The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

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I recently picked up the online version of Scythe (on sale at steam for $8 until 1/2).
It's pretty cool and pretty odd. Much of it is logistical planning the order of your actions. The first half the game is mostly solitaire as there isn't much interaction between players until they build up and become mobile. The faction you play and the order board you wind up with adds a bit of variety.

Worth $8. I'm not sure I would pay $64 for the boardgame as I can see it wouldn't get played with my family and there are lots of little pieces to pick up and put down every turn.
 
I've only done the first hour or so, but I can tell I'm going to like Disco Elysium. It's one of those "you're gonna be doing a lot of reading" type of CRPG's, and the text I've read so far is fascinating in a weird sort of way.

I'm also very near the end of Anime Cop Simulator and it's stayed good the entire way through - every level mixes things up and has at least one new idea in it, which I really appreciate given how many "big" games run out during their first act.
 
Started Witcher 3, mostly because hey huge sale on Steam and everyone says if you love open world RPGs you should play it and...

Honestly, it isn't bad. It isn't that I dislike it. It's just that it misses what I like about open world rpgs.

I can play anything I want, as long as that thing is a stonefaced Witcher swordsman who is named Geralt of Rivia and has three tons of backstory.

It's fun. It just isn't the same thing you know. Also, I dislike that the "open world" isn't open and is instead a bunch of zones.

And while good combat isn't a must (I mean I like Skyrim a lot and look at the combat in that game), the combat in Witcher 3 feels stiff and awful. I keep missing parries for the sole reason that I swear you have to have stood still for an entire second before you can input another command.

And the UI and menus are straight garbage.

There are some positives I'll admit: I like hunting monsters and having to actually discover things to hunt them (like figuring out what happened to create a noonwraith at one point so I could summon it to fight it). The focus on consumables and crafting them is neat. The writing and voice acting is very well done. And I'm sure there is a mountain of content.

But I just can't fathom the hordes of people who act like this is the best game ever made. It's fine. It is fun. But holy hell I don't understand the fanatics at all.
 
I finally got around to getting Outer Worlds. I was afraid it was going to be Fallout but with more roaming since there are multiple planets and I wasnt far off so far. I'm still on the first planet but so far I like it slightly more than fallout which I've only played one of in the series (Fallout 4).
I was pleasantly surprised by the game so far with the beautiful planet details and playability reminding me of Skyrim more than Fallout though the story and style are decidedly Falloutish with its sleep stasis intro and what not.
I would actually recommend the game.
 
I can play anything I want, as long as that thing is a stonefaced Witcher swordsman who is named Geralt of Rivia and has three tons of backstory.
Yea, I don't consider a game a true crpg unless you can fully customize your character: abilities, look, and equipment. This goes for most jrpgs as well. They can be fun but it isn't the same when you are playing through someone else's story.
 
Yea, I don't consider a game a true crpg unless you can fully customize your character: abilities, look, and equipment. This goes for most jrpgs as well. They can be fun but it isn't the same when you are playing through someone else's story.

I'm fine with it in more linear story driven RPGs, because I play those type of games to play a story.

WIth Open World RPGs I play to run around and be the character I want to be.

(Even in the case of Open World games in general, I'm fine with a defined character, as long as its an open world action game and isn't trying to be an RPG. I quite like Horizon: Zero Dawn for instance. (Also H:ZD has crazy good gameplay mechanics, which helps))

Hell, even if that was my only complaint (that I could only be Geralt) I would probably still hold it up as an amazing game. But the plethora of other issues. The controls, the combat, the menus, the UX, I just don't know if I'm going to want to keep going to see more of the good parts.
 
I finally got around to getting Outer Worlds. I was afraid it was going to be Fallout but with more roaming since there are multiple planets and I wasnt far off so far. I'm still on the first planet but so far I like it slightly more than fallout which I've only played one of in the series (Fallout 4).
I was pleasantly surprised by the game so far with the beautiful planet details and playability reminding me of Skyrim more than Fallout though the story and style are decidedly Falloutish with its sleep stasis intro and what not.
I would actually recommend the game.
I always imagine Outer Worlds is like Fallout and Borderlands had a child together. I love Fallout. Borderlands isn't my type of game but I appreciate its visuals. What I've seen of Outer Worlds is visually stunning.
 
Started Witcher 3, mostly because hey huge sale on Steam and everyone says if you love open world RPGs you should play it and...

Honestly, it isn't bad. It isn't that I dislike it. It's just that it misses what I like about open world rpgs.

