What are you playing now?

[Humanoid]

At the start of the weekend I was thinking that if the new WoW expansion turned out to be any good, I might pop in and give it a go for a while, hang out a bit and mess around with people I haven't played with for two-and-a-half years. But well, obviously the launch didn't go quite so well - indeed it's giving AC5 a run for its money. So scratch that idea.

 

Instead I'm giving The Sims 4 another earnest go. I got it a couple weeks ago, but it wasn't doing anything for me. Well, it's working a bit better now. The problem was that in trying to play it like I did the previous game, I ran headfirst into TS4's biggest weakness: single-sim households.

 

Now I've always played the Sims games in two distinct ways: a) singleton sims which I play actively, taking part in their daily management in a pseudo-RPG setup; and b) multi-sim households where I largely leave the inhabitants to their own devices: a virtual ant-farm if you will, or a (very) light Dwarf Fortress-style arrangement.

 

The former gameplay style doesn't work at all in the new game as it stands, the new short-term mood system and the stripped-down wishes functionality that is linked to it has no synergy whatsoever with the life of a lone sim. You only have a maximum of three wishes, you can't 'promise' (i.e. save) them, and can't cancel them to generate new ones. One wish slot is tied directly to your current mood and therefore comes and goes as quickly as your mood swings - sometimes you get less than half an hour to act on them. The result of this is that very often there are literally no practical short-term goals to pursue, kind of like having an RPG with no quests.

 

Now that I'm experimenting with the latter gameplay style, I'm beginning to see the strengths of the new system. With other Sims almost always around, wishes that would otherwise go ignored (the social ones, which is the majority of them) become relevant, and interactions between Sims are a lot more dynamic and interesting to play than any previous title. Unfortunately this is currently hampered by the limited AI functionality that makes large households unwieldy; for example, the 'claim bed' (or any other item ownership) functionality does not currently exist, so Sims will sleep in whatever bed they wish, often leaving another Sim without anywhere to sleep because of relationship statuses. That at least, unlike the single-sim issue, is a weakness that can be patched, so I look forward to usability improvements over the coming months. For the moment, I reckon to get the best out of the game, two to four bedroom households is pretty much the usable range.

[Nonek]

This War of Mine. I'll just play one more day and then i'll quit...honestly.

[Lexx]

I can feel that I am slowly getting tired with Dark Souls 2, so I now ordered Dark Souls 1... should arrive in a few days.

[Bendu]

Kind of curious how you interpret Nashandra and her sisters without knowing Dark Souls.

 

Always remember: The **** are a lie!

Edited November 15, 2014 by Bendu

[GhostofAnakin]

 

 

I had a really good run in COD AW last night, got 3x 600pt kill streaks in a single match. I equipped the 2nd auto rifle with a laser, and the perk that let's you shoot while running, and hipfire shot everyone. The rifles basically have no recoil, unlike the smg's that have horrible recoil

 

Really?  That was one of my issues with the AW guns compared to previous CoD games (MW2, I'm looking at you).  I find the recoil is pretty bad when you're shooting at distance.  I'll hit a guy once, but the gun will "bounce" and so I'll have trouble lining up the second shot.  In MW2, I'd line up a guy in a building with my SCAR and unload three or four shots with the red dot barely even moving from his head after each shot.

 

Which guns are you using? I prefer these two. I'm more short to medium range shooter. The one at the bottom usually kills them off in a 4 round burst, so there's no need to realign a shot. I use the fore-grip attachment, I believe it helps a little bit on recoil

 

 

 

 

Neither pic showed up. 

 

In any case, my assault rifles of choice are either the first one (can't recall what it's called) or the first one you have above.  Since I'm playing hardcore, I like to keep silencers on my gun.  So I usually run with a silencer, a grip (better accuracy, apparently) and a red dot (find it easier to aim with).

 

I do OK with it.  I've managed to get my K/D up around 1.00 after starting off really, really badly.  I just find that the recoil is a lot greater than in MW2 with my personal favorite SCAR.

[Lexx]

Kind of curious how you interpret Nashandra and her sisters without knowing Dark Souls.

Not really at all, tbh.

