The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

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yeah and just like that... it's gone.

Shame.
 
This is why I've forbidden myself from spending any money on MMO's, they gotta shut down eventually.
I also get bored grinding and leveling and such.
That being said I've only ever played Runescape and The Elder Scrolls Online, so what do I know? :clown:
 
A large part of the reason I played City of Heroes so long was the player base. Absolutely the friendliest people I've ever dealt with online. It really isn't a good thing that this was ripped out from under them yet again.
 
The guy behind the original secret server is a jerk. He tweeted that he will help anyone "that won't fold to a C&D" set up a new server within twelve hours.
 
The guy behind the original secret server is a jerk. He tweeted that he will help anyone "that won't fold to a C&D" set up a new server within twelve hours.
That's an extremely poor idea, but it sounds like the guy is very emotional right now (I assume we're talking about the guy from your second quote). It sounds very sad. Anyone willing to throw their life away for a game - no matter how awesome - must not have a lot to live for.
 
That's an extremely poor idea, but it sounds like the guy is very emotional right now (I assume we're talking about the guy from your second quote). It sounds very sad. Anyone willing to throw their life away for a game - no matter how awesome - must not have a lot to live for.
Some people just don't appreciate what they have..


In other news I installed battlefield 5. Wife is out of town tonight so I should be on for a while if anyone is interested.

Alternately I could be convinced to start up Fantasy Grounds and host a game.
 
There are rumors circulating that the PlayStation 5 console will be released in November 2020 for $500 with no optical disc drive and a 2 TB hard drive, selling at a $100 loss. Those same rumors state that the DualShock 5 controller will contain a built-in camera. I really hope that rumor about the DualShock 5 controller is wrong. I suppose that we will see.
The Switch's right joycon contains an IR camera, and the left one contains an NFC reader, so it's not out of the realms of possibility. It's the rumours about the graphics capabilities from last week that seem ridiculous.

I also can't see a discless console launching as the main model until the next generation - potentially multiple models at launch, including one that is discless, yeah, but not as the only one.
 
Rumor now is that the lead systems engineer for the City of Heroes rogue server (the person actually responsible for the server), somehow heard that a Cease and Desist was on the way, panicked, and deleted the whole server... before they actually received anything. They're trying to get the server back up now.

Also, the game server cost 'em $2,500.00.
 
Anyone playing Sekiro? I enjoy it a lot, but have you ever been intimidated by a game that you enjoy? It's a toughie. There are three or four minibosses that I have tabled until I git gudder.

I’m making some real progress, just completed Sunken Valley. Cleared out all the mini-bosses who honestly can often be tougher to beat than the bosses! I think it is best to spend time doing so before tackling Lady Butterfly and General Genchiro Ashina.

One prosthetic item that makes several fights far easier is the Loaded Umbrella - Magnet. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

This allows you to Deflect attacks far easier and build up Posture damage on some of the mini-bosses so quickly that I was able to beat them in two to three tries.

Jinsuke Saze in particular went from impossible to easy peasy once I figured this out. Centipede Sen’un also becomes easy once you use this and figure out his Perilous Attack tell (he backs up before his sweep if his back isn’t against a wall).

Also a lot of the mini-bosses can be chipped away at via the use of the Fistful of Ash. Seriously underrated, one use let’s you get in one or two good hits. Very useful for later in the fight when you’ve got them on the ropes and have ran out of Spirit Emblems.

The most difficult mini-boss in my opinion is the spear guy in the Ashina Reservoir, back where you first meet with the Divine Heir. I cheesed the fuck out of him by using oil, spring loaded Fire Vent and my grappling hook on the cliffs to keep him the hell away from me. Finished him off with some good old Fistful of Ash.

And remember that the majority of the mini-bosses can be stealthed and backstabbed taking off one Red Bar before the fight begins.

In general I like to stealth through a level first and sometimes if it seems really ganky (aka. Sunken Valley) even do the classic Dark Soul’s run through and then come back and stealth kill the majority of my previous harassers.

Oh and don’t bother with the Supernatural boss in the Abandoned Dungeon or Headless until you’ve unlocked infinite Divine Confetti with one of the merchants because it is just a waste of resources.
 
