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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I have been absurdly addicted to Vampire Survivors. I don't like bullet hell!
... except apparently I do like bullet hell when the meta-progression is catchy, the runs are short (and easy to make shorter by bumping up the time modifier), and the Massive Cosmic Power of broken builds is enormous fun.
Oh lord, I just got over a pretty serious VS addiction. I had 44 hours played New Year's week alone. After I unlocked almost everything I dropped it completely, and now I only play when my nephews visit.
Pugnala FTW! If you have the Foscari DLC Eleanor is pretty OP as well (until you unlock the godlike Sigma or Je-Ne-Viv)
That's been exactly my pattern, yeah. I can see it starting to lose steam now that I'm farther along, thankfully, I don't have time for this much addiction. XD
Didn't realize Eleanor is from a DLC (I bought the whole package), and yeah, she absolutely is-- I hold out for the triple-S set on other runs frequently too. I'll have to give Pugnala more attention, I've run most often with Poppea and Imelda. I just cleared Moonspell and started on Emergency Meeting, so I've been distracted from main progression.
That's a whole genre now, this site hosts a spreadsheet where someone ranked and reviewed over 900 VS-likes on a 60 point scale
https://survivorslikes.com/
Oh boy. I'm going to... save that link and ignore it until I need another full-time-job-level addiction for a while. ;) Thanks!
It might not be as edgy as some of these other comments, but I can't get enough of cyberpunk. With all the recent updates, it's quite enjoyable to play now. I also love the genre and pace as a late 30's gamer. I play it on GeForce ultimate, so it looks A+.
If there's friends around though, it's all about Mario kart..any version, but the latest one on switch is endless fun.
Chess and card games too : )
Started playing Dredge and Rollerdrome after finishing Dave the Diver.
Dredge has been great so far. The only thing I will say is that I accidentally started a temporary quest that won't renew on failure. Once I realized my mistake, I started a new game (thankfully, I was only about an hour deep in the previous playthrough). Otherwise, love the gameplay loop, the music is very atmospheric and fits well, and the nighttime is genuinely creepy.
Rollerdrome has been my "change of pace" game and it's also been really fun. Turns out a third person shooter combined with roller blading is actually a really cool idea.
Dave the Diver was great, although it did get a bit grindy at the end. I started rushing the main story quests to get the game over with. That doesn't take away from the other 80% of the game which was great though!
I've heard good things about Dave the diver. What contributed to the grind, do you think, and what might they have chosen to do to mitigate it? Or did the devs expect a different kind of play?
While the game does throw a lot of gameplay mechanics and minigames at you, none of them are particularly deep. Even the slightly-less-shallow mechanics (like the fishing) ended up feeling like a chore for me towards the end of the game, because I'd just done it too many times before and there wasn't enough variety to keep me interested. The only one that didn't get old for me was the sushi restaurant but it just wasn't a large enough part of the game to ignore the grind outside of it.
The main pain point based on what I've seen and experienced myself is about halfway through the game. Without spoiling anything, that's when a bunch of new gameplay elements are added which add more grind for the player without adding anything particularly interesting or fun.
In terms of what could've been done to mitigate it, I think making the core gameplay loop a bit deeper and more interesting could've solved a lot of issues, or just shortening the game a bit. I'm no game developer though, so take what I say with a pinch of salt!
Keep in mind this is all my opinion though, and I still heartily recommend the game. I had a ton of fun with it and it was 100% worth the price - it just isn't perfect.
Nice, thank you for your response and I won't take points off the game for this, just curious :) I like hearing what people think about pain points in games and how they can be mitigated, just out of sheer interest in development and variation in players expectations.
Some games introduce automation for repetitive loops and some games end before they become a chore.
It'll also help me to see it coming if/when I pick up this title to play. it's on my (long) shortlist! :)
Time to write too many words about a couple more games!
Let's start with Hue, which was a christmas giveaway gift from @kfwyre !
Hue is a 2D puzzle platformer about colors. The graphics are very simple/basic, and while there's an "open" world progression is mostly linear. The premise is that Hue, the protagonist, is a child collecting a "ring" of colors (an analog stick in your controller). You can set the background color of the world to any color you have collected, which will make things of that color disappear and reveal things not of that color. "Things" include entrance/exit doors, keys and locks, pushable boxes, rolling boulders, spikes, lasers, etc. The puzzle solving component of the game is actually quite solid and a lot of fun! In addition to collecting all of the colors and then reaching the end, there are also collectible "beakers" hidden throughout the levels providing extra objectives (some are quite hard to find!) I played 100% of this game in 8 hours.
