The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Jason_Miao]

Beat AI War on 7/7 AI levels (each AI can go to 10, but 7 is considered average difficulty).

I also beat it before on 7/7 between my earlier post and this one, but that was also with a map style that's suited for defense, and all of the expansions enabled.  I'd noticed that I tended to pick options and settings that increased the number of toys and benefits - arguably, this made the game easier, albeit more complicated.  So I decided to turn off all the expansions and try playing a pared down AI War before writing up a full post about it to get a feel of the core game.

AI war is a fundamentally single player (although co-op mode exists) 4x RTS that, like many modern RTSs, have multiple resources to keep track of.  But in the end, the game revolves around a single negative-resource: AI Progress.  Capturing strategic points will get you more tech, more metal, more hacking points, etc, but it will also advance AI Progress.  Destroying critical structures may advance AI progress.  Certain addon features, if not captured or properly dealt with, may advance AI progress.  Dawdling may advance AI progress.

And AI Progress is bad.  It dictates how many ships are part of the waves that will periodically invade your planet.  It dictates the level of ships that are used to reinforce planet defenses.  It's the difference between a probe of 100-ish mk I fighters and a 10,000 strong wave that rips through several fortified planets.

The result is an RTS that is fairly atypical - rather than rushing to capture most of the map and resources, a player needs to weigh the strategic benefits versus costs.  In an 80 planet map, one might take less than 20 planets - a far cry from most RTSs where players rush to conquer most of the map as soon as plausible, and buy technology as soon as they can pay for it.  This isn't a game for the casual gamer who wants to be done in an hour, but for those who wish there was more "S" in RTS, AI War is worth investigating.

[Iron Dragoon]

Been playing Alien: Isolation the last few days. As a quick review: Amazing. The game genuinely gets my heart rate going, I get paranoid as hell, and it looks amazing. It's caught the look, feel, and attitude of the original movie amazingly well. It's strong in every way it should be.

For complaints, I only have one. NPC patrols aren't random. They have a tendency to patrol right to you, without having ever caught sight of you. I've tested this a few times with different NPCs in different areas, and they always end up shuffling right on up to where I'm hiding. It's a bit annoying, but paying attention to the hiding spots around you makes it semi-negligible except for just slowing you down.

Update: After having racked up 10 hours in the game, I need to add to my complaints section. Once you move past the tutorial section of the game and the Alien becomes a regular in the game, *it becomes a regular in the game.* I've gone through two sections of the game since the Alien has become a viable threat, and in those two sections, it's *always* there. And I mean *always.* It's constantly patrolling right past you. I even tested it and stayed in the same room, and the same hiding place for over half and hour, and it always came right back to where I was hiding.

This wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that it sort-of ruins the point of the Alien. It moves away from being this thing that could be God knows where to you knowing *exactly* where it is, all the time: in the hallway outside of the room you're in. And if it isn't, give it 10-15 seconds and it will be.

Now, this doesn't stop it from being a great game. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. But it does make it annoying.

[Dracos]

I've heard basically that game has a good start, and outstays its welcome hard as the game goes on.

But haven't really paid attention over Hyrule Warriors All the Time.

[Arakawa]

It moves away from being this thing that could be God knows where to you knowing *exactly* where it is, all the time: in the hallway outside of the room you're in. And if it isn't, give it 10-15 seconds and it will be.

That sounds too Five Nights at Freddy's to me. A bit more troll than horror (trollor?)

On another note: vicariously enjoyed Among The Sleep in the form of some Let's Plays. That didn't seem like a bad way to enjoy the game given that it's mostly story and atmosphere and not a lot of actual gameplay mechanics.

[Dracos]

Gotten more play in on Hyrule Warriors.

It's got an unfortunate bit with Hard, which seems balanced for folks in the level 30 to 40 with tier 2 or higher weapons.  Mainly folks with tier 1 weapons still just struggle to do damage.  Bosses will take several guard breaks to take down, and usually take a few rounds to guard break.  That everything along the line takes longer to get through makes many of the things just difficult to stay ahead of, even if you're not getting hit and mauling things rapidly.

Without help, most characters under level 40 are just going to struggle very hard to get tier 2 weapons on the adventure mode, if they weren't given them in the main game mode.  They just don't hit hard enough and that makes achieving the time requirement while also being cautious so to remain under the damage taken requirement difficult.  Tossing 15 levels toward one of my characters made an enormous difference of moving from a C to a just missed A.

In general, I could go with more of the heart container challenges being harder and the Weapon challenges being more lenient, since they're really significant upgrades rather than just small bonuses.  I know, that sounds weird, but a few of the characters just get pretty much handed powerful tier 2 or 3 weapons, and the others have to struggle quite a bit for them.

[Dracos]

Roaming through Persona Q.

Anyone else playing something fun?

