What are you playing nowadays? Share yo' thoughts.

[DAPUNISHER]

Just completed the main quest in W3 (as well as all the contracts and most of the sidequests).

Guys, this game is a ****ing masterpiece.

Its not necessarily a "deep" game. The actual RPG mechanics and combat are fairly shallow. But GOD DAMN this game is cinematic, its immersive, its grimdark as **** (in like the most slavic way possible), its rich on lore, and it knows how to present its main cast in an incredible light. Go in understanding what you're getting and it will be one of the most rewarding gameplay experiences of your life.

Easily one of the best games of all time and worthy of a "Flawed Masterpiece" award if there ever was one.

I am going to count Hearts of Stone as well as Blood and Wine as their own games given the breadth of content available there.

I think I ultimately got the "Witcher" ending for Ciri, with her basically joining Geralt for a life of Witchering after the main game was complete. Maybe not the best outcome for the world, but by far the best outcome for Geralt and Ciri and I am happy.

Now you understand why I revived that old thread for the game, and went on a posting spree in it. Had trouble getting into it the first few times I tried over the years. Once I made it past the first couple of hours I was addicted. Can't say enough about how well the humor and tongue in cheek parts kept the game fresh.

I finished Dead Island 2 a couple days ago. B movie schlock and gore made for a fun playthrough. I used the male stripper/fireman build. At the end I had to swap some cards to go heavy offense to beat the final boss stage. Up until that point my defensive build worked great. It's all about the cards you use. Timed blocks would cause stunning explosions and present coup de grace counters. You are basically immune to damage during that window. Using these cards for my build also provided huge amounts of health. Making the need to use health kits a rarity. The other big perk is your weapons don't wear out this way, so you don't have to repair nearly as often. Or replace them until you acquire better ones.

Since you can swap so many cards as the game goes on, I am not certain playing a different build/character will add any replay value that way. But it is certainly a game you can fire up to kill zombies for an hour or two when you are in the mood for that kind of game. Mostly due to the environmental kill choices combining with your own elemental weapons and powers. You can create some spectacular carnage.

 

[CP5670]

I liked W3 but didn't find it to be the best game ever like people say. I thought Cyberpunk was better both story and gameplay wise, and RDR2 had worse gameplay but far better story. Even Witcher 2 had a better main quest line. The Wild Hunt felt quite underwhelming given the whole build up to them (giving them names and backstories just removed their whole mystique), and many of the key Witcher 2 characters barely appear at all or have very different personalities (like Radovid). Going from Witcher 2 to 3 was like Dragon Age 2 to Inquisition, a much bigger game with far more content and gameplay, but felt unfocused and had a much weaker main quest. The W3 DLCs are a different matter and deserve all the praise they get, and are like separate games in their own right.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I liked W3 but didn't find it to be the best game ever like people say. I thought Cyberpunk was better both story and gameplay wise, and RDR2 had worse gameplay but far better story. Even Witcher 2 had a better main quest line. The Wild Hunt felt quite underwhelming given the whole build up to them (giving them names and backstories just removed their whole mystique), and many of the key Witcher 2 characters barely appear at all or have very different personalities (like Radovid). Going from Witcher 2 to 3 was like Dragon Age 2 to Inquisition, a much bigger game with far more content and gameplay, but felt unfocused and had a much weaker main quest. The W3 DLCs are a different matter and deserve all the praise they get, and are like separate games in their own right.

-Its admit I was pretty annoyed that CDPR was able to provide so much game and somehow still not include Iorveth or any of the Scoiatel despite that being one of the primary factions you could ally with in W2.

Seems like a strange oversight on their part.

I do think something was lost going from the tight hub and spoke model of W2 (which is actually a really tiny game in terms of play area) to the open world of W3, but the presentation was so fantastic that I was able to look passed it (cities actually being cities, villages being villages, even minor sidequests being fully acted with little plot arcs).

The Wild Hunt definitely suffered thanks to "Main baddy syndrome" where I was so over leveled by the time I reached Eredin that the fight was kinda a joke. Whole thing got written into a corner too, sort of like Mass Effect and the Reapers.

Despite the flaws, it's hard not to have a good time with W3 IMO just thanks to the amount of care and effort that went into realizing the world.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Just started Guardians of the Galaxy, it was $17 and change on Steam. Already loving this game. Probably helps that I've been a Marvel nerd for almost 50yrs. Digging the 80s soundtrack. Graphics are outstanding, and the RT reflections are value added. Not far enough in to evaluate gameplay.

