What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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guigui
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by guigui »

Sima Tuna wrote:Subnautica is currently scaring the piss out of me.

My first encounter with a Leviathon was probably one of the most pants-shitting moments I've had in gaming. I saw the dude swimming around, so I turned and booked it. I could hear something behind me, but I just kept swimming away. Eventually, I figured I was safe. So I turned around to check. Nothing there. Cool.

Suddenly, a massive Leviathon came clipping out of the ground! He had still been chasing me and just clipped himself into the earth while still following! :shock: I about pissed myself.

But hey, at least now I have my Prawn Suit and I can go all Kenshiro on rude sea animals that try to fuck with me. ATATATATATATATA A group of Bonesharks found out about that the hard way.
Yay Subnautica ! Definitely a favorite of mine. The sense of exploration and freedom are just crazy, I love the "just try to get out of here" story and how it leaves you wondering how you're supposed to do that. I also love that swimming actually amounts to flying all the time, ability to go anywhere on the environement is something I always wanted to have in a 3rd view game.

The moment I built my Seamoth -- when you realize that there is so much more under there than just fishies and small tunnels -- was certainly one of my most favorite gaming moment of my life.
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Sumez
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Subnautica definitely shattered my expectations. The fact that it's not just Minecraft'esque exploration and crafting, but actually has genuinely breathtaking and surprising things to discover really lifts it up. It's also one of the scariest games I've ever played despite not even being a horror game.
Oh, and it's a real game with a definite end, and it doesn't drag on, also a positive.

The technical issues with the game however are kinda extreme to the point where they almost ruin the experience, but ultimately they didn't for me.
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MOSQUITO FIGHTER
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by MOSQUITO FIGHTER »

Just found out the Gran Turismo 7 will not work at all without internet access. Bummer. Really discouraged from playing it because of this. You’d think it would at least let you play all the single player stuff. The cars are too expensive also. They are really trying to get everyone to pay real cash to buy cars. Prices put a majority of the cars out of reach. It’s ridiculous that you can’t sell cars anymore. It doesn’t even let you sell duplicates. Just make it F2P if they are going to make the game like that.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

Sumez wrote:Subnautica definitely shattered my expectations. The fact that it's not just Minecraft'esque exploration and crafting, but actually has genuinely breathtaking and surprising things to discover really lifts it up. It's also one of the scariest games I've ever played despite not even being a horror game.
Oh, and it's a real game with a definite end, and it doesn't drag on, also a positive.

The technical issues with the game however are kinda extreme to the point where they almost ruin the experience, but ultimately they didn't for me.
I said the exact same things. I h a t e crafting survival shit, but Subnautica is the exception. I ran through it three times and now I'm about to reinstall for a fourth. lol
That was a GREAT game.
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guigui
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by guigui »

Subnautica sequel, named Subnautica Below Zero is available on PC and consoles. Any of you SN lovers tried it ?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

guigui wrote:Subnautica sequel, named Subnautica Below Zero is available on PC and consoles. Any of you SN lovers tried it ?
A friend was playing through it thoroughly and sort of chronicled his play in my server until he finished. He said its...unfortunate. He doesn't regret it or not recommend it outright but that its too short and too small for any of its new ideas (or foundational SN signatures) to actually get off the ground how he'd hoped. I'd have to talk to him again for a more detailed opinion but I remember him saying it's not as good.

But its cheap and didnt really advertise itself as some grandiose sequel anyway. So none of its faults are that painful
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Just binned Resi Village. I'm sure it gets better, but the opening is such utter dogshit that I really can't be arsed to find out.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Ol 'One chance Marc' :lol:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Blinge wrote:Ol 'One chance Marc' :lol:
I've enough in the backlog that I simply won't force myself through anything that doesn't grab me from the off. It's a shame, because I'd really like to play the castle level at least, but between the crappy opening, and the prevailing opinion that it trails of for the second half of the game anyway..... to the back of the pile.

Incidentally, since that post, I've now binned Yomawari: Midnight Shadows. Plod, plod, hide, repeat. No.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

Played the demo of this and it's immediately fun. And it strikes me as something very addicting. I'm going to have to grab this. The visuals are...questionable but I kind of like them. They remind me of old PC games. And I like Shigetake's art style. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1718 ... _Revision/
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Lander »

I started my first ever Strategy RPG in Tactics Ogre Reborn. 20 hours in and I'm about halfway through Chapter 2 on the Law route.
It's very good, and the presentation goes beyond retro remaster fare and well into the realm of a full-on polished production. Spritework's a bit odd, since it's hand-uprezzed in a style that looks like Super Eagle, but overall it's nice to look at.

