What are you currently playing?

happyninja42

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I thought I'd heard you can have level 3 Blink after which the game is basically over: you will just "nightcrawler" your butt where ever you need to go. But at level 2, I don't see that offered. But, I am progressing, using Blink a lot.
Oh most definitely maxing out Blink makes the game even easier to navigate, especially when you couple it with some parkour leaps into the void to close platform distances and blink mid-jump. I just meant that having Blink 1, and no other powers at all (the requirement for the achievement Mostly Flesh and Steel) was still super easy, as there are plenty of paths you can take with just that one level of Blink. And since you don't have any real need to go off the objective path to find the hidden rewards, since they are usually whale bone used to buy power upgrades (something you aren't doing that run), you basically just need to head right for the target in most cases. So the missions were super fast compared to a normal run, where it's in your best interest to go pick up all those loot items so you can fund your power arsenal.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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To the people who told me not to play Genshin Impact; you were right

This game is BS. At rank 25 your suppose to do a dungeon/accession question, the only problem is you face a nearly unbeatable series of enemies, and if you respawn you barely get any health back. And if you think that was hard try doing the second accession quest where you need 2 5 star characters, you are only given 1, and you are recommended two specific ones. So you reroll the picking of the characters right??? Wrong Rerolling is not useable for PS4 and has been nerfed.

Rerolling is where I presume you roll once, and if you don't like your picks you do it somehow another time, I never got to it since I play PS4.

Avoid 99% of all free to play games, this one included. Hell if they had sold this game as a 60 dollar game I would have brought it. The problem is those stupid more money than sense whales who running mobile gaming, and soon to be console gaming.

And people wonder why I like Politics, it's so we can deal with greedy assholes like this company via public policy.

Guessing you meant “would have bought it.” The solution to that mistake would be complete review transparency so that the consumer knows what they’d be getting into before wasting $60. The matter of personal opinion subjectivity is beside the point that a crappy practice is just that, and should be called out, preferably with a hefty dose of public shaming for the garbage pushers publishers responsible.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Made some progress in DS3. After feeling like I was spinning my wheels for a bit I've gotten past the bad dog on the High Wall and reached the undead settlement where it feels like I'm making much better progress. I've also been doing some jolly cooperation with the bad dog, both to get embers, sunlight medals and souls, but also just to get used to fighting bosses again and help out others along the way. And I swear it does feel like it's a hell of a lot easier to take some of these fuckers down with people helping.

Anyway while the high wall was giving me feels like that of Anor Londo combined with the Undead Burg, I'm getting serious Bloodborne vibes from the Undead Settlement, like Hemwick Charnel Lane but in the daylight and boy does this place foster a sense of paranoia, like a fucker can and will jump out of the woodwork at any moment.

Also, I'm gonna say, I do appreciate the world layout. From the door where you drop the banner and catch a ride, you can get a good look at what looks to be the entire game world(or at least a lot of it) and while yeah, it's clear it's miniaturized not unlike looking at the horizon from Majula in DS2, it doesn't look anywhere near so artificial, off-scale and flat as the landmarks did from Majula.

I would normally complain about how there's no apparent path from the high wall door(where you fight vordt dog) to the bridge the connects to the undead settlement, but I think it's heavily implied that space is convoluted with the world coming to an end, so everything feeling wierd and off kilter actually makes sense.

Also, fun fact, the very first time I was summoned for jolly co-operation, I expected to fight Vordt the bad dog, since I placed my sign near the door at the bottom of the area. Instead, the host took us back up to the top of the area where Emma hangs out and I ended up fighting the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. Needless to say, I DIED. So apparently the level matchmaking is wierd or the guy doing the summoning was sequence breaking, because yes, I get that there's an early game boss and a late game boss nearly right next to each other, but still it's weird that I I could be summoned for a late game boss fight like that.

Yeah the High Wall was ironically where I hit a wall also in terms of progress. There’s a good bit of verticality to everything up to that flag waving point which can get the player disoriented, as well as the fact several big character quests also commence in typical vague fashion around that time.

Interested to hear when you might hit the next one. For as linear as the game generally is this time around, there are more of these moments than I thought there’d be, personally.


On topic, pretty sure I’m on the last animal to study/skin for the dual Zoologist/Skin Deep trophies in RDR2, at least according to guides that all say the Guarma animals or plucking birds aren’t required. It’s the Rio Grande Wild Turkey, and it’s proving to be elusive as all hell. At least two hours so far and not one sighting, even using the locations I’ve seen on different YouTube videos. I figure the game realizes it’s my last one to get so it nerfed the spawn rate to about .005%.
 
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Dalisclock

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Yeah the High Wall was ironically where I hit a wall also in terms of progress. There’s a good bit of verticality to everything up to that flag waving point which can get the player disoriented, as well as the fact several big character quests also commence in typical vague fashion around that time.

Interested to hear when you might hit the next one. For as linear as the game generally is this time around, there are more of these moments than I thought there’d be, personally.
Managed to pick my way through much of the undead village of jerks and those Evangelists can go to fucking hell. Most of the enemies so far are bearable but every time I see an Evangelist I start looking for a way around or very least a way to get rid of its buddies so I can focus on taking down it's fat ass. Made it past the path where the giant is shooting massive arrows at me from the tower to the Curse Rotten Great wood and tried it once before I had to stop. So yeah, a giant boss with mobs to help it. Lovely. At least it routinely kills them as well and that helped me when I got invaded by Holy Knight Holrick when I managed to lure him into the murder field.

I also found an underground sewer with velka statue and a bunch of skelingtons. Not sure where it goes yet but I'm sure it's terrible(because sewers never lead anywhere good in these games). Oh, and joined the sunbros. Probably the earliest I've ever done so in a Souls game. IIRC, you it was harder to find/join them in the earlier games.
 

stroopwafel

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Managed to pick my way through much of the undead village of jerks and those Evangelists can go to fucking hell. Most of the enemies so far are bearable but every time I see an Evangelist I start looking for a way around or very least a way to get rid of its buddies so I can focus on taking down it's fat ass. Made it past the path where the giant is shooting massive arrows at me from the tower to the Curse Rotten Great wood and tried it once before I had to stop. So yeah, a giant boss with mobs to help it. Lovely. At least it routinely kills them as well and that helped me when I got invaded by Holy Knight Holrick when I managed to lure him into the murder field.

I also found an underground sewer with velka statue and a bunch of skelingtons. Not sure where it goes yet but I'm sure it's terrible(because sewers never lead anywhere good in these games). Oh, and joined the sunbros. Probably the earliest I've ever done so in a Souls game. IIRC, you it was harder to find/join them in the earlier games.
''Cleanse the bastard's curse...come to mee.'' xD
 

gorfias

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Got this for $10 and am playing on my Xbox 1X. Pretty and playable so far with interesting characterizations.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Managed to pick my way through much of the undead village of jerks and those Evangelists can go to fucking hell. Most of the enemies so far are bearable but every time I see an Evangelist I start looking for a way around or very least a way to get rid of its buddies so I can focus on taking down it's fat ass. Made it past the path where the giant is shooting massive arrows at me from the tower to the Curse Rotten Great wood and tried it once before I had to stop. So yeah, a giant boss with mobs to help it. Lovely. At least it routinely kills them as well and that helped me when I got invaded by Holy Knight Holrick when I managed to lure him into the murder field.

I also found an underground sewer with velka statue and a bunch of skelingtons. Not sure where it goes yet but I'm sure it's terrible(because sewers never lead anywhere good in these games). Oh, and joined the sunbros. Probably the earliest I've ever done so in a Souls game. IIRC, you it was harder to find/join them in the earlier games.

Couple things about this area/boss, there’s another easier path from that bonfire, but you might need to loop around down the steps from the Greatwood entrance. Can’t recall if it’s open initially. Also it’s worth doing some further exploration beyond the sewer area. The giant is kinda like another Durja from Bloodborne, but not nearly as inconvenient to make peace with.



