What are you currently playing?

[Ezekiel]

Started Vice City a week ago. I dropped it early sixteen years ago, thinking at the time that it was worse than San Andreas in every way that matters.

Yesterday I did the mission where you kill a man with a chainsaw, obviously taken from Scarface. It's so drawn out and idiotic compared to the movie. The target runs out of his penthouse and then you chase him down the street for a while. In the movie the chainsaw is used for interrogation. In this game, the guy in the cutscene just tells you to kill him and to use this.

After that I had to kill a golfer, which again turned into a chase. I bumped his cart into the ocean, which caused him to drown. But then I destroyed my cart too and had to get back to the golf entrance on foot, bothered that this Miami resident couldn't just swim the short distance back to the mainland.

Blew up a building by dropping bombs with an RC helicopter, a pretty ridiculous idea, but honestly more interesting than the assassinations.

Rockstar was always so incompetent at movement and combat, except when they had to respect the work of other devs: Max Payne 3.

 

[Worgen]

Been playing Forza 6, its quite good, but it is pretty much just more Forza, seems like there isn't anything really new besides the Country, but its still just a damn good arcade racer so its hard to argue against it for not being revolutionary.

 

[thebobmaster]

Gave both Star Wars Outlaws and Time Crisis a chance. Bounced off the former because even with the introductory mission, I could see it introducing elements that I figured would annoy me later, plus even with the in-game explanation, I couldn't figure out the lockpicking minigame. As for the latter...I swear, the controls are broken, because I literally had the same button either work as the shooting button or not. Guess I'll get around to trying Red Dead Redemption now.

 

[Worgen]

Picked up my run of Hedon from late last year, I got to hell in chapter 2 but after the first chapter and the first 1/4th of the second I needed a break, plus other games distracted me. I'm at the final area before the final boss and damn its still a fucken great fps game, fun combat, great weapons, really good story and good exploration.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Started Vice City a week ago. I dropped it early sixteen years ago, thinking at the time that it was worse than San Andreas in every way that matters.

Yesterday I did the mission where you kill a man with a chainsaw, obviously taken from Scarface. It's so drawn out and idiotic compared to the movie. The target runs out of his penthouse and then you chase him down the street for a while. In the movie the chainsaw is used for interrogation. In this game, the guy in the cutscene just tells you to kill him and to use this.

After that I had to kill a golfer, which again turned into a chase. I bumped his cart into the ocean, which caused him to drown. But then I destroyed my cart too and had to get back to the golf entrance on foot, bothered that this Miami resident couldn't just swim the short distance back to the mainland.

Blew up a building by dropping bombs with an RC helicopter, a pretty ridiculous idea, but honestly more interesting than the assassinations.

Rockstar was always so incompetent at movement and combat, except when they had to respect the work of other devs: Max Payne 3.

I never have beaten Vice City. Some of the later missions are absurdly difficult and tedious to retry.

To quote myself from almost a decade ago on my last attempt:

The city has a real nice atmosphere and tone, the radio stations are great, and the way the light turns everything shades of orange at sunset is just so pretty!

But those freaking missions! It's not bad in the early game, but later on they get almost unfairly hard. Like this one where you need to race a guy and you get a slower car and the cops are chasing after you but not him. Like, what the heck! The only way I found I can stand a chance is to place a faster car somewhere along the road and hope he crashes into it and gives me enough time to switch over and then hope I can make it through the rest of the race without being blindsided by a cop and blown up! Not only is it unfairly hard but you need to sit through 6 loading screens if you want to try again right away. First it loads after you die, then you get in the cab that takes you back to the mission and it loads, you go into the building that the mission is in and it loads, then it loads the first cutscene which I skip, then it loads the second cutscene that I skip, THEN it loads the race. Frick! I think I've spent around 2 hours trying, but I haven't managed to beat it.

That race isn't even the worst of it, because you can usually find a fast car to rig things with pretty quick, but in the obscenely hard combat missions where you get shot to pieces in seconds you need to drive all over town collecting guns, body armor, and getting back to the mission every time you lose! This game was in serious need of a retry mission option.

The cops just suck too! They suicide bomb your car and there just isn't any way to consistently avoid them all, especially the FBI. There was another mission where I had to break a guy out of jail and lose the cops, and the only way I found to do it was to park a car in the pay and spray and drive a freaking tank to the mission. Even then I had to try like 10 times because the suiciding FBI agents would sometimes slow me down enough that a random patrolling officer would be able to run over and yank the door open and bust me before I could build up enough speed.

And the camera sucks!

 

[thebobmaster]

Also, making a character who dies if he looks at water funny, and having your game set in MIAMI, is just bad game design.

And that racing mission you mentioned is peak "makes no sense in story, is frustrating to play, and ends up being completely pointless in the end." I'd actually argue it is one of the worst mandatory missions in the GTA series as a whole, let alone in just Vice City.

 

[BrawlMan]

I liked Vice City back when my older brother and I played it and completed, but you couldn't get me to go through any GTA ever again though.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The 1.0 release of Into the Radius 2 came out recently, and I finally finished the game. Some aspects are greatly improved, and it has the most robust gun- and gear-customization system I've seen in a VR game, but the atmosphere of the game feels a little weaker, and the "guide" is fairly annoying (though he was much more so when introduced in early access). Still, it was well worth the wait to me, and stands as a very respectable attempt at "STALKER in VR".

