Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Rico]

[Friday]

"here, we know you want to play dq8 again so here's some starting gear to make you think you are"

[François]

When I started my DW1 LP, I had no idea this was coming up. And now it'll still be months and months before it even starts making sense for me to think about buying it. :D

[Friday]

Dragon Quest character tier list

B Tier

Jessica, Angelo, Torneko, Aishe

A Tier

Yangus, Alena, DW3 Female Solider, DW3 Female Wizard

S Tier

Sandy the Smog Paralyzer (Dog)

[Rico]

100% accurate.

François: I'm not very far in, but yeah, it is A Dragon Quest Game. You've earned your break.

[Thad]

"here, we know you want to play dq8 again so here's some starting gear to make you think you are"

Well, it has been 13 freakin' years since DQ8. I'd have preferred something more in the mold of DQ5, 7, or 9, but 8's mix of gorgeous graphics and accessibility as a jumping-on point is worth going back to.

I hear it runs under Linux, which is a plus; I hear it uses Denuvo, which is a minus. In case of a tie, my fallback position is "Hey, isn't there a shitload of games I already paid for? Maybe play one of those."

So anyway I went and played Zelda.

[Friday]

FRIDAY'S IMPRESSIONS SO FAR

"Hmm, this seems easier than typical, but DQs tend to ramp up later, and there's always Draconian Restric--"

*Great Sabercub frolics freely!*

"God damn it this enemy is bullshit using an attack that grants invincibility now I have to run away"

[Rico]

Great Sabrecubs are pretty great but they're no Sham hamwitch.

[Friday]

Yeah I was actually coming here to talk about how I threw my controller and shouted when I first saw them

Small mechanics spoiler/info for those playing: There are respecs now (I guess they unlock later, maybe halfway?) so feel free to do whatever with your skills because unlike 8 you don't have to worry about locking yourself out of the best endgame spec

[Friday]

Well, hit the point you can respec. It's not halfway, that post I read was full of shit. It's really early on, within the first ten hours or so. (Or much faster if you're not an "explore literally every rock" slowpoke like me.)

20 gold per point reset. Cheap and easy.

Now some other news,
An entire town full of dudes
Who speak in haiku.

Searching the bathhouse
I found, inevitably
The puff-puff woman.

But her puff puffs were
sadly, not in haiku, so
My heart is empty.

[Brantly B.]

Soft sacs smoosheth thee.
Be they treats, or be they beasts?
Nay, best not to know...

[mharr]

Hey uh, if any of you happen to have Night Dive's re-release of the original System Shock, they've dropped a rather quiet engine update that makes it just plain work on modern systems. Switch to OpenGL, activate linear texture filters and anti-aliasing, hit the old fullscreen button and press E for freelook, and you'd think it was an indie project released on itch.io this year.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/0 ... -rerelease

... I am just going outside and may be some time.

[beatbandito]

If anyone else here is terrible enough to play Maple Story 2 (fully f2p on Wednesday) Mad Gear lives on U.S. East.

It's isometric now with a terrible static camera and okay diablo-like combat that works fine with keyboard or controller. You can upload your own textures for icons, equipment, some furniture and public advertising which somehow I haven't see go terribly wrong yet, and freeplay or upload your midis to a special mml type for instrument. Other than dungeons and leveling there's lots of dopey minigames to play in groups and guild or as open events and the public community isn't terrible, largely because almost everything is shareable and instances so there's no fighting over resources.

The pay shit is completely ridiculous, but limited to cosmetics (uploading files and in-game outfit items) and stuff that makes gathering and crafting less of a slog, or at least lets you idle through it. I'm on the edge because if you just play around like a casual game you should never have to pay, but for any level of customization or secondary character skills you are going to need to, and the numbers are pretty high (item to toggle gear slot visuals costs $10).

Basically it's fun and dopey and if you want to have dopey fun and can hide your shame, come hang.

[Newbie]

Apparently I bought Tacoma during some Steam Summer Sale or other, and since I really liked Gone Home best out of all walking sims I've played, I was pretty excited to finally play this one now that I have a laptop capable of running it.

The context this time is that you're a contractor who's been hired after the Tacoma orbital station had to be evacuated; your job is to recover the station AI, along with any Augmented Reality recordings you can find. Each of the six main sections of the station has a major recording of the events of the last 72 hours, through which you can piece together exactly how and why the station had to be abandoned. Because these are "augmented reality" recordings, they play back in 3D in the environment where they actually happened; when a group splits up, you can follow one couple out of the room to hear the rest of their conversation, then rewind and follow a third party in a different direction to see what he did instead. They all have AR consoles that pop up in front of their faces as well, which you can interact with to see what they were accessing at that time--messaging apps, email, online shopping, etc. There are also a bunch of minor, often incomplete recordings with little more than audio, usually in peoples' private quarters or other isolated spots. Access enough of these recordings and AR consoles and your handlers will clear you to enter the next two areas, before finally grabbing the AI wetware and leaving.

It's pretty good! I really enjoyed the setting; the Tacoma station feels plausible, for the most part, and it's fun to peek into people's bunks and rifle through their offices. Plus, the AR playback gives you a lot of excuse to hang out in areas you'd normally walk right past in other games; sure, everybody might leave the locker room early in the recording, but if you stick around, you can hear a broadcast from their employer about contemporary events. Little touches like that meant that exploring felt rewarding across the entire game.

