What are you playing right now

[redneckdevil]

Playing final fantasy 15 and keeping an open mind about the story so far, it's pretty cool so far. Not the greatest, badass set of wheels and can hardly drive the damn thing nor know how to turn up the radio, Ive just been letting my Sanji drive us around. Nice big open world, and hot damn my mechanic is hot af. I really appreciate the waifu lol.

[Katphood]

Playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and loving it. 10 hours in and it is probably one of the best Zelda games right alongside Majora's Mask.

[melkathi]

Waiting for my NES Classic Mini Thingie to arrive.

[Malcador]

Did a mission with 3 friends in Division. Was pretty fun in how chaotic it was with keeping snipers suppressed while fighting off charging flamers.

[Tale]

Finished my replay of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty over the holiday weekend. I forgot how good the dialogue was.

 

And went through a good deal of Heart of the Swarm on my sick day yesterday. This is my second time playing it and I recall thinking the love story was forced last time. I don't remember them being quite that close in Starcraft.

[Fenixp]

I forgot how good the dialogue was.

First I hear that Baldur's Gate was tactical and now that Wings of Liberty had good dialogue. Does Western world consider Czech Republic inferior and we therefore get inferior versions of games or something? What is happening?

[Tale]

Maybe those things mean something different to you than to other people. I like the dialogue because every character has a unique voice that would come through even without the voice acting. The lines show character, even if the characters aren't the best.

[melkathi]

Wings of Liberty was quite well written. Definitely better than any other Blizzard game (though that is not in itself an achievement). The love story was a bit too central perhaps, but the dialogue flowed well, the story made sense, and most importantly was devoid of the excessive need for  ridiculous "epic" that is so prevalent (especially in blizzard games). heart of the Swarm in comparison was drivel.

[Blarghagh]

Wings of Liberty is definitely the better part of the SC2 trilogy. The love story is often cited as a bad thing but until Heart of the Swarm I thought it was the one-sided obsession of a lonely, has-been drunkard. Only a couple of things that bother me about it and one of them's not it's fault but comes from plotholes introduced by later parts.

 

- One is the part where the Overmind is a corrupted good guy, because good lord Blizzard, can you write nothing else?

- Then there's the twist about Tychus working for Mengsk the entire time and being able to see everything we do - meaning he saw our every move to destabilize him, from stealing the Odin to using it to broadcast our propoganda messages, and did nothing about it just on the off chance we could get close to Kerrigan some day.

- And finally there's the plot twist from Heart of the Swarm revealing the Tal'Darim work for Dr. Narud, making the missions where you fight the Tal'Darim to collect alien artifact pieces for Dr. Narud a giant headscratcher.

 

Heart of the Swarm had potential but too many of the talking Zerg were cartoonish (honestly the only one I liked was Abathur), it introduced a lot of plot holes and unneccesarily retconned established lore, and Kerrigan reinfesting herself made some of our biggest achievements from Wings of Liberty feel kind of pointless. And again Mengsk had a secret weapon that he could have used to solve everything from the get-go but saved until the very end like an idiot. What happened to Mengsk the master manipulator from the original? It wasn't just bad, but it made the other parts worse.

 

Legacy of the Void was decent enough as long as you stick to the Protoss campaign and completely ignore the final three "bonus" missions in which good space whale cthulhu turns Kerrigan into a space angel to kill bad space whale cthulhu. A lot of insanity in those last bits.

[majestic]

 

I forgot how good the dialogue was.

First I hear that Baldur's Gate was tactical and now that Wings of Liberty had good dialogue. Does Western world consider Czech Republic inferior and we therefore get inferior versions of games or something? What is happening?

 

 

No, there's just a difference between good dialogue and a good story - or good characters for that matter. In terms of storytelling Wings of Liberty was a disaster written by someone with the attention span of a mayfly: A convoluted patchwork of storylines barely two missions long stichted together with no regard for consistency, established lore or sense and a retroactively patched in lovestory that turned the badass marshall Jim Raynor into the hard drinking wild west emo pining after his lost love we got in Star Craft II (fun fact, the last time Raynor saw Kerrigan in Star Craft: Brood War he promised to kill her, not being beaten up about it at all).

