Official "What are you playing now?" thread

[darthYENIK]

Just got done playing Lake.  Lake is a game about an overworked big city computer programmer who, for two weeks, takes over the mail route of her father, who is a rural Oregon post man.

 

There is a little drama, a little heartwarming, and a few characters.  I enjoyed it for what it was, which is basically a social sim with mail delivery and an easy listening sound track.  It was a great game for my post holiday decompression so I can just chill out.

[TwistOfLime21]

Alan Wake remake.

 

F**k me this game is boring. I’m (assuming) most of the way through episode two and shooting the same NPCs over and over and over again gets really repetitive really quickly. 

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

I've hit the twisted, grueling challenge of Dead Cells, and I'm enjoying it, especially the satisfaction of feeling you get as you proceed a little further each time.  But the game responds by letting you know how and why it's your skill that needs to improve to keep progressing!

[trip]

So for all those who grew up playing atari in the 80's...

 

I'm playing a lot of Pitfall.

Cept this is my 1:1 clone I did for the xbox.  It's all finished and I'm just getting to the 'pain in the ass' support graphics for the store listing and that nonsense.   

 

But but but...this is as close to an exact 1 to 1 and now I can't stop playing and trying to beat my highscore.  Just like 1982.

 

 

 

I never play the games I sh*t out...  I take no credit for my enjoyment of this game.   But I swear it is sucking the same amount of time from me as it did (holy sh*t!) 40 years ago.

Edited January 8 by trip

[Failed Again]

I have it on my Atari Jaguar.

good game (though probably not the best version of that time)

Edited January 9 by Failed Again

[trip]

Ohhh Jaguar.  Nice.  I grew up poor and used to dream of getting an Atari 400 just because the games looked so good.  2600 was my last console back then.  When NES came out I got one but my gf(now wife) took it over...same thing with Sega Genesis.  I didn't regain console play until the last years of the 360...and that was because they stopped releasing Madden for PC.

 

myPitfall is sitting in certification at MS.  We'll see...not too sure Atari and/or Activision will allow it.

 

 

Between Pitfall I've been racing in GTAO.  Yup.

 

[Failed Again]

On 1/9/2022 at 10:15 AM, trip said:

Ohhh Jaguar.  Nice.  I grew up poor and used to dream of getting an Atari 400 just because the games looked so good.  2600 was my last console back then.  When NES came out I got one but my gf(now wife) took it over...same thing with Sega Genesis.  I didn't regain console play until the last years of the 360...and that was because they stopped releasing Madden for PC.

 

myPitfall is sitting in certification at MS.  We'll see...not too sure Atari and/or Activision will allow it.

 

 

Between Pitfall I've been racing in GTAO.  Yup.

 

AvP and Tempest 2000 on Atari Jag was nice too

[Night Machine]

Been playing a couple old N64 classics on the XB1. Original Turok and Doom 64. Still just as fun as they were when they 1st came out. 

[sabitsuki]

Silent Hill 2 on PCSX2.

 

The game has held up very well.

[Mister Pink]

Finished Mass Effect 1 and started Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition. The bump in graphics from 1 to 2 is night and day! ME2 looks properly remastered and up to date. Almost current gen or at least end of last gen. Playing on Series X with 4K TV, it looks superb. 

 

 

Still playing Halo: Infinite but slowly. Also had some games of Prominence Poker again.

[guerilla_man]

Far cry 6 

no mans sky 

 

 

[Failed Again]

Age of Empires 4

 

[Candy_Licker]

I came across this new historical turn based crpg calles Expeditions:Rome. Highly recommend so far if you're into any of that stuff.

 

Warhammer 3 also looks really nice with all the improvements in camapign map so maybe this will be the first TW since Shogun II to really sink my teeth in. Fingers crossed.

Edited January 23 by Candy_Licker

[Failed Again]

On 1/23/2022 at 10:32 AM, Candy_Licker said:

I came across this new historical turn based crpg calles Expeditions:Rome. Highly recommend so far if you're into any of that stuff.

 

Warhammer 3 also looks really nice with all the improvements in camapign map so maybe this will be the first TW since Shogun II to really sink my teeth in. Fingers crossed.

nice -Barbarians(Britannia season 3) just started here too

Edited January 25 by Failed Again

[Candy_Licker]

^ Feels like the (HBO) Rome season 3 we never had.

