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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.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has been ruling my life for the past month or so. I don’t think I’ve been so impressed by a game in a really long time. Fantastic game
I love all the additional content the voice actors have been producing outside of the video game.
(Did you see the Only Fangs video?)
The one shot sidequest they did in character without Tav was amazing, and I need it as a quest in BG3, you get stuck, rest, and they come back to tell you
Now this is marketing I can get behind. God I love Astarion so much. "Like and subscribe! Whatever that means..."
Finally finished Tears of the Kingdom, and I find myself more torn about it than I expected.
I'll split my thoughts between broad gameplay/structure stuff, and then full story spoilers. So be warned if you're still working through it!
First, broad gameplay and structural thoughts:
For many people, this is a huge plus! Lots of folks thought that BotW suffered from a lack of interactive NPCs, or that its environmental interactions were too limited, so these changes are beneficial in that regard. But as much as I enjoy the new tools and characters, I do feel like something was lost. BotW, to me, is beautiful in its sparseness. The loneliness is kinda the point of the game, and the world of TotK feels less special.
As for the powers, it's just so much. Sure, it's neat to solve a shrine by combining a bunch of stuff to build a bridge or a little boat or what have you, but after the tenth shrine in a row whose solution is "glue the thing to the other thing", the formula started to wear on me. Even in the open world: I spent hours goofing around and experimenting with all the new game systems, but at the end I asked myself, "is this really what I want from a Legend of Zelda game?" I'm still not sure.
Finally, the two new areas: the Sky and the Depths. Both were a bit of a letdown to me -- I don't mind that they're both so big and empty, but I do mind how stylistically monotonous they each are. I could spend hours wandering around Hyrule because each area is so distinctive and unique, but if you dropped me at any random spot in the Depths, or on any random sky island, there's no way I could tell you where I was without a map.
And now for the story, including discussion of the ending:
I think the part that put me off the most was the Sages feeling like warmed-over versions of the Champions from BotW. Like, when TotK became its own game, they said "well we need excuses to visit the four other kingdoms, and we need individual characters from each to interact with, but the Champions are dead, sooooo..."
And the way we interact with each
ChampionSage got wildly repetitive by the end. I like them all in isolation, but the pattern of "visit kingdom, meet the Sage, do the dungeon to solve their problem, watch a cutscene of Zelda saying the exact same line to each of the previous Sages" got old for me. And we don't get any new environmental stuff out of it either: the reward for each of these is restoring the kingdom to more or less how we left it in BotW, with a few NPCs swapped around.It might feel like I'm dunking on the game, which... okay, I guess I kinda am. But it's out of love, I swear! I spent over 100 hours in this game, and didn't even finish everything! But at the end of the day, I just can't see myself wanting to replay this the way that I want to go back to BotW. Honestly, my expectations were probably too high going in -- though I also recognize that my tastes might just be a bit different, in that most (not all!) of the "improvements" that TotK made felt like downgrades to me.
Dotage
It's a fantastic little rogue-like city builder with mechanics similar to Agricola or Robinson Crusoe and a strong - but manageable - difficulty curve. It's cute, easy to get into, tough to master, and developed by one guy.
I've been competent enamored by the game, it scratches an itch I didn't know I had. It's also a welcome break from Baldur's Gate 3, and a nice segue into the release of Cities: Skylines 2 coming up soon.
Edit: Did I mention it has a demo? How crazy in this day and age!
I've been playing a LOT of mount and blade bannerlord. Nothing has ever had me so absorbed, I get lost in it. I had to set boundaries, I dont let myself play it during the weekdays but go heavy come Friday. The first time I was given a castle I was so stoked. I would walk the walls, build up the garrison, find the perfect governor, make sure my people were happy.
I can see the late game not being as fulfilling because now I'm this god with a battle axe chopping down vlandians and imperials without difficulty but those early levels are incredible. I also got voted to be the leader of the northern empire but it felt super abrupt, I didn't even know lucon died. So I'm going to finish this campaign and rebuild the empire and then I think I want to start a new campaign and focus on being a charming infantry commander or maybe stack the battian bowmen.
