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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
The Steam sale brought my attention back to Planet Zoo since most of the DLCs are on sale. I have a weird relationship with this game, I want to love it but every time I go back to play it after not playing for a while I feel like I need to do a bunch of research about how to play it. The controls are very detailed and allow for a lot of creative freedom at the cost of not being super intuitive. Even after 130ish hours, I wouldn't call myself anything close to an expert builder. That being said, it has been cool to open my sandbox zoo and see my skill progression represented in the habitats I've built over time.
What kind of research do you do? I spent so much time in Zoo Tycoon as a kid but Planet Zoo's level of detail is super daunting for me as well. I would be much happier plopping down completed buildings than painstakingly crafting each bathroom.
Mostly looking up building tutorials on YouTube, there are a few good channels of people who build amazing things and break down how they do it. Deladysigner, Rudi Rennkamel, and adamup are some of the ones I've found most helpful. A lot of them also put their designs on the workshop, so you can just play by plopping things down if you prefer.
I definitely dug Zoo Tycoon as a kid, but got frustrated pretty fast when my zoo got too big and the AI started flipping out. I never really got into scenario challenges, as I just always wanted a completely giant zoo. Either way, great times.
I've always kind of wanted Planet Zoo, but I'm not the sort of person who appreciates the literal handful of animals for $10 more type of game schemes. To be clear, I get it, just isn't something I appreciate gating actual content behind cash drops. Cosmetics, for sure, go for it, but not content.
That said I will probably have a ball someday when there's an end of life announcement and it finally goes into a solid pack that's reasonably priced.
There are so many animals even in the base game that you couldn't easily build a zoo with all of them if you tried. Animals and building pieces are reasonably equivalent to cosmetics for this game, or at least that's how I view it. Some of the packs were introduced with new mechanics, gameplay features, and animal behaviors, but all of that was pushed as a free update alongside the pack launch. They definitely don't feel like something where I must have every pack to have a complete game.
I got battlebit and been having a great time. It's a great game that deserve the praise it's been rewarded
It's a good game. Most players have the situational awareness of bacteria though. Teams barely play the objectives. Most just try to rejoin the chaos on either side of the maps' choke point as quickly as possible.
About the only interesting times are when your squad is back capping and cutting off fresh armor from the front line. Your team practically wins by default. Finding squads like that though seems rare.
I guess that balance is what makes it so accessible. Spawn and jump into the meat grinder all you want. The waters fine and it's mindless fun. Anyone trying to play just a little deeper: squads made the difference.
Why you gotta put me on blast like that?
My friends and I have found it more fun this way. We'll usually try to take and hold a building. Put up a spawn, reinforce with walls and stuff, and just try to survive as long as possible. Usually we're deeper in enemy territory when doing this.
But we come from Planetside 2 and that's how we've played over there for years now. Just trying to be annoying as hell to the enemy. Forget the objectives; just hold a (made-up) point. If I was playing objectively in either PS2 or Battlebit, I don't think I'd have nearly as much fun.
I did hear this game captures and improves the Battlefield experience, glad to know it does it so accurately.
Hahaha well put. It's usually the number one complaint in any objective based team game and Battlefield (and Bit!) is no exception.
Just have to roll with the punches and join the chaos or find a squad.
Agreed on the praise. It's always awesome to see a small studio pull battlefield player numbers. I just grabbed it a few days ago. I find it oddly refreshing after years of unengaging FPS.
If you expect it to be a mil sim and everybody working perfectly to capture objectives you're going to have a bad time.. It is fun, dynamic, and chaotic. That's the point.
I just purchased battlebit yesterday on a request from some friend who wanted to play with me, but I'm a bit concerned about the premise. As someone who has never played a battlefield game, I have to ask: how does the ecosystem adapt to falling player numbers? I can't imagine such massive servers would be particularly sustainable after the initial release boom, no?
As long as there are multiple populated servers, it's not an issue. Even if the game sees a dip in players, there should still be plenty of servers that have big populations. It's when you can't get full games at all when the writing is on the wall.
You can still go and find games in Battlefield 3 or 4 today, and those games came out about 10 years ago.
I bet it will be fine for a bit since it still will get a boom when it leaves early access
I had purchased Breath of the Wild discounted a few months ago and just couldn't get into it at the time. I decided recently to give it another go and have been thoroughly enjoying it. I defenitly get the love for the game now and have been having a blast exploring Hyrule.
It is such a fun experience. I just loved climbing around and exploring different places to find some tiny little thing.
I am holding off on Tears of the Kingdom until I get a chapter of my dissertation finished, but everyone I've talked to says it takes everything right about BoTW and improves upon it.
I returned to Factorio: Space Exploration for what was intended to be a brief construction and ended up taking about 10 hours total over a couple of days, breaking my LTN train network at the same time and nearly crippling my base. At the end of those 10 hours I look back, and I'm not sure what I did was even a good idea.
Background: I'm about 100 to 200 hours in to a save using the Space Exploration mod, I'm about mid-game in SE, I have levels 3 of all the available space-based sciences so far, use mostly solar power, and have a pretty well oiled industrial machine of off-planet resource gathering, everything is hands-off and runs itself for the most part -- except dealing with biters. My last big post about this save: https://tildes.net/~games/15ck/what_games_have_you_been_playing_and_whats_your_opinion_on_them#comment-7v71
The thing I jumped back in to do was to finish off Bioscience level 3, which I had partially started a while ago and had the plans on a post-it note. Decided to finish it off so I could use that post-it note stack again.
Completing the bioscience build wasn't bad, got that wrapped up and running smooth, but found my vitamelange (the critical resource used for bioscience) collection was running slowly. I was using vitamelange mining from the surface, which is easy to do but a finite resource, and was starting to show its age with lower yields. I supplemented it with a core miner, which is infinite but requires dealing with byproducts -- in this case core fragments and stone, both of which I already have processing in place for.
So I make a core miner, make a launch pad to send the vitamelange core fragments back to my home base, then set out on building out LTN facilities for turning the core vit. fragments in to vitamelange, and then in to nuggets, and then nuggets in to bloom, and finally moving the bloom over to my existing vitamelange production facilities to continue producing bioscience, but now at a rate much easier to increase.
Problem I ran in to is that I started out with the earlier parts first -- the vitamelange core fragment processing, completing LTN requester stations, and even having trains delivering material to the stations before I could fully process them. Normally this isn't a problem, LTN is smart enough to only deliver what is needed until your station reaches capacity, and then stops. This time it was a problem, because you have to tell LTN how much material you want in that station, and I set it to the same amount I use in my other stations: 50,000. When you're shipping iron plates, 50,000 works great -- iron plates stack in stacks of 100 each, and through some math, with the length of trains and everything, 50,000 is how much those stations I use can handle.
Vitamelange does not stack in stacks of 100. The core vitamelange fragments, the vitamelange, and even the nuggets I believe, all stack in to 20, which is 1/5 of what you can stack iron plates. As a result, my LTN trains would be dispatched to deliver core vitamelange fragments, go to the station to unload, run out of space, be unable to offload, wait there desperately until space is free to unload, which never comes because the rest of the chain wasn't set up, and eventually time out and return to the train depot -- laden with undelivered material.
After a while, all the trains in my LTN network had done that trip, returned to depot full, been taken out of service automatically, and my entire supply chain ground to a halt. Eventually, after changing the requested amounts to something the trains could handle with those stack sizes, I had to manually offload all those trains to get everything running again. Biggest issue over time I was running in to was needing blue belts to complete these processing facilities to actually use up that excess vitamelange, but the blue belts need gears, which need iron plates, which were delivered by LTN trains, which at this point there were far too few of. Blue belt construction ground to a halt because of the trains issue, so I couldn't even complete or expand existing stations.
Got that all sorted out, in what was intended to be only a brief couple hours, but ballooned in to a whole crisis. Now I look back at this production chain and wonder if it was even a good idea to do this whole part with LTN. Vitamelange core fragments and vitamelange itself don't stack well, so trains aren't as effective running it. The other big issue is that nothing else uses these components except this whole vitamelange chain itself, so I could have colocated these facilities and just passed intermediate products to them via blue belts directly, no trains. Vitamelange core fragments only go to one place, which turns them in to vitamelange, which only goes to one place, which only turns them in to vitamelange bloom, which again only goes back to one place. Alas, at least its easy to undo the LTN part of this if I need to, I put these vitamelange facilities right next to each other, and I have way more space to expand them to scale up production, so some benefits out of there.
After that, and running at the same time as all the above issues, is that the biters aren't going away, they're a persistent problem I'm still dealing with. I set up an autoglaive setup in the orbit of my sun, realizing at some point that the solar effectiveness of panels there is insane (something like 1000%, or a couple magnitudes higher than putting them anywhere else), and even though the transmission loss of beaming energy from the sun's orbit back to Nauvis (my base's planet) is lowered, it is still well made up for by the reduced amount of solar panels needed. This has solved my biter problems on two planets, so much so that I don't believe I even suffer biter attacks on those planets anymore at all. The biter issue on Nauvis remains unfortunately, despite my scaling up of the autoglaives, I am still very frequently finding myself running around my base patching up holes in walls and turrets left by biter attacks. I don't believe I would have survived this level of biters pre-solar-autoglaive, but its still not as much of a relief from them as I had hoped. The next thing I may do is just keep going back to solar orbit and setting up a massively overpowered autoglaive setup to cleanse my planet of biters once and for all.
Love the write up, makes me reconsider diving back into my own Space Exploration + Krastorio save, despite spending way to much time away from work in Zelda these days. Oh boy.
Adding Krastorio to the Space Exploration is a level of effort I cannot imagine embarking on. Regular Space Exploration is already a long and slow affair.
Unfortunately I am now kind of interested in seeing what that is like after, hopefully, one day completing regular SE.
It's definitely intense, but I do feel like they fit nicely and can recommend so far. From what I can tell in others' reviews, Krastorio kinda tapers off after the mid-game and eventually you're mostly dealing with SE itself.
