What Video Game are You Playing Now II?

[Alex]

World of Warcraft (classic).

[Jim H]

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.  

[ER]

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

[ER]

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?

[pennywise37]

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. 

[pacman000]

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.

[Rev. Powell]

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.

[A_Dubya]

NBA 2K21 for PS4
Silent Hill for PS1

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

[pacman000]

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.

[Jim H]

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

[pennywise37]

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.

[M.10rda]

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...... 

[pennywise37]

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

[M.10rda]

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. 

[Rev. Powell]

I went through an "addicted to Tetris" phase.