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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 got into the Vampire Survivors craze. I've got maybe a dozen or so achievements left to unlock (including the Moonspell ones) but I'm feeling the pull less and less now. I think I've got my fill of this whole genre for a good time to come.
My enthusiasm for VS has been a bit of a weird rollercoaster. At first my hipster-gene kicked in, making me not really interested because it felt like everyone else was playing it. But then a friend gifted it to me, so I felt obliged to play it, and thought it was a neat idea (single-stick shooter) that I might get a few hours of fun out of. Then by coincidence I got two evolved weapons in the same run and it felt like I broke the game, because it was suddenly way too easy, and most of my enthusiasm was gone, except I'd get a brief burst of enthusiasm every time I unlocked a new character or map, and a significant drop in enthusiasm from trying the bonus maps, which I didn't really like. But then I decided to do some achievement hunting, and it was more fun again with concrete goals to achieve, but the game felt wonky in that you'd either luck into an evolved weapon which breaks the game, or you die much too soon. But then, after dozens of runs and several hours spent playing the game, for the first time I had the need to pause the game (not much need to pause it since it pauses when leveling up and when picking up chests), and I discovered there's a map! And it has icons on it! So that was a fresh wave of enthusiasm as I hunted down the artifacts and the mysterious question marks. I struggled for a long while with figuring out how to defeat the guy blocking the path downwards on Milk Factory, and with defeating the rolling ball of bones on Bone Zone. At some point I accidentally turned off arcanas, which made the game so much more difficult that I lost much of my enthusiasm, until I many runs later discovered how to activate arcanas again. I discovered an important button on the pause meny, the grimoire, and felt a burst of enthusiasm about discovering all the evolved weapons (struggling a bit with the ones that require items that make enemies more powerful, and especially the evolution for the clock lancet). Most recently, just a few days ago, I discovered a button named "secrets", so now I have renewed enthusiasm hunting for secrets!
Sounds very similar to my own progression--gradually discovering new mechanics that renew enthusiasm.
My current wave of apathy comes from having bought around 30 golden eggs for Red Death after unlocking him and discovering that giving him certain weapon combos (which are easy to achieve now in every single run after having unlocked all the rerolls, skips, and banishes) makes me completely untouchable and basically ensures that I'll complete the full run, even if I go nuts and boost the enemies by maxing out all the curses I have available to me or can find in the level.
Picked up Hogwarts Legacy on the weekend. Didn't preorder as I was a little skeptical considering how other hyped games have had poor releases. After seeing the preorder early access reviews I was feeling more confident.
The game so far has blown me away. I usually struggle to stay entertained by a game for more than 30 minutes before getting bored, but this had me hooked all weekend and ended up playing 10 hours over 2 days. Just every part of the gameplay is supurb. The combat especially is so far above expectations. Feels like there is easily 80 hours of gameplay in this if you were to explore the whole map and find everything. Just the castle itself is enormous and packed with hidden things.
Game also give me huge Fable vibes, not so much the mechanics and gameplay, but the visual style, music, and voice acting feels very similar.
PC performance is a little rough right now, it's mostly a problem of consistency. With the same settings I'll see the fps range from hitting the cap at 144fps and then drop to 50 in other areas. With some tweaking I imagine this will be fixed in the coming months.
After months of not working, I eventually got around to sending my Switch in for repairs and a porch pirate stole it when it got sent back!
Nintendo kindly sent me a replacement free of charge, but what I did not realize was that saved games are bound to your console. And I cancelled my Nintendo Online subscription months when it stopped turning on, so the 90 day grace period where it keeps your cloud saves lapsed.
All my achievements are gone. My Animal Crossing island and turnip-mania financed home. My Stardew Valley farm, my Breath of the Wild 98% play-through, my Mario Odyssey play-through, my completed Hollow Knight play-through. ALL OF IT!
I was sad, but I picked Stardew Valley up again. I hadn't played it in a while, and I had only ever tended the one farm when I did. Coming back to it after such a long hiatus, and restarting without the benefits of my hoarded resources and technology, I'm reminded how delightfully relaxing of a game this is. The last time I played I sort of focused on mining and the farm and didn't do much socializing. This time I decided to explore the social sphere and I like how each of the characters has their own little interesting but low-intensity side-story. I sort of assumed, based on online discourse, that this was going to be some sort of permutation on anime waifu culture, and it sort of is, but it's mostly just pleasant.
Great game. I'd never have picked it up if not for the package thief. Fuck that guy still, but I'm glad there was a silver lining.
Tried FFXII Zodiac Age after my FFXV run, but realized I don't like the almost pure fantasy FFs and prefer the kinda-sorta-scifi-fantasy FFs, so uninstalled it and moved on to Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core. Just started it so not much to say yet.
Played a few since the last time I posted...
Goldeneye is really bad on Nintendo Switch Online and Xbox. Rather than give players a decent way to control the game or even the option to remap button controls on the N64 emulator, the Switch version requires you to go into your console settings and fuck around with your overall button configurations. I think you have to flip around the left and right sticks, along with the LR/ZR and L/R buttons, then restart the game and change your control style in-game to 1.4 to get anything approaching Xbox controls. The Xbox version has decent modern twin stick controls but is actually a graphical downgrade compared to Switch and is not on PC, meaning the only way to experience it is to either own an Xbox One/Series console, or deal with ludicrous input lag by cloud streaming it. It also has no online play, which is utterly baffling in 2023 when NSO is the service known for dogshit netcode.
Carrion is a mixed bag. It's like a very linear Metroidvania where you play as the monster wrecking havoc on a research facility. Played it for about 2 hours, got bored and haven't really touched it since. It's another Super Mario 3D World where I might pick it up again when I can finally be arsed to clear another few stages.
Metroid Prime Remastered looks gorgeous and is a damn good remaster from early impressions, but there are two big things I'm not liking about it. Firstly, I have made it a habit to scan absolutely everything because I have heard horror stories about people missing out on 100% completion. Another problem is that the game's early bosses are just bad. The totem boss that spawns wasps on you is especially awful and was the point where I stopped playing. Part of the issue is the fact that they swarm you in droves and slowly chip away at your health in the most frustrating and disorienting way possible. The other is the buzzing, which is the first time in game history that wasp buzzes have made me feel unsettled in a video game.
I may go back to it. I may not.
Wario Land 3 remains one of my favourite puzzle platformers of all time, and seeing it launch on Nintendo Switch Online was a pleasant surprise. This game still holds up many years later and is a timeless classic for me. It was a game I originally hated because of how it would throw you into rather punishing boss battles. In fact, I was actually scared to face most of these bosses as a small child. I have since completed the game 100% on multiple playthroughs. At the moment I'm at the point where I've unlocked The Colossal Hole, obtained two music boxes and have basic powerups. Some levels are annoying, but they're blemishes on what is otherwise a 10/10 game for me.
I just wish that we'd see another Wario Land game in this style, or at least an indie developer release a puzzle platformer with infinite health and status changes just like this.
Pizza Tower is a game I haven't played that much of. Part of the reason I haven't been so hyped about this game is that I hate Wario Land 4 for being incredibly short and bastardizing the formula that the previous two Wario Land games were built upon. I am however pleased to confirm that a sole indie dev shat all over Nintendo's previous efforts to create a fast paced action platformer and made a game with far more personality, love, care and passion within it than the last twenty years of Wario games.
The other reason I haven't played it is that I genuinely can't get it to boot right now, and I'm on the verge of getting a new PC. It's going to happen but I lack the energy to do it right now.
Kuru Kuru Kururin actually came out as a launch title in my region, unlike in America. On finally playing it I can actually see why it never saw release in the United States. It's a very short and frustrating game. Beating the pre-set record times feels virtually impossible, even if you play the stages to perfection.
The Outer Worlds: It's become my main game to play right now again, same first character I started quite a while back. I got to Monarch where the game really starts to click, it's a huge exterior zone with plenty to do, and feels like its own game. I don't remember the first planet feeling like this, but I've logged at least six hours just on this planet to progress the story and knock out quests.
Got a sudden hankering on Saturday to play a game where you like, command a ship (either space or navy), but one where you have like an actual crew you command, and has personality, and somewhat open ended where it's not only about combat.
Basically I wanted to play an episode of Star Trek as a captain, sue me.
I ended up finding and trying UBOAT, a game on Steam where you captain a UBOAT. It's been decent so far, has some sore spots, and some room for progress, but it certainly does excel on one front I really wanted: you're the captain, you have crew, you can see them go about their duties, and it's about you going out on the open water and trying to complete some missions (mostly finding and sinking merchant transport ships).
The main problem I had with my search for this type of game is that most games in the genres of space/navy fall in to a few of the dealbreakers for me:
UBOAT has been decent to me so far in that the common missions are "go to this region and try to sink some merchants", leaving you to command the ship to find other ships, determine if and/or how to fight them, go in for the sinking, then try to get out without a destroyer sinking you with depth charges. There's some specialty missions here and there that also shake it up a little and give you more creativity/problem-solving in getting them done than just a simple ship/space battle.
I've got to try Star Trek™: Bridge Commander next, which seems pretty close to what I want, but may be a little on-rails. Worth a try for 10$ while I'm still in this "command a ship" kind of mood.
If you have friends to play with, I can highly recommend Barotrauma. The game is amazing and allows for some pretty over the top ridiculous emergent gameplay. There are also a lot of logic gates and electronic gizmos to play with and create interesting stuff if you're into that sort of thing.
Bridge commander felt very railsy and limited to me, more of a theme park ride than a game.
Played a lot of World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King. I truly believe this is one of the best games ever made, and don't get enough praise. It's not on Metacritic's Top 100, and on IGN it's 47.
Classic MMORPGs embodied the open-world concept in a way that many current games fail to do. The world is inviting, engaging, and highly populated. It draws me in like nothing else.
The cartoonish over-the-top style is so pleasurable, everything feels solid and, IDK, heavy and "crunchy". That is one reason why I never adapted to Guild Wars 2... the game feels "papery" -- the UI and overall design pretend everything is written on parchment. It's hard to explain, but GW2's visual identity feels soft, removed, and dreamlike. When I throw a punch, it doesn't feel like I'm throwing a punch, but rather that two bundles of pixels are gently connecting. In a weird way, WoW's cartoon quality makes it feel real to me.
A friend created a character to play with me, but was disappointed by the quality of the quests and asked for a refund. I can't blame him. Minor quests in WoW can be really dull. They're all either "kill 10 of x" or "get me 10 of x (which may involve killing a bunch of y)". Sometimes the writers make an effort to provide flavor, but none of that is a requirement for the fulfillment of the missions and can be safely ignored.
The way WoW handles the servers is outdated and problematic. There are dozens of them, and when you create a character, it is locked in there unless you pay a hefty fee. This means that, if I have a level 50 character and my friend has a character on another server, to play with them I'll have to either pay the fee or start all over again. This creates a lot of anxiety and frustration. This problem is inexistent in Runescape (where you can change servers anytime), and Guild Wars 2 (where you can play with people from any server).
I like to strike up conversations with people, either helping them or asking for help. The other day I did a bunch of quests with a rogue. I decided to roleplay a bit, commenting on how that world asks for nothing more of me than killing. I mean, mages are highly educated, sophisticated individuals, I'm not sure they would be happy to use their knowledge exclusively for killing. I roleplayed a traumatized mage, questioning our actions at every stage. At some point, my rogue friend answered me "Well, you could pretend this is all just a game". Meta roleplay! In the end, he broke character and said "Well, I have to log off to tend to my grandson". Grandson! That's what you get playing in Classic... grandparents! That was awesome.
I was thinking of going to a roleplay server, but the only one with a decent population is so far from my location that I get 200ms+ pings. Which would be pretty bad since it's a PvP server.
I gave Fallout New Vegas yet another go, followed the Viva New Vegas guide to make the game playable, got to level 17 and - as usual - got bored. It's a great game with loads of replayability but for some reason I don't find it as engaging as Fallout 4. Maybe it's because New Vegas has the Skyrim problem (ignore the fact that NV came out first) where you get to the point that exploration is pointless.
I've been meaning to play Project Zomboid, maybe I'll finally play it.
Project Zomboid is in a great place to be played right now. The devs are deep in development for the next major patch and the existing one has had plenty of time for official patches and unofficial mods to come out. So you have a very stable game with a robust mod ecosystem.
Semi-related but last week I noticed that Project Zomboid actually topped the Steam Sales charts behind only Hogwarts and the Steam Deck. It's cool to see an indie game from 2013 managing to pull those sort of numbers!
Also kinda crazy that the devs had such a rocky start but actually manage to shake that incident off, somehow keep going, and eventually become such a monumental success. So kudos to them!