What are you Playing Now? - Back to the Grind

[Wormerine]

I played through Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown demo. It looks quite excellent.

it is also first time I noticed that Ubisoft games are missing from Steam - I suppose it shows how much I care for the usual Ubi releases. Last game I bought and played was from the very same studio - Rayman Legends. Hard to believe it's been 10 years already.

[Hawke64]

27 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

I played through Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown demo. It looks quite excellent.

it is also first time I noticed that Ubisoft games are missing from Steam - I suppose it shows how much I care for the usual Ubi releases. Last game I bought and played was from the very same studio - Rayman Legends. Hard to believe it's been 10 years already.

I've tried to play it on EGS, but the Ubisoft DRM kicked in and after several windows, the demo still was not running. So, I guess, missing this one. I doubt that it will be available on GOG or Steam/EGS without double DRM.

The RPS review was favourable and I like the screenshot-on-the-map feature, accessibility settings, and the visual style.

[Keyrock]

I finished Starfield and have zero desire to do NG+ any time soon (possibly ever), so, after a break of a couple of months playing The Talos Principle 2 and Starfield, I'm back to Morrowind. Usually when I put a game down, the chances of me returning to it after a prolonged period of time are pretty low, but with Morrowind the chances are nearly 100% because it's a game I dearly love and it's still a joy to play, cliff racers notwithstanding. I even had perfect memory of where I left off, again, because I love the game and it stays in my mind. Oh Bethesda, you were really great once upon a time. Anyway, I'm still relatively early in the game. I recently joined House Redoran and I'm doing busy work for them to increase my rank. While on the way back from an assignment, I made the mistake of agreeing to escort this haughty c**t to the Ghostgate shrine and it was cliff racer central on the way, and all for a measly 100 gold. Then I had to hoof it back through more cliff racers to get to Ald'ruhn again. That's what I get for being a nice guy. I have 2 weeks until Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth comes out. I doubt I'll beat Morrowind by then, but who knows?

Edited January 14 by Keyrock

[melkathi]

I think I am in the last book in Bookwalker.

What is interesting is that, while it is a small game, it feels a bit like the opposite of other games. A lot of games, you have a very fleshed out start and then, as you progress, everything becomes less rich, as the devs ran out of time. In Bookwalker later books you enter aren't necessarily more complex in gameplay, but they feel at the very least just as involved as the first one. So I am quite happy that the game has been a constant experience. You don't get that as often as I'd like.

And I even enjoyed the "big reveal" in the plot. Or at least the first big reveal. There may be another down the road.

[Hawke64]

Control. After resolving the issue with crashes, it seems to be fine. I don't like shooters much, regardless of the camera being first- or third-person, but I can tell that it is better than Alan Wake 1, despite the foes looking rather similar - twitchy shadowy dudes. Defeated a boss (a flying shadowy dude) by hiding behind a column, which was rather anti-climatic, but still on the first try (died 2 minutes later by falling from a cliff). Some RNG-looking missions appeared at the save points. I am unsure how character development works or why my Excalibur-gun cannot morph into, well, Excalibur.

[melkathi]

Probably because I book walked in and stole Excalibur from the story.

[Keyrock]

If I lived in Vvardenfell I would be really tempted to get a pet scrib, those little buggers are the cutest. Unfortunately, eventually that scrib would presumably turn into a decidedly less cute kwama. Now, there's maybe some kind of spell I could cast to keep it in its larval scrib state and stop it from becoming a kwama, but whatever the Tamriel third era equivalent of PETA is might come after me, also I would feel bad because that's ****ed up. Now, if I could speak with the scrib and the scrib, let's call her Peggy the Scrib; if I could speak with Peggy and she told me "I like being a scrib and adorably thumping the ground with my butt. It would be great if you had a spell or potion that could keep me in this state and stop me from becoming a kwama." In that case I would be perfectly fine with using such a spell or potion and Tamriel PETA could **** right off, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

[melkathi]

I finished Bookwalker. It is a rather short game, just about 7 hours. As it is isometric I would call it more a point and click adventure game than a visual novel (I have seen people liken it to VNs in reviews).

The combat is definitely the weakest aspect of the game and win or lose doesn't really matter.

The game only has one ending, so the choices in the books you walk through do not truly matter. But the ending is kinda sweet.

Thoroughly enjoyed the game and do recommend it.

[rjshae]

I finally finished up a complete play-through Deadfire. It was a more enjoyable experience this time since I didn't prioritize chasing Eothas and just went where the story took me. Now I'm off to do the same with P:WotR. Yeah, it's almost retro gaming at this point.

[Hurlshort]

I've been hitting Midnight Suns pretty hard. It's pretty rewarding building up the characters. I have a training portal that lets me level up characters, and they get to really flex their powers in it. The combat scenarios are still a bit repetitive, but I think I just need to do more story missions to advance a bit. I'm over leveled for the story currently.

There is a lot of customization of outfits. Some looks pretty cool.

I wonder if the DLC is worth it. Seems a bit pricey for extra characters.

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I wonder if the DLC is worth it. Seems a bit pricey for extra characters.

They are rather overpriced IMO. Worth picking up on deep discount.

You get 4 new playable characters each of them with 3 story missions, and two bosses. They introduce new enemy types that are quite interesting, though their gimmick does get a bit old by the end of the campaigns.

 

I started Uncharted4 DLC. I struggle to take seriously - due to my RPG background I find cast behind two lead ladies (Morrigan and Xoti) to be rather distracting.

Edited January 16 by Wormerine

[melkathi]

The DLC adds a story arc across all the DLCs. The story isn't bad, but the inclusion of Deadpool really hurts the Midnight atmosphere. Midnight Sons were about the darker side of Marvel. Throwing in the 4th wall breaking overdose of ridiculous, breaks the atmosphere. The other characters fit far better. Morbius was an original Midnight Son after all.

Gameplaywise I liked Morbius best, as he utilizes Bleed and can thus combo well with Blade. It is nice to have characters that do the same thing and can work together instead of making one another obsolete.

Venom I enjoyed.

By the time Storm released, I was too bored of the game to care. I felt her inclusion was a bit forced. Where Venom was foreshadowed by the main story, and the DLC story naturally leads to Morbius, the other two were more "make it so we can include these". A bit like Wolverine really. He just shows up and joins because Marvel fans love Wolverine so he needs to be in this fanfic.

[Keyrock]

Something I really appreciate about Morrowind is that I'm hardly ever changing my gear. It's standard practice in modern game design to constantly bombard the player with incrementally better gear. I guess the thought process is that if the player doesn't get a new better sword every 5 minutes they won't be "engaged"? Do developers think that every gamer has ADHD or something? I've been rolling with the same suit of bonemold armor I got in Balmora at level 2 and I'm level 8 now. I only just recently swapped out the steel mace I got in Seyda Neen at the very start of the game for a mildly enchanted mace. Honestly, it's refreshing.

Anyway, I quickly rose through the ranks of House Redoran to house cousin and I got one of the councilors to sponsor me, I just need to wait a bit before he gives me further duties.  I should probably check back in with the Blades at some point, but I'm all the way up in Gnisis, so it will have to wait until I get my ass back to Balmora. I do have matters to attend to in Vivec, so I'll hit Balmora on the way when I make that trip. I mean, I could take a silt strider to get there instantly, but I still have some parts of west gash and bitter coast to explore, so I'd rather hoof it.

Side-note: This is the only game I can think of where the best money making mechanic is sleeping. I'm sure it wasn't intended to work like that, but it does nonetheless. Every 3 to 5 times I go to sleep I get rudely interrupted by an inept assassin, for reasons not yet clear to my character (of course, I know why). I easily dispatch said assassin, strip 'em naked (#metoo), then sell off the rather valuable dart they always have on 'em, and the rest of their gear fetches a decent price too. Thanks, inept assassins, for keeping my coin pouch nice and heavy. I appreciate it.

Edited January 17 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

Getting the hang of the CIA guys in Door Kickers 2 finally, the missions are a bit nuts.  Perhaps I should try putting my pistol away and being sneaky but that's too much work.

[Hurlshort]

9 hours ago, Malcador said:

Getting the hang of the CIA guys in Door Kickers 2 finally, the missions are a bit nuts.  Perhaps I should try putting my pistol away and being sneaky but that's too much work.

I mean, it's called Door Kickers. That's not a real stealthy way to enter a room.

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I mean, it's called Door Kickers. That's not a real stealthy way to enter a room.

Indeed. The term door kickers IRL refers to our special forces (esp. the SEALs). To use that term for CIA field agents seems rather silly.

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I mean, it's called Door Kickers. That's not a real stealthy way to enter a room.

Well the first game was a SWAT team game. Decided to branch out and give you military. As of now, there's a Ranger team, CIA SAD team and a generic brown people SWAT team that you can use.

The CIA missions are less mass murder, although the operatives are some of the best at killing.  Just a bit awkward as things are more dynamic, and I really liked the planning being the most key thing. 

[Hawke64]

Finished Cult of the Lamb. It is an action-roguelite with management elements.