 

 

But I like this... more or less subtle story thing about the player becoming the next king. I am here for finding a cure for the curse, but somehow everyone is driving me into becoming the next king. Usually this stuff would make me think the writers forgot the games main task and just totally went off the road with the story, but here I actually believe that it's done on purpose.

 

 

I am a little bit worried about the endless respawning mobs in DS1, though. DS2 had some parts where I honestly had to "grind away" all the mobs first, before I was able to take on the the next boss...

 

 

Oh, and on another note... The pursuer was one of the hardest boss fight for me first, and now I am playing him like a fiddle. Did my reflexes really get this much better? Jumping his attacks feels super easy now. He doesn't seem that fast anymore at all (it felt like madness when I first encountered him). Now I even feel brave enough to take on the two of them encounter at drangleic castle.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Lexx

[Bokishi]

Darn no hotlinking here's the correct gun pictures

 

 

 

Silencers tend to throw off my range and damage, I don't use them that much. But I just play normal settings

[Keyrock]

I can now confirm that Infinite Climax (Insane) difficulty in Bayonetta 2 is indeed insane.  I never played on 1st Climax (Easy), so I don't know what the jump from 1st Climax to 2nd Climax (Normal) is like.  The jump in difficulty from 2nd Climax to 3rd Climax (Hard) was definitely noticeable, but my own increase in skill level was actually greater than the increase in difficulty, so I actually has an easier time going through the game on 3rd Climax difficulty by virtue of how much better at the game I had become.  The jump in difficulty from 3rd Climax to Infinite Climax is brutal.  Not only do enemies do more damage, they add in mini-boss and boss level enemies into regular battles.  I thought I got pretty darn good at the game, but I'm going to have to be the mother****ing master to beat the game on Infinite Climax difficulty.  It's freakin' nuts and I love it! 

Edited November 16, 2014 by Keyrock

[GhostofAnakin]

Darn no hotlinking here's the correct gun pictures

 

 

 

Silencers tend to throw off my range and damage, I don't use them that much. But I just play normal settings

 

I might get rid of them myself.  Despite using them, the enemy always seems to know where I am anyway.  So I might go with no silencer next time and see if it'll improve those long range shots where I hit them once but don't kill 'em.

[Malcador]

There's a lot to do in WoD, the garrison minigame is kind of fun, for now as I level up my NPC minions. Now I am called Commander and no longer some sociopahthic elite mook that kills people because others say so, bwaha. Nice to see they've added exploration bonuses, as rare mobs all over the place, epic weapons that you can find on the side of the road and some events as well. Shame the bonus objectives are "Kill N of X and J of Y" though.

[Nonek]

This War of Mine.

 

While out scavenging for food our Athlete friend was shot and killed, we went from scraping by in our ruined house to truly desperate straits, we're understaffed, underfed, we're all sick or wounded, have no medical supplies and have no reliable weapons. We're banking on one of our injured scavengers finding a good haul tonight, if he doesn't we may not survive, we gave him a knife when he set out and he knows how important it is that he gathers everything he can. Morality is beginning to be compromised here, there's an old couple nearby with a well stocked home, we hope it doesn't become them or us. 

 

The atmosphere in this game is amazing, highly recommended.

[Endrosz]

FInished playing Stacking today. This Double Fine game is even better than I expected. One of the most creative and fun games I ever played, a well-executed spin on the adventure genre. No grinding, no useless minigames or platforming segments, no pixel hunting, no lengthy backtracking. Just pure puzzle-solving (with built-in hints via both dialog and a hint system), and having random fun with the quirky abilites of the dolls. BTW: Stacking > Broken Age. Which is ironic, because Stacking wasn't crowdfunded with great promises, it's just a game that is completely finished and polished.



The game uses classical music to great effect. Why don't more game companies do this? Classical music is free, and covers a great variety of themes, from marching tunes through majestic choirs to somber lullabies.
 
I recommend Stacking to anyone who likes adventure or puzzle games, or games with humor. Also: it's a great family game, no adult content or copious violence, play it together with your SO, younger siblings or kids!

[Labadal]

I really liked Stacking even if it gets a bit repetitive by the end.

