henke on 18/2/2023 at 06:19
Aja I am also playing and/or have OPINIONS about all of these, and you're gonna hear em!
Metroid Prime - only ever tinkered with the dolphin emulator version of this a bit, definitely wanna play the new remaster.
I wanna play Demon's Souls remake but I am not allowing myself to til I've finished my Elden Ring and I'm still stuck on the final boss which I don't feel like fighting.
The only good NFS games was NFS1 and NFS Porsche. These games are BAD RACING GAMES and I don't know why they keep making them.
Disco Elysium - y'know... I'm on day 2. Actually, got to day 2 like 2 weeks ago and haven't been back since. Wonderful writing and characters but it's not really hooking me in. I don't care who killed the guy out back, probably the dock workers. Whatever! The big thing that had me hooked was "will I be able to pay for my hotel room?" and now I've managed to do that, so what is there left for me to care about? Think I'm done with this game.
Shadow Man sounds cool.
Aja on 18/2/2023 at 15:54
For Elden Ring I was stuck on the last boss too. Eventually I just summoned some people, let them do all the work but took the killing blow :cool: Demon's Souls is incredible, though, and since the Elden Ring ending is literally a three-second cutscene, I say go for it now.
I think you're wrong about NFS. This new one is developed by Critereon, who have a good track record. The handling is weighty but still arcady enough to be fun, the sense of speed is insane (my wife can't watch me play it because she winces every time I hit another car or even have a near miss), there's a great car selection with lots of interesting upgrades, and the open world is fun to drive around it. Plus you get to smash cops until they explode, what's not to like!
Thirith on 20/2/2023 at 09:12
Shame that Disco Elysium didn't click with you beyond the point where you pay for your hotel room, henke. I had hoped that the strength of the writing and characters would keep you engaged, but I understand: here's a game with a cool ride, and you don't even get to drive it. Let's face it, in terms of vehicles, you are pretty much the opposite of Disco Elysium's protagonist.
I played some more Returnal over the weekend and am finding it quite moreish - though I can absolutely imagine playing this a lot for a couple of weeks and then forgetting all about it. Right now, though, it's very enjoyable, and I'm finding the story snippets interesting and interestingly tied to the gameplay itself. Sulphur, the points you mention may well become a major annoyance, but so far at least I'm not minding them any more than I did in, say, Hades. Though I would've hated it you weren't able to suspend your game and pick up again the next day, as was the case when it first came out on PS5.
I also got started on XCOM: Chimera Squad, because I wanted something to complement Returnal. It seems I've forgotten all of my XCOM skills (I played XCOM 2 two or three years ago), but perhaps it'll all come back to me before I get all the members of my squad killed horribly.
henke on 20/2/2023 at 10:10
Disco Elysium was gonna have an uphill battle with me anyway, being an adventure game. I rarely get into those these days, except when I can't sleep. It's probable that the next time I can't sleep I'll fire it up and continue. But I usually sleep like a baby, so it might be a while.
And yeah I've played some of Criterion's earlier NFS games, but despite loving Burnout 3 and Paradise, their NFS efforts did little for me.
Anyway I've been playing Ghostwire: Tokyo! You run around Tokyo beating up ghosts and trying to find your sister. It's a really neat open world with fun traversal and cool atmosphere. The story is so-so. Fantastic visuals, tho I had to tinker unusually much with the settings of this PS5 game to get it running and playing well. I'm 12 hours in, digging it, will probably finish it.
Malf on 20/2/2023 at 10:34
Thought I'd finish off Elden Ring and get properly started on Returnal this weekend, but it turns out there's a lot of Elden Ring I hadn't seen.
Area after area keeps getting unlocked, and for a few of them, I actually feel a little OP now, so it's probably stuff I should have engaged with earlier.
Also, thanks to the ambiguity of the quest system, there's a fair few that I'm pretty sure I've botched, so there's a temptation to explore them in New Game+
But I really don't like how obscure some of the quests are. For a fair few of them, they don't seem like they'd be possible to progress without incredible luck or the wiki on hand.
But aside from that, still putting a lot of time in to Dwarf Fortress.
Having given up on my original Steam release fortress because all the work had ground to a halt, I'm now on another that's rapidly approaching 20 years.
I may have played it a little too safe when I was choosing where to place it, as there have never been any goblin or necromantic sieges, and no kobold thieves either.
However, this has been balanced out by another dwarven civ declaring war on me after we stole some of their artifacts. In addition, instead of kobold thieves, we get stupid humans trying to nick stuff who boldly declare their presence before being smeared across the landscape by my military.
The queen arrived a while back, and promptly got drafted, but not before telling us that she wants to dig deeper. And to be honest, the surface is now completely deforested and slow to regrow, so she might have a point; caverns mean more "trees" in the shape of giant mushrooms.
I'm a little reluctant to expose the caverns, as i find they're usually not worth the FPS drop, but this version does run better than previous ones.
Aja on 20/2/2023 at 18:26
Quote Posted by henke
And yeah I've played some of Criterion's earlier NFS games, but despite loving Burnout 3 and Paradise, their NFS efforts did little for me.
Well, the first thing I thought of when I started playing it was, “I bet henke would like this.” So make of that what you will!
Sulphur on 21/2/2023 at 06:04
@Thirith, if Returnal compares favorably to Hades, that's great, because Hades is my platonic ideal of a roguelike (apart from the actual games in the Rogue genre, like ADoM, Nethack, [Z]Angband, and, well, Rogue).
Thirith on 21/2/2023 at 07:27
The initial experience does compare favourably, at least for me, even if it's obviously a very different game tonally. However, from what I've seen online, Returnal doesn't have the longevity that Hades has. At the beginning it's easy enough to experiment and explore, but it's very well possible that you're right and from a certain point onwards you have to plan every run really well and choose your build accordingly, and that's usually when I lose interest. I'm fine with that sort of thing as an optional NG+ challenge, but it's not something that appeals to me all that much.
Anarchic Fox on 22/2/2023 at 03:07
Quote Posted by Sulphur
@Thirith, if Returnal compares favorably to Hades, that's great, because Hades is my platonic ideal of a roguelike (apart from the actual games in the Rogue genre, like ADoM, Nethack, [Z]Angband, and, well, Rogue).
My own platonic ideal requires a simulationist core, which is why I go with Caves of Qud.
Aja and Thirith, did y'all finish Disco Elysium? Is it safe to talk about what displeased me?
