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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 impulsive part of my nature won out and I ended up grabbing Baldur's Gate 3 far ahead of intended schedule. Spent the first ~8 hours in the character creation testing the myriad options - purchase justified. Eventually settled on a Drow Warlock and sinking my teeth in proper now. Really enjoying it all so far, particularly the RP parts which have a nice golden-era Bioware feel while offering more variety and humour.
On a technical note, I'm running on an Intel Arc A770 with i5-12400 and have found it to run surprisingly well, at least at this early stage in the adventure. Have it running at 4K on a mix of high/ultra settings with no noticeable dips in frame rate. Noticed some weirdness with hair textures in Vulkan but DX11 has been without issue so far.
It's been optimised rather well, probably because they'll be releasing this on multiple consoles too.
That's not to say it runs perfectly, but older or mid tier hardware is still very capable of running it at a respectable fidelity.
I've snagged a 4080 because of a small windfall and it runs incredibly well. The only graphical issues are clipping, mocap, or some other issues (sometimes my helmet doesn't show and I'm bald, strange glitch).
Enjoy! I've spoken about Baldur's Gate a couple of times on Tildes and I'm very much recommending it to anyone looking to pick it up.
Oh and don't be afraid to try something crazy, the terrain allows quite a bit of manipulation with clever use of spells, and Larian always makes stuff like Speak With Animals or Speak With Dead worth it so be sure to pick those up if you haven't. Other than that, just enjoy the game by choosing options your character would choose.
Though... Don't be put off by some oddly written responses, sometimes the negative responses are downright hostile even when you don't want to be hostile. Even if it's the only way to let someone down, the response to it is often friendlier than you'd expect.
I was the same as you, I bought it even though I virtually never buy games at full price. For instance, I haven't ever played Factorio since it never goes on sale, even though it would be right down my alley. However, I enjoyed Divinity Original Sin 2 a lot.
It's a great game but I've been feeling a sort of choice paralysis and haven't touched it since reaching the goblin camp. I've restarted the game thrice because I didn't like the character the first two times, then started fighting my way out of the camp for a couple of hours until I realized my group is too underleveled to pull it off completely (after initially trying a dialogue-based approach). So now I want to redo the entire thing, but using a diplomatic approach after all. I'm the type to save scum a lot in a game so I'm realizing that I will have to change my play style and just stick to whatever choices I make, rather than trying to find an arbitrary ideal path through the story, else I'll never finish the game.
Regarding performance I had to turn down the resolution to 900p using a GTX 1050 and it runs fine.
My friend: Factorio is life-changing, and worth every cent. Do yourself a favor and buy it.
I tried factorio recently after hearing a lot of hype from my programmer friends but damn it just feels like doing my day job of juggling different requirements and outputs. Very mentally exhausting to the point that it's not fun
This is exactly why I stopped playing. I'd rather get paid to refactor my spaghetti.
I usually play a lot like yourself in save scumming for the desired outcome, but my first play through of BG3 after I had some not desired outcomes I didn't know how to change I decided to mentally file away how I wanted things to go and try to work for it in the next play through.
About 120 hours I finished up the first run and I started the next. One thing that is blowing me away is, at least in act 1, how reactive the game is to your choices in terms of race/class and how you approach situations in general. The game notices a lot!
In terms of difficulty, I think getting to know the game engine a bit really makes a difference, there are a lot of creative solutions that you wouldn't think of at first to get through situations.
Sending the exploding barrels to camp and dropping them out ahead of time. Throw water and electrify it to funnel people, same with grease and then fire combo. The map has a lot of routes you can stealth to, the goblin encampment has many entrances and some rafters to climb around for example. Smash down walls with blunt damage etc. You can get to out of reach places with enhanced jump or flying. You can put people to sleep and auto crit them or sneak by them or pick pocket them.
If you are stealthing and one shot someone it won't alert nearby people. Invisibility lets you get by into a lot of areas. There are disguise self spells and abilities so you could make yourself look like a goblin to get into the camp. There are some powerful allies you can find that will let you summon them in in act 1 to help wreck an area.
You can blast people off cliffs or shove them off high areas to kill things immediately. In a play through with a friend I accidentally knocked a boss mob into a hole and killed it immediately. You don't get the loot from it but usually its not a big deal for it esp in act 1.
