Whatcha Been Playing?

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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Truk_Kurt »

I recently signed up to Boomerang games and the first delivery I took was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I really enjoyed the previous two games and I'm enjoying this a lot too. The moment to moment gameplay is so much fun and I'm often astounded by the intricate designs of the tombs which have some superb puzzles and platforming in them, it's a real treat. I've often read online that some people consider this to be a step down from the other two games but I don't understand why as at worst it just seems more of the same. The story is really engaging me but I never played these games for the story, if it did have a story and characters up to the level of Uncharted that I think this game would be a classic as everything else about it is top quality. It looks absolutely astonishingly good on Xbox Series X too with the recent FPS boost patch.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

Interesting.

I know when it first came out there was a series of one hit kills in some water area with pihranas and it seemed completely unfair but maybe they patched it to help the player out
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Truk_Kurt »

That's still in there but I got past that section without much frustration, it's only a small section of the game which only lasts a couple of minutes.
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ReprobateGamer
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ReprobateGamer »

After a spate of TTRPG sessions being cancelled, I've been getting into Sea of Thieves.

Played this a bit while it was in beta/early access and while it seemed fine, it didn't really grab me at that point and I put it down right about the point it officially launched ...

... roll forward a few years and it's beginning to gel much more. The main difference I think is that I'm going in with a solid group of three other players, one who has played recently and knows the tricks, and another who played a lot for the first year and then, like me, has recently returned.

The graphics at times are jaw droppingly pretty - I'd love to see how they appear on a Series X - much more pretty in fact than the characters! But that's a deliberate choice and as this is largely 1st person, I'd rather the time was spent on the landscape.

I'd still like an option to remove the PvP element if I'm honest - though I know that Rare view that as part of the gameplay. And it sometimes seems as finding quests is irregular. If you don't understand the emissary set-up (and I don't), it seems as though finding an initial quest is hard. Then later, you have a bunch of quests picked up and can't clear your list before you need to switch the game off!

But these are minor irritations honestly. Just to take the last session we played - I was cannon shot to an island as we sailed by so that I could solve a riddle there. Meanwhile, another player was dropped at another island to investigate a shipwreck as the last two took the galleon to a third island to begin hunting skeletons. Using the mermaids, myself and the other exploring player then hid the found loot and teleported back to the ship to join the hunt. Moving the ship around the island, a pair brought skellies to the beach into range of the ships cannons as I provided overwatch from a island based cannon emplacement that I had been sent into neutralise. With that island cleared and headed back to retrieve the stashed loot, we clashed with a skeleton galleon that hit us with an anchor drop shot then managed to sink us. Someone got our rowboat free from the ship just in time and we loaded it up with as much salvaged loot as we could - including the caged pig! Me and him then rowed to the nearest island and waited for the other pair to bring a fresh galleon back to retrieve us ... which they managed! Though sadly not before the pig died of starvation :cry: The session ended with much grog being downed in a tavern at an outpost ...

Definitely one to try if you can get in with others - it's certainly playable with one and the smallest ship is certainly controllable solo. But's it's the crew vibe that sets this game off. I'm glad that my TTRPG games are back on this week - but a part of me would like for the crew to be on the high seas ...
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Caligulas Horse
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Caligulas Horse »

It doesn't seem like I need to be saving ammo as much as I am in Resi Village, but it's an ingrained habit I find hard to break. It's not causing me any trouble anyway, I mostly circle around zombies slashing at them with my knife, I imagine from third-person it would look like the pool cue bit in Shaun of The Dead.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Playing a small amount of Valorant, mostly to test out my new laptop's ability to run relatively modern games. The game's fine, it's a fun twist on Counterstrike with hero-based abilities like Overwatch, but it's not completely hooked me or anything.
More importantly it runs at a stable 50ish fps on normal settings which I'm more than happy with :D
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Did my first ever stream last night, trying out games from the Indie Bundle for Palestine.

There's some great stuff in there! Signs of the Sojourner is a chilled out road trip visual novel, with this very light deck building mechanic that's really more of a puzzle matching thing for conversations. The use of colour in this game is fantastic.

