What are you playing at the moment?

[Shadoko]

I just saw a new Stellaris expansion being announced, and I’m eagerly awaiting the responses from our estmd collgs.

I have popcorn and everything, so feel free

Big “eh, let’s see” from me.

Federations looks…cool? I guess? Giving pacifist/cooperative players more tools to have fun is always a step in the right direction, even though it also looks like Paradox thought “hey what kind of scifi trope was lacking in Stellaris? Oh yeah, the federation from Starship troopers and the Trade Federation from Star Wars!” Jokes aside, we’ll see if the AI can use that accordingly and whether or not the galaxy-wide sanctions and stuff will be an actual game-changing perk or just yet another empire-wide effect that doesn’t matter (see : virtually all empire-wide effects). I’m not big on Federations having RPG-like “levels” with experience that accumulates over time, feels like a very artificial and extremely gamey way of representing stuff like common legislation and it also further reinforces the Stellaris thing of “bigger is always better, longer is always better, nothing can “degrow” so to speak”.

Lithoids are…a thing, I guess.

[arathain]

Don’t remember what the MG is called. Might be Blast Furnace from the Black Armory? I’ll check later. Edit: nope, I guess Blast Furnace is a pulse rifle, so it can’t be that one.

I find a lot of the same stuff confusing, honestly. I played some on release, and some on Forsaken, but I wasn’t around for the introduction of most of the activities, an figuring out what they’re for has been an undertaking. Bounties, which were present before, seem more important, since they seem to get you XP for the season pass as well as challenges for leveling up.

Leveling is also pretty weird. I mean, I get wanting to make the number go up, but since enemies only get weaker to a point (which is different for each activity) and it doesn’t actually gate off all that much by level, you quickly hit a point where all it really does is make you give up guns you like. It means a lot if you want to raid, but I don’t.

The endgame seems to be unlocking the rarer guns, then trying to grind for the perfect versions of your favourite guns, which I only really enjoy up to a point. That’s OK, I can duck out for another year when I’m done.

For now I’m enjoying some of the activities quite a bit. I like the Forge fights, mostly for that wonderful ‘BONG!’ noise you get when you hurl a battery at the forge. You can throw passes to other players, I discovered.

[LTK]

I’ve come to discover that Thronebreaker’s difficulty curve resembles a hyperbola. In the first three acts, battles are moderately challenging, but if you keep investing in your army and upgrading cards you can keep pace with the strength of the enemies quite easily.

In act four, Nilfgaard units become a lot tougher, with piles and piles of armor and snowballing health buffs, so you need to have a really solid deck to make a dent in that, but then the difficulty lies in executing a good combo and this is not that much more difficult to do.

Now I’m facing the final battle of act four and this one is officially fucking wack. The story is that you’re besieging an enemy force that has barricaded itself into a tower, but if the enemy’s Gwent deck is to be believed, I’m actually fighting their whole goddamn army! Not only does a new enemy unit replace every one I kill, but the opponent also gets extra card draw and a deck so large it might as well be infinite. I have to wonder if there was some sort of miscommunication, if the designers were like “hey this is supposed to be your desparate last stand” because there’s zero sense of this actually representing the battle the story describes.

I need to retool my entire deck to stand a chance in this fight (something which I haven’t had to do in the entire game) and the last checkpoint where I can do that is before the preceding battle, which is just adding salt to the wound. Ugh. If you’d told me that putting the difficulty on Hard only applied for the final battle I’d have believed you.

[Similar]

Don’t remember what the MG is called. Might be Blast Furnace from the Black Armory? I’ll check later. Edit: nope, I guess Blast Furnace is a pulse rifle, so it can’t be that one.

Hammerhead is from Black Armory too. It was the first AB weapon I got, but I think you get it in a different way than the other weapons.
From what I’ve read it hits harder than the other MGs. Fires more slowly too, but that means it’s almost completely stable at full auto (and it’s so accurate I sometimes use it for long range single shots if I don’t have a scout or sniper equipped).

Leveling is also pretty weird. I mean, I get wanting to make the number go up, but since enemies only get weaker to a point (which is different for each activity) and it doesn’t actually gate off all that much by level, you quickly hit a point where all it really does is make you give up guns you like. It means a lot if you want to raid, but I don’t.

yeah. My Warlock is only 919, but I seem to already have hit a point where drops, even from stuff like highest tier Escalation Protocol or Vex Invasion, is usually only one point better than what I have. Maybe two points if I get really lucky. So getting to 950 by one point at a time seems like it’s going to take forever (and this is with the season pass power buff, even). Not that I’m going to raid or such either, but I guess I automatically want to get to 950. Just something to aim for.

The endgame seems to be unlocking the rarer guns, then trying to grind for the perfect versions of your favourite guns, which I only really enjoy up to a point. That’s OK, I can duck out for another year when I’m done.

At least with the Black Armory, you can aim for good rolls while working on getting the armor at the same time. That helps a little.

For now I’m enjoying some of the activities quite a bit. I like the Forge fights, mostly for that wonderful ‘BONG!’ noise you get when you hurl a battery at the forge. You can throw passes to other players, I discovered.

hehe. yeah, I like the sound too. And I guess the passes explain why I’ve sometimes suddenly had a battery in my hands. That has confused me.
The EDZ forge is terrible, though.You just get swarmed from all sides while 48 of the Fallen spheres hit you too. Some of the others are pretty okay, though. Especially the Vex one.

[Viral_Frog]

I’m also kinda intrigued by Planetside 2, although I gather it’s much more team-based and I’m not sure how much I’d be able to compete or run around. I do like the idea of loads of people and vehicles though.

I spent all of 10 hours in Planetside 2 getting shot from who knows where and never being able to find any fights near where I respawned. Every fight I found after spending far too long wandering around, I was dead nearly instantly and had no idea what hit me.

[Shadoko]

getting shot from who knows where and never being able to find any fights near where I respawned. Every fight I found after spending far too long wandering around, I was dead nearly instantly and had no idea what hit me.

Sounds like an accurate depiction of modern warfare, oddly enough.

[LTK]

Re: Thronebreaker, I finally managed to finish that battle by stealing a Nilfgaardian unit that buffs adjacent units and duplicating it, then putting them all next to each other so I could outpace the 10-point buff that the enemy leader gives to his units each turn even while doing nothing. I had to, because the enemy has a ridiculous amount of card advantage and I inevitably have to pass my turn and wait for him to play out his hand, hoping that I snowball faster than he does. I still would have been screwed if he had drawn one of his 97-point (!!!) units after I passed but fortunately that didn’t happen.

For all the grief, I’m still happy I finished it. The story is a great fleshing-out of the Witcher world - sensationalized, but not excessively so - and it even does the ‘choosing between two evils’ thing better than I expected. Almost always you’re presented with a binary choice and you have to weigh the options for yourself, with your advisors adding their two cents as well. After you’ve made your choice, Meve explains her reasoning behind the decision in a way that no choice feels out-of-character and you always feel like you picked the right option.

I’d recommend it to any Witcher fan for the story and how it presents it. Even if you’ve no love for Gwent, the easiest difficulty just lets you skip the card battles, and failure is not an option in those so you’re not missing out on anything.

[Similar]

hm. Aside from the inconcievably poor starter experience of Destiny 2, it doesn’t exactly help that there’s quite a few bugs, so you don’t know if your bounties magically disappear because of something you don’t know or because of bugs.
And known quest breaking bugs don’t get fixed after three weeks…

And I needed a particular Strike for the recent Banshee quest and, unlike the fifteen or so strikes I’ve done so far, it’s suddenly power 950 (I tried to solo a 850 Strike and had to give up), with three modifiers, and lasers that target you whenever you stop for half a second. Just totally impossible and very unfun. And there’s no way to choose a version suited to your power level, nor any kind of explanation for why it’s so much higher all of a sudden.

I’m starting to get the impression there’s some very competent people working on the basics of the game, and all the others, including management, are on crack. Which is a shame because with competent management, they could have something extremely special.

I guess I’ve been spoiled by Warframe. Compared to other MMOs, DE are insanely responsive and transparent. Pretty tragic that’s exceptional these days.

[Shadoko]

Ok so the last DLC mission for Ace Combat 7 is absolutely insane. It’s a bombastic run of sheer aircraft-powered badassness and stupidity that manages to be incredibly dumb, unashamedly awesome and fun at the same moment.
It has, in no particular order :

• The japanese version of Red October
• A submarine carrier with railguns firing nukes because why the hell not
• One of the best-designed ground attack missions in Ace Combat, period.
• An AI roasting a main character
• An actually legit boss fight, with your wingman saving your ass with actual dogfight tactics (I’m shocked!)
• Memes. Oh, so many memes.

It’s very fucking weird. These DLC are weird. They’re Ace Combat, and great Ace Combat, but they’re also incredibly self-conscious.

