What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I recently picked up Snowrunner since I had finished up BG3 and Starfield. I heard about it from a random podcast I listen to and it sounded liked a perfect game for listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos.

For anyone that does not know what Snowrunner is, it is basically American/Euro truck simulator but “extreme”. You don’t drive down highways, you drive down mountains. You aren’t driving a straight line, you’re navigating mud deep enough to stop you in your tracks. You aren’t relaxing for 30 minutes to an hour while making deliveries, you’re stressing out over 3 hours of driving and planning possibly going to waste because you thought you could drive through a deep stream, but you came in at an angle and now your truck and everything you’ve hauled across the map is about to come undone.

The best way to describe the game after playing about 10 hours is that it is (prepare for the cliche of the decade) the dark souls of trucking sims. You have to constantly be aware of everything. Scouting the path, prepping your truck, getting the materials in place, making split second decisions when you start tipping, being on the lookout for winch points when you’re stuck in the mud, staying calm when you get you’re backup truck out there to save the first (hoping that you don’t get that one stuck as well).

I was expecting a brain dead background game, but it’s way more involved than I expected. I initially had a podcast on in the background, and an hour into it I realized that I hadn’t listened to a single word since I was so pulled into what was happening in the game.

So, long story short: I’m having more fun with Snowrunner than I expected, but the downside is that I still need to find a good “background” game…

A few things.

I've been playing The Talos Principle on my desktop. It's challenging and engaging and also a bit depressing. You play an android that has to run around a number of different, smallish worlds, solving puzzles. You do this to collect "sigils", which are basically Tetris blocks, because a booming voice from the heavens tells you that's your purpose. As the game goes on, you learn that there was some sort of calamity that probably killed off all the humans, there's a tower that god doesn't want you to go into, all the worlds you go to are probably computer simulations, and there have been many puzzle-solving androids before you, some of whom died along the way. I'm expecting to have to make a decision at some point about whether to join oppose Elohim, the supposed god, possibly with only incomplete information about what's going on.

The puzzles are engaging and challenging, and generally come in three layers. First, each world has standalone puzzles that you solve to get sigils. Second, each world has a number of stars, which are generally collected by taking pieces of one or more puzzles and connecting them together. (For example, you might have to put a laser relay device in one particular spot in one puzzle, then smuggle another relay device out of a different puzzle to link them up and power a hidden door in the world to get access to where the star is.) Finally, there are tons of Easter eggs, which are very challenging or just very obscure; they don't have any bearing, as far as I can tell, on the plot or the rest of the gameplay, but you get a reference to another game or some joke when you find them.

The storyline is both interesting and depressing. The unfolding of what's going on, as well as the somewhat-philosophical concepts woven in, is interesting. There are also records of people going through whatever calamity happened, and it's depressing watching the world fall down around them.

Overall, I'm really enjoying it and I'm looking forward to finishing the game. Based one some of the achievement descriptions, I suspect I might need to do a few playthroughs to get all the possible endings.

I bought DREDGE on a whim to cleanse my palate after finishing Starfield, and I'd just like to say that it's great that relatively short indie games with very unique themes are able to thrive alongside AAA multi-year hundred million dollar budget blockbusters. DREDGE is definitely both of those things - I completed it in about 12 hours, then spent another 5 hours to 100% it since I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, and I doubt I'll play something similar to it in the near future, unless arcade boat fishing games with a Lovecraftian twist suddenly become the hot new trend to chase.

The gameplay is very straightforward - you have a fishing boat you can upgrade, and you catch fish/dredge for materials and treasure to get what you need to upgrade it. Your boat has an inventory system akin to Resident Evil 4's - that is, you'll be playing tetris with your fish and loot to make it all fit. There's a few different groups of islands and various smaller islands dotted around one interconnected map, with docks, wrecks, and NPCs to interact with. There's also the Lovecraftian horror element - sailing at night can be treacherous, as it drains your sanity. The lower your sanity, the more threats there are out on the sea, so making the most of the day and resting at docks is crucial.

The story's also simple and easy to follow, though vaguely told to maintain a sense of mystery up until the end. The writing's nothing phenomenal, but it does capture the essence of a Lovecraft story well so it's more than done its job there.

If you're even slightly interested in Lovecraft's work and you want something that's short and spooky, I'd definitely recommend this. They're also making more content for it, with new islands and quests, and I'm looking forward to those when they come out.

