What are you Playing Now? Games = Life

[Malcador]

Whispers of a Machine - had this sitting around on my hard drive so giving it a go, heard it was fun, if a bit short.

[BruceVC]

Im about 20 hours into Disco Elysium and its been a fun experience so far....not great but fun

I am appreciating the parody and metaphorical SJ themes and it is humorous. But its not a RPG or action game so I am finding it a little boring. I like adventure games but I like fantasy adventure games, like KQ and HQ, so maybe that is why I am getting a little bored ?

[Keyrock]

I've been playing The Crew 2 on PS4 and I've been very pleasantly surprised. I have Assetto Corsa Competizione for when I get a wheel & pedals rig set up at home, but I wanted something more arcadey, but not too arcadey to play with a controller on the road, The Crew 2 fits that bill nicely.

One of the biggest anxieties I had going in was the live service model and the dreaded microtransactions. They are in the game, but I haven't found the game to be overly grindy in an effort to get you to spend money. Sure, if you want to get a Bugatti Chiron it will take you quite a while to earn enough in-game currency, but it's a freakin' Bugatti, you don't just give a car like that away. The game gives you some decent vehicles gratis to get you started. I wanted an Acura NSX as my main get around vehicle and saving for it took a very reasonable amount of time. I'm probably going to buy one of the packs in the game as a thank you to the devs because I got the game super cheap on sale and I honestly feel like I robbed Ubisoft given the amount of content I got for my money.

The amount of content in the game is ABSURD. The map (it's a condensed and not completely accurate United States) is absolutely littered with icons, even by Ubi standards. Unlike in other Ubi titles, the vast majority of said icons are worthwhile and fun activities, rather that copy & paste collectibles and repetitive outposts. The amount of vehicles in the game is overwhelming, with something like 500 cars, motorcycles, trucks, planes, hovercrafts, and speed boats. There are so many different tracks and racing disciplines that it will make your head spin and the vast majority of them are really fun, including some goofy stuff like racing a Delorean against 50s hot rods. Ubi have steadily been adding content since the game released some 3 years ago and continue to do so still.

The driving model sits roughly halfway between sim and arcade.  Different vehicles feel decidedly different and you can upgrade any of them. This is where my biggest gripe with the game comes in, the upgrade system. You can't just buy parts, you get loot drops, which is stupid. You get loot drops very regularly, though. I suppose if you want to squeeze the last 1% of performance out of your car because you are trying to get #1 on the global leaderboards it could take excessive grinding to get the absolute best stat drops, and that's probably where they get you with microtransactions. If, however, you just want to casually have fun (that's me!) and make your car really fast (but not the absolute fastest) you will never feel the need to spend a penny.

I was very relieved at how mild the rubber banding is in the game. I hate aggressive rubber banding, which thankfully is not in this game. There is rubber banding but you can absolutely pull away with a fast enough vehicle and good driving and absolutely get left in the dust if you suck. I am also happy that every vehicle has a schlongpit view, which is sadly missing from far too many racing games.

A really cool feature is the ability to switch vehicles on the fly. You can be ripping through Miami in a car, hit a jump, swap into a plane in mid-air, fly over a lake, then swap into a boat and drop into the water. If that sounds awesome that's because it is. There are even some super fun races where you switch vehicles mid-race. They are rad as ****. 

You can fast travel to any icon from anywhere or drive or fly there yourself. It takes roughly 40 minutes to drive from Seattle to Key West. Amusingly, there is a really great dynamic weather system, but it doesn't respect geography, so you wind up with a snow storm in Key West (proof that global warming is a hoax? ). You can stay on the roads or rip through forests (preferably in an off-road vehicle). There are all sorts of activities to do just cruising around. If you are online other players will be on the map. You can group up with them if you wish, do events together, have impromptu races, or just mess around. 

I'm just blown away by this game; the sheer amount of content and how fun most of it is, how not overly greedy the microtransaction economy is, and how much sheer joy I've gotten from it. Ubisoft did a good? 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Keyrock

[Pidesco]

On 10/20/2021 at 2:01 PM, BruceVC said:

Im about 20 hours into Disco Elysium and its been a fun experience so far....not great but fun

I am appreciating the parody and metaphorical SJ themes and it is humorous. But its not a RPG or action game so I am finding it a little boring. I like adventure games but I like fantasy adventure games, like KQ and HQ, so maybe that is why I am getting a little bored ?

