What game are you playing?

[MC_Sea]

Trying this out.

I recently found this game too. The artstyle is very satisfying to look at and the gameplay seems right up my alley. I'm honestly surprised there haven't been more games that are a hybrid of on-rails shooting and run-n-gun. It seems like a combination filled with tons of potential especially give how many game mechanics from each genre compliment each other.

[Roderick]

Trying this out.

I recently found this game too. The artstyle is very satisfying to look at and the gameplay seems right up my alley. I'm honestly surprised there haven't been more games that are a hybrid of on-rails shooting and run-n-gun. It seems like a combination filled with tons of potential especially give how many game mechanics from each genre compliment each other.

I like it a lot. Ill be checking the previous game from them heard it's also good.

[Roderick]

NeonInferno.png

[Tinky Winky]

Finished Tunguska: The Visitation, honestly can't recommend it, the combat is way too janky and unfun due to how the camera angle obstructs your view and how it's difficult to tell if you have aim on your targets, making the camera the bigger enemy than the hostiles themselves.
Changing the aiming mode to auto aim (basically the easy mode) and obtaining laser pointer do make at least the game playable, and it's short enough (about ~15 hours for the main quests) so I still managed to finish my playthrough. The rest of the aspects are okay and I think it'd have been a decent game if it was 2D sprite based instead of 3D, I mean I've played free top down flash games that have better shooting gameplay than this.

[1998]

Finished Bioshock 2. Sure good game. But will wait a bit before starting Infinite. Probably not the games you want to play back-to-back

[Roderick]

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Does about what you expect from the genre. Protagonist a bit horrifying in certain closeups.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Kuro no Kiseki 2/Trails through Daybreak 2

I tried out the English dub, but it was quite lackluster to listen to. Switched back to Japanese voices.

The game has yet another boring Trails start where you wander around talking to lots and lots of NPCs, and there is lots and lots of talking dialogue scenes, and we haven't gotten to any gameplay or exciting story stuff yet. Conceptually, I like that they are adding new city districts, but these modern urban cities are simply boring.

Conceptually I like the idea of the protagonist getting heat, though in this case it's not for any of Van's actual choices. We'll see if it actually goes anywhere. Rean should have gotten a lot of heat for his choices. Disliked by Erebonians who oppose Osborne and his dogs, disliked by the people of the two countries he conquered, Calvardians would have loved to spy on him and try to assassinate their enemy's most prolific mech pilot, and should have gotten on the shitlist for Bracers/people in the martial arts community/friends of Cassius and Arios for being a ELOB student who "serves the wrong side". But he got nothing done to him.

"Send your white kid to be taught at the local mosque! It's just like Sunday School at Church!"






It is neat how they were able to reuse preexisting assets and doodads to create this neat little outdoor market area.









It is irksome how yet again, my character levels and inventory resets. Come on, this is what? The 12th Trails game? Other RPG series like The Banner Saga figured out to carry over everything as soon as the first sequel. How hasn't Falcom figured out how to do this by now?

That is a cool looking monster. I like the aesthetics of Falcom monsters. It's a shame that you never get to interact with them outside of being trash mobs, ie never see them being tamed by beastmasters or exhibited/sold in town as pets.




The game is better optimized than Kuro 1 was. I have had no stuttering during S-crafts this time.


(Prologue)

► Show Spoiler

Ah, if only Falcom had the guts to do this and make it stick.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Kuro no Kiseki 2/Trails Through Daybreak 2
Chapter 1






Messeldam looks a little more interesting than your average Kuro town, but still the presentation of Calvard with these iphones, cars, modern yachts, etc, doesn't make it feel like the charming world of the earlier Trails games, but like mundane real life.




Hrm conspicous lowcolized dialogue.





They've put gacha lootboxes in my Trails. I was hoping that the presence of them in Reverie was going to be a one-off.




Oooooh we have a talent tree, some actual character customization of abilities beyond stats and universal spells. Only took Falcom 12 games to attempt it! We'll see how meaningful this turns out to be. Suikoden 3 and 5 introduced a skill system that made it seem like you could customize your character's abilities, but after many hours of fiddling around and testing it turned out to be a waste of time.




