Well I should hope that you’d be sleeping with your partner in your marriage.
What are y'all playing? ver 2.0
archnemesis
#1206
I’m only in the very beginning of Horizon: Zero Dawn but it seems quite promising. It is an interesting universe and the combat is fun.
archnemesis
#1207
The PC version of The Elder Scrolls: Legends was released today. A tablet version will be released later this month. It’s a Hearthstone clone with a few interesting changes. The first story chapter was really simple and I need to unlock more cards before I can decide if it’s worth playing or not.
archnemesis
#1208
My second attempt in the arena mode led to a perfect victory. The first time I had a top heavy mana magicka curve.
I was rewarded with 130 gold, a booster pack, and two legendary creatures. This will probably be my go-to timewaster for the next few weeks.
RpgN
#1209
I have been jumping from game to game due to the fact that I have been starting with new games too easily. This has not been a good idea for my backlog. It’s time to hold back and focus on finishing what I have started. Lately I have been playing with the following:
Currently Playing
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Untold Legends Warriors Code
Hyrule Warriors Legends
Soul Sacrifice Delta
New Game
Zelda Breath of the Wild (wii u)
My focus has been mostly going to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate except for the past 3 days which went to Zelda. Before Zelda though, I was going hardcore on MH3. It really is a fantastic game. I haven’t touched it in a year and all of a sudden it’s back.
archnemesis
#1210
Persona 5 hasn’t arrived so I gave Severed (PSV) a spin. I thought this would be a platformer like DrinkBox’s previous games. Instead it is a first-person dungeon crawler. You sweep at the screen to swing your sword. All enemy types have individual patterns that you need to learn, and if you focus on not getting hit or blocked too much then you can activate a sever mode where you can sever body parts. There are no experience points. Instead you can use body parts to upgrade your combat skills and expand your health bar by finding pieces of heart (like in Zelda). The map design is very well done and so are the puzzles. There is some Metroidvania to the level design and once you have found the right item then you go back to previous areas and continue down new paths.
Overall it’s really fun and it doesn’t seem overly long.
John
#1211
I’m replaying TW3 not using any sort of fast travel or horse riding. Just walking everywhere. Honestly the game world really isn’t that big when you know how long it takes you to walk from town to town. The geography of the world feels a lot different this way too, where before the world felt connected in hidden ways walking through every road really breaks that fantasy. It becomes really evident that the world is stopped in motion in a way that it didn’t before. It’s actually making me think of fast travel in a different way, not just how it benefits the experience in a mechanical and pragmatic sense, but fast travel also helps provide a deep sense of movement to the timeframe of the world, in the sense that it promotes the idea that you’re not longer wholly aware of the events of the world, that there now was some length of time of life happening that you weren’t there to witness. Playing TW3 without that kind of illusory time traveling is really changing the entire experience.
Firstly, and more obviously, i’m actually starting to recognize places much more easily. I can recall a lot of particular roads and landscapes that marked the various travels around Velen. In some ways that kind of awareness helps put me in a mental space where i feel more considerate of particularly striking areas in the world instead of wholly dismissing them as meaningful but pointless details of an unknowable vastness.
Secondly, and good lord, after playing this game for over three hundred hours there were places in Velen i’d never seen before. Like a moving bridge in the middle of nowhere…
It’s a lot of fun. I’m really enjoying this kind of “breaking” the game. It’s quite obvious that the game begins to falter in some aspects if you choose to not use the fast travel, and it’s interesting to see how and when that happens. Paints a more honest picture of the game.
archnemesis
#1212
I started a new job this week so I’ve been more busy than usual. I picked up Hoplite and re-downloaded 868-HACK (iOS). They’re both great puzzle-like strategy games, perfect for quick sessions during my commute.
John
#1213
I bought Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight and it’s a cool game. Haven’t reached very far… it’s kinda hard to be honest. Some little things i wish were changed, but overall i’m enjoying the game and atmosphere a lot.
DG_Nick
#1215
I beat Persona 5 on hard. I’m only going to talk about basic game mechanics and maybe some general plot and first few hours of gameplay here.
The first thing I want to mention is how stylish this game is. Pretty much everyone already knows this from early footage, but it’s worth bringing up again as a reminder. Nearly very menu and submenu has a unique animation and it never gets old to watch it transition. The important players from previous Persona titles returned, including composer Shoji Meguro. However Shihoko Hirata, the vocalist from 4, passed the baton to Lyn. It seems like many people loved Persona 4’s sound track, but I much prefered Lyn’s stylings over Shihoko’s here.
I really like 5’s aesthetic of literally removing the mask hiding your true self. The process is also similar to Persona 4’s approach of “obtaining the facade to face life’s hardships”, but it’s different in one key aspect. The characters in both games are psychologically, and often also physically, backed into a corner, but whereas 4 would have you succumb to societal pressures before eventually accepting your ego, 5 is about being mad as hell and not taking it anymore.
In battle, this time your options are mapped to discrete buttons. When your persona is selected or your gun is drawn, the animation is peformed while you’re selecting your target. Once you learn a target’s weakness, you can press R1 to scan enemies and automatically select a move that will hit a target’s weakness. Post-battle results can take a couple seconds to load you out of battle, but there are also no more mini-games to contend with before you can get back to dungeon crawling. All of this has a net effect of speeding up battles.
I was afraid reintroducing negotiations to Persona would be a step back, but I’m glad I was wrong. The way it’s framed as a “Hold up” makes thematic sense and deciding whether you want to negotiate or all-out attack makes engaging in that system actually matter. Persona 5 also makes the smart decision of keeping every correct answer to questions static. Even if you fail a negotiation, you still learned something about their personality and what not to say on your next attempt.
One of my favorite new features is the expansion made to social links in Persona 5. On top of the standard ailment recovery and withstanding lethal blows introduced in 4, 5 goes a bit farther with unique skills for each of your party members. Additionally, non-party member social links offer their own set of perks that drastically aid you in both the combat and life-sim parts of the game.
The last thing I want to mention are the dialogue options. Once again, your dialogue options don’t affect story events (for the most part) but they’ve struck a better tone here than in the past. You’re allowed to express doubt over the morality of your actions, play coy when you’re questioned, or slyly use double-speak in your responses. This has the effect of making the protagonist feel like more of a character, he even speaks 1% more than previous protagonists!
All in all, I really enjoyed my time with Persona 5. I might write some more about it later, maybe I’ll do a spoiler post too.
archnemesis
#1217
The retro aesthetics of Lumo (PS4) filled me with a lot of nostalgia. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling the gameplay. There is something off with the controls and the pace is too slow.
Not A Hero (PS4) might be a good game, but I’m too tired of the art style to give it an honest go.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (3DS) seems very promising and more straightforward than the modern games. I’m hoping there will be less filler content and more to the campaign mode.
Most of my gaming time is still poured into Persona 5. It’s July and I’ve completed the three first main dungeons.
Leo
#1218
What server do you play on?
I used to be in the same free company as Nick, but I switched to another server when a friend of mine decided to come back to the game. I co-founded a pretty large free company with him, although he did the majority of work. I helped out here and there. Our free company has over 100 members.
Sibylus
#1219
Leviathan (Primal). Play with friends and fam in the FC they started, usually joining up for dungeons and FATEs.
OneEightZero
#1220
I finally figured Witcher’s combat out. The game is amazing. I get lost in the skies and the wind and the rain. The sound design is so good I have moments where I get chills up my spine.
LabouredSubterfuge
#1221
Aye, just things like the wind and the trees creaking in the quieter moments gets you totally immersed.
MidnightTrain
#1222
Is there a video or something that catches you up on the story going into Witcher 3? I ended up not being able to get into it after a few hours because of the story and combat.
Das
#1223
Replaying a bit of DOOM. The combat is fluid, fast and generally, a complete triumph of the old shooter phillosophies of Unreal, Quake, Shadow Warrior, etc - how having a cinematic vista doesn’t mean you have to put enemies behind walls, how you can still strafe and jump to higher and lower ground mid-fight, how cover is useless when you can just skillfully keep out of the way, perfecting a fight feels fucking marvelous, the game is just fucking marvelous, also it runs stupid smooth on the 1080ti.
