What Video Game Are You Currently Playing?

I got back to playing Doom after a 1.5 month hiatus. Picked up where I left - Icarus map 20

On 2/12/2021 at 12:50 PM, Aaron Blain said:

RetroArch netplay!

 

After years of being too intimidated by the number of variables involved, I finally got it going last night thanks in part to a very patient rando on Discord. Got my ass kicked in MKII, played some SNES beatemups and some Smash TV (which, it turns out, is amazing in co op).

 

If anyone reading this wants to come over to the libretro discord, I'd be more than happy to help you set up the details.

I'm often remiss with this stuff, but I'd love to SNES, NES, or Genesis it up with other people.  Do share!

I've been playing a few games.  Gave up on Doom Eternal for now, cannot play that at night after a day of work, too mentally exhausted.

Playing a bit of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.  It's a decent game but the menus are fucking cumbersome.

Also working on Sword Art Online: Lost Song.  Do not go from Vita to PS4 unless you'd finished it on the Vita.  But really fun ARPG, and calming.

Also returned to Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires for another Chaos difficulty run.  In the process of joining a kingdom, mercenary missions are too unbalanced to continue.

Finally, playing Doom 2 with Brutality 3.0, working throigh Cleimos 2.

I got Nioh 2

I finished level 1, and well, I am impressed, and I enjoyed it.

On 2/20/2021 at 5:52 PM, pilottobombadier said:

I'm often remiss with this stuff, but I'd love to SNES, NES, or Genesis it up with other people.  Do share!

It's a little bit complicated, so I was too intimidated for a long time, but I've gotten the hang of it recently and it's amazing.

The trick is that both players need 3 things to match exactly:

1. RetroArch - the frontend that coordinates all your emulators and handles netplay. Everyone should get the most recent 'Nightly' build, NOT the 'stable' build or it won't connect.

2. The emulator - RetroArch has a built-in online updater that it uses to install emulator 'cores' for each system. When you have the core loaded, it will (somewhere, depending on your device) show the Git hash, indicating the precise version of the emulator (E.g., Nestopia 1.50-WIP 2b0315c).

3. The ROM - you could compare file checksums, but in practice I either share a download link or send the rom to the other player.

Then, follow these steps:

1. Start RetroArch and load the ROM+core, starting the game as if you were going to play normally.

2. Bring up the RetroArch menu and find the 'Netplay' tab.

3. Either choose to host a game, or 'Refresh Netplay Host List'. You can also have one person host, and tell the other player their IP address and enter it manually.

There are some other details, but that's the basics. And, yes, cross-platform play does generally work. I have a Raspberry Pi 3, an Android, and a Linux x86 that can all play together.

I'm happy to help anyone with setup. PM me or join the libretro discord. I'm on there quite a bit lately, trying to help stimulate the community/player base.

I'm always looking for people to play Smash TV,  Mortal Kombat, any decent beatemup or shmup. Pretty much anything other than sports/racing games. I'd also really like to find people who are interested in getting good at classic strategy games like Archon.

A lot of stuff for me really depends on how I am feeling but some games I have been playing include(with some stuff after):
Black mesa. Internet was out for a few days and I needed something to do because apparently I can't start Doom Eternal offline so I couldn't finish my Nightmare play through which was my original plan for that.

Doom Eternal, as said before I currently have a Nightmare play through going on and I am currently at the ARC complex but I suck at the game so I am stuck on one fight. I will most likely get past it eventually but I really don't know when because I tend to play other games more often.
Hades! I love this game so much but I haven't really been able to play it for a few months because of other games.
Risk of Rain 1 & 2. I love both of these games a lot but 2 a lot more than 1. I got every achievement in Risk of Rain 2, please don't do this, it is not worth it, one of the achievements sucks to get.

Minecraft. I tend to go back to it quite a lot because its just a game I find to be relaxing(but also sometimes frustrating). I love modded(happens in most games to be honest) but I haven't really followed it recently so I don't know what modpacks to play.
Rust. To be honest this game has kind of failed to keep my interest past the first couple of hours of gameplay. Friend family shared his library and tried it that way but it seems that it has been disabled or something because I can't play it anymore. Not too big of a loss because it was kind of boring and it finally gives my friends a reason to stop trying to get me to play it with them constantly.

Syberia or I was until I got tired of the puzzles, if you want to use that word, which were being thrown in front of me. The two main components I look for in an adventure game are logical puzzles and an interesting story. Syberia has a decent story ruined by tedious puzzles with too many falling into the camp of guessing dialog combinations or walk from one side of level to grab an item. If this was a low budget animated movie or miniseries it would be better as it feels like the developer was more interested in creating an unique world than a good game. Need something visceral to detox from this game.

On 2/22/2021 at 10:57 AM, Aaron Blain said:

It's a little bit complicated, so I was too intimidated for a long time, but I've gotten the hang of it recently and it's amazing.