I am not too keen on this new shard search feature so far. Now I am running around constantly scanning and looking for little morsels of gacha lootbox currency rather than being immersed in the world.




Another example of how Kuro feels divorced from the franchise. We never had homelessness before.

*sigh* it's another brothel.

[rusty_shackleford]

I did enjoy the whole dudebro macho thing, but back then it was a norm so I doubt it played a role in the game's success.

Hm, I remember its having a reputation for that even at the time; it went beyond the normal standard of video game manliness.

perhaps, idk. I remember how everyone complained about the overabundance of grey dudebro military shooters, so it could've actually played a negative role.

Proto gamergate

[Valter]

Lord forgive me, I'm back on my Dragon Quest 11 ********

[Finarfin]

Kuro no Kiseki 2/Trails Through Daybreak 2
Chapter 1






Messeldam looks a little more interesting than your average Kuro town, but still the presentation of Calvard with these iphones, cars, modern yachts, etc, doesn't make it feel like the charming world of the earlier Trails games, but like mundane real life.




Hrm conspicous lowcolized dialogue.





They've put gacha lootboxes in my Trails. I was hoping that the presence of them in Reverie was going to be a one-off.




Oooooh we have a talent tree, some actual character customization of abilities beyond stats and universal spells. Only took Falcom 12 games to attempt it! We'll see how meaningful this turns out to be. Suikoden 3 and 5 introduced a skill system that made it seem like you could customize your character's abilities, but after many hours of fiddling around and testing it turned out to be a waste of time.




I am not too keen on this new shard search feature so far. Now I am running around constantly scanning and looking for little morsels of gacha lootbox currency rather than being immersed in the world.




Another example of how Kuro feels divorced from the franchise. We never had homelessness before.

*sigh* it's another brothel.

Please stop playing the lolcowlized version and download the fantranslation.
Create a mods folder where the exe is and drop this in there.
Since I don't have the game, you need to see if it works like that. Someone said he needed to rename the file but no Idea into what.

Kuro no Kiseki 2 Fan Patch

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Kuro no Kiseki 2/Trails Through Daybreak 2
Chapter 1






Messeldam looks a little more interesting than your average Kuro town, but still the presentation of Calvard with these iphones, cars, modern yachts, etc, doesn't make it feel like the charming world of the earlier Trails games, but like mundane real life.




Hrm conspicous lowcolized dialogue.





They've put gacha lootboxes in my Trails. I was hoping that the presence of them in Reverie was going to be a one-off.




Oooooh we have a talent tree, some actual character customization of abilities beyond stats and universal spells. Only took Falcom 12 games to attempt it! We'll see how meaningful this turns out to be. Suikoden 3 and 5 introduced a skill system that made it seem like you could customize your character's abilities, but after many hours of fiddling around and testing it turned out to be a waste of time.




I am not too keen on this new shard search feature so far. Now I am running around constantly scanning and looking for little morsels of gacha lootbox currency rather than being immersed in the world.




Another example of how Kuro feels divorced from the franchise. We never had homelessness before.

*sigh* it's another brothel.

Please stop playing the lolcowlized version and download the fantranslation.
Create a mods folder where the exe is and drop this in there.
Since I don't have the game, you need to see if it works like that. Someone said he needed to rename the file but no Idea into what.

Kuro no Kiseki 2 Fan Patch

I played the first Kuro game with the fan translation patch as the Durante PC port was available before NISA patched in their English localization. With Kuro 2, there was no early release of Durante's PC port before the official localization, and I wasn't going to buy CLE's inferior PC port and get a subpar play experience when I already had stuttering with Durante's port for Kuro 1, so I waited. I don't want to install a CLE fan translation patch that might break this port.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Wait, anyone could just delete the main repo? The company wasn't backing their stuff up to hard drives in case of an accident? I struggle to imagine that any company could have nonexistent security.

[Tweed]

The Dig.

