What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

[ManjuShri]

 

[mause]

in my quest to get through my steam library i've been playing through the borderlands series and half life series again after the half life alyx announce,.Hl1 is endlessly amazing as ever..and that black mesa upgrade thing is nuts too. Theres also an interesting free Half Life 2 updated thingy which adds some better effects and visual/sound upgrades which i would reccomend checking out

other than that, Rising Storm 2 is a lark..and keep going back to Anno 1800 now that I have built a new workstation rig with a cpu to handle large, lategame saves. Red Dead 2 on pc is okay aswell, though the multiplayer can be a bit shit sometimes if you dont have anyone to play with, also, the Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD steam release is pretty fun, last time i checked my speedrun for casual time trial was in the top 10...

None of the recent big titles have caught my eye, truth be told..The Outer Worlds looks pretty great but just dont have the money to fork out on a game like that, especially after drunkenly dropping fifty fucking quid on rdr2, other than that one it all kinda looks the same in the current VG world. 

what ever happened to that one soviet style bioshock vibes game that was announced last year(?), that shit looked really interesting..iron heart or something like that..oh, also do people recommend Borderlands 3? ive heard people say its a bit lackluster and pre sequel is stil the king of the series..

Edited December 30, 2019 by mause

[Hugh Mughnus]

^ I'm playing BL3 right now, honestly enjoying it more than previous installments. Character builds are well thought out as are the legendary weapons etc. If you're playing for a good story though, I guess there could be some complaints there. 

The game is pretty massive. 

 

Oh, there are definitely some optimization issues though. Until recently I was having framerate issues despite having a pretty high end rig (IE a 7700k, 1080ti etc).

Edited December 30, 2019 by StephenG

[mause]

6 minutes ago, StephenG said:

^ I'm playing BL3 right now, honestly enjoying it more than previous installments. Character builds are well thought out as are the legendary weapons etc. If you're playing for a good story though, I guess there could be some complaints there. 

The game is pretty massive. 

yeah..i always loved the story in BL, something about the scale and sprawl of the worlds brings me joy. its no good having an amazing set of weapons and character builds without something interesting to fight for and explore

i might try and nab it when its next on sale, though dont really find myself with the time to dive into new, huge games these days..shame really..i miss the days when i could go weeks without doing jack shit except playing fallout 2 or alpha centauri. i guess thats just part of growing up

the trailers looked good for BL3, and people have been recommending it with a grain of salt flavoured caveat about the story. hey, could be worse..could be rage 2, where's my  awkward andrew W.K. press release at..maybe for the next mause ep, who knows?  

[Hugh Mughnus]

Roger that! 

For BL3 I personally really enjoyed the story (on my second playthrough now). There are purists out there though that dissect it bit by bit (think, Star Wars fans almost?), I think that type is more likely to have issues with the story. Nothing against them of course, maybe I'm just a more casual gamer. 

Definitely think you should pick it up if it goes on sale!

Also that avatar is lol... I've seen a video with that guy in it prob 500x. Don't want to sidetrack the thread too much, but is there somewhere I can purch your self released EPs? 

[mause]

nice, i'll defo check it out, i know exactly what you mean about the purist approach to story stuff!

aha yeah its from Jamir, great shorts. really want to do some sound design for one of these..if Alexandre Louvenaz is reading, hmu

yeah man, I put most of it on my bandcamp here though I've got some more stuff to put on there..

[Hugh Mughnus]

[ambermonk]

2 hours ago, mause said:

 

what ever happened to that one soviet style bioshock vibes game that was announced last year(?), that shit looked really interesting..iron heart or something like that..oh, also do people recommend Borderlands 3? ive heard people say its a bit lackluster and pre sequel is stil the king of the series..

Atomic Heart. My understanding is that it's gone into development hell since last spring, and that Mundfish supposedly lost most of its team members and that the game was far less complete than the company let on. A shame, since it looked awesome. I hope they can recuperate and get back on course. 

Borderlands 3 does look somewhat appealing, but I'm worried that it will be full of annoying NPC dialogue, plus I'm still not keen on the Epic Games Store. Even though I've put nearly 700 hours of Steam time into BL2. The Outer Worlds I'd like to play at some point as well, but I'm not in a hurry. Still need to try out Subnautica, The Long Dark, etc.

[Hugh Mughnus]

@ambergonk bl3 will be on steam in the relatively near future!
 

April 2020 I believe. I’m not a big fan of epic store either but have to say since I’ve installed it they’ve had a ton of free games. A clan mate recently said he’s gotten no less than 60 free games many of which he’s played through. Maybe he’s exaggerating, I didn’t spend the effort to fact check. 

Edited December 30, 2019 by StephenG

[mause]

9 hours ago, ambergonk said:

Atomic Heart. My understanding is that it's gone into development hell since last spring, and that Mundfish supposedly lost most of its team members and that the game was far less complete than the company let on. A shame, since it looked awesome. I hope they can recuperate and get back on course. 

Borderlands 3 does look somewhat appealing, but I'm worried that it will be full of annoying NPC dialogue, plus I'm still not keen on the Epic Games Store. Even though I've put nearly 700 hours of Steam time into BL2. The Outer Worlds I'd like to play at some point as well, but I'm not in a hurry. Still need to try out Subnautica, The Long Dark, etc.

ahhh yeah thats the one i was thinking of. shame about the dev hell..didnt they do a vr(?) demo thing that tanked cos it was shit? the trailers for the full game looked so much better though.

just caught a glimpse at the steam stales and grabbed Age of empires definitive edition for like..3 quid..so i guess thats gonna be my life now, since aoe1 wont run properly on windows 10..still have the full collection of age of empires in big box from the good old days..

[splbt]

honestly, the bl3 story IS annoying, and that's coming from somebody who doesn't care much for the previous titles. it reads like a shitty YA novel. the gameplay is great though, and theorycrafting builds, to the extent that it's possible this early into the game, is always fun. it's still a bit rough around the edges, with too many loot pieces being world drops, but in due time it'll be even better. no doubt. gearbox is patching a lot of community requested issues

[ManjuShri]

Tower of Time free on GOG.

https://www.gog.com/game/tower_of_time

[milkface]

Still need to finish MGSV.

[mause]

4 hours ago, milkface said:

Still need to finish MGSV.

oh christ, same here..forgot all about that game. put a lot of hours into it just fucking about but never finished the damn thing.  

[Hugh Mughnus]

1 hour ago, mause said:

oh christ, same here..forgot all about that game. put a lot of hours into it just fucking about but never finished the damn thing.  

Same lol. MGSV and Persona 5 put about 80hrs into each and just didn’t finish them. Wth

[Squee]

9 hours ago, mause said:

oh christ, same here..forgot all about that game. put a lot of hours into it just fucking about but never finished the damn thing.  

I thought I was done and then it said, “to be continued in episode 2” and I said, “fuck no”. 

[Rubin Farr]

Picking up Arcade Archives: Balloon Fight as my last game of the decade.

[Thiefinger]

I started playing Witcher 2. Seems really good otherwise but so far the combat has been ridiculous. It's not that it's too hard but at least currently my character does absolutely zero damage and killing strong enemies takes up hours at this pace. I'm trying to figure out if I'm doing something wrong..
As for the graphics, story etc. it all seems really nice. Compared to Witcher 3 this seems way more linear although there's some freedom to roam around. I don't even mind that.
I couldn't get any of the mods working on this. I have it on Steam. I tried installing a bunch of them but they're not appearing in the start menu. Oh well.

[ManjuShri]

Have you played Witcher 1 yet? Many people skip it for being 'old and unintuitive'; however Witcher 2 is definitively weakest of the series in most peoples' opinion; 1 vs. 3 taking primo spot is up for fisticuffs.

[luke viia]

I like the first Witcher game, I played them in order as they came out, but idk... each one got better IMO. I liked Letho's arc, the scoiatel (sp??) were fun in 2, and that game kinda fills out the story with the lodge of sorceresses and such. The first game is kinda painful to look at these days and the combat...big meh. Still good times. 

 

edit: man I'm bad at this pagebreak stuff!

Edited December 31, 2019 by luke viia

[Thiefinger]

18 minutes ago, ManjuShri said:

Have you played Witcher 1 yet? Many people skip it for being 'old and unintuitive'; however Witcher 2 is definitively weakest of the series in most peoples' opinion; 1 vs. 3 taking primo spot is up for fisticuffs.

I have played it a little bit. I have all three on Steam but I've really just played ridiculous hours of the third one. I think some reviewer called the first game basically "charming but flawed" and that's how it seemed to me. At the time I tried playing it I didn't have patience for it's dated interface and all that. 
My opinion is that the Witcher 3 is maybe even the best game I've ever played. Not that it has great combat system or character customization, all those things sort of work fine but are not the "best there is". But still the game just grabbed me in its world in a big way and after finishing the main story and the dlc's I still played it for countless hours finding new side quests etc. I love the lore and the atmosphere. TBH I'm tempted to play through it the third time.

edit: buggy watmm posted my message 2x

Edited December 31, 2019 by Thiefinger

[ManjuShri]

2 minutes ago, Thiefinger said:

 I think some reviewer called the first game basically "charming but flawed" and that's how it seemed to me. 

Aye, however aside from graphic and modern standards of gameplay, the first rises above the second in terms of 'choices and consequence', one of the main defining features of what cRPGs are, (and is here the main disparity lies in terms of oldschool/PnP folk and newschool lies)

antosocialfatman (RIP) has the best delineation of what an RPG actually is, is imo.

 

[Thiefinger]

24 minutes ago, ManjuShri said:

Aye, however aside from graphic and modern standards of gameplay, the first rises above the second in terms of 'choices and consequence', one of the main defining features of what cRPGs are, (and is here the main disparity lies in terms of oldschool/PnP folk and newschool lies)

Yeah. I'm sure that is the case. That said, I just might be the type to enjoy these RPG-lite experiences too.

[ManjuShri]

No slight meant, Witcher 3 & DLC was dank af.

[ambermonk]

Steam Awards 2019 are in. TBH I was disappointed that Void Bastards and No Man's Sky didn't get nominated for Outstanding Visual Style and Labor of Love respectively. But then again they tend to have a smaller niche in player base compared to the games that did receive nomination.

Steam Award GOTY 2019 goes to:
 

Spoiler

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice