What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

I love it. Say goodbye Bobby.

had a sudden and irresistible desire to play Tekken. Haven't played in years and, hey guess what, turns out the Ultimate Edition is on sale right now for something like 70% off. 

Like riding a bike - going to get my ass handed to me when I decide to play online but I really do love the flow/feel of the game. Loading times are shit tho wish they had made/will make a PS5 upgrade that would take advantage of SSD load times/graphics/etc. ...  

  On 1/14/2022 at 2:17 PM, mcbpete said:

Wild - a memory of me playing a demo of that game about 20 years ago popped into my head a few days ago for no reason. Was gonna see if it was on GOG but had no idea they'd done an updated one...

Yeah I'm loving it. Kind of cryptic sometimes but fun to play drunk.

I've invested close to 80 hours into Blasphemous... new DLC keeps this game fresh!

rocket league is a guilty pleasure for me.  It's one of the rare games I can really find fun being horrible at.  It's also good at being a game you can pick up for 20 minutes a day, have a laugh, or some  great gameplay and be done.  Just saw the next event coming January 26 is a collab with Grimes.  Though it would be an interesting crossover to share here for any fans:

https://www.rocketleague.com/news/neon-nights-celebrates-the-music-of-rocket-league/

Windjammers 2 

There a North America/Canada/Mexico Mario Kart tournament this weekend if anyone wants to join. They don’t do these very often anymore 

I played Star Citizen, so you don't have to.

I followed this guide:

I was an early kickstarter-backer. That was over 8 years ago. lol.
But I have never touched the game until now.
Took a while to download. Folder is 75GB. SSD is highly recommended they say.
Watch the tutorial video above. You'll be thankful you did.
There's no real good-functioning in-game tutorial yet.

First impressions
Character creation is kinda weird. You have to combine faces to make your face.
Not a lot of options actually. No beards. Few hairstyles. Can't adjust body.
That's too bare-bones for a persistent online universe imo.
When first waking up from your bed in game you might experience some graphical loading issues.
Graphics are not very optimized though. So beware.
Just let your pc do its thing. Things will get somewhat smoother the longer you play.
Visually it looks very detailed. Very impressive.
Especially station interiors and ships. They look amazing.
But space looks kinda dull imo. I guess they went for realistic space, not breathtaking nebula space.
That's a valid choice. And the devs seem to go for realism in most cases.
The controls, interface, inventory-management and movement are all very clunky.
Not intuitive at all. I think that's a major drawback for new players and more casual players.
Simply activating stuff requires you to press F, mouse over a text field, and left-click. Why?
The gameplay seems okay for an immersive game.
There is some content in the alpha, but obviously there's still a lot of things missing.

Gameplay
There are missions you can do. That's good.
However, instead of receiving them from talking to npc's in the world you get them by choosing an item from a list in a menu. clapclap A bit dull, don't you think?
Why not have a spicy interaction with a security guard, an alien in a bar, a fat banker, or shady individual?
Also, so far, the missions don't seem very interesting or unique, or at least they seem somewhat unfinished in a very raw state. Very dry.
A gameplay thing I personally miss is character-stat-progression. Maybe also skill-unlocks.
But that's just the RPG-fan in me. Obviously this is not an MMORPG.
Crafting equipment and building your own ships our stations are also not a thing it seems.
Why am I gathering resources? Just for cash? To influence the economy? Ok.
Wouldn't it be more fun if players could at least craft equipment with all the different things they find in the universe, increasing their chance of survival?
I guess that would make it a different game though. I guess I played too many open-world survival-craft games. lol
It seems that most progression is unlocked by making money, by doing deliveries, mining, shooting scum, market-trading, and completing missions.
This way you can buy better ships and equipment and do more challenging stuff.
I think the devs rely more on their players finding joy in doing stuff in co-op.
Doing random stuff together, doing missions together, exploring together, fighting each-other, forming guilds,...
I guess it's thus a multiplayer game first.
Having fun with friends. An irl mission could be to look for friends.
Now let me dream: Will we be able to act out Star Trek, the Expanse, Firefly? That would be awesome.
But it might also maybe just be wishful thinking. lal
It's an ambitious game for sure.
Combining space-flight, first-person-shooting, hand-made environments, realism, trading, and exploration all within a multiplayer setting is quite a challenge.