A friend on another forum complained that the game's politics are so impeccable as to be distracting, and I can kind of see what he means. So many characters are such Good, Earnest People that anything outside those boundaries is rendered almost cartoonish. Otherwise, my only complaint is that the pool table physics are a little klunky, but the fact that the pool table even works is wildly unnecessary. Overall, I recommend it!

[Maximillian]

Forza Horizon 4 is my first step back into the series since Forza 3. They're very careful in the language to never imply that anybody has lost a race. They'll print 'Finished' on the screen, even if you're in 12th place. Screwed up on a corner and took out a ton of barriers? You got destruction points for that. There's positive reinforcement on this game akin to your parent(s) coaching you on your first time learning to ride a bike. My roommate, who isn't very big on video games, has taken to this like crazy and is now glued to it.

Also, Bond cars!

[WingSounds]

Ooo, a friend of mine really likes the Forza series. I'll have to recommend it.

I hope it's okay I'm regenerating an older thread, but - I've been replaying Heroes of Might and Magic II, again. It's so good, maybe my favourite of the Heroes of... Series. Everything about it is just so charming. Maybe I just find the art extra appealing, but it's another title I'll have on my backlogs of ancient junk to playthrough for people at some point.

Also, the intro cutscene still makes me chuckle. While Archibald was.......... not so good.

Edit'd, wait WHAT, SS1 was remastered?! I LOVED IT INFINITELY OVER SS2 WHICH WAS STILL GOOD BUT -
It's getting a REMAKE
How did I not know this?!

[mharr]

Ohhh the SS1 remake is a storied tale. Shamus Young is probably the best place to get the overview. https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysided ... m+Shock%22

[WingSounds]

Oh, dear, that timeline is... Not encouraging.
Well, I have editing to do, but this seems a good time as any to go in.
If I don't puzzle my way out by tomorrow, send help..!

Edit'd, finished the podcast if that's where things are at the state of the moment.
Lord of light, that's disappointing. Not surprising, but disappointing. Still - it may yet become a game, so, I suppose we'll see?

[beatbandito]

Pokemon Let's Go: Good Version (You Know Which [The One With The Better Companion]): Is definitely a Pokemon game. Or maybe it isn't? I don't really know what pokemon is anymore. I appreciate the simplification of IV and natures, and the removal of breeding. I was able to build a full team with appropriate natures and respectable IVs without much hassle (except for Dratini) and could have worked much, much harder to get all perfect IVs which I didn't. Catching wild pokes is fun but incredibly frustrating and doesn't seem to follow its own rules. Everything else is essentially simplified Red & Blue with a lot of ease of use changes. Also Giovanni isn't your dad anymore, it's officially Mr. Mime.

Rust: Is Rust! Fallout 76 made me decide I wanted to try a new survival sandbox and this is disappointingly exactly what I knew it would be. I punked a couple Australian kids and otherwise have been either spawnkilled by mute assholes or killed immediately after establishing any kind of foothold by geared out squads all exclaiming "whoops, sorry" after effortlessly tearing through me. If I had more time I'd join an established clan and probably have fun, but it's no good for solo online builder shenanigans if you're not already a pro.

Pathmaker: Kingfinder: Is a good cRPG. Character creation has good model options with dumb generic outfits for each class, simple portraits but you can add your own, and a good variety of classes and archetypes that are limited by feat choices and item type availability. The story so far interests me, the characters are well designed and written if they are all very generic and candid in their moralities. I haven't gotten so far as to even find or make any kings, so I'm missing out on a lot of mechanics from what I understand, but if I was just progressing forward as I am now I'd still be compelled to go on. Mechanically it plays like basically any crpg with real-time 'rounds' and pausing to queue actions. Most of the complaints I've heard about were difficulty here, but that is 100000% player choice. There's a built-in very robust difficulty manager that lets you immediately and at any time change pretty much any numbers in combat. My main complaints are: The enemy type of "swarms" which is a ton of critters all banded together as one monster unit that is only affected by fire or acid splash damage, which is pretty much exactly the same as trolls other games as a test if you have a sorcerer in your party or are just going to have a shitty time. Dice rolls outside of combat or persuasion boil down to clicking the same item over and over until you get it, or reload because you're locked out or died from falling off the same log ten times. Camping is the fucking wooooooorst, you still need to rest as often as classic crpgs (aided by exhaustion debuffs even if your heals and spells are holding up) but now it consumes items, requires (to be fair not much) actual micromanagement, and still takes up hours or days despite time and deadlines being real concerns here.

[Niku]

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR ONE

this is so goshdarn clever

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR FIVE

there is so much more to this than i was expecting

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR EIGHT

okay i guess i can detour into another submap while i clear all this shit out, don't wanna miss anything

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR TWELVE

jesus this is uh, meaty huh

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR FIFTEEN

what the christ do you mean there's another fucking map

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR TWENTY

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

WORLD OF LIGHT HOUR TWENTY THREE

fuck you i got 100% fuck you forever you tedious piece of shit

CHALLENGE BOARD: YOU STILL NEED LIKE 300 SKILL SPHERES TO GET ALL THE ABILITIES :)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA