What Are You Playing?

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Horizon Forbidden West - Man, it took me awhile to get used to this again after almost half a year straight of Elden Ring. The UI, HUD, UX and contextual controls are just too complicated, I can barely draw the correct weapon/ammo when necessary! :ganishka:

I'm only half kidding, I really was getting my ass handed to me and am only really now getting comfortable again after a few hours. Speaking of UX though, the way you pick up crafting resources in this game, especially mounted, is way clunkier, basically stopping you in your tracks for a grabbing animation, than in ER. Anyway, this game is gorgeous and they really did build this huge, original sci-fi world and it's just getting more complex and cool, so in retrospect I do kind of feel sorry for them that they keep coming out in the wake of some landmark, incandescent and transcendent title that makes them seem more ordinary by comparison.

I decided several years ago, that instead of constantly trying to figure out what game to play next, I'd make a list of all the games I never got the chance to play when I was younger, along with all of the games I want to play in the future. Since then, I've been going through the list, title by title.

And I took your idea, except I used a composite list of the "best games of all time," color coded the ones I'd finished in green, played in yellow, and never played in red, and similarly made my way through, except there's no way I'm going to play all this shit because some of them I'm just not interested in (and the effect likely wouldn't be the same either, like Halo 1 now compared to back then). Anyway, I also always give priority to new games I want to play or the more recent games on this list, unless there's some urgency like I sense they're going to go from still being relatively modern and accessible to falling into that "no longer as effective" zone I mentioned. Basically, it's just a suggested backlog. =)

I told one of my best friends about this project a few years ago when I started it, and his response was "You will die unfulfilled." :ganishka:

 
Stray - Well, meoooow! I'm having a blast with this game, scratching carpets, dropping shit off of tables, tripping people (robots) up, and just catting my way through everything. It's the cat fantasy fulfilment I've always wanted. Game's really fun and charming. The world is cool and I'm enjoying uncovering its secrets. My own cats had their eyes glued to the TV to check out why it was meowing so much haha.

Recommended for cat lovers! And it may even convert you filthy dog lovers into the true path of Felinism!

Now excuse me, I've got some furniture to ruin.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Stray - Well, meoooow! I'm having a blast with this game, scratching carpets, dropping shit off of tables, tripping people (robots) up, and just catting my way through everything. It's the cat fantasy fulfilment I've always wanted. Game's really fun and charming. The world is cool and I'm enjoying uncovering its secrets.

I got it with PS+ so my copy is ready when I get the chance (maybe it will get my daughter to stop demanding we play I Am Bread - Which sucks).

Recommended for cat lovers! And it may even convert you filthy dog lovers into the true path of Felinism!

From the cats I've known they don't mind excluding as many people as possible. =)
 
I'm going to boot up Outer Wilds for the first time this weekend. I've heard really good things about this one from people I respect but am also nervous about getting stuck or frustrated due to the puzzle-y and looping nature of the game. I really don't know anything beyond that it has these elements and it takes place in space(?) Wish me luck!
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
I'm going to boot up Outer Wilds for the first time this weekend. I've heard really good things about this one from people I respect but am also nervous about getting stuck or frustrated due to the puzzle-y and looping nature of the game. I really don't know anything beyond that it has these elements and it takes place in space(?) Wish me luck!
That game is pure magic.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Stray - Being a cat is indeed pretty cool, so now I understand why they act so superior! Though, to that point, I kind of preferred the beginning when you're just being a cat wandering around, before all the familiar video gamey elements kicked in.

Horizon Meaningless Words - I'm in the groove, getting optimized for taking out the big boys when called upon, but you can mostly just run through it save for the LOOOOOONG conversations... my current theory is your clone (though shouldn't everyone react like she's your twin?), the non-threatening sounding "Beta," is a double-agent of course and the bad guys actually want you to start producing the machine army to attack them so she can seize control over Gaia and it. It's a classic you're doing the work for them scenario... is Sylens right about everything and basically the real hero of these games after all? =)
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
I also bought Stray at launch, but I'm only about 30 minutes in. It's beautiful, but it seems like they're funneling you down a very specific path. So it feels more like a tech demo than a game. Maybe that changes up after the tutorial stuff.

I picked up Live-a-Live for the Switch, since I'm 1000% pot committed to Square's remake-SNES-games-that-never-hit-the-US train (next up is one of my all-time favorites: Front Mission). Bizarrely, my son likes it a bit more than me. It's a segmented JRPG story across 7-9 different settings. Sort of a mish-mash of stereotypical genres but told through a traditional JRPG lens. In the mid-90s that was probably pretty novel. Now it feels a bit quaint. However, it's been given the Octopath Traveler HD-2D tilt-shift paint job. Looks nice!

