What are you currently playing?

[FakeSympathy]

Just beaten Messmer in Elden Ring DLC. Definitely hard, and I died a lot, but I definitely didn't struggle as much as I did with Malenia.

This boss actually made me strategize, and I gotta commend fromsoft for that. Before it was the simple timed-dodge-then-attack gameplay. But with this guy, it actually made me think about re-specing my build as well as maxing out a tanking spirit summon as I was a mage. It really wasn't a boss to out-DPS. And I managed to beat it with Black Knight Commander Andreas summon.

Co-op kinda backfired on me with this boss, because if I grabbed two additional damage builds, we're all just glass cannons and everyone got wiped out quickly. One-shot build especially was the worst, because as soon as their prep work was ruined they were panicking and didn't know what to do. But with how quickly the summon signs are being grabbed, it was hard to find someone with a tanky build.

 

[Bartholen]

Beat Messmer in Elden Ring, though I have fairly little idea how. For most of the second phase I was simply dodging in seemingly endless combos of the camera zipping around, effects filling the screen and not getting to attack. I used a spirit ash and the NPC summon, so I guess splitting the aggro helped a bit. I'm glad I got it after a few tries, because I have a feeling it was going to be a boss I wasn't gonna enjoy.

I've repeated myself on this already, so let's lay it to rest: the open world in Shadow of the Erdtree is fucking awful. It's at least twice the size it would need to be to remain fun, and thrice the size it needs to be for its content to be spread consistently. It's so barren, so empty, so devoid of anything that it honestly feels either procedurally generated or like a bad early access game. It feels like there's supposed to be tons of stuff to see, but there just isn't. It's like Fromsoft wanted to make the awesome vista in the Dreg Heap in DS3 fully accessible, but forgot to put anything there. It's a sightseeing tour with some dungeons and bosses on the side. Makes for pretty screenshots and vistas, and that's it. I have zero clue how people are creaming themselves over the world, it's so bad.

But it doesn't stop at just it being empty. It's also a world record for obtuseness for Fromsoft, and a nightmare to navigate. It's like they went "Hey, remember how in the base game Moonlight Altar confused a lot of people because it was always displayed on the map? What if we made the entire map like that?" It feels there are like 5 layers of elevation overlapping each other, but the map is strictly 2D, so it's actually less than useless. Entire areas are gated behind incredibly easy to miss drops in the most random of places, and because of the bloated size of the world, it's basically impossible to try to infer from the map where the roads to different areas could be. There's apparently access to entire areas in the Shadow Keep I've yet to find despite scouring it like 5 times already, because there's some hidden ladder in some corner. Much like the open world, I have to wonder what purpose Fromsoft thinks this level of obtuseness is serving. Because so far it's only padded the playtime.

My opinion on the Scadutree fragments has also soured considerably, and that's because almost nothing aside from story progress in this DLC is gated behind bosses. Almost any boss you encounter can potentially be the first one you fight, and most Scadutree fragments I've found have been available in the open world right away, it just takes a while to get to them. Which means that despite it being intended as a leveling mechanic and an exploration incentive, in practice it's nothing but a timer after which your build actually starts to do things decently. The thought of having to run across the world for like an hour gathering the fragments with other characters is not my idea of fun.

Shadow of the Erdtree is definitely feeling like an Ashes of Ariandel so far: not worth the price for the amount of content you get.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

...

I've repeated myself on this already, so let's lay it to rest: the open world in Shadow of the Erdtree is fucking awful. It's at least twice the size it would need to be to remain fun, and thrice the size it needs to be for its content to be spread consistently. It's so barren, so empty, so devoid of anything that it honestly feels either procedurally generated or like a bad early access game. It feels like there's supposed to be tons of stuff to see, but there just isn't. It's like Fromsoft wanted to make the awesome vista in the Dreg Heap in DS3 fully accessible, but forgot to put anything there. It's a sightseeing tour with some dungeons and bosses on the side. Makes for pretty screenshots and vistas, and that's it. I have zero clue how people are creaming themselves over the world, it's so bad.

...

Funny, I just listened to the Easy Allies crew indeed creaming themselves over the world/map here. Reveling in the caves and how much you have to keep falling into lower levels. *shrug*

Well I was listening to that while checking out the Forspoken post-game screw around grind and.. yeah, no, I don't think I'm gonna continue with that. Even wanting something mindless, it's TOO mindless lol.

 

[BrawlMan]

Even wanting something mindless, it's TOO mindless lol.

Called it!

I've been playing some DMC5SE. I never completed SoS mode, because I skipped straight to LDK and DMD mode. I might finish Hell and Hell mode for DmC, as I only did about 3 missions. I am going back into Gal Guardians in a few, and I might try out this car brawler game I never heard of. It's only $7.99.

​

 

[BrawlMan]

The reviewers who have minor complaints about Gal Guardians being "too easy" are exaggerating must like being kicked in the groin. The game is challenging, but it's not old school NES Castlevania hard. I can live with that. I beat stage 3. I did lose two lives, but got them back after beating the boss.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Graven.
Oh it was going so well. It was. So well!

