What game are you playing?

[Seabeast2000]

The first one is radically gorier than the sequels. Heads and limbs pop off in sprays of blood, guys get electrocuted or melted into skeletons, etc. The second one removed all those effects in a conscious effort to not get in trouble with some countries’ censors I think was the story. It took some of the ridiculousness away IMO!

I just hit level 20 and called it a day. I died a few times in random encounters and trying to do the circle of slaughter or w/e at level 13. I’m rusty. At least sledge was a pushover. I’m going siren with defensive skills and the overpowered smg mod like a coward.

So I too fired up the new GOTY yesterday.
Rusty, I have goals listed on my screen but the navigation arrow isn't showing up to get to them. I seem to remember the nav arrow doesn't show up until you're in the right land but I don't know what land to go to ell oh ell.

 

[wankerness]

So I too fired up the new GOTY yesterday.
Rusty, I have goals listed on my screen but the navigation arrow isn't showing up to get to them. I seem to remember the nav arrow doesn't show up until you're in the right land but I don't know what land to go to ell oh ell.

You have to have the mission selected and you only get direction from the minimap. Only one mission has objectives visible at a time, and it only shows one of those objectives at a time (ex, collection quests only show one of the objects on the map at a time, the next marker shows up after you pick up the one the game has marked). If you're not in the right zone it shows you the entrance to that zone.

 

[wankerness]

I played a bit more Borderlands last night, up to level 27 or so now, just killed Krom. It's been so long since I played this, and I played so much Borderlands 2, that I forgot about some of the annoyances and quirks of this game compared to 2 and am getting caught off-guard. Primary might be how terrible the vehicles are and how they barely scale. I remember now that doing the vehicle-heavy DLC pack was endless frustration as you could practically be two shot and your vehicle's damage output was a joke, and there were tons of very long tracks that you had to navigate that were very bad news if your car exploded. Even that early Mad Mel fight is incredibly difficult to survive without getting at least one vehicle destroyed, I know I never have! The big tweak to vehicle scaling was one undeniably huge improvement in 2. On the plus side, the rocket launcher car is massively better than the machine gun for vehicle combat, while it was opposite in 2, and the rocket launcher is much more fun.

Another is that there's less point to different elements on guns. I mean, fire is ridiculously overpowered but does crap damage against shields, so shock/fire are just as good if not better than 2, but corrosive and explosions are pretty useless. And hooooly crap are rocket launchers useless in this game! Oh, and there's the weapon leveling that I forgot about, so if you stick to a couple weapon types they get massively better over time, which is kind of a fun mechanic. It discourages switching, of course.

I love that you don't lose half your frickin money every time you die. That was so infuriating in 2. Though, it was balanced out by how you could never get anything very good out of vending machines so it wasn't as important!

 

[Ralyks]

I played some earlier as well, but only level 15 and just getting to Sledge. This is also making me want to go back and finally get the Platinum for BL2, which is basically finish the side quests and discover a few areas I apparently haven't yet.

Also, finally finished the Final Episode of Birth By Sleep. That one feels like it was the shortest, yet apparently I put more hours into it total than KH1 and 2. Probably the easiest story to follow of the KH games I've played so far, but that's not saying much Ill probably put in 2.8 tomorrow and start Dream Drop Distance.

 

[wankerness]

BL2's quests are way more obnoxious than 1's, there are things like those timed vehicle missions that I outright hate. Though I think there are some of those in the Knox DLC, I guess I'll see. I just finished the Zombie DLC. That ~500 brains quest is the first really annoying thing I've encountered (I finished every mission in the base game already). It was a lot less painful this time as I'd found one of those revolvers that have regenerating ammo so I ended up headshotting probably 80% of the zombies I encountered anyway; I probably only spent a few minutes GRINDING, it just involved a lot of running back to the stupid questgiver since however many you have disappear whenever you turn in the piece of the chain you're currently on.