[Mexicola9302]

Im currently playing through "Days Gone", i played it 23.9 hours so far. I got mixed feelings about it, some things are very good done, some things are just annoying af. I hate it that Deacon keeps talking to himself, or that he shouts very loud while driving the bike, if another person sits on it. The coping with the past is annoying, these whiny flashbacks. In the beginning the game sucks, but after really getting into it, getting some better weapons, bike upgrades, better skills and all it's actually fun after a while, well if progress is made in the game. I only killed one horde so far, they were in a train, next to a nero site. I was just lucky there were so many explosive containers around, the rest i killed with molotovs, a pipe bomb, my rifle and pistol. Without these explosve contaiers i wouldn't have been able to kill the horde.

 

Yesterday i was so afraid of going out of a house at night in "Rogues Camp", because there was a horde that could be seen, it was a horde of like 50 freakers, they killed me 2-3 times, while i tried to destroy some nests there. After i realized i couldn't kill that horde, i just waited for dawn in a house and destroyed the nests then. The hordes still give me creeps, im really scared by them, i don't got the weaponry to easily kill them yet. Im pretty sure in a New Game+, with the best weapons that are available, and good firearm skills, hordes are easy to kill, but damn they are hard in the first playthrough.

 

I started playing that game now, because the perfomance sucked on PC shortly after release, but now for some reason i can play it all maxed out in 2160p with normally 75-80, sometimes 100-120 indoors FPS, and i don't get these weird FPS drops while riding the bike anymore, so it's actually fun to play this game now.

 

Playing it with R9 5950x, RTX 3080, 32 GB 3800 MHZ RAM, NVMe drive. I upgraded my ram from 3200 MHZ to 3800 MHZ, and i think that fixed the stuttering/FPS drops for me. Or maybe it was just a game update, i honestly don't know, just glad it runs well now for me.

 

After im finished with Days Gone first playthrough, i probably gonna give Far Cry 6 another chance, and after i finished that, will do a New Game+ of DG, and then maybe i buy the Singleplayer Mode of Halo Infinite and play that.

 

And after that i will probably play the Mass Effect Remastered Trilogy.

 

Yeah i will game a lot over the next 3 months or so, i will just stay at home, out of job and relax. So not in the mood to look for a new job now, i do that if the pandemic is a little less worse here in Germany. Lost my job shortly before christmas, so f*ck it, gonna live of the state for a while, i don't feel guilty, not if we feed like 2 million refugees, only like 20% of them are working so yeah, i don't feel guilty, i worked the last 4 years and paid taxes so not feeling bad about it.

 

Gaming, gaming, gaming yeah for the next 3 months.  

[DEALUX]

I went back to GRID Autosport because I wanted to give this series a chance (Codemasters is actually kinda good at making racing games) but...

 

 

That video sums up this game lol. Atrocious AI. Almost made me uninstall the game but I still want to finish it and get it over with.

[guerilla_man]

Been playing new game plus + as Alexious on level 75. Replaying the story. Playing now on normal difficulty. When I first started the new game I played on easy difficulty as Alexious. Aced every trophy after completion of the main story and eliminated all the cultists before starting a new game plus. Assassins creed odyssey is amazing!

[Jason]

Got a bit of CRPG craving but I don't want to start any new ones while I've still got 1-2 playthroughs unfinished, so I'm finishing up my Pillars of Eternity 2 playthrough that I started and dropped almost a year ago now, while simultaneously eyeing up Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous to buy and start immediately after.

[smokeless6]

19 minutes ago, Jason said:

Got a bit of CRPG craving

 

I played Kingmaker, but not WotR, at least not yet. Played PoE and PoE2, which were great. Divinity Original Sin/2 though are my favorites. I reckon you've played these too? Holding off on BG3 until full release.

 

Lately I've been playing

 

Hitman World of Assassination (all three titles)

Forza Horizon 5

GTAO

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2

Football Manager 18

[Jason]

2 hours ago, smokeless6 said:

I played Kingmaker, but not WotR, at least not yet. Played PoE and PoE2, which were great. Divinity Original Sin/2 though are my favorites. I reckon you've played these too? Holding off on BG3 until full release.

 

Div OS 2 is basically the game that opened up the CRPG for me, I absolutely loved it. I put a few hours into Kingmaker and got to the kingdom stage but I'm not massive on the side-game stuff, so I kinda just put it down and never got round to picking it back up again. I know WoTR has something similar but there's almost no timers (I like to be able to explore with no rush) and there's way to either minimise the Crusade stuff or mods that just basically nullify it, so I'm really interested in giving that a go.

 

Also tried Solasta on Games Pass the other day which was interesting but ultimately not for me, visually it's a bit messy and the writing and voice acting is messy. Div OS2 and Disco Elysium are my faves I'd have to say, PoE2 is really good but has some issues with how it deliveries story for me.

 

But yea, I'm in the BG3 waiting room as well, it's top of my Steam wishlist and probably the game I'm most looking forward to right now that's tangible and not just words, like GTA VI.