Armored Core 6 has been an absolute pleasure to play. It really has been everything I hoped it would be. Highly customizable mechs, super fluid and engaging controls and challenging bosses. It all comes together to make a fun yet challenging game. I look forward to seeing how it plays as I progress through it some more.

FZERO99, however, has been my "I've got a few moments to burn" game.... yet sometimes those few moments turn into hours. For me it has been a highly addictive and competitive game. It's not perfect, but it's just so damn fun to play that any flaws the game has is vastly overshadowed by the entertainment factor. I'm still trying to get my first race win, but it's been an exciting journey of progression along the way.

Got a few new ones this week, all through Steam.

Warpips - a simple hybrid RTS-lite and auto-battler where you command units that move left to right. The objective is to destroy the enemy bases with the aim of conquering each map, and you do it by choosing units to fill a loadout you take into battle. The kicker is everything you use is consumed in the match, so it becomes a balancing act of deciding what will serve you best in a given situation...or deciding what to use after picking through and using all the best stuff. Simple to pick up, harder to master. Gameplay sessions are anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on difficulty.

Thronefall - Essentially a 3D version of the Kingdoms games; instead of being 2D it's a 3D isometric game where you do the same thing as Kingdoms; build a kingdom. It's a bit more complex than Kingdoms because of the perspective, but in exchange you have far more options and the skill/levelling system ensures you can tailor your experience to suit your strengths. You're also able to battle the enemies yourself, but you can also customize your build to maximize the use of defenses/minions instead if you like. This one's in Early Access if you want to avoid the uncertainty that can come with those titles.

Katamari Damacy REROLL - A remaster of the original game. The King of the Cosmos somehow accidentally destroys all the stars in the sky; as his son, your task is to make giant balls of stuff from rolling your special ball around and turn them into stars. The controls are pretty cumbersome at times, but the game is enjoyable enough that they're not too hard to deal with. I haven't played the game for years, but after a bit with the remaster, all those songs are stuck inside my head again.

Still playing Starfield. Have about 80 hours in it. Get the hate. Not my favourite Bethesda RPG but still a very good one that scratches that itch.

I also got back into Last Epoch to scratch the ARPG itch and because it should be releasing soon. I keep flirting with the idea of going back to Diablo 4 for season 2 but the loot filter is just sooo good in Last Epoch I have a hard time imaging playing an ARPG that doesn't have one and the thing I hate about Diablo 4 was having to look at every single piece of gear and try to figure out if it was good or not.

I'm still playing Starfield. I'm about 60 hours into it and still enjoying it a lot. I guess I just like a Bethesda-ass Bethesda game, as they call it.

I have also started playing the new Forza Motorsport. It's definitely more of a grind than the previous games in the series. It suits me fine, though, as I mostly play the Forza games (both Motorsport and Horizon) while I exercise on an elliptical machine, and I prefer a game with no storyline to follow for that kind of thing, and being a repetitive grind isn't a negative in that context. In fairness to the game, they've still nailed the driving feel and the cars and tracks look great, but there is a lot of recycled content from the previous games in there.

I got both games via Xbox Gamepass btw.

I'm pretty hooked on Elden Ring and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 right now.

I've only got about 12 hours in Elden Ring at this point, but I'm loving the hell out of it, even if it feels very slow in comparison to other From/Dark Souls games. Running as a Sorcerer, I still haven't really found many upgrades or new spells yet, so I'm using the basic stuff, which can really be a challenge, but I'm having a great time. I recently finished Morne Castle and the Weeping Peninsula, now exploring the Eastern reaches of the starter area, I think I'm ready to head back to the large castle to the North finally. I was getting my ass kicked when I originally hit it, but now I've got a new staff that's as upgraded as I can make it and my spells hit a little bit harder, so I'm going to hack away at it.

HoMM2 is nice and relaxing for when I've had my fill of Elden Ring. I really can only play Elden Ring for about an hour at a time, because I'm usually playing in the evening after my kids go to bed and I begin to get tired quickly. So HoMM is very relaxing and lovely on my PS Vita, where I can just dip my toes in and play a couple of turns before bed and don't really need to think too hard.