I was a little annoyed that there is no way to go directly to a level though. Let's say the area where you get the color "purple" has 15 levels and you missed a beaker in level 15. Tough, get ready to play through the first 14 levels again! I got really good at replaying certain levels quickly but it was still frustrating that I had to do it at all.
Oh, and this game has some kind of lore delivered through letters about Hue's mother and "The Professor" and their academic research into the existence of colors. There was a fully voiced narrator. None of this was necessary! I just wanted to solve puzzles! And the gigantic hallway levels where the narrator is talking (but only the first time you reach them) only make it more annoying to revisit areas!
I've also played Narita Boy which was a giveaway gift from @aphoenix .
Narita Boy is a 2D sidescrolling beat em' up . Sometimes it looks like it's trying to be a kind of metroidvania but it really isn't. The aesthetic of the game is really good/consistent; it's really, REALLY over the top 80s CRT pixel art cyberpunk with relentless amounts of technobabble and cyber-mysticism and other such trappings. You play as Naritaaaa Booooy! (they spell it like that sometimes in the NPC text.) You're a hero summoned to save the three beams of the Trichroma (Blue, Yellow and Red) or something like that from HIM, the rebel supervisor Red program, and his corrupted programs, the Stallions. You want to do this by recovering the memories of the Creator (just some programmer). You fight with a katana and unlock a large amount of other attacks throughout the game. You will surf on a floppy disk, ride a servo-horse and merge with Three Legendary Dudes among other things.
Much of the gameplay is about collecting keys (floppy disks; a lot of things are floppy disks) and using them to unlock things, or finding symbol combinations in the environment and using them in teleportation devices. Most of the gameplay is about fighting the Stallions. There are several varieties of mobs and several boss fights too. The combat isn't easy; the first isolated mobs are easy enough, but the game will throw increasingly harder sequences of groups of mixed mobs and some of them are quite tough. You can mitigate the difficulty by learning the right move and attack patterns to improve your odds, but some encounters are just plain bullshit. Still, for most of the game I enjoyed the challenge.
Checkpointing consists in autosaves after anything important happens, this usually works, but not always. If nothing important has happened and your last autosave was 15 screens ago, guess what, you get to navigate the 15 screens all over again! Argh!
There is an extra objective: Finding the hidden backup floppies for the Creator's First Memory, which is destroyed at the beginning of the game. Of course I went for it... only to find close to the end of the game that I missed one and backtracking to get it is not allowed, meaning I wasted time and effort on an objective that was already impossible. It's one of several little game design issues that just shouldn't be happening in the 2020s anymore. Fans have called out the devs but it seems they have ignored or chose not to fix these issues.
I gave up on this game in the final area, with 76% of the achievements acquired. I felt like the beat em' up sequences were becoming unacceptably unfair at this point. There were so many enemies there was no space in the screen to avoid their attacks and no time to heal, and sequences were so long even if you beat the first or second or third group of enemies, if you died on the fourth you'd have to redo the whole thing, since there's no autosave during combat. There's an enemy that takes several minutes to kill because it's armored (you have to wait for it to rush you while dodging its ranged attacks, then jump over it with perfect timing so it crashes against the wall so you can land a few attacks, rinse and repeat). I don't mind doing that once in a while; I do mind dying 4 groups of enemies later and have to do it all over again each time so I can get to the part of the fight giving me trouble and die again in ten seconds.
So yeah, mixed feelings. There's a lot of fun to be had with this game and I don't regret playing it, it certainly was a unique experience, but some of the gameplay feels like it's from another era, and it's one that I don't miss!
Last year, I made it a goal to play through a lot of my backlog and finish as many story games as I could. This year, I'm giving myself permission to quit on games that aren't clicking with me. I only gave up on one game last year (Ghostwire: Tokyo), technically two if you count not beating each campaign in Back 4 Blood. This year, I've already dropped two: FIST, which was just too jank for me to justify continuing with, since I wasn't into the control scheme or combat very much, and Soulstice, which I bounced off hard within the first thirty minutes. I didn't realize what kind of game it would be, and those games are just definitely not for me.
But I'm happy to say that I finally sat down with Disco Elysium and I am fully engrossed in it. It took a minute to feel comfortable with it but once I realized there's no right way to go about things, I just let myself wander and follow impulses and it's been so much fun to get invested in. Tonight I apologized to so many people that I got an achievement for it, and then I tried to play up my authority by sticking my partner's gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger. Insane behavior, but that's disco.
Disco Elysium lets you have so many incredible weird moments if you want them. I want to replay and do an all the drugs all the time run, hopefully while wearing the dragon bathrobe the whole time.
I'm so sorry already, Kim.
