What are you Playing Now? Games = Life

[Amentep]

I found I liked the idea of Metroidvanias more than I actually like Metroidvanias.

[the_dog_days]

9 minutes ago, Amentep said:

I found I liked the idea of Metroidvanias more than I actually like Metroidvanias.

They always sound fun until I remember I hate backtracking.

[Keyrock]

3 minutes ago, the_dog_days said:

They always sound fun until I remember I hate backtracking.

I like backtracking in a game, metroidvania or otherwise, so long as there is no level scaling. Coming back to an earlier area much more powerful and slicing through everything like a hot knife through butter is a fun power fantasy for me. 

[Bartimaeus]

8 hours ago, KP the meanie zucchini said:

That's one very specific qualifier.

The 4-5 hours requirement is usually to do with map size and complexity as well as backtracking. Metroidvania games tend to have such a heaping of "explore literally every single last corner of every single last square of the map", it's incredibly frustrating and tedious - please make the map manageably-sized, thank you. I also tend to prefer my games on the short side these days regardless, and that's especially true for Metroidvania games which simply isn't my favorite genre to begin with.

The melee vs. ranged weapons is not as hard of a rule as the first - it's just what I've noticed after having tried a number of them, I tend to enjoy the ones centered around melee combat a lot more than the ones centered around ranged combat. Probably because the ones with ranged combat very often become a non-stop gauntlet of "avoid an endless amount of projectiles while also trying to constantly be aiming and shooting your own projectiles at the things firing the projectiles" - just isn't really my cup of tea.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Probably because the ones with ranged combat very often become a non-stop gauntlet of "avoid an endless amount of projectiles while also trying to constantly be shooting and aiming your own projectiles at the things firing the projectiles" - just isn't really my cup of tea.

Honestly, Metroid games don't really fit that description well, they're not bullet hell-y. There are of course some regular enemies that fire projectiles at you, but they are few and far between. There are usually a few boss fights that get a little bullet hell-y like Mother Brain every time she makes an appearance, Phantoon, and in Metroid Dread some of the later central unit battles have a bunch of projectiles flying at you, but those CU fights are so easy you can mostly tank the damage and just unload on the central unit. The irony is that later in Metroid games you don't generally do a lot of shooting. I mean you can, if you're dead set on it, but once you have speed booster and screw attack you just run or spin jump your way through regular enemies and even some bosses. You don't need to stop to fight regular enemies once you have screw attack, you just go. Samus Aran's greatest weapon is her mobility, which is why Super Metroid and Metroid Dread are easily the best games in the series, because they have really good, fluid movement and tight controls.

As an aside, I think it's bonkers that speedrunners already have Metroid Dread any% down to 1:15 and 100% down to about 2 hours. I just spent 19 hours beating the game. Granted, I did 100% and I'm a very slow gamer. 

Edited November 4, 2021 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

It just dawned on me. Why did the (sith) empire waste so much time and money continually building giant superweapons that come standard with one fatal flaw to blow up planets with? They should have just hired Samus Aran, she's really good at blowing up planets. I don't know what her fee is, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's significantly less than building a gigantic battle station that's just going to get blown up by a X-wing anyway. The sith's greatest flaw is being very irresponsible with their money.

[Keyrock]

I haven't found much time to game lately, so I'm still really early in Bravely Default 2, I only just finished the prologue and got into the game proper. Freelancer has abilities at lev 9 and lev 12 (max) that increase how many job points (jp) you earn and whenever I see abilities that increase xp gain my natural instinct is to get them ASAP. This means that my party currently consists of 4 freelancers, which is a pretty terrible party. It will be worth it in the long run, though.

[Mamoulian War]

After finishing Rebel Galaxy, I am currently in gaming hiatus. I just do not know what to pick to play next. So I am just driving around in Assetto Corsa leagues and went back after looong break back to Fairy Fencer F insane 100 million trophy grinding. I am currently on 80 millions

Edited November 8, 2021 by Mamoulian War

[melkathi]

So you only have another six years of grinding?

