What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I've been playing Stray! I absolutely love being a cat. Mild spoilers below.

I'm struggling with some parts of the game though. As usual, my partner takes over during a lot of the more stressful sections, since that makes me feel ill. That's okay, though; I can enjoy being a cat, jumping up high, and solving puzzles.

Despite giving it a somewhat jaded review I'm still playing Wildermyth quite a bit. I guess I like the combat, which can be quite suspenseful, particularly when I screwed up somehow. (For example, forgetting to read what the mission actually is and trying to fight it out instead of running.)

The storytelling parts are kind of interesting and kind of clumsily handled, so I have a bunch of nitpicks:

Part of the fun of the game is that your characters sometimes get magically transformed. For example, I have a wolf-headed mystic that I quite like. But these dramatic changes are rarely acknowledged by the other characters in the cut scenes, so it seems a bit tacked-on.

I also found the way it handles aging and disability to be interesting, though a bit odd at times. The characters go grey but they never change their hairstyles as they get older. They may have children, but somehow having a family never prevents them from being ready to go on a new adventure - families seem a bit tacked-on too?

You can bring old characters back in new campaigns, but it's strange how it's done. One of my characters from the original campaign got old enough to retire, and she also lost her leg. In a new campaign, she's young again and has some of her abilities - but she doesn't get her leg back? How disappointing.

Also, I find it hard to imagine her walking for weeks across the countryside, as adventurers have to do in this game. I realize there's a trope of pirates having a peg leg, but they're on a ship so they don't have to walk too far. Meanwhile, an average day for an adventurer is walking the entire day in rough terrain, setting up camp, and then doing it again tomorrow.. Seems like you might want to change jobs? Town guard, maybe?

Another odd thing: if a character dies in the final battle of a campaign, there are essentially no consequences. It's not even acknowledged after the battle is over.

I've been playing Outriders with my gaming group. It's been pretty fun so far! I've been enjoying the tone and pacing, both story and loot/leveling up. I think the systems are really straight forward and it's pretty easy to just jump right in and go for it. I'm interested in what'll get explained in game and what I'll learn when I finally start reading the journal entries. I will say that I'm not too sure if I would play it by myself haha.

I just started the Nintendo Switch version of Link's Awakening. I'm not usually one for puzzles and dungeons, but it's just so dang cute! I also like how forgiving the Zelda series is in general, and this will give me something to do until the BotW sequel (prequel?) comes out.

I tried playing The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe last night and I found it absolutely insufferable, although I don't know what it was specifically that made me not like it.

I also tried Steamworld Heist again and quit playing after an hour or two. I didn't like how you could recruit several characters but were artificially limited to how many you could take on missions. Also there was no passive method of levelling up new recruits, so you'd either grind older missions or just use the characters you're already using.

I started watching a youtuber play Stray but lost interest when the cat got a robot buddy, I don't know why.

I've been playing Burnout Paradise over the last few weeks and decided to try out the bikes again. I had forgotten how terrible the bikes were. None of the bikes (all 4 of them) have a boost system and two of the bikes aren't worth using. Also all the events are blitzes. Some blitzes you can only do during the day, others at night but for no real reason. Some races have checkpoints which is odd since none of the single player car races do. There are no bike opponents.

I got the Live A Live remake and have been playing through the first half fairly slowly. I have some very mixed opinions on it so far.

The first thing I will say about it is that they do a great job at making the game better without ruining the nostalgia. The way the sprites have been redrawn fit the game so naturally that I actually forgot for a moment that the original game drew everyone in tiny squares like the first few Final Fantasy games. That was one of the things that always disappointed me about the original; it involved all these artists but we could never really get a good look at their style. The biggest improvement is in the distant future chapter; the original behemoth looked like an oversized green anteater, but the new one is a giant and very detailed which actually makes it look threatening.

And one of the best things so far has been the rearranged music. We’ve already heard re-recorded versions of some of these songs when Composer Yoko Shimomura released Drammatica, but honestly the production on this soundtrack is a bit better, especially when it comes to tracks that rely on more modern instruments and genres. The sound design is just generally perfect. There’s a few examples where they showed a bit of constraint and it looks like they kept some of the original sound effects at some times.

One thing you should be aware of if you decide to play this game is that it’s not a strictly originalist version of the game. There are light changes here and there and they can be a bit frustrating at times. I got thrown through a bit of a loop one point because they asked what name Cube was originally given because the localization team decided on “Roundy” for some reason. But one change that I found to be the most welcome is that they included a “radar” system that tells you where to go, which was always confusing in the original game.

With all those positives out of the way, there are two major problems in the game. Number one is that the switch version of the game is plagued with loading screens. You’d think with mostly pixel art this wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it can be long at times. Which is why it always gives you hints between loading screens.

But much worse is that every dialogue scene has been made to be very very slow. This is largely because of the addition of voice acting. The VAs are all pretty well matched for their roles and they do a good job, but they talk so, so slowly. And worse, in these scenes they walk very slowly. Sometimes they have to move north or south off of the screen, and because the camera angle is tilted that’s the longest possible route. The devs adjust for this somewhat by making every interaction skipable. It doesn’t matter if they only have one thing to say, you can skip the conversation.

PowerWash Simulator

Long ago I played and wanted to love Viscera Cleanup Detail. It’s been so long since I played it that I can’t remember why I bounced off of it, but the idea of a relaxing cleaning game that I could play while listening to audiobooks stuck with me as an unscratched itch.

Enter PowerWash Simulator, which is finally scratching that itch.

I started playing it yesterday, and I’m already on my second audiobook.

I’ll also plug a great QoL feature that I’m thrilled this game has: there’s a toggle that uncouples your pressure washer from the camera, so you can move it freely while the camera remains in place. I’m decently susceptible to motion sickness in first-person games, so this feature is huge, especially in a game where your pressure washer has to point literally everywhere. I could probably still play it without that feature, but it makes certain things (e.g. cleaning ceilings) way more tolerable.

Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

I first played this game several years ago, but didn't think much of it, and put it down rather quikly. The gimmicks of the game didn't really appeal to me, the platforming up intil then was unimpressive, the one boss battle I did was underwhelming, and the last I remember I was wandering around lost in the desert searching for power moons.

A week ago I let my niece and nephew try the game. Honestly not my brightest moment. They're 6 and 4 years old, so the game is much too difficult for them, and yet they both got unhealthily engrossed in it. They've played quite a bit, but when they got too frustarted or scared, us adults had to take over. Together we made it quite a bit further than I previously did on my own.

And you know what? This game is actually pretty good!

Partially I think it's due to the shared social experience of being multiple people cooperating with the game. But I also feel there's a serious improvement in level design past the desert map. We also kept discovering ever new creatures with cool special abilities we could mind control with our magic hat. The platforming sections got better, and the puzzles more interesting. Boss battles didn't improve much, but they're a very minor part of the game.

I'm planning to start my own save over, power through the desert map, and see if I find myself enjoying the game solo too.