What Are You Playing 8 (2023 Reboot)

[ArmyOfOptimists]

B movie games are nearly always the best games in my view. If you plotted my mean enjoyment and respect for a game as a function of review score, it would be an upside down parabola with its peak right about an 80 - 85. Go much under a 70, and the jank is too much, but once you push north of 90, the polish starts to remove innovation and soul.

Yeah, I call those types of games "strong 7s". They may not be as polished as major releases and maybe some of the offerings are slim or janky, but what they do well, they do really well. God Hand is my poster child for the category.

After finishing it, I'd probably call Lies of a P a "strong 8." It's a bit more polished than you'd expect a Souls clone to be even if it's not as fleshed out as the FromSoftware titles. There are some genuinely neat ideas, though. The recharging health potion is genius and something I think even FromSoftware could learn from.

[warty goblin]

Yeah, I call those types of games "strong 7s". They may not be as polished as major releases and maybe some of the offerings are slim or janky, but what they do well, they do really well. God Hand is my poster child for the category.

Ayup. The tricky bit is sorting the good 7s and 8s from the boring just don't work out ones. Sometimes a 7 is a 7 because it's a worse version of a 9, sometimes because it's something super weird that the niche studio that made it would never get the budget and time to actually pull it together.

The thing that makes BG3 so awesome is that they basically made a eurojank B game with the time and budget of a much bigger game. But it still has the sensibility of a B game.

[Rodin]

Yeah, I call those types of games "strong 7s". They may not be as polished as major releases and maybe some of the offerings are slim or janky, but what they do well, they do really well. God Hand is my poster child for the category.

After finishing it, I'd probably call Lies of a P a "strong 8." It's a bit more polished than you'd expect a Souls clone to be even if it's not as fleshed out as the FromSoftware titles. There are some genuinely neat ideas, though. The recharging health potion is genius and something I think even FromSoftware could learn from.

They did that with Elden Ring - once you clear an enemy group in the over world you get potions back relative to the number (or sometimes quality) of the enemy you defeated. They turn this off in dungeons where they can more accurately gauge the length. I do like the “final flask refreshes” mechanic in Lies of P as it lets you bring a boss fight back from the brink.

[warty goblin]

They did that with Elden Ring - once you clear an enemy group in the over world you get potions back relative to the number (or sometimes quality) of the enemy you defeated. They turn this off in dungeons where they can more accurately gauge the length. I do like the “final flask refreshes” mechanic in Lies of P as it lets you bring a boss fight back from the brink.

Something similar shows up in the Surge 2, where you fill up a battery when fighting dudes. A full charge can either be spent on chopping off one of their body parts - which is how you get to loot whatever is attached to that body part - or on healing you back up. It's not a bad system, honestly if Surge 2 had less Soulslike Annoying Level Design^TM, it'd quite like it.


Edit, got Starfield onto the SSD, which renders it very much playable. The Expanse vibes continue to be strong. Shooting dudes is surprisingly pretty good, not Doom or Titanfall 2 levels of crisp, but completely tolerable. Though how well it weathers Cyberpunk + expansion next week is anybody's guess, everything I'm hearing says CDPR have finally turned in the game Cyberpunk always should have been.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Edit, got Starfield onto the SSD, which renders it very much playable. The Expanse vibes continue to be strong. Shooting dudes is surprisingly pretty good, not Doom or Titanfall 2 levels of crisp, but completely tolerable. Though how well it weathers Cyberpunk + expansion next week is anybody's guess, everything I'm hearing says CDPR have finally turned in the game Cyberpunk always should have been.

I'm torn on Cyberpunk. On one hand, good on them for turning the game into what they'd promised originally. On the other, it's been three years since they released the original version. That's like half the original development time spent fixing it, which highlights just how rushed out the door it was. Any praise for delivering on their promises seems misplaced, given they took my money already.

Also, it probably doesn't fix the writing issues I had with the game, which were my biggest complaint. I had surprisingly few bugs even at launch.

[Eldan]

Honestly, playing a few months after release and on PC, I was entirely happy with Cyberpunk. Gameplay was only okay, sure, but still entertaining, and I thought the worldbuilding, characters and story were all fantastic. I didn't think it was a bad game, though it could definitely have been better and it needed more bugfixing and testing, apparently (never saw a bug myself.)

So, this is just bonus and I'm very here for it, it looks amazing.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, Cyberpunk was a perfectly fine game on release, though definitely carried by the NARRATIVE rather than MECHANICS. It was still pretty fun in the moment-to-moment sense though. Looking forward to trying out the update this evening.

