whatchu playing now

you know the drill. post what you are currently playing. add whatever else you goddamn please ;-)

bioshock inf 2nd dlc - a bit of a let down, elizabeth's story is so muddled and confusing.
orcs must die - this game is pretty fun!

I (and, ostensibly, my girlfriend, who mostly only plays the pinball stuff I bought for her) just bought a PS3 a couple of months ago, which I'm completely new to aside from crashing helicopters into gas stations in GTA IV at my brother's. So I've been excitedly hoarding games, since this seems to be the sweet spot between when previous-gen system come way down in price and when they go out of print and skyrocket. But I'm trying to be restrictive in my playing so that I don't play eight million things at once and fail to fully appreciate the varied experiences.

Althought I was completely put-off by it at first (complicated tutorials maybe shouldn't take place in the middle of combat under cover of darkness), probably 75% of my game playing time of late has been devoted to Just Cause 2. So much addictive fun, and great for brief, post-work mayhem sessions. Strangely haven't read or heard a whole lot about it outside of ILG threads, so thanks for that, y'all. Prior to that, I was mostly sucked into Skyrim, which initially impressed and then subsequently overwhelmed me with its breadth. I mean, I'm level 25-ish and realized recently that I'd completed somewhere pretty far south of 10% of the core game, so it feels like a thing that could just go on forever. I'll return to it someday when I'm ready to really dig in.

Other stuff in my current rotation:
Fez (not hugely into platformers but I'm really digging it; music and design and use of color are aces)
Minecraft (kinda don't know exactly what to do with it yet, but it's cool to mess around with)
Arkham Asylum (not crazy about the combat, but maybe I'm just not used to it yet; the beginning of the Scarecrow encounter was amazing)
Where Is My Heart? (cute, cool concept, good for short bursts)
Portal (just started this...the rest of the Orange Box is backburnered for the time being)
Deadly Premonition (not terribly far into it; definitely bizarre as hell but I'm undecided just yet as to whether it's my kind of bizarre)
Prototype (love it to bits; I think I'm near the end so I've been sitting on it for a little while to prolong the love...although I do already have the sequel)
Resident Evil 3 (revisiting after 15 years; controls are for shit but I'm building up anticipation to RE4)
Walking Dead (only played the first episode thus far but it was great and I'm looking forward to more)

I also have a ton of stuff that I've played <15 minutes of (The Saboteur, Tomb Raider reboot, Marvel Ultimate Alliance) that I'm looking forward to jumping into more fully soon.

Kinda want to make a (sadly & ridiculously long) list of the stuff I've acquired and get recommendations of what to tackle next.

MPQ and GTA5, exclusively, for ages now. Very very reluctant to start a new game atm

rotation of dark souls 2 on ps3 and might & magic X and magic online on the laptop. nearly done with mmx and think i am going to finally play monaco. nearly done with ds2 but just going to keep playing it anyway.

diablo 3 on pc! oh nooo

I thought of something else I played recently: WSOP Full House Pro poker on xbla.

I am in a bad place. ;-)

GTA5 in the evenings, still searching for those hidden items
Or Lego City Undercover on occasions.

Any other time I struggle to find time or energy to play anything else right now, I'm trying to design and develop my own games and I find that a struggle in itself.

Games that I *should* be playing anyway...

Pinball FX, really really should fire this up more often
Rayman, not even installed this yet
Red Dead Redemption (still not bothered to attempt the final mission)
Fallout3, embarrassingly never finished this either
Fuel, after having to purchase new PS3 I'll have to start all over again.
Just Cause 2, dropped off the radar a bit, dip into every now and again to get that 100% status
Minecraft/FTB, my only reason for not playing this more often is its just too daunting. In terms of time wasting goes this is the mother of all. FTB packs have basically kicked this game into mind blowing status imo.