 

[sze5003]

Guardians of the Galaxy is a fun game in terms of quips back and forth, story, writing, etc. Combat is very basic but the levels you explore and the way the game puts it all together makes it an enjoyable experience.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Ok, Borderlands 3 is awesome and after taking a character through Mayhem 10 (on my first run in Normal), I can confidently say that all the complaining that you see from old reviews are from people who played the game within the first months of launch when the game was full of bugs. Yet again, another fantastic reason to never jump into a game at launch because this game got a lot of undeserved bad reviews.

Firstly, yes some minor bugs still exist but the vast majority of them were fixed by simply quitting to the main menu and going back in. Mainly NPCs that get stuck or refuse to move will be moved to their next flag after you reset or it'll just reset their AI and they'll move again. Two of the DLC cinematic intro movies didn't work and I read that it's because my resolution is too high (4K) or it's an unsupported (ultrawide) resolution which made the video bug out and freeze. You can simply skip the intros and watch them on YouTube. Nothing game-breaking and if you have to reload a save, you don't lose any progress because there's save points scattered everywhere.

Now to get to the good bits:

Gameplay 9/10 - BL3 took a lot of what made BL1 and BL2 great and expanded upon that model. They also listened to the major gripes that we had with BL2 and removed those aspects entirely or fixed them so they are now tolerable. Legendary gear is now pretty common and I initially thought this was going to be a huge dealbreaker for me as my first playthrough I found an incredibly overpowered legendary grenade mod within the first ten minutes of the game. I was nuking bosses with one grenade for at least 20 levels but as I continued to play, I remembered how frustrating it was trying to farm a Sham from BNK3R or a Conference Call from The Warrior but ending up with 15 Leeches instead. The increased drop rate made farming for end-game gear actually fun and it made well-built builds feel overpowered without resorting to abusing broken mechanics (looking at you Grog Nozzle). I did have to respec some of my skills but since money becomes meaningless about halfway through, there's really no reason not to respec your skills and try new builds - especially since it's pretty cheap to respec. The combat is pretty much what you'd expect from a Borderlands game but I think it truly shines after you unlock Mayhem modes since increasing the difficulty through Mayhem will add modifiers to the game that changes how it plays out. The higher the Mayhem level, the more difficult some of the modifiers become, but there's a lot of different ones and you can reroll them until you get the perfect combo that you want. I had a lot of fun just revisiting older areas farming for better gear and messing with the Mayhem levels to see what the different modifiers would do. The boss fights were also a lot of fun with brand new ideas that didn't pull from older games.

The only disappointing aspect about the gameplay revolves around secondary objectives. When you first start off, they give you a bunch of side quests that are basically just tutorials and the very first side quest you're given introduces the secondary objective system. It's pretty standard and if you played older BL games, you'll know that doing secondary objectives gives you additional rewards. Well, doing the first one rewards you with access to a secret area with a red chest inside. The next side quest with a secondary objective gives you a better weapon for completing it. A few others reward you with Eridium and other little gear bonuses. However, after the first area on Pandora, secondary objectives pretty much just stop being a thing and on the rare occasion they surface, you simply get a small cash bonus for doing them. It feels like they had planned on giving us great incentives to go the extra mile for a secondary objective and then scrapped the idea entirely.

Audio 9/10 - The music for this game is outstanding (with one exception) and the VAs deliver the comedy and drama that you would expect from a Borderlands game. Not to mention the celebrity VAs did an amazing job as well. However, I do have two minor gripes with the audio. There are two instances where you're introduced to a brand new character, but the moment they speak they sound exactly like other characters. It seems like they should have changed the voices up a bit more or had someone else do the VAs for those characters as it's pretty noticeable. The only other gripe is a single combat song in one of the DLCs. I understand Gehenna supposed to be a Japanese/wild west hybrid, but the biggest area in Gehenna is called The Blastplains and during combat in this gigantic area, the combat song can only be described as what you'd expect to hear if you gave a fiddle to a deaf child. It's one or two chords being played over and over and over and over again until the combat ends. While I was in this area, I actually turned the music off because I couldn't stand listening to that anymore. Other than that one song, the rest of the music was outstanding and perfectly fit the tone for the areas. The intro song was pretty good but I don't think they'll ever have another hit like using Short Change Hero by The Heavy ever again.