I'm largely a stranger to stories of warring nations with wide scope and scheming lords, but am hooked and particularly enjoying the even plot-encounter-plot-encounter pacing that comes with the world map and party level system. Recently ran across the game's first major optional combat dungeon, and it was a pleasant bit of variety rather than the "oh no time to put on a podcast" fare that can accompany the same in other RPGs.

The mechanics are beginning to click now I've accumulated a sizable force and have room to experiment. Turns out that recruiting beasts and dragons for a novelty beastmaster party is difficult when the guest plot characters are trampling all over your carefully-laid strategy, but the aforementioned dungeon is free of that and full of rare units to coerce. Fly, my pretties! :twisted:
Marc wrote:Just binned Resi Village. I'm sure it gets better, but the opening is such utter dogshit that I really can't be arsed to find out.
Well, there's one very interesting windowsill in the hub area that was pretty good.

And the part where Marco lends you his Metal Slug so you can fight Megatron is a highlight, but you have to put in a lot of hours to get there.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ryu »

The Evil Within 2. The difficulty on Nightmare mode feels just right and the game seems to keep the horror game atosphere up. In all other aspects, it's worse than the first game and doesn't seem to ever hit the same heights. Still fun.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sima Tuna »

guigui wrote:Subnautica sequel, named Subnautica Below Zero is available on PC and consoles. Any of you SN lovers tried it ?
I actually just finished Below Zero today. I'll put together a larger post on it here after I've had a moment to gather my thoughts.

In a nutshell, however, I'd say it's a smaller, leaner, shorter experience, with a much stronger focus on storyline. It's much less scary and the ocean has quite a bit more light from luminescent objects. So it's more of a kiddie pool to try out Subnautica if you're new. The above-ground stuff is largely pointless or shitty or both. Base building has been expanded in some cool ways.

Performance is a mixed bag as always. The game is beautiful compared to the first Subnautica, but I also experienced quite a few more technical problems. Notably a framerate that absolutely shat the bed at numerous points.

That mystery element of the original Subnautica isn't really present. Your character isn't a castaway and you aren't trying to escape. I wasn't a big fan of the story but I could see people who disliked the OG Subnautica for being too opaque, too scary, too hard etc finding this much easier to tackle.

Survival is pretty piss-easy compared to the first game. There are plants in Below Zero that provide 15 food and 15 water and grow in these giant clumps where you can pluck off 5 or more at a time. :lol:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BIL »

Lander wrote:the part where Marco lends you his Metal Slug so you can fight Megatron
:lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sima Tuna »

Sima Tuna wrote:
guigui wrote:Subnautica sequel, named Subnautica Below Zero is available on PC and consoles. Any of you SN lovers tried it ?
I actually just finished Below Zero today. I'll put together a larger post on it here after I've had a moment to gather my thoughts.

In a nutshell, however, I'd say it's a smaller, leaner, shorter experience, with a much stronger focus on storyline. It's much less scary and the ocean has quite a bit more light from luminescent objects. So it's more of a kiddie pool to try out Subnautica if you're new. The above-ground stuff is largely pointless or shitty or both. Base building has been expanded in some cool ways.

Performance is a mixed bag as always. The game is beautiful compared to the first Subnautica, but I also experienced quite a few more technical problems. Notably a framerate that absolutely shat the bed at numerous points.

That mystery element of the original Subnautica isn't really present. Your character isn't a castaway and you aren't trying to escape. I wasn't a big fan of the story but I could see people who disliked the OG Subnautica for being too opaque, too scary, too hard etc finding this much easier to tackle.

Survival is pretty piss-easy compared to the first game. There are plants in Below Zero that provide 15 food and 15 water and grow in these giant clumps where you can pluck off 5 or more at a time. :lol:
I can expand upon this now.

So, Subnautica: Below Zero is a story-focused, narrative sequel to Subnautica. It largely focuses on the main character's search for truth. The major plot twist of the first Subnautica serves as a sort of B-story for Below Zero, but there is no disease in gameplay.