Space Exploration is very big on messing with stack sizes. I dropped my last SE+KS attempt (again) but from what I remember all exotic materials can be processed on site to improve transport efficiency in exchange of dealing with byproducts like stone.
Are you playing on default biter settings? You can wall off a perimeter around your base, ideally outside of your pollution cloud, and defend it with a mix of turrets, flamethrowers and artillery. If you add bots and a train station to keep it supplied of ammo and repair stuff you should be able to forget biters exist.
My biggest issue with biters was creating a surface by exploring a planet, and then letting it sit for tens of hours. By the time I decided to settle, the biters had expanded everywhere. You can delete the surface before landing to reset the planet but I enjoyed the fight.
I believe default biter settings, if anything maybe turned down a little.
I do have the perimeters walled off, using natural chokepoints from the narrow land between lakes, filling them with double sided spike walls and two rows of laser turrets (with a good amount of research in to additional laser damage). It works very well for the most part, but requires the occasional bit of manual repair when the damage from biters adds up.
I've thought about adding flamethrowers and such to really cut through biters, and on other planets (namely my vitamelange planet) I also have artillery set up, but I'm really hesitant to add that on Nauvis because I didn't want to set up rails out to each wall to refuel them. It's just enough effort that I want to see if I can get away with rushing to ramp up autoglaives instead.
For reference, in my last SE-K2 i had a tileable wall section the size of a roboport logistic range (so all tiles get connected). It had 2 flame thrower turrets, I think a mix of 4-6 laser/gun turrets tops. I only lost wall sections pre artillery.
Now, K2 buffs lasers and has stronger ammo (and a bunch of new turrets I never use), but it is probably still good for vanilla biters. Also flamethrowers chew through construction bots unless you get the mod for nonflammable bots.
I did not like autoglaives much. I tried them on 0.5 and when they run out of targets they tore through my factory to get to the other side of the map. Not sure if that still happens.
On 0.6 I don't believe I've had any autoglaive related friendly fire maimings. I've read conflicting reports on reddit, some speak of them tearing through your factory to get to other biters, and others say they turn off to find the next target but might hit your objects if they're close to biters. Can't say I've had any issues with running multiple of them all the time for 10s of hours, so it might be a QoL improvement in 0.6, or maybe I haven't been burned by them yet.
I've been playing Subnautica, actually got it at the Xmas sale but bounced off after an hour or so. Glad to be giving it a second chance!
I'm really enjoying the game, I don't normally like survival "make your own fun" type games but the fact that this one has an actual story and end-goal makes it way more satisfying to me. I like the progression mechanics of slowly unlocking cooler and deeper things to do, and literally finding tech around has a cool treasure hunt vibe.
I appreciate that the game doesn't hold your hand re:progression, but I do wish it did a little bit more. I essentially locked myself out of important progression technologies because I missed a scannable hanging from a ceiling, I've had to look-up guides on where to go next at least a few times as zones can be kind of hidden, and the game doesn't do a great job of letting you know where the invisible boundaries are, leading to more than a few leviathan attacks destroying my subs and costing me an hour of catch-up work.
Overall still highly recommend, if you love oceans and exploring it's a fantastic time
I would rate the original subnautica in my top 5 games I've ever played.
I can get what you're saying about needing a hit of help. My first few play through I struggled to get very far but eventually on one play through I took it less seriously and just enjoyed the exploring. This lead to me getting new unlocks and I ended up cruising through and really pushing through the game.
The second unfortunately was a little lack luster for me. It was beautiful, but the surface areas really ruined things for me I think. I really wasn't interested in them and I was dissapointed with the level of detail in the underwater biomes. The first few underwater biomes are fantastic but the detail did drop off a bit near the end which didn't sit right with me.
I will however always recommend the first to anyone and have replayed it countless times now.
Subnautica is one of my favorite games of all time, and I wish so badly that my thalassophobia didn't keep me from playing it. It's basically tailor made for me to watch someone else play while we're hanging out, so I can be the copilot looking up where to go next, and they can handle all the parts that would give me a heart attack!
Finally got around to playing Returnal. I borrowed it from a friend on PlayStation 5 when it came out but didn’t have the time to commit to it and largely got worn out by the lack of a save system. Back then you could only put the console in sleep mode if you wanted to take a break. If you switched apps your run would be gone which was frustrating.
Fast forward to now, I am playing it PC and they have added proper saving to the game and man I am having a blast. The gameplay is fast and frantic, the amount of enemies it throws at you at times reminded me of the new DOOM games. The environments are really cool and make you truly feel like you’re in an alien world. The story is super cryptic but really grabbed my attention and made me want to keep finding out all these small details. Only advice I’d give is once you get to the end credits, keep playing as that isn’t the true end.
Highly recommend this one to anybody who likes fast paced shooters and roguelikes that offer up a challenge. Definitely looking forward to whatever Housemarque makes next. Also check out Resogun if you haven’t already as that game is also fantastic.
I just finished the Tower of Sisyphus DLC for Returnal this week (the story content of it, I mean) and I'm left feeling kind of empty, like the best art leaves you. It's the most unique, compelling game I've played in ages. I will add: don't hesitate to get into it because you've heard scary things about the difficulty. I am uniquely bad at games and found Returnal to be challenging, yes, but certainly not insurmountable. As long as you keep moving, use your alt fire, don't ADS, and take advantage of your dash's invincibility frames, you'll be fine
Oooo dang, looks like I’ll be jumping into the tower content once I get the true ending. If it offers more story content then I’m absolutely in.
To jump on the difficulty conversation, I’d 100% agree with your tips. I also find this game to really get so much easier once you get on a good run also. In the beginning I struggled a bit to make any progress as I felt I wasn’t getting any good items but then came a run that changed all that and then you kind of steamroll the rest of the content. That’s not to say it’s not challenging still and small mistakes can and will punish you. But good items really change your chances of survival and I went from doing multiple attempts of the first boss to clearing every other boss on the first try.
I think new players miss that it's a roguelike, so the more play time (thus more deaths) you have, the stronger your character is getting.
The hardest boss is the first. Not because he's difficult, but just because you don't have any weapon perks unlocked, you don't have any of the high power weapons locked, you don't have a pool of ether for opening chests or cleansing or getting a starting item, you don't know any of the enemy attack telegraphing, you don't understand how to dodge that well, and your failing dodges prevent you from gathering resin on the way to the boss.
It's kind of "git gud", but not really because the all of that skill just comes from playing more.
I love the game. I picked it up on PC because I played it on my friend's PS5 and was blown away. So much fun. Especially when you get down to like 25% health and that part of your brain kicks in that turns you into a dodging superman.
Love that game. It's like DOOM gameplay, Metroid Prime tone and setting, with a roguelike mechanic that cleverly plays into the story. Love the mid game twist, blew my mind at first.
I'm still playing the new Zelda. I've beat the final boss but I'm not sure when I'll say I'm done. Is it when I have all shrines and lightroots? All side quests? All collectibles? All Koroks? I got 100% completion on BotW, but this game feels so much bigger. I have so many other games to play, but at the same time, I'm still enjoying TotK. I'm a completionist, but I only have so much time in the day to play. It's a conundrum!
I got Satisfactory and holy shit what a game. I'm seriously impressed by what the devs have accomplished here
My only issue with it is the same issue I have with games like this, and it's totally on me... I'm not very imaginative/creative so I quickly hit a wall with these games or stop playing do the paralysis from all the options
Also enjoying Returnal
Satisfactory is fantastic! I was never into factory games but something about being able to lay it all out and move through my creations made it click for me. There's something immensely satisfying with being able to piece together a massive system, running along conveyor belts where ore is harvested to each step in the process where it becomes something new.
I will admit though, there's a pretty hefty step in the order of making things where suddenly you need a lot more of everything and it can get overwhelming. If I can force myself through that step, the game is a dream, but frequently in each playthrough that's where I stop.
I'm also not very imaginative but it's not necessary with Satisfactory. On the flipside I am definitely creative, so much so, that any supply line issue gets resolved though some sort of ridiculously overcomplicated solution that would never fit into the concept of "efficiency".
That aside, you don't have to make imaginative factories. Just ones that function.
Under and overclocking machines is ultimately where a lot of efficiency comes from, but you can sort of ignore that if you're still just figuring things out and compensate by having massive energy supplies.
Interesting; I've never heard of this. It looks along the lines of Factorio but more first person. Also similar to Mindustry.
Curious if you (or anyone else reading this) have played either, and how you would compare it to those?
Satisfactory is a little less complex than Factario in terms of Factory building — no double sided belts to deal with, and no tools for higher level automation like wiring or complex train networks. Unlike Factario, factories are built in 3d space and are much bigger than the character, so movement and terrain become much more important. Satisfactory is also a "fixed" world instead of a procedurally generated one, adding an exploration aspect to the game with higher-level resources generally being harder to find. There's some very light FPS elements with aggressive creatures often spawning around those resources, but no tower defense or hordes of enemies to fend off.
I liked both a lot. I bounced off Factorio several times when I first tried it, and it was only after playing Satisfactory for a year or so that I tried it again and was able to stick with it and complete the game. Satisfactory is probably a great place to start for anyone who's not played a game in the factory-builder genre before.
Thanks for the review. I honestly couldn't get into Factorio at all, but Mindustry made total sense. I think I'd like Satisfactory based on your input and what I liked/disliked about both Factorio and Mindustry. I've got it on my wishlist now.
I OD'd on Satisfactory. I played so much in a short time, and was so immersed, that for weeks after I finished the play through my dreams were about getting factory lines working. It was rather disturbing after a bit. I can't think of another game that hit me like that.
Playing Dragon Warrior on an NES emulator, my first ever playthrough. Technically impressive and a lot of good ideas but there is just way too much combat. Finally getting the Repel spell was a godsend. The random encounter rate is just way too high, but to their credit, it was the mid 80s and probably felt really exciting back then when these kind of games were a new thing in this world.
I played it when it came out. It was revolutionary, but it's definitely a game from an era when high encounter rates and high difficulty were necessary to pad out game times.
But I will always love it as my fist RPG.
Is this also the first game in the series that you've tried? It was certainly a revolutionary game for its time, but it can get pretty tedious as you've seen.
I've always appreciated that Dragon Warrior/Quest games have held on to a lot of those 80s JRPG conventions like turn-based combat and a need for a certain amount of grinding. It's those kinds of things that give me the same feeling starting up Dragon Quest XI at age 40 as I got when I played the first one as an 8 year old. Expect more of the same high encounter rates and need for grinding exp and gold in the next few entries if you play the sequels.
Yep! Missed out on most of these because even though I had an NES, I had practically no games for it because my mom would just say "But you already have some games!" and basically didn't understand the entire point of having a console in the first place.
So now that I've got an emulator working, I'm revisiting the childhood I should have had but didn't.
The NES Dragon Warrior series are always my go-to games when I'm really sick and can't concentrate on anything else. There's just enough decision making to feel involved and the slow progression really helps me recover easier.
The ports tend to rebalance the encounter rates, thankfully, but the originals definitely suffer balance issues. The rest of the games in the series are more like standard jrpgs with a party system, but DW1 is the OG in a lot of ways and was highly influential. They refined things a lot as they went along. I feel the series really hit its stride with 4, but there's a lot of disagreement about that. I find the combat very relaxing. I can turn off my mind and hit the buttons and still feel like I'm getting somewhere (slowly).
To clarify, it's not just the OG in a lot of ways, it's literally the first JRPG by most accounts. It was released in 1986 (same year as Zelda) and it definitely created the genre that also gave us Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger.
I think 3 is where most people probably pin it down as becoming what it would be today but I know 4, 9, and 11 are all extremely popular as well.
I've been replaying 11S recently and there's definitely no feeling like it - it's undoubtedly that unique charm only traditional JRPGs have that hits the spot. Chained Echoes was actually really good, but something about the sort of campy attitude in DQ just hits home. It wasn't even my go to series, the first one I played was 11 - but there's something about it that just captures the essence of fun old games used to have for me.
I 100% agree with your last statement. DQ really captures a simpler time for me. A lot of JRPGs feel bloated to me nowadays and despite 11's length, I never got that feeling.
My personal favorites are 5, 7, and 8, but I enjoyed 11 a lot. Enough to buy it when it came out, as well as the definitive edition later! It will be interesting to see what 12 will be like, as they are saying they are taking it in a more adult direction. Hopefully it doesn't lose that nostalgia factor in the process.
The best QoL fix to playing Dragon Warrior on an emulator is to increase the frame skip rate. Walking and fighting take so much less time this way!
I literally spent most of last week playing Final Fantasy XVI. I'll probably finish it sometime this week.
As a die-hard FF player, I'm enjoying it. Is it my favorite FF? No. But it's no where near my least favorite entry. I'm invested in the world and story; I want to find out what is happening in the land of Valisthea. I love games that have political intrigue and nation-state vs nation-state struggles. FF16 has that in spades.
While I prefer FF7R's fight system more (and I like turn-based systems even more), I don't hate FF16's. 16's system definitely feels a lot more "Western," but I want to expand the types of games I play. I love turn-based systems, but I know there are a lot of good story games I'm missing out on because I don't generally play active battle games (which practically all Western RPGs have).
FF16 definitely has some weirdness to it. Like where are all the people of color? I noticed that early on, only to see that other players have picked up on that as a, IMO, fair criticism. And one of the major premises of this world seems almost backwards. I don't think I'm spoiling anything, but in FF16, innate magic users are enslaved or otherwise used by those who require crystals to cast magic (ie they cannot innately cast magic). These innate users are way more powerful than their non-magic peers, with a select few even able to summon massive god-level "Eikons," yet they're the enslaved weak ones? Seems sus. Maybe I'll eventually find out why the world came to be this way.
Like I said, hopefully I'll finish it this week. So far so good.
Yeah in classic JRPG fashion, the races span from white people to tanned white people for a good majority of the game. Once you visit dhelmekia in the desert, you start seeing more people of color.
And there is an explanation why bearers are somehow all slaves, though whether or not it's satisfactory may be a matter of opinion. I didn't find it super convincing personally.
I agree, I like FF7 remake's combat system more, despite being a huge devil may cry fan. Landing big, awesome hits in 7 felt more special, whereas they become sort of the standard in 17. 17's combat really reminds me of 14's combat actually, where you're waiting for your massive damage bursts to come off of cooldown.
I'm getting close to the end of the game and it's solid fun. FF7 remake is still my favorite as a whole package, but I've been drawn in to 16, the story is pretty interesting and it feels like a grand, continent-spanning adventure.
IIRC 16 had a bunch of 14 devs working on it, so it makes sense that the action feels a bit more MMO use skills on cooldown style.
This also imo is what makes the eikon fights so fantastic. 14's devs are very experienced with making grand scale boss fights at this point, put them into a singleplauer experience and its an awesome spectacle.
I've been mostly playing Phasmophobia recently. It's a ghost hunting game where you need to figure out what type of ghost is haunting certain locations. It's fun and pretty engaging for being a relatively simple concept. I really enjoy the investigation aspect of the game; using equipment to determine the ghost, as well as the ability to use custom map settings, it makes the game infinitely re-playable. There's a big update coming out later this month that I am looking forward to, so many new equipment items are being added to try. The other big benefit for me is the youtube community around the game, they are who first got me interested in the game and they make great content for it.
Otherwise, CIV 6 is my tried-and-true time waster. I have put 700 hours into that game since launch, and still have a great time ever time I start it up.
Yeah, I tried playing it with a friend for a while, it's ok
On paper, there are a lot of cool mechanics and features, but it doesn't every feel like they blend particularly well, and overall it's sort of soulless if that makes sense? After playing something like the forest, I never really felt connected to the environment in any meaningful way. Exploration lacks the same sort of rewarding feeling, it's cool to see a giant can of soda or crawl inside of a gameboy, but there isn't much benefit or thrill apart from the spectacle.
I love the art of Grounded, but the game design never really felt anything more than serviceable. It never felt more than the sum of its parts, it's like a hundred disjointed, half-baked systems instead of a cohesive experience. I think that sounds harsher than I mean it to be, it's a fine game, but I think that explains why it never felt like anything truly special, it never really "clicked"
I thought it was really fun with a couple friends, but we got turned off of it somewhere at the 3/4 mark because of just how ridiculously grindy it got to even be able to survive most late game threats.
Valheim has the same problem too I feel, and that game is vastly improved if you modify item drops by increasing them, bypassing the grind.
Not every challenge in a game needs to be overcome by 20 hours of resource farming lol
I will say, like you and your friend, we LOVED the asynchronous, shared world of Grounded. Made it easier for us to grind on our own and then group up to explore. I'm usually the one to set up servers and get people connected in these kinds of games, but the fact the Grounded had a pseudo server system as a stock feature was amazing and I want to see more games do that in the future.
With Valheim, another group of friends and I just made ores teleportable via mods. So much more tolerable. I feel bad that console players don't get to experience games like that.
I am really on the fence with this one. I love the whole "shrunk down" genre of games and I particularly love insects so this one seems right up my alley. I want it to get a little cheaper on a sale before committing to it.
Have you played the solo mode and the multi-player? If so, how do they compare? I usually like to play games at my own pace or with close friends, but something like Deep Rock Galactic just feels better with other people even if it's strangers.
I just finished Ys VIII and was left very impressed. It's an enormous, open world action rpg with all of the writing and character development of a pretty good, 50 episode anime.
I say that because it's structured very much like such a show, and while it's slow to get going the payoff is just incredible. The gameplay sits somewhere near Dragon's Dogma, but more frenetic and a bit looser. You're meant to spam flashy skills and chain stuff together. You progress in the usual way but the game does a great job of presenting it in a unique way. The game takes place on a deserted island, in which you slowly put together a settlement together with the other survivors of a shipwreck. It has all the conventions of an action rpg but presents it without you using currency. You collect materials from everything, all the time, and use these to make and improve your stuff. You'll end up with a town by the end, more or less.
What sets this game apart to me is the level of effort that went into the writing and characters. You'll get to know all the folks in your castaway village. With each character, you will by the end know a bit about who they are, where they come from, whats important to them, and what you've been doing means to them. This plays out through a lot of little vignettes, it is the backbone of really all the side content. That the reward is so consistently a pretty well delivered, poignant moment works. They succeed in delivering on that just about every time it happens.
The plot does a lot of stuff you've seen in every other jrpg, but the execution is done in a unique/interesting way, and the twists are pretty awesome. It's the one time a game ended with destroying some metaphysical stuff and managed to stay relatable. That's kind of how the whole game is - on the surface it's all stuff you have seen before. But it's done so well that you can't help but enjoy it. You can have Japanese va and the soundtrack is pretty amazing. Easily an 80 hour game if you're taking your time, and it only gives you more stuff the further you go. It also gives you ample opportunity to get everything done and see everything.
And, it has a bunch of unlockable stuff, the most impressive to me being a customizable new game plus mode. It's very detailed, you can customize exactly what carries over from your endgame save and get an option to crank up the difficulty. "Normal" can be a genuine challenge sometimes. "Hard" is nothing to sneeze at. Then it goes two steps further and adds this ng+ option. If you really like the combat it pretty much lets you play it like an arcade game, all the stuff you'd need for that is there.
Edit: Check out these songs and see what I mean (spotify links). Falcom's band, Falcom Sound Team JDK, has been going since 1990, they know what they're doing. If you're a fan of upbeat, speedy metal, this is gonna be fantastic:
-The theme
-Sunshine Coast - This is the first piece of music you hear when proper gameplay begins.
-Next Step Toward the Unknown
-Iclucian Dance This one is by far my favorite.
-A to Z This is the final boss battle music.
Mostly on MechWarrior Online recently. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to most people unless you're a fan of mechs but I really like it. Other than that, just a little bit of the new Street Fighter which in my opinion feels great to play. As for boardgames, I finally tried One Deck Dungeon. I like it so far but definitely need to play more.
