Video game spotlight thread



  • How come we don't have a thread like this?

    Some guidelines:

    • One game per post
    • Make the title h1, so we can easy parse new game posts from discussion
    • Only games you are playing now, no "I remember playing this as wee lad"
    • Include some media (screenshots, video etc)
    • Not intended as your diary. Once you post a game, we don't need daily reminders you're still into it (unless you have something new to say)

    But whatever. Unlike the song thread, I see no point in being too strict here. We'll see how it goes.



  • I'm still playing Destiny (and with the two expansions coming, think I will be for a while).
    I've played Forza Horizon 2 for a few hours. It was immense fun (especially seeing friend's drivatars from Forza 5 driving around), and want to get back to it soon... it will probably be when none of my friends are playing Destiny though.
    Next on the list is Sunset Overdrive. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, although I'm not sure how much it might keep me coming back to it once I'm through the main story.



  • I'll go first (naturally). EDIT: Not first :-(

    Heavy Bullets

    http://www.heavybullets.com/

    It's kind of FPS roguelite. Your goal is to get to the 8th floor and do something. So far, I've only managed up to 4th. You only have a revolver with 6 bullets, but you can retrieve them once you fire them out. You can also get one or two special items and some crappy upgrades. Automatic generation is a joke, hardly anything changes between the playthroughs.

    Yet, the basic mechanic isn't bad at all. Having limited ammo is interesting and enemies are pretty well designed. I'm enjoying screwing around with this 30-60 minutes a day while listening some podcast or catching up with the song of the day thread.



  • @Spencer said:

    I'm still playing Destiny (and with the two expansions coming, think I will be for a while).I've played Forza Horizon 2 for a few hours. It was immense fun (especially seeing friend's drivatars from Forza 5 driving around), and want to get back to it soon... it will probably be when none of my friends are playing Destiny though.Next on the list is Sunset Overdrive. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, although I'm not sure how much it might keep me coming back to it once I'm through the main story.

    I see I'll have to update the rules.... πŸ˜„


  • kills Dumbledore

    I'm playing Dragon Age at the moment, since getting it free on Origin.

    Played it briefly on 360, years ago, I think I was a dwarf then. This time I'm an elf maiden, the introductory back story involves kidnap and rape on your wedding day, in case you were expecting the game not to be all gritty and real. I'd also forgotten just how much blood gets spattered on the player characters from fights.

    At some point I'll get round to finishing Infamous 2. Really enjoyed the first one but the second doesn't seem to have held my interest as well



  • @jaloopa said:

    I'm playing Dragon Age at the moment, since getting it free on Steam.

    I remember trying that one. It was ... ok, the last gasp of the old Bioware.


  • kills Dumbledore

    I haven't played any more recent Bioware except Mass Effect 1 and 2. Enjoyed 1, got really annoyed that they took out most of my favourite bits for 2 and made it a Gears of War clone.



  • Things I do right now:

    • I bought the very unexpected and surprising 100% Orange Juice DLC and plan to try it with some internet friends after work or throughout the weekend.
    • I am playing through Doom II with a WAD called "Demonsteele" which is a suprisingly fun experience.

    EDIT: Not on my Laptop right now, will provide pretty pictures later! (Check out the link to the Doom mod, though.)



  • I'm playing Skyrim Legendary Edition which with the added content and locations is overwhelming on how big it is and how many missions there are.

    I'm also doing some casual Minecraft with my kids on an Xbox 360 and it's lots of fun.

    I guess I don't have to add any screenshot of this two.

    In the future I expect to play GTAV & Fallout 4 (whenever it's released) not other games I feel attracted at, although I've seen some pretty cool stuff about Destiny.



  • @aliceif said:

    I am playing through Doom II with a WAD called "Demonsteele" which is a suprisingly fun experience.

    Looks cool. Is this like Brutal Doom? It seems like the same level of gore.



  • Nope. It has more gore than ordinary doom, though.
    Whole lot different gameplay and some very drastic changes, most notably the HP/Armor system.
    And new enemies!


  • 🚽 Regular

    I'm playing Watch_Dogs, which for those who don't know is the game where it's perfectly acceptable to ram other cars or even casually running over people; but if a robbery happens next to you and the guy starts shooting, someone might call the police, who will scan the area and tag you as suspicious and start chasing you β€” and if you try to escape by swimming to the middle of the river, they send a helicopter.



