What are you playing now: The New Thread

[Raithe]

Giving Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey a try.

Third-person survival type, but with the premise of being set 10,000,000  years ago in Africa (at least, that's where it starts), and you're slowly guiding the evolution of  primates into humanity. Deveoping "skills" over generations that represent improved communication, motor functions, tool making, etc.

The opening sequence includes a line about "we're not going to help you much", and by god that's right. The tutorial is very basic, and there's no real guidance on what you're doing. You have to learn as you go, figuring out what you actually need to do - just like a primate that has yet to evolve. One key thing is that so much of it runs by audio cues, when to click a button, when to release a button, it all comes down to hearing the right audio cue or everything goes **** up.

Frustrating and engaging at the same time.

[ComradeYellow]

Thinking about trying Battletech.  Yay or Nay?  

[Hawke64]

5 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

Thinking about trying Battletech.  Yay or Nay?  

I liked it. The main campaign was linear, side missions were random, but somehow it worked. The combat provided enough tactical depth, character and 'Mech builds were diverse, animations were skippable, GUI was easy-to-read. Also there are a rogue-like mode and PvP. I have not played them, so can't say anything else.

[Humanoid]

I was out sick for about a week recently followed by a week of minimising time spent sitting down - nothing too serious but kept me gaming in bed pretty much the whole time. My gaming time was therefore understandably limited and I have not played Outer Worlds since the launch week, though I think this is the week I finally pick it up again.

One consequence is that I regrettably picked up the Freecell bug again after over a decade off, and that played havoc with my sleep schedule: "one more game" rapidly turns into forty. Over the course of a week and a half, I have played probably 600-700 games. Estimating about 5 minutes per game, that's 50-60 hours in say, 10 days, for 5 hours a day. That's kind of beyond the pale, so I have resolved to only playing it on my phone when I need to burn some time, and quit cold turkey on my PC. That said, I'm happy to report that playing it was like riding a bicycle and that it took almost no time to get back into shape. Across all devices I'd say I ended with a 92-93% win rate with a best winning streak of 49.

The other surprise hit was Adventures of Lolo on the Switch NES classic thing. I moved my Switch to my bedroom and explored the various NES and SNES games I'd never played first time around, which was most of them. Regrettably, most of them were awful and not worth spending more than 5-10 minutes on. Lolo, especially once I started playing it as a pseudo co-op game with the online feature, was the uncontested star of the bunch. Hopefully the sequels turn up on the platform eventually.

Anyway, now that I'm mostly healthy again, I'm sort of left with a strategy itch. However my options all have a big caveat attached to each of them so I'm reluctant to start any of them. I think I'm done with CK2 for the time being, especially if no more balance changes are going to ever be made again. Civ6 I'm still lacking the Gathering Storm expansion which I hear is a Big Deal, but I'm reluctant to buy it before hearing definitive news on whether or not another expansion is forthcoming. And XCOM Long War Rebalance is in a really weird state where the lead dev has decided to completely overhaul the Overwatch mechanic seemingly on a whim. I think it's some sort of weird compulsion to fix everything that isn't broken. Maybe I'll just end up playing the new Stardew Valley patch releasing this week when I need something other than TOW.

 

P.S. I got up to chapter 20-21ish in Three Houses before completely losing momentum. I have no interest in picking up the game to complete it for the moment, despite being just 2-3 chapters away from completion.

[Hawke64]

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. I traversed the Dark Chasm of Old and defeated the Darklurker, though the second part (after the boss split) was more random than I would like.
The second (?) DLC, the Brume Tower, seemed to be the same as it was in DSII. I successfully reached the bottom of the tower and defeated the Fume Knight, surprisingly, on the first attempt (Raime was the most difficult boss in DSII for me).

[Keyrock]

I finished The Witcher 3 main campaign (again). I'm going to set the game aside for a while and play something else, something completely different, definitely not a RPG and MOST DEFINITELY not a 100 hour RPG. I'll come back to play Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine later. 

[GhostofAnakin]

I don't know who thought that having to deal with those BT's every other minute in Death Stranding was a good idea.  They're not even scary or a threat to kill me.  It's just a bunch of sequences of me mashing the "shake off" button between walking through tar.  Rinse, repeat every time I pass through certain areas of the map.

