(shouting)

What games are you playing?

do you like them video games? what about those there romhacks? well pop on in here and talk about them then! what are you waiting for?!
thatguyif
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by thatguyif »

I got a job offer of sorts. While I took it, I'm sandbagging: Pay is lousy in comparison to what I just had, and I'm expected to be in the office 3 times a week starting January. I got a lead that's pretty deep and pays better, and I have about 5 interviews lined up that could go anywhere. Next month will be chaotic. At the very least though, unemployment period is much shorter this time around. (Comparisons: The hell years of 2009-2012, where I was officially jobless for 3 years (did some contract work for a year, but that didn't count), and the awful time in 2017-2018, where I was out of work for 8 months.)

So Airship: Kingdoms Adrift went into Early Access earlier this month, meaning I was able to actually play their demo. Glad I did, to a degree: Fun little game that's basically "What if Sid Meier's Pirates, but with airships?" You get to really customize your ship, outfit with different weapons and abilities, then blast shit out of the sky. What's more fun than that? And the combat's mostly fun. Started with the magical Balto-German nation because their boat looked cool. Played the opening act of the demo. Strangely enough, it had cheevos. There are some nice features that don't seem obvious but are cool regardless. Example: I gunned down some easy pirate that was along the way, and about 10 minutes later his cousin shows up (and starts chasing you around the map ) screaming vengeance bloody vengeance, and that fight was harder. Another example: While ammo is used up during combat, you auto-heal after each battle.

Still, it's very clear it's still in Early Access. A lot of the writing desperately needs a proofreader (if not a editor), with how many typos and missing words there are. Controls for the most part are fine, except for two things: Shifting from auto-pilot (a nice feature for sure) to manual is highly inconsistent, and when you collide with one of the floating rocks in the sky, it's annoyingly hard and tedious to back away from them. Auto-pilot doesn't account for the rocks in the sky, so you either have to shut it off to get around obstacles. Combat, while fun, can sometimes be absurd, because of weird quirks in targeting and accuracy. Like sometimes I'll fire a shot, and it's almost like the guns are deliberately angled to miss their target, and this'll happen repeatedly until suddenly the shots line up properly. If that's their way of portraying accuracy, it's ridiculous. On top of that, I really had no control over what ship the guns targeted if they were in the same cone. It also made combat feel a little RNG. That harder fight I mentioned? First attempt I was mauled by the two ships haranguing me, not helped by me missing shots and them landing shots that knocked out weapons quickly.. Second attempt, my first shot knocked one of the ships out of commission instantly, allowing me to manage the other ship more easily.

Regardless, I see the potential. I'll definitely wishlist this, but I'm not buying it anytime soon. I'll wait until it's gotten more cooking time.

Grand Theft Auto IV continues...slowly. I think that's a thing that bothers me about this game: Everything feels more sluggish. Movement, driving, other things...they feel a bit more plodding than I care for. Still, there's some nice things. I like how Rockstar adapted Bully's search-based model for cops hunting you. Rather than being constantly chased until you pick up enough bribes and/or hit a pay-and-spray, you're given a moving search zone that you have to escape, and then you have to lay low until cops stop finding you. That's pretty nice, at least. The friends/dating system I'm unsure about, at least for now. More playtime will happen over the long weekend.

Friend and I are trying to determine what we should get for Christmas in terms of a co-op game. He wants some silly builder games that allow him to backstab me, I want just more chill plays. We'll see how that pans out.
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Bean
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

After taking the time to download that Uncharted 4 patch so I could play it, I finally started up Uncharted: Golden Abyss on the Vita instead. My brother was done with the handheld, so I got his collection of games and chose to go through the one title I've beaten on the thing on my own profile now.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

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Final Fantasy IV PSP - Went from Tomra/Sylph Cave/Feymarch to recruiting Fusoya and I'm outside the Lair of the Father. Good shit. Pondering on whether I should try to wrap up what I can of the Bestiary without needing to start a new file.

