The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[thepanda]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00g2ZbI3ung&list=UUwPnX0XSfxswF0rL78NzNIw

Playing some World of Tanks, Extinction mode in Ghosts, Charlie Murder (kind of fun) and maybe Kirby if I can get people to sit down and play.

[Sierra]

That Youtube link = truuuuuth.

[Dracos]

I leave for Gate.  Maybe for Pax.

Castle Vault.  Old Forest 3.

So ridiculous.

[Dracos]

I continue my monsterously long Tales of Maj'Eyal playthrough.  I don't play particularly fair, but having a good time.

So far:
Cornac Human Berserker -  Technically died in the vortex of time, got cheated for more lives and saying screw you time clones of no escape, died in the Room of Death to the Horde of Overpowered Multi-colored Wyrms.  15 lives in.

Lightning Draconian Berserker - First game complete, in exploration mode.  Died like a dozen times against the Room of Death, preventing it from being a legitimate win.  Saved Melinda and managed to end with 18 lives.  Afterwards has had a long productive life as an item carrying mule, since seriously 750+ encumberence.  Decks out future folks in random artifacts, because artifacts are awesome.

Faerie Brawler - First abandoned character after it died on the second enemy.  Really, what the fuck, that starting level is very mean.

Faerie Brawler - Second abandoned character.  Fiddling with UI Addons, and got stuck with one I didn't really want.  Both of these basically dropped instantly.

Faerie Brawler, Try 2 - First legitimate win, and first time attempting to slaughter Athamon.  5 deaths, 3 of which were against mr obnoxious post game boss.  Beat him on the 4th try.  Hadn't stacked enough fire resist really and it made a huge difference just specializing the build on that.

Antimagic Razor Draconian Berserker - This character felt honestly unstoppable for much of the game once it got going and got anti-magic.  It was a test of both anti-magic and exotic weapon proficiency and ended with 22/5 effective talent level for that, having a monsterous physical mutliplier and casually dishing out 6000 point damage hits in the late game.  Screwed up against Athamaton as I'd swapped regen infusions at the very end, so half the time had a monsterous 4-500 hp recovery...and half the time had 80.  That drop really hurt against him.  As soon as I fixed it, I steamrolled him easily.  7 deaths.

Archmage Yeek the Dying "Please, Please Let Me Die" - played to break myself of Melee, Melee, Melee play in the game and also to unlock a lot of shit.  The Yeek starting area is super mean, and just keeping to one or two deaths in it is an honest challenge  with their being tons to pay attention to, and not to mention a surprise 'way too hard for most classes' boss sitting right outside the exit.  Just poorly set up.  But that didn't stop poor Archmagus Ye, or his 29 partner Yeeks, that were all dragged by the Way across the world, blasting and dying and just generally alternating between 'Things just die 11ish squares away without seeing me', 'Things die by horrific amounts of lightning', and 'Oh my shield went down, I'm dead'.  Character build was bad...but what ruined it largely was losing one of his bigger shields before heading east due to a buggy interaction with another talent.  Stuck with only two solid 'anytime' shields, 1 partial shield, and 1 'sometimes, but almost never when it'd be useful' shield the yeek had trouble keeping things from murdering it, resulting in one of its brothers rising up to carry on the run.  Lightning largely suffered in late games as it was basically: Get hurricane or go home, and hurricane became very hard to actually trigger.  Was planning to go wildfire, but the bug on fire damage and split counting between types wrecked it.  Either way, the Way ensured that it got there as a beaten wreck of an ewok ripoff, having monsterously destroyed the natural way of things and then brainwashed almost all of mankind, while striking a setup for a massive war.

Next I wanted to try the Dark Faerie silliness and the Monk I'd read a bit about so...
Dark Faerie Monk - Got to the end of the faerie opener, reaching level 5 and just not really looking forward to it.  The class pretty much dictates how you need to spend about 48 of your class skill points to really be playable, which is an enormous percentage of the total by level 50 amount.  It also quickly moves between large amounts of complicated minor passive buffs, which just was more complicated than I was looking for.  Run just canceled.

Dark Faerie Sun Paladin - This one was actually reasonably fun, except that it just didn't work as a Dark Faerie.  The cloning racial meant that my helpers were constantly spawning and using blinding sun attacks that would also hit me.  Even with an enormous early game investment in anti-blindness, I still was basically getting hit every major encounter.  Run on pause until helper clones not inflicting status ailments is fixed.  Hopefully, Tinkerbell shall fly again for silly.  3 lives through to dreadfall.

