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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.
Titles I'm playing at this moment:
Deep Rock Galactic. Very nice coop game with 1-4 players, think Left 4 Dead but with big bugs in procedural generated caves. You can set the difficulty from super chill to super hard, there are various kinds of missions, it's easy to start the game for 30-40 minutes and have simple fun with random players.
Assassin's Creed Origins. Reinstalled it recently on the Steam Deck, it's perfect for the many short (side) quests, easy to pause and resume.
Caves of Qud. A traditional (turn-based) roguelike in a weird sci-fi world. There's an overarching story with static quests, a massive overworld with many villages, ruins, PNJs, and strange mobs. I also love the art and the overall vibe.
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I'm gonna get crucified for this, but I really really don't like the game, even though I loved Breath of the Wild and spent more than 100h on it. I feel like Nintendo took all the elements I disliked in BOTW (and more) and turned them up to 11.
I hate crafting in games; the very basis of TOTK is crafting contraptions and weapons. Speaking of weapons, wasn't it tiring they broke all the time in BOTW? Good news, they still break but they are also super weak without crafting. Also, the most basic mobs all have massive hp pools and hit like trucks, you better spend half the battle gluing rocks to swords if you want to not die all the time. Also, here are 300 shrines and 9000 korogus, in case you weren't already super fed up with them from BOTW. After how much I loved BOTW, I couldn't be more disappointed.
Edit:
I'm finding that there are things about TotK that dramatically improved on BotW for me, and others that have gotten much much worse.
Enemies have way too much health and hit much harder than they should, unless they are bosses in temples. Getting hit by a temple boss takes one and a half hearts, meanwhile getting hit by a bokoblin arrow in Hyrule field takes ten hearts. Pink horriblins take like ten hits to kill with a weapon that does 70 damage. Meanwhile a temple boss take like six hits to kill with the same weapon. Why??
Weapon durability is just as frustrating as the first game. The vast majority of weapons you find are worthless because they are decayed and break even more quickly than in the first game. Fusing simply brings weapon durability back up to what it would have been in the first game. Really disappointing.
The building mechanic can be really useful, but is a pita to use. Autobuild doesn't have nearly enough favorites slots for me to feel like I can experiment much at all without wasting a huge chunk of time on it. Some platform-type parts have snap points while other don't, which can make building with the wrong materials incredibly frustrating. Some enemies can just easily smash all your stuff so building larger weapons can be a huge waste of time. Also any time you load a save, anything you've built disappears, which is idiotic.
Sage powers are stupidly frustrating. Why did they make the button to activate them the same button to pick stuff up? Why do I have to be standing next to the sage I want to activate their ability? They really dropped the ball on the controls for them.
And honestly, they dropped the ball on all of the controls in this game. No way to rotate clockwise when building. No way to switch between types when selecting an item in the dpad-up menu. No way to quickswap bows without pulling a bow out, and no way to quickswap your melee weapon while your bow is out. Z-targeting is an archaic form of lock on. Sprinting / jumping doesn't take you out of a crouch. The sprint button and jump buttons being across from each other is asinine. So many frustrations with the control scheme in this game.
On the flipside, I find the story to be a lot more engaging than BotW. Zelda is less annoying and the sage quests were more fun and memorable than the last game. I also think the depths and sky maps add a lot of variety to the gameplay so if I'm bored of the overworld I can go do stuff in the sky or underground. Even though I hate the weapon durability garbage, the fuse mechanic makes killing big enemies feel more worth my time. And as annoying as the building mechanic can be, being able to build air bikes and frost carts has definitely been a game changer for me. I've played TotK for much longer than I ever played BotW because of these few improvements.
Throwing seeds in the Depths is so clunky... is there really no better way than this? 1) hold R to start to throw sword 2) press and hold up on d-pad 3) scroll to select seed 4) let go of up 5) let go of R to throw seed. I vaguely remember there was a shrine that teaches you how to throw seeds, and that's what it said to do. For me it often ends at 2) get confused and let go of R, throwing my best weapon into an unseen pool of gloom.
Nope, that's indeed how you are supposed to throw items. It feels so odd and looks odder imo, seeing Link pull back his sword, then it just swapping to whatever item you select. I absolutely love this game and the majority of its mechanics, but there are so many weird little things like this that start to add up.
It feels similar to the controls found in Red Dead Redemption 2. I've heard Stephanie Sterling describe it as "menus within menus." Hold this, then press this, okay now open the sub-menu, okay now select this. And I do think this can work in certain contexts, including RDR2, but I feel like it wasn't as well-executed as it could have been in TOTK.
Oh yeah, that's another huge control scheme issue I hate. You should be able to pull up the item menu then select to throw the item. Having to pull my weapon up to throw is so clunky AND makes me infinitely more likely to throw my weapon accidentally, which I definitely have on several occasions. So annoying.
What's kinda funny to me, is I'm having the opposite reaction as you in regards to tears of the kingdom. I hated BOTW and it's mechanics. But I'm actually loving the crafting element. I stopped attaching rocks to my swords when I learned I could just combine a sword with a sword. The gloom aspect I don't like. But you don't really have to deal with that. At least so far in my game.
BUT I do agree the mobs have way too much health. I'm getting wrecked in one hit when I've been working on them for a few minutes.
Ah that's interesting, so you still gave TOTK a chance after hating BOTW - and got rewarded for it! What aspects did you not like in BOTW that are removed/improved in TOTK?
For me, it's the same actually! I really didn't like BOTW but I do mostly like TOTK! I like that you can build vehicles and use them to speed up exploring. Building things also helps to speed up shrines so that's a big plus too.
One of the things I hated about BOTW was the mostly empty open world and the fact that it took so much effort to explore everything. It just felt tedious to do anything. In TOTK I can just build a flying machine and fly anywhere I want. It's just much less time-consuming. The map is much larger but it still took much less time to fully explore thanks to machines.
There are still many things I don't like about it, like the durability on weapons, the lack of proper dungeons, dungeon items and the lack of music. BOTW and TOTK still don't feel like proper Zelda games to me.
I finished BOTW on PC with many mods to fix the issues I had with it, just because I needed to (I've finished all of the Zelda games so I had to finish this one as well). I actually managed to finish TOTK on original hardware without any mods.
Gloom becomes less avoidable in the mid-to-late game. At one point I just spent some time fast-traveling to each sky island and hoarding sundelions.
I agree, "special damage you can't heal with normal healing mechanics" is one of my least favorite game mechanics. Tunic had it too, and it led to me playing a good chunk of the game with damage disabled because it was just too frustrating otherwise to be fun.
But in the mid to late game you have so many gloom-avoiding techniques. Any vehicle will let you drive across it without a fuss, or you can fly, or you can ride the fifth sage, or there's gloom resistant gear and potions, or, since combat is rare in the Depths outside of setpieces you can avoid, you can just tank it until you get to the next sunroot. Gloom just isn't much of an issue fairly quickly.
My wife played through it and also vastly preferred BOTW. She found the ultrahand kind of awkward or hard to control, I guess, and generally wasn't into the vehicle construction and fusing which is everywhere in TOTK. Getting the autobuild ability/mechanic helped a lot though. She also preferred the puzzle-like nature of the BOTW shrines, where there is often a solution in mind that you have to figure out, whereas many shrines in TOTK are more like a sandbox where you "just" construct a vehicle to get to the end.
You reminded me that I wanted to give Caves of Qud another shot and I finally finished the first quest! I've had the game for years but I've always just been stoned to death by baboons straight out the gate, so this is exciting :D
What's your experience with Caves of Qud like? I've had it for quite a while, and have started countless games. It really seems like something I'd be pulled into, but I haven't been , and I feel like I'm missing something.
I can relate, I had it sit in my backlog for 2 years before it finally clicked. Actually I was expecting a "normal" roguelike, with short-ish dungeon runs, when it's actually a full RPG with procedural generation. Think "Skyrim with random quests and villages". Starting the game with that mindset helped. It's also a very well written game, take your time to read the descriptions (not the books though, they're 99% procedural).
Make a mutant character (they're just fun), pick up and sell stuff to always have enough water, and don't be afraid to sometimes look up things on the wiki, there are lots of non obvious mechanics that will make the game surprising but also harder.
Also, I'm playing in "roleplay" mode, so that when I die I restart on the latest checkpoint in town. Still punishing but at least you won't throw a 10 hours run in the bin.
I finally finished BOTW yesterday evening. I really didn’t want to finish it because I enjoyed the story, but I had run out of things to explore. TOTK is already waiting to be played, but I don’t feel like I can commit to it just yet.
I would give it a breather for a bit. TOTK makes the world feel fresh as heck, the new powers are awesome, and frankly I feel like it's going to be hard to ever go back to BOTW after playing it. But it uses BOTW's skeleton as a starting point, so it is similar in that way.
Having said that if you're still desperate to play more Zelda right now after having finished BOTW I guess it wouldn't hurt to start TOTK. You'll have a good time either way, just don't want to get burned out. It's a long game, longer than BOTW at least assuming you don't speedrun to the end.
Longer than BOTW… oh dear. I don’t get to game as much as I like, and it already took me 1.5 years to finally do a playthrough. If TOTK is any longer, it might be the last game I’ll play in my remaining time on earth.
Yeah... I feel like I'm gonna be playing it until 2024 and I don't mean that as hyperbole. Not only is it huge, I am enjoying it a lot so I might 99% it (I'm not going to bother finding all the Koroks).
How does the Deck run Assassin's Creed Origins?
I been playing it currently, but also I could start playing it during commute. Do might install it on to mu deck.
Most of my graphics settings are set to low or medium, framerate capped to 45fps, and it mostly runs at 45. When I'm not plugged, I also limit the TDP to 10W and it it runs at 30-45fps.
As long as the textures are set to medium, I think it looks good enough on the small screen. I also tried to set the resolution at 90-80% with FSR2.0, but I didn't notice a significant framerate improvement.
I just started playing through Diablo IV on my Steam Deck and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The somewhat-mindless hack-n-slash is a welcome diversion. And I'm really impressed by how well it runs on the Steam Deck despite being a Windows game - Proton is magic.
I've also been playing Diablo IV. It's my first Diablo game and it's heaps of fun, my friends are showing me the ropes. What class did you pick?
Nice! This is also my first Diablo game, and I'm playing as a rogue. I don't really know what I'm doing as far as the skill tree goes but I'm having a lot of fun even with my non-optimized build.
Windows runs quite well on steam deck as well. I didn't have any issues so far and love using it as a full handheld computer that runs normal software as well as games.
Can't wait what Windows will do with the pocket version they announced for the deck.
To stay on topic, I'm playing Eastward right now when I find the time. It's a bit of a dungeon crawler itself in pixel art style, but with a neat story and some exploration. It's really unique.
I'm playing Diablo 4 right now. I was really, really hyped for it before it released. I played all of the betas -- enjoyed them, too! But now that it's out and I've been playing it for a while, it feels like a slog. I don't know what I was expecting. I don't care about the side quests at all. Most of them feel like filler content (maybe that's the point?) and the main quest was entirely too easy for the first two acts. I'm currently in the third act, I think. The boss battles are fun because there's a lot going on but it actually made me want to play Path of Exile again. PoE feels more challenging and intricate with the skills and stats. I think I wanted it to be more like D2 and less like D3 and while it is definitely some mix between the two, one huge thing it killed for me was the importance of finding new gear. I feel like it doesn't matter if I like a new armor or weapon because in 10 minutes I'll find a better one. Uniques don't feel as special, either. I have found that there will be magic gear that's objectively better. Complaints, yes, but I'll finish it for sure.
I read somewhere someone saying (and I'm paraphrasing), "Diablo is like comfort food" and I wholeheartedly agree. I'll probably play this off and on for years but the sit-down-and-play-until-my-eyes-ache feeling just isn't there. Also, my life is just not built around gaming as my only hobby/form of entertainment anymore. Diablo is good for 30 minutes of gaming and then moving on with my day, if needed (or more!)
That's exactly what it feels like. It's like a blockbuster movie: enjoyable, easily digested, and forgotten as soon as you leave the theater. Actually it's so comfortable I mainly played Diablo 3 on the Switch, in my bed, to fall asleep.
I completely agree with you.
I played through Tier 1 with a friend and finished the story, which I very much enjoyed. Then I thought "what next?"
I did not enjoy the grind to nightmare and after an additional night or two, I've completely quit the game. I've just got no interest anymore. I think part of this is that as I've gotten older, I've begun losing interest in games in general, sadly.
I will play Starfield when it comes out and try again. Maybe that one will hold me for more than a week.
Really enjoyed D4 and got about 80-90 hours out of it with a friend. As soon as we hit Tier 4 and did a bit of Nightmare dungeons and the whispers stuff, we kinda hit a wall because there's not much to aim for so to speak. As an MMORPG player, I need a good long term go.
Having enjoyed D4 I've since installed Path of Exile which seems to be the multiple thousand hour game. So far so good, it's a lot more deliberate so far which is cool. I like how the gem sockets give you actual skills and you're not stuck with a classes stuck abilities.
I'm enjoying Diablo 4 but I do find that I enjoy it a lot more playing with friends or in small chunks. Hop on, kill a world boss, grind Helltide, do a NM dungeon and call it a day.
Have you gotten to level 50 yet? The Paragon board kind of scratches that PoE itch on a much more simple level.
I haven't made it past 30-ish because by then I'm bored with the characters and start a new one, hah! But that's good to know!
50 plus becomes a super grind, but the Paragon boards make for some interesting customization on a limited scale. Definitely an improvement from the Paragon system in D3.
Played the FFXVI demo and now I can't wait for the game to come out. Very "Game of Thrones" meets Final Fantasy. The combat is pretty good and the summons are ridiculously huge as they should be. Probably going to be one of the best games of the year in a pretty packed year.
My friends and I are so excited. I love character action games and FF7 remake, and they love JRPGs. My friend who couldn't get into bayonetta or devil may cry has been gushing to me about the demo and how great the combat feels.
From the impressions I've been hearing, it sounds like Square may have outdone themselves
I was just coming in here to say the same thing, even pre-ordered it after playing, knew I was eventually going to get it anyway, but the demo really solidified that I needed it as soon as possible. Plus having the demo come full circle back to that first scene? Beautiful.
That demo was wild, like I was not expecting a couple hours to make me care about those characters so much. I've never actually played any FF games, but I'm super hype for this one.
I am in the same boat. I have a dentist appointment that day and just decided to take the whole day off, so I’d get some time to play haha.
For some reason I keep playing this silly web game
https://wasyl.eu/games/compact-conflict/play.html#
It’s pretty easy yet short and amusing.
I spent 2-3 days playing this quite frequently after I saw it posted in another gaming thread.
Its enjoyable to scratch the Risk-like itch. I've taken to playing on "Endless" and just trying to finish off all of the AIs. I wish it worked on mobile.
Thanks for this suggestion. I just played a round and enjoyed it quite a bit.
Thanks for killing my productivity with this suggestion.
Reminds me a lot of an older risk-like game that I used to play online called dice wars.
I just finished Yakuza Kiwami, and am planning on moving onto Kiwami 2 after I take a short break. For all the rough edges of RGG games, I'm always impressed on how well they manage to portray the wide range of human emotions in their stories and characters, particularly passion in both its negative and positive form.
Anyone who hasn't played at least Yakuza 0, I highly recommend trying it.
I hesitate to think I will ever have a more jaw dropping moment than finishing Kiwami 1 and the credits rolling to "Silent Night." The series is gripping though, and ive been meaning to get back to Kiwami 2 after a bit of a break.
I started my Yakuza journey with Kiwami and so far played 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. 0 is next, I'm looking forward to seeing what all the rage was about :) It's one of my favorite video game series.
You definitely have to play 0, especially if you are interested in Majima. It's so well written and executed, It's been a long time since a game story got me to worry about characters like 0 did.
Yeah i’ve played all of them, and am almost done with yakuza like a dragon and so far 0 is still my favorite by like a dragon is very close up there. But i’m probably biased since 0 was my first yakuza game.
I enjoyed Grounded, but it felt very much like a sign that Obsidian under Microsoft was going to move away from the things they'd been known for and into being a much more general purpose developer.
Currently playing Witcher 3 - great storytelling, lots to explore, slow-paced, great combat (didn't expect this!), world is just so so beautiful. Probably going to be one of my all-time favourites.
Also Cyberpunk 2077 - not enjoying it much so far, it has all the elements to be "cyberpunk" but for some reason it just doesn't feel like it (probably because my expectations were too high to start with).
My tip for Cyberpunk 2077 is 2 things:
do not use fast travel (except if you're doing like, the Panam quests)
try to go in stealthily.
These two really let the game almost shine for me, the world in that game is just immaculate (but not very deep, sure) and doing both really helps you learn the ins and outs of it almost.
All good suggestions, thank you! Should help to slow down a game pace a little bit as well.
In regards to Cyberpunk, I believe there is a huge update rolling out with the DLC release (DLC not required) that tightens up enemy AI, specifically police officers, and makes the skill system a lot more useful.
I played it at release on PC and enjoyed it but I stopped after maybe 20 hrs as I knew the game could be better so I'm waiting for the DLC release and maybe a few bug fixes before I jump in, mod the living hell out of it and start playing again.
Good to know, thanks! Do you have any favourite mods? I only started looking into mods recently, never used them before.
I myself haven't looked at installing mods yet but I believe there's a big one that restores the cut metro system in the game so you can get around using the Night City subway. I know it's a popular game for nodding though so no doubt there'll be a lot to choose from.
Ohh you should get the Witcher 3 DLC as well if you haven't yet - Blood&Wine especially is amazing and feels like a whole extra world (with new mechanics and quest types).
That's totally on my list, thanks!
Just started playing Sonic Frontiers, it's enjoyable and engaging so far. First 10 hours has been decent fun.
As a lifelong Sonic fan who's become somewhat disillusioned with the 3D games post-Unleashed (Colours and Generations are also really good, don't get me wrong, they just don't hit the same note for me) and whose favourite 3D game is still probably the original SA1 (not SADX), Frontiers was such a welcome breath of fresh air. It's not perfect, there's a few things I don't really like - the cyberspace stages probably being the biggest offender, I really can't stand how they handle - but it's a really promising step forward, IMO.
