The Bill's Now Playing Video Game Thread (Now with Bames)

[The Bill]

Also, anyone play Callisto Protocol yet? The reviews have been pretty underwhelming, but I'll have to get it anyway, it's just a matter of how long I'll wait and what else I won't play instead.

Reviews have painted a pretty clear picture it’s not really a Dead Space game, but a shitty Mike Tyson Punch-Out. Pass.

[The Bill]

Tried the Duke Nukem Forever (2001) Restoration Project release:



Eh! I think they released it too soon. Still way too buggy and unpolished. Audio mix is a mess. I’ll wait and hope for a better release. The machine gun rules, though.

Dolphin emulator now has this graphics trick that changes all in game Nintendo button prompts into the corresponding Xbox (or PS, I guess) for a ton of games. Best QOL fix for an emulator, yet.

Steam Winter Sale, grabbed some shit including Elden Ring. Why I does dis to myself?

Cyberpunk is wrapping up. I can start to do a point of no return final quest, but I’m mopping up side missions first.

Cyberpunk runs and looks much better than Elden Ring. This seems farcical.

[FVBTVS]

bought a deep discounted red dead 2 for the fuck of it and played through some of the prologue. its really an astonishing experience for the amount of details they've crammed into it and i've only played an hour. i'd love to want to play the whole thing but we'll see.

[The Bill]

bought a deep discounted red dead 2 for the fuck of it and played through some of the prologue. its really an astonishing experience for the amount of details they've crammed into it and i've only played an hour. i'd love to want to play the whole thing but we'll see.

Playing it in first person mode is insane. Immersion central.

[doomeddisciple]

Also, anyone play Callisto Protocol yet? The reviews have been pretty underwhelming, but I'll have to get it anyway, it's just a matter of how long I'll wait and what else I won't play instead.

Reviews have painted a pretty clear picture it’s not really a Dead Space game, but a shitty Mike Tyson Punch-Out. Pass.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out is a lot more fun and the controls are better.

Super gorgeous to look at if you want to play for graphical value only - but just a chore to get through.

[spacehamster]

Super gorgeous to look at if you want to play for graphical value only - but just a chore to get through.

Pretty graphics do go a long way for me, especially the sci-fi/horror kind, but as I've learned from quitting Gruntybeard Ragnarok, they don't make up for everything. Callisto Protocol is only about 10 hours, though, so I'll probably still pick it up once I get this addiction to Darktide that I've developed out of my system.

[FVBTVS]

why did i buy The Cowabunga Collection

[spacehamster]

why did i buy The Cowabunga Collection

Well, it alliterates, so.

[Eight Bit Alien]

bought a deep discounted red dead 2 for the fuck of it and played through some of the prologue. its really an astonishing experience for the amount of details they've crammed into it and i've only played an hour. i'd love to want to play the whole thing but we'll see.

Does it have a long unskippable tutorial and story section? I want to run around in the wild west but I'm not sacrificing an hour of free time for some bullshit "press triangle to learn the shitty video game plot" thing before I can actually play the game.

[FVBTVS]

yeah pretty much. i think it does do a good enough job of imbuing it with stuff (writing, acting. character. setting) that'll drive you through it and orient you with how the game feels because its very heavy feeling, deliberate and slow mechanically. a lot of systems and shit. gta controls on weed gummies basically

i'm probably the same as you when it coems to that shit and i had to really get myself in the mood for it. i'm not even through it yet and i can do no more than 30-40 mintues at a time. i even read the entire hand written journal the protagonist carries and flipped page after page.

like i said there's enough artifice and detail going on w this game that even in the prologue its like

just the way the models leave tracks in the snow drifts is worth a few minutes of dicking around

bought a deep discounted red dead 2 for the fuck of it and played through some of the prologue. its really an astonishing experience for the amount of details they've crammed into it and i've only played an hour. i'd love to want to play the whole thing but we'll see.

Playing it in first person mode is insane. Immersion central.

i spent like 20 minutes alone trying to find the right fpp control scheme for head shot chads

[The Bill]

why did i buy The Cowabunga Collection

Because you’re awesome

[The Bill]

Beat Cyberpunk

I dread, Dread Elder Ring. It’s a rabbit hole of anger, and bad dreams, and a sense of acknowledgement that my wife will take a shit on. All over again.

[THE KILL]

Hahaha, you should start a video game blog where every post contains details on how your wife took all the joy out of beating a game.

Anyways, been playing that new Turtles game on the Switch a lot. It's the best Turtles game and the best brawler I've ever played, and I've played shitloads of Turtles in Time on the SNES. Also, Rolling Gunner, a horizontal bullet hell shooter programmed by some ex-Cave folks. It's mostly butt-ugly, incredibly brutal, but still a fuckload of fun if you're a masochist. I'm thinking of getting my own Switch just for this game.

[The Bill]

Hahaha, you should start a video game blog where every post contains details on how your wife took all the joy out of beating a game.

Ha. It doesn’t happen too much as she has no idea what’s going on in my world o’ games, just as I don’t know beans about her series de Reality TV. And lately my-son has been into my victories and likes to just see end boss battles and the cutscenes that follow.