  • @Zecc said:

    and if you try to escape by swimming to the middle of the river, they send a helicopter.

    Once you get Disable Helicopter, running away from cops is basically "run for the nearest body of water and swim in circles". I've completed one of the last missions, which in theory sends you on a huge cop-chase around the city with several checkpoints to visit and CTOS all over the place, by staying in water for 90% of the time.



  • @aliceif said:

    Nope. It has more gore than ordinary doom, though.Whole lot different gameplay and some very drastic changes, most notably the HP/Armor system.And new enemies!

    Tried it..... didn't captured me instantly.


  • 🚽 Regular

    Oh, and me and the missus are doing some preparatory work in Terraria to fight off the pre-hardmode boss (the Wall of Flesh).

    The version of the game is freakin' old, so we're missing on a lot of cool stuff, but the PS3 is technically hers and she doesn't want to connect it to the 'net and I respect that. I may buy the PC version some day, but the game is already a huge time-sink as it is.



  • It took me a while to get used to it. You have to learn how to play it before you can have fun. There's also the issue that Doom II's first few levels aren't really too good in highlighting the great things about it, same with Doom1's first Episode.
    Episode 2 and 3 of Doom1 were a blast, though.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    huge cop-chase

    Cops are way too agressive in this game.

    "Ram the fucker." Other people and property be damned.


    Oh, I have to tell you about this mildly funny episode.

    I was doing one of those Gang Hideout missions, where you need to disable one of the enemies without killing him, but it's fine if you kill all the minions β€” which is what I usually do.

    One of the minions was profiled as a paranoid who thought someone was out to kill him. So as a distraction I sent him a text message saying he was going to die in ten minutes. And then I killed him even before he had the chance to answer. It was very satisfying.



  • The evil ideas thread is this way: β†— ⏩ πŸ”ƒ



  • @Zecc said:

    Cops are way too agressive in this game.

    "Ram the fucker." Other people and property be damned.

    I actually liked that aspect. Cop chases were properly challenging. CTOS, on the other hand, was complete bullshit that placed you in unavoidable situations pretty much half the time.

    That's all, of course, until you hop on a boat, which breaks this part of the game completely.

    @Zecc said:

    I was doing one of those Gang Hideout missions, where you need to disable one of the enemies without killing him, but it's fine if you kill all the minions β€” which is what I usually do.

    Ah, the only missions worth doing.



  • Eve Online

    I have been playing this for several years now -- albeit intermittently over the past year or so due to the inability to find large chunks of time to sink into the game.

    My advice: you have not experienced what a MMO should be until you get into a good corp in Eve, whether you are doing Faction Warfare, nullsec, wormhole exploration, piracy, or what-have-you. Eve is a game where your actions matter, perhaps not in the 'rows in a database' sense, but in a broader, social sense. It's a game of unique moments and emergent stories, actions with consequences and "I was there".

    Be forewarned though: you will never look at MMOs the same way again after you experience the full depths of what Eve has to offer, and the game also can be a tremendous time sink, despite being one of the least grindy MMOs out there.

    But, the feeling you get when you look at an article and go "I was there, part of something that will never happen in the same way again, a moment in history." is something you will never get out of a raiding party or a battleground. That is why Eve is worth the subscription fee in a way no other MMO I have heard of is.


  • kills Dumbledore

    I tried the free fortnight of Eve and never got past the tutorial. Maybe I'll give it another go one of these days but the learning curve was a bit steep for me at the time.



  • @jaloopa said:

    I tried the free fortnight of Eve and never got past the tutorial. Maybe I'll give it another go one of these days but the learning curve was a bit steep for me at the time.

    The Eve NPE (New Player Experience ;) ) has seen drastic improvements over the past couple of years, so give it another go. Getting into a newbie-friendly corporation also helps tremendously, I might add.


  • β™Ώ (Parody)

    #Klondike Solitaire

    I play this on my e-reader (which has an ancient version of Android). I have it set to deal one card at a time. There is no undo. It keeps track of wins, losses and fastest win. Since last reset (about 400 games) I'm at about a 63% win rate. My strategies have evolved over time to suit the particularities of this variant.



  • @boomzilla said:

    There is no undo.

    ✌ for victory


    "Undo or undo not there is no untry."

