What are you playing at the moment?

Just started the Resident Evil 1 remake after beating Code Veronica and…I think I hate it? The controls are not ideal - I’m constantly fighting what direction I need to move, and the classic controls seem extra tank-y.

@sombre: The original Ace Attorney trilogy could be pretty darn frustrating to be sure. I still think that focus on finding clues and puzzling things together but with better designed 'puzzle choices' and some QoL changes would make for my ideal AA game. It was so satisfying to finally break those pesky witnesses!

I stuck with tank controls for that. The new controls make transitioning between camera switches a little odd. I can get used to tank controls. I can't always anticipate a change in perspective.

for me at the moment, between RimWorld and Project Zomboid, I play indie games that are trending on Itch.io, some are quite gems for tiny games 😁

I've just finished Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest. Y'know, I kind of miss that era in gaming where sequels got kinda crazy. This and Zelda 2 stick out as just strange departures. And yet, Konami do try to give you direction in a sense. Townspeople are always talking about things you need to do but then you have to sit somewhere for a tornado to appear.

Oddly ahead of its time with day/night cycles and a large-ish world.

Dead Space 3, which I started when it came out and gave up on maybe after an hour. I think it’s really good! They refined the combat and it looks really good on SX. I couldn’t be more excited for The Callisto Protocol now.

Getting a little bored with GTA Online, and I've been thinking about my Switch and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth.

Edit 7/19/22

So, I want to play Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, but I didn't finish Three Houses, and I don't know if Three Hopes is either a continuation of one of the endings to Three Houses, or an alternate timeline to the original game that doesn't really spoil anything. So, since I'm not entirely in the mood for another 100+ hour RPG at the moment, I went back to Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2005) since the game showed up in my YouTube recommended feed.

@cornfed40: Thanks.

@facelessvixen: Alternate timeline. There's still a war, the characters and names are the same, but the story is entirely different, Byleth is your chief rival and still just a mercenary, while your character is the one that enters the Officer Academy instead. I really liked it, making it only the second Warriors game I've actually enjoyed playing

I just finished this game last night. Well, finished as much as I'm going to (I did the main quests, the loyalty missions, and some of the bigger side missions specific to each planet. I didn't touch a single small "task" side quest, which there are something like 30 or 40 of and all sound like fetch quests).

I... didn't hate it? Don't get me wrong, this game isn't very good, but it's also not as bad as I was expecting. The combat/weapons system stuff was fun and I didn't mind the loop to get each planet habitable. I think what happened was they were focused too much on there being a lot of stuff. It seems like some mid-level executive got it stuck in their head that they needed to have have a ton of things in the game and it had a knock-on effect that impacted the quality of pretty much everything, including the writing (and subsequently, the voice work, etc.). Had they instead pared things down and focused on fewer but better characters, they could have had a genuinely decent game. It's too bad because I can see the potential in this and had it been managed better, it could have been a decent game.

Hopefully BioWare has learned their lesson for the new Mass Effect. The hirings they've been making for it are promising at least, but who knows what will happen with that game.

In other news, Stellaris still has its hooks in me. I can't stop. I bought more DLC for it. I just got the Overlord DLC pack, which comes with new megastructures called Hyper Relays which are literally just mass effect relays from Mass Effect. I also got the robot DLC which unlocks a bunch of different robotic factions you can play as, including a faction of sentient defence robots that glitched out, making them wanting to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. I tried playing as these robots but it turns out that playing this faction is way harder than most. You can't engage in diplomacy at all and every organic faction hates you from the second they meet you. Factions kept declaring war on me the entire game until finally several factions teamed up and wiped me out completely.

After that game I decided to do the opposite and played a round as pacifist environmentalist egalitarian sloth people, and I won outright through diplomacy (well, mostly. The hegemonic imperialist beetle jerks kept attacking me but I had a ton of defensive war bonuses so I ended up forcibly subjugating them after they declared a war of aggression on me one too many times and got pushed all the way back through their territory. Having them and all of the factions they controlled as subjects boosted my final score a ton).

With my spouse, we're currently playing through Rayman Legends on the Switch.

I'm not finished playing Metal Gear Solid 5 on the PS4, but I got a bit bored of that. I'll probably just do the mainline missions from now on and skip the side stuff.

On my computer I randomly got the itch to play through Jedi Knight 2: Outcast & Jedi Knight: Academy which I just finished in a couple days. For the past day I've just been using cheat codes to spawn a bunch of NPC's in a large area and watch them duke it out lol.

In my quest to find a controller for my Switch that has a decent D-pad, I bought an 8Bitdo wireless adapter (version 2) in the hopes that a DualShock 4 controller will be good enough for retro and retro style platform games. I am enjoying the first Blaster Master Zero, but I wish I had a better D-pad, and the PlayStation controllers are the most comfortable for me for character action games as well, so I might play though Bayonetta 1 and 2 before 3 comes out, assuming that the adapter meets my expectations.

Edit 8/2/22: The adapter is doing what it should. I can now use either an Xbox or a PlayStation controller with my Switch.

This shit is crazy. I love it.

Just finished live a live so jumped back in into the breach. That game doesn’t get old.

Got back to Pathfinder Kingmaker.

Clocked about 140h in total so far. Man this game is masive.

I got only two acts left so should be able to finally finish it.

Finally got around to playing Hades. Turns out, everyone was right. Pretty good game! Completed my first Hades run after 16 deaths.

Neon White- as someone with trouble concentrating, this thing is a liquid drip of gameplay->reward->story that I find incredibly satisfying.

Fire Emblem: Three Hopes- OmegaForce keeps cranking out middling musou games in their Dynasty/Samurai Warriors games so they can APPARENTLY keep making brilliant spin-offs of pre-existing franchises. I'm 100 hours into the Golden Deer storyline and I'm definitely going back for the others.

V/H/S- 4v1 horror game that's in Early Access and has a TON of promise. Here's to hoping it's successful enough to keep a community.

Multiversus-I can't believe how fun and accessible it is...

That's pretty quick! What build do you like?

For the first time in about 18 months, I'm playing an actual videogame that isn't just Pokemon GO (Which is really fun when you have someone to play with)

I downloaded Pokemon Soul Silver after somehow never playing it before, despite being a huge pokemon game fan. I think when it came out, I was just slightly too old to play it genuinely, and it felt ironic to play it, so I somehow skipped it.

I'm enjoying it so far!! I just got to Azalea town and I really like my little team of mans. I'm using Chikorita, Onyx, Hoothoot and Rattata, and they're pretty much 4 mon I wanna take with me all the way to the E4 really!! The only negative I can put on the game is that it's SO bare bones. Like you go to a CITY, and there's 2 buildings that aren't either the Mart, Centre or Gym. I can't really hold it against a 20 year old game, but after playing the more modern ones, this one seems basic as fuck.

Aside from that, I just downloaded the new Octopath on the phone, which I've seen some people say is better than the Switch release, so I'll report back in a few days!

Been playing Star Wars JEDI Fallen Order or however you're supposed to spell it. It's very much a B game that they supposedly aren't making any more. They're doing one thing with it and doing it reasonably well, but the game gets repetitive and goes on for too long without introducing anything new. There is no economy in the game and all your health items restock at every checkpoint so you don't have to waste any time on looting which is great for a person like me who tends to want to collect everything. The story is one fetch quest but at least I like that Cal is a young dude as opposed to all the dad or surrogate dad shooters and brawlers on the market. People have compared it to Dark Souls but it's honestly more of an Uncharted in space where you're constantly going through a narrow corridor with only one possible route ahead of you, with a few bigger combat arenas and secret rooms here and there. I don't like the trick that they do where bosses have health bars but the fight actually ends when you get to halfway to their bar, like we're not actually doing this boss fight, we just made you think that. The game is still littered with weird performance issues even on console, one being that lip syncing in cutscenes is several seconds off which really undermines the drama that they're trying to tell. I'm glad that it's on Game Pass because once I see the credits I'm not going to have any desire to go back to it perhaps ever.

@undeadpool: So far, I seem to do much better with the bow. I don't have much in a prefered build as I'm still trying to figure the in's and out's of the game. I've only just found out that you can use the titan's blood to upgrade your weapons.

In the run where I beat Hades I had the bow with quick shot/no power shot, augmented with a Dionysus boon to inflict hangover. Special shot cast Doom from Ares. Cast was Athena's deflect shot. Dash had Ares spinning blade things. Call was Athena's invincibility.

As for my permanent upgrades I've unlocked a couple locks on the mirror. I currently have maxed out death defiance and switched the cast # upgrade to auto-regen after a few seconds so I can keep casting magics. After that I just put points into all the other stuff.

I will say I am straighttrash with the sword as well as the shield.

@chamurai: The bow is my go-to weapon, specifically the Hidden Aspect and the Heartseeker (the one where you hit them with the attack, then all your specials seek to that enemy).

