So, what're you playing?

[Yegolev]

I don't always read Jeff Kelly's posts, but when I do, I do it with interest.

I kinda forgot how fun Destiny is.  I finally got over my angst, jammed all of my old exotics in the bank, and picked up the story mission track to get shit done in the book.  Now I'm back to having fun by actually looking forward to drops instead of trying to figure out how to get that one cockblock upgrade mat for my sets of exotics.  Yea, I miss that second grenade but I'll survive.  I even melted down a bunch of legendary weapons that were stinking up my bank.

[grunk]

Actively Playing:
1. Path of Exile
2. Star Craft 2 (high diamond)
3. Darkest Dungeon
4. 7 Days to Die

Casually Playing
1. Guardians of Ember
2. P1999
3. Grim Dawn

[naum]

Currently in the gaming queue, in order of frequency of play ATM:

1. Shadowverse -- a better Hearthstone, if you can stomach the pinup art
2. Hearthstone -- I can't quit you ;(
3. Stardew Valley -- this is a cool little game but I think I need to redefine some hotkeys, as I hate the WASD setup
4. Super Mario Maker - on the 3DS
5. EU IV -- got Rights of Man expansion on Steam sale

[jakonovski]

Finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Definitely a straight to dvd sequel, but still 30 hours of very enjoyable gameplay.  Next up is Dishonored 2. I've started playing these fps sim type of games without the on screen objective marker. Definitely helps with immersion and makes you pay better attention to the game world. In some ways it's like going back to the 90s.


 

[Fabricated]

1. Dishonored 2 - on a NewGame+ run as Corvo. Great game still.
2. The Division - My game for clearing my brain of all thought.

Picked up Enter the Gungeon and I'm bad at it.

[Khaldun]

I've finished two games of Civ VI now and I kinda sorta don't like it. I do and I don't. I can't figure out exactly what's leaving me cold. I think the diplomacy AI is part of it--alliances don't seem to work the way I'd think they'd work (I thought they'd be mandatory joint-war situations, but quite the opposite), your allies don't seem to recognize that when *you* have been attacked, you're not the warmonger, etc--it's the usual thing of taking one step forward (giving the AIs really strong personalities that lead them to have predictable preferences/reactions that are distinctive from one another) and taking other steps backward. But like Civ V I can see this developing into something better over time.

[Bann]

Took my annual plunge into Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup this week. The current version (19.1) seems like its in a really good spot. Some of the annoying features I had remembered (praying over corpses, needing a dagger to carve corpses) have been phased out. I managed a win on a Troll of Cheribidos, which I would recommend highly to newer (or newly returning players.) I leveled throwing to ~8, left unarmed and fighting on the whole game, and prioritized invocations to 14 once I found an altar. Once you max out piety with Cheribidos, the stat bonuses make dodge worth investing in. I also ended up training shields as I found a nice one. Next year I'll go for a caster win.

You can play webtiles online or download the offline version here.

https://crawl.develz.org/

[Sky]

Holy shit I forgot how brutal the first horde is in 7 Days to Die. Got lulled into a sense of security and decided not to build any traps...Held out in a retrograde action on the catwalks against the first wave (which chewed through my walls like butter) until the second collapsed the walkway behind me... it was actually pretty awesome, but time to restart and build a decent defense asap...

[Yegolev]

Just over the past few days:
Final Fantasy Fifteen
Destiny
Darkest Dungeon[PS4], in which maybe I played farther on Vita because I thought I had already unlocked a thing.
Majora's Mask[3DS], because the Gamecube memory cards cannot hold a save game for a long time without data loss.

Wife still complains about her MacBook Pro but so far only PhotoShop is a real problem.  Which I find interesting.  Sims 4 on Mac is really what is keeping her from returning to the Land of Endless Tech Problems.  Also the Microsoft RDP client isn't awful.