Now currently trying out:
Thalore Oozemancer - this character is a ridiculously capable monster with tons of options.  This is supposedly post nerf, but it completely mopped up the room of death without any trouble.  I walk around with a standard 21 percent resist all, that soon will go to 24-25 percent.  When any serious battle shows up, this promptly escalates to 70 for the first 7-10 rounds of combat, with a casual 111 percent buff to nature damage, tons of resistances.  Can pretend to be a mage, summoner, or punch monkey without trouble at any time.  Can even double doing mage and summoner duty, since one of her AoEs both does tons of damage, lays down a damage field, and summons a bunch of oozes that all then shoot once to twice a round at whatever.  Sometimes that can just be dropped in a room the oozemancer isn't even in, and they'll kill everything without the player even involved. Currently level 37, just got back to the east.  4 deaths, all in the early game.  Basically if Slalin isn't one-shot, she isn't going down.  "Oh you did 90 percent of my health?  Well, time to take it seriously.  Tremendous wave of instant action buffs and heals and summons.  Followed by double turns for the next couple of rounds.... and healing and regen options in the wing (There's a half dozen massive heal (sometimes + massive damaage) options).  Fun, but definitely overly powerful character.  Speaks strongly though to Saves not really doing enough.  Despite an outrageous willpower and cunning (126 and 86 currently), + a reasonably strong save gear, I still regularly get hit with confuse.  You'd think physical effects would be the ones getting through, but nope, mental tends to hit through just as often.  Main weakness anyhow?  Can't carry much.  The 15 encumberance 'bonus' gear the character got handed during the game by being online at the right time sinks most of her carrying capacity.  Will be glad to max Will, Con, and Cun so I can start tossing points to raising that (What, defense?).

Oozemancers have perhaps the most awesome problem: Basically almost every option they can choose to take is good or very good.  Where most classes have one or two archetype builds that you build and plan around, I'm pretty sure 'random clicking' would be a totally workable powerful build on an oozemancer.

[Jason_Miao]

I continue my monsterously long Tales of Maj'Eyal playthrough.  I don't play particularly fair, but having a good time.

Oh hey, that game. 

I keep playing elven archmages on Roguelike, and dying to typos.  I'mWinningI'mWinningI'mWin*SUDDENDEATH* is how I roll.

[Kaldrak]

I'm currently replaying Dead Space.

This time around I figured out that the sluggish controls and laggy aiming were not inherent gameplay features. As far as I can understand it, the problems are caused by the in game v-sinc option running the game well below the framerate it should be at. Disabling it caused horrible screen tearing, but you can force the application to run v-sinc through your video card instead, which not only gives you a HUGE performance boost and drastically reduces load times, it makes aiming SO much easier.

The game is quite a bit more fun now, but I think I'll pass at playing it on the 'impossible' difficulty setting I just unlocked.

[Dracos]

Finished Oozemancer.  Enjoyable.

Trying what was to be an Anti-magic mindslayer, but then I stumbled on Stone Alchemy as an option on the very first screen and rolled with it, playing toward just having ridiculous stats through tons of stacked gems on everything matched with The Way mindstars.  It's working though really, not quite sure its clicking.  The setup just weirds my head.  It's a spattering of physical, mental, fire, ice, and lightning effects that for the most part are best at mid range, lacking good get in close or hit from far options so far.  Was kind of expecting a psionists, and instead what I got is a mental powered magic fighter, which is weird.  Everything else has so far been good at being consistent: 1 or 2 main categories, whereas Mindslayer just feels all over the place.

Tried Solipist for a moment and it was at least more in the right vein, but it felt weird switching midrun.  It certainly felt more along the mentalist route, and while probably super op, at least was doing mind damage.  That I think was my real grudge.  I had 50 psionic options not to deal mind damage with mind slayer.

[Anastasia]

I've been playing an old 90s pinball game, Crystal Caliburn. It's a table centered around Arthurian myth. Your goal is to accolade all the knights of the round table, find the holy grail and bring it back to Camelot. Doing so triggers the last battle, which is the game's wizard mode. It's a fun and satisfying game with a good feel to it, that sort of thing that pinball games struggle to nail.

It's a good call if you want a 90s pinball fix.

[Jason_Miao]

I won my first game of AI War.

A 4x RTS with inspiration from tower defense.  The premise is that humanity has already fought a war in space with the AI and lost.  The AI has already started working on other projects outside of the galaxy.  Humanity is mostly destroyed.  But the AI missed a last scrap of human resistance - you.  Your job is to build a fleet and to destroy two AI cores. 