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I’m making some real progress, just completed Sunken Valley.
I'm just a step behind you, finishing up Senpou Temple.
Jinsuke Saze in particular went from impossible to easy peasy once I figured this out. Centipede Sen’un also becomes easy once you use this and figure out his Perilous Attack tell (he backs up before his sweep if his back isn’t against a wall).
Jinsuke was a bitch, but I got him with a very mobile evasive approach. Sen'un is up next, and I had heard about the magnet umbrella with him, so I have just obtained the upgrade. He looks pretty easy with that approach; the first time I fought him, I was able to withdraw when it started going poorly.
The most difficult mini-boss in my opinion is the spear guy in the Ashina Reservoir
He's one of the guys I'm going to come back to. Also those purple ninjas overwhelm me every time.

Lady Butterfly probably comes after Sen'un. I tried her last time and got pretty close. If I had known when to evade her butterfly attacks after the first takedown, I probably would have succeeded. I had it figured out by the end of the fight, but I had already used up too many gourds.

I've also heard about the Headless and Divine Confetti - I have a few, but not an infinite supply. I'm in no rush to find out what happens with those guys.

I'm just starting to get the hang of the game, and I have to admit I've been watching a lot of FightinCowboy. Usually after I get handily spanked in a new area.
 
Yeah, word is NCSoft is willing to make these servers legal as long as all traces of the player characters database that was stolen and given to the Titan Network bigwig are deleted.

It's up to 14,000 registered players now. It's insane, in a good way.
I enjoyed the game for what it was, but I wouldn't say it was terribly deep. There didn't seem much synergy in the abilities. The setting and superhero vibe was cool though
 
The City of Heroes drama continues.

There was never a Cease & Desist from NCSoft. There are multiple rumors circulating, but what most people consider accurate is that a troll went into the City of Heroes Discord (which is headquarters for the rogue CoH server) yesterday, and proclaimed that a Cease & Desist from NCSoft was "imminent." The lead systems engineer for the rogue CoH server panicked, completely wiped the CoH game server, and then ghosted the other admins. People began to panic and blame NCSoft. Some began to DDoS various NCSoft servers. A couple of hours later, 4chan trolls caught the blood scent and flooded the CoH Discord to the point that the CoH Discord admins had to temporarily shut it down last night. It was a mess. During all this, someone started a second CoH Reddit and a second CoH Discord because they didn't agree with how the original CoH Discord admins ran it nor how they handled the 4chan troll flood.

Now the admins of the original CoH Discord are trying to pick up the pieces and try to get a new game server going. We'll see. Now we have at least two CoH reddits and two CoH Discord servers, so it's going to be even more difficult.
 
I remember there was a couple of months way back in the 80s when I thought Karate Champ was da bomb. It wasn't on the scale of games like Joust (where I'd get $5 of quarters and just park at the machine) or the later Super Dodge Ball (where I'd get $20 of quarters and my friend and I would own the machine all evening), but Karate Champ was definitely one I pumped quite a bit of change into.

The only place I ever saw it was at the local 7-11. I don't recall the local arcades ever having the machine. Or maybe the novelty had worn off by the time I saw it at the arcade. I remember I was completely unimpressed with the port to the C64 to the point where I thought it was a crap game. I also remember the game being older than 1984. But whatever, the game burned brightly and very briefly in my thoughts of most awesome thing ever at some point in my early teens.
 
Karate Champ was about the highest level of joystick complication I could master.
Karate%20Champ%20(Arcade)_jpg.png
Does anyone recall an arcade game that was like Vikings or some kind of barbarians playing football, where you could punch the other player's team members and stab them to get the ball away? I have no idea what it was called as we always just referred to it as "Barbarian Brothers Football."

Edit: found it, it was called Pigskin 621 A.D. We played the hell out of that game.
pigskin-01.png
 
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Does anyone recall an arcade game that was like Vikings or some kind of barbarians playing football, where you could punch the other player's team members and stab them to get the ball away? I have no idea what it was called as we always just referred to it as "Barbarian Brothers Football."

Edit: found it, it was called Pigskin 621 A.D. We played the hell out of that game.

I didn't know there was an arcade version of that game. On the Genesis it was called Pigskin Footbrawl. I never played it but the screenshots and title made and impression.
 
I've been playing City of Heroes the past two days to take my mind off the pain. When the game shut down six and a half years ago, about a month later the hard drive on my computer died. I lost all of my screenshots, my character builds, years of chat log files, everything. I've learned my lesson and back up everything four times now, (three external hard drives, and the cloud). It really hurt. So now I'm screenshotting everything that is mildly "important."
 