I also played Minit, a very retro looking top-down Zelda-like, where you die every 60 seconds but anything you find persists. It's quite fun running around this little black and white world trying to see where you can go and what you can do before the time's up. Also the music is raucous, really good.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by stvnorman »

Jon Cheetham wrote: June 10th, 2021, 2:28 am I also played Minit, a very retro looking top-down Zelda-like, where you die every 60 seconds but anything you find persists. It's quite fun running around this little black and white world trying to see where you can go and what you can do before the time's up. Also the music is raucous, really good.
Always enjoy seeing some love for Minit! I’ve played through it on Switch a few times since it came out and there’s still things I reckon I haven’t seen yet. Very clever game.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

stvnorman wrote: June 10th, 2021, 12:17 pm
Jon Cheetham wrote: June 10th, 2021, 2:28 am I also played Minit, a very retro looking top-down Zelda-like, where you die every 60 seconds but anything you find persists. It's quite fun running around this little black and white world trying to see where you can go and what you can do before the time's up. Also the music is raucous, really good.
Always enjoy seeing some love for Minit! I’ve played through it on Switch a few times since it came out and there’s still things I reckon I haven’t seen yet. Very clever game.
Really liked what I played, definitely going back to it!
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Miririn
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Miririn »

This time during my second playthrough of "Horizon Zero Dawn", I'm playing the "Frozen Wilds" DLC. The first time was my first ever PS game so it was taking enough to get me through the base game, let alone anything extra!

The DLC is really fun - I love the design of the setting and the machines. What I like best though is the little mechanical noises and vibrations from my Dualshock controller when I use the Banuk weapons. The music of HZD is just okay (personal preference but I hate that "Gladiator"-type sad moaning singing on soundtracks, so me and the HZD soundtrack were never going to be best mates) and Aloy's commentary at times is uh... trying. But all the environmental sounds (machine noises, weapon sounds, crunching footsteps on snow) are impeccable.

I kind of can't be arsed to pay that much attention to the DLC story, though (sorry! I am scum etc) so I'm finding it really pleasant to put on a podcast, breeze through any cinematics, and run around hunting beasties with my bow and arrow and scavenging for bluegleam for hours at a time.

I love how even if you're at a relatively high level, and have relatively powerful weapons, if you don't approach each fight as something unique that you need to adapt to (changing your strategy based on terrain and beast type), you will have a hard time. It forces the player to experiment and learn lots of different techniques. It's perfect for an Open World environment because no matter how strong I am, I can stumble into an encouter that *should* be easy, but then quickly find myself overwhelmed or on the back foot... while at the same time no encounter is impossible as long as I'm willing to be patient and think it through.

I'm so curious and happily excited to see what Guerilla will achieve with the upcoming sequel.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

Minit is indeed a good time.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

I've also been playing Ghost of Tsushima recently. I'm about ten hours into the campaign, and the open world is indeed magnificent. Both in terms of its sweeping vistas and majestic use of colour, and the incredible detail in the design. Right down to the ablution pavilions at some of the temples. There's no doubt of the diligence by this team to faithfully and beautifully portray this world and period.

The combat is also good, once you've got some ranged and stealth options opened up. The basic sword combat suffers by comparison to Sekiro, which it unfortunately invites by using almost the same spear attack mechanics and of course the focus on parrying. I much prefer playing this as an Assassin's Creed type game, silently de-fanging enemy bases without being seen. The game supports this really well by letting you slip into enemy yurts and under buildings to get inside or up onto the roof.

Unfortunately nothing about the story or characters has connected with me. Obviously the team are obsessed with Samurai movies, but they only seem to have been interested in recreating their aesthetics and tropes. The characters I've met are paper thin, they may as well have their motivation on a sticky note on their forehead. Here's the irate sensei, here's the grieving noble, and in a quite frustrating pattern only the samurai class and nobility even have names as far as I can tell. Everyone else is literally just "peasant", "monk", etc. Maybe the daimyō weren't that invested in the inner lives of their populations, but weren't the writers of this game interested in examining these themes of honour and status and considering how they impacted different segments of society?

