What are you playing right now?

[Lexx]

Finished a replay of Dishonored 2 - Death of the Outsider. Was a lot faster this time, but still a good game. In the last two missions I just killed everyone. Should have done this way more often.

 

 

Thinking about trying out Hunt: Showdown, but eh... I bet it's one of them games I will only play a couple hours and then never touch again.

[mkreku]

I'm on a game completion spree so I thought I'd finish up Assassin's Creed: Origins. Turns out that's easier said than done.. I'm enjoying myself but damn is it longer than I thought. I've already spent 72 hours on it with no end in sight.

 

Damn good game though. One of the prettiest games I've ever played too.

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm on a game completion spree so I thought I'd finish up Assassin's Creed: Origins. Turns out that's easier said than done.. I'm enjoying myself but damn is it longer than I thought. I've already spent 72 hours on it with no end in sight.

 

Damn good game though. One of the prettiest games I've ever played too.

 

The main story ended up being longer than I thought.

 

The sidequests aren't as engaging, I find, as previous AC sidequests.

[Lexx]

Played some The Division again, just to see what has changed... It became really big. Lots of stuff added. Pretty hard to get back into it with my old character. Still plays pretty smooth though and does have its fun moments. In singleplayer it gets quite boring quickly, though.

[Malcador]

Playing Caesar 3 again, most pleased as I am breezing through levels that gave me difficulty.   I guess I've become smarter in the past 20 years, despite all testing indicating otherwise, as my problems now are unemployment where previously I always had shortfalls in workers.  Still like this best out of all of the Caesars, though I miss the option in 4 to find where the cart for a warehouse/workshop is.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I finished Pillars of Eternity. On the whole, the game was enjoyable. 

 

It has two critical errors that become very prominent later on:

 

1. Overleveling. My last 5-10 hours with the game were ruined because I had a maxed out party and nothing, even upscaled and on Hard difficulty, had any chance whatsoever. I eventually grew frustrated and just skipped White Marches 2 and the Temple of Hylea, bee-lining straight for the end boss. I know that WM2 is where some of the harder encounters are but I simply lost interest. From party level 14 and onward,  any challenge in the game collapsed.  The economy was broken, I had 160,000 gold, could buy up anything even though I needed nothing. XP and Loot supply need to be controlled better!! 

 

2. Verbosity. There are different ways to introduce a player to the game world. I always felt that casual, easygoing revelations were best. For example, Baldur's Gate never stops being a relatively simple to follow and easy to relate to fantasy tale. The PC communicates with the world in terms that don't require any knowledge of the Forgotten Realms whatsoever, and when they do, it's slim and quickly explained. 

Pillars of Eternity takes a tome of it's own lore and repeatedly slams it over the player's head. Through never ending dialogue trees it will pulverize Dyrwood, the Saint's War, Eothas, the gods, the soul, Waiwaden's legacy, animancy, Thaos, the political arrangements of various groups, Engwithians, and a host of other things into the player whether he wants to participate or not. 

We forgave this sin to Torment, because it was extraordinarily good in many ways. PoE is what it looks like when it's less good. After a while the endless verbosity becomes intolerably overbearing. 

Good epic fantasy stories (usually) aren't about made up lore, they're about basic human emotions, situations, tragedies, comedies and what have you. Shadow of the Collossus's story could fit onto 2 pages of text and it couldn't care less that you would have to assume or fill in the gaps for yourself. The Mouse Guard comics turn mice, weasels and foxes into tales more grand than many of the fat books fantasy authors write. 

 

This method, 's not good. That's like, my opinion, man.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Hurlshort]

Completely agree on the 2nd point. I love my lore and fleshed out worlds, but there is a point where I just get exhausted by the idea of going to a new area and listening to a bunch of NPC's prattle on about every little detail in their lives. I don't actually forgive it in Torment, it is why I never finished the game.

[Drowsy Emperor]

PoE also does itself a disservice by demystifying its own world too much. By the time the game is done the PC has all but resolved several world spanning mysteries - the Engwithians, the gods (no less, eh), the Legacy etc. It's as if the world was just waiting for the PC to turn over every rock and break down every metaphysical question that runs it.

 

Sometimes ancient civilizations should remain just that. If Conan stopped to explain the background of every den he ever raided we'd have called him Conan the Historian.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Katphood]

Continuing my Yakuza 0 playthrough while playing some Tearaway and Halo on the side. Halo runs at a very smooth 60 fps on the Xbox One X but damn, it was pretty much unplayable before the 19 GB patch. It just kept crashing until the patch was downloaded and installed.