I have started Elden Ring, but I’ve had a tradition of playing Yakuza (and games made by these dudes) the last 4 New Years, so I’m thinking I might start up Yakuza 2 tonight, instead.

[spacehamster]

Also, in case you hadn't heard, the "complete edition" of The Witcher 3 on PC is, uh, busted. I could run the game at Ultra settings on my previous PC, now I have a new machine, and I can just about make it run okay on high with the lowest RT setting, all of my saves past the "Brothers in Arms" quest are gone (I had already finished the main game and Hearts of Stone on this playthrough and just wanted to go back and do Blood & Wine again), plus about 30% of the time when you load a save, the game stutters to a halt and you have a hard time even turning it off. I bet CDPR thought this was going to be how they get back in everyone's good graces, and now it's basically CP2077 all over again.

[Eight Bit Alien]

Like five more old-new duke nukem games have leaked in the past 45 seconds

[The Bill]

Also, in case you hadn't heard, the "complete edition" of The Witcher 3 on PC is, uh, busted. I could run the game at Ultra settings on my previous PC, now I have a new machine, and I can just about make it run okay on high with the lowest RT setting, all of my saves past the "Brothers in Arms" quest are gone (I had already finished the main game and Hearts of Stone on this playthrough and just wanted to go back and do Blood & Wine again), plus about 30% of the time when you load a save, the game stutters to a halt and you have a hard time even turning it off. I bet CDPR thought this was going to be how they get back in everyone's good graces, and now it's basically CP2077 all over again.

And it broke a whole slew of decent mods like blood and gore ones, which really made the game for me. I don’t know, I probably won’t fuss with Witcher 3 till I get a newer PC one day. My plate is so obscenely filled to the brim with shit I want play/replay.

Speaking of, I decided to stick to Elden Rings, and I’ve played a ton, yet feel like I’ve gotten nowhere.

[spacehamster]

That's why I still haven't finished Elden Ring. I feel like everytime I sit down to play it, I lose five hours of my day and don't make any progress because I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. As much as I want to like the game, it's the worst example of everything I hate about "open world" games. Just tell me what to fucking do.

[FVBTVS]

try to do everything in the big castle and around it. if you get hard stuck go to the region in the south and do everything there..

[spacehamster]

try to do everything in the big castle and around it. if you get hard stuck go to the region in the south and do everything there..

I've already been to that southern region. Finding out I was supposed to go there kind of kept me going for a while, but then I hit another wall. i think I'm supposed to go to the city next, but I can't figure out how, and I'm fucking done riding my horse around it for hours trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go. That's where I gave up.

[The Bill]

try to do everything in the big castle and around it. if you get hard stuck go to the region in the south and do everything there..

I've already been to that southern region. Finding out I was supposed to go there kind of kept me going for a while, but then I hit another wall. i think I'm supposed to go to the city next, but I can't figure out how, and I'm fucking done riding my horse around it for hours trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go. That's where I gave up.

Umm, I have some ashes and I apparently have a bell but how do you summon? I walked over to one of those little statue things near the entrance and Golden Knight Douche (who I cheese killed) but there’s no summon prompt.

[spacehamster]

Umm, I have some ashes and I apparently have a bell but how do you summon? I walked over to one of those little statue things near the entrance and Golden Knight Douche (who I cheese killed) but there’s no summon prompt.

There's a symbol that shows up in the bottom, uh, left, I think, that lets you know you can summon. Typically in areas the devs expect to be hard, with a lot of enemies at once.

[The Bill]

Umm, I have some ashes and I apparently have a bell but how do you summon? I walked over to one of those little statue things near the entrance and Golden Knight Douche (who I cheese killed) but there’s no summon prompt.

There's a symbol that shows up in the bottom, uh, left, I think, that lets you know you can summon. Typically in areas the devs expect to be hard, with a lot of enemies at once.

Left, like the HUD left. Like that circle that appears during the Roundtable?

[FVBTVS]

it's actually stupid for me to speculate because i dont know what you've explored, as its almost all technically open to a degree but if you're talking about lyndell the gold capital city i really doubt you need to be there yet. do all limgrave, do most of caleid, do storm veil, do the liurna lakess

bill - there's an onscreen prompt for when you can ash summon, it's a little white ghost headstone on the left, sometimes its only in certain regions but its available for most boss encounters. a lot of exterior tough guys you cant summon against. that would have been nice to summon the jelly fish against gold kknight douche i agree (tree sentinel)

[spacehamster]

it's actually stupid for me to speculate because i dont know what you've explored, as its almost all technically open to a degree but if you're talking about lyndell the gold capital city i really doubt you need to be there yet. do all limgrave, do most of caleid, do storm veil, do the liurna lakess

I think I've done most of that, but it's been a while. I can't remember the last time I felt like I was making progress in this game. I appreciate you trying to help because a) I know you love the game and b) you know what a big Souls nerd I am, but there's really something fundamentally off for me with this game in the way it's structured where it just becomes a chore. I was worried about this because I don't like most open world games anyway and I never understood why so many people thought the only thing wrong with Dark Souls was that it should've been open world. It's just tedious and frustrating.