The "What are you playing now?" Thread

[Chris]

Been playing Gears 5 after signing up for the Game Pass with cloud gaming. Playing that shit on my past its prime PC and it runs more or less flawlessly.

As for the game, if you've played one Gears, you've played them all. Take a lot of cover, kill a lot of enemies that look more or less exactly the same, get annoyed at a random difficulty spike where the game developers decide it's time to sodomize you, and also annoyed at the various types of smaller enemies that rush toward you, but wriggle back and forth so they're difficult to target with a controller when you're being shot at by forty different greyish blurs in the distance...rinse, repeat.

The story is reasonably interesting and the voice acting is quality. It's also very pretty, and has a blessedly varied color palate by Gears standards. You spend a large chunk of the game either in the desert with blood red sand piled over everything or in the arctic with prevalent snow and ice.

The enemy rotation has been a little weak, though, and there are rarely encounters that feel very crafted like those fucking juggernaut Locust in the first game that would instakill you if they ran into you. Each of those segments felt specifically tailored to the scenario, whereas here they'll occasionally throw a super tough enemy at you, but often it's in environments that make those enemies annoying to fight rather than fun.

The act two boss fight is particularly annoying because the game essentially cripples you to make it more difficult, occasionally throwing up a red fog that's entirely in your character's head that obscures your vision and makes it damn near impossible to know if the boss is going to charge at you or leap at you, one of which requires you to hold your ground and the other to dodge. I find that to be bad game design. They couldn't figure out a way to make it more difficult organically so instead they just make it harder to see things.

As always, your AI teammates are the next best thing to completely fucking useless. They seem to mildly injure the enemy, but they'll rush into death with an urgency that would make Leeroy Jenkins proud and yet are rarely in a similar hurry to help you when you get downed.

I imagine I'll finish it, which is more than I can say for most games these days.

I liked it a lot. Was one of my favorite Gears games I think. I may have just caught it at the right moment in my life.

 

[Jack Brickman]

I liked it a lot. Was one of my favorite Gears games I think. I may have just caught it at the right moment in my life.

I'm enjoying it enough that I actually plan on finishing it. I just think it feels pretty by the numbers for the Gears franchise. I'm only a little ways into act three, though, so I've got some game to go.

At least it's less grey than most of the previous games.

 

[Kouki]

Super excited for Elden Ring...cleared up space on my PS4 this morning. Unfortunately I don't think I'll even get to enjoy it till like...Sunday night. Fuckin adulting.

I think I'm going to go in completely blind to really capture the magic of the earlier Souls games.

FYI, pre-order gets you a "digital adventure guide" which sounds intriguing for a blind playthrough . Deluxe version (extra $20) gets you the OST and concept art

 

[Ohio]

Super excited for Elden Ring...cleared up space on my PS4 this morning. Unfortunately I don't think I'll even get to enjoy it till like...Sunday night. Fuckin adulting.

I think I'm going to go in completely blind to really capture the magic of the earlier Souls games.

FYI, pre-order gets you a "digital adventure guide" which sounds intriguing for a blind playthrough . Deluxe version (extra $20) gets you the OST and concept art

Yeah I pre-ordered for this exact reason. Figure it should help while exploring.

I too won't be able to play for several days as I'll be out of town until Tuesday night. Sucks lol

 

[Marcus]

Horizon has been fantastic, despite a few bugs.

I am over the moon excited for Elden Ring; probably my most anticipated game in years, and I have all of next week off.

 

[MRMsix6]

I installed Elden Ring on PC, spent about 30 minutes trying to get my Xbox controller to function with the game, gave up after trying every solution available, and decided to use mouse & keyboard. I then spent another 30 minutes trying to change the settings via mouse & keyboard in the game's menus, which are also complete trash and non-functional on a keyboard, before uninstalling and refunding.

The game looks pretty amazing...if you can actually play it. Unfortunately, the reality is that this is easily the worst PC port I've ever touched.

 

[Kouki]

Elden Ring

Pros: colorful, jumping, existence of a map, some tutorial information, "rump", died a lot

Cons: not sure if map will be useful, dogs, menus too small to read easily, I still suck at parrying, died a lot

 

[Blazie]

Just wanted to come in here and say thanks for the suggestions in this thread... would have missed out on Hades without it. Game is cool as shit.

Currently playing WH3 (CA might be my favorite developer of all time, although I prefer the historical games more) and hades... thinking about grabbing a ps4 for the exclusives I missed or a switch for the same reasons. Don't know which yet.

 

[Kouki]

Lmao I have abstained from all responsibilities and have put like 15+ hours into elden ring so far. And I feel like I am just getting started really. Just been wandering and ignoring the main quest. Now doing all the side dungeons I've encountered

 

[foucault87]

How is Elden Ring if I have never played a soulsbourne and have a garbage reaction time? Am I just gonna get frustrated and never play again?

 

[Chris]

How is Elden Ring if I have never played a soulsbourne and have a garbage reaction time? Am I just gonna get frustrated and never play again?

Probably, in all honesty. These games aren’t for everyone, but it’s part of their charm. Maybe pick up Bloodborne or something on the cheap and if you dig it, you’d probably like Elden Ring.

Game is sick, btw

 

[Jack Brickman]

My favorite part of this game so far was when you exit the door to enter the Limgrave region for the first time after completing the tutorial. Straight down the hill is a knight in golden armor called a Tree Sentinel riding a horse. I walked down to check him out and was dead before I even knew what happened to me.

Game reminds me a lot of Breath of the Wild, to be honest. Enemies hit really hard and you can really quickly find yourself overwhelmed, but since there's only the vaguest outline of a set path for you to follow, you're free to go do something else until you can power yourself up enough to get past previous obstacles.

 

[Jack Brickman]

How is Elden Ring if I have never played a soulsbourne and have a garbage reaction time? Am I just gonna get frustrated and never play again?

From what I've seen so far, it's just as difficult but also quite a bit more forgiving compared to previous games. The open world gives you a lot more freedom to just go do something else when you hit a boss you can't beat and it's pretty easy to grind experience as well to level yourself up a bit.

 

[Kouki]

There is a new mechanic though with boss fights. Their attack speed is super varied which makes "reaction timing" way more difficult than previous games.

Still always ways to cheese tho. Second boss I got some help from some people and ended up running around the arena for the last two minutes waiting for poison to kill it lol

 

[Jack Brickman]

For anyone just getting started, if you see glowing skulls lying around on fields in Elden Ring, if you break them open you get a golden rune worth 200 regular runes. They're all over Limgrave and can help you level up quickly early on.