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What Video Game are you currently playing?

janejane6178

Kaleido Star FOREVER in my heart <3
Downloaded Pokemon Masters just to get Serena... and got her <333
 

PsychoLogical

Black and White, Yin and Yang, Light and Dark.
nearly done with my second run of Fire Emblem Blazing Blade. In Hector mode this time since I need to in order to unlock hector hard mode.
 

Tsukuyomi56

Emblian Royalty
Recently started Kirby and the Forgotten Land (currently in the second world) and still playing Legends: Arceus and Shining Pearl. The main part of Legends: Arceus is almost done with Espeon and Lucario left to be able to face Arceus, after that it is getting Pokemon's Dex entries to Level 10 and perhaps tackling some of the post-game battle challenges.
 

Captain Jigglypuff

*On Vacation. Go Away!*
I’ve been playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land since Saturday. I finished the main story and just opened up the post game. I like the game a lot but I wish a couple more abilities that I think could work well in 3D were in the game. The abilities I’m disappointed aren’t in the game are Bell (sound waves do move in a 3 dimensional space), Poison, Spark/Plasma, Throw (imagine Kirby grabbing an enemy and swinging it around in a fast circular motion similar to Tornado and then letting go to launch the enemy), and Ninja (make use of camouflage and sneak attacks).
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
Still playing Arceus and am having a blast. Also played some other indie games.
 

Xionea

Half a centaur
I'm in a big open-world kick lately.

Been working on Elden Ring since release, currently stuck on final boss. Turns out my build is not good for the boss so I have to consider changing that up so it's not 5x harder than it needs to be.

Also picked up Ghostwire: Tokyo when that came out a few days ago. That's been super fun. Finished chapter 2 yesterday, but I'm mostly interested in exploring Tokyo and finding all the secrets, fighting the Visitors, seeing the youkai, etc.

Replaying Breath of the Wild since I haven't played that in a couple years now.
I also uhh.... tweaked it a bit so I'm not playing as Link...
I'm playing it on Master Mode, since I bought all the DLC awhile back but never bothered to play it. Early game was really intense! Lot more strategizing instead of swinging wildly.

And to top it off, I starting playing PowerWash Simulator for some reason and dang it's fun.
 

The_Orb

Member
Fromsoft games and feel-good Nintendo platformers work really well together when released around the same timespan. Been playing both and it's great
 

Divine Retribution

Conquistador de pan
I haven't done a ton of gaming recently, due to real life goings-on, but I have gotten a few games in.

I played through this game one other time back in 2017 (I had originally found it while looking for games similar to Dante's Inferno, which wasn't available on PC outside of emulators at the time; it has since been released on PC a couple years ago so maybe I'll have to pick that up and give it a revisit as well). I had beat the game once and then never revisited it; it was a fun little way to kill a few hours but the almost comically edgy aesthetic of the game wasn't super appealing to me (Just look at the name. Apparently naming it Metal Gear Rising: Revenge or Metal Gear Rising: Vengeance wouldn't have been edgy enough, Kojima needed to invent a whole new word for even more edge factor).

Anyways, I was looking through games in my Steam library trying to decide what to play and I stumbled across it and decided to give it another shot. I noticed there's an achievement for completing the game on the hardest difficulty with an S-Rank score in every fight (usually meaning you can't take damage at all, and may need to do some additional nonsense in some of the later fights) and decided to go for that; it seemed like a reasonable challenge. So I loaded up the game and immediately ran into a problem. On the console versions of you game, you can unlock the hardest difficulty modes by inputting the Konami code on the start menu. On PC, you can't do that without a controller (which I don't own). You need to beat the game on Hard to unlock Very Hard, then on Very Hard to unlock Revengeance. So I had the beat the game twice before I could even start trying to go for that achievement.

So a few hours and two runs of the game later and I could start my challenge, and I immediately ran into another problem; my own total lack of knowledge about this game. While you can brute-force everything on the other difficulty modes as taking damage matters significantly less, on the hardest mode nearly everything one or two-shots you, and I needed to not take damage to get S-Rank scores anyways. I spent about half an hour on the second set of enemies in the tutorial mission, trying to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to kill 2 robotic railgun dogs and a rocket cyborg without taking damage while all my equipment and upgrades are unavailable, including my ability to dodge (yes, dodging is an ability you have to unlock in this game, despite being necessary to beat some enemies without taking damage), before eventually realizing that that this fight isn't even scored and I don't have to worry about taking damage. Well, except for the attacks that flat out one-shot me, which includes most of the railgun dog's arsenal. Then I spent another half an hour or so remembering how to actually play the game against the first phase of the boss fight (it took me a very long time to remember I can parry his charge attack, during which I had to restart multiple times due to trying to slide away from it and getting hit at least half the time).

