A positive thread about what you're currently playing

I love doing a bit of Jolly Co-operation in Dark Souls 3 DLC at the moment. Nothing like charging in and getting stomped by a vicious dragon as a team.

Persona 5 is still treating me good. Besides that, I finally tried out that old demo for the Odin Sphere remaster/remake. They changed up the entire battle system of that game and added stage layouts that were more than just endlessly looping rooms(the titular "spheres"), and I liked what I played now a lot better than what I played back when I tried it on Playstation 2. I might prefer Dragon's Crown's sword and sorcery to Odin Sphere's fairy tales, but it still looks neat. It's the first time I've played as Velvet, and she's a lot of fun in a Spider-Man like way. It's such a treat that the stamina system was changed, though I wish they had mapped blocking to another button rather than pressing and holding the attack button.

I bought Strider back when it came out on 360 and had fun for a while, but it wasn't interesting enough for me to keep coming back. I liked just running around and fighting in it, but it felt very mashy and I can't remember a thing about the music or story. It did look and feel very good, and I loved the speedy movement, but I didn't really find any chewy depth to hold on to, if that makes any sense. The investment wasn't there.

I've been getting back into Titanfall 2 after before the new DLC hits. The shooting feels great, and the movement will never get old to me. It really confuses me that this game hasn't become a bigger success.

I finally bought Stellaris yesterday. My first game is a custom race of Fungoids (The Djunn Shiro), Ironman mode on. I only have two planets, haven't met anything other than some autonomous mining drones and pirates, but it has completely dragged me in. I am trying to "roleplay", as every cool thing I have heard about the game is in the context of making cool stories. I am not focusing on winning or doing things right as much as I am focused on doing what I think the species I have made would do. And they are peaceful, happy fungi. So happy that they abhor unhappiness. So I will do whatever it takes to make everyone happy. I am hoping to meet a peaceful yet unhappy species, which will get really interesting.

Beat Majora's Mask and Mario 64, which were both a great time (Majora beats 64 though. Freaking love that game!)

Now diving into the Persona series with 4 on PS2. I have to admit I was a little weary when hours of game went by with no actual gameplay despite an interesting story, but after the first real combat encounter I can tell two things:

1. I will absolutely be hooked on this game until I finish it.

2. As a guy who doesn't play many JRPGs, this game is probably gonna kick the crap out of me. Almost dying on the first boss? Hoo boy ?

@nicksmi56: The first boss fight is among the harder ones. Just keep at it, it gets easier.

I finally found some time to really dig into Persona 5 this week. I'm halfway through the third palace right now and loving every second of it. Just like P4G it's a game that I can see myself doing a NG+ playthrough to platinum it.

I am enjoying the heck out of Cities Skylines on the xbox. At that point with my city where I am now going back over what I built and upgrading roads, trying to improve my mass transit and putting in higher density zones.

I've been going back and fourth on 2 completely different games as of late. One is Grim Fandango Remastered. I'm on year 2 for the game but I seem to be stuck trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with the metal detector. Otherwise I'm loving my time with this game and see why this was such and beloved and revered title back in 1998. The art style is wonderful, the story is engaging, the puzzles are clever and the audio is A+ from the soundtrack to the voice acting.

The other game is Freedom Planet which funny enough is sort of an antithesis to Grim Fandango in that GF is a methodical point and click adventure and FP is a lot like the Genesis Sonic games where you can get past levels and pretty fast speeds. It also has elements of games like Gunstar Heroes where there's more of a combat focus as different characters have unique attacks to defeat enemies. There's also a good number of puzzles that either help you advance or are there to give you little bonuses. I've loved the level design so far and currently on level 5. Advice if anyone wants to play this, play it on classic mode rather than adventure because classic will give you just the levels up front. Adventure mode provides the plot with fully voiced cutscenes and you can watch those if you'd like, but I think the story takes itself too seriously considering the cartoonish aesthetic and when compared to Grim Fandango (Kind of unfair since GF has legendary voice acting), the voice acting in FP is far inferior.

I needed something else after Persona 5 ate up 96 hours of my life(so far), so me and a friend got together yesterday and played almost three hours of Street Fighter V. My favorite thing in that game at the moment is that after another person has started their critical art, you can seemingly input your own immediately before theirs connects and hurts you, as a counter. It makes the camera jerk around all cool and it feels great to do. I've had a friend do it to me once before, but this is the first time I've gotten to do it myself.

I've picked up Horizon: Zero Dawn, and it's good. I was surprised by how Bioware-like the story presentation is. The robot dinosaurs were expected, the conversation trees were not.

I just started playing Battlefield 1 again and im having a blast (literally) because blowing people up with the limpet charge is funny somehow.

Right now I'm mostly playing Overwatch. Took a short break from Persona 5 after like 50 hours. (Gonna get back to it soon though). Competitive season 4 ends in about a week and a half (May 16, I think), so I'm trying to get as many cp's as I can (For that golden weapon). I should be good after next season as long as I place gold again. Recently I've finally started getting good at a a couple characters and it's been great. Next comp season I think I might finally start doing better!

It's been fun having a little goal like that for the past year. I really find a lot of satisfaction in leveling up my profile and prestiging. I'm at level 273 and have put in around 207 hours since last year. I consider that a lot of time, so when I see silvers with multiple stars on their portrait, I'm at a loss. And in a way, I'm envious. Not of the amount of time they've put into the game to get there, but of the prestige/vanity in it. I don't know. The last time I really got into a multiplayer game this much was Modern warfare 2. Sure I've played plenty of others like Titanfall, "Insert any other COD", rocket league, destiny, etc, but with Overwatch I am invested in a way I never thought I'd be.

I have a confession. I have spent just as much money on loot boxes as I did to buy the game. At this point, I have all the base game stuff that I want, but those events... I made a rule for myself to only get one 10 dollar loot box purchase during an event. I have to play the game to get any others. Otherwise I could easily see myself get sucked into a loop of trying to get all the event items (minus sprays, cause who gives a fuck about sprays, right? ...actually, I kind of do)

Oh, and I finished Dark souls 3 a few weeks ago. So, now I have finished the trilogy + bloodborne. I still have thoughts of demon's souls, but keep diswaying it for two reasons. 1. I already watched Brad and Vinny playthough the whole game. 2. I would have to dig my ps3 out of storage and make a space for it next to my tv for at least a week. I know I'll play it someday, just not right now. And Nioh is the same. I like that game from what I've played, but I'll get to that another time.

Cool, this is back on top! It's nice to read about what everyone else is playing.

Still going through Persona 4 myself and making good progress in that, but I decided that I needed something else when I didn't feel like playing it, so I'm also going through Super Mario World for the first time.

This game makes me so glad that my brother bought the Wii's Classic Controller for 2K years ago. I usually use the Gamecube controller for my Virtual Console games, but for whatever reason Mario World's controls are completely screwed up for it, so I've finally picked up this thing and it feels awesome. I'm totally gonna use this for the rest of my 2D games on here.

The game itself? Well it's Mario. To many people it's THE Mario game, and while it hasn't reached that level for me, it's a heck of a lot of fun. Mario controls really well once you get used to him, Yoshi is great (and I always feel bad when I've had to leave him to die. R.I.P. my friend ?), the levels are fun and varied, it's cool and engaging to hunt down the secret exits, and the Cape Feather is probably my favorite power-up in Mario history. It's so dang useful!! ?

Fun fact: I think I've accidentally sequence-broken this game. You know the levels that would normally be after the final boss, like World 9 in New Super Mario Bros Wii and World S in Galaxy 2? Well I've somehow just entered World's equivalent, the SPECIAL world, and I haven't even completed World 3 yet XD at least I'll be able to get them out of the way early this time around.

I'm replaying Half life 2 episode one only this time I replaying it with the Oculus Rift and wow it looks amazing took a little while to configure it but this game so far is really awesome even more so in VR. The early part of the game when Dog throws you and Alyx while your sitting in the car into the Citadel felt so crazy in VR it was like a rollercoaster ride kinda I think I'm addicted to VR. lol

I'm currently playing a weird grid-based exploration game called Waxworks. It's not nearly as forgiving or accessible as Grimrock, but there's an undeniable charm to the game despite how much of a chore it can be sometimes.

Ed, Season 2's third DLC character, is out for Street Fighter V now in the Beta they're doing. I'm beyond awful with him, but he's pretty fun to use. He's definitely the most teen character Street Fighter has had in a while. His clothes and hair are so asymmetric, his voice so shrill, his expression so downtrodden and his cheeks so flushed that he seems young despite being just as beefy as anyone. He gets a lot of points with me for being a kid Balrog has been raising. Knowing Balrog I doubt he's the world's best adoptive dad or anything, but they had a cute partnership in the story mode and it's adorable how Ed is doing boxing to imitate him. I figured Ed would be an edgelord beyond help, but the dude's winquotes have been more positive than Nash's so far. I like him, even if he's a bit of a mess designwise.

