What are you currently playing?

[SomTervo]

I wasn't saying it's a masterpiece – I never took that step – and obviously the way i've played it has affected my opinion. Playing it on a tiny, co-op split screen must make it look a lot better than it does in native res. And certain things become far more fun co-op for reasons I won't get into here – I think it's easier to overlook issues and poor design when you and a friend laugh stuff off and constantly press ahead for the next big rush.

 

I also didn't say it was better than RE5/6 or DS3, but I think on the co-op survival horror stakes it does that better. Because those games basically don't feature co-op survival horror. Almost no games have ever done that successfully. Resi 5 went full blown action, but Rev 2 has a load of stealth (co-op stealth too), difficult survival horror fights, decent little puzzles – which is more than Resi 5 ever had. I think 6 did match that a few times, but the pacing was way worse.

 

And I wasn't saying it is a co-op TLoU or that the level of quality is anywhere near that game – though my writing may have been a little misleading. I said 'imagine' a co-op TLoU. Because there are times where, indeed, the mechanics are exactly what TLoU would be like if someone else was playing Ellie. That doesn't mean they are as good or the graphics are as good. It just means that it's the same vibe and probably what co-op TLoU would be like a lot of the time.

 

When I riff off 20 things which a game is like, I'm not saying that it is all these things. I'm like a wine connoiseur sniffing a glass of red and saying 'ooh, hints of blueberry, oak, cinammon'. I'm just saying 'there are flavours of all this stuff in the game'. I'm not saying IT'S THE NEXT LOST MEETS RESI 4 HOLY SHIT. Who the hell would think I'm saying that? Chances are my excitement about the game is making my posts have a bit of a hyperbolic tone, but I'm just drawing high-level similarities. Like the Lost, stuck on an island, conspiracy theories, strange supernatural shit? That high-level story stuff could apply to Rev 2, even if the writing is (yes) nowhere near as good and very hammy. I wouldn't call it full-blown bad though. This is mid-range stuff. (Barry is really badly written though, he's a stand-out shit dialogue beast.)

 

I do think you're being way harsh on it though, Strange. Like, okay so the graphics are pretty mediocre. It costs £20. It lifts a lot of stuff from other games and stories. What doesn't? It mixes them together in a nice way in a good little adventure. (Also it's £20). Singleplayer I imagine the campaign is pretty damn dull, but as you say, Raid is brill. And it's £20. Y'all should try it co-op, because it's one of the few/only co-op survival horror games, and I'm having an utter blast with my gf playing it. And it's £20.

 

At the level of a budget title, what you get is great. I've always said that. At no point did I say it's the same level of experience you get for £50 on a new, high budget game.

 

On a different topic, a friend and I sunk a lot of time into GTAV's Heists yesterday. Very janky and needs a lot of ironing out, but this was great (copied from the GTAV Heists thread). Imagine it all in a rank, dry, sun-baked desert at noon:

 

Me and a buddy finished the Prison Break last night with two skilled randoms. It was fucking great.

 

Had a genuine life-long gaming memory moment:

- me and my buddy swinging onto an airstrip in a battered, bullet-ridden armoured prison bus

> followed by six police cars, coppers hanging off the sides; three police choppers keeping us in their sights and the wanted level up; a SWAT van

> at the end of the runway, our getaway driver is idling in an almost-destroyed getaway plane (the engine on fire, windows shattered)

> in the air above us, the 'demolitions' guy is flying an attack chopper, raining down bullets and rockets onto the cops who chase us and the helicopter

> I zoom down the runway, swerving the huge prison bus to avoid explosives and bullets. There are constant explosions and choppers falling out of the sky, often landing in burning heaps to either side of the bus. Smoke and bullets are everywhere.

> we pull up to the getaway plane and jump out of the bus. I am on the side of the plane with the door so I get to the door, spin around, and cover my teammate and the target as they climb in. Only one panda car has made it all the way to the end of the runway, with more flooding in in the distance, and I shoot down the cops as they climb out of this car.

> we all heap into the plane, screaming at the driver to get moving. The driver hits the pedal and... the plane engine sputters. The front rotor spins a couple of times and stops. The plane moves about one foot. We all begin screaming.

> Three police cars come roaring up the runway, spinning to avoid the prison bus and firing off shots at our plane. Helicopters have circled overhead.

> The demolitions guy blows up a chopper which lands nearby to the plane's front left flank. We scream.

> He blows up another chopper which lands on the plane's wing. The whole thing rocks and creaks. We scream louder.

(It's worth noting at this point that I was partly watching this from inside the plane, in the cabin, in first person, and partly in third person looking back at the runway.)

> Finally the plane engine kicks in and the rotor spins and we gradually pull away from the chaos. There are now four cop cars behind us, officers hiding behind them with shotguns and rifles and letting off shots. The demo guy blows up more helicopters, fire and smoke and metal raining down around us as we pull off the ground.

> In an effort to escape the dangerous ground, our pilot pulls up sooner than usual. The plane slowly – agonisingly slowly – lifts up and floats off. Bullets ping through our windows and off the tail and chassis.

 

Then we're away. The demolitions guy holds off the hordes of cop helicopters, they lose sight of us as we gain altitude, and our sputtering, groaning plane makes it off the police alert grid. In first person I look at my co-criminal sitting opposite and he has a bullet hole in his forehead, but he's okay. I won't spoil the very thrilling end of the thing, but by god, that was a glorious experience.

Edited March 16, 2015 by kenshi_ryden

[toxicitizen]

I wasn't saying it's a masterpiece – I never took that step

Revelations 2 feels like co-op Resident Evil 4 most of the time. But only the Village part. That is, only the best part of Resident Evil 4, which also has legendary status.

Could've fooled me.

 

I also didn't say it was better than RE5/6 or DS3, but I think on the co-op survival horror stakes it does that better. Because those games basically don't feature co-op survival horror. Almost no games have ever done that successfully. Resi 5 went full blown action, but Rev 2 has a load of stealth (co-op stealth too), difficult survival horror fights, decent little puzzles – which is more than Resi 5 ever had. I think 6 did match that a few times, but the pacing was way worse.

 

Except that both of those games are better than Rev 2 in almost every way imaginable. And if we're going down that road, then Rev 2 isn't much in the way of survival-horror either. It's your regular modern action Resident Evil. So I'm not sure where you're getting any of that from. Also, Rev 2 has puzzles? I guess I haven't played Episode 3 yet, so maybe it starts having them in that one? Because I haven't encountered anything that would qualify so far. Not that RE5 had a ton of puzzles or anything but, off the top of my head, the laser puzzle section in the temple from RE5 is more of a puzzle than anything I've seen in Rev 2 so far.

 

And I wasn't saying it is a co-op TLoU or that the level of quality is anywhere near that game – though my writing may have been a little misleading. I said 'imagine' a co-op TLoU. Because there are times where, indeed, the mechanics are exactly what TLoU would be like if someone else was playing Ellie. That doesn't mean they are as good or the graphics are as good. It just means that it's the same vibe and probably what co-op TLoU would be like a lot of the time.

Then why even compare it to TLoU at all? I mean, I feel like the similarities you're describing are superficial at best. It's not like the two games actually have anything in common in how they play and feel. And, I mean, comparing a budget title like Rev 2 to something as critically-acclaimed as TLoU in any way just comes across as preposterous, regardless of your intention.

 

When I riff off 20 things which a game is like, I'm not saying that it is all these things. I'm like a wine connoiseur sniffing a glass of red and saying 'ooh, hints of blueberry, oak, cinammon'. I'm just saying 'there are flavours of all this stuff in the game'. I'm not saying IT'S THE NEXT LOST MEETS RESI 4 HOLY SHIT. Who the hell would think I'm saying that? Chances are my excitement about the game is making my posts have a bit of a hyperbolic tone, but I'm just drawing high-level similarities. Like the Lost, stuck on an island, conspiracy theories, strange supernatural shit? That high-level story stuff could apply to Rev 2, even if the writing is (yes) nowhere near as good and very hammy. I wouldn't call it full-blown bad though. This is mid-range stuff. (Barry is really badly written though, he's a stand-out shit dialogue beast.)

Fair enough, but again, you might wanna be careful which comparisons you draw because it seriously colors the tone of what you're saying. I guess what I'm getting from all this is that you made a whole lot of hyperbolic comparisons without really meaning any of them?

[SomTervo]

I guess in future I'll caveat my gushing ramblings with '*The following is KR-excitement rant*'.

 

Full-disclosure: this is something I get from my dad. Whenever I'm excited by something - a movie, a game, a book - I will rant about it incessantly and full of hyperbole, trying to convey the excitement I feel. Something my dad does in exactly the same way about films and music, etc. We are usually blinded to negativs in these instances, or forget them too easily. (As an aside, surely it's a good thing to enjoy stuff massively?) And Rev 2 is genuinely something I'm excited to play on a daily basis with my gf (her shifts don't coincide with mine that much so we've only chipped away at it up until half way through episode 2), and we both have a load of fun playing it.

 

I think, when played with a friend, Rev 2 feels much bigger than it actually is. When I imagine playing the segments we've done by myself... I can imagine it being pretty disappointing and lonely.

