I started this last week, and plan to continue posting this topic weekly.

So, 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.

A few of the other groups have been doing recurring topics like this, and I think we should really do it more regularly in ~games too.

So, what have you been playing lately? (Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game as well.)

It can be a remaster (like Resident Evil HD), a faithful recreation (like Spyro Reignited Trilogy), or a complete reboot (like the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake).

• Which old game do you choose, and why?
• What should they change to make the game more palatable for modern audiences?
• What shouldn't they change so that they can remain true to the original?

So, I just finished playing Sleeping Dogs. It's a kung fu action game with a heavy emphasis on the hand to hand combat. It feels like it's the Arkham games roided up with some hack and slash juice. Almost all the upgrades are hand combat based, the vast majority of combat encounters are hand to hand. It's how the game was advertised, it's what all the reviews talk about, it's why I was interested in it, and why it was recommended to me. And you know what? I was way more into the shooting than the hand to hand combat.
The game does not seem all that proud of its gunplay, there's not a place to buy or customize guns, you just have to pick them up when a firefight starts and drop them after, and there's only like 3 guns total in the game. But it's some of the most fun gunplay I've played in years in a third person shooter. It heavily utilizes slow motion when you jump over cover or kick an enemy and leap into the air, incentivizing you to not just stay in cover the whole game. It really reminds me of Vanquish, which is one of my favorites in the third person shooter genre of all time.
So this got me curious, what are some games that others have enjoyed for "wrong" reasons? Wrong is in quotes, because, well, it is still something meant to be enjoyed if it's in the game, but it clearly wasn't the focus of either dev time, or marketing, or general hype around the game, or all of the above. Although if you want to share something that wasn't something meant to be enjoyed at all, like something left in totally unintentionally by the developers, feel free to share that too.

I'm not necessarily asking for the scariest one you've played but for your personal favorite/best, based on whatever criteria you choose. Games that are more horror-lite/spooky still count as well, so feel free to consider and include those.

With regards to your pick: what made it so good? In what ways did its use of horror add to your experience?

Given that a lot of horror relies on surprise, subverting expectations, or the unknown, please give spoiler warnings if you plan to discuss important aspects/plot points that might ruin the game for others.

Hey everyone !
Post in here if you wanna squad up with people on here.
I'll start : Anyone wanna run some apex or titanfall 2 on Xbone comment in here. I play most evenings. Feel free to comment in here looking for people to play a different game with.

I'm not sure how many people here are into board games, but I figured I'd make a post about it. I'm going to be at dice tower con this week. I'm hoping to get a game of Blood on the Clocktower going. If you see a guy trying to gather people for a game of botc, that'll be me. Come say hi.

Video game's approach to storytelling usually comprise of mixing gameplay mechanics (gunplay, health system, enemy AI...) and storytelling elements (cutscenes, dialogue trees, environment details...). There are also special systems designed to work both as gameplay challenge as well as narrative carriers (quick time events, the nemesis system in Shadow of War...)

However, there's also a third approach, where traditional gameplay elements when put into appropriate context within the game gain additional narrative significance (the way Thomas was Alone's basic platforming mechanics are personified via narration, or Undertale's combat system being integral to how the story develops...)

Have you ever noticed if a gameplay element also doubled as a storytelling device in the games you played before? If so, what was it and what did it "tell" you?

I personally usually heavily mod my games, due to finding the process of modding itself fun, along with me preferring to spend a LONG time at one run through.

As an example, I'd give minecraft where I usually play so-called expert packs, which are basically taking a lot of mods and making them depend on each other for progression.

I'm interested in a game that you still loved or enjoyed in spite of its significant flaws or issues. "Best" and "worst" are, of course, based on whatever subjective criteria you choose.

• What made the game bad?
• Why did you keep playing it?
• What enjoyment or appreciation did it give you?

Looking for some new games to play. This is my list of liked games so far

1. Worms WMD. This style of game just never gets old for me
2. Mario kart. Looks really nice in 60fps and a ton of fun
3. Golf story. Surprisingly fun golf RPG game, also great 2 player multiplayer
4. Arms. Quite a bit more fun than wii sports boxing
5. Baba is you. Really fun puzzle game with a unique idea
6. Korg gadget. Not a game but I love playing with synths
7. Night in the woods. I never got to playing this when it came out but I tried it on the switch and I like it

Inspired by @Whom's music and anime threads

What have you been playing to this week? You don't need to be playing the latest games, nor do you have to write gigantic essays. This is just a space to talk games!

Feel free to give recommendations, thoughts, opinions. Chat about playstyles and habits! Reminisce about games and mechanics long gone, or coming back!

What is your favorite homebrew console application/game? A really cool thing I saw recently was someone moved the dsi version of flipnote to a 3ds and connected it to an unofficial server to continue using it like when the servers were still online. Another cool thing was DS linux, I never managed to get it working but as part of the install process it removed the health and safety warning screen which is kinda neat.

I bought Tekken 7 about 6 months ago and have been seriously addicted to it ever since. My friend used to have all the old tekken games when we were really young but back then I just used to mash buttons.

It's a tough game to learn and even play passably but the process of improving is very satisfying. Currently I've got Asuka to Vindicator (2nd yellow rank) and plan on sticking with her until I (eventually) reach high orange/ first red rank. Dabbled a little with Kazumi/Paul but I don't think switching characters is a good idea at this point.

So do any tildinista's play Tekken?

Downloaded it, it is NOT noob friendly but seems like it will be fun once I get it figured out. Has been a somewhat annoying process. Figured out the crafting system, get killed by exiles. Start trying to set up a camp fire and make a little space, get killed by some hyena thing that was invisible due to server lag (on an official server, no less). Which, of course, results in losing everything.

Anyone else playing it? What has your experience been like? Also looking for a good server/group to play with, although I probably will not be able to log in much since I have a fairly busy schedule.

Inspired by @Whom's music and anime threads

What have you been playing to this week? You don't need to be playing the latest games, nor do you have to write gigantic essays. This is just a space to talk games!

Feel free to give recommendations, thoughts, opinions. Chat about playstyles and habits! Reminisce about games and mechanics long gone, or coming back!

I was playing Stardew Valley recently and ended up playing the mini arcade games in the tavern for a couple hours. I was suprised at the depth they put into a video game that is inside another video game. Truly great.

Any other tabletop RPG fans here? What system do you play and what kind of character are you currently running?

I'm in two D&D 5e campaigns at the moment. In one I play a Gnome Mystic, and in the other I play a Tabaxi Monk.

D&D isn't my favorite system, but it's difficult finding groups for other systems. I'd prefer playing something where character ability progression is more freeform, like GURPS.

(Still don't know if Tilders is a thing, but I'm rolling with it.)

Red Dead Redemption 2 has hooked me like no other game has in years, and that's saying something. My collection is massive between my Steam library, PS4 library, and all the older titles I hoard. But ever since RDR2 came out a few months ago, it's almost all I have played on a daily basis.

Aside from the fact that the graphics and animations are objectively jaw-drop gorgeous, there is something about this game's pacing, writing, thematic story telling, game-play, and characters that has absolutely captured my imagination, and has become my go-to way to unwind after a long day. Most of this applies to the story mode.

But I also dove completely head first in the Online Beta for a few months straight. I'm now rank 101, have all I want really for online as it stands, and I loved every minute of my crazy solo-hunting/fishing/griefer oblitherating grind. Taking a break for new content coming on the 26th of this month, and also really need to get some friends to play with... (I have a perma-posse on PS4 named "The Pariah" as well if anyone decides they may be interested)

I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and somehow, RD2 MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH HUNTING IN IT. I could go on, but I'm hoping to get some discussion out of this and not just blabber on and on like I do in real life about it.

So... please tell me I'm not the only freak on here that loves this game. The Reddit communities for this game are a toxic dumpster fire, and I really want to discuss it with some people who actually like to... discuss.

Hi, so my SO and I are looking for a third person to play Apex with. We're pretty casual and not the best skill wise but just playing it for fun. Having a third person to talk to would be cool. We typically play around 9pm EST for about an hour or two. If you're down you can add us on xbox and shoot us a message at Rocket Man and Bubblegum KMA

I used to watch TotalBiscuit's videos to learn about PC ports of games, to see if they were any good. Obviously I can't do that anymore, and the best replacement I've found so far is looking at PCGamingWiki. If a game has a long page with a lot of issues and workarounds, it is probably a bad port.

But that doesn't really help if I want to know if a game has improved a lot since launch. Does anyone do a good "state of game x a few years later" series?

Anyone else play visual novels? If you don't know what they are, it's like an interactive story with pictures and sometimes player choice. People called Bandersnatch a kind of visual novel!

I got into them by playing Katawa Shoujo, which is astonishingly well-written and empathetic and funny. Recently I played Don't Forget Our Esports Dream, about two Starcraft pro gamers trying to chase their dreams while facing the realities of their lives. I love how it talks about the soul of esports, and if you ever played Starcraft, this game will bring back all the memories. What visual novels do other people recommend?

Of all video games out there where a good guy beats a bad guy, which bad guy do you personally feel got the shittiest end of the stick? I recently beat Mother 3 and SPOILER Porky's fate seemed kinda fucked, what with him being permanently sealed away, unable to die, for all eternity in the Absolutely Safe Capsule.

I bought a starter pack in 2015, played a few dog fights and races at 25fps, and then forgot about it. I reinstalled it today and was amazed at all the progress. There's some really cool stuff, like having your own expressions mapped onto your characters face with a webcam, or how you can get on your ship, jump to another planet, descend through the atmosphere and land at a camp, get out of your ship, and go inside, all seamlessly with no load screens.

The game looks fantastic, and runs a lot better too (I did upgrade, my pc, but not that much. I have a ryzen 5 2600 and a radeon 570)

Do any of you play? What do you think about the game?

What upcoming game are you looking forward to so much that they're already on your Steam wishlist?

Mine are:

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
Away: The Survival Series
Children of Morta
Morning Star
Noita
Space Haven
What The Golf?

Over 10 years ago the world of mobile gaming was totally different from today's. Still many (if not most) phones could run installable and built in games. Which were your favorite ones?

Let's say the mobile game is retro if released before 2009.

So you're thinking about starting up a game, remembering all the fun times and great experiences you've had with it, and then you realize that if you want to play that game, you have to go through there again. A place so annoying, so difficult, or so boring that it saps your will to play it preemptively, or makes you drop it partway through. For me, I have this issue with the Dark Souls series. Tomb of the Giants for DS1 (Seriously, fuck the whole needing a lantern thing and fuck gravity), Lost Bastille for DS2 (I still struggle with the Ruin Sentinel 3v1), and Undead Settlement for DS3 (Seriosuly, fuck those bee shooting witches. And the swamp afterwards is a spit in the face after). Anyone else have their grievances with their games?

I've found a fair few glitches that I find really interesting, and I'd be pretty interested in seeing some more pixel vomit too. For the ones I'll be listing, they are in old games but are very interesting.

Everyone's seen the MissingNo. glitch, but a far less famous (although in my opinion, more interesting) glitch is the Super Glitch. If you've got an emulator, I'd recommend doing a save state and messing around with it - it's results vary a lot.

A glitch available in quite a few games is arbitrary code execution. It's pretty interesting in general, as people can do loads of things, from loading up homebrew to replacing maps. Most of the time it is rather difficult or time consuming to do, but it's still fascinating to see.

This one technically isn't a glitch at all, but teleporting in SRS-based Tetris games is pretty cool. An actual glitch in Tetris (NES version) is pentrises don't clear all lines, which can make pretty interesting stuff happen.

EDIT: I nearly forgot about The Big Skip in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. I recommend watching a speedrun from AGDQ, it only goes over it very briefly in the tasvideos page.

What made them great? Who would you recommend them to?

Don't feel like you have to limit yourself to 2018 releases either. I'm interested in whatever you played and enjoyed regardless of when it came out.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came out last Friday, and it seems everyone (including me) is enjoying the game. What are your opinions on it? What was missing? (Waluigi aside, unless you actually explain why.)
What are its high points and its low points? I'm hoping we can use this as a sort of guide for people looking to buy, but really, I just want to know your opinions. Type away, my minions! Mwahahahaha!

Now hear me out, alright? This is a very polarizing issue but I do want some experienced opinions on the matter. There are too many bandwagoners spouting regurgitated opinions and it's hard to pick out the genuine impressions

When 76 went on sale, I decided to grab it up. Yes, I know, I'm the cancer rewarding Bethesda for a low hanging cash grab effort and I should be ashamed. However, I really wanted an educated opinion on the matter and I had the money. So, despite the hivemind having made themselves up, and myself being not so keen on the decisions, I buckled down and dived in.

So, while everyone's complaints were focused more towards gameplay, engine, and server side issues (which are completely valid complaints), I found myself blown away, and deeply saddened, by the art direction. The game honestly does look beautiful! I got sick of dilapidated buildings and browns and greens in Fallout 3 and 4, and New Vegas was nice when it wasn't brown sand and olive brush. This game looks gorgeous. They managed to throw a ton of different tiny biomes into one map, that all look interesting and appealing to the eye (once you tweak the .ini to get rid of the god awful Depth of Field). Lots of beautiful forest settings and foreboding mountains.