That said, I'm at a point now on the XL map where I really need to start consolidating my gains. I've encountered the computer finally and their Heroes army is much tougher than my Main Hero, so I need to make the big trip back towards my area and collect as much of my creatures as I can so I can begin the slow process of wiping them out and taking their lands.

I started Ghostwire: Tokyo since it was on Game Pass and I was looking for a single player campaign to sink time into. I made it about five hours before I gave up and uninstalled. The control scheme is really goofy, the combat was extremely uninteresting, the story seemed ridiculously melodramatic and I didn't have any context to understand what was actually happening. There was also an overwhelming abundance of stuff. Food items that do various amounts of healing, lore items, side quests that are mostly just go find this thing.

Oh, and part of the game requires you to absorb thee floating souls and then store them inside a phone booth machine thingy. For whatever reason, the numbers scale at this absurd rate. The first time I deposited the souls, it said I added like 150 out of 240,300. That number alone turned me off of wanting to continue that activity because it's just so much.

I think the only interesting thing about the game was that when you used an item to heal, it would permanently increase your health a tiny amount. I don't think I've seen that in a game before, but it's a neat way to get around item hoarding at least.

I've been playing the demo of Mosa Lina for the past few days— discovered it while browsing through Steam's Next Fest and I've found it absolutely brilliant. Comes out tomorrow and I can't wait.

It's an immersive sim-inspired 2D platformer physics puzzler by an indie dev, with a structure and premise that's super fresh and unique. You play each level with a randomized set of abilities that you use to grab objectives and then leave the way you entered. It's endlessly replayable, forces you to think on your feet, and full of hilarious outcomes from the emergent systems interacting in ways you don't always expect.

As always, playing FFXIV. I've finally moved the MSQ forward after taking a break from it for about a month. And I believe I've just completely finished the Shadowbringer expansion, including the post-SHB content. Onward to Endwalker! Hopefully I'll finish it before the next expansion comes out early next year.

I think it's time to start a new class, too. My original class is Thaumaturge/Black Mage, but I only got to ~level 65 before giving that up for Red Mage, which is at Lvl 90 (the max level). BLM was just too confusing. Through Stormblood and SHB, I started Machinist, which is also Lvl 90. It's time for something other than DPS; it's time for a healing class.

I rarely play healing classes in MMOs. In fact, I think Eve Online is the only MMO where I play "logi" to repair other ships. And even then, that's only like 10% of the time; the other 90% is regular combat DPS or mining (which is just DPS against rocks, let's be honest). It'll be good to branch out of a bit.

I discovered Pokéclicker about a week ago. I have played nothing but Pokéclicker for about a week. Help.

Usually I'd be more annoyed about finding this kind of game, because they tend to hook me and just make me feel uncomfortable that I haven't min-maxed them enough, but I've got a teething son and a mountain of new albums to listen to... So I've just been relaxing by plotting a route of stuff to do, using an autoclicker to speed through the brute force bits, listen to stuff, and read. Might watch some anime while I'm at it.

I'm playing Fallout 1. Since I played it A LOT back in the day (1999-2000), I know my bearings and I'm efficient.

I play Steam version on Steam Deck and I miss children in the game. I know blowing them up with bombs (that you "accidentally" activated right before the kids stole them from you in Adytum) is seen as bad nowadays, but back in the day in original game, this was one of the ways how to deal with those thieves.

I believe stuff like this should not be cut from the game. Well... I still have original CD, so...

Endless Dungeon came out this week, a game that's been on my wishlist for a long time. I played about 5 hours last night and, thus far, it's one of the best roguelikes I've played in years!

The gameplay is amazing. It's a twin stick shooter with tower defense build in. The shooting and upgrades for your heroes is satisfying, but you need to supplement it by building turrets to help you defend against enemy spawn points. You have a crystal robot with you who unlocks locked doors for you to progress and if the bot dies, the run is over. Personally, I'm not normally a fan of tower defense, but it works super well here and is very easy to learn (there are set points where you can build turrets).

The main draw of the game and why I feel like it's so great is the risk/reward system. You need money to build turrets, upgrade your heroes, and to research better turrets, and you get money for each door you open in the dungeon, but you also run the risk of triggering enemy waves, finding more enemy spawn points (which you then cannot close), or finding artifacts that debuff you and are expensive to turn off. You can also build generators, which give you more of a resource when you open a door, but then of course you need to defend that as well, so you have to decide if the generator + 4 turrets is worth the cost vs the number of doors you still have to open on the floor.