Below Zero retains the same crafting and survival gameplay, but virtually every aspect is tweaked in some way. The game seems very similar at first, but subtle changes in area design dramatically alter how the game is played. The Cyclops is a good example. In the first Subnautica, the Cyclops was a mobile base you could obtain. You could store smaller vehicles within it, grow food, manufacture/cook supplies and manage its power levels. It fed from 8(!) power cells, which could be recharged in various different ways. As a large vehicle, it was so big that any creature smaller than Leviathon class would tend to ignore it. Obtaining the Cyclops really opened your eyes up to the possibilities. Without being tied to any specific location, you could "base" anywhere.

So... The Cyclops does not exist in Below Zero. At all. You might think this is an oversight, or a mistake. It's deliberate. See, the Cyclops is much too big to fit in the biomes Below Zero provides. Below Zero's biomes are twisty, narrow and full of jutting protrusions. There are very few areas where you see large swathes of open water. The biomes aren't dark anymore, either. Many objects on the seafloor, even in shallow areas, display bio-luminescence. The whole seabed glows at night, illuminating even the deepest depths.

Within these cramped, yet brightly-lit zones, you wouldn't be able to fit a Cyclops. There are times when the Prawn can just baaarely squeeze through a vent to go deeper.

The replacement for the Cyclops is the Seatruck. The Seatruck is a beefed-up Seamoth, capable of towing additional "modules" (think cabs on an actual truck) which provide various services. These include the Fabrication Module, Storage Module, Aquarium Module and Sleeper Module. Some of these modules are pretty neat. However, even the Seatruck becomes VERY unwieldy, when trying to navigate some of the twisty, narrow biomes in Below Zero. Slamming into the sides of walls with your Seatruck is more of a fact of life than a mistake. :lol: Additionally, the Seatruck is not a Cyclops and smaller predators do not leave it alone. Expect to get harassed by squidsharks and bull sharks when driving around. Leviathans can also shred your Seatruck's fragile armor rating quite easily, necessitating constant repairs.

Speaking of Leviathans, there are very few of these in Below Zero. The title Leviathan is only found on land. I'll speak more about land gameplay in a minute. The new replacement Leviathan for the Reaper is not half as scary. He's an eelfish with a beak. Yawn. The Shadow Leviathan is nearly absent from the entire game, except for one section at the very end, where the devs spam about 4 of the fuckers in two tiny-ass, cramped zones where you can't really avoid them. When you get grabbed over and over, any potential to be afraid goes out the window fast. You're never really in danger, so long as you stay in your Prawn suit, and you can't kill the Leviathans either. So it's kinda just shit.

I think I just named every Leviathan in the game. There are two non-hostile "leviathans." One is a whale, which is pretty cool. You can ride on him. Kinda neat. The other is totally stationary and just houses some resources. It has no AI or behavior because it's more of an object than an animal.

Some of the new aquarium animals are fun. There are some new arctic animals, like penguins and sea lions. Well, Subnautica versions of them. The new fishes are fun, especially the Nootfish. Messing around with the aquarium and eggs was probably the most fun I had in Below Zero.

Food (and survival) is, as I mentioned previously, totally broken. It's pathetic how easily you can manage your survival with zero effort. In the shallows, mushrooms grow that provide both food and water. There are islands/icebergs dotted all over the map with fruiting trees. You can get a grow pot going really early in Below Zero and the Fevered Pepper is insanely OP. 15 food, 15 water and it restores your heat gauge in case you are wandering around above the surface. There are also edible Anemone which provide 10 food and 20 water and are abundant. Below Zero, because of its heavy story focus, has more large installations. These installations have a lot of food and water stockpiled in various lootable chests. The end result is you won't need to worry about survival when you play Below Zero. Biomes are small, food is abundant and light is ever-present. There are few Leviathans and the most common predator is a loudmouthed lizard that flees when you knife it.

Base-building and crafting has been expanded. You can pin recipes and build more shit for your base than in the first game. Building bases is fun as always, but I never found much reason to craft advanced items aside from personal enjoyment. Oh, and the default maximum depth for most vehicles has been decreased. So you do need to build more depth modules. IIRC the max depth for the Prawn Suit in Below Zero is 1300, whereas I think the very first depth upgrade for the Prawn Suit in the og Subnautica is 1300. The first of three. Most of the vehicles in Below Zero are this way, with a low max depth. The waters in Below Zero are not nearly as deep as those of the base game. The endgame area is around 1100 meters deep IIRC.

