What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[XoPachi]

I've been doing MK8DX time trials a lot lately. I really did not care about this game that much. But 200cc makes things a lot more interesting for me.

I dunno. Bought both the Wii U and Switch game, but just couldn't get much into it. Maybe I'm a Mario Kart noob and someone can correct me, but it feels less skill based and more luck. It seems the better you do, the more the game throws random BS at you. I played the Crash Kart Racing Remake when that came out and that felt way more skill based and had those awesome boss battles.

I only do time trials because Nintendo can blow me with their terrible online service.
CTR is superior.

[Herr Schatten]

Ok, Aggelos experts, I think I need a little help. I'm now at what I assume is the final boss, but I'm really struggling. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I keep hitting the head and the eyeball thing in his crotch, but so far I haven't been able to get him down to more than about half his health. I have the best equipment, full hearts and all of the scrolls, so I don't think I'm underpowered. I'm obviously doing something wrong. What is the winning strategy here?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Well I sold Elden Ring so maybe I will play something else now lol

[guigui]

Ok, Aggelos experts, I think I need a little help. I'm now at what I assume is the final boss, but I'm really struggling. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I keep hitting the head and the eyeball thing in his crotch, but so far I haven't been able to get him down to more than about half his health. I have the best equipment, full hearts and all of the scrolls, so I don't think I'm underpowered. I'm obviously doing something wrong. What is the winning strategy here?

Not much more than what you said I guess. Hit the head to make eyeball appear, hit eyeball, repeat. Focus on dodging stuff rather than hitting when necessary.

EDIT : and iirc you can hit the head without actually jumping from the platforms, this saves a lot of time and efforts dodging stuff.

[XoPachi]

I finished up Kirby's true ending on Saturday and put the game down. I'm coming back now to get all the Waddle Dees and I don't like this objective based stuff. Feels forced and padded. Like all the dumb extra shit in Skyward Sword because they were worried the game wouldn't be long enough. Forgotten Land is significantly lighter than the Kirby's I grew up with, but it's enough and was already refreshing to just get another standard 3D action game. I would have been satisfied with just finishing the level and getting the 3-5 Dees they place organically. Like what is this "go under Gorimondo's legs" objective? There's no advantage or reason to do that so no one's gonna think about it. It's just something to send you back into a whole ass boss fight for one tedious little assignment. There's like 5 levels that make you take down posters. And some other stuff that I just didn't even bother to pay attention to my initial playthrough because I just stopped caring. lol

I'd have preferred what Kaze did and give a further reward for no damage and par time honestly.

Ok, Aggelos experts, I think I need a little help. I'm now at what I assume is the final boss, but I'm really struggling. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I keep hitting the head and the eyeball thing in his crotch, but so far I haven't been able to get him down to more than about half his health. I have the best equipment, full hearts and all of the scrolls, so I don't think I'm underpowered. I'm obviously doing something wrong. What is the winning strategy here?

Combo him to shit. It really is just that. Make sure you're using the Aggelo's orb ability frequently and the...what was it woodpecker scroll? Just stack damage and really Capcom Vs the shit out of him the moment you get. It gets a bit hectic, but it's doable.

[Herr Schatten]

Focus on dodging stuff rather than hitting when necessary.

EDIT : and iirc you can hit the head without actually jumping from the platforms, this saves a lot of time and efforts dodging stuff.

Combo him to shit. It really is just that. Make sure you're using the Aggelo's orb ability frequently and the...what was it woodpecker scroll? Just stack damage and really Capcom Vs the shit out of him the moment you get. It gets a bit hectic, but it's doable.

Thanks, I finally made it. In the end I resorted to grinding the start of the dark world a bit since I was already close to level 19 anyway, so getting up to level 20 was done quite quickly. Apparently, it makes a huge difference whether you're level 18 or 20 when facing the final boss. After more than twenty unsuccessful attempts at level 18, I beat him on my second try at level 20 with some hearts to spare and a herb still in stock.

