What Are You Playing Now: The Other Thread

[Gfted1]

Have you tried any different "modes" on your tv (IE: Cinema, sports, dynamic, standard, etc.)?

[melkathi]

Or alternatively, have you tried playing Majesty instead?

[Skazz]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

Or alternatively, have you tried playing Majesty instead?

You. Where have you been my entire life?

[marelooke]

Played through (and finished) Rage 2. It's an OK shooter. Story is nothing to write home about, and if you really had to "Meh." would sum it up pretty well.

Gameplay loop is fun though, but it doesn't take all that long before enemies become pretty much trivial. Game is supposedly buggy as hell but aside from one weird crash (seemed like the audio crashed, got the crash popup but game kept running, without sound. Had to kill it from task manager) I didn't run into any major issues, certainly none that really impeded gameplay, or made the game unfinishable.

Bit annoying that the DLC are behind an external service. I thought Steam didn't allow that crap, but guess they changed that policy while I wasn't looking. Game's not good enough for me to be willing to bother with a 3rd party store to get DLC, so their loss, I guess.

So yeah, decent game, might be worth picking up on sale.

[ComradeYellow]

Fortnite.

It's pretty fun and I've came in first twice but I don't really like F2P games so I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.  Nothing at all compels me to purchase further content.

[melkathi]

Talking of Majesty. Been playing just a bit of Driftlands. I like the flying island thing as a gimmick. But like Majesty 2, the game doesn't have the same soul Majesty had. Unlike Majesty 2 though, it is trying to do something new and interesting, so I'll give it a chance and move around floating islands.

[the_dog_days]

Tokyo Xanadu is going to draw comparisons to Persona, and unlike Trails of Cold Steel 1 those comparisons are warranted. Both are paranormal roleplaying games with slight horror bends set in or around Tokyo and featuring an ensemble cast of teenagers. Persona's themes are rooted in the science of psychology while Xanadu is more so inspired by Shintoism, but I can see how on the surface someone would equate the two. So, in case someone attempts to draw me into a "Persona 5 is better" argument, here's my preemptive "Persona 5 also had ten times the budget" response.

Now that the fanboi wars are over, about Tokyo Xanadu:

Story: Kou, a boy of 16, and his growing list of friends are the protagonists of the story. They live in a suburb of Tokyo with an odd history. Ten years earlier there was a very mysterious earthquake that killed quite a few and left a permanent impression on both their town and on the kids. In the current day, after seeing his class president, Asuka, walk into an Eclipse dungeon Kou gets dragged into this supernatural world that exists parallel to his own, learning that there are beings called Greeds who adversely affect the world around them. In this brave new world he finds secret organizations dedicated to the eradication of Greeds, or the subjugation of them, or even just their study. This happens just in the nick of time because as it were the number of Greed related incidents are on a ten year high. Kou and Asuka try to help their classmates and people in the town as Greeds become more frequent.

Is it the most original premise? Absolutely not. But most games aren't and in my experience the ones that are entirely original usually aren't very good.  What Xanadu does well, indeed what Falcom does well, is making me care about the characters. While there are always one or two that I don't like as well as others, Xanadu actually made me like the soft spoken girl (which I assure you, I usually don't like at all). All the characters start trope-ish but with tiny bends here and there to make them their own characters. Falcom is one of those great studios that doesn't have to completely deconstruct in order to make something new or interesting. They just make slight changes that are in character to make them stand out. And that doesn't even touch on the NPCs.

The NPCs are on par with the Trails series. For those of you who haven't played a Falcom game a common element is having NPCs who go on about their lives without the players input. Not through day and night cycles or NPC schedules (in fact none of Falcom's games have either) but by having them talk about what's going on with them and having that change over time. Despite the fact that I'll talk to the same vendor standing behind the same counter he feels more alive to me than Lucan (owner of the Riverwood Trader for those of you who don't know--which is probably all of you because let's be honest, who remembers anything about this guy other than the golden claw and that we married his sister?). All in all it gives the impression that as for the day-to-day crap NPCs don't need your help even if they're willing to pay for it every once in awhile.

