What are you PLAYING?

[hellboy]

Been playing a game called Cosmchoria lately. It's a relatively simple arcade game where you jetpack between planets, planting seeds and defending them against aliens. Good clean fun, though a little repetitive.

Haven't had much time of late to get any further into Witcher 3 - I feel like it's the kind of game where I need to set aside at least an hour to play for a session, and that's time I don't seem to get these days.

Terraria 1.3 comes out today, so I'll probably have a look at that in the coming days as well.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Picked up Hitman Absolution on Steam today for $5.

Played the first couple of levels and I have to say I got a lot of enjoyment out of pulling a guy out of a window to his death immediately after he got off the phone with his doctor who told him the results from his cancer tests were negative.

"Oh, thank you Doctor! That's such a relief... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[UndKeineZwEier]

Put a bit more time into Hitman: Absolution and while it's not a bad game, it is a pretty terrible Hitman game. If they had released it as a new IP it would have been a lot better. The game is designed as a linear stealth action title as opposed to the sandbox puzzle style of the previous games. There are a lot of new features that are cool and work well but because they're more action focused I inevitably find myself not using them because I'm trying to play it like a Hitman game. And the disguise feature can kinda break some of the stealth sections as there have been a couple of levels that I've been able to complete by just walking through them as there a decent amount of levels that aren't designed around killing a target.

The levels that are focused on killing a target are pretty unsatisfying. The levels are too small and the amount of ways to take out your target are pretty limited. The great thing about previous Hitman games was wandering around a level and seeing all these elements you could interact with and figuring out how to use them to take out your target(s). There was a creative aspect about it because there were so many different ways you could complete your objective whereas in Absolution it feels like all of your options have been plotted out by the developers and so you're just a picking one of a few different scripts for how to complete your objective.

There's one level where the target is the owner of a small strip club who likes to tend bar because he likes being near the center of attention. In previous games something like that would mean that the target is almost never alone and so part of the puzzle would be trying to figure out how to isolate him. In Absolution after like 2 or 3 minutes he heads to the bathroom where one guard is always stationed. The guard is no trouble to take out before the target goes to the bathroom. So I just took out the target with a garrote in the bathroom. It was the most unsatisfying close quarters undetected silent kill I've ever performed in a Hitman game. There was no strategy to it, it felt like the "easy" option. Like the developers just put it in so that everybody could get a silent assassin rating. In previous Hitman games if you couldn't figure out how to discretely kill your target you would just shoot the place up. That was the dumb option. I shouldn't feel like I did the option when I get a discrete close quarters kill in a Hitman game but that's how I felt today.

Anyways, having said all that I do think it's a pretty decent game and I think I'll enjoy it more on a second playthrough when I go for a more aggressive approach. As some of my favorite moments in the game have been when I approached situations more aggressively.

[hellboy]

I enjoyed Hitman 2, but haven't played any of the others.

[UndKeineZwEier]

I've played 2 and Blood Money. 2 wasn't bad but I remember some of the levels unnecessarily large. There were a couple of levels where you would have to spend a ton of time just getting to the area where your target was. There was two levels in particular I remember, one was an empty city and the other was an empty mountain area, both required you to walk for like 10 to 15 minutes just to get to the building where your target was. It was really annoying.

Blood Money is still good though. I was just playing it a few months ago and it's still a good game.

I actually also played a little of bit Contracts at one point a long time ago. I couldn't even get past the first level.

[hellboy]

I liked the big levels - that Mountain Pass was cool. I don't remember the empty city though, but form memory I never finished the game, so maybe that's near the end.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Eh, I was really bad at that game so I probably had to do those replay those levels a lot. I do remember the city being more annoying though, because there wasn't even like a good story reason why you had to start so far away.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Well, I finished Absolution. Not much has really changed from my previous review, but I will say that I did have a pretty good time with it. I hope some of the features they added make their way to other games. One of the things that I really enjoyed was how many objects there were in the environment that you could use as a weapon. Leading a suspicious guard into a room and grabbing a vase/book/screwdriver/etc. and taking them out quickly is really satisfying. It's a shame that the Hitman style doesn't really lend itself to that style of improvisation. As I would just usually reload whenever I alerted a guard.

