In a quick break from the insanity in the real world, I thought I'd see what everyone was playing, or looking to play.
Being a huge X-Wing/Tie Fighter fan, I'd really like to play Star Wars: Squadrons, but I refuse to give EA money, and the developer pushing bullshit pronoun nonsense sealed the deal.
Instead, I'm about to start Yakuza Kiwami for the first time.
What are you guys enjoying right now?
Even if you put aside SW Squadron's woke pandering for a second, have you seen the player count?
It's been out for less than a month, and they're already down to 1000~2500 players online. Which, for a pubbie matchmaking game, sounds like the death spiral of long queue times, newbies getting stomped by die-hard fans, and orders from marketing to implement desperate moves to gain new players at the risk of the existing player base.
And when CP77 comes out, you can just imagine how those numbers will look in a month from now.
It makes me sad, because I love the spaceship dog-fighting genre. I fear that when smaller studios see that even EA's budget and SW's brand combined cannot guarantee you a financial success, they'll choose less risky genres to work on instead.
Wow, already? I thought it might do well, apparently not. I didn't pick it up because I'm not much of an early adopter. I've gotten away from multiplayer anyway, they just offer me little fun anymore. I like to play too many different things and the multiplayer world has grown into requiring you to eat, sleep, and breathe their game anymore. I guess I'm just old.
It's a shame Squadrons seems to have bombed the campaign (if there's one at all). I'd have bought it later this year if the multiplayer seemed fun/fair or there was a great campaign mode. Oh well.
I'm checking the numbers from Steam Charts, they could very well be higher in-game: https://steamcharts.com/app/1222730
Maybe if we're lucky they'll eventually add modding support and/or a campaign/level editor. The fan base would jump at the opportunity to recreate all the X-Wing vs TIE Fighter era single-player campaigns for them.
I'm in a TIE Squadron community that has THOUSANDS of modded missions for the old sims. If EA opens it up, I expect very good things from the modding community.
You do get that games where set in cities before gta right?
Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles mostly. When I'm in the mood for something less RPG and more action I mix in an FPS or action game here and there. Lately that's been Metal Wolf Chaos XD. I've been very heavily preferring Japanese games lately and that wasn't intentionally to avoid woke-ness, just as a byproduct of that they've been more fun. I'm even about to get into some more traditional JRPGs.
I'm not sure if you played Yakuza 0 or not but Kiwami 1 got me way more hooked on the series than 0 did. Planning to play it all the way through now.
Anyone that's never played Metal Wolf Chaos really should check it out right now. It's a bit crude and not very deep gameplay, but the story is just hilarious in modern context. The President himself has to jump in a mech and take down the usurpers to save American freedom. There's even fake news (called DNN) who fly around in a helicopter and claim the President is destroying America and slaughtering innocent Americans. It's just hilarious.
Also every review I've seen has said, while the fighter gameplay is excellent, the story is shit and the character interactions are boring one sided exposition dumps. I love fighter sims, but I don't see the point of playing a game...no matter how good the gameplay is...if the reason for playing is shit.
The last game I played was Ghost of Tsushima. My brother has been trying to get me into Among Us, but life gets in the way. But when Cyberpunk 2077 gets here next month all bets are off.
So, I don't like EA either, but gaming is my primary social interaction with several old friends, and Squadrons came up as something to play together.
The starfighter gameplay is pretty good, but there's some major balance issues, and matchmaking can be bonkers. The main problem is, a 4-5 man premade team is guaranteed to get matched against 2-3 guys with literal simulator modules in their basements, rank 50+ or something stupid like that, and they'll get three times as many kills as the rest of the game combined.
I'm not sure it's possible to do this in a normal fashion for that game. I played the demo of it, it's a cool game, but I think its biggest flaw is pushing memorization. There's no practice mode in the demo, so I just had to guess and check and die lots and lots to learn how every enemy moves. Then that memorization goes out the window when combining some enemy types, so you lose hard and then pray for a second chance to simply learn.
Just wasn't worthwhile to me, but I hate roguelikes anyway. The rhythm aspect is probably considered a difficulty increaser because it forces you to make inefficient moves.
The Necrodancer guys are also in the cult of Anita, so I've avoided giving them cash.
