What are you currently playing?

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Thief » Mon Oct 24, 2016 12:13 pm

Made it to the Kiln of the First Flame... which I'm 99% sure is the final area. So I guess it's time I go look up what I missed before I complete the game (notably DLC -- which I have no clue how to access).
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Davidsmith150 » Thu Oct 27, 2016 3:47 am

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby OL » Thu Oct 27, 2016 12:03 pm

The Resident Evil 7 demo finally went open to all users on the playstation store, not just ps+ users. Played that yesterday, and... meh. Still the same feeling I had toward the game seeing any of the trailers. The gameplay seems fine, it's just that the aesthetics are incredibly uninteresting to me, and whatever scare tactics they employ so far just aren't very scary at all. That seems to be their goal with the new game, making it all "scary" again, but just based on the demo, it ain't working out all that effectively.
There was also a demo for Outlast 2 on PSN though, and that was actually much better than the RE7 one. Obviously lower in budget, but still much more interesting, despite dealing with a slightly similar "backwoods" setting and all that. Stumbling upon a pit of charred, dead children, evading homicidal farmers in a cornfield, and the final shot of your character's groin getting torn apart from a first person view are all great horror elements, all far more affecting than anything shown of RE7 so far. Another nice little detail: the protagonist wears glasses, so whenever they get knocked off in a cutscene the graphics go all blurry until he gets them back on. Small, inconsequential detail, but a really nice immersion-builder all the same.
The first Outlast (and, even more so, its expansion Whistleblower) was a really good little horror experience, and the second seems to be doing it justice so far.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Monkei » Thu Oct 27, 2016 12:25 pm

I was thinking about getting Outlast, especially since it's on sale for €4,50 or something right now.. but somehow it doesn't really appeal to me that much. I'm looking for a similar gaming experience though. Already bought Alien: Isolation and am playing Soma right now, which is kind of a spiritual successor to the Amnesia games (which I haven't played yet). It's from the same developer at least. Fun game.. not too scary though. I wouldn't even call it horror.. more like a somewhat dark scifi thingy with some stealthing around and surviving. It has lots of water, so the IGN review probably doesn't look too great. It's mostly the story that's making it so enjoyable for me to play.

Anyway, has anyone played Amnesia? And if so, do you recommend it?
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby OL » Thu Oct 27, 2016 2:57 pm

^^Funny, I think it was earlier this year I played through Alien: Isolation, Soma, and Outlast all back-to-back, so maybe you'll be having a similar experience to me. Yeah, Soma is pretty cool, but I agree, not much in the way of horror, despite the way it's marketed. Good story though, some cool philosophical concepts, and a great ending.
I still haven't played Amnesia, but I can definitely recommend Frictional Games' earliest effort, the two-part Penumbra series, which starts with Penumbra: Overture and ends with Penumbra: Black Plague (there's also Penumbra: Requiem, but it's almost more of a puzzle add-on kind of thing). They're some of the few games I've ever played that create a genuine Lovecraftian tone without resorting to the cliche route of tentacled monsters. They're very, very much indie games though (made by a team of no more than about ten people, if that), so don't expect a ton of polish.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Thief » Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:32 pm

I think of the RE7 demo as being more of a tech demo than accurately representing what the gameplay will be. It's clear from both developer interviews, and one of the trailers, that the game is going to have combat and exploring and is more of a RE1 in first person (rather than a run and hide game like Outlast and Amnesia).

Personally, I'm no too fond of Outlast, so the demo did nothing for me because I knew the game was going to be an extension of this gameplay. However, RE7 at least worked as an aesthetic teaser, and since I know the game isn't going to be emulating Outlast, then I was able to enjoy it on the surface level (as a teaser for the setting and game engine). I'm with OL though, I'm not quite feeling the setting -- and that may be personal bias against that "crazy hick" type of horror.

Anyway, regarding Monkei's question, if you enjoy the games that OL mentioned, then you will like Amnesia (likely). They are of a very similar genre of survivor horror.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Monkei » Fri Oct 28, 2016 1:57 am

Penumbra sounds cool, but I usually stick to the PS4 for playing.. I probably won't change my habits that easily there :p I guess I'll actually check out the Amnesia Collection instead, sooner or later. It's coming out for PS4 next month.

And yeah, maybe Soma will have served as kind of a warm-up for this type of gameplay for me when I finished it, and I'll get right into Alien: Isolation after it.

I'm somehow in 'first person games'-mode anyway at the moment, having recently finished Ether One, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Mirror's Edge Catalyst. I usually prefer third person view, but some games are just too interesting to skip merely because of their camera perspective. But I digress.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Axm » Sat Oct 29, 2016 11:24 pm

Destiny expansions were on sale so I got the game all current and have been playing that. Haven't played it since vanilla in the first year, two years ago. A good amount has changed in the game and it's overall a much better and rewarding experience.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby OL » Thu Nov 03, 2016 4:53 pm

Finally grabbed Sleeping Dogs for PS4. Digitally, since it was on PSN for all of 7 dollars.
I'd played the demo a ways back and didn't particularly like it, but people kept insisting that it was just a bad demo, and that the main game is really, really good.
Now that I'm playing the main game, it's... eh. It's alright.
Really nice atmosphere, I'll give it that (though it's absolutely nothing like Shenmue, no matter what any of these dweebs might be saying). And the story and characters seem to be shaping up nicely enough.
But the gameplay is a total mixed bag. The combat works well enough, but it's occasionally unresponsive when you're trying to counter, and the animations are pretty sub-par. I'm coming off of Mad Max, which had surprisingly good animations, so I might be a bit biased. At least the environmental attacks are a lot of fun.
The driving meanwhile has literally got to be some of the worst I've ever played in a game. The physics suck, and the camera is about as bad as it could possibly be (to a ridiculously frustrating degree), not to mention that the streets are all so narrow and filled with traffic that engaging in a fun, worthwhile chase is unnecessarily difficult to do. I have a good bit of fun when I'm on foot fighting badguys; considerably less so when I'm forced to drive anywhere.
It's funny, people bitched and moaned about how bad the driving was in Watch_Dogs (a point that I vehemently disagreed with; that shit was excellent), but I've never heard anything about how bad it is in Sleeping Dogs. Yet here I am, playing some of the worst driving mechanics ever. Even the taxi minigames from Yakuza 5 were more fun than this.
I'm still playing regardless; I keep telling myself that maybe I just need to get used to the mechanics and everything will be fine. But honestly, I could probably stop playing at any point, move on to something else and not feel bad about it. It's not an awful game (and like I said, the story seems to be going well enough), but I'm not finding myself wowed like many others seemed to be. But hey, it's basically part of the True Crime series, so I shouldn't really be surprised.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Monkei » Sat Nov 05, 2016 7:43 am

So I finished SOMA a couple days ago, and for the most part I had lots and lots of fun with it. I wasn't always enjoying the chase/stealth/creature-is-present parts of it and actually could have lived completely without them. At least that's what I felt.. if they had actually cut these parts out it would have had a negatve effect on the whole atmosphere most likely, lowering the stakes of everything too much. Still, these parts were testing my patience more than stressing me out, most of them at least. At one point I had to wait for a really slow door to open (kinda "waiting for the really slow elevator in Half-Life"-like) while avoiding a creature though, that one was great. I had to run out of my hiding place a little too early, because the fucker was suddenly approaching me, running round the table I was hiding behind. The door wasn't fully open yet, so I kinda had to squeeze through with the creature screaming behind me, run through a corridor, limping due to a previous encounter, and climb up a ladder to safety - that was fun. In hindsight. The stuff that good nightmares are made of.
Exploring the areas and puzzling together the awesome story was what I got the most fun out of though. Exploring felt particularly great because all you were looking for was pieces of the story and stuff that's relevant for the current puzzle situation. No collectibles, no ammo, weapons or other bullshit to look for - that felt quite relieving for the semi-completionist inside me. Made me enjoy the environment for what it is, rather than seeing it as a labyrinth I have to thoroughly search for things to hoard.
As for the story (spoilers for the movies 'The Prestige' and 'Moon' inside):
I quite enjoyed it over its whole course. Loved the whole setting and the crazy idea of the ark. Felt a little annoyed by the main protagonist(s) not fully understanding the concept of copying a mind, in contrast to moving it someplace else, the way it's depicted in this game. I guess he didn't see Nolan's 'The Prestige' or 'Moon' with Sam Rockwell, which explored similar ideas and story elements. I love philosophical stuff like this and enjoy pondering these things over and over. To me the question of all question that arises from the questions the game's story asks of the player is: Does the original Simon, whose brain was scanned at the beginning of the game, differ in any way from his copies or the other forms of being we encounter in the game? My view is he doesn't at all. Just like his copies he is in a way programmed (by various factors) to perceive himself as, well, being a 'self', being someone, when in truth he (and with him all of us, the human species) is merely a bunch of atoms or whatever, in the end (or on our human level of perception) forming an organic computer inside a 'body' that just works this way, perceiving itself as 'being a being', while actually being everything there is and nothing at the same time. Further elaborating on this would be kinda tough for me in English, but I think scratching the surface of this topic is sufficient for this post.


