What are you playing right now?

[Andrew]

Baldur's Gate 3 is a game that, much like Xenoblade Chronicles, I'm cursed to cycle playing on/off every few months. Been a long time since I've been able to sit down and dedicate some time to this and I really do wish I never had to take a break. Always sucks coming back to a big game like this after some time away.

Regardless, I'm running a way more powerful machine now so I can run this sucker at maximum everything. It's so very, very pretty and so much fun.

 

[Scott]

it turns out, the secret to making combat in 5e fun is to modify it heavily and give the player several cool, build defining magic weapons to play with. who knew!

i beat bg3 not too long after launch and I kinda thought about going back to it to see the several fixes they've made and maybe do things a bit differently. but that is a hefty big boy game and i just have so much shit to do so idk. i love my wife minthara

 

[Term]

I finished Metroid Prime 4. And... I didn't like it!

Not that I think it's bad, necessarily. The word is disappointing. It's mediocre and bloated. It's easily the worst Metroid Prime game... but I guess it's not really "bad". Just, like, a 2/5.

I have a lot to say about it, but I think youtuber Nerrel went over it pretty well:


Light spoilers in that video, but they're labelled. And honestly, worth discussing anyway. The main thing I don't agree with in his video is his inflated score at the end lol

The stuff that bothered me about it has been said to death by everyone else. The NPCs are annoying and pointless, the open world is barren and useless, the villain was a stupidly handled waste of time, and honestly even the parts that feel like classic Metroid Prime feel the weakest they've ever been. The zones are all linear and very few of the upgrades provide anything you haven't already seen in all the other Prime games already.

Of course, it's always worth saying, it's a gorgeous looking game and the soundtrack is great. In spite of its linearity I'd easily call Volt Forge the highlight of the game, hyping up the motorcycle by making you fire up the factory that makes them and using its assembly line as both hazards and puzzle fodder. I didn't even mind the linearity since it's the first "dungeon" in the game.

There are enough cool things in the game that I guess I would recommend it, lightly, if you're a fan. But only after you've played the first 3 games (Echoes is underrated!), and certainly not for $70.

_____________________________________________________

I do have one thought I haven't seen anyone else bring up, and it's a small thing, but it bothers me. I've always thought the switch from first to third person in the Prime games when you enter the Morph Ball was jarring and awkward - in general, I think games shouldn't be doing this at all if they can help it. But the Morph Ball is an iconic part of Metroid, and trying to do first person on that would be a nightmare, so I saw it as a clunky but necessary compromise. I figured the devs probably felt the same way about it, but not anymore after Beyond. Why in god's name do we drive the motorcycle in third person? A Morph Ball is a sci fi thing, we have no idea how it would look to do that, but motorcycles exist in real life. You can go drive one right now to see what it should look like. They were literally built to be used from a first person perspective - your eyeballs. Why did we need ANOTHER awkward camera shift for it?

 

[Super Crab Deluxe Turbo X]

I haven't played it so I don't know if it'd change my mind on this, but I have nowhere else to say this so I'll use your post as an excuse to

Sylux is not cool! Stop trying to make me think he's cool! He looks like a the villain of a failed toy line from the 2000s! He's from a fucking Nintendo DS game people mostly remember just for having bad controls! And he wasn't even the best design of all those jobbers that only existed so multiplayer wasn't just four... samuses? samii?

I don't know if they kill him off at the end of 4 or anything, but if they announce a Prime 5 and he's in it I'm just not going to buy it. I'm making a (very petty) stand. Bring back Ridley for the 10th time or something, I'd take that over Sylux

 

[StuseizeU]

Bought The Beginner's Guide on sale and I'm gonna rip through that. Kinda feels a bit dated but I've been looking for stuff that feels anti-audience for research and hopefully I learn a thing or two from it.

 

[Term]

I haven't played it so I don't know if it'd change my mind on this, but I have nowhere else to say this so I'll use your post as an excuse to

Sylux is not cool! Stop trying to make me think he's cool! He looks like a the villain of a failed toy line from the 2000s! He's from a fucking Nintendo DS game people mostly remember just for having bad controls! And he wasn't even the best design of all those jobbers that only existed so multiplayer wasn't just four... samuses? samii?

I don't know if they kill him off at the end of 4 or anything, but if they announce a Prime 5 and he's in it I'm just not going to buy it. I'm making a (very petty) stand. Bring back Ridley for the 10th time or something, I'd take that over Sylux

I think he looks kinda cool tbh. Purple is my favorite color. But he's such a nothing character lol

and his implementation in 4 is just disastrously bad. I can tell you if you don't think you'll play it, but if you're still planning to try it out eventually, I'd say it has to be seen to be believed

Bought The Beginner's Guide on sale and I'm gonna rip through that. Kinda feels a bit dated but I've been looking for stuff that feels anti-audience for research and hopefully I learn a thing or two from it.

This game has not left my mind since I first played it

 

[silly]

roblox

 

[Term]

DOOM: The Dark Ages. It's great action. I'm only partway through it, but I think it's a good reminder to ignore what people say about games on the Internet. I heard a lot of bitching about it when it came out

Its combat system is fast and brutal and fun as fuck, very much like the other two, but also reinvents itself just enough that it doesn't feel like it's retreading their old ground. All three of these games are clearly in the same series, but all three feel clearly distinct from each other. Most people will probably like one a lot more than the other two. I think I still prefer Eternal, but we'll see how I feel as I go on.

That's not to say the mech and dragon sections aren't shallow and unnecessary, but at least so far, none of them have lasted long enough for me to bother complaining about them. They don't need to be there but they're fine. Some people complained about the story too, don't give a shit about that, but you can skip all the cutscenes in this game so it's instantly better than '16 from a story perspective (same as Eternal)

My main complaints so far are that all the arenas are flat as fuck (very little verticality, no thought put into arena design) and that the guns are all more general-use now. Some people will prefer it that way, like I said above, but I liked that Eternal made every weapon feel like it had its own niche. I don't feel that way in Dark Ages, most of them feel like you can use them for anything and it's not really better or worse, so there's less thought in which one is worth using. Several weapons feel like they could be used exclusively if you dedicated enough upgrade points to them. Boring!

Still having a great time. Not gonna dethrone Eternal for me, but I'm happy to see a series take some creative risks. I'd rather have Dark Ages than Eternal 2, you know? Eternal didn't stop existing, I can go play that one again any time. Hopefully if they make a 4th game after this, they can stick with that pattern and have it stand shoulder to shoulder with the other three. Different yet the same.

Anyway. It's definitely not my Game of the Year, so I have a post to write in that thread. I want to do it right though, so it might take a few days to write. And I'll be unavailable this entire weekend due to MAGfest, lol. Please wait patiently for my expert and absolutely correct opinions, as I know you always do

 

[KevlarCaviar]

Been getting back into The Binding of Isaac, a game I am absolutely terrible at. Got a nice string of good runs and finally got Golden God. Lots of progress left to go.

 

[KeplerElectronics]

Bought The Beginner's Guide on sale and I'm gonna rip through that. Kinda feels a bit dated but I've been looking for stuff that feels anti-audience for research and hopefully I learn a thing or two from it.

Beginner's Guide is incredible. I found it really impactful when I played it a couple years back, and it really stuck with me. I should replay it soon.

 

[atradaitoshi]

Just finished Stalker 2. Goated with the sauce.

 

[soap1111]

bioshock and mirror's edge. i was going through cyberpunk and the rain world watcher dlc but then i put them on pause randomly lol

 

[Andrew]

It's time

 

[Term]

DOOM: The Dark Ages. <cut for brevity>

Having played it some more, it's stagnating in my mind. I wrote this expecting the weapons/tools I had unlocked would give me at least a little more to play with, but no. Very little synergy between weapons and probably at least half of them have all/most of their upgrades dedicated to allowing you to more easily use only that one gun. At this point I've bought all the upgrades and I've started doing combat arenas with one gun, going down the list, just to try it out. It's boring but it works perfectly fine. I'm on the hardest difficulty (that doesnt delete your save when you die) and I'm still barely sweating as I approach the end

Also the mech, turret and dragon sections are as boring and slow and shallow as you've heard. They don't take up much of the game but they just didn't need to be there lol

Dark Ages feels like a huge backslide from Eternal. When that game came out, it got some criticism from people who wanted to only use one gun the whole game, and who couldn't stand the parkour segments. Those people will be delighted to know Dark Ages is for them - absolutely braindead shooting in massive boring empty fields stripped of the verticality the "parkour" movement provided.

When Eternal and Ultrakill dropped in 2020, I felt like we were witnessing the birth of a new subgenre of shooter. Five years later, I'm heartbroken to report nothing else (that I'm aware of) has taken a stab at that style, Ultrakill *still* remains in Early Access, and even Eternal's own sequel shied away from it.

That said, it's still cathartic and fun. Believe it or not, I *am* enjoying myself. I'm gonna finish it. I don't regret paying $30 for it. But I don't see myself ever revisiting it again after this.

 

[Super Crab Deluxe Turbo X]

The first one fully produced under Microsoft is disappointing, you say? Huh. Curious.

I started Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. Always gonna be kinda torn between being sad that we never got a true console-scale followup to SotN until Bloodstained and being amazed at what they were doing on the GBA. Circle gets an extra special gold star for being a launch game too.

The movement feels a little stiff but aside from that I'm having a lot of fun. Doubt I'm gonna end up liking it as much as Aria, but I'm looking forward to playing more (and also Harmony and the two DS ones that aren't Dawn because I haven't yet).