What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Sevej wrote: So, tried Overwatch at the free weekend and bought it on the subsequent Monday.

Enjoy it thoroughly, especially if my friends are online. The thing with Overwatch is, it's so easy to enjoy, even if you're losing. The shooting mechanism is solid (hitscan FTW), and there is a lot of chance to do heroics. My favorite hero is now Reinhardt, even if I do some stupid things with him (being shot at in the back, running away with charge, only to fall into chasm). Playing offensive Reinhardt is surprisingly tactical (finding the right time and place to charge). The others are Pharah, Bastion, Reaper, Soldier 76 and Mercy.

It's still overpriced though.

It's incredibly enjoyable! Not even close to everything is hitscan though. Of the characters you mention, only Bastion, Reaper, and Soldier76 have hitscan as primary fire, and they all have range issues (less so for Soldier). Aside from "sprays" like Winston's Lightning Gun, Mei's Ice Gun, and Symettra's ...uh.. Light(?) Gun, the characters I think of as traditional hitscan are McCree (Revolver) and Widowmaker (Sniper Rifle). Dodging Pharaah rockets is routine, Lucio's gun has memes made about it because its bullets are so slow. And dying to random Junkrat balls is a wonderful introduction to the character.

Have fun out there! I am 2-0 in my placement matches so far, but I will end up in ELO hell and Bronze to be sure.

Legomancer wrote: Finally giving NMS a bit of a rest and playing the seasonal thing on Diablo 3, but I'm not 100% feeling it.

Yeah, the seasonal thing on D3 was cool the first couple times, but it gets old pretty quickly, ESPECIALLY if the set highlighted for the class you want to play is subpar. A couple seasons back, the Wizard set was Delsere's Magnum Opus and the set bonuses were mediocre, at best. I have far more fun playing my Tal Rasha's and Firebird sets, so it kinda left a sour taste in my mouth about the whole seasonal thing. It's also a LOT more fun to run the season with other people. I'm not quite sure how things are going to change when the Necromancer comes out, but I'm hoping that they spruce up the seasons a bit.

The Necro has been quite fun, but is having some similar problems. Some of the skills are just underwhelming in their effect, which makes the sets based on those skills (like Trang'Oul's) very underwhelming. In the beta, there's a merchant who looks like a giant satyr named "Dahnk M'eme" who hands out full sets for 200 blood shards, so they could be tested. I've tried all four and I have to say that, right now, I'd never play anything but the Inarius set, because it makes an otherwise underwhelming skill in Bone Armor into pure insanity. I have no pets(!) I just walk into a crowd, cast Bone Armor to do massive damage to them, and then surround myself with a combination damage and armor field that multiplies the damage of the rest of my skills in that radius by a ridiculous amount. It's insanely fun. The rest of the sets pale in comparison. That said, outside the sets, I'd probably never play anything but a max pet build (golem, warriors, mages.)

So, I have a pretty crap laptop despite only being a year or so old. Also, recently, I borked my windows install trying to revert back to 7, so I'm now running Linux Mint "Cynnamon" or whatever. My point is I can really only play low requirement games.

I logged into Steam yesterday and saw a game "Mark of the Ninja" on sale for about $3. It's awesome. Great stealth tactics, in which I normally do not like stealth games. I've only done the first 3 missions, but I have already found myself going back for stealth achievements and high scores. On the first mission I have successfully climbed above Josh Look lol Anyhow, it's great. I can't recommend it enough. Add me on steam QPCloudy.

Also, thinking about CS:GO, but I keep reading it's got a toxic community. Not sure if I want to deal with it.

Counter-Strike players are some of the worst of the worst.

MARK OF THE NINJA is great. It's made by Klei Entertainment, and they also made SHANK, which is a sidescrolling good time with the same engine as MotN, but a more ...direct approach to enemy engagements. Then they made a zillion dollars from DON'T STARVE.

hotseatgames wrote: Counter-Strike players are some of the worst of the worst.

guise... if you want to feel better about the world, watch Dunkey trolling CS:GO players. It's goddamn heaven. Giving wrong call-outs.. .running into total jerks and trolling them. I love this man.

Uh oh, ARMS looks like it's punishingly difficult and has tons of grindy unlocks. Paging Dr. Simmons, Dr Simmons, you are wanted in the Switch lobby...

arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/strong-ar...endo-i-used-to-know/

My son loved the testpunches he took part in, but he's Splatoon crazy so that's where his summer funbux went.

Seems the Arms reviews are pretty good.

arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/arms-review-nintendo-switch/

EDIT: regarding the difficulty, F-Zero GX is brutally hard. I was never able to finish the story mode, yet it's still my favorite race.

The 3v3 Lockout Elimination mode in Overwatch is a nifty piece of game design. Each player has one life, and after a really long time (long enough for ultimates to charge, typically) a control point will appear to break stalemates. It's played best of 5. Since everyone only has one life, healers and self healers are really good. A common strong team I saw before was Mercy/Soldier/Roadhog. But the Lockout wrinkle is that once your team wins a round with a hero, no one on your team can take that hero anymore that match. So if you blow Soldier and Roadhog on your first round, you're going to have to find a way to get your other two wins.

I've largely been solo-queuing, and I like to wait for at least one of my teammates to pick before I do. I take Mercy a lot, because she's good with any tank or a Pharah, but I've been burned by attaching myself to bad Pharahs. Mercy is also really good with Bastion, the robot who makes himself into a turret. When I don't wait or we get down a round or two, I'll just snap pick Roadhog or Soldier because they're so good in this mode.

Jexik wrote: The 3v3 Lockout Elimination mode in Overwatch is a nifty piece of game design. Each player has one life, and after a really long time (long enough for ultimates to charge, typically) a control point will appear to break stalemates. It's played best of 5. Since everyone only has one life, healers and self healers are really good. A common strong team I saw before was Mercy/Soldier/Roadhog. But the Lockout wrinkle is that once your team wins a round with a hero, no one on your team can take that hero anymore that match. So if you blow Soldier and Roadhog on your first round, you're going to have to find a way to get your other two wins.

I've largely been solo-queuing, and I like to wait for at least one of my teammates to pick before I do. I take Mercy a lot, because she's good with any tank or a Pharah, but I've been burned by attaching myself to bad Pharahs. Mercy is also really good with Bastion, the robot who makes himself into a turret. When I don't wait or we get down a round or two, I'll just snap pick Roadhog or Soldier because they're so good in this mode.

I like 3v3 Lockout as well. I really like the swapping out idea in general. I play more Mystery Heroes than Quickplay, probably, so this is in my wheelhouse. I think it's important to manage your offensive picks. I played against a team that was probably better than we were, but by round 3 they had NO Offense characters left and just couldn't kill anyone between our heals and ganks.

Remember: Roadhog mirror, hook LAST. Try to get some damage on them and bounce around a lot, if they hook you and bring you in, take your lump, then shoot, hook, shoot, melee. This is worth practicing, it comes up.

hotseatgames wrote: Counter-Strike players are some of the worst of the worst.

<<I>> was a CS player back in the 2000's

As was I, but I wasn't trolling people and making them look at goatsce

lol

I bought Project Highrise, which is basically an updated version of SimTower. I enjoyed that one back in the day, and I am so far enjoying this one as well. I find it less stressful to worry about a single building than an entire city. Not that I'm worried. I build out a space, rent the space, run electricity to it, a phone line, etc. It's neat to watch the whole thing buzz along.

I played some Diablo 3 with both spawnlings in 3 player local co-op on ps3.

Here is a good educational example on the importance of cooperation. If all you do is run around collecting as much loot as you can without sharing, you will lose as a group.

The female spawnling understands this, but the male spawnling has little sense of working as a group and is more interested in his own avarice. This is highly concerning to me. I hope I can use this game as one means to help guide him away from that.

Local co-op is a bit janky to play. Its all played on the same screen, which is good. But the constant interruption of checking your inventory and skills makes it more of an accounting game and really destroys the sense of exploration. Especially when male spawn checks every single time he gets a gold coin. He definitely suffers from ADHD, and I suspect is high on the aspergers spectrum as well.