What are you playing?

Gamepass is finally available here. In the last 3 week I beat 4 games from my wish list. The I started Persona 5 Royal. There's no way I'm going to finish this game before paying to microsoft monthly more than it would cost me in steam. At least I know it's possible to use your gamepass savegame in steam.
 
Persona 5 Royal is brilliant. I have yet to finish it, but through no fault of its own. I just haven't had the time the last couple of years.
 
Been playing Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania and it's incredible. The amount of love and detail put into this little expansion to a rogue-like is beyond anything Konami has done since even before Iga left. The soundtrack, the Easter eggs, the everything is so well done. 5/5 if you like skill testing action rogue-likes.

The whole soundtrack is incredible.



I would pay the full price of a new game for the Dead Cells team to make a fully fleshed out, non-procedurally generated Castlevania. If they could nail the level design with their incredible fast paced gameplay, it would be the best Castlevania game. Easy.
 

Dave

Staff member
Been playing Diablo IV today and while it's good it's also a janky mess with a lot of issues with the server. At one point my character was invisible during a pretty decent world fight - think open world Diablo MMO fight where anyone can join. I died twice just because I had no clue where TF I was.

But in the prologue before it got to multiplayer, it was great!
 
I crashed 10 minutes in and went back to LE. If this is how the game is gonna play on a Triple A title, I think I'm better off with the indie company.
 
I don't think it's going to change on release, remember D3's launch, but it is an open beta stress test weekend.
 
I don't think it's going to change on release, remember D3's launch, but it is an open beta stress test weekend.
The only thing that will change is it will launch with a fully functional cash shop that's polished to the 9's and certain to remain up even when the rest of the game crashes
 

Dave

Staff member
  1. Pre-order Diablo IV even though you rail about pre-orders.
  2. Wait a long time to get on the game.
  3. Buggy mess unfolds.
  4. Play about an hour completely
 
I pre-ordered it as well and I am looking forward to its release. I am perhaps super naïve, but am hoping they will have a lot more server capacity.

I am currently playing a game called Against the Storm. It’s kind of like a cross of Warcraft, Civilization and I’m not sure what.

The world suffers from terrible storms that will wipe out your progress every so often. You establish small settlements and gather materials and complete orders. You compete a settlement by getting so many reputation points before the Queen gets too impatient.

Every few settlements, the storm takes over and you get experience and can level up buildings in the capital (which survives the storm) so that your settlements are stronger the next time.

I'm really liking it so far.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Book of Demons

I'm kinda mixed on this one. I enjoyed it, but by the end I was feeling like it was about to overstay it's welcome. Which is sad because it's got some great ideas.

The game is kinda Diablo-lite. The game is styled around being a book, with all the characters made of paper, and all the gameplay is pretty simplified. You can only walk around the dungeons along the straight paths. There's branches, so it's got non-linear sections, but there's no open rooms, and there's no dodging left and right if you're not at an intersection. There's no skill tree and no weapons. All skills and equipment are in the form of cards, which you equip in slots on your hotbar. Which leads to odd restrictions like deciding between having quick access to potions, or wearing armor. I never felt like I had enough slots.

Combat flows okay despite this. The limited movement feels weird at first, but the game is balanced around it, and the game makes a point of having the player do more than just click, even when you aren't using skill cards. Monsters may have shields you use a different button to break, or you can interrupt their casting if you catch them at the right time. Getting stunned causes a QTE, and may also knock your equipped cards out of position, needing to click on them to put them back in place.

However, near the end of the game all these mechanics just because a torrent of bullshit. If you don't equip the item that reduces stun chance, you'll be doing the stun QTE more than you'll be fighting. There's constant poison, ice, rocks, etc to deal with, and it feels more like whack-a-mole than ARPG combat. The mid-game, when there's a half-dozen monsters, with one or two causing disruptive status effects, feels pretty good. The end game when there's a dozen or more monsters all constantly blacking out your screen, messing with your controls, needing micro managing to defeat, it just got to be too much. I had almost all of the equipment to reduce the debuffs enemies could put on me, to the point where I barely had any skills or items to easily use, and the final fight still felt like a cluster-fuck where I was barely in control.

The thing I liked best about the game is the ability to generate dungeons of various sizes, based on how long you want to play. The game learns from your runs to make the time estimates more accurate, as well. It was nice to be able to pick from 5 dungeon sizes. Small dungeons were under 10 minutes for me, while the largest size was like 45+ minutes. It's a shame I don't really feel like going back for more. When I finished Torchlight I almost immediately went back to play with another class, but I have no similar desire with Book of Demons.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
One Hand Clapping

Just started this one. Other than the philosophical reference, I can't figure out the reason for the game's title because it's a puzzle platformer about singing. It requires a microphone because the puzzles are controlled with your voice. It starts out with puzzles that trigger to any sound, and moves on to high and low notes, then to having to sing specific notes, and I'm not sure how far it goes because I suck and need to take a break. I am not good at matching pitch, and it's even worse because allergy season has coarsened up my voice. Even with the game being pretty lenient, I'm struggling.

It would be hilarious to see @LittleKagsin or @Bumble the Boy Wonder stream this one.

The art style is simple, but beautiful. I'm not sure what story the game is trying to tell, if any, but it's fun to look at.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Maaaan... some skyrim modders are really disingenuous.

"Here's a new follower, she looks like this!"

1680997146526.png


GasBandit: Woo! Sign ME up!

Download... install... find her in the world...

Did I get this follower from the Nexus, or from Wish.com?

1680997202175.png


Mod Author: "oh yeah, to get her to look like my screenshots, you also need to load these seven other mods and custom swap out some textures..."

1680997286931.png
 
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