General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

The Dutch Ghost said:
I have been hearing some conflicting voices over on RPG Codex, about political pandering but also about the design of the game and the gameplay.

Doing better than Bethesda studios is not such a high benchmark these days.
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The political pandering stuff is hyperbole but their design complaints, I can confirm. The game is entirely too easy. I'm nine hours in now and I'm drowning in money and perks are incredibly underwhelming. If stuff like that is a deal breaker for you, I would skip it, but the world is neat and all I have invested in it right now is a dollar so I'm a bit more forgiving.
 
Had a far better time with Shadow Of War yesterday. Like I said, the game throws you instantly into the deep end and I'd suggest lowering the difficulty to the easiest just so you can figure out how the game works before you start scaling it up.

You don't need to grab enemies to execute them once you reach level 2 or 3 as you unlock the Might meter which as you hit enemies it fills up and once it is full you can hit B and Y to execute an enemy (whose animation will not be interrupted by other enemies around you). I think it is ridiculous that you have to level up (oh and the only way to get levels is either by completing side objectives, main objectives or taking down captains) to get that basic game feature that is a necessity for combat.

You get to choose how you level up your character, obviously, and some things that has helped me out is to pick a skill that when I aim at a campfire I can strike it (traveling to it instantly) and explode it so anyone around takes damage and I just got an upgrade that allows me to simply shoot an arrow to explode the fire.

I also suggest taking down item enemies which have a white glow to them in the spirit vision so you can loot their enchantment upgrades. The one I got in my sword right now is a health stealing skill. So it means I have some means of very slightly healing myself. And you get points you should use to unlock the enchantment slots for everything else but the sword (as they are all locked) so that you can get as many of them as possible. (I've focused on XP gain just so I can level up and become more powerful)

I also pretty much turn my brain off in a way and just go on muscle memory when it comes to the button prompts and it is a lot easier to counter and dodge enemies but because you need to constantly mash Y to counter, X to attack, B to stun and A to dodge or vault over enemies it means that there is no time to use the camera which means that if you get stuck in a poor position you might have a shit view of the area around you, gotta dodge away instantly.

Oh and if you start seeing the dodge prompt (A) then get distance or get up on a rooftop right away. Because chances are that whatever enemy is charging at you isn't going to stop so you'll constantly be forced to hit A with no break to do anything else.

Abuse the ever living shit out of the stealth system. You don't need for everything to become super quiet before you can stealth attack again. Just drop down a ledge, slide over to the side until you see a white outline of your last known position, and keep cool or flank around them and preferably up on top of something and then drop in for another stealth attack.

Pay attention to environmental attacks in spirit vision and try to use as many of them as possible before you engage captains in combat.

Pay attention to where arrows are on the minimap and make sure to use arrows frequently.

There are still issues with the game but they are so far not enough to royally piss me off like yesterday. Where your character decides to climb and WHEN they decide to start climbing is wonky as all hell, never ever expect it to be reliable and that you will go the direction you wish to go. There is also enemies that can charge you and pretty much instakill you with their RIP AND TEAR attack. Some captains can just spawn enemies right away and whenever you see someone about to sound the alarm you might as well not pay attention to them because they are so fucking fast at doing it that by the time you figure out their position they're already lighting the alarm fire, at that point try to get away from the area glowing red on the minimap and lure whatever captain you're fighting with you. Because enemies do not run out when an alarm is in place. They spawn indefinitely as far as I could tell.
 
Underrail!

I've played it once before with tanky AR build from forums and it wasn't that great.

But with Expedition out I've decided to play again with custom build and see how much of the game can be completed as pacifist (no humanoids killed).

I've rolled with stealthy crossbowman on Oddity XP system and yesterday I've reached the Deep Caverns with 4 humanoids killed by my character (you need to kill 3 gladiators in Arena to progress the MQ and I've decided to kill bandit leader for a good ending). I've had to avoid certain quests (Arena, Gauntlet, majority of Protectorate questline), but the game and expansion are completely viable with only 3 guys killed.

Having high Intelligence and social skills unlocks surprisingly large amount of extra dialogue, lore and alternative quest solutions.

