What are you currently playing?

[CraigTheCylon]

Been scattering my focus between too many games and not getting anywhere again, but at least beat some things recently.

The Evil Within 2: I still haven't really done anything on the first one; played the prologue once, then abandoned it. Will have to go back one day. Still, #2 is stand-alone enough that I didn't feel I lost much from inexperience. You're a detective with a Sadness Beard trying to rescue your daughter from a virtual-reality world that's supposed to be idealized small-town Americana but has twisted out of shape and flooded with monsters, and also there's a corporate conspiracy subplot brewing in the background. Simple enough. TEW2 takes the risk of welding an open-world design to survival horror conventions - because everything in games is an open world now whether anyone wanted it to be or not - and...kinda succeeds. As you skulk back and forth across Union, trying to stick to the alleys and backlots to avoid packs of zombies and occasional bigger menaces, with useful upgrades and ammo drops luring you into inevitable traps, you'll feel no shortage of tension. Ammo is scarce, and stealth is the smart approach. Unfortunately, it doesn't tip over from 'tense' into 'scary' all that much. Leaving the player relatively free to approach from any direction, and throwing enemies into varying open areas, exposes the mechanics of AI behaviour too much, and encounters quickly devolve into instances of pure math, more akin to outsmarting the guards in any given Metal Gear than a horror title. That said, the game makes sure to lock you in enclosed spaces for important story sections, and here the spooks come back hard. The virtual reality premise lets the developers muck about with level geography to no end without breaking the rules of their narrative, and that creates some excellent stand-along murderboxes which, if I'm honest, would maybe make a better horror game directly glued together without all the running-around inbetween. Still, TEW2 succeeds where it counts.

The Town of Light: A creepy walking simulator in an abandoned mental hospital, Town of Light is built around the story of Renee, an Italian girl of uncertain but drastic illness who's trying to piece her own life back together by dredging through the rubble of the past. It's a diverting story well-told, with a strong lead vocal performance and good use of a limited location, plus the occasional diversion into more surreal territory. It doesn't shy away from pretty shocking subject matter but never feels like it's just throwing this stuff in there purely to shock you. That being said, the strength of any walker is the sense of immersion, and Town of Light suffers thanks to technical issues. Specifically the framerate, which stutters constantly and I have no idea why. It's not that impressive to look at and it's running on Unity, so I'm at a loss to explain why it drops below 30fps whenever confronted by a lighting effect. There's also an issue of waypointing: the game isn't always clear about where it wants you to go next. There are maps, but they're pinned to the walls (i.e. not something that's part of your inventory) and not every area is labelled correctly. Think I wasted 20 minutes on chapter 9 looking for an 'archive' I'd likely passed twice before because it's not named as such on any map and has no sign above the door. Still a good example of the genre, I just wish the experience ran a little smoother.

[bruceleegreyhulk]

playing a 2D indie game using my fight pad since I can't play any game that requires analog sticks . my pro controller's cable broke so I order a new controller from Amazon that is a upgrade of the one I had.

[Zero Hunter]

Gave Monster Hunter: World a shot. While I liked some things about it in the end it just was not the game for me. I gave it about 5 hours and it just never really hooked me.

[BeastieRunner]

Gave Monster Hunter: World a shot. While I liked some things about it in the end it just was not the game for me. I gave it about 5 hours and it just never really hooked me.

It takes a long time to get into a Monster Hunter game. This one touted being more "inclusive" of new players but ... it takes a good 20+ hours to get into the depth of the game that makes it ridiculously fun. Which makes me sad, because I was hoping they would've opened it up a bit more that the older games. MH is kinda like Ninja Gaiden as a either you love it or hate it.

Anyway ... I've been playing a lot of Super Mega Baseball 2 and Just Cause 3 with some MH:World sprinkled in.

[WraizeM]

Been really into COD again for some reason, got the new game WW2 and it’s pretty average, I wouldn’t mind getting one of the Naruto games to try out, if anyone has played them let me know how they are. Also still play allot of SWTOR and WOW.

[Jopi]

Fallout 4 and Stellaris.

[Amacent]

Final Fantasy 15 - It's been sitting on my shelf for more than a year but I finally took the dive and started to play it. I love it so far. The only issue that I have is that I absolutely HATE Noctis' hair. Good Lord, it's awful.

[CraigTheCylon]

Gave Monster Hunter: World a shot. While I liked some things about it in the end it just was not the game for me. I gave it about 5 hours and it just never really hooked me.

It takes a long time to get into a Monster Hunter game. This one touted being more "inclusive" of new players but ... it takes a good 20+ hours to get into the depth of the game that makes it ridiculously fun. Which makes me sad, because I was hoping they would've opened it up a bit more that the older games. MH is kinda like Ninja Gaiden as a either you love it or hate it.

I've had the good fortune of a friend who's absurdly obsessive about Monster Hunter to hold my hand in my various attempts with the series over the years, previously with Monster Hunter Tri and more recently World. That was a lifesaver, because there is SO MUCH important stuff to figure out with these games that the game itself either takes its sweet time establishing or doesn't openly acknowledge ever. Even just simple stuff like how to pull off combos with a bladed weapon can be a mystery, especially with weirder ones like Switch Axes or Gunlances. World does take more time than usual to explain itself - sometimes a little too much, there seems to be no end to the tutorial pop-ups - and I appreciate the effort made in constructing the story this time around. Even so, when the game gets tricky it's borderline unbearable, and after a particularly annoying failure to kill some dumb ice-flinging dragon - during which I wasted maybe 20 minutes chasing two (2) completely wrong sets of trails, lucked out by sending the beast to sleep with my cat's upgraded weapon only to find it had fallen in a spot you can't put a trap on, set the trap a bit to the side and woke the monster up hoping it would move toward me and get caught only for the stupid thing to fly away in the opposite direction, waste more time chasing it down, got KO'd twice, and recovered from the 2nd fall only to be alerted I had less than 5 minutes left and the beast was on the opposite side of the map, and the map was full of dumb slow-ass climbing walls and vines so that was that - I rage-quit and told myself I'd go back later when I was feeling better.

That was 2 months ago now. Probably never going back. Plus my friend is no longer playing the game because he's apparently beaten it too much, the show-off.

...haven't really completed anything since my last post, but may as well talk about Destiny 2: Warmind. It's pretty good, and coupled with the tweaks from the season 3 patch it does feel like real effort was made to address lingering issues only experienced fans would have. That said, its campaign doesn't put the best foot forwards. For one thing, it's short - about 90 minutes to 2 hours for completion depending on skill. Granted, that's partly since it doesn't drag things out with repeated missions on the older planets like Curse of Osiris did, but short is short. It's also a bit lacking in detail, given the parts of the Destiny mythos we're dealing with here. The Clovis Bray institute and the Warmind Rasputin have been around since D1's beginnings but Rasputin's never factored into D2 as yet, and Clovis Bray has been just whispers and mentions in passing until now. Here we finally see them up-close and...learn very little. I'll give it this, the campaign's final boss is the most exciting one since Oryx in The Taken King, non-Raid division, feeling appropriately epic AND actually feeling like a fight rather than a piece of furniture that spawns minions *cough*Panoptes*cough*. But the real value of Warmind is its post-game stuff. For one, the new Mars patrol zone is satisfyingly big and intricately layered, with a nice variety of environments and real thought put into its design - hell, even the Lost Sectors have interesting lore stuff in them. And you're properly motivated to explore, as there's not 1 but 2 distinct scavenger hunts potentially leading you to all-new guns and gear. I've seen people compare the workings of this stage to the Dreadnaught in D1 and that's a compliment I'll happily agree to. There's also the new Escalation Protocol, which is, well, horde mode with a fancy name. But it's a well-staged horde mode with some neat extra gameplay features included, and a difficulty that starts kicking you in the teeth and only gets more painful as time goes on (yeah, the difference between power levels in season 3 is way more noticable than before). One of these days, I'm gonna make it past level 2. Don't know if I'll ever get further but I can do that much.

[Zero Hunter]

Been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and am really liking it so far. Combat does take quite a bit of effort to get the hang of, but it is not boring. The only thing I hate is when you die and realize you have not saved in a while. I wish it autosaved after you finished a quest like most games of this type do. I had to do that stupid catching the birds quest 3 times because of that. Now I just make sure to grab a quick nap after every quest and save.

[Chocolate Starmie]

I got back into Stardew Valley over the weekend and almost forgot I had to go to work yesterday morning

[Tenebrae]

Just started Mass Effect Andromeda and I can see some of the issues people have with it, especially in the faces, but I am really enjoying it at the min. The combat is a lot of fun as I can use whatever abilities I want and create combos all the time. I do see more similarities than I'd like in gameplay to Dragon Age Inquisition but maybe just cause it's space it seems a bit better.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Just started Mass Effect Andromeda and I can see some of the issues people have with it, especially in the faces, but I am really enjoying it at the min. The combat is a lot of fun as I can use whatever abilities I want and create combos all the time. I do see more similarities than I'd like in gameplay to Dragon Age Inquisition but maybe just cause it's space it seems a bit better.

Well EA put out a patch. The worst glitches were taken care of weeks after it all.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

Just got my PS4 Pro and am playing 4 games, Disgaea 5, Mass Effect Andromeda, Nights of Azure 2, and Fallout 4...very different games but all fun imho...though I don't like the character creation and odd saving thing in Andromeda...

[CraigTheCylon]

Completed Manticore: Galaxy on Fire for the Switch last week. Pretty good stuff. Manticore was apparently a mobile game originally, but you wouldn't know it from the outside, partly because it's not forever trying to fleece you out of more money but mostly because it feels like something built with genuine care. You're a nameless starfighter pilot who comes a-cropper on entering the Neox system, only to be bailed out by the mercenary crew of the battleship Manticore. With nothing else to offer, you sign on as their new recruit just in time to partake in a planet-destroying catastrophe, and spend the rest of the game navigating the web of power players in the sector on a whodunnit quest. With spaceships. Controls skew toward arcade simplicity; if you're old enough to have fond memories of the Rogue Squadron games you'll feel right at home. One stick controls direction, the other accelerates and allows for evasive barrel rolls. Missions are relatively pint-sized, with even the more protracted clocking in at 10 minutes or less to complete, but there's a lot of them - my save slot registered near 7-and-a-half hours playtime by the end, and that's with me skipping some of the unlockable lore entries. Mission variety is decent, though things do get a hair repetitive towards the end. Less repetitive is the vehicle choice; there are 9 different ships to unlock with differing properties (loosely grouped as fast ones, strong ones and middle-y ones), and you're also given free reign to choose their loadout of 2 main guns, missile choice, and bonus devices like a cloak or area-effect EMP. The story ends on a mild cliffhanger and the lore pages hint toward a grander threat that remains unseen, so hopefully there'll be a sequel in future.

Also finished Far Cry 4 last night. Yes, 4 not 5. I'm behind. Actually, this might be the first Far Cry I've played, although I do have older ones sitting around gathering dust...anyway, it's Far Cry, meaning it's the Ubisoft Game Template™ in first-person shooter form. You're dumped in a big, pretty map that you'll waste far too much time simply making visible and accessible for later use, there's a billion arbitrary things needing done at any given moment and enough weapons and useful perks are locked behind them that you won't feel safe ignoring them, and it's clear a lot of time and effort was spent on getting the feel and atmosphere just right but it amounts to so very little because Kyrat - the aforementioned pretty map - is like the world's biggest playpark, except it turns playing into a chore, and no amount of dizzying depth-of-field or nice writing can escape the general malaise that creeps up over time. Look, I don't want to be entirely negative here because Far Cry 4 isn't 'bad' in the normal sense; most of the shooter mechanics are solid-to-great, stealth is consistently well-handled, its moral choices are binary but never easy, and there's some really exciting bottle-episode stuff like the Shangri-La trips or the missions in the Himalayas that shake things up in cool ways. But there's just far too much faffing around demanded of the player, much of which I'd rather not have done (not keen on how many animals you have to kill and chop up just to have a decent-size wallet or carry an acceptable amount of medkits, for example), and all the time I was constantly wondering how much I'd prefer this same story told as a linear collection of levels without the tiresome sandbox cluttering it up. For the record, I chose to side with Amita as Golden Path leader because I like heroin more than religion, let Noore kill herself because I was trying to be merciful early on, then got impatient when I felt the end getting closer so shot Sabal and Pagan first chance I had. Then the game crashed almost immediately after the credits rolled, so, decided not to go for the 100%.

Currently unfinished, and will likely remain that way, is Black Mirror. Not the TV show about how your iPhone will kill you. This one's a horror puzzle-adventure game set in a castle in 1920s Scotland. You're the new master of the house after your dad's unusual death, and it's immediately apparent that everyone there - your relatives, the butler, the terrifying one-eyed groundskeeper - are keeping secrets from you. Cue much wandering around, asking pointed questions and poking at anything unusual to see what happens. Despite technical niggles - the game can't hold a solid framerate to save itself - I was enjoying the lovely art design and wonderful voice acting (you just don't get actual Scottish brogue in enough games), but I've run into a game-crashing glitch midway through the 2nd chapter which prevents story progression point-blank. Bugger.

[Starter Set]

Battlefront 2 on PC.

I must admit, they have done some good work since the release fiasco.

The pay to win elements have been removed, for now at least, there is a lot of content and the overall game experience is pleasant.

Good job.