Social justice themes? What do you mean by that?

[Malcador]

Playing D2 Nightmare a bit to keep up with my buddy, the Summoner was funny - not even a fight, wandered through that awful level forever and found him, poked him once with charged strike and he keeled over.   Duriel was fun, he spent his time failing to kill my Valkyrie while I poked him to death.  

[InsaneCommander]

Playing Deadfire again. Despite replaying the first game earlier this year to set up my Woedica Templar, I ended up going with another character, a Sorcerer focused on Storm spells.

I like the build and theme, but this is a Diplomatic/Benevolent/Honest character and that is not nearly as much fun as the Shady/Clever pirate I played on my first playthrough.

[Bartimaeus]

12 hours ago, Malcador said:

Playing D2 Nightmare a bit to keep up with my buddy, the Summoner was funny - not even a fight, wandered through that awful level forever and found him, poked him once with charged strike and he keeled over.   Duriel was fun, he spent his time failing to kill my Valkyrie while I poked him to death.  

You're playing an Amazon, right? Although the Arcane Sanctuary stays the same size, most other areas get so absurdly over-sized in nightmare and hell, I can't even imagine walking through the entire game on those difficulties as a non-sorceress without teleport - I'm not sure if I've ever done it, to be honest.

[Hurlshort]

I've been harvesting a lot of resources in New World. So far it still has that new MMO feel, which is nice. Up to level 25 but in no hurry.

I also got an itch to play Battle Brothers, and I added the recent Arabian themed expansion for some more flavor. It is still brutal. I've already lost a few brothers, and retired a few with rough permanent injuries. Severance pay include, of course.  

[Keyrock]

Metroid Dread first impressions:

tl;dr Game is great

Right off the bat, the movement feels really good, even without any mobility tools like speed booster or high jump boots. I haven't played Super Metroid in a really long time, so I can't compare to that, but movement definitely feels better than Fusion, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, and light years better thsn the original Metroid. This is important because when an E.M.M.I. spots you it's time to make yourself scarce, those robots are not slow.

The devs seemed to have learned from the mistake that Prime 3 and Other M made, that being having you interact with too many characters. Normally, I'm all for interacting with characters, but not in a Metroid game. What gives the games tension is a feeling of isolation, it's Samus against the world. The only entity I have interacted with so far that wasn't trying to kill me is Adam, but that's a disembodied AI, it can't help me, it's just there for exposition purposes. Better yet, Samus is cut off from her ship, so there's no feeling of safety. She's alone and surrounded by things trying to kill her.

You start off with a few missiles, the ability to slide, and the melee counter, which thankfully work better than in Samus Returns. Beyond more missiles and a couple E tanks I've so far acquired the spider magnet, phantom cloak, morph ball (which comes bundled with spring ball), and spazer..  I mean wide beam (it's still spazer to me, dammit).

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by Keyrock

[RichardRichieRich]

I play Dota 2. Sometimes Wow, but no time for games at the moment.

[LadyCrimson]

Just to report: I did finish Tales of Arise. I also finished every side quest and post-game thing.  There really isn't much post-game specific content at all, actually. I think technically it's just one multi-dungeon run and one other gauntlet. Which I suppose was a little fun but the thing is it's so Monty Hall and required almost no effort (on Moderate).  Since main story won't get you anywhere close to max-lvl, you expect post-game is going to have some grind if you want to hit that, right. Nope.  No grind at all - you just get all of them in one giant fast boost - which isn't a bad thing in of itself but point is what's left is so short and the elevation is so rapid it feels anti-climatic as heck. (edit - this post-game rushed feeling design is likely partially a side-effect of the XP system, which = almost zero XP gained once enemies are a few/several levels below your chr. lvl).

NG+ does not change enemy scaling or anything like that. You can up the difficulty setting if you want and it's nice if you want to carry over the enemy encyclopedia stuff or maybe outfits, but if you carry over gear, proficiency, skills etc. then ... utterly pointless.

Not sure what I want to do now. Since I could skip all cut/skit scenes/have foreknowledge, starting completely over would be much much faster and I could try it on Hard or Chaos, but ... not enough motivation. Outside of occasionally firing it up to giggle at Full-Auto combats, I think I'm done with the game, unless they add more content DLC.

