What are you Playing Now? It's not how you play the game, it's how you place the blame

[Gorth]

3 hours ago, majestic said:

Forcing Bioware to adopt Frostbite for everything turned out to be a wonderful decision, and when they were close to actually making it work EA pulled the plug. Not that the decision was not understandable, Anthem hat preciously little to show for its enormous development time.

It's quite possible it was the move that killed swtor for good, as any and all resources got shifted from the mmo to the Anthem project, putting all the proverbial eggs in the last basket (just before it hit the floor).

 

Edit: Up to about end of 2021, swtor was still figuring on top ten mmo lists of most played games. The last 12 months it has shined with its complete absence from such lists.

[BruceVC]

13 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I got through one run of DA:I and I enjoyed it. The repetitious meaningless combat was definitely a pain, and why I doubt I'll ever replay it, but the parts of the game outside of combat including the story I liked quite a bit.

Thats a good way of describing it, " repetitious meaningless combat" especially with creatures endlessly spawning in certain maps. The consolation is there is some fun and more engaging combat especially at more complex battles like closing rifts 

[BruceVC]

18 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Nah, I am afraid I just can’t help myself from not finishing games I am starting if they have story. I have been slowly slogging through DA:I for probably over a year. I attempted to give up on it once, but it found it’s way back to my disk in the name of completion. 

Wormie do you realize something, you and I are playing the same game at the same time....thats profound. Are you thinking what  I am thinking, its destiny 

[kanisatha]

20 hours ago, MrBrown said:

I found the most stress-free way to play DA:I was to control a sword&shield warrior tanking everything, and have everyone else be ranged with the AI handling them.

Yes! This is exactly what I learned to do as well!

The AI does a pretty decent job handling ranged characters, be they bows or spellcasting, but rather poorly with melee characters. I've done okay with my character being a duel-wielder too.

Edited January 28, 2023 by kanisatha

[Hawke64]

MEA has jetpacks and a controllable car. And the Vaults (more platformer-like sequences). Also the MC not being a part of the military was refreshing, considering ME3.
DAI certainly was very enjoyable when I had more time and the ability to focus. Tried replaying it for the 3rd or 4th time a year ago on Hard with some of the new difficulty options enabled. The combat was satisfying (everything could one-hit you), but there was too much of it (and exploration). A more concise (DAO/2) presentation would be preferable.
Haven't played Anthem, not fond of online-only DRM and looter-shooters in general.

After playing Expeditions: Rome a bit more the lack of maps and the presence of RNG and timers on activities (e.g. crafting, healing, resource capturing) are becoming more irritating, but the tactical combat is engaging enough. On another note, I missed the control and the exact numbers in DAI ("We don't have enough people to storm the castle" "How many people do we have? The ones at the courtyard?"), but in Rome the very same things feel overwhelming. I would prefer to know them still, but also to give the legion more general directions (e.g. to capture all resources in a conquered region, instead of clicking on each one then waiting), while micromanaging only the major battles.

[Mamoulian War]

14 hours ago, majestic said:

I did, because at the time I could play through Origin Access - EA Play nowadays. Anthem, at release, was l ike a tech demo that promised a fun game once completed, which is a truly sorry state for a multiplayer experience to launch in. When it worked and you got a decent group to play with, it was pretty good. The flying worked well and the combat was much better than in Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

It was everything else that was the problem, from the disjointed story to the technical aspects that led to the game's loading screens being longer than some of the missions, to a grindy and repetitive endgame with way too little variety in everything. Loot was boring, it was always the same handful of missions, and the loot was boring. Did I mention that everything that is supposed to keep one playing through an end-game grind in a co-op multiplayer experience with RPG elements was boring? Particularily the loot and the mission variety.

Forcing Bioware to adopt Frostbite for everything turned out to be a wonderful decision, and when they were close to actually making it work EA pulled the plug. Not that the decision was not understandable, Anthem hat preciously little to show for its enormous development time.

I am sorry, if I didn't notice it in your "review". But from what I understood, some of the guys who had the "luck" to play it, has told me, that the loot was boring. How did you enjoyed this reward aspect of the game?

