What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

[chim]

14 hours ago, ambermonk said:

Just started Starfield. 4 hours in so far.

Was worried at first whether my PC would run it at all. Not only did it run, but performance surpassed my expectations.

As for gameplay, it's about what you'd expect from a Bethesda title. But in this case I mean it in a good way.

18 hours in and it just grows and grows. People are insanely harsh on it, probably due to expectations and Bethesda are partly to blame with the hype machine. Everybody seems obsessed with what it's not.

Sure enough there's flaws, most NPC's are plastic scenery and similar stuff you don't really want in a modern title, space dungeon crawling and endless variations of "go to X, talk to Y and do Z" without deeper hard-RPG elements or continuous space travel. Prominent characters look pretty good (for a Bethesda game) but it's sorta hit/miss depending on lighting conditions. But the variety of environments, crafting & skill progression, lots of weird little tangents to get sucked into ("let me hold off whatever I was doing and go check this out") more than make up for all that. Urban areas aren't massive sprawling cities but they're well detailed, and the sound design helps sell everything from a seedy kebab joint below ground to a space station orbiting Mars. Trying stuff out in the ship builder and then walking around your massively overweight ride before flooring it into a different star system is incredible. 

The Nasa-punk aesthetic is geeky & fresh, no grim-dark BS, even the weapons look fun & inventive, the score is absolutely terrific peak Goldsmith. Most of all I love the sense of exploring what's around the corner, and there's so much of that in every direction, even if there's a bit of old school fast travel & cutscenes. A two second faux-loading screen makes people go apeshit? People are spoiled as hell nowadays... I also haven't encountered any bugs beyond some NPC's facing the wrong direction in a conversation.

The poor PC optimization (and Xbox too I guess since it's capped at 30 FPS) is a big drawback, so we're probably looking at a lot of patching and modding before people take more kindly to it. 

The persistent ship decoration mini-game is one of my favorite pastimes. 

[onecaseman]

1 hour ago, chim said:

18 hours in and it just grows and grows. People are insanely harsh on it, probably due to expectations and Bethesda are partly to blame with the hype machine. Everybody seems obsessed with what it's not.

Sure enough there's flaws, most NPC's are plastic scenery and similar stuff you don't really want in a modern title, space dungeon crawling and endless variations of "go to X, talk to Y and do Z" without deeper hard-RPG elements or continuous space travel. Prominent characters look pretty good (for a Bethesda game) but it's sorta hit/miss depending on lighting conditions. But the variety of environments, crafting & skill progression, lots of weird little tangents to get sucked into ("let me hold off whatever I was doing and go check this out") more than make up for all that. Urban areas aren't massive sprawling cities but they're well detailed, and the sound design helps sell everything from a seedy kebab joint below ground to a space station orbiting Mars. Trying stuff out in the ship builder and then walking around your massively overweight ride before flooring it into a different star system is incredible. 

The Nasa-punk aesthetic is geeky & fresh, no grim-dark BS, even the weapons look fun & inventive, the score is absolutely terrific peak Goldsmith. Most of all I love the sense of exploring what's around the corner, and there's so much of that in every direction, even if there's a bit of old school fast travel & cutscenes. A two second faux-loading screen makes people go apeshit? People are spoiled as hell nowadays... I also haven't encountered any bugs beyond some NPC's facing the wrong direction in a conversation.

The poor PC optimization (and Xbox too I guess since it's capped at 30 FPS) is a big drawback, so we're probably looking at a lot of patching and modding before people take more kindly to it. 

The persistent ship decoration mini-game is one of my favorite pastimes. 

Thanks for this. I've never liked a Bethesda game in the past, but I tried them all way after they came out because I wasn't gaming for ten years. The scifi setting is much more interesting to me than fantasy (I liked Cyberpunk but hated The Witcher for example). I think I'll pick up an Xbox on the cheap a few years from now to try this and hopefully some other good games that will have come out like the Hellblade sequel and perhaps Perfect Dark.

[ambermonk]

5 hours ago, chim said:

18 hours in and it just grows and grows. People are insanely harsh on it, probably due to expectations and Bethesda are partly to blame with the hype machine. Everybody seems obsessed with what it's not.

