Your Newest Game: what did you get and why?

[SweetShark]

*Double Post*

 

[savageoblivi0n]

(I belief my post to have been eaten, so here goes again)

Had some friends speaking the virtues of Elite: Dangerous, and I'd been intrigued by it for a while, but I was off-put by the initial learning curve.

Last week was my university's spring break, so I had time on my hands, and found a decently discounted copy of the Horizons edition, so I said "what the hell?" And took the plunge...

May the gods have mercy on my soul for what I've unleashed on myself... Productivity is slowing to a standstill, how can I resist? There's wanted Anacondas out there! Can't...stop...bounty hunting...

....send help...

 

[tippy2k2]

If you stop then you will miss the awesome Boss fights.
A hint: It isn't about go in circles in these fights.
Also it's beautiful lore of the game near the end of the game is glorious.

Unfortunately their comment was purged in the server maintenance but whoever had said up the difficulty was 100% correct.

Unfortunately you get killed by BS every so often (no no Doom Marine, take your time on some of those Gore kills, I'm sure everyone will stop shooting at you) but it made the game much better.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

The last game I bought was Uurnog, the latest game by Nifflas. The reason I bought it is because it's the latest game by Nifflas. It takes a lot of cues from FiNCK, one of his previous games, which in turn takes inspiration from Super Mario Bros 2. The gimmick or hook of the game is that whenever you die (and I think when you exit the game too) the entire game world resets (items, enemies, etc) except for what's in the save room. The save room is pretty big and is essentially the hub world. It has doors to a bunch of levels but you need to find keys to unlock them. You can also use the save room for item/creature storage.

I'm not very far in so there's not much else I can say, it seems promising though and Nifflas hasn't disappointed me yet.

 

[SmugFrog]

Avorion - Yet another early access space building game, but with more going on so that it feels like a successor to Freelancer with ship building and some kind of RTS elements. I'm enjoying it quite a bit but I'm reaching a point now where multiplayer is suffering as they haven't implemented factions and such yet. When my friend and I can start controlling sectors and pooling our ships and resources, then it's going to be awesome.

Invisible Inc, because it was 6 bucks and looked like a turn based tactical stealth game, two genres I love, so why not.

How is that game? I've had it on my wish list forever and was so tempted during that sale.

My most recent purchase was Starbound, the new update got announced so I decided it was finally time to check this one out, also helped that it was made by Chucklefish, the studio that published Stardew Valley, one of my favorites last year.

I have hundreds of hours in Starbound, played it since the beta first released and I've enjoyed it - but ultimately it wasn't what I hoped it would be. It's just missing something that Terraria had with the sense of progression or how items function. It's always more fun with friends though, like many of those kinds of games. Once you play it with friends, single player becomes a lonely and boring affair. I even started a server after the last big patch but after a week or so my friends were ready to move on to other games. For me, I could just dig up and collect ore for days feeding my virtual OCD collector-hoarder habits.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Well, the Far Cry series was on sale on Steam, so I got it, cause I liked 3 and 4, and wanted to try the others.

I'm assuming Far Cry 2 came with the pack. If so, prepare your anus. 3 (without Ziggy's Mod) and 4 are walks in the park. 2 is much more immersive than any of them and the harshest of them all. But it has its own overall style and feel that 3 and 4 just don't have.

See, the problem is, when people play Far Cry 2, they're so worried about finishing objectives as quickly as possible. Getting to the place they want to go as quickly as possible. And if that's solely what you're focused on, you're gonna have a bad time.

On top of that, Far Cry 2 emphasizes something that many other FPS' don't. Positioning. It can mean the difference between super easy victory or reloading your last save. The AI in Far Cry 2 is actually some of the most intelligent dynamic AI I've seen and they WILL try and flank your ass. Constantly. And if you let that happen, you gonna get raped. Also, in Far Cry 2, your health bar is one of the few things that ISN'T against you since it's actually quite large. Everything else drains or degrades in some way. In Far Cry 2, hardly anything is permanent. But it's in this beautiful but almost completely fair harshness that Far Cry 2 truly shines. And the gunplay and AI and terrain altogether is just really addicting. The thrill of getting new weapons in Far Cry 2 is also a thrill few games actually have delivered on for me. This is because practically every weapon is viable and unique. If you're good enough, you can clear out a base with only your fucking machete and some serious skill in Far Cry 2.

At the end of the day though, if I could offer one piece of advice that would allow people to enjoy Far Cry 2 the most, it's that the joy of FC2 isn't in the destination but in the journey. Slow down and just ENJOY the game. Stop being in such a rush to get the stupid objective done. Plan your entry out. Enjoy the ride. Take it slow. Appreciate the gunplay in the moment. You do that, I almost guarantee that you'll see why this is an utterly amazing underappreciated game. The Jackal's pretty interesting too.

Further reading if that wall of text really wasn't enough. XD - http://majorslack.com/games-tips-tricks/having-fun-playing-far-cry-2/

However it does make me wish Mercenaries 3 would be made. DAMN YOU EA! *shakes fist*

I fucking know, right? >_>

 

[Timedraven 117]

Men at War.

I got it because I wanted to see what was so special about the game. So far I'm interested, but its particularly hard and annoying at times. Especially with the fact you have to babysit all your guys otherwise the enemy AI can just walk up to them and execute them.

Other then that the Voice acting can do with some work, but I really enjoy the missions where I control a small subforce while the AI does all the charging forward and stuff, leaving me with the line breaking.

 

[sageoftruth]

Atelier Firis. I was a big fan of the games in the PS2 era, but stopped getting consoles after that. Having missed out on 6 Atelier games since, I'm happy that the series has made it to PC. Hope the 6 I missed get ported sometime too.

Atelier Sophie was not without issues, but I enjoyed the whole low key approach it had.

Firis is largely an improvement if you ignore all the technical issues and the fact it runs like ass. But even with weird flickering shadows it is playable and I will overlook it to enjoy my item crafting. The game just feels more motivated and there's places to explore and go as opposed to just hitting the same few gathering spots in random blocks of map.

And as far as lower budget JRPGs go, Atelier is one of the better ones. It's far better than Neptunia at least.

I've played a few of those games (Escha and Logy, and Mana Khemia 2) and I've been eyeing this one. I'm not interesting in getting one of Koei's shoddy PC ports, but I have a PS4 Pro as well that could use a few more games for its library. How does Firis compare to the others? Does it have some new mechanics? Is the character support/vanguard still a part of the combat? I've been having trouble finding reviews for it online, so I'd appreciate it.

 

[sageoftruth]

Tales of Berseria. I've never played a game in the series, from what I hear it was going downhill by the time the series came to my attention, but I liked the look of this one from the first time I saw it and I figured it might well be the last game in the series, and I wanted to try it, so fuck it.

Really glad I did. Only about 20ish hours in yet, but I love it so far. Games looks really good, love the art style, and the characters are really likable. It is a fantastic localisation as well, the English voice actors did an amazing job in my opinion. Though if you are allergic to English you can choose between English and Japanese audio every time you boot up the game. But yeah, I've just had such a fun time with it, the story and the characters.

Ah, I just got that. I'm still finishing Hollow Knight, but that's next on my list if I don't get lured back into playing more Bloodborne. I heard it does a great job at straying from a more predictable JRPG story formula. I'm curious to see how that's done. Truth be told, the last Tales game I actually finished was Tales of Phantasia for the Super Nintendo, but I'd love to get back into the franchise. I imagine I'll have a lot of new mechanics to learn.

 

[wings012]

Atelier Firis. I was a big fan of the games in the PS2 era, but stopped getting consoles after that. Having missed out on 6 Atelier games since, I'm happy that the series has made it to PC. Hope the 6 I missed get ported sometime too.

Atelier Sophie was not without issues, but I enjoyed the whole low key approach it had.

Firis is largely an improvement if you ignore all the technical issues and the fact it runs like ass. But even with weird flickering shadows it is playable and I will overlook it to enjoy my item crafting. The game just feels more motivated and there's places to explore and go as opposed to just hitting the same few gathering spots in random blocks of map.

And as far as lower budget JRPGs go, Atelier is one of the better ones. It's far better than Neptunia at least.

I've played a few of those games (Escha and Logy, and Mana Khemia 2) and I've been eyeing this one. I'm not interesting in getting one of Koei's shoddy PC ports, but I have a PS4 Pro as well that could use a few more games for its library. How does Firis compare to the others? Does it have some new mechanics? Is the character support/vanguard still a part of the combat? I've been having trouble finding reviews for it online, so I'd appreciate it.

Well I've only played the Iris and Khemia line, so I can't compare it to Escha/Logy. The battle system is worse than Mana Khemia's, but is an improvement over Sophie's. There's less time cards and no support swapping and all that makes me kinda sad. There's a chain system and a bigger emphasis on item usage. In Khemia you could more or less just beat the shit out of everything straight, but in Firis you better know and use your bombs.

Crafting is a lot different than Iris/Khemia in that there's a bit of a minigame involved instead of just slapping items together and in Khemia's case, messing with the wheel. You assemble ingredients in a grid, and you can use catalysts which add bonuses for filling up certain squares.

Each item also has its own exp bar, leveling up to 4 times. The more proficient you are at creating an item, the more you make, the more traits you can transfer from the ingredients and you unlock the ability to rotate ingredients within the crafting minigame. Some items are grouped, so by crafting one you gain experience for all items within the group.

There's a butt load of random sidequests you can get throughout the game. They are fairly arbitrary and aren't particularly written with scenes or anything. Just something extra to do to gain rewards. Money and idea points.

