WHAT VIDEOGAMES ARE YOU PLAYING RIGHT NOW?

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Only have time to play a bit of Control (and use up all my poverty money). It's very much my jam (gonna try to be story spoiler free here). The only thing I didn't like was the punchcard puzzle that only the designer knows how to solve, if your game is full of shooting up transdimensional zombies you probably shouldn't put a witness puzzle in the middle of your game that puts the flow to a screeching halt js. I could do a whole essay on how much I hate that puzzle.

One thing I'm noticing is that the combat becomes more and more manageable the more optional abilities you get. At first I thought having health that can only be gained from fodder enemies a little annoying but once you get some defensive abilities like shield it becomes more about positioning than anything else. It is kind of a headshot gallery otherwise though, I'm just glad I'm not slamming into chest high walls for dear safety anymore. The third person shooting genre has come a long way!!! One super nice thing about the game is that there's no modern "cinematic prompts", doors will fling open when you get near them, the melee attack doesnt wrestle control away from you for a few seconds (no idea why this is acceptable in doom 2016), there's no "tomb raider lady crawls through a crevice to to let the level load" bs, and the story doesn't treat you like an 8 year old.

Best thing hands down is the art direction and the location design. It cannot be said enough at how diverse the bureau setting is with its adaption of Brutalism and bizarre cold war aesthetics while you brutally get to blow up every cement chunk of the architecture. Also the live action cutscenes sort of complement to the wonky atmosphere, my favourite are the puppet shows. There's also the sexy fonts that it displays per area/mission which I think goes to show that the game tries to change up even the smallest things taken for granted in most games.

Weirdest comparison is that this game feels like Parasite Eve in some ways. In that you revisit rooms and they'll sometimes trigger shootout encounters that aren't part of the linear setpieces. Meaning there's always something to shoot inbetween main missions. The customization in this game is strangely loot boxy/random without having any actual micro-transactions, it's just weird that it feels setup for one. But it's not a big deal, just sell the lower rank modifications and roll for only high ranking ones. At most it means not everyone is getting the exact same build every time.

Really impressed with this game, feel like I made the right choice for this over Astral Chain. Heard good things about AS but heard the story and the padding brings it down a notch. I think I was looking for something that had both the action and story to back it up, which Control easily does.
World of Warcraft Classic.

I try every new WoW expansion for at least a little bit, but the last two? I sat out Legion, and I only played Battle for Azeroth for less than a week after it dropped. I just have no interest in the modern iteration of the game anymore.

Then along comes WoW Classic, I try it for fun, and boom... I'm hooked like it's 2005 all over again for me. People were saying that folks were only begging for Classic because of nostalgia, but what I'm experiencing is anything BUT nostalgia. I'm playing an iteration of WoW that actually makes you COMMUNICATE with people again, and it's so much fun. The game actually feels social again.
I don't know why but I might just play through the entire Arkham Batman (BAHAM!) series this Halloween month due to that Epic Store giveaway. Hilarious that Origins wasn't on there though (I have it on Steam I think).

Asylum is the only one in the series I've beaten but I decided to replay it anyway. It actually feels more dated than I remember, but its DNA is in any modern game with light stealth/RPG mechanics it's bizarre. There's also Asassins Creed to blame but Asylum I feel like won over even the most jaded of cynics with its magnet fist to face combat. On harder difficulties it reveals how braindead simple the combat boils down to, but not fun to get good at. The sweet-spot for me is just to skip out on health upgrades and play it on normal.

Overall it's a reminder of how this game could have easily been bad. Light stealth mechanics that isn't the focus? Melee combat that isn't done by the God of War team or Platinum? The pitch could have sounded like a disaster to anyone living pre-2009. Somehow every mechanic manages to be pretty passable, though admittingly they sometimes feel like the equivalent of those trash cans that move wherever you throw the paper ball.
Zakariya
Every misdeed has its own punishment, and every good deed has its reward.
1174


This game is considerably fun, but be warned; it'll consume your life if you aren't careful.

Like many MMO's...of course. >_>

It also requires much patience, but that patience can pay off in the form of...



...a very appealing ship that lays waste to enemies in seconds. ;)
Bought Tales of Berseria when it came out, and never really put much time into it so I'm trying again! I can't remember playing a game I both love and hate in equal measure.

The cast of characters is just so good. They're all fun to play in battle too. Rokurou's story is a little too similar to Velvet's, and his impact on the story is almost non-existent so far. Laphicet is at times annoying, but otherwise the cast have great chemistry with each other. It's easy to understand their motivations, and they're a breath of fresh air compared to the last couple of games.

All Tales are a bit bad for backtracking, but holy fuck Berseria actually enjoys wasting your time. If I have to take time out of the plot, go all the way back to Titania, then walk to Velvet's prison cell, watch a ten second cutscene and then walk all the way back again I'm going to give up. The Geoboard is weird and useless in most locations and is not a good enough fix for poor pace.

