What are you Playing Now? I name all the operations that go down in Taipei.

[BruceVC]

7 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

For me Ubi games lack “meat” - their games are extremely repetitive and core gameplay loop is just too shallow to make those enjoyable to me. They are pretty but the glamour disappears after a session or two. The closest I came to enjoying a modern Ubi game was FarCry3 - shooting was enjoyable enough and it was that badly padded - I still started to get bored with it halfway through. 
I didn’t bother trying AssCreed reboots as while they shake things up a little bit, they seemed to add stuff I tend to hate, like grindy power progression in an action game. 

Fair enough but you must give Odyssey a go, its got creatures from Greek mythology you can fight, like the Minotaur and Cyclops,  and fun naval battles which changes the repetitive nature of Ubisoft design 

 

 

[Theonlygarby]

3 hours ago, BruceVC said:

What dont you like about Ubisoft games? What they good at around design and mechanics have generally always been the same but they improve on this formulae. So Im interested in what you dont like about  there basic design 

For me they very entertaining, the game worlds are always beautiful and authentic around lore and historical accuracy, like AC Odyssey, and the side activities are fun. But as with all Ubisoft games you  inevitably get to that " Ubisoft fatigue " where suddenly the clearing of bases and camps becomes boring and at that point I just focus  on the main quest 

Well number 1 is the endless stream of quests.  They say "go here to do this main quest.  And on the way there are 300 events.  Save this person, clear this area ect. Feels like there is no real downtime.

 

Example.  Get the first mission.  Walking down a path and there is someone held hostage in the bushes, but I don't see it, I just hear yelling, then firing.  So I blindly fire into the bush.  Save the person.  I take 10 steps and the exact same thing happens again. Walk for 30 seconds after that, and then there is an outpost.  Liberate that and I get a call that someone needs saving down by the dock.

 

I can see why people like it, it's 'fun' just really not my style of game.  Also I'm a little OCD when it comes to map markers.  I feel the urge to tik them all off.  And always end up getting fatigue and giving up...

[Hawke64]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

For me Ubi games lack “meat” - their games are extremely repetitive and core gameplay loop is just too shallow to make those enjoyable to me. They are pretty but the glamour disappears after a session or two. The closest I came to enjoying a modern Ubi game was FarCry3 - shooting was enjoyable enough and it was that badly padded - I still started to get bored with it halfway through. 
I didn’t bother trying AssCreed reboots as while they shake things up a little bit, they seemed to add stuff I tend to hate, like grindy power progression in an action game. 

Agreed about the grind and too much filler. In AC: Unity and Syndicate I played only the critical path and it was decent, but too similar to any other AC game. Probably, the same for Far Cry.
I guess, I am not the target audience for triple-A, as I strongly detest grind, filler, "cinematic" cut-scenes, ridiculous file sizes and most of all GaaS, DRM and MTX.
---
The Waylanders. Reached the second Act (again). The second to last difficulty does not seem different from Normal. I hope that the companion quests for the newly-recruited team member will work correctly this time.

[BruceVC]

7 minutes ago, Theonlygarby said:

Well number 1 is the endless stream of quests.  They say "go here to do this main quest.  And on the way there are 300 events.  Save this person, clear this area ect. Feels like there is no real downtime.

 

Example.  Get the first mission.  Walking down a path and there is someone held hostage in the bushes, but I don't see it, I just hear yelling, then firing.  So I blindly fire into the bush.  Save the person.  I take 10 steps and the exact same thing happens again. Walk for 30 seconds after that, and then there is an outpost.  Liberate that and I get a call that someone needs saving down by the dock.

 

I can see why people like it, it's 'fun' just really not my style of game.  Also I'm a little OCD when it comes to map markers.  I feel the urge to tik them all off.  And always end up getting fatigue and giving up...

You make good points around your criticism....you made me laugh because its exactly what its like in FC games 

You can disable map markers as far as I remember but the mechanics that frustrate you wont change 

[Theonlygarby]

3 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

You make good points around your criticism....you made me laugh because its exactly what its like in FC games 

You can disable map markers as far as I remember but the mechanics that frustrate you wont change 

Which is a shame because the story is intriguing.  Oh well, maybe I'll watch a YouTube compilation

[Keyrock]

I overall lukewarm enjoy Ubisoft games. I haven't played a Far Cry game in quite a while. Since 5 is on Game Pass, I may give it a go at some point. AssCreed is decent enough, but I only really liked Black Flag and Rogue and that's mostly for the sailing, hence my interest in Skull & Bones, despite the trepidations I have (live service model & lack of solo campaign). AssCreed games always take a giant nosedive whenever they go outside the Animus and into present day IMHO. I haven't played one since the reboot on account of the reported added grind. I played Watch_Dogs briefly, but that game quickly lost me due to wonky driving physics and how much of a black hole of charisma Aidan was. Watch_Dogs 2, on the other hand, was a game I thoroughly enjoyed, largely due to how likable Marcus and the other DedSec hacker were. I legit wanted to do right by those wacky miscreants. It's amazing how far a likable protagonist(s) can take you.