The next few levels were pure suffering as well. At the end of the second level, you have to fight two GRADs, large mech-like robots that literally skate around the arena and love to spam rocket attacks that deal splash damage and can't be blocked. This is the first fight that felt like a whole lot of luck to me. I had to do my best and try and keep one of the GRADs in between me and the other GRAD, and pray that while I was attacking it, the other GRAD wouldn't decide to swing off to the side and start spamming rockets at me or there wasn't really much I could do about it. The third level sees even more obnoxious mechanics, including my first fight against what would come to be my most despised enemy type in this game; Sliders. These are basically flying bat-like robots with machine guns and rockets. Usually they fly out of reach of your attacks, waiting for the most inopportune moment to start shooting you in the back as you deal with another enemy, or fire homing missiles at you. When there's multiple of them, jumping up to attack one is risky as it's likely one of the others will attack you mid-air, during which you are completely vulnerable to all of their attacks. They don't even deal much damage, but them hitting you at all is usually enough to cost you a S-Rank score.

At the end of the third level is the boss Monsoon, and holy damn did he take me for a ride. Monsoon alone forced me to actually learn how to play the game properly and parry rapid attacks from every angle. It must have taken me nearly a hundred attempts (I'm not even exaggerating), but by the end of it I had that fight nearly down to a science. I figured out one huge and yet subtle thing I was doing wrong near the end that had probably cost me dozens of runs previously; Monsoon has an attack where he magnetically picks up a bunch of APCs and helicopters and throws them at you, which you need to cut. The amount he throws increases each time he uses it. The first three times, it's no big deal, but during the fourth and beyond, he throws so many things at you that cutting them all is genuinely difficult and inconsistent and you usually get hit. Well, it turns out you can deny him the opportunity to even use the fourth throw by being very careful with how much damage you deal to him after the third, then using a big burst of damage from the pincer blades weapon to bring him straight to the threshold that triggers the end of the fight, skipping the fourth throw entirely. It's a good thing I figured this out, because I actually had to redo this entire freaking level as I had gotten an A-Rank instead of a S-Rank score in a previous fight and not even noticed. The second time I fought Monsoon I didn't have nearly as much trouble.

The fourth level wasn't super bad in comparison (there's one annoying sequence at the beginning when you have to hold back an onslaught of various enemies using a turret, but it's one of the few sequences where you can actually take damage and still get an S-Rank score so it's not so bad) but I ended up having to redo it again, because it turns out killing Sundowner without taking damage isn't enough to earn a S-Rank score. You also need to either farm a high hit combo score, or let him use the attack where he jumps to the side of the arena and starts casually swinging a 30-meter long light pole around (this game sometimes...) and glory kill one of the cyborgs that spawns before he does it for you with the light pole. Either I got lucky or that second part isn't actually as difficult as it sounds, but I did manage to get it pretty quickly the second time around.

The next level is practically a freebie. There's one semi-annoying fight involving 4 inaccessible rocket enemies that you need to force to jump down off the balconies they're on, but that one didn't give me too much of a headache. I was practically inoculated against stupid frustrating BS at this point, after enduring the Monsoon boss fight. Well, so I thought. Up next was the fight against Jetstream Sam, and this one was a learning experience. I started out getting absolutely destroyed on pretty much every attempt. Like Monsoon, Sam attacks you with rapid attacks from every angle, but you often have even less time to react accordingly. He has a few attacks that outright can't be parried and you must dodge, and when he runs behind you and attacks you from the back, sometimes the camera angle decides to follow him in the most inopportune way possible, and you must switch from parrying to the back to parrying to the front at exactly the right moment or he will hit you. But after about an hour and much blood, sweat, and tears, I finally beat him without taking damage. And got an A-Rank. It turns out that in order to get an S-Rank in this fight, I need to do that and pick up a couple of the healing pastes that spawn around the arena in boxes, which are ordinarily useless to me as I can't take damage anyways or I lose the S-Rank score. So yeah, that's 3 bosses in a row that I've had to do twice now. Good thing I'll learn from that and not make that mistake against the final boss, right?

So most of the final level doesn't actually give you a rank, and it's honestly not very difficult anyways in comparison to some of the BS we've already faced. This is a good thing, because the first time I fought Metal Gear EXCELSIUS, guess what? I got an A-Rank. Again, taking no damage isn't enough to get an S-Rank score. I have to do that and farm hit combos against the boss while he's stunned and glory kill at least one of the... uh... chicken bull tank robot... things... he spawns during the plasma beam attack (while not taking damage from the beam itself, which involves a bit of luck). I knew that it felt a bit easy when I did it the first time. Anyways, a level restart and a few more attempts later and I managed to get past that part, and ran straight into the next brick wall. In between the EXCELSIUS fight and the final battle with Donald Trum- I mean senator Armstrong (that joke is a bit mean in my opinion; Armstrong is way more likeable than Trump), you are treated to a couple sequences where you fight him on top of the wrecked metal gear. The first one isn't anything special, but holy god damn, the second "fight"...

So, between the two sequences, Armstrong catches your mall ninja sword and snaps it like the cheap piece of chinesium it is, so you don't actually have a weapon during the second part of the fight. This means you can't really parry his attacks; you can, but doing so still causes you to take some damage, which denies you a no-damage score. But in order to advance to the next stage normally, you have to take at least one attack. Or is there another way...? It turns out, there is. Instead of fighting him or blocking his attacks, you can run around dodging his attacks for two and a half minutes, which will cause him to use a special fire blast attack that doesn't actually damage you, but triggers the transition to the next phase, preserving your no-damage bonus. The problem is, this is easier said than done. It would be frustrating enough normally, as the camera angle on top of EXCELSIUS seems determined to screw you over (there's a couple places where, if you walk near the edge of the arena, the game decides you'd rather look at all the pretty scenery off to the side of the map instead of the deranged psycho trying to juice your face with his fists), but he has one attack that makes it way harder.

I call it his supersonic kick. Basically, he crouches down for a moment, then freaking flies at you at the speed of sound to kick you into another dimension. A normal dodge doesn't work on this attack, you need to specifically dodge backwards, and you have to react to the crouch animation before he uses it as there isn't enough time to dodge it once he's already moving. He also uses that crouch before other attacks, so you need to treat pretty much every attack as a potential supersonic kick incoming. To make matters even worse, the stagger recovery he goes through after missing certain other attacks can sometimes override the crouch animation that telegraphs this attack potentially incoming, and you are basically 100% screwed if you don't predict this happening. Add this to the fact that there's no timer telling you exactly how long left you need to survive and this is a very frustrating experience indeed.

Finally, though, we get to the final battle and it... wasn't actually that difficult. I don't know if it's because I improved so much at this game between Monsoon utterly destroying me over and over and over again and getting to this fight, or just because Armstrong attacks with slow, powerful attacks that are dangerous if you don't avoid them but quite easy to block or dodge, but it took me about 5 attempts to beat this last phase. I even picked up all the useless nanopastes and farmed some hit combo score on him while he was staggered, figuring it might matter for getting an S-Rank score, and it turns out it did.

So anyways, this game was actually quite fun with the added challenge of basically not being able to take damage ever. It can be difficult and frustrating and some fights feel downright unfair, but for anyone accustomed to similar challenges it might be a good way to kill some time. The game in general is honestly not bad, I'd give it a solid 7/10. The plot is a bit out there, the characters are a little generic, the action sequences and cutscenes have an absurd anime-esque disregard for the laws of physics in favor of dumb action scenes (if you're not a big fan of bare-handedly flipping 500 ton robots and dueling them with a blade the size of a skyscraper, this game will probably give you a brain aneursym; maybe stick to Mount & Blade or Kingdom Come or something), and this game has more edge than a razor blade factory. However, it's also got some unintentionally hilarious moments, like when Monsoon decides to monologue about memes, or when Armstrong reveals where Donald Trump got his campaign slogan.

The music is also absolutely on point. I'm a bit biased, being a metalhead/hard rock lover myself, but it's legitimately the only game I can think of where the soundtracks both have lyrics and perfectly fit the scenarios they're used in. This track in particular is something I would actually listen to out of context, like god damn. I once heard someone describe this game as a $30 heavy metal album that comes with a free game, and that's pretty accurate.

The game play is enjoyable enough. It's a pretty simple hack n' slash at the core and on the main difficulty modes you can honestly get away with just spamming attacks while walking in the general direction of your enemies, but if you want to successfully complete fights without taking damage you really need to learn the combat system, dodge/counter timing, when it's safe to attack enemies and get some damage in, etc., so there's definitely a skill curve, even if the difficulty system kind of buries it.

All in all, worth the money in my opinion.

