What are you currently playing?

[toxicitizen]

I got Supraland from the current Humble Choice and figured I'd share some thoughts while there's still time to grab it (until friday). I had heard really good things about it around the time it first came out and I can't say I disagree. It's a first-person puzzle game where you play as a little toy figurine in a kid's sandbox but what makes it really special for me is that it's also structured like a metroidvania. Which means it has that super addictive gameplay loop where you'll get an upgrade and suddenly think of like 10 places you should go back to for hidden stuff. Some of the upgrades are also kinda novel, leading to some "oh shit!" moments where scenery elements that seemed unimportant suddenly change how you view the level.

 

It has some really basic combat that's honestly a little weak but that's just about the only thing I'd criticize. Everything else is pretty great.

[TheMightyEthan]

Still working on The Last of Us Part II, and now I have some actual thoughts about the game itself rather than just the graphics (which again, there's nothing wrong with them, they're even pretty great, they're just not mind-blowing...)

 

*Ahem* I'm not loving this game. I was liking it fine, nothing fantastic but nothing bad, solid 7/10 material, until I hit the second major section (trying to avoid spoilers, hoping people who've played it will know what I'm talking about). It's just dragging on and on. I feel like I understand the point they're trying to make, and that this whole part could have been replaced with like one or two chapters that were much shorter. It's just really really overstaying its welcome.

 

I haven't finished it yet, and I hope I'm wrong and they end up justifying all this, but it's looking less and less likely. I do have a thought for a fairly straightforward change they could have made that would have fixed this whole issue, but I'm going to save that until I've finished the game and can say for sure whether I think it would actually have worked or not.

[Mister Jack]

I started playing Dark Souls II. I know it's the most divisive one, which is why I originally skipped it, but I was in the mood for a soulslike game and figured I'd like it more than Code Vein, at least. So far I do, but I'm not sure that's saying much. The other Souls games are about rough but reasonable challenges but this one seems designed like it doesn't care if you have fun or not, it just wants to beat you into submission with ludicrous enemy placement to preserve its reputation as "teh hardcorez gaem". Not even Nioh makes you fight this many enemies at the same time. That cutscene in the beginning where the witch is like "You're gonna lose all your souls over and over! Mwe he he he he!" made a pretty bad first impression. It doesn't help that I decided to play as a cleric for a change and then four bosses later found out that clerics were nerfed into near uselessness and never fixed. I also really hate the adaptability stat. It makes me feel like the first twenty levels I gain don't even matter because you really need to raise that stat at all costs if you want your rolls and your healing to be worth a damn. There are a few things it improved upon from the first game that I appreciate, but in many ways it feels like a step back. I'm enjoying it just enough to stick with it, but I really hope it gets better later on.

[TheMightyEthan]

I just tried Yakuza 0. Played for half an hour and I don't think this is for me. The fighting is janky, and from the way it's presented I'm guessing that's going to be a big part of the game.

[MetalCaveman]

IIRC when DS2 came out some people complained it was too easy, so in an update they just went "OK Then, here's way more enemies and stronger enemies and everything else!"

 

I remember an area early on that was originally an empty spot leading to a boss, after the update there was a dragon there.  

 

On Topic:

 

Playing FEAR 2, and man this game's way better than FEAR, there's a MECH, A FREAKING MECH, and you get to pilot it! Though it's only for a short while it's still pretty cool.

 

Being that it also looks way better the scary stuff is also way more scary.  

 

I just reached this part where Alma... Well, I knew about the ending, I just didn't know that before that she changes her appearance in such a way. That was a surprise.  

 

If you don't know, aside from creepy girl with a blood-red dress, Alma has a more adult appearance, that looks more like a reanimated corpse than anything else. After a certain part in FEAR 2, she changes that for a more... Alive look, presumably trying to woo Sgt Beckett, though the constant horrific visions and all the corpses she leaves behind aren't working in her favour.  

[toxicitizen]

2 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

The fighting is janky

 

[TheMightyEthan]

@FLD It didn't feel very visceral or precise, even when you were getting hits in or getting hit it still kind of felt like the people were sliding past each other (except of course the little cutscene special attack things).

[toxicitizen]

5 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

@FLD It didn't feel very visceral or precise, even when you were getting hits in or getting hit it still kind of felt like the people were sliding past each other (except of course the little cutscene special attack things).

