Currently Playing

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Abs_McBain
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Abs_McBain » Tue May 26, 2020 9:43 pm

I couldn't defeat the last boss in Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, so I YouTube'd the ending. I just ain't got the reflexes anymore to finish that kinda game. Overall it was kinda alright? I've also been putting some time into Forza Horizon 4. After a while I see a pattern of rubber banding AI and odd behaviour right at the end of a race. Really off putting, also is it just me or is the UK a boring place to set an open world racing\driving game? Sekiro is tough and I keep dying; in order to stop dying all the time I throw all defensive behaviour out the window and go all assault, which somehow works? I'll keep at it, the game looks like it's worth the effort. Wrapping up gaming with a VN called A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986. Can something be painfully nostalgic? It's weird yo, i've never been to Hong Kong yet visuals and audio just turn that nostalgia dial over 100.
The Wiki article on games set in HK is pretty short, it's a damn shame. The setting is brilliant and now with the current event unfolding I don't see many developers investing time and money in creating a game with a story in Hong Kong.

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DjchunKfunK
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by DjchunKfunK » Wed May 27, 2020 8:38 am

Sekiro is about going on the offensive so you should keep that up, it's not like previous From Software games where you can turtle up and wait for the right opportunity. I eventually hit a boss where it just wasn't fun anymore and I gave up but I got a fair amount of enjoyment out of it up to then.

Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Sun May 31, 2020 9:03 pm

Rossell wrote:
Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:50 am

The Last of Us

Argh. I'm ashamed to admit I've never finished this which is my task at the moment. It's brilliant, I'm just really crap at it.
Finally went back to this. Again. This time it's really clicked. Starting to enjoy it properly, still rubbish at it and the combat isn't brilliant but the story and atmosphere is great.

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Alan
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Alan » Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:31 am

Dicey Dungeons
I like this but I also dont think I'm going to spend much time playing on PC and wait for the tablet version instead. I feel will be a great mobile game. Its Slay The Spire Yahtzee btw.
A man who could tell more truth and eat fewer pies.

Me99
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Me99 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:33 pm

Space Haven
It's a sort of dwarf fortress lite thing in space. You have a small cutout spaceship which you expand to add weapons and stuff. Crew all have stats and traits and have mental breaks which these sorts of games have. It's alright, the graphics remind me a bit of the ships in the first xcom which I like. Its still early in early access but seems have alot of the ship building stuff working, plus fighting and boarding and alien infested derelict ships. Bit of FTL meets Oxygen not included.

Frost Punk
Quite an unusual city builder with a steam punk in the snow look. The levels are a race against a massive storm coming and freezing everyone to death. The cities are built around a massive coal powered heat generating tower which the early building huddle around to stop from freezing. you can send teams out into the snow to find resources and new people. You've also got a large selecting of laws to introduce to either keeps peoples moral and hope up or sacrifice living standards for better efficiency. Not the biggest game but it heavily discounted on steam now.

Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Wed Jun 03, 2020 8:00 am



First effort trying to coherently Web sling through manhattan. This game is brilliant.

Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Sun Jun 07, 2020 8:45 am

Rossell wrote:
Sun May 31, 2020 9:03 pm
Rossell wrote:
Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:50 am

The Last of Us

Argh. I'm ashamed to admit I've never finished this which is my task at the moment. It's brilliant, I'm just really crap at it.
Finally went back to this. Again. This time it's really clicked. Starting to enjoy it properly, still rubbish at it and the combat isn't brilliant but the story and atmosphere is great.
Final entry in this journal, finished it just. That is one of the best stories I have ever witnessed in a game. I remember some people here having trouble with the early part of the game and not moving forward, my advice is to persevere. It gets much better.

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Animalmother
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Animalmother » Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:19 am

Amazing game. If you have the dlc it's worth a look as well. It covers a bit you don't see in the game and has flashbacks with Ellie prior to the main story.

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Sly Boots
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:36 am

Been playing a bit over the past few weeks, will summarise some of them:

FM20

Out for Gamepass, so downloaded it. They've actually fixed the major issues I had with the match engine and quite enjoyed playing a few seasons. I don't tend to have the staying power with these games that I had in my youth so not sure if I'll go back to it, but if you've been holding off for technical reasons it's much better now than on launch.

Warhammer 40k Mechanicus

Picked this up in a recent sale for quite cheap. It's pretty good, a squad-based tactical battler thing in which as you level up you customise your troops with all manner of robotic add-ons. It's not quite XCOM, maybe more like Chimera Squad in that there's not really a strategic layer as such and you move directly from battle to battle pretty much, with some levelling up between missions.