On topic again, I got the Zoologist and Skin Deep trophies in RDR2. It came down to finding that turkey on a tiny island in the far southwest corner after reloading a save a couple times. There were three or four of them there, as if it were some consolation to finding NONE across the whole of New Austin the last four or five hours prior.
 
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happyninja42

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Picked up Shadow of War on the PS4 as this month's free game for PS+. I've already played it on steam, but figured, fuck it, it's fun, and my wife would enjoy watching me play it. I was correct. The first set of orc captains we ran into, and she fell in love with them.

I forgot how just silly those orcs are with their voices and mannerisms. Almost the first orc I "killed" cheated death, and came back. And his entire mood was being a very emo, depressed kind of orc. So his return line was to the theme of "Hah! You thought you killed me! But I'm not dead! .....well, maybe a little dead...on the inside.." *sad voice* And all of his comments are like that. *Initial orc posturing and violent expressions!!.....ends with sad comment like Marvin the Paranoid Android.* My wife just started giggling and was like "oh I love him." So we've been having fun with that game and messing with the orcs.

I plan on starting Miles Morales later today, now that the download is complete, that's going to suck up pretty much ALL my gaming time for days.
 

09philj

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I recently played through all three BioShock games (and their DLCs) back to back. BioShock 2 is an underrated entry, I think, it's very much on par with the other two. All three games have problems with balance where the openings are fairly challenging but every fight becomes pretty trivial once you get an upgraded Insect Swarm or Murder of Crows. Rapture and Columbia are still great settings to blast your way through though.

At the moment I'm playing through Shadowrun: Hong Kong, the third and currently final Shadowrun game developed by Harebrained Schemes. I don't think it's quite as good as the second game Dragonfall so far, but it's still a really well put together strategic RPG with interesting characters, an engaging plot, and the same brilliant fantasy-cyberpunk setting as the others. Play Dragonfall if you haven't already, and if you've played Dragonfall but want more, get Hong Kong.
 

happyninja42

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At the moment I'm playing through Shadowrun: Hong Kong, the third and currently final Shadowrun game developed by Harebrained Schemes. I don't think it's quite as good as the second game Dragonfall so far, but it's still a really well put together strategic RPG with interesting characters, an engaging plot, and the same brilliant fantasy-cyberpunk setting as the others. Play Dragonfall if you haven't already, and if you've played Dragonfall but want more, get Hong Kong.
Yeah I need to dust off those games and play them again. I enjoyed the first 1 or 2 I played, though I'm not sure if I played them in release order.
 

09philj

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Yeah I need to dust off those games and play them again. I enjoyed the first 1 or 2 I played, though I'm not sure if I played them in release order.
Shadowrun Returns is set in Seattle and is about hunting down a serial killer who murdered your friend. It's the first one they made and the main campaign is somewhat of a tech demo for the level editor, and there's no core team of NPCs. Shadowrun Dragonfall is set in Berlin and is about finding out who killed your team leader during a run gone wrong. It's more expansive and every NPC on your team has a short questline with an additional mission. (Glory's is particularly great.) Shadowrun Hong Kong is set in Hong Kong, unsurprisingly, and is about tracking down your foster father and uncovering who ordered the murders of the shadowrunners he hired. Like Dragonfall, there's a core team of NPCs with additional missions to complete unlocked through conversation.
 
