What Game Are You Currently Playing?

I think sometime around 2000, the great minds of gaming must have realised that endlessly falling off platforms and instantly dying isn't actually enjoyable, at least not for the majority of people. I got very sick of the "splat-beep" noise in Half-Life that announced that you'd fallen off something.
 
I fell off things a lot in HL. :LOL:

I've been watching videos on YouTube of Horizon Forbidden West, so i'm going to have another run through of HZD. I couldn't get into Mass Effect.
 
My best result so far in revisiting Project Zomboid: lasted 3 days and killed 19 zombies.

What I learned this time around - don't try and kill zombies halfway up a staircase. For some reason (probably some kind of collision detection fault in the coding) you can't hit them.

Also, one of the most important early things to do in the game is find a can opener because, as the fresh food rots, canned goods are your only saviour (unless you take up farming or fishing). That's how I died by the way - I was going from house to house looking for a can opener but the last house I broke into had a burglar alarm and attracted dozens of zombies. Next thing I know, I'm backing up the stairs swinging my baseball bat at the horde.
 
Back to Stellaris, with a couple of updates. Some extra cosmetic options, new origins, some new mechanics I haven't encountered really yet.

Went with a subterranean origin and made a Svartalfr (dark elves) empire (I'd just read a great book on Norse mythology). Incredibly good start, with seven planets suiting my habitability (the standard is three) in the vicinity. Plus four wormholes, three of which are adjacent to one another, and a ruined Dyson Sphere megastructure (which will save me thousands of alloys down the line). One of the systems is a three-planet (all habitable) one I've not encountered before so probably a new addition, I think.

They've reworked how admin cap/empire size works, though, so I'm already over the maximum but there's no way around that.

Adjacent to me is a very friendly fallen empire, so that should help secure the southern (as it were) border.

Could all go very wrong, though, if I have some rough customers nearby. Only met the fallen friendlies and non-sentient lifeforms so far. (I always play with two fallen empires, prefer that way. Possible the other is blocking territory too).
 
I played some more of Jedi Academy. Given its age, the writers do a lot of clever things with what's available, and the missions are nicely varied. Just a shame the swordfighting is so dull.

Aliens: Fireteam Word Salad remains really good fun. It's not a clever game by any means, but small touches and attention to detail really help it.
 
After about 170 hours of play have reached level 31 on my Skyrim Legendary Survival playthrough. No longer a "glass peashooter" but still unable to take on enemies 1-on-1 unless they are: goats, deer, basic wolves, mudcrabs etc.; I am lucky; or can snipe them faraway with bow or magic (and they are the very basic version of the enemy). So now a "glass air-pistol" I suppose. Can finally take on basic trolls using my companion band - see later, although I still haven't managed to beat the git that lives on the throat of the world - because still quite easy to freeze to death on the way up that mountain if I decide to hang about and hit trolls. Still run away from vampires and those cult members looking for me - they are both b*stards

So have been gameplaying with constant companion and conjuration of other entities to tank for me, exploiting as much as possible: enchantments, potions, magic and shouts. And also saving a lot. Especially when locked in Boss Arena with a dozen enemies - which gets very hairy. However, still finding it fun to work out the best strategy to beat big bads - for example, leading attacking dragons onto bandit camps, so that they attack each other and helping you defeat both.

Have virtually no carry capacity, because survival difficulty, but then that's what a companion is for. And no fast travel...but I quite like wandering about Skyrim, as I find it very relaxing. Thankfully money is not an issue, loot drops and rewards in dungeons are not nerfed at these difficulty levels. Also enjoying the other survival mechanics - food system with hunting and scavenging veg from barrels/sacks and farms is much more important, as does the need to utilise the network of taverns across Skyrim so that you can rest.

Almost finished the first home at Falkreath, just need a pile of steel, slaughtfish scales and all the various bits and pieces to make the shrines.

And have finished 31 quests and 145 misc. objectives and started all the main questlines, apart from the civil war, although I've barely gone very far with any of them - 7 for the main quest. the rest just started.
 
Resident Evil 4 Remake: Chainsaw Demo. This demo is basically the beginning of the game and the village part (one of the most iconic). It took me 37 minutes to finish.

First Impressions: the graphics are great. I like the level of detail.

Most of the classic trash, B-movie dialogue lines are still there. In fact, when it comes to dialogue, the only differences I saw were in the Spanish that the Ganados speak: it’s now much more understandable.

As shown in the trailers, the radio transmissions are no more. There is a scene with Hunningan, Leon’s handler and it's just an ordinary cutscene. That’s such a letdown. There are radio transmissions with other characters, even villains, in the original game. I wish I saw that here too.

As for the combat, I found it a little hard to aim for the head. I miss the laser target; it’s much better than the crosshair. Maybe I’m a little rusty. (it’s been what, seventeen years now?) I got killed twice; twas’ awful. You can now parry Dr. Salvador’s attacks; it’s actually pretty easy. Other than that, I didn’t see much difference.

Can’t wait for this to actually launch.
 
Won the Scottish Third Division with Albion Rovers in Championship Manager. My goal is to be offered the Celtic job and take them to European glory once again. Now in pre-season before starting my second division campaign.
 