Below Zero adds above-ground biomes and enemies. These are mostly shit, however. The new above-ground vehicle is garbage. It controls like ass and you're best off forgetting it exists. I chose to wear my Prawn Suit above the ground nearly all the time and that was my preferred way to travel. Above-ground predators can't do shit about the Prawn. I made a heat suit for fun, but you really don't need the heat suit, so long as you just run from place to place. Caves, heat flowers, underground heat spouts and hot food can all warm you up. Heat just replaces oxygen when you're above the ground, except traversal is much shittier when you can't swim.

In summary, Below Zero feels like a game intended for Subnautica newbies, or those who wanted to play the first game but thought it seemed too scary. Below Zero is smaller, brighter, easier and has a more standard video game story, with more conversations and characters than base Subnautica. If you go from playing Subnautica to playing Below Zero, I think you'll be disappointed. But if you're new to the series, Below Zero is probably a fine place to start. It's worth mentioning that Below Zero has something like half the biomes of the original Subnautica, which contributes greatly to the game feeling so much lesser than the original.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

Pokemon Violet, because I am obligated to play all of these, even if the last one I actually finished was Y, over 10 years ago.
It's not like a 4/10 apocalyptic wasteland of a game, but it isn't that good and it feels really painful that a game as barren as Pokemon Legends: Arceus feels just that much more polished. It's also really goofy how apparently the performance under emulation is apparently dramatically better than on hardware.
Spoiler
no seriously, I feel sorry for anyone who is playing this on real hardware, if you can play it emulated, dump your game and emulate
Regardless of the ugly character designs [it is astonishing how there are like less than ten remotely stylish or attractive designs in the entire game] or the terrible graphics [also, is there a reason that games decided it was okay to do dithering instead of real alpha blending? it looks awful every time] or the goofy bugs [it is REALLY painful finding out that some of the shit I saw was on hardware and not just emulation], and regardless of the fact that it feels like it needed six months of dev time more, the thing that bothers me the most is that the gyms don't have different level teams based on how many badges you already have, which really kind of puts a damper on the fact that the game is open world.
Also, the complete and utter lack of any dungeons/caves/buildings or anything -- actually, the last time Pokemon games had particularly decent dungeons was like gen 4, and it's painful to think about that.

It also has the same set of mechanics since X/Y to make the game easier than ever before in a franchise long renowned for its lack of difficulty with the affection buffs and the exp share that generates extra exp out of nowhere for your whole team, while still balancing the game around if these features weren't present [or togglable].

Ultimately, if you paid money for this game: consider a refund. If you like it, that's fine, but I just can't justify it being $60 in the state that it's in.


In other news, I tried the Aero GPX demo on Steam. It feels pretty good, just a nice F-Zero style game. I am pretty bad at it though, and I cannot keep up with the AI cars. It's been ages since I've played any F-Zero, but I wasn't quite this bad in X or GX, even if I wasn't good enough for Master.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steven »

Lander wrote:I started my first ever Strategy RPG in Tactics Ogre Reborn.
I haven't played Tactics Ogre (although I will probably get around to it sometime in the next 30~50 years or so), but good strategy RPGs are good. The only bad one I've ever played is Fairy Fencer F Refrain Chord, which is just a disappointing pile of very poor but not completely dumpster-tier game design.

On strategy RPGs, I just finished Relayer Advanced about 10 hours ago. Its design is a bit safe for a strategy RPG, and it has some questionable design flaws, but it works and has solid if unremarkable mechanics, and I have massive respect for the developers for such an unexpectedly bold and great ending after a relatively safe story until that point. Lots of potential for improvement in its 2 planned sequels, which it absolutely deserves to have, but the game sold terribly, so I imagine those sequels might not happen, which makes me sad, but that's how it might turn out.