My pipe dream for "Frontiers 2" is for a game that builds off the open-zone formula specifically, with more Sonic-esque terrain (loops and slopes, quarter- and half-pipes, corkscrews, etc.), and a focus on building and maintaining momentum like the Mega Drive games. Drop the boost, readd the spindash, maybe tie damage in combat to momentum so if you come blasting in at top speed, you can barrel right through enemies without having to break up your flow to fight them...
Kinda getting ahead of myself there, sorry. :P But yeah, as a predominantly-retro fan who's been following the series for a long time, Frontiers is really promising, and I'm excited to see where they end up going with it.
It's funny because in theory it shouldn't be that hard to make the game you're asking for. Like SA1 back on the DC, you had the overworld exploration, and you had quite large action stages. All it needs is something to connect them without loading screens, and you're basically most of the way there.
Yessss, exactly. I think SA1 was the closest we ever really got to a straightforward 3D adaptation of the MD games' gameplay, so for all its flaws, I'm still quite fond of it for that reason. (Well, okay, in fairness I've just played SADXPC with the Dreamcast-related mods installed, but still - love the aesthetic and such of SA1, even if it hasn't aged that well.)
Man did I love SA1. I remember finally figuring out how to win the Big the Cat levels after giving up for while, which were all that held me back from the final boss. Good times on the Dreamcast - still my favorite controller of all time.
Hopefully with the graphics restoration mods! I played both the adventures on the Dreamcast, and then got the new ones for the GameCube, but remember thinking, damn, SA1 looks worse than I remember!
For my money, SA2 still holds a really special place in my heart, even if it got away from the exploration aspect. I was completely invested in the story and Shadow.
Oh yeah, all the Dreamcast mods all the way :P Even if it's showing its age, I really like SA1's art direction. It's almost exactly as colourful and vibrant and interesting as I'd hope for from a Sonic game. The lighting system in particular, I think is really fascinating - it's remarkable how just a bit of playing around with palettes and whatnot is able to affect the scene and mood so drastically. I really can't fathom why they removed it from SADX; from what I understand, it was working pretty much fine in one of the GameCube protos that's surfaced.
Haha, it's one of those things where it obviously had a huge effect on my kid brain, but I wasn't smart enough to figure out why. Yeah, they were extremely creative with the technology they had access to. Nothing so far, not even Frontiers, has come close to capturing the adventures for me. Part of it is nostalgia of course, but I think they legitimately made something really unique, and haven't been able to recapture that since.
Removing those graphics from SADX reminds me of the graphical "upgrades" games like Chrono Trigger and FF6 saw when they were ported into mobile and steam. It was a technological challenge, just a complete misunderstanding of why people thought the game looked good.
There are weird downgrades in lighting, textures, and sounds in pretty much every Dreamcast to GameCube port. It looks like the GameCube had more raw generally but only 3 MB vram in comparison to the Dreamcast’s 8, though to be fair aparantly there was some sort of compression scheme that would have made that 3 MB go further. I don’t know enough about this to say anything definitive but I have heard the GC graphics pipeline made it difficult to write shaders for.
Also just started Sonic Frontiers, and I’m really enjoying it. Exploring and sprinting around the Island is a lot more fun than I expected. I’m a big Ian Flynn/Sonic comics fan, so the writing feels good, too.
Also recently started Animal Crossing and Tears of the Kingdom. Have definitely put in more time on Animal Crossing - probably triple ToTK and Sonic combined.
I've started playing Path of Exile with some friends. I played it at the beginning of COVID and enjoyed it but got bored. It's a lot more fun with friends, and we are looking forward to Path of Exile II. I also started playing GW 2 and it's a lot of fun as well.
PoE 2 looks really promising. The 2 trailers they released recently really hyped me up.
Same! I hope there are more than six starting classes. I get with the skill tree you can do all kinds of stuff as you level up in PoE, but I wish there were at least a couple more starting options.
The classes themselves don't make much difference, it's the ascendancies that have a big impact so you might enjoy looking into their trees. Also there are 7 classes: marauder, templar, witch, shadow, ranger, duelist, and scion
So I played the Final Fantasy XVI Demo on a whim out of curiosity as I’m not really a fan of the series (My total experience is playing about 2 hours of XV and getting bored) but for some reason I got really into this one.
I ended up playing it one sitting (about 3 hours) and I was hooked with that itch I get when I’m really into a game and just want keep playing more, I kept thinking about the game so I had to go back and play the other demo mode the next day. I’m just glad I only have to wait a few days for the rest of the game because this has gone from a ehh maybe I’ll play it when it’s on ps plus or something to a cancel everything happening on release day I have new plans.
I’m very happy to see demos making a comeback and if you haven’t tried this one yet I highly recommend you do!
I recently finished Baldur's Gate 3 early access, and now I'm contemplating whether I should give in to the addiction and do another play-through with a new character, or wait until the full game comes out in August....
Baldur's Gate 3 is so good, but I'm trying to keep the discipline to wait until the full release so I can play a single character start to finish.
Just in case you haven't played them yet, Divinity 2 (by the same studio) and Wasteland 3 are both awesome and similar games to bide your time with, they scratch the same itch for me.
Yes, Divinity 2 is such a great game, I'm a big fan of Larian studios games. I haven't played Wasteland 3, so I will have to check that one out. Thanks for the suggestion!
Somehow I already have 25+ hours in that game, just playing the available part by myself and with different friend groups. For the exact reason you mentioned, I've been rationing myself off of this game until it comes out fully. I'm so excited for it, Larian is one of my favorite studios.
Just a small clarification for people who don't know the series: make sure you search for Divinity: Original Sin 2. Divinity 2 (released 2009, sometimes called Ego Draconis) is a classic isometric CRPG and the third game in the original series. Divinity: Original Sin 2 (released 2017) is the sequel to the reboot of the series, and is usually the game people talk about.
You don't need to have played any of the previous games to know what's going on. In fact you don't even need to have played Divinity: Original Sin as a lot of the world building was redone (and for the better, IMO). If there was anything that would contextualise anything between games, it would be the minor spoiler I'll leave in the next block.
Minor spoilers for the Divinity universe
The king mentioned a lot in the first area of Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a bad guy from Original Sin 1 who keeps cropping up. The fleshing out of his evil deeds that happens on the isle is a nice bit of fan service.
I'm currently playing through Lost Judgment. As I'm prone to do lots of side activities I'm about 50 hours in and still have like 3 chapters to go. I think it's pretty good for the most part, but damn, some of these side activities (the "school diary" ones especially, all of which I recently completed) are very repetitive and grindy. All in all I think it'll end up fairly low on my Yakuza/Like a Dragon/Judgment ranking list.
I liked the school diaries, personally. I thought it was funny to be this grown ass man totally surrounded by dumb teenagers and trying to figure it out. I'm mildly hopeful we might get a third game in that series, originally it was supposed to be the end because Yagami's actor is represented by an agency that wouldn't let them put the game on PC because of dumb reasons. But they released them on PC now, so maybe they made an agreement and they'll keep making them? I really like Yagami as a character, so I hope so.
Yeah, I don't know what's up with the whole Judgment situation. Never thought we'd get LJ on PC but here we are. Played the original Judgment on Stadia of all things. I do like the characters of this series so I wouldn't say no to another one either.
I just finished Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic and can’t wait to get started on the sequel and related materials such as the Revan novel. I found the combat to be engaging (compared to what seems to be the general consensus) and the story interesting. The game was a bit glitchy at times but apart from a few save losses it worked fine most of the time
I hope you enjoy the second! I find it even more compelling than the first! The opening level of Peragus can be a bit tedious, but the game becomes much better after!
When I have a short amount of downtime, I alternate between Dicey Dungeons, Slay the Spire, and Vampire Survivors. Great games that don't require a huge amount of time to make some progress and that are simple to get into, but have some deep mechanics that come out the longer you play.
I've also been playing through Chained Echoes which is just a fantastic take on the 16-bit JRPG genre, near Octopath Traveler for me in terms of how much I enjoy it. Speaking of which, I need to eventually play the second Octopath Traveler now that it's out.
As for AAA games, I am almost always making some progress on a new Witcher 3 game or Fallout 4 game when I have the time to really sink in some hours. Two games that have never been deleted on my end.
I've been playing Cassette Beasts, and been absolutely thrilled! While it might look like a bog standard Pokemon clone on the surface, it's been significantly better than I would have thought based on that. The puzzles are delightful, the characters are fleshed out, the soundtrack is brilliant, the retro theme is fantastic, I love the way they did their equivalent of Shiny's, the type interactions have significant depth, and, my personal favorite, the bosses (archangels) have aesthetics significantly different from the rest of the game, a la Madoka Magica, making them feel just that bit more intense. When you're playing a 2d game, and enter a battle with a powerful entity only to find that it's a giant claymation beast, it's just chef's kiss.
I very much would recommend it to anyone with a pc, though I hear there are some troubles with the console port.
I heard it's bad on Switch, but should be good on the "big" consoles. It's also in Game Pass library.
Yep, switch state ain’t good. Fortunately it runs perfectly on my steam deck #^o^#
I can't even tell you how long I've wanted a game similar to Starfield. Something space, something RPG, something simulation but arcadey... The last game in a similar vein was Freelancer way back in 2003. I have spent years looking for other games to scratch that itch. After watching the Starfield Direct stuff I'm too hyped to ignore it.
