What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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

Post by Marc »

Blinge wrote:I'm finally getting into Doom2016. Put more RAM and an SSD into my potato, now it hovers decently around 60FPS and doesn't take centuries to load.

Fucking hell, this game is everything I wanted it to be.
I've tried to get into this twice, but too many reviews sold it to me as being like old Doom and I just ended up disappointed. Felt very samey - the same reason I never got into Serious Sam and it's ilk - a corridor or two, monster arena, rinse and repeat.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Finished Suikoden last night, also been playing some Tetris again and N64.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

To be fair, Serious Sam has more in common with Robotron than Doom.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

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Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by versionfiv »

P.N.03 for gamecube
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

versionfiv wrote:P.N.03 for gamecube
I enjoyed this game. Pretty simple, but fun.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

Serious Sam 4! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I'm calling bullshit on the haters. There must have been a gigantic difference between the review build and release.

So my system's weird, I have an i9 9900k 8-core CPU, 32 gigs of ram, but a 1660 Super budget GPU (waiting out for a 3000). The game has an autodetect function for graphics performance, and I stuck with the suggested levels (plus I turned off AA out of personal taste). While LOD quality popups are frequent and noticeable in the slow parts, I've been getting a solid 60 fps at 1080p.

Maybe the CPU is the bottleneck, but aside from a crash to desktop while applying too many graphics setting changes at once, I've not had any of the awful bugs all the angriest reviews reported. I've had Serious Sam.

Maybe folks were expecting a nuDOOM reimagining. This is not that. Serious Sam 4 is akin to Overload, in that it's a recreation of a classic FPS' gameplay with modern tech and a few refinements, but not the greatest graphics available at the time.

Anyone who tells you the level design or gameplay is a significant departure from previous games is full of shit. I've been replaying first and second encounter all last month and this is the kind of gameplay they had on offer.

This is purely a matter of taste, but I didn't find the humor "cringeworthy," certainly a lot less than the "crate bus" joke that started Second Encounter. What on Earth would a zoomer who'd never even heard of Old Man Murray have thought seeing that scene for the first time?
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Is Serious Sam 3 a game that's best not discussed?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Marc wrote: I've tried to get into this twice, but too many reviews sold it to me as being like old Doom and I just ended up disappointed.
It's only like old Doom insofar as movement is heavily encouraged and you aren't hiding behind cover staying still for ages shooting military dudes.
Felt very samey - the same reason I never got into Serious Sam and it's ilk - a corridor or two, monster arena, rinse and repeat.
How far in did you get? I think Foundry/ 3rd level opens things out a bit.

I think people look at Doom with the rosey specs on, I remember being utterly sick of 2's level design by the time I finished it.
The endless wanderings trying to find the right switch to activate something on the other side of the level are not missed by me, however Doom2016 does replicate that a bit if you're searching for all the secrets like I do..
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

  • OG Doom is a genuinely great game. It took revisiting the game over a decade later for me to realise this, so it isn't nostalgia or something like that.
  • That said, Doom 2 does have mostly bad level design, and it's this aspect that makes or breaks this type of game. Doom 1 = Good, Doom 2 = Bad.
  • Doom2016 is nothing like OG Doom. The major thing they do have in common is in the ways they are different from most other modern FPS games.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

Doom 2 has mostly bad level design, but some of the best enemy and weapon design the world has ever seen. I doubt any other game can compete with the overwhelming quality and quantity of its user made levels.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Sumez wrote: Doom2016 is nothing like OG Doom.
Some similarities-
Prioritises movement. Has enemies with similar movesets.
Has enemies that behave in unique ways and force you to act accordingly.
Varies the challenge by throwing enemy combinations at you + environmental factors.
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Marc
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Blinge wrote:
Marc wrote: I've tried to get into this twice, but too many reviews sold it to me as being like old Doom and I just ended up disappointed.
It's only like old Doom insofar as movement is heavily encouraged and you aren't hiding behind cover staying still for ages shooting military dudes.
Felt very samey - the same reason I never got into Serious Sam and it's ilk - a corridor or two, monster arena, rinse and repeat.
How far in did you get? I think Foundry/ 3rd level opens things out a bit.

I think people look at Doom with the rosey specs on, I remember being utterly sick of 2's level design by the time I finished it.
The endless wanderings trying to find the right switch to activate something on the other side of the level are not missed by me, however Doom2016 does replicate that a bit if you're searching for all the secrets like I do..
Hmm, maybe I'll give it one more try then.
Sumez wrote:
  • OG Doom is a genuinely great game. It took revisiting the game over a decade later for me to realise this, so it isn't nostalgia or something like that.
  • That said, Doom 2 does have mostly bad level design, and it's this aspect that makes or breaks this type of game. Doom 1 = Good, Doom 2 = Bad.
  • Doom2016 is nothing like OG Doom. The major thing they do have in common is in the ways they are different from most other modern FPS games.
I replayed both quite recently, and concur completely.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Stevens »

Still clocking time in Noita. 100 hours in and it comes out of Early Access in a few weeks. Looking forward to what is going to be a huge update.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sir Ilpalazzo »

Sumez wrote:Is Serious Sam 3 a game that's best not discussed?
It's truly excellent - once you get past its slow start I think it's easily better than any of the Serious Sam games that came before it.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

I'm playing Rivals of Aether like mad since it got it's Definitive Edition. I bought it for Switch so that I could make Dan Fornace $30 richer. I love his little universe he's got and I can't wait to see the future games in the series he's working on.
Sir Ilpalazzo wrote:
It's truly excellent - once you get past its slow start I think it's easily better than any of the Serious Sam games that came before it.
Hard agree. 3 was stellar. The more gritty aesthetic and slow (but still enjoyable) opening few levels were a bit offputting at first. But once the game really starts, it's a top tier Sam experience. Marvelous game.
What the FUCK happened with 4... :l

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

Post by vol.2 »

Not sure if this is already known, but Konami just released a stand-alone version of OG Metal Gear from MS3 Subsistence on GOG. https://www.gog.com/game/metal_gear

I've not yet played it, so I'll have fun with this.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Sir Ilpalazzo wrote: It's truly excellent - once you get past its slow start I think it's easily better than any of the Serious Sam games that came before it.
That's good to hear. I was pretty excited for it when it was first announced, because I thought it looked really excellent, but I never actually got around to trying it.

I was just wondering why MM kept comparing Serious Sam 4 with the first two, as if the third didn't exist.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

I have not played the 3rd, so I'm in no position to compare.

But for what it's worth, I've heard other people call SS4 "All the good parts of Serious Sam 3 with none of the bad."
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Picked up Bump and Jump and Super Real Darwin over the weekend. They're both kind of shitty, I'd like my tenner back please.
Still, I suppose with BnJ appearing on AA, my Lock 'n' Chase port might eventually turn up.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Finished off TTYD, and damn that game is a tough love.

I has a lot of enjoyable moments that are fun to experience, but actually playing it is almost painful. It's to the point where I feel like the developers actively wanted to annoy the player.

Origami King is a vastly better game.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by versionfiv »

when i was looking at panzer dragoon on amazon i saw Otogi in the related items list, a game i had long forgotten. I owned an xbox for about 3 months in 2005 and had Otogi, but had forgotten about it. it's a samurai 3rd person action hack n slash game by FromSoftware. they made a sequel for it, too. xbox only.
so im playing that again.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

Genshin Impact. I'm playing on my phone, but it's out on PS4 and PC. AFAIK, the PS4 version doesn't share the same log-in or anything as the other versions because lol Sony's dumb-shit policies.
A lot of people have been comparing this to Breath of the Wild, and I haven't ever played BOTW.
It plays like basically every other open world game I've encountered, which is a novel experience when you're getting it on a phone. Lots of gliding and fast travel and climbing up random things and just walking out into the distance to get a fast travel marker that's in an area that you don't have the map for.

Still, it has a lot of problems.
It's got gacha mechanics for additional characters and the rates are terrible. Worse, re-rolling at the start of the game is an extreme ordeal and it takes like 30 minutes of play before you can even roll for characters.
It's also very clearly not a phone game despite this, and it seems to have a mobile release entirely because miHoYo was primarily a mobage developer. The phone controls are okay enough, with some really baffling issues [for a game that you need to point the camera around a lot in, the right side of the screen is full of important buttons to touch on accident, I've already died a few times because lol fall damage from canceling my glide on accident].
Also, miHoYo has a miserable, awful habit of not supporting controllers in the mobile releases of their games.
The English dub is terrible and it took ages before you could get into the settings menu to change it. Not being able to adjust graphics settings for a while was particularly dumb, too, especially since the game is fairly intense graphically, the game drinks battery like juice.

But yeah, it's a fairly standard open world game, and that doesn't quite mesh with the sort of quick "let me pull this out for a minute" gameplay you'd expect from something on your phone, and the game has a bad habit of needing to load a lot if you switch to something else/leave the phone in sleep for more than a few seconds.

The game has some other little issues -- the battle system is heavily dependent on elemental type composition, and I can't switch out characters in the middle of a fight even though you'll have two party members who are entirely useless against that element or can't attack at range and the enemy is constantly flying and the other two barely do any damage.
Dungeons tell you up front what you need to bring, but in the overworld, I've ended up either a: having to teleport away, redo my party, and then walk back, or b: taking thrice as long to kill the thing because I need to break the bloody barrier on it and I'm slowly, slowly, slowly whittling away at it. There are a lot of weird things you can't do at weird times, and one of the most annoying is that if I'm aiming with a bow, I can't switch characters even though there are a gazillion other things that will drop me out of aiming state.
Oh, and the camera keeps trying to auto-adjust and landing in the bushes. I've taken to claw-gripping when this happens, so I can attempt to hold the camera in place.

Still, I've been playing it like all evening into the morning. It's entertaining. The graphics are nice. The story is decent. The production value is through the roof. It feels like a proper game. There's a ton to complain about, but it's still fairly fun to play.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by WelshMegalodon »

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

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Sega AGES Shinobi has gotten its hooks into me. The game does have some problems - namely that in later levels enemy placements get downright cheap, and throughout the game the ninja enemies attack at awkward angles & distances that I'm not sure are well thought out from a design perspective.

But it just feels so snappy. In going back to Revenge of Shinobi & Shadow Dancer (Gen) for comparison, I'm struck by them seemingly being a step back in this department. Revenge's jump in particular feels super floaty compared to the first game's rapid hop. The first one throws you into plenty of hectic situations, but generally gives your character the twitch reaction response to make it through if you're properly positioned.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

Now that I have a laptop that can play it at full speed in a window larger than a postage stamp, I'm having a go at Indivisible, which I was a backer of in ye olde tymes; the reception to it was decidedly mixed upon release, and a few hours in I can already see clearly how some folks would have gotten frustrated with it on numerous fronts, but having managed to get through some rough spots - in part due to the low penalty for dying and partially because I just want to see more of the gorgeous artwork - I feel like I'm at least kinda-sorta getting a feel for it, as in some ways I've had to keep my expectations in check and learn to play it on its own terms. Too bad the developer imploded, I seem to recall they were originally planning to add more stuff to the game...guess that ain't happening now.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by guigui »

I'm currently lost in the post-apocalytpic plains of Mother Russia in A.T.O.M. RPG The game is available on PC, Switch, mobile.

After trying many JRPG these last years, none of which could really hook me (Ys 8, Bravely Default, Xenoblade Chronicles ...) I'm glad I finally found a RPG game I like to invest time in.

The game is basically Fallout 1 and 2, but set in Russia, made by a small Russian indep dev team. The writing and CRPG aspects are very good (C for choice, your choices do have consequences on the story). Graphics (isometric 2D) are really nice for a small team.

What I love in these games is that there is no sense of good and evil. Everyone is just trying to survive and use other people to do so, you just have to use them too in order to meet your end. In this setting, being nice and helpful with the lovely lady you just encountered may not be better than actually screwing her up ; being a merciless bandit is no different than trying to take part in some political organization to control a city.

So please, just stop trying to hunt the Evil and save the Princess, and come make yourself a name in the wastelands of Mother Russia.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

BulletMagnet wrote:I'm having a go at Indivisible
Interesting, The main character looks a lot like Nadia from the early 90's anime title.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Sengoku Strider wrote:I'm struck by them seemingly being a step back in this department
I'm definitely in the camp of OG Shinobi being the best in the series.
It was better off being a clear cut Rolling Thunder clone.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Flashman »

Starwars: Squadron's at the moment - much as I've disliked the EA / Disney SW's games thus far (JFO was okay) I have to say it's pretty amazing, I'm practically living on it at the moment, it really does take me back to the old DOS Tie Fighter game, though obviously it has the graphics we all dreamed the game could be back then. My only gripe is that they've squeezed the timeline in immediately after the destruction of the 2nd Death Star i.e. the end of anything interesting. I'd have much rather they'd just stuck it in during the events of the original trilogy so we got to fight in some of the big landmark battles (such as defending / attacking a death star) I can see why they did it though.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by chempop »

Now that my Genesis and Saturn are hooked up to some candy cabs I've been enjoying some of my childhood favorites including:

Guardian Heroes - Way too much text to wait through, but I still enjoy the gameplay and branching paths.

Streets of Rage - First in the series has a special place for me, took a handful of tries before clearing it with the default continues. I'll move onto SoR2 sortly, only played SoR3 once or twice, but the US port had the difficulty ramped up so maybe I'll hunt down the JP version (or a $7 chinese cart).

Ristar - This I got kinda recently along with a bunch of other loose carts I was after. I like the aesthetic, but can't really get into the gameplay. I'm not big on platformers in general, and it doesn't help that stage 2 is a kinda annoying water level.

Up next, I'm going to try to relearn which weapons to use in Gunstar Heroes. Maybe give Rocket Knight Adventure an honest attempt finally.

Any recommendations for other arcade style Megadrive/Genesis or Saturn games would be welcome. I was thinking about Comix Zone, Punisher, Dahna, El Viento, Golden Axe 2...
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