It's a great game, but I'm not sure I'd place it above the games that inspired it. I don't like that leveling up does make so much of a difference. In the Monster World games there's no such mechanic and I feel they are a bit more relying on pure skill as a result. Also, while the difficulty curve is almost perfect for most of the game, I experienced three huge spikes in difficulty that felt out of place:

1. The woodpecker trial. It took me almost an hour to beat that shit, and it didn't help that the challenge asked for mastering a skill that's needed nowhere else in the game.

2. The air temple was slaughtering me when I first reached it. Enemies took a ton of hits and caused massive damage. So after I acquired the air ring, I left the temple and upgraded the Aggelos gear. When I returned, the air temple, including the boss, suddenly was trivial.

3. The final boss was really, really hard compared to the ones before, but at least that’s in line with the absurdly hard Meka fight at the end of the non-japanese versions of Monster World III, so I'm willing to let that slip.

I'm actually wondering if playing hard mode gives you a smoother difficulty curve without those spikes since you'll probably be one to two levels higher than in normal mode when reaching those choke points.

[Gamer707b]

I finished up Kirby's true ending on Saturday and put the game down. I'm coming back now to get all the Waddle Dees and I don't like this objective based stuff. Feels forced and padded. Like all the dumb extra shit in Skyward Sword because they were worried the game wouldn't be long enough. Forgotten Land is significantly lighter than the Kirby's I grew up with, but it's enough and was already refreshing to just get another standard 3D action game. I would have been satisfied with just finishing the level and getting the 3-5 Dees they place organically. Like what is this "go under Gorimondo's legs" objective? There's no advantage or reason to do that so no one's gonna think about it. It's just something to send you back into a whole ass boss fight for one tedious little assignment. There's like 5 levels that make you take down posters. And some other stuff that I just didn't even bother to pay attention to my initial playthrough because I just stopped caring. lol

I'd have preferred what Kaze did and give a further reward for no damage and par time honestly.

Ok, Aggelos experts, I think I need a little help. I'm now at what I assume is the final boss, but I'm really struggling. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I keep hitting the head and the eyeball thing in his crotch, but so far I haven't been able to get him down to more than about half his health. I have the best equipment, full hearts and all of the scrolls, so I don't think I'm underpowered. I'm obviously doing something wrong. What is the winning strategy here?

Combo him to shit. It really is just that. Make sure you're using the Aggelo's orb ability frequently and the...what was it woodpecker scroll? Just stack damage and really Capcom Vs the shit out of him the moment you get. It gets a bit hectic, but it's doable.

Yea I feel you. AT first, I was pumped to 100% Kirby, but it just doesn't feel very rewarding to do so. Unless there's something I'm missing? Still gonna finish the game though.

Kaze was an awesome game btw. Don't know what the devs are up to, but I would love a part 2. That's the only negative about a lot of the good indie stuff. We either don't see a sequel to the games we like, or the dev goes completely off the radar.

[Gamer707b]

I've been doing MK8DX time trials a lot lately. I really did not care about this game that much. But 200cc makes things a lot more interesting for me.

I dunno. Bought both the Wii U and Switch game, but just couldn't get much into it. Maybe I'm a Mario Kart noob and someone can correct me, but it feels less skill based and more luck. It seems the better you do, the more the game throws random BS at you. I played the Crash Kart Racing Remake when that came out and that felt way more skill based and had those awesome boss battles.

Of course playing MK against CPU has random elements, this is what makes it fun Vs real players too.
But I'd say time attack modes with only boost is a whole different story.

I guess you're right, but I've never been a fan of randomness. When I lose, I like to know it was because of me. But I get what you're saying. Maybe I need to watch someone play at a high level to better understand the game.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Any racing game with weapons in it is going to have a considerable RNG element, at least far more so than a traditional racing game. Same goes for other series like Wipeout; getting hit by another racer at a bad time can screw you rather severely and there are few skill based ways of evading or parrying incoming attacks in a game like Mario Kart. It's just something to accept with the "racing with weapons" subgenre I'd say.

[guigui]

Any racing game with weapons in it is going to have a considerable RNG element, at least far more so than a traditional racing game. Same goes for other series like Wipeout; getting hit by another racer at a bad time can screw you rather severely and there are few skill based ways of evading or parrying incoming attacks in a game like Mario Kart. It's just something to accept with the "racing with weapons" subgenre I'd say.

I played a lot of MK and wipeout, and have never been really annoyed by weapons. MK for instance, you have a lot of ways to avoid red shells (bananas, shells, horn, be faster than red shell in 200CC).
Blue shells is more fun than annoying to me, did not screw my whole run many times. Most efficient way to avoid it when you're 1st but close to the crowd is to brake like crazy, then you're not the 1st anymore !
Finally,I also like to get stuck in the crowd madness : this is when you have to make very prompt decisions and most of the time you either make the good ones and can get out 1st, or the bad ones and fall behind.

[null1024]

Wipeout's weapons have never really bothered me that much, although I guess I'd be pissed if I got hit with plasma and just died in the middle of a race from full [which at least cannot happen from the AI]. It always felt like they were a way to overtake, rather than a way to massively recover. P
Mario Kart... MK's items are basically made to shuffle the position order around regularly. I 100% understand and accept why this is the case, but sometimes it just gets annoying, and it often encourages deliberately staying back a bit to get better items and smash through at the end. Also, sometimes, you can just get the trauma conga line happen to you, where you're just repeatedly hit by everyone and eat shit. It's rare, but happens.
In contrast, I've never been locked down like that in Wipeout.

[Sengoku Strider]

Drag a shell or a banana peel behind you to act as a shield. That's about all there is to it.

[To Far Away Times]

I play Mario Kart as a low stakes multiplayer party game. There's plenty of Git Gud games out there if I want that sort of challenge, don't need Mario Kart for that.

[Sumez]

I've finally gotten started on Bug Fables, and it's easily everything I was promised and more. Right off the bat it takes almost everything the first two Paper Mario games did well, and nothing of what they did poorly. The game does not have the nutty self-depracating sense of humor that the Paper Mario games excel as, but it does have a cute and endearing tone of its own. But what really surprised me is how well designed the combat is.
You have three party members instead of two, as well as a bunch of tactical choices involving changing their order and taking over turns from eachother, which allows you to employ their individual strengths according to the situation.
And right off the bat you are given a free-to-use "hard mode" item - it is stated than when enabled it increases the rewards for combat, which is a good incentive to always use it. However, while I have yet to try any fights in the game without this item enabled, that probably makes it sound better than it is. Because this is one of those games where the moment you have "enough" EXP for the level the game wants you to be on, the amount you earn immediately drops to near nothing, pretty much locking your character progression to your story progression. But the hard mode has felt so satisfyingly well balanced so far that I don't plan on disabling it at any point.

That said, there is not much to "grind" for in this game anyway. Although every new level does come with a small buff that increases your resources for tactical options in combat, your damage output or defense is never increased, making this a really fresh departure from the standard JRPG fare. The game takes those signature low damage/hp numbers of the Mario Party games and really runs with it. This also mean that any skill or option that makes you do or prevent even just one extra point of damage can make a very notable difference.
It's really just a super well balanced game, where the economy of everything from the items you buy to your HP and the cost of skills is perfectly adjusted for the challenges you meet - at least, on hard mode it is. You are expected to stock up on a full inventory before every new area, and probably restock before the boss as well, and will probably have used up most of them after beating it.

I'm having a very hard time putting it down, and although I wager I'm probably only about halfway through, if the game is able to keep up its current pace, it'll no doubt end up as one of my favourite turn-based RPGs.

[Sumez]

Aggelos

I'm actually wondering if playing hard mode gives you a smoother difficulty curve without those spikes since you'll probably be one to two levels higher than in normal mode when reaching those choke points.

The difficulty spikes in hard mode are definitely different. Mostly every boss and area is a "spike" if you want, so in that way the game is more even. Though the dragon boss was so hard for me I actually weren't able to beat it until I played on in the game to get the next major upgrade and returned to it.

The final couple of bosses are incredibly hard on hard mode, but I also think they should be. IMO hard mode feels perfectly balanced, even though it is quite hard.

[Herr Schatten]

That's definitely different in normal mode then. Apart from the final one, the bosses were all set up in such a way that you would spend the first 1-2 tries to learn their patterns, then beat them with the next one. If you really really struggled, then you could tank through the latter half of the fight with a potion or elixir. - Pretty much as it is in MW II - IV.

