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

Slay the Spire. It's a deckbuilding roguelike that I've quite enjoyed. It's easy to start, but with considerable depth, and between four different characters that all have their own styles and subspecializations there's quite a bit of variety.

The downside is that I've been playing it on Xbox Game Pass, with some of Microsoft's signature adventures in mediocrity. Cloud saves are pretty standard by this point, but somehow Microsoft can't manage to swing it using their own Xbox app on their own OS. So I've had to hunt through their obtuse file conventions and email my save to myself in a real bit of unwanted nostalgia. It's not the first issue I've had with the service either; somehow, even with hundreds of games for $15 a month on Game Pass, I still find myself using Steam and waiting for sales most of the time instead.

Chained Echoes on Switch
Just finished this title: It's an absolutely amazing love letter to SNES-era RPGs like FF6 and Chrono Trigger that stands on its own as a deeply fulfilling experience. "Just OK RPGs" in my experience tend to come in two flavors: Ones with good stories and characters that you hold your breath and grind through the battles/tactical parts, or the inverse where you just try to "quick mash" the buttons to skip the absolutely terrible writing. Chained Echoes pulls off the rare "double good" where both elements are good enough to stand in their own and reinforce a good experience for each other. The writing and story are fantastic - totally passed the "would you pay to see this as a movie" bar that 95 percent of RPGs would not. Only a few snafus in the localization appear and honestly they almost lend an air of "early 90s authenticity" to the game. The gameplay is also great, overall. Some of the equipment systems are overwrought but they don't detract much from what ends up feeling like a "perfectly tuned challenge" tactically. This was the last game I started in 2022 and it was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise: Pure joy from start to finish.

A friend had me pick up Tunic recently and it was great!

It's a cute top down action game that has puzzle elements, and is probably best with a controller.

I think the game is best played by externally looking up as LITTLE as possible, so my words here are limited.

But if you like adorable games with a very good feel and don't mind spending a bit of time staring at things here and there, it's fantastic.

It's a Finji game and between Tunic and Night in the Woods, they are super on my radar now.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft Classic - Wrath of the Lich King. How much, you ask? Well, way more than I should. Let's leave it at that.

My friends from a decade ago are either unreachable or don't play the game anymore, so I don't have an allegiance or a social hook to be on a particular server and that's a problem because that is not a game to play alone. I mean, you certainly can, but that's not my idea of fun.

So I created a bunch of characters in different servers to get a feel for them.

One way to really make friends in-game is roleplay, so that was one of my focuses.

On paper, Grobbulus is the ideal PvP roleplay server. High population, balanced factions, interesting guilds, etc. However, the RP tag shouldn't be taken too seriously. Without enforcement, Grobbulus is largely a PvP server with in-guild roleplay. Don't expect to find spontaneous RP anywhere in the world, and even the roleplay guilds seem very focused on raids and such. It also has a high ping for me so I would only stay there if I had a strong reason, and up until now the guilds I dabbled in don't seem super active on the roleplay front.

Bloodsail Buccaneers, on the other hand, is a very small server with an active roleplay and hardcore community. I joined an RP guild there, and they take it very seriously. When I asked for context for a scene, I was directed to a 12-page Google Drive document. I participated in an event and had a very touching scene with another player in which we discussed some of my Paladin's traumas. I later investigated their Discord further and realized that they have their own system, rules, and rolls that are external to the game. In a sense, WoW's actual mechanics are not that relevant to them. WoW serves as the board and the characters as the pieces. Impressive! But I'm not sure if I'm up to that level of effort, I don't wanna play another game on top of WoW, but rather add RP elements to my enjoyment of the game itself. And because the server is so empty, I imagine that finding people for group quests, dungeons, and endgame content will be an issue. I'm unsure if I even should make an effort to level my character on that server, will that interfere with the roleplay? I don't know. But the people seem really nice. Let's see how it goes.

On the non-roleplay front, I found enjoyment in helping others and participating in normal guilds. These servers are all about leveling fast to get to the meaty content, and that's okay. Questing in Classic is a chore[1], no doubt about it. The content of the quests is usually irrelevant and ultra-generic. I don't read them anymore. I created a Priest on the largest server in the game (Benediction) just to be around a lot of people. Being a healer, I can always be useful to others and they appreciate that. I "met" a guy in his thirties that travels around the US in some kind of trailer or motorhome. Did my first dungeon as a healer and we got wiped multiple times. The druid tank was overly aggressive and it was impossible to heal them. It was fun. I installed Healbot so hopefully that won't happen again.

I like WoW's holy trinity, everyone has a defined role that is fun to play. Especially tank and healing -- DPS is pretty boring because if you don't do well, someone better will probably compensate for you. Tanks and healers, on the other hand, can make or break a run.

I'm using a bunch of addons because WoW without addons is like Emacs without packages: you can do it, but there are better ways.

In Classic, the group finder does only that: it facilitates the creation of a group. There is no automatic teleport. This means that, if you don't have a mage, you have to get there on foot. That makes for an interesting dynamic since you get to know your mates before the instance, but is especially problematic because some of the dungeons are in enemy territory and I'm not willing to die multiple times in the hands of the Horde. At my level, there is one Alliance dungeon and three in the Horde. That's a bummer.

I'm a bit dissatisfied with the fact that my main is a Priest and I have to drink water all the time (I forgot about that part..), and I don't wanna start over again. My next healer will be a Paladin for sure.

All and all, I'm loving the game.

[1] This makes me think, why should an MMORPG have that many quests anyway? A lot of those clearly requires no narrative. The quest text is just filler. Instead, a better solution would be to have one huge zone goal that includes a bunch of subtasks (such as "kill X amount of boars" or "evil mobs") that you will naturally encounter during exploration, reserving actual quests only for things with novelty or narrative relevance. That is something Guild Wars 2 does well (even though the story is crap too). There are a bunch of ways to get XP that are not narrative in nature, and that's fine. They don't need to pretend that everything is relevant to the plot. When you have fewer text dumps, the ones that remain are automatically more important, especially if the writers make sure to cease the opportunity. By the way, this comment is basically a repeat of something I said about MUDs.

I've been playing Metroid Samus returns! It's quite fun I didn't know how much I liked playing metroidvania games till I got a flash cart for gba and played through Metroid zero mission. Now with prime getting a remaster on switch (with the two sequels hopefully to follow) I've decided I'll just play through them all! I've seen conflicting orders to play so if you have recommendations let me know, but it's a lot of fun!

Shooty Fruity

This is my new favorite VR game.

It's a horde shooter where you're attacked by fruit, but you're also an employee at a grocery store. You have to split your attention between scanning groceries and shooting the advancing fruit. Better guns and powerups are locked behind the number of groceries scanned.

It's an interesting experience in multitasking. Also, as you progress, the grocery scanning becomes more difficult, and other modes open up as well (e.g. serving food on cafeteria trays). You also unlock new weapons which can make returning to previous levels and meeting their objectives easier.

I'm going to be honest: based on the name and premise, when I first started playing the game, I expected to go for maybe five minutes and then uninstall it. Instead, I've been having a blast and keep coming back to it. I've started playing it daily after my Beat Saber sessions.