Game's way too easy, though, but finishing the game unlocks both the weirdly ultra-tone-deaf what-if post-game stuff and the hardest difficulty setting, so I guess I'm replaying it on the higher difficulty to see how much more difficult it is that way and then on to the post-game.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by WelshMegalodon »

null1024 wrote:Pokemon Violet
I'm just shocked that they removed the set battle style and the option to turn off move animations.
null1024 wrote:the thing that bothers me the most is that the gyms don't have different level teams based on how many badges you already have
So it's no more "open world" than the Gen I and Gen II games? Lame.
null1024 wrote:affection buffs
Combining affection and friendship was a mistake.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Ok, I've been playing Portal Reloaded for a couple hours now, and I finally figured out what bugs me about it. First, a recap.

The idea is that you now have a "time" portal in addition to the two positional portals. The time portal takes you between the past and the present, and there are environmental differences that you have to either contend with, or use to your advantage. Pretty much everything works as one might expect with the exception of materials (the cube mostly) between time. If you bring a copy of an item into the future, it instantly evaporates. That much is okay, but if you bring something into the past, it's double can persist, that is, it can persist until you touch the copy and then it evaporates. That doesn't make much sense to me, as there's no reason touching it would make any difference. It's annoyingly arbitrary, especially considering they made such a thing of the rest of the time mechanics observing some central logic. Certainly it's fantasy no matter, but at least the rules stick to something laid out up until that point, and then it's just "this thing will disappear when you touch it."
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

WelshMegalodon wrote:
null1024 wrote:Pokemon Violet
I'm just shocked that they removed the set battle style and the option to turn off move animations.
null1024 wrote:the thing that bothers me the most is that the gyms don't have different level teams based on how many badges you already have
So it's no more "open world" than the Gen I and Gen II games? Lame.
null1024 wrote:affection buffs
Combining affection and friendship was a mistake.
So, the significant lack of barriers really does help a lot, so if you want a harder experience, just ride out into the distance until the game is hard enough. Gen 1 and 2 definitely funnel you quite a bit more as to where you can go at any given point until well into the middle of the game, where you can then do like 3 badges out of order if you want.
The game doesn't really force you to interact with much, up to and including wild Pokemon, although you will still need to get badges so you can catch+use higher leveled Pokemon.
However, this also means that when you do go back to those Gyms/etc, they will be shamelessly easy because you will end up overleveled.

Honestly, if I entirely discard my hopes for the series and focus on what the game actually has... having some kind of badge scaling system really would still dramatically improve things [so like, at the absolute least, if you do go out and fight hard gyms first, they could at least boost the ones you skipped to not be actually zero effort].
Also, it's ugly in both an actual graphics sense and a lack of art direction sense, I hate the character design still, the music is mediocre, and also it's... well actually, it's not really that glitchy in my playthrough but a lot of the glitches seem to directly be based on the terrible performance of the game on real HW and like, I am entirely capable of just sidestepping that thanks to having a good PC.
Oh, and almost all the route Trainers I've fought were embarrassing to the point where wild Pokemon around me were significantly more trouble lol. If they're entirely optional fights, then make them actual fights.

Oh, and then there's the seemingly quite extensive character customization, loads of accessories, hairstyles, more advanced face customization, bags, etc... with one gigantic, gaping hole in the entire thing: there are exactly four outfits you can wear in the entire game, the four school uniforms you are given. It's baffling.

I'm rambling a bit, but god, I'm just constantly thinking about the fact that GF has been not terribly good for 10 years now, and this game is flawed in painful ways that hurt more just because it's like, you can feel the idea of something better at every turn, and there is a definite way to have fun with it. It's not like with Sword/Shield where I got bored and dropped it ASAP, and it seems less barren than Legends Arceus, but like, gah, it is just relentlessly frustrating, and GF will almost certainly sell an obscene number of copies of this game despite everything.
Spoiler
so like, again, don't spend $60 lol
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Air Master Burst »

RE3 remake is in the bag and I have very conflicting emotions! The plot and story was better than the original by a wide margin. The Nemesis boss fights were also pretty great! Nice to see Hunters return, too. I didn't miss the Tremors worm at all, that boss fight sucked anyway. Jill Valentine is more badass than she's ever been, with a more practical outfit (and a very welcome run speed after RE2) to boot. Jill takes an absolutely insane ass-kicking throughout this game; we're talking like Ash from Evil Dead levels of abuse here. Nemesis throws her around like Big Show tosses cruiserweights, it's fucking dope. Hilariously enough, she actually begins the game already down to Caution.