I can play anything I want, as long as that thing is a stonefaced Witcher swordsman who is named Geralt of Rivia and has three tons of backstory.

It's fun. It just isn't the same thing you know. Also, I dislike that the "open world" isn't open and is instead a bunch of zones.

And while good combat isn't a must (I mean I like Skyrim a lot and look at the combat in that game), the combat in Witcher 3 feels stiff and awful. I keep missing parries for the sole reason that I swear you have to have stood still for an entire second before you can input another command.

And the UI and menus are straight garbage.

There are some positives I'll admit: I like hunting monsters and having to actually discover things to hunt them (like figuring out what happened to create a noonwraith at one point so I could summon it to fight it). The focus on consumables and crafting them is neat. The writing and voice acting is very well done. And I'm sure there is a mountain of content.

But I just can't fathom the hordes of people who act like this is the best game ever made. It's fine. It is fun. But holy hell I don't understand the fanatics at all.

I was lukewarm on it til I encountered two excellent side quests that were really fascinating and fun, it is too bad I had to suffer through so much piss poor combat to get to them.
 
I finished Life is Strange 2. All in all, I found it to be kinda meh. It's fine, but the side characters suffer from the whole thing being a road movie so you never get to know them beyond their initial broad stereotypes - and of course, that also means that some of them are Good and some of them are Bad without any of the shades of grey that you see in the other games. There are a couple of properly flawed-but-sympathetic characters, but disappointingly few. And even the main characters are pretty flat. Max was always more than just her powers, and Chloe was interesting enough to support a whole game on her own, (almost) entirely without superpowers and murder mysteries, but Sean and Daniel? Five episodes, and I still don't think I could describe them beyond "a pair of hispanic brothers who's on the run because one of them have telekinesis that got out of control."

It doesn't help that for that matter, telekinesis is just about he most generic, brute-force superpower there is. Max's time powers felt like an extension of her tendency to dither and want do-overs to everything, and Rachel's (implied) pyrokinesis was an extension of her being passionate, fascinating and ultimately descructive (and self-destructive). Daniel... can move stuff around with his mind. What's that supposed to tell me, except maybe that he's energetic and wants everything his own way, just like every other pre-teen boy ever?
 
I was lukewarm on it til I encountered two excellent side quests that were really fascinating and fun, it is too bad I had to suffer through so much piss poor combat to get to them.
My wife doesn't agree about the piss poorness of the combat at all. She says it's not easy because you need to be precise. You can't just mash away on the buttons. Not that that's necessarily what you are doing. I don't know it myself as I haven't played the game, but she is an experienced gamer so her opinion should hold at least some value.
 
I found the combat in Witcher 3 to be better when I went into settings and selected the alternate controls option.

Rob
 
Witcher 3's gameplay is some of the best I've ever seen. I beat multiple enemies well above my level by outplaying the game, rather than being more powerful than the fight.

Just finished the story on Days Gone. LOVE that game. Underrated gem. Now in the post game. Also started Jedi: Fallen Order.

On Steam, I've gotten hooked on Lords of Waterdeep and The Lord of the Rings Adventure Cad Game.
 
Video Gamers are so predictable. "The gameplay in X isn't great" "You just don't like it cause you suck at it and you mash buttons".

Witcher 3 isn't DIFFICULT. The complaint I have was never in not being able to do it, but in how bad it feels while doing it.

One example of this is Geralt has a lot of different animations for his light attacks. These animations are different lengths, and vary slightly in range. Which one will you get when you hit the light attack button? It's random.

I also dropped parrying almost altogether because dodging is 100% better. Both the actual dodge button and the roll.
 
That's fine that you don't like it...I'm just saying it was my favorite game to *play*, because of the *gameplay*. And, for whatever reason, it worked for me because I routinely punched above my weight class in that game (as opposed to Witcher 2, which laughed at me in the tutorial and then held my hand for the rest of the game).

On the other hand, my son mocks me because he's ran through the Dark Souls games and Bloodbourne several times, and I give up after an hour.
 
Just started Etrian Odyssey Nexus today. Love the mechanics as you fiddle with the different classes in the party and whether they work best in the front line or in the back and how to allocate points for the best combos, all just just lovely.
 
My wife doesn't agree about the piss poorness of the combat at all. She says it's not easy because you need to be precise. You can't just mash away on the buttons. Not that that's necessarily what you are doing. I don't know it myself as I haven't played the game, but she is an experienced gamer so her opinion should hold at least some value.

