What are you playing right now?

[Sniperwoof]

How can anyone like the "durability" system (i.e. stuff breaking) in BotW and TotK? The only positive about this system is that you can use other weapons and bows, but it doesn't outweigh the tedium of having to constantly replace those things.

Weapon durability is shit mechanic in general. There's a reason franchises like Fallout and Fire Emblem have gotten rid of it completely.

 

[SmallKiwi]

I seriously hope Nintendo never returns to this formula/style of Zelda again.

I hate the shrines. I miss doing sidequests for heart pieces. I also dislike the armor system to some degree since it messes up the already unbalanced combat botw and tok have. Enemies can deal tremendous damage or one-shot you compared with previous titles, which means you have to grind for materials and unlock all the great fairies just to have the best armor. Koroks seeds unlocking more weapons, also grinding. It's too much grinding for a Zelda game.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I got Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice for $2 with a very vague awareness of what it is. Based on the first hour, I hate it. Opens with a very, very long boat ride/walking sim section of hearing voices talk to you with dreary medieval backgrounds (wow so psychological) and then got bogged down in repetitive two-button fighting bland sword enemies and repetitive and tedious looking for shapes in the environment. Absolutely awful.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Playing Persona 4 and it's perfectly fine... but I think people's love for it has a lot more nostalgia attached than they'd care to admit. 3, 4, and 5 was Studio P finally figuring out the formula that works for them and these games have linear improvements on each other, which I find admirable in game design. Oh, AI party members are schizo? Allow for direct command options. Character models look similar? Well, with more gigs, now that's not a problem anymore. Even art design got better, as I was looking at character drafts and I found the early drafts of 4's characters to be better than their finalized designs whereas 5's finalized designs are excellent and a big reason why 5 is so saturated in Persona related media.

So, I can't say 4 is better than 5.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Since I bought this on eBay for almost $40, I’m currently going back to 2002 to play this game that Dave Mirra and co. sued to get his likeness away from it



It should be fun.

 

[derpherp2]

Weapon durability is shit mechanic in general. There's a reason franchises like Fallout and Fire Emblem have gotten rid of it completely.

It's because durability is either so low as to be an in issue or so high as to be a nonissue.

Mabinogi did it well, with durability being enough to persist through multiple normal "days" but improper maintenance, massive demands from higher tier runs, and repair will eventally permanently break it - while subpar craftsmanship will make the weapon already shitty.

We just need to add a system to recycle equipment in there and it'd be golden. Like Rimworld with mods.

Also as for the thread: Palworld while playing miscellaneous other games to see if there's anything promising.

 

[GloryHole Stalker]

Legend Bowl. I refuse to buy a modern Madden game because I'm not giving the NFL a penny of my money, but I needed to satiate my American football jonesing. Legend Bowl does that and some.
It was created by a guy who goes by the online handle King Javo. He was not happy with the direction the Madden series has taken over recent years and while bitching online about it, someone told him to make his own game...which he did.
It doesn't have real team names or the players' license, but it does have a mode where you can play as teams closely modeled after current teams and their players.
Since the game is done in a 16-bit graphical style, some online reviewers have compared it to the old Tecmo games. This is incorrect. It looks like, and plays like a better, tighter version of the Sega Genesis Madden games. It has a healthy franchise mode that, in theory, you could play forever. It has the tightest gameplay I've ever experienced in any football game. It plays great. stats mean something here as you can't take a poorly rated team and steamroll a good/great team, no matter how good you are.
The game also has a nice sense of humor. In-game and stadium ads abound. These are usually parodies of real products. there is no voice play-by-play, but after each play, there are text play results that also are pretty funny, even a few that take light potshots at Madden and how bad, or good you just did on the previous play.
If you don't mind the 16-bit style graphics, check the game out. It's on PC and all modern consoles.

 

[Croaking Spider]

I've been playing Severed Steel in between Palworld sessions. Severed Steel is like if Superhot played more like actual FPS instead of a puzzle. The movement options (diving, sliding, wallrunning) and the slow-motion you accumulate through kills have a bit of a Max Payne flow to them. You pick up guns as you fight and throw them when the ammo runs dry. $25 bucks is a bit steep though in my opinion, but the game frequently goes on sale for under $10. Has a decently lengthy campaign, time trials, an endless mode, and a roguelike mini-campaign generator. Overall a pretty fun little game.

 

[Soycast Guy]

I’m playing Ghostrunner. I got it for free on epic games, so I thought I’d try it, and it’s pretty good. A lot of games are really slow and boring, but ghostrunner is nice and fast-paced for my ADHD brain to enjoy.

 

[Baklava]

Right now, playing Warframe while I look for a new game to play since I just finished Cyberpunk. If you use GZDoom, I highly recommend the demo of SIREN, a really cool total conversion I played recently.

 

[Dieter Laser]

I will not lie, I have been chain dabbing and playing Palworld for like 3 days and I do not want to stop

It’s such a shitshow of a mashup, like it just shouldn’t work at all. But somehow it’s just the perfect mix of genres and depth for a relaxed open world game.

I have had more fun playing it over the last few days than I have in quite a long time.

It’s wild to think it’s only the second Steam game to ever hit 2 million consecutive players, but it really is that fun. $22 ain’t shit.

 

[instant]

PALWORLD
NONSTOP PALWORLD
For the first 6 days since PalWorld's early access I averaged playing it for 8 hours a day!

The only reason my average daily playtime fell is that I've been playing PalWorld so much I fell behind on work! I was at risk of being fired for a bit LOL!

I just finished catching up 2 weeks worth of work in 2 days and when I get home I can't wait to play PalWorld again! Going to breed a downright demonic Elphidran Aqua with all the busted RNG traits!!!!

 

[Cod of War]

Abiotic Fear demo. It's like a mash-up of Half-Life and Subnautica. It's enteraining as I did drop some hours in to it. Also, the game has a shitting mini-game.

 

[DavidS877]

I have started a new playthrough of Mass Effect. I've forgotten how short it is, especially if you skip the seemingly 300 busywork missions. I'll pass on scanning the 21 keepers, thanks.

 

[Baklava]

Started playing Lunacid---that is a really comfy, cute game. It's much more like a first-person Castlevania game than a proper King's Field style game (though KF/ST/Souls series are all basically some kind of Castlevania), despite having all the 90s first-person dungeon crawler trappings. It reminded me more of Symphony of the Night or even Lament of Innocence than, say, Shadow Tower Abyss or King's Field 4. Controls in Lunacid are way better than the old Fromsoft dungeon crawlers, though. Devil Spire has more of the old King's Field/Shadow Tower vibe, in my opinion. I recommend both if you like that style of game.

Also played Risk of Rain Returns. It's fine, I guess. I've played a lot of the first game, so it's nice to see some new stuff, etc. I'll have to play more of it to get a better sense of what I like/dislike. The multiplayer seems to not be janky as fuck compared to the original game.

 

[That Chris Guy]

Total WaWa 3 - going to try out Skarbrand's campaign, then might give the Greenskins another go. Having to deliberately ignore economy, trade, diplomacy and just chimp out on everyone is taking a little getting used to.

Also planning to pick up Granblue Relink when it comes out.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Sleeping Dogs, after a decade. I was playing Yakuza and it was disappointing me and just made me want to play Sleeping Dogs. Now, I don't much like this either, to be honest. I wouldn't say it's bad, it just doesn't feel like it holds up in a lot of ways. The basic gameplay is fine. Some people said its repetitive, but it couldn't be any more repetitive than shooting people from cover. The cars are arcadey, but it has lots of movie-like things like being able to jump from car to car, so it's not great for racing but it works well for chases. Foot chases (with lots of climbing, jumping, very light parkour) are good, they only really come up in missions but they feel great. The story is fine. Yakuza is interesting because of how Japanese it is, how inane it is, but it also sucks any real impact out of the story, and most importantly, its presentation is complete dogshit. Sleeping Dogs is, as far as GTA clones go, one of the best-written ones with its crime/detective drama angle. It's fairly serious.

There's not much in the way of side activities. With Yakuza I found some were decent, most aren't. Everything is gated behind several menus and clicks with little to no voice acting or animation. Things work smoother in Sleeping Dogs. But you really just have mahjong, cockfighting, and karaoke. Karaoke is okay. I like its implementation better than in Yakuza (with analogizing it to keeping the right tone by holding the stick at the right pitch), though it really is just this asshole singing, so it's not great quality music. (Better than Japshit.) Cockfighting is a complete waste of time. Only other game I know of doing that is Far Cry 6 as a parody of fighting game. This nails the cockfight experience as it is in reality: you bet money and you randomly win or you don't. There's nothing you can do to influence it (like playing as the bird) or to try and determine the true odds (like inspecting birds, or whatever). The mahjong is gated behind a mission and is way off in the middle of nowhere. Terrible design choice there, side missions and content are ideally sprinkled throughout a map so that you can naturally do it while wandering in between other tasks. That's one thing Yakuza aces.

You can tell what era it was made because there are a million dating missions that are there for no good reason other than GTA decided (somewhat more understandably) that building a harem is a gangsta activity.

The first ghetto is a really good map.

Overall, kind of disappointed with this. I can see why I liked it so much, but I can also see why the GTA clone died out.

 

[likeacrackado]

Playing Battlebrothers on "Ironman" mode. I don't feel like getting fucked 10hours into a save file so I let myself alt-f4 mid battle if things are looking bad. You still have to be careful because the game saves before battle on Ironman mode. Like the game but the RNG can be ridiculous at times. I'll restart a battle where half my men die, use the same tactics, and come out with only a few scratches.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Trying out Tekken 8. I haven't played a genuine fighting game in what feels like a decade, and I think my last Tekken game was Tag Tournament on the PS2. So it's fun to see what kind of insane plot the story mode has. I'm terrible at fighting games and I'm still at the mashing buttons level, but the simple control options make that viable against the computers (at least on Normal) and it's neat to watch the spectacle. It's not a bad looking game and pretty fun for a complete offline scrub.

 

[Incel Death Note]

Just finished Garage: Bad Dream Adventure and it was fantastic. Beautiful despite looking like a bad robitussin trip. Great design on both the music and art. I wish there were more unsettling adventure games with unique mechanics that tie with the setting like this.