Questing: We need to be talking about Falcom in the same breath as CDProjekt Red, Obsidian, and the Sega Yakuza team for being able to present tried quest design in new and interesting ways. There wasn't one quest I didn't enjoy. Once all I needed to do was walk down a street and put up flyers and even that was but fun and interesting (I legitimately belly laughed at one point).

Combat: Xanadu plays exactly like Ys. It's action based where you control one character as you run through dungeons another character is on support and a third is in your party that you can switch out if your health gets too low. The goal is to run through the dungeon as fast as you can while killing all the monsters, breaking all the destructibles, taking as little damage as possible, and keeping your hit streak going for as long as possible. Along the way you'll face a mini boss or two and at the end of the dungeon is a big boss. There isn't really any combat outside of the dungeons except for a few set pieces. You're scored on how well you did at the end of the dungeon but before the final boss. After finishing it once you can replay just about ever dungeon if you want to grind for Greed parts, money, or levels. Similar to Trails, the combat is built on a rock, paper, scissors system of elemental damage types. Having the right equipment can make fights much easier, though you don't really have to (at least on Normal difficulty) as long as your dodge timing is good.

There are platforming sections. I suck way too bad at platforming to give a relevant impressions of them. I'll just say that I made it through them and didn't break my controller in frustration. 

Items: Like I said before, Xanadu has its equivalents of quartz (elements), master quartz (master cores), and orbal devices (soul devices). You can't change your weapon because your soul device is your weapon. Other than that there are a lot of items in the game. I mean a lot. Some of the best you can only get through finishing hidden quest chains (similar to Trails of Cold Steel), some require certain Greed parts, and a few really good things you can buy. Pro Tip: You're never gonna get everyone in your party fully outfitted with the best armor unless you save all your money until the end.

Nitpicks:

4: I don't like platforming. This is obviously a pet peeve rather than real criticism, but there ya go.

3: They did reuse the 'just when all seems lost friends arrive just in the nick of time' too often. At one point I thought about making a drinking game out of it but then realized I would die. I'm not entirely convinced they didn't do that on purpose as Falcom also over used establishing shots in Cold Steel 1 in a very similar manor.

2: The true ending, which you can do if you meet the qualifications right after getting the normal ending, took me 12 hours to clear in what was already a 60+ hour game. It reminded me of watching The Return of the King with someone who hadn't read the books and after Mount Doom they were like, "is this the end?" every five minutes, only in this scenario I was the guy asking. Not that I didn't enjoy it and in the end it made sense but I thought it would be 30 minutes at the most. So consider yourselves warned.

1: While I don't mind that there's no English audio, but because the game usually uses text boxes there were times at the end where important characters in dramatic moments were saying something (in Japanese) and there was no on screen translation. This is a design oversight rather than a translation/port error. Usually I got the gist of what they were feeling in the moment so it wasn't super confusing, but still it would be nice to have an exact translation that I can read in time with the scene.

Edited January 23, 2020 by the_dog_days

[the_dog_days]

TL;DR My feelings on Tokyo Xanadu: 

 

[LadyCrimson]

Steam, search "walking simulator."
Purchased results: Morels: The Hunt, and theHunter: Call of the Wild.

Morels: you walk around forests and lands searching for Morel mushrooms. They are pretty hard to see (turning foliage to minimum helps if you're so inclined). Picking mushrooms, taking photos of wildlife gets you "points" for buying first aid, bug sprays, energy bars, and big items like a horse, ATV, tent. It'll take you a long time to get things like the tent and rides. >.>  
You play a "season" (100 days) and starting a new season is basically a replay (I think).  After a certain number of game days played, new maps/environments/animals open up (some get moderately large but nothing super-sized) and you can bounce back and forth between them as you wish. 
It's a mellow no pressure walk-about game. No dying I think, but you can lose energy being harassed by alligators, heh. Graphics are adequate for a 6GB game. Nice for 20-30 minute relax playing and its $20 price tag isn't too bad. Some might want it to be $10 tho. Only negative is the poison ivy mechanic which makes you stop every 10 seconds to "scratch", which is very annoying, and the first aid kits are expensive initially. Dev. is going to make changes to that probably due to complaints.

