What are you playing?

[robot zombie]

I started Plague Tale: Requiem up last night, but I could only finish the first chapter because I started too late and had to go to bed. Man, that was hard to do! It was pretty epic. We'll see how they do on their main story arc, but that setup was kind of insane. And it looks absolutely incredible.

People who've read my Skyrim and FO4 screeds know how I feel about trees. These trees are thicc as hell. I want these pines in my Skyrim SE. I love the foliage, and the animation for it all. The environments are stunning in general, with a lot more variation. The color choices and fine details are serendipitous, beyond natural. It's so photogenic that it kind of slips away from photo-realism and into something more fantastical and surreal. It's more like the perfect photographs are real, and you are inside of that reality. But nothing looks quite like it does in photographs. Requiem does. Imagine if you could go to the place inside of the beautiful, vibrant landscape shot. It's like it takes you so far "there" that it breaks the illusion of reality and becomes a fantasy world again.

I like how they are blending in the horror side of the aesthetic, too. That is a different kind of surreal. I'll also say, that opening was way more weighty and visually symbolic than anything in the first game. It makes me excited to see how they'll tell their story this time, how they're going to leverage new gameplay elements and engine power to present it. It has really set the bar pretty damned high.

I go in to work later tomorrow, so now it's really on. The quality of the game will be seen on my face tomorrow afternoon. My review score system works on the eyebags/10 scale.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Here's another crop, I took with Ansel:
View attachment 266231
It's locked at 5.1GHz with RAM at 3886-15-15-15, VRAM temp at 56C, VRAM usage at 7.4GB, GPU temp at 35C, GPU usage at 77%, power at 66%, and max core usage at 72%. I would like to believe it's just bottlenecking on streaming scene assets from disk. Just such an odd scene to see both FPS and GPU usage drop.

This is turning around and looking the other way:
View attachment 266232

In this game, it's just this one scene, but in other games, it can be entire levels or even the entire game. Devs, we're onto you... fix your sheet.

Ok, that's 100% weird. For a moment it seemed like a CPU bottleneck situation but now I'm not sure what to think..

 

[R-T-B]

Can't it hit a friend instead < 3

 

[LifeOnMars]

Still playing through Uncharted and loving it but took the opportunity to purchase A Plague Tale: Requiem as I found a very good deal on it and as stated previously, it's next on my 'To play' list. I couldn't resist taking a quick look at it Wow, as seen in the screenshots already posted in this thread by various members, what a beautiful game this is. Graphics are becoming truly amazing nowadays, I'd love AI to catch up. I hope the gameplay experience will be as good/ if not better than the first game which I really enjoyed playing.

 

[Splinterdog]

Still playing through Uncharted and loving it but took the opportunity to purchase A Plague Tale: Requiem as I found a very good deal on it and as stated previously, it's next on my 'To play' list. I couldn't resist taking a quick look at it Wow, as seen in the screenshots already posted in this thread by various members, what a beautiful game this is. Graphics are becoming truly amazing nowadays, I'd love AI to catch up. I hope the gameplay experience will be as good/ if not better than the first game which I really enjoyed playing.

View attachment 266330

That really does look amazing and I'm sorely tempted. Gamesplanet have at 10% off at $45...hmmm.

 

[Cvrk]

@LifeOnMars allow me to continue

on the edge is how this game keeps you

 

[Splinterdog]

That really does look amazing and I'm sorely tempted. Gamesplanet have at 10% off at $45...hmmm.

I crumbled and couldn't resist Uncharted.
Downloading now...

 

[SN2716057]

Going back to Star Citizen after a very long wait. It took me a very long time to figure out where they placed the hangars...
Oh and it still runs like shit.

No flight pix yet as it took me 30 minutes to reach this far, and I have a real job to do later today

edit: you ppl convinced me, downloading uncharted.
edit 2:

 

[ne6togadno]

ding. 100% terraria

 

[Cvrk]

If you are seeing this Batman is dead. And so are the performance issues. No joke.

Pre-release reviewers from IGN, PC Mag, Kotaku etc. had horrible issues. This is Steam release day 1 patch and the long draw distance + fire + particle effects huge lag is gone. Medium specs PC's rejoiced.
AMD's FSR2 set to balance and your good for almost 90/100 frames even outside. Cap it to 60 and it never ever budges, it's solid. ...... so far


Game put together by people who simply don't have gaming as a hobby ---Combat, menu, in-game button interactions, character inventory (abysmal) - vehicle control worse than GTA San Andreas ----

It is an unfriendly UI and bad / clunky overall mechanics, for us gamers. Done by people that don't play video games

 

[kapone32]

If you are seeing this Batman is dead. And so are the performance issues. No joke.


View attachment 266527

Pre-release reviewers from IGN, PC Mag, Kotaku etc. had horrible issues. This is Steam release day 1 patch and the long draw distance + fire + particle effects huge lag is gone. Medium specs PC's rejoiced.
AMD's FSR2 set to balance and your good for almost 90/100 frames even outside. Cap it to 60 and it never ever budges, it's solid. ...... so far


Game put together by people who simply don't have gaming as a hobby ---Combat, menu, in-game button interactions, character inventory (abysmal) - vehicle control worse than GTA San Andreas ----

It is an unfriendly UI and bad / clunky overall mechanics, for us gamers. Done by people that don't play video games

I am waiting for this to finish downloading. My favourite Mod for TWWH3 is being updated due to a huge patch from the developer. I do expect that as time goes though that this Game should improve in terms of Mechanics. There will be plenty of smack online if they don't.

 

[Frick]

Rimworld Biotech and I will probably not play anything else for quite some time.

 

[Aquinus]

Rimworld Biotech

I'm probably going to buy it over the weekend.