I played since open beta and just recently dropped out from playing it. Very fun game, and the constant mech/weapon/armor combos you can create make it highly replayable. I think people who play stuff like war of tanks and the ship version (name escapes me) may find it enjoyable to jump in and learn the game.
I've been playing Dave the Diver and enjoying it a lot. It switching things up between running a sushi joint and diving for ingredients. But there's also a ton of mission quests and other content that I'm not including because spoilers. I enjoy the progression and it doesn't feel like such a grind. It's not too hard but enough difficulty that it's engaging. It's also forgiving in that it doesn't punish you too bad for messing up. It's been a great game to relax and chill out to after a busy work day.
I've been having a lot of fun with Dave the Diver too - it's the perfect level of casual to me, and it's full of such great little surprises! It keeps adding new mechanics, and the music, graphics and animations are a delight. I'll avoid spoilers, and I'm not that far into the game yet, but I was pleasantly surprised by a dream and the full track of a very special song. I can't wait to see what happens next!
I just saw that this was on sale for steam. I didn't look into it but that does sound pretty fun.
I've been playing the board game, Frosthaven, with a group of four. It has largely been an enjoyable experience, but - in comparison to its predecessor, Gloomhaven - is mechanically more complicated and overall feels more difficult. We've lost 3 scenarios so far and are still in the early game (around 15 scenarios in). Some of these losses were the result of one obviously bad round that we couldn't recover from, which is demoralizing. So there's definitely less room for error and requires us to be on our A-game throughout the scenario. I'm theorizing that, as a sequel, Frosthaven has less explanatory legwork and assumes its players to be experienced enough with the unique mechanics from Gloomhaven to be able to handle the difficulty spike. Or maybe we've just been out of practice with this game style and need to strategize better. Maybe it's both.
I've been wanting to try frosthaven, but if it's more difficult than gloomhaven... maybe I don't want to, hah. Gloomhaven is hard enough that we can't get through many of the scenarios without a few house rules.
We don't like repeating scenarios, it's tough to get everyone together to play as it is without repeating scenarios, we want to make ~some~ progress throughout the year
I will say that Frosthaven is a noticeable upgrade from Gloomhaven in almost every way, which has been an awesome and exciting adventure so far. But that difficulty spike is also just as noticeable. I'm definitely curious if other players share a similar sentiment to us or if this is just our group's experience so far.
Our last session was the final straw though and we've agreed to adding our own house rules like table-talking / metagaming because, like your group, we don't like repeating scenarios and losses are big time sinks. But I personally think the game is more fun when the group is strategizing openly (as long as we're not dictating each other's actions). Secondly, it's not like D&D where metagaming drastically hinders the role-playing side of things. Frosthaven is still, ultimately, a board game.
I agree that it's a lot more fun when you strategize as a group, plus it helps to keep the conversation going. Like you said, it's a game, and supposed to be fun!
Or biggest problem though is card management. By the time we're done with the battles, we are usually out of cards and can't complete the level, so we tend to fudge that a bit too. I'm sure I'll try frosthaven, but I assume we'll have our own house rules to make it not so punishing
I started Borderlands 1 for the second time I played it a bit before, but not finished. This time I'm going for it.
I have already played and finished Borderlands 2 and I see differences between the two. Borderlands 2 is a bit more matured in some ways, but lacks in others. I like weapon categories/skill levels in 1, I like more specific info about shields in 2 etc. But as I said in my short Steam review - witgout Borderlands 1, there won't be Borderlands 2. And who played the second one should definitely play first one at least once too.
Started playing the DS version of The World Ends With You for the first time recently after a post here linking to a top 15 article for DS games reminded me it existed.
The story for what I've played so far has been kind of poorly paced I feel (examples below) but the core concept is cool and it feels like it's starting to level out the issues a bit.
Spoiler examples of pacing issues
Rhyme getting erased and Beat joining the Reapers both felt like they happened way too fast, I didn't feel like I had time to get attached to them as characters so these moments didn't really have much emotional impact.
The music is really good, not really much else to say there.
The gameplay is very cool and I think it's probably the game that uses the DS's unique gimmicks the best. You have real time combat encounters that are split between the top and bottom screen. The same enemies exist on both screens, so if you do half of Enemy A's health in damage on the top screen and the other half on the bottom, it will die. Both of your characters on each screen also share a health bar, so you can't neglect either half of combat.
For combat the bottom screen you drag the stylus around from on your character to walk around, move it fast to dodge, and you equip different pins that are different attacks/skills that use the touch screen, so you have pins where you slash over an enemy to have your character dash in and hit them, or you tap an enemy to shoot a projectile at them, or you hold the stylus on the screen to start a fire you can drag around. There's lots of different types of pins and they each level up independently and some evolve into new pins, it's really cool.
On the top screen it's a bit simpler, you use the dpad (or face buttons if you're using the stylus in your left hand) to do different (simple) combo paths. Performing specific combo paths (it will be random which one is the correct one, if any, for any given attack chain) will earn Fusion Stars which are just a meter to build up for a Fusion Attack, which is just a big blam that hits all the visible enemies on each screen. Combos are always initiated by pressing left or right, depending on which direction you want to attack in, and if you aren't mid attack and press down you perform a block, and if you press up you jump and avoid attacks (and you can also initiate attacks from a jump).
The way difficulty is handled is also neat, you have four regular difficulty levels (you unlock them at various points in the story and can change it at any time). Playing on higher difficulty levels will change what enemies can drop, so if you play on a harder difficulty you get better loot (and you can still get drops for lower difficulty levels). You can also change your level at any time from 1 up to your current max, this scales your HP in combat and also effects drop rates, the lower your level relative to your max level, the higher your drop rates.
Everything about the game is cool and interesting and I could see it becoming one of my favorite games by the end.
TWEWY is one of the most unique games I have ever played. Definitely worthy of being on the list of top DS games. The switch port isn't bad either, I'm thinking of trying the coop mode with the wife someday
Timberborn.
It's a city builder as beavers where the only enemy is the periodic drought that you need to survive. There's lots of water management by building dams and levees, plus managing farms and equality of life for your beavers.
I spent like 70 hours on it in 2 so weeks. Super fun and extremely cute.
I've finally sat down and played the critically acclaimed NORCO, and I got to say... that's it?
I mean, it's an okay point&click. All the usual trappings, the minigames are alright, I like the mind-map as a way to convey extra exposure and lore on things without having to click on every single framed image on every wall to get more quips, streamlines the process quite a bit.
But as for the main story and circumstances, I just don't know. Maybe this'll hit harder for someone from the southern US I'd imagine? Where you can more readily understand the depicted future? For me as someone from Europe, it was okay (and hey it was cheap) but little more than that.
I think this files into that illustrous "the perfect 7/10"-category.
Thanks for saying this, I agree 100%. Personally felt crazy when reading people calling it Disco Elysium-level of writing. It just didn't touch that part of my heart there I go - yeah, I feel that. And am I sympathetic to the themes and aesthetics, too, but it just wasn't - honest? personal? vulnerable? - enough for me.
It does still warm my soul games like this are being made and get successful.
Dark Souls Remastered. This is my first true Souls game, I have played other souls-like games before. And I am enjoying it so far, I had step aside for a few months, to the point where I needed a restart to learn the controls again, which I don't mind really. Besides that I really like it, so far. I like the feeling of overcoming the bosses that gives you problems by learning their move sets and dealing the final blow to them.
So interested in hearing more about your ongoing DS experience, especially since you've been exposed to the genre before the ur-game.
So far, I am really enjoying the game. Like the previous souls-like game was Salt and Sanctuary that was given away for free on Epic a while ago (granted it was on my wishlist on Steam before hand) and it was a decent enough experience for me. And yes it is difficult, but it is kind of fair in a way, in the fact that you need to learn the move set for bosses to really thrive in those fights, it really just a matter of learning to "git gud." Although I did made a fuck up when I restarted, in which I accidentally attacked the merchant in the Berg area, because I wanted to speed up the dialog, and pressed the attack button by accident. So I started another game after that.
And I have played other unforgiving games before like Darkest Dungeon and XCom, so I am no stranger of wanting to punch my screen in frustration./s But in all serious, I like these types of games. Besides the one game that really hate with a passion because of unfair it it you as a player.
Edit: How the hell do I stop hackers from invading? Besides from going offline.
You can't get invaded if you're hollow, that's a way of getting around it but other than that it's better to be offline. Invasions are usually very unfair for the host even if the guy doesn't use cheats.
Alright thanks.
Terra Nil. I have a soft spot for chill resource managing/strategy games. I've only done a few hours of it but so far it's been enjoyable. It may lose it's charm after a while but it's a nice change of pace from the sweatfest that is R6:Siege ranked.
Oh, I love this game, its concept and execution. I remembered playing the demo on itch.io and I have been waiting ever since. Bought it when its 1.0 came out. I'd say its short and I do want it to be a bit longer, only having four biomes and four more alternate level in each biome with slightly different mechanic. I even went and gotten all the achievements because of how short the game is. However, I do love the ending after finishing the first four biomes. I think it's a fitting ending.
I'm looking forward to dedicating my winter months to Cities: Skylines 2.
Finished Metroid Fusion recently and thought it was fine. Nothing really crazy but fun enough for me to finish it. Love the sprite work done in the game, it looks amazing.
Started Chrono Trigger (the DS version) since I heard it's a great game. I beat the first boss and it's kinda fun, but I'm reserving judgement since... I only got to the first boss lol.
Still playing through Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Finished my 3rd dungeon (Gerudo/Thunder). Honestly am just ready to finish the game lol. It's not bad, I just want to play other games rn lol. I have a thing where in order to continue going through my backlog and not let myself get distracted, I only let myself play 2 to 3 games at once.
Oh and I also started (and am close to finishing lol) Picross E on the 3DS. I love picross and after recently hearing some Mario Picross music, relapsed my picross addiction lol.
You still have a bit to go to beat TotK. I'm still enjoying it, but it can be overwhelmingly big.
A fellow picross enjoyer! Is Picross E the main picross series by Jupiter? I've bought a few but lately have been playing some of the more interesting versions. Murder By Numbers is a combination of detective game and picross - if you're looking for some story with your picross, I recommend taking a look at it!
Yeah TotK is a LOT lol. I still need to explore the Depths and Sky Islands some more.
Yeah the Picross E games were the main series from them on the 3DS. They're doing the same thing for Switch called Picross S, although those games added color picross which I don't think were part of the E series games.
Murder by Numbers has been on my Switch's wishlist for a long time now lol but it does look cool. IIRC the musical artist that worked on the game made music for the Ace Attorney trilogy, so I just know the music has to be at least good lol.
I like the music in Murder by Numbers quite a bit! It's set in the late 80s/early 90s iirc so the music does have that vibe. If you are at all nostalgic for that time period, you'll probably love it.
Pokemon unite
It's a tencent game, a 5v5 pvp topdown moba for the switch and for mobile where your pokemons evolve troughout the match. Think of league of legends but with pokemon.
Uninstalled it yesterday and not looking back.
Matches are fixed, the game actively punishes you for doing good by putting you with worse and worse teammates until you end up losing. The better you are at the game, the worse your teammates get. It's really painful to lose to a bunch of enemy idiots just because the rest of your team is made out of even bigger idiots, but that's how the game is designed to be, it caters to a more casual kind of playerbase and they have no plans to make it more competitive.
What's worse is that the community knows it and has come to accept it. After talking about my last losing streak with another player they told me "that's sad, just take a break, the algorithm will detect your recent losses and give you better matchmaking tomorrow".
FUCK.
THAT.
Now looking into battlebit remastered
It's kind of an odd choice pairing experienced played with novices. I have not heard of any other online game to adopt such a policy.
you ask me... The highest rank of the game is master but, once you reach it, you can't derank from it.
...and because of the various rank inflation mechanics, you can reach masters even with a 38% winrate (maybe even less, but that's the worst one i've seen)
so you could be a masters 1600-1700 player and you can have teammates that just reached masters with a <40% winrate because "technically" you're both masters so your skills are technically considered the same.
Farthest Frontier stole my soul rather biblically. It's Banished's spiritual successor.
Detroit: Become Human has now done the same thing. It's a very interesting concept and gamestyle to what I'm used to. But the story is wonderfully compelling.
Is farthest frontier worth the price right now? I’ve heard there were major issues early on.
There definitely were. But it's absolutely fantastic.
It gets a little chuggy around 700 villages, just to warn you. My PC definitely started becoming a radiator.
Just finished TotK, now back on the Octopath Traveler 2 grind. Loving it. The music isn't as good as the first game, but everything else is. Reminds me of the jump from Pokémon Red/Blue to Silver/Gold in terms of features/quality.
After this one, I'm either finally going to start the Yakuza series or play Control. Haven't decided yet.
The Yakuza series is one of my favs but it's a lot. Pretty unique and its own thing. You're probably aware but the series changes significantly with Yakuza 7 (Like a Dragon in the West), with a change of protagonist and gameplay (from brawler to turn based). Most people start with Zero or 7. Either are good jumping off points, depending on if you like turn based or brawler combat better. The spinoff Judgement games are also excellent and a bit more of a standard story (mystery detective setting) than the typical craziness in the main series.
I think I'll be more of a fan of the turn based combat, but I bought Yakuza Kiwami during the sale. Is that not a good starting off point?
There are a lot of arguments about that :) I prefer Zero to start with because it makes Kiwami's story more significant. There is an extra piece of content that is a massive spoiler for Zero as well. However, if you're not a story person, Kiwami would be fine. It's a remake of the original PS2 game so it's shorter and a bit rougher than the other games. You also can't go wrong starting with Like a Dragon. Although there are references to the earlier games, it's a mostly new cast. A lot of people started there.
I am a "story person" and started with Kiwami because it was on sale and was a remake of the first game in the series so it felt like a natural starting point (I didn't research :) ). I'm yet to play Zero. I probably won't notice whatever spoiler you're talking about because I played Kiwami six years ago. It took me six years to beat five games. I usually play one Yakuza game a year, more or less. I'm planning to play Zero this year. It's become one of my absolute favorite series and Kiryu is like a dear friend.
With that said, @Biscuit please don't feel discouraged, now that you already purchased Kiwami. I think that Kiwami is a good starting point in the series, it worked just fine for me.
Zero was my first Yakuza game, so I'm probably biased ;) The spoiler part is the additional Majima side content that was outside the main game that is a direct resolution to his part of the Zero story. If you skipped that or don't remember it, all the better!
I've played parts of every Yakuza game but couldn't get into 3 or 5 entirely. Finished everything else (except Isshin). I'm looking forward to the Kiryu side game coming out, as well as Yakuza 8. I feel like the story-telling is getting better, so you may enjoy the later games even more. The stories in Judgment and Like a Dragon were top notch imo.
I just remember Majima Everywhere and know it was a new addition. It was such a wacky experience and I loved it! I actually miss the Majima from Kiwami, he's not the same person in subsequent games, he's more serious there.
5 was the longest Yakuza game that I played and I appreciated that it was trying new things gameplay-wise (taxi driving, Haruka the singer, Saejima the hunter, the prison, etc.). I liked it but it took me a couple months to finish.
3 is the most "boring" Yakuza game, but thinking back on it I really treasure my time at Okinawa and getting to know the dad Kiryu. I miss those kids and miss Rikiya. When I said that Kiryu is a dear friend of mine, I meant it. I know it's a video game, but I have an emotional relationship with him and the supporting cast :)
You know what, I was mistaken. The Majima side chapter is in the remake of Yakuza 2, not Kiwami. D'oh!
Majima started out as a one-off character and became popular so they fleshed him out. The reasons for his personality are explained in Zero, and it also explains why he got more serious as time went by. I adore Majima as a character because he is layered and his logic for behaving the way he does is fascinating to me.
In 5, I got stuck on the Saejima prison portion. I know he's a fan favorite, but his portions of the games are always my least favorite. Especially because 5 repeats the prison setup of 4. One day I will go back to it and power through that sequence.
I think a lot of people connect to Kiryu. Despite being yakuza, he's truly a good man with strong ideals. In some ways, he's an ideal embodiment of "manhood." He's a bit thick at times, but that's his only real flaw. He's definitely memorable and relatable.
I played Yakuza 2 Kiwami as well, of course. :) Is it about
Possible spoiler
how he lost his eye?I've been hearing about Zero for years, so I'm looking forward to playing it finally later this year (though it will be difficult because of Starfield :) ). I am wary of two things -- that the game won't live to my expectations (happens quite often when I play some highly praised games) and that it will be so long as to wear me off (like Y5 or even longer). I am not a completionist, but Y5 still took me 78 hours.
Nope, not that (although that is covered in Zero). If you played the side part that is only accessible on the main menu separate from the main game where you play as Majima, you did it. But you may not even realize the significance of it since you didn't play Zero. All the better if you forgot it!
Zero is much shorter than 5, iirc. It only has two protagonists and you swap between them. My memory is that it's closer to the length of 2, but I could be off a bit. After 5, they seem to have realized that longer isn't always better and scaled back a bit.
Zero has been hyped to death, but it's still my favorite in the series. I'm a huge Majima fan so being able to play as him and see his evolution was great. Kiryu is great in it as well and it's nice to see him in his pre-Dragon days. The antagonists are really memorable, unlike in some of the other games. The stakes are understandable and the twists are realistic. I really hope you like it, but going in with tempered expectations is a good thing.
It's a good thing you aren't a completionist because some of the minigames to get the platinum are brutal!
I’m doing it the other way around. I’m not purchasing TotK until I finish Octopath Traveler 2. I love this game. It reminds me so much of the old FF games especially FFVI.
I have been playing the graveyard keeper in and off. I am at a bit of limbo and the next set of milestones are going to take a little while. But I like playing it on short bursts.
Been playing Valheim. Currently ramping up to fight The Elder - just about ready, need to slay a few more trolls to finish upgrading my armor set. That said, to be honest, it's starting to feel a bit grindy and I'm running out of motivation to finish.
Probably take Satisfactory back up soon. There's a grind aspect to it also at times, when expanding low tier resources to make up for the quantities needed at lower tier, but it just feels more satisfying to me to see the results.
Before that, gotta play Solasta. It and all of its DLC were just on deep sale (probably looking to pick up some pre-BG3 hype) and I'm a huge D&D/Pathfinder RPG fan - the Owlcat Pathfinder games, the original isometric BG games, and similar ones like the Divinity series. Of course, it's not that long until BG3 comes out, so it may be a bit before I get back to Satisfactory...
i played ea of bg3 so much, because it is sooooo good. buggy, but good. the battle is everything i ever wanted, larian's surface mechanics are still there + 5e dnd stuff, you can improvise, you can exploit, you can be very creative, this game is FUN. and actually well-written too.
The Elder is the second boss right?
Yes
Ok, I wasn't sure there was a prescribed order. My friends and I are at a similar point, and I've noticed a bit of the grind as well. But we've got to build a ship and get to a new island so I'm hoping that freshens things up.
The order isn't forced, but it's somewhat assumed by the scaling - you can't mine metal until after Eikthyr, you can't get iron until after Elder, etc, so you'll have a lot more trouble killing them without going in order.
Hunt Showdown. A PvPvE with some rogue-like elements that is way more addictive than it has any right to be. Development is active and the community is large enough that matchmaking is quick.
+2.
If you like FPS, and don't need a firehose of a gun to be happy with it, PLEASE give this game a chance. Right now they have an event going on with some of their highest player counts, and perhaps more impressive is that this game's long-tail is actually quite different in terms of population compared to other games; it historically has gotten dips but also has genuinely grown its playerbase over the course of 5 years, which is incredibly difficult in today's market, so it goes to show just how much this game has managed to convert people with its flavor.