 

More Divine Divinity, slaughtered an entire camp of soldiers and just killing stuff in general.

[Keyrock]

I discovered I have a ton of relearning and practice ahead of me if I'm going to use Rosa in Bayonetta 2, and I intend to.  Unlike Jeanne, who I unlocked the first time I ran through the story, Rosa plays very different to Bayonetta.  Jeanne has a much smaller window of time to trigger witch time than Bayonetta, the trade-off being that she does more damage with witch weave attacks, but beyond that she plays very much like Bayonetta.  She has pretty much all the same combos, her timing on combos is very similar, and she uses all the same weapons as Bayonetta (she has her own versions of said weapons, but from a mechanical perspective they're the same).  Rose, on the other hand, does much more damage than Bayonetta (not just with witch weaves) and also takes much more damage when hit, but beyond that she also plays very differently than Bayonetta.  First off, she can't use any of the unlocked weapons that Bayonetta and Jeanne can use, she has her own version of the basic 4 pistol weapon kit and you can't change that.  I haven't used the basic 4 pistol kit in a very long time (since I got my first weapon unlock)and it requires very different strategies for combat.  For one, I'm stuck with extremely short reach for melee attacks (Rosa's just punching and kicking).  Of course, with guns I can just shoot my opponent from a distance, but I need to relearn to do that since I got used to using weapon kits that give me massive range on melee attacks (the whips are awesome for that), so I never bothered using ranged attacks  since I could easily hit enemies with melee from all but the most extreme distances.  More than that, though, Rosa has her own unique moveset.  Her basic pistol kit combos are very different from Bayonetta's (or Jeanne's by extension) basic pistol kit combos.  She has a lot of different button press patterns (for one, Rosa is the first playable character I've encountered that has any combo strings that start with kicks and end with punches) and the cadence to her combos is very different with a lot of pauses in spots very different from where Bayonetta's pauses generally come in.

 

To that end, I've decided that for the time being, I'm going to back the difficulty down and run through the story with Rosa all the way through.  This will achieve a couple of things.  First, I'll get a lot of much needed practice with the character getting familiar and comfortable with her moveset and cadence.  I could, theoretically do that on Infinite Climax difficulty also, but on that difficulty, given my relative unfamiliarity with the character, the amount of damage enemies do, and the fragile nature of Rosa, I'll be getting killed quickly and often, not giving me much time to practice.  Second, there are still a few things I've missed along the way in my two playthroughs of the story so far.  There are a couple verses I've missed (very few) and there is one particularly nasty Muspelheim verse that I have failed to complete during both playthroughs (not for lack of trying) that I think is tailor made for Rosa.  The Muspelheim verse in question is a timed battle where you have a very short amount of time to kill all enemies and you gain (a very small amount of) time when you kill enemies.  I've attempted that verse probably a combined 20 or 25 times between my 2 previous playthroughs and I just could not kill the enemies quick enough.  Given Rosa's increased damage output, she seems like the perfect character with which to overcome this hurdle.  There's also the matter of completing every story chapter with a gold or higher rating and, if I'm good enough, the matter of completing every story chapter with a platinum or higher rating and the unlocks that doing said feats grants.  Lastly, it will be cool watching Rosa in the cutscenes, particularly the late game ones where there will be 2 Rosas in the cutscenes.

[LadyCrimson]

Last thing I tried was Borderlands Prequel. This was mostly because the BL series is still the only thing hubby likes/plays so we were hoping for more LAN fun.

 

Sadly, while it does feel like Borderlands, we were disappointed with it. It's not terrible, mind you, but the area design is dull compared to 1st two games, the gravity-slam and low gravity features didn't excite us and the campaign was pretty short even for us slowpokes. We went through Normal difficulty and I haven't touched it since. Claptrap as a playable chr. was sorta amusing, tho. Oh and the Cyro/freezing weapons were fun to use.

 

The most irritating is how so many of the quest bosses aren't re-farmable. Such is fine in a story-rpg game, but a loot-hunt/grinding game? Not so much. At any rate, technically it does qualify as a stand-alone, full-price game, but it plays more like a $30 expansion.

