What video game(s) are you playing at the moment?

[Minim]

Coincidence, Cool

I think you will really enjoy that one, it's certainly a fun game. I think it came out around 2004 so maybe still a new board game to the world so to say.

I like board games, you will have fun with this one. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with the (Ticket to ride)
Thanks for letting us know Minim.

OK, I just played the Ticket to Ride European Edition board game for the first time yesterday, although we were so overwhelmed by the complexity of the rules that we simplified it for our session.

I built a nice small lead to start the game, until my dad got lucky by claiming two similar routes along his track, along with more importantly, the only one to claim a long route worth about 20 points, so he blew the competition away even before the scores were counted at the end.

Still, we (Playing as a three with my family) had fun with it and we'll certainly consider playing this more often with additional rules once we get used to the game.

[Strato Incendus]

I finally got an old childhood game of mine - Bionicle Heroes - to work again a couple of days ago! That was kind of my main Christmas present, figuratively - I had bought a copy of the game for myself a couple of years ago after having used my brother's version during my childhood. Only to find out then that the game no longer ran under Windows 10. (And this is not the first game for which this happened to me.)

I had to buy an external CD drive for my new laptop anyway, so I gave it a shot. Unsurprisingly, installing the game still didn't work. But I did find the install files online. Of course, that version also included a no-CD crack. But I didn't have to use it; I could insert the CD into the drive as normal and it would play. So it was really only the installing process that caused the problems. (I wasn't quite sure whether it would work, because my CD version is obviously the German one, whereas the online files presumably were from the English version.)

Since I do own a legal copy of the game, I eventually tried the no-CD crack nevertheless. It adds the slight convenience of loading more quickly than having to go via the CD. The game still displays in German.

What a weird new age this is: You buy the official version of an older game, but it almost never works. Usually because the installation process fails at some point. So you still have to go for some online download instead to just be able to use what you've paid for in the first place.

And then, the official version only sits on your shelf, in case somebody tracks your online activity somehow and were to accuse you of piracy. Then you could hold up your official copy of the game if the police show up at your door and say "Here, I paid for it, I'm allowed to make copies for private use."

I think anyone who has tried to make Lemmings 3D work off of the official CD can relate to this problem. And guess what, now we have an online version of that game available as well.

[Nessy]

I finally got and started playing Spelunky 2... like a lot... a lot. It definitely is way harder than the first game, but fortunately I managed to score my first main game win a couple of days ago The next thing I want to aim for is the second ending win which I feel like I can realistically do. However, the third ending looks like it might be way too brutal for me personally I'm curious if anyone else on here has managed to complete that final world and get the third ending?

But in other news I'm more than ready to get back into Lemmings. Not playing levels... but actually making something new after doing some overdue updates on my previous works

[ericderkovits]

Right now have been playing the Age of Empires games(I recently got them online. Got the Definitive versions). I remember playing these when they first came out. So I really like these games.
Also The Definitive versions are much better as gameplay, sound,, graphics, and other features are much improved over the older originals.

Age of Empires 2 is probably the best of these. Also on the 26th of this month an expansion pack with 2 new civilizations is coming out. I plan on getting this too.

[kaywhyn]

Finally took a break from Lemmings this past week and played AoE: Definitive Edition. I had bought the collection on Steam months ago, but I had never gotten around to playing it until now. This was a game that I grew up with, and I absolutely loved it, even if I ended up just typing in cheat codes to win However, I since gotten over using cheat codes for these games a long time ago, and so I play the campaigns and single player legit, even though I suck at these RTS games.

I'm just slowly rolling along the campaigns on the hardest difficulty. I'm currently on the first one in the original AoE, after the Egyptian tutorial one. I have already completed the campaigns before on this difficulty, after much struggling. If anything, perhaps the standard difficulty is more suited for me.

I absolutely love the improved graphics in the DE version. However, the UI is extremely small, even at 150% zoom. The fix is to simply lower the game's display resolution, but I rather keep it at my laptop's default. Then again, I think the last time I played the game was years ago on a laptop with around a 1270 x 1038 resolution, so things were much bigger. Here, my default resolution is 1920 x 1200, so everything is quite small here.