Old-timey weapons (shots matter), an incredible soundscape that is unlike any other FPS I've ever played which pairs perfectly with the pacing of the game because of the "slower" weapons (fyi, they're still quite deadly), risk-reward factor for those who crave it in the format of potentially losing their hunter with their traits on them as well as their weapons in each match, and a very clear objective to fight over which encourages fights to happen, yet still allows you the choice if you've finished your engagement to push on, or to instead lick your wounds and try another match, all add up to a very addictive experience.
I got Descenders on the Steam sale the other day, and have about 8 hours on it at the moment. It's a game about riding bikes down hills. That's it.
In the main career mode, you progress through various environments with around 8 tracks in a world. On the tracks, you ride for around a minute over jumps, rough terrain, etc. Each level will also have an objective, e.g. 'complete the stage without braking' which gives you extra lives. (you lose a life when you bail)
There's also a free ride mode, which can be played online and off, where you just mess about and go for score on various levels. Feels reminiscent of the old Tony Hawk games in a way.
Overall I give it a solid 8/10. Loads of fun, but might be a bit lacking in content after 20hrs or so.
I just recently started Skyrim. I've played Fallout since Fallout 3 launched, then New Vegas, 4, and also ESO. Loved all of them so don't know why it took me so long to get into it, especially given the amount of lore in the Elder Scrolls universe.
i think there is a chance that starfield will be somewhat connected to the tes universe because beople clocked the nirn root at the trailer of starfield))
if you are new to the series try also morrowind and oblivion, skyrim is great but oblivion is a gem of absurdity and fun, and everyone should fall through textures in vivec in morrowind at least once in their life
They're all on game pass, so I'm sure I'll get to them at some point. I've heard people say Morrowind is definitely in a league of it's own though, being older in the series.
I've been working my way through Darkest Dungeon and have been having a really good time. I can't play it in long sessions but 20 min here and there are good. It's been interesting how it relates to x-com in that you have a set of characters and they can permanently die. In X-Com that really bothered me and there was a lot emotion in it. But in Darkest Dungeon it's been a more tempered experience. It's still a setback but it feels like it's an integral part of the game and due to my own actions.
I'm now playing Rakuen by Laura Shigihara. It's an RPG maker game.
Engine-wise, this game is terrible. Can't maximize the tiny window. Fullscreen exists but is janky; not only does the game refuse to use my second monitor, it also moves all of my other windows out of my second monitor which drives me absolutely crazy. Can't rebind the arrow keys, can't change the music volume, can't change the text animation speed, etc.
Content-wise, this game is excellent. It's a pixel art JRPG-like with no combat (though you can still die); instead it focuses on narration, puzzle solving and item fetching. You play as "Boy" (not renameable), a child who lives in a hospital. There's something off about the hospital, which contains boarded off passages and demolished backrooms with newspaper clippings referencing an unspecified catastrophe. There, Boy (and his adult mother, who cheerfully tags along for the journey) finds a door to another world - a colorful fantasy village inhabited by critters who have the same names as the other patients from the hospital. Boy is told he can wake up the slumbering guardian of the village and ask for a wish if he can learn a certain song, but doing so requires him to help the other characters/patients - a girl whose friend never visits her, a grumpy but lonely old man, a woman in a coma, etc. In the course of doing so, we learn their stories.
The game contains beautiful music with vocals by Laura herself.
You still have one more day during which you can buy it with a 50% discount!
My experience was the game wasn't so much about the "game", but the story and characters.
It's similar to games like "To the Moon", and "OMORI"; very emotional.
I picked up Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on sale after playing it a bit with my nephew while it was on PlayStation Plus.
Heavily inspired by one of my favourite 8-bit games River City Ransom, Scott Pilgrim is a side-scolling beat 'em up with some light RPG elements that's full of classic gaming references, just like the source material. Of course, all of these references went over my 10 year old nephew's head but we still had a blast beating up punks. It's the 16-bit sequel to River City Ransom that I've wanted since I was a kid.
The main story is pretty short, only taking about 5 hours for me to complete but it also doesn't overstay its welcome or add any filler. The game has a ton of replayability as well. I don't know what the game sold for when it was first released but at $7, I got more than enough value for my money.
I got myself a Steam Deck some time ago to catch up with a bunch of games I have missed over the years, and now I'm playing Dying Light. This game offers such fun and unique gameplay. It's like Dead Island and Mirrors Edge combined. Open-world survival horror game with zombies, RPG elements, and first-person parkour mechanics? Give me two, please! I have already played 30+ hours and don't want to stop. The story is a bit cheezy, but I don't care because the gameplay makes up for it. Also, this game has really good side content. I often find myself doing side quests and activities for 3 hours straight or just running around town drop-kicking zombies off the roofs, and interacting with all the game systems Dying Light has in place. The gameplay feels repetitive occasionally, and when it happens, I usually take a break from the game for a day or two, but I'm always coming back. Overall it's a solid experience that no other game can deliver, other than maybe Dying Light 2, which I plan on playing in the future.
I remembered playing Dying Light when it first release and I enjoyed it so much that I bought it again on the PC. I'd say do enjoy the first game thoroughly before jumping into Dying Light 2 (DL2) because most reviews online says that the first game is better overall whilst DL2 is lacking something. I am currently playing DL2, and I agree with it. I do intend to stick with it though since I do love the parkour in these games. (So far 7+ hours in the first week of playing. Could've been more but I have work and other hobbies that took my time)
I found Cassette Beasts on Game Pass. I read the description and saw it was a turn-based RPG, which I love, so I thought I would give it a go.
Wow! I was surprised when I started playing. You're dropped in with no explanation, which plays into the story, and suddenly, I realized that it's an advanced version of Pokemon. You're collecting creatures, battling random encounter creatures, fighting leaders for renown, all while answering the question of what is this world you're in.
The battle system is simple, but robust. You can power your way through things, or learn type advantages and fight smart. You can 'evolve' (the game uses different terms) your creatures, you can change out your moves, all though a tongue-in-cheek cassette-based system.
As a lover of puns and referential nonsense, the mission titles are fantastic.
I'm not very far into the game, but I can see where this is a deep story and going to be consuming most of my free time in the near future.
The Zodiac Trial
The simplest way I can describe this game is as an ambitious 999 fangame that's hamstrung by lack of budget. 12 people are kidnapped, assigned a Chinese Zodiac animal, and given a timed board game where the first people to reach the end go free and everyone left behind is executed. It definitely could've used a flowchart to show how to access all the routes, but it tries to give a bootleg version where you can quickly pick your first few choices from the main menu. It also really could've used some visuals to explain the rules of some puzzles like for the Dog or Ace route, or more maps for stuff like Tiger's route. Still, it's 11 hours to complete all the routes for $9 on sale.
I think the main thing about this VN for me is that the routes split early, and thus the murdering happens fast once the incentives are pushed with different traitors and victims. The routes and characters aren't exactly balanced in terms of focus, but the good parts do shine past the mediocre bits.
If you're willing to give a chance to an indie thriller VN for $9 to finish in a spare day or two, then give it a shot. it's also got a demo covering the first bits of the game before the route splits.
Light Character Rankings/Thoughts - Possible Spoilers
Barely There
These 2 are the weak-willed, panicking types. Not much to say even on their routes.
Bland
They don't really have depth. A hidden secret sure, but not depth.
Almost There
The man's either friendly or being an ass with a smile. Just a bit more focus and he would've been solidly on the way to having a more punchable face.
Competent
This is the passable line. Mouse is smart enough as the viewpoint character, Ox is the serious mirror/partner character trying to keep order, and Tiger is just happy to be there.
Pleasantly Surprised
They're unassuming being lazily jaded and self-absorbed comedy relief respectively so their presence isn't the same as the below, but once the spotlight is truly on them, the contrast gives way to a charming depth to their normal selves once known.
Well Done
The gang leader with a soft side and the smart, shady "tilts glasses up" guy. These archetypes are common enough, but they perform well with a strong presence on almost every route. Dragon is metal as fuck with what she does on her route, and rest-assured, Snake is usually calculating.
Route Ratings/Thoughts - Likely Spoilers
Way too long
The problem with these 2 routes is that the antagonist is revealed right at the start so any mystery is sapped away and everyone tries to challenge them one by one and fail which leads to a long drawn out "get on with it" feeling since Mouse is the one to deal with it in the end, and neither of these really contribute information to the other routes or overall story that can't be figured out there.
Meh
I ranked these two the lowest as characters and their routes really reflect that since they're just desperate to survive instead of making things more intricate.
Way too short
They're desperate fighting for their lives, but they're not out to betray the group so their routes suddenly end after their issues are resolved.
More time in the oven
These two routes do have a mystery, but they're also pretty linear so I didn't feel the same level of suspense as the other routes.
The Good Stuff
Bunny, Dragon
These two are the blood-filled action routes where someone hit the "Fuck this, we're killing someone" button and things devolve into violence, "Us or them" mentality, and ruthless kills as everyone is pushed to their limit. It's a nice change of pace with imminent violence instead of slow-burn mystery in a high tension environment.
Snake, Monkey
And these are the thriller routes as bodies are discovered one by one and the survivors dwindle down with logic needed to crack open the truth and force a confession.
Mouse
And this is the Traitor route where you get to play as the villain and kill all the other characters to force a path to freedom. The dev commentary calls it non-canon since Mouse would confess her role 99% of the time instead of betraying the group, but it's a fun change of perspective.
Demons Roots
Started Chapter 4 out of 5. Steam says I'm 26 hours in, but the game itself says 38 hours which I assume is from high framerates. Taking a small break because I defeated a certain boss instead of grabbing my stolen equipment and all of it's left behind so I had to reload. The game does warn you with dialogue, but not stop you with an "are you sure?" as with other bosses.
As every review of this game will mention, it's an RPG Maker Hentai game that's hiding one of the best JRPG stories out there. The game knows how to present its story with the right amount of seriousness and dramatics as the Demons invade the even worse Human Empire out of desperation with their pitiful home on the brink of collapsing permanently. It's a story of the oppressed, the demons and the slaves of the Empire, rebelling against the systematic cruelty that casually discards and degrades lives in the name of progress, control, convenience and plain old corruption. It's a story of forgiveness, each party member seeing the sin of their environment and gaining the will to fight and correct it, for themselves and a world where demons and humans can peacefully coexist. "Keep the promise."
