Please discuss all the latest titles and news in the video games industry.
Latest posts by GC Staff (see all)
- Crit Hit Video: Loretta - March 19, 2023
- Crit Hit Video: Yuppie Psycho - March 1, 2023
- The Forest Quartet Review - February 28, 2023
Tags: Watcha Been Playin'
Playing a few different games with my 5-year-old son recently. Pikmin 3 – Played the first two with my wife and now we’re both playing with our son. We have the final boss left to fight, but we have loved this game. It seems a lot easier than the first two and the Wii U’s controller really seems to be a benefit for him while playing. Super Paper Mario – We’ve been playing this off and on for two years and we finally beat the final boss this week. When we first started playing, I just gave him a controller… Read more »
I’m in the post-Souls doldrums, which has led me to make some regrettable decisions.
Borderlands the pre sequel – blech
Lumo – ugh
Dishonored GOTY edition – boring
All abandoned. I did finish the Banner Saga though; console implementation was a big fiddly, and they may have made it easier, the final fight in particular. Good, though the port seemed to be done on the cheap; lots of spelling errors on the flavour text etc.
Tried getting into Transformers Devastation, but three levels in I realized I just wasn’t enjoying the game. Instead, turning my focus to Super Meat Boy. Really enjoying it so far. Can be tough at times, but never where I feel like giving up. Of course I’m only two worlds in, so that feeling may change. Also, currently playing Pokemon Shuffle nearly every day. Not a big fan of free-to-play games and only played one other Pokemon game (the underrated Snap on the N64), but am addicted to this little game. Works as a good little distraction for 10 minutes in… Read more »
Mirror’s Edge should be in the mail tomorrow. I am avoiding reading the reviews, so I can form my own opinion. I have seen the “okay” scores. If it is anything like the first, I’ll really enjoy it despite the flaws.
Put some time into Overwatch. I like it. Good change of pace from the military shooters. Needs more game types though. Ones that utilize the full maps.
Wouldn’t a real forum be better? Then again anything decent with protection is 50-10$ a month ><
I am doing Dark souls again finished it a month or so ago, working on skyrim mods putting off FO3/NV mods, going to fire up Wolfenstine 09 with a mod I made that makes heavy armored guys more like big daddy’s as far as taking damage goes.
The forum has been a chat room for about 5 of us in the past couple of years. I think I’ll miss having a real forum, but I am not surprised by the change.
I can understand that its not worth it,maybe an IRC chat would be better?
Wow. I’m gone for like one year and they change everything. I’m going to miss the old forums too, but yeah, this makes sense. Though I’m not seeing a way to log in? That seems odd.
I pretty much haven’t played anything all year except for Heroes of the Storm. I ran out of things to talk about on the old forums. I’m having trouble keeping up conversations in general, actually, since so much of my time has gone to the same game that everyone is tired of hearing about.
Finished Doom, Uncharted 4 ( unsurprisingly a poor game. Naughty dog have only got 1 out of 4 Uncharted games right ) and Quantum Break.
I’m replaying Half Life 2 and episodes 1 and 2. The small varieties of enjoyable combat encounters design is still so far ahead of anything else today it’s shameful. It’s why I’m on my 12th play through of HL 2 and episodes.
For your pick of the one Uncharted they got right, is it 3?
3 had some last of the last generations best set pieces, but for me the poor balance and tuning of the gameplay was a fatal flaw for 3. 1 was low on ideas and high on repetition. 4 has insane amount of climbing in the game and should really be called : Nothing Left Unclimbed. Minor spoiler about one small section that does set a lot of tone a lot for this game, and I’ll speak in a generally vague tone in Uncharted 4; There is one section where you lose your partner. Nate calls out in the darkness and… Read more »
I whole heartedly concur, there is just too much climbing in Uncharted 4. I played one past Scotland (not wanting to spoil too much ;-)) and I can’t bring myself to continue. If I see another slidey-rope-swingy-climby-jumpy-section I might start to cry. Not cry, but probably just switch the game off again. The problem is that the “climbing” in Uncharted just isn’t all that interesting, challenging or engaging, and it doesn’t stop. The climbing sections just go on and on and on until I’m begging for some shooting and pushing a crate around for a change. It’s just not very… Read more »
I think Naughty Dog were desperate to increase the play length of this game, so they made a really bad decision and quadrupled down ( at least ) on the climbing, which absolutely no one I read asked for more of in the previous Uncharted games. climbing is what you do most in this game and like you said it kills the pacing, inducing yawns of boredom more than anything else. There is even in the statistics page the distance that the player has climbed and for me it was 4.6 km and I completed the game. The statistics should’ve… Read more »
I am really enjoying Uncharted 4. Never even thought about all of the climbing. The traversing the terrain has been a highlight for me. The shooting sequences are the part of the game that seem out of place for me. Nathan Drake doesn’t come across as a killing machine to me.
