What are you currently playing?

[danielpholt]

4 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I would honestly like to know what people like about Animal Crossing? I ask because I keep seeing everyone talking about it on Twitter, and it makes me intrigued, but it seems like something that would get real old real quick.

 

There's absolutely a risk of that. I've fallen foul of it myself a few times. I start super strong, constantly getting new things and generally being super enthused about the entire process. Eventually the chill vibe of the game turns into a bit of a grind for 'the feeling' of unlocking something new, and at that point I usually disembark.

 

That being said though, the game is something really unique in its nature, and it's absolutely perfect for where we are right now.

[Mister Jack]

2 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I would honestly like to know what people like about Animal Crossing? I ask because I keep seeing everyone talking about it on Twitter, and it makes me intrigued, but it seems like something that would get real old real quick.

 

It's a relaxing and generally comfy game. It can even be downright therapeutic. The thing about AC is that you're not meant to marathon it for hours at a time, at least not once you get going. You can if you want, but at a certain point you play for maybe an hour a day, but you play it every day. Your town progresses in real time so you're watching it slowly build up from a big patch of nothing to a thriving community that you helped put together. Because it's in real time, your animal neighbors also act accordingly depending on what day it is. They'll remember your birthday, celebrate holidays with you, and react to the changing seasons. That's not even getting into all the stuff you can collect to decorate your house.

 

Also you can have a mortgage with no interest and no payment deadline and how great is that?

[CorgiShinobi]

Yeah, not much else I can add about Animal Crossing that hasn't been said.

 

I'm definitely more goal oriented, so I can get caught up in the Nook Miles that were introduced in New Horizons. But to me the intent has always been a chill, if not therapeutic, experience where you build an environment of your own design. It gives you control in a situation where you normally have very little.

 

Granted, with people in self-quarantine, players have been antsy and "time traveling" to speed up the process. What would normally be a relaxed experience has become people's obsession as they find they have nothing else to do. (I mean, read a book, watch a movie, play another game...) Though who am I to dictate how others enjoy the game. I just don't want people to get burned out with a game that isn't even a full week old yet.

Edited March 24, 2020 by CorgiShinobi

[Mal]

I find New Horizons to be rather nicely paced compared to the last few AC games I had tried. Also no town full of people to start so you're slowly building up your island.

 

Anywho, Trails to Zero is probably harder than all of Cold Steel combined. Also since you're a detective, you got to think like one for the numerous choices. This single prologue itself has more choices than whole Cold Steel games. They also matter too for points. Man, I have forgotten that Trails games can be challenging and engaging!

[danielpholt]

I started playing through Headmaster last night (PSVR) and for a game with such a simple concept (head the ball into the net) it's incredibly satisfying. The core gameplay feels kinda awesome, and like any good VR game, I've been told you look like an absolute moron whilst doing it (Source: Danielle, on the sofa to my left).

 

It's got a little of that Portal 2/Stanley Parable about it, so we'll see how well they handle that because I tend to find it's a very fine line between funny and annoying when it comes to that sort of comedy.

 

 

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I guess I should put Earthworms in here. It's not complete, but I've stopped playing it as I think I encountered a game breaking issue. It's a point and click, but it clears things out of your inventory periodically as you progress (I don't know if this is deliberate to keep your inventory clean or a bug).  I need an item that was cleared out of my inventory and I cannot see another way to progress and nothing on the internet helps. It was already starting to get on my nerves a bit so I don't want to waste any more time on it even though I am so close to the end I can almost taste it. Unfortunately the taste is bitter.

[TheMightyEthan]

That's got to be a bug, the whole point of point and clicks is collecting random shit in your inventory.

[TheMightyEthan]

Skyward Sword is surprisingly pretty in 4k (I've also installed a high-res texture pack, though it doesn't replace every texture)

 

 

 

 

 

[MetalCaveman]

Started a playthrough of DOOM Eternal in extra life mode (you run out of lives you have to start the game all over again), close to the end now. Finally managed to get the mastery skin for the super shotgun! \m/ \m/

 

Spoiler

Just have Nekravol, Nekravol Pt2, Urdak and Final Sin left.

 

I thought I'd be able to replay older missions and just farm extra lives there, turns out, this mode prevents you from playing through mission select.  I'm sure it warned me about it and I just missed it.  