 

[Splinterdog]

Uncharted has a nice Tomb Raider vibe, including white ledges! I'm going to enjoy this.

 

[Rahnak]

Uncharted has a nice Tomb Raider vibe, including white ledges! I'm going to enjoy this.

Uncharted is excellent but it's a shame Sony decided to port the 4th game and the spin off rather than starting with the first game/trilogy. Also, this may be a controversial opinion, but it's Tomb Raider (the SE trilogy) that has an Uncharted vibe. But to SE's credit, they went their own way on the 2nd and 3rd game.

 

[lexluthermiester]

ding. 100% terraria
View attachment 266520

That's serious dedication right there.

 

[AlwaysHope]

Well that was an interesting end to Oblivion game of the year edition deluxe, now my character has to wait 2 weeks for the super duper dragon armour.
A case of too good, too late!

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

Still enjoying A Plague Tale: Innocence.

 

[ne6togadno]

That's serious dedication right there.

nah only 200 angler quests. you get most of the rest by just naturally playing the game

 

[Cvrk]

Silver lining: the coop is 10/10. This was made for playing with 1 single friend.

Your friend joins set waypoint he sees on the map, and follows. EXP and side mission progression for both.
In main missions, you both see the cutscenes and progression.

The excellent part: when your friend leaves, the game asks if he wants to keep the progression or not. Thing is, each character has it's own cutscenes. So if he clicks NO....he gets to do the main story all over but see different cutscenes.

 

[Flanker]

I've been playing Skyrim for the first time (yeah really). Completely forgot about the main quest. I am having so much fun doing the side quests. But the modding!!! Modding this game is more enjoyable than playing it lol

 

[Lei]

Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition [2014]

Nice game actually, I'm impressed.

 

[robot zombie]

I've been playing Skyrim for the first time (yeah really). Completely forgot about the main quest. I am having so much fun doing the side quests. But the modding!!! Modding this game is more enjoyable than playing it lol

You picked it up quick then! Good for you! Have lots of fun.

Still enjoying A Plague Tale: Innocence.

View attachment 266579

View attachment 266580

I think I know every beat in that game. And dominant strategy for every enemy lol.

That little breakaway in the abandoned town may actually be one of my favorite moments in that game. There's just something about the colors and visual textures that make me go "Ahhhh..." The dynamics you cross as you move through that environment are excellently coordinated.

That's an underappreciated thing in these tweaked proc-gen worlds and levels you see in a lot of other games. You can coordinate a level so that a player will see and experience certain things, with it feeling totally intuitive to them. The best level design doesn't let you miss anything great about the level, but you never really sense how it's guiding you to see these things and approach them in such and such way. A big part of getting atmosphere isn't the pretty visuals and sounds... it's about psychology. Looking at the level and understanding how people will process it at different points, what senses will train on (and how to use that advantageously,) as well as little subconscious decisions that happen. When it all lines up, you know, because it's just pure experience. You don't need to think. You are just kind of in the wonder of it. It feels like a discovery. But it's a totally curated and guided experience.

It's funny though... I'm playing Requiem now and as much as Innocence is truly a great work of visual art, they came a very long way in refining it with Requiem. Asobo may be one of the few out there getting recognition from the AAA crowd, that has a really apparent style to them. Seeing these two games side-by-side really does a good job of reminding me that this stuff is ground-up. Not some generic UE workup. A lot of the big games all end up with a similar visual feel in many elements... because they actually do share a lot of common elements in their graphical pipelines, it's almost foundational.

Visual identity is underappreciated these days. Show me a game that *really* looks like either Plague Tale. Obviously, there are all sorts of 'inspired' decisions too. You can see influence. But it's like the execution is entirely their own, their child.

I get that outsourcing engine tech is industry standard, like VFX houses for films and shows. But there's a certain charm to a good purpose-built engine. I think it also promotes a better diversity of games. Plague Tale's engine was developed by Asobo over the course of their experiences making games. They were apparently always asking themselves what THEY wanted and needed in THEIR games, and what features they would need to make it happen... slowly purpose-built this engine that would become the platform for one of a kind game experiences. When development goes well, when there is that patience and vision, there's a cohesiveness that emerges in the finished product. Everything can sort of fit like a glove, whereas games that outsource end up inevitably (and probably inadvertently) sharing idiosyncrasies and losing a bit of that identity in the things they end up doing to adapt their game to someone else's tech. There's also internal understanding. Having a ready-made setup obviously eases burdens... but it's like how with people, sometimes it's those little trials that make us who we really are. Asobo can only be Asobo, because they're all they've had. But it also means they have an understanding of their tools that many studios won't develop quite as much of.

I wish AAA could grasp some of these things. Especially the whole 'patience and vision' thing. Because when you have that, you eventually get the best art. I feel like people who play these games and enjoy them, will never forget it. As time goes by, I find myself A LOT more interested in games like Plague Tale than anything from a major studio. The heart is just not there. Playing Innocence or Requiem makes me sad, because I remember things that I find lacking in the present culture and ethos of making games, as a whole. They show me things that are missing from that bigger picture. It's reminiscent of an attitude towards making games that I like to think was much more common in gaming's tech-transition phases... those times when nobody knew what was going on, there was no standard, and people just tried stuff and did the best they could with new ideas and parameters. Whereas now, there are basically a handful of standards for any genre, that most will just try to maximize. I'm sensing sort of a loss of 'creative awareness' out there. But I think Asobo is very much 'aware.'

 

[SmoKies]

Guys this game is AMAZING

 

[Rahnak]

ding. 100% terraria
View attachment 266520

You gave me the itch again. But man, I hadn't touched Terraria since 2017 and I'm totally lost. But I was further along than I remembered, which is nice.