(With the exceptions of Pinball and Rayman you might notice a distinct pattern in the games I like)

picked up gta 5 again just to round off the epsilon missions. i was convinced there would be a big heist at the end of all of it, because ripping off the scientologists seemed to make sense and how else would i ever get the cash to buy the golf course etc. so the only one getting ripped off was me :( officially done with this game.

also just finished xcom enemy unknown which i loved to bits. besides it was just long enough to keep my interest through the whole thing.

not really sure what to go with next. ps+ gave me lots of options. i'll probably get going on tomb raider, as soon as i stop struggling to like pes2014.

dayZ and nothing but dayZ. the slow small little updates that come out every couple of weeks just make it that little bit more appealing every day. i try not to think that's there's no real goal or 'end' to it.

Dude, FRACT OSC is out. It's fun, but giving me a lot of flashbacks to Myst, due to heavy puzzles with occasional symbolic language hints. You're exploring this long abandoned machine world and you restoring operation to a giant synthesizer that you wander around in.

SMT4, the soundtrack for this game is so good, running around a post-apocalyptic Tokyo to synthy krautrock <3 http://youtu.be/SG_gB4kb2oA

Oh, FRACT sounds great, might have to grab that.

The only thing I'm playing at the moment is Letter Quest on my ipod. It's quite good but nothing mindblowing.

portal 2 (3rd time), ni no kuni, assassins creed 4, dork souls

FTL and could be on this for a while now that I feel like I finally understand how to play it

im obsessed

so many ships still to unlock and haven't even touched advanced mode...

I've been playing Kingdom Of Amalur, a game that apparently lost the taxpayers of Rhode Island $75m, recently. I kind of hate myself as it's another massive Skyrim-style time sink, but it's quite good fun.

what IS advanced mode

i havent even begun boarding as a tactic yet

sorry "advanced edition"

As a reminder, FTL: Advanced Edition is a free content expansion for FTL. All current (and future) customers will receive this update regardless of where they purchased it. Prior to release, we will post detailed instructions on how to get the update from whatever digital vendor you originally purchased FTL.

http://www.ftlgame.com/?page_id=106

New systems (clone bay??), new race, new ships, just lots more stuff, and it was released as a free sort of patch. It's a toggle option when you start a game, you can choose standard or advanced.

I've been playing Kingdom Of Amalur, a game that apparently lost the taxpayers of Rhode Island $75m
― Yuri Bashment (ShariVari), Thursday, April 24, 2014 3:45 PM

ah yes the curt schilling rpg

oh yeah i'm playing dragon's dogma. i've given up on it twice before so i'm determined to finish it this time. the controls are lacking but it has some of the best gfx i've seen in an rpg. makes dark souls 2 look like shit by comparison anyway.

http://cdn.destructoid.com//ul/266639-curt-shilling.jpg

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.

Life got in the way of Astro Bot for the past few weeks, but I picked it up tonight where I left off, that goddam pumpkin mini level. Most of the game has been pretty easy so far, but some of these mini levels ... phew!

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 4 March 2025 02:32 (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

The mini/bonus levels are Celeste-levels of twitchy intensity. I like how you can choose to make the game as easy or as difficult as you like - either blast through all the levels or scrupulously tick each one off making sure you don't progress without rescuing all bots and finishing the mini stages before moving on. I've been doing the latter up until now (final main galaxy), but the challenge is ramping up. I had a fight with a gecko boss that was so incredibly tough. Glad I finally beat him

xp yeah it's couch or online. I really want more couch co-ops too. That said, the main person I'd play with would be my partner when she comes to visit, and while she likes the idea of gaming she's not much of a gamer, so even It Takes Two was a bit tricky for her to get her head around

I had my wife play the first level of Astro Bot, and she both seemed to enjoy it and showed no interest in returning to it.

I'd been doing the latter approach with Astro Bot as well, but I think I'll just come back to some of those mini levels, which have proven more annoying than fun. (Though it must have been fun to design them just to fuck with players.)

Split Fiction is couch co-op, right? I wish there were more like that.

I want more adventure co-op, like SF looks nice but just endlesss exhausting jumping and running nice. I want something with a story that me and my friend can digest slowly, (that isn't a goddam survival/crafting game)

I did notice this on the horizon, but worried it's just an fps

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2569760/?snr=1_5_9__205

xpost Isn't their earlier game, A Way Out, like that? A prison escape co-op game? I haven't played it yet.

Yeah that one fit's the bill perfectly, we've played that one and loved it.

I haven't started it yet but I just instabought Wanderstop when I saw that it was a Davey Wreden game AND has a soundtrack by Daniel Rosenfeld.

....and now I've refunded it again, because 3 minutes into the tutorial the watering can it was teaching me to use vanished from my inventory and stopped me going any further. Handy reminder not to buy games on release day, might give it another try in a couple of months.

Rise of the golden idol has its first DLC out. It's good! My only complaint is that the first two missions were harder than the last two. The history that you have to reassemble in them covers multiple events that are easy to get jumbled up.

I splashed out on Kingdom Come Deliverance II. It's... quite good so far. Lots to enjoy, althoguh there's been an awful lot of cutscenes and not that much action. Whenever I've been in a fight I've found the controls a bit hard to get used to.

A video review I saw mad-out that the game was revolutionary in its immersiveness, depth and lack of handholding, but I don't really see it being much different from most other action RPGs really - makes me wonder if the reviewer had played anything like Red Dead or Witcher 3 before.

All-told it's very beautiful and detailed. Occasionally my PS5 would struggle a little with latency clipping on the sound, and the odd texture taking a second to load up, but it's a new game and I can accept a little jank for now.

My main bugbear is the acting though. I don't know if it's down to the scriptwriters or the casting directors or the actors, but it often feels like none of these people ever spoke to each other.

Early on, you meet an old herbalist woman and her daughter, both of whom speak like they're the Queen's cousins. The daughter especially sounds increidbly clipped and RP, enunciating almost too clearly, as if she's reading the script for the first time. It wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't having to wrap her mouth around lots of "ain't"s, "gonna"s and "gots" - dialectal truncations that no one with her accent would usually say. Her mother says things like "My eyes don't see good no more", which would be fine if she had a Cockney-type accent but really takes me out of it coming from someone who sounds like Judi Dench.

As for this, I'm bamboozled by what's being attempted here. I can't work out if this lady is meant to be Geordie, Leeds, Yorkshire, South African, Jamaican or New York. It's an absolute hodge-podge of an accent. My guess is that it's meant to be an attempt at Middle English? Or is the actor just making up her own accent as she goes along?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdDGBw0R5WI

Honestly, I found myself wanting to write to the developers asking if they'd give me a job as a script editor. I think a big problem is that the dialogue is often a bit dull and repetitive, and the voice actors are miss-cast for their roles which makes it even more glaring.

For a game where they've put so much effort into the historical accuracy, into the graphics and sound design etc, this feels like a glaring issue

More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yslQTtO15ko

A lot of cutscenes early on to set the table, but you're pretty much left to your own devices after that. Unless you're pounding the main story quests exclusively I guess, which I don't recommend. Side quests are generally more fun. Less talky anyway.

Accent weirdness did not register at all to me but I am not britisher.

It feels like the scripts were written by Americans and then voiced by British people

close, it was developed in the Czech Republic

Possibly. Czech dev team, but who knows who they brought in to handle the English.

I like this much more than the Witcher but I am one of the dozen people who doesn't rank that game particularly highly.

As far as immersion, RDR2 is a good comparison, but I appreciate how Kingdom Come doesn't drop some event in front of you every 20 feet that you can involve yourself in like RDR2 does. You will encounter random stuff while poking around, but it's doled out in a way that feels more natural.

Also you are going to suck at combat and just about everything else starting out. Leveling up skills through use and trainers makes a significant difference.

