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Topic Starter Topic: Re: So, what games are you playing now?
Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 12-15-2021 11:21 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yeah, I love the Thief games too :D
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 12-23-2021 12:22 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've been playing Control the past few days. Typical Remedy Entertainment game. I think it's a great game. The gameplay mechanics are really game-ey but everything feels real solid. Combat is tight and visceral and the puzzly bits are shallow but adequate. Everything you do has a real sense of tangible impact to it. The guns sound great, explosions are loud and forceful and using telekinesis to rip parts of concrete out of walls to hurl them at your enemies is great :D

The atmosphere is great too, and this is where the game really shines IMO. Those who played Alan Wake and liked that will feel right at home here. Although where Alan Wake really dived head first into the horror aspect of it, Control is less horror and more about "here's a bunch of weirdness, be freaked out by it". The game isn't particularly scary like a Silent Hill or Outlast would be, but there's a constant tension going on that creeps under your skin. Things never get really scary because when you deconstruct the game into its core elements, the gameplay consists of little more than moving from room to room and shooting all the bad guys in the face. But telling it like that does a huge disservice to the game, because the shooting bits work really well and the overlying aesthetic and atmosphere really sucks you in.

The game takes place in The Bureau of Control which is a secret government organization that tries to keep supernatural occurrences under wraps as well as study them. It has a bit of Stranger Things, as well as X-Files and Twilight Zone going on. The Bureau has been overrun by some mysterious force and you find yourself in the middle of all of this when everybody suddenly starts referring to you as the Director of the Bureau. Then there's also this rather strange janitor... hmmm...

I had kind of forgotten I have this game because I got it for free on the Epic Games Store a while ago, but kind of stumbled into it recently so decided to give it a whirl. And I'm glad I did because it sure is a great experience.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 12-23-2021 06:00 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


It's a great game, although some of the difficulty spikes are a bit extreme.

It's also a great game to revisit once in a while, as it's cottoned on to the fact that as long as you make movement in a game interesting, often that's enough to maintain interest.
And there's also quite a few hidden things in there which are fun to unlock.

It's also heavily influenced by the SCP Foundation.
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Lieutenant Dan
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PostPosted: 12-23-2021 07:53 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've been meaning to sink more time into Control, maybe in the coming weeks.. I loved Alan Wake, and hell, most things put out by Remedy.
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Don Carlos
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PostPosted: 12-24-2021 01:30 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I tried my best to get into Control but it just didn't grab me :/
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Pext
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PostPosted: 12-25-2021 11:44 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Don Carlos wrote:
I tried my best to get into Control but it just didn't grab me :/


Same here. The premise was nice: Strong "Lost" vibes + some spookyness. I liked the abstractness of it.

But the gameplay was not something I care about. Generic shooter with a boring twist.
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Pext
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PostPosted: 12-25-2021 11:50 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


The Ruined King (League of Legends RPG spinoff) - 8/10

A JRPG set in the world of league of legends. The combat mechanics are very satisfying. But it's on the easy side. Play it on the highest difficulty.

Nothing special but well crafted. Solid game.
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 12-26-2021 08:07 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Control is free in the Epic Games Store the next 24hrs or so
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Don Carlos
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PostPosted: 01-10-2022 12:40 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Forza Horizon 5

Beautiful on the series X - a lot of fun as always with these games. Done most of the stuff I am interested in now; just a few cars left to buy that I want to try and I will be done with it. Then back to Miles Morales before Horizon Forbidden West arrives
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 01-10-2022 02:18 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mario Party Superstars and Super Mario Odyssey.

Yep, I got meself a Nintendo Switch as Xmas gift from work.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 01-10-2022 08:49 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Odyssey's fab, full of really inventive ideas :)
Myself, I'm playing a janky RPG, Greedfall, which has actually got a pretty good story going on about colonialism.
The RPG itself is a bit basic, as is the gameplay, but the story's enough to keep me coming back for more.
It's like a budget Bioware game crossed with a Piranha Bytes game (Gothic / Risen etc.)

Apparently the makers, Spiders, are somewhat known for making janky but ambitious RPGs.
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MKJ
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PostPosted: 01-10-2022 11:07 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Odyssee is great. Theres no endgame tho ehich is a shame.
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Pext
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PostPosted: 01-11-2022 01:45 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Dead Cells - 9/10

Incredibly flow-inducing gameplay.
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 01-11-2022 01:53 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'm enjoying Odyssey, it's a fun game. But there's a few bits in there which feel a bit out of place in a Mario game. The whole New Donk City level is just weird. I mean, it looks good and it plays good and it all works and the level itself looks decently cohesive, but it's just so weird to have Mario walk in this real world setting with "normal" people walking around. It's not bad, just a bit odd.

I had the same feeling with the dinosaur in the very first Tricera-tops level. The whole level has this cartoony look to it, but the dinosaur is suddenly this realistically rendered, real life looking dinosaur that just looks so incredibly out of place. I wonder why they went for these contrasting styles.
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vesp
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PostPosted: 01-11-2022 02:27 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yes I noticed that feeling too - it's like they normalised the whole style crossover thing with Smash Bros and are just going with it now.
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Don Carlos
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PostPosted: 01-15-2022 07:30 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


God of War is out on PC now...just saying *cough* Eraser *cough*
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Doombrain
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PostPosted: 01-15-2022 07:57 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Still just PUBG and Halo
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 01-15-2022 01:46 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Don Carlos wrote:
God of War is out on PC now...just saying *cough* Eraser *cough*

Gotcha :)
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Lieutenant Dan
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PostPosted: 01-18-2022 11:01 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Fell into playing GTA5 Online with a few friends. Since they make it easy to create private lobbies with just the people you're playing with, it's actually pretty damn enjoyable.
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Hannibal
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PostPosted: 01-27-2022 02:52 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Broforce: what am I doing with my life/10. Haven't laughed this hard in a long fucking time.
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Whiskey 7
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PostPosted: 01-27-2022 05:57 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hannibal, been a while ;)

I looked up this BROFORCE and selected video in Google.
I love the Alien link in this YT @ 28 secs, especially the Sigourney Weaver moment and the others through the Launch Trailer below :D



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Don Carlos
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PostPosted: 01-28-2022 04:27 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Miles Morales on PS5

I can't get a stupid 100 hit combo so I can't plat the game. It's doing my tits in. Other than that, good little game, worth the playthrough.
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saturn
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PostPosted: 02-03-2022 02:47 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Only Wordfeud and Wordle these days. And maybe racing on Zwift if cycling in a virtual world counts.
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Pext
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PostPosted: 02-17-2022 01:29 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I've been plaing this recently:



It's ~3$ on steam. Stupid game but a LOT of fun for 1-2 evenings turning into nights.

You move around, dodging enemies. Your weapons fire automatically. And there's some roguelite mechanics (you get gold from runs and can spend it on upgrades).

Highly recommended.
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 02-17-2022 02:43 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Been playing a couple of different things. Got Big Brain Academy and WarioWare on the Switch, which are fun little games to play with my kids.

I've also been playing a bit of Little Nightmares. My brother recommended this to me and it's a charming little game. It's a platformer/puzzle game kind of like Limbo. It's set in a typical horror setting but it's not actually scary. It's more of a Tim Burton style of horror.

Another game I've been dabbling around with since yesterday is Rocket League. Never played it before because I thought it looked like 6 retards scrambling for a ball, but my brother has been playing this with his kid a lot. I was browsing the Switch store and saw it so I thought let's give it a go.
The game does feel like 6 retards flailing around to try and run into a ball, but it's actually kind of funny. I'm terrible at this game, but apparently so are a lot of other people, so I'm matched into games that I can actually win with my team. I find myself struggling to do something useful in a match, but somehow, I do manage to make saves, assists and even goals with a high enough frequency that it stays fun. I guess that if I give this a bit more playtime, my skill will increase and it'll get even better.
The only downside of Rocket League on the Switch is that it's clearly developed for PC. Fonts are way too small to properly read, UI is aimed at mouse use. I also don't understand how the whole system of gaining cosmetic items with blueprints and loot boxes and trading and whatnot works, but that's completely uninteresting to me anyway, so eh.


I finished Control, did most of the side missions as well but got bored of some of the difficulty spikes for the remaining missions. I moved on to Prey (the 2017 one by Arcane).

I can tell it's an expertly crafted game. Arcane are a studio I hold in high regard. Their work on the Dishonored games is excellent. The world building they did in those games really drew me in.
Oddly enough, it's exactly that what seems to be missing from Prey. I'm having a hard time actually caring about the world the game places you in, or the character that you play. It's interesting to see how a game like Control immediately had me hooked, but Prey just feels a bit bland and uninteresting. It's too much generic sci-fi. And that might be an odd thing to say after praising Control, as that game just stacks all of the x-files cliches on top of each other, but there's this intangible difference between the two.

The whole gameplay mechanic of grabbing items and putting them in your inventory and recycling junk you pick up into resources that can be used to craft new, useful items is something I'm not a fan of either. I want to shoot aliens in the face, not micromanage my inventory like some kind of book keeper.

The game is supposed to set itself apart by offering multiple distinct ways of achieving your goals. Hack the door? Find the keycard? Find an alternate route via the airducts? It's nice to have options, but the options all feel a bit obvious most of the time. A bit forced, at times, even.

Combat is a bit weird in this game as well. As enemies get stronger, fighting them head on isn't always a good idea anymore. Not that you can't handle the enemy, it's just that you'll run out of ammo too soon. The game doesn't offer any solid stealth mechanics either, so that's not an option most of the time either. I'm struggling a bit in my mind about whether I should be afraid and avoid an enemy, or if I should just go in guns blazing and kill him, with the risk of finding myself out of ammo 15 minutes later.

So is this a bad game then? No, not at all. It's just that it doesn't deliver on it's ambitious promises (yet, I have played only a relatively small portion of the game). It just feels like I've played this game before. Not literally this game, but the various gameplay mechanics. It's like a mashup between games like Bioshock/System Shock, Deus Ex and a hint of Dead Space.

I'll give it a few more play sessions to see if my appreciation for it grows, but so far, it's not a game that leaves me wanting for more when I turn off my PC.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 02-19-2022 09:59 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I hope you manage to stick with Prey Eraser. I loved it to bits, but then it's my kind of game.

Myself, I'm playing Sifu.
It's a kung-fu vengeance story with a twist; every time you would die, you instead get older. It starts off with you getting a year older, but every death also increases the death counter. So say you're 23 and you death counter is 2, next time you die, you'll resurrect at 25. Get to 70 and above, and the next death is permanent.

The youngest age you get to the next level becomes the starter age for that level. You can go back and try to complete it at a younger age, which will set a new starter age.
So with that in mind, you really want to get to the next level without dying.

And that's really fecking hard. This game doesn't pull its punches, pardon the pun, and if you manage to set a low level start age, it's because you've got better, not your character.
Although you can unlock new moves, but they just add options rather than making the game easier.

And the combat is some of the best out there. Kinda like Arkham Asylum, but I reckon it feels better overall. Enemies are much more likely to attack you while you're fighting someone else than they were in the Batman games, and a wild swing can even hit their buddies.
It also feels like it really relies on player skill, where Batman occasionally felt like it was on autopilot.

Highly, highly recommended.

And it treats you every so often to recreations of famous fightscenes from modern martial arts classics :D

If you were interested in Absolver, but wanted a single-player version, this is it. It's made by the same company.
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MKJ
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PostPosted: 02-19-2022 10:48 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


That sounds extremely interesting.
Not available on xbox :(
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 02-19-2022 11:12 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


So what does it actually mean if you get older? Is it just a glorified lives counter or does getting older influence the gameplay as well somehow?
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 02-19-2022 11:15 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Oh, I got a high enough level to play competitive (ranked) Rocket League mode. Yeeeaaahhh, that sucked the fun right out.
The matchmaking is whack. I found myself playing against groups of people who belong to the same clan (or whatever they call it) and they do all these wild acrobatics in the air and just fly all over the playing field. There's no fun in that.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 02-20-2022 12:08 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Eraser wrote:
So what does it actually mean if you get older? Is it just a glorified lives counter or does getting older influence the gameplay as well somehow?


Well apart from any death after 70 being permanent, each 10 year marker (30, 40, 50, etc.), your health goes down, but your damage goes up.
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raw
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PostPosted: 02-21-2022 04:44 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Just started playing Lost Ark with my son.
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 04-16-2024 05:31 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'm playing through Quake 4 because I never finished the game. Playing through it I understand why I never finished it. It's garbage. I will soldier through, though, just so I can say I finished Quake 4.
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Κracus
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PostPosted: 04-17-2024 05:08 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I have a flight sim setup at my house. VR, full flight stick along with foot pedals and throttle playing MS Flight sim.

It's been pretty fun. There's no real game in it as it's really just a simulator so I made myself a game in that I took off from my hometown and flew south down the east coast with the goal of reaching the tip of south america in an ultralight aircraft that goes at best 170km/h or about 80/90 knots.

I'm in South America now, flying through the carribean was fun. There's some questionable airports in those areas.

Let me tell ya though, South america is so freaking huge. It feels like I'm moving at a snails pace in comparison to north america and it's ALL trees. You often have to fly for hours on end to find an airport whereas in North America there's always an airport 10 minutes away from you.

Once I reach the tip, the goal will be to fly north up the west coast. I'm a bit anxious to get to the Nazca lines.
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