[Gamer707b]

Any racing game with weapons in it is going to have a considerable RNG element, at least far more so than a traditional racing game. Same goes for other series like Wipeout; getting hit by another racer at a bad time can screw you rather severely and there are few skill based ways of evading or parrying incoming attacks in a game like Mario Kart. It's just something to accept with the "racing with weapons" subgenre I'd say.

You have a point. But CTR Remake felt less like that and more actual skill. I guess I'm not much familiar with Mario Kart. Didn't play much of the series till MK8 came out on the Wii U.

[XoPachi]

If you think any of that is hard in Aggelos wait until you find...

The Mouse.

[Herr Schatten]

If you think any of that is hard in Aggelos wait until you find...

The Mouse.

During the ending sequence, there was one enemy greyed out and marked "???". Is that it? The silhoutte looked similar to the rat enemies, so that would fit.

Spoiler

Is it in the dark basement of the castle somewhere? I think that's the only part of the game I haven't searched thoroughly.

[RileyYeo]

I'm playing Lost Ark. It's one of the best games I've played in a long time. One of my favorite all time mmos. Can not wait for release. Amazing combat, voice acting and lore. Really couldn't brag about this game enough. Quality classes. Enemy variety is also something that speaks in this game, it's really good. Looks great too, artwork is great.

[MidnightWolf]

Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (Steam)

It was the very first video game I ever played, back on the SEGA Master System, but I put off playing this remake in case it destroyed my nostalgia for it. Thankfully it's pretty good.

Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend (Steam)

Because it never got an arcade release, so the only one I can't play on Teknoparrot.

[null1024]

I've been playing Doom [1993]... with raytracing!
Being a prboom based release, it doesn't mess around with anything major mechanically, it is a demo-compatible version of the game.
Finally able to justify having an RTX card. It currently doesn't support AMD cards.

I turned off bloom [which was genuinely hurting my eyes, turning it off stopped the eyestrain I'd been feeling] and enabled the lo-res mode with the "CRT filter" [which alters the colors, making the picture look quite a bit nicer vs the way-too-clean look the game has with it off].
The CRT filter emulates what looks like a composite signal even though PC monitors are RGB, but eh, screw it.

I won't blame anyone if they don't like how it looks. Some parts just look weird. The modder added way too much shine to a lot of surfaces, the barrels glow far too brightly [which means E1 looks a fair bit worse than E2 or E3], and the lighting is different pretty much everywhere because Doom doesn't use real light-sourcing... but when it looks good, it looks damn good. I really like how objects now have normal maps so that they don't look like cardboard cutouts against the comparatively hyper-realistic lighting.
A lot of areas are really dark vs vanilla. Going around with a dim flashlight and seeing a Pinkie just appear out of nowhere is a great experience, I love it.
Unfortunately, some areas that would be really dark in the original game are way too bright due to several objects that look like they would cast light IRL now actually casting light. It's just different overall.
A lot of the look [especially with the filter on] reminds me of the PS1 version of Doom, with the quite saturated colored lighting combined with the overall darker looking environments.

I'm a little iffy on some of the other non-raytracing related changes -- the radiation suit gives the screen edges a "plastic bubble" effect, which is a little disorienting, the light amplification goggles give everything a bright neon heat-map look [you can toggle it on/off with the flashlight key, and sometimes you need to turn it off], and you don't see the screen flash red when getting hit.
I really like the new spectre effect and the new wipe effect, they're extremely cool.

I think the biggest flaw this mod has is that because it has to modify the assets with new materials for raytracing support, it only supports Doom 1.
If it supported Doom 2, I could play a bunch of WAD files [or at least, any files that don't add their own new graphics], since everyone targets Doom 2.

[guigui]

Blasphemous, the demo.

I kind of like the settings/lore, combat and metroidvania mechanics. But damn this character is slow, very slooooow. Is there some point in the game where you can actually increase the speed of the character ? Watching the trailer and the ad at the end of the demo, it looks like the Penitent One moves faster than what I saw in the demo.

[BulletMagnet]

There is an item to increase movement speed, though I also know the combat and platforming have been tweaked via updates; I don't, however, know if speed was also adjusted, or if the demo has kept up with the full game in terms of revisions.

[null1024]

Still trying to get $20k in Crazy Taxi [PC]. Need to fix my routing late-game, it starts to fall apart pretty bad once I've been in the city area for more than a few minutes and I don't have a clear path of where I should be aiming next beyond "lol get all greens". Still haven't even hit $15k on this computer, made it to juuuuuust barely under today.
Really miffed at one crash that seemed to be the start of my run spiraling down -- had absolutely gobs of time, then I lost like 10 seconds on the highway clipping a bus and getting stuck on it, then I got there without a speedy bonus, and then a smaller issue happened next and I wasn't able to be as picky about my stops, and I kept tumbling down.

I also started playing around with the Sonic P-06 demo. It's weird -- it fixes a bunch with Sonic 06, but it's still unfinished enough that it still feels like "yeah, this is 06 alright".
Handling is definitely different, but like, that's a good thing. Sonic still handles kind of slowly. Camera is still a major issue and I'm 200% reminded why games started abandoning solid cameras.
It still feels weird having functional controls during the Knuckles/Rouge bits when climbing the wall.

[Vexorg]

Currently I'm playing a bunch of Satisfactory. Started out in the "factory" genre with Factorio, but found it a bit too much for my ADHD brain to handle at once, with all the resource management, base defense and the fact that pretty much every end game build looks pretty much the same. Although the main difference between the two is the 2D versus 3D, Satisfactory seems to focus a lot more on the building and exploration parts of the formula. In a bit of ironic reversal the mined resources in Satisfactory are all infinitely renewable while the trees and plants are not (a fact that becomes immediately obvious when one of the early goals is to set up coal power plants so you have a "sustainable" source of energy and don't have to keep manually feeding biomass into your generators) so for the most part you could set up production of some part and once it's going it'll basically keep running until it fills up its storage (as long as you don't exceed your power capacity at least.) That's not to say it's a simple game, there's just as much number crunching, over/underclocking of machines to match input capacity to output capacity, no shortage of conveyor spaghetti, and generally still a maddening amount of stuff to figure out, but it's still less to deal with than Factorio.

[Valtele]

Astral Chain. I think it's the "best-of" Platinum game, loving every second of it. It's sad that they released such awful games like Babylon's Fall now and I am not sure about their future, tho I'm hoping that Bayonetta 3 will be as good as the first game. Astral Chain, on the other hand, is just right, tho I would like to see a deeper approach towards the cyberpunk theme they decided on for the title. Tho graphic and gameplay-wise the game is top-notch, borrowing legion elements from old Capcom classic Chaos Legion. I think that for every fan of 80s anime this game is a must, and maybe could be the one game to buy Switch for.

[davyK]

Playing some Puchi Carat for PS1 with the paddle controller. Really nice port with those extra modes.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Astral Chain. I think it's the "best-of" Platinum game, loving every second of it. It's sad that they released such awful games like Babylon's Fall now and I am not sure about their future, tho I'm hoping that Bayonetta 3 will be as good as the first game. Astral Chain, on the other hand, is just right, tho I would like to see a deeper approach towards the cyberpunk theme they decided on for the title. Tho graphic and gameplay-wise the game is top-notch, borrowing legion elements from old Capcom classic Chaos Legion. I think that for every fan of 80s anime this game is a must, and maybe could be the one game to buy Switch for.

I really need to go back to this. I bought it on sale, did the first 'tutorial' mission, and found it kind of chaotic and not terribly satisfying. Like there's 15 guys attacking you, you can switch between you and your partner, AND you both have these monster pets you command. I just randomly smashed some buttons, bad guys died (I don't really have any idea how since there was so much shit going on simultaneously, the camera was just spinning around). The game was like "Great job! Off to the next mission!". And... I found something else to play...

That said, people have been telling me it's actually really good. So maybe it's just the proverbial rough introduction. At any rate, I probably should investigate it a little deeper since it's taking up a ton of precious Switch HD space and all.

[Valtele]

I also found the beginning of the game disorienting and chaotic. but please give it more time, actually, it became interesting for me in the 3rd chapter and forward. When you get used to quite complex controls, it grows on you.