(Archived 2022) The thread in which we talk about games we are currently playing

video games
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I decided on a whim to give Sonic Frontiers, Shining Resonance Refrain, and Devil May Cry 3 a spin today.

I'm only around 3 stages into Sonic Frontiers at the moment, but I'm happy to say that I'm enjoying it so far. I like the music, I'm engaged with the stages enough to rerun them for better times, and I like running around the overworld as well. The writing so far feels less snarky/quirky, and more on the sincere side, which I especially appreciate after watching a friend stream Lost World recently.

That game felt like it was trying to be snarky and self-aware, but did a poor job of it, which made dialogue kind of painful to sit through. That's all to say that as someone who grew up playing a lot of Sonic Adventure 1, Frontiers so far is managing to be the first Sonic game I've really enjoyed since Generations from over a decade ago.

I played a bit over an hour or so of Shining Resonance Refrain, and my thoughts on it can mostly be summed up by saying that it seems like a nice B-tier junk food PS3-era JRPG that I will enjoy. I like the characters and their designs so far well enough, the story/writing has a very particular brand of anime ham to it that I'm down with, and the gameplay, while a bit clunky, is still enjoyable enough.

As for Devil May Cry 3, while I've seen playthroughs of all five games, this is my first time actually playing one. I like the music, and the cutscenes are charmingly over the top and stupid, which I'm genuinely into. It's definitely going to take some practice to get used to the combat controls, but I'm hopeful that once I get some of the muscle memory sorted out, I'll really be able to start having a good time with it. I've always been interested in character action games, but this is my first time actually taking the plunge and playing them for myself. I intend to play through 3, 4, and 5 eventually.

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This week I replayed Wizorb thanks to its release on the Switch. It’s a better game than its spiritual successor Strikey Sisters but, damn, there are tons of things from Strikey Sisters I wish were in Wizorb.

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This `morning` I replayed `Tactics Ogre` thanks to its release on the Switch. It’s a better game than its spiritual successor `Triangle Strategy` but, damn, there are tons of things from `Triangle Strategy` I wish were in `Tactics Ogre`.

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@“Delta”#p92689 It’s definitely going to take some practice to get used to the combat controls, but I’m hopeful that once I get some of the muscle memory sorted out, I’ll really be able to start having a good time with it.

Of course the name of the game is complex inputs so it's going to take some time to get settled in any case, but if anything feels too unnatural from the outset, always remember you can bend the game to your will and remap those controls.

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@“chazumaru”#p92691 This morning I replayed Tactics Ogre thanks to its release on the Switch. It’s a better game than its spiritual successor Triangle Strategy but, damn, there are tons of things from Triangle Strategy I wish were in Tactics Ogre.

that sounds interesting! like what? I have no interest in looking at triangle strategum.

@"Syzygy"#p92690 Well, KH1 does not exhaustively explain itself like FFVII. I also think my meaning was being mistaken, and when that happens I don't really care so much as it bothers me feeling like I'm being hounded for it.

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@“captain”#p92692 That's true. Normally I just try to stick with default controls, but I get the feeling swapping some of the inputs around may actually be a good idea for this game. Better do that sooner than later.

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@“Syzygy”#p92695 I don‘t think retconning stuff is a symbol of consistency. This writer also has a pattern of retconning a ton in those other works like Advent Children and X-2. and again, that teaser trailer at the end doesn’t seem to be consistent with anything, or is it?

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@“treefroggy”#p92694 There are myriads of little Quality of Life features I am missing might now. No “end turn” shortcut, no immediate access to the dialogue log (not that I need it so much for TO’s story but I am surprised I can’t access it), various interface quirks. The Warren Report (especially its modern incarnation) remains a model to follow for any budding RPG developer but TS is a smoother experience than TO in many respects.

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I've been playing Dome Keeper steadily for the last two weeks or so. I scrolled up a bit and didn't notice anyone mention it (sorry if someone already did?). You play the role of some space ... I dunno ... asshole? ... that's trying to excavate a planet of its underground resources under the protection of a little dome. The local inhabitants attack the dome in regular intervals, with waves getting increasingly hostile.

You gotta switch between upgrading/repairing/protecting the dome, and drilling/exploring down below for resources until you reach an end-game that involves >!discovering some ancient artifact that allows you to obliterate the local hostile inhabitants, giving me the reading that it's the player's divine right to invade the planet and screw over the inhabitants which ... I dunno. Is that how I am supposed to read that? !< or in another mode you climb the leaderboards by just space capitalism'ing the fuck out of the planet via mining as many resources as possible and shipping them off.

What's sucking me in is the game has a really good balance between exploring down below, and rushing to protect the dome. There isn't a lot of time for either note of the game to wear thin. I blame that pacing for creating a situation where my initial play was meant to be a quick 20 minutes, and when I finally turned it off I had played 7 hours.