In combat, you can throw (throw command) any of the potions to heal several people at once. You can carry a candle around and drop it on the ground, then dip into it for extra fire damage. I always forgot to use elixirs and buffs, but they all last for a long rest, so you get a lot of life out of them and the game gives you more than enough to use frequently. Spells like hold person result in them being automatically crit. At level 4 all the chars get their feats, but I found the sharpshooter and/or great weapon master that give you -5 accuracy but +10 damage to be extremely helpful in low levels.
You will also meet someone that will let you respec your character and all the companion characters for 100 gp, you can do this at will, so you can constantly rebuild and try things out. 100 gp is a bit in act 1, but when I finished the game I had 45,000 gold on me unused. I guess what I'm saying is that there are a lot of approaches that aren't totally obvious in the game, but the door is wide open to try things and it really does let you know it knows what you are trying a lot.
Game is really my game of the decade, it is amazing.
And like other posters said, factorio is worth the price, so is satisfactory if you haven't tried that either, both great takes on the factory genre if you like it.
Did you explore the chapel to the north of the crash area at the beginning? There's a particular character to be found who will join your camp and allow you fully respec your characters for 100 gold a pop. Handy if you wind up not liking your class or build but don't want to restart the whole game.
I've been enjoying it as well, the character writing is standout. Particularly impressive to me how many variations and possibilities they've taken into account - no small feat in a game this size. I find that I'm legitimately invested in at least most of the characters (sorry, Wyll) and am eager to see their progression through the story. It took me some time to realize that each character is somewhat phrased as a puzzle to the player, one which can be prodded at as you find new situations and items in the story that nudge them one way or the other. Not all of the paths you can go down are good, so some consideration is required!
I, too, am playing a drow. I tried rolling a dwarf first but it didn't really feel like a dwarf between the voice acting and the written style of the dialogue options, kinda made me feel like I'd made a dwarf-shaped human. Rerolling drow but going rogue + urchin background let me feel right about being a bit smug and superior in the first half of act 1 but with an arc of coming around to the plights of the surrounding world and transitioning into kind of an anti-hero as any good drow campaign probably goes if you're not gonna be dedicated to full on Llolthian evil the whole way through.
Was a good reroll and I'm happy I did it.
Act 3 is gonna push your rig to its limits, but it will look amazing in 4k.
I've been doing the "patient gamer" thing, and have been going through my backlog of games that were recommended to me ages ago. Most recently, that's been Transistor (beautiful art, music, and game mechanics), and Alan Wake (only just started, but I can see the elements of this that seeded Control, which was a bloody masterpiece).
Transistor is one of my all time favorites, and definitely my favorite Supergiant game. The soundtrack I legitimately just listen to regularly it's so good, and the story is really deep when you finally understand it. Also I really liked the gameplay, which I have still yet to see in any other game yet.
How have you been liking it?
Just wrapped up the first playthrough; I very much enjoyed it!
I gave into the hype and bought Baldur's Gate 3. I'm not a huge gamer these days, just can't seem to focus on story-driven stuff. I blame myself and my social media habits for that. But with the limited hours I've put into BG3, I've had a lot of fun. I've always wanted to get into Dungeons and Dragons but never really put in the effort into finding a group and learning the mechanics. This game automates all of that for you and it's super fun exploring the world and engaging in the turn-based combat.
When I just want to mindlessly drive around and destroy stuff, I play BeamNG.drive. Calling BeamNG a game is a bit generous imo, it's still very much a physics simulator with some missions added on top. But man is it fun driving a supercar at 200mph and then crashing it into a wall and seeing how the various bits and pieces react. Or driving a "Subaru WRX" off the side of a mountain and seeing the body panels and wheels get ripped off as it rolls down the hill.
I'm still playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I actually got it on release day, but I clocked in only about 50 hours so far. This is because I've been very busy with life these past few months, but also because honestly I'm not really enjoying it that much, and this is coming from someone with about 250 hours on botw back in 2017.
In my opinion there are two ways a game can keep the player engaged: gameplay and story. Botw did it through gameplay and totk is doing the same, except it feels more like playing a botw expansion than a new game. Sure, there are new things and some old ones change, but it's not enough to make it feel fresh again despite having played botw over six years ago. It just isn't keeping me interested. The most fun I've had with the game so far is checking old places I liked in botw and seeing how they changed, but I'm already running out. I think I will start engaging more with the story from now on and just finish the game and be done with it. I'm kind of disappointed since the Zelda serie is my favourite of all time and I liked botw despite being a different kind of game from the previous ones.
I'm also planning on starting Nier: Replicant as soon as I finish totk as I bought it a few months ago but just haven't had much time to play.
I also bought TOTK on release day and... I think I played 5 hours, while having 110h in BOTW.
There are many reasons (most of them subjective) why I don't like the game, and I've been playing this series since Link's Awakening so I'm a bit sad that it's the first Zelda I 100% don't enjoy.
I’m with you there. I bought into the hype and was disappointed. It doesn’t capture the same magic as the flagship game now that the switch is 7 years old.
Once I let my expectations go I enjoyed it much more. When I stick to the core story I have a great time. When I get into my old BOTW ways of random exploration, I find myself getting bored.
I still have yet to beat it because I burned myself out exploring the underworld. I think once I return I’ll stick out the rest of the core story- I’ve heard good things about the game’s conclusion.
That's unfortunate that you can't get into it. I'd agree that it feels more like an expansion of BotW than a totally new game, but for me, "more of the same" is perfect. I was so in love with that game, so I am enjoying having a reason to go back and re-explore that world.
Have you gotten much into deep exploration yet? Have you spent time searching for caves, wells, and little side quests? I was always excited about and interested in the game, but I didn't fall in love with it until I stopped rushing through the main story (which I only did because I was eager to get the Master Sword) and started delving into the little things. There's quite a bit of content in the caves, and there are some secrets in the game that are a lot of fun to find.
Very minor spoiler here.
The Thyphlo Ruins and Faron Jungle, in particular, were a lot of fun.I hope you can get into it, since it sure sounds like you want to.
That's actually how I'm approaching the game and how I approached botw. I go around loosely following the story but stop around if I see something. I had a lot of fun doing this on botw, but now on totk it feels kinda boring. Part of it is probably because the layout of the map is still the same, so there's not much surprise in discovering something major like a village when you already knew was there.
You mentioned caves, and they're one of the things I felt botw was lacking. Exploring them is interesting and they're a really great addition to the game.
In the end I'm trying to figure out if I played too much of botw and now the formula feels boring to me or if I'm just not in the target audience anymore...
Playing Starfield on PC and redid my character multiple times because I wanted to try some of the other backgrounds. Settled on Bounty Hunter with Wanted for the nice balance of starting skills and RP. Then the usual RPG skill points into lockpicking and speech checks should be a solid, generic start.
Eyeing a crazed knife-wielding Chef for the next playthrough that's on the quest for the best alien lamb sauce. See that alien? You can cook it.
Being a Bethesda game, it retains their signature jank that makes it feel like a game 8-10 years behind, and makes some more prominent, like the loading screens to go to a small indoor area and the stiff animations during dialog scenes (and there's a lot here now). I've read about those indoor areas separated by loading screen might be a product of the development cycle, because other cities have those built into the main space, or maybe New Atlantis might just be too big that it's pushing an internal engine budget to be able to load the space as it is.
There's also the weird UI design decisions which feel like I'm back in the 360/PS3 console port to PC era. Your choices to exit out of menus on PC is to use Esc multiple times or hold Tab. You have to press a key to switch between buy/sell as well as switching between you/companion/ship inventory, because displaying one list takes half of your screen instead of having a trade screen that displays them side-by-side like in most ARPGs and MMOs.
There's the hazy color grading and lack of a gamma/picture quality sliders, no FOV slider (so you have to edit a config file), and the lack of a local map/direction finder in the big cities. In 2023 I can have Google Maps navigate down to an exact store, but the technology was lost in this universe to get grav drives working. A counterpoint that might've helped immersion is being able to ask the generic NPCs for directions and your scanner's route gets updated.
Minor nitpick is the scanner is so useful that I'm going Arkham Asylum detective mode again and having it on most of the time, because aside from the navigation arrows there's way more clutter in the world it can get hard to see which object you can interact with if you're not scanning every inch of the map.
As for fast travel, I definitely wanted a more immersive system similar to what Jedi Survivor did that gives you the feel of you doing space travel in a space game, but not turn it into Elite Dangerous.
Like say you plot a course in that nav computer while you can move around in the ship and have some smoke and mirrors where the skybox shifts around for a few seconds than the current way of a cutscene then a loading screen (which should still be an option). Or maybe one of your crew can pilot while you pick from dialog choices about where to go. I just don't like how the discussion around this tends to devolve into the extremes of loading screens or Hutton Orbital, as if having a balance between immersion and still being a mainstream big budget game doesn't exist.
Gran Turismo 7
Honestly after coming back to this for a little bit this week to test out my new ps5, I think I can confidently say that this game is one of those games. The kind that in some regards, is truly unique and wonderfully well done (the simulation, how it feels to drive, the sheer variety in cars that are well modeled to drive), and in other regards, makes such boneheadely backwards, even just straight out bad game design decisions that it really puts a damper on the whole experience (how lacking the event selection is, the races feeling more like time trials with 20 slow cars to dodge instead of actual racing). The areas where it's lacking feel even worse too, because games that are close to 20 years old like Gran Turismo 4 already implement the events in one of the best ways they ever had in the series. They could've just iterated a little upon gt4's gt mode, or even just lazily copied that and said there you go, and I would've probably ended up regarding the new entry as a modern classic instead of the mess we have now.
Armored Core VI
This one had a rocky start for me. Not even into the first cutscene I was thrown at bizarre stuttering issues which, at least at time of writing, are best solved by having to remove the ability to use the online portions of the game, and needing to hunt down the process in task manager to change a cpu affinity value every time I try to run it. And then with the technical issues finally solved, the first boss of the game you encounter pretty early on in the game kinda hits like a train too, to the point where I almost gave up on it then and there...
...And then something clicked after beating it and I've been having a fantastic time with it ever since. I've even run into the 2nd boss (or maybe technically the 3rd, being kinda vague as to not directly spoil it) you run into, and despite it killing me more than the first one, I think I'm at the point in the game where if I die, I can usually figure out what it was I was doing wrong to get that death, and I can learn from it and not make the same mistake on the next attempt. Like I don't think I've had a game where my reaction to being killed the 11th time on something is to eagerly hop back in on a 12th attempt, usually in other games I would've quit or given it a break by like the 3rd attempt. The fact that the game elicited that response means that it's absolutely doing something right.
Completely agreed, I felt that in Gran Turismo Sport, and they didn't seem to improve on it in 7 -- a game I bought on launch and abandoned after a week or two.
I am just so dang tired of every race being the same: flying start, with you at the back of the pack, the race becomes a time trial of you driving fast enough that you can catch up with the person who started in first, all of the other drivers are easy to beat, but the top 3 are the only actual challenge, and to make it easy you just buy all the mods for your car and win easily.
Just give me some real racing events, with better AI, make it feel like I'm something I'm part of and working towards, instead of the same tired system they trot out.
I'm playing classic EverQuest on the Project 1999 server. I'm too young to have played this era live, and actually hadn't played EverQuest at all before coming to P99. P99 is permanently locked at EverQuest's second expansion, Scars of Velious.
I had tried P99 a few years ago on one of their servers that isn't as popular anymore, Blue. I unwittingly quit just a few months before the Green server came out, which now has roughly twice the population of Blue. (There are typically ~800-1000 people playing this MMO from 1999 on Green at any given time.) When I logged into my old characters, it was basically a ghost town, so I started over on Green. It was a shame to leave my old characters, but the highest I've ever been is level 12, so it wasn't a huge loss.
I rolled a High Elf Cleric and an Iksar Shadow Knight. So far, I haven't really been able to decide between them. Healing's what I usually do in games, but so far I've struggled to find a group. I'm very shy. Some players gave me a bunch of gear for my SK, though, so that's something.
I've heard there's a new classic EverQuest server coming out on October 1, Project Quarm. There's going to be such a huge rush over there that I'm going to wait a while before joining if I join at all.
Right now on P99, there's a 50% EXP bonus active for the holiday. Given how much of a grind classic EQ is, that's an awful lot, so I've been playing most of the weekend.
If you play EQ on P99 or any other server, PST! I'd love to group with you.
MythForce early access, and I can't wait for it to properly release in a week. 80's Dungeons and Dragons cartoon: the game.
