What are you currently playing?

Chimpzy

Simian Abomination
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That looks like of dope, and to be honest, is exactly the kind of gimmick weirdness that attracted me to the Gunlance in the first place.

Rise looks like a cracking time, but as someone who decided to learn MHW with a Mouse/Keyboard, getting it on the switch, and needing to relearn the game with a controller, sounds too much like reinventing the wheel.

I hear the game is coming to PC at some point next year, so I will probably jump on it, then.
No, I get it. I played MHW on pc with controller, but the controls in Rise are just a little different, and that's already throwing me off pretty badly.
From what I can tell, im about 2/3s of the way through World's story, so I haven't even touched Iceborne, yet.

Im sure between the expac, grinding for gear, and trying out different weapons, im sure there is enough content to keep my hands full, for a while.
Enough? Eh, looks at Steam playtime. 500+ hours. Perhaps, yes.
 

hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
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Is it worth it to play solo? That was one of the main reasons I didn't bother with Wild Lands.

I played well over half of Wildlands solo, and while being a smidge more difficult it was by no means detrimental. The AI mates were still helpful between cool downs. It actually allows you to be more intimate with the game’s locations by feeling the maps and enemy positions out more. When you’re with a live squad it’s basically like a systematic blitzkrieg every time because everyone just wants to wipe another baddie off the list. It can be a fun buddie game but at that point the game itself takes a back seat.
 
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Piscian

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I played well over half of Wildlands solo, and while being a smidge more difficult it was by no means detrimental. The AI mates were still helpful between cool downs. It actually allows you to be more intimate with the game’s locations by feeling the maps and enemy positions out more. When you’re with alive squad it’s basically like a systematic blitzkrieg every time because everyone just wants to wipe another baddie off the list. It can be a fun buddie game but at that point the game itself takes a back seat.
Thats a big reason why I don't play live service games when I can avoid it. I hate feeling pressure to play fast because other people just want to grind gear and achievements.
 
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NerfedFalcon

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Finished Chapter 1 of Red Dead Redemption 2. So far, the shooting and riding mechanics are pretty fun, though I've only just gotten through the tutorial for them, more or less. I didn't do very well with hunting in the tutorial mission for that, so I'll probably need to practice in the wild a little/a lot more if I'm going to make a good contribution to the camp. As for the story, there's a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of things going on with the gang, and I feel like I'm not really keeping good enough track of all of it, but I'm still interested to see where it goes.

The game looks beautiful, in stills and in motion, though sometimes I have difficulty seeing where enemies are when I'm not supposed to. I also don't know about all the RPG stuff like stat boosting and temperature and horse bonding and all that, since I don't normally play games like this, but I'm sure I'll get there. I am enjoying it, and I plan to stick it out for at least a little while. I've heard it's a pretty long game, though, so I don't know yet whether I'll go all the way or not.
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
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Finished Chapter 1 of Red Dead Redemption 2. So far, the shooting and riding mechanics are pretty fun, though I've only just gotten through the tutorial for them, more or less. I didn't do very well with hunting in the tutorial mission for that, so I'll probably need to practice in the wild a little/a lot more if I'm going to make a good contribution to the camp. As for the story, there's a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of things going on with the gang, and I feel like I'm not really keeping good enough track of all of it, but I'm still interested to see where it goes.

The game looks beautiful, in stills and in motion, though sometimes I have difficulty seeing where enemies are when I'm not supposed to. I also don't know about all the RPG stuff like stat boosting and temperature and horse bonding and all that, since I don't normally play games like this, but I'm sure I'll get there. I am enjoying it, and I plan to stick it out for at least a little while. I've heard it's a pretty long game, though, so I don't know yet whether I'll go all the way or not.
The RPG stuff isn't really a big deal. You subtly level up by doing it but as far as I can tell it doesn't change much. For example, if you run a lot Arthurs Stamina increases every so often. OTOH, you can get stamina, health and deadeye restoration items everywhere and even with an un-upgraded satchel you'll probably have more then enough to carry you through the game without issue.

