What are you currently playing?

[TheMightyEthan]

A horror game you say...? 

[Thursday Next]

On 9/29/2021 at 4:00 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

Basically you give orders for what you want all your ships to do over the next "turn", and then once you're done you hit go, and everything plays out all at the same time, in realtime, for about 10 seconds before pausing again to let you issue more orders.

 

That sounds a lot like how Frozen Synapse plays (in case you want to try more of that style of gameplay), except it is dudes with guns in buildings.

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh yeah, you're right, I'd forgotten about Frozen Synapse, but it's exactly like that.

[danielpholt]

I'm maybe 2-3 hours into Guardians and whilst I don't think it's going to blow anyone's socks off, I'm having a good bit of fun with it. 

 

It looks great, although I'm a bit disappointed to see that they're splitting Performance Mode and Graphical Modes again. I'd have liked to see that with the additional power these new boxes bring that they could hit 60FPS in both modes.

 

The combat is mostly fine. Sometimes it devolves into a complete mess of characters and enemies that you sort of just continuously shoot at; there's a thin layer of control in regards to telling your Guardian allies what to do, but even that feels less strategic than it could do.

 

I'm here for the characters and they bantz. Let's be honest, that's where a Guardians game lives and dies. And in this instance, it does pretty well. I've laughed plenty, and I don't ever get bored of just listening to these guys interact with one another; sometimes to the point where I'll just leave the controller and here them talk shit. 

 

 

So yeah, pretty happy so far. 

 

 

 

[Mister Jack]

Important note: if the Guardians start to banter make sure you don't walk too fast because it's easy to accidentally cut off dialogue by triggering a story section.

[MetalCaveman]

Completed my Hardcore run on Resident Village, started Village of Shadows immediately after... That's a thing.

 

I can take the increased difficulty (kinda), but having enemies where there used to be nothing, or more enemies dropped during a boss is a bit too much, thankfully I did bring a fully upgraded STAKE with infinite ammo, but still, it's been a thing.

 

Not looking forward to

Spoiler

The Chris section, were I'll have to rely on his NERF guns lol.

 

[Mister Jack]

Spoiler

The Heisenberg fight is arguably the hardest part of a Village of Shadows run.

 

[toxicitizen]

32 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

  Hide contents

The Heisenberg fight is arguably the hardest part of a Village of Shadows run.

 

 

[MetalCaveman]

[Baconrath]

I think I got to like right before the final boss in Dread but I got frustrated by speed boost puzzles so I dusted off Gundam Breaker 3 again

 

I made a gundam that is covered in as many gatling guns as the game would let me lol

 

[TheMightyEthan]

So, I gave Metroid Dread the old college try, and I just was not feeling it. Part of it is that some of the mechanics felt dated, and part of it was that I just prefer melee combat in this kind of game. I'm also guessing there's an element of Seinfeld is Unfunny to it, though I can't say for sure. The real killer though was how much just running through areas you've already been through there was. This game could really use a fast-travel. About the fifth time I finished something or activated something to open a new area or whatever, then looked at the map to see where I needed go next, and my reaction was "ugh, I have to go way over there?" I decided the game wasn't for me.

 

At least with Gamefly I'm only out a few days of my sub instead of the purchase price less whatever I could get for selling it, which probably would have netted out to about $30.

[danielpholt]

Unpacking

 

It's a game about putting your moving boxes away. There's a very lite story to it (as you complete 'moves' the in-game year will change; implying that your moving through your life as you would in real life). So far I've moved my bedroom around, then moved into my dorm room, partners houses, my own house etc etc.

 

I'm playing it on Gamepass but I think this might be best played on a Switch. Pick up, put down.

[Thursday Next]

21 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

So, I gave Metroid Dread the old college try, and I just was not feeling it. Part of it is that some of the mechanics felt dated, and part of it was that I just prefer melee combat in this kind of game. I'm also guessing there's an element of Seinfeld is Unfunny to it, though I can't say for sure. The real killer though was how much just running through areas you've already been through there was. This game could really use a fast-travel. About the fifth time I finished something or activated something to open a new area or whatever, then looked at the map to see where I needed go next, and my reaction was "ugh, I have to go way over there?" I decided the game wasn't for me.

 

At least with Gamefly I'm only out a few days of my sub instead of the purchase price less whatever I could get for selling it, which probably would have netted out to about $30.

 

I liked MD apart from a couple of issues. I agree that it desperately needed fast travel (even if it was a late game thing, and only available between certain room types), the controls are also horrible. To aim and fire a rocket you have to hold "L" to aim, "R" to select rockets, aim with the thumbstick, and press "Y" to fire. When certain bosses require you to aim a rocket at a specific point, while avoiding stuff, it's just ludicrous.

 

I also would have liked to have play post game with the hyper-beam, rather than the old Ninty stalwart of rewinding to before the final boss.

[TheMightyEthan]

I was still in the first area and felt like it needed a fast travel, but yeah I would have been fine with it only being between certain types of room, in fact that's exactly what I was imagining. Like let you fast travel between save rooms.

[danielpholt]

The Forgotten City

 

A game I'd been very excited to play for a while now, but an hour in and I found myself being somewhat bored by it. It feels very much like the Skyrim mod that it started out, make of that what you will. For me at-least the central plot just wasn't enough to get me past the sheer amount of dialogue that you have to trawl through.

 

Oh well.

[TheMightyEthan]

I've got that game on my list right after GotG. Hopefully I'm not as bored by it as you were. 

[danielpholt]

1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I've got that game on my list right after GotG. Hopefully I'm not as bored by it as you were. 

 

I've heard nothing but good reviews for it. For whatever reason though, it just didn't click with me.

[TheMightyEthan]

Guardians of the Galaxy

 

Based on chapter numbers I'm about halfway through, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've heard it described as Uncharted + Mass Effect, and I can see why, even I think that description overblows the RPG aspects (I've also heard it called an RPG, which just... no. It's the least RPG of any action game I've played in the last 10 years, each character has four skills you can buy, and that's the extent of it). The combat is fun, and getting to order the various Guardians around keeps it varied. They've also done a good job so far of keeping the missions varied, and not fallen into the Uncharted misstep of having way too many combat encounters. It doesn't have the polish of an Uncharted or something similar, but the fundamentals are all there, and all work very very well.

[danielpholt]

1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Guardians of the Galaxy

 

Based on chapter numbers I'm about halfway through, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I've heard it described as Uncharted + Mass Effect, and I can see why, even I think that description overblows the RPG aspects (I've also heard it called an RPG, which just... no. It's the least RPG of any action game I've played in the last 10 years, each character has four skills you can buy, and that's the extent of it). The combat is fun, and getting to order the various Guardians around keeps it varied. They've also done a good job so far of keeping the missions varied, and not fallen into the Uncharted misstep of having way too many combat encounters. It doesn't have the polish of an Uncharted or something similar, but the fundamentals are all there, and all work very very well.

 

 

What I will say is that the final 2-3 hours felt like nothing but combat, which is fine because I think the combat is somewhat more engaging that (say) Uncharted, but I still found myself thinking it was a bit much at one point.

[Thursday Next]

On 11/4/2021 at 4:47 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

I was still in the first area and felt like it needed a fast travel, but yeah I would have been fine with it only being between certain types of room, in fact that's exactly what I was imagining. Like let you fast travel between save rooms.

 

Ok, so either post-game, or once you have unlocked all teleporters (not sure which) the teleporters link so you can fast travel a bit. I've finished the story and have been doing a few speedbooster puzzles, but I have to say, I'm really not enjoying them, so think I am done with the game. NG+ doesn't really interest me tbh.

[danielpholt]

Forza Horizon 5

 

This series in nearly a decade old. Time is an illusion.

 

As for entry number 5, it's a very impressive driving/racing experience that I think might be the most out and out fun I've had with a racing game in a while; and largely not for the racing. From the moment you jump out of a plane and drop into driving through the wilds of Mexico, this game doesn't let up. I absolutely fucking hate the people that take part in this fucking festival of horror, but damn if they don't put on a good show. 

 

Gonna go drive down an active volcano or something now.

[TheMightyEthan]

I am also playing Forza Horizon 5 and enjoying it. Though I spent an hour and a half with the benchmarking stuff trying to get the settings to where I want them, and then two and a half hours troubleshooting audio issues (unrelated to the game itself), which all reinforced why I much prefer console gaming...

[danielpholt]

On 11/14/2021 at 7:15 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

I am also playing Forza Horizon 5 and enjoying it. Though I spent an hour and a half with the benchmarking stuff trying to get the settings to where I want them, and then two and a half hours troubleshooting audio issues (unrelated to the game itself), which all reinforced why I much prefer console gaming...

 

To be fair the game seems to be in a little bit of a state. I've had serious issues staying online, had multiple challenges completely fail to pop in and keep having to restart the game to get the damn thing working as expected.

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, this wasn't any problem with the game, it was just me trying to optimize the graphics vs. performance, because as soon as I can start tweaking it is impossible for me not to. The audio issues were something weird with my computer interacting with the way I had my TV setup, it affected all audio from my computer, not just the game. The only real issue I've had is the disconnects, but I don't care about playing online anyway so it hasn't bothered me.

 

*Edit - Though there is one problem with the game that made my optimization harder: on any texture setting below Extreme there is a LOD issue where ground textures in the distance are super low res. It looks terrible. My PC is capable of running the game nicely at 4k, but trying to use extreme textures while running at that resolution was causing me to run out of vram, so a lot of my tweaking involved figuring out what I needed to turn down to not have that happen.

 

That kind of stuff is common on PC though, there's always something, and it's the kind of stuff I'd rather not have to deal with.

[MetalCaveman]

I've had a ton of issues with FH5, crashes very often, I have to disable Logitech's GHub, Discord and basically anything else that may be running at the time in order to get FH to run, and even then it keeps saying I got disconnected.

 

That being said, when it does run, it's really fun. \m/ \m/