But overall, my favorite thing about the game is the enemy design. And no, I don't mean the stupid scorched. My favorite thing about Fallout has always been the mutation/radiation angle. I love the possibility for terrifying and disgusting mutated creatures, and the art team absolutely nailed it with creatures like the Wendigo, Snallygaster, Grafton Monster, and Gulper. Just super unsettling and creepy monsters in the most literal sense. I feel the worst for the art team, who did a fantastic job but who were ultimately drowned out by the flak thrown at the gameplay and bugs.

This, of course, does not excuse the horrendous bugs encountered during regular play. Power Armor pieces not actually being repaired yet still using up mats, constant server disconnects, poor scaling system (Did a level 70 player walk into an area first? Well expect every enemy there to be around their level even if you enter!), awful graphics setting options (for the love of god, no more depth of field), no push to talk voice (seriously?), poor economy, exploits, and lack of true endgame, among many others I've missed.

So, does anybody else want to expand?

Comment on both the concept (if it works, if it is pro-consumer) and the ever-increasing sizes of games.
For example, Rainbow Six Siege has been receiving steady updates since its release. I find a lot of them fun, but where does it end? Grand Theft Auto V is another game that is quite bloated at this point. Thoughts?

Just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on the most recent total overhaul of the game. I haven't bought the megacorp DLC yet, but I did play a multiplayer game with a friend that did, and I was pretty impressed. Much as I detest tedious micro, the new planet management system is light years ahead of the old one, and represents a much more realistic pace for colony development- no more outpopulating and outdeveloping your homeworld in twenty years. The main issues I've seen so far are poor balancing between raw materials, market balance, and finished goods, and AI. Since nearly all finished goods require minerals exclusively as an input, you get constant mineral deficits and a market that places more value on minerals than the goods made from them.

As for the market, the demand/pricing mechanism is poorly implemented, so you can exploit it for infinite money. Say a good costs 1EC/ea, you put in a bulk purchase order for 10,000 units. You pay 1EC for each of them, but after the order the sell price is boosted to 2EC. You can then immediately dump everything you just bought, selling each for 2EC. They could (and probably will) fix this by considering the price of each unit individually based on whatever formula they use for calculating market demand.

Finally, the AI completely shits the bed with the new administrative cap mechanic, and ends up decades behind any competently managed player empire in both economy and technology. But then I suppose poor AI is nothing new for Stellaris.

Issues aside though, I feel like with this patch, Stellaris has finally taken its place as a worthy successor to the classic Master of Orion 2.

For me, I value gameplay and originality. For example, let's take Splatoon. It gets a lot of hate because it has "kiddy" graphics. But I like it. It's gameplay is great. It's a really fun shooter, and I don't care if it has cartoonish graphics. As far as originality, it has amazing new ideas, such as the ability to swim through ink laid down by your weapon. What do you all value in a game?

Hey! Despite the seemingly negative name, I want to make this thread so anyone can say pretty much whatever you want about the games you've been playing! Whether it's a review, a brief paragraph or two of thoughts, recommendations, or frustrations, let's try to commiserate or proliferate discussion about what we've been playing!

I myself am a very, very competitive person. Because of this, I play almost exclusively competitive titles that feature a ranked ladder and esports. I find that even on a game that takes care to be competitive, there are still plenty (read: the vast majority) of people that don't seem to care for playing to win, or that don't make any sincere effort to ever improve. There's a guy called Labor on a game I play who plays hundreds and hundreds of ranked matches per season, but plays exactly the same today as he did a year or two ago. He's totally average, stagnant in rank, but keeps playing. Are any of you like Labor? If you are, what do you look for in a game? Even if you aren't, I'm curious. What kinds of games do you play? What types of experiences are you looking for? Why do you look for those experiences?

I was wondering about uncommon game mechanics recently and would like to get some inspiration for a possible next project. :)

I personally enjoy games in which a story is generated organically based on the user's gameplay.

By "lost", I mean games that have been lost to time--games that you would not be able to play now, even if you wanted to.

It could be because you cannot currently get a copy of the game (through legitimate means), or your own copy is not able to run since the tech has moved on. Perhaps the game's servers have been shut down or the multiplayer base has died out. Or, perhaps the game's development took it in a different direction and you're left hankering for an older build.