What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition

[mkreku]

26 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

I think we already talked about it, but when I play the game for the first time, I always play vanilla - maybe outside unofficial patches if the game benefits of it. To me devs have same authorship over their work, as writers or film makers, so in general I am not interested in mods, and prefer to consume media “as it was intended”. 
Not that you are wrong. I do think Bethesda games are more of a platform than a game, and therefore I have no interest in what they sell. 

I'm the same. I see people install mods like, "make you run 300 times faster and fire a thousand Fat Man's at the same time!!1!".. like.. what's the point? Sure, if someone has made a "high res textures" mod I might install it. But even those are usually "we updated 80% of the textures in the game" and then you get into the game and the same house has two different styles of textures on it, completely ruining the art direction.

[Hurlshort]

Bought a Narwhal in Starfield, my first class C ship. It is pretty fancy. I don't love the 3 deck setup, but it has a ton of reactor power. Now I need to level up my command skill so I can have a full crew.

Oh and my wife Sarah died. So sad. I guess I'll just cry on Andreja's shoulder for a bit. 

Also Mickey Caviar is my favorite NPC.

Edited June 16 by Hurlshort

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Playing Stardew Valley for the first time in several years due to the massive 1.6 update. I know the last time I played, multiplayer was not even officially supported and required a user mod to play. Looking that up, it was mid-2018, so it's been at least six years.

Funny thing is that the major content patch was probably mostly in the 1.5 update, which was effectively a free expansion with a brand new major zone, but that passed me by for whatever reason. Realistically the new zone only becomes accessible in the second in-game year, so there's a bit of an issue where by the time it was unlocked, I felt like I'd almost had enough of the game already. Regardless though, I pressed on so I could at least see some of it.

I'd never really bought into the idea of the game as a whole being an exemplar of the "cozy game" genre. There's far too much pressure in terms of both time and inventory management for that. But I could see where the argument comes from, and for most of the game's existence the argument has been fairly reasonable. That ceases to be the case with each piece of new content that's added though, mainly in the sense that it rapidly becomes overwhelming if you're the type to stick with the game's central theme of being a farmer. Instead you're very much incentivised to completely abandon most of the base game mechanics in order to even have time to engage with the new content.

An element of this was already hinted at in the base game with the somewhat-optional Skull Cavern, the endgame dungeon that required you to heavily optimise an entire day's play to it in a pretty literal sense. To give a bit of context, the intended approach for it pretty much involved kitting yourself out the night before, praying the game's RNG generated a good luck day in the morning, then using a teleport at 6am and start mining with explosives until 2am, when you passed out from fatigue (which is optimal play, the 1000g penalty for not going returning home manually is trivial). But to be fair, this is something you only had to pull off a couple of times in an average playthrough before being set for resources.

The new zone takes this approach and dials it to eleven. Every single day your new goal becomes to get yourself to the new zone as soon as possible at the sacrifice of everything else, and engage in the new major grind there. I admit that after a few days of this, I gave up and installed a cheat mod that allowed me to freeze time, turning the game into a more traditional RPG in which I could explore the content at my leisure. I thus wave farewell and good riddance to the game's central time management conceit, but it nonetheless feels bizarre that the intended approach seems to be to stop farming altogether, sell all your animals, ignore all your friends and their quests, etc.

Now in mitigation

  Reveal hidden contents

normalcy is somewhat restored later on with late-lategame content gold sinks, which allow you to set up permanent portals to just about anywhere. But that creates a somewhat degenerate case where you either access the content at the point of the game it was designed for and suffer through the inconvenience, or just grind the original content for much, much longer in order to mostly trivialise everything.

 

I've played about a handful of hours of Stardew Valley and my impression of the game turned into "this is going to be impossible for me to enjoy because of how quickly days are over combined with how much crap you have to do that they've stuffed into this game...unless I just start cheating". I was really only scratching the surface with how little I played, too. The reason I didn't start cheating and instead quit was because I was not confident that I was actually enjoying any of the game's writing, content, or gameplay. None of the characters did anything besides annoy me, I don't really enjoy any element of farming or "designing" a home/base, and while there certainly seemed to be mysteries abounding, I kind of just found the gameplay loop to be too dull and repetitive for that to compel me forward any. I see people sink hundreds of hours into Stardew Valley and I wonder what I'm not getting, but I suppose that's just how it goes.

Edited June 17 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

The core gameplay loop of Stardew Valley's first year is just about perfect for me. There's always something to do, and often slightly too much to do per day. Then it rains, and you spend the day catching fish or 'clearing' mine levels instead. There's always something that needs upgrading and you feel like you're making progress every few days.

The trouble is by the 2nd year it starts to feel like make-work instead, or becomes trivial because you've automated everything, and you've done most of the tasks in the community centre. I've never even made it to Ginger Island or whatever it's called, I always stall out sometime in spring year 2. Still one of my favourites though since getting to that point is, well, great.

[rjshae]

I'm playing some more user modules for Solasta, which are a bit hit and miss in terms of quality. Currently I'm running through the "Depths of Darkness" module, which is a re-creation of the old "The Sunless CItadel" PnP module for DnD. It's a pretty decent effort compared to many of these user creations, so I'd recommend it if you like Solasta.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2860765207

[Sven_]

Taffers gonna need some taffin'!

I mean, there's references all over the place to everything 0451 anyway. But Chapter 4 in Fallen Aces is basically ripped straight outta Thief. It's not even subtle about it. It hits ya like a, wait for it, blackjack!

 

Then again, WHY THE HELLZ NOT? It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's Thief, not Thi4f. I don't want this to end. But at five Episode 1 levels so far, it's gonna. Even if you're playing this like me rather than if you'd be heading headfirst into M1E1 of your last favourite Boomer Brawler:  sneaking around, exploring every airduct and cranny, eavesdropping on all the dialogue, reading all the documents, listening to the radio programme apparently updating alongside to the storyline (and your pursuits) -- and still missing out on some secrets for some reason. 

I want this poster. Plus the soundtrack on Vinyl.

Edited June 17 by Sven_

[BruceVC]

11 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I think we already talked about it, but when I play the game for the first time, I always play vanilla - maybe outside unofficial patches if the game benefits of it. To me devs have same authorship over their work, as writers or film makers, so in general I am not interested in mods, and prefer to consume media “as it was intended”. 
Not that you are wrong. I do think Bethesda games are more of a platform than a game, and therefore I have no interest in what they sell. 

Wormie !!! No need for racism, this is a forum of tolerance and acceptance 

But there is a legitimate debate around playing the vanilla game first to understand " what was intended " and I agree with that sentiment 

But that typically doesn't apply to Bethesda games for several reasons or rather why I mod there games to change . And this includes the following

• HD textures and graphic mods dont change the narrative or mechanics except for improving on something that didnt exist at the time of development. So they become  " must have mods " in the interests of enhancing the visual experience 
• A game like  Oblivion had some incredibly bad designs like level scaling, the idea that a rat can challenge you when you level 20 makes no sense and there should always be monsters that can defeat you on  early levels like in Gothic games. So loading mods that change this is about the immersive experience and that for me is very important 
• I dont load mods that change the fundamental narrative and all my mods are lore friendly 
• And of course loading chainmail bikini mods is all about gender equality. I am a  feminist and I always support a liberated and confident women and we must  never tell  any women what they can or cant wear. Even @HoonDingwill agree on this 

But in summary  the mods I use improve bad designs and development shortfalls but they dont really change the vanilla experience because the vanilla experience isnt suppose to be a bad  or a  lazy design 

Of course there are exceptions to this, when I play Skyrim for the first time I am going to play Requiem but thats more the exception because thats a major overhaul mod but its the type of game I want to experience from the beginning 

 

 

 

 

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Bought a Narwhal in Starfield, my first class C ship. It is pretty fancy. I don't love the 3 deck setup, but it has a ton of reactor power. Now I need to level up my command skill so I can have a full crew.

Oh and my wife Sarah died. So sad. I guess I'll just cry on Andreja's shoulder for a bit. 

Also Mickey Caviar is my favorite NPC.

I like to read posts like this because it confirms what I was hoping and expecting for Starfield

The game had its predicated but still disappointing bad launch but now  official updates and mods will change that initial bad experience and Starfield will start becoming a much better game 

I wont touch it for another 24 months 

 

 

[Humanoid]

4 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

The trouble is by the 2nd year it starts to feel like make-work instead

I feel the burnout begins for me the moment you branch off into livestock. While it doesn't really take much time compared to crops, the gameplay is much more repetitive and shallow. If I ever start a game fresh again (it's probably years away, maybe with the fan expansion?), I'll probably just skip that element and use cheats to spawn the required animal products in.

1.6 has added even more micromanagement, in that you now are actually incentivised to close the barn/coop door every night to maximise animal happiness. (Prior to this patch, it was a common urban legend that you needed to do it, but it actually did nothing)

To be fair, I haven't used the super-popular Automate mod yet. Maybe if I was going to seriously try to grind out for the late-game items that cost seven digit amounts I would, but at the moment I'm thinking of doing the opposite and basically deleting everything but my greenhouse.

[Wormerine]

15 hours ago, BruceVC said:

The game had its predicated but still disappointing bad launch but now official updates and mods will change that initial bad experience and Starfield will start becoming a much better game

Speaking of games that launched in poor state and needed years of patches:

Cyberpunk2077. I am yet to pick up the DLCs (hoping for the discount before it is time to tackle it), but I started my 2nd C77 playthrough, this time with female Nomad V focusing on being Cool and Techy.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the game when I played it for the first time around Edgerunners release, but wow, I like Cyberpunk 2.0 much much more . It feels like technical state of the game is much better, and gameplay is actually fine now - I didn't expect it getting that much better. The smaller systems they added (street chases, police systems) aren't much on paper, but together they make the city a bit convincing backdrop to the rigid quests the game offers. It feels less like a techdemo now and more like Cyberpunk "Mafia".

It also helps that I think female V has a bit more engaging VO, and Nomad intro worked for me much better for me than Corpo.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Speaking of games that launched in poor state and needed years of patches:

Cyberpunk2077. I am yet to pick up the DLCs (hoping for the discount before it is time to tackle it), but I started my 2nd C77 playthrough, this time with female Nomad V focusing on being Cool and Techy.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the game when I played it for the first time around Edgerunners release, but wow, I like Cyberpunk 2.0 much much more . It feels like technical state of the game is much better, and gameplay is actually fine now - I didn't expect it getting that much better. The smaller systems they added (street chases, police systems) aren't much on paper, but together they make the city a bit convincing backdrop to the rigid quests the game offers. It feels less like a techdemo now and more like Cyberpunk "Mafia".

It also helps that I think female V has a bit more engaging VO, and Nomad intro worked for me much better for me than Corpo.

Absolutely, Cyb2077 is another example that games can survive terrible launches

It just takes commitment from the development studio and mods can also address certain problems

 

[bugarup]

On 6/16/2024 at 8:24 PM, Humanoid said:

I'd never really bought into the idea of the game as a whole being an exemplar of the "cozy game" genre. There's far too much pressure in terms of both time and inventory management for that.

All the pressure is in your own head, mate. You don't have to do everything at once right away and perfectly. There's always another day, just chill. 

[Humanoid]

9 hours ago, bugarup said:

All the pressure is in your own head, mate. You don't have to do everything at once right away and perfectly. There's always another day, just chill. 

Eh, yes and no. It's true of many things, and in the early game it's mostly a few rare events where an early game oversight might mean you need to wait an entire in-game year for the next chance. Often not a big deal since you're waiting on other stuff anyway, e.g. completing the Spring bundles in year 2 means just a minor delay since you're waiting for winter items anyway.

However the time pressure becomes more unavoidable the deeper you get into lategame, initially mostly with the Skull Cavern content from launch (where losing all your staircases and bombs but failing to reach level 100 is a massive setback), but increasingly so with post-launch content like Ginger Island.

[Hawke64]

Arcadia Fallen. Got one of the rarest achievements by asking a child why he was following the party, then telling him that I was going to murder his brother. The game is funny. While the story was as exciting as watching paint dry (small towns are good for burning down in the prologue, but not so much for having the whole story centred on them*), the UI is excellent - the short reply options alongside the intonations and explicitly marked story-affecting choices help greatly. The plot did get somehow jollier by the end of Chapter 4 (out of 7), though I still was not able throw a grenade at a certain NPC.

*the main character is an alchemist apprentice, and at the end of the prologue the local farmers/miners try to destroy their shop (and again at the end of Chapter 4). There is also a little demon army under the town, so the protagonist just has to save the town, because reasons. Instead of packing the bags and leaving for a better and larger city.

The main mini-game (rotating 3 circles to form a certain pattern) is enjoyable enough and it is nice that there is something tangible. Though, the PC does have some personality stats attached and some of the decisions are tracked.

[MrBrown]

Death Must Die

Nice combination of Hades and Vampire Survivors.

[Lexx]

Finally decided to give Life is Strange 2 a go. Bought it back in the days but then never played it, because somehow lost the motivation. Finished episode 1 now. All in all it was better than I expected, but IMO a bit too slow, with really long cutscenes. It's like, if I am breaking down the gameplay segments from the cutscenes, there's really only very little content. You're basically just walking around interacting with hotspots, then pick up some stuff and let's go to the next cutscene. The first game felt a lot more balanced in that area.

Also I now remember all the people crying about the game being woke or whatever, because it features a racist character who is very clearly a trumper-type. Didn't felt too off to me. What was a little more weird was the savior dude who was into nudism. That was a bit... not sure what to make of it.

Started episode 2 now. Will see how it continues.

[Hawke64]

Arcadia Fallen. Finished the game. I liked it, though the subplot with the alchemy teacher landed significantly better than the main story, which felt very off. It might have something to do with that the former required to solve puzzles (not sure if the last part changes based on it or not).

Review:

Spoiler

Arcadia Fallen is a visual novel with role-playing elements.

There are some choices and branching in dialogues, with certain personality choices ("How do you feel about A?"/"What do you want to do about B?") being reflected throughout the story, though the range of roleplay felt limited in regard to the central point of the main story - the protagonist has been living in a small town where the locals are very transparent in their dislike for the PC and their teacher, Elizabeth, while the main quest is focused on saving this town from a demon invasion. Somehow, the game managed to make the locals less sympathetic than the shadowy pokemons. Alas, there was no option to let them sort out their differences without the party's interference. Speaking of the party, there are 5 companions and their stories can have different outcomes, including bad endings. Overall, the subplots and side quests were satisfying, while the lore and the setting (steampunk, leaning more towards magic) were rich and detailed.

The UI is a thing of beauty - the short summaries of the dialogue options have the intonations and explanations (e.g. that the option will advance the dialogue) attached to them and the important conversations are clearly communicated, with the pop-up windows for the points of no-return.

Additionally, the character customisation (name, appearance, gender identity/pronouns, which are not bound to the body type), the ability to save at any time, and the protagonist not auto-dialoguing nor auto-staring at boobs/butts are most welcome.

The alchemy puzzles were reasonably engaging, though the inability to throw the poison vials at certain NPCs was disappointing. That is, the ability to create potions or bombs is used during specific points of the story, but there is no actual inventory and supply of consumables to be used at will.

The art style and graphics are expressive and stylish and the characters have a lot of sprites, though very few CGs. The music and partial VA are present and I did not turn them off during the playthrough.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and can recommend it.

The Kickstarter campaign for the sequel is live, though I am planning to purchase it later, rather than back now.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/galdra/arcadia-fallen-2

[Lexx]

Just finished Life is Strange 2. It was... ok. Ending was fine, but by god is this game slow. Jesus Christ, can you make it even slower, I'm not sure. Worst is, you can't even skip cutscenes, which turns a replay into a huge pain in the arse. Wouldn't mind to check out some alternative paths, but not like this. Most of the time you'll sit around and watch long winded cutscenes with characters that speak too slow. Rest of the time you will be trapped in a small space and interact with hot spots that shower you in toxic positivity. Note to the writers: Not everything has to be cool and awesome. It's ok to not like things.

Some characters are nice. It's cool to see

 

David again.

The mother was... just so pointless. I wonder how so many people could be nice to her. I really didn't care and feel like she deserved nothing. Some of the writing is really awkward. It's like they had to make everything somehow wholesome... it really shouldn't be.

Now I wonder if all their other games are this slow as well. LiS1 had A LOT more and interesting gameplay going on than whatever was going on here. Guess I'll be rooting for Dontnod now to deliver a better next game. True Colors was cringe as hell, but at least it had a lot more fun gameplay.

Edited Sunday at 03:14 PM by Lexx

[Hawke64]

3 hours ago, Lexx said:

Just finished Life is Strange 2. It was... ok. Ending was fine, but by god is this game slow. Jesus Christ, can you make it even slower, I'm not sure. Worst is, you can't even skip cutscenes, which turns a replay into a huge pain in the arse. Wouldn't mind to check out some alternative paths, but not like this. Most of the time you'll sit around and watch long winded cutscenes with characters that speak too slow. Rest of the time you will be trapped in a small space and interact with hot spots that shower you in toxic positivity. Note to the writers: Not everything has to be cool and awesome. It's ok to not like things.

Some characters are nice. It's cool to see

  Reveal hidden contents

David again.

The mother was... just so pointless. I wonder how so many people could be nice to her. I really didn't care and feel like she deserved nothing. Some of the writing is really awkward. It's like they had to make everything somehow wholesome... it really shouldn't be.

