whatchu playing now

it's okay that diablo is like that because diablo is supposed to be a treadmill you hop on and off with your friends, but it depresses me in single-player "be caught up in our sweeping otherworld" experiences-- it is also outrageously bad in cyberpunk, a game i mostly think is underrated

There seem to be a lot of these top-down RPGs that just seem like a jumble of random number explosions to me. Are these all MMORPGs? What confuses me is that I read that Baldur's Gate 3 is designed as a single-player game, but any footage I've seen is a crew out doing battles and stuff.

they're single-party games, they have co-op but there aren't other players running around out there outside your party so not an MMO

you control the whole crew.

(tho for some fucking reason you can't group-select them.)

indie game - pikmin, but you can't group select

but yes as i said the exploding barrels were interesting

sry for this lol, agreed that the environmental/elemental combat system was the best part is all i mean (tho as sgt biscuits chronicles in the actual BG3 thread maybe running a trifle hot)

I don't think I got out of the second level (the one after Fort Joy) in my single player DOS2 game, but I almost never used the environment outside of putting my ranged dudes on high ground.

i played an awesome full 4-player co-op campaign in DOS2 as a wizard (or some sort of spelldcaster). i set everything on fire, purposefully and accidentally, approximately 1500 times

speaking as a permanent amateur since i haven't played that many ttrpgs or dnd campaigns, but DOS2 is interesting because the environmental effects, while technically possible in a ttrpg, would be waaaaaaay too annoying to do in real life, to keep track of the elemental/environmental status of every tile in a battle. it's an idea and style of play that makes much more sense in a computer game.

thanks for the input team.. i'll probably give it a chance when it gets discounted

I gave Starfield a few hours and I'm honestly not sure if I'll ever boot it up again.

I heard it gets better after the first ... 12 hours.

I did the same re: starfield. Many xxps: I don’t remember dignity’s weapon system being like that? I thought it was entirely similar to BG3’s, with the additional magic/physical armour thing (another element I loved). I’ll have to boot it up again, it’s on my extremely long list of games I stopped playing 3/4’s through for no particular reason.

Currently doing a level of alien isolation on the steam deck each night. Very pretty game. I like its confidence in itself to be exactly what it is. No bloat, no extraneous systems, just some good enemy a.I, some great audio ambience, and a by the numbers alien story told well in a videogame format. It’s a fantastic sum of its parts. And my wife (who hates anything horror) hasn’t even complained yet while playing it next to her!

It's kind of amazing how well that game nails everything and and yet how so few games have come close to doing what it does so well. Re: bloat, I never got around to finishing it (will start over at some point), but I have heard some people complain about its length.

Finished Streets of Rogue tonight on co-op. fun stupid chaos.

Are you talking about alien isolation Josh?

Alien Isolation rules. I never finished it, maybe a little longer than it needs to be, but super cool game. Love how it really goes for the original Alien aesthetic.

xpost Yeah, played a bunch of it when I bothered with the Switch. Really well balanced and paced, imo, both in terms of progress and threats. A lot of thought put into it

I'm only up to chapter 5, just saw there's 18 chapters. If it stays this high quality throughout then I am fine with that length? The chapters are a perfect bite size; it is literally replacing reading a book chapter at night for me right now and it fills that role well. I'm sure I would not enjoy it as much if I tried to plow through it in a few days though.

I do like when the alien franchise leans on the whole "can we trust A.I? no!" angle. Happy it gets an early entrance in this game

void stranger is game of the year, easily

Just read a review and that sounds intriguing & pretty insane. Hope it comes out for PS.

I bought Somerville, by one of the people who made Limbo/Inside, came out a year ago on PC and Xbox but just out now on PS.

Looks neat. Saw this with a review:

Playdead have reached out to say “There is no overlap between the creative teams and leadership making LIMBO and INSIDE and the creative team and leadership making SOMERVILLE, in fact the only human overlap there is is executive producer Dino Patti who was not a creative contributor to LIMBO or INSIDE. I understand why you draw parallels between the titles, but I can assure you that there is no overlap between the creative teams and that we have no involvement with the SOMERVILLE project.

Huh yeah, kinda crazy since it looks extremely Limbo/Inside in terms of style.

And there's another game by the person who actually made Limbo & Inside? Looks really cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xub7_FhlWws

Chants of Senaar, the Moebius tower of Babel game, is pretty chewy in a good way! After a very brief tutorial, you're thrown into the deep end as far as figuring out the game mechanics even as you try to piece together all the language puzzles.

Began "Bioshock Infinite." It's already pretty different from the first two, or at least, the start is overwhelming while the others sort of ease you into their worlds. Kinda getting nu-"Wolfenstein" vibes from it.

chants of senaar sounds great. wishlisted.

final fantasy 8. specifically triple triad in the starting area of ff8. i am the cardmaster

I tried to undo one of the annoying triple triad rules once and I couldn't do it in 5+ hours of trying.

board game night cancelled tonight
so it's time for the case of the golden idol - p stoked

not sure if it's similar but loved hob's barrow

big fan of the mystery/detective game boom of the past few years

yes any other recs like these would be appreciated

finally playing FF7R. played the demo when it came out but kinda hated the battle system, so didn't buy at the time.
with a hefty discount and the second one coming out soon, plus reading various hints about how the remake story goes off in a different direction (without getting it spoiled), figured the time was now if ever. and I made my peace with the battle system once I figured out it's just a dumb button basher in FF clothing, so bring on the daftness.

yes any other recs like these would be appreciated

Obra Dinn is the obvious touchpoint (though I was a lot more meh on it than others). But I'll just plug Chants of Sennaar again!

enjoyed obra dinn but found it a bit of a pain to navigate

Will add sennaar to my list

If you like Sennaar and Obra Dinn, I suggest The Case of the Golden Idol: https://www.thegoldenidol.com/trial

(which I see was mentioned, but they offer a free trial)

Playing It Takes Two with my son at the moment.

Was not expecting it to be as great as it is. Lots (and lots) of fun and really inventive gameplay mechanics with an abundance of variety as you progress through the story.

I recently found a working PS2 in a cupboard I didn't realise I had. A recent trip to CEX turned up:

- Eternal Ring (a janky PS2 flagship action-adventure, BUT it's also an early Fromsoft game, so naturally I'm kind of intrigued about it, especially as it shares a similar name to another game)
- Final Fantasy X + X-2

Obvs Baldur's Gate is taking up the vast majority of my time, so it will be a while till I get round to these

Back to cyberpunk with this new update. Still stands as the best looking videogame since its release nearly 3 years ago. Quite the feat!

Bit of FFX, bit of FFXVI, last boss of BG3, and always an excessive amount of TF2

cocoon looks rad

Just finished "Bioshock Infinite," and my take is maybe ... ambitious failure? Everything about the gameplay is pretty sound - the fights, the design - but there's so much back and forth between locations, which gets boring, and the fights are kinda all the same, too. The biggest sticking point for me, though, is the story; I literally had no idea what was going on. Something about an inter-dimensional white supremacist steampunk city in sky, with ghosts and crossing timelines and alternate timelines and prophecies and ... who the fuck can tell. Normally I'm fine with convoluted gibberish - I have no idea what is going on in *any* From game - but this is so character driven that it proves a distraction, imo. It's hard to fight when you have no idea exactly what you're fighting for. Even "Control" felt more cohesive, and that was a gleefully surrealist farrago.

yeah, I think it's one of the most disappointing games in memory. Storywise, I don't think it ever recovers from the baseball of racism moment in the opening segment. Just a total dogshit story through and through that revealed Ken Levine to be a David Cage level artistic fraud.

Cocoon is rad

Do you recommend it for someone who didn't finish Inside?

Idk, what didn't you like about it? They're both pretty short. So far Cocoon is pretty brilliant at introducing you to new mechanics (without any text or dialogue) without being overwhelming. There's always a new little application to what you just learned and you feel pretty smart, but it stays very focused at the same time. It's pretty masterfully designed, especially considering it only uses one button.

There are "boss fights", but they're very forgiving (if you get damaged, it just tosses you out of the world so you can restart the fight immediately).

Inside being horror-adjacent was hard for me to keep playing (I gave up after a mermaid ate me).

It's the 2023 Interactive Fiction Competition lads. That'll be my month of games.