don't see myself sticking around, but I'll try and enjoy the moments.

EDIT: I got Soldier 11 now too.

 

[Piscian]

I finished Far Cry Primal

It was aight. I guess it really was an expansion/DLC. It was probably half or 2/3rds as long and as diverse as a regular Far Cry game. It's hard to really put my finger on why it was a 7/10 which really should have nothing to do with length. I guess I'd say it just wasn't that interesting. I sorta blew my load early on exploring and upgrading the village and after that the game started to feel like a chore without any reward. Some of it was still fun. I enjoyed taking bases and unlocking pets, but for all intents and purposes I unlocked everything in important in the first 1-2/3rds of the game. I think I would have liked to see a 3rd final boss/tribe.

In most Far Cry games there's kind of a big bad that the game builds up to with sub-bosses. In Primal the game introduces one antagonist and then introduces a second and it doesn't matter which order you beat them in. The game ends when its done and thats kinda it. I did appreciate that several NPC had "endings". A lot of the time in Far Cry Games storylines just peter out. Like Cyberpunk when you capture all the cyberphyscosis patients she's just like "cool thanks". I hate that.

For 3-4 characters in Far Cry Primal they actually had an end. Like you don't go talk to them just to get a quest, your last talk is the end of that characters storyline where theres a sense of closure. One character just like "I'm getting too old and burden, gonna live with the animals", another is dying from cancer essentially, and requests assisted suicide which is pretty sad. You don't get that very often with side characters in games.

That said 2 others just don't have endings at all. Its that "oh..you finished my quests...well this is awkward". Maybe thats it. Maybe Far Cry Primal just didn't quite feel 8/10 rewarding. Far Cry Primal is a perfect example of a game thats just "fine".

Ok now it's time I work on the backlog!

...........So anyway I bought Yakuza: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth and I'm starting that.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess - Demo
...

Ooh I played this yesterday too. My feelings were mixed- loved the way it looked, loved the idea of it. The actual gameplay was a bit awkward- everything is context sensitive interactions so I got frustrated trying to communicate actions from my brain to the screen. Like getting my damn villagers to go the spot I wanted was something I never quite figured out. The duration of the monster attacks was pretty long too so I imagine this will be frustrating when you try a strategy then if it's wrong, you gotta battle all this while until failure and trying again. One of the most important things a game can do to draw me in is to make recovery from failure quick and smooth.

I didn't play enough to determine if any of my problems would be solved with playing more and getting the hang of it- I didn't complete the demo because I didn't have time and I just don't feel like continuing demos. It's in my "if on sale someday" mental list.

 

[Bartholen]

I've finally gotten around to Disco Elysium recently, and I gotta say, I get why this game makes such an impression. I'm only a couple of hours in, but it's already incredibly gripping in a completely unique way. Never have I played a game where I start to have a debate about fascism with the character's intestinal system, or hitting on a random woman I'm interviewing for a police investigation. All the dialogue's incredibly sharp, and often hilarious right out of fucking nowhere. It feels like playing through a novel, and I mean that as a compliment. But that's also its biggest flaw so far: it's so incredibly dense with dialogue, worldbuilding and lore that I can't really play it for long stretches before my brain becomes completely overwhelmed. I'm sure I'm only at the very start, but I have a feeling finishing it is going to take a while.

 

[BrawlMan]

@NerfedFalcon and @Piscian, I am quitting ZZZ. I can't get invested in something that doesn't respect the player's time. I am going back to play Super Crush KO.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I am quitting ZZZ.

I figured that'd probably happen.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I caught Hard Reset on sale and to be honest... it's kinda crap, like "throwback to the worst parts of mid-2000s gaming" crap. The enemies are weirdly-shaped and blend in too well with the environments, so it's hard to pick out where they are, and the weapon feedback is so weak that it's hard to tell if you're even hitting an enemy, let alone where. The UI is as ugly as sin and the sound, both music and effects, hardly inspires. (The voice acting is... passable, but it tells a story so uninvolved with everything I'm doing that I feel like I was supposed to have watched the Saturday morning cartoon for context.)

This was from some of the Painkiller guys?

 

[BrawlMan]

I caught Hard Reset on sale and to be honest... it's kinda crap, like "throwback to the worst parts of mid-2000s gaming" crap. The enemies are weirdly-shaped and blend in too well with the environments, so it's hard to pick out where they are, and the weapon feedback is so weak that it's hard to tell if you're even hitting an enemy, let alone where. The UI is as ugly as sin and the sound, both music and effects, hardly inspires. (The voice acting is... passable, but it tells a story so uninvolved with everything I'm doing that I feel like I was supposed to have watched the Saturday morning cartoon for context.)

Which version? Original or Redux? Redux is the better version, and just go for that one. They re-balanced the game, and added in the sword from Shadow Warrior. I personally like the game, but I can see where some people have issues. Still better than Shadow Warrior 1 & 2, and nearly all of the cover shooters from 7th generation or early 8th generation.

This was from some of the Painkiller guys?

Yes. People Can Fly made Painkiller and Bulletstorm. Flying Wild Hog made Shadow Warrior 1-3, Hard Reset, and Evil West. Though most from FWH came from PCF.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Which version? Original or Redux?

Original, apparently. I had no idea Redux was a thing.

 

[Worgen]

I caught Hard Reset on sale and to be honest... it's kinda crap, like "throwback to the worst parts of mid-2000s gaming" crap. The enemies are weirdly-shaped and blend in too well with the environments, so it's hard to pick out where they are, and the weapon feedback is so weak that it's hard to tell if you're even hitting an enemy, let alone where. The UI is as ugly as sin and the sound, both music and effects, hardly inspires. (The voice acting is... passable, but it tells a story so uninvolved with everything I'm doing that I feel like I was supposed to have watched the Saturday morning cartoon for context.)

This was from some of the Painkiller guys?

It worked better before it was expanded. Originally it was just a pretty short fps game. Almost more of a technology showcase kinda thing, but they expanded it and... well, I never beat the expanded one.

 

[BrawlMan]

I never beat the expanded one.

If you're referring to Redux, I beat twice.

 

[Worgen]

If you're referring to Redux, I beat twice.

I just have the extended edition, it was updated from the original.

 

[BrawlMan]

I just have the extended edition, it was updated from the original.

I forgot about that. I've only played Redux on PS4.