 

Thinking about starting Code Vein afterwards. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Persona 5 Royal

 

I'm not very far into it, but I'm super glad I already platinumed vanilla P5, because with all the quality of life improvements this game makes I don't know that I could go back. It fucking rocks.

[toxicitizen]

Seeing Animal Crossing all over the internet for the past couple weeks has made me finally get around to trying My Time at Portia a few days ago and holy crap, I had no idea what I was getting into. Despite buying Stardew Valley at launch, I never actually played it so I was not prepared for how much of a time blackhole these kinda games are. It's only been like 4 days and I've already put almost 30 hours into it. The way you constantly have a short-term goal you're working directly towards and a long-term goal you're always thinking about is so fucking addictive that there's always one more little thing I wanna do before turning the game off and I inevitably end up playing for an extra hour or two without even realizing it.

 

If I never post again, it's not the virus that got me. Just assume I forgot to eat and starved because of this goddamn game.

[Baconrath]

Ya'll ever just reinstall Fistful of Frags and pass the whiskey? 

[deanb]

Now there's a name I've not heard in a long while.

 

Currently I'm on Horizon Zero Dawn, largely eyeing up the Frozen Wilds which I bought years ago but then didn't get around to playing. I've now entered the frozen wilds and fuck me it doesn't like it if you're on New Game+ with your shieldweaver. Like there's enemies specifically designed to cripple you if you're wearing Shieldweaver. So I'm guessing gonna have to divest into Frozen Wilds specific gear and completely change my current play-style (which is heavily shield weaver based case of "throw yourself at them and batter them down with your spear").

 

Tis very pretty though.

[MetalCaveman]

Yeah, I gave up on using the shieldweaver early on. The armour you get from completing the FW storyline is pretty cool though, actually became my main when I went back to finish the base game.  

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, it's not just NG+, I went into Frozen Wilds from my regular save and had the same problem.

[TheMightyEthan]

Tackling the Control Foundation DLC. I really really do not remember how to play this game...

[MetalCaveman]

Played some Darksiders 3 with game pass. Man that was not fun, the game has two combat modes, default, which feels Dark Soulsy (attacks have this inertia to them and it takes a while to use healing items) while classic is supposed to play like the old games. My main issue is that dodging feels weird, the timing is all over the place, and worst of all, the whip thingy just isn't fun to use attacks don't feel or look like the carry any weight, hitting enemies requires lock on, which also reduces your field of view quite a bit and with enemies jumping at you from all over the place, it means you'll constantly get hit by attacks coming from your blind spots.  Wrath attacks are weak and Havoc form is also useless unless you put points into arcane. Whether you use classic or default doesn't change any of this.

 

To level up this time around you need to visit Vulgrim and feed him souls to get upgrade points, which you then put into health, damage or arcane. You get small bonuses for each stat per point, I don't know how many points there are, but after dumping about 6 of them into strength and not noticing any real difference I hope there are a ton.

 

You can also upgrade your weapons by collecting different items found in the world or from killing enemies, this is what you want to do to increase damage.  

 

All in all I'm glad I gave it a chance, but there's too much stuff I didn't enjoy here. Might give it another chance in the future, but for now I'm skipping it.

[TheMightyEthan]

That's too bad, I really liked the first two.

[TheMightyEthan]

Started Death Stranding today. It's weird as shit (which I expected). I'm 2 hours in, of which probably 1 hour 15 minutes was cutscenes (which I didn't expect but should have if I'd thought about it). I'm digging it though.

[Mister Jack]

Nioh 2 is reminding me just how much fun the Nioh gameplay can be, and now it's even better. Yokai moves feel a lot more rewarding than the living weapon system of Nioh 1 and on top of that this feels like the leap from Dark Souls to Bloodborne in the sense that there's now a high risk/high reward counter move that you can use to turn an enemy's unblockable attacks against them. This game is also hard as fuck, much harder than the early game of Dark Souls was, but I'm not struggling as much as I did in the beta because now I can actually properly customize my character to my preferred playstyle. Three player co-op is also a lot of fun but it completely breaks the game even after it increases the enemy spawns to account for the extra help. I'm trying not to abuse it but it's a great way to farm for items and exp when you join someone else's game. You get to keep half of the exp you earn as a visitor even if you lose and you get multipliers if you win so that's a nice incentive to help out if you need to level grind. Out of all the Souls copycats out there, this series is probably my favorite. Combat just feels so damn good and now there's even more depth to it than before.

