Well, I have an idea for someone new to bring in (been looking at the game so far and I don’t know that I’d be comfortable taking over someone else’s character). I can give a background to you and answer the questionnaire, if that’ll help.I just don’t want to take over this thread to do it.
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Either PM me or post to:
The party is close to exiting the dungeon, so it shouldn’t be too hard to introduce new PCs.
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Update on this one… I’ve played 4 hours so far, and have definitely been getting my money’s worth from it (at the current price that’s a low bar, but still…). If a cross between an action RPG and a choose-your-own-adventure book sounds intriguing, then I’d definitely recommend it.
My only new complaint is that there seems to be a very fine line between blowing through a fight without getting a scratch, and getting completely trashed by the enemies. But, the checkpoint system so far has meant that dying only sets me back for the single battle that I was in at the time, so it’s not a huge deal (though, if I were trying for the achievement to get through an entire level without damage, it would be an entirely different can of worms).
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GURPS players now back up to three, which is enough to go with. But the more the merrier; if anyone else wants to step in, now’s the time.
All it requires is a couple of posts per week; if you want to step back out, it’s easy enough to arrange a heroic death.
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It sounds interesting to me but I have zero experience or knowledge of how it works. And I’d hate to drag down the experience for everyone else because i don’t know wtf I’m doing. Is it the kind of thing where I can read along and maybe join the next round once I feel less clueless?
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Sure.
There are no “rounds” as such, but new players can be added in whenever it’s plausible to do so (i.e. easy to do in the city, problematic when mid dungeon bash unless you can set them up as rescued prisoners or somesuch).
Have a look at the player posts on the narrative thread; an occasional post like that is all that’s required.
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I finally finished Persona 5 last weekend. After putting over 100 hours into it, my verdict is – yeah it’s pretty damn good.
Great presentation, great real-world setting (Tokyo! with stunning accuracy), gameplay, very accessible, cliched but still fun story, great characters, great dungeon crawling, wonderful music – all hallmarks of the Persona series. I’m already gearing up for a NG+ playthrough to work through all of the stuff I missed before and to try out the extras that were added to that mode. Definitely deserved of its high Metacritic score.
But, and of course there’s a but, I just didn’t like it quite as much as Persona 4: The Golden. Let me get this out of the way, I’m a huge fan of the Persona series. I’ve played Persona 1 on the PSP, I’ve played through Persona 3 three times – including O.G., FES, and P3P versions, I’ve played Persona 4 three times as well, twice on O.G., and once on The Golden (where I finally managed a playthrough maxing out every social link, and yes I am not ashamed to say I leaned on a walkthrough to make it happen). I’ve also played most the Persona 4 gaiden games – Arena, Ultimax, and Dancing All Night.
P5 has so much going for it – some of the most streamlined gameplay I’ve ever seen in a Persona title, wonderful menus and UX with so much style even the loading screens are great, and of course wonderful characters to get to know. But I just never felt the same connection with the characters that I did with Persona 4’s cast and that was a real bummer. I was also somewhat disappointed that there wasn’t more of a break from formula – I mean you basically had the same JRPG archetypes in every game ever. Yes, the character stories were great as always, but there wasn’t much in the way of surprise. Character arcs more or less started and ended exactly like I expected them to. That’s not to say the stories weren’t great, just that there weren’t many surprises.
This is especially disappointing given that Persona 4 had some very atypical character arcs including a male character struggling with his sexuality, and a female that presented herself as male in order to be taken seriously in her profession (I wouldn’t go as far as to say she was portrayed as a trans man but there’s some debate on this). In JRPGs, LGBT roles are often played for comedy or laughs; P4 played this (no pun intended) largely straight.
Sadly, P5 does revert to type by portraying a pair of homosexual men as flamboyant deviants that hit on Protag and his male friends a few times throughout the story. There’s also several portrayals typical anime-level harassment that left me feeling very uncomfortable, but they were thankfully few and far between.
The final disappointment is in the localization. ATLUS is well renowned for doing amazing localization for their games and P5, while certainly not bad, is just not as good as I’m accustomed to. More about that aspect here: http://www.personaproblems.com/. While there was nothing incomprehensible (this wasn’t Zero Wing or anything) or game breaking, I did notice this, and it was a letdown.
Anyway I can’t recommend this title highly enough if you’re into JRPGs. Despite my criticisms, it’s still a very, very good game. One of the best I’ve played in a very long time and I can’t wait to delve into a second playthrough. Despite the ‘5’ after the name, there’s no need to have played the other titles as they are all self-contained other than being in a shared universe and there being some occasional referential Easter eggs.
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Thanks for the review; I was wondering about it and now I will definitely check it out.
I’m so into Horizon Zero Dawn it’s not even funny. The story is compelling but it’s the world design that has really hooked me in; it feels like it’s a rare thing to see an original IP these days, let alone one starring a female protagonist that is pointedly not sexualized in an entirely original sci fi setting that goes out of its way to try new things.
I’m really in no hurry to finish it; now that I’ve levelled up a bit and can hold my own against the larger enemies, I’m taking great pleasure in spending hours at a time hunting and exploring.
As is often the case in games with stealth mechanics, I’m having a lot of fun not trying to hide at all and deliberately walking into crowds of enemies, spear drawn and actively trying to get their attention.
That said, I think Mrs Cynical was a bit taken aback last night when I went full Sarff Landan and shouted at the TV. Reading a book as she was, I don’t think she was expecting me to bellow “CMON! DO YOU WANT SOME? BECAUSE I’M WELL IN THE MOOD FOR IT!” at a herd of robotic cows, even if they were getting ready to charge me, nor was she expecting me to mutter “yeh mate, fuckin thought not” as the last one decided it had had enough and legged it.