I think in their other game, Towerfall Ascension, they put Anita in as a playable character, but that's all I know. Anything more would help.
I am playing Carrion right now.
It is pretty good so far and I’m enjoying it.
It’s simple enough that I can just pick it up and make a decent amount of progress without taking away too much time from school and other projects.
I haven’t had time to play anything in a while, so it’s nice to be able to play something again.
I thought Carrion was interesting for what it was, but ultimately it got kind of repetitive and wasn't very difficult. It was mostly letting the level design guide you through the "maze" and figuring out effective ways to deal with the few types of enemies that they throw at you.
Definitely agree with you there.
I like it because it is repetitive and mind-numbing, it’s exactly what I need in a game right now.
It isn’t for everyone, and it is stupid easy, but when I am stuck coding all day, it’s nice to just be able to click a couple of buttons and drag a mouse and not have to think too hard
Every week or so I do a few runs of Risk of Rain 2 with friends, laughing at how cruelly or favourably RNG happens to be treating us. The best moments are the ones where half the party is undergeared, your taking way too long to find teleporters and kill bosses, and you're stubbornly, desperately trying to salvage a run you know went to shit two stages back, and through some miracle manage to suceed where you know you had no reasonable expectation of anything but death.
Rimworld.
Just finished Yakuza 0 and moving on to Kiwami. Plan to play the rest of the series while waiting of SMT V. Always been a fan of japanese games, always will.
I'm playing the Doom Eternal DLC, which is good.
It's about the only 'AAA' game I've played for the entire of this year...oh I pirated Resi 3 as well.
It's good (Doom DLC) they've made it even faster if that was possible.
Currently enjoying myself in racing games (F1, Assetto Corsa / Competizione) and I plan on buying a proper wheel setup come Black Friday.
After being too busy with grad school to play video games for quite a few years, I finally got back into in the last few. I still don't play too much, but when I do I've been playing 2d action/platformers almost exclusively.
Dead Cells is what I've been playing the most recently. They must put crack in that game because I just can't stop.
If you like Dead Cells, and also like the 2D platformer/Metroidvania genre, you might check out:
Axiom Verge Hollow Knight Blasphemous Sundered
I quite enjoyed them all.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried most of those.
I loved Hollow Knight. It's one of my favorite games.
I started playing Sundered and enjoyed it a lot, but stopped for some reason I don't remember (Busy? Megaman X collection? The answer is lost to time.). I should pick up it again because that game is pretty sweet.
I actually started playing Blasphemous recently but haven't able to really get into. Everything in it feels so slow. Maybe I need to give it more of a shot, but so far I feel like it's not really for me.
Axiom Verge is on my wish list. If it goes on sale I'll probably snatch it up. Especially since the sequel is coming out this year.
Ultimately though, Dead Cells is black hole that just keeps sucking me in.
Have you played Cuphead? That's been another one of my favorites since getting back on the 2d game wagon (which I had been off of since I was a kid).
Yeah, I beat Cuphead, though I didn't 100% everything. Thought it was great, but the load times killed my desire to keep playing. It was a work of art though.
My only gripe with Sundered is that you have to do some farming to get your damage/health/shields up to a level where you can survive the waves of shit that come at you. I'd have found it a much more enjoyable experience if it were possible to get through the game on pure skill. I've gone through it a few times though despite it, so it obviously wasn't a deal-breaker for me.
Blasphemous, I'd agree, is an acquired taste. The combat isn't as well developed as something like a Hollow Knight, but the exploration is pretty decent.
Hyper light drifter, it's a great action adventure with superb sound design. My only pet peeve is that the difficulty curve is a series of straight walls, and that you need to farm medkits to get anywhere.
Hyper Light Drifter was great!
I never managed to finish it though - sadly my reflexes are not as good as they once were.
Banished and Terreria.
Played a good bit of Noita this week, mute suicidal-genocidal purple wizard simulator is just my kind of jam, and it's got a surprising amount of breadth to it.
Yakuza Zero is my favorite game from the last year (I know it came out before that, but I played it this year).
They're putting out a turn-based Yakuza game next, and my expectations are high.