I don't really see the point.  It's just annoying -- and it's already annoying having to walk everywhere for minutes at a time with no way to fast travel (that I've seen early in the game) -- and doesn't really add anything.  It's kind of sapping me of the will to play the game because there's just so much of it.

[MedicineDan]

I've been thinking of Outer Worlds.  I've been harsh on the writing, but I've come to think that the source of my criticism is more stylistic than substantive.  It does have some glaring errors, but it works.  It does the job and usually does it nicely.  I sincerely find it inferior to the writing in Deadfire, but it achieves its goal, more or less campy humor with a lot of tongue in cheek pokes at modern society.  For example, I got a kick out of the elevator music that plays in at least one of the elevators.

However, there are two things that made me reassess my feelings.  First, I really like some of the NPCs.  I think making NPCs that are genuinely sympathetic and fun is a hallmark of a great CRPG.  Morte, Dak'kon, Ed'er, Imoen, Floyd the Robot all imbued the games in which they appeared with a certain transcendent quality.

The second reason is related to the first, but it's not exactly the same.  The goofy-assed 'romance' between ADA and SAM, if it can be called that, is... cute.  That's not a word I use often.  When I first read and heard the dialogue, I found it a bit jarring, but it is just, I dunno, sweet?  It's funny and actually kind of touching.  When I get the chance to try Disco Elysium, I'll be playing that, but I think I'll return to Halcyon eventually.  They did a great job with it.  It didn't break into my top five, not even my top ten probably, but it was splendid fun and it's certainly didn't disappoint me.  I will buy the next game sight unseen.

[Lexx]

1 hour ago, GhostofAnakin said:

Rinse, repeat every time I pass through certain areas of the map.

Just take a different route?

It's what I do, it's what the game probably wants you to do. As far as I am aware, you can walk around most of that stuff.

Personally I loved the early game way more than the late game. You have to manage your carry weight, your route to take, and you need to take care not to drop anything. As soon as you get the truck, it'll change... you just load it full and call it a day. Then it *really* is only drive from a to b, which takes a lot away from the game, imo. (Though luckily there are still valid "walking"-options, via exoskeleton and hooverthingy, etc which are more fun).

Edited November 25, 2019 by Lexx

[MedicineDan]

16 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I regrettably picked up the Freecell bug again 

I feel you, Brother.  I've been playing the hell out of Freecell.  I've got over a thousand games altogether, but I've got over 600 over the past few months.  My average is probably a little longer per game than you.  My best time is about 2.5 minutes, but some games do take me longer.  I've done them all at expert level, but I've never really understood what makes you an expert at Freecell other than wasting a lot of time on the game.  If you start a 12 step program for it, let me know.  I'll join.

[marelooke]

On 11/20/2019 at 4:03 PM, Tale said:

A bit of Destiny 2, just enough to get the season title. Looks like this season was kind of meh and now it's essentially over. I might log back in to do dailies and weeklies so I can get the rest of the Empyrean Cartographer set, but don't expect to really play more of it. Dawn better sound incredible or I won't even come back for that.

Barely did any of it. I did grind through the Halloween event though.

I do enjoy the game, mechanically, but the way it is set up with all the FOMO events etc. is just a huge turn-off, and I'll probably just drop it since there really doesn't seem to be much of  a way to play it "casually" and still feel like you're achieving anything.

[Malcador]

Finally a tricky mission in Tropico 6, as it requires political management which I'm terrible at.  Not sure which 4 of the factions to suck up to, I guess Capitalists, Industrialists, Religious and Intellectuals may work - although right now both Capitalists and Communsits love me so may not have to pick one of the pairings, heh.

[Tale]

I'm supposed to be playing The Outer Worlds and Still There, but Death Stranding has kinda hooked me. The strength there is a pretty quick gameplay loop that allows you to get into that whole "it'll only take me 15 minutes to do blank, one more round" that keeps you going. And the setting of it is just so interesting you want to push on to learn more.

Which is to say that I'm not betraying The Outer Worlds, I'm addicted. It's an illness. I need help not judgement.

[GhostofAnakin]

14 hours ago, Lexx said:

Just take a different route?

It's what I do, it's what the game probably wants you to do. As far as I am aware, you can walk around most of that stuff.