I got Dave the Diver at the start of July. I finally beat the game after 37 hours. Pretty good game overall. It's a bit repetitive since the gameplay loop is that you fish during the day and act as a server at a restaurant at night. There's a lot of scripted events to break the loop and a lot of mini games that are proposed. Some are optional and some that are part of the main storyline. That means that almost every day there's a new mechanic that gets introduced. A lot of the time though I just wanted to fish in peace and make a lot of money in the game at night. I'll probably keep playing it for a while since there are still a few fishes I haven't caught yet.
Saved my PS3 from the yellow light of death (at least for now) and picked up Motor Storm at the local game store. Lots of fun, totally missed this game back in the day. Love the multiple paths on the tracks.
Also playing through the God of War collection on PS3, I've played through the newer games, but never tried out the old ones. Honestly enjoying God of War 1 more than the newer games, combat feels really good and there's no wondering around a world looking for the next thing to do.
Erion MUD
For some reason, I keep coming back to these text MMORPGs.
Erion is like a version of Aardwolf that was sanely developed. The game is all about killing mobs and seeing numbers go up. It also has crafting and more complicated things.
The writing is good, although lengthy and too elaborate for my taste.
Erion is, by all accounts, very well made. It feels like something that was carefully planned and executed. It is not a bloated game, it has everything you need and not much else, and very easy to start out. Being a DikuMUD, at least for now, combat is uneventful and largely automated. I managed to create a chat capture window so it doesn't interfere with the game output.
The ASCII map is tiny and doesn't show much. Being a MUD, the game expects greater effort from the players, and I can imagine people did their own maps back in the day using pen and paper. I'm not going to do that, so I learned to use Mudlet's (a client) automapping function. It works well most of the time, but, when it doesn't, the script gets insane and I create a bunch of bogus rooms in a few seconds. Fixing it is so troublesome that I restarted the map from scratch three times. The "solution" is to create my own mapping script, but Mudlet's documentation on the matter is just a list of functions with no clear instructions.
And, since ErionMUD barely uses any protocol to send extra information to the client, anything I do in terms of a custom UI would require me to build a collection of monster regexes. No thanks!
So it seems that, after 60 hours, I'm not playing this game anymore. That's a shame, but I'm not learning Lua scripting just to play a game.
/r/mud likes to believe that MUDs are not that popular because they are text, but that is just part of the story.
Of course, being text-based is a problem. But outdated designs are a problem as well. There are no technical impediments to having a functional map, expedited gameplay, modern questing system, basic QOL, interesting puzzles, engaging combat, and descriptions that are more than window dressing, with actual mechanical implications.
At that point, instead of trying to make an existing MUD into something more palatable, I might just take the plunge and make my own. MUD veterans are so focused on the past, that they often ignore that you don't have to go fully graphical to modernize the genre for new audiences. It is perfectly viable to do so without ignoring their lineage and identity. Maybe I can prove that someday. Ask me again in a year!
I may just have to check this one out! I played Aardwolf for a bit some years ago, but the weird day and night cycle was a big turn off. It's a weird thing to be a stickler for, I know.
I think you're definitely right about it not simply being a case of a lack of graphics. I've played plenty of games with terrible graphics (or none at all) but we're still able to capture me in a way thar most MUDs i tried in the past weren't really able to. Aardwolf was the closest, I think in part because of the map and just general ease of access for people new to MUDs. That weird day and night cycle though, lol.
Erion is similar to Aardwolf. In regards to usability, the main difference is that Aardwolf has an official client that is full featured and well maintained, while Erion does not.
There are user scripts and packages, but nothing that comes close to what you have in Aardwolf.
But Erion is a very good game. It's well populated for a MUD that is not Aardwolf. I may just keep playing with the ASCII map.
Another game you might like, with an interesting client, is Alter Aeon.
Still playing World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore. Playing with 4 of my friends. One's already out, and one almost died on his own. Not even even level 20 yet.
I would've played the hell out of hardcore WoW.. if it was fifteen years ago.
It's already a time investment, hardcore even more so.
How are you enjoying it? I can imagine the slower pace really works well for such an expensive world and lets you really immerse yourself in it.
I gotta say. Hardcore reignited my love for the game. I always took breaks during expansions but would return to try out new expansions and get a character or two to max level then takes a couple years off. Dragonflight killed it for me finally. Don't think I got more than a couple levels in and decided WoW wasn't for me anymore.
But a group of friends convinced me to try out hardcore and boy do I love it. Every area is full of people, every decision feels meaningful, I have to be very cautious. I feel like my WoW skills are finally being tested now that bad decisions have real consequences. Only played a couple hours, first character died at level 8 because of a bad pull. Have a new rogue back at level 4 and I'll probably keep chipping a way.