Now I wonder if all their other games are this slow as well. LiS1 had A LOT more and interesting gameplay going on than whatever was going on here. Guess I'll be rooting for Dontnod now to deliver a better next game. True Colors was cringe as hell, but at least it had a lot more fun gameplay.

Tell Me Why was slow. It is free during June, by the way, if you would like to try it. I haven't played, but would like to eventually, Twin Mirror. Dontnod also develop some action games - Vampyr (played, the game is funny for the wrong reasons, the combat is not good) and Banishers (have not played, but would like to as well; the genre is hack and slash) and Jusant (something about climbing). And there is Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, which looks like a VN. True Colors was developed by a different company, as far as I know.

[Lexx]

Ah damn, true. It was Deck Nine. But whatever, I guess. Still more gameplay than LiS2 had.

I'm seriously kinda angry right now about the game. Took me 18 hours of which Probably at least 10 or more was spend on looking at slow cutscenes, while the rest was just wandering around, trying to find the next hotspot. The remaining hours was me having the game paused in the main menu, because I needed a break for a while.

They have this whole mechanic of the brother being able to use telekinesis and it is barely outside of a few scripted sequences.

The few emotional touching moments weren't enough to weight this up. Thank god I had nothing better to do.

[Hawke64]

Flynn: Son of Crimson. Finished. A platformer with some Metroidvania elements, such as different weapons, a few combat skills, and 2 additional traversal abilities. The story of an orphan saving the world is not exactly original and this particular implementation is bland, but not horrible. The controls are rebindable and the level design is present. The graphics and visual design are nice and there is no contact damage, which, while good in general, should not be the only good things to say about a game. The Scourge system, where a previously-cleared location transformed and you had to clear a few rooms of it in order to progress, was fine. Not sure if the chosen levels were random, but it did look like a lot of effort to implement.

There were a few instances when I was hit (-1 HP) and pushed into a pit (-1 more HP), which was rather irritating.

56 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Ah damn, true. It was Deck Nine. But whatever, I guess. Still more gameplay than LiS2 had.

I'm seriously kinda angry right now about the game. Took me 18 hours of which Probably at least 10 or more was spend on looking at slow cutscenes, while the rest was just wandering around, trying to find the next hotspot. The remaining hours was me having the game paused in the main menu, because I needed a break for a while.

They have this whole mechanic of the brother being able to use telekinesis and it is barely outside of a few scripted sequences.

The few emotional touching moments weren't enough to weight this up. Thank god I had nothing better to do.

Thank you for sharing. I don't think I would like to play it now, though Dontnod games have some branching story paths, which I like, so maybe some day.

[Lexx]

Well, those branching story paths in those games are usually always fake for the most of it. The effects they have on the actual gameplay almost always is marignal or just not existent. Pick your path, and then you'll later get either a letter, a mail, or a phone message in good or bad variation. At best you'll meet that character again for 10 seconds and that's it. Not really blaming the developers that much, since we know that those story permutations quickly get super expensive... but still... it's starting to get very formulaic and lazy, imo.

/Edit: I was surprised to see actual tiddies in LiS2, though. Shame they didn't had the balls to also show some... balls, heh.

Edited Sunday at 09:16 PM by Lexx

[LadyCrimson]

7 Days to Die - Alpha 22 .... er, I mean Release 1.0

---fps is a fair bit worse (at 4k anyway), if I try to use all High/Ultra like before, but it's so smooth I didn't notice without a fps counter on. Mostly it's the shadows/object shadowing. I had those up High/Ultra before w/60+ fps still. I had to knock their quality to Low. But now there's hardly any difference visually between High/Low shadows. Only Off looks terrible. So, it's fine.
---Traders are now specific to specific biomes. "Trader Jen" is in burnt forest. "trader Rekt" is in forest biome, because of trader quest "progression". And by default the map generator will not create "big cities" in the Forest biome at all, also in the name of progression/forcing players to expand to other biomes. Which sucks donkey sweat if Forest biome is your favorite biome and don't give a hoot about "trader quests" anyway. Good thing I know how to open Notepad and alter .xml's. There, all fixed, big cities everywhere and multiple Traders in multiple biomes when I want.
---map generator is way way way faster. I can now make 10k+ sized maps in 90 or so seconds instead of take-a-nap amount of time.
---actual gameplay - well, it's 7 Days to Die. Some item/loot/quest mechanics have changed, and a whole lot of new POI's, but it's all largely the same.
---I'm still guffawing at the "1.0 release" for console naming, shenanigans. It's still an Alpha, stop pretending.