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Offline Particle Person

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #980 on: November 30, 2020, 05:46:38 PM »
now playing rimworld. my crew slings space drugs to neighboring space cities.

Also been playing a lot of this lately. Do you use any mods? The Vanilla Expanded series is excellent if you don't want to change the feel of the game, just, well, expand it
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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #981 on: November 30, 2020, 09:01:00 PM »
now playing rimworld. my crew slings space drugs to neighboring space cities.

Also been playing a lot of this lately. Do you use any mods? The Vanilla Expanded series is excellent if you don't want to change the feel of the game, just, well, expand it

i use the vanilla plants expanded mod, but i haven't tried the other expanded series mods. i also use prepare carefully, wall lights, home mover, and advanced synthetics manufacturing (for that sweet, sweet hyperweave).
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Offline Crudblud

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #982 on: December 24, 2020, 12:11:56 AM »
I have been playing Death Stranding. I'm usually not an "omg the graphics!!!" kind of guy but omg the graphics!!! I'm only a few hours in but it's been weird and hilarious so far, which is exactly what I expect from Kojima, although not necessarily in this way. Unfortunately I encountered some system-breaking crashes early on, but it seems like redownloading drivers and verifying the game files has fixed the underlying issues, whatever they are/were.

Big shout out to junker, the kindest man in human history, who made my playing this game possible!

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #983 on: January 13, 2021, 04:49:46 PM »
Just finished DOOM. Pretty good throwback to the arena shooters of yore. I'm not sure that what story there is needed to be there. You are the Doomguy, you must rip and tear, you don't need to know shit about fuck to do that. Still, I guess the story is appropriately B-movie in its shallowness. I don't really have many complaints. As repetitive as the action is it's very satisfying, though the glory kills do get old after a while, and the single healthbar final boss was a bit of a disappointment compared to the bosses with multiple distinct phases earlier in the game. Also I wasn't too fond of the industrial metal soundtrack, it sounded kind of tacky to me. All told, a solid FPS.

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Offline juner

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #984 on: January 13, 2021, 04:59:06 PM »
Also I wasn't too fond of the industrial metal soundtrack, it sounded kind of tacky to me.

Rushy in shambles...

I think I liked DOOM 2016 more than Eternal. But you should also play Eternal.

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Online Rushy

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #985 on: January 16, 2021, 04:24:32 AM »
Also I wasn't too fond of the industrial metal soundtrack, it sounded kind of tacky to me.

Illegal opinion. Report to the nearest education center.

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Offline Fortuna

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #986 on: January 17, 2021, 09:06:33 PM »
Playing Sea of Thieves of course. My friends and I spent almost 3 hours locked in battle to the death with a larger ship last night. We sunk them twice before they finally caught up with us as we ran aground on a little sandbar and they executed us with pistols from the deck of their ship. We'd have sunk them a third time probably, but we ran out of wood and cannonballs. 

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Offline JSS

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #987 on: February 05, 2021, 09:31:01 PM »
Dyson Sphere Program

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366540/Dyson_Sphere_Program/

It's Factorio in space, on tiny planets!  Adorable!  The graphics are just gorgeous.  Still in EA, but very playable.  Lots of fun.

Factorio+Satisfactory+No Mans Sky. 

I really can't say enough about the graphics, watching the sun rise over your buildings on a moon orbiting a gas giant whith your partially completed dyson sphere glittering in the sky is just stunning.

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Offline Clyde Frog

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #988 on: March 19, 2021, 10:59:37 PM »
Just finished the main story line in Immortals Fenyx Rising. It was pretty fun. Very much a blend of BotW and AC:Odyssey. If open world single-player RPGs are a thing you play for fun, it should be on your short list of games to consider playing.