There's a strategy to which doors you open at what time. You need to explore to get to the next floor of the dungeon, but you also need to be careful to not open the floor too much before you have adequate defenses in place. Once you tell your crystal robot to unlock the elevator, endless enemies start spawning as the robot waddles across the map to the door. You have to be prepared and plan ahead of time to make sure it survives the walk.

That's just the gameplay... The art direction, characters, and story is also wonderful. The story is told via text datalogs and memoirs that you find in the dungeon. If you collect enough, you can view cutscenes back at your base that you hang out at between runs. The story is intriguing, but the characters are all the best part. They're all well designed, super cute, and have some neat stories to them. They also all have unique abilities and upgrades to use.

All in all, a very good game. I'm not sure I'd put it quite on the top of the roguelike mountain, but it's pretty close. There are some flaws, such as how some of the guns just are not fun to use, but the base gameplay is generally very good. I do feel that this one won't be "unlimited" gameplay for me like FTL or Isaac, I will probably only play until I beat the game (it seems there's a story ending, but you can probably play more after) and finish all the character quests, so it doesn't have unlimited gameplay, but I expect to spend at least 30-40 hours here .

Recently finished Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on PC. It was a pretty fun game, it felt a little short but that may just be because I'm used to JRPGs these days. Gameplay was largely pretty tight, and graphically it's stunning. Plot felt a little generic, and what I thought was sort of the mid-point ended up being the final act. The guns were pretty good, though I feel it had an over-reliance on turret type or otherwise external weapons over handheld fire power, and it doesn't quite reach the same heights of the weaponry in previous games. The weakest point would be the dialogue, it suffers the same fate of a lot of recent games where the characters just do not shut up.

Overall, good game, would recommend! Great outing for the duo after over a decade of bad to middling games.

Planning to start up Hollow Knight soon, though I have been meaning to play that for several years, so who knows?

I work in game dev and my new project is on a well known, very cool military fantasy series so I've been super deep into a lot of games I don't normally play to build familiarity with the reference material.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 / 2 / Warzone / etc.
Gears of War 1-5 + the spinoff game
Counter-Strike, good lord, a lot of Counter-strike and Valorant
Rainbow Six: Siege
I've played almost all of the Halo titles back to front as well.

A lot of games like this are not normally in my wheelhouse and I'm having a LOT more fun with them than I really thought I would have. I usually turned my nose up at the annual Call of Battlefield debates in my earlier college years but these games are way more fun than my pretentious hipster ass believed they were.

About two weeks ago I started getting into Warhammer: Verminitide II. This is a cooperative first-person hack and slash in the genre of Left 4 Dead but set in a fantasy world. There are 5 unique classes to play each with 3 (4 if you include DLC) subclasses. The game has a bit of a story element to it, but it's hard to pay attention to as you are constantly warding off hordes of chaos zombies or rat-men.

Overall, I like this game a lot. It's very immersive in terms of high-tension moments where a huge horde of enemies comes at you. I've only played on the lowest two difficulties so far and I am not sure if I can handle moving up. The main downside is that the levels aren't procedurally generated so there is a bit of a repetition, but the combat can vary which keeps it fresh. Also, some levels the objectives are a little unclear and it took quite some time floundering about until I figured out what to do. Having said that, I love the focus on melee combat for this compared to other FPS co-ops and it feels very immersive. Any time I hear the horn of an enemy horde I hunker down and mentally prepare myself for the onslaught. This game has a high learning curve which can make playing it really fun.

I've been playing Octopath Traveler 2 and while there are some parts that I enjoy, there are some parts that are just so boring. Throné's chapter 2 is essentially just a few cutscenes? Ochette's was a couple of cutscenes and a single room dungeon? I've heard people saying this is just better than OT1, but it's not quote gripping me the same. Maybe I'm misremembering the first game, but does this one pick up at get more complex at some point?

