whatchu playing now

dragon's dogma was good fun, at its best early before everything becomes too easy, so i encourage you to not progress the story at all until you have been everywhere. one of the best and most unique things it has are the giant wandering monsters that really felt like epic fights, at least until my gang quickly got OP'd. helps if you resist the temptation of the broken pawns that are available early.

infinity wars + starbound

helps if you resist the temptation of the broken pawns that are available early.
― Roberto Spiralli, Thursday, April 24, 2014 4:29 PM

what are the broken pawns. i've just been using the free low level ones and trading them in every so often. groups of bandits on the roads are still kicking my butt

i got one real early with an ordinary woman's name, Karen i am fairly sure, and her owner had limited her level but she had maxed-out, late game rare gear and was a total powerhouse

whatever the fighter class is. i got another midway thru with a more forgettable fantasyish name, also a female fighter.

Dammit, Fract really _is_ like myst. I can't find the symbolic to detangle the tune I'm supposed to play to solve the final puzzle in one of the areas.

Final Fantasy - NES
Assassin's Creed IV - PC
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX - PC
Castlevania: Rond of Blood - T16
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - PSX
Metal Gear Solid - PSX
Metal Gear Rising Revengeance - PC
Metal Gear Solid 2 - PC

you livin' the life, Adam, respect

finished saints row 4
tried diablo 3 again - meh so spammy
maybe back to metro 2033

"Finished" Portal and Fez, loved both. Seems like there's still aftergame stuff for me to do, which is cool.

I'm a good way into the first God of War, and I can't be sure but I think I might kinda hate it. The brutal waves of super tough enemies are awesome, and some of the puzzles are pretty good, but creating Indiana Jones-esque deathtraps with a shitty camera and sketchy controls was the fucking worst idea ever. I've wasted so much of my playtime on failing to kill everything onscreen within a set time before falling to my death or being crushed or sliced up by shit that I can barely see in front of me that it's kinda become a chore for me to continue. I might just be hating the PS2-ness of it, though.

I've been surprisingly digging a lot of arcade-y stuff that I've gotten cheap from PSN recently. Super Stardust and Wipeout took me a little while to get used to but they're amazing once I'm in the zone. Just got Retro/Grade, which I haven't played much but which has an awesome conceit (basically a rhythm game disguised as a shooter that runs in reverse). The Space Invaders update also seems like good value.

This weekend, I hit 50% completion and the 100 hour mark near-simultaneously on Just Cause 2. Clearing a few areas in the game has become such a reliably perfect way to decompress at the end of the day.

kotor + bg2

getting myself psyched + ready for pillars of eternity i guess

xps I played GoW 1 for the first time... a year ago? Maybe two? Felt some of the same frustrations as you, but I'm still planning to truck on through to the others at some point. I can see how it all would've been far more impressive back in 2006, but some of those levels and dungeons are awfully designed.

What build you going for in KOTOR, Mordy?

i guess soldier guardian. tbh i'm kinda more interested in my bg2 half-elf cleric/ranger build (so OP apparently it's ppl's fave for soloing the game). (thought about playing a wild mage too.)

Streets of Rage 3
Bare Knuckle III

So BKIII is the Japanese version of SOR3 and it is WAY easier. This does not mean it is easy though, it only means it is possible to get through stage 1 without using a continue. American version of Streets of Rage 3 is one of the more difficult games I've ever played.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWsJPJ19DA

That level with the bulldozer is all-time unfair.

all that and he's beat by a girder

i love the energy meter for 'wall'.

i guess i only played Streets of Rage 1 & 2.

man why doesn't axel just jump over the damn walls

sor3 is weird. it seems like it admits to tactics then it doesn't really.

I think after you get past the stage where you are fighting kangaroos and evil dominatrix clowns they just figured they could get away w that.