Thinking about it now though... I really only reloaded when something like that happened because it lowered my score. The game keeps a running score in the corner for each level and it raises and lowers depending on your actions. If that weren't there I would probably have embraced that improv a bit more, but seeing a score go down 1,500 points when something like that happens just blows. That score thing fucking sucks to be honest. It penalizes certain gameplay styles and encourages others. If that wasn't there or if there was at least an option to turn it off, the game would be a bit more enjoyable.

The story is nothing to write home about. It's pretty simple, but there's no pretension. I've played quite a few video games over the last few years that have had pretty straightforward stories, but they're played up as being more complex and clever than they are. So it's nice to play a game that understand that it's story isn't amazing and just has fun with it. The characters are insane and the voice actors really chew into their dialogue and it's make the whole thing a lot more enjoyable than it would've been had it been played straight.

Overall, it's not the best game I've played in a while, but it was fairly enjoyable and it held my attention throughout. The mechanics are solid and other than the Hitman in the title and the ever present, I don't really have a ton of complaints about it. 7/10

[UndKeineZwEier]

I've started playing Faherenheit/Indigo Prophecy. The main dude reads Nietzsche and listens to Theory of a Deadman. Not exactly the most likeable protagonist.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Also one dude got depressed after he exited a diner and discovered the door locked behind him so he'd have to walk around the diner to the main entrance. The next morning he took a shower in his underwear.

Another character searched the NYPD database for Kirsten and only got one result.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Indigo Prophecy has gotten really, really stupid. I just had a DragonBall fight with a 2000 year old Mayan oracle after which I found out that I was brought back to life by a group of AIs who gained sentience in the 80s, one of which had been disguising itself as a blind, dead, old woman, for the purpose of finding the Indigo Child so that the AIs could become the dominant lifeform on Earth. I was then taken in by a group of AK-47 wielding hobos who had been around for as long as the Mayan oracle.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Loulz, turns out I was only like fifteen minutes away from the ending the last time I posted about Indigo Prophecy.

Anyways, in that fifteen minutes one character admits she's in love with this guy she's known for like a day. This was after chasing him for a week or so thinking he was a killer. Also, he beat up a ton of cops for no reason other than because they were trying to arrest him, but I guess that's okay because he didn't actually kill the people that he was accused of killing. Also, she's only known him since he was brought back to life by the AIs (who gained sentience in the '80s through the internet in a dumb subplot that could've been removed from the game entirely and would have had no effect on the story whatsoever) and had all of his personality removed. Though, to be fair, he didn't really have much to begin with.

Also, the best ending is set in some fairy tale forest for some reason. I'm glad I replayed the last chapter to see that ending (because I stopped tapping a button for a microsecond so I could change my tapping setup and it fucking failed me, fucking bullshit, and it gave me a bad ending, the piece of shit. And it's so fucking inconsistent too, sometimes you have to tap to fill a bar and sometimes you just have to not stop tapping whatsoever, but the fucking interface is the same for both things so you don't know when you're going to fail for not tapping.)

[UndKeineZwEier]

Also, I spent five fucking minutes looking for the pieces to rebuild a radio and all it did was give me news reports that told me shit I already knew (except for the oceans freezing over which I didn't even think was possible) and it made my character depressed which is like this game's equivalent to a health bar. So yeah thanks for that fun and rewarding sidequest Quantic Dream.

[UndKeineZwEier]

And the AIs brought the main dude back to life in a way that left him with no body temperature and no need to breathe, but still left him with the ability to procreate somehow.

[MobileVortex]

Just picked up dying light. I'm only like an hour or so into it, but so far so good. Once you get past the controls (namely RB being jump) its a pretty fun game. Anyone played this yet?

Yea i started playing Diablo III again... I dont know why.

[THE1TRUEMOG]

I picked up an XBox One for the heck of it. Glad I did. Nice having both consoles and not being limited in terms of exclusives. At the moment I am playing Far Cry 4 and Wolfeinstein The Old Blood. Just finished up Batman Arkham Knight which was a blast. (although it did have too much freakin Batmobile!) Looking forward to the Gears remaster coming end of August. The fall/winter is packed full of what look like great games. Halo 5, Fallout 4, Uncharted Remaster, Tom Clancy Rainbow Siege, Star Wars Battlefront, Battleborne, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Uncharted 4, The Division, Doom etc etc.

