Badmovies.org Forum

Continued from http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,116492.1980.html. (http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,116492.1980.html.)

I'm still playing Skyrim. Pretty deep into my Thieves' Guild run. Then I'll do Mage's Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and any miscellaneous quests I've missed before moving on to my next game (I'm thinking it's time to tackle the Mass Effect trilogy).

Do you have any of the DLC for Mass Effect Rev?  That's the one annoying thing about the trilogy now, the repackaged trilogy lacks all of it and the DLC costs more than the actual game now. Most of it is totally unnecessary, but there's two of them in part 3 that might be worth looking at when you get to it.  The Javik character DLC and the Citadel DLC.  Just a heads up. 

Personally, I'm playing an RPG called Age of Decadence.  It's pretty neat, in a post-apocalyptic but somehow Roman Empire inspired setting.  I'm playing as basically a con man who can't fight at all, and the game supports that really well.  Solidly written too.

I also just beat Tesla VS Lovecraft, a neat little twinstick shooter.

I don't own the game at all yet, it would be me next purchase. I just learned that the entire thing is going to be remastered, so I might wait for that.

Oblivion and Skyrim have been the only computer games I've played for about the last 5 years, going on 10. There's a lot to do there, especially with mods, tremendous value for money.

(Also, I'm lucky if I can find a couple of hours a week to play a computer game.)

Had a crack at Mr. Do! recently; this is one of my better scores.  One of my favorite games ever!

(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/02cd2122-ddde-4a33-9039-4ac0f3ab0deb/ddwq7i8-68130476-3f31-44c1-b125-ff5270743aa1.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMDJjZDIxMjItZGRkZS00YTMzLTkwMzktNGFjMGYzYWIwZGViXC9kZHdxN2k4LTY4MTMwNDc2LTNmMzEtNDRjMS1iMTI1LWZmNTI3MDc0M2FhMS5wbmcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.mKSEH90wxTqNfi26kSbxaWmZaz76g5uL6k_HhnOiFZw)

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVHmdaXwLXs#)

Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Animal Crossing and Pokemon Sword for the Switch.

i bought a years worth of PS now tonight for $42 bucks. check out the days of Play it ends on Wed. you have to apparently go to the PS Store to buy it and not a real store which really is just plain stupid but what can ya do ya know? i was playing a little bit of Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty one i haven't played before when the stream cut me off, my guess it's not my connection as i tested it first before i bought it, with this pandemic going on there's no doubt a crap ton of people online so that doesn't help me at all ya know?

Persona 4 Golden Steam port.

The original version of Persona 4 Golden was my favorite game of all time.
Now I can play it in 4K at 60 FPS. It's a dream come true.

i was playing some Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty (2008) the other night on PS NOW. i signed up for year's worth of it for only $42 bucks this past week when Days of Play was going on i'm only like i think 40 minutes or so into the game

The old, old arcade game TARG.

Holy crap, this is one of the hardest games I've ever played.  You move a car around a 9X9 grid of squares, shooting really crafty enemies that try to ram you.  They take a different path to avoid your shots and try to find another way to reach you.  And when you're low on enemies remaining they speed WAY the hell up.  From time to time a bonus enemy emerges from a square and tries to ram you but they're not nearly as much a pain.  This one's way up there with DEFENDER on the challenge scale.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/iXkuMdfYpZQQaX2pDTuCDh3ZpEWW39jRGP4tbPck9AUUCMCC0TByfKZXhYdnrlCBl2zR1W_6O_QD5SJFqRaPoCNvp-bW_KcyzuI3nAxD6eeeX4KVlnaQ)

I just beat the remake of Link's Awakening. 

I had played and beaten it before way back when it was on the Gameboy.  It was nice to revist it again.

http://youtu.be/YgBaf3onLWs (http://youtu.be/YgBaf3onLWs)

Creaks comes out tomorrow, I'll be playing this for sure!  :thumbup:

Been Playing Roller Coaster Tycoon II a bit lately. I create a basic plan for a park in the Scenario Designer, then I try to complete it in the actual game.

i started playing Super Lucky's Tale and ya know what? it's not that bad of a game i had played so little of it since i bought it when i bought my X on day one.

i dunno why i just have and now that i've played a little bit of it, it's pretty good i think

Snowrunner, it's a sequel to Mudrunner, which is a getting stuck in the mud with logs simulator.

Fallout 3.

Injustice 2 and WOW just WOW does the joker look simply awful and the voice was crap too but playing as Harley was freaking awesome though and she's so far my favorite to play as.

I am intrigued by the Fallout television series in production now.

Me too, although in my case I find myself wondering if people will get stuck walking into a wall or occasionally just walk through them.

Anybody else been following the beta for Mortal Shell? It's as close to Dark Souls 4 as we're likely to get anytime soon.

Beware Mortal Shell! Beware! Beware! Thirty wasted bucks, ten wasted hours. It's not a good game and it's definitely not another Dark Souls. And besides, you want water, go to the well. Dark Souls still rules!

Sea of Thieves.  It's a fun multiplayer pirate game depending on the server you get into you can have a chill time searching for treasure chests or end up in a fight with people that enjoy PVP.
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5JIBaasuE8#)

that looks fun!

The classic scarefest SINISTAR!
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8S5VSwcNag&t=316s#)
RUN COWARD!

For the first time in a loooooong time, I am playing absolutely no video games. Partly I needed a break, partly I've been unimpressed with anything I've seen released in a long time. (Maybe major titles are being held now for the next generation of consoles?) As a result I've tripled the time I've invested in reading.

I do imagine, though, before the end of the year I'll power up Dishonored and begin my zillionth playthrough of that great game. I've still never made it to the end without killing anyone, but I have done it multiple times with only one fatality: invariably that one early guard during the prison break. Shrug, a slaughterfest is frankly a lot more fun.

I have now logged 671 hours on Skyrim, and I'm not done yet. I'm going to make one or maybe even two more characters after I finish this one.

(https://cdn-cf.gamivo.com/image_cover.jpg?f=134&n=2b9668c0-784a-11e7-8203-abacaa3272cd.jpg&h=4a597d4b64356b07e1b90869f14a5e19)

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/di4e6R5suXs/maxresdefault.jpg)

What is the best wave you've reached?

(I think I have made wave 4 at best, do not remember for sure.)

It's too bad they made the warrior waves so hard.

Have you ever done the "255 lives trick?"  (I have not, but am tempted to try.)

World of Warcraft (classic).

Been playing Cyberpunk 2077.  Luckily on PC, though my rig can't handle it as well as I'd like.  It still plays mostly OK though.

As far as the game goes...  It's good, but not incredible.  I'm like 20 hours in or so.  There's some very good writing and character stuff, the world looks very good, but the actual core gameplay isn't blowing me away, it's just "good".  I will say bugs and glitches have hurt the experience, even though on PC it's not generally game breaking.  Stuff like parts of the interface staying on when they're not supposed to (like the popup for picking up an item), textures taking too long to load in, weird physics, the run button randomly stopping working until you reload your save.  

Oh, and some of the systems are very poorly explained or oddly underwhelming - definitely feels like the game wasn't 100% done when they released it.  For example, the explanations of leveling and text messaging systems in the game are very half-baked.  Combat is also either extremely easy or you instantly die 95% of the time - I think I'm forever going to be of the opinion that leveling in an FPS/RPG almost never works very well.

At this point, if you haven't already bought it, I'd suggest waiting six months and then getting it.  You'll have a better experience and probably pay less.  I lucked out and got it cheap, so I can't complain too much.

Also, this is hard to explain and probably quite personal, but the character you're playing as, V, is definitely a defined character...  But it being first person, and the way this is balanced with your choices, I dunno, it doesn't feel quite right to me somehow.  Like you're HALF in control of your character, and it'd be better if it was more in either direction?  From what I've seen of the Witcher games (especially 3), with Geralt being even more defined in personality than V and the game being in 3rd person, it worked better.  Same with the Mass Effect games, though Shephard isn't as strongly defined of a character as either V or Geralt.  

My retro trend continues, and I'm replaying Oblivion, which I think is the best Elder Scrolls title.

None. Zero. Zip. I been on a reading trend the last month and haven't turned on any gaming consoles at all since I last played Oblivion.

I haven't been impressed with anything new in a while and that's why my playing for the last year has been focused on classic titles I liked: Dishonored, Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, No Man's Sky.

The last new games I bought didn't do it for me, one was The Outer Worlds, the other a Dark Souls 3 clone with excellent visuals and horrible internal design, and I am starting to wonder if the industry is in the doldrums, updating and relaunching old games or releasing clones of them under new names, since let's face it, all video games are spokes off the same few wheels, and no new genres have been introduced in decades.

I dunno, I figure what goes around comes around and I'll get back into playing eventually, but in keeping with the trend, the game calling my name these days is Dark Souls 2, a title I've been playing off and on since its 2014 launch, and which I've beaten up to NG5.

Ah, maybe Elden Ring won't suck, huh?

i really haven't played that much lately either i was playing a little big of Majora's Mask on my 3DS a few days ago. 

Finally got Gex to work; it froze after the intro on my PS1 & 2, but it worked on my PS3. Played a couple levels of that, then tried Lair again.