Picked up two music games recently, that are very different:
Trombone Champ is humour focused, and was very highly satisfying as a former band geek: due to the public domain nature of songs chosen, nearly all of them were songs I've previously played over and over for months on end, and performed in concerts, competitions and marches. Even though I was woodwinds and Trombone Champ is nothing like a real trombone, it was a very fun experience.
Full game spoiler
The other is Just Dance 2022 with Unlimited subscription (extra song pack). In many ways this is the opposite of trombone Champ: it's not indie but Ubisoft (booo); it pushes a hated subscription model very heavily and feels somewhat microtransactional; it's got some whimsy to the (especially kids) songs but definitely sometimes quite adult themed despite censorship; it's full of pop songs from around the world that usually introverted, older former band geeks like me have never heard.
But they're both 2022 music/rhythm games, with great things on how modern games have changed for the better: accessibility.
For both, it's extremely "easy" to score points. It doesn't mean you're gonna look awesome dancing or that the music you toot will sound great, but it's easy to score points. The game is called Just Dance: not "GG - turn if off and get super good first THEN come back to dance"
Neither game will "fail" you out of a song. They're not DDR, where you put your toonie in and get 15 seconds before the song turns off because you're new. They're not Guitar Hero or Rock Band, where animation crowds will leave and invisible voices will boo. The challenge is not within the game itself: it's solely on the player if they want to get better.
Trombone Champ has options to turn down flashes, jump scares, and decrease button mashing. JD2022 has songs that are specifically for folks who sit, and most songs score on rhythm and don't necessarily require full body movement.
TC will let you grind for points to unlock things, no need to actually S rank the hardest songs to unlock all the little cosmetic doo-dads. JD2022 as a co-op mode so many dancers all contribute to one score together, rather than having some feel bad they didn't score as high or whatever. (In the newer versions of JD2023 and beyond, there's an option to turn off scoring entirely)
I love that challenging games exist. I love the competitive segment. But I'm also glad that games for "the rest of us" also exist. It allows that there are many ways to have fun and that we can be very different and still enjoy the same things
After playing mostly on my steamdeck during the end of last year, I've gone back to playing on my desktop, so I've been catching up on some shooters that I've had in the backlog.
Metal: Hellsinger: Probably my favorite of the bunch. A lot of people praise the music of Doom 2016/Eternal, which never really did that much for me, but I think the music in this one was a lot of better. It's probably because I had to pay more attention to the music to keep on the beat, and for me the vocals add a lot as well. The combat was not quite as good as Doom, but combined with the rhythm aspect I thought the final product was great! It's fairly short, but I felt satisfied with it towards the end, so for me it was long enough.
Prodeus: Started off fairly strong, but didn't really evolve the gameplay that much as it progressed, so it got a bit stale. Felt mostly like an inferior version Doom 2016/Eternal, but it was ok.
Roboquest: A fun roguelite shooter, but I think it has some issues with runs feeling fairly similar after a while. Sure, there are lots of different guns and a few different classes, but the interaction between items and abilities felt pretty minimal. Comparing to something like The binding of Isaac where combos can drastically change how an item functions, the combos here were mostly +X% damage, which stops being exciting after a while. But I had a lot of fun with it, it just didn't have the staying power I'd hoped for.
To not burn out completely on shooters I recently started playing Expeditions: Rome but I'm not entirely sold yet... But I think the game is about to open up soon, so I'll likely play a few more sessions to see what it's about before giving a final verdict.
Metal: Hellsinger rules. I think about it randomly all the time. I just wish the boss fights were a bit more varied
Yes! I was a bit hestitant during the first few stages, but once I got into it I was thoroughly hooked.
Agree that the boss fights were a bit of a letdown, and I wish there were more boss songs. I know you can change them manually, but would still have been nice with some more variety. But I think the relatively short length of the game worked in its favor here, the boss fights never got too repetitive before the game ended.
I didn't really play much of the Leviathan mode though, just the story mode and all the torments, so maybe the boss issue is even more noticeable there.
Yeah I have expeditions Rome wishlisted.
Big fan of that era and love total war Rome
Yeah, ancient Rome is always strangely alluring!
I'd say that Expeditions: Rome is more like XCOM than Total War though, so keep that in mind if you chose to buy it.
Cool ty
I've been playing a whole lot of Animal Crossing New Horizons - I borrowed a Switch so I could give it a try. Usually, farming/social simulation games don't do much for me, but so far ACNH is very engaging and appealing to me, hitting me right in the Must Collect Everything.