That's all the story we get for the basic game.  This is not a story-driven game.  It's a game about strategy and logistics.  It's fundamentally a about tradeoffs: for every strategic objective you destroy or steal from the AI, it becomes more and more aware of you.  As "AI progress" increases, it sends larger waves of stronger ships against you.  So you need to scout the galaxy well, find which systems you need to take and which ones you can afford to skip. 

[Dracos]

Been going through Shin Megami Tensai 4 during the yellowstone trip.

While I do enjoy the model and am slowly gathering all the poke...demons...

I've got four big 'hey, that's just not very cool'.

1)Difficulty is horrendously spikey.  I've had the same strategy on a boss lead to an almost no damage overwhelming victory and a complete and utter loss.  I got to watch the boss get an enormous string of crits that took a party from full health to one guy barely standing.  I'm currently in the middle of a quest that I'm saving at heavily, because there's a more than 10 percent chance that the enemy horde just instantly wipes my party, despite my party being able to return the favor.  Sometimes it just goes first, even when successfully map attacked, and if it's 'do 120 to all + poison' attack shows up in that surprise two attack setup, the fight is pretty much over, especially as it can get followed by a 120 point physical flurry to the lead.  Surprise attacks are nastily capable of just killing off a demon, regardless of level difference.  Given I'm overall consistently winning, I'm not getting the feeling that these are strategic mis-steps, but that the randomness range often has significant percentage chances of just getting mauled standing right alongside apparently effortless victories.  I'm on normal difficulty for the record, which apparently makes article writers cry.

2)Scouting is very random.  Enormously so.  This has been a thing in SMT games from the beginning as I recall, and it's really no less pleasant now.  The upgrades seem to provide for getting more monsters in a scouting success, but that's actually not seeming desirable, given I'm usually scouting to build up a fusion tree toward a specific result.  While after playing for a while, I do see more options, there's no real sense of whether anything is successful or not.  A very satisified demon can just decide to leave the battle, which is almost more annoying than failure (Which at least gives another chance).  It's sort of a shame that it's still such an unclear and random mechanic so far into the series.

3)Given that things can end brutally in a sudden and random fashion, it seems almost mocking that the game provides a restore from dead for a cost feature.  I've found it prohibitively expensive in macca (which is annoyingly slow to come by even with fundraising) to ever use, encouraging me to save often and fail out rather than use it.  It's practically faster to exit the game then to trigger a game over through that.  Heck, the macca scarcity is pretty annoying on its own, but having a 'you lost, and now we suggest a high punitive cost' is just mean.  The one time I've chosen Macca, it requested more than 10 percent of my net take so far, more than I had at the time.

4)If your lead gets knocked over, the rest of your monsters are really not in any shape to do anything about it.  At least in earlyish game.  This is unfortunate, especially as you just generally don't have anything special you can do to protect your lead.  He does have more hp and all, but a random assault can leave you suddenly without him, pretty much removing several battle options from play, most notably: Use item to heal or revive the lead.

I have other complaints, such as encounter rate/control being just in the way, but they're minor compared to those four.  I'm pretty early, just after the first Transport, but I don't suspect those will change, since they seem fundamentally messed up.

[Dracos]

Took a side trip to bravely default and mauled some folks, before deciding to continue the Neutral route in Devil Survivor.

I have 4 of 6 routes finished, but never did finish Gin's story, the tale of the Rock Star that Saves the City.

[Merc]

Gin's story: He slept, he showered, he asked for breakfast, he was denied.

[Dracos]

Hmm.

So I have finished.

Song of Hope was played, demon and angel kind banished from the world, Haru rocked out in front of the computer.

It was kind of an interesting finish.  Before the gate of kings, Babel, I had saved everyone, and down this route pretty much everyone but Kaido and Naoya joined me, so I had an enormous 10 person group.  I could've almost fielded an all human battle party.  Which actually would've been sorta clever, but a real stretch on abilities since everyone shares the same one off pool.

Anyhow, in my final group, I went with Kon, Atsuro (Bro of Bros), Yuzu, and Black Frost.  Since I was doing song of hope, and banishing all demons, Black Frost was banished midway through the fight.  He took a moment to turn and say goodbye, talking about how much he'd learned, and his intent to be a hero of love and justice in the demon world.  Black Frost, beloved by all children, vanished to his future as a sentai hero.

This left Babel versus the original three.  And no support, because seriously, all of the demons get banished before you take on the final version of Babel.  It makes for a heck of a challenge dealing with him with 3 characters, one of which is an instant game over if he goes down.  Tiny set of abilities, and he has his usual 'you best be doing this element to get any progress' setup.  Luckily, he started with lightning weakness, so Kon was able to do most of the necessary damage in the first pass.  Otherwise he certainly wouldn't have managed it.  It ended close.  Atsuro down.  Yuzu silenced and half dead.  Kon with 6 hp left.

Yuzu finished it off with a punch, everyone cheered, the other half a dozen folks that could've been helping out came out of the shadows to celebrate, and the world went back to normal, despite the massive destruction of tokyo.

Metatron came off as his least civil strangely down this route, even less so then when you openly declare war on god.  A complete "Step out of line and we'll totally kill all humans.  It's all on you, king of bel".

Anyhow, turns out Kaido is not actually considered a route by the game, so I now have a perfect save, complete with all routes displayed on the opener, and all the top tier demons as well as a complete Tyrant set in my stash. 

Game has been completely abused.  Now to see whether I can get going again in SMT IV.

[Dracos]

Started SMT IV back up.

I'm...just not really able to bring myself to tolerate its world map.  It just actively irritates and bothers my eyes to look at it, I can't tell where I'm really going, find the map painful to even orient myself with or tell what's roads and what isn't.  I started it up, struggled my way between the first two locations and slaughtered a boss bird for a quest, and then just didn't want to walk back.

So, game on halt on account of tiresome worldmap.

Started up Paper Mario Sticker whatever.  So far...Victorious but unimpressed?  There's no leveling, and you get most of your wealth per area by just getting through it, so stomping everything is sort of a pointless activity, there because its there kinda?  They're more aggressive than Paper Mario 2 was with being paper, and it being just something everyone takes for granted in the world setup.  It makes it come across... well, as playing with paper dolls rather than playing a story.  The introduction of main series style level separation doesn't help ("Hey World 1-3, let's go~!").  The introduction of non-paper objects also doesn't help.  They're strongly going for (and getting) some guy playing with his stamp collection and hobby collectibles as a theme.

Personally, still feel Paper Mario 2 is the high point of the series.  The story book thematic they went with there was strong, the RPG elements carried, and it more felt like it was asking you to participate in a story rather than play sticker collection.

[Kaldrak]

Playing a survival horror game called Claire.

Though many people who have reviewed the game make a point of mentioning that it seems heavily influenced by the Silent Hill series, I'll try not to do that very much. Some of the sound effects are similar and some of the gameplay is reminiscent of the SH series, but Claire is a standalone creepy adventure title. The game is a sidescrolling exploration simulator. You walk around in the dark as the title character, Claire, while creepy beings of unknown origin stalk you through the corridors of a hospital that has somehow gone strange and otherworldly. The music is moody, the gameplay is simple, and you have no choice but to run from your enemies whenever you encounter them.

The main thing the devs got right here is atmosphere. In order for a survival horror title to actually be scary, one must have an atmosphere that sustains a feeling that the player should be afraid. The actual Silent Hill series has failed to do this consistently since SH4, due to the fact that "team Silent" abandoned the series to work the Siren games and it's been picked up by a different developer in each iteration and each succeeding game seems worse than the last. SH is dead and I won't reference it again.

So what does Claire do right? The game is genuinely unsettling in several parts. The sound the monsters make, the strange effects you encounter in some of the rooms, the confusing and mazelike quality of the hospital you're exploring, the writing and dialogue, the mystery of the whole affair. I LOVE these things. Even the retro style visuals work well to create a scary atmosphere.

Sadly, not everything is good. Puzzles with me are really hit or miss. There was one puzzle that I simply couldn't figure out on my own, due to a lack of clues within the game world itself. It was one of those: "Oh, how was I supposed to know THAT?" scenarios. Unfortunately, said puzzle prevented me from continuing the game until I solved it, even though my exploration ethic is fairly meticulous, the clues simply did not add up to the answer demanded by the game itself.

Also, the game trapped me once in a scenario I couldn't escape from and I died. The main objective pointed me straight at the trap and there is no way of knowing not to go into it unless you've already gone inside and died. When I reloaded I had to bypass the trap and wander around for a while before the game supplied a new objective and highlighted it on the in-game map. That's just not good game design. You should always leave your players some way out, even if you have made a death trap for them.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Why did Claire not go into the really obvious elevator she was looking for? No reason, the player made her go somewhere else because she'd die if she went in there. Not well thought out.

Anyway, haven't beaten the game yet. It's good spooky fun though. If you like that sort of thing you should check it out.