I recently finished all the major quest lines in Skyrim (main, companions, thieves, assassins, mages). I'll be cleaning up some of the minor quests (Daedric and others) then finally moving on to something else after years of nothing but Skyrim (and years of nothing but Oblivion before that). I plan on doing the Mass Effect series when the remaster drops, in the meantime I think I might try out the Halo series while I'm waiting for that. Not really attracted to first person shooters, but it's so universally beloved I think I should give it a chance.

NBA 2K21 for PS4
Silent Hill for PS1

I started on The Walking Dead Final Season, but haven't touched it lately.

Finally got RCT3 to work, so I’ve been playing that.

Also, I hooked up my Atari 2600 today & played a stack of cartridges I’ve been meaning to try. Favorite game of the bunch: Worm War I.

I just beat Ghostrunner.  It's parkour cyberninja first person slasher.  Quite difficult.  I enjoyed it basically, but it has a number of pretty serious annoyances.  Biggest one - the game frequently checkpoints, but doesn't save your progress, so if you want to quit and come back to where you were you must finish the level.  Oh, and sometimes you'll die literally 100+ times at one checkpoint (you die in one hit and the game almost instantly restarts from the checkpoint), so you'll want to quit and come back so you don't have to replay 90% of a difficult level.  Ridiculous it doesn't save at all - there's no reason I can think of not to.

Still it was fun enough it's worth a play if the genre description piqued your interest and you can handle high difficulty.


I'd suggest looking at more middle and low budget games, especially indies.  You'll have a bit better luck.

i was playing a little bit of Mario wii U on my switch this afternoon it was the 1st time i had really played in awhile as i haven't played anything in quite awhile since i got my PS5 back in November i played that non stop for a couple of months than i got burnt out by video games for awhile.

Hi. New Board Member. Have been lurking for weeks and enjoying this awesome site, then finally registered to identify a movie in the "What Was That Film?" board. After a long absence from gaming (while adulting), I had a breakdown the past couple of weeks and played several things, spending the most time on one that I have quite a bit to say about (and may do later). But just briefly, I loaded up GTA4 last night for the first time since late December 2017... specifically the Biker Gang campaign from EPISODES FROM LIBERTY CITY. Once in the club, I did the same thing I probably did 4 years ago... immediately ran upstairs and played CUBED (or QUBED?) for an hour. It's a simplified and possibly even more addictive TETRIS. I may never make any more progress in any GTA4 campaign, but I'm likely to keep it installed forever just for CUBED. If only Rockstar would release it separately I could delete GTA4......  :twirl:

i dunno Cubed to be honest but Tetris is among my favorite games of all time

Mine too - played it endlessly on the original Game Boy way back in the day and then had an old arcade stand-up in the arthouse movie theatre I managed 20 years ago (with access to the coinbox, so I would just cycle the same few quarters through it every night after closing). CUBED is TETRIS with just cubes (squares) instead of the full array of shapes. Two come down at a time in different colors - blue, red, yellow, green, purple, orange - and you need to link 4+ of the same color (in pretty much the same shapes as in TETRIS) in order to make 'em disappear. Easier than TETRIS, probably, hence I can play longer w/o eventually filling up the screen, yet like TETRIS, that endgame is inevitable. Shame that Rockstar never made it available on its own - but maybe that would constitute some intellectual property violation.  :lookingup:

I went through an "addicted to Tetris" phase.

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Trying to create a garden/park in the sandbox mode. I think RCT2 has better scenery options, but RCT3 will let me see the park from a guest’s viewpoint.

Provided I can figure out how the camera works. :/

Nintendo released news about the next batch of games on Nintendo Online and other than Joe & Mac the rest i have honestly never even heard of

I finally got around to installing Demon's Souls into my PS5 so now i just need to play it lol

If you're curious, Magical Drop is pretty fun.  I have Magical Drop 3 on a stand-up Neo Geo cabinet, though the cab is at my mom's house now.  Spanky's Quest isn't bad, but I barely remember it - I rented it when it was new.  Super Baseball Simulator... Well, it's an OK baseball game, but not my thing.  Ninja JaJaMaru-kun I'd never heard of either.

Oh, and I'm playing a Souls game myself - Dark Souls 3.  I've beaten it once before, as a sorcerer, now I"m replaying it as a melee class.  Great game, but I think it's my least favorite of the three.