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happyninja42

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Shadowrun Returns is set in Seattle and is about hunting down a serial killer who murdered your friend. It's the first one they made and the main campaign is somewhat of a tech demo for the level editor, and there's no core team of NPCs. Shadowrun Dragonfall is set in Berlin and is about finding out who killed your team leader during a run gone wrong. It's more expansive and every NPC on your team has a short questline with an additional mission. (Glory's is particularly great.) Shadowrun Hong Kong is set in Hong Kong, unsurprisingly, and is about tracking down your foster father and uncovering who ordered the murders of the shadowrunners he hired. Like Dragonfall, there's a core team of NPCs with additional missions to complete unlocked through conversation.
Yeah I beat one of them...I think Dragonfall? And started with Hong Kong (I think), but just sort of fell out of interest. I could be remembering wrong, as little to know details of the games themselves really stuck with me. I enjoyed them, as they are a setting I love a lot, I just, didn't find them terribly memorable you know? But I know for certain I beat one of them, and started another, I just don't recall exactly which one was what.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is hitting all the right SotN notes (fast 2D combat, exploration, progression, ost, etc.) and manages to expand upon it in some intriguing ways. There are now a wider span of NPCs, some of whom have side quests that reward rare items, and I haven’t really figured out what to do with all the different food items and meals I’ve acquired (you can’t just munch down on a pork roast now, and there is even an in-game jab at that from Castlevania in one of the books). Or where that room is that holds the key to moving those big statues.

I refuse to wiki here.
 

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Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. It's kinda weird. Normally I don't think I'd tolerate the crazy farming busywork for long, but it's woven very well into the fabric of the game and broken up by the exploration/combat segments. Eventually exploration will get tough due to enemy levels increasing, and I'll look forward to my next harvest and starting my next crop since that's how you increase your levels/stats. Also having a bumper crop of rice means more dinner options, which means better daily meal buffs.

I don't know where my last 20 odd hours went, but I had fun and I'm still not yet done with the game. It's definitely a repetitive loop, but I haven't grown tired of it yet.
 

Dalisclock

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Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. It's kinda weird. Normally I don't think I'd tolerate the crazy farming busywork for long, but it's woven very well into the fabric of the game and broken up by the exploration/combat segments. Eventually exploration will get tough due to enemy levels increasing, and I'll look forward to my next harvest and starting my next crop since that's how you increase your levels/stats. Also having a bumper crop of rice means more dinner options, which means better daily meal buffs.

I don't know where my last 20 odd hours went, but I had fun and I'm still not yet done with the game. It's definitely a repetitive loop, but I haven't grown tired of it yet.
I've seen that pop up a couple times recently but I was waiting to hear more about it first. The idea sounds interesting but it's easy to mess up the whole duality between action game and farming sim.
 

happyninja42

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Just finished Ghostrunner. Man that last level basically just ramps up the Fuck You Figure It Out to 11. Soooo many deaths. Very fun game, sadly there is no New Game + mode, where I can redo it with all the upgrades and stuff.

I find the collectibles to be fairly bland. Like, the physical objects are just random every day items from the "before times" which while cute, weren't really all that compelling. Yes...it's a credit card...I get that those wouldn't be very compelling in a post apocalypse...so...why am I collecting it?

The sword skins are nice, but ultimately just flavor. While it is the single thing you will see throughout the game, as it's always on screen, when you are fighting, you're not really paying attention to your sword. You're watching the enemies.

Music is just sick. Some tracks were just ok, and just faded into the background, but the rest, just kept making me bob my head to the techno beats of deliciousness. I found myself dashing in time to the beats just for fun, and this oddly helped out during one of the final level's parkour puzzles. Not sure if it was designed to almost become a beat matching game with your jump timing, but it worked out that way for that one sequence at least. It was pretty fun to do

Not a lot of variation on approach to the maps, it's very linear. You've got to get from A to F, and there is only one real way to get there. The closest I came to breaking the pathing, was mostly by accident. Certain walls are electrified, so you have to time jumping off of them to avoid being zotted. Well, it's fairly easy on most of those, to dash on top of them, where you can safely just run along to the next wall run segment. I also ended up bypassing an entire jump/wallrun puzzle by sheer accident, of missing a jump, and falling down to a lower section of the exterior puzzle wall. This wall just happened to be pretty flat and straight, all the way to the corner which was also flat and straight...and just happened to empty out over the exit door to the next segment. Pretty sure this wasn't meant as a bypass? But, well it worked.

