What are you playing?

We rented Kirby Star Allies from Gamefly and AHHHHHHHHHJJ it's unbearably cute and charming! The little joke reference to Kirby Super Star at the end of world 1 was hilarious. At every turn with new powers, there are new surprising combos to discover and adorable environmental interactions.

It's going to be over way too fast.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It took Terrik 11 years, but he finally crowned a witch. Appropriate for his swan song out of video gaming and into dentistry.



And yes, I know my camera was messed up and focused on the cat instead of me.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It started off as my flaky friend Adam wanting to play tonight, and then later Terrik said he wanted to play... that made 3. And Adam actually showed up for once. If we'd messaged both of you guys, we'd have had 5 and someone wouldn't have been able to play, anyway :/

And as I said before, I've tried many times to get something going again, it just never seems to work out... and I didn't know Dei was available again. I'd kinda just come to accept she was out TFN. It's a two way street, guys! If you wanna play something, all you have to do is let me know!

(As long as it isn't Overwatch or PUBG or Fortnite :p )
 
I've been engaging in peasantry while my husband family shares my Steam account to play my JRPG collection so we don't buy them twice. But I can kick him off if people are doing things. :p
 

Dave

Staff member
I want to like Fortnite, but (a) I found the people (kids) playing it to be beyond help and (b) I fucking SUUUUUUUCK at quick building. And if you can't quick build, you are a victim.
 
The kids on Switch were hilarious the first night I played. This maybe 9 or 10 year old was angry, but expressing it in the most polite words possible. Maybe his mom was in the room or something.

I'm disappointed with how Kirby Star Allies is going. I thought this would be a game Julie and I could play together no problem, but she's getting overwhelmed with the on-screen chaos. It's a little better if she plays as one of the dream characters like the hamster or King Dedede since she can differentiate her character from the rest, but I can tell it's stressing her out. My next suggestion will be for her to play as Kirby so she can set the pace.
 
It started off as my flaky friend Adam wanting to play tonight, and then later Terrik said he wanted to play... that made 3. And Adam actually showed up for once. If we'd messaged both of you guys, we'd have had 5 and someone wouldn't have been able to play, anyway :/

And as I said before, I've tried many times to get something going again, it just never seems to work out... and I didn't know Dei was available again. I'd kinda just come to accept she was out TFN. It's a two way street, guys! If you wanna play something, all you have to do is let me know!

(As long as it isn't Overwatch or PUBG or Fortnite :p )
Also, I know that @Terrik 's favorite L4D pastime involves 5 people.
 
Octopath Traveler is so disjointed. Every story chapter takes place in its own bubble, and your inactive party members don't get any exp, so a lot of the game is spent either carrying party members through their quests, or grinding a lot to keep everyone relatively equal. I like the combat mechanics, but I hate the way the game tells it's stories.
 
Octopath Traveler is so disjointed. Every story chapter takes place in its own bubble, and your inactive party members don't get any exp, so a lot of the game is spent either carrying party members through their quests, or grinding a lot to keep everyone relatively equal. I like the combat mechanics, but I hate the way the game tells it's stories.
Sounds like it's taking it's secret SaGa pedigree seriously. Glad I didn't day one it.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Finished RFG:RM and I've started Firewatch. Really beautiful game, and the voice acting is fantastic. The only problem is me. For months now I've had really bad anxiety about playing new games. It's irrational, I'm terrfied of getting stuck or frustrated, or I'm not even sure what my brain is screaming at me about might go wrong. Even though I know Firewatch is a "walking simulator" and that means it probably doesn't have fail states, I can't get my brain to calm down and let me just enjoy it. Beautiful scenery, pleasant music, slow pace... and I'm having to stop and take deep breaths and try to stop tensing all my muscles. I finish an in-game day, and quit out only to find my heart rate is elevated and I feel dizzy.

I just want to relax and enjoy my hobby. :(
 
Question: anyone played Civ VI: Rise and Fall yet? Civ IV and V were completely changed (and in the case of V, much improved) by their expansions, but R&F doesn't really seem to have made much of a ripple. I played VI for a bit but got bored once Hansas were nerfed into the ground...Being tall wasn't realyl viable. Anyway, just wondering what it plays like now and if it's worth adding to my list for possible pick-up in the fall sales - it wasn't discounted enough for summer.
 
Question: anyone played Civ VI: Rise and Fall yet? Civ IV and V were completely changed (and in the case of V, much improved) by their expansions, but R&F doesn't really seem to have made much of a ripple. I played VI for a bit but got bored once Hansas were nerfed into the ground...Being tall wasn't realyl viable. Anyway, just wondering what it plays like now and if it's worth adding to my list for possible pick-up in the fall sales - it wasn't discounted enough for summer.
Yeah, this is my issue with Civ 6: I don't like playing fat and Civ 6 requires it. So I just keep going back to Civ 5 until the Civ 6 devs get a clue.
 
It was temporarily kind-of possible by playing Germany, and having 3 or 4 Hanza's all influencing all cities around them. That got production up to acceptable levels. Then they nerfed that -_-.
 
