What Are You Currently Playing? 6.65: Neighbor of the Beast

[Mustang]

Elden Ring
So I'm still not really comfortable with the combat and I don't think I will ever be completely comfortable with it. I'm decent with it enough to get by though. Even though I've been going for a samurai mage type of build I have been swaying from that idea though. I've seen lots of builds, so much so that I don't know what kind of build I'll be going for by the end. In the meantime, I have a +4 Uchigatana, +5 Blood Nagakiba, and a +6 Bloodhound's Fang. Everything else I have haven't been touched yet, but some of them are the reasons I'm not sure what I want to go for yet. I also have this Great Stars weapon, with Carian Knights Greatsword and the Meteorite Staff. Yeah, I've been around to quite a few places lol. A lot of my time has been basically following different guides for OP Builds and a lot of them are terrible trying to follow so a lot of my time has been spent doing bits of what I can here and there. There are some baddies I want to go after immediately for revenge, but I'll play nice for now lol.

So I've been engaging with some FromSoft fans, and, yeah, all I can do is shake my head. I just watched recently watched Max's latest Shadow of the Erdtree playthrough video (work and whatnot) and he didn't care for the fight and the comment section was something else lol. I'm neither for nor against. Play how you want, but my goodness, the stress people put themselves through for pride and a "challenge". You can tell some people have only played Souls and nothing before Souls became a thing. 1 guy said something along the lines of summoning means you're not playing the game the way it's supposed to be played. This attitude here is something I can't stand. I paid money for my game and I'm gonna play it how I want to play it. If I want to summon I'll summon. If I want to use magic I'll use magic. What I don't understand is why everyone else is suddenly so against it (I'm mostly talking about content creators at this point)? Like there's some sort of hidden rule that demands them to play with either a STR or DEX build (I've watched a lot of people at this point too).

Now I've been enjoying Elden Ring as a whole, but if I really wanted to, I can go in on this game too. People talking like they're actually doing something with their character when all I see from these STR and DEX builds are Jump attacks or Ash of War spam. Like I said, coming from Nioh, yeah I can really go in if I wanted to, but I'm treating this like how I treat God of War and just enjoying what's presented to me. But yeah, this attitude about how Souls should be played. Fuck outta here with that noise.

Give me a couple more days (weeks lol, we have actually started hard work again and I've been getting more tired) and I can give a semi review

[Mustang]

So I think I played enough Elden Ring at this point. I don't see myself finishing to be honest, mainly because the combat just saps it outta me (and I'm ready to move on). I like the idea of bloodhound step and whatever the lightning version is, but I hate that it cost FP (for BH). Barring that, it's 8-9/10. Unlike Shenmue 3, the combat is still ok, whereas Shenmue 3 is unforgivable. I think I said it in one of my early posts. It's not God of War when it comes to presentation, but it's presentation is good on it's own. It's customization and world design is where it smokes everything else. If other folks want to say Game of the Generation, I won't argue, but it's not something I would say. Personally, I think I'd still take Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom over Elden Ring.

Armored Core 6 while it's not next up on my list to play, but I think I have even more interest in that game than what my interest level was at for Elden Ring, mainly for its customization. I've also heard it's like Metal Gear Solid 5, how you'd have your mission and just go. So it could be next up, but I also need to take a break from long running games for a bit so I might be jumping back into Street Fighter 3/6 and Tekken 8, maybe. It's been a hot minute since I've actually played any.

I did forget Astro Bot comes out next week so I might just hold out for that and I think Plucky Squire comes out a few weeks after so I might be set with those 2. What happened to me right? I hate platformers right? Yep, but I'm just trying something that I don't usually play for the sake of not burning out.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes- I'm almost done with this one. I could finish it at any point since I basically just have the final boss left, but I'm taking some extra time to see if I can find all of the items and finish it off with 100% completion which is now a tradition for me with Metroid games. Overall, I'd say it's about on par with the first game with maybe a few annoying aspects, but still a great adventure game overall. I miss this old-school type of world design from that era of gaming. I'll probably jump to Prime 3 at some time in the Fall and try to finish it before the end of the year so I can be ready for Prime 4 when that drops.

Cyberpunk 2077- Well, this was a surprise. I have never played a CD Projekt Red game before, I'm not particularly a fan of open world games, and this is a game that was a bit of a laughing stock at launch if I recall correctly thanks to it's poor console performance and abundance of glitches. I liked the Edgerunners anime that came out last year, and it endeared me to the world a bit, but ultimately I still wasn't thinking of coming into this game. Then I started hearing buzz about how the game had a complete overhaul and was far more enjoyable of an experience than it was at launch, and how versatile the gameplay had become. And I happened to watch some videos of gameplay of what you can do with all of the different builds and I have to admit I was actually intrigued.

And I have to say, I'm rather impressed. It took me a while to get into it but the gun-play in this game is really solid, and right now with a Reflex-based build and using a Sandevistan unit I'm having a blast switching mainly between pistol and sub-machine gun style weapons and Knives and Katanas. This game actaully has some really fun FPS-style movement controls and fun enemy encounters while mixing it up an a genuinely interesting wold design with GTA style gameplay in-between the main missions. Getting into Cyberpunk wasn't on my bingo card for this year but I've had a lot more fun with this than most modern AAA titles. If the game was like this at launch, I have a feeling it would have had a far different reputation (which to be fair, does seem to have still changed for the better).

