So, what're you playing?

[Yegolev]

I generally tolerate all the clicking shit in Telltale games, even though it keeps me from actually listening to the dialog and undercuts my overall gaming experience.  This new Batman one, however, is nutso.  Also, I'm pretty sure I've heard this one before.  I picked a response that was basically a foreshadowing joke on Harvey Dent and my wife was like "So you see where this is going?!" and I'm like "I THINK SO".

[Sky]

You'll just have to face it.

[Rishathra]

I would argue that playing a TellTale game because you want to play a game means you're doing it wrong.  Not that I am any kind of fan of the QTEs, but they are mostly harmless anyways.  I treat them like when you watch a movie on your computer and you occasionally have to shake the mouse to keep the monitor from going to sleep.

The QTEs in the final boss fight in Tales from the Borderlands were hilarious, though.

[Teleku]

As I said, the QTE (was quoting the incorrect CTE drunkenly, heh) helps me be engaged and at least feel like I'm doing something.  The Wolf Among us was great, and I enjoyed the interaction.

I'm totally thrilled with puzzle's or other challenges in a point and click game.  I god damn kickstarted Obduction, and played through the original Myst games before in preparation.  Alas, things like Gone Home and Firewatch had zero puzzles or mystery.  They were complete walking simulators in the vein of Dear Esther.

While the story tends and dialog tends to be really well done in TellTale games, not sure I could stand it if there was almost no interaction and I just walked through the plot.

[Sky]

If the game is about story, then make the story the game. It's not about sitting unengaged through a bad CGI movie. It's about exploration (the adventure game segments, I'm basing this on TWD and BttF) and story choices. Choices made in game (actions triggering consequences) or dialogue options.

QTE is lazy and stupid.

[Yegolev]

Tales from the Borderlands was pretty awesome, in my opinion.  All around.

Game of Thrones was too depressing and after some time I didn't feel like choosing any path because I just knew I was going to be stabbed anyway.

Batman, though.  A lot of buttons to push AND I've already heard this story.  At this point it's like remaking a Bible story again and again, not to give it too much credit but to make a point that 90% of Americans know the Batman story.

[Khaldun]

I thought the Batman one was messing quite a bit with the mythos in terms of the Waynes, etc.?

[apocrypha]

Steam backlog huh. Just had a look at Steam Calculator and I have, apparently, 190 games with less than 1 hour played. 

I'm gonna order them by rating and start working my way down until they get too shit for me to manage an hour of. First up... The Wolf Among Us!

[Cyrrex]

I have started to use the refund policy for Steam, especially because it is hard to sort out good VR games from cynical shitware.  Kind of a nice way to try things out.  At first, I felt a little guilty about refunding stuff, but then I decided that if you produce unfun shit that I play for less than two hours, the problem is yours.

I wonder how much of that old shit you could get refunded?  There is probably a time limit for all I know.

[apocrypha]

I'm pretty certain there's a limit, I thought it was 2 weeks. TBH I think most of the low-rated stuff I have has come from Humble Bundles. Also myself and a couple of friends occasionally gift each other stupid shit for a laugh.

[MrHat]

Dragon Quest Heroes of Minecraft demo is out on PS4.

It's fun.  It's minecraft but you build a town for people.

[Druzil]

Dragon Quest Heroes of Minecraft demo is out on PS4.

It's fun.  It's minecraft but you build a town for people.

DQ Heroes was $12 off with Amazon Prime the other day when I grabbed it.   Not sure if it still is.

Been playing some Enter the Gungeon which I'm liking quite a bit.  There's definitely randomness to it where you don't get a decent gun some runs which sucks but I realize that's just part of the genre.  I like the aesthetic considerably more than Spelunky and Issac which I think helps. 

Also some more Devil Daggers which is a great game to just blow 5-10 minutes on.

[Setanta]

Messing around with Hybrid Wars by Wargaming. It's weird... I should hate it... but I keep going back to it despite its lack of story.

[schild]

I bought Battlerite because Hex games weren't firing. 100% sure I'll regret it.

[Khaldun]

There is something about the name Battlerite that makes me look at it every time I see it and think, "That's misspelled", or "Wait, what?" I can't put my finger on it but there's something wrong about the word. "Rite of Battle" doesn't bug me at all, but "Battlerite" feels like a medicine or a snack food.

[apocrypha]

Maybe it's meant to refer to a follower of Battler?

[Yegolev]

I'll hand you a Battlerite ...  sandwich.

He said:

I come from the land down under!

[Rasix]

Sounds like a drug store generic MOBA.

[Teleku]

Maybe it's meant to refer to a follower of Battler?

Ah, similar to those who study the teachings of Cathol.

[Sky]

inorite

[lamaros]

Still playing Duelyst, and CS:GO.

[apocrypha]

Steam backlog huh. Just had a look at Steam Calculator and I have, apparently, 190 games with less than 1 hour played. 

I'm gonna order them by rating and start working my way down until they get too shit for me to manage an hour of. First up... The Wolf Among Us!

OK so I gave The Wolf Among Us a couple of hours and it just isn't gelling with me. The characters are great, the story is fine, I like the look of it, but it's just not all falling into place for me. It's very slow and clunky, and I don't mean the story pacing, I mean the interface as much as anything. I think I'd probably have coped with it on console tbh, but on PC it feels like it's been made out of left over crap from a steam punk costume.

Also doesn't help that it crashes on launch (on PC) if you have a controller plugged in, despite feeling like a perfect title for playing on the couch with a controller. Apparently this bug has been there since it released. On the official forums one of the forum mods links to a file that supposedly fixes it... but that file is malware. This kind of shit really pisses me off and speaks volumes about what kind of company Telltale Games is.

So, on to the next one down the list... Don't Starve.

[Sky]

Had to force myself to put down Mafia III and go to bed last night. Digging it!

[Setanta]

Wolf amoung us is the only Telltale game I've finished. I really enjoyed it. Tales of the Borderlands dumped my saves half way through the series and I can't go through the early eps again because I just wanted to finish it. GoT Ep1 was good but then I got bored of characters that might/will die.

[Quinton]

In their latest effort to simulate my day job in a video game, Zachtronics has delivered unto us SHENZHEN-I/O.

It is fantastic.

It is sort of a fusion of SpaceChem and TIS-100.

http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/

[Trippy]

In their latest effort to simulate my day job in a video game, Zachtronics has delivered unto us SHENZHEN-I/O.

It is fantastic.

It is sort of a fusion of SpaceChem and TIS-100.

http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/

If they keep going with this stuff at some point we'll be inadvertently programming Skynet.

[Sky]

Internet gripes about the framerate aside (so far, I've only noticed it in one hectic chase scene), and a few of my own about some series quirks I loved that they dropped (multiple era gameplay, traffic laws, gas tanks), the game is really good.

As usual, the face tech is outstanding and really sells the acting, which is quite good so far. The gunplay is enjoyable, but I'm not a shooter guy. Basic cover shooter with some improvements over the last iteration. Guns sound amazing and feel good, first time I picked up a gangster's magnum when mine ran out, the difference in sound and kick put a smile on my face.

Decent stealth, though the AI is a bit early-thief dopey about things. Since I liked early Thief, I easily overlook that. Enemies show up on radar when you see them, then drop off after a few seconds if you lose LoS, and their icon is directional. That plus patrol routes helps the stealth movement a lot. The stealth takedowns are a bit robust (I'm playing on easy but will probably bump that up to difficult once I get the controls down), you can reach out from hiding, snag a guy with one of a variety of animations, and pull him back to cover.

An early mission is a long assault on a gangster fortification, I only stealthed up one side, so it was a cover shooter on the way back. Both options are fully valid. In a later mission, I'm trying to draw the police away from my buddies, so I'm in cover with a ton of cops. A cop yells from off to the side (oh, the voice stuff is great, very positional and informative "I'm out!" (good for timing when to pop out) "There he is!" etc), I look over and there's a little tunnel, I run to gun him down, missing terribly...stop for a sec to aim and take three bullets in the back, leaving me almost dead with no medkits. I take the shot and vault over a crate or whatever, then slowly cover shoot the three cops, one of whom gets on his radio and relays this to the others. I take him and the other guy out, and sneak down the alley as a couple cars pull up.

