What game are you playing?

[wankerness]

that reminds me that I got Disco Elysium on sale a few months back and haven't got around to playing it yet, whoops. (although that holds true for probably 70% of the games I own anyway...)

lately I've been playing Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, which I think I got free on the EA platform via Twitch [Amazon] Prime? I'm really impressed with the pacing of the game, how smoothly the mechanics are integrated, the character writing, and as I get older / lazier... the quality of life options.

being able to turn off quick time events and make it a simple button press is a godsend, as is being able to toggle the difficulty down when I don't feel like replaying an extended section for the tenth time in a row because I missed the last dodge / strike on a boss. if I want to get my ass handed to me, I'll play a Souls game instead. (I've never quite finished the ones I've started, due to being distractable or having life intervene and my attention bounce somewhere else, but I am continually amazed at how good they are.)

the best Star Wars media (books, games, whatever) play with the extended universe, and the less directly tied to the movies' events, the better the games tend to be. I'd put it somewhere in my top 5 Star Wars games. I certainly haven't played all of them, but for reference, that would be Tie Fighter (the old DOS combat sim -- haven't played all the newer space combat titles), Knights of the Old Republic, Dark Forces II (does that still hold up?), and maybe a tossup for something like Battlefront II that never personally owned.

they had it on sale for something crazy like $5 the other day on Steam. damn thing wouldn't launch since I already had it on EA Play though and it kept erroring out? so I refunded it and went with what it turned out I already have. I really wish they'd stop adding stupid DRM hooks to games that are already tied to a distribution platform... or at the very least, remove the more invasive DRM a few months after release when it's no longer helping the bottom line anyhow. it doesn't make sense to cause problems for your paying customers -_-

I did not get into Disco Elysium AT ALL in the 3-4 hours I played it. Haven't touched it since. It was on console, not sure if that was part of the problem.

Jedi Fallen Order's biggest difficulty problem is the stupid chaotic animal enemies that are unpredictable and have like zero windup to their huge attacks that take off 80% of your health. Fighting humans is actually fun on higher difficulties but it's the random bullshit aliens that make it not fun. It's just not tuned well. It's got good gameplay systems but it's way too easy on easy, bordering on too easy on normal when it comes to humans and bordering on frustrating when you fight things like giant frogs, but definitely too hard on hard with the aliens even though that seems like the "right spot" when it comes to stormtroopers and those weird darth maul looking melee humanoids.

Dark Forces 2 was a great game. I haven't played it in 20 years though. I played it after Jedi Knight 2 though and even though the graphics were a big step down (it looks more like Quake 1 than Jedi Knight 2 in terms of polygon counts) it had a lot of complex and interesting gameplay ideas. No idea how it would hold up now, though. I played Jedi Knight 2 and it all the way through way back in the day but haven't touched them since. Never played Jedi Academy even though that was apparently quite good. The modern ports to console are supposed to be awful cause they didn't account for how much harder it is to precisely aim/turn on a controller vs mouse/keyboard.

 

[CrushingAnvil]

I played Sons of the Forest last night and it's incredible. Best co-op experience I have had in a long, long time. 10/10 would recommend.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

My friends and I randomly started playing Fortnite, after resisting for years and years. It... Kinda rules.

 

[Mathemagician]

Apples first M1 chip was a roughly 40%+ increase across the board on processing power, graphics capability, and runs significantly cooler than intel could ever manage even when they purposefully underclocked chips under load. Like it was a night and day “I can’t believe the numbers I’m seeing” situation from reviewers and testers. Then they launched and delivered on all the previews.

Like I absolutely didn’t buy into it up front and waited to get one until I knew it’d be worth “going apple” for my next laptop.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

Apples first M1 chip was a roughly 40%+ increase across the board on processing power, graphics capability, and runs significantly cooler than intel could ever manage even when they purposefully underclocked chips under load. Like it was a night and day “I can’t believe the numbers I’m seeing” situation from reviewers and testers. Then they launched and delivered on all the previews.

Like I absolutely didn’t buy into it up front and waited to get one until I knew it’d be worth “going apple” for my next laptop.

I used to hate apple because I was a "cool pc windows guy" but after using a macbook pro for work (software dev) and discovering that it's basically a really polished Unix box... Oh man I love them.

Man I wish I had an M1 in my personal laptop though. The fan is so loud all the time.

 

[BMFan30]

I started playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Anomaly the weekend I got my Caparison Dellinger. I have played the game more than I've played the guitar - it's incredible. It's free too.

That's awesome, thanks! I grabbed the link for when I'm going to play Stalker again. Such a good series.

 

[BMFan30]

I'm gonna check out the diablo iv beta today and see if I want to preorder.

Let me know if you like it or not.

So I spent most of last night and this afternoon playing as a Barbarian in the Diablo IV beta. Barbarians start out a lot squishier in the early game (and can stay that way based on your build path) but I decided to focus on a tanky berserker/bleed build. I fooled around with other skills and permutations but there is something immensely satisfying about just standing there bonking enemies with a giant hammer or sword. It's wild how big the map is and how much stuff they have crammed into every nook. I was pretty lukewarm on the game before playing it, and now I'm seriously considering preordering it. I haven't had this much fun in a Diablo game since Diablo II.

Oh sick, looks like a lot of people have been saying it they like it. I've always rolled a tanks as well. Guess I'm going to have to start saving up for a new PC. Been overdue.

 

[CTID]

the GAMMA modpack for STALKER Anomaly is also sick if you're interested in Stalker. still awaiting Stalker 2, and hopefully a new Metro game at some point

 

[ElRay]

Anybody play Eve Online? Been itching for a good Sci-Fi "RPG".

 

[Choop]

Anybody play Eve Online? Been itching for a good Sci-Fi "RPG".

I played it some a long time ago just to try -- it's really more like a space-sim mixed with an MMO haha, but it's kinda neat. I wonder what kind of state it's in now since it's been out for so long at this point.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Kinda late to the party, but re: weapon durability in Zelda BotW, I'm sure I've said it here before but I didn't find it much of a problem until I was grinding Lynel guts and the white Lynels just soak up so ooooo much damage.

My biggest problem in all games is that I hoard the good items "until I really need them," which is usually after the end credits. I didn't fire a single ancient arrow even though they certainly would've helped at some points, and just used lightning/bomb arrows and ancient melee weapons to kill guardians. Next time around I'll force myself to use consumables way more often.

 

[TedEH]

I get the impression that BotW wasn't designed around the idea that you're supposed to "grind" so much as just wander and improvise - and the weapon breaking system is something that would bother those whose gameplay style is more about the grind and the min/max and the meta-game. The "I grinded for 45 hours killing the same enemy over and over so that I could craft an upgrade that gives me a 0.002% increase in running speed because I haven't beat the game until I've maxed every stat" kind of gamer.

But it's a system that works really well for the "run in the direction of shiny things and SWORD GO BRRRRRR" kind of gamer. The "once I've seen the credits I'm done with this" kind of gamer.

That divide seems to explain a lot of the differences in taste I tend to see in people's game reviews.

 

[SalsaWood]

It's integrated graphics on the M1 chips, and it's actually really good. I can run Xplane 11 on max settings at ~3k and 40fps steadily.

 

[wankerness]

I get the impression that BotW wasn't designed around the idea that you're supposed to "grind" so much as just wander and improvise - and the weapon breaking system is something that would bother those whose gameplay style is more about the grind and the min/max and the meta-game. The "I grinded for 45 hours killing the same enemy over and over so that I could craft an upgrade that gives me a 0.002% increase in running speed because I haven't beat the game until I've maxed every stat" kind of gamer.

But it's a system that works really well for the "run in the direction of shiny things and SWORD GO BRRRRRR" kind of gamer. The "once I've seen the credits I'm done with this" kind of gamer.

That divide seems to explain a lot of the differences in taste I tend to see in people's game reviews.

Oh absolutely. The enemies didn't turn into gigantic damage sponges until I was on cleanup trying to find those last few shrines (I didn't use a guide for finding 95% of them so I was wandering a LOT). If I'd more beelined the objectives and then beat the final boss and quit without killing whatever hundreds of enemies trip that threshold to cause the "enemy level-up" I never would have had any issues. It's very possible they stuck those mechanics in to give the people who played the game for hundreds of hours and wanted a challenge some sort of "endgame" where there's still a challenge. But it was a big nuisance for someone that was trying to see almost everything but also trying to finish it. I think I played somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 hours total? Maybe closer to 100? And I only killed all those enemies cause of trying to max out the basic armor sets, and some of them require a TON of things like specific lizard tails.

 

[wankerness]

It's integrated graphics on the M1 chips, and it's actually really good. I can run Xplane 11 on max settings at ~3k and 40fps steadily.

Ah, interesting. The intel macs are absolute trash for games but run programs really well. Mine's coming up on lease this summer, maybe I'll have to get another macbook pro instead of buying this one out and see what the difference is. It's too bad you won't be able to dual boot anymore, but eh. I barely used that feature once I discovered games made this century were basically unplayable.

 

[TedEH]

I was pretty surprised that my old Dell laptop could handle "some games" with the integrated GPU. Nothing very modern, of course, but you're the type of person who plays older games, an integrated GPU can still get you pretty far. It's the beauty of PC gaming - the historical library is vast and mostly accessible.

As much as I'm very excited to have another BotW, there's a part of me that's sort of spoiled by modern games and disappointed that the latest and greatest in such an important legacy franchise kinda looks like a potato because they just don't have the hardware to back it up. You can see some pretty egregious frame drops in the gameplay demo, and the resolution scaling is definitely doing some heavy lifting, and while they hid it well, the LoD / pop-in is definitely also doing a lot of work. It's not Pokemon levels of ugly - Nintendo at least knows how to art-direct - but there's a sense of disappointment just knowing what modern games are capable of and seeing the classics relegated to an objectively lagging platform.

 

[unusual]

I play the occasional Overwatch 2 match. Guitar takes up almost all of the free hobby time. My kids have Xbox Game Pass and sometimes something there will catch my attention for a few hours, so I usually limit myself to the shorter, more casual games in that selection. I was stuck with Hades for a long time, can't wait for Hades 2.

 

[SalsaWood]

I think the biggest part of it being the Switch itself just isn't that powerful. It's basically a previous gen console, which is fine for Mario Cart and JRPGs but it's a big reason Nintendo doesn't see many AAA titles and almost no AAA titles at release. It's crazy playing Assassin's Creed on a Series X or PS5 compared to my Switch OLED.

 

[ElRay]

… killing whatever hundreds of enemies trip that threshold to cause the "enemy level-up" …

Oh man. I was playing "Genshin Impact" for a while because the kids were into it and triggered that. I was definitely into a "Oooo Shinny Thing …" explore everywhere style of game play and didn't follow the story line. Now my world-level is so high that trying to complete the missed storyline missions is tough.

 

[wankerness]

I think the biggest part of it being the Switch itself just isn't that powerful. It's basically a previous gen console, which is fine for Mario Cart and JRPGs but it's a big reason Nintendo doesn't see many AAA titles and almost no AAA titles at release. It's crazy playing Assassin's Creed on a Series X or PS5 compared to my Switch OLED.

The switch was basically a previous gen console LAST gen, let alone the PS5/Xbox Series X gen. Just watch it struggle with games that were on regular ol PS4. Like, AC couldn't port any entries past Black Flag/Rogue to it. Dark Souls 1 runs at half the framerate it does on regular PS4/Xbone. Etc.

Basically, it's barely more powerful than the Wii U. The Wii-U ran BOTW almost identically apart from disc loadtimes vs flash memory loadtimes.