Most comments say the game is easy because Ange can protect the rest of the party, but I'm actually having a little trouble because she's getting shredded by enemy AoE spam at this point. Right now I'm reading the party as Najezta/Polca as the interchangeable healers/(de)buffers, Ange as the main tank, Kalinka as Physical DPS/Off-Tank if Ange goes down, Sarasa as Magical DPS/AoE, Diana as a jack-of-all-trades TP Battery, and a certain someone as an item caddy because of no damage.
I should really feed my 2 newest party members EXP books.
I've been cranking on tears of the kingdom and FFIII(not VI)
I've been big into Temtem recently and also getting into Street Fighter VI
My friend and I got Temtem when it came out in Early Access and we were all excited for it. Finally a Pokemon-esque MMO! But it just didn't really click for us. The battle difficulty felt off (like all over the place), elemental stuff didn't make sense to us, and the story was just kinda, meh. Think we played for like a week or two before putting it down. We haven't played in over a year. How is it these days?
Sorry for the late reply. The elemental system still doesn't make sense to me and the difficulty scaling does seem scattered. Some fights have been super easy, but some tamer fights are just migraines. It feels satisfying though, if that makes any sense
I’m playing the hogwarts legacy game on Xbox one.
It’s just okay. I love the world of Harry Potter but the story and quests feel a bit too formulaic.
I’ve just stolen a goblin helmet from a tomb and it’s really just dungeon -> puzzle-> collect object.
Some of the more unique collectibles and interactable puzzles are cool, but I’m not crazy about the story line.
Magic combat feels great at first but I’m now basically a magical god who can squash anything in my path (and I haven’t unlocked any of the unforgivable curses yet). It’s not deep enough to have hard bosses because a hard boss would just hit harder (frustrating) or have a bigger health pool (tedious).
The previous game I played was cyberpunk 2077 which was phenomenal in comparison.
I’m planning to finish it and then go back to Batman Arkham Night and then purchase the new Zelda game on switch.
The Cyberpunk DLC is coming out in about two months, too! \o/
can't wait for this one!
I tend to play a bunch of games at once. Right now, I'm playing:
Halls of Torment with my husband on the TV pc. It's an early access game in a genre so new it doesn't really have a name - the 'survivors bullet-hell' type recently made popular by Vampire Survivors. It's sort of a mix of Hades, old Diablo, roguelikes, and probably others I don't know. It's a little rough around the edges still, but it's only been out about a month and is pretty fun to play in a grindy way.
True Fear: Forsaken Souls 2 is one of those hidden object style adventure games, but this one has a horror theme, no hidden-object scenes, and feels a teensy bit less childish than the common ones. There's nothing new here gameplay-wise - find item, take it somewhere, unlock a thing and move to the next item/place, but I like it to just destress and unwind.
Dreams in the Witch House is a Lovecraftian point-and-click adventure game with some simulation and rpg elements. You play as Walter, a new student at Miskatonic U., and have 2 months to focus on your studies, investigate eldritch doings, do absolutely nothing, or discover and perhaps stop the cosmic horror before it's too late, amongst other options. Nice pixel graphics, interesting characters and story, and loads of references for readers, plus a lot of replayability with some random game aspects and multiple endings.
Halls Of Torment is awesome, I’ve recently found a few games like that but you are right; it’s a genre so new I don’t think it has a proper name yet. I keep telling my friends about it but I can’t describe it, im like “It’s like a rougelike without dedicated stages?”, I really can’t describe it well lol
Took a flyer on Frostpunk, and holy crap is it awesome. It's a survival/post apocalyptic /civilization rebuilding type game. The learning curve is about medium difficulty but it's so fun to try and figure out mechanics. It's also got some challenging and fun scenarios. I'll probably get several hundred hours out of this game, which at the steam sale price is a great deal.
I usually have a few games going simultaneously.
Final Fantasy XVI: - this game has been quite the experience thus far. I've been piloting the game while my wife watches and we have both been quite satisfied with the product we were provided. The two of us met playing XIV, the MMO, so we are very familiar with Yoshi-P and his crew, and everything has been within our expectations. Lots of amusing carryover from his crew's experienced running an MMO first, but that's okay. We know that the story will be generally a high quality and look forward to how the adventure concludes
Front Mission 1st this journey into a classic Turn bases RPG has been fun. They stayed faithful to the original in this remake which means it also has all of its faults. That's okay, because for me that is part of the charm. The story is amusingly dated as well, making it incredibly campy in current year but seeing the origin of how Front Mission played will make a great foundation for my experience as they eventually remake Front mission 2.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is my newest on the go game of choice. I'm playing it on a DS emulator on my phone. I actually started it many years ago, but I lost my DS almost immediately afterwards. I'm excited to finally play through it as I love both tactics and SMT games. So far it's matching up with my expectations.
I began playing the XIII Remake. This is probably the first modern [7th gen forward], made for gamepad, shooter I've played. You move so slowly I just cannot imagine who'd wish for this even on a gamepad.
I played through a level where the game had me take a hostage I could not let go of till the mission ended. I could only use my two one-handed guns and there were enough dudes to shoot I ran out of ammo, and for some reason I cannot let go of the hostage and reload. There are also normal guards that I am not allowed to shoot.
After getting past that with judicious ammo use, I got to another level where I am supposed to sneak around and not kill dudes who'll shoot at me. I am not finishing this game. Well, back to Quake.
I have been bouncing around several games, I play what I want when I want it, but here are a couple of core games I go back to.
Valorant
An online FPS, 5v5 similar to Counter Strike but focuses more on agents' abilities and utilities similar to Overwatch. This is my first time playing any online FPS games of any form. Internet in my country has been...meh and I never had any friends to play with. Until one of my secondary classmate contacted me years after and asked me to play with him (before he left me to play Rainbow 6: Siege). I have gotten hooked on the game and even went out of my way to improve my skills. (its still terrible but I could carry my weight). I love the gun play, despite the frustration. Making stategies and plays that only work 1 out of 10 times, but always funny to try. Needless to say, its my go to game whenever I want to play something quick and easy. I have been playing it almost daily since Killjoy was released, which was almost 3 years now.
Deep Rock Galactic
This was a death of a thousand cuts experience. I have known about this game for years and only heard good things about it. I got recommendations from the youtubers that I watched, podcasters that I listened and even from the DM when I played DND. And that last one was the straw that broke the camel's back as I saw the game on sale on Steam. Gotten >30 hours within the two/three weeks of purchase. Which is a lot for me with busy schedule and all. The main thing that drew me in is just how friendly and nontoxic the player base is. I know that Valorant is not the most toxic games but its day and night when I compared it.
Dying Light 2
The more recent purchase I gotten was Dying Light 2. I only bought it last week at the time of writing. I am excited for the game since I enjoyed the first game, but the reviews really made me hesitant. I finally cracked when the itch to play the game became overbearing. Now that I have played it for a bit (only >7 hours, again due to having busy schedule), I agree with the reviews saying that the game is still lacking a lot, but I enjoyed the game and atmosphere still. I do not like some of the game elements, but the core gameplay is still the same (albeit degraded somewhat). At the end of the day, I enjoyed the game and that is what matters to me. I can always stop when the fun stops.
Recently finished Elden Ring in the seamless co-op mod with my brother, and it was an absolutely amazing experience. Felt a lot like an MMO with great, deep combat, something we've always wanted. Now we've moved onto Craftopia. It's janky as hell and wildly unbalanced but it's a ton of fun, much more of the direction we wish Minecraft had gone.
Looking forward to Baldur's Gate 3 releasing soon as well as Atlas Fallen and Armored Core VI.
I have been playing Ultimate Doom with the Crispy Doom port.
Ultimate Doom is just original Doom with an extra chapter.
Crispy Doom provides numerous QOL features such as widescreen, improved UI and resolution (while remaining very pixelated), mouse support, and vertical aiming.
These optional features are not enough to break the game or make it too modern, but have the effect of making the game feel as it felt to me in the early 90s -- fresh, dynamic, and brutal.
I now realize that I never played any further than the first episode which was available to me as shareware. I am now on the second episode which, to me, is entirely new.
I have used cheat codes here and there because secrets and mazes are not great for me because they require memorization, which is terrible for my ADHD. There are also occasions in which the game's solution for difficulty is to throw dozens of enemies in a very confined space, I don't think that's interesting at all. So I cheat.
Doom is remarkable for levels that feel alive, frenetic, challenging, and varied. Each of the NPCs is dumb as a door, but also very different in behavior, power, and speed, and the way they are positioned and grouped is genius.
In a way, Doom is like pinball. Every piece of the puzzle is trivial and unremarkable, but the way they interact with each other makes for infinite variation.
pokemon go & ingress - pretty much staples of my life even though i hate all the new stuff (kinetic capsules are terrible idea, pogo moves to become a pay to win, etc). i still get the necessary gamification outside, otherwise i would stay in my cave and never leave.
strangers of paradise - i am always looking for soulslike multiplayer games and this is pretty good. it is a final fantasy title, so plotwise it is of course painfully stupid, but the battle is there and even if you died on a boss you keep your exp and can even level up a profession. i can't stress enough how satisfying is that you can just continue trying to beat the boss and level up, that is a dose of dopamine i crave, so for that reason only i totally recommend this game. and i can play with 2 friends, and it has insane amount of professions to try, and some bosses are nasty but nothing impossible, and the pc port is actually working, they patched it already and it runs smoothly. i lost hope for wu long, and this game does for me everything i was expected to get from a team ninja title.
path of exile - diablo as it should be. and it is FREE. if you love diablo-likes and never tried poe, drop everything and give it a shot. the amount of content, builds, leagues - you have no idea how big it is and how well it is. for free!!!!!!!! i played for years and still think i didn't saw everything.
I just finished Warlock's Tower, which was low stakes puzzle game with a Gameboy aesthetic. Some of the puzzles were tooooough but it was pretty fun.
