What Are You Playing Now: The Other, Other Thread

[melkathi]

I tried playing Dreadfire.

It gave me the option of importing a savegame (not going to happen as I'd have to suffer through PoE1 (where I am probably near the end - I have to decide which god's help to accept before jumping in a hole?)). It said I could also create a custom world state through the Options menu. At that point there was no way of getting to that menu without finishing character creation. I felt this was extremely irritating: being forced to Alt-F4 because you want to choose an option the game informs you that you have for that specific choice.

Devs should be forced to play their own games.

There probably is a circle in hell where exactly that happens.

[Keyrock]

I may be getting carried away. In anticipation of playing X4 when I get home, I ordered a new flightstick. My Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X is pretty beat up (I've had it for many many years), the stick... errm.. sticks when twisting the z-axis, the deadzone feels too big no matter how I adjust it, and a couple of the buttons work only when they feel like it. With that in mind, I ordered a Thrustmaster T.1600M HOTAS. I was torn between that and a X52. Were the X52s still made by Saitek, I may have been more invlined to get one, but they got bought out by Mad Catz a few years back and I live by the mantra "Mad Catz = Garbage". These days I believe Logitech makes the X52s, so maybe the quality has bounced back, but I decided to go with the T.1600M since it uses the same stick components as the top of the line (and ludicrously expensive) Warthog (albeit without the awesome metal casing) so it has the same surgical precision. Also, way more buttons than my T-Flight and a buttload of 4-way hats. All in all, it should be a significant upgrade.

I'm pretty excited to start building my galactic empire.

[ComradeYellow]

Downloading RE3.  After reading some reviews, it looks like my skepticism having only 1 year development time turned out to be valid, as people are claiming it's on the short side.  

The demo was fun though so if it stays similar to that throughout I won't have much complaints but I'm guessing it's probably not worth it at full price unless you're a real fan of the series.

[Mamoulian War]

13 hours ago, melkathi said:

I tried playing Dreadfire.

It gave me the option of importing a savegame (not going to happen as I'd have to suffer through PoE1 (where I am probably near the end - I have to decide which god's help to accept before jumping in a hole?)). It said I could also create a custom world state through the Options menu. At that point there was no way of getting to that menu without finishing character creation. I felt this was extremely irritating: being forced to Alt-F4 because you want to choose an option the game informs you that you have for that specific choice.

Devs should be forced to play their own games.

There probably is a circle in hell where exactly that happens.

Then you are very close to finishing up PoE1. You should give it a try and import your party.

[Tale]

Spoilers are circulating for the Final Fantasy VII Remake due to early releases. And they've convinced me I have to get this game on day 1.

 

Spoiler

It's sounding less like Final Fantasy VII Remake and more like Rebuild of Final Fantasy VII.

Have I mentioned State of Mind on here? I think it was part of Humble Choice in the last couple of months. Anyway it's fantastic if you're into the story focused game where you mostly run around and talk to other characters with the rare puzzle here or there. Highly recommended. On the downside, it has less choice and consequence than your typical Telltale game.

[ComradeYellow]

Playing Resident Evil 3.

It's actually pretty good, more focus on action than the usual intricate puzzle-solving layouts (Again the short development time is certainly the cause of that), and fairly linear, but what it does it does well.  Basically, It's closer to RE4 than REmake, with a RE3 Nemesis skin, but the pacing, the action, the ammo creation and the characters make up for its short comings.

[bugarup]

I've been playing "The Council", adventure game kind of like Telltale, only not really, because, a) no pretty artsy style, b) choices actually matter and lead to noticeable story branching, I got vastly different results from two playthroughs and from what I saw there's ton of ending variants. Oh, and there is skill system like in RPGs. Always nice to get better at breaking and entering.

Pros -- story and characters, con -- backtracking. Ouch so much of it. Character-based game, I understand, blah blah, still, to be confined to several rooms for entirety of the game is a little too meta right now.

Looking forward to their next game, apparently based on VtM. Gonna be good, given how much abuse can be inflicted on the poor protagonist of "The Council", the studio know their gore and morbidity.

