What are you currently playing?

[Old_Hunter_77]

I started up Mass Effect Legendary Edition again, because I've only played through the whole trilogy once years ago and it was on the old versions. This time I picked the Biotic class (already forgot what its actual name was) because I've never played with it. And... ehhhhh, I'm kind of having second thoughts about playing through ME1 again. I never understood all the hype about it even when I originally played it around ´09. Maybe because I didn't have much experience with western style RPGs at the time I failed to grasp the true scope of its innovations, but to me it always felt very awkward and clunky. Not just on a mechanical and storytelling, but even on a technical level: the sound mixing is straight up ass even in the legendary edition. Ambient sound effects right down to the characters' footsteps are incredibly quiet and lacking, making even the Citadel feel small and sleepy. And this is with the sound effects and music turned up way more than the dialogue.

The storytelling always felt like it expected me to take a huge amount of information for granted at the beginning. We see Saren for all of like 1 minute of screentime, and then we're told he's the biggest threat to the galaxy. It's very "tell, don't show" storytelling, where we barely get time to even settle into the setting, and then we're already expected to take Saren for Darth Vader when we barely know what Turians are. The Bioware style cutscenes look hopelessly quaint, but I can hardly fault it for that. The dialogue system was undoubtedly revolutionary for its time, but IMO it always hurt the setting that Shepard is supposed to be a super elite, acclaimed soldier, but all the Renegade dialogue options have them acting like a needlessly abrasive, short-sighted prick. All in all time has not been kind to the beginning bit of this game. I can't help but think of Yahtzee's recent review of KOTOR 1, where he points out that over time trying to judge games by the standards of their time becomes basically impossible, because we've grown used to improvements since then. It's very hard to feel immersed in the setting in a post-Cyberpunk 2077 world when Mass Effect's way of feeding you information is to have every character be ready to burst into long-winded exposition, a lot of which I feel is information Shepard should already know.

Eh, I'll keep playing, ME1 is a surprisingly short game anyway, it's not like I'm committing to Divinity OS 2 here.

I played the trilogy well after it was done and I only had trouble getting into it at first, mostly because of all the shooting and I find that kind of gameplay hard and annoying. But I was into the graphics, story, characters, setting and everything right away- real space opera stuff, my jam. I restarted as a Vanguard and being able to just punch everything made the game fun too and I loved the whole trilogy.

Sometimes I get the desire to replay it but I was so happy with all the choices I made in the game and the Vanguard playstyle that I don't trust myself to do anything different (except maybe the "romance," the least important part of any such game anyway) so then I don't replay it. But perhaps someday...

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Playing Vernal Edge, which to my mind starts you off with a wealth of perks and abilities for a Metroidvania. I feel like I'm controlling a character who's already like 50% of the way there.

It's a very combat-oriented Metroidvania, prone to locking you in rooms and spawning waves of enemies. The focus of the combat is juggling them and building up a combo, which means that everything has to be a damage sponge. The twist is that you can get your health back by building up a combo, marking an enemy with a button and then performing a lunge attack at them. It's a nice reward for fighting "well".

Conversely a lot of the other mechanics feel worthless. You're simply too fast and powerful to bother with anything that might break the flow, like parrying (which doesn't work while moving) or using spells. You're Yoda at the end of Attack of the Clones, jumping and dashing around the screen. In fact the movement alone is so freeing that the game doesn't really have good platforming challenges to match it (at least so far). Despite the setting being a series of floating islands you mostly run down halls either dashing past or blocking projectiles.

The story has the Timespinner problem of everybody sharing the same "voice" and talking like a petulant teenager, regardless of whether they're one or not. It also has the same premise as Timespinner: girl warrior looking to kill her dad. Where the protagonist of Timespinner (Luna? Lunail? Lunais? Soleil?) behaved heroically, mostly, Vernal starts every sentence with an ugh and her character portrait is always rolling her eyes, insistently treating friends and enemies like crap. So the best I can say for the story's sporadic interruptions is that there very easy to tune out.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I'm gonna give the "Score Attack" mode in Bastion a go. I don't normally do NG+ or hard modes or whatever but Bastion was pretty sure and I don't have the mental bandwith to learn a whole new game and I did like this one so why not. This mode less a normal NG+ (which the game also has) but it adds some score multiplier counter thing and there is an achievement to get a million points with it so I figured I'd use this mode on the small chance I go for the full 100%. I probably won't as I save that only for easy games on Playstation (I'm playing this on my laptop via Steam) but I'll go as far as I can/feel.

 

[Worgen]

Finished episode 3 of Supplice. It does get kinda slaughter mappy but it keeps you decently supplied (mostly) so you always have what you need to progress and the story just gets more and more interesting, which is really unexpected for a game made in GZdoom with Doom as its gameplay inspiration. Anyway, there are still 3 more episodes planned, highly recommend for anyone who enjoys FPS games, especially those in the style of classic Doom games.