[Anonymouswizard]

I imagine Cyberpunk ran into the dual issues with first getting feature trimmed and then getting rushed out to launch in 2020. I liked it when I played it, but I'm not one for open worlds anyway and when I ran into a corrupted script file issue couldn't be bothered to actually fix it and continue playing.

Of course now my PC isn't going to be able to run it anyway, at least until I can afford a few hundred quid in upgrades (or possibly a whole new machine and rededication of the current one to games from the noughties and early tens).

[Batcathat]

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to play after finally getting around to finish XCOM, but I stumbled onto Pathway completely unplayed in my Steam library (I think I bought it at some point? But maybe it was some sort of givaway?). Anyhow, decided to give it a shot and it's quite fun. Very charming and the gameplay is simple without feeling too repetitive (so far, at least).

[warty goblin]

So made it to Artemis City in Starfield. It's uh, look, not to run the Cyberpunk comparisons into the ground but it ain't Night City. I honestly found it less impressive than the Imperial City in Oblivion. Sure it technically looks better, with higher res Bethesda Brand Potato People, but it has zero verve. It's like somebody decided to let you walk around a theme park version of a matte painting of "futuristic city" from a very uninspired sci fi movie.

It also hits you with a real case of First Town Arrested Momentum Syndrome, where the very opening of the game has stuff happen, and then all that slams to a screeching halt so people can talk at you for 30 minutes or so. Painful enough in a well written game with an engaging cast and hook, all of which this lacks. It's too bad, because flying around shooting space pirate ships is fun, as is landing and shooting space pirates. The loot is fun enough, you find distinct stuff pretty early on, and I like the art direction's very slightly retro future look, it hits a nice line of practical and lived in without being dingy or worn out.

[Saambell]

Well, after 35 hours of playing Starfield and finding a number of bugs in those last 5 hours which locked off entire areas, its all come to a head where now the game just refuses to load my save file. I can either try a new save and see if its the game that's broken with infinite loading screens or just that one save file, or find a different game to play.

Edit: turns out I had added a mod that the game really didn't like. Game works now. Really should know not to try modding while the modding scene is in "early access" before the proper modding tools come out.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well everybody talking about Starfield got me wanting some space action, and The Outer Worlds (OG version) was on sale for pretty cheap.

Yeah, this is Fallout: Space Vegas, with a bit less nuclear apocalypse and a few more corporations. Annoyingly including the fact that I can't actually use the kind of weapon character creation gave me skill points in because I don't have the parts to get it in good nick (despite nearly half my skill points going into tech) or the money to buy one.

[AlanBruce]

I am at the end section in Lies of P.

I hadn’t noticed at first the encumbrance mechanic. In my opinion, it shouldn’t exist. And because Pinocchio doesn’t wear armor (it’s all internal pieces), I was slotting the best defense while simultaneously becoming the slowest puppet in Krat.

I may have mentioned this before: beautiful visuals and setting does not a good game make. Pinocchio is incredibly weak compared to almost everything the game throws at you. Basic abilities in other games are locked here behind a skill tree. Combat asks you to parry and eventually stagger, like Sekiro. Unlike Sekiro, parrying here gives very little rewards- even a perfect block. Then you get the white border around a boss’s healthbar- time to stagger and end the fight, except… you have to charge an attack to get the stagger and you better believe that boss will either leap away, combo you 15 times to death while you charge the attack (you get no poise in this game), or both. This, in my opinion, gives me reason to ignore that mechanic completely and just R1 them because it’s more effective.

And of course, every other boss from the middle to endgame has two full healthbars? Why? For difficulty, clearly. However, it becomes an annoying gimmick very quickly.

[Rodin]

I am at the end section in Lies of P.

I hadn’t noticed at first the encumbrance mechanic. In my opinion, it shouldn’t exist. And because Pinocchio doesn’t wear armor (it’s all internal pieces), I was slotting the best defense while simultaneously becoming the slowest puppet in Krat.

I may have mentioned this before: beautiful visuals and setting does not a good game make. Pinocchio is incredibly weak compared to almost everything the game throws at you. Basic abilities in other games are locked here behind a skill tree. Combat asks you to parry and eventually stagger, like Sekiro. Unlike Sekiro, parrying here gives very little rewards- even a perfect block. Then you get the white border around a boss’s healthbar- time to stagger and end the fight, except… you have to charge an attack to get the stagger and you better believe that boss will either leap away, combo you 15 times to death while you charge the attack (you get no poise in this game), or both. This, in my opinion, gives me reason to ignore that mechanic completely and just R1 them because it’s more effective.

