A positive thread about what you're currently playing

The Evil Within

It's perfect in every way. I'm having a grand time. Mikami is a genius.

No, not really...

I wanna quit the Akumu difficulty. It makes me hate the mechanics of the game more than ever before. I'm in that chapter where your partner has to open the doors while you fend off all the undead. I could probably do it if there were a checkpoint for the second section, the basement. It's just too much a hassle doing the first floor when the basement is even harder. I tell myself that I'm gonna use the flash bolts and freeze bolts in the basement, but everything happens too fast to think and strategize.

I hate that the camera zooms all the way to your forearm whenever you aim. It's dumb. It makes it much harder to see and makes no sense. Eyes don't zoom. I know some people think shitty mechanics are essential in creating tension, but I find that absurd.

I also hate having to run in circles around these guys with my ridiculously low stamina while they all are running at once. It's fucking retarded that the character completely stops moving when his stamina is out, after he's run for like three seconds. In other games, the character just moves slower or is no longer able to run.

I like a challenge, but Akumu is unbalanced.

Also annoying is that the game interrupts you in the middle of the action to show quick cutscenes of things in the environment, while the action continues. I was killed immediately after a quick cutscene of more undead being dropped from a garbage chute. The checkpoints are often placed before unskippable mini-cutscenes.

Edit: Finished this part, finally. I killed myself twice shooting those stupid fire bolts, when I was almost done! I thought I had regular bolts equipped. Another time, I was almost done but could barely play because I couldn't stop shaking anxiously.

@clairvoyantvibrations: Man, I gotten check this game out. Really liked what I saw from the QL and seems like something right up my alley from what you're saying. May I ask, how long it is? Are there reasons to play it again other than 'cause it's awesome?

I've been playing Yakuza 0 intermixed with various other games just because I want to prolong the experience. I love these games and theres just so much stuff to do that I feel like pacing myself is the best way to go about it.

@liquiddragon: I would say it's about 9-12 hours, depending on how much of the side stuff you uncover.

The game is structured in days, and each evening you get to choose to hang out with either Gregg or Bea, Mae's two best friends.

Each day has a specific event that plays out with each character, and events never repeat. So for example, if you hang with Gregg on Day 1 you'll see Gregg's Day 1 event and you'll miss Bea's. So the only way to see Bea's Day 1 event is to start a new game. The more you hang out with someone, the more of what's happened in their life in the two years Mae's been gone is revealed, so if you're invested in all the characters a second playthrough is valuable. I wouldn't call it necessary, though.

This may be considered a spoiler so I'll block it:
The game always ends the same. It's unflinchingly linear in it's main narrative. The variation is mostly dialogue, and comes from how well specific characters know Mae based on your choices on who to hang out with during the evenings.

I was going through my Steam list last night looking for something interesting, and came across Murdered: Soul Suspect.

The game has some crazy interesting mechanics, the story is intriguing, the side stuff seems really cool, and I'm a sucker for any game that goes out of its way to explain video-game-ass video game stuff in an in-world way; specifically in this game you're a ghost and you can walk through any solid wall that you want (leaving a neat ectoplasm silhouette); UNLESS a building has been consecrated in some sort of magical way. And since you're in Salem, Massachusetts basically every single building has been consecrated. So, in order to walk into a building, you have to wait for someone to open a door. Once you're inside, you can't leave unless it's through another open door to the outside. It's a clever way of explaining the fact that you can't just walk through every single building and wall you see.

There are a few things that kind of bother me about the game but, like Jeff mentions a lot, he's a fan of the not-quite-AAA releases that come out from big publishers. This one was published by Square Enix, made by (former) Airtight Games which was made of old FASA games employees, and it's got a lot of charm while not being perfect. It's kind of a shame it didn't get more attention, really.

Been playing Horizon Zero Dawn on hard. I'm only a couple hours into it but the combat has been real fun to get a handle on, and I can see a lot of potential for it once the world opens up. So far the characterization for the few characters in the game has been excellent with great dialogue that gives glimpses into the characters head space.

Dark Souls III. It's so much better than Bloodborne, which is great. It is also not nightmarishly worse than DSII, which is also cool. I never got deep into DSIII for some reason or other (XCOM 2 and it not being as ridiculously fantastic as DSII) and only finished it twice. Getting much deeper into it now and I like how active the community is still.

Bloodborne keeps being a joy for me, of the terrified, tense kind. I tried co-oping a little bit, but it's not as easy in this game as in the Souls series. What keeps me invested is how cool the moveset feels. I love gun parries, and regain, and the dashing. But I also like how cohesive the world feels. Demon's Souls is very coherent. You eat souls because all the demons eat souls, and you give a specific demon souls so she can use them to level you up. Why are there fog gates? Because the head demon produced a ton of fog that covers the land, and it concentrates in front of especially powerful demons(bosses). Why do you keep reviving? There's a specific supernatural being that traps your soul.

Dark Souls 1 lore is pretty good, but a lot of stuff is just holdovers from the gameplay of Demon's, and the lore starts with a mess of different supernatural beings spawning after finding a really big flame rather than just one, old fog demon. It's kinda too late for Bloodborne to solve those things(what's a "blood echo" supposed to be exactly?) but I'm really having a good time with the plot of madmen beckoning Lovecraft mythos gods in various ways, trying to move beyond beasthood. It's also nice to play another metroidvania-style interconnected world after the other Souls games dropped it.

I've made it to Rom, which I think is about halfway, including the DLC.

Wind Waker HD, as my first 3D Zelda, is charming and clever and fun. Sure, I'm only playing it because I can't find a Switch, but still!

Bloodborne is super fun, even ~10 playthroughs in. The builds are actually super unique because of the weapons, since they all play so differently and have such unique movesets, unlike "Longsword #32" in the other Souls games. The fact that the mechanics are so focused on one core playstyle (dodging) means all the weapons and enemies are designed with that playstyle in mind, as opposed to Souls which has more playstyles, but none that feel as good or as evenly balanced as Bloodborne's. Bloodborne is the definition of "quality over quantity".

All the bosses save for, like, 2 "mob" fights (which still have decent designs) are unique and super fun to fight, especially because they do good on the "second form" thing. The art design and worldbuilding is solid. Bloodborne was so good they basically took that game and put a fantasy coat of paint on it for DS3.

Every time I think I'm done, I look at another weapon and think "wow that'd be fun, time to make a build for that one". Never once done that in another Souls game, outside of making a spellcaster build or something.

@teddie: Bloodborne is the first time they did boss fights with different parts to them outside of like, Ornstein & Smough and the Gargoyles, right? Everything here powers up, starts healing or does some other weird thing. The Shadows of Yharnam are just fantastic in the way their moveset seems to have three different evolutions that activate as they all lose health, and I had to decide which I'd rather not deal with at full power.

I really want to make a cannon build. I sort of specced bad early on, so I've got something like 18 strength and 25 skill, leaving me in a weird place where I use the rifle spear, the saw cleaver, Tonitrus and the blades of mercy as necessary. I haven't even tried any alternate guns yet. Does Bloodborne have a re-leveling option somewhere?

This is somewhat against the spirit of the thread, but I kinda think Bloodborne was a bad base for Dark Souls 3, unlike Demon's for Dark. I get odd graphical glitches from the environment in that game that I don't get in Bloodborne, and it looks much more drab than Bloodborne does, presumably because less of it takes place during night or something. But maybe it was just a design preference. Dark Souls looks rather colorful while Demon's is practically monochrome, after all. Though part of that is how Dark Souls is such a fan of colored lighting for the different areas, I still remember the lighting shifting from blue in the Sewers to bright green for Blighttown.

Furi - Really cool combination of bullet hell and third person action, bosses seem cool and art style is dope.

Mirrors edge Catalyst - Starts really strong, very good characterization and dialog so far. Free running is much better than the first game and still gives a good feeling of satisfaction when you pull off a cool move. Combat is alot better than i thought it would be as well, very surprised there.

Mass Effect Andromeda early access - Multiplayer is still pretty fun, runs great (multiplayer maintains framerate better than single player so far), and backgrounds/ environments look good.

@redhotchilimist: I think DS2 had some multi-phase fights? I remember Veldstadt doing something like powering up mid-fight, anyway. They certainly weren't as common or extreme as they are in Bloodborne.

Bloodborne doesn't have a respec, probably my least favourite thing about it, but I don't really mind replaying the game for a new weapon build either. If you're going with rifle spear, maybe start going full Bloodtinge and pick up the Chikage or something as a secondary weapon (although Chikage is so good it might make the Rifle Spear obsolete). I think the Cannon might have a STR requirement as well as needing good Bloodtinge to be worthwhile, so maybe that weapon is a bust for you at this point. Evelyn is your next best bet for high damage gun.

Your build doesn't sound too busted, your strength isn't that high, but you should probably drop Blades of Mercy and the Saw Cleaver if you're not gonna keep leveling STR or Arcane.

Torment: Tides of Numenera has very good writing and the combat and leveling system is slowly growing on me.

Total War: Warhammer is epic and endless fun, as they keep releasing new DLC for it and also FLC which keeps the game from growing stale. At least for me.

YAKUZAAAAAAAA

I started Yakuza 1, beat it, then started Yakuza 2. I purchased a copy of Yakuza 3 for PS3, and then I own 4 and 5 on PS3 digital. I'm watching Yakuza 0 through Beast in the East, and that's so much fun. This series is so good!

Working my way through Horizon right now. The exploration is really wonderful - uncovering the map from east to west is a super rewarding experience. Just really enjoying my time with it in general. The next Elder Scrolls is really going to have a high bar to match when it comes to the vibe of the world and the feeling of wandering around nature. Some of those forests are fucking stunning. It also helps that a lot of the music so far reminds me of Jeremy Soule's work!

It's getting a ton of praise already, but I'm absolutely loving Zelda. Exploring the world is so engrossing, I've probably put 40 hours into already and haven't tried to move onto the actual dungeons yet.

So thankful it's on the WiiU so I don't have to get new hardware to play it.

I'm playing Breath of the Wild which has the most fantastically unbridled sense of emergent discovery of just about any game I've ever played.

I also just started Pillars of Eternity and I love the disposition system and the way it handles skill checks in conversations. Obsidian is lowkey the best RPG developer in the industry.

I tend to have dozens of games I'm technically "in the process of playing", but I'd say the main ones I'm trying to focus on are:

The Witcher 3. I bought this at launch, but didn't actually beat it until this January. Bought the DLCs immediately. Hearts of Stone blew me away, story and character wise. And the scope of Blood and Wine is just amazing me all the time. There's not much left to say that hasn't been said thousands of times by much better writers, but on a personal note it has become my favorite game ever.

The Legend of Zelda: BotW. I'd consider myself a Zelda fan. But beyond really loving ALttP and WW, I'd say I mostly appreciate it from afar. I was aware of this game coming out but I had assumed I would get it somewhere down the line. After seeing the overwhelmingly positive reception and the stories coming from people and the way they described their experiences, it sounded like exactly my type of game. So I got it immediately. And man, it really is something. I wrote a review describing my thoughts on the game in more depth, but the gist is that I like it.

Hitman. My playing this at all is entirely on how much I enjoyed Giant Bomb's content of the game. I never really got into the Hitman games. They seemed cool enough but there's just too many games to play, you know? And I thought even playing it now, after watching so much of these guys playing, that it would feel like I'd seen everything it has to offer. But the game is full of so much sandboxy goodness. Even with exactly the same setup things can go wildly different every single time. I just started but I'm excited to keep going.

Gonna have to beat everything soon though, because come Persona 5's release, that's what my life is.

Night in the Woods is really fun and very comfy to play. It's got great characters and a protagonist that is really fun and relateable. The writing makes me laugh and sometimes gives me goosebumps. It's a well-polished game and I look forward to replaying it over and over again.

After a bad argument with my folks last night, I didn't feel like solving the next dungeon in Majora's Mask. I just wanted to unwind, and before I knew it I was 11 stars into Super Mario 64, so guess I'll talk about both.

Majora's Mask has a great way of drawing me into its rabbit hole, as it's basically "Sidequests: The Video Game!" and games like Arkham City had me staying up till all hours of the night to complete "One more mission." I love the formula of getting heart pieces through helping others rather than environmental puzzles. It makes the game feel much more personal and makes me feel more accomplished. Yet the dungeons are still well designed despite the focus on side quests, and the need to finish them before everyone dies adds a great layer of tension, especially when you missed something and have to go back. It's also a very unique Zelda game with a creepier tone that still manages to work excellently with the amount of quirky side characters and moments. Great game, might even like this a bit better than Ocarina.

Super Mario 64 is proof that great game design doesn't age. Going through the castle and worlds to grab that "one more star" is extremely addictive (crap, another rabbit hole XD), and Mario's 3D model has aged rather gracefully, to the point that it looks cute rather than outdated to me. Everything just works and is fun to actually play, which is more than I can say for a lot of games these days. Each world is expressive and has its own nooks and crannies, and the soundtrack is catchy as hell. Looking forward to grabbing each and every star like I did in the Galaxy games.

Just finished my second playthrough of Alan Wake. The combat wears thin and the cutscenes look awful, but the game otherwise holds up. Easily my favourite Remedy game. Played it on the Nightmare difficulty mode, which seems like the preferred difficulty.

Playing through Rise of the Tomb Raider. I don't remember anyone talking about how terrible the voice acting / dialogue is in that game around the time it came out. It is truly awful. Good game though!

So I am forcing myself to pick up Link between worlds and beat it. I forgot how good this game is. Also playing shadow squadron on my 32x, ahh memories.

FarCry 4.

It was too early after 3 when being so similar. A long time has passed now and I am really enjoying it. A better time to play the game than when it launched.

I'm about to finish Far Cry: Primal...having skipped Far Cry 3 & 4, I've enjoyed it. Riding into a camp on a Sabretooth tiger, throwing fire & bee bombs everywhere, yeah I'll take it :)

@ballsleon What game is that?

I remember really liking that game, despite the "figure it out!" sequences not always making sense/being clear. I'm a fan of those AA types of games too, not that many of them around any more :/

I'm not really playing anything at the moment, but I finished Night in the Woods two days ago. I enjoyed it so much that I'd be totally okay if it turns out to be my favorite game this year. I grew attached to nearly every character, I even sympathized with minor characters that you barely interact with. I think more people should play this game, but if you're not sure about dropping 20 bucks on an indie, you can play Lost Constellation – a supplemental game that is equally fantastic – for free if you wish.

Completed my 100th shrine in Zelda, found all the memories, completed my compendium, found 200 Koroks, beat the main dungeons, and only need to storm the castle now. Just cleaning up the few side-quests I haven't done and then it will, sadly, be over. I don't know how long I've been playing. I'd guess 75 hours. I scoured every area extensively. I'm amazed there are 700 more Koroks to find, but I have no desire there. Great game!

I'm also playing Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Alpha Protocol, and Furi.

I have been playing No Man's Sky for a week and i have been enjoying my time with it a lot. I noticed it was discounted on PSN for 15€ and was about to get the Pathfinder update and Pro support, so decided to jump in.

After playing some of it i could see why people were so angry when the game first released and paying 60€ for it. They made a lot of false promises that they didn't fulfill in the end.

I think they are on the right track with the updates they released and i might be playing this for a long time, if only just to pop in, explore couple of planets and see what they have added to the game. The core gameplay loop is really simple, but i just enjoy exploring and gathering stuff in this game. It might help, that there is decent amounts of variation in the planets and lots of stuff to build and upgrade, to make you even more efficent at exploring and gathering!

Paragon has sucked me back in. That game has been terrible at times,but since december has been amazing. A new character every three weeks really keeps the game fresh.

Playing trough original nier atm and I really like it :D Barely touched automata yet and will now finish the original first. Anything obtuse I should know in order to get the multiple endings in og nier, or is the game pretty clear about it? I refuse to use guides, I always end up spoiling more for myself than I like.

@lestephan: It's pretty clear just uh.. do them in order. A, B,C, D.

@efesell: Ok cool, thank you, I was wondering if missing sidequests was locking me out of certain endings.

I still don't understand the numbers behind Superstar difficulty in Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, but it makes victories sweeter. I think it's accurately portraying the drudge of a side in poor form and how new faces can alleviate that temporarily.

I'm still digging Horizon: Zero Dawn.

I recently bought a Nintendo 2DS - my first handheld since I bought a Gameboy Pocket in 1998. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is incredibly charming!

I'm very much looking forward to playing lots of DS & 3DS games on this thing; picked up some of the Professor Layton games this evening at a local game store.

Playing Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath and it's really good. Had some problems getting my dualshock 4 to play nice with it, so i eventually gave up and went to Keyboard / mouse, and that works fine.

There's a really nice pace to the game (get bounty > go to area to get to the boss > kill or capture the boss > get new bounty > after 3-4 bosses, go to new hub area with new bounties.

It's pretty amazing how well the levels lead back towards the hub. I'm at the 3rd hub now and i didn't have to backtrack once. Since there are 6-ish different ammo types, you can play in a variety of ways. Lure guys underneath a crane to drop a boulder on them, dodge them by walking through high grass, or just run and gun while punching fools. It's really fun.

I really like running on 4 feet and then bumping into enemies to stun them. Or bump into friendlies to 'bump' the money out of them. Funny enough, if you keep robbing the friendly guys, an alarm goes off and everyone runs inside to hide from you and turrets aim for you. This running animation also makes the game feel like Assassins Creed 1 at times. You're running from hub to area, kill the boss of that area, and then run back to the base to get a new target with it's own level.

On top of that, there's some neat humor (I just got to 'New Yolk City' , and yes, everyone is a chicken.)

I have been back and forth on Horizon Zero Dawn, the start of that game is a slow burn but once you start getting stronger weapons and more overriding abilities you can start having more fun messing up big monsters. Also the story kicks in harder then I expected it to, I'm really interested just to see how it wraps up. Also looking forward to Nier since I chose to jump on Horizon first.

I'm currently playing through The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on the Vita and enjoy basically everything about it a lot. Great soundtrack, characters I've actually become invested in and a good tactical combat system. The English localization deserves a lot of praise, too.

Keep leveling skill, rather, right? The Blades of Mercy has an A scaling in skill, and probably deals the best damage for me usually unless the enemy is weak to thrust/fire/bolt. I've got that and Saw Cleaver at +7, the Rifler Spear at +6, Tonitrus at +5 and the Reiterpallasch at a measly +4. I checked, and my stats are, at level 61: 16 strength, 27 skill, 10 bloodtinge and 7 arcane, with vitality at 30 and endurance at 21.

I'll check out the chikage once I get to it. I've made it to the boss in Cainhurst, and it's apparently behind him, so I'll try him on for size next. Is there any benefit in leveling bloodtinge for the rifle spear if I don't really use the gun functionality? I basically just use it as a dark souls spear/lance.

I beat Rom today, so now the sky looks messed up.

I replayed Journey this week and that game is still amazing. I wish it was available on Vita.

Also been playing Rayman Legends on Vita and it's a great version of that game. Manages to make effective use of the touch screen without making it feel gimmicky. Looks gorgoues on the Vitas screen too.

Top 3 areas in Bloodborne that make my neck muscles tense up with stress and fear so much that it makes me afraid for my spine:

1. Upper Cathedral Ward

2. Hunter's Nightmare

3. Hypogean Gaol

Besides that business, I've now defeated Martyr Logarius, Celestial Emissary and The One Reborn, and I'm jumping between Nightmare Fronter and the Hunter's Nightmare. The chikage isn't really doing the damage I need. I'm good at coating it in blood, getting knocked down, and losing tons of HP to the constant HP drain. So the Blades of Mercy have been saving my ass. I'm considering going in and doing another Chalice Dungeon, but honestly the first one was pretty dull. That and going to farm vials because I lose them all on just a couple of nearly succesful boss attempts are the only things that have bothered me. Other than that I'm just captivated by the game, and can play it for hours. I don't think the straight line through this game is very long, but it's got a good amount of optional areas. I've been jumping between different areas for a lot of the game. Is it bigger than Dark Souls 1? I think boss wise it might not be, but I sure feel like Yharnam and Cathedral Ward by themselves are bigger than all of Undead Burg and Anor Londo put together.

Far Cry 4, it's like Budget Horizon. Bought it 2 years ago on Black Friday, never grabbed me. Now it's fun. Especially with a machinegun that could mow down a forest in like 5 seconds.

@redhotchilimist: Farming vials shouldn't be a thing past the very early game, just buy a couple hundred from the vendor every now and again.

Yeah, especially considering the amount of NPC dialogue in that game. The work must have been insane.

Been getting back into World of Warships. I gotta say, nothing is so satisfying as landing six 16" shells into some clueless cruiser across the map and seeing a big ol' five-digit number pop up. Often accompanied by huge explosion to boot.

Of all of Wargaming's online offerings I can pretty safely say I like this one the most out of World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, though I've barely played the latter.

Hollow Knight is incredible. I'm discovering new areas, secrets, and characters astoundingly fast. I'm constantly being pulled in multiple directions because l'll notice a breakable wall and go on a huge tangent off the map and discover a completely new area or a shop to buy some cryptic item or a crazy looking character who doesn't do anything yet but seems important. I'm currently 7 hours in and I've found 5 different areas that all need to be explored further. The sense of mystery is the main draw for me, I can't wait to find new things because the aethetic is so original and I love seeing what kind of creature I'll stumble upon next. It's hard to tell enemies and NPCs apart a lot of the time because the design is very cohesive - it feels like a well realised world. I can't recommend the game highly enough.

Im trying to 100% MGSV because it is my favorite stealth game, the gameplay is just so damn fun.

Screw the mission called Backup Back Down, it makes me stress so much :P

@samanthak: Yeah....that was one of the hardest S-Ranks if I recall correctly. I had to use a guide and even then it took three tries. Hang in there :)

I'm playing Breath of the Wild almost exclusively. After about 15 hours or so meandering around the main quest line, I've now taken to adventuring off towards each tower to unlock all parts of the map. I've seen some things man. Some things and some stuff. All of it good. This game is rather splendid to say the least. I....don't really have anything negative to say about it. The cooking takes a bit too long. I guess that's it. I don't mind the weapon durability at all, it's a nice change if anything.

To me, it's a cross between the best bits of Skyrim, Dark Souls and Ocarina of Time. The latter two are two of my favourite games ever and I liked Skyrim too, so playing Breath of the Wild at the moment is a bit like eating an ice cream that's a cross between chocolate, caramel and winning the lottery.

@ohbabes: I think im on the 11th try to get S rank on that mission.

I hated timed stuff :(