I'll start: the party knows my character is a veteran of the war between the elves and the humans, but they don't know that she was duped into helping develop a type of biological warfare and becoming an accessory to war crimes.

What are you hiding?

I’ve been playing Bayonetta on and off for a bit of time, and now that I’m near the end of it (just started Requiem), the genre kinda grew on me, which surprised me quite a bit.

I see loads of games being thrown in the same bag:

• Bayonetta
• Devil May Cry
• Darksiders
• Ninja Gaiden
• No More Heroes
• God of War
• several Warriors/Musou games
• etc. etc.

So I was wondering what makes any specific game in the general genre distinct and special, and wanted to discuss in this thread.

My experience with this genre is limited as the Switch is my first ever console, but I will share what little experience I have in a comment.

P.S. I hope this thread will be a bit more lively than my previous try with the Different types of 3D platformers thread.

I asked in another thread about the best games you played this year, which is a question that tends to surface highly polished and often highly familiar gaming experiences.

This thread isn't about "best" but about the most interesting -- games that did something different or odd or tried something new. They didn't have to necessarily succeed at that, and they can be very rough around the edges or even outright bad -- what matters is that they went out of their way to offer something very much their own.

Post in this thread if you've got a game you want to play, and you're looking for others to play with. Video games, tabletop games, friend codes, gamer tags, you name it. :)

EDIT: There is an Unofficial Discord server with a #games channel. It may be easier to organize on there, and the link's posted a handful of times in this thread, so I'm just gonna... stick it here, I guess? https://discord.gg/PcP8qHS

As anyone who's spent any amount of time on any gaming forum would know, Cyberpunk 2077 was easily the most hyped game in the past year, if not the past few. Expectations were impossibly large: fanatics expected the immersiveness of Red Dead Redemption 2, the map detail of GTA V, and the density of a Yakuza game.

Now that Cyberpunk 2077 has been available to the public for ~1 day, what are your impressions? Does it live up to the hype? Do the bugs detract too greatly from the experience? Is it revolutionary in some sense; or is it the inevitable cumulation of open world RPGs, excellent but ultimately derivative?

For perspective, would you consider it a personal contender for game of the year?

I know that everybody is busy playing Cyberpunk 2077, but if anyone is interested in arena FPSs, the QPL Season 2 Finals is taking place later today.

This is the final day, the last players remaining are all the big names of the North American and European regions: Rapha vs. RAISY, vengeuR vs. k1llsen, and in the lower bracket cYpheR and BaSe.

The live matches begin at 14:00 GMT and are expected to last late into the evening.

Twitch stream
Liquipedia link
Plusforward link

For worldwide launch times, see:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoVEcJCW8AIXqLR?format=jpg&name=large

7PM on the 9th for me. Can't wait!

Also, heads up, there is supposedly a 43GB day 1 patch coming, at least for consoles but possibly PC too.

p.s. If you try to launch the preload early on GOG. :P

The first time I saw beat saber was this gameplay video in 2018 and I immediately fell in love with it. I adored the concept and wanted to play it so badly.

There's a VR arcade close to my place, where I actually played Beat Saber for ~30 mins last year. Lots of fun! And last week, I bought and received an Oculus Quest 2 and finally played it by myself.

First of all, god damn that is a good game. It's perfect at making you feel like you're naturally good at it, too. Or maybe I actually am. With only ~4 hours of played time I'm doing hard or expert on most new songs with faster song mode (+20% song speed). Which has this weird effect of making me feel like that's the natural pacing of the song… super, super weird when they are ones I already know, as now the version I know feels slowed down.

The campaign felt short and a bit too easy, with one exception (1-hand expert $100 bills with max 4 misses… spent 2 days on that. Looks like I'm not the only one having problems with it). Though it's been frustrating in places; I find the whole "you need to make at least x mistakes to win this level" pretty ridiculous. Min/max movement is an interesting mechanic but I'm not fond of the execution.

I have some frustrations with the game. No replays I can save to show off the most awesome combos. Hit detection feels way off on some levels. I haven't tried online mode yet, pretty excited about it.

But god daaaaamn it's an awesome game. I'm finally playing something again! I haven't really played any video games since … shit, almost two years. And the workout you get is fantastic. I am finally getting a handle on my lockdown atrophy.

Ben Brode once said: "Make your games super easy to get into. The longer it takes me to get into your gameplay, the less interested I will be in playing your game. Except for Beat Saber: I will jump through any hoop just to play that."

And that brings me to the Oculus Quest 2. I was a 2020 original Oculus Rift kickstarter backer. I actually tried the first dev kit. A pretty awesome and unique feeling, but all that for shitty resolution, motion sickness and 4 cables hanging off your head.

Well, it's all gone. Integrated audio, fully wireless, good resolution, no cables, no base station, no PC required. And the features just blow my mind. IR cameras to detect objects around you, the guardian mode with its virtual barriers, the pass-through mode which lets you see outside the oculus without removing it (killer feature). Casting support so it's easy to show your gameplay to friends in the same room. Oh and hand detection?! This is some Star Trek shit.

I recall my reactions to touching and playing with the first iPhone: "Wow, this is game-changing." - Such is my reaction to the Oculus Quest 2. VR is now a console that is, frankly, cheaper and less intimidating than owning a playstation-type console or some such (after all, you need a TV for those). It's on the same level as the Nintendo Switch. I know a lot of people who are greatly intimidated by VR and this removes almost everything scary about it.

Incremental progress is weird; sometimes you stop following the various upgrades in a field and suddenly you catch up and it's mind-blowing.

The problem with the Quest 2 is still the lack of true killer games. Right now, I bought a $400 Beat Saber game… though, it's still worth it. Like Ben said: any hoop.

(I also got The Room VR because I'm a sucker for these kinds of games and it came highly recommended)