Sure enough there's flaws, most NPC's are plastic scenery and similar stuff you don't really want in a modern title, space dungeon crawling and endless variations of "go to X, talk to Y and do Z" without deeper hard-RPG elements or continuous space travel. Prominent characters look pretty good (for a Bethesda game) but it's sorta hit/miss depending on lighting conditions. But the variety of environments, crafting & skill progression, lots of weird little tangents to get sucked into ("let me hold off whatever I was doing and go check this out") more than make up for all that. Urban areas aren't massive sprawling cities but they're well detailed, and the sound design helps sell everything from a seedy kebab joint below ground to a space station orbiting Mars. Trying stuff out in the ship builder and then walking around your massively overweight ride before flooring it into a different star system is incredible. 

The Nasa-punk aesthetic is geeky & fresh, no grim-dark BS, even the weapons look fun & inventive, the score is absolutely terrific peak Goldsmith. Most of all I love the sense of exploring what's around the corner, and there's so much of that in every direction, even if there's a bit of old school fast travel & cutscenes. A two second faux-loading screen makes people go apeshit? People are spoiled as hell nowadays... I also haven't encountered any bugs beyond some NPC's facing the wrong direction in a conversation.

The poor PC optimization (and Xbox too I guess since it's capped at 30 FPS) is a big drawback, so we're probably looking at a lot of patching and modding before people take more kindly to it. 

The persistent ship decoration mini-game is one of my favorite pastimes. 

Yeah overall I'm hooked. Granted it feels like it takes shortcuts when it comes to space travel, but that's coming from years of me playing No Man's Sky. But it's overwhelming how much there is to explore.

As for all the hate it's getting, seems like it's mostly coming from the usual suspects - salty gamers who've likely never held a full-time job or had to pay their own bills, and/or 4chan schizos. Most them likely have never touched the game.

[Rubin Farr]

On 9/9/2023 at 2:58 AM, ambermonk said:

Just started Starfield. 4 hours in so far.

Was worried at first whether my PC would run it at all. Not only did it run, but performance surpassed my expectations.

As for gameplay, it's about what you'd expect from a Bethesda title. But in this case I mean it in a good way.

 

[chronical]

For anyone playing Starfield on PC, I'd recommend trying out these mods on Nexus:

Immersive Tactical HUD (takes away the enemy positions in the lower left radar. Why would you have a GPS pointing to every enemy? This way you actually look for enemies with your eyes and ears)
Remove Scanner Vignette + Scanner Reworked Vanilla Style (less invasive scanner HUD, I'm still waiting on a mod that removes outlines while scanning)
SGS's LUTs - Enhanced Color Grading and Black Levels (I went with the 50% version here, maintaining the game's lookup table/color correction to an extent, although at a lessened degree, so darks will be darker, planets won't look like washed out Willy Wonka-land all the time)
Short Temple Puzzles (Not sure what Bethesda was thinking here, grabbing lights to power up is fun the first two or three times, after that it's a chore)
A Realistic Flashlight For Starfield (personal preference)

As well as a DLSS replacer mod in case you're on an NVIDIA GPU. I'm using "StarfieldUpscaler". Oh and make sure to adjust FOV with making an .ini file at Documents/My Games/Starfield/StarfieldCustom.ini. You will need to create one to load most of the above mods anyways. Mine looks like this:

[Camera]

fFPWorldFOV=100.0000
fTPWorldFOV=100.0000


[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=


[Display]
fMipBiasOffset=-0.5

the fMipBiasOffset apparently helps with an issue the game has, if you're using DLSS (FSR 2 too probably?) the game loads textures at the resolution you're upscaling from, so having a 1080p internal resolution upscaled to 1440p will give you washed out 1080p textures, supposedly this fixes it by loading the correct resolution (1440p in my case) textures. Shouldn't affect performance too much seeing as the game isn't too hard on VRAM to begin with. Haven't been able to test this yet but thought I'd mention it. There's also some talk about enabling Resizable Bar for Starfield which could improve performance, though I haven't tried that out yet.

Also here's some lush screenshots, love that they turn into loading screens:

 

[Rubin Farr]

pretty sure I played Splatoon with Richard 

[Ivan Ooze]

All right then, lets get going, i'm brexit geezer

[Berk]

Gonna get bg3 when it's a bit cheaper, looking forward to it. It's gonna be cross play at some point too I read somewhere 

[Rubin Farr]

F-Zero online, nice

 

[onecaseman]

Leviathan fucked me up, but I somehow got through it after 20 tries and now am cruising along Dead Space. I like how in this version ammo scarcity forces you to learn how to use every weapon, and there is a learning curve. What I haven't really tried to learn is any of their secondary firing modes though.