I found another thing that's a huge improvement in 2 - in coop, the guns are free-for-all! In 2 everyone sees their own. Ah well. The only achievement I have left apart from max level is to kill a major boss in coop. I'll probably make an alt for that. Siren is so ridiculously overpowered compared to my memory of soldier and hunter, not that they were any slouch at max level, but siren can phasewalk (go invisible/invincible) and regenerate 80% of its health, and then resist 70% of damage for 5 seconds, with only about a 10 second cooldown in between each use! Assuming you aim for the CD reduction talents in the first and third trees, anyway.

 

[thedonal]

I never finished Borderlands 2- I found it much more difficult than the first and just lost interest. I might give it another go at some point. I rarely fire up the 360 now. I did start KoA:Reckoning again recently- just very infrequent play.

A shame re Anthem. From the reports that have come out, it seems like all of the working world is the same now- grind staff into desperation and tears and undo your own work (this is not just down to the games industry- though the serious hours that are involved and pressures are quite particular to those companies). I doubt EA will put as much into making things right that even Activision/Bungie have done over time with the Destiny games. EA are more likely to fire/move people around and close studios than stick with things and get it right over time (look what great work Hello Games have done with No Man's Sky since launch- they are a real example to the industry).

What is a real shame with these games is the scope of them is often shrouded in mysterious aspiration when they reveal them and then the actual game is actually a fairly closed experience- even with big open sections and repetition/excessive grind is rife.

 

[rifftrauma]

Platinum'd Sekiro over the weekend, would highly recommend, fantastic game.

 

[wankerness]

I never finished Borderlands 2- I found it much more difficult than the first and just lost interest. I might give it another go at some point. I rarely fire up the 360 now.

Borderlands 2 initially did feel a lot harder than 1, but some of it's down to different gimmicks. Basically you need a good corrosive gun to deal with the endless streams of robots cause nothing else is good vs them, a good fire weapon to deal with the endless streams of dudes, and a lightning or regular weapon to deal with shields. It's all about switching guns vs the first which tunneled you into whatever you used the most, or if your class had talents for certain ones. The fact you run out of ammo like crazy in the early game before you've upgraded also necessitates switching weapons a lot. Oh, and look at the levels of quests/enemies, you get some quests way before you should be trying to do them - take the level suggestions seriously! I died TONS of times on things like mutating the huge flying insects around Tiny Tina, or fighting the huge burrowing fire dude that stole the guy's leg.

Oh, and your action abilities are less overpowered than 1 so you can't get overwhelmed and then hit the action button to instantly be safe again until late game and even then only with soldier/gunzerker.

So yeah, you have to be more careful but it doesn't really end up feeling that hard once you get into the swing of it besides the occasional infuriating guy that suicides on top of you so you have no one left to get second wind off of. >:O I think it's worth trying again, but yes, the first bit of it is pretty dire when you have terrible guns and no character talents.

 

[lurè]

Finished MA Andromeda. It desperately needs a sequel or some decisions you have to make are total nonsense.
Overall great game but I can see why took some fans away from the saga: less roleplay and companions management during combat.

Didn't understand why putting 20 skills for combat 20 for biotics and combat when you have 3 slots max for usage.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

^Unfortunately any planned sequels were shelved and with Bioware in trouble it could be a while before anyone tries a go at the franchise again.

I finished Dragon's Dogma - Dark Arisen recently. In some ways the best action RPG I've played and in many ways the worst RPG I've played. I hope they make another game taking into account the good and bad from the first. If you put some of the combat mechanics into Dragonage or the Witcher it would bring those games to another level.

Nothing else I want to play on Xbox now and its 5 weeks until Rage 2 which gets released at a time when I don't play games for months. Time for another Skyrim play through I think.

 

[Ralyks]

Finished MA Andromeda. It desperately needs a sequel or some decisions you have to make are total nonsense.
Overall great game but I can see why took some fans away from the saga: less roleplay and companions management during combat.

Didn't understand why putting 20 skills for combat 20 for biotics and combat when you have 3 slots max for usage.

From my understanding, there’s a bunch of points in Andromeda where you can tell they may as well have said “place DLC content here”, then they abandoned the game.