Anyway. That's it, anyone else try bannerlord? I've not tried the multiplayer but if anyone is down I'd love to try it
I also started a new (modded) Bannerlord playthrough recently, and you are completely right about the endgame being lacking. The early and middle game is so much more fun than everything that happens after you own your first town. I like to impose challenges on each playthrough in order to extend that early part and delay the end game. Some of the ones I've done:
Hah, that's pretty true in real life too!
I finally played the DLC for Deus Ex:Mankind Divided over the past week.
There's the Tarvos one, which I think I completed in about 20 minutes. I got to the end and just uttered, "Really, That's it?" and it officially gets 1*
There's another around breaking into the Palisade Blades in Prague and that is FAR more Deus Ex than you realise. It's also very Hitman inspired with each level of the Blade being almost clockwork in how the guards, bots and cameras are designed. It's got a great little bit in the last third where you suddenly realise you 'stealth get-out-of-jail-free' aug promptly isn't worth its weight in Praxis points. That was fantasic, if frustrating as hell. The new and old cyber-nerd characters are excellently written and the entire thing felt very bank robber-esque. Proper 4* little jaunt through Prague.
Then Criminal Past is a decent enough playtrhrough. Though many of the puzzles, codes and passwords feel very tacked on (There's a Missile system that has the same keycode as a maintanence locker...) and gives off Rifleman Bank Station vibes from "The Missing Link" in Human Revolution. It was fun, but by the end I was frustrated and confused at having to hop back and forth between buildings rather than just feeling like I was moving forwards.
I REALLY wish there were more games like Deus Ex in the world. I can get lost for hours in the lore and the insanity in which they feel futuristic... but not too futuristic to feel alien.
Yeah, I want the third part of Deux Ex so bad, but it probably won't happen after middling sales. At least not anytime soon. Which is a shame, because I love stealth action games: DX, Splinter Cell, Hitman. The last is the only one that's left it seems. I don't know how stealthy Assassin's Creed games are; the only I've ever tried was AC1 or AC2.
I thought I played the Palisade Blade DLC, but I'm not seeing that I own the DLC. I don't have Criminal Past, either. I only have the Desperate Measures mission, which is the Tavros one, but I don't even remember that.
Think it's time for a replay of both HR and MD...
I'd kill to see Jensen's story finish up one way or the other! The books were really good and I just want more!
I replayed them recently. Also Deus Ex GOTY with the Revision mod is absolutely brilliant as well.
I somehow didn't realize that Mankind Divided had dlc. Finished it when it first came out and actually never looked at it again.
Have you played Shadows of Doubt? It's procedural, but really neat if you've got any inclination towards the Im Sim genre.
Highly recommend them If you can get them on the cheap. They add a good 8 hours or so to the storyline, but they're nothing substantive.
I haven't. Let me consult the great Steam overlord tomorrow, I just had a look now and it seems VERY up alley. My thanks!
I'll need to keep my eye out for them, I've been wanting some more Deus Ex lately, but had installed GMDX, which I haven't yet played.
Hope you like Shadows of Doubt! I absolutely can't wait for the full release. Here's a post I made several weeks ago about it and a "little" anecdote.
Mankind Divided is one of my all time favorites. Immersive Sims with powers and guns is easily my favorite genre. There’s not a lot of entries. Prey and Deathloop for sure. Cyberpunk sometimes hits that note, it’s just games like that—Far Cry and Fallouts—lack the polish to make them real gems in the genre.
Mankind Divided and Phantom Pain are like the duo of amazing games that were narratively unfinished.
MD really was fantastic, the ending was a bit... sudden, and the sheer lack of third instalment just sucks. I'd love to see where Jensen gets to given his connections to The Collective and the Illumanti using him. It's endlessly frustrating to have a story left untold.
