Video Games: Devils Die Twice

[Inkdaub]

7 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

You just blew my mind. I bought Vampyr recently and every time I play, I keep thinking, "this is probably the closest we'll ever get to Bloodline." Bloodlines, if I remember, bombed pretty bad, but I loved it so much. I still think it's a great game, so this is exciting news.

 

Edit: P.S. Vampyr isn't very good.

I like Vampyr though I'm not too far in as yet.  First person manages to even ruin trailers for me so Bloodlines 2 isn't for me.  Looks like people are excited for it, though.  Code Vein is another one but I'm afraid of games compared to Dark Souls.

[Werthead]

17 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I'm more in line with this position--go where the games are, but it is kind of annoying that I currently have Steam, Origin, Uplay, and GOG. I don't want to add another program, just because, but on the other hand, I hear Epic is offering a friendlier money deal to devs, so that's something worth supporting.

You can add all of these games to Steam and run them through there (although if they're UPlay or Origin they'll still load the launcher in the background, but not if they're GoG or Epic), which is at least somewhat more convenient.

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So is this Steam/Epic/GoG thing the console wars of this generation?

Well, not really. Adding a separate launcher and buying games through it rather than Steam or GoG is hardly the inconvenience or cost level of having to buy a whole new console to get exclusives. But it is annoying to remove customer choice.

It is amusing seeing people who three days ago would have screamed blue murder if The Outer Worlds had been a Microsoft Store exclusive now saying they'll proudly buy it from there to stick it to Epic.

[KiDisaster]

Sekiro is amazing so far, but it's absolutely brutal. I didn't struggle anywhere near this much with any of the SoulsBorne games. Big part of it being how parry heavy this game is. I was hopeless at parrying in the previous From games but it really wasn't mandatory there. I'm still hopeless at it but slowly getting better since you really can't beat most of the mini-bosses/bosses without it. 

If you were good at parrying in Souls you'll probably have much less of a hard time with it. 

[Impmk2]

Coming late to the Divinity Original Sin 2 party. I haven't had this much fun with a party based isometric rpg in a very very long time. Kicks the crap out of pillars or the dragon age games. Am about 70hrs in and it's giving me some serious Baldur's Gate 2 vibes.

Loving it. 

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Coming late to the Divinity Original Sin 2 party. I haven't had this much fun with a party based isometric rpg in a very very long time. Kicks the crap out of pillars or the dragon age games. Am about 70hrs in and it's giving me some serious Baldur's Gate 2 vibes.

Loving it. 

Haven't played the second one yet but my buddy and I played through the first one entirely in co-op and it was a blast.  We each controlled two characters and it made the combat a ton of fun as we'd use our powers together to wreck shit.

[aceluby]

11 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

Sekiro is amazing so far, but it's absolutely brutal. I didn't struggle anywhere near this much with any of the SoulsBorne games. Big part of it being how parry heavy this game is. I was hopeless at parrying in the previous From games but it really wasn't mandatory there. I'm still hopeless at it but slowly getting better since you really can't beat most of the mini-bosses/bosses without it. 

If you were good at parrying in Souls you'll probably have much less of a hard time with it. 

Yeah, I picked it up last night and have only gotten through the tutorial.  I took heavy advantage of the parrying system in BB and spent a bit of time learning to parry in DS1, but once I was away from the game for a bit I lost that skill.  This one is definitely closer to DS parrying than BB.  What I do LOVE about this game though is the stealth aspect.  Lots of different ways of taking down enemies without being seen and/or alerting the entire level.  Hopefully can plod through a bit tonight, but thinking I might take a day off tomorrow to sink my teeth into it.

[Mexal]

Anyone here playing The Division 2? I've been eyeing it for awhile but not sure how I feel about playing a shooter online rpg.

[KiDisaster]

3 hours ago, aceluby said:

Yeah, I picked it up last night and have only gotten through the tutorial.  I took heavy advantage of the parrying system in BB and spent a bit of time learning to parry in DS1, but once I was away from the game for a bit I lost that skill.  This one is definitely closer to DS parrying than BB.  What I do LOVE about this game though is the stealth aspect.  Lots of different ways of taking down enemies without being seen and/or alerting the entire level.  Hopefully can plod through a bit tonight, but thinking I might take a day off tomorrow to sink my teeth into it.

Yeah, I love stealthing around and silently taking out all the enemies in an area. The game is very good at making me feel like a total badass and also a helpless baby when I eventually have to fight somebody head on. Even the normal enemies in the area I'm at will fuck me up if I'm not careful. 

The boss I've reached now feels like a real midgame gatekeeper moment. He felt impossible at first but after several hours of attempts I've started getting better at reading his attacks and getting them rhythm of deflections down.  Got to the final phase on my last few attempts and now I'm at work just itching to get back in there and finally kill him when I get home. 

58 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Anyone here playing The Division 2? I've been eyeing it for awhile but not sure how I feel about playing a shooter online rpg.

I played around 8 hours or so of it. It's OK. If you liked the first one you'll like this one, if not I doubt it'll change your mind. Almost everything about the game is 'fine'. The shooting feels fine, the missions are fine, etc. Nothing really stands out vs any of the other shlooters on the market right now. Well, nothing stands out in a good way anyway. The actual loot is boring as dirt, which in any loot focused game is a real fun killer for me. I doubt I'll play much more of it. 

[Fez]

I've been playing Baba is You, and that's one hell of a puzzle game. Basically, all the rules of the game are sentences on the screen "Wall Is Stop", "Water Is Hot" , "Flag Is Win", etc. with the only rule not on screen being the foundational one that you can push the words around; letting you modify all the sentences; so you can change "Baba is You" (Baba being the name of the character you start most levels as) to "Wall is You" and then you move around and control the walls instead of Baba. The game is top-down 2D, and each level is a single screen.

It's a really neat idea and the game quickly gets much harder, I now have to deal with "Has" & "And" in addition to "Is" and there's a whole lot more nouns and adjectives floating around as well. I think I'm probably getting to the limits of where my brain can get me, the game is turning into something of a programing simulator at least point, but it's been a really fun six hours or so. And I'm not giving up just yet. But I've 100% the first 2 worlds, "area cleared" another 1 (which you can do before finishing all the levels in a world) and there's at least another 4 worlds left; probably more. The game hints that it's going to go in some really weird directions if you can get far enough.

[aceluby]

Got some time with Sekiro yesterday and watched a couple beginner videos.  Took down the Ogre after ~3 tries after that.  Then I found a couple of areas off the beaten path and a bell to make the game harder, but with better drops.  I've grinded an area for a couple hours after that to get some skills, get used to the combat mechanics, and get some $$$ for materials.  Going to keep grinding tonight and head over to the other merchant to buy them out of goods.

[Mexal]

There is so much to do in Witcher 3. I'm not sure I've made a ton of progress. I'm currently level 11, made myself some Griffin gear and am in the process of the story quest sequence where I'm looking for Dandelion. Fun times.

[KiDisaster]

Took me a couple nights and dozens of attempts but I finally beat the Sekiro boss I was stuck on. Slow progress from it feeling totally impossible at first until I finally learned his attack patterns, got the timing down on parries and figured out how aggressive you really need to be in this game vs the much slower pace of a Souls game. 

Haven't felt that same sense of accomplishment in a game since the first time I killed Gwyn, and I still have the latter half or so of the game to go

[Ramsay B.]

I’m like 35 hours into AC: Odyssey and I’ve barely touched the southern part of the map. This game is insanely big and there’s almost too much to do. I’ve decided to ignore basically all side quests before I get burned out. I’m hunting cult members only now.

[aceluby]

Played Sekiro for about 3 hours last night, started doing some grind runs, but got bored.  So I continued on, took about 7 attempts to take down a miniboss which was a PITA since I had to clear out the entire area before every time.  Then I got chased by this enormous snake before reaching my first real boss.  First time I took him down to nearly dead and got curb stomped at the end (same thing happened with the Ogre).  Ended up spending the next 90 minutes trying to take him down and finally did around 12:30.

And then I realized that my dumb ass didn't turn off the extra difficulty before either boss, which was most likely why they could both destroy me after a single mistake.  Tonight it's back to the grind so I can do some more upgrades and get some passive skills at the same time.  I'm definitely hooked.

[Werthead]

WarCraft and WarCraft II are now on GoG in mildly remastered and updated forms. Nothing like the full mega-remaster of WarCraft III for later this year, but nice to see them working without a lot of faff.

[Inkdaub]

On 3/27/2019 at 5:16 PM, Ramsay B. said:

I’m like 35 hours into AC: Odyssey and I’ve barely touched the southern part of the map. This game is insanely big and there’s almost too much to do. I’ve decided to ignore basically all side quests before I get burned out. I’m hunting cult members only now.

I've been playing this one too.  I like it and agree it looks like I will never complete that map.  I have come to learn that pretty much all current/modern games are visually impressive.  AC Odyssey is ridiculously gorgeous though.  Climb up on any roof or hilltop and look around and the view is beautiful.

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I've been playing this one too.  I like it and agree it looks like I will never complete that map.  I have come to learn that pretty much all current/modern games are visually impressive.  AC Odyssey is ridiculously gorgeous though.  Climb up on any roof or hilltop and look around and the view is beautiful.

Something that helps is that several of the later areas of the map have zero main quests or story-driven side quests (and several more than that do have story-driven side quests, but the main quest lines will never take you there). So the map is less intimidating than you'd think, if you just want to beat the game.

[Toth]

I haven't played EU4 in the last two weeks, but it might be neat to show where I currently am: https://s16.directupload.net/images/190329/6kjnutfg.jpg

As you can see, Poland-Lithuania had turned into the Commonwealth and then further trolled me by allying with my ally Hungary, forcing me to totally abandon all future attempt to ever get Prussia back. That blob is there to last.

Instead I turned towards (and against) my HRE neighbors. With a little more waiting in between wars I managed to grab both Mecklenburg and Dithmarschen without having too much coalition hassle. My ally Denmark however imploded, with Norway and Sweden now going their own ways. So since the only one willing to help me against Poland was Russia, I then changed my course and went for Bohemia instead. Because screw them. One successful war later I had a bunch of more Silesian provinces, only sacrificing my alliance to Brunswick in the process. However, this was only possible after I sat out my second stupid regency in this game, one that apparently left me with negative prestige and horrible legitimacy. I'm screwed there, I think.

What annoyed me even more however is that this place in my network of alliances was then somehow taken up by the Netherlands. It just popped up while I was in the middle of fighting Bohemia and I accidentally accepted. Next thing I knew was that was in a war to protect the Netherlands from Britain. One that left me speechless at just how horribly weak they are. My army was essentially just standing at the shore mopping up the tiny British forces that landed one unit at a time. However I had massive trouble with war exhaustion after some time (could be because Brandenburg was raided by two continental allies of Britain) and suddenly I had to deal with three 30k revolt stacks and I gave up in frustration.

[aceluby]

On 3/27/2019 at 10:40 AM, KiDisaster said:

Took me a couple nights and dozens of attempts but I finally beat the Sekiro boss I was stuck on. Slow progress from it feeling totally impossible at first until I finally learned his attack patterns, got the timing down on parries and figured out how aggressive you really need to be in this game vs the much slower pace of a Souls game. 

Haven't felt that same sense of accomplishment in a game since the first time I killed Gwyn, and I still have the latter half or so of the game to go

Which boss was this?  I just

Spoiler

took out Genchiro, who I only after 4 or 5 tries was able to take down w/out getting hit, but could not for the life of me use the same strategies for his lightning phase.  Had to change my strategy for that phase and take a less aggressive approach that took advantage of the mikiri and lightning counters when given space.

This is seriously one of the best games I've played since Bloodborne.  @Red Tiger, wasn't it you that enjoyed BB, but hated the slowness of Dark Souls?  This is BB turned up to 11 with fast, precision combat mechanics, punishing enemies, and a great stealth aspect that brings me back to playing Tenchu.

There are literally some bosses you can take out just by blocking their attacks correctly.  Gonna double check that I didn't miss anything and then head to the Gun Fort next.  Heard that this was an area a lot of people rage quit.

[Red Tiger]

6 hours ago, aceluby said:

Which boss was this?  I just

  Reveal hidden contents

took out Genchiro, who I only after 4 or 5 tries was able to take down w/out getting hit, but could not for the life of me use the same strategies for his lightning phase.  Had to change my strategy for that phase and take a less aggressive approach that took advantage of the mikiri and lightning counters when given space.

This is seriously one of the best games I've played since Bloodborne.  @Red Tiger, wasn't it you that enjoyed BB, but hated the slowness of Dark Souls?  This is BB turned up to 11 with fast, precision combat mechanics, punishing enemies, and a great stealth aspect that brings me back to playing Tenchu.

There are literally some bosses you can take out just by blocking their attacks correctly.  Gonna double check that I didn't miss anything and then head to the Gun Fort next.  Heard that this was an area a lot of people rage quit.

Yeah I know, im playing it as we speak, I beat Dark Souls 3 and 1 after beating Bloodborne. Im enjoying Sekiro a lot so far.

Also beat Devil May Cry last week and RE2 the week before that.