So, what're you playing?

[Rendakor]

Is there a decent wiki or getting started guide for Zomboid somewhere? I gave it a shot way back when and couldn't really figure out what was going on.

[Malakili]

pzwiki.net is your best bet. I'm not sure how up to date it is, but I gave the quick survival guide a look over and it seems like a good place to begin: http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Survival_Guide

[apocrypha]

I've been playing Guild of Dungeoneering mostly because it works perfectly on the tablet. Fun little diversion, with funny songs.

[Sky]

The isometric graphics of PZ is one of my favorite things about it.

Finally got a log wall built around my backyard, probably 4x as big as I need it to be to protect a small farm...but I did need the carpentry experience. I initially started the log wall to save nails and then I hit a warehouse and...yeah, should've done a plank wall...Anyway, have to grind out some more walls on a second raid/stash base and I'll have level 3 carpentry for doors and crates. Then I start getting to the business of sustainability.

By far the longest and best game I've had, lots of great additions have been put in. It's a decent game now and has the potential to be amazing. Love the framework and how the dev is filling it out.

[Sky]

Goddamned helicopter decided to come back to my newly-walled base like four times in one day. Fully wore out a spiked bat twice keeping up with the carnage.

And I had JUST cleaned up all the zed corpses in the neighborhood, it was so unsightly. Granted, they were naked because I stripped them all for cloth to bind the logs for my walls. And by 'cleaned up' I mean piled them high in empty houses.

[Yegolev]

I want to play Zomboid a lot but I seem to end up dyingas soon as I go outside.  Is that story thing gone for real?  I thought it was out because they can't maek gaems.

Drank a lot on Saturday in a pirate pub crawl and so on Sunday mostly slept but also poked at Challenges in Diablo 3.

[Sky]

The story and npcs were cool back when I first played it, so I hope it comes back as a game mode. Doesn't have to be perfect, but npcs sure would add a nice dimension.

Not sure how you could die so quickly, zombies are slow. Just be careful, stay behind them, sneak always, break LoS if seen, etc. And put some nails in a baseball bat asap! Full disclosure, I did set this game to easy to learn base building a little without getting slaughtered, and easy is a bit too easy. Good to learn the basics, though.

[Yegolev]

I think I get bored or distracted before I find anything as cool as a baseball bat.

[Sky]

Then you do not want to play PZ a lot  I found one literally next door in the neighbor's house. And nails in his closet.

[Yegolev]

Man, all I found was  empty cabinets and a know-it-all raccoon.  I'll try again.

Last night was Fallout 4.  My wife normally doesn't watch because the game is apparently "really disgusting", but she came in for a few minutes and I luckily exploded a supermutant's head in spectacular fashion with a new height of detail in the flying bits.  She is just a lucky charm, I guess.  She asked if that could be turned off, which I am not sure, but I told her that I could make it worse with Bloody Mess.

[Sky]

Dude. The tutorial? You die at the end. It's a joke, because the game is a story of how you died.

The tutorial isn't all that great, anyway. Run through it quickly and then hit http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Survival_Guide for the basics.

[Yegolev]

My feelings....

[Rendakor]

Picked up SMT IV: Apocalypse for 3DS, which is just as great as SMT IV was. It's nearly a direct sequel to IV, although you don't play as the same character from IV. Details in the spoiler.
It lets you import your save from IV for some free starting gear, but doesn't change the name of IV's MC-san to match the name you used which was disappointing.

[Bunk]

Picked up Just Cause 3 on XBone last night cause it was 60% off. Haven't actually started playing it yet, since it was a 47 GB download.

[apocrypha]

Installed the PS Now PC app earlier to give it a spin. Works really well, playing The Last Of Us. It's a 7 day free trial so let's see if I can finish it in that time.

[Kail]

There's a bunch of "classic" games I haven't touched, so in an effort to rectify that, I'm going back and playing a bunch of stuff from Gog that I bought but haven't played yet.  First on the list is Ultima 1, which is pretty fun.  I mean, I would probably hate it if I'd spent $50 on it and had only this game to play for the next month or so, or if I didn't have the internet to explain some of the baffling bullshit that's going on here, but since that's not the case, it's surprisingly neat.  I mean, the controls are clunky as shit, and the methods for making progress - or even what progress you should be making - are all super clunky and weird... but BECAUSE it's so weird, there's a feeling that you're learning new stuff all the time that modern games don't have.  Watch_Dogs has been sitting untouched on my hard drive, but if I booted it up for the first time, I'm fairly confident I could be running around in two or three minutes gunning down cops (or whoever you fight in that game) just based on the fact that I've played Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto, but an hour in to Ultima and I was still trying to figure it out.  Not sure if I should try to run the entire Ultima series or just finish this first one and jump to something else.

[Sky]

Installed the PS Now PC app earlier to give it a spin. Works really well, playing The Last Of Us. It's a 7 day free trial so let's see if I can finish it in that time.

Interesting, if they support the 360 controller I may have to think about that one. And of course...no Red Dead Redemption.

[Sky]

Not sure if I should try to run the entire Ultima series or just finish this first one and jump to something else.

Have you played 7 and 7.5? You should, they are my favorite crpgs of all time. There were some other good games in the series, but those were just so ridiculously good for their era.

[apocrypha]

Interesting, if they support the 360 controller I may have to think about that one. And of course...no Red Dead Redemption.

360 controller I have works fine, no rumble though. Of course Sony claim that only the Dualshock 3/4 work, but that's a flat out lie.

[Kail]

Not sure if I should try to run the entire Ultima series or just finish this first one and jump to something else.

Have you played 7 and 7.5? You should, they are my favorite crpgs of all time. There were some other good games in the series, but those were just so ridiculously good for their era.

No, the only one I remember putting any time in to before was dabbling a bit in Ultima Underworld (and even that, I barely played a few hours).  I get the impression that there's a big, overarching story for the series, though, so figured it would be best to play them in order, although given the "plot" so far in the first game I'm not sure how accurate that is.

[Sky]

I'm not sure plot even matters until 4. But I may be biased, since that was the first one I played. I also remember enjoying 5 quite a bit, but never played 6 since I was out on the road in that era.

[HaemishM]

I think the first 3 Ultimas are all basically rehashes of the same story.

[Tebonas]

There are bits and pieces of Ultima 1-3 lore in Ultima 7 and 7.5 I think (most of it in Serpents Isle), other than that they are not only inconsequential but also completely different games. 1 has Sci-Fi Tech and other planets that vanished without a trace, 2 partly plays on earth and has time travel, 3 even has other races than humans that never are mentioned again.

They were fun games, but the Ultima Experience really starts with 4 (Disclaimer: Yes that was also my first Ultima).

[apocrypha]

PS Now note: works great on my Surface tablet. Lying in bed on a Sunday morning playing The Last Of Us. 

[Yegolev]

Had a rough week and some time with Borderlands 2: Original Flavor really helped.

Well, I started a new game as Krieg but close enough to Original.

[Rasix]

Beat Life is Strange over the course of a week. This was a pretty solid experience. These "choose your own adventure" games are good for about one play through a year for me. And unlike the TellTale offerings, this doesn't have any dumb CTE (just dumb time rewinding).

Very mature, dark story. I didn't know what to expect from the story going in, so I was pleasantly surprised. The episode 3/4 went a little too straight for the heart strings, but it was moving and helped frame just how messed up the entire situation of the game is. The journey was better than the destination, as I feel they went a bit too Mass Effect 3 at the end.


Still, this was worth playing and a worthwhile experience as a whole. Any game that has you thinking about it that much (and not in a Pavlovian addiction way) after you're done for the night is doing something right. And they have my respect for putting black bars on the side so it played nice with my new monitor. I'd recommend it, but it's not for everyone. There's not a ton of gameplay and the choices you make along the way mostly just affect the journey and provide context in the end, but do not affect the ultimate end as it's a binary choice. I assume that might annoy some, but in the end I just picked a way and was satisfied.

Now, back to the backlog.  Ohh what to choose next.

edit: FYI, took about 12 hours total. So, a little over 2 hours per episode.

[Teleku]

Does the CTE stuff really bother people that much?  I'm down for story/CYOA type games, but I feel TellTale has gotten it best so far in terms of making me interact enough to feel engaged.  Gone Home and Firewatch were so far into the no-gameplay what so ever camp it was hard for me to enjoy them.  I need to feel like I'm doing something, instead of watching an incredibly slow an inefficiency movie (with a worst pay off than most).

[Hawkbit]

I remember Gone Home and Firewatch for the most part warmly, having finished and enjoyed both. I've never made it more than an hour in any Telltale game. I guess different people like different things?

[Rasix]

Does the CTE stuff really bother people that much?

Yes, it does. It's just not interesting gameplay.  I'm in it for the story and all that entails.  I'm not for being the best at hitting A B X Y when they flash on the screen for 2 seconds. That's really not interesting game play to me. Exploring the area, playing with the narrative, and figuring out some puzzles are actually more worthwhile than playing on screen Simon Says.

It's even worse in action games.  RE4 and the God of War series were worse off for it.  I'd rather an action just trigger a cutscene than make me hit B (or maybe it's X this time.. WOO HOO) while I'm straddling some sort of god/monster/overly large animal thrashing about. For all of the crap I give Shadow of the Colossus, you're actively up there stabbing the shit out of something and holding on rather than engaging in a ridiculous CTE encounter. 

[apocrypha]

I hate the QTE stuff too. Was trying to play The Wolf Among Us with my wife, with us making the choices together, but the tome limits and QTE's made that too frustrating. I think we stucki it out for about an hour and then neither os us ever went back to it.

[carnifex27]

I hate the QTE stuff too. Was trying to play The Wolf Among Us with my wife, with us making the choices together, but the tome limits and QTE's made that too frustrating. I think we stucki it out for about an hour and then neither os us ever went back to it.

That was my experience with the wife in both The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead as well. It's why I haven't picked up season 2 of The Walking Dead or Tales from the Borderlands.

[Rendakor]

Is there a difference between CTE and QTE?

[Sky]

I dislike them, as well. Make the 'game' about choices and exploration (of places and characters), not some cheesy simon (well put). It's a shame, because I really liked both TWD and the Back to the Future games but I skipped TWAU and will probably skip Batman as well. And the Batman one is a true crime (hah) because it was the perfect opportunity to do an old school Detective series without all the superheroey nonsense.

[Rasix]

Is there a difference between CTE and QTE?

Just me screwing up the acronym. Although I suppose "click time event" works too. 

And like others here, it's what holds me back from playing more TellTale games.  It's just not something in their favor. You know how the QTE is supposed to play out, just give me result that goes with the decision I made.

I hate the time between games.  I was almost tempted to play WoW.  $50 expansion price + sub made it difficult to take a flier on the inevitable failure of that endeavor.

[Sky]

I'm still on-and-off playing GTA V. Started a new game when I installed Win10, not sure whether to stick with that or bring over my old saves from my 7 computer. I hit a point where I was super broke but could make a mint if I hadn't blown all my money on crap. I got bogged down trying to make money, but it was wicked slow.

And as much as I love the game, there are a small handful of missions I hated and don't want to replay. Sunday night, replaying Trevor's first rampage 6 times was not fun. I should probably just skip it and finish the plot!