The world looks amazing, but there's nobody in it I want to spend time with. The Witcher 3 shows how just a handful of brilliantly written supporting characters can make an entire open world feel alive, but this really leaves me wanting. You can have a pulpy action-packed samurai film like Blade of the Immortal that still finds space to explore Manji's relationship to both the honour and bloodshed that define him. Sekiro, again, had questions it wanted to ask about feudal loyalty and national identity in the face of unification. Some people have said this seems like it could have been made by a Japanese dev team, and I am of course also an outsider and foreigner saying this, but it seems quite evident to me that it wasn't. It feels like the work of samurai movie fans.

One thing that is an absolutely resounding success is Legends Mode. I've done ten hours in the open world but for the last couple of sessions I've just been playing this. It's an arcadey co-op focused add-on game where you have to beat these linear missions three short stages at a time for the story mode, then there's a wave-based survival mode where you're holding a beach or other location. The combat and stealth shines in short bursts and survival mode is exciting, but what seals the deal for me is the aesthetic. The campaign plays it very straight, no yōkai or pot nobles, but this is all bloodred skies with immense human hearts suspended against the night, possessions and demons, you even play as baleful ghosts of dead "legends" of Tsushima. Your enemies are now oni and demonic disciples, and each mission in story mode has a unique mechanical challenge. There's "tethered" twins of enemies you have to kill within seconds of each other or the first twin resurrects, or the Iyo Disciples who regenerate health for other enemies so you need to find a way to take them out first. It's extremely fun, it looks boss and makes the core movement and combat really shine. Beating the final wave on survival mode is really satisfying too. Clearly the team were able to flex their creative muscles here and for all I've had a pop at the characters in the main game the vibe and designs in Legends are just so on point. There's a lot of it as well, considering it was a free update it's an absolute treat. Can't wait to play more of it.

Edit: one more thing on the gameplay in the campaign though.

Tailing missions and instant fail stealth sections where if you get seen you go back to the start? Honestly. This came out last year!
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Truk_Kurt »

I'm hoping that Ghosts will be one of the games to come over to PC as I really like the sound of the stealth aspect in particular, going into enemy bases and silently taking enemies out. Would you see it is similar to the Predator sections of the Arkham games in that way as that was one of my favourite aspects of those games.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Truk_Kurt wrote: June 12th, 2021, 9:36 am I'm hoping that Ghosts will be one of the games to come over to PC as I really like the sound of the stealth aspect in particular, going into enemy bases and silently taking enemies out. Would you see it is similar to the Predator sections of the Arkham games in that way as that was one of my favourite aspects of those games.
I haven't played the Arkham games but the stealth mechanics in this, like the way it plays when you're free to infiltrate posts and bases and stuff, is excellent. Like you can get rumbled and you toss out a smoke bomb then chain assassinate a bunch of enemies while they're stunned, a bit like something from Mark of the Ninja. Incredibly satisfying. But in some of the quests the actual fun of the stealth is marred by the conditions for progress.

Like there was one earlier where you fail if a "peasant" is killed while you defend a forge (Jin doesn't care enough to learn these people's names but if one of them dies all is lost, apparently). In The Witcher, for example, you'd carry on and have to live with the fact you got someone killed. Then you might approach the next mission differently. It makes the game more interesting and gives your playstyle consequences. But nope, just a reset again until you satisfy the conditions of the quest stage. Very rigid and old school in that regard, and I think it sits ill with the big open play area and otherwise expressive stealth/ combat.

