What Are You Playing? (Winter, 2015-2016)

Alien vs. Predator (CPS2) - I beat level four without credit feeding, but I decided to credit feed the rest to see how much is left. There is no damn way I'm 1cc'ing this on the default settings, so I am tempted to call it "finished," but I'm not quite ready to do so.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (PSV) - I'm sitting at the beginning of the fourth trial (out of six) in this one, but I've since been sidetracked by...

Fallout 4 (PC) - This one has grown on me once I started playing it like The Elder Scrolls and not Fallout. I've abandoned the VATS and beefed up everything to make me a more efficient sniper, similar to my archer build in Skyrim. Having that plus high lock picking and hacking has really turned the game around for me. I am also a big Nick Valentine fan and am actually somewhat disappointed his story line is over. Similar to others in the thread, I find the civilization building tedious and wish it were handled at a higher level without the micromanagement. The cries for help from the settlements have also become about as annoying as the phone ringing in GTA IV. However, the core game is still good, even if they did miss a huge opportunity to update it on id Tech 6.

Star Wars: Battlefront (PC) - I finished the last multiplayer achievement a couple nights ago, so now I just need to go through the missions while focusing on the diorama requirements, and I'll be done until compelling DLC is released. There are multiple promising multiplayer games next year, so I knew this one would have a relatively short lifespan, but it's been fun while it's lasted.

Put a few hours into Summon Night 5. I played a lot of good 2015 SRPGs (Codename STEAM, Hyperdevotion Noire, Lord of Magna Heaven (still haven't played Stella Glow (sorry, Finch))) but this is the best. The way it discourages you from over-leveling is pretty brilliant: if one of your characters kills an enemy of a lower level, you lose "Brave Points" which work kind of like a super meter. You can spend Brave Points on Team Skills, two of which are important: curing status effects and swapping out active characters for reserves. If your Brave Points hit zero, it's automatic game over. I'm sure you can grind stats hard enough to wipe out a map before losing all of your BP, but as long as you don't play like a jerk, the risk-reward of leveling characters past the average enemy level, a number the game is kind enough to give you before each fight, makes decisions about what to spend EXP on (leveling up characters or acquiring new character skills) meaningful. The weapon enhancement economy is well-balanced, too: you can spend resources upgrading your weapon's stats, buying new weapon skills, enhancing existing skills, or augmenting the powered-up states that each character can activate once or twice per fight.

There's another neat little economy in the winning and spending of Brave Medals. These are like Achievements/Trophies to be won in each battle: you get one for a first attack, another for not using recovery items, another for defeating two enemies at once, etc. Those can be traded in for new Team Skills, stat re-rolls, or accessories. Medals are finite; their management feels especially weighty.

The bad: A solid two minutes of fast-forwarded dialogue separates one battle from the next. Were I following the story, it would likely be a solid ten or fifteen minutes between each fight. And the fishing is kinda dumb if unobtrusive.

Divinity Original Sin - Playing the enhanced edition on PC. This game is really cool! The world is super detailed and all the elemental effects make the game really interesting. Actually if anything I am not used to this level of detail and exploration on quest designs and such. Like, just exploring and finding subquests and so forth. This game is also pretty old-school in that it throws you in the deep end and makes you sort it out and make mistakes. I know a lot of these CRPGs start off hard and get easier and this game seems to be the case.

But it's fun. I am not sure if I am going to finish it but since I'm now broke I have plenty of time to go through my backlog.

Original Sin is my favorite Kickstarter success story. Not only did they deliver a completed game, it ended up (arguably) being the best thing Larian's ever done and easily the best RPG of 2014. I really should revisit the Enhanced Edition and actually finish it this time. The battle mechanics are great fun.

Just got it yesterday for ps4. It takes forever to get anything done!

It does speed up some when they start throwing more plot at you, but yeah, it moves at a pretty glacial pace a lot of the time. I spent the first half of the game feeling like I was playing it incorrectly somehow, so I'd say it emulates the CRPGs of the 90s quite well.

I want to listen to the song that plays during character creation forever.

I never played any of the Baldurs Gates or anything similar, so this is my first exposure to this sort of thing. I didn't have a computer until pretty late in the game.

Like diff said, these games are extremely dense and throw a lot at you at the start, but stick with it. It'll often feel like you're blundering through quests, but as you understand the game's "rules" more and more you'll learn to take advantage of them. Before long you're figuring out crazy ways to complete quests and doing some amazing shit in fights.

Edit: I think the ponderous pace is due in part to how interactive everything is, which I find extremely immersive.

Brutalized PaCrappa in Twinkle Star Sprites earlier this week.

Until Dawn- Loved playing this game by committee with my wife and daughter. I wanna have another play-thru and kill everyone this weekend. Cool game. Worth more than the 20 that I paid for it.

Splatoon- Gonna put in some work on the new map. The conveyors really change it up.

Witcher 3- Just started but I like what I've played so far.