|
Post by Mako on Apr 12, 2020 9:22:15 GMT -5
Picked up Bannerlord last night and downloaded!
|
|
|
Post by Tig on Apr 20, 2020 20:08:47 GMT -5
I picked up No Man's Sky on PS4 2 years ago amd got bored. I read about some more overhauls they'd done to the game since and rebooted it. Just need something relaxing for the couchm
|
|
|
Post by PegLegPete on Apr 21, 2020 11:33:56 GMT -5
I picked up No Man's Sky on PS4 2 years ago amd got bored. I read about some more overhauls they'd done to the game since and rebooted it. Just need something relaxing for the couchm They definitely added a ton of content since I first played, got back into it briefly and other than making tons of gold mining and dodging pirates to go sell the ore...still felt pretty empty. The game really needs warring factions on planets or something.
|
|
|
Post by WickedCrustacean on Apr 21, 2020 15:01:15 GMT -5
I tried playing Empyrion the other day, which is like a more intelligent and more drama-free version of No Man's Sky, but kinda had the same experience as Pete. They do have warring factions in Empyrion, some kind of an alien faction that comes after you after a while, but I dunno, the beginning just feels so boring compared to survival games that I like, like 7 Days to Die.
In the latter, as soon as your spawn, there are zombies around, and wild animals. In Empyrion, there is some wildlife, but overrall felt dead. I did love their ship building stuff though. You have to actually craft each part of the ship (engine, fuel tank, repulsors/jets, cabin, etc), and assemble them manually to build the whole thing. Would've enjoyed that in a more interesting game world.
|
|
|
Post by Mako on Apr 21, 2020 15:22:20 GMT -5
I've got Empyrion and have tried it. Felt the same thing as well. A very cool concept, but it's lacking. Yes, you've got some critters around you can kill and hunt, and the alien forces if you wander too far or build up certain things too fast, but it does feel empty and lacking.
|
|
|
Post by fantasiawht on May 22, 2020 22:52:34 GMT -5
Just finished Witcher 2 (which runs beautifully on my new rig). Made some different choices in the playthrough, but still didn't like it. Man what an odd duck. Wholly lacking the freedom of Witcher 1. You are forced to not just take sides, but no matter what you do, you cause massive changes to the political makeup of the northern kingdoms. So many times in the game I just thought "I don't want to do either of these two things. Why would I have to?" Combat was bad, controls were very wonky (stupid hard to just aim at something and pick it up), and both the radar map and the larger map bore very little relation to the reality of the space you had to move around in. If I had played this first, I never would've played another Witcher game.
And boy does the game (and actually reading the books now at the same time, heh) make me hate the sorceresses. I'm going to go into Witcher 3 not wanting to help any of them, including Triss and Yennefer.
I've been going ham on Fortnite with the new rig, since I can now play it with my best friend out in Vegas and his son and my son. Not entirely my jam but it's fun to play with friends and it runs awesome (140+ FPS at maxed settings). My daughter even enjoys playing, although she's terrible, hah.
|
|
|
Post by fantasiawht on May 22, 2020 22:55:57 GMT -5
More ranting... the game is nothing but politics, politics, politics. Endless politics. They throw so many names at you, and it's very hard to keep everybody straight. I really think the whole point of the game was to deliver a political treatise and explain how the northern kingdoms fell apart from their peace and were vulnerable to attack from the southern Nilfgard (which is how the credits end - showing the invasion starting - and how Witcher 3 is set).
|
|
|
Post by WickedCrustacean on May 26, 2020 17:22:54 GMT -5
Yeah, I enjoyed Witcher 1 in most ways except for combat, and really liked Witcher 3, but the second game was hard to get through. It felt very railroaded, even though you had choices to make, and very movie-like as opposed to game-like. And don't even start me on the rolling.
|
|
|
Post by Tig on May 30, 2020 11:38:24 GMT -5
So I tried to play Dishonored one more time through so I can finally get to Dishonored 2. I also reloaded Homeworld to play Sands of Kharak. What did I play through my days off? Skyrim. Lots and lots of Skyrim. No mods, just the enhanced edition, pure vanilla otherwise, and I love it as much as the first time I played it. I'm just a conventional fighter Nord. No stealth advancements, minimal magic usage (potions and shouts), just straight up action combat, and I love it. Why is this, to me, one of the greatest games ever made? It's not even my usual genre. Unreal level of entertainment.
|
|
|
Post by Mako on May 30, 2020 12:30:17 GMT -5
I love Skyrim. I'd play it more if I had it on PC instead of Xbox. It's the big, open world and being able to go where you want, do what you want. Yeah, there's quests, but you do them in the order you want and can even ignore if you don't want to do them. And while there is a storyline, you basically get to write it yourself instead of just acting out the story as in so many other games. Playing Skyrim is an escape into another world. The best of what we tend to want when gaming.
I haven't been playing much lately. Only thing in the past few weeks was I downloaded Civ VI when it was free and have played a bit of that. Need to get back to Bannerlord, but just in a gaming drought right now.
|
|
|
Post by Tig on Jul 18, 2020 17:20:04 GMT -5
Call of Duty...so much Call of Duty, and you guys know how I typically feel about that game but CoD WWII was free on PS4 so I snaked it. Great graphics, great acting with Josh Duhamel, a decent story and good shooter action. It's a great game, for free.
Another console buddy of mine talked me into getting the new CoD Modern Warfare. We're going to play the co-op together, which we enjoy doing in Star Wars Battlefront II. CoDMW is also cross-play enabled, so we can include my buddies that play the game on PC, of which I have plenty. The big draw in the cross-play is Warzone where a buttload of players from all platforms can play battle royal or team on team. The battle royal is precisely like every other battle royal out there, and it sucks. It sucks so bad. It really sucks. I hate battle royal. The other forms of team play I'm rather enjoying for the first time in the history of me playing CoD online.
The campaign in CoDMW is far overshadowed by Warzone and, to me, that's a shame. I've played several CoD games now for the campaigns and this is not only the best of the Call of Duty series, but it's one of the best campaigns I've ever played. Part roller coaster, part tactical shooter (with exceptions to realism at times), part action movie, and just all around enjoying and entertaining. The melodrama of "the horrors of war" gets a bit thick at times as they try to outdo what they already presented in the last Modern Warfare 9 years ago and I really don't care for a game showing children being killed. They don't revel on it and the game moves on rapidly but that did put a good black mark on it for me. Still, overall, I completed the campaign and had a great time.
|
|
|
Post by Mako on Jul 18, 2020 17:49:48 GMT -5
All of the CoD games I have are on my Xbox 360, none on PC. I haven't played CoD since the Ghosts version. Where aliens were invading. It just sucked. They made so many changes I didn't like that it stopped me from getting any of the newer games. Sounds like they've gone back to what worked more. I might have to check that out sometime.
Co-op is my favorite mode of gameplay in most gaming. My brother and I play co-op CoD zombies a lot when he visits. We also used to play Ghost Recon 1 and 2 on the old Xbox in co-op years ago. Honestly, the competitive MP/battle royale usually doesn't interest me at all in most games. I'd rather play a solo campaign or co-op. Part of why I love MMO's so much, too.
|
|
|
Post by Tig on Jul 18, 2020 20:03:40 GMT -5
Yeah co-op is definitely my favorite. ID and I met playing R6 Rogue Spear and we typically just played co-op for years that followed across R63 and Ghost Recon. If you get CoDMW let me know; would love to build a team.
|
|
|
Post by Tig on Jul 19, 2020 2:02:04 GMT -5
Wife got me Ghost of Tsushima and all I can say so far is BANZAI!!
|
|
|
Post by fantasiawht on Aug 6, 2020 8:02:53 GMT -5
Just finished my second playthrough of Witcher 3 (and the whole series, if you recall I had started over with Witcher 1, got stalled in Witcher 2 when my laptop fell apart). I have never played a game that long a second time through again, but boy was it worth.
Spoilers below if anybody still cares
Man, that game (and the whole series, taken in context of how long ago the first two came out) is a true masterpiece. The whole buildup throughout the series was handled masterfully. The writing is just amazing, and the whole focus of the series on your freedom to make choices - and the often unforeseeable consequences of those choices - are not only great game design, I've realized now after reading the books are the perfect manifestation of the message of those books.
My playthrough of Witcher 3 was "hurried" - I played on easy combat and left most of the sidequests undone. The writing and storytelling and worldbuilding was so good though, that by the end of the game I was really regretting not having seen what the world had to offer more, having built more relationships, helped the oppressed more. What other video game invests you in itself so much?
And man, is the relationship between Geralt and Ciri just perfectly done. No video game has ever moved me as powerfully as Witcher 3 did. The moment they finally reunited gave me such palpable joy it actually had me crying. In a tiny touch of tenderness, I even realized this time that a super brief flashback was actually to the scene from the books (and the last episode of the Netflix series) where they actually met for the very FIRST time - neither had ever met each other, but destiny so bound them (and boy is that whole thread cool in the books) that when they first saw each other (grizzled, scarred witcher and small, incredibly frightened child), they flew into each others' arms.
Speaking of having read the books, that really changes your whole understanding of everything as you play the games. First of all, it helps you keep the various kingdoms straight. Second, it straightens out the politics of the sorceresses as well. And holy crap do I fucking hate those sorceresses now, hahaha (playing through Witcher 2 made me hate them as well). They're disgustingly mad with power and dismissive of the value of anybody who is not them, and they use anybody for any little desire without a thought. I made every choice I possibly could in Witcher 3 to stymie their efforts, avoid them, or actively harm them (sadly not very many, the game forces you to rely on them a ton)
Also speaking of the books, it's always been a cliche for Witcher 3 that if you just played the games, you would like Triss (who is developed into a real character in the 3 games, and is in all 3 games of course), and if you read the books, you would wind up with Yennefer (the first time I played 3 I was disappointed in her and didn't understand why Geralt was so obsessed). I get that now, and it makes sense. Unlike a lot of people, reading the books didn't make me like Yen (her haughtiness still not my type), but I get their relationship more. I still chose to ask the Djinn to undo Geralt's wish, though, and establish that he was not in love with Yen (and she was in love with Geralt, take that bitch). I also didn't romance Triss either, because she was part of the Lodge of sorceresses.
In the end, my Geralt was devoted to one thing - Ciri. Letting her become her own woman instead of everyone else's puppet, or plaything, or tool, that's what I was devoted to.
What an awesome game.
Now time to play the expansions, which I didn't last time!
|
|