What are you playing at the moment? - December 2017

alms 2017-12-01 06:52:17 UTC #1

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alms 2017-12-01 06:52:28 UTC #2

Shadoko 2017-12-01 09:10:14 UTC #3

So I said that No Man’s Sky’s galactic map had been coded by monkeys on LSD.
This is actually untrue.
My current theory is that Hell Games took the monkeys, randomly generated a hundred more monkeys, put them in a pocket universe, made this universe collapse, collected the resulting space dust, sent it in a black hole, then recreated a giant monkey, set it on fire, let it explode in a myriad of quantic monkeys who then reassembled in a dozen monkeys who then coded the galactic map.
Seriously, how do you mess up something like that ? Even with a controller it’s a nightmare. It’s not hard to design a 3d map, goddamnit.

Also I still don’t understand the game optimization. Like, yeah, I’ve understood that my weak CPU is bottlenecking me, but I don’t see why I should have a 20 fps doip while LOOKING AT A PLANT. Seriously.

But it’s still great.

Jurple 2017-12-01 11:05:41 UTC #4

Apparently I’m playing Advent of Code again. Let’s see whether I make it to Horacemas this year!

Other than that, Pinball FX3! And just maybe win through Xcom1/vanilla/Classic.

Imaginary_Llamas 2017-12-01 12:31:39 UTC #5

I recently finished the main campaign for Sniper Elite 4. Not much to say other than it’s a great, solid game. Highlight was probably when 5 alert enemies happened to stand in a neat little line and I was somehow able to pull off a quintuple headshot.

I had been progressing through the Tropico 4 campaign, but gave up as it had been crashing fairly often (which resets your game and graphical options to the default every time…) and there was an infuriating bug which would sometimes reset your campaign progress after completing a mission. It was managable when it occurred on the 3rd or 4th mission, as there’s a cheat to instantly win missions that makes it easier to get back to where you were. When it happened on the 16th mission, I just couldn’t be bothered with it.

LexW 2017-12-01 12:40:27 UTC #6

NMS belongs to that sad group of games, a very tiny, single-digit group of games, where the technical issues didn’t prevent me playing (at all), but were so off-putting, that I got rid of it. Specifically, the goddamn clipping.

When I got it (I refunded it later), I started out on a planet that seemed pretty cool, but had these literal hexagonal iron pillars (about 8-12ft tall, maybe 2ft wide - so, big bastards) all over it, in sort of fields. When I start out, in a little valley, this looked cool. As I started travelling across the planet though, I was driven to HP Lovecraft-esque insanity by the way they pop’d in, at like, 25m. These huge iron pillars, which you should have been able to see for miles, and created an amazing landscape, and they just pop in at 25m.

It made me twitch so hard.

I looked around for mods, hacks, ini tweaks, anything which could increase the pop distance/clipping, but nope, that’s hardcoded.

I got the ship working and so on, but I just couldn’t handle all the pop’ing/clip’ing I now saw, ugggggh, the pillars had made it too obvious. So I refunded. Sad but there you are.

Talking of bad games that are strangely enjoyable, I’m playing a bit of Agents of Mayhem, which I bought for reasons I cannot entirely figure out, in the Steam sale. I’m actually finding it pretty fun, and I don’t quite know why. It’s dumb, the difficulty is dodgy (it has a huge number of difficulty levels - that’s awesome - but jumping between like, the 1st one above the default, to the next one above that, it’s like going from just a little too easy to WAY too hard, maybe when I’m leveled up it’ll feel different), it’s a bit repetitive, and the “one character at a time” mechanic makes zero sense, but… I dunno, I’m enjoying it.

I’ve also been playing Prey, which is just great I mean holy shit. Someone said it was the “System Shock sequel they didn’t know they needed” and yep, that’s about right. I had no idea I missed that shit. The only thing that pisses me off is that the game has quite a few mirrors in and we apparently STILL can’t make mirrors work? Like, I will accept a shit framerate in an area with mirrors in guys, seriously, but it’s REALLY immersion-breaking to go up to a huge mirror and see the room blurrily reflected, but none of the objects/characters.

theantmeister 2017-12-02 10:12:52 UTC #7

Yup, still playing Planescape Torment. I’m wondering around Clerk’s Ward now. It just dawned on me how different the game has become. No more having to constantly bash thieves. No more garbage everywhere. No more filthy witches digging through body parts. Lots of exposition and lore now. Wow.

Shadoko 2017-12-02 18:48:14 UTC #8

DAI is actually interesting once you’re out of the crappy first area.
One thing however.
How to say it…

ORLAIS IS CREEPY AS HELL.

Like seriously, what’s up with the Bioshock-like masks ?

Thermal_Ions 2017-12-03 03:00:35 UTC #9

Playing Killing Floor 2 daily with friends - it’s our goto co-op game. Tripwire, of course have already added the achievements for the Christmas update - so nobody has 100% any longer - and you can imagine how “The Internet” likes that.

Also been recruiting and killing colonists in Rimworld, although I’m not above save scumming when I have a complete wipe.

