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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I completed all the Steam achievements for Celeste so that's pretty neat. The hardest was probably finishing Farewell, the whole level took me almost 13 hours to beat, with 6 of those hours being spent on the last screen. After that, the moon berry wasn't too bad, it just felt like another C-side level, just for Farewell.
This is an impressive achievement - big congrats there. I got through all the A/B/C sides, all the non-special berries, Farewell, and a small handful of goldens, but I couldn't get any further.
It took me 1500 hours but I finally 100% the binding of Isaac and I don't really know what to do anymore. Truly my favourite game of all time, I don't think it ever really felt like a slog.
Been trying to get into Noita, I've bounced off it a few times, I find the beginning to be too slow a start, the part of the game I enjoy, tinkering with cool wand builds doesn't really seem to take off until the 3rd level or so, and I'm not good enough to get there often (i think the furthest I've gotten is lvl5). I'm hoping something will click to make the early game more fun, because I really enjoyed the few runs where I've gone far.
I'd recommend activating the Random starting loadouts mod (included with the game) to spice up the beginning portion a bit. It makes you a random type of themed mage (fire, summoner, etc.) and gives a starting loadout and perk to match.
This isn't exactly a game I've been playing but I figure this is the best place to share the news: I should be getting my Steam Deck soon!
I just got the email today and completed the purchase.
I've already decided that Rogue Legacy 2 is going to be my starting game for the Deck. I'm also going to set up either EmuDeck or RetroDeck to enjoy some old PSOne and Dreamcast games (assuming they run well enough).
Ah, that game really did come out at the perfect time. I now have almost 100 hours in it, the vast majority on the Deck, it's so much fun. You're in for a treat ;)
Yay finally! I finished out Elden Ring on mine, and now I'm working on Ori and the Blind Forest and The Master Chief Collection.
Those are some great games to break in the system with! Glad you're enjoying yours. Mine is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and I couldn't be more excited.
Any tips and tricks/do's and don'ts for new Steam Deck owners that you'd recommend from your experience with it so far?
I haven't gotten to play much with the emulation side of the deck yet, so no real comments there.
There was a beta software build a bit ago that recently got pushed to the main deployed system build that allows users to set the native refresh rate of the screen. This enables a 40hz profile, and you can then set the deck to follow at 40 fps. It's a pretty big power saver, a smooth 40 fps is substantially better than 30 fps, or erratic frames. This can really help you stretch the deck's battery, especially when playing more modern or more demanding games.
The deck UI makes it really easy to see other community created control profiles for each game, and then you can edit then however you like. These are also voted on, so it gives a good starting point when starting up a new game if you're looking for something different than the default control setup for that game.
A battery pack is pretty much a must if you plan to regularly take the deck anywhere. I found one on /r/buildapcsales a couple of months ago that is perfect and a great price. I try to keep mine plugged into the battery pack or the wall if I'm around the house, as the deck has a power passthrough that skips the battery, so it's not constantly discharging and recharging it. Keeping it plugged in when you can should extend the usable life of the original battery, which will be a pain to replace.
At least when I was actively messing with mine, the default touchpad layout for the desktop view is not intuitive or good. I highly recommend changing it. I use my right touchpad to move the mouse, pressing the right touchpad as left click, and the left touchpad is setup to mimic a scroll wheel and clicking it is right click.
Overall I have been really happy with mine. I am reminded how out of practice I am with controllers (with Elden Ring being the first game I've primarily used a controller for in at least a decade). I am now terrible at Halo lol.
Crystal Project: Combat like Final Fantasy 5, with a expansive job/class system, but world traversal more like Super Mario RPG, with lots of platforming and enemies you encounter or avoid on the world map. Very very story-light, though slightly surreal, this is a game to be enjoyed for the exploration and combat. There's a couple of difficulty spikes where the game really tests whether you've incorporated your understanding of the classes available to you into your plans, and you definitely do need to mix up your group composition to handle different areas. Much like other difficult RPG's, this is at some level a puzzle game. Fortunately it surfaces information about the enemies in detail. You can see all of their stats, their movesets, etc. It means that while you're forced to adapt to changing demands, you do always know what you need to be defending against.
I started the game on Hard, but found that its warning that grinding would be necessary completely accurate. There's games where harder difficulty is more fun, and I'm not finding this to be one of them. Stronger enemies and slower advancement doesn't actually improve the experience for me, and so I took advantage of the flexible accessibility options to modify the difficulty in a variety of ways.
Sniper Elite 5 on XBox Game Pass. It's a lot of fun so far, though pretty standard fare from Rebellion Games.
Not as much as I thought I would over the past two weeks. I got home Thursday, and today (Saturday) I figured I'd fire up Elden Ring, and got a wild itch to take on Godrick, beat him first try after a bunch of runs a month ago in which I learned his patterns. I have a bleeding uchigatana +6-8 though, so I've got a considerable advantage.