What are you playing?

figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Just finished Zeno Clash 2 and it wasn't as good as the first game.

Pros:
- Beautiful insanity. This game has some crazy character and art design, and I love it.
- I like the main character (who is basically done with this shit and is going to beat everyone into the ground until his morals are satisfied.)
- Crazy villains

Cons:
- The semi-open world nature reveals that the design team sucks at level design.
- The worst voice actress from the first game returns in a big role.
- Having to find hidden upgrade totems is tedious and distracts from the story.

Also, none of the fights live up to the crazy shit in the first game. Scrambling to shoot a masked assassin who is standing on top of a dinosaur's head while throwing squirrels laden with powder kegs down on you? Now that was amazing.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
Har har.

Still playing Dragon Age Inquisition. Feels kind of churny, and I can't really get into it. Anybody else experience this?
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

fade said:
Har har.

Still playing Dragon Age Inquisition. Feels kind of churny, and I can't really get into it. Anybody else experience this?
Click to expand...
Only most people I've spoken to, including my wife. For other Bioware games, she likes to do everything on one playthrough (choice-based missions aside). Dragon Age 3 killed that for her, and yet you still have a prerequisite amount of shit to do before you can move on with the story. Nothing in particular, just go do more side-questy nonsense until you're allowed to proceed.

That said, the story is a huge step-up from DA2, some interesting story beats. One warning so as to temper expectations, and I won't list specifics because it's just a pacing thing:

The final battle is the denouement; the second to last mission is the actual climax. I say this because otherwise you finish the second to last mission expecting the grandiose finale, except you already played the big finale and didn't realize it.

Others may disagree and say it's fine, but watching my wife play I thought it was odd from a storytelling perspective.
 
Fun Size

Fun Size

I've grown bored of Deadpool, which is a statement I never thought I could make and a sad reflection on the video game industry. Anyway, I finished The Room 3 (four times) and need new fixes. I really want to play Borderlands 2, but I'm exclusively a solo player, so everyone has made me very nervous about that one. Also downloaded The Last Door demo, as I'm longing for decent creepiness that doesn't rely on jump scares (which is what has thus far kept me from Five Nights at Freddie's).
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
I've put some more hours in Empyrion.

In fact, I started playing it online in multiplayer.

It's got some mechanics I wish Space Engineers would copy/steal, and it has some others I'm not sure about.

For one thing, I like how the "blueprints" system in Empyrion lets you deposit all the required raw material ingots and just have it built itself over time. The bigger the thing, the longer it takes. It's less realistic than Space Engineers' way of "welding parts onto a 3d projection manually" but ungh it is SO less tedious. The personal drone mechanic also makes building stuff manually SO much easier. Additionally, Empyrion seems to have figured out how to get large and small ships to dock together with landing gears, no fuss, no muss, no exploding twisted shards of steel and plastic. Once you know how the game works, you can practically be in space within an hour of first planetfall. Also, it's kind of interesting how the game map defaults - the starter planet is strictly PvE, as is orbital space around it, but the surface of its moon (the only pre-warp source of Neodymium, which is required to build things like warp drives and other higher tier equipment) is PvP enabled, as are most planets, moons, and space sectors beyond that. I guess that is so that if you get your ass completely handed to you out amongst the stars, you can always start over again on Akua...

Thing is, the default also seems to be that any structure you don't visit for 48 hours deletes itself. I can understand the need to reduce clutter in multiplayer, but that's kind of a tall order with dire consequences. If, as previously mentioned, you get blown to shit in space around the lava planet 2 AU away or something and have no recourse but to respawn on Akua, if you haven't been to your base there in 48 hours, it is gone. And that's a hard row to hoe if you have to start over with nothing but a pistol and a hand drill. The other players might not kill you on Akua, but the local wildlife can be pretty unfriendly when you don't have steel and concrete to hide behind at night. One poisonous bite from a plant-monster and you might die before you can find the right plant to cure it... assuming you aren't just straight up eaten by a dinosaur, or get food poisoning from eating the wrong CornDog plant.

