Whatcha Been Playing?

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

I'm on Chapter 13 of 15 in Evil Within and after the tragedy that was Chapter 10, i'm finding myself not as enthused with it. It's got a lot of gimmicky moments one after another but it's sort of settled back into its own routine and giving me the manhunt/last of us vibes again but I gotta admit, i'm sick of being chased by the same faces and i'm also bored of one-hit kill bosses.

Still, i'm at the end now so i'll see it through and i'm eager to see the sequel but Red Dead 2 is next week so it probably wont be played for a long time.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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ThirdMan wrote: October 20th, 2018, 6:25 pm
I came to Sunless Sea via Fallen London, its browser-based precursor. I fell in love with the writing and world-building in that game and I was excited to learn that there was a full-blooded 'roguelike' version, one set at sea no less! The reality is somewhat disappointing. Sunless Sea is just as poor at explaining its various 'currencies' and 'perks'. In fact how you actually 'play' the game isn't obvious from the start. Ultimately both games are part of the interactive-fiction space that's fractured in all sorts of different directions, and while Fallen London sits nicely into that, Sunless Sea seems to have struggled to distinguish itself as being a game with gameplay. Those are my initial impressions, at least. I don't really mind because I'm in it for the fiction, not the gameplay, and on those terms I'm loving it.
Thanks for the update! Yeah, felt much the same way as you but it didn't click for me for whatever reason. I might go back to it for another look actually. This year I've noticed that games that don't grab me at first can be very rewarding if I eventually put in the time, so this could merit a second look for that reason. Cheers!
dezm0nd wrote: October 20th, 2018, 7:44 pm I'm on Chapter 13 of 15 in Evil Within and after the tragedy that was Chapter 10, i'm finding myself not as enthused with it.
....
Still, i'm at the end now so i'll see it through and i'm eager to see the sequel....
The sequel is a different kettle of fish and I found it very enjoyable, though your mileage may vary on that. It kind of falls into the split-genre bucket that we're seeing more and more games embrace (usually denoted by the phrase 'rogue-like elements' but here some kind of evil open world-horror-stealth amalgam aaaaghh) and becomes more interesting because you're a bit unsure how to play it.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

The Evil Within is one of only a handful of games I've actually bought in recent years and not bothered finishing. I just gave up in the end, it was far too long and not especially enjoyable after around ten hours.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

I decided to take an impromptu break from my current DMC obsession / lifestyle and booted up Rise of the Tomb Raider of all things.

If the beginning is anything to go by, the game is very pretty, very... modern (read: passive), and there are only so many barely interactive climbing sections I can endure before catatonia sets in.

I thought the first one was decent enough, but I feel like these games don't really live up to their full potential by trying so hard to be Uncharted clones with serviceable combat. Let's see what the rest of the game has in store.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DeadpoolNegative »

Operation Darkness- this turn based strategy game from 2008 was one of the many XBox 360 JRPG exclusives. This one stars a special ops team in WWII, where they're actually... WEREWOLVES!!! DUN DUN DUN! and you fight vampires and zombies and shit too! It's a fun little game, or it would be if the mechanics didn't make things so screamingly difficult. There's the utterly bizarre camera, which whipsaws around the battlefield, centering on characters but it's often hard to get a full look at the goings on because it's obsessed with closeups. It's hard for me to articulate; actually watching footage of the game might help. There's the fact that the weight of equipment on your character is a big factor the game never really tells you about, so you can accidentally load your characters up with stuff and make them slow as molasses while the enemy swarms them. And you need panzerfaust equipped troops, they'll be slow anyway. Then there's the limited supply depot, health and extra ammo are only replenished after you beat main missions. But it's advisable to go through the side missions to build up your stats, and you'll lose health items doing that. But you really need to do the side missions to survive the main missions. And I'm currently stuck on main mission four because... if one character dies, it's an instant mission fail. This is the kind of game that just likes to throw mountains of enemies at the player and guess what? Sometimes they like to gang up on one character.

It's really... why does it feel the need to make me feel like I wasted my time, if I spent 35-40 minutes on a mission and one character dies, and I'm done? I don't hate the game, I want to engage with it but I really wish it could at least try to meet me halfway.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - last Monday I decided to finish the last few missions for my third (!) playthrogh of this underrated Spider-Man open worlder, since Bill Rosemann and Marvel Games has forsaken all of us pathetic XBox owners for that sweet sweet Sony cash. This game is also topical since it's about the venom symbiotic going completely apeshit and taking possession of the entire population of Manhattan with all its little symbiotes. Spider-Man has to face off against normal and symbiote-ized versions of classic villains such as Electro, Vulture, and the Black Cat, as well as Wolverine. It's a not particularly deep story but it's entertaining enough, despite a somewhat annoying voice actor as Spider-Man.