Idea points is a currency you can use to unlock crafting recipes. There's two ways to unlock recipes - either by following the clues in your recipe book, which will have comments like "If I harvested more of X" or "If I made more of Y" and other stuff. If you want the recipe immediately, you can spend idea points to unlock it. But you can't just spam idea points to unlock every recipe ever, you still need to find the initial inspiration for the recipe which is triggered in all sorts of ways.

The first part of the game has a time limit - but it's pretty generous. The goal is to reach a certain city and pass an alchemist exam. After you do that, the credits roll and stuff but there's till more to do. The time limit is gone, your character decides to go search for a goal in life and off you go. And well, increase friendship levels with all your potential party members. Kinda like Mana Khemia in that sense, where you build your friendships up throughout the school year. Here you gain friendship by just taking them along with you, exploring, fighting, leveling and you eventually unlock scenes and quests.

 

[sageoftruth]

I've played a few of those games (Escha and Logy, and Mana Khemia 2) and I've been eyeing this one. I'm not interesting in getting one of Koei's shoddy PC ports, but I have a PS4 Pro as well that could use a few more games for its library. How does Firis compare to the others? Does it have some new mechanics? Is the character support/vanguard still a part of the combat? I've been having trouble finding reviews for it online, so I'd appreciate it.

Well I've only played the Iris and Khemia line, so I can't compare it to Escha/Logy. The battle system is worse than Mana Khemia's, but is an improvement over Sophie's. There's less time cards and no support swapping and all that makes me kinda sad. There's a chain system and a bigger emphasis on item usage. In Khemia you could more or less just beat the shit out of everything straight, but in Firis you better know and use your bombs.

Crafting is a lot different than Iris/Khemia in that there's a bit of a minigame involved instead of just slapping items together and in Khemia's case, messing with the wheel. You assemble ingredients in a grid, and you can use catalysts which add bonuses for filling up certain squares.

Each item also has its own exp bar, leveling up to 4 times. The more proficient you are at creating an item, the more you make, the more traits you can transfer from the ingredients and you unlock the ability to rotate ingredients within the crafting minigame. Some items are grouped, so by crafting one you gain experience for all items within the group.

There's a butt load of random sidequests you can get throughout the game. They are fairly arbitrary and aren't particularly written with scenes or anything. Just something extra to do to gain rewards. Money and idea points.

Idea points is a currency you can use to unlock crafting recipes. There's two ways to unlock recipes - either by following the clues in your recipe book, which will have comments like "If I harvested more of X" or "If I made more of Y" and other stuff. If you want the recipe immediately, you can spend idea points to unlock it. But you can't just spam idea points to unlock every recipe ever, you still need to find the initial inspiration for the recipe which is triggered in all sorts of ways.

The first part of the game has a time limit - but it's pretty generous. The goal is to reach a certain city and pass an alchemist exam. After you do that, the credits roll and stuff but there's till more to do. The time limit is gone, your character decides to go search for a goal in life and off you go. And well, increase friendship levels with all your potential party members. Kinda like Mana Khemia in that sense, where you build your friendships up throughout the school year. Here you gain friendship by just taking them along with you, exploring, fighting, leveling and you eventually unlock scenes and quests.

Interesting. Lots of it sounds similar to Escha and Logy, but the idea of making items more essential sounds like an interesting challenge. Maybe it can teach me not to be such a hoarder with my items.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Just picked up Styx: Shards of Darkness.

Why? I really really really enjoyed the previous game. It had some really solid stealth gameplay. Only had a chance to play the first level (Most of my limited gaming time at the moment is going towards XCOM 2 Long War 2), but so far I like a lot. It's a pretty solid improvement in most ways (Minus the game over screens where Styx breaks the 4th wall to make fun of you, those are immersion breaking). Now all I'm hoping for is that they actually nail the final boss/encounter this time.

 

[stroopwafel]

Momodora: Reverie under the moonlight. Really fun game. I love seeing 2D side-scrollers keep on evolving. Momodora is like a continuation of classic Castlevania mixed with some Symphony of the night and the more modern influence of Salt & sanctuary(which itself plays like a 2D Dark Souls). They keep adding stuff to such a classic genre and Momodora really takes some of the best parts while adding some of it's own 'gothic' flavor. It's excellent. Very pretty pixel art as well.

 

[Guffe]

Techincally it's Shovel Knight. But I haven't played it yet as all I've been playing the past 2 weeks is Zelda, I bought the cartridge for Zelda and when I got home I DL:ed Shovel Knight...

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm pretty sure it was either Snipperclips or Blaster Master Zero. The Snipperclips demo hooked me and I downloaded that to have something to play with my brother or really whoever else I happen to be hanging out with though I haven't really played it yet because I've been alone and I don't know if it does a Portal 2 or not (ie: Is SP the same as MP or are there MP-specific puzzles to solve?)