Personally I loved the early game way more than the late game. You have to manage your carry weight, your route to take, and you need to take care not to drop anything. As soon as you get the truck, it'll change... you just load it full and call it a day. Then it *really* is only drive from a to b, which takes a lot away from the game, imo. (Though luckily there are still valid "walking"-options, via exoskeleton and hooverthingy, etc which are more fun).

Couldn't find a way to take a different route.  Getting from one way station to the next meant walking through that same area that triggers them automatically.

In any case, I just found that kind of thing more boring than scary or intense.  Instead of being all, "Oh crap!  Gotta run!" it's more like, "Oh come on.  Welp, here's me mashing the shake off button and walking through tar for the next few minutes".  That, combined with the endless walking, makes it a very tedious game, IMO.  The actual story parts are fine.  But the walking with literally nothing to do (it's not like FO or whatever where there are enemies to kill or towns to pop in on along the way) from Point A to Point B, it's just kind of tedious.

[Lexx]

16 minutes ago, GhostofAnakin said:

But the walking with literally nothing to do

That's where the pretty landscape and music comes into play. : >

Though I understand that that's not for everyone.

[Hawke64]

Attempted to play Shenmue III. I had low expectations for the game, but I did expect it to run. Now it either shows me black screen (and so helpfully tells that I can activate Ansel by pressing Alt+F2) when run from the *.exe or just crashes immediately when launched via EGS. I am unsure how to proceed, there are no links to technical support anywhere, neither on the devs' site (shenmue.link) nor on the publisher's (Deep Silver).

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. Defeated Sir Alonne.

Edited November 26, 2019 by Hawke64

[Zoraptor]

I've been playing Prey (2017) since I have time left post TOW on gamepass. Don't know how far through I am but it is very much System Shock (2) (2017) rather than an updated Prey. I rather liked the original Prey so I might be disappointed, but I loved SS2. Hard difficulty actually is hard, enemies actually require more than a bit of pew pew to handle, plenty of exploration, skills and alternative approaches and the atmosphere is genuinely unsettling- maybe not X labs from Stalker unsettling, but pretty close. Even more of an absolute steal for $1NZ than TOW was. A great shame that it sold poorly because it's 100% my sort of game.

[Hurlshort]

Huh, I didn't even realize Prey didn't sell well. I enjoyed it and it seemed like it had some good buzz about it.

[ComradeYellow]

Prey is literally the only great thing that has come from Bethesda.  Probably in my top ten and any mid range pc can run it well.  Gee what a shock it didn't sell well.

[Keyrock]

41 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

Prey is literally the only great thing that has come from Bethesda.  Probably in my top ten and any mid range pc can run it well.  Gee what a shock it didn't sell well.

Ahem.

DOOM (2016), Dishonored, Wolfenstein: The New Order, TES3: Morrowind, TES4: Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion (the base game can eat a bag of ****s)

Edited November 26, 2019 by Keyrock

[Zoraptor]

59 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

Huh, I didn't even realize Prey didn't sell well. I enjoyed it and it seemed like it had some good buzz about it.

Reviewed decently but didn't sell well I'm afraid. Arkane's founder was forced out after and the studio refocused away from strong narrative SP games, hence the disposable Wolfenstein games they've worked on recently.

Keeping up the Looking Glass successor tradition of making some great games, but never getting great enough sales.

[Lexx]

Ugh, don't remind me of how ****ty Wolfenstein became...

I fear the same treatment would happen to a new Dishonored game at this point.

[Malcador]

Broke that mission's back, Mayan Referendum or something in Tropico 6, realize I don't really play politics at all well, hah.  Need to work on that in sandbox I guess.. Only 1% of players have actually done so, I guess no one plays the campaign at all.

[GhostofAnakin]

23 hours ago, Lexx said:

That's where the pretty landscape and music comes into play. : >

Though I understand that that's not for everyone.

I've reached the part in the story where there's a partial "fast travel" now, though it's still very limited.  Plus I can fabricate my own bike now, though that also doesn't help much when so much of the terrain is rocks.

The story parts of the game are interesting.  And that's what keeps me pushing through.  But the walking ... my God, Kojima must really love seeing gamers spend 80% of their time running through the landscape he created.

[Lexx]

Regarding driving on rocks: You can lift the front wheel when pulling back the left analog stick. This way you can get past lots of obstacles. Also the jump-button is useful (works even in the truck later).