What game are you playing?

[Valter]

Just finished this little story-focused horror game. Short and sweet, really enjoyed it.

[Tweed]

Playing Wasteland 2 since I never got around to finishing it so I guess I ought to.

[Cedric]

I played, and loved, The Use of Life, a Japanese kemono gamebook-style RPG with 4 distinct endings and two major progression paths. I enjoyed the writing a lot and was impressed just how differently all four major advanced classes played. I finished the game six times, with all the endings, and every class, and then another two times just to experience the Critical Success/Failure outcomes (which unlock for you to enable at will once you saw all endings.)



What really touched me was the author's notes you unlock as you beat the game; how the developer was frustrated that they just made no game he wanted to play and so he made his own.

The art is very good (except for your main sidekick, but I understand the stylistic choice of making her a different art style to contrast with the protagonist) and the monsters look really cool. I would not recommend Hard mode to anyone.



The game uses JRPG combat but every attack can be dodged by timing a QTE right. This is a lot harder than it sounds and was not as unfun as it might appear. In fact, I really liked it - especially because you have a real impact of your stats. A speed build will have incentive to try and perfect the QTE for no damage; a slow, tanky build using heavy weapons and armor is better off guarding against faster attacks.

[TKVNC]

Playing Wasteland 2 since I never got around to finishing it so I guess I ought to.

It's a really good game. My only complaint is the difficulty spike halfway through is a little annoying. You do get better equipment quite quickly so it's not all bad.

I quite like the companions too, none of them are particularly obnoxious or preachy.

Would recommend the game to anyone who has not played it.

[Vaako]

Currently replaying skyrim a again on 2nd playthrough with the Requiem mod which makes the game a lot more challenging but also rewarding. And no quick travel except carriages and horses. Dragonpriests and Dwarvenspheres with ridiculous health regen that you need like expert level spells and some companions to even take them down but they guard some of the best loot. Like 230 hours in the last 2 months. Also you get a nice welcome party if you visit places like blackreach... one area had like 30 falmer and one arrow stuns/throws you over if you dont have 100%poison resistance and heavy armor... and 2 arrows kill you in 2hits with light armor/clothing without the blur spell.

[DemoGraph]

I've decided to try Outer Wilds.
Best death in the first hour is jumping into geyser in tutorial crater.
Pronouns are pretty irritating. I've tried switching to Russian (in a hope of evading they/them), but I've already got accustomed to English names.

Switched to Russian after all. Didn't regret it. After 15 mins of accustomization, everything clicks together. And Russian has none of that pronoun business.

I've played for about 3-4 hours, visited all the main planets and got some secrets that I think are probably midgame? Found all the spacemen, including the guy with the fish. Didn't visit hanging city yet. Obviously, didn't farm all the POIs, even ones that could be seen from orbit.
Then the game crashed. And wiped my account together with the save. Restoring the save from the backup didn't help.
**** it, I'll watch the LP some day. Or maybe come back to it in a year or two.

I liked the feel of the game. Very Myst-like. Spaceship planks are cute. Undercity reminded me of the one from the Thief series. I still wonder what exactly made you stuck in a loop - I hope that it's not some handwaving.
I really didn't like that all the planets are superspecial - there're literally no ordinary dustballs there, everything is gimmicky. Also not a fan of 20-minute wipes. I also found that sometimes killing yourself is faster than moving the ordinary way; I think it's bad; dunno, maybe it has some additional meaning in the plot.

The game made me want to play KSP again.

tl;dr I've dropped it. Still, it's a nice adventure game. Recommended.

Finished Outer Wilds. Liked it.

► spoilers inside

Srsly spoilers. This is a final warning - you want to play this game blind.

► Show Spoiler

I liked playing it. Liked destroying the fabric of spacetime.
But I've realized that the game left me with a mixed aftertaste.

I liked the locations. They stand out. They're at least as memorable as the sunken forest from Myst, Morrowind mushrooms, etc.
I disliked the locations, because everything is a special snowflake. There's no ordinary dust ball.
The location I liked the most is the endless river. Because it's the most ordinary looking, but also an obviously alien, one. (And I'm pretty sure it was stolen from Hyperion).

