So, what're you playing?

[Merusk]

Screw up your character that badly or already have another concept you want to try?

[Ironwood]

More aimlessly wandering for an hour or two, fucking everything up and then saying 'Right, take this seriously.'

It's a much, much harder game to get into than Three.  Not sure I'm sold on it yet.  Way too... bitty.

[Lantyssa]

I was the same way.  I couldn't ever get very far in NV, no matter how many times I tried.

[Bunk]

I restarted NV about 20 times. Only ever made it to Vegas proper twice, never went beyond that. I understand people have a lot of love for it, but it never hooked me the way 3 did.

[Xanthippe]

Are you using VATS?  You don't have to worry about aiming much, like with a traditional FPS, if you use VATS.

I guess not, since I don't know what that is.

I like having the extra ammo and not dying easily. It makes up for my absolute terribleness at playing FPSes.

I started over again, too, now that I sort of understand the whole leveling concept. I can only play for an hour or two at a time, (hands don't work with console controls like they ought to or used to) but it's fun. I like the open worldishness, the crafting, the salvaging and the farming.

[Yegolev]

Well, you should use VATS.  Says the guy with 13 Perception.  It's L1 on my controller.  Also helps spot enemies hiding in the bushes if you're into that.

[Falconeer]

Also helps spot enemies landmines hiding in the bushes if you're into that.

Fixed that for you.

[Khaldun]

Some of the stuff in this game gets kind of amusingly crazy at times. I was walking back out of Jamaica Plains having set them up with some defenses after supply lining them and I headed towards the South Boston salvage yard. I see a BoS vertibird firing on the salvage yard and coming in for a landing. I hear the Super Mutant suicider noise (I'm still a long ways off) and boom there goes the vertibird. I crouch and size stuff up. There's a legendary Super Mutant Master on the balcony, I don't see any others. So I figure what the heck, I'll plunk him. Scope headshot and then VATS critical and he's mutating. I figure I'm in good shape, he doesn't even know yet where I am. Then another Super Mutant Master comes out of the house. Ok, still not a problem. Then I see four more Super Mutant Masters heading my way from the other end of the salvage yard. This is starting to get hairy, but none of them really know where I am yet, lots of retarded yelling about stop hiding human. Then Deacon decides that he would like to fight right now and goes forward of my position to start shooting. Which pulls the whole mob, eight Super Mutants, six Masters. That's a bit much even in X-01 to handle, especially since I'm low on shotgun shells and fusion cells. So I start running. They stay on me. We have a huge running battle all through Jamaica Plains--cars blowing up, grenades being thrown, sniping, the whole magilla. After I've dropped three of them, five of them still around but wounded, I have a damaged leg on the armor, a BoS vertibird comes in overhead and starts shooting and somehow one of the Super Mutants blows it out of the sky, so I have raining flaming chunks of Vertibird coming down in and around the fight. I think I'm going to have to start carrying a missile launcher and the cannonball shooting thing with me for this sort of thing.

[Rasix]

Nothing but Fallout 4.  Some League, because my son likes watching me play against bots and has no idea how to play most characters (he's six).  I've been trying to get him to play HotS instead, as it might be easier if he doesn't have to worry about the years of complexity baked into LoL, but he seems to just like it better.

On the phone, its still mostly Heroes Charge and showing up for wars in Clash of Clans.  2.0 update for Heroes Charge is dreadful, but somehow I'm still playing despite it.  A stupid bug ate 400 of my exp salves and support is quibbling over with me.

[Yegolev]

Didn't get much time on the game systems over the holiday.  The boy has decided he likes Disgaea 5 and so he is working on that, also some Rogue Legacy and other random junk.

I played more Rogue Legacy on my Vita while watching Tom Brady wallow in hubris, then determined that there is something not working properly with the cross-save and so that's probably going to be Vita-only until I get that fixed.

I think I've played more Fallout 4 but time passage in the Commonwealth is weird.  I'm supposed to be completing quests but all I can remember right now is a long, long string of slow-motion exploding skulls and detached legs.  I do like taking out the legs.

Sometime last week I finally completed the new Act 4 of Path of Exile with a fire witch.

[HaemishM]

I decided that I just wasn't getting Europa Universalis IV, so I installed Banished on my work computer and played for an hour at lunch. I like it so far, though figuring out how to get those fuckers to breed some new citizens is a bit of a challenge.

