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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.
Destiny 2 on Steam, still.
I've clocked in well over 200 hours over the past two months, and lately l've been playing in a very "touristy" way; turn on recording, equip a sniper rifle with a good scope and walk around looking at the worlds and enemies from afar. Shoot a few if they shoot at me but otherwise be passive.
I'm just making screenshots and examining the game's art(which is fantastic!) and l'm also looking at the concept art a lot.
I've recently picked up Blender and Substance Designer and l'd like to do game related art, as drawing isn't my jam 3d is the way to go. That means using similar materials, and knowing what the game's visual language is like: how are worlds set up, what are the materials?
It's very much meta gaming. The game has a fantastic art style and a lot of concept art is up on Artstation, which makes it fun to continue working with the available materials, and practise 3d work at the same time.
l've noticed that since l started looking from a design standpoint, l appreciate the game and its level design a lot more than before. Also found an area where textures appear to be missing, lol.
Sounds like you're having fun – in a dedicated, caring way. They used to call people like you amateur, which is French for "someone who loves". I wish the word still conveyed its initial meaning. It's a joy to hear about something like what you're doing.
The Destiny series has excellent lore, which is what made me fall in love with the games. They clearly have a story to tell – and they tell it in a measured, deliberate fashion. Games like it have attempted the same, but Destiny does it well.
It's a product of passion, no doubt about it.
I've never been much of a fanart person but uh, that's often involving characters. I can't really make those yet, but landscapes, architecture and weird machines are totally my jam. Plus applying something like SubDes is a good practise since it's a powerful tool and industry standard for materials.
Taking a break from Dead Cells on Switch to play Autonauts on PC. I've logged about 10 hours.
I don't play Minecraft or any builders but I loved Stardew Valley, so this was a logical extension.
I love the simple graphics, the gameplay centralized around automation, and that there's always more to do. Seems endless! I find that I get into the zone really quickly and an hour goes by but feels like 10 minutes. The discovery and unlocking levels is rewarding.
Another thing that's nice is that you can move things pretty easily after you've placed them.
I would like a little more functionality in the programming of the bots, the interface can be a little frustrating until you figure out how to use it. Some things are unclear how to make or use but there's an encyclopedia that helps.
It's a small community playing right now but I am betting this game will take off!
I've bought about 12 games from the Steam sales going on currently. The one I'm sinking almost all my time into currently is FlintHook.
I'm having a blast playing it, though I'm still getting used to the controls. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself as I needed 4 attempts to beat the first boss. I'm sure it'll get easier the more I play, but I'm having trouble keeping track of everything on the screen at once, especially with the harder ships that I attempt to clear.
Don't take that the wrong way, I'm having a blast when I'm playing. It just seems to have a slightly higher learning curve or skill ceiling than the other games I'm used to playing.
In other news, I have completed my personal goals of achieving Champ 1 rewards for the current season in Rocket League. I'm not even sure I want to try getting any further, since this was a personal goal I set for myself a month or two ago and now I'd like to focus on something else, non video game related. I played with some friends last night, and won a 3v2 against them while my teammate was a mid bronze level player. So that felt great actually lol
Just started Jedi Fallen Order last night. I bought EA premier access last year in order to play Darksiders 3 about a month before Anthem dropped. So IIRC I have until the end of February to play through the premier games I have access to because I have no plans of renewing. This gave me the kick in the butt needed to start on the game. I might renew with the non-premier version next year to work through some of the other games in the catalog I've been putting off but right now I'm not so sure as I do have a backlog of physical games which are all critically acclaimed (persona 5, kingdom hearts 3, dragon quest, partway through spiderman, partway through FE 3 houses, and more...)
The game isn't quite a souls game (feels much easier TBH) but it's kind of got the same feel to it. That is to say, if you enjoy souls games, you'll probably enjoy this. I just hit the first planet after becoming a Jedi and I've been having fun. The first thing I encountered on the planet was the big ol froggy boi who will kill you in 1-2 hits. I used this as an opportunity to begin to learn the dodging and parrying mechanics a bit better. I probably spent about 30 minutes dying before I finally bested him, but mainly because it's been a while since I've played a souls game and I was playing too aggressively. Looking forward to playing more tonight. It's kind of got me itching to pick up Sekiro again too, but I may continue to wait on that because I have quite the backlog.
At this point it might make sense to wait for Persona 5: The Royal - expected this spring. Will basically be the base game + an additional party member and an additional (semester?) of content.
I already have the physical copy because I bought it for my ex. Since she doesn't have her own PS4 and already beat the game, I inherited the copy. I've never played any other game in the series and honestly it's only on my list because I have a copy and it's critically acclaimed so I will probably end up skipping out on the DLC.
Tried Cogmind recently. Someone on Tildes mentioned it in an off-hand comment in a context that sounded alright.
I'm a fan of that sort of a game, but not of this one. It's good, but not my kind. Loved the character management aspect, but the "true-roguelike" nature of the game made sure I was soon disjointed from the purpose.
I like games where character progression is meant to be a composing, caring experience where you deliberate on your capacities versus the challenges you face, both in the short- and the long-term thinking. Cogmind, being a true-roguelike game, forces you to play both, but across multiple characters, which I find difficult to handle.
I don't like it when the character I'd become attached to is supposed to die very soon by the very design of the game. I like to have one character develop across the whole plot, whether this plot is determined by writing or procedural generation. I like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead in part because it allows me to build up a single character in the long-term. Yes, they may still die, but at least I can ensure this happens as rarely as possible – better, at least, than in Cogmind.
It's a feeling I haven't entirely parsed or processed.
I have been playing The Outer Worlds. You can tell it's the same team that did Fallout, but the color palette is a lot brighter since it's not post-apocolyptic. I find myself wishing it were a little deeper, combat and character development are pretty simple. The other thing that bugged me early on is that there are no ways to deal with groups of enemies (i.e., grenades), but now that I'm higher level all the fights are pretty easy. Overall, not bad but glad I got it on sale. I think I'm about 60% done, give or take but that's just a guess.
Put in a little over 20 something hours into Pokemon Sword over the last week because I was on vacation and brought my switch. Not entirely certain what I think of it... the game was rather short for the price tag and what I remember of the pokemon series. Technically speaking, I'm not exactly "finished" with the game, but I'm probably going to stop or play very little in the immediate future. I could have finished the main story line a bit quicker, but I was having fun checking out the new pokemon in each area before moving on and chasing after a few specific pokemons that seemed interesting to have or to fill out my party comp in a balanced fashion when I updated my team.
It was kind of refreshing to play a pokemon game for the first time in ages... the last game I played was black and white, platinum before that, then gold and originally red. There's a decent amount about the game that I had forgotten, and certainly a lot of new cool pokemon to check out. I really enjoy the cutesy art style of the current gen and it seems like the last few as well.
I haven't really dug into the real post game content - I've only just captured the unique legendary and unlocked the battle tower. Perhaps that'll get me a bit more invested to figure out which pokemon are the strongest in this game and searching for the high IV pokemon for the strongest team? I dunno, I have a lot of other games to play.
Just got into Dishonored 2, better late than never. It's really good so far! I enjoyed the first one and the second builds on everything it did well, with a bigger scale. The level design is almost overwhelming for how big the locations are and how many different paths there are through them. As with the original, the world building and mechanics (special abilities, high/low chaos paths, other challenges) are well-considered and inventive. Seems to be a game designed for replayability.
I bought Age of Mythology: Extended Edition. It runs flawlessly on Valve's Proton. I remember the game being really fun but there are many improvements that I think could be made. Placing walls is often not possible or interrupted totally randomly by subtle differences in the elevation of the ground. And there is no way to snap walls to a grid. The result is that you are forced to build walls in very strange shapes to get around certain ground geometry and nothing is ever quite square or parallel to anything else. Very easy to fix and would make the game much better.
I've jumped into Star Citizen for the first time this year, with its anniversary sale + CitizenCon livestream. It's been fun playing with some friends first look at the game and seeing where it is in its current state. It'll still be a while before it's in a completed state enough to play regularly, but it's enjoyable in timed doses, especially with others, every now and then.
Similar to last week:
Pokemon Go: still working at this game. I feel a little hampered in my progress due to living in the suburbs. I don't have enough pokestops to keep getting pokeballs and I haven't had a raid yet where others have joined me.
Madden 20: played through another year in an offline franchise. The game is starting to get old but I'm sure I will keep playing it throughout the week.
Hollow Knight: I probably have an hour into this. I don't know if I like it and will see it through. My last ditch effort is to play along with a guide for an hour to see if that extra push will be enough to keep me interested.
Dragons Dogma: have a little more than an hour in this. When this game clicks, it clicks hard with me. I find the game to be a bit busy though with the UI.
Pokemon Renegade Platinum: this rom hack of Pokemon Platinum includes all 493 available Pokemon, creating events to get any Pokemon that isn't included. Additionally, it has some QoL enhancements that speed the game up. I'm playing with a speed patch that runs the game at 60 fps rather than 30. This speed the game up but not the music. AI is a lot harder in this game with all trainers getting the Elite 4 AI and all gym leaders having 6 Pokemon with enhanced moves/IVs.
Took me a while to get into Hollow Knight. It's definitely a frustrating game, but I think if you put a little more time into it will be worth it.
Getting back in to some Lord of the Rings Online. One of my favorite things about the game is the ease that I can pick it up and play for a few weeks and then drop it for awhile.
I find as I get older I still love playing video games, but find myself switching around multiple different games where I'll get really in to one for a bit before dropping it for another game, does anyone else feel this way?
Do you pay for the subscription?
Still in a video game black hole at the moment; to be honest I haven't had much time because I have been putting in the finishing touches on my Timasomo project. The few minutes I have been able to play games, I have been continuing with a mix of Atelier Sophie and GTAV.
Yesterday I picked up a copy of Overcooked! because the boyfriend wanted to play it for a while and it's currently super cheap on the Humble store. I didn't find it terribly fun, but it was a decent passtime. Of course, I get blamed when we can't get enough points to get a star.
Been pretty busy recently with the amount of games I'm playing.
I just bought the Master Chief Collection for PC. The port of Reach is pretty good, although it leaves out fine-grained graphical controls. Overall I'm impressed, though. LAN support, modding support (there's a mode that turns off anti-cheat), FOV sliders and mouse smoothing is off by default! Performance seems fine, although my PC is high end and shouldn't ever have a problem with that.
I've been playing some Titanfall 2 again. It fills this gap where older Call of Duty games used to be. Fast moving action with some good shooting. The movement in this game just feels so good: Running on walls, jumping, using a grappling hook, sliding, et cetera. And even though Titanfall 2 has a similar idea to Call of Duty's killstreak, Titans aren't indestructible. You can some great damage to them, even when your team doesn't have any Titans yet. It also increase the potential points you can get, which makes the game more balanced.
Playing through War of Omens, a free to play card game which is one of the many descendants of Magic the Gathering. It's a tight little card game! Cross-device, which is nice.
Slay the Spire still challenges and delights, I play that at least once a week, and the Spire always wins.
Assassin's Creed Origins, slowly. I've been a fan of this franchise since the beginning, and really enjoy this one.
Just the tutorial right now, but I did a round of ADOM. I bought it years ago on Steam when the dev decided to start making money off of it. I just did a tutorial run, and got to a point I just wanted to kill my character, but I'm planning a more serious try tomorrow. I'd been wanting to play a roguelike for a few days, and finally decided to give it a shot after shooting down some harder favorites (DCSS, NetHack). I may also need to start playing Jupiter Hell more, I haven't really touched it.
I mentioned it somewhere else, but I decided to play TESIII: Morrowind, through the OpenMW engine. I'm not far at all, but I'm getting into it as I play, but have only done side quests.