Another source of irritation is that there is no ship-mounted mining equipment. All mining has to be done outside of a vehicle. Which, granted, the T2 laser drill (which autocollects ore into your inventory) makes it a lot less inconvenient than when you start, but I really wish they would have a ship-mounted mining laser that does the same thing.

On the other hand, I like the mechanic for dealing with depleted resources on a planet. Every time a planet's supply of a given resource falls below 10% of its starting point, a meteor falls randomly somewhere consisting entirely of that resource. A pretty elegant solution to a problem Space Engineers only solved by saying "well, go further out into space and find more."
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
On the other hand, I like the mechanic for dealing with depleted resources on a planet. Every time a planet's supply of a given resource falls below 10% of its starting point, a meteor falls randomly somewhere consisting entirely of that resource. A pretty elegant solution to a problem Space Engineers only solved by saying "well, go further out into space and find more."
Click to expand...
To be fair, this is also part of the scenario in Space Engineers. The empty, hollow bases that have been abandoned once the nearby sources of resources have been depleted adds to the atmosphere of the game. You move because not moving means death. Ensuring that meteors full or resources will always arrive nearby is simply going to encourage people to stay in one place instead of exploring.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
To be fair, this is also part of the scenario in Space Engineers. The empty, hollow bases that have been abandoned once the nearby sources of resources have been depleted adds to the atmosphere of the game. You move because not moving means death. Ensuring that meteors full or resources will always arrive nearby is simply going to encourage people to stay in one place instead of exploring.
Click to expand...
It's also because Space Engineers features an infinite procedurally generated universe (with all the good and bad that comes with it, especially bad on the bugs/technical end), whereas Empyrion features a limited, albeit large solar system with a finite number of planets and locations, most of which require jump drives (and special fuel resources for the jump drives) to travel between. Planetary survival and interfaction conflict will play a larger part in Empyrion, I'm predicting... which is fine by me. My favorite Space Engineers server had a limited size map with all the resources clustered in the center, so that people came into contact/conflict over them. Granted, the starting planet being system-enforced PvE puts a damper on that, but I think it's a reasonable replacement for Space Engineers' ability to have a conventionally-fueled jump drive that can put you 500km from anyone else in any of all 3 directions so that you never have to see another player if you don't want to.
 
Yoshimickster

Yoshimickster

Played "Beatdown:Fists of Vengeance"(generic name fun game) at my friend's house, and the monent I saw the main characters-
-I immediately thought Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. 3 males, 2 females, multi-ethnic group of people. Hell, they even had matching costumes in the first act! Also the entire organization is just the most ethnically non-exclusive gang I've ever seen, like one of those TV gangs.

Like I said, fun, but cliche as all fuck.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Yoshimickster said:
Played "Beatdown:Fists of Vengeance"(generic name fun game) at my friend's house, and the monent I saw the main characters-
-I immediately thought Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. 3 males, 2 females, multi-ethnic group of people. Hell, they even had matching costumes in the first act! Also the entire organization is just the most ethnically non-exclusive gang I've ever seen, like one of those TV gangs.

Like I said, fun, but cliche as all fuck.
Click to expand...
Ha. There's even a Z on the medallion for ZORDON.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Yoshimickster said:
Played "Beatdown:Fists of Vengeance"(generic name fun game) at my friend's house, and the monent I saw the main characters-
-I immediately thought Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. 3 males, 2 females, multi-ethnic group of people. Hell, they even had matching costumes in the first act! Also the entire organization is just the most ethnically non-exclusive gang I've ever seen, like one of those TV gangs.

Like I said, fun, but cliche as all fuck.
Click to expand...
So... Black Ranger, Gold Ranger, Red Ranger, Purple Ranger and.... Leopard-Print Ranger?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Empyrion-

After a brief testing of my ship's new jump engine (to the "Trading Outpost" 1 AU away, where, spoiler alert! - there is no trade, only angry bases with rocket launchers), I returned to Akua to load up on fuel and oxygen, since I don't know where else I'll find either. Luckily, apparently sometime between last night and today, a promethium meteorite made landfall a scant 50 meters from my base :confused: ulp. Well, I'll not look gift fuel in the mouth, no matter how near the miss. Also turned my single seat shuttle into a personal submarine and went trawling the lakebottoms for the blue crystals that get refined to make jump drive fuel, and set 4 oxygen generators on the lake's edge to turn water into O2 tanks while I went to play secret world with Dei for a few hours. When that was over, I had hundreds of bottles of oxy to keep me breathing out in the black, and dozens of cans of food in the ship's fridge.