Played 2-player Hyperstone Heist for the Genesis last night. Got to Super Shredder and then we died and we were out of continues! The music in that game is incredible. Orchestrated speed metal.

i'm still playing bg2.

eu4 always with the eu4. genovese colonial empire.

wish i could get into eu. each time i load it up there are like 300 tutorials

if it helps you still won't know what the fuck is going on if you sit thru the tutorials

Sadly not as into Mirror's Edge as I'd hoped (hinges way too much on barely-disguised quick time events, which fuck that). Surprisingly way more into the first Metal Gear Solid than I expected (tough but mostly fair, cutscenes and dialogue that are reasonably well-written and not totally perfunctory, generous with the game saving, and the controls and camera, while occasionally obnoxious, are better than those on a lot of the PS2 games I've played). I still haven't been able to get past the first boss yet, though, so we'll see how long my admiration lasts.

is there some kind of amazing online tutorial that will teach me how to play?

there is a lot of user and wiki content so possibly but i'm not aware of anything myself. i think you just need to start playing it with the expectation that you won't know what you're doing for a long time. start with france: raise a big army and start some beef. you can go a long way with them without having to worry about some of the more arcane stuff for a while and you will pick up a good foundation in manpower/supply, tech advancement, diplomacy, religion. you can dip your toe into trade and colonies if you want but you'll still be able to do plenty without. and you'll have the immediate objective of unifying france to get your teeth into, which definitely helps the transition into the sandbox. you'll always have something to do with them and that is certainly not always the case elsewhere.

have any of you played crusader kings 2 and can you take the same approach there? tried to get into it but get caught up on figuring out how levies work and what a demesne is and somehow the game had me entering into an affair with my own wife

ftl

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Aria of Sorrow is incredible. Are the GBA Metroids this good?

Harmony is cool too, if only because the lead character is dressed like anime Santa Claus.

I remember the GBA Metroid I played being awesome

this is gonna make me sound like a crazy person but i've gotten into watching lets-plays of EU4 and i don't even own a PC. they're weirdly soothing?

any you'd recommend? esp for newbs?

there's a youtuber by the name of shenryyr2 who i gather is some kind of god at it. he doesn't really do tutorials but a lot of the rhythm of it comes out via osmosis.

my general sense is it's just not a 'for newbs' game, you just kind of have to keep jumping in at the deep end until it clicks

jeez, just had a click around that guy's YT, he is nutso. if i had infinite hours i would watch the lot. but yeah, as a learning experience you probably already need a foundation to get anything from someone like this.

Aria of Sorrow is incredible. Are the GBA Metroids this good?

yeah he's also endearingly/annoyingly ignorant of actual history & geography

i just wanted some cool flowing graphics of a map shifting slowly over time while i did other shit.

xp

*checks england ca. 1650* "a republic? england went republic? wtf, that makes no sense"

was that cromwell? idk I'm too lazy to wiki at the minute

metro: last light
had no idea the wolfenstein remake is more then just "lol nostalgia", preview trailer got me intersted

xp yeah

just finished back to the future telltale game, it was pretty fun, but if it hadn't been for walking dead s1 i dunno if i would've had the patience. now i am trying to play sam & max penal zone and it is next-level inscrutable adv game :(

Did any of you happen to see this week's Steven Universe where Steven gets obssessed with this epic Pokemon/Final Fantasy-style Mini Golf RPG? Man, I would love for that to actually exist.

no but that sounds great. i also love the SU where garnet becomes transfixed with the meat beat mania arcade game

hah, that was great too!

ftl

Played a little "Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia" yesterday and holy crap am I addicted to these Castlevania games...

not sure about AI use but think it uses the cloud for the destruction model

about two thirds of the way in and feel comfortable calling Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter a masterpiece

My Summer Car, because I enjoy pain

playing mio: memories in orbit and i want to 'recommend' this to everyone who had thoughts about silksong being too difficult because lmao this is absurd.

there is a lot to like about it but then the endgame goes all in on worse-than-path-of-pain nonsense

wow I had to turn off the in-game text chat in the finals - the community in that game are pretty toxic. probably because the playerbase is so small it’s only the 2k+ no lifers still playing. and if you don’t perform the min max’d consummately efficient play at all times they’re instantly on at you. I thought apex was bad but guess cos the playerbase is larger then the bitter griefers are more spread out

the smurfing problem is diabolical too. getting beamed by level 14’s playing like they have 1k+ hours in game is wild. apparently ppl set up smurfs to not only game the sbmm (which is common) but to gift free skins and multibucks back to their main accounts

I’m having a ton of fun with Nioh 3. The more open world zones are done very well and the separate ninja/samurai style is super smooth. Still learning the game though there is possibly too many different systems to get familiar with.

