What are you currently playing?

[TheFlyingGerbil]

because I'm an idiot. Though I guess to choose not to use food is slightly different than choosing to die? and I think that would be more accurate descriptin of what I do. I think I worry I'll use the good item and end up dying anyway so it's wasted. I have the same issue spending experience points. I worry about upgrading the wrong thing so wait ages and make the game harder as a result to no benefit.

 

In Lucanor I think you can buy a save with coins but you don't get many of them and there's other stuff you need to buy so I'll need to look at the best tactics as I think it will actually make a differnce what I choose in the game rather than just my own indecisiveness causing me difficulties.

[danielpholt]

Dark Souls Remastered 

 

I've cleared my backlog and so it's finally time to jump into this. My only other experience with this sort of game is Elden Ring, and whilst I know the two games are likely to be significantly different, I think I enjoy that core experience, so I should be fine with it. 

 

I'm playing on Switch, which is probably not the ideal way to experience it, but you know...portability. 

Edited July 11, 2022 by danielpholt

[TheMightyEthan]

17 minutes ago, danielpholt said:

I've cleared my backlog

 

He is the chosen one!

[danielpholt]

Just now, TheMightyEthan said:

 

He is the chosen one!

It's not that hard when you admit you're not going to commit to a game you're no longer enjoying. Neon White, Stanley Parable, Bugsnax and Disk Room have all been brushed aside in the last month alone. I just don't have the time to persist with games I'm not getting anything out of.

 

Embrace the cull!

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh I already do that, I just buy them faster than I can cull. 

[Mister Jack]

I own all these fancy games but lately I'm addicted to Vampire Survivors, which is a little $2.99 where all you do is move the joystick around to move your character while they auto-fire their weapon to ward off an impossible tidal wave of monsters. That's really all there is to it. The only other thing you do is choose upgrades from the menu when you level up. It's as simple as can be, but I can't stop unlocking new characters, levels, and weapons and I'm also hooked on trying out new builds and weapon combinations. You're automatically killed when you hit the 30 minute mark...usually...but it still counts as completing the level and giving you access to a new one. I just gotta find out where this all leads. I'm determined to find that damn vampire eventually and kill him.

[TheMightyEthan]

Don't worry, owning things that you don't use is just the way of the world. I bought a fancy new Xbox Elite controller with back paddles and everything, and the first thing I did was play a game that only uses 2 buttons, and the second was play a game that doesn't have controller support at all. 

[danielpholt]

Escape Academy 

 

Great premise, middling execution. 

 

Maybe that's a little harsh? I dunno. This game feels like it would be better as a 2d adventure game, instead of this slightly janky 3d thing. I'm about half way through and I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh, that's too bad, I've heard good things about that game. Some of the things though make it sound like it might be a lot better with two people.

[toxicitizen]

So I've been playing Ghostwire: Tokyo as my first proper ray-traced game. And so far the biggest paradigm shift seems to be that instead of staring up at the bright, shiny things I'm instead constantly looking down to see their reflections on the wet ground lol.

 

 

 

Although, as good as it looks, I'm still far more impressed that I can run it with RTX on while downsampling from 4K and still get ~100 fps. DLSS is some black magic, man. Whenever it's raining and the image quality gets distorted I'm constantly turning it off just to make sure that it's not making it look worse and I can honestly never tell the difference between native and DLSS. I probably just don't know what to look for but still, that's really impressive.

Edited July 18, 2022 by toxicitizen

[TheMightyEthan]

Of the games I've tested it with Deliver Us the Moon was the game that had the biggest visual differences between DLSS and no DLSS. In that game I couldn't tell a difference between native and DLSS Quality, but both Balanced and Performance were noticeable when swapping back and forth. Without swapping back and forth only Performance was noticeably worse bar a few very specific cases (like in the cockpit at the end of the first level there are some shadows on one set of switches that get weird artifacts with DLSS, that kind of thing).

 

Several games I tested (eg Rise of the Tomb Raider and Hitman 3) actually looked better than native with DLSS on, even in Balanced mode, because DLSS does a better job of antialiasing than the game's native TAA does, so there were was less edge-jaggies.