[smokeless6]

5 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

Div OS 2 is basically the game that opened up the CRPG for me

 

The first one for me, but otherwise the same. That game re-opened the door in to this genre, which I had drifted away from since the days of games like BG2, Planescape and NWN 2. When DOS 1 came out I tried it and it was phenomenal, a game that had all the stuff that made those classics great, but modern, with graphics, mechanics, and ideas that made it fresh. Only the inventory in DOS 1 seemed stuck in the 90s haha.

 

DOS 2 improved on absolutely everything, except, crucially, combat. That was a step back for me. Still great, but the way they changed initiative to no longer matter, and the splitting of armor in to both magical and physical were decisions that I did not support, and I think the game suffers a bit because of it. Even so, it's the best game of this type I've played, and that's a list that goes back several decades.

 

So for me it was DOS 1 that opened the door, and Pillars, Kingmaker, Tyrrany and of course DOS 2 all followed among others. There's so much good about this new generation of iso RPGs, but for me the trend I like most is how these games are going 'classless'. No longer is it down to a choice between Paladin, Fighter and Mage, ya know? The way games like  PoE 2 or DOS 2 allow you to blend your build using every possibility is amazing.

[Jason]

Yea multiclassing is nice, albeit often a "avoid if you're not 100% on what you're doing". It's one of the reasons why Div OS2 was really the catalyst for the CRPG renaissance I think, it was very accessible while not completely dumbing it down. The ability to make some wacky builds in that game is one of it's strengths and while I didn't play the first so I can't comment on the armour changes (I did hear about that tho) I adore OS2's sandboxy combat and being able to use the environment to your advantage. One of my favourite things was using stuff like the furniture to your advantage, creating mazes for enemies, etc. It allowed some silly stuff like this to get you through fights your underleveled for.

 

BG3 looks to be building on that with stuff like shoves etc. Solasta does that as well, one of the early fights in the game is in ruins with one of the fights being in an area with a load of ruined walkways with falls and gaps all over, allowing you to push enemies off.

[smokeless6]

Multi-classing is a better way to put it than classless I think. I don't want to derail this thread too badly, but yeah, I'd recommend giving DOS 1 a go if you ever feel like it. I think it's worth it for the combat alone. You also have full control over two characters in DOS 1, two players really, both controlled by you all the way from initial character creation.

 

To touch on a couple changes from 1 to 2,  the armor is probably the most drastic. This is comment I made a few years ago in a different forum when I first got DOS 2, and I'm too lazy not to paste it here...

 

I've talked about armor, and how it was split in to both magical and physical for the second game. Beyond that, status effects can't apply until the armor type that resists it is completely gone. Skill descriptions use the term "resisted by", but it really should say "blocked by". Charm or shock for example cannot work until magic armor is removed. And then it works 100%. It's an odd change and I don't like it. I'd rather it worked traditionally, that is with saving throws. DOS 1 works this way, and in that game you have Defenses (Body Building and Willpower) that are rolled against the attack, so statuses can be applied at any time if you win the roll. Conversely you need to invest in these if you want to prevent being CC'd, set on fire and the like. I much prefer this as it is dependent on your build and makes combat less binary in a sense. It also means that mixed parties (both physical and magical damage) are less effective in the second game. You'd have an advantage going all-in on one or the other. But that's less interesting and I didn't do it for my Tactician DOS 2 run.

So that small difference means that in DOS 1 the build is more important (since defenses do not even exist in DOS 2). Failing to invest in Body Building or Willpower means that your character can be CC'd by even the most modest enemy. In DOS 2 it just comes down to how much armor you have (and what type). And for me, any mechanical/combat interlacing between build and effectiveness makes that aspect of the game more interesting.

Another thing that was changed is how initiative works. In DOS 1 you have a Speed attribute, that affects Action Points, movement and initiative. In the first game this is important since initiative affects the combat order of all combatants. In DOS 2 this was changed to a round-robin type system, where initiative of your party only affects the order they fight in, and regardless of stats, the enemy will always go next. It alternates, meaning initiative is far less important. You just want to make it so your characters fight in the order you want, and forget about improving the stat beyond that. In DOS 1 if all of your party have higher initiative than all enemies, all of your party gets to take their turns before the enemy fires a shot. So the change was likely made to make combat more challenging, by preventing you from ganging up at the start. Personally I don't like it as it takes another 'interlaced mechanic' away from the build synergy.