So far the game of the year for me has been The Witcher 3. CD Projekt Red just got it right. A little buggy at first but I kind of expected that going in. Amazing amount of content for $60 bucks. Nice to see a developer that actually packs their vanilla release full of content rather than chopping it up and selling it as DLC (cough Destiny cough).

[hellboy]

Been playing quite a bit of Dirt Rally recently. Great game by Codemasters, only issue is that I reckon the number of tracks is a little limited. Codemasters said there will be more, but not many more (presumably they're saving others for DLC or some shit). I'd also like to be able to use any car on any track as well. For what I assume are licensing reasons you can only use Rallycross cars on Rallycross track, Hill Climb Cars on Hill Climb tracks, etc. I'd love to be able to do the Pikes Peak hill climb in the 1970s Ford Escort rather than be locked into some 900hp rally car.

Those criticisms aside, it wasn't and expensive game, and the driving experience as well as graphics are solid. Worth checking it if this form of simulation is your thing.

[THE1TRUEMOG]

Been playing quite a bit of Dirt Rally recently. Great game by Codemasters, only issue is that I reckon the number of tracks is a little limited. Codemasters said there will be more, but not many more (presumably they're saving others for DLC or some shit). I'd also like to be able to use any car on any track as well. For what I assume are licensing reasons you can only use Rallycross cars on Rallycross track, Hill Climb Cars on Hill Climb tracks, etc. I'd love to be able to do the Pikes Peak hill climb in the 1970s Ford Escort rather than be locked into some 900hp rally car.

Those criticisms aside, it wasn't and expensive game, and the driving experience as well as graphics are solid. Worth checking it if this form of simulation is your thing.

Not really into racing games but that sounds like fun. Speaking of racing type games have you tried Rocket League? It seems like the most absurd concept but people are flipping their shit over it.

[hellboy]

Not really into racing games but that sounds like fun. Speaking of racing type games have you tried Rocket League? It seems like the most absurd concept but people are flipping their shit over it.

I've seen it, and I don't see the appeal. Too many other games to play. I need to play more Witcher 3 though, that much is true. 30 hours in and I still feel like I've only just scratched the surface.

[UndKeineZwEier]

I picked up Rayman Orgins on GOG today for $5. Really digging it. Been a long time since I've played a non-arty 2D platformer. This one is a lot of fun.

[THE1TRUEMOG]

Mad Max....Seriously it is repetitive as fuck, not much of a story, occasional framerate issues...but there is just something so damn fun about building this ridiculous magnum opus car and slamming into shit. Even the combat, which is just button mashing repetition, is stupidly fun. Walk into a camp, beat the shit out of everyone, blow shit up, rinse, repeat.

If nothing else it is serving as a decent holdover until the big releases in October. If you have nothing to play I recommend picking it up. Do a bunch of the repetitive side missions to level up faster and get some decent upgrades on your car because then it really starts to get fun.

[hellboy]

I think MGSV is likely to be my next purchase, and should take me through until Fallout 4

[THE1TRUEMOG]

I think MGSV is likely to be my next purchase, and should take me through until Fallout 4

I have been told MGSV is outstanding. I personally have never been a fan of that franchise so I don't imagine I will be picking it up. Just not really many games from Japanese developers interest me. Obviously back in the old days when we were young bucks I enjoyed Nintendo and Super Mario Bros and all that jazz, but nothing coming out of Japan game wise does it for me at this point. Just a style that doesn't work for me. Always ends up being either anime/cartoonish or some odd spin on a Western theme. Solid Snake does Afghanistan? Mother Base. That said the game has gotten tens or nine out of ten almost across the board and people I know who love the franchise are in heaven.

The only cartoonish/comic style games I ever enjoyed were the Borderlands series. The writing and the humor always top notch. Mechanics were superb. That is why I am looking forward to Battleborn. It has that cartoon look but Gearbox just finds a way to make it work. Shame you don't have a console I would enjoy gaming with you.

[hellboy]

I've never enjoyed MGS games in the past, but the new one sounds great, and much better than the previous ones. I don't have a whole bunch of Nintendo nostalgia, having never really owned a Nintendo console except for the Wii.

[UndKeineZwEier]

Halo 5, Fallout 4, who gives a shit? It's Roundabout, baby!

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