Whatcha Been Playing?

[Alex79]

Tried the Fuser demo on Switch last night and thought it was really cool. Not paying £60 for it though! Anyone played the full version? Wondering how much 'game' is there, other than it being a fun music toy.

Also, christ the cutscenes are bad. Genuinely cringe inducing. And the African stereotyped character right at the start wasn't great, either.

[duskvstweak]

Tried the Fuser demo on Switch last night and thought it was really cool. Not paying £60 for it though! Anyone played the full version? Wondering how much 'game' is there, other than it being a fun music toy.

Also, christ the cutscenes are bad. Genuinely cringe inducing. And the African stereotyped character right at the start wasn't great, either.

That's $60 plus any DLC tracks you'd want to add. I was looking forward to the game, I was a big fan of their Dropmix, but like that piece of hardware, it's way too pricey.

[Alex79]

I'm still playing Horace.

It's far, far too long. I've had my fill and only on chapter 12 of 22!

I'd like to finish it, but hoping it adds something new soon...

[Miririn]

"Dishonored 2" is still downloading, I didn't fancy an AC game or an open world game, and I had just played an art-y Indie title, so I wanted some big budget bombast. So somewhat predictably I'm doing yet another TLOU2 run*, my fifth full playthrough, but this time my first Grounded run. But... New Game+, because I am cowardly. Is Grounded+ sort of cheating? Because so far I think it's making things a lot easier (particularly having arrows and trip mines early on). There's more supplies than I thought there would be, and I've played TLOU2 enough times at this point to have a fairly good idea of where enemies are even without being able to use the "listen ability".

Not sure if I'll be able to finish it (just finished Seattle Day One). I'm not the best gamer, and even on lower difficulties I find the Ellie vs Abby theater fight later on a bit tricky. Also dreading facing the Rat King with limited ammo. So far, though, I'm finding it less challenging than "Uncharted 4" on Crushing mode (which I loved), and "TLOU1" on Grounded mode (which I never even finished because I was so crap at it - I'll probably have another go at it at some point). Normally I just play games on the normal/recommended difficulty but it's nice to challenge myself every once and a while.


* I realised that I know some of the safe codes off by heart at this point, which is depressing me. Please force me to get a life and/or play one of the many unplayed games on my to-play list! Although getting a life might be difficult during lockdown...

[Jon Cheetham]

Still playing Hitman 3, doing Silent Assassin runs and challenges, maxing out the Mastery for these missions. I got obsessed with the Dubai level. I like to go back and do everything there is to do in a location once I've beaten the campaign, but Dubai really comes into its own when you start exploring off the beaten track of the Mission Stories. It's quite compact and easy to get a mental map of, like Paris or the New York bank level, even more vertical than those however. And the new shortcuts system means you can set yourself up for some very quick routes through. Having got 20 Mastery already I still feel there's more to rinse from Dubai, I did a featured contract and am going to make a few of my own.

Also went back to Dartmoor and some of the Mission Stories that aren't

Spoiler: show

Knives Out

are also really brilliant.

Anyway the thing about Hitman is it's good.

Meanwhile Slay the Spire had its Android launch, so I can now play it on my telephone which is excellent. Thanks to Gwent (the version you play in the pub in the Witcher 3, as opposed to the stand-alone) I got into deck building games last year and have been looking forward to trying one of the most discussed ones.

"Dishonored 2" is still downloading

Such a build-up to one of the greatest video games I have ever played... will be interested to know what you think!

[Miririn]

"Dishonored 2" is still downloading

Such a build-up to one of the greatest video games I have ever played... will be interested to know what you think!

At the rate it's downloading, I anticipate being able to play it approximately eighty-five years from now.

[Magical_Isopod]

I'm in this state of limbo where I wanna play something but I'm working in Windsor all next week and my copy of Ys IX is still in the mail. What should I play?

Anyone got any recommendations for like a 10-15 hour (or less) game I can whip off before I travel? Here's my backlog.
https://www.grouvee.com/user/PyramidHea ... og/?num=50

[Truk_Kurt]

I'm in this state of limbo where I wanna play something but I'm working in Windsor all next week and my copy of Ys IX is still in the mail. What should I play?

Anyone got any recommendations for like a 10-15 hour (or less) game I can whip off before I travel? Here's my backlog.
https://www.grouvee.com/user/PyramidHea ... og/?num=50

I'd reccomend Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair as that can be done in around 10-12 hours. I found it to be the best 2D platformer I've played since Rayman Legends. Actually Celeste would be the last great 2D platformer I've played but I class that as a little different due to it's harder difficulty and short stages.

[ReprobateGamer]

I'm in this state of limbo where I wanna play something but I'm working in Windsor all next week and my copy of Ys IX is still in the mail. What should I play?

Anyone got any recommendations for like a 10-15 hour (or less) game I can whip off before I travel? Here's my backlog.
https://www.grouvee.com/user/PyramidHea ... og/?num=50

Cold Fear should be doable in that time - bit a of Resident Evil clone, with a nautical theme (more consistently applied than with RE: Revelations. Have to say I don't recall anything from the game being outstanding but equally I don't recall anything infuriating either

[Jobobonobo]

Being European, I never got to play the original Katamari Damacy so seeing that the remake of this first game, Katamari Damacy REROLL was available on PS4 made me want to check it out. Done 6 levels so far and the hardest one by far was to make a katamari of 1m in 10 mins, takes ages to get it big as you start from 5cm and everything runs into you making your katamari lose mass. Pretty stressful stuff but still managed to get it to 1m on the second try. Story is very daft and the King of All Cosmos is still very chatty and bizarre. Very addictive and nice simple fun but feels a bit samey. We Love Katamari had a great deal more variety so still gives it the edge for me but this is just based on first impressions. Top notch presentation and I look forward to trying out more of this, can see why this series became a cult classic.

[stvnorman]

I’ve really been enjoying The Simpsons Hit & Run on GameCube as I continue to purge my backlog on there. It’s old-GTA in a well written, authentic Simpsons skin, but I’m not sure about the lack of variety holding my attention to the end. Maybe just short bursts.

I’ve done a couple of chapters in recent PS+ freebie Vampyr. To a more detrimental degree than The Simpsons, I like the subject matter more than the game so far, and I’m not sure that’s enough here. It’s all a bit last-gen and stodgy and just not much fun.

And still plugging away at Cyber Shadow on Xbox. Getting a bit hard now!

I’ve given up hope of finding my copy of Speedball 2 on Atari ST, so have been on the lookout for it at a decent price for a while. Struck lucky on eBay last week and I’ve had such a good time getting back into that! So much depth, hasn’t aged a day, and unlike Vampyr, is just loads of fun!

Finally, played through ZX Spectrum 2020 Native American platformer White Jaguar. It’s absolutely stunning to look at, and while it isn’t that big, it doesn’t pull any punches, and your quest takes a lot of exploration and puzzling out in a metroidvania kind of way. The end alludes to more to come, and I really hope it does.

[ColinAlonso]

I haven't settled on anything lately. I played a couple of hours of Fell Seal: Arbiters Mark, Pokémon Crystal, Crash 4, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, a few more runs in Hades and just haven't stuck with one.

Well except for Slay the Spire, I'm now up to 70 hours (same amount as Hades!) and have reached ascension level 12 with the Ironclad and 4 with the Silent.

I'll probably go with Pokémon up to the podcast though.

[Jon Cheetham]

I've been playing Slay the Spire as well on my android phone. It's fun, haven't beaten it yet though.

It's very similiar to a free to play knock-off I played a lot of last year called Dungeon Takes, so I might have spoilered some of the mechanics for myself, haha.

[Miririn]

I've been playing "The Last of Us Part II" on Grounded+, which was going pretty well, but suddenly halfway through Abby's section the game seemed to really spike in difficulty. I had to study how people online did sections and try to adapt what I was doing. It makes me feel so bad at the game that I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not playing on Normal or Hard any more and it's not weird to be failing a lot (I'm pretty sure someone yelling "IT'S THE WOLF!!!!!!" or "WOLF IN OUR VILLAGE!!!!" will haunt my dreams tonight considering the amount of times I got spotted in the Seraphite village). To keep myself from hurling my controller out the window, I think I'm going to do what I did when "Uncharted 4" on Crushing got maddeningly difficult later in the game (from Avery's Mansion on) and just plug away at Grounded+ for thirty minutes or an hour a day while playing another game the rest of the time. Not sure if I'll be able to complete the game but I'll try my best. And after that (five whole playthroughs since August, including two this year) I think I'll finally be done with the game for a while (...unless I go back to pick up collectibles )

One thing that surprised me is how generous the game is with supplies in Grounded mode. I always heard there was practically nothing. Is it because I'm doing New Game+? Have always had a comfortable amount of ammo, and even after the Rat King encounter depleted my reserves I was able to stock up again really quickly. Stealth is much more difficult, though. Those Seraphites/Infected/WLF could hear you do a teeny fart from three miles away and immediately come swarming to your exact location with all of their friends.

"Dishonored 2" downloaded at last (it took eight days, haha) so I'll probably start playing that tomorrow or later this week.

[Flabyo]

Played a lot of Hades this weekend.

That’s a good game.

You probably all already know that, I’m just a little late to it.

[Scrustle]

Started a new run on Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen recently. I deliberated a bit over whether I wanted to carry my previous character through to NG+ or just start fresh for a while, but I ended up deciding on the latter. My old character was a big heavy Warrior, and while playing as that was fun, I think it resulted in me painting myself in to a corner with stat growth somewhat. Ended up overspecialising on certain stats for that class without even realising, and only discovering once I was almost right at the soft cap for stat increases, so I figured it was too late to change direction and try a different class by that point.

On this run I went back to the same kind of classes I played way back on the 360. Starting with a basic Fighter before moving on to Mystic Knight later on. They are still really fun to play as, but I also didn't want to just play the same thing I have before again, so I've started doing a bit of branching out. First trying out using the staff as the weapon for the Mystic Knight, which gives them a lot of the same abilities as the Mage, but I didn't like it. Very slow, doesn't really provide much feeling of impact. I know there's some wild spells later on if you keep going down that path, but I figured it still wasn't really my thing, and I think they're locked behind Sorcerer class anyway. So today I changed class completely to Strider. I considered starting off with this class actually, since I've never used the daggers or bow before in this game. So far I'm rather liking it. Very fast and snappy, with great acrobatic skills. The bow is so useful against flying enemies too. They're always a pain with melee weapons. Not sure how long I'll stay with this class, but I do expect to stick with it for a while. I guess I'm hoping to stay as a bit of a Jack of all trades in terms of stats, so I don't end up having any glaring weaknesses.

Something I'm not too fond of is how it seems really hard to get decent equipment though. This is something I've always had a problem with in this game, but I figured that was simply because I was using an overpowered DLC outfit that is given to you early on in on previous runs. So this time I decided to intentionally not use that, and instead go through the normal gear unlock path, but I'm still left with using stuff that you get really early on, without any reason to use new stuff. I feel like I'm missing something big, this doesn't seem right. Do I really have to wait until Bitterblack Isle to get decent stuff, having to rely on random spawns in chests to get anything good?

[duskvstweak]

I've been playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Loving it. Ori controls like a dream and that triple jump means I never had to touch the ground. It's great fun, minus the sad story moments that torture me throughout. And, nothing as aggravating as that flooding tree from the first game!

My wife got a Switch for her birthday, but I haven't got any games for myself, so I've been playing a LOT of Tetris 99. I can't crack anything higher than 5th place right now, it's a bit maddening! I've been playing Tetris since I was 5, what the heck!

[KissMammal]

Succumbed to another Game Pass subscription so I could play retro arcade platformer Cyber Shadow - a second one for a month is way cheaper than getting it on Switch! Anyway, it’s wonderful! Little bit Metroid and a lot Ninja Gaiden - punishing but fair, controls like a dream, the levels are really well designed, and they even got the checkpointing just right. It’s also the best looking and sounding NES game you could ever imagine, oozing this oppressive atmosphere behind all that polish.

I'm really in admiration at the difficulty curve of this game - it seems perfectly tailored to my personal level of skill and patience. It's a tough game, often bordering on frustrating, and I will often die on tricky sections dozens of times, but it never feels insurmountable, and the checkpointing is really fair in how you're rarely forced to redo egregiously difficult parts once you have cleared them, and it's very thoughtful how the game will sometimes drop you little breadcrumbs/shortcuts even if you fail to fully clear a 'hard' checkpoint.

Also digging how much mileage and versatility they get out of a control scheme that is essentially limited to dpad/stick and two buttons (jump and attack). You could pretty much play it on a NES controller.

[duskvstweak]

Thinking about grabbing Hades on the Switch. I assume it's not a bad place to play it? It would either be that or the PC but it seems like the Switch might be ideal for it?

[Magical_Isopod]

My copy of Ys IX has been lost in postal purgatory - it spent a full week in Brampton until I filled out a formal complaint form, at which point it magically started moving. That's despite paying extra for one-day shipping. I fully expected some degree of delay with the CoViD, but a full week to move a game 2 hours down the highway? So frustrating.

So as a result, I've been playing little bits and pieces of all sorts of different games, mostly on Switch - I've been dead tired from work, so being a potato with YouTube on in the background is ideal.

Streets of Rage 1 and 3 have been interesting. First one is kinda dull, but the music's good. Third one's much more fun to play, but the music is a little chaotic and lacking a cohesive direction. Both great games, but for my money I prefer 3. I've become interested in Genesis games again after diving into VCV Rack, an application to produce synthesized music without the thousands of dollars of kit. I found some videos that hook the Genesis sound chip to an oscilloscope - one lead on each of the 12 sound channels - and it's been really enlightening in uderstanding how these soundtrack were made. Generally, the more complex OSTs used between 9 and 12 channels for music -- and this is where emulation often falters. On the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection version of Streets of Rage 3, the music is drowned out and truncated by the sound effects, and now I know why - each channel of sound is 6 dual-channels, left and right. The Streets of Rage games use 9 channels for music and 3 channels for sound effects, but each of these 3 channels shares a dual-channel assignment with a channel used for music. My presumption is that most older emulation methods capture each dual-channel assignment as a single-channel - meaning sound effects and music are fighting each other to be heard, in some cases. It's actually really damn fascinating, and if anyone has more clarity on this topic, I'd love to discuss further.
Here's a visualization: https://youtu.be/-Jm11887pv4

Also tried out Space Harrier II... Pretty damn great game for a Genesis launch title. I've played arcade ports of Space Harrier (the original) before, but I never quite "got" it. However, I rather enjoy this one.

Tried a little Yoku's Island Express as well. I like it so far, it's hard to put down once I boot it up. But I also don't feel especially compelled to rush to play it either. It's obviously well-made, and who's have thought "pinball platformer" would work so well? But for all its cleverness, I am finding it a little frustrating to hit perfect angles necessary to advance areas sometimes. Such is the nature of pinball. But there's no score accumulated here for taking too long in one area - you're just trying again and again until the physics gods decide to favour you. And that does get pretty boring.

Tetris 99 is still the best version of Tetris IMHO. Still easy to pick up and play a couple rounds. I rented the heavily-lauded Tetris Effect a while back and... I didn't exactly get the feeling of synesthesia it supposedly provides. I found the music and visuals far too dull and abstract to capture my attention. Like I'm a huge, huge fan of pairing rhythm and visuals in creative ways, especially when they set a narrative stage - Einhander and Nier Automata being great examples. But for Tetris, I prefer the pressure of 99 to the self-prideful nonsense of Effect.

Been doing lots of game shopping too. Picked up The Lost World on PS1 after watching a TripleJump feature on dinosaur games for PS1. Always on the lookout for games where you play the dinosaur, so that was a must-have. Got Lego Dimensions on the WiiU as someone who really isn't fond of the Lego brand, but the pop culture mash-up provides an interesting motivation to play with RFID programming - something I'd bought a kit for a while back. Having an intent in mind (spoof RFID for expensive toys to life you can't buy anymore) is super exciting when it comes to my little science experiments. Picked up CrossCode on the Switch upon trying the XBGP version - it hit so many buttons in my "good" emotions that I had to buy it. Grabbed a dirt-cheap ($8CDN) copy of Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 after finding out it had Forgotten Worlds on it - something that's been on my Genesis wish list for a while. Bought a repro of Mutant League Hockey off AliExpress because I'm not paying $80 for the loose cart. Was inspired by a stream of Mutant Football League I caught in stead of the Superbowl.

But I need to take a break on games spending for a long while now.

Also rented Link's Awakening and Streets of Rage 4 to try whilst on business out of town for a week.