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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I started playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild last week. It's my first game of this type (I'm more of an Animal Crossing person) so I didn't know if I could figure out all the controls etc. but I am absolutely hooked. There's nothing like the rush of that first week playing an addictive game. Thank god I don't have children so I don't have to try to limit their screen time when I can't even manage my own.
There's still a long way to go before I'm truly proficient with weapons, but I'm getting there. It seems like a game that could last many months, so I'm trying to enjoy each little success without feeling like I have to hurry up and beat the game. What a joy to just roam around the easier parts of the kingdom and drop bombs on those dumb-as-rocks bokoblins! At first I thought I'd play without guidance but I admit I'm now sneaking occasional peeks at YouTube tutorials.
Actually, Animal Crossing does come in handy because I have one little amiibo coin from that game. Once a day I use it in BOTW and little Blaire the squirrel drops me some fresh meat and other goodies.
Edit: And may I add that it amuses me greatly to see Link written up there beside my name...
You could definitely spend a long time just playing Breath of the Wild. The world is vast with lots of detail for you to explore. I myself have been playing it for around 2 years pretty casually and am nowhere near 100% completing it. If you eventually decide to give Tears of the Kingdom a try, you might get lost in that game for even longer haha. Tears of the Kingdom adds even more detail to the world from BotW that it's honestly a little overwhelming just how much there is for you to explore and discover.
I recently finished Chained Echoes and had an absolute blast playing it!
It's got a good retro-RPG style and is strongly reminiscent of Chrono Trigger and Suikoden II, quite deliberately in the case of the former.
The writing is a little shaky here and there, and the plot relies on twists and turns a little too heavily, but at least it's not 1000% dull and predictable from the get-go, as you frequently update your understanding of the situation as various characters' motivations are revealed (even if some of those revelations are pretty buckwild).
The combat in the game is a competent remaining of classic turn-based, menu-based mechanics and depending on how much time you want to spend optimizing your party (and depending on which accessibility options you tweak) ranges anywhere from trivially easy to gruellingly tough. I personally played with things set as easy as possible and trained up a very powerful party because I enjoy that power trip, and I had a lot of fun getting my party set up just the way I wanted them.
There are a lot of systems in the game to engage with, and it strongly encourages exploration, so while 100%-ing the game isn't required to enjoy (I'm still missing a number of achievements myself), being thorough will give you the best reward for your purchase, I believe.
All in all, I'd rate it about a 7.5/10 and would recommend it to anyone that enjoyed playing early to mid 90s RPGs.
I adored this one. I thought the pacing was great and it really respected the player's time. Great soundtrack and gameplay systems as well.
It was definitely great! I played it back in December and absolutely loved it - it's not perfect but it's a really fun and exciting thing to have around. My biggest complaints were centered around the armor battles, which were just a bit more tedious than I liked - but they weren't frequently forced by any means so I got over it.
The story definitely took some... Interesting turns, but I was more frustrated that in my attempt to 100% the game, I was only able to get a few characters in the party towards the end, when I didn't have the patience to grind them or time in the story to get to know them. Still good by all means, I enjoyed the mechanics, especially around jobs.
Game sounded great so I went to add it to my Stream wishlist and discovered I actually already had. Guess I should finally pull the trigger on it.
Worth a play! I started playing it on my Steamdeck and found myself constantly going back to it. Over the winter break I finished it. It's a fantastic game for the Steamdeck as it is very well optimized and uses very little battery.
Story was interesting as the parent comment mentions. Takes a bit to get going. Combat was fun and interesting. And they just added a New Game +, so it might get me to come back.
It's perfect for steam deck, that's what I played it on.
It's so good, do it and don't look back
Factorio: Space Exploration
Last two updates: https://tildes.net/~games/1896/what_games_have_you_been_playing_and_whats_your_opinion_on_them#comment-9ms5 and https://tildes.net/~games/17wz/what_games_have_you_been_playing_and_whats_your_opinion_on_them#comment-9f7z
My biter problem seems mostly taken care of, I say hesitantly. The autoglaive array I have in solar orbit seems to have shut down at times due to inactivity from what I can tell. Not sure if it will last, but it's hopefully a step in the right direction. It came right as I started automated production of shield emitters, although I hadn't been able to start rolling them out before this.
I spun up material science level 4, pretty easily at this point, didn't require a lot of new facilities to support. I think I may try to check off the last level 4's I have (I think bio and astro?) and move on to the endgame.
At this point I'm really running my existing mining production to the max, not sure how much more I can push it with one planet-per-resource core miner setups. I have production modules in each step of the chain, speed modules, fully powered, etc., and at this point I don't think I'm getting much more total production unless I start colonizing more planets.
So I started, last night, set up a base on a planet that has core oil mining (not using it yet), but also a lot of iridite on the surface, which I started mining and sending up to bolster my strained production of heavy girders. I think this is the right step now, supporting my existing production chains with more total raw materials. Tricky part I've found in scouting planets is the huge ramp up in delta V, it seems like all the core mining planets with resources I want have delta V's magnitudes higher than my existing ones. May have to figure out some spaceship-based approach for transport, presuming those are more efficient.