[WayAbvPar]

Picked up Darklands (which I forgot I had bought before from GOG  ), Dark Souls, and Pillars of Eternity from the Steam sale. Have only got to spend an hour or so on Pillars, but I really like the feel of it thus far. Also grinding out the tail end of Season 4 in Diablo 3 (chasing achievements for the most part).

[Jeff Kelly]

Playing Dark Souls 2.

That game is a huge disappointment compared to the original. The game feels as if the design team has not understood anything about what made the original game great and consequently focused on the wrong aspects.

It feels like Souls fan fiction but not like a coherent game.

[Flood]

2.0 update for Heroes Charge is dreadful, but somehow I'm still playing despite it.  A stupid bug ate 400 of my exp salves and support is quibbling over with me.

This has happened to me twice, with XP cheeses - pretty sizable stacks of 20-30.  I mean, I guess it's okay that my Arcane Sapper is now level 61 compared to all my other guys hanging out at 55, but if there's some avenue of recourse - post it up in HC thread if you don't mind?

[Margalis]

Playing Dark Souls 2.

That game is a huge disappointment compared to the original. The game feels as if the design team has not understood anything about what made the original game great and consequently focused on the wrong aspects.

It feels like Souls fan fiction but not like a coherent game.

I actually just started playing this again, after not having played for a year. It's not bad, but it's not nearly as good either. It's weird - there are some major missteps (like the map layout and the ability to teleport anywhere from the start) but a lot of it is just the compounding of many small things like enemy placement and numbers. Apparently Scholar of the First Sin changes a lot of the enemy layout, but I'm not sure if it's for better or worse. (Haven't played it) It definitely does feel like a team tried to make a Souls game very true to the first, but didn't quite understand what that meant.

I just made it to a spot where once again the difficulty is just a lot of enemies. In Dark Souls 1 there were very few places where there were a lot of enemies, and in those few places (like the Bell Gargoyle cathedral steps) having a lot of enemies was the point. DS2 often feels like a wave based arena combat game.

[brellium]

I've been playing some Wolfenstein: The New Order, and watching The Man in the High Castle.

[Jeff Kelly]

A few things about Dark Souls 2:

They "improved" the character levelling systems and mechanics and made them more complex. The system that matters the least in Souls games yet as a distinct and important purpose. The RPG mechanics in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are just an elabroate con. They give a false sense of incremental improvement of your character (and it's incremental) every time you hit a wall. It's just there to keep you going and give you a sense of progress when you hit a wall during gameplay. It gives you a purpose (grinding and levelling) and lulls you into the false feeling that encounters get easier because you've 'levelled up'. Except that levelling up an attribute only marginally increases that attribute and there's a soft cap, while cost for levelling up rises in a quadratic or exponential fashion.

For example: Endurance 10 in DS equals 91 'points' of endurance. Endurance 30 is 133 'points' of endurance. The cloranthy ring is basically a bigger boost to endurance than the 20 increments you usually invest during a run to get it from 10 to maybe 30.

Without the rpg mechanic a lot more people would probably quit after they hit a wall and and didn't progress for a longer time. The RPG mechanic is just something to occupy players until they've improved their play enough to progress. It doesn't matter that much. Improving your gear matters much more. That's why Dark Souls allows for so many viable and such diverse builds. There aren't any builds. You need a certain amount of strength, dex, faith or int to unlock options but there are no real builds.

The fact that DS2 improved and expanded the least important game mechanic tells me that the designers really had no clue what they were doing.

[Jeff Kelly]

Then there's combat.

Dark Souls' combat is not hard. It requires determination and patience. It's slow paced with quick exchanges of blows and hits and it makes you commit to your action because a misjudgment or an impatient action will leave you open to counter-attack and will cost you. That is the whole point of the combat system. Two opponents testing out each other slowly and deliberately while talking any opportunity to strike quickly should it present itself. Because that strike is deadly, both for you and for the enemy.

It's also somewhat 'realistic' due to the fact that fighting several enemies at once puts you at a distinct disadvantage and because of 'deadly' attacks that can stagger and make one lose 'poise'. So DS makes you really think about who to fight and where. In DS2 you can't even seperate enemies from each other effectively to enable you to kill them one by one. The whole 'hollow' thing is basically an in-game explanation why enemies are stupid enough to not gang up on you. except in DS2 they always do. Yesterday I had to fight three of the big mace wielding things in that turtle armor all at once. (They trigger all at once) In a level where I didn't even have enough space to fight one.

