What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

The most fun I had with Diablo 3 was playing the hell out of it when it first came out and they still had the real money auction house. Ended up getting back the cost of the game selling items on there. Added a whole new level of rush to finding a stellar RNG'd item.

Diablo III is a literal sleep inducer for both my wife and I. We both enjoy it, but maybe 30 minutes in and one or both of us are running into obstacles or not moving entirely.

Don't get me wrong... Dead Cells has a LOT going for it. It is well worth the asking price. It still has a lot of secrets I have yet to discover, but I'm starting to hit a wall. I don't regret buying it for a second.

I played a ton of Diablo 2, but D3 was just too boring. There was stuff in D2 that I found hard at Normal level, but I only died once in D3, and that was because I got distracted. The fans all told me, "It doesn't even count until the second playthrough." I have no problem wasting way too much time (see above, and other game below), but D3 wasn't good enough to make me want to repeat for that second playthrough.

Sorry Black Barney, I haven't played a lot of Mass Effect lately. Why? Because my no-good sumbitch coworkers have got me started on GW2 again after a 3(?) year hiatus. I had played a Charr Engineer to level cap, but I think I missed my calling as a Warrior. It's been a lot more fun at the lower levels. I had leveled a Necromancer to level 17 or so, but that was getting boring, and a Ranger wasn't as much fun as a I normally have with my normally favored WoW Hunter-oid classes.

Lately it's been back to Destiny 2 for me. I'm hoping that THIS time will be the time I learn to enjoy playing online with my friends. We'll see.

I've heard a lot about Hollow Knight, but to be honest, I'm wary of buying new games these days. It seems like you can't get something that's just like a pleasant, fun, straightforward game. Everything is either OMG SO HARD, or "augment your blade with phoenix orbs, of which there are 250, and the different combos of them produce different effects, especially when paired with one of the 800 different ghost auras you can find, which you can slot in certain ways to blah blah blah we're revolutionizing the entire platformer paradigm". I'm old. I'm not going to fight the same boss for hours until I figure out the exact timing and combo, and I'm not interested in having to navigate millions of different configurations of shit. Point me somewhere and tell me what to beat up or whatever.

My wife and I enjoyed couch co-op on Diablo 3, but then suddenly they changed how shit works and I literally don't understand any of it. There were seasons and rifts and challenges and whatever and none of it made any sense to us.

Dead cells was okay for a while but I burned out on it pretty quick. Trying to grind out the last health vial upgrade before digging into the first harder difficulty killed my enthusiasm for it, plus all the viable builds for me seemed to be about killing stuff as soon as it was in the screen and largely avoiding combat which got kinda old. Rogue Legacy is still the gold standard for that kind of thing for me, with a solid nod towards Flinthook.

Personally I'm playing a lot of Black Ops 4, which is a solid turn for a franchise that's had a couple of rough years. Blackout mode is super good, though I'm infinitely bad at it.

Ah_Pook wrote: Personally I'm playing a lot of Black Ops 4, which is a solid turn for a franchise that's had a couple of rough years. Blackout mode is super good, though I'm infinitely bad at it.

Do you have PUBG on PC? I can always use a new teammate.

Dead Cells is boring. The first 20 or so runs are great but then it turns into pure repetition. It’s not like Souls, where every attempt is tense and has tactical variances. It’s just the same thing over and over. I liked it a lot for maybe three hours.

When I played the first Diablo, I described it as a game where you click on monsters until they distribute prizes. That has never changed. It’s really the skills, gearing up, and leveling that make it. However, in 3 I feel like they made the actual fighting more interesting. Each encounter has a distinct tempo...you’ll run into a couple of enemies, more pile in, it turns into utter chaos, you struggle to stay above water, and then it breaks and you eventually wind up running down the stragglers. I -rarely- play through games more than once or start multiple characters but I did both in D3.

Not to mention how COOL the Monk is when that Bell thing drops? I mean godDAMN that is hot. BOOOONNNNGG

Michael Barnes wrote: Much more excited about Diablo 3 on Switch than Red Dead Edgelord Flower Picking Simulator.
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Hey look everybody, I’ve spotted a BIG DUMMY






... I lol’d @ edgelord

Hollow Knight is the best game I've played all year! I'm also shocked it's so divisive!

RobertB wrote: I played a ton of Diablo 2, but D3 was just too boring. There was stuff in D2 that I found hard at Normal level, but I only died once in D3, and that was because I got distracted. The fans all told me, "It doesn't even count until the second playthrough." I have no problem wasting way too much time (see above, and other game below), but D3 wasn't good enough to make me want to repeat for that second playthrough.

I actually had a lot of trouble with the Demon Hunter, maybe because I was a noob. Her kit was based around running away from shit, but you can't run away from the bosses, and they were a pita solo. Everything felt like playing against Duriel as my old Amazon. Meanwhile, most of the other classes could just run in and kill stuff.

The biggest thing that I missed going from D2 to D3 was the customization and having a plan for a character. All gear was just +x% dps or whatever. Boring. My amazon had been built around having absurd movement speed and low armor, so she never actually got hit, really. I got more health for nightmare - you can't dodge every projectile.

I got about 15 hours into Hollow Knight before giving up. I loved the world and the atmosphere. I wanted to keep exploring and see all of it. But I hit a personal skill wall. At the end, I felt like all of my sessions were either aimless wandering without actually getting anywhere or finding anything, or bashing my head against some boss that killed me repeatedly. Part of the problem is definitely me. I have a terrible memory, and the game really wants you to remember where you saw stuff that you can't get through yet. I have a terrible sense of direction. Areas I don't have the map for yet are awful because I keep wandering in circles, and once I do, I still have to use a pin slot for the "see where you are on the map" instead of for something more gameplay-useful, which annoyed me.

I don't regret playing it, and I Really wish I could've dropped the difficulty to easy and kept going because I wanted to see the rest. But, like the Souls games, they decided that there's only one difficulty, and that's too hard for me, so I don't get to see the rest.

Yeah, it definitely has that souls pattern recognition and boss repetition. Maybe that is what is so alienating. That makes sense to me since I've become such a souls fan.

I think the experience of finding the map guy may not have been a good one, in retrospect. It generated some very tense blind runs, which was the point, but it is frustrating to explore an unknown area without even getting map coverage in return (until you find the singing map guy).

It's definitely a Souls loop. I've done the same "play for a good chunk, hit a skill wall and stop" cycle with four Souls games before now. I really hate it. I get that the idea is that you keep trying until you learn enough and skill up enough to beat it, then feel great. Except since my skill level is on the lower side, that process takes longer and longer. At some point, the amount of time I'd need to spend beating a single boss is longer than I mentally want to spend. Plus, beating a boss after a bunch of tries doesn't make me feel great, it makes me relieved that I never have to do that again. I'm not chasing the high of beating it, I'm dreading the frustration that I felt the last times.

I actually don't mind the map guy mechanic. I just don't like it when they wall him off such that you can only get to him via a path that you won't be able to access until later. I think I only ran into one area like that, but it was real annoying to see him and not be able to get to him.