The hunting thing isn't needed for camp contributions. You can donate cash or valuables as well, and you'll find valuables by the wagonload by looting all the people you shoot(just wait till people start yelling at you to get going because you're looting the 20 guys you just shot). The hunting thing is mostly important for pelts and legendary animals. Also if you just enjoy hunting(which a lot of people do).

You'll get an introduction to fishing later but you don't have to do it except like once in the entire game if you don't want to. There are some optional missions and parts of missions where you can go fishing(One particular mission where Dutch and Hosea invite Arthur to go Fishing together is nice, not so much for the fishing but the banter while fishing).
 
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Piscian

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Playing a lot of Outriders, did my first co-op with a couple friends last night. I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, however it's sort of difficult to describe why I'm enjoying it despite not being a traditional grindy mmo looter shooter fan.

1. It feels like theres a lot more emphasis on story. This is more gritty storytelling and less "kickass", it reminds me a bit of STALKER atmospherically speaking. It doesn't feel like endless amounts of procedurally generated grinding gameplay. A lot of games like the recent Borderlands, Destiny and anything Tom Clancy feels like 90% of it is auto-scripted checkbox quests and environments. So far this feels like the developers sat down and wrote out the whole game and thought things through. It has a very straight forward and interesting single player Campaign. Co-Op isnt technically required. I guess thats bad for replay value, but I can name on one hand the number of games I've replayed in my entire life.

2. The equipment feels a tab more meaningful. This one is geared towards customizing your equipment with mods that give you magic abilities like setting enemies on fire or freezing them etc. I remember playing, Borderlands II, Division and Breakpoint and you constantly cycled through equipment, because upgrades came literally in the form of .1% upgrades but you'd get new items like every 5 seconds and so it just became a hassle managing all that crap.

3. I wasn't locked out of playing with my buddies due to leveling issues and people being at different parts of the game. We just joined the lowest level persons game and it drops us down to their level and we played their story. We don't get a ton of benefit outside of item drops which were correct for my level, but the point is to play with friends. I prefer it not to be a competition.
 

happyninja42

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3. I wasn't locked out of playing with my buddies due to leveling issues and people being at different parts of the game. We just joined the lowest level persons game and it drops us down to their level and we played their story. We don't get a ton of benefit outside of item drops which were correct for my level, but the point is to play with friends. I prefer it not to be a competition.
Yeah I remember City of Heroes implemented that back when it was live, and it was a great system. The Sidekick/Mentor system to equalize levels so people could play with each other without breaking the game balance. It was super fun.
 

Asita

Answer Hazy, Ask Again Later
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I got reasonably far in Subnautica: Below Zero, but considering how the full release is just about a month away, I put that on pause for now.
 
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meiam

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1. It feels like theres a lot more emphasis on story. This is more gritty storytelling and less "kickass", it reminds me a bit of STALKER atmospherically speaking. It doesn't feel like endless amounts of procedurally generated grinding gameplay. A lot of games like the recent Borderlands, Destiny and anything Tom Clancy feels like 90% of it is auto-scripted checkbox quests and environments. So far this feels like the developers sat down and wrote out the whole game and thought things through. It has a very straight forward and interesting single player Campaign. Co-Op isnt technically required. I guess thats bad for replay value, but I can name on one hand the number of games I've replayed in my entire life.
Played the demo and I really wasn't crazy about the story in the first hour, so much so that I started skipping cut scene. It felt like poor man andromeda meet poor man mad max reject... Maybe it get much better later on, but yesh that introduction. Like it starts with some dude who absolutely insist the ship land now while the pathfinder outrider insist it wait until they figure out the storm thing. Either the ship really need to land ASAP, in which case the outrider are idiots for telling him to delay or the ship can wait in which case he's an idiot for not waiting. Or one of the outrider is telling the base they need to quarantine people cause they're getting infected and then he doesn't understand why medic aren't being rushed in to help them.