Significant part of content seems to be extraneous.
I didn't actually need all that running around the fossil to intuit how to evade the fishes. I actually reached both the jaw spacer and the ship before I even found the fossil riddle!
The same is true for planetary teleporters. All you have to do to solve them is to realize that the ceilings are similar to the one on white hole station. You might not realize what the hell are you doing, but you can reach the core pretty easily.
OTOH, I've really struggled with "against the current", because I just couldn't believe that the riddle is a play on the words (because medusas were supposed to be electrical and the storms were sometimes electrical, etc.). So I dunno. On the one hand I like that the game could be finished in 15 minutes, if you know what you're doing, on the other - come on, all that skippable content is just that, skippable.
To contrast, the Witness forced you to play through the majority of its riddles, but it mechanically triggered the proper zone accesses. Yes, it's more obtuse. But at least you see that you've flipped that switch and it did... something.
Also, the first location I've travelled was radio tower. I looked at the photos and didn't see the most obvious thing. I thought that the strangest thing was that tiny speck of quantum moon that jumped places.
So maybe it's not extraneous. But it feels so.
(I actually finished the game without realizing that DLC is there at all. I had to google to find that radio station was added in DLC and only then it clicked.)

I liked the aliens. They're pretty detailed.
I disliked the aliens due to them having Oblivion-like plastic-looking everything. Also, nobody is really harsh or violent in the game. Even the owlbears never really try to harm you. And time loop makes it so that protag shouldn't be afraid of anything. So there's no real sense of danger.

I liked the plot for its themes. I liked the details.
Chekhov's sun was very impressive for the first time.
I disliked that the authors stack improbabilities too much. "Everything is a special snowflake." And why the hell all the stars are chekhovs? Is it only to add more drama?

I generally don't like time loops. They're dumb if only because the hero risks nothing in the groundhog day. When I play an ordinary game, and I have to reload, I feel like I failed, even if a little bit. Looping makes the failure meaningless. Dying is meaningless. The only meaningful thing is to drop the game and go play with your kid.
I actually had very disturbing impressions from black hole and ocean giant. Because they're ******* violent and are there to kill you. But then it turned out that black hole is but a slight inconvenience and those goddamn giant tornados don't tear your ship to smithereens, and don't even tear your unprotected *** to smithereens, and its all a groundhog day in the end, so... well... they turned into nuisance.
Black hole is but an inconvenience, kids! Think about it! What the ****, devs.

The only side of the game that I can't criticize is the music.
"Space" resembles everything "Thomas Was Alone" (and it's a good thing).
"Sun Station" is like properly being protected from, but still absentmindenly scraped by, the star almighty.
"End Times" - "Final Voyage" diptych is properly epic.
"The Search", "Campfire Song", "The River" are just nice.

On a kinda unrelated note, I find it pretty interesting that the universe tends to sometimes just shove me the answers to questions I posit.
I've stumbled upon OW completely randomly, on a hunch, after looking at a random video for a minute. And then, at the same day, my buddy told me that he finished it after several years long pause and advises it to me.
Turns out, the existential themes in the game were conducive to the themes I've been thinking about for some time already. The message of the game wasn't the answer I'd give (and wasn't even about the question I asked), but it was pretty thought provoking. Half a year ago it would've been of little value for me (as well as, I suspect, it will be a few months from now on). So the timing, and theming, was completely random, but spot on.
Thanks, Universe. You're a kind one.

[Gastrick]

Started playing the original Rogue, basically wanted something as approachable as the Torneko's Mystery Dungeon Super Famicom game, but with more charming graphics with the sprite remake, and without having to reset any time a game was going well. With how in Torneko each time you go into the dungeon, you have to return as soon as you get enough gold to upgrade your shop with how your wife uses up anything extra.

Got fairly far on the second try all the way down to floor 11/26 and reaching 1000 gold, but running out of food, probably from wasting time thinking I just missed the stairs going down on one of the darkness tiles (when it was a hidden door), and lost movements from getting used to the KHJL keyboard movement controls, and getting darkness from swallowing random potions trying to get rid of weakness and the cursed armor. Something that seems like it'll be rough to adjust to is how none of the scrolls have names at first, so the only way to not have to guess is collecting multiple of a kind and then trying one out to reveal the rest.

