whatchu playing now

Final Fantasy XV demo on steam is really amazing. the game looks fantastic. the hair in these games looks like cotton candy or something i swear (at least ever since Lightning). this demo is so cool! its optimized pretty well im runing on a low-midrange system.

Still playing Link to the Past Randomizers over and over...

uuuuuuugh, i just assumed there was a mac version of Into The Breach (from makers of FTL) but there is not and uuuuuuuggh

nbd because a mac version is coming soon (from their website: "Into the Breach will be initially available on Windows. After release we intend to bring the game to Mac and Linux as well. As a small studio, we found managing that large of a release for FTL very difficult, so we’re going to spread it out more this time. We will consider the possibility of bringing the game to Mobile devices and/or consoles in the future, but it is not a priority at this time.")

curious to see what others think though

There's a post on Reddit explaining how to get it to run using Wine (as long as you buy the DRM-free version from Humble or GoG):
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntoTheBreach/comments/80nt36/i_have_successfully_installed_into_the_breach_on/

Evan, have you played Binding of Isaac (preferably the newest Antibirth+ version)? I didn’t think Isaac would be so good but I’ve been addicted to this for 2-3 months now. The replayability is amazing because of the randomizer and unlockables. Probably the best game I’ve played in 2-3 years.

I have! Well, whatever is the one that came out on Switch. I will probably become re-addicted to it once I revisit.

I do love seed based games. LTTP rando is a fan made thing where all the items get shuffled (per seed) among the same fixed map. It's done using a logic so you can't get stuck.

really enjoying Tales of Berseria so far! obviously gets the usual anime-as-fuck disclaimer but it's a fun button-mashy action-JRPG with great writing and a wonderfully over-the-top antiheroine protagonist. it's kinda refreshing to play a recent RPG with no open-world ambitions or sidequest filler, it's just all-in on the core JRPG experience and does it very well.

https://i.imgur.com/648D8IQl.jpg

Metal Gear Survive. recently i started growing potatoes so finding food is becoming less of a task. bummed that you can't bring a bow and a spear at the same time. i am one mission from getting clean water at my base but there are a ton of walkers between me and the goal and there is also a giant Evangelion-style abstract giant sky beast walking across the landscape. looking forward to more inter dimensional crazy shit.

the dunkey review was not kind to this

oh yeah people hate this game. then again people also hated FOB when it might have been secretly the best part of MGSV.

im at mission 7 now and so far it has been all new level design. there have been some rooms here and there that look familiar but they are always just part of a mostly entirely new level design. its an apocalyptic take on MGSV. everyone is going "lol zombies" but there are more like dimensionally damaged creatures. inter-dimensional demons. the glowing weak spot is great and arcade-like.

however Final Fantasy XV is just about to unlock on steam so...

people also hated FOB when it might have been secretly the best part of MGSV.

I lovedMGSV and racked up so much time on it but FOB mode not being something you could opt out of was unforgivable.

I’m now playing Yakuza 5 ahead of 6 coming out next month. It’s a lot meatier than the other games and 5 playable characters is the most ever - and I’m loving the 5 cities you get to play around in. I haven’t actually finished the story - have spent my time in minigames as per. I loved the idol storyline and dance minigames more than I expected to, ditto the baseball section. It’s a stronger entry than I would have thought and I like seeing how much they progressed the fighting mechanics since 3 and 4.

Rusty Lake: Paradise. I think it's step down from the other three RL pay games but still really good

Ohhhhh, yeah. Just remembered that the introduction of FOBs was the point where I went 'huh?' and failed to return to Phantom Pain. And now I'm realizing that like all my shit is probably gone as a result of persistent invasions.

'Slay the Spire' and 'Into the Breach' are both proving massively addictive.

can't wait for the into the breach port...

is slay the spire really good? it's already out on mac and it looks interesting tho potentially disappointing?

the PC port of FFXV is incredible. better performance than the benchmark or the demo. the game looks amazing. combat is lots of fun. i like warping around its a good mechanic.

some screenshots:

https://i.imgur.com/oOEaKxuh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/bJjDh3bh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/FpQ7sJih.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/azqqjImh.jpg

I love Slay the Spire, but its kind of up my proverbial alley. I've got an embarrassing 48 hours on it (and 35 hours on Into the Breach)

Are people looking forward to Surviving Mars?

more FFXV

https://i.imgur.com/0zV8Gmxl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/NsTWF8Bl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Wkm8rVJl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/NVHXHRuh.jpg

this was taken by one of the characters. its from the middle of a battle. i tried to figure out what was going on lol. its like a Hans Bellmer photo montage or something.

I have finally, sadly, accepted that I don't have the time to learn how to play strategy/builder games like Surviving Mars - as great as it looks. It might just go on my list of "games I watch other people play on Twitch"

otm, i love board games in that genre but 4x video games are an order of magnitude more involved to learn and play

Yeah - but what I've watched of Surviving Mars seems oddly joyless. But maybe it's great if you get engaged.

finished Tales of Berseria last night, really good JRPG overall. some of the best & most fun character writing I've seen in the genre, and the combat system was enjoyable the whole way through. it doesn't have the visual or environmental wow factor of some of its peers e.g. xenoblade but it does everything else well.

next up in my JRPG queue is the first Trails in the Sky game, i think

xp in my experience every mars themed game, both videogame and tabletop, comes out joyless, i call this the Curse of Mars

lol

https://i.imgur.com/5vxrKexl.jpg

i just got to the 2nd map in Metal Gear Survive and am still am having fun. bow & arrow/battle axe is my current go-to loadout. this game may reuse a lot of MGSV assets but so far the world maps are entirely new. looking forward to see what they do with the jungle, not being tied to having the larger bases/outputs formula.

mission 14 was pretty incredible! one of the few legit reuses of an old map and it's for such a cool sequence. there are a bunch of cutscenes from this mission and the final one is a doozy.

xp in my experience every mars themed game, both videogame and tabletop, comes out joyless, i call this the Curse of Mars

― ciderpress, Friday, March 9, 2018 10:08 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not true! Red Faction: Guerrilla is a delight! But that's almost entirely due to destructible environments. Few game mechanics can compare to smashing buildings apart with a sledgehammer.

trails in the sky is charming but v slow paced, i'm 12 hours in and not much has happened yet. love the corny jazzy battle music, it's so far off of the final fantasy template that 90% of these games use.

Wasn't Doom set on Mars? I won't stand by and let you slander Doom!

i meant strategy / survival games set on mars, doom is fine

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Ultima_Worlds_of_Adventure_2_cover.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima:_Worlds_of_Adventure_2:_Martian_Dreams

never played but this always looked sick

whoa ciderpress you're playing trails in the sky? i am trying to play it too! less than an hour in and i almost always immediately fall asleep as soon as i try to play tho.

yeah i just started it last weekend it's very cozy

i'm a bit more excited about trails of cold steel tbh but i want to do things proper and play the older series first. it honestly hasn't aged that badly compared to other early 00s RPGs thanks to using sprites instead of 3d models for the characters

well i blasted through trails in the sky 1 thanks to liberal use of the turbo button - really glad they added that feature in the steam version, there's a ton of lengthy magic animations in combat that you don't need to watch 1000 times, and cutscenes of airships slowly taking off and landing in a game that's already really slow paced. combat was reasonably fun, it's got a pretty basic but enjoyable turn-based system that was engaging enough to have me constantly tinkering with my characters' builds. it ends on quite the cliffhanger and having started the 2nd game now it's become clear that 1 was really just something of a long introduction to the world and characters, whereas 2 is much meatier from the start since that stuff is all out of the way.

d00dz my students are obsessed with fortnite and won’t shut up about it

is it any good??

it's okay, it's the best of the trendy battle royale games so far just by virtue of running smoothly. unclear how long the trend will last

I tried pubg last night and Holy holy does trying to find a tiny enemy on a tiny screen suck

Just sneak to the final circle, hide, and lob grenades liberally when down to 2. It's how I won my only chicken dinner, whilst being a lousy shot. I love(d) the aesthetic of PUBG, and hate that of Fortnite.

I've played Subnautica to death. Dozens of hours past the end of the game to collect seeds and plant decorative undersea gardens. Probably going to buy Surviving Mars next.

would be interested to hear how surviving mars is. i watched a stream and wasn't totally convinced.

i think i just can't stomach Gun Games unless they're stylized rather than going for realism re: fortnite vs pubg

the last big fad was overwatch

battle royale is a fad of greater magnitude than overwatch, by a fair amount

i thought the same of mobas, but they stuck around

and actually overwatch has generally stuck around too. not sure they're fads so much as just new genres

moba and battle royale more new genre-y than overwatch, which is more of a refinement

yeah blizzard is in full-on pc genre refinement business, cf hearthstone, herostorm and overwatch.