whatchu playing now

Same. I don't get the anime aesthetic at all.

I’m having a ton of fun with Sea of Thieves lately. Got dinged on release for being a sandbox with not a lot to do in it, but apparently they’ve been heavily building it out since. Got into it through some friends recently. Definitely requires other people for it to be properly fun, great hangout game with buds, but I’ve taken to just firing it up with a squad of randoms and it’s been a blast. Seriously never know what kinda crazy shit will happen.

There’s a real primal joy in sailing through the open sea, hearing all the sounds that go with it, angling sails, getting up in the crow’s nest and looking around for opportunities or a menacing silhouette off in the distance.

The cooperation aspect of running a full boat is truly great with a good group. Particularly when things get hairy.

(ys) 8 ended up being my favorite jrpg this generation so i'm excited for that

ys 8 rules, the music is amazing

it bangs and the lost world setting is so perfect for that type of game

i finally replaced my joy-cons. they succumbed to the left analog stick hell that ruins so many of joy-cons, it seems. i kept it going for months with tweezers and computer air cleaner, but by the end i couldn't play with it longer than 30 seconds without having to fix it.

i highly recommend the PENJOY C25 off-brand joy-cons. they're $38 new, and they feel much larger and better in my hand than the real deal.

as a result of this i've been playing switch for the first time in months, and unexpectedly lost much of my afternoon to fucking donkey kong country, which is now one of the free SNES games (probably has been for a while). also, rygar sucks imo

my daughter calls DKC "monkeys" and demands to watch me play it frequently. i make good use of the rewind and save states.

i think dkc is pretty satisfying if you only use save states at the start and checkpoint of levels, the second half of each level is usually a nice escalating gauntlet that feels good when you nail it

the secret sauce of dkc is its difficulty curve, both on a broad level throughout the game and sometimes even within levels, like ciderpress mentions

GTA3 for days...

nice. i jumped back into Vice City a couple of weeks back on the ps2. control issues aside it's still a lot of fun.

finished GTA 3 last night, onto Vice City (replaying...)

what are you playing them on?

My phone

ewwww.

you must have a large phone! my dumb thumb would cover up half of the screen on mine.

did they change the gameplay at all for the phone versions, or is it just a straight port?

iPhone 11
Admittedly it would be impossible on a first gen SE but anything other than that should be manageable. Controls are on the far right / left, so not much of an issue.
Straight port except they added auto aim for the shooting which makes things a lot easier.

probably one of the better platforms to play it on tbf. ps2 is hard to get good visual on modern tvs. PC versions just suck with bugs on modern os platforms (admittedly can be patched if you quit your job and spend the rest of your life working on)

may i suggest a used PS3? i believe it's backwards compatible with ps1 and 2 out of the box (i know for sure that it is on a jailbroken one)

jailbreaking a spare PS4 seems like an idea

PS4 wouldn't work for that, has to be 3

Convenience is the thing for me, i can fire it up at random times during the day and take care of some in game bidness

there are jailbroken ps4s, yes? is the deal that it won't boot without an internet connection?

oh is there a working ps2 emulator for ps4? i wouldn't think it'd be powerful enough to run one

the game was ported to PS3 and PS4 digitally

though i don't know what the differences are; do the PC versions not work with modern systems?

I am enjoying my glass cannon Prismatic Bolt embermage in Torchlight 2. Although the random effects from Wand Chaos are so much fun I'm tempted to put a bunch of points in there.

kinda want to play the new vanillaware game even though ive been shrugging off all the other new releases this year until later

I beat both Control DLCs and am considering working on the time trial Expeditions

fwiw doing some of the side missions, specifically the janitorial tasks, is highly recommended. absolutely crazy weapon mods in the AWE expansion

I need to get to those DLCs. The Expeditions seemed impossibly hard to me, but maybe with it'll be easier with the rewards you get from the DLC

looked at my xbox (for pc) game pass (they really need to not name this xbox it's very confusing) for the first time in a while after finishing a playthrough of state of decay 2 and realized a bunch of stuff i wanted to play or at least try was available. so i have a bunch of games to play now!

wasteland 3 - played about a half hour last night, seems like it could be interesting but hoo boy either my computer is finally unable to run current stuff and it defaulted to ugly settings, or it's just ugly
crusader kings iii - wanted to try it but didn't feel like buying a new game... then i saw it was on game pass! it's complicated and deep but the tutorial does a surprisingly good job of getting you on board. just wish it had some more filters and taught you a couple more things. largely great tho. i've heard ppl say "play it like the sims" and tbh that's kinda the vibe i am going for!
microsoft flight sim - i started installing this but it's a big one, and my computer will for sure chug w/ it, will report back though
spiritfarer - yet to boot this as well but looking fwd to it.
state of decay 2 - spent plenty of time with this now, riyl state of decay 1 i guess! i had fun w/ it but it is very much the same idea -- fairly repetitive and story-light but fun community-building mechanics and longer term survival stuff. story ending model kind of unsatisfying but what can ya do. it also has some more narrative dlc tho which i wanna go back and play!

what else have i been playing... since i have pretty much made this an everything post at this point why stop!

still playing two gacha games (final fantasy war of the visions, which has been EXTREMELY geneous gachawise to me personally; and fate grand order, which is dumb but im sucked in still) on my phone. i can never ethically recommend these games to anyone but if you are playing ffbe wotv please let me join your guild mine is bad

on steam...
endless space 2 - some friends picked this up so we are playing it online (and i am playing it single player a bit to try and remember how it works) and tbh it's better than i remember. really good game. the UI in this game is off the charts, best in class, all people making any kind of strategy game should be required to play this if they design UIs. the game is also good and every faction is so weird and different it's really like 10 different games with one common goal.
use your words - kinda like jackbox, only one game but great fun (and if you like me have played every jackbox to death it's nice to mix it up once in a while).
jackbox 6 - because yeah it's good

can't remember if i am playing anything on ps4 right now... i know i just got a grip of games on sale. played a bit of battlefield 1 cos my friend wanted to play it online, might go back. i played some fall guys then i watched ppl online get good at it and figured "yeah i probably don't need to play this anymore." i picked up some game called the caligula effect because it looked like persona lol. i have heard the battle system is good but the rest is not so much. depending on how long it's been since i posted in this thread i also played the hell out of hitman 2 and a bunch of COD for the first time since... COD 4 for xbox?

that's probably everything hey everyone long time no post
i also installed FFVII (not the remake, not sure i'll ever play it again just thought it was cool that it's there and i have a new hard drive so space no longer at a premium), play golf with friends (minigolf game made by team17 so i thought it'd be cool. played it a bit. it's fine, but im not clamoring to play it again),

currently eyeing this thps 1&2 remake

installed it last night and played a couple levels. feels exactly how i remember the PS1 games feeling, except with manuals and reverts added. also the soundtrack doesn't restart a song or skip to a new one if you restart a run which is a nice touch that i don't remember from the OG.

i don't know what it would feel like to play w/out the super strong nostalgia factor. probably pretty good.

looking forward to playing more.

crusader kings iii - wanted to try it but didn't feel like buying a new game... then i saw it was on game pass! it's complicated and deep but the tutorial does a surprisingly good job of getting you on board. just wish it had some more filters and taught you a couple more things. largely great tho. i've heard ppl say "play it like the sims" and tbh that's kinda the vibe i am going for!

also been playing this! predictably, it's great, but yeah it's a fucking complicated game, sometimes needlessly so. it lets you do so many things, but it also gives you the freedom to do something completely pointless or damaging to yourself. for instance, i wanted to replace the crappy bishop on my council, but unlike the rest of my council, i can't change them out because i guess the catholic church wants to do it instead. so i spent like 2 years cooking up a plot to kill him instead. finally, i got him to drink the poison, and no one found me out. but before i could replace him on the council with my preferred learning/religious guy (a skill level of 23!), somehow this new church-endorsed dude shows up at the door and is like "HI I'M ON YOUR COUNCIL NOW!". the game was paused! no time had passed since the murder! how did the catholic church act on this so quickly in the year 1074?? anyway, lol crusader kings, it's great. they should change the name though, it's embarrassing