Monster Train

This is excellent. It's basically Slay the Spire meets Hearthstone meets a tower defence game. It's a deck-builder where you're operating a train to relight the fires of hell. The train has three levels on which you can summon troops via cards in your deck, then enemies enter from the bottom floor and work their way up each combat round, trying to reach the top where they do direct damage to your 'pyre' (your hp, basically). There are five unlockable races, each of which have vastly different mechanics and playstyles, and come with a champion card who you get to upgrade a few times as you progress. Between fights you get the chance to upgrade monsters and spells, ditch cards, grab some gold or hp, duplicate cards or have a random event... all of which can have a dramatic impact on your run. There are also artifacts to collect, similar to StS, which again can have a major influence on the way you play. I can't tell if it's recency bias, but I think it may actually be better that StS. It's certainly at least on a par with it.

Baldur's Gate

I had a yin for another playthrough of this, and was pretty pleased to discover I already had the original, non-Beamdogged version in my GOG library, which since their Enhanced Edition you can no longer in fact buy. But anyway. It's been years since I played it, and decided to play a rogueish character. Needless to say I was thrilled to discover when you get caught stealing they summon the Candlekeep guards, who you can call "baldy virgins" and run away from (if you leave a room or area you cease to exist as far as the AI is concerned :lol:). I took a few beatings but accrued a good amount of wealth. Then I left Candlekeep with Gorion, met up with Imoen and was promptly eaten by a wolf. I hadn't saved :(

I may go back to it, but might be while before I can summon the enthusiasm to go through all that again. Besides, it seemed like a pretty fitting end for the sort of gittish character I was playing :lol:

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DjchunKfunK
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by DjchunKfunK » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:25 am

Greedfall

Started and finished this over the last week or so and mostly enjoyed it. The game has a really nice world that looks beautiful in places, a nice and flexiable ability system and good fun combat. The story was pretty good and I liked how some of the side quests fed into the main storyline. It ends fairly well but does have one narrative leap which even though they do explain it is still a bit jarring. As I played through the game it became clear that the game suffers from having a smaller budget than these games usually get, reused interiors, VO and character models being the most obvious. In many respects it does feel a bit like a cut priced Bioware RPG as it apes their designs pretty closely, including the faults.

From what I understand it is Spiders most ambitious game by far and in many respects they deserve praise for what they have been able to achieve on their budget. I'm not sure I could recommend that people play it though without some caveats, it has some rough edges that become very obvious at times, there is a bit too much running backwards and forward talking to people (something I think Bioware games were also guilty of) and whilst the characters are mostly decent there are no real outstanding ones. It's a decent game though and I enjoyed my time with it.

Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:39 am

Animalmother wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 10:19 am
Amazing game. If you have the dlc it's worth a look as well. It covers a bit you don't see in the game and has flashbacks with Ellie prior to the main story.
Thanks I'll have a look at it, got part 2 on order controversy be damned.

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Animalmother
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Animalmother » Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:56 pm

It's on the PS4 isn't it? Might try pick up a cheap one once game cones out.

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Raid
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Raid » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:47 pm

The Last of Us - I'm an entire generation late to the party, but with the PS4 Remaster on sale for less than a tenner and some quite positive things being said about the sequel, I figured it was time. I'm finding it a little frustrating to begin with; it seems to want to be a cover shooter but without an actual "take cover" button (unless I've missed something significant), meaning everything is based on context-sensitive animations which just aren't quite precise enough. The animation system was probably massively impressive at the end of the PS3 era, and clearly a lot of effort has been put into the sound and environment design, but it's one of those remasters where they seem to have dialed up the texture quality without doing the same to the geometry which is a little jarring. Also, is it just me or does Ellie look a little... strange. All of the other character models I've seen up close have been great, but there's something just a little wrong with her head sculpt which I'm finding distracting in cutscenes.

As for the game itself, it feels very much like a product of its time. Maybe I've just not played many third-person action-adventures in recent years, but this style of game feels a little dated now. The abundance of loosely-defined stealth mechanics, waist-high walls everywhere, the abundance of context actions that don't really add anything to the experience, there's just something that doesn't feel particularly satisfying.

I know the game is famous more for its story and characters, and it's obviously going to be the main draw. The gut punch opening came as a bit of a shock, not in what was going to happen but the way in which it did. I've managed to avoid spoilers remarkably well considering it's 7 years old now. About the only thing I know is that there's a bit with giraffes that people quite liked, and I'm assuming it's not the little girl clutching a stuffed one in the bit immediately following the prologue.

I'll persevere, it's not like I don't have the time over the next few days given I can't leave the house, but it hasn't really grabbed me from the opening hour or two.

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DjchunKfunK
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by DjchunKfunK » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:55 pm

The combat and mechanics are pretty bad and I found it got worse as they added in more infected types to fight also don't forget it's actually a PS3 game but even for the time it was a worse playing game than it's contemporaries. The story is pretty good though and just about saw me through.

Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:59 pm

Personally I felt the game started to click when I got the shotgun in Bill's town so maybe try until then..

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