What games are you currently playing?

[Xhukari]

Oh man, I remember loving the original trilogy of TR when I was young... but I started to play the first one a couple years back (Steam), and I just lost interest after awhile. The game feels pretty barebones outside the main gameplay loop; doesn't really have a story, world building or any real developments. It started to feel like I was just doing the same thing, but on different colour palettes of the levels.

 

[Ellie]

True. Although most of my time was spent making her do handstands, shooting the butler, and making her explode.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I never played Tomb Raider, but as a longtime gamer, I still have a kind of fondness for it. I have friends my own age who played the most recent (unless there's a newer one?) game and they were just constantly horrified at the sudden graphic violence. They want to explore ruins and come across tyrannosaurus rexes and fight them with Desert Eagles akimbo. Instead, they miss a quick time event and suddenly Lara Croft's head gets impaled on a stake.

Coyote: Dark Souls definitely doesn't hold your hand or do much direct explaining. When I played it for the first time, I escaped from the undead asylum and immediately headed down into the catacombs. My friends told me the game was hard, and I figured, "Huh. Yeah, I guess the game is really hard." I didn't realize until later that I was supposed to go the other way, and the catacombs are meant for much more powerful characters. Where did you get stuck?

 

[coyotecraft]

I've been running circles around the undead burg. I'll have to watch a video of someone else's playthrough to figure out where I haven't been. I didn't discover the catacombs right away. It's like, oh, there's stairs back here? But I quickly figured out I was under leveled because there's killer ghost wraiths whatevers that come get you when you start moving across the water.

All I remember is an NPC saying something about ringing a bell. And there were 2 paths to 2 bells.

I think the difficulty is all in the controls. It's just like tomb raider where you need to do precision platform jumps, and if you're off by just a little bit you die. As I kid I thought it was hard. But now I just see it as bad game design. Bad lighting, low quality textures, No communication, or sketchy feed back.
Like there will be a lever on a wall in a dark corner, that opens a door on a timer, and you're suppose to sprint to the door before it closes and the lock resets.
But in reality, you'll go into the corner and conclude there is nothing there. If you don't have the camera angle just right. The new games at least have message box like "Press X" when you're near something interactive. But the old Tomb Raider games didn't have that and you needed to be perfectly aligned. And it's so easy to just pass a thing by thinking it's just part of the background. And if you didn't have the volume up, or you were listening to real music while you were playing, you couldn't hear the short squeak of the door opening and closing.
Sometimes you wouldn't have found a door yet to know it's a door, and put 2 and 2 together. You're more likely to think it's a Bat, pull out your guns like - where is it?

 

[Hybrida]

I'm playing Granblue Fantasy: Versus. Owning newbs with my favorite baby, ZETA. Zeta is love, Zeta is life.... I'm one with Zeta even after the nerf. Shame. I discover a awesome character, and the goddamn game dies.

Every fuckin' time. It never fails. I love my Zeta no matter what...

 

[coyotecraft]

I made progress in Dark Soul. *20 hours later*
It's got the same kind of vibe as Valhalla Knights. There's a sense of progression but no reason to progress.
Like imaging playing Castlevania, but you didn't know about dracula and you were just exploring the the castle for exploration sake. Then you trip over the ending credits.

I dunno if I want to keep playing. I looked at a guide and saw how much more I have to go. And I'm like- why?

 

[Xhukari]

Dark Souls is a weird one, though you do definitely have a reason to progress -- are you exhausting the dialogue with the NPCs? The dude in blue armour near Firelink Shrine pretty much tells you the reason to progress (at least for the first half of the game). Having said that, the first half of DS1 is the best half, so if you're not enjoying it now, you'll enjoy it less in the latter half. The ending can definitely sneak up on you, which isn't helped by how stupidly easy the DLC is to miss (as are a lot of the more interesting NPC interactions)!

As much as I love the gameplay of the Dark Souls series, I really do not care for the vague / interpretive method of storytelling found in it (and games like Silent Hill 2).
___

I've not really been playing games much myself lately. I got that nice HD version of Age of Empires 1 installed, but I haven't played it (only gotten to the options screen). I've just been feeling too tired for it, or I'm game developing!

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm taking notes from walkthrough guides. I don't think NPCs have said anything useful to me beyond "ring the bells"
But then again, they don't repeat themselves. So if someone told me I needed to get a key from a boss to get to another boss who has another key that opens up blightown which connects from the undead burg sewers, It must have been months ago when I played last.