Coming off the Soulsborne games it feels very clunky and actually I find that just rolling and button mashing does get me through most fights. Maybe if I turned it up to Max Difficulty it would be more engaging.
 
Coming off the Soulsborne games it feels very clunky and actually I find that just rolling and button mashing does get me through most fights. Maybe if I turned it up to Max Difficulty it would be more engaging.

Honestly this has been my experience as well. Parrying is too imprecise, his swings are too random to plan too far ahead. I just roll and swing roll and swing.

Though on Soulsborne games I have my own complaints but its never about the games MECHANICS, I think that they are very well designed games with very good combat. I just think they are stupidly obtuse about explaining it to you. To such a degree that the difficulty of the game is learning how to control your character, not the actul combat. (Seriously, in Bloodborne I remember not even being able to figure out what the different stats affect because it asks you to assign points to stats without giving you information on what the stats did).

My general comparison for "good combat" though is Horizon: Zero Dawn. 1. The animation system is so fluid it is amazing. Going from one motion to another never feels jerky. 2. The key to being good at the game is learning how to take things down, what status effects work well against which enemies, which weakpoints correspond to which attacks, etc etc. The first time I ran into a Thunderjaw it was frightening. Once I figured out how to approach it though, it became more about outsmarting it than just plunking it with a million arrows.

Hell, even things like scrappers in the beginning. They were scary at first. But once you KNOW how to deal with them they are surprisingly easy to deal with. But its about learning the tricks, not about endlessly swinging/shooting at things.
 
They released Civ 6 on PS4. This is a good thing. I fucking hate barbarians. Why can't these highly advanced fuckers leave me alone. What do I have they could possibly want: they already know spear technology and have boats raiding the coast. This makes no sense
 
They released Civ 6 on PS4. This is a good thing. I fucking hate barbarians. Why can't these highly advanced fuckers leave me alone. What do I have they could possibly want: they already know spear technology and have boats raiding the coast. This makes no sense
You are supposed to hate the barbarians though. If you didn't hate them, they wouldn't be doing their job right.

As for their tech progression, I haven't had an issue with it in my games. Boats and spears are both on the bottom tier of the tech tree anyway.
 
You are supposed to hate the barbarians though. If you didn't hate them, they wouldn't be doing their job right.

As for their tech progression, I haven't had an issue with it in my games. Boats and spears are both on the bottom tier of the tech tree anyway.
In Civ 1 I would go out of my way to let the barbarians take one city and then contain them by placing guarded fortresses around it but allow them to improve their city. :goof:
 
Picked up the Fallen Order and surprised to find its combat system borrows liberally from Dark Souls and its parkour from Uncharted. But if the original film was a pastiche of other films why not the video game? I also like that so far it seems free of silly attempts to connect the game to familiar characters and icons from the original films.

 
Shadow of the Tomb Raider

I'm liking it a lot for a few reasons:

1. It always provides hints about which buttons/keys to press (because I'm an idiot who just can't remember these things)

2. It is teaching me tons about the Maya, Aztecs and Inca (really fun companion to the scholarly tome I'm arduously working through right now on the Maya)

3. It provides flexible difficulty dials (wanna make exploration more difficult, but combat easier? no problem!)

A great game, even though it gets a bit saccharine at times.
 
Aaaaaarggggh, it's no use! I give up!

I just tried doing the Orc campaign in Total War: Warhammer for the umpteenth time. It always ends the same, with me completely disheveled and being utterly destroyed.

I just have to face facts. I am simply Not Orky Enuff. :sad:
 
Spent the weekend getting over a cold with with chicken soup and playing Etrian Odyessey Nexus. I'm mostly over the cold and I got to the third labyrinth so a productive weekend overall.
 
Anyone tried Phoenix point yet? I was going to buy it as I love me some X Com (though I never did finish the fiendishly difficult original DOS games. Didn't stop me from loving them) and finished the firaxis games (which I also loved). However bug repoorts and having to get through a different store front rather than Steam have put me off. Just wondering if anyone can sell me on it...
 
I bought these two during the Playstation Store sale for the PS4, and had a great time with them over the past two weeks:

Riddled Corpses EX
Shakedown: Hawaii

Riddled Corpses is a retro style twin stick shooter with some grinding/levelup elements. It reminded me a bit of the old arcade game Total Carnage. In terms of retro style, I could easily imagine it being a niche retail game back in the last 90s/PS1 era. About my only complaint about it was that it was too short, and felt like there should be a few more unlocks and another level or two. On the plus side, it clearly knows it's an arcade style twin stick shooter, and doesn't outstay it's welcome. At $2 it was a fantastic deal.