Concluding the saga from my last few posts on this thread, I finally finished playing Hotline Miami 2 on the Vita. I enjoyed playing this game right after the original, but I wasn't as big a fan of this game compared to the original. I found that this game required you to look beyond your normal viewport often, which was difficult on the Vita as it requires you to take your fingers off the thumbsticks and drag on the touchscreen. A lot of the later levels in the game also had various visual effects added which made it really difficult to see the enemies that were roaming around. I also found the AI to be more difficult in this game, which was nice at first, but got annoying as you'd just get speed-sniped before you even had a change to act. I also found attacking enemies to be inconsistent as sometimes you'd be able to just hack and slash through multiple enemies but other times you'd only get one enemy and then get killed by the other. This was especially annoying when you were down to the last few enemies and instead of making quick work of them, you'd die and have to restart the level. Overall, a solid 6/10 on the Vita. Highly recommend checking out the first game on the Vita but playing the sequel on PC.

My update after a couple of missed posts:

Factorio Nullius mod
After a hiatus I'm kind of back into the game, currently just hit red chips at about 200h. I'm in the middle of rethinking my train configuration (to double headed because stations are starting to take too much space) and some of the production flows (I have areas with multiple iron byproducts produced together, but now they are needed at different proportions than before and that system is sort of falling apart).

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Tried this one when it came out but never got too far into it. I was using the EU version which has a harder saving system. Tried the US version now and messed up my save anyway by trying the "restart" system (you go back to the beginning of the game keeping equipment, money and other stuff). Now I have kind of lost several sessions worth of progress, so I'm not sure I'll go back to this right away. It is a rather bleak rpg where you really need to manage your resources, even inventory space.

Fell Seal: Arbiters Mark
Tried this one after the fiasco with BoF. It's an indie strategic RPG with mechanics similar to final fantasy tactics / tactics ogre. Played only a couple of maps. I don't have big expectations about the story but I'm liking the systems.

Bunch of japanese visual novels
I'm currently learning japanese and I hit a point where I can kind of read okish with the help of a dictionary so I'm trying multiple visual novels in japanese. There are multiple websites with free VNs, some even with voice acting! The quality is all over the place but right now just being able(-ish) to read is enjoyable enough.

Mostly I play MTG:A (Magic the Gathering: Arena) - I'm a magic nerd that stopped attending in-person weekly magic due to the Pandemic and Arena was a great way for me to keep in the game.

Other than that, I on/off play Factorio which has been quite enjoyable. I also sometimes play various version of the STALKER game series and (more often) the fan-made standalones like STALKER Anomaly or STALKER Gamma.

I'm hooked on Slay the Spire right now - I played maybe 60 hours when it first came out and killed the hear with all characters except the defect. For some reason I picked it up last week and won with the defect and am now through ascension 3 with ironclad and the silent.

Not sure why it's so much more appealing to me this time around, but I've been really dumping time into it. Hoping I can get to A10 with one or two characters, anything past think I feel might be too big of a grind for me.

This month I decided to go through my backlog and play something that is at least somewhat aligned with a Halloween theme. I settled on Bayonetta 3. I feel like the game kinda just died in the discourse around it. It has controversy with its lead voice actress, and then the game itself seemed to get a mixed reception for its story. Everything I heard about the game started and stopped at those 2 points. I'm really annoyed at myself for getting delayed by the discourse, because the game is incredibly fun.

It has all of the zany action I expect out of a Platinum game. I didn't initially like Viola based on her visuals, but in gameplay she is super fun and I think her parry mechanic is a very good companion to how the dodge mechanic works throughout the trilogy. I am not a player who goes through and Pure Platinum's the whole game (I got mostly gold trophies), so I have a less nuanced understanding of the combo system, but I felt like the changes incorporating the demon summons were all good.

I also think it may have the best mini games out of the three. I loved the Jeanne sections in particular. Overall I think they feel less intrusive compared to other games Platinum has made.

The story isn't bad per se, but it is half baked. I'm not a lover of any of the Bayonetta game's stories. At most I appreciate the absurdity of a stripper witch shooting monsters. The gameplay sells these games for me, and I think 3 delivered something that is on par with its predecessors.

Since 3 put me in a good mood with the franchise I'm now starting out Cereza and the lost Demon. I'm not super far in, but it also feels like it's gonna deliver.

