Enjoyed Kingdom Come on console.  Would have liked a character creator, but it is otherwise one of the better recent RPGs of the past couple years.

I have played both Overwatch and Paladins. Two games with some similarities. But definitely different approaches to the whole hero shooter paradigm.

The overwhelming playstyle encouraged in Overwatch is hero switching. If you die, you switch to another character that might do better against the other team. This is baked into the game. And expected by the most vocal of the game's fanbase. However, it disenfranchises and punishes those players who just really want to get really good with their favorite character. So yes, there are some definite down sides.

In Paladins hero switching is not a thing. You choose your hero at the beginning of the match. And that's it. You can't switch to another character in the middle of the match. So you have to do your best with the character you have. And that's it. You can't change team composition to metagame the system for victories. In my opinion. Paladins rewards those players who focus on improving their skill, first and foremost.

Yes, I am biased in favor of Paladins. For straight up game play. It just feels better to me.

I also play wildly different styles of characters in the two games. In Overwatch, my preferred character is D.Va.Who is an off-tank. In Paladins, my preferred character is Skye. Who is a flanker.

I came to this conclusion after spending quite a bit of money on a huge statue of D.Va from Overwatch. And I have bought a bunch of other merchandise based on her. So yeah, I really love the character.

But for game play? Overwatch has become too toxic and unfriendly for me. It has catered to the wrong audience for too long. And it has certainly damaged my enjoyment of the game.

Paladins I play on the Nintendo Switch. And I have a blast with it. I managed to pick up the character pack that unlocks every character for quite nearly half price during the holidays. And so far, my experience has been very much of enjoyment.

But I am not sure if most of that enjoyment comes from simply my being new to Paladins. And currently having rose colored glasses toward the game. So I will have to just play more and see if my positivity lasts.

But I have to end this by saying the obvious. Cheaters suck. They destroy the atmosphere and sense of community in a game. They make the players who want to play legitimately for enjoyment to no longer want to play. And if the company doesn't deal with them out of the gate, they take over and lay waste to it all.

Activision Blizzard gets a lot of heat from bad service on their other games. It has certainly creeped into Overwatch. And as a fan of the game and its lore, I'm certainly in a state of mourning.

I prefer Overwatch by a mile. Paladins is such an unpolished game and an attempt to jump on the Overwatch hype train. But to each their own, I suppose. We all have our preferences.

I'm currently playing, or replaying should I say, Witcher 3 and I'm going to do the expansions too. Love that game.

Quote from: WeldonRac;1072835I'm currently playing, or replaying should I say, Witcher 3 and I'm going to do the expansions too. Love that game.

Good choice! I love it too!

I have a rather centered view of both Overwatch and Paladins. Both games are great multiplayer games. But they are definitely not for everybody. They both have different styles of play that they cater to. So there is a lot to choose from.

If you go to Paladins from Overwatch. Flat out. You shouldn't exact the same approaches to exist or even work there. Paladins is definitely its own ecosystem.

Compared to Paladins, Overwatch is really stripped down and reliable in its character abilities. It has a basic predictability to all of its characters that is always there. If you prefer that? Good on you! Overwatch is a great game. And I have a lot of love for it and many of its characters. But it is definitely its own experience.

Paladins is a more complicated game. Because every character's abilities are up for being modified by an infinite number of different card loadouts each character can have. So you never know what you are really facing from any character an opponant has chosen.

You cannot switch characters mid-match in Paladins. You have to stick with the character you have chosen for the length of the match. So there is no on the fly switching of team compositions. Like there is in Overwatch.

The choice between the two games ultimately comes down to individual preference of play styles.

Both games each have their own poster child sickly overpowered character. Who getting killed by feels massively cheap. With Overwatch, it's Genji. With Paladins, it's Koga. Getting killed by either of them feels like a cheap shot. Instead of an actual earned defeat of an opponant. Because they are just plain, head and shoulders, far more powerful than all of the other characters in the game.

Himeko Sutori. I have no idea if the name actually means anything in Japanese, but it's a strategy RPG largely inspired by Ogre Battle's mechanics, where you control a large army of RPG characters and group them into squads and fight very large battles with them.

It's an Early Access game and incredibly rough, plus there's not a huge amount of story content yet, but it's remarkably fun. I've somehow sunk 20 hours into it already.

Just started playing Elder Scrolls Online gain from last night.
Wow, has it improved since I played it last several months ago.
Much better interface, UI, quests, ingame help is really good.

I just have the base game too, so haven't bought any of the extra content.

I discovered something last night that made me very happy with High-Rez Studios. They did something that genuinely surprised me. And I just had to share it.

They recently enabled Paladins Cross-Play with XBox, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Which they announced they were going to do a considerable time ago. However! They did something additional that was a true gift to their customers. Something so very nice.

You see, I downloaded Paladins for the PC last night. I had been playing it on the Nintendo Switch for months. And while I enjoyed it, I also wanted to play it on the PC. The game won me over  enough that I was prepared to buy the Champions Pack unlock a second time so I could play it on the PC as well. But after I loaded my PC version. That is where I got the surprise.

My High-Rez account is universal. It works on all platforms. And when I went into the PC version, I found all of my stuff! All characters unlocked! All in game currency I earned! High-Rez made the accounts universal! So nobody has buy content more than just once. To be able to play it and enjoy the content they gained across all platforms!

It still has DLC. It still has a battle pass. And it still has microtransactions. But a unified account across all platforms? That was a very nice discovery. Something most video game companies these days do not do.

High-Rez Studios are the first video game company I have seen who have done this. And I am very greatful to them for doing so. It makes their games more playable, more enjoyable, and far more consumer friendly.

Yes. This is me being positive for once. Illustrating when a video game company did something I believe to be right. Something very much pro-consumer.

Still playing the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. ...only 40 shrines left to go.

Lately I've been giving Pathfinder: Kingmaker a go.  It had a rocky release (too early, too buggy), and a lot of people apparently dislike video games where 'normal' difficulty isn't easy, so I think it's fair to say the reviews on Steam are not fully representative of the quality of the product as of February 2019.  It does a respectable job of implementing Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) mechanics in an isometric realtime+pause combat engine.  A pretty solid chunk of the Pathfinder mechanics are there, and the character building has the same pleasantly crunchy feel as Pathfinder (for those who enjoy such things, as I do).

For a totally different genre, revisiting Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance has been a lot of fun.  Not even multiplayer, just finding neat ways to speed run on the missions in 40-50 minutes rather than the usual 90.

I still can't stop playing Star Realms on Steam.

You might call me crazy but I'm still playing League of Legends and been doing so since 7 years already.

I feel like Riot efficiently tackles the repetitivity of the game with their new season changes and stuff. Sure, at some point it might stop being enough but for now that's good. I think they've noticed it themselves as they've began working on a new game

As per what I don't like in the game it would be the pain in the ass to make new accounts there - it takes over 2 months of few hours daily play to get an account to level 30 - that's slavery. While there are websites aiming to solve this issue my policy has always been that I'm not going to spend a dime on a game after I've initially purchased it. Thus I hate micropayments, you should pay for a game once, get it and be done on the money part

Battle Brothers has been an obsession for me the last few weeks. The graphics are goofy, but great once you understand how they're showing everything you need to know. Took forever to get good enough to beat a lindwurm (i.e., dragon) without casualties.

Having recently got a PS4 PRo, I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and Diablo 3 a fair bit recently.

Nothing!
My mother-in-law is staying with us and she is using the big plasma TV my X-Boxes are hooked up to, watching Russian TV.