[Mamoulian War]

Well almost , 1 million is approx 20 minutes now so it will be approximately 7-8 more hours of playtime. I am lucky, I can play few minutes a day when I am waiting on something, and doing anything else in that timeframe would be as much waste of time as this grind My speed is between 2 - 10 millions per month this way

[Malcador]

Playing Capitalism 2, have created a company that dominates the market in corn flakes, CPUs, desktop PCs, mobile phones and eye shadow.  Suck on that Intel.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Malcador

[LadyCrimson]

Decided to download/try the demo of Sword and Fairy 7.  It looked ok, and at least without ray tracing (I'm assuming default demo settings would have no RT) it played in 4k perfectly fine.

Unfortunately the demo has zero English dialogue or menu subtitling so I had no idea what to do, outside of figuring out what was the jump and attack buttons. >.>  The full game does have the English subs/menus but the demo was not very helpful to me re: whether I wanted to purchase or not. I did manage to whack some starter enemies to death and roamed some wilds and picked herbs for a bit...seems very dialogue/cutscene heavy, possibly typical for the type of game (fantasy wuxia? something like that?).

[BruceVC]

On 11/8/2021 at 9:18 PM, Malcador said:

Playing Capitalism 2, have created a company that dominates the market in corn flakes, CPUs, desktop PCs, mobile phones and eye shadow.  Suck on that Intel.

Im proud of you Malc, embracing Capitalism as the best economic system in the world is just part of the important journey of finding true serenity and happiness 

[BruceVC]

I have excellent news, I completed QFG4 after about 25 hours and I enjoyed it

The first 2 hours were hard, I nearly quit because of the outdated graphics and basic gameplay mechanics but I persevered and I started using my imagination and the "look " icon to understand what was on the screen 

The game is very humorous and the writing is well done. I am going to play QFG5 now but the best part of me enjoying this type of older game is I am well on my way to now being able to play all the classic older RPG like M&M, Ultima and Wizardry and the classic Gold Box AD&D games 

So I feel I have made huge progress in truly embracing using imagination as one of  the main  reasons for gaming enjoyment 

[the_dog_days]

Been playing Ys 9. I love the Ys series, though not as much as I do Falcom's other flagship series The Legend of Heroes. There's got to be 3 or 4x as much story in Ys 9 as there was in 8. There's a lot of cut scenes, for an Ys game. I like the characters but I feel like the twist is very obvious. The gameplay is the best in the series with new slick traversal mechanics like teleportation, wall running, and gliding and a decent size new city hub to use them in. Even so, some of the flying enemies are annoying. So far my favorite Ys game to date.

[Lexx]

I finally got around to play the Life is Strange 3 bonus chapter "Wavelengths". It is ... ok. Nice idea. Bit preachy at times, often cringe writing like LiS3. I hate how they shove the "gay stuff" into the players face. It's never shown as something normal, it's always this huge special thing that everyone makes a big deal about. I get it, you are gay. I already understood it in the last game. Jeez.

Don't know.. feels like Deck Nine is moving the franchise into the wrong direction. I liked the more down to earth kind of thing in LiS1. It had the right mix of hipster and fantastical murder mystery about it. Now it's just ... I have no idea. Not it, I guess.

The actual story of Wavelengths is ok and I'd say well executed, considering this is basically just a short and cheap DLC. Can't expect huge things with such updates. Same deal as the Before the Storm bonus chapter was. People who complained about it make me roll my eyes.

That said, turns out I really seem to hate the Alex character.

 

The very end of Wavelengths blends into the beginning of LiS3, where Alex enters the record store... and oh god, it's just so damn cringe. Reminded me of what I loathed so much when playing LiS3: The awkwardly long pauses with everything in every dialog. You just think these people are body snatcher aliens who haven't really figured out humans yet. Who knows... maybe that's exactly what's going on here...

Edited November 11, 2021 by Lexx

[Keyrock]

Today is Shin Megami Tensei V release day, it should be a joyous day for me. However, Amazon informs me that the physical copy of the game I ordered won't be here for at least another week.