Bugs
The biggest problem however for now are the bugs.
Some are visual. Some disrupt gameplay. Some stop you from performing certain actions.
But there's also quite some game-breaking bugs, in which case you should respawn or even reset. 
But yeah, that's what an alpha build is. Still after so many years though.
I wasn't able to complete a single mission, which sucks. All progress lost every time.
 - Some equipment kept disappearing from my inventory. No hand-mining for me I guess.
 - Invisible hands. No miming for me I guess.
 - A box I couldn't drop. So I had a box as a glove.
 - One time I even had an entire backpack as a shoe. lol
 - Third person view flipping out like crazy.
 - Being stranded because my quantum boost wouldn't activate.
 - A triple overloaded backpack I couldn't remove or interact with.
 - Automatic landing doing weird stuff, shoving me into a building.
 - Flashlight-circle disappearing in the environment.
 - When in inventory the camera clipping with the environment.
 - An NPC revolving around their own body like an ungodly snake.
 - Prone going bonkers on non-flat ground.
 - Clothes clipping witch each other.
 - Losing mission-progress. And thus mission rewards. No $ for me.
 - Random stationary floating equipment.
 - Being stuck in a cave forever. Alone. With my thoughts.
The list goes on...



Micro-transactions
A thing I actually really dislike is that you can buy the better ships with real money.
They're not just cosmetic. They have quite an impact on game-progress.
That's not very balanced, is it?
Now, supporting the devs with all your money is fine by me. Go nuts big spender.
But buying vastly better ships... That's a big no-no for me.
How is that fun for all the non-spending players?

Conclusion
In its current state it's playable, but I don't recommend playing it now.
Best to wait a few more years. But it's going to be a looong wait though.
And in the end I'm not sure if the devs will be able to deliver the promised ultimate space-sim though.
Will it be fun? is my main concern.
I think it would have been better if they started with some fun gameplay-mechanics and intuitive controls, and build from there, adding to it, expanding the universe later on.
I honestly kinda feel like we'll see better similar games sooner then whenever Star Citizen will release unfortunately.
(The Outer Worlds 2, Starfield, No Man's Sky 2, Freelancer 2, Eve Online 2, some out-of-nowhere simple-looking but amazing indie game...)
But hey, I hope they prove me wrong.

Extra video:

having fun with this RPG, it's a combination of Golf Story, Zelda and the Pokemon overworld engine

Playing the PlayStation core on MiSTer. It's still early in its development but plays well nonetheless. In-game music doesn't work yet. So far played Ridge Racer Type 4, Rival Schools, Tekken 3, Symphony of the Night....it's so good 

I finished R&C Rift Apart and ended up getting platinum trophy as it was so much fun. It’s not a difficult platinum for sure but I don’t usually bother but this was worth it.

Thrashed thru Dirt 5 that was Januarys PS Plus offering and found it fun. If you liked Sega Rally back in the day then this is it in super graphics glory (on PS5) - due to the nature of the ‘racing’ I’ve stayed away from the online

Now currently playing Beyond A Steel Sky as I really like adventure games. Clunky as hell and struggles with frame rate on PS5 but I don’t care. Liking the sarcastic humour so far.

Waiting for Elden Ring and GT7….

  On 1/22/2022 at 4:35 PM, MaartenVC said:

Micro-transactions
A thing I actually really dislike is that you can buy the better ships with real money.
They're not just cosmetic. They have quite an impact on game-progress.
That's not very balanced, is it?
Now, supporting the devs with all your money is fine by me. Go nuts big spender.
But buying vastly better ships... That's a big no-no for me.
How is that fun for all the non-spending players?

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I'm a big fan of space sims and I've been following Star Citizen for ages, 8 years of development for that is kinda.. nuts. There's a tweet of the CEO saying he'll never spend the backer money on yachting, years later he's on a yacht in a selfie. Seeing them sell ships for thousands of dollars to spacesim-fan-whales is just shite. Especially for a non-free to play game. Can you at least earn in game currency to buy them too?

  On 1/25/2022 at 1:21 PM, chronical said:

I'm a big fan of space sims and I've been following Star Citizen for ages, 8 years of development for that is kinda.. nuts. There's a tweet of the CEO saying he'll never spend the backer money on yachting, years later he's on a yacht in a selfie. Seeing them sell ships for thousands of dollars to spacesim-fan-whales is just shite. Especially for a non-free to play game. Can you at least earn in game currency to buy them too?

Yes, you can actually buy all ships with in-game earned money too, so I guess that's ok, but you'll have to grind pretty hard for some ships.
I just think it's not ok to be able to buy progress or advantages in a multiplayer game. Kinda unfair.
Beware though, if you're going to play and you decide to invest a lot of time in it, if you buy ships with in-game earned money, they might be deleted from your account on the next big wipe. Not sure when that would be, and not sure how often they wipe.

Oh yeah, I've actually been playing some more the last days.
There's just something about this game that makes me want to come back to it, even though it's in alpha and even though I reset my account with each death.
Yesterday I had not a single bug for at least 2 hours, which was quite refreshing.

I'm going to play some more, see the sights, test some more.

I really like Inscryption and have this thread to thank. I'm absolute shit at deck builders, but this is great

so THANKS, im pleasantly weirded out and I couldn't have done it without you, watmm

Started playing RDR2 but god, despite my love for Rockstar Games, that "game" is indeed just a movie with basic interactions. I don't think it's a videogame but rather an interactive movie actually.

  On 1/25/2022 at 9:27 PM, logakght said:

Started playing RDR2 but god, despite my love for Rockstar Games, that "game" is indeed just a movie with basic interactions. I don't think it's a videogame but rather an interactive movie actually.

How far are you? It takes a bit to open up.

  On 1/25/2022 at 9:28 PM, Squee said:

How far are you? It takes a bit to open up.

I must admit I just got to the train level, but mostly because it always crashes there. 

  On 1/25/2022 at 9:30 PM, logakght said:

I must admit I just got to the train level, but mostly because it always crashes there. 

Hm, that's unfortunate.
But really, it honestly takes 6-7 hours before the game really "starts" and let's you play the game. It's a bit of a hurdle if you're not comlpetely in awe of what you've seen so far, but it's really, really, really, really-really good.

  On 1/25/2022 at 9:52 PM, Squee said:

Hm, that's unfortunate.
But really, it honestly takes 6-7 hours before the game really "starts" and let's you play the game. It's a bit of a hurdle if you're not comlpetely in awe of what you've seen so far, but it's really, really, really, really-really good.

Ok my friend, gonna give it another try, and reinstall, haha.

  On 1/25/2022 at 9:03 PM, Nebraska said:

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I got this as my second Genesis (here in the States) game after Space Harrier II (and of course the Altered Beast pack-in)... it's actually a debranded version of Hokuto No Ken (Fist of the North Star) since they didn't think the anime was known or popular in the US...

Kind of a feminine leg

Dark Souls 3 and Death's Door.

Former is my first proper Souls-game. On new game+3 atm with a knight build. Weirdly addicting alright, tho for such a popular title it does have its fair share of problems imo, like clipping issues, the camera in general and input buffer being a tad too lenient imo, often resulting in being punished twice for single missed roll timings: You're getting hit for being too late and potentially get hit again due to the roll coming out later hardly controllably, rhythm going to shit. Wasn't sure about the hyper obscure secrets and lore at first (freely admit i looked up shitloads on the web), but turns out there's quite alot to be deducted from item descriptions and there's indeed a pretty well defined mythology to be uncovered. Bottom line: I dig it, but not quite up there.

Death's Door is kinda like a Zelda Souls-lite experience. Weirdly infantile and adult-oriented at the same time in terms of presentation and humor. Quite challenging, too, at times. Again: Likeable.