Was it originally written in the Czech language though, or English? As circa1916 says, it's unlikely they didn't use an English team to handle the writing and speaking

chants of sennaar! not long but it's very satisfying to figure out the translations and i love the look/visual style

Oh yeah that looks good

I gave up near the end of Slider because there's a required zone that's randomly generated and I wasn't interested in playing it. Really good up until that point.

some more i found on thinkygames:
Leap Year and DLC: puzzle platformer with unexpected character physics. The new DLC is longer but lacks the "wtf is going on" aspect of the base game.
Understand: another inductive logic game, this time with pen & paper style puzzles and tons of stages. The challenge is to figure out what the rules of each puzzle are. Something like the puzzles in The Witness.
Sliding Hero demo: sokoban-style puzzle game with ONLY ice sliding and a big map. There are deterministic 'fights' similar to Desktop Dungeons or DROD RPG. recommended.
Isles of Sea and Sky: some surprisingly hard puzzles in this puzzle game. The square movement and 8-bit island setting remind me of StarTropics. Feels like it will be a long game.

isles of sea and sky was cool. ran me 12 hours to beat it fwiw, and would probably be twice that for 100% puzzle completion

replaying legend of zelda the minish cap, i don't think i ever finished it back in the day though it's all been familiar so far through the 3rd dungeon. i forgot how good the main town is in this one, with all the little pathfinding puzzles to get into and out of buildings when you're mini

Can't say I'm enjoying Kingdom Come 2 very much. I'm just finding it incredibly difficult to get the hang of, and nearly everything I've experienced so far has felt really clunky and unintuitive.
Even on my big OLED it can be really hard to read the map and the UI, which is frustrating as it's a heavily systems-based game.
I don't like that there's no regular autosave. You either have to Brew a potion and drink it, or save and quit out, then back in again. You can lose 30 minutes of quest if you forget to do one of these things, and when there are so many quests spread out so far across the map, going back and retreading the same landscapes and listening to the same conversations again is a real confusing bore. Just build in an autosave, lads, it's a game!
On top of everything, I've managed to finally get to an essential training tutorial section where the instructor keeps telling me I'm doing it wrong, but I'm not being explained what it is that's wrong

Im sure it all comes together but I've played a good few hours of this and it's more like hard work than anything else.

just beat Type Help, a text-only deduction game inspired by obra dinn.
https://william-rous.itch.io/type-help
To unlock scenes you need to know who was in what room and when. I won't spoil the plot -- experience it for yourself. Best story I've experienced in a game since... Norco in 2022?

Crypt Custodian - really like this one so far. playing it right after tunic and minish cap feels like i've constructed a goldilocks and the three bears scenario for zelda combat tuning. it's just right

That's been on my wishlist for a while! It looks cute but I hope it is not as annoying as tunic combat wise

just beat Type Help, a text-only deduction game inspired by obra dinn.
https://william-rous.itch.io/type-help
To unlock scenes you need to know who was in what room and when. I won't spoil the plot -- experience it for yourself. Best story I've experienced in a game since... Norco in 2022?

― master of the pan (abanana)

This is fucking brilliant.

Agreed, I love it. I actually got an hour or so in then switched tabs and lost my save point, so I was just going to give up on it...but then I found myself thinking about it constantly over the next few hours anyway, until I got to the point where I was actually happy to start it over again.

Got around to finishing it, probably a GOTY contender, only tiny complaint I had (and it's something I'm hyper sensitive to) was the anachronistic dialogue in places. But everything else about it was amazing.

I've been playing Type Help at work lol. It's pretty fun. I'm curious what I was supposed to do for the hangman puzzle

spoiler: hangman puzzle is unsolvable. if you haven't found the dream that @ mentions, think of what its filename would be.

Crashlands 2!

Oh man, <i>Type Help</i> was amazing, I loved it. Such fun storytelling. GOTY contender for sure.

What helps so much for me is that the input was limited; some stuff could be brute-forced but you still needed to piece it together yourself.

What gets me to give up on a lot of adventure games is that there's too many objects and locations to possibly click through - that's why I've shied away from stuff like Obra Dinn.
Maybe I should give it a shot. Tunic had a great world but I gave up really fast and resorted to guides early which probably ruined the experience somewhat.

I think Obra Dinn is pretty comparable to Type Help in scope. Other than basic nautical terminology, everything you need to know is in the game, and there isn't a ton of stuff to review. There's only 60 dead people, so there's their scenes plus a few supporting illustrations in the book.

