Now Playing (Video Games)

I've been working my way through Dandara, one of the Free for Gold games. In doing some minor research it turns out it was made by a Brazilian develeper and it is a fairly "rare" game. Glad it's getting the exposure, because it is awesome. You control Dandara, a young black woman with a cool big afro, yellow scarf, baggy shirt and pants. The game is yet another Metroidvania with slightly retro pixel art with some modern elements. Like Metroid this game is MASSIVE. It has several endings and you have to explore every conner and beat all the level bosses to get the "true" ending upon beating the final boss. Also like metroid the world is sectioned off in tunnels and rooms. However you travese the world like Celeste, jumping from plataform to plataform on "salt" patches. And like some Zelda games it has an overworld and an underworld. It encourages speedruns and in fact, one can finish it in a little over a half hour if you just literally run through it. However, I've chosen the exploration aproach first and I'm at over 15 hours of gameplay, judging by the map I'm almost done, but in reality the sections are rather tricky to traverse and it is taking me some time. Taking a break due to the frustration build up. I'm debating wether to just beat the final boss now, finish exploration later, or continue crawling through the dungeons. Pretty neat game.

While taking a break from Dandara started working on Ghostbuster. A friend of mine really hyped it up telling me not only is the gameplay great, but the original cast from the movies are in it, voices their characters and writing the script. Apparently it is supposed to be the ever dormant script for the mythical 3rd movie that will never be made after Harold Ramis passed away. I like the movies, but I don't venerate them or hold Bill Murray to any god-like status. I was hesitant to start it, but I have to say, it's pretty cool. I'm still on my first solo mission in the Hotel level (started it late last night and had to go to bed), but I'm really liking it. The graphics are great with the character likeness to the Ghostbusters is great, their facieal expressions are awesome, they do a fantastic job with the voice acting and for all intent and purposes you ARE a ghostbuster.

Waiting in the wings to get started or continue:
Road Redemption
Sunless Sea
Alice 1 & 2
Lost Planet 2
Resident Evil
Ori and the Blind Forest
Brutal Legend
Bully
Bioshock 1 & 2
Alien Isolation
Maid of Sker and many more. So, I'm ok if I don't purchase any games this year lol. Thanks to the lock down I've gotten through way more than I ever thought possible.
 
Onhell said:
Ori and the Blind Forest
Click to expand...

I couldn't resist and started this one over again, this time on hard (and mind you, the game was already rather hard even on normal).

However it's similar to Alien: Isolation for me, that is - after I've suffered through my first playthrough I learned enough that this time around it's rather breezy. I don't mind or complain - heck, I could have waited some more, in order to "forget" more of the stuff and feel, but the game is enjoyable anyway.

Also, believe it or not, the second installment looks very similar, but some game mechanics were tweaked here and there in order to bring an original experience - it doesn't really feel superfluous.

Although if someone didn't like Blind Forest, he won't like Will of the Wisps neither.
 
LooseCannon said:
I like the game, and not just because my girlfriend is in the credits.
Click to expand...
What did she work on? That's pretty cool. An acquaintance of mine and some friends of his worked on some voice work for Fallout: New Vegas.

JudasMyGuide said:
I couldn't resist and started this one over again, this time on hard (and mind you, the game was already rather hard even on normal).

However it's similar to Alien: Isolation for me, that is - after I've suffered through my first playthrough I learned enough that this time around it's rather breezy. I don't mind or complain - heck, I could have waited some more, in order to "forget" more of the stuff and feel, but the game is enjoyable anyway.

Also, believe it or not, the second installment looks very similar, but some game mechanics were tweaked here and there in order to bring an original experience - it doesn't really feel superfluous.

Although if someone didn't like Blind Forest, he won't like Will of the Wisps neither.
Click to expand...
I've been putting off Alien Isolation, because I'm too chicken shit lol. After making it through Dead Space I think I'll be ok, but still... something about it truly terrifies me.

As for the Ori Sequel, the reviews I've seen/read says it takes everything that worked from the original and other metroidvanias (mainly Hollow Knight), dropped what didn't work/was annoying from the first and basically is what a sequel should be. I'll be adding it to my list when I can actually bother to buy games again. I keep telling myself, "It's only a year and you have a giant back catalogue."
 