A Dark 'n Dingy old-school FPS - no, not like the cool popular zoomie dooms as one may first assume. And no, not like the nerdy unpopular, uhh, whatever-system-shock-esque-slow-RPG-existed-at-the-time as one may second assume when the hud and menu layout lands upon monitor screen. It's something...in - between. Not quite RPG without exhausting gear/numbers, not quite action FPS without linear stress-panic hordes - just some calm equilibrium permeating the in-between.

Is almost like a very stripped down immersive sim: there's hub, exploration snaking out different directions, secrets, more secrets, non combat NPCs allegedly going about their lives whinging about the state of things, getting up and sitting back down in mid-air whenever I try talking to them from any angle other than directly in front of their eyes.

Combat a simple mix of melee and ranged with some upgrade options, light stamina management, light puzzling, light physics, an ever-availabke kick button, a nice whoppy combo with the staff where secondary attack is quick whip from the bottom of staff upwards followed by main attack with tbe main blunt end and why not throw in a final kick for good measure?

Ah, the chemistry, the buzz, the butterflies! Seriously was going pretty smooth for like two nights progressing the campaign. Made it past the sunken lighthouse mission, upgraded couple of weapons from having saved and scraped every penny from every barrel and corpse pile finally and was pumped for whatever nonsense it had planned for me next. Ahh, What could've been.

Cause then it crashed to main menu and reset/deleted all progress on save file. No second or separate auto saves, no back-up option. All gone. Only the file name survived. Even the clock was zero. So deleted game. Cannae be having bullshit removing time wholesale from life like that, is a hard line in the sand am afraid.


(unnecessary font change initially wasn't intended, but cos after a font size edit, the 'A' wouldn't look right next to following letters, so for own sanity sake just changed the font to be able to mentally move on, lol)

 

[laggyteabag]

I finished up Half-Life 2 Episode 2, which means that I am done with the franchise (other than Alyx, which is still on my list).

I didn't really care much for Black Mesa, or Half-Life 2, but the superior pacing, varied locations, varied activities, and having a companion most of the time in the Episodes resulted in a much improved experience. Im still not convinced that I find the games particularly impressive or noteworthy, but im happy to have ticked the games off my backlog.

Now I'm in a bit of a Gears of War mood. I can't be bothered to drag out my Xbox, so I will just settle for the games that I have on PC. I've just started Gears Tactics, which is a bizarre but welcome idea for a Gears of War spin-off, and effectively functions as Gears of War x XCOM. I'm only three missions in at the moment, but I really like the flow of the game, in how executing an enemy (zero health, close-up takedown) gives a temporary action point to all of your squad, which results in some pretty crazy combos.

Afterwards, I think I would like to replay Gears of War 4 and 5, which I haven't played in about 5 years.

 

[BrawlMan]

I finished playing as all the Turtles again in Hyperstone Heist. Buck Up and Drive! is a great endless runner racing game, but does get tough real quick I am playing Streets of Rage 4 on Steam and is running great. I am currently finishing up my run of DMC5SE on SoS difficulty.

 

[Worgen]

Now I'm in a bit of a Gears of War mood. I can't be bothered to drag out my Xbox, so I will just settle for the games that I have on PC. I've just started Gears Tactics, which is a bizarre but welcome idea for a Gears of War spin-off, and effectively functions as Gears of War x XCOM. I'm only three missions in at the moment, but I really like the flow of the game, in how executing an enemy (zero health, close-up takedown) gives a temporary action point to all of your squad, which results in some pretty crazy combos.

I've started up gears tactics twice and gotten to pretty much the same point both times and just stopped. The game itself is good, the mechanics are solid, but it suffers from too many just random fluff missions you need to do and they aren't like the ones in Xcom, they are just kinda boring. Plus the story is pretty dull and having named characters who have to be included along with randoms is just kinda weird and makes your team feel only half yours at best.

 

[BrawlMan]

I finally finished SoS in DMC5SE after putting off for so long and doing it out of order.

 

[meiam]

I've started up gears tactics twice and gotten to pretty much the same point both times and just stopped. The game itself is good, the mechanics are solid, but it suffers from too many just random fluff missions you need to do and they aren't like the ones in Xcom, they are just kinda boring. Plus the story is pretty dull and having named characters who have to be included along with randoms is just kinda weird and makes your team feel only half yours at best.

Plus random team member the game will give you tend to be higher level than your troop, so you have to constantly discard your veteran for fresh recruit.

 

[Worgen]

Plus random team member the game will give you tend to be higher level than your troop, so you have to constantly discard your veteran for fresh recruit.

