What are you Playing Now? No really, tell us more...

[Keyrock]

5 minutes ago, the_dog_days said:

Marry me.

Slow down, I'm not that easy. You gotta take me out to a nice dinner and a movie first.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

50 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

I like Kevin Sorbo

According to @majestic, he was the drive behind Andromeda being less weird and more generic. So **** Hercules.

[majestic]

6 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

According to @majestic, he was the drive behind Andromeda being less weird and more generic. So **** Hercules.

Keyrock liked Hercules in Space more than Andromeda, so... yeah, I don't think that's going to change his mind.

[Keyrock]

57 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

According to @majestic, he was the drive behind Andromeda being less weird and more generic. So **** Hercules.

Andromeda had its issues, true, but that doesn't take away from 6 seasons of the glorious campy goodness that was Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Plus, that show spawned the GOD-TIER Xena: Warrior Princess which gave us so much joy, including the single greatest sequence in cinematic history:*

* This is hyperbole. The true greatest sequence in cinematic history is obviously ED-209 going haywire on Kenny in the original Robocop.

Edited February 27, 2022 by Keyrock

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

9 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Andromeda had its issues, true, but that doesn't take away from 6 seasons of the glorious campy goodness that was Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Plus, that show spawned the GOD-TIER Xena: Warrior Princess which gave us so much joy, including the single greatest sequence in cinematic history:*

* This is hyperbole. The true greatest sequence in cinematic history is obviously ED-209 going haywire on Kenny in the original Robocop.

I vaguely remember Hercules and Xena but didn't really watch them. I vaguely remember Andromeda as a show that would air late at night, but I never personally watched and only know about it from @majestic talking about it in the anime thread. When I think about it, I can't remember keeping up with anything Sorbo has been in. Though Sorbo did make a recording that was used by DARE back in the early aughts to convince kids not to do drugs.

Anyways, video games. Uhh, I downloaded Hades and decided to replay PoE and Deadfire with a Chanter > Monk/Chanter who does drugs. Guess Sorbo's DARE video didn't work.

[Wormerine]

32 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

Anyways, video games. Uhh, I downloaded Hades and decided to replay PoE and Deadfire with a Chanter > Monk/Chanter who does drugs.

That's a fine selection of games. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

33 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

That's a fine selection of games. 

I've heard nothing but good about Hades, so I'm excited.

I slept on Chanter in PoE and that was a mistake. I am using the IE mod to replicate Deadfire behavior of starting with all phrases, which helps a lot. It's still clunky in terms of progression but that AoE paralyze is very useful. Of course, Priest is still practically required, the +30 accuracy that stacks with everything is probably the biggest game changer in PoE.

[melkathi]

I braved my first big storm in Against The Storm. Which is a fancy way of saying I reset the map.

It is a rogue-like city builder?

A magic storm covers the world so it is raining constantly. Every few years a cataclysmic storm drowns everything. Some weird, mysterious queen has the magic power to hold the storm at bay and so people survive in her citadel. When it is safe to go out, you, a viceroy or something like that, organize expeditions to (re)establish settlements in the surrounding areas. The nifty thing, until the reset those villages are persistent, so when you work on a new settlement, you can trade with the previous villages you built.

Working on the first village of the new era. It is going through that tricky early period where I am lacking in some resources. This time it is food. And there isn't anyone to trade with yet. Luckily this is a mutant forest, so while my human settlers have a couple of plantations running and lizard folk trappers steal insect larvae, the beaver woodcutters get meat as a byproduct of cutting trees.

[Vaeliorin]

23 hours ago, Keyrock said:

2 had much of the stat and equipment finagling stripped out but ironically allowed for much more variety in playstyle because the classes actually felt distinct. Also, the shooter mechanics were improved from super garbage to acceptable. Also also, while the game lacked a strong main villain, the overall story about assembling a rag tag group of misfits to save the galaxy was duper duper fun.

See, I always thought the story in ME2 was kind of garbage.  It's a character driven story (that's not the term I want to use, but the term I actually want to use escapes me at the moment) where the characters barely acknowledge each other's existence outside of 1 or 2 conflicts.  And Jacob's story is basically just another ripoff of Heart of Darkness.

