What Are You Playing Now: The New Beginning Thread

[ComradeYellow]

Resident Evil 1 on Emu Browser lol partying like it's 1996.

[the_dog_days]

Bought Horizon Zero Dawn for PC. For a game that has two of my favorite things in the world, redheads robots and dinosaurs, it's pretty meh. I don't know how the aiming is with controller, but with keyboard and mouse the drop off of the arrows are so bad that the reticle is basically useless so I've been using melee stealth. There's a fight at the end of the prologue that throws waves of enemies at you. That fight was annoying. So far the best thing about the whole game is getting a robot mount.

[Sarex]

I tried to get in to HZD on PS4 and aside from motion sickens I got little else.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, the_dog_days said:

Bought Horizon Zero Dawn for PC. For a game that has two of my favorite things in the world, redheads robots and dinosaurs, it's pretty meh. I don't know how the aiming is with controller, but with keyboard and mouse the drop off of the arrows are so bad that the reticle is basically useless so I've been using melee stealth. There's a fight at the end of the prologue that throws waves of enemies at you. That fight was annoying. So far the best thing about the whole game is getting a robot mount.

I remember watching footage of that game and thinking basically three things:

1. Wow, cutting-edge 3D video game graphics have officially gotten into a terrible combination of "unstylized ugly" and "uncanny valley" for me.
2. I really like Ashley Burch (voices the main character and also Chloe from Life Is Strange and Enid from OK K.O.! among other things), but the weird voice direction they gave her makes it sound like she has brain problems, and that is going to be really difficult to listen to in a game that has at least six hours of cutscenes (e: and by the way, six hours of cutscenes in of itself is pretty unbearably terrible to me as well - cheque, please).
3. These 3rd person action lite-RPGs are really all starting to look like they play more or less exactly the same regardless of their window-dressing. Back to indie and retro games for me!

Edited August 9, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[Keyrock]

26 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I remember watching footage of that game and thinking basically three things:

1. Wow, cutting-edge 3D video game graphics have officially gotten into a terrible combination of "unstylized ugly" and "uncanny valley" for me.

Not a vidya game, but the absolute worst example of uncanny valley is Alita Battle Angel.

HARDCORE nightmare fuel.

[Humanoid]

I'm messing around with PS4 Remote Play, streaming to my desktop, partly because I wanted to finally try HZD but from the comfort and warmth of my home office, and not my cold, cluttered living room. Sitting on a sofa playing games hasn't ever been my thing unless it's a game mode that necessitates it, like split screen multiplayer. Haven't actually fired up HZD, despite buying it when the budget re-release came out, but have tried a couple other things.

- Pro Evolution Soccer 2020. Response time was fine, I'm not a good enough player to notice a difference in timing precision, but the graphics get a bit distractingly blocky, likely because of all the very similar shades of green. I don't think this is a game I'd continue to play this way.

- Persona 5. This marks the first time I've used the PS4 for anything other than football games since I bought it in 2018. The basic setup of the game didn't capture my attention back then and I abandoned it after the tutorial. Tried going on a little further and on the plus side, the player character isn't quite as much the insufferable kid who thinks he's the coolest guy on the planet as the tutorial made him out to be. Anyway, it isn't exactly graphically sharp but I didn't mind the overall quality as much as I did with PES, presumably because of the solid block colouring of its artstyle.

But yeah, next up I suppose are the two other heavily-recommended PS4 games I bought and haven't touched yet in HZD and Nier, though I'm a little concerned that they'll have similar issues to PES, since they're more about photorealism. And I also own Monster Hunter World for no good reason. Let's see if I can find one good single-player PS4 game worth playing before the next gen consoles release. And yes, with the addition of FIFA 18, the titles listed in this post are the sum total of games I've bought for the thing in over two years of ownership.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

I hit level 20 in LotRO and lost the will to continue. I downloaded SW:TOR, played it for about 2 hours and I came to the conclusion that I don't want to play a MMO. I go through this every couple years where I talk myself into trying MMOs again then I realize MMOs are just not for me. I'm currently downloading Dishonored. 

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

Not a vidya game, but the absolute worst example of uncanny valley is Alita Battle Angel.

HARDCORE nightmare fuel.

We've come a long way since

[Oner]

Reminded me of a video hbomberguy released a couple days ago.

[Mamoulian War]

 

Another session of Journey finished on my PS4. Took me around 2 hours again, but this time with a companion, who was helping me traveling around and has shown me how to get some trophies. It was a lot of fun, but this took away little bit of the feeling from the exploration of the world. I am happy that my first playthrough was solo

Edited August 9, 2020 by Mamoulian War

[majestic]

20XX was free on Epic (I think last week) so I went and checked it out. A Mega Man roguelite seemed too good to pass up, although initially I wondered how and why they could get away with such a blatant rip off.

Yeah, I guess they got away with it because it plays like arse. Them jump controls are awkward. Press A, jump, so far so good, but it just feels wrong. Pity. Back to Dead Cells then.