In the meantime I have also been playing Jagged Alliance 3, the long awaited good sequel to Jagged Alliance 2, a 90s turn-based tactical (and strategic) RPG where you control mercenaries trying to complete a mission in a war-torn country.
The game is good and very fun, I played it until 4am in two consecutive nights. I'm right around the Refugee Camp triggered mission thing, which from what I can tell is an act-break in the game. I've got my whole squad kit out with modified long-range rifles, and haven't had much difficulty lately in dispatching of enemies.
The team did a great job developing the game, it feels very similar to JA2, but with better graphics and a fresh UI, it's also nice playing the game at a base-level without the decades of added features and quirks that JA2 1.13 has become. Can't wait to see what mods and expansions and the like add to the game, I think it's going to be a big game for that over time.
Just started my first K2 run for Factorio. My god the spaghetti "starter base". Eventually want to do a SE+K2 run too.
I was really enjoying getting into Path of Exile, it's been a really fun monster grinder with cool mechanics. Until an unannounced patch last night completely broke Linux comparability and now it won't start :( Here's hoping they fix it asap
We're at the quietest point of a league right now which is when they roll out their "riskier" patches so that any bugs can be fixed for the next league launch. I think the last patch was a fairly large graphics processing overhaul.
Yeah, thankfully some googling took me to the subreddit, which had a workaround where I made a file and pasted some code. I also had to redo all my graphics settings to get stable FPS, but that makes sense for a graphics overhaul
Yeah the subreddit can be negative and toxic but they're usually very helpful. Are you following a guide or going blind?
Went blind originally, half-so as I got some general tips from a friend who's played a ton. Started to hit the slowdown that would become a wall, so I opted to create a new char and follow a guide. Currently on a SRS witch blasting through content, pretty fun!
A friend lent me his Quest 2 headset for the weekend - so I bought Half Life: Alyx and have been playing it. It's really an excellent game! I think the best part is all of the attention to detail put into making exploring and manipulating the environments a joy.
My favorite things to do:
I think if I play enough to the point where I'm not terrible with the pistol it would feel very rewarding to be able to consistently hit targets without aiming down the sights. There's real skill involved there. I look forward to when more people can play VR shooter games and the best players won't just have great tactics, map knowledge, and comms. They'll actually have professional sports shooter level hand-eye-coordination.
Oh, I was able to stream my gameplay to a friend over Discord. I used the built-in speakers and mic in the headset. That was pretty cool.
I just cant stop myself from playing Eu4. Maybe a few years late but I've finally collected enough of the infamous DLC to play some of the more interesting regions outside of Europe within the game. Just a great time and a fun way to learn some history about the regions by doing a Wikipedia read of the states I want to play next.
For those familiar, I'm currently doing my first ambrosian republic run on Milan and having a blast. It's such a strong government type and in some ways makes you appreciate what a real life republic has over what used to be the predominant form of government in Europe with feudalism/monarchism. It's massively simplified of course but it does trigger my brain to think in more concrete terms where the benefits for an elective republic come in over a monarchy. Seeing that tangibly is just a bit of fun and unique to paradox interactive games in my experience.
I can't believe it has almost been 10 years since it came out. It has been my default activity whenever I have been bored. I have an embarrassing amount of hours played, but it is almost meditative for me to play at this point.
Desperately trying to get into Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
For the life of me I just can't seem to grok the appeal yet. It doesn't help that I'm not big on open world zombie survival crafting games, so maybe this game just isn't for me in that respect? I'm a big fan of other traditional roguelikes like Cogmind and Caves of Qud, but CDDA feels obnoxiously clunky in comparison so far.
I played that for a while but i never got far. I'm thinking of going back and making it super easy and trying to figure stuff out again.
I'm going to try testing our running around with some debug cheat modes on just to see what's possible without being bogged down by food or water requirements.
The lore for the game sounds super zany and I want to experience that instead of base building medical supplies for 20 hours to get started.
Yea that sounds like agood idea. Check out vormithrax on YouTube. He has some cool let's plays that might give you some goid tips and tricks while playing.
Vorm's videos are amazing and really the only reason I've gotten as far as I have currently.
Though I think I get more entertainment factor from Rycon roleplay videos of CDDA where I can just munch on a bowl of popcorn and not have to think too critically.
I'm near the end of Final Fantasy VII: Remake, which is... interesting. I never played the original, so basically everything here is new to me. The pacing is really dreadful- both in the story (it swaps between extremely compelling and clearly filler) and the actual gameplay (you'll do one battle, get to run down a hallway, then be forced to walk around a corner for a cutscene, do that, then have to walk around some more. It never lets you just do your thing.
I'm nearly done and I'll finish, but it feels... wasteful? Hard to pin down. It gets incredibly compelling moments from the original, but doesn't really improve on them.
I don't remember who said it (Zero Punctuation, maybe?), but they suggested "remake mediocre games, not good ones". It's nice to have a fresh coat of paint on older games, but the things that need it the most are games with good ideas that never had their time in the sun. I don't think FFVII falls into that bucket.
Given how convoluted and weird certain parts of FF7's story are (mostly backstory and world building outside of Midgar), I actually think it was kind of perfect for a remake.
Unfortunately, I don't think having the guy who does Kingdom Hearts heading the project was the way to go. Instead of streamlining the story, everything was similar, but with shuffled around story beats and some awful new narrative introductions.
I managed to get in one run of Slay the Spire in over the last week (Silent A18) and actually won which was fun. I'm working through the ascensions to try and beat A20 on all characters. No heart runs for me as I don't really enjoy that fight and trying to build a deck specifically with it in mind.
Slowly but surely beat it on my laptop and I also have a save on my phone where I'm doing the same. I'll eventually try mods but probably have at least another 100-200 hours in the base game since I admit I'm not the best at it.
I'm also working through A20 on all characters. I've finished Watcher and Ironclad and am getting close with Defect (on A18 as well. Edit: got a good run and I'm in A19 now). What a great game.
What's your general strategy for Silent? I have yet to really click with that one, but it's the one that most people seem to love.
I have 2 goto builds for silent, either poison or shivs.
Poison is the safer build imo. You get the poison cloud card with 1-2 triple poison cards and 2 blurs, reduce the Deck size as much as you can and if you get it going your block will not reset. Dex helps a lot to stack up your Block and damage ticks passively while you can focus on defenses.
Shivs are mich mir fun but hard to get going reliably. The relic that increases damage of 0 energy cards is kinda core eben though you can also use the Power that increases shiv damage. 2-3 shiv generators are needed, strenght helps hugely and bob's your uncle :)
From discussions over on Reddit and some videos I watched of way better players I just tend to build my decks around whatever comes my way in the first 1.5ish acts. Usually try to go more attack-heavy in the early parts of the act, but if I see a Footwork, Well Laid Plains, Tools of The Trade or a Leg Sweep early on I tend to take them. I also saw someone give the general advice of removing a defend instead of a strike for your first card removal and I've noticed that it does help in giving you more damage early on since you start with Survivor.
I've also had a lot more fun trying to go for discard synergy decks. I used to not find it as fun, but when the deck clicks it can feel really cool cycling through so many cards.
Lately I have been play testing my own board game, that I came up with a month ago. It is not really original, but it combines several aspects from different games and genres. The boardmap is made of hexagonal tiles, similar to Catan. There are several tile types, each has a unique resource and speed. You start with a unit and a town and then process to colonise the needed tiles for better resource access. There are 2 main units: pawn and knight. Knight has a higher movespeed. This combined with a uneven map imposes great importance on the movements of your units. You win by capturing the enemy Starting Town. So even if you are loosing/at a disadvantage you can still win by outmanevouring your opponent.
We are having lots of fun playing and tweaking the rules/costs, so the game is more easy to play and more balanced.
As a hobby mapper it also gives me opportunities to come up with new map layouts for the game which I enjoy quite a bit.
I've been trying to play Okami HD, keyword "trying." It's just not a very enjoyable game, which surprised me because it seems to be regarded quite highly. Its artstyle and ost are nice, and the exploration and story can occasionally be fun, but overall it feels like a total slog. The best phrase I can use to describe it is that it "overstays its welcome." It takes so long for things to get moving in the game between all the NPCs saying tedious things, especially Issun. The game would be vastly better with like 90% less Issun dialogue. The combat is pretty weak too, almost every enemy just gets facerolled by Rosaries. I'm not incentivized to fight anything that isn't story critical because I've just never felt weak, "underleveled," or anything even close to that.
It's tough, I really wanted to like it because I've heard it's a cool game, but I'm at a point in my life where I just can't be bothered to spend time playing a game that doesn't motivate me to continue.
Anyone feel the same about Okami?
That's exactly how I felt about Okami. I so wanted to like it. Zelda is my favorite game series--I was hooked with the original as a kid--and this game was billed as a Zelda clone. I bought it on the Wii and didn't like it, but I convinced myself it was because I hated the Wii controls. So I bought it again on the Switch when I learned that it had regular controls. But I came to pretty much the same conclusions as you. Everything about it was boring other than the art and the overall style/mood of the game. The combat wasn't fun and the never-ending dialogue was unbearably dull. I forced myself to push a little bit into it, but like you said, it was a slog.
Even at the end of playing it a few years ago, I thought I'd try to keep pushing, but your comment has made me realize I'm 100% over it. I'd watch a movie version of it, though, if such a thing ever came to be!
I have been playing Cassette Beasts.
As a fan of indie development in general, I was following the devs for a long time and had really built up some anticipation for its release. However, on initial release, I was a bit overcome with the usual dread of "What if it doesn't live up to the expectations I now have of it?". I decided to leave it a month and see what others thought of it.
Last week, I finally grabbed a copy - my word - it really delivered. It really captures everything I ever loved about Pokemon and managed to overcome a lot of that series shortfallings. Moving around the world is not a chore, but a fun and interesting part of the game. Battles are often not trivial and take at least some level of strategizing. No grinding is really required; in fact, it's better if you don't. I found that the natural level progression from just following the story kept the "bosses" and "minibosses" challenging.
The soundtrack is just phenomenal too. I could see it being a bit divisive but, for me, it is super catchy and complimented the emotions I felt at various parts of the game perfectly. I love that it features vocals in the soundtrack too.
I just got this yesterday, and wow is it fantastic. People told me that if I enjoyed the original Pokemon games, I'll love this, and I could not agree more. It's - IMO - a strictly superior classic Pokemon that also does an insanely cool job themeing itself perfectly.
And yeah, the soundtrack is something else. Stellar performance.
Glad to hear you've enjoyed it as well. I hope this picks up more as a standalone or as a franchise, because I would like to see a bigger community around it - especially with multiplayer battling on the way.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The exploration bug that bit me during BOTW is back in full force with this version. I absolutely love the small quality of life changes they've made between versions; most notably being better able to see where shrines are due to their green & blue swirls, and the fact that they mirror the locations of the lightroots. The weapon fusing also opens up the gameplay in a way that I no longer hoard my better weapons to instead reuse the low-level/starter ones "because I might need the better weapons later!"
The only downside is that my son is also having a blast playing this game so I need to trade-off my playing time with him. Fortunately I have 35 years of experience playing LoZ games so I can stay farther ahead in the story than him, even though he has the benefit of playing through summer break while I have to go to work.
I was alternating with my son for a while, but he beat the game in the first week with about 9 hearts and hardly any stamina. Just flurry rushed everything. It took me 2 and a half months to finish the story, just wrapped it up yesterday. Amazing game from start to finish.
My son's the same way with that youthful reaction time. Despite my best efforts I can't get the timing right at all to do a flurry rush, so I'm making my way through the game as a stealth archer instead.
I am struggling through this game. I have finished three dungeons and maybe 35 shrines.
I am not really engaging with the build stuff mechanics unless the materials are right there. I am the type of person that saves all expendable items in games, and I don't want to use zonite when I could use it for my battery expansion instead.
I pretty much avoid combat as much as I can. Approaching random camps I'm finding the spoils are not worth the resources to fights the mobs. And fighting the mobs is not fun for me. It feels like constant menu management and I need to repeatedly fuze arrows or change weapons that break after one and a half kills. Speaking of kills, I am really tired of getting one shot constantly. My armor is for sure weak, but I have 12 hearts and it's just not fun. I started playing this after getting through Dark Souls and Bloodborne and now I am just longing to go back to reliable, smooth combat. Investing in building and using stronger weapons has improved things though.
I feel like I'm constantly playing this game the wrong way. I'll end up places like the stormy sky island and I can't tell if I'm underleveled, undergeared, or just haven't set up the world properly with the quest prerequisites.
I am enjoying the game a lot more on weekends when I can put in a few hours and not feel rushed. On weeknights I have about an hour of time and I just feel like I'm constantly spinning my wheels not getting very far or having fun which makes me anxious about how I'm spending my time.
I will definitely finish the main quest line and do a little more exploring. I am enjoying just thinking about this while and after playing it.
The mobs definitely hit harder in TOTK versus BOTW. Two things have helped me so far: unlocking a couple of the Great Fairies to upgrade my armor, and cooking 5x Hearty Truffles to get a ridiculous number of extra hearts.
Dream Swing
It's a $3 dollar grappling hook game made by the same dev as Remnants of Naezith (which I own, but haven't really played yet). You get 5 minutes to collect as many of the 3 respawning orbs around the arena as you can with the 5 game modes being Default Seed, Random Seed, Weekly Seed, Default Seed with no timer, and Random Seed with no timer. I think I like it because it's an open air area where everything can be grappled onto and you can go at your own pace, whereas a lot of other grappling hook (and parkour) games feel more like skill check obstacle courses where you have to go along the intended route or break the physics even further beyond the dev's intentions. This feels more free flow and expressive if I were to put it, something I would replay alongside Cyber Hook.
Murder by Numbers
The first thing I'll say is that this game is exhausting if you're not familiar with picross. Any piece of evidence is accompanied by a picross puzzle and the last two cases throw constant 15x15 puzzles at you. The game does offer easy mode and hints, but activating those means that minor scenes of Scout's memories are locked away unless you avoid using them. The third case apparently also has a secret puzzle that prevents S-ranking it if you don't find it.
The second is that it's a pretty bog-standard, bright murder mystery story with an inclusive cast unless you choose to look at it as an unintentional critique of typical amateur detectives. Honor has no experience investigating besides playing a TV detective, but she barges onto crime scenes anyways with her one-of-a-kind robot buddy. This leads to stuff like regularly disobeying the local detective (ex. sneaking onto a crime scene despite being a murder suspect to prove her innocence faster; hacking into police databases for information), invading everyone's privacy (ex. looking through a friend of her best friend's finances because a murder happened nearby; "If you're innocent, you have nothing to hide!"), consistently calling a preemptive arrest for the first red herring suspect that matches the evidence (ex. a shady but otherwise innocent-of-murder loan shark panics because of her reputation in getting the wrong person (he's the second person in the case Honor accuses too after she got the first one wrong); she threatens an arrested suspect who she knows is innocent by telling them they'll be found guilty if they don't help find the true culprit). It's not as if Honor is blind to the breach of privacy aspect either because Scout innocently scans her measurements in Case 1 to see if she can move inside a vent and she tells him to delete that information the moment she finds out. It just leaves a bad taste because Honor is an unlicensed investigator who looks through everyone's things without permission or protocol and constantly oversteps the law, something that does get called out by the detective and a lawyer with valid criticism, but gets brushed aside by her because she's after the truth (or the thrill of finding the truth anyways).
