Discuss games you've been playing

[DarthConker]

Dark Souls II was my least favorite of the Souls trilogy when I first played through all three games back at the beginning of 2020, but I've slowly been growing more fond of it lately. For every awful design choice the devs made there's a handful of really small yet neat little details that haven't been tried in the other Souls games like the torch system, or actual new things happening on New Game + cycles. Still not a fan of the movement and the unfair spamming of enemies (at least in the Sins of the First Scholar edition; apparently this wasn't as big an issue in the original release of the game), but the shift from Dark Souls 1 to 2 reminds me a lot of Ocarina of Time to Majora's Mask. There's a similar feeling of despair in both MM and DSII, not to mention some odd design choices that I think can be overlooked due to the quality of everything else.

Anyway, I went to continue my save from last year and finish up some bosses I skipped (including finally getting around to the DLC areas) but somehow my save data was deleted (and annoyingly DSII doesn't use Steam cloud save backup), so I guess I'm starting yet another playthrough of this game.

[CaptainDredlokk]

It's been a few months since I finally got around to beating it let alone 100%'ing it, but Yooka Laylee was not anywhere near as bad as it was made out to be in my opinion. It isn't without flaws - some of the Pagies were very obtuse to in their puzzles (I spent a very looong time looking for the gas valve in the casino for the jacuzi in the ice level due to the strange texture choice on the jacuzi itself and eventually gave up and googled the solution) and despite there being nearly 20 tonics I almost strictly used the one that makes hard to find collectables whistle, Despite this and the occasional annoying pagie, it definitely gave me that satisfying Banjo collectathon challenge, and in spite of the boss fights on the easier side, Capital B was a pretty good final boss that tests most of your kit.

I was pretty satisfied with it in spite of it not being the greatest game in the world. Too bad it wasn't as well received because I'd love a renaissance of that style of game - really felt like Microsoft was gonna do something crazy and announce Banjo Threeie when they let Nintendo use the rights to BK, but it came and went without a peep from MS which is a shame as it would be a welcome announcement what with them reviving Fable and getting Rare working on something new - even if they had another team working on the game. Then again, 343 is really fumbling the bag with Infinite so maybe it's best that BK doesn't have a Nuts and Bolts 2 as a sendoff...

[DementedSun]

Finally got around to finishing Breath of the Wild, having never seen any spoilers since the game released somehow. I absolutely hate weapon durability being so low, made me never want to bother killing enemies in the field - especially after I learned about the invisible XP you gain that makes enemies stronger, but hardly benefits you at all. So glad that Tears seems to fix the durability issue by letting you mesh items together to 'repair' them. Still, after finishing BoTW, it really doesn't feel like a Zelda game. I'd definitely give it maybe a C, and even Skyward Sword would get like a B-. I really wish games would stop being 'open world' for no reason. The lack of dungeons and unique areas made it feel so empty. I hope this isn't a permanent change to the Zelda formula, because it isn't special.

Drift/randomly not walking full speed with the pro-controller is also so freaking annoying. How did Nintendo mess up SO bad designing this gen's controllers, when the Gamecube was peak design.


OH, also 100%'d Bugsnax before it left gamepass. Probably my favourite game I've played this past year, and this is exactly what a new style of Pokemon game could be like.

[CaptainDredlokk]

I finally managed to squeak out a victory on

Spoiler: (highlight to view)

Jevil

and man Toby knows how to make a tough optional boss. I also forgot how good Deltarune chapter 1 is; the writing is great. I'm on chapter 2 right now, right before

Spoiler: (highlight to view)

I fight the queen. I've already beaten Spamton NEO and while I love his psychotic, disturbing character more than Jevil, I was a little disappointment with how much easier he was - with me beating him on my first attempt. Still, I haven't attempted the Weird route yet and I know he's tougher there. I just have to be able to bring myself to actually play through that sadistic playthrough...