[ambermonk]

3 hours ago, onecaseman said:

Leviathan fucked me up, but I somehow got through it after 20 tries and now am cruising along Dead Space. I like how in this version ammo scarcity forces you to learn how to use every weapon, and there is a learning curve. What I haven't really tried to learn is any of their secondary firing modes though.

TBH I never bothered much with secondary attack modes, as I never really found them useful. Except for maybe the Ripper.

[usagi]

I started Signalis, it's awesome. if you like the Resident Evil, Silent Hill or Dead Space, this is a must for you.

[milkface]

Kinda bummed right now. I've been using a Red Dead Redemption GOTY Edition Xbox 360 disc to play the game on Xbox Series X which was all well and good until I wanted to play the Undead Nightmare DLC that comes with it but a glitch is causing zombies to spawn as headless NPCs (shooting them causes actual NPCs to target you). Shame really I was excited to play but it's literally unplayable. I looked it up and it has something to do with a patch they introduced in 2014 which broke it and I don't think I can do anything about it since I have the GOTY edition 

Edited September 15, 2023 by milkface

[Hail Sagan]

Baldur’s Gate 3 is like the perfect counterpart to Elden Ring. They are both massive and beautiful worlds that are exciting and brutal at times (souls games more so of course, but I’m dying plenty in BG3) but that’s where the similarities end. I liked souls games in part because the story was minimal, which was a pretty new at the time when Demon’s Souls first came out. You learned to appreciate the mystery and adventure of not knowing what’s next and would pick up on lore in things like item descriptions, etc. Obviously the challenging reaction-based combat also set apart from most everything else at the time and was also a huge part of it becoming such a rewarding experience.

With BG3 the story is front and center and yet somehow the acting and the writing is so fucking good that being about halfway through it as of writing this, it has never felt like a grind at all. Not gonna lie, I definitely did some soul farming in all the from soft games I’ve played and that’s about the only element of those games I don’t like. Another thing with BG3 is I have NEVER seen a game with so much consequence to your story based on your decisions, and at times, misfortune (or sheer luck).

This is also the best turned-based combat I’ve ever experienced where every battle seems to require a new strategy, clever use of your environment, and new foes and creatures to contend with. Whereas the souls game require timed parrying, rolls and hitting your estus flask after running behind a pillar BG3 is chess, or at least high stakes poker. It definitely takes a bit to get used to but no 2 battles are ever the same, and even the same battle ain’t the same if you die and come back for redemption. Also, you can kinda do whatever the fuck you want in Baldur’s Gate. Oh no the bridge fell apart and we can’t pass, just drink a vaulting potion and jump over it. The guy who outlevels you with the big sword that’s permanently aflame? Use a spell to command he drops it, steal it and make your escape. Can’t open the door? Break that shit down. 

 

 

[milkface]

Grand Theft Auto V turns 10 today!

Edited September 17, 2023 by milkface

[usagi]

Signalis done kicked me in the feels. I wasn't expecting it. beautiful game.

 

[o00o]

Just bought mortal kombat 1 for switch.

[cichlisuite]

On 9/9/2023 at 9:58 AM, BlockUser said:

I rarely play video games these days but I usually always have some Stalker installed. Currently, it's Road To The North. It's a good mod! Might go for an hour or two this Sunday. I played Anomaly a lot during the first lockdown, but for me, freeplay Stalker is only fun until you are all geared up, at which point there isn't anything else to do really. I noticed that the biggest rush Anomaly ever gave me was when I got all the parts and tools for fixing up some good but broken rifle I had stashed away some in-game weeks earlier. But I always preferred story mods like OGSR. RTTN comes with an all-new storyline and has pretty good tasks. Can only recommend this mod if you want an expanded story mod for Stalker.

Yes, I used to play Stalker religiously.

I like Stalker too, played the CoP and SoC but I didn't venture into mod territory. Years later I got a tiny nostalgia kick, so I checked the Anomaly. It's way harder to play because enemies are so much more dangerous, which at first was a challenge I gladly took on. Combat felt more exciting and raiding camps was fun. But the crafting (well obtaining stuff mostly) takes away too much focus and I slowly lost interest unfortunately.

Find memories of the atmosphere of the SoC and CoP games still alive tho - I hope Stalker2 delivers some more of that

Edited September 18, 2023 by cichlisuite

[o00o]

https://www.ign.com/articles/leaked-microsoft-email-reveals-xbox-boss-phil-spencer-really-wants-to-buy-nintendo
 

[Rubin Farr]

6 hours ago, o00o said:

https://www.ign.com/articles/leaked-microsoft-email-reveals-xbox-boss-phil-spencer-really-wants-to-buy-nintendo
 

He could be full of shit

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/27/japan-to-limit-foreign-ownership-of-firms-in-tech-and-telecom-sectors.html

[o00o]

I am pretty sure they will not sell but Spencer even thinking about it sounds terrible 

[YEK]

1 hour ago, o00o said:

I am pretty sure they will not sell but Spencer even thinking about it sounds terrible 

Would that mean no more good Nintendo games?

Edited September 20, 2023 by YEK

[BlockUser]

On 9/18/2023 at 9:06 PM, cichlisuite said:

I like Stalker too, played the CoP and SoC but I didn't venture into mod territory. Years later I got a tiny nostalgia kick, so I checked the Anomaly. It's way harder to play because enemies are so much more dangerous, which at first was a challenge I gladly took on. Combat felt more exciting and raiding camps was fun. But the crafting (well obtaining stuff mostly) takes away too much focus and I slowly lost interest unfortunately.

Find memories of the atmosphere of the SoC and CoP games still alive tho - I hope Stalker2 delivers some more of that

It's an amazing world, right? There's nothing quite like it. I find myself daydreaming about the Zone sometimes, even when I don't play it for years sometimes. This sort of bleak psychedelia is where it's at!

It's true, Anomaly is demanding. You can change a lot of the things you mentioned in the gameplay settings, though. Anomaly went for a Zone sandbox, so you can forego the crafting system and the repressive economy completely, but it's still fun to check it out.

I distinctly remember getting the task to kill a Bandit, saw him on the map and thought "Well, he's just out in the wild in Garbage, I'll catch him later" as I still had some other tasks on. Next morning I see he went to the Bandit base in Dark Valley. Went there to scope him out for a day from the hills and the boi just didn't move out. That was early in my run and there was no way I could take on the Bandit base. The task was about to fail due to time limit and I desperately needed the money so I roamed the map until I killed a small squad of bandits by the transition point to Garbage. Donned the bandit outfit and casually waltzed into the base at night pretending to be a bandit. In the meantime, a  rainstorm had begun raging. The guy was sitting in a busy spot with guards moving around so I had to wait for the right second to go for a stealth kill (stealth kills are always jarring for me btw, they're cold-blooded murder). Knifed him from behind and snuck away quickly. All this with the shitty green NVG which can't handle lightnings. Stealth is broken in Stalker but Anomaly implemented a pretty good stealth kill system. it worked like a charm. I felt guilty and dirty but made it back in time to Barkeep in the rain. The atmosphere in Stalker is the real deal.

[usagi]

Anomaly's default settings are ridiculous in some places. it is not "realism" to be spotted through dense foliage from 200+m away in the night and instantly killed with a precise headshot. I tweaked the settings manually a fair bit, particularly the stealth settings in m_stalker.ltx, till they provide a reasonable mix between challenging and playable. and yeah, the crafting system I ignore entirely, I've gotten a decent economy going (again through tweaking prices and dealer settings) so I can just pay techs to repair my stuff and buy whatever else I need. the purists in the community may spaz out over this but frankly that is their problem, people are free to create whatever play experience they like so long as they respect the work that was put in (by both the OG developers and modders). I am in it for the vibe of the Zone, not masochistic Tarkov-esque tacticool gameplay for people who want to pretend they're in the military.

the point stated earlier about the value of Anomaly capping out once you've gotten all the gear you've wanted and explored all the zones is also true. the storyline is easily the weakest part of it, I have no desire to pursue the main quest beyond a certain point. story is the one place where modded Stalker shows a real lacking over OG Stalker, there's no real inspiration there.

I doubt we're going to get this specific type of gameplay from Stalker 2 which I am expecting likely be more hand-holdy and less free play (so expect the community to flip out and review bomb it), but that is fine because modders will take it as a base and make of it whatever they desire. it's all good.

[YELLOW]

Bought Tears of the Kingdom about a month ago, it's been really fun so far. I don't think I've even scratched the surface so far despite probably like 10-15 hours, mostly just doing shrines and side tasks