Right now I'm currently playing the following:
Freelancer HD - A mod for the original Freelancer that adds high resolution textures to everything, widescreen support, and quite a few QoL improvements while still being 100% compatible with OG Freelancer
Endless Sky - Free open source 2D space sim where you can basically do anything you want
Starsector - 2D space sim where you can basically do anything you want
Nothing adventurous. Trying to finish the story in Mega Man XDiVE before it shuts down; ticking off daily and weekly check boxes in Epic Seven (possibly the best mobile game there is, by the way), and doing much the same for Pokémon GO (which I picked up on day 1). I'm thinking about starting the latest Expedition in No Man's Sky; I'd like to actually finish one of those, but it's locked behind yet another large update, and my monthly "home" internet is limited.
Also booted up Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the first time in a couple of years and I am embarrassingly rusty.
XDiVE is... Kind of disappointing, honestly. It scratches the Mega Man itch well enough, but in the form of a gacha, where, as is is tradition for gachas, the best units are original characters (or in the case of X himself, armors, as each armor counts as a separate"unit"). Weapons are also pulled from the same gacha, and there's no synchrony between a character and their associated weapon, for better or for worse (for example, Copy X and the Destructive Laser, his own buster). It's also missing a few signature characters, namely Fefnir, Phantom, and Serenade.EXE. I'm also disappointed it's shutting down before giving a DiVE Armor version to Alia, Layer, and Palette, as well as "Bass DC" (while he's basically a villain, it's justified by his Get Ability Program and DiVE Cross MegaMan.EXE). That said, in a rare move for a gacha, they're releasing an "offline" version, perhaps because of something to do with the rights to the original characters.
Epic Seven is a turn-based RPG, I guess? Each character only has three skills, but the battle system still has plenty of complexity. It's an original IP, rare for a gacha, with a lot of care given to the artwork, and a storyline you'll probably find at least decent (even if Episode 1 is extremely generic). It's also super generous with premium currency, and fairly easy to save up enough bookmarks (summoning currency) to pity-pull a character you particularly want.
It seems like once or twice a year (or every other year at most) I brush off NMS and start playing again.
For all the games I've ever paid for in my life, I think the content additions and improvements made to No Man's Sky have been the absolute best. The game is over a decade old now, and they'll still just adding new content for free.
I just wish more people would give this game a shot. The release was a train wreck, but the work done since then has just been amazing year after year. I'm super impressed with Hello Games at this point, and they've managed to turn their pretty terrible launch into a text book example of how to repair good will in a community.
I was disappointed by XDive too. I never paid a penny for pokemon GO and never paid a penny for Xdive. The game certainly encourages you to spend money if you want to make progress. It's a mean design. I might have put money into it if the p2p was any good, but p2p doesn't reward skill... just if you have a stronger build that floods the screen with some spammable super attack. And those builds are much easier to get if you spend money for it. It lags a lot too.
Numbers and scores constantly crowd the screen. All of the character feel the same. And it's a shame because the assets are really good. The characters have never looked better or moved better.
It just doesn't feel like a Mega Man game.
Agreed. It's nice to see Omega, Copy X, and Bass.EXE as (good!) 3D models when previously they've only been sprites.
Haven't spent on XDiVE (and now can't), but did spend a bit on PoGo when Raids were at their most popular... Around 2018?
If you're looking for something to scratch your Megaman itch, the Megaman Battle Network Legacy Collection was released earlier this year, complete with online PVP. Playing the story mode in 2023 has been a trip, as it was so ahead of its time in terms of technology. Its strong sales hopefully hint at a revival of the franchise, given the clear demand for it.
I've always loved how the PETs evolved with each generation. Considering how much technology has advanced, it would be fascinating to see their take on smartphones with 5G that can "jack in" anywhere with cell service. Perhaps they might even adopt an AR glasses approach, where everyone can see their Navis in the real world and we could battle each other anywhere.
They could even go all out and have like a companion app for your iPhone that lets you talk to your AI-powered Navi that you could use in place of Siri!
Been playing The Finals closed beta, since I love Battlefield and have been itching for a new shooter to play with my friends. It's a blast, playing a heavy class and literally leveling 5 story buildings feels amazing, or punching holes under objectives to steal them out from under other teams is so much fun. I hope it takes off when it finally releases!
Have also been playing this! It's been really good fun. The mobility of the light class is so juicy, but being a heavy and just tearing shit up is so fun. The destruction is great and the game works very well for all the intensive action happening on the server in my experience.
It's crazy how the destruction can really sway a match, like you said with punching holes but also with just reducing the building around an objective to rubble to eliminate cover. Plus the different classes feel so distinct, it adds variety if I get tired of one playstyle. I was really not expecting to enjoy myself as much as I have with the finals.
Dang man, that looks like a tremendous amount of fun. Is it graphically demanding? Engine runs smooth?
It does tend to make me and my friends' PCs run a little hot, but we don't have any issues with frame drops. It's built on Unreal Engine 5, but there's a lot of optimization to keep things smooth and stable compared to the average indie game. It has DLSS support too which does a lot of work to keep things nice on my computer at least. If you're curious to try it out, their discord has a channel with people constantly giving away beta keys.
Just beat Lone Fungus. Was a fantastic little Hollow Knight-like Metroidvania. 95% of the game was perfect. Even the challenging platforming areas were enjoyable.
The 5% that wasn’t was one of the endings paths. And several of the optional platforming areas where you could try the same thing 19 times, but on the 20th the levels timing would be off and something that worked every other attempt now wasn’t good enough. This was the most frustrating part for me and only applied in a few places. Besides that the game really held off the Silksong itch for a little bit
Slay the Spire
I've finally reached ascension 20 with Ironclad.
I'm a bit better at drafting cards for Ironclad after my recent progression from A12-A20. After enough failed runs, I can recognize decks that have obvious weaknesses (Like: if I run into X enemy, how do I survive? Maybe I need to draw certain cards and live for so many turns; how can I prepare to ensure that?). I'm also better at recognizing value-adds to my deck/relics and avoiding stuff that doesn't help (I love Demon Strength and Barricade, but these often aren't good additions).
I've already reached act 3 boss 2 once, but couldn't pull it off after scraping by the first boss. You know in advance who the first boss is, but you don't know the second boss, so it's that much harder to prepare. I feel like I'll beat A20 soon though.
Nebulous Fleet Command: An early access RTS where you control big sluggish spaceships. Its a very methodical game where you don't issue a lot of commands, but those commands need to be good because even turning a ship can take an entire minute and you don't want to be caught in a bad position. Your ships can have a lot of tools which can be challenging to remember to use, and know when to use. Radar jamming, communications jamming, radar illuminators, radar coverage, early-warning systems, target locker, guns, missiles, mine layers, rockets, point-defence, oh my. Since you can design your own ships you can however decide your tools and how much you need to juggle. And constantly iterating your designs is a big part of regularly playing the game, as you find that maybe you need more point-defence, or maybe you should specialize more and ditch the missiles.
Talking about missiles, the game has many types and even has a missile designer. You can prioritise speed, range, or manoeuvrability. You can choose add modifiers, like radar-absorbing coating. You can choose seeker head like fixed-radar, semi-radar, pivoting-radar, heat-seeking, optical, anti-radiation, command guided, oh my. You can even choose a second seeker module of any type that acts as targeting validation so that it is less perceptible to counter measures. Hell, you can even set it to do evasive manoeuvrers on target approach. Missiles can be used in several ways, like automatic defence, put it on a waypoint path to hit that one behind the asteroid, or just fire them directly at the enemy. Missiles are very deadly, but you only have so many of them and pretty much all players carry extensive counter measures as they have learned to fear them.
Guns guns guns, so many guns. You got your big capital ship guns that are basically taken straight from WW2 battleships. They punch hard and at range. You got smaller guns which are better for small fast ships and can even be used with proximity fuses to engage missile at range. And an array of choices between the biggest and smallest. You got rail guns which has no explosive filler but are very long range. And you got plasma guns which eat away ship armor.
Oh, and you know you can't shoot what you can't see, which is where those jammer and other electronic warfare comes useful. Or maybe sacrifice your own sight by turning off your radar to lower your signature.
When I bought it, it was because I really liked the premise and thought maybe it would be fun to play at some point since it only has skirmish battles atm. But I've found myself playing way more than expected. While the many hard-core systems are intimidating at first, the community has been friendly so far and you can just join and experiment.
Ghosts of Tabor: Another early access title. This time it's VR. It is basically Escape from Tarkov but in VR. My main attractions to this game is actually the physical interactions with your firearms. It really should be a small thing but this is something that I really miss from most VR FPS. Point and shooting can be fun, but what is really fun is fumbling your magazine as you cower behind a rock while being flanked and suppressed because you didn't train enough with it. The latest major update brought gun interactions to a point of immersion that I haven't seen in any other VR game. Sure, H3VR has more detailed and accurate guns, but they just aren't very immersive.
The game is however very buggy, and those bugs can easily wipe your progress. And that is on top of regular global wipes that the devs are doing.
Recently picked up the System Shock remake which is awesome!
I've never played the original ones, so I'm happy that I can play it now with a more modern touch.
I like the comparisons between the original and remake, as it's been kept very close.
I'm an IT guy, so the idea of a pissed off AI having a god complex really hits my heart.