 

PoE also does itself a disservice by demystifying its own world too much. By the time the game is done the PC has all but resolved several world spanning mysteries - the Engwithians, the gods (no less, eh), the Legacy etc. It's as if the world was just waiting for the PC to turn over every rock and break down every metaphysical question that runs it.

 

Sometimes ancient civilizations should remain just that. If Conan stopped to explain the background of every den he ever raided we'd have called him Conan the Historian.

These words are gold to me ears lad.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Katphood

[Majek]

Finally pulled my switch out of the box and i'm playing the only game i have for it , for now, Mario+Rabbids and it's as fun as i had hoped it would be. Should last for a while until i figure out if i want Zelda or Odyssey first, or even Bayonetta. Hopefully i'll decide before Tropical Freeze for switch arrives and changes my mind. :S

 

 

Also played some Far Cry 5 , seems ok though i don't think i'll play it all that much.Can't really explain why.

 

Still MHW as well, just not any more than i used too, even when i have more time. :S But it's a SP game so i'm not missing all that much by taking it very slow. Other than special events of course, but as long as those aren't DMC or something else i really want to have i'm not all that upset.

[GhostofAnakin]

Finally finished the main story in Assassin's Creed Origins.  It was decent enough as you got further in, but the Aya bits annoyed me to no end.  I hate games that allow you to build up your character, both in terms of skills and equipment/weapons/abilities, to only then force you to control another character who has none of those.

 

"Here, lets have you spend 100 hours building up your character and acquiring the best gear ever, only to now force you to fight with a stick against one of the main bad guys!"

 

Idiotic.

 

Also, the blocking with a shield simply does not work.  I have a legendary shield equipped, and even low level cannon fodder enemies swing past the block and do damage.  If you're going to add a blocking mechanism to combat, make sure it works.

[Drowsy Emperor]

I started Tyranny but I suspect I won't see it through to the end.

[Katphood]

Will be buying a new OLED TV, just not 100% sure which brand and whether it will be 4K or not but it's ok, I take OLED over 4K any day. Sad thing is that I play most games on the PS4 and I still haven't upgraded to the pro. The Xbox One X on the other has the capability to show off 4K in case the TV I buy will be UHD as well as OLED.

[SadExchange]

Playing through Titan Quest on the PS4. Playing a Warden I believe, being a cross Defense/Hunting. Done either Greece and Egypt and enjoying it so far.

 

Also started a new character on Grim Dawn but this time mostly playing on a tv through steamlink and the controller option so far is pretty well done.

 

Playing these two games at the same time has been pretty eye opening as far as seeing where The genre has progressed and I feel that THQNordic has done a decent job porting the game onto a controller considering its 12 years old now. I do look forward to it on the switch though as the play anywhere side of an Arpg is really enticing. I know this sounds a little crazy but if Crate do end up releasing Grim Dawn on the Xbox, due to it being an easier port from the pc and them being a small team, I could see myself picking up an Xbox. Unless there’s any talk of a PS4 port but there’s been no word and even the devs at Grinding Gear Games hasn’t even mentioned porting to the PS4

 

I will saying playing both of these games on a controller has made it hard to play GD on a pc with a M/K now with all the clicking. Anyone else felt this way?

[wolfrider100]

Man I finally finished Pillars Of Eternity and after that, The Witcher 3's : Blood and Wine expansion. I just started

 

Far Cry 5 and also Assassin's Creed Origins (I was just waiting for both expansions to release before I started this).

Edited April 3, 2018 by wolfrider100

[Mamoulian War]

Will be buying a new OLED TV, just not 100% sure which brand and whether it will be 4K or not but it's ok, I take OLED over 4K any day. Sad thing is that I play most games on the PS4 and I still haven't upgraded to the pro. The Xbox One X on the other has the capability to show off 4K in case the TV I buy will be UHD as well as OLED.

Just check the reviews properly. I do not know how much they improved, but some point ago, OLED had big issues with longevity of proper display of blue color.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Can someone opine on Tyranny? Is it worth the hassle if I hope for a good story, characters or simply something unique out of my RPG experience. Bear in mind I played most of the genre's offerings since 1998.

[melkathi]

I played it through the end once. It was OK. I had some fun with it. I did not regret getting it. I will not play it again.

 

Ever since Torment brought in the strange, unique npcs, all rpgs try to do that. It is getting tedious. At least the first npc you get in Tyranny is refreshingly human and boring

[Katphood]

 

Will be buying a new OLED TV, just not 100% sure which brand and whether it will be 4K or not but it's ok, I take OLED over 4K any day. Sad thing is that I play most games on the PS4 and I still haven't upgraded to the pro. The Xbox One X on the other has the capability to show off 4K in case the TV I buy will be UHD as well as OLED.