But jesus, what a linear affair! There's no routing to speak of, which is the best part of RE games for me. The director constantly ruins all of their own jump scares by taking control away from the player with supremely annoying canned animations of Jill flinching away from something relatively minor. There are some segments where this happens every few steps, and it's fucking infuriating. The Nemesis chase sequences are pretty bad, too, like the director really loved the giant gator in the RE2 remake and said "let's make half the boss encounters in the game like this, but longer and shittier!"

There's a lot to love here, but they really make you work for it at times. Totally worth the 10 I paid, but the original asking price is absolutely fucking outrageous for what comparably little content is here.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Gamer707b »

Been into the Resident Evil mood lately, so I've been on Resi 8 for the last few days. Didn't like it at first months ago, put it down and really didn't go back to it till recently. One of the things that turned me off at first, was the whole werewolves thing. Also the game wasn't scary, unlike Resi 7. That game was awesomely scary. Having said that, after playing 8 lately, I really like it! SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!! There's no cohesive environmental theme. The Mansion, outdoors, caves, etc, but it all comes together for some reason. I will be downloading the dlc, because I want to get more of it. Can't wait till to play Resi 4 Remake. Capcom has been killing it with Resident Evil the last 4 or so years.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Leandro »

I'm also on a Resident Evil streak these last few weeks, completing Shadows of Rose (which was so so, but what did I expect?), clearing Resident Evil 3 Remake on Hardcore in a first blind playthrough (a game which, despite being short and having so little content, I thought it was more enjoyable overall than RE2R,), and then I finished Resident Evil Revelations 2 on Survivor difficulty in a blind first playthrough.

Noe I'm Workin Ng through Invisible Mode in Revelations 2. It's pretty fun low budget game, getting my money's worth, I only bought the individual chapters in a sale, it was so cheap.

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ryu
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ryu »

Had the opportunity to play F-Zero AX in a cab. Wasn't disappointed.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Gamer707b »

ryu wrote:Had the opportunity to play F-Zero AX in a cab. Wasn't disappointed.
Yea I had a chance to play it when I was In Chicago at Ghost Arcade a few years ago, but sadly I didn't. I was too excited for all the shmup games they had.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ryu »

Gamer707b wrote:
ryu wrote:Had the opportunity to play F-Zero AX in a cab. Wasn't disappointed.
Yea I had a chance to play it when I was In Chicago at Ghost Arcade a few years ago, but sadly I didn't. I was too excited for all the shmup games they had.
But you could play those at home!

Been playing Sonic Frontiers. First impressions were very bad, but it's grown on me a little. The open world game is decently enjoyable in short bursts, but feels very monotonous in longer sessions. The Sonic Super boss fights are worth it though. They make me feel like a 14 year old... in a good way. Mid bosses are hit or miss, sometimes frustrating, sometimes really fun. Regular enemies are just annoying. Challenge stages are hit or miss too. Some are more fun than others. The ones that aren't so much suffer from bad physics. Sonic often feels way too stiff in those stages; turning mid-air is a real nightmare.

No idea what they were thinking with the bland electronic music tracks for the cyberspace stages. Since they're themed after classic Sonic stages the arrangements of their corresponding themes would have fit much better. The soundtrack overally isn't bad but lacks the franchise's identity (save for the vocal tracks framing the boss fights, those fit surprisingly well). Same for the visuals of the open world zones. My biggest gripe with the game is that most of it plays in generic grasslands, generic deserts, and so on. It's like the graphic director at Sonic Team is creatively bankrupt. The open world enemies are also just generic alien robots with little personality to their designs.

I'm glad the series has gone back to telling actual stories. Even if they're not much to write home about I'm enjoying these narratives much better than the loose comedy narrative they attempted with Colors and Lost Worlds.

All in all the game's about alright. The main game loop isn't great but I'm always looking forward to the boss fights. The game however desperately needs an artistic identity like the Mega Drive games used to have. As for the open world gameplay I wish gameplay objects such as platforms and rails would be visually in line with the overall direction of the maps. They also should have gone less for realistic terrains and put more slopes, loops etc. into the game. There's potential for a really good Sonic game in this.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BrianC »

I played AX at the arcades a couple times. Flippers in NC had one. I'm usually more focused on the pinball games when I'm there, though I haven't been for a while since my dad is no longer in NC.