I picked this game up on sale for $7. I had never previously played it, despite playing its sequel/spiritual successor, Apex Legends, but I had previously heard that this game is really good and criminally underrated, so for $7 I figured I'd give it a try. Unlike Apex Legends, which is purely a multiplayer PvP game, Titanfall 2 includes a singleplayer campaign, which is what I played, as all the multiplayer lobbies seemed to be empty.

So mechanically Titanfall 2 is a fairly ordinary (although well-polished) shooter combined with some platformer aspects, with a somewhat more fluid than average movement system. There are a few neat unique mechanics, such as the ability to run along walls, but nothing absolutely mind-boggling. The standout feature is that you have a mech that you fight in for some of the levels, but for a big portion of the game you're actually separated from said mech.

That being said, the level design in this game is borderline jaw-dropping at times. There's an entire level where you traverse a town that's been turned on its side. There's a level where you hop between the past and the future to pass through a base, fighting enemies in both timelines along the way. While the gunplay might not be anything crazy, the level design sure as hell is, and my only real complaint is that it's too short and a bit too easy. It took me a little over 3 hours to play through the campaign on the hardest difficulty setting, and I died exactly once to the penultimate boss (I probably would have died to the final boss too but I found a way to cheese it). I get the feeling the campaign of this game isn't really aimed at FPS players (which I definitely am, with my thousands of hours in Apex Legends, PUBG, PlanetSide 2, and others) so much as platformers and generally more casual players. Of course, the actual playtime value of this game would be increased if the multiplayer aspect of it was active, but it doesn't seem to be, as its younger brother Apex Legends seems to have stolen most of its thunder.

For the $7 I paid though, I would say this game was worth it. That's less than a movie ticket these days, and being able to experience a few hours of that level design was more enjoyable than any movie I can remember. I probably would struggle to justify paying the full $30 that it usually is as long as multiplayer remains dead, however.

This playthrough is actually on-going, but I've been feeling the itch to revisit this game, one of my all-time favorite games, for the first time in a few years. I decided to do a challenge playthrough based on the Nuzlocke challenges that are popular in the main series games. Essentially, I can only recruit the first Pokemon who offers to join my team in each dungeon (who must be nicknamed, of course), if an extra Pokemon faints it must be released, and if my main character or partner faints, I have to restart the entire run. Oh, and I can't use Reviver Seeds, at all.

I expect that this playthrough will be quite challenging, especially in the mid-late game dungeons. Not being able to use Reviver Seeds is going to be a serious curveball that will require me to play extremely safely in a lot of situations. That's easier said than done in PMD2, however. Very few moves have perfect accuracy, so random misses can screw me over. Damage calculation can be very strange at times, which makes certain things like multi-hit moves very dangerous, and of course the infamous Monster Houses will be very challenging to deal with without any Reviver Seeds. I expect there will be a lot of luck (or misfortune) involved in many scenarios. I'm probably only going to take this challenge to Dialga and not the entire post-game.

I started my playthrough and randomly answered the quiz questions. I got Charmander, obviously named Divine, which is perfect as it's a starter that I don't think I've used before. I should have an easy enough time with the early game dungeons as they're full of Bug and Grass types, but some of the later dungeons like the desert dungeons and Brine Cave might require some serious strategizing. I also used a random number generator to pick my partner, and got Eevee, named Nemesis after the Greek goddess of retribution, because yes, I am that uncreative and egocentric. She's a bit more of a double-edged sword. On one hand, Adaptability is undeniably a strong ability in this game, but on the other hand, Run Away... isn't. In fact, Run Away is kind of a potential lose condition in a lot of circumstances. I'll need to make sure to keep items handy to deal with that. Oran Berries to heal her, or even a Stun Seed to at least prevent her from running away straight into another group of enemies.

The first few dungeons were no trouble. I had a bit of a close call with Drowzee as he dodged two attacks with in a row Forewarn and then hit me with a critical Confusion, but I chomped on an Oran Berry and reapplied Smokescreen and was able to finish the fight without issue. I played through Waterfall Cave super cautiously, as it's full of Water-types, but I didn't encounter any problems. Ironically, Apple Woods was actually a tad bit scarier than I thought it would be, as despite me having a significant type advantage there, it's full of Pokemon who can inflict dangerous status conditions, as well as Beedrill with the dreaded Fury Attack. Despite a couple slightly hairy situations, I made it through okay, and recruited my first Pokemon on this run (I didn't get a recruit from Waterfall Cave), a Paras named Garcia. Her stats and typing kind of suck (most Pokemon in this game that aren't starters or legendaries have bad stats, unfortunately), but she gets Spore at a fairly early level and that move is every bit as strong in PMD as it is in the main games, so she could be useful if she survives long enough.

