whatchu playing now

pubg is absolutely a bigger deal right now than dayz ever was (and arma too probably)

as much as im enjoying PUBG, i loved dayz a lot more. had more depth and 'story', could waste hours and hours on it, whereas PUBG is a supercharged quick fix of a game. both are flawed though, there's a truly great middle ground between the two and i hope something comes from it soon.

ah hell, i might as well as just admit: im hankering for a new STALKER game with online capabilities. maybe that escape from targon thing will be it.

and now I'm back at work. so whatchami playing now? fucking nowt.

^^^ feeling this. At the moment I don't have the time to play videogames between work, travelling to work, travelling home from work, getting my shit together for a career change, and dealing with my nobhead family.
I have watched a few PUBG four player squad videos and I'm getting a Minecraft feel from it, in the sense that it's a technically flawed game that nevertheless seems to have it's core game mechanic down really early in it's development. It's interesting that each round seems to consist of 15 minutes of looting buildings while twitchily looking out for other squads, with periods of intense 'did they see us' stealthing, ending in a 2-3 minute firefight. On paper that sounds terrible but it's made for gripping viewing.

PUBG really feels like it's tapped into some primal vein of fun that the previous battle royale games didn't quite hit. there's something too perfect about the straight-faced military sim weapon design juxtaposed with the cartoonishly unpredictable vehicle physics. it's also one of the most enjoyable games to watch on twitch because of how differently different people approach the game.

Short rounds mean that people are more likely to experiment with different approaches because if a new tactic doesn't work out it's only ~20 mins at most. Also I love watching people ramp Dacia Renault 12s off of stuff.

The playing area getting progressively smaller during each round really forces people to keep moving and taking risks when otherwise they'd maybe hole up somewhere. There was one particular twitch stream I saw with a four player squad where the reduction in playing area forced them to traverse a bridge - which resulted in them getting wiped out in about 30 seconds by a sniper who was behind an overturned truck on the bridge itself. But the squad's team chat during the attempt was very tactical in a way that doesn't usually happen in this kind of game - they were really thinking on the fly about using cover, providing covering fire for team mates, best use of each squad member based on their equipment, etc..

my best finishes so far have all involved sneaking around with subpar gear because i dropped on a farm rather than a city, and then hiding in a bush and dying when i try to ambush someone because i forgot to set my gun to automatic fire

On the downside it doesn't seem to be as well balanced for solo players - getting decent equipment early is much more important and there's that online multiplayer thing of getting killed by someone you didn't even see. With a squad you can grab more gear, swap gear between members to spec them into specific roles, and generally are less likely to get jumped because there are more eyes watching out for threats.

as much as im enjoying PUBG, i loved dayz a lot more. had more depth and 'story', could waste hours and hours on it, whereas PUBG is a supercharged quick fix of a game. both are flawed though, there's a truly great middle ground between the two and i hope something comes from it soon.

ah hell, i might as well as just admit: im hankering for a new STALKER game with online capabilities. maybe that escape from targon thing will be it.

― NI, Wednesday, July 5, 2017 3:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya but what I'm saying is it really doesn't matter, this game is already a huge success while most people talk about dayz in terms of how disappointing they always found it, not many people are clamoring for more dayz in their pubg. they're not gonna mess with the formula at all at this point

PUBG looks dope. I'll play the inferior version once it comes to consoles.

same. and i'll watch josh og on twitch until then

i'm playing Phantasmagoria

Now that's a game I haven't thought about in eons

it's very bad but it's kind of fascinating in the ways that it is a failure

Playing Watch Dogs 2. It’s ok? The ability to kind of pop into multiplayer to do a quick mission is kind of nice, but the four player turns into more dumb shooting and less stealth/hacking. It kind of feels not quite realized, especially the skill tree. This is the first game I have played in eons that has voice chat enabled and all I’ve learned is everyone else playing who owns a mic is a prepubescent male

heh stevie. that's one of those sierra "classics" i always meant to get back to

ya but what I'm saying is it really doesn't matter, this game is already a huge success while most people talk about dayz in terms of how disappointing they always found it, not many people are clamoring for more dayz in their pubg. they're not gonna mess with the formula at all at this point

dunno bud, the response to dayz was more mixed than that. ive seen more of an even split between 'this is amazing' and 'this isn't what it should be'. it's no no man's sky. either way, not really discussing worldwide gaming market forecasts, more that i reckon PUBG is good but lacks depth and i personally would fucking adore a PUBG with a longer playtime and more survival/story bits. probably not gona happen but a boy can dream

i watched some guy play it last night and here were my two thoughts
1. it seems like a whole lot of boring nothing scavenging for the same items over + over punctuated by all too brief moments of killing someone / getting killed
2. this guy i watched on twitch made like $50-100/hr from donations from ppl watching him wtf is this really a thing???

the most popular streamers make a ton in donations yes

he wasn't particularly personable or funny. i guess he was good at gaming. i was kinda shocked it was eyeopening.

twitch sorts all its directories by # of viewers descending so popularity kind of snowballs and you get this upper crust of dudes making a ton of money and then a big dropoff

it's a modern dream career for sure

it's kind of a cultural downward churn where streaming and gaming all the time means all their references and jokes are to streams and games

and i get to feel very old

a decade ago i wanted to be a video games journalist (tm) if i was still young and full of pep, i'd definitely want to be a ca$h money streamer. seems to easy, have fans, meet cute girls etc

popular twitch streams are fascinating to me and also terrifying. they make me feel old too, forks, because my initial and sustained reaction is that i want it to stop and i think it's bad for humanity.

i just mostly feel jealousy

that is literally the last thing I feel!

things that you might get:
fame/notoriety: thought I wanted it at some point in my life. seems bad now.
ability to play video games all day: my hands hurt just thinking of this
get paid to play video games and just talk: great, now video games are my job and not a fun thing I do

guys we have a thread for twitch bitching

Get paid to play video games = the bit I'm jealous of

k thanks tom!

it would be hell to have to play video games all day every day. some of these people do marathons where they stay up 24 hours playing games. at that point how do you even enjoy it anymore?

as much as it sucks to have people donate so that someone can say your handle and that you've been a subscriber for 6 months and attribute the guilt for the treadmill running away of their lives on you in some twisted consumer echo chamber of throwing up and regurgitating experiences. actually makes sitting down and playing a game yourself in your own free time seam genuine and personally meaningful.

nobody play Phantasmagoria. I'm struck by how many things in this game are wrong, not just by today's standards but by universal ones. Like, obviously the graphics are shit and the controls aren't very impressive and the gameplay is straightforward, but even beyond that, the actors' reactions to things are very incorrect (nonchalance toward supernatural phenomena, overreaction to mundane things), there are too may inconsequential interactive objects in the game that do nothing to further the plot or flesh out the game world (as if they decided there wasn't enough to do and just added things for no reason), the first real "scary" scene doesn't occur until halfway through the game after several hours of pretty mundane gameplay, there are no real puzzles (apart from trying to randomly guess which object to use in a given situation without any real indication), everyone's outfit is egregiously bad... it feels like a game full of so much missed potential, where drastic improvements could have been made within the same budget.

It truly is something you should just watch some clips of on YouTube because playing through the entire thing is an entirely unnecessary slog

Oh yeah, I played that at the time because I would play all adventure games I could get my hands on, and boy was it tedious.. Although I was generally hyped for all sorts of cool new graphics back then, I remember the ugly 3d rendered backdrops + FMV characters looked absolutely hideous.

Did the game have some thing at one point where someone is force-fed entrails through a funnel? Pretty sure that was the point I was too disgusted to be willing to go on with the game.
I did like the faux-Carmina Burana theme a bit.

The whole FMV fad was a pretty lame time in gaming overall. Still don't know why anyone have fond memories of the goddamn 7th Guest, beyond the camp pleasures of spookily exclaiming "feeling ... loooonely?"

FMV is ripe for ironic kitsch resurgence. it's the perfect storm of 90s nostalgia and green screen cheese. the games themselves sucked (i owned 7th Guest and played it maybe 4 times total) but the camp is ripe for the picking.

oh there is already a FMV resurgence iirc, and yeah this is the game w/ the entrails through the funnel. It's weird bcz the game is so toothless for the first ENTIRE HALF and then it goes into full overdrive w/ super depraved gore??? spread that shit out ffs

haha, I played through Phantasmagoria in its entirety last year and basically loved every second of it for all of the same reasons Stevie hates it. I would never recommend it to anyone else though because it is definitely objectively terrible, but FMV games scratch a weird nostalgic MST3K itch for me (I'm really excited to play Tender Loving Care with John Hurt which I just picked up in the steam sale). Harvester is the FMV game I'd actually recommend to the masochistic and curious because it is pretty much insane right off the bat.

re: FMV... gabe night 2!!!!

ya I enjoyed it too for the same reason but it's just a very bad game by any standards. I didn't love EVERY second but I really enjoyed a lot of them.

the the room of videogames

did anyone play 'her story' yet? that seemed like a possible reimagining of the category 'fmv game', i didn't get around to playing it because er yeah

otoh i just bought a gaming laptop so xcom 2 is a thing in my life now

Yeah it's okay but not much of a game.

I thought it was great and very much a game, just not a videogamey game.

Not the kind of game that has gameplay

i never finished it because i'd sussed out the central plot "twist" after 3 minutes and lost all interest

That's a pretty circular definition of gameplay.

The gameplay consists of googling keywords and watching the videos that come up

What would you consider a solid lower limit on APM?

It's quality not quantity.