The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Dracos]

I have that game.

At some point it will get many hours.

Hum.  Beat Borderlands 2 playthrough 1 yesterday.

Killed many warriors.  Got the True Warrior challenge by ignoring his extremely vulnerable heart.

The Bee Shield is ridiculous at boss killing.  It's so-so for normal enemy fights so far and amazing for sniping.  But against bosses, one can just sort of evaporate them with your opening flurry while they're posing.  I do 99.9 percent of the last boss' health before he's finished posing, and have to wait, since the logic requires him to realize he's almost dead and position himself so.

And yet still, he chunks like 10 pieces of loot in the lava and maybe 1-10 pieces of loot lost under his head.


Anyhow, killed last boss lots of times,
but the legendary drops were none.
Loot in Lava, makes Drac sad.  No Haiku.

Basically, I enjoy the game, but the drop reward mechanics are disappointing and make it seem like hunting for good things is pointless.  I don't feel I have a non-cheat way to make progress in the hunt for good loot.  Repeated boss killing doesn't do it.  Chests have had zero occurrences of legendaries.  If I had an answer for Shields and Class mods, I think I'd just start ignoring it and planning on giving random bonus items to my co-op friends as we played to provide the sensation of getting them normally as rewards for exploring and playing.

[VySaika]

Pokemon White 2. This time, with polish!

Enjoying most of the new features, particularly the new mix of pokemon you can find early. Before the third gym, I had my team of: Oshawott, Sunkern, Growlithe, Mareep, Venipede and Riolu rolling. Good stuff. Sunkern and Mareep will prolly get swapped out eventually, likely late game, while the others may stick around for the ride. Oshawott and Venipede are the only ones I know aren't getting swapped at all.

[Anastasia]

ToGf: Asbel just got kicked out of Lhant. That was an epic level dick move by Hubert and a botched bit of storytelling. I was with it until Hubert decided to take over things. I'm fine with Hubert being pissed since he was the victim of Lord Lhant being a titanic asshole. The combo of taking over, an unwinnable boss fight (really guys?) and getting told off by Hubert made me call bullshit. I can accept the first one, but the rest of it made me roll my eyes. I'm not willing to accept what the game's saying here - that Asbel fucked up in every possible way, from his choice to run away to his training.

[Brian]

Yeah, that was some epic BS.

We learned very quickly that the theme of the game, at pretty much every level involving the story -- is trolling.  ...you'll see.

[Anastasia]

I thought it would have worked better being a bit less personal. More tell and less show. Let the military forces inform Asbel of what's happening and throw him out. Let Hubert watch on and have his inactivity tell the story. A softer touch would have gone a long way there.

[Brian]

I just finished Rochard.

I'm ... honestly no longer sure where I got that game from.  A humble bundle, probably.  Or it was on some really cheap sale so I snagged it.  My Steam library is stuffed with small quirky games I grabbed from sales/bundles for 'a later day'.

Rochard is a very short game (~4 hours, maybe).  It covers the journey of a space-miner and his friends as they deal with a horrific dry-spell in terms of finding whatever it is they're looking for before finding Something Unexpected in the reaches of space.  The game is a platformer with soft/easy action sequences and generally pretty simple puzzles.  There are gold completionist medallions to collect, and some light physics effects for puzzle-solving.

And platforming violence.

...in fact, I think I just did.

You get your anti-gravity lifter, gravity reversal rooms, low-gravity mode once you patch into the station's anti-grav generator, and a host of offensive upgrades.  Some are purely optional, squirreled away in corners, ducts, or areas reached with quirky physics puzzles!  It's not a metroidvania game -- it really lacks that complexity.  It also doesn't allow much of any backtracking.

The story isn't particularly deep, so it instead goes for mildly amusing -- and that strikes a good balance.  If you can pick this game up cheaply, I'd have to say it's probably worth it.  The challenge really isn't there (unless you're going for the 3-hour speed-run achieve, or the 100% collections achieve), and it's got an eye-rolling sequel hook, and also a really annoying unskippable credits sequence (isn't paying you guys for the game appreciation enough?) -- but beyond that?

An enjoyable game.  I'd endorse it.

...in fact, I think I just did.

[Empyrean]

Playing XCOM. I was a big fan of the original, and modded it to hell and back with a DOS based text editor. The new one is simpler in a lot of ways, but still captures the feel of the original pretty well. I'm in the process of a rather comprehensive modding project for it as well; rebalancing all the guns, tweaking armor, aliens, all that stuff. Should be even more fun when I'm finished with that. It's still rather unforgiving, although not as bad as the original,  but that mostly just adds to the tension instead of merely screwing you over without you being able to do anything about it.

[Dracos]

ToGf: Asbel just got kicked out of Lhant. That was an epic level dick move by Hubert and a botched bit of storytelling. I was with it until Hubert decided to take over things. I'm fine with Hubert being pissed since he was the victim of Lord Lhant being a titanic asshole. The combo of taking over, an unwinnable boss fight (really guys?) and getting told off by Hubert made me call bullshit. I can accept the first one, but the rest of it made me roll my eyes. I'm not willing to accept what the game's saying here - that Asbel fucked up in every possible way, from his choice to run away to his training.

I thought the most BS part of it really was the context:

Asbel went off to train as a KNIGHT for 7 years.  Hubert just taking him down in one on one combat was silly.  Being tossed out by Hubert's troops would've made sense, but really Asbel should've been narratively well past him in physical battle.

[Anastasia]

I think it could be supported in the narrative but it wasn't. In particular, Stratha's forces were shown to be advanced. It could be done, but it wasn't. Really, that entire section was botched.

[Anastasia]

ToGf: Finished up the civil war arc and killed Cedric. The game's a lot of fun if you ignore the occasional bad design/character choice. It's like 90% goodness broken up by 10% WTF.

Is Pascal's loli grouping routine something that didn't translate right or is it meant to be a mine of creepy subtext? On the other hand, Pascal gets bonus points for making a few insinuations about Richard and Asbel's close friendship. If you know what I mean. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Pascal's funny until that comes up and it's like oh stop chasing after Sophie, dammit!

Boss battles have felt chaotic so far, with Cedric and Victoria being really bad for it. I suppose they have to be hard to stun and fast to have a chance with 4-1 odds, but it's simply hard to keep up on boss battles with all that's going on.

[Dracos]

Just take every action as the person Trolling.

That said, Pascal taken seriously is a stinky smelly otaku tinkerer in cute little girl form.  She has dozens of habits in the game that would be horribly offensive in real life and characters do comment on them.  But taken in a non-serious cartoony she's messing with them fashion, they are funny.  Is she going to eat 10 banana pies or 12?

She's also the most awesome character in the game, only possibly competed with by Malik.

[Brian]

Yeah, Pascal is best character.  Admittedly, I never took her grabbiness toward Sophie in a pervy manner.  It's easy to see that subtext, but it doesn't really fit her character.  She's curious and silly, so I was able to file it as 'harmless'.

Also, Sophie is master of dim mak, and Pascal is just a squishy.  If it bothered Sophie beyond humor value, she'd take care of it. >_>

Maybe just my ability to overlook some things that would squick other people. :\

Edit: Also, yes.  If you remember that every character is actually just doing their best to troll every other character, the story is awesome, and Hubert is just a scrub who only knows brute-force trolling methods.  And isn't even very good at them. ;)

[Anastasia]

ToGf:

Oh, what's this? Uncharted Sandstretch? Wow, the fights take awhile and they sorta hit har-20000 XP?! Hello!

[Dracos]

So, I discovered Borderlands 2 punishes you for being slightly overleveled last night.  You will encounter more badass enemies that can be 'storylevel+5' up to level 52 (Max level is 50).  Given that buyable gear is locked at story level and droppable gear rarely goes more than a couple past that, this is pretty eeeh.

This is also something that as a player, you have no control over whatsoever.  If you've been playing everything, you WILL be overleveled.

I am pretty sure actually that drop quality is negatively affected by being overleveled too.

So, framework of the game?  Awesome.
Tuning?  U So TERRIBLE.

I haven't tried the new DLC but the forums seemed an ocean of tears about it last I looked.

I really like the new characters and the more varied enemy types, but overall well...

All Sirens Borderlands 1 >>>>>> Borderlands 2.

Basic recommendation is to not do Playthrough 2 single player at all.  At least not as Zer0 or Gunzerker.  The inability to have a valid way to deal with the Super Shield Nomads will make it intensely frustrating.

Oh also good learning:

Every 5 levels, all numbers are effectively doubled.  Exponetial curve and all that really takes off around level 30.

This means if your weapons are 5 levels lower than you, you will take twice as many shots to take something down and go down in half as many shots.

Oh, also bitchy bitchy:
Super Shield Nomads drop their forward guard in one of three cases:
1)They are giving an order.  Sucks if they are the only enemy around cuz they'll never do this.
2)They swing their shield at you because you are close enough.
3)You hit their shield or possibly hand with sufficient damage. SUFFICIENT?  This means that if you can knock their shield aside, they're only barely threatening.  If you can't, they'd be a complete war to take down.

So basically, if you are overmatched, the mechanics of the enemy can make it nearly impossible.  If you overmatch them, it can turn it into a cakewalk.  Note actual way of playing doesn't seem to have any bearing here.  Grenades (due to sudden SPIKE of damage) can sometimes qualify as sufficient, but they better be the same level, cuz otherwise the enemy might just ignore them.

[Dracos]

ToGf:

Oh, what's this? Uncharted Sandstretch? Wow, the fights take awhile and they sorta hit har-20000 XP?! Hello!

Run.  Really.  Not worth fighting there early.  The enemies are stupidly scaled and the scorpions particularly are supposed to be level 92 enemies.

That whole area is meant as a close to end game scenario.  Weirdly enough the dungeon after the sandstretch isn't nearly as brutal with its enemies.