I've been out of WoW since SLs, retail completely destroyed my connection with the world. Also didn't play Classic, because I've already done Classic.
Hardcore is different. It's like... it's the endgame from lvl 1. Every decision matters. Every time you leave a cave alive is a triumph. You think long and hard about what spells to buy, or whether you should buy yourself vendor armor. I honestly can't imagine playing the game in any other way anymore.
I have a 2 year old, so I can't play very long. An hour or two every other day, and then longer on Sundays. But I love it.
All old video games this week for me:
Excite Truck!
There’s a name I haven’t seen in a while. I got a lot of playtime out of it and Excitebots back on the Wii.
How are you emulating the motion controls?
No emulation needed, I'm using my original real Wii remote (plus a cheap Bluetooth adapter to help Dolphin see it, because macOS has recently removed support for syncing Wii remotes).
Finally had a week off and got a few games other than BattleBit and retro emulators.
Played Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood and it's a wonderful VN with interesting paths. You get a lot of control over the story and events fight from the start but as a player you need to learn about the world to properly appreciate your choices. Fun concept, lovely style, would kill to have prints of the cards I designed.
On a whim I picked up a strange little word game called Myths of Rules. Think of it as text based FNAF where you need to solve esoteric language puzzles to ward off mythological monsters. It's not nearly as glamorous as it sounds but the dev does a good job of building atmosphere and tension. It's also not marked as early access, but it does feel like there needs a few more scenarios.
And on the flip side of run time, I also played Paquerette Down the Bunburrows. It's a simple AI manipulation puzzle game where you need to catch bunnies. I figured it'd last me a few hours tops and it seemed like a calm diversion on the lines of Monsters Expedition or Railbound. It's been days and I've not been so obsessed with a puzzle game since Babba is You. The devs first expect you to follow the rules, then some rules can't be followed so you get loopholes, then it expects you to break rules, then it expects you to break rules to bypass the loopholes and follow the original rules, then it introduces new rules and secret rules. And the whole time they're hinting at future rules. And then you find a new rule so you need to release all the bunnies and start again. And the worst part is that it all feels 100% intentional. I can not hope of cheesing any of this because every possible base seems to be covered. I hate these devs and wish them slow suffocation in my overfilled bunny cage. 10/10, highly recommend.
Trine 5 Co-Op
I have been playing it with my brother and about halfway done. I would say it is another solid Trine game if you are familiar with series. Puzzles seem a bit easier compared to previous entries though.
Was visiting a friend in Norway and we snatched a copy of Armored Core 6. I started the playthrough and at the end of the trip we swapped places and she created her own save (while deleting my own, weird how it only allows one save per account).
Really hard, really rewarding and the gritty style along with the diverse options to kit out your mech are truly refreshing for the mech-genre, specifically for such a mainstream release.
I would grab a PS5 and AC6 myself for this game alone and could sink a ton of time into it. Sadly, finances don't allow it at the time.
I picked up OllieOllie world on switch on sale, and man I am so bad at it. I actually seem to get worse if I retry a level too many times. Not sure if I regret it or just need more time
If I could inject the feeling that BG3 gives me into my veins I would. As a dad with 100 kids and a job it's hard to find time to play, but I find myself for the last couple weeks staying up until 12am playing this game after putting the kids to bed and feeding them. I need to convince my wife to take the kids cause I'm not going to spend time raising them while I play this game.
I still play Stardew Valley (as I mentioned in the last thread and theone before that).
But I don't want to ralk aout Stardew Valley. I have bought Car mechanic simulator 2018 because I suddenly wanted to play a game similar to Gearhead Garage. I spent a few hours in doing a few hobs and while the game definitely does what it is supposed to do (and even more), I feel like I.miss something. I miss the vibe and the feeling of accomolishment. I mean I can definitely.fix cars in the game, I ca level my skills and workshop, I would be able to buy barn-finds and make them shiny again. But I just don't feel like I actually wwnt to play and advance. As I said, the game does what it announces. It's just that it smehow didn't click with me.
I just finished the Diablo 4 main campaign. The ending was kind of a let down, but I always felt that Diablo was more of a “enjoy the journey” game, rather than focusing on the destination. After trying each class, I settled on a necromancer. I had a blast demolishing hoards with my skeleton bros.