It's a bit rusted in terms of game design. It does not hold your hand. You have to find your way through voice recordings and messages. Sometimes you don't know immediately what you need to find to continue. Sometimes you feel very clever to find a hidden pathway, just to figure out, that's the intended way all along and you are not as clever as you think. :D
But honestly, I like it that way. It feels rewarding to push through the problems. You are lost and alone in this citadel. It makes sense that the game does not help you much. I think more games should be this way. A quest marker with a "go to place A, find thing B, kill monster C" kind of dulls the immersion and makes things too simple.
The dogfights in the cyberspace are super fun as well. The visuals look so cool. A proper virtual acid trip :)
Very sinister and dark place to be in, but it keeps me from continuing TOTK.
Besides this, I've picked up the early access of Baldurs Gate 3 which is super fun as well. I really dig the DnD aspect in the game. I like the idea of DnD in general, but never wanted to invest the time and the commitment to go through multiple weekends to play it with friends. So that's a nice alternative.
For an early access it's already very polished, but I have faced some bugs which were not so great.
One major one was, that when I went to sleep with my group, one character decided to noclip to the other side of the world. Decreasing the fog of war, dying in the process, and leaving the corpse at some far away place. So I had to revive the character and lost the specialty for the day. The last save was before a big fight and I didn't want to do it again, so I had to live with it.
As the save will be unplayable once the EA is over anyway, I have no hard feelings about it. Besides this, it's super fun and the story already starts in a very cool way.
Does 40k count as a "board game" in this context? I played my first game of the newly released 10th Edition and I loved it; this is coming from a person who really hated 9th edition and had no motivation to play it in the past two years or so. It just felt bloated, ungainly and slow. I stopped playing it in favor of many other tabletop wargames, but 10th moves it to a much better system, more akin to Age of Sigmar, a much better game in GW's stable than 9th ever was. 10th moves faster and is generally just so much less fiddly, that I'm awfully excited to begin painting my 40k armies again.
Otherwise, I've been playing the new System Shock. I like it, but I don't love it, which is unfortunate. I played the original (Enhanced Edition) back in 2020 and absolutely loved it, especially as a relic of a genre that I loved, but had totally missed back in the day. There was just a lot of charm to it and it was amazing what was being done with the game at the time, 30 years ago. The new one is good, but it just feels lacking in that same charm and I'm not totally sure why. One of my biggest complaints is the excessive "immersive" animations. Every time I use a med patch there's a long animation; whenever I pick up a voice recording, there's a long animation of the character looking at it; it just feels so totally unnecessary and after 10 hours, I'm totally over it. I intend to finish the game, but I'm just not loving it like I thought I would.
Just last night, I finally finished the last mission of I am an Air Traffic Controller Airport Hero Hawaii. I absolutely love this game and series, it's so strange, but it's very addicting for me. It's what I'd refer to as a "Plate-Spinning Game", where you have multiple things going on at once and you have to figure out how to keep everything moving smoothly to get to the end of the stage. Basically, you have five channels in your ATC tower, each plane on a different channel depending on what stage of flight they're in (Approach, Departure, Ground and I can't remember the other two) and you can only talk to one plane at a time, but pilots get stressed out if they don't receive instructions soon enough. So your job is to keep everything moving smoothly, not crashing planes into each other and not having the pilots get stressed out. Not sure what else to say about that, but I just started the next game in the series I am an Air Traffic Controller - AIRPORT HERO HANEDA on my 3DS, which introduces some new elements, so I'm curious how they work. That said, I'll probably take a brief break and come back to that one later, when the previous game is less fresh, as I'm finding myself getting hung-up on the differences between the two.
There's also I am an Air Traffic Controller game on Steam I ought to play, but I find it a little too different and janky to really get into, but I also haven't spent a ton of time with it. The 3DS/PSP games just feel way more polished and well put together.
Yeah, it’d say 40k counts. But this topic might specifically interest you too:
https://tildes.net/~games.tabletop/16lg/what_do_you_think_of_warhammer_40k_10th_edition_so_far
Thanks, hadn't seen that!
Diablo IV: I'm honestly not really in love with this title. I don't hate it either, but the activities are aren't hooking me so far, in world tier 3. Probably because most of what I'm doing is the renown grind, when I really just want to do almost anything else. Also been doing helltides when I see them and breaking the tedium with nightmare dungeons, but it's all felt kind-of whatever to me. Maybe I've simply grown away from the genre, though. I sunk a lot of time into D2 and D3 and enjoyed each for what they were, after all.
Street Fighter 6: It's been a couple weeks since this game launched now, and I'm just now taking a little break from the online battles to poke at the single player content. I think it's a little aggressively unchallenging so far, but maybe that changes later. I do wish every single fighting game came out with single player content like this, though; seeing friends discover the genre and the fun it offers, without ever having to stress over getting beat up online, has been amazing.
Street Fighter 6 is the first fighting game (out of soooo many that I’ve tried) that I actually like playing, and it’s because of the Modern control scheme. I was resistant to Modern at first because of some hang up in my head about how it’s not “real” Street Fighter, but I’m glad I tried it out. The simpler inputs are so much nicer to me than Classic mode, and using Modern allows me to focus more on what my opponent is doing and actually play the game rather than getting frustrated and mashing because I couldn’t do a DP consistently to save my life.
Modern mode is such a neat innovation; I'm ashamed I forgot to sing its praises. Most other fighters just slap an autocombo or something and call it a day, but Capcom went above and beyond simplifying the button layout, too. You end up using the same number of buttons as classic due to the Auto button and macros, but it's still so much easier to grok than something like the Stylish mode in Guilty Gear Xrd.
Drive Impact/Drive Rush are driving me up a wall though, heh
I spent most of the last weekend playing Diablo 4. It's fun, but the only class I've been able to enjoy is the Rogue. Maybe the rest get more fun at higher levels. I just love how everything seems to synergize so well and feed into each other by reducing cooldowns, healing, extra damage, etc. And it's the only class where it doesn't seem like everyone's goal is to completely eliminate basic attacks.
After that, I realized that the final translation patch for the Tsukihime Remake had come out, so I started playing that. Dreading the wait for the sequel.
BOTW - we have it on Switch, but I'm currently playing through it emulated on my Steam Deck and it is working perfectly. Finished the divine beasts and currently just exploring about until I get the nerve to go to the Castle.
Valheim - I play this with a few friends every Sunday night. It's mostly been a lot of fun, but I'm finding the Mistlands super grindy to the point we'll probably be looking for a new game to play soon.
Guacamelee 2 - me and my son had a lot of fun playing through the first one, and the second is currently free on Epic. So far it's more of the same, but we're enjoying it.
Currently playing a run of Factorio, specifically the Space Exploration mod. Absolutely titanic expansion, I'm loving it. Very polished. But I've barely scratched the surface at 80 hours in...
Recently played Murder on the Titanic, a hidden object puzzle game I got years ago and never got around to playing. And wow no wonder that ship sank, the crew was useless. Couldn't even clean up a small oil spill themselves. That game was wasted by being so serious, should've leaned into the comedy of the time wasted on puzzles leading to the sinking.
Other than that, currently trying to get mods to work for Stardew Valley on my Steam Deck. Just need to figure out how to add SMAPI to the non-Steam-game list. So woo! That'll be fun!
Also started a new profile on Legends Arceus, where so far I've spent more time agonizing over the name than playing. Because I am a nerd and decided since I wanted a gender-neutral name for this file I should use a Japanese one. And then had like 4-5 tabs open looking up various names with kanji meaning jade. Followed by more tabs looking up Japanese vocab related to space because Team Galactic is a thing so why not?
So yeah. That's how my gaming week has been going so far!
One of many who's mainly been playing Tears of the Kingdom lately. I loved BoTW, and ToTK's been great, IMO. Not perfect, and I feel like there are a few places - some major, some minor - where it falls short of the original, but it's still a great game IMO.
One of the things I've been most impressed by has been the voice acting, surprisingly. I'm generally a subs-over-dubs kind of person - I've never really heard any English dubs that have sounded natural to me, and as soon as BoTW was updated to allow switching the voice language, I swapped to Japanese immediately and never looked back.
With ToTK, though - other than one or two voices (one of which frankly wasn't any better in Japanese, lol), a few flubbed lines, and some awkward writing, the English voice work has been really, really good, in my opinion. Zelda's voice actress in particular, Patricia Summerset, really brought her best performance to ToTK. It feels so good to be able to say that she (and the other actors) did a great job and mean it wholeheartedly. <3
I found the game's story to be pretty interesting, it kept me engaged enough from beginning to end - but I feel like it also inadvertently highlights the problem with trying to add a solid narrative to an open-world game like this. Because of the order I did a few things in, I figured out at least one major plot point fairly early on, in a way that made some of the rest of the game... A little jarring to play through, honestly? Hardly a game-ruining problem, mind, but as someone who gets really immersed in games, it ended up breaking my immersion a bit.
One other thing that's consistently bugged me about ToTK is how it feels... Inconsistent in how it connects itself to BoTW. On one hand, it's absolutely a sequel, and it's really nice to see the connectivity when it's present, but on the other hand... Well, when it's present. There's a lot of places where it feels like ToTK just doesn't want to link itself to BoTW, and the way it's just glossed over is a bit jarring. The lack of any broken Guardians or Sheikah technology comes to mind, particularly the complete absence of the Divine Beasts. I figure a big part of that is to both give ToTK its own identity, and to avoid confusing players who didn't play BoTW, but the fact that there's barely even a passing mention or attempt at explaining things is... weird.