Graphics 10/10 - It's Borderlands graphics but more detailed. Certain DLCs really ramp up the visuals like the final act in Gehenna when you're overlooking the valley after the bomb goes off and pretty much all of Krieg's areas were really stunning.

Story 10/10 - I really wanted to score this lower simply because how much I hated the main antagonists of this game but I realized about halfway through that it was the writing and acting that made me hate them so much. Can't go wrong with a book, movie, or video game giving you villains that are crafted so well you can't wait for their demise.

Immersion 0/10 - I'm only adding this category because I don't know how else to explain this gripe. There's certain parts in the story where you'll be taken out of the game to watch a cinematic video and in damn near every one of those instances, your character should be standing right there next to the other characters when things are happening, but you're not. Things that you would expect your character to intervene with, but it just plays out like you're not there. It feels like there was cut content or the cinematics are playing at the wrong time because some of the dialogue during the cutscenes allude to nobody being around to intervene or stop what's happening, yet your character was standing five feet away when the video started playing. It completely pulls you away, especially with all the dialogue revolving around the characters wishing you were there to stop the bad guys when in fact, I was standing right next to them just sucking on my thumb or eating popcorn.

Little things like that make me feel like certain parts were rushed or unfinished but overall the game is amazing and definitely something people should pick up if they love looter/shooter games.

 

[Zeze]

Check out the Tina's DLC too!

 

[Fenixgoon]

i still need to beat BL3. maybe i should fire that up

 

[Stg-Flame]

Check out the Tina's DLC too!

Is that the stand-alone game Tiny Tina's Wonderlands? I have the Ultimate Pass for BL3 and there is nothing for Tina listed but I do have TTW on my wishlist. I'll likely grab it on the next seasonal sale when it comes down in price.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Is that the stand-alone game Tiny Tina's Wonderlands?

Maybe this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/..._Dragon_Keep_A_Wonderlands_Oneshot_Adventure/

 

[Stg-Flame]

Maybe this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/..._Dragon_Keep_A_Wonderlands_Oneshot_Adventure/

That's a DLC for Borderlands 2. It's possible Zeze meant this one but I played it a long time ago. It's the DLC where you get the Grog Nozzle which is about the only way anyone can reliably solo any raid bosses in BL2 without abusing other glitches or just using Sal.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Playing Wolfenstein Young bloods between Witcher 3 main story and Hearts of Stone DLC.

It's alright, I'm pretty early on and it seems to be maintaining the more absurdist elements of the Wolf reboot series with the Blazcowitz twins as these obnoxious teens raised in a world conquered by Nazi's (but after the US was liberated).

They turned the damn thing into a looter shooter with leveling and weapon upgrades and quests in zones that respawn enemies and have little side quests and pop-up quests and stuff to complete.

Whole game is always online with co-op (in single player your sister is controlled by frankly braindead AI). It hasn't been much of a problem until bosses show up, which are incredibly bullet spongey which causes the partner AI to melt down a bit.

This would have pissed me right off if I didn't know all this going into the game. As it stands it's a nice light on its feet, arcady shooter. It's got some play-to-win leveling elements to it which isn't terrible given what the game is trying to do.

Game isn't overly long either, I've only completed a handful of missions and am already at 25% completion so I think I should be able to burn this one down in 10-15 hours tops.

Then back to that sweet, sweet Witcher 3.

 

[Zeze]

Is that the stand-alone game Tiny Tina's Wonderlands? I have the Ultimate Pass for BL3 and there is nothing for Tina listed but I do have TTW on my wishlist. I'll likely grab it on the next seasonal sale when it comes down in price.

Yup TT Wonderlands.

It doesn't deviate much from the formula but they do D&D medieval-themed spells and etc. It's fun.

I should play it again. I miss the meteor spell just vaporizing enemies.

 

[JTsyo]

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. Picked it free somewhere. Tried it out. It plays a bit like Heroes of Might and Magic. But its a bit limited (tech, units). No campagin, you just play like a game of Civ.

 

[pauldun170]

lol

 

[DigDog]

whelp,
i think i can call it a day on Skyrim SE.

Currently at 157 hours, and have done pretty much everything.