Now to wait for them to fully implement moddability so the fans can really tweak things.

 

[BrawlMan]

I did some more arcade modes in USFIV. I did Ryu last night, and I did Makoto's just now. I only thing I hate about arcade mode is the input reading the CPU does the better you get or in later fights. Mainly the Rival Fights. Those tend to be harder than Seth sometimes. How they expected people to 1CC on the harder difficulties is beyond me. No thanks, and not worth the achievements.

Back on point: Makoto is a lot of fun, like her 3rd Strike counterpart. Though she has weaker health in IV, compared to herself in III. IV is a prequel, so it sorta make sense. I am getting the hang of juggling and linking certain combos together now. Characters like Ryu, Sakura, or Fei-Long are easier to do with these, but someone like Makoto uses some dexterity. I welcome the challenge, as she is one of my favorite characters to play as. I've got the hang of linking combos into my Supers or Ultra combos respectively.

 

[Worgen]

Beat Hedon again on the highest difficulty. Damn fun and has one of the best boss fights in a fps game. Sounds like Zan, the maker of the game's next game will be set in the same world but be some kinda stealth thing. Normally I'm not big on stealth, but damn do I want more of this gaming world.

 

[BrawlMan]

More Ultra Street Fighter IV. I was actually able to do a 1CC on Medium as Chun-Li this time, and got a new high score. I got a trophy for it too.

​

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

South of Midnight
replay, on PlayStation, platinum trophy run.

Just a game I love the look and story for that I played before on GamePass. This time followed a guide for the collectibles and since there are no trophies related to difficulty settings, went for the platinum.
The hard part was that you have to defeat the three big boss battles without getting hit. These battles have multiple stages and one even has platforming sections in between them, making retries rather long for the first and third. But some patients, youtube tutorials, and distractionary podcasts got me through.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'm now one of Ranni's interns. No pay, but I get to say I work with Blaidd, and that's enough for me.

Radahn, on the other hand, is too much for me. I do a lot of damage per hit, but he's just so stupidly mobile and capable of a lot of reach. Even all the summon stones on the beach aren't enough to turn the tide in my favor.

Beach, turn the tide, did you see what I did there

 

[BrawlMan]

Street Fighter V: Champion Edition - I popped this in, as the last time I played was just before SFVI came out. The game is so much fun to play, and has the best bonus modes out of the second trilogy of games. SFIV removed bonus modes in later updates/iterations, hurting the replay value. I mainly did some arcade runs with Sakura, and one arcade run with Chun-Li. All three of them done with a 1CC run. Then Survival on Hard mode with Ryu. I got to stage 27 before losing.

​

 

[meiam]

Been playing absolum with a friend, essentially Hades mixed with a side scroller beat em up. Pretty good, lots of content, they try really hard to make every run unique. Not sure how much it is single player, but coop its pretty fun.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Finally completed Nine Sols. According to the in-game timer, it took me a little over 17 hours for not quite 100% completion, though getting that would apparently require more grinding than I felt like doing. Maybe I'll circle back for the remaining achievements sometime.

For the most part, I found the game was not that difficult except during boss fights. A few enemies had some tricky patterns, but even in the most extreme cases I don't think I died to the same non-boss enemy twice. As for the bosses, they're all fairly challenging with two major exceptions, one at each end: the Sky-Rending Claw only got me a couple of times before I figured out its gimmick, and Eigong, the final boss, is on the level of some of the harder bosses I've beaten. She's not as tough as Malekith the Black Blade or Nightmare King Grimm, but she's definitely on a similar level to Hoarah Loux, Orphan of Kos, or further afield in genre, Vergil. At least it didn't feel like a fluke when I beat her; I can't really put it into words, but Nine Sols definitely feels like it's good at teaching you both base mechanics and enemy attacks, to the point where even after not playing for a week I was able to pick it right back up and keep going.

The gameplay is well-designed, but the graphics, level design and progression aren't quite on the same level as Hollow Knight or Sekiro. Where Nine Sols really excels, though, and what makes it worth playing in my opinion, is the story. Now, I'm not going to tell you that the majority of Soulslikes have no story worth noting; the lore of the Souls games and Hollow Knight are present and fun to read through, but the common trend of silent protagonists tends to create a gap in the narrative. Sekiro and Hornet both speak, and Hornet has a lot of agency in her own story, but Yi is genuinely one of the most interesting protagonists in a game that I've played, and learning about New Kunlun, the Council, and Yi's own role in the events prior to the plot motivated me to keep going a lot more than seeing the next area or boss.

Overall, I would recommend playing Nine Sols, and even for those who aren't really into Soulslike games, Story Mode effectively allows you to make enemies deal no damage and die in one hit, so you can still experience it firsthand. I would recommend at least attempting to beat the game first, though; you might surprise yourself with what you're capable of, given a good enough teacher - and whatever else it is, Nine Sols is definitely that.

Which actually kinda fits the subplot of Yi teaching Shuanshuan, so that's pretty neat too.

Mina the Hollower comes out in a few days, so I'm probably not going to start anything major before that drops and then get stuck right into it when it does.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Several sleepless nights with Slay the Spire 2 later, I have beaten Ascension 1 with every character and am working on getting through Ascension 2 with all of them as well. Quick thoughts:

1.The Necrobinder really is the worst huh? My girlfriend has beaten Ascension 2 to 3 with every other character, but she has never beaten the game with the necrobinder period. It really does feel like the only usable build is Doom. I tried to experiment with Souls and the Ethereal abilities, but nothing good ever comes out of them. Which reminds me...
2. A lot of the builds with the other characters still don't make sense to me. The Defect has many abilities regarding Status cards, but they never seemed remotely as useful as channeling orbs. The Regent has these weird Minion cards that seem straight up unfinished (which sucks, considering that it seems to fit his character more than generic attack cards). The Silent's Sly mechanic also seems kinda ass. I really don't know how much of this is due to the game being in Early Access, maybe the devs added these cards without other abilities meant to complement them.
3. I can't help but compare to Hades, but I do feel that the Ascension's make the game harder in the most boring of ways. Less healing, less money, etc, etc. Boss fights never change, the dialogue you have with allies is cute but fluff, and it all just feels vaguely harder. It might feel unfair to use Hades as a comparison, but given that this game is a card based game with no voice acting, I thought it would be much easier to inject more character and variation into gameplay.

I'm not sure if I will keep going after Ascension 2. It is a fun game, but a run takes so much time and we have stopped unlocking new stuff. Maybe now I really will jump into the older Supergiant games like I said I would earlier this year.

 

[meiam]

Several sleepless nights with Slay the Spire 2 later, I have beaten Ascension 1 with every character and am working on getting through Ascension 2 with all of them as well. Quick thoughts:

1.The Necrobinder really is the worst huh? My girlfriend has beaten Ascension 2 to 3 with every other character, but she has never beaten the game with the necrobinder period. It really does feel like the only usable build is Doom. I tried to experiment with Souls and the Ethereal abilities, but nothing good ever comes out of them. Which reminds me...
2. A lot of the builds with the other characters still don't make sense to me. The Defect has many abilities regarding Status cards, but they never seemed remotely as useful as channeling orbs. The Regent has these weird Minion cards that seem straight up unfinished (which sucks, considering that it seems to fit his character more than generic attack cards). The Silent's Sly mechanic also seems kinda ass. I really don't know how much of this is due to the game being in Early Access, maybe the devs added these cards without other abilities meant to complement them.
3. I can't help but compare to Hades, but I do feel that the Ascension's make the game harder in the most boring of ways. Less healing, less money, etc, etc. Boss fights never change, the dialogue you have with allies is cute but fluff, and it all just feels vaguely harder. It might feel unfair to use Hades as a comparison, but given that this game is a card based game with no voice acting, I thought it would be much easier to inject more character and variation into gameplay.

I'm not sure if I will keep going after Ascension 2. It is a fun game, but a run takes so much time and we have stopped unlocking new stuff. Maybe now I really will jump into the older Supergiant games like I said I would earlier this year.

1. You can try a Osty build, but its not that great since his damage depend a lot on his health, and that always goes down. Soul can work, but you need a few key power (deal damage every time you use soul).

2. Defect status build is actually pretty good, he has a card to use all the status in his deck to attack and can transform status card into more energy, but imo his best build is 0 cost card, feral + claw can cut trough most boss really quickly. Sly mechanic works with a discard build, which work by letting you draw a lot of card. Most build shouldn't be played purely one way, you still need a couple of good card from other build.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

2. Defect status build is actually pretty good, he has a card to use all the status in his deck to attack and can transform status card into more energy, but imo his best build is 0 cost card, feral + claw can cut trough most boss really quickly. Sly mechanic works with a discard build, which work by letting you draw a lot of card. Most build shouldn't be played purely one way, you still need a couple of good card from other build.

I can see how the Defect Status build would be great, but its always dependent on that one or two cards you mention. So if you don't get that card basically immediately, why would you burden yourself with Status cards before then? It's leaving it all up to RNG in a way that I don't really find fun. I get how the Sly mechanic works, but you need to accumulate both Sly and Discard cards at the same time. I tried so many times to not just do yet ANOTHER Shiv build, but I was just never encountering any useful Sly or Discard cards.

I always felt like Hades was pretty good at setting you up for success early on that made you feel like you weren't totally at the mercy of RNG. Get the pretty average Hephaestus ability early game, and you would inevitably get Hephaestus upgrades later into the game that made you godlike.

 

[thebobmaster]

After for once actually following through on saying I'm going to do something, started Red Dead Redemption. Still very early game, haven't even done much of anything (just finished the horse race with Bonnie, which I did manage to beat on the first try, but that was still surprisingly tough for a first race). Kind of odd having basically the first thing John Marston does upon arrival for his job is get himself shot like an idiot, but I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just an odd narrative choice in terms of establishing the main character in a fairly grounded setting as not really thinking things through at all and/or having a death wish.