[Theonlygarby]

5 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

I overall lukewarm enjoy Ubisoft games. I haven't played a Far Cry game in quite a while. Since 5 is on Game Pass, I may give it a go at some point. AssCreed is decent enough, but I only really liked Black Flag and Rogue and that's mostly for the sailing, hence my interest in Skull & Bones, despite the trepidations I have (live service model & lack of solo campaign). AssCreed games always take a giant nosedive whenever they go outside the Animus and into present day IMHO. I haven't played one since the reboot on account of the reported added grind. I played Watch_Dogs briefly, but that game quickly lost me due to wonky driving physics and how much of a black hole of charisma Aidan was. Watch_Dogs 2, on the other hand, was a game I thoroughly enjoyed, largely due to how likable Marcus and the other DedSec hacker were. I legit wanted to do right by those wacky miscreants. It's amazing how far a likable protagonist(s) can take you.

I also enjoyed black flag.  The furthest I've gotten in a ubisoft game was that one.  For pretty much the same reason you stated.  Have never played watchdogs.  Not much interest in it really.  Game Pass is great for games I have an itch to play, but know I will lose interest.

[Humanoid]

I ended up "solving" my CK3 de jure drift problem ...by maximising my de jure drift. The size of my primary kingdom of Galicia was too far gone to ever be able to realistically convert it: hell, large swathes of Morocco and southern France are now fully parts of Galicia. So instead of trying to do anything about that, I encouraged it by manually trying to shrink the Kingdom of Andalusia to be as small as possible, then once it was down to a measly eight counties I had pre-converted to my culture, I would be able to finally end this silly struggle.

But there was another stupid problem in that I needed to be in the Hostility phase to be able to end it, and one such phase had just concluded. It's like if I need to do something by midnight, but it's now 1:00 AM and I need to wait out the entire day for midnight to roll around again. Except the problem with that analogy is that progress to the next phase is dependent on actions by all characters involved - specifically hostile actions. And with full control of the region established amidst centuries of peace, that meant such progress was glacially slow. So began a long and stupid grinding phase, where essentially my only valid hostile actions were to upgrade every single castle in Spain over and over (worth 3 points), and to turn full puritan, spying on everyone to expose their love affairs and other secrets (worth 10 points). I need 1000 points to advance one phase. And I had to do this cycle twice over to get into the correct phase, so that's 2000 points required from spamming those actions. The game started in the year 867. I had essentially "won" by around 1040. It then took until around 1260, mostly sitting around waiting for progress bars to complete, for this torture to finally be over.

So yeah, that's Fate of Iberia. The struggle system has potential in that it's an interesting journey, turning the Reconquista into more than just Holy War spam like it used to be. But the destination is idiotically arbitrary, requiring the player to jump through a series of hoops that bear little relation to sensible gameplay, and instead turn it into a grind-fest of nonsensical actions. I suppose that's better than the other way around, in that I imagine either modders or a future patch can fairly easily update the "win" condition to be less stupid, and that the mechanical changes that lead up to it are in fairly servicable condition. I don't necessarily think I'll ever play this particular struggle ever again, but if they ever port the system to other regions of the game, then it's fairly clear what needs to be improved.

[Hurlshort]

I started playing Sea of Thieves with my son. He's much better at it than I am. Basically I get to steer the ship while he runs around doing the important stuff. It's a strange game.

[Hawke64]

The Waylanders. Completed the second playthrough, which took less than 10 hours. The ending slides played as they should, unlike the first playthrough, though I am unsure what exactly caused it. Another bug encountered is that I was unable to talk with the companions after completing their quests and there were 2 more random crashes.