Shakedown: Hawaii is like an update of the old 2d GTA games which were on the original PS1. The whole game is presented in a retro style which makes me strongly think of some kind of alternate universe Sierra type game of the early 90s. The game is nominally a twin stick shooter, albeit with a sandbox world as well as a basic real estate sim tacked on. The game has a story with a cynical and sarcastic style of humor which clicks perfectly with me. It wasn't much of a challenge based game. Gameplay was more based on just goofing off and having a good time while enjoying the ridiculous story. That was perfectly fine with me.

In terms of flaws, Shakedown's story was maybe just a hair too long. In addition the real estate sim became almost completely redundant before I was even a third of the way through the game. The only thing for me to do was to watch my funds explode, and money was never an issue again. This was great in terms of the sandboxy/do-what-I-want aspect, but it did make it feel like an interesting component of the game had just become obsolete. Then, as the game wears on and you gain more and more options to increase your revenue, it all starts to seem a bit pointless and tedious. Then again, maybe that's the point. The game is not at all subtle with its parody of corporate excesses and callousness in the quest for maximizing profit.

I got Shakedown: Hawaii on sale for about $10. I loved it. At that price it was another absolute steal.

I'm thinking about either moving on to Bards Tale Trilogy Remastered or Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered next.
 
My son and I have been playing Fire Emblem games. We've finished Fates and Awakening and just started 3 houses. As crpgs, they aren't that great. No customization beyond appearance, very few decisions on advancement. Where they shine is as mid complexity skirmish games. You have a unit of 10-15 characters with different weapons and abilities, plus different weaknesses. Magic and missile weapons have range which gives you brief standoff capability. Swords/lances/axes are in rock/paper/scissors situation. Position matters. You have to keep characters out of range of attacks they're vulnerable to. Each chapter is a different battlefield, some of which are interesting and tricky. Good games for spending 20 minutes having a skirmish battle with something that is engaging but not complex to the level of being mentally draining.

There's romance and talky stuff - mostly cut scenes but 3 Houses has better options so far. They're cute but easy to skip past.

We've had a switch for a while but this is the first I've really used it as a handheld. The visual quality between 3 houses and the others (on a 2Ds) is huge. The Switch is a tad heavy and wide for a handheld but the upgrade in the size and quality of the screen is huge. I think it's also a big step up in memory and processing power which unlocks more possibilities for designers; for example, this is the first fire emblem with full voice acting.
 
Finished the Star Trek 25th Anniversary game. It has the original cast doing the voices and original series sounds and effects. Controls are a bit funny but you get used to them. It constitutes the 4th year of their five year mission. Simple enough point and click that takes about 3-5 hours depending on how completionist you want to be. Nothing amazing but a nice little romp if you're a fan of Star Trek.

re2.jpg
 
Civ 5... Much better than civ 4

How dare you! j'k

Civ4 is *by far* my favorite edition. I prefer Civ 6 to Civ 5... but I love all three.


As for me - currently

PC
Vermintide II
- I'm back, rat-faced-rotblood scum! Fatshark fixed all the issues in with their Winds of Magic DLC - so me and my team are back slugging it out in Legendary mode. Glorious game. It makes me actually *sweat* playing it (but only on Legendary mode).

Domina - Little indy game that is pixel-graphics gladiatorial arena manager. Really fun.

The Cycle - It's like Overwatch, and Fortnite had a baby with Borderlands. It works. Don't know how... but it does. Damn fun. (surprisingly so - since I detest the Battle Royale fad.)

Battlefield 4 - Still the best pound-for-pound FPS game imo. Shockingly large population still going very strong.

Console
Days Gone - yeah! this is a lovely game. I'm enjoying the story a lot.

Fallen Order - Cool story. I *like* hard games. But there is a criticism I have about this game: it's unnecessarily hard in context for what a Jedi should be. Granted you're not supposed to be a full blown Jedi, but on Hard mode even then I think that the fights are skewed more towards making the game TOO much like Dark Souls and it's difficult for difficulty's sake. I don't feel like a Jedi as much as a guy running around playing Dark Souls with a lightsaber and a few nifty magic tricks. It's a cool game, but something about it rubs me wrong contextually between the gameplay and the setting.
 
How dare you! j'k

Civ4 is *by far* my favorite edition. I prefer Civ 6 to Civ 5... but I love all three.


