So, what're you playing?

[HaemishM]

So serious question about Witcher 1. I started Chapter 3 and it looks like I'll have to traipse across the swamp for most of this chapter as well. I'm really not sure I can handle it, I have such a visceral dislike of that zone. Is it worth pushing through that chapter for the later game? Is there some point where I can just never fucking go back there?

[Ironwood]

I gave up on witcher one multiple times. I hated it.

Three is all kinds of fucking awesome though. 

[Rasix]

So serious question about Witcher 1. I started Chapter 3 and it looks like I'll have to traipse across the swamp for most of this chapter as well. I'm really not sure I can handle it, I have such a visceral dislike of that zone. Is it worth pushing through that chapter for the later game? Is there some point where I can just never fucking go back there?

Witcher 1 and 2 have a key feature of being a rather slow game to play. You traipse around a lot. A LOT. Doesn't get better in chapter 4 as you trade swamps for fields. But hey, no swamp!

[Signe]

Two was a fair bit better than one, imo, but IW is right... three is awesome.  Having the choice of all three right now, I would totally skip one and two.  Actually I did skip almost all of one.

[Sky]

I finished 1, but got bogged down in 2's attempt at a tutorial early on a couple times. Throwing a bajillion buttons, combos, potions, whizbangs and doohickeys at me immediately makes me go play minecraft.

[Rasix]

I finished 1, but got bogged down in 2's attempt at a tutorial early on a couple times. Throwing a bajillion buttons, combos, potions, whizbangs and doohickeys at me immediately makes me go play minecraft.

The tutorial + Chapter 1 of Witcher 2 are a pretty awful introduction to the game. It gets a lot better and more forgiving after that. Plus, you'll actually have enough experience to tailor how you play instead of being dependent on everything. The two very worst boss fights are also in 1. So.. yah, you just need to get beyond that and it's a much better game.

3 is still miles better, but I thought 2 was a good experience outside of the incredibly uneven experience of the first chapter.

[Shannow]

My son, a diehard Skyrim fan, loves the Witcher. Played through 3 and all the DLC, started another playthrough. Bought Witcher 1 and the first book.
He just told me he bought a Witcher medallion off Amazon.

Holy fuck I've spawned a nerd.

[schild]

I'm playing "Decide if I want to get Resident Evil 7 in the next 90 minutes because the reviews are stellar and it's 20% off on GMG."

[Yegolev]

why even

[Signe]

I know!  I'm waiting for it to go on sale but only because I'm poor.  If I had money I would have been all over it immediately.  Resident Evil 7 is the first one in AGES that looks awesome.

[Ginaz]

I'm playing "Decide if I want to get Resident Evil 7 in the next 90 minutes because the reviews are stellar and it's 20% off on GMG."

I heard it's pretty short and uses a 3rd party DRM.  Denuvo?

[Velorath]

I picked RE7 up, partly because the reviews seemed positive. I didn't actually read any of them or play the demo though because I wanted to go in blind. I also got this partly because aside from Shadow Warrior 2 it's the only PC game I know of that supports HDR (also the reason I watched the first episode of The OA and an episode of that show with Billy Bob Thorton on Prime). Anyhow, I'm taking my time with the game but so far I've been liking it. The controls are a little clunky in true RE fashion (playing with an XB1 controller), but it also just takes a little bit to figure out how you're supposed to approach "combat" at first. I have heard it's short though and I'm not sure if there's any sort of incentive for multiple playthroughs.

[Samwise]

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

 

[Rasix]

Playing The Division currently. Thanks to advice here, I'm stinking less at it. Now most of my deaths are from not noticing that I've ran smack into a squad of mobs. 

Tried Prison Architect.  It's kind of boring. Tried Mordheim, but the tutorials aren't grabbing me. It was free anyhow.

Started a run through of Mass Effect 3, and this game is worse than I remember. The mechanics are fine, but for some reason the dialogue sounds pretty awful, and the plot is not great either. 2 was definitely the high water mark for the series.

My son and I have started playing co-op games and just finished Castle Crashers. We need some new local-co-op to have fun with.  Preferably something not too horribly violent or disturbing, but he does enjoy combat.

[Yegolev]

I enjoyed the RE7 demo and watched someone else play Kitchen.  Were my expectations too high for the actual game?

[jth]

My son and I have started playing co-op games and just finished Castle Crashers. We need some new local-co-op to have fun with.  Preferably something not too horribly violent or disturbing, but he does enjoy combat.

The first Lara Croft game (Guardian of Light) was a lot of fun, one of the best co-op games I've played. The puzzles in co-op are different from single player and require teamwork to solve.

Never tried the sequel, heard only bad things about that one.

[Rasix]

Tried to play Lost Castle with the boy. Refunded it within an hour.  I guess they weren't joking when they said it was hard in their own advertising. There's no real sense of progress, so even with some upgrades we just didn't feel like we were getting anywhere.

Don't Starve Together didn't have same screen co-op. Bummer.

[Zetor]

Played through Dark Souls 3 for the first time. With mouse&keyboard. As a pure sorcerer. I'm sure this is on the - scale somewhere, but I'm not sure of the exact location.

Now I'm playing Hellenica: a SRPG with PSX-era throwback graphics in anime steampunk ancient Greece where Plato is a friendly NPC who can use 'Dialectics' to AOE stun enemies. ... anyway, the gameplay is kinda fun, but definitely not an FFT, Fire Emblem or even Disgaea. I'd call it, uh, diet coke Telepath Tactics meets Invisible Inc? Oh, and the protagonist is a (were)bear, apparently.

[Bann]

Playing The Division currently. Thanks to advice here, I'm stinking less at it. Now most of my deaths are from not noticing that I've ran smack into a squad of mobs. 

Tried Prison Architect.  It's kind of boring. Tried Mordheim, but the tutorials aren't grabbing me. It was free anyhow.

Started a run through of Mass Effect 3, and this game is worse than I remember. The mechanics are fine, but for some reason the dialogue sounds pretty awful, and the plot is not great either. 2 was definitely the high water mark for the series.

My son and I have started playing co-op games and just finished Castle Crashers. We need some new local-co-op to have fun with.  Preferably something not too horribly violent or disturbing, but he does enjoy combat.

I picked up Crypt of the Necrodancer on sale  this week (as of Friday morning, still seems to be on sale for 4 bucks). I've found the co-op to be surprisingly good. We configured so one person uses wasd, the other the arrow keys. I was also happy to note that the first unlockable character has a passive that makes the game turn based rather than rhythm based, which may be nice depending on the age of your son.

[Fabricated]

Enter the Gungeon is on sale and is pretty good.

[Rasix]

I had Dungeon Defenders + all DLC from an old Humble Bundle. Boy seems to enjoy that, and it's not bad. The split screen doesn't give you a lot of room visually, but we've seemed to manage.

Enter the Gungeon looks hard as hell.

[Job601]

I started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition recently. Wow, is this game a combination of the great and the terrible.  Great:  Worldbuilding through dialogue, complexity of the characters, quality of the art in the environments, snappy and streamlined controls.  Terrible:  Combat, crafting, character art and costumes (everyone looks like a zombie clown,) pacing, weird cutscene editings, and level design (especially inside cities and buildings, which seem torn between trying to be good for gameplay and trying to be realistic  and achieve neither.) 

Also still playing Heroes of the Storm and trying out Enter the Gungeon.  It's reminiscent of Binding of Isaac but seems to have more respect for its player's time.

[Yegolev]

The middle-school squad played Gungeon for a weekend or two.  It has now disappeared into the mists of history.

Wife and I played Dragon Quest Builders this weekend.  It's OK.

[Mandella]

Enter the Gungeon is on sale and is pretty good.

I honest to god read this first as "Enter the Gungan."

So disappointed.

[Rendakor]

The middle-school squad played Gungeon for a weekend or two.  It has now disappeared into the mists of history.

Wife and I played Dragon Quest Builders this weekend.  It's OK.

I couldn't really get into DQ:B. It was sort of ok, but the building was too scripted and it was too quest-driven. If it had come out on PC I might have stuck with it longer, but the controls were pretty shit for building stuff on the Vita.

[PalmTrees]

Finished Legend of Grimrock2. Or at least as much as I could w/o spoilers and I'm still too prideful to go look. Maybe by next month that will have worn off. Currently playing Legend of Heroes:Trails in the Sky Second chapter. Pretty much same as the first so far which is good.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I liked DQ:Builders. I wanted to love it but the controls are horribad and it was really tiresome fighting them all the time. I just went back to Minecraft instead. Given the choice of fine, easy, intuitive controls with crude graphics, little direction or plot (after surviving the first couple days), and clunky/limited npc systems, versus cute graphics, ignorable but available plot/direction, clever and progressable npc systems, but horrible controls that leave you having to sometimes do things three or four times to get them right, I think I'll stick with the former while wishing for the nicer parts of the latter.  If I want to Minecraft on the couch instead of at my desktop, I'll pull out DQ:B, but otherwise MC wins hands down.