My friends and I just picked up Ember Knights which just came out of early access. It’s a super fun rogue-lite game. Think Hades meets Dead Cells, in the opposite way that Have a Nice Death mixed them. Plus, multiplayer co-op for up to 4 players. I’ve been having a blast with it. Oh, and it runs flawlessly on Steam Deck if that’s your thing.
I played this a while ago with a few friends and it's just a blast to play with others. On your own it's still good, but as a group it's amazing just trying to one up each other on the in between round accolades.
Been spending lots of hours playing Project Zomboid. Fantastic game I'd recommend to anyone.
Recently picked up a gacha game called Snowbreak. Division style shooter with anime girls
I've been a zomboid fam for a couple years now and alwayd come back to it, especially after updates. I also highly recommend it. It is such a great survival simulator. The devs are awesome too. Even if you're not into zombie games, it really is tons of fun, solo or multiplayer.
I was trying to get my Pokemon Trading Card Game save moved over from my Gameboy Color to my Miyoo Mini and just wasn't having any luck, so eventually just decided to play something I had already on my Mini.
Picked up my Dragon Warrior 3 (GBC) save instead and ended up playing that for about 10-15 hours, which got me thinking about JRPGs in particular.
I've kind of always regarded myself as a JRPG hater, but thinking about it a little, I realized I've completed Dragon Quest 4 on DS many years ago, have played about 45 hours of Dragon Quest 8 on 3DS (and intend to play more), as well as played about 20 or so of 3 on Gameboy, in addition to the fact that I've been playing Persona 3 Portable for about 8 years now, on and off. I've actually played a decent amount of JRPG stuff and I don't actually hate them, what I actually hate is the Final Fantasy series. They were my first exposure to the genre and a few years ago, I completed Final Fantasy 6 as part of a challenge and absolutely hated it.
There's no real point to the above paragraph, but it did make me realize I was ready to pick up Persona 3 Portable again. So I cracked out my Vita and picked up where I left off; did about 20 levels of Tartarus and am now on the 202nd floor, jumping back out again to enjoy the Visual Novel part of the game. I really love this game and am quite excited to eventually start Persona 4 Golden in about 3 years...
I also started playing OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe), a game I've been meaning to play for some time now. I got the itch for a City Builder/Management game after teaching my oldest how to play Sim City on SNES and was looking for something of the genre to play on my Vita/PSP, as haven't felt like using my computer or Steam Deck lately. Thought about Sim City 2000 on PSX, but ultimately decided to try the OpenTTD port for Vita and am having a great time of it. It hasn't been updated for 4 years, but still works well enough that I'm enjoying my time with it.
Cultic which is a classic Doom style FPS with great movement, mechanics and weapons. There is a good story too especially if you find and read the notes/lore.
Very good reviews all around which is difficult to do these days.
Jagged Alliance 3 has been really fun. The combat is very XCom-like, but it really shines with its 90's/early 2000's themed humor, story and the voiced banter between the large cast of mercs. Kalyna's banter is amazing.
I gave it a look this weekend and was absolutely blown away with just how well it all fits together. It was literally a click to get into a game and a few seconds later I'm pinned down by a tank and out of nowhere a friendly helo swoops in and the door gunners nail it with RPGs. And that's the moment blocky battlefield had me hooked.
By the end of that match I got a feel for the gunplay, movement, every class and a good chunk of vehicles. Players are surprisingly friendly when it comes to healing and support. I'm never more than a minutes run from action. There's enough progression paths to keep me changing up play-styles. And I can go full Bad Company on an entrenched position. But most importantly, it's not wasting my time, storage, money or bandwidth with needless fluff.
There are a few maps that could use some work and some more options with heavy/indirect weapons would be nice but overall its like you said: These devs are putting in the effort where it matters and the end product shows.
I recently got my hands on a retro handheld emulator and I've been diving into the extensive backlog of GBA games. I've been playing the following:
1. Open Season
This game had my jaw on the floor! The sprites are so cute and well-animated, especially considering that this game was developed in what -- 2005?
Such an amazing little platformer. Highly recommend!
2. Advanced Wars 2 - Black Hole Rising
This is one of those games that will forever be timeless imho. Great little strategy game, and it can really suck you in!
3. Mission Impossible - Operation Surma
Haven't played this one much but it seems to have great stealth mechanics implemented from what I could see in a cursory playthrough
4. Kim Possible 3 - Team Possible
Another great little platformer. Great graphics and mechanics :)
There's other games I want to get to, eventually, like Pokemon or Harvest Moon, but that's an update for later!