[Det.Bullock]

Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PC)
Lots of pretty colors and a relaxed difficulty curve.
I had to activate the active camera in the options otherwise I had to keep my finger on the left trigger 90% of the time.
It’s also really well polished, the only glitch I’ve ran into was with an egg thief that became invulnerable under certain circumstances but it reset everytime I walked far enough so all good.
It’s incredible how pretty it is, it could easily be at the very least a TV feature with how it looks and it’s real time 3D graphics.

Ok so the last DLC mission for Ace Combat 7 is absolutely insane. It’s a bombastic run of sheer aircraft-powered badassness and stupidity that manages to be incredibly dumb, unashamedly awesome and fun at the same moment.
It has, in no particular order :

• The japanese version of Red October
• A submarine carrier with railguns firing nukes because why the hell not
• One of the best-designed ground attack missions in Ace Combat, period.
• An AI roasting a main character
• An actually legit boss fight, with your wingman saving your ass with actual dogfight tactics (I’m shocked!)
• Memes. Oh, so many memes.

It’s very fucking weird. These DLC are weird. They’re Ace Combat, and great Ace Combat, but they’re also incredibly self-conscious.

OK, now I might just get the season’s pass once it goes on sale.

[Internet]

After being home sick, I’ve played Dead State for hours upon hours. I came in expecting a mediocre rpg, what I got was an incredibly uneven one with more examples of solid talent than shortcomings. The writing is solid and realistic. The stronghold is incredibly meaningful. The game is full of characters and they have lots of quests, personalities and issues. The order you get them in (or don’t, because they can die) makes the storytelling almost emergent. There’s tons of little touches: text message vignettes you find on zombies; a remembrance wall that characters put letters to dead loved ones on; factions that are small but recognizably based on personality. The noise system of attracting zombies works and works well. The animations are varied enough and complex enough to create believable tension.

But… It’s a good game that definitely overstays its welcome. I’m on day 34/100 and already have my characters decked out in the second best tier of armor. We have all base upgrades but one. I’ve killed the mid-tier enemies, and started on the upper tier ones. Food is stockpiled and actually starting to spoil. There aren’t enough jobs for everyone. It’s partially my fault for not letting people die, but…

Systematically, the game makes a ton of mistakes. Choosing the torque engine was mistake number 1. Maybe at the time Torque and Unity looked like competitors, but a game that looks like NWN 1 should not be freezing a 2017 computer. The second problem is the decision to use a turn-based system. I don’t think turn-based works as well when you have big battles with lots of mobs. The third is armor and loot distribution. The skill that makes armor is rare, and your need for armor will scale faster than the ability to make it. Therefore, the only way to get better weapons and armor is killing mobs who have and use both. See the small problem there? If it weren’t for the throw a grenade in the room which attracts a mob of zombies trick, I wouldn’t have been able to beat several tough fights. And the biggest mistake of all is requiring your character to go on every mission. You can build your character at the beginning, and this makes a big difference. One problem: your character is going to spend 85% of the game in combat, and the rest of it using dialogue skills. If you pick a character like a scientist, or machinist, you will literally be behind for the entire game.

All in all, it plays like a game made by a skilled writer and a skilled graphic designer on a relatively small budget, with hackish programming and ill-conceived game design that has been iterated to the best point it can be. I’ve enjoyed playing it, but I’m going to sleep until the ending.

[ToomuchFluffy]

I have been meandering around for the last one or two weeks. I started on Universe at War, but didn’t have the DVD with me for a while, so I didn’t get far with it. What I have played of the campaign missions didn’t seem designed well and even though I kind of like the basic story setup for the factions - though it’s mostly from the manual -, the story as narrated in the campaign by the faction heroes unfortunately just seems boring. So I turned to Skirmish-mode and played some with the Novus (robots) against the Hierarchy (huge Walkers). The idea of Novus-infantry being able to speed along their stealthed power lines is quite cool and one of the main things that makes the faction feel unique. So far, I have mostly fared badly against the Medium Hierarchy AI. Neither infantry nor aircraft seem to work against them, but I have had some success with Amplifiers (tank with laser that gets stronger). I at least want to give the other factions a try before I decide what I really think about UaW, but at the moment I don’t find it to be a convincing take on the RTS-formula.

Other than that I have been playing through Defense Grid 2 again. Just one or two maps from time to time.