Deathloop is in my 'to play' pile, gonna throw that down now.
Prey was amazing. The twist was fairly predictable, but the reality of your actions having meaningful results was great. Also, the sheer Lovecraftian horror of the Apex is just... Nope.
I’d hate the ending if it wasn’t for the test at the very beginning of the game that puts the whole thing into perspective. The game also hints at the twist a few times as well, so it’s not too out of the blue. I just don’t have any love for that style of twist.
Aye, I think if you've played the originals then you'll get it as well.
But the connection between HD-MD & DE1 are fantastic as they're written. Wadding through one of the MD-DLC's and Stanton Dowd's name pops up and you're like "Oh, It's him!"
I adore that.
I started a new runthrough of Cyberpunk for the first time since launch, got through the training modules and the first couple of missions, and maybe it's been a while since I've played it but it doesn't feel too different yet. I can't rembmer when I stopped at launch but Steam said I have 8 hours in it.
The gunplay and the stealth.... don't seem thatttt much different than Starfield's honestly. Maybe it'll change the further I get into the game though.
Same, I reinstalled with 2.0 thinking maybe they'd delivered more on the original hype but I still found it really hard to get engaged with. Performance was still bad for me too. I only have a 2080 S, but I've been able to play some hefty games with no real problems. Cyberpunk always just has the caustic, unoptimized feel that turns me off every time I try it again. I want to be able to enjoy it but just never seem to.
The performance and graphics didn't look very good to me either, on my 3080, and it was chugging along at like 40 fps until I turned on DLSS. It looks much better on Performance mode but I'm still kinda disappointed, it's basically the same performance as when I was playing through it at launch. I'll probably go through it this time around though, just to get it out of the way haha.
2.0 doesn’t feel that different to me from previous versions. The perk change is nice—before it was just a mind numbing map of things that boat your stats by 2%.
I do wish that you could have a cyber deck + sandevestan. Perfect stealth, no-kills full ghost is impossible without being able to distract patrols. Especially annoying when you get a mission that’s like, “please don’t kill anyone” and you’re kitted out to go ape-shit murder-fest. Then on the other hand, I had a boss fight and I can’t imagine having done that without being able to air dash around the arena like a roided out rooster.
The other thing that drives me bonkers is how awkward weapon swapping is. Would have rather seen the d-pad setup for weapon swapping and separate menu for all the phone call/texting/car summoning. Being able to setup loadouts would have been nice as well. There are times when I want a stealth kit, non-lethal, and full violence—but having to menu and sort through a pile of 20+ guns is lame.
I also wish the cars had a fast travel option built into them. Kind of like in GTA where you could call a cab to fast travel to a destination. They self-drive to my location, they can’t take me to a destination!
The perks seemed like the biggest change for sure. I'm not sure if my perpective is skewed or not post Edgerunners though, but I kinda like the cyberdeck + sandevestan split, makes it more realistic in this world at least.
I’ve been running Sandevestan and when trying to do stealth sections there’s not really a good way to deal with stationary guards with their backs to a wall with a sightline on a key path. The game does this surprisingly a lot.
Sometimes shooting a surface with a silenced weapon can draw their attention elsewhere, but also a decent chance to put them on high alert or outright trigger combat.
Edgerunners has David’s Sandevestan as a spinal implant, so it’s sort of ambiguous how it fits into the game canon when the implant sits elsewhere in the ripper-doc menu.
Interesting, i'll have to see when i get to those missions! i'm not too far into the game yet so I'm not sure, though maybe i'll be happy that I have a Lucy inspired character haha
The radiant quests tend to do this more often. The teal rectangle with an ! in it. I don’t think there’s too many missions that “penalize” you for just busting heads though.
Finished Hotline Miami last week so I picked up Hotline Miami 2 for this week and so far I've been really enjoying it. It's a bit more difficult than the original imo but I'm also being a bit more daring with my movements so I'm dying more frequently. Overall still a fun game to play!
I got an iPhone with a dynamic island too so I've been playing the game Hit the Island which is like pong but the enemy paddle is the dynamic island. The novelty wears off quick but it's free so can't complain lol.
Hotline Miami is one I slept on for far too long. I got it on the Switch, and it's a perfect pick and up and play title!
My thoughts exactly! I'm someone who only really plays in short bursts so I absolutely fell in love with how easy it was to just pick up and play Hotline Miami wherever I left off.
Started up a Rome 2 total war with the DEI mod. I suck but it's quite cool.
Dunno why but i never looked into rome 2 mods. Looking at this, sounds like a major overhaul. Gonna have to give it a shot, thanks!
Yeah The campaign moves a lot slower, battles as well. Let me know your thoughts
I've been really enjoying Astrea. Same concept as slay the spire, but you have a deck of dice instead of cards. There are safe dice with 6/6 sides being small consistent effects, balanced with 4/6 more powerful effects and 2/6 drawbacks, and risky dice with 2/6 strong effects and 4/6 drawbacks. However you sometimes want the drawback to deal damage to yourself and make yourself stronger. There are so many lines of play that it can be quite mentally taxing, but in a good way.
Oh, did that come out? I loved the demo! Glad to hear it’s great!
I've finished Metro 2033 Redux for the first time. I have finished Last Light in the past andread books in between those two games. I ca only recommend bothe the games and the books. I love postapocalyptic things and this portrays them really well.
Speaking of postapo... After finishing Metro, I have immediately started Fallout 1. I played it for the first time in 1999 and it stuck with me. As well as the second one. These are the games that hooked me in the postapo genre. Theyare both great games. Somemay say that graphics are daed, that turn-based is painfully slow... but both games have so much to offer, especially Fallout 2. So many different endings so many different playstyles...
I haven't had time the last couple weeks for PC gaming (BG3, Starfield, Cyberpunk all in progress. Feel spoiled with choice.) But I did see Slay the Spire on Apple Arcade and installed it on the iPad. What a wonderful game! It's been perfect for my moments of downtime.
TOTK still. I have a newborn at home so it's taking me a long time to finish but I think I'm getting close to finally finishing it. I decided to upgrade an armor set to the max and needed to farm Lynel guts. That took forever because the drop rate is way too low for something I found to be very tedious and frustrating. I really love the game but that really sucked. Anyway, I finally have the parts and am doing a push to the ending. Not sure what I'll play next.... Maybe the Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty.
I'm also play Diablo 4 once a week with my brother. I like it but it hasn't really blown me away.
My go to when I feel like playing something is trackmania. I'll check other games out, but I have a strong tendency to not stick with them. Anyway, highly recommend. It's free to try on steam and console.
I started AC: Mirage. It was something I was a bit hyped for. Mostly because they were finally stepping back from the crappy Horizon zero dawn style RPG model with a loot box type inventory and such... ick. Also because it's finally an AC game that doesn't use the main protagonists tragedy as the personality base. This guy wanted to do assassin things for assassin reasons that further their cause. Not just wrapped up in it to get revenge or what have you.
That being said, it's a decent game, but they still haven't fixed their freerunning mechanics and that gets annoying.
4/5
Well I played Cocoon, an effort led by one of the folks formely at Playdead (Limbo, Inside)! Just like Inside, the game is polished and tight. The gameplay mechanics are interesting and the progression is well constructed to make use of different combinations of mechanics in such a way that they never overstay their welcome. The boss fights are interesting and the art is clean and pleasant.
Unlike some reviewers, I didn't find the game too "short" as such. There isn't really any filler content, there is no repetition, and I wouldn't want there to be any. I did, however, feel that I would personally have enjoyed having more of this. More worlds, more mechanics, more combinations, more bosses. Perhaps some more branching in level design, allowing for greater exploration. I did not miss repetitive applications of the existing mechanics, it's just that I liked the game enough that I would have liked it to get even more complex. Greater puzzle difficulty would also have been appreciated, at least from my perspective as someone who plays a lot of puzzle games.
