The Gamers Arms

I hadn't played The Division so didn't know what I was getting myself into last year when I picked up D2. I thoroughly enjoyed it as a diversion from GR:Breakpoint when the boys weren't around to coop with

Somewhere along the way, late last year, the game updated and my nVidia drivers updated at almost the same time. After that, the game locks up after three to ten minutes, every time I boot it up. I haven't bothered with it since, and never tried problem-solving this issue, since we all dove back hard into our coop sessions for Breakpoint. I'd still like to actually finish the game once. The weapons customization stuff seemed ridiculously complex, so I found myself a solution I liked, using the special items: having a turret and the little tracking rolling mines, all maxed out and boosted from the gear I was wearing, a good handgun, and a rocking assault rifle. Made for a decent single player game that way, and I was less concerned about constantly updating every last little piece of kit (until forced to by the leveling system, of course).

The setting is awesome to me, because I've wandered around many of the exact same streets in DC, in actual meatspace. Have a hideout underneath the Hirshhorn Museum, for example, was pretty damned cool, since that building and its grounds was a highlight of one of my trips a few years ago. In contrast, I fucking hate anything to do with NYC, so I think I avoided the first game just for that - I also hate Christmas, bah humbug! so the setting in the first just put me right off wanting to play it.

Animalmother wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:46 pm

If nothing else Game Pass is wonderful for saving money on not buying shite games.

This 100% and then some. I was a horror for snapping up games, whether a bargain in a sale or a title I liked the look of. I now pay £7 per month and since I have started doing that I have bought Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone and most recently God of War, that's it. Oh, and Forza 5, but that was deliberate, I love the Forza games, wanted the bells and whistles edition and was happy to pay them for it.

Extra win, I was mulling over bagging Hitman 3 when it came out of Epic exclushitity a week or two back. Ping, it drops on Gamepass. More money saved.

Snowy wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 21, 2022 2:56 pm

Animalmother wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:46 pm

If nothing else Game Pass is wonderful for saving money on not buying shite games.

This 100% and then some. I was a horror for snapping up games, whether a bargain in a sale or a title I liked the look of. I now pay £7 per month and since I have started doing that I have bought Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone and most recently God of War, that's it. Oh, and Forza 5, but that was deliberate, I love the Forza games, wanted the bells and whistles edition and was happy to pay them for it.

Extra win, I was mulling over bagging Hitman 3 when it came out of Epic exclushitity a week or two back. Ping, it drops on Gamepass. More money saved.

As well as the big titles I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of new indie titles hitting GP

Absolutely, there have been a few nice surprises there too.

Agreed. I'm currently absorbed by Nobody saves the world. I've played about 5 or 6 hours and it's just the right difficulty for me to keep me invested.
I suddenly unlocked a turtle and he loves the water and opened up some bits of the map (and some bits I think I'm not supposed to go to yet ) that makes me feel like I'm really exploring.

I always feel in two minds. Its great for MS owned games which never cycle out but I always get weird anxiety playing long 3rd party games that could cycle out because then I lose my progress or have to buy it in the XBox app which is just not something I want to do! They also seem pretty vague with their "leaving gamepass soon", they've only just started putting dates on there. On PSNow theres an expiry date on everything "300days left" which would be nice if they brought that to every title. Hitman 3 for example, I'm 100% certain I wont be done with that by the time it cycles out so I'll probably just buy it on steam. Everything should be cross save, it would make my brain less anxious.

It's good motivation to play something on your short list though. I usually install indie titles and then don't get round to playing them until I see that they're getting taken down in a week.

Mantis wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:15 pm

It's good motivation to play something on your short list though. I usually install indie titles and then don't get round to playing them until I see that they're getting taken down in a week.

Indeed, though I agree with evol about it being nice to have more notice. I didn't get around to playing Night in the Woods until it was due to leave, but I only noticed with about a week to go and I missed a significant portion of the game because I had to rush through.

And speaking of Gamepass:

Nobody Saves the World

...is something I probably wouldn't have tried without it. Granted now that I've tried it, I doubt I'll be going back, but it's nice to know for certain. I just don't like the art style; the quality of the artwork is good, but it's that deliberately repulsive style that I just can't get into. It also plays like a flash game, which granted probably wasn't helped by playing it on an XBox pad (4-direction control never feels right on an analogue stick), but there's just nothing satisfying about the movement or combat. Just a dodge roll would have helped, and maybe that comes with later forms, but it's a real slog at the beginning.

I'm on the Nobody Saves the World train as well. Really enjoying it, love the art style and the music. The controls can be a pain and not being able to stop a conversation you accidentally started is fucking tedious. Anyone else finding the horse a tad useless? He the one character I barely use unless required.

Animalmother wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:15 pm

I'm on the Nobody Saves the World train as well. Really enjoying it, love the art style and the music. The controls can be a pain and not being able to stop a conversation you accidentally started is fucking tedious. Anyone else finding the horse a tad useless? He the one character I barely use unless required.

I completed this last night and I really enjoyed it, there are a lot of smart decisions made throughout the game such as giving you a plentiful supply of the upgrade currency so that you never feel like you wasted it on upgrading a skill plus as you can apply them to any other form it's never totally wasted. It's a really well balanced game in that I kept unlocking new forms throughout my playthrough so combat never got boring as there were always new things to play as and experiment with. I've not had any real issues with the combat, I don't think it is built in such a way as to warrant a dodge move as Raid talked about, even though you do get one for one of the forms. The only slight annoyance was the way aiming worked, it could sometimes be a bit too easy to attack facing the wrong direction.

As for the Horse, I wasn't a huge fan, having to face the opposite direction to attack is funny but a bit too cumbersome in practice, it's gallop skill is quite good though.

Yup, loved it and also completed it
The Dragon (final form) is pretty good as he can also travel over water.
That also reminds me, when the turtle is on land he's pretty slow but when he gets in the water he smiles and zips along

I hated the slug for the longest time, slow and a delay in firing but with a speed passive and skill points to reduce the delay he ended up quite fun.

Unlocking familiars (zombies, rabbits, tigers or demons) makes a lot of tricky fights so much easier.

Being able to swap out passives and skills dynamically really helps.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Having quite a lot of fun with this. It's a mix of environmental exploration (using the various Guardians' skills to negotiate obstacles) and gunplay... the former is more enjoyable than the second imho, but the fighting is still fine.

Whether you'd enjoy it or not really depends on how you feel about the banter between the characters, which is pretty much constant (giving you occasional choices to direct the conversation). Personally, I think it's great and it helps build the idea that this is a team of individuals with different motivations, and some don't get on with others (not far enough in to really know if that evolves over the course of the game). There's some genuinely funny moments as well.

If you enjoyed the films and like the idea of hanging out with the Guardians crew, you could do worse than check it out.

Finished Dangonronpa, started Dangonronpa 2.
Loved that first game. The only part I didnt like was when you have to piece back a comic to show the events of each murder at the end of each trial. I sometimes found it a bit hard to discern what each panel actually was and had to sometimes just trial and error it. There were also a few moments in some trials it seemed like there were more than one right answer yet it would only accept one though that may have been me overlooking why some answers were wrong. Other than those few niggles I loved it. The dialogue is funny, the writing and story hold together all the way to the end with the twists being mostly surprisingly smart(uh... mostly -_-). I was actually quite gutted when some characters were killed off and now I'm onto the sequel I'm already really missing the students from the first game. I hope this one can be half as good as the first.

Rainbow Extraction
Its fine. I like the stealth aspects of it, the gunplay is fun and its pretty harsh but fair. Not a fan of the progression system which often rewards you jumping into a mission, doing a few sub objectives and extracting over doing all three main objectives. The risk reward aspects of the health system and the risk to your agents of death. Its good, its not great and I doubt I'll be playing it long term.

Still playing Dead By Daylight most days too if I get a chance. Usually one or two games to do the daily challenges but I'm having so much fun solo queuing the killer! Its a jankyass game but damn its fun. Wish I started playing it ages ago.

Tails of Arise

Wanted to finish this off this weekend, have long since turned it down to easy so I can breeze through the combat, but it just keep going. I've just spent nearly 2 hours on this one area which I think might be the final area. The game gets you to run all the way through the are fighting elite enemies and when you reach the end you fight a boss, flip a switch and the whol area gets turned on its head and they ask you to run all the way back through it again fighting a bunch more elite enemies. I've had to put it down because I just can't any longer.

Once I'm in a better headspace I'll push through to the end but depsite the game doing some really good things with the characters and telling an interesting and engaging story these last few hours have tipped me over the edge and I'm not sure I would recommend anyone play this game, unless you are more of an JRPG fan than me and these artificial lengthenings that JRPGs seem to love to do so much don't bother you.

Since getting an RTX graphics card I've been looking for as many ray tracing games as possible so:
Cyberpunk 2077
Still impressed with this one. The world building is just great and with everything set to max, it looks gorge

Metro Exodus - enhanced
Played this through several times but started again. The graphics defo still have it and look very naturalistic. I'm even listening to all the dialogue (mainly because it's unskippable) and letting myself become part of the world.

Control
Just about to reinstall this one to turn it all on. See if I like it still (hated the end part as it turned into a platformer/bullet sponge annoyance).