Whatcha Been Playing?

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

Post by Michiel K »

I'm currently getting absorbed in Super Mario Maker 2!
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SludgeWizard
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by SludgeWizard »

Picked up Days Gone on sale, despite being wary of its grim tone and pretty much being over zombies. The podcast episode tipped me over the edge and at $14 I figured why not.
So far I'm finding that it bounces between cool and frustrating (not sure I'd use the word "fun" yet). Survival and stealthing around aren't usually my favorite things to do in games, but I am a fan of the swarming crowds of enemies, even if seeing that swarm usually means I'll be dead in the next 15 seconds. I find them genuinely dangerous and scary, which I think is a hard thing to pull off.
I'm enjoying it more and more as it "clicks" and I start to see how the game wants me to play.
Not sure I'll finish it, but I'm so early in it's hard to say.

Definitely buying a Nintendo game next, though. Need some bright colors and smiles.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

Forgot about Project Warlocks weird/throwback system in which when you lose all your lives, you're told to start again from the beginning. (On any difficulty other than easy)

Whilst I appreciate the nostalgia of this mechanic I do wish what is essentially Iron Man mode could be toggles on or off.

I want the challenge of the game without being told to do it all again because I made silly mistakes.

I wouldn't even mind restarting just the chapter but the whole game? Nah mate.

I kicked it to easy and I'm enjoying it but as someone who plays doom on UV I am finding it a walk in the park
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Michiel K
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Michiel K »

^^^^
That sounds like it would be better off as a toggle, independent of the difficulty level, re: Project Warlock. I got it ages ago on GOG, but have only dabbled with it so far. I dug the late era, Natsume-style NES aesthetic transplanted to a 90s, pre-Quake FPS.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

SludgeWizard wrote: June 12th, 2020, 4:27 pm Picked up Days Gone on sale, despite being wary of its grim tone and pretty much being over zombies. The podcast episode tipped me over the edge and at $14 I figured why not.
So far I'm finding that it bounces between cool and frustrating (not sure I'd use the word "fun" yet). Survival and stealthing around aren't usually my favorite things to do in games, but I am a fan of the swarming crowds of enemies, even if seeing that swarm usually means I'll be dead in the next 15 seconds. I find them genuinely dangerous and scary, which I think is a hard thing to pull off.
I'm enjoying it more and more as it "clicks" and I start to see how the game wants me to play.
Not sure I'll finish it, but I'm so early in it's hard to say.
I'm loving it, probably 15-20 hours in now. The main thing they've nailed is the bike. Seeing as you spend so much time on it, it's good they got it so right. Drifting round sharp bends and using a burst of nitro over a broken bridge is so much fun, and there's a real decent weight to the bike too, I've found. Gun combat isn't perfect, but I've not really found any good condition weapons yet. Melee feels meaty though, you can almost feel that baseball bat with nails in it sticking in the heads of bad guys. The story seems OK so far, although Deke sways between loveable rogue and genuine arsehole a lot of the time. I find in cut scenes he doesn't come across too bad, but it's in the incidental dialogue he shows his true colours. Someone asked how Boozer was as I walked past them and he told them to shut the hell up and mind their own business!
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Suits
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I've been enjoying using the Wii-Mote to play games of late.

So, I've started Metroid Prime again, this time on the Wii via the Trilogy.

The confidence and pace that this control scheme gives is huge over the GameCube.

Anyway, I'm very much immersed.


Also, I was unable to find the answer, so took a gamble but......the Wii won't force 16:9 on a 4:3 CRT. The menus and oddly when you go into Morph Ball does the screen crop to 16:9 but playing the game in Samus' helmet is beautiful in 4:3.

Some games will force 16:9 you see, so on a CRT these appear cropped. RE4 for example.

So yeah, well happy with that as that was a concern, not being able to find the answer online, meant a bit of a risk picking up a Metroid Prime Trilogy but it paid off and some. Rad.
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

I’m playing Greedfall at the moment. It’s a little rough around the edges, but the setting and plot is pretty unusual. It plays like Dragon Age Inquisition, but has a ‘long leather coats and tricorn hats’ aesthetic that feels a little bit Bloodborne.