[methoxetamine]

Wandering Sword. I'm about 4 hours in and completely sold, this **** is great


Also I finished Nioh 3 and most of NG+

[rusty_shackleford]

Wandering Sword. I'm about 4 hours in and completely sold, this **** is great


Also I finished Nioh 3 and most of NG+

Didn't like Wandering Sword at all, but it's probably pretty good if you like JRPGs. I was tricked into playing it by being told it's like Hero's Adventure (it's nothing like it)

[Acrux]

Wandering Sword. I'm about 4 hours in and completely sold, this **** is great


Also I finished Nioh 3 and most of NG+

Didn't like Wandering Sword at all, but it's probably pretty good if you like JRPGs. I was tricked into playing it by being told it's like Hero's Adventure (it's nothing like it)

You're right - it's better!

[Roguey]

Finished Balloon Kid for the Game Boy. Pretty neat platformer, not too stressful except near the end.

[Cedric]

Menace, King's Field 2, Mewgenics, Lamento: Beyond the Void

[Mortadela_Viva]

Finished Fallout 1, it was funny blowing the Cathedral with the nuclear warhead, then seeing "10000xp for killing the master" in the log, without even realizing he was there, this kind of freedom is rare these days.

[Oyster Sauce]

Why do these games never let you make your man and walk around on ships

Coming back to this post because I really like games that let you walk around big vehicles, especially ones piloted by players

There's Guns of Icarus, a multiplayer Steampunk airship combat game where teams of 4 have to work together to take down other ships. I only played this one a little bit and it's ******* DEAD



Then Blackwake, which was a lot better and I put quite a few hours into. Generally teams are split between a few ships of varying sizes, with some crewed by up to 16 people. With so many players, duties would be split up between spotting, patching up holes, pumping water, putting out fire, loading the guns and delivering ammo, etc. Having 12 people run the guns on the port side and annihilating an enemy ship was the coolest **** ever. It is also ******* DEAD



And this one barely gets a pass but the Halo 4 mission "Reclaimer" takes place on top of a Mammoth, a giant fuckoff vehicle equipped with turrets, power weapons, a bunch of marines, and smaller vehicles, which makes it one of my favorite Halo levels even though the game sucks and is ******* DEAD

Blackwake lives on :')

[methoxetamine]

Wandering Sword mounts are kino. Extremely sovlful game

[KnightoftheWind]

Played and beat the original Dawn of War's main campaign, as well as Space Marine (2011). Dawn of War is a very solid RTS, with a good enough story to keep you interested and that tried and true WarCraft-style gameplay with some added flairs The maps do tend to be visually monotonous though, and the DLCs weren't my cup of tea either.. Space Marine however, is an outstanding action game. It functions as a TPS/Hack and Slash hybrid, with satisfying levels of gore and an addictive loop that kept me playing. I wish there were more games like it.

[DemoGraph]

The maps do tend to be visually monotonous though, and the DLCs weren't my cup of tea either..

DoW gameplay in general was regretfully pretty meh (I suspect that tabletop 40k is the same). WC3 was interesting because of maneuver. Modern combat is interesting because of maneuver. DoW is balanced on jumping around 2-3 chokepoints with 3 unit types.

Sad, actually. I was pretty charmed by it the first time I've played.

[Fitz]

Shooting cops in the head all day and night in Max Payne 3. Finished up the story the other day. Really enjoyed it. Alan Wake 1 is also among one of my favourite games (haven't played 2 yet) so I'll be doing some digging on Sam Lake. The guy clearly does something that appeals to my taste and that's worth investigating.

[Tinky Winky]

Wandering Sword mounts are kino. Extremely sovlful game

Meh, I can tell it's a chinkslop on the first glance because of the choice of these mounts.

[logincrash]

Installed M&B Warband with the A World of Ice and Fire mod after watching the Dunk and Egg show.
Spent a couple of days riding with Stannis the Mannis fighting the good fight. But the ******* game is all kinds of ****** on new-ish hardware. The trees look all ****** up and pulse like crazy and the game keeps crashing every couple of hours. Deleted it out of frustration. Such a shame.
Think I'll get back into CK2 AGOT instead.

