What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

[logakght]

2 minutes ago, MaartenVC said:

Played the Diablo 4 open beta during the weekend.

Positives:
• It's quite addicting. I could play for hours non-stop enjoying the game.
• The game looks great. Graphical fidelity, performance, art style and atmosphere are all superb.
• Sound effects and main narration was very good.
• Lots of options in the menus, so you can play just like you want to play.
• It's fun to easily and freely try out different skills / builds.
• There's tons of loot. And it's fun to check what gear might work good together in combination with your skills.
• Freeing castles/outposts in the open-world was really fun.
• Tougher random elites in dungeons are fun. Give good loot.
• Random open-world events are fun.
• Big open-world events with other players are ok. Very good loot though.
• A few nice story cinematics.
• No hard crashes. Very few bugs. High quality.

Negatives:
• Main story and side stories felt kinda predictable / bland. I wish it was a bit more interesting / thought-provoking.
• Most of the narrative is shown from a non-interactive top-down perspective. I wish it was all more engaging / dramatic.
• It's very easy. I played on veteran. Only 1 boss -for which I was under-leveled- felt challenging. Butcher too.
• The music was meh. And not very memorable. Playing without the in-game music was better.
• Some classes felt extremely powerful, while others felt very weak or even tedious. Needs some balancing for sure.
• Gameplay is nothing revolutionary. Just what you can expect from a hack-and-slash action-RPG.
• Dungeons can feel very copy-paste. A bit dull.
• Often it felt like you can just play on auto-pilot a bit too much.
• Rubber-banding / stuttering / hitching in cities with other players.
• I want the option to play offline.

I had fun during this beta, but I seem to no longer really like the game genre all that much any more.

This is a well known fact, but indeed Blizzard is what it was anymore.

[o00o]

36 minutes ago, MaartenVC said:

Negatives:
• Main story and side stories felt kinda predictable / bland. I wish it was a bit more interesting / thought-provoking.
• Most of the narrative is shown from a non-interactive top-down perspective. I wish it was all more engaging / dramatic.
• It's very easy. I played on veteran. Only 1 boss -for which I was under-leveled- felt challenging. Butcher too.
• The music was meh. And not very memorable. Playing without the in-game music was better.
• Some classes felt extremely powerful, while others felt very weak or even tedious. Needs some balancing for sure.
• Gameplay is nothing revolutionary. Just what you can expect from a hack-and-slash action-RPG.
• Dungeons can feel very copy-paste. A bit dull.
• Often it felt like you can just play on auto-pilot a bit too much.
• Rubber-banding / stuttering / hitching in cities with other players.
• I want the option to play offline.
 

• I also had the impression the difficulty was not how its going to play in the final game. every char felt kind of overpowered with a lot of epic loot more available then it normally would be. I never had the feeling I was in real danger. 
• the dungeons in general felt a bit unfinished like they glued them together in a way that was not really polished and optimized. 
• TBH I was happy that they did not try to reinvent the gameplay. This is what ruined WOW
  
  In the end I kind of agree to what you say but I also expect this from a beta so it will be interesting how much polish they will put into the final game 

 

 

[o00o]

 

[TubularCorporation]

Replaying Earthbound (emulated on the Wii) on the sidewalk CRT. Closest I'll ever get to seeing it how it was meant to be seen, and it's close enough.

[usagi]

On 3/25/2023 at 11:56 PM, auxien said:

had to go look up the list on the wiki...

i'd made it through Genchiro Ashini and done some sub-bosses in other areas (Sunken Valley, Senpou Temple) and dipped my toes into Ashina Depths at least, maybe another area? ....i'm assuming that's about 1/4 way through, at least boss-wise according the wiki, that's about right. looks like you're half as far as i'd got give or take....Gyoubu was fun, def took me a few tries tho. Lady Butterfly was a little more difficult than she should've been for me, i think she was a big hint that i wasn't playing Sekiro how Sekiro wanted me to play it, but i got through that fight and enjoyed it once i figured out the right way to approach her. Genchiro Ashini was a big push to make the fight work, made it start to not be enjoyable tho. that was the point for me that i realized i could do the actions, but it was SO tight and so exacting that it wasn't really fun to be playing at that level...at least for me at that time. 

world building stuff and story was cool, i could see it was going in some weirder directions and was getting pretty interesting. 

the areas i was in around then were really kicking my ass, was hard to enjoy...was definitely part of the reason i didn't feel like pushing through. would like to come back to it at some point tho

I beat Genichiro last night. I'd tried him much earlier, before going all the way through Hirata Estate and confronting Lady Butterfly, and while I managed to beat his first phase on the first try, he was a stone wall to me with his second lightning phase. when I tried him again last night it just clicked somehow. my timing has gotten a lot better in the interim, probably (though I still can't quite read which type of perilous attack is coming and have to guess which counter move to use). plus got a bunch of passive upgrades that improved posture damage etc.