And of course, every other boss from the middle to endgame has two full healthbars? Why? For difficulty, clearly. However, it becomes an annoying gimmick very quickly.

I disagree with...pretty much all of that.

The encumbrance system is literally the same one as in every Souls game. The only reason Bloodborne didn't have one is that Bloodborne doesn't have armor to speak of. Lies of P does, so you have to make the usual trade offs. Want to wear the heavy armor and swing the big weapons? You gotta invest the stat points. I'm currently wielding the heaviest weapon in the game (that I've found thus far), and I managed to get it with only a modest investment into Capacity (about 7 or 8 levels). This isn't Dark Souls 3 where you have to put 30 points into Vitality to wear heavy armor.

Treating the game like Sekiro is, in my opinion, a mistake. Sure, it's impressive to parry a bunch of attacks in a row. But the game actually plays a lot more like Dark Souls 2. Spacing is incredibly important, and I generally win the boss fights by baiting out attacks, causing them to whiff, then going in and blocking/parrying the final blow before getting my hits in. Or just evade the attack entirely and stab the boss in the back. I agree that the stagger window on bosses is a bit small, but that's possibly because you can upgrade that.

I just hit my first two-healthbar boss, and I wasn't surprised when it was one because phase 1 was simple and I did it first time. It still only took me 3 or 4 tries to beat it - I've yet to meet a Souls-level boss where I'm stuck on it for an hour.

I'm still really enjoying my time with the game. It's steadily improved throughout, despite the occasional questionable design decision.

[Sapphire Guard]

Dragon Age: Origins. I played about half an hour of DA2 and Inquisition and got bored with both, so I checked out the original and am enjoying it more. I've heard all these character names before in various places on the internet, but know very little. Turns out, one of the most acclaimed games ever is quite good, who knew?

Of the main quests, I've now done Redcliff, Bresilian Forest, and Orzammar, in that order.

Spoiler: Orzammar

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is significantly more complex and difficult that the first two. Jarvi, Brood Mother, and Branka make for a difficult set of bosses and it takes a lot longer to go back to the camp. when you get injured. Ilike how that works, by the way, losing a character isn't the nightmare it is in Baldur's gate 1 or 2, but if it happens too often the injuries do stack up. Orghrin took my party killing his wife rather well. If there was a way to spare Leske I didn't find it.

Darkspawn variants work the same way as Husks in Mass Effect, where different species become different variants. I know this predates that, but the idea still feels recycled.

I'm a casteless dwarf, so whatever my misgivings about Bhelen I crowned him anyway for Rica's sake. Interesting to think how this would have gone down if I had a different background.

Spoiler: characters

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I'm not giving gifts to the party except if they are brought up in dialogue (I'd rather develop a relationship through interaction rather than bribes), so I gave Alistair his amulet because he mentioned it, and Leliana a pet pig, which is the main reason Leliana is the only person who is really fond of me at the moment. She's the only character quest open right now, but I'm not going for it yet. Oh, and Dog loves me of course. I'd keep him in my party except that I lose character interactions by doing it.

I have a massive soft spot for Simon Templeman's Kain voice, I can't be mad at Loghain even when he's betraying me. His hired assassin signed on with me, so I now have at least two retired assassins on staff who are on the run from their brethren. Alistair is my favourite party member, but he doesn't tend to approve of my choices. Not super fond of Morrigan, but I'm stuck with her because I don't have another mage.

Spoiler: Forest

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I actually went here by accident, I mistook it for a sidequest. I suspected the reveal as soon as I met Zathrian.

Spoiler: Redcliff

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Nice village defense. I lost Murdoch in the fight, but it worked out fairly well. I tried to take the demon, but Morrigan couldn't take her alone, so in the canon timeline I killed Connor (Well, Isolde did.) I imagine the Arl will be unhappy when/if he wakes up. Alistair disapproved, of course. I suspect he would disapprove of blood magic too, though.

[Kish]

Spoiler: Redcliff

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Nice village defense. I lost Murdoch in the fight, but it worked out fairly well. I tried to take the demon, but Morrigan couldn't take her alone, so in the canon timeline I killed Connor (Well, Isolde did.) I imagine the Arl will be unhappy when/if he wakes up. Alistair disapproved, of course. I suspect he would disapprove of blood magic too, though.

Spoiler: Redcliff

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Disapprove of sacrificing Isolde? He sure would have, reflecting that he was sure there was another way that didn't involve murdering anyone.

