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

I just started a fresh replay of Tears of the Kingdom after 100%-ing everything in the game (except only ~50% of koroks). I already love it and am so back in. This game is absolute perfection for me personally. It's a resource management, exploration, adventure game with some light puzzles (but ones that get figured out with loose physics and not specific solutions). So fun.

Just finally got started with Dyson Sphere Program. As someone with hundreds of hours between Factorio and Satisfactory, I figure it's right up my alley; I bought it on first release but got distracted, but they just released their first big expansion pack with combat, so I'm taking it up again.

Also, just got a copy of Scrabble Deluxe. Nothing that exciting, but it's a family favorite and none of us still had a physical copy, so picked it up to play with family over Christmas.

I'm a bit behind the times but I started playing Dave the Diver. Really enjoying it so far, fun gameplay loop, nice steady dose of content, even if each particular gameplay element isn't super deep.

I also just got Dredge and Rollerdome, both of which I'm looking forward to!

I have finally picked up Cities Skylines 2 and I am pleasantly surprised: the performance is very good. I love the gameplay but that isn't very surprising.

Our family had a sit down time to physically put a puzzle together, was great!

And then digitally I'm playing some more "Mobile Suit Baba" -- get your copy here while it's free for now!

Happy Christmas everyone!

I've played Strange Horticulture over the last week. I was interested in it largely due to the Lake District setting as I spend a fair bit of time around there. You run a plant shop. Customers come on and ask for a specific plant. You have a book with some clues to help identify them. You are constantly getting new plants and new pages and it is up to you to label the plants you've identified. You have a map, and occasionally get clues for where to get new plants (although the screen never leaves your plant shop, I've you don't actually get to explore anywhere else). There is also an underlying spooky plot going on but I don't want to spoil anything!

It is short (about 5 hours) but I loved all of it. A nice change of pace, and it feels like it was made for the Steam Deck (which I played it on).
On top of that I finished my replay of Batman Arkham Origins. Some of it was really fun, some of it was pretty frustrating. I don't feel the need to go back and finish the side quests (I did them all back when it was first out anyway).

From the recent Tildes thread about good winter sale games:

Glyph-
Excellent platformer. Only issue I've had so far is that the tutorial is a little slow if you're already comfortable with platformer basics, but it's the kind of game where stuff that frustrated the hell out of you early on will feel insanely simple just an hour later when you get more comfortable. Very simple mechanics used extremely well with nice level design to make something so much better.

Linelith-
Quick puzzle game (hour or so tops) that the less you know about the better.

Outside of those I'm still playing or have on my current list:

Stellaris Nexus- A great game that's already getting better. It's fun to play the AI and I think the multiplayer is quite good for something that could so easily be a mess.

Against the Storm- Cool way to do city builder but as a roguelike. VERY involved compared to most city builders (which lets face it, let you do basically whatever you want these days) so I have to find some time to really learn it, but I love the idea.

Endgame of Devil- Realllly simple deckbuilder/autobattler thing. Very easy, but I can run it on anything and keep it in a window while I work on other stuff.

I've been playing the beta of Fairytale Fables, a deckbilder auto-battler that until recently has required an invite to play.

Refreshingly, you can either play a real-time queue against other players, or against players who've previously played then at your own leisure, where you can also take breaks or whatever.

The balance isn't great so far; there are a couple of combinations that seem broken with multiplicative bonuses that multiply. So far the devs have been relatively responsive and fixed a couple of these already.

I haven't played enough to get higher up into the elo brackets, where supposedly folks have found counterplay to some of the broken builds, but not all.

It'll be interesting to see how things develop, and how the game is when it is eventually released/monetized.

Just picked up Zachtronics solitaire collection and have been idly clicking away. Cribbage is hard!

I was able to pick up Trombone Champ on Switch using nothing but eShop coins thanks to the current sale. This game is hilarious. The switch version has four different control schemes that make a ridiculous game even more absurd as we struggled with the different variations on playing an invisible trombone; my personal favorite is using the joy-con’s IR sensor to determine the distance of your “slide” (this is the first game I’ve owned that makes use of the IR sensor). If you’re looking for a good party game, you could do a lot worse.

Have a Nice Death: A sidescrolling roguelite reminiscent of Dead Cells. You control Death, who after for a very long time leaving its affairs in the hands of a soul-crushing bureaucracy, is trying to reclaim its duties from the hands of its rebellious delegates. It pokes fun at various office tropes; the humor is decent, though the game contains a ridiculous amount of text dialogue which I kind of ended up skipping through very quickly since it was getting in the way of playing the game.

Both combat and movement are very snappy and satisfying. You get to choose which level to visit next from a number of random possibilities based on the kind of reward you can get from it (a bit like Hades). Combat in the level once you get used to the game is relatively easy; it's unlikely that you will die there. Bosses are a different matter, since they hit very hard, move very quickly and, depending on your luck, you might get bad equipment in the run, or just equipment that doesn't synergize with your skill progression. New types of equipment are permanently unlocked from run to run and skills are made randomly available from a set of three skill trees: Melee, Magic and Defense.

Other than luck/RNG being a little too important, other problems include little variety in enemy types throughout levels and the occasional bug. These bugs are well known and reported but it doesn't look like the developers are going to fix them. One such bug killed a run I was very hopeful for (after many failed others) and that's where I stopped playing, but I had fun with this game for more than 20 hours.

After Us: A terribly unsubtle 3D platformer about What We're Doing To The Planet. Play as Gaia, a sprite traveling around a dead world to reclaim the spirits of various sacred beasts. Spoilers: They've all been murdered by them pesky humans. Most humans, including children, have turned into petrified statues (I think?), left behind in dramatic poses to create hundreds of plaintive tableaux for your enjoyment. Some have just become ghouls, and will rush you, grab you and try to inhale your soul or something. You have to fight and (mercifully) destroy these. Note: All the human statues and human ghouls are naked but have no genitals (breasts are shown).

The graphics are excellent and the sets are very well made; you will visit such charming locations as the Countryside (an endless open air landfill), the Power Plant (where all the humans worshipped heaps of CRT televisions), the Farms (a barren desert), the National Park (a hellish broken landscape filled with homing sawblades) and more. All of these locations are covered in... sentient oil spills with tentacles that will try to drag you in and murder you. Each of the spirit beasts is found in a dire situation clearly intended to make you feel Ashamed Of Yourself: The Polar Bear's corpse languishes on the last few pieces of arctic ice; the Pig requires crossing a massive slaughterhouse; hundreds of giant harpoons will try to murder you before you can reach the Whale.

If you don't mind how preachy the game is, there isn't much I can say about it that is negative. I didn't experience any crashes or noticeable bugs. The level design was a little annoying on just a couple of occasions (confusing or misleading), but the checkpointing is extremely friendly. Some might be annoyed that it requires a controller to play, but I've always had and preferred one anyway. In addition to platforming and traversal, gameplay consists in collecting (requires some off the path exploration at times) minor animal spirits and memories from some of the ghouls that you slaught- errrr, that you mercifully dispatch. Memories consist in pictures that form sets; each set tells a wholesome story that shows the good side of humankind. It took me 18 hours to 100% the game.

Previous

Patrick's Parabox, a recommendation from another Tilderino. Absolutely brilliant sokoban-style game where you can go into certain blocks. There are deep and mind-bending consequences of this, including going to infinity and beyond, and shrinking down to the infinitesimal. Words (and Steam trailers) do it no justice, if you enjoy reasoning through logic puzzles (and/or Christopher Nolan films) you've got to experience what this game has to say.

Also playing Outer Wilds which has been mentioned a lot recently. I tried it for a bit years ago but I had a lot of gut discomfort playing it (for me, some games like Stray trigger motion sickness. Outer Wilds didn't trigger it to this extent, but it's still uncomfortable. It's very strange because I usually don't have this problem with fast paced FPSes.)

The game world is so full of mystery and I want to stick with the game to completion. A little each day, slowly if I need to, just willingly experience the discomfort. Odd way to talk about a game but it sounds like it'll be worth it.

I recently had a fascination with clones of Vampire Survivals. However, a lot of games which looks like that have abandoned the games core, the auto-attack, so that they are simply twin-stick roguelikes. But I did find a straight clone called Ancient Witch Arena.

This game is stylish. Very stylish. Most likely the stylishest roguelike I've ever played! Which feels odd, considering that Vampire Survivals was the ultimate fantasy eyecandy overload. But once I got used to it, I think it works rather well. The character moves with a snails pace, but I can accept this as part of the aestetics. Cool stylish witches do not run. The game consist of handpainted artwork, kept in a soft, high-key palette, contrasted with saturated splashes of blood; stylished, of course.

The english translation is disasterous! Doesn't matter much, I think, but this bit from the tutorial is really something "When the number of exp reaches the upper limit, you need to pick up the experience of falling on the map. After a period of time, you will refresh the experience of falling again. During the upper limit, the enemy will not drop experience, and the experience will accumulate in the red experience ball around the hero."

With english selected, the upgrade text is so small it's hard to read, even on a reasonably sized monitor. I quickly got used to it, but don't play this one on a laptop!

The permanent upgrades are permanent. Meaning, you cannot reset them if you want to try a different build. I don't really like this much, the ability to experiment and try new stuff worked so well in Vampire Survivals. Why change something that works? That said, the upgrades doesn't offer that much variation, so I guess it's okay.

One detail I like is that you have lives instead of life points. So three hits and you're dead. Nice and simple.

In addition to WASD movement, you can heal a life with Q or enter Fury mode with E. But it takes time to recharge, so use wisely. A good addition, adding some variation without breaking with the core gameplay.

Been playing an ironsworn campaign solo set in the elder scrolls in 4E 98 during the void nights when the moons disappeared. My character's quest is to help bring them back. I plan on it being pretty long so I'm just starting but it's really fun. I use foundry vtt with the mythic gme module

While the Iron's Hot, a crafting adventure available on Gamepass and other platforms. It does nothing different from all the other crafting games I've played, but it does it very well. It's very much a game without stress. Just decided to buy the Switch version to take it with me on a small trip I've planned the upcoming days.

Asgard’ Wrath II on the Meta Quest 3. This is the “pack in” game with the MQ3 although if you bought an MQ3 in October you had to wait until mid December when the game was released.

This is the first AAA game I’ve played in VR and I find it absolutely awesome. Everything else I’ve played has been a lot smaller like Tales of Onogoro (shares some puzzling) or *Angry Birds VR”, this in a. action RPG that’s comparable in complexity with what you’d see on a console. Despite that I haven’t yet gotten into any deeply frustrating problems with the control scheme, instead it is pretty consistently fun.

I've been playing Lies of P. It has all the polish of a AAA game, but the gameplay just isn't quite there. It's essentially an homage to Bloodborne but you're playing as Pinocchio. Which is a weird concept, but they make it work. The problem is that the dodging in the game isn't as good as in Bloodborne, so you have to parry a lot...but the parrying isn't great either. The enemies feint and delay their attacks in very unnatural ways, meaning that you have to memorize their patterns much more than in Sekiro, for example, but the mechanic also works differently than on Sekiro--you have to hold the parry button to get get the full i-frames, whereas a quick tap would get them in Sekiro. Plus the stagger system is pretty much all behind-the-scenes and not as perfect as Sekiro's so it leads to a lot of frustration.

I've read a lot of comments online from people who beat all the Souls games at level 1, etc., and have never had as much frustration as with this game. I certainly had more frustration with Bloodborne (first Souls game) and Sekiro (didn't understand the mechanics), but once they clicked, they essentially became extremely easy, to the point where I've beaten both games' final bosses without taking any damage. I think this game has clicked for me and I just can't time the parries properly. It's certainly much more frustrating for me than Elden Ring, Demon's Souls, or Dark Souls, which is disappointing. They created a great world, but many of the boss fights have become "keep trying until you know how to beat the boss but the BS the boss pulls keeps killing you, then summon help so you can actually win." It's much less fulfilling to win that way. I really did feel a great sense of accomplishment when I finally beat the bosses in the other games. In this game, I just feel relieved that it's over.

I finished up Ghost of Tsushima this weekend after about 35 hours. I really enjoyed the story and for the first about 20 hours, I enjoyed just running around and clearing mongol camps and doing side missions, but I got a bit tired of them in the end. I think that's just inevitable with open world games. I sadly spoiled my myself for the end game fight by looking up something about the final act before I got to it, but I think it was handled well regardless. I still have the DLC to do but I'm going to come back to it.

I started Spider-Man 2 yesterday and have played about 3 hours so not terribly far in. Still getting through early missions and tutorial stuff. I 100%ed the first game twice and recently ran through Miles Morales for the first time, so I'm excited to be able to play both of them together. The parrying stuff isn't my favorite, but the wingsuit seems to be a great addition.

Finally, I'm in Episode 4 of Life is Strange 2. I've played every other game in the series but avoided this one based on reputation, and I kind of think that was the right call. Not that any of the LiS games are light and breezy but this game seems to really pile on the trauma. I sort of hate the little brother, who, yes, has been through a lot, but is still frustratingly impetuous, impulsive and just flat out whiny. So much could be avoided if he just listened to Sean, just once. The writing is noticeably weaker throughout overall and I feel like the soundtrack is seriously lacking. I'm going to tough it out because I'm this far but man this is a bummer.

I ‘finished’ Hades this morning (I.e., escaped enough times for the main quest to complete). I still have a few more side things I want to wrap up (E.g., Achilles’ quest line) but I’ve put in enough time and had a bunch of fun, so I don’t think I’m gonna try to 100% or anything.

I picked up Descenders a week or so ago from a kind Tilderino, haven’t spent enough time in it yet to really feel comfortable, but it’s been fun so far.

I still need to get back to Outer Wilds to wrap up the DLC (I’m probably 2/3rds through it, as a guess?) but it makes my steam deck cry a bit :). Not really, but the battery life is poor and the fan kicks on high which tends to make my kiddo (who’s typically sleeping on my chest when I game) more prone to waking, so I have only really played it docked. Probably need to turn down the graphics or something

Cyberpunk 2077 here.
Seems like I picked it up at the right moment. I am 25 hours in and i am enjoying it a lot... maybe the fact i did not read anything about the main story so far played on my favour because every twist is unaspected. The graphic is stellar and the occasional glitches don't break the immersion... actually i am enjoying it so much i am thinking to buy the dlc and have a new run with a complete new build once i will reach tge end (i am mostly a stealthy netrunner but i am curious to see the game from a gunslinger pointer of view).

Sea of Stars

Just got to the marsh of Mesa Island. It hasn't been exciting besides spotting all the references to The Messenger. It feels really slow pace too, like I wouldn't even say the game actually begins until commandeering the ghost ship a good couple hours in. It also feels lacking in the wit The Messenger had, with everything being played straight and seriously so far. Hoping it picks up sooner rather than later.

WORLD END ECONOMiCA episode.01

Linear VN about a teen runaway on the moon hoping to make it big via day trading and getting taken in by the small, local church. Episode 1 of 3 so I can't judge fully; I'd say it was an okay read, though with a stiff translation. Hard to recommend given A) a random fanservice CG of Hagana leaving the bathroom in just her panties which just felt out of tone B) Hal having frequent and casually misogynistic thoughts against Hagana and Lisa. I suppose if you were feeling generous, the latter could be attributed to him being an arrogant teenager who thinks he has everything planned out and doesn't like them lecturing him, but regardless, it just felt uncomfortable.

Otherwise it's a tale of Hal choosing between his grand ambition and the people who've taken him in. The first half is slice-of-life-ish world-building which I preferred over the stakes and drama of the second half which felt like it moved too fast. I thought it was interesting that Hagana represented logic, yet also the bonds of the quiet, steady life Hal had formed during his stay with the church. Meanwhile, Barton represented emotion with the exciting glory and riches Hal was dreaming of.