On the surface, the battle system seems stripped down, but actually it's pretty deep. Knowing when to use your Soul Gauge and Burst Souls is fun. You can setup and perform cool combos really easily, and you're actively encouraged to switch around your party. Party member AI is some of the best I've ever seen in an RPG. I am yet to revive a mage because they position themselves and exploit enemy weaknesses so well.

Absolutely forgettable soundtrack. Constantly reuses the same tracks in each dungeon (which are visually boring). It's barely serviceable. I've just been playing the game for the past 5 hours and I can't even hum the battle theme. Velvet's Theme is decent I guess, but the best song in the game (Zavied's Theme) is recycled from Zestira.

Also, why does Kamoana get so much screen time and dialogue? Her voice actress sounds like she's got a dick in her throat.

Anyway, I can't stop playing this game. You get a move called SLAG ASSAULT 10/10.
liberty has fallen to fire emblem hell. send help. my students are all weirdoes and i love them very much. battles are fun. i like the changes made to allow for learning stuff outside of battles, too. it has a very persona vibe. i only started playing yesterday and i'm already in very stronk like with the game.
AtiyaTheSeeker
In all fairness, bird shrapnel isn't as deadly as wood shrapnel
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Wasteland 2, specifically the Director's Cut version. A ton of fun, but plenty challenging. I was surprised at the opening cutscene for the game, and I worry I may have spread my team a little too thin on abilities at the start, but I am loving this post-apocalyptic journey thus far. Every fight seems to matter in this game, and the first one I was ever in was nerve-wracking despite my experience with a couple SRPGs.

That said I wound up having to redo a specific area twice now because of a particularly dangerous fight and a lack of auto-saving, so I'm licking my wounds and will probably try again in the coming days. The game's too much fun for me to give up only nine or so hours in. Also dang, they throw morally grey choices and their consequences at you pretty early.
Zakariya
Every misdeed has its own punishment, and every good deed has its reward.
1174
author=Liberty
liberty has fallen to fire emblem hell. send help.


What specific form of help do you seek? I may be able to provide it... XD
Alternating between Deadly Premonition and Untitled Goose Game. I will both destroy a small town and crash my Switch driving around one, I guess.
Just started on Epic Mickey, seems okay so far even if the camera is a load of fuck. Also playing Blasphemous, its wonderful.
I've been playing some Code Vein, basically an "anime Dark Souls". The first obstacle is the character creation, or rather that was what I thought. However, the character creation is not as awesome as advertised. Apart from the standard Soulsborne fair, you get clothing option. The options are nice to have, but not that robust. Basically, you choose between a few outfits and then get to edit them somewhat, namely remove extra belts or other accessories and recolor the clothes. A lot of the outfits are over-designed even if you remove all removable accessories and most of them come of as rather outlandish. With the format of having preselected outfits and allowing the player to add or remove accessories and sometimes even significant pieces of clothing, it would make more sense to me to have fairly standard looking bases and then by adding or removing pieces, allow the player to make them more over-designed and or outlandish if they like to. Apparently the developers thought otherwise. I did still find options I like.

The story also takes a heavy anime turn. There's this mysterious girl with a weird outfit even with Code Vein standard and she has obscure save the world knowledge, but seem helpless to defend herself. The game is also very cutscene heavy compared to Souldborne games.

Gameplay is great. Combat feels a bit between Bloodborne and Dark Souls in terms of speed and fluidity. Soulsborne players should feel at home once they get used to the changed control scheme. One thing I do like is that the quicksilver bullet equivalent can so far only be replenished by going up close to the enemies. This means you can use ranged attacks tactically to take out key targets or thinning out large groups, but ultimately, you will have to get up close to enemies. Chance is there will be options that allows you to cheese enemies with overpowered spells later on though. So far though, I'm having fun using a bayonet.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
i have over 75 hours in three houses save me
mainly Just Cause 3 (5 years old or w/e but new to me) which I bought because of how much I enjoyed the first half of my first playthrough of Just Cause 4 which I rented cause it was like 2 dollars in a redbox. I'd totally ignored the franchise prior to now but now I'm finding it very relaxing to just fly around this gorgeous open world blowing shit up left and right with silly overpowered weapons. you can jack a motherfucking assault helicopter that's trying to kill you with one single button press. amazing. Rico Rodriguez has all of the powers of both Spider-Man and The Punisher, and then some.

I've also got Valkyria Chronicles remastered (which reminds me of Front Mission a lot more than anything else, good thing in my book, I enjoy the battle system) but I'm having trouble motivating myself to work on jarpgs that aren't MAH jarpg. Also it is one of the most stupidly linear games I have ever seen, unless it opens up later on. Basically you watch 5-7 cutscenes in a set order, watch or don't watch 1-2 optional cutscenes in a set order, play one mandatory story battle that the cutscenes lead up to or denouement from, then you turn the page of the "book of the film" and repeat. Ad nauseum. There are "skirmishes" you can do to grind (and I should probably do some, these story battles are getting hard and my guys aren't leveling very fast) but that doesn't really address my complaint that the entire main game is a perfectly straight line.