Also, where on earth is Kass, Nintendo? You better be bringing back my husband in DLC, otherwise we're gonna have problems. >:(But yeah, overall - great game. I'm crossing my fingers for an update or DLC that addresses some of my issues with it, and barring that, I'm eager to see what modders end up doing with the game once it's cracked open. I actually made a mod for BoTW back in 2021 that turned Link into a Rito, and I've been revisiting that to improve it and adapt it for ToTK as well. Look, I just like birds, okay? The Rito are great, don't judge me. :P
I played through Lil Gator Game today. It's an incredibly cute, no stakes adventure game where you explore an island and make friends by doing quests for them. It's super refreshing to play a game that has minimal goals, no health system to worry about, etc, you just explore and fight some cardboard baddies!
The movement and traversal is pretty amazing. You get shield surfing pretty early on, which you can use to actually gain a shitton of speed. There are a bunch of "shields" with different properties that have some interesting movement mechanics. You also get other gadgets like bubble gum and sticky hands that let you fly or swing like spiderman. The game also has some good humor, like the naruto headband that makes you naruto run, all the cheeky references to Legend of Zelda, etc. I definitely recommend it, it's a great palate cleanser. It's a relatively short playthrough (3.5 hours for me) and you could probably get a few more hours out of it if you want to 100% it.
Final Fantasy Tactics: I'm going through my umpeenth playthrough of the game. Trying to exclusively use unique characters, and no repeating jobs or subjobs. I've landed on Orator/Squire for Ramza, because I like the idea of this wanted heretic convincing every knight sent against him to turn on the Church. The final scene between Delita and Tietra still gets to me, after all these years. And though I usually prefer the WotL script, there's some lines that land way harder with the original translation.
Europa Universalis IV: Playing the Ottomans again, but with a twist. Only janissaries and mercenaries. The empire is the House of Islam, and no native born Muslims shall be asked to endanger their lives when the barbarians of Europe provide enough soldiers.
I've been playing older games, some that are new to me and others I've played before. Alleyway is an early GB title and is essentially a Breakout-like. Very simple, but it was fun to fiddle around with while listening to a podcast. With the help of save states I managed to finally see the final stage!
I'm making my way through Battle City for the GB now, which is a slow top-down, tank-themed shooter and is an adaptation of a similarly titled NES game. Also pretty basic, but I enjoy it for what it is. I'd like to play the NES one in full too.
Wario Land (SML3) is up next. I remember enjoying it many (many) years ago -- significantly more than the other two SMLs. The idea is to go though the rest of this series too, of which I only played WL4 before.
Not sure how many here are into retro games, but it would be fun if there was a dedicated sub (or thread) to talk software emulation, FPGA, CRTs, hardware mods and all that good stuff.
the Wario Land series is an all-around great time. if you had a good time with it back then, i think you'll still love it. time has been kind to the series.
also, i didn't know Battle City got released on Game Boy! did it have link cable support? the main reason for why i played the NES version was the simple co-op.
I've never played the multiplayer mode unfortunately, so I can't say for certain how it works. It has a VS mode, so my guess is it's 1v1 rather than co-op.
I've recently been playing:
Diablo IV: I'm still on the fence on this one. There are many aspects I like about it but there are also many things I don't like. I like the way it plays, it feels smooth and I haven't encountered any bugs during gameplay whatsoever. It looks and sounds great. What I don't like is the mob scaling, it's just too aggressive. You're supposed to be getting stronger as you level up and get better gear but the scaling renders all of that pointless. It actually feels like you're getting weaker as you level up. A new character is really overpowered for the first 10-15 levels. I also don't like that it's always online, in my opinion this doesn't add anything to the experience and it is annoying when the servers crap out (which happened several times). For me it's a 7/10. I still like Diablo 2 more.
Warhammer 40K Boltgun: Really awesome boomer shooter set in the WH40K universe. One of my favorite genres and universes. I like pretty much everything about this game. Good soundtrack, good visual effects. The maps are somewhat lacking. Solid 9/10 for me. Finished it in two sessions so it is rather short.
F1 '23: I like F1 games and I like VR racers. I've only played it in VR and it's a blast. It feels good to race and it looks great too. Probably not the most realistic racing game there is but it's really fun.
I'm taking a break from the PC games I play the most often (No Man's Sky and Vintage Story) to play Breath of the Wild. I hadn't played it before, and TOTK got me thinking I should try BOTW. I have played other Zelda games before (most recently, the Switch remake of Link's Awakening) and I knew this one was different but holy cow. It's amazing, but I have a feeling this will take me a long time to play through. I just beat one of the divine beasts, and it took me about an hour, just on the battle. I'm having a lot of fun. I love the shrines. The biggest difficulty is figuring out good ways to get rupees so I can afford to buy stuff (armor is so expensive!). Side quests that pay good money - at least, so far - are hard to come by. But I'd like to be able to have good armor so progressing is easier, since I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to battling difficult opponents.
I started playing Hogwart's Legacy yesterday. I'm not a HP fan. I bounced off the first movie (it was not bad, but, er... too "family friendly" for me, so to say -- just a kids' movie). I read the first book until the quidditch rules were introduced and didn't feel like continuing. I think the book is well written, but I feel too old for it (I'm a bit older, when HP was published in my country I already read Tolkien, Jordan, Sapkowski, Williams and others, so I missed the Potter hype train, it was targeted at an audience a few years younger than me).
I just know enough to sort of understand the setting :) I've got the basics, at least. So far, I'm enjoying the game. I'm just running around the castle doing main and side quests, I'm about to head to Hogsmeade for the first time. The game is pretty, I need to watch the Digital Foundry analysis as I'm switching between graphics modes and haven't decided which one to use (I've playing Balanced on PS5, turned on Fidelity + RT out of curiosity and didn't see anything special about it, except a huge framerate drop).
I can't say anything about the non-technical side yet as I only played for a couple hours. I enjoyed the prologue with Professor Fig. Joined Ravenclaw (I'm aware it's the only house missing some NPC). I liked the magic lessons. Not sure I'm a fan of walking around and casting Revelio everywhere to gather some trash -- I usually skip such activities in games, but here they seem to be required for leveling up.
The combat mechanics so far are nice, it's easy to grasp the hang of and the haptic feedback on the DualSense when using the wand is cool.
Minecraft (All the Mods 8 modpack) - completely changes the game by adding 100's of different mods together. It actually gets pretty overwhelming with just the sheer amount of stuff you find while mining, you actually have to take a serious look at your inventory/resource management system, and indeed there are actually different inventory management mods you can work with (RFTools, Refined Storage, and AE2 being the big ones). It's a great way to get exposed to alot of random mods all at once, rather than trying to go through one by one (who has time for that?). Downside though is that it's essentially just Creative mode with extra steps, as you eventually get to a point where you can get or do anything you want without much effort.
Neon Abyss - side-scrolling shooter with randomized items/weapons, almost similar to Spelunky in a way, but with smaller rooms and a cyberpunk aesthetic. Kind of mindless fun with little to no storyline. I'd been using the avatar as my steam avatar for so long, I was like, "I should probably actually try to play this game at least once in case anybody asks." Game itself is ok, though not too deep.
Mothership RPG - tabletop rpg. Not really playing, so much as getting ready to play it. I'm GMing a few sessions for a one-shot scenario with my normal group and just getting ready to run it via FoundryVTT. We normally play systems like D&D and Savage Worlds and people always try to do campaigns where the characters get built up to god-like levels, whereas with this I just want something short, sweet, and gritty with the potential for character deaths, so it'll be quite a different experience.
Fortnite - Been playing this for about a year, kind of addicting.
Hogwarts Legacy - On a second playthrough, playing through as a Hufflepuff this time.
Jedi Survivor - Still on the first playthrough, I swear this one is way harder than the first.
I've been a fan of the Saints Row series since the original on X360, own every game except Agents of Mayhem and some of the DLC, even bought The Third Remastered. But when the reboot was announced last year obviously I was hesitant. When it was released and got creamed in reviews I figured I'll wait until the price dropped. Well about a month ago I saw it for $30, physical copy and decided to give it a shot.
The reviews and critiques weren't wrong. Aside from clunky controlsa and sometimes janky bugs it genuinely plays and shows like a game that would have been a little dated even 2012. The soul of Saints Row is in there, especially with the absurdities and some of the mini-games but it doesn't feel like a reboot, it feels like fanfiction reinterpretation...or a knockoff movie version...like The Force Awakens version of Saints Row.
It workd if you like lower effort games that aren't too challenging... something to occupy your downtime and keep you mildly entertained. I'm not saying the old SR games are game-changing works of art, but this one is kinda meh in comparison.
I already beat the story so I'm just working through challenges, and 100%ing neighborhoods and collectibles.
Tears of the Kingdom. Trying to ween off it after passing it but the zonai building sections are very fun.
Currently Playing: Ghostwire: Tokyo
I am enjoying it so far! The world is neat and I'm enjoying the side quests. The atmosphere is pretty great, if you're into more of the supernatural storytelling. I also have been enjoying the elemental combat, instead of the more standard gun variants.
Jedi Survivor: I just finished the game, and I was on my way to completing the Platinum trophy on PS5, but a bug is preventing me from doing it :( Just waiting (hoping) that the developer fixes it.