I do think Normal/Moderate difficulty is pretty well balanced for those that want lower stress but occasional challenge. I've tried it on Hard occasionally and that increases sponge and damage taken - ppl used to Dark Souls/Sekiro would in the long run probably still find Hard too easy overall and you don't unlock Chaos until later. (the patch that added Unknown difficulty, not sure if you can pick that from get go or not).

Edited October 24, 2021 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

Trials of Fire is one of those roguelike rpg thingies with card based turn based combat.

Having fun with it. Just unlocked the last of the 9 characters, a ratling occultist. Haven't tried them yet.

It has different quests you go on instead of just starting a run and seeing where it goes. So I am trying once more the one quest I can't beat. the party is doing well so far, but I have gotten to the final boss before and things have gone downhill before when everything had been going swimmingly

[Mamoulian War]

I have finally earned enough reputation with Red Devils in Rebel Galaxy, to get into neutral and earn one of the rarest achievements in the game. It was today mage pain in the ass... The RNG on mission board was awful, I either get to guard pirate ships made out of the glass, which were impossible to safe from obliteration, or I did not get any missions for them at all. I was just cruising around two systems, and landing on various orbital stations, with no luck to get some decent and finishable mission So after 3 hours, I finally got third mission to finish, and my reputation dinged right away. Next time, I will be visiting the first Red Devil station and checking their equipment \o/

[Keyrock]

I'm progressing further in Metroid Dread. I got Varia suit, bombs, grapple beam, diffusion beam, and speed booster, plus ammo for something I don't have yet (sequence break!), which I think is power bombs. Speed booster puzzles have always been fun in Metroid games and Dread is no exception. I was surprised to find out that you can morph ball shinespark in this game, which is all types of awesome. 

With my new found toys I've been going back to earlier areas to clear out everything I couldn't before. I have almost the entirety of Artaria (starting area) cleared out except one part with extreme cold zones. Varia protects from heat but not cold. I tried doing a hell run through the cold zones, but damage over time scales in this game, you take more damage every tick, so even with 6 E-tanks I died really quickly. Hopefully there's a suit that protects from cold because I intend to get 100% item completion on my first playthrough. I suppose I could try hell running that area again once I have 10 or 12 E-tanks.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Keyrock

[Gorth]

I bought Fallout 4 GOTY edition, if nothing else, just to satisfy my curiosity. Still have a very bad taste in my mouth after dropping Fallout 3 halfway through with no intention of going back to it. I made it to some camp with a bunch of kids that screamed 'kill me', but the game wouldn't let me kill them, uninstalled and never looked back. Oh yeah, the requirement for a non existing Microsoft Live service was another reason.

 

It was $13, so I just think of that as the price of satisfying my curiosity and see what this game is about. I don't know what it is about Bethesda, but they sure as heck can't start stories in any way that I find motivating. In Fallout 3, they threw this old guy at me all the time, called him my 'Dad' and I was supposed to care somehow. Well, I couldn't care less I suppose. In Fallout 4, they have weighed me down with some brat, i suddenly have to find. Problem is just... I... don't... give... a... ****... about the baby. Hope the rad scorpions made a nice meal out of him. Double fail Bethesda, people don't care about characters because YOU TELL THEM TO, dammit. They just don't. Found my old home and Codsworth being way more interesting than my now dead partner and irrelevant spawn. Not sure if I'm actually going to progress from this point onward to be honest or just write off the $13 and cut my losses (time is a valuable commodity for me these days)

 

[ShadySands]

I have the same problem with the Bethesda "Stallout" games. New Vegas was the only one that I managed to get anywhere in thanks to Obs and I still didn't get very far.

Edited October 26, 2021 by ShadySands

[Keyrock]

Bethesda can't write a main story nor main characters to save their lives. They can write side quests and bit characters well enough, but not main stuff. My theory is that side quests and minor characters allow them to get weird, goofy, humerous, and such, whereas comedy characters don't really belong in the main story, not in these types of games, anyway. Bethesda has trouble writing serious dramatic characters with anything remotely resembling depth.

[LadyCrimson]

14 hours ago, Gorth said:

Problem is just... I... don't... give... a... ****... about the baby.

But did you get/like the dog? Surely you give a few cares for the adorable dog?

...there was this point very early in FO4 not long after you get your first mechsuit contraption. Main quest said something about meeting someone in a town/vault. I found the place, entered, looked around for about 10 seconds, then turned around and left.  I never went back and the rest of my time in FO4 was building forts, and randomly exploring what I could whilst playing with/dressing up that dog.