Blaster Master Zero is one I got because I can't just play Zelda and Bomberman all month and while I didn't play much of the original game, the trailer sold me. So far I've put about 3 hours into it and I'm really, REALLY enjoying it. It reminds me a lot of Metroid Fusion in a way and not just because Mother Brain is an early boss. The next game I get is probably going to be either Binding of Isaac + or Human Resource Machine. I loved Little Inferno but I'm not sure if I'm ready to buy it again.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Far Cry 4. Liked Far Cry 3 a lot. Saw it in the bargain bin.

It's an improvement over FC3 in all the small details, but falters in the big detail. The story just isn't as compelling and a large part of that is it's trying to retrace FC3's steps. There are several blatant "references" to it up to and including a carbon copy of the mission where you kill the right-hand man. There are a shitload of signature weapons, the single greatest one unlocked by freeing all the radio towers meaning you're guaranteed to get it, but the other good ones are a pain to get. The Bushman in particular.

Other than that, it's an improvement and I'm glad I got it at 66% off.

EDIT:

I thought the complaints against Jason in FC3 were harsh, hating him just because he was a SoCal fratboy (seriously, the rage was disquieting). That being said, Jason had a personality and opinions (to a degree). Ajay Ghale has nothing. He's a half-step up from Gordon Freeman. However, he has a voice so it's really strange he never uses it. He could have solved many of the problems if he only showed some initiative, or even any character.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

Horizon Zero Dawn

Why? Giant. Fucking. Robots. 'Nuff said. The game ain't perfect, but it manages to make taking on robots a fucking blast, though sometimes frustrating. Seriously, fuck Rock Breakers. The most annoying of the Zeta bots. Hopefully the sequel will let us ride the Thunderjaws, Stormbirds, and the inevitable Mammoth-bot.

 

[Zydrate]

One of the last games I bought when I quit my job was Dishonored 2 and I have sadly not given it the attention it probably deserves, but it will gladly be available next time I get a sneak-stabby itch (Which is currently being fulfilled by Sniper Elite 4 which was gifted to me).

Why did I get it? Because I'm partial to stealth RPG's and I'm a fan of Dishonored 2's crisper mechanics. I like how guards notice things like open doors, or the fact that their patrol buddies are not in position which makes them actually start looking around. I've prioritized hiding bodies much more than I do in any other game, even Sniper Elite 4 where the Nazis just yell "He's dead!" and walk around for a while before going back to their patrol. Dishonored does that too but the environments are a LOT more tight knit, narrow, and everything is much closer together so unstable guard pathing over an open door and make or break that particular encounter. Bravo, Dishonored 2. Bravo.

 

[gorfias]

Far Cry 4. Liked Far Cry 3 a lot. Saw it in the bargain bin.

It's an improvement over FC3 in all the small details, but falters in the big detail. The story just isn't as compelling and a large part of that is it's trying to retrace FC3's steps. There are several blatant "references" to it up to and including a carbon copy of the mission where you kill the right-hand man. There are a shitload of signature weapons, the single greatest one unlocked by freeing all the radio towers meaning you're guaranteed to get it, but the other good ones are a pain to get. The Bushman in particular.

Other than that, it's an improvement and I'm glad I got it at 66% off.

EDIT:

I thought the complaints against Jason in FC3 were harsh, hating him just because he was a SoCal fratboy (seriously, the rage was disquieting). That being said, Jason had a personality and opinions (to a degree). Ajay Ghale has nothing. He's a half-step up from Gordon Freeman. However, he has a voice so it's really strange he never uses it. He could have solved many of the problems if he only showed some initiative, or even any character.

I haven't finished either but am amazed at how much the graphics improved in a very short time. FC3 (PC: HD 7970) is amazing looking but FC4 just bumps it up that much on PS4. I do read that the story in 3 is better and I think Jason a compelling hero that so far is missing in the hero of 4. But I want a helicoptor! And I got Primal too: I think I'll get a flying dinosaur so... that is different!

I got Deus Ex Mankind Divided for less than $19 on Amazon for PS4. I'd initially heard it is a disappointment but watched some reviews that state that, no, it is worth my time. I played the opening and it looks great.

I'm watching "Iron Fist" on Netflix and multi tasked. For the 1st time, watched a show while playing Zelda Wind Waker on Wii U's table. Fun and worth doing! (Just got Zelda for $10 from Bestbuy... worth playing). May get Breath of the Wild for the Wii U rather than switch. Just works for me for now.

Please stop me though. Just heard, just now, Sony stops production of PS3 now. I DO NOT NEED ANOTHER!!! But its my last chance for a new one!!! But I don't need it!!!

Seriously: Switch, Scorpio, PS5 or next gen PC is likely next. To prepare for the next gen of 8K gaming.