whatchu playing now

<3 <3 <3 talos principle <3 <3 <3

oh this is good? i'll check it out when it hits PS4, it's been awhile since i've had a good puzzle game.

the cat cover alone convinced me... to eventually buy it when it goes on clearance

still jamming Swarm Simulator (because I am an idiot) and today I finally finished getting all the achievements. 20 ascensions! and I am STILL letting it run. I like watching numbers get bigger.

talos principle is very fun. the puzzles are generally not particularly difficult but get kind of baroque in terms of implementation and are thus satisfying. the mechanics are consistent enough that one can generally enact one's envisioned solution.

what makes it really compelling imo is that it feels very expansive. obviously it's a puzzle game so there are discrete puzzles, but there are hub worlds and optional worlds and little unexplained details that are left up to the player in a very 90s fashion. a little portal, a little myst, a little old fashioned fps in momentum and movement.

(also there are optional puzzles to solve that cross those discrete puzzle boundaries in ways that demand a different kind of thinking than the rest of the game, which is cool.)

fwiw i feel much less railroaded into a meme-y theme park ride than i did with portal (which i liked)

still a slave to destiny trying to break the habit w a USB snes controller and roms of every snes game. looking very much forward to play through #20ish of ff3

Spent some quality time w Fallout: New Vegas. First time playing a Fallout title for a substantial amount of time.

Tutorial NPC was a grizzled hunter/trader with a faithful companion dog who she loved. She took me on a mission to shoot some geckos and when she was off-screen her dog got in the way and met an unfortunate end. Running into her a few minutes later, she had little to say on the matter. I think if you were living in a post apocalyptic wasteland and a stranger had just killed your companion you'd be upset but nothing much seems to upset ANYONE in this world. Ran into an NPC later that told me about losing his wife and daughter and retained a pleasant and cheerful disposition for the entire conversation. It wasn't long before I just started skipping all dialog. Oh, Bethesda.

The world is fun, if a bit boring and empty. Everything is a bullet sponge, from the scorpions that take a dozen shots with a 10mm to wasteland bandits that can withstand a barrage of shotgun blasts at point blank range while wearing NO armor. The bullet-time is fun, but it gets a bit ridiculous shooting limbs off with a frequency only matched by Arrested Development's armless man.

Mod the hell out of FONV if you cast.

Anyone else playing Rocket League?

If you can, rather

rocket league RULES. my only beef is the huge gap between bot intelligence between amateur and pro levels when playing offline. but not a biggy. fucking love it.

Started playing this last night - i suck so much at it. I'm trying to hang back and anticipate the ball coming out of the scrum but it consistantly goes sailing over my head. Haven';t tried going online yet, I'd be destroyed.

it's all about using the double jump/forward spin combo to gain speed - its a quicker way to get down the pitch than boost... also learning when to go slow as the ball is SLOW, and at first i would zoom past it every single time

Ok you guys have convinced me to try it this weekend

I've only been watching videos of Rocket League so far. It's beautiful to watch when players know how to pull off insane aerial hits. Looks really fun.

I was going to pre-order MGSV when it came to Steam and it finally did yesterday, and comes with a free copy of Ground Zeroes. This is the fist time I've bought a new video game since Mortal Kombat II came out for SNES. Trying to get 100% on GZ before MGSV comes out. It still impresses, both graphically and gameplay wise. The lighting is amazing. The level design is GREAT. Kojima has spent so many years making immersive linear levels that he knows what he is doing, as opposed to most Open World AAA games.

If you spot me online and want to play Rocket League I'll happily drop anything else I'm doing to jump into a game. Managed to get together with 7 other guys from work for a few matches last week and it was my gaming highlight of 2015 so far.

josephcotten on psn if anyone wants to rocket

i will try this later on

phwoar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrBmF_BeyZA

I need to develop my aerial game

I made the colossal mistake of downloading the Destiny demo (ps3 version) and plowing through it in the course of an evening- I've done everything I can except the 3-man "strike" instance. I'm insulated against it for a little while, since I don't have a ps4 and I'm in no danger of buying it until I do, but it does something terrible to the reward center of my brain. And not even the loot grind, which is negligible at this point; it's more just the core runny-jumpy-shooty gameplay loop. I never got into Halo (only ever played the PC demo, and that felt bizarre compared to "normal" PC FPSs) but whatever the game's other failings- and they are many, even this early on, Dinklage being only the most noticeable- Bungie know damn well how to make an FPS that's deeply satisfying to play on a gamepad.

yup. the gameplay was rock solid

It's a great great game. I just wish I didn't hate it.

Finally quit for good recently, when I managed to get Icebreaker in a nightfall and then within a couple of days they announced they were nerfing it.

Tried Rocket League yesterday. Damn it is fun! I don't think I've ever played a first-person soccer simulator.

it does something terrible to the reward center of my brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79dWuqXe5o

the upcoming changes w/ the next destiny expansion seem promising tho, many of them are major overhauls of the base game

yeah the joke is that the destiny beta ends with the release of the next expansion in nov. i remain conflicted, recognizing on the one hand that much of the content should have been packaged with the original game and the dlcs are fairly obvious cash grabs but on the other hand i really love the game and it is reuniting college gaming sessions with cross country friends which i have been thoroughly enjoying. luckily nothing else on ps4 has really commanded my attention so a destiny addiction isn't so bad

well at the very least everyone who's bought in already gets the major changes whether or not you buy the expansion. but yeah nothing says middle-finger cash grab more than a dlc that entirely consists of going through already existing maps but backwards.

so i changed up my camera settings in Rocket League to something similar to some of the best ranked players and suddenly went from average, to scoring goals in two winning ranked games,
and winning a tournament at pro level vs bots.

omg love rocket league.

what did you change?

try this:

Camera FOV: 110
Camera Height: 100.00
Camera Angle: -3.00
Camera Distance: 230.00
Camera Stiffness: 0.70
Camera Swivel Speed: 3.20

No Camera Shake. Also you should use ball cam 95% of the time.

i mean its not gonna give you instant skills, but i found it a huge help in improving my play

i am terrible at rocket league but it's fun

Got rocked by DMT_SHAMAN last night.

I just tried the strike included with the Destiny demo (Devil's Lair) and my team got stomped into jelly by one of those spider tank things. The tank itself isn't so much of a problem- I've participated in killing one in a world event, and got an ascendant shard (I understand this is fancy) to show for it, and the instance has some nice areas to block line of sight from its turrets- but the endless flow of level 8 enemies in a demo that caps out at level 7 seems a bit cheap.

This is me, for what it's worth (I seriously don't get why there is character customization in this game if you can't switch your character's helmet off even in social apps like bungie.net but whatever)

https://www.bungie.net/en/Legend/Gear/2/4611686018451908605/2305843009323124448

Can Steam RL talk to PSN RL networks?

Yes but no. If you go into matchmaking then it's cross platform, but as far as I know there's still no way to intentionally team up with people from the other side. They say that'll be in a future update though.

Stayed up all night beating Bayonetta.
How. How did I get through life without playing this game? It is truly an amazing thing.

Got some Dreamcast action:

Shenmue - Ok this is cool. Voice acting nowhere near MGS tho. Some of it, like the random kids, is really grating on the ears. Gameplay is super awkward but not too bad for the time it was made. The atmosphere is super charming so it seems most of the draw for this game is just chilling in that world.

The audio quality was kind of bad but I am running my Dreamcast thru an ancient RFU composite adaptor and thru a VCR before going into projector so that might be why. When I play the original Playstation the audio goes thru RGB connectors and sounds like crystal.

Resident Evil 3 - Never played much RE except for the first one when it just came out and my friend beat it over a week. This was cool but super early in the 3D cycle. It is weird to compare those games to never 3rd person open world games, where everything is modeled and in-camera cinematics and super intuitive dual-stick controls are a standard. The controls always feel like they are fighting the camera to me. This is another reason why MGS is so good for an early 3d game, it didn't bother w the tank controls and fighting the camera, it designed the levels and gameplay on the camera. Anyways this was ok but I killed a bunch of zombies and didn't know where to go next, I'd been to every screen so I was pixel hunting. Character select screen was kind of funny, looking like a ridiculous Sexy Costumes section of a party store. Check it out Anita.

Sonic Adventure - Holy crap I don't know what it is about this game but it is just the funniest thing ever to play. It is almost like The Room or Troll 2, a horribly assembled caricature of a cinematic experience. The characters will say stilted and desperately cool (in a 90s way) dialog and the camera will linger just a bit too long on their expressionless faces, introducing an impending sense of Lynchian horror. Think Sonic in the restaurant dream sequence from Mulholland Drive. The music is straight out of a back to school special pretending to be 90210 but about cyberpunk furries. It is the soundtrack to Station Square, the mall with cutout taxi cabs and bikini babes, a hyper virtualization of the hotel swimming pool where the 3d cast of the "Money For Nothing" music video celebrates being awesome. My favorite quotes:

Sonic: Come on ya' big DRIP! Where you going?

Miles 'Tails' Prower: Hey, Sonic!
Sonic: Oh, um, heh heh. I was on a snooze cruise, I guess...

It's a hard game to play for more than a few minutes. Hilarious as hell though.

My buddy & I still quote certain Shenmue 1 bits to each other, like the dreadlocked dude you encounter in the neighborhood. "Hi, R-y-o!"

Hah. I like "Kitty don't look so good."

I thought it was neat that they had in-game capsule machines for little Sega-related doohickeys I want in real life.

http://shenmue.wikia.com/wiki/Shenmue/Collection_Datasheets

Beat Devil's Lair and am now properly done with the Destiny demo. It's pretty great, actually- I like how well tuned at least this strike is for drop-in play with total strangers, with no voice required. Though I do totally get the complaints about Destiny's bosses being bullet sponges, because it took for fucking EVER to kill both the tank and Sepkis Prime, but at least the latter encounter mixed things up a bit, with less predictable enemy spawns and attack patterns. I mean, I'm sure they're there, and old hat to anyone who's been playing for a while, but the encounter felt genuinely exciting and dangerous instead of a dull grind like the tank.

lol, love the dreamcast reviews AB.

lol yeah that Sonic Adventure review matches up with my memory exactly. i was amazed by how corny it was, the how flashy the graphics were at the time, and also how hard it was to play the game for more than 15 minutes in one sitting.

got to play evergrace on a friends ps2 recently. apparently it was a launch title made by from software. its got kind of a souls precursor feel, i can see where some of it carried over to demon's souls. the controls and weird enemies at least, not the bad music and voice acting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot3kX3psh_o

they added a horrible song to the rocket league menus :(

wish rocket league was on mac!

Rocket League is rad, i am terrible at it.

House is child free for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow, so in anticipation of actually getting some decent game time in, I just went to the psn store and bought:

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture
Game of Thrones Season One
er Peggle 2