Technically, you can play AX at home too since the data is actually on the GX disc, though it's not the same experience as playing it in a cab.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

I'm basically finished with Pokemon Violet. Like, there's post-game stuff after the 4 main story sections, but like, I'll get to that later.
It's better than the last three or four Pokemon games! That isn't a hard feat in any capacity, with maybe Sun coming the closest to being better [shame that game is a never-ending tutorial and at no point do you feel like you're able to really roam and do what you want].
The characters and story aren't amazing, but again, better than the last several games.
I'd say hope for DLC, but like, spending $60 still seems like a baffling mistake, let alone another $30 on top.

I haven't had the ez-mode affection boosts show up, but apparently they're still connected to happiness? I'm not complaining that I haven't seen 'em, they absolutely take away any of the thrill in any battle, especially the one where it's all like, "___ toughed it out so you wouldn't feel sad" fuck offfffffffffff.
A lot of Gym battles seem like the leader will pull out something interesting for their final Pokemon... then they use the big special mechanic, Terrastalizing, to discard their secondary typing so now what was going to actually wall my Pokemon just loses for no reason lmao. It's really lame.
In terms of game difficulty, it is also still way better than Sw/Sh or BD/SP, but being able to challenge stuff that is definitely a bit out of your league helps. I still think actual level scaling options would have made for a better experience, but knowing Game Freak, they'd scale every fight to be easy.
It still feels weird that you can't enter like 90% of buildings, and of those you can, 90% of those are just a text menu with no interior.

Having elected to not endure the experience on real hardware because it runs like a tired, miserable dog there, I can't actually comment much about the game's notable lack of performance overall.
It runs pretty smooth if you emulate, and on my PC, it kept a reasonably solid 30fps unless you left the game running too long, where apparently a memory leak in the actual game starts causing performance issues [framerate started dipping to like 20 after a few hours playing], and this apparently happens on hardware too.

It's just kind of frustrating as a package. It could easily be a good game, a great game, the Pokemon game that people have waited for since they were kids, if it actually came anywhere near modern open world game quality standards. I feel like if any other studio headed the project than Game Freak, it would easily be the best Pokemon game, period.

Also, the main story is kinda short for an open world game like this. I was about 24h in when I finally closed the game after the actual "last boss" [which was an actually cool fight honestly, even if mostly because I didn't know the typing of any of those Pokemon] and then the box legendary encounter. I did a fair bit of faffing around too, I didn't just blitz from point to point.
It is 200% baffling the lack of little sidequests, especially coming after Legends Arceus.
BrianC wrote:I played AX at the arcades a couple times. Flippers in NC had one. I'm usually more focused on the pinball games when I'm there, though I haven't been for a while since my dad is no longer in NC.

Technically, you can play AX at home too since the data is actually on the GX disc, though it's not the same experience as playing it in a cab.
Cooool. Always did want to try out AX.
Also, AFAIK, isn't the handling really different in the AX "home port" on the disc than on the actual cabinet? Like, the actual movement values? I think I remember hearing that somewhere, but like, I could also be 200% wrong.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It's good so far. There's a whole ton of things it doesn't do well, but none of those things feels objectively worse than earlier games.

Jumping and grabbing things isn't as precise as it ought to be in relationship to how unforgiving it is. I feel like TR series, Crystal Dynamics and forward, has always had somewhat lousy ledge detection or whatever it is, but I always play them anyway. Sure, you're going to die over and over again in certain areas for no reason, but you get used it. The most annoying thing I've encountered so far is swinging from the repel line; there's some issue with it where it sometimes just drops you, and sometimes it's impossible to swing in certain orientations. Also the AI is kinda half-baked, and the stealth mechanics are kinda broken. They haven't really "fixed" the combat yet, but it's loads better than it was in the past.

But it's a beautiful game with an okay story and some good puzzle tombs. Here's to hoping the next one finally addresses some of the long standing issues. I understand they are done with the current timeline, and the intention is that they are going to attempt some form of reconciliation between the various versions of Laura. I'm sure it's going to take forever to be released though.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ryu »

BrianC wrote:Technically, you can play AX at home too since the data is actually on the GX disc, though it's not the same experience as playing it in a cab.
Yeah I was having the experience in mind when I said that you can't play it at home.
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