I'm a bit all over the place with my gaming lately. I've been in the middle of playing tag team with a friend on a satisfactory server. We're playing in the update 8 experimental and this will be our 3rd satisfactory save we're working on over the years. We are slightly stalled out where we always seem to stall out, around heavy frames/cpu's. Blueprints have been very nice, but they sometimes have issues saving in multiplayer when creating them which has put a damper on using them. Vehicles were also exploding the server as they would tend to load in with the wheels on the ground and the cab on the platform they were on, then start bugging out crazily and/or crashing the server over and over. This is our fault for playing the bleeding edge, but we wanted to see the new stuff. Overall is ok, but it feels like our original buggy play of the game when it first came out and not the stable update 7 version still.

With the momentum falling off started trying a bunch of randomness. Another friend was kind enough to gift me Astlibra, which is a 2d rpg action game. I didn't get too far, the animations etc didn't draw me in, but I'm going to leave it on my steam deck and I think i may put some time into it that way. It has great steam reviews but may just not be hooking me.

I grabbed Fortify, which is a 5 dollar steam tower defense game. It's pretty neat looking but the interface has some issues scaling to a pc screen and I found controlling the units a bit fiddly despite it having some nice schemes. I probably won't spend a lot of time with it just due to not quite enjoying the moment to moment gameplay of adjusting the troops around to defend.

I also have Shadows of Doubt, which is a really interesting game. I wasn't quite feeling detective play so stopped a bit, but my impressions from this game were really positive. I believe this game is a procedural detective game with a really slick voxel style to the graphics. The atmosphere really draws you in to that bleak future setting, and I like the game systems in place that I have seen so far. It's still under active development as well so worth checking out if you like the theme IMHO.

Had purchased Mordhiem City of the Damned on sale to try out, but I stopped playing that pretty quickly. This one has the look of something that could have been good, but just feels like it wasn't quite brought home. I can't put my finger on it. Things like the mouse movement was hyper fast because it was made for a controller, awkwardness in navigating/finding your way around, animation + damage speed of resolution all just not wanting me to spend time with it. I can't say it's bad, I just didn't want to be there longer than 20 minutes or so.

Took out dwarf fortress steam version for a spin finally, I hadn't played DF in YEARS. While I still think DF is probably my all time greatest games to ever exist, I didn't end up getting sucked in. Some of the things still felt tedious to me, and that is the fault of many colony sim/builder games that just do the interface better. Something like wanting to make 10 doors was me having to queue up 10 doors. I know it said I can get a manager (which I didn't have yet) to make task orders but I was just like, meeehh. That doesn't mean the game won't have a permanent home on my desktop though.

I took out wartales for a spin after a major patch and started a new game. I promptly played a few hours but didn't make it into any of the new stuff ironically. This one is still living on my desktop and will continue playing.

Finally, I think I've found the one I'll be playing a bit, The Outer Worlds. I had been meaning to play this for a bit and was waiting for the mood to strike me. I am about an hour in, and I think I'll be at least making my first 20 hours with it. Some things got my hairs up about potential quality issues, like it starting VR or the horizontal vs vertical aim sensitivity being off unless you change the FOV to 90. These are just things you see right away and are easily fixed in code that I would think should have been caught ASAP, makes me wonder what else could go wrong, but i'll remain cautiously optimistic.

Whew, so yeah it's been an all over the place week, but I'm glad to have settled on something finally.

Not sure if entirely kosher, but I “got” the PC Tekken 8 beta and am taking it for a spin - can’t wait until the official release!

My Starfield character is lvl 50, all major questlines finished, so I have to stumble into interesting content and do basebuilding now. I'm switching games up for a break.

I finally started Deathloop which I didn't expect to be "Funny Dishonored," but I think I'm going to main this game for a bit. I read that The gameplay loop (no pun intended) can take a few hours to click, so I'm going to be patient, but it seems fun so far.

I've been GMing a pathfinder 2e game for about six months now, and I really like it. I feel like it's a lot more balanced for all classes, and the system definitely makes it easy for me to modify things without worrying about unintended consequences (such as monsters that are much more difficult than their challenge rating would indicate).

I've been refinding my edgy-teen self as someone in their 30s and started getting into the Boomer Shooters genre. I was a little too young and sheltered to be allowed to play Doom or Quake so all of this is new to me as a genre. However I was nostalgic for when me and my friends used to play Timesplitters because the combat was extremely fast paced and the current movement in most shooters isn't fast enough to get that 'wind in your hair' feeling when running around the map killing things. I tried one of the best modern movement shooters, Titanfall 2, and loved the combat, but the multiplayer was brutal and I didn't want to practice just to have fun in multi. Eventually I picked Dusk off of my steam library and gave it a whirl and oh, baby. It just scratches an itch I can't scratch in most modern FPS. I finished Dusk and now I'm on Cultic. I love that we have so many now to choose from. On some level, I think we need more mindless, edgy games. I miss how prevalent the 'punk' mindset was in video games, and it feels like it's dried up or gone artsy/indie. Which is fine, but I'm just not in the mood for an existential or thinking game right now.