Battlefield 2042: I've regularly played it since launch, and it's a pretty good game now. I keep playing out of habit mostly.
Diablo IV: I wish it was better, but I'll keep playing it. I've played since Diablo I so it's again, kind of just nostalgia or habit keeping me going.
Wait. No, for real, what is BF2042's playability status? How's the stability, bugginess? Has it returned to its rock-paper-scissors roots? Every few months, I check out the (recent) Steam reviews, and they're always below positive. I'm a BF veteran (ish), and have no interest in any fancy "play as a named character" nonsense. All I've read is that BF2042 has utterly ruined the BF franchise, and it will never be the same again (like BF3, BF4, BF1, BFV).
Haha yeah, it's playable, I'd say. I'm playing on PC and I very rarely get crashes now. My friend plays on Series X and never really has issues.
I'd say they've been trying to balance infantry, ground vehicles, and air vehicles (if that's what you mean by R-P-S) but it's not quite there yet. But, I'm rarely so annoyed by an immortal pilot or tank commander that I'd want to stop the round.
As for the "heroes" they've made a change recently to better enforce the typical BF classes and I think it's a good change. But, something is still missing from the squad/team-play that we may remember from older games.
My friend and I play a few times every week to complete the battlepass missions, but not much beyond that. Maybe 3-6 hours a week? To give you a sense of our investment. But, we've both played since 1942 and I would say that 2042 hasn't ruined anything, but definitely is not a favorite entry in the series nor a "great game". But definitely playable and fun if you go in with realistic expectations.
I’ve been playing Before We Leave and while its certainly not the most difficult of economy/engineering management games it is so soothing. It’s almost meditative to play and has been a really nice way to relax.
On the other end I just got Dont Starve Together and i’m super excited to dig in
On the Switch: Tears of the kingdom. Enjoying it a lot. i have technically beaten it already, but i'm going for 100% and that will take a bit. I love all the stupid things you can build/do in that game. And the best part is, that even though it is more or less the same map as BOTW, they added/changed enough that it was fun to rediscover everything.
On PC, Elden Ring for like the 5th time, Botato and Sekiro.
Elden Ring: I still have fun even after replaying it a bunch of times in a row. Possibly even more than before, because i got better. I wouldn't say good yet, but definitely better.
Brotato: Fun little arena survial game about potatoes that can wield up t o6 weapons (in most cases) at once. You fight a wave, get material to use in the shop for upgrades, use those upgrades to help you survive the next wave. It's pretty fun and will soon leave early access and go into full release, but the beta for the 1.0 update is already playable, so i've been doing just that.
Sekiro: I'm not that far, but so far i'm enjoying it. Currently stuck on that horse riding boss dude and i'll have to figure out how to kill him, but i'll do that when i feel like it.
I'm like 70 hours into Zelda totk and have started (not finished) exactly half the available side adventures - the ones with story attached. The game is great, but perhaps a tad too massive. I really want to finish in time for FF16 this weekend, but I feel like that's a pipe dream
On my list to play when I get my PC that can run it assembled lol. Have you looked into whether it supports mods? I had a similar problem with Monster Hunter World - what's the point of having tracking sections if you've got a cloud of glowing lights taking up half your screen with the fastest path to the monster? - and there was a mod that, albeit a little clumsily, removed the offending design element.
the new final fantasy looks pretty good ngl ;~;
I've been on my first playthrough of Elden Ring. I had a hard time with Dark Souls III even though I thought it was one of the most visually appealing games I've ever played. Well, Elden Ring has been nothing short of a blast. The mostly nonlinear progression really does it for me. It's been a long time since I've been completely hijacked by a single-player game and I'm really digging it. I also like that I've been running it with almost no issues on Linux (I run Arch btw).
I'm playing through Elden Ring for the first time with a friend who is relatively new to gaming. It's been a bit of a challenge (I've played all of the Souls games co-op), but they've been doing surprisingly well. It's really built their sense of confidence and even instilled a sense of needing to try to win every fight, since they're (mostly) very fair and it's quite clear what went wrong when one loses.
Elden Ring really just feels amazing. It's such a big world that just keeps getting bigger while feeling true to the series despite fairly large changes (crafting, maps, etc.) Glad you're enjoying it as well :)
System Shock 2 - I am an immersive sim lover. I would consider Dishonored, Prey, Cyberpunk 2077 & Outer Wilds some of the most engaging and captivating gaming experiences I've had ever. I've put off playing this game for so long but I figured now was the time, since Nightdive Studios' System Shock came out. Now I played System Shock 1 Enhanced Edition like 2 years ago and absolutely loved it, not in spite of how it aged but because of how it aged. Something about those retro games just sparks wonder and joy in me, the simple textures, the clunky controls, and having to read the manual (or getting to, bring back game manuals!). Now I was basically already considering System Shock 2 one of my favorite games before I played it just because all the games that it inspired already are on that list so it made sense. And while I'm only 5 hours in I think that is going to hold true. I'm just in love with it so far.
Bully Scholarship Edition - First time playing this one and its a fun game. I have nothing really to say about this one. I like picking it up for an hour or two every couple days and doing a mission or two and going to some classes. Its a Rockstar classic.
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - I didn't think I would find the combat fun in this one, at least not as much as I do. The world is neat and the collectibles are actually somewhat interesting. Its a bit clunky sometimes but not enough to dissuade me from playing for a few hours.
Pyre - Supergiant Games are always so cool. I think this game is a bit overlooked or its just overshadowed by the games that preceded and followed it. Its got great music that adapts to the gameplay, the characters are interesting and the story they came up with is pretty neat. And the gameplay outside of the visual novel parts is just a fun variation of their combat systems.
I've been having a lot of fun playing a game called Dungeon Drafters. It's a single-player, turn based tactics, collectible card game. You build a deck and do roguelike dungeon runs with it, collecting new cards along the way. If you get out alive you can use the new cards to improve your deck and try again. Combat is played on a 2d grid that you can move around in which adds the "tactics" elements that I like. The plot is mediocre, but it's not the type of game you play for the plot.
Got sucked back into The Long Dark again... it's amazing how much irl time that game can eat away at. Playing 'Survival' on the second difficulty level is just enough of a challenge to keep me hooked while not feeling completely unfair.
I mostly play TagPro when I hit a lull in work. It's an online 4v4 capture the flag game. We have a lot of fun.
Tagpro.gg
https://tagpro.koalabeast.com
I’ve been playing Elder Scrolls Online.
I’m having fun with the new Arcanist class - it definitely won’t be my main, but I think I can make a really powerful endgame tank build with it. The new companions are really fun too. I haven’t unlocked Sharp-as-Night yet, but Azandar has some great dialogue. The new environments of Apocrypha are amazing too, very beautiful and insane.
If you’re not familiar with ESO it’s the traditional elderscrolls story combined with traditional MMO gameplay, probably most similar to GW2. It’s got easy but engaging story content, gorgeous environments, group content ranging from easy facerolls to extremely difficult encounters where every team member has to be nearly frame-perfect. PvP is also fun with a wide array of playstyles. I think where the game is most inventive is the housing system, where players have made some really amazing things.
"PikaNu redDit" - it seems quite over-rated...
I liked the Squabbles DLC a lot but there's bin an influx of only pic pos(t)ers so the Tildes DLC is Luke-ing better. Am aweighting the Wales DLC. The meta DLC is ded 2 me...
Ive been playing Farming Simulator 22. But Im very excited for Starfield and Cities Skylines 2 this fall.
Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun. I just finished my first play through and had fun on this retro-looking shooter. You play a single UltraMarine fighting chaos forces. Chaos Marines, nurglings, plague toads and their closest friends all try to stop you. I played it on medium difficulty because I wanted to explore and enjoy the atmosphere more than have the challenge of difficult enemies. I play pretty slow and took me about 20 hours the first time.
I played it on Steam Deck through a dock to an external monitor, and gameplay was fast and fluid. Only drawback with the Deck was cutscenes were replaced with classic color bars as placeholders.
One of my favorite things is the ability to taunt your enemies - “I am the edge of his sword!”
Diablo IV: Just finished the third act on the druid class. The game is fun but I don't get excited about it when I'm not playing it. I do want to make a hardcore character after I finish the campaign.
Battlebit Remastered: My friends wanted to play this game with them and for $15, it's pretty fun. The game is pretty much a battlefield clone but without the greed. The servers are active and the community seems pretty good so far. It helps that the devs tell you a million times they will ban you for offensive chat.
Not playing any specific game in general right now, but I did just pick up an RTX 3060 Ti on eBay (my first dedicated graphics card in probably over a decade) and spent the weekend configuring my desktop such that my host Linux OS still uses the on-board graphics, and passes the entire Nvidia card through to a Windows 11 VM using VFIO. So now when I want to do some PC gaming I can just fire up that VM instead of using wine or having to dual boot and get pretty close to native performance from it. The VM is configured to auto-login and run Steam and the VirtualDesktop streamer, so I can run it headless and then stream games remotely to either my Logitech G-Cloud or Quest 2 headset while still using Linux on my desktop like normal (albeit with less resources since it's conceding most of the CPU and RAM to the Windows VM). It all surprisingly works really well.
Now if only I wasn't such an old bastard who doesn't have the time or patience to play video games anymore I'd be in heaven.
I got really into Omega Strikers for a while, but the bad matchmaking got me to quit even if the game is a ton of fun. I was routinely getting matched with people an entire bracket below me (Low plat matched with low gold) and even beyond that (got into some matches where I was paired with silvers ._.) and in a team game there's only so much you can do to carry.
I try to prioritize single-player games over the repeatable dopamine loops anyway, and I enjoyed the LoL spinoff game Mageseeker. I'm building a PC that can actually handle modern titles am really looking forward to throwing myself into some of the fantastic single-player experiences that have come out in the last couple years. Here's what my list looks like, if you've got any recommendations for what not to miss I'd love to hear them.
I've mostly being playing a Minecraft modpack called Cottage Witch with a friend and their partner. We usually do a rush to build farms to get tonnes of resources, but this time we decided to slow down and take it easy. It's been a welcome change of pace. I've mostly been focusing on Ars Nouveau, a magic mod that allows you to build your own spells out of parts, and it's been fun. I've finally got my building groove on, so now I'm moving my messes inside and decorating with the wide variety of decoration mods that are in the pack.
There's also the new Deep Rock Galactic update, which has been fun so far. The new enemies perfectly counter two bad habits (the Septic Spreader ensures you keep moving and don't just stand still, and the Stingtail means I can't just go off and scale a wall without backup). The sound design is as good as ever, and I love the squeaky toy sound as the Stingtail is about to pounce. Also I think there are more bugs spawning when clearing lithophage spikes, which means I can no longer solo them on Haz 4. That's ultimately a good change for the game as it means actual teamwork again, and you actually have to stop midway through to clear out bugs so you can continue.
Other than that I'm in a bit of a lul. There are a few singleplayer games I'm interested in on the horizon so I am waiting for those.
I've been playing a bit of Ground Branch lately. It's a tactical shooter by one of the devs who worked on the old Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games. It's basically just Terrorist Hunt on the PVE front and I haven't looked too much at the PVP yet.
There was a big update in March that I missed on release (something about a baby being born) so it's been great to see the changes!
I have been playing Diablo 4 and having a blast.
Cities Skylines! I picked it up again after a discussion here on Tildes. I figured out that there is actually trams in the game, they're just not in the "Mass Transit" DLC but in the "Snowfall DLC" instead. Now I've built the first tram-connected bikeable neighborhood in my city. But I've got a lot of work to do to improve the existing neighborhoods in my city as well.
Disney Speedstorm: Kart racer that I enjoy. I always wanted to get into Mario Kart but for some reason that did not work out (yet). Speedstorm surely has a lot of issues, but the music is great and if you spent a lot of money it's not as frustrating to do all the events. My interest in the game is declining and I expect to drop it for other games. I should try Mario Kart again.
Diablo IV: I've been focussing on the story, and less so on the grind or the progression. It's my goto game at the moment, but I'm not sure what will happen once I finish the story. I'm not the kind of person that grinds for gear. The shop thankfully does not contain a lot of stuff I enjoy so I can keep my wallet closed.
Star Citizen: When it works, the game can be a lot of fun, when it doesn't, we create memes and participate in the community. It surely has made a name for itself, it's very controvertial. Most of my friends mock the game even though they never tried it.
For me it's more about the sandbox environment, the possibilities and the sci-fi setting. I don't even enjoy PVP or flying spaceships, but I sure do enjoy living in them, and visiting new locations, meeting new people, manually loading up ships with boxes, ...
A bit different than a lot of the other suggestions, but I’ve been playing a ton of Eleven VR Table Tennis lately. It feels close enough to playing real ping pong to scratch that itch and it’s great to take a quick break from work, get in a few games, and get the blood flowing after sitting at my desk for a while.
I've been playing the same thing that's been monopolizing much of my gaming time for over a year now. Total War Warhammer 3.
The game has an incredible amount of content in a massive map and almost 100 different playable factions spread across 24 different races, each with unique gameplay mechanics on the battlefield and on the campaign map and with large, diverse unit rosters. It's the culmination of three different strategy games and boatloads of DLC which all combine in the final game to make a crazy ambitious strategy title.
That being said, the sheer amount of content and technical debt of essentially combining three different games released over the course of seven years means the game is still quite buggy and every major patch and content update takes a while and often even simple bug fixes introduce new ones. Community bug fixes go a long way towards fixing the most egregious bugs, though it's frustrating that such a profitable game for the largest game dev in the UK can't quite make it all work a little better together.
Still, the bugs have rarely been hugely impactful to my play experience and if you're a strategy game fan and like fantasy settings, I have to recommend folks give it a try. Despite the issues, it's honestly a once in a generation kind of game and the game is looking to be supported with yet more content for quite some time to come.
After so long of putting it off because no MMO had stuck before I finally tried FFXIV and oh my God I wish I would've done so sooner. After falling in love with the Dragoon class and being drawn in by the story there was no end of joy as I've played. I'm partially through the Heavensward expansion and if the quality keeps climbing at the rate it has, this may be in contention for my favourite game.
Battlebit remastered! It's fun as hell
Rocket League and Beat Saber as always.
Honkai Star Rail - This is a gacha (lootbox-y) RPG that feels similar to the Trails series, with a bit of a Persona vibe. It's good! It's free unless you choose to spend money on it. Play/spend wisely.
Gas Station Simulator - I read a review that called this a Very Dad Game. Perhaps the Most Dad Game. It's true. I'm not a dad, but it's a Very Dad Game. I like the party bus visitors. You run a gas station. It is what it says on the tin.
Mr. Prepper - This is also a very dad game. You're a prepper dude who builds out your bunker (with animals! - if you have the Farm DLC anyway) while trying not to get caught. Also there are aliens/UFO abductions. Storyline gives you a dog that will bring you things and is generally a Very Good Boy.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, a franchise I played as a kid, revisited every so often, and am revisiting now.
As a kid I started with THPS1 on N64s, THPS2 on the PSX was huge for me, and I rented the rest of the games through Tony Hawk's Underground 2. I don't think I ever got to American Wasteland, that should be where the series petered off for me.
Tried to do each of these in one sitting, trying to complete the game roughly as fast as I can:
THPS1: 2 hours. The game that started it all, not a bad entry, missing things that made 2 and 3 more fun, like manuals and reverts. Stages are good but barebones. The controls were fine as long as you were moving, gets very awkward if you need to stop and turn around.
THPS2: 3.25 hours. This one was the peak of the series for many people I think, it was a huge release after the first one. Right out of the gate its better, with Hangar being a rethought version of 1's Warehouse. After that you get School II, which is a great and classic level, although 1's School I was great (and the best of that game) and still holds up. This game features many more goals, and a money-based combined stat and progression system, the first game used collectible stat points in levels along with a set number of goals needed to get to the next level. This is the one where manuals were introduced to the series, letting you really extend lines, and finalizing the core gameplay style for the remaining games with the idea of having these long lines of combos through the stages in a fluid manner.
THPS3: 1.5 hours. For me, a huge step up in the series, and maybe the one I like the most. Going from the PSX to the PS2 was a huge jump, this runs so much better, obviously looks better, and I believe has a higher framerate. Along with the technical jump, this one introduces reverts, letting you not only extend your lines/combos with manuals, but now also letting you continue combos with halfpipes, combining the vert and street styles of play in to one fluid stroke. The stat and progression systems in this are once again separate, but keeping the idea of money for buying things like movies and decks, but with stat points as collectibles in stages, and a goal system a la THPS1 -- although much more fleshed out.
I've dabbled with speedrunning this, and I might try to do that every once in a while. It's a fun game to just drop in to and play.
THPS4: 2.5 to 4 hours. This one introduces spine transfers, letting you transition between halfpipes back-to-back. The other thing it introduces is an objective system, making you have to go up to people and hear their dialogue to get a mini-quest from them. It's not badly done, and I see why they felt the need to do it, although it slows things down, making you go from person to person doing objectives one by one instead of letting you do as many as you can simultaneously within the old 2 minute time-limit in the previous games. The levels are quite nice, and embody that idea of continuous lines all around the level, keeping a single combo. The annoying part of the levels is how many contain "water" you can fall in to, causing you to crash, breaking your combo, and respawn in another point of the level. Doesn't play so well with some of the objectives, that, making me want to retry a goal from the menu if I miss up instead of continuing to try the current goal wherever it respawns me. A "classic" mode of this game (introduced later in THUG2) with the old 2 minute time limit and the old list of objectives would be great to play.
THUG1: Still playing this, gave up on timing it, too complicated. This one leans heavier in to the RPG side of things, with a whole storyline and such, and having your stats level up the more you do things, rather than as a collectible system where you select them manually. Feels like a big step up from 4 on a technical level somehow, still PS2 but feels like a more solid game, and the skating feels a little tighter. This is the one that also lets you get off your board, the last major introduction to the series, and the reason so many of the community like to play backported levels in the THUG2 engine.
I've also started a round of Cities: Skylines in anticipation of the second game, a last hurrah of a game I played since release and looked forward greatly to seeing come out back in 2015, hot off the tails of the failure of SimCity 2013, and long after the great SimCity 4 had not just been released, but aged technically in to a frustrating position. Installing mods has been a terrible experience, but in between problems with that it's a lot of fun playing it. Can't wait for the second one to come out, not just for the improvements they've confirmed are coming, but also so I can play one of these games in complete vanilla mode with no mods again.