Overall, I have no idea why I put off playing it for so long when I was beyond hyped when it first dropped. Playing through both has definitely rekindled by excitement for the chapters to come though and made me bust out the Gaster evidence boards and my tin hat all over again lol

Originally Posted by DementedSun

Drift/randomly not walking full speed with the pro-controller is also so freaking annoying. How did Nintendo mess up SO bad designing this gen's controllers, when the Gamecube was peak design.

I'm on I think my 3rd Joycon thumbstick repair at this point. I hadn't had that issue with my pro controller, but it's a damn shame that a lot of things on the device are such poor quality in terms of durability. Like, I understand the plastic screen and "soft but tough" philosophy with the core console since it's supposed to be a toy the children can use, but the controllers are the antithesis of that design and stuff like the body bending to the point the dock doesn't work and the screen literally scratching from using the dock are really embarrassing for a $300 device...

[dragon_kazoooie]

Been making my way through the Final Fantasy games and have finally hit the 3d era with FFIIV! So far I've enjoyed my time with the games (4 and 6 being particular standouts) and am looking forward to seeing how the series continues to evolve.

It's fun having zero knowledge coming into these things for the first time. For instance I am in the very beginning act of FF7 and so far Cloud seems like a dick and Barret is awesome, I mean he's got a GUN ARM, also love how mad he's getting at Cloud for not caring about the planet.

[Pstriple]

Played and beat Streets of Rage 2 for the first time.

I really, really enjoyed the first game, so I was eager to play the second one since everyone said it was even better than the first.

Gotta be honest though, I actually really could care less for this one.

Like, first game was 9/10, but this one was an easy 6/10.

I feel that every single thing they added somehow took away from the first game.

Mostly the enemies, all the new ones they added were just annoying, and not challenging in the good ways the enemies from the first one were.

[dragon_kazoooie]

Been going through a lot of old games recently, some old loves and some new to me. Gotta' say even though I never had one PS1 games hold up waaaaay better than N64 in a lot of little ways that add up immensely.

Finally figured out how to get to the school in Silent Hill 1 and boy is it still pretty scary, the atmosphere is impeccable. Also got through the beginning part of Majora's Mask again and it's insane how much atmosphere the game oozes from the sound design to the color pallet, it's pretty incredible.

[CaptainDredlokk]

When I was incredibly young and couldn't read, I played a lot of GoldenEye. I could only play certain missions and only on Agent difficulty, and was relegated to the "just shoot people and get to the end" missions as I had no idea what was truly happening in game. I recently went back to play the Xbox 360(or One?) port on 00 Agent and it's a pretty satisfying game w/ dual sticks. It has some crazy difficulty spikes - some missions really test your patience and your ability to learn from your mistakes as well as memory and routine (Train and Control while unique, are utterly brutal) while others are a cakewalk. (Dam, Surface 1 and 2, and Statue were all rather easy when you understand what's happening. Others are hard until you "solve" them. (Runway is insanely hard... until you realize there's a tank. Bunker 2 is nonsensically difficult... until you learn that melees, one shots, and throwing knives count as "stealth" kills as well as the silence PP7 or - my strategy - kiting ads all the way back to the prison cells out of the "horde alert" radius lol) The spikes also kind of spoil the ending, as the battle w/ Alec feels more like an "oh okay, it's over" rather than a "culmination of all you've learned." (Subjectively. A lot of people said Caverns was the hardest mission and that if you chase Alec - the "alleged correct way" to beat the mission - but I finished it and Cradle in two runs. Control, by and far, was the hardest and it took an exploit with enemy pathfinding to really beat once and for all. Same with Train, needing a glitch to complete, as the "wound Xenia" secret objective just refused to work even when I was sure I pinged her. Aztec did bring the difficulty back, but Egyptian was really easy when you solve the floor puzzle)

That said, it has a pretty dang good amount of variety in its missions. Facility is incredibly satisfying to speedrun, Surface and Surface 2 both seem nearly as big as Hyrule field while only being 1 of 20 missions, Train - while tough as nails and glitchy - is completely chaotic, and is frustrating to learn but you really feel like a 00 Agent when you master it. Jungle is probably my personal favorite, as I love the break in the music while you and Natalya slowly push forward through the trees, knowing that you can only take a total of six shots from the AR33's, checking your angles to make sure you don't take a blow that can make or break your mission run. Even Bunker 2, while annoying to "solve," is a lot of fun to replay and see how fast you can beat it now that I know how to "stealth."

Which is where the game also really shines. GoldenEye is utterly nuts to speedrun. While a good 60% of the cheat unlocks aren't that hard, the ones you do on 00 Agent or are just really chaotic even on easier difficulties, are a great taste of speedrunning the game. Some missions are more notable than others, with Facility being a personal favorite, while some are just running in a rather straight line. (Statue and Streets) Others, like Archives, are also just running, but are such a tight needle to thread and have a lot of B-lines and zig-zags that make trying to beat your times just as satisfying as one of the more shoot-y missions.

I will say, while I'm sure some of the guns are designed strictly with multiplayer in mind, the sandbox is handled a bit weirdly. Some of the weapons barely see any time at all. The Phantom shows up for one mission, and the P90 shows up at the very end of one and the very end of another. The Sniper rifle shows up for two, but Surface 2 is practically begging for a sniper rifle as well, and Jungle being one of the more open maps, could have done with it as a secret pickup somewhere hidden. While I kinda get the Grenade and Rocket Launcher being sparse, (although the nade launcher does come up a good amount) being explosive weapons, you spend a LOT of time using the PP7, the Soviet, the Deutze, the Z9mm, and the AR33. That's not too terribly little variety, but the Klobb and DD44 are both rather weak and got little use out of me, the Sniper while useful is only on two of the four open maps, and the P90 and Phantom both make almost cameo appearances. Even at the very last mission, when P90's show up right before the mission starts, I'm expecting a really challenging mission where guards are carrying P90's galore, but instead it's all Z9mm's. Just a shame because both of those guns were really satisfying to use and I felt like they didn't get enough screentime. The "two-ammo system" as well made it so the Klobb and DD44 never really got to shine, as they both just feel rather inferior to the PP7 or Deutze when they show up, so two of the few regular sandbox guns being inferior to the default while using the same ammo just made it so I had to cycle weapons way more to get to the alt I really wanted - the Soviet. Other guns make sense to only appear in certain spots, like the Moonraker Laser, throwing knives, and the Golden Gun, but I wish the Cougar Magnum showed up outside of cheats as well.

Overall I think it's a game that's aged a bit poorly in some ways, aged excellently in others, and was worth grinding out to get all achievements for, and adding another game to the list of "games that kicked my butt when I was a kid that I got revenge on as an adult" lol. I actually enjoyed playing it so much, I picked up the 360 remaster of Perfect Dark - a game I'd known about nowhere near as long as GoldenEye but only just recently learned is about as close to a "GoldenEye 2" as we're gonna get. So far it's really good and fixes a lot of issues w/ GoldenEye but I'm only 1 mission in.

[Danny Trabajo]

Le Collage (PSX): J'ai la nausée. [??/10]

[The Colonel]

rushing through to end my annual resident evil journey. played re4 remake. it's good but i'm insane and like video games from 2005 so it didn't grab me. the separate ways dlc was okay but they desperately need to get better performances out of ada.

played through revelations 1 and it was not a good game but it was... fine.

revelations 2 is weird but it has some mildly fun ideas

[The Colonel]

i also played stubbs the zombie for october this year. dont play stubbs. not a good game

[The Colonel]

i also played amnesia: the dark descent and a machine for pigs, and soma. the dark descent and soma are good. play them if you haven't. a machine for pigs is very bad. do not play a machine for pigs. do not give a machine for pigs the time of day

[dragon_kazoooie]

Still playing through Baldur's Gate 3 and haven't even cleared Act 1 yet.

Been having a lot of fun as a thief since you can end pretty much every encounter before it even gets started and finding clever ways to activate sneak attack is loads of fun! I've also got a Battlemaster Fighter, a Trickster Cleric, and a Totem Barbarian and all of them are doing superbly.

[CaptainDredlokk]

Party Animals is an utter riot. Haven't laughed so hard at a video game in a while lol

[Zondekel]

yeah, it's alright