[LadyCrimson]

Tiny Tina Wonderlands -

We still have lots o' little sidequests or "completionist" type stuff, but we hit max clvl (40, currently) and went to do the campaign end boss. We killed him and the loot shower started ... and the credits rolled right in the middle of that. Not allowed to click out of/skip them. Fine, they've done that before, 5-7 minutes or whatever right. We waited. And waited. And waited. 25 minutes later we were still waiting. 30 minutes later it was finally over for me, but hubby's PC for some reason was 5 minutes behind showing them so we waited some more. When they finally dumped you back into the game, the loot shower finished etc, but ....

....way to kill the player's play-mood. By the end I was wishing I could have my chr. shoot all the credits as they scrolled endless by.

Maybe you can skip it if you do it a 2nd time, but that was an overly excessive length for forced game 1st-time credits watching.  >.>  Like, after a few minutes of main credits a "press to skip" could have popped up then, with the "play credits" in the main menu to view later.

We tried the end game routine briefly - similar to the Overworld instanced "encounter" mini-map sequences, with a new currency drop for item enchantments.
Then we tried one of the short DLC's and while the areas were unique, it still runs like a small multiple-arena goal-gauntlet, with yet another currency to gather and the added factor that you cannot die/2nd-wind. If you die during the whole trip, you're put back in town and would have to start all over.

eg, not much of an "endgame."

At any rate, we still had a fair amount of fun overall, despite some later mild annoyances here and there.

[MrBrown]

On 7/15/2022 at 5:00 PM, Hurlsnot said:

I started playing Sea of Thieves with my son. He's much better at it than I am. Basically I get to steer the ship while he runs around doing the important stuff. It's a strange game.

This sounds exactly like me playing Barotrauma with my friends. I'm the submarine's captain, but I have the least idea of what is going on.

Edited July 19, 2022 by MrBrown

[Malcador]

Replaying Mass Effect as I got the Legendary edition.  Plodding my way through ME1,  doesn't really seem like they changed much. I'd still have liked them to add in the mission locations on the galaxy map as a QoL feature, but ah well.  My Shepard looks less greasy, as well.

 

[Wormerine]

Into the Breach on my iPad. The wait was worth it, as it is again an excellent port. I guess I will keep my Netflix subscription for a while.

[HoonDing]

The didactic elements consisting from climbing historical buildings and meeting (and at times, assassinating) historical figures in AssCreed series were excellent. Nonetheless I quickly refunded the game in Egypt. Felt like an offline MMO. The focus on *present time* nonsense was already grating before that, but far from a deal-breaker.

Never gonna play another Ubi$oft game, unless Beyond good & evil II is somehow released.

Edited July 20, 2022 by HoonDing

[LadyCrimson]

On 7/18/2022 at 1:10 AM, LadyCrimson said:

but that was an overly excessive length for forced game 1st-time credits watching.

Just wanted to postscript, that through the power of the internet (and my trying it with another chr, myself) I've learned that even on repeated playthru's you cannot skip the credits of Tiny Tina Wonderlands - but you can hold the down arrow key to make them scroll much faster. Or on a controller it's pushing one of the toggle angles (this supposedly works the first time too, wish we'd known that, hah). On my PC it took about 3-4 minutes that way vs. 30 minutes. I'd guess hubby's PC would take a bit longer. So tape the key down and make a sandwich I guess.

Edit: not the "typical" way of rushing credits, it's no wonder many players missed it/didn't realize, after ESC, spacebar, etc. didn't work.

Edited July 21, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[BruceVC]

On 7/19/2022 at 5:40 PM, Malcador said:

Replaying Mass Effect as I got the Legendary edition.  Plodding my way through ME1,  doesn't really seem like they changed much. I'd still have liked them to add in the mission locations on the galaxy map as a QoL feature, but ah well.  My Shepard looks less greasy, as well.

 

And, stop being coy. Who is part of your Romance arcs, it must be Miranda in ME2 ....I love Miranda (I prefer the original Miranda  of course ) 

[Bartimaeus]

Stray. The only thing I saw proper of this game was its initial announce, and I recently heard about the highly positive reviews. So I played about an hour...and I wasn't terribly impressed. It's effectively a dolled up and slightly more exciting than usual walking simulator, and a seemingly completely linear one at that. For some reason, I expected there to be like...platforming of some kind, something to take advantage of the unique element of being a literal cat, but this isn't a game where you can jump or even accidentally fall off anything. Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Stray. The only thing I saw proper of this game was its initial announce, and I recently heard about the highly positive reviews. So I played about an hour...and I wasn't terribly impressed. It's effectively a dolled up and slightly more exciting than usual walking simulator, and a seemingly completely linear one at that. For some reason, I expected there to be like...platforming of some kind, something to take advantage of the unique element of being a literal cat, but this isn't a game where you can jump or even accidentally fall off anything. Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations.

