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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.
The Outer Worlds
After 40 hours, I hit the point-of-no-return on the main quest line and finished out all the other side and companion quests. I'm now sidestepping to run through the two DLCs, before I then come back and finish out the main story.
This game is up there with Yooka-Laylee for me in the pantheon of "Did I play the same game as the rest of the internet?" The widespread response to both was lukewarm to negative. Both get accused of being soulless and funless. Both are broadly seen as weak attempts to be another, better game.
I feel like I'm on a completely different planet (fitting!), because I genuinely loved both of them. I thought both of them did a great job at paying homage to their inspirations while being their own unique experiences. Furthermore, I believe both of them are great games on their own merits alone.
With regards to The Outer Worlds specifically, I thought the writing in the game was great. The plot itself isn't necessarily anything stellar, but the incidental character writing and dialogue was fantastic. In a lot of other games I'll skip dialogue if it's tedious, perfunctory, or annoying, but I listened through all of the conversations and made it a point to run through unnecessary dialogue options just for the world- and character-building.
I also love the way the game handles companions. They are integrated into the writing as well, with companions chiming in to your conversations with other characters, as well as bantering between themselves. They also didn't write generic lines to be spoken by any companion character -- all the dialogue is specific to each individual character. I ended up getting really attached to the ones that I adventured with, as I got to hear a lot of their opinions and thoughts on things as the game progressed.
At some decision points in the game, you can even consult with your companions about what they thing the right choice is, and they'll often give you different feedback based on their individual beliefs and values. I knew the game "had me" emotionally when I had my player character intimidate someone I was talking to, and one of my companions who was present responded afterwards and tried to diffuse my anger. I felt that moment, in my own person. It's so easy to play a game like this with "I can pass that speech check, so that's the option I should pick", and in that moment I passed the check, but I felt like I failed my character and my crew.
I also think a big difference for me is that I pretty much forced myself to play this game wiki-less. I've always attempted to play games like this without looking up optimal quest resolutions, but my desire to min-max my experience always gets the best of me. It makes for good mechanics in that I get the numbers and outcomes I want, but it kills the emotional tension and buy-in to the world. For this game, I went in with a "you have to live with the results of your choices" mentality, and it made the experience much richer. This didn't stop me from reflexively safety saving before literally every decision no matter how small or inconsequential, but I'm happy to report that I didn't end up using those to retcon my playthrough on the fly.
I'll put a couple more thoughts below a spoiler fold, but all told, I'm thrilled with this game. I'm someone who has a hard time sticking with games, so for me to see something through for 40 hours is noteworthy. While I also don't "get" the game's reception at large, I also feel like I should be grateful for it: it set my expectations low, so my playthrough ended up being full of pleasant surprises whenever those were exceeded.
Spoilers (also, fair warning: emotions)
This game was a favorite of a friend of mine who unexpectedly passed away from a very aggressive cancer last year. I put off playing it for a while because it was a painful reminder. It's only now that I felt emotionally ready to tackle it, and even then I wasn't sure if I'd follow through with it. I'm very glad that I did, however.
One of our last conversations before he passed was actually about this game and how much he loved it. He identified as a homoromantic asexual, and Parvati was the first time he ever encountered someone like him in media. EVER. Her companion storyline was his experience to a T -- knowing that he felt strong romantic feelings, but also experiencing no sexual attraction or desire to engage in sexual behaviors. This was particularly difficult for him, as queer male culture in particular tends to hyperfocus on sexual activity, so he often felt lonely and "outside" of even queer spaces and experiences.
I learned a lot about being an ace-inclusive gay guy from him, and it remains vitally important to me that aces are understood, included, and loved by us -- not just as a way of honoring him but because it's the right thing to do.
Anyway, I don't know how to word this properly, and I made myself cry in talking about him, so I'm not exactly in a great place to string words together, but meeting Parvati in the game and accompanying her on her journey felt a little like being on a journey with him.
That was my favorite part about the game.
I enjoyed TOW rather a lot myself! I'd describe it as an odd low-budget mix of Fallout: New Vegas and Mass Effect, with a theme that lands somewhere between Bioshock and Firefly. The scope of the game is small, but the writing and open-ended multitudes of player choice make up for it. It's fun to pick a faction and play through the story from their POV, but the most pleasant surprise for me was discovering the existence of a viable diplomatic playstyle. Every single conflict in the game can be defused through mediation. It's not an easy path necessarily, and it does lengthen the game somewhat. It's also not a "happy ending" as it involves making some hard choices and compromises. But when I got to the end of it (after having seen how the other storylines resolve) I felt really satisfied that I had brought about the best possible conclusion for the most people. I can't say I've encountered another game that left me with that.