And finally, because I have been appointed a holy quest to beat/annoy Blackice, I’m participating in the RPS Pinball FX3 tournaments currently being run by Bexo Dust - Pinball FX . Come join us.

Shortly going to kick off a co-op playthrough of Sniper Elite 4 and keep telling myself I must play The Sexy Brutale (it anomalously ended up backlogged).

Being on holidays I should have more time to play, but it just hasn’t been working so far.

Blackice 2017-12-03 11:44:15 UTC #10

Looking back, somehow I’ve been above you more often than not, although you didn’t participate last week so that one doesn’t count I guess!

I’ve played a fair bit of Destiny 2 these past few days, playing the main story and the adventures, all solo. Up to level 10 now. I know I won’t be playing this in the “typical” Destiny way - teaming up, playing hundreds or thousands of hours, doing the raid over and over. I’ll be more than happy just finishing the story missions, or maybe getting a character to max level then moving on to something else.

LexW 2017-12-03 12:50:08 UTC #11

I love Orlais, and yes it is indeed “creepy as hell”. I guess that’s just how they roll.

ToomuchFluffy 2017-12-03 15:01:11 UTC #12

I have decided to remove Risen 2 and Maelstrom from my harddrive. I’ll likely come back to the latter at some point though, since, however frustrating the stupid AI and balancing-issues might sometimes be, it’s still quite interesting. And - as opposed to the Ascension - I haven’t devoted a lot of time to the Hai-Genti-faction.

That means that I might focus on Disciples II the coming weeks. Though, considering how slow and simplistic it is, I will have to be careful to not burn myself out on it. I’m estimating about 30-40 hours per campaign… so I might just do one campaign at a time over a longer period of time.

Winged_Nazgul 2017-12-03 15:21:51 UTC #13

So I just finished Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. A brilliant game from start to finish. Hope to see more games like this from Ninja Theory or really anybody else.

vinraith 2017-12-03 18:43:45 UTC #14

Does SE4 allow either mid-mission saves or, at least, have a resume function? A friend and I love SE3 but the missions are so long that it’s nigh impossible to coordinate co-op play for us since you can’t stop in the middle.

Naramsin 2017-12-03 19:57:45 UTC #15

I’m having a ball with Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. The story is meh but open world works perfectly with this game. I play it more like Burnout City Paradise or Test Drive Unlimited, racing openworld games, excpet you are not racing in cars but runing parkour.

LTK 2017-12-03 20:02:01 UTC #16

I’ve finished Grimrock 2 now, and it struck me that it’s different from its predecessor in a couple of ways. The first is that it moved away from brainteaser puzzles that tested your logical and spatial reasoning in favour of having you gather cryptic information and decyphering it. I rarely got stuck on a puzzle I didn’t know how to solve, but frequently I didn’t know what the puzzle was. Give me a room with trapdoors, gates, pressure plates and teleporters and I’ll happily tackle it repeatedly until I figure out the solution, but if the game tells me ‘The silent one has a friend who is more willing to speak. Head towards the sunrise, beyond the gate, to find him,’ I’m likely to alt-tab to the walkthrough the moment I finish reading the sentence.

The stone heads that say these things are sometimes helpful, like when they say that to open the cemetary you need to go to the archives, and sometimes completely useless, like “The Master is the key to all mysteries” or “There are four sides to everything”. Often I can’t tell the difference between the fluff and the clues! I think the only way I’d have progressed through the whole game without a walkthrough is if I’d meticulously documented the location and line of every one of these stone heads, which is not my idea of a good time.

The second is that by the end it goes a bit Serious Sam. I’m not kidding. It’s actually amazing.

There’s one last thing that pisses me off though: the game didn’t warn me that I was about to end the game when I went through a portal after defeating the final boss. Now my last save is before fighting the boss. Hrm, well, the boss wasn’t too difficult at least.

Shadoko 2017-12-03 20:52:32 UTC #17

The Bureau : Xcom declassified might be the dullest game I’ve ever played. It’s not bad. It’s just…painfully average. Deinstalled it after 20 minutes.

Dragon Age Inquisition is a huge game and I’m just starting tyo realize it, 6 hours in (yes, it’s been a productive week-end).
I’ll try to summarize my experience so far.

The negative points :

-It’s a stutterfest. I don’t really know why. The game runs at a rock-solid 60 fps in combat, with a mix of medium-high settings, and yet it skips frames all the time when exploring. My CPU usage never gets really high, so it’s probably bad optimization. Whatever, it’s not too annoying.
-the french VA is very hit and miss. Sometimes it sounds like the voice actors didn’t have a proper script to work with (people yelling their lines while they should be having a quiet, casual conversation for example). Main characters are great though, so that’s ok I guess.
-the combat is average. I feel like Bioware was a bit overreacting after DA2’s messy combat system with the implementation of the tactical view mode. It’s quite a mess to use, especially because of the very close zoom and the arrows used for camera movement instead of the mouse. Origins had a great camera system, why not keep it that way ?
-Mages are…a bit dull, maybe ? Like, so far I only seem to have attack spells, with the odd crowd control and evasion stuff. That’s a bit empty.
-Speaking of Origins, there’s lot of Origins bullshit coming back, like Revenants that one-shot you, mighty bears that can wipe your party…

All the rest is pretty great so far.