Finished Shadow Of The Tomb Raider — pretty good, more exploration-focused than the other two reboot games, perhaps a little too long with all the DLC thrown in (I had gotten the Definitive Edition with all the DLC included on deep discount). I think I’m losing my patience for environmental traversal mechanics that don’t involve any particular thought or skill (e.g. climbing and shimmying in games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted). There were some traversal sections in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider that required better timing or some thought to cue things up, but they were few and far between. I’d like to see more stuff like the very end of Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands where you’re having to traverse a path that only comes together when you combine environmental timing with other player-controlled environmental factors and skilled character control.

I should probably finish up Adrian Smith’s book before I jump into another big game. Not sure if that’ll be RDR2, Nioh, or Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War.

Re: Ghostbusters, I actually bought that when it was down to $7.50 recently, but because RDR2 is still hogging 100GB of my paltry PS4 hard drive, I didn’t have the space to download it...LOL. Now that I deleted Shadow Of The Tomb Raider I would probably have space for it...
 
Jer said:
Finished Shadow Of The Tomb Raider — pretty good, more exploration-focused than the other two reboot games, perhaps a little too long with all the DLC thrown in (I had gotten the Definitive Edition with all the DLC included on deep discount). I think I’m losing my patience for environmental traversal mechanics that don’t involve any particular thought or skill (e.g. climbing and shimmying in games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted). There were some traversal sections in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider that required better timing or some thought to cue things up, but they were few and far between. I’d like to see more stuff like the very end of Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands where you’re having to traverse a path that only comes together when you combine environmental timing with other player-controlled environmental factors and skilled character control.

I should probably finish up Adrian Smith’s book before I jump into another big game. Not sure if that’ll be RDR2, Nioh, or Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War.

Re: Ghostbusters, I actually bought that when it was down to $7.50 recently, but because RDR2 is still hogging 100GB of my paltry PS4 hard drive, I didn’t have the space to download it...LOL. Now that I deleted Shadow Of The Tomb Raider I would probably have space for it...
Click to expand...
"Pretty good," is an apt description. I just felt... disappointed with how... hollow it felt. The vistas were amazing, obviously, but it seemed to lack the same punch the previous two did. Don't knwo where Square Enix will take it, but I enjoyed all three. My favorite is still RISE.

Definitely download Ghostbusters, I'm really enjoying it. The banter between them is great and the facial expressions are impressive for a 360 game. You can tell a lot of care went into every detail. Don't know if it is the particular style or actually doing mocap, but each face is very detailed, expressive and the eyes are... ALIVE, unlike the deadeyed, deadpan expressionless maniquins of say.... Bathesda.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jer
Well, right now I am mostly playing counter strike global offensive, call of duty black ops cold war, fifa 21 and sometimes I like to get into forza horizon 4. However, most of the time I prefer counter strike and fifa. I got really dissapointed by cyberpunk so I deleted it, and I am not looking forward to downloading it once again. Sometime, when I get tired of those games, I get to play some fall guys. Don't get me wrong, I got some trainers from https://wallhax.com/trainers/ for this game, and I am just having fun, making some experiments with the gameplay.
 
Last edited:
This week I finished Dandara and Ghostbusters. With Dandara I got tired of exploring every nook and crany and finished it even if that meant not getting the "real" ending. I'll get to the chests and that one room I can't seem to find a way into later. Ghostbusters was great. I might do an achievement clean-up like I'm doing with Bioshock 1 & 2 later as well, but I haven't had this much fun playing a video game in a while. It was immersive, funny throughout, just the right length where it doens't feel like a short experience or, like many games now-a-days, that it goes on forever, and as I previously mentined the graphics were a pleasant surprise, the voice acting was on point and the mechanics were adequate.

I'll continue on my 360 kick going back to the Alice games and Lost Planet.
 
I play a lot of CSGO and Valorant, which is not such an old game but it is a very popular choice for a lot of gamers. I know a lot of guys that left PUGB or CSGO and started Valorant with friends and are playing it for more than a year. The only problem is that accounts are stolen very easily. And after someone stole my account. I downloaded a hack from here https://battlelog.co/valorant-hacks-cheats-aimbot-esp/ and started to return to my old rank, but after even boosted myself a little and there is more than a month now and still no ban.
 