It’s doing something that I haven’t seen a game do to the same extent since Alpha Protocol, which is that even though the quests can be done in pretty much any order, most of them will change how they play out based on which ones you’ve already done and how they turned out.

I’m willing to forgive some slightly clunky combat and some frankly hilarious spelling mistakes in the subtitles because it’s so different from the norm.
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Kacey
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Kacey »

Gettin' sucked into the PS1 era right now. Gran Turismo, Road Rash and even a lil Wipeout.

Also, Sega. Lots of Sega. Virtual On, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, even picked up Hang On for the SMS in anticipation of my Analogue Mega Sg coming in tomorrow.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

I'm also playing a lot of PS1 stuff, on the RG350M. I'm finding that driving games suit the small screen pretty nicely. Ray Tracers, RR4, Wipeout 3, GT2, all great fun. Also enjoying a bit of Parappa, Tomb Raider and G-Darius. For some stuff, the screen is a bit small I'm finding but you can connect it to the telly via micro HDMI out, I've just not done it yet.
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DomsBeard
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by DomsBeard »

Picked up MK11 Aftermath on Stadia as a little something to fill the gap till The Last Of Us 2 is here.

Not started the story expansion yet as I've just been messing around with Robocop. Sadly he is quite static which of course makes total sense after all but it has been fun for all the intros, fatalities and friendships.

I seem to be unlucky on Animal Crossing, so far 70 hours in I've still not seen a tarantula or scorpion, every island I've been to has had the same trees and fruit as mine also. My wife has embraced it fully and we've been discussing projects going ahead.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

You won't see any tarantulas now, they're out of season. Not sure about scorpions though - I think they're still about but I've only seen a couple in 150 odd hours. Apparently you can force them to spawn on some random islands but I've never got it to work.
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stvnorman
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by stvnorman »

Scorpions just appear randomly so you might get a flurry of them on your island or another, or none at all. Whether you notice them when they appear is another matter. Clearing a random island of everything and picking all the flowers works but it can take ages for scorpions rather than normal bugs to appear. You are going to get the same old stuff visiting other islands most of the time - I think the interesting stuff has very low spawn rates so just need to keep at it.

Finished the Call of Duty WWII campaign on PS4. The first couple of hours were a thrill ride, then the novelty wore off and it turned into a bit of a slog for the rest, apart from the jeep and plane sections, which I thought were great fun!

That gave me enough space to install the other June PS+ freebie, Star Wars Battlefront 2. I’ve finished the campaign on my son’s Xbox, but never played any multiplayer so that’s where I’ve been. I’m not much into online shooters, but like its predecessor, this gets a pass so I can just enjoy the sights and sounds; and for as long as the novelly lasts, they’re incredible!

I got the itch-io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, and have mostly been enjoying looking through the 1000+ games rather than actually playing them! I accidentally started a browser-based choose-your-own-adventure called American Election though, then spent a bit over an hour playing through it. Very simple, nothing revolutionary, but well written and engaging. And is an easy way to feel you’ve got something out of this bewildering package! Also couldn’t resist Wampus, an actual NES game in a .nes file! It’s a very linear take on the original Zelda, nothing too taxing and is over in an hour and a half, but it’s a nice time.
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Angry_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

I just completed chapter 6 of Red Dead Redemption 2 and have moved onto the epilogue. As much as I enjoyed my time with the game, I'm not exactly enthused about playing the epilogue which I hear is pretty long. So I was wondering whether people thought it is still worth playing through or is it something that could just be watched on YouTube?
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Suits
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Angry_Kurt wrote: June 15th, 2020, 10:12 am So I was wondering whether people thought it is still worth playing through or is it something that could just be watched on YouTube?
I'm sure many will recommend playing on as it is held in incredible regard.