Ratchet & Clank (2016) i had to install it on my PS5 and start a new game but i don't care i hadn't played it in ages anyways and i have so far actually gotten farther than in the game that i had before go figure

this new Ratchet and Clank is bad ass i'm already almost halfway through it and i just started played it Tuesday night

I've been playing Viscera Cleanup Detail again. It's probably the most gory relaxing game that I've played.

well i'm still playing the new ratchet and clank game lol it's so much fun i hope the next one comes out sooner than 5 years from now

I beat Gato Roboto last night.  It's a 2D Metroidvania where you play a cat controlling a mech.  It was quite, light, controlled well and entertaining.  Pretty easy and short though - I beat it and found most of the secrets in just over 2 hours.

sometimes you just feel like an easy game to kill an afternoon or an evening we've all been there

I do that with Red Dead Redemption 1 a lot; log in just to play Texas Hold 'Em all night. The cool thing about that game is if you lose then you can always blow away your opponents and take their money that you lost to them, then shoot your way out of town and run for the hills while The Law chases you down.  :cheers:

On PC: I've been playing a lot of American Truck Simulator lately. I've owned the game for 3 years now but hardly ever played it because I was having trouble getting out of the damned parking lot at the very beginning of it. Now that I've got a handle on the game, I can't stop playing it and am now even considering a late-in-life career change and getting a CDL to become a truck driver because of it, well that and the $100K + salary that it could bring. My current job requires a lot of driving but only around town, which just doesn't satisfy me quite as much as long-hauling would.

On Xbox Series X: I just bought this thing last week and I'm having a blast playing and replaying older games that I've had for a while on the Original, 360, and One X. Thankfully, they optimized my old favorite Sniper Elite 4 to take full advantage of the Xbox Series X. Ray tracing looks amazing in that game. I've been replaying a lot of Forza Horizon 4 too; I'm happy that they kept the ray tracing subtle on both of those games; they seemed to overhype it for marketing purposes. It's a cool feature but not really game-changing, in my opinion.

Finishing up the grass starter run of Pokemon: Sword

Found my copies of Crash Bandicoot 1, 2, & 3 the other day. The graphics are still really good!

Metroid Dread (Switch - 2021) - The true 2-D Metroid successor I've been waiting on for years.

Battletech.

The latest Steam update somehow deleted all almost all my Skyrim saves and mods (I found them in my recycle bin, but I didn't put them there). ALthough there are still a few things I haven't done in Skyrim, I've completed over 90% of all the content, so maybe this is karma's way of telling me it's time to move on to something else. I have my eye on Disco Elysium, which I could probably finish failry quickly before getting a new PC.

I recently sold my PSVR, which gave me splitting headaches  and extreme eyestrain (so I never played it more than about 15 minutes at a time), to buy an Oculus Quest 2.  This one doesn't bother me much at all.  I think it has to do with the higher resolution of the display and less jitter.  If you've ever been curious about VR, the Quest 2 is an excellent entry point, I am very impressed by the hardware for the price point.  Apparently Facebook loses money or at best breaks even on them, and I believe it.

So I've been playing a lot of Beat Saber, as well as trying out a few free games like Pavlov Shack and Echo.  Beat Saber is a blast, though it seems to aggravate my stupid elbow, so I've been trying to keep it limited to 20-30 minutes a day.  Decent exercise too.

Started Disco Elysium. Haven't gotten very far but loving it so far. I always wanted to play a role-playing game with (basically) no combat.

Not started playing it yet, but it has been recommended that I buy The Bard Tale series and give them a play. They seem to be fairly cheap on Steam so I'll give it a go.

Assassin's Creed Origins. Again. (I got so motion sick playing the other night while hurrying through a series of tunnels that I thought I was going to have to lie down and grip the carpet to keep from falling off the world.)

I've been kind of going nuts with the Dark Souls trilogy.  I beat Dark Souls twice (fourth time total), beat Dark Souls 2 again, and am now about to to beat it once more...  And I'm playing through 3 co op with a couple of friends.  After that we plan to co op through 2.

They're fantastic games, as much as they also irritate me while playing them.

I'm hoping to get them out of my system completely at least a couple months before Elden Ring comes out, so I can start playing it next.

anyone watch the video game awards? they were f.. terrible this year and  just the two of us or whatever the f... that won i haven't heard anyone really say gee you must get this game well not like Spider man for example.  anyone play Guardians of the galaxy?  i bought it and have since beaten it i love the game i really hope they do a 2nd game.

I know this sounds seriously lame but I play Angry Birds 2 on my smart phone daily: quite a funny game.

I especially found the ads built into the game awards embarrassing to watch.  Imagine if Ryan Reynolds came on stage at the Oscars and started pitching Mint Mobile.  Cringe-inducing. 

At least It Takes Two winning the top award was more interesting than some of the other options.

