Vidya Games Chat Thread

Use this board for any non-gaming related topics. ゲーム以外の他の話題はこちらを使ってください。
User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Fri Apr 01, 2022 2:37 am

We seem to talk about this kind of thing a lot in person, so here's a thread to talk about what video games are currently taking away from all your painting time!

Keeping an eye on plot spoilers for games with 'em is probably a good idea?

I recently finished up Horizon Forbidden West (Subtitle: Oh. Oh, Ted.), and liked it a great deal, although I also loved Zero Dawn (Subtitle: F**k you Ted) so no huge surprise there. It really did feel like more of a straight continuation of HZD gameplay-wise, so if you're tired of open-world crafty nonsense it may feel like it bogs down a bit, but I'm not! I like what they did with the story, and the performance capture and voice acting was really excellent. Most importantly, the core gameplay of "kill and dismember robot dinosaurs in various interesting ways while they try to breathe their Shin Godzilla plasma breath weapon on you" remains very engaging. I now have all the non-annoying content done (screw machine racing), and all my gear fully upgraded, so with literally nothing else to do I wait for NG+ and/or DLC to come down the line.

To fill the void, I was tempted by Elden Ring, which people seem to love, but everything I heard about it suggests I'm exactly not the target audience - smashing my head against difficult fights over and over and dying repeatedly is not really my idea of fun, even if you do have to do it much less than in "standard" Souls games.

Instead I picked up Cyberpunk 2077, and do not regret it one bit. It reminds me a lot of Deus Ex, in a good way, with a slightly less engaging main story (the basic idea is fine and very genre-appropriate, the execution is sometimes annoying) and a lot more sidequest content. It also reminds me of Deus Ex - and the Horizon games, come to think of it - in the specific way you can pick off mooks one by one from stealth at range* and their steadily-dwindling number of friends will get mad for 30 seconds or so before shrugging and going back to their business, even while wandering between the corpses of a half dozen of their friends. Even in so-called stealth missions, the easiest thing to do is usually "murder everyone in the building first". But oh well! I just wish it was third-person so I could actually see the avatar I so carefully constructed and the absolute clownshow mishmash of gear she's currently wearing.
*My current giggling-like-a-maniac ploy tends to center around hacking a base's cameras, and then targeting mooks through said cameras with my brain-frying cyber attacks from a safe spot on the other side of the street. I imagine while having a cup of coffee and a ham sandwich.

So what are all y'all playing these days?
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

Jye Nicolson
Legend
Posts: 1852
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:04 pm

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by Jye Nicolson » Fri Apr 01, 2022 3:57 am

After Elden Ring (which is really very accessible compared to its siblings, don't be afraid to try it, folks!) I needed something very much not open world.

With good timing, Guardians of the Galaxy came on sale, and it's great. It's not a great *game* - combat and puzzles are kind of so so - but the full package is awesome and I really warmed to this iteration of the team and each of the characters.

Not quite done with it yet but heading into the endgame - it won't outstay its welcome.

I'd really like to play Tiny Tina's Wonderland but I might wait for a sale purely to limit the money I give Randy Pitchford.

User avatar
me_in_japan
Moderator of Swoosh!
Posts: 7382
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 2:46 pm
Location: Tsu, Mie, Japan

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by me_in_japan » Fri Apr 01, 2022 5:43 am

I got pretty far into zero dawn, and am enjoying it, but I've kinda put it aside for a bit while I work on Fortnite for a bit (new season started recently). Playing against other people has given me a much more realistic view of my abilities as a game player (ie I suck at em) buy I still enjoy trying to outsmart other players, and that one-in-ten kill where I manage to lure somebody into a room rigged with C4 or snipe em without them even knowing I was there is still hella gratifying. I also got sidetracked on Cyberpunk 2077, but I'd be happy to get back into it when I get time - it's a good game. It's just about finding time to do it. Gotta get that painting in, too...
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things

Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

User avatar
Primarch
Evil Overlord
Posts: 11392
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 9:33 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by Primarch » Fri Apr 01, 2022 6:21 am

At the moment I am playing Steel Division 2, a real-time WW2 combat simulator based mainly on the Eastern Front (i.e. Russia Vs. Germany). There is an online skirmish mode, but I am still working my way through the first of several single player campaigns. Each game places you in command of one or more battalions of troops (drawn from historical Orders of Battle). You are given quite a large map to deploy on and fight for control over. The campaign mode includes a large scale map featuring towns and cities and you have control over a full division or more. It's very much my sort of game, I am a big history nerd and seeing (you can zoom all the way in) T34's and Panzer III's duking it out is awesome. Plus the tactical elements of it are fun. You can call in airstrikes, rain down mortar and howitzer shells, pin units with MG fire and all sorts. There is a load of DLC for it, some free, some not, so once I finish up all the campaigns, I may see what the DLC has to offer.

Zoomed Out
Image
Zoomed In
Image

I'm kinda tempted by Cyberpunk 2077, but I will wait until the price drops a bit.
Painted Minis in 2014: 510, in 2015: 300, in 2016 :369, in 2019: 417, in 2020: 450

Jye Nicolson
Legend
Posts: 1852
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:04 pm

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by Jye Nicolson » Fri Apr 01, 2022 7:50 am

I am also in the "Cyberpunk...maybe?" team. I downloaded the demo and was vaguely tempted by it at 50% off for the PS5 version's release, but this was like the week before Elden Ring.