To be honest, most of my gaming time the last few days has been Open Sudoku on my phone. Been nice weather and just got a gazebo put up on the patio (got it for 50% off since it was going out of season!), so I've been just sitting out in the lounge chair playing on my phone and watching the dog romp around the yard.

Aside from that, I've been less playing games as much as tinkering with the computer. Just went from AIO to my first custom loop water cooling setup. I still need to get a block for my graphics card (which will likely take a while waiting on the Slow Boat From China since only one place actually makes a block for my card), but otherwise got it going after three drain and refill cycles of tweaking things. I've gotten very efficient at bleeding the loop now though, I can get it filled and 95% air free now in about 5 minutes!

Part of that comes down to discoveries from my first couple of false starts though. I'm using an EKWB FLT-120 res with integrated pump with a D5. Conceptually, the idea for this was to put the pump and res in the bottom of the case, a Ceres 300 - it has a separate compartment for the PSU but my PSU is only about 1/3rd the space; there's a fan mount in that space you can use to feed extra air to the video card, so I figured I could use that as the res/pump mount if I had a relatively compact res, hence the FLT "flat" reservoir. I didn't anticipate just how big a D5 was, though! Original plan would have worked if I had a DDC, but I already bought, opened, and tested the D5 by the time I realized it (I built the original loop outside the case on a towel on my desk to practice and run cleaning solution through the parts. I had a filter in the loop during this phase and it accumulated a shocking amount of metal grit).

Technically, it did fit, even if I had to 3D print a bracket to offset the res from the fan mounts. However, this had the res mounted parallel to the top/bottom of the case. This made bleeding the loop hell - most of the res volume was actually inaccessible to the pump and the top of the res was close to the inlet so the air wouldn't bubble out, it kept getting pulled back in (despite being listed as an acceptable orientation by the manual). If I had the DDC pump I could have built a bracket that tilted it and fixed most of the problem, but it just barely fit in there flat with the D5. So it ended up getting moved up to the middle 120 slot in the front of the case - bottom one didn't have clearance for the tubes to get from the res to the components. Messed up the aesthetics a bit, but it works so much better now. And that'll get fixed once I get the water block for the card, since I'll have more room inside the case and can move back to the old twin 140 front fan arrangement with the res mounted behind the bottom fan with a 3d printed bracket, there's just not room now because the air video cooler is enormous.

I just finished up Assassin's Creed: Mirage. While it's a lot smaller in scale than the last few AC games, it was still pretty fun! For comparison, I 100% completed the game at 25hrs, compared to the 100+ I put into Valhalla. I easily got around 60hr each from the two before that one.

The game is basically another decent installment in the series, you play a dude who stealthily kills people and runs around a meticulously designed environment. The story exists just enough to keep the ball rolling. Shorah Aghdashloo voices a character, and she's always a delight.

All in all, it's worth a rent, but I would not consider this game worth more than $20-30, it's just too small and doesn't actually do anything new. It feels like a resetting of expectations, since Valhalla was such a massive project.

The other game in playing is both an absolute guilty pleasure and a giant freaking trainwreck: Payday 3. This game is essentially a multi-player PvE where you and 3 people conduct various heists. You can sneakily steal from a bank or loudly fend off waves of cops. It's surprisingly fun if you get past aaaaall the ways they absolutely fucked up making this game.

For one, its launch was a massive disaster. To "combat cheating" they made the game always online, but the servers are as reliable as a paper bag umbrella in a thunderstorm. The first few days, the servers didn't even work at all. And even though the game is cross platform now, its matchmaking capabilities are abysmally basic. The game doesn't even have built in voice chat yet either.

What makes that sting worse is that Payday 2 had a far more robust system, over a decade ago. There's a ton of Quality of Life features that are no longer present in the game.

The saving grace is that the team has constantly updated PD2 throughout that entire decade, creating hundreds of updates and practically quadrupling the content of the game. So PD3 will eventually be better.

But holy shit, did they fuck up this launch.

Since I finished up Cyberpunk 2077 I haven't really wanted to get deep into anything. Still playing AC VI a little here and there. I started a game of STALKER Anomaly.

The way I set this one up, it's survival mode (which changes spawns to zombies), and the factions are all severely reduced in number/presence. Mutant spawns are as high as it'll let me. I have a squad of three dudes with me and we've been slowly making our way across the map to the rookie village (merchants are still there in survival mode).

As it always does, STALKER makes me uneasy in a fun way. There are several things to be considering and watching for at any moment. We're out in the wilderness; there's a good bit of distance between us and the village. I can see mutants and zombies out in the distance, sometimes fighting with each other. There's a squad of bandits way on down the road, I could hear them shooting at the mutants. So me and my three dudes gotta figure a route through this with minimal conflict. I've got enough supplies for several days but I'm concerned with my ammunition. My starting rifle is a good one, but I'm highly unlikely to find more of the ammunition it uses in the area we're currently going through. Hopefully the merchant has some, but in case they don't, I've been trying to protect myself with my pistol more often. The pistol is one of the shittiest, so I'm not very confident in it.

So far we haven't found much that's helpful, either. Some old ammo for guns we don't have, mostly. A few materials we might use later for repairs/replenishing things. Primary goal right now is to just get to the village - there will be a merchant there, as well as some stashes we might be able to get into.

We've been stopping along the way to check out buildings and hideaways for loot. Usually I'll camp the squad outside said building and go explore it myself. You never know what you'll encounter in there, so there's some pressure, and NPC's can be kinda annoying indoors. So far, unfortunately like I said we haven't found much, but the setup is working well and the squad has been good about picking off mutants/keeping the building secure.

My method of getting resources for now, has been to harvest mutant parts. If I can make it to the scientist outpost, I'll get the best price for those and might be able to stock up on better ammo.

STALKER is a game I can always come back to because of stuff like this. Anomaly lets you customize the experience, so you can just sort of wander within the game's systems and see what happens to you. While I'm busy trekking through the wilderness, the other factions are also moving around, and mutants/zombies are on the move. From here several things are possible. One or more of the factions could establish a strong presence, and if they're hostile to me that could mean a fierce struggle to get somewhere (as well as an opportunity for good loot). It's possible too, that the mutants and zombies are overwhelming, and nobody manages to build up in that way. I can claim territory if I hold it for a set period of time, so I could end up doing it myself. Periodically, Chornobyl lets out a big burst of shit called an Emission, which wipes anyone out in the open. There are other big events, called Psy-storms, that can render anybody caught outside a zombie. So it's also possible one of these events massively affects the factions and adds to the overwhelming mutant presence. I'll just have to keep going and see.

Balatro out out a new demo recently. It's a rogue-like deckbuilder, but the deck is a 52 card poker deck, with the main modifiers being Jokers, a permanent that you have a limited number of that change how the cards in your hand are scored, and Vouchers, that upgrade the shop where Jokers and your other alteration cards are sold. There are also Planet Cards, that make different types of hands worth more, Arcana Cards that change the makeup of your deck, and Spectral Cards, which are high risk, high reward Arcanas. The demo is pretty fleshed out, changed up pretty often for bugs and balance features, and is rather entertaining in its own right.

Deliver Us Mars. I really liked the Deliver Us the Moon but this sequel was so disappointing. The story was okay, I didn't really like the cliffhanger ending and the side characters were just blunt tools with little nuance written in.

Also man is the game ugly. The first one had an obviously small budget with restricted animation and space suit, no faces, only. But you know, it worked well. The sequel brings more characters in and decided to show their faces. Which, man, both ugly models and lackluster animation is just a recipe for bad times in a serious story.

And the gameplay. Right trigger, left trigger climbing got old fast, even if it was fun for a moment. Mostly it was pretty one-note and the biggest part of the puzzles was running around, which I don't think is the fun part of solving a puzzle. Also I got stuck because controls weren't as intuitive as they should've been (I ended up pushing the controller stick the wrong way and wasted time trying to find an alternative solution).

If you're a fan of the first game, maybe you might enjoy the story as it continues but I don't know... Prepare to be disappointed. At least wait for a sale or game pass "freebie".