[rooster]

Replaying Okami

This game is just lovely.

[Lord Dave]

Doki Doki Literature Club.

So I was persuaded to download and play this free "horror" game from steam that disguises itself as a Japanese anime romance story game because the horror was sooo good, they said.

You'll have to try it yourself but... yeah, it's not.  At least not to me.  To me it was boring, predictable, and not in the least bit scary.  I'm not even sure why anyone thought it was scary.

The 'horror' is supposed to be 4th wall breaking where one of the characters is 'aware' and modifies the game in various ways: deleting saved games, corrupting graphics, restarting the game after 'deleting' a character, etc... before talking to you and essentially locking the game so anytime you load it, you just see this room with the aware character.  The idea being you have to delete her just like she deleted everyone else.  She even *gasp* reads the %currentuser% variable and speaks your login name!

Again, this is supposed to be horror.  But I just saw it as a giant script that was running with glitches everywhere.  Hell, at one point I actually though the game was broken or glitched.  Turns out you just gotta go through about 100 pages of random ascii text while staring at a slightly changing image.  "Oh, I didn't realize the script was that broken.  You've been staring at the dead body as time progressed for two days." -says the aware character after you literally spend from Friday afternoon to Monday morning staring at a dead body while clicking (or auto moving) through unreadable dialog.

I think it's shit but hey, maybe you'll feel differently?  It takes about 2 hours to get going and lasts about 6-7 to get through.  Most of it is reading dialog you've already read 3 times.

[beardo]

I finished Assassin's Creed yesterday. It was shit. 3/10. Started playing AC2 and it seems much better.

[honk]

Pillars of Eternity

I love this game, and I don't know where to even begin talking about it. The character creation is awesome, and it's so cool the way your later dialogue will then form part of your backstory. And it's not even just your own backstory, but your past life. You get to decide what your relationship with Iovara was, and your relationship with Thaos. One moment that really stood out for me was when Thaos asks you if you know Iovara, there's an option to say you don't, and an option to say you don't with the knowledge that it's a lie. Aside from that, it nicely averts the generic fantasy setting with its own original twists, the characters are distinctive and memorable, and on the whole it's just a great, original story with wonderful lore lore lore.

My two main issues with the game are the combat and the level progression. It's a very limited selection of skills you can choose to level up in, and the lack of any auto-leveling system for the companions is ridiculous. I'm not fucking keeping track of which of my five companions could stand to see some improvement in this area, which of them might benefit from having this ability or that, and so on. Same goes for the combat - I'll be damned if I'm going to be pausing each fight a hundred times so I can issue unique instructions to each companion on which ability I want them to use and on whom. This shit should be automated, with an option to turn it manual for the few people who actually want to do it all themselves.

Tyranny

Obsidian learned from their mistakes and fixed all of the above. Having three companions at a time instead of five also helps the combat feel like less of a clusterfuck. Moving on, this is another original fantasy game, with good writing, good characters, and a truly unique setting. Unlike with Pillars, it seems as though none of my Steam friends here on FES have tried this one yet, and I strongly encourage you to reconsider.

[beardo]

Pillars of Eternity

I love this game, and I don't know where to even begin talking about it.

But muh non-generic fantasy races

[Crudblud]

Finally got around to playing Dark Souls. I played a little last night, but I had a bit of a time trying to get it to play nicely with my PS2 pad. Today I got it working properly, took care of the Asylum Demon and am around the beginning of Undead Burg. It's been fun so far. I like the emphasis on caution, it's a different pace from what I'm used to in ARPGs and similar.

I also checked out the 2013 version of Shadow Warrior, which was amusing for the excessive violence but seems like it would get boring pretty fast.

Lastly, Unreal Tournament pre-alpha is rough around the edges but has all the makings of a great comeback for the series. Too bad Epic seems to have left it to rot.

[garygreen]

Unreal Tournament

holy shit for real?  the nostalgia i'm having for the original right now is overwhelming.  fuck i loved that game.

[Crudblud]

Unreal Tournament

holy shit for real?  the nostalgia i'm having for the original right now is overwhelming.  fuck i loved that game.

Yeah, there's been a public pre-alpha in the works for years, but it looks like they haven't updated it since last Summer. What they have so far is really promising, but it's definitely not up to '99 or 2k4 standards in terms of feel, and there still aren't many finished maps, character models and skins are kind of generic as well. Nonetheless I think it could be great if only Epic would give it the attention it needs.

