Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@Th3solution I'm the same mate in regards to CRPG territory - only played Disco, BG3 and now DOS2.

Are you aware of 'Zero Parades' dropping next month? PC/Steam only for the meantime, console release to follow... its the next offering from ZAUM (studio behind Disco... or at least whats left of them after the mass exodus/culling)

But politics and shady business protocals aside, the game itself received glowing previews and looks to be really something pretty cool

@Werehog Happy to hear that the Jill playthrough is basically the ''normal'' and most consequential one with the featured characters. She would anyway have been who I choose just because I find the idea of playing as her far more interesting, so good to not be missing out. I'll make sure to let you know whenever I get around to playing it! I'm sure it'll be at some point this year just to continue my Resident Evil journey, and I assume it's not a very long game to begin with.

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@Th3solution @CJD87 Getting into CRPGs with the first Divinity: Original Sin a few years ago truly was a blessing and a curse. Those games are insane time investments. The only ones I've managed to finish since are the aforementioned Disco Elysium and Wasteland 3. Both of which I loved. I got a good 90 hours into the second D:OS with my co-op partner before dropping it entirely. It was just too long and we were nowhere as invested in it as the first, so at some point enough was simply enough for us.

While I have yet to get around to Baldur's Gate 3, I think my next effort in the genre will end up being Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. I'm eager to try one of Owlcat's games, and that one seems straight up my alley despite having no previous exposure to the IP. I just have to wait for all of the DLC to come out, because there's no way I'm replaying a humongous game like that and I want the full experience first go-around. I suppose there's a chance Zero Parades precedes it given it gets good reviews. There's also Esoteric Ebb which came out to rave reviews leading to my buying into the hype and buying it... but alas, I have not yet started it. It's a shorter experience, so I suppose that would fit in this year as well!

@CJD87 Ah, I didn’t realize Zero Parades was already launching. Since I don’t play on PC I figured it was still many months away. I’ll be glad to see how it fares on PC before the console port comes out. I really enjoyed Disco Elysium and the promo pieces for Zero Parades looked very similar. In fact, almost copy-and-paste similar. It’s not a bad thing though, because DE was so unique in its own right. I was initially really hyped about Zero Parades until I realized the dev team was thoroughly… how do we say, ‘modified’, I guess. 😅 The whole situation at ZA/UM sounds like a dumpster fire and I don’t really understand the in’s and out’s of the situation, but if ZP is a good game, I’m not opposed to playing it someday.

@Tjuz Yes, the time commitment is absolutely an obstacle for me. Especially when the game might be a fringe interest. It’s easy to take a fly on a little 8 hour indie as an experiment, but jumping on a 100 hour game that you’re not quite sure if you’ll gel with is another thing entirely. At least it is when your schedule is already quite full, as mine is. I’ll be interested to read about your Warhammer experience though. I also have no clue about the Warhammer 40K IP. I’ve considered trying this Space Marine 2 game though. There’s got to be something great about Warhammer because they keep making tons of content with the IP!

@Tjuz Esoteric Ebb is a brilliant game in fairness, and a much shorter playthrough. I can't speak to 40K RT, but Baldurs 3 is really quite spectacular. I think 40K Rogue though is supposedly a little less obtuse, and more casual-friendly (I found BG3 quite overwhelming at first, took me about 10 hours in to fully realise the mechanics)

@Th3solution I believe one of the reasons the Warhammer IP is so prevalent in gaming is because its license holder very freely gives it out for collaborations. It's one of the reasons why there's a vast range of great and, frankly, bad games in the world. I suppose it's working out for them though, since I feel like the heavy hitters by far outshine the lesser efforts. It's also done a great job at keeing an IP in the public eye that I otherwise would normally have nothing to do with or no interest in. Plus the fact that it's present across basically all genres! There's something for everyone. Those with not enough time have Space Marines 2, and us sad sacks who also don't but had the displeasure of becoming invested in the CRPG genre have Rogue Trader to look at from a distance... I'm very intrigued by Owlcat's new game in the universe as well with Dark Heresy. I just hope it nails the investigation stuff!

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@CJD87 Glad to hear you had a good experience with Esoteric Ebb! I hadn't really seen much talk about it outside of the initial influx of praise when it first released. Seems like one of those games that came and went, and didn't really stick in the larger conversation. With how stacked this year's releases already are, I guess that's not entirely surprising! I'm always up for some lighter writing, but I'm usually hesitant of any game that advertises itself as comedic. I find they fall flat for me more often than not, but this one seems to be a nice middle ground between both supposedly hilarious and still having a lot more going on with it than just that.

@Tjuz Oh, that’s a good point. I don’t know how these things work with IP usage and collaboration, but it does make sense that Warhammer is much more free with letting it out. And not just games, I think it’s permeated a ton of other spaces like tabletop stuff and there’s a big community of model building. I think I’ve seen books and fiction using the universe too. I can’t recall any movies or TV, but there’s probably some of those too. It’s amazing that the IP is so ubiquitous and yet I have no clue what it’s all about! 😅 I guess it’s a Sci-Fi setting…? Not sure any details at all. The name is a bit awkward in my opinion. Warhammer sounds so 1980’s cheese, and 40,000 is just… what? 😅 It’s a number that’s an odd one to include in your title.

Blowing the ten feet of dust off of my Switch 2 to pick up Tomodachi Life. Novelty of this already is kinda wearing thin not gonna lie, but kinda like when you'd check in with a mobile game, if you put it down for a few hours and then boot it up, there is usually about a half an hour to an hour of stuff to do due to the passage of time in the background before you move onto something else. Whether that is worth sixty quid or even a good thing in general is a different discussion I suppose, but it does kinda seem like the reality of it.

You'll be looking at roughly six to eight hours for each character's playthrough, maybe a little less if you're well-versed in the series' iconography and so recognise what you're doing. Best of luck!

Still doing UFO 50. What a game. I might be playing this game for the rest of the year. I find it hard to even still be excited about anything else...

@Th3solution As far as my limited knowledge of Warhammer goes, I think the 40,000 subtitle indicates that it is in the sci-fi setting. I believe the IP has both that and its original fantasy setting as its most common universes, and they're only tangentially linked. Probably why the Warhammer name feels so weird for a space setting like you said, haha. Anything without the 40,000 is most likely set in the other fantasy universe. Just had a quick google on why the sci-fi setting is referred to as 40,000. Apparently it is because it's set in the 40th millennium of that universe. I suppose that makes sense, even if it's just a random number for us passers-by. Maybe one day we'll both know more about the setting(s) and be nerding out about our favourite fantasy/sci-fi units on here!

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@Pizzamorg Ah, that was my biggest fear with this follow-up as well. I never played the 3DS version, but watched loads of gameplay of it on YouTube at the time. I always wanted to play it but never owned the console. I was wondering with this sequel coming out if my fond memories of it came mostly from the commentary of the YouTubers I liked or if I'd be genuinely having a blast with the game was it in my hands. It feels like it leans more towards the former, especially with you confirming to me it's very much a game to check in on only once in a while. Maybe I'll still pick it up eventually, but yeah, it doesn't sound like it's a full-price kind of game for me.

@Tjuz I think part of my problem was me in fairness, on reflection. I kept my island relatively small populationwise, as I mostly just wanted an island of people I knew IRL, but I guess logically now I reflect on it, the more people on your island = more things going on. So of course my island felt quiet when it was only around the initial 10 person goal to get you through the tutorial.

While it hasn't completely solved the amount of time where stuff isn't going on and it is like I am doing that meme where I poke it with a stick and tell it to do something, when I started injecting fictional characters into the mix to bulk out my island (I made Ichiban, Kiryu, Link and Princess Zelda), the amount of gaps in the downtime got significantly shorter.

There is still a conversation to be had here, if the 70 Mii limit on the island is less of a limit, and more the intended goal so stuff is always happening on your island. Like is this good design? I mean I just know I don't have the imagination in me to create 50+ more Miis and while I am sure for some, Princess Zelda getting married to the Dragon of Dojima is probably a meaningful payoff, it kinda dillutes the fun for me personally I think? I stopped having stories to text my friends like "you know that guy you hate at work? Well your Mii totally went on a date with him just now!". I dunno, maybe I am just the wrong audience or maybe I am realising now normal people have 70 people in their real lives to fill their island with and I am weird for not doing so.

This was really rambly sorry I was sorta working through this in real time 😆

Anyone else checking out the latest Diablo 4 expansion? My first day was fairly mixed with the new class (since I tried the Paladin on early access, I am talking here about the Warlock) and I am fairly meh on Diablo 4's story in general because I feel like narratives just become inherently less interesting when your world is overwhelmingly and oppressively bleak, to the point where it all just feels sorta flat and shocks lose any meaning or purpose.

However, now onto day 2, I am finding more to like. The way the Warlock is designed, and this is possibly for the new trees for the base characters as well, I haven't really tried them yet, it feels like they almost invert the build formula in the game in a way I think is really healthy for it.

What I mean by this, is in the old system your class mechanic and your key passive were the pillars and engines of your build, and all the choices you made in terms of skills, and passives, had to interlink into that, to make your build actually work at the core, then you would introduce your Legendaries, Uniques, Paragon etc It made builds really easy to craft by ARPG standards, but it did slightly strangle build craft potential, because it effectively funnelled every class into four variants, and one would always be objectively stronger than the others, so everyone just sorta ended up there naturally.