Bleeding profusely, I decide to switch to stealth takedowns. A cop looks down the alley "Hmm, don't see anything here" (again, very Thief feeling) and I use the (very abusable) whistle mechanic, drawing him down the alley (tradeoff, now he's suspicious and ready to shoot). Since I'm on easy, I do a quick takedown. At the mouth of the alley, I see the cops heading toward the downed guys who had radioed for backup ("It's a bloodbath over here, call in more units!") and decide to hoof it across the street while they're all distracted.

A short sneak through another block, with only one takedown and several avoided encounters (I'm hitting the periphery of police activity now) and I'm in the final area to leave the alert zone (changes from red and blue to just blue, similar to when cops lose sight of you in GTA V). A couple more takedowns and I'm out and meet up with my buddies at the getaway car.

And then the car chase scene starts.

Great balance of action and story. Love it.

[Kail]

Decided to run through Ultima 2 just for completeness' sake.  I have kind of mixed feelings on this one.  I really like the IDEA of the game, having to travel around a big world collecting information from all over.  There's pretty much no breadcrumb trail and you can just march straight to Minax's castle if you want (and get killed immediately, but still, you can at least go there).  The problem is that obtaining the information is a titanic pain in the ass because traveling in general is a titanic pain in the ass, and a lot of it is either too cryptic to be useful or just not mentioned at all (fucking "I'm an old man" guy, looking at you).  I have no idea how people beat this game without Ye Olde Internette, I was getting destroyed until I realized that Blue Tassels are basically the most important item starting out.  And once you do figure the systems out, half the content is useless.  I don't think you EVER need to enter a dungeon or tower anywhere, the entire first person mode is completely redundant, there's an entire solar system that is both ludicrously risky to explore and completely pointless (except for one guy on one planet you have to talk to once).

Figured I'd give Wildstar a shot, too, before it dies.  So far, I'm really liking it.  Not sure if I just haven't gotten to the sucky parts yet, or if I must report to the reeducation centres for correction, but I'm having a lot of fun.

Tried Savage: Resurrection.  It's basically Savage: Battle for Newerth but with updated graphics.  The one big innovation here is that they added microtransactions for cosmetic items, which I'm pretty sure was the one thing everybody was asking for.  Also, almost nobody plays it, so it's basically just a few grizzled vets (or people who played the original Savage) beating the shit out of bewildered newbies on the one half empty AI server.  It's also pretty glitchy and clunky.  But aside from that it's, y'know, Savage, a game from like 2000 that was kind of fun.

[ghost]

Finally threw my hands up in frustration at Fallout 4.  Maybe I'll pick it back up later, but jeez, it's super bland.

Going to give the Witcher 3 a try after some recs from some friends.  Never made it through the first iteration, but maybe this one will be better.

[Yegolev]

Playing Borderlands 2 because it's comfort food to me and it works to chill.  Also got Darkest Dungeon which isn't chill but that's OK when I want something dark and grim.  I feel like I was playing something else but I forgot due to a bifurcated vacation.  The first half was in WDW with many people and the second half was just my wife and me in Savannah.  I was actually in Savannah for 16 hours (awake for 8) before we decided it would be wise to abandon the city.

Spent more time with AC Syndicate.  It's overall pretty good, with my only complaints being that it's not Black Flag.  I do like Jacob Frye well enough, if only because he wears a top hat and brass knuckles.

Wife finished AC Rogue and the ending was neat since we had already played Unity.  Why out of order?  These things just happen.

[apocrypha]

Having a lot of fun with Don't Starve. Fucker is difficult though. So far I've been killed by frogs, cows, bees, frogs again and a bastard tree that came to life. Then wolves. Haven't starved though!

[Sky]

Haven't starved though!

Winning!

[jakonovski]

The new Doom game was pretty awesome. First game I've finished in a while.

[Merusk]

Finally started Nuka Cola on Fallout.  Accidentally shot one of the raiders while trying to skip dialog in their enclave and had to kill them all.   Oops.

Four fat men later and I now have killed them all and Gage won't talk to me.  Guess I'm done here.  Worst DLC ever.

[Yegolev]

I tried to kill everyone in Diamond City but the game was against me.