whatchu playing now

Phantom Pain is fucking amazing and one of the top five games of this generation for sure.

it's fucking excellent.

nice, I'll give it a try finally!

Please Note:
1) As with all Metal Gears, you will need to commit to about 45 minutes to being force-fed beautifully rendered, interactive, nonsensical backstory before you can play. Don't let that put you off.
2) You're gonna want to balloon everything. Go with that.
3) Creative answers to every problem are available with a bit of experimentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pN8TvupNn4

ground zeroes is also amazing. in some ways it's even better. not open-world, and lacking a couple of basic mechanics from phantom pain (most notably the fultons) - but the flip side is that it's tighter, more refined, more arcadey.

I don't know what "balloon everything" means but I'm excited to find out!

ooh xp I have that too on the one I bought from the ps4 store

you might start with that, it's a kind of simplified version of phantom pain.

right, I see that it's billed as a prelude to phantom pain

it's a good way to learn the movement mechanics and how the game works. from there you move to a map that's dozens of times the size.

MGS5 is ace. I bought Bloodstained yesterday, really enjoyable so far, just the right amount of quirkiness to keep it interesting

all the splatoon youtubers are really obnoxious

i'm only 1 day in but disco elysium is really fantastic so far. the theme is startling and original (and yes political but so far not didactically so). the writing is top-notch for game writing i'd say it reminds me of some of the fallen london stuff just in terms of how much of a step up from most game writing it is - clever, i laugh regularly, evocative + full of images, etc. the gameplay kinda reminds me of FO + FO2 in terms of a) a totally unique skills system that directly feeds into how you solve puzzles in the game and seems consequently to promise varied playthroughs, b) what feels like a responsive world where permanent changes can be easily (and irrevocably) made - tho they're generally good at warning you when you might, c) conversational choices that actually matter and have gameplay influence, d) the general aura + vibe also obv the cynicism.

just another note on the writing - i really had to force myself to play pillars of eternity bc the writing was mediocre and the game world was just not that interesting. but i find that i'm reading tons of text and asking for more bc i am legitimately curious about the game world and it's written well enough that i enjoy it. super important for this kind of rpg. the game actually told me last night to stop asking someone questions bc i can ask the more later and i shouldn't overdo it in one go.

now i'm more intrigued! tbh, i wasn't planning on playing disco elysium specifically because of getting burned by games like pillars of eternity, which are praised for their writing and story

i don't remember pillars having any humor which is deadly for a text heavy rpg. even baldur's gate had humor. and despite being an "original world" is just felt like a reskinned forgotten realms

There were lots of bits in Disco Elysium where I saw a new wall of text and got the instinctive "agh more video game writing" groan, but then immediately remembered that I was going to actually enjoy reading it because it's so sharp and funny

It was a brutally depressing game to play in the UK in December (it's probably even worse now!!), but it has heart

Really nice score too, didn't realise it was British Sea Power until the end credits

Bits of PoE were quite good, writing-wise – Durance, the Saints' War, Lord Raedric, the Council of Stars and especially the expansions, which are worth everyone's time imo – but even at its best it merely rises to the level of other titles in the isometric RPG subgenre, with the obvious exception of Planescape: Torment. PoE's wordiness was criticized so sharply that its sequel, Deadfire, erred on the side of concision, but it also lost much of its philosophical heft in the process, no matter how poorly it may have been handled in the first place. Anyhow, I am an absolute sucker for the original Infinity Engine games and my nostalgia knows no bounds, so I thought PoE and Deadfire were both excellent, because they got the atmosphere right, and because my fantasy standards when I'm not reading a book are undoubtedly lower than Mordy's. I haven't tried Disco Elysium yet, but I certainly plan on getting there soon. I will candidly admit to being less than enthused by its setting, however, just as I'm generally less attracted to modern and/or post-apocalyptic environments. Like most people, I play video games for purposes of escapism above all, so I'd rather just roll with whatever reawakens the dumb 13 year-old who fired up Baldur's Gate 1 a couple of months after it came out, and who took its plot oh so seriously (this, incidentally, is why I kinda hated Divinity: Original Sin I & II).

i couldn't enjoy divinity original sin for related writing reasons; it just seemed totally underwritten. the game systems were somewhat unique (at least for the genre convention) but the writing was even more generic than PoE.

really hoping they don't botch the switch port of disco elysium

Tbf to PoE's writing, much of it overtly deals with disappointment, which implies some degree of self-awareness on the developers' part and makes for a considerably more adult take on the whole fantasy CRPG shtick (hence the charges of blandness that have been levelled against it). The end result, while not stellar, is more interesting and subversive than its detractors give it credit for, even though I think the execution could have been far smoother, especially with the roster Obsidian had at the time. D:OS, on the other hand, set 'lol, whatevz' at its starting point, which just isn't appealing to me at all as a fantasy enthusiast. I want to be able to suspend disbelief, no matter how fleetingly.

to PoE's credit i often think about trying it again (or from where i left off) or taking a look at the pirate sequel but it's such a long game it's hard to commit when i wasn't particularly enthusiastic the first time through. i do remember there being some interesting things in it. i don't want to oversell my distaste for it. i did play it for 33 hours according to steam.

If you do revisit it, I strongly suggest checking out The White March, which you could probably get started on immediately if your party is already 33h in. It's not as dramatic a step up as Mask of the Betrayer was to Neverwinter Nights II's original campaign, but its writing is quite effective and it comes with a self-contained yet consequential narrative that is more skillfully deployed than in the base game.

(No idea why I italicized those titles, they're not books or albums!)

Btw, have you played Planescape: Tides of Numenera? And if so, what did you make of the writing?

Speaking of PoE, I've been playing some Path of Exile lately. It's a f2p Diablo type that is a few years old but was just released on PS4 last year. I probably wouldn't have tried it if it wasn't free, but it's pretty fun. The multiplayer aspects are handled well.

i have not played tides of numenera - i've been interested in it tho bc i've read some of the numenera sourcebooks and they looked cool -- is it worth playing?

I'd say so, although it's nowhere near as good as Planescape: Torment and parts of it are painfully overwritten. Its highs are tremendous, however, especially the so-called 'Mere'.

In a similar vein, Tyranny's setting is quite unique (you're a Judge Dread-type figure in a low-magic Bronze Age) and eminently repayable.

As for the other PoE, Grim Dawn remains my favourite Diablo clone, but Path of Exile is an incredible achievement in its own right. You need to be a hardcore theorycraft fan to thoroughly fall under its spell, though.

*Dredd

maybe after i finish disco elysium i'll check out numenara now that my taste for isometric rpg has been rekindled

I'm gonna pull the trigger on Disco Elysium as soon as it hits 50% off, hopefully this summer.

tyranny on sale atm -- only $15. should i pull the trigger? i do love judge dredd...

I'd go for it if I were you – it's fairly unique among its peers, all things considered, and worth it for that reason alone.

ok cool i grabbed it - i'll play that next after disco since numerara is still quite expensive so i'll wait for that to go on sale

ooo steam says ck3 in sept

Tyranny is better than Tides of Numenera anyway imo so you made the right call.

Maybe CK3 will mark the moment I finally leap into the franchise.

ck2 is an alltime great fwiw at this pt maybe you're better off holding out esp since the new one is supposed to be more accessible but if we ever repoll best games of all time ck2 will be in my top 10

Ok cool. Tbh it's one of those games I've partly avoided for fear of getting sucked into it because I'm fairly sure it would be up my alley.

I believe Tides of Numenara is available in xbox game pass if that's any use to you mordy

just got obra dinn and baba is you, yay for me

Baba is You is a motherfucker.

a ISS space station docking simulator.

actually really fun!

https://iss-sim.spacex.com/

loved "baba is you" and everyone in the house got obsessed by it for a weekend but I think we all got completely stuck pretty quickly

I should clarify. Baba is Me is brilliant and hard to put down, but it gets pretty tough and can drive you a bit crazy. It’s a logic game but the metaphysical fuzziness of some puzzles makes you question the soundness of the design and then immediately your own intelligence for not getting it.

Baba is You*

Still messing with me

It’s a logic game but the metaphysical fuzziness of some puzzles makes you question the soundness of the design and then immediately your own intelligence for not getting it.

'There is literally no answer for this room. Oh, wait, so it also works like *that*.'

really hoping they don't botch the switch port of disco elysium

― megan thee macallan 18 year (||||||||), Thursday, May 14, 2020 6:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Oh man if ever there were a game that felt like A PC Game

steam released an update where it will recommend games from your library that you haven't played - it's nice of them to recognize the problem. it recommended i play epistory: typing chronicles, which was a fun game except i felt like spent most of it wandering around trying to find the next thing to actually do. and then when i did it was a ridiculously huge horde of spiders. the thing i like about rpgs is that it offers some sort of alternative to "git gud", but i'm not sure how any of the unlockables i get from leveling up would actually help me defeat this swarm.

tried "marvel super heroes 2" the other day. lego games are really frustrating to me because of the story levels. they're supposed to be "easy" and casual but i spend most of the time wandering around trying to figure out the precise random action i'm supposed to take in order to progress, and all the "clues" they throw at me never seem to quite help. ok, i'm supposed to do something with dr. strange here. wait, dr. strange isn't in my party. he used to be in my party. did a story event i ignored make him go away? do i need to go find him? or did he just get stuck somewhere because of a bug and i need to quit and replay the level all over again? i spend half an hour smashing random stuff, none of which unlocks anything, and quit. i do not restart.

the lego games are interesting to me because the games seem to be "for kids" easier copies of whatever style of gaming is popular in AAAs. maybe the mechanics they use are done better in AAAs, but i don't care about the mechanics, i just want to get the story over with so i can wander around and look for cool shit. i never get to that part with most of the games, between the unskippable cutscenes, though at least the most recent games let me turn off the voice acting, and the frustrating story levels.

PC gamers smell of onions

i am a hybrid gamer

so scallions?