I sunk 16 hours in Techtonica this weekend, it's a lot of fun. It plays a lot like Satisfactory, with shades of Dyson Sphere Program. Weirdly, it made me reinstall Satisfactory and I'm playing that now.
Overall I'd recommend the game to anyone who is a fan of factory builder games.
Finally finished Final Fantasy XVI on Friday. Took me about 97hrs over 3 weeks, which is the fastest I've ever completed a Final Fantasy entry, or really any JRPG. Typically takes me months or years, if I finish them at all.
I enjoyed it. Combat was fun enough. The story and lore of the world kept me intrigued and interesting (though I definitely had some questions about things that either went unanswered or poorly answered). I like that many of the characters, including many major non-playable ones, were developed over the course of the story and revealed their motivations and such. The pacing I thought was a little off in terms of all the sidequests, but that was just more annoying than anything.
I will say that for an FF, the music was just OK. I mean it was good, well composed, but very little was memorable.
Not my favorite FF entry, but not my least favorite either. Solidly in the middle and thoroughly enjoyable.
Why is Super Auto Pets so addicting? It's so simple and not exactly new but since I "finished" Slay the Spire I've been looking for a new "meeting game", that is, something I can play during meetings without it being too obvious lol. Tried Monster Train but it felt a bit off, even though it's still pretty good! If anyone else has some meeting games I'm happy to hear them!
I am a tech nerd - I have a gaming desktop pc but just recently got a surface pro type portable, and I’ve been impressed by what it can run (albeit, on the lowest settings at 1280x800)!
Ive been playing Yakuza 0, MGSV, and just installed the standalone Dishonored 2 expansion. Spider-Man crashes when I boot it though.
I love open world immersive sim type games so I am having a blast!
I just started playing Diablo 4 and the combat feels a lot like Diablo 3. Though, the bosses feel a bit different, I can't put my finger on it, but maybe it's how face smashing bosses doesn't work as well?
I'm playing as a druid on... I think it's called veteran? It's the harder of the 2 starting difficulties. I barely beat X'fal, then went exploring right after the prolog ended... the second boss I fought was the broodguard which kicked my butt - gave up after 4 tries lol, the 3rd never killed me as I was able to run away (ok the Woodsman may not have been a boss but he kicked my butt like one!) I heard leveling is a grind, but it hasn't been grindy to me yet. I'm not really that far in yet, so maybe that'll change?
I got the game on launch day and only finished the campaign last week. Contrary to people complaining online, I am having more fun in the endgame, now that I started on Nightmare difficulty.
It also doesn't feel grindy, mostly because I don't chase min-maxing. I just enjoy blowing shit up and expertly kiting dozens of powerful mobs when my coop partner dies. Any shiny loot that I get is simply the cherry on top.
It probably helps that I also play on average 1h per day, so I don't have time to get burned out by the game.
I had the opposite experience. I've played D1-D4 and invariably at some point I start feeling like "what am I doing with my life" / feel like I'm playing cow-clicker. Usually these has taken hundreds of hours, but with D4 it happened pretty much after the campaign ended (well, before that but I had the carrot of finishing the game to chase).
There's just so many areas where Blizzard just doesn't respect the player's time - horse cooldowns, long skill cooldowns, long dodge cooldowns, timer to leave dungeons, spending more time sorting/filtering gear than actually playing the game. Recent patch made the enemies take longer to kill so now you spend more time just running away waiting for your skills to recharge.
I've dropped it for now and will probably check back in, in 6mo or so.
Oh yeah,that makes sense! I feel like I play the same way, I'm too casual to do more than play for fun and nice drops are just a bonus. I could care less how long it takes me to kill a boss or how many times I die.
I had some time off and got to really use my steamdeck for once and had a tactics game kick. With the last steam sale I was looking at Triangle Strategy and Tactics Ogre Reborn. I was leaning towards tactics ogre from the start, as I had really enjoyed final fantasy tactics back in the day. I had tried tactics ogre but it didn't grab me like FFT did and it was always in the back of my head to come back to it. Reading the reviews, I saw a lot of complaints about triangle strategy's story being too long between battles and dragging the game down.
I ended up getting tactics ogre and was enjoying it up until around chapter 3. The voice acting was amazing and environments looked good. I am not going to lie that I really did not like the unit designs, I've always been more partial to pixels rather than smoothing them out into vector art style. From what I read, tactics ogre did a good job modernizing the gameplay, but it really wasn't enough for me.
There were times when I did the throw away training battles and set the AI to auto in order to get to the next level cap. I put the steam deck down and watched it play out for 5 minutes, glad I didn't have to waste time on a throw away battle, and, also wondering why I am watching the computer play the game for me. In addition, the story I felt took some turns that didn't make sense to me at times and it just lost my interest.