So after a crash and a partial fix, i decided to try a new game but taking mods more seriously.
SSE comes with Wyrsmtooth, Dawnguard and Dragonborn baked in, and i added Moonpath To Elsweyr, UFO (later replaced with Amazing Followers Mod, although they both work great and the allegedly better AI from AFM isn't worth the effort of going through the horribad UI this mod uses), Anima Nera, Queen Of The Damned (a graphical overhaul and a combat overhaul for Serana), plus No NPC Greetings (no more "i used to be an adventurer like you" being blurted out every.fucking.time), No Screen Blood, Vivid World Map, and Legacy Of The Dragonborn.

Now, the point was to play Legacy (LOTD) because allegedly it was akin to a total conversion mod, aaaand it's not. Like, nowhere near nuhu not at all;
basically you do get a whole bunch of additional quests, but for some fucked up reason, the very prerequisite of those quests is that you must have already completed pretty much the entire game.
Though, they are good quests, but nothing to write home about.

Elsweyr isn't worth it. I have read on Reddit the explanation that M2E predates the -whatever name for Skyrim editor- and essentially it's worthy of praise because at the time, it was revolutionary. Well, it hasn't aged well at all. Good voice acting, but poor scripting, poor maps. And there's a couple of items that are so broken that i refuse to acknowledge they exist.

Oh yeah i forgot, you also get .. uh, more stuff in the base game. Heartfire, which adds a useless functionality to build houses because 1. it's useless, 2. you get pretty much zero choice on what to build, 3. the sole purpose is to have a easy-farming spot for salmon, and it adds one alchemy component (salmon ROE, duh) that is utterly broken.
Elsweyr adds a component called Zahilisk Tooth that can make potions of Fortify Smithing that obscenely overpowered and even with very basic enchanting / alchemy you can get 300% bonus to weapon smithing.

i had fun. Like, solid 7/10 fun.

it's a shame that the game as-designed has severe faults because it could have been even better, but her, it's idk, 15 years old?

I played throughout at Expert but regardless, the combat is very poor and the AI is so bad, you have to just accept this, let them hit you, because otherwise there would be no fun at all.
Enemy spells are much stronger as much as your own are garbage. Throughout the game, there is a very brief sweet spot around level 10 - 25 where the game is somewhat balanced, but even without trying too hard, it rapidly becomes excessively unbalanced.
Even if you ignore all the special ores, no dragon weapons, no amber, no madness, and make no effort at all of looping the enchantment & alchemy buffing - i mean, ZERO Restoration exploit - hell, even if you ONLY use drops you find in chests, but only take those pieces that boost either Archery or Two Handed or One Handed or whatever, you will still deal 500+ damage per hit. This is without even considering that you can make near-endless potions that will boost that, should you actually need it.
At Expert level 65+ most mobs, even while parrying, will die to 1 normal blow, or 1 arrow. Never mind power attacks, never mind potions.

If you do your own Smithing and Alchemy and Enchanting - not that you need to - you can pretty much ignore anything you find in chests, in drops. "Sword Of The Annihilator"? "Warhammer Of Absurd Doom" ? nah, no tnx i got my own shit at home.

Dragonborn is ... really good. The "Black Books" series is suuuper trippy, the writing and story are really intense, and while still not being "untracked" quests, they are kept as vague as the game allows. I found it surprising i had to do my own thinking.

Legacy / LOTD is .. good, but, weird?
Essentially you are given a museum. EMPTY. And the curator is like, yeah buddy, go. Go and pick up and return every item in existence in the base game and these 4 expansions.
But it's not just like decorating your house, because, the more items, the more the museum questline opens up. At the start it doesnt seem to do anything, but the more you collect, the more it opens like an actual mod.
But again, the problem is that .. it will take away those items. Fuck you if you actually need them for a quest, and if you do, take it back from the museum, FINISH THE BASE QUEST, until the item can be dropped, and then deposit it. This includes 3 Elder Scrolls, nightingale armor, dragonbone armor, daedric armor sets, etc stuff that you DO NOT HAVE at the start of the game, and you can't just pretend the base game missions don't exist and only play the mod missions instead.

.. i mean, i just wanted to play the Civil War.

