Whatcha Been Playing?

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
The Sonic Mole

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by The Sonic Mole »

I've mostly been playing M3U and Xenoblade Chronicles lately. I've had the latter on the go since release in 2011 and am determined to finish it before the baby arrives next month!
User avatar
Beck
Member
Posts: 653
Joined: September 4th, 2012, 3:50 pm

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Beck »

I just finished Assassin Creed Black Flag. I'm a bit underwhelmed with it. There's definitely a lot of fatigue with the series, even with the way they've twisted the world. I've got a lot of time for the assassins creed games but this has been the first I've found to be uninteresting. They are starting to feel like a guilty pleasure more than anything.

I'm starting to miss a static hero the introduction of a new protagonist every game puts me off. I hate starting new games because I find the methods of introduction to be so boring and repetitive. I really liked Ezio, maybe even miss him. It could be that Edward and Connor have been characters hard to warm too but I find the thought of a new lead character enough to prevent me playing the next AC.

The game did a lot of things right. The whole pirate thing was fun but the mechanics associated with it were limited. It looked excellent and the voice acting and music were brilliant as always. The story was just a scattered mess though and this present day story is completely confusing and uninteresting. They really need to nip it in the bud. As a fan of the games I'm really struggling to keep up and even remember wtf is going on.
User avatar
Electric Crocosaurus
Member
Posts: 333
Joined: May 17th, 2013, 1:41 pm
Location: West Midlands, UK
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Electric Crocosaurus »

Beck wrote:I just finished Assassin Creed Black Flag. I'm a bit underwhelmed with it. There's definitely a lot of fatigue with the series, even with the way they've twisted the world.
Agree with almost everything you've said. I've been playing Black Flag on and off for about 6 months; it's fun in short bursts, but it's so repetitive that I quickly get bored and put it away again. They've really struggled with the story since the 2nd game, and they've had at least 3 attempts to create a lead with the charisma of Ezio and failed each time (although I think I'm one of the few people who really liked Haytham at the start of ACIII).

The co-op play in Unity, and the graphical leap, is enough to make me interested in Unity, but I really hope that they've also put some time into telling a good story with a memorable protagonist.
User avatar
stvnorman
Member
Posts: 911
Joined: March 19th, 2013, 8:09 pm
Location: Keysoe, Bedfordshire, UK
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by stvnorman »

Exactly the same here. I've played it in hour bursts since I got my PS4 at Christmas. Might give it some welly and get shot of it as soon as the Destiny Beta is done... I don't normally do day one but this might be an exception. Taking up all my limited gaming time and I love it. Really started noticing the incredible graphics today too. Some of the lighting effects and shadows have blown me away today. And I had a real rush from the last bit of the level six story. Seriously intense piece of action.
Todinho

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Todinho »

The Pain there's only pain in RE6... im done with Leon's campaign and the most fun i've had was seeing a Ipman poster and going "oh that's neat" other than that it's just so bad it controls weird and there's always so much stuff on screen you can barely focus and then you're getting hit and is down to one square of health for no aparent reason and dont even get me started on how this is possibly the dumbest plot I've seen in anything ever seriouly there's no redeeming qualities here whatsoever even the graphics look like shit.I just hope Leon was the worst of it but something tells me that's not true.
User avatar
ratsoalbion
Admin
Posts: 7918
Joined: August 28th, 2012, 9:41 am
Location: Brighton, England
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

Todinho wrote:I just hope Leon was the worst of it but something tells me that's not true.
:cry:
arry_g

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by arry_g »

After getting the Platinum in Demon's Souls (my first plat even though I've owned the console since a couple of years after release).

I am now replaying Dark Souls, attempting to get the platinum in that one also. I've started a new character so I imagine it'll be about three playthroughs to get complete the Trophy list, meaning my next three games on the completed thread will probably be this game unless I give up.

I'm a STR, Melee character this time with a little bit of Pyro for crowd control. As result I feel I'm dying more that I did before but that's OK - I feel being close and personal is really getting me in tune with the game's mechanics. That said, I know that this isn't the general consensus but having played Demon's through to completion three times now and Dark one and a half I personally see Demon's as the better game. Don't get me wrong though, both are great. I hope when I get to Dark Souls 2 after all this that the character movement is more akin to Demon's than Dark.
User avatar
DomsBeard
Member
Posts: 3689
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 5:03 pm
Location: Doms Chin

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

Leon's campaign is probably the best to be fair :( it's still sat looking at me with Ada's campaign to go.
User avatar
Beck
Member
Posts: 653
Joined: September 4th, 2012, 3:50 pm

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Beck »

I finished Wolfenstein New Order today, it's a good old school shooter that I really enjoyed. I'm perplexed about all the average reviews it got though, for me it was what the genre has been missing. There was a tad too much gore for my liking, the bit with your comrade was far too much in my opinion.
User avatar
ratsoalbion
Admin
Posts: 7918
Joined: August 28th, 2012, 9:41 am
Location: Brighton, England
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

According to Metacritic it received a whopping 59 positive reviews and only thirteen that were 'mixed'. Of those just 5 were 6/10 or 60% - the lowest it received.

Its average score is around 80% which makes it excellent by any standards. Had I reviewed it professionally I would likely have given it 4 stars or equivalent.
User avatar
Scrustle
Member
Posts: 2426
Joined: November 18th, 2012, 6:02 pm

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

So I played the Destiny beta today, since they opened it up to everyone. I've never actually been interested in the game so far. Looking at it, I couldn't see anything about it that made it seem like it was worth experiencing. But since the beta was free, I thought I would try it out and see what all the fuss is about.

I was actually surprised how impressive it was from first impressions. Seeing footage of it before, to me it looked like it would be just another boring shooter using all the standard mechanics that really put me off the genre. Slow movement speed, unwieldy sprinting, reliance on iron sights with obtrusive gun models, etc. While Destiny does do some of those things, overall I found that they weren't really a problem here. Although I would like the movement speed to be a bit faster, it wasn't bad. And iron sights didn't seem necessary unless you are at long distances, and when you did use them, you could actually see what you're looking at, and you had a reasonably level of mobility in that mode too. Gunplay also feels really good, with some quite nice sound design.

There were quite a few things that I wasn't so keen on, which I think will be dealbreakers for me. Even from the little of the campaign you get to do in the beta, I'm already seeing it being extremely formulaic and repetitive. Missions are basically you dropping down in the large open area, fighting your way through a building, and then ending with fighting waves of enemies at a certain point. Rinse and repeat, over and over, in the same environment. That's what every mission in the beta was for the most part.

And then PvP was just miserable, and exactly why I don't play online shooters. You're ridiculously fragile, meaning that encounters just come down to who has the drop on who. None last for more than two seconds, and you never have a chance to defend yourself. I utterly despise that kind of gameplay. There isn't much in game design that infuriates me more.
User avatar
Beck
Member
Posts: 653
Joined: September 4th, 2012, 3:50 pm

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Beck »

ratsoalbion wrote:According to Metacritic it received a whopping 59 positive reviews and only thirteen that were 'mixed'. Of those just 5 were 6/10 or 60% - the lowest it received.

Its average score is around 80% which makes it excellent by any standards. Had I reviewed it professionally I would likely have given it 4 stars or equivalent.
You're right and I have no idea why I was under the impression it reviewed poorly. I'll blame it on a lack caffeine ;)
User avatar
ratsoalbion
Admin
Posts: 7918
Joined: August 28th, 2012, 9:41 am
Location: Brighton, England
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ratsoalbion »

It does interest me how the common perception of games with even just a handful of sub 75% scores is that they've been reviewed averagely or even poorly. I suspect it comes at least in part from the days when certain magazines wouldn't award anything lower than about 70% for fear of losing advertising revenue, and because of that nefarious practice people started to think 7/10 meant average to poor.
:)

Plus of course, that's not to say that those 6/10 type reviews of Wolfenstein: NO (or anything else) don't accurately reflect those particular reviewers' feelings on their time with the game.
User avatar
Beck
Member
Posts: 653
Joined: September 4th, 2012, 3:50 pm

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Beck »

I was under the impression that the reviews were on average 6. I've no idea why I thought this ha ha.

Yeah it's a tough one to gauge reviews. There have been games I have enjoyed that reviewed poorly and vice versa. I don't envy reviewers at all. It must be difficult to give a score when you know many will ignore the validation of the score. I'm guilty of skimming through a review to get to the score, in fact I'd say I check the score before reading a review. It's like pudding before the main [emoji3]
Todinho

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Todinho »

Finnished Chris Campaign and to my surprise I didnt find it as bad as Leon's,I wouldnt say I had fun playing it but I wasnt in constant pain either so that's a plus I guess,I think I found this one less miserable because the game seems built for this type of combat anyway so the gameplay gets a little more bearable,it also helps I was skipping 80% of all combat and had better perks(because this belongs in a single player Resident Evil game right),this didnt stop the game from having great sections such as hold X to crawl that made me die over and over again and made me wanna throw the controller at a wall but hey at least it didnt have a underwater section that controls like shit.

This campaign though felt somehow even more alien than Leon's did,his was basically a Michael Bay movie and now Chris feels like he's in Call of Duty,for all the flaws of RE5 at least it still retained some of the feeling of a Resident Evil game but here it's all gone and that's very upsetting to me for some reason Im not even mad it's just sad I guess,my dad was watching me play some of it today and he had no idea that this was RE6 until I told him and I used to watch him play the RE games all the time(which he played all except this one),so yeah it's kinda of jarring how much this series has changed to the point people cant even recognize it anymore.

PS:I only noticed this now but what the hell have they done to Ada Wong's face!? First she looks like she's 50(which could be true I guess since I never knew her age in past games)and second she doesnt look asian at all I really dont know what were they thinking here.
User avatar
James
Moderator
Posts: 1763
Joined: August 28th, 2012, 5:42 am
Location: Worcestershire, UK
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by James »

In between starting up System Shock 2 and the Destiny beta, I've been playing Thief. Or trying to play Thief. Or suffering through Thief. Or... I don't really like it. At all.

I wasn't overly enamoured with Dishonored [sic]. Despite obvious quality in the world-building, I felt Dishonored [sic] lacked in the story and mechanical aspects. At least part of my frustration was that first-person stealth and I have a troubled past; I find the lack of peripheral vision and physical context a barrier in the majority of first-person stealth games. Whatever I felt about Dishonored [sic], Thief makes it obvious just how excellent a game Arkane Studios made.

The main character is ugly, annoyingly patronising, uninteresting and has very little motivation for his actions. On this basis I should like Garrett for how much he reflects me alone, but I don't. The world is a pain to navigate, it's not obvious how far Garrett can jump or (in the open-world sections) where to go at all. There have been some interesting side missions, but it seems that the player has to activate many of these by visiting NPCs in the aforementioned confusingly laid out open-world.

The economy for upgrades is tied to how much money the player collects during missions, which means the upgrades cannot be essential and, in fact, verge on the inconsequential. If employing a 'collect-everything' attitude (in order to maximise the upgrades and equipment that can be purchased) it is far easier to knock everyone out, which renders careful planning and exploring to discover stealthy routes mostly moot.

All in all, I had high hopes that Thief would appeal to the stealth nut in me. After all, Eidos Montreal made Deus Ex: Human Revolution which, for all its faults, was a game I adored. Alas, Thief and I have had a much rockier rendezvous. :cry:
User avatar
DomsBeard
Member
Posts: 3689
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 5:03 pm
Location: Doms Chin

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

Finally got round to starting Metro Last Light.

Very good so far and glad I made the choice in 2033 that Last Light is based on otherwise I would've found playing this a bit weird.

Combat is far improved if a little too easy when fighting humans and I've only needed to use proper bullets once. I'd say the story is a lot more basic than 2033 but yeah good.
User avatar
stvnorman
Member
Posts: 911
Joined: March 19th, 2013, 8:09 pm
Location: Keysoe, Bedfordshire, UK
Contact:

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by stvnorman »

Gave Crimsonland a go on PS4 today. It's a recent port of the old PC game, and is a free download, hidden inside the full price game preview screen. I think you get a bit of the quest before you pay, and survival mode, which is where the real fun lies. It's as simple as hell. Green screen, tiny character and hundreds of tiny enemies that turn the ground red when they die. The screen quickly fills up with them, and the skill is in skirting around them all, and knowing which random power up or weapon or perk works best for prolonging your life. Analog sticks and R2 are the only controls. Zero polish, but really fun and you're getting four player local co op for nothing. I've no desire to spend whatever it costs to get the rest of the other modes, but really recommend finding it in the depths of the PSN store and having a download.
User avatar
DomsBeard
Member
Posts: 3689
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 5:03 pm
Location: Doms Chin

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

Ultra Street Fighter IV

Done with it for now I've reached the point where it pisses me off too much so I'm going to trade in my copy seen as I've got it to download for free when I need it again.

Also tried to get into Battlefield 4 again but I think that ship has sailed, I think I just prefer Titanfall far too much and I've not even picked up any of that dlc yet.

Metro Last Light is getting boring now sadly, got to a section where it's just throwing those new hard monsters at me constantly and it's tedious running around waiting for my gun to slowly reload. In 2033 the story kept me going but in this its been basically the same mission since the start but everything goes wrong/someone gets in the way and you have to take a detour.
User avatar
RoboticMonk3y
Member
Posts: 844
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 3:25 pm
Location: Bristol

Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by RoboticMonk3y »

Rogue legacy on the vita.
Lovely!
Post Reply