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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.
Due to NDA, there's not much I can say about Palia's alpha (I can say it's an MMO with a heavy focus on crafting and social interaction), but what I can say is it's charming, and if a chill game is what you want go check it out.
Starmourn MUD
The friendliness and dedication of the small and awesome community of this game never cease to amaze me. Everyone is ready to assist and make me feel welcome. Such assistance is often dispensed in character since most of the administrative positions within the fictional universe are interpreted by human beings. The universe feels vibrant and full of personality in a way that NPCs could never do.
Just now, a player gave me a full lesson on space flight and combat (which is awesome, BTW).
The roleplay environment is conducive to a wholesome atmosphere. From the references, vocabulary, and Discord profile images, I assume that this game is something of a unicorn: a MUD with younger players.
In terms of mechanics, I gave up on the idea that will memorize things as I go. I added 9 buttons/keybindings for skills (which made it similar to MMORPGs in both mechanics and aesthetics), as well as WASD-like keybindings for going in all directions. That makes a lot of difference in how I play. It feels more like a game. I also have an Org file now, where I store essential tips and information about the game.
I was invited to a clan, and the channel is OOC (out-of-character). One player showed me their scripts, which, according to them, are essential to play their class. That scared me a bit. I'm okay with the notion that scripting is an option for the technologically inclined, but the idea that something like that could be a requirement for playing the game is incredibly unfriendly.
Luckily, according to them, my class (basically a space wizard), doesn't need scripting. In any case, the game's scripting guidelines are rather strict, and there's not much I find useful that the game allows.
The rewarding feeling I get from this game is not that different from their graphical counterparts. Like MMORPGs, I have quests. Some of them are silly, like killing X amount of mobs. Others are more engaging. For example, one questline gave me the option to free a bunch of slaves. The actions I took to do that were trivial, and the "final boss" was easy and underwhelming. But in the end, it felt good to free all those people, and they thanked me profusely for my heroic actions. It was incredibly rewarding.
It's pretty crazy to realize that in the past week I spent almost 15 hours playing a text game. There's something magical about it that is hard to define.
The concept of MUDs intrigues me but I don’t enjoy text based games so I really enjoy reading your writeups in each of these threads
When I play a MUD, it is easier to understand a design paradigm in action (or lack thereof). It is profoundly educational, much in the same way that watching movie classics teaches a lot about films today. You can see where everything came from. Even a modern MUD is, in some way, a historical artifact.
Warhammer: Darktide, which runs like crap. Unless you're lucky, you'll have to put everything on low and get a blurry image to achieve a decent, semi-stable frame rate. Old bugs from the launch of the previous game, years ago, are somehow still present.
When the game's not deciding to be an ugly mess, I can certainly see potential in it. The combat can be fun, but it really does depend on the quality of your teammates, and everyone wants to rush.
This topic seems to have been buried this week.
I bought way too many games this week and it’s a shame because I really don’t have that much money.
One of the games I bought was thankfully extremely short because if it were much longer I might have gone insane. It’s also one of the least game-like games out there because there is literally only two choices you will ever get to make. That game was Song of Saya.
Reading Song of Saya should be all the proof you need that there is something wrong with Gen Urobuchi’s brains. It’s equal parts demented and genius. While I haven’t personally read Lolita the way I felt reading this reminded me hearing about how reading that book made them feel - it’s both beautiful and utterly disgusting.
I do have to say that the experience is expertly crafted. The visuals are really impressive and both the art and writing show a good amount of restraint; you’ll see a good amount of gore, but you won’t see any of the truly demented and horrifying stuff. Which just makes those things even more terrifying. But honestly the scariest part of this game is that it’s the edited version that takes away a lot of the sex scenes which would have made it that much more gross. Which is, unfortunately, not to say that those things don’t happen, so you end up thinking about it and it’s brain poison.
Honestly, though? $15 is a lot to ask for
A game this short and this old. I’m glad I got it on sale.
I finally bought Cyberpunk. That first act takes too long to get you to the open world, IMO, but if that's my only complaint it's good. Also, that's my only complaint. The story is compelling, I like the criminal element that doesn't leave me feeling like a filthy SOB by playing it so far. I'm surprised at how well it runs on my computer, too (2018 i7, RX5500 XT, loading off a 4tb hdd). I'm literally on the first mission of Act 2, so I haven't played in the open world too much but it feels okay at least.
My vanilla Skyrim run sorta stalled. It got boring, but I just need to focus more on making my own fun to get XP to finish building out my unarmed Khajiit. The build is coming out exactly how I planned, which is fun, but I'm concerned I may never actually be able to use weapons, as I'm doing so much damage now with claws.