What are you currently playing?

[toxicitizen]

8 hours ago, Mal said:

This world man. It's so bubbly and fun. I honestly don't think I encounter a world like this since Brave Fencer Musashi almost two decades ago. It just feels like an adventure... nostalgic maybe? Part of this I attribute to the English VA work. You'd think Gurumin* would give me similar feelings but no.

 

That and the bit about liking Zwei more than Gurumin make me more interested than I was, tbh. I wanted to love Gurumin and I still want to try to go back and finish it but it really didn't do much for me. I was just kinda bored by both gameplay and story. I think I'll still hold off on Zwei until at least the 60fps patch hits, though. We know Sara's working on it, so I see no point in playing the game right now.

[Mal]

Now that I look at it, on PC I have a lot of in-progress Falcom games. Along with Zwei, I have Ys VII, Gurumin and Xanadu Next. I should be able to give an up-to-date view and comparison of all those titles maybe by the end of this year or early next year. It should be interesting. Maybe I should take notes and do a proper write-up.

[TheMightyEthan]

I started playing Rebel Galaxy today, and the music really sells that game.  The game structure is basically a bunch of fetch quests, but the combat is fun, and the western rock makes you feel like you're playing Firefly.

[Hot Heart]

Decided to try some Warframe after hearing it's gotten a lot better. I remember playing it years ago on PC but not really having a clue what was going on. There seems to be a proper introduction with much more user-friendly systems now. I'm still just playing solo and clearing the first (possibly only?) "storyline" stuff to set up the game but I'm really enjoying it. I imagine you can do some super amazing stuff on PC with mouse-aiming but I seem to be doing okay with a bow on PS4.

 

 

[Mister Jack]

The Evil Within.  How 'bout that plot?

[toxicitizen]

Played a bit of Nioh today. Made it to the first non-tutorial boss and got promptly splattered against the floor. Seems about right.

 

So far I really like it even though I'm terrible at it. It's been a while since I've played a proper Souls game (that piece of shit Lords of the Fallen doesn't count!), so I'm a little rusty. The speed of the combat is also throwing me off a bit. I keep wanting to just run in there and cut everything to pieces like you would in a Platinum game but the game doesn't seem to want you to do that. I keep trying to dodge-cancel into a slash but there's a short pause between the dash and the attack where I often get fucked up. It's way faster than Dark Souls combat but there's still a crucial need to be careful with your dodge and attack timing. If I can get good at it, it might actually be more fun than the slower, weightier combat of Dark Souls.

 

Oh and the port is actually somewhat decent! Serviceable, even, depending on what's important to you. It doesn't run as well as it probably should but I built this PC on a budget knowing I'd end up with a console-like experience, so it doesn't bother me all that much. I was able to turn some things down and get something close enough to a solid 60fps. I recently said fuck it with Evil Within 1 and 2 and locked them to 30fps just so I could max them out but with a fast-paced action game like this 60fps takes priority.

[Mister Jack]

Experimenting with the stances in Nioh made a huge difference for me in dealing with the difficulty.  Fighting in the high stance does more damage, but it also affects your dodging in addition to your attack speed.  Me personally, I stuck with low most of the time because you can not only dodge faster, but also farther, which is a huge deal.  In theory you could also take a hit and run approach by quickly switching stances to get a few strong hits in when you have an opening, then switching back to quickly get away.  Ki bursts are an essential skill to master.  Human enemies also use stances, and there's a rock/paper/scissors mechanic in play with that.  You don't have to use the opposing stance, obviously, but it will help your stamina attack and defense.  I love this combat system.  There's so much depth to it.  You definitely want to think of it more like Ninja Gaiden than a Platinum game, though.

[TheMightyEthan]

I can't play PC games at 30 fps, it's too juddery.  Console games at 30 are fine, but for whatever reason they always feel way smoother than PC at that framerate.  My best guess is it has something to do with the frame pacing, but it's weird.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, I generally feel the same way. I played a lot of games with framerates bouncing between 40-50 because it looked smoother than 30. But I don't think it's something inherent to PC. Frametimes definitely play a role, I think. I don't know if id Tech simply has good frame pacing or what but when I tried locking to 30 in the Evil Within games I instantly went "hey that's not TOO bad". It obviously didn't feel as smooth but after a while it stopped bothering me. It was a little cathartic to realize I could stop obsessing about that shit for once. From now on I think whenever I can't get something close enough to a consistent 60 I'll just lock to 30 and stop worrying about it.

[TheMightyEthan]

If I ever found a PC game that feels as smooth at 30 as console games do then I'd be all for that (as long as it wasn't like a twitch shooter), but I have yet to find such a game.

[toxicitizen]

I wanted to look at the frametimes of Evil Within when I was playing just now but the EVGA Precision overlay wouldn't show up, for some reason. :/

 

Also, I've never tried it myself but apparently using RTSS to set a framerate cap can do wonders for frametimes. If you use MSI Afterburner, you should already have it installed. Maybe give that a shot and see if it feels any better next time you can't get a game to run at 60.

[MetalCaveman]

How do you guys tell what the framerate is? Do you use some kind of tool to meassure them? For me it's hard to tell, usually it's either playable or unplayable. I wouldn't be able to tell when it's 30, 40, 50, 60 or whatever fps.

[Mal]

If through Steam, I use the FPS overlay. It's very discrete so I kind of have it on all the time. If I need more info (e.g., CPU, RAM info) or I am on say GOG Galaxy, I use Riva Tuner.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, there are tools that will give you those numbers. It's impossible to tell just by looking at it.

 

MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision are good because they allow you to monitor other stuff like GPU and CPU temp, memory usage, etc. But like Mal said, if all you want is the framerate, Steam has a built-in counter now. It's what I use most of the time because it's less noticeable and distracting but I'll turn on the Precision display if I want to monitor temps or whatever else.

[toxicitizen]

Re:RTSS  I messed around with it a bit more today and the newest version of Precision seems to be fucked, which is why the OSD wouldn't show up. I switched back to Afterburner, so I was able to test capping the framerate with RTSS and I can confirm that it does make the frame pacing more stable. Nioh still didn't feel good at 30fps, though, but I can confirm that even without RTSS it's pretty solid in Evil Within. That and the fact that it's a slow survival horror game is probably why it feels way better.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I just tested it with Death of the Outsider, and holy shit it's like night and fucking day.  With the in-game framerate limit set to 30 the frametime bounces between about 30 and 35 ms and it feels juddery as hell, but with RTSS's framerate limiter the frametime is a rock solid 33.3 ms.  It's console quality 30 fps, which still doesn't feel as good as 60 obviously, but it's playable, which is a huge step up.

 

Sadly it didn't work on the first game I tried it with, Watch Dogs 2, because its anti-cheat software blocks the hooks.

[Mal]

It

It has been a while and I suspect that I will be on this one for a while since it's on nightmare and there are three characters.

[CorgiShinobi]

Since browsing all the Black Friday deals, and seeing most recent titles going for $25-$30, it struck me that I haven't finished some games I got on Black Friday a few years ago.

 

Those would be Shadow of Mordor, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and The Evil Within. I almost finished Wolfenstein, but something pulled me away. The Evil Within didn't really grab me, but I know I put a few hours into it. My biggest offense is Shadow of Mordor as I only had 4 hours into the game, and it is a fun game to boot. For some reason it didn't hold my interest over some other games at the time.

 

Point being, before I can even think of getting Shadow of War, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, or The Evil Within 2 at such a deep discount, I've got to finish the respective first game. So I've jumped back into Shadow of Mordor and I know I'm doing better than I did originally. Thing is the game seems to know this too and in my first hour, the game threw three Captains at me in the same fight. I barely had any abilities unlocked and ultimately faced my first (or second) death.

[deanb]

14 hours ago, Atomsk88 said:

Since browsing all the Black Friday deals, and seeing most recent titles going for $25-$30, it struck me that I haven't finished some games I got on Black Friday a few years ago.

 

Those would be Shadow of Mordor, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and The Evil Within.

 

Meanwhile in 2019:

14 hours ago, Atomsk88 said:

Since browsing all the Black Friday deals, and seeing most recent titles going for $25-$30, it struck me that I haven't finished some games I got on Black Friday a few years ago.

 

Those would be Shadow of War, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, and The Evil Within 2.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

I started playing Prey this weekend.  I'm quite enjoying it so far.  I got it because I was looking for something like Dishonored but that I hadn't played before, which this isn't, it's way more Bioshock than Dishonored, but I'm loving it anyway.

 

The graphics are weirdly not good though.  I think they were going for the the same kind of look as Dishonored, but in the sci-fi setting it doesn't come off so much painterly as just low-quality-textures.

[toxicitizen]

Still working my way through Nioh, just made it to the second region. I hit a pretty crazy wall on the second mission's boss (no boss in any Souls game has ever frustrated me this much, no joke) but it's been going pretty smoothly since I managed to beat her. The more I play the less it feels like a Souls games, even though there's definitely some core mechanics that are Souls-inspired. I have to say, I think I like the combat in this more than in Dark Souls. There's way more depth to it, it's kind of halfway between Dark Souls combat and PlatinumGames combat. I'm really glad I took a chance on it because I'm loving the hell out of it.

 

Oh and it seems like Koei Tecmo are actually improving! Nioh got a patch that improved performance for the one setting I had to turn down, so I can max it out now. Still get the occasional framerate drop but it never dips low enough to affect gameplay (usually stays above 50). And I don't think it's just because Nioh is a decent seller because apparently they finally fixed the lower res 2D/menu assets in Atelier Firis. Doesn't look like they did the same for Sophie, though, but apparently there's been some activity on SteamDB so we'll see.

Edited November 16, 2017 by FLD

[Mister Jack]

I know exactly which boss you're talking about.  After I got super leveled and figured out all her tricks I practically made it a hobby to go back there and help new players kick her ass.

[toxicitizen]

Hahaha, maybe I should do that. I tried summoning help but no one ever showed up. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

 

Usually once I beat a boss in Souls I can look at it with hindsight and realize what I was doing wrong but she still feels like her moveset was legit fucking bullshit. She's just a terrible boss fight. If it wasn't for someone on ResetEra telling me spears make her way easier, I might actually still be stuck on her.

[Mister Jack]

Well the good news is that as far as mandatory bosses go, she's one of the hardest, so if you can beat her then you can probably beat the rest of the game.  I can only think of one or two bosses in the story who come close to her in difficulty.

 

If we're talking about side missions, however, that's a whole different story.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, I already ran into one sub mission that's just a boss fight and it's crazy hard. I gave it a good shot and I could probably do it if I kept at it but I ended up just going "fuck this and fuck you" and decided to come back in like 30 levels or so. Are there a lot of sub missions like that? I intend to do everything in the game, so I'm gonna have to fight them all anyway.