[Malcador]

Was afraid it would not be worth the money and is a glorified expansion. Deep Steam sale for that one. War of Mine sounds interesting, will nab that later on

[Nwinda]

Currently getting back into D3 (finishing off my seasonal for the sake of the transmog... OCD Ho!)...  besides that, playing some games out of my backlog on steam.  Seriously, I really need to just make a list of the games I DON'T care about finishing on there at this point.   And, I agree.  Just read up on This War of Mine, and it definitely sounds like a game I'd be interested in.  Oh, the curse of having a lot of varied interests.

[mkreku]

Last thing I tried was Borderlands Prequel. This was mostly because the BL series is still the only thing hubby likes/plays so we were hoping for more LAN fun.

 

Sadly, while it does feel like Borderlands, we were disappointed with it. It's not terrible, mind you, but the area design is dull compared to 1st two games, the gravity-slam and low gravity features didn't excite us and the campaign was pretty short even for us slowpokes. We went through Normal difficulty and I haven't touched it since. Claptrap as a playable chr. was sorta amusing, tho. Oh and the Cyro/freezing weapons were fun to use.

 

The most irritating is how so many of the quest bosses aren't re-farmable. Such is fine in a story-rpg game, but a loot-hunt/grinding game? Not so much. At any rate, technically it does qualify as a stand-alone, full-price game, but it plays more like a $30 expansion.

 

Thanks. Been wondering why noone has commented on this game. I didn't buy it because.. well, it just looked dull from all the trailers and such.

 

I think I'll wait for a sale and Borderlands 3 instead.

[GhostofAnakin]

I don't know if I'm finally getting the hang of it and got in the zone, or whether I was just playing against crappy opponents, but I was able to get on a bit of a roll tonight in CoD.  Joined a match late, but still lead the lobby with a 22-6 K/D and helped my team come from behind to win, then went on to finish top-3 in the next 5 games, averaging around 13-7 each game.  One thing is I've got a pretty good idea of each map now, and have an understanding of where the opponents usually like to go and where the best spots are to pick them off.

 

I'll tell you one thing.  This game certainly doesn't allow for much domination, even by the best players in the lobby.  My 22-6 was the best run I saw today in every single lobby I was in (leader usually goes 17 or 18 kills, 8 or 9 deaths), and the second best run I've seen my entire time playing (someone went 31-11 a couple of days back).  I don't know if it's size of the maps, the million different paths through the map, or what.  But it's very, very difficult to get a long kill streak even for the best players.

[Bokishi]

^ I take it you removed the silencer

[Drowsy Emperor]

Saints Row IV. Its my first encounter with the SR series. Its okay, like old GTA used to be but with even worse driving physics. Dated graphics and presentation, a lot of juvenile humor. 7/10 so far

[Lexx]

Quick people, I am 85% done with my "PC to TV" setup and now I must make a decision:

 

Either I am buying a bluetooth dongle and use my PS3 controller with it (which - as far as I've read - might make some troubles, as the PS3 then might get confused with the signals)...

 

... or I am buying a new controller only for playing on my PC / TV system. I probably prefer this solution, but then the next question comes: What kind of controller should I buy? It has to be wireless in any case. Some custom thingy? A simple XBox or XBone controller? (Never used an XBox controller, so I dunno if it's better or worse than the PS3 version)...

Edited November 17, 2014 by Lexx

[HoonDing]

Driving in SRIV? I don't recall that ever being necessary.

[Tale]

It's necessary for the virus collection missions and before you get super speed. You don't get that until a couple missions in.

[Bendu]

Quick people, I am 85% done with my "PC to TV" setup and now I must make a decision:

 

Either I am buying a bluetooth dongle and use my PS3 controller with it (which - as far as I've read - might make some troubles, as the PS3 then might get confused with the signals)...

 

... or I am buying a new controller only for playing on my PC / TV system. I probably prefer this solution, but then the next question comes: What kind of controller should I buy? It has to be wireless in any case. Some custom thingy? A simple XBox or XBone controller? (Never used an XBox controller, so I dunno if it's better or worse than the PS3 version)...

Never had a problem with my Xbox controller and as far as I know there is no wireless XBone controller, yet.