 

[BrawlMan]

I unlocked a few more trophies for GG GORE I am almost at 100%. I have to complete the game on Easy Mode. I do hate it when Difficulty Trophies/Achievements don't stack. Beating on Normal or Hard, should unlock the achievements for easier difficulties and I don't know why certain developers stopped doing this.

 

[Silvanus]

Second playthrough of Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, a very pretty metroidvania that combines Ori-style traversal and Hollow Knight-style combat/skills/charms. Styled around Shinto mythology.

Trophies require a no-healing and no-deaths run. Doing a bit of save-scumming to make it.

This just makes me sadder (and angrier) about Humble Games being "restructured" (read: essentially shut down with massive layoffs). This was their last project, and the devs have said they've lost post-launch support as a result as well. Fuck IGN and Humble Bundle for doing that.

 

[BrawlMan]

Fuck IGN

What did those fuckwads do?

 

[Worgen]

What did those fuckwads do?

IGN bought humble bundle awhile ago, so the restructuring/layoffs are their fault.

 

[Silvanus]

What did those fuckwads do?

Humble Bundle is a subsidiary of IGN entertainment.

 

[BrawlMan]

Humble Bundle is a subsidiary of IGN entertainment.

I did not know that. Some how I hate them even more now, and they contribute even more to the worst parts of gaming!

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I unlocked a few more trophies for GG GORE I am almost at 100%. I have to complete the game on Easy Mode. I do hate it when Difficulty Trophies/Achievements don't stack. Beating on Normal or Hard, should unlock the achievements for easier difficulties and I don't know why certain developers stopped doing this.

*nods*
I didn't even realize there were games that didn't stack difficulty achievements. But then of course the only game I can think of where I did get difficulty related achievements was Witcher 3, which is actually a very easy game even on the hardest mode.

Speaking of which, I burned through my second play-through of Bastion in two days. I made the mistake of not using any "idols" which are difficulty adding modifiers so that by the time I got to the point of no return at the end game, I would have had to grind like crazy to level up enough to even have a chance at dealing with the games' most difficult challenges, so I just went ahead, beat the game with the alternate ending, and packed it in.

Now I'm onto Transistor, because that was my first and still favorite Supergiant game. I'm on a different account from when I played it many years ago so if I want all/most achievements I'll have to do a NG+- we'll see, for now I'm just enjoying the mood and vibe and intuitive gameplay and art which is what I like about Supergiant anyway.

 

[Piscian]

Ugh Like a dragon infinite wealth has a pokemon training and tournament mechanic, there goes the rest of 2024.

 

[Worgen]

Was in the mood for more GZDoom goodness so I grabbed Relentless Frontier which just came out in early access. It is quite different from Supplice. Its a movement based shooter, you have double jump and dash. So far its quite cool, not a huge array of enemies but they are very well animated and have more frames then what I'm used too in a gzdoom game, like it has death animations that work from different directions and if you circle an enemy corpse it will be shown from different angles, rather than just facing you. Weapons are also interesting, your pistol is really a hand cannon despite its kinda weak sound, the shotty is great for shreading armor of armored enemies, the assualt rifle is a pin point accurate bullet hose that tears up little guys like nothing else and your melee is powerful but also gives you omni gel on a kill, which you can turn into health, armor or ammo. The music is fine, nothing that has blown me away like Hedon or Supplice, but its not bad. Weapons as said before, sound a bit weak but otherwise sound is well done. Levels are huge and spawling and are somewhat non-linier, like, they are one level to another, but you can usually go back and look for additional secrets if you find a new movement ability or something that you can use to destroy barriers. There are also weapon upgrades you can find, they can really change how you use a gun or melee also.

So yeah, pretty cool. In terms of GZdoom games I would say Hedon is better, but this is certainly top 5.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Transistor playthrough done. As with Bastion, I hit a point where going for all achievements proved too daunting. In this case, there are these "tests" that are like challenge trials and one of them is just to survive waves of attacks. It's actually a clever setup where you choose from a random set of abilities but as the tests get harder they get longer, more waves, and when you die you gotta start over. Which actually turns this lovely linear game into a sort of roguelike. Which means- Transistor was many years ahead of the current trend to add a roguelike mode to a non-roguelike game.

But I don't like that stuff so *fart noise*
The idea behind the combat abilities is really genius though- you get all these abilities which you can slot into "active" (press button to use it), "upgrade" (modifies an active), and "passive" (just a separate buff). So it allows vast customization but doesn't change the core action of running around and smashing things. This with the music and art and character design is why it's still my favorite Supergiant.

Since I burned through Bastion and Transistor so quickly I'm a little burnt out so I may break from gaming for a week or so, by which time I'll be moved into my new place and will have access to my PS5 again which of course means Elden Ring DLC. But I'm also kind of.. not looking forward to going back to that? Ugh... so hard and annoying. I also see Elder Lillies is on PS+ and that is exactly the kind of game that for me is like "sure I'd check it out if it was cheap" so maybe that.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Got around to finishing Metroid Dread finally. I loved it, and I'd recommend it to basically anyone with a Switch who likes 2D platformers. It's really well put together, and despite the story being incomprehensible to people who don't know the series' lore, I still think it'd win over newcomers on the gameplay at least.

God of War 4's been pushed back a little bit on my list due to a planned move to a new house; since I've heard we won't have low-latency Internet connection for a little while once we move in, that's when I'm gonna try and knock over the giant single-player adventure. In the meantime, I don't know what I'll pick up. Maybe I'll just stick to making as much progress as I can in Runescape while I can.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

God of War 4's been pushed back a little bit on my list due to a planned move to a new house; since I've heard we won't have low-latency Internet connection for a little while once we move in, that's when I'm gonna try and knock over the giant single-player adventure. In the meantime, I don't know what I'll pick up. Maybe I'll just stick to making as much progress as I can in Runescape while I can.

Hopefully you already have the latest update installed. Otherwise joke’s on you!

 

[meiam]

Played some more of atomic heart. It's a really uneven game, graphic and environment are top notch but gameplay is repetitive and writing is pretty bad. The main problem with the writing is that there's just too much of it, conversation drag on about nothing interesting, the main character and his glove AI teamate are just shooting the breeze the entire time, but its not interesting. A lot of it is just them justifying some of the video game logic, like why you always need to find key to progress, they usually give some sort of internal logic for it, except it rarely make much sense and doesn't really justify how often you're just collecting keys. Most of the gate that require key are really convoluted, one require you to find a bunch of canister to power a tree so it can power the gate to open, not very exciting and really feel gamey. This is also made worse by the protagonist always complaining about having to collect key, breaking the fourth wall doesn't make it better, it just make it even more tedious, clearly the dev realize this problem but didn't really do anything to liven it up.

Story is pretty non sense, you explore a lab complex where everyone was massacred by robot a couple days ago, but apparently no one outside the complex know about this? Thousands died and no one bothered to call? No delivery driver showed up? Its also really similar to bioshock rapture, but I'm not sure how self aware it is. Bioshock is very clearly a critique of a specific worldview, learning about the world is learning about its failure. But here the story might actually be all in on communism, maybe? The major crisis that happen in the game seems to stem solely from some sort of power struggle between the government and the leader of the lab complex. You could say that this represent the failing of the communism concentrating power in a few hands. But there's not really anything to support that. And you have some odd conversation, like at some point the main character talk about how proud he is to be a soviet citizen, and the glove add that yes its amazing how much the soviet accomplished. Maybe that's meant to be taken sarcastically, like "the soviet promised all thats in the game but never delivered that" but I'm not sure. There's another conversation where some soviet leader boast about how there mole in the CIA is telling them that the american can't figure out soviet technology, and there's really no other point to that. They also retcon it so that the soviet chief scientist is the one who made the atomic bomb (although it seems to imply that the american are still the one who used it first).

Gameplay also never rise above very simplified version of an immersive sim, stealth is almost non existent and there's rarely many way to get trough area, its pretty linear most of the game. Except during the open world segment, but those are pretty awful because enemy constantly resurrect and summon more enemy, so exploring is very tedious since your never safe. Most enemy also just charge and attack you, which gets boring but also has a nasty habit of often pinning you in the wall texture, forcing you to fight immobilized.

I dunno if I'll keep playing at this point, I'm still enjoying myself, but I essentially grabbed every weapon and power I want at this point, so the gameplay will be really static from here on out. Might just do another playtrough of prey instead...

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Hopefully you already have the latest update installed. Otherwise joke’s on you!

I'll still have access to the Internet, and not even with that small a bandwidth, from what I've been told. I just won't be able to do things that require low latency like online multiplayer games, including MMORPGs.

 

[BrawlMan]

Might just do another playtrough of prey instead...

Or just go through BioShock or Dead Space/Remake & 2 again. System Shock Remake as well, assuming you played it before or it's your first time.

I don't know what I am playing at the moment. I'll probably get back to playing some games on Steam I have not finished yet.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finally finished Persona 5 Royale. 157 hours. Wow, what an enormous game. What's even more impressive is that I didn't really get sick of it. Spoilers to follow. The final chapter ended up being better than my first impressions, I'm still not in love with it and think the game would have ended better if it just cut after killing the evil god, but whatever. Overall it was just really good.