[majestic]

5 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

I am sorry, if I didn't notice it in your "review". But from what I understood, some of the guys who had the "luck" to play it, has told me, that the loot was boring. How did you enjoyed this reward aspect of the game?

It was great.

[Keyrock]

I'm playing Control. I actually started playing this a long time ago, only got as far as the end of the intro, then stopped, not because of the game itself, other stuff came up and I just never got back to it until now. My feelings on the game so far very much mirror my overall feelings on Alan Wake, which makes sense given that not only are both games made by Remedy but Control is set in the Alan Wake universe, or Alan Wake is in the Control universe, whichever way you want to think about it. Anyway, the gameplay is... It's okay. It's a pretty bog standard third person shooter, maybe it gets more interesting later on when you unlock more abilities, but so far it's pretty ho-hum. However, I really really like the world and I'm very much invested in not just the story of Jesse Faden and her brother but also this world as a whole. I am happily going out of my way and scouring every nook and cranny for collectibles, not for completionist reasons, I don't care about achievements, but because I'm into the mythos of this world and I will gladly read all the text and listen to any and all audio logs if they help me get a clearer picture of said world. There's very much a SCP Foundation vibe going on and I'm all about that. My investment in the world and interest in the story are easily enough to carry me through mediocre gameplay and also have me excited for Alan Wake 2: The Wakening coming later this year.

Edit: I should add that I'm weirdly enjoying the running commentary/narration that Jesse does during the game. It's something that potentially could get really grating really fast, and I suppose it still might, but so far I'm on board with it. Also, the Threshold Kids videos are really creepy and bizarre and I'm absolutely there for them.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Keyrock

[Vaeliorin]

So, for some bizarre reason a Phoenix Point video showed up among my recommended videos on Youtube, and being bored, I watched it.

Now I'm playing Phoenix Point, which I have don't since the 4th or 5th backer build.  It's better than it was back then (I think the biggest thing for me is that soldiers seem way more accurate than they did back then), and I'm kinda enjoying it, but the missions are getting a little repetitive and the enemies don't really seem all that interesting/varied...though that's possible because I'm killing most of them before they manage to attack me.

The geoscape stuff on the other hand...I feel like it's getting out of hand.  I really don't know what I'm doing, what order I should do research in, etc., and the Behemoth from the Festering Skies DLC is wrecking the opposite side of the planet, and I don't have any way to get to it.  I probably picked poorly on which bases to activate, and now I'm low on resources and can't really afford to activate any more.  The most annoying thing is that I activated a base in Greenland, thinking that it would link me into North America (I started in South Asia, and have access to Europe and Africa at the moment) and there were like 3 scanning sites near it, none of which were in North America.  I might have to try my hand at trading (though I don't really want to) and I'm hoping I can somehow improve my relationships with Anu and New Jericho (I just kinda got RNG'ed into siding with Synedrion at the start of the game.)

The UI could definitely be better (the color of the Tech points makes it hard to read, and it would be nice if completed scavenging missions where more clearly marked...I finally realized that they're grey instead of white after about 20 hours.)  It would also be nice if there were some sort of repeatable scavenging missions that I could go on, instead of having to trade (which just seems tedious.)

All in all...it's not terrible.   I don't know that I'll sink almost a thousand hours into it like I have XCOM 2, but I might play it more than once, depending on how the mid to late game is.

[BruceVC]

17 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Yes! This is exactly what I learned to do as well!

The AI does a pretty decent job handling ranged characters, be they bows or spellcasting, but rather poorly with melee characters. I've done okay with my character being a duel-wielder too.

I do the same thing in DA:I, I am a mage and I use range combat and then let the AI mange 80-90% of the battles . But thats also a design problem because I find the battles too numerous and frenetic and the combat mechanics too limited to want to disable AI. Its not like BG1&2  or D:OS2 where you want to manage the battles because its interesting and you want to decide what each party member does and it creates strategic value 

[Wormerine]

5 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

So, for some bizarre reason a Phoenix Point video showed up among my recommended videos on Youtube, and being bored, I watched it.