[Cain]

I bought a copy of No Man's Sky yesterday...... I immediately regretted that decision

[juner]

I bought a copy of No Man's Sky yesterday...... I immediately regretted that decision

It could be worse, you could have wasted money on Star Citizen.

[Cain]

I bought a copy of No Man's Sky yesterday...... I immediately regretted that decision

It could be worse, you could have wasted money on Star Citizen.

Personally, I'm not a fan of paying for virtual ships in a game that, lets face it, is just Chris Roberts extorting money from people. There is no way that he is ever going to release Star Citizen, why would he when he can charge people hundreds of dollars for ships/land that he is never going to give? And after the 38 million dollar kickstarter? i'm a bit skeptical

[juner]

...why would he when he can charge people hundreds of dollars for ships...

Or in the case of at least one of our forum members here, thousands of dollars...

[rooster]

I played South Park: The Stick of Truth

It was fun

[garygreen]

I played South Park: The Stick of Truth

It was fun

i never completed it, but i really loved stick of truth.  they did such a good job of making it feel like you were playing out an episode of the show.

[Ghost Spaghetti]

I've recently been playing Sonic Mania

In many respects, it's a great game; the physics and action feel as tight as they ever have in a Sonic game, the new zones are inventive and maintain the feel of exploring an environment - as opposed to the linear roller-coaster rides more recent Sonic titles have adoped - and the reimagined old zones shake up the formula to offer something new to old players.
Some of the new features and the clever boss designs (Studiopolis' weather-report boss and the Mean Bean Machine-inspired boss to Chemical Plant are particular standouts)

That said, I do have problems with it:
-The blue spheres Special Zones are too big to come up every time you hit a checkpoint. They massively interrupt the pace of the game and are far too easy to access - maybe if you needed 50 rings to enter instead of 25 it would have been an improvement.
-The visual styles from the old games sometimes feel wildly at odds with each other - especially Lava Reef with its more subdued colour palette and the messy graphics of the Sonic CD zones (I always thought that S:CD was overrated and felt more like a good Sonic 1 ROM hack than an actual sequel like S2 or S3)
-The 10 minute timer on levels is a frustration, especially when you can sometimes get complicated bosses which have multiple stages.

[Cain]

...why would he when he can charge people hundreds of dollars for ships...

Or in the case of at least one of our forum members here, thousands of dollars...

Seriously? Who is it?

[juner]

Seriously? Who is it?

Quite serious. I won't out the person, but it can figured out without much trouble...

[Lord Dave]

...why would he when he can charge people hundreds of dollars for ships...

Or in the case of at least one of our forum members here, thousands of dollars...

Seriously? Who is it?

Lurk Moar.

[Pete Svarrior]

Pillars of Eternity

[...] the lack of any auto-leveling system for the companions is ridiculous. I'm not fucking keeping track of which of my six companions could stand to see some improvement in this area, which of them might benefit from having this ability or that, and so on. Same goes for the combat - I'll be damned if I'm going to be pausing each fight a hundred times so I can issue unique instructions to each companion on which ability I want them to use and on whom. This shit should be automated, with an option to turn it manual for the few people who actually want to do it all themselves.

I'm currently playing through PoE. I've gone through a fair bit of the main campaign previously before I gave up on my sucky laptop. Replaying the early bits certainly helped me get my characters right.

That said, I strongly disagree with regard to game mechanics. The game was Kickstarter'd as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and the people who actually threw money at it to let it happen wanted things that way. Tyranny didn't "fix" anything, it simply wasn't trying to target a very specific (and, I appreciate, peculiar) niche.

Besides, if you're not treating your party as a cohesive unit, you'd really struggle with any of the more challenging battles. If you *really* hate issuing commands, set up your party AI, allow them to use per-rest abilities, and enjoy burning a village's worth of camping supplies. Alternatively, hit that "Story Mode" button and auto-attack away - if you hate the game mechanically but love the story and characters, why would you not just make use of that?

[Cain]

Seriously? Who is it?

Quite serious. I won't out the person, but it can figured out without much trouble...

After preforming an extensive examination, I have concluded that the member in question is Rushy.