I wanted to play Oblivion but instead I put on Dishonored 2, which was my least favorite of the four Dishonored titles, and I began a new run-through with Emily, and while I had no issues playing it in 2016, yesterday I was so motion sick before I was out of the tower that I felt nausea for most of the rest of the evening. Let's hope that's not a trend.

i have nothing against Take Two at all but i do not know one person who's even played it i've heard nothing good or bad about the game so that winning game of the year really baffled me. nobody online or off ever mentions it at all now God of war... i still here how damn good that game is and it is i own it myself. 

i've been playing some of the Arkham games on my PS5. i beat Guardians of the Galaxy awhile ago and that one is a must get for those who have not played it. if you don't care for it at first i didn't keep playing and you i think will fall in love with it like i did.

Red Dead Redemption II, which is serving to prove that when it comes to gaming, beauty is not everything.

Indeed, despite the gorgeous graphics it has been almost unbearably slow-paced and boring so far. It had a five-hour(!) tightly-controlled first chapter that functioned as a tutorial-lite, and I thought I was going to lose my mind plodding through all that deep snow at a snail's pace doing tasks I did not want to do.

I loved the first game a decade ago but this one seems boring despite all the glowing reviews it's gotten. Maybe it gets better? I hope? Surely sooner or later I get to gun down a nun, right?

Hopefully I won't get motion sick on this title.

I've been playing Dying Light 2.  It's very OK.  Rough, a bit unpolished, overstuffed...  But passably entertaining.  I dunno, I expected more.  I wouldn't have bought it so soon, but some of my friends wanted to play co op.


I do think it gets better, but not completely.  If you get through another chapter and you're still really not liking it, might consider stopping.  It gets better, but never stops having long periods of slow moments.  I particularly find the long, long segments where you're driving a wagon somewhere and characters talk to be tedious - just play it as a cutscene and edit it down, don't make me barely interact in a boring way while listening, it's just irritating.  Especially as if you divert like 10 feet off the path they want you to do, you fail.

I did like the game overall, but I found the pacing and restrictive narrative stuff for much of it to be off-putting.  The first game is better.

I'm replaying No Man's Sky. But instead of play the storyline (I didn't finish it), I'm playing the constructive mode, more than nothing I'm testing some mods.

I like the game, but after a time, it is feel repetitive. The same thing happens to me with Conan Exiles. Each time that I get news about a new update, or new content, I download the update, play some hours, and then I get bored.

If I am in mood to start playing again the main story, I gonna use some mod that skip the tutorial/introduction I found, but not today.

Total War: Warhammer III. To be entirely honest I am feeling a bit let down by it so far. I wanted a game where I could play as any faction and set out to conquer the entire world. I haven't played it enough to tell if the full world is available, but I can't take just any faction. Oh well, I can always go back to Battletech.

RDR2 has gotten better but it surprises me that a game hailed as a masterpiece doesn't have more to recommend it.

I think I'm going to miss jumping into Elden Ring at launch because I can't see walking away from RDR2 so early in the plot, but Elden Ring is my next title and it's possible I'll jump ship if I get tempted enough.

Apparently Elden Ring is getting unprecedented positive reviews. I'll wait awhile until it's patched but if these notices hold up I'll probably get it, assuming that someday I'll have free time to play video games.

As of three minutes ago ELLLLLDEN RIIIING!



Added after a couple hours of playing.......

This is an intense, fascinating, and intricate game that has more beauty than Dark Souls, and gives a player more choices to make than Bloodborne or Demon Souls. It stands on its own but does resonate with past FROM titles, and every few moments reminds me I am playing Dark Souls 4, albeit a less vicious installment in the series. It absolutely draws you in and activates curiosity about this vast, perilous world you're dropped into without much information. I'm enjoying it and so far it shows every sign of living up to the glowing reviews. I really think this is a game that will bookmark a new era in the industry.

It's been that good.

WHAT SHE SAID!!!
This game is GLORIOUS!

Meanwhile, everyone is playing Elden Ring, I'm downloading Conan Exiles. I gonna give it another chance.

I only hope that Elden Ring doesn't become in a few weeks the new Cyberpunk 2077. Too much hype, too much game's awards before even the game was finished and launched, and few days after the release...the horror.

I hope so too but I can say it isn't a day-one letdown like No Man's Sky six years ago.

Conan Exiles is a survival game, isn't it? If it's the one I'm thinking of it looked interesting. There was also a Conan game, not that one I think, whuch was like Age of Empires. You built cities and economies and waged war with giant arachnids and seige weapons, and that one made me want to play it but I never did.

Yes, Conan Exiles is a survival game, based of course in the Robert E. Howard's Conan canon, but not in a particular story or arc.

The game you said that looks like a 'Age of Empires' is call 'Conan Unconquered' and I think is based on King Conan stories.

Also, there is Age of Conan, which is a MMORPG with mostly free content, that according to the official description 'takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon'.

All the three games are licensed of Funcom.