Edit: Oh yeah! I realized that when the Into the Breach update came out earlier this week, it also got added to iOS. Pretty incredible to be able to play Into the Breach on my dang phone.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Finished Klonoa: Empire of Dreams last night. It, like Lunatea’s Veil, was a delightful little platformer. I was really impressed with how well the gameplay from the previous 3D installment translated to 2D. Highly recommended for fans of classic 2D platformers.

Next up is a game I played for about 20 minutes on my friend’s XBOX back in the day: Max Payne.
 

Dar_Klink

Last Guardian when? - CyberKlink 20XX before dying
I'm going to boot up Outer Wilds for the first time this weekend. I've heard really good things about this one from people I respect but am also nervous about getting stuck or frustrated due to the puzzle-y and looping nature of the game. I really don't know anything beyond that it has these elements and it takes place in space(?) Wish me luck!
Great game, loved it a lot. Make sure you get/do the DLC, which is integrated pretty well into the game if you started playing with it already installed.

Been getting through all of Death Stranding recently, last time I got to almost the end of the second area, around
Heartman's Lab
, now I'm riiiight at the point of moving on to the third area after 5 starring everybody up to that point. I've been playing on Steam Deck a bit while working my overnight do-nothing security job but I'm waiting til I have the free time to play it on my PC with full FPS/resolution now that I'm moving into new story parts. I enjoyed it a lot the first time but got caught up in a move when I was playing it around release and didn't get back into it until the PC version of the Director's Cut came out a few months ago.

Also got Live-A-Live in the mail from Best Buy, may start that up soon.

Oh, and the posts here got me to download Into the Breach to my Steam Deck since I never got far in it haha.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
And I took your idea, except I used a composite list of the "best games of all time," color coded the ones I'd finished in green, played in yellow, and never played in red, and similarly made my way through, except there's no way I'm going to play all this shit because some of them I'm just not interested in (and the effect likely wouldn't be the same either, like Halo 1 now compared to back then). Anyway, I also always give priority to new games I want to play or the more recent games on this list, unless there's some urgency like I sense they're going to go from still being relatively modern and accessible to falling into that "no longer as effective" zone I mentioned. Basically, it's just a suggested backlog. =)

I thought about doing it that way, too, before deciding on my current course. If you're at all interested, I used this list to form the basis of my own list. It's similar to the Wikipedia article you mentioned (which is where I first started), and the various articles on IGN, U.S. Gamer, etc. I found. It's pretty comprehensive, and it's hard to disagree with their top ten, for sure.


I love that clip. The first time I saw it, I remember reacting to that stormtrooper removing his mask the same way Belushi reacts to seeing Flounder for the first time in Animal House.
 
I got it with PS+ so my copy is ready when I get the chance (maybe it will get my daughter to stop demanding we play I Am Bread - Which sucks).
I have the perfect solution for you: I Am Fish!


This game seems like such a pain to play that it may destroy her liking for this genre!
From the cats I've known they don't mind excluding as many people as possible. =)
Depends on the cat, I suppose. I mean, surely some wouldn't mind having more slaves to attend to their every whim and fancy.

Speaking of which, I need to return to Stray. I just finished my replay of Days Gone, and I've had my fill of zombie killing. Time to be a cat again!
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Horizon Frostbitten Yeast - Spent a couple of hours while the baby went back to sleep gathering upgrade materials, which is cooler than it sounds because you have to shoot them off of or collect them from the corpses of robot beasts, for my armor. I'm not completely satisfied that my weapons and armor are really optimal for the mid-game and I'm just sort of dragging my ass through, wasting crafting resources I'm soon to run out of, to get by. I think it might be time to overhaul my weapons selection too so I'm exploring deeper into the world to see what late game stuff I can snag early.

I also bought Stray at launch, but I'm only about 30 minutes in. It's beautiful, but it seems like they're funneling you down a very specific path. So it feels more like a tech demo than a game. Maybe that changes up after the tutorial stuff.

Don't worry, after that it'll turn into every other game out now. I think I would have preferred if they'd designed an entire linear, curated game experience like that opening, more like a puzzle game or The Last Guardian: Actual Housecat Edition. :shrug:

I'm sure it's still good, I'm just feeling catty because I didn't want to play as a cat to talk to NPCs!

If you're at all interested, I used this list to form the basis of my own list. It's similar to the Wikipedia article you mentioned (which is where I first started), and the various articles on IGN, U.S. Gamer, etc. I found. It's pretty comprehensive, and it's hard to disagree with their top ten, for sure.