[Malcador]

On 11/10/2021 at 12:50 AM, BruceVC said:

Im proud of you Malc, embracing Capitalism as the best economic system in the world is just part of the important journey of finding true serenity and happiness 

Yes,  a great system that works well with Oil reserves that respawn and stores that can sell 4 items.

[LadyCrimson]

Sword and Fairy 7

Ok, reached the point where I seem to have all four party members (that sounds familiar....).

Bottom line: for $30 (maybe it's an "A" or "AA" game vs. "AAA"?) it's entertaining in some ways, great cinematics, a pleasant enough world and some great art, but combat and party AI is weak. Not a bad game for the price and probably its lower dev. budget - but one does have to not mind or ignore quite a few shortcomings. Tales of Arise is/was much better of a game overall.

--The game/art is beautiful in many ways and I think that's its main high point.  The gameplay/dungeons are heavily scripted/linear (expected), although there is some free-roam exploration - and the plot is kinda interesting. Gods and demons, multiple realms type of conflict stuff.
--occasional "only this chr. can do this task" stuff, small simple puzzles occasionally, the rare QTE moment, so far one annoying "slide down a mountain forever and try not to crash into anything and die" section.
--I like that there are "spirits" (pets) where you can gather/get more of them as they go along. They have different ability focuses/attacks. And ofc, they're cute.
--combat is serviceable, but kinda boring - even if a boss is whomping my butt, it's ... boring.  Big fights often alternate between player-combat and long cutscenes, disrupting flow -  the cutscenes feel more fun than the actual combat. For someone like me this is fine but if you're wanting "awesome player combat", likely won't get it here.
--the party AI is poor, not even average. It's that type where party members do not really follow you, they just teleport periodically when you're not looking to stay close. Meaning they hover, get stuck, are slow to catch up. Enemies seem to target whoever is leader (you) all the time, I'm not sure aggro is a mechanic. No settings to alter AI priorities. I suspect if you desired, you could defeat all bosses by having leader run/dodge in circles while the others very slowly whittle it away, since it'll obsess over chasing you. Sometimes the other take zero damage the whole time....

Edited November 12, 2021 by LadyCrimson

[the_dog_days]

Just unlocked an achievement for Ys 9 for 2000 kills after sitting back and letting a fire mushroom explode. I laughed a bit too hard at the irony of that.

[Bartimaeus]

On 11/11/2021 at 5:15 PM, Lexx said:

I finally got around to play the Life is Strange 3 bonus chapter "Wavelengths". It is ... ok. Nice idea. Bit preachy at times, often cringe writing like LiS3. I hate how they shove the "gay stuff" into the players face. It's never shown as something normal, it's always this huge special thing that everyone makes a big deal about. I get it, you are gay. I already understood it in the last game. Jeez.

Don't know.. feels like Deck Nine is moving the franchise into the wrong direction. I liked the more down to earth kind of thing in LiS1. It had the right mix of hipster and fantastical murder mystery about it. Now it's just ... I have no idea. Not it, I guess.

The actual story of Wavelengths is ok and I'd say well executed, considering this is basically just a short and cheap DLC. Can't expect huge things with such updates. Same deal as the Before the Storm bonus chapter was. People who complained about it make me roll my eyes.

That said, turns out I really seem to hate the Alex character.

  Reveal hidden contents

The very end of Wavelengths blends into the beginning of LiS3, where Alex enters the record store... and oh god, it's just so damn cringe. Reminded me of what I loathed so much when playing LiS3: The awkwardly long pauses with everything in every dialog. You just think these people are body snatcher aliens who haven't really figured out humans yet. Who knows... maybe that's exactly what's going on here...

I have not been able to muster up the motivation to try either LiS2 or LiS3 because they look a bit far off from what I liked about LiS1, although I have to say LiS3 looks like it misses the mark even more more than 2. I don't know if you're wrote about it on it before (if so, just link), but how does LiS2 compare to LiS1?