Last edited:
Saapanael said:
Looking forward to Diablo 2: Resurrected and Diablo IV. :dancinggeek:
Click to expand...
Diablo 2 was great. I'm also looking forward to Diablo IV, I hope they fix all their issues aka not suck.

Lost Planet 2 was a lost cause, no clue what is going on in that game, you can host campaigns, join campaigns... for a 360 game, which according to one of their execs, is NOT an online machine, this game requires xbox live play.... said fuck it.

Played Stela instead. It's a puzzle plataformer a lá Inside, Limbo, Little Nightmares, etc. You play a nameless woman who just runs and can grab items to solve puzzles. I really liked it. The visuals were cool, the soundtrack was great, it was short (2 hours), and oddly relaxing. Not worth full price, but definitely a worthwhile pick up on discount.
 
I decided to bite the bullet and pick up RDR2 again, and I was soon reminded why I put it down in the first place. It’s really pretty and expansive, but it’s just soooooooooo slow, and the whole thing with cores and gauges isn’t as intuitive as it ought to be, and Dead Eye is unreliable as hell compared to the first game, so I don’t feel like I’m in control in high-risk situations. And Arthur keeps putting away his weapons when he’s on his horse, so I don’t wind up having them when I need them.

RDR1 was great because you could focus on exploration and gunplay and there was always something interesting going on. RDR2 still has the exploration part, but everything else is horribly unfocused, and the controls fail you when you need them most. Blecch.

I’ll stick with it, and hopefully it will start clicking at some point. But when shit happens like pulling out a bow and holding it cocked, only to glance back and see that your entire stamina core and gauge are now suddenly empty with no real warning, and you have to fuck around three menus deep to figure out which tonic to use to halfway address the problem, I have to wonder how anyone ever thought this shit would be fun.
 
Picked up this month's Free for Gold games. Port Royale 3 and VALA. VALA is an acronym for something like something something Llama Apocalypse. I can't do it any justice so here's the trailer. I'm having A LOT of fun and laughing quite a bit. Great free game lol:
 
heff2jynhio61.jpg


:)
 
I'm SUPER stoked, because last night I was able to purchase Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 for a little over a dollar each! Xbox has a Capcom sale with games 20-80% off and I couldn't pass that up. It's weird, because the last time I looked for them, they were not available in the xbox one store, only the 360. If I wanted it on my xbox one I had to buy the Legacy collection 2. That annoyed me, because I'm not a fan of 7 and 8. So now I don't have to buy the games I don't want just to play the ones I do. So cool.
 
Still slowly plodding through RDR2. For some reason Dead Eye suddenly leveled up and started working the way it used to in RDR1, which helped a lot.

Had a pretty disheartening encounter where a random passerby died and fell off their horse in the middle of the road in front of me. Their dead body soon created a traffic jam, so being a good samaritan I picked up the body to move it, and suddenly everyone in the area saw me as a murderer and was a witness. What a crock of shit. I killed a number of them, but couldn’t quite get everyone, so I had to loot up to pay off my bounty and go on my way.

Killed a legendary moose and had its skin on my horse. Was riding back to the trapper when I was accosted by a wolf. Went into Dead Eye, set up three pistol shots to its vitals. Still didn’t go down. Now I’m spinning around in loops trying to target the stupid thing with no Dead Eye left, but it keeps running around my horse and biting me. Then it makes my horse buck me. Wolf comes at me, I shoot it in the face twice. Still doesn’t go down. Then it chews me up and kills me. The game loads up and informs me that I abandoned my legendary animal skin, but it’ll still let me craft dumb outfits with it if I want. No monetary reward, though. WTF.

At this point I think I’m just going to do story missions and ignore everything else. It’s not worth the hassle. Beautiful game, but so goddamned slow and clunky.
 
That's matching much of my experiences with RDR2. It's very pedantic in places. "My character smells so I should take a bath. Wait, there's bathing mechanics where I have to choose which limb to clean? Why?"
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jer
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top