But I suppose that would raise questions like how they know theres a lock door behind a locked door.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I don't know. Maybe it's all part of the legend of the chosen undead. Not like there really needs to be an explanation, but maybe it's because of how fluid time is there, which also explains how multiplayer works. There have been innumerable chosen undead, whose timelines fade in and out of each other's. Maybe the NPCs got the story from one of the other chosen undead.

 

[coyotecraft]

That's what makes me think of Valhalla Knights. I dunno about all the games in the series but the first one has a kind of time loop, soul thing if I remember correctly. And it's not said explicitly but the title of the game suggests the world is Valhalla, which would explain the weirdness of elves, samurai, and automaton existing together.
Then again maybe that's just par for the course with dungeon crawlers where you die and revive continually.

Theres this anime series this season called "I'm standing on one million lives"
It's not as dark as Dark Souls, but they've made more than a couple allusions to it.
And the plot suggests a future timeline interacting with the past.
So I'm seeing a pattern.

 

[Xhukari]

Finally started playing some of that AoE 1! Finished the 10-mission tutorial campaign today. The game's in a weird spot... it of course looks great, and has been given some modern conveniences such as auto-reseeding of farms... but then again, pathfinding is still absolutely dreadful. So much so, I favour archers en masse. The game also added some voiceover to introduce each mission, and he commentates your success or failure at mission end.

 

[coyotecraft]

Beat Dark Souls.

 

[Xhukari]

Hey, well done! Nice work. Has the gameplay bitten ya yet, or you got to no plans to play again?

AoE1 HD is annoying me more and more. When you make new units, they default to the behaviour of "I'll follow you until you or I die". Which given that you got them at your base, to protect your base, and that the enemy is constantly scouting around... it is super annoying. I wish the game had that thing where you can set their default behaviour... Forgetting to set a catapult to Passive, just to have it kill the enemy and your army at the same time is greeeeeeat...

Can't even do my tactic I mentioned earlier with the Archers, as the campaign I'm playing doesn't get the good Archers at all. So my only options are super weak archers, melee, slow melee, or cavalry melee. Which with the aforementioned pathfinding issues from an earlier post... I just end up with clumps of dudes walking into each other and getting stuck, whilst the enemy plink at them.

 

[coyotecraft]

My goal is to finish Xenogears by the end of the year. I've been playing it on and off for a few years now I think.
My save file is about 30 Hours in. It looks like I'm nearing the end. "Looks". But I'm still on disk 1. And it's such an old fashion game with long loading screens and gratuitous cutscene animations, and some long ass B.S. hallways. Forced battles that are easy wins but there's 2 dozen of them in a row. So you can play for 30minute and go nowhere. And then Gimmicky boss battles where if you don't know the pattern you'll be redoing the last 30 minutes all over again.

 

[Xhukari]

Really doesn't sound like you're enjoying that game, Coyote... why do you keep doing this to yourself? :p First DS, now Xeno...

I got too angry at AoE1, so I uninstalled it. Felt like I was trying to look after a bunch of kids or something. Didn't help that pretty much all the campaign missions I'd done at the point were essentially 3v1, with one enemy having a massive defensive empire with tons of towers and strong archers, and I start with humble beginnings. They're aggressive too, so you can't just work on your eco.

Currently I'm playing YuGiOh on EDOPro with a friend, we randomise which Type and Attribute we have, then try to make a deck in 30 minutes, where all the monsters have those 2, and that all the trap / spell cards mention at least one of those. Then we do a best of 3 match. Pretty fun!

 

[coyotecraft]

It's hard to fault the game for being old fashioned. If I had played it when it was new maybe I would have enjoyed it more. Then again, it wouldn't have the correspondences to Xenosaga. All the Xenosaga cast are just incarnations of Xenogears.
Like, Bart is Junior. Citan is Jin. Emeralda is either Kos-Mos or Momo, I'm not sure yet.

It's really hard to gauge how much more there is to this game I have left. Like, looking at a walkthrough's chapter divisions I should be at the end. But I'm still on disk 1. I've heard, disk 2 is like a book with occasional battles and that the game itself wasn't even finished. I'm noticing more scenes are doing these cheap cutaways narrations segment like "...and afterwards everyone spend the night celebrating. Off screen character development happened..." Like it's a plot outline.

I played it all night and it looks like I only progressed a chapter. But that's because it took me 3 tries to beat a boss...and you know how old jrpgs are with their unskippable cutscenes.

 

[coyotecraft]

Success! Xenogears complete.

 

[Mega Flare]

Bugsnax

 

[Hybrida]

I'm playing Candy Crush. (Again). Level 2004... Everytime I try to quit, I'm awarded 8 hours of infinite lives

MAKE IT STOP! :sad:

 

[ZenVirZan]

uh oh hybridie is a boomie :heart: