whatchu playing now

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?

nier automata is an auteur game thats a hybrid of jrpg / character action / bullet hell shmup. its good & unique

yakuza 0 is great

don't have much to say about the others there. i liked witcher 3 but its outside my wheelhouse so i cant compare it to other stuff

Dishonored 2 - i think the first one was the last game i really got into? i like a stealth game

if you like a stealth game, definitely don't miss out on Hitman Season 1 while it's still free (free with a PSPlus subscription, until March 4 i think?). at least download it while it's free, even if you don't plan on playing it for a while. i just grabbed it last night so i'm not very far, but it was very well received

just watch switch game let’s plays on youtube.app with the controller in your hands

there's a new Trials game out, which i'll probably grab eventually when it goes on sale. this, from the kotaku review, describes quite a few games in recent years:

Trials Rising garnishes a map with fun and beautiful racing challenges, then impedes your flow between them with endless progress screens and loot unlocks. Experience gates close off new challenges, leaderboards are needlessly complex, every track has contract challenges for various sponsors that overlay the simple bronze-silver-gold-platinum system that grades your skills, and every hour or so you have to sit and watch the same reveal animation 20 times when you remember to open the loot boxes you’ve earned. These contain a neverending cascade of shirts, shoes, helmets, bike parts, victory animations and stickers with which to customize your rider. Frequently, it doles out doubles or triples that must then be individually sold via the inventory page for loose in-game change.

Who actually wants any of this?, I wondered every time I opened a box with a denim vest in it, wishing I was racing instead. Presumably a significant minority, or these loot systems wouldn’t have become so ubiquitous, but certainly not me

i'm with her, i can't stand all of this dumb extra shit, but i guess people like it enough to be willing to pay real life cash for it in many cases

Nier: Automata - is this a JRPG? reviews are rapturous but i can't tell what it even is

It's not an RPG, certainly not a JRPG.

I'm pretty vocal about my antipathy for Witcher 3 (supposedly well-written, I didn't find it so) and my indifference towards GOW, don't want to bore ILG with it again.

I will recommend Horizon: Zero Dawn or The Last of Us: Remastered if you didn't play the original on PS3.

xp its definitely a JRPG

im willing to concede yakuza not being one but nier has plenty of jrpg systems/signifiers

yakuza 0 is also an rpg

repping for both of them

But your character level and the different weapons largely don't matter -- main story enemies and bosses simply scale with you, no? And you're really just going to be spamming the attack button while the pod bullet button taped down.

i don't think the enemies scale with your level though its been a while so i might be wrong

its got jrpg style consumables and character statting with the chips

its got 'gathering points'

its got fishing

the main issue with n:a us that levels actually matter too much, to the point of being impossible to beat certain enemies (as in, you do 0 damage with your attacks) if the lvl difference is too large. most people don't notice because like you said they've balanced it enough to be somewhat invisible to many people

they should have dropped exp altogether and rely on equipment upgrades only. you can change diffculty at will mid-game, no one would need to grind anyway

i mean, try to fight the superboss while you're at level 60 and tell me how it goes. character action game skills are meaningless, you either grind and level up or you're fucked

don't get me wrong if someone specifically asked me for JRPG recommendations it's not one of the first games i'd push on them since its gameplay appeal is closer to the platinumgames side than the square enix side, but let's be real it's popular because of the story, and it's a JRPG-ass story

i mean, try to fight the superboss while you're at level 60 and tell me how it goes.

My best effort against this boss was lasting 5 seconds, but it's an optional boss!

I can agree that the story is similar to ones you'd find in conventional JRPGs, but as far as game mechanics? I guess you can think of the chips as materia or w/e.

its also, like, the 5th game in a long running action-rpg series so it gets some benefit of the doubt with rpg-ness though i still think it passes the bar on its own

the jrpg umbrella has included action games since at least like secret of mana if not going all the way back to ys 1 and dragon slayer and such

Spiderman!

Edith Finch: Not that you should never play it, but I found it to be pretty inessential. The story is cool, but I wasn't like WHOOOOOOOOOA MAN. I'd suggest The Witness if you like puzzles, or Life Is Strange if you like Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Cities: This is fun if you have Excel open in another window, but on a console? I dunno. Even among sims by that developer, I'd suggest Surviving Mars instead.

just got gungeon and it's fun! Think Smash TV roguelike

Yakuza 0 is super fun

Karl Malone otm about loot box bullshit. Who wants stickers for their in game bags?