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The other game is Cyber Stadium Series Base Wars. I was thinking of this game's spritework and that Konami/Ultra Games OST and I was like, "Damn! I should play this again!"

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I don't think of myself as a "sports guy", but I am definitely a "robots-playing-sports guy". I'm fully aware that robots in sports is just putting cheese on my broccoli in order to get me to eat my vegetables.

Baseball? I mean, yeah. Cool I guess?

Oh. Robots playing baseball? Let's fucking go!

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Every time I fire this up, consistently since the 90s, I convince myself I'll play an entire season. But by game two I discover I didn't upgrade something correctly and my bots just get slaughtered (I'm currently at this point). In which case I realize I have absolutely no business making baseball related decisions, robot or otherwise, and I swap the cart out. Where it will sit for 12 months before I remember the awesome spritework and OST, and repeat the process all over again.

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@“Syzygy”#p92701 okay, maybe I‘m starting to see what you mean. maybe you found the key to unlock my understanding of what you mean, and my heart.

but do you think the kairi transplant and these children not being just normal children was planned from the start? cause that’s what bothers me the most. it just seems so unhinged from reality as a story at that point. and increasingly complex heart-body-soul mechanics just seem tacked on after the fact.

maybe the hooded guy was supposed to be "nobody", but did they know at that point he was created by somebody losing their heart and becoming a heartless?

does that mean the stupid Don Bluth Manlet from Traverse Town has a nobody named xexex

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@“Syzygy”#p92708 Okay, I think we've come to an understanding. what you call “false foreshadowing” is kind of what I was describing from the start.

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@“Syzygy”#p92708 “A New Hope” was originally just called “Star Wars”, too

That's what I'm saying!!!!!! I think something like a Yoda, who's """"supposed""" to just be a weird goblin, needs to remain unexplained to be interesting. I think the main misunderstanding is my language, using the phrase "never supposed to be explained"... Nojima wasn't solely responsible for the entire game. I really dislike the direction they went with these kids becoming dehumanized figures, already by the time of Chain of Memories. Maybe that's why it was popsicle time in KHII, they realized they needed to humanize the protagonists again.

So we pretty much agreed from the start, and I got defensive. We each lean slightly to either side of the same conclusion. I think the first game had convenient blanks to be filled in later, or not.

Reality, life, has many things which will never be fully explained. The emotions of a preteen, being confused, *not* figuring it out but trusting your heart, your conscience, principles, that's the theme here that speaks to the player.

George Lucas sucks

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i have played much game these past few weeks.

i finished _automaton lung_, a weird little experience that i pretty much totally dug. the environments in that game are so wonderful and surreal: a pyramid with a giant head suspended off the ground; a small church that opens into a city on top of a skyscraper; a void with an invisible floor through which platforms rise. a great game to spend time in, never explains anything, just an abstract and haunting space with gorgeous music. (as a 'game' with 'combat' and 'controls' played on a 'tiny original model 3ds' it is occasionally very annoying. but a) its levels, such as they are, are pretty brief; and b) combat is usually optional and not particularly difficult.)

i finished _signalis_ last night. still digesting it. i actually haven't played many horror games, though i love horror as a genre and have always been fascinated by how eerie virtual spaces can be. i enjoyed the experience, i think, though it was something i found myself really needing to set aside time for and psych myself up to play; it wasn't something i was compulsively picking up, it was more like 'ok, i have two free hours, time to grit my teeth and dig in.' the mechanics did a very good job of stressing me the fuck out. as blatant as the references are (i lol'd at the >!obvious ghost in the shell bite during the fake ending!<), i did think it had a strong sense of... not its own identity, maybe, but its internal coherence as an experience. if that makes sense. it's a complete-feeling game. i wish the storytelling was a little less oblique at points.

also played _milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk_. short horror point-and-click/visual novel (or short story) about a girl who experiences reality in a very unique way. good writing and atmosphere, it's about 20 minutes so like... there's very little to explicate. i like that it casts you, the player, as an outsider to her headspace and limits the interactions you have with her; it gives her a lot of space to have her own experiences and thoughts, without you explicitly controlling her. it occasionally forces you into being short with her, but in a way where you're not, like, playing therapist to a virtual girl; feels appropriate.

finally, started _norco_. reminds me that i need to finish _kentucky route zero_ at some point in my life. i don't have coherent thoughts on it yet, but the writing is good.