 

The trick is that both players need 3 things to match exactly:

 

1. RetroArch - the frontend that coordinates all your emulators and handles netplay. Everyone should get the most recent 'Nightly' build, NOT the 'stable' build or it won't connect.

2. The emulator - RetroArch has a built-in online updater that it uses to install emulator 'cores' for each system. When you have the core loaded, it will (somewhere, depending on your device) show the Git hash, indicating the precise version of the emulator (E.g., Nestopia 1.50-WIP 2b0315c).

3. The ROM - you could compare file checksums, but in practice I either share a download link or send the rom to the other player.

 

Then, follow these steps:

 

1. Start RetroArch and load the ROM+core, starting the game as if you were going to play normally.

2. Bring up the RetroArch menu and find the 'Netplay' tab.

3. Either choose to host a game, or 'Refresh Netplay Host List'. You can also have one person host, and tell the other player their IP address and enter it manually.

 

There are some other details, but that's the basics. And, yes, cross-platform play does generally work. I have a Raspberry Pi 3, an Android, and a Linux x86 that can all play together.

 

I'm happy to help anyone with setup. PM me or join the libretro discord. I'm on there quite a bit lately, trying to help stimulate the community/player base.

 

I'm always looking for people to play Smash TV,  Mortal Kombat, any decent beatemup or shmup. Pretty much anything other than sports/racing games. I'd also really like to find people who are interested in getting good at classic strategy games like Archon.

That I already knew.  I'm familiar with Retroarch, that's the emulator that I have across most of my devices.

Heretic, and I may play Hexen: Beyond Heretic next

I'm still playing Blasphemous and still loving it. It's pretty good at kicking my ass, but when it does I realize why it did. And I learn from it. And then it kicks my ass a different way. And it's still the first game in a long time where it kicks my ass, I get irritated, quit, and then I'm playing it again within 15 minutes, because I realize what I did wrong, and I'll be damned if a game is going to get the best of me. Bless its heart.

And the art style and story telling is just... well fantastic. I haven't seen 2D art quite like this is a long time, it really reminds me of Demon's Crest in how intricate the animation is, how well the enemies and bosses were designed, and how impressive the backgrounds were. And I've probably missed a few great 2D platformers along the way that might outshine it, but I love Demon's Crest and thematically, at least to me, Blasphemous feels like it could tie into Demon's Crest. They shouldn't, the tie-in with Bloodstained seems forced enough as it is. But Firebrand just might work.

9 hours ago, pilottobombadier said:

That I already knew.  I'm familiar with Retroarch, that's the emulator that I have across most of my devices.

Ok, I guess I was looking for a pretense to evangelize to anyone looking at this thread. It did take me some time to figure out that there are three version numbers to coordinate precisely, and that for example the versions provided by the Google Play Store for Android, and the RetroPie setup script won't match; it's not enough to update your cores -- the Git hashes need to match. And also crossplatform netplay is broken in 1.90 Stable but fixed in the Nightlies. I had at least four sessions of "Can't connect." and "Failed to Initialize Netplay." that ended in frustration. But I have it working now!

It's funny, I was motivated by a desire to play obscure strategy games, but I've found to my delight that certain things that I thought weren't worth revisiting are a ton of fun in 2-player. Especially Mortal Kombat and classic beatemups. I have a lot of brushing up to do on my fighting games. Also, while I've always preferred Robotron over Smash TV, I now appreciate the latter as an extremely fun co-op game.

Got Dolphin emulator to play through the Tony Hawk series. It's a fucking blast

Never played through all of Quake 2: Zaero so I'm doing that now. So far it's pretty good.

Playing Touhou Project 6

Couch Co op on Stardew Valley on PS4 (finally re-released in EU) Holy shit this game is a time sink...

A very heavily modded Skyrim SE.

Still.

It has me.

Help?

On 2/26/2021 at 7:41 PM, Doom_Dude said:

Never played through all of Quake 2: Zaero so I'm doing that now. So far it's pretty good.

I'd forgotten about that add-on; I have it, but never actually played it. Time to change that me thinks.

Majorble

Weirdly enough I don't like it as much as I thought I would. (It was a part of my childhood, but I never actually played it. Just watched my brother. Was always too scared to play it myself.) Don't get me wrong, it's a masterclass in atmosphere and immersion, helped greatly by the time loop mechanic... but at the same time that mechanic is kinda annoying. I feel like I'm repeating stuff that I really shouldn't have to.

It's a shame that the game that had so much more of a focus on sidequesting than OoT was also the one that made it kind of annoying. But then again, it's really not that bad, just really not ideal.

I still think on the whole I like it a little more than OoT, but it's also more of an actively flawed game.

(And they were not kidding when they said the swimming controls on the 3ds version were bad, holy shit)

I recently replayed through Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Old Blood, and then Doom 2016 following that. Still real blasts to play through, and I look forward to comparing them with The New Colossus and Doom Eternal under a bit of a closer microscope.