It's still worth playing, though, and if you aren't much of a puzzle solver you can rest assured that it's a fun few hours and you're unlikely to get stuck!
PIKMIN 4!!! It has absolutely taken over my life. I have no idea who the intended audience for it is, aside from like… me. I like weird, quirky games, and boy does Pikmin fit the bill. It’s a game where you are a tiny alien explorer sent to rescue other tiny alien explorers who have crashed on Earth. You do this by managing an army of even tinier plant people and your tiny two-legged dog. It’s part RPG, part puzzle, part resource and time management, part horror (but really really cute horror.) I’m obsessed with it, and there’s additional levels to explore unlocked after you beat the main story. The first hour really eases you into the gameplay, and the load times are irritating, but I love it all the same. Play this game, it’s so weird and delightful.
Just got Against the Storm and played for a few hours, it is really good at the beginning. Unlocking new buildings, cornerstones, races, etc. Really gave me that "one more map" feeling I love.
However now it is falling into a pattern where I know which buildings are efficient and try to roll them and if they don't come up I'll use the lower star alternative. The production chains don't change that much as you need the same crafted food, services, and luxury items. Is the higher end gameplay just about getting that loop tighter? I was hoping more of a Slay The Spire type of situation where your deck can change your entire playstyle. Right now it's just harder Settlers (did you know a new Settlers game came out this year? Neither did I until just now). I'll keep trucking for a while and they do release updates very frequently so maybe it's just an early access issue.
I've finally tired of both Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077. Much as I like both of them, I've had over 100-hours of "talky" games since before Starfield released and I'm ready for something different finally.
Instead, I've been playing a good amount of Heroes of Might and Magic 2. 2 is probably my favorite over the third; even though HoMM 3 adds so much and is so much more refined, I just adore the art style of HoMM2, so I have difficulty pulling myself away.
Also went to finally pick up Dark Souls 2 again, but, much to my relief, I appear to have accidentally deleted my old save. Finishing this one was a major road block to starting Elden Ring, so I figured I'd start that up finally! Put in 3 hours so far, I'm past Margit and am trying to explore the castle now. Very happy with performance on my Deck, running at a locked 30FPS, High settings. Excited to put more time into this one.
Dark Souls 2 and 3 don't support Steam cloud save, if that's why your save file is gone. You'll need to back those files up when uninstalling the game or reformatting your PC.
Strangely both Dark Souls 1: PTDE and Remastered support it just fine.
I was aware, but for some reason I figured the local save wouldn't get deleted upon removing the game from my Deck.
No great loss, really. Someday I'll finish Dark Souls 2, but that day is not today, I guess. I've got about 200 hours into the game, but just tend to peter out around hour 50 of any given playthrough.
I was back to Aardwolf MUD until I found a ridiculous maze. I quit the campaign and took another, only to end up in the same ridiculous maze. I'm sorry, but I'm a 40-year-old man. I'm not wasting my time with an inscrutable, absurdly difficult area some teenager came up with in the 1990s.
I tried Aetolia, which is at least professionally made, but I just don't have it in me anymore. So I'm taking a break from MUDs. Again.
Star Trek Resurgence is a Telltale-like game/interactive fiction. I have played the introduction and a bit further. I don't think they get the Star Trek feel at all. The music is kinda of random, there is too much of it, and sometimes it gets too loud for me to hear the dialogue. The game has two protagonists, an upper-decker and a lower-decker. This solves the issue of always having at least one player character present for the important events but makes it difficult to allocate the time in the exposition for me to really care about both.
The mini-games are so trivial and silly, that it feels they were only added to provide enough gameplay so people don't call it a visual novel. You can skip them too.
Oh, and the game has almost no options, settings, whatever. What you see is what you get. Feels bare and incomplete.