Story is fairly simple, and pretty damn obvious once you start going through it. No real surprises, or at least, none that aren't clearly telegraphed very early on. That doesn't bother me too much, as I wasn't really expecting a heavy story from a game like this.

I'll probably play it again once I'm done with Miles Morales. Now that I'm not terribly concerned with collectibles, I can avoid using that one upgrade that shows them on your map, and free up more space for my special abilities. Next play should be much faster and efficient, as I'll be using my special Blitz attack like crazy, and building to have it recharge ASAP.

But yeah, very fun game if you like 3D platforming, wallrunning stuff. Be ready to die, a LOT, but it's a fun ass game if you like cyberpunk parkour settings.
 
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EvilRoy

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But yeah, very fun game if you like 3D platforming, wallrunning stuff. Be ready to die, a LOT, but it's a fun ass game if you like cyberpunk parkour settings.
What's the progression of abilities and stats and such like? I kind of shied away from this one on the basis that I'm kind of feeling a "level up and unlock new abilities" kind of game right now and it didn't look like Ghostrunner would really scratch that itch. I don't need labarynthine skill trees or anything, but I kind of wanted a minimum of what Dishonoured offers at least, where you pick abilities to improve and customize your playthrough a bit.
 

happyninja42

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What's the progression of abilities and stats and such like? I kind of shied away from this one on the basis that I'm kind of feeling a "level up and unlock new abilities" kind of game right now and it didn't look like Ghostrunner would really scratch that itch. I don't need labarynthine skill trees or anything, but I kind of wanted a minimum of what Dishonoured offers at least, where you pick abilities to improve and customize your playthrough a bit.
The progression is VERY linear. Each new floor of the tower that you are climbing that you clear, will eventually lead you to a computer terminal. You go into cyberspace and do some puzzles and unlock a new power. There are no choices in what you get, as far as the order that you unlock powers, but you do have choice in how you build yourself.

So, basically, you have these tetris blocks, that when plugged into your CPU grid on the right side of the upgrade screen, will give you special abilities. Some will augment your basic actions, like giving you the ability to reflect projectiles shot at you if you time your katana swing right, and aim properly. Or, you can augment your dash ability to have more than just 1 charge before it has to recharge (though it's super fast so this isn't really an issue for the first half of the game). Or, you can slot in blocks that will directly augment your special abilities as you get them. So things like, your Blink attack (where you dash across a distance and gensu carve up a poor bunch of chumps), will say...have a longer range when you trigger it, or have a wider effect, allowing you to slash more targets easily, or give you a second use of it after you kill someone with the first use. Stuff like that. But you are limited in how much CPU space you have, so it's a give and take. Because the more free space you have in your CPU, the faster your special ability recharges. So, then you have to ask. "Do I want to buff up my Blink attack with all these bells and whistles, but seriously slow down how quickly it recharges? Or, do I want to let it just be Basic Blink (which is still pretty badass), but I get to use it more often?" As you unlock more powers, you free up more CPU space, but you also get more blocks, for the new powers, that you can choose to slot in or not. It's actually a really fun system, because you can change it up whenever you want, based on the situation. You might run with Blink as your default 95% of the time, but then there is a combat room where one of the other powers would just be very useful. Or hell, just being able to reflect blaster shots. So you tweak it for that encounter, clear it, then go back to your preferred loadout.

I didn't really use the special abilities for most of the run, as I was dedicating a lot of my CPU space for the utility stuff, like more charges of Dash, pinging collectibles on the radar since they had audiofiles with bits of the backstory. Later on though, I started to switch out a lot, because it just made life a lot easier to have some of the special abilities tricked out.

My next run through the game, I'll probably just build for optimal Blink early on. Keep my CPU minimal so it refreshes a lot, and add in the upgrades for it as I make more room. Because having a high refresh rate is really sweet if you are using those powers a lot.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Just finished doing another play through of Bayonetta, currently working on Control and Blasphemous. Also got into Desktop Dungeons again so kinda been messing around with that a bit also.