 

It also doesn't help that every, and really every decision you can make in Wings of Liberty is right. Some nice settler genocide? Yeah, sure, they all were infected anyway (and what the hell, Raynor fought that very thing in the first Star Craft, how would he every agree to the Protoss here, ah hell, never mind). Attacking your old protoss buddies? Sure, Dr. Feelgood came up with the cure in time. Buying Nova's Dominion propaganda? Yeah, Tosh really is a bastard, and so on and so forth.

 

The presentation of the Wings of Liberty campaign and the dialogue itself were pretty good - and much better than what we got in Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. Legacy in particular was terrible, not only did we get fanfiction level storytelling but also ridiculous dialogue and terrible characters.

[Blarghagh]

Actually, Dr. Feelgood never came up with the cure. They never state that. They just say she'll keep working on it. That's what makes that decision so mind-boggling to me - I promptly reloaded and sided with Selendis instead. Plus, that makes for a better character arc anyway - another woman in Jim's life becomes a monster and he has to put her down just like he vowed to put down Kerrigan. It solidifies his "there has to be a better way" theme that makes him determined to find a way to bring Kerrigan back.

 

But yeah, betraying Tosh being a good thing all of the sudden? That choice made no sense.

 

EDIT: Anyway, talking about Dungeon Keeper earlier in this thread gave me a nostalgia itch and I couldn't get my old discs working anymore, so I bought both games on GOG. Lovely being the bad guy. Surprised that there's a lot less depth in the first game than I remembered, but it's got the most style and atmosphere of the two by far.

Edited December 28, 2016 by TrueNeutral

[Fenixp]

good space whale cthulhu turns Kerrigan into a space angel to kill bad space whale cthulhu.

I gave up on Wings of Liberty after like first 5 missions, dialogues I perceived as rather terrible among the reasons of why. But I might give it another shot based on space whale cthulhus.

[Blarghagh]

Perhaps you can find some enjoyment of the "so bad it's good" level in it, but as someone who was a bit of a StarCraft lore nut before SC2 was even announced, I hated it. StarCraft always had a bit of Space Opera tinge to it but Heart of the Swarm onwards took out the comparative grit and realism that set it apart from the WarCraft franchise.

[majestic]

Perhaps you can find some enjoyment of the "so bad it's good" level in it, but as someone who was a bit of a StarCraft lore nut before SC2 was even announced, I hated it. StarCraft always had a bit of Space Opera tinge to it but Heart of the Swarm onwards took out the comparative grit and realism that set it apart from the WarCraft franchise.

 

I probably read the old Star Craft manual more often than I actually played the game. Wings of Liberty was really bad with messing up the story but Heart of the Swarm went wild with the reconning, what with a new home world for the Zerg, "primordial" Zerg versions of the units we have now (who were in the old manual lovingly described with their freaking place of origin and what they were before the Overmind assimilated them) and ehm... lots of other stuff I already repressed.

[Mamoulian War]

In between doing quests in Star Ocean 5, I have finally managed to beat the hardest challenge in Gran Turismo 5. After aprox. 10 hours of retries, I was able to beat the required time od 2.10.000 by 0.120 seconds and with it, I have unlocked the Golden Standard trophy for achieving gold medal for all races, licenses and special events in the game.

 

Yesterday I have spent about 3 hours driving and achieved the best time of 2.10.137. I also managed two faster runs, but both times, I have ****ed up the last chicane on the track.

 

Today, I have managed to beat the dream time after 20 minutes of driving. 2.09.880 is not the best among the Gran Turismo players by a long shot, but for me, the Golden Standard trophy tied to this challenge, was the hardest "exam" in any game, I have ever played and managed to acquire :-D

 

When looking back, Gran Turismo 6 Platinum compared to this trophy was just a walk in the park full of kittens and puppies...

 

All that I need for GT5 Platinum is to get the A-Spec level to 40. Currently at 48 and half so few hours of driving in Endurance event should do the trick and my hardest Platinum will find it's new rightful home :-D

[Blarghagh]

 

Perhaps you can find some enjoyment of the "so bad it's good" level in it, but as someone who was a bit of a StarCraft lore nut before SC2 was even announced, I hated it. StarCraft always had a bit of Space Opera tinge to it but Heart of the Swarm onwards took out the comparative grit and realism that set it apart from the WarCraft franchise.

 

I probably read the old Star Craft manual more often than I actually played the game. Wings of Liberty was really bad with messing up the story but Heart of the Swarm went wild with the reconning, what with a new home world for the Zerg, "primordial" Zerg versions of the units we have now (who were in the old manual lovingly described with their freaking place of origin and what they were before the Overmind assimilated them) and ehm... lots of other stuff I already repressed.

 

 

Yeah, I was mightily annoyed with how they made the Overmind secretely a good guy, but you know, I guess some kind of Xel'Naga conflict is okay to justify a little bit of that and all we heard was how Zeratul and "Tassadar's Ghost" interpreted everything. But when we went to Zerus and it was something entirely different than what had been explained and the "primal" Zerg that our Zerg were created from had nothing to do with the parasitic worms the Zerg originally were according to established lore?

 

But then again, the WarCraft II manual clearly states the orcs were always bloodthirsty and lo and behold our current proud warrior race who was just corrupted. Maybe it's my fault for expected too much from Blizzard.

[melkathi]

Said it before, will say it again (as you can't stop me )

I felt that Wings of Liberty was the only one written with an actual eye on the Galaxy and leaving the possibility of future content. There was no "The scourge killed ALL elves. But we need elves now so when we said ALL and you thought how epic the scourge was, we didn't mean all as in every last one of them. This group survived. And when we meant this group survived because they fled their homeland, we didn't mean that the ones in the homeland died. Because actually, now that we need elves to be part of the game, kinda... they all lived so be a blood elf in the MMO" that Blizzard likes to do. And which Heart of the Swarm was closer to with Kerrigan's hand waving "Brood Mother XYZ, take your brood and wipe out that planet because I am grimdark evul lolz".

The doctor and her zergcure I always felt was put in for two reasons. One to create the situation TrueNeutral described. Two, so that if they ever decide they will return to SC in an MMO format or if Heart of the Swarm needed talking infected npcs, the colony could be used to provide those, as the cure would not have worked, but left them free of overmind control.

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, a lot of loose ends were clearly just openings for new games. Such as Heart of the Swarm's little alien infection missions on a Protoss colony ship. Kerrigan's last order just happens to be "destroy the Protoss" before she decides to forget her new little swarm exists. Somewhere out there a highly evolved but forgotten Zerg queen is still working towards that order so in another game we've got an excuse for some more Protoss on Zerg action.

 

(And I feel the Forsaken are a much more obvious example of that than the Blood Elves. )

Edited December 28, 2016 by TrueNeutral

[Keyrock]

I started playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.  I'm fairly early in the game and my impressions are kind of lukewarm so far.  The story really isn't grabbing me.  I haven't met a truly compelling character yet, hence I've failed to form much in the way of bonds.  Duncan MacReady is the closest thing to a character I care about.  I'm guessing he's the guy I'm supposed to hate at the beginning then learn to begrudgingly respect and maybe even like eventually, at least that's the impression I got.  I must be ahead of the curve because I liked the guy right from the start, despite him being a racist (augist?) and kind of a ****.  I know people have fawned over how amazing a hub area Prague is, but I'm not seeing it so far, keep in mind I haven't seen that much of it yet.  To me it looks like a random Half-Life 2 city.  There are houses and doors and windows, most of which are just for decoration, but a few I can open and go inside.  There are some people out in the streets getting harassed by combines police.  Beyond the giant rock suspended by chains, I've yet to see anything interesting in Prague.  Maybe I just haven't been to the cool part of the city yet.