[TheMightyEthan]

Updated report on Death Stranding:

 

Still weird as shit. I'm managing to follow the plot in terms of what I'm doing and why, but have no idea what's going on as far as the lore. Basically what I've got is "something something the afterlife, when you die to explode like a nuke, BTs = bad". Also, the gameplay is kind of super boring.

 

Still totally obsessed with it for some reason though.

[toxicitizen]

P4G is a pretty solid port. It looks about how you'd expect a Vita port to look but it runs smooth as hell, has an uncapped framerate, and even has built-in supersampling, which is nice.

 

This is the first proper Persona game I play since P4G on Vita like 8 years ago and I forgot how much fun this series is. I wasn't sure if I'd want to get into such a long game right now but I just got sucked right into it pretty much immediately. I might even try going for all achievements this time. Although this means I'll need to get that dreaded Risette achievement again. I feel like I lucked out big time on Vita because I got it without even trying and everyone else seems to have such a hard time with it lol...

 

Oh and, not that it should surprise anyone, but the game appears to be doing insanely well. It's still the top seller after over 24 hours, to the point that it actually got a front page banner!

 

 

(This is completely automated and based on popularity.)

 

The concurrent player count keeps rising and has surpassed even FFXV at this point, which had the record for any JRPG as far as I'm aware.

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Also, the gameplay is kind of super boring.

 

Still totally obsessed with it for some reason though.

 

Sounds about in line with what I've heard. "Been playing for 50 hours, gameplay is boring as hell. Best game I ever played!"

 

As a huge Kojima fan, even I don't know what to make of it or what to expect when I finally play it next month lol.

Edited June 14, 2020 by FLD

[Mister Jack]

I'm on the fence about Code Vein so far. I knew it was going to be inferior to Nioh 2 but it's got some performance issues, the level design so far is kind of bland, and the second boss was way way too hard for the beginning of the game. I am willing to look past all of that, but what's harder to overlook is that the combat feels a little clunky. It's not really as responsive as a Souls game and it definitely isn't as responsive as Nioh. I'm willing to give this game a little longer to see if I come around but if I don't get used to it in the next day or two I might just refund it.

[MetalCaveman]

Playing FEAR, last time I played I stopped at the part where the cyber-demon-ninja dudes show up, those guys were super annoying with how much they jump around and their ability to turn invisible. This time I've made it past that part and it's pretty fun.

 

There's parts of this game that still hold up and honestly, it doesn't look that bad (for a game that came out 15 years ago! ) other parts haven't aged that well, there's no sprint, and most weapons don't have an actual aim/zoom feature, it's just a tiny zoom without really being able to aim down sights. Still, it's prettyfun, and that gun that vaporises enemies is pretty cool.

[TheMightyEthan]

The Last of Us Part II

 

I haven't played much, about an hour and a half, and so far gameplay/story wise it's about what you'd expect. I wanted to comment though that I'm confused about all the gushing I've been seeing about the graphics. Like, it's just not that impressive to me. There's nothing wrong with it, it's actually one of the better looking games, but it's not amazing like everyone acts. The natural environments look great, but all the character models and human made objects (clothes, furnirture, books, etc) just look meh. They all look like flat surfaces with textures pasted on, and not especially sharp textures. I suspect, though I am not sure, that this engine is not using physically based rendering, and that is the problem. I think that would explain why all the materials look the same in terms of the way they interact with light. At a fundamental level they all look like they're made of the same material, just colored differently, not some things being wood and some cloth and some skin, etc. The characters especially honestly look like the PS3 game, just with higher poly counts and higher resolution textures, etc, but not actually any better rendering/lighting tech.

 

Another thing is that the far-distance vistas (mountains, towns in the valley, etc) are really obviously paintings on a sky box, rather than actual physical models in the distance. Again, not something that looks bad, but it keeps catching my attention because of how everyone hyped up the graphics of this game so much.

 

None of this actually detracts from the game, graphics are not all that important really, it's just confusing to me. Like, Death Stranding looks way better*, and that game came out last fall, so why is everyone acting like this is some graphical masterpiece?

 

P.S. I do want to give it one shout-out: the snow deformation when you walk through it looks amazing. That actually does look way better than the same effect in Death Stranding.

 

*I do understand that comparing it to Death Stranding is apples to oranges, since that game only ever has one or two characters on screen at once, and doesn't have all the vegetation and stuff, I'm just talking about the visual impressiveness of the graphics, not the technical impressiveness underlying them.