I tend to play incredibly frantically, dodging constantly and attacking 1-2 times, so I favor stuff that's quick and twitchy (I am garbage with the gun, for instance)

I was also pretty bad with the sword and shield, but give the Hidden Aspect of both of those a shot, they're...VERY different.

And check out the other aspects of the mirror too, the game is just so damn deep on how much customization you can do and I found the ability that lets you come back 1/room became a LOT better for me than the one that gave you extra lives.

@undeadpool: I was looking at that death per room upgrade but I'm reluctant because there are still instances in the late game where I'd die twice in the same room and it saved my run. Specifically in Styx with the poison. Still haven't figured that out quite yet. I'll try it out though, I hope the game doesn't penalize you for respeccing too much.

I will look into the weapon upgrades for sword and the shield as you suggested as well. Thanks!

Played through Portal 1 and 2. Of course I've played them both before but not for years, and they came out on Switch. I'm sure everyone here has heard all the praise many times, but, both are near-perfect games. The first is a great package, a compelling story that you can easily wrap up in one sitting, and it's charming as ever. The second hits the ground running with amazing production values and slightly more complex, but still perfectly balanced and satisfying puzzles, where you have to scratch your head but not for *too* long. The humor in the second one is hit-or-miss - the hits being basically everything Wheatley does or says, and the miss being most of the Cave Johnson stuff - but the gameplay is just never not fun. The sheer scope and scale of the diabolical goings-on of Aperture Science still impress after a decade. And I have to say it runs like a dream on Switch, without a hint of framiness that I could catch, and relatively fast load times as well.

@chamurai: I think resets just cost "Shadow," which I'm now saving up for the ludicrously expensive stuff.

Yeah, I often wouldn't notice I got poisoned, so even making it to the healing oasis was a pain. I found Styx got easier with experience, more than other levels, because they tend to be very similar and limited. Especially if you have that deflect-dash, the satyrs poison themselves!

Cool thread =)

Im playing right now Elden Ring is such a good game.

Has anyone played it? or completed it?

Thanks

Played it, completed it, even beat Malenia. HELLUVA FromSoft game, but I hope their next one is a little more focused.

THPS1+2

Really glad this turned up on PS Plus. I beat the originals relatively recently but the feel is right there. I do find the menus a bit of a mess and some of the new goals really make the first game less of a breeze. One of the best things Activision has put out in the last few years. Shame we won't be getting THPS3 which is the biggest blank spot in my Tony Hawk knowledge

I have been deep in the JRPG mines with Xenoblade 3 which is the game of the year, actually, real shocker even to me sorry Elden Ring I thought we had something.

@efesell: Man, I just tried to get back into XC2 after putting about 35 hours into it back in 2017. I got stuck on a boss in chapter 5 and just never went back. Figured I would try again with all the XC3 hype going on. I'm not really much for JRPG's in the first place and wow is it confusing as hell lol. I don't remember how anything works anymore and even fighting lower level enemies is wasting me. I've thought about watching some videos to relearn the combat but add to that all the other stuff you need to know about the game it seems like a damn chore haha. Thinkin about XC3 in the future but I dunno, we'll see. Have you enjoyed it more than 2 so far?

@spacemanspiff00: Oh absolutely. I like the other Xenoblade games a whole lot but 3 kinda just blows em out of the water. Having had their runaway hit with 2 they were clearly given more time, money, and people to work on this game and it shows in every part of the project.

After spending ~125 hours on it, I finished it last weekend. I loved it and like @undeadpool above, I also managed to beat Malenia. Man, that was a frustrating fight. I honestly jumped up off the sofa as I got the final hit!

I enjoyed taking my time in that game. Typically, with open-world games, I get to the point where I'm burned out, so I just want to push through to the end. With Elden Ring, though, I didn't mind just going with the flow and seeing how things turned out. Great game.

Have fun!

@efesell: Interesting. My brother is a big Xenogears/Xenosaga/Xenoblade fan. I think he's pretty much played them all, and he sprang for the special edition of this most recent game (he really wanted the art book). I want to like them, but I think I've fallen off every single entry.

Speaking only to the more recent Chronicles games, I quit XC1 because it had waaaayyy too many fucking sidequests and I'm the sort of deranged idiot who feels he needs to complete them all. XC2... weirdly, as cool as the mech reveal was where you could suddenly fly around the world, that aspect killed it for me after a short while. What had felt like a really cool big open world suddenly felt tiny when you had a mech, and combat started to feel dumb because you could literally just destroy "normal," non-mech enemies with your giant robot.