[KnightoftheWind]

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, natively on Linux, via "openmohaa". https://github.com/openmoh/openmohaa

The project is still in beta, but it seems the campaign and it's expansions are fully playable. Having not played this game in years, I'm surprised as to how much I'm enjoying it. Despite the AI being absolutely ********, blasting germoids just doesn't seem to get old. The sound effects are crunchy and impactful, and the movie-tier OST makes it feel like you're playing an interactive (((Spielberg))) production. Which makes sense, since he's credited with creating or producing the series in it's first few installments. The game runs like a dream, with crisp and clear visuals at 4K and a rock solid framerate. Far more pleasurable an experience compared to modern UE5 slop. It's not a deep experience, but I highly recommend this game if you're a fan of FPS titles, just to see where the Call of Duty series hailed from.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That is a cool bear. (Was this a random mob from the Basel road in Kuro 1?)

I am not keen on how the game lets you buy equipment from pedestals placed on roads and in dungeons. It undermines the pacing of the game. In town you are leisurely walking between shops and examining your character builds before heading out to action, which is when you should be exclusively focused on fights and exciting plot developments.


The 3D water is a neat touch.



Not fond of how I just had a long boss battle and finally triumphed over the enemy, only for them to still be standing in the ensuing cutscene.

Whew, that was a hard boss fight. Had to take a defensive posture, with Van constantly spamming Earth Guard, Quatre alternating between casting shields when Van wouldn't be able to refresh Earth Guard in time and AoE healing, Judith spamming AoE healing, and only Shion left to spam AoE arts and his freeze S-craft. Nearly wiped when it was just the one boss left but I managed to revive the other three characters. Only managed to have enough leeway to drop defenses and burst down the boss at the very end.

Once again, after a hard won victory, the bad guy is still standing in the ensuing cutscene and waltzes off.

Getting points for completing sidequests and then ranking up and getting an item doesn't make sense in Kuro. In the prior games, the player was a new member of a large organization that could have acquired these items and distributed them to members as rewards, but here Arkride is an independent who can't afford much more than to rent an apartment in old town and own a car, and he rewards himself with cheap candy.

[rusty_shackleford]

Wait, anyone could just delete the main repo? The company wasn't backing their stuff up to hard drives in case of an accident? I struggle to imagine that any company could have nonexistent security.

@WhiteShark

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Kuro no Kiseki 2/Trails Through Daybreak 2
Swin chapter 1

It is irksome how Kuro characters keep bringing up the bombing of Creil vilage and acting as if it was if they are the victims of unprecedented tragedy. Never saw this level of anger when Loewe riding on a dragon crushed a shopping mall in Bose and torched farms, or when Enforcers sprinted through Grancel slaughtering policemen left and right, or when Crossbell committed perfidy and wiped out Garellia and lorded their superweapons over the continent, or when the Northern Jaegers loosed killer robots in Haliask, or when Ouroboros and jaegers began bombarding Ordis with railway guns and massacred the Juno castle, or when Juno was wiped off the face of the earth by Babel. The small town of Rolent was blown up in the Hundred Days War and yet Liberl doesn't trot out a choir to sing for it. It is especially hypocritical that Calvard indiscriminately bombed villages during the conflict with Erebonia, but then one of their villages gets bombed and they are now sobbing.





The writers keep flipflopping between "we can't go to the Bracers or the Police! Their punishment would be to severe! We must settle this out of court!" and "Bracers and Police are too inept! We gotta take the law into our own hands and be vigilantes!".

It is disappointing that you don't get to fight with Eddy in gameplay.




The usual suspects are pushing their self-righteous narrative again.




It has been 7 years. How has this beautiful woman not gotten married yet?

I am a little peeved that this NPC can't just be a neat cameo for the player to realize on their own "oh, she is from way back when, nice", and the game instead has to give you a cutscene and tell the player to their face "SHE IS THAT MAID FROM A DOZEN GAMES AGO!".




For the tailing missions, there needs to be unpredictability to make them engaging, ie the target turning around to see if he is being followed, suddenly breaking out into a run, wagons or trucks moving and blocking the street, people dropping boxes, etc. Currently I am just using turbo mode to speed up the slow walk of the targets.