I’m making some real progress, just completed Sunken Valley. Cleared out all the mini-bosses who honestly can often be tougher to beat than the bosses!
I just cleared out all the bosses and mini-bosses up until the second meeting with Genichiro. I have only dabbled in Sunken Valley, because I get the impression that it's intended to be tackled more after that boss is finished off. Those shotgun microbosses are a pain in the ass.
One prosthetic item that makes several fights far easier is the Loaded Umbrella - Magnet. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
You're not the only one who said this, and I tried it several times against Su'un. I'm just not using it right.

However, this has led me to take a more deflection-oriented style overall, and I've been getting a lot better with it. I was able to beat that guy with standard swordsmanship, though it takes a while to get used to his sweeping perilous.
The most difficult mini-boss in my opinion is the spear guy in the Ashina Reservoir, back where you first meet with the Divine Heir.
I had a really hard time with him as well. What finally worked for me - would you believe it? - was the prosthetic ax. This absolutely wrecked his posture, and it also powers completely through his sweeping perilous. Combined with a few mikiri counters, his posture is quickly demolished.

I got this tip from a cheese guide that recommended a strict alternation of R1-R1-[Prosthetic ax]. I found that this didn't actually work for me, but instead it worked by integrating the ax into a non-cheese strategy. The same goes for my fight with Lady Butterfly and the recommendation to cheese her with nightjar slash combat art - spamming it didn't work for me, but it was very helpful when combined with a more dynamic approach.

I went back to the dojo level of Ashina Castle, just prior to the big boss fight, and I tested my new level of skill (and Skills) on the blue-robed swordsmen of the preceding level. I was very pleased to find myself able to clear out the level without spending a single gourd. This is a really deep game in terms of player skill.

I'm starting to agree with people who have been saying that Sekiro's combat is richer and deeper than the Soulsborne games. It's not that I disbelieved them before so much as the fact that I'm starting to personally experience it now. It's definitely bringing something new to the table.
 
I've been playing Subnautica.

This morning I was deep in the Sparse Reef biome, where it's pitch black, there's a grinding from down below and you can hear a deep, rhythmic thudding like god's own heartbeat. As the computer announces: "This environment contains seven of the nine preconditions to inspire terror in human beings". Moments later a warper yanked me out of my sub without bothering to open it first and did something weird which hurt and cracked my face mask.

At that point my SO tapped me on the shoulder. I NEARLY FUCKING WET MYSELF.
 
I've been playing City of Heroes every day since this past Wednesday. It's been a blast. My old supergroup/guild/whatever the kids call it today from 2008 through 2012 finally got together. We played in an eight person team in game and on voice chat in Discord Saturday night. Four people from California, myself from Pennsylvania, someone from Maryland, one from Illinois, and another from Australia. It honestly felt like The Magnificent Seven rides again.

NCsoft could of course make this all go away again at a moment's notice, so I'm trying to enjoy it for every ounce that I can while it lasts. Why NCsoft killed off City of Heroes seven years ago, I'll never know.
 
NCsoft could of course make this all go away again at a moment's notice, so I'm trying to enjoy it for every ounce that I can while it lasts. Why NCsoft killed off City of Heroes seven years ago, I'll never know.
Superheroes are an American thing and NCSoft is a Korean company, so it wasn't as popular over there. Also, it was taking money from Blade and Soul, a game that they were more invested in. They looked at the financials and pulled the plug. Asian companies tend to want to keep their business within their own borders, always have. It's Western companies that want ALL the money in the world.

Anyway, I'm getting back into the Borderlands franchise, finishing off Hollow Knight, got a gift of a game called Touhou Luna Nights, which is a gorgeously sprite animated game, I think it's based off something, but I don't get the references. Among others.
 
So I lament that Battlefield went political with their game (I've been playing since BF1942, and my crew were Division 1 in BF3 and BF4)... so I've been wanting that mass-combat experience again... But then I got caught up in Vermintide II. Lord I loves me some Vermintide...

But now... my chocolate ended up in my peanut-butter!!

Mordhau has complete absorbed me

 
Mk11... a game, as they say, of two halves.

One half is a fun fighting game with some good ideas and a decent pace. It has its problems (teleport punch can die in a fucking burnign dumpster of flammable shit). The defensive options need seriously tweaking, but the core is good.

The other half is a fucking hot mess. It is an objectionable tedious grind based around random loot the sole purpose of which exists to solve a problem created to cause its existence in the first place. The Krypt is fucking tedium incarnate and you have to spend a small fortune to actually restock it because of the consumables you need to play the horrific AI matches that are stuffed full of horrendous modifiers. It is singularly and simply THE worst game mode I've seen in a long time. It is so unfun that it makes me giddy trying to conceive of why anyone would not only want this, but want to overwork their developers to create it.

Fuck NRS. Fuck Ed Boon. Fuck me for buying this.

As for the complaints made by the usual suspects, fuck them too.
 
Recently purchased Baba Is You. The game's brilliant, but it's unfortunately too brilliant for me; I desparately want to experience more of the game, but I've just about reached the extent of my ability to solve its puzzles.
 
So I lament that Battlefield went political with their game (I've been playing since BF1942, and my crew were Division 1 in BF3 and BF4)... so I've been wanting that mass-combat experience again... But then I got caught up in Vermintide II. Lord I loves me some Vermintide...

But now... my chocolate ended up in my peanut-butter!!

Mordhau has complete absorbed me


I'm happy that you can actually preform a Mordhau in the game Mordhau!
 
So I lament that Battlefield went political with their game (I've been playing since BF1942, and my crew were Division 1 in BF3 and BF4)... so I've been wanting that mass-combat experience again... But then I got caught up in Vermintide II. Lord I loves me some Vermintide...

But now... my chocolate ended up in my peanut-butter!!

Mordhau has complete absorbed me


Looks very interesting! How does it compare with For Honor (if any) ?
 
No comparison to For Honor. It seriously feels like Battlefield but completely Medieval. For Honor was more "arcadey" (not a bad thing at all) - Mordhau is *much* more kinetic and lethal. The combat system is a little more detailed - but once you add in itemization and armor, it completely transcends For Honor.

Plus there is mounted combat, siege weaponry, crossbows, bows, throwing axes, frying pans (I got killed by a guy bashing my skull in last night with a Frying Pan named Gordon_Ramsay), environmental issues, explosives (firebombs) etc. Tons of customization (or you can go with their very stout pre-set templates). You can also play in third-person for those of you that don't like first-person.

LazyPeon does an *excellent* review of the game in terms of what to expect.
 
I have realized... when I'm mounted in Mordhau...

I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.

For some reason people do not like fighting mounted. But it seems to come easy to me. That sweet sweet pass and I unfurl my pole-axe or bardiche and the wet-crunch tattoo as multiple heads go sailing through the air with crimson roostertails and ribbons erupt in their wake. Truly sublime.

Of course... getting dismounted by a pikeman and beaten death by a frying pan is commensurately unglorious too.
 
Anyone playing Sekiro? I enjoy it a lot, but have you ever been intimidated by a game that you enjoy? It's a toughie. There are three or four minibosses that I have tabled until I git gudder.
My wife finished it weeks (months?) ago. She liked it, but she prefers the gameplay of Soulsborne and Nioh.
 
Sekiro is the first Soulsborne (ish) I passed. Can't explain why but something in it didn't grab me. I think I'm a storyfag and Sekiro world looks kinda bland.

I'll surely get it on a sale, though.
 
I am temporarily paused on Sekiro, but I've been enjoying it a lot. The combat is the best thing about it; the rhythm of deflections and ripostes reminds me of a refined version of the counters of Batman and Shadow of Mordor. But lots more options and things that you need to react to intelligently.

The story is also quite good, but the atmosphere isn't quite as powerful as previous Soulsbornes. I think that's a consequence from setting it in the real world. The themes of From's stories are always very similar: learn to move on and accept mortality. When you don't, things stagnate and spiral downwards. Seriously, that's always the theme.
 
I have realized... when I'm mounted in Mordhau...

I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.

For some reason people do not like fighting mounted. But it seems to come easy to me. That sweet sweet pass and I unfurl my pole-axe or bardiche and the wet-crunch tattoo as multiple heads go sailing through the air with crimson roostertails and ribbons erupt in their wake. Truly sublime.

Of course... getting dismounted by a pikeman and beaten death by a frying pan is commensurately unglorious too.
"A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot. "
-John Steinbeck
 
WoW Classic beta goes live tomorrow. Release scheduled for 8/27. Be still my heart.
 
Sekiro is the first Soulsborne (ish) I passed. Can't explain why but something in it didn't grab me. I think I'm a storyfag and Sekiro world looks kinda bland.

I'll surely get it on a sale, though.

I think the story in Sekiro is more resonant than in any other Soulsborne game. I think the NPCs seem more vivid and real. The Buddhist themes hinted at in previous games are much more prominent here and carry more weight to me.

Although this is still my fav NPC in any of the games.

9200
 
The Doll from Bloodborne, right? The miniature got unlocked just before the Bloodborne Boardgame Kickstarter closed.
 
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