But after that, my latest sojourn for like the past two weeks has been the new Hitman trilogy. I got the first two on PC, but I was unhappy with the EGS exclusivity, so I bought Hitman 3 for the PS4 and decided to play the whole shebang again from the beginning. It was a fantastic time and now I'm currently working to bring all levels up to a mastery of 20. This will take awhile, but the heck with it.

I've also been trying to practice up on Street Fighter V since Dan was released for it. I somehow fail to be good at this game, but I still enjoy it when it isn't frustrating me considerably. 

Time from time I'm playing Faster Than Light. I've got my first victory few days ago, it was really nice feel. 

Since burning out on Doom pretty hard last year, I've gotten hold of an original XBox One - it's been floating about my family unused for some time, so it was free!

After treating myself to a couple of 2800mAh rechargeable battery packs, which seem to last weeks, I've gotten down to some pretty intense console gaming, replaying Forza Horizon in it's entirety, before starting on the newly bought Forza Horizon 2 - the only one in the series I've not played. Sadly Microsoft and the developers delist the DLC within 3-4 years of the release of these games, so I've not been able to play the Rally expansion for the original or the Storm Island expansion for the sequel, which is a shame as the spiritual successor to the latter for Horizon 4 (Fortune Island) was fantastic. I've "beaten" Horizon 2 already, by doing 100% exploration and becoming the champion (and then retaining the title when challenged by the main NPC character), but am only a quarter of the way through the 168 car class championships (28 car classes * 6 regions), so that'll take a while yet. Having played Horizon 3 and 4 on an aging high-end PC, I've seen those games look a little better (rendered at 4k but with some other settings lowered to compensate) than the XBox One exclusive title (Y THO?), but there's honestly not too much in it - the main evolution was in how each game has progressively opened up the map and included ever more cars. Handling wise, 2 actually feels really good, and I quite like the extra haptic feedback the vibrating triggers in the XBOne controller provide over the wired 360 controller I've used to play the other three games. Musically 2 is very weak, though. The Southern France/Italy setting is nice, and the Castelletto region in particular looks incredible, with it's coastal road on the cliffs. Fantastic game series with no bad entries, if you like your racing a bit more casual!

Aside from my longstanding love affair with the Forza games, I've just completed a Legendary run of Halo 4 last night (again, replaying the 360 game on XBox One), lining myself up to have a more casual go at Halo 5 for the first time - the only other XBOne exclusive I'm aware of that I've wanted to play and couldn't get on PC. The first half of the game seemed to feature more encounters that were easy to get stuck and frustrated on at this level, while the last three levels in particular seemed to pass with minimal deaths and a reasonable challenge. I was beating one chapter per evening, spread over a couple of months.

Finally, on my girlfriend's PS4, after seeing her play it through in a few intense days, I decided to also play Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which was free on PS Plus - we were meant to have the Definitive Edition, but clearly we don't. Oh well, the extra Challenge Tombs won't be missed! Really good game, anyway - I spread my play through over a bit longer, and got 100% completion on the middle difficulty without too much hassle, which I think was my experience of the previous two entries in the series as well.

Modern gaming is good. Generally an enjoyable and relatively relaxing way to kill some time.

EDIT: Forgot to mention I also played through the entirety of the official Doom 64 PC port, which was great. Feels like a decent old-school ZDoom set, with a comfortable top difficulty. If you get really into the secret finding (and/or are happy to use a guide) the secret levels and "fun" level accessible through the extra menu are definitely the peak of difficulty for the game, but all doable. Good stuff, with a nice mood and punchy weapon effects. The extra episode was enjoyable too, and a welcome addition.

Continue to play Touhou Project. Now I'm gonna to play TH07 and TH08.

New Super Mario Bros. DS. It's fun, simple, and easy.

I recently got into Total War.

My attention is divided by both Medieval 2 and Warhammer 2, they are such very different games yet both are amazing on their own for multiple reasons.

Dug out my old DS Lite from the closet. Currently playing GTA: Chinatown Wars, aka - Heroin Storage Simulator 2009. It's fun, but the design of the DS Lite is rather uncomfortable - my middle, ring and pinky fingers have fallen asleep more than once.

I'm playing Kerbal Space Program, and I've been mucking around in the sandbox trying to create a crewed rover for operations on Duna's surface. After extensive testing and prototyping, I have successfully landed a vehicle on the Mun, because I want to do some off-world driving before working on the Duna transport vehicle, which is going to be a little project in itself.

Unfortunately I managed to roll over the rover in a way that never happened while driving the vehicle around Kerbin. I'm hoping that I'll be able to add some landing legs to function as self-righting mechanisms.

Umbrella Corps. It’s pretty awful but I’m a Resident Evil fanboy and have given myself the goal of finishing this garbage game.

Need For Speed World (Soapbox Race World, Freeroam Spark Server)

Postal Redux on PS4, Ion Fury

AvP2010, finally 100%ed its story, and soon to try out some HL2 mods.