I've never cried more in a year than I have in the week since I've started playing Katawa Shoujo. Once a year, once classes let out, I choose one or two things to binge on in order to keep myself busy for one reason or another. Last year was Gorillaz, year before that was Red vs Blue, and this year is Katawa Shoujo and Danganronpa. I'm starting with Katawa Shoujo, and it's made me cry about 5 times in the past 4 days. Just thinking about the game and the characters I met and bonded with nearly brought me to tears while I was working today. I've broken down sobbing in my chair twice since starting the game and I'm only through three of the girl's routes. I still have to finish Rin and Shizune, then I'm gonna run one last time with my favorite then jump into Danganronpa. That being said, despite how good this game has been so far, once I finish the run with my favorite, I will not be returning to the game ever again. This series of stories has broken me in ways that I thought have long been untouched, and I don't wish to put myself through this again when I am said and done on the experience.

The Street Fighter V CFN Beta. Not too much lag, no random disconnects and Ed is a really fun character to play as. Can't wait for the main game to get these updates.

Persona 5. It's Persona 5, do I need to say anything else? I'm playing New Game Plus and I almost never have time for those anymore!

Clicker Heroes PS4. Something I can have on in the background while I surf the web.

Started Alienation last night. Played about 2 hours with a mate on hard and it was a blast can't wait to get back to it.

Finally started in on Night in the Woods. I must say for a game that features animal people who can walk on power lines I'm surprised to find that it has way more humanity in it than anything else I've played this year. Fantastic looking art style with a lovely somber indie soundtrack. Any game that can touch my blackened heart is worth calling out any day.

Also back to playing Titanfall 2 occasionally. That multiplayer still gets my blood pumping more than most games. As of now it's probably my favorite mech game ever in terms of the raw feel of the action.

I've been cheating my way through Half-Life: Blue Shift and it's breaking in some dumb, wonderful ways. NPCs models don't spawn (but their collision will), enemy scripting breaks and level transitions sometimes don't load.

It's a glorious mess.

I'm nearing the end of Binary Domain, and I have been enjoying it immensely. It's been sitting in my steam library for ages and I've always meant to play it. What finally prompted me to start it is that it's the first game chosen by Waypoint for their new podcast where the staff plays through a game and discusses it in the form of a podcast at the end of the month.

I also just started playing Charlie Murder on steam, and it seems great. I'm not the biggest fan of the classic beat-em-up formula, but there's something that really hooks me when it's coupled with rpg like progression and loot. Not the biggest fan of Ska Studios art, but I can't say I actively dislike it either.

Just started playing STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with the Complete 2009 mod. I originally played STALKER when it first came out, having been pretty hyped for it after the long development cycle it had gone through (I remember seeing some old screenshots of it in a PC Gamer magazine that looked way different than the final product). My computer could hardly handle the game at the time though, and lets be fair it was buggy as shit on release anyway so I did not play much of it.
Playing it now though, I'm having a ton of fun with it. The amazing atmosphere is what grabbed my attention at first. I can not point to many other shooters that go for such a specific kind of setting and manages to capture and draw you into its world so well. Playing STALKER I truly feel like I am in STALKER and it is terrifying and relentless and awesome.

I'm actually having a generally positive experience with Mass Effect: Andromeda.
I find it a lot easier to swallow if I actively ignore most of the story stuff and just treat it like I'm a dude helping out some up-start colonies get on their feet.

Playing on normal the combat is really simple but I do find it satisfying. Might consider turning the difficulty up.

Will I play it again next time I revisit the ME series? Probably not, but for now I'm havin' a fun ride on it.

I just started up Nier Automata and have mixed, but largely positive feelings about it. It manages to be weird without being wacky. I don't think there is any particular element that stands out, but as a combined package it's fascinating.

I've been spending a lot of time with Stellaris, and learning the in's and out's of that grand strat game. I'm rather excited to mess with the Utopia expansion content since I've always wanted to fart about with a hive-mind race in a space strategy. My goal is to create an empire of humanoid hive-mind creatures named Greg, and have the Mass of Greg touch all the stars in the night sky. Might even set it up so they're on a religious crusade to purge the galaxy of those who are not named Greg. The Greguisition?

Playing through Horizon Zero Dawn, that game is amazing. Also playing lots of Overwatch which is super fun but beginning to get frustrating in competitive play.

Playing Persona 5 and I really dig all of the writing and how hard they lean into the concept of you and your crew being cat burglars, I've made a few errors and how much I'm doing certain things to raise stats and Social Links but everything I wanted this game to be is here.

Also finally got to playing Shadow of Mordor and its a fun thing to load up and fuck up some orcs after work, Also I have a Kotor 1 save I need to pick back up...

Just started The Witcher 3 for a second play trough after two years and it has its hooks in me all over again. Playing it on a harder difficulty setting now and the added challenge really makes the game come alive. The fully patched version also feels much nicer when it comes to controls. It still looks amazing as well.

Just got Uncharted 4 recently, was on my backlog and hadn't gotten to it despite me being a big fan of the series. I actually was coming in with not a lot of expectations despite the great critical reception mostly because I felt burnt out after 3. But man has it gripped me in the first few hours. The writing was great in 1-3, but it's top notch thus far here. I really thought I'd not buy the forced new brother character as well especially since they did the whole "two top leading men in games" thing by adding Baker to it. But within the first hour of the game you already buy the relationship between them. It's pretty effective honestly. Open of that thing too on the ocean may of topped Uncharted 2 for best opening sequence in a game. I was impressed with how "vast" it felt and how I could just ram my boat into other boats and fuck their shit up. Man I can't wait to keep playing more of this game.

Also ironically enough I'm also playing through Shadows of Mordor. Another title that features Nolan and Baker in the lead. I beat like half of it when ti released but never finished it so I started over a bit ago and am playing it with a different approach. Last time I played it I was on the tail end of having played far too much Batman and Assassins Creed style games, including those franchises themselves. So I just was warping around doing objectives and checking boxes. I still had some enjoyment out of the engagement with the Nemesis system but it really wasn't the way to play this game imo. On this playthrough I'm having a much better time picking a direction with objectives, and just roaming around the land killing Orcs, wiping off Suarons enemy, pretty much doing a variation of the multitude of things you can do with no set order. It's super easy to then get caught up in the chaos of some of the random awesome things that can happen in that thing. Plus you end up getting a good variation of game systems from stealth to melee to ranged.

Rogue Trooper is pretty damn good. A focused third person shooter with stealth elements that has a great pace. The controls are completely unconventional which is nice to cleanse the palate.

Played some Dark Souls II, but let's talk about Sleeping Dogs and how rad that game is. Beast in the East got me in the mood to play it again.

I've put 80 hours into Zelda botw so far and just beat the game. I'm not sure it's my favourite Zelda but it's certainly up there for me. I was also playing Persona 5 but I haven't touched it in weeks so now I'm going to have to go back to it now.

I'm also playing some Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the side. It's a great game that I can just pick up and play for an hour or two between other games. I haven't seriously played a Mario Kart since 64 so it's good to be playing a new one after all these years. I wish I was better at the multiplayer, I'm almost scared to play it because I don't want to lose rank every race.

I unearthed my PSP and bought a new charger off of Amazon so I could get back into Pesona 3 Portable. As of June 2012 I'd already put 175 hours into it and left a shiny NG+ with a level 99 FemC waiting for my future self. I was already in November, so I just had to slide into the bad ending after one or two hours of play to start over with a new game.

I still love this game with all of my heart. I keep accidentally pressing the wrong buttons during battle thanks to P5, but I'm gettin back in the right mindset. I'm near the end of October after about 27 hours, so my NG+ file has officially cracked 200 total hours. I want to max all these S. Links and date every single boy AND girl on Port Island. I have 90% of the compendium complete and I want to beat Elizabeth this time around.

I'm ready.

I started Nier: Automata last week and managed somehow to put more than 20 hours since Thursday (I've been having trouble maintaining sleep; that's my excuse). The story is pretty anime, but the writing is better than I expected and the game does a good job building a desolate world that is still interesting. Also, I don't dislike the combat! It's totally serviceable.

Just finished Trails in the sky: The Third yesterday, and I'm genuinely saddened that the Sky-series is over now... It's probably actually my favorite game-trilogy of all time.

Ending was fucking beautiful though and kept reminding me of why Estelle is one of my absolute favorite characters. Love all these characters and the wonderfully realized world they live in.

Though I didn't like trails of cold steel nearly as much, the way this game set up alot of things that got pay-off in that game made me appreaciate it more than I used to. Will probably get into Cold steel 2 in the near future.

