whatchu playing now

yeah i thought batboy was nes and gameboy?

batboy lol

how does that thing work for big thumbs? i feel like i would try to press B and right at the same time and i would end up stomping one of my thumbs with my other thumb

No, just NES and gameboy. I'm playing Mother/earthbound zero/earthbound beginnings.

just played through AC Unity...sad to say that I agree it's not a good game, because I love the setting so much (I mean, I left a life behind to move here), but they barely set anything in the Rive Gauche! it's built as beautifully as the Rive Droite but the main story hardly steps there and even the dumb side missions there are sparse. I hate it when games do this, but AC games seem often to run out of steam at the end & leave big chunks of the map unused (Venice was this way in AC 2 for instance). such a drag because the Rive Gauche would have offered so much beauty. It was great to climb the windows of my work place too!

I already bought Syndicate and Origins so I'm not done with the series, but dang what a lost opportunity.

syndicate is the one where i wanted it to be good bc of the setting but the word of mouth was so bad that i never touched it

I’m gonna play Yakuza 0 next. setting is everything to me these days.

I've bought Elite Dangerous because it dipped below £5, though I'm fully expecting the base game to be almost pointless given that it's had years worth of expansion content added since launch. On the other hand I also don't expect it to hold my attention long enough for me to feel like I'm missing out if I don't have access to all the endgame stuff, I'm just looking to fly around and bit and buy and sell some ores really.

xp good choice

Obra Dinn, Anthem, RDR Online, Florence, Subnautica, Steep, Golf Clash, fantasy basketball

where are you to in subnautica? i got up to the lava castle and took a break and haven't gone back since

I'm not that far yet. Still figuring out the basics.

it's really a fantastic game. deep + immersive!

I did a 3rd Subnautica playthrough, with no vehicles (even the Seaglide), up until the finale module of the escape fetch quests where one's required. It's totally viable to run air pipes from the surface to the lava castle, and it's arguably more fun, save ferrying 40+ air pipes everywhere.

but have u done an ironman run

Yep (2nd playthrough). The times I've died in the game have been almost 100% through underestimating the time required to reach the surface (or getting disoriented in a wreck) and winding up with 0 oxygen at 50m. The sole exception is when I was nibbled to death by leaches in the reactor room and wasn't paying attention. But its a pretty forgiving game on ironman, compared to most.

sorry there's not a dead cells thread to post this on, but i have a question. skip if you have me or dead cells

i'm a little confused about how the HP% increases work. if i'm shooting for a build that would put me at about 4/8/3 (red/purple/green) by the first boss, does it make sense to do the green upgrades first so that i end up with more HP?

when you choose the first upgrade, you can either get a 50% HP boost (red), 40% (purple), or 60% (green). let's say you start with 100 HP and then choose purple, then red, then green for your first 3 upgrades. you'd end up with 336 HP:

40/50/60

100 * 1.4 = 140
140 *1.5 = 210
210 * 1.6 = 336 HP

now let's say you choose the opposite order, starting with the green 60%, then red 50%, then purple 40%:

60/50/40

100 * 1.6 = 160
160 *1.5 = 240
250 * 1.4 = 350 HP

so, returning back to my previous question, if i wanted to be at 4/8/3 by the time i hit the first boss (i'm just making these numbers up, it's probably off), wouldn't it be better for me to first invest in two greens, then three reds, THEN seven purples? or is all of this just kind of silly (not mutually exclusive options, i know)

I don't have an answer to your math question, but my color builds have been like 2/9/2 or something when I take on the first boss. Basically, purple rules.

And to explain myself:
1. Skills (which are what the game calls those traps) are insanely good. Upgrading purple not only increases their damage but also reduces their cooldown time. By the time I get to the first boss, I can pretty much spam them to kill him (I use melee attacks purely as bonus damage when I can manage) -- a combo I like is Wolf Traps with something that can shoot projectiles.
2. After the fight, the levels have a chance to drop colorless skills, and the damage is based on your highest color level.

For clarity: After the fight, the levels stages have a chance to drop colorless skills...

And now I realized you're way past me in the game and I feel like an idiot.

oh, not at all! i'm still struggling. i tend to do the same thing, spamming the purple. i'm in love with the double crossbow-matic/turret + freeze/wolf trap combo. and after struggling with the Conjunctivius boss for a few battles, i've now realized that its way easier if you can freeze him.

i got super frustrated this morning because i lucked into the best possible amulet before facing conjuctivitis - it decreased damage from projectiles by 75%, AND i had the freeze/turret combo going. i had it down to a tiny sliver of health and then i completely lost my cool and blew it in epic fashion. it was one of those dark souls kind of moments where you just panic and hit all the buttons at once, leading to the inevitable death. i much prefer the promenade/ramparts route so i'm eager to finish conjunctivitis so i don't have to go down the sewer path again

Just Dance 2019. Took it out from the library. It's stupid and silly but kinda fun, I can admit, as long as nobody is looking at me.

Anyone wanna try some vs wargroove

100 * 1.6 = 160
160 *1.5 = 240
250 * 1.4 = 350 HP

Hi I don't know anything about Dead Cells, but if the 250 on the last line should be 240 then you'll get 336 either way, which makes sense.

.......fuck! thanks! and shame on me for forgetting basic algebra. (A*B*C = C*B*A, duh)

Whew! On my 35th game of Dead Cells, I beat Conjunctivius for the first time, and then rolled over the entire rest of the game and beat the hand of the king with the barest sliver of hp left! I guess for my play style the combo that worked best was 11 red, 11 purple, 2 green, balanced blade (could have been any sword), fire brand (crucial!), sinew slicer, and ice grenade. I played very cheap and cowardly, spamming fire brand and sinew slicer from as far away as possible. I think the Dead Inside mutation is worth it--it turns out food is less important and an extra 50% hp is more important than I'd thought (at least in this one run)

I'm playing some Wargroove. But I really suck at it.

i'm not a huge battle royal fan but I've had fun playing Apex Legends . it promotes squad play and the characters are cool

The Guides and The Guides Axiom on my phone. These are "find the password" style games. The first one is good enough, but Axiom takes it to another level.

Crowd city

I'm currently working on the endlessly long Pathfinder: Kingmaker – a pretty solid Infinity Engine clone with some welcome tweaks to the usual formula, although I don't like it as much as Pillars of Eternity 1&2.

as a game it's better imo, because it's based on one of the most absurdly goodie-stuffed but also exhaustively iterated rpg systems (d&d 3 by way of 3.5 by way of pathfinder) instead of the weird tangle of the PoE system (which is rock-paper-scissors if you played it like the tennis wargame in infinite jest) and has something close to the best character creation interface i've ever seen. story/characters are cartoonish and obv not going for what PoE is going for, and the pathfinder setting's avalanche of mundane nonsense (GOLARION!) makes forgotten realms read like lord byron; but your party members are charming and the CYOA skillcheck interludes are succinctly written and v responsive. dunno what most of the game is actually like tho because i spent 100 hours doing the first few chapters (up to the troll boss) like four times w different characters.

particularly once the kingdom management begins, time is a resource (as in the original fallout)-- a mechanic big story games have become so petrified of using it can now feel like a thrill, but which i think paralyzes a lot of players and which i also suspect may ultimately be let down a bit by a lack of payoff to the kingdom management. nevertheless having to make tough choices about where to travel and when was a real relief after PoE2's numbing sailing mechanics that didn't matter (tho the latter tbf does have all those hidden difficulty features named after gods, which i haven't played around with much and the right cluster of which prob does turn huge swathes of the game into more of a game.)

PoE setting obv much more interesting but when i'm not playing it i can't say i miss the prose style.

anthem launched on some platforms yesterday, and more widely on feb 22. trying to figure out if i want to bother. it looks beautiful, and bioware games are very consistent.

But of course there’s a lot more to the game than just flying around. Anthem revolves around getting missions from the people in your hub, a city called Fort Tarsis, going out into the big, bad, dangerous world to complete them, and then returning and using the loot you collected to upgrade a mechanical suit, also known as a Javelin.

but also, this description just kind of feeds me with dread. my first reaction is that this sounds like every AAA game. but i've whined incoherently about this kind of thing before, this feeling of knowing what the game would be like before playing it. i believe last time i was whining about RDR2, which i ended up enjoying a lot even if it wasn't surprising).

VVVVV is on sale on Switch, so I bought it for the third time and I might actually complete it this go round. It's certainly the most fun version to play (as opposed to iPad or Macbook Steam account).

bioware games are very consistent.

https://i.imgur.com/2dp6NMB.jpg

also you're aware that anthem is a co-op multiplayer game, right? doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would be that fun solo since its just grinding missions/loot MMO style

i'm looking for a game to play on PS4 and maybe it's just hormones or something but i kind of don't want to play any of these amazing looking games like horizon zero dawn, gravity rush 2, etc. I just finished Spider-Man which i absolutely loved, played Last Of Us 2 which i REALLY didn't. i think maybe i got spoiled by Spider-Man's instant hit of action every time i switched it on? I dunno. i'm considering Uncharted 4 or the most recent epilogue just because I know it's going to provide that hit. i'm such a basic bitch. I've looked at a lot of the indie games available, all the weirdo platformers like Dead Cells, Hollow Knight etc and there's something about the aesthetics of them that i just find immensely offputting. maybe i'm just not admitting that i'm waiting for Last Of Us 2 and want be satisfied with anything apart from that. i do still luv my Super Mega Baseball - i just wish i could do pick-off moves :/ that literally is one reason i'm thisclose to getting The Show even though I'm sure this year's edition is due any day now

sorry i mean i DIDN'T play Last Of Us 2 - i played Life Is Strange 2! haha i must have given half of you here a heart attack

Lol no heart attack but initial heart break because I thought the 2 was a typo. But I feel you on TLOU2, really the only reason I bought a PS4 (and I just so happened to buy a butt ton of other games to pass the time until it finally releases).

My first hours of Hollow Knight were pure magic, but I love the art style and I was sold by its "world of adventure and insects" tag line.

Re: Kingmaker: Pathfinder, I agree with you on most counts, dlh. Mechanically it's less of a design gamble than PoE1 and especially 2 (both of which I played on Path of the Damned fwiw) and its grounding in a tried-and-true PnP system definitely makes a difference, although I do find the encounter design to be perversely skewed towards RNG at lower levels, even on core rules.

Regardless, the kingdom management and implementation of alignment is a massive step up from other such games (including both PoEs), so props to them for going all out. My main gripe is with the writing and atmosphere, which shouldn't matter all that much in a CRPG (indeed, my expectations tend to be exceedingly low), and yet... I do think PoE's world-building is quite strong in spite of its stylistic mishaps (compared to previous Obsidian efforts, at least) and the background art is just gorgeous, especially in Deadfire. Some of the CYOAs in Kingmaker play like a more evolved version of their PoE counterparts, it's true, but the latter are quite memorable nonetheless.

Anyway, I really am thoroughly enjoying Kingmaker's as a game, I'm just not sold on its 'aesthetic' facets, as it were.

I never before played a Yakuza game but I’m loving how varied the gameplay of Yakuza 0, esp compared to the terrible Assassin’s Creeds I’ve been playing.

I started undertale, it's cute

sounds like anthem is a trainwreck, is the general vibe going around about it

i assume everyone else has already played undertale at this point but i am loving it, especially the "secret of monkey island" humor vibes. very much in my wheelhouse.

I can only judge the Anthem demo, but moving around and doing combos and shit is pretty fun. The world is boring, but the graphics are fine. Classic rental imo.

tales of hearts r

this is better than i expected, having more fun with this one than i did with vesperia

(youtube voice) wwwwhat's up guys

i got a PS4 just to play RDR2 after years of not being a gamer. now i've beat to that to death, and will probably avoid online, but the winter is still awful here so i'm looking at other timekillers:

which of these big and well liked releases are most essential?

God of War - loved the first couple way back
witcher 3 - tried an earlier one and kind of hated it, got nowhere
Dragon Age: whatever latest - are these still any good? first one owned
Nier: Automata - is this a JRPG? reviews are rapturous but i can't tell what it even is
What Remains of Edith Finch - should i just read a book
Dishonored 2 - i think the first one was the last game i really got into? i like a stealth game
Wolfenstein(s) - this is the answer, isn't it
Yakuza 0 - or this, right? clips i've seen look hilarious
Far Cry 4 - or maybe a mayhem game?
Just Cause - " "
and as an outside chance: Cities Skylines - is this just asking for frustration on console??

Those games are all bad get a Switch

Doom, yo?