God of War Ragnarök is still ongoing - I'm playing the Valhalla DLC and while I don't love roguelikes that much, this is balanced well between combat and downtime, just like the main game, and it's just plain fun to experiment with all the perks and techniques. But the real strength for me is the story of Kratos trying to figure out who he wants to be. I also went to The Funeral in the main game and I absolutely loved it that (spoiler) is still so very angry. Also, one hell of a moment to pick for the second credit roll.
Coffee Talk - a friend pitched the game to me as: you make coffee, and there are orcs. They know me well. There are not just orcs but a whole lot of other fantasy races, and yey, you make coffee and other drinks for them. It's cute and chill, and I'm enjoying seeing everyone's story as it goes on.
Board game wise: Port Royal - an open drafting card game where you are free to draw as many cards as you like in your quest to get as much money as possible to hire the best crew for your ship but at the risk of losing everything. It's fun and fast and deals well with a variety of playing styles (my partner loves high risk, I do not)
We got a Switch last year, and I player Animal Crossing a ton in the summer. Dropped off for most of the rest of the year, but then saw an article about the New Year’s Eve countdown. Decided we’d set the clock forward to do it around 7:30pm (kids bedtime), and it was just such a pleasant thing. Back to playing every day again now. We’re literally playing as I type this.
ngl I'm contemplating getting a Switch if I can get a good deal on a used one just for AC because it's so nice to play for half an hour in between things. But I'm going to wait and see if I stick with it for longer.
Back to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the PS3 for a bit. One of the better RPGs I've played, with a stronger adherance to D&D realism. I have a soft spot for Morrowind too, and I've been meaning to try out OpenMW.
Recently I have been getting into my DSI again so a bunch of games, but the one that I'm mostly focussing on is Metal Max 3. It's a fan translated Japanese RPG that's set in an apocalypse and I really like the characters, combat is a tad simple but suprisingly easy (which I didn't expect) though the only negative is that it has save points far away so sometimes you really worry that I need to stuff over again-
I recently dug out my old DSi and did a little research on the modding scene. It turns out the DSi is easy to mod and has decent emulator support. Not only can I play NES, SNES, GB, GBA, DS, etc, the fan-made games and translations added a Iot of new content as well.
Same here, but in my case I rediscovered my dslite with R4 card. The ds has a huge number of games that run on it, and some of the best classic RPGs. Also it has great battery life and a nice pocketable form factor.
Hmm! It's not as impressive as what's available on the 3ds but still very good for the DSI, seeing DScraft run on it was mindblowing
If you think the 3DS has impressive Homebrew, you ought to check out the Vita. A prolific porter just recently ported Hollow Knight to it and there's always more stuff coming out.
I'm not much into JRPGs, but that looks pretty interesting.
I've been recently playing Last Window - Secret of Cape West on my DSi; I loved Hotel Dusk playing it on my N3DS a few years ago and recently picked-up a DSi around November just because I'm sort of sick of my 3DS for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the blurry DS games.
At any rate, it's really great and now that I'm getting towards the end of it, I haven't been able to put it down. Not exactly sure what I'll play next, but if I'm in the mood for more visual novel style stuff, I may check out 999.
Oh thank you for the reminder! I never played hotel dusk but I did play the small (DLCish?) Chase Cold Case investigations thats very similar to that and I loved it! Really gonna need to play the DS one soon
Interesting, thanks for the heads-up on Chase Cold Case, I'll have to check it out.
Really enjoying the DS as a mostly bedtime thing; normally I'd be reading a book instead, but these Cing games are so close to that, it's been nice to relax with them.
Started playing two new games:
Wall World,
and Moonstone Islands.
I bought both games on gog.com by a whim practically without reviewing and pretty much happy with both.
Don't want to spoil anything, but while these games is completely different (one is roguelike miner, and second is combination of Stardew Walley with Pokemons) exploration and learning of new mechanics is very interesting in both games. And I don't even like Pokemons.
Catmaze. It went on sale in the PS store and I really need me some metroidvania’s. I recently replayed Hollow Knight and it’s as beautiful as ever, but I didn’t have the patience to do the Radiance ending.
If there’s any recommendations on some metroidvania’s I’m all ears. Especially anything recent I may have overlooked.
This is meta, but I've been kind of addicted to filling out my Backloggd this week while I play Pokeclicker. I want to see if I can hit 1000 games I can remember playing... as Tunic languishes on the side. Though I feel kind of stuck there, I got to the mine and the enemies are rough.
The mine section was really irritating me, and then I realized I'd approached from a back route and was trying to get past an area I quite literally could not progress past at that point yet and had to come in from a different way. Not sure if that helps you, but maybe something to think about as a different approach.
You know now that you mention it, I do think there's, uh. A big obvious front entrance that I opened on the way to that point. :^) Thank you, I'll try and find the path there...
I've gotten heavily into Stardew Valley again. Started a new farm on my Switch and am working toward the last of the community center bundles. My goal is to build up a more diversified farm rather than a wine-based one. Because I always fall into the trap of exclusively growing Starfruit, then turning it into wine, then aging it, and then just raking in cash. Very good way to be rich, but a very boring way to play.
So far I've got large fields for crop-growing and a steady cow/goat/chicken operation going. Also recently unlocked the desert mine, but damn that thing is difficult.
This week for our roguelike podcast we played Wildermyth
Going in blind, I was thinking it was pretty close to a cartoony Invisible, Inc but it's much more of an X-Com like game with elements of base management. I really like the presentation with the charming graphics and simplified, faster combat than you get with other tactics games, but boy is the game wordy. I feel like that's the make-or-break factor for Wildermyth with folks is if they like that kind of narrative structure or not. I can see why people would love it and others would hate it.
Our overall podcast rating was on the positive side. I liked it the best of my 3 co-hosts, but you really need to be in a specific mood and space to play it. Wildermyth would be tough to follow story-wise if you were distracted by a background podcast or TV. The game overall is good, but I feel like it could use some polishing up in some very minute areas to really make it shine.
I was also kind of shocked that Wildermyth isn't out on consoles yet, particularly Switch. I played a lot of it on the Steam Deck and it worked surprisingly well. I think it's supposed to hit consoles in 2024 sometime and I imagine it will be a big hit with casual gamers. Wildermyth does have a sort of PG fun-for-all style to it and if you think you would like the kind of game it presents itself as, you probably will. Just be ready to read and flip to the next comic page a lot.
Dyson Sphere Program
I'm not sure that it qualifies as a game exactly.
I recently restarted playing Helldivers in anticipation of the sequel. The over the top Starship Troopers lampooning coupled with the intensity keeps bringing me back.
I recently put a lot of time into Voidigo. I really liked it! It's a little different than other rougelites that it resembles so it took some time and frustration to figure it out. I really like the things it does differently and it really encourages trying different weapons and powerups. You have to in order to access the final level. I put a good 40 hours into it but I felt it was time to move one.
I started playing Mortal Sin for my rougelite fix and love it so far. It's still in early access and I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses. Mortal Sin also brought me to Barony. That game is rage inducing but I can't stop playing it.
I also started Spider-Man 2. I'm still at the beginning but I'm sure I'll like it because I enjoyed the first one and Miles Morales a lot.
Just reached Chapter 4 of Rogue Trader. It's absolutely not a perfect game, but it's the most realised version of the 40k universe I've ever played. I hear Chapters 4 and 5 are buggy, so I'm waiting for the next QOL patch to come out.
In the meantime, I'm playing Europa Universalis IV again. Specifically my comfort campaign, the Ottomans. Thinking about getting King of Kings for a Byzantium playthrough, but I might wait for a discount.
With it's recent introduction of Safer Seas (PvE servers), I've once again set sail in the pirate sandbox that is the Sea of Thieves. I was having difficulty enjoying the game with the constant anxiety of other players who could potentially undo hours of work collecting treasure by sinking my ship. Playing with literally just a crew of my own choosing has been an enormous game changer and made the game actually relaxing to play.
There's still plenty of peril, I spent an hour gathering treasure solo from a siren's grotto to be confronted by a ghost ship on my way to turn in me loot. I just don't need to worry about the stress of other people anymore!
Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children
Korean hero-based XCOM combat which I got a while ago purely out of reputation even though I'm not one for macro decisions in strategic games. I'm still in the early game just after Irene joined so I'm poor and have no idea what I'm really doing. Currently shaping units as follows:
I've had Albus and Sion KO'd in the last two missions by virtue of splitting the party and the Bull leaders exploding them, so that's a lesson to not do that even though the maps have so many treasure chests to loot.
LONESTARS
Took note of this during the last Next Fest and it just went into Early Access. It's a turn-based roguelite where you customize your spaceship in the random events between fights and allocate your hand of energy cards in the ship's weapons to deal enough damage to overpower an enemy's attacks. Each run has 12 fights (divided into 2 mob fights, elite, and boss each zone) and an optional victory lap where you can take on 5 bosses back to back (haven't had a build good enough to do this though). The new ship type allows for moving around the ship's systems a few times in the middle of combat so it allows for covering gaps in offense or maximizing the attack after moving the ship out of the way. Already have 7 hours, so I think this is a keeper just for that feeling of "I math'd everything out and avoided damage", though of course it's still developing.