Kind of mixed with Stellaris playthrough, as I've never been attacked and have a defensive pact with perhaps the most powerful empire (aside from the fallen ones) but my fleet is only so-so and I'm a surprisingly large way behind on tech. Then again, it's my first game for a little while.

The new hyper relays are being used for a sort of galactic motorway, and I'll try out an orbital ring soon. Doing reasonably well overall. While tech is not fantastic my income generally is pretty solid.
 
I loaded up the original Thief (1998) and played one of the missions. Compared to Thief 2 (2000), Thief is rough and quite clunky, as if the designers hadn't quite figured out what players would want before they put it out. It feels harder than Thief 2, and the graphics are pretty ropey - close to the bottom of what I find playable. And yet it's very good: very atmospheric and tense.
 
So... this Stellaris playthrough is going kind of weird.

I initially got a self-defence pact with the neighbouring hive mind because my other neighbours hated me. This seemed to work in terms of deterring them.

More recently, the hatred the third best non-fallen empire and its fallen empire overlord had for the hive mind prompted them to declare war, which dragged me into it. Rough, and long, war but we managed to win and I gouged a few worlds, and a second science megastructure, from the non-fallen empire. During this war, the second fallen empire, with whom I had a border, declared war on the hive mind. At this stage I was pretty pissed off with my 'allies' for this.

However... due to good luck (and some sense building gateways) I got pretty much my whole fleet to defend my border and instantly annihilated the second fallen empire's fleet. Aided a lot, it must be said, by the hive mind I then conquered the entire fallen empire and got every single world.

I've also got a Dyson Sphere, plus two ecumonpolis worlds.

And yet... I'm still well behind the hive mind on the scoreboard. Currently going to open up the L-Cluster then I've got a secret fealty agreement I can use to get a new vassal and crush another enemy, but after that I need to decide whether to ditch this defensive pact.

Kind of odd everything going so well but still being behind on the scoreboard. In diplomatic power terms we're practically identical. Rather liking the competition, to be honest.
 
Toby Frost said:
I think sometime around 2000, the great minds of gaming must have realised that endlessly falling off platforms and instantly dying isn't actually enjoyable, at least not for the majority of people. I got very sick of the "splat-beep" noise in Half-Life that announced that you'd fallen off something.
Click to expand...
The trend probably came back in the late 2000s/2010s with the soulslike games :LOL: Falling off a cliff is by far the most common to die.
 
Also, surprisingly, in the Witcher 3. Relatively small drops can cause a lot of damage or just plain death. Which is blisteringly ironic after Geralt effortlessly slaughters a horde of monsters, only to die from a small fall.
 
I wonder if falling is quite difficult to programme? Skyrim and Oblivion had a problem with this as well, IIRC.

That's why I avoid anything like Dark Souls with a vengeance. I simply don't enjoy being angry and frustrated. These are not pleasant experiences for me and the reward of getting further in the game won't make them so.
 
Skyrim's can often be sidestepped with the Become Ethereal shout, though. It's incredible useful for cutting journey times by just leaping off a mountain.
 
Toby Frost said:
I wonder if falling is quite difficult to programme? Skyrim and Oblivion had a problem with this as well, IIRC.

That's why I avoid anything like Dark Souls with a vengeance. I simply don't enjoy being angry and frustrated. These are not pleasant experiences for me and the reward of getting further in the game won't make them so.
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The bigger the troughs, the higher the peaks are - I like such an approach, it's the same as doing hi-intenisity exercise, horrible half-way through, but when you finnish, the feeling of bliss is more than worth it. Also it does you good (in both cases!)

Re: falling. Bethesda has always had fall damage, so if you fall a certain distance you've had it. With games like dark souks I think it's render distance - essentially you are falling out of what the computer has modelled, so the program has to kill you as you are out of bounds. What I find a bit lazier are when Rockstar didn't program swimming in a lot of its earlier games, so the second you hit a body of water...you instantly died.
 
Venusian Broon said:
The bigger the troughs, the higher the peaks are
Click to expand...

A while ago, a wargamer friend of mine said "The pleasure of winning isn't as great as the pain of losing", which sounds like the sort of thing Pinhead would say if he was a football coach. But I think there's some truth in it. I suspect I have quite a low frustration level as far as games are concerned, and jumping games make me strangely uneasy (perhaps linked to vertigo). I don't really play games to "beat" them as much as experience them, and if the experience is just getting killed over and over again, I won't enjoy it. Each to their own, I suspect.
 
I'm easily frustrated with games - especially if I think it's more to do with the UI rather than my lack of skill (something I probably claim more than I actually should).

I think I agree that sometimes it's worth pushing through the proverbial pain barrier and an example is my perseverence with Project Zomboid. The controls are, to put it mildly, bloody awful, but I'm glad I stopped whining and just kept practicing because there's an absolute gem of a game there. Just to balance things here - although I don't like the controls, I can't think of a better way to do it. That probably explains why I'm just a moaning numpty and not a games designer.

My real problem comes when I think the sacrifice in my time is not met by the reward a game gives, and all the jumping in Half Life just wasn't worth the effort. Although I thought it to be a pretty decent game, I never rated it as highly as the critics and many other players did. It was, as I said, decent, but not so decent as to justify expending all that frustrational energy.
 
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