When you start the game you have the option to jump into the Civil War questline right away - after all, you are already in it when the game starts, Helgen is attacked by a dragon, and the Imperials think you are a stormcloak.
You join, and shortly after they give you a new armor that doesnt suck as bad as the basic armor; idk, Imperial Armor Plus.
And, in the previous game, i was already wearing idk, enchanted Elven Armor by this stage and i thought, is there any way i can play this questline at the start, and actually be given this armor when it's worth something?
So i started a new game with all the above, and ... no.

No you can't. You can TRY, but the Civil War questline immediately breaks because you MUST fucking go report to the Jarl of Whiterun, you MUST go to the watctower, you must kill the dragon and absorb the soul, and you just aren't given a chance to do anything until you become Dragonborn.

So *yawn* i tried instead doing the LOTD quests, but they are completely locked behind you being able to find enough diverse game assets that you just cannot do unless you open up the base game, do far more quests that you want, which kinda defeats the purpose of have "a huge, sprawling standalone mod". Standalone my ass.

Ok time to wrap up this nearly page-long post.


I became Dragonborn, Slayer of Alduin and saved or all of Tamriel, Archmage of the college of Winterhold, Listener of Sithis, Guildmaster of Riften, Thane of 3 holds, Prelate of the Empire, Fellow of the Bard College, and then i married a vampire because they know how to suck.

 

[igor_kavinski]

whelp,
i think i can call it a day on Skyrim SE.

Next up, Witcher 3?

 

[WelshBloke]

O

 

[DigDog]

Next up, Witcher 3?

no, sorry. Maybe in 10 years.

This is my experience with W3.

1. download W1 - or was it W2 ? - and the very first scene has you running on a castle bridge of some sort of straight corridor, and a dragon KILLS YOU. Unskippable cutscene, try again, dragon kills me again.
2. uninstall

3. spend years hearing everyone say how fucking amazing W3 is.
4. decide to download W3 and try it.
5. spend an hour of basic training in the castle, X is for this, Y is for that, * is for potions, ) is for spells, % is for enchantments, } is for OTHER spells, doubletap A, then B for a rolljumps etc
6. go to sleep, next day wake up, forgot all the commands. uninstall the game.

 

[quikah]

Grr, classic hardcore mode got me playing WoW again. I sunk too much time into this game already.. should wear off in a few weeks...

 

[WelshBloke]

3. spend years hearing everyone say how fucking amazing W3 is.
4. decide to download W3 and try it.
5. spend an hour of basic training in the castle, X is for this, Y is for that, * is for potions, ) is for spells, % is for enchantments, } is for OTHER spells, doubletap A, then B for a rolljumps etc
6. go to sleep, next day wake up, forgot all the commands. uninstall the game.

Ha! That is me in every fucking game that has more than 2 buttons!

 

[Muadib]

Ha! That is me in every fucking game that has more than 2 buttons!

I also suffer from this! Getting old sucks!

 

[igor_kavinski]

I hope I have the best console to play Mortal Kombat 2055 on my death bed.

Angel of death: Come on, already! I'm late coz of you!

Me: Just one more fatality!

 

[GodisanAtheist]

On the "Final Mission" of Wolfenstein Youngbloods. Heard bad things about the tankiness of the final boss and I've kind of just been putting the mission off for a while.

Having a blast with YB so far. I completely understand the initial hate behind it from Wolf fans but it's really a damn good "popcorn" game and a totally serviceable side entry into the franchise.

Just hope we'll be getting a proper Wolf 3 sometime soon.

Otherwise my Wife is playing through Portal 2 so the kids and I will sometimes just hang out and watch her play in lieu of TV time and we've all been having a blast (and my daughter especially is much better at solving the puzzles than my poor wife is).

Glados is such a well written female antagonist, her barbs and quips just hit my wife different and draw her into the game in a different way than they did to me.

 

[thejunglegod]

Glados is such a well written female antagonist, her barbs and quips just hit my wife different and draw her into the game in a different way than they did to me.

Everything in Portal 2 is so well executed. The Wheatley character arc is something that i will never forget ever. I just wish Valve never stopped making games.

I'm playing Red Matter on PC VR at the moment and holy hell it's polished. Pretty easy puzzles but the visuals and the entire atmosphere in that game is so surreal. Instantly grabbed Red Matter 2 as well to have a go at after i finish this.

Also playing Hogwarts Legacy and i have mixed feelings about it. It seems to bundle a lot of fetch quests in the guise of main quests. I'm hoping it picks up gameplay wise. Such a beautiful looking game though.