What are you currently playing?

[Mister Jack]

I borrowed a copy of Bloodborne, figuring I'd give the series another chance even though I didn't like the last Souls game I played.  I'm not doing great so far because I'm still stuck in the first area.  It's not because I keep dying, but because I have no idea what the fuck to do.  There has to be a boss around here somewhere but damned if I can find him.

[Mister Jack]

Good grief, Nioh is even harder than Bloodborne was.  It took me a whole day just to beat the first mission's boss, and that was WITH people I had summoned to help me.  Even the overleveled people kept getting killed.  I eventually beat the bastard by using hit and run moves, but damn was it hard.  I chalk a lot of that up to the combat.  Compared to your average Souls game, there's a lot more going on here you have to work with.  Each weapon can be wielded in high stance for power, low stance for speed, or mid stance for a balance of the two.  So not only do you need to pick the right weapon for the job, but also the right way to use it.  That's on top of the magic and ninja skills you can learn, which have their own upgrade categories to manage.  As if that's not enough, if you run out of stamina then you can't even move until you're out of the red, but you can instantly get back lost stamina if you hit R1 at the right time after an attack.  Mastering all of these systems is mandatory to get anywhere with this game, and it sure as hell isn't easy to grasp at first, but damn does it look cool when you figure it out.

[Mal]

I look forward to hearing about your fist only run where you punch people out and catch enemy blades and use that to impale them in the chest.

 

On my front, I never expected Little King's Story to take up 50 hours of my time. And that's without cut scenes which I just realized are not playing for me after unlocking a theater mode. So I pretty much missed 80% of the plot and gags. Somehow I still enjoy it enough to go through some really bullshit bosses.

[toxicitizen]

Started Valdis Story: Abyssal City tonight. It's a metroidvania with DMC-like combat on a 2D plane. It sounds awesome but I think I kinda hate it a little? It's not bad or anything. The metroidvania part is about as fun as you'd expect but during the two hours I played the combat made me rage an unreasonable amount. It also feels a bit unpolished. The graphics look kinda blurry, movement and jumping both feel kinda floaty and imprecise and the combat is just challenging enough to become frustrating when there's a difficulty spike. I want to like it but right now I'm trying to distract myself from buying Hollow Knight and I think I'm gonna need to play something better than this if I'm going to succeed.

[Mister Jack]

I know what you mean.  I started it a while back and I think it was the second or third boss that started giving me red flags.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

 

Almost there . . .

 

Blood and Wine is brilliant. Some of the side quests feel like they belong in the main quest. And I absolutely love the bright Rococo style they used in designing Toussaint. Witcher mutations are neat, too. I'm using my heavy armor, strong attack, poison build from my NG+, and it feels all the more stompy with the right mutation equipped.

 

Thanks again to GOH for gifting Blood and Wine during Secret Santa, and to Thursday for gifting the core game a couple years back.

[Mister Jack]

I'm a few hours into Nier and my god I can't believe how polished this game is.  I never played the original, nor was I very interested in it, so I originally had no intention of picking this one up.  The overwhelmingly positive reviews ended up changing my mind, and man I'm glad they did because this is probably the best game Platinum has ever made.  Keep in mind I'm saying this with only a few hours of gameplay under my belt. They sorely needed this after their last couple of mediocre releases, which I understand were being made by their B-team.  Also, I'm really liking that PS4 developers are starting to understand the importance of a 60FPS framerate for action games.  Whoever it was who said 30FPS is more cinematic can go jump off a bridge.

[Baconrath]

When I'm not being terrible at Overwatch I've been bouncing between Dragon Quest VIII (3DS), Digimonstory Cyber Sleuth and a little bit of Fairy Fencer F. The latter I've kind of mentally checked out of after a cutscene death makes the MC flip out and panic time travel to an early area in the game.

 

Also I *might* have accidentally sold a special item and there's no buyback. That didn't help. 

[danielpholt]

Motorsport Manager

 

So like many a british teenager, I spent most of the early 00's playing entirely too much Football Manager. I could say that I was somewhat addicted to it. Motorsport Manager isn't quite as deep as that, but it's scratching the same itch, although I think it's lack of depth is what will ultimately push me away from the game in the long run. 

 

The only negative I can find atm is that it seems almost as if I (as the manager of a team) am a none factor. Much like the iOS version, I can't shake the feeling that eventually my team will become successful because the game dictates it, rather than through any skill of my own. 

 

Going to stick with it for now though as I love this sort of stuff. 

[Saturnine Tenshi]

NieR: Automata. Spent a while goofing around and fishing before moving on to the next area. The Mario Cacti robots are goofy af. Enjoying it so far.

[deanb]

Currently dabbling with Warframe. Been recommend it and so far I'm kind of enjoying it, I can certainly see the comparisons with Destiny. It's pretty stylish, and the movement is pretty great. Also the maps so far are very friendly for people that are wanting to go exploring. Linear to the degree of getting you to your goal, without just being a corridor shooter.

 

Also diving back into FFXV, though with the news of the update I had held off a wee bit.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

For androids that are programmed to have critical thinking and emotions, those in NieR: Automata don't seem to be too bright. SOMETHING IS CLEARLY MORE AMISS THAN "THEY'RE JUST SAYING RANDOM PHRASES"!

Edited March 29, 2017 by Saturnine Tenshi

[Mal]

Chapter 4 and I got to say, Trails SC really builds on FC by this point. You can imagine and read about it but until you experience it, you just don't know. It's a total joy to go through even if my memories of FC is fuzzy. I'm kind of rushing it so I'm not really trying to get everything. I imagine that I missed a thing or two by not going off the beaten path to find non-board quests.

Gameplay wise, I really wish Hard was a tad bit more tame. Normal is just a bit too easy but Hard is just a slog. Hard comes down to chance on how my encounter will go even if debuffs and buffs correctly. Hell, during this Normal run I got defeated by all the enemy going for a NPC at the start of a battle. That's no good. This good battle system needs a rebalance. Maybe in 3rd? Also some parts is just kind of weirdly designed. Like why do I need to look at the colorless fish when the front desk is already talking about the person I am trying to find? Couldn't my characters ask if this person been around and what's the deal with "colorless fish". I swear I ran into this place a few times before I found the prompt at the colorless fish...

Hopefully I'll be done with this by the time I get my draft back so I work on that then go visit my niece. Maybe I'll start 3rd in New York on my rather crappy laptop... I wonder if it even runs.

---
Chapter 7. The wayward son returns! YES YES YES

Edited April 26, 2017 by Mal

[deanb]

I am currently playing Warframe and atm I'm a day (of three) into building my first warframe (that isn't the one you pick at the start). I'm pretty excited. It's certainly scratching a shooting itch. I like some of the variety in the weapons. I started with a bow as my primary, which was fitting after having just wrapped up Horizon, but currently my fave gun is a kind of automatic cyclical shotgun. It burns through bullets like mad though. Recently found out as well one of my special powers that gives me a glowing super sword, is a fucking ranged weapon!! I've been using it at close range, so I hadn't noticed that my slashes go off into the distance like a phantom sword projecticle. It's pretty fun to kill enemies that way.

Last weekend played some Jackbox, this time with my older sis and her BF joining in and our parents n grandparents observing to the side. At first people were like "so what do you do" but soon go the hang of it. Also played some Rocket League (got sisters BF to bring his controller so we could do two players). My sisters played each other, then I got royally trampled by her BF 15-0. He's obviously not attempting to please the big brother.

I was on relatively even skill with my dad though. He quite enjoyed it once he had the (pretty simple) controls explained to him. He's more into his rally and F1 games, not this football+cars stuff

Also with the time my younger bro spends customising his car I hate to see what he'll be like when he gets into Bethesda RPGs.

I've also downloaded the DoWIII beta which I shall be giving a spin of later today (housework and shit first).

edit: Gave DoW a spin. Made my own army, but turns out there's no bots in the MP so I've not played it proper. :/

[danielpholt]

A few things for me. 

I'm still spending far too much time playing BB-TAM. It's a cute mobile game where you aim to destroy blocks using balls and angles and shit. It looks like the 2048 people have been at it again and decided to release their own version, called..Ballz. For what its worth, I'd recommend BB-TAM. 

I picked up Snake Pass last week. It's exactly what you think it is, a cutesy puzzle game that oozes charm and offers a unique take on a fairly unoriginal genre. That being said, for all it's quality, it's let down by some infuriating decisions. Namely the checkpointing system that punishes you (and thus removes your eagerness to explore the maps) and a somewhat iffy camera. I'm going to go back to it, but I hear it gets even harder towards the end, and I'm not sure I need that in my life.

Finally, I just picked up Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. I've spent 90 or so minutes with it so far, and jank aside I'm having a blast. I've spent 95% of my time hiding in bushes; furiously moving the camera around in order to spot any potential combatants, whilst trying to work out the games kinda-awful inventory management. It seems to run like a pile of crap on my system, but I'm thinking that might be an early access thing. 

 

[Mister Jack]

So I've been dabbling in Yooka-Laylee and I can't shake this feeling like the dev team, despite their prior experience, bit off more than they can chew.  I don't agree with all of the complaints in the reviews.  The controls seem fine to me, at least with the PC version and while using a controller.  The music is great.  The voices are...a subjective matter.  They don't bother me that much but I can definitely understand why constantly hearing the WONKWONKWONK of Rare gibberish can grate on someone's nerves.  No, my main problem with this game is unfortunately probably the most important aspect of a platformer: the level design.

I've played N64 platformers and I can say without a doubt that the levels in this game are too fucking big.  I guess since they only made five of them they wanted to make them as big as they could, but this introduces a number of problems.

A) The objectives are spread too far out.  I'm missing 15 pages in the first world despite tirelessly searching every inch I could for new pagies.  They must be in there somewhere, but damn if I could tell you where. It also makes the levels feel like big, empty fields that happen to have random crap just thoughtlessly dumped in them for you to do.

B) There's no map.  I know that N64 platformers didn't have maps either, but they really should have.  Plus, those levels weren't this god damn huge.  It should not take me half an hour to forty-five minutes to figure out where my next objective is.

c) The objectives are...boring.  There are a few neat ones here and there, but I've literally jumped through hoops for pagies at least five times now. I realize it was a small team, but if it came down to smaller levels or more pagies, I think I'd rather have smaller levels with more interesting things to do in them.  

I dunno about this game.  I certainly wouldn't give it a 2 (come on, Jim Sterling) but I also wouldn't make excuses for all of its flaws like people are doing on the steam forum. It's...thoroughly average. If you're determined to buy this game, wait for a sale.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Mister Jack

[Hot Heart]

Been replaying Jade Empire, which I'd been meaning to do since probably ten years ago. It's also sort of inspiration/research for a board game I'm attempting to design. A sort of deck building game where you have different fighting styles that offer unique special moves (activated by combinations of the cards in your hand/deck) within an adventure game framework. Probably overreaching a little but I'm enthused about it and it's not like I'm rushing to meet a deadline.

Also, someone should make a new Jade Empire-style game since The Witcher 3 shows you can make decent action combat combined with RPG elements.

Edited May 15, 2017 by Hot Heart

[TheMightyEthan]

I've been playing Forza Horizon 3 and really enjoying it. It's like the best parts of Dirt combined with Burnout Paradise (except good).

Also, driving a supercar through a city at 250mph in this game is the first time in my life that 60fps has seemed insufficient.

[Hot Heart]

I think the Forza games are the only things that make me wish I had an Xbone.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Golf games are a lot harder than I remember. I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Think Mario Golf is more my level.

[deanb]

 

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Mainly Overwatch atm. Double XP and all. Spamming grenades and cheesing with Symmetra. But the cheese is good.

[CrowKnow]

Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Overwatch and Mount & Blade Warband.

I haven't found ANY of the side missions fun in Mirror's Edge so far.  Running through the world and picking up collectables is fine but, reloading missions multiple times (an ssd is necessary not to go insane)  to hear the same audio, to get lost cause runner's vision would suddenly stop or tell me to jump to my death, constantly having no idea what I'm supposed to do.  It's suuuper disappointing and I'm glad I'm using the Origin subscription trial thingy to play it. 

Overwatch is Overwatch.  I skipped most of the double exp weekend to play Path of Exile's beta for an expansion and I'm kinda sad I didn't get the genji skin throughout the event.  I've been playing tons more Zen lately which is leagues less stressful than Ana.  I don't have to worry about heals, I don't have to worry about the right time to nano since it's basically "did they use grav,blade,visor? Time to trance" and lastly I can actually protect myself vs trying to land sleepdarts, hitting noscopes and waiting till the right moment to throw a nade at the floor.

I've been playing warband with a lotr mod which has been pretty fun.  It's was a bit hard to get into cause I didn't remember most of the controls/mechanics of the mount and blade games so I wasn't sure what was mod specific or not.  I'm at the point where I would like to wrap it up but, I can't siege towns so I'm stuck waiting (AND LOOKING FOR) the ai to finally attack the enemy.

[deanb]

Goddamit I totally forgot about the free Origin Access trial.

 

What's the LotR mod you're using? I didn't get super into Mount & Blade but a touch of LotR might spruce it up for me.

[CrowKnow]

The Last Days of the Third Age