Half off recently though and definitely worth it, I will do my best to finish it despite my grumbles.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by duskvstweak »

I haven't finished Metal Gear Solid 4 but I wasn't feeling it for a bit, so I jumped onto Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning. It's been on my list for a while, but after it featured heavily in Press Reset by Jason Schreier, I figured now was as good as time as any. I'm liking the combat, trying to figure out what weapon I want to use. It's also not bad to look at, in a dated Fable/WoW sort of way.
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Truk_Kurt »

Jon Cheetham wrote: June 12th, 2021, 2:06 pm
Truk_Kurt wrote: June 12th, 2021, 9:36 am I'm hoping that Ghosts will be one of the games to come over to PC as I really like the sound of the stealth aspect in particular, going into enemy bases and silently taking enemies out. Would you see it is similar to the Predator sections of the Arkham games in that way as that was one of my favourite aspects of those games.
I haven't played the Arkham games but the stealth mechanics in this, like the way it plays when you're free to infiltrate posts and bases and stuff, is excellent. Like you can get rumbled and you toss out a smoke bomb then chain assassinate a bunch of enemies while they're stunned, a bit like something from Mark of the Ninja. Incredibly satisfying. But in some of the quests the actual fun of the stealth is marred by the conditions for progress.
Yeah, Mark of the Ninja is similar to the predator sections in Batman except they're 3D, so I imagine it's very similar in Ghosts. I would recommend the Batman games to you, even if you're not into Batman as I feel you can still enjoy them without that connection to the character. I knew little about Batman and the trilogy are still some of my favourite games of all time.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Truk_Kurt wrote: June 8th, 2021, 9:33 am I recently signed up to Boomerang games and the first delivery I took was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I really enjoyed the previous two games and I'm enjoying this a lot too. The moment to moment gameplay is so much fun and I'm often astounded by the intricate designs of the tombs which have some superb puzzles and platforming in them, it's a real treat. I've often read online that some people consider this to be a step down from the other two games but I don't understand why as at worst it just seems more of the same. The story is really engaging me but I never played these games for the story, if it did have a story and characters up to the level of Uncharted that I think this game would be a classic as everything else about it is top quality. It looks absolutely astonishingly good on Xbox Series X too with the recent FPS boost patch.
Personally I just found it a bit dull compared to the Uncharted games. Didn't care about the story or characters, which is a huge part of the Naughty Dog series for me. I never played the first two rebooted TR games, however, so it's a little unfair of me to say that considering I may well have built up an attachment to the characters prior to playing this third one, but that's how I felt after I'd finished it anyway. The difficultly settings were nice though, individual sliders for combat, puzzles and climbing.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by duskvstweak »

Alex79uk wrote: June 12th, 2021, 2:57 pm
Truk_Kurt wrote: June 8th, 2021, 9:33 am I recently signed up to Boomerang games and the first delivery I took was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I really enjoyed the previous two games and I'm enjoying this a lot too. The moment to moment gameplay is so much fun and I'm often astounded by the intricate designs of the tombs which have some superb puzzles and platforming in them, it's a real treat. I've often read online that some people consider this to be a step down from the other two games but I don't understand why as at worst it just seems more of the same. The story is really engaging me but I never played these games for the story, if it did have a story and characters up to the level of Uncharted that I think this game would be a classic as everything else about it is top quality. It looks absolutely astonishingly good on Xbox Series X too with the recent FPS boost patch.
Personally I just found it a bit dull compared to the Uncharted games. Didn't care about the story or characters, which is a huge part of the Naughty Dog series for me. I never played the first two rebooted TR games, however, so it's a little unfair of me to say that considering I may well have built up an attachment to the characters prior to playing this third one, but that's how I felt after I'd finished it anyway. The difficultly settings were nice though, individual sliders for combat, puzzles and climbing.
I like the rebooted Tomb Raider games, having played the first two. But, when I think about what I want from those games, I'd probably just go back to Legends. The new games are a whole different thing. I want to play Shadow, but I'm not sure my PC could handle it that well.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Truk_Kurt wrote: June 12th, 2021, 2:54 pm Yeah, Mark of the Ninja is similar to the predator sections in Batman except they're 3D, so I imagine it's very similar in Ghosts. I would recommend the Batman games to you, even if you're not into Batman as I feel you can still enjoy them without that connection to the character. I knew little about Batman and the trilogy are still some of my favourite games of all time.
Gadget-y stealth is great. I do have the trilogy from Epic giveaways, too!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

Quadrilogy :(
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