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...

revisiting Tunic, what a lovely little game, so beautiful in every respect

If you have PS+, Skate Story is one of the free downloads this month and is worth a look. Skateboard game (loosely, other shit going on) set in a psychedelic, vaporwave-y PS1-y looking world. Not far enough in to give a proper verdict, but interesting enough so far.

It would be generous to call the end of "Dead Island 2" a cliffhanger, because that would imply you might care about what comes next, but nah. Still, I appreciated the gradual shift into sorta sci-fi, which the first (shortish) DLC "Haus" really emphasizes. Funny that I should play it right when the trailer to "Control 2" was released, because boy is it clear the Dead Island guys were into "Alan Wake" and "Control," which "Haus" kinda has as more in common with than "Dead Island 2." Once again, some fun writing, and if I were the sort to play games multiple times I'd be curious how different the other characters and their dialogue/personality is.

Angeline Era - cryptic ps1-core action-adventure game with Ys bump combat, by the devs of the Anodyne games. i went from not being sure if i like it to playing for 6 hours today. i don't think it makes a great case for bump combat being as fun as plain old zelda hack and slashing, its a lot more finicky to keep the hit detection in your favor, but everything else going on with the world and progression is compellingly weird and cool enough to keep me retrying the action gauntlets

KOTOR

Coincidentally been playing a little Dead Island 2 lately after my brother picked it up on sale. Good, low investment background silliness for catch up sessions on voice chat.

Enjoying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 now that it’s out on PS5. Some jank around the corners, but undeniably an awesome thing to behold once you’re in the sky.

Think I'm finally burnt out on Hades II, my new obsession is the absolutely batshit Tingus Goose. Is it worth spending money on what is essentially an idle game? In this case, yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaZJj-bWNnA

Sektori worth it just for the music.

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

Just started Baby Steps. I have to say, it's pretty fun so far. Not sure how tedious it will get though, but I'm enjoying it as a gestalt pastiche of Death Stranding

Etrian Odyssey HD. Sometimes I just want to waste time grinding for levels and drawing maps. The skill point system is interesting in that some skills are worthless and others are game-breaking -- I liked experimenting to find the good ones. fuck the postgame nonsense - there are quests where you have to search every square of every map again. no.

Hades (1). I didn't get into it when it was released because it seemed like I had to grind for permanent upgrades to win, and if I wanted to do that I'd prefer not to have the fighting part. It turns out that the fighting is more interesting than I realized. There IS some grinding (for example, one death defiance is virtually required), but after beating the final boss once, the grinding is to unlock interesting weapon variations.

Cobalt Core. FTL with the deckbuilding from Slay the Spire. It could become another addiction.

Various metroidvanias. Nine Sols, Blasphemous 1 and 2, Ender Lilies, The Messenger. Comfort food gaming.

I learned something hilarious about Baby Steps: if you skip all the cutscenes - which is apparently a tricky thing to do - you are forced to watch/listen to a 28-minute cutscene of the actors rambling about random stuff: "Rather than, you know, do a proper cutscene, Nate and chill donkey-guy Moose will acknowledge the player's lack of interest in their narrative, sit down, drop character, and embark on a cutscene that puts even Kojima to shame. What proceeds is effectively a 28-minute podcast between Nate actor Gabe Cuzzillo and Moose actor Bennett Foddy, in which the pair discuss everything from The Joker, to Foddy's Game of Thrones rewatch, to the proper definition of a broccoli rabe while chatting about how the player will almost certainly just skip this cutscene too. As the pair note, quite a lot of work goes into making these scenes, you know, and here you are just barreling through them. How rude."

Baby Steps ended up driving me back to Death Stranding 2, lol. If I'm going to fall off cliffs...

Yeah it's stupidly difficult. Like, one of the first challenges (after you learn to walk in a straight line) is having to climb on top of an old carnival cart. I fell so. many. times. And I still couldn't do it.

back on my apex bullshit. nothing scratches the itch for me quite like it - the whole player base is super cracked these days tho

i've been playing spiderman (2018). just wrapped up the main story and will probably move on to the dlc. the face animations are hilariously outdated and the gameplay does get repetitive but it's hard to deny the combo of the web-swinging and the city design. it's fun just to walk up to stores/restaurants where you can look in the window.

My own standard of "outdated" is pretty dated, lol. I thought it looked pretty great! Miles Morales sequel was fun, too, and that reminds me that I still need to play the second Spider-man game.

spiderman, the hero famous for his expressive face. they did him dirty

Been really into Nioh 2. I had tried playing it before and couldn’t get into it but this time everything clicked and im loving it. Looking forward to Nioh 3 in Feb.

… otoh, no other game is as singularly annoying, frustrating, RAGE-INDUCING as apex. still mmmmm moreish tho

zelda oracle of seasons. they should bring the subrosians back, they're my favorite weird little guys in the series

Cobalt Core. FTL with the deckbuilding from Slay the Spire. It could become another addiction.

i’ve been playing this as well! i’d add Into the Breach as a reference, too - each turn, you can see what the enemy is going to do, and you get the first move.

very similar to FTL and Into the Breach, i like it, but i sense that i suck, and i’m not committed enough to look online for strategies and and stuff, so it’s gonna be curtains for me soon i think! but would recommend to people that like FTL/into the breach, and if you felt like you were good at those i bet you’d be good at cobalt core as well

i loved cobalt core. has way more deck variety than other deckbuilders I've played. i played on the 2nd difficulty level though, the default was too easy. and even then i sometimes managed a combo deck that basically one-shot all the enemies. but that's still fun to execute

I played Cobalt For for a bit but didn't feel compelled to stick with it because the combat didn't offer a whole lot of variety for me, but I really like the art style.

The Roottrees Are Dead" [...] This is a Golden Idol/Obra Dinn-esque puzzle game about genealogy.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic)

i played that one, it was okay but felt a little dry without the cool staging and "on-site" investigation of an obra dinn or golden idol

― ciderpress

This turned out to be a perfect holiday break game. Short and sweet.

I didn't mind the lack of staging. First person makes me queasy (I think I'll always be a bit annoyed that I can't play Obra Dinn and probably not blue prince or Blake Manor either) and I didn't miss having Golden Idol style scenes. The early-web search format works well for this game I think.

Not sure I loved that the art looks AI generated (even though it isn't). It's not offensive or ugly, just not super memorable.

It originally did have AI art when it was a free game but they hired an artist and replaced it all for the paid version.

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/686651/roottrees-ai-original-illustrator-replacement