And aside from still playing E.Y.E. (attempting a melee-character at the moment), I have also created my first Fallout 2-character. I have made it through the trials, but I am still in Arroyo for the time being. My character is female and has Charisma and Intelligence at 9, Agility at 8 and I believe Endurance is at 6 or 7. My perks are “Gifted” (surprise surprise) and “Good Natured” and I have tagged “Small Guns”, “Speech” and (unusual for me) “Sneak”. I think I might later also go for “Lockpicking”. I’m not yet sure when I will get back to it. I didn’t really expect to still be playing E.Y.E. at this point

[Shadoko]

OK, now I might just get the season’s pass once it goes on sale.

The planes in the season pass aren’t exceptional really (ok so the Falken is just a very OP superplane with silly manoeuverability and a gimmicky weapon, the Raven is a bigger Falken with even more gimmicky weapons and the Morgan is just pure fanservice). The real meat are the missions - with the caveat that they’re just so much better than base game missions in terms of ambience, dialogue and sheer fun that they might cast the base AC7 game in a bad light once you’ve played them. If you’re not interested in the planes I’d advise against taking the Season Pass (IIRC it’s around 25 euros, the three missions are 15 euros in total, 5 euros each, so it would require the season pass to get quite a steep dsicount so early in the game’s life).

[Similar]

All in all, it plays like a game made by a skilled writer and a skilled graphic designer on a relatively small budget, with hackish programming and ill-conceived game design that has been iterated to the best point it can be.

I followed its development and I think you’re right. I definitely got the impression they hit a point where they knew it wasn’t turning out like they had thought, but they didn’t really know how to fix it (and, most likely, also didn’t have the money to keep working on it). The lukewarm reception must have been very discouraging too, if probably not too surprising.

I somehow never got around to playing it, but it sounds like it’s worth a try.

[Internet]

All in all, it plays like a game made by a skilled writer and a skilled graphic designer on a relatively small budget, with hackish programming and ill-conceived game design that has been iterated to the best point it can be.

I followed its development and I think you’re right. I definitely got the impression they hit a point where they knew it wasn’t turning out like they had thought, but they didn’t really know how to fix it (and, most likely, also didn’t have the money to keep working on it). The lukewarm reception must have been very discouraging too, if probably not too surprising.

I somehow never got around to playing it, but it sounds like it’s worth a try.

It really is. I was expecting a complete shitshow of a game, and it’s definitely not that.

[BillButNotBen]

Are you playing the updated/rebalanced version, whatever that was called?

[Imaginary_Llamas]

Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PC)
Lots of pretty colors and a relaxed difficulty curve.
I had to activate the active camera in the options otherwise I had to keep my finger on the left trigger 90% of the time.
It’s also really well polished, the only glitch I’ve ran into was with an egg thief that became invulnerable under certain circumstances but it reset everytime I walked far enough so all good.

I’ve been enjoying Spyro as well - much like Crash Bandicoot, I’ve had a vague interest in playing it for a number of years so a remaster on PC was a perfect opportunity to give it a go. However, the difficulty in the first game is so relaxed it only holds my interest for a level or two at a time. I hope the next two games have at least a little more challenge.

[TheDreamlord]

Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PC)

I am liking it as well. Playing a world at a time, as it it repetitive and gets boring quite fast, but it is otherwise very cute and colorful. I am surprised at how pretty it looks. What I object to though is the 40 gig of space it requires… it boggles the mind.

[Det.Bullock]

Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PC)

I am liking it as well. Playing a world at a time, as it it repetitive and gets boring quite fast, but it is otherwise very cute and colorful. I am surprised at how pretty it looks. What I object to though is the 40 gig of space it requires… it boggles the mind.

I don’t think that’s excessive. Until now every dragon I’ve freed is a different model and I’m at the third world and almost everyone had a specific voice-acted line of dialogue when freed. If this kind of production values have been put in all three games I’m not surprised it weighs that much.

I’ve been enjoying Spyro as well - much like Crash Bandicoot, I’ve had a vague interest in playing it for a number of years so a remaster on PC was a perfect opportunity to give it a go. However, the difficulty in the first game is so relaxed it only holds my interest for a level or two at a time. I hope the next two games have at least a little more challenge.

Personally I don’t mind at all.
I never quite got the appeal of Crash even when I was little (mostly from adverts on Disney comics, I never had a Playstation either), I think I get him even less now and the straight platforming rather than the more relaxed collect-aton gameplay of Spyro is not my cup of tea.

[Sarfrin]

Still Far Cry Primal. Being a caveman bashing things for survival based rewards is a surprisingly satisfying antidote to watching cavemen bashing democracy for another bottle of claret and a smug sense of satisfaction at their own superiority.I’d definitely pay for a DLC that put Rees Mogg and Johnson out there for you to hunt and rid the world of before they had a chance to ruin society in the future.