That said, the Information Broker's (is that his name...the Liara DLC mission) ship is possibly my favorite mission in all the ME games, just because it's so much fun to fling enemies up into the lightning.

[the_dog_days]

34 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

That said, the Information Broker's (is that his name...the Liara DLC mission) ship is possibly my favorite mission in all the ME games, just because it's so much fun to fling enemies up into the lightning.

My favorite ME DLC is Project Overlord. It was the best blend of horror and sci-fi in the series.

[Malcador]

On 2/26/2022 at 7:29 PM, Theonlygarby said:

Started playing cyberpunk.  The side quests are top tier honestly.  Sometimes I have to double check its not a main quest it seems so substantial.   Went with female V, sex scenes are weird, not sure I like being mounted like that.

 

Edit: okay the Silverhand sex scene was also awkward so it's not just being mounted that's weird

Before they patched it out, my V had a revolver in her hand.  That made that scene with Judy hilarious.

 

[melkathi]

Against the Storm has this "one more turn" compulsion. Though it isn't turn based. But you just wait for your woodcutters to reach that little glade. Then for your scouts to grab that loot. Then get firewood and food ready for the heavy rain season. And then Drizzle season starts so lets see what bonuses the Queen has to offer and what settler caravans are passing through. And lets make sure those settlers have housing...

Played six hours today it seems.

[majestic]

On 2/27/2022 at 2:42 PM, Wormerine said:

Mostly because I didn't play and as for years EA hid all their games from me on Origin it didn't remind it about myself. Now with gamepass I am considering jumping into Andromeda and DA: Inquisition, but I need to run out of things I actually want to play or replay before I get there. 

 

On 2/27/2022 at 5:00 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Because nobody played it, as Wormerine said, . Origin-only + bad launch if you happened to blindly put your faith into EA and pre-order it + poor reviews made it so basically nobody I know that played the original trilogy even bothered to check this one out.

I haven't watched much PreRecorded, but I'm pretty sure I have watched this one. ...Yep, 20 minutes of sitting in silence, that's the one, .

Well, I played Andromeda and even enjoyed the ridiculous loot box multiplayer for a while, but it was riddled with constant disconnects and crashes, and that meant investing time and energy for no gain, which lead me to just stop playing. It wasn't the worst game I ever played, but not going to lie, some of the dialogue was CAN I SHOW YOU MY FORCE LANCE level of bad (Andromeda joke, sorry ) and the animations were hilariously broken after the launch.

Gameplay wise it was probably better than Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, all things considered, but that's no real wonder, running on an adapted Frostbite 3 (I think it's pretty clear that BioWare's Unreal 3 implementation for Mass Effect just wouldn't give them any decent shooter gameplay). If it couldn't do the one thing right it was originally designed for then that would have been terrible. Please note that this doesn't mean Andromeda was a good shooter, it just played a whole lot better than the other Mass Effects. When it worked. Which it barely did.

The comment however was mostly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, I thought linking Rich destroying Mass Effect DVDs made that clear.

7 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

See, I always thought the story in ME2 was kind of garbage.

Mass Effect 2's excuse for a plot is a rehash of Dragon Age: Origins. Face impossible threat, assemble team, face impossible odds, prevail. I don't mean excuse for a plot as negatively as it comes across here, because that clearly wasn't the focus of the game, and story-wise, it apparently really did not have a focus while everyone was trying to figure out how to best mess up the  groundwork laid by the first game in the third one.

An excuse plot it was, nevertheless. A collection of small stories with barely any connecting tissue. Still, since I'm a sucker for character stuff, it was probably the Mass Effect I enjoyed the most.

edit: I should also mention that I liked Dragon Age: Origins, and to a certain degree Inquisition, so I'm probably not the best person to judge things, at least going by the edgelords and art snobs on this forum, because DA:O is like the worst thing since Pool of Radiance 2, apparently.

Edited March 1, 2022 by majestic

[Keyrock]

21 minutes ago, majestic said:

...at least going by the edgelords and art snobs on this forum, because DA:O is like the worst thing since Pool of Radiance 2, apparently.

Wait, do people really hate DA:O? I've long held the belief that DA:O is overrated, but by overrated I mean that it's good, just not the masterpiece that so many people hailed it as when it first released. The Ogrimmar part (or parts if you played a dwarf) were legitimately great. The rest of the game was decent.

P.S. You should always play a dwarf, they have by far the most interesting intros.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Keyrock

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, DAO is a good game. It had perhaps the most generic setting ever made and was a bit long and a bit clunky, apart from that, fine.

I actually enjoyed Inquisition/ Andromeda well enough too, for that matter. I'd have difficulty separating them at all as they managed to feel almost identical in every respect except I guess setting. Way, way too long for the amount of actual decent content; but I played them until I got bored, didn't care about not finishing the plot and didn't regret the time spent on them.

I don't think it's time for my biennial rant about ME2/3, and I'm too busy watching some bunch of clowns get reamed by the BruceVCs in cricket, but suffice it to say that I outright liked a lot of ME3's structure. The plot was hamstrung by ME2 not advancing it at all until the last dlc, and there were three decidedly bad ideas there- Kai Leng, the star child (mostly because it was unearned, and felt massively pretentious. As a concept it could have worked but it needed a lot better implementation than we got), and Kai Leng. I know I mentioned Kai Leng twice, but to steal a joke from Red Dwarf, it was so important I thought it deserved two points to itself.

[Humanoid]

DA:O is an odd one for me. It kind of put me offside straight away because I resented being conscripted into the Grey Wardens and spent the first part of the game pointlessly trying to rail against it, but of course you have no recourse.

After that initial resentment faded, I was able to reasonably enjoy the game for a while, but with steadily waning interest, up until one day I just couldn't be bothered firing it up again. Yes, I got through the Deep Roads. No, I didn't actually mind The Fade. I don't recall where I actually got up to, except that I know I never got to settle any of my personal feuds. And I've never really been able to enjoy that style of vaguely-tactical RPG experience ever again. If I want to manage a squad, I'll go play something like XCOM, thank you very much. I did not play DA2 and only tried DA3 through the tutorial.

 

My opinions on Mass Effect are simpler. ME2 turned out okay because I played it first but the writing would have pissed me off a lot more had I played it in order. ME1 is fine as a standalone experience and I don't even hate the gameplay other than the inventory management. ME3 sucked and I ragequit less than a quarter of the way through it. ME4 doesn't exist.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

10 hours ago, Malcador said:

Before they patched it out, my V had a revolver in her hand.  That made that scene with Judy hilarious.

Just launched the game with the new content for the first time. Being able to have sleepovers is cute, but boy does Judy need to buy a new bed.

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

Mass Effect 2's excuse for a plot is a rehash of Dragon Age: Origins. Face impossible threat, assemble team, face impossible odds, prevail. I don't mean excuse for a plot as negatively as it comes across here, because that clearly wasn't the focus of the game, and story-wise, it apparently really did not have a focus while everyone was trying to figure out how to best mess up the  groundwork laid by the first game in the third one.

An excuse plot it was, nevertheless. A collection of small stories with barely any connecting tissue. Still, since I'm a sucker for character stuff, it was probably the Mass Effect I enjoyed the most.

edit: I should also mention that I liked Dragon Age: Origins, and to a certain degree Inquisition, so I'm probably not the best person to judge things, at least going by the edgelords and art snobs on this forum, because DA:O is like the worst thing since Pool of Radiance 2, apparently.

Yeah, it was a very simple plot, but it wasn't pulled off too badly and I liked the more lower-stakes nature of it compared to the first and especially the third game...combined with the greater quantity AND quality character stuff, yeah, it worked well.

Dragon Age: Origins, on the other hand, I got halfway through when I suddenly realized I despised pretty much everything about it. I hated all the characters, I did not care at all about the main plot or the world, and the 3D isometric tactical combat made me want to die - just as NWN2 before it did. Only difference was that I at least mildly liked most of the other elements of NWN2, and I actually really quite liked Mask of the Betrayer. I turned the game off and uninstalled it, and never shall I return.

[Humanoid]

38 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I did not care at all about the main plot or the world

The human noble origin definitely amplified this feeling for me.