I must say, I'm a sucker for romance in games, and the redhead my character is romancing is fine. On that subject, thought, if we're talking about preferences, some body diversity would be desirable, since I am more into the plus size side of things. I didn't think that would be my takeaway from a Star Trek game, but here you go! :P
Neon White - Very fun gameplay, terrible anime dialogue in between. I got Ace medals on all the levels, found all the collectibles and beat the "heaven rush"es (play all the levels in a row) - all that's left is the "hell rush"es (same but you only have 1 life, among other conditions) but I doubt I will even bother to try them.
Slay The Spire - I tried out the Downfall mod, played the first 4 boss characters. For some reason it hasn't really hooked me in like the base game did, and I don't feel much excitement to play the rest of the characters. I played a few A20 runs of the base game on my phone (where I don't have access to mods), and made it to the Heart a couple of times but wasn't able to kill it.
Magic: the Gathering - I taught/re-taught a couple of friends how to play with my Modern decks. I quit the game a little while after Modern Horizons 2 came out. I was really starting to miss it. I still really hate what WotC has done to the Modern format, mostly with the MH2 evoke elementals, so I don't have plans to go back to FNM or anything - but maybe I will be able to play more, casually, with friends. I feel like my friends were picking up the game rules pretty OK, even though Modern cards/decks are a little more complicated than I would ideally teach with. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision to play Magic at all, so I just grabbed what I had ready to play. I've been wanting to build some decks for teaching and playing with new players but haven't really had anything to motivate me til now.
MTG has gotten...weird, it feels like. I've had a long, long break from it, but recently my friends and I decided to play some, as it's more multiplayer friendly than the usual tabletop wargames we play. Had a good time cracking out old decks and bullshitting with my buddies, but I went over to the Hobby Shop this last weekend and it seems like there's about 10 different sets and they all generally seem to be expensive. I'd intended to get just one booster, but the only one I saw was $24, which there was no way in hell I was going to pay.
I could have picked-up a new Commander deck for $100 or one of the new LOTR ones for $70, but I felt like that money would be better spent on other stuff. Guys at the shop were telling me Hasbro has taken over MTG and are just milking the shit out of it.
Yeah, Magic has done a lot of crazy things in the last few years to pump up the revenue. They have some special boosters that have more foils and cards with fancy frames in them, and sometimes boosters are more expensive because a set has good reprints in it. They've also done a lot of crossovers with other IPs and sold reprints with "this doesn't look anything like a Magic card" art and frames directly to consumers online via their Secret Lair line.
To be somewhat fair to Hasbro, they bought WotC in 1999 and people have been blaming them for things they don't like about the game ever since. I have no idea how much the parent company influences the child one...Other than Hasbro, I've seen people blame Chris Cocks (unfortunate real last name), who became CEO of WotC in 2017. A lot of the big changes came around 2019, and MTG developers frequently state that Magic sets have a 2 year lead time. In 2022 he got promoted to the CEO of Hasbro itself.
I’m replaying through Ascensions in Slay the Spire and I’m just absolutely jammed up as the Silent at A18. I’ve been trying to play with bigger decks like Frost Prime does over brute forcing through minimal decks and I’ve not gotten to a point where I win with consistency.
I struggled a lot with Silent in that A17-20 range. I had a goal to beat the Heart on A20 with each character and it took me months to do it with Silent. Shiv decks with Accuracy seem to work pretty well for A17-19 as long as you aren't trying to kill the heart (and you probably need to dodge Time Eater, which is why I exclude A20 cause you have to dodge it twice)
Finding ways to get huge amounts of Intangible is also really good. Nightmare + Wraith Form ideally.
My Silent decks do tend to end up getting pretty large...I am still struggling to recognize when something is a good tool to have vs just something that dilutes my deck's plan.
I keep getting runs dependent on a specific card popping up. Like I’ll get a bunch of good shiv cards chapter 1, but never see any synergies like accuracy, vulnerable/damage adds or attack gain block/paper cuts/add poison. Or none of the relics.