-The game looks great. Maybe it’s a side-effect of years spent playing in 720p at 30 fps, but DAI looks truly great, even in medium-high. At the same time, there’s something a bit off…I guess it’s the Frostbite engine. It looks very sharp and clean, which is great for the modern military setting of Battlefield but feels a bit weird in Dragon Age. Character faces are amazing though, yes, even my own character looks great.
-The writing has its moments. In fact ity’s weird. DAI is akin to the Dragon Age Universe as a whole. On the one hand, it’s very classical high fantasy, with some very dumb stuff and at the same time there’s what I’m obliged to call a Bioware twist to this setting. Simply put, when the writing is great, it’s truly great. Stuff like the Qun for example is great, or even the Chantry - yes, it’s technically a gender-bent Christian Church but that’s precisely why it’s awesome.
What I said works for the overral world and for the story as well.
-It’s interesting how the game seems to follow the good old Bioware plot (you’re the chosen one, you become part of an elite organisation and oh, the world is ending by the way) but with a major twist : you are the one in charge of said organisation.
That is where, IMO, the game shines. You’re not the lone hero anymore. I know it’s mostly set dressing and it doesn’t fundamently changes the mechanics of the game but DAI really manages to make you feel like you have an entire organisation behind you. You interact with soldiers and agents of the Inquisition, you talk strategy and politics with your advisors…yes, you’re still the center of it all, but there’s the feeling that other things are happening around you and you’re not the only one working. In a way, this is exactly what ME3 would have wanted to be, but never managed to achieve.
-Politics. They’re great. Seriously, the discussions before missions in the war room are the most interesting part of most missions. Again, the game nails the feeling that you’re in charge, and that you’re interfering with pre-existing political situations all around the world, that you have to make do with what’s already there.
-Thrill. Yes, that may sound stupid, but I started the game relatively blasé - the beginning follows very closely the good old Bioware plot and it was boring. But now that I’ve started to truly interfere with the mess between the mages and the templars things are suddenly becoming truly interesting. Important things are at stake. And it’s the very first time for quite long now that I’ve been genuinely thrilled when starting a mission in an RPG.
-Iron Bull and everything related to him. Like, this guy is awesome.

TheDreamlord 2017-12-03 21:23:14 UTC #18

I seem to be caught in a very happy loop of three games.

Nioh’s fighting system is superb. Probably better than Dark Souls’ one but much more complicated and demanding, as well. I think I am about 20% in or so. I am not a big fan of the mission based gameplay. The world has no (inter)connectivity. The levels themselves are decent, with loops and shortcuts, but do not give a sense of a complete world. DS is miles ahead in that respect. Also, the bosses so far have been average. Since the game is rather long and the bosses very very difficult, I have so far chosen to prepare the boss levels for a boss run and then summon another player to help me beat the boss. Which is quite nice in a sense. I love the Japanese mythology, there is a lot of loot (too much I think) and in general the game is fun. What I do not like at all, is the sub missions that take place in the same level you just finished. That’s just cheap.

Ghost Recon Wildlands has sucked me into its gameplay loop and I foresee playing this game for a long time. It is just so much fun, the shooting is very very decent (love the snipping), there is plenty of gameplay quirks to get involved in and master, interesting upgrade path and a magnificent world to play all this in. I think this is one of the best worlds I have ever seen in a game. It is huge, densely populated, at least half the buildings have interiors (take notes GTA), single player with AI is actually fun and the co-op is brilliant (thanks Chaz!). First time I co-oped in a game for a decade I think. I just love the thdup sound every time I snipe someone!

And I just started Assassin’s Creed Origins. I am not sure what to make of it yet, but the world is gorgeous and, well, it’s Egypt. So far it plays well, too. I am very much looking forward to exploring catacombs and the pyramids!

I think between them and some racing, I will be very content for a few months.

Imaginary_Llamas 2017-12-03 21:49:05 UTC #19

I was playing a bit of the Disciples series a little while ago - enjoyable, but as you say it is rather slow. For me it was definitely a ‘one more turn’ game which I would play for rather long bouts. I ended up cheating through the last mission of the Disciples I Empire campaign, as the map layout allowed the enemy AI to conquer 2/3rds of the map before you could even get to them. They piled up tens of leaders at the main chokepoint, and once you crossed that threshold they all spilled out into your lands. That would have been tedious enough, but the AI would also cripple/kill your own leaders by constantly casting top-tier damage spells. It would have taken hours upon repetitive hours to win that, so I just cheated through it.

Sarfrin 2017-12-03 22:28:37 UTC #20

Restarted Soma now that safe mode is here. I’m not that far in, but it’s an amazing environment to explore. Still somewhat scary in safe mode, so I think they’ve done a good job of it.