Edited November 13, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Mamoulian War]

Aaaand 82,5 millions in Fairy Fencer F And still thinking what game to play again

[Lexx]

4 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I have not been able to muster up the motivation to try either LiS2 or LiS3 because they look a bit far off from what I liked about LiS1, although I have to say LiS3 looks like it misses the mark even more more than 2. I don't know if you're wrote about it on it before (if so, just link), but how does LiS2 compare to LiS1?

Haven't played LiS2, because the whole premise kinda turned me off all the time, so can't really say anything about it.

IMO the big problem in the new games is that the writers looked at the statistics and saw that everyone goes for lesbian romance, so now the games are all about being gay. It's so horribly preachy about it, honestly, if I would know any of the characters in real life, I'd probably avoid them at all costs, because they are so obnoxious. And what makes me the most angry about this whole thing is that pointing it out makes me feel like a bigot. I don't care about gay stuff, I don't care if people are in a same-sex relationship, if I play their games I also run into into the same-sex romances and have no problem with it, hell I even welcome it being a theme in games... But Deck Nine doesn't treat it as if it's normal, they treat it as if it's a hip lifestyle. It's so damn in-your-face with it, it's horrid writing. Just compare it to FNV, which took these elements as completely normal and didn't make a fuss about it at all. That's how it needs to be done.

Now why do I write such big walls of text about it instead of just ignoring it and moving on? Because I want to like the games. It's the kind of stuff I want to play, but with good writing... and they haven't delivered good writing since Before the Storm (and even that was already a bit borderline). Big sad.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Lexx

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

Haven't played LiS2, because the whole premise kinda turned me off all the time, so can't really say anything about it.

IMO the big problem in the new games is that the writers looked at the statistics and saw that everyone goes for lesbian romance, so now the games are all about being gay. It's so horribly preachy about it, honestly, if I would know any of the characters in real life, I'd probably avoid them at all costs, because they are so obnoxious. And what makes me the most angry about this whole thing is that pointing it out makes me feel like a bigot. I don't care about gay stuff, I don't care if people are in a same-sex relationship, if I play their games I also run into into the same-sex romances and have no problem with it, hell I even welcome it being a theme in games... But Deck Nine doesn't treat it as if it's normal, they treat it as if it's a hip lifestyle. It's so damn in-your-face with it, it's horrid writing. Just compare it to FNV, which took these elements as completely normal and didn't make a fuss about it at all. That's how it needs to be done.

Now why do I write such big walls of text about it instead of just ignoring it and moving on? Because I want to like the games. It's the kind of stuff I want to play, but with good writing... and they haven't delivered good writing since Before the Storm (and even that was already a bit borderline). Big sad.

Bad and in-your-face writing is bad writing that's difficult to ignore, regardless of subject matter. What's that old saying, "act like you belong, and people will believe you"? Something like that. Most (though not all) media is still in that "we need to make a big deal out of it because it's new and important" stage, and I get why (...after an eternity of being ignored and/or shunned in media, and worse than that before media existed), but it sure doesn't make for enjoyable writing for myself personally. Media will get past it...eventually...probably...hopefully within our lifetimes, . I wouldn't like it if you took the same bad material and then inverted it to be about straight people, after all. In fact, toxic masculine characters (both male AND female) make me want to kill them just about anytime they appear in media, unless the writers are able to subvert, rationale, or otherwise use them in an interesting and satisfying way, which is pretty rare. Obnoxious is obnoxious is obnoxious.

Anyways, that's...more or less the feeling that I got from looking at LiS3, that all subtlety as well as the atmosphere that I liked from the first game had gone straight out the window. I should probably give LiS2 a chance at some point - while I share your feeling in the premise not interesting me at all, the game at least looks more respectable in most other ways than LiS3.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Oner]

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Anyways, that's...more or less the feeling that I got from looking at LiS3, that all subtlety as well as the atmosphere that I liked from the first game had gone straight out the window. I should probably give LiS2 a chance at some point - while I share your feeling in the premise not interesting me at all, the game at least looks more respectable in most other ways than LiS3.

I haven't played True Colors so I can't compare, but I can't fathom how it could be more preachy than 2. Episode 1 killed it for me, so maybe it gets better later but after I got spoiled on the "final boss" I doubt it.