Now that D4 is out of the way, I’ve turned my attention to Final Fantasy 16. They made some bold decisions and its quite a departure from previous entries in the series. While I do not necessarily dislike it, at the same time it doesn’t really feel like a final fantasy game to me. It feels like Square Enix wanted to ride the Game of Thrones wave of dark fantasy, or something to that effect.
The visuals are amazing, and combat seems simple and satisfying hack and slash style. (At least that’s the way I’ve been playing. It doesn’t punish you for button mashing, and I haven’t figured out an optimized combat strategy. I’m most struck by the many cutscenes, and good grief, they are long! I wonder if there is more playtime, or cutscenes.
I'm a bit under the weather this week, which gives me the opportunity to play Control. Love the concept so far - I grew up with X Files and I am forever in love with creepy, haunted, extending-to-alternate-dimensions buildings (yes I read House of Leaves during my formative years), so this is right up my alley. Gameplay seems a bit repetitive so far, but that's actually perfect for me right now.
Also, not sure if this counts, but I fired up an old Hollow Knight save after recommending the game to my partner and watching him play it like it's a second job. It reminded me of what a great experience it was, and I was surprised to find that some of my muscle memory is still there. I really hope that we get Silksong later this year.
I finished Viewfinder, a 3D first person puzzle solving game (100% in 8 hours, minus pause times I guess). I have mixed feelings about it.
The game's core mechanic is really cool - you can take photos of the environment around you with an instant camera, go anywhere, rotate the photo any way you wish and "paste" it onto the environment. The contents of the perspective captured by the photo will then appear in 3D and can be interacted with, helping you reach places and solve puzzles. For example, you can turn a copy of a wall into a ramp for reaching a high place, or you can photograph something out of reach and paste it nearby upside down so it will fall and land near you.
I appreciated all the extra paintings and pictures that we get to past in certain levels, including some with collectibles hidden inside them. These collectibles add to the game, and I had to look up the locations of a couple of them.
The puzzle difficulty ranged from easy to not-quite-medium. Unfortunately the game was lacking in serious challenges. Some of the puzzles in the later levels make you think a little longer, but in the end there is only so much you can do with the tools at hand. The game feels artist-led in how almost every level feels like a little set that only makes use of a small number of mechanics and props. It's as if the game is afraid to scare the player by being too mechanically daring. This might be related to how the level progression is tied to the story progression, and that leads me to...
..the progression makes little sense. You go through a bunch of puzzle-solving levels in almost linear fashion because you're trying to... solve climate change? Apparently the simulation we're in was used by a group of enterprising creative people who may have hidden a solution to climate change ("The Weather Disruptor (tm)") in it. We're tasked with finding it. Apparently the only way to do this is solving unrelated puzzles and listening to (for some reason) audiologs. Audiologs everywhere. Audiologs are, as always, the lazy game designer's vehicle of choice for plot delivery.
I don't know. I choose to rationalize it as "the AI in charge of the simulation is lonely and created this obstacle course to keep us engaged so we won't leave too quickly, even though it could have just given us the answers we needed," but this is never really made explicit. In any case, the story is pleasant in that you have the company of a bunch of human voices while you get through the levels and they seem like nice people for the most part, but I'd rather have no story and a lot more levels, with the core mechanic much better utilized than it was.
And please, developers, let me run. How hard is it to add a "run" key? I know your game is short, but it won't feel longer just because it takes longer to get from point A to point B.
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I can't stand games that have slow walking speeds, and I especially can't stand games that don't let you have full control over your speed. If I'm having an NPC spew boring unskipable exposition at me, then either cut me off entirely so I can walk away for a pee break or let my character run and jump around so I don't lose all my interest.
Of all the stupid things in the game, this is probably the number one reason why I didn't bother to play past the intro of the last Final Fantasy release.
Playing One Way Heroics for my Roguelike podcast
Really enjoying this quirky JRPG so far and it's really growing on me. I wasn't totally sure how to navigate the yes menus or systems at first but a couple Let's Play videos later and it's starting to gel.
I have to make a shout-out for the really great soundtrack . It's a compilation of freely sourced midi files from free Japanese music sites, but I think the solo dev's curation of them is great and they really theme together we'll.
