15
votes
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Echoes of the Eye definitely has a smaller feel to it (although there's more than meets the eye... Uh, pun not intended haha). My partner and I played it after we had finished the base game, and we both wondered how different it would be to play it as part of the main game. Would the contrasting thematic elements be as stark, or would it lose something if you had your attention torn between two stories? Would it be a little less repetitive if you could be going to other locations and solving other puzzles at the same time, or too much to keep straight?
Nowadays I don't have much time to play games, but this are my favorite games.
Probably my most favorite game is Euro Truck Simulator 2, I bought the game a few days after it came out from the official SCS store and I really liked it right away, the first couple of months I played using the steering wheel controls with my mouse for more control, now I'm playing on a 960 degrees steering wheel and it's really awesome.
I want to add that this is not the first truck game I've played, back when I was a little kid about 20 years ago, I spent several hours playing Hard Truck, I still remember that game as if I had just played it.
Then I played 18 Wheel of Steal, but somehow I didn't like that game as much as Hard Truck or later ETS2.
A year ago, I very often drove with my friends in a convoy where we even have a company on TrucksBook.
Another game is X-Plane 11 to which I come back from time to time, at the beginning I learned to fly on the Cessna and setting data given from ATC.
Now my favorite Jet is Cirrus Vision SF50 with much more comfortable Garmin 1000 panel.
I even maintain an anological (on paper) Fly Logbook. :)
But the most interesting game is Factorio it's probably the most time stealing game I've ever played, sometimes on the weekend I played literally for 12 hours without any break. I really recommend Factorio.
Has anyone played Horizon Zero Dawn? I loved the description and trailers enough to buy it, even though I don't (yet) have a machine to run it on. Now planning to overhaul/upgrade my 7-year-old gaming PC to handle it (and Witcher 3, and Elden Ring, and etc.).
I played many hours of that on PS4. Never did finish it, but that should not be taken as a reflection of the quality of the game. It is an excellent game. I recommend it. It is slightly unique insofar as one of the core aspects: combat with entities (animal machines), which is quite challenging. You can adopt a stealth playstyle, or a brute force playstyle, or a hybrid of both. Playing on harder difficulty, the thrill is real. One of the more heart-pounding experiences I've had in gaming, trying to survive, escape from, sneak up on, and defeat a very tough creature, one which could kill you in one or two hits. Graphics are brilliant, from the environment to the people. Story is interesting, too. Oh, and: Don't judge the story or the world too soon, because it evolves or unfolds beyond the first few hours in.
yes it is one of my favorite games. I love the world and characters and story. so immersive and amazing.
I've finally got into Act 3 of Divinity 2: The Original Sin, it took me 5 years and 3 start-overs to finally "make it click". But once it did - I found myself deeply immersed in the world of Rivellon.
This game is so dense with content it's insane. Every location is meticulously crafted, feels populated with stuff and stories.
Flip side of that is that the game expects to you consume it all, even if you're not fond of some particular quest chain. Otherwise you quickly fall behind on XP and gear stats which is then punished hard in combat (I'm playing on Classic difficulty). So in a way you're constantly trying to keep ahead of the difficulty curve.
It's a fantastic game though, the role-playing aspect is incredibly deep, the combat is fantastic (if you're into turn-based gameplay) and the stories it tells are great. Highly recommend.
EDIT: Divinity 2 as in Original Sin, honestly, who names games like this, Larian?!
If you've played it, how do you feel it compares to Pillars of Eternity?
Not OP, but Divinity 2 (and Divinity for that matter) require a lot more thoughtfulness from the combat. By halfway through PoE I had a combat strategy that worked, and it worked for the entire rest of the game with no significant deviations, trash mobs and bosses alike. Divinity leans harder into elemental attacks and vulnerabilities, so what works on one enemy or area won't be what works everywhere. It keeps you thinking and planning, since you really will need a diverse set of solutions to handle everything the game throws at you. The fact it's turn based also plays into that. You really can stop and think about how you want to handle things, even more so than with RtwP.
Have never played Pillars, but I've heard it's pretty similar.
Yeah, I've tried to play Divinity 2 so many times and so frequently get stuck in the swamp just outside of Fort Joy. The fact that enemies don't respawn means I can't farm XP until I can get past a boss or some big fight but have to find the other avenues to gain XP, which is not my playstyle and becomes very frustrating for me! But the characters and setting seem so cool!
100% feel you. First time I've played, had the same issue. I would honestly suggest just turning down the difficulty for the first playthrough or looking up build guides (fextralife is good).
I think I'm going to power through Classic, but only because I finally figured out how to optimize my characters to make them work well together.
Game's hard, there's no doubt about it.
Just wanted to clarify which Divinity you're talking about: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=divinity
Rivellon is the world in which all the Larian Studio's Divinity games take place... but given the description of the game being turn-based, OP is most likely talking about Divinity: Original Sin 2, not Divinity II from 2012 (which was a third-person Action-RPG).
D2: The Original Sin. I blame Larian for making it confusing af!
I’ve been replaying Borderlands 3 and really enjoy it. I don’t think the humour’s quite up to par with BL2 but it still a fun looter shooter.
Been playing Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and I gotta say, not really enjoying it. Gearbox has been trying (and failing) to recapture the same spark from Borderlands 2 and it shows. The game just isn't funny. In fact, it's so woefully unfunny that I find it hard to keep playing. The gameplay alone isn't radically different enough to entice me to keep playing it over 2 or 3. Maybe it's because they went for a T rating this time around? Mainly though the characters just won't shut up and everytime they open their mouth it's to make a joke that usually falls flat
I tried playing borderlands 3, because BL1 and to a lesser extent 2 were some of my favorite coop games of all time.
The problem isn't even just that the writing is terrible, and the really, really tryhardy "omg so randum" comedy. It's that it's shoved down your throat constantly. I was having fun shooting stuff and finding loot, but there's nearly always some zany NPC screaming in my ear the entire time. The jokes aren't good, the characters aren't interesting, and the whole thing is just so painful that I had to quit a couple hours in. I doubt I'll go back.
Chivalry 2. It's great.
I have been playing The original PS1 version of Ape Escape.
I’ve always kind of hated this game because the flow of gameplay pissed me off. Each stage has X monkeys, you need to capture Y of them, and as soon as you get Y you are immediately ejected from the level regardless of secrets and collectibles you may have found. It basically made it impossible to completely explore a stage and it also felt like it was a huge waste of time.
I still don’t like that aspect of the game, but I can appreciate it in that it encourages me to put the game down, which makes it the perfect “in-between” game. The one you play between different things you want or need to do.
And of course, other than that one giant glaring problem, it is still a very well designed game. It feels a lot like Super Mario 64 in some ways.
Ape Escape!
I recently revisited it as well, and I share the exact same complaint as you. Getting kicked out of a level, especially once you've mentally mapped it all out, is super frustrating. Plus, the later levels are HUGE. I'd spend close to an hour in some of them and relied on save states to hold my progress, since you can't save mid-level. I had no desire to return to them just to finish off the parts the game made me miss.
I also never realized how bad the draw distance was as a kid. Given that I'm currently going through other games from the time, this is super common, so I assume it never really pinged for me and was just something I was used to. It also helped me realize part of why I thought Spyro the Dragon was so breathtaking at the time, because it doesn't have the same issue where the level just appears within a certain radius around your character.
That said, like you, I still love the game. It's held up well, and stands head and shoulders above a lot of other early 3D games.
Did you ever play any of the other games in the series? I only ever played the original Ape Escape and am wondering whether the others are worth trying.
The only other Ape Escape game I've played is that exceptionally bizzare minigame that came with Metal Gear Solid 3.
I did, however, just learn that the series title in Japan is Saru Gets You, which I find to be incredibly adorable.
Vampire Survivors
I’m on summer vacation, so for most mornings, after I wake up I’ll either read the news while I drink my coffee or play this with one hand with my mug in the other. It’s sublime. Currently working my way through all the stuff they’ve added to the game since I last played.
20 Minutes Till Dawn
This is Vampire Survivors with guns and aiming. Scratches the exact same itch.
Bugsnax
This is a QUALITY kids’ game. If I had children, I’d be thrilled to get them this. The game is charming, resonant, and encourages critical thinking. It's similar to Pokemon Snap, only you have to figure out how to catch the different species of bugs given the game's toolset and environment. Also, like Pokemon, the Bugsnax say their names, and it's adorable.
As an adult it doesn’t hit quite the same. I’m liking it, but if I weren’t on summer break with plenty of time to fill, I probably would have put it down by now.
Tomba!
This is an old Playstation 2.5D adventure platformer. As a kid, I played (and loved) Tomba! 2 but I never actually played the first game. Thus, I'm visiting it for the first time via emulation on my Steam Deck, and it's a delight. These two games are at the top of my personal list of Games That Deserve Remasters. I think they would still play well with modern audiences.
I always wondered what Bugsnax was. I spent a lot of time on Twitch when it launched and never actually watched it. It looks kinda cute.
I don't like the straight comparison of 20 Minutes Till Dawn to Vampire Survivors, which many make, as 20MTD feels more like Risk of Rain 2 than VS because of how the builds work, and the extra interaction. They're both fun games, but I think it's much more than "yet another Vampire Survivors."
Bought Dead Cells from the Steam sales; have to say I'm a bit disappointed given the ratings of the game. Although the animation and combat are pretty smooth, all the runs are quickly feeling very samey and the progress is extremely slow. Weapons and enemies don't have much variety either. In contrast, I really enjoyed Curse of the Dead Gods, where each weapon, dungeon and enemy had a lot more variation going. Losing all your cells and blueprints on death just seems like bad design. The progression fails to impact the gameplay enough in my opinion; lot of time it just goes in health flask and other upgrades which take forever to grind. On death I just feel annoyed I have to do the same 3 level grind again before it gets interesting again.
Boomer shooter summer baby!
JK, but picked up some bangers I've wanted that finally went on sale. I'll start with what's labelled the "New Blood FPS Trilogy"
Ultrakill: It's what it says on the tin. Killing the shit out of stuff on Doom/Quake style parred levels.
Dusk I need more time with Dusk as I don't get it, and was getting one-shotted on the hardest setting.
Amid Evil sort of like if Heretic was a Quake mod: Battle axes, magic staves with homing beams, Quake-style level/difficulty selection. It's fun.
I dusted off Strafe: Gold Edition and while it's fun, it has similar problems to Obsidian, which is a Doom random map generator. Not every possibility is necessarily fun, but it is infinitely replayable. It's still fun when you get into it.