The crazy thing is that I have played nothing but Lemmings daily for the last 10 months. I can understand if people get sick of the game after a month or so, but to go 10 months straight of Lemmings... Needless to say, Lemmings has consumed 10+ months of my daily life, 6 of which was spent on United alone. 

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, as awesome as all the custom content for Lemmings and its many different clones are (NeoLemmix, Lix, SuperLemmini etc.), and as much effort as the developers of those engines put into those games year after year:

Now I've re-discovered another childhood passion of mine, which also has a vary active fandom, much more active than I thought... and the efforts they go to in order to develop custom games for their beloved franchise, well, that's on a whole other level than Lemmings. Programming a 2-dimensional, deliberately reduced game in terms of graphics (8-pixel-characters etc.) such as NeoLemmix must already be hard enough; but these guys make straight-up 3D roleplaying games.

Im talking about the Lego Bionicle fandom! For all the feeble efforts Lego themselves have made to release video games for one of their most successful custom franchises - an excessively-shortened first game to go along with the first movie, and then the fairly repetitive and easy-to-beat "Bionicle Heroes" - the fans are now doing way more than making up for that:

There are currently 3 (!) different custom fan games for Bionicle being worked on (at least that I am aware of - there may be more?). All of which are centered around the main storyline of the first six group of Toa (later renamed to "Toa Mata"). All of these are complete 3D roleplaying games:



1) "Legend of Mata Nui": This is a fan rebuilt of the first official video game Lego ever wanted to release for Bionicle (in collaboration with Saffire, which went bankrupt over the late cancellation). The fans got their hands on an alpha built, then made a beta version, now there is a comparatively stable rebuilt version.
Gameplay here is very much reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda games: Characters have voiced but speak in some pseudo-language, so you have to go by the subtitles; there is a grappling hook ; the bosses have their names presented on screen at the beginning of combat and typically expose a vulnerable spot over and over again over the course of the boss fight, so that's the thing where you have to keep hitting them; there's no leveling-up of characters, but you can fulfil quests to extend your health- and mask-power bar (kind of like collecting heart containers in Zelda). And there's a temple for every element (which is part of the lore, of course), so this is similar to the "shrines" in e.g. The Legend of Zelda - "Twilight Princess".

Then there are two entirely fan-made games, built from scratch; and where "Legend of Mata Nui" is still somewhat level-based (albeit with freedom of movement between the various regions of a given level), both of these custom ones are open-world games.

2) "Quest for Mata Nui": Not to be confused with the one mentioned above. This one is still in development, and is going to be a Starcraft 2 mod. Graphics-wise, this one looks to be the best by far. They have a YouTube channel where they keep posting development updates, from game music to demonstrations of particular abilities and enemies to straight-up short gameplay excerpts.

3) "Masks of Power": This one is also still being worked on, but there is already an available download of the most-up-to-date version. I've just tried it for the first time tonight, and so far it's already much more stable than the fan rebuilt of "Legend of Mata Nui"! It's easy to save, there is no lagging, I couldn't see any graphical glitches, combat works, there are dialogues, even small quests to be fulfilled already... I definitely expected this one to be in a much earlier stage still. The graphics are also largely accurate to the source material - it's just that the landscape is currently a lot "emptier" than in what I got to see from "Quest for Mata Nui". All the important stuff is still here; there are simply fewer details and decorations thus far.

And the best of all: Lego has not shut down any of this - as they could have done for copyright reasons, obviously! "Legend of Mata Nui" has been available for a while now, apparently; the developers of "Quest for Mata Nui" even met up with some Lego folks, so they kind of even got official permission to keep working on this (instead of just a passive "non-interference" by the company). If I remember correctly, they said Lego did give them some "guidelines" on what they should do so that they can retain Lego's "support" - obviously, it would be unwise on Lego's part to just give the developers a blank cheque and let them do whatever they want with their franchise.



