whatchu playing now

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...

I got stuck on the second DS game and never moved onto that one

Fuckin' boulder, I hate you

I've been deep into Caves of Qud all year, what a fantastic game

utopia must fall

I have all of the old Dragon Age games but haven't played any, given that the new one seems to have broken the Bioware losing streak, I kind of want to finally get around to them. I heard that Inquisition is probably the best one to play as it's the most modern, gameplay wise?

I haven't played any of these, but I think the consensus is Origins was easily the best and it's been in decline since.

I remember my DA:O obsessed friend being really disappointed with Inquisition when it came out, but I gather a decent amount of folks like that one.

i want to get a new switch game, lorelei and the laser eyes and dredge are both on sale from my wishlist. which should i play first?

Dredge is fun even though I never finished it. Lorelei I've heard is hard, like, you need a notebook and scratch paper hard.

Been playing through the new Silent Hill 2 remake. First SH ever. S’alright, having fun, still mechanically a PS2 game with QOL improvements. Not spookin me too much.

Can’t help but think about the GOAT survival horror status this game has and the cultish fan base bemoaning the abandonment of the series. While Alan Wake 2 comes out and sells 300 copies. Boneheads don’t know what they’re missing.

apparently the remake literally doubles the length of the game, like stretches the same beats out twice as long. dunno how much that changes how it comes off but probably a lot

can't trash talk SH2 or the remake as i've played neither but alan wake 2 coming out in the triple-A-remastered-sonygame age sure but barely breaking even is a real headscratcher. i thought Gamers loved their "cinematic experiences" or whatever

got good reviews generally - but tbf, it was 12 years after the original and even that didn't set the world on fire iirc. haven't played either
still, i'll get to it eventually because Control was so good

apparently the remake literally doubles the length of the game, like stretches the same beats out twice as long

Ha. Did they make that walk up the hill at the start of the game twice as annoyingly long then.

i ended up getting Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, it's pretty awesome so far. i would say it is not as "notebook required" as obra dinn, e.g., you have a "photographic memory" in the game so you can access anything you read from your menu after the first time you read it. however, you do sometimes have to do calculations or solve puzzles and in that case the paper does help. i also find the puzzles to be more varied and attuned to my brain than obra dinn (a game i respected but did not enjoy). HOWEVER i did not understand the purpose of the in-game computers and so i played 2-3 hours of the game without understanding that it was not autosaving. so i just had to start replaying the game over from the beginning.

I think Alan Wake 2 admittedly hobbled itself out of the gate by calling itself "Alan Wake 2". About as dazzling as cold meatloaf. Game itself goes about as weird and wild a AAA game is gonna go, really wish more people could experience some of the truly gonzo stuff it surprises you with. Not yr average survival horror game.

if anyone here played and really liked deadly premonition on the 360, play alan wake 2 immediately.

they have different gameplay and i do prefer DP's faux open-world, small-town-sim style over AW's more standard adventure game mechanics but that's really all it has going for it, literally everything else in AW2 is astronomically better.
if you've only got time for one unashamedly twin peaks influenced game, let it be alan wake 2 for sure

also belated thanks to circa1916, your posts itt were what pushed me to check it out

Can't wait to finish Red Dead Redemption (1) and start Alan Wake 2

it's definitely on my radar to try at some point. just built a new PC last month so i can do new AAA stuff again now

Thanks chihuahuau, nice to hear.

Mechanically AW2 is very meat-and-potatoes survival horror (done very well and with some spin tho) with small elements that don’t quite land (pinboard stuff didn’t do much for me) and stretches that could be tightened. But it’s a vibes game above all with some ecstatic moments that make it something out of the ordinary.

Can just pound a YouTube primer on the events of the first game to get caught up.

I’ll walk back my semi-dismissal of the Silent Hill 2 remake. It’s pretty fun! PS2-game-with-QOL improvements in a good way. The simple combat mechanics have a nice arcade-y dance to them once you’re acclimated. And the puzzle-y stuff is generally right in the sweet spot.

Not super engaged story wise and pyramid man is more goofy than spooky, but enjoyable gameplay bones to it.

Good to hear. Looking forward to playing it eventually.

Golden Idol sequel is out tomorrow!
https://www.polygon.com/review/475169/rise-of-the-golden-idol-review

Also Judero seems like a very ILG kinda game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1960900/Judero/

i'll certainly be playing golden idol 2. probably wait for the weekend though

I started playing Indika. Beautiful game, interesting and unique premise. Slightly fiddly/frustrating gameplay, but you're not there for the game itself. It's a trip