So far the game has been boring. I am spending a lot of time alt+tabbed out refreshing forums or going through my Youtube watchlist rather than being on the edge of my seat eagerly wanting to find out what happens next. The hard fights where I am one move away from defeat engaging, but they are few and far between.

[Tweed]

Finished The Nig Dig. All adventure games are short, but this seemed shorter than most, got stuck a few times and had to look at solutions. Worst were the gem crane, the bone puzzle, and the prism puzzle. The gem crane was mostly because if you don't enter a valid sequence it doesn't do anything at all so you'll never figure out its function. The bone puzzle is a lot of back and forth between the fossil and the skeleton, and near as I can figure the prism is pure luck. To be honest the game was lukewarm and the ending was every sci-fi ending ever since 2001: Space Odyssey, but with slightly more sense, and more happy. I remember how this thing got hyped to hell and back when it was new, but I'd have been ****** if I'd put money down on it back in the day.

I'm glad I had friends to pirate stuff like Descent from instead.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Why is there infidelity in my Trails?






I wished that higher production value RPGs would do what smaller visual novel studios do and have lots of bad/dead ends, to explore what would happen if you had failed or if by chance had done something different which led to catastrophe. So I am glad that there are bad ends in this game, and it does make these mindless monsters feel threatening having seen them rip apart the heroes. It was also a good opportunity to show an emotive side to the characters that we don't ordinarily see (since hardly anything bad is ever allowed to happen and stick for real in the main story), such as Elaine witnessing the kids be killed and fall into despair, and then after the time reset she is overcome with emotion seeing the kids alive and well. Or Zin's anguish seeing Elaine and the kids fall. Integrating all of these bad ends into the main story by using the time resets is an interesting way to avoid having the player unimmersively savescum to see every possible outcome.




I am glad we are finally getting a traditional looking location besides Oracion as opposed to yet more brutalist urban cities, though unfortunately this area is a pretty small block. This also has the first dojo we get to see in Calvard, though unfortunately there are no named masters of the style here like with the swordmasters across Erebonia, and we don't learn anything about the lore of the Gekka style or its techniques.

I wanted to build Van as a martial artist master, and dodging and counterattacking is a more satisfying fantasy than standing there and being hit, so I unequipped Van's Mare holo core and equipped Camio for the dodge+counterattack effects. It is odd having Mare unequipped in gameplay, but in cutscenes she is Van's canon companion. Imagine if Rean could swap out "Valimar" in gameplay but then buddy buddy with Valimar in the cutscenes. It'd probably make more sense if Mare couldn't be unequipped from Van at all but you could customize her effects.

[KnightoftheWind]

Beat the campaign for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. I have to say the enjoyment factor significantly decreases once you hit the infamous "sniper level". Imagine several snipers gunning you down at once, with pinpoint accuracy, while you can't even see them because of rain and debris. Good for a movie, maybe, but not a video game. After that it's pretty bad, but not as bad. Overall it's a decent game, but it definitely shows it's age. I booted up the first expansion pack, Spearhead, and so far it's an improvement. Just in the way it feels, at least.

[gastovski]

Throne and Liberty because i need it

[quetzalcoatl]

Back to Rimworld for me

Criticize my list of mods: https://pastebin.com/eBjzGbs1

- did not expect bbcode to flashbang me with my own post

[Oyster Sauce]

Back to Rimworld for me

Criticize my list of mods: https://pastebin.com/eBjzGbs1

- did not expect bbcode to flashbang me with my own post

Far too small

[Roguey]

Finished Wario Land 4. Far less demanding than Pizza Tower, though I see now where that guy was coming from, making a game for Expert WL4 players who wanted to go fast. An all right time.

[wndrbr]

I booted up the first expansion pack, Spearhead, and so far it's an improvement.

Seems like the devs have learned from their mistakes in the original campaign, and made the expansion more bombastic and full of exciting moments. Feels even more like a proto-Call of Duty than the OG MOHAA.

the second expansion was made by a different team, and it shows. It's boring and poorly balanced.

[Roderick]

SNK beta.JPG

Going to try this.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Finished Van chapter 2.



The food poisoning/roofie sidequest is unnerving to think about. I was always warned against buying from neighborhood icecream trucks, but I didn't think about chefs in a professional looking hat and apron manning a foodtruck like the ones you see outside of convention centers.

This track is pretty nice.




*Groan* once again, I eviscerated a boss, and then in the following cutscene my guys are panting on the floor while he's still standing.

I gasped when I ran through the doors in the Great Spire and there was giant mecha right in front of me swinging immediately and I dodged just in time. Didn't expect that to happen in a Trails game.

Goodness gracious. "Fufu, I was only pretending to be evil! It was my plan all along for you to raid our base, beat up our guys in front of the public, smash our priceless pottery and the new terminator robots we just bought, and beat me up!" "Yes Cao, you are a genius!".




The Heiyue stuff really is one of the lowest points of the Kuro series. The Langport chapters both in this game and in Kuro 1 end with you being a bystander while Heiyue leaders walk in and stand around talking about nonsense that has nothing to do with the main plot objective or our heroes. And then there is unearned melodrama as people start breaking down crying or screaming at the moon, and I just don't care about these foreign crimelords. I would rather see them hang from the lamposts. And then it is followed up by one of the franchise's worst sins: bad guys teleporting away after having just fought a pointless battle to the death with you.

We have had climatic scenes before where characters barge in to stand around and talk, like Osborne and Rufus walking in at the top of the Inferno Castle at the end of CS2, but that had a world changing reveal that affected the entire cast and recontextualized our journey across 200 hours, had a twist personal to the main protagonist and several party members, the explanation for the scheme they just executed sounded coherent, featured characters I cared about, the voice acting and camera framing and music choice elevated the dialogue scene, etc.


Swin chapter 2



Agnes, you have been brainwashed. This looks like a prison.





Goodness gracious. Our heroes have willingly signed up to go to a panopticon go to a modern public school and play basketball in the courtyard.

Welp, Agnes is level 32 while Swin and Nadia are 22. I should do the Marchen Garten to level them up. It is frustrating how much time it takes to reach the relevant layers of the Garten. It seems that each layer spans a 2 to 3 level range, and I only had the level 16-19 layer unlocked so I am going to have to go through 5 or 6 layers to reach level 32 mobs. But each layer requires you to run through 5 maps and each map has a requirement (ie light 3 lamposts with arts, kill 5 medium sized mobs, etc) you have to fulfill to unlock the teleporter to the next map. So I am going to have to complete 30+ something maps and requirements, and then I finally will be at the level appropriate area... for just this moment. And when my characters fall behind in levels I am going to do this all over again. With Reverie Corridor the levels of the mobs were spread out far fewer maps and there were no requirements, so it was pretty easy to just run to the level appropriate spot.

[Breathe]

Haven't been able to use the computer for a while so I've been playing Honkai Star Rail in my free time. I actually enjoy the fighting system, and have completed the main quest stuff and now finishing off side quests. I'll probably keep playing it and finish the events tab. Lastly, I skipped most of the dialogue because it's trash and runs on forever.

@Val the Moofia Boss You played this too right? I feel like I saw a write up of yours earlier. This is the first mobile game I've enjoyed since Street Fighter Duel.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Haven't been able to use the computer for a while so I've been playing Honkai Star Rail in my free time. I actually enjoy the fighting system, and have completed the main quest stuff and now finishing off side quests. I'll probably keep playing it and finish the events tab.

@Val the Moofia Boss You played this too right? I feel like I saw a write up of yours earlier. This is the first mobile game I've enjoyed since Street Fighter Duel.

I have played it, but I haven't gotten that far into it, as I have been busy playing through new box purchase releases like Kuro 2 and reading through the Eternal Dream series. I am intending to get back to it after I finish up Kuro 2 and FF7 Rebirth, and maybe check out the Jak and Daxter games because Wretch keeps asking me to.

If you are looking for good mobile games, I would recommend Granblue Fantasy (is more of a visual novel than a game really, can also be played on PC via web browser) and Jet Cars (makes use of your phone's motion controls to fly the car, which is interesting).