I need to get back to it at some point. I really like PP but it never quite clicked for me. Releasing standalone DLCs, rather than meaty expansion also added segmented content that I don't particualrly enjoy. It's a draft or two away from being really excellent.

There is a pretty big fan mod, Terror from the Void that might be worth checking out.  I didn't get around to it, but will probably instal when I get to giving PP another go.
https://phoenixpoint.info/blog/2022/10/6/terror-from-the-void-mod-adds-new-challenges-enemies-and-more

[Vaeliorin]

6 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I need to get back to it at some point. I really like PP but it never quite clicked for me. Releasing standalone DLCs, rather than meaty expansion also added segmented content that I don't particualrly enjoy. It's a draft or two away from being really excellent.

There is a pretty big fan mod, Terror from the Void that might be worth checking out.  I didn't get around to it, but will probably instal when I get to giving PP another go.
https://phoenixpoint.info/blog/2022/10/6/terror-from-the-void-mod-adds-new-challenges-enemies-and-more

Yeah, I'm aware of Terror From The Void, but I figured I should see how the base game works before using an overhaul, which I figure would be harder and kick my ass if I tried it without understanding the base game.

[Hawke64]

Finished Uncharted 3. I suppose, it was somehow entertaining - the locations and graphics in general looked good, though the story, combat, and controls varied from ridiculous to horrible. I managed to punch my way through most of the opponents, because it was nearly impossible to aim with a controller. Binding the grab attack and rolling to the same button was a rather unwise decision by the developers, even taking the general lack of keys into account. The MC was completely unable to plan anything beyond "Nate wants the treasure", while murdering hordes of evil minions and destroying historical buildings. The said minions had no self-preservation, but were able to almost literally rain from the sky. The pacing in general was quite good in the beginning, but descended into arena battles in the late game. I guess, if it was a parody of the American action movies from the 90s, it was successful.

[Tale]

Dark souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin down.

It's a weird game. Massively more ambitious than Dark Souls 1, but strangely taped together. I guess it's easy to say that when I've been told that's what happened, but I see it too. It's more imminently playable, but it fails to capture the imagination.

[Hawke64]

6 hours ago, Tale said:

Dark souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin down.

It's a weird game. Massively more ambitious than Dark Souls 1, but strangely taped together. I guess it's easy to say that when I've been told that's what happened, but I see it too. It's more imminently playable, but it fails to capture the imagination.

DS2 v.2 is somehow more diverse yet consistent than DS2 v.1 in terms of enemy encounters and item locations, at least. I've heard that the lore-friendly reason why the areas are seem to be taped together is that the PC is losing their memories due to the Undead Curse. The out-of-universe reason is the developers running out of funds and time, as far as I know. DS3 has a similar location structure to DS2, but with a more clearly articulated in-game explanation (the resting places of the Lords of Cinder are the only things to remain while the world is collapsing into itself) and definitely not due to the deadlines. I think, Sekiro is the only other FromSoftware game on PC that had an interconnected world similar to DS1, though the "paths" are still more linear than in DS1.

Expeditions: Rome. Conquered the first area, only the story quests left. The general opinion (better combat, but more bloat and RNG than in Vikings) has not changed.

[Wormerine]

11 hours ago, Tale said:

It's a weird game. Massively more ambitious than Dark Souls 1, but strangely taped together.

If one doesn't catch up than Earthen Peak elevator is a dead giveaway.

It seems you are still enjoying it more than I did. DS2 is the only FromSoftware release so far, I have no desire to return to.

[Malcador]

Success in Space Haven, managed to board some pirates while they were busy boarding someone else.  Don't really have the resources to advance much so I think I'm going to fail in this current save.

[Bokishi]

Just got Dead Space on Xbox and it’s a pretty legit remake. It makes the original look like a ps2 game. 

[Tale]

4 hours ago, Wormerine said:

If one doesn't catch up than Earthen Peak elevator is a dead giveaway.

It seems you are still enjoying it more than I did. DS2 is the only FromSoftware release so far, I have no desire to return to.

A theory I heard on that elevator is that you were supposed to go to the Iron Keep from the Forest of Fallen Giants Salamander area. This would have been a good fit since FoFG goes basically nowhere other than the back entrance to Bastille. Which itself seems like it's just... there. And that explains why there's Ironclad Soldiers in both areas.

That elevator was probably going to head underground somewhere like the Undead/Dark Castle, which became the Crypt.

 

I just started up Dark Souls 3 and it immediately blows Dark Souls 2 out of the water. The atmosphere is great. And the mid roll feels just fun to use. Combat feels similar otherwise (I haven't tried powerstancing and likely won't this run), but that roll is such an improvement.

[Wormerine]

17 hours ago, Tale said:

I just started up Dark Souls 3 and it immediately blows Dark Souls 2 out of the water. The atmosphere is great. And the mid roll feels just fun to use. Combat feels similar otherwise (I haven't tried powerstancing and likely won't this run), but that roll is such an improvement.

Some of the noses bosses are really fantastic as well. DLCs especially. Enjoy!

Edited February 1, 2023 by Wormerine

[Bartimaeus]

17 hours ago, Tale said:

A theory I heard on that elevator is that you were supposed to go to the Iron Keep from the Forest of Fallen Giants Salamander area. This would have been a good fit since FoFG goes basically nowhere other than the back entrance to Bastille. Which itself seems like it's just... there. And that explains why there's Ironclad Soldiers in both areas.

That elevator was probably going to head underground somewhere like the Undead/Dark Castle, which became the Crypt.

 

I just started up Dark Souls 3 and it immediately blows Dark Souls 2 out of the water. The atmosphere is great. And the mid roll feels just fun to use. Combat feels similar otherwise (I haven't tried powerstancing and likely won't this run), but that roll is such an improvement.

The goofy/clunky movement in DS2 drove me up the freaking wall, the roll especially. Never ever got used to DS2's movement, and despised the game for it by the time I got to the end - I'd take DS1's 4-direction movement any day over that crap. Though really, I'd take any aspect of DS1 over DS2.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

13 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The goofy/clunky movement in DS2 drove me up the freaking wall, the roll especially. Never ever got used to DS2's movement, and despised the game for it by the time I got to the end - I'd take DS1's 4-direction movement any day over that crap. Though really, I'd take any aspect of DS1 over DS2.

DS1 movement for me was janky as hell, I can only imagine then how DS2s felt.

[Bartimaeus]

22 minutes ago, Sarex said:

DS1 movement for me was janky as hell, I can only imagine then how DS2s felt.

DS1/DeS (they're practically the same) have probably my favorite movement out of all the Soulsborne games. They're slower and more weighty than the other games, which takes a little time to get the hang of at first...but the thing is, the result is that those two games have enemies that are slower and play more fair with the player - DS3 is like a much faster and smoother version of DS1's controls (and with 8-directional movement when targeting), but in exchange, you get piles of enemies repeatedly doing 360 degree spin jumping attacks over and over and it's just so incredibly obnoxious and largely not fun to me...especially as someone who can play through all of DS1 without ever getting hit because of the degree to which I perfectly understand its controls and enemies' movesets. With DS2, they were going for something entirely different from all the other games, something that I think was intended to be even slower and more limiting but which I just don't think works at all - they feel unnecessarily context conditional, floaty, and vague. Even though I literally beat DS2, I never felt like I understood its controls (or understood why they were the way they were) and that enraged me in a way that none of the other games ever could, so no surprise I hated that game.

Some people say DS2's movement is, in fact, the best out of the three Dark Souls games. A curse upon them and their house for all eternity, says I.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

I disliked the controls in DS1 immensely, although I used mouse and keyboard and the original port of the game.

[Bartimaeus]

11 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I disliked the controls in DS1 immensely, although I used mouse and keyboard and the original port of the game.

Yeah, should probably take the "it has to be played with a controller" people pretty seriously most of the time - you don't play Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong Country with M+KB*, and you definitely do not play Dark Souls with M+KB, .

*Though Dark Souls seems a lot worse, what with trying to control the camera with the mouse...yowza.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Bartimaeus