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@“Delta”#p92696 Yeah in my case I had like four years of muscle memory to undo because it hadn't occurred to me I could change the controls…

On the other hand it's not like it needs to be perfect, just change them if something is immediately unintuitive

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Yoooo I can't believe this kinda works. Streaming Steam to my tablet and now I can play with touch controls while relaxing on the couch [upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/CEsSQZ3.jpeg]


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@“Syzygy”#p92723 I bought and downloaded the game on Steam earlier today and have been playing it on my desktop, then was getting kinda tired of being at my desk and thought to myself, man I wish I could play this on my tablet like how I was playing Vandal Hearts on Duckstation! So I googled “stream Steam to tablet” and there was an article https://www.theverge.com/22962051/steam-games-remote-play-windows-ios-android-macos-streaming that said download Steam Link, so I did. The Android app immediately upon opening automatically searched for Steam clients on my home network, found my desktop, gave me a pin number to enter into my desktop PC, and bam it worked immediately! Like maybe 5 minutes total from wondering if it was possible, to doing it!

I'm using touch controls on the tablet as emulating mouse controls on the PC, and it's working pretty much exactly as I hoped. With a little distance between me and my router the resolution on the video isn't 1080 or anything but it's a SNES game at its core who cares!

Edit: lol they totally nerfed the battle where you save the first of the 4 shaman sisters, she was never in any danger at all

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@“thebryanjzx90”#p92722

I've done something similar with a few games and it usually works surprisingly well!

@"Syzygy"#p92723 I just use the "Steam Link" app on my tablet, it negotiates all the magic as long as Steam is running on your PC and is logged in to the same account. It'll see your PC, do some network tests to work out which bitrates etc will work, and then you can just launch the game. It essentially is doing a RDP/Parsec/etc screen & control share. There are decent control config options also, ranging from virtual gamepad, mouse, or a direct mode where it clicks exactly wherever you happen to tap rather than having a virtual mousepad.

I haven't tried it, but pairing a controller with the mobile device should also work, for playing on a remote screen with a gamepad if that is something you would like to do.

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I finally restarted Fantasian last night. I'd completed Part 1 when it released (and really enjoyed it) but never went back for Part 2, such is the reality of Endless Content.

I've decided to start from the beginning (such is the reality of my crap memory). It's a lovely game, and I'm excited to cancel my soon-to-be-price-hiked Apple One account once I'm done.

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Was gonna say I ‘missed’ the Death Stranding talk, but I guess it was only like a day ago and this thread moves fast. Gonna jump in because I re-installed the game recently after beating it six months ago and just passed the 100-hour mark.

I completely agree with @billy about wishing I could play the game for the first time again. That feeling of cresting a hill into some unexplored zone and having the music kick in as you slowly saunter toward some bizarre structure in the middle of nowhere was just magical. However, I will say that I still get this sort of feeling even 100 hours in -- not with the music and everything, but the landscape is just so beautiful and haunting that I don't think I will ever get over it.

I don't love the MULEs because I don't understand stealth at all, but I just kinda run in with my blood bags and bola gun and some stun bombs and just sorta make it happen. I stealth until I am close enough to my target, and then just go nuts and start sprinting. Usually works, even on hard. Those guys are pretty dumb.

Recently, I've been going after memory chips. In my first 90 hours with the game, I had gathered about a quarter, which felt pretty low. I thought it would be too easy to just have an online map open, so what I did (in true Death Stranding spirit) was I went through a map in the middle of the night while too tired to think straight, and wrote incredibly vague directions for each one. That way, I have a sense of where they are, but still have to go find them. These directions are like "C MULE SE Craftsman" or "Beyond PKC". I find them amusing to look back on and I'm having a good time just wandering around collecting stuff now.

I like the variety of activities in the game: sometimes you just wanna drive a car around, sometimes you wanna climb a mountain, sometimes you wanna sneak into an enemy base, etc. Even when you have everything unlocked, there are still complications, and if you get complacent, you can find yourself in some pretty bad situations. The most recent time I died was because I started a mountain delivery without resting, and ran out of Monster Energy and then stamina, so I thought I would have a little sleep. I got up to make tea while my guy slept and when I came back I saw that he had died, probably because he had fallen asleep on a mountain in the middle of a blizzard. Oops!

I think they just made so many wonderful choices while making the game, and the design of all the materials and buildings and everything feels so unique and cool. And don't even get me _started_ on the animation and sound design of Sam himself. I have never felt so connected to the video game character I am controlling. I _feel_ his struggles, man! I really do!

Death Stranding!!!!!

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@“wickedcestus”#p92767 yeah I’m still at the weather station but I pick the game up on my pc with my 8bitdo pro 2 every now and again and it’s great!

You just reminded me in fact that I’m gonna take a break from gba and go back to pc gaming, death stranding and ffviir

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there's this part in Cyberpunk 2077 when the player goes to a “house of ill repute” and has to choose a “safe word” and the game gives you two dork ass choices (I went with “Samurai”)

which made me think what would be your video game related "safe word" would make a good show opening prompt for the pod cast

@"Jaffe"#205 can you work that into the beginning of an episode, during the part when they say: "I'm ________ and my ____________ would be etc

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don't say it was my idea on the show though if you do it