So I put it down and saw triangle strategy was still on sale and grabbed that. I have to say, wow what a difference. First off, triangle strategy does the more modern thing and shows you a lot more information ala fire emblem during gameplay. You can see movement ranges and which squares are in range and who they are in range of. Philosophically, the combat makes heavy use of positioning for height and pincer maneuvers, and every combat arena supports this in one way or another through the whole game. Every character feels useful throughout the game, even the ones that seem bad at first. The difficulty curve was great, I honestly think the game expects you to need to sacrifice characters to finish maps (they come back, no permadeath). Even the training battles all had some clever twist on mechanics to make them feel interesting.
Graphically the game looks great as well, great pixel feel to it and levels look great, spell effects look great, animations are great. The voice acting was painful to come from tactics ogre straight into this one, but over the course of the game I didn't mind it. Some performances are good, but it is very inconsistent. Tactics ogre reborn also had the edge in music as well, triangle strategy had a few nice tracks but wasn't as consistently good as tactics ogre.
What sold me was the story in triangle strategy. I guess you could think of it more as an RPG and tactics game. There is a lot of it between each battle, but I felt the plot was great all the way through. The game is phased such that you watch a series of cut scenes at locations, then walk around a map and talk to/find items (done in 5 min mostly), then cut scene into battle. At phases of the game you are faced with diverging plot points that are settled by your companions all choosing a path forward. You can attempt to persuade them in a direction, and they all stick to and are swayed by arguments that fit their personality. I felt like these choices were all great moral dilemmas throughout the whole game and am excited for another play through to see other routes.
So stepping back to compare the two I think that tactics ogre does what it was intended, to modernize an old game without losing it. I really would have loved them to do a graphic overhaul of the characters and spell effects in that game though. I can't really complain too hard and I do plan to come back to it. But in the end I really liked triangle strategy and think its a great game, maybe not 60 dollars good, but was definitely 30 dollars good.
I'm now on to try wartales to continue my tactics game kick that i'm currently on.
I've been playing Neon Chrome on PS4/5 for longer than I'm comfortable admitting, especially for it being as (relatively) simple a game as it is - I just cracked 100 hours last week and am on track to 150 already.
I go through cycles of playing nothing but this game and got DAM does it scratch an itch. I'm a sucker for cyberpunk, and two-stick shooters/bullet hells are a lot of fun IMO.
Outside of that, the Borderlands series (including Wonderlands, but less so) are my jam, along with Generation Zero (which is awesome and you should check it out if you haven't already).
I'm NOT a fan of RTS/lore-heavy games - I typically don't have that much time to actually sit down and play, so I like to get to the action quickly or at least not spend a ton of time digging through text or NPC interactions to get to the next portion of the game.
Finally sat down and finished the first 2 Alan Wake games and the DLCs in prep for Alan Wake 2. There were a lot more starting threads that lead to Quantum Break and Control there than I realized. American Nightmare with its timeloop story, and especially the DLCs and American Nightmare really establish the rules of the Dark Place/ Cauldron Lake and how Alan might be able to be a participant in Alan Wake 2 without immediately escaping the Dark Place. I had previously finished control and the AWE dlc, I am a little foggy on the details of how that ended up though so I might have to revisit that before Alan Wake 2 arrives, but I'm excited for October.
It's such a shame American Nightmares is so maligned for being both unlike the base Alan Wake game by fans but also being too much like the Alan Wake games for non-fans. It's such an interesting format for a video game that I've never really seen explored anywhere else, and it's actually a really solid title. It's certainly more memorable pound-for-pound than the base game for me.
From a recommendation in a previous post I recently bought Against the Storm and have really been enjoying it. I'm trying to stay away from too many guides and game info to sort of explore, learn and get better with each iteration on my own. I sure I'll need help eventually but I thought it would be cool to work solo as far as I can get.
I also just bought Dave the Diver. Super fun game and worth checking out for something casual with a fun story and theme.
I've been playing Dave the Diver. it's fairly casual, I usually don't have this problem but actually some of the puzzles are TOO easy, they're more like minigames lol. But I really don't mind, I'm having a blast! The game has a great sense of humour, the flavour animations have made me bust out laughing several times. It's also just fun to dive and catch fish so you can serve them in the dine n dash sections. I'd say that it goes at a good pace, building up to you having to manage a fair bit of things without you really realizing. I'll be sad when the ride is over. But yeah, it was definitely a pleasant surprise from the summer releases!
How is GTFO if you don’t have 3 eligible friends? I’ve had it on my wish list for a while but at best I’d be playing with two casual players.
Regarding the PSU have you tried jumping it? It’s pretty easy to verify yourself, just make sure everything is disconnected first.
https://www.silverstonetek.com/upload/downloads/QA/PSU/PSU-Paper%20Clip-EN.pdf
Not great with randos on mic, I might hold off for now. Thanks for the input.
I thought I had a cooked PSU a while back, but after testing it turned out to be the mobo, very upsetting. Data was fine though so didn’t lose anything. If you’re not backing up regularly, now is the time to start!
24TB! Holy moley data hoarder indeed.
Good luck with the trouble shooting, that’s a weird bug. Fingers crossed for it being the adaptor.
I've been bouncing back and forth between RuneScape getting ready for Necromancy to drop in two weeks and Halls of Torment. I'll occasionally pick up some CS:GO with some friends but knowing that CS2 is coming in a few months has kind of killed my motivation to play any till the update.