[Malcador]

Playing Overwatch competitive, is fun to intentionally play bad and ruin other's rankings. They complain so much

 

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Playing Overwatch competitive, is fun to intentionally play bad and ruin other's rankings. They complain so much

 

You sir are a mean one

 

Anyway, one more trophy run of Journey finished on my PS4. Took me 2 hours again, and this time, I've met 4 companions. Just 5 more missing for the last trophy to pop-up .

[Mamoulian War]

Also, yesterday, I was also able to defeat NG+ The Pursuer. Only 4 tries this time I have much better build for this fight now The fight is again bellow Little under 3 minutes

 

[Malcador]

4 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

You sir are a mean one

It's all that keeps me going.

Played some more Majesty.  I think I need to read the manual.

[Keyrock]

I started up Dishonored. What is there to say about the game, I'm sure most of you have already played it. It's Totally Not Thief™. For a PS3 game, it holds up surprisingly well visually.

[melkathi]

13 hours ago, Malcador said:

 

Played some more Majesty.  I think I need to read the manual.

 

Though you can also ask here and someone will answer.

 

(with someone quite likely being Skazz or me)

[Skazz]

Rule #1 in Majesty:

When in doubt, spam Paladins.

Unless the scenario prohibits them. Then don't.

[Humanoid]

Played through Wildfire in co-op. Bit of an odd game as at times the co-op functionality seems to be fairly perfunctory - player two is just a palette swap and their existence never acknowledged by the plot - but at the same time lends itself to some interesting organic solution to some puzzles. An interesting enough game, though graphically rather bland, and the enemy faction for some reason consists purely of identical female Roman centurions. Anyway, no doubt there's more to it than our quick "just finish the game" run would have experienced, but it's not a something I see myself replaying - I have no interest in the completionist type runs, or in the achievement-oriented objectives like ghosting levels that's probably the hook for more hardcore players.

For the unfamiliar, it's a 2D sneaker sort of game, where the gimmick is elemental magic, for mostly non-offensive purposes. Interestingly, killing is pretty hard to do in this game, with no stealth takedown mechanic or even any way to harm enemies directly - you have to rely on environmental damage to do so. Doing things like throwing a ball of fire at someone just knocks them back slightly, and other variants of your basic spells do fairly basic things like disorienting them for a few seconds, or causing them to run away in panic. This leads to an interesting reversal where unlike most games of the genre, we actually murdered as many guards as possible because the novelty in doing so when the situation allowed made it fun. The accessibility of "solutions" like that, plus the likelihood that the game wasn't truly balanced around the existence of a second player, meant the difficulty curve was a bit all over the place, though on average it felt about right.

 

It's also a bit odd that you never get to access the powers of the fourth classical element, with the game ending right as you acquire it. Makes me feel like the whole thing was cut short somewhat.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Humanoid

[Mamoulian War]

After defeating the Pursuer, I went back to Heide's Tower of Flame, and unfortunately after few attempts to get to Dragonrider or Old Dragonslayer, I found out, that the Old Guardians are somehow too powerful for my character With bad taste in my mouth, I went back to Old Bastille, and decided to try how difficult will be Ruin Guardians this time... I have also found out, that you can summon a powerful caster phantom Pilgrim Bellclaire. So I've decided to summon her, and to my surprise, instead of 33 tries as in NG, I was able to get them down on 4th try

Whole fight took me 2 and half minutes.
 

 

[BruceVC]

I mentioned I moved away from RDR2 Online once I hit level 100 but they have just released a whole  new profession\role called a Naturalist and Im really enjoying it so I will continue playing RDR2 on and off but I am still getting into Daggerfall Unity and its as huge as I suspected and great fun 

Edited August 11, 2020 by BruceVC

[Hurlshort]

I've been playing this game called Empyrion. I bought it awhile back, but it just released version 1.0. It's a very ambitious block building type game. You crash land on a planet and have to craft your way through a story line. You can build a tremendous amount of stuff, and the planets are fleshed out with other species, quests, and lots to explore. You can build and populate massive bases, spaceships, etc. It has been in development for years and there really is a staggering amount of content. It sounds perfect, but...

It's still a pretty rough game. The graphics are all over the place. The planets are beautiful, and some visuals are stunning, but the characters are hard to look at. The quests are creative and fun, but the writing is terrible, and it is easy to get overwhelmed and lost. I don't know, it's like the ultimate diamond in the rough. I find myself getting annoyed by parts of it and thinking I should go back to a more polished game like No Man's Sky, but then I think of all the limitations I have in No Man's Sky and the rather bland storyline. Empyrion at least has charm, despite the rough edges. 

[Malcador]

Mighty Brno has 21 points after 8 games, leading the league.  Hopefully I can hang on as the match engine decides new ways to screw me, like well rested players breaking their back in training or getting 4 injuries in one game..

[Chilloutman]

42 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Mighty Brno has 21 points after 8 games, leading the league.  Hopefully I can hang on as the match engine decides new ways to screw me, like well rested players breaking their back in training or getting 4 injuries in one game..

sounds like soccer players if you ask me....

[Tale]

Bought the new Wolfenstein games on sale. I played (and 100%ed) TNO on PS4 and thought it was just good. Not great, good. But I checked out reviews that seemed to gush over 2's story and seeing all the people upset about it for like pushing white guilt or whatever, I simply had to get it.

Man was it oversold to me. It was just good.