 

Anyway, the gameplay is good enough that it keeps me playing for now, so hopefully the story picks up soon, before I give up on it.  For starters, a good villain would help.  The Illuminati pulling strings from the background isn't doing it for me.

 

Edit: Also, the whole #AugLivesMatter stuff has fallen flat for me, mostly because it doesn't seem to affect my character at all.  Jensen is about as aug'd up as a guy can possibly get, no amount of badass trenchcoat can conceal that, yet no one has given me any **** aside from one crooked cop who tried to extort me.  I can go wherever I want and no one bothers me ever, which makes it hard for me to go along with the oh noes the augs have it so bad aspect of the game.

Edited December 28, 2016 by Keyrock

[Vaeliorin]

So I've been playing more XCOM2 with A Better Advent 2, and wow does the difficulty ramp up.  Pods are all at least 6 enemies now, and their are enough of them on the maps that it's really difficult to keep a second pod from becoming involved in any fight.  Also, a pod of 5 berserkers and a firestarter prime (a souped-up berserker that breathes fire) is freaking hard to kill in a single turn, even with 8 soldiers with plasma weapons (it might be easier if I was using the Long War Perk Pack classes instead of the Shadows Ops Long War classes or had some psionics trained.)

 

It also seems like there are 2 pods parked around the objectives now too, and I don't know if the civilian AI has been changed, but I just had one move to spot my scout, then go through a door to the objective, activating the pods there.  5 Muton Captains, an Andromedon, and 6 elite Advent troops is a lot of enemies to have to deal with. 

 

It's glorious!

 

(I should mention, this is on Veteran difficulty...I imagine it's much worse on Commander and Legendary.)

Edited December 29, 2016 by Vaeliorin

[Tale]

Finished Heart of the Swarm. The campaign was good fun (Ha!), but the story wasn't anything special. Literally spending the entire campaign building up power so they can do one mission sequence in service of plot. That seems less than stellar.

 

Should have just built up power while moving the plot forward. Time to search for Jim at this dominion base! While we're here, let's assimilate some of the native forms into the swarm! But no.

[Lexx]

I started playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.  I'm fairly early in the game and my impressions are kind of lukewarm so far.  The story really isn't grabbing me.  I haven't met a truly compelling character yet, hence I've failed to form much in the way of bonds.  Duncan MacReady is the closest thing to a character I care about.  I'm guessing he's the guy I'm supposed to hate at the beginning then learn to begrudgingly respect and maybe even like eventually, at least that's the impression I got.  I must be ahead of the curve because I liked the guy right from the start, despite him being a racist (augist?) and kind of a ****.  I know people have fawned over how amazing a hub area Prague is, but I'm not seeing it so far, keep in mind I haven't seen that much of it yet.  To me it looks like a random Half-Life 2 city.  There are houses and doors and windows, most of which are just for decoration, but a few I can open and go inside.  There are some people out in the streets getting harassed by combines police.  Beyond the giant rock suspended by chains, I've yet to see anything interesting in Prague.  Maybe I just haven't been to the cool part of the city yet.

 

This is exactly how I felt with it. I started to like the Prague setting once it switched to the night scene. Suddenly it didn't looked like Half-Life 2 anymore and more like a variant of Hong Kong or Hengsha.

[Darkpriest]

I've found Legacy of the Void good, but do not play Epilogue... it's terrible... easily the worst part of the game and it would be much better off if it never existed.

[melkathi]

 do not play Epilogue... it's terrible... easily the worst part of the game and it would be much better off if it never existed.

 

Thanks for the warning

[redneckdevil]

I'm enjoying FF 15, it's different and hitting those nostalgia notes pretty good.

So far my only complaint is those damn imperials spawning so ****ing much!! I'm figuring since this is FF first attempt at open world single player that maybe it's glitches or whatever, OR a reason to play with friends when the multiplayer comes out. Really hoping it's multiplayer is story and not something like the abomination of ME/DA multiplayer.