Yeah, you don't really have the same connection to your team that you do in something like Xcom and the characters aren't good enough to compete with something like Xcom Chimera.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Still Persona 5 Royale. The Okamura boss fight SUUUUUUCKS! It's just awful and I have no idea what they were thinking when they designed it. The idea is that he sends in four of his henchmen and then you kill them all and he sends in four of the next higher rank. It's all well and good until you get to the big green guys that have a huge amount of health, a ton of resistances, and few weaknesses. It's about that time that you learn that if you don't kill them all quickly and close together they have a tendency (read: certainty) to all run away, upon which Okamura sends in four more with full health and nothing you did previously counts. This happens forever until you turn the game off. There's also a 30 minute time limit on the fight. I understand that the game up until now has been pretty trivial in terms of difficulty and I've toyed with the idea of increasing it myself, but then I remember that difficulty and JRPGs don't mix and just end up being "oh, well I got a string of bad rolls, there goes an hour of progress. Oops."

Oh well, I'm sure I'll beat it tomorrow after I take stock of my options and actually make a strategy, but it's still a bad fight. I honestly considered that the game might be bugged after they all ran away for the third time and the fight kept spinning it's wheels.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

So I'm downloading Monster Hunter World to play with girlfriend. Chunky game, taking a while to download. I decided to game a little to pass the time.

An hour later, I'm ready to sleep, and it turns out Steam paused the download for the sake of the performance of the singeplayer game I was playing.

 

[Worgen]

So I'm downloading Monster Hunter World to play with girlfriend. Chunky game, taking a while to download. I decided to game a little to pass the time.

An hour later, I'm ready to sleep, and it turns out Steam paused the download for the sake of the performance of the singeplayer game I was playing.

There is a setting in downloads that you need to turn on to allow downloads during gameplay. I have seen it sometimes turn itself off after a big update.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

There is a setting in downloads that you need to turn on to allow downloads during gameplay. I have seen it sometimes turn itself off after a big update.

Yeah I've changed the setting. I'm just surprised that it was on by default, most gamers would be smart enough to know that downloading a game is bound to have some kind of effect on playing online games. They'd pause the downloads themselves if it was necessary.

 

[Worgen]

Yeah I've changed the setting. I'm just surprised that it was on by default, most gamers would be smart enough to know that downloading a game is bound to have some kind of effect on playing online games. They'd pause the downloads themselves if it was necessary.

One of the few things that steam handles a bit wonky is how aggressively it likes to keep games updated.

 

[BrawlMan]

I finished Streets of Rage 4 on Steam for the first time with Cherry. I've already unlocked almost all of the retro characters. The only ones left are the SOR3 characters. Nearly every stage I got an S-Rank on the first try.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Finally done with Elden Ring DLC after 30 hours.

And that final boss has made it onto my "do not solo" list; There are very few which makes it on to this list, because for the most part, I genuinely believe in trying to solo every boss in soulsborne game.

Not with this one, though. The concept is very cool where we face Radahn in his prime, now powered up by Miquella but after facing the boss multiple times, the novelty wore off; This boss has too many moves that can kill nearly all builds in1-2 hits. Granted, Malenia was capable of doing this, but her waterfowl dance was the real deal, and the rest could be rolled/tanked and live with some HP left; Not with this boss. The opening attack will kill you if you don't time your dodge roll right.

And that's just the first phase; The second phase was impossible for me to solo, and it got to the point where it was more of a mental torture. So I decided to co-op, which after 10 attempts I was finally able to beat it.

I think FS kinda dropped the runes here, because this and other bosses seem to have lots of cheap shot attacks, ridiculous health pool, and very tight dodge window. The boss fights should be challenging with all builds, not be near-impossible for some. And this was base game, w/ 20 scadu blessing level (aka find all scadutree fragments). Apparently 20 is t he max level, which also carries over to NG+; Holy crap, and most of my other builds are on NG+ and beyond;

I am hesitant about beating the dlc with other builds now

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Sherdtree adventures continue. I did a rebirth to try a strength build and went back to Rellana. Got her 2nd try wearing the Solitude armor set using Wild Strikes on the Cold Great Stars hammer with the hammer talisman and Physik that does increased poise damage, plus Ironjar Aromatic for good measure. I was fat rolling at only 36 endurance anyways, but the tankiness made up for it. The whole fight was less than a couple minutes with both the npc summon and my Oleg summon, level 4 Scadutree and spirit. Also beat the big hippo thing 2nd try soon after.

I think I’m just missing the easternmost map fragment judging by the zoomed out map area, but haven’t covered any ground revealed besides a quick ride through the sleepy fields. If there are really 10 levels worth of Scadutree/spirit upgrades before even fighting the first boss then they must be hidden pretty well. I’m only now at level 5 and most of those have been reached after bosses. Maybe two levels worth I’ve found just going through dungeons. Idk how much it helps being rune level 199 but I guess I can still count on 80 strength and 60 vigor to some extent.

Was really tempted to just see how far I could tank things (no pun) but ended the night by rebirthing back to dex with the backhand blades because I like the moveset and mobility, even if it’s tougher. I did add some arcane to make bleed more viable though.