[DY]

I've been playing Destiny a lot, really enjoying it. Also been playing Star Wars the Old Republic, the newest expansion dropped this week and I'm having a blast going through that. Though, I really need to focus on my backlog of other games heh.

[Kaldrak]

Playing Dead Space 3 with a friend of mine. The weapon crafting system is quite fun once you have enough resources to build the parts you need. You can make the most stupidly impractical things if you want. ^_^

[Dracos]

So been playing a few things.

Persona Q:  I've played this to finish and had a good time with it, even though in hindsight it feels like an average EO, with the talking too crammed together.  I'll try and give a longer go over of it, but I did have a lot of fun with it despite a lot of obvious minor flaws.

Poker Night at the Inventory: Well...it was cute.  But the player AIs were just pretty bad.  Too much of it involved characters going all in on trash, or massively raising on trash, which made it awkward to play.  If anything, worse than their previous poker game.  The characters all had special items, but they dropped them pretty quickly.  Overall, just kind of disappointing as a relaxing cardgame to play.

Poker Night 2: From Disappointing to just bleh.  Ran poorly on my machine, with control bugs, and if anything, the AI was obviously worse, with enormous pre-flop bets right off the bat repeatedly.  "So uh, what's the point in coming on when the pot was 400 and is now 8000 to call?"

Final Fantasy 13-3:Lightning Returns: Well, it's really a shame on a lot of levels right off the bat.  As advertised, everyone wears enormously impractical outfits that don't accent the character so much as just say 'this person is eye candy'.  It's set in a weird Right Before the Fall pile of excessive indulgence mixed with 'Holy City' starters.  It casually drops tons of broken mythology type bombshells: Here's a whiny little kid complaining about her doll in the lead in for the apocolypse...no wait, she's really extremely long lived and btw, every city is floating in a weird bubble of chaos?  Wait really, that's how you want to introduce both those concepts?  By a crying child asking for their cactaur doll?  Much like the previous games, it immediately plays around with you being less informed than anyone else in the setting.  Being a god's servant it still feels wrong to be so excessively uninformed compared to those around.  Basically, a way of trying to cram the mythos they're wanting to build on top of the gameplay, rather than working together.  Then there's the everpresent timer.  That did indeed annoy me after a short bit.  Yeah, not clicking here.

Got a bit further in Hyrule Warriors.  Evil's Bane is unlocked.  Starting to work on Legendary, and got probably about 1/3rd to 1/2 of Master Quest unlocked.  Really wish they had Recc Levels on things, as its easy to have a super easy level next to something I have to stop because my level 60 Zant simply isn't hitting hard enough for it to be plausible.

Trying out Infamous 2 now.

[Dracos]

Continuing power leveling in fire Emblem Awakening, sitting right before the last boss.  probably going to challenge Apothesis after.  And get mauled by things meant for Gate or higher level players, instead of "I can totally powergame" level players.

Been doing occasional Smash. Kinda been playing weakly at it.

Haven't checked out the january Hyrule Warriors DLC.

For various reasons have acquired a copy of Dragon Age Inquisition.  Was 5 bucks, so...  May have to do something with it.

[Dracos]

Trying out On the Rain Soaked Precipice of Darkness: Episode 3.

Had it for a while, but it's a nice simple thing to play with.  Currently at the transdimensional section.

[Ebiris]

Found a cute little game called Spooky's House of Jump Scares in which you must navigate a 1000 room house of horrors run by a cute little ghost. Said horrors mostly being on the same level as a child's halloween haunted house. At first, anyway.

The graphics are pretty much on the level of a higher res Wolfenstein 3d, and the jumpscare/horror conceit works with them being objects in the world rather than just images appearing on your screen like in typical flash jumpscares. There are also a few arcade machines featuring the titular Spooky in other types of games that you can play if you find them in the randomised layout of the house.

It's free, so I'd suggest playing it if you're in the mood for some spine-tingling horror, at least for fifteen minutes to see if it grabs you.

[Dracos]

Huh.  I might check it out later.

I watched a video, but I wonder: What do you do with that?  Sorta, what is going on there?

[Ebiris]

You explore the haunted house and try not to die horribly of course! Also read notes from previous inhabitants/explorers.

I'm not saying it's super in depth or anything, but it's fun and terrifying~

[Dracos]

Did some more Hyrule Warriors this weekend, and also some Tales of Maj'eyal.  In the latter, I unlocked doomelf and went through Reaver and half of a Demonologist run (so thick).  Reaver was pretty strong, only dying at athamaton from having found no dispersion gear, and having no way to say 'go away' to his reflection.

Unlocked the giant boss illustration, and gave it a try....and was mauled horribly.  As much as it might be neat, the giant bosses were very high level, and came 3 at a time.  It basically ensured I was getting hit with both Gohma and Manhandla going side by side on top of a giant dodongo.