The last time I was this impressed by a fan game was when I discovered the fan community of the Dungeons-&-Dragons video game "Temple of Elemental Evil" had not only fixed a bunch of the bugs of the original game (especially when you tried to run it on Windows 10), no, they also went ahead and added a bunch of custom content to it, most of it after the ending of the official part of the game, but also some in between - and they increased the cap for leveling up from 10 to 20, so that there could still be progress during these new later parts of the game. Meaning, they had to program in all the spells, abilities etc. that D&D requires for characters between level 11 and 20 (in rules version 3.5). That thing is called The "Circle of Eight Modpack".

Definitely a great effort as well... but Temple of Elemental Evil is still a turn-based game with small characters you view from above. The people behind the Modpack also didn't create any new graphics, they just adapted and re-used the ones already present in the original game. For example, with a slight change of the lighting, the same building that makes up the upper floor of the Temple of Elemental Evil in the main game can also serve as a church of the (good) Sun God Pelor in the expansion part of the game.

But those Bionicle fan games, especially the two that were built entirely from scratch, without relying on previous "official" work, they had no such help. They had to make everything by themselves, I assume.

PS: Bridging the divide between Bionicle and other, more standard fantasy roleplaying games: There also seem to be Bionicle mods for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. While they look great for the characters themselves, as well, as does the landscape (since it's what we were all used to from Skyrim), there is of course the inconsistency of the robot-like Bionicle characters fighting Skyrim's standard fantasy foes, i.e. organic beings, such as wolves and bandits.

[Proxima]

I finished Tametsi, one of the games mentioned in my last post, in the unlikely event anyone was curious

I've just finished The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang, a weird and silly action-RPG in which you play as a vampire fighting off cloves of garlic. I had never heard of the game until my girlfriend suggested it as something that would be fun to play together, and it certainly was that, although it only took us about six hours to get through the whole game.

I'm also playing Myst, a classic game that many of you will have heard of (I already know that some of the discord crowd have!). I played the original version on the Mac soon after it came out, and although I loved it, I was never able to get anywhere with it, not even off the starting island (Of course, in the intervening 27 years, I picked up through hearing the game talked about that there would be other worlds, so I didn't get to experience that as a surprise ) It has felt absolutely wonderful to come back to it and explore further, especially as I'm playing a remake with really gorgeous graphics.

It's a game that absolutely demands pencil-and-paper note-taking, which is something I have always loved; I still have my original notebook with the Lemmings access codes from all those years ago It helps me to feel much more directly involved with exploring and piecing together the world, and of course it leaves a lasting trace that will be really satisfying to have and look back over when it's complete.

[ericderkovits]

just purchased the Lords of the West expansion pack for Age of Empires 2 (includes 2 new civs-Burgundians and Sicilians). also installed the new patch 44725. Also will start doing the daily tasks to get the new New Years Celebration goodies.

[Strato Incendus]

Has anyone of you here played Nier: Automata? (Yoko Taro / Square Enix / Platinum Games)
It's been in the headlines again recently because of frustrated players review-bombing the Steam version, which hasn't been fixed since its initial release in 2017.

It's not the type of game I would usually play. I'm neither into post-apocalyptic stuff (except for maybe "The 100", haven't seen the final season yet, though), nor into Anime.

But considering that e.g. Arty is currently still let's-playing another mature-rated Anime game (The Fruit of Grisaia), I thought there might be some overlap here.

On my ambiguous relationship with Anime

I only kind-of "hate-watched" Yu-Gi-Oh! as a kid occasionally, without actually playing the TCG myself. That may have biased my attitude to anything Anime negatively, because not only is the worldbuilding of Yu-Gi-Oh! so laughably unrealistic and inconsistent, but I also didn't like what the TCG was doing to my fellow students in primary school on a mental level . That one Anime series I had any contact with was always some sort of "competitor" for me - first in primary school as I was into Bionicle while everyone else was playing the game of the violet-black-blonde-haired cactus head, and then later in secondary school as I discovered Magic: The Gathering (which, being the first TCG ever, basically has a natural competition with Yu-Gi-Oh! built into the community by default).

