What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

A friend gave me some nintendo money for my birthday a few weeks ago. So I picked up Hades (again) and Ori and the Blind Forest for the Switch.

Still a shield and fists guy in Hades… already have around 13 wins again. Not that impressed with Ori after the first night or two playing it. But maybe it’ll grow on me.

I started up Storybook Brawl a few days ago, and it's real cool. I'm terrible at it, but hey. It's basically a free to play version of Hearthstone Battlegrounds, but not Hearthstone. If you like drafting stuff and seeing how broken a combo you can draft up then this is a pretty fun version of that, then the combat plays out automatically and you see how you do with what you drafted. The monetization doesn't seem to bad either. Basically you can pay to unlock more heroes, and you get a choice of 4 of your owned heroes at the beginning of each match. It's good fun.

Edit; this game is really good you should check it out

I want to like Total Warhammer 2 so much but I just find its overworld map incredibly incoherent and frustrating. It's especially annoying that it's just like their armies can switch to march mode and walk around whereever they want, there's very little concept of front lines or anything.

I fired up Assassin's Creed:Valhalla and played a few rounds of this fictional dice game Orlog. It's basically a head to head dice game with yahtzee (I think thats the mechanic style) rules of roll dice, set some aside, roll the rest, etc x 3 rounds like Elder Sign with some resource management and special powers thrown in. It was just fun enough that I looked online to see if this was based on a real game or if anyone made a physical copy since it is just a handful of custom dice, some tokens, and a couple of things that could easily be represented by cards...

...enter the kickstarter which, like kickstarter tends to do, turns what should have been a $15 casual game into a chrome laden swagfest costing upwards of TWO F'N HUNDRED DOLLARS with carved wooden pieces, metal tokens, glow in the dark dice, and a damned cheap ass drinking horn to salute your vanguished foe!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/purearts/as...discovery&term=orlog

This thing raised a MILLION dollars (canadian, but still) so I guess a lot of folks liked it. But who the hell drops 2 bills on a basic dice game you can play in a video game for free?

Thank Odin the KS ended a day before I found it so my money is safe

Here is my playlist right now:

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Edition
One Piece Pirate Warriors 3
One Piece Pirate Warriors 4
Hyrule Warriors
Fire Emblem Warriors

So there is clearly a theme here. I am utterly obsessed with Musuo games. Hyrule Warriors was the first one I really got into back in the Wii U days, but renewed interest on the genre and a $6 sale on Pirate Warriors 3 brought me back into it hardcore.

These are simple hack and slash games that on the surface level are about mashing buttons and KOing literally thousands of people while you run around a dungeon-like map. At the next layer, there are simple combos and a special Musuo attack keyed to a meter. Then you dig deeper and depending on the game there are differences in weapons, characters, and skills. Then you get into base building, character development, and deeper levels of gameplay while it still remains super simple but extremely rewarding.

DW8XLE is kind of the baseline. It’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms stuff but with magic, tigers, and flame tanks. It has about a billion weapons and I think 130 or so characters. Weapons range from traditional Chinese martial arts stuff to wacky shit like flail swords, handheld cannons, and massive bladed wheels. There’s a historical story mode where you can be Lu Bu or other folks westerners have likely never heard of but the meat to me is this Ambiton mode where you build a base, manage allies, upgrade buildings and so forth.

The Pirate Warriors games are probably my favorite even though my interest in One Piece is at a very casual level. But the goofy anime Popeye tone suits the genre well, and it has the wildest characters of the games I’ve played. It’s a little simpler and more direct, adding this fun mechanic where you can “build a crew” by doing Kizuna Rush attacks with allies. PW3 was the $6 one on Switch, and it is fabulous and fun. PW4 I got on PS5 after hearing that it’s a little janky on Switch. It adds aerial combat, the stages are better, and it’s got story stuff which makes no sense later in the One Piece timeline. Maining Zoro but I just unlocked Chopper, the little reindeer guy, so I may switch it up.

Fire Emblem Warriors is the most complicated because you have more control over your allies in the field. You can direct them to strategic areas, order them to heal units, hold forts, and so forth. Since it’s FE, there’s an emphasis on building relationships between characters. I’ve played this one the least but I think it might be the best for the long haul.

I really want the Berserk one but it’s $60 and never goes on sale. We have Persona 5 Strikers but River lost the disc, which is irksome. And Samurai Warriors 5 just came out…this is a thing for me. These games are offering exactly what I want from video games right now- low commitment, low complexity, low fluff but big payoffs and big action. TBQH there is almost Diablo like quality to these games that is very addictive, but they are more streamlined and less driven by RNG/loot drops.

Definitely a genre I've never really gotten into. I've come to see these as the equivalent of the more systems heavy clickers/idle games. When I think about them that way their appeal makes a lot more sense to me.

In a really weird way it's the value I get from Crusader Kings and Stellaris... super decision heavy games, so different from these genres, but crucially there's no real short term win point and you're mostly surrounded by a giant swirling clash of systems and AI forces. Creates a real zen, which is what I'm told people get from clickers and musuo.

Yeah, that is definitely a way to look at them…but I also look at Diablo like that. I think I told a friend back when Diablo 2 has just come out “you click on monsters until they dispense treasures”.

The zen-like thing comes from them having just the right balance of repetition and demand for engagement with direct rewards. The thousands of mooks don’t even really fight you, they are just there to block you and to build up your KO counts and Musuo attacks. The real enemies are the elites and officers.

The BOTW prequel one (Hyrule Warriors 2?) has me interested due to story possibilities but the switch really chokes on those mass battles. I need that on the Xbox series X.

My wife and I stopped playing the Diablo series since the gameplay was so hypnotic, one or both of us would be asleep before the level was done.

Hades came out on playstation finally do I've been playing that. Played a TON over the weekend. I can consistently get to Theseus and the Minotaur with all the weapons, and I consistently get destroyed by them. Only a matter of time I'm sure but theyre real fuckers.

Hades hit Gamepass and I tried it out. Played a couple of games, I like it, but have yet to see exactly why so many people fell over themselves over it.

Started my season of F1 2021 and chose the Renault powerplant because I hate myself. Or maybe because I'm a Lions fan and it hits the same notes.

Ah_Pook wrote: Hades came out on playstation finally do I've been playing that. Played a TON over the weekend. I can consistently get to Theseus and the Minotaur with all the weapons, and I consistently get destroyed by them. Only a matter of time I'm sure but theyre real fuckers.

While still learning the encounter, I’d recommend focusing the minotaur down first. They both briefly go invincible when you get then down to 50%, but when Theseus does the encounter becomes more chaotic. If the Minotaur is already down it’s more manageable. There’s also a UI clue when Theseus is powering up his special (spear throw); you can use the pillars to block it.

Later on, when you have stuff like Aspect of Demeter fist going, you can try to clump them up and bum rush them.

I thought I had them using the shield
aspect that hovers (Zeus?), and my attack and shield both inflicting tons of Hangover. Probably should have won that one since I killed the Minotaur pretty handily, but once Theseus gets low on life he goes kinda nuts and I wasnt ready for all that.

Edit: beat then on my next run, using the hangover zeus shield. Area 4 is pretty rough huh. Died to the boss, but I got him to like 1/3 life at least.

I'm one of the GamePass Hades players. I'm not great at it, only managed to get to the Minotaur/Theseus twice. I kinda wish the first room every time was the spec choice for the weapon. Thought I had him when I played the bow with the spec to auto fire instead of power shot. Ugh.

One odd thing is there is a relic that doubles the damage of any attack that isn't affected by a boon. I feel odd that I don't want to take any primary upgrades anymore. Only want Dash causing damage, and general boons.