The combat was passable, it's a traditional turn based JRPG barely any different from Persona 4 and 3 before it. I've cooled a lot on this style of combat over the years, it just has a lot of problems. You can work really hard and strategize over move sets and stats and craft the perfect personas... and trivialize combat. Or you can muddle along with sub-optimal builds until you run into a boss that hard counters you and you need to reorganize. You can turn the difficulty up to add some additional challenge, but then you increase the risk of dying to bad luck especially since the game is still over once the protagonist dies (at least enemies casting hama are less frequent). No options available are amazingly fun and I tended to just feel like the combat was a chore I needed to get over with to get back to the story. On the plus side, dungeons were even better and had more story than Persona 4 did. The proc-gen mazes weren't missed in the slightest.

The characters were enjoyable, and the story was well crafted. The big twist was handled extremely well, and made perfect sense in retrospect. The framing device was also used fairly well. It's fun to watch your group of scrappy rebels climb in notoriety and popularity until their sudden decline. It kind of sucks how you never really get back your pre-Shido fame and it ends with most people not really remembering the Phantom Thieves for... reasons. I still like advancing the social links and having the big moments at the end where everybody you maxed out always works well. I still didn't manage to finish 3 of them: Ryuji, the kid at the arcade, and Haru (who I barely even started because I could tell I wasn't going to have enough time when she joined.) The big problem was that at the start of the game I was giving all my confidants equal attention, not focusing on anyone in particular, then over half way through I finally finished Kawakami and realized that she would have saved a ton of time if I had focused on her first. Or maybe it wouldn't have, as I finished all my night S-links with a month to spare, I don't know. Would have at least given me more options for nights. Also, didn't help that whenever I ran into a stat block on a S-link I'd sometimes devote time to raising that stat over socializing. This was obviously a mistake as I maxed my stats well before the Shido fight. Utilizing Chihaya's fortune telling much earlier also would have helped a lot. Oh well, what's done is done. I could have finished up Ryuji on my last day, but it felt more fitting to talk to Sumire one last time about Maruki so she could evolve her persona.

And now to gripe a little more about the Royale Ending. Maruki was right. Straight up. I don't think the Phantom Thieves had any basis for fighting him, moral or otherwise, and the ending where we chose his reality was the best one. Seriously, it's just plainly hypocritical for them to object to what he's doing. This is a group that has been using divinely bestowed superpowers to intrude into people's subconscious and forcefully rewrite their personality in order to make them confess their crimes. Basically, manipulating people's minds in order to improve society as they see fit. Which is completely different from Maruki manipulating people's minds to improve society as he sees fit because... it's Maruki doing it and not the Phantom Thieves? I don't know. Maruki was granting everybody's wishes and improved everybody's lives 100x more than the PT ever did. What the heck was wrong with that? After this I think their next target was going to be Santa Claus because those kids did nothing to deserve getting those toys. Anyway, on the whole it was just a weak way to end the story. The stakes were lower (oh no, we lost, now everybody gets to have their wish granted and live in eternal happiness :o), and the final boss sequence just wasn't as good. Maruki and Joker having a dumb pointless rooftop puchout is nowhere near as anime as using the world's faith in the Phantom Thieves to evolve a giant persona to fire a massive gun at god. I also don't understand why Joker leaves town at the end and the team breaks up to scatter to the four corners of the globe or whatever. I mean, he's pretty much an adult, old enough to say that he's going to finish school at Shujin with the people he's gone to the ends of the earth with rather than go back to the parents that didn't even care enough to send one text for an entire year. It seems so forced. And who the heck were the guys in black car?! The police? It's so out of nowhere, when there wasn't a hint that they were being investigated for the last 3 months.

A couple other random thought. What was wrong with Ryuji's leg? He mentions a couple time that he needs surgery and can't run on the track team, except we see him running all the time and do nothing but train when we hang out with him. I don't get it. Pancakes aren't cakes, this was so distracting I didn't even pick up on the foreshadowing because I was just trying to figure out what the heck he was talking about. Morgana >>>> Teddy, though the Japanese VA probably helps. I'm glad I held out for Sumire as GF as she is the only one that straight up confesses her love, but the goodbye at the train was terrible. She waves goodbye like we were a classmate that she says hello to every now and then. I could have done without the DLC junk unlocking as soon as you look at the box on your shelf. I was just curious and then I had 100,000 yen suddenly and the early game economy (the only part of the game that has an economy) was broken. I actually restarted to avoid that and lost an hour of progress. Even when I did open it halfway through the game it felt like cheating to use any of the stuff that came out of the box and I made sure not to.

All in all, good game, extremely long. What am I going to fill my time with in a post P5R world?