I'm replaying Rockstar's The Warriors. I loved it at 13 back in 2005. I was going through my graffiti/street culture phase, having watched and fallen in love with Style Wars and The Warriors among other things. As soon as I heard the forlorn, nostalgic synth on the menu music, and saw that iconic wheel spinning in fluorescent pink against Coney Island's dark sky, I got a nostalgia punch to the gut. It's invoking that 'me' all over again, and what a blast. Great game. They nailed it.

Loving Overwatch at the moment, and excited for the anniversary maps.

Over 60 hours into Zelda, and I'be still only completed my first divine beast (the giraffe). Undoubtedly, a new standard has been set by Ninty.

The campaign in Injustice 2 is such a great dumb fun time. I'm streaming that out to a friend through the PS4 Share Play feature, and we're having a great time going through the story of that thing. Also some of those finisher animations are straight up brutal. It's a really fun game, and I really don't like fighting games.

I finally started playing Resident Evil 7 a couple of days ago and it's pretty great. This is easily one of the strongest openings to a video game I've played this year. Holy crap does this game establish a creepy atmosphere right out of the gate. I can see what Alex was talking about earlier in the year with this being a stressful game to engage with. The sound design alone has me on edge most of the time. These seem like weird points to make in a positive thread but it all just works so well in context of the horror vibe this game is going for. I'm sort of sad that I can't play this in VR because I totally see how it could enhance such an experience.

I fell into a Stellaris hole again, mostly due to finally getting around to Utopia and 1.6 (Persona just had to hit the same damn week as Utopia). Got pretty far into one run but they kinda borked the AI so I started a new one when the 1.6.1 hotfix dropped.

They added some fantastic stuff. I've managed to help the Infinity Machine calculate Infinity, break through the Enigmatic Fortress and solve it's puzzles, and complete one ending to The Horizon Signal. They apparently got the writer from Sunless Sea to do it, and boy did it show. That whole event was pretty damn well written and it had like 5 other mini-events happen during it which were all sufficiently creepy and/or cool. I need to see what the hell happens if you accept the event stories.

GRAVITY IS DESIRE. TIME IS SIGHT. WHAT WAS, WILL BE; WHAT WILL BE, WAS.

Also apparently they added a new "end game crisis" called The End of the Cycle and it sounds amazing. So next run will knock out that too.

That being said I also just got about 11 games from that damn Backwards Compatibility sale, so another Stellaris run might have to wait.

Injustice 2 is probably a shoe-in for my Game of the Year at this point.

I have so many single player games to play and finish but I cannot, for the life of me, stop playing PU's Battlegrounds and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Both are so, so good.

Persona 4 Golden. My two-year-old new game plus save is on February 13th in game. And for those who don't own a calendar, tomorrow will be Valentine's Day in game.

I have made some decisions on this run! Tomorrow is going to be a rollicking good time!

I put a handful of hours into that new Fire Emblem. The maps are pretty boring so far, though I was expecting that from everything I've heard about Gaiden, but the characters have all been very endearing and the new art direction is gorgeous. And I don't think I can overstate how much I have been loving the localization and voicework done for this game. Tremendous job by 8-4.

I picked up Hitman and Injustice 2 today. I grabbed Breath of the Wild for my wife today and she's hooked.

I'm 9/10s of the way to what I presume will be ending B in NieR: Automata. I've got endings A and K so far and am loving it. I just found Emil's secret under the shopping mall and thought it was a pretty cool nod to the first game. It really helped put this game in context with regards to the first.

RE7 in VR is the scariest experience I've had with a video game.

I've played a lot of horror games, seen the most fucked up horror movies, and this game in VR had me almost closing my eyes sometimes. It's just....kind of like you're there.

Man, I am really digging Prey. It's got its share of problems and I wouldn't say it's as good as its contemporary's' (your Bioshocks, System Shocks etc.) but what it does well it does extremely well. Giving you a big interesting world to explore Prey slowly introduces you to its citizens and how they live, what they do when they are bored, the relationships they have and the mistakes they make. Prey's environments feel lovingly crafted. The amount of detail they pack into small environments continues to color the state of the world even well passed the 30 hours I've taken to explore it's most darkest depths. As well realized as I think Prey's world is It's a bummer that its combat Isn't as satisfying or hard hitting. Some of this could be my fault as I arbitrarily decided no to invest in any of the alien powers. Which could have evened the odds with the games alien menace. Either way, Prey is a game I am afraid will be slept on this year but for me with its wonderful sense of place, well written cast of characters and hauntingly claustrophobic atmosphere. It is a game that will stick with me well into the rest of 2017.