What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Definitely need to play this, then, given my souls love. Thanks for writing up the thoughts, both of you.

Gary, I'm very interested to know your thoughts on it, since of all DS fans I know, DS2 is your favorite.

Barnes, by the way, that comparison with Bushido Blade was a cruel joke. When I played Bushido with a friend, about 20 years ago, I told him something along the lines: "mark my words, soon all games will be like this one - health bars will become a relic from the past, and it will all be about localized damage." He still reminds me of that "prediction" at every chance.

I'm loving For Honor. Knocking an opponent off of a cliff is VERY satisfying. And DAMN is this game gorgeous.

Vlad wrote: When I played Bushido with a friend, about 20 years ago, I told him something along the lines: "mark my words, soon all games will be like this one - health bars will become a relic from the past, and it will all be about localized damage." He still reminds me of that "prediction" at every chance.

Score 1 point for you?



Nevermind, the stupid name is -1.

One hit kills.... interesting. Basically a samurai Dive Kick. As long as matches don't take long to load.

Can't believe how much RE4 holds up after all these years. This must be getting close to my tenth play through and I've already screamed once or twice when a bunch of Ganados flanked me. It's so unscripted how the AI acts too. In holding up in the house at the beginning , the chainsaw dude came up a ladder. He's never done that, he always takes the stairs. I did a 180 and saw the Top of the ladder in the window and this burlap sack started appearing ... I ran so fast to the window to push the ladder and start firing grenades down, I think I had two?

Trying a Red9 play through this time with no TMP. I'm also skipping the initial rifle this time. I'm running out of ammo often and have to evade fights.

Just got Ashley and she got stuck in a bear trap In the village and died. I had my way with the corpse.

The controls were maddening at first after years of dual stick run and gun but I got back used to it and I appreciate how much scarier it is to pick your moments to stick and shoot, you conserve ammo like this too

I think I sweat during both Del Lago and El Gigantesque fights, I don't remember the latter being as tough as it was. I had the dogs help too


All my previous play throughs I've relied heavily on the rifle so I was always in the scope and I didn't realize I was missing out on stuff by not seeing anything else. For instance on the gondola everytkme you shoot a ganado, Ashley fist-pumps. It's really funny

Loving Nioh as well. The combat has very little in common with Souls imo - it's a far more aggressive game than even Bloodborne. Good use of ki management, stance swapping, and ability use can result in most enemies (and some bosses!) being stunlocked into 100% damage combos. Ninjutsu and ranged attacks allow a player to have full initiative in managing encounters, and scroll magic can force enemies into an almost catatonic stupor. While Nioh has some of the deadliness of Souls, a bit of character action background makes much of the game a blowthrough.

Where the game shines is in the pure fun of the combat system. The 3 stances and 2 weapons (6 stances total) lends to fantastic variety in attacks and almost limitless combo potential. Add in the specials which allow for seamless counters and position swaps and you have an incredibly fluid system that's almost OP as the game progresses. With fewer limits than the Souls games comes lesser difficulty, though it takes a degree more skill to hit that level of ease.

Great game so far, but I need to see how the level and enemy design stacks up before saying it blows Souls out of the water. The bosses I find a bit predictable in comparison.

I finally got over the first boss. In hindsight, it was more of an endurance test mixed up with dodge practice.
I also discovered the skill tree, and the fact that there're combos, which is very different from a Souls game. The skills + stances + bazillion items = overwhelming, but not really in a bad way.
Once you've played a Soul's game to the end, you kind of know what to expect from the next, and there's a very consistent philosophy between all of them. Nioh doesn't seem to blindly follow that philosophy, and is pretty surprising as the result.
The swordfights are just awesome, they feel right and I can't get enough of them.

Watched some NIOH streaming and I came away a little cold. At some point, the guy was looking at this list of like, 25 armors that had like tiny little % differences and I was wondering if the game is just another min-maxy inventory fest. I have that game, it's DIABLO 3 and it's a stone fox. I liked SOULS because of the way carrying stuff and wearing armor was a big strategic decision. "Yeah, I can take another hit with this big ass boar's head, but I move at like half-speed for the pleasure." What's going on there? How often am I going to have to take a minute to think about how spiky my epaulets are?

Can anyone compare this experience to DESTINY/DIABLO on the loot side?

Jeb, that's a good point.
The rate loot drop is similar to Destiny/Diablo. Maybe even higher. And it is not just loot. There are a lot of "learnable" skills, which give place to combos, which you can assign to specific key combinations, which I find very confusing. Way more confusing than Destiny or Diablo - in these games, you shoot and strike and when you notice that the enemies' health doesn't go down at a satisfactory speed, it is time for a weapon upgrade. Since fights are much more dynamic in Nioh, it leaves me wondering - even on the early stages - whether I am doing something wrong tactics-wise or whether it is my equipment or skills, or something else I am missing - there's just a shitload of subsystems.
For example, there're these particularly resilient yokai (and seemingly optional) in the caves that I'm not sure whether I am supposed to be tackling now or further on.

jeb wrote: Watched some NIOH streaming and I came away a little cold. At some point, the guy was looking at this list of like, 25 armors that had like tiny little % differences and I was wondering if the game is just another min-maxy inventory fest. I have that game, it's DIABLO 3 and it's a stone fox. I liked SOULS because of the way carrying stuff and wearing armor was a big strategic decision. "Yeah, I can take another hit with this big ass boar's head, but I move at like half-speed for the pleasure." What's going on there? How often am I going to have to take a minute to think about how spiky my epaulets are?

Can anyone compare this experience to DESTINY/DIABLO on the loot side?

Sorta. Like Diablo, there are endless possibilities of equipment bonuses you can find for equipment. Unlike Diablo, player skill has a decidedly greater impact on the results of the game than equipment. I'm sure people will be beating this game at minimal level and with minimal equipment soon enough. For myself, I don't really look at what the equipment does and just swap out to weapons with higher attack rating. For armor, I pick what looks cool lol

Vlad wrote: Jeb, that's a good point.
The rate loot drop is similar to Destiny/Diablo. Maybe even higher. And it is not just loot. There are a lot of "learnable" skills, which give place to combos, which you can assign to specific key combinations, which I find very confusing. Way more confusing than Destiny or Diablo - in these games, you shoot and strike and when you notice that the enemies' health doesn't go down at a satisfactory speed, it is time for a weapon upgrade. Since fights are much more dynamic in Nioh, it leaves me wondering - even on the early stages - whether I am doing something wrong tactics-wise or whether it is my equipment or skills, or something else I am missing - there's just a shitload of subsystems.
For example, there're these particularly resilient yokai (and seemingly optional) in the caves that I'm not sure whether I am supposed to be tackling now or further on.

If you're talking about the yokai in the third stage (after the first real boss, which you beat), you should be able to kill those cave yokai fairly easily. The big cyclops ones take a fuckton of damage if you shoot them in the eye with a rifle, and the small ones with axes have incredibly predictable attacks and are very susceptible to stunlocking. I think I was level 15 or so when I cleared that stage and it's boss, but some players find the boss to be a difficulty spike.

No, I was talking about

Samoko, are you using the combos/combo customization much?

Been playing Bayonneta on XB1. Bought it used. Love it!

stoic wrote: Been playing Bayonneta on XB1. Bought it used. Love it!

Yep, that game rocks cocks. You're going to get a full blown rundown from SaMoKo now too.

Bayonetta remains one of the best games ever made and I will keep the Wii U for as long as that double pack of both games is only available there. The second one is actually better in some ways. It's even more incomprehensible, camp, and absurd. It also starts better- it doesn't try to ease you into its world like the first one does.

But where the first one exceeds virtually all other games is in how just continually ups the ante. It is like the developers were contstantly trying to top the last crescendo. It is the video game design equivalent of exploding sixes, and it rolls sixes all the way through until it ends in just about the only way it possibly could.

Follow that up with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Vanquish, Madworld, or Transformers: Devastation. Platinum is just amazing.

Their sequel to Nier, one of the most underrated and misunderstood games ever, looks amazing. The demo is available on both platforms and it is well worth looking at.

Odd that probably the only two non-Nintendo games I'm going to buy this year are Nier and Nioh.