What Are You Playing Now: The Other Thread

[Bartimaeus]

I played through all of Subnautica semi-recently. It's a little janky (made in Unity...), but it was a pretty awesome game. Unlike most survival games, it's not a ridiculous "FARM A MILLION OF EVERYTHING" game, and there's a main quest and objectives to follow along (or don't if you don't want to). I was pretty thoroughly impressed with it, and I say that as somebody who rather expressly dislikes the survival genre. Everyone I knew that played it seemed to love it, and, well, I guess here I am also recommending it as well!

Edited March 12, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Tale]

I tried playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo. "Tried" because it crashed during the countdown,  but I mostly like what I saw.

The only real issue is they really need to get a cinematographer behind their cutscene cameras. The camera doesn't need to zoom in close and start panning every time some minor character starts running.

[Keyrock]

I completed chapter 5 in Warriors Orochi 4, which is the end of the standard campaign, though not the end of the game. The important thing about finishing chapter 5 is that it unlocks Chaos Difficulty, which is, IMHO, the difficulty these types of games are meant to be played at. There's really no point in playing a musou on easy or normal difficulty, there's no challenge whatsoever. Even on hard difficulty the game is quite easy and only late game missions offer anything approaching a real challenge. Chaos difficulty is where you actually have to be careful and move around the battlefield strategically because even the mooks can seriously hurt you, they're far more aggressive too. Archers are downright evil on chaos difficulty. Taking enemy bases so that they spawn friendly mooks instead of enemy mooks actually matters on chaos difficulty (it's essentially pointless on hard or lower). There's also Pandemonium Difficulty, which is essentially chaos difficulty, but also standby officers don't heal (on all other difficulties your standby officers, the ones you are not currently controlling, regen health). Pandemonium is available in missions where Hundun appears. It is BRUTAL. I think there may be a way to unlock pandemonium difficulty for all missions at all times, but I don't know if I'm that much of a masochist. I'll stick with chaos for now and if I git gud enough that chaos is lacking in challenge, then I'll consider playing on pandemonium.

I'll probably take a break from WO4 and play some Valkyria Chronicles 4 for a while. I'm also VERY interested in Beautiful Desolation, but as of right now, according to Proton DB, while the game runs on Linux, the movies don't play, at least not with any audio, which is obviously an issue in a story-driven game. Once they get that squared away I'll likely scoop that up. Until then, time to command my ragtag group of soldiers through alternate history Europe.

Edited March 14, 2020 by Keyrock

[Skazz]

I'm doing a casual playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas. It's one of the games that I greatly respect and feel a compulsion to refresh once in a while, so here I am.

I'm still early into the DLCs, but suddenly, somehow, it's 2014 all over again. So many years have passed, and yet I'm again at a loss about

Spoiler

whether it's better to evacuate Zion or fight the White Legs.

I mean, in the end, it's just a small change in the ending slides, but I swear to God that this is the one choice in the entire game that always stumps me.

 

Edited March 14, 2020 by Skazz

[Mamoulian War]

I am now playing Quarantine 

[Hawke64]

Avadon: The Black Fortress. I've been slowly progressing through the main story. The linearity of it became more obvious, but I still can role-play and optional content offers more choice.

Okami. I've defeated the first (?) boss, the Spider Queen, and reached the Taka Pass. So far the most challenging part was the Celestial Brush sequences, I can't react fast enough and draw it precisely on the first attempt.

[Bokishi]

Spent most of lockdown yesterday in VR, mainly playing Boneworks. It’s physical interactions with everything make you believe it’s real 

[E.RedMark]

Been playing Magic the Gathering: Arena . Lot of fun, lose some, win some..

 

But its relaxing to have matches . And there is no chat, so you don't hear Toxic stuff or abuse when you oblirate someone lol they just bail and cancede! 

19 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Avadon: The Black Fortress. I've been slowly progressing through the main story. The linearity of it became more obvious, but I still can role-play and optional content offers more choice.

Okami. I've defeated the first (?) boss, the Spider Queen, and reached the Taka Pass. So far the most challenging part was the Celestial Brush sequences, I can't react fast enough and draw it precisely on the first attempt.

Love avernum and Geneforge serie. But I played the 1st Avadon..and it just doesn't have the same....that something y'know ?

 

Hope you like it though. 

[Skazz]

3 minutes ago, E.RedMark said:

Been playing Magic the Gathering: Arena . Lot of fun, lose some, win some..

MTG: Arena is great. Once upon a time, I went on a quest to build a working deck that would consist mostly of dog cards. Fun times!

Which reminds me, Resolute Watchdog is such a good boy. Also, that flavor text is just heartbreaking.

[E.RedMark]

12 minutes ago, Skazz said:

MTG: Arena is great. Once upon a time, I went on a quest to build a working deck that would consist mostly of dog cards. Fun times!

Which reminds me, Resolute Watchdog is such a good boy. Also, that flavor text is just heartbreaking.

I'm black and red and driving some players nuts lol cose its alot of ''Ohhh nice Big Green/White/Blue creature you have there, now look! MAGIC! *POUF*'' 

[melkathi]

Need to continue PoE. I do want to finish that game...

[Skazz]

2 hours ago, melkathi said:

Need to continue PoE. I do want to finish that game...

Spoiler

 

[melkathi]

Arguably your suggestion is the better game.

[melkathi]

Bah this is annoying. Prisoner escape in PoE. Of course the alert that it happened only appeared a long time after the fact. So in the meantime I had changed a dozen areas, overwriting autosaves multiple times over, and had completed several quests, so didn't have any recent saves.

 

What is the point of alerts if they show up 2 days late?

[Oner]

10 hours ago, melkathi said:

Bah this is annoying. Prisoner escape in PoE. Of course the alert that it happened only appeared a long time after the fact. So in the meantime I had changed a dozen areas, overwriting autosaves multiple times over, and had completed several quests, so didn't have any recent saves.

 

What is the point of alerts if they show up 2 days late?

I'm not sure but I think you answered your own question?

[melkathi]

Bah, 7 hours of game time lost because devs want to be clever and force stuff on players.

[Wormerine]

As my work has been put on hold, I sort of have too many things going on right now:

 Actually playing:

1) Two Point Hospital - darn its pleasant fun. At first I was worried it's more of a clicker then a game, but as "missions' progress some management becomes required for success

2) Hades - the game progressed a lot, and with the next update being months away, I felt it's finally time to explore more indepth what game has to offer.

3) Wolfensteins New Order and Old Blood - two in the row was too much. I getting tired of it a bit. Enjoyed New Order and will push through to finish Old Blood though. It's getting... old though.

Trying to play:
4) Pathfinder: Kingmaker - writing really makes it difficult to stomach. I find timed quest annoying - I usually welcome this kind of stuff, but as Pathfinder is clumsily designed as the game likes to punish for not having extensive metaknowledge.

5) Banner Saga 3 - I need to finish. Why can't I finish.

Intending to play, but just end up staring at it:
6) Phantom Doctrine - mehhhh

7) Divinity: Original Sin2 - BG3 looks fun. Maybe D:OS2 isn't as tedious as I remember... maybe.... maybe....................................

[Keyrock]

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is scratching my tactics itch. Tactics games massage that same area of my brain that puzzle games do and they also enflame my mild OCD. For example, I went through the third mission of the game and initially got a D rating. I went back through it, armed with the knowledge of what I'm up against and a new, more optimized squad composition. I got through it much faster and, all proud of myself, watched the score screen come up and... B rating. Now, I'm racking my brain trying to figure out how to shave off 1 more turn off the completion time. 

[LadyCrimson]

Still Death Stranding.

I started a 2nd playthru to see what "online" was like. It's so much easier because of road building material help and vehicles EVERYWHERE.  I have to constantly dismiss bikes and trucks blocking doorways and all the player structures that rather ruin the isolated/desolate atmosphere.  The way the game chooses what to dump into your game is a mystery. Only nice thing is not having to build many things yourself, saving you power, and if you wanted to "speed run" you'd get much better times I suppose. I prefer offline and went back to my main playthru.

But I reached ... chapt 8? ... and some of the actual story sections/chapters are annoying. Goes from open world to a bad shooter mechanic or something. At least *I'm* terrible at those, hence I dislike them, but at least they're very short.  I have the feeling it's going to be like FFXV in a way, with this open world then sudden story sections that go faster and faster until you reach a movie ending. Then post-game is back to the open world. Not sure if I want to rush the story to get past it so I can enjoy the open world unhindered.

Also I wish there were more things to build. Not just the roads, but more devices/structures. Still fun tho.

[Mamoulian War]

More of Pillars of Eternity blind playthrough. I have just finished The Master Below quest and with for me unexpected outcome We'll see what I might get out of that later

[Wormerine]

9 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is scratching my tactics itch.

Did it improve upon the original? I did like VC quite a lot, but it was poorly balanced - getting “S” tank usually meant buffing one scout and rushing through map in one turn - shame the only thing the rating care about was speed. 

[melkathi]

When is a good time to start White March? I just got to Act 3.

[Keyrock]

23 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Did it improve upon the original? I did like VC quite a lot, but it was poorly balanced - getting “S” tank usually meant buffing one scout and rushing through map in one turn - shame the only thing the rating care about was speed. 

I'm way too early in to pass judgement on the game, but I'm having a blast with it so far.

You can't rush through a whole mission with just one scout in a single turn since every successive time you select a unit in the same turn they get drastically less AP. Even a scout can barely move more than 10 or 15 yards the third time you select them in a turn. That said, scouts are still the best infantry unit in the game IMHO, at least so far.

[Mamoulian War]

5 hours ago, melkathi said:

When is a good time to start White March? I just got to Act 3.

It’s right about time  

 

I have started it in the middle of Act 2. And it was quite challenging. I was around level 7 or so...

[melkathi]

5 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

It’s right about time  

 

I have started it in the middle of Act 2. And it was quite challenging. I was around level 7 or so...

Alright then. I'm level 9, so I should head that way.