Author Topic: What are you playing right now?  (Read 613772 times)

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Offline Mobius

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age.

I remember playing FFXII back in the day but I stopped very early, while my brother completed it. I decided to give it another try, so I bought The Zodiac Age, which is a nice remaster of the original FFXII. So far, so good.

Any good?   I didn't get past the bunny village at the time, i've still got the PS2 disc but no room for a PS2 in my life,  i've had the physicla media in my hand and "ummed/ahhh'd" a few times...

I'm only a few hours into my playthrough, and
Spoiler:
Penelo just joined the party. We have to collect a particular stone in order to sneak into Rabanastre's royal palace. I don't remember anything, it's almost as if I'm playing it for the first time ever.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Picked up a game called Hob that I learned about from a random GDQ run.  It's an action-platformer with some Metroidvania mechanics worked in.  The cool part is that you're essentially helping to reconstruct this clockwork world as you move through the game and restore power and water flow to different areas.  The storytelling is all non-verbal, even the straight-up "lore" bits, so you have to mostly rely on environmental cues to get an idea of what might have happened in the past.  The art design is gorgeous and the soundtrack is a low-key dreamlike affair, so it's perfect for just chilling out and exploring.

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Hob was made by the same developers who made Torchlight. ;)
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Quote: Tuesday, 3 October 2023 0133 UTC +8, #general
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Oh you still believe in fairy tales like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and free market competition principles?

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Yeah, though I'm only familiar with that series by name.

Pushed through and finished it after I realized I was close to the ending.  13 hours is pretty good for something that cost me $6 or so.  I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the collectibles I was able to get without resorting to a map.  The ending gives you a binary choice, but one is definitely much more of a Good End for most parties involved.  Props to the game for being an enjoyable little experience.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Othercide

To be very reductive its X-Com-mold Turn Based Tactics meets non-Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror. And it very stylish and awesome - and probably a very, very acquired taste, because just as the graphcis are high contrast (black and white with a few intrusion by red and yellow) so is the game's underlying stroy and lore (there a lot of items that start with "the ..."); and the trek into horror territory comes with quite a bit of body horror in the enemy designs, and the personalities of the bosses so far (first two) have been ... "pushing buttons" - that's a bad euthemism...

Speaking of pushing buttons: The language for recruiting your squad of "Daughters" is a bit ... uncomfortable. It openly codes the operations in language of plant breeding: Creating a new "Daughter" is called "germinate" and you can only heal daughters by sacrificing another of the same or higher level, giving her an additional trait depending on the sacrificed Daughter's class (they luckly stopped short from calling them "grafts" but the description is unambigious as to that is that is).

Now is all that "button pushing" a deal breaker? - Ask we again once I am done, at the moment of the story I am in right "things started happening"...
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

  

Offline CP5670

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Re: What are you playing right now?
I finished Torment: Tides of Numenera. The setting and world are very unique and well suited for this type of game, better than even Planescape Torment. It's more of an interactive novel than a combat-based RPG, and you spend most of the game just reading dialogue. The writing is superb, obscure but full of hidden meanings and allegories. A few sections had the most powerful and thought provoking writing I've seen in a game, but it is also writing that could only work in a game and not a novel. I especially liked some of the merecaster sections, which are optional parts where you experience the past lives of other characters, and can see the consequences of your actions later on. The 2D graphics are simple but artistic and fit the game well.

The game does have its issues. The combat system is terrible, but there are very few fights to begin with and you can mostly ignore this aspect of the game. This also makes leveling up abilities and buying weapons kind of pointless. The player character and companions are mostly generic and not interesting, with the exception of Rhin. This game is really about understanding the world and the philosophy behind it, while Planescape was more about the player character discovering himself and his own past. Despite the great writing, some things you encounter are just bizarre for the sake of being bizarre, and don't fit into the rest of the world.

It's definitely not a game that will have mass appeal, but I loved it. I'm surprised its reviews on GOG are so mixed, as it has the same pros and cons as Planescape, but I guess Kickstarter backers are never happy.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: What are you playing right now?
I've finished the story mode of Transformers Devastation (PC)
The story has some elements from the comics even though the look and feel is very much that of the G1 cartoon.
While I got better towards the end of the game I don't really feel like replaying with a higher difficulty level or doing the challenges.
It is tons more fun and visually appealing than the cybertron games but this kind of gameplay can be a bit tiring and I have no reflexes.

Now I bought Jedi: Fallen Order because it's Star Wars and I want to see if the most uninteresting-looking protagonist ever is a detriment or not to the game.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Ghost of Tsushima

... has a very interesting mechanic to navigate you without a HUD compass - basically when you press (or in case of the PS4, stroke) the input for navigational assistance all particle effects are temporarily redirected into the direction you need to be going... I wonder if that can be applied to FSO in some way, some day...
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: What are you playing right now?
The swirly whirly wind and ghosts in GOT look lovely.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The only good Zod is a dead Zod
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Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Started playing Tradewinds Legends again, for the fine text.







My blog

Quote: Tuesday, 3 October 2023 0133 UTC +8, #general
MP-Ryan
Oh you still believe in fairy tales like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and free market competition principles?