That's about where I am now with that playthrough. I'm currently right before the expedition chapters, where I think I will encounter the first real challenge for this playthrough; the illusory Groudon. However, with some Sleep Seeds or similar items I should be able to get past it. I just have to avoid getting hit by its Mud Shot as that very likely might OHKO me.

I'm very interested to see how this challenge goes, especially how difficult the later dungeons end up being and how many runs I end up needing to beat Dialga.

I've also been playing some other games as usual (PlanetSide 2, Apex Legends, RuneScape, etc.).
 

PsychoLogical

Black and White, Yin and Yang, Light and Dark.
mainly replaying Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade but on Hard Mode.
 

The Mega Champion

Well-Known Member
I finished Octopath Traveler last night. Well... 'finished to my liking' really. The game gave me credits after completing one of the Chapter 4's. It was the first one I did. I still did the rest of the Chapter 4's. But because the game gave me credits... everything else is considered post-game as far as I'm concerned. I don't play post-game most of the time except in some certain specific circumstances. This isn't one of them. No I don't care if there's a 'true final boss' it's after the credits have rolled and in post-game as far as I'm concerned so I'm not doing it. Besides... I have no motivation to continue this game. It was extremely underwhelming and not as great as everyone made it out to be. In other words everyone made it out to overrated to what it actually ended up being for me. It makes me not want to play anymore HD-2D games but we'll see. Feel free to try to convince me otherwise though. At least when it comes to Live A Live. Either way my personal final score for Octopath Traveler is 7/10. A little too much grinding and not exciting at all.

Either way I started my next game in my backlog last night as well. Tales of Symphonia Chronicles for the PS3. It's fine. It's been so god damn long since I've played the Symphonia games it'll be interesting to see how they still hold up for me (they used to be my favorite Tales of games but I didn't start getting more until recently lol). Plus... can I beat them without cheating? I certainly hope so but time will tell obviously. It's just going to be weird yet somehow cool to play these games again.
 

Pikasaur

Lazy Summer
Been about a month and i haven't finished any of the games i was playing. Because i started new ones :p

Xbox: Call of Duty Vanguard , Tiny Tinas Wonderlands
Switch: New Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Legends: Arceus
PS4: Spyro Reignited Trilogy (First Game)

i also have like 4-5 dozen games in "Backlog" and adding more all the time, so i doubt i'll finish Spyro or Wonderlands
 
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janejane6178

Kaleido Star FOREVER in my heart <3
Been about a month and i haven't finished any of the games i was playing. Because i started new ones :p

Xbox: Call of Duty Vanguard , Tiny Tinas Wonderlands
Switch: New Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Legends: Arceus
PS4: Spyro Reignited Trilogy (First Game)

i also have like 4-5 dozen games in "Backlog" and adding more all the time, so i doubt i'll finish Spyro or Wonderlands
I played this game of Spyro in the Switch a year ago and it was super laggy. Couldnt keep playing
 

Absolutely Absol

It's just Absol...
Finished Kirby & the Forgotten Land's story mode.
Started to play Picross S Mega Drive & Master System edition recently because it was on sale (EU). I've already finished all of Picross S series.

I played this game of Spyro in the Switch a year ago and it was super laggy. Couldnt keep playing
Huh, I didn't find it super laggy. I don't remember there has been below 20FPS. Sure, it has dropped below 30FPS sometimes but it didn't affect my gameplay so I finished all of three games 100%. I've used to old 20FPS games such as Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Digimon World.
 

The Mega Champion

Well-Known Member
I completed Tales of Symphonia yesterday. Despite how old this game is... it's unreal how well this game still holds up to this day. For me at least. Is the battle system outdated and didn't age well at all? Of course. However... outside of the first Sword Dancer boss and the other bosses that were either literally impossible or weren't required to win... I didn't get a single Game Over. So you could make the argument I didn't get a single game over in the game period. Great story and great characters. I love it just as much as I originally did.

I also started the Symphonia sequel last night. Because why not. Dawn of the New World. It'll be interesting to see if my opinion on this game changes... but I personally doubt it. Most hate this game but I don't. Honestly... I utterly and completely forgot about the monster catching gimmick in this game. I hope getting specific monsters isn't required... otherwise I won't be beating this game. I can already tell the skits are FAR better than the first game. One has already made me legit laugh. Off to a good start so far. It's still jarring to see the drastic change in Lloyd though....
 
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