So, tomorrow... the Adventure into the great (PvP) unknown begins.

Here are some screenshots I snapped of my base and ships before logging out tonight.

(GBI is my faction's abbreviation, Gas Bandit Industries, of which I am currently the sole member :p )








The large ship isn't really anything special, just a stock standard blueprinted 1000 ton spacebarge, customized a little by yours truly to add the jump drives (which don't come standard on this) and a few other upgrades. Right now it's just got one defensive cannon turret, but I don't plan to take this raiding. Probably just set up a new base on another world, scrape together more resources so I can build a bigger, badder ship.[DOUBLEPOST=1465361902,1465361386][/DOUBLEPOST]Somebody actually built this thing in this game.



I have my doubts about how well it moves... but it's really tempting to save up the stupid amounts of resources it would take to build it, and give it a whirl.
 
Null

Null

I would love to see when people driving that get in a PVP match with people driving a Star Destroyer.

My money's on the Star Destroyer.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine

Holy hell, the amount of content in this expansion pack put many supposedly full-size games to shame. And for $20? It's an incredible deal. Worth every penny.

One thing I'm enjoying more than I expected is owning my own vineyard in the game. There's an assortment of upgrades to it, that all give you bonuses to yourself and to your noble steed, Roach. The other nice touch is decorating your home. Some quests give you mementos you can hang or display. Even better, there are various armour and weapon stands. Given the huge amount of weapons and armour sets, this is a great feature. Since I have everything else upgraded (potions, bombs, etc), I'm spending all my extra money upgrading all the armour sets to the highest, even if they're not the best armour to use anymore, JUST to display them in my home.

Being a fan of open-world sandbox games, I wish these games would do this more. Give you little mementos and let you display wherever you want in your homestead or crib. Even just having various mementos as you progress through the game is nice. Arkham Knight did something similar, where the jail cells filled up with criminals and super villains as you progressed through the game. Not only could you track your progress that way, but you were reminded of some of officers or firefighters you rescued along the way. Imagine being able to do that in a Year One-style Batman game (or something similar) where the Bat Cave fills up with everything from a giant Joker card to a mechanical T-Rex or even a little stable for Bat-Cow. Or a Superman game with a Fortress of Solitude that fills up in the same way. Or heck, how about a Flash game where you fill up The Flash museum? Or a Green Lantern game with a display room on Oa.

Basically, what I'm saying is I wish this feature or something like it was in more games like this.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

ThatNickGuy said:
The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine

Holy hell, the amount of content in this expansion pack put many supposedly full-size games to shame. And for $20? It's an incredible deal. Worth every penny.

One thing I'm enjoying more than I expected is owning my own vineyard in the game. There's an assortment of upgrades to it, that all give you bonuses to yourself and to your noble steed, Roach. The other nice touch is decorating your home. Some quests give you mementos you can hang or display. Even better, there are various armour and weapon stands. Given the huge amount of weapons and armour sets, this is a great feature. Since I have everything else upgraded (potions, bombs, etc), I'm spending all my extra money upgrading all the armour sets to the highest, even if they're not the best armour to use anymore, JUST to display them in my home.

Being a fan of open-world sandbox games, I wish these games would do this more. Give you little mementos and let you display wherever you want in your homestead or crib. Even just having various mementos as you progress through the game is nice. Arkham Knight did something similar, where the jail cells filled up with criminals and super villains as you progressed through the game. Not only could you track your progress that way, but you were reminded of some of officers or firefighters you rescued along the way. Imagine being able to do that in a Year One-style Batman game (or something similar) where the Bat Cave fills up with everything from a giant Joker card to a mechanical T-Rex or even a little stable for Bat-Cow. Or a Superman game with a Fortress of Solitude that fills up in the same way. Or heck, how about a Flash game where you fill up The Flash museum? Or a Green Lantern game with a display room on Oa.

Basically, what I'm saying is I wish this feature or something like it was in more games like this.
Click to expand...
Did you play the previous Witcher games? If not, did you have any trouble getting into 3?
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
Empyrion-

After a brief testing of my ship's new jump engine (to the "Trading Outpost" 1 AU away, where, spoiler alert! - there is no trade, only angry bases with rocket launchers), I returned to Akua to load up on fuel and oxygen, since I don't know where else I'll find either. Luckily, apparently sometime between last night and today, a promethium meteorite made landfall a scant 50 meters from my base :confused: ulp. Well, I'll not look gift fuel in the mouth, no matter how near the miss. Also turned my single seat shuttle into a personal submarine and went trawling the lakebottoms for the blue crystals that get refined to make jump drive fuel, and set 4 oxygen generators on the lake's edge to turn water into O2 tanks while I went to play secret world with Dei for a few hours. When that was over, I had hundreds of bottles of oxy to keep me breathing out in the black, and dozens of cans of food in the ship's fridge.
Click to expand...
Wait, this has undersea exploration too? Neat. I may have to pick this up sometime in the future.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
Wait, this has undersea exploration too? Neat. I may have to pick this up sometime in the future.
Click to expand...
Well, no body of water that I've found has been deeper than 10 or 15 meters. But it makes for quite an inconvenience to gather aquatic plants and warp crystal, because you can't swim if you're wielding an item (you sink and then walk slowly across the bottom), and the water is dark and murky and you have to put on your helmet and use up oxygen bottles if you're going to stay under for more than a few seconds. But I wouldn't call it "undersea exploration." More like... diving for pearls.

I have no idea if the water is different on other planets, though. I suspect the barren and lava planet types may not have water at all. Maybe there are plans in the works to add an aquatic planet type? There is a snow planet...
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Ravenpoe said:
Did you play the previous Witcher games? If not, did you have any trouble getting into 3?
Click to expand...
I hadn't, so it was a little difficult at first. There's a point early on where someone asks you questions about decisions made in previous games. It can affect whether certain characters show up later. I had no clue who these characters were, so I didn't really know what to answer. And the game doesn't really provide introductions to characters aside from suggesting you read their biography entries in the game's database.

But once I got to know these characters myself as I progressed, that became less and less an issue until I wound up really enjoying the game and its characters.

Honestly, I'd intended on playing through 1 & 2 before playing 3. They're so cheap anytime they go on sale. But I couldn't get into 1 at all. I found it rather dated, so I wound up selling it and decided I'd just jump right into 3 and wing it.

It's now become one of my favourite games. I might go back and give the others a second chance sometime.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Playing my first Layton game, Professor Layton and the Mask of Regret Miracle Mask. I'm enjoying it so far, but I foresee bad things coming in the story. They'll probably wave it off with British politeness, but still.

The interactions are really funny though. "You gots to solve this puzzle if you wanna go in here!" "You want my help? Then solve this puzzle." "I'm sorry for being rude. Let me make it up to you with a puzzle." "Here's your prize--a puzzle!"
 
Fun Size

Fun Size

Zero Esc said:
Playing my first Layton game, Professor Layton and the Mask of Regret Miracle Mask. I'm enjoying it so far, but I foresee bad things coming in the story. They'll probably wave it off with British politeness, but still.

The interactions are really funny though. "You gots to solve this puzzle if you wanna go in here!" "You want my help? Then solve this puzzle." "I'm sorry for being rude. Let me make it up to you with a puzzle." "Here's your prize--a puzzle!"
Click to expand...
Penny Arcade is always hit or miss, but they were never so "hit" as this comment on the good Professor (and I love those games)
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/13/professor-layton-and-the-perpetual-torment
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Null said:
Man that just reminds me how fucking good Penny Arcade's art was in 2008. That was before he decided that everyone's face needed to look like Ren and Stimpy's asshole.
Click to expand...
A chipmunk staring out of Ren and Stimpy's asshole, you mean.