I was excited for the eventual sequel, but I'm obligated now to call out how the Microsoft acquisition of Obsidian killed any chances of its release on Playstation. I'm happy with my PS5 and not in the market for an Xbox, and not a PC gamer, so I likely won't get to play it. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point, but I'm not keen to let MS' anti-consumer policies win out.
I honestly don’t know why people consider this game to be low budget. I never saw anything that came across as egregious cost cutting. But I guess we have to keep in mind that this is something of a niche game. I can see your average gamer getting upset about the gunplay and then moving on because its not as refined as the fps du jour.
I think the "low budget" crack is about the really small worldspaces. In a way the game is constrained, but it feels like a solid RPG, and does what it tries to do very well.
Parvati’s story is also my favorite part of the game. The other companion side quests are all pretty good but I found myself wanting to help out Parvati the most (even though she tended to need some of the most annoying things some times). Helping her get together with her crush was so immensely satisfying for reasons that are really difficult to articulate, and it’s probably a lot to do with how much I like her as a character.
By the way, companion interactions during the main quest can be much more dramatic. If you make a choice that they think is super unethical they will actually leave you.
Stan Parvati. 😄
This is good to know, and actually pretty validating. Makes me feel better about my choices! Though, to be fair, I've gone the sort of strongly diplomatic playthrough that @balooga mentioned in their post and been mostly successful at that.
I've been playing Risk of Rain 2 with a couple of people! My SO and I played the first one first, and overall they're both really enjoyable and very different experiences but fun. We've put in a lot of time for the second one, and while very fun, it's way harder with multiple people, they REALLY throw it at you.
I was able to get further going solo than with multiple people. It was cool but it definitely makes you think about the meta and the best way to play it, which characters to use. The Bandit is honestly so clutch, he's a great character and I love the play style you can use with him. Definitely looking forward to adjusting the group play style to beta it at least once!
Since I haven't had too much time for gaming sessions as of late I've really gotten into Melvor Idle, it's a numbers-go-up idle game loosely set in the Runescape universe that puts a fun RPG spin on things :) Very easy to just pick up for 5 minutes either on the steam or mobile version after you get past the initial bump where you need to be active rather than idling.
I've never played Runescape before but Melvor is the first idle game I've actually managed to find enjoyable despite not being familiar with the lore. Currently at about 33% game completion according to in-game stats but I'm expecting it to get a fair bit grindier from here on out haha
Small world! I have been playing Melvor Idle the last month or so, too. I even mentioned it in the last weekly ~games topic. I am only at 22% complete in my main game, and 14% in my Adventure Mode one though, so I'm a fair bit behind you.
I've been playing since mid-May, but I also haven't been running multiple game saves so I'm probably not playing optimally lol. Have you played Runescape before or did you just stumble onto it like me?
I stumbled upon Melvor by chance while browsing steam tags one day, but I did play Runescape a fair bit back in the day, so it definitely hits the nostalgia button for me. :)
If RS itself is anything like Melvor in terms of the skilling/levelling and item system it definitely makes me want to try the original game, but like you said in your linked thread I just don't have time to be getting into an MMORPG. Maybe something to consider if I retire :P
It's more than just like it; Melvor is basically a spiritual clone of Runescape, but purely UI-based and single-player instead. So if you enjoy Melvor you would likely very much enjoy Runescape too. RS is a bit less idle-friendly though, since you can easily die even while mining or doing other ordinary activities if you aren't paying attention, especially at the higher levels, in the more dangerous PvE or PvP flagged zones. And unlike Melvor (other than in Hardcore Mode), dying can also be incredibly painful in RS, since you can potentially lose all your gear+inventory too (depending on the circumstances). So yeah, RS is a lot more stressful, and also unfortunately requires a lot more active involvement, paying of attention, and dedicated time to play it.
Thanks for the heads up! Will definitely have to stick to the idle version then, can't really be making a part-time job out of anything haha. Seems like something I could have sunk hundreds of hours into during my school years though for sure.
I broke through a hurdle in Pillars of Eternity by clearing the Sanitarium (not completely of course). I'd been looking at a bunch of games I played recently but "wasn't in the mood for," and picked it back up, it's definitely a solid game, and when you finally clear a tough encounter it feels amazing. I'm redoing interactions, but only because I'm working myself into corners or stumbling into the worst possibility when I didn't even mean to progress that questline. It's quite thrilling to have an entire house of people come after you.
EDIT: Fallout 1 is on the menu! I mostly live in Windows, and the Steam version runs better ootb than the GOG version. PoE was sort of trying to see if I'd like that genre as I couldnt get FO1 running well, but I'm thinking of mixing up the RPGs a bit. I also want it on my Deck, so I'll look into some settings for it.
I've just recently finished Stray, which was a little on the short side, but the length is enough to get my fill and not wear out its welcome.
I'd only seen a couple teaser trailers, so I went in not knowing about a couple of core elements, and those pieces were a nice surprise when the game unlocked them for me.
I really liked the design of the explorable areas, though it's held back a little by being a bit inconsistent with which things you can jump to or how high you can go with each jump.
I've also started another attempt at Disco Elysium, but that's the sort of game I feel like I have to chew on quite a bit in between sessions. Lovely art though.
I've started playing Multiversus last friday and played a lot over the weekend. As someone who never played smash bros but played a lot of brawlhalla this is exactly what I was looking for. It is so much better then brawlhalla already. And it has so much potential.
I'm playing NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
When a character sent me on a simple fetch quest to pick up an item off the ground nearby and this triggered half an hour of cutscenes and a five year timeskip that invalidated all my ongoing sidequests, I felt like maybe this game isn't always entirely honest with the player.
In general, it's hard to tell what you should be doing next in order to 100% it. On the other hand sidequests can be grindy and repetitive, and there are more of them than in NieR Automata. If you just go directly where sidequests want you to go rather than trying to aggregate multiple quests per trip you mitigate the risk of accidentally advancing the plot, but you will spend a lot of time running around the map on the same routes over and over and over. Also, I've been told it's important to get all the weapons, but (unique) weapons often tend to be just lying around on the set, sometimes in places that are hard to go back to. I find this weird. Can I lock myself out of being able to finish the game? Have I already done so? Who knows!
There are bugs, such as for example one that prevents me from fishing properly, which in turn makes some quests impossible. Some of the things that happen are waved away without a proper explanation, such as the haunted house stuff in Emil's place (what's with those paintings? why? doesn't jive with the rest of the plot!) I find the little sister character annoying as hell, which I'm certain was not the intention but you can't tell me I'm not right. The farming mechanic is mandatory for some quests but also very annoying, with slow animations getting in the way of actions you must perform over and over, and it's tied to the system clock as well meaning you "must" actually wait for your plants to grow in real time (or just advance your system clock by 1-2 days each time... which is still a chore). On the other hand farming can be quite lucrative, and you do need money to buy (very expensive) weapons. Sidequest rewards can be good enough, but they're also very uneven (some quests don't pay anything at all).
But it's not all bad. The game looks great! The soundtrack is excellent, just as good as NieR Automata's, good enough to listen to on its own. If these games' only redeeming quality was that they brought their soundtracks into the world they would still have been more than worth it. The voice actors are also good and suited for the characters, at least in japanese (though I've noticed the english text is often a very poor match for what the characters actually said). The combat mechanics are... fine. I like Automata's combat system better (I'm even one of those rare people who don't hate the "hacking" minigames) but the fighting in Replicant is at least fairly smooth and not too difficult, with quests providing enough experience and items that you shouldn't need additional grinding. Enemies are often far more tanky than they needed to be, which is unfortunate - by now you can probably detect a pattern of the game not respecting your time (I guess this is often the case in JRPGs).
I like the protagonists, Generic Kind Shounen Hero, who grows up to be Generic Aloof Confident Hero; Haughty Young Woman, who wears a woefully insufficient amount of clothing because... Yoko Taro, and doesn't age over the time skip for contrived reasons I won't spoil, and Overpowered Child, who is casually immortal and can one shot kill everything but after considerable effort manages to downgrade himself into a less powerful ally (very unfortunate). The main story has its intriguing beats. The locations on the world are somewhat interesting and some of them look very good, too. I have mixed feelings about the time the game turned into a text adventure but I appreciated it for the originality and novelty, even though it suffers from the ever present handwave effect.
Iron Danger
Terrible name, cute graphics, interesting concept, mediocre execution, middling story, poor optimization, didn't finish it, made it about 60% through.