It also reminds me of FFT tho...which means that if I do get into it, I'm going to get REALLY into it. I did like that they included Vyse from that Dreamcast game (tales of arcadia? skies of arcadia? can't remember, that's an oldy) as a recruitable unit right away at the beginning (as opposed to being able to jump through eleventy billion hoops in FFT to get Cloud).
Currently playing Lufia 1 and The Witcher 3. I generally like to play a modern and retro game side-by-side, or alternately. Lufia 1 is pretty fun so far, and a bit more challenging than I expected. I actually wish I picked a higher difficulty in The Witcher 3, because I constantly feel overleveled and I never feel challenged.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I'm also playing Code Vein and am having a lot of fun using the bayonet. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that its Souls roots feel like just that: roots. I really respect the devs for using the formula as a jumping off point to do their own thing rather than just settle for being a Souls knockoff. A Soulslike with a much heavier emphasis on combat, story, and characters is something I've wanted to see attempted for a while now, so I'm glad to see it finally happening!

Speaking of companions, that was actually the biggest selling point for me. Given its roots, I was curious to see how they handled AI companions. As it turns out: pretty well! At no point does this feel like an escort mission. In fact, they can handle small groups of enemies entirely on their own. They have a lot of health, can regen, do a lot of damage and, shockingly, save you from death if they have the time to cast the spell to bring you back. While it does make the game a LOT easier (though you can elect to go without a companion if you find the battles too easy), I personally keep them around since they're just too useful.

But, uh, I'm not sure adding quips for every single situation that could possibly happen and having them fire off every three seconds was such a great idea. It'd be fine if everyone had more than one or two lines per situation, but simply running through a level will cause lines to repeat at least twice. I consider myself to have a higher than average tolerance for repeated dialogue, and even I started getting annoyed after the first four levels. Just to give you an idea of the frequency of character quips: I got the trophy for listening to 50 of them before I was halfway through the second stage.


Crystalgate
There's this mysterious girl with a weird outfit even with Code Vein standard and she has obscure save the world knowledge, but seem helpless to defend herself. The game is also very cutscene heavy compared to Souldborne games

Very mild (but amusing) spoilers:

Io actually does join your party later on and, despite her claims, is quite capable of holding her own in a fight. In fact, she's one of the more useful allies that I've met so far, haha.
I'm probably the only person here who got a Nintendo Switch (Lite) just to play old Final Fantasy titles.

Currently been playing Final Fantasy X.
I bought it to play FE3H. I'd get the FF titles but I already own them on other consoles, so... :shrug:

It works well, though! Which colour did you get? I got yellow. I wanted blue but they only had the yellow one left and it's cute anyway. I definitely won't be losing it easily.

As for Fire Emblem 3 Houses, which I've been playing a lot, I started with Black Eagle house and honestly, I'm glad I did. If the other houses go the way I think they will, having this perspective to refer back to will help a lot with getting the most out of the story, I think. I mean, I already guessed what was going on with the Flame Emperor (someone got someone's bonding up a tad too high before the big reveal XD) but honestly, I'm glad I went with her route first.
I am also playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and when I say "playing" I mean I am displaying unhealthy obsessive behaviour.

I also started Black Eagles, but I feel like Hubert is going to stab me in the back (literally). I made Edelgard my tank which is hilarious to me as you can't even see her face behind her gigantic shield.

Caspar is a Brawler and believe me when I say I have zero regrets.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Code Vein keeps crashing during a post-boss cutscene pretty late in the game. Since there's no autosave right after boss fights, I have to beat the same boss again and again to test if this time I can pass through the crash. My character's outfit kept glitching a little before the crash, so I keep swapping the Blood Veil, clothing, and even face settings just in case my fashion statements overloaded something, but so far, no dice.

So that's neat, I guess.
I've been playing some more Code Vein.

I really like that the main way of replenishing your magic/ranged attack source is to go up close to enemies and either drain or hit them. This in theory means that you can use ranged attacks to thin out multiple enemies or strategically get rid of the worst, but ultimately you d have to get up close to monsters. This is how I think the Soulsborne games should have tried to handle ranged combat. In practice, I do know that there are too many ways to break this game for this to hold true. Still, the ranger type build works just great for this playstyle.

While I appreciate that they did their own thing with the partner system, a lot of things are hardly adapted to having said partner. I had a good success rate using parries and drain attacks during the mandatory alone section in the first dungeon. Once I got a partner again, I found those moves hard to pull of. The partner will repeatedly disrupt my timing by staggering, killing or just aggroing an enemy I had plans for. On the other hand, backstabbing is often easier than it should be since you can easily backstab an enemy who's aggroed to your partner, as long as said partner doesn't kill it too quickly that is. My opinion is that once they made the decision to give the player a partner, the game developers needed to make more changes to adapt the soulslike formula thereafter.

There is no reason to have roll, guar and parry on three separate buttons. Dark Souls had to do it that way because the existence of parry and guard is bound to your equipment. However, this is not the case in Code Vein, there's no reason not to do it like Kingdom Hearts and bind both roll and guard to the same button.