If you wanted Fallout with more depth in combat, definitely pick it up (and it's often really cheap).
 
Got a cheap copy of Aliens: Infestation for DS. It's Metroid with Space Marines and actually quite good for what it is. Probably either the second or third best Alien game made.
 
joevonzombie said:
Got a cheap copy of Aliens: Infestation for DS. It's Metroid with Space Marines and actually quite good for what it is. Probably either the second or third best Alien game made.
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Awesome little game and probably one of the best games in the Alien/Aliens franchise after Alien Isolation.
Its only major problem is is that it is to short. I really think there should have been some more levels in this game and some extra weapons like a missile launcher or a plasma rifle.

Edit: and I wish it was possible to carry two weapons at a time.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
Awesome little game and probably one of the best games in the Alien/Aliens franchise after Alien Isolation.
Its only major problem is is that it is to short. I really think there should have been some more levels in this game and some extra weapons like a missile launcher or a plasma rifle.

Edit: and I wish it was possible to carry two weapons at a time.
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Seems fairly brisk this far. I'm trying to keep all the Marines for a little bit of extra challenge.
 
Let's round up the last couple of games:

Shadow Of War
I enjoyed it enough I guess but this is an example of a game being bloated so at a certain point I had enough and just wanted to finish the game which took for fucking ever and is filled with tons of filler bullshit quests. Anyway. I stopped playing right at the end during the final mission on the bridge.

See, a game has rules and it expects the player to adhere to these rules it has set out and so long as the player does what the rules say that the player can do then everything should work out fine, right? Well what if the game doesn't acknowledge its own rules? In order to drop down from a ledge you need to hold B (xbox), so I do that, you expect me to drop down from the ledge that is 3 meters up down to the ground below that has no clutter that could possibly be in the way right? Well the game decided that what I wanted to do was to jump from the ledge over to a set of stairs about 16 meters to the right.

Other examples are when I use the double jump feature and I expect the game to fling me the appropriate distance that I need to end up on a rooftop or at the very least on the ledge of the rooftop. I've seen the game allow me this distance before so I am not asking for too much. But then the game decides that no, what I wanted was to a measly jump that carries no distance and drops me down right at the ground before the building. There's a shitload of this in Shadow Of War.

But the last straw was when I was fighting with a nazghul spirit thingie on the bridge and the game decided multiple times in a row that the character I want to attack is not the nazghul but my very own orc captains which are aligned with me. And the final straw was when I was looking at the nazghul, I had moved away from my captains to give us distance and I moved the analogue stick in the direction of the nazi and the game decided that what I wanted to do was attack another one of my captains that was so far away my character had to leap towards the camera to attack him.

And I had enough. I expect a game to follow its own rules. See a dated and clunky game still has rules. Rules it needs to follow. Deus Ex for example is quite dated and clunky BUT if I enter sneak mode and I move around and an enemy says that he thinks he saw something and I move behind something so he can no longer have a line of sight on me then he will go back to his normal routine. That is the rule and the game follows it. An EMP grenade will take out a lot of robotics and electronics. That is the rule and the game follows it. If I target an enemy with the GEP gun and let it do its proper targeting beeping then if I fire the rocket and I can see that there is nothing in the path of trajectory then it will hit the enemy.

That is the rule, and the game follows it.

But the best way I can explain what kinda problem I have with Shadow Of War is that it does not follow its own rules. What input you do on the controller and what the game actually does can be two completely different things. And like I said, the game is bloated, that bridge part at the end where I stopped playing the game constantly broke its own rules and it felt like the game was purposely fucking with me. I got infuriated and when I hit my captain from way away for no good reason then that was it, I had enough.

Agents Of Mayhem
Take whatever "charm" Saints Row 3 or 4 had and then strip it of that and add in animé and you got this game. I dunno if I would necessarily say it was bad. It just had nothing to grip me.

State Of Decay 2
This game is pathetic. It's like a unity store asset steam early access title. And the difficulty of the game ramps up way too quicky to be even remotely fun. At some point there's special zombies and hordes a stonethrow away at any given time and it makes exploration a bore. The game basically has no story at all and characters are practically cardboard cutouts. Nights are way too dark and you can't pass the time til morning so you basically got to walk around blind. The map I picked (plateu) has absolutely garbage road layout so getting from point A to point B was always a tedious chore. And cars don't run out of gas that fucking fast, remember when Todd was sent a pack of bobby pins and told "weigh this"? Yeah, that, but for fuel for cars. It is also buggy as all hell. The last straw for this game was when I decided to just back my car up and it got stuck on a metal railing for no good reason. You can use your phone in the game to use a command to get unstuck. And that speaks volumes about the game. It requires a command that the player can use to get unstuck because it is such a problem in this game.

Lords Of The Fallen (currently playing)
I'm enjoying so far. A bit Dark Souls 2'y. Not a whole lot of monsters. Mostly dudes in armor. Boss fights are basically just a test of patience. But it's okay. However it is horribly optimized for the Xbox so the framerate constantly dips into the shitter.
 
Mr Fish said:
State Of Decay 2
This game is pathetic. It's like a unity store asset steam early access title. And the difficulty of the game ramps up way too quicky to be even remotely fun. At some point there's special zombies and hordes a stonethrow away at any given time and it makes exploration a bore. The game basically has no story at all and characters are practically cardboard cutouts. Nights are way too dark and you can't pass the time til morning so you basically got to walk around blind. The map I picked (plateu) has absolutely garbage road layout so getting from point A to point B was always a tedious chore. And cars don't run out of gas that fucking fast, remember when Todd was sent a pack of bobby pins and told "weigh this"? Yeah, that, but for fuel for cars. It is also buggy as all hell. The last straw for this game was when I decided to just back my car up and it got stuck on a metal railing for no good reason. You can use your phone in the game to use a command to get unstuck. And that speaks volumes about the game. It requires a command that the player can use to get unstuck because it is such a problem in this game.
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Have you played the first one? It was not great but i did 100% it and was thinking of playing this one aswell, But since nobody talks about it anymore and it never came out on steam i might just pass on it.
 
Yeah I enjoyed the first one. It had a bit of an issue with traversing the map too but once you figured out how to drive across the field you 'could' cut through the farmland. I also remember it having far more of a story than the sequel do too. It's been a long time since I played it though.
 
Got burnt out of wow classic so i went back to play some games i've played before and started a new one.

The evil within 1-2. 1 feels badly made when it comes to AI and bugs/gameplay and even if i played on the hardest difficulty 99% of the difficulty was to avoid the game from screwing me over with non pausing cut scenes and enemies not taking dmg from grenades/flash/exploding stuff.
Overall it is better than 2 in a lot of places but it is so infuriating.

The second game however has a better map with the "open world" and i don't mind the crafting and suchs, The 1 ghost is also really well done but thats about it. The game is piss easy and the AI is way dumber.
People love this game because it is streame lined and improved gameplay wich = "1 was to hard and i can't admitt that!"
Overall it is fun for 1-3 playthroughs but i allways feeel like the end sucks and i still want more of the early game.

Bioshock infinite
Yeah.. Not sure about this. I did not love it but it was fun back then but now it feels like i am close to the end and i didn't really do anything worthwhile. I might not finish it this time around.
Also they added a DLC that gives you more dmg more buffs and more money. Fuck you guys! I sadly forgot to remove it so i have gone on rambo mode but the AI yet again is kinda dog shit.

Darkwood.
Now were talking! A isometiric survival horror game with crafting collecting etc and you need to "see" things to see how they really are? Aka flashlight over stuff to show if you can use it or if there is enemies there. Really cool concept but sadly i went into the FPS urge and played the other 3 games before i got far into this. Will pick it up soon again but the little i played it was really nice.
 
Yakuza 0, got it for a couple bucks on last sale and Underrail left me a bit exhausted with RPGs.

Just started chapter 5 and the tycoon side questline. Pretty fun game with interesting story. I like that everything happens across a couple of blocks instead of entire city, allowing it to be much more fleshed out.

I love combat, maybe it's not as brutal as Sleeping Dogs, but punches have their weight.
 
So I quit Lords Of The Fallen near the end.
Remember what I said about Shadow Of War not following its own rules? Yeah. That. It's buggy. The camera is as much of an enemy as the actual demons you fight. Enemies range from piss easy to insanely irritating. Some enemies require me, a rogue, to use magic to kill. And a lot of bosses are just exercises in tedium. It had good parts that a Souls-like fan would like but it has bad parts too. I was able to push past a lot of bad parts but then as I was nearing the end as the narrative is concluding and I see from the walkthrough (which I glance at to see how long a game is and how far along I am) that I'm on the last chapter and then... I get a filler boss. No good reason. I just defeated the last lord guarding a certain someone, had a chat and I'm sent back. To a dead end corridor, and the only path out of the corridor leads to LOTF's "fog door", where I have to defeat two bosses that are there for the sake of being there. See, this game doesn't necessarily have a ton of filler content. Most of the bosses are there for main story reasons and you're never really forced to fight an optional side boss that isn't important. And my patience was at its end. I had a good three hours before reaching this point but I knew that if the game threw another monkey wrench at me then that'd be it. And it did.

Just imagine a film where 10 minutes from the end it has a 5 minute scene of some guy drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. That's what this was for me.

Oh and the game never explains what a certain polearm shirtless dude enemy regenerates from so I'll explain it for anyone considering buying it: If they start healing, follow their red aura, it leads to a vase that you should smash and then collect a Tyrant Heart. After that he cannot regenerate himself anymore.

Next game will be Assassin's Creed Black Flag.
 
Maybe Fish is like me and has a soft spot for shitty games.

Speaking of soft spots, I replayed Arkham Origins; it’s the weakest entry in the series for sure, but it’s still fun, and it’s the only Arkham game that gets the “fear” aspect of Bamham’s persona right in my opinion. Enemies in Arkham Origins do not taunt you, they don’t go “I’m gonna break your face, Bat”, or call you chicken. Enemies in Arkham Origins are afraid. They’re fighting Batman because they think they’re going to die; in a weird way, setting the game near the beginning of his career allows for a better representation of how the thugs of Gotham see the Batman.

In addition, the game has my favorite Joker portrayal in a non-live action series next to John Doe from the Telltale games (yeah, I said it, Hamill isn’t my favorite). The scene where you watch him manipulate Harleen Quinzel is actually very well done, as is the rest of his characterization and dialogue, in my honest opinion.

All in all, on a scale from 1-10 with 5 being average, I give Arkham Origins a 7. Thé shock gloves are op, and the game is more linear than other Arkham games, but the boss fights are fun and the gameplay is classic Arkham and the story, while INCREDIBLY predictable, features an extremely underrated Joker portrayal and takes after the Frank Miller Batman more than the other games (with the characterization of Batman and the inclusion of SWAT Officer Branden, etc; Miller Batman is my favorite Batman, with The Dark Knight Returns and Year One being masterpieces in my eyes), which is definitely a positive thing.
 
Nah, he just hates those games. They aren't overly shitty in a so bad it is good kind of way.
 
I just like underrated games, or ones that I feel don’t get their due. One day soon I’ll make a point for Arkham Knight and AC: Rogue here.
 
Again, I'm clearing out the backlog. There's an awful lot of games I bought because they were on sale over the years and never got around to playing. Some I bought on a whim. Maybe I saw some gameplay footage in the background of a commentary video and that's why I bought a game. Maybe there was a meme that made feel like it was worth throwing 5 bucks at it. Whatever the reason, I'm stuck with a big backlog and I gotta clear it out as expediently as possible but I want to give every game a chance too.

Anyway, finished Assassin's Creed Black Flag.

I liked it.

It good.

Still issues with the character deciding to do whatever he wants to sometimes. I think the reason I was able to put up with it more than Shadow Of War is because I actually liked the storyline.

See. I can like things too.
 
For me the worst part of Black Flag is Assasin's Creed part. At that point already they should have put the franchise down and just create open worlds in different periods.
 
That's kinda what it does now tho'.
Besides, it's not a numerical title so it can be considered a spin-off that does its own thing.
 
Went back to playing Witcher 3, it's a good game, flawed but good. Skellige is probably the worst region in the entire game.

Other than that waiting for Persona 5 Royal and Warcraft 3 Reforged. I hope Blizzard does not fuck it up too much.
 
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