What are you currently playing?

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, the difference between Rogue Legacy and Souls is that I actually enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay of RL, so I don't mind having to repeat stuff. Also the randomization really helps because I'm never doing the exact same thing twice, and if I do want to keep retrying a boss I can just lock the castle and warp straight to him, eliminating much tedium.

[toxicitizen]

Lol. I actually forgot that RL has procedural gen, it's been a while.

 

Not that I feel like it makes a huge difference personally but I wasn't trying to start a thing, just thought it was kinda funny considering your stance on Souls.

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh no, I wasn't trying to start a thing either, I was just trying to explain what makes RL different for me.

[toxicitizen]

I know! Holy shit, dude, calm down!

[TheMightyEthan]

Lol, I am calm...?

[toxicitizen]

[TCP]

[Mal]

So I gave the Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara a spin and tried the two games within. Where were these games in my childhood in the arcades? They easily rank with and may outclass the X-Men and TMNT beat them ups. Like holy crap, an inventory and/or spell selection!? There also seems to be a RNG based loot drop as well... and a shop!? These games might be the River City Ransom of the arcades.

 

Now to try to invest some time into these games to see if they really hold up. So far, first impressions are really good.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I'm sure I mentioned this before but the reason I don't play co op is I don't want to be the weak link and let people down but I thought I'd give it a go in ac unity and boy was that not the problem. Even though the person I was with had a high rank they did nothing except wander around aimlessly I literally had to find and do everything. The only thing they did is cause a fracas in the main square so all the crowd left and I had no one to hide amongst.

Edited January 7, 2016 by TheFlyingGerbil

[TheMightyEthan]

Another one down!

 

[Mal]

Vermintide

 

L4D with a robust economy of sorts.

 

Oh man, you can easily find yourself lost in trying to get the best loot which is more or less tied to a die roll. You can somewhat stack the odds to your favor with finding and finishing the level with tomes or grimores. Those give you better die to roll with but in game they take up inventory space and with the grimores, reduce the party's total health. There's also a forge that allows you to forge a higher tier weapon (with 5 lesser weapons), upgrade (for an ability) or to melt down for some upgrade currency. An alternate way to get better weapons is with an alter where you can use excess upgrade currency to get a new weapon. This economy is pretty neat.

 

The melee combat is satisfying. Depending on your weapon and if the skaven is wearing armor, you might find yourself having to aim for their heads if your weapon cannot penetrate armor.

 

Anyhow, I think my dwarf need blue tiered weapons to handle Hard. An extra ability would help against the rat ogre. Most my hard mode game overs was due to not being able to beat the rat ogre.

[TheMightyEthan]

Dove into Rise of the Tomb Raider and played for about 3 hours.  So far it is exactly what I'd hoped it would be.

[Mal]

 

MFW this happens at a troublesome spot

 

 

An all mage/sorcerer run could be really devastating.

[deanb]

I am also playing DDDA. If you pick up McVitie, that's my Pawn.

 

I'm enjoying it, though certain aspects could be refined. It's not as hand-holding in areas it could be, such as I have a level, and enemies have levels, but my quests don't give an inkling which are levelled or not (nor which are apparently time limited too). Also while I knew they'd apparently made the fast travel easier I wasn't aware that I had to go to the inn keeper to pick this stuff up. Some kind of internal quests would be nice (like what you get for new DLC in TES n such). Though tbh best I can tell the fast travel is only one way, which kinda sucks balls a bit cos the starting town I have to go back to for a couple quests and it's a good hour or so of game time away.

[Mal]

DDDA control scheme for KB+M is just bizarre. It works for the most part but it has few annoyances. Menus that should be or can be hotkeyed are not like equipment and map. They did it for items so why not menus? Hitting escape to access it most of the menu is just odd. Additionally the space bar should sub in for the enter key in the menu and dialog. Some prompts you kind of have to use the enter key. The alternate is a mouse click which can trigger an attack if you are not careful towards the tail end of a conversation. So for me, a lot of switching to full keyboard controls (it works) for town work. I'm not getting arrested or killing anybody again. edit: E works. Like what the fuck!? Also seems like Ctrl and alt works for Insert and Page Up.

 

Then there's the ballistas. Right trigger on the controller is mapped to F which is to fire the arrow/bolt. Right and left click is just to choose arrow types. F in other cases is to grab people or things. I would've figured it would be E since that is the use/interaction key but no, F.

As for PC port exclusive Bow Mode which is bound to Q... I have no idea what that does.

 

I can keep going with some other issues but I have to say this: I am loving this game. It has problems but the idea is just really neat. We need a Dragon Dogma 2 which attempts to address the issues and expand on this game. Slaying beasts in this game is actually fun.

 

Tonight I finally took down a dragon in the western portion of the map. Thing's a beast. I'm not sure how I am going to do it when I do a melee character. Another first is a griffin during a story mission. Prior to this, I was having a hell of a time trying to engage one.

Last night surprise was a lich of sorts. A completely random encounter that nearly killed me while I figure out how to fight it. Overleveling and a bit of kiting it is what saved me when I can blast it with powerful magics from behind a rock... now I want to fight a hydra out in the field.

Edit: Also... it's odd how I'm looked at and referred as a man when I am a woman. Can't the Queen or whatever confide in another woman from outside the court!? I seriously don't want anything romantic... and there's the issue of the childhood friend... I'm sticking with Selene.

Edited January 19, 2016 by MaliciousH

[SomTervo]

Playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate mainly, with bits of Mad Max and Fallout 4 on the side.

 

For the record: Assassin's Creed Syndicate is the best AC game made to-date and is the only AC game (imo) to be a legitimately excellent game outwith the series itself. Most of the time it's more like GTA Victorian London meets open world Thief meets Victorian Hitman. It is fucking glorious. It's the first ever AC game I've played that I think about on a daily basis and actually look forward to playing every evening.

 

It's an utter pleasure. So many little things are streamlined/improved. It has an awesome female protagonist. There's a grappling hook which reduces your climbing/faffing time to 1/10th what it was previously and opens up stealth sandboxes with ease. There are loads of gadget improvements, like how Frenzy darts work with nearby objects, and how pistols are structured. The world has lots of moving parts - the Thames is full of awesome boats all rolling along dynamically which you can steal from and free run across. Trains go about their business. Horses and carriages can be climbed on/ all over so you can do Just Cause style stunts, car chases and rooftop fistfights.

 

The combat hasn't been changed much - but has been doubled in speed. So it's not longer a big hassle getting in a fight - you can take apart enemies in seconds, and viciously. On top of that - there are now a handful of factions in play at once. If police see you in a fight, they'll get involved. If your gang members see you in a fight, they'll get involved. If enemy gang members see you in a fight, they'll get involved.

 

It's an actual sandbox. Often, a typical 'kill the criminals' ambient objective can turn into a street-wide riot, full of gunshots and screams and people trying to escape (while you zip to a rooftop and watch). There are other cool things about combat - like there's now a dedicated dodge button for being shot at, which makes you feel like a badass actually dodging bullets.

 

So awesome.

 

Tonight I finally took down a dragon in the western portion of the map. Thing's a beast. I'm not sure how I am going to do it when I do a melee character.

 

Grab the chest.

 

Grab the chest like you're a rando in a heaving nightclub.

 

Re DD:DA, some dude on NeoGAF made a save file converter so you can copy your DD:DA save file from PS360 to PC. I played the game to about 2/3rds completion on X360 and now have a gaming PC, so I was super down with that.

 

But I only ever had vanilla Dragon's Dogma on Xbox 360. And the save file converter only works with Dark Arisen console saves.

 

*biggest sad face ever*

Edited January 26, 2016 by SomTervo

[Thursday Next]

After playing through FFX again, I'm back to the best combat / upgrade system ever devised. Also the best intro to a JRPG ever...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F78Ac8XQw9k

 

It's showtime girls!

[Eleven]

But what about this system?

 

[Thursday Next]

XII was fun in a setting up the dominoes to watch them fall kind of way, also lead to some hilarious defeats when I was lazy with my Gambits. I just love the dress sphere, garment grid system in X-2.

[TheMightyEthan]

I never played any of the final fantasy games where you could do that, but I really liked the related system in DA:O where you programmed your allies' AI.

 

*Edit - I like the dominoes comparison.  The game isn't playing itself because you're the one telling it how to decide when to do what, you're just playing at a different level of abstraction.  You're playing the commander who gives general guidance to his troops, but doesn't micromanage every single thing they do.

[deanb]

After playing through FFX again, I'm back to the best combat / upgrade system ever devised. Also the best intro to a JRPG ever...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F78Ac8XQw9k

 

It's showtime girls!

 

But that's the FFX-2 opening, this is the FFX opening:

 

On the upgrade front I think I like FFIX over others. Though yeah FFX had pretty enjoyable and straight forward combat, always recommend it as a "my first FFX" just cos the combat doesn't take much to wrap your head around (apart from knowing to fight zombie evyra you should use cure magic).

 

And yeah, thought it super annoying at the time that folks hated on XII for the gambit system but then stroke DA:Os shaft with it having the tactics system and they're exactly the same thing apart from needing to find advanced "gambits" as items.

[Mister Jack]

After hearing about the steam announcement, I decided I should finally get around to playing Danganronpa 2.  I am not looking forward to getting attached to all these teenagers only to see them die horribly.

[Thursday Next]

Despair Girls (the spinoff Danganronpa game) is only worth it if you are a massive DR fan. Just FYI. I loved DR1 and DR2, tolerated DR:AEUDG.

[deanb]

I'm currently playing DDDA still. Recently became a Knight, I'm taking my time with this game but much faster now I've acquired several Port Crystals. tbh the lack of "proper" fast travel is what drags it out, and without the Eternal Ferrystone this version has I reckon I'd have chucked it in. Got 5 escort quests lined up to go to Bloodwater Beach (or whatever it is, sounds like that) which is in the furthest South-West point, and the capital is in the North-East so it'd be insane to have to walk that, while protecting your charge, 5 times over. Instead I can plop a port crystal down (which I did last night) then just teleport between capital n beach in a near instant and get several quests out the way.

 

On my mobile I'm on Pokemon Shuffle and to my shame I kinda installed Simpsons Tapped Out again. I am a sucker for skinner boxes but eventually I kinda burn out on them. Kinda crap cos I have proper decent games on my mobile to play too.

[SomTervo]

The problem is if they implemented fast travel it would make so many of the quests absolutely vacuous experiences - your port crystal experience would become the norm and nobody would engage with the overworld properly.

 

The solution IMO would be to make the overworld a bit more dynamic. It's still great like it is, but after a while you're like "oh yeah, there is an orc behind that bush. There's a bunch of harpies there. A boulder is about to roll down the hill." In Souls this works because you're so agile, and there are so many shortcuts, that you can sprint through any area in seconds, but in Dragon's Dogma you've just got to trudge through this far more massive world. It would be solved if there were randomised/dynamic battles/events throughout the world and no enemies spawned in the same places, so it was always a fresh adventure.

 

Of course, this is infinitely easier said than done. Apparently when you get to games of this scale/detail, the smallest 'randomised' aspect is fucking hard to do.

 

On-topic: I got Rise of the Tomb Raider for £6 using the region-swap trick on Windows 10. I feel a bit dirty. The game is clearly worth £30+ and I'd happily pay that for it, but I'm not exactly flush with cash. Perhaps I'll buy it on Steam at a later date once I see it on a deal.

 

Initial thoughts: the writing and pacing are far better than TR2013, which was on-the-whole really shit for that. However, it's still not Uncharted-level. Most of the dialogue and voice acting still misses the mark and comes off as forced/false. However, the pacing is so much better that it's easier to forgive the actual writing quality. This game has an actual introductory sequence (rather than a horrible PC-FPS-circa-2003-tier pre-rendered cutscene) and there's a nice ebb and flow of drama and pauses and action and mystery introduction then more action. It's still not as flawlessly paced as a Naughty Dog game, but it's getting there.

 

The actual gameplay seems like it might be Uncharted 2-tier, so that is excellent. It's safely better than Uncharted 1 or 3, though I doubt it's going to match Uncharted 3's set pieces.

 

I love the 'learn the language' mechanic. Makes all the generic 'read this tomb wall' objectives actually compelling.

 

Edit: I particularly like that RotTR has an 'Extreme' difficulty equivalent, which is substantively different from the standard three difficulties. It has more enemies, less health regen, etc etc. Really, really adds to replay value.

Edited February 2, 2016 by SomTervo