I’m playing a bunch of Borderlands 1 still, but Gearbox fucking up the connectivity issues since launch for online co-op is hampering it a little. I managed to get into one game earlier today, then it disconnected after like 15 minutes and wasn’t able to get on again. Basically, the best part of the game hasn’t worked since launch.

Oh, and Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance.... this one is weird. I like some of the new combat mechanics, but just when shit couldn’t get more confusing... I just really want to get through the 2.8 collection and finally play KH3.[/spoiler]

 

[StevenC]

^Unfortunately any planned sequels were shelved and with Bioware in trouble it could be a while before anyone tries a go at the franchise again.

I finished Dragon's Dogma - Dark Arisen recently. In some ways the best action RPG I've played and in many ways the worst RPG I've played. I hope they make another game taking into account the good and bad from the first. If you put some of the combat mechanics into Dragonage or the Witcher it would bring those games to another level.

Nothing else I want to play on Xbox now and its 5 weeks until Rage 2 which gets released at a time when I don't play games for months. Time for another Skyrim play through I think.

Get a Switch so we can play Mario Kart!!!

 

[MetalHex]

Replaying Thief ll - The Metal Age. Greatest TRUE stealth game ever made for PC.

 

[mongey]

ok. BABA is You has pissed me off now

First half of the game was hard but good. really clever puzzles . now it just feels like a random try this fest . stuff seems to work on one level but not the next . feels like there's no consistency in the rules of the puzzles and instead of clever solution's it becomes convoluted and overly complicated. just not fun for me

gonna shelf it.

 

[Ralyks]

Man, I was thinking of grabbing Baba Is You at some point too...

 

[mongey]

Man, I was thinking of grabbing Baba Is You at some point too...

first half was great .maybe if you are a real puzzle game sadist then you'll like 2nd half too.I feel like I'm decent at puzzle games. got all through the witness with no googling.

maybe I'm a little slow and dumb as well. that's a possibility

 

[wankerness]

Finished MA Andromeda. It desperately needs a sequel or some decisions you have to make are total nonsense.
Overall great game but I can see why took some fans away from the saga: less roleplay and companions management during combat.

Didn't understand why putting 20 skills for combat 20 for biotics and combat when you have 3 slots max for usage.

Yep. The teammate combat was infuriating since it was completely down to AI. Even the first Mass Effect had far more depth with teammate management, and 2/3 basically had the same AI as this one but with the manual ability triggering on top of it that was really smooth. It's doubly frustrating since the actual shooting mechanics and player control is the best of the series. If they hadn't chopped out the ability for manual control it would have been fine. I don't know how I felt about the player "builds" either, as you ended up feeling like you were just playing simplified versions of the classes from the last two games, but whatever, you could swap it so easily it wasn't really detracting.

I kind of enjoyed the game, but part of it is I like exploring and filling in maps. The actual characters were really bad compared to the previous 3. Like, they're not terrible as far as video games go, but they're just so weak and non-memorable. Peebee had the most personality but was mostly unfunny and annoying, girl with the fashy haircut was like an even more boring Ashley that had the extra characteristic of mope, I don't even remember anything about the black guy besides he liked "old stuff," the alien dude had all the personality of the DLC dude from ME3, and the Krogan was fine I guess, he just basically was the last two guys with "old" added to the personality traits. And was that it? I feel like even 2 had more squadmates.

 

[TedEH]

Replaying Thief ll - The Metal Age. Greatest TRUE stealth game ever made for PC.

Yeeeeeeeees. Also play the first one if you haven't. It starts off slow, but it's just as excellent, IMO.

 

[LeviathanKiller]

Yeeeeeeeees. Also play the first one if you haven't. It starts off slow, but it's just as excellent, IMO.

Hmm, will look into these

 

[MetalHex]

Yeeeeeeeees. Also play the first one if you haven't. It starts off slow, but it's just as excellent, IMO.

I've beaten 1 and 2 a dozen times. Best games ever! I love being sneaky. I could sit there and eat an apple while a guard unknowingly walks right in front of me and get a semi rush-high