What ARE you playing in 2020?

[MrDuck]

Currently playing...

• Spider-Man + DLC (PS4).
• Blasphemous (PC).
• Invisible Inc. + Contingency DLC (PC).
• Fallout: New Vegas UE + a buncha mods (PC).
• Stardew Valley (PC) - Co-op mostly atm.
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (PC) - Co-op only. God bless remote play on Steam.

[Tomi]

I've tried to keep my Trine 4 sessions short so that the game lasts longer, so I took a little break from it, and started another fairytale kind of a game instead:

Mages of Mystralia. I was going to rush through it, but I just can't seem to be able to play games that way... so in the end I got all the achievements. It didn't take too long though, and it was a fun little adventure. The game is like some sort of a Zelda / Little Big Adventure / Magicka crossover, and a pretty good one at that. The graphics are colourful and cute, nothing terrible happens to anyone, there's a little bit of harmless humour, and it's all very nice and charming.

The best thing about MoM is without a doubt the magic system. It's simply magnificent! There are four different types of spells, but during the game you'll find lots of different kind of runes, and by combining those you can create some very imaginative and complicated spells. Coming up with your own spells is really fun, even though at one point I semi-accidentally invented a proper killer spell that got me through just about every fight in the game. I don't think that the system is very well balanced; there are some rune combinations that are ridiculously good, but hey, at least it's fun! It's a shame, however, that the game wastes a lot of the potential of this incredible magic system. You don't really need to create those complex spells, at least not for combat. There are puzzles where you need to use your imagination a bit, but even those are often quite simple.

[Thirith]

That moment in Kentucky Route Zero Act III is still one of my favourite moments in games, but really in any medium - not least because the game borrows so well from a range of media.

Does anyone here know if the interlude between Acts II and III still works in VR? I doubt that it’d really be for most VR aficionados, but for someone like me who’s into theatre as well, it’d be fascinating.

[Sulphur]

Since QD finally fixed Detroit: Become Human on PC so it doesn't max out every single CPU thread you throw at it, I've been playing a bit and... yeah, it's a David Cage game. So far the story is like if you slammed bits of Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, and a random android awakening together. I'm not warming to it, but I'm not cool on it either - not yet, at least. Much of the story is hammy, and yet a lot of the scenarios could work if there were actually, like no words. None. Just make it silent theatre with Cage's ham hands nowhere around any speaking parts and it'd be 100% more compelling, though it still appropriates the history of slavery in America to tell a science-fiction robot story*. But, this is also keeping in mind I'm only halfway through. We all know Monsieur Cage's games are these confections that tend to deflate at the end like the world's most overbaked souffle.

So it has this menu girl named Chloe in the background who's an android that keeps looking around the screen at random and comments on shit you do - if you're booting up the game after a day, she'll say it's been a while. If you don't do anything for a bit, she'll quote random trivia. If you go into the options section, she'll explain you're at the options section, which lets you select various options - gee, thanks Chloe. Is there an option for you to go stick your fingers in a light socket and hum the theme song to Short Circuit? No?

She just asked me a question. 'Are we friends?' And I'm like, 'Listen, you're basically I Feel Fantastic but marginally more horrifying because there isn't even a synth track in the background to take the edge off.' So I click on 'No'. And she doesn't say anything, but she continues looking around at the screen with a quivering lip and sad eyes and is just very actively distraught.

I suddenly catch myself feeling bad about this for a second. Like, actually considering what I would have lost if I'd just said 'Yes' to this random digital assemblage (modelled after a very gorgeous person, no doubt) instead of being the man in black realistic. And y'know, that's actually this game's biggest triumph: it's not the story and its granular choice->consequence flowchart, it's the ability to weaponise performance capture. I mean, I still feel like I need to go back and make this stupid menu android happy, even though I can't now; I made my choice. It's gonna stay with me. And that's a good thing.


*This can actually be done right if your treatment isn't all blunt riffs off history or general asspulls, and has been attempted by not just Asimov or Clarke. There's an old IF game called LASH that made a better fist of it, and while it still fails, it's the kind of failure that points the way instead of circumscribing the entire territory as an irradiated no man's land.