This is combined with a combat system where enemies do much more poise damage to you and you do less to them. Where it's harder to block 100% of physical attacks and where you can't break enemies out of their attack animations as easily or even at all. Back-Stabs and parries/ripostes also seem much harder to pull off than in DS.

It's quite frankly annoying how often the game spirngs two or even three enemies at you simultaneously so that the only recourse for you as a player is to run around the level like a frightened chicken. Just to get some of them to leash or get stuck on terrain so that you are able to fight and kill one of them at a time.

The fight against those three turtles basically went like this: Run to the start of the level. As soon as they leash aggro one of them and train them further away. Kill that guy and rinse and repeat until all of them are dead.

Or buy firebombs and simply blow them up when they run past one of the several conveniently placed barrels of gunpowder.

[Falconeer]

It's a known fact that for Dark Souls 2 they had a different Lead Designer as Miyazaki was busy with the secret development of Bloodborne. He is back at the helm for the upcoming Dark Souls 3.

[jakonovski]

DS2 was a bit cheap with enemy groups, but then again I felt that gearing up until you were unstoppable was much easier.

[Ard]

So who picked up Just Cause 3 that wants to tell me how it actually compares to 2?  I have my concerns since it's being made by a different team than the ones that did 2, so I haven't bought it despite wasting who knows how many hours on 2.

[Trippy]

I picked it up and played a bit last night and am struggling with the controls* just like I did with Just Cause 2. I only played Just Cause 2 for a bit (cause controls) so I can't compare them.

I did watch some streams of it and it does look fun.

* Hitting Space instead of Shift for Handbrake causes some hilarious vehicle wipeouts in case you want to try it. Also deploying my bodysuit just seems to dive me straight into the ground. And the grappling hook is confusing now cause of the double hooks.

[Shannow]

Picked up skyrim with all the DLC thru Steam sale. Forgot how good this game is.

[Trippy]

I picked it up and played a bit last night and am struggling with the controls* just like I did with Just Cause 2. I only played Just Cause 2 for a bit (cause controls) so I can't compare them.

I did watch some streams of it and it does look fun.

* Hitting Space instead of Shift for Handbrake causes some hilarious vehicle wipeouts in case you want to try it. Also deploying my bodysuit just seems to dive me straight into the ground. And the grappling hook is confusing now cause of the double hooks.

The vehicle handling in Just Cause 3 with keyboard is terribad.

[Yegolev]

I didn't realize Just Cause 3 was out, but I'll report back how it works using a real control system.

[Ard]

I'm specifically interested in the ps4 version, which I've indirectly heard is not so good.  After how bad the controls were on 2 for keyboard, I won't even really consider buying the PC version unless it's somehow light years ahead of the console ones.

[Paelos]

I didn't mind the controls for JC2 on the PC. I'm apparently the guy that just doesn't give a fuck.

Yet, AC3 bothered the everloving shit out of me.

[Yegolev]

There's an Asheron's Call 3?

[Rasix]

We lost that acronym a while ago.

[Yegolev]

Says you.  I wish I could fix my wiring.

[Sky]

I absolutely loved Just Cause 2 on PC, used a 360 controller on the sofa. Gave no shits about crappy shooting or dodgy driving, just a goddamned fun game to mess around with. After black friday, don't have the budget for another full price game, the release date was ill-planned imo (also: FO4).

[Rendakor]

Don't wanna pay full price? Good news: it's 50% off at cdkeys.com.

www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/just-cause-3-pc-cd-key-steam

[schild]

Going back to talking about Dark Souls.

Dark Souls was a heartless followup to Demon's Souls.
Dark Souls 2 was a soulless followup to Dark Souls.
Bloodborne was a confused attempt at creating something new that wasn't either but felt the same.

Fucking, just, 1080p Demon's Souls, thanks.

[Ragnoros]

Picked up Far Cry 4 and have been enjoying messing around and exploring in it rather a lot. The setting is rather problematic: White Savior helps brown people by shooting brown people for a cast of flat stereotype characters. That said, the game is absolutely gorgeous on my R290, and runs much better than the choppy FO4.

[lesion]

MGSV, which I'm playing now, takes me back to MGS3 which was on PS2 which I had before never getting a PS3 which has Demon's Souls which I couldn't play which I do so want to play. Kevin Bacon.