A positive thread about what you're currently playing

@shindig: Silly in all the right ways, I agree. I'm surprised how many little things the game gets right, in terms of general vibe and mechanics, it's fun. My B-game of 2017 I think.

I'm playing Persona 5 right now and oh my god do I love everything about that game, stylistically speaking.

I gave Hollow Knight another try the other day after not really getting into it beforehand. Booted it up on a whim and spent 6hrs straight playing it, and then 3 days later I had 100% and 30hrs in the game. I think when I originally tried the game I was expecting a bunch of cool boss fights and tight combat, and while I got some enjoyment out of those aspects, the draw for me ended up being the exploration and characters.

It definitely has its issues, but the whole thing was really endearing, with a bunch of obvious passion put into it, and I suppose after so many lootbox/AAA garbage fires in the limelight lately, it was a nice reminder of why I'm even working in that industry to begin with.

Horizon: Zero Dawn has been a solid game for me. As some other poster remarked, it really gives you an almost tactile feeling of hunting . And some of those hunts/Corrupted zones, and various missions/errands can be intense. I do prefer the automatons over the humans. I'm about 70% done now. It seems a little long, but open worlds tend to be. I will remember this game as a good use of gaming time.

There, positive vibrations, One Love!

Playing WWE 2k18 with my son. For all the faults, I really dig the core mechanics. Also, there are some really good created wrestlers out there that take me back to my Virtual Pro Wrestling days.

Also, just messing with customizing characters in games has always been oddly zen-like to me.

School Days HQ.

[spoilers on the other endings and the anime] No one got stabbed! No one get their head cut off! No one got hit by a train! No mentioning of a nice boat! Sekai is depressed as all hell, but hey, I wasn't going for any of that harem shit, mostly in fear of Kotonoha's nice boat.

I won! I fuckin' won! Fuck you nice boat! You have not defeated me! Kotonoha may have been my choice for round one, but I'm going for a Sekai ending for round two. ...I might be too dumb to go for a harem ending.

Similar to Catherine, it's kind of of a letdown that you're merely going along for a ride by guiding Makoto's decisions as opposed to fully shaping his character as if it were a fully flushed out dating sim or even the social simulation part to the Persona games. But going though it was still really fun given how much I unironically like the anime adaptation and was successfully able to direct the story how I wanted it to go. So, here's another no-so-guilty-pleasure of mine along with HuniePop where, yeah, naked cartoon pussy, but I can leave it since the other aspects to the games are significantly more interesting.

I've been bouncing off a lot of things lately.

I played about an hour of the first Styx game and it seems pretty interesting so far. I'm not a fan of how it looks so far but it seems like a well made stealth game and you have some cool powers like puking up a clone of yourself.

Started Tekken 7. I've never played a Tekken game before and I very, very rarely ever touch fighting games. I love the solo modes in Netherrealms Studios games and that's about the extent of my fighting game experience. Really into Tekken so far. The mechanics have taken a lot of getting used to and I haven't found a character I like but it's got so much style and customization options which I'm super into.

Recently bought Hitman again but this time on Xbox because it runs terribly on my Pc and I got the GOTY edition. Still a fantastic game.

Also played a little bit of Hollow Knight. I live the look of it but so far not big on the map system. Enjoying everything else though and the response mechanic seems cool.

I've also been playing my go to games which are PUBG on Xbox, rainbow six on pc and NBA 2k on Xbox. I know it got a lot of shit and it has some problems but I love the career mode in nba 2k. It's probably my favorite version of the mode in years. Something seems really off about the shooting though, it feels a lot worse than previous years.

So I've been making it a point to play through my 100 game backlog while I'm saving up for a new PC.

I tend to play games in sets just to facilitate diversity. Basically, I have every game assigned a number, and I roll percentile and d10 dice to randomly pick which games I play. So here's what I'm working on:

F.E.A.R. (360)- I'm not very far in yet, but I really like the atmosphere presented, and slo-mo is always a fun mechanic.

Final Fantasy VII (PSP)- This is actually my first run-in with this particular title. I'm really excited to see what all the hype's about.

Dark Cloud (PS2)- I'm a sucker for procedurally generated dungeon crawlers. Need I say more?

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (PS1)- In an era of contrived JRPG narratives, I can really appreciate a title with a fun and jaunty sense of adventure to it.

Orphen: Scion of Sorcery (PS2)- Finished. This one was pretty rough. Although, that being said, it had some cool ideas and you can tell the people working on it wanted to make a good game. I'd read somewhere that this was a launch title for the PS2, so it's a shame that timing was likely a factor in this one not being everything it could've been.

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)- Okay, I'm a Gen III kid, so this remake just gives me the most wonderful sense of whimsy. I feel like a kid again when I'm playing this one.

Shin Megami Tensei IV (3DS)- On the other hand, SMTIV is asking of me ALL of the JRPG expertise I've learned over the years, and I love it. There's something about this game that just brings out this visceral tactician side of me.

Fester's Quest (NES)- Finished. This game's not as bad as the reputation that proceeds it. It's got some cool ideas. Really the worst of it is standard NES-era tomfoolery.

Valkyria Chronicles Remastered (PS4)- I really love this blend of TRPG and Third-Person Shooter gameplay styles. Not very far in, but I see loads of tactical potential in the tools the game gives me.

@radnostiv: I envy your 100 game backlog. I feel like mine is actually in the 1000s now.

I didn't realize Fester's Quest had a bad reputation! I loved that game, but also probably played it like 20 years ago.

Played through Strider. It's decent old school hack-n-slash platformer with light Metroidvania. I wanted a game with not so much thinking and a whole a lot of doing and it was a good choice for that. The game runs well on PS4 and looks nice when a ton of stuff happens on screen.

Currently playing Cuphead and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Probably don't have to say much about Cuphead sense it's fresh in ppl's memory and I'm just late to the party. It's all around solid. I like the audio/visual treatment and it's fun to play. Maybe I need to play further to find out why it's a GOTY contender but regardless, it's a good time and I like the challenge. Also, it runs on a toaster so I'm most impressed by that.

Playing Ninja Gaiden again quickly reminded me what an amazing game it was and still is. I had written off Team Ninja after Ninja Gaiden 2 but playing Sigma has ignited my enthusiasm for that developer. The new layer of paint on NG in Sigma looks really nice and the combat animation has aged gracefully. Ppl got a lot of love for Bayonetta these days as I do but DMC1/DMC3/NG are probably still the games to beat in the character action arena.

@mundanesoul: I'm actually a relatively new collector, hence the smallish backlog. I've been gaming my whole life, but have only been seriously collecting since I was 16; I'm 21 now. My collection sits somewhere in the 300's. I also generally avoid buying digital unless that's the only way to experience a game, so I don't really get the same "sale fever" most people do. I actually used to be pretty good at beating games as soon as I got them, but around the time I started collecting was in my later years at high school, so that really impacted the time I could spend on games. Go figure, no time + collecting = backlog.

Fester's Quest started getting a bad rep when AVGN covered it waaay back when. If I'm not mistaken, it was one of his earlier episodes.

Beat The Surge. Really enjoyed playing it; the combos and finishers changed up the formula nicely. The bosses, few as there were, posed quite the challenge. I was decked out with several HP increases, maxed-out armor, at level 85, and the final boss was killing me in two hits.

It's not a big game, yet the environments get samey quite fast, which was a downer. I got lost a lot. The backtracking and lack of actual direction were to blame there, plus iffy level design. Not perfect, but still cool enough to wanna explore.

The audio logs have some intriguing moments, and there's one huge wtf moment near the end. A clever poke in the gut. I liked it. Solid 6/10.

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I beat the Tekken 7 story mode finally. Corny as hell, but so fun. I struggle with my hands these days, and thought my fighting game days were numbered, but I bought a Hori Fighting Commander and it has saved me. I can set a grab to a trigger, and other two-button inputs (like LK+HK and LP+HP) to the extra R1 and R2 face buttons it has. So, for example, I can do Kazuya's jumping laser attack by just tapping R2 then R1!

The raised, concave d-pad lets me do diagonal jumps and half-circle moves far more easily, too (I literally can't do them on a Dualshock 4). It's been a bit emotional to be able to play them properly again. I even managed to beat Akuma in the extra chapter. Can't believe I'll be able to play DB FighterZ.

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Finally, I'm half a dozen hours into FF XII. I love it so far. The writing, Japanese VA, creature designs, and interesting combat are making for quite the arresting package. I love the kings and queens, oldschool FF vibe. It's a far cry from the sci-fi tinged games of late.

@liquiddragon: Off the top of my head, Ninja Gaiden / Black / Sigma is the best character action game of all time. It's one of my favorite games ever.

Getting back into Nioh. Really good game but the amount of loot is ridiculous and a lot of the time its junk. Also playing GT Sport and going to start Tekken 7 story mode soon. I also want to try and beat Gravity Rush 2 before the servers go down.

I'm currently playing Pokemon Sun. It's a bright, fun game, with amusing characters and very cool Pokemon. It manages to hit all my nostalgia, whilst still adding new ideas and game-play mechanics.

Currently playing Final Fantasy XV and so far it's the first FF game I've enjoyed in a long time.

I am playing Snow Moto Racing Freedom on the Switch. Its an awesome snowmobile racer!

34 hours into FF XII. What a game. The Zodiac edition's improvements run deep it seems, making this more fun and rewarding than it was, and less time consuming to boot with its high-speed options (you can speed the game up by x2 or x4!). It literally is knocking hours off the average playthrough. I love playing it; it never drags. Best pacing of any FF game in my opinion, and the story is so thoughtfully told and full of subtlety, politically and emotionally. Great game.

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Just played through the entire first season of the Telltale Batman game on a whim. The QTEs, first of all, feel better than most other games that have used them. They're not strict, blend into the style of the artwork well, and the action that unfolds feels slick and satisfying in a way the other games kind of never have, so it doesn't feel shitty or jarring in the least. No mashing, either.

The twists on the classic Batman tropes are massive in some ways, especially Bruce's parents, Penguin, and Vicki Vale's backstories. Massive. The performances are decent to excellent, especially Gordon and Catwoman. Joker had a real cool vibe as well; sort of a normal American accent, but always just short of losing it. He's not pure evil like Hammil's take, but more of a passive-aggressive, constantly elbowing you in the ribs, I-know-all-your-secrets tone. It was creepy.

Yeah, I liked it a lot.

@brunothethird: I need to catch-up on season 2, but I really dug season 1 of Batman. I'm not a big comic guy, but it seems like they're not afraid to take chances and piss-off the fan base, which is great to see.

I'm hoping someone sees this who isn't aware of it:

MUTANT FOOTBALL LEAGUE!

The guy what brought us Mutant League Football has a game that's about to come out of early access that's very much a spiritual successor to MLF.

It's goofy fun in the spirit of NBA Jam or NFL Blitz and it feel really fun to play. The current build hitches a bit during certain events (playing on Xbox One), but hopefully that gets cleaned up upon release (sometime over the next month, I think).

Anyhow, it's a great time and a nostalgia trip. It's a solid update that's been modernized where it needed, and kept simple in service of fun.

Persona 5 is better with japanese voice over than english voice overs. The translation in the dialogue and description uses a lot of big words to explain what’s going on. It makes it hard to fully grasp whats being said in English. On my first playthrough with the English dub, I kept thinking in my head “no one talks like this in real life”. After I lost my save when my hard drive failed, I immediately downloaded the Japanese dub and it’s way better. It’s like reading fan subs. Better immersive experience. “It’s like one of my japanese anime!”

Playing Sonic Mania on the Switch. I wasn't necessarily feeling it at first being rusty on the controls and got annoyed at some of the obstacles in Chemical Plant Act 1. However once I beat the Mean Bean Machine Boss and got to Studiopolis, I've been hooked on it and hey, they finally made a good Sonic Game after all these years. Also the music is top notch!

Almost done with Deus Ex Mankind Divided. I've been enjoying it quite a lot besides the hacking parts, man I really hate hacking. Then I realized spending a few praxis into stealth hacking might be worth it, and wow I can't believe I didn't do this from the start. Having a much better time with it now.

Started VA-11 HALL-A on PC and wow, it's insane how good it is. Played just an hour but I right away fell in love with the soundtrack and the cyberpunk style of it. I love sci-fi and these kinds of settings so It is right up my alley. It's a sorta visual novel. You're a bartender named Jill who works in a bar called VA-11 HALL-A (sometimes called simply valhalla) and you have to mix drinks for guests. You also set up the bar playlist in the jukebox filled with songs from the soundtrack, some even unlockable. Each guest is unique and tells their own story or what happened recently and they request a specific drink you have to make. There's a recipe book and you add ingredients, mix it all up. Nothing is time based so there is no stress factor like in other games such as Cook, Serve, Delicious. This game is meant to be relaxing, the opening dev thanknote even says something along the lines of "grab a drink, snacks and get comfortable, this game is meant to be relaxing and enjoyed". If you love sci-fi/cyberpunk themed stuff with a good synth/80s soundtrack and good writing I really recommend it! After my little session I also bought the soundtrack and just can't stop listening to it.

Got a little tired of Skyrim, which I played for like 80 hours over the holidays. So I got Hollow Knight on GOG and absolutely love it. Also reinstalled Fallout 4.

Pretty much only games from ps + subscription, right now.

- Darksiders ii deathinitive edition - quite a good game. I'm like 15 hours within. Although, i would like to see some differently looking dungeons at last.

- Deus Ex Mankind Divided - the same gameplay time as at darksiders. I love it, though there are some kinda annoying, small technical issues like fps drops in the streets of Prague (here and there), and slow load times.

- Skyforce - pretty fun to play this little bullet hell shooter. Anyone on coop? Just let me know and we'll shoot 'em up.

- Amnesia Collection - currently going through Dark Descend and though i am not scared by horror games, this thing has managed to made me feel nervous (in a good way)

Started Assassin's Creed Origins and it feels pretty fantastic. Bow headshots (especially with that one bow I forget the name of) feel great, and I'm loving the world so far. Also it seems like once you make a dent in a base area (by murdering a few guards) you can just fucking power through the rest of the area via stealth. Headshots, takedowns, and even a couple of ballistae once just tear through them, though I usually miss a few guards during eagle recon. Also, boarding ships with tigers on them is fun.

I also jumped into American Truck Simulator and holy shit that game is the most chill thing. Found some chill eurobeat/electronica station and two hours vanished in three deliveries. I've been using manual transmission and usually taking the specific harder parking attempts and it's a great mix of zoning out and focusing, and I can't wait to sink more time into that game.

@nutter: I bought season two thinking it was season one, then had to quickly buy the original as well, so I'll mow through two soon. I'm back on the Telltale wagon. I bought their Minecraft series yesterday, and am thinking about getting the Guardians of the Galaxy one soon. I wish they would revisit The Wolf Among Us, that is my favourite thing they've done outside of Walking Dead season one.

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In bigger news, my SNES classic turned up today. Holy shit am I excited. I fired up Donkey Kong Country and to my surprise, fell in love with it. I used to grimace at its art style from screenshots I've seen over the years, but in person, with the lovely music and surprisingly tight platforming mechanics/accurate ape/monkey movement, it finally clicked. Great game, as it turns out!

The same thing happened with Yoshi's Island. Never thought I'd be one of these pariahs, haha. The egg throwing isn't great, but it looks and plays nicely otherwise. I'm into it.

I will blitz through the platformers and such before I get to the ones I really bought it for: Link to the Past, Earthbound (Mother 2), Mother 3, Mario RPG, and Final Fantasy III. I haven't played 75% of the games on it, but those especially felt like must-plays. Oh, Mother 3 isn't on it.

I'm playing Galak-Z pretty regularly in the mornings when I have time. I think it is absolutely perfect for that since it feels like I'm a kid sitting down to watch Saturday morning cartoons whenever I play the game. I've enjoyed all of the popular rogue-likes in recent years, but this is the only one that really clicked for me.

@brunothethird: So, I've played most of Telltale's post-Walking Dead catalog and some of their pre-stuff.

The Walking Dead Season One, The Wolf Among Us, and Tales from the Borderlands are far and away my favorites. Season one of Batman is up there as well. I'm looking forward to season two.

Guardians has it's moments (I'm at the end of episode 3), but I'm not hooked on it yet. The music is great and the game has a lot of heart, but I'm curious if it'll seal the deal with me over the course of the last two episodes.

Watch Dogs 2 - I've enjoyed how open they've designed this thing to be, allowing the player to do whatever they want with a minimum of forced guidance. I managed to burn through the ScoutX/landmarks as well as the Key Research data, because I liked tooling around this SF.

I don't recall anything particularly standing out to me about the first Trails in the Sky, but I'm playing SC now, and whooo boy, is that a good game. The female protagonist is surprisingly great this time around, as the writers allow her to have grown up somewhat emotionally while still keeping her spirit from the first game. It reuses a lot of the same environments (sometimes to eye-rolling effect - a building that burned down in the first game is fully restored as it once was probably because of budgetary and time constraints of the second), but I really like the slightly more mature feel to the whole thing. Doesn't hurt that the game is surprisingly witty at times, too.

Finally started playing Persona 4 and I mean, it's not P3 but for a P3-like game, it seems pretty good. lol jk

I've been putting off P4 for years cause I felt like I got the Persona experience with 3 and as much as I loved P3, it drained me pretty hard. It's been a few years now and I feel ready for another one. So far, I'm very early on but I'm liking it very much. I think I heard ppl say how slow it is to get going but maybe those comments were from ppl that didn't play P3 'cause P4 seems to get going pretty quick.

I'm really glad it's set in a much different rural setting, it's a nice contrast and I'm quite fond of a fog town so that's another plus. I listened to the soundtrack after I beat P3 and didn't get into it but hearing some of it with the game, I get it and enjoy it. Also, I'm liking most of the characters I've met and excited to interact with them and meet more. I keep comparing P4 characters to the ones in P3 and thinking, oh he's Junpei or she's Yukari but I'm sure they'll develop into their own. Morooka, the homeroom teacher, is the one character I'm hoping will get less annoying. And I miss Elizabeth, so hoping Margaret turns out to be a fun character.

I didn't mind the English voices in P3 but I'm not quite use to the voices in P4 yet and finding myself wishing for Japanese. I'm sure they'll grow on me but that's one thing that's bugging me atm.

Quake 2.

...

Yep, my backlog knows no bounds, also, discovered i f***in love Quake 2.

I gave inFamous Second Son another shot after not even making it through the prologue (when you're travelling to Seattle; prologue or intro, whatever you wanna call it), and turns out once you get to town and start collecting blast shards, it's some inFamous-ass inFamous. Whatever qualms I had with tone or story fell to the wayside and my need to hover around collecting them all took over.

Pretty good game! Story came around for me by the end (on the light-side playthrough anyways, but the evil playthrough is more of a victory lap anyways).

Ended up making another character in FFXIV, so I'm levelling up ~4 classes at the moment. God I fucking love that game so much. Never got so into an MMO as I have with this; not even the first time I gave ARR a shot back when it relaunched. Something about the start of 2017 was the right time for it I guess.

Dragon Age: Origins currently up on the chopping block. I am having the best time I've had in an RPG in ages. It lets me play as a well-meaning, snarky asshole! It's fricking awesome. Morrigan is totally hilarious accompaniment to my snarkiness. I was literally LOLing yesterday while I was playing the game.

I got Wildlands due to it being on sale and partly out of Predator mission curiosity. Ended up enjoying it far more than I thought I would. It's a bit guilty of the Ubisoft overfilled map, but I just been ignoring it and meandering around using the squad shot to lazily take out the cartels. It's much more fun than it should be.

@cikame said:

Similarly, I'm playing through DOOM 2! It's awesome.

FAST: RMX on Switch.

It's fucking fabulous! My personal favourite future-racer since the CG. I don't really understand why it's not getting more talk with new Switch owners, easily one of the best games on the system and the most fun I've had with it aside from Zelda. (cheap too, $25 Canadian for 36 unique tracks)

Very impressed :D

This person is about %1000 better than me...

Still playing Path of Exile on Xbox. No idea how many hours I've put into this. I've beaten all ten acts and am into the ridiculous post-game Atlas maps. I don't usually fall so hard for loot/stat games but something about this one has hooked me.

Also my witch's main attack fires so many projectiles that the game's dynamic scaler has to bump the resolution way down to keep up. It's kind of awesome.

Far Cry 4....finally went back to it.

Total mayhem constantly. I love it.

After watching a 3 hour waypoint stream of Slay the Spire, and being fascinated by it, even though I'm not into roguelikes or cardbuilders, i bought it and spent the whole day playing it.

Really addicting. Overkilling the third boss with a 110 damage attack put a smile on my face.

After seeing it make it on so many goty lists and spotting a sale, I decided to give Assassins Creed: Origins a chance. The last Asscreed I played was the first one, so it's been a while. After a few hours I'm still enjoying especially the open world shenanigans and loot very much. Virtual Egypt is a nice change of pace from most video game environments.

I haven't played Slay the Spire yet, but it's going to be the name of my progressive technical death metal band.

Just started Dungeon of the Endless which, after it's initial cliff like learning curve, seems pretty rad so far! Feel like it could us a little more bells and whistles but I got it for 10 bucks so not really complaining.

Finally got back to Original Sin II, seeing as I have a lot of free time to binge it again now. Just finished cleaning up quests in the second act, and I'm wondering how the game could possibly have an entire area (or more) after that place. They really packed every inch of the first two maps with worthwhile, fun, hand-crafted content. It's great that I can explore so much stuff in the game without any of it feeling repetitive.

Think I might have said it in this thread already, but the fact that every fight is a one-off encounter and nothing ever respawns makes it super satisfying to get through those longer fights and then just have free reign of an area.

The one thing I'm sad about is that I made my own character because I didn't realize you could just change everything about the presets, and I don't think I could possibly find the time to replay this game for the sake of getting Fane's story (I ditched him since my created character was undead and had all the smarmy, know-it-all traits).

Persona 5
Style, excellent story telling and typical Persona brilliance. Around 45 hours in and feel like the story could go in any direction at this point. Oh and the superb soundtrack to boot.

World of Warcraft
Jumped back in to experience the level scaling update and so far been very impressed. Brings so much more life back into leveling, in all honesty Blizzard should have added this years ago. Still, a breath of fresh air for the MMO.

I started playing Dark Souls II again for the first time since its initial release almost 4 years ago. I fell off of pretty hard back then. Other stuff was coming out that stole my attention and I don’t think I was quite ready for another Souls game. You have to be in a particular mindset to invest in these series of games. While my initial impressions were somewhat negative (it’s definitely a step down from DS1), I came around on it after a few hours and am enjoying my time overall.