A third thing that was changed is how action points work. In DOS 1, as you level your skills you start to gain 'mastery' over them (my term). For example a Novice-level Aerotheurge spell at Aero 1 might consume 4 action points. But when you add an additional point to Aero that same spell now consumes 3 action points. So as you level and increase these stats you can use more spells in any given turn. In addition, increasing speed gives you more APs, further increasing the number of skills and spells you can perform in any given turn. Leveling also affects cooldowns, all of which means that as your character levels up it imparts the sensation that your character is mastering that school. In DOS 2 leveling these stats is more of an 'unlock', or the pre-requisite needed to learn the higher level abilities. There is a small 5% boost to damage per point, but that's all. You do not gain more APs, and AP costs do not drop. You can just cast more powerful stuff. Once again, I prefer the way it works in DOS 1.

In the end I re-rolled my dual mains about six times lol, as I kept making mistakes or forgetting to change their portrait or whatever haha. I built a sword and board battlemage (Lone Wolf / Pet Pal + Man-at -Arms + Witchcraft, Geo and later Pyro and Scoundrel) and a mage (Lone Wolf / Far Out Man + Witchcraft, Aero, Hydro, but who will eventually have points in all schools). A fourth difference between the two games is how skill points are spent. In order to level something like Aero in DOS 2 you just spend a single point. But in DOS 1 each level costs the same in skill points. So to reach Aero 5 in DOS 2 you spend 5 points. But in DOS 1 to reach level 5 you need to spend 15 (1+2+3+4+5). That's a huge difference and means that to go to the highest level you need to heavily invest. Instead, I will spread it out. Instead of taking these to level 5 I will go to 4, meaning I have 5 skills points saved and can invest them instead in another school. There is no Memory-type cap, you're simply limited by your money and ability to find skill books. In a sense it's a system that is even more classless than DOS 2 if that makes any sense, and encourages you to diversify. Plus, the Master spells are extremely powerful but have just one use per combat, further encouraging me to spread it around rather than go pure.

 

I play Tactician mode, and these changes made the very early game, while you're still trying to break out of the fort quite difficult in Tactician. In the end I still loved the game and rate it as the best one of its type. Larian is a great studio and I hope they deliver the goods in BG3.

Edited February 5 by smokeless6

[Jason]

Yea it sounds like it was simplified which I can 100% get being a downside to people experienced with the first, but it did definitely work for them as brought DOS2 to a whole new audience which is the price you pay I guess.

 

The armour system in 2 was very very simple which makes it easy to understand, but it was (along with other aspects of the games gearing) lowkey and sorta intentionally exploitable. Stacking heavy armour + shield to make tanks godly early on, visiting high level places early and getting some high level tank gear early was particularly valuable, especially as high level shields did soooooooooo much damage before they slightly nerfed it for the definitive edition. The way they did it opened up all those types of things but honestly I kinda liked it, it also played into one of the games strengths which is that you could make some crazy, crazy strong characters and the game encouraged it.

 

Also while we're on OP stuff, he physics in the combat were also great and made possible things like the infamous build where you stacked telekinesis and filled a steel chest full of heavy stuff and just 1 hit people with the chest.

[VenusianDream]

Just finished Mafia III, a lot of people complained about it's repetitive gameplay but I actually found it quite fun to go from district to district tearing apart each and every one of the mob's rackets while listening to all those good tunes on the radio. The dlcs, races, and loyalty missions add a nice variety and helps keep the game fresh too. The story was good, although it could've used some more cutscenes. Lincoln was a badass character and his tragic revenge story kept me engaged the whole time playing, and Sal was a good villain with a somewhat likeable charm to him despite what he did. It was satisfying the way things ended especially since I chose Vito to run the city afterwards. All in all I'd say it was a damn good game on par to the other two games in the series.

 

Currently playing the first Dying Light now, but I might start a new game+ for Ghost of Tsushima and replay it in Kurosawa mode.

Edited February 21 by VenusianDream

[GTA-Biker]

I completed Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey a few days ago.Fun game,playing as a prehistoric hominid is interesting,though getting attacked by sabertooth cats all the time was kinda annoying,at least before I figured out how the stalker cat feature works.It would be cool to see more games set in prehistoric times.

 

Currently I'm playing Crash Team Racing remaster.I had the original version on PS1 as a kid back in the early 2000s,I loved it then,and I love the remaster as well.Can't wait to play Crash Bandicoot 4 too.

[justinlynch3]

Mix of GTAO, Fallout 4, FighterZ, WWE 2K20 (until 2K22) and SnowRunner.     With some other games occasionally.

[GTA-Biker]

I recently played Crash Team Racing remaster and Crash Bandicoot 4 (fun game,I like it a lot),and currently I'm playing Medievil remaster.I remember playing Medievil 2 as a kid,I liked it a lot,and the remaster of the first game is fun too.

[GTA3Rockstar]

Elden Ring