Usually the deck has to do multiple things and I try to structure it like that but I’ve had a lot of runs crippled cause I’ll just get repeat of the stuff I already have.
Baldur's Gate 3. I bought it when they released it as early access, since I had such a good time with Divinity 2, but only played a little. With the release I've played it religiously. I have a two year old daughter, so don't have much free time, but I play first chance I get. But tomorrow, Total War: Pharaoh is released, and it looks to be good so far, so it might be the game to break my BG3 streak.
My disappointment with Starfield lead me to try No Man's Sky again after I had a bitter experience with it back in 2019. I started the game in survival mode and ended up in a death loop in the tutorial. I realise now j should have just played on normal.
Playing now in 2023 on normal I'm having a great time, I'm really enjoying just exploring around and seeing all the game features that are avaliable.
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky really make Starfield look horribly dated, it's pretty sad really. I could write a whole essay on my feelings on Starfield's failures but I think people have heard it enough already.
I’ve been playing vampire survivors overnight keeping watch on our kiddo, and it’s been a blast. Got up to level 97 last run in the library and hit the 30 min limit, with 3-4 evolved weapons. It got to the point where I couldn’t even see my character with all the damage numbers popping up.
Keeps me awake, at least
Space Engineers with the Star Trek Mod Pack. This Trekkie's 🖖🏻 is absolutely tickled by it. It's hard to put down!
Being playing the original Alan Wake to get ready for 2.
I feel like I was a bit unfair on this games combat. It's not as bad as I remembered. And the story and characters are fantastic.
It's a rare for a game to give me a good story reason to progress the plot other then just "you get to shoot guys". I like that
Overload. It's Descent 4 except by name, a six-degrees-of-freedom FPS where you fly a small ship through mines and space bases in destroying enemy ships, in zero gravity.
I really like how taxing it is on your spatial awareness because you and the enemies can approach each other from literally any direction while you have to contend with the fact that you're in a bounded space. You easily lose your sense of direction in fatal ways mid-battle if you don't concentrate and learn to account for fire from all sides.
I've been playing the Steam Next demo of Strike Force Heroes, which is very limited (capped levels at 5, 6 missions and last one has no sub-mission, etc), but feels like the SFH of old.
On steamdeck, it practically works out of the box (just set a trackpad as mouse and clicks as A presses, the game treats kb+mouse and gamepad as different controllers), someone's game lacked the codecs for cutscenes (but not me?) meanwhile I can count my HUD's pixels. Hope it's demo-only, even if it's not game-breaking.
Genshin Impact and Honkai Star rail . been playing GI since July last year and HSR since launch. Both daily. Gatcha games but love the stories, personalities and especially community artwork and music .
I've been playing almost entirely Elden Ring for the past 2 months (with a sprinkling of Cyberpunk and some other games here and there). I've just defeated the final boss and am on NG+. Easily up there for one of my favorite games, not because it's perfect or anything, but more so for the whole journey of stepping out into the Lands Between for the first time leading up to beating the Elden Beast. Overall, I've really enjoyed my time playing this game.
Bought and finished Viewfinder. Fun concept, good puzzle variation around the initial concept.
My biggest complaint is that it was way too easy/short, almost all of the puzzles were solved in an instant, they were so obvious. Only one puzzle was a head scratcher for me, but that was due to me stupidly forgetting a core principle of the game.
Writing was also somewhat underrealized and the two characters I found to be annoying. Which is all a bit of a bummer since good writing would've brought so much value to the game.
All in all, I would recommend it if you find physical puzzle games fun. I just wished it had more of a challenge and better writing.
Skimmed over Steam's Next Fest demos. There was a surprising amount that I want to keeps tabs on, but few that feel distinct in identity? Well, here's the stuff that felt different:
AMEDAMA: It's a 7-day timeloop game where the main character is a recently-deceased spirit possessing different bodies to rescue his sister. I think the premise is interesting though I can already see some flaws:
Against Great Darkness: You know that game where you control a bar at the bottom of the screen and move it left and right to bounce a ball at blocks? This is that, except as a roguelite where the ball is your main DPS, all the blocks are shooting at you, and the premise is that you're playing as a pagan god who's climbing out of hell. I think this is a nice twist on the genre with a distinct style to it.
TEVI: Same dev as Rabi-Ribi. The demo starts off slow with no gear or skills but once the ball gets rolling, it's a whole chapter of Metroidvania goodness that speaks for its quality with in-depth combat. Went melee for the demo, but the different sigils look interesting for mana regen burst style. I should give Rabi-Ribi a shot anyways.
LONESTAR: Turn-based spaceship roguelite. This seriously scratches that itch of optimizing ship equipment and card hand to minimize damage and overpower the enemy's attacks in the beam-to-beam tug of war. First try at it was a successful 1H40M run that was constantly generating energy which powered up the the specific type of laser cannons that I had.
Rabbit and Steel: By the Maiden and Spell dev. It's a Co-Op bullet hell-ish roguelite, though the page itself compares it to an MMO raid with different classes, attacks on cooldowns, and cooperation needed unless you're playing solo. Tried out the Dancer due to the attacks having a chance of resetting the Special attack and that paired up well with items that triggered on Special attack.
Duelists of Eden:
Other games that seemed neat.
SpellRogue: Slay the Spire, but with dice. I think the main differences are having to choose between an artifact or deck upgrade after an elite, and being able to destroy cards to gain other cards or artifacts. From what I saw, the demo character is focused on dice manipulation, poison, and multi-hits. Had a successful run simply from having 2 good damage cards, and two cards that retained dice for the next turn and gave effects for doing so.
Pizza Bandit: Co-Op Objective Horde TPS. Honestly, it reminds me of Payday before it went full Payday so I hope it can fill that gap.
Skybreakers: Normally I'm not into Survivor-likes, but each character having a unique melee moveset with character-specific perks makes it more interesting to me. Played as the hammer girl, and the first perk I got was being able to charge up her golem by attacking it. This was already great on its own, but then I rolled a hammer affix that made it a constant whirlwind attack so that just played itself.
Darkblade Ascent: Roguelite First Person Brawler. It's a bit simple: your options amount to parry attack, dodge attack, cast spell off cooldown, and melee; the upgrades are all number/% stat boosts too. Despite this simplicity, I thought it just felt nice to play. Didn't see a brightness setting though, the lighting is just a tad dark.
Phantom Rose 2 Sapphire: Roguelite deck builder where your cards are all available, but go on cooldown when played even between battles and you have to get rid of cards if you're above the deck limit at camps. Each turn, the enemy shows the two cards they're going to play and you get to fill the remaining gaps on the board with two of your cards while each card gets activated in order. The game definitely has some mobile game DNA in it though; apparently the first game was originally on PC but then had the mechanics remade for F2P mobile.
Sovereign Syndicate: Haven't played Disco Elysium yet, but this game is reminiscent of it with the narration and rolls, though with Tarot Cards and steampunk. Felt a little railroaded in the demo, though it is the start of the game. The steam forum comments also cite Shadowrun as an influence, so I do hope this game turns out well.
Star Ocean The Second Story R: Classic realtime JRPG remaster. Haven't heard of the series before and the story so far is 90s JRPG, but it is holding my interest. Chose Rena as my main character, mostly casting a boulder before going in for dodge/melee combos.
Little Locked Rooms Small cutesy game of looking at a crime scene diorama and solving the mystery by answering each question of what happened.
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley: I'm unfamiliar with the Moomins, but this felt like a wholesome pro-nature exploration game with mild stealth elements.
SUPER CRAZY RHYTHM CASTLE: This is a rhythm game except A: up to 4 people can join like a party game, B: the game is deliberately trying to screw you over with its scenarios which is a little frustrating until you accept that that's what this game is about.