What Are You Playing Now: The Other Thread

[Tale]

Since Postal 2 was free on GOG I decided to give it another try. I remember playing it once in college and thinking it was pointless crap. After about an hour with it, my opinion has changed. But not by much.

The vulgarity is less severe than I recall, but it's just such a tedious game. The draw is clearly in acting our fantasies of shooting down everyone around you. From the boss who fired you on the second day of the job, to protesters who hate violent video games, to the line at the bank. But the shooting is so dull and unappetizing that I'd rather just wait in the stupid line. After which the cop beats up the guy in front of him, finds the corpse he just made, and then tries to arrest me for being suspicious for being around a corpse.

This is a recurring annoyance. Someone attacks you, you decide you don't want to bother with it, the cops attack them, then the cops attack you for being nearby. And I run away from it because a game that came out 5 years after Half-Life 1 plays like it came out 5 years before Quake.

The improvement is that I get a sense of the point of it. It's just not any fun.

[Katphood]

I always liked Postal 2 because it offered a different kind of 'Open-World' compared to other games. It had this smaller but more interactive world. I have played the game two times from start to finish and it always surprised me in weird ways.  

I still haven't played the Paradise Lost expansion that came out a few years ago.

[Hawke64]

14 hours ago, bugarup said:

Fighting. Hate fighting that's obviously meant for console controller.  Made myself a pretty decent crowd control/support build that works well enough on trash, but bosses are pain in the arse. Dying a couple of times to figure out their pattern and then applying "roll roll roll roll shoot roll roll, repeat" 300 times is not my idea of fun (could be a good practice for "Witcher 2", though). Companions being uncontrollable isn't helping any, since their AI sends them to headbutt everything and that strat works predictably poorly on bosses. Oh well, I could always drop difficulty and respec into "cheese the bosses" build if the game starts throwing them my way on regular basis.

You can riposte-to-death pretty much everything (played on KB&M), and, as parry interrupts any action, the PC is almost invincible (does not work AoE attacks and magic missiles). Also firearms are OP, if you don't mind skipping combat (I tested heavy weapons vs one-handed blades vs firearms, the latter shorten combat encounters to seconds).

Companions' AI leaves a lot to be desired, but they survive longer, if well-equipped.

[Hawke64]

The Outer Worlds. Tried another option for a late-game main quest. It turned out clearly superior to the one I chose first. So, the ending was as good as it could.

God Eater 3. After resolving the issue with crashing, the game is quite stable. In general, it is more engaging than Monster Hunter: World, mostly because there are NPC companions that are not cats. The plot is generic (dystopian post-apocalypse with world-saving teenagers), but it is better than nothing, I suppose.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Hawke64

[bugarup]

8 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

You can riposte-to-death pretty much everything (played on KB&M), and, as parry interrupts any action, the PC is almost invincible (does not work AoE attacks and magic missiles). Also firearms are OP, if you don't mind skipping combat (I tested heavy weapons vs one-handed blades vs firearms, the latter shorten combat encounters to seconds).

Companions' AI leaves a lot to be desired, but they survive longer, if well-equipped.

Thanks for the tip, I completely ignored riposte in favour of roll/dash. I noticed how OP guns are, armour-eating stasis + guns trivializes everything and I even stunlocked one boss this way. I'm just bit stingy with ammo, because even stunlocked the boss needed, like, 100 bullets with maxed out guns. I also got a very cool bishop for a companion, he's ranged and I'll see how he fares against bosses.  

[Malcador]

Started Syberia 3. Boy this is rough. Subtitles mismatch, audio cut outs and some odd voice acting (this is supposedly in some ersatz Russia I think, yet everyone speaks with dead American accents) alongside the tedious UI are not making this all that fun.  Also forget a lot of the previous games.

[Hurlshort]

I've got a major case of base builder's regret in Conan Exiles. Every time I start a new foundation, I find something I don't like about the area I have chosen. My most recent Savannah location is too hot, and my previous northern base was too cold.

[HoonDing]

"Started Syberia 3. Boy this is rough. Subtitles mismatch, audio cut outs and some odd voice acting (this is supposedly in some ersatz Russia I think, yet everyone speaks with dead American accents) alongside the tedious UI are not making this all that fun.  Also forget a lot of the previous games. "

The game kinda shares the same fate as Broken Sword 3 & 4.

At least it was better than Dreamfail Chapters.

Edited December 19, 2019 by HoonDing

[Azdeus]

2 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

I've got a major case of base builder's regret in Conan Exiles. Every time I start a new foundation, I find something I don't like about the area I have chosen. My most recent Savannah location is too hot, and my previous northern base was too cold.

I recently set up a base in the jungle because I want a T4 purge Derketo priest. So far I haven't had a single lemurian purge come by my base. Just loads of snakes, gorillas and cultists.

I'm thinking about setting up base in the north though, I've hit 60 waiting for the purge event that I want to come along, but since nothing is happening I might aswell move I think.