I beat CP2077 in the first few weeks after it came out and am like 15 hours into Elden Ring.  No chance of it being another CP2077, it's already technically much better than CP2077 was (especially if you're playing both on a base console, PS4/Xbone) and a much better game too despite some technical problems.  I'm getting stuttering issues which I really shouldn't for a PC as strong as mine, but other than that really good.  CP2077 had endless bugs, glitches, crashes, falling through the world, broken quests, bad performance, and I was on a PC well above the minimum specs - it was far worse on base consoles.

Also, Elden Ring so far is wonderful.   :teddyr:

^ Yes, I read some reports from relieved players that Elden Ring is not the new Cyberpunk 2077, besides the fps drops, and other flaws.
Sadly, as my PC is not a gaming rig, and the price on Steam, I'm not giving a look to the game for the moment (for that reason I said, 'every is playing Elden Ring...' in another post).

Get fun!

Elden Ring (all hail Elden Ring: Hail! Hail!), day three report card.

The Good: almost everything.

The Bad: It's annoyingly difficult to travel great distances in a straight line when the terrain is so mountainous, with so many cliffs. It's like Skyrim minus the road signs and guards who kvetch about getting shot in the knee. Fast travel helps but not when you're exploring new areas.

The Ugly: Most of the foes you sink your sword into are sooo ugly they look like their parents were siblings as well as monsters.

Bottom Line: A classic of the 2020s, Elden Ring takes the baton from Dark Souls and does what it did in the 2010s, only better.

First Term Grade: On a scale of negative two to positive thirteen, I'd give this game a twelve!

I can't disagree much!  ELDEN RING is a blast.  My problem is my approach to the game - I tend to find a boss I want to beat and keep hammering at him, then go harvest souls - er, I mean, runes - until I can level up a time or two, and then hammer on him some more till I finally win. I've made about 40 runs at "Magrit the Fell Omen" and still haven't beaten him.  I need to explore more.

After a month of playing Elden Ring and getting my character to level 67,  I have reached a point where I need a break.

I still think this is an impressive game but it's not a perfect game, meaning it has some real flaws.

I played every Souls title to at least NG2, and one to NG5, and found no matter how hard they were they remained fun, and that pushed me to keep going to challenge a boss for the tenth time, to keep pushing on against whatever frustrations arose, and while I went into Elden Ring "prepared to die" I have found myself lacking that motivation, not because the game is hard (it's not as hard as any Souls game) but because....it's devoid of some x-factor the Souls titles had that kept them enjoyable no matter what madness they threw at you.

So, I am going to stop playing Elden Ring now for however long it takes to get me motivated to leap in again. Maybe this summer? Maybe never.

Good luck to everyone still battling it out in that perilous open world!

My conspiracy theorist workmate is obsessed with Elden Rings and says he can no longer play Dark Souls because this new game does all the same stuff but better. He really wants me to play it, but somehow him encouraging me to do something only makes me want to do it even less at the moment.

Nevermind, I'm back in love with Elden Ring.

Playing Shadowrun Returns. My Street Samurai has just taken down a body part collecting serial killer and has hired a crew to investigate the pseudo-religious organisation that was pulling the strings behind it.

I beat Elden Ring, and for now have moved on to Weird West.  It's pretty good.  Plays like Fallout 1 or 2, or Divinity Original Sin, ya know, tactical turn based RPGs with lots of options in combat...  But it's a real time action game.  This fun and interesting, but also overly complicated, and the game is isometric in view with a moveable camera.  The whole thing gets unwieldy.  It's also in a horror-fantasy western setting, a bit like Hard West, which seems like an influence.  Story is thin, but the setting and atmosphere is good.

I am enjoying it, but it's not great.

Finished the first Shadowrun game and am working my way through the second. I always dislike it when you don't get to play the same characters in a sequel. The first game was fun enough, but way too liner. Hoping the second will give you a bit more freedom.

i had to buy a new copy well it was used of Arkham Knight mine needed replaced and plus i bought one that i've been looking for a long time and i never did get around to buy it online from amazon.  and that's Infamous Second Son for PS4 but at least you can play it for the PS5!  that game is worth the price i paid for it i forget how much it was but i bought it used at game stop. i don't mind game stop i never have had issues there they had one close to my doctors when i went on Monday and to kill some time before i had to go in we went to Game stop. i bought my Nephew the new Jurassic Park Evolution 2 game for his b-day

he's got a PS4 we got him a couple years back. i don't think the PS5 was out yet but i do not remember to be honest and if it was i really didn't feel like spending $500 bucks on a game console for him.  the PS4 was cheaper and a great console he's only gonna be 11 this year. anyways Second Son was an even better game than i thought it was going to be. i tried to play the first Infamous game on PS Now i think? and i can't play it the controls for it are really really awful.  the camera for it was dreadful and hard to use.  it's only a miracle that game got any sequels at all

I completed Battletech, so now I am looking for something new to play. Might try one called Old World, but that will have to wait for Tuesday (payday).