Anyway, since the 'hiding-from-the-creature'-parts weren't exactly what I enjoyed most about this experience, I don't really feel the need to directly jump into Alien: Isolation next, and play these games back to back like OL did. Instead I'm now trying to get back into Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I randomly stopped playing about four months ago. Can't stand having a half-finished game on my harddrive any longer. So far I'm having a little trouble getting a good grasp of the combat strategies and tactics (and remembering my travel buddies, like, who the fuck are these people again? :lol: ), but as the game is time consuming enough anyway I swallowed my pride and dropped to casual difficulty, maybe that'll help.

Additionally I'm occasionally continuing my playthroughs of Stealth Inc. 2 and Trackmania Turbo. Stealth Inc. is an alright little puzzler and pretty enjoyable in small doses, while Trackmania is pure childhood-"playing with Hot Wheels"-nostalgia. Ridiculous over the top arcade racing with four different cars on their respective rollercoaster-like racing tracks of extreme fun and extreme speed. It's already getting tougher to get all the gold medals pretty early on though, so I'll see where that goes. So far I'm still good, going through the second easiest series of courses.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby ys » Sun Nov 13, 2016 10:55 pm

OL wrote: The Resident Evil 7 demo finally went open to all users on the playstation store, not just ps+ users. Played that yesterday, and... meh. Still the same feeling I had toward the game seeing any of the trailers. The gameplay seems fine, it's just that the aesthetics are incredibly uninteresting to me, and whatever scare tactics they employ so far just aren't very scary at all. That seems to be their goal with the new game, making it all "scary" again, but just based on the demo, it ain't working out all that effectively.
There was also a demo for Outlast 2 on PSN though, and that was actually much better than the RE7 one. Obviously lower in budget, but still much more interesting, despite dealing with a slightly similar "backwoods" setting and all that.

I didn't find Resident Evil 7 very interesting either. Despite people talking about going back to the horror roots and so on. It feels, I don't know, a bit lacking in personality. Like one among many other first person horror games. Maybe the full game differs a bit?
I know that I might be too traditional and behind the times but I still like the fixed camera angles here. They could add tension, create an atmosphere and made the game feel more "cinematic". Like playing an old school horror movie.

I recently tested their VR demo too which was slightly underwhelming. Especially after I saw all those people going crazy on Youtube. Anyway, good sense of space but characters got too much in my face. I got more annoyed than scared and some objects glitched through the camera. The guy working at the store had a smirk on his face (in anticipation) when he started the demo. He seemed a bit disappointed because I didn't have much feedback afterwards.

I'll have a look at Outlast 2.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby shredingskin » Sun Nov 13, 2016 11:14 pm

Yestarday origins and the darkness within.

Both look promising, but yesterday origins runs pretty bad (I'm on a laptop with integrated card, but still, unity games tend to run like crap).
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Coromasta » Mon Nov 14, 2016 12:37 am

Pokemon Moon since it leaked last monday, finaly they did something different with the story. And it works great, well that validates my purchase of both Sun,Moon and a New 3ds XL.(actually as a birthday present)

Looking forward to yet again amass a living dex.
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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Axm » Mon Nov 14, 2016 7:32 pm

Playing Until Dawn now. Really cool so far.

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Re: What are you currently playing?

Postby Coromasta » Mon Nov 14, 2016 8:31 pm

Axm wrote:Playing Until Dawn now. Really cool so far.

O man, I totally forgot about this game. It piqued my interest but got overshadowed by alot of other games, I'll be sure to pick it up whenever I see it for a decent price.
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