[Mustang]

Man, I wish I could play Cyberpunk. I was told I would like it too. I just can't play it because I get dizzy/motion sickness from FPV now (I probably need to go to a Neurologist at some point lol)

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Sorry to hear that. It sucks when a medical or personal issue can get in the way of enjoying some particular things.

I'm kind of similar when it comes to VR. Granted, there aren't any that I would want to play other than Half-Life: Alyx. Something about that perspective is so disorienting for me.

[Avaitor]

What're you playing Cyberpunk on? Because I've heard that the PS5 version is solid and fixes most of the bugs.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, it's the PS5 version.

[Mustang]

Kinda been out of it a little bit. I won't lie, Elden Ring kinda messed up my plans and I've been a little burnt out at the moment, and the discourse around everything that I like, I've been keeping my distance on a lot of things as well. I'm currently forcing myself to play One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 just to get out of this little funk that I've been in (not really working) and kinda been focused on learning/re-learning Yugioh for when my nephew challenges me the next time.

Gaming media bullshit, FGC bullshit, Sports media bullshit, yeah I've just been kinda keeping to myself. I've even cooled off on watching Chilledchaos and his clique cause right now I'm just over the "for the content" plays at the moment.

Currently waiting for Metaphor to come out but that won't get played until probably next year. I have Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth to get to, but I'm not in the mood. Hell, haven't tried out Terry yet nor bought Marvel collection (to be fair, I'm waiting for the physical copy to be released) To be honest, it's looking like a similar situation where it took for me to boot up Spider-Man to get out of this funk. Hopefully it won't come down to that, but it's looking like it for sure.

[Mustang]

Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel
Still watching a few people for the most part, but I am playing a little bit more. I do believe a reset is needed, but probably on the forbidden list itself moreso than where the game is at. Originally, I thought because the game is so fast with the special summons that it needs to be toned down when most people like those decks. They also like the interaction with the hand traps and board breakers. The one thing most people hate are the floodgates (Skill Drain), and then there's Max C. From my understanding, Max C is the counter for all the heavy special summons (along with Nibiru), but at the same time, it might depend on what format you're playing. If you're playing casuals, YES, BAN THIS MOTHERFUCKER, but if you're playing tournaments/rank/meta, I think Max C is needed. That being said, I think my biggest issue are the boss monsters some of these decks are playing into. Like, you have a trap heavy deck with a board that ends with the boss monsters as a combo deck and that just don't make sense to me. These generic boss monsters like Accesscode Talker, Borreload Savage Dragon, Chaos Angel, Barron de Fleure need to be theme specific. I hate seeing Accesscode Talker in a deck like Yubel or Dragon link just because its so easy to summon it with it's busted effects. With cards like this roaming rampant, you can afford to reset the banlist altogether. And that's just me observing. Playing casually has been "meh". Trying to get cards without spending money is very bothersome.

Street Fighter 6
Easing my way back into it. The noise around fighting games in general is still whatever, but it's getting closed to that time where my friends and family have our little gauntlet.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm currently playing Sonic X Shadow Generations. To be more specific, I'm really playing Shadow Genterations since I already effectively 100%'ed Sonic Generations back when it came out over a decade ago....WOW, has it really been that long already?

Anyways, Shadow Generations is actually really damn good. Like, I really wish Spark of Spirit or TalonMalon were still active members of these boards for times like this because I'm sure they'd have been gushing about this game as well. This isn't just a case of the Sonic fans hyping up a mediocre game to be something better than it is due to lowered standards, as it's been getting pretty unanimous praise for the most part. To me, this is pretty much the peak of 3D Sonic gameplay, and I think it's to the games credit that they don't try to needlessly pad it out more than they need to. It helps that  they have all of Sonic Generations, now remastered to be upscaled to 4K and run at 60 FPS on the console versions (the PC version was already capable of this for years, of course). I dabbled with it a bit just for the nostalgia and it does still hold up really well. But even compared to that I think Shadow Generations is a step above the the gameplay department. It's not quite up there with Sonic Mania which is my favorite Sonic game ever, but it oddly enough feels like a fitting successor to Shadow's story in Sonic Adventure 2, a childhood favorite of mine (I never played Shadow the Hedgehog).

I definitely want to go back and try to S-rank as many stages as I can. On that note, it also helps that the rankings aren't as piss-easy as Sonic Generations was. The Sonic games that I've played seem to bounce between laughably simple to ludicrously hard when it comes to their rankings, with no in-between until I played this game which seems like a fair compromise. The C and B-ranks are doable enough but if you want an A or S-rank you'll have to work for it.

Games like this that are short to beat and can be played in quick bursts but that are infinitely replayable are my jam these days. It's hard for me to invest in the big open-world RPGs that seem to be the most popular single-player genre for modern games. Like, it's funny because back when I was in grade-school longer games like that were a dream for me, but nowadays I prefer something much more streamlined but still skill-based with lots of room for improvement. Something more arcade-like in design, if you will, which this game excels at.

[Avaitor]

It's been interesting to see Sega jump basically fully into Dreamcast/GCN-era nostalgia, especially Shadow, after mining Genesis nostalgia for basically all it's worth.

But I have no problem with that, Shadow Generations looks like fun!