What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Took a break from the latest Zelda to play Vampire Survivor. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow is that an addictive game, much like Loop Hero from a few years back. I've no idea how demanding it must be to display thousands of enemies, bullets, and damage numbers on screen like that, it's just a riot of color in the endgame. But like a lot of these evolved games, there are mechanics and "fun easter eggs!" that are really obtuse and only fun for the die hards that played from the beginning and know the system well. Also, the use of italian makes it really hard to distinguish things as everything has a sing songey name straight from some Rennaissance era family drama

Dang, you can hear that sweet MIDI electric guitar just looking at it.

I just beat Diablo IV's campaign. I went Druid and was level 50 at the time I beat it. I started mainlining and not really doing a lot of side stuff, mainly because I just wanted to be done with that so I could focus on other stuff. I was hoping I'd unlock Adventure Mode, but that does not seem to be there yet. That was my favorite feature of Diablo III. I don't give a shit about the story. Blah blah prime evils blah blah. Give me monsters to click on and shiny loot. That's all I need. Adventure mode does that really well.

I will probably mess around a bit with my Druid until the "season" starts on July 20 so I can see what that's all about. As I understand it, if you do a seasonal character, it disappears at the end of the season. I don't really get the appeal of that but maybe there is something I'm missing.

I finished Infernax and I was quite impressed. Perfect combination of Castlevania 2 with more updated sensibilities gameplaywise.

Infernax fucking rules

Well, I played my lifestyle game Payday 2, up until June 15th, then Starbreeze shit the bed by adding crossplay to it with Epic. A LOT of the players, myself included, went batshit. A lot of the functionality, such as simply inviting Steam players, was wrenched out for a "SOCIAL HUB" and "LOBBY CODES" aka inviting people with extra steps. I've never seen the flood of cheaters since starting the game over 5 years ago than I did when they made the switch.

It was so bad, the devs came out and mea culpa'd. There's a workaround to do Steam matchmaking only. But, Crime Spree isn't working, you still can't invite players off your Steam list, and there's horror stories of people losing their entire save file due to corruption. So, I uninstalled it and waited for news. They're still working on updates, but I'm not holding out hope at this point. People have ranted to the devs to make Epic MM optional, and restore functionality to Steam MM, but nothing's been done at this point. I reinstalled it recently, simply because I paid for the last DLC Heist, Crude Awakening. It's blast, but my enjoyment is tempered with the fact that I no longer look forward to playing the game anymore. The fuck up was that bad.

Now, I've purchased some new games and reloaded old ones. Started playing Raid: WWII once again since Starbreeze is updating it on the regular and made some substantive updates. Player count is extremely low, but I do have Steam friends who play and drop ins are always welcome.

Another game I got back into was Depth. I hadn't played it in nearly 5 years due to the fact I just got so frustrated playing when there was no skill based match making. It was downright toxic, with me writing down a list of users who were tryhards and ruining the experience. If they showed up in the lobby, I disconnected. Now, since the game is sunsetted, I've gotten back into it. And forgot how fun it actually was. Granted, there will be no new updates, and the publishers have a bad track record on their games, I'll still play it. Again, I have Steam friends who play and who aren't assholes.

Why would the cheating be so much worse for Epic? Does Steam do a lot of client-level cheating prevention?

Gary Sax wrote: Why would the cheating be so much worse for Epic? Does Steam do a lot of client-level cheating prevention?

Well, Payday 2 does not use VAC. Otherwise, that would be nipped in the bud. When a cheater enters, the word CHEATER appears over their head. It's mainly because people who unlock DLC without paying for them. It's Starbreeze stopgap measure. The program automatically kicks cheaters if using an illegal mod or something that breaks the game. However, the only way to never to play with them again is to ban them individually on your account if you're the host. That's it. Oh, and you can only ban players who are in the heist with you, not anywhere else.

However, there's also word of false positives. Ex: Marioinatophat is a Payday 2 partner, but there was instances of people bashing him for being a cheater because the UD 237 fucked things up. However, the vast majority of cheaters I saw were from the Epic side. I have no idea if they've fixed it or not.

dysjunct wrote: Picked up HADES on sale and am so far not particularly impressed. It's pretty but kind of twitchy, and WASD plus mouse seems nonoptimal. Not sure what to make of the various upgrades. I'll stick with JUPITER HELL for now.

I put in over 100 hours on Hades, but if I had to do it with WASD controls I definitely would have bounced off of it. It was on constant rotation in our Switch for a good six months though, both with me and with my kids. They still dust it off now and then, though I'm mostly done with it.

For whatever reason, perhaps in a fit of ADHD madness, I decided to see if I can get into Morrowind. Having played a fair bit of Skyrim, and a little bit of Oblivion, I consider myself an Elder Scrolls liker more than a fan. That said, Morrowind might make a believer out of me. I feel like I'm spending more time interacting with NPCs rather than exploration. It also forces me to engage with the physicality of the world a lot more than its two sequels. By that I mean that I need to actually read signs, consult a map, and get directions to go where I need to go. I also need to figure out how to get there. The slow stamina regeneration is a pain, but it really does end up feeling more immersive.

I mean I'm only like 5-10 hours in, I might wake up tomorrow and decide I'm never playing again. But I can absolutely see why the game has stuck with people twenty years later, and why someone would much prefer it to Oblivion or Skyrim.

One thing to do that takes away some annoyance is just train up your running/endurance (I think athletics?) by rubber banding a controller or modding. It's going to happen anyway as you play.

My eldest passed the marshmallow test. Last year he decided he wanted a Switch. For ten months he saved every dollar of his allowance and every birthday and Christmas gift. Yesterday he bought that Switch. I chipped in for extra controllers for his brothers and his first games (Mario Kart 8 and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection). He’s happy. Auto-steer, 50cc and easy computer AI have him taking first regularly.

My wife is even more happy. We bought the pass that gets you access to the online NES collection, so she’s playing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time in decades. She remembers all the secret paths and hidden boxes and warns me about Thwomps off screen.

It absolutely holds up, but there are these odd things that stick out to me years later. The levels are incredibly short. Most shouldn’t take more than a minute if you are pushing right. You can also skip a huge amount of gameplay through the secret paths. My wife is hitting all of the skips because she learned them the hard way over a summer of grinding, but I actually want to play the game.

I remember when I went back to the first Super Mario Bros as an adult, I realized I had never played half the game because as a kid I would always use warp pipes, so when I played this time I made sure to just play straight through.

Also, SMB3 is top shelf.

Gary Sax wrote: One thing to do that takes away some annoyance is just train up your running/endurance (I think athletics?) by rubber banding a controller or modding. It's going to happen anyway as you play.

Yeah, I'm hopping pretty near everywhere, and running when I'm not. It would be an Elder Scrolls game if you didn't do some stupid thing to level up your movement.

san il defanso wrote:
For whatever reason, perhaps in a fit of ADHD madness, I decided to see if I can get into Morrowind.

Morrowind is awesome. Assuming you are playing on PC, there is a mod that simply removes the flying enemies (cliff racers?). They suck and are annoying. You will only be making yourself happier.

I've been playing the game vanilla, aside from using the OpenMW engine to run it on Mac. Call me a glutton for punishment, I just like seeing stuff in its original form I guess.

Truly, I can burn hours in Morrowind more than just about any other open world RPG I've ever played. There's just something that works about the game, even with its considerable jank, which was even a little much for 2002.

I've actually been thinking a lot about why this game is hitting my Q-zone more than Oblivion or Skyrim. It's surprisingly hard to qualify, but I think it has something to do with the quests feeling like they come from NPCs, rather than just feeling like content to be consumed. I don't want to be too hard on Skyrim, which I've always enjoyed, but there's a lot more character in Morrowind, that's for sure.

In other words, 20-year-old game that everyone likes is, in fact, really good.