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Star Renegades

« Last Edit: September 10, 2020, 04:07:40 pm by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Jedi: Fallen Order is an almost aggresively 7/10 game.
It has its moments but the gameplay is a bit of Dark Souls but without shield and Tomb Raider but with less satisfying movement.
The narrative is what took it down a notch for me, the protagonist in particular.
I'd probably be more generous if the side character Cere Junda wasn't the one that has the most stakes in the story, she literally jumps out of nowhere to talk to the final boss once you defeat her because you character is literally a bland self-insert whose little characterization comes a bit too late and is so subdued you might as well have a silent protagonist and it wouldn't change much.
Hell, the midpoint twist would have been much better had the player character been Cere Junda, but can't have a 40-something black woman being the protagonist otherwise the 12 year old kids that yell racial slurs while playing on the internet might not feel represented.  :rolleyes:

I tried to get back to Tomb Raider III but the game feels a lot like a chore, the bugs and ironing the kinks of the passage to windows 10 (like getting Vsync to work again because it's one of those games that don't play well with frresync) didn't do it any favour.
Last time I left the game to what came out to be the very last stretch of the India levels, the FMV cutscene that follows locks up and often glitches up the level selection graphics unless you skip it and nothing I did solved the problem so I watched the cutscene on youtube.
I had read that in Nevada you lose all weapons so I did that first, there was a glitch that did not make the texture load on first try so I had to load the game twice every time I died, fun.
There was also an in-game cutscene that didn't play between Nevada level 1 and 2 so I found myself in prison without understanding why.
There is less combat than TR2 thank god, but the platforming almost seems designed for completely different controls at times. There are almost too many points that require excessive precision or unorthodox use of the controls and mistakes either kill you or send back so far that often it's faster to reload than go through that again, I shudder to think what this game would be without the ability to save everywhere.
At the moment I stopped at Area 51, I don't know when or if I'll get back to it.

I'm currently playing Freespace with the cockpit mod since it was available on Knossos and I never got it to work properly by installing it manually for some reason. For some reason at times the game starts to do the "clicked on something that's not clickable at the moment" sound every few seconds during gameplay and I can't tell why, there are no keys that bind on my keyboard and nothing seems amiss with my HOTAS profile. Also the crosshair seems slightly off to the side, enough to make shooting at distant moving targets a bit more difficult than it should.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Sounds like the "war orphans of the force"-angle didn't resonate with you?
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Sounds like the "war orphans of the force"-angle didn't resonate with you?

To resonate you would need a compelling main character, Kal Kestis is played so subdued he might as well be a freshly memory-wiped droid.
Oh, yes, there is also the fact that the final redemption doesn't come from him and the second sister finding common ground after the defeat but from Cere Junda talking to her.
The main narrative arc is Cere's, the stronget connection with the bad guy is hers and she even disconnected herself from the Force the same as Kal.
The journey could have been about her trauma from the failure to protect her apprentice easily and we even see her old master in-game, have her duel with a vision of her own apprentice as a Jedi.

Of course it might just be a clumsy attempt to create a foil to the protagonist that ended up being more interesting than him but I can't get the sensation out of my head that Kal might have been wedged in relatively late for marketing purposes not unlike what happpened with Assassin's Creed Origins.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: What are you playing right now?
To resonate you would need a compelling main character, Kal Kestis is played so subdued he might as well be a freshly memory-wiped droid.

I don't know if that is true - esspecially if you leave Merrin and the Ninth Sister out of the narrative.
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Little bit of shipbreakers,  little bit of Elite dangerous.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline The E

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Re: What are you playing right now?
playing the waiting game for the 3080
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: What are you playing right now?
Getting my RNG fix with Torchlight II.

By playing with mods and console commands. :warp:
My blog

Quote: Tuesday, 3 October 2023 0133 UTC +8, #general
MP-Ryan
Oh you still believe in fairy tales like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and free market competition principles?

 
 

Offline Det. Bullock

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  • Madman in a box.
Re: What are you playing right now?
Apparently the Freespace 1 Cockpit mod doesn't work with Playing Judas, I had to switch back to "plain" FSport with mediaVPS to be able to play the mission as the HUD was invisible with the mod.
I wish the mod had the option for the classic radar, the 3D radar takes a while to get used to and its range is a bit limited and I'm the kind of player that keeps the range to infinite all the time.
I still can't understand what triggers the intermittent "can't click there" noise, I'm curious to see if it's there with the FS2 version too.

EDIT

I'm an idiot, the radar can be set to infinite with the mod, I just kept pressing the wrong key.

To resonate you would need a compelling main character, Kal Kestis is played so subdued he might as well be a freshly memory-wiped droid.

I don't know if that is true - esspecially if you leave Merrin and the Ninth Sister out of the narrative.

Too little too late, Kashyyk is the middle of the game and Merrin is almost at the end of the game.
When his friend dies at the start he barely raises an eyebrow and there is only  lip service paid during an optional conversation.
Effing hell, Kanan Jarrus was traumatized by seeing his master die before him too and actually acted like a human being.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2020, 07:45:06 am by Det. Bullock »
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor