What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Just watched some gameplay.

It looks cheesy as all hell... and I want it.

"Looks like you brought claws to a sword fight!"

"So where are your claws now, Skippy?"

I got pretty far in Shadow Warrior... haven't finished it and am not sure I ever will. It's fun, but I could have stood for it being shorter.

I picked up the Oculus Rift a couple months back when it was on sale (Rift plus the Touch Controllers for $400), but then slapped my forehead when I realized I couldn't even use it with my current PC. So a couple months and many more $$$ later, I finally got a new PC with the Rift up and running last week. And my mind is now blown, fully and completely. I had tried it briefly last year courtesy of engelstein, but forgot how amazing it is, and that initial taste had only scratched the surface. In particular, I want to share a little about one new title, Lone Echo, and a couple others.

In Lone Echo, you are a robot who is helping a captain of a space station deal with various predicaments involving an anomaly. You move around the station, fixing various things, and do spacewalks outside, and stuff like that. You are equipped with various tools, which the game metes out to you gradually so you learn them over time, like data scanners and a laser cutter, and you maneuver around using small thrusters on your controllers. Feels so real. For the times when I'm spacewalking, it's ridiculous because I know that I'm standing on a solid floor in my living room, and yet my brain is freaking out because I am fully in the illusion of floating out in huge space surroundings. And the graphics are great, but not 100% realistic, and yet still, I'm deeply invested in the feeling of being there.

Another cool one is Robo Recall, which came free with the system. I have almost zero interest in FPS games, but something about this is just fascinating to be part of. Again, the immersion is very real, and though you're basically just killing a bunch of evil robots, with some different challenges and objectives mixed in, the way you do it is awesome. You can shoot at them, sure, but you can also grab a robot, rip off its arm, and then use that arm to beat another robot. Or grab a robot and use it as a meat shield. So fun.

I also got the Rick & Morty: Virtual Rick-ality game, and that's great, too. It's essentially a "do this job" kind of thing, where you are a Morty clone that Rick orders around. But it puts you right in there, and has a lot of humor and inventiveness, of course.

The Star Trek holodeck has arrived, in essence. And this is really just the beginning, I'm sure. And yet, Lone Echo is already easily one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. And sure, on a certain level, it's a bit more "experience" than game, though there are challenges and things to solve. But man, I can only imagine what else we'll see in the coming years.

I find that I need to limit my time on there, though. I spent a couple hours in Lone Echo last night, and have what I suppose would be a "VR hangover" today, where my balance and visual focus is a little bit screwy.

Coincidentally, Friday I put my Vive back on after having not touched it for a long time. I checked back in with Onward, which is basically virtual reality Counter-Strike. The big difference with this game is that you slide your thumb across the controller pad to move, so you don't teleport around. This has great potential to cause motion sickness, and after playing for 30 minutes, I felt not great for awhile. You do get used to it.

A lot has changed in the game since I last checked it out; there is a proper tutorial now, and you can fight AI opponents, which is what I did. It was fun and very tense since you are "there". I am terrible at this game.

hotseatgames wrote: I got pretty far in Shadow Warrior... haven't finished it and am not sure I ever will. It's fun, but I could have stood for it being shorter.

This! But I will try to continue. Silly as it was, I want to see the conclusion of the story.

I bought Dark Souls 2: Sins of the Whatnots on a whim, because I remember the first one being a fun, if tough game. Peas and rice. I had no idea what I was doing, or how to get away from the starting area. Some clacky dog things killed me while I tried to shoot them with arrows. At some point I ran out of arrows and had an axe. I killed the clacky dog things, some big fat troll, and finally, exasperated, did for all those cackling old mares in the hut. Never did find any way out of that starting area. That was after an internet search trying to find how to jump (nothing worked). There were some fallen trees that looked choppable, but were not.

I played through Oxenfree, which happens to be free right now on Xbox One. It's a short adventure about a group of teens who go to an island for a night of drinking, and things go awry.

You make virtually no decisions, and the game mostly leads you around the nose. The story has its moments, but overall, I was not engrossed. I did finish it, though.

JEM wrote: I bought Dark Souls 2: Sins of the Whatnots on a whim, because I remember the first one being a fun, if tough game. Peas and rice. I had no idea what I was doing, or how to get away from the starting area. Some clacky dog things killed me while I tried to shoot them with arrows. At some point I ran out of arrows and had an axe. I killed the clacky dog things, some big fat troll, and finally, exasperated, did for all those cackling old mares in the hut. Never did find any way out of that starting area. That was after an internet search trying to find how to jump (nothing worked). There were some fallen trees that looked choppable, but were not.

Click in the stick for jump. Terrible place for that control.

Yeah, forget that troll dude for now and keep moving to Majula. Almost every souls game has some difficult enemy you don't actually need to kill near the start just to fuck with you.

Gary Sax wrote: Click in the stick for jump. Terrible place for that control.

Can you jump from standing still? I always thought it was only possible to jump by tapping the run button while running.

Yeah, I think you're right. Missed that part.

Believe me, I tried everything. I even mapped it to B, and it made no difference. Maybe it's a bug with XBox One controllers on Windows. Anyway, I couldn't see any way out of the start area so I just quit.

I used an Xbox One controller on Windows (via USB cable) and never had an issue.

I thought DS2 was kind of weak, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Finished Shadow Warrior. Oh, wow. It's such a great game. The back story is very sad/romantic/tragic... and the game did a really nice job of revealing it layer by layer.

Unfortunately it suffers from repetitiveness, and very weak mid game. Some enemies just break the pace. Hated the harpies, suicidal dudes and the chargers/berserkers. The harpies are just flying and shooting from the sky. Cannot use melee attack on them. Suicidal dudes are just... well let's just say the game's frantic with lots of movement except when these dudes are around. The chargers have exactly one weakness and fighting them became routine, then chore.

I can't recall any game, ever, that had flying enemies that didn't suck.

Destiny 2