The the tone shift to everyone being absolutely insane with corpse dangling from chain and stuff, which would work for some sort of dark comdy, but there's not a lot of joke, at least in the first few scene...
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
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I got reasonably far in Subnautica: Below Zero, but considering how the full release is just about a month away, I put that on pause for now.
I totally intend to get and play it and the only reason I haven't yet is because it hasn't hit full release yet and because I'm not in the mood to play it right now. If I was ready to jump into it, I'm sure I'd already have purchased and started it.
 

meiam

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Rainbow Six: Siege also known as Toxicity: The Game. When I was a dedicated player some 3 years ago I was consistently ranking low/middle Gold, which is about middle of the pack in terms of skill. This season, coming back to the game and not quite having adjusted to it yet I begun ranked as high Bronze and quickly fell down into Copper. That is to say that I'm now trash tier. My aim and situational awareness has been terrible, I make no excuses. But it is infuriating being this low, because a majority of the players don't even understand or engage with basic game concepts like reinforcing walls or the basics of the game meta like Anchor defenders (stays on objective) and Roamers (tries to ambush or flush out attackers before they get to the objective) in favor of randomly running around the map. This alone means crawling out of the hole is largely luck based, but then you get the very prevalent Smurfing that goes on where people deliberately throw their ranking games to absolutely dominate Copper ranks. If you get one of those in the opposing teams it is a guaranteed loss, because they engage in every noob abuse tactic you can think of and often have the skill of the upper 30% of players. It makes playing Ranked decidedly not fun, especially since the average "engagement" between teammates is calling your team noobs, various racial and sexual slurs and being the most toxic piece of human trash a pre-pubescent kid or early teen can be.
I've played plenty of games reputated for having toxic atmosphere (moba, overwatch and such) and consistently found that the toxic atmosphere goes away once you rise out of the bottom tier. Played LoL and the very beginning game were mostly quiet but once I got past that initial stage it started getting really ugly with name calling and people dropping really early (usually to the benefit of the team). But once I got pass that hump and gotten to average matchmaking skill it went back to being mostly quiet, I'd say maybe 1 game out of 100-200 would have any amount of toxicity with maybe 2/3 of game having literally no one say anything in chat outside the usual gg and call missing. I'm not sure if its bad player being more toxic or toxic player constantly getting banned and making new account so that the low level just naturally become polluted.
 

Asita

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Is it different from the original enough to be worth while?
It's similar enough in gameplay to be familiar, though it adds some twists (such as a greater on-land segment that requires heat management), and tweaks to functionality. For instance, while you still get a prawn suit, the cyclops and seamoth have both been cycled out in exchange for a single modular vehicle, the "seatruck". Probably the most appreciable difference however is in character personality. While the protagonist of the first game was silent and simply trying to survive, the protagonist of Sub Zero (Robyn) is relatively chatty and ends up directly interacting with a few other characters. She came to the planet to investigate the death of her sister, not believing Alterra's claim that she died due to negligence.

Aside from that, you're dealing with an entirely new map with largely different fauna. This is not necessarily better or worse, just different. You're in a different biome, after all. Still a bit of discovery, still a bit of stumbling onto precursor tech, still a lot of building and survival. Whether that's different enough in your book, I leave to you. But for what it's worth, I like it.
 
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BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
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Decided to play Mario 3D World. I did not play it on Wii U at the time due to lack of interests and me knowing it would be ported Nintendo's then new and next console at some point. Game is fun like any Mario game, and I always preferred the linear course games over the ones with an open sandbox. Not that those are bad, but I never liked Sunshine much. I still got to pick up Odyssey at some point, but it can wait. I am playing as Luigi for right now. I should probably see if my big bro can co-op with me on the weekend. The Bowser's Fury portion I might hold off on until I am done or near done beating 3DW. I love the super cat power up.
 

Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
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PS+ freebie Days Gone

Just your run of the mill bucolic open world with zombies in it. You crouch in bushes, tag enemies, throw rocks, kill instantly, loot bodies, craft molotovs, clear bases and repeat. Some minimal survival element by keeping your bike fueled and repaired with scrap, but nothing to sell the game on. The story just kinda has you going from one survivor camp to another without much ado. Feels like the sparse plot could be background filler for any other zombie game.

There's nothing awful about the game, just unremarkable so far.
 
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Bob_McMillan

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Uninstalled Titanfall 2 in favor of Battlefront 2. I dropped Battlefront 2 a long time ago because the servers were ass and the gunplay just wasn't jiving with me. Might play it tonight and see how it's changed.