Right now the main game I've been getting into is Total War: Warhammer III; bought it during the summer sale and I've been going through, learning how to play and getting a feel for it. So far it's been pretty fun, I went through the tutorial and then started Realms of Chaos. Feels a little hectic sometimes, bad decisions that backfire, but my empire survives none the less.
Planning on possibly taking a break from it and playing a few games on my backlog, like Scarlet Nexus or Tales of Arise.
Warhammer 3 is a blast. Realms of Chaos is kind of garbage. Worth playing through once or twice but the best part of the game is definitely Immortal Empires. If you're ever looking to do a coop campaign let me know!
Heck yeah, once I get deeper into the game and feel like I fully understand the mechanics a bit more, I'm down!
Yeah definitely do that. Coop is a little weird. Because of how long battles take you usually make rules like auto resolving every battle unless it's a really important one meaning you design your armies differently and can't always be as aggressive.
Been bouncing back and forth between Age of Empires 2 DE on PC and Mass Effect LE on Xbox. Two of my favorite games that you can spend hours playing.
This week I have mostly been playing Snowrunner. It was on sale recently, and is also on Microsoft Gamepass. There's something very satisfying about spending hours slowly driving big trucks through muddy/snowy landscapes to get seemingly small tasks done, unlocking upgrade parts and new trucks and stuff along the way. It runs pretty great on the Steam Deck, although it does murder the battery pretty fast. I'm also playing it on my beefy desktop PC, which is a better experience as the UI elements are not optimized for a small screen, but it is nice being able to switch to the Deck when I need to.
God damn do I love the series. Started with Spintires and have played every game since then; lived Snowrunner so damn much I left a Steam review, which I flat out, do not do. Snowrunner is absolutely the culmination of a series that started with a great idea, but wasn't sure how to make a game around it, to what Snowrunner now is.
I spent 90 hours on that game and managed to fully complete Michigan. I've been back occasionally and made little bits of headway into Alaska, but need to jump back in and get further. Been thinking about doing that again recently.
And yeah, it was one of the first games I was looking forward to trying on my Deck. You can eek out a little more battery life if you lock it at 30fps and crank down your TDP to give you that constant framerate, but the battery life still isn't amazing.
This game is great in multiplayer as well. I have read complaints about 4 players having a lot of disconnects and issues, but when I played it was just with two people and it was a blast. We set some rules for ourselves to not reset our trucks unless as a last resort, which resulted in some hilarious piles of trucks at the bottom of hills as we kept trying to recover and losing the recovery trucks as well. I strongly agree with the other response that snowrunner is the game that puts the cap on mudrunners/spintires by including a fun game alongside the awesome mud and driving physics.
I look forward to trying that. I have no hesitation about recovering to the garage when playing by myself, but it sounds like it would be fun dragging each other out of the mud in multiplayer.
Been on a nostalgia bent lately and been playing Imperium Galactica II of all things.
I've been playing Rayman Redemption these past few days and I'm enjoying it very much. It's a fan-made remaster of an old 2D side-scrolling platformer (Rayman) from 1995, which was my favorite game growing up, even though it's before my time.
I especially like the level of detail that was put into the game; you can really tell that its creation comes from a source of passion. I've been wanting to play it for some time now and I'm happy I finally did.
Some levels from the (very artistically creative) original game have been enhanced, new levels were added, and the controls feel very smooth. Also, the game overall is much easier than the original (if you ever played it, you'll know it's very challenging), which I appreciate, because I personally despise having to re-play levels over and over again.
The awesome soundtrack was kept and so, the entire ambience of the original (which for me always felt quite relaxing for the most part) is preserved.
I could say more, but maybe this is getting boring to read.
I'm about half-way through, and it's been a very nice experience so far; if you like soothing 2D platformers (both musically and graphically) and want to unwind, I'd definitely recommend checking out this game!
Still playing The Division 2. Love that game, despite everything it's been through.
Lately Samurai Warriors 5, I liked Orochi Warriors 3 which I bought a long time ago and finally got around to playing a few months ago. I saw SW5 cheap at Gamestop so I got it. I just finished Fate/Extella Link and thought I’d keep my Musou game streak going.
I think it is fun but easy for a Japanese game. (Maybe the western version is easier.). I found normal mode wasn’t much of a challenge so I switched to hard for the beginning of Chapter 2 and made it all the way through the level but got killed by the boss. I don’t find it as addictive as I found the last game so I can play a little and then do something else.
I’ve been really into Everspace 2 lately. Since upgrading my PC, I’ve been able to run it on the highest settings and get pretty good frame rates. Typically I’m not into rpg / open world games like Everspace but something about the combat, movement, and variety keeps me playing. I highly recommend it!
The caribbean sea:
It's a funny/challenging game in the style of the organ trail. You get sent on quest to discover treasure or kill everything that moves, all while your crew is dying of scurvy. Also if you get this game please open setting and turn messages in a bottle on.
the Blaster Master Zero series. It's wonderful. It's a 16bit side scrolling and top down masterpiece.