Well, I immediately disagreed with it vehemently! =) Tetris is such a phoney, pretentious legacy selection, video games' answer to history's tabletop classics, but one might as well declare Pong the best game ever. GTFO. RE4 is a great and influencial game, but it might not even be the second best RE game and there are easily dozens of better games out there, Half-Life 2 fell out of this stratosphere over a decade ago, BotW is arguably top five... within the Zelda franchise, and Jesus Christ, The Last of Us!? Did the curators of this list only start playing video games a decade ago when they became interactive TV melodramas!? Maybe if they reversed that top ten I'd find it less unpalatable, but what a collection of lazy, mainstream, pop culture picks slathered with recency bias!! :mozgus:

/rant

My madness above is why I just went with the wiki list of great games organized by year, and it takes a while to update too: before 2018 was added this year BotW was the last game to make the list and it hadn't changed since... until now. Red Dead Redemption 2 was actually my guess for the next obvious game to make the list, though I would not have thought God of War.

I love that clip. The first time I saw it, I remember reacting to that stormtrooper removing his mask the same way Belushi reacts to seeing Flounder for the first time in Animal House.

It's a classic, and the wizard even became a part of SK.net history in a "Troll of the Rings" Photoshop.

I have the perfect solution for you: I Am Fish!


This game seems like such a pain to play that it may destroy her liking for this genre!

I think I'd prefer Maneater or it's forebear Jaws Unleashed. And it can't be worse than I Am Bread, which has about the most clunky and unintuitive gameplay mechanics I've ever encountered.

Depends on the cat, I suppose. I mean, surely some wouldn't mind having more slaves to attend to their every whim and fancy.

They wouldn't want me, I'm an enemy to the cats going back to my own as a child. Did you know they don't always land on their feet? Poor Arlo, I should have had a patient, forgiving, and put upon dog. Lucky for the cats though I grew to become literally allergic to them. I think Arlo arranged it somehow. =)

Speaking of which, I need to return to Stray.

I'll give it another look after I finish or get bored of Horizon 2, but I wasn't pleased by anything after you find the little vest, etc. Maybe it's my opposition to dressing pets.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Well, I immediately disagreed with it vehemently! =) Tetris is such a phoney, pretentious legacy selection, video games' answer to history's tabletop classics, but one might as well declare Pong the best game ever. GTFO. RE4 is a great and influencial game, but it might not even be the second best RE game and there are easily dozens of better games out there, Half-Life 2 fell out of this stratosphere over a decade ago, BotW is arguably top five... within the Zelda franchise, and Jesus Christ, The Last of Us!? Did the curators of this list only start playing video games a decade ago when they became interactive TV melodramas!? Maybe if they reversed that top ten I'd find it less unpalatable, but what a collection of lazy, mainstream, pop culture picks slathered with recency bias!! :mozgus:

/rant

I shouldn’t have said I agreed with the entire top ten; just the games I’ve played so far. I haven’t gotten to the ones you mentioned yet, so the jury’s still out on them. However, Tetris is still one of my favorites (Pong, too, hehe), so we’ll have to agree to disagree there. :void: Those games are way more fun than they should be.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
I shouldn’t have said I agreed with the entire top ten; just the games I’ve played so far. I haven’t gotten to the ones you mentioned yet, so the jury’s still out on them. However, Tetris is still one of my favorites (Pong, too, hehe), so we’ll have to agree to disagree there. :void: Those games are way more fun than they should be.

How come you haven't played any of these? They're classics! I agree with Griff's comments but that aside I've played every game in their top 30 (didn't check beyond) over the years just because they were prominent releases at the time.
 
Finished Stray and wow, I was not expecting it to have the depth it did or to get me emotional at the end. Loved the experience.

Meow/10.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
I shouldn’t have said I agreed with the entire top ten; just the games I’ve played so far. I haven’t gotten to the ones you mentioned yet, so the jury’s still out on them. However, Tetris is still one of my favorites (Pong, too, hehe), so we’ll have to agree to disagree there. :void: Those games are way more fun than they should be.

Well, I don't hold that list against you, but I'm crazy and need it organized at least somewhat objectively by time/era. And I agree Tetris is one of the greatest games of all time, and Pong one most significant if no longer great by any modern objective standard, but it's just a matter of putting almost any of these singularly above all others when there's so many all-time transcendently great games at this point... except Ocarina of Time, of course, it's clearly superior! The Alpha and the Omega, elevating everything that came before to a perfection from which everything after flows! =)

How come you haven't played any of these? They're classics! I agree with Griff's comments but that aside I've played every game in their top 30 (didn't check beyond) over the years just because they were prominent releases at the time.

Don't make him explain the story behind his own list again, I already feel like it's a top forum subplot at this point! And I didn't even read past the top ten at first but see that Mass Effect 2 and CoD is there... I guess I should just be grateful that Fortnite, Minecraft and Angry Birds aren't the top three.

Finished Stray and wow, I was not expecting it to have the depth it did or to get me emotional at the end. Loved the experience.