The management elements include raising the titular cult and taking revenge on the gods who demanded you to be sacrificed. The cult requires members, who can be found during expeditions or recruited after boss battles. In turn, these members produce Devotion, which is used to purchase new abilities and unlock new buildings, and require food and housing. The resources can be gathered during the above-mentioned expeditions, the Crusades, or grown at the base. The Crusades include venturing into the randomly arranged rooms, slaughtering the regular foes and the bosses, gathering resources, rescuing potential cult members, and occasionally meeting NPCs. The loss of progress on defeat is minimal - only the part of the dungeon in progress.

The only negative aspects of the game are the random elements which are rather unpleasant - an unwieldy weapon, such as a hammer, can make a Crusade unsuccessful, the requirement to sacrifice 3 followers to progress in the post-game (as I understand, it was added after the initial release), and that the game is still in active development, which was not clear from the store page.

The controls are rebindable, 5-button mice supported, no critical bugs have been encountered (some minor issues with building placement). The accessibility options allow to auto-pass the mini-games and stop the time at the camp when the MC is on a Crusade. The graphics, visual style, and sound design are lovely and expressive.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Slay the Princess. Odd little visual novel. Didn't somebody here mention it within the past couple of weeks or so? I could swear somebody here mentioned it and it's why I checked it out in the first place, but now I can find no evidence of it on the entire forums except for a post by Tale back in the middle of 2023 talking about it being in development. Weird...but also fitting, given that the game features memory loss as a reoccurring event.

[rjshae]

N/M

Edited January 18 by rjshae

[Hawke64]

Vampire the Masquerade - Shadows of New York. Finished the game mostly by holding Ctrl - I have much lower tolerance for visual novels, pretty or not. While the art is outstanding, the saving system, GUI in general, the choices and the story make it hard to recommend. The writing and music are fine, the VA is not present. The protagonist is predetermined, from the name to the background to the clan. There are some choices that do determine the ending, but I was unable to follow the logic. There is no gallery to view the backgrounds and CG, but there is a dictionary with 1-paragraph descriptions.

To elaborate on the saving system, there are 3 auto-saving slots, one per playthrough, and the game just deletes the save after the playthrough is finished. It was the same in the previous game and seeing it not fixed is disappointing. While it is possible to use Windows Explorer, the developers should have implemented manual saving at will as in any technically-decent visual novel.

 

[Bartimaeus]

14 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

The writing and music are fine, the VA is not present

I have an addendum to make to my previous post about Slay the Princess that I totally forgot about until I was reading your post: I heard like two lines of the voice work in that game and then I completely muted the voice audio for the rest of the game. This isn't really all that important, but I just wanted to note this in case anybody thought I actually played through an entire visual novel with the voice-acting on - hell no, you'd have to have some outstanding voice-acting for me to do that, and...no, that game definitely did not have it. Well, I don't know, maybe it did, I did only listen to like two lines before muting it, so what the heck do I know? But voice-acting in games that are all dialogue is pretty much intolerable, as far as I'm concerned - it slows games down massively to have to listen to all of it, and if the voices aren't just right, it can really throw the whole atmosphere into question pretty much immediately. I always thought the Infinity Engine games had the right of it in only voicing lines sparingly/appropriately - use it to establish a character by all means, and use it for moments important to those characters and the plot, heck yeah...but every single line all the time? Eh.

Edited January 20 by Bartimaeus

[bugarup]

Oh! I too played Slay the Princess. It was way too short, less than 10 minutes I think, and my reward for slaying her sucked.

[Wormerine]

Finished Uncharted4 Stand Alone DLC Lost Legacy. After being rather lukewarm about the Thief's End I was rather surprised that I ended up enjoying the DLC rather a lot.

Story is still good, though far more simple, but it makes up for it, by being a better game. Far better paced, and making far better use of it's gameplay systems. Finally, some fun puzzles, combat encounters are less linears (dropping difficulty to normal, and maxing aim assist I am sure helped as well). The big car chapter is so much more fun, than more linear sequences of T'sE. Even bombastic setpieces worked for me this time around, probably as they were well integrated into the story, rather than being the thing happening between story bits, like it felt like in the base game.

I started Resident Evil2 Remake through gamepass. Eh, we will see. Gameplay wise it seems quite interesting, but I am really not enjoying the gore. I hope the title will soon stop trying to shock me with lavishly produced innards, and focus on the gameplay experience. Otherwise, I might nope-out in a session or two.

[melkathi]

@Hawke64 did you play Coteries of new York first?

Shadows is the sequel. It has two endings because coteries had only one, regardless of what you did, and people complained.

Coteries was better and the terrible ending made sense lore wise even if it was very unsatisfying.

But in general you get more fun out of werewolf heart of darkness.

Again it is a short VN and at some point during the second play through you realise again that your choice matter very little. But it is just well done. The first play through is great. If you can stand a VN.