What are you currently playing?

[pindicator]

I've been playing it since Beta and a lot of the late game mechanics I just ignore - stuff like advanced crafting is just witchcraft to me. But it is still a fun game even if I don't regularly explore endgame content. This is the first league in a while where I've tried to do so and I'm enjoying things but I'm not playing my own build, I'm copying someone else's. There's a bit of fun in that too, in just exploring. Anyway, I mean to say I hope you get enjoyment out of it for playing your own way and don't expect to have to know or do everything.

[haphazard1]

That was an amazing read Chevalier, thanks so much for posting that. This isn't a game that I would play myself but I'd love reading more about it if you find the time.

I will second Sullla's thanks, Chevalier. The game looks very promising. I have been interested in American Civil War history for a long time, and the level of detail is impressive.

[Bobchillingworth]

Started playing CrossCode again, since they released their first expansion for it; I had forgotten how good the game is. More-or-less the best Sega Genesis game that never was, it's sort of a combination of Zelda dungeon diving and overworld exploration with the combat from Hades and the graphics of Cave Story. It's also quite difficult, both the fighting and puzzles, several of which require enough both foresight to set up Rube Goldberg-esque chain reactions and perfect reflexes.


Also the plot is excellent, the character writing is even better, and there's a surprising amount of freedom in how you can customize your character and battle style. I recommend it!

[BRickAstley]

I'm not that great at it (mid-level Gold), but Rocket League is great fun and the cross-play parties work very well.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I'm playing Curse of the Dead Gods right now. I've had it for a lot of Early Access and the game was more polished than most early. It just went into full release recently.

It's another action rogue-lite type game. But much more combat-focused than Hades, by comparison. There is essentially ZERO story. Like, as in, none. Off the top of my head, I cannot even think of a single text screen providing any narrative at all. Basically, you're an explorer who moves deeper through three different enemy and trap-laden temples, each with different enemies and bosses, and after clearing all three temple levels, it unlocks a final boss. I still have to clear the last full temple run of the newest "Eagle" temple, so I have not completed the game. As you move through the temple, each new room gives you 20 "curse," along with some enemy's attacks which curse you, and when you hit 100 curse, you receive a new curse. The curses make moderate to major changes to the system mechanics, some of which make plus and minus tradeoffs that could be perceived as positives, and some that are just straight negatives always. After clearing a boss of a level, you get to remove one curse of your choice. If the fifth curse becomes active, you constantly bleed health, which essentially ends the run.

You have a main weapon, off-hand weapon, and two-hand weapon. The combat flows around your stamina bar, which typically has five dots. Each time you do a main weapon "finisher," use an off-hand combo, swing your two-hand weapon, or roll to dodge, you use one dot of stamina. When you run out, you can no longer do any of those things, and it takes a couple seconds for your stamina to slowly recharge, leaving you vulnerable in combat. So it is often a trade-off between attacking power and escapability in combat. Do a lot of damage and you may leave yourself extremely vulnerable. There are ways to get some stamina back through perfectly time dodges or parries as well. The trade off is you receive a gold multiplier combo per kill that adds up fast, but it requires you to continue attacking within a brief window to prevent the counter resetting, and resets each time you are hit by a trap or enemy, so that also encourages you to balance safety with aggression in combat.

You get a Slay the Spire type map that lets you select gold rooms, weapon rooms, relic rooms, weapon upgrade rooms, ? mark rooms, health fountain rooms (which are only immediately following a boss and curse you for every 20% of your health you heal), and stat-increase rooms. The goal is to become as powerful as possible without overextending and dying. At the end of the rooms where you are receive a relic, weapon, upgrade etc., you can choose to use gold to buy the upgrade, or blood to sacrifice, which increases your curse level.

For meta progression, you earn blue skulls which can be used for a few things: 1) unlock three rune slots which allow you to modify your stats or gameplay mechanics prior to the run in some way, 2) earn divine favors which allow you to re-roll your purchase options in temple rooms, 3) unlock up to four weapons altars which lets you select your weapon loadout before the run and upgrade those altars to offer better "more rare" weapons. There is also green rings which lets you unlock weapons you encounter in the temple to show up on the altars. The types of weapons and the way they operate and interact are quite varied and add much of the replayability to the combat.

Compared to games like Rogue Legacy and Hades, the meta-progression never truly levels up your character. You definitely get stronger with better weapons and three good runes, but you never increase your base stats, health pool or damage etc. So the game stays quite difficult, as you cannot just power your way through the difficulty curve with enough grinding. I suspect a reasonable amount of the people who purchase the game will never beat it.

The art style is good and the mechanics are quite tight. Everything is snappy and just works like you would want it to. That said, due to the lack of story and lack of extensive meta-progression, the replayability is probably somewhat lower than the leading games in this genre. If you're into action rogue-lites, I recommend this. I have put 33.7 hours into it (but probably less than five hours since the last temple was added, and maybe only 2-3 hours on the 1.0 release build) and I have definitely enjoyed the game and think it's worth the money. If you just dabble in this genre, or struggle with the difficulty curves in these types of games, this one is pretty unforgiving.

[Jowy]

I didn't realize how bad the GPU market is.. I figured I'd be fine, I can be patient. Well, after almost 3 months of waiting, I ended up canceling the order and getting another one that happened to be in stock. Though in that time the GPU prices had inflated by around 50 euros. Probably way more for scalped ones.

[T-hawk]

What's happening in the GPU market is the most postmodern thing I've ever seen. Computational capacity has become so much of a commodity that gamers can't get it for their graphics, because someone else (cryptocurrency miners) has a more profitable use for it and squeezes gamers out of the market.

[Old Harry]

So we should hold of upgrading until the cryptocurrency bubble bursts?

[T-hawk]

Put another way: If you want graphics, the market clearing price for it is the value of the Bitcoin that that GPU could be mining instead.

I'm not making any bubble predictions or anything, nobody knows where the Bitcoin or GPU markets are going to go. My own GPU is from 2013 and I don't play anything newer than Civ 5, so I don't have any stake in this.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

If you want a new GPU at retail prices, the only option is basically buy a new pre-built PC. I figure I will hold off until the next round of new cards and then upgrade everything with a new PC.