 

I guess we might have different definitions of what constitutes jank but try not to compare Yakuza to like, something excessively polished like The Last of Us (since I know you just played it lol). It's not exactly triple-A. The combat isn't meant to be this extremely precise Devil May Cry affair, it's really more of a cartoonish Streets of Rage kinda brawler (Majima's breakdancing fighting style would've been a dead giveaway if you had kept playing) with the vast majority of the fights being more along the lines of a JRPG's disposable random encounters. Yakuza 7's combat being straight-up turn-based has only validated my belief that Yakuza was secretly a JRPG all along lol.

 

Basically to enjoy the combat just look around and grab the first bicycle you see and just fucking clobber everyone with it. The fight will be over in seconds and you'll move on your merry way. Yakuza 0 especially has a fantastic story if you give it a chance.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, as far as the non-fighting bits, I don't know if I just wasn't in the right mood for it or what, but it was starting off way too slow for me.

[toxicitizen]

So I put about 10 hours into Death Stranding and yeah, despite the super mixed reception there was never really any doubt in my mind: I'm loving the hell out of this game. The cargo balancing stuff seemed novel and interesting to me so I wasn't really skeptical about that. If there's one thing I'll blindly trust Kojima with, it's gameplay. I'm still too early into it to judge the plot but it's interesting so far and the gameplay has me completely hooked. Hell, I think I'm even more inclined to love it than I would've been just a year ago because the lack of (or lesser focus on) combat is actually more appealing to me right now.

 

Outside of my playthrough of Witcher 3 at the beginning of the year, I've been in the biggest gaming slump I can remember having since, well, ever. And Witcher 3 kinda made it worse because what the hell do you follow that up with? There was just nothing I wanted to play and it took a weird little indie game like Supraland to even get me to finish a game. But Death Stranding is a game I could play all day long and then end up wishing there were more hours in the day so I could play a little more. If the plot actually delivers then I might actually end up loving it even more than Witcher 3, which is saying something.

[Mister Jack]

Ghost of Tsushima is pretty cool so far. It isn't exactly breaking the mold for open world games but it refines certain things in ways I really like. Using the wind as a navigation tool is a brilliant way to seamlessly blend player mechanics into the game world itself and I like how it does the same with certain animals. There's no need for map markers because the world around you gives you the guidance you need. It's really cool and I hope future open world games take notes from this. The world is also freaking gorgeous to boot. This is some of the best art direction I've seen for an open world in a long time. This game was made for photo mode.

 

On another note, I appreciate that this game isn't afraid to just be a game when it needs to be. It has really nice animations during combat but when I want to collect a crafting resource I don't have to stop and get off the horse every time to watch a painstaking animation where Jin picks a flower off the ground and plucks off the petals and puts them in his robe. I don't have to watch him bend over an animal carcass and slowly skin it and pull off the hide and roll it up under his arm. You just hit the R2 button and boom, it's yours. You don't even have to watch him pick it up with his hand. You just get it instantly. I vastly prefer this to the tedious gathering animations in Red Dead Redemption 2. Sure, they look impressive, but they waste so much time. 

[TheMightyEthan]

I'm three hours in and agree with everything you just said.

[MetalCaveman]

Ghost Recon Breakpoint, played the trial (6 hours), this time on Xbox.  Between immersive mode, AI teammates and the new Resistance event, they've turned this into Wildlands 2. Which is great IMO.  At the same time, it's clear the game is not balanced for immersive mode and Resistance stuff, the Wolves are dangerous in normal mode because they're always several levels above you and with higher rarity weapons, when all that stuff is thrown out the window they're just normal enemies, just with cool outfits.  

 

Something really cool about the Resistance event, the resistance fighters are much more active than in Wildlands, missions were you capture enemy camps and bases actually allow them to take and keep control of them, I've seen them driving around and suddenly turn to head towards a Sentinel base, they now have helicopters flying around, in general, they have a wider variety of stuff they do, and completing missions for them actually feels like you're helping them drive Sentinel away. They've added a lot of life to the world, which felt pretty barren before as the only ones moving around the islands were Sentinel forces and Wolves drones.

 

It's a shame that it took them this long, but they've finally turned Breakpoint into a pretty decent, pretty fun game. It still has some issues, but compared to the mess from the closed beta, and from its original release, it's a whole new beast.  

[TheMightyEthan]

Anyone who follows me on Twitter should be very aware that I am playing Ghost of Tsushima.

[toxicitizen]

Kojima: In Death Stranding, our team has meticulously crafted a highly-detailed mountain range, full of hazards and challenges, for the player to hike through as Sam.

 

me:

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I had a whole fucking network of those built throughout the mountains. They're great.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, they're not as much fun to ride as the batpod but they're less tedious to set up than fixing all those damn roads.

[toxicitizen]

I never really bothered playing around with a game's photo mode until Death Stranding and I was missing out. It's actually kinda fun!

 

 

This was about 3 seconds before I lost my footing and ate approximately half a mountain's worth of shit. BB did not survive.

[Mister Jack]

I swear, watching people eat shit in this game never fails to make me laugh.

 

[Mister Jack]

I downloaded Fall Guys on Playstation Plus (it's also on steam for $20) and played it last night with a couple of friends. It's a battle royale—no! Wait! Come back! I swear it's different this time! This is a battle royale in the style of a physical challenge game show like Ninja Warrior or Takeshi's Castle. The game has a pretty low skill ceiling and all you really have to do is run, jump, and occasionally grab things, but the sheer chaos in competing in events with so many other people can make for a pretty hilarious spectacle. One of the games has you all trying to cram yourselves through a narrow doorway and we were all cracking up at the gigantic piles of bodies trying to climb over each other like the World War Z movie. This does mean that sometimes how well you do can come down to luck. With so many bodies pushing and bumping against each other there will inevitably be times when you get shoved right off a platform. However, this is still much easier to win than a game of Fortnite or PUBG. I managed to win an episode last night, even. I could have won three times but two of those times I made a couple of easily avoided literally very-last-second fuckups that cost me the crown. Oh well. Easy come, easy go. I think there are two big reasons that I enjoy this game when I hate every other BR game.

 

1) Each round in an episode is quick and lasts an average of two minutes each. It's not a shooter so there's no boring period where you are all just scrambling for a weapon and then waiting for something to happen. There's also no chance of you getting instantly eliminated at the start of the game, leaving you frustrated and feeling like you're wasting your time. No matter how bad you are at the game you will always be able to play through the entirety of at least the first round. If you do get eliminated then jumping into a new game takes mere seconds, server status notwithstanding.

 

2) This is really more of a party game than a skill-based esports title. While there is some on-the-fly strategy involved in how you approach a challenge, I doubt you'll see much metagaming here. We probably won't be getting any Ninjaesque streamers who dominate everyone else on a regular basis. I won't say your platforming skills don't matter but the chaotic nature of the game can help and hinder you in equal measure. Think of it like Mario Party without the board game bits.

 

My only two big criticisms of the game are easily fixable. First, it needs more minigames, which I'm sure they're already working on. Second, there are a couple of team based games where you can end up losing in the last two seconds even when you were completely dominating the rest of the round. It's like timing a capture the flag game and then picking the winner based on whoever happened to be touching the flag when the clock ran out regardless of how long everyone else was holding the flag the rest of the time. I would prefer these games be scored based on time spent in the lead rather than all-or-nothing at the very end. Still a fun game with a ton of laughs, though. If you have PS+ or you just want something fun and silly to play with friends I'd give it a look.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, that game looks like a lot of fun, it's actually got me tempted to re-sub to PS+.

[danielpholt]

Fall Guys is something I can see myself coming back to every once in a while, just to see whats up. I wish it had more level variety, and that there was a little more skill involved, but I'm not sure that's the type of game it's aiming to be. Which is fine. 

[Mister Jack]

It does need more levels but it just came out so I'm gonna cut it a little slack. They've already added one new game type since they launched and I'm sure they'll be adding more on a regular basis. If it stays this popular we might be lucky enough to end up with 100 or more minigames when all is said and done.

 

Speaking of Fall Guys, it looks a bunch of corporate brands are desperately trying to get their own Fall Guy skin in the game, including the likes of Wal-Mart. The developers decided to capitalize on this by holding an auction for the right to a branded skin. Whatever company or individual (but definitely company) has the highest bid gets to be promoted in the game and the developers will give the proceeds to charity. Pretty admirable move if you ask me.

[TheMightyEthan]

I've been playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and really enjoying it. I'm kind of baffled why they felt the need to expand an already 100+ hour RPG, but whatever, they seem to have done a good job. I'm really impressed with how they seem to have managed to take was was apparently 10 hours in the original game and turn it into a 40 hour game without it feeling like it's all filler.

[toxicitizen]

I caved and drunkenly bought Fall Guys last night. No regrets, it's so much fun. Not sure how long it'll manage to keep my attention but so far I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Now I just need to convince my friends to buy it...