Re: What Are You Playing?

Bump for funsies.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

Recently finished my first run through Bloodborne, which is in my top five games of all time now. It's hard as shit and genuinely unnerving, but once you get over the initial difficulty hump it's also incredibly fun and rewarding. And the atmosphere/worldbuilding is unparalleled. It may be the most successful example of an attempt at a Lovecraftian story in a visual medium ever.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

*eyebrow*

*makes note to find trailer*

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

*obliges*


Basically, you're an outsider who's come to the city of Yharnam to find a cure for an unknown illness. Unfortunately, you've had the bad luck to arrive on the night of a hunt. Yharnam is victim to a unique bloodborne disease which regularly drives its inhabitants mad, transforming them into horrific beasts. With no other choice, you must take up the mantle of a hunter and purge these foul streets, fighting through a multitude of horrors in order to find a mysterious substance known only as Paleblood—a substance that could be the key to curing you. As the night goes on, the beasts grow more formidable and your surroundings grow ever stranger, and you come to realize that the city's inhabitants might not be the only enemies you face...

In terms of gameplay, it's very similar to the Dark Souls games, which are by the same developer, although its combat is much more aggressive and quick than that series'. Upgrading your character/weapons works very similarly to D&D. You have two types of weapons, right-hand and left-hand; right-hand are various types of melee weapons (spears, swords, saws, axes, etc.) while left-hand are firearms (blunderbuss, pistol, etc.). Your right-hand weapons are "trick" weapons that can transform from one state to another, resulting in such exotic arms as the Rifle Spear, Whirligig Saw, and Boom Hammer, to name but a few. Various other items are also available to pick up and use.

There's a very steep learning curve early on, and it's the type of game that you'll probably end up Googling answers to as there are a variety of steps forward that aren't spelled out and rely on either intense knowledge of the world of Yharnam or blind luck for the player to stumble upon. But once you can clear the initial difficulty hump, it becomes intensely rewarding. I've poured dozens of hours into the thing.

It's also a sort of best-of-both-worlds when it comes to open-world vs. a linear playthrough. The world of Yharnam is vast, but you can choose a fairly linear path through it if you so choose; the side quests also aren't overlong or convoluted. As someone who usually requires a fair degree of linearity in his games—I can't do The Witcher 3 because of how sprawling and open it is—I found Bloodborne to be a fantastic compromise between the two extremes.

Last edited by Abbie (2017-09-28 02:23:16)

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Re: What Are You Playing?

I'm not much of a gamer. Every once in a while I come across a mobile game that occupies a chunk of my free time for a month or two. These days, that game is Cribbage With Grandpas.

My grandfather loved cribbage. He died when I was just 7, but I ended up playing a lot with my grandmother over the years. This game is cute, simple, and well done. I like how it makes you count your own points, and it doesn't warn you if you missed something (well, they might on the easier settings, I haven't tried). And all the crappy hands I get frustrate me to no end  tongue

"Fifteen two, and the rest won't do."
"Fifteen four, and the rest don't score."
"Fifteen six, and the rest don't mix."

Details like that bring me back. I had no idea that this was mainstream cribbage lingo, haha.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

I've every now and then I pull out Ocarina Of Time and continue my playthrough when I was a kid I got about halfway into the game and at some point gave up. A couple of years ago I started it again and can't say I've been in any hurry but last week I beat the water temple!

Extended Edition - 146 - The Rise Of Skywalker
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Re: What Are You Playing?

Meanwhile I, a gamer, had a friend over a couple weeks ago and we played Halo 3 ODST start to finish, wrapping at 5:30AM.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: What Are You Playing?

Prax, not sure what I was expecting, but that first trailer was a lot cooler than it.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

Quick tip to anyone who picks it up—always play Online Mode. It lets you summon other players to help out, but more importantly it lets you see all the notes and clues people have made, which can be CRUCIAL for avoiding certain blunders or finding certain rewards.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

I hate Bloodborne and all the Souls' games with a passion.

I mean, sure, they're not bad games per se, and I like a challenge, I just can't stand a game that will repeatedly kill me within the first 10 minutes of my first playthrough.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

I'm a big dumb asshole because I only promise ten minutes to a movie and one episode to a TV show, but, even to me, it seems a little extreme to give up on a shooter game after ten minutes of dying.

Of course, I myself don't even play games, and may not last ten minutes with a game that isn't hideously frustrating, so... I should really just shut the fuck up, because this topic is academic for me and personal for everyone else. But there does seem to be a distinction between my movie thing and your game thing: movies don't require iterative involvement from the audience – watching a movie has nothing in common with 'developing a skill' – but games do. Isn't giving up on a game after ten minutes similar to giving up on learning to juggle in ten minutes? Can someone check my math on this?

(Disclaimer: To be clear, 'I'm not blindly sticking with something I already don't enjoy' is an excuse which becomes valid immediately after diving into anything, in my opinion. Hell, I advise people to immediately drop books the instant they lose interest in them, because there's a longer-than-your-life amount of writing that you'd love, and every second you spend forcing yourself to stick with something you've lost interest in represents a very-real loss of time and enthusiasm for something you would like.)

(So yeah, like I said: this is just an academic distinction for me. Just makin' chit-chat.)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

The only reason I enjoyed playing Dark Souls 3 last year was that I was doing so on stream to raise money for St. Jude and people got to commiserate (and offer advice). I hit a dead end about five or seven hours in and just stopped, and I'm happy to never return to it. I don't mind difficulty but it was just too much for me personally.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: What Are You Playing?

Teague, I think it's the difference between picking up a book you think you might enjoy and getting halfway through and discovering you don't, and picking up a book you know you're going to have to work at to get through, but you're someone who enjoys that process of reading a really really hard book. Generally you can figure out whether you're reading Harry Potter or House of Leaves within the first page or two.

Same for games most of the time, some people just want to have that experience of playing the game with a bit of difficulty but mostly it's for the story and the experience of playing it. Other games like Dark Souls etc, are specifically designed to murder the fuck out of you, and be about being micro second accurate with your controls and combos and strategy. Some people like that sort of challenge, others don't. generally you can figure out what kind of game you're playing in the first couple minutes.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: What Are You Playing?

Yeah, I enjoy hard games, but the Souls' games are literally designed to be insanely hard.

Like, say a game like Monkey Island, where I would get stuck is just fine. I'd spend hours figuring out the next bit, whilst enjoying the game, and then later solve the puzzle and jump for joy.

Same with RPG's. If you're stuck on a boss, simply go back, and grind for a bit. Power up your characters, build up a new strategy and whatnot.

Driving games? Tune your engine(if possible), and nail that corner next time.

Souls? You're literally dead 5-10 times within the first 5-10 minutes of the game, which for me, is simply not fun. I have no desire to get better at it, because I know if I make it through the first 10 minutes, the next 10 minutes are even harder.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

I'd like to wish a very happy 20th birthday to the best game I've ever played, Half-Life.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsWW5CYV4AECaao.jpg

You couldn't tell my life without talking about Half-Life. It was my first FPS. I was 7 when I played it for the first time. From this point onwards, not a week would go without me playing a bit of it. My brother showed me its map editor, at the time Worldcraft and then renamed to Hammer, when I was maybe 9. It developed into me making maps for Half-Life for the next ten years. It got me to join my first forum community on the internet when I was 12, a website called Le Site du Zér0 (roughly "The Noob Website"). I took part in contests, community projects, but the biggest part of it was just me making maps for myself, largely taking place in the Black Mesa research facility. I was more interested in the world that in the gameplay. I was fascinated by the universe the game took place in. I think I was 10 or 11 when I made nearly a full pre-incident chapter, having the play wandering through Black Mesa with nothing happening except scientists doing their thing. It pretty much looked like shit, and stumbling upon the files years later, I re-made it with better skills. It was nice.

I think I lost my shit when Half-Life 2 was announced. I think I even more lost my shit when I played it. It's the second best game I've played.

Not everyone agrees with this. I've had lots of people tell me this game has better mechanics, that game has better AI...

But the thing the Half-Life series does is make you be an active part of a movie. Your character has no identity, he doesn't talk. You're the character, not like other games do where your actions become the character. You're an active audience. You're watching a film and making it happening. There are no cutscenes. You're never (except ONE time in the whole series) out of your body. Half-Life is the most extreme execution of the first-person structure. And though its gameplay mechanics are interesting, the best success of Half-Life is its experience of immersion.

I get out of a Half-Life game like I get out of the theater, having watched a great movie. I ask myself questions about the story, about what I've just witnessed. Like a great film, it raises questions without answering them. Like a great film, it leaves you room for interpretation.

(seriously, who the hell is the G-Man?)

Twenty years later, my love for this series hasn't diminished one iota. It's part of my culture, it's part of my identity.

PS: to celebrate this birthday, the Black Mesa devs have released a first trailer for Xen, the final chapter of the Half-Life remake, scheduled to be released in 2019.

Last edited by Saniss (2018-11-19 12:53:56)

Sébastien Fraud
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Re: What Are You Playing?

I love, love, love Half-Life 2. Blew my mind when I first played it, Alyx remains the only video game character I had a legit crush on.

Last edited by Writhyn (2018-11-19 19:31:14)

Witness me!

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Re: What Are You Playing?

TableTop edition!

Loving Vampire: The Masquerade 5e.  Also really into Deception Murder in Hong Kong.

Eddie Doty

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Just picked up Tetris Effect on a whim and I'm in trouble. This thing is enthralling.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

I am fascinated by the choices this score is making. It's fucking incredible. What a wacky idea; it totally works.

(Game looks fun too.)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

https://itavisen.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/rdr2-officialart-3840x2160.jpg


It's been 8 years since the original dropped on PS3, and Rockstar continues to prove their rockstar status in the gaming industry by outshining themselves with every game they release.

RDR2 is no exception, and putting my experience to the written word is a baffling, mind-boggling conundrum, that won't include what hasn't already been said a million times already.


I fuckin' loved every second of it.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

Played through GRIS this week. What a gorgeous little game.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

Sekiro, the new From Software game, is basically what would happen if you combined Bloodborne with Uncharted and set it in feudal Japan. I have almost snapped my controller in half in frustration with a couple of bosses (recorded myself finally vanquishing one below) but am otherwise having an utter blast.

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Re: What Are You Playing?

Been hearing good things, I've been tempted to try it, though it'd be my first game of this type.

Witness me!

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Re: What Are You Playing?

One thing to keep in mind if you pick it up is that From's reputation for making games that are impossibly difficult is for the most part misguided (and not helped by the Dark Souls fanbase's "git gud" mentality). Don't get me wrong, you will be dying a lot, and there are points where the games arguably do lean into cruel territory, but by and large they're tough but fair. They're basically teaching you how to play them as you go—it's about incremental progress, and tbh in terms of level design the initial stages where you're still learning how to play the game are probably the hardest. The bosses and individual enemies will get harder as the game goes on, but the levels themselves sorta plateau as you realize "Okay, THIS is what I should be doing."

I had to dash my head against the wall for a long time in Bloodborne, but once it clicked it clicked hard and became my favorite game of all time. So don't let a lot of early deaths in Sekiro dissuade you!

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Re: What Are You Playing?

Ghostrunner.

Cyberpunk. Parkour. Ninja. Robot. With A Sword.

I am absolutely loving the /hell/ out of this game, I'm not usually one for the speedrunner platform-y games, but this one has managed to blend together a really fluid movement system, a challenging (and extremely frustrating at points) but satisfying progression of difficulty, and wrap it up in a GORGEOUS cyberpunk aesthetic.

Usually with these sorts of games I've found it feels like the levels are designed to be frustrating rather than fun, but Ghostrunner manages to find a really nice balance where it can be incredibly frustrating and will take a while to get the hang of the flow, but it never feels out of reach, even in the level that is literally just a spinning blender of lasers and gunfire (everything in the game is one-shot one-kill, including you) you can parse out and discover the route that flows naturally, and within a couple dozen tries it sinks into your muscle memory and you're just this unstoppable killing machine flowing through the levels like water, and THAT is an extremely cool feeling. It's definitely a try and try and try and try and experiment and try again until it works sort of game, which again, isn't usually my bag, but this one really makes it work for me.

If anyone ever watched my old series, way back when, in Cloudbuilt, it has a very similar sort of feeling but with a much more refined flow and movement system.

Plus, obviously gotta mention it, Cyberpunk as fuuuuuuuck. An extremely cool universe that just goes all in with a lot of old school cyberpunk tropes, it takes place in a giant megacity, with social stratification and a once virtuous now maniacal leader, that has fallen from the promised utopia to a grime filled dystopian nightmare run by gangs hopped up on augs and guns, and you're an AI powered robot assassin with a sword being guided by a giant holographic face; all that good stuff. But it's never in your face about it, the universe just nicely sits in the background as the canvas for the story and levels, just happily bein all rad. And if you watched the trailer up there, the music is that good all the way through, this soundtrack just makes my little synthwave heart happy.

Definitely not a game for everyone, but if if this sort of thing is even kind of in your wheelhouse, HIGHLY recommend it.

OH!

And this game did something that A) I was super happy to see, because games don't do them anymore and B) is absolutely what swayed me into buying the game.... they have a fully functional demo of the first 2 levels so you can actually try it out and see if you like it. Which is always a concern for me with games like this, because how it feels to play is what makes or breaks it and it sucks spending 20-40 bucks on a game only for it to feel terrible to play.

So yeah... check out the demo if you're curious: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1139900/Ghostrunner/

ZangrethorDigital.ca