I tend to think that the origins were mistakes in general. You can't just funnel six entirely different prologue stories, each barely the length of a tutorial, and expect a smooth and believable transition into a one-size-fitz-hall story. The wildly disparate situations and motivations of each origin end up being left more or less unaddressed and handwaved away for most of the main story.

[melkathi]

The human noble had the added problem that they weren't just anyone, a random unlucky stranger like the rest. They were pretty much the top of nobility and people treat them as if they were random adventurer #5382.

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Kai Leng

He really is the worst. I actually just had a false memory right now where I thought I remembered the player decapitating him close to the end of the game, but I just looked it up and it's an incredibly lame omnitool stab instead. Figures my brain would make up a much more vicious and brutal end for him than he actually got.

1 hour ago, Humanoid said:

The human noble origin definitely amplified this feeling for me.

I tend to think that the origins were mistakes in general. You can't just funnel six entirely different prologue stories, each barely the length of a tutorial, and expect a smooth and believable transition into a one-size-fitz-hall story. The wildly disparate situations and motivations of each origin end up being left more or less unaddressed and handwaved away for most of the main story.

Any time games try to have "deep" "meaningful" "choices" like that (yes, I am putting air quotes around each word individually), that's pretty much always how it turns out, especially if it's not right at the end of a game/series (which is where the least amount of branched off/exclusive content would be necessary for actually significantly different outcomes), so I wasn't even the slightest bit surprised that that happened - it's the nature of AAA game development with how expensive everything is to make that they don't want to spend more than the minimum amount of development time on something that only a minority of players will see.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, it was a very simple plot, but it wasn't pulled off too badly and I liked the more lower-stakes nature of it compared to the first and especially the third game...combined with the greater quantity AND quality character stuff, yeah, it worked well.

There's another fun tidbit about me playing the Mass Effect series. I finished the trilogy on Insanity, and the looked up stuff and apparently realized it wasn't that hard, while I actually struggled with the initial stages of the first and second game, at least. Quake on Nightmare mode, for instance, was comparatively easy. In a thing that only ever happens to me, I missed that you're supposed to import a previous character played on another difficulty level when playing on Insanity.

The first part is the most annoying to start as fresh Insainty character with, because everything almost one-shots you and the gameplay is pretty awkward at first.

Kinda the same thing that made me go through Dark Souls while wondering how casters are supposed to be the "easy mode" of the game when bosses lose less than half of their health and I'm out of spells and forced into melee with a character not really built for it. Buying multiple copies? Why would I do that? I already got the spell. Right?

Unintentional hard modes for the win!

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Dragon Age: Origins, on the other hand, I got halfway through when I suddenly realized I despised pretty much everything about it. I hated all the characters, I did not care at all about the main plot or the world, and the 3D isometric tactical combat made me want to die - just as NWN2 before it did. Only difference was that I at least mildly liked most of the other elements of NWN2, and I actually really quite liked Mask of the Betrayer. I turned the game off and uninstalled it, and never shall I return.

Strange how diametrically opposite our experiences are. I couldn't ever finish the original NWN2 campaign, and I actually finished the OC of the first NWN. I keep hearing how Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best (if not the best) of Obsidian, and yet I just can't get there, because I just can't start with it and the OC is so... off-putting, boring and, well, terrible that it breaks even my need to soldier on*, and that realiably. Quite a feat. I almost quit over that tutorial, and kept hoping it would improve. Right. It didn't.

Dragon Age: Origins, meanwhile, I finished twice (noteworthy insofar as I barely ever replay games that length). However, I despied Awakening. What a terrible expansion. On the other hand I also did what I always do with games like that, build a character that plays itself. The "combat" of Dragon Age: Origins was making an Arcane Warrior and clicking some party scripts together, then watch it play out on its own. There's only a handful of fights that need direct control intervention. I'm fairly content with the game playing out this way, but it anyone wants an actual gameplay experience or riveting tactical combat from BioWare games I think they've been looking at games from the wrong company. It's not really like DA:O created the BioWare game template.

*I actually finished Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor.

6 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Wait, do people really hate DA:O? I've long held the belief that DA:O is overrated, but by overrated I mean that it's good, just not the masterpiece that so many people hailed it as when it first released. The Ogrimmar part (or parts if you played a dwarf) were legitimately great. The rest of the game was decent.

P.S. You should always play a dwarf, they have by far the most interesting intros.

I don't think dwarves are allowed in Orgrimmar.

[Humanoid]

MotB was unplayable because every single enemy in the tutorial dungeon was immune to sneak attacks.

[Bartimaeus]

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

There's another fun tidbit about me playing the Mass Effect series. I finished the trilogy on Insanity, and the looked up stuff and apparently realized it wasn't that hard, while I actually struggled with the initial stages of the first and second game, at least. Quake on Nightmare mode, for instance, was comparatively easy. In a thing that only ever happens to me, I missed that you're supposed to import a previous character played on another difficulty level when playing on Insanity.

The first part is the most annoying to start as fresh Insainty character with, because everything almost one-shots you and the gameplay is pretty awkward at first.

Kinda the same thing that made me go through Dark Souls while wondering how casters are supposed to be the "easy mode" of the game when bosses lose less than half of their health and I'm out of spells and forced into melee with a character not really built for it. Buying multiple copies? Why would I do that? I already got the spell. Right?

Unintentional hard modes for the win!

Ugh, I made the same mistake by playing the entire series on insanity, and that no doubt played into how incredibly bored I was of the combat by even the second game - it's tediously difficult with how quickly you can eat it. If I were to ever even consider replaying them, it would either be on normal or even easy, and I wouldn't really even think twice about it, especially because I'd no doubt want to be Cheat Engine-ing that sucker up to 2-3x speed for much of the game. Don't want to die to stupid crap and replay any of the combat, that's for sure. But I don't really see myself ever trying to replay them - shooters just aren't really my thing anymore for obvious reasons and the games are so long and they probably haven't aged very well...

22 minutes ago, majestic said:

Strange how diametrically opposite our experiences are. I couldn't ever finish the original NWN2 campaign, and I actually finished the OC of the first NWN. I keep hearing how Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best (if not the best) of Obsidian, and yet I just can't get there, because I just can't start with it and the OC is so... off-putting, boring and, well, terrible that it breaks even my need to soldier on*, and that realiably. Quite a feat. I almost quit over that tutorial, and kept hoping it would improve. Right. It didn't.

Dragon Age: Origins, meanwhile, I finished twice (noteworthy insofar as I barely ever replay games that length). However, I despied Awakening. What a terrible expansion. On the other hand I also did what I always do with games like that, build a character that plays itself. The "combat" of Dragon Age: Origins was making an Arcane Warrior and clicking some party scripts together, then watch it play out on its own. There's only a handful of fights that need direct control intervention. I'm fairly content with the game playing out this way, but it anyone wants an actual gameplay experience or riveting tactical combat from BioWare games I think they've been looking at games from the wrong company. It's not really like DA:O created the BioWare game template.

*I actually finished Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor.

I like (and believe in*) D&D as a general setting, even if it's the very overplayed Forgotten Realms, so that's something it immediately has over Dragon Age, where I simply could not care less about anything to do with the setting or world. I don't really know why they went with such a by-the-numbers set of party members, though...and the whole main plot was pretty boring - a literally mindless corrupted guardian is passively destroying the world, oh how terribly exciting. However, I would wager that if you disliked just almost everything about the original game, you prooobably wouldn't love MotB either.

*Believing in a non-Earth world/setting is something that is difficult for me to do regardless of whether it's books, games, or film - does a lot to help sell a sense of investment. I am generally way more amenable to fantasy/sci-fi that has at least a tenuous connection to Earth/the real universe than ones that don't, so it's notable when there's an exception.

I hate party AI, so having to program my party to not make the combat the worst pile of garbage in the world because the controls and such are so gosh-awful is extremely off-putting to me.

13 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

MotB was unplayable because every single enemy in the tutorial dungeon was immune to sneak attacks.

Even outside of that starting dungeon, a lot of stuff in MotB was immune to sneak attacks. Lots of elementals (immune), undead (immune), machinery (immune), and spirits (immune).

Edited March 1, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Humanoid said:

MotB was unplayable because every single enemy in the tutorial dungeon was immune to sneak attacks.

I generally dont focus on sneak attacks or party members with that skill. But their are exceptions like D:OS2