I immediately replayed the fight via Reflection of Strength and just had fun practicing the fight again until I could consistently beat him. all the talk around the game's difficulty has been tempering my expectations and stopping me from getting too frustrated. I will say though I would be having a much worse time if I wasn't using a controller, I'm sure. this is the first From game I've played fully with a controller.

[Rubin Farr]

On 3/28/2023 at 5:32 PM, o00o said:

 

The first $70 first-party game on Switch 

[chronical]

7 minutes ago, Rubin Farr said:

The first $70 first-party game on Switch 

Can't wait to pirate it

[auxien]

On 4/3/2023 at 12:32 AM, usagi said:

I beat Genichiro last night. I'd tried him much earlier, before going all the way through Hirata Estate and confronting Lady Butterfly, and while I managed to beat his first phase on the first try, he was a stone wall to me with his second lightning phase. when I tried him again last night it just clicked somehow. my timing has gotten a lot better in the interim, probably (though I still can't quite read which type of perilous attack is coming and have to guess which counter move to use). plus got a bunch of passive upgrades that improved posture damage etc.

I immediately replayed the fight via Reflection of Strength and just had fun practicing the fight again until I could consistently beat him. all the talk around the game's difficulty has been tempering my expectations and stopping me from getting too frustrated. I will say though I would be having a much worse time if I wasn't using a controller, I'm sure. this is the first From game I've played fully with a controller.

sounds like you’re enjoying it for sure….good you’ve got the skills and tempered expectations to allow for experiencing the game like it’s meant to be. hoping i can go back to it at some point to have that. i still have a barely touched (40-60 hours?) Elden Ring playthrough to work on as well. 

i watched someone doing the Genchiro fight and now i’m not sure i ever finished it. that last phase isn’t ringing any bells to me so maybe i never actually completed it? i remember fighting him and getting him down in those first rounds, but i don’t remember that last changed phase. 

[chronical]

7 minutes ago, auxien said:

sounds like you’re enjoying it for sure….good you’ve got the skills and tempered expectations to allow for experiencing the game like it’s meant to be. hoping i can go back to it at some point to have that. i still have a barely touched (40-60 hours?) Elden Ring playthrough to work on as well. 

i watched someone doing the Genchiro fight and now i’m not sure i ever finished it. that last phase isn’t ringing any bells to me so maybe i never actually completed it? i remember fighting him and getting him down in those first rounds, but i don’t remember that last changed phase. 

Genichiro is the best skill check I've ever seen in a videogame. When I defeated him most other bosses or minibosses got a lot easier. I actually stopped playing it for months before I beat him and years later the mechanics are still burnt into my nerve endings. Now Isshin however. Fuck that.

Edited April 4, 2023 by chronical

[Enthusiast]

Does anybody own a Playdate? Is it worth getting? I would like one, but it's 250€ in Europe after shipping and taxes, so a bit more than an impulse purchase.

[TubularCorporation]

Still playing America's Next Top Model on the Wii.

 

It's an experience.

[YEK]

2 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

Still playing America's Next Top Model on the Wii.

 

It's an experience.

You wanna be on top?

[TubularCorporation]

All I know is apparently there's melee combat, and I need to at least get far enough to try that.

[six]

22 hours ago, chronical said:

Genichiro is the best skill check I've ever seen in a videogame. When I defeated him most other bosses or minibosses got a lot easier. I actually stopped playing it for months before I beat him and years later the mechanics are still burnt into my nerve endings. Now Isshin however. Fuck that.

I agree, I was trying to brute force my way through the game before Genichiro but he really teaches you the mechanics to make it through the rest of the game.

Isshin and Owl Father drove me to the brink of madness though.

[usagi]

2 minutes ago, six said:

Isshin and Owl Father drove me to the brink of madness though.

 

[cloud capture]

 

[exitonly]

21 minutes ago, cloud capture said:

 

“fun”

[chronical]

14 hours ago, exitonly said:

“fun”

so you don't enjoy diablo?

[exitonly]

3 hours ago, chronical said:

so you don't enjoy diablo?

it was more directed at the video. those people could make a rollercoaster sound boring

[onecaseman]

I got Playstation Plus Extra so I could play Stray (cat game). It was pretty cool. I now can sample a bunch of other games in the catalog, but have Resident Evil 4 and soon Horizon's Burning Shores expansion to play as well.

[T3551ER]

1 hour ago, onecaseman said:

I got Playstation Plus Extra so I could play Stray (cat game). It was pretty cool. I now can sample a bunch of other games in the catalog, but have Resident Evil 4 and soon Horizon's Burning Shores expansion to play as well.

Stray is fantastic. Also, since you have it now, some gems on there:

Returnal - bullet hell but it's sort of like wandering through your subconscious/Prometheus. Gorgeous. Hard to recommend buying b/c it's so weird (and tough), but totally worth it as free

Spider Man Miles Morales - fantastic. Great open world, but also great story, and it's relatively short. I hate open world games that take 200 fucking hours to beat. Who got time? This is straight to the point but also tons of actiony fun. 

Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition or whatever tF it's called. One of my fave action/slashers ever. I paid full price, would pay again. No brainer it it's free. 