[Anonymouswizard]

DA: O is probably the most approachable, although I do personally prefer 2 for not being the Bioware Heroic Fantasy Save The World story. DA2 requires you to accept that the world is moving on and only sometimes intersects with Hawke's story of trying to gain the power and prestige to keep their family safe. The series also mostly abandons the superior third option after Origins, which you'll either love or loathe (the one I can think of in Inquisition is at best a temporary solution which ignores the actual issues).

Also DA2 is in my opinion much more interesting if you play a Mage and get Carver, he has a much more interesting relationship with Marian* than Bethany does.

Inquisition gets good in the post game (i.e. the DLC), but still has the worst combat of the series by far.

* I literally cannot remember WrongHawke's default name

[Batcathat]

DA: O is probably the most approachable, although I do personally prefer 2 for not being the Bioware Heroic Fantasy Save The World story.

While I can never quite decide which one I prefer over all, this is pretty close to my take, as well. I think DA2 has a far more interesting story, though with a lot more glaring flaws than DAO (mostly from a technical point of view, but I think there are some flaws to the story as well).

[Sapphire Guard]

Can you maybe not outline the story of the sequels next time I mention a game I'm playing, or at least do it under spoilers? Thanks.

[Anonymouswizard]

While I can never quite decide which one I prefer over all, this is pretty close to my take, as well. I think DA2 has a far more interesting story, though with a lot more glaring flaws than DAO (mostly from a technical point of view, but I think there are some flaws to the story as well).

Oh, it's definitely not perfect, but in a series I mainly replay for the story it stands out as by far the best. Origins has just as many story flaws from the fact that not every piece of early drafts got removed (for the earliest the mention of magical healers operating in Denerim in the CE Origin), and Inquisition has very little main story and continually tells you that you're not ALLOWED to see more.

Can you maybe not outline the story of the sequels next time I mention a game I'm playing, or at least do it under spoilers? Thanks.

I don't think we've really done more than outline the very broad strokes, trust me when I say we've very much not spoiled the twists (bar the one that was well known before DA2 released). I mean, we could go on and on about stuff like

Spoiler

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Varric's chest hair

but that's such an important part of the series that it would feel downright ungentlemanly.

On that note make sure to get good use out of those crowd control spells, you'll miss them in two game's time!

[Psyren]

Well, after 35 hours of playing Starfield and finding a number of bugs in those last 5 hours which locked off entire areas, its all come to a head where now the game just refuses to load my save file. I can either try a new save and see if its the game that's broken with infinite loading screens or just that one save file, or find a different game to play.

Edit: turns out I had added a mod that the game really didn't like. Game works now. Really should know not to try modding while the modding scene is in "early access" before the proper modding tools come out.

I always beat a game, especially an RPG. without mods first. Not only does this give me the time to compile my mod wishlist for my next playthrough, it gives both the devs and the modders time to iron out the wrinkles, make a mod library tool etc.

[SerTabris]

Also DA2 is in my opinion much more interesting if you play a Mage and get Carver, he has a much more interesting relationship with Marian* than Bethany does.

Inquisition gets good in the post game (i.e. the DLC), but still has the worst combat of the series by far.

* I literally cannot remember WrongHawke's default name

I have no idea why I know this, but it's Garrett. Though personally, with Bethany and Carver, I like giving Hawke a name that starts with A.

And I agree on the gameplay of Inquisition; still need to go through it again to see the DLC content. I first got it on 360 (all I had for it at the time), so that character can't do the last DLC because they never released it for 360/PS3. I could theoretically import the save, but I got a PS4 and 5 but never an Xbox One or Series, so I don't have anything valid to import it to.

[Errorname]

I always end up burning out on Dragon Age games. I really don't enjoy the combat and there's always so much game that I end up really struggling to see it through to the end.

Well everybody talking about Starfield got me wanting some space action, and The Outer Worlds (OG version) was on sale for pretty cheap.

Yeah, this is Fallout: Space Vegas, with a bit less nuclear apocalypse and a few more corporations. Annoyingly including the fact that I can't actually use the kind of weapon character creation gave me skill points in because I don't have the parts to get it in good nick (despite nearly half my skill points going into tech) or the money to buy one.

Outer Worlds always felt a little too safe for me. Like it's not a bad game, but it never really manages to impress. Also it's hard to be both Firefly and Futurama at the same time and have it be cohesive.

DA: O is probably the most approachable, although I do personally prefer 2 for not being the Bioware Heroic Fantasy Save The World story. DA2 requires you to accept that the world is moving on and only sometimes intersects with Hawke's story of trying to gain the power and prestige to keep their family safe. The series also mostly abandons the superior third option after Origins, which you'll either love or loathe (the one I can think of in Inquisition is at best a temporary solution which ignores the actual issues).

DA2's focus on a single location and emphasizing temporal scale is a great idea but I think I liked it better in Pentiment. Hawke has so little agency to actually change anything in Kirkwall and the core conflict is built around the weakest elements of the setting, I remember being really frustrated by it. Origins and Inquisition are a lot more generic in terms of premise but I remember them hanging together a lot better.

[Psyren]

Now that I finally beat BG3 I got started with Starfield on GamePass, but I can feel myself bouncing off. Finished the first two parts of the tutorial (leaving the mine planet, and the space battle) and now I'm infiltrating the pirate base and the combat is already so samey and sparse. Baldur's Gate got to the action in far superior fashion - boom, you're on a crashing ship! Here's some combat! Now some social challenges with a bit of exploration! Now combat again! And the third person is pretty awful since I can't shoot over cover except to manually stand and crouch.

And of course the skills and talents are much easier to grok starting out. Will I need piloting early on? Is Extrovert worse than Introvert? What are all these factions? I'm not sure I understand what they were even thinking.

[Anonymouswizard]

Outer Worlds always felt a little too safe for me. Like it's not a bad game, but it never really manages to impress. Also it's hard to be both Firefly and Futurama at the same time and have it be cohesive.

Eh, so far TOW has beenexactly what it claims to be. Although honestly I can't go too far into why I like it here.

DA2's focus on a single location and emphasizing temporal scale is a great idea but I think I liked it better in Pentiment. Hawke has so little agency to actually change anything in Kirkwall and the core conflict is built around the weakest elements of the setting, I remember being really frustrated by it. Origins and Inquisition are a lot more generic in terms of premise but I remember them hanging together a lot better.

Bare in mind that DA2 was developed in about nine months, while both Origins and Inquisition took four to five years (seven for Origins if we count pre production). Compared to the other two DA2's story is a first draft, and it's still much more engaging. Another year or two and a lot of the flaws would have been smoothed over.

Notably the developers and writers do have changes they wish they'd made, including moving the Act 2 climax into Act 3. It's by no means perfect, but unlike Inquisition the story is actually there.

[GloatingSwine]

Eh, so far TOW has beenexactly what it claims to be. Although honestly I can't go too far into why I like it here.

The best bit of The Outer Worlds is digging in to every situation; finding out all the details and looking for an interesting way to solve the problem; and putting together all the pieces to see how everything, even the toothpaste, is actually part of one big overarching story.

The worst bit is the combat and gear.

[Errorname]

Eh, so far TOW has beenexactly what it claims to be. Although honestly I can't go too far into why I like it here.

I'd say Outer Worlds delivers exactly what it claims to be and nothing more. It's not dishonest or anything, it's just unambitious. I'll probably think more fondly of it if Obsidian really impresses me with Avowed or the Sequel, and I'll be able to look at it as early steps that laid the foundation for what came after. Tyranny and Pillars 2 are both considerably better than the first Pillars but they don't exist without that groundwork.

Bare in mind that DA2 was developed in about nine months, while both Origins and Inquisition took four to five years (seven for Origins if we count pre production). Compared to the other two DA2's story is a first draft, and it's still much more engaging. Another year or two and a lot of the flaws would have been smoothed over.

There's definitely a lot they could have done to improve things, but I kind of suspect the story was broken in a way that wouldn't really have been fixable. Again, the core mage/templar conflict is the weakest link in the whole setting and the whole game is built around it.

[Batcathat]

There's definitely a lot they could have done to improve things, but I kind of suspect the story was broken in a way that wouldn't really have been fixable. Again, the core mage/templar conflict is the weakest link in the whole setting and the whole game is built around it.

While I find it occasionally lacking in execution, especially towards the end, I'll take that story any day of the week over DAO's "unite the people against the giant horde of Evil Monsters". Personally, I think DAO is a rather unoriginal story told quite well, while DA2 is a more interesting story told mostly okay, which is why I'm having trouble choosing my favorite of the two.

[Pax1138]

My favorite thing about the Outer Worlds was that same feeling the old Fallouts has of being the only sane person in a world of complete nutjobs.

But not wacky "hey-look-at-me!" goofballs from a lot of comedic games, but honest, "I've thought about it, and arrived at my insanity through carefully reasoned thought" madmen. People who are part of a society and culture that was warped their brains and forced them to reach totally insane conclusions and take up ridculous behaviors to fit into their world.

[Rynjin]

The issue with The Outer Worlds is it was a really lopsided game. No part of it seems to have as much thought put into it as the first planet.