spiritfarer - yet to boot this as well but looking fwd to it.
i found this to feel unfinished, somehow. i'm only about an hour and a half in, i'm sure a bunch more stuff will open up. but i feel like i've already been through several cycles of the core mechanic - going to a new area, finding someone/something to add to your boat, going to the next area - and there isn't much pleasure there. i need to revisit

currently eyeing this thps 1&2 remake

same. i guess there's no cross-platform multiplayer, though. that sucks

oh yeah i definitely have strong nostalgia for the first 3 games xp

i wonder how the online multiplayer will be - guessing barebones score runs

might get it, but i'll probably be occupied with Avengers for a while, so it's tempting to wait for the inevitable sale

yeah i don't know about the last line here, and i'm downloading the new one now, but most of this part from the polygon review seems right

The first two Tony Hawk games were created before the series had story modes or sections in which your character got off the board. Even now, the levels explode with an aggressive ferocity filtered through elegant, versatile design that rewards players who go straight for each objective, while also holding surprises for fans trying to think outside the box.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 are the sorts of games you just couldn’t make anymore. The concept doesn’t really support ongoing content, as Activision found out by watering down what made the game special with sequel after sequel, year after year. That’s why the franchise was always doomed; it wasn’t an idea that did well as different teams bolted on more and more gimmicks and oddities.

But that only makes this remaster feel more miraculous — an act of driving through your old neighborhood to see what’s changed, back when a few skate parks and some inventive inside jokes were enough to support a full-priced release. No one would fund such a modest endeavor anymore; there’s no good way to add a season pass to Pro Skater, or fund continual development through selling skins. It always worked better as timed runs through limited environments, not as an open-world game with various missions to find and complete.

The series, when done well, is almost the opposite of a living game, which is a pretty punk-rock thing to be in 2020.

i still think those first 3 thps games are closer cousins of mario 64 than any of the other 3d platformers that gen. acrobatic traversal, exploration, collectibles, that's the whole formula. everything else was missing the first part and tried to make up for it with fart jokes

No one would fund such a modest endeavor anymore

isn't it more like, it could be done as an upper-tier indie game but as such it would never occupy the central cultural place the original did

hmm looks like the time manipulation cheese strat that got me through the last half of Trails of Cold Steel's boss battles unscathed isn't going to work on (what I'm assuming is) the last boss

Kids are playing ABZU on PlayStation now or plus or whatver, a cool adventure underwater with a nice color palette

i got the outer worlds on the switch and i'm having a fun nostalgic time playing it, but man it looks shitty. presumably it looks better on ps4/etc but on the switch the character design hasn't improved over the ps3 fallout games and the backgrounds are often blurry and hard to see anything in front of. i think it actually looks worse when it's docked than in handheld mode

last i checked, tim's production company produces quite a few shows for adult swim, so i'd imagine his low-budget passion project isn't going to get the axe any time soon

wrong thread :X

hades might be game of year? just got out of early access, supergiant (pyre, etc)

if you don't like roguelite action adventure (think dead cells) genre, i guess stay away, but it kind of seems like the endpoint/perfection of the idea (note: i thought the same about dead cells, but this is a little better)

still annoyed that they refuse to put pyre on switch despite it being the best fit for handheld of their games

i'm only about 4 hours in, though, and probably still in the overgushing first wave of fandom.

the standard Supergiant polish makes a big difference. everything just looks and feels super good, similar to Pyre in that way. and the story, and frequent interactions with the greek olympians and inhabitants of hades, are well done. it feels cool to be on a journey to escape hell, with the olympians watching and trying to help. and, knowing a little bit about greek gods, i assume that as i get closer to the end, maybe some of those olympians will start doing dastardly things to me as well.

it also feels like i've barely scratched the surface. i was reading a First Impressions kind of thing and they mentioned that even 60 hours into the game, key things were unlocking

I am playing Chef Wars ON IPAD & loving it, because I love RPGs and I love food

microsoft bought bethesda. dunno where to put this since i couldn't find a current xbox or bethesda thread but seems like Big Gaming News