I’ve been playing the hell out Overwatch, and dipping into Hitman every once in awhile to relax. I’m looking to get some more hits in the Sapienza episode before I dive into Marrakech. Also, resisting urges to pick up Stellaris and am very excited to play Brigador which finally released today.
I haven’t had much time for gaming over the past few months (I have a lot of irons in other fires…), but I have put about 42 hours into Bloodborne. And since I never got to talk about it on the show, I’ll talk about it here. I have a hard time imagining me liking any of the Souls games more than this one (which is impressive, because I really love Demons Souls). This is basically the perfect Bracken game — the gothic setting, the creepy ambience, the constant stress over dying…fuck, this is the 3D Castlevania game I always… Read more »
I also went back to try Bloodborne again (bounced off it completely the first time). I can’t say I adore it: a significant portion of its apparent difficulty is just tedious nonsense (par for the Souls course), everything is so gray I *constantly* mistake player echoes for enemies, and while it has a more compelling human element than DS3 that would be damning by faint praise for any game not made by FROM. I’m sticking around mainly because I’m a sucker for Lovecraftian fantasy and because I enjoy the aggressiveness and pace of combat. Alas, it seems like an attempt… Read more »
Glad to see Sparky commenting here. Hope to see more of it.
Bloodborne is my favourite Souls-like so far. I got into it a bit later than most, thanks to travelling when it came out and having to buy a PS4 first of all, which had the advantage that I was playing post-patch and never experienced the awfully long load times it had at launch. It tells the most personal story of any recent From game and since I was on media blackout I had no idea what was coming. I was expecting to just deal with goofy looking werewolves and vampires throughout the game. Boy was I wrong 😀 After a… Read more »
Could use a little help from the PC graphics card experts out there. I recently purchased an Nvidia Shield Android TV box and its capable of Gamestream with most Geforce GTX cards. I’m trying to decide between 750, 950 or even 970 for perhaps future VR use (i’m not going to be an early adopter, but I might like the option). The 970 at $200 for the cheapest models are on the high-end of my budget. The 950s are as low as $100 and the 950s are about $150. What card do you think is the best bang for my… Read more »
If you’re not going for VR straight away, I would suggest going for a cheaper option. GPU prices will only ever go down, therefore I would recommend to get your VR ready graphics card upgrade at the time you actually buy your VR set. The 950 should do well for most modern games. With the 750 you might find it struggling with more recent releases. My card is VR ready (R9 390), but am considering an upgrade when I grab my VR headset, but not a second earlier. Also, later this month the new series of GPU from AMD comes… Read more »
The 970 has been the card to get for some time — runs virtually everything on max settings (and I’m still on a pitiful i5-2500K) and seems from my observation to be the most popular choice among enthusiasts. I paid a lot more than $200 for it a while back and it was completely worth it.
Mike, I’m still on an i5 as well so you’re in good company. 😉 And thanks everyone for their responses. This was perfect and such a throwback to the old forum days.
I’m still using my 2500k. I moved it over to my living room PC and paired it with my old GTX 670 FTW. I have it overclocked to 4.7 Ghz on air.
I bought a 970 in February, and it’s running every game I throw at it on max or near-max settings, including Fallout 4. Deep down I know I should have waited for the 1070, but I’m totally satisfied, even on my 4-year-old i7 processor.
I second the 970-I put one in my new system and it handled Dark Souls 3 and Overwatch like a champ.
The 970 should be great for running anything out there right now at 1080p, and there will likely be a window between when the new Nvidia cards come out and the old ones sell out where the last gen cards take a small price cut.
I’ve been slowly progressing in my soul level 1 runs of Dark Souls 3, and also went back to Dark Souls 2 for a bit to directly compare all parts of the now (presumably) complete series. I was always a bit grumpy about Dark Souls 2, especially some of the level design seems bland in comparison, but revisiting it I found new appreciation for the title since it at least tried something to mix up the formula. The DLC of Dark 2 is really well made and some of the NPC invaders are genuinely funny. Also little things like “knocking”… Read more »
So, is the general consensus that you should play vanilla DS2 and not Scholar of the First Sin? I have both games here unopened — I may actually play one someday…
Personally, I think Scholar is better than vanilla DS2, but both are solid. Scholar does one *very* specific thing that I hated, but beyond that I thought the changes were positive.
I always intended to play Scholar and skip vanilla DS2 — which is why I was surprised to see Li-Ion’s comment going against what I thought was the conventional wisdom.
I sold you on Bloodborne. I’d never steer you wrong on Souls Mike.
So true — Spock sure did nail it on Bloodborne.
It’s not so uncommon for people who started with vanilla to dislike Scholar. If you never played Dark Souls 2 before, I don’t think it matters all that much with which you start. However, Scholar did some odd things with enemy and item placement, which I simply didn’t like very much. My prime example are the Heide Knights, but going into much detail here would go into spoiler territory and some people might wonder what’s going on. Essentially it’s the “Han shot first!” debate of Dark Souls 😉