[Druzil]

I liked DQ:Builders as well.  It added some depth to the Minecraft style game play that I really appreciated (building recipes, better fishing & cooking, meaningful NPC's, furniture/props).  All of it really leading to me becoming attached to my little towns.   I also liked just how different each of the 4 chapters were.  They all had a just a little different thing they were doing that made the game fresh again as I moved through them.

I think I've said it before but my biggest issues with it was the lack op co-op online and/or split-screen.  Also forcing people though the story mode before giving them full access to Terra Incognita was a questionable decision for people that wanted the less structured experience.  The good news is the game sold really well, so there's already talk of a sequel by SE.  Hopefully in the next one we get the full co-op experience and randomly generated worlds to really flesh the game out.

The controls are a little funky for sure but I got used to them once I learned to use the bumpers to place blocks.  Clearly a PC version would be beneficial here and SE did port DQ Heroes to PC, so maybe we'll see DQ Builders on PC eventually.

[Sky]

I liked DQ:Builders. I wanted to love it but the controls are horribad and it was really tiresome fighting them all the time. I just went back to Minecraft instead. Given the choice of fine, easy, intuitive controls with crude graphics, little direction or plot (after surviving the first couple days), and clunky/limited npc systems, versus cute graphics, ignorable but available plot/direction, clever and progressable npc systems, but horrible controls that leave you having to sometimes do things three or four times to get them right, I think I'll stick with the former while wishing for the nicer parts of the latter.  If I want to Minecraft on the couch instead of at my desktop, I'll pull out DQ:B, but otherwise MC wins hands down.

You can mod in a lot of the latter. My favorite HQM is still Blightfall.

And also play it from your sofa with the right setup 

[Druzil]

Started playing Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest this week.  I haven't' played a Fire Emblem game in awhile so it's been fun.   There's some minor things like equipment breaking & town building that I'm sure the die hard Fire Emblem crowd love but just doesn't add anything meaningful for me.  Also, I still don't think it's as good as Advance Wars.

Gearing up for a busy month with Horizon, Zelda & Nier coming out within like a week.  Then Persona 5 less than a month after that.  Plus some games I'll possibly want to play like Nioh & For Honor.   No way I can finish it all but hopefully it will be a great few months of games.

[Yegolev]

Wife and I played Dragon Quest Builders this weekend.  It's OK.

I couldn't really get into DQ:B. It was sort of ok, but the building was too scripted and it was too quest-driven. If it had come out on PC I might have stuck with it longer, but the controls were pretty shit for building stuff on the Vita.

Controls are shit on PS4.  Overall it's not great, as you say.  My wife has latched on despite the anger-inducing controls and overabundant quest chatter.  This really just points out how desperate she is for something new and good.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Got Sovereignty: Crown of Kings. Kind of an old style Total War map layer (Shogun/Medieval 1 board game style map and army depictions). The tactical battles are turn based, hex tiled. The strategic layer isn't very interesting though, not much depth to the provincial layer, not even really as good as those old total war games let alone something like Dominions or a Paradox game. The UI is terrible. The tactical battles are decent but again fairly little depth compared to other turn based tactical games, basically just move and combat. Terrain doesn't seem to do anything besides impede movement (doesn't even LOS block range fire). Seems badly balanced, my dwarf crossbow units just obliterated even infantry units depicted as having large shields. Battle AI is decent at least.

A lot of people seem to have crash issues, I didn't, ran smoothly for me but that's not much consolation to people who CTD every 10 minutes. Avoid this game even if you're a sucker for this kind of strategy/tactical map mix. Inferior in basically all aspects to existing titles and doesn't offer anything fresh either.

[koro]

My gaming time has been pretty much 100% Bloodborne ever since getting my PS4 Pro a few weeks ago.

Overall I enjoy it, but it's not sucking me in like Dark Souls did.

[Yegolev]

Fell back to Borderlands 2 in between anxiety attacks.  Hit the end of Krieg's Mania tree and it all came together with that final skill.  Works great until I fight a boss that I can't run up to and chop, like the Leviathan.

[Ironwood]

Fucking Witcher 3 man.  Fucking Witcher 3.  What a fucking game.