I always have it in my head that this game is twice as long as it actually is, since so many of the side mission tasks are repetitive. The thing is, the game always forces you to do side missions to move the story along. And there's a lot of swinging around, no fast travel for the 2008 Spider-Man. But overall I still dig it.

Grand Theft Auto V- I was thinking in the middle of all this RDR 2 mania why not do a second playthrough of this game? I always loved the pacing of this game in its first third, the way it builds to the intro of Trevor slowly, hinting he might show up, but nothing happens, until you pull off the first big heist and then kablammo. I still get chills when the surprise guest stars show up in Trevor's first cut scene. I love it. And then the game forces you to stay with Trevor, making you take in this whole new part of San Andreas, and its totally different cast of characters. I liked that a lot.

River City Rival Showdown- the further I get into this the more I realize it's kind of like Shenmue (oo, oo, oooooo!). Our young hero is just wandering around talking to people in hopes of a plot happening to him and he's always fighting a bunch of dudes. I'm not even sure what the story is at this point- Kunio seems to be targeted by everyone for... reasons? Old rivalries? Is there a girl involved? There isn't? It's satisfying to go eat some chow that boosts a certain stat like throwing or weapon use, then go to town on guys exploiting that stat.

--Dan
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

I really want to recommend Soul Calibur 6, it plays well and is probably the best the series has been since 2.

But on the Xbox one the loading times are dire, and the online simply does not work. Lots of us cannot get it to connect to a game at all. (And they ran a network test beta a few weeks back that was absolutely fine...)

They’ve been quiet on even acknowledging there’s a problem, but every tweet in the official channel is getting multiple ‘game is broken’ replies, so I’d be astounded if they’re not aware...

I’m sure they’ll patch it, but they need to pull their finger out because I suspect people are going to start returning it soon...
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

Apparently loading times are considerably quicker (<> 50%) on PS4, PS4 Pro and XOX (which is what I'm playing on) compared to XO.

I haven't tried the online yet but it's not where I'd be spending most of my time anyway. However, obviously they do need to address that side of things quickly, as you say.
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Putting my dev hat on (I never really take it off) it’s not so much a long loading time as it is there’s a clear ‘hang’ in the load that lasts about a minute. It’s doing ‘work’ that it doesn’t need to, or it might be that it’s trying to contact an analytics service via a duff address so it’s just waiting for the call to time out.

The reason online seems to fail is because of the long load, the connection drops because one of the players is sat locked in that loading hang and not responding to pings.

If you do get a moment see if you can play a ranked match on the XOX, I’m hearing anecdotal that it’s oretty broken there too, just worse on the normie.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

I have managed to get to Chapter 8 of Alien Isolation without the Alien killing me.

Here is me nearly copping it earlier :D

https://twitter.com/richspurs24/status/ ... 7336004609

Bear in mind on the infamous Chapter 5 in my first playthrough he must have killed me up to 50 times. Humans have killed me mostly (mostly :lol: ). It has helped a little being so familiar with every thing but it is still so tense. It is one of the greatest games of all time.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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GoG have an absolutely tone deaf approach to social media though.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

ThirdMan wrote: October 23rd, 2018, 9:10 pm Any other recommendations?
Okay, so I don't play on PC and don't use GoG and therefore have only a very superficial knowledge of most the following games (mostly from doing research and watching videos), so take my recommendations with a grain of salt. But after a quick glance at their lineup, these are some that stood out to me:


80 Days - The podcast definitely piqued my interest. Appears to be a very intriguing little game.

Grim Fandango & the Monkey Island series - PC adventure classics. May be worth a look for the humor / historical significance.

Planescape: Torment - Often heralded as an all-time great of video game storytelling.

Jade Empire & Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Classic BioWare RPGs, must-plays for fans of the genre.

Rayman series - One of the few 2D platformers that can compete with Super Mario.

Worms - BOOM

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth - One can never go wrong with Simon's heartfelt recommendation, right? :P

Thief trilogy - Some of the most acclaimed pure stealth games out there.

Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - An unknown quantity to me, but I've heard so many great things over the years that it might be worth looking into, at least. Bit of a cult classic.

Baldur's Gate 2 - Same as the above.

Infinifactory (and the other Zachtronics games) - Fantastic if you're interested in puzzle games. We have a thread about it somewhere. One of my biggest positive surprises of this generation.

Rollercoaster Tycoon - May sound a bit silly, but I do have wonderful memories of playing this with a friend 15 years ago.

System Shock 1 & 2 - Imersive sim / FPS / survival horror / RPG / whatever. Precursor to BioShock. 2 has a great villain.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream - Adventure game dealing with very heavy high-concept subject matter. Based on a novel and co-created by the author himself, afaIk.

Myst series - Love it or hate it. Puzzle-ish, I guess? Look into it.


Let us know if any of those end up catching your interest!

ThirdMan wrote: October 23rd, 2018, 9:52 pm Thankfully I don't follow social media.
A good way to live and remain sane.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

CANNON FODDER!!

EDIT: As in, a game to check out on GoG.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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ThirdMan wrote: October 24th, 2018, 8:46 pm Wow, thanks for taking the time!

Some of those I recognise, while others are new to me and sound fantastic. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream appears to have been way ahead of its time. I'm definitely up for it!
You're welcome! The list didn't take that long to compile, it's more or less my own to-play list should I ever decide to dive into PC gaming at some point.

Also, I had a feeling that IHNMAIMS might catch your attention considering your literary / cinematic tastes. Anyway, looking forward to your thoughts when you're done. Have fun! :)
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Simonsloth »

My GOG back catalogue is mostly made up of classic point and click adventure games from the golden age.

Top picks would be:

Beneath a steel sky (I think it’s freeware)

Tex Murphy series - bizarre FMV sci-fi-noir adventure with an array of A-Z list actors including James Earl Jones and Michael York. They also contain something called the universal hint system which basically tells you what tiny incidental thing you havent done to progress but at a cost of game score and can affect your actual ending. They are an acquired taste but if you like your games with a side of cheese then I would give them a whirl.

The Blackwell Series (or indeed any Wadjet Eye Games)

Gabriel Knight Series (mainly the first two) the second is also an FMV adventure.

Starship Titanic - written by Douglas Adams of Hitchikers Guide fame and with a lot of his handiwork. It’s such an intriguing game and laugh out loud funny.

I obviously make these recommendations with my rose tinted spectacles on but I have replayed all of them recently and attest they are as excellent as I remember them. Fantastic stories are still no less fantastic 10-20 years on.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

In the moments I manage to pull myself away from Valkyria Chronicles II (I always feel I can squeeze in multiple "just-one-more-battle"), I've been playing a little Akai Katana on ye olde 360.

As much as I love my treasured Progear No Arashi CPS2 board, and I do love it, Akai Katana does play and feel like a superior hori. Where Progear had a few production troubles (six-month development cycle, a small team learning new hardware), Akai is nothing but experience and confidence through and through.

All the love in the world doesn't make me good at it though... but I'm learning, and more importantly just enjoying it for what it is.

It's nice to break up the longer games with shorter games in between.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I wanted to play a short arcadey style game after months of lengthy triple A titles, and have been playing Assault Android Cactus on PS4. Really enjoying it. There's no way I'm chasing Ksub's scores, but having a lot of fun. The different androids are cool, too. Usually there is little point changing from the default character in games like this, but I'm finding Shade (I think it is? Laser and rockets, white suit) to be by far the most effective character to use. I died on a boss about ten times using Cactus, did it first time with Shade. What a great game. I think I'm on the final area now.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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ThirdMan wrote: October 26th, 2018, 8:04 am I am without any type of gaming platform for the first time in over 25 years.
What an unfortunate concurrence of factors. Sorry to hear that. What now? :(

Alex79uk wrote: October 26th, 2018, 8:24 am I'm finding Shade (I think it is? Laser and rockets, white suit) to be by far the most effective character to use.
Don't you mean Starch? If so, that's who I used as well! Great little game for sure. :)
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

ThirdMan wrote: October 26th, 2018, 8:04 am I am without any type of gaming platform for the first time in over 25 years. And on the very day that Red Dead Redemption 2 hits the shelves.
The humanity! :D

Possibly wise to give up on the Mac if it is struggling. I tend to go for laptops for my PC gaming, and I'm pretty sure Black Desert Online burnt the GPU on the last one to a crisp.

I am playing a little Sunless Sea, on the PS4, where it was on sale when ThirdMan mentioned it a few days ago. Enjoying it; it still is a little wooly for my tastes but I guess the idea is to try and relax and enjoy the world building. I have a load of objectives that I am nowhere near achieving; and sticking you with that last load of Sphinxstone is cruel!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

KSubzero1000 wrote: October 26th, 2018, 8:30 am
ThirdMan wrote: October 26th, 2018, 8:04 am I am without any type of gaming platform for the first time in over 25 years.
What an unfortunate concurrence of factors. Sorry to hear that. What now? :(

Alex79uk wrote: October 26th, 2018, 8:24 am I'm finding Shade (I think it is? Laser and rockets, white suit) to be by far the most effective character to use.
Don't you mean Starch? If so, that's who I used as well! Great little game for sure. :)
That's her, yes!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

Always pleased to see more people discover AAC, I love that game.
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