Tengai Makyou Ziria - Got through the State of Tsukuba and I'm almost done with the State of Banmou. Recruited my girl, Tsunade (seriously she's occupied some of my brain cavity ever since i first saw her in Kabuki Klash), and I'm at Shirakawa-cho. Being a filthy gaijin, I'm not getting all of the commentary on inaccurate western perceptions of Japan aside from the more obvious ones, everything looks exaggerated to me.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

And that was a quick platinum. Uncharted: Golden Abyss is complete. Way too grindy for some of those goals though, but eh, it's a short enough game.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

P5R: So even for the game being stupidly easier on NG+, Kaneshiro Bank is even more stupidly easy since you can just... skip the last third of the palace.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

And finished up the preinstalled Welcome Park thing on the Vita. The 15-piece puzzle was easily the toughest goal on that, but I got a good run after a few minutes of playing tonight to complete it ten seconds under the par time. We'll put that in the extra section of games beaten section on my list since it's more or less an introductory app.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Been adding a bunch of games I want to play from the NES+FDS, SG1000+SMS, MD+MCD+32X, TG16+TGCD libraries to my Backloggery so I can have a list of games I can just pick from when I'm bored. Also a bunch from the SNES library, still need to dig up more. They're primarily from the Japanese libraries, using Retro Game FAN and its admin's summaries + the included Amazon JP reviews as a catalog/resource.

I'm also using Jeremy Parish's retrospectives, and /v/'s Recommended Games Wiki for western only titles and SG-1000 games, which are not in the Retro Game FAN site. The average content warnings for 4chan and gamer!Reddit (let's be real here lmao) adjacent stuff applies to the /v/ wiki, so be wary. I'm already used to it myself, being a /v/ and /vr/ regular lurker for a good portion of the 2010s and before that, an Encyclopedia Dramatica lurker at the age of like 12.

I'm planning to go through more console and computer libraries as well as Steam/Itch/GOG/Epic/DLSite/Vector/etc and cross-reference with other trusty sources (European Microcomputer and SMS retrospectives, American retro PC nerd nonsense, HG101, queer gamer sites, East Asian game catalog sites, game sites from other parts of the world like Brazil), and try to add what interests me and what was culturally significant to various parts of the world that I can feasibly play: either in English, Japanese with some translation help and a guide, or in another language I can understand like Spanish, and preferrably on my current PC or on a jailbroken 3DS/Vita/PS3/Wii.

I'm deffo not gonna be able to play everything before I croak but y'know, being aware of history is always important.

So far I have over 1000 games in my Backloggery with NES and SNES by themselves making up the most of it...
nyoro~n

Though MegaDrive and TG16 (if we include TGCD) are like only half way there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway,

Arcus Odyssey - Backloggery picked this one at absolute random, and it owns. Pretty fun arcadey top down action game, with light RPG elements (mostly an inventory and items obtained from chests). It reminds me of Wolf Team taking a spin on Alcahest, before Alcahest? But from what I can tell they're both pretty hard. A good strategy in ArcOdy is to always keep spamming the attack button. I'm playing the US MegaDrive version since it's translated by the lovely folks at Renovation Products.

The SNES version, Arcus Spirits, was gonna be translated too but alas, Sega bought Renovation. I do wonder how some of the special graphical effects look in the SNES version, I might give it a look-see. They're super good on the MegaDrive as is, Wolf Team knocking it out of the park with almost every game they make.

The Act 4 music Owns, and I can't wait to get started on that stage soon. Beat Act 3 earlier today, very fun. Composer is Motoi Sakuraba, so this is clearly before he started plateauing around the early Tales/Star Ocean games, holy shit.

Also Mutsumi Inomata worked on this too? Go Off, I don't always agree with some of her design choices but she's a super great artist, much respect. She's deffo one of the highlights of the Tales series.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'm playing as Erin Gashuna, the whip lady. The walkthrough I skimmed through a bit seemed to indicate that she's the best one for newbies with a pretty good attack despite not having the best magic. Jedda, the warrior, seems to be the all rounder to a fault, Diana, the archer, and Bead, the mage, seem to be very powerful but under the hands of experienced users, Diana having the weakest attack and Bead having the least HP, squishy mage and all.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

The Vita games continue with Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational. It's an impossible game to platinum because of an online trophchievement for a game with its servers shut down, but who cares? It's a fun golf game that also happens to have some ridiculously hard greens to read properly at times. I'm going through the game's challenge mode at a decent clip so far. My only gripe is that it's too grindy when it comes to unlocking stuff.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Ashan »

I read through the book Masters of Doom which covered the history of id Software. And it was pretty cool and inspired me to finally check out the original Doom games. I played through Doom 2016 a few years ago and enjoyed it enough but never went back to play through the originals.

I played through Doom and Doom II and thought they held up surprisingly well. Then I knew Doom 3 was coming up and was more of a horror game, but I'm a huge pussy when it comes to horror games and just FPSes in general so I kinda held off for a bit. But I finally got around to playing it and it wasn't that bad. I guess even though the game is very dark and required the use of a flashlight to see what's going on in a lot of areas, the fact that you're generally well-equipped to deal with the stuff that jumps out at you makes it not really scary at all. There's no tension-building really, it's just fighting demon after demon, and it happens to be dark to show off John Carmack's innovative (as of 2004) engine with fancy lighting.

Just finished the game tonight and... yeah! It was pretty fun!

After this I plan to play through the DLC, then probably a second playthrough of Doom 2016 since I barely remember anything about the game at this point. Then Doom Eternal which I got for a decent price from a recent Steam sale.

This is my update
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raekuul
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

P5R NG+: Five palaces cleared. I spent way too much time grinding Decarabias for Liquid Mercury, but at least now I don't have to make regular lockpicks ever again on this chain of save files (this frees me up to make Limelights regularly, which I'm probably going to need those for The Twins). I really want to push through the Jinbocho books but I still have three evening social links to master (Heirophant, Wheel of Fortune, and Hanged Man) before that time slot frees up - each of the Jinbocho books has three pips so even under optimal conditions you have to spend two time slots on them (and after Palace 6 you lose some freebies).
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Managed to not only beat my Hot Shots Golf Vita game but also snuck in a round right after where I got my first hole-in-one in it. That was a nice way to cap off the run for the time being. A part of me wants to get on to Uncharted 4 already, but I should probably start video editing again soon.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Did everything up from Job 41 to Job 51 in Arc the Lad III, but starting with 39 (40 has to be done prior to it or it's lost) in the past two days. Currently wrapping up things in Paysus. Very sad that Sania's face doesn't seem to ever be seen from the player's perspective. I guess it makes sense, she is sort of in hiding, trying to restore the ruined world. I think the only one you see of her family in the game is this bookworm who's studying to restore their family and was related to the Millmana Royal Family's spy with the vacuum cleaner in Arc 1 and 2, Roan, according to the English translation.

Also made it past the forest world and Mangrove Forest + Cannon Fire in my VIP and Wall Mix replay, today.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Realized thanks to my bro that I have access to online stuff in PS4 stuff again, so hello to a quick finishing off of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. And I did decide to start up Uncharted 4: A Thief's End... by hopping online to see how that stuff is. Heck, online was about the only part I liked about Uncharted 3 anyway.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

P5R NG+: Six palaces cleared. Won't be long now before I have to shoot Yodelbooger in the face (and since I made sure to max out Councillor this time, I get to actually see what this Third Semester is all about).
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Did all the online stuff in Uncharted 4 I felt like doing. Time to think about starting the main adventure at long last. Wait, what do you mean the Wave 3 courses are out in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe today?
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

P5R: Punched Maruki in the face (I might have been joking about this earlier but in my defense I didn't actually know that would actually happen which is pretty neat). All in all: it's an alright game, a decent time-waster, and the Royal Ending fits the Phantom Thieves better than the regular one does; I think I'm firmly in the "Prefers Persona 4" camp all things considered (though this is with the caveat that I have only played PS2 P4 to completion - my Golden save is somewhere in May at the moment). I guess it's finally time to get these pokemon speedchoice hacks built and running.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Don't know if I said it on here, but I always felt the issue with P5 was that it had too many similar story beats as 4, including the game having a dip in the middle. Only problem was I don't really feel like 5 ever got its groove back to the first half of the game while 4 finished pretty strong.

Anyhoo, played the Wave 3 courses on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, been shuffling between light sessions on three other games on Sony stuff in the meantime.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by KobaBeach »

Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2/PSP) - Beat Glasya Labolas in Elrane's Flying Dragon. Fun fact I initially fought it twice and had my ass handed to me. Grinded a bit for gald to prepare for the battle by buying some extra recovery items, made everyone use recovery and water spells, "got gud" and beat it. Made it to the alternate timeline and I minimized PCSX2's game window with Esc during the fade out to the

Dycroft reveal

and that alone caused the emulator to crash :)

Had to do it again, but I did get adjusted to the battle, as well as relearning that constantly jumping to the left helps you get out from behind the boss. Went through Vangelo (which is called Gospel in the script translation I was reading? wh) and I'm at the Undeveloped Jungle.
Bean wrote: 1 year ago Don't know if I said it on here, but I always felt the issue with P5 was that it had too many similar story beats as 4, including the game having a dip in the middle. Only problem was I don't really feel like 5 ever got its groove back to the first half of the game while 4 finished pretty strong.
Ha-shit-no is a hack? What a concept

Here's hoping whoever they get for Persona 6 is both good at writing and also not a huge bigot
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Ashan »

I did what I said I would do in my last post. I played the Doom 3 DLC and finished it. And then I played Doom 2016 and finished it. Soon I will play Doom Eternal, but will I finish it? Stay tuned
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by HatKid »

I didn't do a ton of the game playing this year, but that's okay. Life was tough for me and reading books was a lot more relaxing than playing games.
Anyway, I added a bunch of games to my now playing on backloggery with the intent of trying to play through them all next year? One or two of them I may even beat this year yet. I'm not going to rush to try and get them all done though. That's no fun.

I'm definitely going to try to prioritize Trails from Zero, FFCC: Echoes of Time, and Chaos;Head NoAH (whenever the patch for that releases), then after that a free-for-all I guess. Maybe I'll just use RNG to decide, but I also don't want to force myself to play a game either.
Favorite game I played this year? I guess Atelier Sophie 2, though I did also have a blast with SRW 30 and T.

Least favorite? Either Grand Theft Auto III or SRW EX. EX is okay, and I forgive it for being a pre-SRW4 SRW game, but I still didn't have a ton of fun with it. GTA3 was a big deal when it released, but it's far outclassed by its immediate successor, Vice City. GTA3 is boring, difficult to navigate, and still is very difficult, but without any sort of hook in the plot (what plot) I didn't really feel the drive to get over the barrier and beat that hard mission. I still did, and beat the game at that, but eh. To sum up my feelings about GTA 3 in one word, it's "eh".
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Bean
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

I have started up Uncharted 4 in story mode at long last. It's a slower start, but that's to be expected from this era of Naughty Dog. It's definitely doing the early chapters better than Uncharted 3 did, that's for sure. And from what I've seen in multiplayer, the gameplay options in combat will be pretty fun.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Bean »

Around the halfway point in Uncharted 4. Been posting a couple of clips on the channel that absolutely no one is watching. Guess my audience is just old-school platformers/series or bust.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Matthew_Coco »

I didn't do a ton of the game playing this year, but that's okay. Life was tough for me and reading books was a lot more relaxing than playing games.
Anyway, I added a bunch of games to my now playing on backloggery with the intent of trying to play through them all next year? One or two of them I may even beat this year yet. I'm not going to rush to try and get them all done though. That's no fun.
Yeah, I'm in a similar situation. I was doing a whole bunch for fall semester of college. Reading stuff like philosophy (Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, etc.) really helped me stay sane. I'll definitely try to start playing Chrono Trigger soon as that's something I've been wanting to play for a while. Glad to know you've made it.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by Matthew_Coco »

Finished Donkey Kong Country 3 a few days ago. Gonna start Chrono Trigger as soon as I handle some stuff on the side first.
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Re: What games are you playing?

Post by raekuul »

bouncing around various new games plus (Persona 5, Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 3) while I push through Speedchoice Red.
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