Anyway, I think I've been burned by that series too many times to buy a copy for myself, but luckily I'm in a position to borrow from my brother when he's done, since he got a physical copy. But, since I'm a skeptic, could you maybe say a little more about why you like this one so much better? BTW I do find it sad that, like XC1 with the Wii, XC3 is clearly hampered by the hardware limitations of the underpowered/aging Switch.

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As for me, mostly I've been playing a lot of Crusader Kings 3, actually. For a while I was doing legit ironman runs, then after a while I decided to do a super-cheaty debug mode run where I make my character immortal and console-command the crap out of things whenever I feel like it. That's been great fun. I'm currently 150 years old and have taken over about half the map; I've also got over a hundred children, aided by the fact that founded a polygamous religion with myself as the head and hence have four wives. What a ridiculous game. I'll probably keep going until I've conquered everything.

Also maxed out my mastery on that new Hitman 3 map that came out recently. Looking forward to playing that new mode when it finally drops.

@atheistpreacher: Well.. it’s still a massive game with a ton of side quests, albeit much more involved than XB1 where a dozen npcs just shout objectives at you. Each one at least has a mini narrative now and some are fully voiced and presented like the main story.

It’s also a video game in 2022 so there’s a lot of minor open world trappings and repeat objectives to take care of scattered around. So this game did not move away from having a ton of things that need doing.

But what I care about in this series is narrative and that’s where 3 towers over the others. It has a great cast, an interesting premise, and wastes no time with set up. You have your full party by Chapter 1 and then it devotes the rest of the game to character development and story.

It also has a job system which I’m simply required to enjoy in JRPGS.

I'm also playing XC2 because of the release of XC3 after putting the game down for nearly a year. I like the game overall but the running into high level enemies on the world map and getting destroyed is no fun, especially since you have to avoid them to reach your next mission. The navigational feature in the game is also badly used making it easy to get lost. And its hard to earn enough money for things, because those Merc jobs happen in real time and can be hours long before you get anything out of them.

Also played the Far Cry 6 trial over the weekend, because I'm never going to buy that game, and I believe it will be a Game Pass or PS Plus game very soon anyway. It's not bad overall. The graphics are really pretty, the gameplay is more involved having a slight RPG element to it, which taking getting used to. But I see why the game didn't sell well and Ubisoft is now trying everything possible to get the game out to more people.

Also started Tony Hawk 1+2 because of PS Plus. Never played the original versions. I see what they are classic games. Good stuff.

Other than those games, the regulars: Destiny 2, Genshin Impact, and some others.

@av_gamer: If you need money in XC2 the best way is to salvage. Once you get to.. I think chapter 4 then the new city there let’s you get like several times profit per cylinder and you can swap on Casual mode spend a half hour salvaging and then never need money ever again.

This will also result in a ton of core crystals as well.

Thanks, I'll try it.

I was playing Re-Volt (Steam Version), which is a pretty fun combat racer for those who love radio control cars (No matter if it's a toy-grade or hobby-grade RC car).

House Flipper.

I discovered this on GP when it released just over a month ago. This game speaks to me, as someone who spent entire play sessions in Fallout 4 building the perfect "house" for my character. I have not been this into a game in a while.

Experiencing Red Shepard makes me want to go though Mass Effect 1 (the original, not the remaster)... for the eleventh time, but I really don't want to cut off playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses again.

Eh. Fuck it. I can finish a Mass Effect in less time than a Persona, and there's a mod for 21:9 these days.

Edit 8/14/22: Mood change: The Crew 2, because I've already played Need for Speed 2015 and Heat for 80 hours each, and Forza Horizon is kinda boring.

I got a new phone recently, and just for giggles to test out how bad I am at phone shooters, and to test the speed of the phone I'm playing Dead Trigger 1, also I'm thinking of replaying portal 1 again sometime... 😁

My two main games right now are Returnal, which has gotten be down to 220lbs, which I still haven't beat in 3 months despite playing about an hour most days. The other is a replay of Final Fantasy 12, because who doesn't like the original Star Wars/Hidden Fortress?

currently working at dragon's dogma . with the news of a sequel and jeff G mentioning he was trying it again n enjoying it it kinda spurred me on. i'd bought the original version after watching the quick look of it years ago ( blame dan) started it tice but never grabbed me at the start. i bought the ps4 version around when the switch version came out a few years back cause austin was hype on waypoint podcast ... i got farther but not far. n just recently i got the steam version .... its actually sticking this time i'm about 40 hours in give er take a few idle hours on pause cause house stuff comes up n i think i'm over 1/3rd -1/2 into it? its pretty good and i'm kinda kicking myself for not really tackling it properly sooner