 

I beg to differ re the TLoU comparison, though. Even if only for select moments, there are times when there's a definite overlap. Like, similarly to Lost there are these high-level similarities (one experienced, strong playable character; one inexperienced, vulnerable one/apocalyptic environments/dangerous and threatening enemies and crowd control), but obviously the actual detail of the game is nothing alike. I guess I should be saying that TLoU has a lot of RE4 in it, so they have similar lineage. There were distinctly TLoU moments in my experience, however. Eg a moment when my partner and I were crouching behind a car in a street, a deadly, looming monster shambling along opposite. We're both pretty low on health so going at it normally would be too risky, as the noise would probably attract/spawn more enemies too. (all just like a TLoU scenario). So we devise a plan: my partner throws a brick one way, catching the monster's attention, and I go the other. I get up close, and stealth kill him. Total TLoU stuff, albeit with a co-op spin.

 

This is only one scenario out of many in the game though. A lot of the time it's the usual Resi hapless running about doing crazy stuff.

Edited March 16, 2015 by kenshi_ryden

[toxicitizen]

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're enjoying the game that much. I'm also enjoying it a lot. It's the way you praised it that kinda made me go "u wot m8". It's good, but it's not THAT good.

 

I guess I should be saying that TLoU has a lot of RE4 in it, so they have similar lineage.

See, this makes a lot more sense. RE4 was crazy influential, you can still feel its impact in action games to this day. And when you describe it that way I can see why it reminded you of TLoU but I still think it's a poor comparison to make when it comes to describing Rev 2. I'd argue that TLoU was more of a survival-horror game than anything the RE series did in the past decade (REmake HD excluded, obviously).

[Mister Jack]

My friend bought me Cities: Skylines

 

 

So, uh...yeah

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I'm playing Pokémon shuffle at the moment and pretty annoyed I've beat the whale thing several times and even when I got the catchability from under 20 to over 80% I still didn't catch it. I'd better get it before it becomes unavailable else I'll probably stop playing.

[deanb]

Are you talking about Kyogre?

 

Also you bastards need to add me or something (even if I only have like three 3DS games or like 4 if you count Shuffle)

[TheFlyingGerbil]

yes, apparently I am talking about kyogre. After pikachu and magikarp I pretty much run out of pokemon names.

 

What's your NNID? Apparently you still need friendcodes. blimes. Anyway, if you just got an unexplained warm feeling it's because we're now friends. [internet hugs]

[deanb]

Yay!

[Mal]

My friend bought me Cities: Skylines

 

 

So, uh...yeah

This is what I'm afraid of. I get this game and suddenly I'm gone from the real world for a week or two.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I started playing Alpha Protocol. It's fun and a bit ghetto but it sort of works as it doesn't seem to take itself incredibly seriously.

[toxicitizen]

So, after playing The Evil Within and the Resident Evil HD Remaster, I was a little bummed out. I enjoyed them both immensely but neither really felt very scary or tense. I just kind of figured that maybe horror games weren't as effective on me anymore. Then I started playing Alien: Isolation this week. Holy shit, this game is fucking awesome! I'm not very far into it but I'm already having a blast. I get so nervous sneaking around that when the xenomorph actually does show up, it startles the shit out of me!

 

And it's not just the scares that are great. They really went all out in emulating the original 1979 movie's looks. I rewatched it prior to starting the game and they fucking nailed the look, the medbay in the ship you begin the game on looks almost identical to the one on the Nostromos and everything has this amazing retro futuristic style to it. It's actually kinda giving me System Shock vibes, which I am seriously digging.

 

The music is also great at elevating the tension but it's the sound design that steals the show. I've been playing exclusively with headphones so far and I think I'm gonna have to play through the entire thing with them. And I'm not just talking about hearing the xenomorph crawling around in air vents here. When you hear the station cracking and twisting all around you, it really sells the illusion that you're in this shitty old hunk of steel out there in space. And not just that but also the beep-boops coming from computers, the crackling of electric panels, the hissing sound of doors or that creepy metallic noise the air vents make when they open. Sevastopol station just feels so alive and it makes for an amazing atmosphere.

[Mister Jack]

Dungeon Fighter Online is in open beta now, so I downloaded that.  I used to love that game so it should be even better now that it's free of the Nexon cancer that killed it last time.  

[TheMightyEthan]

Civilization: Beyond Earth (thanks again FredEffinChopin!).  Quite enjoying it so far, very cool theming.  I can't wait to see where it goes after we get a couple expansions.

[toxicitizen]

Civilization: Beyond Earth (thanks again FredEffinChopin!).  Quite enjoying it so far, very cool theming.  I can't wait to see where it goes after we get a couple expansions.

Most of the impressions I've been hearing pretty much boil down to: it's good but not good enough to bite just yet, wait for the first expansion. Would you agree with that?

 

 

As for me, I started playing The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Man, I want to love it, I really do. But it's just so ugh. The Mass Effect-like combat isn't bad but it is pretty average at best. And it would be much easier to look past the braindead squadmates AI and nonsensical story that basically contradicts Enemy Unknown if the game didn't insist on crashing every fucking 20 mins. At one point there was a fight I couldn't get past and the game would literally crash every single time I reloaded the checkpoint. It's so bad that if I hadn't already played a bunch of Far Cry 3 without any issues I'd be kinda worried that there might be something wrong with my new GPU. :/

 

Honestly, so far all the game is doing is making me wish I was playing Enemy Unknown instead. And since I still haven't taken the time to fully dig into Enemy Within, I'm really tempted to actually do just that...

[Strangelove]

I started true vault hunter mode in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. It's basically a second tougher play through where you keep all your items and your level. You obviously acquire better loot too.

They did something pretty cool with it though. The Pre-Sequel is basically told by one of the playable Pre-Sequel characters to the main characters of the first Borderlands. It's basically like playing a flashback with narration.

What happens is that on your second play through, two characters from the previous two games(Brick and Tiny Tina) ask the character to retell the story since one of them missed it. So she does. So from then on, the game injects commentary from the storyteller and the two characters. It's fucking cool.

Only game I know that did something similar was Nier. Though I think in Nier it's vital to replay it. Here is just a nice little bonus.

Anyways, I have a lot of respect for games that add substantial content to new game plus. I have a problem with replaying games. I think I may do it too much.

[TheMightyEthan]

nonsensical story that basically contradicts Enemy Unknown

I don't think The Bureau is supposed to be within the same universe as Enemy Unknown.

 

As for Beyond Earth, I haven't even finished my first game yet so it's hard to say.  It's definitely more Civ V though, but with fewer features than expanded Civ V.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Still mainly playing Guild Wars 2. It's something I can pick up for a few PvP matches while taking a break from writing without having to really get into it. Trying to put off any serious gaming until I finish this project (with the exception of The Witcher 3, and maybe Atelier Shallie when I can pick that up).

[Hot Heart]

Seeing as the Dreamfall Chapters stuff has started to be released, I decided I should actually get around to The Longest Journey and then Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. So, the games are either the Dreamfall series or the Longest Journey series... huh

 

ANYWAY.

 

I'm liking the characters and the story in TLJ so far but really put off by the old-style adventure game mechanics. I mean, I used to love that sort of thing, but here they are so divorved from the actual narrative I'm thinking it would be better off without this stuff until the thrust of the story gets underway. So far it's just a lot of "go here and meet a person" but this person's told me to meet them somewhere... except they're not there. Now I've just given a guy a sweet that I made disgusting by dipping it in ooze that was under a bin, he's run off so I can get to a fusebox he was standing next to... and now I've picked up his hat. And I've got an inflatable duck ring thing for some reason, there's a machine outside my character's border house that I suppose I'll need to fix? I have no fucking clue why am I doing half these things.

[SomTervo]

I'm worried about this ^. Very keen to play those games, even saw the devs speak about them at EGX Rezzed 2014 and asked them about their writing (very inspired by Sandman), but I'm worried the mechanics won't be as focused/elegant as, say, Monkey Island or Grim Fandango.

 

 

So, after playing The Evil Within and the Resident Evil HD Remaster, I was a little bummed out. I enjoyed them both immensely but neither really felt very scary or tense. I just kind of figured that maybe horror games weren't as effective on me anymore. Then I started playing Alien: Isolation this week. Holy shit, this game is fucking awesome! I'm not very far into it but I'm already having a blast. I get so nervous sneaking around that when the xenomorph actually does show up, it startles the shit out of me!

And it's not just the scares that are great. They really went all out in emulating the original 1979 movie's looks. I rewatched it prior to starting the game and they fucking nailed the look, the medbay in the ship you begin the game on looks almost identical to the one on the Nostromos and everything has this amazing retro futuristic style to it. It's actually kinda giving me System Shock vibes, which I am seriously digging.

The music is also great at elevating the tension but it's the sound design that steals the show. I've been playing exclusively with headphones so far and I think I'm gonna have to play through the entire thing with them. And I'm not just talking about hearing the xenomorph crawling around in air vents here. When you hear the station cracking and twisting all around you, it really sells the illusion that you're in this shitty old hunk of steel out there in space. And not just that but also the beep-boops coming from computers, the crackling of electric panels, the hissing sound of doors or that creepy metallic noise the air vents make when they open. Sevastopol station just feels so alive and it makes for an amazing atmosphere.

 

Yes. Alien: Isolation is an FPS classic up there with System Shock, Deus Ex, Bioshock, Dishonoured.

 

It's such, such a great game. If the first few hours don't grab you, hold out, because hours 6-19 most certainly will.

 

 

 

As for me, I started playing The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Man, I want to love it, I really do. But it's just so ugh. The Mass Effect-like combat isn't bad but it is pretty average at best. And it would be much easier to look past the braindead squadmates AI and nonsensical story that basically contradicts Enemy Unknown if the game didn't insist on crashing every fucking 20 mins. At one point there was a fight I couldn't get past and the game would literally crash every single time I reloaded the checkpoint. It's so bad that if I hadn't already played a bunch of Far Cry 3 without any issues I'd be kinda worried that there might be something wrong with my new GPU. :/

Honestly, so far all the game is doing is making me wish I was playing Enemy Unknown instead. And since I still haven't taken the time to fully dig into Enemy Within, I'm really tempted to actually do just that...

 

 

That sucks about the crashing. I played on 360 and it was a slightly dumb game in concept, but really fun, with no issues whatsoever.

 

On Hard mode, some of the later gunfights outperformed many of Halo and Mass Effect's best. It was great.

 

Plus just you wait for that ending. Phenomenal last hour or so to The Bureau, even if the first half of the game is really quite poor. And shouldn't have been called XCOM.

 

On-topic: I've been playing

 

 

Just as great as everybody (read: most people) says.

 

The very singular, focused aesthetic and style makes the game infinitely more playable than Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, which I still really enjoyed. Neither of those games kept me gripped right to the end, but Bloodborne has me rapt.

 

Some of the best monster designs I've ever seen - and it doesn't hold back on the horror. There's some genuinely disturbing stuff in there, up there competing with Silent Hill's worse.

 

The combat and game systems are the most refined and clever they've ever been, too. Recommend it to all PS4 users. (It's also not as hard as everyone says.)

Edited April 6, 2015 by kenshi_ryden

[toxicitizen]

I don't think The Bureau is supposed to be within the same universe as Enemy Unknown.

Based on what? I guess I'll know for sure when I finish the campaign but so far there's been nothing to indicate that it's its own thing. It mostly comes off as "let's put in the very minimum of effort to not overtly contradict that other, better game". And I'm talking lazy throwaway lines that just kinda make you go "lol fuck off". They simply didn't care enough to bother making sure everything remained coherent. I mean, this game was in development hell for a little while and it kinda shows.

 

Besides, if it was meant to be its own thing then they should've just rebranded it as something other than XCOM. Especially considering they already had a proper XCOM game out by the time this came out. I mean, even when it was first revealed as an FPS the reception was pretty negative. It was always going to suffer from having the XCOM brand needlessly slapped on it.

 

That sucks about the crashing. I played on 360 and it was a slightly dumb game in concept, but really fun, with no issues whatsoever.

 

On Hard mode, some of the later gunfights outperformed many of Halo and Mass Effect's best. It was great.

 

Plus just you wait for that ending. Phenomenal last hour or so to The Bureau, even if the first half of the game is really quite poor. And shouldn't have been called XCOM.

Yeah, the first couple missions had some encounters that were kinda frustrating but now that I've leveled up my squad a bit I'm really glad I'm playing on Veteran difficulty. Now it's just challenging enough to be satisfying.

 

Curious to see what you mean about the ending, though, since I heard it wasn't very good. Hopefully I'll end up agreeing with you.

Edited April 6, 2015 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

I just thought I remembered from around the time of release that it was a different continuity. After some research though, apparently it's kind of a middle ground where it's defaulted to canon for Enemy Unknown unless and until they decide it's not.

 

http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/15/2k-marin-reddit-ama-explains-the-bureau-xcom-declassifieds-canon-status/

[Baconrath]

I'm busy being poo poo at KoF XIII. I'm using a fight pad so some of the trials and stuff are nigh impossible for me without a full fight stick.

 

 

The Never Git Gud camp is a lonely place.

[Thursday Next]

Finishing Danganronpa 2. Just got Island Mode to complete then she is le plat! Also, acquired Bloodborne today. So, gonna die, quite a bit.

[Mal]

Replaying Gurumin and restarting Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The port of Gurumin is competent but it does have some weird slowdowns here and there. I think it also have some stuff that wasn't in the PSP version...? I don't recall the music note thing for critical hits. As for Deus Ex, it is the director cut version. Let's do this.