I don't know, but I'm tremendously curious. I really want more Yakuza 0 - in fact, I want Yakuza -1. Give me a pre-electronics Yakuza.
Been playing a lot of Squad recently. I found it's my kind of game since I really liked the old school Battlefield games (1942 & BF2) and started to get bored of them when they started to cater more to the CoD crowd starting with BF3. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the Arma series which is just waaay to focused on trying to be realistic that it's really slow and can get pretty boring. So Squad seems to be like the happy medium.
I'm still just hamming away at No Man's Sky. I feel like gaming died. Everything has been bought by M$ and EA, and then ruined. Blizzard is trash now. Everything else belongs to tencent. Everything is run by tranny karens.
I don't think I'm a gamer anymore. I doubt I ever will be again. It's getting harder and harder to remember where my time goes. I never seem to enjoy it anymore.
Mostly playing Running with Rifles and a couple of hidden object games from my backlog (Artifex Mundi ones mainly).
Speaking of EA, I'm also currently playing through the remaining games I got there that I haven't played yet before I delete my account. Just some fairly old stuff, Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3.
Tried starting Legend of Grimrock 2 a couple of times but by the time I'm done with character creation guides I'm always out of time to actually play the game :D
Running with Rifles is pretty fun.
Crysis 3 is kinda junk but im going to highly suggest finding a bro to play with on dead space 3. It goes from the worst dead space by far to a decent co-op romp.
Yea I'm a few hours in and DS3 is kinda meh. Feels really uninspired, like a weak Dead Space 2 expansion. The pay 2 win DLC also doesn't help it.
Probably not going to find anyone to play with considering how old it is and I don't think it's really worth trying to find someone.
If i had the time in the next few weeks id totally play (w/ dlc). The co-op missions split apart like a "oh cool" moment
Been playing Ghosts of Tsushima and its multiplayer recently but i have also gotten back into Fallout 76
Have you played Yakuza 0 yet? Personally I found Kiwami a bit of a disappointment after 0, so just a heads up that the series has more and better to offer, depending on how much you enjoy Kiwami 1. Kiwami 2 was good though.
I just finished reading House in Fata Morgana for some language practice and I was saving Disco Elysium for afterwards. But in the meantime I've been dabbling in Spelunky 2, Noita and Ring of Pain, which are all absolutely kicking the shit out of me in terms of difficulty. Noita in particular has a strong pull on me - I'm a sucker for physics nonsense and I love watching the environment get screwed up in unexpected ways, but it leads to me taking stupid risks all the time.
Slowly grinding through the new patch content in FFXIV. Though I probably won't get hooked back onto the game until the next raid tier starts.
Endless Space 2's been filling my turn based strategy niche. Slay the Spire and Dicey Dungeons have been good for some quick hour long, I dont want to get super invested into playing a game, games.
And I recently picked back up my Dota 2 addiction. I think it's mostly because I needed some kind of ranked competitive game and I stuck ass at Counterstrike, and I can't in good conscience go back to playing Starcraft.
Action Taimanin.
Been playing Gaychink Impact, M.A.S.S. Builder and BallisticNG.
Been playing L4D2 recently.
I watched a lot of speedruns, which gave me entertainment.
That, and a community update came out that really added some alright stuff, including new players.
Campaign I'm alright at (even if its Normal for now), but Versus has some good days and some bad days.
Been OD-ing on Factorio the last nine months or so. Up to 2,150 hours so far.
If you've not seen it, the simplest way I can describe it is if Rube Goldberg invented a tower defense game.
May payne 3
Been New Game+ on FC5 and already beat it and finishing up rando tedious quests but I need to finish Persona 4
I am playing through Rance 03 mainly to further my japanese studies. Other than that, I occasionally play GTA Online to collect cars.
My computer is gonna be 9 years old in a few months so I'm saving for a new one. Hopefully I'll be able to get through my huge backlog with it.
I played the remake of Rance 1 for the same reason and I have Rance 2 chambered and ready to go at some point. They're pretty primitive for what they are though. Are you familiar with any other games in the series and if so would you recommend I skip ahead to any particular one?
Is your Rance 2 the remake? Rance 02 is found within the Alice 2010 bundle. I might have the torrent file somewhere if you need it....
I downloaded all of them in advance, to be honest. I only discovered the series recently, so I wanted to play them in order. So far, Rance 03 is way, way better than the other two, it's got VA, Kanami-chan and Shizuka-chan are in it as well. The gameplay shares some features with 01, but it's a lot more fun and refined.
Rance 02 has shittier scenes, the fights and the dungeons are more tedious and the BGM is not as good, either. Also, it's shorter than the other two. Even then, 03 picks up where 02 ends, and many characters from it show up all the time. I recommend you play through it at least once.
I am looking forward to Sengoku Rance, I've heard it's so good that some people put it in their top 10 strategy games.
Thanks for the rundown, that's exactly the kind of info I needed. Yeah my Rance 2 is the remake. The title theme is a banger but in a quick dabble I got the sense that it wasn't quite as good as Rance 1. Still, if it's shorter, and if it fits in the continuity and Rance 3 is a big improvement, then I'll stick with it and do the full series with as much thoroughness as I can. Like you, I've heard a ridiculous amount of good things about Sengoku Rance as well as Rance X, so I'm looking forward to eventually burrowing my way through to those ones.
Who knows how long that'll take though. I'm a bit burnt out on Japanese after spending hundreds of hours getting through AI Somnium and Fata Morgana this summer. I thought about re-reading Cross Channel Final Complete, which I half-assedly skimmed through once long ago - while absorbing enough to realise that it was an excellent story, I highly recommend it if you like basic VNs - but when I fired it up, the author's obtuse writing style was already hurting my brain within the first couple of scenes. Think I need to just stick with my handful of indie roguelites for a little while to recover from language fatigue and from eye strain.
Speaking of all that, you mentioned the Alice Bundle. Do you know if the Mangagamer version lets you switch language? Part of the reason I pirated the Japanese versions of Rance 1&2 is because I wasn't sure if you could play the western ports in anything other than English. If you can switch easily, then I might try purchasing them as I go forward in order to support the devs a bit, assuming nothing is censored.
Sorry, I do not know anything about the Mangagamer version. I'd rather buy some merch to help AS, but my coffers are in a bit of a crisis atm.
Thanks for the recommendation, I can see myself going through it in order to take a break from our hero with insatiable lust.
BTW, what is your set up for going through the VNs? Like what kind of programs do you use? I use Textractor and Anki with the Migaku dictionary addon.
My setup is my smartphone in my hand lol. I use the app 'Japanese Dictionary Takaboto' to look up most things, along with 漢字辞典 when I want to look up a kanji by input rather than Takaboto's radical search. I actually kind of hate it; I'm accustomed to looking up Japanese on an ancient Canon electronic dictionary which gave up the ghost last year, so touchscreens and inescapable adverts in apps make me want to puke.
I've seen Textractor mentioned and I could probably save myself countless hours with it, so I'm going to give it a look.
It's Halloween, so I've replayed Dead Space twice, and now I'm on my third playthrough of Resident Evil 4. A P.R.L. 412-only run is harder than it looks, despite it being one of the overpowered unlockable weapons for NG+. My current run is with the Chicago Typewriter, with a semi-auto rifle for moments where I need more precision that a bullet hose won't solve.
Been going through a refueling outage at the nuke plant so I haven't played much. Mostly played a little bit of Genshin. Basically roll the dice on what to play when I get home. Started the DOOM Eternal DLC, been pretty good so far. Also need to finish Digimon Cyber Sleuth when I have more than a day off.
mancraft
Been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 here, with a goal of hitting Definitive Edition of Chronicles 1 after. I just wrapped up a stint of Super Mario Odyssey. On the computer front, I have a big soft spot for Stellaris and it's nice to chip away it in little chunks. I can't really buy anything new right now, but that's okay. The backlog is big.
It's too bad about SW Squadrons, but at least X-Wing is on Steam now. If you've never touched any of the old school X-Wing flight sims, Alliance might not be a bad place to start.
Blood Bowl 2 and Gloomhaven, thinking about getting back into Absolver.
Blood Bowl is such a glorious nightmare of RNG, I love/hate it. I played Kislev last season, which was a painful experience from which I am still recovering.