What are you currently playing?

[XsjadoBlaydette]

forgot to add video evidence of deliver at all costs, it is a simple brain tickle but a long overdue imo



(oh hadn't realised it was Konami published game till just now lol)

also forgot to add first impressions of a seemingly underexposed strategy;

Ixion
is really first impressions am throwing in due to not seeing it mentioned anywhere else yet. to summarise, I guess it is like a Frostpunk in spaaaaaaace. you gotta look after a fresh colony of earthlings arriving at space station with their soft fleshy earth butts still sore from the long travel from earth, I assume. looks and runs quite smooth and polished at mo, though console port means stuck with controller and text made for midget ants. doesn't appear to be aiming for anything artsy or funky, more grounded and dry affair, but is what the heart desires


is so early it may still all go to shit yet, but will savour this fleeting moment of purity

 

[Worgen]

Which is what drove me to try the first one. It being so light on the story does raise the question of if there's any point to playing it at all, but I paid money for it, so at least I can give it a few hours.

There are a few things that will make more sense but you really don't have to since both have self contained stories and the places you go in 2 have nothing to do with the areas in the first one. Aside from the very start.

 

[Worgen]

Woo, had my first successful run in Monster Train 2. It feels like its much easier to become really strong in MS2, but its also harder so you might think you are doing well but then something you aren't looking out for slaps you down. Although in my run I was so powerful that nothing could touch me and it seems like it would be easy to replicate that if I was the kinda player who did that sort of thing which I am not.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

This is only a 5 hour 3/10 difficult platinum. Did something happen to make it difficult for you?

tl;dr: Beating the game in 35 minutes when his best speedrun time was 48 minutes, with no obvious time save even after watching a speedrun video.

 

[CriticalGaming]

tl;dr: Beating the game in 35 minutes when his best speedrun time was 48 minutes, with no obvious time save even after watching a speedrun video.

i dont know anything about the game. but there is a speedrun video done in 24 minutes on the PSNprofiles.com trophy guide for the game.

 

[Catfood220]

So I played the demo for the sequel to Stardew Valley, quite possibly one of the best games ever made, its called Cattle Country.

Ok, I'm being just a little saracastic, I mean there was nothing particularly original about Stardew Valley, but it seems like this game should be called Moonmist Canyon, made by Apprehensive Chimp.

You are a person, wanting to start a new life in the country and you turn up and are given a surprisingly huge and fertile plot of land for you to farm. You know this story, the difference here is that it has a turn of the century Wild West setting where you can go hunting and raise livestock as well as explore dungeons, etc etc. And then, there are the NPC's who wander around town who you can befriend and possibly marry. As well as the usual fishing, farming, mining and foraging, I'm sure you can upgrade your house too.

Its not bad, if you want more Stardew Valley, this could be up your street, just don't be surprised if you feel like someone has invaded your house, killed your loved one and is walking around wearing their clothes.

Now I want to play Stardew Valley again.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Completed Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I'll post my complete thoughts in the dedicated thread in the next couple of days, but in short, I loved it from start to finish and I can't recommend it enough. I can't believe this game got made, and I also can't believe it did well enough to get a sequel that is by all accounts even better.

Party order in the final battle ended up being Tifa, then Barret. Which threw me for a loop because I've never not seen Aerith show up and I had Magnify+Healing on her, which got me murked by Heartless Angel the first time. Won the runback though, and I don't know if it was an update that added the checkpoint after Harbinger, but I'm glad for it.

I doubt I'll pick up Rebirth immediately, but the big game store chain here usually does a big sale through June, so that'll be a good time to grab it once I'm good and ready. In the meantime, I don't have Intergrade so I'll probably watch an LP while I grind in Runescape or something.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Hahah I already hit the annoying difficulty spike in Kunitsugami (I had a lot more playing time in the last couple of days due to many half-hour breaks in between meetings which is perfect handheld gaming time).

I'm about halfway into the game and it's less a pure difficulty spike than an annoying/tedious spike. The levels get longer, the waves of enemies get more plentiful, the upgrade paths get more tedious. I think they want you to replay levels to get more rewards and that's just... ugh, no, I hate that. Kind of a similar experience to Everspace 2, Lysfanga the Time Shift Warrior, and other smaller games with ambitions to extend game time.

I remembered this game was like $50 on release and I feel like some of the mechanics are there to extend game time.
For instance it is all the same currency to upgrade your villagers AND yourself. But also you could kind of re-spec, with tedious menu futzing. So you could retry battles with different stats. But since the stages are now also longer, it's a lot of time to "experiment." And since the core gameplay is the same no matter what it stops being fun is just blech.
I mean the game is billed as strategy but the whole strategy is just putting guys around a field, there's only so much you could do. More shooty guys vs more stabby guys? Ok, well the enemies are kind of randomized anyway so once you get the basic layout of the stage there aren't that many different tactics at play.

Since there's no story or characters- which is fine btw I like that the game is just action and style- and the gameplay becomes hampered by its own mechanical time-stretching obstacles, there's little reason to continue. And I kind of expected this- hence Gamepass game.

Speaking of which, I might try Lords of the Fallen. For sure a game I will quit, but I'm curious as to how it plays. One of the reasons I quit Soulslikes is all the parrying and delay attacks but I haven't seen much discussion about parrying in this game (I'm sure it's there but maybe like options like the actual Dark Souls games?).

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I stopped uploading vids aftear Seath but if anybody thought I got off easy playing Dark Souls here're my first, second and sixth attempts at Bed of Chaos.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Anyway, finished the Throes of the Watchmaker DLC for Sea of Stars.

It's a neat expansion that extends the adventure by 6-8 hours, if you've already beaten the game. Just about everything in it is new. You get a new party character, two new elemental blocks, one new town, four new dungeons, a suite of new minigames, new attacks, recipes, enemies, animations, cutscenes and a few more teases connecting to The Messenger. It's all pretty slick (stumbled into a couple of softlocks here and there) and clearly a lot of passion and effort went into it. Capcom or Ubisoft would charge $5 to $10 and 50% of it would be either cut content or cobbled together from preexisting stuff. Here it's free.

I also appreciate when free DLC drops and it's its own pocket dimension thing that, rather than force you to reacquaint yourself with a game you haven't touched in a year or two, plays by its own set of rules.

 

[BrawlMan]

I did a 1cc run as Kunoichi in Ninja Saviors/Ninja Warriors Once Again. I did this on my Steam copy. I was not expecting to do a no death run today.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Anyway, finished the Throes of the Watchmaker DLC for Sea of Stars.

It's a neat expansion that extends the adventure by 6-8 hours, if you've already beaten the game. Just about everything in it is new. You get a new party character, two new elemental blocks, one new town, four new dungeons, a suite of new minigames, new attacks, recipes, enemies, animations, cutscenes and a few more teases connecting to The Messenger. It's all pretty slick (stumbled into a couple of softlocks here and there) and clearly a lot of passion and effort went into it. Capcom or Ubisoft would charge $5 to $10 and 50% of it would be either cut content or cobbled together from preexisting stuff. Here it's free.

I also appreciate when free DLC drops and it's its own pocket dimension thing that, rather than force you to reacquaint yourself with a game you haven't touched in a year or two, plays by its own set of rules.

Next you're going to put Xprimentyl in his place and show him how easy it is to platinum Superliminal?

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Lords of the Fallen

Look... I'm as surprised as you are. Was really done with the Souls genre. And still am... but... I was just too curious to not check it out as it's on Gamepass and they recently released a MAJOR update that addressed a lot of the issues that people had with the game.

And by gum if it ain't pretty good at the beginning. I mean I only got past the tutorial, the first major boss, and one little side boss I found. So it's only enough to get a sense of the basic mechanics and vibe.

It is Dark Souls, there's no pretense or cute attempt to disguise that. This is a direct rip-off and I dare say it's like the game expects you to have played Dark Souls or Dark Souls 3 because it's the same nonsensical vague intro of proper nouns and dark fantasy drivel, the same character creation and classes, the same controls, the same stats and currency system.

What is winning me over so far is that the mechanics are fluid and comfortable. It is a happy medium between the now-clunky feeling of the original Dark Souls and the beginning of the move to twitch annoying actions of Dark Souls 3.
It is basically like if you made Dark Souls today, what would I do to make it just a little bit more modern without sacrificing the feel of the original? Well I would have a dodge AND a roll, make stamina for basic movement just a little more generous, and have the attacks of the enemies be readable based on the action without stupid flashy red symbols. And this game did all that, yay! I can discern if an attack is likely to be blockable or not with my shield by context.

There is a parry. But the dodge is also good so I don't need it! It is the last piece of combat they tutorialize- during the big first boss battle, which was wild to me! And all that made me want to actually try it, and I did, and it worked. OMG I enjoyed a parry again lol.

If you know anything else about this game it's this whole umbral world system where you can warp into a mirror universe where you can see different things but it's also dangerous. It also acts as a sort of extra life- if you get killed you're still in that world and can get back. This is all going to give me a world of headache but also adds a nice wrinkle to the souls formula.

I still don't expect to get very far because the weather is nice so, you know, touch grass, and the inevitable frustration of HARD GAME will set in but I really do recommend anyone interested in the genre or has deep love for Dark Souls the actual game not Dark Souls the git gud cult check it out. I am playing it via Gamepass and I see it on sale on Steam all the time.

