Whatcha Been Playing?

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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

Despite the fact I don't like them, I got the Bioshock Collection on Switch the other day. Been playing that.
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Truk_Kurt »

Woah there Alex, even the first Bioshock you don't like?! :P
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Jobobonobo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jobobonobo »

I have now started my final game that I will be playing along with for the podcast: Marvel Spiderman Miles Morales. Mostly seems to be more of the same but since I really enjoyed what came before, I am pretty okay with that. It felt good to be out swinging through New York again and combat is still incredibly smooth and fun. The Venom punch is a nice little addition to combat and is useful to bust out when you are up against powerful enemies. Also while some thought the sidequests were really basic open world fare (and to be fair, they are), there is something really moreish about them as you has a little list of stuff to do and it is nice to just get stuff done while you are traversing the streets. I think it is due to how fun moving around and fighting is that finding any excuse to do more of it, I will gladly accept. Using the radar to find the underground caches can be a bit fiddly and annoying but other than that, been enjoying this one a lot.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Truk_Kurt wrote: September 30th, 2022, 9:12 am Woah there Alex, even the first Bioshock you don't like?! :P
No, I think it really drags and is about 4 hours too long at least. It had a good first and last third I think, but that middle section was just dull. I didn't like the third one either, although I did enjoy the second one. I thought I'd give them another go though.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Honestly, I think I'm getting stupider the older I get. I am finding games really difficult to follow lately. First I gave up on Deathloop because I couldn't make head nor tail of what was going on or how the systems in the game worked, and now, about 2 hours in to Cyberpunk 2077 it's the same thing. It throws so much stuff at you, I've not got a clue how all this hacking works, and I did the tutorial. There are loads of things that seem totally pointless, like when you have to match the codes up, that doesn't seem to actually do anything, then in another side mission someone gave me a hack and told me to use it on a camera to find an access point, which I did, and jacked in to the access point but I couldn't tell you what the point of it was or what it did for a million pounds.

Now I think about it, I'm finding I have to look up the plots of films halfway through on Wikipedia as well because I've lost what's going on. Difficult to know if things are getting more complicated or I'm just getting thicker...
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Alex79 wrote: October 2nd, 2022, 11:36 pm Honestly, I think I'm getting stupider the older I get.
Hey, me too!
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Alex79 wrote: October 2nd, 2022, 11:36 pm Honestly, I think I'm getting stupider the older I get. I am finding games really difficult to follow lately. First I gave up on Deathloop because I couldn't make head nor tail of what was going on or how the systems in the game worked, and now, about 2 hours in to Cyberpunk 2077 it's the same thing. It throws so much stuff at you, I've not got a clue how all this hacking works, and I did the tutorial. There are loads of things that seem totally pointless, like when you have to match the codes up, that doesn't seem to actually do anything, then in another side mission someone gave me a hack and told me to use it on a camera to find an access point, which I did, and jacked in to the access point but I couldn't tell you what the point of it was or what it did for a million pounds.

Now I think about it, I'm finding I have to look up the plots of films halfway through on Wikipedia as well because I've lost what's going on. Difficult to know if things are getting more complicated or I'm just getting thicker...
I have found this my whole life. Especially when it comes to film plots. I think that's why I have never got really passionate about any major franchises like Star Wars because I find it difficult to keep track of everything which is happening so any plot holes between films and in films go over my head.

With regards to games, I struggle to keep track of games with extensive gameplay mechanics to keep track of. The Witcher 3 is a great example for me here, the combat has so many elements to it with all the different potions you can apply, then other things to apply to your Geralt and weapons, armour. I just gave up in the end.
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FrittteShopClerk
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by FrittteShopClerk »

Glad to read some of the Deathloop chat here resonating with my thoughts also. My son bought me it for Christmas last year because I'd managed to get a PS5 in November, loved the Dishonored series and figured this would be a new gen version of that. The opening few levels just left me cold. As Corvo and Emily in Dishonored I'd be scaling rooftops and working out the layout of a level before diving in. In Deathloop I just seem to be funnelled through street level whilst facing enemies meaning it automatically turns into a shoot out. Maybe I'm just rubbish at it, maybe it just doesn't cater for my play style but it's gone on the 'might come back to' pile.