I eventually forgot there was even supposed to be story/questline. But FO4 was a pretty good post-apoc. pet and fort-design simulator.

Edit: oh yeah, I never used the mechsuit again. I left it on the side of a road I think.

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by LadyCrimson

[Malcador]

On 10/22/2021 at 10:04 PM, Bartimaeus said:

You're playing an Amazon, right? Although the Arcane Sanctuary stays the same size, most other areas get so absurdly over-sized in nightmare and hell, I can't even imagine walking through the entire game on those difficulties as a non-sorceress without teleport - I'm not sure if I've ever done it, to be honest.

Yah, Amazon.  Act 3 already is pissing me off wandering through the jungle with my merc's pathing issues. Have a Valkyrie because...why not.   Shelved D2 for a bit, am going back to wasting time in FM18.

Whispers of a Machine does not play well with dual monitors or something, I see my cursor still and interestingly the game does not register at all on taskbar, so Alt-tabbing is out

[Amentep]

2 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Bethesda can't write a main story nor main characters to save their lives. 

I'm not sure if they can't, or if they just don't realize that its not all that important to Fallout to have a railroaded thing you have to care about.  Even the original ditched the reason you go to the Wasteland if you follow the story long enough to solve it.  Part of why FO:NV works IMO is you choose to care or not about who shot you.  Eventually you'll end up in New Vegas.

[Keyrock]

5 minutes ago, Amentep said:

I'm not sure if they can't, or if they just don't realize that its not all that important to Fallout to have a railroaded thing you have to care about.  Even the original ditched the reason you go to the Wasteland if you follow the story long enough to solve it.  Part of why FO:NV works IMO is you choose to care or not about who shot you.  Eventually you'll end up in New Vegas.

It's not just Fallout, though, look at The Elder Scrolls. When is the last time that series had a good main story? I guess Morrowind. I mean, that wasn't a stellar main story, but it was engaging enough. That was 20 years ago.

[Amentep]

3 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

It's not just Fallout, though, look at The Elder Scrolls. When is the last time that series had a good main story? I guess Morrowind. I mean, that wasn't a stellar main story, but it was engaging enough. That was 20 years ago.

I literally can't remember the plot for Morrowind.  I remember jumping around all the time to raise my jumping skill.  Oblvion plot was the Daedra portals unlocking which I have no clue how it ended up since I hated the mechanics to close the holes.  Skyrim was the Dragonborn stuff and the civil war, both which were ignorable, really.  But that was kind of my point, Bethesda's style of games don't really need strong plots; that's not what brings people back to them.  So the continuing desire to make something the player cares about be a person (Dad in FO3, son in FO4) when none of the other games seem to go in that direction seems counterintuitive to me.

[LadyCrimson]

Morrowind had a plot? 

...I do vaguely recall being asked to join a faction...

But yeah, I agree with Ametep - Beth games are more for that open world/exploration, crafting, experimenting with "stuff" gameplay, not main plot/story. I mean some may/could argue that but ... that's my opinion. Oh and mods/customization at this point, ofc.

[Keyrock]

Yeah, you don't have to have a strong story in a big open world game full of exploring, but it can be done, and it has been done, just not by Bethesda.

[Zoraptor]

Morrowind had a plot. You had to find Caius Cossades, the creepy skooma addict, and follow his creepy skooma addict instructions. Most people just spent all their time admiring the giant mushrooms though rather than getting naked for his entertainment.

All I can remember about Oblivion's plot was that they got Jean Luc Picard and Sharpe to do the voices, and spent a grand total of 0.50c on the rest of them. And, of course, daedric glass elemental armoured bandits, mudcrabs- memorably horrible creatures, I avoided them whenever I could- and the radiant AI deciding 3 o'clock was time for people to rake their carpets after staring at a wall for the past hour or so. I did, for my sins, finish the game but literally the only thing I can remember was Sean Bean walking up temple steps or something.

Fallout 3 you were looking for your father, a middle aged guy, maybe someone's seen him? Sounds suspiciously like Qui Gon Jinn phoning it in? In the most Bethesda move possible it originally had the single most stupid ending ever written, orders of magnitude worse than 'rocks fall, everyone dies' NWN2. Of course the PC has to commit sudoku by radiation rather than sending someone immune to radiation in, otherwise he wouldn't be the hero thick as two short planks, unable to walk and chew gum, a drooling imbecile etc etc. Or maybe that's just all the people who thought that ending was a Good Idea™.