Just check the reviews properly. I do not know how much they improved, but some point ago, OLED had big issues with longevity of proper display of blue color.

 

Thanks for the heads up, bro. I'll be sure to check out some reviews.

[melkathi]

Decided to finish Spellforce 3. The decision I was stuck at turned out to be a non-issue story wise, leading to the same result with the same npcs doing the same stuff. Choices that don't matter

 

I like how the prequel thing is not in your face. For someone who enjoyed the previous games and remembers the story, the game has a completely different dimension to it though than I guess someone new to the series would experience.

[Keyrock]

Can someone opine on Tyranny? Is it worth the hassle if I hope for a good story, characters or simply something unique out of my RPG experience. Bear in mind I played most of the genre's offerings since 1998.

I liked it and thought it was much better than Pillars. The combat is just as mediocre as in Pillars, but there is much less of it. There is a lot more choice and consequence and I found the setting and story far more interesting than Pillars' bog standard offering. It's also a much shorter game.

[ShadySands]

I really liked Tyranny and since it's pretty short I've played it to all but 2 endings, the new one they added with DLC and the Scarlet Chorus, I can never side with the Chorus

[LadyCrimson]

There's this feature on another forum where if you highlight a certain part of a posts text then hit Quote, it only quotes that part of the post. I like that feature.

 

I will saying playing both of these games on a controller has made it hard to play GD on a pc with a M/K now with all the clicking. Anyone else felt this way?

 

As a general statement since I started playing a bit on consoles, the only thing I miss re: KB/mouse is aiming precision if it's an action game. That and inventory menus that were designed for KB/mouse vs. controller, but it feels like most games are designed with consoles eventually in mind these days so even in PC games those aren't always what I prefer anyway, anymore.

 

PC game controls are becoming so convoluted that I often dislike it - 10 commands of Alt+F6 and Cntrl+9+a round of hokey pokey just to do what seem like simple things. I always liked the ability to reconfigure KB/mouse controls to almost whatever you wanted, to better fit your hand preferences but it's becoming rather ridiculous in the few games I've seen/tried lately - I prefer most things to be doable with single key presses or just the mouse even. I see 4 pages of KB/mouse "commands" in a game and my eyes glaze over.

Edited April 3, 2018 by LadyCrimson

[Humanoid]

Will be buying a new OLED TV, just not 100% sure which brand and whether it will be 4K or not but it's ok, I take OLED over 4K any day. Sad thing is that I play most games on the PS4 and I still haven't upgraded to the pro. The Xbox One X on the other has the capability to show off 4K in case the TV I buy will be UHD as well as OLED.

 

Can you even buy 1080p OLEDs anymore? Haven't seen them for a couple years now.

 

All consumer OLED TVs use LG panels so the difference is in the electronics doing the image processing. In the end though, the image ends up fairly similar between all three of LG, Panasonic and Sony. Image retention is a physical phenomenon and as such will behave more or less identically between all three as a result, but this is not a typical concern as you pretty much have to intentionally abuse the TV for it to become a problem (i.e. running 100% brightness at all times, when a properly calibrated display should be about half that).

 

Between the three, the Sony is more expensive because, y'know, Sony. So I've been weighing up the entry level Panasonic vs LG recently, and I note a few common traits:

 

- The Panasonic is better calibrated out of the box, so if you don't plan to do calibration on your own, the Panasonic has the more accurate image.

- LG supports Dolby Vision, Panasonic does not. The usefulness of this depends on what media you watch, of course.

- Panasonic's Smart TV functionality is based on the discontinued Firefox OS and is fairly outdated compared to the functionality other brands offer.

- Panasonic historically has better customer support in the event of any faults.

- EDIT: Panasonic had a minor stutter issue, this has been corrected with a firmware fix as of February this year.

 

Bear in mind too that new models typically release mid-year - indeed the new models have been announced - so there may be good opportunities to grab a good discount soon on last year's models.

 

 

EDIT: To clarify, the models being discussed here are the Panasonic EZ950 and the LG B7 or C7 which are the current entry level models available to purchase, at least where I am.

Edited April 4, 2018 by Humanoid

[SonicMage117]

For some reason, I woke up today and really felt like installing and playing both Bayonetta and Vanquish again. This is a rare feeling for me as usually once I finish a game I just move on.