--Patrick
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Stardew Valley

Ohhhh boy. This game'll be a time sink for me. I can already feel it.

So a friend of mine got this for me as a birthday present (back in May). I've been so hooked on Witcher 3 that I hadn't gotten around to playing it until now. Today, in fact.

...and I just finished playing 6 hours of it in one sitting.

Oops.
 
Dei

Dei

ThatNickGuy said:
Stardew Valley

Ohhhh boy. This game'll be a time sink for me. I can already feel it.

So a friend of mine got this for me as a birthday present (back in May). I've been so hooked on Witcher 3 that I hadn't gotten around to playing it until now. Today, in fact.

...and I just finished playing 6 hours of it in one sitting.

Oops.
Click to expand...
One of us, one of us
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
So, before Overwatch got started tonight, I got a scant few minutes to play Empyrion again... I said adieu to my cushy little base in PVE land and struck out for the unknown, looking for adventure (and rare minerals). First place I tried was a nearby lava planet.

(Spoilers for size)

The view of the planet from my space barge's helm.


The space barge on approach


Jeez, it's just as bad from the surface as it is from orbit.


I fly around in my shuttle to get the lay of the land and try to find something worth sticking my neck out for.

These crazy horrible things are all over the surface... my targeting reticle calls them "nightmares" and it's not far from the truth.


And these terrible abominations are called "overlords," though they seem to be a predatory animal and not a hostile sentient alien... at least according to my turret autotargeting.


I find a deposit of erestrium a good ways to the east of my landing site, gun down the local horrors, and nervously dig up a load to take with me using my autocollecting mining laser. SO much better than the petrol-powered conventional drill you start with.


The tension gets to me a little too much, so I decide to try exploring somewhere else, and head off to another nearby planet, this one a desert planet. My jump drive warps me right into the middle of a ring of asteroids around the planet, and I have to muscle it out of the way of the gnashing rocks.


I stop to investigate the "shipyard" on the radar, but find it to be torn open and gutted... some other enterprising spaceman has been here before me.


As I scan the barren wastes of the desert planet, I find an abandoned factory complex and decide to go have a look.


The local wildlife is suitably alien and unsettling.



The desert golem is not friendly.

I don't know what "MalCo" made here, but judging by the symbols on the containers they left here, maybe I don't want to get too intimate a knowledge.


To cut a long story short (too late), inside I find mostly abandoned and crumbling, with occasional spurts of hostile wildlife that came in through this or that crack. The containers I crack open (the ones that DON'T have warning symbols on the outside) are mostly filled with raw materials like wood, cement and plastic, but also I manage to find a dozen or so of various medical supplies for treating wounds and poison. Nothing I can't make myself, mind you, but ah well. I also sample some of the local flora - I collect some cactus pads and a wierd tentacly fruit, and I find my first nest to pillage for eggs, so maybe there will be some waffles in my future.

I pack it all away in the fridge, and that's about when Terrik and Dei got online and it was time to stop for the night :p
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

I started playing Elite: Dangerous again. I kitted out a ship for deep space exploration and decided to head out on an expedition. It was a relatively short journey, taking me only two (real life) days and taking me 500 lightyears away from the 'bubble' of civilized space around Sol. I decided to end my journey at Betelgeuse.

Here's a nice shot of my planetary rover, taking in the milky way as Betelgeuse rises in the distance (it really is very far away... thing's just huge)

 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Having devoured Dark Souls 3 pretty quickly, I started wondering if it was too easy. I decided to go back to Dark Souls 1 and find out if it's the game or me that's changed. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Dark Souls 3 is much more "twichy" than the other souls games, borrowing pretty heavily from the Bloodborne style of play. DS1 feels much more slow, deliberate and precise. That being said, I found that bosses that used to be ball achingly difficult (I'm looking at you Capra Demon) seemed much easier than the first time I made my way through the game (Havel is still making my dex character his bitch, though). So, I think the fact that I'm a veteran of the series kind of colored my view of how easy DS3 was, but I'm pretty sure it is slightly easier than the first two games.

I'm looking forward to see what they do with the expansions to hopefully wrap up some of the lore introduced.
 
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