You can take the boy out of London…
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I’ve been playing mostly driving games this year for some reason (I don’t actually drive, but it’s fun in a game).
Grand Theft Auto V, in story mode, is excellent. I see why it won so many awards and stuff. I’ve talked to some people who only played it briefly as “I just drove on the sidewalk and ran over hookers”, but if you actually play the story, the characters are fleshed out, the transitions are great, the interactions during the cutscenes and drive-time conversations are good, the setting is fleshed out even to what plays on the radio or shows up online when a character uses a computer or their phone, there’s some real weird stuff, and some fun easter eggs. I tried online play, but it was glitchy and people were hacking it, so it wasn’t as much fun as it could be.
Then I tried Euro Truck Simulator 2. I liked that so much I bought a steering wheel and pedals controller for it. It’s relatively slow-paced and relaxing. Pick a contract, tune the radio to a station you like, and cruise across the European landscape. Between drives, you use your money to buy new garages and trucks and hire new drivers to grow your company. But mostly, it’s just kicking back, relaxing, and listening to music while the countryside rolls by. A great way to relax after a hard day’s work.
The third was Rocket League. Soccer played by cars in an arena. But the cars can drive up the walls (and even briefly across the ceiling before gravity kicks in). And they have rocket boosters and the ability to jump, so you can jump, boost, and fly to hit the ball in the air. There’s also a basketball and hockey mode and another ‘dropshot’ mode where when the ball bounces on the floor it makes holes. This is about the opposite of Euro Truck Simulator 2 - a pure adrenaline rush, but brief, 5 minutes per game. So it’s easy to just play a game or two before dinner or whatever. It’s set up as an e-sports thing, and they have tournaments with serious prize money, but I just play for fun. I’m not that good against humans, but I can really beat the AI. And sometimes it’s just nice to score 20 goals in 5 minutes.
My tastes tend to come and go in cycles. Not sure what will be next, I’d guess most likely wargames then RPGs, but I still have some adventure and horror games that I haven’t played much yet.
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I was supposed to get a copy of that when I picked up my PS4 recently but they’d run out 
definitely on my list though. Nice to see that Guerilla have finally worked out how to add a decent character to good gameplay!
Just finished the first two Destroy All Humans! games that I picked up from a bundle a little while ago, solid 7/10 games that know exactly what they are and do it with humour. I miss Pandemic 
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I love Pandemic. I’ve tried a bunch of its offshoots and variations, and some are better than others (the new Cthulhu Pandemic is very clever) but the best by far is Pandemic Legacy, which I would say is one of the best board games I’ve ever played, and easily the best “legacy” game. Permanently destroying cities, tearing up cards, opening sealed boxes to unveil new items that completely change the game as you go… it’s a time investment, but it’s worth it.
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Ah, my mistake. I’m not a video gamer at all.
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I was really into Rocket League for a couple of months when it was newish. I also found it was a huge adrenaline rush, which is not always a good thing. 
I stopped playing a bit before they added all the various game modes.
Currently playing Project CARS (I’ve learned to skip events involving certain car types because they feel completely wrong and are frustrating as hell), Diablo 3 with the Necromancer expansion (officially now, not just beta), and started Nex Machina but it’s currently crashing after finishing the first level of the second world.
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“Oh good! An American Muscle Car series set entirely on street tracks! I was just thinking how bored I was of cars that have a turning circle smaller than that of an aircraft carrier!”
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I want to try out the new Cyrodiil mod for Skyrim, but Sony are not allowing it for the PS4.
My game life needs are pretty small.
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Rez Infinite is finally out for PC (on Steam) and discounted a bit. Tonight I will be reliving the year 2001, except with fewer jaggies 
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Relating to games in general, I just got back from five days at GenCon in Indianapolis, and it was rather overwhelmingly bonkers. I play a lot of games, living with hard-core tabletop gamers, though it’s not my main passion, so I was more or less along for the ride, but still had a good time.
GenCon is fucking enormous. I’ve been to lots of cons of various sorts, but… yow. Total attendance: 76,000. It took up the huge convention center, a nearby football stadium, and all of the meeting-area space of eight nearby hotels. The dealer’s room alone took days to explore.
All organized games have to be signed up for months in advance, and I only got into a few: a session of The One Ring RPG (very Tolkien-y!) and a rollicking Star Wars: Edge of the Empire adventure where I was a Wookiee freedom fighter. I also played a few sessions of True Dungeon, which is basically a high-budget mini-LARP. Much time was spent exploring all of the new games debuting or being demoed, such as Star Wars Legion and Pandemic Legacy Season 2. The hottest selling item of the con and the hardest to get ahold of: Bob Ross, the Art of Chill.
All in all, it was exhausting and fascinating. Did anyone else go?
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I finally finished Amdromeda a few weeks ago and I finally went back to re-read @nungesser’s comments and yours.
I’m on my phone right now so writing anything in depth would be painful but I want to say your commentary and complaints were all completely on the nose.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your observations.
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A few days ago I decided Project CARS has too many bugs and annoyances fo rme to keep sticking with career mode (physics that goes completely nuts under some conditions, AI drivers unaffected by rain, no way to quit/forfeit a completely broken race or series)… and now Dirt 4 is on sale on Steam for the first time. 
I haven’t played it for long, but it’s a very different experience from Dirt Rally so far. I’m so used to bored-sounding British guys as codrivers/pit engineers in racing games that a cheerful American woman for a codriver is kind of a shock. 
The tracks are dynamically generated which means less distinctive scenery. The physics mostly feel pretty good, but I’m going to have to take baby steps and work back up to shifting manually. Thankfully there’s a rally school and joyrides and that sort of thing for just getting a feel for a car and doing donuts and such.
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