What You've Been Playing This Week

[wakka]

I'm still playing and enjoying Planescape Torment. I'm about halfway through now, and at a point where I can begin to appreciate why this was game was considered so innovative in 1999 and why for many people it's still a favourite today.

For one thing, for its time the reliance on combat is low, with non-violent solutions not only provided but promoted.There's a freeform quality to the way you're able to approach playing, it too. Although the story itself seems basically linear, I'm currently in a chunky midsection of the game where you have no real overarching task other than exploring the city, talking to people, and doing subquests for them at your own pace.

Almost all of the subquests are dialogue based, and can be quite diverse - among the usual fetch quests you're asked to investigate a murder by interviewing chief suspects and deciding who was behind it, talk someone out of their depression, and help to free someone who's been wrongfully enslaved and put up for auction.

In some ways the game that it most reminds me of is Shenmue. The way that the two games play is not all that alike, but they both offer a type of gameplay which hadn't been commonplace before - where you inhabit a small, dense, fixed location and live out a day-to-day existence in a quasi-simulation, rather than working your way through levels beating up or blowing up everyone in sight.

It's a cool game, and I'm enjoying it. A lot of its ideas still feel fresh today.

[Dogg Thang]

That sounds really good. I might have to get that at some point.

I'm still trudging my way through Dead Space. It's grim and samey and maybe a little longer than it should be but it's still a superb game. Good enough that it's hard to see what the remake can really contribute beyond a few quality of life adjustments.

[wakka]

[MENTION=3144]Dogg Thang[/MENTION] Yeah I reckon you would find it interesting .If you do try it, either Google (or give me a shout if you like!) for some tips regarding speccing your character during character creation, and then levelling them up. I did quite a bit of research into this as I wanted a smooth run through the game where I could see as much of it as possible without it being overly hard, etc, and found some useful spoiler free info that has really helped. Mainly with maximising dialogue options, which is what it's all about.

[huxley]

On PC
Just finished Uncharted 4. Cracking fun, forgot about the ending - got a bit emotional.
Lost Legacy next.

SteamDeck
Resi 4HD. Looks really good on the deck.
Got the original Dead Space to play after Resi

[Dogg Thang]

Currently on a plane and I just finished Dead Space on my Deck. Make sure you adjust the res to match the screen. I don’t think it did it by default for me.

It plays brilliantly on the Deck. Such a good game. The atmosphere is brilliant and I love how chunky Isaac is and how heavy he feels. It’s very satisfying. The gane does get a bit samey, in my view, but it’s still a great game all the way through.

I had forgotten that ending.

[gunrock]

Started Kirby Forgotten Land last night. It's wonderfully charming and my first Kirby game. However, I wasn't feeling it, so started Disco Elysium. Now, that is a strange game with a unique voice! Only played about 40 mins, but it was stylish enough to hook me in.

[fuse]

Finished Bayonetta 3 last week, and honestly was quite keen to put it down by that time. There's loads more to do in it but I'm not ready to even think about that right now.

As a nice little one-sitting game, Stories Untold was pretty great. The first of the scenarios got under my skin quite well and did scare me more than I was expecting. Rest of them less so, but I did still enjoy them. Smart, well-contained little jaunt, and another that explains why folks are excited about No Code taking a shot at a Silent Hill game.

Tried a bit of Soundfall but not feeling that so much. The characters are a little irritating, and though I thought the core gameplay (rhythmic top-down shooter) would work for me, I'm not feeling it. You can move about freely enough, but have to keep attacking on beat, and well... it's no Curse of the Necrodancer, that's for sure. I've ended up less focused on the beat and more on movement, and getting rooms where enemies just spawn and spawn and spawn endlessly doesn't feel like its got the approach down right. Music cycles through genres so casually too, never really doing any of them any justice, leaving it with no real identity you can pin down. Done the first two worlds but might leave it there.

And lastly stuck on the Atari 50 collection. Yes there's a lot of games on here, but if I'm being honest with myself I'm not sure how keen I am to learn how to play some of these games from the 80s for the first time. What I do like though is the interactive timeline, giving you the opportunity to poke around and explore the history of the company in a neatly structured manner, rather than just throwing you in at the deep end of a 1000s-long vault of press materials without any context. There's a decent amount of video content too, making it feel like part documentary rather than just endless stills and photographs of fliers. Some of the later games may justify it for some, but there's also a few new modern re-imaginings of old games too that are worth checking out too, like VCTR-SCTR which blends the ideas of a few vector games into one with some added modernity to it.

[briareos_kerensky]

Completed Kuro No Kiseki 2 Crimson Sin yesterday. Overall inferior to the first due to overreliance on a plot device that removes all urgency from the story.

Also reached the final boss with a second character in Elden Ring, a Dex/Int build. Took me around 60 hours compared to the 100+ of the first character, but I did skip some bosses and dungeons.

Still playing Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope on the side, which will probably become my main game now that Kuro 2 is done.

[QualityChimp]

Also reached the final boss with a second character in Elden Ring, a Dex/Int build. Took me around 60 hours compared to the 100+ of the first character, but I did skip some bosses and dungeons.

I was about to ask if anyone is still playing in the first play thread, but this answers my question!

I had massive FOMO when it launched and it seemed like it was GOTY for a month and the only game needed for the rest of the year, but people have gone quiet about it.
Other than BK, here, anyone else still putting the hours in or has it become... tainted?

[Golgo]

I was about to ask if anyone is still playing in the first play thread, but this answers my question!

I had massive FOMO when it launched and it seemed like it was GOTY for a month and the only game needed for the rest of the year, but people have gone quiet about it.
Other than BK, here, anyone else still putting the hours in or has it become... tainted?

I confess I got bored by the time I got to Leyndell and ran out of steam and packed it in. There was too much of the same mini-bosses and cookie-cutter catacombs to pad out the open world map and stuff. Plus some seriously crummy quest direction/misdirection like the 'Where's Wally' quest with the wolf-headed guy with the Welsh accent. That said, I thought the first castle was among the best designed in the whole of the Soulsborne series.

Anyway, I haz been playing Yakuza 7.

[wakka]

I have been playing Modern Warfare II. Just the multiplayer so far, not the campaign, and I've been strictly vanilla, mostly focusing on TDM and Kill Confirmed, not really any of the new stuff.

It's fun! I think they actually held back some of the best maps from the beta for the full game. There's one in particular, set around a hydroelectric dam, which is like a little maze and it's super fun to run and gun around it with an SMG.

It's tried and true, but it's just such an enjoyable formula. Like slipping into a warm bath (one that's full of people trying to kill you).

[briareos_kerensky]

I was about to ask if anyone is still playing in the first play thread, but this answers my question!
I had massive FOMO when it launched and it seemed like it was GOTY for a month and the only game needed for the rest of the year, but people have gone quiet about it.
Other than BK, here, anyone else still putting the hours in or has it become... tainted?

Tarnished.

[QualityChimp]

Tarnished.

You can tell I haven't played it!

[briareos_kerensky]

Elden Ring completed with the second character...twice. I save scummed my way to get two other endings with one character . I think they toned down the Elden Beast a bit, I remember that with my first character (patch 1.3 or 1.4) some attacks were impossible to dodge; once it triggered the triple ring attack, chasing stars, and golden spears in fast succession, and during my death animation it was executing its three-hit sword combo.
None of that in both encounters, thankfully.

[Cepp]

Played through Lunistice, which is a cute 32-bit style platformer. It's only a few hours long but very enjoyable. It has some silly features like a 20fps mode and crt filter, fun to mess around with for 5 minutes. Really nice music too.