 

So yes, DLSS is black magic.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, I'm mostly comparing it to DLSS quality mode. I've yet to try a game where the performance was bad enough for me to lower it to performance mode although I imagine the difference would be more obvious then. I'm surprised to see you mention Hitman 3 though because I remember the Digital Foundry video mentioning that their DLSS implementation wasn't the best with some really obvious trailing artifacts and whatnot. That may not have been in quality mode, though. I'd have to rewatch the vid to make sure.

 

Speaking of Hitman 3, I'm really tempted to buy it and replay the whole trilogy with ray-tracing but I still haven't gone back to finish getting all the achievements (and redoing those for the first one) in Hitman 2 and I'm worried if I try Hitman 3 now I'll never want to go back to finish off Hitman 2.

[TheMightyEthan]

34 minutes ago, toxicitizen said:

Speaking of Hitman 3, I'm really tempted to buy it and replay the whole trilogy with ray-tracing 

 

The whole trilogy is on Game Pass. 

 

*Edit - As far as it looking better with DLSS, I'm basing that on the benchmark mode, so it's possible in actual gameplay the trailing artifacts would be worse, cause the bench camera doesn't tend to do a whole lot of fast pans. So mostly what I mean is that the jaggies are lessened and there was no apparent downside to offset that.

 

Although I guess it's also possible they patched it to fix the trailing problems too.

[Mister Jack]

I got into the Multiversus beta and it's not quite what I expected. I don't mean that in a good or bad way, it's just different. For starters, while it is a platform fighter like Smash Bros and is clearly trying to cash in on its popularity, it feels a lot more casual than any Smash game. There is a dodge button but there is no block and no universal throw that everyone can use. Special moves work on a cooldown so you can't spam them endlessly. There are also no heavy or smash attacks, but you can charge up most basic attacks by holding down the button. If you're someone who has never played Smash, I could see it being relatively easy to pick this up. Nickelodeon All-Stars is trying to be the competitive brawler while this is trying to be more like a party game. 

 

While there is a free for all mode, the game heavily emphasizes the 2v2 mode because a lot of your specials have passive effects that can either buff your teammate or debuff your opponent. There are also equippable perks when you level a character up that give them some passive buffs as well, so that means it's not really going to be a totally level playing field  unless everyone is the same rank but I'm still figuring out just how much of a difference those perks make in a match. 

 

I can't say much about the microtransactions because this is a preseason. There's a battle pass for 4.99 but I doubt it'll stay that price when the full game launches. There are some cosmetics like character skins, profile flair, taunts, and special effects that can only be unlocked with premium currency, but thankfully the characters can all be unlocked using coins that you earn in game. Maybe they'll change it later, but at least right now it only took me a couple hours to do enough daily missions to get the coins I needed to unlock Bugs Bunny, who quickly became my main. 

 

Really, the game is free to play so there's no real risk in trying it out if you like the genre. Someone did the math and concluded the current cost to unlock every single cosmetic was around $250, which is a lot, yeah, but compared to the $500,000 to max out ONE character in Diablo Immortal it's way less egregious, so I'm hoping the prices stay somewhat reasonable once the game starts its first season and we don't see any nonsense like $40 skins. Maybe that's wishful thinking but at least right now I haven't seen any individual item that costs more than 20. Still more than I think any digital accessory should cost but it's not so much it makes me recoil with disgust. We'll see how it pans out.

[danielpholt]

I've been plugging away at Dark Souls Remastered on the Switch. Firstly, it's a really solid port, and plays pretty well on the Switch. The issue I'm having is that whilst I loved Elden Ring, Dark Souls Remastered is, at its core a 10 year old game with a lick of paint thrown on top. 

That's not to say it's bad, far from it. I can certainly see the attraction, but I think it's all just a bit too raw for me. I loved Elden Ring, and whilst I didn't expect that from DSR, I also wasn't expecting everything to be as ....(word here?) as it is. 

This hasn't put me off from trying Bloodborne or Sekiro however. And with both of those games being more modern, I think a few of the issues I've had with DSR might be ironed out. 

 

Maybe.

 

[Mister Jack]

What issues do you refer to?

[danielpholt]

Issues was the wrong word. The game is just not for me at the end of the day. 