I have been obsessed/hyper fixated with My Time at Portia recently (Released in 2019, developed by Pathea Game and published by Team 17). A "farming sim" or life sim in the same vein as Stardew Valley and, more accurately, Graveyard Keeper. You play as a builder, inheriting your pa's old workshop. Your goal is to just live life as you see fit, meet the townsfolk and go on an adventure.
The game has a certain charm and goofiness and a bit janky and slightly unpolished (despite the shine). There are tons of things to not like the game and yet it managed to hold me in its grasp. Being in the same genre as Stardew Valley and Graveyard Keeper, the main gameplay loop is to do commissions as your main source of income and to increase relationship points with the townies, gather resources (you will do lots of this) and chatting with the surprisingly decent-fully voiced NPCs and there are dozens of them. This is not a village, its a small town.
As you go through the game, befriending the NPCs and learning about their personalities, stories and desires, you will unlock their quests at each stage of your relationship. For me, this is the highlight of the game. I like to learn about the NPCs and getting to know them. Eventually, I learned the schedule of most of the townsfolk, their routines and have learned where they lived snuck into their homes at some point.
The game main grind for me is its resource gathering. You need to deforest the entirety of Portia multiple times over the period of the game. There days in game where I would chop trees from one end of the map to the other end, from dawn to dusk and throughout the night until I passed out. Only to do it again the next day. Once all trees are sufficiently chopped and nary in sight, I turn my attention to pickaxing the mines (or the abandoned ruins as this game calls them) for metals like copper, iron and sofas (for gifts of course). Equipped with a jetpack and scanner, I turn my sight to clear the mines of all its resources to fuel the factory that is in my yard. Once you have enough of passing out in the mines, you can turn your attention to the dungeons (or Hazardous Ruins) for that few rare items you could only get there. Clearing it out of human sized rats, dog sized snails and jumping fishes and impses before meeting their giftwerfer wielding bosses. All of this satisfies the townsfolk need for stuff.
There is a main storyline for the game (aside the massive need for the exploitation of natural resources) and it is the growth and development of the Portia. The town will slowly grow its sphere of influence, from building bridges and expanding the harbor. Being a
unlicensed/unqualifiedbuilder, you are tasked to build all sorts of parts and infrastructure, from the Dee-Dee (a tuk-tuk) to bridges, cranes and hot air balloons. Along the way, you will follow through the setbacks and delays that often plagues the modern construction industries, uncovering the mysterious conspiracies that reared its head halfway through the game (I haven't finished the game yet so no spoilers please). As well as unlocking new diagrams and resources to finish more advance and special commissions.I played this game around their 1.0 release in 2019. I remembered enjoying it the first time I played it. Logged just shy of 70hrs by the end of my first play through until life gotten busy and I just never picked it up. However, last weekend I had a minor surgery (toenail removal) and suddenly gotten a long weekend where I am suddenly free, saw the second game is coming out and the itch of playing the game came back. So I downloaded the game for the first time in years and... I already doubled the hours played. (128hrs now).
This past week I went ahead and got both Diablo 2 Resurrected and Diablo 3 for cheap on sale, something I've been meaning to do for a while now, so of course I've obsessively played through D2 + Lord of Destruction on my free time in the last few days. It wasn't my first time playing Diablo 2, but last time I did was maybe some ten years ago at the very least and I don't think I've ever made it past Act 2 for one reason or another, this time I've finished the game though.
So while I had a good time with the game, I didn't remember how dated it was both gameplay wise and graphically. The remaster did an amazing job with the new graphics, so that was a blessing, but on the gameplay department it definitely needed an overhaul. So many mechanics that just don't really make sense, for instance stamina, a completely useless stat that a few hours into the game it becomes irrelevant yet the game still drops stamina potions and related magic items until the very end. On the other hand, coming from more recent games like Grim Dawn I kind of appreciate how "simpler" it is; way less numbers and skills to care about, you just go around bonking demons on their heads without much thought.
The one thing that annoyed me was just how weak the Necromancer class felt, especially against bosses, Diablo for instance basically one shots your skellies at first sight. Fighting some of the bosses felt more like battles of attrition than I would've liked... That aside it was a fun experience, if albeit somewhat rough around the edges and funnily enough it actually made me want to play more Grim Dawn instead of jumping into Diablo 3. Regardless, I think I'll take a break before jumping into either of those for now.