People mostly expected it to be a cat walking game without a story. I think the fleshed out story is what made everyone surprised enough to give it good reviews.

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Stray.

Yeah, it's not a traditional platformer. I could tell that from the videos, because I dislike most of those almost instantly on sight. I'd call it more of a story driven visual walking and ... not puzzles, but look for items/find the solutions to progress story type of thing. Example, need a # code to open a door, have to find the code somewhere in the area. Need to get up somewhere, have to do something with something to be able to do so. It's not difficult but occasionally I was hunting a bit before I noticed.

Since everyone plays at a different speed, not sure how far you are in an hour. Game says I've done 2.5 hrs. and I probably spent a lot of that in the Slums area, leaping around trying to find all the items and figure out what I was supposed to do. I quite enjoy it. It's really simple and yeah you just follow "x" prompts (there are many "x" marks that lead nowhere, too) but I like the hunt for the music sheets for example, and I'm curious about the history/story.  Edit: I like B-12, too.

So far, outside of "cat, well animated, cute stuff" and the moody/eerie visuals and atmosphere, I'd consider it a good/fun but not great casual game. I don't think I'd play it more than once, unless there are different endings or something.

The only thing I haven't liked is the save system. It seems to save at checkpoints (single slot), and while I was going thru the slums, I thought about exiting a few times but the game would say "last checkpoint 12 minutes ago" and I didn't want to lose progress so I kept wandering and doing stuff, trying to find a point where the game would save again. I'm not clear yet if it saves on exit regardless and I didn't want to risk it. So that was kind of annoying. >.> 

Edited July 21, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Bartimaeus]

To be honest, I don't really even know what I wanted exactly from the game, because I don't want like...a full-on platformer or collectathon or anything like that, that would be awful and I would definitely have no patience it. But from what I played of it, it felt like playing...the wolf sections of TLoZ: Twilight Princess, but more linear and where you can only make those lame Midna-scripted jumps that can't fail, except instead of the lovable Midna I have a little robot thingy? Maybe it's just me not having slept for more than 3 hours each day over the entire past month that I'm even more irritable and short in tolerance/patience than normal...

[Malcador]

6 hours ago, BruceVC said:

And, stop being coy. Who is part of your Romance arcs, it must be Miranda in ME2 ....I love Miranda (I prefer the original Miranda  of course ) 

Actually, first time I played I romacned no one.  Maybe I'll romance Liara just for how rapidly it moves in ME1   I've tried them all as I've really played the trilogy far too much - I think 4 times or so ?  Ah still remember the first ME2 run, I got Jacob killed, thought to myself "Sure, the black guy dies first".  Granted, I continue to kill him off in later playthroughs.

I usually kill everyone in ME2 that I can get away with, leaving me with Samara and Garrus most of the time.

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by Malcador

[BruceVC]

I have finally started on BG1 EE with a good  selection of mods but I decided not to use Sword Coast Stratagems or Tweaks because those mods really enhance the ruleset for hardcore fans and Im not going to play this game multiple times, like all games,  so the standard EE ruleset is fine.

I have just left Candlekeep and Im on my way to the Friendly Arm Inn with my 3 x companions that include Imoen, Xzar and Montaron. Imoen is already annoying  me with her naïve banter  but she is cute and means well. I am looking forwarding to meeting up with Viconia and hearing some adult  views of the world 

I must say its great knowing a wolf can kill you, being 1st level makes the early journey exciting and risky but worth it 

 

[BruceVC]

28 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Actually, first time I played I romacned no one.  Maybe I'll romance Liara just for how rapidly it moves in ME1   I've tried them all as I've really played the trilogy far too much - I think 4 times or so ?  Ah still remember the first ME2 run, I got Jacob killed, thought to myself "Sure, the black guy dies first".  Granted, I continue to kill him off in later playthroughs.

I usually kill everyone in ME2 that I can get away with, leaving me with Samara and Garrus most of the time.

 

I miss the ME game world and characters, its good hearing your stories 

[Keyrock]

I'm playing the Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels expansion. It has definitely met my expectations so far. Imagine if someone took the floating islands from Chrono Trigger and built a giant Hot Wheels track on and between them, complete with loop de loops, launchers, jumps, magnetic tracks so that you can race upside down, oh and there's a gargantuan dragon figurine because why the **** not? It's completely ridiculous and all types of goofy fun.