[TheMightyEthan]

My wife and I have been playing Escape Academy, and really quite enjoying it. It's definitely something that should be played coop though, I think if I were playing alone I probably wouldn't like it nearly as much.

 

I also tried out the Forza Horizon 5 Hotwheels DLC with my new racing wheel today, and it was great. Not only was the wheel itself great, but I feel like the DLC as a whole brings back some of the ridiculousness and spectacle that I thought was missing from the base game. Now that I've tested everything's working with the wheel though I'm making myself stop playing until the shifter gets here (it shipped separately), cause I don't want to get through all the DLC before I have my full setup.

 

I've also been replaying Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. Still a great game, I'm really impressed with well they managed to bring the experience of classic Homeworld to a game on a planetary surface.

 

Finally, I've also also been replaying Titanfall 2. I mainly restarted this to put my Elite Series 2 controller through its paces, and I definitely chose right in that respect. It's also still one of the best FPS campaigns ever.

[danielpholt]

On 7/22/2022 at 1:26 AM, TheMightyEthan said:

My wife and I have been playing Escape Academy, and really quite enjoying it. It's definitely something that should be played coop though, I think if I were playing alone I probably wouldn't like it nearly as much.

 

I also tried out the Forza Horizon 5 Hotwheels DLC with my new racing wheel today, and it was great. Not only was the wheel itself great, but I feel like the DLC as a whole brings back some of the ridiculousness and spectacle that I thought was missing from the base game. Now that I've tested everything's working with the wheel though I'm making myself stop playing until the shifter gets here (it shipped separately), cause I don't want to get through all the DLC before I have my full setup.

 

I've ditched Escape Academy, but I agree with your take on playing as a duo. I think you need that back and forth in order to make the games puzzles more interesting. And for what it's worth, I think you might have just sold a copy of the Forza Hotwheels DLC to me. 

 

I started As Dusk Falls last night. I've heard mixed things about it but 90 or so minutes in and I'm definately a fan. Story is interesting, the art design is something truly unique and I'm enjoying the somewhat laid back nature of the gameplay works perfectly for some end-of-day gaming. I'm also playing it using my phone as the controller. The game is mainly just decision points, with some very (very) light QTE moments, so it's working fairly well so far. 

 

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

My wife and I are visiting her family this week, so I'm planning to play As Dusk Falls on my phone through Xcloud, glad to hear it works well.

[danielpholt]

I actually thought i'd finished it last night; hit credits and everything......turns out the game is split into two 'books'. I'm going to start my second book tonight. The stories are (I think) entirely connected, but I think you play as different characters or something? Either way, sign me up for more of that please. Easy top 5 of the year potential here. 

[TheMightyEthan]

I played the first chapter of book 1 this morning right after I posted that. I was planning to play with my Razer Kishi, but based on your post I just played with touch controls and it worked great. I'm really looking forward to continuing it

[TheMightyEthan]

Exapunks

 

This is a Zachtronics game where you play as a computer hacker who has to program these little agents to infiltrate computer programs to steal/alter/delete data (basic hacker stuff). The coolest part is that you're actually coding, it's not abstracted in any way, so really the game is just a series of coding puzzles with a cyberpunk story as a backdrop. I love it, possibly even more than Opus Magnum, which was my favorite Zachtronics game up to this point.

 

Also, my new mechanical keyboard makes me feel like a real hacker when I'm playing it. 

[danielpholt]

I'm very slowly working my way through the Forza Horizon 5 Hotwheels DLC. It hasn't grabbed me as much as I thought it might, and I think that's largely down to how track-based everything seems to be so far. One of the things I like about these games is that for the most part, you're not restricted to driving on tracks, that's not the case here. 

I'll keep at it. I'm hoping as I unlock more cars it'll start to open up a little. 

[danielpholt]

Ditched Hotwheels. As I mentioned before, it wasn't scratching the itch that I want a FH game to scratch, so rather than continue to push against it I've jumped off entirely.

 

Not really playing anything at the moment, however I did get a chance to load up Multiverses and I got as far as the games opening menu before I was told I HAD to have a WBgames account to progress further. At that point I closed the game and I'm not sure I'll be going back. I don't remember being forced to sign up for an account in any other game before. IIRC even Rocket League only forces you into an Epic account because of the cross-play, and even that allows you to play without an account.