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

[Mamoulian War]

And I cannot post normally again. Reseting cookies did not work this time  

[Malcador]

Chaos Gate is getting tedious, had a good run in a mission but had to waste time kiting around an enemy as he was ranged and kept dicking around near the next enemy spawn.

[LadyCrimson]

7 Days to Die. I currently have a map where I found this very tall and long mountain cliff face, which faces the right direction for me to be able to build horizontally with it ... voxel block angle/visual limitations ... so now and again I fire that up and work on a massive multiple story underground bunker city that has giant cliff windows and vault entrances, guardhouses/bunkers, workout rooms, long long hallways/staircases/ladders, giant living spaces etc. Even cheating in blocks etc. it's a huge time sink. Good for the occasional casual couple of hours at a time project.

In my mind I'm building a Fallout bunker city or something akin to that, vs. a zombie defense tower. And it's pretty fun. No mega plans, just sorta winging it. Dunno if I'll ever reach a point of impressive screenshots, but here's a cruddy pic to show what I mean about "built into the clifface."  Except the goal is many many more, several stories, from road-level to near the top. So far this top level and the road-garage level are getting somewhere.

[MrBrown]

Finished Vampire Survivors base game.

It was more fun early on when it was more of a stat dependent game, later it just got too wacky and gimmicky, and there were clearly better weapons and characters.

But it was ok overall.

[Keyrock]

I rolled a new world in Valheim because I got an absolutely atrocious seed in my last world. I stuck with the crappy seed for a while in hope that it would get better as I explored further but it inexplicably just kept getting worse and worse, plus it rained constantly, though I'm not sure if weather is determined by seeds. That's the thing with procedural generation, sometimes you get a bad roll of the dice. I kept the same character and I still have all my skills and the gear and items I had on me, so building a new house didn't take too long. I'll have to kill Eikthyr again, but he's a pushover, so no big deal. I suppose I could jump back into the crappy seed to get all the stuff I have stored in chests, but I probably won't bother, the best thing I have there is raw tin, which is easy enough to get. This new seed seems a lot better so far 

[Humanoid]

Went through the Snow Bros remake on Switch. It sucks.

Well, to be specific, the first 50 levels that are just reskins of the old game are okay. The extra 30 levels the new dev team added suck. Play the NES version instead.

[Mamoulian War]

1st goal of 2023 has been finished

January 9, 00:15 – After 4 more hours on Easy difficulty, I have finally acquired the last PS4 trophy in Final Fantasy XV – Episode Ardyn DLC. The biggest challenge was to get 350+ combo on a guardian. 30 minutes of failed attempts and reloads, until I was able to get 423 Hits on him. After that, it was just a slow-paced grind to demonify more than 100 enemies, conquer 7 city sectors, spent less than 50 minutes in battles, in which I had to receive less than 15k damage, including final bossfights. After the last one, I was surprised, that I have achieved A+ in all of the required categories for this trophy with total of more than 1.7 million points. All that is needed to 100% this DLC is final battle challenge, which unlike in previous DLCs, does not award the trophy for a victory.

[MrBrown]

On 1/6/2023 at 11:55 PM, Keyrock said:

I rolled a new world in Valheim because I got an absolutely atrocious seed in my last world. I stuck with the crappy seed for a while in hope that it would get better as I explored further but it inexplicably just kept getting worse and worse, plus it rained constantly, though I'm not sure if weather is determined by seeds. That's the thing with procedural generation, sometimes you get a bad roll of the dice. I kept the same character and I still have all my skills and the gear and items I had on me, so building a new house didn't take too long. I'll have to kill Eikthyr again, but he's a pushover, so no big deal. I suppose I could jump back into the crappy seed to get all the stuff I have stored in chests, but I probably won't bother, the best thing I have there is raw tin, which is easy enough to get. This new seed seems a lot better so far 

You can google for good seeds, if you want.

[Malcador]

Slugging my way through WC SO1. Some of these missions are just pain. Getting buried in fighters with my idiot wingman.  Although, did have a good run in BiFrost 3 - just tried to primary the outpost while the fighters missed me or crashed into it.  102 kills and still just a Captain, bah, ****ing Confed.

[Malcador]

Realize it's SM1, SO1 is WC2 But finally done it, those last few missions were hell. The mission where you have to defend the Tiger's Claw were suffering due to the game chugging to the point my joystick trigger wouldn't result in anything happening.  Funny enough I beat the mission, the TC starts rendering oddly when I tried to dock and then Iceman bought it colliding with the TC. 

[Keyrock]

I'm getting ready to fight The Elder in Valheim. My gear is plenty good enough, I'm at 30 armor and I have a max level finewood bow and a full stack of fire arrows. The battle itself should be easy. Before I go ahead and kill Mr. Giant Tree I've been scouting real estate for my future fortress. I've got a promising location already but I'm going to do my due diligence before committing to anywhere. Ideally, it will be a location in the meadows zone on the shore located relatively close to as many other zones (black forest, swamp, mountain) as possible for easy acquisition of a variety of resources. Once I kill The Elder and get their power I'll be able to get into swamp crypts and be able to get iron which will unlock stone building pieces to build my fortress with.

[Ragnorrk]

I'm currently playing R6 Extraction and the Hitman Trilogy. But I'm not sure what comes next.

[Mamoulian War]

I have finally caught all fishes in Final Fantasy XV Also after 45minutes of chugging Megapotions, I have beaten MAX-Angelus optional boss. This one was just a lazy design, when you give some lower level mob crazy high resistances and "infinite" HP pool... Disappointed I am...

[marelooke]

Finished Death Stranding, kind of a weird one. Gameplay loop is fine, though I can see why it wouldn't be for everyone, but I feel the pacing and storytelling are a bit iffy. You get fed little bits of information and then suddenly you just get dumped in a bunch of pretty linear chapters that just speed you to the finale.

Controls aren't great either, turning in place is often a huge ordeal without using compass mode, and there's things that use different keys that kinda feel like they shouldn't (like "F" being used for most interations, but then it's "Tab" for buildings, I see why it is that way, but it still felt annoying)

Another feature that could use some work is the sharing of structures with others. I found out the hard way that structures from other players you've not contributed to directly (because there may not have been a reason to) can just outright, randomly, disappear, when you next load the game. This is pretty rage-inducing when you want to have quick play session to clear up some deliveries before heading to endgame just to find out a huge section of (expensive to build) highway just vanished, especially since I'd already had to put in the effort of actually building almost all of the highways myself (think there was only 3 sections that "appeared" from other players). Before anyone brings it up, no it hadn't detoriated, at least not on my playtime, since I'd spent a lot of time going around repairing all damaged highways the day before...

And at least one of the boss fights was truly rage inducing.

Spoiler

Seriously that Higgs fight can go suck eggs.

The whale at the end was kinda, whatever, it was fairly easy to just stay out of the Tar and just pick it off slowly.

Additionally not being able to properly equip yourself in the last few chapters was rather annoying. I didn't have any Repair Sprays and the backpack cover was long gone but then they push you through this massive Timefall without the option to resupply telling you you'd have to rely on other people's help. I imagine that if one gets unlucky with their links, and thus the buildings available, this part could really really suck.

Once past the ending you get the chance to complete things that you didn't prior, but motivation to do so is kinda low. You do get more background information that might help explain some of the ending stuff, but yeah, lots of effort for the payoff.

[LadyCrimson]

^ I always used a controller, which felt fine/worked well. I don't imagine I would have liked using a keyboard.

There's one minor boss fight (the one just before you have to travel to another map section thru snow) in the game that after struggling to even escape it a couple times I realized I could avoid completely by just ... running over some rocks in the opposite direction then the game makes you think you have to go because it'll despawn after a certain distance. So I did, and again when replaying. Technically I have not defeated that thing, lol.