theHunter: Call of the Wild:  A hunting wildlife game. The reviews were right, it's a very pretty environment game. The maps are vasssttttt (seriously, vast), at least when you start and have to hoof it. Nice physics like grass staying trampled where you walk (I wrote my name in the grass, ofc).  Has some basic skill/perks you can work towards getting. I bought the "bundle" version but there's still a lot of dlc (including new world/environment maps) that would add up a lot if you get them.
Anyway, it's very pretty but if you're not trying to/don't care about "the hunt" (tracking, sneaking, ground-crawling, kills for xp) then it seems you'll hardly see any animals. They run away almost instantly from dot-in-the-distance visibility if you just crash about. So as a walking/scenery simulator all you'll see is trees and scenery which, as pretty as it can be, after a while is a little dull, so I wouldn't purchase just to walkabout.

That said, if you do try hunting, it seems like a good game for that, mechanics/gameplay wise (edit: there are goals/quests too) - but too much locked away as DLC making it expensive if you want "everything". Also, at least in the beginning, feels like a slow burn, patience is a virtue hunt, more towards realism - if you want fast-paced, quick gratification action-y trophy hunting, this isn't it.

Edited January 23, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Azdeus]

The DLC's is the only thing I really dislike about Call of the Wild,  not so much the new areas, but the weapon packs and such really stray into pay to win territory. You get the guns immediately and don't have to unlock them with ingame money and experience, and some of the weapons straddle classes so you have a free multipurpose gun instead of several different ones.

If you want something more quick paced, you should go for Generation Zero, same engine, a massive map and robots to kill, while they don't tug as hard in your wallet.

[Skazz]

8 hours ago, melkathi said:

Talking of Majesty. Been playing just a bit of Driftlands. I like the flying island thing as a gimmick. But like Majesty 2, the game doesn't have the same soul Majesty had. Unlike Majesty 2 though, it is trying to do something new and interesting, so I'll give it a chance and move around floating islands.

Oh, huh. I haven't heard about this game before.

Is it seriously anything like Majesty, or are you just toying with my heart at this point?

[melkathi]

You place flags that tell your heroes to do stuff so they get paid.

But it doesn't have the humour and charm.

The heroes in majesty talking so much gave them a personality that is lacking in other games.

[Skazz]

Oh... I now understand why you chose to compare it to Majesty 2. That's a shame.

Thanks, though.

[Lexx]

23 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Have you tried any different "modes" on your tv (IE: Cinema, sports, dynamic, standard, etc.)?

Yeah, I did some fiddling with it.

Turns out the bright edges were screen sharpening. It didn't happen while moving, because the game had motion blur activated, so the sharpening effect obviously didn't look as bad then. I've set it to 0 and now it looks fine.

I've also found out that my mainboard / CPU can't do 4k in 60hz on HDMI 2.0 - so the picture was automatically in HDMI 1.2. I've reduced the screen resolution down to 1080p. It works with HDMI 2.0 now and generally looks more fluid. However, there is still a problem with input lag - MGS5 runs pretty well and I hardly notice anything, but in Hollow Knight it's plain obvious. The game feels sluggish and slow, which sucks hard.

Not sure if there is anything else I can do to improve this... It's weird, because on my old TV it was running fine and that one already supported 1080p ... so what exactly is causing the input lag now? The (fiber optics) HDMI cable is almost the same length as my old one... probably 2 meters longer, but I doubt 2 meters make or break the experience?!

Edited January 23, 2020 by Lexx

[LadyCrimson]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

Not sure if there is anything else I can do to improve this... It's weird, because on my old TV it was running fine and that one already supported 1080p ... so what exactly is causing the input lag now? The (fiber optics) HDMI cable is almost the same length as my old one... probably 2 meters longer, but I doubt 2 meters make or break the experience?!

I think the cable would have to go past 40-50 meters to notice any difference re: input lag, although some might say less.