[Tomi]

You better be playing that with the New California and Autumn Leaves singleplayer mods. They will forever be part of any NV play through I do from here on. Fallout - Fronteer is on the horizon too.

What do those mods do then? It's the amount of "essential" mods that has always put me off the game, but I think it's about time I gave New Vegas a try after owning it for about eight years.

[Sulphur]

They're both additional, fan-made campaigns. Quality-wise, I don't know if they're up to snuff with the rest of NV, but I hear good things about New Calif at least.

[Starker]

Oh, that's right, Detroit did actually come out on PC, didn't it? Must keep an eye out for a sale.

David Cage gets a lot of flak, some of it deserved, but I have never come away from his games with the feeling I have lost something. Omikron, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain -- they've all had something memorable, something interesting, whether it was in a good or a bad way.

Omikron was clunky as hell to play and had a somewhat cheesy premise and looked like a budget Blade Runner rip-off, but the high concept was actually pretty cool and IMO it nailed the weird alien feel of the world pretty successfully, not unlike some far better games, such as Outcast and Morrowind and perhaps Beyond Good and Evil.

Fahrenheit is actually pretty damn good in the beginning. It had me completely hooked for maybe a solid third of the game, even if the completely bonkers latter parts are just The Room in video game form.

Heavy Rain is probably the most boring of Cage games (though, as Yahtzee suggested, it does get a bit more interesting if you headcanon the FBI agent into being a visitor from the future suffering from the effects of time travel when he changes the future), but it still has its moments and again, the high concept of how far someone would go to save their child is a potentially interesting one to explore -- would you kill someone, would you kill yourself, etc... It's not always executed well in the game, but the finger scene did make me flinch, it was just that brutal.

Sure, his games are all about taking an interesting premise and not doing anything interesting with it, but he sure as hell fails in an entertaining way.


As an aside, every time I read the words "I feel fantastic", this is the song that plays in my head.

[froghawk]

I couldn't make it through Fahrenheit. I tried, I really did - I didn't even make it to the bonkers stuff, which is a shame. But the thought of those quicktime events makes me shudder. Omikorn seemed cool to me but I didn't manage to get past the clunkiness on that one, either.

[Starker]

Maybe watch it on Youtube or something. It's probably worth it for the reactions alone.

[bob_doe_nz]

Tried out the Dying Light Free Weekend.

This is what Dead Island should have fucking been.

[Sulphur]

David Cage gets a lot of flak, some of it deserved, but I have never come away from his games with the feeling I have lost something. Omikron, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain -- they've all had something memorable, something interesting, whether it was in a good or a bad way.

Omikron was clunky as hell to play and had a somewhat cheesy premise and looked like a budget Blade Runner rip-off, but the high concept was actually pretty cool and IMO it nailed the weird alien feel of the world pretty successfully, not unlike some far better games, such as Outcast and Morrowind and perhaps Beyond Good and Evil.

Fahrenheit is actually pretty damn good in the beginning. It had me completely hooked for maybe a solid third of the game, even if the completely bonkers latter parts are just The Room in video game form.

Heavy Rain is probably the most boring of Cage games (though, as Yahtzee suggested, it does get a bit more interesting if you headcanon the FBI agent into being a visitor from the future suffering from the effects of time travel when he changes the future), but it still has its moments and again, the high concept of how far someone would go to save their child is a potentially interesting one to explore -- would you kill someone, would you kill yourself, etc... It's not always executed well in the game, but the finger scene did make me flinch, it was just that brutal.

Absolutely. Fahrenheit always had the most interesting of openings, and Heavy Rain had a fairly decent set of ideas. It's always been the execution and the denouement that unravels the enterprise. Heavy Rain isn't great by any metric, but there are glimpses of something there that could have been good. The thing with Cage is, he comes up with these neat ideas that work for one-shot vignettes, but has trouble linking them into a cogent narrative. What is fantastic without a shadow of a doubt is the team he's working with - they've a mastery of visual design and technical artistry that's pretty much up there with the best in the industry. Detroit's quite a system hog, though. I don't think it'd do 60 FPS at High settings even at 1080p unless you have something like a 2070.

As an aside, every time I read the words "I feel fantastic", this is the song that plays in my head.

Hah, it's been a while. I actually missed it.

@froghawk: yes, please at least watch a playthrough like Starker suggested. It's the most gobsmacking 200mph to batshit insane trainwreck ever made in gaming, and it's worth it for at least that.

[Thirith]

Damn, Red Dead Redemption 2 is gorgeous on PC! It was already beautiful on PS4 and a big screen, but I'm still wowed just by moving through that sublime landscape.

Though the bit where you're relocating to your camp near Valentine highlights some of the restrictive design bullshit that Rockstar is still prone to. If you take the wrong way (that would still take you to where you're going), blam! Mission failed, start again. No warning in the dialogue (something that happens in other missions), no "Where are you going, Arthur? It's straight ahead!"

For whatever comes next for Rockstar, I very much hope that they invest some time in more robust yet flexible systems. They can still have relatively tightly scripted missions while at the same time allowing for more freedom, or at least better, more organic signposting. If it's so important that you take exactly the right path, Hosea could react to you getting off course, he could first caution, then warn you, and then there could be O'Driscolls or Pinkertons that see you and come to investigate. Anything but this kind of bullshit.

[Pyrian]

Been playing a silly team in Into the Breach. I was dissatisfied with the Steel Judoka is supposedly themed around getting the Vek to hit each other but its members aren't great at accomplishing that, so I put together a team that has the signature Vek Hormones but also includes two of the best repositioning mechs. So, Grav Mech, Hook Mech, and Swap Mech. Problem? I have absolutely no weapons that inflict damage.

Here's this team squeaking in a win on an objective to kill 7 Vek:

https://imgur.com/gallery/EFRe87E

[SubJeff]

Tried out the Dying Light Free Weekend.

This is what Dead Island should have fucking been.

I've got it, and played a couple of hours. I don't like it. It grates somehow.

[Thirith]

I didn't like the first few hours of Dying Light, but for me it improved a lot once I'd got a bunch of combat and movement upgrades. Not saying it'd be like that for you, SubJeff, but it might be worth sticking with it for a bit. Also, if you can find a coop partner who's roughly at the same level, it's very enjoyable playing with others.

[Malf]

See, I reckon if they got rid of the whole RPG silliness, the game would be a LOT more enjoyable, and much better for co-op. But I would also say the same for Destiny / The Division / etc.

[Thirith]

I'm torn on this. With Dying Light I enjoyed learning new skills, but I first had to reach a certain level and have a number of skills to make locomotion and combat enjoyable rather than clunky. At their best, the skills represented a wider, more varied set of tools to deal with the world of the game and the obstacles in it. However, once I got to the point where combat pretty much turned into superhero silliness my enjoyment pretty much stopped, and the grappling hook also kinda ruined my enjoyment of getting around. I like well-done parkour in games, I like its physicality. The grappling hook replaces much of this.

What I definitely don't enjoy is RPG The Division-style, where for the most part skills are all about combat and the combat itself is mediocre at best, and where the toolset pretty much consists of minor variations on a handful of types: DPS, area damage, damage types, that sort of thing. I hate RPG mechanics that are all about higher HP counts, resistances and bullet sponges. There was little of interest to me in The Division's combat and skill trees, it was mainly about being prepared to tackle enemies with more hitpoints that had to be hit with bigger and badder guns.

[Tomi]

I started playing the latest Epic freebie, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, mostly because I haven't played an AC game for years and I found the theme interesting. Had some mysterious technical problems at first, but eventually got the game running. It took me a while to get used to the "I didn't intend to jump there or do that, but I guess that'll do" control scheme again, but I'm starting to get the hang of it a bit now. Moving around can still be very annoying at times though, some rooftop chase scenes especially where you can't afford to lose too much time can be quite infuriating.

I like AC: Syndicate though. Yeah, it's grindy and it's basically still the same game that AC has always been, but the city is very beautiful and actually feels like a living city, and there are a lot of things to do. Perhaps too many things to do for a completionist like me. The skill points system and crafting are fairly basic but nice little additions. Having two protagonists makes it possible to switch between stealthy and non-stealthy playing styles whenever I like, and that's quite nice. The zipline thing makes me feel like the Spiderman, sometimes it works from crazy distances and sometimes it doesn't seem to work at all. Londoners seem very stupid; normally they don't seem to understand (or care?) what's going on even when I murder people in front of them - I guess this sort of a game needs some of that stupidity to be any fun, but I think the AI is a bit too stupid.

The main story doesn't really seem to be going anywhere at the moment, and even though the side quests are entertaining enough for now, I hope that things get more interesting some time soon. Still glad that I tried this!

[Tomi]

I'll probably be all AC'd out for the next two years once I'm done with the main story, but I'll keep that in mind!

[Brethren]

I've been simultaneously playing Doom 2016 and replaying Doom 2. Kind of an interesting experiment. Doom2 is as fun as it has always been, not much debating that. It's been great replaying all these levels that I haven't played for probably 10 years or so. Not sure if I have the nostalgia glasses on too tight or not, but D2 seems like more pure gaming fun that most of modern games I've tried recently.

But Doom 2016 - I know a lot of folks here have praised it, and it's not bad, but it just doesn't seem...great. The visuals are pretty, but the gameplay, it all seems so staged. It's a constant recycle of set piece, kill 30 bad guys, quiet area, then repeat. Plus, you have the helper government guy who communicates with you remotely and guides you through the game. Very cliched, so far at least. I plan to finish it, but in some way its a slog at the moment. Maybe it will get better. It also just doesn't seem to have the same punch (for lack of a better word) that the original games had. In one area near the beginning, I died 5 times in a row, partially because I didn't even realize I was been being hit by the enemy. Weapons just don't seem as powerful as in the originals. It's gory as hell, of course, but you don' really feel it. If that makes sense.

At this pace, I'm going to be way more excited for Doom 64 than Doom Eternal when they come out later this month, but we'll see.

[Tony_Tarantula]

I got Kingdom Come for free and ahve done about 90 minutes or so of it.

It's very good at least this far away from the launch bugs. I do see why it was kind of divisive: it's a very euro-centric game, that is trying hard to convey a "life is hard" type mood through gameplay mechanics and difficult combat. At the start of the game you can barely beat up the town drunk and taking on even a single fully capable combatant is beyond your abilities.

[Tomi]

Isn't that typical for most RPGs though? This time the giant rats have just been replaced by the town drunkard.

[Yakoob]

I've been playing Far Cry 4 and it keeps surprising me in how great it is.

Lots of fun gameplay aside, the characterization is fantastic. While the two main leaders (Sabal and Amita) are eh, every other character is fantastic. Getting little sound-bites from the main villain, Pagan Min, is just a treat every time. He just went on an angry rant about the candles - who goes around in a worn torn nation every morning to light all those fucking candles? So he outlawed candles, punishable by death. Probably one of the best game writing I've ever seen.

Then there's Willis, charricature of a gung-ho-CIA-American. You get in his plane and start yelling at him for screwing you over, and the first thing he says is: "What you forget you're American? Americans knock"

There's also a mission later on inside a chemical compound where you start hallucinating. It turns into a sequence of shooting dark outlines who explode into bursts of Holi colors, as punjab music plays in the background. Complete with messed up UI, false objectives and some trippy gameplay effects.

Also, the honey badger quest.

The game is just so chockful of those little moments that stand out on top of very solid gameplay as well. Just a very polished and enjoyable experience.

[Sulphur]

Dude, that's Far Cry 4. I was a little confused when you started praising the characterisation for FC5, which is... well, something other than good.

[Renzatic]

Played through the game more times than I can remember. Absolutely love it. This game was my first experience with cyberpunk and started off a lifelong love of the genre.

You know, there's another game made by Beam Software, Nightshade for the NES, that's a lot like Shadowrun in a lot of ways. Check it out. You might like it.