Personally, after 40 hours, I stopped playing and watched the rest of the story cut scenes YouTube, I thoroughly enjoyed the story that way without the burdening weight of sluggish controls and repetitive gameplay.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

Epilogue was possibly my favourite section.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

IT IS WORTH PLAYING!!!
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

Started playing DUSK, yet another FPS which harks back to the good old days.

Where as Ion Fury was Duke 3D and Project Warlock was Doom/Hexen, this DUSK really gives me Quake 1 vibes but definitely with a PS1 aesthetic.

It's a lot spookier than I imagined and so far I've gunned down lots of what appears to be Klansmen so i'm alright with that.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

I haven't been playing much of anything. Dunno if it's a depression or what. I feel like I wake up too late, and then by the time I'm done getting my tasks done for the day, it's night time and all I wanna do is lay down and be a potato.

I sold Mario + Rabbids because the charm of the game kinda wore off by the 4th world and I just wasn't feeling it.

I started Tictacs Ogre on the PSP, and I'm probably gonna sell that one too. I really like it, but my god is the difficulty ever out of control in this one. My "Yeah, I'm done" moment came when I had a mission where you after to protect an NPC, but the NPC is killed off within two turns, and you don't have enough time to actually get over to where she's at. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but that sort of thing is rage inducing.

I picked up Jeopardy on Switch and... Don't pick up Jeopardy on Switch. I have wanted a good trivia game since 1 vs. 100 on 360 and Buzz on PS3, but Jeopardy is just slow, boring, and bad. The questions are piss-easy, so every match boils down to being fastest on the buzzer. If you're playing against AI, you will always buzz first. If you're playing online, you will never buzz first. The games are long, and the presentation is so basic it hurts.

Strangely, I've been really enjoying this boardgame collection on Switch? But not the good one. I have this low-rent mobile port thing that was free on the eShop. And I really enjoy playing Minesweeper on it. Can't beat free.

I think I'll be hammering away at some of those itch.io games. There's only 18 games from the 1600+ (seriously) that I'm interested in, so I'm curious to just dive in.

I played a bit of Astral Chain too, and that's just a weird case of like... I really like it, but I just don't have the time and energy to focus on it right now. It's hard for me to sit down for an hour or more, unless it's something fast and quick like Apex or a short arcadey experience. I'm just way too restless with the virus, the protests, going back to school, job hunting... everything's fuckeroo'd.
rob25X
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by rob25X »

Need for Speed (2015)

I don't know how I feel about this one really. It's a mix of great and poor in my opinion. The game is great visually, I'm sure all would agree and the cutscenes with the live actors blending in with the game cars and garage is possibly the most impressive visual effect I've seen this generation.

There are 2 very bad aspects of this game, the first is the 'always online' thing and the second is the A.I.

The online requirement is not really necessary as most of the content is story/single player. The forced online means pausing is disabled and all the other problems that come with it. Playing online with others is nothing more than a pain anyway as most just want a head on collision or bomb about on the map not accepting challenges anyway when you do get close enough to them to invite them.

With the A.I, it's all old NFS issues. Rubberbanding, insane A.I speed boosting, wildly placed and often unavoidable traffic and worst of all luck still playing a big part in winning events.

Overall it's a good racing game though, there's a lot to like and a good amount to mess about with especially in the customization department which is truly excellent in this title.

3/5 for me.
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ReprobateGamer
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ReprobateGamer »

My recent run through Portal 2 reminded me of the You Monster dlc for the tower defence game Defense Grid. Though it took me a bit of a search to confirm that I had never actually got around to buying it (re-ends to wish list...) However it also reminded me that I was in the midst of a Defense Grid 2 run for 100 gold medals (and the 10000 alien kills at the same time) so I spent a happy few hours last night bouncing from level to level and adding a few more to he tally.

Xbox stats say that I'm in the low nineties but I'm aware from True Achievements that the 100 medals have to be on the same difficulty level so I'm actually in the low sixties.

Having been a couple of years since I last played this series I'm reminded how well Hidden Path construct this genre - I'd love for them to leave the VR world alone for a bit and come out with the next in this series
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