What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Spent some time with the open beta of Ghost Recon Wildlands on PC today. I am a much better shot with a keyboard and mouse, but my PC is a bit chuggy in this game, even with a decently hot video card. Also, while you can play with the AI buddies, you definitely want real teammates. Preferably ones you actually know. I think a regular crew could have a lot of fun for a long time with this one.

The guns feel really good. Driving... it could be better, but taking a car over a cliff as a "shortcut" is pretty amusing.

Early returns are that Breath of the Wild is fucking great. Curious to hear how you dudes with the Switch enjoy it.

I have fallen deep into Hitman. Any time I am not playing it, I am thinking about it. Thinking about how I could do a certain thing, whether this or that would work, etc. Kind of like a puzzle game. I've decided to play it as if I bought it when it first came out. That is, max out each location before moving onto the next. I just got mastery level 20 in Paris, and I'm ready to move onto Sapienza. Originally I planned to do everything in a level, including all the Escalation missions, but there are like 20 of them for each level, so I'll go back to those later.

I'll probably do the Elusive targets, even ones not in an area I have played before, because why not?

I've only ever played Hitman Blood Money and I wasn't very good at it, and thought it was okay, but this one is great.

My quick thoughts after several hours of Ghost Recon Wildlands:
PROS:
- guns feel great
- animation, sneaking around, all great
- driving off of mountains is a blast
- huge landscape full of stuff to do

CONS:
- ALL of the dialog. Seriously, all of it is terrible. It's like what how a 7th grader must think soldiers talk.
- currently very buggy. It freezes, has huge frame rate drops, and will randomly kick people from sessions
- Even on normal difficulty, with all human players, it's insanely hard. Enemies will spawn behind you. F this game

After some patches, and a price reduction, this game will be worth your time. But it isn't now.

So is this like Far Cry but with co-op kind of thing?
About the enemy. Are they hard just because they spawn and are many/tough, or is the AI any good? Do they use team tactics, flanking, communication and such? Drive vehicles?

Vlad wrote: So is this like Far Cry but with co-op kind of thing?
About the enemy. Are they hard just because they spawn and are many/tough, or is the AI any good? Do they use team tactics, flanking, communication and such? Drive vehicles?

I hate games where the onky tweak to enemies is, more, more often, or more unexpectedly. On shooters it's an especially glaring sin.....When the endgame is just wave mode....especially ifthe game had any semblance of tactics or stealth prior to endgame.

I get it that a i's are way more difficult to code than "add twice as many of the same thing."

The other pitfall of those types of games is just multiplying hp's and turning evrything into bullet sponges.

Exactly my feeling. The only military shooter worth emulating, in my opinion, is Operation Flashpoint, the original one.

Vlad wrote: So is this like Far Cry but with co-op kind of thing?
About the enemy. Are they hard just because they spawn and are many/tough, or is the AI any good? Do they use team tactics, flanking, communication and such? Drive vehicles?

It's a combination of Just Cause and Far Cry. The cooperative elements are actually really cool. The enemies are difficult because of the sheer volume of them. And if you do manage to clear them out, you usually have a small window in which to achieve your objective before a new batch trickles on in. They will drive vehicles, man sentry guns, call in attack helicopters, fire mortars, and flank. Although their usual technique of flanking is more like swarming.

I forgot another really cool thing I saw in the game, and I hope it figures into the gameplay at some point. I was driving to an objective, up the side of a mountain, and had to stop while a train went by. The track wound around the side of the mountain. It was really cool and unexpected. If they don't have a mission involving that train, they are really missing the... boat.

I got SHENZEN I/O in the Humble Bundle and it's really cool if you are the kind of person that liked SPACECHEM and TIS100, very much a Zachtronics game. I can't tell you how proud I am ofThat's tight as hell!

Jeb, we're not on the same page

I'm pretty advanced in Nioh's second area. That early troubling boss in the cave was a hell of a difficulty spike, I have not encountered anything remotely as hard as that one so far. There was a very well-done human swordsman boss. The level design is pretty engaging, too.

Early indications are that Nintendo has done it with Breath of the Wild. Universal acclaim and I like specifically what I'm hearing (and who I'm hearing it from), it sounds amazing. Especially from people (like me) who have gotten pretty jaded and cynical about 3d Zelda. Might wait for a while to buy it, though, with buying a house coming at the end of the month. I guess I could get it for Wii U but the performance will probably be garbage. Maybe I'll buy a Switch if there are at least 2-3 great games.

Instead, I bought the Witcher 3 Complete for 20 bucks and started it. The amount of loot and shit you get is just overwhelming but I guess a lot of it isn't important. But it's very intimidating to start the game because of this.

I do love Geralt's dialogue. Genuinely great. PS4 version runs like garbage-ish but the dialogue is looking like it will hold me in. Combat is challenging, too, which is fun. I'm doing 2nd highest difficulty level and I LOVE the idea that monsters are hard enough that you need to actually research and prepare. And it's totally in-universe consistent with Geralt actually being a professional monster hunter people pay to do this service.

i really want to try the Witcher III one day but yeah, i hate those intimidating openings where you are overwhelmed with look and stuff. Mass Effect took forever to ramp up that stuff so I prefer that approach. The Bethesda games typically overwhelm you too with too much. You're managing encumbrance from the very beginning practically. Penny Arcade did something great with that on Skyrim where the guy was walking around with all these plates and wooden spoons, lol

Who's gotten loot right? You want lots of loot, but you want it to be quickly assessed as good or bad and easy to drop if inventory management is a thing. Loot having its own level is kind of a mess. DIABLO 2 made loot interesting, but loot management could be a pain in the ass. BORDERLANDS had a pretty good valuation metric, but levels always made this part suck because you would hold on to stuff you couldn't equip for ages sometimes. The spoons and shit in ELDER SCROLLS made me hate that game. MINECRAFT made loot a puzzle, but again, inventory management sucks. RESIDENT EVIL 4 has likely the worst inventory management system with that stupid Tetris interface.

Anyone have a favorite? TORCHLIGHT was cool about inventory, right? I only played it briefly.

Dungeon Siege had the ability to turn junk you didn't want into gold, right there in the dungeon. That was nice. I liked Torchlight's "send the pet to sell junk" bit.

I haven't bought a new console game since Super Mario Maker, but I do have a pre-order for Breath of the Wild in at the local Gamestop. I'm trying to convince myself that I don't need to go and grab it at midnight tonight.

It sounds like a very fun game on which to compare notes and experiences. We might need a dedicated thread...