My son is all over the place and I can not really keep up.  Last night he played Skyrim, which really isn't like him despite his friends being into Fallout and other such.  I think he completed Pokemon Moon, or at least captured the legendary.  Lots and lots of Starbound on Steam.  Last night he was playing Super Mario World on WiiU, after telling me that it was the best 2D Mario game.

Then there is some Mario Party game on 3DS which we all played together and my wife and I still do not like Mario Party.  In fact, this one is so bad that we were asking if we could play Fortune Street instead.

[Druzil]

Over my vacation:

FFXV - I'll finish it eventually (~40ish hours in, chapter 9 I think).  I'd need a long write up to really sort out my feelings on this game.  No hurry to get through is probably the TL;DR though.

FFVI - Went through start to finish in about a week.  Still shockingly great after all this time.  The end game content they added in the newer editions is super meh.

World of Final Fantasy - Purchased for some reason even after I said I wasn't going to because the art style is not my thing.  Installed it last night but I haven't started it yet.  If it's bad I'm heading for a X & X-2 play through.

DMC - Pulled this out of the backlog, I should have played this ages ago.  So far the first few stages have been fun and I didn't bounce off it like I did with replaying DMC 3.  It's really making me want to go replay Bayonetta.

The Witness - I liked this one much more than I was expecting to, most of the areas in this are really clever.  I think it's just a bit too long though.  After I finally made it to what I though was going to be the end I got excited for the ending (or maybe just being done) then got hit with another batch of difficult puzzles and my brain shut down.  I need to give this one a few more days rest and then come back and try to finish it.

Let it Die - Not letting you change the control scheme definitely goes on my list of game pet peeves.  I don't usually like to play 3rd person action games with melee attacks on the L2/R2 triggers.   I get they are going for the whole left hand/right hand thing, but seriously, just let me change it.  Uncle Death is great though, so I'm going to keep at it for awhile. 

Overcooked - I really like this game but the single player is not much fun.  My son is helping me through it a little at a time but he can only take a few levels before it burns him out     He's mostly into Subnauticia and Astroneer at the moment.  I think he also finished Pokemon Moon.

Super Mario World IS the best 2D Mario game.

[Yegolev]

I'm never really sure if my thoughts are objective in cases like this.  I know it is better than the predecessors.  Not sure if it is better than SM Galaxy, but I sure do like SMW better.

It is different with Super Metroid.  That game is objectively better than anything else in the genre.  I'm pretty sure I'm not just being nostalgic.

[Shannow]

Took my annual plunge into Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup this week. The current version (19.1) seems like its in a really good spot. Some of the annoying features I had remembered (praying over corpses, needing a dagger to carve corpses) have been phased out. I managed a win on a Troll of Cheribidos, which I would recommend highly to newer (or newly returning players.) I leveled throwing to ~8, left unarmed and fighting on the whole game, and prioritized invocations to 14 once I found an altar. Once you max out piety with Cheribidos, the stat bonuses make dodge worth investing in. I also ended up training shields as I found a nice one. Next year I'll go for a caster win.

You can play webtiles online or download the offline version here.

https://crawl.develz.org/

Darn you.

[Yegolev]

Just don't look at it.

[Rasix]

Oxenfree. I like this one so far.

I may have petered out on Dragon's Dogma. It seems rather grindy around the mid 50's point in New Game+, and I'm not quite sure I have the patience to really power up much farther. Bitterback Isle is kind of underwhelming. I was hoping for something more chaotic, rather than just big ass monsters that have a bajillion HP.

[Shannow]

Just don't look at it.

I did, but was saved by the horrendous UI.

[Sky]

Back into a bit of Firewatch while I contemplate a new gameplan for 7D2D...still bugging me that the protagonist keeps doing things I wouldn't do and doesn't give me the options to deal with things the way I want to. I like the game overall but that is grating more as it progresses.

[Yegolev]

I really just wanted to look for fires all summer, but in the end I was good with what happened.

[Rasix]

Finished Oxenfree.  Enjoyed this a lot more than Firewatch, although both are excellent walking sims. I manged to goof up every relationship but one, so it's refreshing to know that I'm as bad at video game interpersonal relations as I am at real ones. This performance should probably put me somewhere on the spectrum officially. 

