A positive thread about what you're currently playing

The idea of the thread is simple. I wanted to have a place where we express what we enjoy about the games we're playing atm. I make a lot of threads (way more than I probably should) and they usually come from a place of criticism. Of course there is nothing wrong with that but I thought it'd be great to come at it from the opposite angle. Anyway, I'll go first:

Just recently started playing The Witcher 3 and what immediately struck me was the score. It's not something I really noticed or remember about W2 but the music in W3 is very dramatic and moving, at times haunting even. It really sets the mood and gives the adventure a tone I kinda expected, yet very much wanted. Also, the way the winds and fog play with the wilderness during what seems like a near constant state of magic hour makes the exteriors so atmospheric . Lastly, I'm very glad I played W2 last year because it made this game very easy to hit the ground running for me.

Exploration and discovering an area with something going on in Zelda is so satisfying. So was getting into Hyrule Castle. It felt so god damn Metal Gear Solid and the music amplified the danger, it was an amazing sequence.

The strategic aspect of combat in Horizon, in terms of "how do I tackle this specific robot, what works best, will it attract other robots I can't see from her, etc" has amplified how much fun I have doing combat in that game. I also really dig how the story is going, though I'm not too far.

I thought I was having a fallout with the MMO genre (my favorite genre) but then I got back into Guild Wars 2 and I've been having a mini-renaissance. The world of Tyria is just so charming and diverse and fun to explore, and I really like how classes play in that game, it feels unique compared to other MMOs. It's also a "loot game" that can rival Diablo 3 in terms of how much shit I get and it feels SOOOO GOOOOD to just have bags upon bags full of loot.

@takayamasama: You've successfully made a post with zero negativity! That's great.

@liquiddragon: I aim to please

Overwatch and BF1. Great games, no complaints.
I also recently discovered that Overwatch Quick Match goes really, really well with the Warcraft III soundtrack in the background.

Also, I've been hanging around on Elysium (Vanilla WoW), both Horde and Alliance side. It's so satisfying playing the economy and making my gold again, getting some XP and doing a couple dungeons. It's got such a chill relaxed (cartoony) style.

Still playing Breath of the Wild. I have just over thirty hours in that game already - for comparison, it took me a month to put thirty hours into Dark Souls III and I thought that game was pretty damn great.

I've always loved the idea of being a wandering adventurer in an open world game like this, but few of them actually do precisely what I want them to do. Exploration, discovery, seeing things, looking off in the distance and saying "I want to be over there" and going over there. It's hard to put my finger on, but Skyrim and now Breath of the Wild have both nailed exactly what I wanted out of them. Sure, at some point I'll finish the main quest, and maybe I'll actually do a few side quests too, but for now I'm just running around the open world, seeing the sights and talking to everyone I meet and fighting monsters and gathering materials and solving puzzles and occasionally freeing ancient dragons from Ganon's control. That was pretty awesome.

Playing Breath of the Wild and the thing I probably enjoy most about that game is being able to look at something: a problem; a challenge. Look at that, and then using what you have available, find a solution. It might be the one they intended, or you might just "game" the system a bit and make your own solution. I mean, that's generally every video game - have a problem, find a solution, but there's just that something about this one.

For instance, I found a small lake, more of a large pond really, with a wooden raft in it. As I used the Magnesis power to search around, I could see multiple chests under the water. So I used this leaf on the sails to push the raft to the first one, and second, and third. However before I could go for the last two, the wind changed direction and pushed me sideways against land and as hard as I tried, I couldn't swing my leaf enough to counter it. So I sat there for a minute and finally thought of something - what if I used Magnesis? Not on the wooden raft, obviously, but on the chests I had already fished up? And what if I moved the chest behind the raft, dipping it slightly into water just above the ground, and then pulled it towards me?

I could have waited until the wind died down and continued to use the leaf to move the raft. I could have used my ice block power to slowly make my way across the large pond and fish the chests up onto those. Instead I turned that wooden log raft into a magnet-powered boat, and it worked.

What if I could do this? What if I did that? Would it work? More often than not, yes it does. If it doesn't, well, time to try another thing. Sometimes you have a great idea that fails, or a terrible one that somehow works, or maybe it all just blows up in your face because that Bokoblin fired his arrow through the campfire and while it missed you, it sure didn't miss that explosive barrel behind you.

I just discovered how cool it is to blow a cannon off a robot animal and then use that cannon to perforate the shit out of said robot animal. Oh yeah, and Horizon: Zero Dawn is pretty cool, too.

I'm also still playing Paragon, which is a MOBA that just feels good to play. Epic recently released a new hero that is basically a K-pop star. I really appreciate their willingness to do something dumb and silly just because it is fun.

Grim dawn, over 700hrs now

people should play it.

I actually hate all video games.

Just got done with playing through Dishonored 2 with both characters. Even with being a pretty big stealth fan there was a bit of an annoying learning curve with figuring out enemy awareness. Additionally, the game gets more and more fun as you add more and more powers so it was a few hours until I started really enjoying it (just like the first game).

I'm glad I waited for the patches that added new game plus as this let's you keep the accumulated rune total, bonecharm traits, and blueprint designs that you've found throughout previous playthroughs. This alone changed what would've been a decent game into a great one and serves as an example of how to implement a new game plus correctly, as opposed to what DE Mankind Divided did with theirs.

Just today I've decided to replay DA:I in anticipation for the new Mass Effect game. Not sure how far I'll get since it can be a really long game but I'm still enjoying it on my third (or fourth) playthrough between both console versions.

BF:Hardline's campaign was totally worth 5€.

Aside from the variety of multiplayer games I play, I'm currently juggling Horizon, Nioh and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

Aside from looking goddamn beautiful and having a pretty well paced/compact open world, Horizon is one of the best examples of how to use weakpoints in action games, and I sincerely hope it gets ripped off a thousand times over in the future. Shit is very fun and clever.

Nioh is just plain awesome. The combat system is freaking excellent, it's definitely in the top handful of greatest combat systems ever made. That game is just so much fun to play. Any flaws in that game are immediately just ignored because I'm having too much fun ki pulsing and moving around.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions is dope. It's scrathing the itch I developed in P5 hype, and it's also a pretty relaxing game to play now at a time where I wanna relax a little bit more. I like all the characters so far (this is very rare) and the gameplay is much snappier and flashier than Persona, which are some of my few complaints with those games. Solid fun!

I played Nioh and it was great. I am now playing Horizon Zero Dawn and I'm finding it somewhat amazing. It takes a lot of aspects from other games, but it's done incredibly well, better than most in my opinion. After I see what I can out of Horizon Zero Dawn I hope to jump into Zelda (as in, to buy a Switch with Zelda). A lot of the praise that's going toward Zelda I feel also can be directed toward Horizon Zero Dawn. The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite open world games, and I think Horizon may just end up being a part of that as well. And yeah, The Witcher 3 has a beautiful soundtrack. I like a lot of the tracks, but it's unfortunate that most of the best tracks are not on the official soundtrack. You can find the best, unreleased tracks on YouTube, though. Horizon also has a beautiful soundtrack when exploring. It's a nice surprise; the game in general really.

I've been spending most of the past few days on Yakuza 0. Every time I think how rad the game is, it just keeps getting better. The story keeps ramping up and up, the side stories are almost always entertaining, the combat never gets old, and the business minigames are fun.

I've also been playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV. It's in a little bit of a lull for most players since the next expansion is due out in about 3 months, but there's still fun to be had, and I'm having a good time playing with my guildmates and leveling some alt jobs for a change of pace.

Aside from that, I still put in around 30-60 minutes of Picross on my 3DS every night before bed. Slowly working my way through all of the eShop Picross games!

I cannot play Yakuza 0 more than one chapter at a time. This makes it perfect for the hours or so I get to game before and after work.

Like a lot of other people, I'm playing Zelda right now. It's so good. Just the playful way the music changes in certain situations is enough to bring a smile to my face. This game is truly a showcase for what huge potential there is in the open world space.

Levelling up some other classes in FFXIV before I start 3.4 story stuff. Really caught me off guard how deeply I'd fall in for this game. I mean, I enjoyed ARR when it came out, but never stuck with it after the free month expired. Really enjoying it.

I gave Tearaway Unfolded a shot and oh my god it's so charming. Platforming feels good, got a great construction paper-esque style, fantastic voice acting. Really excited to play more of it.

Picked up Assassin's Creed Unity when it was recently on sale and went into it purely wanting to climb around France, and so far it ain't disappointing.

Path of Exile. Diablo II is my favorite game of all time, and Path of Exile is the sequel to Diablo II that Diablo III should've been.

I actually did that while waiting for Zelda. Just wrapped it up a few days ago. Used around 105 hours to wrap everything up, excluding the DLC. It's certainly a meaty game. Had a great time for the first 40 hours maybe, and a way less great time for the remaining time. It just drags on in a way. And it's not confident in it self, so it just tosses out a million markers and small quests everywhere. Kind of annoying for a completionist.

This is something I don't see a lot of people talking about that is actually incredible. The shrines have puzzles that are solved a very specific way, that just require good execution. But the amount of times I've failed the "proper" solution multiple times and immediately tried the "work smarter, not harder" approach, it has payed off in ways that just leave me grinning like an idiot because I think I'm some insane evil genius for getting one over on the game. One of the shrines you have to move an ice cube from the start to the finish without touching any fire, or it melts, using a giant metal block to cover up the flames so you can proceed. After failing to execute a full run of this about three times, I put the ice cube on top of the block and flung the block to the end of the puzzle before the ice cube could slide off, effectively bypassing the entire puzzle.

Another one you are supposed to move an object from one side of the room to the other, avoiding lasers and jumping over holes in the process. Again, I failed this a few times and had a crazy idea to just apply stasis to the ball and beat the shit out of it to launch it across the room, and it totally worked.
There are simply too many examples to list, but every single time I had a giant goofy smile on my face when I thought I got one over on the game. Not many games have achieved this, and even fewer (perhaps none) have achieved it while also bringing story, combat, exploration and platforming in addition to. The game is just such a treasure in every aspect, shame about the framerate.

I've been playing Bloodborne for the first time. I purchased it a long time ago, and somehow it just felt about time for it. It's fun! Or exciting, rather. I feel like my neck muscles are gonna snap my head off, I unconsciously tighten them contantly because of the stres. The visuals are grimy and distressing, the combat is fast and rough, and the growls and roars of everything are so messed up. Even just returning to the hub has a scare sound effect.

I used to watch youtuber EpicNameBro speed-/permadeath-/low level run this game daily a few years ago, so I thought I was pretty familiar with the game's environment. Didn't stop me from getting lost in the city and having to look up where the second aqueduct bit is. Stopped once I had beaten Cleric Beast(with the help of Gascoigne, who died quickly) and Father Gascoigne(with the help of three tries). It's fun, although I'm pretty much just spamming R1 in combat. They changed the guard button(L1) from Dark Souls to a trick weapon button and triangle to the healing button, so I mess up those a lot. I love having a gun instead of a parry. I barely ever used parries in Dark Souls, but I can pull them off relatively often here, especially against big guys.

I am catching up on some games and working my way through Uncharted 4, which is great. Charging around your little combat arenas just greasing a bunch of bad dudes is as fun as ever. The locations are gorgeous. The banter is fun. I love swinging around on my grappling hook and dropping on dudes.

I am also finishing off Dying Light with a mate and having a darn good time. The story isn't great, although it is a vast improvement on Dead Island, but the parkour movement feels good and lets you pull off some great stuff. Wish there was some more cause to actually go out at night and play it the way they intended (creep around and avoid scary uber-zombies) but on the bright side I do get to dropkick zombies off rooftops and you'd have to be soulless not to crack a smile at that. The game is derpy in the right ways.

Just finished Horizon, and very much enjoyed the conclusion. While the combat with bandits and cultist is tedious, the epic nature of taking down the bigger robuts is wonderful.

Now I'm just waiting for Mass Effect, and replaying Dark Souls 3. Which DS3 has kind of become my warm glass of milk, see how far I can get without dying, comfort game. I just like the way it sounds and plays.

I'm usually the same but since I've already completed the game before I can enjoy this playthrough at a leisurely pace and not feel the pull to complete everything. That's usually how I am with most big games that offer a lot of optional stuff. Now if I could only accept that mindset from the get go of every game (and not on subsequent playthroughs).

I've just started playing Legend of Heroes: Trails In The Sky.
I'm only 2 hours in but I'm already enjoying the writing and characters a bunch. The dialogue just kind of flows and feels natural in a way I really appreciate. Props on the translation I guess. It feels well thought out and I'm actually intrigued in where the story is going.

The combat system also seems like it could be really neat but also challenging enough since I am not great at sort of tactical grid-based combat in JRPG's.

@doctordonkey: I think I also did the same thing for that laser/ball shrine, or at least for a similar shrine.

There was another puzzle that involved a giant stone ball and a plinko-like sloped area you needed to navigate, presumably using stasis or cryonis to stop and re-orient the ball as you went down. Instead I noticed this catwalk system where you'd probably stand to get a good angle to use the powers from, and I just smacked the ball onto that (using ice pillars to make sure it wouldn't roll down the slope) and skipped the rest. It was too big to push like boulders, but I could nudge it just enough to let it roll down the catwalk and then one tap from stasis at the bottom to get it in the goal.

Another shrine had one of those hit-activated...lever...pole...things, and you needed to be really quick for a bonus chest. Instead I just went slowly, and then arched a bomb arrow over a wall to activate it.

I also enjoy the moments where I think I'm doing it right, but then after finishing it I realize the intended way of doing it with an "Ooooh, I see what they wanted me to do" moment. Sometimes it would've been way easier and it makes me laugh.

@liquiddragon: I've never been a soundtrack person, so if I notice a game's soundtrack it usually means it's REALLY good. I was actually listening to the Witcher 3 soundtrack for a while after getting the game.

I'm currently playing Burnout Paradise again. I don't know if there needs to be anymore said about that game on this site, but it is fantastic still. Probably the greatest arcade driving game of all time. The open world is fun to explore and the collectibles are probably the best I've collected in a game. It is just so satisfying to drive through the yellow gates and blast a billboard.

On a side note; Xbox One backwards compatibility is so awesome.

@nate_is_my_fake_name: Ah, you totally reminded me the game actually came with the soundtrack. Thanks!

The soundtrack of TW3 is definitely a return to form and improvement at the same time. TW1 had a fantastic soundtrack but TW2s was very hit and miss. I absolutely loved TW3's even some of the battle themes that people said grated on them.

Torment: Tides of Numenera . It has been really enjoyable to play an RPG that has almost no combat. I am only six hours in but, I keep wanting to come back to this game to learn more about the facinatingly weird world and people that inhabit it.

Putzed around with Disc Jam off and on today. Really fun game. Just a whole lot o' jammin' in ways legally distinct from the jammin' one would associate with wind.

Good thread :) I feel like most news and discussion are about the negative. It's nice to hear people being positive.

On the 3rd ending path of Nier: Automata. Enjoying it immensely so far. The way they handle the alternate endings in this game is a lot more interesting than the original, or most games in general. Labeling them as alternative is probably a disservice, since they're basically just the nex scenario of the game. Also while the combat isn't necessarily the main reason I'm here, it still feels good, with a lot of options without being overwhelming. And the boss I just fought is probably one of the best fights I've seen in a game in awhile. I'm officially convinced Platinum was the perfect collaborator for this project.

If P5 wasn't out this year this game would likely be an easy shoe-in for my GOTY. Not that it matters. A great is a great game regardless of the competition. I just hope more people get a chance to play it.

I've been traveling a lot lately, so my 3DS has come in handy. I randomly picked up my last Bravely Default save. Man that game has some personality. Also, like Brad, I'm a sucker for job systems. (Good idea for a thread).

Oh, man. Well, I started Animal Crossing: New Leaf again because my little sister got it and it's a pretty laid back way to do something "together" while being on opposite sides of the US.

I also have been playing Factorio and Banished. Both games give me this crazy need to continually get better. Factorio because there should always be more stuff faster. Banished because the whole town dies otherwise.

Finally, I've gotten back into Undertale. I bought it during a steam sale shortly after it came out only to get it spoiled for me 2 hours into the game. Now it's been years and I can't remember the spoiler, so that works out.

There's a few others. I have a hard time sticking to games because being employed and a student full-time makes free time a bit low. Also, I have way too much to choose from.

NieR Automata is unique and special and is brimming with heart and atmosphere. To be honest the combat being good is just sort of a bonus. Not only is the story good but some of the sidequests are legitimately hilarious. I'm still on Route A, and I am in love. I could write a million words about this game already. I wholeheartedly recommend this game, with no asterisks this time like the first one.

Found a nice home for multiplayer shooters in Titanfall 2. Haven't regenerated (prestiged) in it, and don't intend on doing so. Been looking for an FPS that I could call my go-to for a while.

Back in '07 I discovered CoD4. I had multiplayer experiences through Gears and Halo, but I found those communities to be way too deep into the minutia of said games. Bought Gears somewhere in the window of 4 months after it came out and popped into Halo 2 here and there anticipating Halo 3's release. I saw the trailers for CoD4 and wanted to take the dive. It was the first time I took a gamble with a game/franchise that I knew next to nothing about other than the CoD2 kiosk experiences at the GameStops and Best Buy's being fun little romps. If Infinity Ward was going to push for modern warfare then hell, I can pass on CoD2 and go straight into 4.

A shiny 10th prestige badge and MW2 7th prestige badge later, I hung my M40A3 and Intervention to play a variety rather than sticking with the team I was in and spend endless nights calling out enemy positions. Don't get me wrong. I would never trade in the good and bad memories I had with those two. It's just that, well, life kicked in. On top of that I ain't the type to prove my worth in a video game. They're fun, but all in all the team was getting that good that I got bored of the shaming and just got tired of having to function at 100%. Also I knew reflexes would dwindle, so might as well catch up with a bunch of other experiences (Mass Effect franchise, Red Dead Redemption, Bethesda Fallout games/Skyrim, etc.).

2013-2014 drained me though. Some might call out 2016 as the worst year in human history. Fine. I'll give in to the consensus that 2016 is terrible, but those two years do tend to wake me up from time to time. Had very little money as well and regretfully passed on Titanfall, but 2015 rolled by and was primed to give a multiplayer game a go. Overwatch was nice, but the nuances were so dense that I just couldn't keep up with the community. It raised my anxiety and made me feel terrible with every loss cause I knew playing something one week and coming back to Overwatch the next week was enough time for Blizzard to nail those balance changes and leave me in the dust. Excuse me for playing the old man card, but I like to put some time into relaxing rather than figuring match-ups. I applaud Overwatch for it's design and intensity, but I just couldn't hang.

I couldn't have been happier to have purchased Titanfall 2 though. It gave me what I wanted out of a multiplayer experience; hunting pixels with my bullets and a simple reason why I win or lose a match (cause one team shot more pixels than the other. I only play Attrition). Even if I lose I get a chance to extract. Cool. Oh shit. A couple of the sane buddies from the CoD4 days got Titanfall 2? Lets play some matches! Win or lose!

Anyways that's my story. TLDR; Titanfall 2 alleviates the pressure I feel in multiplayer FPS and doesn't leave me an anxious, salty mess.

I occasionally check in to continue to play Darkest Dungeon and that game is fricking awesome but balls out hard.

I have been playing Hyrule Warriors on WiiU. That this certainly has its issues, but I am finding it a LOT of fun - a great way to relax and come down after a day of work.

I'll write some nice words about that new Nier game too. I'm in love with the soundtrack, and especially with the way they mess with the track as you roam around a stage. They might cut out the vocals and bring up the violins as you cut into an alleyway, or leave just the vocals with a muted backing track as you make your way elsewhere. My favorite example of this is in the third area you make your way to in the story. Just a lovely track that I'll likely keep coming back to after I'm long done with this game.

I'm just about to wrap up route B, and the way they've continued to mix in totally different gameplay elements has yet to get old. I don't really want to say too much, but something that could be written off as a throwaway little mini-game anywhere else can become a core part of combat encounters in a pretty cool way.

Mixing and matching weapons is fun, and surprisingly so is just pairing up the same weapon type. Dual spears is something that I didn't think I would enjoy as much as I do. Combining all of this with different pod weapon setups just makes experimentation a lot of fun. This game may not have the button string combos of a Bayonetta but I never really feel like I'm at a loss for options.

Replaying GTAV again on PC right now the graphics and the attention to detail is amazing everything about this game is so good from characters to music to gameplay there's some games that feel that they where made for you this is one of them.

Two GOTY contenders for me:

Still plugging away on the Yakuza 0 completion list. Tremendous game - the writing is sharp, the combat is fun, and the density of stuff (you are constantly stumbling into sidestories, minigames etc.) is unparalleled.

Also made a start on Persona 5. Too early to say for sure, but it's probably going to up there with Persona 4 - everything is dripping with style, the new characters seem interesting, and the narrative thus far seems intriguing. The English release can't come fast enough IMO.

Bloodborne is scaring the shit out of me. Even though I watched all this stuff before, playing it is a different story. I feel hounded in a way I never feel in Souls. I beat Bloodstarved Beast, and now I've started running into these guys who are up to no good, and started making trouble in my neighborhood.

I've played through Night in the Woods twice since it came out and... duders I think it might be my favourite game? It might sound hyperbolic... but I've been really thinking about it non-stop. It has... something. That speaks to me in a way most games don't, and when they do I don't feel like this. It's so difficult for me to describe and I'm not great with words. It's the first time I've felt... understood(?) by a piece of media, as weird as that sounds. I can't really describe it, like I said.

One thing I think I can describe is how I felt like I inhabited Possum Springs more than I inhabited the carefully crafted worlds of AAA games I love like The Witcher or Skyrim. I found joy in simply waking up. In walking on the powerlines to meet up with Gregg knowing we were going to get up to something like smashing fluorescent lightbulbs. Or meeting up with Bea to have dinner, only to have it end with a fight. I found joy in sitting on the bridge outside of town, contemplating along with Mae about mystery, about college, about home and the friends who's lives she has so suddenly re-entered. I found joy in the mundane in Possum Springs. I felt at home there more than I have in any other world in any other game, and when it was over I felt satisfied in leaving that home, because I left feeling changed.

Ive been bouncing between Zelda and Nier. Zelda isn't really holding my attention like I thought it would so I'm playing it sparingly in handheld mode. However, Nier is super good. I really like that game.

I started Mark of the Ninja last night. I've only beaten the first level, but it is tight. Some of the best described and most consistent stealth game play I've ever experienced. It almost plays like a turn-based strategy game. You're never rushed into situations, there's always time to plan ahead and there are many different ways to approach every encounter. If you're spotted, your death is almost assured, but check pointing is incredibly generous. You could completely flub your way through it and eventually get there, but rather than feeling too easy, you end up wanting to do every encounter over until you've perfected it because clearing a room/level perfectly is so rewarding.