Now in my mid-twenties, of course I have developed a calmer attitude towards such "fandom quarrels" in the meantime. I've realised that a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! players make fun of the Anime show themselves (like through the very successful "abridged series" parody on YouTube), and that the games and franchises can also co-exist in harmony. Thanks to Netflix, I'm now actually able to re-watch the Anime in chronological order, rather than just casually zapping into it when it was running on one of our trash channels on television back in the early 2000s. Konami even earned its first revenue from me recently, when I found out about the game "Legacy of the Duelist" that actually allows you to play through the "story" of the TV show, but with "correct" Yu-Gi-Oh! rules.

I would still never drop any money on actual cards - I'm spending enough on Magic: The Gathering already, and I still consider that a superior game to Yu-Gi-Oh! - but it's still fun to get to do some of the stuff yourself that you saw as a kid. Kind of like Lemmings: Building custom levels was also something we could only dream of as children, now with NeoLemmix, it's not just possible, but with the additional skills and tilesets, we can do so much more than what we were hoping for back then!

I guess the main thing that always threw me off about the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game was the random combination of monsters from all kinds of different contexts: Fantasy, SciFi, Horror, Egypt, Superheroes, all the way up to playing with monsters that symbolised food, of all things... It seemed like the Warhammer 40k of card games.

And from Yu-Gi-Oh! to The Legend of Zelda to Nier: Automata: This seemingly arbitrary combination of a lot of "random stuff" into one setting is one common theme I see with a lot of Japanese fiction.

With Western Fantasy or SciFi, it's usually "here are a couple of species and locations, now let's have their interests clash and combine these elements of the story in all kinds of different ways". Of course, that's what I grew up with, but just considering the number of things you need to memorise to understand a setting, I find it much easier to keep the overview in such a Fantasy or SciFi setting. With the Japanese stuff, I often can't even tell whether it's supposed to be Fantasy or SciFi in the first place.

I only found out about the game by accident, while researching "nihilism in the media" on YouTube. Mainly because I was looking for an answer for why a lot of modern movies and TV shows seem to have become so bleak and misanthropic, with characters constantly yelling at each other and humanity generally being depicted as awful. Now I know I probably should have looked for the term "Grimdark" instead. Either way, these types of stories have become infamous in recent years (especially after Star Wars: The Last Jedi) for failing to inspire people.

Nier: Automata, in contrast, was then mentioned as a "good" example of playing with these ideas. And well... by the looks of it, it clearly did inspire a lot of people in one way or another, considering how many people seem to be waxing poetic about it.

I for one am always immediately suspicious when I discover something has so much unanimous hype behind it. And the fact that I only found out about this game because I was looking for content about a theme it happens to relate to, rather than about the game itself, means that I basically had the conclusion spoiled in the first 1 or 2 videos I watched. Given that it's also not in a genre I normally like, what mainly kept me looking for further information about the game were indeed analyses of its philosophy. Which inevitably led to me finding out about all its central plot twists.

Given that, I took a long time making up my mind whether I would drop 40 euros on this game (and have it take up 40-50 GB of my hard-drive space) to try it out for myself. Considering the dissatisfaction a lot of people were reporting about the Steam version (most players so far seem to have played the game for XBox or PS4), I'm definitely glad I didn't buy it earlier. The version I have now is the "Become as Gods" edition from the Microsoft Store, and I can't complain about any technical issues so far. In fact, it was the release of this improved PC version that led to the players review-bombing the Steam version, to make the developers aware of their unfinished business again, and it seems like now this has finally worked (they just announced on 13th April or so that they're going to fix the Steam version).

So at first, I thought I should wait until the Steam version was patched. But given that I hadn't heard any complaints about the Microsoft Store version, I thought I might just as well go with that one, and so far I don't regret that decision.



Considering this game relies on multiple playthroughs, and seems to care primarily about its story and philosophy, I expected gameplay to be much worse, namely more repetitive. So far, I'm positively surprised in that regard. Maybe things will start feeling more repetitive as I enter the second playthrough (since the game relies on multiple runs to unlock everything), which seems to have very much overlap with the first one, and it is only starting with the first playthrough that new things are added to the mix, which then eventually lead you on to the conclusion.

As I said, I'm not a particular fan of Anime, so I don't feel such a close connection to the characters either. Nor do I particularly care about gimmicks such as the first main character having a self-destruct function that removes her skirt.

