What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Ah_Pook wrote: Borderlands 3 is on sale for $15 at best buy this week, which seems like an okay price for Borderland 2.3: More of Exactly The Same Thing. Figure it will be something nice and brainless to sink some hours into.

The game itself is great, but the "story" and "dialog" are the worst they have ever been. You could turn dialog volume all the way off and make the game better.

hotseatgames wrote:

Ah_Pook wrote: Borderlands 3 is on sale for $15 at best buy this week, which seems like an okay price for Borderland 2.3: More of Exactly The Same Thing. Figure it will be something nice and brainless to sink some hours into.

The game itself is great, but the "story" and "dialog" are the worst they have ever been. You could turn dialog volume all the way off and make the game better.

Yea i already hated their entire schtick by the end of 2, and they just keep leaning further into it. I foresee the game being one long protracted eye roll, but also being fun enough to
actually play that I'll put up with it for $15.

If you do turn off the dialog, when you get to the "rapping doctor"... turn it back on

Ah_Pook wrote: Borderlands 3 is on sale for $15 at best buy this week, which seems like an okay price for Borderland 2.3: More of Exactly The Same Thing. Figure it will be something nice and brainless to sink some hours into.

In all seriousness, I hope it works out for you. I got bored. $15 is a good price for it, though.

SLAY THE SPIRE finally dropped for iOS so I picked it up and have been really digging it. The different characters all have unique little strategies for their deckbuilding so you have to play to their strengths.

I too picked up Slay the Spire and appreciate the $10 price. Monster Train has maybe ruined it for me, but I am away from my PC for the week.

Man I want to play Monster Train pretty bad, it looks super fun. Hopefully it gets a ps4 release eventually.

I'm getting way better at One Step From Eden. Still haven't won a genocide run, but I'm getting there.

I played an ungodly amount of Monster Train for a couple weeks there. I hit Covenant 21 and I'm kinda burned out on it now.

Trying out Griftlands, yet another deckbuilder; it feels almost like a throwback to Bioware RPGs only it seems like every choice is kinda morally ambiguous. There's an interesting mechanic where if you do a job or share a drink with someone they grow to like you and will have your back in future fights or negotiations if they happen to be in the same location. A given run is longer for sure when compared to Monster Train or Slay the Spire, more like 3-5 hours. And you have two separate decks, one for Negotiation and one for Battle.

I have been spending yet more time with Space Haven, I thought I would have milked it for everything it had by now but it keeps on delivering surprises.

Last night I sent my away team onto a derelict vessel to snoop around and had a shocking encounter. As I have traversed the galaxy the threats have steadily increased and I've started to find that the scuttling monsters often found infesting abandoned ships are now laying eggs and mutating into more evolved creatures.

Nothing so far has been too much for my standard combat team of four to handle so they boldly stepped into the wreck blasting any errant spider creatures that dared to pop into view. We reached the engine room of the ship at marching speed and swung open the door to a full on assault from several second level mutations. Three crew members went down almost immediately and, in a move that would later earn her a combat commendation, pte. Zarah did a 'Forrest Gump' and pulled her heavily wounded commanding officer onto her shoulders and ran him back to the safety of the shuttle before going back into the fray to rescue the rest of her comrades. The secondary away team had by this point dispatched to provide support and arrived just in time to watch the mutants dragging the two remaining unconscious soldiers away in order to bind them to the wall in sticky cocoons. The arrival of the cavalry was enough to support Zarah in exterminating the last of the scuttling bugs and we managed to rescue everyone and get them to medbay without any casualties.

While recovering from all of this, a pirate ship dropped in to the sector with twice the ordnance of anything we had seen before. No doubt seeking revenge for the husks of smaller ships that we had littered the system with, and keen to recover the prisoners we still had on board from those encounters, they immediately opened fire and only an emergency hyperdrive jump saved us from being marooned and having to tackle a boarding party. We are currently hiding out in order to undertake repairs and increase our armaments ready for a big showdown. This game is fun.

Back to Path of Exile for me.

I really enjoy this ingenious game but you do need a build guide and a couple of stash tabs so I put maybe $20 into it and now it really is super fun.

Dicking around with Borderland 2. Pretty good mindless fun and I don't even mind the dialogue.

ThirstyMan wrote: Dicking around with Borderland 2. Pretty good mindless fun and I don't even mind the dialogue.

Give it a couple hundred hours and get back to me re the dialog. It's whatever in small doses but it just gets grating as hell after enough of it, in my experience.

Speaking of which, I played maybe 4 hours into Borderlands 3 last night and like... It is exactly what I remember Borderlands 2 being. I can't even spot quality of life improvements. It's just the same thing. They did add mantling but it feels bad, so.

I just finished Bloodborne, plus the Old Hunters DLC. I'm still absolutely terrible at discovering and progressing NPC quests but I did really well against the bosses, one-shotting Ludwig and killing Orphan of Kos on my second try. Since then I've messed around helping people fight bosses and that's really fun, especially 3v1 against the Orphan.

I started Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and I'm liking it okay so far. I like the exploration, which feels like a throwback to the first Jedi Knight game on PC with its enormous levels, but apparently the climbing/jumping stuff cribs from the Uncharted series (which I've never played).

However, I'm lukewarm on the Sekiro-esque combat. I'm a few planets into the game and I haven't parried a purge trooper yet, and I've yet to check an enemy's poise during combat. Enemy health and poise bars are so small and so similar in color scheme that they're functionally identical to my eyes, when I notice them at all. Oh well, I'm at least dodging my way through so far. I'd probably practice on purge troopers more if the loading times weren't so ridiculous; guess I'll just wait until the PS5's SSD.

Ah_Pook wrote: Speaking of which, I played maybe 4 hours into Borderlands 3 last night and like... It is exactly what I remember Borderlands 2 being. I can't even spot quality of life improvements. It's just the same thing. They did add mantling but it feels bad, so.

It would have been nice for it to be more of a change, for sure. I think the loot is much better, and it definitely looks nicer, mainly in how everything shoots 10 million particles all over the place.

Getting rid of slag was a great decision. As for quality of life, you no longer have to specifically pick up cash, so there's one. You can also fast travel from anywhere, which will save you a lot of time.

I watched someone let's playing The Old Hunters and forgot what an amazing set of DLC it is, both lore and gameplay wise.

Mezike, you're single handedly putting space haven on my wish list.

BLOODBORNE.

Help me out here--I can basically stroll through stuff to the Cleric Beast and then I get obliterated and drop 5000 blood doohickeys and want to cry and quit. But I can't level up until I see the Cleric Beast? So is the opening move to just rush to her, get owned, and then redo stuff, but now with the chance to level up?