Of course because I quoted your post it revealed to me your spoiler tagged material, so thank you for at least not going into detail.:shrug:But it sounds like I better get back to it sooner rather than later!
 
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Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
How come you haven't played any of these? They're classics! I agree with Griff's comments but that aside I've played every game in their top 30 (didn't check beyond) over the years just because they were prominent releases at the time.
Don't make him explain the story behind his own list again, I already feel like it's a top forum subplot at this point! And I didn't even read past the top ten at first but see that Mass Effect 2 and CoD is there... I guess I should just be grateful that Fortnite, Minecraft and Angry Birds aren't the top three.

Haha, I don't mind explaining it again. I won't go through the whole thing, but basically I stopped playing video games when World of Warcraft came out. Prior to that, I mainly played the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid games, anyway. Not sure why I restricted myself to those, but I did. That and a lot of Halo at LAN parties. Anyway, by the time WoW had run its course, I wasn't sure what to play next, so I started playing the Final Fantasy games again, beginning with Final Fantasy VI, which I'd never played through in its entirety.

After that, I played some of the Resident Evil games, before getting burned out and not knowing what to play next. I decided to create a list of all the games I never played, either because I was too young, didn't have the system(s) or because I was too side-tracked with the FF and MGS series. I'm a pretty organized person, so a list just worked best for me. I've been playing through it ever since, occasionally stopping to replay some of my favorites, like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, as I go along.

Well, I don't hold that list against you, but I'm crazy and need it organized at least somewhat objectively by time. And I agree Tetris is one of the greatest games of a time, and Pong one most significant if no longer great by any modern objective standard, but it's just a matter of putting almost any of these singularly above all others when there's so many all-time transcendently great games at this point... except Ocarina of Time, of course, it's clearly superior! The Alpha and the Omega, elevating everything that came before to a perfection from which everything after flows! =)

I completely understand that side of it. That's why I think "top" lists are so difficult to create, take seriously, use as actual data, etc. because of the fact that you either have to honor the legacy titles or the latest and greatest, and most sites choose legacy. I'm not sure which is right and which is wrong, or if there's a right way to do them at all. Nevertheless, I keep reading them. :ganishka:
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Haha, I don't mind explaining it again. I won't go through the whole thing, but basically I stopped playing video games when World of Warcraft came out. Prior to that, I mainly played the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid games, anyway. Not sure why I restricted myself to those, but I did. That and a lot of Halo at LAN parties.

Ah, I see. I remembered your video game quest of course, but I'd forgotten that you had so little exposure before you started out. Still a long road ahead of you... You should probably be skipping second rate shit like Klonoa to focus on the actual good stuff. :ganishka:
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Ah, I see. I remembered your video game quest of course, but I'd forgotten that you had so little exposure before you started out. Still a long road ahead of you... You should probably be skipping second rate shit like Klonoa to focus on the actual good stuff. :ganishka:

You’re not wrong. I’ve thought about doing just that. We’ll see how impatient I become as time goes on. :ganishka:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Horizon Forgiven Wrest - I pretty much pressed pause on the main missions to just fuck around getting the best armor in the game, an optimum off-armor for when I come up against enemies with elements that armor is weak too, and upgrading and optimizing all my weapons. I think I prefer these activities because there's much less talking.
 
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - I recently started my very first island and I think I'm too old for AC but at the same time I just love the game. It's so relaxing and charming, as charming as usual.

God of War - I got this game from a dear friend of mine and I recently started on PC. A bit too cinematic for my taste (ironic considering I'm a massive
Hideo Kojima fanboy) but let's see how it goes. It is a masterpiece after all.

VALORANT - I play a lot of Valo on the side, I'm personally a fan of competitive games in general and I've been having a blast trying to learn how to play over the past year. It's toxic, and I'm sure all of you hate Riot Games here, but I for one think they did a good job with this game.

Soul Calibur VI - Yup. Just started to play with my friends and you bet I made Guts as soon as I could!
I play a lot of games all the time so I would love to update this from time to time. I like to see all the discussions around games over here, was expecting to see only Berserk over here. :SK:
 
I bought Into the Breach after Aaz got me interested, and a metroidvania called Vigil: The Longest Night. Can't wait to start both!

Horizon Forgiven Wrest - I pretty much pressed pause on the main missions to just fuck around getting the best armor in the game, an optimum off-armor for when I come up against enemies with elements that armor is weak too, and upgrading and optimizing all my weapons. I think I prefer these activities because there's much less talking.

I still haven't finished that one. Even without the Elden Ring hammer which shattered all my interest in this game, it was already hard to stomach with its awful leading lady. And yeah, those dialogue trees were insufferably long, weren't they?

Actually I found a nice video that more or less echoes my sentiments toward this game. I doubt you'd have the time or desire to watch a video of this length, but in case you're interested:

 
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