What are you playing right now?

[Mamoulian War]

And Dark Sun Gwyndolin downed!

[Bartimaeus]

I forget how that fight even goes. Only ever fought him once.

[the_dog_days]

Since Skyrim bugs ran me off last week, this week I've been replaying the Witcher 3.

[Tale]

 

I'm nearing the end of Higurashi Chapter 1 and things are picking up. I'm really hooked.

 

But I'm also splitting time with more Choice of Games titles since Choice of Robots was so good. Just started Fallen Hero Rebirth, which is about a mind controlling supervillain that used to be a hero. And it's pretty nice too.

Ahhhhh...the demo for Book 2 is out..just saying XD check the forum ! when you are done teehee...

 

Finished the first and it was simply incredible. I don't think I'm going to touch the demo, though. Don't want the tease hanging over me before release.

[Mamoulian War]

I forget how that fight even goes. Only ever fought him once.

 

Infinite corridor, and he shoots two kind of soul spells and a bow. Harder to get to him, than the fight tbh. I would not know, where he is hidden, if I did not see accidentally spoiler video. I am trying to do mostly blind playthrough, but sometimes, I just have to peek inside guides for some hints.

[Zoraptor]

Finished Deadfire. Overall, I liked it a lot. Massive improvement in pretty much every single respect over PoE1.

 

Negatives first: combat was far too easy on the first patch but far better balanced after 1.1 with a few highly annoying exceptions- dominate/ charm attacks that can use your abilities and have no use limitation are way too powerful; I hate regenerating boss boss battles with a passion. By the nature of the game there are a fair few trivial battles of course if you find content you missed, but that is to be expected. The main plot was a bit disjointed from everything else as you never really got a sense of urgency. Then again, that's a flaw with a lot of games including BG2 and FONV. Ship combat... probably needed to go the whole hog and have a grid etc if they were going to have it. Economy etc was unbalanced, but when is it ever not.

 

Positives: it's pretty, it's a big improvement gameplay wise over PoE1, it was largely bug free for me (in fact I had more crashes on 1.1 than before, and even then only a handful and only a few other bugs) it has about the right references to the first game in dialogue and it's about the right length. The NPCs were fine and fit the game and its plot well enough, definitely better than a Bioware pseudo Whedon style quirk-a-thon but worse/ less memorable than classic NPCs. Everything about it felt a bit more polished and less mechanical than PoE1. I also cannot emphasise enough how much better the combat is, whether it's encounter design or the changes to per encounter uses I don't know, but the flow is far better. I also overall liked the travel map over location clicking, and it was pretty well thought out as well.

 

Other observations with spoilers

 

Some sort of better feeling of Eothas moving and trashing stuff as he went would have been nice, I only found 3 soulbound items which seems too little (assume I missed some) and there wasn't much of a feeling of impending existential crisis which Eothas's mission should have resulted in. Chatting with the gods was probably a better idea than how it was executed, but it worked well enough. And much like in BG2 while you supposedly had your soul 'stolen' there really wasn't much urgency about getting it back. The factions worked OK and were a lot better balanced than, say, NCR vs Caesar's Legion in FONV both in content and in terms of choosing who to back. Ended up backing the Huana. I was however somewhat (unreasonably, I admit) annoyed by some of the pronouciation, hearing about Ingartee instead of Narti (Ngati) all the time drove me bonkers. Slightly less so was Tangaloa being god of death rather than the sea (Tangaroa in Maori). I may well be the only person on the planet annoyed by that though

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by Zoraptor

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm not sure I like this or not: playing through Vampyr, I came across one of those random citizens need help quests when I came near an area.  The problem was I was too low level to take on the skals who were surrounding the person, so I decided to save it for later.  I sleep a night and level up to where I can take them on, but by that time the person is dead.

 

Positives: those quests are urgent, so you can't just pick flowers while that person has zombies banging on their door threatening to kill them.  It gives the game world a better sense of urgency.