[Gorth]

On 12/19/2019 at 6:20 AM, Tale said:

Since Postal 2 was free on GOG I decided to give it another try. I remember playing it once in college and thinking it was pointless crap. After about an hour with it, my opinion has changed. But not by much.

...

The improvement is that I get a sense of the point of it. It's just not any fun.

Sadly, all the sequels were crap, but the original Carmageddon will for me always be the most satisfying game for living out those homicidal urges. Just splattering pedestrians and their dogs all over the footpath

 

=

[Malcador]

8 hours ago, HoonDing said:

"Started Syberia 3. Boy this is rough. Subtitles mismatch, audio cut outs and some odd voice acting (this is supposedly in some ersatz Russia I think, yet everyone speaks with dead American accents) alongside the tedious UI are not making this all that fun.  Also forget a lot of the previous games. "

The game kinda shares the same fate as Broken Sword 3 & 4.

At least it was better than Dreamfail Chapters.

So far DFC is just better for having not garbage VO and controls.   But Kate has a better ass.

[HoonDing]

The part in the theme park is great but it takes a while to get there.

I don't even recall a single puzzle in Dreamfail.

[Malcador]

7 hours ago, HoonDing said:

The part in the theme park is great but it takes a while to get there.

I don't even recall a single puzzle in Dreamfail.

Not there yet, trying to get to totally-not-Pripyat.  I hate the need to use mouse gestures to rotate clocks or handles, etc. 

Now that I think on it, I don't recall anything about Dreamfall Chapters.  Huh.

[Hawke64]

Completed the demo of Code Vein.  It is a decent Souls-like, gameplay-wise, and the controls are excellent (there's even 5-button mouse support). But the combat was disabled when I got to the hub, like in some linear JRPG. The story is very anime-like. Character customization does not include beards for some reason. I died twice during the demo, once to gravity, once to a zombie with a glaive.
So now I'm considering purchasing The Surge 2 and waiting for 75%+ discount on Code Vein.

[LadyCrimson]

Installed RE2/remake, spent about 20 minutes going through what seemed to be 2178 graphic/display options, started the game as Leon, saw it auto-saved at the spawn point, exited game. The options menu exhausted me apparently. (that and the 1.5 hour wait to download it)

 

[Humanoid]

Finally finished Fire Emblem: Three Houses, some five months after it released. Or more specifically, I finished one of the four routes in it. No, I'm not going to play the other ones, at least not anytime soon.

It's a good game. Arguably the best one yet, if you take a snapshot of it at any point in time. But there's just too damn much of it. For those unfamiliar, the game uses a calendar system where the game happens over the course of approximately a year-and-a-half. Story missions happen on a fixed schedule of once a month (leading to the narrative absurdity where enemy forces always wait until the last week of each month to schedule their "sneak" attacks). That's all fine. However, the problem is that there is repeating content that happens on a weekly basis. That means there are about 70 weeks of weekly chores to do over the course of a typical game.

I seriously burned out on the game and took a break of approximately two months, while 80% through the game, just because I couldn't be bothered turning it on anymore. The late game tedium was soul-crushing and the only reason I finished it is because I'm doing a parallel runthrough with my sister and we agreed to get it over and done with before the Christmas holidays.

Final damage was 165 hours or so. Peanuts for a typical strategy game perhaps, but that's a lot of hours for a game with not terribly much depth.

[Mamoulian War]

7 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

Completed the demo of Code Vein.  It is a decent Souls-like, gameplay-wise, and the controls are excellent (there's even 5-button mouse support). But the combat was disabled when I got to the hub, like in some linear JRPG. The story is very anime-like. Character customization does not include beards for some reason. I died twice during the demo, once to gravity, once to a zombie with a glaive.
So now I'm considering purchasing The Surge 2 and waiting for 75%+ discount on Code Vein.

The Surge 2 will be coming to GOG if you prefer DRM free

 

Anyway, more Pillars goodness, I have left the Raedric’s Hold, in the Kolsc hands, and then slowly moved to Defiance Bay, I have tried to visit Sturgeon Gorge, or what was the name, for a while, but my party got destroyed on level 5  So I have reloaded back to Caed Nua and moved to the Copperlane to start few tasks and quets. So Act 1 is at the end, and I will be slowly going through all Defiance Bay Districts. A lot of talking and low portion of fighting awaits

[Keyrock]

16 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

(there's even 5-button mouse support). 

It's a sad state of affairs that this is something we get excited about in the year of our Lord 2019. This should have been standard on ALL PC games for the last 20 years. Mice with more than 2 buttons aren't exactly brand new.

[ComradeYellow]

Finally getting around to playing FFXV, it's a massive download, almost 100 gb!

Looks very promising at first glance, let's see if it holds up.

The only thing that looks concerning is the MMO style quest system (Level XX quests here, level XL quests over there).

I already beat RDR2 so I guess this would be the next similarity as far as massive worlds go.

 

EDIT: And it keeps crashing.  Think it's time to ditch my overclocked Radeon RX 5700 for a more stable Geforce 2080 TI.

Edited December 21, 2019 by ComradeMaster

[Hawke64]

God Eater 3. I reached Rank 4 and unlocked Assault Missions. In the offline mode I got 7 AI companions. They seemed randomized, but fairly capable. We could not defeat the Glacial Ra within 5 minutes, but there were some rewards, the most notable were new Engage (team-action-thing) abilities.
The story became even more ridiculous, but I can't start the next mission before talking to key NPCs, who are not shown on the map and can be anywhere at the hub. On the other hand, I finally got reasonably good builds for my companions and bosses became challenging.

[marelooke]

Started and finished Moons of Madness. It's set in the Secret World universe (which seems pretty cool, actually, someone should make a good MMORPG in the setting...  )

The game started off pretty strong but sort of lost its "horror" vibe halfway-ish through (at least for me), after that point it was more about figuring out the specifics about what was going on and how it would turn out (though I'm sure most forumites could, by that point, make a pretty good guess, at least in the broad sense. Especially if familiar with the universe).

Felt "The Park" (also set in the Secret World universe) did a better job at keeping the suspense going until the end.

Not a bad game, might be worth picking up in a sale if you enjoy these types of games.

Oh, and one miss-able achievement that basically requires you to do something dumb to get it (standing in easily-avoided electrified water), bit of a bummer but I doubt I can be bothered to play through half the game again just to get that one (at least at this point).

[Malcador]

Syberia 3 is pushing the limits of my tolerance now, mouse cursor disappears every time I zoom in.  And this is the supposedly patched version!

[LadyCrimson]

On 12/21/2019 at 12:40 PM, ComradeMaster said:

Finally getting around to playing FFXV, it's a massive download, almost 100 gb!

 ( ... snip ... )

EDIT: And it keeps crashing.  Think it's time to ditch my overclocked Radeon RX 5700 for a more stable Geforce 2080 TI.

The final/last update (w/the release of Ep. Ardyn) made the game much more stutter-y and problematic for many people on the Steam version. Not me, but lots of complaints about it (since SE is "done" with the game/won't fix it, likely). There's been some evidence that installing the 4k pack (another huge download) for some reason makes the stutters go away. I've had that installed since Day 1 and have never had any major/persistent issues even on my old putt-putt rig. Anyway, if you're having issues and it's on Steam, you could try that. The higher res textures and movies are still noticeable even if you're not playing in 4k etc. I'd also keep TRAM setting to High, not Highest. Even w/11GB VRAM, Highest can cause more performance loss/suck up 9.5-10gb of vram on my system and sometimes I drop it down to High even if I can use Highest.

And yeah...the side quests in the game are pretty bad. I mean if you like the combat it's just fun to ... more combat ... and later Hunts have some tough battles, but they're almost all fetch/kill quests. And don't get me started on the find lost Hunters and broken down cars "quests."   >.>  Don't expect stellar storytelling pacing either. I still love the game tho.

Edited December 23, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[Raithe]

Giving Star Wars Fallen Order a whirl.

Okay, I'm going to say up-front, it's a good game. But it's a good game with a however. Its an averagely good game. But what raises the bar is that its a competent good game with no particular weaknesses.  It's not an overly actiony action game, it's much more like Tomb Raider in Star Wars, in the sense that it's more about the platform exploration and solve a few puzzles along the way more than anything else.

It's got some elements that are really nice - Your holomap of where you've explored is projected by your robot companion, and it really highlights where you are, where you've been, routes you can't access yet (due to skills or tools not yet acquired), and routes you have found but haven't explored but ar ecapable of.

The lightsaber combat is..decent. Again, it's that "averagely good with nothing significant to complain about", but I really don't understand why some critics have raved about it. It doesn't have the swooshing frenzy of joy that the Jedi Knight games had. It's fluid, but doesn't make me go "yeah!"

Force powers are fairly understated, but that makes sense, your character is a padawan who wasn't fully trained and then spent several years hiding and not practicing his abilities. So again , you have that comparison that you don't have the variety or the over-the-top cinematic force powers of Force Unleashed or the like.

I think that's what it actually comes down to.  Nothing actually falls flat, but not much really wows you either. The combat, the force powers, it's all understated but competent. Which makes sense for the storyline, but it doesn't really evoke much feeling of wonder or joy. It's engaging, but more so if you like the idea of Star Wars Tomb Raider.

[LadyCrimson]

Ran through the tutorial zoo mission of Planet Zoo.

Some decent gameplay details/options. Some learning curve but not that complex, yet not mind-numbingly simple either. The park/foliage and animal graphics are fairly good for a sim, although nothing hugely impressive. The human park visitors/workers are in this cartoonish/low-detail styling however, which feels odd/out of place. I've tried a few "zoo" sims before and didn't like them at all - this one seems much better/more my style.

Not quite good enough (so far) to make me want to play multiple hours in one sitting but good enough I'll fire it up a few more times and see if the engagement factor increases over time. Sims can be funny that way.