Now that Shadow of War has patched out all the microtransactions and rebalanced the game to not require either purchasing them or grinding a great deal to make up for not paying them more money, I picked it up on sale for the gold edition. It's pretty good.

Fun fan fiction. Did you guys know there's actually two THE ONE RINGs?

Shelob looking like Stoya is still off putting.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Hey, they put TWO of Sasha Grey in Saint's Row (The DeWynter twins). And yeah, she wasn't exactly one of the best characters/voice actresses.
 
Man, having 4 of your dominated captains turn on you at once in an ambush is rough city. Especially since they had one of my warlords down with them.

Also, every single new enemy captain having that teleport 4 guys into the fight out of nowhere power is fucking bullshit. That power is fucking bullshit.

Other bullshitty things include enemy captains having like 45 second unskippable precombat babble. JESUS CHRIST LET ME SKIP IT.

"Hello manfilth, I've finally caught up to you you stinky manfilth whose flesh sucks and I'm going to eat it because I am bad and you know what manfilth? You know what? I'm gonna kill you manfilth, because I like to kill manfilth..."

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
 
I've been playing Persona 4 Golden because I got sick of Octopath Traveler after finishing one story arc and half to 1/3 of everyone else's and I've only played the original, and damn there's so much more to do in Golden. I think I'm losing my mind, and my social link count is suffering because I'm distracted by new shinies. Oh well, I have to New Game + anyways to do Margaret's thing.
 
Julie got me Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

My XCOM skills have evaporated over the past couple years. I'm still winning, but by powering through on superior HP levels rather than tactics. That won't work for much longer.
 
I wish I wasn't so completionisty.

It's making these areas drag, but then it bothers when me when I don't do and get everything.

Curses.
 
I decided to give No Man's Sky another try, now that the huge NEXT patch has come out and they claim the game is drastically improved and finally what was promised. Also because even though I refunded the game two years ago, Steam never bothered to remove it from my library.


The Good:
The game is drastically different, as in it's not even the same game that launched. It's still, at its core, a pretty standard survival game, but all the systems that you use for that end have been highly altered. Even the names of most things have been changed.

There's now multiplayer.

Third person view, now that they've had to actually create character models for multiplayer. I gotta say, the traveler is much more realistically humanoid than I invisioned, I always thought you'd be a cute little chibi based on the cutesy art.

Base building, lots of different vehicles, from starships to ground vehicles to giant cargo ships that you can store your other ships in.

There's actually a story now if you want to follow along and do that.

The Bad:

The controls are terrible and there's really no reason they should be. I'm playing the PC version using an xbox one-s controller, which I might add is the most common controller used on PC. No Man's Sky, which is a CONSOLE PORT built for controllers, will show the xbox button prompts when using a controller, but it's apparently a crapshoot as to whether those prompts are correct, because half the time the button is bound to something different, even though I'm using the default configuration.

Sometimes this isn't as bad, for example in the tutorial it tells me to craft a material I need by going into my inventory and pressing X on an empty inventory slot. Pressing X, however, is the default button for installing technology. Confused as to why I can't craft, I look at the prompts on the bottom, see that A is actually the button to craft, and manage to craft the metal plate I need. A little wonky, but not game breaking.

Later on, however, it tells me to build a refinery, and when I'm done using it, it reminds me to pick it up and take it with me. Looking at the refinery tells me X will use it (which is correct) and B will pick it up. B does absolutely nothing. Going into control configurations I try to bind pickup to be, only to discover that pick up is not a bindable ability. Eventually I go to reddit to see if anyone else has this problem, and discover that pick up is bound to middle mouse click even when you are using a controller, and there is no way to rebind it. The fix for this is going into steam settings and setting a custom control actuator to make the B button input a middle mouse click.


The other major flaw I find this early in the game is that while the third person perspective is pretty, the game is in no way built for it. Camera controls with analog sticks is way too sensitive, and it seems that going into settings and reducing the sensitivity only reduces mouse sensitivity and not controller sensitivity. It makes aiming at even completely still rocks that you want to shoot difficult and tiresome. When exploring buildings and the like, in first person mode you would look at something and it would pop up to tell you if it was interactable. Now, with a third person camera, this only happens if you bother to point your offcenter aiming reticule at the object.

I'll just change it back to first person. I hit escape, and... hrm, it's not in game options. It's not in control options. It's not in graphics options. Ok, let's go into my select menu. Hrm, not there either. How about my start menu, where it shows my goals. No, no, it's not in there either.

Back to reddit... oh, of course, it's in a hidden utilities menu. I press down on the d-pad, which is the quick key for recharging my various systems, and then I can press right all the way over to utilities, and open another menu that has the option to toggle first and third person camera. That could be a little more intuitive...


Also, the game still runs like ass, even on my incredibly beefy machine.

*Andy has joined your game*
Andy: NMS launch was an inside job. Sean Murray can't melt steel beams.
*Andy has left your game*

Well... at least multiplayer works. And yes, that really happened.
 
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