With the Warlock, there are no key passives, and the class mechanic does not function as an engine to feed into other skills. It will modify how some things behave, and maybe add new dimensions to other skills, but everything you build isn't all orbiting around this choice to function.

I hadn't clocked onto this on the first day, so I just couldn't make sense as to why the Warlock just felt so bad to play, and it was only on day two when I started to get more Legendary's that informed my skill choices instead, I realised the class mechanic was more like the final bow on the build, but the warlock is incredibly flexible and dynamic, as it is a class that effectively builds without any engine.

If they have altered the class design of all of the classes to no longer requiring you to pick effectively one engine and build out from it, then I think the craft of building out a character in D4 is now a thousand times more interesting than it was just a few days before this expansion came out.

@Pizzamorg You gotta make more friends (or babies) to fill out that island! Not that I could do much more than ten, mind you. Did you get any fun interactions between some of your IRL Miis and the fictional ones you inserted? Getting to tell a friend of yours they're dating Zelda would be a fun update I'm sure. Totally get what you mean on how if 70 Miis in the intention, that's just a lot of work to ask of a player upfront to get to a point where they can enjoy a proper, active soap opera. I think the biggest criticism you can probably make of Nintendo there on a design level would be that they got rid of the online Mii sharing. Filling out 70 Miis is easy if you can just scan a QR code of a character you love in Mii-form, but it's just so much more inconvenient in this sequel with the lack of it.

It seems that as the dust has settled on the release a lot of people share your sentiment, though. I've seen plenty of criticisms that it feels empty and not like much of an improvement on the 3DS game, if even an improvement at all. Sounds like it has become repetitive quite quickly like its predecessor, which is a shame. Especially since apparently they took literal ages to develop it. You'd think they'd have have the time to put some more meat on its bones!

I have to be honest in saying I haven't touched the game in weeks. That first week or two of doing the mobile game check ins was fun enough, but it was also helped by the fact that I didn't have a lot going on, so I had the time to do so. Once the weather got better so I could get out in the evenings on long walks, and stuff came out that I actually wanted to play like Pragmata or Diablo 4's expansion etc there just wasn't time in my life anymore to boot it up, click on the exclamation marks and go through the motions with Tomodachi Life.

I also openly admit that I was always taught not to criticise something unless you have a solution, but I don't know what the solution is to "fix" Tomodachi Life, or if it even necessarily needs "fixing". A library of pre-made Miis like Miitopia would probably help, just to populate your island, but the lack of that does kinda force the player to engage with the tools on offer and be creative. But if you aren't creatively minded to the point where you can use the touchscreen to sculpt your favourite characters into Miis or whatever, you are almost playing a different game entirely versus someone who is that way.

Regardless, the general events the Miis can get into, the interactions they can have, they are fun to begin with, but quickly grow stale and there isn't much of a surprise factor outside of those opening few hours. Like there were a lot of jokes about the mindlessness of the reactions to the game, like "oh my God my game said the word penis!" but it is like... you had to tell the game to say that word, so like it is funny the first time it happens, but the reality is that the game isn't really surprising you, it is just mirroring back whatever thing you entered, which is a bit like getting distracted by coloured lights.

In my head I think then maybe the solution is to allow more direct scripting of events by the player, kinda like Universe mode in a WWE game or something, to give Miis more coherent storylines you can watch play out. But then I think part of the unique charm of Tomodachi Life, even if in some ways it is its greatest weakness as well, is that the player is so hands off, and it is all just a bunch of random chaos happening on the back end of the game somewhere that the player can't control. I do think the game would lose something if you gave the player direct control, even if it may not burn out as quickly.

I guess the real issue is that if a game is going to be entirely driven by itself, and the player mostly just creates a diorama and watches it go, then there needs to be hundreds upon hundreds of unique events and scenarios to keep it interesting, and I guess there just wasn't the scope to do that, so you just feel like you are watching the same events play out endlessly.

@Pizzamorg Ah, a shame to hear it hasn't really had staying power for you either. I suppose ''fun enough'' for about two weeks could be worse, but it's definitely not a particularly convincing argument for the game. I hope you still felt the full price was worth it even for that limited time of fun! Maybe they'll keep adding stuff to the game over time, and you'd have reasons to revisit your Miis every one in a while.

I think you're right in saying it's not a very solvable issue however. It really just seems like the game is exactly what it set out to be, and your mileage will vary on whether that fits your personal tastes and remains fun for a longer time. I guess they could have more variety within the game, but even that wouldn't stop the eventual feeling of repetition. I'm sure there's a lot of people who will get a lot of enjoyment out of the game just mirroring their own humor (whether accidental or not), but you'd have to find yourself incredibly funny for that to keep up for longer than a few weeks as it did with you.

I do like your idea of giving the player the chance to script more events. I've always been very interested in the Universe modes of the WWE games for that reason, but I've never really tried it as I'm generally not big into wrestling. I've enjoyed a match here and there, but I don't think if that would keep my attention span up for longer than a few matches if it's not specifically an interest of mine. It could really work for something like Tomodachi Life however, which is not tied to any interest in particular. I guess at that point it would become almost like simulating your own reality show rather than just being a passive observer. Taking the role of production manipulating events rather than seeing it all play out over time, but that's a different kind of engagement that others then might not find appealing.

I'm interested in Tomodachi Life. I played it over at a friend's house and it seems like something that can really fill a kind of hole. But I do fear that like @pizzamorg I might be done with the game before I've enjoyed for about 60 euros of fun. I had the same problem with the more recent Animal Crossing.

been playing/binging through Pokemon Scarlet like crazy this week this month. about done with the regular main game stuff like the last gym badge, the elite 4, the first dive into Area Zero. and doing the final final exams. last night i got lucky and kind of figured out how to do the stupid trade evolve of the dolphin pokemon.

also other games im playing this month

Dragon Quest III HD Remake for my switch lite
Mega Man Battle Network 1 from Legacy Collection volume 1 digitally for my Switch Lite. goign to play Battle Network 2 sometime this month whenever i get to it

I was one of the crazy people who bought the super mega premium deluxe ultimate edition of Forza Horizon 6. I wanna say up top, whether you think this game is simply too expensive or this practice isn't healthy for the industry then you're entitled to that stance, but I do think a bunch of misinformation has surrounded this because I think people are making it seem like you're paying like sixty quid just for four days of access, but it is also for upcoming DLC and car packs and other such things, advance access is just one part of the top tier for the game.

Anyway - the game. It is more Forza, and that is a good thing. To me, anyway. I am not a big racing game fan generally, but this is very much like a jangling keys game first, that happens to have racing in it. You have this huge, gorgeous, map - I am playing on PC, and with the help of DLSS, I am running this totally maxed out with raytracing maxed out as well, and still able to sit around 120 fps. So I honestly spent most of my first time with this just driving around Japan and taking shots in photo mode.

But then there is always a race waiting for you around a corner, it is probably going to take less than five minutes to complete, will be an adrenaline fuelled thrill ride for all of those five minutes, and you don't even need to be good at racing games to enjoy it. It feels like it is almost designed to be played with as many assists on as you want, as the experience of the race and the setting of the race seem almost more important than the nuts and bolts of the car touching the road.

And that isn't to say the cars don't feel great, I feel like everything just feels a little tuned up and tightened since 4, I feel like I got less cars which out of the gate are slipping and sliding all over the place, and need to tune less of my lower tier cars to bump up their handling stat. It is surprising how two cars can feel so different even with the same vague ballpark and class, and it is always fun when you get your first super car, squeeze the trigger ever so slightly and it feels like you've unleashed some rampaging beast you're fighting with all of your life to control.

And then yeah, when the race is over, you'll always be rewarded with something to power the loop forwards so it never breaks, you're never grinding, you're always onto the next experience. You can either have the game dump you back out onto the map, and just start driving, or you can have your AI assistant create curated playlists for you, so when you finish one event she'll offer you four choices and get you into the next race as soon as she can, helping you climb your Horizon ranks.

It is just wonderful.

Spent an enjoyable hour with the new PS5 port of Time Crisis yesterday, and will be going back on this afternoon to try and figure out the alternate routes in its bonus scenario.

I never had a G-Con when I was a kid, but I still sure as heck had Time Crisis and got pretty good using the D-Pad to guide a little dot around the screen, so I was nervous about the new gyro controls, but they work well enough. They do drift a lot, meaning you have to remember to press triangle to re-centre your crosshairs after every shooting gallery (although fortunately not after every shot). The emulator's reticule is also a couple pixels higher than that aforementioned in-game dot, so you have to aim high (or at least I did, and I have yet to figure out if I can fix that in the settings) but it's all perfectly playable.

But short game is very short, especially with the added benefit of an insta-rewind to fix any mistakes. Like I said, the bonus scenario seems to have alternate routes, but even so, don't expect a full weekend's worth of gameplay from this. More like a pleasant, albeit loud and frantic, evening.

And what a soundtrack!

Crimson Tears on PS2.

It's pretty fun, I feel like I might get into these weird Seichi Ishii games that he made after Virtua Fighter starting with Tekken and the bouncer and all this other stuff.