What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

^cool game. It's pretty different from XCOM in a lot of ways in that your marines need to take some risks and move quickly. It's pushing you to actually take shots from enemies because of the timer.

The 40k game sounds cool. I wish it wasn't such a struggle to remember which game is which. It's always Warhammer 40,000: Gibberish Nonsense.

i was confused because i played a ton of Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate in my younger days, which was an old tactical squad based 40k game (late 90s sometime?). seemed like a random thing for someone to be real into in the present day though.

"Finished" Tunic. A crushing disappointment. Beautiful and atmospheric game with a great buffet of things to explore and figure out, but smothered in layer after layer of obnoxious hard-as-balls combat. There are three ways to mitigate it and it wasn't long before I switched on two of them. Between that and raising my stats, we were doing okay.

Then it dumps you to a place where, HA HA FUCK YOU, it negates all your stat raises and oh yes, a lot of the other shit you have come to figure out doesn't work anymore. Eat shit. Oh, did you build up a nice supply of healing potions? Bite some dicks because they don't work anymore. Games are only fun if they're hitting you in the teeth with an aluminum bat. I turned on the final training wheel -- immortality -- and still found the shit tedious because even though you won't die, you still have to wade through fight after fight against damage sponges.

It's one thing to buy a Souls game knowing you're getting this, but everything about Tunic avoids mentioning it. And I don't have time to go crate digging through 1000s of games trying to find one that explicitly says "hey, we didn't ramp up combat to 11 on this one to appease a bunch of assholes". Since I paid for this I wanted to try and get some value out of it and I largely did, but even though there was still plenty for me to do when I "finished" it, it had utterly worn out its welcome with me and I was ready to move on.

I'm sure people love it and will tell me it wasn't hard, that I just suck, or that hard combat is the centerpiece of a quality gaming experience or whatever, and glad they enjoyed it. I felt it was a unique and captivating idea ruined by dumbly following the current fad, like making a nice meal and then just drowning it in 5-alarm hot sauce because it's more "epic".

I have spent a couple of hours with Gotham Knights. I am playing on Xbox Series X. I'll start by saying I have not read any of the reviews, but I know they are middling. I pre-ordered this game because I was really in the mood for something like this, and it looked cool. And it DOES look cool. Graphics are great, the city looks great, performances are great.

It starts strong. Everything looks great, and the game controls very well. I am playing as Nightwing and am enjoying him. I have noticed that sometimes I want to grapple forward and he will attach to a building BEHIND me, which is annoying, but it seems to only happen when I am too far from a proper grapple point ahead of me.

There is some light investigation, and it is pretty fun overall. You will not be stumped by brain teasers.

Driving the bat cycle is fun and easy, but the sense of speed is just not there. You do not feel like you are barreling down the road practically out of control, which is what I would want.

Combat is familiar to anyone who has played a Batman game. You can put level up points into different abilities or enhancements, and can also get enhancements by crafting suit and weapon upgrades. Don't let the word "crafting" turn you off; you end up finding / earning resources without even trying, and crafting upgrades is literally holding the A button for 5 seconds.

I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say as I go, but so far I am not disappointed.

Update on Gotham Knights:
One technical glitch that was hilarious: during the day everyone is hanging out in the Belfry, wearing street clothes. Red Hood aka Jason Todd walks around in a hoodie, obviously, and the strings were jutting out at a 0 degree angle like he was using them to search for water.

You can switch characters at any time, which the game does not go out of its way to tell you, for some reason. All characters level up simultaneously, which is great, so you can take someone out at any time and they won't be under-leveled. I made my first switch last night, to Batgirl. I first started reading her email, since they each have their own account and there are things that are unique to each character. The subtle details were actually very impressive.

After trying her out in combat (got my ass kicked but that was probably my lack of experience with her compared to Nightwing) and then went to meet Montoya. After a brief discussion with Montoya that definitely could have been an email, I noticed we were next to the statue of Jim Gordon (Batgirl is his daughter if you didn't know). There was a special icon there, indicating an interaction that would only occur if you were Batgirl. It triggered a really nice cinematic that featured an exchange between Montoya and Batgirl that was only hindered by the fact that when the cinematic starts one of them says 'What are you doing out here?', completely ignoring the fact that both characters had literally just talked. But I get it, game dev is hard.

Legomancer wrote: I'm sure people love it and will tell me it wasn't hard, that I just suck, or that hard combat is the centerpiece of a quality gaming experience or whatever, and glad they enjoyed it. I felt it was a unique and captivating idea ruined by dumbly following the current fad, like making a nice meal and then just drowning it in 5-alarm hot sauce because it's more "epic".

git gud

RobertB wrote:

Legomancer wrote: I'm sure people love it and will tell me it wasn't hard, that I just suck, or that hard combat is the centerpiece of a quality gaming experience or whatever, and glad they enjoyed it. I felt it was a unique and captivating idea ruined by dumbly following the current fad, like making a nice meal and then just drowning it in 5-alarm hot sauce because it's more "epic".

git gud

there's no rolling eyes emoji

Ah_Pook wrote: i was confused because i played a ton of Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate in my younger days, which was an old tactical squad based 40k game (late 90s sometime?). seemed like a random thing for someone to be real into in the present day though.

I want to say 1998, BUGGY AS ALL HELL. Still loved it and still have it, despite it not being able to run on my not potato PC.

I beat DeathLoop, and I must say I'm pretty proud of myself, since I don't finish a lot of games. This one was really awesome, with very little in the way of frustration. If you like what Arkane does, you should check it out, especially if you have access to GamePass.

Rogue Legacy 2 got a surprise launch on the switch today, so I grabbed that. Man I played a tooooon of the first game, and this one is scratching that same itch.

Still playing Gotham Knights on Xbox, and I think I'm closing in on the end of the main story but I'm not entirely sure. I still enjoy the game.

Had a co-op PC game of GTFO tonight, and that game has had a LOT of polish applied in recent months. It seems like it would be a bit more friendly to newcomers, but I already knew what I was doing so I can't be sure. This game remains incredible and one of the best cooperative games I've ever played.

The Xbox Black Friday sale is already going on, I just picked up The Quarry for $35, and I also see that Gotham Knights is on sale already for $41.

Fired up Cyberpunk:2077 and wow, what a fun experience. I can see all the bones from Witcher 3 in there with the crafting, subbing cybertech for magic and whatnot, and the usual roster of "are we ALL kinda bad guys?" quest resolutions but damn is it fun. Just riding around the city on a motorcycle is spectacular.

The shooting is a little janky and it's always a bit reality breaking when it takes a mag dump+ to take down a scrubby punk just 'cause, but it's still fun. As a lifelong cyberpunk aficionado this is a really good realization of the grimy 'punk side of it (so far) and I hope my road to full cybernetic body and inevitable descent into cyberpsychosis is well worth it

New update to Summoner Wars 2e online has me playing that again. Up to 14 factions now and the deckbuilding options for my favorite, the Tundra Orcs, just cracked wide open. Also it got a recent graphical update as they prepare for a steam launch.