    After winning 2^10 straight games of Freecell, I thought "maybe I'm procrastinating".



  • Coldfire Keep

    I was itching for some first person dungeon crawling, so when I saw this as a part of a $3 bundle, I got it.

    Mistake.

    The game looks nice on the screenshots but plays TERRIBLY. It was obviously meant to be played on a tablet, because PC trappings (keyboard controls, settings etc) are rudimentary at best.

    Worst of all, YOU CAN'T INITIATE ANOTHER MOVE UNTIL THE PREVIOUS MOVE'S ANIMATION IS COMPLETE. If you type a key chord like you're used to in similar games (eg: turn + strafe + back), all but the first command will be swallowed. I can't stress enough how much this sucks. Probably due to naively mapping tablet's gestures to keys. Whatever. Unacceptable.

    Luckily, Grimrock 2 came out yesterday, so I'll move on to that, and hopefully forget "Coldfire Keep" ever existed.



  • @cartman82 said:

    The game looks nice on the screenshots

    The character avatars look like stolen FB photos twiddled with in Photoshop. Badly.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    The character avatars look like stolen FB photos twiddled with in Photoshop. Badly.

    Nice = something I would like to play. I don't care about graphics quality.

    One of my favorite RPGs of all time:

    http://www.dodgysoft.com/images/DD2_shot5.gif

    That's a 2013 game.



  • Hearthstone in every column



  • @jaloopa said:

    I haven't played any more recent Bioware except Mass Effect 1 and 2. Enjoyed 1, got really annoyed that they took out most of my favourite bits for 2

    Mass Effect 2

    I'm actually replaying the ME trilogy now, and on ME2. My opinion generally matches yours (and I guess diverges from the mainstream?): ME1 is the best of the trilogy and ME2 is the worst. And this replay is reminding me of what I call the "death by 1000 papercuts", which is just a multitude of a ton of little things that are all only a little anonying but combine to create an experience that just doesn't come close to stacking up to ME1.

    That being said: I think ME2 is still quite good. And this time, inspired in part by the following comic, I went with Vanguard.... and I gotta say, it's really a blast. To the point where I'm basically willing to completely forgive the health regen, because Vanguard wouldn't be half as useful or fun as it is now without it.

    And I'll also say: I highly recommend ME3. Despite its problems and the extra ME2 problems it brings out, it's still very much worth it IMO. (And some of the worst ME2 issues are moderated in ME3, though not quite back to ME1 level.)



  • I really, really liked the whole ME trilogy and story. I didn't find ME2 to be a clone of GoW but just what I wanted, more combat and less stupid mining.

    This is one of the games that would make me buy a new console.



  • I'm going to attempt to follow the rules, even though they're dumb and make no sense.

    Borderlands The Pre-Sequel!

    This is the game I should be playing, being a new entry in a series I've had a lot of fun with in the past.

    Unfortunately:

    1. It's not really all that great (not as disappointing as Destiny or Elder Scrolls Online, but there's really nothing that seems to advance the game past what Borderlands 2 already did better.)

    2. I got it for free with my video card I bought a couple months back, so I don't really feel the compulsion to play it. It doesn't have the "I spent $60 on this shit" magnetic draw of Destiny or ESO.

    (NOTE: be prepared to call me a wimp!)

    The default difficulty level is too hard for me, I died like 3 times at the first boss battle and (for the first time ever in a Borderlands game) found myself having to "grind" on sidequests and random murder to advance the story missions. Grinding? In Borderlands? Shiiit.

    Also the tutorials tell you all the shit everybody's known for 30 years, but leave-out crucial differences between Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2-- for example, the way the boost on the cars work is totally different, and you're gonna have to trial and error it 3-4 times before you figure out why you're wasting all your jumps. (Pro-tip: in previous Borderlands games, the boost accelerated your axles. In this one, the boost is a rocket that accelerates the entire vehicle even when it has no wheels on the ground.) Strangely, despite spending 40,000 words in annoying unskippable tutorial dialogs, it has no driving tutorial at all.

    So anyway. Long story short: playing it feels almost more like a chore than a fun game. That said, some of the jokes are fucking hilarious. (Starring: CL4P-TP as This Was A Mistake!) But not enough to keep me going. I think I'm going to turn it to "easy baby" mode, and just power through to get the story.



  • Payday 2

    Played a couple hours of this with Rantis last night it's, shockingly, not a tenth as terrible as the first Payday game! I actually kind of enjoyed it! Not in any kind of ironic "so bad it's good" sense either!

    Basically, they made it a shit-ton easier. (And yes, call me a baby wimpo wuss or whatever, but we played the first Payday with 4 extremely experienced FPS players, and we were unable to complete even the missions marked "easy". That game just drops in 50,000 cops an hour.) What did they improve?

    1. Cops come in waves now, instead of just a constant stream of death

    2. The game does a MUCH better job of communicating pre-level intel, like proposed plans of actions and blueprints (I think these existed in the first game, but.)

    3. Missions are much shorter and simpler. No more 3 hour missions with 47 different objectives, now your gang is doing simple "hey rob this bank, make off with at least 4 money backs, evac from the van" simple stuff. As a result, there are also a lot more missions, so, hey look!, variety! (So far, none of the missions have asked us to chase a guy into a van, then set the van on fire.)

    4. Weapons and tools are easier to unlock and purchase. You can buy a silencer for your pistol after only one successful haul, for example.

    5. The game ships with more masks than those stupid fucking clown masks of the original. I hated those clown masks. (Now you can use some of the best masks from Hotline: Miami. A shitty game, but the masks were cool.)

    What is it still doing poorly:

    1. The equipment breakdown shit is annoying. Especially since the timer on the equipment is already 5 minutes, sometimes longer. 5 minutes is an eternity in a video game, delaying it with a breakdown an eternity-and-a-half, and they should re-evaluate all of their pacing frankly.

    2. You still can't do shit in casing mode. Nothing useful. At all. Even if you're by yourself in an alleyway, and nobody's looking at you, you can't climb a ladder without putting on your mask. Because climbing a ladder is "suspicious." This makes casing mode useless for actually casing the target; it's only purpose now is to move your character to the "start positions" with less risk of being detected.

    3. Stealthing missions is nearly impossibly hard, and the rewards for using stealth aren't much better than the normal rewards. I'd like to do the missions without killing guys, but it's virtually impossible. Maybe when you're level 40 and have all the unlocks.

    4. The tutorials/help sucks, and this is a complicated game that BADLY needs them. You unlock a skill, like "tag a guard", and the game gives ZERO guidance on how to tag him, or what good that does you. Additionally, the irritating radio guy/announcer/whatever saying for the 47th time, "you gotta drill the vault!" when the drill IS ALREADY GOING YOU IDIOT is very annoying.

    So anyway. It ain't bad. Honestly. I was surprised, so was Rantis.



  • Ok people, if we're going have rules, make SOME attempt to follow them.

    Or at least type enough letters so other people know what the holy shit you're talking about. For example:

    @aliceif said:

    I bought the very unexpected and surprising 100% Orange Juice DLC and plan to try it with some internet friends after work or throughout the weekend.

    What game is this a DLC for?

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    I actually liked that aspect. Cop chases were properly challenging. CTOS, on the other hand, was complete bullshit that placed you in unavoidable situations pretty much half the time.

    What game is CTOS?

    And now OPINIONS:

    @jaloopa said:

    Enjoyed 1, got really annoyed that they took out most of my favourite bits for 2 and made it a Gears of War clone.

    Ironically, I agree Mass Effect 2 is a piece of crap, but basically for everything it does other than the combat system.

    @Eldelshell said:

    I'm playing Skyrim Legendary Edition which with the added content and locations is overwhelming on how big it is and how many missions there are.

    I have (no shitting) somewhere close to 1200 hours on Skyrim, and yesterday I encountered a quest I've never seen before.

    @tarunik said:

    But, the feeling you get when you look at an article and go "I was there, part of something that will never happen in the same way again, a moment in history." is something you will never get out of a raiding party or a battleground. That is why Eve is worth the subscription fee in a way no other MMO I have heard of is.

    EVE players are freaks. That game is boring as shit. And I don't see the appeal of being in a "moment in history" nobody gives a shit about.

    @cartman82 said:

    Worst of all, YOU CAN'T INITIATE ANOTHER MOVE UNTIL THE PREVIOUS MOVE'S ANIMATION IS COMPLETE. If you type a key chord like you're used to in similar games (eg: turn + strafe + back), all but the first command will be swallowed.

    Ouch.