As for me - currently

PC
Vermintide II
- I'm back, rat-faced-rotblood scum! Fatshark fixed all the issues in with their Winds of Magic DLC - so me and my team are back slugging it out in Legendary mode. Glorious game. It makes me actually *sweat* playing it (but only on Legendary mode).

Domina - Little indy game that is pixel-graphics gladiatorial arena manager. Really fun.

The Cycle - It's like Overwatch, and Fortnite had a baby with Borderlands. It works. Don't know how... but it does. Damn fun. (surprisingly so - since I detest the Battle Royale fad.)

Battlefield 4 - Still the best pound-for-pound FPS game imo. Shockingly large population still going very strong.

Console
Days Gone - yeah! this is a lovely game. I'm enjoying the story a lot.

Fallen Order - Cool story. I *like* hard games. But there is a criticism I have about this game: it's unnecessarily hard in context for what a Jedi should be. Granted you're not supposed to be a full blown Jedi, but on Hard mode even then I think that the fights are skewed more towards making the game TOO much like Dark Souls and it's difficult for difficulty's sake. I don't feel like a Jedi as much as a guy running around playing Dark Souls with a lightsaber and a few nifty magic tricks. It's a cool game, but something about it rubs me wrong contextually between the gameplay and the setting.
Fair enough. I just found 4 to lack depth and be too skirmish focussed. Played a few hours and never went back. Civ 5 is an instant classic for me.
 
Fair enough. I just found 4 to lack depth and be too skirmish focussed. Played a few hours and never went back. Civ 5 is an instant classic for me.
You try 6? I'm curious to know what you think about it. I feel 6 did a lot to clean up stuff I didn't like in 5... and it took a LOT of 5's elements to its core.

That's funny that you say 4 is "too skirmish" - it's *definitely* more conquest, but for me "skirmish" denotes lots distinct units doing very specific stuff. The fact that 4 does Unit Stacking makes it feel more like a conquest game of fast-mass combat. 5 and 6 without unit-stacking feels like what I think of as a "skirmish" game where conquest requires more tactical combat like in an actual wargame. I also think it highly discourages Conquest style play (which is fine, but I think it's too de-emphasized, almost punishing the way it's implemented in 5, especially in the early game.

6 does a LOT to ease that, but they added other things to balance it. I've become fond of their city-building... but at times it seems... "gimmicky*? but that doesn't feel quite right since gimmicks denote a mechanic that is an afterthought, when it clearly is super important.
 
You try 6? I'm curious to know what you think about it. I feel 6 did a lot to clean up stuff I didn't like in 5... and it took a LOT of 5's elements to its core.

That's funny that you say 4 is "too skirmish" - it's *definitely* more conquest, but for me "skirmish" denotes lots distinct units doing very specific stuff. The fact that 4 does Unit Stacking makes it feel more like a conquest game of fast-mass combat. 5 and 6 without unit-stacking feels like what I think of as a "skirmish" game where conquest requires more tactical combat like in an actual wargame. I also think it highly discourages Conquest style play (which is fine, but I think it's too de-emphasized, almost punishing the way it's implemented in 5, especially in the early game.

6 does a LOT to ease that, but they added other things to balance it. I've become fond of their city-building... but at times it seems... "gimmicky*? but that doesn't feel quite right since gimmicks denote a mechanic that is an afterthought, when it clearly is super important.

I haven't tried 6. I sort of got away from Civ after 4 and colonization. Maybe I didn't give 4 a fair shake, but to me it seemed the world was too small, the City footprints too big, and the game-play too rushed. I felt like I was getting squeezed by conflict when all I wanted to do was build up a bit first.
In 5, I have time to grow and then combat comes at a more natural pace.
 
Civ 6 is almost different game from the rest of the series, no? I'm beginning to play it now and coming from other 4x (Endless Legend, Civ4, Alpha Centauri, etc) it feels more like a building and management game then a full blown 4X. Which is good, I was a bit tired of the formula.
 
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Currently being played by my wife: Horizon Zero Dawn, final DLC of Nioh, Slay the Spire, Radiant Historia, Link's Awakening.

Next in the pipeline: Dragon's Crown pro.

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Horizon Zero Dawn is fantastic. The aesthetic and worldbuilding are fun, and the gameplay is IMO one of the best action mechanics ever. I like how much it focuses on understanding your enemies and picking the right tool for the job, rather than just plunking enemies a hundred times.
 
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