The one thing I don't have high hopes for it that FromSoftware has is the goofiness. Sometimes an actual Soulsborne will throw some crazy shit at you- having to find umbilical chords for a secret end boss, soul-sucking mini-Cthulu's, tiny nekkid aliens hiding a laser shooting emo vagina face boss, a newborn baby beating the shit out of you with its mother's placenta (geez can you tell my favorite game?). Yes this game has cool looking stuff and enemies with names like Lord Someone of the Forever Something Latinish Realm or whatever. But FromSoftware are the kings of those wtf lulz moments.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Just had a gen-u-ine Mario Party Moment(tm)* where I lost the game solely because Bowser decided to steal a star from me instead of coins despite having the lowest chance to do that, so that was fun**.

* Mario Party 6 specifically.
** And by 'fun' I mean that other thing.

 

[BrawlMan]

I managed to do another 1CC run of Ninja Saviors/Ninja Warriors Once Again. This time as Yaksha. I couldn't beat my previous time of 3,030. 63 secs, but I honestly don't care. I do wish this remake kept a score attack mode or run. Either would add more replay value.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Since I was bored this weekend, I decided to pick up Horizon: Zero Dawn again, since the only other time I tried it I only got halfway through the prologue. And... well, all of the pieces seem good enough, aside from the rather clunky melee combat; the graphics are exceptional, the world is detailed, the main character is relatable enough, and the premise of a post-human world full of mechanical beasts is intriguing. But so far, it just doesn't feel like it's connecting with me- maybe it's the "we are outcasts, we must obey the law even though it puts our lives at risk" garbage.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finished Lorelei and the Laser Eyes 100%. It was pretty good. Story was fairly incomprehensible but the puzzles weren't bad. Best part was you are able to solve all the puzzles once you know the solution and don't need to wait for RNG to line up to input the answer. Most of them weren't that difficult, but a couple of the optional puzzles require you taking very specific leaps in logic to solve.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Most monochrome (with flashes of red) puzzle game seemingly set in a mid-20th Century (or is it?) middle European hotel. Deep in a forest. In the dark. Solve all sorts of problems, open doors, find stuff, work out what the hell is going on. Good stuff. Control is very weird: I assume it's designed for a console type controller, and hasn't been optimised for mouse and keyboard.

I would argue it hasn't been optimized for a console controller either.

 

[Worgen]

Since I was bored this weekend, I decided to pick up Horizon: Zero Dawn again, since the only other time I tried it I only got halfway through the prologue. And... well, all of the pieces seem good enough, aside from the rather clunky melee combat; the graphics are exceptional, the world is detailed, the main character is relatable enough, and the premise of a post-human world full of mechanical beasts is intriguing. But so far, it just doesn't feel like it's connecting with me- maybe it's the "we are outcasts, we must obey the law even though it puts our lives at risk" garbage.

I was never able to really get into it either. I played like 10 hours of it, but its just... not for me.

 

[Worgen]

Finally beat Metaphor: reFantasia. Whew, takes forever if you are just playing a few hours a night off and on with other games, especially when you try and succeed to do almost everything, only didn't finish the arena and debating other candidates. I would say I really liked it, the characters are some of the best that Atlus has ever done and that is saying something since they are known for amazing characters. The graphics and effects are nice, the UI is amazing, it manages to beat even Persona 5 with great menus. The story is quite good, but I like the characters more then the overall plot. The character stories are fantastic, but the overall plot, while good, is... well, its interesting but I kinda wish it was more straight forward.

Anyway, highly recommend.

 

[Agema]

Blue Prince

Roguelike puzzle game where you need to explore the rooms of a house - you have a "deck" of rooms, and can select from one of three every door. You have a limited number of moves per day, and every day, the house resets. (Blue Prince, blueprints - get it?) You're set to find room 46 in a house with only 45 rooms. That's the headline aim, except you'll find that there's a whole, massive lot to find out - narrative, secrets, puzzles, etc. You can however make some permanent changes which deliver permanent advantage/progress.

This is, I think, genuinely a masterpiece. Almost.

Because it's also incredibly annoying: like many of these games, you need to go in again and again to get progress, but the ease with which you can be screwed by RNG is huge. Managing RNG to the right level in these games is probably one of that hardest things for a developer. I think these devs have tended to RNG excess.

So for instance you can see a puzzle and a solution, but you've also got to get via RNG the right rooms in the right place and picked up the right three items. And you'll need to luck out like that another 20 times to find stuff out. You'll have the odd freakish run where stuff comes together, and you have ways of planning to make these more likely. You can get bits of incremental progress. But mostly you'll be wading through a mass of runs which don't pan out, and each one is probably 15-30 minutes of your life wasted, and it feels like the game does not respect your time. You will get frustrated, start to resent the day start cut scene, etc.