The main things that drew me in were the atmosphere of the setting (kind of eerie with all this bright light) and the music, of course.
Though I do find some of the tracks in what I believe is that forgotten Peruvian Chamicuro language a little annoying.

So far, it's a game I'm enjoying despite its flaws - which I mainly see with the game's philosophy. As a psychologist, I think the premises of the core philosophy of the game - Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism - can easily be debunked by modern science. But I'm giving it a fair shot by playing it for myself, and also accepting every little side quest I can find. Maybe some of the things it's trying to say make more sense if you get the entire context.

But don't be fooled, I know where the journey is going, and that the game's main intention is to depress the player and throw them into an existential crisis.
So I'm also kind of playing it as a challenge whether the game can break my spirit too. Apparently there are a bunch of people who cry like little babies when they reach the final credits.

Well, bring it on, game - you're gonna have to go to much darker places than where I've already been to get me to that point.
After all, for all the many real-world philosophers that are represented as characters in this game, I've noticed there doesn't seem to be anybody named Schopenhauer...
And even if there were a robot named "Arthur", I'd probably already be able to predict what he would be saying...

[Nessy]

I have heard of Nier: Automata but I had no idea what it was or what it was about. Good to know now! I must admit that the whole "nihilism in the media" thing is something I really didn't notice but it could be because I don't really actively watch a lot of things now-a-days and only play a few selected modern day games so maybe that's why. As someone who considers themselves the complete opposite of that philosophy, I actually don't mind it as long as it's used in a way that is in service to the narrative the person wants to tell or show instead of it being slapped on because that's what all the cool kids are doing with no real reason or direction (and to be fair that goes with everything else as well).

Also I've noticed that your relationship to anime is actually quite common among a lot of people I know... it's definitely not for everyone. I'm personally starting to get into it now-a-days because I just like how different and fun it can be such as, for example, the blending of "random stuff" into one setting if done correctly.

[Strato Incendus]

As someone who considers themselves the complete opposite of that philosophy, I actually don't mind it as long as it's used in a way that is in service to the narrative the person wants to tell or show

I think the game's main philosophy is not nihilism, but existentialism. Yet, there is also another term called "existential nihilism". Without knowing much about the details of existentialism, there are at least two core premises of it that I think modern science can easily debunk:

1) The claim that "existence precedes essence". (We exist first, and then have to find a purpose for it.)
2) The claim that "human beings are condemned to be free".

Basically, existentialism asserts there is no pre-defined meaning to life, but human beings have the possibility and responsibility to find and define a meaning for their own life.

The problems with those two claims are:

1) Human beings come with at least one pre-defined purpose: Procreation of our genes. And we come with instincts that serve that purpose. If people reject that built-in purpose, then yes, they have to find a different purpose for themselves to give their lives meaning. But it's not like there were no pre-defined purpose at all.

2) Take together all kinds of evidence from psychology, physics, neurochemistry etc. and the idea that human beings had free will, least of all were "condemned to be free", becomes pretty absurd. Especially with the built-in purpose of procreation our genes always drive us to, that actually makes it harder to make decisions entirely for ourselves than if we had no built-in purpose, and thus also no built-in behavioural tendencies, in other words: free will.

So you see how the two premises connect with and rely on each other: No predefined purpose seems more compatible with the idea of free will, but if you accept that we have a pre-defined purpose that is built into our biology, then whatever automatisms (pun intended) serve that purpose also simultaneously limit our freedom to act on our own volition.



As for the question whether the game implements the existentialist ideas in a subtle or narrative-serving way, well... it depends.

If the "narrative" in an ideological sense is to convince the player of existentialism, then yes, most things in that game serve that narrative. If however by "narrative" you mean "do these elements serve the story?", I'd have to say no. Rather, the story is in service of the existentialist narrative.

As mentioned in my previous post, the game features several characters that are straight-up named after real-life philosophers. Among others, there is a robot named Jean-Paul (like Sartre) that just gives you existentialist talking points whenever you speak to him. It's not even subtle.

Spoiler

There are also two machine enemies who call themselves Adam and Eve (yet Eve is also male). At the end of the first playthrough, Eve tells the two main characters that he is sure they feel the same as him: "That this world is utterly meaningless."

I mean, I already knew where this game was going with its narrative, and even for me, that came completely out of nowhere at that point. It hadn't been sufficiently set up yet at all. The only thing that came before was Eve losing his brother Adam, who captured one of the two main characters and then challenged the other character - the one you are playing at that point - to a fight so that he, Adam, a robot, could experience the danger of death, in an attempt to better understand humanity. So now Eve is ticked off that you killed his brother (it's not like the game left you any choice in that regard, there are countless cutscenes that railroad you into certain outcomes to allow the story to continue, especially at the end of such boss fights).

In other words, whenever the game hits you over the head with existentialism, sometimes just by a character shouting in your face that any given thing were "meaningless" (it's even in the English version of the title song "Weight of the World"), this is often just asserted. In author speak, it's more "tell" than "show" so far.

I'm currently at the start of the second playthrough, route B. The first time you play the girl on the cover of the game, 2B, the second time you replay the same events, but from the perspective of her sidekick character 9S. And yes, he does feel like a sidekick, often just fulfilling the supporting role, as the game occupies you with "meaningless" busiwork in the background while 2B, the character you played on the first playthrough before, does all the stuff you did last time.

I know the central plot twist the game is headed for, so I am aware that the assumption of "no predefined meaning" is indeed "shown" through the story at a later point, too. But so far, up to the start of route B, it only ever really gets told, not shown.

[Strato Incendus]

Okay, I've finished NieR: Automata (i.e. all the way up to Ending E) a couple of days ago. Took me something between 40 and 50 hours total across 1.5 weeks. I think that's evidence of how positively addictive the game is to play, and that's even though I'm very aware of the many flaws this game has.

Pros:
+ atmospheric visuals
+ mood-fitting and well-made soundtrack
+ fluid combat system
+ frequent changes in gameplay style (3D third-person, 2D platforming, view from above, bullet hell minigames etc.)
+ despite the game's overall bleak atmosphere, there is room for occasional, somewhat funny banter between the main characters and a couple select NPCs. This seems noteworthy as a lot of other post-apocalyptic franchises like to go full Grimdark and have the main cast yell at each other and treat each other like cr*p. That is fortunately not the case here. At least the early parts of the game (Route A and B) are what I would call "Nobledark", i.e. a dark setting, but you can at least empathise with the characters to some extent. (Sadly, Route C then trashes a lot of that later on.)

Cons:
- excessive railroading in service of the story and narrative (depending on whether you like them or not)
- using the dodge function in combat most effectively will lead to a lot of spamming of the attack and evade keys that can make combat rather hectical at times
- no possibility to save throughout the intro (if you die during the first 30-45 minutes, which is likely since you're not familiar with all the controls yet, you have to start all over again - lowering the difficulty to "easy" just for the starting section is something I would advise the first time you play, however that will make the intro comparatively trivial)
- Route B (second playthrough) is largely a repetition of Route A even though you're playing as a different character
- Route C amps up the tragedy for the sake of it (without the player having a lot of control over it, see the above point about railroading), not necessarily in plot-consistent ways. Many seem to consider this the best section of the game, but the gameplay part devolves into a lot of dragging fetch quests, and the enforced tragic outcomes seem too contrived and arbitrary to me to really hit home.

[WillLem]

Here's what I've been busy with over the Summer, video game wise:

Pokémon Go, which I've become basically obsessed with since my GF introduced it to me

We've also been playing our way through the first 3 Sonic games

Also discovered a game called From Dust which is remarkably similar to Lemmings in that the idea is to save a tribe of people from danger and guide them towards an exit by remodelling the landscape in various interesting ways - definitely one to check out if you haven't heard of it already.

Looking forward to the upcoming Jackbox sessions, and I'm also up for some Gartic if I catch the Discord notifications in time!

[kaimitai]

I can recommend Quake on Steam which received a major update recently. If you already own it, you get the update for free as well. Been enjoying playing online coop/deathmatches with friends, and the new episode is amazing.

[grams88]

Lemmings Revolution, only five levels left except I accidentally deleted my saves ooppps. Hope there is a way to get it back. By the way, those five levels that are left to complete are going to be tough.