I am playing Rescue Rangers 2 for the original NES.  It's decent, but most definitely a step down from the original.  I want a cartridge of it, but it's over $200...  So emulation for me.

i dunno how to do that or else i would i do have the 1st game on cartridge in fact i had bought it used waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the early 90's i believe. no case i didn't get it when i bought it.  and i've never beaten it before i've never played the 2nd one though.

i was playing a bit of God of War (2018) the other night i hadn't played that in f.. ages

The original Settlers.

Thinking about thinking about giving RDR2, which I shelved when Elden Ring came out, another go. You know, thinking about it.

I think I'm experiencing burnout on all my games. If they ever do release Deathloop on PS4 I'll try it but for the first time in a long while absolutely nothing is appealing to me.

Started Dishonored again for, I dunno, the seventieth time? Promptly got motion sick.

Perhaps the grand age of gaming has passed in my life.

You might try  quitting entirely for a few months or a year or two, and then trying with something very different when you think of it again.  It has come and gone for me at different ages, personally.

Maybe....

I'm still trying to figure out PacMan  :buggedout:

Dishonored is the sort of densely-packed game that after a decade still reveals new things on every play-through. I did a medium chaos play-through in late July, then a low-chaos play-through (I only caused two deaths the entire game, and one was an accident after i dropped an unconscious person on stairs), and right now am on the highest chaos run ever, literally killing every figure in the game I am allowed to kill, in order to see what happens. What I discovered was the high-chaos changes to the scenario begin even on the first outbound mission. I saw these holy men executed one of their own for being infected with the rat plague, when in other scenarios, the man begged them to kill him in order to spare his suffering, and it was done gently by his friend. That's just one minor shift I've caught, but I hadn't noticed so many variations came so early, depending on your moral choices and actions. Dishonored is the most deeply-layered game I've ever played, and that combined with its moody setting, the depth of its world creation, the fluidity of its AI, makes it one of the best classics ever..

Prey,  by arkane and bethesda. A real thinkers fps. Basically an updated version of system shock 2. Good storyline and character development, interesting npcs, missions and more.

 A mission that got to me was finishing a dead TTRPG group's last adventure.

I'm inclined to agree with you about the nuance and level of detail in the game, even after a single playthrough (almost 10 years back). I'm a habitual Save-and-Reload gamer, as I don't have a ton of time to replay games - even the best ones. So if I am in doubt about my choices in a game like this, I am apt to load a recent save and try something different, just to see what will happen. Often the multiple outcomes are clear even within missions, in more-or-less real time...

And furthermore, DISHONORED is one of the rare games that doesn't necessarily wait for you to show up and trigger an event... my impression from wandering about, catching snippets of dialogue or action that I'm not directly involved in, and sometime reloading to see more of the same event... is that the business of the game's world is often going on whether you, the player character, are there to see it or not. THAT'S freaking cool - even though it frustrates me to think what I may have missed or be missing. Not many other games appear to attempt this level of vibrancy and dynamism in their environments. (I think the METRO series of games try to do this.) Again, it's been 8-10 years since I played it and I still remember many moments with extreme clarity.

All that said, I will confess that I felt nonplussed about how the final stages of the game seemed to respond to my relatively "high chaos" approach. The player character is an infamous warrior and assassin, and from the opening levels, supporting characters are asking you to go one one impossible mission after another, and often to extinguish serious threats to their (and your) survival... and while there's usually one NPC who takes a moment to remind you of some kind of nonlethal options... I mean, you're a mega-badass facing off against legions of killers and corrupt scumbags. Yet in the final couple of levels, characters who have been happy to benefit from your achievements the whole game suddenly turn all judgmental on you and condemn you for doing everything that they knew all along you were good at doing. This seemed clunky and artificial to me... in a game that is so sophisticated in so many other ways, I wish the writers and/or programmers had handled the "bad" ending with a little more subtlety and taste. But of course, it is an FPS, not an arthouse film or something.

One more positive thing I will say for DISHONORED, directly related to movies: it has some of the best big-name celebrity voice acting in any game I've played, or rather, it has LOTS. Michael Madsen, Susan Sarandon, Lena Headey, Brad Dourif, and there are more I'm forgetting - all totally in service to the plot and characters, no one breaking the immersion. Sarandon actually gives the best performance I think she's given in the 21st century. Even the non-celebs (or at least vocal talent whose names I didn't recognize) are strong - the guy who voices the Butcher Bill-esque gangleader is exceptionally good. I guess I am seconding your recommendation!

I think I'll get Choo Choo Charles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHeN0uAY-8E (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHeN0uAY-8E)

Anybody gonna play Hogwarts Legacy? Aside from the wandering the castle part, I don't know how much it appeals to me. Especially for almost a hundred dollars.

I asked Kristi if she was interested. I think she is tempted, but she is still thinking about it.

^ Its appeal level is low. I have seen most of the sights and sites within the game I wanted to see on YouTube, and visually it is a masterpiece, letting players see things and go places readers of the books always dreamed of, but in terms of gameplay and composition, much of it looks unappealing, to be honest, and it has parts that look genuinely boring. If I see it marked way down in the future I may get it but probably not before then.

Finally decided to start playing Fallout 4 again. The game is running much smoother than it did on release, and I can actually manage to fight things. Only played up to where you rescue some folks in a museum from raiders, then fight a Deathclaw.

Off-topic: This looks interesting, to be released this November.

The Day Before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJhlxI0uTfk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJhlxI0uTfk)

I keep trying Total War: Warhammer III. The difficulty level seems much higher than the previous instalments.

I haven't touched a game in weeks. Almost months.

Since it was advertised as the game and expansions being free for a while, I thought I'd download D&D online and play it for a bit.

Its ok. Not compulsive playing, but it keeps me amused when I feel like playing a game.

Downloading the old Aliens Vs Predator game since it is on sale on Steam for £1.

I just beat Hogwarts Legacy the Sunday Morning i think? it was a damn good game too, yeah i can see why to some it feels you just wonder around.

there aren't that many big bosses in the game well not as many as in the god of war films for example. but The Trials are awesome there are 4 of them the first 2 are pretty good but the 3rd one is my favorite one and the 3rd and 4th one aren't the same as the first 2.   i have the side quests done now i just need to finish the collections as i'm currently 92% complete 104 or 105 hrs into the game i think?  i have it on the PS5 and if you get it on the xbox it won't have the haunted shop you can only get that from Sony. when you beat that you get your own shop and your own house elf too it's pretty sweet actually.

i loved the story as well there is one character in it though his story got pretty dark actually. he's not a boss or anything but a friend and you don't fight him
either. it's well worth a play i think

I've concluded I am burned out on video games and nothing new has interested me since Elden Ring last winter, and nothing new for a long time before that. Even my old favorites seem stale.

Reloaded Disco Elysium on my computer, started up a game, realized I hadn't played in over a year and had no idea what was going on, so I started a new game from scratch. Very cool game, though.

WWE Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain. PS2.

Greatest wrestling game made. Decent graphics for the time, perfect roster.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. I just got all Steam achievements in Dark Souls and want to do the whole series.

Nice work. I've not played that one on PC myself (although I have played the boardgame), but from what I am told it is a very difficult one.

The expansions were impressive but somehow not as enjoyable as DS2  itself, I thought.

I'm playing D4 and I feel old. The game is so overly complicated that at some points it makes me want to reinstall D2R and just farm Mephisto over and over. Still, I'm enjoying it enough, I only wish I had a better computer.

Dark Souls for the ? time in eleven years. Maybe my all-time favorite and still as enjoyable as ever. Like crack to my latent nerd gene. Still a challenging puzzle, still a rush.

Been playing Baldur's Gate 3.  It's very good. 

Decided to pick up Cyberpunk 2077 and give it a go. Downloading it now.

Just finished a nostalgic playthrough of OBLIVION, and now I'm about to hit up DARK SOULS 2.

Chess, Checkers, & Ludo on a tablet. (Ludo is to help my self esteem after the computer beats my pants off at the other games.)

Pokémon Blue, Yellow & Crystal, on occasion. (Finally found my old copies.  I was afraid they were gone for good! :smile:)

WWF No Mercy. Nintendo 64.

I'm Taka Michinoku vs. Road Dogg Jesse James right now

Last Train Home.

I been having an inkling to start up where I left off on Elden Ring two years ago. Played it almost daily for two months and one day abruptly stopped mid-fight and never got back to it, but it's a great game (the maddening map excluded) and I think I could have fun reconnecting.

3D Dot Heroes

Think Legend of Zelda but made out of Minecraft blocks.

Got into a sticky spot in DISCO ELYSIUM: I couldn't pass a check I needed to advance the plot, and I had just about run out of side quests so I was having difficulty getting enough experience for my skill point. I also think I'm (finally) nearing the end.

I am also playing a bit of online Dune Imperium.

Trying ELDEN RING again after stalling out the first time.

I've had this game for a long time but it wouldn't run in playable way on my desktop, but I am finally playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my new laptop. Enjoying the game so far.