If it has a "Gaming" picture profile try that if you aren't already - might help. If there's more than one HDMI connector on the back of the TV, maybe try using a different one, the cheap 43" one I use with the PC only one of the 3 works for 4k/60 or HDR or something like that I forget - anyway maybe something like that's affecting something? Some other video settings might slow things down, like all the post-processing modern TV's like to whack you with these days (I turn all of that off). Dunno why one game would be a lot worse than the other, tho.

Edited January 23, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Tale]

I finished Still There last night. Honestly it was kind of great. Just not the kind of great I'm itching to play again. Kind of depressing.

It also marked the 10th item in my Steam curator, so that forced it public. Which sucks, since I hadn't gotten a logo yet.

[LadyCrimson]

Btw, when did Nexus start with the "you can only download up to 2MB of files unless you want to pay for premium membership"? Yes I was registered/logged in. Sure most mods I'm interested in are usually in the kilobyte ranges and it's probably expensive maintaining their servers but 2MB is a really low non-sub limit. Could've made it more like 5-10MB at least. Pffft.

Unless I'm missing something.

Edited January 23, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Tale]

Is it not just a speed limit?

[ShadySands]

That's what I thought. I just downloaded a 85MB BattleTech mod the other day and I had no issues.

[LadyCrimson]

43 minutes ago, Tale said:

Is it not just a speed limit?

Oh, well don't I now feel stupid. Or "old-brained", if you get my drift. 

[outWo]

I've just started playing Temtetm, something like Pokemon Blue, Red etc.

[Lexx]

So I did some more tests with my TV -- turns out the input lag becomes worse depending on the screen resolution. Now I'm not sure if it's actually the resolution itself, or the performance of the game, because obviously if I reduce the resolution, I'm also gaining more fps, while increasing the resolution reduces my fps.

This would explain why MGS5 runs so well... this game is well optimized, I simply have very good fps while playing. If I crank up the resolution to 4k, I also get noticeable input lag.

I've also tested Dishonored - Death of the Outsider, which also runs pretty well.

For Hollow Knight, I've read that lots of folks have input lag with it... apparently it's simply the Unity engine. HOWEVER, the game runs perfectly fine on my pc monitor... the moment I move it to the tv, it's all crappy. But maybe it's still all related? I have good fps on my pc, but because it's "local" so everything is fine. Once I move it to the TV, there's additional strain due to the 12m HDMI cable and the lag becomes noticeable.

The Unity-engine theory could also be supported by The Long Dark, which uses the same engine and *also* has noticeable input lag on my TV.

 

Also to note: I have yet to see any screen tearing, so I'm assuming the input waits for the image to be "complete" before showing it, and thus naturally lag is produced? I'm a 100% noob in this area, so I dunno if that's a thing or not. Just a wild guess.

Also to note2: When I'm writing about input lag, I don't mean 10 second delays. It's barely a second, but it's just so obvious.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Lexx

[Hawke64]

God Eater Resurrection. I acquired more equipment and grew accustomed to the difference in controls between GE3 and GER. So far, I've been focused on the story missions and successfully reached Rank/Difficulty 6 (not sure how many are there). It is noticeable that GER was developed for handheld consoles (mostly, GUI and animations), but it is ported quite well to PC.
The things that bother me are the plot presentation (worse than GE3), characters (too anime) and the default operator, Hibari. Unlike Amy (GE3), she almost screams during missions and her lines are too long (e.g. the target's status changes while she's still talking), thus I've disabled VA for missions, though I like to know if the aragami is retreating or just preparing for another attack (sometimes I can't see it). It should be possible to switch to another support NPC after completing the main story. At least, it was in GE2RB.

Edit. I cleared Difficulty/Rank 6 and (I think) the base game (the pre-Resurrection part). The plot did not improve, but the difficulty increased, so it somehow worked out. The final (?) boss, Arda Nova, still took only one attempt.

Edited January 26, 2020 by Hawke64

[melkathi]

Trying to give Crusader Kings 2 another chance. This seriously is the worst tutorial ever made. I pause the game to read the tooltip and keep getting interrupted with pop up messages. Which then pop up to stop me from reading the previous messages.

I think the devs mistook the malware advertisement spam for a great idea to bring information across.

[ShadySands]

Ugh, now I've got to go spend another 55 hours in CK2.