As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting weekly discussion threads the last few weeks. They weren’t getting too much traction and, more specifically, people weren’t engaging with each other, which is what I was trying to encourage. I wanted to take a break and rethink how I wanted to do it to achieve those goals.
So here is a twist on the formula:
- Tell us not only what you are playing, but also why someone else should pick it up and give it a go themselves.
- And/or comment on someone else’s reply and get a conversation going.
I’ll go first:
- I’m still playing a ton of Helldivers 2. I’ve put in over 100 hours so far. The last time I put over 100 hours in a game was probably Halo 3, and this is coming from someone who almost exclusively plays single player games. I think this game is unique in that its mechanics are very grounded and physical, the two different factions play very differently, the encouragement to play cooperatively versus competitively is a breath of fresh air, and the monetization in the game is very fair. I love the idea of playing on a giant galactic chess board with hundreds of thousands of other players, evolving the story as we go as a community. It really does feel like a community. At $40 for me, it is such a no-brainer to pick this game up for some awesome times.
I agree with everything you said about Helldivers 2. I generally avoid online multiplayer games, even co-op ones, as I don’t like playing with randos, but HD2 truly feels like a team effort every time I play, and there’s so much variety between factions, enemies, and difficulty, that I am happy to continue playing it over and over again.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has also put its hooks into me. I really enjoyed the first one, and the second one definitely lives up IMO. There are valid criticisms about the frequent low level combat and lack of enemy variety in it, but it honestly doesn’t bother me. The more rare enemies show up just enough that I don’t feel like I’m only ever fighting low level enemies, and the harder ones are a genuine treat. It’s also fun to find a new enemy type that is particularly rare and discover the reason for it is because they will absolutely stomp you unless you’re pretty high level. Beautiful graphics, fun world to explore (I’m particularly fond of the caves), and quests that don’t hold your hand every step of the way (although, on occasion, I wish they would hold my hand a little more). I do hope they add a setting to reduce the pawn dialog to get rid of idle chatter, but I know the last patch is supposed to reduce the frequency already. I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet to see if it’s a significant improvement. I also really wish there was a way to tell what time of day it was since you will get missions that tell you you have to do it between certain hours, or worse yet, missions that don’t give you a time frame and you just have to stand there and wait. When an in-game day is 45 minutes IRL, that gets old very fast.
Edit: omg, it’s the menu background. There’s a huge radial clock graphic in the background of the pause menu…
I was very interested, so much so that I picked up 1 to play around about a month ago. Ended up dropping it but I loved the gameplay. I just didn’t have time to dive into a huge RPG when I was considering getting the sequel soon.
How do you feel about the micro transactions for things like fast travel? Are these items found easily enough in game that the blowback is overblown, or do you feel like these items are in short supply on purpose to push players to pay for items that should have been included from the start?
The microtransaction stuff was absolutely overblown. I’m level 40, and I have literally never seen the ability to purchase microtransactions in-game. I honestly don’t know how you do it in-game at all. The blowback also caused confusion for me in regards to how camping supplies actually worked. I thought they were expensive single-use items, but that’s not true. Your supplies have a chance to be destroyed if you’re attacked while sleeping, so as long as you clear the surrounding area of monsters so you don’t get attacked in the middle of the night, you’ll be just fine.