Blue Prince: I was worried that the first demo revealed too much of the game, and yes, it did. (It was supposed to be limited to 3 days in-game, but you could keep starting over and the game would throw in the more exotic rooms that usually take 5+ days to find.) I think I'm past the majority of the demo content now, with some new areas open.

Getting permanent unlocks speeds things up compared to the demo. It looks like there's a way to remove the resource management elements, eventually -- spoiler: <h>grind for stars then spincycle them with allowance, then buy the fancy key that unlocks all doors.</h>.

failed spoiler tags, sorry.

BLUE PRINCE rules. this is ilx game of the year type stuff. it should have its own thread. actually you know what

its april 2025 and game of the year already came out. it's the BLUE PRINCE thread

post-blue prince gaming

-went back to Lonely Mountains Snow Riders since they added a 4th mountain, the lack of which was my only gripe about the game. it's a really pretty one too, probably my favorite of the 4. i've cleared all the single player challenges at this point but i'm still enjoying going back to this and improving my time trial times. good game

-Look Outside, a survival horror RPGmaker game with some really grotesque pixel art. i don't know if i'm going to get a good ending in this, you have 15 in-game days to accomplish something but i spent the first week mostly getting wrecked in fights and then playing video games in my apartment for the rest of the day until i could sleep it off. i imagine this is how the apocalypse would go for me IRL too. starting to make some progress now but running out of time. really claustrophobic and feelbad game, in a cool way.

-I finally booted up Hades since i'm feeling better about new-school style roguelikes lately. that game gets its hooks in you real fast huh

-I also played Nubby's Number Factory which gave me the same general experience as Balatro where i had fun for 10 hours and then felt done with it even though it's easy to see how someone could sink 100 hours. love the cursed windows 95 era aesthetic of this

-played the first 15 hours of The Hundred Line, the new game from Kazutaka Kodaka (Danganronpa) and Kotaro Uchikoshi (Zero Escape). this starts off with basically a full-length version of the Danganronpa Tactics game it looked like in promos, which I haven't finished yet, but my understanding is once you do you get the zero escape VN flowchart and it goes absolutely insane in scope. looking forward to that. i already like this first route more than the Danganronpa games, turns out tactics is a great fit compared to detective stuff which kodaka was never as good at writing as his ace attorney peers imo.

I thought the Danganronpa detective stuff was more than solid tbh but I'm looking forward to Hundred Line, I've been needing a new Danganlike for ages

i still enjoyed them but i would rate them below pretty much every ace attorney game in mystery writing

the appeal was always that they add the sci-fi mystery box intrigue stuff on top of that which is still very much present here. and i'm not even convinced this game isn't hiding some actual detective stuff in another route, there's a wannabe detective character already

oh i also started Yakuza 7. it's yakuza. the turn based combat really doesn't change the experience much, it's not a crunchy enough system to do so

I’ve also been playing Yakuza (7): Like a Dragon. After burning through the first 11 chapters, I got hung up on a grindy difficulty spike in chapter 12 that resulted in a month long break. I just got past it though and hope to clear the rest of it soon. Incredible game.

-I finally booted up Hades since i'm feeling better about new-school style roguelikes lately. that game gets its hooks in you real fast huh

Oh boy Hades 2 is going to be out soonish and I'm already going to have to drop off the face of the earth a few nights for that

i can't marathon mashy action games like i can RPGs, my hands cramp up after a bit. but i did play like 7 hours of it this weekend

Sony should make a controller for me that's identical to a dualshock but 20% larger

I thought the Danganronpa detective stuff was more than solid tbh but I'm looking forward to Hundred Line, I've been needing a new Danganlike for ages

― i got bao-yu babe (Noodle Vague), Sunday, May 4, 2025 10:34 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ive been on hundred line for a couple of days now, im enjoying it well enough but i will wait until the end before i give it the Danganronpa Stamp Of Approval & Despair (if youve played dgr u get why you kinda gotta wait for the ending to have a take)

intrigued by Drop Duchy which asks the question we've all long been wondering: what if Carcassonne was Tetris?

answers, rather

Fünf Stäbe. Really enjoying this and Imbroglio, not a fan of the other Broughs.