    Even the old SSI Dungeon Hack got that right. (BTW, Dungeon Hack is still pretty playable, surprisingly. I put it on my laptop during my train commute a few years ago.)

    @algorythmics said:

    Hearthstone in every column

    I stopped playing that when they released a patch that crashed every Windows 8.1 computer that tried to run the game. Fucking incompetent developers.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What game is this a DLC for?

    A board game.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Maciejasjmj:
    I actually liked that aspect. Cop chases were properly challenging. CTOS, on the other hand, was complete bullshit that placed you in unavoidable situations pretty much half the time.

    What game is CTOS?

    Canasta, The Original Series?



  • Oh. You bought a mod FOR a game named 100% Orange Juice, not a mod NAMED 100% Orange Juice.

    Looks like shitty animes playing the Candy Land. Whee.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What game is CTOS?

    Umm, if you follow the chain of replies, you'll eventually get to Zecc's post about Watch Dogs. I know this forum is shit, but it's not that hard.



  • Right; and then someone compared Watch Dogs to CTOS, but I don't know what CTOS is.

    If that answer's on this forum, maybe quote it? Because I read top to bottom and I didn't find it.



  • A DLC but whatever.
    It's a good board game if you have a bunch of friends to play it with and like board games.
    And you can do some strategic things by using cards and such.



  • Maybe, but if I downloaded that it'd cost me a lot of money to replace my monitor after punching all the awful animes off it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Right; and then someone compared Watch Dogs to CTOS, but I don't know what CTOS is.

    No, somebody (i.e. me) compared police chases (one of the game mechanics) with ctOS (another related game mechanic).

    also, yeah, I capitalized it wrong, mostly because I forgot they used that retarded fake-iOS spelling



  • Oh. And I was supposed to know that CTOS was another game mechanic and not another game with... magical pixies? Let's go with magical pixies.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Let's go with magical pixies.

    I concur, that would be less iritating than the actual thing.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    That game is boring as shit.

    It's also advanced by leaps and bounds since 2003(!), and become much more diverse (read: less boring) in the process. Then again, you're one of those instant-gratification types (at least when it comes to your games), no?

    @blakeyrat said:

    And I don't see the appeal of being in a "moment in history" nobody gives a shit about.

    How often do events in any other game out there find there way to the BBC? Does 'never' satisfy you? So, your judgement that nobody cares is a bit off-base.

    @blakeyrat said:

    EVE players are freaks.

    Well, I'm of the opinion that people who expect all their content to be spoon-fed to them by the game developers are freaks.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    What game is CTOS?

    Connective Tissue Oncology Society
    Convergent Technologies Operating System

    Or something involving watch Μ… dogs.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Additionally, the irritating radio guy/announcer/whatever saying for the 47th time, "you gotta drill the vault!" when the drill IS ALREADY GOING YOU IDIOT is very annoying.

    Sounds like the new β€œPlebs are needed!” (for those of you who remember the old Sierra city building games before they got the balance right).



  • Silos needed.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @aliceif said:

    Silos needed.

    Hey! Listen!



  • SIDE NOTE: PayDay 1 is free today on Steam until 10am PDT Friday October 17 2014.



  • After 6 years, I'm still playing Team Fortress 2 several times a week.

    Part of that is because the game itself has continued to evolve during that entire time. Part of that is because I've managed to find a few good communities. A good dose of humor being part of the game helps too... I mean, how many other games can you kill someone with a cricket bat then conga over their corpse?

    More likely, though, is because of the community added content. Although Valve themselves don't really support community created game modes I find they add a twist or two to the usual run and gun formula. So much so that I tend to take over game modes that are dying and bring them back to life. I tried and failed at that with the Freak Fortress 2 plugin (although some of the code I wrote is used by the person who took it over after I did), then tried and succeeded with the TF2 PropHunt plugin.

    Having said all that, my time spent "playing" the game yesterday was actually reverse engineering the changes Valve made to the TF2 vote system as it broke one of my server plugins that acts as an API to Valve's vote panels for other plugins.

    Apparently the TF2 dev team decided that having -1 (or 255 for byte values) stand for all teams in the vote system was poor design. Despite using that value in every game since 2008's Left 4 Dead. Including TF2 up until yesterday. So, now 0 stands for all teams, despite the game engine using 0 for the "unassigned" team already.


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