 

Negatives: If you accidentally trigger one when you're way too low in level to take on the bad guys, you either keep dying in combat because 2 hits kills you (at that point) or that NPC dies.  I'm not sure I like triggered quests when they're level-dependent in order to successfully complete it.

[Keyrock]

Playing Tomb Raider Underworld has reminded me just how awful the combat was in the OG TR games.  In that area, the reboot was a VAST improvement, and I say that about a bog standard cover shooter, that should give you an idea of just how awful the combat was in the old games.  With that said, I'm still having a great time with the game.  Just about everything in the game that's not combat is really fun.  Also, while it's obviously a bit dated, it still holds up graphically surprisingly well for a 10 year old game.

[LittleArmadillo0]

Been playing some Jade Empire. It has been a good experience so far with the combat. Some of the dialogue is a little jarring though.

[SonicMage117]

Playing Tomb Raider Underworld has reminded me just how awful the combat was in the OG TR games. In that area, the reboot was a VAST improvement, and I say that about a bog standard cover shooter, that should give you an idea of just how awful the combat was in the old games. With that said, I'm still having a great time with the game. Just about everything in the game that's not combat is really fun. Also, while it's obviously a bit dated, it still holds up graphically surprisingly well for a 10 year old game.

The graphics are definitely the best thing about it. This the one that starts off with the giant octopus right?

 

The shooting feels like she's holding toy guns, at least the reboot, the bow actually makes you feel powerful and when you can kill an enemy with one shot, it adds some depth and realism to the combat.

[the_dog_days]

Been playing some Jade Empire. It has been a good experience so far with the combat. Some of the dialogue is a little jarring though.

 

Like when

your cousin hits on you?

 

[Labadal]

I beat Teslagrad. A fun puzzle platformer that looks really good. Not overly long either. I'm just collecting the last achievements for 100%.

[Tale]

Did a boss battle in Saliens. Played the entire health bar and went from level 7 to 12. Took me an hour, I think.

[E.RedMark]

 

 

I'm nearing the end of Higurashi Chapter 1 and things are picking up. I'm really hooked.

 

But I'm also splitting time with more Choice of Games titles since Choice of Robots was so good. Just started Fallen Hero Rebirth, which is about a mind controlling supervillain that used to be a hero. And it's pretty nice too.

Ahhhhh...the demo for Book 2 is out..just saying XD check the forum ! when you are done teehee...

 

Finished the first and it was simply incredible. I don't think I'm going to touch the demo, though. Don't want the tease hanging over me before release.

 

you arent missing much . The demo is extremely short , and need alot of work . Its been released mostly for testing by the author and to drive her feral fans batty XD . 

[SonicMage117]

I'm working on my Steam review for Dead Rising 4 which was given to me by ShadySands.

 

So far, I like it more than the others. The map is more open and they removed the stupid time limits to finish each case which means that you can explore on your own time as much as you'd like.

 

Optimization wise, it runs fine except that it get stucks on the loading screen once in a while so I had to control+alt+delte and restart the game. After that, no issues, no frame drops either which is surprising comsidering that the zombies come by the hundreds. I play with a 360 controller so I'm not sure how the game does with a mouse and keyboard.

 

Graphics it looks pretty good, it's probably my hdd in my Alpha chasis that causes some lod slowdown to a minimal output causing buffering to happen BUT that's only on things like posters and decales on the walls in the game. Or maybe it's just the game/engine that's causing it?

 

Soundwise it's great.

 

Another gameplay change I like is that the annoying "escort a survivor" missions are gone. They annoyed me, especially in the second game. Crafting seems to have take a notch up as well. Locations actually vary. It takes place in winter but you get a pretty broad sense of locale, kinda like the variances of The Witcher 3 or GTA5, even though the map isn't as big of course.

 

Story wise, the story is my favorite thing. It's silly enough but less silly than the other Dead Rising games. At least so far. The start of the game is very close (but not identical) to Return Of The Living Dead 3's beginning. That was a zombie movie from the late 80's if I remember correctly. It then progresses to a Prototype 2 type feel minus the superpowers and add crazy weapons. Both have the sci-fi definitive story in common throughout.

 

That's about all I got. I enjoyed this Dead Rising the most. Poorest rating on Steam out of all of them, not because the game itself but because people had issues running it, cpu is taxed by all them zombies so best be prepared.

 

Thank you all. Goodnight.

[Hurlshort]

I spent a few bucks to pick up Rust, but I can not get it to run easily. It takes forever to load servers, and then the performance is just a no-go. Might need to just give it up.

[SonicMage117]

Mafia III (courtesy of ShadySands)

 

All I can say for now is that the game opens up with Jimmy Hendrix - All Along The Watch Tower mastered for surround sound. With added reverbs lightly thrown in the background and some frequency cuts, it sounds just like it would on Vynal in a porch room. Very New Orleans indeed!

[GhostofAnakin]

More Vampyr.

 

So I've killed off three of the four pillars of the community, even though I'm playing a peaceful/good guy play through.  Imagine how much carnage I'd leave in my wake if I was actually trying to be a vicious beast.

[Skazz]

More Vampyr.

 

So I've killed off three of the four pillars of the community, even though I'm playing a peaceful/good guy play through.  Imagine how much carnage I'd leave in my wake if I was actually trying to be a vicious beast.

 

This honestly made me laugh.

[Orogun01]

More Vampyr.

 

So I've killed off three of the four pillars of the community, even though I'm playing a peaceful/good guy play through.  Imagine how much carnage I'd leave in my wake if I was actually trying to be a vicious beast.

So you're playing a peaceful, miserly guy? You could have given them your blood.

[GhostofAnakin]

 

More Vampyr.

 

So I've killed off three of the four pillars of the community, even though I'm playing a peaceful/good guy play through.  Imagine how much carnage I'd leave in my wake if I was actually trying to be a vicious beast.

So you're playing a peaceful, miserly guy? You could have given them your blood.

 

 

But then I'd lose out on XP.  Maybe I'm less a good guy and more an XP-addict.

[Keyrock]

Can the battles in Vampyr be cheesed?  I plan to eventually get the game and do a maximum pacifist playthrough, which will mean I will be super weak in battle and will need to resort to cheese tactics.

[wolfrider100]

I'm almost done with act one in The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Final Cut, so far I been having

 

a blast playing it. I been using a gunslinger build (Picked the Bounty Hunter class at the game's beginning).

 

Quick thank you to ShadySands for giving me this game.

 

UPDATE ONE: I just finished up act 1, now for act 2. UPDATE TWO: Act 2 is done and am starting act 3. Ok

 

just one more act to go, then I'm finished with this game. May take a break for a day or two before I start act 3.

Edited July 2, 2018 by wolfrider100

[Skazz]

Can the battles in Vampyr be cheesed?  I plan to eventually get the game and do a maximum pacifist playthrough, which will mean I will be super weak in battle and will need to resort to cheese tactics.

 

Kind of. There's a blood shield power that enables you to completely shrug off a set number of hits (any hits) regardless of the level difference, and it doesn't cost any blood. The ultimate abilities don't cost any blood either, so if you're patient, you can pop the shield and slowly chip away at your enemies with a hit-and-run approach while you wait for the cooldowns to refresh.

[Orogun01]

Can the battles in Vampyr be cheesed?  I plan to eventually get the game and do a maximum pacifist playthrough, which will mean I will be super weak in battle and will need to resort to cheese tactics.

The game seem to have 3 main builds with choosing from blood, shadow or bestial abilities. There are however "pacifists" skills, you will definitely want to invest in. Carrying more bullets and health packs for example or stealth, bosses will be hard and I would recommend at least investing in one offensive skill and one ultimate.