[Kolgrim]

Been playing Darksiders 2. Downloaded reshade and tweaked some stuff since the remaster washed the color out so much. I'm happy with the result overall.



I also gotta say I appreciate all the tall women in this game.

► Woman alert

[logincrash]

God, I love Crusader Kings 2. So comfy.

[Breathe]

God, I love Crusader Kings 2. So comfy.

This is the one genre I just can't get into, despite appreciating what it offers. RTS is about as close as I can get to it. It's like the further I am from the action the less interested I am.

[logincrash]

God, I love Crusader Kings 2. So comfy.

This is the one genre I just can't get into, despite appreciating what it offers. RTS is about as close as I can get to it. It's like the further I am from the action the less interested I am.

Crusader Kings 2 is basically an RPG. You get to make your own ruler with stats and traits and then you are just dropped into the middle of a medieval world. Pure emergent storytelling.
CK3 supposedly leaned even more into the RPG side of things than CK2, but I can't confirm either way since I've not played CK3 for more than 1 hour at launch.
Honestly, I wouldn't be able to get into Victoria or Europa Universalis precisely because you are so far removed from the action in those games.

[Breathe]

God, I love Crusader Kings 2. So comfy.

This is the one genre I just can't get into, despite appreciating what it offers. RTS is about as close as I can get to it. It's like the further I am from the action the less interested I am.

Crusader Kings 2 is basically an RPG. You get to make your own ruler with stats and traits and then you are just dropped into the middle of a medieval world. Pure emergent storytelling.
CK3 supposedly leaned even more into the RPG side of things than CK2, but I can't confirm either way since I've not played CK3 for more than 1 hour at launch.
Honestly, I wouldn't be able to get into Victoria or Europa Universalis precisely because you are so far removed from the action in those games.

This gives me a different perspective. Think of it like an RPG. Hmm. I may try CK out in the future with this in mind. Thanks.

[DemoGraph]

This is the one genre I just can't get into, despite appreciating what it offers. RTS is about as close as I can get to it. It's like the further I am from the action the less interested I am.

Crusader Kings 2 is basically an RPG. You get to make your own ruler with stats and traits and then you are just dropped into the middle of a medieval world. Pure emergent storytelling.
CK3 supposedly leaned even more into the RPG side of things than CK2, but I can't confirm either way since I've not played CK3 for more than 1 hour at launch.
Honestly, I wouldn't be able to get into Victoria or Europa Universalis precisely because you are so far removed from the action in those games.

This gives me a different perspective. Think of it like an RPG. Hmm. I may try CK out in the future with this in mind. Thanks.

Try the second one, though. 3 is cancer.
Also, get all dlcs, vanilla is pretty meh.

[logincrash]

Also, get all dlcs, vanilla is pretty meh.

But don't buy the DLCs. Don't reward Paradox' **** avaricious practices.
Get the free-2-play barebones version on Steam and then

Hidden Content

This board requires you to be registered and logged-in to view hidden content.

[Roguey]

Finished Mario vs Donkey Kong for the GBA. I like how the first half demonstrated how to handle that level's gimmick when starting it, did not care for how demanding it got in the latter parts of both halves. Another great puzzle-platformer.

[weaselus]

Playing Wasteland 2 since I never got around to finishing it so I guess I ought to.

To me it is the real Fallout 3. A masterpiece of post-apocalyptic isometric games. The flavor is somewhat different so it will take at least twenty hours until you see it as Fallout.

[Tweed]

Playing Wasteland 2 since I never got around to finishing it so I guess I ought to.

To me it is the real Fallout 3. A masterpiece of post-apocalyptic isometric games. The flavor is somewhat different so it will take at least twenty hours until you see it as Fallout.

I'm not having a good time. The game is a trudge, getting anywhere takes too long. The writing is stupid, most of the NPCs are dislikable fuckheads. Way too many ****** girlbosses, way too many ****** couples. Le quirky weird factions that are totally zany and off-the-wall because why not. Nothing in this alleged plot is coming together in a meaningful way and it's been 100% predictable so far. Membah the 80s? Membah the 80s? Membah the 80s?