What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

This isn't a blanket suggestion for anyone, but I found the Witcher 3 one of those games that improved when you crank the difficulty. It made me think and prepare for every major mission, esp against supernatural stuff. Which I found very thematic but ymmv.

I'm on both the_jake and Gary Sax's side: it gets samey, but turning up the difficulty makes it more fun. If you're leaning on the Save key, it doesn't cost too much to see exactly how tough is too tough. And some of the bounty monsters will make you pay atttention.

If there's one thing I've learned about how I play games it's that I have about a 12 hour window for caring about a video game story. I've obviously played games for longer than that, but they had a basic feedback loop that involved me, not some great level of narrative. Because of that I have chickened out on The Witcher 3. I just can't care about a story for that long. (I made it through some CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, but those had some long breaks.)

I don't think anyone can call the first two Bioshocks non-linear, but within the levels there's some exploration and it's not wall to wall shooting. Sounds like Infinite is a little closer to something like Half-Life 2, all forward momentum and action.

BillyBobThwarton wrote: I loved the bloody baron stuff! I thought it was very moving and emotionally challenging. From a different quest tree, my favorite scene in the game is one between Geralt and Whoreson Junior talking about a chalice of sorrow. That is a badass speech.

Regarding gear, once I realized how awesome the sets are, I pretty much just sell everything else.

Yeah, I actually liked the baron stuff, too. That was just the easiest one to reference that people would know what I was talking about.

I’m looking to start the Witcher 3 here pretty soon. Not being well versed in open world games, it’s sort of a trial run to see if Cyberpunk 2077 is something I might like. I’ve been putting off starting it because I know if I like it it’ll dominate my free time, which I don’t need at the moment.

san il defanso wrote: I don't think anyone can call the first two Bioshocks non-linear, but within the levels there's some exploration and it's not wall to wall shooting. Sounds like Infinite is a little closer to something like Half-Life 2, all forward momentum and action.

Perhaps I have described Infinite poorly. There's a lot of story in Infinite, and you do get to examine, and should/must examine, a lot of stuff; kinetoscope videos, conversations, etc. But you don't get a break from the storyline, and the storyline doesn't change much. In Witcher 3 you can wander off the main story line for long periods of time, and it will be waiting for you when you come back.

We've just been playing a lot of Bloodborne. My son got interested when I was a couple bosses from the end so he started a new game and went with an arcane build. It's fun but it's pretty OP due to how easy you can cheese enemies, bosses included, with the Hunter Tools (i.e., spells). I also discovered false depth Chalices, which are codes for code-manipulated chalice dungeons you can access much earlier than you normally should be able to. So we've been digging more into the lore and over-leveling (he started a bloodtinge build) so we can focus more on enjoying the setting.

I think I much prefer the Soulsborne approach to storytelling (which, granted, takes a lot of getting used to after decades of spoon-fed exposition in video games) to the Bioshock approach of (mostly, but not entirely) logs scattered everywhere, though I think they both have their place. I'm hoping to get Elden Ring when it comes out to see how well I can parse the lore in a new From game instead of doing the easy work of reading others' interpretations/discoveries.

We got the Old Hunters DLC so that's next, and then on to DS3.

My favorite part about the Witcher 3 was how some of the mission choices would have a direct effect on the world down the road. The one that stands out most for me was either killing or loosing the spirit in the basement of the three witches. I also liked how it did not gatekeep the world and you could stumble upon stuff you had no business trying to fight. Greedfall has done the same thing in their world.

^^I've never tried an Arcane build in Bloodborne. Sounds hard until you get some of the arcane laser tools or whatever. What weapon are you using?

I've cranked through a ton of games in the past month. Witcher 3 of course, which I really liked. Definitely gave me a different opinion on the Netflix show casting, particularly Triss.

Division 2 was decent, but not as fun as the first. Maybe I just liked NYC over DC.

Gears of War 4, meh.

Tried Middle-Earth: Shadows of War. I really liked the first one, but the repetitive slog of conquering fortresses and whatnot burned me out on this one after 15 hours or so.

Red Dead Redemption 2. Also really really loved the first one but I don't know ikf I'm getting open world fatigue or what, but it is just not that great. About 8+ hours in and I feel like I'm still in a tutorial.

I think I'm turned off my the complexity of the geography in this gen of open owrld games. Just getting around is so damned hard because the detail level is high and it isn't obvious where you can and can't go. Navigating DC in D2, riding a horse in RDR2 or W3, running around Mordor, it is just so hard to follow the glowing mission indicator. I think the technical capability has outstripped the 'gameability' of the game. Breath of the Wild beats this by having supreme climbability, limited only by stamina. But these other games have hard walls that you can't easily see in world, so pathfinding is confusing and frustrating. And in an open world game, navigating the world needs to be supremely satisfying and fun IMHO.

Last night I played the "final boss" in Rayman Legends. Obviously there's still at least 2/3 of the game left to play, but I got the end credits, so it's kind of an arbitrary "end." I think I'm willing to call it my favorite 2D platformer since Super Mario World.

The part that really works for me is the difficulty curve. There's a definite challenge to some of the later levels, but it's not controller-throwing tough. Rather it's the sort of tantalizing "you might get it if you try again!" kind of challenge. So many of the later levels depend on getting into a real flow, hitting a rhythm of perfectly timed jumps and attacks to get through a challenging moment. There's always a sense of "I'll get it this time," rather than "How in the world am I supposed to do THAT?"

It helps that the game dispenses with the nonsense of lives. It rarely forces you to replay a long stretch so you can get through the whole level unfazed. Rather, when you die, it sets you right in front of where you died so you can try just the tough part again.

Finally, the whole element of collectibles really works for me, which is impressive, because I am often one who doesn't care about stuff like that. But because the challenge of the levels feels sensible, I don't mind revisiting them to locate the nooks and crannies that might have Teensies or extra Lums. It has the feel of a late-90s collect-a-thon, but because it's 2D I am much more willing to engage with levels repeatedly.

Just a great game. I'm really surprised at how much it works for me, and it reminds me of the first video games I ever really loved. Definitely worth playing on the Switch if you missed it in its Wii U days.

Gary Sax wrote: ^^I've never tried an Arcane build in Bloodborne. Sounds hard until you get some of the arcane laser tools or whatever. What weapon are you using?

There aren't really any purely arcane weapons in Bloodborne; most people tend to just outfit their weapon of choice with fire gems to convert it to arcane. My son looked up how to get the Logarius Wheel (which does arcane damage in its tricked mode) and used that. It hits like a truck but is only slightly less cumbersome than the Kirkhammer's trick mode.

I wasn't going to suggest an arcane build to my son until I watched the following video. In short: upgrade Vitality and Arcane early on and use a moderately-upgraded Flamesprayer (he was Arcane 17 and Flamesprayer +3 in the early part of the video) to obliterate everything in your path until you get a hold of some fire gems and hunter tools. It's kind of shocking how a focused arcane build trivializes a lot of the bosses.



Anyway, as mentioned in the video, the first chalice dungeon gives you a fire gem so you could just play through it twice and put both of them on a weapon of your choice. If you already like using Ludwig's Holy Blade then I have good news for you, because it has a "C" arcane scaling at +2 and a "B" at +5.

We both started new games and abused one of the false depth chalices to power level so we could go to the DLC early. He's doing a bloodtinge build with the Chikage and I'm learning transform attack combos and practicing my parrying with a skill build with the Saw Spear.

Whoa, anyone here play Escape From Tarkov?

Started playing this last night and had one of the top gaming experiences of my life.

It feels heavily influenced by Day Z. You play a private military contractor trying to escape from a warzone that's collapsed in an isolated coastline of Russia.

You load into a map along with a large number of other players. The goal is to scavenge what you can as you make your way across a huge area to an extraction point. There are also NPC scavengers that roam around which can be looted.

The kicker is that every piece of gear you bring in is lost if you die. So it has this roguelike tension combined with a bit of Battle Royale and a survival game.

Starting out seems rough as it's a difficult game. I had to load up online maps on my phone simply to identify where my extraction point was (there is no in game map).

I was logging in with a pistol and a single extra magazine as I didn't want to risk losing my only machinegun.

The gear system is the Diablo Tetris thing, not only on your person but back at your base between missions.

Anyway, in my second game last night I ran into another player inside a large dilapidated building. We spotted each other simultaneously and I unloaded my handgun's mag, mostly hitting the door frame as I strafed hard. I one shorted the bastard in the head.

It was a player and he was kitted out with an assault rifle that was heavily modded (there's all kinds of weapon parts in this game and it apparently has the deepest mod system of any shooter). He also had body armor and even a helmet. Took his headset too which amplifies noise.

I was on cloud nine.

So I decide to try and make a B-line for my extraction so I can get off with this valuable loot. I run into an NPC scavenger who takes out my legs and my right arm. I crawl away slowly and he stops firing.

I tried using a splint and a shitload of meds,but my wounds were too severe. So all I can do is limp at ultra low speed to my exit. But it's over a kilometer away and I have 10 minutes to make it. Plus my hydration was low and I didn't bring water.

Dragging my sorry ass across half the map with heavy wounds just to salvage that rifle and armor was extremely tense. I couldn't sleep afterwards.

This game is nuts. It's only in beta, but there's base building, character levelling, and thousands of gear items. You can all kinds of odd stuff like computer parts, food, and hardware like screws and wire. Not to mention weapons and ammo.

Yeah, I heard it's sort of the big successor to PUBG among the hardcore. Sounds interesting.

I haven't played it. While the game itself seems cool, the developers' response to "why are there no female body types?" was so fucked up that I decided I'd peace out on it.

They basically said "women can't handle war so we aren't going to bother making female characters."