Ghost of Tsushima - Only game in recent memory I find myself just stopping and... like, just looking at it. 

Hidden Gems:

Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2 - Fun, quirky games. 

I'm 99% sure that The Last Guardian is on PS+ now. I bought it ages ago because OMG love love Ico and Shadow of the Collosus, etc. It's fantastic. 

[onecaseman]

3 hours ago, T3551ER said:

Stray is fantastic. Also, since you have it now, some gems on there:

Returnal - bullet hell but it's sort of like wandering through your subconscious/Prometheus. Gorgeous. Hard to recommend buying b/c it's so weird (and tough), but totally worth it as free

Spider Man Miles Morales - fantastic. Great open world, but also great story, and it's relatively short. I hate open world games that take 200 fucking hours to beat. Who got time? This is straight to the point but also tons of actiony fun. 

Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition or whatever tF it's called. One of my fave action/slashers ever. I paid full price, would pay again. No brainer it it's free. 

Ghost of Tsushima - Only game in recent memory I find myself just stopping and... like, just looking at it. 

Hidden Gems:

Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2 - Fun, quirky games. 

I'm 99% sure that The Last Guardian is on PS+ now. I bought it ages ago because OMG love love Ico and Shadow of the Collosus, etc. It's fantastic. 

Yeah I beat Returnal, Miles Morales, and Ghost Tsushima already. Returnal is my favorite. I couldn't bother finishing Gravity Rush. Vibe was just off for me. I didn't get past the first level of Devil May Cry 5. Not for me. I have The Last Guardian downloaded from this. I never played it because reviews were so-so, but I loved Ico. Thought Shadow of the Colossus was overrated, but still good. 

Others I downloaded: Demon's Souls, Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Tchia, The Quarry, Watch Dogs 2, and Far Cry New Dawn.

[usagi]

On 4/5/2023 at 11:49 PM, six said:

Isshin and Owl Father drove me to the brink of madness though.

just beat Owl Father and I can see what people mean. toughest fight in the game so far.

one strat I've found that helps consistently with most bosses - maybe the human ones anyway, not including for example the Guardian Ape who just spazzes out constantly - is to just be up in their face constantly and clashing swords at close range. it means having to learn attack-attack-deflect-deflect timings in a tight window, but once you get it, it makes fights more manageable because then you can dictate the pace to some extent and prevent them from using special attacks, which always make things more dangerous and unpredictable. of course there are moves built into each boss to break the close contact each time but I've found if I can close the distance quickly, it keeps the pressure up and whittles their posture down more easily.

I got the bad/shura ending out of the way first so I've also beaten Emma and Isshin. but I'm guessing that Isshin isn't as hard as the later Sword Saint Isshin fight? idk

Edited April 9, 2023 by usagi

[six]

29 minutes ago, usagi said:

just beat Owl Father and I can see what people mean. toughest fight in the game so far.

one strat I've found that helps consistently with most bosses - maybe the human ones anyway, not including for example the Guardian Ape who just spazzes out constantly - is to just be up in their face constantly and clashing swords at close range. it means having to learn attack-attack-deflect-deflect timings in a tight window, but once you get it, it makes fights more manageable because then you can dictate the pace to some extent and prevent them from using special attacks, which always make things more dangerous and unpredictable. of course there are moves built into each boss to break the close contact each time but I've found if I can close the distance quickly, it keeps the pressure up and whittles their posture down more easily.

I got the bad/shura ending out of the way first so I've also beaten Emma and Isshin. but I'm guessing that Isshin isn't as hard as the later Sword Saint Isshin fight? idk

Nice work! Owl Father is no easy feat. I beat the game in 2 weeks so I kinda sped through it but really struggled on him and it seems insurmountable at first. Isshin Sword Saint is def the tougher of the two but I struggled a lot with both, so if you can take down one you can beat the other.

And yes staying in bosses' faces is for sure the key, cautious aggression is rewarded in this game. I struggled so much with both Isshin's that I ended up baiting out attacks that had safer counter windows. Still mad tough though. Amazing game but I'm not sure I'll ever revisit it.

[T3551ER]

On 4/7/2023 at 4:52 PM, onecaseman said:

Yeah I beat Returnal, Miles Morales, and Ghost Tsushima already. Returnal is my favorite. I couldn't bother finishing Gravity Rush. Vibe was just off for me. I didn't get past the first level of Devil May Cry 5. Not for me. I have The Last Guardian downloaded from this. I never played it because reviews were so-so, but I loved Ico. Thought Shadow of the Colossus was overrated, but still good. 

Others I downloaded: Demon's Souls, Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Tchia, The Quarry, Watch Dogs 2, and Far Cry New Dawn.

Dope. DMC is definitely one of those you like or don't, glad you bailed once you realized not for you. Last Guardian is sort of a melding of SOTC and Ico in some ways.. but hews closer to SOTC (imop). Curious to see what you think.

Those others ones on my "to do" list.. eventually. It's a pretty great service IMOP b/c .. like, with limited time to game, there's usually always something on there that I'm going to enjoy playing. Have fun friend!