[Keyrock]

^ Have there been any updates on Big Bad Wolf's VtM game? I am a big fan of The Council, so when I saw that same studio was making a VtM game I got super excited (I am honestly more excited for their VtM game than for Bloodlines 2). I haven't heard a peep about it since.

Edited April 4, 2020 by Keyrock

[majestic]

I finished Tomb Raider. Groaned a bunch at the end when Lara picks up that second pistol to cutscene blast Mathias off that cliff with it. For a game that short it also really felt too stretched out for its own good. Every setpiece repeats itself ad nauseum. Lara climbs a crumbling tower. Lara runs over a crumbling bridge. Lara runs from explosions. Lara climbs a crumbling tower. Lara runs over a crumbling bridge. Lara runs from explosions. Lara climbs a crumbling tower. Lara runs over a crumbling bridge. Lara runs from explosions.

In a game that - with padding - scratches the 20h mark?  Just how did it get the raving reviews it did when it came out?

The one thing I really liked, and that's Lara learning to cope with her situation and progressing from scared out of her mind to ruthless killer rivalling Steven Segal's bodycount, also got ruined by the end when she starts killing the otherwise undefeatable and scary Oni by the score. Really? Fully equipped commando teams couldn't stand up to them but Lara and her trusty bow can, after a few days of learning wilderness survival and camping?

Edited April 4, 2020 by majestic
apparently reviews were out of a hat, can't into spelling ey

[the_dog_days]

6 hours ago, Keyrock said:

^ Have there been any updates on Big Bad Wolf's VtM game? I am a big fan of The Council, so when I saw that same studio was making a VtM game I got super excited (I am honestly more excited for their VtM game than for Bloodlines 2). I haven't heard a peep about it since.

Everything I know: it's Werewolf Apocalypse instead of VtM. Devs were clear that they're going for more of a action game than a rpg. The character is fixed (eco-terrorist). You can use three different forms, wolf for exploration, werewolf for combat, and human for narrative. Definitely not open world. Last I saw it was scheduled for late 2020 or early 2021 release.

[Keyrock]

47 minutes ago, the_dog_days said:

Definitely not open world. 

Thank God. I have nothing against open world games, but we certainly have no shortage of those; not every game has to be open world. There are benefits to keeping the player on a more rigidly controlled path, namely in the pacing department.

[Chilloutman]

yeah but that action stuff really was not my jam. I still cant shake that bad taste after the trailer. It was really cringe fest

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6uuGf_3k_8&has_verified=1

[Keyrock]

Okay, it seems we're talking about 2 different games here. After some brief googling, I found out that the game Big Bad Wolf is making is indeed a VtM game called Swansong. They say they want to continue making "narrative RPGs", so I expect it will be at least somewhat similar to The Council, which is fine by me. Bonus points if the again include a Chesty McBoobs character.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/onlysp.escapistmagazine.com/vampire-the-masquerade-swansong-announcement/amp/

There is also a Werewolf the Apocalypse game in development by a different studio (same publisher, though, I think)

As for what I'm playing, it's still Valkyria Chronicles 4. I'm in chapter 10. There was a bit of a jarring tonal shift when I had played 25-ish hours of what is essentially a pseudo-WW2 tactics game with exclusively conventional weaponry when suddenly MAGIC.

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Keyrock

[the_dog_days]

Whelp. There goes my parade. Don't mind me, I'll just be in the corner with the dunce hat on.

[Keyrock]

^ There are so many World of Darkness games that either just came out or are coming out relatively soon that it's easy to get them confused. World of Darkness is the new Warhammer? 

[Orogun01]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

^ There are so many World of Darkness games that either just came out or are coming out relatively soon that it's easy to get them confused. World of Darkness is the new Warhammer? 

Blood for the Dark Father and the Blood Good!!!

[melkathi]

4 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Okay, it seems we're talking about 2 different games here. After some brief googling, I found out that the game Big Bad Wolf is making is indeed a VtM game called Swansong. They say they want to continue making "narrative RPGs", so I expect it will be at least somewhat similar to The Council, which is fine by me. Bonus points if the again include a Chesty McBoobs character.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/onlysp.escapistmagazine.com/vampire-the-masquerade-swansong-announcement/amp/

There is also a Werewolf the Apocalypse game in development by a different studio (same publisher, though, I think)

 

 

Swansong is published by Bigben. The Werewoof game was announced in 2017 by Focus. Since then it has been quiet around that - mostly because Focus announced a number of games at the time way too early to actually show anything (but pretending they'd release in 2018). It is being developed by Cyanide. And in 2018 it indeed swapped over to Bigben as publisher  (RPS article here)

[the_dog_days]

I have 55 hours in Cold Steel 3 (PC) and I'm still just short of finishing chapter 2. I'm glad that CS3 embarrasses once again the sweep gameplay loop that was set aside in part during CS2. I'd say "I like it," but that's an understatement given that I'm probably going to turn right back around after finishing it to NG+ if only to see all the bonding scenes I won't get to in this playthrough.

Edited April 5, 2020 by the_dog_days

[Oner]

After playing Cabaret Club Czar as Majima for what feels like 3 whole days, I unlocked the secret legendary fighting style ...of Kiryu. I'm kinda missing a few substories on both guys but I really don't feel like bothering with them and Club Moon still needs to have it's butt kicked.

[Hawke64]

Loren: The Amazon Princess. I've completed the game with the normal and DLC endings. The important thing that the in-game tutorials had not mentioned (or I forgot) was that it was possible to change equipment during combat (I discovered it only at the beginning of the third chapter), so by the end I had five elemental and several normal swords and was actively switching between them. Not sure, if it was by design.
Also I was able to get the "Alone" achievement. For some reason, only 2.6% of players have it.

Okami. I successfully restored all cherry trees in Sei'An after looking for the last one for ~15 minutes in both quarters. It was on the head of the NPC who gave me the quest.
Somehow Issun started to annoy me more than before, though considering that the PC is a wolf, I understand that there had to be a talking NPC nearby.

[Malcador]

Sort of wondering at some of these puzzles in The Next Big Thing.  Using a juicer on a fire extinguisher to extract the colour of the paint.  Granted it is inside someone's head but that seems pretty out there.  Almost done the game, isn't all that bad but no way would I have paid full price for it and felt I got good value.

[Mamoulian War]

More Pillars of Eternity after few days of break. Went to Cayron's Scar and after few fights, I went met some crazy party, where Lagufaeths were together with Ondrite Fanatics... For some reason, three of my party members got some crazy AoE DoT ticking on them which did 40 damage to them... Of course there was no chance for my group staying alive... I tried to save at least Devil of Caroc, but the bubble spell which I use for situations like these completely failed. I need to recheck all of the Durance spells if he has some kind of DoT removal or at least supression for this kind of situation, because I completely forgot...

So my party got obliterated, and my last save was more than half and hour back, soooo I kind of get annoyed and pissed off, that I rather turned off my game...

[Bartimaeus]

That's usually the right decision to make. Any time I lose like more than 15m of progress in a situation like that, I turn off the game, and often wait a day to return to it.

[Keyrock]

I'm on chapter 14 of Valkyria Chronicles 4. I'm guessing I'm 2/3 of the way through the game. For the first time in forever I actually don't have enough development points for all my gear upgrades. At the same time, there are 3 skirmishes I haven't done yet, so once I run through those, that should take care of the r&d situation as well as get me a level up for all my soldier classes, granted level ups don't mean all that much in this game, except lev 11, which promotes a class to elite status, which comes with a new ability (except for engineers and grenadiers). I wonder if lev 21 will bring with it another status upgrade, or if you can even reach lev 21? My scouts are lev 17 and all my other classes are lev 16 now, so I guess I'll find out in the near future.

[Malcador]

16 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

So my party got obliterated, and my last save was more than half and hour back, soooo I kind of get annoyed and pissed off, that I rather turned off my game...

Pft.  Casual.