Do you still have to sort through a million weapon drops with slightly different stats? I'm probably more used to this after playing Nightreign, but it was the main thing that put me off the first one.

I love me my Souls games, but those Nioh games look like Souls+even more numbers/stats.

What game popularized that thing where hitting the enemy emits a shower of different numbers, I presume denoting damage?

Yes tons of loot still. It annoyed me at first but I’ve gotten used to it. I don’t overthink it much and just sell practically all of it for souls.

My understanding is that builds are mostly meaningless unless you plan on playing ng+ and beyond. Just use whatever weapons and magic you enjoy. The combat is extremely fun once you get into it.

xp damage numbers have been around in RPGs since the 80s. not sure what the first action game to have them was. secret of mana did in 1993 but i'm sure theres something earlier

crazy that most of the highguard seem to have been laid off only a few weeks after launch. battlepass uptake numbers must have been dismal

I love me my Souls games, but those Nioh games look like Souls+even more numbers/stats.

it's dark souls taken in a much more action game direction + diablo-style random loot. it's fantastic even if the loot system is sort of tedious to engage with, and they made it much easier to avoid engaging with the intricacies of the loot in 3 at least, and make much more of an attempt at easing the player into things than before

the fundamentals of combat feel similar enough, with stamina management, limited healing, very punishing combat, but then there's a lot more action game-style combos that are possible, and various elaborate special move metres, and the stance system, and more... the whole game is systems on top of systems and is kinda overwhelming in that way, but you also don't really need to engage with most of that very much to get by. you can play it as a slightly-more-technical dark souls if you want and it works fine. i like to play it as a really fast-paced dark souls.

the nioh 3 demo was fantastic (it is like 8 hours long, somehow) and i loved 2 so i'm looking forward to playing the rest of 3 later. i went back to nioh 1 (i never finished the dlc) and it's decent but not really scratching the same itch because there's so much stuff they added in 2 that i miss

xp that happens with a new multiplayer game practically once a month at this point. the market is completely saturated

Ok I'm getting quite interested in Nioh 3, assuming the next From game (available on PS at least) is still quite a ways away.

Ooh nice, there's a demo where your save can carry into the main game if you buy it, that's how it should be done.

As soon as Dunkey realizes you can play as an old lady and that there are magic cats I knew this would be a funny video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4aS5e0J3Ls

Heh. I downloaded the demo (which is nearly 60 gb, because it's the full game) and will give it a shot, but also remembered that the new Resident Evil is coming out in a few weeks and that sounds like a much more fun prospect.

Damn, Nioh 3 is really fun. The combat just feels great in a way that's hard to grasp from seeing videos, and that's kinda my main thing.

There are so many options (styles, stances, weapons, special moves, etc) that I often don't feel like I'm playing it "right", but I think that's just the vibe.

I bought the Metal Gear Solid Collection 1. I've never played these games and I am absolutely HOPELESS at them.

I loved the PS1 one but sometimes around PS4 I realised that playing a videogame that demands I creep around the place lest a huge alarm goes off and everyone chases me was not relaxing and in fact too similar to daily life.

I noped out of Dishonored for that reason. Patience and strategy sneaking around the guards was more of an investment than I wanted. Made easier when the save file corrupted and I lost the first level of play.

Yeah I mean, within reason, I like a game that makes me work a fair bit at the start but culminates in total overpowered destruction.

Yeah Nioh 3 has a ton of different ways to play but you can just pick and choose what systems you want to engage with and get by fine. I do think it’s important to get used to Ki pulsing and timing Burst Counters.