Also regarding Cyberpunk. I got the PS5 upgrade so played about 15 hours or so but it too is getting to be a bit of a grind. I think my main problem is the fact that it insists on giving you this constant din of phonecalls, bleeps, sirens and Johnny bloody Silverhand. Considering my preference of Red Dead to GTA I think I like my open world games when they just leave you alone for a bit.
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MattL
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Alex79 wrote: October 2nd, 2022, 11:36 pm Honestly, I think I'm getting stupider the older I get. I am finding games really difficult to follow lately. First I gave up on Deathloop because I couldn't make head nor tail of what was going on or how the systems in the game worked, and now, about 2 hours in to Cyberpunk 2077 it's the same thing. It throws so much stuff at you, I've not got a clue how all this hacking works, and I did the tutorial. There are loads of things that seem totally pointless, like when you have to match the codes up, that doesn't seem to actually do anything, then in another side mission someone gave me a hack and told me to use it on a camera to find an access point, which I did, and jacked in to the access point but I couldn't tell you what the point of it was or what it did for a million pounds.

Now I think about it, I'm finding I have to look up the plots of films halfway through on Wikipedia as well because I've lost what's going on. Difficult to know if things are getting more complicated or I'm just getting thicker...
This was exactly my experience with Doom Eternal and why I was so horribly disappointed in it. Subsystem micromanagement, power cooldowns, and "hit the enemy's weakpoint" gameplay was not what I wanted from a Doom game.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I've gone back to a game I know and love - Dark Souls.
I've only ever finished it all the way through once before, on PS3, over ten years ago I think. Picked it up for Switch and the first thing that struck me is how slow it is compared to the later Fromsoft games, but it's nice to be back in Lordran.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Interesting to see these takes on Deathloop. For the longest time I thought I was in a real minority over the game. As somebody dedicated to the Dishonored series, and I mean besotted with it, I found Deathloop a bit of a letdown. The feel of the combat and the guns - all amazing, and the powers are great as usual even if there aren’t as many of them. Colt and Julianna are genuinely excellent characters.

But the repetitious enemies and missions, having to cycle through a whole day again if you die, weird choices like respawning enemies during the party, and the single solution quest marker based gameplay are all marks against it. The characterisation and and voiceover for the Visionaries also sets my teeth on edge. It’s like if a Far Cry game only cast influencers and streamers as voice actors. Really obnoxious stuff and I had little interest in the assassination marks as a result, unlike the ones in Dishonored which are so memorable and so individually reprehensible but without actually being aggravating.

Far from being more “expansive” than previous games, I think it’s actually the most linear thing they’ve done. Dishonored and Prey feel like possibility spaces, sandboxes where there’s so much potential interaction between abilities, equipment, physics and imagination that the possibilities for solving encounters or obstacles are often practically endless. Deathloop levels are collections of combat arenas, with even enemy AI working synchronously as they alert to you in groups. You bash through them again and again following objective markers and that’s the game.

It’s a lot of fun anyway, but I hope it’s really a first draft for a more fully formed version of this “rogue lite 0451” concept in the future.
Alex79 wrote: October 4th, 2022, 4:37 pm I've gone back to a game I know and love - Dark Souls.
I've only ever finished it all the way through once before, on PS3, over ten years ago I think. Picked it up for Switch and the first thing that struck me is how slow it is compared to the later Fromsoft games, but it's nice to be back in Lordran.
Now there’s a game that’s always good to go back to. I replayed it again after Elden Ring recently. I love the slow pace and methodical exploration.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Deathloop will certainly make for an interesting show one day! I think of all the views I've read on here, I'd say the forum seems to be leaning more towards a negative one, but the people who enjoyed it really did seem to enjoy it, so it must be doing something right to get such good reviews. I'm not sure it'll stand the test of time though, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a Bioshock Infinite style backlash in another year or so.

Been playing some more Hades today. I can consistently get to the third area, Elysium, now, using all of the weapons. Only managed to get to the boss duo in that area twice so far though and not beaten them yet. I came so close on my last run. Had a wicked build, really high level lightning cast which bounced between enemies (and killed each Hydra head on the area before in about three shots!) and high level upgrades for the gun and it's bomb special meant everything I was shooting was shocked still and I could fire three rockets at once for the special. Closest I've come to beating the Minotaur and his pal, but not quite...
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by MattL »

Alex79 wrote: October 6th, 2022, 1:57 pm Deathloop will certainly make for an interesting show one day! I think of all the views I've read on here, I'd say the forum seems to be leaning more towards a negative one, but the people who enjoyed it really did seem to enjoy it, so it must be doing something right to get such good reviews. I'm not sure it'll stand the test of time though, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a Bioshock Infinite style backlash in another year or so.
Bioshock Infinite is an excellent comparison. I think it and Deathloop scored so well with mainstream games journalists because, when compared to prior Bioshock games and prior Arkane games, there was a bigger focus on the story and voice-acted characters and the gameplay was significantly more linear. To fans of the immersive sim genre (which I think is a decent descriptor of both BI and DL), this was the exact opposite of what we were expecting or wanting, leading to the harsher user reviews.
Alex79 wrote: October 6th, 2022, 1:57 pm Been playing some more Hades today. I can consistently get to the third area, Elysium, now, using all of the weapons. Only managed to get to the boss duo in that area twice so far though and not beaten them yet. I came so close on my last run. Had a wicked build, really high level lightning cast which bounced between enemies (and killed each Hydra head on the area before in about three shots!) and high level upgrades for the gun and it's bomb special meant everything I was shooting was shocked still and I could fire three rockets at once for the special. Closest I've come to beating the Minotaur and his pal, but not quite...
I'm back at Hades as well. I had my absolute best run, with two Duo Boons (Zeus/Poseidon and either Poseidon/Demeter or Poseidon/Athena) and two Legendary Boons (one Zeus and one Poseidon), and I was rocking and rolling, until Hades murdered me. I was so frustrated. I said to myself, "In about 80 runs between my first Hell Mode game and my current regular mode game, I have never had that kind of a loadout and I doubt I ever will again." After that, I gave in and turned on God Mode for the 20% damage reduction and I immediately beat Hades the very next run, with a significantly worse loadout. :roll:
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Jon Cheetham wrote: October 6th, 2022, 1:15 pm The characterisation and and voiceover for the Visionaries also sets my teeth on edge. It’s like if a Far Cry game only cast influencers and streamers as voice actors. Really obnoxious stuff and I had little interest in the assassination marks as a result, unlike the ones in Dishonored which are so memorable and so individually reprehensible but without actually being aggravating.
Yeah definitely. There's no Vaas or Lady Boyle or Jindosh. They're all just kind of annoying, but not even so annoying that you relish taking them out. It's a problem because the story is based on do you or do you not stay in the loop, and for me it was never a question. I was so bored of that place.
MattL wrote: October 6th, 2022, 2:24 pm Bioshock Infinite is an excellent comparison. I think it and Deathloop scored so well with mainstream games journalists because, when compared to prior Bioshock games and prior Arkane games, there was a bigger focus on the story and voice-acted characters and the gameplay was significantly more linear. To fans of the immersive sim genre (which I think is a decent descriptor of both BI and DL), this was the exact opposite of what we were expecting or wanting, leading to the harsher user reviews.
That's a good comparison. There was a good article in Edge recently about Infinite, looking at its flaws and strengths from a present day perspective. It's interesting because Infinite is a game that sparks a lot of passion, love and hate, and understandably. Deathloop is interesting to discuss, but it's not one that I see spark a lot of heated debate outside of 'I thought it was great', 'no it's overrated'. Besides Colt and Julianna, it's such a flat game. I feel like I'm giving this game a kicking, but I think it's interesting to discuss because it's in that middle ground.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by shadowless_kick »

fired up Sayonara Wild Hearts after having it on my radar since its release. I honestly don't remember the last time a game made me smile like this. the dodging can be a bit loosey-goosey for my tastes at times, but the core gameplay combined with the amazing audio/visual aesthetic create a package that is so refreshingly fun and undeniably infectious. I'm constantly being tickled by little changes and tweaks the game introduces as it moves on, and I'm always anticipating what's coming next.

seriously, if you're in a foul mood, give this a try and I can almost guarantee it'll brighten your day. I don't know how many games I can say that about.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I second this, Sayonara Wild Hearts is lovely. Perfect one sitting game.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by FrittteShopClerk »

Bioshock Infinite was one of those games I got to the end of purely because I figured I'd spent money on the thing so had to. I really enjoyed the first two but all Infinite seemed to want to do is just throw more and more enemies at you rather than let everything breathe for a while. It's a game that is far less clever than it obviously thinks it is.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I've enjoyed replaying the Monkey Island games on my Android tablet, so decided to go through some of the other Lucas adventures on there. Playing Full Throttle at the moment. Despite owning the remaster from a few years back, I'm playing the original via SCUMMVM. I've played the start of this game loads of times but don't remember ever getting very far. I've just fixed my bike up now. I think this is really a pretty bad game so far, as adventures go. The puzzles are quite illogical and there is very little direction on what you're actually supposed to be doing. Surprised this one is quite as revered as it seems to be.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I watched The Northman, which made me feel like trying Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which reminded me I never did the paid DLC packs for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The free quest pack, Lost Tales of Greece, was a highlight of the game, getting closer to the lofty heights of The Witcher 3 than anything else I’d seen in Odyssey and Origins.

I skipped over Legacy of the First Blade for now as the opening quests were very fetch questy, even by AC standards. And I am pretty familiar with the backlash to where it takes the character.

Finished The Fate of Atlantis Ep 1 - Elysium. Each of the three episodes in this expansion gives you a new small open world to explore, and Odyssey works really well contained like this. I always enjoyed staying in one island of Greece and focusing on those quests and getting the lay of the land, and this provides the same experience. You’re basically playing politics with different factions either working against or with Persephone, leading to a battle for control of Elysium. I feel like if CDPR did this they would have made more of these characters and made it feel like the choices were weightier, but as it was there were some good little family conundrums and divine power struggles to engage in.

The fort layouts and stealth are better than ever, and both the stealth and combat hold up imo. The negative is the very vertical topography, which is part of what makes the fort layouts so creative, but means you spend a lot of time climbing or looking for teleporters to get up and down these towers of rock.

I’ve just reached Ep 2 - Torment of Hades, which kicks off with a very fun boss fight against Cerberos. It’s a similiar size realm but flatter, which is good. My issue is the colour palette, it’s a dull greyish brown everywhere which isn’t very spectacular for Tartaros (see: Supergiant’s Hades). The devs were having to pump these out every two months and basically reskinning assets from the base game so maybe it isn’t fair to compare this to the likes of Doom 2016, but even if they were just going for a colour filter some bright reds and yellows would surely have been better than this.

I’ll probably make more of a beeline through this as a result - Odyssey is a game about beautiful settings so this isn’t really what I’m here for. However I do like the idea that everybody Kassandra has killed is down here by now and they’re pretty pissed with her. Already run into one very familiar face.

So yeah, 180hrs in this game after buying it at launch four years ago… I think it has accidentally become one of my favourites. It’s certainly a good digital stress ball. Also got a second hand copy of Valhalla delivering today to go onto for after these DLCs are done and dusted.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Kasuga-san »

Reading some of the past few comments on here about getting older, I don't have trouble following plots and stuff, but when a few of you mentioned getting lost in all the systems management on games I completely feel that. For me, I think it's not so much that I can't come to grips with systems, but more that I find some many systems to be needlessly complicated and annoying for no reason. I mostly can't be bothered with it... but then I pick up a modern JRPG and at least have to deal with these things to an extent. My bigger thing is the reduced reaction time making it hard to play some of my favorite older games.

I've gone back to Pathfinder Kingmaker again to try to finish my current campaign and man, does this game drag on with too much down time? Speaking of annoying systems in games, I really don't care for the kingdom management. I've been tempted to turn on the auto management, but I hear you can't get access to one of the endings if you do. The moment to moment gameplay outside of the kingdom stuff and the need to kill time is pretty good. So far a solid CRPG with balance issues and a few too many quirks to be fully recommended.
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