I can't believe poor Horizon Forbidden West launched on top of Elden Ring. I will definitely play it eventually but an open world game in Elden Ring's blast radius is a tough place to be.

The other thing Elden Ring did was get me to stop logging in to FFXIV every day, which is fine because I was on the cusp of needing to raid to see the last of the Endwalker content, and I'm happy to be a patch behind on that rather than trying to do progression. Endwalker was phenomenal, FFXIV is just an astoundingly good MMO, a real testament to what careful, long term work by a dedicated team can do, given the basket case that was the original release.

Of course, "please enjoy this game, it gets *really* good after a few hundred hours" is a tough sell to anyone for whom it isn't already in their wheelhouse.

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Fri Apr 01, 2022 10:27 am

Yeah, Forbidden West is, at its core, a pretty tried-and-true formula open world game, with strong core gameplay, a great story, beautiful graphics, and on the other hand a couple clunky systems and some "things to do" bloat, while Elden Ring by all accounts just blows the door off what it means to be an open world game. With any luck, HFW's big DLC will trigger the release of Breath of the Wild 2 or something. :lol:

Cyberpunk is probably pretty similar in the end, with some fantastic set dressing (just driving around at night in the rain is fun, and the city is wonderfully grimy - the only thing it really lacks is people with neon-lit umbrellas), lots of ways to build and kit out your character, and fun cyberpunky shootouts, but probably lots that more-jaded-than-I gamers have seen and gotten tired of before - and Keanu Reeves, for all that I love him, delivers a pretty uninspiring vocal performance that's front and center to the story. Right now I'm in a holding pattern, running side jobs to get money and street cred while waiting for my cyber-girlfriend's quest line to advance.

@Prim, that looks cool! Real-time strategy games are generally a bit too big-brained for me. :lol:
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:28 am

More vidja gamery - following my trend of playing games that are just slightly past being the hot topic everyone's talking about, I recently finished a playthrough of Signalis, an indie pixel-art Lovecraft-flavored dystopian sci-fi survival horror gig. Very good stuff, if you're into that kind of thing, with a Silent Hill-esque multilayered story with lots of different, sometimes contradictory, but somehow equally valid interpretations. (Also a Silent-Hill-esque love of asking you to jump into holes...)
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

User avatar
Konrad
Wargod
Posts: 2581
Joined: Wed May 26, 2010 6:09 am

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by Konrad » Tue Sep 12, 2023 6:36 am

My 'pooter specs are, "my son's old one that he dropped and the screen won't close anymore". I don't know anything about graphics cards, but it has the one that does not do video games. So my computer gaming is limited to this ancient MMORPG "Age of Conan". Sometimes a man just needs to unwind and kill a few dozen Picts. I used to also play (just vs the AI) this Axis and Allies free game.
https://triplea-game.org
The Lord of the Rings variant is pretty tricky at first. Then the trick is to nerf the elves and try it again. And then see if a Goblin/Dwarf alliance can divide the world into equal halves. I think I spent too much time on that game.
Speaking of AI, my computer time sink is AI image generation these days. Just write words and pretty pictures come out. Change the words and slightly different pretty pictures come out. Terrifying actually. This stuff is going to put so many people out of business. Still not sure how it is all going to work out. That is the billions and billions and billions dollar question after all.
...and now his Head was full of nothing but Inchantments, Quarrels, Battles, Challenges, Wounds, Complaints, Amours, and abundance of Stuff and Impossibilities.....
Cervantes, Don Quixote

Jye Nicolson
Legend
Posts: 1852
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:04 pm

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by Jye Nicolson » Tue Sep 12, 2023 8:27 am

The Other Dave wrote:
Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:28 am
More vidja gamery - following my trend of playing games that are just slightly past being the hot topic everyone's talking about, I recently finished a playthrough of Signalis, an indie pixel-art Lovecraft-flavored dystopian sci-fi survival horror gig. Very good stuff, if you're into that kind of thing, with a Silent Hill-esque multilayered story with lots of different, sometimes contradictory, but somehow equally valid interpretations. (Also a Silent-Hill-esque love of asking you to jump into holes...)

I really enjoyed Signalis!

After I finished Armored Core 6 NG++ I skipped doing A ranks so I could mainline some nostalgia - Bombrush Cyberfunk is basically just Jet Set Radio Future again and after 20 years that was stunningly overdue. It does some of its own things so it's not entirely a retread but it wisely does not stray too far from *exactly what we all wanted* either.
Last edited by Jye Nicolson on Thu Sep 14, 2023 8:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
The Other Dave
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 5096
Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 3:46 am
Location: Nagoya
Contact:

Re: Vidya Games Chat Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Sep 12, 2023 11:22 pm

I was intrigued by Armored Core, but it may just be another game that’s too hard-mode for me. :D So I’ve been replaying Signalis (trying to figure out WTF is going on / trying for a different ending) and farting around in No Man’s Sky until either the Cyberpunk XPac drops at the end of the month or they finally getting around to releasing Baldur’s Gate 3 in Japan (I guess there were translation / localization issues?).
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

Post Reply

Return to “Life, Things and Stuff - ゲーム以外の話題”