Repair Sprays are completely unnecessary to protect cargo from Timefall itself - so long as you don't fall down a mountain or get swept away by those ghosties, haha. Even with fully repaired cargo containers, a major fall etc. could damage the cargo pretty extensively, even to the point of mission fail, sometimes. I stopped carrying them at all about halfway through the game. Timefall did reduce most gear over time but I was a packrat as usual and always had a certain number of things. I mostly used the blood grenades the entire time so I had piles and piles of blood bags and not much else.

Interesting re: roads or structures disappearing, never had that happen on the console, all the online structures stayed forever - unless I manually deleted them myself - as long as I repaired them a little occasionally. Sounds like a bug.

Edited January 16, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Wormerine]

4 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Repair Sprays are completely unnecessary to protect cargo from Timefall itself - so long as you don't fall down a mountain or get swept away by those ghosties, haha.

I really like that as a mechanic. I can opt to carry sprays for better protection, or take more risk if, for example, I catch an unlucky spear in the face while climbing. 

[Malcador]

Weird bug in SM2, Spirit just died although she was alive when I was landing. SM2 is fun, I guess I haven't gotten to the real pain as of yet.

[Malcador]

And Hunter died off screen. Had to get a save editor and returned him and Spirit to life. Tempted to try to blow up everything in Corsair 3 but I'm shot to pieces and Hunter is useless.  Hopefully I don't lose the Firekka series either, thought I was doing well but got the loss, so looping back to do Corsair 3, Halcyon didn't yell at me (punk, I'm one grade below him and he talks to me like that)

[Hawke64]

Expeditions: Viking. Completed the game with a reasonably good ending. Overall, it was a good if simple RPG. The difficulty curve was rather steep, but it was possible to lessen some of the gameplay aspects (mostly, management). The story was branching, the dialogue options meaningful, the choices reflected in subsequent events, some RNG present but nothing critical (mostly the hostile archers' critical hits and random events). While completely avoiding combat was impossible, non-lethal takedowns were mostly acknowledged in quests.

Terfenstein 3D. A hardcore retro FPS. Successfully reached the second level and discovered that there were no "hard" saves, only checkpoints within one game session. While I appreciate the game conceptually, I also appreciate the options provided in the more modern FPS (with the last played being Titanfall 2, I'd say that my skills at them are quite limited).

[Malcador]

Phew Wing Commander complete fully. Got the Medal of Valor for not having Maniac die, never knew he was that bonkers - killed me once with friendly fire. Got the good ending, the Firekka drove off the Kilrathi.  The last mission was trivial, apparently if one wave runs away the other waves don't show up.

 

[Mamoulian War]

After a break from since September, I started to play Assetto Corsa Competizione few days ago again. This time in GT4 cars. I have picked up Aston Martin and started to race on Low Fuel Motorsport again. After few very nice races and three podiums in Split 2, I had today a lot of time to race a little bit around. Unfortunately, it looks like, that Friday is the worst day for racing, especially, if there are a lot of Porsche drivers on the grid  In three races, I was hit in almost every single corner of the Donington track by Porsche drivers, which forgot that they have also brakes in their cars , and I have lost almost 1/4 off of my Safety Rating, which pretty much sent my performance back to July of last year. Enough is enough, I will be having fun tomorrow making videos of reports of the incidents

[Hawke64]

Expeditions: Rome. An RPG. I've just started, but so far, while definitely better-looking, it seems less than Viking - less options for character creation and all lines are voiced, though I do prefer class-based systems to the classless ones. The combat system allows to recover the action spent if you killed an "untrained" opponent, so it might be possible to have quite a few turns in a row. I am curious whether Rome has any general narrative theme. I think, it was that while the environment affects one's opportunities, there is personal choice in Viking.
Edit. Completed 2 missions. There is no mini-map, which is inconvenient, and all skills seem to be combat-related - no Diplomacy, Leadership, or Crafting. There is a dialogue-related skill (3 to choose from; all have only 1 level, so you either have it or you don't), but I am unsure how much impact it has. It is possible that crafting and wound treatment are bound to the legion management part of the game, which I have not reached yet, but found crafting resources and dismantled some equipment.

The Forgotten City. An adventure game. Looks and runs well. There are some character customisation options, which are welcome, though I am unsure if having 10 bullets is better than sprinting 25% longer. Also, it the second game in the Roman setting from GOG that gave me an error during installation - they seem to use the C drive to install, regardless of the final destination, and there was not enough space on mine.

Momodora. After taking a quite long break I forgot some peculiarities of the game. Mostly that spikes are an instant death. Still, I was able to defeat Derelict Frida without taking damage on the second attempt, though the following boss, the Witch, took more time. Frida's accessory and charging the bow helped a lot. I am also starting to think that the MC might actually be an archer - there has been no upgrades for the melee weapon, but several to improve the fire rate and the bow's damage.

Edited January 21, 2023 by Hawke64

[majestic]

Epistory, the current free game on Epic.

For those of you who don't know, it is a typing action adventure game, and that really is all there is to it. Words pop up on your screen, and you type them in to make them disappear. It features an adaptive difficulty, whatever that means. I suppose that means people who type less quickly will not be getting the really hard to type 'big' words to contend with. It does feature some more mechanics, you can and at times have to change the elements of your typed words, which has added special effects. Fire burns the next word after a while, ice freezes enemies, wind blows them away and lightning does area of effect damage, making the use of lightning whenever it is possible a slight no-brainer.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis showing up? Well, zap the enemy next to it reading BUT, that's quicker. Okay, granted, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis shows up as a solo enemy and you have to type that in before it kills you, but you get the general idea. Also, yes, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is totally a word in the game that shows up. Not joking.

Hilariously enough, for English speaking folk, the game has two difficulty modes. American and British English, so pick if you want extra vowels in your words or not. Anyway, doesn't really matter, as long as you're an avery typer you're not going to break any sweat. The words per minute calculation of the game is a little wonky, but it is a game, not a typing simulator, so there's downtime between words, some spawns are easier than others, and some go much faster down than others too, depending on your character upgrades and available elements.

All in all it was a fun experience. Took me six hours to complete, and that's with running around the island several times to make sure I did not miss anything and looking for all the treasure, which was really pointless because there's a hard level cap you can easily reach without finding all overworld treasure chests.

Game is perhaps a little bit to long for what it offers. It looks nice enough, and it's hard to argue with the price Epic's asking.

[Hurlshort]

Outward - This is an interesting RPG. No save system, and death works as a mechanic that puts you in strange situations. It has taken some getting used to, but the world is engaging and the gameplay is decent. It reminds me of Risen quite a bit, but it seems more complex. 

[Hawke64]

Completed Momodora - Reverie Under the Moonlight. I suppose, it was decent, though the combination of saving system and insta-killing environmental hazards was unpleasant, and the no-damage boss battle rewards puzzling. Also the contact damage. It should not exist unless the foe is covered in spikes. The graphics, sound, and controls were good. The story was there and it was enough to explain why the MC goes on a murder spree, but nothing exceptional. The combat and character development were rather minimalistic and too much focused on the bow - there were several upgrades for it and only one for the melee weapon, which apparently determined the ending.

After some progress in Expeditions: Rome the positive changes from Viking became more apparent - the looting system (you can loot multiple corpses in one click, there are less containers with generic materials in general) and the companion interactions (you can ask them about the missions completed, though the replies are rather limited). The combat system is definitely more fluid and engaging (some abilities that can be used without spending an action point, some class-specific, some equipment-specific; though the latter, equipment stats in general, are RNG-reliant, which is unpleasant). Also most of the management and some of the customisation options are bound to the Legion Management.