Onto something new. Brief tried Vermintide (humble monthly, yah, I forgot to unsub) but that type of game really isn't my thing. I guess it was kind of fun, but playing with random idgits in an objective based co-op is not something I really want to do with my time. Heh, at least I could find a match for the prologue easy enough. I was hoping it'd have some sort of offline campaign, but that didn't look available.

So, off to the backlog.

[Yegolev]

I'm playing ARK.  This mostly means screwing around with jackass friends instead of really playing the game.  It's rather shitty.

[Signe]

Which is shitty?  ARK?  Or playing around with your jackass friends?

[Rendakor]

It can't be both?

[Yegolev]

ARK is shitty.  Jackass friends are great.  There was bad blood that surfaced from a prior episode where someone burned down someone else's treehouse in Minecraft.

The shittiness of ARK is almost a catalyst for fun times.  On other games, we have to purposely do things like drive the team off a cliff or open the menu in BL2 every time someone tries to change areas.  In ARK, the game provides all the fuel.

[Sky]

When you forget room for a spike moat when building your first stronghold on a hilltop, then carefully dig out under the foundation one block at a time, adding new cobblestone quickly...and the last support column is the one that gives out, bringing down the entire upper superstructure of wood, including all doors, chests, torches, etc.

And then it rains for the rest of the day so I can't fix it or even go scavenge up the iron I lost...

Yay

[Ginaz]

Back into Skyrim again with a new character.  Still haven't visited the Greybeards yet after 12+ hours in and I don't know if I ever will.

[Hawkbit]

My latest run is sitting at 115 hours and I just finished Dragonborn, but haven't started the Thalmor embassy quests yet. I think I'm just about totally finished with Soltsteim, so back into Skyrim proper for awhile.

[Quinton]

Finished up The Last Guardian this week, which was wonderful (even if the camera and controls often infuriated).

I'm now playing Oxenfree, which is fun, and creepy, and appears to be haunted by F13ers...

[Draegan]

Totally still into POE. I'm on my 5th char and never made it past 60. Fun game for mindless fun.

[PalmTrees]

My free month of The Secret World ran out and I dropped it. The combat changes introduced in Tokyo really bled the fun out of the game.

Now playing Legend of Grimrock 2. Just a good as the previous one so far and I still suck at finding gold keys.

[Ironwood]

There are never enough golden keys.

[Ironwood]

Currently juggling Elite and Witcher III.  I was never able to get into Witcher before because my system gronked it around, but now it's smooth as silk and I'm finding it much more enjoyable to play.

Also finding out that a complete restart was the best idea as I pretty much missed almost everything in the starting area due to my impatience with the graphics.  If there are any tips on 'things you must do before you leave the starting area' let me know now.  Apart from get that Gwent card off that one chap, of course....

[HaemishM]

Made it through Chapter 2 of the first Witcher game. Is it just me not paying enough attention, or does the main storyline just make no goddamn sense? I spent the entire Chapter 2 trying to solve a murder that I didn't even remember seeing - I don't even remember who it was that was supposed to have been killed. I realize my attention could have wavered on some details but the story feels just really tenuous.

[Khaldun]

First Witcher is definitely disjointed. It took me a long while into the game before I could fully grasp what was supposed to be going on. All the absolutely dumb back-and-forth questing doesn't help.

[Yegolev]

I should be working on Dishonored but accidentally Captain Scarlett's Pirate Booty.

[Lucas]

Regarding the first Witcher, yes, Chapter 2 of the game is a pain in the ass and can really put you off, especially the swamp area. But if you somehow manage to get through that, while resolving the majority of the loose ends (sidequests) in Vizima temple district and finally reach Chapter 3, things will get much more interesting and enjoyable, IMO.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, the swamp area almost broke me. I fucking hated that zone. All the little random encounters and surprise spawning plants - fuck that zone.