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Offline honk

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #989 on: April 23, 2021, 11:46:21 PM »
Batman: Arkham VR

An hour-long tech demo you could just watch on YouTube for pretty much the same experience. It's kind of cool to do standard investigative Batman stuff with your own hands, and there's an impressive level of detail and interactable objects in each level, but most of the game is spent fumbling with your gadgets and listening to dialogue. The story sucks, too. It's a relentlessly grimdark, miserable prelude to Arkham Knight that doesn't cover any new ground and just feels like brooding for brooding's sake.
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Offline juner

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #990 on: April 24, 2021, 07:39:24 PM »
Fantasian

GotY 2021

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Offline honk

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #991 on: August 21, 2021, 04:37:39 AM »
Alan Wake

This is a very bad game, and one that almost perfectly exemplifies one of the worst trends I've noticed in story-driven games - completely divorcing the story from the gameplay. Look, if you want to make a game that's more about the story than the actual gameplay, that's fine. There's more than one way to make a good game, and just as great gameplay can be enough to overlook a weak story, a great story can also be enough to overlook weak gameplay. But you have to do it right, and by that I mean that the gameplay must tell the story. That doesn't mean that the gameplay necessarily has to be particularly unusual or profound, just that it's reflective of the story. It can be as simple as killing lots of enemies, provided that the story is reflective of you needing to kill lots of enemies, like if it's set in wartime and the main character is a soldier.

Alan Wake does not do that. The story of the game is at first the main character searching for his vanished wife in a mysterious small town, which later turns into something more complex when he realizes that an ancient cosmic power is making him write a book that's magically destined to come true. The gameplay, however, is mostly just you trekking from one end of a dark forest to another while fighting off zombie-like enemies the whole time. None of it advances the story in the slightest, because the story is not about traveling through the woods or fighting zombies. The story is a relationship drama and a metatextual rumination on the power of fiction, and 100% of this story is communicated through the cutscenes. If the way the hero traveled to each plot-critical location was by climbing into a spaceship and blowing up an alien armada before landing at his destination, the story would be unaffected. If he tunneled under the earth and fought an army of mole-men with mystical martial arts before emerging at his destination, the story would be unaffected. I don't think I've ever seen a ludonarrative disconnect this pronounced in any game before.

The above would be a fatal flaw in the game even if the story, taken as its own separate thing, was truly great. But it's not. There's an interesting central conceit to the story, but the execution is bungled by clunky prose, awkward, inhuman dialogue, and the characters all being either bland and forgettable or too obnoxious to take seriously. Alan Wake himself comes across as aloof and thoroughly unlikable, his design is of course that of another generic dark-haired white guy, and the game's efforts at demonstrating what a great writer he supposedly is by filling the game with samples of his florid, overblown prose and endless narration are just laughable. Seeing untalented writers try and write like how they think a talented writer would write reminds me of the morons at Bethesda trying to write dialogue options for supposedly intelligent or persuasive characters. The gameplay is similarly lacking. You point a flashlight at the enemies, all of which are very similar, and then shoot them with your guns, all of which are very basic video game weapons. You do this about a million times over the course of eight or so hours. Most levels take place in the same dark woods and look almost identical, and your objective is very rarely anything more interesting than "reach the next point on the map." To call it dull and repetitive would be an understatement.

To reiterate, this game blows chimp, and I have no idea why it got so much praise from reviewers, even after reading the reviews in question. Like, I don't believe that anyone who's played more than a handful of video games in their life could find this gameplay tense or frightening at all. Because it's not, and I would know. I'm scared shitless of horror games, and I didn't so much as raise an eyebrow out of fear at anything in Alan Wake. It's simply not a scary game. Likewise, I'm a little puzzled by how many reviewers praised the "episodic" nature of the game, meaning that the game would occasionally just flash the title screen and say that it was the end of episode whatever. Why is that so laudable? Seriously, how does splitting the game up into episodes actually make the game any better or more enjoyable in any kind of substantive way? I would argue that it doesn't, and to single it out as an especially praiseworthy detail rings a little false. I can't help but feel that something was a little fishy with this game's reception.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2022, 03:39:41 AM by honk »
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Offline rooster

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #992 on: September 01, 2021, 06:06:40 PM »
Psychonauts 2

I'm so happy the sequel is finally here. It's just as quirky, comical, and fun as the first although this one deals with some heavier issues but also very wholesome themes on healing. It can be a bit laggy, but that's 100% forgivable since it's such a wonderful game.