I think next for me is What Remains of Edith Finch or Coffee Talk. If anyone has a recommendation between the two let me know!
Lost Vault.
Really loving it!!! It’s my favorite idle RPG.
Fortress Kings.
This scratches The itch when I wanna build and help an aliance.
Dice World: meh. Something to play when you’re bored I guess.
Lords & Knights: another building/fighting game. It’s fun if you want something easy to play.
I have a lot more but I’ll stop here.
Played Enter the Gungeon for my roguelike podcast this past week.
It was good to have on some friends who have put 300+ hours in so we could get the full breadth of experience. It took me a while to cross over the 20 hour gameplay mark, but I think Gungeon was just too skill based for my co-hosts. We are officially too old now?
In any case there was a distinct split between those who like games similar to Elden Ring or Dark Souls and Enter the Gungeon. The aspect of boss attack pattern memorization, constant dodging, and accumulated skill all build up in tandem.
Overall I liked Gungeon once I got over the first 10 hour hump, but I'm not sure it's a game for everyone these days. It's certainly worth a play and if you don't think you'd enjoy that kind of gameplay, you'd know sooner rather than later I think.
Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S
It's Picross. It has Vocaloid songs while you do puzzles. It's what you'd expect. Not a huge fan of Picross, I prefer the one where you draw rectangles(Pix-a-blox?) instead of Picross.
Lost Epic
A Metroidvania Dark Souls kind of game. It's fine. It gets tedious at some points, fun at others. Mostly tedious though.
Speaking of Metroidvanias though, I just finished the 2nd Ori game yesterday.
I like the ideas of the first game more, but the combat in the 2nd game is much better.
My list is a bit funny, because most of my gaming is of the "casual" variety.
Magic: The Gathering Arena: I've been playing Magic tabletop for years with friends. being almost exclusively F2P has made progression slow, but I've played since release, and spend in-game judiciously. I love that I can scratch my competitive MTG itch somewhat easily.
Pokemon TCG: My 6yo daughter is a pokemon fanatic who recently got cards for the first time and wanted to learn. I collected cards as a kid but never played, so we learned together. Fast forward a couple of months, she's built a deck from her own collection and destroys me. I've picked up their online client to get more familiar with the metagame, and tournament decks. I'm hoping over the next year or so my daughter wants to continue to play, and we can build toward tournament-level decks, and mastering them.
Coming from MTG, Pokemon is crazy. the resource constraints are so wildly different, as is "interaction" that the adjustment is a bit challenging.
Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms: It was nice to find an idle game in a skin i liked. I open the game 2-3 times a day to set my team to go. It's fun opening loot and optimizing positioning.
Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus: This was on sale during the Steam 40k sale, and my first foray into the 40k games. I love turn-based tactics games, and I've only heard good things about this one. I love the way the game is laid out, and how the setting works with the mechanics of the game to make it feel right. Highly recommend to anyone who loves turn-based tactics games.
Soccer Kids (Alpha): This was an alpha demo of a turn-based tactics game with a soccer skin. Eastern European street soccer meets momentum-based movement. It's 1 full scenario outside of the tutorial, and definitely worth the 30 minutes of time I spent playing.
I picked up the remastered uncharted: legacy of theives edition for ps5 to finally check out the franchise. Its boring as shit! Its like the redone tomb raider only nit nearly as good. Its basically y a movie where you occasionally either mash triangle or ex, which i wouldn't mind if i found the movie compelling in any way.
I recently wrapped the entire Yakuza series, and it's among my all time faves. I love the stories and characters, even if the gameplay can be... inconsistent. I'd recommend Yakuza 0 even if you don't plan on ever playing any more.
On PC, I played The Case of the Golden Idol, which is a great short game.
On my phone, I've been playing Laya's Horizon (a Netflix game, unfortunately), which is just delightful.
You finished the entire series...for now. We have two new games in the pipeline! RGG is really cranking them out lately. Was Zero your favorite?
I'm psyched for the new one! I think Zero is my favorite because it was my first. I really enjoyed 4 and 5 (except for the whole Saejima prison sequence in 4), but by the time I played those I was pretty in love with the series so having such sprawling games to play was really satisfying.
I'm bouncing between three games at the moment, while feeling guilty about not finishing a fourth:
Diablo 4 (PC): I'm finding the story engaging but the playthrough tedious, if that makes sense. I feel like I can chalk it up to my build (the bone necro levelling hold on maxroll.gg). It seems to be a bit of a glass cannon with mana issues. With this build, I need to learn the bosses like I would the bosses for dark souls or elden ring. At first, I liked this idea, but after several hours, I feel like I should just pick elden ring back up for that gameplay.
Spiritfarer (Switch): this game's loop reminds me of stardew valley. However, the spirits you encounter early had sad stories, and were heartbreaking yet cathartic to send off. Some of the later spirits don't seem to have the same touch. And one, in particular, is annoying (although from the spoiler I read, I understand it's inclusion into the game). Interestingly, this game has been alot more engaging than diablo 4.
EVE Online (PC): I picked this game up after a several year break a few months ago. I've since joined a wormhole Corp. However, I don't know if they could hold their own without their alliance's help if their system is seriously contested. So far, it's been fun, although I feel like I have 15 - 20 years on everyone else in the corp. I know my character is almost as old as one of the members...
From the sidelines - Elden Ring (PC): this game is amazing, but I feel like it's too long. I only got up to Castle Sol before I dropped off the game again. I might wait for the DLC before I pick it back up again unless I can get some good invasions (which seems unlikely - I'm on PC).
Don't play D4 with a build guide. Just make builds using skills you want to try or that scale off of legendaries you already have. And run dungeons to unlock class specific imprint abilities. Be sure to carry around some spare yellow items that look like they'd be good once imprinted.
I haven't played since after the 2nd week because honestly I just found it boring, and the 40-50 lvl gap was a slog, but once you get to 50 and start power scaling with paragon points, it gets easier and more ARPG "ooo I made the screen explode" kind of gameplay.
How is J-space these days? I left the game around the time Blood Union started kicking everyone out and turning everything into rental systems. It was unfortunate seeing the WH culture dying out.
J-Space seems ok. When I first started playing eve (when wormholes were introduced to the game), my involvement was just day tripping in a drake to attack sleepers with a friend. After a while, I abandoned them to join a null sec block for years, so my experience with J-space has been pretty small.
My experience these days are that there's periods of no activity besides our corp (and sometimes not even then) separated by periods of roaming gangs hopping into our hole to kill us and most of the people in the corp turtling in their stations. By and large, we're pretty laid back. Has that been your experience before Blood Union started kicking everyone out?
We seem to be very much an industry/pve corp that's based out of a wormhole. We're part of an alliance that's more pvp oriented, though, and have opportunities to participate in or defend against evictions and other types of pvp.
Yeah, that sounds about how it was as I left. During the golden era before that though there were tons of corps (Hard Knocks, Adhoc, NoHo, Ragnarock, Surely) with activity in all timezones. Everyone was red, but we kept diplomatic channels open and would work together on evictions (especially when any goons tried to move into j-space). Turtling up and refusing to fight in a C3 or higher was pretty much grounds for immediate eviction.
I’ve been playing destiny.
It’s pretty fun gun gameplay if you have friends.
But it is a terrible experience for new players since it doesn’t tell you any lore, or really explain how the game works. Unless you have a friend to help you out.
Add on top of that some scummy monetization they’ve been doing lately…. But I still have fun regardless with just my friends.
I got consumed with nostalgia and started playing nethack again. This game was one of the first games I played, and amazingly it is still under some level of active development.
OMORI
Combat is reminiscent of Earthbound.
Beautiful art-style and music.
An engaging story and memorable characters.
Gives emotional damage.
I'm sad, but also happy to have experienced it.
Did you walk away unscathed?
Currently playing risk of rain 2 and loving it a lot. Unlocked all the characters and now going for mastery challenges ( finish the game on High difficulty with each character ). Unique playstyles for each character and lots of cool 'sidequests' make it very replayable despite having very limited monster variety.
But on high difficulty it really needs friends to play, which i lack. Still sometimes get good random matches.
After finishing elden ring, was waiting for dark souls 3 on sale but it costs twice the price of elden ring in my region and only got a 50% off. Will have to wait for atleast 80% off to afford it.
I've recently began to play Brigadors again, I first started playing it right after getting my Deck which was... an experience.
This game is meant for bigger screens than the Deck feels like, and trying to aim with a joystick, is honestly a pain, I'd say you need a trackpad at a minimum.
Still early into the Freelance mode, I remember favoring Agrav vehicules, but I think I prefer Mechs nowadays (the Oxybeles in particular, Railgun + Chaingun + EMP is pretty good).
Gameplay-wise, it's fairly simple: you're thrown into a district, and have to clear at least one objective to proceed (destroy the orbital guns, remove all targets, remove most enemy forces), with some marked building to make your job easier (depots to restock on ammo, comms tower to delay alarms for longer, and substations to cut the power lowering the panic walls if the alarm was raised and revealing enemies more clearly). Rinse and repeat until Solo Nobre falls.
The game itself is fairly repetitive, but replayability comes from your loadout, obviously the biggest change is the vehicle (trying to use a twitchy agrav like a slow and stompy mech is a bad idea, there's also the golf cart), but weapons also are important, I could replace my EMP with active camo to fully dive into drive-by destruction, at the cost of being significantly at a disadvantage in fights, or replace the railgun for a regular chain/minigun for more offence, at the cost of priority targets being harder to kill.
There's also how you handle missions, go straight for one of the objectives, try to bring the substations down/comms out as early as possible, or look for the small arms depot since you accidentally the one in the last district?
Overall, it's very much a game I recommend for quick plays of one mission or two at a time, including the deck if you can handle the small screen.
I've recently started a new playthrough of Monster Hunter World on PC. Already played 700 hours or so on my Xbox but since I've not been using my Xbox much I wanted to start a new file on PC because it's one of my all time favourite games and I love to just pick it up and do a couple online hunts. Love pretty much everything about it; great combat and enemies, and the environments are probably my favourite out of any game. Awesome OST too.