What are you currently playing?

[Monkei]

So after pretty much forcing myself through 14 in-game hours, with huge breaks of several weeks (one time even months) inbetween, I'm finally starting to really really dig and enjoy Dragon Age: Inquisition. Longest "getting used to"-phase I've ever endured. But it's paying off now!

EDIT: Now that I've written it, it kinda sounds like some case of videogame Stockholm Syndrome...

[OL]

I'm currently waist-deep in Far Cry Primal and Watch_Dogs 2 (which I'll talk about another time), but I also decided to give Let it Die, the new Suda game, a try yesterday.
The only other free-to-play game I've ever bothered with before this was Warframe, so appropriately this felt a little bit like that, but mixed with the basic gameplay style of Dark Souls. It's actually pretty fun, to my surprise. I played for probably two hours, died twice, managed to get past three levels and the first boss, and I'm definitely primed to play some more later today.
Only thing that seems a little cringy is the life insurance system. As with all free-to-play games, there are elements that you can pay for if you choose, and in this case it's... death coins? Something like that. Basically, as long as you have some of these coins, if you die, you can immediately respawn and keep playing right where you fell. But if you don't have them, you have to restart from zero (I think that's the case... I haven't had to do that yet). And being a bit of a Souls-like game, you can imagine how often these might eventually need to be used.
At least in Warframe the only elements you paid for where things to speed up progression, to get unique items, that kind of thing. In this case, it's more like "pay so you don't lose all your progress," which is a little... eh. Seems like it might be pretty crappy if it gets to that point. I played the hell out of Warframe, and at a certain point, yeah, I started buying a few things, because I felt like the developers deserved something for all the fun they'd given me for free. But here, it seems like the main drive for sending a little money their way will just be frustration. And I'm not sure if I like that business model as much.

All the same, the game itself seems surprisingly solid, fun, and likable for something free-to-play. Definitely give it a try if you have a PS4, if only to experience the wackiness of the first couple hours.

[Axm]

Battlefield 1
Star Wars Battlefront (Rogue One DLC maps)
Gravity Rush Remastered
Telltales Batman

[Ash]

Final Fantasy XV and Root Double.

[shredingskin]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Fuck, this game is a texture eyegasm. Apparently made with photogrammetry, it's really one of the most visually realistic games I've played.

[Monkei]

^ Yeah, truly a beauty.

Edit: Oh, and still playing Dragon Age. Getting close to 70 hours I think, and there's only one final story mission left to do now, so soon I'll finally be able to move on to something new.

[Coromasta]

Skyrim:se and since it's almost christmas I'm going to replay shenmue 1 and 2 again, like every year.

[sand4fish]

Played this a little bit on the 360 back on the day, but now I will give it a full play on the PS3 given my hype for Automata in 2017. So far, gotta give love for the music. Such a soothing feeling.

[Ragol]

I'm playing the Dreamcast version of Cannon Spike. Really great action in there. I've made a video for it. It's in Swedish tough, but it contain lots of gameplay.

phpBB [video]

[Ash]

Root Letter (on something of a "Root" kick, it seems.)

Stardew Valley. It's a fun game, and I'm enjoying it, but I must admit, I can't understand the seemingly almost universal praise, unless it's to do with the fact the game was entirely created by one person.

[shredingskin]

GTA V, fuck this game is fun as fuck.

Don't know why I waited so long to give it a try, I actually loled a couple of times while watching tv and during some conversations.

And the game runs great on pc.

Also I;ve been playing the witcher 3, looks beautiful, but it's pretty boring stuff, I can't really get into the combat, I think GTA V will be my main game right now.

[Axm]

Ive been jumping around from game to game. Its really ridiculous. I think im juggling 6 different games atm. Talk about spoiled asshole eh?

But you know what? Its always MLB The Show I keep going back to every damn day religiously. Baseball or any sports game probably for the matter, are just universally endlessly playable. When you learn every detail about the controlls, timing, animation etc it almost turns into any FPS, fighter or sim. Except its a real game people actually play in real life. Its not fantasy. Thats the biggest draw for me I guess. That when I use Ichiro I know he can slap bunt down the 3rd base line and actually beat out the throw. Or that Stanton really can hit it out of Dodger stadium because he has.
Love it.

But whatever.. also playing FF14 and Elder Scrolls Online to see if they are better these days.

I'll probably just end up jumping to another game in my stupid embarrassing backlog.

[Peter]

Right, I got Last Guardian, Elder Scrolls Remastered and Yakuza 0 (which I can't play until the end of January)

So what do I begin with? The Last Guardian or Elder Scrolls Remastered? I'm tentative about the latter because of how much I loved the Witches though. But then again, I'd love a game I can get immersed in for hundreds of hours.

[OL]

^^I'd say go through The Last Guardian first. It's not super lengthy, so it won't keep you occupied for too long before hitting Elder Scrolls (which will probably consume all your time once you start).

I'm still slowly playing through Dishonored 2, but I also started Wolfenstein: The New Order and Styx: Master of Shadows.
Wolfenstein felt a little weak when I first started; it seemed like just another middle-of-the-road console shooter. But once I finished the so-so prologue and got to the mental hospital, it suddenly got really friggin compelling. Absolutely loving it now.
And for some reason, glancing at stuff for the upcoming sequel made me really interested in playing through Styx (and possibly the game it spun off from, Of Orcs and Men). I already had it on Steam, but my PC gamepad didn't work well with it, and the game really seemed designed for a controller, so I nabbed it on PSN. Loving how old-school it is in its approach to stealth. It feels like a mix of old Tenchu and Splinter Cell games, but with its own aesthetic style and the environmental expansiveness made possible with newer technology (I always use to wish for huge, vertical levels like this back when I'd play Tenchu). Enjoying the hell out of it.

[Henry Spencer]

Yeah, Wolfenstein is probably the best shooter I've played this gen yet. My mate keeps telling me to play Doom, though. Should really get that at some point.

Currently I have given FFXIV a well earned break, after around 10 or so days playing it non-stop. The main reason is because my bro got me this fine gem:



I've pretty much just been playing so much of that since Christmas, every day whenever I can. Just as weird, crazy and madly addictive as ever. I love this series. Already has a much better pace than SMTIV did and the list of improvements is massive:

+Bosses stay tough throughout the game, not difficulty spike early on and then game gets too easy. Also, there's better build up to bosses in this game. You will feel dread going against some of these bosses who you meet early on, just like in Nocturne, these demons all have their own personality traits that you just don't meet for one battle and that's that. In that sense, it's way better than SMTIV where you just meet the boss, kill it and move on forgetting about them straight away.
+Difficulty selection is available from the offset and you can swap the difficulty whilst in the game itself.
+World Map is no longer a clusterfuck and everything is labelled clearly. There's now even a Mapper system that makes navigation sooo much easier. And oh my god, so much of the enemies racing after you whilst you try to get your bearings. Game changer, honestly.
+Much easier to obtain AP than before now (dead bodies now instead of giving you resources give you AP).
+Alignment system actually has more than just Chaos, Law and neutral again like in Nocturne. There's a lot of factions in this game and even within these factions there's Civil Wars going on. Feels like there's a lot going on in the setting, not just you being the centre of the universe.
+The cast of characters are waaaay better than SMTIV's cardboard cut out factory of "I'm the Law guy who believes in Justice and I am pretentiousness incarnate" to "I am the Chaos guy who believes in survival of the fittest and think people should fight to earn their right to live" to Neutral "I have no personality/am boring but like manga and think both sides suck". Yeah, was not a fan of the writing in SMTIV at all, it was plain as fuck, not at all memorable like past games and not in the Nocturne way of minimalism but rather in a way "simple as simple gets" kinda way. Here, it's way more interesting and complex. So many dynamics going on.
+Masayuki Doi, the new SMT series artist (replacing Kaneko) is now a fantastic artist to me. I really like his character designs in this game, a big step up from his boring designs in SMTIV. Also, the Demon Designs are faaaar better this time. No more ugly Demon Art that is jarring (bad Art Direction in SMTIV, imo), Masayuki Doi steps up as the new Demon Artist of the series and redrew all of the bad art from SMTIV into making it similar to Kaneko's designs. He did a very, very good job. I love the look of Lucifer and the new demons in this game like Dagda. Doi did Kaneko proud. *sniff*
+The Voice Acting is surprisingly great. Felt like it was decent in SMTIV but everyone seems perfectly cast here this time.
+/-Atmosphere is just as strong as ever. However, now that you have all of these party members following you it makes the loneliness factor a lot less. This game is closer to Soul Hackers and Digital Devil Saga in that sense, than it is Nocturne. Your mileage may vary on how you like mainline SMT.
-Music is certainly very good so far, but is definitely a step down from SMTIV's soundtrack which was fantastic (not Meguro, but still fantastic).
+Combat is so much better balanced now. They've made some big changes as well adding in some new twists to the formula - Smirks from SMTIV do not guarantee you a dodge from enemies and it is only through smirking that Mudo and Hama (previously instant kill spells) actually insta-kill enemies weak to them. Mudo and Hama now actually do damage to enemies in normal phase (which mean I actually use them a lot more now). Heavy attacks only use MP now, none use HP at all, so MP is even more important now. Spells now have a + and a - effect, if it's in the minus it means that Demon is crap at using it, whereas the higher the + the better the damage output and crit chances. Speaking of critical attacks, you can now perform them with Magic spells as well as with Physical. Press Turns can now be chained even higher more easily because of this. Also, you have party members that each grant special abilities and have a Persona like "All Out Attack" mechanic that also grants you another set of extra turns against enemies. This is balanced against the fact that enemies hit you hard in this game.
+No more "you have to go here to accept quests" bullshit, now it's simply assigned to you automically as you are playing the game.
-You visit a LOT of the same areas as SMTIV. Would be advised to leave it a long time after playing SMTIV before touching Apocalypse. Especially since it follows one of the routes in SMTIV.

Also got Batman: Arkham Knight which is all kinds of ace as well. Glad i took such a big break from the series after Origins since I didn't want to go in feeling burned out on the formula. And hey, it works for me, the beat'em up combat came back to me as soon as I landed in my first group of baddies that needed the snot kicked out of them, plus just being Batman is always so satisfying in these games, alas they have gotten too carried away with the Batmobile missions but the actual act of being Batman has never been captured as well as it has in this series. There's something to be said for being able to come up against such a wide array of batman's Rogues gallery. I have played countless batman games over the years, the SNES Batman Returns, the Mega Drive Batman Returns, the Sunsoft Batman game based upon the 1989 Tim Burton film, the Adventures of Batman & Robin for Mega Drive, the awful Batman Forever game, the rather bad Batman Vengeance game, the arcade game etc they all tried to various degrees but none captured the actual spirit of being the Bat like these games have. Being able to just explore Gotham and complete all of these RPG like quests makes it even better for me. Also like seeing the Joker being a psychological scar tissue for Batman opening those old, hard wounds of his. Having a blast with it, a shame so many didn't like it much.