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Offline honk

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #993 on: September 02, 2021, 03:04:48 AM »
Twelve Minutes

A great premise very poorly executed. You play as a man trapped in a twelve-minute time loop in which a murderous cop barges into your apartment while you and your wife are trying to spend a quiet evening together, with tragic results. With every new time loop, you have a chance to learn something new about the situation - who this cop is, why he's doing this, how to stop him, what your wife knows about it, and hopefully, how to break the loop. The main problem for me - and make no mistake, this game has plenty of problems, but I don't feel the need to discuss them simply because this one by itself kills the whole experience for me - is that while this is a premise that cries out for player freedom and experimentation, the game refuses to oblige you. The number of interactable objects and environments in this setting is surprisingly quite low, and it soon becomes clear that there is only ever one way to achieve any given objective. There's only one way to incapacitate the cop. There's only one way to find out where an important item is hidden in the apartment. There's only one way to convince your wife you're in a time loop. Being forced to hunt for each arbitrary, highly-specific solution to each obstacle is no fun at all.

Also, the big twist ending of the game is a lazy cop-out and a thoroughly unnecessary attempt at "explaining" the existence of the time loop. It was all in the main character's head. None of the game's events actually happened, they were a manifestation of his guilty conscience. Interestingly enough, that's almost exactly the same stupid "explanation" that The Sexy Brutale had for its own time-loop premise, and it came across as really lame in that game too. Some time-loop games have pretty cool in-game explanations of their premises, but other games have no need of an explanation, and I wish that more writers would have the courage to just not bother trying to explain it all. Lots of weird things happen in video games that don't have in-game explanations.

Anyway, yeah, bad game, do not buy.

The Forgotten City

And here's a time-loop game that's actually quite good. You're trapped thousands of years in the past in an isolated Roman city where if anyone commits a crime, everyone in the city is turned to gold. Your only hope is to take advantage of how the day constantly repeats itself to find out what's going on, escape the city, and save its residents from their golden doom. To say much more about this game would be to ruin the mystery and overall sense of discovery. It's enough to say that this is a clever blend of dungeon-delving, political machinations, and thoughtful philosophy, all at a modest price. It's definitely worth your time and money.
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Offline juner

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #994 on: September 17, 2021, 02:17:43 AM »
Recently finished Bloodborne and Sekiro.

The angriest, most tedious fun I have had in a long time.

Playing Cuphead rn, although I am nearly 50% done after several hours.

Got Demon's Souls today, looking forward to more angry fun.

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Offline rooster

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #995 on: September 17, 2021, 02:01:28 PM »
Recently finished Bloodborne and Sekiro.

The angriest, most tedious fun I have had in a long time.

Playing Cuphead rn, although I am nearly 50% done after several hours.

Got Demon's Souls today, looking forward to more angry fun.
My blood pressure spiked just from reading this.

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Offline honk

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #996 on: September 21, 2021, 03:26:31 AM »
Deathloop

Arkane's latest game is pretty good. I just wish it had more than four levels. They're great levels, and just like in the Dishonored series, there are a ton of hidden paths over, under, around, and through the terrain and enemy outposts. They're a lot of fun to explore. But there's no getting around the fact that there are only four of them. That's not enough for a full-sized game. You can visit each level at different times of day, and they do change a bit, but only a little bit, like with more snow falling, different enemy placement, certain buildings being unlocked, and so on. The levels never stop being fundamentally the same old levels that you'll quickly grow very, very familiar with. I remember criticizing the latest Hitman games for having only six levels. Wasn't that cute.

There are actually a lot more problems with the game than just that. When you're not slipping past your targets' defenses and assassinating them, the missions usually have you revisiting each level many times to do something dull like discover a code or password. In fact, it's almost always to discover a code or password, which unlocks a door or safe where you find something that indicates you need another code or password. It's so tedious and repetitive. I respect Arkane's obvious desire to not just rehash Dishonored and do something new, but at the same time, it's the holdovers from Dishonored - exploring and navigating these great levels, playing around with your powers and weapons to cause havoc among your enemies in fun and creative ways, balancing stealth and firepower as you infiltrate your targets' bases, and taking out the colorful villains you encounter in whatever way you find most fitting - that make this game as good as it is. It's the new elements, and especially the time-loop mechanics, that don't add much of value.

So as not to be too negative, I will say that I like the story. While the excessive swearing is a bit overly edgy, it soon becomes clear that the main character is not another stock gritty dark-haired white guy FPS hero, but a goofy guy who stumbles over the lame jokes he makes, sings to himself, and comedically yelps in response to setbacks. He's genuinely funny and endearing. The main antagonist is similarly likable, and the two characters have a fun rapport as they regularly exchange banter and insults. The supporting cast are fleshed-out and have distinctive personalities, and the voice acting for everyone is on point. I also really enjoy the pseudo-1960s style and setting. It gives the game such a unique and memorable look.
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Offline juner

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #997 on: September 23, 2021, 05:02:49 PM »
Finished Cuphead, it was a good change of pace and enough of a challenge.

Probably start Demon's Souls this weekend.

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #998 on: October 10, 2021, 06:25:11 AM »
New World:

Its ok.  Pretty standard MMO.  Combat is smooth with each weapon giving a different play style.  There are no classes or restrictions aside from level restrictions.  So someone with magic could use all heavy armor with magic stat boosts.  The downside is that you can't dodge as well and you lose the 20% bonus to damage by wearing light armor. (10% for medium)

Crafting is enjoyable enough.  Slow, as one would expect an mmo.  But you can apply different material tiers to give you a boost in the potential gear score.  Reminds me a little of Star Wars Galaxies.  You can also add other boosts and items to improve it on craft.

Quests:
Boring.  Bare mininum.  Some even seem just... Badly written or lack impact.
In one quest chain, you're doing favors for a blacksmith and a survivalist expert.  The survivalist wants to date the blacksmith but she keeps rebuffing him.  After doing a few quests for each, some of which is meant to impress the blacksmith for the survivalist, it ends with her saying she'll give him a shot because you, the player, did all the extra work. (?) And his end line is "I guess I'll give her space."

So yeah, clearly not great writing.

PVP:
Haven't done it yet but the wars and open world pvp, from what I've read, is alot of fun.  Defending or assaukting a fort is a blast.  Tho wars tend to be far more formal and rigid on who can join.  But assaukting forts?  Open world.


Overall its enjoyable but it'll get stale fast if you don't enjou pvp.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2021, 06:29:51 AM by Lord Dave »
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Offline honk

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Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #999 on: December 04, 2021, 04:03:54 AM »
Gamedec

In a gritty cyberpunk future where advanced VR gaming is the biggest industry in the world, you are a game detective, or "gamedec" who investigates and infiltrates virtual worlds at the behest of your clients. Gameplay-wise, this is an isometric CRPG where you interact with the environment by examining objects, talking to NPCs, and in general gathering information to solve the mysteries you're presented with. The clues you gather are listed in a "deduction" feature of the menu where you can then make conclusions about the evidence so far, which then leads you to the next part of the mystery. It's a great setup, but I will say that from what I've seen, it doesn't really matter if the deductions you make are right or wrong. You're guided on to the next stage of the case and given all the same information you would have been regardless. That's pretty disappointing, and I think that this is exactly the kind of game (as opposed to a big mainstream AAA title) that could afford to have real consequences for messing up investigations and coming to the wrong conclusions. Still, the mysteries are still pretty fun to think through and solve, even if it's for only the first time you play through them.

There's also a major twist near the end of the game that dramatically changes everything about the story so far, and I didn't care for it. To the game's credit, it's not a complete ass-pull. There are some clues hidden in the story and the background lore that foreshadow it, and it's nowhere near as bad as the shitty "It was all just a dream/hallucination" cop-out, but it still felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me. The twist also means that this is yet another video game where the final act is radically different to the rest of the game, and also far weaker. In this case, it drops the investigative elements entirely and just becomes a regular point-and-click adventure. I don't understand why some devs pull this kind of stunt. If I'm playing a game and I'm nearing the end, it's a pretty safe bet that I'm enjoying the game for what it is. Why change key elements of the gameplay so late in the game? Why fix what isn't broken?

Setting that aside, solving cases as a cyberpunk video game detective is fun, I like the pulpy overarching story everything builds up to (at least until the unnecessary twist), and there's some clever satire of current trends in modern games in the portrayal of these fictional game worlds, or even in just the lore text files you can read. There's an aggressively monetized freemium farming sim, a Star Citizen parody that mocks that game's relentless selling of digital spaceships coupled with its never-ending development, an edgelord adult game where you rack up points by killing people or having sex with them, and still others. There's a lot to like in this game, and while it's not for everyone, I'm glad I experienced it.
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